"Asp" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... arrows, or sword and buckler, and play at dice and draughts, and give no alms except to their dogs. 'Our places are taken by hawks and hounds, or by that strange creature, woman, from whom we taught our pupils to flee as from an asp or basilisk. This creature, ever jealous and implacable, spies us out in a corner hiding behind some ancient cabinet, and she wrinkles her forehead and laughs us to scorn, and points to us as the only rubbish in the house; and she complains that we are totally useless, and recommends our being ...
— The Great Book-Collectors • Charles Isaac Elton and Mary Augusta Elton
... child shall lead them. And the cow and the bear shall feed; their young ones shall lie down together, and the lion shall eat straw like the ox. And the sucking child shall play on the hole of the asp, and the weaned child shall put his hand on the cockatrice den. They shall not hurt or destroy in all my holy mountain: for the earth shall be full of the knowledge of the Lord, as the waters cover the sea" (Isa. 11:6-9). "And in that day will I make a covenant for them with ...
— Satan • Lewis Sperry Chafer
... again and followed MacRae in a cautious file around clumps of willow and rustling quaking-asp to the place where the blaze should have shown. But no glint of fire appeared in any direction; the coulee-bottom lay more dark and silent, if that were possible, than the gloomy hills above. Perplexed, MacRae halted, and we bunched together, whispering, ...
— Raw Gold - A Novel • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... Oliver, who noted where the flat, spade headed little serpent fell. "Looks wonderfully like an asp, such as they have in Egypt. ...
— Fire Island - Being the Adventures of Uncertain Naturalists in an Unknown Track • G. Manville Fenn
... raised a gory clot (23) In guise of Asp, sleep-bringing, swollen of neck: Full was the blood and thick the poison drop That were its making; in no other snake More copious held. Greedy of warmth it seeks No frozen world itself, nor haunts the sands Beyond the Nile; yet has our thirst of ...
— Pharsalia; Dramatic Episodes of the Civil Wars • Lucan
... "you all ride down the road to where the bridge is—that's the main stream again, and she's pretty big—regular river, all right. Wait for me there at the bridge. I'll see if I can pick out a fish or so. I see a dry quaking asp lying here that some fellow has left, and I'll just try it myself. You know, get a quaking-asp pole that's dry and hasn't been dead too long, it's the lightest and springiest natural fishing rod that grows. The tip is strong enough, if it hasn't rotted, and she handles almost as good ...
— The Young Alaskans on the Missouri • Emerson Hough
... has hindered millions from progressing, and never benefited a soul. It occupies the mind with that which is injurious and thus keeps out the things that might benefit and bless. It is an active and real manifestation of the fable of the man who placed the frozen asp in his bosom. As he warmed it back to life the reptile turned and fatally bit his benefactor. Worry is as a dangerous, injurious book, the reading of which not only takes up the time that might have been spent in reading a good, instructive, and ...
— Quit Your Worrying! • George Wharton James
... out of drawing. With a gasp, She pants upon the passionate lips that ache With the red drain of her own mouth, and make A monochord of colour. Like an asp, One lithe lock wriggles in his rutilant grasp. Her bosom is an oven of myrrh, to bake Love's white warm shewbread to a browner cake. The lock his fingers clench has burst its hasp. The legs are absolutely ...
— The Heptalogia • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... deadly brood appears; First the dull Asp its swelling neck uprears; The huge Hemor'rho[:i]s, vampire of the blood; Chersy'ders, that pollute both field and flood; The Water-serpent, tyrant of the lake; The hooded Cobra; and the Plantain snake; Here with ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook, Vol. 3 • E. Cobham Brewer
... in diameter, and bout forty feet in height. Among their giant relatives of the Sierra the very largest would seem mere saplings. A considerable portion of the south side of the mountain is planted with a species of aspen, called "quaking asp" by the wood-choppers. It seems to be quite abundant on many of the eastern mountains of the basin, and forms a marked ...
— Steep Trails • John Muir
... were gone. She failed to captivate Augustus by her winning manners, or move him by a display of her distress. Her power, she realized at last, was gone; but grace his triumph in Rome she was determined she would not. As a crowned queen she had lived; as one she would die. The deadly asp, it is said, became the executioner of her wicked will; and when the victor came to stay the act which would rob him of a part of his revenge, he found the work accomplished. Cleopatra would try her ...
— Woman: Man's Equal • Thomas Webster
... baffled. She pretended all submission; but when the ministers of Octavian came to carry her away, they found her lying dead upon her couch, attended by her faithful waiting-women, Iras and Charmion. The manner of her death was never ascertained; popular belief ascribed it to the bite of an asp which had been conveyed to her in a basket ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 2 • Various
... intriguing women shook off the spell with a laugh, and the men did the same with an oath—and I was satisfied! I received neither 'pay,' nor jewel of recognition,—I had played 'for the honour' of appearing before their Majesties!—but my bow was a wand to wake the little poisoned asp of despair that stings its way into the heart under every Royal mantle of ermine, ...
— Temporal Power • Marie Corelli
... are those of the amentaceous trees, and the earliest of these are the pussy willow, the quaking asp, and the hazel. All of them are quick to respond to the kindly influences of a vase of water and a sunny window and we may have all three of these first blossoms in a spring bouquet at home by the first of March. Towards the last of February the catkins of the pussy willows and the aspens ...
— Some Winter Days in Iowa • Frederick John Lazell
... and cloth of Pyramus I see: There is the number of the joyless days Wherein Medea won no love nor praise: There is the sand my Ariadne pressed; The footprints of the feet that knew no rest While o'er the sea forth went the fatal sign: The asp of Egypt, the Numidian wine, My Sigurd's sword, my Brynhild's fiery bed, The tale of years of Gudrun's drearihead, And Tristram's glaive, and Iseult's shriek are here, And cloister-gown of ...
— Poems By The Way & Love Is Enough • William Morris
... up the letter, and, with a shudder, thrust it in her bosom, as Cleopatra might have thrust the asp which was to destroy her; then with leaden feet, she crossed the hall and opened the library door, and saw her father standing by the table clutching some papers in one hand, and gesticulating wildly with the other. Dizzily, for there seemed to be ...
— At Love's Cost • Charles Garvice
... you so, Mamma," had said Ellen, this night of the full moon, as she had pondered before the mirror upon the effect a headache-bandeau in the shape of a royal asp would have upon a certain retired colonel who seemed inclined to find solace for his long widowhood en secondes noces. "She evidently did not see Mr. Kelham and Sybil on the sand-bank, and I honestly do not think she ...
— The Hawk of Egypt • Joan Conquest
... a Mexican pony rider came in, mortally wounded, having been shot by the savages from ambush while passing through a dense thicket in the vicinity known as Quaking Asp Bottom. Although given tender care, the poor fellow died within a few hours after his arrival. The mail was waiting and it must go. Kelley, who was the lightest man in in the place—he weighed but one hundred pounds—was now ordered by the boss to take the dead man's place, and go on with the ...
— The Story of the Pony Express • Glenn D. Bradley
... Alexandria was significantly said to be a tyranny tempered by ridicule. The dynasty ended in the person of the celebrated Cleopatra, who, after the battle of Actium, caused herself, as is related in the legends, to be bitten by an asp. She took poison that she might not fall captive to Octavianus, and be led in his triumph through the streets ...
— History of the Intellectual Development of Europe, Volume I (of 2) - Revised Edition • John William Draper
... heart that Becky Glibbans should never wear gloves for my marriage, I was averse to sending her any at all, but my mother insisted that no exceptions should be made. I secretly took care, however, to mark a pair for her, so much too large, that I am sure she will never put them on. The asp will be not a little vexed at the disappointment. Adieu for a time, and believe that, although your affectionate Rachel Pringle be gone that way in which she hopes you will soon follow, one not less sincerely attached to you, though it be the first time she has so subscribed ...
— The Ayrshire Legatees • John Galt
... harmless I have liv'd; my bow Ne'er bent save on the wild beast of the forest; My thoughts were free of murder. Thou hast scar'd me From my peace; to fell asp-poison hast thou Changed the milk of kindly temper in me; Thou hast accustom'd me to horrors. Gessler! The archer who could aim at his boy's head Can send an arrow to ...
— The Life of Friedrich Schiller - Comprehending an Examination of His Works • Thomas Carlyle
... despite his mask. There lived not a man like him. Tall and thin, with long, bird-like limbs and a stooping back, with the features concealed by the white mask all but the eyes, which glittered like those of an angry asp, he seemed more spirit than man; and I felt as if I were crossing blade with some uncanny phantom of the woods rather than a thing of flesh and blood, as after a fierce bout we circled round, watching each ...
— Orrain - A Romance • S. Levett-Yeats
... caused her to draw away from Chauvelin, as she would from a venomous asp, was certainly not fear. It was hate! She hated this man! Hated him for all that she had suffered because of him; for that terrible night on the cliffs of Calais! The peril to her husband who had become so infinitely dear! The humiliations and ...
— The Elusive Pimpernel • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... to conclude in secret the final arrangements. The ground about the quaking asp grove, and nearest El Capitan, afforded the best concealment close to the Gap. And to this point Scott was directed to bring what men he could ...
— Nan of Music Mountain • Frank H. Spearman
... aparte. As if kvazaux. Ask demandi. Ask (beg) peti. Asleep dormanta (adj.), dormante (adv.). As long as tiel longe kiel. As many tiom. As much tiom. As many as tiom, kiom. As much as tiom, kiom. Asp aspido. Asparagus asparago. Aspect vidigxo. Aspect (phase) fazo. Aspen tremolo. Asperse kalumnii. Asphalte asfalto. Asphyxia asfiksio. Aspirate elspiri. Aspirant aspiranto. Aspiration (breathing) elspiro—ado. Aspiration (aim, intention) ...
— English-Esperanto Dictionary • John Charles O'Connor and Charles Frederic Hayes
... great for words, it might have been; but his sister!—his pride and delight, after all and certainly a Christian! Better far had she said she was leaving him for ever, to abandon herself to the degrading service of the temples; better had she said she had taken hemlock, or had an asp in her bosom, than that she should choose to go out of the world with the tortures, the ignominy, the malediction of the religion ...
— Callista • John Henry Cardinal Newman
... soubrette through whom Cnemon's misfortunes had arisen, had been slain by accident in the conflict; and Thermuthis, whose suspicions had been awakened by the joy expressed by Cnemon, is meditating the murder of his fellow-traveller, when he opportunely perishes by the bite of an asp. Cnemon, continuing on his way,[57] reaches the margin of the Nile opposite the town of Chemmis, and there encounters a venerable personage, who, wrapt in deep thought, is pensively pacing the banks of the river. This old Egyptian priest, (for such he proves to be,) Calasiris by name, not only ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine—Vol. 54, No. 333, July 1843 • Various
... written in the Himakoot book (That mighty Baly from Kehama took), "Who blows on pounce Must the Swerga renounce?" It is! it is! Yamen, thine hour is nigh: Like as an eagle claws an asp, Veeshnoo has caught him in his mighty grasp, And hurl'd him, in spite of his shrieks and his squalls, Whizzing aloft, like the Temple fountain, Three times as high as Meru mountain, Which is Ninety-nine times as high ...
— Rejected Addresses: or, The New Theatrum Poetarum • James and Horace Smith
... nor, like Pegasus in Euripides, "who stooped and crouched lower than he wished"[642] to take up his rider Bellerophon, must he humble himself and grant whatever favours are asked him, fearing to be called hard and ungentle. They say that the Egyptian Bocchoris, who was by nature very severe, had an asp sent him by Isis, which coiled round his head, and shaded him from above, that he might judge righteously. Bashfulness on the contrary, like a dead weight on languid and effeminate persons, not daring to refuse or contradict anybody, makes jurors ...
— Plutarch's Morals • Plutarch
... on earth is sadder Than the dream that cheated the grasp, The flower that turned to the adder, The fruit that changed to the asp; When the day-spring in darkness closes, As the sunset fades from the hills, With the fragrance of perish'd roses, With ...
— Poems • Adam Lindsay Gordon
... and lizards flabby, Centipedes, and hydras scabby, Asp, and slug, and toad, whose gem ...
— Fringilla: Some Tales In Verse • Richard Doddridge Blackmore
... lie down with the kid; and the calf and the young lion and the fatling together, and a little child shall lead them. And the cow and the bear shall feed; their young shall lie down together, and the lion shall eat straw like the ox. And the sucking child shall play at the hole of the asp, and the weaned child shall put his hand on the cockatrice den" (Isaiah xi:6-8). Do not say this has a spiritual meaning. It has not; it means what it says, and when the King comes back He will do it all in ...
— Studies in Prophecy • Arno C. Gaebelein
... ye do that?" sez I. "You've shquibbed off your revolver like a child wid a cracker; you can make no play wid that fine large sword av yours; an' your hand's shakin' like an asp on a leaf. Lie still and ...
— Soldier Stories • Rudyard Kipling
... shade of the forest that edged the mesa, and just back of Fernando's camp, a Ranger trail cuts through a patch of quaking-asp and meanders through the heavy-timbered land toward the Blue range, a spruce-clad ridge of southern hills. Close to the trail two saddle ...
— Sundown Slim • Henry Hubert Knibbs
... robes, dead, and her two maids dying too. "Is this well?" asked the man who found her. "It is well for the daughter of kings," said her maid with her last breath. Cleopatra had long made experiments on easy ways of death, and it was believed that an asp was brought to her in a basket of figs as the means ...
— Young Folks' History of Rome • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... dignifying pain— A father's love and mortal's agony With an immortal's patience blending:—Vain The struggle: vain against the coiling strain And gripe, and deepening of the dragon's grasp, The old man's clench, the long envenom'd chain Rivets the living links,—the enormous asp Enforces pang on pang, and ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole, V4 • Horace Walpole
... it waved over was transformed. No human foot approached her cave—no mortal dared. The warrior, who feared not a hundred foes, quailed at the sight of Elgiva, the enchantress, the worker of wonders. Unclean reptiles crawled around her cave—the asp, the loathsome toad, and the hissing adder. Two owls sat in the farthest corner of the cave, and their eyes were as lamps in its darkness. They sat upon skulls of the dead. A tame raven croaked in the midst of it. It was told ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Volume VI • Various
... head of the museum, and been ordered to leave Alexandria. He died, as courtiers say, in disgrace; and he was buried near Diospolis in the Busirite nome of the Delta. According to one account he was put to death by the bite of an asp, in obedience to the new king's orders, but this story is not generally credited; although this was not an uncommon way of ...
— History Of Egypt From 330 B.C. To The Present Time, Volume 10 (of 12) • S. Rappoport
... The soldiers clanking past with swords and shields, The camel-drivers rocking on the humps, The Brahman proud, the martial Kshatriya, The humble toiling Sudra; here a throng Gathered to watch some chattering snake-tamer Wind round his wrist the living jewellery Of asp and nag, or charm the hooded death To angry dance with drone of beaded gourd; There a long line of drums and horns, which went, With steeds gay painted and silk canopies, To bring the young bride home; and here a wife Stealing with cakes and garlands to the god To pray her husband's safe ...
— The Light of Asia • Sir Edwin Arnold
... still held Juan's, by degrees Gently, but palpably confirm'd its grasp, As if it said, 'Detain me, if you please;' Yet there 's no doubt she only meant to clasp His fingers with a pure Platonic squeeze: She would have shrunk as from a toad, or asp, Had she imagined such a thing could rouse A feeling dangerous ...
— Don Juan • Lord Byron
... she was found lying dead on a golden couch in royal attire, with her two women lifeless at her feet. The manner of her death was unknown. It was generally believed that she had died by the bite of an asp, which a peasant had brought to her in a basket full of figs. She was 39 years of age at the time of her death. Egypt was made a Roman province. Octavian did not return to Rome till B.C. 29, when he ...
— A Smaller History of Rome • William Smith and Eugene Lawrence
... regard to those planets was borrowed by them from Egypt, where for many ages the sun and the moon had been studied in connection with their movements in the zodiac. In that country these serpentine movements were symbolized by the uroeus, or asp, worn upon the crown above the head of every Pharaoh. So closely was the Jewish religion connected with worship of the planetary bodies that Moses is said to have disappeared upon Mount Nebo, a word which shows the mountain to have been sacred to the moon; while Elijah ascending ...
— The Woman's Bible. • Elizabeth Cady Stanton
... this noblest of all empresses, was marked to be stricken down by the red hand of anarchy, to whose crime, and poison, and danger we open our national ports with an unwisdom which is criminal stupidity, and of which we shall inevitably reap the benefit. America cannot warm the asp of anarchy in her bosom without expecting it to turn and ...
— Abroad with the Jimmies • Lilian Bell
... play-goer. Gulliver, with the Liliputians swarming upon him; the painty-necked ostriches and pelicans; the mummied mermaid under a glass bell; the governors' portraits; the stuffed elephant; Washington crossing the Delaware; Cleopatra applying the asp; Sir William Pepperell, at full length, on canvas; and the pagan months and seasons in plaster,—if all these are, indeed, the subjects,—were dim phantasmagoria amid which she and Bartley moved scarcely more real. The usher, in his dress-coat, ...
— A Modern Instance • William Dean Howells
... conceals an asp, And bliss coquetting flies the grasp: And, waking up, snap goes the slight Poor cord that held my foolish kite,— Your slave, you may not care to know it, Your humble slave will be ...
— London Lyrics • Frederick Locker
... enemy of the asp. It is a native of Egypt and when it sees an asp near its place, it runs at once to the bed or mud of the Nile and with this makes itself muddy all over, then it dries itself in the sun, smears itself ...
— The Notebooks of Leonardo Da Vinci, Complete • Leonardo Da Vinci
... emperor; and Justinian, planting a foot on each of their necks, contemplated above an hour the chariot-race, while the inconstant people shouted, in the words of the Psalmist, "Thou shalt trample on the asp and basilisk, and on the lion and dragon shalt thou set thy foot!" The universal defection which he had once experienced might provoke him to repeat the wish of Caligula, that the Roman people had but one head. Yet I shall presume to observe, that such ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 4 • Edward Gibbon
... boys are delightful bits of worthy music. She, too, has done more ambitious work, such as a Rossetti Christmas Carol, the contralto solo, "The Quest," eight settings of Stevenson's poems, the Wedding Music for eight voices, piano, and organ, and a cantata, "The Golden Asp." ...
— Woman's Work in Music • Arthur Elson
... (the Iconographie) we have several references to ancient representations of our blessed Lord treading the dragon under foot; and sometimes the lion, the asp, and the basilisk are added. ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 193, July 9, 1853 • Various
... however, she enjoyed later much complimentary disparagement from her own sex. Miss Celestina Howard, second leader in the ballet at the Varieties, had, with great alliterative directness, in after-years, denominated her as an "aquiline asp." Mlle. Brimborion remembered that she had always warned "Mr. Jack" that this woman would "empoison" him. But Mr. Oakhurst, whose impressions are perhaps the most important, only saw a pale, thin, deep-eyed woman, raised above the level of her companion by the refinement of long suffering ...
— Tales of the Argonauts • Bret Harte
... noticed—besides the great saurians already mentioned among the larger animals—the Nile and Euphrates turtles (Trionyx Egypticus and Trionyx Euphraticus), iguanas (Stellio vulgaris and Stellio spinipes), geckos, especially the Egyptian house gecko (O. lobatus), snakes, such as the asp (Coluber haje) and the horned snake (Coluber cerastes), and the chameleon. The Egyptian turtle is a large species, sometimes exceeding three feet in length. It is said to feed on the young of the crocodile. Both it and the Euphrates turtle are of the soft kind, i.e., of the ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 5. (of 7): Persia • George Rawlinson
... It was an asp. He knew it was from the descriptions he had read of such creatures, and then the desire to throw it off—as far as he could, came over him, and his nerve began ...
— Yussuf the Guide - The Mountain Bandits; Strange Adventure in Asia Minor • George Manville Fenn
... end. Against the wall, in the middle of the half-pace, is a chair placed for him, with a table and carpet before it. Over the chair is a state, made round or oval, and it is of ivy; an ivy somewhat whiter than ours, like the leaf of a silver asp, but more shining; for it is green all winter. And the state is curiously wrought with silver and silk of divers colours, broiding or binding in the ivy; and is ever of the work of some of the daughters of the family; and veiled over at the top, with a fine ...
— Ideal Commonwealths • Various
... deities, and were worshiped through sacred animals, as emblems of divinity. Among them were the bulls, Apis, at Memphis, and Muenis, at Heliopolis, both sacred to Osiris. The crocodile was sacred to Lebak, whose offices are unknown; the asp to Num; the cat to Pasht, whose offices were also unknown; the beetle to Ptah. The worship of these and of other animals was conducted with great ceremony, and sacrifices were made to them of other ...
— Ancient States and Empires • John Lord
... Exploring ocean in its every nook, From the Red Sea to the cold Caspian shore, In earth, in heaven one only Phoenix dwells. What fortunate, or what disastrous bird Omen'd my fate? which Parca winds my yarn, That I alone find Pity deaf as asp, And wretched live who happy hoped to be? Let me not speak of her, but him her guide, Who all her heart with love and sweetness fills— Gifts which, from him o'erflowing, follow her, Who, that my sweets may sour and cruel be, Dissembleth, careth not, or will not ...
— The Sonnets, Triumphs, and Other Poems of Petrarch • Petrarch
... stopped, plunged his naked arm into the basket, and drew out a cobra de capello, or else a haje, a fearful reptile which is able to swell its head by spreading out the scales which cover it, and which is thought to be Cleopatra's asp, the serpent of Egypt. In Morocco it is known as the buska. The charmer folded and unfolded the greenish-black viper, as if it were a piece of muslin; he rolled it like a turban round his head, and continued his dance while the serpent maintained ...
— Complete Hypnotism: Mesmerism, Mind-Reading and Spiritualism • A. Alpheus |
