"Python" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... before. Better risk discovery, better risk everything, than be left to pass the night where I was. Should that horror settle down upon me again, I felt that I must succumb to it. It would crush the life out of me as infallibly as though I were in the folds of some huge python. Long before morning ...
— The Argosy - Vol. 51, No. 2, February, 1891 • Various
... his feet, and exhausting him by the heavy going. Several times animals broke cover and crashed away unseen. At one spot in the ooze he saw the form of a huge crocodile, and at another place the menacing head of a python was reared above the tops of the reeds, with his forked tongue flickering about the blunt nose. These sights, and the sudden snorts from unseen beasts, bred in him a growing feeling of uneasiness, which in turn weakened his powers of reasoning, so that he blundered hither ...
— In Search of the Okapi - A Story of Adventure in Central Africa • Ernest Glanville
... without making one observation on the character of this figure. He is supposed to have just discharged his arrow at the Python; and by the head retreating a little towards the right shoulder, he appears attentive to its effect. What I would remark is the difference of this attention from that of the Discobolus, who is engaged in the same purpose, watching ...
— Table-Talk - Essays on Men and Manners • William Hazlitt
... serpent" (Job xxvi. 13), expressions which are almost Vedic. From celestial phenomena the myth of the Apollo Serpent descended to impersonate the phenomena of earth, of which we have examples in the Greek fable of the Python, and others. Apollo again appears as the god which agitates and dissolves the waters, and the serpent as the winding course of a river, and also as other sources of water. The sun causes the river ...
— Myth and Science - An Essay • Tito Vignoli
... is a species with arms sometimes 30 feet long, so as to be 60 feet from tip to tip. The body, however, is small in proportion. The Giraffe attains a height of over 20 feet; the Elephant, though not so tall, is more bulky; the Crocodile reaches a length of over 20 feet, the Python of 60 feet, the extinct Titanosaurus of the American Jurassic beds, the largest land animal yet known to us, 100 feet in length and 30 in height; the Whalebone Whale over 70 feet, Sibbald's Whale is said to have ...
— The Beauties of Nature - and the Wonders of the World We Live In • Sir John Lubbock
... avail were the judge's struggles; as well might an infant struggle in the folds of a python. Ere even an elderly man's scant breath was quite spent, he lay among the whins, bound hand and foot, trussed like a fowl, and with the upper part of his body and his head wrapped in the stifling folds of the ...
— Stories of the Border Marches • John Lang and Jean Lang
... it. That did not help, so he curled up his trunk behind to try to get me to step on. Each time he made an effort like that, however, he sank deeper into the mud. I saw the trunk curling back and creeping up to me like a python crawling up a hillside to coil around its prey. There was no more trumpeting or calling from the elephant, but a sinister silence through which he was trying to reach me. He had come to the end of his unselfishness. In ...
— Kari the Elephant • Dhan Gopal Mukerji
... a lion, No, years ago, night was a python Weaving designs against space With undulations of his being— ...
— A Woman of Thirty • Marjorie Allen Seiffert
... a mo'o was derived from objects present in his island home. The word mo'o may have been a coinage of the Hawaiian speechcenter, but the thing it stood for must have been an actual existence, like the python and cobra of India, or the pterodactyl of a past geologic period. May we not think of it as an ancestral memory, an impress, ...
— Unwritten Literature of Hawaii - The Sacred Songs of the Hula • Nathaniel Bright Emerson
... events became engrafted. From this point of view, the earliest meaning of Siegfried's victory over the Dragon would signify the triumph of the God of Light over the monster of the chaotic aboriginal Night. It would be, on German ground, the overthrow of Python by Apollon. In this connection it is to be pointed out that Sigurd appears in the "Edda" as the hero "with the shining eyes," and that, in one of the German Rose Garden tales, twelve swords are attributed to him—a ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 5 of 8 • Various
... hunter brought his rifle to his shoulder, and fired before the captain had time to say anything more. The python began to writhe and wriggle in the bush, and Felix fired again. Then he dropped off into the water. The rest of the company had been aft with the ladies, but they all rushed forward at the report of the rifle. The captain stated what ...
— Across India - Or, Live Boys in the Far East • Oliver Optic
... Professor Challenger," said he, "if you could see your way to make any remarks which may occur to you without seizing me by the chin. Even the appearance of a very ordinary rock python does not appear to justify such ...
— The Lost World • Arthur Conan Doyle
... their ladders screaming, "Harimau! Harimau!" (A tiger! A tiger!) The next morning she found that her pet dog, Fatima, named after herself, had been killed by one stroke of the great beast's paw. Once a monster python swung from a cocoanut tree through the window of her home, and wound itself round and round the post of her mother's loom. It took a dozen men to tie a rope to the serpent's tail, and pull ...
— Tales of the Malayan Coast - From Penang to the Philippines • Rounsevelle Wildman
... a sudden and violent rustling and switching of the long grass in front of him, something struck him a violent blow on the shoulder, and in an instant he found himself enveloped in the coils of an enormous python, the great head of which towered threateningly above him, as it opened wide its gaping jaws within a foot of his face and emitted a loud, sibilant, angry hiss. Its hot, foetid breath struck him full in the face and, in conjunction with the overpowering musky smell of its body, ...
— With Airship and Submarine - A Tale of Adventure • Harry Collingwood
... of the Pasteur Institute in Lille, France, several years ago discovered antivenomous serum. That serum is efficient for the bites of most of the venomous snakes of different countries, including the rattlesnake, cobra, python, etc. ...
— The Home Medical Library, Volume I (of VI) • Various
... off, all in coils and curves like a dead python, and deposited him upon his bed. When we returned three other ...
— The Stark Munro Letters • J. Stark Munro
... schemed and pushed herself out into the front of the ranks. She combined with him as only an ambitious woman can combine, and she supplied all he lacked. It filled her mind, and she never awoke the jealousy that lay like a sleeping python in the heart of Draycott Wilder. It was when they were in India that Clarice, for the first time, lost her grip and allowed her senses to get the better of her common sense, and she became for a brief time a woman with a very troublesome heart. Hector Copplestone, a young man newly come to ...
— The Pointing Man - A Burmese Mystery • Marjorie Douie
... repeatedly desired her not to be afraid. The lady who seemed the principal person had remarkably good features, though somewhat injured by the small-pox, that venomous scourge which each village Esculapius (thanks to Jenner) can now tame as easily as their tutelary deity subdued the Python. The lady's eyes were brilliant, her teeth good, and her countenance formed to express at will either majesty or courtesy. Her form, though rather embonpoint, was nevertheless graceful; and the elasticity and firmness of her step gave no room to suspect, what was actually the case, ...
— The Heart of Mid-Lothian, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... also place amongst the appearances and works of Satan false Christs, false prophets, Pagan oracles, magicians, sorcerers, and sorceresses, those who are inspired by the spirit of Python, the obsession and possession of demons, those who pretend to predict the future, and whose predictions are sometimes fulfilled; those who make compacts with the devil to discover treasures and enrich themselves; those who make use of charms; evocations by means of ...
— The Phantom World - or, The philosophy of spirits, apparitions, &c, &c. • Augustin Calmet
... sympathetic studies of struggles in the animal world. Mr. Marshall's white elephant will linger as a memory, even as his ghost remains, longer than the sagacious play-fellow of Mr. Gilbert's little Indian; but nobody can forget the battle the latter fought with the python. ...
— O Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1919 • Various
... the senorita in her professional garb and pose. Irresistible, in black lace and yellow ribbons, she faces you; a blue racer is spiralled upon each bare arm; coiled twice about her waist and once about her neck, his horrid head close to hers, you perceive Kuku, the great eleven-foot Asian python. ...
— Heart of the West • O. Henry
... genius, are here. Here is the "Tiger devouring a Crocodile" (with which Barye made his first appearance at the Salon, in 1831); the "Jaguar devouring a Hare"; the "Lion devouring a Doe," the "Crocodile devouring an Antelope," the "Python swallowing a Doe," the "Tiger devouring a Gazelle," the "Bear on a tree devouring an Owl" and the "Lion devouring a Boar." What a series of banquets on blood and warm, almost living flesh is here presented! How cruel these creatures are to each other, is the thought that first comes to ...
— The American Architect and Building News, Vol. 27, Jan-Mar, 1890 • Various
... an oily tongue, which wagged desire To speack with thee, but I all unawere Of thy design, did ward him gently off. Quezox: 'Twere well, thus ever do when skins are white. But did this hombre show a mighty girth? Muchacho: In sooth he did, Senor; his leg like to A python gorged with infant carabao Did to his body make comparison. Quezox: Ha! bid him hence. I know this hombre well! Go twist thy tongue into a double knot So that his importuning ...
— 'A Comedy of Errors' in Seven Acts • Spokeshave (AKA Old Fogy)
... as a wonder that, when the party, early in the day, were passing a thicket out of which glided a very large serpent, the major should give a shout and incontinently discharge both barrels at it simultaneously. It chanced to be a python of great size, full fifteen feet long, and thicker than a man's thigh, but a really harmless species of serpent. The major, however, did not know this, or did not care. His shots, although fired ...
— Hunting the Lions • R.M. Ballantyne
... could be worshipped as Divine Saviour. Latona must leave the heavens and come to Delos ere she can give birth to Apollo; for, in order to slay the serpent, the child must himself be earth-born,—indeed, according to one representation, he slew the Python out of his mother's arms. Neither the serpent of Genesis nor the dragon of Revelation can be conquered save by the seed of the woman. From this necessity of his earthly birth, the connection of the Saviour-Child ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 6, No. 34, August, 1860 • Various
... her surprise died out, and into her eyes crept a strange look of repulsion and even fear. She had no words to offer. She made no move. It was almost as if she sat fascinated like some harmless bird held by the hypnotic stare of a python. So long did she remain silent that Buck at last turned and looked into her face. And something like alarm caught and held him when he beheld her gray look of horror as she faced the gloomy crags mounting ...
— The Golden Woman - A Story of the Montana Hills • Ridgwell Cullum
... uttered in the remotest future. You ask me what, precisely, that message was? Well, it is too elemental, too near to the very heart of naked Nature, for exact definition. Can you describe the message of an angry python more satisfactorily than as S-s-s-s? Or that of an infuriated bull better than as Moo? That of Kolniyatsch lies somewhere between these two. Indeed, at whatever point we take him, we find him hard to fit into any single category. Was he a realist ...
— And Even Now - Essays • Max Beerbohm
... hurried to the window and looked out. In the moonlight they could distinctly see a huge reptile, either a python or a boa-constrictor, coiled up in the angle formed by the juncture of the airplane body and the broad base of the left wing. The creature was so long that its tail passed up over the rounded fuselage and out upon the ...
— Around the World in Ten Days • Chelsea Curtis Fraser
... thou and I together, old hunter, might make him see reason." Here Baloo rubbed his faded brown shoulder against the Panther, and they went off to look for Kaa the Rock Python. ...
— The Jungle Book • Rudyard Kipling
... Tundun-porpoise story seems to have arisen in gratitude to the porpoise, which drives fishes inshore, for the natives to catch. Neither Tharamulun nor Hobamoc (Australian and American Gods of healing and soothsaying), who appear to men as serpents, are borrowed from Asclepius, or from the Python of Apollo. The processes have been quite different, and in Apollo, the oracular son of Zeus, who declares his counsel to men, I am apt to see a beautiful Greek modification of the type of the mediating Son of the primal ...
— The Homeric Hymns - A New Prose Translation; and Essays, Literary and Mythological • Andrew Lang
... an aunt in Yucatan Who bought a Python from a man And kept it for a pet. She died, because she never knew These ...
— More Beasts (For Worse Children) • Hilaire Belloc
... called them his Angels) were substances, not dependent on the fancy, but permanent creatures of God; whereof those which they thought were good to them, they esteemed the Angels of God, and those they thought would hurt them, they called Evill Angels, or Evill Spirits; such as was the Spirit of Python, and the Spirits of Mad-men, of Lunatiques, and Epileptiques: For they esteemed such as were troubled ...
— Leviathan • Thomas Hobbes
... thick body of an immense python and the clawed legs of a dinosaur," said Marable, speaking as though he were delivering a lecture. The sight, without doubt, fascinated him as a scientist. He almost ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science July 1930 • Various
... at it the other way around; consider what an enormous variety of animal forms we have here, all developed under the same conditions. The humming-bird and the python, for instance. Gravitation needn't have ...
— The Devolutionist and The Emancipatrix • Homer Eon Flint
... without touching the floor at all. He described a perfect parabola. It was just the way I should have tossed him had I been Destiny. He gripped the table-legs like a vise, coiling himself around them like a poor navy-blue python with a green face. He thought the worst was over, but in his last clutch at the locker he had accidentally opened it, and at the next lurch of the yacht all the cans bounded out and battered his unprotected back like a shower of grape-shot. The ...
— As Seen By Me • Lilian Bell
... among the hills"; therefore it was that the youth of Greece sacrificed their hair—the sign of their continually renewed strength,—to the rivers, and to Apollo. Therefore, to commemorate Apollo's own chief victory over death—over Python, the corrupter,—a laurel branch was gathered every ninth year in the vale of Tempe; and the laurel leaf became the reward or crown of all beneficent and enduring work of man—work of inspiration, born of the strength of the earth, and of ...
— Proserpina, Volume 1 - Studies Of Wayside Flowers • John Ruskin
... twilight time Of every people, in every clime, Dragons and griffins and monsters dire, Born of water, and air, and fire, Or nursed, like the Python, in the mud And ooze of the old Deucalion flood, Crawl and wriggle and foam with rage, Through dusk tradition and ballad age. So from the childhood of Newbury town And its time of fable the tale comes down Of a terror ...
— Selections From American Poetry • Various
... it through the fire. "If he hand it to Molech, and do not pass it through the fire, (or if) he passed it through the fire, and did not hand it to Molech?" "He is not guilty till he hand it to Molech, and pass it through the fire." One has a familiar spirit, when the Python speaks from his arm. But the wizard speaks with his mouth. These are to be stoned, and inquiry from ...
— Hebrew Literature
... deeper in the woods. It was much larger and climbed fully a dozen yards from the ground, winding in and out among the limbs of a ridgy beech, which seemed to be forever struggling upward to get away from the smothering embrace of the vegetable python. ...
— Through Forest and Fire - Wild-Woods Series No. 1 • Edward Ellis
... impotent desire, Even for the bow whereby the Python bled, That I might send on dart of the living fire Into that land, before the vision fled, And thus at length fix the enchanted shore, Hy-Brasail, Eden of the western wave! That thou again wouldst fade away no more, Buried and lost within thy ...
— Poems • Denis Florence MacCarthy
... the Python slain, With orbs unroll'd lay covering all the plain, (Transfix'd as o'er Castalia's streams he hung, And suck'd new poisons with his triple tongue), To Argos' realms the victor god resorts, And enters old Crotopus' humble courts. This rural prince ...
— Poetical Works of Pope, Vol. II • Alexander Pope
... stream, Look how the mountains with their double range Embrace the vale of Tempe: from each side Ascending steep to heaven, a rocky mound 320 Cover'd with ivy and the laurel boughs That crown'd young Phoebus for the Python slain. Fair Tempe! on whose primrose banks the morn Awoke most fragrant, and the noon reposed In pomp of lights and shadows most sublime: Whose lawns, whose glades, ere human footsteps yet Had traced an entrance, were the hallow'd haunt Of sylvan powers immortal: where they ...
— Poetical Works of Akenside - [Edited by George Gilfillan] • Mark Akenside
... one of the products of the forests,—and also for travel and as bearers of burdens. Wild elephants are hunted and trapped in Siam; and tigers, bears, deer, monkeys, and wild pigs abound in the jungles. Crocodiles live at the mouths of the rivers; and the cobra, python, and other reptiles ...
— Four Young Explorers - Sight-Seeing in the Tropics • Oliver Optic
... I should let go my hold and fall down. I am not ashamed to confess having had that feeling, but I tried to conquer it, and it soon wore off, and then I began to consider how I might best escape the dreadful Python. At first I thought that I would climb up to the very highest branch, in the hopes that the boa would not venture to follow me there, for fear of breaking it with his weight; and then it occurred to me that I might possibly escape by working my way along to the very end of one of the lower branches, ...
— My First Voyage to Southern Seas • W.H.G. Kingston
... on. Don't you know, how in the stories it is always in a terrific gale that the caged lion or gorilla or python breaks loose and terrorizes the ship? We don't sport a menagerie on the ——, but I did pick up the contents of the dry gun-cotton case, which had broken and spilt the torpedo detonators around on deck contiguous to the hot radiator! And, of course, the decks below were knee-deep in books, ...
— World's War Events, Volume III • Various
... loathed three heads yawn; Defies his foe with a fell spit, To wade through death to meet with it; Then in his self the lymbeck turns, And his elixir'd poyson urns. Arachne, once the fear oth' maid Coelestial, thus unto her pray'd: Heaven's blew-ey'd daughter, thine own mother! The Python-killing Sun's thy brother. Oh! thou, from gods that didst descend, With a poor virgin to contend, Shall seed of earth and hell ere be A rival in thy victorie? Pallas assents: for now long time And pity had clean rins'd her crime; When straight she doth with active fire Her many ...
— Lucasta • Richard Lovelace
... A sublime enough Voltaire; radiant enough, over at Cirey yonder. To all lands, a visible Phoebus Apollo, climbing the eastern steeps; with arrows of celestial "new light" in his quiver; capable of stretching many a big foul Python, belly uppermost, in its native mud, and ridding the poor world of her Nightmares and Mud-Serpents in some measure, we ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. X. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—At Reinsberg—1736-1740 • Thomas Carlyle
... wrote a little story of a woman who was crushed to death by a python. A day or two after its publication, a friend stopped me in the street. "Charming little story of yours," he said, "that about the woman and the snake; but it's not as funny as some of your things!" The next week, a ...
— John Ingerfield and Other Stories • Jerome K. Jerome
... This was the actual comfort President Wilson's message gave Germany. The negative result was felt among the Allied nations which, struggling against the German Monster like Laocoon in the coils of the Python, took Mr. Wilson's praise of Germany's imaginary love of justice and humanity as a death-warrant for themselves. They could not believe that he who wrote such words, or the American people who swallowed them, could ever be roused to give succor to the Allies ...
— Theodore Roosevelt; An Intimate Biography, • William Roscoe Thayer
... expressed in picturesque American. Magdalena, in a suit of her father's old clothes, was handing his books through the library window to Miss Folsom. Miss Geary was scrambling up the ladder, a hose coiled about her like a python. The leader of the company stood on the roof directly above the front door, giving orders with imperious voice and gesture. But although the flames leaped high about her, starting the leaves of a neighbouring tree into sharp relief, he could ...
— The Californians • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
... aside—preferring to suffer rather than that she should be lost. God only knew how he was suffering day by day, hour by hour; but it were better that he should suffer than that she should be abandoned to the spiritual constriction of the old Roman python. It was horrible to think, but the powerful coils would break and crush to pulp; then the beast would lubricate and swallow. Anything were better than this; Ulick's kisses would never be more to Evelyn than the passing trance of the senses; she never would love him as other women loved, giving ...
— Sister Teresa • George Moore
... herself, and they have no houses nor crops, because they are afraid of the Manbos that surround them. Their food is the core[16] of the green rattan and of fishtail palm,[17] the flesh of wild boar, deer, and python, and such fish and grubs, etc., as they find in their wanderings. They sleep anywhere; sometimes even in trees, if they have ...
— The Manbos of Mindano - Memoirs of the National Academy of Sciences, Volume XXIII, First Memoir • John M. Garvan
... exhilarating jests from old Ben, who was a connoisseur of vintages when it came to jokes. Duncan wished fervently, first that he might expire; secondly, and with greater intensity of feeling, that they all might die. Minta Lockwood, he felt, was slowly but expertly greasing him with adulation—as a python prepares its prey before dining (or is it a python?)—and he knew he was presently to be ...
— The Fortune Hunter • Louis Joseph Vance
... their forces, these were their standards, these were their colours, and these were their scutcheons. Now, over these did the great Diabolus make superior captains, and they were in number seven: as, namely, the Lord Beelzebub, the Lord Lucifer, the Lord Legion, the Lord Apollyon, the Lord Python, the Lord Cerberus, and the Lord Belial; these seven he set over the captains, and Incredulity was lord-general, and, Diabolus was king. The reformades also, such as were like themselves, were made some of them captains of hundreds, and some of them captains of more. And thus was the army ...
— The Holy War • John Bunyan
... the Bacchus, notwithstanding its plastic superiority, rather inclines that way. The Apollo has been loudly extolled for the pride of its attitude and its divine calm in the encounter with the serpent Python; and still it is said that "a god could not have cause for so great pride in the conquest of a reptile." But the art-critics have exaggerated the import of the figure, which is wonderfully beautiful without being accurately ...
— Delsarte System of Oratory • Various
... [103] Python, of Byzantium, was a very corpulent man. He once said to the citizens, in addressing them to make friends after a political dispute: "Gentlemen, you see how stout I am. Well, I have a wife at home who is still stouter. Now, when we are good friends, ...
— Flowers from a Persian Garden and Other Papers • W. A. Clouston
... food-economy campaign a notable example has been set by the python at the Zoo, who has decided to give up his ...
— Punch, 1917.07.04, Vol. 153, Issue No. 1 • Various
... No other woman in the world could have worn that gown, with its unbroken line from throat to hem, its smooth, high, black satin collar, its writhing tail that went slip-slip-slipping after her. In it she had looked like a sleek and wicked python that had fasted ...
— Cheerful—By Request • Edna Ferber
... the Theban's charmed life; We come not scathless from the strife! The Python's coil about us clings, The ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... marble forming a far-more-lovely-than possible faded purple and lilac rug. Also, the pathetically trodden-down-to-bits porphyry discs in the doorway. And the little cippus of a Roman girl who lived sixteen years and twenty-eight days. Against the apse, outside, the great python of a cactus. ...
— The Spirit of Rome • Vernon Lee
... and we were just beginning to arrange the different parts. The rest of the hose that was on the ground was Kaa, the Rock Python, and Pincher was Grey Brother, only we couldn't find him. And while most of us were talking, Dicky and Noel got messing about with ...
— The Wouldbegoods • E. Nesbit
... venomous species, seem to be less feared than in India or the wilder parts of Australia. The python grows to twenty feet or more, but is, of course, not poisonous, and never assails man unless first molested. The black momba, which is nearly as large as a rattlesnake, is, however, a dangerous creature, being ready to attack man without provocation, and the bite may prove fatal in less ...
— Impressions of South Africa • James Bryce
... din of the rough meals, but soon she found that Joan's slow movements accomplished a tremendous amount of work in an amazingly short time. There was no pause in the girl's activity. She poured out her strength as a python pours his, noiselessly, evenly, steadily, no haste, no waste. And the men's eyes brooded ...
— The Branding Iron • Katharine Newlin Burt
... a meridian sun—from the half-smothered sound of a whispered love, to the whirl of the uttermost orb in space, there is life in moving matter, as perfect in particulars, and as magnificent in range, as the animation which swells the tiny lung of the polyp, or vitalizes the uncouth python floundering in the saurian ...
— The Continental Monthly , Vol. 2 No. 5, November 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... Made all the gods to grace her majesty. Apollo first his golden rays among, Did form the beauty of her bounteous eyes; He graced her with his sweet melodious song, And made her subject of his poesies. The warrior Mars bequeathed her fierce disdain, Venus her smile, and Phoebe all her fair, Python his voice, and Ceres all her grain, The morn her locks and fingers did repair. Young Love, his bow, and Thetis gave her feet; Clio her praise, Pallas her ...
— Elizabethan Sonnet Cycles - Phillis - Licia • Thomas Lodge and Giles Fletcher
... of the streams; one they call Phoenix, the other Elaea, even to the present time, as if Lucina had not been delivered between two trees, but fountains. A place hard by, called Ptoum, is shown, where they say she was affrighted by the appearance of a boar; and the stories of the Python and Tityus are in like manner appropriated by these localities. I omit many of the points that are used as arguments. For our tradition does not rank this god amongst those that were born, and then made immortal, as Hercules and Bacchus, ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough
... the most dangerous ambushes which can be met on the road by animals who resort to a spring is that prepared by the Python. This gigantic snake hangs by his tail to the branch of a tree and lets himself droop down like a long creeper. The victim who comes within his reach is seized, enrolled, pounded in the knots which the snake forms ...
— The Industries of Animals • Frederic Houssay
... valley below it was lonely and dark. The few people who lived there kept themselves hidden among the rocks as if in dread of some great danger. They told Apollo that near the foot of the mountain where the steep cliff seemed to be split in two there lived a huge serpent called the Python. This serpent often seized sheep and cattle, and sometimes even men and women and children, and carried them up to his ...
— Old Greek Stories • James Baldwin
... recently discovered a crocodile in a dustbin encourages me to write to you on a similar subject. I note with profound dismay the proposal to turn Hyde Park into a Zoological Garden. At least this is not an unfair deduction from the scheme to instal a huge python in the neighbourhood of Hyde Park Corner. I do not profess to know much about snakes, but I believe the python is a most dangerous reptile, and I see it stated that the pythons which have just arrived at Regent's ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 159, July 28th, 1920 • Various
... you did last week. I hope that Spain won't get her $40,000,000. I also hope that next time when the Greeks retreat from some place they will do it better than at Larissa. I wish that there were some more about the big Python. It is nice that Mr. Havemeyer has got a Little Venice on Long Island. At the Tennessee Centennial it must be fine fun to go up in those cars! I hope that Mr. Mayer will get out of Germany before he will go into the ...
— The Great Round World and What Is Going On In It, Vol. 1, No. 31, June 10, 1897 - A Weekly Magazine for Boys and Girls • Various
... its actions with probability, according to the nature assumed of it. Hobbes did not see, that the skill and beauty of these fictions lay in bringing them within those very regions of truth and likelihood in which he thought they could not exist. Hence the serpent Python of Chaucer, ...
— English Critical Essays - Nineteenth Century • Various
... head of a python arose, and with gaping jaws struck as the branch fell from my hand.' In a moment I had whipped the tomahawk from my belt and slashed at the body of the snake squirming at my feet, as, baffled for a moment by the falling branch, it gathered itself ...
— Tropic Days • E. J. Banfield
... A python is a familiar spirit who speaks from his armpits; a wizard is one who speaks with the mouth. As the Rabbis have taught, a familiar spirit is one who speaks from his joints and his wrists; a wizard is one who, putting a certain bone into his mouth, ...
— Hebraic Literature; Translations from the Talmud, Midrashim and - Kabbala • Various
... of development the extremity can not perform its functions. Just think of the cetacea! Of the hind extremity, only its carrier, the pelvis, has been developed; and even this is only represented by the two hip-bones, hanging in the flesh. As to the python, the hind extremities are more complete, but they lie hidden under the skin, and therefore are of no use for local movement. Such examples show that in the history of the development of an organ thousands of years may pass, and numerous generations may arise and disappear, until it reaches ...
— The Theories of Darwin and Their Relation to Philosophy, Religion, and Morality • Rudolf Schmid
... the right a fine collection of the enormous fruit bats and some of the skins of these bats, which are of great commercial value. Large collections of birds' eggs, attractively displayed; numerous specimens of stuffed wild boars and deer were displayed. Fine specimens of python, 21 feet long and 1 foot in diameter, and a collection of crocodiles, large iguanas, and lizards were prominent features ...
— Final Report of the Louisiana Purchase Exposition Commission • Louisiana Purchase Exposition Commission
... does not end here; for it is shown in a still more aggravated form where within the limits of the same natural group of organisms a rudiment is sometimes present and sometimes absent. For instance, although in nearly all the numerous species of snakes there are no vestiges of limbs, in the python we find very tiny rudiments of the hind-limbs. (Fig. 8.) Now, is it a worthy conception of deity that, while neglecting to maintain his unity of ideal in the case of nearly all the numerous species of snakes, he should have added a tiny rudiment in the case of ...
— Darwin, and After Darwin (Vol. 1 and 3, of 3) • George John Romanes
... pure disembodied terror stood in Winsome's eyes. Fascinated like an antelope in the coils of a python she gazed, her eyes dilating and contracting—the world whirling about her, the soul of her bounding and panting to ...
— The Lilac Sunbonnet • S.R. Crockett
... accompanied him to the Settite, and came upon the tracks of a herd of about fifty elephants that had crossed the river a few days previous. As we were walking through the high grass we came upon a fine boa-constrictor (python), and not wishing to fire, as I thought I might disturb elephants in the neighbourhood, I made a cut at it with my heavy hunting-knife, nearly severing about four feet from the tail, but it escaped ...
— The Nile Tributaries of Abyssinia • Samuel W. Baker
... PYTHON. Native name WAKEL or WA-A-KEL. This snake is considered by the natives a great delicacy, and by their account resembles mutton in flavour, being also remarkably fat. I requested them to let me taste the specimen from which the drawing was made; but they devoured every ...
— Journals Of Expeditions Of Discovery Into Central • Edward John Eyre
... are introduced to one natural history topic per chapter, be it a plant, a tree or an animal. There are various perils that have to be overcome—the upas tree, an ourang-outang, a tree that drops its fruit like a heavy bomb, a python, and quite a few more. Luckily they don't meet any unfriendly Dyaks during the journey they undertake to get from their landing-place to the town of Bruni, many ...
— The Castaways • Captain Mayne Reid
... especially in connection with the study of myths and religions. The fragment of gibberish to which I refer generally takes the form of saying "This god or hero really represents the sun." Or "Apollo killing the Python MEANS that the summer drives out the winter." Or "The King dying in a western battle is a SYMBOL of the sun setting in the west." Now I should really have thought that even the skeptical professors, whose skulls are as shallow as ...
— A Miscellany of Men • G. K. Chesterton
... say precisely what it was—had flashed into view from out of the long grass, within a yard or so of where the deer stood, and the next second the unfortunate creature was enveloped in the coils of a huge python. As the watchers of the unexpected tragedy sprang to their feet they distinctly heard the bones of the deer crack as the serpent constricted its coils about its victim; and then Earle, with an ejaculation of anger, sprang out from behind the bush, and, with Dick at his elbow, started at ...
— In Search of El Dorado • Harry Collingwood
... sandwich and brushed the crumbs off his trousers. Thomas continued operations on the bun with the concentrated expression of a lunching python. ...
— The Politeness of Princes - and Other School Stories • P. G. Wodehouse
... the python is the only other creature that dares to attack the orang-utan, and that when it does so victory usually declares for the man-monkey, which bites and tears it ...
— Blown to Bits - The Lonely Man of Rakata, the Malay Archipelago • R.M. Ballantyne
... kill, but their chief food is roots. They kill great numbers of snakes. Even the largest python is no match for a herd of peccaries if they catch him before he can take ...
— The Treasure of the Incas • G. A. Henty
... intend to give up the trail. To do so would have been beyond him. His mental fangs were already fixed in Binhart. To withdraw them was not in his power. He could no more surrender his quarry than the python's head, having once closed on the rabbit, could release its meal. With Blake, every instinct sloped inward, just as every python-fang sloped backward. The actual reason for the chase was no longer clear to his own vision. It was something no longer to be reckoned with. The only thing that counted ...
— Never-Fail Blake • Arthur Stringer
... that they must remain at times motionless. This is especially noticeable with crocodiles, which wait for whole days without moving, concealed in the water or deep grass, until their prey comes within striking distance, when they pounce upon it. The same is true of the python snake, which hangs from a tree so immovable that he appears like a vine or a branch of the tree. If an animal attempts to pass, he ...
— The Human Side of Animals • Royal Dixon
... divine person—binding on a sandal or preparing for the bath. When a more complex and significant action is permitted, it is most often represented as just finished, so that eager expectancy is excluded, as in the image of Apollo just after the slaughter of the Python, or of Venus with the apple of Paris already in her hand. The Laocoon, with all that patient science through which it has triumphed over an almost unmanageable subject, marks a period in which sculpture has begun to aim at effects legitimate, because delightful, ...
— The Renaissance - Studies in Art and Poetry • Walter Pater
... was a very slim, blushing and confused snake,—short, too, for a python. And she had a turned-up nose, and was quite young. Her scales were stylish. And, although certainly abashed, apprehensive and timorous, she yet had, about her delicate mouth, the signs of terrible determination, of ruthlessness, of an ambition that nothing could thwart. Mr. Prohack might have ...
— Mr. Prohack • E. Arnold Bennett
... the populace did not alarm Hamilcar's daughter. She was disturbed by loftier anxieties: her great serpent, the black python, was drooping; and in the eyes of the Carthaginians, the serpent was at once a national and a private fetish. It was believed to be the offspring of the dust of the earth, since it emerges from its depths and has no need of feet to traverse it; ...
— Salammbo • Gustave Flaubert
... the expense of Apollo, the great sun god. Apollo was himself a mighty archer, and had slain with his arrows the python of Delphi. Proud of his victory, he mocked at the little god of love, advising him to leave his arrows for the warlike, and content himself with the torch of love. Cupid, vexed at the taunt, replied threateningly, ...
— Michelangelo - A Collection Of Fifteen Pictures And A Portrait Of The - Master, With Introduction And Interpretation • Estelle M. Hurll
... was nothing to indicate that a few miles to the eastward mighty armies were striving over a tortured strip of blasted land that for years to come would lie fruitless and barren. Here all was peace, with never a hint—yes, far below on the white ribbon of roadway a long, dark python was slowly dragging itself forward. It was a familiar sight to Larkin and McGee—troops moving up to the theatre of war. And over on another road a long procession of humpbacked brown toads were plodding eastward. Motor lorries, carrying munitions and supplies. Strange monsters, ...
— Aces Up • Covington Clarke
... leaf, crawled down the mountain as non-apparently as a python, and pinned it high on an outstanding redwood, then returned and told his sentinels to sleep, replacing ...
— The Valiant Runaways • Gertrude Atherton
... was the Orang Kaya, or chief of the Balow Dyaks, on the Simunjon River. He said: "The Mias has no enemies; no animals dare attack it but the crocodile and the python. He always kills the crocodile by main strength, standing upon it, pulling open its jaws, and ripping up its throat. If a python attacks a Mias, he seizes it with his hands, and then bites it, and soon kills it. The Mias is very strong; there ...
— The Malay Archipelago - Volume I. (of II.) • Alfred Russel Wallace
... in this district, and "knew a motor when they saw it." Even a drove of sheep (near the wonderful fortress of Peschiera with its coiled python of a river) seemed comparatively indifferent as they surged round us in a foaming wave of wool. But then, sheep have no facial expression. All other four-footed things show emotion by a change of countenance, just as human beings do—more, because they don't ...
— My Friend the Chauffeur • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... concerning it Instance of land snakes found at sea Singular tradition regarding the robra de capello Uropeltidae.—New species discovered in Ceylon Buddhist veneration for the cobra de capello The Python Tree snakes Water snakes Sea snakes Snake stones Analysis of one Caecilia ...
— Sketches of the Natural History of Ceylon • J. Emerson Tennent
... was out hunting, he came upon a strange sight. An enormous python had caught an antelope and coiled itself around it; the antelope, striking out in despair with its horns, had pinned the python's neck to a tree, and so deeply had its horns sunk in the soft wood that neither creature ...
— The Orange Fairy Book • Various
... a scrannel pipe." See L. & S. s.v. {puthaules}. Cf. Poll. iv. 81, {puthikon aulema}, an air ({nomos}) played on the {puthois aulos}, expressing the battle between Apollo and the Python, the ...
— The Symposium • Xenophon
... education; and that it was so connected with their system of ethics and of intellectual training, that the God of Music is with them also the God of Righteousness;—the God who purges and avenges iniquity, and contends with their Satan as represented under the form of Python, "the corrupter." And the Greeks were incontrovertibly right in this. Music is the nearest at hand, the most orderly, the most delicate, and the most perfect, of all bodily pleasures; it is also the only one which is equally helpful to all the ages of man,—helpful from the nurse's song to her ...
— Time and Tide by Weare and Tyne - Twenty-five Letters to a Working Man of Sunderland on the Laws of Work • John Ruskin
... Bonaparte's ardent imagination. His was a mind that quailed not before visible dangers; but, with all its powers of decisive action, it retained so much of Corsican eeriness as to chafe at the unknown,[58] and to lose for the moment the faculty of forming a vigorous resolution. Like the python, which grips its native rock by the tail in order to gain its full constricting power, so Bonaparte ever needed a groundwork of fact for the due exercise ...
— The Life of Napoleon I (Volumes, 1 and 2) • John Holland Rose
... encircled Jimmie's form and were slowly tightening in a python-like constriction that forced Jimmie's organs upward into his ribs and shut off his heart action. Again Jimmie recalled vividly his experiences in trying to break a "body scissors" on the mat, This time, however, he cast aside the rules of conduct that ...
— Boy Scouts Mysterious Signal - or Perils of the Black Bear Patrol • G. Harvey Ralphson
... early times till the 4th century A.D. every four years, near Delphi, in honour of Apollo, who was said to have instituted them to commemorate his victory over the Python; originally were contests in singing only, but after the middle of the 6th century B.C. they included instrumental music, contests in poetry and ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... A reticulated python about twenty-two feet long arrived from Singapore with its old skin dried down upon its body. The snake had been many weeks without a bath, and it had been utterly unable to shed its old skin on schedule time. It ...
— The Minds and Manners of Wild Animals • William T. Hornaday
... Cordeliers,—shoots his glittering war-shafts into your new Cordeliers, your Heberts, Momoros, with their brawling brutalities and despicabilities: say, as the Sun-god (for poor Camille is a Poet) shot into that Python Serpent sprung of mud. ...
— The French Revolution • Thomas Carlyle
... sitting at his table, surrounded by the snakes that for him took the place of a family. On the table was a bowl of milk from which a large bull-snake, in a gay Turkey-carpet design, was drinking. A yellow and black python lay coiled in several figures of eight in the armchair, and an intelligent-looking small dust-coloured snake with a broad nose and an active tongue leaned out ...
— Living Alone • Stella Benson
... lips. He began to move backward, step by step, step by step, all the time striving, with might and main, to prevent himself from doing so! His eyes were set rigidly upon Ki-Ming, like the eyes of a rabbit fascinated by a python. Ki-Ming ...
— The Hand Of Fu-Manchu - Being a New Phase in the Activities of Fu-Manchu, the Devil Doctor • Sax Rohmer
... beast we loosed was the python. Ivy did the loosing and I stood by with a big rifle to guard against trouble; but, bless you, there was no need. One and all, the beasts knew the old Boldero was doomed, and one and all they cried and begged and made eyes and signs to be turned ...
— IT and Other Stories • Gouverneur Morris
... water, and reconverted its limb into a paddle. The bones of the front feet still remain under the flesh. Animals of the horse type have had the central toe strengthened, for running purposes, at the expense of the rest. The serpent has lost its limbs from disuse, but in the python a rudimentary limb-bone ...
— The World's Greatest Books - Volume 15 - Science • Various
... patronizing, significant way—and ordered a dinner that included nearly everything on the dinner card except Lubly's thumb. The dinner was brought to me in relays and I ate it—ate it all! This step I know now was ill-advised. It is true that for a short time I felt as I imagine a python in a zoo feels when he is full of guinea-pigs—sort of gorged, you know, and ...
— Europe Revised • Irvin S. Cobb
... to converge upon them from all sides, to contract its coils like a python, but still the house was untouched, save by the drifting smoke and ashes. Darker and darker the night came down, a black cap over all this red struggle, but with its contrast deepening the vivid colours of the ...
— Before the Dawn - A Story of the Fall of Richmond • Joseph Alexander Altsheler
... thou ne'er leavest, Genius, Thou wilt raise above the mud-track With thy fiery pinions. He will wander, As, with flowery feet, Over Deucalion's dark flood, Python-slaying, light, ...
— The Poems of Goethe • Goethe
... the breasts of wives and widows equally. He has even aforetime forced the gods, wrought up to a frenzy by his blazing torch, to forsake the heavens and dwell on earth under false appearances. Whereof the proofs are many. Was not Phoebus, though victor over huge Python and creator of the celestial strains that sound from the lyres of Parnassus, by him made the thrall, now of Daphne, now of Clymene, and again of Leucothea, and of many others withal? Certainly, this was so. And, finally, ...
— La Fiammetta • Giovanni Boccaccio
... a rousing coquette,' said Heriot; 'you won't be happy till you 've been racked by that nice instrument of torture, and the fair Bulsted will do it for you if you like. You don't want a snake or a common serpent, you want a Python.' ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... fifty-five feet high and thirty-three feet in breadth he was represented as Apollo hurling his darts at an enormous Python, under one of whose fore-paws struggled an unfortunate burgher, while the other clutched a whole city; Tellus, meantime, with her tower on her head, kneeling anxious and imploring at the feet of her deliverer. On another stage Ernest assumed the shape of Perseus; ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... or eight metres. It is able to remain long under water, moves slowly on land, and can climb trees. Deer and pigs are its usual food, but at times it attacks and eats natives. A few years previously this python devoured a Katingan, and as it remains at the same place for some time after a meal, two days later it was found and killed. These Dayaks kill it with knives, spears being ineffectual, and the meat is eaten. A very large lizard is also said to be ...
— Through Central Borneo: - An Account of Two Years' Travel in the Land of Head-Hunters - Between the Years 1913 and 1917 • Carl Lumholtz
... sick of storm and strife and slaughter, Some ghostly night when hides the moon, I slip into the milk-warm water And softly swim the stale lagoon. Then through some jungle python-haunted, Or plumed morass, or woodland wild, I win my way with heart undaunted, And all the wonder of ...
— Ballads of a Bohemian • Robert W. Service
... arrow of light had slain the Python coiled about my heart. If he believed, I could believe also; if he could encounter the vague dark, I could endure the cheerless light. I was myself again, and, with one word of endearment, left the bedside to do what had ...
— The Vicar's Daughter • George MacDonald
... said Apollo, "what dost thou with the warlike bow? Such burden best befits my shoulders, for did I not slay the fierce serpent, the Python, whose baleful breath destroyed all that came nigh him? Warlike arms are for the mighty, not for boys like thee! Do thou carry a torch with which to kindle love in human hearts, but no longer lay claim ...
— Good Stories For Great Holidays - Arranged for Story-Telling and Reading Aloud and for the - Children's Own Reading • Frances Jenkins Olcott
... of the Cape Colony Boers, and embittered racial feeling there. It put the British cause in the wrong in the eyes of the whole world, and made the Boers appear as a gallant little people struggling in the folds of a merciless python-empire. It increased immensely the difficulty of the British government in negotiating with the Transvaal for better treatment of the Uitlanders. It stiffened the backs of Kruger and his party. The German Kaiser telegraphed his congratulations on the defeat of the ...
— The Expansion of Europe - The Culmination of Modern History • Ramsay Muir
... (before the days of trunks), according to this authority, when drinking at a riverside had his moderate and well-shaped snout seized by a crocodile. The little elephant pulled and the crocodile pulled, and by the help of a friendly python the elephant got the best of it. He extricated himself from the jaws of death. But, oh! what a difference in his appearance! His snout was drawn out so as to form that wonderful elongated thing with two nostrils at the end which ...
— More Science From an Easy Chair • Sir E. Ray (Edwin Ray) Lankester
... killed by Indra is Vritra, the restrainer, who catches and keeps in the clouds the rain that is falling to earth. He often is called simply the snake, and as the Budhnya Snake, or snake of the cloud-depths, is possibly the Python (Budh-nya).[10] There is here a touch of primitive belief in an old enemy of man—the serpent! But the Budhnya Snake has been developed in opposite ways, and has ...
— The Religions of India - Handbooks On The History Of Religions, Volume 1, Edited By Morris Jastrow • Edward Washburn Hopkins
... fishes, the reptiles seem fairly modest creatures. The ordinary snake does not lay more than twenty or thirty eggs, and even the python is content to stop at a hundred. The crocodile, though a wicked animal, lays only twenty or thirty; the tortoise as few as two or four; and the turtle does not exceed two hundred. But I am not really interested in eggs—not, at least, in any eggs but birds' eggs—or should ...
— The Pleasures of Ignorance • Robert Lynd
... deep. Her bitter reason had but the common pity for a madman despatched to his rest. Yet she knew hatred of her lord in his being suspected as instigator or accomplice of the hand that dealt the blow. He became to her thought a python whose coils were about her person, ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... The Chinese alligator, Alligator sinensis, has been already mentioned. Among lizards, the genera Plestiodon, Mabuia, Tachydromus and Gecko, of which the two latter are very characteristic of the Oriental region, range through China to Japan; and among snakes, the Malay python (Python reticulatus) is likewise Chinese. The giant salamander (Cryptobranchus, or Megalobatrachus, maximus) represents, as mentioned above, a type found elsewhere only in North America, while Hynobius and Onychodactylus are peculiar generic types of salamanders. ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 2 - "Chicago, University of" to "Chiton" • Various
... well for you to sneer, and talk about art. But there are already in this world a deal more Standard Works than any man can hope to digest in the average lifetime. I don't quarrel with them, for, personally, I find even Ruskin, like the python in the circus, entirely endurable so long as there is a pane of glass between us. But why, in heaven's name, should you endeavour to harass humanity with one more battalion of morocco-bound reproaches for sins of omission, whenever humanity goes into the library to ...
— The Cords of Vanity • James Branch Cabell et al
... Zoological Gardens is positive that certain snakes, for instance Crotalus and Python, distinguish him from all other persons. Cobras kept together in the same cage apparently feel some attachment towards each other. (61. Dr. Gunther, 'Reptiles of British India,' ...
— The Descent of Man and Selection in Relation to Sex • Charles Darwin
... entire alteration and loss of the original form." All that admirable adjustment of the serpent to its environment which delights naturalists was to the Wesleyan divine simply an evil result of the sin of Adam and Eve. Yet here again geology was obliged to confront theology in revealing the PYTHON in the Eocene, ages ...
— History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom • Andrew Dickson White
... of the rich; and when men who have climbed above their fellows on golden ladders, tremble at the crack of the blackmailer's whip and come down at the call of an obscene newspaper. An age when the python of political corruption casts its "rings" about the neck of proud cities and sovereign States, and throttles honesty to silence and liberty to death. It is such an age, dark, confused, shameful, ...
— The Americanism of Washington • Henry Van Dyke
... end of 1881. Early in the next year he went for change of scene to stay with the Severns at his old home on Herne Hill. He seemed much better, and ventured to reappear in public. On March 3rd he went to the National Gallery to sketch Turner's Python. On the unfinished drawing is written: "Bothered away from it, and never went again. No light to work by in the next month." An artist in the Gallery had been taking notes of him for a surreptitious ...
— The Life of John Ruskin • W. G. Collingwood
... worship, and introduced their rites, there was generally some story of a serpent. There was a legend about a serpent at Colchis, at Thebes, and at Delphi; likewise in other places. The Greeks called Apollo himself Python, which is the same as Opis, Oupis, and Oub. The woman at Endor, who had a familiar spirit, is called [189][Hebrew: AWB], Oub, or Ob; and it is interpreted Pythonissa. The place where she resided, seems to have been named from the worship there instituted: for Endor is compounded of En-Ador, and ...
— A New System; or, an Analysis of Antient Mythology. Volume I. • Jacob Bryant
... rose strongly, full of exultation. On a branch above them, a python, awakened by those vibrations, revealed itself in an ...
— Sacrifice • Stephen French Whitman
... coincidence be mere chance? Phoebus Apollo, your favorite divinity—and that, too, of the sage of Tyana—may perhaps have been angry with me. He who purified himself from blood-guiltiness after killing the Python is the god of expiation. I will address myself to him, like the noble hero of your book. This morning the god visited me again; so I will have such sacrifice slain before him as never yet was offered. Will that satisfy you, O philosopher hard ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... of the bank, no huts roofed with palm leaves or grass, no smoke indicated the vicinity of Indians. In a thicket by a brook lay a boa constrictor, a snake allied to the python of the Old World, in easy, elegant coils, digesting a small rodent somewhat like a hare and called an agouti. At the margin of the bank some water-hogs wallowed in the sodden earth full of roots, and under a vault of thorny bushes lay their worst ...
— From Pole to Pole - A Book for Young People • Sven Anders Hedin
... and a man requires nothing less than this when he wants to dash his cap on the table, throw himself astride a chair, and stare at a high brick wall with a frown which would not have been beneath the occasion if he had been slaying "the giant Python." The conduct that issues from a moral conflict has often so close a resemblance to vice that the distinction escapes all outward judgments founded on a mere comparison of actions. It is clear to you, I hope, that Stephen was ...
— The Mill on the Floss • George Eliot
... mountain slopes; around us, dark lines crawled along the plains—westward, westward ever. Who could stand against us? We met the wild asses on the steppe, and tamed them, and made them our slaves. We slew the bison herds, and swam broad rivers on their skins. The Python snake lay across our path; the wolves and wild dogs snarled at us out of their coverts; we slew them and went on. The forests rose in black tangled barriers, we hewed our way through them and went on. Strange ...
— Fairy Tales; Their Origin and Meaning • John Thackray Bunce
... of the dragon Fafnir reminds us of Python, whom Apollo overcame; and, as Python guarded the Delphic Oracle, the dying ...
— The Story of Siegfried • James Baldwin
... ridiculous attitude into which he had thrown Dennis, as his own trumpeter. Dennis, whose brutal energy remained unsubdued, was a rhinoceros of a critic, shelled up against the arrows of wit. This monster of criticism awed the poet; and Dennis proved to be a Python, whom the golden shaft of Apollo could ...
— Calamities and Quarrels of Authors • Isaac D'Israeli
... the python, the fierce onset of the kingly tiger, the sudden flash of the forked and quivering lightning, was the grasp made at the outstretched arm by the practised Brahmin. His tenacious fingers closed tightly round the other's wrist. One sudden wrench, and he had ...
— Sport and Work on the Nepaul Frontier - Twelve Years Sporting Reminiscences of an Indigo Planter • James Inglis
... an anachronism of summer, the relic of a by-gone world where such monsters swarmed. But it has its limit, the kindlier forces of Nature work against it, and the silent arrows of the sun are still, as of old, fatal to the frosty Python. Geology tells us that such enormous devastators once covered the face of the earth, but the benignant sunlight of heaven touched them, and they faded silently, leaving no trace, but here and there the scratches of their talons, and the gnawed ...
— The Writings of James Russell Lowell in Prose and Poetry, Volume V - Political Essays • James Russell Lowell
... with the soft, easy tread of the python, or the Pathan, or some animal with a "pth" in it. Probably I mean the panther. He bore himself confidently, and his mouth was a trap from which no superfluous word escaped. He was the strong, silent ...
— Happy Days • Alan Alexander Milne
... Tex, swinging into his saddle, "we'll hit the trail before this old Python here finds something else to forebode about. For all I care the moon can turn green, an' grow a hump like a camel just so she gives us light enough to see by." He led the way across the little plateau and the others followed. ...
— The Texan - A Story of the Cattle Country • James B. Hendryx
... confess to you in friendly confidence, that I have winced when I read of lifelong friends of mine saying that I have, in certain Indian transactions, shelved the principles of a lifetime. One of your countrymen said that, like the Python—that fabulous animal who had the largest swallow that any creature ever enjoyed—I have swallowed all my principles. I am a little disappointed at such clatter as this. When a man has laboured for more years than I care to count, for Liberal principles and Liberal ...
— Indian speeches (1907-1909) • John Morley (AKA Viscount Morley)
... man ought not to be. Why should not he, so like the worst of men, have some bond or kindred with the evil beings who were not men? Why should not the graceful and deadly cobra, the horrid cerastes, the huge throttling python, and even more, the loathly puff-adder, undistinguishable from the gravel among which he lay coiled, till he leaped furiously and unswerving, as if shot from a bow, upon his prey—why should not they too be kindred to that evil power who had been, in the holiest ...
— The Hermits • Charles Kingsley
... world has lost by this infamous system of suppression? How many grand thinkers died with the mailed hand of superstition on their lips? How many splendid ideas have perished in the cradle of the brain, strangled in the poisonous coils of that python, the church! ...
— Lectures of Col. R. G. Ingersoll, Volume I • Robert Green Ingersoll
... of Macedonian warriors. Many of the officers went to the tent of the regent, and told him openly that he was the cause of this calamity. Outside the tent the Macedonians yelled, beside themselves with rage. About a hundred of the officers, headed by the satrap Python, refused to share further responsibility, resigned their commissions, and left the tent. The excitement grew intense. The troops, in ungovernable rage, entered the regent's tent and threw themselves upon him. Antigonus struck the first blow, others followed, and, ...
— History Of Egypt From 330 B.C. To The Present Time, Volume 10 (of 12) • S. Rappoport
... up stairs in search of the list of notes, with a ludicrous expression of wonder. In his eyes, no revenge at present seemed worth so extravagant a price. But Trevethick had his reasons, or thought he had, for this excess of hate; his slow-moving yet powerful nature resembled the python—it was exceedingly tenacious when its object was once grasped, and it ...
— Bred in the Bone • James Payn
... shell without spilling the contents, as would be the case if the front teeth were large. The shell is then ejected. Others appear to be harmless, and even edible. Of the latter sort is the large python, metse pallah, or tari. The largest specimens of this are about 15 or 20 feet in length. They are perfectly harmless, and live on small animals, chiefly the rodentia; occasionally the steinbuck and pallah fall victims, and are sucked ...
— Missionary Travels and Researches in South Africa - Journeys and Researches in South Africa • David Livingstone
... there does not appear to be any species of cult unless we include the Warramunga cult of the mythical Wollunqua totem animal, whom they seek to placate by rites. In Africa the chief centre of serpent worship was Dahomey; but the cult of the python seems to have been of exotic origin, dating back to the first quarter of the 17th century. By the conquest of Whydah the Dahomeyans were brought in contact with a people of serpent worshippers, and ended by adopting from them the cult which they at first despised. At Whydah, the ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 2, Part 1, Slice 1 • Various
... plural form in Hebrew meaning Excellence. It designates a prodigious and enormous beast—the rhinoceros, perhaps, or the hippopotamus. As to Leviathan, it was a huge reptile, a gigantic python." ...
— The Cathedral • Joris-Karl Huysmans |
