"Reptile" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... never do it. I will see Luella, and tell her she must decide at once between us, and take a decisive stand in the matter. I saw a sneer upon the licentious mouth and a leer in the bloodshot eye of the reptile as he saw me treated so cavalierly. If I had him here for about five minutes I would settle this matter with him. And then I thought Luella's parting was not as warm as usual. Was it my jealous fears, or has she really been influenced? Her failing is that she is too easily persuaded; ...
— From Wealth to Poverty • Austin Potter
... great dragon, that old serpent, called the Devil, and Satan, has suffered a similar transformation. He is shrunk into a poor little reptile, the ...
— Old Calabria • Norman Douglas
... have never yet been able to settle the question, as every fall I start up a few of these gigantic specimens, which perch on the trees. They are about three inches long, of a gray striped or spotted color, and have quite a reptile look. ...
— Wake-Robin • John Burroughs
... You must be a new sort of a Gentile. Never came across a reptile of your pattern before. Is that ...
— One Snowy Night - Long ago at Oxford • Emily Sarah Holt
... steals into my nostril, a form presses against my palm in all its dilating softness, with rounded petals, slightly curled edges, curving stem, leaves drooping. When I would fain view the world as a whole, it rushes into vision—man, beast, bird, reptile, fly, sky, ocean, mountains, plain, rock, pebble. The warmth of life, the reality of creation is over all—the throb of human hands, glossiness of fur, lithe windings of long bodies, poignant buzzing of insects, the ruggedness of the steeps as I climb them, ...
— The World I Live In • Helen Keller
... the sea," saith Ezekiel; hereby, plainly meaning a whale; in truth, some versions of the Bible use that word itself. Besides, it would much subtract from the glory of the exploit had St. George but encountered a crawling reptile of the land, instead of doing battle with the great monster of the deep. Any man may kill a snake, but only a Perseus, a St. George, a Coffin, have the heart in them to march boldly up to ...
— Moby Dick; or The Whale • Herman Melville
... against me, of the Mischianza business,—but for that I blame him not,—and, last, of his involving me in the vile net of Arnold's treason. I could as soon forgive a snake that had bit me as this reptile. ...
— Hugh Wynne, Free Quaker • S. Weir Mitchell
... tiresome creature and get more and more exasperated with him, I am conscious that he has, little by little, destroyed my happy mood and dragged the pure, beautiful morning down to the level of his own ugliness. He looks like a great sprawling reptile striving with might and main to win a place in the world and reserve the footpath for himself. When we reached the top of the hill I determined to put up with it no longer. I turned to a shop window and stopped in ...
— Hunger • Knut Hamsun
... shouted, and broke into a laugh. "At last! Gentlemen, I congratulate you. The doctor is honouring us with a visit! Cursed reptile!" he shrieked, and stamped in a frenzy such as had never been seen in the ward before. "Kill the reptile! No, killing's too good. ...
— The Horse-Stealers and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... fern-like, some cactus-like, some vaguely tree-like; but it was all outrageous, inherently repulsive to all Solarian senses. And no less hideous were the animal-like forms of life, which slithered and slunk rapaciously through that fantastic pseudo-vegetation. Snake-like, reptile-like, bat-like, the creatures squirmed, crawled, and flew; each covered with a dankly oozing yellow hide and each motivated by twin common impulses—to kill and insatiably and indiscriminately to devour. Over this reeking wilderness ...
— Triplanetary • Edward Elmer Smith
... lifelike that the boys might well have imagined they were in a zoological garden. Lions, tigers, bears, elephants, snakes, moose, and other specimens of the animal and the reptile tribes were imitated with a fidelity that was amazing. In addition, the renditions were interspersed with droll and lively comments by Larry that added immensely to the humor of the performance. When at last it was over, the boys broke out into enthusiastic ...
— The Radio Boys Trailing a Voice - or, Solving a Wireless Mystery • Allen Chapman
... our hero was clear of the snake, but he felt far from comfortable. He perched himself on the limb and watched the reptile closely. It whipped this way and that over the ground as if in high anger ...
— Jack North's Treasure Hunt - Daring Adventures in South America • Roy Rockwood
... future, which to her eye was dark with portents. Elwood himself was also obviously considerably disquieted by the news, showing no little uneasiness and excitement,—an excitement, perhaps, resembling that which is said to be manifested by a bird in the presence of the devouring reptile. He doubtless would gladly have been relieved from any further connection with Gaut. He doubtless would gladly have avoided even the slightest renewal of their former acquaintance. But, for reasons which he had never disclosed, he felt confident he should not long be suffered to ...
— Gaut Gurley • D. P. Thompson
... gently he was made Of nicely tempered mud, That man no lengthened part had played Anterior to the Flood. 'Twas all in vain; he heeded not, Referring plant and worm, Fish, reptile, ape, and Hottentot, To one ...
— The Book of Humorous Verse • Various
... From the reptile to the bird is no great distance. Then the Wood-pigeon's iridescent hues, the eyes on the Peacock's tail, the Kingfisher's sea-blue, the Flamingo's carmine are more or less closely connected with the urinary excretions? Why not? Nature, that sublime economist, delights in ...
— The Glow-Worm and Other Beetles • Jean Henri Fabre
... with which he conquered all obstacles in science was patience. He knew how to sit immovable, a part of the rock he rested on, until the bird, the reptile, the fish, which had retired from him, should come back, and resume his habits, nay, moved by curiosity, should come ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. IX (of X) - America - I • Various
... fire,—which, symbolically, was the origin of all that was bright and glorious in the soul of man,—and in the midst of it, behold a little reptile, sporting with evident enjoyment of the fervid ...
— A Virtuoso's Collection (From "Mosses From An Old Manse") • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... quickly backward along the direction from which he came. Here, at first, a brighter prospect met his eyes: the far-off rolling slopes were green, the far-off woods had not been stripped of leaves; but never could the grim story be quite wiped out for, across this verdant scene, as a long, thin reptile with a million legs, crawled an endless line of ...
— Where the Souls of Men are Calling • Credo Harris
... one day, his mother, happening to go out, saw him seated on the ground eating his porridge in company with an adder, who, however, instead of hurting the child, merely supped up the milk. When the reptile edged a little nearer to the boy than was quite equal, Douglas slapped the adder on his head with his horn spoon, saying, "Keep yer ain side o' ...
— Books for Children - The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Vol. 3 • Charles and Mary Lamb
... embroidery. True, the differences between the descendant and the ancestor are slight, and it may be asked whether the same living matter presents enough plasticity to take in turn such different forms as those of a fish, a reptile and a bird. But, to this question, observation gives a peremptory answer. It shows that up to a certain period in its development the embryo of the bird is hardly distinguishable from that of the reptile, and that the individual ...
— Creative Evolution • Henri Bergson
... its eyes flashed menacingly, and its tongue vibrated with a hissing sound as it gazed at Tom. Its tail was wound round the trunk of the tree. Ned was powerless, for his arms were pinioned to his side by the coils of the reptile. ...
— Under Drake's Flag - A Tale of the Spanish Main • G. A. Henty
... in this matter. The work must be thoroughly done, so let us be patient. And meantime," he continued with a laugh, "he is having suffering enough. The loss of this mine is like a knife thrust in his heart. It is pleasant to see him squirm like a reptile pierced by a stick. He is seeking large compensation for the work he has done,—three thousand dollars, I believe. It is worth ...
— The Foreigner • Ralph Connor
... insensible. It is after this mode the fisherman kills the salmon captured in his wear, and a single blow, when well directed, is always sufficient; but no single blow has the same effect on the earthworm; and here it was vitality in the inferior portion of the reptile,—the earthworm portion of it, if I may so speak,—that refused to participate in the state of syncope into which the vitality of the superior portion had been thrown. The nice and delicate vitality of the brain seems to impart ...
— The Cruise of the Betsey • Hugh Miller
... as if they were merely people hurrying up and down the street. She had stopped and made their acquaintance, and now she knew them all, and they were her good friends, excepting a few, such as the poison-vines, and here and there a plant or reptile, with which she was never on ...
— What Might Have Been Expected • Frank R. Stockton
... and he recoiled from the firm grasp which the other took of his arm, in the earnestness of discourse, with some such instinctive aversion as a man recoils from the touch of the reptile. The thought of a treachery like that implied in the remark of his companion had never occurred to him, and his honest mind turned with a strong disrelish, from even the implied proposition of the other. Still, he was not quite certain how far Sir Reginald wished to ...
— The Two Admirals • J. Fenimore Cooper
... the rites of the ancient pagans was in the form of sacrifice, to propitiate the deity. Abraham and Jacob offered sacrifices, but without degrading ceremonies, and both abhorred the representation of the deity in the form of animals; but there was scarcely an animal or reptile in Egypt that the people did not hold sacred, in fear or reverence. Moral evil was represented by the serpent, showing that something was retained, though in a distorted form, of the primitive revelation. The most celebrated forms of ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume II • John Lord
... reptile at your feet, When power is not abused, May prove the fruit of mercy sweet, By ...
— The Youth's Coronal • Hannah Flagg Gould
... completely formed and healthy individual. Animals, too, such as polyps or zoophytes, and many beautiful and elaborate worms, multiply by "fission," dividing into two or more parts, each of which becomes a complete animal. This process is not seen in any fish, amphibian, reptile, bird, or mammal, nor in molluscs, nor in insects, crustaceans, myriapods, and arachnids (spiders and scorpions). It is almost wholly confined to lower animals (worms and polyps) and to plants, and hence ...
— More Science From an Easy Chair • Sir E. Ray (Edwin Ray) Lankester
... bed, she sent for Mrs. Towns to tell her that a snake had lain across her chest during the previous night and had tried to get under the cover where her young baby lay asleep. Mrs. Towns was skeptical about the size and activities of the reptile but sent for several men to search the house. They had given up the search when one chanced to glance above the sick woman's bed and there lay the reptile on a shelf. The bed was roped and moved to another ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves - Georgia Narratives, Part 4 • Works Projects Administration
... of which I have promised a description, is the boa-constrictor. The species is common in the Philippines, but it is rare to meet with a specimen of very large dimensions. It is possible, nay probable, that centuries of time are necessary for this reptile to attain its largest size; and to such an age, the various accidents to which animals are exposed, rarely suffer it to attain. Full-sized boas are consequently to be met with only in the gloomiest, most remote, and most ...
— Adventures in the Philippine Islands • Paul P. de La Gironiere
... make myself ridiculous by fighting with such an apology for a man; but I will crush him as I would any other reptile that attempts to injure me. There shall not be a day of his life that does not bring him some pang which he shall owe to the hate of Barbesieur de Louvois. And I counsel YOU not to imitate his ...
— Prince Eugene and His Times • L. Muhlbach
... species of poisonous serpents and one poisonous lizard; eighteen species of these are true rattlesnakes; the remaining nine are divided between varieties of the moccasin, copperhead or the viper. The poisonous lizard is the Texan reptile known as the "Gila Monster." In all these serpents the poison fluid is secreted in a gland which lies against the side of the skull below and behind the eye, from which a duct leads to the base of a hollow tooth or fang, one on each side of the upper jaw; which fang, except in the case of vipers, ...
— Mother's Remedies - Over One Thousand Tried and Tested Remedies from Mothers - of the United States and Canada • T. J. Ritter
... sport, become degraded in their turn. And this degradation increases with the frequency of the spectacle. Persons in such habits are apt to lose sight of the dignity of mankind, and to consider them as made for administration to their pleasures, or in an animal or a reptile light. But the Quakers, who know nothing of such spectacles, cannot, at least as far as these are concerned, lose either their own dignity of mind, or behold others lose it. They cannot therefore view men under the degrading light of animals for sport, ...
— A Portraiture of Quakerism, Volume III (of 3) • Thomas Clarkson
... represents lightning, its rattle thunder and its spots rain-clouds. The number of snakes they find is surprising, as they catch from one to two hundred during the four days' hunt on ground that might be carefully searched by white men for months without finding a single reptile. ...
— Arizona Sketches • Joseph A. Munk
... upon the Irishman with a sick horror, as if the big fellow were turning into a reptile before his eyes. On the face of Harrigan there was an expression like that of the starving man whom the fear of poison induces ...
— Harrigan • Max Brand
... extraordinary degree of arrogance, by dictating to future parliaments, and prescribing to future ministers a mode of action to be adopted some thirty years hence. He remarked:—"None but a novice, a sycophant, a mere reptile of a minister, would allow this act to prevent him doing what, in his own judgment, circumstances might require at the time; and a change in the situation of the country might render that which is proper at one time inapplicable at another. In short, the scheme is nugatory ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... put stripes upon you. I tell you, Alfred Stevens, I loathe you with the loathing one feels for a reptile, whose cunning is as detestable as his sting is deadly. I loathe you from instinct. I felt this dislike and distrust for you from the first moment that I saw you. I know not how, or why, or in what manner, you are a villain, but I feel you to be one! ...
— Charlemont • W. Gilmore Simms
... life was done— The very hue, so ghastly, won— The grey, dull tint:—the labour ceased, It stood—half reptile and half beast! And now began the mimic chase; Two dogs I sought, of noblest race, Fierce, nimble, fleet, and wont to scorn The wild bull's wrath and levell'd horn; These, docile to my cheering cry, I train'd to bound, and rend, and spring, Now round the Monster-shape to fly, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXVIII. February, 1843. Vol. LIII. • Various
... its head and tail, is slowly drawn, by some one standing by, nine times across the front part of the neck of the person affected, the reptile being allowed, after every third time, to crawl about for a while. Afterwards the snake is put alive into a bottle, which is corked tightly and then buried in the ground. The tradition is, that as the ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 82, May 24, 1851 • Various
... liberty being impinged, coiled himself up, and raised his head in defiance. Its colors were greenish-yellow and brownish. It appeared to be of the thickness at the maximum of a man's wrist. The bowsman struck it with a pole, not without some trepidation at his proximity to the reptile, but it made off, apparently unhurt, ...
— Personal Memoirs Of A Residence Of Thirty Years With The Indian Tribes On The American Frontiers • Henry Rowe Schoolcraft
... wider. You heard, as I did, Fandor, the revolting scales grit on the boards. But you didn't know what it was, whereas I did know it was the snake! I swear to you it needed all my pluck not to flinch, for I wanted at any cost to see it through to the end, and know whether, behind this reptile, Fantomas was not going ...
— The Exploits of Juve - Being the Second of the Series of the "Fantmas" Detective Tales • mile Souvestre and Marcel Allain
... was transferred to the bank, the crew lifted the great canoe off the water and turned it bottom up, while four of them placed their heads beneath and rested the gunwales upon their capote-bepadded shoulders. As they carried it off, one was reminded of some immense antediluvian reptile crawling slowly ...
— The Drama of the Forests - Romance and Adventure • Arthur Heming
... on each side of the head; these are the creature's gills and answer the same purpose as the gills in a fish; the blood circulates through them, and is made fresh and pure by the action of the air contained in the water. In this state the tadpole is more of a fish than a reptile; in a short time, however, these gills will be lost and then the tadpole can no longer breathe the air of the water, but must come to the surface to take in air from the atmosphere. By-and-by we should see two small tubercles appear near the ...
— Country Walks of a Naturalist with His Children • W. Houghton
... killed. They cut off the head of the snake and carried it, together with the lifeless body of their comrade, to the vessel; the right wrists of the corpse bore the marks of the serpent's teeth, and the disfigured body showed that the man had been crushed by the constriction of the reptile round the head, ...
— Forest & Frontiers • G. A. Henty
... much as I do; but the remainder do not. I have questioned numbers of persons of both sexes, and have been astonished at the frequency with which I have been assured that they had no shrinking whatever from the sight of the wriggling mysterious reptile. Some persons, as is well known, make pets of them; moreover, I am told that there is no passage in Greek or Latin authors expressive of that form of horror which I myself feel, and which may be compared ...
— Inquiries into Human Faculty and Its Development • Francis Galton
... once what had set the jay to scolding. Slowly drawing itself along the earth, gliding through the grass and over the dry leaves—without causing even the driest of them to rustle—went a hideous reptile—a snake. Its yellowish body, dappled with black blotches, glittered as the sun glanced from its lubricated scales; while it rose and fell in wavy undulations as it moved. It moved slowly—by vertical sinuosities, almost in a direct line, with its head slightly raised from the grass. ...
— The Desert Home - The Adventures of a Lost Family in the Wilderness • Mayne Reid
... and intent on scenes of spoil And death:—So mounts Ambition, and aloft On his proud summit meditates new scenes Of plunder and dominion, till the breeze Of fortune change, that blows to empty air 250 His feeble, frail support, and once again Leaves him a reptile, struggling in the dust! But what the world itself, what in His view Whose dread Omnipotence is over all! A twinkling air-thread in the vast of space. And what the works of that proud insect, Man! His mausoleums, fanes, and pyramids, Frown in the dusk ...
— The Poetical Works of William Lisle Bowles, Vol. 1 • William Lisle Bowles
... to inspire him. As the romantic movement progressed, it would be easy to show that distaste for the eighteenth century mannerism resulted in more and more flippant treatment of the goddesses. Beattie refers to a contemporary's "reptile Muse, swollen from the sty." [Footnote: See On a Report of a Monument to a Late Author.] Burns alludes to his own Muse as a "tapitless ramfeezled hizzie," [Footnote: See the Epistle to Lapraik.] and sets the fashion ...
— The Poet's Poet • Elizabeth Atkins
... the crevice, facing outward, watching the head darting in the water. He had switched off the torch, and the loss of light appeared to bewilder the reptile for some precious seconds. Ross pulled as far back into the niche as he could, until the point of one shoulder touched a surface which was sleek, smooth, and cold. The shock of that contact almost sent him hurtling ...
— Key Out of Time • Andre Alice Norton
... not need this Goliath of a frog. I am merely valuing the reptile for your future guidance. Let ...
— The Idler Magazine, Volume III, April 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... in the cave?" was Blanka's first and most natural inquiry. Every woman in her place would have put the same question. Ever since Mother Eve's misadventure with the serpent in Paradise, women have cherished a deadly enmity toward the whole reptile family. ...
— Manasseh - A Romance of Transylvania • Maurus Jokai
... walking in the Catskills, I saw the burly driver of a stage-load of ladies bound out of his vehicle to kill a garter-snake, the pallid women looking on, meanwhile, as if the earth were being rid of some terrible and venomous thing. They ought to have known that the poor little reptile was as harmless as one of their own garters, and quite as useful in its way. Every country boy and girl should be taught to recognize all our helpers in our incessant fight with insect enemies—a fight which must be maintained with more organized vigor ...
— The Home Acre • E. P. Roe
... on, brother?" the Man called out to the other reptile, without removing his eyes from those of ...
— Fantastic Fables • Ambrose Bierce
... The moment Edith had passed around the sliding door and thought herself unobserved, an expression of intense disgust came out upon her expressive face, and with her lace handkerchief she rubbed the hand he had kissed, as if removing the slime of a reptile; and the large mirror at the further end of the room had faithfully reflected the suggestive little pantomime. He saw and understood all ...
— What Can She Do? • Edward Payson Roe
... knife, and again and again hurled the weapon at the snake although now they were safe from any attack by the reptile. Its skin was glossy and the dark folds had a certain beauty of their own. Both boys, however, were unaware of the colors of the great snake. At last Zeke succeeded in severing the body. In a moment he grasped the tail and flung the part to which it ...
— The Go Ahead Boys and Simon's Mine • Ross Kay
... words were sweet and gentle, for the nymphs knew no evil and their hearts were pure and loving. He became the pet of the forest, for Ak's decree had forbidden beast or reptile to molest him, and he walked fearlessly wherever ...
— The Life and Adventures of Santa Claus • L. Frank Baum
... remarkably clear-sighted on most other subjects, he obstinately refused on this to listen to the truth. Indeed, the remonstrances of his friends had the effect of strengthening his conviction that the reptile, as he called the supposed enemy, assumed the appearance of friendship, the better to mask ...
— Another World - Fragments from the Star City of Montalluyah • Benjamin Lumley (AKA Hermes)
... of a single bullet the whole contents of the automatic's magazine poured out and every missile took effect in the reptile's huge head. In its death agony it straightened out its folds and Frank's senseless body dropped from them, seemingly limp ...
— The Boy Aviators' Polar Dash - Or - Facing Death in the Antarctic • Captain Wilbur Lawton
... regular abode, to which it invariably returns after performing the offices of mortician to some defunct bird, beast, or reptile. This insect grave-digger, by the way, is remarkably expert at its business, and will bury a frog or a bird in a very short time. As soon as it has buried the dead animal and deposited its eggs, it returns to its domicile beneath some log ...
— The Dawn of Reason - or, Mental Traits in the Lower Animals • James Weir
... seductive persuasion. I was despatched on a trifling commission to one of his estates, my presence being an obstacle to his designs; for poor and despised as I was, Gomez Arias nevertheless looked upon me with a feeling of dread. He could crush the reptile, but he feared the sting. I was strong in my very weakness, for as I had but one solitary motive to link me to life; that being removed, my oppressor felt aware my life would then only serve as the price by which I was to ...
— Gomez Arias - The Moors of the Alpujarras, A Spanish Historical Romance. • Joaquin Telesforo de Trueba y Cosio
... limb projected. Charley pulled himself up and got a footing on it. He drew his little axe from his hip, and, yanking the snake half-way out of the hole, broke its back with a sharp blow of the axe, and then threw the reptile to the ground. Lew was on it like a flash with his feet, tramping it to death. In the snake's mouth was a small squirrel still ...
— The Young Wireless Operator—As a Fire Patrol - The Story of a Young Wireless Amateur Who Made Good as a Fire Patrol • Lewis E. Theiss
... in general, we had some difficulty in finding a pair of hobbles for each, and not being able to do so, I left one in the mob without. This base reptile surreptitiously crawled away in the night by himself. As our camp was the most wretched dog-hole it was possible for a man to get into, in the midst of dense mallee, triodia, and large stones, I determined ...
— Australia Twice Traversed, The Romance of Exploration • Ernest Giles
... up in me for this lost egg, this dead end in the tree of life, George. One thinks of the humble but deserving amoeba, the primordial metazoon, the first fish, the remote reptile ancestor, the countless generations of forefathers that, so far as this egg went, have lived and learnt and suffered in vain. The torrent of life had split and rushed by on either side of it. And you might," cried he, turning ...
— Select Conversations with an Uncle • H. G. Wells
... came. Its plumage is like a mirror which reflects the snow, the moss, or the lichens in turn. It is, indeed, a feathered chameleon, but with changes of colour taking place more slowly than is the case in the reptile. ...
— The Log of the Sun - A Chronicle of Nature's Year • William Beebe
... cross on the Palenque Tablet has so many features in common with those in the blue and red loops of the Fejervary Codex as to induce the belief that they were derived from the same type. We see in that of the Tablet the reptile head as at the base of the cross in the blue loop, the nodes, and probably the bird of that in the red loop, and ...
— Notes on Certain Maya and Mexican Manuscripts • Cyrus Thomas
... off as if it had been some venomous reptile, and turned upon him a look flaming with ...
— Cruel As The Grave • Mrs. Emma D. E. N. Southworth
... Melissa! she—ah, where is she! Oh, reflection insupportable! insufferable consideration! Must that heavenly frame putrify, moulder, and crumble into dust? Must the loathsome spider nestle on her lily bosom? the odious reptile riot on her delicate limbs? the worm revel amid the roses of her cheek, fatten on her temples, and bask in the lustre of her eyes? Alas! the lustre has become dimmed in death; the rose and the lily are withered; the harmony of her voice has ceased; the ...
— Alonzo and Melissa - The Unfeeling Father • Daniel Jackson, Jr.
... second time, his head aching with throbs, it was with a sense of falling. He found that he was on a litter that had just been set down. Evidently this was by order of the colonel, who was standing over Hugo in the company of some officers. All were regarding him as if he were a species of reptile. ...
— The Last Shot • Frederick Palmer
... accordingly ushered into the imperial presence; and the Kaiser spoke to it as he would to one of his own kind, gravely asking what it required. The reptile made a most courteous reverence to Charlemagne, and signed in its dumb way for him to follow. He did so accordingly, accompanied by his court; and the creature led them on to the water's edge, to the shores of the lake, where it had its nest. ...
— Folk-lore and Legends: German • Anonymous
... the most prolific writer of the evangelical reform in the eighteenth century and the standard theologian of the evangelical party, declared: "We have no reason at all to believe that the animal had a serpentine form in any mode or degree until its transformation; that he was then degraded to a reptile to go upon his belly imports, on the contrary, an entire loss and alteration of the original form." Here, again, was a ripe result of the theologic method diligently pursued by the strongest thinkers in the Church ...
— History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom • Andrew Dickson White
... t'other. I caught the animal last night, And viewed him o'er by candle-light; I marked him well, 'twas black as jet. You stare, but sirs, I've got him yet, And can produce him.' 'Pray, sir, do; I'll lay my life the thing is blue.' 'And I'll be sworn, that when you've seen The reptile, you'll pronounce him green.' 'Well, then, at once to end the doubt,' Replies the man, 'I'll turn him out; And when before your eyes I've set him, If you don't find him black, I'll eat him.' He said—then, full before their sight Produced the beast, ...
— Dynevor Terrace (Vol. I) - or, The Clue of Life • Charlotte M. Yonge
... His reptile temper crawled into hiding, and when I said day was breaking, he said he ...
— The Cavalier • George Washington Cable
... him no confidence that he had secured more than a respite. It was as if he had had a loathsome dream, and could not shake off its images with their hateful kindred of sensations—as if on all the pleasant surroundings of his life a dangerous reptile had left ...
— Middlemarch • George Eliot
... of the gravest and most trustworthy gentlemen of several different localities on the mountains that there really is a creature infesting these streams supposed by them to be a young alligator, reaching a length of twelve inches, and doubtless subsisting on fish. An alligator as a mountain-reptile had not entered into our conception: can these voracious saurians, playing in the alpine affluents of the Mississippi, possibly be identical with the vast and ugly beasts of the lower bayous and the Gulf? We leave the ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII. No. 31. October, 1873. • Various
... manners and fine sense, Yet wanting sensibility—the man Who needlessly sets foot upon a worm. An inadvertent step may crush the snail, That crawls at eve along the public path; But he who has humanity, forewarned, Will step aside, and let the reptile live." ...
— Stories about Animals: with Pictures to Match • Francis C. Woodworth
... gateway of mathematics. The old antinomies of the infinite were, I imagine, the irritant that first woke his faculties from their dogmatic slumber. You all remember Zeno's famous paradox, or sophism, as many of our logic books still call it, of Achilles and the tortoise. Give that reptile ever so small an advance and the swift runner Achilles can never overtake him, much less get ahead of him; for if space and time are infinitely divisible (as our intellects tell us they must be), by the time Achilles reaches the tortoise's starting-point, the tortoise has already ...
— A Pluralistic Universe - Hibbert Lectures at Manchester College on the - Present Situation in Philosophy • William James
... thought, once more rose above her victim. The snake was now uncoiled, and writhing over the ground. Another rush from the peccary, another spring, and the sharp hoofs of the animal came down upon the neck of the serpent, crushing it upon the hard turf. The body of the reptile, distended to its full length, quivered for a moment, and then lay motionless along the grass. The victor uttered another sharp cry, that seemed intended as a call to her young ones, who, emerging from the weeds where they had concealed themselves, ...
— Chambers' Edinburgh Journal - Volume XVII., No 422, New Series, January 31, 1852 • Various
... had laid hold of little Ilbrahim's hand, relinquished it as if he were touching a loathsome reptile. But he possessed a compassionate heart which not even religious prejudice could harden into stone. "God forbid that I should leave this child to perish, though he comes of the accursed sect," said he to himself. "Do we not all spring from an evil root? Are ...
— Twice Told Tales • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... wrongs to petty perfidy Have I not seen what human things could do? From the loud roar of foaming calumny To the small whisper of the as paltry few And subtler venom of the reptile crew, The Janus glance of whose significant eye, Learning to lie with silence, would SEEM true, And without utterance, save the shrug or sigh, Deal round to happy fools its ...
— Childe Harold's Pilgrimage • Lord Byron
... they grow to a great size), that I was really terrified at the sight of the hideous beast, and told Sol to throw it away. In this I was very foolish, for they are esteemed good eating in many parts of Canada; but to me, the sight of the reptile-like thing is enough—it is uglier, and far more disgusting-looking ...
— Roughing it in the Bush • Susanna Moodie
... a dead bough from a scrub oak he approached the snake cautiously while the rest sat in their saddles silently anxious, and Charley edged his restive pony a little closer to the repulsive reptile. ...
— The Boy Chums in the Forest - or Hunting for Plume Birds in the Florida Everglades • Wilmer M. Ely
... the tale, as far as the Pecos were concerned, was certainly true. He never could get to see the reptile, however. ...
— Historical Introduction to Studies Among the Sedentary Indians of New Mexico; Report on the Ruins of the Pueblo of Pecos • Adolphus Bandelier
... lived a beautiful purple life, went to sleep under a tree in the forest. Jove sent a huge serpent to destroy him. The man awakened as the reptile drew near. ...
— Fables For The Times • H. W. Phillips
... still more definite advance in the same direction. The cerebral hemispheres have now so much increased in size as, more or less, to hide the representatives of the optic lobes, which remain comparatively small, so that the brain of a Marsupial is extremely different from that of a Bird, Reptile, or Fish. A step higher in the scale, among the placental Mammals, the structure of the brain acquires a vast modification—not that it appears much altered externally, in a Rat or in a Rabbit, from what it is in a Marsupial—nor that the proportions ...
— On the Relations of Man to the Lower Animals • Thomas H. Huxley
... the race the elder slew the second, and in the thirteenth generation came the deluge, from which Nuu was saved, for at the command of Kane he built an ark, took refuge in it with his family, and, with pairs of every species of bird, beast, and reptile, was released by the gods after the water had gone down, and found that his ark was resting on the top of Mauna Loa. The rainbow was the stair by which Kane descended to him, and it was left in the sky as a token of forgiveness. As the history proceeds we recognize the story of ...
— Myths & Legends of our New Possessions & Protectorate • Charles M. Skinner
... found both in Malay and Hindu mythology, differing somewhat in details, but always relating to some monster reptile. In the Manek Maya, one of the ancient epics of Java, Anta Boga, the deity presiding over the lowest region of the earth, is a dragon-like monster with ninety nostrils. The same conception is found also among ...
— Day Symbols of the Maya Year • Cyrus Thomas
... opera-glass, probably all our party on board the Rangoon would have been personal witnesses to the existence of a great sea-serpent. But, alas for romance! One glance through the lenses, and the reptile was resolved into a bamboo, root upwards, anchored in some manner to the ...
— The Youth's Companion - Volume LII, Number 11, Thursday, March 13, 1879 • Various
... of the black leopard. "But," you say, "how can I find out whether a book is good or bad, without reading it?" There is always something suspicious about a bad book. I never knew an exception. Something suspicious in the index or the style of illustration. This venomous reptile almost always carries a ...
— Brave Men and Women - Their Struggles, Failures, And Triumphs • O.E. Fuller
... Cow-boys dashed from nowhere in particular and did amazing things with a bit of rope, sending it through the air with snaky undulations after flying cattle. The rope, taking on lifelike coils, would pursue the flying beast like an aerial reptile, then the noose would fall true, and the thing was done. A second later a couple of cow-boys would be examining the disputed brand on ...
— Judith Of The Plains • Marie Manning
... to see if the reptile would surface again, sighted another object, a rounded shape floating on the sea, bobbing lightly as had ...
— Storm Over Warlock • Andre Norton
... century. Recently it has obtained a reputation as a febrifuge, but its value as an antidote to the bites of snakes and scorpions is universally believed, and the inhabitants carry a seed with them in all their journeyings; if they happen to be bitten by any venomous reptile they scrape about two grains of the seed in brandy or water and apply it to the wound, at the same time taking a like dose internally. This neutralizes ...
— Catalogue of Economic Plants in the Collection of the U. S. Department of Agriculture • William Saunders
... returned from one of his sporting and scientific expeditions in South America. He had already won fame as a naturalist, and had succeeded in bringing home alive quite a variety of beasts, usually of the reptile order, whose extreme rarity seemed to me a merciful ...
— Lords of the Housetops - Thirteen Cat Tales • Various
... the people is idolatry and fetich, or superstition. They have large houses where they worship snakes; and so great is their reverence for the reptile, that, if any one kills one that has escaped, he is punished with death. But, above their wild and superstitious notions, there is an ever-present consciousness of a Supreme Being. They seldom mention the name of God, and then ...
— History of the Negro Race in America From 1619 to 1880. Vol 1 - Negroes as Slaves, as Soldiers, and as Citizens • George W. Williams
... and failed. With Merrick was Tad Sobber, his nephew, a youth who at Putnam Hall had been a bitter foe to Dick, Tom and Sam. Sobber had sent the Rovers a box containing a live poisonous snake, but the snake got away and bit another pupil. This lad knew all about the sending of the reptile and he exposed Tad Sobber, and the latter, growing alarmed, ran ...
— The Rover Boys at College • Edward Stratemeyer
... only in the next parish. A man in his development runs for a little while parallel with, though never passing through, the form of the meanest worm, then travels for a space beside the fish, then journeys along with the bird and the reptile for his fellow travellers: and only at last, after a brief companionship with the highest of the four-footed and four-handed world, rises into the dignity of pure manhood. No competent thinker of the ...
— Darwiniana • Thomas Henry Huxley
... upon a plate or in a gourd, the person next eating or drinking from the contaminated vessel will soon become the unwilling landlord of a reptilian tenant. There are other avenues, too, by which the reptile may gain admittance; but when expelled by the conjure doctor's arts or medicines, it always leaves at the point where it entered. This belief may have originally derived its existence from the fact that certain tropical insects sometimes lay their eggs beneath the skins of animals, or even of men, ...
— The Conjure Woman • Charles W. Chesnutt
... came to the foot of the tower, provided according to her husband's commands, he directed her to touch the head of the insect with a little of the ghee, to tie one end of the silk thread around him, and to place the reptile on the wall of the tower. Seduced by the smell of the butter, which he conceived to be in store somewhere above him, the beetle continued to ascend till he reached the top, and thus put the vizier ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 13, No. 354, Saturday, January 31, 1829. • Various
... been made to bring the descent-system into agreement with the actual facts, the incongruity between the two has become obvious." Thus, for instance, the well-known archaeopteryx is not, as was maintained, a connecting link between reptile and bird, but a member of a blindly ending side branch. In fact palaeontological research has proven incapable of finding the transitions between different species, clearly determined by the theory. But the overwhelming abundance of matter called for new endeavors to master it. It was ...
— At the Deathbed of Darwinism - A Series of Papers • Eberhard Dennert
... times, that of all pleasures death is the greatest. He even plays upon the word, using it in senses which it will hardly bear. Libycae mortes are serpents; Accessit morti Libye, "Libya added to the mortality of the army;" nulla cruentae tantum mortis habet; "no other reptile causes a death so bloody." To one so unhealthily familiar with the idea, the reality, when it came, seems ...
— A History of Roman Literature - From the Earliest Period to the Death of Marcus Aurelius • Charles Thomas Cruttwell
... world, because he does not agree in his creed with thee, know that he judges according to the best of his abilities, and that no more will be required of him. Know also that thou thyself judgest like a worm of the earth; that thou dishonourest the Almighty by thy reptile notions of him; and that in making him accord with thee in condemning one of his creatures for what thou conceivest to be the misunderstanding of a speculative proposition, thou treatest him like a man, as thou thyself art, with corporeal organs; with irritable passions, and with a limited ...
— A Portraiture of Quakerism, Volume II (of 3) • Thomas Clarkson
... back to the stables, and returned in a few seconds with a clothes-prop, with which he dealt the disturber of our peace a few rapid, but vigorous, blows, breaking its spine in several places. Then the step-ladder was brought out, and Ted, seizing the reptile by the tail, uncoiled it with some difficulty from the wire, and threw ...
— Amona; The Child; And The Beast; And Others - From "The Strange Adventure Of James Shervinton and Other - Stories" - 1902 • Louis Becke
... with which all living bodies start in life, but with which they are subsequently built up. "Protoplasm," says Huxley, "simple or nucleated, is the formal basis of all life. It is the clay of the Potter." "Beast and fowl, reptile and fish, mollusk, worm and polype are all composed of structural units of the same character, namely, masses ...
— Natural Law in the Spiritual World • Henry Drummond
... romance in general. The knight is in complete armour, and is riding through a forest. On a hilltop in the distance are the turrets of a castle; a lean hound follows the knight; on the ground between his horse's hoofs sprawls a lizard-like reptile; a figure on horseback approaches from the right, with the face half obliterated or eaten away to the semblance of a skull, and snakes encircling the temples. Behind comes on a demon or goblin shape, with a tall curving horn, which is "neither man nor woman, neither ...
— A History of English Romanticism in the Nineteenth Century • Henry A. Beers
... other animals, and of amusing himself with their dying convulsions. He also frequently took pleasure in roasting them alive. He once received a present of a very large snake from some person who seemed to understand how to please this remarkable young prince. After a time, however, the favorite reptile allowed itself to bite its master's finger, whereupon Don Carlos immediately retaliated ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... very much disposed to remain in the house and give my servants their view of the cause of Krause's strange disappearance, which was—as they had previously told me—that he had been seized and devoured by an enormous reptile, half eel and half turtle, which had been known to swallow not only human beings, but such trifles as double canoes, groves of coco-nut trees, etcetera; but on my telling them that I was very tired and wanted a quiet house, they retired to the native village ...
— The Strange Adventure Of James Shervinton - 1902 • Louis Becke
... it," he said, laughing at her alarm. "Shall I bruise the serpent's head with my heel, or shall I draw my sword on a reptile?" ...
— The Actress in High Life - An Episode in Winter Quarters • Sue Petigru Bowen
... Nature. Every kind of Animal is diversified by different Magnitudes, each of which gives rise to a different Species. Let a Man trace the Dog or Lion-Kind, and he will observe how many of the Works of Nature are published, if I may use the Expression, in a variety of Editions. If we look into the Reptile World, or into those different Kinds of Animals that fill the Element of Water, we meet with the same Repetitions among several Species, that differ very little from one another, but in Size and Bulk. You find the same Creature that is drawn at large, ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... through the grass, and when it found itself surrounded by enemies, coiled itself round Harry's leg, a proceeding very painful to that youth, who nevertheless stood like a statue while Jim dodged about for a chance to strike at the wildly waving head. He got it at last, and while the reptile writhed in very natural annoyance, Harry managed to get free, and soon put a respectful distance between himself and his too-affectionate acquaintance. Jim finished up the snake, and they resumed the track, keeping a careful look-out, and ...
— A Little Bush Maid • Mary Grant Bruce
... Turn him, O Infinite Spirit, turn this reptile back into his dog-shape ... that he may crawl on his belly before me ... that I may trample the abandoned wretch underfoot. Not the first!... Woe! Woe not to be grasped by any human soul, that more than one should sink into this abyss of misery—that the first, in her writhing agony ...
— The Faust-Legend and Goethe's 'Faust' • H. B. Cotterill
... would, you dear, sweet, kind-hearted, but most un-Christian, father. You must come to church, in order that some idea of what Christianity demands of you may make its way into your heart. It is not what the clergyman may say of you, but that your mind will get away for two hours from that other reptile and his concerns." Then Mr. Grey, with a loud, long sigh, allowed his boots, and his gloves, and his church-going hat, and his church-going umbrella to be brought to him. It was, in fact, his aversion to these articles that ...
— Mr. Scarborough's Family • Anthony Trollope
... invincible; Cadmus, who loved no one, slew Mars' own reptile. We love, and Love makes everything possible for the heart that follows his standard, for the hand of whose darts he is ...
— Psyche • Moliere
... characters, as, for example, the Steward in King Lear, which are thoroughly contemptible, and which we follow with contempt. But it is to be observed that there is nothing laughable in Oswald; nothing that we can either laugh with or laugh at: he is a sort of human reptile, such as life sometimes produces, whom we regard with moral loathing and disgust, but in whose company neither mirth nor pity can find any foothold. On the other hand, the feelings moved by a Bottom, a Dogberry, an Aguecheek, or a Slender, are indeed very different from those which wait ...
— Shakespeare: His Life, Art, And Characters, Volume I. • H. N. Hudson
... enough to keep; The "real, genuine, no-mistake Tom Thumbs" Are little people fed on great men's crumbs. Yet keep no followers of that hateful brood That basely mingles with its wholesome food The tumid reptile, which, the poet said, Doth wear a ...
— The Poetical Works of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Complete • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... small-bore Russell, differing from his chief only in that his labor hatred is more fanatical and less discreet. Hubbard was hard hit by the strike in 1917 which fact has evidently won him the significant title of "a vicious little anti-labor reptile." He is the man who helped to raid the 1918 Union Hall in Centralia and who appropriated for himself the stolen desk of the Union Secretary. His nephew Dale Hubbard was shot while trying ...
— The Centralia Conspiracy • Ralph Chaplin
... it the savage would make mince-meat of you. No, Peabody, fire at once. This would wake us all up, and if you didn't kill the reptile we would do it ...
— The Young Adventurer - or Tom's Trip Across the Plains • Horatio Alger
... popular idea that man has caused the misery of this world, he cites the ages, when the Old Red Sandstone bred gigantic cannibal fishes; when the Oolites produced the mighty reptile tyrants of air, earth, and sea; and when the monsters of the Eocene and Miocene periods shook the ground with their ponderous tread. And the world of waters is still a hideous scene of cruelty, carnage, ...
— The Kasidah of Haji Abdu El-Yezdi • Richard F. Burton
... that far behind rose the tufted tail of the king of the forest. From the two great eyes of the gigantic reptile shone dazzling streams of white light, like the rays of a mariner's beacon, and everywhere twinkling yellow lights were moving about the face of the great rock, across the platform whereon the colossal figure rested, even ...
— The Great White Queen - A Tale of Treasure and Treason • William Le Queux
... much on account of mosquitoes as because of the small saurian reptiles that abound in such places. If your party is a large one, there will certainly be one lady in it, at least, who has had a lizard in her stomach for several years, and the struggles of the confined reptile to join its congeners in the swamp might induce convulsions, and so mar the hilarity of ...
— Punchinello Vol. 1, No. 21, August 20, 1870 • Various
... great minds over weak ones. He fascinated the slave, as a rattlesnake does a bird. Standing "like Teneriffe," he smote him with his eye, and said, "Tune, homo, audes occidere C. Marium?"—"Dost thou, fellow, presume to kill Caius Marius?" Whereat, the reptile, quaking under the voice, nor daring to affront the consular eye, sank gently to the ground—turned round upon his hands and feet—and, crawling out of the prison like any other vermin, left Marius standing in solitude as steadfast and immovable as ...
— The Art of Public Speaking • Dale Carnagey (AKA Dale Carnegie) and J. Berg Esenwein
... stones and pieces of very hard wood, when the lakes which they inhabit are dry, or when they are in want of food. M. Bonpland and I observed in a crocodile, eleven feet long, which we dissected at Batallez, on the banks of the Rio Magdalena, that the stomach of this reptile contained half-digested fish, and rounded fragments of granite three or four inches in diameter. It is difficult to admit that the crocodiles swallow these stony masses accidentally, for they do not catch fish with their lower jaw ...
— Equinoctial Regions of America V2 • Alexander von Humboldt
... 498)] consul for Rome, was warring against Carthage, a serpent suddenly crept out of the palisade of the Roman army and lay there. By his command the Romans slew the reptile and having flayed it sent its skin, a great prodigy, to the Roman senate. And when measured by the same senate (as the same Dio says) it was found to have a length of one hundred and twenty feet. In addition to its ...
— Dio's Rome, Vol VI. • Cassius Dio
... the water was very deeply furrowed, thus proving how the great lizard had repeatedly dragged its heavy bulk over the same spot on its way to drink at the stream, and I bethought me of a plan to deal with the reptile. The only weapon I had upon me when kidnapped from my ship was a short sabre or manchette, which I wore as a sidearm. But this I hoped would prove a formidable weapon when put to the use for ...
— Adventures in Southern Seas - A Tale of the Sixteenth Century • George Forbes
... brushed the little reptile away; but it was quite a moment before he assumed an erect position, and I saw two or three quick shudders pass over his frame, such as I had not seen since, many a long year before, I witnessed the horrible tortures of a strong man stricken with hydrophobia. ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 2, No 3, September, 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy. • Various
... Bob Roberts returned with the ammonia, and realised what was wrong, he pulled out his pocket-knife, placed his foot on the reptile's neck, as it still writhed feebly, and cut off ...
— Middy and Ensign • G. Manville Fenn
... way, and jumped quickly on one side as he came up to a great ugly bullfrog, who, charmed by a snake, was too terrified to move. The snake was just about to swallow it whole, when Mark seized a large stone and threw it with all his strength into the reptile's wide-open mouth. Down went the stone into his throat, ...
— The Two Story Mittens and the Little Play Mittens - Being the Fourth Book of the Series • Frances Elizabeth Barrow
... 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 Park are "large and vigorous, already active and looking for food." Surely this monstrous suggestion, threatening the safety of the peaceful frequenters of ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 159, July 28th, 1920 • Various
... went on. "I have supplanted Eunice in Philip's affection. She was once engaged to marry him; I am engaged to marry him now. She is resolved that he shall never make me his wife. He will die if I delay any longer. He will die if I don't crush her, like the reptile she is. She comes here—and what does she do? Keeps him prisoner under her own superintendence. Who gets his medicine? She gets it. Who cooks his food? She cooks it. The doors are locked. I might be a witness of what goes on; ...
— The Legacy of Cain • Wilkie Collins
... batrachian was the making of a little broth. Another part of the skinned anatomy touched the iron rail below, and the anatomist observed that this casual contact produced a convulsive twitching of the dead reptile's legs. He groped about this fact for many years. He fancied he had discovered the principle of life. He made the phenomenon to hang upon the facts clustering about his own profession, familiar to him, and about which it was natural for him to think. He promulgated theories ...
— Steam Steel and Electricity • James W. Steele
... and with a start, I saw a limb swing down to stare at me with the boa's glittering eyes. He was so exactly the colour of the bare bough, and lay so still, I had not seen him till he came to take a look at me. A very villainous-looking reptile he was, and I felt grateful that I didn't live in a country where such unpleasant neighbours might pop in upon you unexpectedly. He was kind enough to take a promenade and show me his size, which seemed immense, as he stretched himself, and then knotted his rough grayish body into a great ...
— Aunt Jo's Scrap-Bag • Louisa M. Alcott
... of understanding me," he said. "Your sympathy is for Oscar. He is the victim; he is the martyr; he has all your consideration and all your pity. I am a coward; I am a villain; I have no honor and no heart. Tread Me under foot like a reptile. My misery is only what I deserve! Compassion is thrown away—isn't it?—on such a scoundrel as ...
— Poor Miss Finch • Wilkie Collins
... dinosaur was a prehistoric reptile," adding modestly, "I once had the pleasure of helping to restore ...
— 'Me-Smith' • Caroline Lockhart
... will be succeeded with an adequate derision:—Could I but say I was descended from honest, tho' mean parents, I would not murmur at my fate, but I have none,—none to own me;—I am a nothing,—a kind of reptile in humanity, and have been shewn in a genteel way of life only to make my native misery ...
— The Fortunate Foundlings • Eliza Fowler Haywood
... him." Quick as thought he stooped down, seized firm hold of the snake by the tail, and, whirling him rapidly round his head three or four times, he dashed him against the boards of the hut and let him drop, crushing the reptile's head with his boot-heel. The snake was four feet six inches in length, and said to be of a very ...
— A Boy's Voyage Round the World • The Son of Samuel Smiles
... for hours, alone in that awful emptiness. The creature was a reptile, but the thought ...
— At a Winter's Fire • Bernard Edward J. Capes
... thee, thou disbelieving son of a different coloured horse, a woman-rider, even she for whom the palace has been built; and swinging her across the saddle so that her feet, as small as thine are big, thou grandchild of a reptile with poisonous tongue, as I say her little feet hung down on one side, and her head, and may Allah protect me from the wrath of my master if I say that it was as the sun in all its glory, hanging down on the other, dashed into ...
— Desert Love • Joan Conquest
... by one who has had occasion to know some of the baser parts of it, and regards him accordingly with shuddering abhorrence, and just so much fear as he deserves. In him is to be dreaded the crawling of the centipede, not the spring of the tiger—the venom of the reptile, not the strength of the animal—the rancour of the miscreant, not the courage of ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 6 • Lord Byron
... reading days began after the bookseller's agent came round, and teased my father into taking in the Penny Cyclopaedia; and those numbers in which there was a beast, bird, fish, or reptile were ...
— We and the World, Part I - A Book for Boys • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... voit cet oiseau qui porte le tonnerre, Blesse par un serpent elance de la terre; Il s'envole, il entraine au sejour azure L'ennemi tortueux dont il est entoure. Le sang tombe des airs. Il dechire, il devore Le reptile acharne qui le combat encore; Il le perce, il le tient sous ses ongles vainqueurs; Par cent coups redoubles il venge ses douleurs. Le monstre, en expirant, se debat, se replie; Il exhale en poisons les restes de sa vie; Et l'aigle, tout sanglant, ...
— Life of Cicero - Volume One • Anthony Trollope
... almost upon it. But for the tremendous effort of Jack he would have dropped squarely upon the velvety body, with consequences too frightful to be thought of; but his great leap carried him over it, while the attack of Fred upon the reptile, in the effort to save his companion, diverted the attention of the ...
— Two Boys in Wyoming - A Tale of Adventure (Northwest Series, No. 3) • Edward S. Ellis
... and fiercely repeated Don Louis. "The wrong of baffled hate; of success, when I planned thy downfall; of escape, when I had sworn thy death! Did the drivelling idiots, who haunted, persecuted, excommunicated me from these realms, as some loathed reptile, dream that I would draw back from my sworn vengeance for such as they? Poor, miserable fools, whom the first scent of danger would turn aside from the pursuit of hate! I staked my life on thine, and the stake is lost; ...
— The Vale of Cedars • Grace Aguilar
... a famous embroglio between our chaouch and the marabout. The latter had caught a waran, or large species of lizard, and skinned it to dispose of the skin. The chaouch impudently swore he had been eating the flesh of the reptile—a direful accusation. A tremendous war of words ensued; and not of words only, for presently the holy man came in for a gratification of ropes' end. All the Fezzanees rushed forward to save the honour of the marabout; and the chaouch retreated to my tent in search of arms. A stupid ...
— Narrative of a Mission to Central Africa Performed in the Years 1850-51, Volume 1 • James Richardson
... sense of obligation, if continuing to recognize the nature of duty in things which could then no longer retain any such quality, otherwise than as looking to the most immediate and tangible benefit or harm, the lowest of moral calculations, would be reduced to a vulgar and reptile principle. The best of its strength, and all its dignity, would be departed from it when it could refer no more to eternity, an invisible world, and a judgment to come. It would therefore have none of that emphasis of impression which can ...
— An Essay on the Evils of Popular Ignorance • John Foster
... of good luck, starts them off, and habit, like a smouldering flame, breaks out, and for a time all is over. Such men scotch, but they do not kill the cobra of intemperance, and soon or late the other result will follow, the snake will kill them. The reptile is tenacious of life, and so long as the life remains there is danger from the deadly venom of its tooth. Those who have never formed the habit of drinking had better die at once than live to form it. Those who ...
— Fifteen Years in Hell • Luther Benson
... movement backward snap the fingers to full length. This is repeated five or six times during the one movement of the hand. The country which the Lipans at one time occupied contained large ponds or lakes, and along the shores of these the reptile was found which gave them this characteristic appellation. (Kaiowa I; Comanche III; Apache III; Wichita II.) "Frogs." ...
— Sign Language Among North American Indians Compared With That Among Other Peoples And Deaf-Mutes • Garrick Mallery
... life, the only true life of the soul? There is such a manifest disproportion between all objects of earthly attainment and the capacities of the spirit, that, unless man is immortal, he is vastly more to be pitied than the meanest reptile that crawls upon the earth. So I thought as I was walking this morning and saw a frog swimming in a puddle of water. I could hardly help envying him when I considered that his condition was suited to his nature, and that he has no wants ...
— The Life and Letters of Elizabeth Prentiss • George L. Prentiss
... "Snake!" were sent up, and each time this proved to be a false alarm, or the snake must have made good its escape, for no horrible crawling reptile came to view, in spite of the most desperate thrashing of bushes, and beating of ...
— The Girl Scouts at Sea Crest - The Wig Wag Rescue • Lillian Garis
... perform such a sacrifice for one year and make a present of a hundred kine with one bull. Having slain a dog or bear or camel, one should perform the same penance that is laid down for the slaughter of a Sudra. For slaying a cat, a chasa, a frog, a crow, a reptile, or a rat, it has been said, one incurs the sin of animal slaughter, O king! I shall now tell thee of other kinds of expiations in their order. For all minor sins one should repent or practise some vow for one year. For congress with the wife of a Brahmana conversant with the Vedas, one ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 3 - Books 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12 • Unknown
... snake, warmed by the hot sun, curled upward from the terraced wall behind them, where it had basked, and glided swiftly between them. Nobili's heel was on it; in an instant he had crushed its head. But there between them lay the quivering reptile, its speckled scales catching the light. Enrica ...
— The Italians • Frances Elliot
... question of mere precaution and convenience. Man is cruelly wasteful of life when his own safety is endangered and he is sheltered by impunity, and little mercy is to be expected from him when he feels the sting of the reptile and is conscious of the power ...
— The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent. • Washington Irving
... "Hyperion's city through the yielding air, "Before the sacred portal lays it down. "If of stupendous wonder aught ye find "In this, hyaenas must your wonder move; "Alternate changing, females now they bear; "And annual alter unto males again: "That reptile too, which feeds on wind and air; "And what it touches, straight its hue assumes. "India by cluster-bearing Bacchus gain'd, "Lynxes upon the conquering god bestow'd: "And, (so they tell) whate'er their ...
— The Metamorphoses of Publius Ovidus Naso in English blank verse Vols. I & II • Ovid
... &c., soon became instinct with life: the abominable head of the crocodile, and his leering eyes, looked out at me, multiplied into a thousand repetitions; and I stood loathing and fascinated. And so often did this hideous reptile haunt my dreams that many times the very same dream was broken up in the very same way: I heard gentle voices speaking to me (I hear everything when I am sleeping), and instantly I awoke. It was broad noon, and my children were standing, hand in hand, at my bedside—come to show me their ...
— Confessions of an English Opium-Eater • Thomas De Quincey
... thrown violently forward on his hands and knees. Again came that dizzy, sickening shaking of the earth, that nauseating sense of being lifted to a height and suddenly let fall, that squirming of the ground beneath him as though it were a gigantic reptile. ...
— Doubloons—and the Girl • John Maxwell Forbes
... the passionate words fiercely struggling for utterance at his lips—that most villainous old tutor of young thieves, receiver of stolen goods, and very devil incarnate: his features distorted with rage, his penthouse eyebrows (those wonderful eyebrows!) working like the antennae of some deadly reptile, his whole aspect, half-vulpine, ...
— Charles Dickens as a Reader • Charles Kent
... sweeter than aught else but his Whose echoes they are; yet all love is sweet, Given or returned. Common as light is love, 40 And its familiar voice wearies not ever. Like the wide heaven, the all-sustaining air, It makes the reptile equal to the God: They who inspire it most are fortunate, As I am now; but those who feel it most 45 Are happier still, after long sufferings, As I ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Volume I • Percy Bysshe Shelley
... large serpent, which they observed revolving itself towards them with great velocity. Terrified at the sight, Michael's two companions fled, while he, on the contrary, resolved to encounter the reptile. The appalling monster approached Michael Scott with distended mouth and forked tongue; and, throwing itself into a coil at his feet, was raising its head to inflict a mortal sting, when Michael, with one stroke of his stick, severed its body into three pieces. Having rejoined his ...
— Folk-Lore and Legends - Scotland • Anonymous
... what to make of you," Ptaha persisted in addressing the tramp. "Peasant you are not, and gentleman you are not, but some sort of a thing between.... The other day I was washing a sieve in the pond and caught a reptile—see, as long as a finger, with gills and a tail. The first minute I thought it was a fish, then I looked—and, blow it! if it hadn't paws. It was not a fish, it was a viper, and the deuce only knows what it was.... So that's like you.... What's ...
— The Witch and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... in a previous article, American naturalists have regarded the heloderm as quite harmless—an opinion well sustained by the judgment of many persons in Arizona and other parts of the West by whom the reptile has been kept as an interesting though ugly pet. While the Indians and native Mexicans believe the creature to be venomous, we have never heard an instance in which the bite of ...
— Scientific American Supplement, Vol. XV., No. 388, June 9, 1883 • Various
... looked down upon him with contempt, as though he were some loathsome reptile writhing at his feet. "Silence!" he said, in a harsh whisper—"Remember, we are watched here! Get up!—why do you kneel to me? I have nothing to do with you, beyond such office as the Church enjoins!" And a cold smile darkened, rather than lightened his ...
— Temporal Power • Marie Corelli
... relation between the serpent and the coming of the rains. These facts would give strength to the theory that god B is to be identified as a rain god. In Dresden 33a, 35a, god B is seated on the open jaws of a serpent, while the body of the reptile encloses a blue field evidently signifying water. The number nineteen appears on this blue color. It will be noted that there are nineteen spots on the serpents in Pl. 11, figs. 1, 2. In Tro-Cortesianus ...
— Animal Figures in the Maya Codices • Alfred M. Tozzer and Glover M. Allen
... regard the cobra as a god, and are loath to kill him. Many cannot bring themselves to do so. If a cobra comes into a hut, the owner sets out milk for him and protects him in every way, and when the reptile becomes practically tame and finds that he is left undisturbed, he does his host no harm. But if the snake kills any one in the hut, he is caught, carried to a distance, and let loose. If he bites a man and then is killed, the bitten man ...
— From Pole to Pole - A Book for Young People • Sven Anders Hedin
... I waste my time here?" said I, starting up, and seizing my hat. "The reptile is at work. Where lives Sir Reginald?—my demon— like double may be there before me. He may personate me long enough to kill my father and rifle his hoards. I must away—but, ere I go, know that, with these abstracted papers, ...
— Rattlin the Reefer • Edward Howard
... trampler on the wreck Of Ilion, knows he not this she-wolf's tongue, Which licks and fawns, and laughs with ear up-sprung, To bite in the end like secret death?—And can The woman? Slay a strong and armed man? ... What fanged reptile like to her doth creep? Some serpent amphisbene, some Skylla, deep Housed in the rock, where sailors shriek and die, Mother of Hell blood-raging, which doth cry On her own flesh war, war without alloy ... God! And she shouted in his ...
— Agamemnon • Aeschylus
... an insect, not even a reptile to be seen, the solemn, melancholy silence is unbroken by the voice of any living creature." From the summit of these hills the commander saw New Bay, that known as Admiralty, which communicates by a current with that in which the Astrolabe was anchored; and he was anxious to explore ...
— Celebrated Travels and Travellers - Part III. The Great Explorers of the Nineteenth Century • Jules Verne
... future becomes transparent, and the distant becomes near. But you must hold fast to the one true Proteus; he will turn to fire—hold fast; he will become running water—hold fast; he will change to tree, beast, reptile—hold fast. Then he will show himself in his right shape, and will speak the fact. Hold fast; the One is under all, and is a God, who will lift the veil of Space and Time from the visage of Truth. But unquestionably the man in his desperate ...
— Homer's Odyssey - A Commentary • Denton J. Snider
... women I would say, Be not discouraged by such gross affronts, prompted by splenetic hearts and spewed forth by empty heads. You may be flouted on the one hand by a few purse-proud parvenues and pitied on the other hand by bedizened prostitutes, but the great world, which learned long ago that the reptile as well as the eagle can reach the apex of the pyramid, estimates you at your true worth and binds upon your pure brows the victor's wreath, while ringing ever in your ears like a heavenly anthem are the words of Israel's wisest—"A good name is ...
— Volume 10 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann |
