"Crocodile" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... "crocodile's tears" has passed into common use, and it therefore may be worth while noting the probable origin of this myth. Shakespeare, with that wide extent of knowledge which enabled him to draw similes from every department of human thought, ...
— Young Folks' Library, Volume XI (of 20) - Wonders of Earth, Sea and Sky • Various
... combinations, as he supposed, that are capable of living. On the contrary, they lead rather to the final catastrophe of the organism. And lastly, St. Hilaire's appeal to sudden and great transformations, such as a crocodile's egg hatching into a bird, has exposed his view ...
— A Critique of the Theory of Evolution • Thomas Hunt Morgan
... Bible, as with light, And the shadows of the night, Like Sidmouth, next, Hypocrisy On a crocodile ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Volume I • Percy Bysshe Shelley
... This name is applied in the Old Testament to some huge water animal. In some cases it appears to mean the crocodile, but in others the whale or ...
— McGuffey's Fifth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey
... snake-bite throughout the year. On the festival of Nag-Panchmi the Mahars make an image of a snake with flour and sugar and eat it. It is reported that the Singrore Dhimars who work on rivers and tanks must eat the flesh of a crocodile at their weddings, while the Sonjharas who wash the sands of rivers for gold should catch a live crocodile for the occasion of the wedding and afterwards put it back into the river. These latter customs may probably ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India—Volume I (of IV) • R.V. Russell
... civilized world rather than to the judgment of the legal officers of the State by whose functionaries they have been already robbed; and that the ruin of toil-worn men, of women, of widows, and of children, and the 'crocodile tears' which that ruin has occasioned, is a subject of jest on the part of those by whom it has been accomplished; and then let it be asked if any foreigner ever penned a libel on the American ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. IV. October, 1863, No. IV. - Devoted to Literature and National Policy. • Various
... made an attempt or two to console her and find out what was the matter; but he could get nothing out of her but monosyllables and sighs. At last the crocodile contrived to cry. And having thus secured his pity, she said: "There, never heed me. I'm a foolish woman; I can't bear to see my ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 103, May, 1866 • Various
... nip like crocodile's grip On one's caudal appendage? Ah, just so! I know 'tis a task that seems too much to ask. I'm reasonable,—or I trust so. But there is the Lobster, it's holding on fast. And—hang it! this state of affairs ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 100, April 4, 1891 • Various
... of an image I had seen of some Oriental god upon his throne. His eyes were scarcely opened, his breathing was almost imperceptible; a gross animal content appeared in him as of a full-fed, lethargic crocodile. Side by side, he and the gaunt, fierce-eyed old man presented no mean allegory of spirit and body. A table was before them, and in the middle of it a toy the like of which I had never seen in this house or elsewhere—a globe of crystal, ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol 31, No 2, June 1908 • Various
... mermaids to get and give information; of boats whose business it is to fire as much and to splash about as aggressively as possible; and of other boats who avoid any sort of display—dumb boats watching and relieving watch, with their periscope just showing like a crocodile's eye, at the back of islands and the mouths of channels where something may some day move out in ...
— Sea Warfare • Rudyard Kipling
... calm for a man who had been struck down in a moment. There was nothing in the breast-pocket, and only a few loose coins and a cigar-holder in the waistcoat. The trousers held a little penknife and some silver, and the side pocket of his jacket contained an old crocodile-skin cigar-case. There was no sign of the little black book in which I had seen him making notes. That had no doubt ...
— The Thirty-nine Steps • John Buchan
... times was the animal worship of the Egyptians. This, too, formed a heritage from the prehistoric past. Many common animals of Egypt—the cat, hawk, the jackal, the bull, the ram, the crocodile—were highly reverenced. Some received worship because deities were supposed to dwell in them. The larger number, however, were not worshiped for themselves, but ...
— EARLY EUROPEAN HISTORY • HUTTON WEBSTER
... obscure paragraphs relating to a crocodile, kept at the Museum, had been perplexing the readers of the Oxford Magazine for some time past, and had been distorted into an allegory of ...
— Green Bays. Verses and Parodies • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... bursting into tears, as any crocodile might do—"my dear, dear young lady, I cannot know that you are thus suffering, and keep away from your presence. Pardon me for intruding upon you ...
— The International Monthly Magazine - Volume V - No II • Various
... disappeared; friends only remained. When he landed at Gibraltar numbers came to greet him, from the Governor himself to the Tio Pedro and the old crone his wife. Letters had already assured them of Mariquita's safety, and they wept crocodile tears of joy as they clasped her once more in ...
— The Thin Red Line; and Blue Blood • Arthur Griffiths
... I ever wrote," said the Minor Poet, "was when I was sixteen. Her name was Monica; she was the left-hand girl in the third joint of the crocodile. I have never known a creature so ethereally beautiful. I wrote the letter and sealed it, but I could not make up my mind whether to slip it into her hand when we passed them, as we usually did on Thursday afternoons, ...
— Tea-table Talk • Jerome K. Jerome
... now! It dated back to his boyhood days. A crawling terror which, having escaped from a menagerie, had taken refuge in a pool, and there fixed its grip upon an unfortunate calf, and dragged—dragged—dragged the shrieking creature, until it went under. A crocodile. ...
— Success - A Novel • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... close of the last century.]] An instructive example this, let me observe by the way, of that which has happened continually in the case of far older legends; I mean that the name has suggested the legend, and not the legend the name. We have an apt illustration of this in the old notion that the crocodile ([Greek: ...
— On the Study of Words • Richard C Trench
... child at play, whatever may be conceived of Divine, or beheld of Human, may be dared or adopted by you: throughout the kingdom of animal life, no creature is so vast, or so minute, that you cannot deal with it, or bring it into service; the lion and the crocodile will couch about your shafts; the moth and the bee will sun themselves upon your flowers; for you, the fawn will leap; for you, the snail be slow; for you, the dove smooth her bosom; and the hawk ...
— The Two Paths • John Ruskin
... dear Mr. Merkell,' cried the hypocritical hussy, falling to her knees by his bedside, and shedding her crocodile tears, 'you owe me nothing. You have done more for me than I could ever repay. You will not die and leave ...
— The Marrow of Tradition • Charles W. Chesnutt
... the birds of Caripe. of the cocoa nut. of the crocodile, medicinal properties of the. of the manatee. of the ...
— Equinoctial Regions of America V3 • Alexander von Humboldt
... Caledonians sewed up their dead in the skins of oxen before burying them. The Egyptians also embalmed the ibis, the ox, the cat, the crocodile, and other animals deified by them, and the bodies of these creatures were then placed in vast subterranean chambers, where they have been discovered in the present day in great numbers. The Guanches of Teneriffe, the last representatives of the Iberians, and probably the most ancient ...
— Manners and Monuments of Prehistoric Peoples • The Marquis de Nadaillac
... sea, attacking every thing in its domain; his head is as hard and as rough as a rock, out of the centre of which grows horizontally an ivory spear, longer and far tougher than any warrior's lance; with this weapon he fights. The shark, with a jaw larger and stronger than a crocodile's, with a mouth deeper and more capacious, strikes also with his tail, in tremendous force and rapidity, enabling him to repel any sudden attack by confusing or stunning his foe, till he can turn on his back, which he is obliged to do ere he can use his mouth. This wily and experienced ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 19. No. 538 - 17 Mar 1832 • Various
... Arrived at the excellent sacred water called Saubhadra after a great Rishi, the brave scorcher of all foes suddenly plunged into it to have a bath. As soon as that tiger among men had plunged into the water a great crocodile (that was in it) seized him by the leg. But the strong-armed Dhananjaya the son of Kunti, that foremost of all men endued with might, seized that struggling ranger of the water and dragged it forcibly to the shore. But dragged by the renowned ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 1 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... measurement, the very biggest ichthyosaurian skeleton ever unearthed does not exceed twenty-five feet from snout to tail. Now, this is an extremely decent size for a reptile, as reptiles go; for the crocodile and alligator, the two biggest existing lizards, seldom attain an extreme length of sixteen feet. But there are other reptiles now living that easily beat the ichthyosaurus, such, for example, as the larger pythons or rock-snakes, which not infrequently reach to thirty feet, and measure round ...
— Falling in Love - With Other Essays on More Exact Branches of Science • Grant Allen
... Laktroi who say that they are the sons of tigers, and paint themselves yellow and black; and with the Aurantes who bury their dead on the tops of trees, and themselves live in dark caverns lest the Sun, who is their god, should slay them; and with the Krimnians who worship a crocodile, and give it earrings of green glass, and feed it with butter and fresh fowls; and with the Agazonbae, who are dog-faced; and with the Sibans, who have horses' feet, and run more swiftly than horses. A third of our company died in battle, and a third died of want. ...
— A House of Pomegranates • Oscar Wilde
... proper shade of blue, draped the wooden frame discreetly at the right moment; there was the old interval of suspense, the old, the piercing squeal, the dexterous cock of the red legs over the balcony; the crocodile came and the hangman, and the devil; I watched them all. So did two of the Harvard crew, and did not know their luck. Nothing of English pride stirred in the blood of those two stalwart young men; they walked off even before the turn ...
— Highways and Byways in Surrey • Eric Parker
... three main difficulties. The first is to understand why primitive Man should name his Tribe after an animal or object of nature at all; the second, to understand on what principle he selected the particular name (a lion, a crocodile, a lady bird, a certain tree); the third, why he should make of the said totem a divinity, and pay honor and worship to it. It may be worth while to pause ...
— Pagan & Christian Creeds - Their Origin and Meaning • Edward Carpenter
... cat: so the Percnopter becomes Pharaoh's hen and the unfortunate (?) King has named a host of things, alive and dead. It was worshipped and mummified in parts of Ancient Egypt e.g. Heracleopolis, on account of its antipathy to serpents and because it was supposed to destroy the crocodile, a feat with AElian and others have overloaded with fable. It has also a distinct antipathy to cats. The ichneumon as a pet becomes too tame and will not leave its master: when enraged it emits an ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 3 • Richard F. Burton
... "A crocodile's a reptile," said Beth, "and a reptile is trouble and an enemy. You always dream nasty things; I expect ...
— The Beth Book - Being a Study of the Life of Elizabeth Caldwell Maclure, a Woman of Genius • Sarah Grand
... cloak and suit bankruptcy would be complete without his name as attorney, either for the petitioning creditors or the bankrupt, and no action for breach of contract of employment on the part of a designer or a salesman could successfully go to the jury unless Henry D. Feldman wept crocodile tears over the summing up of the ...
— Potash & Perlmutter - Their Copartnership Ventures and Adventures • Montague Glass
... diplomatic tears over the transaction. They cannot be called crocodile tears, insomuch that they were in a measure sincere. They arose from a vivid perception that Austria's allotted share of the spoil could never compensate her for the accession of strength and territory to the other two Powers. Austria did not really want an extension of territory at the cost of ...
— Notes on Life and Letters • Joseph Conrad
... have been properly married before they die. In this fashion the weddings of grandparents, parents and children have all been celebrated simultaneously. The Singaria Dhimars of Chhindwara grow singara or water-nut in tanks, and at their weddings a crocodile must be killed and eaten. The Sonjharas or gold-washers must also have a crocodile, but they keep it alive and worship it, and when the ceremony is concluded let it go back again to the river. It is natural that castes whose avocations ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India - Volume II • R. V. Russell
... rather suspicious of this attitude; it seems to me something of a pose, adopted in order to make other people envious and respectful. It is the same sort of precaution as the "properties" of the wizard, his gown and wand, the stuffed crocodile and the skeleton in the corner; for if there is a great fuss made about locking and double-locking a box, it creates a presumption of doubt as to whether there is anything particular in it. In my nursery days one of my brothers ...
— Escape and Other Essays • Arthur Christopher Benson
... the Jackal, pulling a long face; "surely you have not forgotten that it is Sunday? We are told in the Ten Commandments to do no work on the Sabbath day. If it were not so, how gladly would I help you!" So saying, he wiped away a crocodile tear. He sat down and waited in the hope that the Stag would die, and ...
— The Talking Thrush - and Other Tales from India • William Crooke
... go anywhere: into the jaws of a crocodile, or even into the jaws of hell, so long as I don't have to stay here. I am horribly bored. I am stupefied by this dullness. Every one here is tired of me. You leave me at home to entertain Anna, but I feel more ...
— Ivanoff - A Play • Anton Checkov
... working his way up, took his final grip of poor Yarrow's throat—and he lay gasping and done for. His master, a brown, handsome, big young shepherd from Tweedsmuir, would have liked to have knocked down any man, would "drink up Esil, or eat a crocodile," for that part, if he had a chance: it was no use kicking the little dog; that would only make him hold the closer. Many were the means shouted out in mouthfuls, of the best possible ways of ending it. "Water!" but there was none near, and many cried for it who might have got it from the ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. VI (of X)—Great Britain and Ireland IV • Various
... pretence of looking for the mislaid handkerchief, went upstairs after her; and tried in a few stolen minutes to comfort her, in spite of great discouragement from Susan Nipper. For Miss Nipper, in her burning zeal, disparaged Miss Tox as a crocodile; yet her sympathy seemed genuine, and had at least the vantage-ground of disinterestedness—there was little favour ...
— Dombey and Son • Charles Dickens
... the down in the air, When wanton blasts have tossed it? Or the ship on the sea, When ruder winds have crossed it? Hast thou marked the crocodile's weeping, Or the fox's sleeping? Or hast thou viewed the peacock in his pride, Or the dove by his bride, When he courts her for his lechery? Oh! so fickle, oh! so vain, oh! so false, so false ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 2 No 4, October, 1862 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... the most formidable animals with which these islands abound, is the crocodile, or alligator. Kar Nicobar is overrun with them, as are all the other Nicobar islands, which have fresh-water lakes and streams. They are of two kinds, the black kayman, and the proper crocodile. The latter is said never to attack live creatures, ...
— Letters on the Nicobar islands, their natural productions, and the manners, customs, and superstitions of the natives • John Gottfried Haensel
... never to have any babies of their own, and were languishing for some amusement, perfectly doated on this prospect of a wee pet. The superior thanked the hidalgo for his very splendid present. The nuns thanked him each and all; until the old crocodile actually began to cry and whimper sentimentally at what he now perceived to be excess of munificence in himself. Munificence, indeed, he remarked, was his ...
— Narrative And Miscellaneous Papers • Thomas De Quincey
... Indian conjurors have attempted to give in India performances on European lines. They have purchased the necessary paraphernalia from London and have as much idea of using it to its best advantage as a crocodile has of arranging the flowers on a dinner table. Our Indian Jadoo-wallah usually gets himself into a very tight fitting third or fourth hand evening dress on these occasions, to show, I presume, how European he is. The audience is more ...
— Indian Conjuring • L. H. Branson
... eyes wide. He had seen something, all right. Maybe just a crocodile, though. Still some crocs around. And he doubted if a young native would ...
— This Crowded Earth • Robert Bloch
... but a large American goatee, revealing the attachments of the jaw whose masseter muscles were evidently of formidable strength. It has been calculated—what has not been calculated?—that the pressure of the jaw of an ordinary crocodile can reach four hundred atmospheres, while that of a hound can only amount to one hundred. From this the following curious formula has been deduced: If a kilogram of dog produces eight kilograms of masseteric force, a kilogram of crocodile could produce twelve. ...
— Rubur the Conqueror • Jules Verne
... Their flesh, too, partakes of the oily nature, and even in taste sometimes resembles that of fish. This is the case not only with the various kinds of water fowls, but with all other amphibious animals, as the otter, the crocodile, the ...
— Conversations on Chemistry, V. 1-2 • Jane Marcet
... and the lion, and none of the princes of this earth are worthy of my hand, neither hath any man seen me unveiled. But my heart is torn with anguish, and my spirit is tossed with desire, for I have heard of thy deeds of prowess, and how thou fearest neither Deev nor lion, neither leopard nor crocodile, and how thy hand is swift to strike, and how thou didst venture alone into Mazinderan, and how wild asses are devoured of thee, and how the earth groaneth under the tread of thy feet, and how men perish at thy blows, and how even the eagle dareth not swoop down ...
— Legends That Every Child Should Know • Hamilton Wright Mabie
... and Henry lit a cigar. "However, as you know, a year after weeping crocodile tears for poor Maurice, she married young Layard of Balmayn. So all's well that ends well. She and Rose have never spoken since the scene when Violet read in the Scotsman that ...
— The Man and the Moment • Elinor Glyn
... I can learn," went on Mr. Preston, "my old rival Waydell has given up the giant idea. He is looking for a two-headed crocodile, said to be somewhere along the Nile river, and he's fitting out an expedition there I understand. I guess we won't be bothered with him. But the giant for mine! If I get that sort of an attraction his two-headed crocodile ...
— Tom Swift in Captivity • Victor Appleton
... to me since that if the scale of things had been enlarged—if Stoffles, for example, had been a Bengal tiger, and the Dryad a boa-constrictor or crocodile,—the tragedy which followed would have been worthy of the pen of any sporting and dramatic historian. I can only say that, being transacted in such objectionable proximity to myself, the thing was as impressive as ...
— Lords of the Housetops - Thirteen Cat Tales • Various
... stood, And said: "Be good Enough to look this way; Court Etiquette Do not forget, And mark well what I say: My royal wish Is ev'ry dish Be tasted first by me." "Here's where I smile," Said the Crocodile, And ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume I. (of X.) • Various
... was one built to contain the tooth of Buddha. Not that the original tooth really exists, because that was burned by the Portuguese. The present relic worshipped by all the Buddhists is more like the tooth of a crocodile than that of a man. It is preserved in an inner chamber, without windows, on a table, and is concealed by a ...
— My First Voyage to Southern Seas • W.H.G. Kingston
... story, as we all know, with flowing ease and stirring vitality. His views may have been more or less partial; Philip the Second may have deserved the pitying benevolence of poor Maximilian; Maurice may have wept as sincerely over the errors of Arminius as any one of "the crocodile crew that believe in election;" Barneveld and Grotius may have been on the road to Rome; none of these things seem probable, but if they were all proved true in opposition to his views, we should still have the long roll of glowing tapestry ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... at times unendurable. Near the town was a great shallow artificial pond which abounded in huge sleepy crocodiles, sacred animals which were tended by a holy fakir, and one of Burton's amusements was to worry these creatures with his bull terrier. Tired of that pastime, he would muzzle a crocodile by means of a fowl fastened to a hook at the end of a rope, and then jump on to its back and take a zig-zag ride. [65] The feat of his friend, Lieutenant Beresford, of the 86th, however, was more daring even than that. Here ...
— The Life of Sir Richard Burton • Thomas Wright
... was first bishop of Aquileia or not, St. Theodore was the first patron of the city; nor can he yet be considered as having entirely abdicated his early right, as his statue, standing on a crocodile, still companions the winged lion on the opposing pillar of the piazzetta. A church erected to this Saint is said to have occupied, before the ninth century, the site of St. Mark's; and the traveller, dazzled by the brilliancy of the great square, ought not to leave it without endeavouring ...
— Selections From the Works of John Ruskin • John Ruskin
... After that he strolled over to the carriage- house where were stored a number of cases containing stuffed creatures—birds and chipmunks and small furry things. Some larger animals were slung up under the beams of the loft to get them out of the way; there was a bear in one corner, and a great crocodile, and a shark; possessions of the previous owner of the Stuffed Animal House, stored here by her executor, pending the final settlement ...
— The Awakening of Helena Richie • Margaret Deland
... on August 5 and Baden-Powell's to Rustenburg on the 6th, Lord Roberts had given up all hope of saving this garrison. But on the 13th a runner from Colonel Hore had arrived at Crocodile Pools, announcing that he had not surrendered. On hearing this the Field Marshal ordered Kitchener to take part of his force to relieve him. Kitchener started on the 16th. from Quaggafontein with ...
— A Source Book Of Australian History • Compiled by Gwendolen H. Swinburne
... CROCODILE'S TEARS. The tears of a hypocrite. Crocodiles are fabulously reported to shed tears over their prey ...
— 1811 Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue • Captain Grose et al.
... the crocodile!" exclaimed Lady Holberton, quite thrown off her guard one day, by the sight of Miss Rowley's card which she threw into ...
— The Lumley Autograph • Susan Fenimore Cooper
... was wonderful, so, too, was the piazzetta with the Ducal Palace with the golden staircase and the two columns, the one surmounted by the winged lion of St. Mark, the other by St. Theodore, standing on a crocodile. ...
— Chico: the Story of a Homing Pigeon • Lucy M. Blanchard
... elements and nature as they then appeared. Pompeii is not a gallery of pictures; it is rather an illustrated journal of the first century. One there sees odd landscapes; a little island on the edge of the water; a bank of the Nile where an ass, stooping to drink, bends toward the open jaws of a crocodile which he does not see, while his master frantically but vainly endeavors to pull him back by the tail. These pieces nearly always consist of rocks on the edge of the water, sometimes interspersed with trees, sometimes covered ...
— The Wonders of Pompeii • Marc Monnier
... nothing particular to prove it. It is moreover declared in his pyramidical silence. And this reminds me that had the great Sperm Whale been known to the young Orient World, he would have been deified by their child-magian thoughts. They deified the crocodile of the Nile, because the crocodile is tongueless; and the Sperm Whale has no tongue, or at least it is so exceedingly small, as to be incapable of protrusion. If hereafter any highly cultured, poetical nation shall lure back to their birth-right, the ...
— Moby Dick; or The Whale • Herman Melville
... aches like fury. All the girls were so fearfully nice. I'd no idea they liked me so much. Irene May began crying at breakfast-time, and one or another of them has been at it the whole day long. Maddie made me walk with her in the crocodile, and said, "Croyez bien, ma cherie, que votre Maddie ne vous oubliera jamais." It's all very well, but she's been a perfect pig to me many times over about the irregular verbs! She gave me her photograph in a gilt frame—not ...
— The Heart of Una Sackville • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... home sweet home. Wiped his nose in curtain too. Custom his country perhaps. That's music too. Not as bad as it sounds. Tootling. Brasses braying asses through uptrunks. Doublebasses helpless, gashes in their sides. Woodwinds mooing cows. Semigrand open crocodile music hath ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce
... afraid I have lost what novelists call my glamour," said Howard. "You have found me out, the poor, shivering, timid thing that sits like a wizard in the middle of his properties, only hoping that the stuffed crocodile and the skeleton ...
— Watersprings • Arthur Christopher Benson
... aspect than at others; and never were they more formidable than in the times of the Coal Measures. The teeth of the Rhizodus—a ganoidal fish of our coal fields—were more sharp and trenchant than those of the crocodile of the Nile, and in the larger specimens fully four times the bulk and size of the teeth of the hugest reptile of this species that now lives. The dorsal spine of its contemporary, the Gyracanthus, a great placoid, much exceeded in size that of any existing fish: it was a mighty ...
— The Testimony of the Rocks - or, Geology in Its Bearings on the Two Theologies, Natural and Revealed • Hugh Miller
... kinds of well-preserved relics is met with in a carelessly constructed hut in the fourth and last enclosure. Symmetrically placed there is a stone crocodile to the right and left in front of a stone block artificially rounded and set on end. These vary but little in shape between a drop and an egg or onion, always inclining toward the first, so that I would ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 6, 1921 • Various
... puzzled to find out a meaning for Leviathan,—'tis a whale, say some; a crocodile, say others. In my simple conjecture, Leviathan is neither more nor less than the Lord Mayor of London for the ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Vol. 5 • Edited by E. V. Lucas
... Guepe does not prosper; I will even admit that it only stands on one leg. In order to make it appear for a few months longer, I have recently been obliged to go to a money-lender, who has left me, instead of the classical stuffed crocodile, a trained horse which he had just taken from an insolvent circus. I mounted the noble animal to go to the Bois, but at the Place de la Concorde he began to waltz around it, and I was obliged to get rid ...
— A Romance of Youth, Complete • Francois Coppee
... of the Red Sea is not unlike that of a crocodile, having its mouth at the narrow Straits of Mecca or Babelmandeb, the head being that sea which lies between Cape Guardafu and Fartaque, and the extremity of the tail at the town of Suez. Its general direction is from N.N.W. to S.S.E. being 530 leagues long, ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume VI - Early English Voyages Of Discovery To America • Robert Kerr
... from lapping up Eisel to killing a crocodile, that Paul would not have done, in the fulness of his wondering gratitude, for his dearest lady, he meekly attached the heart to his chain and put it ...
— The Fortunate Youth • William J. Locke
... undergrowth. In one the ugly snout of a small crocodile protruded from the muddy, noisome water, and the cold, unwinking eyes stared at elephant and man as they passed. The rank abundant foliage overhung the track and brushed or broke against Badshah's sides, as he ...
— The Elephant God • Gordon Casserly
... and Nikumbha, each of whom has in the text a long Canto to himself. When they fall Ravan sends forth Makaraksha or Crocodile-Eye, the son of Khara who was slain by Rama in the forest before the abduction of Sita. The account of his sallying forth, of his battle with Rama and of his death by the fiery dart of that hero occupies two Cantos which I entirely pass over. Indrajit again comes forth and, ...
— The Ramayana • VALMIKI
... think of Grace Noir spending one more night under the roof of that burrowing mole, that crocodile with tears in his eyes and the rest of him nothing ...
— Fran • John Breckenridge Ellis
... single glance at the yellow, filthy hue of the water would be sufficient to debar its use; but the very name of the Ganges sanctifies everything with these mentally blind creatures. Sometimes, though this is not a frequent occurrence, a crocodile takes away a bather; but such persons are rather envied than regretted, since to die in those waters is in their estimation simply to be at once wafted to the elysian fields ...
— Due West - or Round the World in Ten Months • Maturin Murray Ballou
... and loves the darkest corner of the room. From the half-light he will suddenly thrust out before you a grinning gargoyle head, to which he will give in an instant more a pair of spider legs, and then, with one roll, stretch it out into a crocodile, whose jaws seem so near snapping that you involuntarily draw your chair further back. Next, in a freak of ventriloquism, he startles you still more by bringing from the crocodile's mouth a sigh, so long drawn, so human, that you really shudder, and are ready to implore him to ...
— Bits About Home Matters • Helen Hunt Jackson
... in some parts of England, as in the nail-making districts, nicknames are general, and surnames little recognized; but I refer to a common usage among both children and adults. The rude man is apt to be known as "a bear;" a sly fellow, as "an old fox;" a hypocrite, as "the crocodile." Names of plants, too, are used; as when the red-haired boy is called "carrots" by his school-fellows. Nor do we lack nicknames derived from inorganic objects and agents: instance that given by Mr. Carlyle to the elder Sterling—"Captain Whirlwind." Now, in the earliest ...
— Essays: Scientific, Political, & Speculative, Vol. I • Herbert Spencer
... than that for ever. He should hear her shrieking in vain for a drop of water to cool her tongue.... He had never heard a human being shriek but once.... a boy bathing on the opposite Nile bank, whom a crocodile had dragged down.... and that scream, faint and distant as it came across the mighty tide, had rung intolerable in his ears for days.... and to think of all which echoed through those vaults of fire-for ever! Was the thought bearable!—was ...
— Hypatia - or, New Foes with an Old Face • Charles Kingsley
... animals both of the useful and hurtful kind. The alligator, probably a species of the crocodile, is found here nigh the rivers and ponds, and is very destructive to young creatures about a plantation. He is perhaps the largest animal, except the crocodile in Africa, of the ovarious kind. The bear is a fierce animal, but in many respects a rich prize to the Indian hunter. ...
— An Historical Account Of The Rise And Progress Of The Colonies Of South Carolina And Georgia, Volume 1 • Alexander Hewatt
... apes are as much figments of the imagination of the ingenious brothers as the winged, two-legged, crocodile-headed dragon which adorns the same plate; or, on the other hand, it may be that the artists have constructed their drawings from some essentially faithful description of a Gorilla or a Chimpanzee. And, in either case, though these figures ...
— Evidence as to Man's Place in Nature • Thomas H. Huxley
... all the crocodiles, and said: "His Highness Prince Fire-fade is going to the upper world; which of you will take him there quickly, and bring me back word?" And one crocodile a fathom long, answered: "I will take him to the upper world, and ...
— Tales of Wonder Every Child Should Know • Various
... scare the first time they came upon an iguana, thinking that it was a crocodile. These great lizards are about five feet long, and are ferocious-looking, but very harmless unless attacked. Then they will defend themselves, and can inflict a sharp blow with their tails, or a severe bite with their teeth. ...
— Out on the Pampas - The Young Settlers • G. A. Henty
... said the maiden, glancing round her with tremulous distaste at the stuffed crocodile, the black cat and the cauldron simmering on the hearth, "to see ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, March 10th, 1920 • Various
... either of Gab or Grab, it isn't so clear that their constituents are much benefited by these accomplishments. If all they want is an open-mouthed Member, why don't the Massachusetts men import a first-class crocodile, and send him to the National ...
— Punchinello, Vol. II., No. 34, November 19, 1870 • Various
... or Horta, the boar, or of Gorgo, the buffalo, Buto, Tantor, or Duro. Histah, the snake, was there. He saw him in the trees in greater numbers than he ever had seen Histah before; and once beside a reedy pool he caught a scent that could have belonged to none other than Gimla the crocodile, but upon none of these did the ...
— Tarzan the Untamed • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... and Knaves; 'tis not the name contains him, But the obedience; when that's once forgotten, And Duty flung away, then welcome Devil. Photinus and Achillas, and this Vermine That's now become a natural Crocodile Must ...
— The False One • Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher
... still to call her who bruised thy heart when it was green and thy head brown—and whether it be better or worse, more painful or less, to believe in the Fancy to this hour, than to know her for a greedy armour-plated crocodile, with no more capacity of imagining the delicate and sensitive and tender spot behind thy waistcoat, than of going straight at it with a knitting-needle. Say likewise, my Twemlow, whether it be the happier lot to be a poor relation of the great, or to stand in the wintry slush giving ...
— Our Mutual Friend • Charles Dickens
... take time, as the actors say; it is worth while. As fluently as you may read hieroglyphics, and explain on the spot the riddles of the sphinx, you can never guess what I found at Richeport, in my mother's room! A white black-bird? a black swan? a crocodile? a megalonyx? Priest John or the amorabaquin? No, something more enchantingly improbable, more wildly impossible. What was it? I will tell you, for a hundred million guesses would never ...
— The Cross of Berny • Emile de Girardin
... take notice, that he is not like the crocodile, which if he lives never so long, yet always thrives till his death. And you are to know, that he will about, especially before, the time of his spawning, get almost miraculously through weirs and flood-gates against the streams; even through such high and swift ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to prose. Volume III (of X) - Great Britain and Ireland I • Francis W. Halsey
... believed he had seen them portrayed somewhere, although he could not for the moment remember where. Fully forty feet long from the snout to the tip of the tail, with a head shaped midway between that of a pike and a crocodile, with enormous protruding eyes, with a smooth somewhat fish-shaped body almost black above and shading off to a dirty whitish-grey beneath, with a long tail broad and flat at its extremity, and with four seal-like flippers instead of legs and ...
— Harry Escombe - A Tale of Adventure in Peru • Harry Collingwood
... her lot to go to Prague? Would not she have drunk up Esil, or swallowed a crocodile against any she-Laertes that would have thought to rival and to parallel her great love? Would not she have piled up new Ossas, had the opportunity been given her? Womanlike she had gone to him in her trouble,—had burst through his prison doors, had thrown ...
— Phineas Redux • Anthony Trollope
... have enervated them by opinions, and bad customs. Who is there who is unacquainted with the customs of the Egyptians? Their minds being tainted by pernicious opinions, they are ready to bear any torture, rather than hurt an ibis, a snake, a cat, a dog, or a crocodile: and should any one inadvertently have hurt any of these animals, he will submit to any punishment. I am speaking of men only. As to the beasts, do they not bear cold and hunger, running about in woods, and on mountains and deserts? will they not fight for their young ones till they are ...
— The Academic Questions • M. T. Cicero
... many false sentimentalists of that day, who not unlike their modern brethren, wept many crocodile tears over the fate of the "poor Indian." They charged that the Governor, in the ensuing negotiations, resorted to trickery, and that he availed himself of the threats and violence of Winamac, the Potawatomi chief, in order to bring the hesitating tribes to the terms of the purchase. In ...
— The Land of the Miamis • Elmore Barce
... the others hunted, and bound the victim whom the Independents massacred. Betwixt such sects I prefer the Independents. They are at least bold, bare-faced, merciless villains, have more of the tiger in them, and less of the crocodile. I have no doubt it was that worthy gentleman who took ...
— Peveril of the Peak • Sir Walter Scott
... these vast serene faces of the Pharaohs on the great rock-temple of Abou Simbel (Ipsambul) (No. 1, F. 307). It Is the sublimest of stereographs, as the temple of Kardasay, this loveliest of views on glass, is the most poetical. But here is the crocodile lying in wait for us on the sandy bank of the Nile, and we must leave ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, Issue 45, July, 1861 • Various
... the banks of the Nile an old crocodile Lay sunning himself one day, And he gently did croon an attempt at a tune, As he watched some small children at play— At play— As he watched some ...
— Harper's Young People, August 24, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... can limit ourselves here to a few sample cases taken at random.[25] Jacques and Storm relate (Floss, II., 423) how one day in a Central African village, the rumor spread that a goat had been carried off by a crocodile. Everybody ran to and fro in great excitement until it was ascertained that the victim was only a woman, whereupon quiet was restored. If an Indian refuses to quarrel with a squaw or beat her, this is due, as Charlevoix explains (VI., 44), to the fact that he would consider that ...
— Primitive Love and Love-Stories • Henry Theophilus Finck
... another superstitious opinion that is still more unaccountable. They believe that women, when they are delivered of children, are frequently at the same time delivered of a young crocodile, as a twin to the infant: They believe that these creatures are received most carefully by the midwife, and immediately carried down to the river, and put into the water. The family in which such a birth is supposed to have happened constantly put victuals into the river ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 13 • Robert Kerr
... Dan tan cila, nave ain vie, vie cocodri qui te gagnin Dans temps cela en avait un vieux, vieux crocodile qui avait gagne ...
— Nights With Uncle Remus - Myths and Legends of the Old Plantation • Joel Chandler Harris
... "Crocodile tears," some had exclaimed. "She is going to meet her son; and with what he has stolen they will live like princes in America." Rumor, which enlarges and misrepresents everything, had, indeed, absurdly exaggerated ...
— The Count's Millions - Volume 1 (of 2) • Emile Gaboriau
... du rebord de l'arcade gante, Un cavalier bless perdant son point d'appui, Un cheval effar tombait dans l'eau bante, Gueule de crocodile entr'ouverte sous lui. ...
— French Lyrics • Arthur Graves Canfield
... the visitor, pausing in his task, "you are occasionally inspired, but the weakness of your character results in a lack of caution. In this matter, therefore, be warned: 'The crocodile opens his jaws; the rat-trap closes ...
— Kai Lung's Golden Hours • Ernest Bramah
... and impure blood mingle. In the reptiles a partition begins to form in the lower chamber. In the turtle it is so nearly complete that the venous and the arterial blood are fairly separated; in the crocodile it is quite complete, though the arteries are imperfectly arranged. Thus the four-chambered heart of the bird and mammal is not a sudden and inexplicable development. Its advantage is enormous in a cold climate. ...
— The Story of Evolution • Joseph McCabe
... yelling hawks under charge of a Rajput falconer in the small of his back. 'He has gone now to send word of the letter which I hid. They told me he was in Peshawur. I might have known that he is like the crocodile—always at the other ford. He has saved me from present calamity, but I owe my ...
— Kim • Rudyard Kipling
... from the Latin Physiologus, itself a translation from the work of an Alexandrian Greek of the second century. In its symbolic zoology the lion and the pelican are emblems of Christ; the unicorn is God; the crocodile is the devil; the stones "turrobolen," which blaze when they approach each other, are representative of man and woman. A Bestiaire d'Amour was written by Richard de Fournival, in which the emblems serve for the interpretation ...
— A History of French Literature - Short Histories of the Literatures of the World: II. • Edward Dowden
... the startled boy. He had disturbed one of the sleeping monsters! Piang's heart beat very fast, and a shudder passed through him as he felt something bump the bottom of the boat. The crocodile was just beneath him and if it rose suddenly, it would upset him. One, two, three seconds he waited, but they were the longest seconds Piang had ever known. There was a slight movement astern; the boat tipped forward, swerved, and before Piang could right himself, a vicious ...
— The Adventures of Piang the Moro Jungle Boy - A Book for Young and Old • Florence Partello Stuart |
