"Serpent" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... President, allow me to speak. Ah! ha! you wish to prevent me from speaking because you know that I tell a story better than you, and that I make an impression upon my audience. You never have been able to catch my chic. Jealous! Envious! I know you, serpent!" ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... of the special fetishes whence he was evolved, the Indra of Vedic India is shepherd of the herd of heavenly kine. Vritra, a three-headed monster in the form of a serpent, steals away the herd and hides it in his cave. Indra pursues the robber, enters the cave with fury, overwhelms the monster with his thunderbolt, and leads back the kine to heaven, their milk sprinkling the earth. This myth gradually assumed in ...
— Myth and Science - An Essay • Tito Vignoli
... them into the north amongst mountains of ice, while we behold them penetrating the deepest recesses of Hudson's Bay, while we are looking for them beneath the Arctic circle, thay have pervaded the antipodes, and engaged under the frozen serpent of the south: nor is the equinoctial heat more discouraging to them, than the accumulated winter of the poles; while some of them strike the harpoon on the coast of Africa, others pursue their gigantic toils on the shores of the Brazils. There is no climate that is not a witness of their ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... into the deepest frozen recess of Hudson's Bay and Davis' Straits, whilst we are looking for them beneath the arctic circle, we hear that they have pierced into the opposite region of polar cold, that they are at the antipodes, and engaged under the frozen Serpent of the South. Falkland Islands, which seemed too remote and romantic an object for the grasp of national ambition, is but a stage and resting-place in the progress of their victorious industry. Nor is the equinoctial ...
— Public Speaking • Clarence Stratton
... There is an Arabian tradition that the devil begged all the animals, one after another, to carry him into the garden, that he might speak to Adam and Eve, but they all refused except the serpent, who took him between two of its teeth. It was then the most beautiful of all the animals, and walked upon legs and ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook, Vol. 3 • E. Cobham Brewer
... One word, in truth, had alarmed her more than battles or sieges, during which she trusted Raymond's high command would exempt him from danger. That word, as yet it was not more to her, was PLAGUE. This enemy to the human race had begun early in June to raise its serpent-head on the shores of the Nile; parts of Asia, not usually subject to this evil, were infected. It was in Constantinople; but as each year that city experienced a like visitation, small attention was paid to those accounts which declared more people to have died there ...
— The Last Man • Mary Shelley
... five hundred were for Father Rapp, and two hundred and fifty for Count Leon. Father Rapp, when I told him the numbers, with his usual ready wit, quoted from the book of Revelation, 'And the tail of the serpent drew the third part of the stars of heaven, and did ...
— The Communistic Societies of the United States • Charles Nordhoff
... necessary not only to observe the child's conduct under the restraint of school observation and discipline; but at those times when it thinks itself at liberty to indulge its feelings unnoticed. The evil propensities of our nature have all the wiliness of the serpent, and lurk in their secret places, watching for a favourable opportunity of exercise and display. For the purpose of observation, the play-ground will afford every facility, and is on this account, as well as because it affords exercise and amusement to the children, an indispensable appendage ...
— The Infant System - For Developing the Intellectual and Moral Powers of all Children, - from One to Seven years of Age • Samuel Wilderspin
... earthquakes, and, to put a stop to these, the crocodiles must be persuaded by religious incantations to go back to bed. A solar eclipse threatens a great calamity to them, and they are sure that if they do not frighten away the serpent who is trying to devour the sun, their land will never see the morning light again. To this end they unite in beating drums and making a ...
— The Great White Tribe in Filipinia • Paul T. Gilbert
... the table on which the medicines stood, looked at the watch, took up one of the phials and a cup, measured the draught, drop by drop, then he turned and looked round him stealthily, and then he drew from his breast a pale blue, coiling serpent, which he threw into the cup, and held it to the patient's lips, who drank, and instantly felt a numbness creep over his frame which ended in death. Edward fancied that he was dead; he saw the coffin brought, but the terror lest he should be buried alive, made him start up with a sudden effort, and ...
— The International Weekly Miscellany, Volume I. No. 9. - Of Literature, Art, and Science, August 26, 1850 • Various
... far as heaven through music Its most magic cures effecteth, Since no witchcraft is so potent But sweet music may dispel it. It doth tame the raging wild beast, Lulls to sleep the poisonous serpent, And makes evil genii, who Are revolted spirits—rebels— Fly in fear, and in this art I have always been most perfect: Wrongly would I act to-day, In not striving for the splendid Prize which will be mine, when I See myself the loved and wedded Wife of the great ...
— The Two Lovers of Heaven: Chrysanthus and Daria - A Drama of Early Christian Rome • Pedro Calderon de la Barca
... Sea-Serpent" (page 109), the original text read, "So shall the rising generation learn the merits of the strong right arm that has ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, July 29, 1914 • Various
... we sometimes see in the face of the young that is sadder than the ravages of any disease or the disfigurement of any deformity. Shall I tell you what it is? It is the mark that an impure thought or an unclean jest leaves behind it. No serpent ever went gliding through the grass and left the trail of defilement more palpably in its wake than vulgarity marks the face. You may be ever so secret in your enjoyment of a shady story, you may hide ever so cunningly ...
— A String of Amber Beads • Martha Everts Holden
... shakes on account of his writhings. The continual conflict between good and evil is wonderfully described in these old Norse legends. On the reverse side we see the triumph of Christianity, a representation of the Crucifixion, and beneath this the woman bruising the serpent's head. In the former sculptures the monster is shown with two heads; here it has only one, and that is being destroyed. Christ is conquering the powers of evil on the cross. In another fragment at Gosforth we see Thor fishing for the Midgard worm, the offspring of Loki, a serpent cast into the sea ...
— Vanishing England • P. H. Ditchfield
... not to be a child: she must be at least thirty years old, with the form of a Medea, with the beauty that comes of pain; an eye deep, tragic, lit up by a feverish fire, with great serpent tresses waving at their will: I refer to the torrent of her black untamable hair. On her head, perhaps, you may see the crown of vervein, the ivy of the tomb, the violets ...
— La Sorciere: The Witch of the Middle Ages • Jules Michelet
... us, and were baptised by the Spirit—After this I rejoiced greatly, and gave thanks to God. And on the 12th of May, 1828, I heard a loud noise in the heavens, and the Spirit instantly appeared to me and said the Serpent was loosened, and Christ had laid down the yoke he had borne for the sins of men, and that I should take it on and fight against the Serpent, for the time was fast approaching when the first should be last and the last should be first. Ques. Do you ...
— The Confessions Of Nat Turner • Nat Turner
... how I fought it out with him. Ah, Athos, such encounters never take place in these times! I had a hand which could never remain at rest, a hand like quicksilver,—you knew its quality, for you have seen me at work. My sword was no longer than a piece of steel; it was a serpent that assumed every form and every length, seeking where it might thrust its head; in other words, where it might fix its bite. I advanced half a dozen paces, then three, and then, body to body, I pressed my antagonist closely, then I darted back again ten paces. ...
— Ten Years Later • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... before the party broke up, excused herself on the grounds of a severe headache and retired to her room. She sat there for some time looking out upon the ocean and the moon-glade, glistening and twisting over the waves like a great serpent. Of a sudden she threw over her shoulders a thick cloak, and, by a dark back passage of the old house, stole out into the moonlight. She felt a desire to walk along the cliff and to soothe her nerves with the deep booming of the ...
— The King's Men - A Tale of To-morrow • Robert Grant, John Boyle O'Reilly, J. S. Dale, and John T.
... stumbling prayerfully along for about a hundred and fifty yards, came to a loose pile of stones. Here opened another low narrow fissure on the left, and, in some doubt, he was about to enter; but the noise he made by stepping on a stone was answered by the hissing warning of a serpent, and the scared padre fell back at his full length in a pool of stagnant ...
— Captain Brand of the "Centipede" • H. A. (Henry Augustus) Wise
... regions of our experience, if it had not had this book of shrewd, practical common-sense. Christianity is the perfection of common sense. 'Godliness hath promise of the life which now is.' The wisdom of the serpent, which Jesus enjoins, has none of the serpent's venom in it. It is no sign of spirituality of mind to be above such mundane considerations as this book urges. If we hold our heads too high to look to our road and our feet, we are sure to ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... whole story as allegorical, and believe it to be nothing more than a symbolical representation of the subversion of idolatry, or of the confining of the Seine to its channel; the winding course of the river being typified by a serpent, and the word Gargouille corrupted from gurges. Other writers differ in minor points of the story, and alledge that the saint had two fellow adventurers, a thief as well as a murderer, and that the former ran away, while the latter stood firm. You will ...
— Account of a Tour in Normandy, Vol. I. (of 2) • Dawson Turner
... silently, bringing to his aid all the years of skill that he had acquired in his life in the wilds. His body was like that of a serpent, going forward, coil by coil. He was near enough now to see the embers of the fire not yet quite dead, the dark figures scattered about it, sleeping upon the grass with the long ease of custom, and then the outline of the woman apart from the others with the children about her. ...
— The Scouts of the Valley • Joseph A. Altsheler
... brought hope which lay concealed after all the others had flown abroad on their missions of mischief. In our Sacred Story this point in the parable has a clear explanation: "The seed of the woman shall bruise the serpent's head." If she brought death into the world, she brought forth a Son who "taketh away the sins of the world.".... These myths, whether received as simple facts, or poetic fiction, whose oracles always reveal the deepest signification of facts, alike indicate the eminent agency of woman in the fall ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume I • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... wife and children would starve. However, the Senate engaged to provide for his family, and he remained, making expeditions into the country round, in the course of which the Romans really did fall in with a serpent, as monstrous as their imagination had depicted. It was said to be 120 feet long, and dwelt upon the banks of the river Bagrada, where it used to devour the Roman soldiers as they went to fetch water. It had such tough scales that they were obliged to attack it with ...
— The Junior Classics • Various
... "it's empty." Decherd cast at him one swift, veiled look, under which Eddring saw all the covert venom of a dangerous serpent that is aroused. "It's not my bag, anyhow," said Decherd, regaining his composure. "I thought it was, but mine had my name on ...
— The Law of the Land • Emerson Hough
... sage, priest and scribe where Nilus' serpent made the vale; "A gloomy Brahm in glowing Ind, a neutral ...
— The Kasidah of Haji Abdu El-Yezdi • Richard F. Burton
... will lead the freedman over the Red Sea of our troubles. It will be the brazen serpent, upon which he can look and live. It will be his pillar of cloud by day, and his pillar of fire by night. It will lead him to Pisgah's shining height, and across Jordan's stormy waves, to Canaan's fair and happy land. ...
— History of the Thirty-Ninth Congress of the United States • Wiliam H. Barnes
... revolutionary moment I found myself prepared for all extremes except the one: ready to do anything, or to go anywhere, so long as I might save my money. At the worst, there was flight, flight to some of those blest countries where the serpent extradition has not yet ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 13 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... startled. They no longer recognised the blonde creature, with violet eyes and graceful figure. Now her eyes were black, her face dark, and her neck seemed swollen by a rush of blood to it. Since she had become warm, she raised her head and hissed like a serpent that had been picked up on ...
— The Dream • Emile Zola
... the vulpine cunning of the marauders. Among the leaders of the Northmen were the terrible brothers Ingrar and Ubba, fired, if the Norse legend may be trusted, by revenge as well as by the love of plunder and horror; for they were the sons of that Ragnar Lodbrok who had perished in the serpent tower of the Saxon Ella. When Alfred appeared upon the scene, Wessex itself, the heritage of the house of Cerdic and the supreme kingdom, was in peril from the Pagans, who had firmly entrenched themselves at Reading, in the angle between the Thames and Kennet, and English ...
— Lectures and Essays • Goldwin Smith
... think, and just leave him to ride the best he knows how. We've got a better jockey in Westley. Besides, the Brooklyn Handicap has taken a lot out of their mare; they may find that she'll go back after it. I think you'd better get rid of that Shandy serpent; he seems ripe for any deviltry. You can't tell but what he might get at The Dutchman if somebody paid him. If I'm any judge of outlawed human nature, he'd do it. I've got to run down to Brookfield on a matter of business, but shall ...
— Thoroughbreds • W. A. Fraser
... Friedrich Wilhelm like his shadow; and fascinate his whole existence and him, as few wizards could have done. Friedrich Wilhelm, like St. Paul in Melita, warming his innocent hands at the fire of dry branches here kindled for him,—that miracle of a venomous serpent is this that has fixed itself upon his finger? To Friedrich Wilhelm's enchanted sense it seems a bird-of-paradise, trustfully perching there; but it is of the whip-snake kind, or a worse; and will stick to him tragically, if also comically, for years to come. The world has seen the comedy of it, ...
— History Of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Volume V. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... and is so superior to man in insight into their modes of life and psychoses that many of them are almost exemplifications of moral qualities to her even more than to man. The peacock is an embodied expression of pride; the pig, of filth; the fox, of cunning; the serpent, of subtle danger; the eagle, of sublimity; the goose, of stupidity; and so on through all the range of human qualities, as we have seen. At bottom, however, the study of animal life is coming to be more and more a problem of heredity, and its problems ...
— Youth: Its Education, Regimen, and Hygiene • G. Stanley Hall
... came over me, as for one who had sustained a mortal hurt that was beyond the power of healing. Alas, that simplicity and uprightness of soul, and the boasted womanly intuitions, should be such poor safeguards against the wiles of the serpent! And yet, I knew that to argue with her at this moment ...
— Ilka on the Hill-Top and Other Stories • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen
... "that he saw, in Malebolge, a strange encounter between a human form and a serpent. The enemies, after cruel wounds inflicted, stood for a time glaring on each other. A great cloud surrounded them, and then a wonderful metamorphosis began. Each creature was transfigured into the likeness ...
— Violence and the Labor Movement • Robert Hunter
... pale faces, and straining eyes fixed upon the tragic group on the fatal scaffold. Suddenly a strange stir ran through the crowd—the child, who was perched up on the cross, had slipped quickly down to the ground, and gliding like a serpent through the closely packed throng, reached the scaffold, cleared the steps at a bound, and appeared beside the astonished executioner, who was just in the act of raising the ponderous bar to strike, with such a wild, ghastly, yet inspired ...
— Captain Fracasse • Theophile Gautier
... prodigy might arrive at the bottom of the Square. His speed was increasing with his 'nack.' But the Square was enormous, boundless. Samuel Povey gazed at the approaching phenomenon, as a bird at a serpent, with bulging, beady eyes. The child's speed went on increasing and his path grew straighter. Yes, he would arrive; he would do it! Samuel Povey involuntarily lifted one leg in his nervous tension. And now the hope that Dick would ...
— The Old Wives' Tale • Arnold Bennett
... my jewel, kicked over my pan of fat and jumped into the fire. Which, being put into straight English, I swiped a horse and rode off with the rest of the boys on the tail of the serpent." Weldon gasped, as he realized the enormity of the crime. Then he laughed. In his haste to gain possession of a mount, Paddy had taken no thought for his armament. His sole weapon was the huge iron spoon, still ...
— On the Firing Line • Anna Chapin Ray and Hamilton Brock Fuller
... Vails. It's a ripping book. It was that book first set me on to hunt for hidden doors in panels and things. If I crept along that on my front, like a serpent it comes out amongst the rhododendrons, close by the dinosaurus we could ...
— The Enchanted Castle • E. Nesbit
... of these reptiles is hung tail downwards from a branch of the highest tree in the public square, and the placing of it on the tree is an annual ceremony. As soon as the ceremony is over, all children born within the past year are carried out and their hands made to touch the tail of the serpent's skin. The latter custom is clearly a way of placing the infants under the protection of the tribal god. Similarly in Senegambia a python is expected to visit every child of the Python clan within eight days ...
— The Golden Bough - A study of magic and religion • Sir James George Frazer
... called a great man. Our aims rather than our capacity determine our character, and they who greatly aspire after the greatest things within the reach of men, which are faith, hope, charity, and who, for the sake of effecting these aspirations, put their heels upon the head of the serpent and suppress the animal in their nature, these are the men 'great in the ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... complained to the Pope, that the naked figures of the last judgment were unworthy of a house of prayer. The artist introduced his censor in his painting as Minos judge of the infernal regions, with long ears like those of the other devils, and a serpent's tail. Paul III when appealed to is said to have answered, that if his Ceremoniere had been in Purgatory, he might have helped him out, but out of hell there was no redemption. This Papal witticism Platner could not find in any writer earlier than Richardson ...
— The Ceremonies of the Holy-Week at Rome • Charles Michael Baggs
... far to strive with Godunov. Or play false with the Jesuits of the Court, Than with a woman. Deuce take them; they're beyond My power. She twists, and coils, and crawls, slips out Of hand, she hisses, threatens, bites. Ah, serpent! Serpent! 'Twas not for nothing that I trembled. She well-nigh ruined me; but I'm resolved; At daybreak I will put my troops ...
— Boris Godunov - A Drama in Verse • Alexander Pushkin
... his body going all the time, and shouting his words out with all his might; and every now and then he would hold up his Bible and spread it open, and kind of pass it around this way and that, shouting, "It's the brazen serpent in the wilderness! Look upon it and live!" And people would shout out, "Glory!—A-a-MEN!" And so he went on, and the people groaning ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... perdition! while I am talking here that serpent! that copperhead! that cobra capella! is coming round again! How astonishingly tenacious of life all foul, venomous creatures are!" exclaimed Cloudesley, as he happened to espy Throg moving slightly where he lay, and rushed ...
— The Missing Bride • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth
... its predestined fall condemn? How, when the creature of His wrath replies With feeble wail and inarticulate moan, The sighing of that contrite heart despise? What man amongst thy fellows hast thou known Who, if his son ask fish, will jeeringly Give him a serpent, or for bread a stone? If ye, being evil, at your children's cry Know how to give good gifts, should not much more Your heavenly Father His good things supply To them who ask Him? Should He not ...
— Old-Fashioned Ethics and Common-Sense Metaphysics - With Some of Their Applications • William Thomas Thornton
... It adjoined a wing of the dwelling, which stood but a few paces away and was evidently occupied by the women of the household. The old Duchessa, her face still like a death mask but her eyes glittering with the brightness of a serpent's, sat enthroned within a large chair in the center of a family group. It was her sharp voice that had first aroused the American's attention. Opposite her sat the Duke, his thin face wearing an expression of gloom and dissatisfaction. ...
— Aunt Jane's Nieces Abroad • Edith Van Dyne
... Hades: "an elementary handbook of demonology" which is as amusing a thing as he ever wrote. The drawings he made for it show specimens of the evolution of various types of devil into various types of humans: the devils themselves are carefully classified—the common or garden serpent (Tentator Hortensis), the red devil (Diabolus Mephistopheles) the blue devil (Caeruleus Lugubrius) etc. Mr. J. Milton's "specimen" is discussed and various methods of pursuing observations in supernatural history which "possesses an interest which will remain after health, youth and ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Maisie Ward
... sand in front of him showed commotion. It stirred and clouded the water. Jimmie stopped and looked, drawing his weapon—the razor-pointed steel bar—to the front as he did so. Then he felt something close about an ankle and draw him down. A serpent's head showed on a level with ...
— Boy Scouts in a Submarine • G. Harvey Ralphson
... and terrible religion, called the Religion of the Druids. It seems to have been brought over, in very early times indeed, from the opposite country of France, anciently called Gaul, and to have mixed up the worship of the Serpent, and of the Sun and Moon, with the worship of some of the Heathen Gods and Goddesses. Most of its ceremonies were kept secret by the priests, the Druids, who pretended to be enchanters, and who carried magicians' wands, and wore, ...
— A Child's History of England • Charles Dickens
... providence operates so secretly that scarcely anyone is aware it exists in order that man may not perish. For man's proprium, which is his will, never acts at one with divine providence, against which it has an inborn enmity. The proprium is the serpent which seduced the race's parents ...
— Angelic Wisdom about Divine Providence • Emanuel Swedenborg
... lies in the Morbihan, or 'Little Sea,' an inland sea which gives its name to a department in the south of Brittany. The tumulus is 25 feet high, and covers a fine gallery 40 feet long, the stones of which bear the markings alluded to. Whorls and circles abound in the ornamentation, serpent-like figures, and the representation of an axe, similar to those to be seen in some of the Grottes aux Fees, or on the Dol des Marchands. The sculptures appear to have been executed with metal tools. The passage ends in a square sepulchral chamber, the supports of which are eight menhirs ...
— Legends & Romances of Brittany • Lewis Spence
... as that of Greece and Italy—each, in its turn, the mistress of the world. I know, when, the term isothermal was used in my inaugural as Governor of Kansas, it was represented by some of our present rebel leaders, to the masses of the South, as some terrible monster, perhaps the Yankee sea serpent; but I now use the term again in no offence, from its important application to the present case, and knowing that what I now advise would produce incalculable benefits to the whole country, but especially to the South. Indeed, if Texas, with her 274,356 square miles of area, with ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol 2, No 6, December 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... but the brave old saw and my aunt, the serpent, guide thee, And, with thy likeness to God, shall woe ...
— Faust • Goethe
... safer, New Orleans safest. Yea, notwithstanding Porter and Farragut were pelting away at Forts Jackson and St. Philip. Indeed, if the rumor be true, if Farragut's ships had passed those forts, leaving Porter behind, then the Yankee sea-serpent was cut in two, and there was an end of him in ...
— Dr. Sevier • George W. Cable
... 1876. Meanwhile, in cretaceous strata, he unearthed remains of about two hundred birds with teeth, six hundred pterodactyls, or flying dragons, some with a spread of wings of twenty-five feet, and one thousand five hundred mosasaurs of the sea-serpent type, some of them sixty feet or more in length. In a single bed of Jurassic rock, not larger than a good-sized lecture-room, he found the remains of one hundred and sixty individuals of mammals, representing twenty species ...
— A History of Science, Volume 3(of 5) • Henry Smith Williams
... no doubt, the dreaded species which Sallust describes as infesting the region of Gafsa. But Lucan goes a little too far in his account of Cato's expedition into these parts; this veracious historian has inserted a few pages of sublime serpent ...
— Fountains In The Sand - Rambles Among The Oases Of Tunisia • Norman Douglas
... question to his God,—who gave her to the patriarch as a handmaid, and, by the Mosaical law, bound her to allegiance like a serf,—even they greeted, with solemn rapture, all great and holy women as heroines, prophetesses, judges in Israel; and, if they made Eve listen to the serpent, gave Mary as a bride to the Holy Spirit. In other nations it has been the same down to our day. To the Woman who could conquer a triumph was awarded. And not only those whose strength was recommended to the heart by association with goodness and beauty, but ...
— Woman in the Ninteenth Century - and Kindred Papers Relating to the Sphere, Condition - and Duties, of Woman. • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... that he believed, what may be true, that they become frightened at their own success. It is much easier to throw things into confusion than to settle them to one's own liking. Troubled waters are good to fish in, it is true, but sometimes in searching for a fish you draw up a serpent. I have much more admiration of Charles's talents than opinion ...
— George Selwyn: His Letters and His Life • E. S. Roscoe and Helen Clergue
... I shall add a most ridiculous piece of natural Magic, which was taught by no less a Philosopher than Democritus, namely, that if the Blood of certain Birds, which he mentioned, were mixed together, it would produce a Serpent of such a wonderful Virtue, that whoever did eat it should be skill'd in the Language of Birds, and understand every thing they said to one another. Whether the Dervise abovementioned might not have eaten such a Serpent, I ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... days, before Mr. McAlpine cam'," replied his friend, giving himself up to the joys of retrospect. "Yer faither used to say the Glen was jist like the Garden o' Eden until the serpent cam', an' it wes the tavern. Ah mind when yon Eerish crew from the Flats cam' up here to Pete Nash's tavern, an' the lads from the Oa cam' doon, a' McDonalds to a man, an' ye could hear the fechtin' ower on the Tenth. Man, yon ...
— Duncan Polite - The Watchman of Glenoro • Marian Keith
... Caesar's well-known account of the wickerwork sacrifice is very circumstantial. It is not repeated by either Diodorus or Strabo, who both refer to individual human sacrifice. Pliny introduces the mistletoe, oak, and serpent cults, and the other three authorities are ...
— Folklore as an Historical Science • George Laurence Gomme
... circulated among the members, suggestions as to books in the Sunday School or public library, books loaned to the children and questions as to their reading may save many a soul from the slimy trail of the serpent coiled ...
— The Unfolding Life • Antoinette Abernethy Lamoreaux
... said to have been established in honor of the victory that Apollo gained at Delphi over the serpent Py'thon, on setting out to erect his temple. This monster, said to have sprung from the stagnant waters of the deluge of Deucalion, may have been none other than the malaria which laid waste the surrounding country, and which some ...
— Mosaics of Grecian History • Marcius Willson and Robert Pierpont Willson
... that he had spoken well. But no mortal speech has ever excited in my mind such emotions as are excited by this magician. Whenever I hear him, I am, as it were, charmed and fettered. My heart leaps like an inspired Corybant. My inmost soul is stung by his words as by the bite of a serpent. It is indignant at its own rude and ignoble character. I often weep tears of regret and think how vain and inglorious is the life I lead. Nor am I the only one that weeps like a child and despairs of himself. Many others are affected in ...
— The Whence and the Whither of Man • John Mason Tyler
... into the fanciful proportions most adapted to excite awe and wonder." To his friend Hogg, in after-years, Shelley often spoke about another reptile, no mere creature of myth or fable, the "Old Snake," who had inhabited the gardens of Field Place for several generations. This venerable serpent was accidentally killed by the gardener's scythe; but he lived long in the poet's memory, and it may reasonably be conjectured that Shelley's peculiar sympathy for snakes was due to the dim recollection of his childhood's ...
— Percy Bysshe Shelley • John Addington Symonds
... huge red serpent with black head and tail, the convoy wound gradually up a slight hill, the scarlet thrown into relief by the long line of grey walls on either side, beyond which lay green fields and clumps of trees dyed with the myriad hues of autumn, the distance ...
— Disturbed Ireland - Being the Letters Written During the Winter of 1880-81. • Bernard H. Becker
... the cluster Praesepe, 'are said' (by astrologers) 'to be of a burning nature, and to give great indications of a violent death, or of violent and severe accidents by fire.' The star called Cor Hydrae, or the serpent's heart, denotes trouble through women (said I not rightly that Astrology was a masculine science?); the Lion's heart, Regulus, implied glory and riches; Deneb, the Lion's tail, misfortune and disgrace. The southern scale of ...
— Myths and Marvels of Astronomy • Richard A. Proctor
... step of one sure that—while man may be unjust, cruel and oppressive to her sex off the stage—here she would reign and finally triumph. She bowed her head, but it was to acknowledge her gracious acceptance of the tribute of applause; she moistened her fiery-coal lips with a serpent's active tongue; she surveyed her dominion with eyes that assumed a passing emerald tint. There was a depth to those apparently superficial glances. It seemed to Claudius that one had singled him out, and he fancied, as his eyes ...
— The Son of Clemenceau • Alexandre (fils) Dumas
... as a serpent," answered the boy, with one of his keen looks which bespoke him older ...
— The Secret Chamber at Chad • Evelyn Everett-Green
... and a poisonous serpent came up roaring and hissing. They made as though to bite him and leaped over him. But Du Dsi Tschun remained unperturbed in spirit, and after a time ...
— The Chinese Fairy Book • Various
... confidentially. "And do you know, my dear, it was one of the most remarkable cigars I ever smoked." Mrs. Gallilee laid down her pen, and eyed him with an annihilating frown. In the extremity of his confusion Mr. Gallilee ventured nearer. He felt the sinister fascination of the serpent in the expression of those awful eyebrows. "How well you are looking! How amazingly well you are looking this morning!" He leered at his learned ...
— Heart and Science - A Story of the Present Time • Wilkie Collins
... idle boasts, No Pleasure thus you'll find; The flowing bowl a serpent is To poison ...
— Sowing Seeds in Danny • Nellie L. McClung
... noon is a blaze of azure fire, and the dusty pilgrims crawl like an endless serpent along treeless plains and bleached highroads, through rock-split ...
— The Poems of Emma Lazarus - Vol. II. (of II.), Jewish Poems: Translations • Emma Lazarus
... ears,—all that his fretting heart has hoarded up and brooded over these months and years! all,—sparing her not a thought, not a passionate word. She tries to repel him, to escape, to scream for help; but he looks down her eyes with his own, holds her fast, and she gasps for breath. So the serpent coils about the dove, and stamps his ...
— Idolatry - A Romance • Julian Hawthorne
... great reform in religion had taken place among them a few years before. Their king Hezekiah, in the very first year of his reign, removed the high places, and cut down the groves (which are said to have been carved idols meant to represent the stars of heaven), and even broke in pieces the brazen serpent which Moses had made, because the Jews had begun to worship it for an idol. He trusted in the Lord God, and obeyed Him, more than any king of Judah. He restored the worship of the true God in the temple, according to the law of Moses, ...
— Sermons on National Subjects • Charles Kingsley
... corner of the carrefour, the serpent catcher showed them two vipers in a low flat box. They darted their forked tongues against the wire netting, and the large green snake, which he took out of a bag, curled round his arm, seeking to escape. In questioning ...
— Celibates • George Moore
... am so afraid that the buffaloes will butt us, and the great serpent eat us up. Let us travel to another part of ...
— The Lilac Fairy Book • Andrew Lang
... suppose to have been snatched bodily out of his dreams. The same sunbeam that had dazzled the doctor between the bed- curtains gleamed on the weather-beaten gilding which had once adorned this mysterious symbol, and showed it to be an enormous serpent, twining round a wooden post, and reaching quite from the floor of ...
— The Dolliver Romance • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... large serpent, I almost thought it was one; but I found it moved only when touched in a certain manner. Then it would roll over, open its mouth, and run out its tongue. There was another that I cannot describe, for I never saw anything that looked like ...
— Life in the Grey Nunnery at Montreal • Sarah J Richardson
... language first spoken on earth, before the beguiling serpent came to our mother," once said an old man to me; "and maybe afterwards too, till the foolish men on the plain of Shinar brought Babel on the earth. And indeed it may be the language spoken in heaven to-day, so sweet and grand and fit for the expression of high and holy ...
— Shenac's Work at Home • Margaret Murray Robertson
... serpent had bitten him; but in a moment he recovered himself, saying calmly, "Tush! it is a poor deceit! you ...
— The Roman Traitor (Vol. 2 of 2) • Henry William Herbert
... a voice into Beryl's ear, but she did not hear it. Her whole intelligence was riveted upon the movements of the serpent and its master. It was a hideous spectacle, but it occupied her undivided attention. She ...
— The Swindler and Other Stories • Ethel M. Dell
... on that ground it inspired great distrust in the public as well as the magistrates. "The people, to whom everything that came from this minister looked suspicious, knew not whether beneath these flowers there were not a serpent concealed, and were apprehensive that this establishment was, at the very least, a new prop to support is domination, that it was but a batch of folks in his pay, hired to maintain all that he did and to observe the actions and sentiments of others. It went ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume V. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... slightest resistance or the slightest delay, and who expected to acquit himself thus of his word, and of the reciprocal engagement both had taken; and then he returned to fresh insults and fury against this serpent, as he said, whom he had warmed and nourished so many ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... Jewish customs and places. Sitting backward on the edge of the Hebrew past, thoroughly immersed in its literature and atmosphere, but with his face fastened on Jesus, he composes out of the facts about Jesus and the old prophetic scriptures a perfect bit of mosaic. There is the fascination of a serpent's eye in turning from the prophetic writings to the Gospel of Matthew. Let a man become immersed and absorbed in the vision of the Hebrew prophetic books and then turn to Matthew to get the intense impression that this promised One has come, at last has ...
— Quiet Talks about Jesus • S. D. Gordon
... draft to the authorities of the Church of Ireland and of the Presbyterian, Methodist, and Congregational Churches. The Moderator, and other leaders of the Presbyterians, including Mr. (afterwards Sir Alexander) McDowell, a man endowed with much of the wisdom of the serpent, while supporting without demur the policy of the Covenant, took exception to its terms in a single particular. They pointed out that the obligation to be accepted by the signatories would be, as the text then stood, ...
— Ulster's Stand For Union • Ronald McNeill
... or beautiful Venice may prepare for your forgetfulness, be sure it will be complete and resistless. Nay, what potenter magic needs my Venice to revivify her past whenever she will, than the serpent cunning of her Grand Canal? Launched upon this great S have I not seen hardened travelers grow sentimental, and has not this prodigious sybillant, in my hearing, inspired white-haired Puritan ministers of the gospel to attempt to quote out of the guide-book ...
— Venetian Life • W. D. Howells
... came,—Tyrrell was on the race-ground; sure that he would remain there for some hours, I put up my wearied horse in the town, and, seating myself in an obscure corner of the course, was contented with watching, as the serpent does his victim, the distant motions of my enemy. Perhaps you can recollect passing a man seated on the ground and robed in a horseman's cloak. I need not tell you that it was I whom you passed and accosted. I saw you ride by me; but the moment you were gone I forgot the occurrence. I looked upon ...
— Pelham, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... place, and vocation, and profession, 'the critic of this department, too,—it is not possible to join the serpentine wisdom with the columbine innocency, except men know exactly all the conditions of the serpent,—that is, all forms and natures of evil, for without this, virtue lieth open and un-fenced. Nay, an honest man can do no good upon those that are wicked, to reclaim them, without the help of the knowledge of evil: ...
— The Philosophy of the Plays of Shakspere Unfolded • Delia Bacon
... JOHN.—I'll tell thee what, my friend, He is a very serpent in my way; And wheresoe'er this foot of mine doth tread, He lies before me.—Dost ...
— Ivanhoe - A Romance • Walter Scott
... outline, it will always be inanimate and cold. The traveller is also aware of a sympathy of mood between himself and the road he travels. We have all seen ways that have wandered into heavy sand near the sea-coast, and trail wearily over the dunes like a trodden serpent. Here we too must plod forward at a dull, laborious pace; and so a sympathy is preserved between our frame of mind and the expression of the relaxed, heavy curves of the roadway. Such a phenomenon, indeed, our reason might perhaps resolve with a little trouble. We might reflect that ...
— Essays of Travel • Robert Louis Stevenson
... disposed of, in the last century. Nay, every good Review of "Essays and Reviews" has answered the book: for what signify the details, if the fundamental lie has been detected, and unrelentingly exposed? The man who plants his heel on the serpent's head, and refuses to withdraw it, can afford to disregard the tortuous writhings of the long supple body.—Again. These attacks are seven. Must seven men with "concert and comparison,"—with leisure and inclination too,—be procured to demolish this flimsy compound of dogmatism ...
— Inspiration and Interpretation - Seven Sermons Preached Before the University of Oxford • John Burgon
... who thundered forth denunciations of rum and the theater with the bitterness of a Juvenal inveighing profligate Rome. The people crowded the orator's hall, upon the walls of which hung the customary banners: a serpent springing from the top of a barrel; the steamboat, Alcohol, bursting her boiler and going to pieces, and the staunch craft, Temperance, safe and sound, sailing away before a fair wind. With perfect self-command, gift of mimicry and dramatic gestures, the lecturer swayed his audience; now bubbling ...
— The Strollers • Frederic S. Isham
... dazzling clouds moving, like herds of white elephants pasturing across heavenly fields, too slowly for the eye to note their motion; and below, the far-reaching, tremulous sheen of reed and bulrush, the wet lair of serpent, wild-cat, and alligator. Now and then there was the cool blue of sunny, wind-swept waters winding hither and thither toward the sea, and sometimes miles of deep forest swamp through which the railroad went by broad, frowzy, ...
— Bonaventure - A Prose Pastoral of Acadian Louisiana • George Washington Cable
... evil spirits live in the air, the earth, and the water. These invisible malicious beings are thought to inflict much suffering on the human race; but, as they have a weakness for beer and a craving for food, they may be propitiated from time to time by offerings of meat and drink. The serpent is an object of worship, and hideous little images are hung in the huts of the sick and dying. The uncontaminated Africans believe that Morungo, the Great Spirit who formed all things, lives above the stars; but they ...
— A Popular Account of Dr. Livingstone's Expedition to the Zambesi and Its Tributaries • David Livingstone
... he awoke from a deep sleep, with a sense of sweet visions and experiences—he looked round. Mrs. Graves sate beside him smiling, but the horror suddenly darted back into his mind with a spasm of fear, as if he had been bitten by a poisonous serpent. ...
— Watersprings • Arthur Christopher Benson
... No Serpent lurks beneath their simple hues. No purple blooms from Flattery's nightshade brings, The Child of ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... mistress, was so good and kind that everybody loved her, and she would have led a happy life, had it not been for a serpent who had fallen in love with her, and was constantly annoying her by his presence. Her servants had orders to drive him away as often as he appeared; but as they were careless, and the serpent very sly, it sometimes ...
— The Pink Fairy Book • Various
... you be, take care lest you foster the serpent that will diffuse its subtle poison over the cherished blossoms which you are, or ought to be, training for heaven, and leave a sting which may pierce your own hearts. One thing we may be sure of, that the faults which we, through negligence or weak indulgence, leave unchecked in our children ...
— Aunt Mary • Mrs. Perring
... stops, and forms a circle, seven around, with one uplifted torch within the sacred zone. The circle breaks and forms two lines and the centre figure passes between, moving onward to the altar. The others in serpent form move sinuously back to the Temple ...
— Saronia - A Romance of Ancient Ephesus • Richard Short
... over whom she might insult. Pride thinks its own happiness shines the brighter by comparing it with the misfortunes of other persons; that by displaying its own wealth, they may feel their poverty the more sensibly. This is that infernal serpent that creeps into the breasts of mortals, and possesses them too much to be easily drawn out; and therefore I am glad that the Utopians have fallen upon this form of government, in which I wish that all the world could be so wise as to imitate them; for they have ...
— Ideal Commonwealths • Various
... the gorge a lazuli bunting sat on a telegraph wire and piped his merry lay. Soon the canyon narrowed, grew dark and forbidding, and the steep walls rose high on both sides, compelling the railway to creep like a half-imprisoned serpent along the foot of the cliffs; then the birds disappeared, not caring to dwell in such dark, more than half-immured places. Occasionally a magpie could be seen sailing overhead at an immense height, crossing over from one hillside to the other, turning ...
— Birds of the Rockies • Leander Sylvester Keyser
... anniversary of the killing of the great serpent Bindrabund, which was creating terrible havoc on the shores of the river Jumna, an event in Hindu mythology, which is as true as any mythology," added Lord Tremlyn. "You observe that it calls together a great crowd of people of all classes, and you ...
— Across India - Or, Live Boys in the Far East • Oliver Optic
... Aid, Altar Guild, temperance gathering; spoke respectfully of the suffragists and hopefully of the "public-spirited women" of the new Civic League. And never, never, never omitted nor misplaced nor misspelled a name! The boy from up-state saw to that. He was wily as the serpent and simple as the dove. Over the local page ...
— Slippy McGee, Sometimes Known as the Butterfly Man • Marie Conway Oemler
... was soon restored, and I fancied, although the dog continued to growl, that it was a false alarm; so I was about to lie down again, when Sumichrast's hand touched me on the shoulder. An enormous serpent was gliding ...
— Adventures of a Young Naturalist • Lucien Biart
... a sudden stop. Few things could make Kazan drop his tail. But that inane and incoherent prattle of the little spiked beast sent him off at double-quick with his tail between his legs. As man abhors and evades the creeping serpent, so Kazan would hereafter evade this little creature of the forests that never in animal history has been known to lose its good-humor or pick ...
— Kazan • James Oliver Curwood
... thought of the setting sun. The Ancient Iniquity in Washington smiles with thin lips and pronounces that all men and Aaron Burr are unambitious, unselfish, and peace-loving—but none the less, he looks askance at the serpent's windings. The friends of Burr are not the friends of Jefferson. There are Federalists—'tis said they increase in numbers—who do not wish the former ill; myself I am not of them. Colonel Burr desired that duel; he lay in wait ...
— Lewis Rand • Mary Johnston
... slept the clock round! King did not answer. He blocked the way into the cave and looked past the mullah at a sight that fascinated, as a serpent's eyes are said to fascinate a bird. But the mullah, who knew perfectly well what must be happening, did not trouble to turn ...
— King—of the Khyber Rifles • Talbot Mundy
... origin of Satan and how such an incarnation of evil has come to exist. The Tartarus into which he and his angels were cast, according to Peter, is defined by leading lexicographers, as meaning the dark, void, interplanetary spaces, surrounding the world. Using the serpent as a medium, this apostate angel, thus cast out, plied our first parents with his temptation by preaching to them the immortality of the soul, "Thou shalt not surely die," and alas! seduced them also into rebellion. ...
— Modern Spiritualism • Uriah Smith
... beverage has been granted within its borders, and a temperance law known as the Scott Act had been in force for eight years previous to 1893, when the second attempt was made by the liquor party to obtain its repeal. Like the serpent in the Garden of Eden, the liquor sellers of the present day are remarkable for their subtility, and many are the innocent victims entangled in the meshes of the net woven by their deceptive tongues; therefore, it need not seem strange that they should ...
— The Story of a Dark Plot - or Tyranny on the Frontier • A.L.O. C. and W.W. Smith |
