"Snake" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... In the snake figure—one which is very seldom danced—quite a large number of couples are called, who form a ring around the room. The leader, taking the hand of one of the men, breaks the chain, and the couples are wound around until they come together in a knot, when the ...
— The Complete Bachelor - Manners for Men • Walter Germain
... a voyage at sea; were it not for the vexation of the thorn, charming might be the society of the rose. Yesterday I was walking stately as a peacock in the garden of enjoyment; to-day I am writhing like a snake from ...
— Persian Literature, Volume 2, Comprising The Shah Nameh, The - Rubaiyat, The Divan, and The Gulistan • Anonymous
... lover of men, And turn abhorring as from fat slug or snake? Lives obstinate in me too Something the power of angels could ...
— Miscellany of Poetry - 1919 • Various
... up with a snake now. The other animals are glad, for she was always experimenting with them and bothering them; and I am glad because the snake talks, and this enables me ...
— The $30,000 Bequest and Other Stories • Mark Twain
... act was too pressing to give time for words. Neither he nor she had uttered a sound since his dash for the viper had shaken her clinging fingers from his arm; and it was only when the poisoned flesh and the burnt match had been flung after the dead snake that Max could glance at ...
— A Soldier of the Legion • C. N. Williamson
... her murth'ring Knife, Nor Atreus there his horrid Feast prepare. Cadmus and Progne's Metamorphosis, (She to a Swallow turn'd, he to a Snake) And whatsoever contradicts my Sense, I hate to ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... crimes and calamities, of investigations and elections. He read of a rumored Police Department shake up, and he could afford to smile at the vitality of that hellbender-like report. Then, as he turned the worn pages, the smile died from his heavy lips, for his own name leaped up like a snake from the text and seemed to strike him in the face. He spelled through the paragraphs carefully, word by word, as though it were in a language with which he was only half familiar. He even went back and read the entire column for a second time. For there it told of his ...
— Never-Fail Blake • Arthur Stringer
... he was directly underneath the balcony, then he rose slowly to his feet, which, in his wet stockings, did not slip. Manuel, indeed, had hurried, for no sooner had Jim risen to the height of his precarious position than he saw the rope dangling downward like a snake. He let it alone until he believed that it was paid out ...
— Frontier Boys in Frisco • Wyn Roosevelt
... creatures reassembled. The whole life of the wood then went on before my eyes; the birds sang their best for me, the squirrel performed his innocent gymnastics with an eye to my applause, the very snake moved less shyly through the grass, as though the word had gone forth that I was a guest, who must be entertained and made to feel at home. This experience often recurred to me in my early days at Thornthwaite. It was some time ...
— The Quest of the Simple Life • William J. Dawson
... was walking slowly along on the lookout for some bird or animal who might be in the mood for story-telling, when she heard an angry hissing, which caused her to start in alarm, thinking a snake was in her path, and, to her surprise, she saw two geese who were scolding violently ...
— The Gray Goose's Story • Amy Prentice
... melting whiteness of those distant peaks. Between the willows of the river bottoms, Larkin could see the red reflection of the sun on the water, and could follow the stream's course across the prairie by the snake-like procession of cottonwoods that lined ...
— The Free Range • Francis William Sullivan
... because of the inveterate tendency of the human mind to reduce things to its own level—to suppose everything to have happened in ways which are within its present powers to comprehend. We figure to ourselves the fear and dislike we should ourselves experience, of a large snake; we imagine the amazement with which an intelligible voice would be heard to proceed from such a creature; so far from being tempted, we should at once be moved to hostility or to flight; and thus we are inclined to throw doubt on the narrative ...
— Creation and Its Records • B.H. Baden-Powell
... spirit underneath him. There was no paddle, nor, in fact, anything except the spirit-tin that I could use as one, so I settled to drift until I was picked up. I held an inquest on him, brought in a verdict against some snake, scorpion, or centipede unknown, and sent ...
— The Country of the Blind, And Other Stories • H. G. Wells
... slowly moved amid her circle of admirers out of the ball-room, her golden skirts gleaming sun-like against the polished floor, and the jewels about her flashing in vivid points of light from the hem of her robe to the snake in her hair. ...
— Ziska - The Problem of a Wicked Soul • Marie Corelli
... was dumb again, although I wanted to speak and tried very hard. A snake was coiled around my neck, and choked me. There is no snake in this room? ...
— Dr. Dumany's Wife • Mr Jkai
... Ile attend hym. [Ex. La Busse. Yet I've heard a tale Of a feirce snake that wounded by a swayne Rememberd it for twentye yeares together And at the last revendgd it; so may he. I, but another tale tells of an asse Which haveinge throwne hys cruell ryder wente In pyttie to the surgeon, ...
— A Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. III • Various
... confined Satan in a pit, were obliged to let him out again to bring on the sequel of the fable. He is then introduced into the garden of Eden in the shape of a snake, or a serpent, and in that shape he enters into familiar conversation with Eve, who is no ways surprised to hear a snake talk; and the issue of this tete-a-tate is, that he persuades her to eat an apple, and the eating of ...
— The Writings Of Thomas Paine, Complete - With Index to Volumes I - IV • Thomas Paine
... English voyager in these regions speaks of war between the Assineboines and their trouble some western neighbours, the Snake and Blackfeet Indians. But war was older than the era of the earliest white man, older probably than the Indian himself; for, from what ever branch of the human race this stock is sprung, the lesson ...
— The Great Lone Land - A Narrative of Travel and Adventure in the North-West of America • W. F. Butler
... but her eyes Were black as death, their lashes the same hue, Of downcast length, in whose silk shadow lies Deepest attraction; for when to the view Forth from its raven fringe the full glance flies, Ne'er with such force the swiftest arrow flew; 'T is as the snake late coil'd, who pours his length, And hurls at once ...
— Don Juan • Lord Byron
... mountaineer, slipped silently from his saddle, swung his light cavalry carbine from his back to the hollow of his arm, and in another moment was lost to sight in the darkness. A snake could not have slipped away more stealthily. I heard a stone rattle under his foot, a half-suppressed oath, and then the night had ...
— My Lady of the North • Randall Parrish
... as though I had done him an injury. To-day I know how it is that year after year, week after week, the bunco steerer, who is the confidence trick and the card-sharper man of other climes, secures his prey. He clavers them over with flattery as the snake clavers the rabbit. The incident depressed me because it showed I had left the innocent East far behind and was come to a country where a man must look out for himself. The very hotels bristled with notices about ...
— American Notes • Rudyard Kipling
... white field in the corner. The first flag in South Carolina was blue, with a crescent in the corner, and received its first baptism under Moultrie. In 1776, Col. Gadsen presented to Congress a flag to be used by the navy, which consisted of a rattle-snake on a yellow ground, with thirteen rattles, and coiled to strike. The motto was, "Don't tread on me." "The Great Union Flag," as described above, without the crosses, and sometimes with the rattle-snake and motto, "Don't tread on me," was used as a naval ...
— Key-Notes of American Liberty • Various
... I'd teach you perliteness with a black-snake whip! I'll see what Layson'll say to such sass as you've gin me. Jest you wait till you hear ...
— In Old Kentucky • Edward Marshall and Charles T. Dazey
... the evils of the system weighed with the most depressing effect upon the business part of the community, some spasmodic effort for a time produced a change. But a temporary check only was applied. The snake was scotched, not killed. The ballot box upon whose sanctity, in a Republican government must the liberties of the people depend, was in the hands of the pliant tools of designing politicians, or of desperate knaves ready to bargain ...
— A Sketch of the Causes, Operations and Results of the San Francisco Vigilance Committee of 1856 • Stephen Palfrey Webb
... I had not noticed before. Looking more carefully I could see yellow and black marks, and thought it must be a tortoise-shell put up there out of the way between the ridge-pole and the roof Continuing to gaze, it suddenly resolved itself into a large snake, compactly coiled up in a kind of knot; and I could detect his head and his bright eyes in the very centre of the folds. The noise of the evening before was now explained. A python had climbed up one ...
— The Malay Archipelago - Volume I. (of II.) • Alfred Russel Wallace
... frogs before their enemy, the snake, Quick scattering through the pool in timid shoals, On the dankooze a huddling cluster makes' I saw above a thousand mined souls Flying from one who passed the Stygian bog, With feet unmoistened by the sludgy wave; ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 122, December, 1867 • Various
... ironed and washed and ironed and washed and ironed till I married. I married when I was seventeen. My mother was dead and I'd rather been married than runnin' loose—I might a stepped on a snake. ...
— Slave Narratives: a Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves - Arkansas Narratives Part 3 • Works Projects Administration
... gun names, the word "culverin" has a metaphorical meaning. It derives from the Latin colubra (snake). Similarly, the light gun called aspide or aspic, meaning "asp-like," was named after the venomous asp. But these digressions should not obscure the fact that both culverins and demiculverins were highly esteemed on account of their range and the effectiveness of ...
— Artillery Through the Ages - A Short Illustrated History of Cannon, Emphasizing Types Used in America • Albert Manucy
... number and bravest, and most were eager to break the wall and set the ships on fire, these still stood doubtful by the fosse, for as they were eager to pass over a bird had appeared to them, an eagle of lofty flight, skirting the host on the left hand. In its talons it bore a blood-red monstrous snake, alive, and struggling still; yea, not yet had it forgotten the joy of battle, but writhed backward and smote the bird that held it on the breast, beside the neck, and the bird cast it from him down to the earth, in sore pain, ...
— The Iliad of Homer • Homer (Lang, Leaf, Myers trans.)
... him and how his sin was the original brand, direct from Adam, put up in cans to keep, and the can-opener lost. Doc Hoover would get the whole town safe in the fold and then have to hold extra meetings for a couple of days to snake in that miserable Bill; but, in the end, he always got religion and got it hard. For a month or two afterward, he'd make the chills run down the backs of us children in prayer-meeting, telling how he had probably been the triflingest ...
— Letters from a Self-Made Merchant to His Son • George Horace Lorimer
... different still, yet it is familiar, too; it appears that rabbits are rather like folks. So the tale proceeds, and the little furry rabbit passes through experiences strange to little boys, yet very like little boys' adventures in some respects; he is frightened by a snake, comforted by his mammy, and taken to a new house, under the long grass a long way off. These are all situations to which the child has a key. There is just enough of strangeness to entice, just enough of the familiar to relieve any strain. When the child has lived through the day's happenings ...
— How to Tell Stories to Children - And Some Stories to Tell • Sara Cone Bryant
... once. The men passed by him in silence, save the single remark of Brimstone, "Give my love to your sweet mother," delivered in an insulting tone, and with a laugh more repulsive than the hiss of a snake. ...
— The Boy Patriot • Edward Sylvester Ellis
... because he was hot in the extremities, and that a cold wave was going up his leg. Ma asked him where the cold wave was, and he told her, and she thought she would rub it, but she began to yell the same kind of murder Pa did, and she said a snake had gone up her sleeve. Then I thought it was time to stop the circus, and I reached up Ma's lace sleeve and caught the frog by the leg and pulled it out, and told Pa I guessed he had taken my frog to bed with ...
— The Grocery Man And Peck's Bad Boy - Peck's Bad Boy and His Pa, No. 2 - 1883 • George W. Peck
... object without first investigating with a board or stick lest there be a snake under it. It became such an obsession that if anyone did pick up something without finding a snake under it he felt as disappointed as if he had run to a fire and found it out when ...
— Land of the Burnt Thigh • Edith Eudora Kohl
... the Red Buttes, went through Devil's Gate, skirted the banks of the Sweet Water River, and winding through the great South Pass, diverted their course to the north in the direction of the head-waters of Snake River, which would guide them by ...
— Woman on the American Frontier • William Worthington Fowler
... Cheerful Plight, T' enjoy the silent Pleasures of the Night, When home return'd, my Thanks to Heaven pay, For all the past kind Blessing of the Day; No haughty Help-mate to my Peace molest, No treacherous Snake to harbour in my Breast: No fawning Mistress of the Female Art, With Judas Kisses to betray my Heart; No light-tail'd Hypocrite to raise my Fears, No vile Impert'nence to torment my Ears; No molted Off spring to disturb my Thought, In Wedlock born but G——d knows where begot; ...
— The Pleasures of a Single Life, or, The Miseries Of Matrimony • Anonymous
... maintains its advance in fatality; tuberculosis, which began to decline in England more than forty years ago, before it was associated with experimentation; hydrophobia, diphtheria, tetanus, typhoid fever, snake-poison, sleeping-sickness, and certain animal ailments of an infectious character. What is his conclusion regarding all the claims of vastly increased potency of modern medicine over these powers of darkness and death? That experiments have been utterly valueless? No; some useful knowledge ...
— An Ethical Problem - Or, Sidelights upon Scientific Experimentation on Man and Animals • Albert Leffingwell
... laid the Long Snake between Short Snake and the Crane, and the smallest ships outside them. But Earl Eric, as each of these was disabled, caused it to be cut away, and pressed on to those that were behind. Now, when the small ...
— The Red True Story Book • Various
... he said, holding out a cup. "Join me, won't you? Of course, you understand—in case a snake should bite us." ...
— The Littlest Rebel • Edward Peple
... is in narrow slips, fenced by the customary snake fence, which is nothing more than slabs of trees split coarsely into rails, and set up lengthways in a zig-zag form to give them stability, with struts, or riders, at the angles, to bind them. These farms are about nine hundred feet in ...
— Canada and the Canadians - Volume I • Sir Richard Henry Bonnycastle
... your temper, my boy. It's dangerous work rousing a venomous snake until its poison bag ...
— At the Point of the Sword • Herbert Hayens
... like a striking snake toward the controls and, as he grasped them, his face went deathly white. For the controls were locked! They resisted all the strength he threw against them and the ship still bore on toward that mocking face that hung ...
— Empire • Clifford Donald Simak
... chances in that combat—many a check, And many a change—a dark and wild turmoil; Sometimes the snake around his enemy's neck Locked in stiff rings his adamantine coil, Until the eagle, faint with pain and toil, Remitted his strong flight, and near the sea Languidly fluttered, hopeless so to foil His adversary, who then reared on high His red and ...
— Life of Cicero - Volume One • Anthony Trollope
... hickory and beech and walnut that stood beyond, he might turn his down-bent-hat-brim up and hold his head erect. Here the shade fell deep and cool on the green tangle of rag and iron weed and long grass in the corners of the snake fence, although the sun beat upon the road so dose beside. There was no movement in the crisp young leaves overhead; high in the boughs there was a quick flirt of crimson where two robins hopped noiselessly. No insect raised resentment of the lonesomeness: the late afternoon, ...
— The Gentleman From Indiana • Booth Tarkington
... the evening sun which sports so in the elder-bush," thought the student Anselmus; but the bells sounded again, and Anselmus observed that one Snake held out its little head to him. Through all his limbs there went a shock like electricity; he quivered in his inmost heart; he kept gazing up, and a pair of glorious dark-blue eyes were looking at him with unspeakable longing; and an unknown feeling ...
— The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries: - Masterpieces of German Literature Translated into English, Volume 5. • Various
... such. It was during a period of peace that Sakra cut off the head of Namuchi after having given a pledge to the contrary, and it was because he approved of this eternal usage towards the enemy that he did so. Like a snake that swalloweth up frogs and other creatures living in holes, the earth swalloweth up a king that is peaceful and a Brahmana that stirreth not out of home. O king, none can by nature be any person's foe. ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Part 2 • Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa
... six days in the making, and that the Deluge, as described, is a physical impossibility; but there is no proving, especially to those who are perfect in the art of closing their ears to that which they do not wish to hear, that a snake did not speak, or that Eve was not made out of one of ...
— The Lights of the Church and the Light of Science - Essay #6 from "Science and Hebrew Tradition" • Thomas Henry Huxley
... heart: the passion of power and the passion of love, or of some emotion which he did not understand. Hokosa fixed his calm eyes upon her with a strange intensity of gaze, and while he gazed his form quivered with a suppressed excitement, much as a snake quivers that is about to strike its prey. To the careless eye there was nothing remarkable about his look and attitude; to the observer it was evident that both were full of extraordinary purpose. He was talking to the girl, ...
— The Wizard • H. Rider Haggard
... skin was as soft and healthy-looking as a baby's, and glowed in the lights of the lanterns like tinted ivory, and underneath this silken covering the great biceps and muscles moved in and out and looked like the coils of a snake around the branch of ...
— The Boy Scout and Other Stories for Boys • Richard Harding Davis
... Levinsohn. The Talmud, we have seen, was at that time the object of assaults of zealous Christians and disloyal Jews, and hostile works against Judaism were the order of the day. Most of them, however, like the fabulous snake, vented their poison and died. It was different with McCaul's poignant diatribe against the cause of Judaism and the honor of the Talmud, which had been translated into many languages. Montefiore, while in Russia, urged Levinsohn to defend his people against their traducers, ...
— The Haskalah Movement in Russia • Jacob S. Raisin
... cause of this judgment; for God 'doth not afflict willingly nor grieve the children of men' (Lam 3:33). Either the heart is too much set upon the world, or religion is too much neglected in thy family, or something. There is a snake in the grass, a worm in the gourd; some sin in thy bosom, for the sake of which God doth thus ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... answering one the other; you may set them on one bottom of paste, which will be more convenient; or if you set them several you may bake the middle one full of flour, it being bak't and cold, take out the flour in the bottom, & put in live birds, or a snake, which will seem strange to the beholders, which cut up the pie at the Table. This is only for a Wedding ...
— The accomplisht cook - or, The art & mystery of cookery • Robert May
... Stewart came down the room, stiffened by the counsel of Angus, "Mind ye, laddie, when ye tak', that the mon wha tak's slidd'ry serpents to tussle wi' 'em, he haes nae hand to use for his ainsel' whilst the slickit beasties are alive; and a deid snake serves ...
— All-Wool Morrison • Holman Day
... carefully as she was bidden, and bent down to look at what seemed a golden arrow-head darting through the water. It was a water-snake, Tom told her; and Lucy at last could see the wave of its body, wondering very much that a ...
— Tom and Maggie Tulliver • Anonymous
... so, something moved in the path above him. It was a fair child, stretched nearly lifeless on the rock, its breast heaving with thirst, its eyes closed, and its lips parched and burning. Hans eyed it deliberately, drank, and passed on. And a dark gray cloud came over the sun, and long, snake-like shadows crept up along the mountain sides. Hans struggled on. The sun was sinking, but its descent seemed to bring no coolness; the leaden weight of the dead air pressed upon his brow and heart, but the goal ...
— Types of Children's Literature • Edited by Walter Barnes
... short intervals gave forth a smothered screech, allowing the noise to die away in its throat in a series of disagreeable gurgles. When the owl was seated upon the hag's shoulder, she took from a box a half-torpid snake, and entwined it about her neck. With the help of these symbols of wisdom and cunning she at once began to evoke her familiar spirits. To this end she made weird passes through the air with her clawlike hands, crying in a whispered, high-pitched wail the word, "Labbayk, labbayk," an Arabian word ...
— A Forest Hearth: A Romance of Indiana in the Thirties • Charles Major
... you gloat—no—you're not doing that. But you are right. I could have checked it further. But I didn't. Outworld Enterprises is far bigger than Flora—and I was busy. Galactic trade is a snake-pit. And, after all, there was Douglas's death—and the Family with their never-ending clamor for money and their threats when it didn't come promptly. I like being an entrepreneur, but until I made Outworld independent ...
— The Lani People • J. F. Bone
... him; but, Lord, if thar's a feller in the country that can swear to anything and everything, and put in all the circumstances and flourishes with a long face, and carry 't through better 'n I can, why, I'd like to see him, that's all! I b'lieve my heart, I could get along and snake through, even if justices were more particular than they is. Sometimes I rather wish they was more particular; 't would be a heap more relishin' if they was,—more ...
— Uncle Tom's Cabin • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... Yankee snake! Smash my brains! D'ye know that that ship has been a hangin' about the north side of Cuba for ever so long, interruptin' our trade? And you an Englishman, to go and ax him ...
— Captain Brand of the "Centipede" • H. A. (Henry Augustus) Wise
... life as soon as it quarrels with itself." On the borderland of psychology we may find sayings like these: "As a tailor's needle fastens the thread in the garment, so the thread of our earthly life becomes fastened by the needle of our desires"; "An elephant kills us if he touches us, a snake even if he smells us, a prince even if he smiles on us, and a scoundrel even if he adores us." But there is one saying which the most modern psychologist would accept, as it might just as well be a quotation from a report of the latest exact statistics. The Indian maxim says: "There is truth ...
— Psychology and Social Sanity • Hugo Muensterberg
... a fish, boy," said the doctor, examining the prize through his glasses, "and it has been seized and constricted by a sea snake. Dear me! bliss my soul! that's very curious. Look here, Captain Smithers, and ladies. Gray, a fresh bucket ...
— Middy and Ensign • G. Manville Fenn
... in the course of my surveying, and never did I see Gone to the Dogs more clearly written on any spot; the half-burnt or overthrown trees lying about overgrown with wild vines and raspberries, the snake fence broken down, the log-house looking as if a touch would upset it, and nothing hopeful but a couple of patches of maize and potatoes, and a great pumpkin climbing up a stump. My horse and myself were done up, so I halted, and was amazed at the greeting I received ...
— Hopes and Fears - scenes from the life of a spinster • Charlotte M. Yonge
... up, and stood at ease, not without rough grace, in a sinuous line, coiled and knotted like a snake. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 09, No. 51, January, 1862 • Various
... scattered shares of their stock. He figured that before midnight he would have them in his possession. As to the next day and the next steps, well, the nerve of a real American plunger clings to life until the sunset of all hopes, even as the snake's tail, though the serpent's head be bruised beyond repair, is supposed ...
— Blow The Man Down - A Romance Of The Coast - 1916 • Holman Day
... silver box; in the silver box is a golden box, and in that is the book. It is twisted all round with snakes and scorpions and all the other crawling things around the box in which the book is; and there is a deathless snake by the box.' And when the priest told Na.nefer.ka.ptah, he did not know where on earth he was, he was ...
— Egyptian Tales, Second Series - Translated from the Papyri • W. M. Flinders Petrie
... the sea, the hills, the sky? Is it the flaming chariot from on high Which demons to some planet seem to bring? Oh, horror! from its wondrous centre, lo! A furious stream of lightning seems to flow Like a long snake uncoiling its ...
— Poems • Victor Hugo
... in jet-like streams, like steam puffed out from a tea-kettle. Again, it will appear as a series of short puffs of steam-like appearance. Again, it will twist along like an eel or snake. Another time it will twist its way like a corkscrew. At other times it will appear as a bomb, or series of bombs projected from the aura of the thinker. Sometimes, as in the case of a vigorous thinker or speaker, ...
— Clairvoyance and Occult Powers • Swami Panchadasi
... writing-tables in the lounge. Ursula Dearmer (she grows more mature every day) and the War Correspondents and a few Generals have melted somewhere into the background. The long, lithe pigskin belt lies between us on the table—between my friend and me—like a pale snake. It exerts some malign and poisonous influence. It makes me say things, things that I should not have thought it possible to say. And it is all ...
— A Journal of Impressions in Belgium • May Sinclair
... subscribed a guinea each to the fund for the suppression of war. These efforts, one and all, spent their fire as vainly as Darwin spent his wrath against the icebergs: the icebergs are as big and as cold as ever; and war is still, like a basking snake, ready to rear his horrid crest on the ...
— Theological Essays and Other Papers v1 • Thomas de Quincey
... Gone to their final rest, Dead in their last encampment Lay the ones I loved the best. And then, when my heart was lightest, It came with a snake-like tread, And darkened the day that was brightest, Then ...
— The Poets and Poetry of Cecil County, Maryland • Various
... and invited her genially to his telephone. He had been sitting at his table, surrounded by the snakes that for him took the place of a family. On the table was a bowl of milk from which a large bull-snake, in a gay Turkey-carpet design, was drinking. A yellow and black python lay coiled in several figures of eight in the armchair, and an intelligent-looking small dust-coloured snake with a broad nose and an active tongue leaned out ...
— Living Alone • Stella Benson
... pleased to be able to laugh. Her friends were standing at the house door, farewells were spoken, Alvan had gone. And then she thought of the person that Ophelia of fifty might be, who would have to find a good apology for him in his dose of snake-bite, or love of a younger woman ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... Science!" The learned doctor should have written "Conflict between the Church and Science." Religion is not and never was at war with science. Prof. Greener should have written, "Mohammedanism better for the Africans than Snake Worship." This brilliant young man cannot afford to attempt to exalt Mohammedanism above the cross of our dear Redeemer, and expect to have leadership in the Negro race in America. Nor can he support the detestable ideas and execrable philosophy ...
— History of the Negro Race in America from 1619 to 1880. Vol. 2 (of 2) - Negroes as Slaves, as Soldiers, and as Citizens • George Washington Williams
... conscience, sir, the Holy Spirit within the higher self. Your symbols urge you to noble deeds, yet you will never be blessed by woman's love, nor aid. Do you see the standing well-poised form of a woman? Rising power—creative force. See she has her feet firm on the back of the monster snake. You will soon become master of your higher destiny. I feel inspired by a mighty impulse. You will stand before many people—see the tall, straight ladder of fame—I should say that you are holding some still-cherished, mighty plans, despite many of ...
— Cupology - How to Be Entertaining • Clara
... she says, a woman ought to look—straight as a dart, supple as a snake, and proud as ...
— The Reflections of Ambrosine - A Novel • Elinor Glyn
... her son resembled the fascination of a snake: once within her reach he was unable to resist her; and when in their tete-a-tete she reproached him with ill-faith towards her, prophesied the overthrow of the Church, the desertion of his allies, ...
— The Chaplet of Pearls • Charlotte M. Yonge
... of the temples. Of my mother I knew naught, for she died when I yet hung at the breast. But before she died in the reign of Ptolemy Auletes, who is named the Piper, so did the old wife, Atoua, told me, my mother took a golden uraeus, the snake symbol of our Royalty of Egypt, from a coffer of ivory and laid it on my brow. And those who saw her do this believed that she was distraught of the Divinity, and in her madness foreshadowed that the day of the Macedonian Lagidae ...
— Cleopatra • H. Rider Haggard
... their strangeness spread, The dark-faced Arab in his long blue gown, The camel thrusting down a snake-like head To browse on thorns outside a walled white town. Where palmy clusters rank by rank upright Float as in quivering lakes of ...
— Poems by Jean Ingelow, In Two Volumes, Volume II. • Jean Ingelow
... poured over the sand, which sucked them down with a thirsting, crisping whisper. A pair of wild doves, surprised and terrified, bolted close past the lone rider, so near that his mount shied and headed for the shelter of the trees again. A small snake, curving indecisively and with obvious bewilderment amidst the growth, paused to rattle a faint warning, half coiled in case the horse's step meant a new threat, then went on with a rather piteous air of ...
— Success - A Novel • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... and wicked eyes of a huge python faced him. The great snake, escaping somehow from the catastrophe to the menagerie ship, had swum for the same refuge Jack had chosen. Now it was dragging its brilliantly mottled body, as thick as a man's thigh, up upon the hatchway. The floating "raft" dipped under the great snake's weight, while Jack, literally ...
— The Ocean Wireless Boys And The Naval Code • John Henry Goldfrap, AKA Captain Wilbur Lawton
... being fiat and dreary in the extreme, and consisting apparently of an endless plain, dotted here and there with heaps of earth, like mud-pies magnified, with the black Peiho serpentining through it in its snake-like curves. ...
— Crown and Anchor - Under the Pen'ant • John Conroy Hutcheson
... first view of the valley and lake is as follows:— "The thicket down the narrows, at the mouth of the canon, was so dense that we could not penetrate through it. I crawled for some distance on my hands and knees through this thicket, until I was compelled to return, admonished to by the rattle of a snake which lay coiled up under my nose, having almost put my hand on him; but as he gave me the friendly warning, I thanked him and retreated. We raised on to a high point south of the narrows, where we got a view of the Great Salt Lake and this valley, and each of us, without saying a word to the ...
— The Story of the Mormons: • William Alexander Linn
... Agiochook! the jackals of the negro- holder.... What boots thy zeal, O glowing friend, that would indignant rend the northland from the South? Wherefore? To what good end? Boston Bay and Bunker Hill would serve things still—things are of the snake. The horseman serves the horse, the neat-herd serves the neat, the merchant serves the purse, the eater serves his meat; 'tis the day of the chattel, web to weave, and corn to grind; things are in the saddle, and ...
— Confessions and Criticisms • Julian Hawthorne
... call them that, and some call them ichneumon," said the man. "Snake-catcher is what I call them, and Teddy is amazing quick on cobras. I have one here without the fangs, and Teddy catches it every night to please the folk in ...
— Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes • Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
... old man pondered for a moment. "I felt mighty shaky once, I rickalect; dat time yalla m'latta man shootin' at me f 'um behime a snake-fence." ...
— Seventeen - A Tale Of Youth And Summer Time And The Baxter Family Especially William • Booth Tarkington
... circumstances we are in, we think it right so to do. We have resolved to give an account of this matter to the King, which is but reasonable; some imagine that we propose to send the original decree, but here lies the snake in the grass. I protest, monsieur," added he, turning to the First President, "that the members did not understand it so, but that the copy only should be carried to Court, and the original be kept in the register. I could wish there had been no occasion for explanation, ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... Then she confessed to herself that she felt nothing extraordinary. This disappointment quickly gave way to a new hope, and Emma returned to him more inflamed, more eager than ever. She undressed brutally, tearing off the thin laces of her corset that nestled around her hips like a gliding snake. She went on tiptoe, barefooted, to see once more that the door was closed, then, pale, serious, and, without speaking, with one movement, she threw herself upon his breast with ...
— Madame Bovary • Gustave Flaubert
... into the hole. "I'm not afraid of snakes. I like them. If it is a snake I'll tame it, and it will follow me everywhere, and I'll let it sleep round my ...
— Five Children and It • E. Nesbit
... has been no alteration; and therefore they take upon them to defend all the writings of George Fox, and others of the first Quakers, and turn and wind them to make them (but it is impossible) agree with what they teach now at this day." (The Snake in the Grass, 3rd ed. 1698. Introduction.) Leslie was always more civil to his brother Jacobite Penn than to any other Quaker. Penn himself says of his master, "As abruptly and brokenly as sometimes his sentences would fall from him about divine ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 4 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... a huge black snake, about ten feet long, showed itself in the grass. Glynn took aim at once, but the piece, being an old flint-lock, missed fire. Before he could again take aim the loathsome-looking reptile had glided ...
— The Red Eric • R.M. Ballantyne
... seldom from his mouth; besides which, he has always his do-little sword by his side, made by themselves of such iron as they get from the Europeans; his bow also, and quiver full of poisoned arrows, pointed with iron like a snake's-tongue, or else a case of javelins or darts, having iron heads of good breadth and made sharp, ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. VIII. • Robert Kerr
... being, as I have just said, of all times and nations,—it is an interior and more delicate difference which we are examining in the gift of Christian, as distinguished from unchristian, song. Orpheus, Pindar, and Horace are indeed distinct from the prosaic rabble, as the bird from the snake; but between Orpheus and Palestrina, Horace and Sidney, there is another division, and a new power of music and song given to the humanity which has hope ...
— The Crown of Wild Olive • John Ruskin
... tidings. Finally, lightning and thunder, rain and storm, came on altogether and executed a mad dervish dance. The bamboo clumps seemed to howl as the raging wind swept the ground with them, now to the east, now to the west. Over all, the storm droned like a giant snake-charmer's pipe, and to its rhythm swayed hundreds and thousands of crested waves, like so many hooded snakes. The thunder was incessant, as though a whole world was being pounded to pieces away there behind ...
— Glimpses of Bengal • Sir Rabindranath Tagore
... bicyclists, are apt to get tired of them, and, tiring, break them off, so to speak, in mid-air, leaving them suspended, like snapped ends of string). But however uncertain their goal may be, their form is not uncertain at all; it can be relied on to be that of a snake in agony leaping down a hill or up; or, if one prefers it, that of a corkscrew ...
— Dangerous Ages • Rose Macaulay
... these poor children was a wicked witch. She had seen the children go away, and, following them cautiously like a snake, had bewitched all the springs and streams in the forest. The pleasant trickling of a brook over the pebbles was heard by the children as they reached it, and the boy was just stooping to drink, when the sister heard in ...
— Fairy Tales Every Child Should Know • Various
... from newspaper scandal. This crime is so ingenious that I believe it has a more powerful motive than mere robbery. You are now at the head of a great house of finance and society. You must guard your mother and your sister, and those yet to come. A deadly snake is writhing its slimy trail somewhere: here—there—'round about us! Who knows where it will strike next? Who knows how far that blow may reach—even unto China, ...
— The Voice on the Wire • Eustace Hale Ball
... clear to-day, but his heart is made small with overwhelming deference or in unshrinking loyalty he would cry: 'Hear and obey! All, all—Flags, Ironcaps, Tigers, Braves—all to the Seng valley, leaving behind them the swallow in their march and moving with the guile and secrecy of the ringed tree-snake.'" With these words Ten-teh's endurance passed its drawn-out limit and again repeating in a clear and decisive voice, "All, all to the north!" he released his joints and would have fallen to the ground had it not been ...
— Kai Lung's Golden Hours • Ernest Bramah
... tree, rise with their pleasant company. Never a beast or bird is there, in that hoary desert bare. Nothing breaks the almighty stillness. Even the jackal's felon cry might seem a soothing melody. A grey wild cat, with snowy whiskers, out of a withered bramble stealing, with a youthful snake in its ivory teeth, in the moonlight gleams with glee. This ...
— Hours in a Library - New Edition, with Additions. Vol. II (of 3) • Leslie Stephen
... With shield upon his arm, in knightly wise, Belted and mailed, his helmet on his head; The knight more lightly through the forest hies Than half-clothed churl to win the cloth of red. But not from cruel snake more swiftly flies The timid shepherdess, with startled tread, Than poor Angelica the bridle turns When she the ...
— Orlando Furioso • Lodovico Ariosto
... prairie dogs, and we have fallen in with a prairie dog town, though I little expected to find one so far north," answered the Dominie; "we should farther away find them covering acres of ground. It is said that an owl and a rattle-snake are invariably to be found in each hole, living in perfect amity with its inmates, but I suspect that although rattlesnakes are often to be found in the abodes of the small rodents, their object in going there is rather to devour the young prairie dogs than for any friendly purpose, ...
— With Axe and Rifle • W.H.G. Kingston
... keep a secretary-bird away from snakes till it grows old, but the first reptile it sees it immediately starts out to beat him up. I had the inherited hate that makes the secretary-bird rush madly at a snake that may be the first of its species that it has ever seen, and I guess that Leith had no love to spare for me from the ...
— The White Waterfall • James Francis Dwyer
... I have seen whiskey-snakes in squirming masses three feet deep. I have gone into a parlor, and had a lady say when she saw me fumbling in my pockets: 'Doctor, your handkerchief is in your back pocket.' Bless her! I was only putting back into my pockets the jim-jam snake-heads as the snakes would try to emerge! I pity a weak devil that goes home and to bed because of a mild attack of delirium tremens. I brush the vipers away with a sweep of my hand, and go about my business. But I myself draw the line ...
— A Strange Discovery • Charles Romyn Dake
... command stopped the music and brought the Guards to a halt. The horses dashed madly forward, barely missing the color and its escort. A ready-witted sergeant grabbed at the loose reins flapping in the air, but they eluded him with a snake-like twist. The next wild leap brought the carriage pole against a lamp-post, and both were broken. Then one of the animals stumbled, half turned, backed, and locked the front wheels. A lady, the sole occupant, was discarding some ...
— The Wheel O' Fortune • Louis Tracy
... obvious reasons, these kinds of bites are more frequently met with than those of snakes. The treatment is the same as that for snake-bites, more especially that of the bitten part. The majority of writers on the subject are in favour of keeping the wound open as long as possible. This may be done by putting a few beans on it, and then by applying a ...
— The Book of Household Management • Mrs. Isabella Beeton
... at the further upper corner of the potato-field, and by the faint tints of violet light that flowed over the brown soil from a pallid and fading sunset. As the sky was scrawled by the gray-and-black rampikes, so the slope was scrawled by zigzag lines of gray-and-black snake fence, leading down to three log cabins, with their cluster of log barns and sheds, scattered irregularly along a terrace of the slope. A quarter of a mile further down, beyond the little gray dwellings, a sluggish ...
— The House in the Water - A Book of Animal Stories • Charles G. D. Roberts
... by a male snake, seemed to be women's counsellor from the beginning, making her skillful in cunning and tergiversation, it is fair to suppose that they were destined to commune with the spirit of evil for ever and ever, that is if women have souls and are immortal, ...
— The Woman's Bible. • Elizabeth Cady Stanton
... day our friends departed for the Charlotte, after making me several presents. From Mr. McMinn I obtained the course and distance of the pillar from our camp, and travelling on the course given, we crossed the Finke three times, as it wound about so snake-like across the country. On the 22nd we encamped upon it, having the pillar in ...
— Australia Twice Traversed, The Romance of Exploration • Ernest Giles
... I answered. "He was the hit of the evening. He pulled a few snake tricks down there and in five minutes he had all the members of the Highball Association climbing the water wagon. That was the same evening I took Clara J. to the St. Regis to dinner. Did I ever tell you about it, Bunch? Well, ...
— You Can Search Me • Hugh McHugh
... surmounting little knolls with an idle disregard for the straight line, knobby with big, round stones, and interestingly diversified by circular mud holes a foot or so in diameter. After a mile and a half we came to the corner of a snake fence. This, Dick informed me, marked ...
— The Forest • Stewart Edward White
... flew, nothing walked, nothing talked. But the thing in the hollow was stirring in stiff jerks like a snake with its back broken or a clockwork toy running down. When the movements stopped, there was a click and a strange sound began. Thin, scratchy, inaudible more than a yard away, weary but still cocky, there leaked from the shape ...
— Accidental Death • Peter Baily
... longer stand the pain and begged for mercy. But first he had to promise Notscha that he would not complain of him, before the latter would let him go. And then the dragon had to turn himself into a little green snake, which Notscha put into his sleeve and took back home with him. But no sooner had he drawn the little snake from his sleeve than it assumed human shape. The dragon then swore that he would punish Li Dsing in a terrible manner, and disappeared ...
— The Chinese Fairy Book • Various
... first Hedge-grown primrose that hath burst; Shaded hyacinth, alway Sapphire queen of the mid-May; And every leaf, and every flower Pearled with the self-same shower. Thou shalt see the field-mouse peep Meagre from its celled sleep; And the snake all winter-thin Cast on sunny bank its skin; Freckled nest eggs thou shalt see Hatching in the hawthorn-tree, When the hen-bird's wing doth rest Quiet on her mossy nest; Then the hurry and alarm When the bee-hive casts its swarm; Acorns ripe down-pattering While the ...
— The Golden Treasury - Of the Best Songs and Lyrical Poems in the English Language • Various
... and Christian recognize their respective religions as different stages in the development of the human mind, as different snake skins which history has cast off, and men as the snakes encased therein, they stand no longer in a religious relationship, but in a critical, a scientific, a human one. Science then constitutes their unity. ...
— Selected Essays • Karl Marx
... costume. It was a question whether Cornelia who came as herself, was lovelier than Charmian, who was easily recognizable as Cleopatra, with ophidian accessories in her dress that suggested at once the serpent of old Nile, and a Moqui snake-dancer. Cornelia looked more beautiful than ever; her engagement with Ludlow had come out and she moved in the halo of poetic interest which betrothal gives a girl with all other girls; it was thought an inspiration that she should not have come in costume, but in her ...
— The Coast of Bohemia • William Dean Howells
... at the starting point, and instead of coming out with the animal, stayed in by himself, and for the fact that an unfortunate mistake in map reading, caused the Battalion to perform a most startling and snake-like turning feat in a lane only a few feet wide, the mistake being discovered just as the last transport vehicle had entered the lane. However, as it was a bright day and we were going away, great good humour prevailed, and each Company played "Here we go round the water cart" ...
— The Sherwood Foresters in the Great War 1914 - 1919 - History of the 1/8th Battalion • W.C.C. Weetman
... "'A snake!' she said, pointing to a reptile which was gliding along the edge of a ditch. 'I am afraid of the ...
— Sarrasine • Honore de Balzac
... connection with the new Northern Pacific. At the same time, another road, known as the Oregon Short Line Railroad, was built from Granger, Wyoming, on the line of the Union Pacific to a junction with the Oregon Railway and Navigation Company at Huntington, Oregon, on the Snake River. The Oregon Short Line came under the control of the Union Pacific and was opened for traffic in 1881. Later a close alliance was made with Henry Villard, the controlling spirit in the Oregon Railway and Navigation ...
— The Railroad Builders - A Chronicle of the Welding of the States, Volume 38 in The - Chronicles of America Series • John Moody
... be made pets, like Miss Tabitha's snake or toad, Selwyn would have fondled a hangman. He loved the noble art of execution, and was a connoisseur of the execution of the art. In childhood he must have decapitated his rocking-horse, hanged his doll ...
— The Wits and Beaux of Society - Volume 2 • Grace & Philip Wharton
... quarantine upon those who aspired to the honor and privilege of holding The Luck. It was a cruel mortification to Kentuck—who, in the carelessness of a large nature and the habits of frontier life, had begun to regard all garments as a second cuticle, which, like a snake's, only sloughed off through decay—to be debarred this privilege from certain prudential reasons. Yet such was the subtle influence of innovation that he thereafter appeared regularly every afternoon in a clean shirt and face still shining from ...
— The Luck of Roaring Camp and Other Tales • Bret Harte
... was released, and both flew down the Court, on the pavement of which the snake-like water-hose lay spirting at ...
— Rivers of Ice • R.M. Ballantyne
... position of the eyes, see so well straight in front. In this case, the hare never perceived the fox until it was within a few feet of it; whereupon it stopped short, and the two sat up facing each other, evidently mutually fascinated, as the bird is said to be by the snake. They thus remained motionless, or powerless to move, for some minutes, until my nearer approach attracted their attention and broke the spell, whereupon they both bounded off in different directions. This, I am told by an authority, ...
— Records of Woodhall Spa and Neighbourhood - Historical, Anecdotal, Physiographical, and Archaeological, with Other Matter • J. Conway Walter
... happens, don't let this heredity bogey get the upper hand of you. The taint you speak of is no more, as yet, than inherited tendency: and this accident—if you believe in accident, I don't—gives you the chance of killing the snake in the egg. Now light up, there's a good chap; just ...
— The Great Amulet • Maud Diver
... age begins anew, The golden years return, The earth doth like a snake renew Her winter weeds outworn; Heaven smiles, and faiths and empires gleam Like wrecks of ...
— Book of English Verse • Bulchevy
... was a robin and she was making that noise a robin makes when she is scared 'most to pieces, and on another limb there was a red squirrel, and he was chattering so I knew he was scared, too. And down under the tree there was a snake pointed right at a little toad, and I stamped my foot and hollered to scare him away; and that same minute he struck and the toad fell over, whether poisoned to death or scared to death I didn't know. And the snake slipped away, because he was afraid of me, just as the ...
— Old Crow • Alice Brown
... Castle The Fair Maids of February The Loveless Youth The Wind Flower The Fate of Hyacinthus St. Leonard and the Fiery Snake A Fair Prisoner The Ungrateful Traveler The Star of Bethlehem The Angel's Gift The Holy Hay The Search for Gold The ...
— The Enchanted Castle - A Book of Fairy Tales from Flowerland • Hartwell James
... we are forced to lie prone on the ground hour after hour, not daring to move and not daring to send reliefs at the appointed intervals. So intense has the rifle-fire been around the Su Wang-fu and the French Legation lines, that high above the deafening roar of battle a distinct and ominous snake-like hissing can be heard—a hiss, hiss, hiss, that never ceases. It is the high-velocity nickel-nosed bullet tearing through the air at lightning speed, and spitting with rage at its ill success in driving home on some unfortunate wretch. ...
— Indiscreet Letters From Peking • B. L. Putman Weale
... presents of food of all kinds were fairly showered upon me, including such delicacies as kangaroo and opossum meat, rats, snakes, tree-worms, fish, &c., which were always left outside my hut. Baked snake, I ought to mention, was a very pleasant dish indeed, but as there was no salt forthcoming, and the flesh was very tasteless, I cannot say I enjoyed this particular native dainty. The snakes were invariably baked whole in their skins, and the meat was very tender ...
— The Adventures of Louis de Rougemont - as told by Himself • Louis de Rougemont
... awestruck, and the face of the Lady Amelia became very dark. Was it not evident that this snake, when taken into their innermost bosoms that they might there warm him, was becoming an adder, and preparing to sting them? There was very little more conversation that evening, and soon after the story of the cook, Crosbie got up and went away to ...
— The Small House at Allington • Anthony Trollope
... been written on snake-worship, in which a wonderful amount of metaphysical lore has been expended. Mr. Herbert Spencer devotes several pages to the snake, and the reason for its appearance in the religion of primitive peoples. He ascribes to savages a psychical acuteness that I am by no means willing ...
— Religion and Lust - or, The Psychical Correlation of Religious Emotion and Sexual Desire • James Weir
... off her horse and sat down to watch him while Bowers enumerated the possibilities of snake skins as decorations. ...
— The Fighting Shepherdess • Caroline Lockhart
... any thing resembling a hut. They made use of the word "kangaroo" and other terms in use at Port Jackson. The party saw only the three kinds of animals above-mentioned, and heard the barking of the native dog; no other reptiles but iguanas and lizards and a single snake ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction. - Volume XIII, No. 369, Saturday, May 9, 1829. • Various
... amulets or talismans were used by the Breton peasantry to neutralize the power of sorcerers. Thus, if a person carried a snake with him the enchanters would be unable to harm his sight, and all objects would appear to him under their natural forms. Salt placed in various parts of a house guarded it against the entrance of wizards and ...
— Legends & Romances of Brittany • Lewis Spence
... the thought of being chucked into the hole, eh, my yellow snake?" drawled Little Billy, strolling over to Ichi's resting place. Despite his knowledge that the hunchback was acting, Martin shuddered at his tones; his voice was vibrant with bitter hate. "But it is not what you like this time, Ichi. It is what ...
— Fire Mountain - A Thrilling Sea Story • Norman Springer
... of his horse and followed the broad cattle trail. The crushed sage resembled the path of a monster snake. In a few miles of travel he passed several cows and calves that had escaped the drive. Then he stood on the last high bench of the slope with the floor of the valley beneath. The opening of the canyon showed ...
— Riders of the Purple Sage • Zane Grey
... among the Chosen People we find the priests attesting their favour with the Deity, and asserting the truth of their religion, by what we may call orthodox magic. We all remember how Aaron's rod, in the form of an orthodox snake, swallowed up the unorthodox rod-snakes of the Egyptian sorcerers, and how Elijah attested the power of the true God by calling down fire from heaven in his contest with the priests of the Sun-god Baal. King Solomon ...
— The Faust-Legend and Goethe's 'Faust' • H. B. Cotterill |
