"Serpent" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... from rectitude. He either tyrannized or deceived; and was by turns a Dionysius and a Scapin. [Footnote: The spirit of this observation has been well condensed in the compound name given by the Abbe de Pradt to Napoleon—"Jupiter Scapin."] As well might the writhing obliquity of the serpent be compared to the swift directness of the arrow, as the duplicity of Mr. Hastings's ambition to the simple steadiness of genuine magnanimity. In his mind all was shuffling, ambiguous, dark, insidious, and little: nothing simple, nothing unmixed: ...
— Memoirs of the Life of the Rt. Hon. Richard Brinsley Sheridan V1 • Thomas Moore
... religious beliefs. To this day if an ordinary man is asked to give his recollections of the story of Adam and Eve he is sure to put Milton as well as Genesis into them. For instance, the Miltonic Satan is almost sure to take the place of the scriptural serpent. The influence Milton has had is unfortunately also seen in less satisfactory ways. He claimed to justify the ways of God to men. Perhaps he did so to his own mind {144} which, in these questions, was curiously matter-of-fact, literal, legal and unmystical. He was determined to explain ...
— Milton • John Bailey
... a serpent belt, crusted with diamond scales, emerald-eyed, and having its open mouth lined with rubies. "Isn't that lovely?" she asked. "An antique, of course; everything is in this window. I daren't look at it. It's ...
— The Castle Of The Shadows • Alice Muriel Williamson
... Sanskrit scholar who shall make allowances for corrupt orthography many of these names will be familiar. For Batara he will read avatara; and in Naga-padoha he will recognise the serpent ...
— The History of Sumatra - Containing An Account Of The Government, Laws, Customs And - Manners Of The Native Inhabitants • William Marsden
... Jerusalem: and Jerusalem shall be called a city of truth; and the mountain of the Lord of hosts the holy mountain."—Zech. 8:3. "The wolf and the lamb shall feed together, and the lion shall eat straw like the bullock: and the dust shall be the serpent's meat. They shall not hurt nor destroy in all my holy ...
— Sanctification • J. W. Byers
... disobedient to parents. We cannot escape these scandals; and God has said that He has sent us like sheep in the midst of wolves. It is necessary for us then to combine the innocence of the dove with the prudence of the serpent. Now, when the precursor of Antichrist erects himself against the Church, he must find us innocent and prudent; these dispositions constitute wisdom. We must hate no one, but bear with the madmen who would violate the law of God. Remember that God, descending a second ...
— The Truce of God - A Tale of the Eleventh Century • George Henry Miles
... the lancet-toothed jaws to a sea-snake in a large bottle of spirits—an unpleasant looking little serpent, said to be poisonous. In a glass case was the complete shell of a lobster, out of which the crustacean had crawled; and beside this were some South Sea bows and arrows, pieces of coral from all parts of the world, a New Zealand paddle on the wall, opposite to ...
— Menhardoc • George Manville Fenn
... should quit the care of all the rest, and come to die in our world, because, they say, one man and one woman had eaten an apple! And, on the other hand, are we to suppose that every world in the boundless creation had an Eve, an apple, a serpent, and a redeemer? In this case, the person who is irreverently called the Son of God, and sometimes God himself, would have nothing else to do than to travel from world to world, in an endless succession of death, with scarcely a momentary interval ...
— The Writings Of Thomas Paine, Complete - With Index to Volumes I - IV • Thomas Paine
... visionary? the unicorn, the kraken, the sea-serpent, are all, perhaps, zoological facts. The unicorn, for instance, so far from being a lie, is rather too true; for, simply as a monokeras, he is found in the Himalaya, in Africa, and elsewhere, rather too often for ...
— Miscellaneous Essays • Thomas de Quincey
... it is not astonishing that they believed it due to divine intervention. We know, in fact, that Osiris or Bacchus was considered as the discoverer of the vine and of milk; that Iris was the genius of the waters of the Nile; and that the Serpent, or good genius, was the first cause of all these things. Since, moreover, sacrifices had to be made to the gods in order to obtain benefits, the flow of milk, wine, or water, as well as the hissing of the serpent, when the sacrificial flame was lighted, appeared ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 385, May 19, 1883 • Various
... the road the felling-sword cut a deep gap, and the group passed in. If it was a high rock, carpeted with verdure, over which the liana twisted like a serpent, they ...
— Eight Hundred Leagues on the Amazon • Jules Verne
... the world loves a lover, and none more so than the tattoo artist, or, to give him his professional name, Professor Sylvanus Ruffino, the world's champion, whose studio is in Commercial Road. When a young man of that district has been bitten by the serpent of love, what does he do? He goes to Sylvanus, and has the name of the lady, garnished with a heart or a floral cupid, engraved on his hands, arms, or chest. His "studio" is a tiny shop, with a gaudy chintz curtain for door, the window decorated with prints ...
— Nights in London • Thomas Burke
... costume of Mother Eve, and they consented on the condition that we would adopt the dress of Father Adam, and that blind musicians were summoned. I told them that I would take off my clothes to oblige them, but that I had no hopes of being able to imitate the seductive serpent. I was allowed to retain my dress, on the condition that if I felt the prick of the flesh I should immediately undress. I agreed to do so, and the blind musicians were sent for, and while they tuned their instruments toilettes were ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... had ordained a great jousting, which brought into Paris an infinite number of people, baptised and infidel; for there was truce proclaimed, in order that every knight might come. There was King Grandonio from Spain, with his serpent's face; and Ferragus, with his eyes like an eagle; and Balugante, the emperor's kinsman; and Orlando, and Rinaldo, and Duke Namo; and Astolfo of England, the handsomest of mankind; and the enchanter Malagigi; and Isoliero and Salamone; and the traitor Gan, with his scoundrel ...
— Stories from the Italian Poets: With Lives of the Writers, Vol. 2 • Leigh Hunt
... of not more than three cables' lengths from us, rushing through the water at a speed equal to that of a railway train, and lashing the water into foam with the rapid movement of his huge convolutions, a monstrous serpent appeared, darting towards the wretched ...
— For Treasure Bound • Harry Collingwood
... garden. The dew had left on the cabbages a silver lace with long transparent threads spreading from one to the other. No birds were to be heard; everything seemed asleep, the espalier covered with straw, and the vine, like a great sick serpent under the coping of the wall, along which, on drawing hear, one saw the many-footed woodlice crawling. Under the spruce by the hedgerow, the curie in the three-cornered hat reading his breviary had lost his right foot, and the very plaster, ...
— Madame Bovary • Gustave Flaubert
... entrails thus are racked with pain And horrid agony, while the serpent's bite Spreads its black venom through his ...
— The Academic Questions • M. T. Cicero
... appear as a Gypsy; she had made her too proud and serious. A more proper part for her was that of a heroine, a queenly heroine,—that of Theresa of Hungary, for example; or, better still, that of Brynhilda the Valkyrie, the beloved of Sigurd, the serpent-killer, who incurred the curse of Odin, because, in the tumult of spears, she sided with the young king, and doomed the old warrior to die, to ...
— George Borrow - The Man and His Books • Edward Thomas
... they were already at the gates of death, and they ought to be most favored since they were most needy. They asked questions about the life eternal; and while the father was explaining to them the resurrection of the body he was aided, by a man recently baptized, with the simile of the serpent, which sheds and then renews its skin, and with other comparisons of that sort. On his road the same father visited a little village, called Baibai, and baptized there ninety persons, ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898, - Volume XIII., 1604-1605 • Ed. by Blair and Robertson
... gnat.] We haue not yet found any venomous Serpent or other hurtfull thing in these parts, but there is a kind of small flie or gnat that stingeth and offendeth sorely, leauing many red spots in the face, and other places where she stingeth. They haue snow ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques, and Discoveries of The English Nation, Vol. XII., America, Part I. • Richard Hakluyt
... paused and listened before he pushed open the door, and that with our first step inside he cast a look of inquiry at the bed that had something beside a son's loving anxiety in it. And I hated the man as I would a serpent, though he bowed as he set me a chair, and was careful to move a light he thought shone a little too ...
— The Mill Mystery • Anna Katharine Green
... a fool, for instead of backing out, as you know animals are quick to do at sight of a rattler, he began to snuff and cavort about the snake, and finally brought his front hoofs down on it. Of course, he cut the serpent all to ribbons, but afore he done it the buck was stung once or twice, and inside of half an hour he jined the rattler he had sent on afore. Rattlers are as bad as Injins!" muttered Boone, with ...
— The Phantom of the River • Edward S. Ellis
... the mist, a high cross standing in the midst of a small grove of yews and cypresses, planted formally about it. There were three tiers of steps at its foot, the lowest partly screened from the gathering rain by the trees. The shaft of the cross, with a serpent twining about its base, rose high above the cypresses; and the image of the Christ hanging upon its crossbeams fronted the east, which was now heavy with clouds. The half-closed eyes seemed to be gazing over ...
— The Doctor's Dilemma • Hesba Stretton
... arrayed all in lily white, And in her right hand bore a cup of gold, With wine and water filled up to the height, In which a serpent did himself enfold, That horror made to all that did behold; But she no whit ...
— Annals of a Quiet Neighbourhood • George MacDonald
... truce with Slavery make, Thy deadly foe; In fair disguises dressed, Too long hast thou caress'd The serpent in thy breast, ...
— The Anti-Slavery Harp • Various
... find no serpents there, my Julia," said the queen, drawing the arm of the duchess to herself. "Lean upon me, my friend, and be persuaded that I will defend you against every serpent, and every ...
— Marie Antoinette And Her Son • Louise Muhlbach
... hero of so many tales that made our flesh creep; but the shepherd always refused to take me into his straw hut, in the middle of the fold, at night. When we had done talking about the horrid wolf, the dragon and the serpent and when the resinous splinters had given out their last gleams, we went to sleep the sweet sleep that toil gives. As the youngest of the household, I had a right to the mattress, a sack stuffed with oat chaff. The others had to be ...
— The Life of the Fly - With Which are Interspersed Some Chapters of Autobiography • J. Henri Fabre
... miscall, this evil a child of God. Philosophy would multiply and subdivide personality into everything that exists, whether expressive or not expressive of the Mind which is God. Human wisdom says of evil, "The Lord knows it!" thus carrying out the serpent's assurance: "In the day ye eat thereof [when you, lie, get the floor], then your eyes shall be opened [you shall be conscious matter], and ye shall be as gods, knowing good and evil [you shall believe a lie, and this ...
— Unity of Good • Mary Baker Eddy
... all alone with his herds! Poor Amos! And at twelve o'clock at night, hark to the wolf's bark, and the lion's roar, and the bear's growl, and the owl's te-whit-te-whos, and the serpent's hiss, as he unwittingly steps too near while moving through the thickets! So Amos, like other herdsmen, got the habit of studying the map of the heavens, because it was so much of the time spread out before him. He noticed some stars advancing and ...
— New Tabernacle Sermons • Thomas De Witt Talmage
... was generally believed to have originated out of a watery chaos, and to float, as it were, upon the deep. This belief was derived from Eridu, where it was also taught that the deep surrounded the earth like the coils of a serpent. ...
— Babylonians and Assyrians, Life and Customs • Rev. A. H. Sayce
... were written above the figure. First, there is the same Horus name which occurs on all the inscribed objects of this tomb and which may be translated "The Warrior." Beside the Horus name in a sort of cartouche is the title "Lord of Vulture and Serpent Crown" (Lord of Upper and Lower Egypt), and beneath the title the sign which represents a checkerboard, and has the syllabic value Mn. There can therefore be no doubt that the king buried in the royal tomb ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 1178, June 25, 1898 • Various
... have said nothing to her. To Milly herself it had for some days been secretly saying much. The personage in question was, as she explained, the greatest of medical lights if she had got hold, as she believed (and she had used to this end the wisdom of the serpent) of the right, the special man. She had written to him three days before, and he had named her an hour, eleven-twenty; only it had come to her, on the eve, that she couldn't go alone. Her maid, on the other hand, wasn't good ...
— The Wings of the Dove, Volume 1 of 2 • Henry James
... be said that he was inconsistent in his lessons. He dragged in all that came to his hand for the astonishment of Liubka. Once he brought along for her a large self-made serpent—a long cardboard hose, filled with gunpowder, bent in the form of a harmonica, and tied tightly across with a cord. He lit it, and the serpent for a long time with crackling jumped over the dining room and the bedroom, filling the place with smoke and stench. ...
— Yama (The Pit) • Alexandra Kuprin
... Neck-curv'd, serpent, silent, scaled With lock'd rainbows, stole the sea; On the sleek, long beaches; wail'd Doves from column ...
— Old Spookses' Pass • Isabella Valancy Crawford
... a long silence. Mr. Grimm still sat with his elbows on his knees, staring, staring at the vague white splotch which was Miss Thorne's face and bare neck. One of her white arms hung at her side like a pallid serpent, and her hand was at rest on the seat ...
— Elusive Isabel • Jacques Futrelle
... of a woman, nearly forty feet in height. Her left wrist rests upon a mighty shield; her right hand holds a winged "Victory," itself of nigh human size. Upon her breast is the awful egis, the especial breastplate of the high gods. Around the foot of her shield coils a serpent. Upon her head is a might helmet. And all the time that these things are becoming manifest, evermore clearly one beholds the majestic face,—sweetness without weakness, intellectuality without coldness, strength mingled justly with compassion. This is the Athena ...
— A Day In Old Athens • William Stearns Davis
... space. The two stars called the Aselli, which lie on either side of 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 ...
— Myths and Marvels of Astronomy • Richard A. Proctor
... they got away themselves, dashing blindly in the wake of their exhausted little army, ready to turn at command and hold again, and escape again, and once more hold the unending blue lines, with their unnumbered guns, unwinding like an endless serpent in their rear. ...
— The Dark Tower • Phyllis Bottome
... with tears. She seized a silk embroidered handkerchief and threw it over her face. In a moment it was all wet; and she sat for some time with her beautiful head thrown back, and her snowy teeth set on her lovely under-lip, as though she suddenly felt the sting of a poisonous serpent, without removing the handkerchief from her face, lest he should ...
— Taras Bulba and Other Tales • Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol
... with the impression that Miss Bell, under proper guidance, could very possibly do some fresh unconventional work for the Age. Freshness and unconventionality for the Age was what Mr. Rattray sought as they seek the jewel in the serpent's head in the far East. He talked to the editor-in-chief about it, mentioning the increasing lot of things concerning women that had to be touched, which only a woman could treat "from the inside," and the editor-in-chief agreed sulkily, because experience told him ...
— A Daughter of To-Day • Sara Jeannette Duncan (aka Mrs. Everard Cotes)
... yonder wooded hill, Leads to a spot where Nature decks herself In loveliness and beauty: far below Spreads the green valley, where a silent stream Turns, like a serpent writhing in its course; And, rarified by distance, kissing heaven, In many noble and fantastic shapes, A giant range of purple mountains sleeps. Grand is the scene, and in the centre stands The tomb of Osborne—after many years Of happiness and friendship, Lora rais'd ...
— Poems • Matilda Betham
... power of vituperative torment, which had driven a husband to the refuge of a reverted pistol; which had banished, for life, relatives and friends; and which, in the shape of a promissory curse, had held apart those who would have been husband and wife; and now, like the long stored up venom of a serpent, it burst out with the direful force given by concentration ...
— The Late Mrs. Null • Frank Richard Stockton
... "We are taught," she said, "that our Father loves us; that he rejoices with great joy in the return of a prodigal to his fold. The truth that he loves us better than we can ever love each other here, that none of us shall ask for bread and receive a stone, neither fish and receive a serpent, was spoken to us from the ages past. Christ came into the world as the bearer of all essential truths. His enemies, the Jews, knew he told the truth and hastened to crucify him, saying in plain words—'If he ...
— The Harvest of Years • Martha Lewis Beckwith Ewell
... miraculous comes into play. Had Christ, for example, limited himself to the conversion of water into wine, He would have fallen short of the performance of Jannes and Jambres; for it is a smaller thing to convert one liquid into another than to convert a dead rod into a living serpent. But Jannes and Jambres, we are informed, were not good. Hence, if Mr. Mozley's test be a true one, a point must exist, on the one side of which miraculous power demonstrates goodness, while on the other side it does not. How is this 'point of contrary flexure' to be determined? ...
— Fragments of science, V. 1-2 • John Tyndall
... open gallery, a shelter for horses; in the corner rooms without windows, and open doorways. Owen chose one, and the dragoman spoke of scorpions and vipers; and well he might do so, for Owen drove a hissing serpent out of his room immediately afterwards, killing it in the corridor. And then the question was, could the doorway be barricaded in such a way as to prevent ...
— Sister Teresa • George Moore
... her and adore her, and paint his lanky people and eat bread and cheese; he told me so, poor boy; he just used to lay his head down on my lap and cry like a baby sometimes. But Mercedes made it out that she was a victim and he was a serpent; and she believed it, too; that's the power of her; she's just determined to be in the right always. So at last she made it all out. She couldn't divorce Baldwin, being a Catholic; but she made it out that she wasn't really married to him. It appears he didn't ...
— Tante • Anne Douglas Sedgwick
... were not all based on numerals; he is sometimes equally profound in other modes. Thus he tells us that the condemnation of the serpent to eat dust typifies the sin of curiosity, since in eating dust he "penetrates the obscure and shadowy"; and that Noah's ark was "pitched within and without with pitch" to show the safety of the Church from the ...
— History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom • Andrew Dickson White
... the end was certain: first the fury, then the apathy of madness. He was no longer tortured with a visible haunting presence, such as had borne him down on that fatal night, but we saw plainly that he had taken the spectre into his own breast, and nursed it, as a bosom serpent, upon his rapidly ...
— Atlantic Monthly Vol. 6, No. 33, July, 1860 • Various
... hitherto in part restrained. But the instincts of the populace were suppressed rather than eradicated. They hung a sack from his statue by night in allusion to the old punishment of parricides, who were sentenced to be flung into the sea, tied up in a sack with a serpent, a monkey, and a cock. They exposed an infant in the Forum with a tablet on which was written, "I refuse to rear thee, lest thou shouldst slay thy mother." They scrawled upon the blank walls of Rome an iambic line which reminded all who read it that Nero, Orestes, ...
— Seekers after God • Frederic William Farrar
... with the poisonous reptile, whilst the Snake wriggled, and coiled its body into hoops and rings. The Kookooburra's strong wings, beating the air just above the writhing Snake, made a great noise, and the serpent hissed in its fierce hatred and anger. Then Dot saw that the Kookooburra's big beak had a firm hold of the Snake by the back of the neck, and that it was trying to fly upwards with its enemy. In vain the dreadful creature tried to bite the gallant bird; in vain ...
— Dot and the Kangaroo • Ethel C. Pedley
... the name; and we went out to seek for the owner of it. There was no trouble about that, for Bermuda is not large, and is like the earlier Garden of Eden, in that everybody in it knows everybody else, just as it was in the serpent's headquarters in Adam's time. We easily found Miss Kirkham—she that had been the blooming girl of a generation before—and she was still keeping boarders; but her mother had passed from this life. She settled the date for us, and did it with certainty, by help of a couple ...
— Chapters from My Autobiography • Mark Twain
... killed, the bitten man must also die. If he meets with an unfriendly reception in a hut, he brings ruin to the inmates; but if he is hospitably entertained, he brings good fortune and prosperity. If a serpent-charmer kills a cobra, he loses for ever his power over snakes. It is natural that a creature which is treated with such reverence must multiply excessively. About twenty thousand men are killed annually ...
— From Pole to Pole - A Book for Young People • Sven Anders Hedin
... not thus. Armed with thy shirt of mail from head to heel, Thou glidest like a serpent silently Into my presence. Wherefore dost thou turn Thy face from me? A herald speaks his errand With forehead unabashed. Thou art a ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... the sea-serpent pie I've warmed up, and I've opened a can of elephant's heads by way of ...
— Prince Vance - The Story of a Prince with a Court in His Box • Eleanor Putnam
... had been a moon and men groaning. There had seemed to him something sinister about that white night with its spectral shadows, and with the trenches of the enemy wriggling like great serpents underground. The trail of the serpent was still over the world. He had been caught but not killed. There was still poison in ...
— The Trumpeter Swan • Temple Bailey
... my cousin's beauty. Would she be able to make it bring a price worthy of its quality? To do this, she must have the cunning of the serpent, the virtue of a saint, and the courage of Roland himself. She must not be fastidious, though she must be suspicious. She must not be a prude, though she must know that all is evil about her. Lastly she must have no heart, though she must learn the rare art of being tender ...
— The Touchstone of Fortune • Charles Major
... avoid," as Augustine states (De Lib. Arb. iii, 18). But man cannot prevent the movement of the sensuality from being inordinate, since "the sensuality ever remains corrupt, so long as we abide in this mortal life; wherefore it is signified by the serpent," as Augustine declares (De Trin. xii, 12, 13). Therefore the inordinate movement of the sensuality is not ...
— Summa Theologica, Part I-II (Pars Prima Secundae) - From the Complete American Edition • Saint Thomas Aquinas
... sons of Bowanee have a horror of shedding blood," resumed Faringhea; "to pass the cord round the neck of our victims, we wait till they are asleep. When their sleep is not deep enough, we know how to make it deeper. We are skillful at our work; the serpent is not more cunning, or the lion more valiant, Djalma himself bears our mark. The array-mow is an impalpable powder, and, by letting the sleeper inhale a few grains of it, or by mixing it with the tobacco to be smoked by a waking man, we can throw our victim into a stupor, from which nothing ...
— The Wandering Jew, Complete • Eugene Sue
... Gallilee 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 wife, and ...
— Heart and Science - A Story of the Present Time • Wilkie Collins
... unhurt! Now why was He unharmed those forty nights with the scrub around Him alive with claws and talons and fangs? He was with the wild beasts, Mark tells us, and yet no lion sprang upon Him; no lone wolf slashed at Him with her frightful fangs; no serpent ...
— Mushrooms on the Moor • Frank Boreham
... followed in terror, looking no where, either around or behind: afterwards, through the curiosity of the human mind, when he revolved in his mind what that could be on which he was forbidden to look back, he could not restrain his eyes; then he beheld behind him a serpent of wonderful size moving along with an immense destruction of trees and bushes, and after it a cloud following with thunderings from the skies; and that then inquiring "what was that great commotion, and what the cause of the prodigy," he ...
— The History of Rome; Books Nine to Twenty-Six • Titus Livius
... religion; and "the luminaries of the world, the venerable assembly of Catos (such are the high-flown expressions of Prudentius) were impatient to strip themselves of their pontifical garment; to cast the skin of the old serpent; to assume the snowy robes of baptismal innocence, and to humble the pride of the consular fasces before tombs of the martyrs." [21] The citizens, who subsisted by their own industry, and the populace, who were supported by the public liberality, filled the ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 3 • Edward Gibbon
... bottom. halt- : stop, halt. brako : arm. ramp- : creep, crawl. torcxo : torch. plant- : (to) plant. serpento : serpent. multekosta : precious, statuo : statue. valuable. saliko : willow. aux ... aux : either ...
— The Esperanto Teacher - A Simple Course for Non-Grammarians • Helen Fryer
... if the Premiership of Graf Moritz Esterhazy, with all his Oxford education and the vigour of his thirty-six years, will be able to bruise the serpent's heel."—Observer. ...
— Punch, 1917.07.04, Vol. 153, Issue No. 1 • Various
... judge Him by our miserable understanding, and there is for Him neither present nor past, nor future; He sees them all at the same moment in light uncreate. For Him distance has no figure, and space is nought. It is consequently impossible to doubt that the Serpent will conquer. This amputated dilemma is then ...
— En Route • J.-K. (Joris-Karl) Huysmans
... which I speak Is a most curious sort of freak. Though Serpent would its form describe, Yet it is of the feathered tribe. And 'tis the snake, I do believe, That tempted poor old Mother Eve, For never woman did exist Who could its ...
— A Phenomenal Fauna • Carolyn Wells
... mighty Thor who can hold them at bay. It is the evil Loke, who is the worst enemy of gods and men. He belongs to the Yotun race, but was early adopted among the gods. He was fair in looks, but wily and evil in spirit. He had three evil children—the Fenris-Wolf, the Midgard-Serpent, and Hel. The gods knew that this offspring of Loke would cause trouble; therefore they tied the Fenris-Wolf, threw the serpent into the sea, and hurled Hel down into Niflheim, where she became the ...
— Norwegian Life • Ethlyn T. Clough
... out through its portals and gazed long at the Death Valley Trail. From the far north pass, where it came down from Wild Rose, to where Blackwater sent up its thin smoke, the trail crept like a serpent among the sandhills and washes, a long tenuous line through the Sink. Where the ground was white the trail stood out darker, and where it crossed the sun-burnt mesas it was white; but from one end to the other it was vacant and nothing emerged from north pass. Billy sighed and ...
— Wunpost • Dane Coolidge
... nobody else ever did. Mothers is always mothers 'n' the best will in the world don't seem able to help 'em out o' the scrape. There's Gran'ma Mullins just cryin' her eyes out these days over Hiram, 'n' you 'd think Lucy was a sea-serpent and Hiram was chained to a rock to hear her go on. She says she 's raised Hiram so careful to be a comfort to her all these years 'n' she says he promised her when he was only two 'n' a half years old that he 'd never smoke nor drink nor get married. She says she 's trusted ...
— Susan Clegg and Her Neighbors' Affairs • Anne Warner
... "A woman ought to be as wise as the serpent, but she ought to have the eyes of a dove. Your baby sweetness is worth a fortune on the screen if you have brains enough to manage it, and I fancy you have. Here's to you, ...
— We Can't Have Everything • Rupert Hughes
... property of the neighbouring landholders. This irade was issued upon the plea that all natural waters (i.e. streams) belong to the Sultan. A wide field for litigation was thus opened, and the Greek, having more than the usual allowance of "the wisdom of the serpent," lost no time in investing large sums in the corruption of all those who would be summoned as local witnesses whenever the case should be brought before the ordinary tribunals. The result was that ...
— Cyprus, as I Saw it in 1879 • Sir Samuel W. Baker
... in the regiment so indefatigable, so energetic, so persevering, so insatiable of "fatigues," so willing and anxious to do other people's duty as well as his own, so restless, so untiring as Trooper Matthewson of E Troop. For Damocles de Warrenne was in the Land of the Serpent and lived in fear. He lived in fear and feared to live; he thought of Fear and feared to think. He turned to work as, but for the memory of Lucille, he would have turned to drink: he laboured to earn deep dreamless ...
— Snake and Sword - A Novel • Percival Christopher Wren
... to dart forward, was the largest serpent they had ever seen; the sunlight checkered its bright colored folds. Its red tongue darted wickedly in and out as it faced the ...
— The Boy Aviators' Polar Dash - Or - Facing Death in the Antarctic • Captain Wilbur Lawton
... along its face with birch-trees. That mountain, well nigh semicircular in the front which is turned towards us, constitutes the Felsen; and along its base we walk, following a narrow foot-path, which is bordered by a little stream, and leads, serpent-fashion, towards the rocks. We pass, in this brief progress, the Sugar-loaf; and observing the ravages which time is making on its inverted cone, we anticipate the hour, probably not very distant, when it will topple over, and fall flat ...
— Germany, Bohemia, and Hungary, Visited in 1837. Vol. II • G. R. Gleig
... chief of mission: Ambassador Lange SCHERMERHORN embassy: Plateau du Serpent, Boulevard Marechal Joffre, Djibouti mailing address: B. ...
— The 1999 CIA Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... Attendance in the Military Hospitals in Germany; and although it did not answer in every Case, yet it was found to have a better Effect than any other Remedy that was tried. We joined different Medicines with it, according to the State of the Patient. We gave the Confectio cardiaca, Rad. serpent. Virg. and other cordial Medicines, and Wine, when the Pulse was low; Oxymel scilliticum, and other Pectorals, when the Breathing was difficult; Opiates, where the Patient was inclined to be too loose; the spiritus mindereri, and other Diaphoretics, when we ...
— An Account of the Diseases which were most frequent in the British military hospitals in Germany • Donald Monro
... mo'o; a word that to the Hawaiian meant a nondescript reptile, which his imagination vaguely pictured, sometimes as a dragonlike monster belching fire like a chimera of mythology, or swimming the ocean like a sea-serpent, or multiplied into a manifold pestilential swarm infesting the wilderness, conceived of as gifted with superhuman powers and always as the malignant foe of mankind, Now the only Hawaiian representatives of the reptilian class were two species ...
— Unwritten Literature of Hawaii - The Sacred Songs of the Hula • Nathaniel Bright Emerson
... coquettish, and in love?—is not that enough for you, eh? But must she be lascivious, gross, with a hoarse voice, a head of hair like fire, and rebounding flesh? Do you prefer a body cold as a serpent's skin, or, perchance, great black eyes more sombre than mysterious caverns? Look at these eyes ...
— The Temptation of St. Antony - or A Revelation of the Soul • Gustave Flaubert
... renewed the old struggle between the lower and the higher natures. For everything which the candidate for initiation formerly had to go through must be repeated in one who follows the Christian path. Just as Osiris was threatened by the evil Typhon so now "the great dragon, that old serpent" (xii. 9) must be overcome. The woman, the human soul, gives birth to lower knowledge, which is an adverse power if it is not raised to wisdom. Man must pass through that lower knowledge. In the Apocalypse it appears as ...
— Christianity As A Mystical Fact - And The Mysteries of Antiquity • Rudolf Steiner
... of the sea-serpent this year a tope weighing thirty-nine pounds has been captured at Hastings. The fisherman who caught it declares that if he had known it was a tope at the time he would not have been in such a ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, July 25, 1917 • Various
... him, like a trapped creature horrified beneath the mesmeric gaze of a great serpent, the girl watched the approach of the man. Her hands were free, the Swedes having secured her with a length of ancient slave chain fastened at one end to an iron collar padlocked about her neck and at the other to a long stake ...
— The Son of Tarzan • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... summer, and then sent her up to the Melmottes, and after that forbade her marriage with Mr Brehgert,—it seemed to her that they were unnatural parents who gave her a stone when she wanted bread, a serpent when she asked for a fish. She had no friend left. There was no one living who seemed to care whether she had a husband or not. She took to walking in solitude about the park, and thought of many things with a grim earnestness which ...
— The Way We Live Now • Anthony Trollope
... suppose it is superstition, or you may have it in your blood; but the horror I have of the eyes of a snake—I cannot tell you of it. Perhaps I was frightened when I was a child—I cannot remember; or perhaps it was the stories of the old women. The serpent is very mysterious to the people in the Highlands: they have stories of watersnakes in the lochs: and if you get a nest of seven adders with one white one, you boil the white one, and the man who drinks the broth knows all things in heaven and earth. In the Lewis they call the serpent righinn, ...
— Macleod of Dare • William Black
... them;—Windermere,—and, far beyond Windermere, Ingleborough in Yorkshire. But how shall I speak of the deliciousness of the third prospect! At this time, that was most favoured by sunshine and shade. The green Vale of Esk—deep and green, with its glittering serpent stream, lay below us; and, on we looked to the Mountains near the Sea,—Black Comb pre-eminent,—and, still beyond, to the Sea itself, in dazzling brightness. Turning round we saw the Mountains of Wastdale in tumult; to our right, Great Gavel, the loftiest, ...
— The Prose Works of William Wordsworth • William Wordsworth
... they could be utterly alone in their paradise, undisturbed even by the thoughts of others, since no one knew they were there and together. Alas! they had been so only forty-eight hours, and already a cold little serpent of anxiety had ...
— The Invader - A Novel • Margaret L. Woods
... D'Artagnan, who, although lacking practice, was perfect in theory, redoubled his agility. Jussac, with the design of finishing him at once, delivered a terrible thrust, which D'Artagnan parried adroitly, and, before his opponent could raise himself, he glided like a serpent under his guard, and passed his sword through his body. Jussac fell ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 57, No. 351, January 1845 • Various
... was still whittling the back of his chair, and did not once look up to his minister, who stood before him in reverential silence. "I thought I had crashed this serpent of legitimacy under my foot," he murmured at last to himself, "but it still lives, and tries again to rise against me. Ah, I despise it, and I have reason to do so. I alone am now the legitimate ruler of France; the fifty battles in which I have fought and conquered for France are my ancestors; ...
— NAPOLEON AND BLUCHER • L. Muhlbach
... the opera, the Prince Tamino rushes in, pursued by a monstrous serpent, and sinks exhausted on the steps of a temple, from which three ladies issue in the nick of time and despatch the serpent with their silver spears. They give Tamino a portrait of Pamina, the daughter of their mistress, the Queen of Night, which immediately inspires him with ...
— The Opera - A Sketch of the Development of Opera. With full Descriptions - of all Works in the Modern Repertory • R.A. Streatfeild
... Put up your swords. Apollodorus: your serpent seems to breathe very regularly. (He thrusts his hand under the shawls and draws out a bare arm.) This is ...
— Caesar and Cleopatra • George Bernard Shaw
... on, abruptly sank, at this last sentence, into a whisper; yet, had any one been there to listen, the whisper would have sounded louder and more terrible than the most violent vociferation of angry passion. It breathed a sudden concentration of evil intelligence, that startled like the hiss of a serpent. ...
— Bressant • Julian Hawthorne
... as Harry saw the repulsive form of a huge snake which had wound itself around him. Harry was absolutely helpless in the folds of the serpent. John's quick eye took in the situation at once, and by the time he reached Harry the bolo was in his hand and poised. With a single stroke the body of the snake was severed above the last coil, and the portion suspended from the tree fell alongside ...
— The Wonder Island Boys: The Mysteries of the Caverns • Roger Thompson Finlay
... wicked souls!... There were no other remedies than the old, true and tried ones,—the product of the experience of people who had lived years ago and thus knew much more. One of the neighbors went off to hunt up a certain witch, a miraculous doctor for dog-bites, serpent bites and scorpion-stings. Another brought a blind old goatherd, who could cure by the virtue of his mouth, simply by making some crosses of saliva over the ailing flesh. The drinks made of mountain herbs and the moist signs of the goatherd were looked upon as tokens ...
— Luna Benamor • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... itself with terror. It showed all its teeth, the slaver dropping from its jaws, and would certainly have bitten me if I had touched it. It did not seem to recognize me. Whoever has seen at the Zoological Gardens a rabbit, fascinated by a serpent, cowering in a corner, may form some idea of the anguish which the dog exhibited. Finding all efforts to soothe the animal in vain, and fearing that his bite might be as venomous in that state as in the madness of hydrophobia, I left him alone, placed my weapons on the table ...
— Haunted and the Haunters • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... scatter the wine! Tempt me no more with the sight! I care not though brightly as ruby it shine, Like a serpent I know it will bite. Give me the clustering fruit of the vine,— Heap up my dish if you will,— But banish the poison that lurks in the wine, That dulls reason ...
— Yorkshire Lyrics • John Hartley
... at Joetun-heim the hideous giantess Angur-boda (anguish boding), who bore him three monstrous children—the wolf Fenris, Hel, the parti-coloured goddess of death, and Ioermungandr, a terrible serpent. He kept the existence of these monsters secret as long as he could; but they speedily grew so large that they could no longer remain confined in the cave where they had come to light. Odin, from his throne Hlidskialf, soon became aware of their existence, and also of the disquieting ...
— Myths of the Norsemen - From the Eddas and Sagas • H. A. Guerber
... giant swayed for a few seconds and finally tottered down with an awful crash, separating into rings in the air, upon the foul bed which had been prepared for him: a shapeless mass of shattered metal and stone lying in uneven coils like some mighty serpent. The wooden sentry-boxes in the square reeled round and fell, while a cloud of filth and dust obscured the fallen monster, and men looked awe-struck at one another like naughty children who had broken something which they ought not to have dared to touch. The moment of ...
— The Insurrection in Paris • An Englishman: Davy
... squadron the signal was repeated, so that the sound passed swiftly down the long array until it died away in the distance. As the coil of men formed up upon the white road, with just a tremulous shifting motion along the curved and undulating line, its likeness to a giant serpent occurred again ...
— Micah Clarke - His Statement as made to his three Grandchildren Joseph, - Gervas and Reuben During the Hard Winter of 1734 • Arthur Conan Doyle
... p. 91, from Afzelius. In an Austrian maerchen the Sleeping Host is a host of serpents. The king slept on a crystal table in the centre. During the winter serpents are believed to sleep. In the spring the oldest serpent awakes and wakens the others, crying: "It is time" ...
— The Science of Fairy Tales - An Inquiry into Fairy Mythology • Edwin Sidney Hartland
... pursuer. He wondered what could have so alarmed the usually courageous animal. Suddenly the knowledge came to him. As Badshah rushed towards him with every indication of terror the man saw that, moving over the ground with an almost incredible speed, a large serpent came in close pursuit. Even in the open across which Badshah was fleeing it was actually gaining on the elephant, as with an extraordinary rapidity it poured the sinuous curves of its body along the earth. It was evident ...
— The Elephant God • Gordon Casserly
... at me scornfully, while I, panting and partially exhausted, tried to harden my sinews for a second attack. I determined to be careful, however. I knew Nick Tresidder of old; I knew he would fight with all the cunning of a serpent, and that he had as many tricks as a monkey, so that, while he would be no match for me had my strength been normal, he would now possibly be my ...
— The Birthright • Joseph Hocking
... this attempted digestion of Japanese mythology. The anaconda may indeed be able, by reason of its marvellously flexible jaws and its abundant activity of salivary glands, to swallow the calf, and even the ox; but sometimes the serpent is killed by its own voracity, or at least made helpless before the destroying hunter. When sweet potatoes and pumpkins are planted in the same hill, and the cooked product comes on the table, it is ...
— The Religions of Japan - From the Dawn of History to the Era of Meiji • William Elliot Griffis
... as the patron saint of Ireland must have felt after he had boxed up the old serpent, and sunk him at the bottom of the lake. I had the enemy where he could not harm me, for it was not possible for him to make his way through the door. I took the precaution to see that there were no holes or cracks through which the snake could again force himself into my ...
— Down South - or, Yacht Adventure in Florida • Oliver Optic
... nothing here is foreign to the one great thought of the painter. The four irregular spaces at the corners are filled with representations of important deliverances of the Jewish people from evil,—David slaying Goliath, the hanging of Haman, the serpent raised in the wilderness, and Judith with the head of Holofernes. The connection in Michael Angelo's mind evidently was that God, who had always provided a help for His people, would also in His own time give ...
— Barbara's Heritage - Young Americans Among the Old Italian Masters • Deristhe L. Hoyt
... himself near to the Temple of Isis. He had wandered far, had clothed himself in another habit than that worn by his people, and by the time he reached the temple he had spent his arrows, and had nothing but his useless bow left. In this predicament, he saw a monstrous serpent who made after him, and he fled. He had nothing to fight with, and was about to be caught in the serpent's fearful coils when the doors of the temple opened and three ladies ran out, each armed with a fine ...
— Operas Every Child Should Know - Descriptions of the Text and Music of Some of the Most Famous Masterpieces • Mary Schell Hoke Bacon
... lovelessness. The spiteful and rancorous temper, always seeking occasions of offense; the jealous spirit which cannot bear the spectacle of another's joy; the bitter nagging tongue, darting hither and thither like a serpent's fang full of poison, and diabolically skilled in wounding; the sour and grudging disposition, which seems most contented with itself when it has produced the utmost misery in others; the narrow mind and heart destitute of magnanimity; the cold and egoistic temperament, which ...
— The Empire of Love • W. J. Dawson
... deified man who was worshipped, all show that immortality was not a divine attribute. Nor was there any doubt that they might suffer while alive; one myth tells how Ra, as he walked on earth, was bitten by a magic serpent and suffered torments. The gods were also supposed to share in a life like that of man, not only in Egypt but in most ancient lands. Offerings of food and drink were constantly supplied to them, in ...
— The Religion of Ancient Egypt • W. M. Flinders Petrie
... besides prayer and meditation, for my own soul and the work, has been occupied in preparing tracts for the press. Five are already finished. I have translated into German: "The love of God to poor sinners," "The Serpent of brass," and "The two thieves;" and I have written myself two tracts, on "Lydia's conversion," and "The conversion of the jailer at Philippi." In this work I purpose to continue, the Lord willing, while we remain ...
— A Narrative of Some of the Lord's Dealings with George Mueller - Written by Himself, Fourth Part • George Mueller
... burning brightly, and the reflection showed on the painted visage. Jack, having stepped forward into the circle of light, was also plainly discerned by the Indian, who, turning his black, serpent-like eyes upon him, said, without a tremor in ...
— Two Boys in Wyoming - A Tale of Adventure (Northwest Series, No. 3) • Edward S. Ellis
... beyond which Tim Brophy had seen the bucks listening to the impassioned harangue of their leader, and the relief was not great when they rode over another swell in the plain, which shut them out from the sight of any of the serpent-eyed Sioux concealed there; for there could be no certainty that the fugitives had not been observed by them. It was not the custom of their people to attack openly; more likely they would set some ambush into which the whites might ride with ...
— The Young Ranchers - or Fighting the Sioux • Edward S. Ellis
... London. Its corner columns are of black marble, supported by others of flecked marble, with panels of Sienna and Griote. Between the panels are rich carvings, done in Antwerp, representing the temptation and fall in Eden; Abraham's offering of his son Isaac; Moses raising the brazen serpent in the wilderness; the annunciation to the Virgin; the birth scene in the stable; the Crucifixion and the Resurrection. The slab of the altar is inlaid with five crosslets, representing the five wounds, and ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 488, May 9, 1885 • Various
... himself outside the cabin. And he knew that the girl was again beside him as he stared and stared at what the waters held. A bloated serpent form beyond believing was struggling in the greasy swell. Its waving tentacles again were flung aloft in impotent fury, and, beneath them, where their thick ends jointed the body, a head with one horrible eye rose into the air. A thick-lipped mouth gaped open, and the gleam ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, June, 1930 • Various
... kneele down, As a colt shoulde suck his dame, And he was 'ware of that shame, His ears with wax were stopped fast, Therefore Richard was not aghast, He struck the steed that under him went, And gave the Soldan his death with a dent: In his shielde verament Was painted a serpent, With the spear that Richard held He bare him thorough under his sheld, None of his armour might him last, Bridle and peytrel all to-brast, His girthes and his stirrups also, His ruare to grounde wente tho; Maugre her head, he made her seech The ground, withoute ...
— Specimens with Memoirs of the Less-known British Poets, Complete • George Gilfillan
... chant—tones low and sweet as music in dreams by maids who sleep in Dian's bosom, yet wilder, fiercer than trumpets blown for war. As a sailor drawn to his doom by siren song, or a bird spellbound by some noxious serpent, she advances fearfully and slow until she is swept into his strong arms and held quivering there like a splotch of foam in a swift eddy of the upper Nile. The room swims before her eyes and fills with mocking demons that welcome her to the realm of darkness; the fountains' ripple sounds ...
— Volume 1 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... of sounds. The General said, there was no beauty in a simple sound, but only in an harmonious composition of sounds. I presumed to differ from this opinion, and mentioned the soft and sweet sound of a fine woman's voice. JOHNSON. 'No, Sir, if a serpent or a toad uttered it, you would think it ugly.' BOSWELL. 'So you would think, Sir, were a beautiful tune to be uttered by one of those animals.' JOHNSON. 'No, Sir, it would be admired. We have seen fine fiddlers whom we liked ...
— Life of Johnson - Abridged and Edited, with an Introduction by Charles Grosvenor Osgood • James Boswell
... abroad in the land. When the quick eye of the master sees a little pile of sawdust at the base of a tree, he knows that it is time for him to sit right down by that tree and kill its enemy. The sharp knife enlarges the hole, which is the trail of the serpent, and the sharp-pointed, flexible wire follows the route until it has ...
— The Fat of the Land - The Story of an American Farm • John Williams Streeter
... brought great grief to the discoverer. She judged that Joan was little better than heathen after all; she greatly feared that the girl had perished but half-believing. Any soul which could thus cherish the slough of a serpent must most surely have been wandering afar out of the road of faith. The all-embracing credulity of Joan was, in fact, a phenomenon beyond Mary's power to estimate or translate; and her present discovery, therefore, caused her both ...
— Lying Prophets • Eden Phillpotts
... It was all the Republic; by robbing the rich, it was taking the bread out of poor people's mouths. And there was no hoping for a better state of affairs. Things would only go from bad to worse,—she knew that from many tokens. At Nanterre a woman had had a baby born with a serpent's head; the lightning had struck the church at Rueil and melted the cross on the steeple; a were-wolf had been seen in the woods of Chaville. Masked men were poisoning the springs and throwing plague powders in the air to ...
— The Gods are Athirst • Anatole France
... 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. Sir, the ballot ...
— History of the Thirty-Ninth Congress of the United States • Wiliam H. Barnes
... any common causes of sterility. There, immense tracts sloping gradually upward show a desolation so peculiar, so utterly unlike every common solitude of Nature, that one enters upon it with the shudder we give at that which is wholly unnatural. On all sides are gigantic serpent convolutions of black lava, their immense folds rolled into every conceivable contortion, as if, in their fiery agonies, they had struggled and wreathed and knotted together, and then grown cold and black with the imperishable signs of those terrific convulsions upon them. Not ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 09, No. 51, January, 1862 • Various
... Popedom have been exterminated in many kingdoms and countries. Innumerable sheep of the Lord Christ have been fed on the wholesome pasture of the Divine Word in spite of those monstrous, tearing, ravenous wolves, the Pope and his followers. The enemy of God and man, the ancient serpent, may hiss and rage. Yes, the Roman antichrist in his frantic blusterings may bite off his own tongue, may fulminate all kinds of evils, bans, excommunications, wars, desolations, and burnings, as ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... fully ere we struck the bottom of the grade. I have never seen such a night. It seemed to throw calumny in the teeth of all the painters that ever dabbled in starlight. The sky itself was of a ruddy, powerful, nameless, changing colour, dark and glossy like a serpent's back. The stars, by innumerable millions, stuck boldly forth like lamps. The milky way was bright, like a moonlit cloud; half heaven seemed milky way. The greater luminaries shone each more clearly than a winter's ...
— The Silverado Squatters • Robert Louis Stevenson
... life. The Great Sea Serpent is, indeed, as much a myth as the Kraken of Pontoppidan, but other monsters, scarcely less marvellous, are actual realities. The Giant Cuttle Fish of Newfoundland, though the body is comparatively small, may measure 60 feet from the tip of one arm to that of another. The Whalebone Whale reaches ...
— The Beauties of Nature - and the Wonders of the World We Live In • Sir John Lubbock
... and his image was a bat."[40-1] Brasseur endeavored to trace this to a Nahuatl etymology,[40-2] but there is little doubt it refers, as do so many of the Cakchiquel proper names, to their calendar. Can is the fifth day of their week, and its sign was a serpent;[40-3] chamal is a slightly abbreviated form of chaomal, which the lexicons translate "beauty" and "fruitfulness," connected with chaomar, to yield abundantly. He was the serpent god of fruitfulness, and ...
— The Annals of the Cakchiquels • Daniel G. Brinton
... that he hath not utterly rusted it. Set him not by thee, lest he overthrow thee and stand in thy place; let him not sit on thy right hand, lest he seek to take thy seat, and at the last thou acknowledge my words, and be pricked with my sayings. Who will pity a charmer that is bitten with a serpent? or any that come nigh wild beasts? Even so who will pity him that goeth to a sinner, and is mingled with him in his sins? For a while he will abide with thee, and if thou give way, he will not hold out. And the enemy ...
— Select Masterpieces of Biblical Literature • Various
... he loves. Yes, he loves, as the hawk loves the harmless dove, as the tyger loves the trembling kid. And is this the man in whose favour I should ever have been weak enough to entertain a partiality? I would tear him from my bosom like an adder. I would crush him like a serpent. ...
— Italian Letters, Vols. I and II • William Godwin
... returned, and the Young Doctor and Kitty met the train. The local operator had not divulged to any one the contents of the telegram to Kitty, and there were no staring spectators on the platform. As the great express stole in almost noiselessly, like a tired serpent, Kitty watched its approach with outward cheerfulness. She had braced herself to this moment, till she looked the most buoyant, joyous thing in the world. It had not come easily. With desperation she had fought a ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... the highest window in the house (I protest I did it myself from the first floor only), is as nothing compared to the thirst for knowledge of the philosopher, the poet, the biologist, and the naturalist. I have always despised Adam because he had to be tempted by the woman, as she was by the serpent, before he could be induced to pluck the apple from the tree of knowledge. I should have swallowed every apple on the tree the moment the owner's back was turned. When Gray said "Where ignorance is bliss, 'tis folly to ...
— The Doctor's Dilemma: Preface on Doctors • George Bernard Shaw
... O serpent heart, hid with a flowering face! Did ever a dragon keep so fair a cave? Romeo and Juliet, Act iii. Sc. 2. SHAKESPEARE. Dissembling courtesy! How fine this tyrant Can tickle where she wounds! Cymbeline, Act ...
— The World's Best Poetry — Volume 10 • Various
... Thanksgiving.—O, Hartman? I couldn't bring him along, you know: where is your sense of propriety? I advised him to stay up there where he is safe, and not tempt the shafts and arrows any more. What, I 'haven't done anything then, after all?' O, haven't I! Jane, you are worse than a serpent's tooth: if Lear had been in my place, he would have talked about a thankless sister. It has been a weary, toilsome, painful task, and few men could have carried it through to so happy an end. And when I come back hungering for sympathy—I told you what my nature ...
— A Pessimist - In Theory and Practice • Robert Timsol
... the devil," said the niece, "but a magician who came on a cloud one night after the day your worship left this, and dismounting from a serpent that he rode he entered the room, and what he did there I know not, but after a little while he made off, flying through the roof, and left the house full of smoke; and when we went to see what he had done we saw neither book nor room: ...
— Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... a thief—she stole round the house, as she thought, unobserved. She sat down on the little green mound beside the rain-barrel, and reached behind it. Suddenly she started back as if a serpent had stung her. Again she reached quite around the barrel, as far as she could stretch her little arms; but nothing was there. Then she peered carefully into the place; but no shoes were to be found. It is plain now,—quite plain. What shall be done? Some one ...
— The Allis Family; or, Scenes of Western Life • American Sunday School Union
... and sown on the earth, and pan creepers grew out of the joint. For this reason the betel-vine has no blossoms or seeds, but the joints of the creepers are cut off and sown, when they sprout afresh; and the betel-vine is called Nagbel or the serpent-creeper. On the day of Nag-Panchmi the Barais go to the bareja with flowers, cocoanuts and other offerings, and worship a stone which is placed in it and which represents the Nag or cobra. A goat or sheep is sacrificed and they return home, no leaf of the pan garden being touched on that day. ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India - Volume II • R. V. Russell
... and days Lady Torrington was more obdurate than the winter wind and the serpent's tooth. She said those two things often and often, and the one about the winter wind shows that she has read 'As You Like It.' I don't know the one about the serpent's tooth. It may be in Shakespeare, but is not in Wordsworth's 'Excursion.' ...
— Priscilla's Spies 1912 • George A. Birmingham
... faith!" said Lawrence, a heart of goodness aping, "They say that now he goes a-begging!" "You lie!" cried Thomas, "hold thy serpent's tongue! Pascal, 'tis true, is working, yet with harm, Since, for this maiden, he has suffered in his arm; But he is cured; heed not this spiteful knave! He works now all alone, for he is strong and brave." If someone ...
— Jasmin: Barber, Poet, Philanthropist • Samuel Smiles
... was thus set it lay flat on the ground, and Skookie motioned the boys to keep away from it—something which all were willing to do, for the barbed arm of the klipsie resembled nothing so much as a fanged serpent with its head back ready ...
— The Young Alaskans • Emerson Hough
... life I bought a small country estate which my wife and I looked upon as a paradise. After enjoying its delight for a little more than a year our souls were saddened by the discovery that our Eden contained a serpent. This was an ...
— The Magic Egg and Other Stories • Frank Stockton |
