"Serpent" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... imaginative people in our own country have done, and have not only added wings to their serpents to send them air-faring, but have also invented a near relation to these in the shape of a travelling sea-serpent, which is not, however, of such large dimensions as those with which we are familiar. From this it is only a short step to the well-known half-human, half-fish being and the sea-lion or tiger; stone representations of which ...
— Corea or Cho-sen • A (Arnold) Henry Savage-Landor
... she had never been secure. Beneath all her trust there had always been the silent fear, slipping through the shadows like a serpent.... Some instinct for character, more precocious than her years, had whispered through her fond blindness, and initiated her ...
— The Fortieth Door • Mary Hastings Bradley
... helpless," she answered; "only that! If it ever lives to grow up and be a man, it will forget that a woman ever held it, or cherished it so! No wild beast of the forest—no treacherous serpent of the jungle, is more cruel in its inherited nature, than man when he deals with woman;—as lover, he betrays her,—as wife, he neglects her,—as ...
— Temporal Power • Marie Corelli
... crevice in the rocks, or hollow log, offers it a shelter, its destruction is inevitable. The hog rushes to the spot, and, bounding forward, crushes the reptile under his hoof's. Should the first attempt not succeed, and the serpent glide away, the hog nimbly follows, and repeats his efforts until the victim lies helpless. The victor then goes to work with his powerful jaws, and quietly ...
— The Hunters' Feast - Conversations Around the Camp Fire • Mayne Reid
... left As is not worth the care to throw away! All lost, all gone, wrecked, rifted, sunk, devoured: Wrecked with false lights on Theseus' rocky heart! Oh man, perverse, dry-eyed, untender man, Enchanting man, so sleek so serpent-cold! Was it for this that thou didst swear to me, By all the gods in the three worlds at once, That thou didst love distractedly, and I, With certain tender and ingenuous tears, Did presently confess to thee as much? Was ...
— The International Monthly Magazine, Volume 5, No. 1, January, 1852 • Various
... of the transgression committed by Adam. Nevertheless the Transgression of Adam, who had all mankind Foederally, yea, Naturally, in him, has involved this Infant in the guilt of it. And the poison of the old serpent, which infected Adam when he fell into his Transgression, by hearkening to the Tempter, has corrupted all mankind, and is a seed unto such diseases as this Infant is now laboring under. Lord, what are we, and what are our children, but a Generation ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... restless, powerful, and malicious enemy; ever striving to drive the sinner to desperation. Let the tempted look to Jesus the serpent-bruiser to shield him, so that the fiery darts of the wicked ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... we stood on tiptoe and tried with all our strength to push our heads through her feathers. She gave us some smart taps with her claw, and ordered us back to the interior of the nest; and when she at length told us in a frightened whisper that papa was fighting with a ferocious serpent, we huddled together as close as we could in the very bottom of our hole. We knew that serpents murdered young parrots and ate them, for only the day before we had heard a neighbor telling mamma that one of these monsters had eaten ...
— Harper's Young People, November 11, 1879 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... her bulk unexpectedly in front of them, held her arm high above her head, and slowly waved her hand in farewell back and forth in the rays of the sun. But her gaze was not following the moving train. Instead it was riveted, like a bird hypnotized by a serpent, upon a 10 carat rhinestone engagement ring that sparkled from the index finger of ...
— Polly and Eleanor • Lillian Elizabeth Roy
... England! Fittingly thine own feet bleed, Submissive to the purblind guides that lead Thy weary steps along this rugged course. Yet ... when I glance abroad, and track the source More selfish far, of other nations' deed, And mark their tortuous craft, their jealous greed, Their serpent-wisdom or mere soulless force, Homeward returns my vagrant fealty, Crying, "O England, shouldst thou one day fall, Shatter'd in ruins by some Titan foe, Justice were thenceforth weaker throughout all The world, and Truth less passionately free, And God the ...
— The Poems of William Watson • William Watson
... a sleeping boa—not one of the giants of its kind, but a good-sized serpent of the sort known among Australian ...
— King o' the Beach - A Tropic Tale • George Manville Fenn
... treated to the shameful spectacle of a young man hunted, harried, and beset by a Diana of the decks; chevied out of comfortable chairs, flushed from odd nooks and corners, baited openly in saloon and reading-room, trailed as with the wile of the serpent along devious passageways and through crowded assemblages, hare to her hound, up and down, high and low, until he became a byword among his companions for the stricken eye of eternal watchfulness. Sometimes the persecutress stalked him, unarmed; anon she threatened with a five-dollar ...
— Little Miss Grouch - A Narrative Based on the Log of Alexander Forsyth Smith's - Maiden Transatlantic Voyage • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... the native force which Providence has assigned them. The angry bull butts with his horns, as did his progenitors before him; the lion, the leopard, and the tiger, seek only with their talons and their fangs to gratify their sanguinary fury; and even the subtle serpent darts the same venom, and uses the same wiles, as did his sire before the flood. Man alone, blessed with the inventive mind, goes on from discovery to discovery, enlarges and multiplies his powers of destruction; arrogates ...
— Knickerbocker's History of New York, Complete • Washington Irving
... that the confusion was occasioned by the introduction of polysyllables. But these learned men must surely have overlooked the numerous conversations reported in Genesis, such as those between the Almighty and Adam, the serpent and Eve, etc. In these all the various parts of speech occur. There was, however, a coincidence of opinion that the primitive language was Hebrew. On the general principles of patristicism, it was fitting that ...
— History of the Conflict Between Religion and Science • John William Draper
... to its lofty summit, burning with a deep, fierce roar that could be heard far away. The petroleum with which the floors and hangings had been soaked gave the flames an intensity such that the ironwork of the balconies was seen to twist and writhe in the convolutions of a serpent, and the tall monumental chimneys, with their elaborate carvings, glowed with the fervor of ...
— The Downfall • Emile Zola
... of Pons' collection; she had a clear record behind her of ten years of devotion, honesty, and disinterestedness; it was a magnificent investment, and now she proposed to realize. In one day, Remonencq's hint of money had hatched the serpent's egg, the craving for riches that had lain dormant within her for twenty years. Since she had cherished that craving, it had grown in force with the ferment of all the evil that lurks in the corners of the heart. How she acted upon the counsels whispered by the serpent will presently ...
— Cousin Pons • Honore de Balzac
... a serpent if we go in danger by it, simply for being such and such a serpent in such and such a place; but we never say that the serpent has only itself to blame for not having been a harmless creature. Its crime is that of being ...
— Selections from Previous Works - and Remarks on Romanes' Mental Evolution in Animals • Samuel Butler
... handing the heavy charged flagon to the nearest seaman. "The crew alone now drink. Round with it, round! Short draughts—long swallows, men; 'tis hot as Satan's hoof. So, so; it goes round excellently. It spiralizes in ye; forks out at the serpent-snapping eye. Well done; almost drained. That way it went, this way it comes. Hand it me—here's a hollow! Men, ye seem the years; so brimming life is gulped and ...
— Moby Dick; or The Whale • Herman Melville
... popular beliefs without any basis of fact. It is fond of small birds and field mice and is what may be called a meadow snake. When frightened it speeds away at an incredible rate. The Coachwhip Snake, found in the southeast, is even more agile than the Black Snake, and like that serpent, will eat smaller snakes. It gets its name from its slender structure and similarity of the appearance of its scale distribution to a plaited whip. The Striped Racer of the southwestern states ...
— Pathfinder - or, The Missing Tenderfoot • Alan Douglas
... (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
... Battle of the Chemung the Mountain Snake be left writhing, yet unless we crush his head at Catharines-town, the serpent will live to strike again. For though a hundred arrows stick in the Western Serpent's body, his poison lies in his fangs; his fangs are rooted in his head; and the head still hisses at God and man from the shaggy depths of Catharines-town. It is for us of the elect to slay ...
— The Hidden Children • Robert W. Chambers
... to count anyone well, Kate, who carries such a lurking serpent in his bosom. Only forty-three! Just in his prime. Poor Len!" The Judge leaned his head upon his hand, while his thoughts were busy with memories of the gay young brother who had filled the old homestead ...
— A Beautiful Possibility • Edith Ferguson Black
... pinion now not Heav'n can bound, Now, serpent-like, in prose he sweeps the ground; In quibbles angel and archangel join, And God the ...
— Specimens of the Table Talk of S.T.Coleridge • Coleridge
... Prince Paul Maraloffski here! By St. George, a lucky capture! This must have been Vera's doing. She is the only one who could have lured that serpent ...
— Vera - or, The Nihilists • Oscar Wilde
... in the shade and soon after I saw a winged serpent, very large and long, coming towards me, wriggling to the right and to the left, and hanging out his tongue, which made me think he was ill. I arose, and saw a larger serpent following him, holding him by the tail, and endeavouring ...
— Fairy Tales From The Arabian Nights • E. Dixon
... scatterer of the brave, Serpent, piercing pike, And immovable stone in the front of ...
— Y Gododin - A Poem on the Battle of Cattraeth • Aneurin
... to find himself under a spell such as is said to bring the weak-willed bird to the serpent's maw. His traitorous feet dragged him toward the trap. The odour of a cigarette drew his revolted nostrils. He could hear the ...
— Bunker Bean • Harry Leon Wilson
... monster base ingratitude, Soul's mortal poison, deadly killing-wound, Deceitful serpent seeking to delude, Black loathsome ditch, where all desert is drown'd; Vile pestilence, which all things dost confound. At first created to no other end, But to grieve those, whom nothing ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 358 - Vol. XIII, No. 358., Saturday, February 28, 1829 • Various
... obtained unexpected concessions. Also, if a monarch behaved badly, he would arrive on the scene and rebuke him. He freed nations. He rescued queens sequestered in towers. It was he and no other that killed the serpent of Milan and ...
— Three short works - The Dance of Death, The Legend of Saint Julian the Hospitaller, A Simple Soul. • Gustave Flaubert
... interview with Mrs. Stubbs; and when I charged her, the base wretch! with cheating me, like a brazen serpent as she was, she flung back the cheat in my teeth, and swore I had swindled her. Why did I marry her, when she might have had twenty others? She only took me, she said, because I had twenty thousand pounds. I HAD said I possessed that sum; ...
— The Fatal Boots • William Makepeace Thackeray
... bows, the Americans two little ones, after which they foraged in their bags, from which each drew a 'rouleau' of 1,000 francs, daintily inclosed in green sheaths of serpent-skin, clasped ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... little serpent!" he groaned aloud. "And I have been crawling in the dust to her, to be stung like this!" He walked ...
— The Choir Invisible • James Lane Allen
... stream, where it winds into a narrow chasm between abrupt mountain walls, winds a crooked street, with a straggling row of log-cabins on either side, and looking from the mountain-tops very much like the vertebrae of a huge serpent. This is Bannack, so called from the Indian tribe whose homes were in the vicinity. These were the bravest, the proudest, and the noblest looking Indians of the mountains till the white man came. Yet seldom has there been a stronger illustration of the inexorable ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 106, August, 1866 • Various
... be hot enough; the gall of my ink was milk to that of my heart. The bitterness of my feelings was tormenting; words that could burn, contempt that could kill, shame that could annihilate, these and nothing less could satisfy me. Could the serpent revenge fly, how would it dart and sting! Happily for man it can only crawl. That I had been treated with great injustice was true: but of justice my notions were very inadequate; of revenge I had more than ...
— The Adventures of Hugh Trevor • Thomas Holcroft
... enemy."[FN310] These replies caused Osiris to rejoice greatly, for they showed him that his son was sufficiently prepared for his enemy. We are, moreover, told that amongst the great numbers who were continually deserting from Typhon's party was his concubine Thoueris,[FN311] and that a serpent which pursued her as she was coming over to Horus was slain by his soldiers. The memory of this action is, they say, still preserved in that cord which is thrown into the midst of their assemblies, and ...
— Legends Of The Gods - The Egyptian Texts, edited with Translations • E. A. Wallis Budge
... protecting spirit of the state and of individuals. He was often accompanied by 'Agathe Tuche (good fortune), and in this aspect may be compared with the Roman Bonus Eventus (Pliny, Nat Hist. xxxvi. 23), and Genius. He is represented in works of art in the form of a serpent, or of a young man with a cornucopia and a bowl in one hand, and a poppy and ears of ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... and break their own hearts, and the hearts of those who love them? Rome seems to cast a kind of spell upon the conscience, fascinating its victims much as the gaze of the serpent is said to hold a bird, till it falls into its power; or as a light attracts a moth, till it flies into it, to its own destruction. Such seceders mourn and dread the step; pray about it, think and think, till they are bewildered ...
— From Death into Life - or, twenty years of my ministry • William Haslam
... receiving relief. Or, equally arbitrarily, betokening some unknown displeasure of the gods, plague may take hold of a district and literally take its tithe of the population. At any moment, life is liable to be terminated with appalling suddenness by cholera or the bite of a venomous serpent. ...
— New Ideas in India During the Nineteenth Century - A Study of Social, Political, and Religious Developments • John Morrison
... uncertain whom to select as the first victim of his heavy hand. Before he could collect his wits, one of the boys yelled, 'Rabbi Isaac, Rabbi Isaac, the candles!'—It worked like a conjurer's charm upon a serpent. In an instant the monitor turned and ran to his room and searched it. Seeing no one there, he sank into his chair, and groaned: 'Wicked, depraved children! Those gallows-birds, I'll mangle their flesh, and flay the skin from their bones!' and he kept on ...
— The Renascence of Hebrew Literature (1743-1885) • Nahum Slouschz
... very patient—for me," he added, with an odd smile flitting across his face, "but my patience is exhausted. Choose quickly." Insensibly he drew her closer to him till his arm felt like an inflexible steel band about her, and she thought with a shudder of the coils of a great serpent closing round its victim. She made a final effort to conquer herself, but between her and the broad chest so close to her she seemed to see a horse's head held low in agony, blood and foam dripping from his lacerated mouth, and a horse's flanks heaving piteously, ...
— The Sheik - A Novel • E. M. Hull
... second time!" she whispered with well-concealed ill-humour, a smile compelled upon her face but a serpent in ...
— Doom Castle • Neil Munro
... had been. Their captains were called Sea Kings, and some them went a great way, even into the Mediterranean Sea, and robbed the beautiful shores of Italy. So dreadful was it to see the fleet of long ships coming up to the shore, with a serpent for the figure-head, and a raven as the flag, and crowds of fierce warriors with axes in their hands longing for prey and bloodshed, that where we pray in church that God would deliver us from lightning and tempest, and battle and murder, our forefathers ...
— Young Folks' History of England • Charlotte M. Yonge
... One knows of eminent clergymen who play golf; and that they should do so seems to constitute so high a title to the respect and regard with which normal persons view them, that one sometimes wonders whether they do not take up the practice with the wisdom of the serpent that is recommended in the Gospels, or because of the Pauline doctrine of adaptability, that by all ...
— From a College Window • Arthur Christopher Benson
... she was by no means a person one would care to meet. She was half white and half blue, and she had such gloomy, angry eyes that any one who looked at her sank into unconquerable sadness and finally into death. But the other two! One was a huge, glistening, scaly serpent, with a mouth that dripped poison, and glaring, beady eyes; and the other ...
— Journeys Through Bookland V2 • Charles H. Sylvester
... ordered our artillery, and rockets, then for the first time employed, to support our small band. Three or four regiments of French infantry were approaching rapidly, when a well-directed fire of rockets fell amongst them. The consternation of the Frenchmen was such, when these hissing, serpent-like projectiles descended, that a panic ensued, and they retreated upon Bayonne. The next day the bridge of boats was completed, and the whole army crossed. Bayonne was eventually invested after a contest, in which it was supposed our loss exceeded 500 or 600 ...
— Reminiscences of Captain Gronow • Rees Howell Gronow
... the Azores with two pinases, the one called the Serpent, and the other the Mary Sparke of Plimouth, both of them belonging to Sir Walter Raleigh, written by John Euesham Gentleman, wherein were taken the gouernour, of the Isle of Sainct Michael, and Pedro Sarmiento gouernour of the Straits of Magalanes, in ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques, and Discoveries of The English Nation, v. 7 - England's Naval Exploits Against Spain • Richard Hakluyt
... difficulty. Now, of the ways that lead to it, one is that from the lake Asphaltiris, towards the sun-rising, and another on the west, where the ascent is easier: the one of these ways is called the Serpent, as resembling that animal in its narrowness and its perpetual windings; for it is broken off at the prominent precipices of the rock, and returns frequently into itself, and lengthening again by little and little, hath much ado to proceed ...
— The Wars of the Jews or History of the Destruction of Jerusalem • Flavius Josephus
... to fly like a bird, to swim like a fish, to gallop like a horse, to creep like a serpent, but I suspect the good of all these is to be got ...
— The Seaboard Parish Volume 1 • George MacDonald
... boatman questioned him anxiously about the monsters. Beric, who thought it as well to maintain the evil reputation of the place, told him that they had searched the island and had found no living monsters, but had come across a dead serpent, who must have been seventy or ...
— Beric the Briton - A Story of the Roman Invasion • G. A. Henty
... wave broke over Achill. None had seen it coming, with great crawling leaps like a serpent, but at dead of night it leaped the land, and hissed on the cottage hearths and weltered gray about the mud floors. The next day broke on ruin in Achill. The bits of fields were washed away, the little mountain sheep were drowned, the cabins ...
— An Isle in the Water • Katharine Tynan
... she, firmly did he believe, was an angel beside Sepia!—of whom, bad as she was, it is quite possible he thought yet worse than she deserved: alas for the woman who is not good, and falls under the judgment of a bad man!—the good woman he can no more hurt than the serpent can bite the adamant. He believed he knew Sepia's self, although he did not yet know her history; and he scorned her the more that he was not a hair better himself. He had regard enough for his wife, and what virtue ...
— Mary Marston • George MacDonald
... even further, if necessary. Its power is not limited to the level surface of the water. I saw on my visit to the canal one of the dredgers at work, and the floating pipes lay on the water like a veritable sea-serpent, extending to a long distance where the stuff had to be carried. At that point the pipe emerged from the water, and what looked very much like a vertebra or two of the serpent crossed the embankment, went down the other side, and there the muddy deposit was pouring out in a steady ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 497, July 11, 1885 • Various
... none were left that were miserable, over whom she might insult. Pride thinks its own happiness shines the brighter by comparing it with the misfortunes of other persons; that by displaying its own wealth, they may feel their poverty the more sensibly. This is that infernal serpent that creeps into the breasts of mortals, and possesses them too much to be easily drawn out; and therefore I am glad that the Utopians have fallen upon this form of government, in which I wish that all the world could be so wise as to imitate them; for they have indeed laid down such a scheme and ...
— Ideal Commonwealths • Various
... shall be opened unto you: for everyone that asketh, receiveth; and he that seeketh, findeth; and to him that knocketh, it shall be opened. Or what man is there of you, whom if his son ask bread, will he give him a stone? Or if he ask a fish, will he give him a serpent? ...
— McGuffey's Fourth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey
... The bee awaked, and stung the child. Loud and piteous are his cries; To Venus quick he runs, he flies; "Oh mother!—I am wounded through— I die with pain—in sooth I do! Stung by some little angry thing, Some serpent on a tiny wing— A bee it was—for once, I know, I heard a rustic call it so." Thus he spoke, and she the while, Heard him with a soothing smile; Then said, "My infant, if so much Thou feel the little wild-bee's ...
— The Complete Poems of Sir Thomas Moore • Thomas Moore et al
... spirit-world before the beginning of human history. He witnessed strife and contention between loyalty and rebellion, with the hosts defending the former led by Michael the archangel, and the rebellious forces captained by Satan, who is also called the devil, the serpent, and the dragon. We read: "And there was war in heaven; Michael and his angels fought against the dragon; and the ...
— Jesus the Christ - A Study of the Messiah and His Mission According to Holy - Scriptures Both Ancient and Modern • James Edward Talmage
... been crowded into all that half a century of official and Parliamentary life—that unwillingness to see anything but deplorable error in his most rancorous, meanest, and most malignant opponent—all these things make it difficult for him to understand the ugly realities whose serpent heads show themselves plainly to almost ...
— Sketches In The House (1893) • T. P. O'Connor
... flared up steady and strong at last, flooding the narrow place with its illumination; then he straightened up and turned towards the bed to throw off his coat, when suddenly every muscle of his body leaped with an uncontrollable spasm, as if he had uncovered a deadly serpent coiled and ready to spring. In spite of himself his lungs contracted as if with the grip of giant hands, and his breath came ...
— The Barrier • Rex Beach
... to relish the act of studying Content with the superficial Could play anybody else's hand better than his own Culture is certain to mock itself in time Disease of conformity Disposition of people to shift labor on to others' shoulders Do not like to be insulted with originality Eve trusted the serpent, and Adam trusted Eve Fit for nothing else, they can at least write Good form to be enthusiastic and not disgraceful to be surprised Housecleaning, that riot of cleanliness which men fear Idle desire to be busy without doing anything Imagining that the more noise ...
— Quotes and Images From The Works of Charles Dudley Warner • Charles Dudley Warner
... scant three pages slowly. It was as though Folly had reached across the sea to scratch him again, for the note was well written in a bold, round hand. It was short because Folly combined the wisdom of the serpent with the voice of a dove. She knew the limits of her shibboleth of culture, and never passed them. She said only the things she had learned to ...
— Through stained glass • George Agnew Chamberlain
... would be—oh, inexpressible. He would be our house guest! The Earl of Brinstead! I fancy that would silence a few of these serpent tongues that are ...
— Ruggles of Red Gap • Harry Leon Wilson
... entirely terminated with the exception of the protracted struggle between "Le Renard Subtil" and "Le Gros Serpent." Well did these barbarous warriors prove that they deserved those significant names which had been bestowed for deeds in former wars. When they engaged, some little time was lost in eluding the quick and vigorous thrusts which had been aimed at their lives. Suddenly darting ...
— The Last of the Mohicans • James Fenimore Cooper
... sting of the serpent. He implored his son to return to his parental roof, but this the boy declined to do, so Judge Wright went at once to Colonel Boone and with many unjust and unscrupulous epithets accused him of having alienated the affections of his son. Colonel Boone had but ...
— The Second William Penn - A true account of incidents that happened along the - old Santa Fe Trail • William H. Ryus
... theory that may be sustained. In neither beautiful marble is there revealed any sensual dominance, though the Bacchus, notwithstanding its plastic superiority, rather inclines that way. The Apollo has been loudly extolled for the pride of its attitude and its divine calm in the encounter with the serpent Python; and still it is said that "a god could not have cause for so great pride in the conquest of a reptile." But the art-critics have exaggerated the import of the figure, which is wonderfully beautiful without being accurately expressive. The civilization of the new era has developed ...
— Delsarte System of Oratory • Various
... ascended the tribune. "I do not know how they can see a serpent in this man," said Lamartine. "He is ...
— The Memoirs of Victor Hugo • Victor Hugo
... forth angrily. "It was that brute of a Lorimer, and he deserves all he got, and more, too. I saw the order to the caterer, made out in Beatrix's handwriting, and there wasn't a pint of champagne on it. Lorimer sent in the order afterwards, just as he invited that serpent of a Lloyd ...
— The Dominant Strain • Anna Chapin Ray
... also the whole of the throat, and it is white in feathering except the head and neck and the extremities of the wings and the rump (in all these parts of which I have spoken it is a deep black), while in legs and in the form of the head it resembles the other. As for the serpent its form is like that of the watersnake; and it has wings not feathered but most nearly resembling the wings of the bat. Let so much suffice as has been said now concerning ...
— The History Of Herodotus - Volume 1(of 2) • Herodotus
... soft and tender fork Of a poor worm] Worm is put for any creeping thing or serpent. Shakespeare supposes falsely, but according to the vulgar notion, that a serpent wounds with his tongue, and that his tongue is forked. He confounds reality and fiction, a serpent's tongue is soft but not forked nor hurtful. If it could hurt, it could not be soft. In Midsummer Night's Dream he ...
— Johnson's Notes to Shakespeare Vol. I Comedies • Samuel Johnson
... in and out of Hercules' mighty grasp a dozen times, but at last Hercules' greater strength overpowered him. Hercules held the river-god fast by his neck, panting for breath. But Acheloues knew magic arts which he could practise. He suddenly changed himself into a long, slippery serpent. He twisted out of Hercules' grasp, and darted out his forked tongue at him, showing his ...
— Tell Me Another Story - The Book of Story Programs • Carolyn Sherwin Bailey
... the vestibule at the west end is a most excellent piece of work. It was carved from a block of white marble by Grinling Gibbons, and is about 5 feet in height. The shaft is the tree of life, round which is twined the serpent, while figures of Adam and Eve stand on either side. It is well worth going into the church to see this alone. The font originally possessed a cover, which was stolen in 1800, and is said to have been hung up in ...
— The Strand District - The Fascination of London • Sir Walter Besant
... continued Murray; "in one of these islands particularly the people call the serpent the fer de lance, a bite from which ...
— Hunting the Skipper - The Cruise of the "Seafowl" Sloop • George Manville Fenn
... 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 ...
— Priscilla's Spies 1912 • George A. Birmingham
... thing into his face. Its third vagary brought it down about his knees. Its fourth sent it into the gaping mouth of the cheeky one. At the same instant the squibs and candles burst forth from all points, pouring their fires on the naked shoulders of the red men with a hiss that the whole serpent race of America might have failed to equal, while the other zigzags went careering about as if the hut ...
— The Prairie Chief • R.M. Ballantyne
... here! and see, where with her comes My serpent gliding in an angel's form, To taint the new-born Eden of our joys. Why should we fear them? We'll not stir a foot, Nor coy it for their pleasures. [He ...
— The Works of Charles Lamb in Four Volumes, Volume 4 • Charles Lamb
... drawings have been obtained, and the similarity of these to some of the thought-forms is remarkable; they suffice to demonstrate how readily vibrations may be transformed into figures. Thus compare fig. 4 with fig. 12, the mother's prayer; or fig. 5 with fig. 10; or fig. 6 with fig. 25, the serpent-like darting forms. Fig. 7 is added as an illustration of the complexity attainable. It seems to us a most marvellous thing that some of the drawings, made apparently at random by the use of this machine, should exactly correspond to higher types of thought-forms created in meditation. ...
— Thought-Forms • Annie Besant
... soil changed abruptly into clay of vivid red, which, extending a dozen yards up the rain-washed hillside, appeared, in a general view of the landscape, like the scarlet tongue protruding from the silvery body of a serpent. ...
— The Voice of the People • Ellen Glasgow
... which called forth the cry from our Irish friend, as related in the last chapter, was neither more nor less than a serpent of dimensions more enormous than Barney had ever before conceived of. It was upwards of sixteen feet long, and nearly as thick as a man's body; but about the neck it was three times that size. This serpent was not, indeed, of the ...
— Martin Rattler • R.M. Ballantyne
... nations may not fling a slur Upon our honor as we cast adrift This alien race to face the world alone. Caesar: Sweet Francos, truly thou hast quick discerned The thought which wisdom fathered in my mind. "Be wise as serpent, harmless as the dove," Should be our watchword as we scuttle ship, For there be those who speak with venomed tongues Of serpents, as we cast them helpless off. But if we of politicos make use, And to their clamour lend ...
— 'A Comedy of Errors' in Seven Acts • Spokeshave (AKA Old Fogy)
... were serpent-like forms, fish with long slender bodies and whip-fashioned tails, with jaws that extended before them for ten feet or more. Others there were, great lumbering monsters that crawled along on the ice, ...
— Under the Ocean to the South Pole - The Strange Cruise of the Submarine Wonder • Roy Rockwood
... a groveling serpent in the ooze, there lies Caliban, abject in fear, with not a ray of love. Hopeless, loveless, see him lie—a spectacle so sad as to make the ...
— A Hero and Some Other Folks • William A. Quayle
... dear, Sweet bird, with bosom of pure gold, What crime can they accuse thee of, That they can make thee suffer thus? What cruel fate has placed thee here With death on watch in serpent's form? ...
— Apu Ollantay - A Drama of the Time of the Incas • Sir Clements R. Markham
... that in this great Seven Days' Conflict, where so much heroism was displayed on both sides, individually and collectively, that to A.P. Hill and the brave men under him belongs the honor of first scotching at Gaines' Mill the great serpent that was surrounding the Capital with bristling bayonets, and were in at the breaking of its back ...
— History of Kershaw's Brigade • D. Augustus Dickert
... Common basis of their language Characteristics of vernacular Singhalese State of the aborigines before Wijayo's invasion Story of Wijayo The natives of Ceylon described as Yakkos and Nagas Traces of serpent-worship in Ceylon Coincidence of the Mahawanso ...
— Ceylon; an Account of the Island Physical, Historical, and • James Emerson Tennent
... visible, but a red veil of fiery mist was drawn across his face; and a magic air of fairy-tales and strange unreality was diffused over mountains, plains and lakes. The river wound like a huge, blood-red serpent through the mountain pastures, and the snow-hooded peaks blazed with ...
— Boyhood in Norway • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen
... doubt not, that, if I were to leave my garden now for a week, it would n't know me on my return. The patch I scratched over for the turnips, and left as clean as earth, is already full of ambitious "pusley," which grows with all the confidence of youth and the skill of old age. It beats the serpent as an emblem of immortality. While all the others of us in the garden rest and sit in comfort a moment, upon the summit of the summer, it is as rampant and vicious as ever. It accepts ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... us have done at once and forever paltry considerations, with talk of despondency and darkness. Let compromise, submission, and every form of dishonorable peace be not so much as named among us. Tolerate no coward's voice or pen or eye. Wherever the serpent's head is raised, strike it down. Measure every man by the standard of manhood. Measure country's price by country's worth, and country's worth by country's integrity. Let a cold, clear breeze sweep down from the mountains of life, and drive ...
— Gala-days • Gail Hamilton
... all you possess to be worthy of that great love she gives you, you have to prove that you are unworthy; and the whole of the only last gleam of Eden that is left to this poor life of yours, the pure love of a man to a pure woman, is blotted out with bitter and jealous tears; the trail of the serpent is over it all. I know well that women can love, and love passionately, impure men; but every woman will tell you that there is a love that a woman can only give to a man who has been faithful to her before marriage as well as after; and for ever and for ever there will be ...
— The Power of Womanhood, or Mothers and Sons - A Book For Parents, And Those In Loco Parentis • Ellice Hopkins
... 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 more speech, His feet ...
— Specimens with Memoirs of the Less-known British Poets, Complete • George Gilfillan
... to England from my second sojourn in West Africa, I discovered, to my alarm, that I was, by a freak of fate, the sea- serpent of the season, I published, in order to escape from this reputation, a very condensed, much abridged version of my experiences in Lower Guinea; and I thought that I need never explain about myself or Lower Guinea again. This was one of my errors. I have been explaining ...
— Travels in West Africa • Mary H. Kingsley
... breathing forth poison and death into the air, which those beloved of God and himself must breathe, and crushing in its pestilential folds the bodies and souls of immortal men. He was one of the young St. Michaels called by God to give combat to that old serpent, called the Devil and Satan, which was deceiving the ...
— Cobwebs and Cables • Hesba Stretton
... angel, sit down by the poor bodies' fire, and eat a sweetmeat. We want to ask you a question or two; only first put that serpent away. ...
— Lavengro - The Scholar, The Gypsy, The Priest • George Borrow
... red-tiled roofs of the cottages, and beyond, the stately pile of Penshurst Castle, I think if only sin were absent, and truth and righteousness reigned, this village would find no rival save in the Eden before the serpent entered, and the ...
— Penshurst Castle - In the Days of Sir Philip Sidney • Emma Marshall
... flying steeds, Uchchaisravas, from Amrit-wave which burst; Of elephants Airavata; of males the Best and First; Of weapons Heav'n's hot thunderbolt; of cows white Kamadhuk, From whose great milky udder-teats all hearts' desires are strook; Vasuki of the serpent-tribes, round Mandara entwined; And thousand-fanged Ananta, on whose broad coils reclined Leans Vishnu; and of water-things Varuna; Aryam Of Pitris, and, of those that judge, Yama the Judge I am; Of Daityas dread Prahlada; of what metes days and ...
— The Bhagavad-Gita • Sir Edwin Arnold
... the kettle is in the form of a serpent's tail, and the spout is the serpent's open mouth. The lid is a nautilus shell on which stands an eagle with raised wings. On one side ...
— Presentation Pieces in the Museum of History and Technology • Margaret Brown Klapthor
... glory without end. Improve your privileges while they stay, Ye pupils, and each hour redeem, that bears Or good or bad report of you to heav'n. Let sin, that baneful evil to the soul, By you be shun'd, nor once remit your guard; Suppress the deadly serpent in its egg. Ye blooming plants of human race divine, An Ethiop tells you 'tis your greatest foe; Its transient sweetness turns to endless pain, And in immense perdition sinks ...
— Religious and Moral Poems • Phillis Wheatley
... parts the serpent has— Of men the enemies— The head and tail: the same Have won a mighty fame, Next to the cruel Fates;— So that, indeed, hence They once had great debates About precedence. The first had always gone ahead; The tail had been for ever led; And now to Heaven it pray'd, And said, "O, many and many ...
— A Hundred Fables of La Fontaine • Jean de La Fontaine
... few minutes, the fire's serpent-like course had taken a new twist. It had flung volleys of sparks across the upper reach of granite rock-wall, and had ignited dry wood and brier on the right hand side of the track. This, far up the mountain, almost at the ...
— Further Adventures of Lad • Albert Payson Terhune
... relate the state of his case, saying, " O friend, I have seen a damsel, but whether she be a musician from Indra's heaven, a maiden of the sea, a daughter of the serpent kings, or the child of an earthly Raja, I ...
— Vikram and the Vampire • Sir Richard F. Burton
... the devoutest faith in the high ideal which was to him a living truth, desired to plant a Paradise, where Beauty, Virtue, Justice, and Love might live happily together, without the possibility of a serpent entering in. And here his wife, unconverted but faithful to the end, hoped, after many wanderings over the face of the earth, to find rest for herself and a ...
— Humorous Masterpieces from American Literature • Various
... which he imagined that he laid himself down upon a heap of dry herbs, among which there were many prickly ones that gave him great uneasiness, and that he afterwards reposed himself on a soft bed of roses from which there sprung a serpent that wounded him to the heart with its sharp and venomed tongue. "Alas," said he, "I have long lain on these dry and prickly herbs, I am now on the bed of roses; but what shall be ...
— International Short Stories: French • Various
... in fact that every husband of any fortune in the Kingdom is nourishing a poisonous, devouring serpent in his bosom with all the mischief but with none ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, D.D., Vol. VII - Historical and Political Tracts—Irish • Jonathan Swift
... Brown, of Mizzlington"—a mistake—a foul plot—a base fiction!—At least, so thought the worthy gentleman, who was as ignorant of any wrong done him as the lunatic that resides in the moon. Had the sea-serpent been discovered in the back pond, a gold-mine been found in the dust-bin, or a Sphinx and Centaur been captured in Lincoln's Inn Fields, Mr. Brown could not have been more astounded!—He knows it to be an imputation that can be disproved in a twinkling, if Mr. Police Inspector ...
— Christmas Comes but Once A Year - Showing What Mr. Brown Did, Thought, and Intended to Do, - during that Festive Season. • Luke Limner
... constitutional weakness at this point. As flame to tinder, was the medicinal whisky to him. It grew upon him rapidly, and soon this cloud overshadowed all his life. He struggled hard to break the serpent-folds that were tightening around him; but the fire that had been kindled seemed to be quenchless. An uncontrolled evil passion is hellfire. He writhed in its burnings in an agony that could be understood only by such as knew how almost morbidly sensitive was his nature, ...
— California Sketches, Second Series • O. P. Fitzgerald
... he turned in his seat, and calmly confronted her. Beautiful she certainly was, at that moment; but it was the beauty of an angry serpent. She had a pencil in her hand, with which, a little while before, she had been sketching heads of some of the passengers in her little notebook. She was now handling this inoffensive object in such a way as to justify the fancy that, had it ...
— The Golden Fleece • Julian Hawthorne
... inherent weaknesses were paraded before her; the hoot of the owl was imitated with ludicrous solemnity; other fowl were described with wonderful attention to detail; and the inevitable rattlesnake was pointed out to her as a serpent whose chief occupation in life was that of posing in the shadow of the sage-brush as a target for the ...
— The Two-Gun Man • Charles Alden Seltzer
... my Lord?" said he, after a conference with a messenger at the gate. "The Black Raven has spread its wings. Fifty keels are in the Seine, and Harald Blue-tooth's Long Serpent at the head ...
— The Little Duke - Richard the Fearless • Charlotte M. Yonge
... by all this, and a great deal more by the fact that from one of his statues at first a mass of smoke ascended in a burst, and then, when the head was taken off to enable investigators to see what was going on, a huge serpent darted up. Another head at once replaced the former, and accordingly he was on the point of sacrificing to himself (for sacrificing to himself was a regular part of his program), when a rope was discovered coiled around the statue's ...
— Dio's Rome, Vol. 4 • Cassius Dio
... evil and foolish, her heart hard like marble; she is a plague in a house. Yes, ask her advice, and do the opposite.".... The leopard told his wife that he was resolved to go. "Beware of the fox," she exclaimed; "two small animals there are, the craftiest they, by far—the serpent and the fox. Hast thou not heard how the fox bound the lion and slew him with cunning?" "How did the fox dare," asked the leopard, "to come near enough to the ...
— The Book of Delight and Other Papers • Israel Abrahams
... marries the Earth. The tendency of men being to claim descent from a God, for each family with this claim a myth of a separate divine amour was needed. Where there had existed Totemism, or belief in kinship with beasts, the myth of the amour of a wolf, bull, serpent, swan, and so forth, was attached to the legend of Zeus. Zeus had been that swan, serpent, wolf, or bull. Once more, ritual arose, in great part, from the rites ...
— The Homeric Hymns - A New Prose Translation; and Essays, Literary and Mythological • Andrew Lang
... from its various contorted forms; sometimes resembling a horn, and often assuming a shape not unlike that of a serpent. ...
— The Field and Garden Vegetables of America • Fearing Burr
... Stop press edition. Result of the rockinghorse races. Sea serpent in the royal canal. ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce
... moment the group of dark-cloaked figures outside crept off in single file like a slithering serpent, moving down the rock defile toward where in the cauldron pit the lights of the mine shone on its ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, October, 1930 • Various
... I stayed upon that isle these thoughts were constant. I lay down to sleep, and woke again with an unblunted sense of my surroundings. I was never weary of calling up the image of that narrow causeway, on which I had my dwelling, lying coiled like a serpent, tail to mouth, in the outrageous ocean, and I was never weary of passing—a mere quarter-deck parade—from the one side to the other, from the shady, habitable shores of the lagoon to the blinding desert and uproarious breakers of the opposite beach. The sense of insecurity in such a thread ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 18 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... to domesticate an animal which can live weeks and months without food: for, as the saying is, 'Hunger will tame any thing;' and without hunger you can tame nothing. I have also learned that the serpent, instead of being the emblem of wisdom, should have been an ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 19, - Issue 549 (Supplementary issue) • Various
... shall rehearse the tale of their after-union? Who shall depict its bliss and bale? Who shall tell how He between whom and the Woman God put enmity forged deadly plots to break the bond or defile its purity? Who shall record the long strife between Serpent and Seraph:—How still the Father of Lies insinuated evil into good, pride into wisdom, grossness into glory, pain into bliss, poison into passion? How the "dreadless Angel" defied, resisted, and repelled? How again and again he refined the ...
— Shirley • Charlotte Bronte
... Mosaical law, bound her to allegiance like a serf,—even they greeted, with solemn rapture, all great and holy women as heroines, prophetesses, judges in Israel; and, if they made Eve listen to the serpent, gave Mary as a bride to the Holy Spirit. In other nations it has been the same down to our day. To the Woman who could conquer a triumph was awarded. And not only those whose strength was recommended to the heart by association with goodness and beauty, ...
— Woman in the Ninteenth Century - and Kindred Papers Relating to the Sphere, Condition - and Duties, of Woman. • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... should be no further concerned to keep the operations of the soul, which is the true seat of virtue, regular and in order, than as they are to arrive at the knowledge of others. Is there no more in it, then, but only slily and with circumspection to do ill? "If thou knowest," says Carneades, "of a serpent lurking in a place where, without suspicion, a person is going to sit down, by whose death thou expectest an advantage, thou dost ill if thou dost not give him caution of his danger; and so much the more because the action is to be known by none but thyself." If we ...
— The Essays of Montaigne, Complete • Michel de Montaigne
... years, and wore a ridiculous Iron Mask; I poked around your Northern forests, among your vagabond Indians, a solemn French idiot, personating the ghost of a dead Dauphin, that the gaping world might wonder if we had 'a Bourbon among us'; I have played sea-serpent off Nahant, and Woolly-Horse and What-is-it for the museums; I have interviewed politicians for the Sun, worked up all manner of miracles for the Herald, ciphered up election returns for the World, and thundered Political Economy ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... now when he's in a temper he goes for me and is ready to trample me under his feet. The other day he got both my hands entangled in my hair so that I could hardly get away. And the girl's worse than a serpent; it's a wonder the ...
— Redemption and Two Other Plays • Leo Tolstoy et al
... own heart! The blow which the dastard Cressingham durst aim at a Scottish chief, still smarts upon my cheek; and rivers of his countrymen's blood shall wash out the stain. After I had been persuaded by his serpent eloquence to swear fealty to Edward on the defeat at Dunbar, I vainly thought that Scotland had only changed a weak and unfortunate prince for a wise and victorious king; but when in the courts of Stirling, I heard ...
— The Scottish Chiefs • Miss Jane Porter
... we ought to place the list of those misdeeds, by reason of which these elements pass into bodies of animals or men of inferior development. "A drunken priest becomes a worm," says Manu, "a stealer of corn, a rat; the murderer of a Brahman, a dog, a tiger, or a serpent"—and this means that those elements which, in man, serve as a basis for the passions, at death, pass over into the bodies of animals that possess the same passions or ...
— Reincarnation - A Study in Human Evolution • Th. Pascal
... one of the many specimens of fantastic growth to be found in the Landslip, and is a great contrast to the tall and stately beech trees that grow in the Cloisters nearer to the upper cliff. It resembles very much the serpent-tree which was painted by Turner. This part of the Landslip is full of great diversities of form and situation, some appearing to grow direct out of the rocks. The white scented violet grows here in great profusion ...
— Pictures in Colour of the Isle of Wight • Various
... a woman who noticed the snake and begged me to show it to her; and then she said if she could only keep the golden snake, she could release her husband from prison with it. Naturally I did not stop to think for a minute, but ran away and left the woman alone with the golden serpent-bracelet. The next day there was much excitement. The poor woman was brought to the castle and the people said she had stolen it. Thereupon I grew very angry and explained with holy zeal that I had given her the bracelet and that I would not take ...
— Memories • Max Muller
... Sigurd gave of the serpent's heart to Gudrun, and she ate thereof, and became greater-hearted, and wiser than ere before: and the son of these ...
— The Story of the Volsungs, (Volsunga Saga) - With Excerpts from the Poetic Edda • Anonymous
... throws the branches to them out of the water. "The berries are stately and beautiful, bring us an addition of them." He goes off again until he was in the middle of the water. The serpent catches him out of the water. "Let a sword come to me from you," he says; and there was not on the land a man who would dare to give it to him through fear of Ailill and Medb. After that Find-abair strips off her clothes, ...
— Heroic Romances of Ireland Volumes 1 and 2 Combined • A. H. Leahy
... love that she alone drinks her nobler nature. For the hero of her worship she has the meekness of the dove—the devotion of the saint; for his safety in peril, for his rescue in misfortune, her vain sense imbibes the sagacity of the serpent—her weak heart, the courage of the lioness! It is this which, in absence, made me mask my face in smiles, that the friends of the houseless exile might not despair of his fate—it is this which brought me through forests ...
— Rienzi • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... But Marion looked more deeply into the matter, and yielded a prompt compliance with the request. "Let but his wife and property reach the British lines, and Fanning will follow. Force them to remain, and we only keep a serpent in our bosom." Such was his reasoning, and the truth of it was very soon apparent. Finding the hope of insurrection fruitless, Fanning fled the country, and was as soon in Charleston ...
— The Life of Francis Marion • William Gilmore Simms
... eighteen inches to two feet is a very common length, and I killed one, where the distance from the shoulder to the extremity of the head was no less than three feet ten inches. The head has a striking resemblance to that of a serpent. They can exist without food for an almost incredible length of time, instances having been known where they have been thrown into the hold of a vessel and lain two years without nourishment of any kind—being as ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 3 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... action. Place a dozen or more boys in line, and have each fellow place his hands firmly on the shoulders of the boy in front of him. Choose one of the fellows for the "Wolf." The first boy at the head of the line is called the "Head" of the Serpent, and the last fellow is the "Tail." The "Wolf" stands near the head of the Serpent until a signal is given. Then he tries to catch the "Tail" without touching any other part of the snake. The boys who form the body of the Serpent ...
— Camping For Boys • H.W. Gibson
... destroy. {113b} In Knox's "History" no mention is made of the threat of death against the priests. In the letter to Mrs. Locke he says, apparently of the threat, perhaps of the whole affair, "which thing did so enrage the venom of the serpent's seed," that she decreed death against man, woman, and child in Perth, after the fashion of Knox's favourite texts in Deuteronomy and Chronicles. This was "beastlie crueltie." The "History" gives the same account of the Regent's threatening ...
— John Knox and the Reformation • Andrew Lang
... heard a serpent do anything but hiss, my lad, though they say the anacondas make strange thunder in the North ...
— Mother Carey's Chicken - Her Voyage to the Unknown Isle • George Manville Fenn
... the valley, white-walled and silent. I remember touching with my stick what appeared to be a streak of moonlight that had filtered through the branches of a tree, when a beautiful little serpent uncoiled himself and slipped away into the shadows. Well, the distance was greater than I had supposed, and the hour was late, so that by the time I reached the city gate, I found it closed for the night. There was nothing to do ...
— The Mayor of Warwick • Herbert M. Hopkins
... in heaven: Michael and His angels fought against the dragon; and the dragon fought and his angels, and prevailed not; neither was their place found any more in heaven. And the great dragon was cast out, that old serpent, called the Devil, and Satan, which deceiveth the whole world: he was cast out into the earth, and his angels were cast out with ...
— Our Day - In the Light of Prophecy • W. A. Spicer
... and instances of lead-poisoning and arsenic-poisoning have been seen in children who have obtained the toxic substance in the mother's milk. There is one singular case on record in which a child has been poisoned from the milk of its mother after she had been bitten by a serpent. ...
— Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine • George M. Gould
... painted colours to set her forth. The antiquity of our church is not from pope Nicholas, nor pope Joan, but our church is from the beginning, even from the time that God said unto Adam, that the seed of the woman should break the serpent's head; and so to faithful Noah; to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, to whom it was promised, that their seed should multiply as the stars in the sky; and so to Moses, David, and all the holy fathers that were from the beginning ...
— Fox's Book of Martyrs - Or A History of the Lives, Sufferings, and Triumphant - Deaths of the Primitive Protestant Martyrs • John Fox
... his face startled the girl. The hideous nature of the man was now revealed in all its naked deformity. She shrank from him as she would have shrunk from a venomous serpent. ...
— Dyke Darrel the Railroad Detective - Or, The Crime of the Midnight Express • Frank Pinkerton
... himself sufficiently to make even an ejaculation, he found himself at the side of a quay. Some amphibious creatures, whom he supposed to be mermen, immediately came to his assistance, rather stared at his serpent-skin coat, and then helped him up the steps. Popanilla ...
— The Voyage of Captain Popanilla • Benjamin Disraeli
... "it's empty." Decherd cast at him one swift, veiled look, under which Eddring saw all the covert venom of a dangerous serpent that is aroused. "It's not my bag, anyhow," said Decherd, regaining his composure. "I thought it was, but mine had my name on ...
— The Law of the Land • Emerson Hough
... There is nothing of the kind in Hebrew literature, where the snake is figured as an attractive tempter. In Hindu fables the cobra is the ingenious and intelligent animal, corresponding to the fox in ours. Serpent worship was very widely spread. I therefore doubt whether the antipathy to the snake is very common among mankind, notwithstanding the instinctive terror that ...
— Inquiries into Human Faculty and Its Development • Francis Galton
... to form, and acquaintances to make. How little does travelling supply to the conversation of any man who has travelled; how little to Beauclerk!' BOSWELL. 'What say you to Lord ———?' JOHNSON. 'I never but once heard him talk of what he had seen, and that was of a large serpent in one of the Pyramids of Egypt.' BOSWELL. 'Well, I happened to hear him tell the same thing, which ...
— Life of Johnson - Abridged and Edited, with an Introduction by Charles Grosvenor Osgood • James Boswell
... necklace has already caused this lady to quarrel with a very good and sure friend of hers—of that I am sure. And, as I tell you, I see in the future that this necklace may cause her very serious trouble—indeed, I see it wound like a serpent round her neck, pressing ever tighter ...
— The Chink in the Armour • Marie Belloc Lowndes
... moved and had their being. For another tribe or group in whose yearly ritual a Bull or a Lamb or a Kangaroo played a leading part there would in the same way spring tip the image of a holy bull, a divine lamb, or a sacred kangaroo. Another group again might come to worship a Serpent as its presiding genius, or a particular kind of Tree, simply because these objects were and had been for centuries prominent factors in its yearly and seasonal Magic. As Reinach and others suggest, it was the Taboo ...
— Pagan & Christian Creeds - Their Origin and Meaning • Edward Carpenter
... and mashed it to pulp. But the Atlamalcan tugboat, if tied by a hawser to the reptile could not have drawn it forth, for it will allow itself to be pulled asunder before yielding. Nor can any conceivable power induce the serpent to let go, its unshakable resolve being to draw its prey within its folds, instead of ...
— Up the Forked River - Or, Adventures in South America • Edward Sylvester Ellis
... been offered thee, and thou hast kicked with the heel. I will go immediately to the tabernacle of Mr Limberham, and discover thee, O thou serpent, in thy ...
— The Works of John Dryden, Vol. 6 (of 18) - Limberham; Oedipus; Troilus and Cressida; The Spanish Friar • John Dryden
... deserving of death. Mr. Upp speaks from personal knowledge, and his condemnation of the species referred to is quite sweeping. At the same time Mr. Raymond L. Ditmars points out the fact that this serpent feeds during 6 months of the year on mice, and in doing so renders good service. In the South it is called the ...
— Our Vanishing Wild Life - Its Extermination and Preservation • William T. Hornaday
... avoided with the bigger boys, and Brigson had never undergone it before. At the first stroke he writhed and yelled; at the second he retreated, twisting like a serpent, and blubbering like a baby; at the third he flung himself on his knees, and, as the strokes fell fast, clasped Mr. Rose's arm, and implored and besought ...
— Eric • Frederic William Farrar
... drew her lips between her teeth, and fairly hissed, "Serpent, yourself! Murderess! I know all —and I shall tell all! You'll regret the day you scorned the ...
— Raspberry Jam • Carolyn Wells
... 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
... savans. He could tell you of strange trees that grow there, bearing strange fruits, not to be found elsewhere,—of wonderful quadrupeds, and quadrumana, that exist only in the Gapo,—of birds brilliantly beautiful, and reptiles hideously ugly; among the last the dreaded dragon serpent, "Sucuriyu." He could tell you, moreover, of creatures of his own kind,—if they deserve the name of man,—who dwell continuously in the flooded forest, making their home on scaffolds among the tree-tops, ...
— Our Young Folks—Vol. I, No. II, February 1865 - An Illustrated Magazine for Boys and Girls • Various
... organization—a mere jelly to hold the invisible life power—carries within itself in that invisible spiritual element the destiny of myriads of animal beings, and according to the nature of that invisible spiritual element it may develop into a Humboldt or an oyster, an elephant, a humming-bird, or a serpent? ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, May 1887 - Volume 1, Number 4 • Various
... 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
... "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 ...
— We Can't Have Everything • Rupert Hughes
... manner. Reddy, as the Roman conqueror left nothing to be desired. The star actor of the piece, however, was Hippy, who played the deadly asp. He writhed and wriggled in a manner that would have filled a respectable serpent with envy, and in the closing scene bit the unfortunate Cleopatra so venomously that she howled for mercy, and instead of dying gracefully, arose and engaged ...
— Grace Harlowe's Sophomore Year at High School • Jessie Graham Flower
... IV; Embassy at Villa Plateau du Serpent, Boulevard Marechal Joffre, Djibouti (mailing address is B. P. ...
— The 1991 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... the original illustrations were like can only be inferred from those in "The Holy Bible in Verse," and in the later editions of the primer itself. In the Bible Adam (or is it Eve?) stands pointing to a tree around which a serpent is coiled. By seventeen hundred and thirty-seven the engraver was sufficiently skilled to represent two figures, who stand as colossal statues on either side of the tree whose fruit had such disastrous effects. However, at a time when ...
— Forgotten Books of the American Nursery - A History of the Development of the American Story-Book • Rosalie V. Halsey
... undisputed, still others probable, undisputed, and tested. As for example, when a coiled rope is lying in a somewhat dark room, he who comes in suddenly gets only a probable idea of it, and thinks that it is a serpent; but it appears to be a rope 228 to him who has looked carefully around, and found out that it does not move, and that it is of such a color, and so on, according to an idea which is probable and undisputed. The tested ...
— Sextus Empiricus and Greek Scepticism • Mary Mills Patrick
... man! Such a serpent love is this,— Bitter wormwood in her kiss! When she strikes, be nerved and ready; Keep your gaze both bright and steady, Chance no rapier-play, but hotly press the quarrel she began! ...
— It Can Be Done - Poems of Inspiration • Joseph Morris
... now for some time has been raging hard by the gates of Proetus; but the seer allows him not to cross the stream of Ismenus, for the sacrifices are not auspicious. So Tydeus, raving and greedy for the fight, roars like a serpent in its hissings beneath the noontide heat, and he smites the sage seer, son of Oicleus, with a taunt, [saying] that he is crouching to both Death and Battle out of cowardice. Shouting out such words as ...
— Prometheus Bound and Seven Against Thebes • Aeschylus
... exposition, and in this way he gives us some remarkable fragments of what we may call the romance of Scripture, filling up the outline of the record with an elaborate coloring quite undreamed of by more literal minds. The serpent, he informs us, said to Eve, "Can it be so? Surely you are mistaken, that God hath said you shall die, a creature so fair, so lovely, so beautiful. It is impossible. The laws of nature and physical science tell you that my interpretation is correct; you ...
— The Essays of "George Eliot" - Complete • George Eliot |
