"Snake" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... black wall of cloud had returned and now hung above the forest of S——, that lay sullenly, in its shadow, forbidding and thick, itself like a cloud. The world was cold, the Nestor like a snake.... I shivered, seized by some sudden sense of coming disaster and trouble. The evenings there were ...
— The Dark Forest • Hugh Walpole
... Altogether, his person was a perfect model of aristocratic outline, slim and slender, supple and agreeable. He seemed as if he could be pliant or rigid at will, and twist and bend, or rear his head like a snake. ...
— The Thirteen • Honore de Balzac
... but an untidy desolate-looking region, with a rude snake fence, all unconsecrated! Cora wanted to choose a shaded corner in her father's ground, where they might daily tend the child's earthly resting-place; but Averil shrank from this with horror; and finally, on ...
— The Trial - or, More Links of the Daisy Chain • Charlotte M. Yonge
... repugnant to man in the word "professor." It makes the flesh creep almost as does the thought of the toad or snake. Though when a boy of ten I had never seen a "professor," the word alone was so full of portent that the prospect of seeing one, even without being caught by him, would have frightened me. I suppose that the chill which reverberated through my spine and legs ...
— David Malcolm • Nelson Lloyd
... invasion in Korea and was the persecutor of the Christians; and Shichimen—a word which means seven points of the compass or seven faces. This Shichimen is the being that appeared to Nichiren as a beautiful woman, but disappeared from his sight in the form of a snake, twenty feet long, covered with golden scales and armed with iron teeth. It is now deified under the name meaning the Great God of the Seven Faces, and is identified ...
— The Religions of Japan - From the Dawn of History to the Era of Meiji • William Elliot Griffis
... distinct sockets, they are firmly amalgamated with the jaws, as in modern Lizards. The palate also carried teeth, and the lower jaw was so constructed as to allow of the mouth being opened to an immense width, somewhat as in the living Serpents. The body was long and snake-like, with a very long tail, which is laterally compressed, and must have served as a powerful swimming-apparatus. In addition to this, both pairs of limbs have the bones connecting them with the trunk greatly shortened; whilst the digits ...
— The Ancient Life History of the Earth • Henry Alleyne Nicholson
... assigned to Hercules was to bring him the skin of the Nemean lion. This monster dwelt on the mountain of Peloponnesus, in the forest between Kleona and Nemea, and could be wounded by no weapons made of man. Some said he was the son of the giant Typhon and the snake Echidna; others that he had dropped down from the moon ...
— Famous Tales of Fact and Fancy - Myths and Legends of the Nations of the World Retold for Boys and Girls • Various
... which forms the sharp and clear horizon. To the south and east a narrow valley that is little more than a deep ravine, the sides of the precipitous hills covered with forest to the brink of the stream, which twists and turns at sharp angles like a wounded snake, shining as burnished silver when one catches glimpses of it through the trees, and playing an important part in a landscape which at brief distance seems as wild and as unconscious of the presence of man as ...
— Elbow-Room - A Novel Without a Plot • Charles Heber Clark (AKA Max Adeler)
... her once with a streaked snake, and if she didn't put 'er through, then I'm no 'Judge. Takin' music lessons, is she? I'd give a fo' pence to hear ...
— 'Lena Rivers • Mary J. Holmes
... mislight thee, Nor snake or slow-worm bite thee; But on, on thy way, Not making a stay, Since ghost there's none ...
— Old Ballads • Various
... power and volume of a church organ with all the stops pulled out. It shook and It trilled and It quavered, and It gargled as if It had a barrel of glycothermoline in It's mouth and had been exposed to diphtheria, and It finished—just as I tripped on a snake and fell—with a round bar of high C sound, that lasted a good minute (or until I was a quarter of a mile beyond where I had fallen), and was the color of butter, and could have been cut with a knife. And It ...
— IT and Other Stories • Gouverneur Morris
... power,—and then, in other forms, as they might be qualified to realize them. This development would be without convulsion,—as the parent gives place, while the children are passing from the lower to their higher life. It would be the exemplification of Carlyle's illustration of the snake. He says, A people should change their government only as a snake sheds his skin: the new skin is gradually formed under the old one,—and then the snake wriggles out, with just a drop of blood here and there, where the old jacket held ...
— Slavery Ordained of God • Rev. Fred. A. Ross, D.D.
... confirm the awful words of the stranger, a thing swung itself down from one of the nearest trees, covered with hoar-frost,—no one could say if it were a snake or a lizard,—it curled and twisted itself, and appeared about to slide down upon the knight or his companion. Sintram levelled his spear, and pierced the creature through. But, with the most hideous contortions, ...
— Sintram and His Companions • Friedrich de la Motte Fouque
... up in the boat. Gigantic forest trees were about me; through which, like a silver snake, twisted and twined the great river. The little waves, when I moved in the boat, heaved and fell with a plash as of molten silver, breaking the image of the moon into a thousand morsels, fusing again ...
— Phantastes - A Faerie Romance for Men and Women • George MacDonald
... marble steps of the great building on the first floor of which were the offices of Roger Dale; and by far the larger proportion of this number went no farther, for I could see them through the broad plate-glass windows, chatting and grouped about a coil of tape that ran out with a snake-like movement into a basket on the floor. There were ladies too who drove up to the door in their carriages and were shown into the back office, and who when they came out again were attended by Mr. Dale himself, bowing obsequiously. He was stouter than when I saw him last, and ...
— A Romantic Young Lady • Robert Grant
... brain,—an old, old memory that seemed to have lain hidden among his thoughts for centuries,—the memory of a story called "LAMIA" told in verse as delicious as music aptly played. Who wrote the story? ... He could not tell,—but he recollected that it was about a snake in the guise of a beautiful woman. And these women in this strange city looked as if they also had a snake-like origin,—there was something so soft and lithe and undulating about their movements and gestures. Weary of walking, distracted ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli
... floated upon the transparent water. To the westward, and in front of them, were the clearings belonging to the fort, backed with the distant woods: a herd of cattle were grazing on a portion of the cleared land; the other was divided off by a snake fence, as it is termed, and was under cultivation. Here and there a log-building was raised as a shelter for the animals during the winter, and at half a mile's distance was a small fort, surrounded with high palisades, intended as a place of retreat and security for those who might be ...
— The Settlers in Canada • Frederick Marryat
... the big snake back into its warm coverings, and shut down the trunk cover and clasped it. Bart, highly edified at the unique ...
— Bart Stirling's Road to Success - Or; The Young Express Agent • Allen Chapman
... knowing anything about the matter, the messenger went back and told the Pope, who turned round to Pompeo and said: "You are a good-for-nothing rascal; but I promise you well that you have stirred a snake up which will sting you, and serve you right!" Then he addressed himself to Cardinal de' Medici, and commissioned him to look after me, adding that he should be very sorry to let me slip through his fingers. And so Solosmeo and I went on our way singing ...
— The Autobiography of Benvenuto Cellini • Benvenuto Cellini
... away, as I supposed, in my pocket, and I slept sweetly till about midnight, when I happened to open my eyes, and saw something long and black crawl off my bed and slip under the berth. Such a shriek as I gave, my dear! "A snake! a snake! oh, a snake!" And everybody began talking at once, and some of the gentlemen swearing, and the porter came running with the poker to kill it; and all the while it was that ridiculous switch of mine, that had worked out ...
— The Sleeping Car - A Farce • William D. Howells
... plains, and finally seethed and boiled in eddies of foam out into a southern sea which has long since disappeared. On its banks grew strange, bulbous plants. Across its waters swam uncouth monsters with snake-like necks. Over it alternated storms so savage that they seemed to rend the world, and sunshine so hot that it seemed that were it not for the bulbous plants all living things would ...
— Blazed Trail Stories - and Stories of the Wild Life • Stewart Edward White
... make us some amends, we had no disturbance upon all the shores of this lake from any wild beasts; the only inconveniency of that kind was, that we met an ugly, venomous, deformed kind of a snake or serpent in the wet grounds near the lake, that several times pursued us as if it would attack us; and if we struck or threw anything at it, it would raise itself up and hiss so loud that it might be heard a great way. It had a hellish ...
— The Life, Adventures & Piracies of the Famous Captain Singleton • Daniel Defoe
... last they reached a lake, winding like a snake among towering hills, and with a huge baronial castle standing out upon the rocky shore. This imitation fortress was ...
— The Metropolis • Upton Sinclair
... Quakers—a people who own neither priest nor king, nor civil magistrate, nor the fabric of our law, and will not depone either IN CIVILIBUS or CRIMINALIBUS, be the loss to the lieges what it may. Anent which heresies, it were good ye read 'The Snake in the Grass' or 'The Foot out of the Snare,' being both well-approved tracts, touching ...
— Redgauntlet • Sir Walter Scott
... had brandy in their tea, and were becoming unmanageable. The saturnine Alfred had glittering, unseeing eyes, and a strange, fierce way of laughing that showed his teeth. His wife glowered at him and jerked her head at him like a snake. He was oblivious. Frank Brangwen, the butcher, flushed and florid and handsome, roared echoes to his two brothers. Tom Brangwen, in his solid fashion, was letting ...
— The Rainbow • D. H. (David Herbert) Lawrence
... snake, though!" remarked the Honorable Bertie with unlooked-for vivacity. For so far Aunt Jane's trembling anticipations had been unfulfilled by the sight of a single snake, a fact laid by me to the credit of St. Patrick and by Cookie ...
— Spanish Doubloons • Camilla Kenyon
... night the banks Of torrent-foaming rivers, many a league Wandering and lost in solitudes; green isles 210 Here shone, and scattered huts beneath the shade Of branching palms were seen; whilst in the sun A naked infant playing, stretched his hand To reach a speckled snake, that through the leaves Oft darted, or its shining volumes rolled Erratic. From the woods a sable man Came, as from hunting; in his arms he took The smiling child, that with the feathers played Which nodded on his brow; the sheltering ...
— The Poetical Works of William Lisle Bowles, Vol. 1 • William Lisle Bowles
... old snake! answered Arni, smiling contemptuously. What monstrous eyes Jon had when ...
— Seven Icelandic Short Stories • Various
... with equal surprize and compassion — We consisted of thirteen individuals; seven lamed by the gout, rheumatism, or palsy; three maimed by accident; and the rest either deaf or blind. One hobbled, another hopped, a third dragged his legs after him like a wounded snake, a fourth straddled betwixt a pair of long crutches, like the mummy of a felon hanging in chains; a fifth was bent into a horizontal position, like a mounted telescope, shoved in by a couple of chairmen; and a sixth was the bust of a man, ...
— The Expedition of Humphry Clinker • Tobias Smollett
... you ask the question? "How many circumstances, since then, have befallen me as prodigies? A strange black dog[68] entered the house; a snake came down from the tiles through the sky-light;[69] a hen crowed;[70] the soothsayer forbade it; the diviner[71] warned me not: besides, before winter there is no sufficient reason for me to commence upon any new undertaking." This will ...
— The Comedies of Terence - Literally Translated into English Prose, with Notes • Publius Terentius Afer, (AKA) Terence
... following her quick movements, and swaying from side to side to get out of the reach of the furious fox, was sometimes in the shape of the letter C, and sometimes in that of the letter S, and sometimes looked like a long snake with a curling tail. Loud was the laughter, shrill the shrieks, as the fox drove them hither and thither, and seemed to be in all parts of the room at once. He was a cunning fox that, as well as a bold one. Sometimes, when they thought ...
— The Wide, Wide World • Elizabeth Wetherell
... of the venomous serpent of this country when he would admonish the traveller to move quickly, and which certainly produces the same startling effect on the nerves of the mule as the signal of the snake is very apt to excite in man. This interruption caused the dialogue to be dropped, all riding onward, musing in their several fashions on what had just passed. In a few minutes the party turned the crag in question, ...
— The Headsman - The Abbaye des Vignerons • James Fenimore Cooper
... Job!" he said strongly. "A snake in the grass! An oily scoundrel! I don't know how I know it, but I know it! A square man would have punched me the way ...
— The Fur Bringers - A Story of the Canadian Northwest • Hulbert Footner
... Dogs.—For obvious reasons, these kinds of bites are more frequently met with than those of snakes. The treatment is the same as that for snake-bites, more especially that of the bitten part. The majority of writers on the subject are in favour of keeping the wound open as long as possible. This may be done by putting a few beans on it, and then by applying a large linseed-meal ...
— The Book of Household Management • Mrs. Isabella Beeton
... France, halt was made at Lyons, and, though he refused to see the gallery, he could describe almost every canvas and the place where it hung; but best of all he remembered Charlet's great picture of the retreat from Moscow and the army that "dragged itself along like a wounded snake." In Paris, too, on that homeward journey a stop was made, and since few of his friends were yet back from the country, there was more theatre-going than usual. Guitry, his favourite actor, was not playing, but Brasseur and Eve la Valliere amused him, and he found special delight in the Mariage ...
— The Life of the Rt. Hon. Sir Charles W. Dilke, Vol. 2 • Stephen Gwynn
... you two had been in the Garden of Eden when Eve took the apple, you wouldn't have had time to give her a look for counting the scales on the snake!" ...
— The Moon Pool • A. Merritt
... resembling that which the full moon sheds on a tropical scene, but far more brilliant. Around this was a broad golden circle or band; and beneath, the silver image of a serpent—perfectly reproducing a typical terrestrial snake, but coiled, as no snake ever coils itself, in a double circle or figure of eight, with the tail wound around the neck. On the left was a crimson shield or what seemed to be such, small, round, and swelling in the centre into a sharp point; on the right three crossed ...
— Across the Zodiac • Percy Greg
... those deserted streets it seemed that this seemingly dead city did but swoon after all, despite its many grievous wounds, for here was life even as the woman had said; evidences of which I saw here and there, in battered stovepipes that had writhed themselves snake-like through rusty cellar gratings and holes in wall or pavement, miserable contrivances at best, whose fumes blackened the walls whereto they clung. Still, nowhere was there sound or sight of folk save in one small back street, where, in a shop that ...
— Great Britain at War • Jeffery Farnol
... foolish Hindoos believe still greater absurdities. They believe that the rainbow is nothing but the fume of a large snake, concealed under the ground; that he vomits forth this fume from a hole in the surface of the earth, without being himself seen; and, when you ask them why, in that case, the rainbow should be in the west while the sun is in the east, and in the east while the sun is in ...
— Rambles and Recollections of an Indian Official • William Sleeman
... want her, a hateful little snake in the grass like that!" the girl flung out angrily. "If you knew the way she treats Elizabeth—like the dirt under ...
— The Torch Bearer - A Camp Fire Girls' Story • I. T. Thurston
... of the void That hid them from his bended bow, Shall crawl from caverns overjoyed, Jackal and snake and carrion crow. And perched above the vulture's eggs, Reversed upon its hideous head, A blue-faced ape shall wave its legs To tell the ...
— Poems • G.K. Chesterton
... immediately answer, gazing upon him as she might at some foul snake which had fascinated her, her breath coming in half-stifled sobs, her hand clutching the heavy curtain ...
— Beth Norvell - A Romance of the West • Randall Parrish
... father! in this house is much wealth, and much people, and much food, and many horses. And the lord of it all is an exceeding great and wonderful snake.' ...
— The Violet Fairy Book • Various
... fishes is the most lowly organised, and appeared before the others, we may conclude that all the members of the vertebrate kingdom are derived from some fishlike animal. The belief that animals so distinct as a monkey, an elephant, a humming-bird, a snake, a frog, and a fish, etc., could all have sprung from the same parents, will appear monstrous to those who have not attended to the recent progress of natural history. For this belief implies the former existence ...
— The Descent of Man and Selection in Relation to Sex • Charles Darwin
... the shrill, monotonous, unceasing rhythm of the whistle cease to dominate the dance. It always rose above the beat of the dancers, it penetrated everything, ruled everything—this single, shrill note, like the chant of a snake charmer. It even showed its power over Dick and Albert. They felt their nerves throbbing to it in an unwilling response, and the dust and the vivid electric excitement of the dancers began to ...
— The Last of the Chiefs - A Story of the Great Sioux War • Joseph Altsheler
... trees and the creeping things first, and after that he set to work to make one man and one woman, forming their bodies of clay; but each night, on the completion of his work, there came a great snake, which, while God was sleeping, devoured the two images. This happened twice or thrice, and God was at his wit's end, for he had to work all day, and could not finish the pair in less than twelve hours; besides, if he did not sleep, he would be no good," said Captain Lewin's informant. ...
— Darwin and Modern Science • A.C. Seward and Others
... broad back of his!—in it. Don't be in a hurry, my nautical friend! we shall all get out in another minute. Just like life! Such fidgety strife to be first to the front when the lock-gates sever. What does it matter, friends, after all? The slow, the skilful, the dull, the clever, The snake-swift "swell" and the splashing 'ARRY, the puffing launch, and the trim outrigger, The calm canoest who hugs the timbers, the fussy punter who toils like a nigger, All will anon be well out in the cutting, the ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 100, May 23, 1891 • Various
... generously ensampled, is the promise of the rich diet that shall follow. At the circus, I have said, I'll go within that booth that has most allurement on its canvas front, and where the hawker has the biggest voice. If a fellow will but swallow a snake upon the platform at the door, my money is already in my palm. Thus of a book I demand an ...
— Journeys to Bagdad • Charles S. Brooks
... the snake went to climb the pole with which they made the house, and they removed again. When they were digging again where they made the poles stand with which they made the house, the labeg [326] skimmed over, and as they had a bad sign the Ipogau moved again the poles with which they made ...
— Traditions of the Tinguian: A Study in Philippine Folk-Lore • Fay-Cooper Cole
... dunno yit. But I b'lieve he's beginnin' ter have his doubts—like th' feller 't got holt of the black snake a-thinkin' it was a heifer's tail," chuckled Walky, whose face was very red and whose spicy breath—Joe Bodley always kept a saucer of cloves on the end of the bar—was patent to ...
— How Janice Day Won • Helen Beecher Long
... Any musical instrument, a wedding. Bird, suit at law. Cat, deception. Dog, faithful friend. Horse, important news. Snake, an enemy. Turtle, long life. Rabbit, luck. House, offer of marriage, or a removal. Flag, some surprise or a journey ...
— Breakfasts and Teas - Novel Suggestions for Social Occasions • Paul Pierce
... made like a great dome, with arched roof, a narrow entrance, and grilled windows or with wider lattices on all sides so that the interior may be well lighted and yet no snake or other such pest may have access. The walls and the dome within and the edges of the windows without should be smeared with light stucco to keep out rats and lizards, for nothing is so timid as a pigeon. A round nest should be provided ...
— Roman Farm Management - The Treatises Of Cato And Varro • Marcus Porcius Cato
... internally every few minutes until recovery is certain. 4. Another Australian Physician, Professor Halford, of Melbourne University, has discovered that if a proper amount of dilute ammonia be injected into the circulation of a patient suffering from snake-bite, the curative effect is usually sudden and startling, so that, in many cases, men have thus been brought back, as it were, by magic, from the very ...
— Burroughs' Encyclopaedia of Astounding Facts and Useful Information, 1889 • Barkham Burroughs
... had only contained three defenders. They would guess that ammunition would be limited. His knowledge of the fighting tactics of the Plains tribes gave clear vision of what would probably occur. They would wait, scattered out in a wide circle from bluff to bluff, lying snake-like in the grass. Some of the bolder might creep in to drag away the bodies of dead warriors, risking a chance shot, but there would be no open attack in the dark. That would be averse to all Indian strategy, all precedent. Even now the mournful ...
— Molly McDonald - A Tale of the Old Frontier • Randall Parrish
... humbug that woman is!" honest old Dobbin mumbled to George, when he came back from Rebecca's box, whither he had conducted her in perfect silence, and with a countenance as glum as an undertaker's. "She writhes and twists about like a snake. All the time she was here, didn't you see, George, how she was acting at the ...
— Vanity Fair • William Makepeace Thackeray
... was their chief and they lived in wigwams. But the last pure blood died in 1804. Nauhaut, one of the deacons of the Cape Indian church, which seems to have thrived a century or two ago, was the hero of a wonderous snake story which, if it were not about a deacon, one might think apocryphal. I did not see a black snake on the whole journey, but they are common enough even now and were once perhaps much more so. At any rate Nauhaut was attacked by a whole ring of them—so the story runs—which approached him ...
— Old Plymouth Trails • Winthrop Packard
... before her birth as one apart from her kind. Her mother, treading upon a rattle-snake near her door, leaves the imprint of the loathsome thing upon the child. She is a "splendid scowling beauty" with glittering black eyes. When angry, they are narrowed and gleam like diamonds, and "charm" after an unhuman fashion. She bit her cousin when a child, and the wound had to ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama, Vol 1 - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook • The Rev. E. Cobham Brewer, LL.D.
... there was a loud hissing sound from beneath the automobile, as if a big snake had ...
— The Curlytops and Their Playmates - or Jolly Times Through the Holidays • Howard R. Garis
... question of "sport." I should like to ask Charles Payne, or Goddard, their opinion of "pricking" a fox. However, to ride straight and fast over such a country would be simply impossible; their detestable snake-fences meet you everywhere, with their projecting "zigzags" of loosely-piled rails; you can hardly ever get a chance of taking them in your stride, and they are a fair standing jump with the top bar removed, which generally involves dismounting. ...
— Border and Bastille • George A. Lawrence
... certainly not a fortune-hunter only; you were also a fortune-giver, otherwise there would be nothing left of your happy peace in the house where you lived. To this day the garden is shaded by big beeches and the birch tree trunks stand there white and spotless from the root upwards. To this day the snake suns himself in peace on the slope, and in the pond in the park swims a carp which is so old that no boy has the heart to catch it. And when I come there, I feel that there is festival in the air, and it seems as if the birds and flowers still sang their beautiful ...
— Invisible Links • Selma Lagerlof
... discrimination were as much distraught as are those of the subjects of the itinerant biologist; who are made to believe, most firmly, that cayenne pepper is sugar, that water is fire, that a cane is a snake. As for the readers of this periodical who still insist that even animal and spiritual magnetism are humbugs, I can only say, with the author of the 'Night Side of Nature,' 'How closely their clay must be wrapped about them!' For ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol V. Issue III. March, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... and other insects, with insatiable appetite. In approaching it, its suspicious-looking yellow-spotted hood and watchful attitude will be likely to make you go cautiously through the bog where it stands, as if you were approaching a dangerous snake. It also occurs in a bog near Sothern's Station on the stage road, where I first saw it, and in other similar ...
— Steep Trails • John Muir
... lake. I saw here, lying half in and half out of the water, the rotten wreck of an old overturned boat, with a sickly spot of sunlight glimmering through a gap in the trees on its dry surface, and a snake basking in the midst of the spot, fantastically coiled and treacherously still. Far and near the view suggested the same dreary impressions of solitude and decay, and the glorious brightness of the summer sky overhead seemed only ...
— The Woman in White • Wilkie Collins
... have engaged a large party of Indians to work for us in the ravines. They belong to the Snake tribe, and appear to be a poor set of half-starved wretches. We pay them in provisions, and occasionally drams of pisco—a spirit made from ...
— California • J. Tyrwhitt Brooks
... Dahcotahs, which, however absurd they may appear to us, are held in sacred reverence by them. There are some animals, birds and fishes, that an Indian venerates; and the creature thus sacred, he dare neither kill nor eat. The selection is usually a bear, buffalo, deer, otter, eagle, hawk or snake. One will not eat the right wing of a bird; another dare not eat the left: nor are the women allowed to eat any part that ...
— Dahcotah - Life and Legends of the Sioux Around Fort Snelling • Mary Eastman
... time we could see clear into the dark, and there stood Doc Lyon quiet like, his hands holding the bars, awful white hands, and his eyes bright like a snake's when it raises up to strike. Then Doc Lyon began to talk. First he was talking about Mitch's dog. He said it wasn't decent to have that dog around where children could see her, and that he had killed her because God told him to. Then he began ...
— Mitch Miller • Edgar Lee Masters
... the circumstances we are in, we think it right so to do. We have resolved to give an account of this matter to the King, which is but reasonable; some imagine that we propose to send the original decree, but here lies the snake in the grass. I protest, monsieur," added he, turning to the First President, "that the members did not understand it so, but that the copy only should be carried to Court, and the original be kept in the register. I could wish there had been no occasion for explanation, ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... and sensual, had appeared to him, who was filled with angelic love. The flesh had tempted him, who had lived on the ideal. He had heard words of voluptuousness like cries of rage; he had felt the clasp of a woman's arms, like the convolutions of a snake; to the illumination of truth had succeeded the fascination of falsehood; for it is not the flesh that is real, but the soul. The flesh is ashes, the soul is flame. For the little circle allied to him by the relationship of poverty and toil, which was his true ...
— The Man Who Laughs • Victor Hugo
... are worse than rattlers, for rattlers rattle and give warning. A rattler is an open enemy, but you never know that a copperhead is around until he strikes. He lies low in the swale and watches his chance. "He is the worstest snake that am." ...
— Little Journeys To the Homes of the Great, Volume 3 (of 14) • Elbert Hubbard
... announcement was made, and looking up, I saw a lugger standing towards us, and already within long gun-shot. I afterwards ascertained that perceiving us to be approaching her, this craft had lain like a snake in the grass, under bare poles, until she thought us sufficiently near, when she made sail in chase. I saw, at a glance, several important facts: in the first place, the lugger was French beyond all dispute; in the second, she was a cruiser, public or private; in the third, ...
— Miles Wallingford - Sequel to "Afloat and Ashore" • James Fenimore Cooper
... snake-shaped, and ends about doing as you'd be done by. It is long, but it has all the beef-bones in it, and ...
— The Wouldbegoods • E. Nesbit
... directions before they could use it. The first time they tried it the plates were put in wrong, and the second time they forgot to remove the cap. There were other things in the box besides the camera: some beautiful pink curlew's wings, a handsomely marked snake skin, and some rare shells that had been picked up on the Gulf coast. Of course the boys had to examine each new treasure as it was discovered. One thing after another delayed them until it was dusk even on the porch where they stood, and in the woods below ...
— Two Little Knights of Kentucky • Annie Fellows Johnston
... the table, so that only the reading lamp upon it was lighted, and much of the room lay in half shadow. The silken cord, coiled snake-like, was close to his left hand; the revolver was close to his right. The muffled roar of traffic—diminished, since the hour grew late—reached his ears as he sat. But nothing disturbed the stillness of the court, and nothing disturbed ...
— Brood of the Witch-Queen • Sax Rohmer
... Ukraine have taken their dispute over Ukrainian-administered Zmiyinyy (Snake) Island and Black Sea maritime boundary to the ICJ for adjudication; Romania also opposes Ukraine's reopening of a navigation canal from the Danube border through Ukraine to the Black Sea; Hungary amended the status law extending special social and cultural benefits to ethnic Hungarians in ...
— The 2005 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency
... larch-tassels wave in the wind. But, recollecting her charitable errand, she went rustling along the pleasant path till she came to another patient, over which she stood considering several minutes before she could decide whether it was best to take it to her hospital, because it was a little gray snake, with bruised tail. She knew it would not hurt her, yet she was afraid of it; she thought it pretty, yet could not like it: she pitied its pain, yet shrunk from helping it, for it had a fiery eye, and a keep quivering tongue, that looked ...
— A Modern Cinderella - or The Little Old Show and Other Stories • Louisa May Alcott
... flight of perhaps one hundred stone steps, and find at their summit a second torii, from whose lower cross-beam hangs festooned the mystic shimenawa. It is in this case a hempen rope of perhaps two inches in diameter through its greater length, but tapering off at either end like a snake. Sometimes the shimenawa is made of bronze, when the torii itself is of bronze; but according to tradition it should be made of straw, and most commonly is. For it represents the straw rope which the deity Futo-tama-no-mikoto stretched ...
— Glimpses of an Unfamiliar Japan - First Series • Lafcadio Hearn
... course, was playing the papa of the house, was to go "down town" to his business; he put his little head out of the door of the kennel, and was just about to creep out, when right in front of him in the path he saw a snake. He knew in a moment just what sort of a snake it was, and how dangerous it was; he knew it was a rattlesnake, and that if it bit Ada or him, they would probably die. For Marland had spent two summers on his papa's big ranch in Kansas, ...
— Our Boys - Entertaining Stories by Popular Authors • Various
... began to shake and tremble when he saw Halfvorson. It was as if he had seen a slippery snake. He did not know which he wished most—to strike him or to run away from him; but he soon perceived that Halfvorson looked ...
— Invisible Links • Selma Lagerlof
... brilliant white of snow. Miles to the south of the isolated peaks lay a long range of mountains, dull black against the blue sky, but with the white of snow caps showing even at this distance. To the north, the river gorge wound like a snake; the gorge and one huge mountain dominating the entire northern landscape. Satiated by wonders as Milton was, he exclaimed over the beauty of this giant, sleeping in the ...
— The Enchanted Canyon • Honore Willsie Morrow
... Food.—Every living thing, whether a plant or an animal, needs food. While the whole body lives, a part of it is constantly dying. The entire outer layer of a snake's skin dies three or four times during a year and is cast off, sometimes in a single piece. We can scrape dead bits of skin from the surface of our body at any time. Tiny particles are dying in all regions of the body, and we should soon waste away if food were not taken ...
— Health Lessons - Book 1 • Alvin Davison
... tent he produced a small wicker cage, in the bottom of which lay coiled a snake of a bright orange yellow color, whose very triangular head showed it to be an especially venomous ...
— A Village Ophelia and Other Stories • Anne Reeve Aldrich
... remarkable for its quick and penetrating poison; it is about two feet long, and as thick as a man's arm, beautifully spotted with yellow and brown, and sprinkled over with blackish specks, similar to those of the horn-nosed snake. It has a wide mouth, by which it inhales a great quantity of air, and, when fully inflated, ejects it with such violence as to be heard ...
— Palestine or the Holy Land - From the Earliest Period to the Present Time • Michael Russell
... another graduate of the Pasteur Institute, has extended the range of the serum-therapy to include the prevention and treatment of poisoning by venoms, and has developed an antitoxine that has already given immunity from the lethal effects of snake bites to thousands of persons in India ...
— A History of Science, Volume 4(of 5) • Henry Smith Williams
... anything uncertin about a sea-sarpint if once you'd seen one. The first as I seed was when I was skipper of the Saucy Sally. We was a-coming round Cape Horn with a cargo of shrimps from the Pacific Islands when I looks over the port side and sees a tremenjus monster like a snake, with its 'ead out of the water and its eyes flashing fire, a-bearing down on our ship. So I shouts to the bo'sun to let down the boat, while I runs below and fetches my sword—the same what I used when I killed King Chokee, the cannibal chief as eat our cabin-boy—and we pulls ...
— The Canterbury Puzzles - And Other Curious Problems • Henry Ernest Dudeney
... below our feet like valleys of Paradise. The candlenut, the ama, with its lilac bloom, the hibiscus and pandanus, green and glossy, the petavii, a kind of banana the curving fronds of which spread high in air, the snake-plant, makomako, a yellow-flowered shrub, and many others none of us could name, carpeted the farther mountain-sides with brilliant colors. Everywhere were cocoanuts, guavas, and mangos. In the tree-tops over our heads ...
— White Shadows in the South Seas • Frederick O'Brien
... the sea comes over the sand like the creeping of a sly wood-snake! Shall we go hence and turn from the ocean-sea without wetting our bodies ...
— The Well at the World's End • William Morris
... not have a better title: it is "Vanished Arizona" sure enough, vanished the good and warm Hearts that were here when you were. The People here now are cold blooded as a snake and are all trying to get the best ...
— Vanished Arizona - Recollections of the Army Life by a New England Woman • Martha Summerhayes
... Pigeon dropped the stone than she screamed, "A snake! a snake!" And she ran to her grandmother and sobbed, while she hid her ...
— The Later Cave-Men • Katharine Elizabeth Dopp
... How peaceful and quiet the three houses are over yonder! It seems quite sad to see that 'To Let' card upon number one. I wonder how number two will like their going. For my part I could better spare that dreadful woman at number three with her short skirts and her snake. But, oh, Bertha, look! look!! look!!!" Her voice had fallen suddenly to a quivering whisper and she was pointing to the Westmacotts' house. Her sister gave a gasp of horror, and stood with a clutch at Monica's arm, staring in the ...
— Beyond the City • Arthur Conan Doyle
... turned him in Janet's arms like frozen ice, then into a huge flame of roaring fire. Then, again, the fire vanished and an adder was skipping through her arms, but still she held on; and then they turned him into a snake that reared up as if to bite her, and yet she held on. Then suddenly a dove was struggling in her arms, and almost flew away. Then they turned him into a swan, but all was in vain, till at last he was turned into a red-hot glaive, and this she cast into ...
— More English Fairy Tales • Various
... on May the 14th, 1842." She laid down her pen and said "Ugh!" A robin hopped in and she welcomed him. A sparrow followed and she stamped her foot. She watched some thick white water which was sliding like a snake down the gutter of the gravel path. It had just appeared. It must have escaped from a hollow in the chalk up behind. The earth could absorb no longer. The lady did not think of all this, for she hated questions of whence and wherefore, and the ways of the earth ("our ...
— The Longest Journey • E. M. Forster
... is at a different hour every day. The only safe hour is from 6 to 7.30 each morning. That hour is free from the influence of Rahu, and is therefore auspicious. And what is Rahu? It is not a planet at all, as was thought years ago; nor is it a mighty snake which periodically swallows the sun or moon. It is merely the ascending node in astronomy wherein alone the eclipses can take place. And yet this imaginary monster has a very real place in the life of this great people, and the foolish dread of ...
— India, Its Life and Thought • John P. Jones
... dolls; dolls from China, with slanted eyes and a queue; dolls from Japan, in gayly figured kimonos; Dutch dolls—a boy and a girl; a French doll in an exquisite frock; a Russian; an Indian; a Spaniard. A second shelf held a shiny red-and-black peg-top, a black wooden snake beside its lead-colored pipe-like case; a tin soldier in an English uniform—red coat, and pill-box cap held on by a chin-strap; a second uniformed tin man who turned somersaults, but in repose stood upon his head; a black dog on wheels, with great floppy ears; and a half-dozen ...
— The Poor Little Rich Girl • Eleanor Gates
... tones, I knew that these birds were excited by the presence of some enemy. Perhaps they were defending their nests against the black snake ...
— The War Trail - The Hunt of the Wild Horse • Mayne Reid
... are about the size of a pigeon, and when skinned and smoked we thought them passable food. Any quantity could be procured by sending people on shore in the evening. The sole process was to thrust in the arm up to the shoulder and seize them briskly; but there was some danger of grasping a snake at the bottom of the burrow instead ...
— The Life of Captain Matthew Flinders • Ernest Scott
... older ones patronised the flowing beards and sartorial styles "all the go way up in Ironbark," yet if put Out-Back would have been as much new chums as city people, and were wont to regard honest unvarnished statements of bush happenings as "snake yarns"; while the youths of these parts combined the appearance of the far bush yokel and the city larrikin, and were to be seen following the plough with ...
— Some Everyday Folk and Dawn • Miles Franklin
... was at first Clerimont, then Florival, then Captain Harry Plausible, then Harry Pliant or Pliable, then Young Harrier, and then Frank—while his elder brother was successively Plausible, Pliable, Young Pliant, Tom, and, lastly, Joseph Surface. Trip was originally called Spunge; the name of Snake was in the earlier sketch Spatter, and, even after the union of the two plots into one, all the business of the opening scene with Lady Sneerwell, at present transacted by Snake, was given to a character, afterwards wholly omitted, Miss ...
— Memoirs of the Life of the Rt. Hon. Richard Brinsley Sheridan V1 • Thomas Moore
... shadow bird went over the rock," said Pineknot; "and then down dropped the mother eagle with a snake in her claws." ...
— The Cave Boy of the Age of Stone • Margaret A. McIntyre
... give him a guard, instead of coming out as a manly representative of the State and joining those who were preserving the peace. I have watched him since, and his conduct has been as sinuous as the mark left in the dust by the movement of a snake. ...
— The Memoirs of General Philip H. Sheridan, Vol. II., Part 5 • P. H. Sheridan
... white snake upon the sands She's writhing in the crispy foam, She holds her soul in her open hands, And now she staggers and now she stands, And now she runs ...
— Margarita's Soul - The Romantic Recollections of a Man of Fifty • Ingraham Lovell
... blank space of delightful mystery—a white patch for a boy to dream gloriously over. It had become a place of darkness. But there was in it one river especially, a mighty big river, that you could see on the map, resembling an immense snake uncoiled, with its head in the sea, its body at rest curving afar over a vast country, and its tail lost in the depths of the land. And as I looked at the map of it in a shop-window, it fascinated ...
— Heart of Darkness • Joseph Conrad |
