"Poison" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... accounting came he found that there were only ten million sestertii left, so he concluded that life was not worth living if his gastronomic ideas could no longer be carried out in the accustomed and approved style, and he took poison at a banquet especially arranged for ...
— Cooking and Dining in Imperial Rome • Apicius
... who give this subject careful consideration cannot fail to arrive at the conclusion that canker is most certainly due to local infection with a specific poison, and that poison a germicidal one from the ground. The symptoms arising may be due to the action of a single germ, or to two or more germs acting in conjunction. As to whether the parasitic invasion is single or multiple ...
— Diseases of the Horse's Foot • Harry Caulton Reeks
... practice continued largely in the hands of charlatans, and down to a very recent period the name "barber-surgeon" was a survival of this. In such surgery, the application of various ordures relieved fractures; the touch of the hangman cured sprains; the breath of a donkey expelled poison; friction with a dead man's tooth ...
— History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom • Andrew Dickson White
... demon, ange ou sylphide, Oh! par pitie, fuis, laisse-moi! Doux miel d'amour n'est que poison perfide, Mon coeur a trop souffert, il ...
— Jasmin: Barber, Poet, Philanthropist • Samuel Smiles
... to the crowded cinema I noticed that the box in which I had been sitting was empty; presently an officer entered it; sat down leisurely to enjoy the pictures; read what I had written; and all at once became a different man. I had injected a deadly poison, he left the box. I walked out after him. He went straight in the direction of the chapel. Ah, I had done ...
— Tales of the Wilderness • Boris Pilniak
... Miss Wort or Lady Latimer—but there is no peace at Beechhurst now for begging. They have plenty of money, and little enough to do with it. I call giving the greatest of luxuries, but, bless you! giving is not all charity. Miss Wort spends a fortune in eleemosynary physic to half poison poor folks; Lady Latimer indulges herself in a variety of freaks: her last was a mechanical leg for old Bumpus, who had been happy on a wooden peg for forty years; we were all asked to subscribe, and he doesn't thank us for it. As soon as one thing is done with, up starts another that we are ...
— The Vicissitudes of Bessie Fairfax • Harriet Parr
... vein like subtlest poison and, like fire that brightens in the breeze, consumes this feeble frame. Resistless fever preys on each fibre. Its fury is fatal. No one can help me. Neither father nor mother nor Lavangika can save me. Life ...
— Tales from the Hindu Dramatists • R. N. Dutta
... revolutionists of all countries. According to Zenker, the headquarters of the association were at London, and sub-committees were formed to act in Paris, Geneva, and New York. Money was to be collected "for the purchase of poison and weapons, as well as to find places suitable for laying mines, and so on. To attain the proposed end, the annihilation of all rulers, ministers of State, nobility, the clergy, the most prominent capitalists, and other exploiters, ...
— Violence and the Labor Movement • Robert Hunter
... scaffold."—"Sire, you seem to forget that my grandfather's property was confiscated because he defended the King."—"Defended the King! A fine defence, truly! You might as well say that if I give a man poison and present him with an antidote when he is in the agonies of death I wish to save him! Yet that is the way your grandfather defended Louis XVI..... As to the confiscation you speak of, what does that prove? Nothing. Why, the property of Robespierre was confiscated! And let me tell you that ...
— Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Louis Antoine Fauvelet de Bourrienne
... is uncertain, Gabriella. It depends a good deal upon the stock market and the sort of stuff we've been buying. Look here, darling, don't, for heaven sake, get the business bee in your bonnet. A mannish woman is worse than poison, and the less you know about stocks the more attractive you will be. Mother has lived for thirty years with father, and she doesn't know any more how he makes his money than you do at ...
— Life and Gabriella - The Story of a Woman's Courage • Ellen Glasgow
... of this argument, which would prove too much, since it would prove (for instance) that one should take a pleasant beverage even though one knows it is poisoned. For the same reason (if it were valid) I could say: if it is written in the records of the Parcae that poison will kill me now or will do me harm, this will happen even though I were not to take this beverage; and if this is not written, it will not happen even though I should take this same beverage; consequently I shall be able to follow ...
— Theodicy - Essays on the Goodness of God, the Freedom of Man and the Origin of Evil • G. W. Leibniz
... poison, Jas, so much poison! Don't you remember what they said to you after the operation? All your life you got to watch out—just the little prescribed for you is all your system has got to have. Wouldn't I give it ...
— Humoresque - A Laugh On Life With A Tear Behind It • Fannie Hurst
... was the wife of Dudley, Earl of Leicester, and when his ambition led him to seek Queen Elizabeth's hand it was necessary to get her out of the way. So he sent Amy to Cumnor, where his servant Anthony Forster lived. At first poison was tried, but she suspected it, and would not take the potion. Then, sending all the people away, Sir Richard Varney and Forster, with another man, strangled her, and afterwards threw her down stairs, breaking her neck. It was at ...
— England, Picturesque and Descriptive - A Reminiscence of Foreign Travel • Joel Cook
... possession of the King's enemies, Burgundians and Lorrainers; secondly, she was a shepherdess and easily deceived; thirdly, she was a maid. He cited as an example Alexander of Macedon, whom a Queen endeavoured to poison. She had been fed on venom by the King's enemies and then sent to him in the hope that he would fall a victim to the wench's[701] wiles. But Aristotle dismissed the seductress and thus delivered his prince ...
— The Life of Joan of Arc, Vol. 1 and 2 (of 2) • Anatole France
... affirmed, and as often denied, that certain serpents possess the power—independent of the touch—of paralyzing their proposed victims. And it seems to be generally admitted that this is done, if done at all, by the eye; for those theorists who ascribe it to poison inhaled through the nostrils of the charmed ones, offer us no example to confirm their theory, or to make it worthy of a second thought. In extended rambles, alone as well as with society, I have made the study of serpents a matter of amusement, and ...
— Forest & Frontiers • G. A. Henty
... poison like a blessing turned into a curse. This is the secret history of what made me such ...
— Magnum Bonum • Charlotte M. Yonge
... shut my grief up i' my heart, and let it poison my life; not I, indeed. It seemed to me, though, as varry little fight were made for Ben Clough afore he died; he'd signed a paper, declaring positive as it were Ben who shot him; and t' case were half done when that were said. ...
— The Hallam Succession • Amelia Edith Barr
... more he raz'd His love's life fort, and kill'd as he embrac'd: Anger doth still his own mishap increase; If any comfort live, it is in peace. O thievish Fates, to let blood, flesh, and sense, Build two fair temples for their excellence, To rob it with a poison'd influence! Though souls' gifts starve, the bodies are held dear In ugliest things; sense-sport preserves a bear: But here naught serves our turns: O heaven and earth, How most-most wretched is our human birth! And now did all the tyrannous crew depart, Knowing there was a storm in Hero's heart, ...
— Hero and Leander and Other Poems • Christopher Marlowe and George Chapman
... share was different—and yet every one knew perfectly well what his share was, and strove to give a little more. Now, however, since they had come to the new country, all this was changing; it seemed as if there must be some subtle poison in the air that one breathed here—it was affecting all the young men at once. They would come in crowds and fill themselves with a fine dinner, and then sneak off. One would throw another's hat out ...
— The Jungle • Upton Sinclair
... Bug Poison.—Proof spirit, one pint; camphor, two ounces; oil of turpentine, four ounces; corrosive sublimate, one ounce. Mix. A correspondent says: "I have been for a long time troubled with bugs, and never could ...
— The Handy Cyclopedia of Things Worth Knowing - A Manual of Ready Reference • Joseph Triemens
... imported into this country, considering that few know for what other purpose it is used than to adulterate beer. We suspect what was at one time generally sold to brewers for Cocculus Indicus was really Nux Vomica (used to poison rats), and that the brewers' druggists when making their defence, passed Nux Vomica for Cocculus Indicus, on the same principle as the forgers of bank notes plead guilty to the lesser indictment. Opium, we believe, is still in use; for we have known seizures of that article in the custody ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 14, Issue 390, September 19, 1829 • Various
... and princes down to the handkerchief round my neck. I should observe that the Sultan requested Yusuf to taste the medicines before he delivered them up to him, to see that there was no blood in them. So he tasted the salts and the jalap; but I told him that the acetate of lead was poison, and we wrote sem upon all the packets. It surprised him that we should ...
— Narrative of a Mission to Central Africa Performed in the Years 1850-51, Volume 2 • James Richardson
... poor old Prince," said Douglas. "Part of it was for the kid whose mind you deliberately tried to poison, and part of it is for Inez. You were the first man, you boasted to me, who ever went to Rodman's. And part of it's for the loneliness you've made in Lost Chief. What have you got ...
— Judith of the Godless Valley • Honore Willsie
... this crisis fell ill—'of a colic,' said the court of Urach scornfully; 'of poison,' said Stuttgart, Baden-Durlach, finally Vienna. This was serious, wrote Schuetz. There were not wanting persons who hinted that other inconvenient wives had died of this same class of colic, and that the illness had been ...
— A German Pompadour - Being the Extraordinary History of Wilhelmine van Graevenitz, - Landhofmeisterin of Wirtemberg • Marie Hay
... it done in time," murmured Charley, through pale lips. "It was the only thing to do. I would have been dead in half an hour otherwise—and such a death. But I guess I've got the best of it, I cut out that piece before the poison had a chance to get into the circulation, I think. Give me a hand to bind up the cut before anything gets ...
— The Boy Chums in the Forest - or Hunting for Plume Birds in the Florida Everglades • Wilmer M. Ely
... beauty is in all these songs, Flooding the heart with painful bliss within— Was this the folk to which Von Kluck belongs, The land of poison gas ...
— Songs for a Little House • Christopher Morley
... or by poison, base pander!" said Julian; "these are thy means of vengeance. But mark me—I know your vile purpose respecting a lady who is too worthy that her name should be uttered in such a worthless ear. Thou hast done me one injury, and thou see'st I have repaid it. But prosecute this farther villainy, ...
— Peveril of the Peak • Sir Walter Scott
... heard yells in the rear, accompanied by pistol shots and the cracking of quirts. In an instant the herd was up with distended eyeballs and lifted tails. The poison of fear ...
— Ted Strong's Motor Car • Edward C. Taylor
... disarmed by his opponent, the wily Dane proposed a parley, and succeeded in persuading Edmond to divide the kingdom between them. The agreement was accepted by the armies and the two kings parted as friends—but the death of Edmond soon after had in it a suspicious appearance of murder by poison. ...
— Historical Tales, Vol. 9 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality. Scandinavian. • Charles Morris
... a note to Bacon's "Life of King Henry VII.," which says: "Richard's wife was Anne, the younger daughter of Warwick the King-maker. She died 16th March, 1485. It was rumoured that her death was by poison, and that Richard wished to marry his niece Elizabeth of York, eldest daughter of Edward IV. It is said that in the festivities of the previous Christmas the Princess Elizabeth had been dressed in robes of the same fashion and colour as those of the Queen. Ratcliffe and Catesby, ...
— Christmas: Its Origin and Associations - Together with Its Historical Events and Festive Celebrations During Nineteen Centuries • William Francis Dawson
... wrongs of the story, presuming that they had some existence in fact, were no longer clearly known to his wife and children; but this disappointment had played a very large part in their lives, and had poisoned the life of Sir Francis much as a disappointment in love is said to poison the whole life of a woman. Long brooding on his failure, continual arrangement and rearrangement of his deserts and rebuffs, had made Sir Francis much of an egoist, and in his retirement his temper ...
— Night and Day • Virginia Woolf
... For five years Nero ruled with moderation and equity. He then broke away from the guidance of his tutor Seneca, and entered upon a career filled with crimes of almost incredible enormity. The dagger and poison—the latter a means of murder the use of which at Rome had become a "fine art," and was in the hands of those who made it a regular profession—were employed almost unceasingly, to remove persons that had incurred his hatred, or who possessed wealth ...
— A General History for Colleges and High Schools • P. V. N. Myers
... with whom she was staying, moved by some jealousy, or disgusted at the retired manner in which she lived, and refused to go about with them or join in their way of life, accused her of every crime they could imagine, and even attempted to poison her. Her mother, hearing of the sufferings to which she was exposed, was moved with a very natural contrition for her own cruelty to her, and set out for Florence to see her, and if possible remove her ...
— The Life of St. Frances of Rome, and Others • Georgiana Fullerton
... of things as obsolete as the Ogham language itself still rouses active passion as against a living wrong. I go back to that statement in the Pall Matt Gazette, to which I have before alluded, as an instance of the way in which the very froth of prejudice and falsehood is whipped up into active poison by the short and easy way of imagination and assertion. It is a fair sample of all the rest; but these are the things which find credit with those who do not know and do ...
— About Ireland • E. Lynn Linton
... in the right," quoth Sancho, "and for the present give me only a piece of bread and some four pounds of grapes,—there can be no poison in them,—for, in truth, I cannot live without food, and if we must keep in readiness for these battles that threaten us, it is fit that we should be well fed, for the stomach upholds the heart and the heart the man. Do ...
— Wit and Wisdom of Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... sake, let us sit upon the ground, And tell sad stories of the death of kings: How some have been depos'd; some slain in war; Some haunted by the ghosts they have depos'd; Some poison'd by their wives; some sleeping kill'd; All murther'd; for within the hollow crown That rounds the mortal temples of a ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 11, No. 24, March, 1873 • Various
... application for pension in 1882, claiming that her son, William Triggs, died in 1875 from the effects of poison taken during his military service in water which had been poisoned by the rebels and in food eaten in rebel houses, ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 3 (of 3) of Volume 8: Grover Cleveland, First Term. • Grover Cleveland
... dishonest. And what is more, the savings are commonly made at the cost of the defenceless. It is better far to live in constant difficulties than to keep out of them by such vile means as must, besides, poison the whole nature, and make one's judgments, both of God and her neighbors, mean as her own conduct. It is nothing to say that you must be just before you are generous, for that is the very point I am insisting on; namely, that one must be just to others before ...
— The Vicar's Daughter • George MacDonald
... his hands. He breaks a path which leads he knows not whither: it may bring him to a shore whence he has no ship to sail from; it may end in an abyss he cannot bridge. The thickets rend and sting him, poison may colour a tempting grain or berry, frost may deaden his energies and lull him to the sleep that knows no waking. He has but little aid from science: beyond food and medicine he carries little more than a watch, a compass, ...
— Little Masterpieces of Science: Explorers • Various
... lowered lids, at Alexander. What moved in the bottom of his mind it would be hard to say. He thought that he loved the man sitting over against him, and so, surely, to some great amount he did. But somewhere, in the thousand valleys behind them, he had stayed in an inn of malice and had carried hence poison in a vial as small as a single cell. What suddenly made that past to burn and set it in the present it were hard to say. A spark perhaps of envy or of jealousy, or a movement of contempt for Alexander's "fortune." ...
— Foes • Mary Johnston
... Infelicity is involved in corporeal nature, and interwoven with our being; all attempts, therefore, to decline it wholly are useless and vain; the armies of pain send their arrows against us on every side, the choice is only between those which are more or less sharp, or tinged with poison of greater or less malignity; and the strongest armour which reason can supply will only blunt their points, ...
— Samuel Johnson • Leslie Stephen
... neighbourhood, and such were the results of his instruction that his fame spread widely, until, the abbot of a neighbouring monastery dying, the brethren almost compelled him to become their superior, but, not liking the reforms he introduced, subsequently endeavoured to poison him, whereupon he returned to his cave, where, as St. Gregory says, "he dwelt with himself" and became more celebrated than ever. After this the number of his disciples increased so greatly, that, emerging from his solitude, he built twelve monasteries, in each of which he placed ...
— Edwy the Fair or the First Chronicle of Aescendune • A. D. Crake
... was condemned. It might be that the death of his old mother had softened him a bit, for she died with his name on her lips, her last words being, "Oh Morley, give it up, my darling boy, give it up; it's your only chance to give it up, for you inherit it, my poor boy; the passion and the poison are in your blood; oh, give it up, ...
— The Floating Light of the Goodwin Sands • R.M. Ballantyne
... request, and from interest in our safety, that a Swiss garrison replaced the Spanish troop which until then had been employed as the guard of Belver. It was also through him that I one day learnt that a monk had proposed to the soldiers who went to bring my food from the town, to put some poison into one of ...
— Biographies of Distinguished Scientific Men • Francois Arago
... Squire, testily. "Perhaps you will speak to the cook about these messes she insists on sending up to disgust one, and leave me to take care of my own health. Don't touch that dish, Frank; it's poison. I am glad Gerald is not here: he'd think we never had a dinner without that confounded mixture. And then the wonder is that one can't eat!" said Mr Wentworth, in a tone which spread consternation ...
— The Perpetual Curate • Mrs [Margaret] Oliphant
... least. Pen knew his mother quite well, and familiarly smiled and nodded at her. When she came in, he instantly fancied that they were at home at Fairoaks; and began to talk and chatter and laugh in a rambling wild way. Laura could hear him outside. His laughter shot shafts of poison into her heart. It was true, then. He had been guilty—and with that creature!—an intrigue with a servant-maid, and she had loved him—and he was dying most likely raving and unrepentant. The Major now and then ...
— The History of Pendennis • William Makepeace Thackeray
... of his hollands, he said that it was certainly no bad idea of the popes to surround themselves with nephews, on whom they bestowed great church dignities, as by so doing they were tolerably safe from poison, whereas a pope, if abandoned to the cardinals, might at any time be made away with by them, provided they thought that he lived too long, or that he seemed disposed to do anything which they disliked; adding, that Ganganelli would never have been poisoned provided he had had nephews about ...
— The Romany Rye - A Sequel to 'Lavengro' • George Borrow
... selfishness that she cannot sacrifice that portion of her Indian revenue which comes from the opium trade or the capital which is invested in its growth and manufacture, and that China must therefore take the poison which diseases and degrades her population. But selfish as is this market-policy, it is a policy of circumstance. It may be resisted with success or it may be abandoned because it cannot succeed. It creates bitterness; it leads to war; it may in its selfishness ...
— Twenty Years of Congress, Vol. 1 (of 2) • James Gillespie Blaine
... alone and unarmed—for his conscience will smite him; He will not rob a she-bear of her cubs, nor an eagle of her eaglets - Unless he have a rifle to purge him from the fear of sin: Then may he shoot rejoicing in innocency—from ambush or a safe distance; Or he will beguile them, lay poison for them, keep no faith with them; For what faith is there with that which cannot reckon hereafter, Neither by itself, nor by another, nor by any residuum of ill consequences? Surely, where weakness is ...
— The Note-Books of Samuel Butler • Samuel Butler
... opening fast enough. There'll be more money coming in, in a year or two, please God. And as for your health, why, what's to make you well, if you cower over the fire all day, and shudder away from a good honest tankard as if it were poison?' ...
— Wives and Daughters • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... glaciers brought their curse of gold into the temperate regions, locking land and sea under tons of ice. Never the frost comes, and the snow deepens on the land, and the rivers and lakes are struck silent as if by a cruel magician's magic, but that this old fear returns, creeping like poison into the nerves, bowing down the heart and chilling the warm wheel of the blood. For the rodents and the digging people—even for the mighty grizzly himself—the season means nothing but the cold and the darkness of their underground ...
— The Sky Line of Spruce • Edison Marshall
... of the mongoos and its antidote has been referred to the supposition that there may be some peculiarity in its organisation which renders it proof against the poison of the serpent. It remains for future investigation to determine how far this conjecture is founded in truth; and whether in the blood of the mongoos there exists any element or quality which acts as a prophylactic. Such exceptional provisions ...
— Ceylon; an Account of the Island Physical, Historical, and • James Emerson Tennent
... Yellows and greens in the dark,—she walked again Those nightmare streets which she had walked so often . . . Here, at a certain corner, under an arc-lamp, Blown by a bitter wind, she stopped and looked In through the brilliant windows of a drug-store, And wondered if she dared to ask for poison: But it was late, few customers were there, The eyes of all the clerks would freeze upon her, And she would wilt, and cry . . . Here, by the river, She listened to the water slapping the wall, And ...
— The House of Dust - A Symphony • Conrad Aiken
... a base slander!" cried Billina, struggling frantically in the colonel's arms. "But the breed of chickens I come from is said to be poison to all princesses." ...
— Ozma of Oz • L. Frank Baum
... destruction upon itself with the eagerness and the ignorance with which Britain has done. Bent upon the ruin of a young and unoffending country, she has drawn the sword that has wounded herself to the heart, and in the agony of her resentment has applied a poison for a cure. Her conduct towards America is a compound of rage and lunacy; she aims at the government of it, yet preserves neither dignity nor character in her methods to obtain it. Were government a mere manufacture or article of commerce, immaterial by whom it should be made or sold, ...
— The Writings Of Thomas Paine, Complete - With Index to Volumes I - IV • Thomas Paine
... fights that often followed, the Indian, poorly armed and half dead with the poison he had drunk, would come off second best and many a wretched native was left to burn and blister upon the plains or among the coulees at the foothills to mark the trail ...
— Corporal Cameron • Ralph Connor
... never leaving it, day or night, sleeping or waking, and defending it with a courage that strikes the beholder with awe. If I try to take the bag from her, she presses it to her breast in despair, hangs on to my pincers, bites them with her poison-fangs. I can hear the daggers grating on the steel. No, she would not allow herself to be robbed of the wallet with impunity, if my fingers were not supplied with ...
— The Wonders of Instinct • J. H. Fabre
... childish wonder—"that the bottle in his hands contains death, and if the Indians bring their hunt to the white-man, the white-man will never take the cork out except to let death fly at the Indians' enemy"—he lifted a little phial of poison as he spoke—"that the Indian need never feel cold nor thirst, now that ...
— Heralds of Empire - Being the Story of One Ramsay Stanhope, Lieutenant to Pierre Radisson in the Northern Fur Trade • Agnes C. Laut
... asserts herself; her good breeding is so absolute that she would not be uncontrolledly familiar with her nearest and dearest, and her thoughts are all for others. But the shrew must always be thrusting herself forward; her cankered nature turns kindness into poison; she resents a benefit conferred as though it were an insult; and yet, if she is not constantly noticed and made, at the least, the recipient of kindly offers, she contrives to cause every one within reach of her to feel the sting of her enraged vanity. When I think of some women ...
— Side Lights • James Runciman
... for the imagination, if we were to allow it to govern us entirely in all such cases we should soon find ourselves restricted to almost as few comforts and conveniences as those unhappy historical characters whose constant fear of poison reduced their whole diet to boiled eggs. Still, the feeling is one of which it is very hard to rid ourselves; and in all probability the ladies who derive the most unalloyed satisfaction from their "additional" braids are those who have had them made from "combings" ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, October 1885 • Various
... delivered his famous Oration on the Crown. Afterward, during the supremacy of Alexander, Demosthenes was again accused, and suffered exile. Recalled from exile on the death of Alexander, he roused himself for the deliverance of Greece, without success; and hunted by his enemies he took poison in the sixty-third year of his age, having vainly contended for the freedom of his country,—-one of the noblest spirits of antiquity, and lofty in ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume I • John Lord
... die. The utmost efforts of science, the most potent drugs—even the beautiful and selfless devotion of the "Howard Association" and its like—availed nothing in the wrestle with the grim destroyer, when he had once fairly clutched his hold. And in the crowded quarters, where the air was poison without the malaria, his footing was too sure for mortal to prevail ...
— Four Years in Rebel Capitals - An Inside View of Life in the Southern Confederacy from Birth to Death • T. C. DeLeon
... obliged to them. Their movements would help to diffuse the gas and prevent it from settling too densely on the floor. Also, their exertions would make them breathe more deeply and so come more rapidly under the influence of the poison. ...
— The Uttermost Farthing - A Savant's Vendetta • R. Austin Freeman
... also by "the pride of wealth and arrogance of power," displayed within the United States; was the motive assigned for the association. "A constant circulation of useful information, and a liberal communication of republican sentiments, were thought to be the best antidotes to any political poison with which the vital principle of civil liberty might be attacked:" and to give the more extensive operation to their labours, a corresponding committee was appointed, through whom they would communicate with other societies, which might be established on similar principles, ...
— The Life of George Washington, Vol. 5 (of 5) • John Marshall
... was the evident intention of the black snake to attack the other. Instead of attempting to escape with its prize, the rattle-snake, though it could not use its venomous fangs, which would have given it an advantage over its opponent, whose teeth were unprovided with a poison-bag, advanced to the encounter. In an instant the two creatures had flown at each other, forming a writhing mass of apparently inextricable coils. In vain the rattle-snake attempted to get down the squirrel so as to use its fangs, the animal sticking in its throat could neither ...
— With Axe and Rifle • W.H.G. Kingston
... if I do like your verses,—you can't help yourself. I don't doubt somebody or other hates 'em and hates you and everything you do, or ever did, or ever can do. He is all right; there is nothing you or I like that somebody does n't hate. Was there ever anything wholesome that was not poison to somebody? If you hate honey or cheese, or the products of the dairy,—I know a family a good many of whose members can't touch milk, butter, cheese, and the like, why, say so, but don't find fault with the bees and the cows. Some are afraid of roses, and I have known those who thought a pond-lily ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... This was the medicine—the patients' woes soon ended, And none demanded: who got well? Thus we, our hellish boluses compounding, Among these vales and hills surrounding, Worse than the pestilence, have passed. Thousands were done to death from poison of my giving; And I must hear, by all the living, The ...
— Faust • Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe
... endeavoured to establish distinctions, by the belief of which they hoped to keep the spirit of murder safely bottled up and sealed for their own purposes, without endangering themselves by the fumes of the poison which they prepared for their enemies.' This is a ferocious and passionate version, but it is substantially not an ...
— Critical Miscellanies (Vol. 1 of 3) - Essay 1: Robespierre • John Morley
... to, and it's no use our doing anything, because they're always prepared. Some one's acting the spy. I can't think it's any of you fellows, but I believe it's old Noaks. You see his son's there, and for some reason or other he seems to hate every one here like poison. Now, what ...
— The Triple Alliance • Harold Avery
... laggards they, When girded with the quiver! Media yields The bitter juices and slow-lingering taste Of the blest citron-fruit, than which no aid Comes timelier, when fierce step-dames drug the cup With simples mixed and spells of baneful power, To drive the deadly poison from the limbs. Large the tree's self in semblance like a bay, And, showered it not a different scent abroad, A bay it had been; for no wind of heaven Its foliage falls; the flower, none faster, clings; With it the ...
— The Georgics • Virgil
... felt safe. Under the influence of fear some accused themselves, expecting, no doubt, that their punishment would be lightened. Others remained quiet, hoping that they might escape detection, while many were accused by false friends as well as by enemies, and fell victims under the poison ordeal. Others, again, stood firm, and boldly proclaimed their faith in the Lord Jesus and their readiness to die if need be for ...
— The Fugitives - The Tyrant Queen of Madagascar • R.M. Ballantyne
... Thus, superstitious princes always felt interested in the maintenance of theological opinions, which were rendered flattering to their vanity, favorable to their power. Like the grateful perfumes of Arabia, that are used to cover the ill scent of a deadly poison, the priest lulled them into security by administering to their sensualities; these, in return, made common cause with him: fully persuaded that the superstition which they themselves adopted, must be the most wholesome for their subjects, most conducive to their interests, ...
— The System of Nature, Vol. 2 • Baron D'Holbach
... of civilization into the badlands and deserts, fought with poison, gun, and trap, the coyote had survived, adapting to new ways with all his legendary cunning. Those who had reviled him as vermin had unwillingly added to the folklore which surrounded him, telling their own tales of robbed traps, skillful escapes. He continued to be a trickster, ...
— The Defiant Agents • Andre Alice Norton
... see my friend." This made her very angry indeed. However, she said, "Good; go and see your friend, and I will make you some delicious sweetmeats to take him from me." She set to work, and made the most tempting sweetmeats she could; only in each she put a strong poison. Then she wrapped them in a beautiful handkerchief, and her husband took them to the kotwal's son. "My Rani has made you these herself," he said to his friend, "and she sends you a great many salaams." The Raja's son knew nothing of ...
— Indian Fairy Tales • Anonymous
... long shot! Each session of the Legislature they fight it over, and make some changes, and then a new set of people are dissatisfied. What's meat to one man is poison to another. It's impossible to pass a law somebody ...
— Jim Spurling, Fisherman - or Making Good • Albert Walter Tolman
... hand upon his poniard Heywood looked up steadily. "How? Wilt thou quarrel with me, Carew? What ugly poison hath been filtered through thy wits? Why, thou art even falser than I thought! Quarrel with me, who took thy new-born child from her dying mother's arms when thou wert fast ...
— Master Skylark • John Bennett
... saved Professor Bumper said it made up for the other loss. Another accident did not end so auspiciously. One of the bearers was bitten by a poisonous snake, and though prompt measures were taken, the poison spread so rapidly that the ...
— Tom Swift in the Land of Wonders - or, The Underground Search for the Idol of Gold • Victor Appleton
... be fickle, false, and full of fraud, 1141 Bud and be blasted in a breathing-while; The bottom poison, and the top o'erstraw'd With sweets that shall the truest sight beguile: 1144 The strongest body shall it make most weak, Strike the wise dumb and teach the fool ...
— Venus and Adonis • William Shakespeare
... in the beauty of the thousand curious forms it took. The test of the old glass, which is now imitated a great deal, is its extreme lightness. I suppose the charming notion that glass was once wrought at Murano of such fineness that it burst into fragments if poison were poured into it, must be fabulous. And yet it would have been an excellent thing in the good old toxicological days of Italy; and people of noble family would have found a sensitive goblet of this sort as sovereign ...
— Venetian Life • W. D. Howells
... been reflecting about. Well, I've been dreaming that, at the period of which I speak, when all the commodities were becoming scarce, your human beings would agree to make poisonous artificial articles of consumption with which to poison themselves by degrees, and thus reduce the population to ...
— The Strand Magazine, Volume V, Issue 27, March 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... sought at least to develop its means, to increase its effect and power. Where is the greatest amount of pain is also the highest beauty. The left side, which the serpent besets with his furious bites, and where he instils his poison, is that which appears to suffer the most intensely, because sensation is there nearest to the heart. The legs strive to raise themselves as if to shun the evil; the whole body is nothing but movement, and even the ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... you will be there. The more I think about your story the more eager to listen I become. There must be some basis of stirring deeds for all the tales they tell of you. My friends say I have a touch of the literary poison in my veins; anyhow I like a story above all things, and to hear the hero tell his own adventures will ...
— The Eagle's Heart • Hamlin Garland
... 'Poverty parts good company;' and he is so cursed poor that he can't afford to know you any longer, now that you have lent him all the money you had, and the pension in prospectu is too much for his feelings. I'll be down with you again as soon as I can, for I hate the diabolical town as I do poison. They have altered Stephen's Green—ruined it I should say. They have taken away the big ditch that was round it, where I used to hunt water-rats when a boy. They are destroying the place with their d——d improvements. All the ...
— Handy Andy, Volume One - A Tale of Irish Life, in Two Volumes • Samuel Lover
... withdraw her countenance from her protegee, and to discontinue her own visits to St. Cyr. Now was the time for Madame Guyon's enemies to attack her, when they saw the court favourite's countenance withdrawn. An attempt was made to poison her, and so far succeeded that her health was ...
— Excellent Women • Various
... disgrace; but then remorse would make me drown myself in my own butt before the year's end, or the finishing of my first dithyrambic.—So that, after all, I shall not meditate our laureate's death by pen or poison. ...
— The Works of Lord Byron: Letters and Journals, Volume 2. • Lord Byron
... as well as she knew how, and before she had finished, Elizabeth's eyes as well as her own were full of tears. One of Elizabeth's tears even fell on the towel, and she cried out in horror, and wiped it away as if it had been a poison-spot, and laid the sacred damask back in its place. Margaret felt the moment ...
— Margaret Montfort • Laura E. Richards
... in Siberia, known to the natives as "muk-a-moor," and as it possesses active intoxicating properties, it is used as a stimulant by nearly all the Siberian tribes. [Footnote: Agaricus muscarius or fly-agaric.] Taken in large quantities it is a violent narcotic poison; but in small doses it produces all the effects of alcoholic liquor. Its habitual use, however, completely shatters the nervous system, and its sale by Russian traders to the natives has consequently been made ...
— Tent Life in Siberia • George Kennan
... blazing brandy, at the bottom of which lay numerous toothsome raisins—a rare tidbit in those days—and one of these, pierced with a gold button, was known as the "lucky raisin." Then, as the flaming brandy flickered and darted from the yawning bowl, even as did the flaming poison tongues of the cruel dragon that St. George of England conquered so valiantly, each one of the revellers sought to snatch a raisin from the burning bowl without singe or scar. And he who drew out the lucky raisin was ...
— The Children's Book of Christmas Stories • Various
... upon the animal system is to produce stupor and insensibility." He says, "Most of the powerful vegetable poisons, such as hen-bane, hemlock, thorn-apple, prussic acid, deadly night-shade, fox-glove and poison sumach, have an effect on the animal system scarcely to be distinguished from that of opium and tobacco. They impair the organs of digestion, and may bring on fatuity, palsy, delirium, or apoplexy," He says, "In those not accustomed to it, tobacco excites ...
— A Disquisition on the Evils of Using Tobacco - and the Necessity of Immediate and Entire Reformation • Orin Fowler
... responsible of all earthly offices is to remain strong enough to crush the spirit of rebellion and immorality which here and there, under the influence of foreign elements, has shown itself in our beloved country, we must, before all things, take heed to keep far away from our people the poison of the so-called liberal ideas, infidelity, and atheism with which it seems likely to be contaminated from the West. In like manner, as we, a century ago, crushed the powerful leader of the revolution, so also ...
— The Coming Conquest of England • August Niemann
... correspondence, and required great personal attention to minute details. Philip, a consummate artist in this branch of industry, had laid out a good deal of such work which he thought could best be carried out in and from the Netherlands. Especially it was desirable to take off, by poison or otherwise, Henry IV., Queen Elizabeth, Maurice of Nassau, Olden-Barneveld, St. Aldegonde, and other less ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... married to a Spanish wife. Scarcely had the promise for this marriage between Louis's niece Marie Louise and the half-witted Charles been made, when, suddenly, Don Juan sickened and died, and the queen-mother Mariana was again in power. There were dark hints of poison; it was insinuated that Mariana knew more of the affair than she would be willing to reveal; but, whatever the facts, there was no proof, and there was no opportunity for accusations. Meanwhile, the preparations ...
— Women of the Romance Countries • John R. Effinger
... were a sort of leprosy of the soul, seems fairly certain. And all that love-making which involves lies, all sham heroics and shining snares, assuredly must go out of a higher order of social being, for here more than anywhere lying is the poison of life. But between these data there are great interrogative blanks no generalization will fill— cases, situations, temperaments. Each life, it seems to me, in that intelligent, conscious, social state to which the world is coming, must square itself to these things in ...
— Mankind in the Making • H. G. Wells
... take tea at Mrs. Ireland's lodgings, an English lady who is here with her two daughters, accomplished and highly agreeable people. I was told by them that after I left Rome a most diabolical attempt was made to poison the English artists who had made a party to Grotto Ferrata. They were mistaken by the persons who attempted the deed for Germans. They all became exceedingly ill immediately after dinner, and, as the wine was the only thing they had taken there, having brought their food ...
— Samuel F. B. Morse, His Letters and Journals - In Two Volumes, Volume I. • Samuel F. B. Morse
... three principal epochs. The first opens and closes with the "Voices of Freedom." We may use Darwin's phrase, and call it the period of Struggle for Life. His ideal itself is endangered; the atmosphere he would inhale is filled with poison; a desolating moral prosaicism springs up to justify a great social ugliness, and spreads in the air where his young hopes would try their wings; and in the imperfect strength of youth he has so much of dependence upon actual surroundings, that he must either war with their ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 77, March, 1864 • Various
... rich in grace and leisure and gifts, and saw the astonishing reversal of God's primal law illustrated in the process of corruption—the fair, sweet, fragrant creature passing into foulness. He looked carefully at the stages and modes of sin—venial sins, those tiny ulcers that weaken, poison and spoil the soul, even if they do not slay it—lukewarmness, that deathly slumber that engulfs the living thing into gradual death—and, finally, mortal sin, that one and only wholly hideous thing. He saw the indescribable sight ...
— By What Authority? • Robert Hugh Benson
... sight of a glass on the dressing-table, and he uttered a cry, but felt confused and puzzled directly after; for his common sense told him that, if the lieutenant had tried to poison himself, whatever he had taken would not have gone off with a tremendous bang inside and made ...
— The Queen's Scarlet - The Adventures and Misadventures of Sir Richard Frayne • George Manville Fenn
... heart Riots in free delirium! O, Heaven! I struggled with it, but it mastered me! I fought against it, but it beat me down! I prayed, I wept, but Heaven was deaf to me; And every tear rolled backward on my heart, To blight and poison! ...
— Representative Plays by American Dramatists: 1856-1911: Francesca da Rimini • George Henry Boker
... complete subversion during the world war of nearly all the international laws which had been slowly built up in a thousand years. These principles, as codified by the two Hague Conventions, were immediately swept aside in the fierce struggle for existence, and civilized man, with his liquid fire and poison gas and his deliberate; attacks upon undefended cities and their women and children, waged war with the ...
— The Constitution of the United States - A Brief Study of the Genesis, Formulation and Political Philosophy of the Constitution • James M. Beck
... These pariahs of society, these long-pursued, badly-persecuted ones—also the compulsory recluses, the Spinozas or Giordano Brunos—always become in the end, even under the most intellectual masquerade, and perhaps without being themselves aware of it, refined vengeance-seekers and poison-Brewers (just lay bare the foundation of Spinoza's ethics and theology!), not to speak of the stupidity of moral indignation, which is the unfailing sign in a philosopher that the sense of philosophical humour has left ...
— Beyond Good and Evil • Friedrich Nietzsche
... by the king and queen, in 1478. The peaceful teachings of the meek and lowly Jesus do not seem to have had much influence on this political Boanerges. He had two hundred familiars, and a guard of fifty horsemen, but he lived in continual fear of poison. The Dominican monastery at Seville soon became insufficient to contain the numerous prisoners, and the king removed the court to the castle in the suburb of Triana. At the first auto da fe (act of faith), seven apostate Christians were burnt, and the ...
— Mysticism and its Results - Being an Inquiry into the Uses and Abuses of Secrecy • John Delafield
... woman see the like? Burning seacoal on the kitchen-fire! Dost thou mean to poison us all with that ill smoke? [Note 6.] And wood in the wood-house more than we shall use in half a year! Forty logs came in from the King only yesterday, and ten from my Lord of Lisle the week gone. Sister Sigred, when shall I put any sense ...
— In Convent Walls - The Story of the Despensers • Emily Sarah Holt
... his back as he read the commonplace lines. The man who had done this had been in this room with him a few hours before, and one of the means of murder was now in his safe. It would have been just as easy for Phadrig to have caused him to look upon the fatal gem, left a bottle of poison with him, and told him to take it as medicine on going to bed. The only difference would have been that there would have been a very much greater sensation in ...
— The Mummy and Miss Nitocris - A Phantasy of the Fourth Dimension • George Griffith |
