"Python" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... informant was the Orang Kaya, or chief of the Balow Dyaks, on the Simunjon River. He said: "The Mias has no enemies; no animals dare attack it but the crocodile and the python. He always kills the crocodile by main strength, standing upon it, pulling open its jaws, and ripping up its throat. If a python attacks a Mias, he seizes it with his hands, and then bites it, and soon kills it. The Mias is ...
— The Malay Archipelago - Volume I. (of II.) • Alfred Russel Wallace
... Zoological Gardens is positive that certain snakes, for instance Crotalus and Python, distinguish him from all other persons. Cobras kept together in the same cage apparently feel some attachment towards each other. (61. Dr. Gunther, 'Reptiles of British India,' 1864, ...
— The Descent of Man and Selection in Relation to Sex • Charles Darwin
... manner, overpowered by an enormous wild grape-vine. The vine had clasped its huge folds round the trunk, and from thence had wound about every branch and twig, until the mighty tree had withered in its embrace. It seemed like Laocoon struggling ineffectually in the hideous coils of the monster Python. It was the lion of trees perishing in the embraces of ...
— Bracebridge Hall, or The Humorists • Washington Irving
... inshore, for the natives to catch. Neither Tharamulun nor Hobamoc (Australian and American Gods of healing and soothsaying), who appear to men as serpents, are borrowed from Asclepius, or from the Python of Apollo. The processes have been quite different, and in Apollo, the oracular son of Zeus, who declares his counsel to men, I am apt to see a beautiful Greek modification of the type of the mediating Son of the primal ...
— The Homeric Hymns - A New Prose Translation; and Essays, Literary and Mythological • Andrew Lang
... girls who do not take it, and they find out about Crete and Greece. We are studying about the Eastern Question, and your magazine helps us to find what we want. Do you know any more about the big python that was found in Florida, or was it just taken ...
— The Great Round World and What Is Going On In It, Vol. 1, No. 28, May 20, 1897 - A Weekly Magazine for Boys and Girls • Various
... Apollo without making one observation on the character of this figure. He is supposed to have just discharged his arrow at the Python; and by the head retreating a little towards the right shoulder, he appears attentive to its effect. What I would remark is the difference of this attention from that of the Discobolus, who is engaged in ...
— Table-Talk - Essays on Men and Manners • William Hazlitt
... Like a huge Python, winding round and round The rugged trunk, indented deep with scars Up to its very summit near the stars, A creeper climbs, in whose embraces bound No other tree could live. But gallantly The giant wears the scarf, and flowers are hung In crimson clusters all ...
— Ancient Ballads and Legends of Hindustan • Toru Dutt
... to pass the night where I was. Should that horror settle down upon me again, I felt that I must succumb to it. It would crush the life out of me as infallibly as though I were in the folds of some huge python. Long before morning I should ...
— The Argosy - Vol. 51, No. 2, February, 1891 • Various
... wolves, hyenas, wild hogs, wild asses, monkeys, porcupines, and zebras. There were three or four cages full of poisonous snakes, one variety of which I recognized, the curse of India—the hooded cobra. Then there was a big python, picked up at Rio, and a boa-constrictor, taken aboard at one of ...
— The Grain Ship • Morgan Robertson
... evince. He tackled apple-pie and mince. This was the motto on his shield—"O'Dowds may burst. They never yield." His eyes began to start and roll. He eased his belt another hole. Poor fellow! With a single glance one saw that he had not a chance. A python would have had to crawl and own defeat from ...
— Indiscretions of Archie • P. G. Wodehouse
... with arms sometimes 30 feet long, so as to be 60 feet from tip to tip. The body, however, is small in proportion. The Giraffe attains a height of over 20 feet; the Elephant, though not so tall, is more bulky; the Crocodile reaches a length of over 20 feet, the Python of 60 feet, the extinct Titanosaurus of the American Jurassic beds, the largest land animal yet known to us, 100 feet in length and 30 in height; the Whalebone Whale over 70 feet, Sibbald's Whale is said to have reached 80-90, which is perhaps the ...
— The Beauties of Nature - and the Wonders of the World We Live In • Sir John Lubbock
... first of the 10,000 stages of development the extremity can not perform its functions. Just think of the cetacea! Of the hind extremity, only its carrier, the pelvis, has been developed; and even this is only represented by the two hip-bones, hanging in the flesh. As to the python, the hind extremities are more complete, but they lie hidden under the skin, and therefore are of no use for local movement. Such examples show that in the history of the development of an organ thousands of ...
— The Theories of Darwin and Their Relation to Philosophy, Religion, and Morality • Rudolf Schmid
... there in the monster folds Of a serpent that round him twines; Sir Walter a moment the scene beholds, Then to save the beast inclines. His good sword stout From its sheath leaps out, When down it falls on the Python's [Headnote 1] crest, And cleaves the coils that the lion invest; And the noble beast, From its thrall released, Shows grateful ...
— Sanders' Union Fourth Reader • Charles W. Sanders
... in ancient Greece other than those in honour of Dionysus we know of the Dance of the Crane at Delos, celebrating the escape of Theseus from the labyrinth, one telling of the struggle of Apollo and the Python at Delphi, and one in Crete recounting the saving of the new-born Zeus by the Curetes. In the chorus sung in honour of Dionysus the ancient Greek drama had its birth. From that of the winter festival, consisting of the [Greek komos] or band of revellers, chanting the "phallic songs," with ribald ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 3 - "Chitral" to "Cincinnati" • Various
... of Australia are very handsome, the green tree-snake and the carpet-snake (a species of python) for examples. The carpet-snake is occasionally kept in the house or in the barn to destroy mice and ...
— Peeps At Many Lands: Australia • Frank Fox
... dark. The few people who lived there kept themselves hidden among the rocks as if in dread of some great danger. They told Apollo that near the foot of the mountain where the steep cliff seemed to be split in two there lived a huge serpent called the Python. This serpent often seized sheep and cattle, and sometimes even men and women and children, and carried them up to his dreadful den ...
— Old Greek Stories • James Baldwin
... PYTHON. Native name WAKEL or WA-A-KEL. This snake is considered by the natives a great delicacy, and by their account resembles mutton in flavour, being also remarkably fat. I requested them to let me taste the specimen from which the drawing was made; but they devoured every atom themselves, pretending ...
— Journals Of Expeditions Of Discovery Into Central • Edward John Eyre
... upon them from all sides, to contract its coils like a python, but still the house was untouched, save by the drifting smoke and ashes. Darker and darker the night came down, a black cap over all this red struggle, but with its contrast deepening the vivid colours of the ...
— Before the Dawn - A Story of the Fall of Richmond • Joseph Alexander Altsheler
... leaf, crawled down the mountain as non-apparently as a python, and pinned it high on an outstanding redwood, then returned and told his sentinels to sleep, replacing ...
— The Valiant Runaways • Gertrude Atherton
... species rare Cobra de capello Instance of land snakes found at sea Tame snakes (note) Singular tradition regarding the cobra de capello Uropeltidae.—New species discovered in Ceylon Buddhist veneration for the cobra de capello Anecdotes of snakes The Python Water snakes Snake stones Analysis of one Caecilia Large frogs Tree frogs List ...
— Ceylon; an Account of the Island Physical, Historical, and • James Emerson Tennent
... on Round Island (386/1. In Wallace's "Island Life," page 410, Round Island is described as an islet "only about a mile across, and situated about fourteen miles north-east of Mauritius." Wallace mentions a snake, a python belonging to the peculiar and distinct genus Casarea, as found on Round Island, and nowhere else in the world. The palm Latania Loddigesii is quoted by Wallace as "confined to Round Island and two other adjacent islets." See Baker's "Flora of the Mauritius and the Seychelles." Mr. ...
— More Letters of Charles Darwin Volume II - Volume II (of II) • Charles Darwin
... forest I behold lianas, Smilax or woodbine climbing round the trunks Of giant trees that live and out of earth, And out of air make strength and food and ask No other help. And in this place I see Spiral bryony, python of the vines That coils and crushes; and that banyan tree Whose spreading branches drop new roots to earth, And lives afar from where the parent trunk Has sunk its roots, so that the healthful sun Is darkened: as a people might ...
— Toward the Gulf • Edgar Lee Masters
... they kill, but their chief food is roots. They kill great numbers of snakes. Even the largest python is no match for a herd of peccaries if they catch him before he can take refuge ...
— The Treasure of the Incas • G. A. Henty
... it is a python!" the Doctor whispered in Bathurst's ear. A similar exclamation broke from several of the others, but the juggler waved his hand with an authoritative hush. The snake rose until its head towered above that of the girl, and then began ...
— Rujub, the Juggler • G. A. Henty
... be Mowgli, and we were just beginning to arrange the different parts. The rest of the hose that was on the ground was Kaa, the Rock Python, and Pincher was Grey Brother, only we couldn't find him. And while most of us were talking, Dicky and Noel got messing ...
— The Wouldbegoods • E. Nesbit
... deluge, felt the blazing sun; His burning heat productive caus'd spring forth A countless race of beings. Part appear'd In forms before well-known; the rest a group Of monsters strange. Then, but unwilling, she Produc'd terrific Python, serpent huge! A mighty mountain with his bulk he hid; A plague unknown, the new-born race to scare. The quiver-shoulder'd god, unus'd before His arms to launch, save on the flying deer, Or roebuck ...
— The Metamorphoses of Publius Ovidus Naso in English blank verse Vols. I & II • Ovid
... all very well for you to sneer, and talk about art. But there are already in this world a deal more Standard Works than any man can hope to digest in the average lifetime. I don't quarrel with them, for, personally, I find even Ruskin, like the python in the circus, entirely endurable so long as there is a pane of glass between us. But why, in heaven's name, should you endeavour to harass humanity with one more battalion of morocco-bound reproaches for sins of omission, whenever humanity goes into the library ...
— The Cords of Vanity • James Branch Cabell et al
... at it the other way around; consider what an enormous variety of animal forms we have here, all developed under the same conditions. The humming-bird and the python, for instance. Gravitation needn't have anything to ...
— The Devolutionist and The Emancipatrix • Homer Eon Flint
... will drown any that may be uttered in the remotest future. You ask me what, precisely, that message was? Well, it is too elemental, too near to the very heart of naked Nature, for exact definition. Can you describe the message of an angry python more satisfactorily than as S-s-s-s? Or that of an infuriated bull better than as Moo? That of Kolniyatsch lies somewhere between these two. Indeed, at whatever point we take him, we find him hard to fit into any single category. Was he a realist or a romantic? He was neither, and ...
— And Even Now - Essays • Max Beerbohm
... be glad, Professor Challenger," said he, "if you could see your way to make any remarks which may occur to you without seizing me by the chin. Even the appearance of a very ordinary rock python does not appear to justify ...
— The Lost World • Arthur Conan Doyle
... Behemoth is a plural form in Hebrew meaning Excellence. It designates a prodigious and enormous beast—the rhinoceros, perhaps, or the hippopotamus. As to Leviathan, it was a huge reptile, a gigantic python." ...
— The Cathedral • Joris-Karl Huysmans
... renewal of human mind and thought, rising "like the rivers that run among the hills"; therefore it was that the youth of Greece sacrificed their hair—the sign of their continually renewed strength,—to the rivers, and to Apollo. Therefore, to commemorate Apollo's own chief victory over death—over Python, the corrupter,—a laurel branch was gathered every ninth year in the vale of Tempe; and the laurel leaf became the reward or crown of all beneficent and enduring work of man—work of inspiration, born of the ...
— Proserpina, Volume 1 - Studies Of Wayside Flowers • John Ruskin
... accounts, may attain a length of seven or eight metres. It is able to remain long under water, moves slowly on land, and can climb trees. Deer and pigs are its usual food, but at times it attacks and eats natives. A few years previously this python devoured a Katingan, and as it remains at the same place for some time after a meal, two days later it was found and killed. These Dayaks kill it with knives, spears being ineffectual, and the meat is eaten. A very large lizard is also ...
— Through Central Borneo: - An Account of Two Years' Travel in the Land of Head-Hunters - Between the Years 1913 and 1917 • Carl Lumholtz
... there was a report like the bark of a cannon and a torn and shredded end of hawser came writhing and twisting up out of the sea, sluing across the face of the pilot-house as though possessed of all the venom of the living thing it resembled—a python. ...
— Dan Merrithew • Lawrence Perry
... Droops in the smile of the waning moon, When it scatters through an April night The frozen dews of wrinkling blight. None now hoped more. Gray Power was seated Safely on her ancestral throne; 700 And Faith, the Python, undefeated, Even to its blood-stained steps dragged on Her foul and wounded train, and men Were trampled and deceived again, And words and shows again could bind 705 The wailing tribes of human kind In scorn and famine. Fire and blood Raged round the raging ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Volume I • Percy Bysshe Shelley
... to shoot anything except a python. Why a python we could not quite fathom. Personally, I think she had some vague idea of getting even for that Garden of Eden affair. But lately, pythons proving scarcer than in that favoured locality, she had switched to a lion. She wanted, she said, to give the skin to her sister. In vain we pointed ...
— The Land of Footprints • Stewart Edward White
... Soul go not to the South Where mile on mile the earth is burnt away And poisonous serpents slither through the flames; Where on precipitous paths or in deep woods Tigers and leopards prowl, And water-scorpions wait; Where the king-python rears his giant head. O Soul, go not to the South Where the ...
— More Translations from the Chinese • Various
... given by the Pedant to his son when sending him to Venice to engage in commerce: "Since thou hast never desired to drink of the pool engendered by the hoof of the feathered horse,[248] and as the lyric harmony of the learned murderer of Python has never inflated thy speech, try if in merchandise Mercury will lend thee his Caduceus. So may the turbulent AEolus be as affable to thee as to the peaceful nests of halcyons. In short, Charlot, thou must go." Sidney kept entirely to these ineffectual attempts, and had no desire to go ...
— The English Novel in the Time of Shakespeare • J. J. Jusserand
... not! I love to rest Under the shadow of that hanging cave And listen to your tales. Your Proserpine Entreats you stay; sit on this shady bank, And as I twine a wreathe tell once again The combat of the Titans and the Gods; Or how the Python fell beneath the dart Of dread Apollo; or of Daphne's change,— That coyest Grecian maid, whose pointed leaves Now shade her lover's brow. And I the while Gathering the starry flowers of this fair plain Will weave a chaplet, Mother, for ...
— Proserpine and Midas • Mary Shelley
... if an arrow of light had slain the Python coiled about my heart. If he believed, I could believe also; if he could encounter the vague dark, I could endure the cheerless light. I was myself again, and, with one word of endearment, left the bedside to do what had to ...
— The Vicar's Daughter • George MacDonald
... the python is the only other creature that dares to attack the orang-utan, and that when it does so victory usually declares for the man-monkey, which bites and tears ...
— Blown to Bits - The Lonely Man of Rakata, the Malay Archipelago • R.M. Ballantyne
... his pattern of style, and how can we exclude them if we wish to express what they have expressed? A tale like Kipling's The Elephant's Child would be ruined without those clinging epithets, such as "the wait-a-bit thorn-bush," "mere-smear nose," "slushy squshy mud-cap," "Bi-Colored-Python-Rock-Snake," and "satiable curtiosity." No one could substitute other words in this tale; for contrasts of feeling and humor are so tied up with the words that other words would fail to tell the real story. If an interjection has seemed an insignificant part ...
— A Study of Fairy Tales • Laura F. Kready
... their scutcheons. Now, over these did the great Diabolus make superior captains, and they were in number seven: as, namely, the Lord Beelzebub, the Lord Lucifer, the Lord Legion, the Lord Apollyon, the Lord Python, the Lord Cerberus, and the Lord Belial; these seven he set over the captains, and Incredulity was lord-general, and, Diabolus was king. The reformades also, such as were like themselves, were made some of them captains of hundreds, and some of them captains ...
— The Holy War • John Bunyan
... It was the fashion of the Parisian diabolists to gloat over cruelty, by way of showing their superiority to Christian morality. The enjoyment of others' suffering was a splendid pagan virtue. So George Moore kept a pet python, and cultivated paganness by watching ...
— Confessions of a Young Man • George Moore
... not to be regarded as a wonder that, when the party, early in the day, were passing a thicket out of which glided a very large serpent, the major should give a shout and incontinently discharge both barrels at it simultaneously. It chanced to be a python of great size, full fifteen feet long, and thicker than a man's thigh, but a really harmless species of serpent. The major, however, did not know this, or did not care. His shots, although fired at random, hit the creature in ...
— Hunting the Lions • R.M. Ballantyne
... sacrificial ceremonies these people also offered up rattlesnakes, which seem to have been a sort of sacred reptile among them; much as, in a sense, the cat was sacred to the ancient Egyptians, and the python is worshiped in ...
— The Border Boys Across the Frontier • Fremont B. Deering
... in hauling timber,—for teak is one of the products of the forests,—and also for travel and as bearers of burdens. Wild elephants are hunted and trapped in Siam; and tigers, bears, deer, monkeys, and wild pigs abound in the jungles. Crocodiles live at the mouths of the rivers; and the cobra, python, and other reptiles are ...
— Four Young Explorers - Sight-Seeing in the Tropics • Oliver Optic
... Put away formeti, forigi. Put down demeti. Put instead of anstatauxigi. Put in order reguligi, ordigi. Put right rektigi. Put up with suferi, toleri. Putrefaction putrajxo. Putrescence putro—eco. Putrify putrigi. Putty mastiko. Puzzle enigmo. Pyramid piramido. Python serpentego, pitono. ...
— English-Esperanto Dictionary • John Charles O'Connor and Charles Frederic Hayes
... you will have more about Cuba this week coming than you did last week. I hope that Spain won't get her $40,000,000. I also hope that next time when the Greeks retreat from some place they will do it better than at Larissa. I wish that there were some more about the big Python. It is nice that Mr. Havemeyer has got a Little Venice on Long Island. At the Tennessee Centennial it must be fine fun to go up in those cars! I hope that Mr. Mayer will get out of Germany before he will go into the army. Do you think that America can get him out? I hope ...
— The Great Round World and What Is Going On In It, Vol. 1, No. 31, June 10, 1897 - A Weekly Magazine for Boys and Girls • Various
... from the stars. There, to avenge his mother, from her home Chased by the angered goddess while as yet She bore him quick within her, Paean came (When Themis ruled the tripods and the spot) (8) And with unpractised darts the Python slew. But when he saw how from the yawning cave A godlike knowledge breathed, and all the air Was full of voices murmured from the depths, He took the shrine and filled the ...
— Pharsalia; Dramatic Episodes of the Civil Wars • Lucan
... wings; and the bodies wherein Great Brahma imprisons the spirits of sin, Many-handed, that blent in one phantom of fight Like a Titan, and threatfully warr'd with the light; I have heard the wild shriek that gave signal to close, When they rushed on that shadowy Python of foes, That met with sharp beaks and wide gaping of jaws, With flappings of wings, and fierce grasping of claws, And whirls of long tails:—I have seen the quick flutter Of fragments dissevered,—and necks stretch'd to utter Long screamings of pain,—the swift motion of blows, And wrestling ...
— The Poetical Works of Thomas Hood • Thomas Hood
... remember what to do in case of attack by a formidable snake. If a boa constrictor or a python begin to curl himself about you, you should pinch him vigorously, and he will loosen his folds and get away from you. Some may prefer to blow his head off with a pistol, but it is largely a matter ...
— The Strand Magazine, Volume V, Issue 28, April 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... struggle of Good against Evil, Light against Darkness, Truth against Error, Civilisation against Barbarism, which is as old as the book of Genesis and as the history of the world. It has been represented by Apollo and the python, by Anubis and the serpent, by the Grand'gueule of Poitiers, by the dragons of Louvain and of St. Marcel. The general truth was appropriated by each particular locality until every church and town ...
— The Story of Rouen • Sir Theodore Andrea Cook
... flash the head of a python arose, and with gaping jaws struck as the branch fell from my hand.' In a moment I had whipped the tomahawk from my belt and slashed at the body of the snake squirming at my feet, as, baffled for a moment by the falling branch, it ...
— Tropic Days • E. J. Banfield
... pound stone. Now, as the sun sank towards the western ridge, and turned the Harpessus to a riband of gold, they had come to the final of the wrestling, where the pliant Greek, whose name is lost in the nickname of "Python," was tried out against the bull-necked Lictor of the military police, a hairy Hercules, whose heavy hand had in the way of duty oppressed many ...
— The Last Galley Impressions and Tales - Impressions and Tales • Arthur Conan Doyle
... year he went for change of scene to stay with the Severns at his old home on Herne Hill. He seemed much better, and ventured to reappear in public. On March 3rd he went to the National Gallery to sketch Turner's Python. On the unfinished drawing is written: "Bothered away from it, and never went again. No light to work by in the next month." An artist in the Gallery had been taking notes of him for a surreptitious ...
— The Life of John Ruskin • W. G. Collingwood
... Academy of Music play) and a polar bear (meaning, to him, the Northern Lights, the long hike, and the igloo at night). And the florists! There were orchids that (though he only half knew it, and that all inarticulately) whispered to him of jungles where, in the hot hush, he saw the slumbering python and—"What was it in that poem, that, Mandalay, thing? was ...
— Our Mr. Wrenn - The Romantic Adventures of a Gentle Man • Sinclair Lewis
... still more evidently not by the agency of God, and of a certainty through the secret workings of the "Old Boy" himself. It was called Necromancy, or the Black Art. It had attractions for the Jews and they yielded to some extent to the temptation of consulting the Python. For this reason Moses condemned the evil as an abomination. These are his words, ...
— Explanation of Catholic Morals - A Concise, Reasoned, and Popular Exposition of Catholic Morals • John H. Stapleton
... was dead, saying that he must have it for a curiosity if we did not, and probably it stretched a little in the process, for it proved to be a python, twenty feet ...
— Through Forest and Stream - The Quest of the Quetzal • George Manville Fenn
... guessed it would be. Whatever could have induced me to think that a fellow like poor old Dug stood a dog's chance against a determined female like his sister Florence, I can't imagine. It was like expecting a rabbit to put up a show with a python. From the very start there was only one possible end to the thing. To a woman like Florence, who had trained herself as tough as whalebone by years of scrapping with her father and occasional by-battles with aunts, it was as easy as killing rats ...
— A Wodehouse Miscellany - Articles & Stories • P. G. Wodehouse
... enough, this old Cordelier, Danton and he were of the earliest primary Cordeliers,—shoots his glittering war-shafts into your new Cordeliers, your Heberts, Momoros, with their brawling brutalities and despicabilities: say, as the Sun-god (for poor Camille is a Poet) shot into that Python Serpent sprung of mud. ...
— The French Revolution • Thomas Carlyle
... must remain at times motionless. This is especially noticeable with crocodiles, which wait for whole days without moving, concealed in the water or deep grass, until their prey comes within striking distance, when they pounce upon it. The same is true of the python snake, which hangs from a tree so immovable that he appears like a vine or a branch of the tree. If an animal attempts to pass, ...
— The Human Side of Animals • Royal Dixon
... harmless lizards, so that it is not conceivable that the Hawaiian notion of a mo'o was derived from objects present in his island home. The word mo'o may have been a coinage of the Hawaiian speechcenter, but the thing it stood for must have been an actual existence, like the python and cobra of India, or the pterodactyl of a past geologic period. May we not think of it as an ancestral memory, an impress, of ...
— Unwritten Literature of Hawaii - The Sacred Songs of the Hula • Nathaniel Bright Emerson
... a swift, rapid movement, a piercing cry from the Indian, followed by the sound of cracking bones, and then the man was lifted bodily out of the boat. Stephen could now see two great coils wrapped round his body, and the head of a gigantic python; then, overcome by the horror of the scene he became unconscious. When he recovered he found that the canoe had drifted away from the tree. He now set to work desperately to loose his bonds, and after great efforts and suffering severe pain, succeeded in getting one hand loose. ...
— With Cochrane the Dauntless • George Alfred Henty
... help, so he curled up his trunk behind to try to get me to step on. Each time he made an effort like that, however, he sank deeper into the mud. I saw the trunk curling back and creeping up to me like a python crawling up a hillside to coil around its prey. There was no more trumpeting or calling from the elephant, but a sinister silence through which he was trying to reach me. He had come to the end of his ...
— Kari the Elephant • Dhan Gopal Mukerji
... the twilight time Of every people, in every clime, Dragons and griffins and monsters dire, Born of water, and air, and fire, Or nursed, like the Python, in the mud And ooze of the old Deucalion flood, Crawl and wriggle and foam with rage, Through dusk tradition and ballad age. So from the childhood of Newbury town And its time of fable the ...
— Selections From American Poetry • Various
... nothing less than this when he wants to dash his cap on the table, throw himself astride a chair, and stare at a high brick wall with a frown which would not have been beneath the occasion if he had been slaying "the giant Python." The conduct that issues from a moral conflict has often so close a resemblance to vice that the distinction escapes all outward judgments founded on a mere comparison of actions. It is clear to you, I hope, that Stephen was not a hypocrite,—capable of deliberate doubleness for ...
— The Mill on the Floss • George Eliot
... service with their little bows, but girls never touch them. Not infrequently the runners in the brush emerge carrying wild pigs which they have seared up and killed, and if, by chance, a big snake is encountered, that ends the hunt, for the capture of a python is an event. The snake is killed and carried in triumph to the village, where it furnishes a ...
— Negritos of Zambales • William Allan Reed
... still remain under the flesh. Animals of the horse type have had the central toe strengthened, for running purposes, at the expense of the rest. The serpent has lost its limbs from disuse, but in the python a rudimentary ...
— The World's Greatest Books - Volume 15 - Science • Various
... devouring a Crocodile" (with which Barye made his first appearance at the Salon, in 1831); the "Jaguar devouring a Hare"; the "Lion devouring a Doe," the "Crocodile devouring an Antelope," the "Python swallowing a Doe," the "Tiger devouring a Gazelle," the "Bear on a tree devouring an Owl" and the "Lion devouring a Boar." What a series of banquets on blood and warm, almost living flesh is here presented! How cruel these creatures are to each other, is the thought that first comes to us, but ...
— The American Architect and Building News, Vol. 27, Jan-Mar, 1890 • Various
... dragon Fafnir reminds us of Python, whom Apollo overcame; and, as Python guarded the Delphic Oracle, the ...
— The Story of Siegfried • James Baldwin
... golden fleece, which is also guarded by a dragon, and is very hard to secure. Like all the Greek sun-gods and heroes, Sigurd has golden hair and bright blue eyes. His struggle with Fafnir reminds us of Apollo's fight with Python, while the ring Andvaranaut can be likened to Venus's cestus, and the curse attached to its possessor is like the tragedy of Helen, who brought endless bloodshed upon all ...
— Myths of the Norsemen - From the Eddas and Sagas • H. A. Guerber
... was an enormous python, or serpent of the boa species, that are common in the northern coast of America. Probably it had been brought to the island on a drifted tree, and being so prodigious a reptile, the wounds it had received were not likely to do it much harm, ...
— The Little Savage • Captain Frederick Marryat
... was checked by the arrival of Kali, who brought with him the slain zebra and its colt, which had been partly devoured by Saba. It was the good fortune of the mastiff that he rushed after Kali, and was not present at the encounter with the python for he would have chased after him and, overtaking him, would have perished in his murderous coils before Stas could come to his aid. For eating the zebra he received, however, from Nell a tongue-lashing which after all he did not ...
— In Desert and Wilderness • Henryk Sienkiewicz
... mighty armies were striving over a tortured strip of blasted land that for years to come would lie fruitless and barren. Here all was peace, with never a hint—yes, far below on the white ribbon of roadway a long, dark python was slowly dragging itself forward. It was a familiar sight to Larkin and McGee—troops moving up to the theatre of war. And over on another road a long procession of humpbacked brown toads were plodding eastward. Motor lorries, carrying munitions and supplies. Strange ...
— Aces Up • Covington Clarke
... "what dost thou with the warlike bow? Such burden best befits my shoulders, for did I not slay the fierce serpent, the Python, whose baleful breath destroyed all that came nigh him? Warlike arms are for the mighty, not for boys like thee! Do thou carry a torch with which to kindle love in human hearts, but no longer lay claim ...
— Good Stories For Great Holidays - Arranged for Story-Telling and Reading Aloud and for the - Children's Own Reading • Frances Jenkins Olcott
... [103] Python, of Byzantium, was a very corpulent man. He once said to the citizens, in addressing them to make friends after a political dispute: "Gentlemen, you see how stout I am. Well, I have a wife at home who is ...
— Flowers from a Persian Garden and Other Papers • W. A. Clouston
... the expense of Apollo, the great sun god. Apollo was himself a mighty archer, and had slain with his arrows the python of Delphi. Proud of his victory, he mocked at the little god of love, advising him to leave his arrows for the warlike, and content himself with the torch of love. Cupid, vexed at the taunt, replied threateningly, "Thine arrows may strike all things else, Apollo, ...
— Michelangelo - A Collection Of Fifteen Pictures And A Portrait Of The - Master, With Introduction And Interpretation • Estelle M. Hurll
... examples, from more advanced art, of true Greek representation; the subjects being the two contests of leading import to the Greek heart—that of Apollo with the Python, and of Hercules with the Nemean Lion. You see that in neither case is there the slightest effort to represent the [Greek: lyssa] or agony of contest. No good Greek artist would have you behold the suffering, ...
— The Crown of Wild Olive • John Ruskin
... many varieties of this large family; some, like the rattlesnake, cannot climb or swim, but crawl along the ground, the terror of unwary travellers who may tread upon them in the dim forest-paths; others are Water-snakes; some, like the Boa and Python, are dreaded, although not venomous, because, of their enormous strength, and power of crushing their victims in their close embrace; others, like the Cobra, for their deadly bite; while many—we might almost say most—snakes ...
— Twilight And Dawn • Caroline Pridham
... revolt of the Giants, Prometheus's theft of fire, his creation of mankind, and the punishment that followed; the might of Eros and of Anteros, the wanderings of the island Delos, the travail of Leto, the Python's destruction, the evil design of Tityus, the flight of eagles, whereby the earth's centre was discovered. He must know of Deucalion, in whose days the whole world suffered shipwreck, of that single chest wherein were preserved the remnants ...
— Works, V2 • Lucian of Samosata
... began to bark, and the men rushed down their ladders screaming, "Harimau! Harimau!" (A tiger! A tiger!) The next morning she found that her pet dog, Fatima, named after herself, had been killed by one stroke of the great beast's paw. Once a monster python swung from a cocoanut tree through the window of her home, and wound itself round and round the post of her mother's loom. It took a dozen men to tie a rope to the serpent's tail, and pull ...
— Tales of the Malayan Coast - From Penang to the Philippines • Rounsevelle Wildman
... find it." II. "Friendship's friendship and respect's respect, but duty's what I'm paid to do!" III. "Give a woman the last word always; but be sure it is a question, which you leave unanswered." IV. "The law .... is like a python after monkeys in the tree-tops." V. "Most precious friend, please visit me!" VI. "Peace, Maharajah sahib! Out of anger came no wise counsel yet!" VII. "That will be the end of Gungadhura!" VIII. "They're elephants and I'm a soldier. ...
— Guns of the Gods • Talbot Mundy
... confessed, squeezing the warm little hand in her own, which had suddenly seemed to turn to ice. "My heart is going bump-bump-bump like a scared wild rabbit's; but I keep saying over and over to myself what the python said. Don't you remember in Kaa's hunting? 'A brave heart and a courteous tongue, said he, they shall carry thee far through the jungle, manling.' It can't be such a very big jungle that I'm going into, and godmother will meet ...
— The Little Colonel's House Party • Annie Fellows Johnston
... beginning even to our day, Aye has that monster grown, and aye will grow; And till much time be past will grow alway: Was never mightier, nor worse cause of woe. That Python, oft the theme of ancient lay, So passing wonderful and fierce in show, Came not by half this loathsome monster nigh, In all ...
— Orlando Furioso • Lodovico Ariosto
... big ivory cache under left gate-post. Went back to camp for men, found dying Arab. Gigantic buffalo gored him. Rest gone with camels. Big python showed up; all scared out. Found camel in trees and stayed to look around. Stories true. Shot two buffalo—suggested prehistoric type, great ...
— The Rogue Elephant - The Boys' Big Game Series • Elliott Whitney
... the cage where serpents of every kind were twisting and squirming about, among them the terrible boa-constrictor, and the python; but Mrs. Steiner could not look at them, and asked the boys to stay but a little while, but they could halt at the tanks of the South American alligator, the rhinoceros, the great turtle, and the hippopotamus; all animals which the boys had never seen except in pictures ...
— Pixy's Holiday Journey • George Lang
... did not alarm Hamilcar's daughter. She was disturbed by loftier anxieties: her great serpent, the black python, was drooping; and in the eyes of the Carthaginians, the serpent was at once a national and a private fetish. It was believed to be the offspring of the dust of the earth, since it emerges from its depths and has no need of feet to traverse ...
— Salammbo • Gustave Flaubert
... says, "Muchos van por lana, y vuelven trasquilados": Many go for wool and come home shorn. In order to pick up matter for natural history I have wandered through the wildest parts of South America's equatorial regions. I have attacked and slain a modern Python, and rode on the back of a cayman close to the water's edge; a very different situation from that of a Hyde Park dandy on his Sunday prancer before the ladies. Alone and barefoot I have pulled poisonous ...
— Wanderings In South America • Charles Waterton
... of the Apollo Belvidere, Byron follows the traditional theory of Montorsoli, the pupil of Michael Angelo, who restored the left hand and right forearm of the statue. The god, after his struggle with the python, stands forth proud and disdainful, the left hand holding a bow, and the right hand falling as of one who had just shot an arrow. The discovery, in 1860, of a bronze statuette in the Stroganoff Collection at St. Petersburg, ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 2 • George Gordon Byron
... stand on that mountain peak, 'in the spirit and power of Elias' (after whom it was long named), fasting, like Elias, forty days and forty nights, wrestling with the demons of the storm, and the snakes of the fen, and the Peishta-more (the monstrous Python of the lakes), which assembled at the magic ringing of his bell, till he conquered not by the brute force of a Hercules and Theseus, and the monster-quellers of old Greece, but by the spiritual force of which (so the text was then applied) it is written, ...
— The Roman and the Teuton - A Series of Lectures delivered before the University of Cambridge • Charles Kingsley
... did not intend to give up the trail. To do so would have been beyond him. His mental fangs were already fixed in Binhart. To withdraw them was not in his power. He could no more surrender his quarry than the python's head, having once closed on the rabbit, could release its meal. With Blake, every instinct sloped inward, just as every python-fang sloped backward. The actual reason for the chase was no longer clear to his own vision. It was ...
— Never-Fail Blake • Arthur Stringer
... Voltaire; radiant enough, over at Cirey yonder. To all lands, a visible Phoebus Apollo, climbing the eastern steeps; with arrows of celestial "new light" in his quiver; capable of stretching many a big foul Python, belly uppermost, in its native mud, and ridding the poor world of her Nightmares and Mud-Serpents in some ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. X. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—At Reinsberg—1736-1740 • Thomas Carlyle
... likely I should let go my hold and fall down. I am not ashamed to confess having had that feeling, but I tried to conquer it, and it soon wore off, and then I began to consider how I might best escape the dreadful Python. At first I thought that I would climb up to the very highest branch, in the hopes that the boa would not venture to follow me there, for fear of breaking it with his weight; and then it occurred to me that I might ...
— My First Voyage to Southern Seas • W.H.G. Kingston
... the mountains with their double range Embrace the vale of Tempe: from each side Ascending steep to heaven, a rocky mound 320 Cover'd with ivy and the laurel boughs That crown'd young Phoebus for the Python slain. Fair Tempe! on whose primrose banks the morn Awoke most fragrant, and the noon reposed In pomp of lights and shadows most sublime: Whose lawns, whose glades, ere human footsteps yet Had traced an entrance, were the hallow'd haunt Of sylvan powers immortal: where they sate ...
— Poetical Works of Akenside - [Edited by George Gilfillan] • Mark Akenside
... was out hunting, he came upon a strange sight. An enormous python had caught an antelope and coiled itself around it; the antelope, striking out in despair with its horns, had pinned the python's neck to a tree, and so deeply had its horns sunk in the soft wood that neither creature could ...
— The Orange Fairy Book • Various
... The gular teeth placed there break the shell without spilling the contents, as would be the case if the front teeth were large. The shell is then ejected. Others appear to be harmless, and even edible. Of the latter sort is the large python, metse pallah, or tari. The largest specimens of this are about 15 or 20 feet in length. They are perfectly harmless, and live on small animals, chiefly the rodentia; occasionally the steinbuck and pallah fall victims, ...
— Missionary Travels and Researches in South Africa - Journeys and Researches in South Africa • David Livingstone
... deliberate, and to make suggestions. One old man offers a clump of grass. Then there is a rising in the basket. The green herbs are agitated; the flowers fall, and the head of a python appears. ...
— The Temptation of St. Antony - or A Revelation of the Soul • Gustave Flaubert
... the reptiles seem fairly modest creatures. The ordinary snake does not lay more than twenty or thirty eggs, and even the python is content to stop at a hundred. The crocodile, though a wicked animal, lays only twenty or thirty; the tortoise as few as two or four; and the turtle does not exceed two hundred. But I am not really interested in eggs—not, at least, ...
— The Pleasures of Ignorance • Robert Lynd
... thought them the columns of Hercules; people fond of natural history thought them a representation of the python, because, according to Pausanias, a similar heap of stones, on the road from Thebes to Elissonte, was called "the serpent's head," and especially because the rows of stones at Carnac present the sinuosities of a serpent. People fond of cosmography discovered a zodiac, like M. de Cambry, ...
— Over Strand and Field • Gustave Flaubert
... of the foregoing scenes were being enacted, the famine had been drawing its python grasp tighter and tighter around the unhappy island. The first symptoms of the dread potato disease showed themselves in the autumn of 1845, and even that year there was much suffering, though a trifle to what was to follow. Many remedies were tried, both to stop the blight ...
— The Story Of Ireland • Emily Lawless
... It was gaining. He could hear its triumphant roar. It would catch him soon. Only a few minutes and a fiery arm would reach out like a python and wrap about him. ...
— The Boy Scout Fire Fighters • Irving Crump
... of a Python heaving in menace of doom to be They hear through the clear night round them, whose hours are as clouds that flee, The whisper of tempest sleeping, the heave and the ...
— Poems and Ballads (Third Series) - Taken from The Collected Poetical Works of Algernon Charles - Swinburne—Vol. III • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... dart of the python, the fierce onset of the kingly tiger, the sudden flash of the forked and quivering lightning, was the grasp made at the outstretched arm by the practised Brahmin. His tenacious fingers closed tightly round the other's wrist. One sudden wrench, and he had the ...
— Sport and Work on the Nepaul Frontier - Twelve Years Sporting Reminiscences of an Indigo Planter • James Inglis
... said Heriot; 'you won't be happy till you 've been racked by that nice instrument of torture, and the fair Bulsted will do it for you if you like. You don't want a snake or a common serpent, you want a Python.' ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... organisms, a rudiment is sometimes present and sometimes absent. For instance, to take again the case of limbs, in nearly all the numerous species of snakes there are no vestiges of limbs at all; but in the python we find beneath the skin very tiny rudiments of the hind limbs. Now, is it a worthy conception of Deity that, while neglecting to maintain His unity of ideal in the case of nearly all the numerous species of snakes, He should have added a tiny rudiment in the case of the python, and even ...
— The Scientific Evidences of Organic Evolution • George John Romanes
... many venomous species, seem to be less feared than in India or the wilder parts of Australia. The python grows to twenty feet or more, but is, of course, not poisonous, and never assails man unless first molested. The black momba, which is nearly as large as a rattlesnake, is, however, a dangerous creature, being ready to attack ...
— Impressions of South Africa • James Bryce
... this first impact of Ichcha the whole pack of cards began to totter slowly, and then tumble down to the ground. The scene was like that of some huge python awaking from a long sleep, as it slowly unfolds its numberless coils with a quiver that ...
— The Hungry Stones And Other Stories • Rabindranath Tagore
... preclude attempts at improvement. If a bungler tries and fails, let him be Anathema, Maranathema; but let not his failure deter from trial a genuine artist. Nor is it an ignoble office to be thus shapers only of great thinkers' thoughts—Python interpreters to oracles. Nor is his work of slight account who thus—as sunbeams gift dark thunder-clouds with 'silver lining' and a fringe of purple, as Time with ivy drapes a rugged wall—hangs the ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 2, No 3, September, 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy. • Various
... "Candygram!" When the door is opened, a shark bursts in and chomps the poor occupant. There is a moral here for those attracted to candygrammars. Note that, in many circles, pretty much the same ones who remember Monty Python sketches, all it takes is the word "Candygram!", suitably timed, to get people rolling on ...
— The Jargon File, Version 4.0.0
... more bright; along the plain it swept; And soon from forth its bursting sides emerged A dazzling form, broad-bosomed, bold of eye, And wild her hair, save where with laurels bound. Not more majestic stood the healing God,[146:1] 435 When from his bow the arrow sped that slew Huge Python. Shriek'd Ambition's giant throng, And with them hissed the locust-fiends that crawled And glittered in Corruption's slimy track. Great was their wrath, for short they knew their reign; 440 And such commotion made they, and uproar, As when the mad Tornado ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... [Sidenote: Open conflict with Satan.] At Philippi is noticeable the conflict between the visible power of Satan and the Power of {39} One stronger than he, in the casting out by St. Paul of the evil spirit of Python from the soothsaying woman. This was an earnest of the final issue of that great contest between the kingdom of Satan and the Kingdom of God, which was now beginning in the very strongholds of darkness, and is to continue to the ...
— A Key to the Knowledge of Church History (Ancient) • John Henry Blunt
... moment her surprise died out, and into her eyes crept a strange look of repulsion and even fear. She had no words to offer. She made no move. It was almost as if she sat fascinated like some harmless bird held by the hypnotic stare of a python. So long did she remain silent that Buck at last turned and looked into her face. And something like alarm caught and held him when he beheld her gray look of horror as she faced the gloomy crags ...
— The Golden Woman - A Story of the Montana Hills • Ridgwell Cullum
... darkness, with never a beacon light from point to point, from hour to hour; running every chute, with a chute behind nearly every point or island, and the vast bends looping on each other like the folds of a python and but little more to ...
— Gideon's Band - A Tale of the Mississippi • George W. Cable |
