"Serpent" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... take the more insulting truth! What crawling serpent of temptation induced you to tell me you expected to marry Beulah? No evasion! I will not be put off! Why did you deceive me with a falsehood I was too stupidly trusting ...
— Beulah • Augusta J. Evans
... existence and him, as few wizards could have done. Friedrich Wilhelm, like St. Paul in Melita, warming his innocent hands at the fire of dry branches here kindled for him,—that miracle of a venomous serpent is this that has fixed itself upon his finger? To Friedrich Wilhelm's enchanted sense it seems a bird-of-paradise, trustfully perching there; but it is of the whip-snake kind, or a worse; and will stick to him tragically, if also comically, for years to come. ...
— History Of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Volume V. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... be intensified into unconditional Will to Power; we hold that hardness, violence, slavery, danger in the street and in the heart, secrecy, stoicism, arts of temptation and devilry of all kinds; that everything evil, terrible, tyrannical, wild-beast-like and serpent-like in man contributes to the elevation of the species just as much as its opposite—and in saying this we do not even say ...
— Gems (?) of German Thought • Various
... of animal life about the Igorot that he will not and does not eat. The exceptions are mainly insectivora, and such larger animals as the mythology of the Igorot says were once men — as the monkey, serpent-eagle, crow, snake, etc. However, he is not wholly lacking in taste and preference in his foods. Of his common vegetable foods he frequently said he prefers, first, beans; second, rice; third, ...
— The Bontoc Igorot • Albert Ernest Jenks
... the world," he answered, laughing. "I know the snakes too well, better than they know themselves. It is not likely that even an old serpent with thirteen rattles, like this one, could harm me. I know his ways. Before he could strike I should be out ...
— The Blue Flower, and Others • Henry van Dyke
... home, it will be found in the streets, and oh, what danger lurks there! Fathers and mothers—see to it, that if your child's heart cease to beat, your own break not with the remembrance of words and looks, that bite like a serpent and sting like ...
— Mrs Whittelsey's Magazine for Mothers and Daughters - Volume 3 • Various
... among the most precious objects of history: they are covered with writings in some unknown, and even unheard-of, tongue. Some of the writing is fine, some coarse: sometimes the lines are straight, from right to left, and sometimes they wind about, like the trail of a serpent, in every direction. Saffah is a desert plain in Syria extending east from the lakes of Damascus, and a part of it is covered with these curious stones. Antiquaries like Renan, Ganneau, De Vogue, Waddington and Pierret are sorely puzzled over the writing on them, for the character resembles ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 22, September, 1878 • Various
... the head of the chief guard: then the guards, armed with large hooks, adorned with silk fringe, in four rows one above another; two other files of men in armor, some bearing maces with long handles; others, maces in the form of a hand, or of a serpent: others, equipped with large hammers and long hatchets like a crescent. Other guards bearing sharp axes: some, weapons like scythes, only strait. Soldiers carrying ...
— A Treatise on the Art of Dancing • Giovanni-Andrea Gallini
... simply. "No sooner were all their backs towards me, than I said to myself that the human race happily is not spiderine. I girt up my loins, or rather fetched my tails up under my arms very closely, and glided away, with the silence of the serpent, and the craft of the enemy of our fallen race. Great care was needful, and I exercised it; and here you behold me, unshot and unshot-at, and free from all anxiety, except a pressing urgency for a bowl of your admirable soup, Maria, and a cut from ...
— Springhaven - A Tale of the Great War • R. D. Blackmore
... really a blessing, in that it informs the householder of his danger. A cock that turns completely around and, after extinguishing the light, permits the escape of the gas, is more dangerous than a poisonous serpent. Yet there may be nothing radically wrong with this fixture, and the use of the screwdriver may make it as good as new. Gas should never be turned low when there is a draught in the room, nor allowed to burn near hanging draperies. Care should always be taken in turning ...
— Practical Suggestions for Mother and Housewife • Marion Mills Miller
... these upper panels (just above the meeting of the two kings), is a great car drawn by oxen, whose wheels are crushing prostrate bodies in the road beneath them. The fourth carving shows a stage drawn by two elephants. The fleshless head of Death is in the front, with a serpent coiling round his leg, and on the car is the figure of a woman blowing a trumpet, with a banner. This is evidently the fourth line of the verse just quoted, "Fama vincit mortem." On the fifth car, drawn by four beasts, is a great dais, and personages beneath it. ...
— The Story of Rouen • Sir Theodore Andrea Cook
... against her, and tried to overawe her. Attempting once to scold her in public, Rebecca hit upon the before-mentioned plan of answering her in French, which quite routed the old woman. In order to maintain authority in her school, it became necessary to remove this rebel, this monster, this serpent, this firebrand; and hearing about this time that Sir Pitt Crawley's family was in want of a governess, she actually recommended Miss Sharp for the situation, firebrand and serpent as she was. "I cannot, certainly," she said, "find fault with Miss Sharp's conduct, except to myself; and must ...
— Vanity Fair • William Makepeace Thackeray
... and prayed all that night long. As soon as it was day he looked about him, and saw he was in a wild mountain, girt round with the sea and filled with wild beasts. Then he rose and went into a valley, and there he saw a young serpent bring a young lion by the neck, and after that there passed a great lion, crying and roaring after the serpent, and a fierce battle began between them. Sir Percivale thought to help the lion, as he was the more natural beast of the twain, and he drew his sword ...
— The Book of Romance • Various
... made as if it would fly or hide itself. It leaped up in its bed incessantly, and saw hideous shapes around it and raved about them, and writhed and struggled like one attacked by a serpent. ...
— The Day of Wrath • Maurus Jokai
... temples, and their places of worship were open to heaven, such as stone circles. They had also a ceremony of baptism, dipping in the sacred lake, as an initiatory rite, and had also a sacrament of bread and wine. They paid great reverence to the egg of the serpent, the seed of the oak, and above all, the mistletoe that grew upon the oak; and they offered in sacrifice to the sun and fire, ...
— Folk Lore - Superstitious Beliefs in the West of Scotland within This Century • James Napier
... said, addressing Mr. Webber, "did you ever in all your born days hear a pal put it across another pal like that? After the work we've done all these years together, me and Lew—why, you're like a serpent in the bush, you ...
— Bones in London • Edgar Wallace
... institutions, that one which he seems most profoundly to have hated was our nobility; or, speaking more generally, our aristocracy. Some deadly aboriginal schism he seems to have imagined between this order and the democratic orders; some predestined feud as between the head of the serpent ...
— Theological Essays and Other Papers v2 • Thomas de Quincey
... Melusina: a water fay who married a mortal on condition that she should be allowed to spend her Saturdays in deep seclusion. This promise, after many years, was broken, and Melusina, half serpent, half woman, was discovered swimming in a bath. For this breach of faith on the part of her husband, Melusina was compelled to leave her home. She regularly returned, however, before the death of any of the lords of her ...
— Quentin Durward • Sir Walter Scott
... of flutes was wafted on the breeze from fairyland. Pulsing bosom and sheen of sun-kissed shoulders.... Ah! maddening modesty and virtue, how inconsistent are thy ways! No wonder so many forget about the cursed serpent.... ...
— Reno - A Book of Short Stories and Information • Lilyan Stratton
... for the serpent Secession in Barlow's paradise. This grand federation of the terrestrial ball is governed by a general council of elderly married men, "long rows of reverend sires sublime," presided over by a "sire elect shining in peerless grandeur." The delegates hold their sessions in Mesopotamia, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 88, February, 1865 • Various
... this longship. It had recently been built by him, and was one of the largest that had ever been seen in Norway. The exact dimensions of it are not now known, but we know that it had thirty-two banks for rowers, from which we may infer that it must have been of nearly the same size with the Long Serpent, a war vessel of thirty-four banks, which was built about the end of the tenth century, and some of the dimensions of which are given in the Saga of Olaf Tryggvesson. The length of her keel that rested ...
— Erling the Bold • R.M. Ballantyne
... great circle, a serpent biting its own tail (the symbol of eternity, of something without end) the six colours appear that make up the three main antitheses. And to right and left stand the two great possibilities of silence—death and birth (see ...
— Concerning the Spiritual in Art • Wassily Kandinsky
... striking a match. At once the swelling note of the fog-horn smote the air and thundered away in tremendous sound waves. Soon a hissing, fiery serpent ran up the port wall of the chart-house, and a fine star rocket soared into the sky. It illuminated a wide area of the bay, and revealed a number of crowded canoes darting in on the ship from all sides. Courtenay grasped the lines connected with the remaining mines ...
— The Captain of the Kansas • Louis Tracy
... the dudish student. Nevertheless, he looked much worried. "Of course, they do report a sea serpent ...
— The Rover Boys in Business • Arthur M. Winfield
... of the carrefour, the serpent catcher showed them two vipers in a low flat box. They darted their forked tongues against the wire netting, and the large green snake, which he took out of a bag, curled round his arm, seeking to escape. In questioning him they learnt that the snakes ...
— Celibates • George Moore
... strong and lithe and full of deadly rage, but unable to spring, trapped and shut within iron bars. Her face had changed to a livid white, and looked hard and pitiless, and her eyes had a fixed stony stare like those of a serpent. And at intervals, as she moved about the room, she clenched her hands with such energy that the nails wounded her palms. And from time to time her rage would rise to a kind of frenzy, and find expression in a voice strangely harsh and unnatural, deeper than a man's, ...
— Fan • Henry Harford
... happening? Evidently the god had fallen upon evil times. Typhon, the prince of darkness, had betrayed him; Delilah, the queen of Night, had shorn his hair; the dreadful Boar had wounded him; Hercules was struggling with Death itself; he had fallen under the influence of those malign constellations—the Serpent and the Scorpion. Would the god grow weaker and weaker, and finally succumb, or would he conquer after all? We can imagine the anxiety with which those early men and women watched for the first indication of a lengthening day; and the universal joy when the Priest (the representative ...
— Pagan & Christian Creeds - Their Origin and Meaning • Edward Carpenter
... deliver it to you in his own words. 'The reason is easy,' he saith; 'for as that sex is frailer than man is, so it is easier to be entrapped in those gross snares of the devil, as was overwell proved to be true, by the serpent's deceiving of Eva at the beginning, which makes him the homelier with ...
— The Lancashire Witches - A Romance of Pendle Forest • William Harrison Ainsworth
... tissues and warming the senses, John became more and more miserably aware that, in the fight between Scaife and himself for the possession of Desmond, the odds were stupendously against him. Truly the Demon had the subtlety of the serpent, for he used the failings which he was unable to hide as cords wherewith to bind his friend more closely to him. When the facts, for instance, of what had taken place in Lovell's room came to Desmond's ears, he denied fiercely the possibility of Scaife, his pal, making ...
— The Hill - A Romance of Friendship • Horace Annesley Vachell
... heard in the Independent Chapel; and he made a High-Church assertion of ecclesiastical powers and functions. Clearly, the Dissenters would feel that 'the parson' was too many for them. Nothing like a man who combines shrewdness with energy. The wisdom of the serpent, Mr. Barton considered, was one of ...
— Scenes of Clerical Life • George Eliot
... grasping my guide with the left hand, from a providential instinct which suggested that his close contiguity might in some way protect me. A call from the chief of my antagonists was answered from the roof of a neighbouring house. I heard a whizzing through the air, and presently something like a winged serpent, but with a slender neck, and shoulders of considerable breadth, and a head much larger than a serpent's in proportion to the body, and shaped more like a bird's, with a sharp, short beak, sprang upon and coiled round my left arm. That it ...
— Across the Zodiac • Percy Greg
... single combat. Menelaus, whose wife Paris had carried away, was as glad as a hungry lion when he finds a stag or a goat, and leaped in armour from his chariot, but Paris turned and slunk away, like a man when he meets a great serpent on a narrow path in the hills. Then Hector rebuked Paris for his cowardice, and Paris was ashamed and offered to end the war by fighting Menelaus. If he himself fell, the Trojans must give up Helen and all her jewels; if Menelaus fell, the Greeks were to return without fair Helen. The ...
— Tales of Troy: Ulysses the Sacker of Cities • Andrew Lang
... battle with the poisonous reptile, whilst the Snake wriggled, and coiled its body into hoops and rings. The Kookooburra's strong wings, beating the air just above the writhing Snake, made a great noise, and the serpent hissed in its fierce hatred and anger. Then Dot saw that the Kookooburra's big beak had a firm hold of the Snake by the back of the neck, and that it was trying to fly upwards with its enemy. In vain the dreadful creature tried to bite the gallant bird; in vain it hissed ...
— Dot and the Kangaroo • Ethel C. Pedley
... crag not far from Bamburgh, and Bamburgh Castle itself, form the scene of this well-known legend. The fair Princess Margaret, daughter of the King of Bamburgh was turned into a "laidly worm" (loathly or loathsome serpent) by her wicked stepmother, who was jealous of the lovely maid. The whole district was in terror of this dreadful monster, which desolated the country-side in its search ...
— Northumberland Yesterday and To-day • Jean F. Terry
... and blasphemy, the Prussian recoiled like a serpent, gathered himself together and launched headlong at Lanyard, only to be met full tilt by a second blow and a third, each more merciless than its predecessor, beating him down ...
— The False Faces • Vance, Louis Joseph
... I shall go when it suits my own convenience; that I quit the castle, he dares to call his, as I would the nest of a serpent, and that this is not the last he shall hear from me. Tell him, I will not leave ANOTHER murder on his conscience, if ...
— The Mysteries of Udolpho • Ann Radcliffe
... of the Treaty of Paris were not carried out without considerable procrastination on the part of Russia, which, by its method of evacuating Kars and surrendering Ismail and Reni, and by laying claim to Serpent's Island at the mouth of the Danube, compelled England to send a fleet to the Black Sea, to enforce strict observance of the Treaty. By the end of the year the matter was arranged, though in the meantime the possibility of Great Britain being ...
— The Letters of Queen Victoria, Volume III (of 3), 1854-1861 • Queen of Great Britain Victoria
... the impression that Miss Bell, under proper guidance, could very possibly do some fresh unconventional work for the Age. Freshness and unconventionality for the Age was what Mr. Rattray sought as they seek the jewel in the serpent's head in the far East. He talked to the editor-in-chief about it, mentioning the increasing lot of things concerning women that had to be touched, which only a woman could treat "from the inside," and the editor-in-chief agreed sulkily, because experience ...
— A Daughter of To-Day • Sara Jeannette Duncan (aka Mrs. Everard Cotes)
... seventeenth century had its own family of two clarinos and three tubas. The old English name of the trombone is sackbut. The old wooden cornet, or German zinke, an obsolete, cupped mouthpiece instrument, the real bass of which, according to family, is the now obsolete serpent, was used in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries as the treble instrument in combination with alto, tenor, and bass trombones. The leading features of the trumpet are also found, as already inferred, ...
— Scientific American Supplement No. 819 - Volume XXXII, Number 819. Issue Date September 12, 1891 • Various
... I; then taking off my hat I stood uncovered before the chair, and said in the best Welsh I could command, 'Shade of Huw Morus, supposing your shade haunts the place which you loved so well when alive—a Saxon, one of the seed of the Coiling Serpent, has come to this place to pay that respect to true genius, the Dawn Duw, which he is ever ready to pay. He read the songs of the Nightingale of Ceiriog in the most distant part of Lloegr, when he was a brown-haired boy, and now that he is a grey-haired man he is come to say in this place ...
— The Pocket George Borrow • George Borrow
... you mean? Nay, that is a cruel religion, which would excruciate hereafter those who enjoy now. Judge them not; in their laurel crowns there is full often twisted a serpent. The hunger of the body is bad indeed, but the hunger of the mind is worse perhaps; and from that they suffer, because from every fulfilled desire springs the pain ...
— Wisdom, Wit, and Pathos of Ouida - Selected from the Works of Ouida • Ouida
... a good specimen of the work:—"When I was a youth with plenty of idle time on my hands, I was much taken with the vanity, of which some grown men are not ashamed, of making anagrams by transposing the letters of my name, written in Latin. Out of Joannes Keplerus came Serpens in Akuleo (a serpent in his sting); but not being satisfied with the meaning of these words, and being unable to make another, I trusted the thing to chance, and taking out of a pack of playing cards as many as there were letters ...
— The Martyrs of Science, or, The lives of Galileo, Tycho Brahe, and Kepler • David Brewster
... stared, and though greatly shocked, smothered his emotion; and attempted, with the wisdom of the serpent and the mildness of the dove, to find another ...
— My Novel, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... stay him, Nor can flowers, Round his knees all-softly twining With their loving eyes detain him; To the plain his course he taketh, Serpent-winding, ...
— The Poems of Goethe • Goethe
... their prey through unmapped forests, across perilous mountain-tops, adown bottomless chasms, into uninhabitable jungles, always near with the invisible hand of death uplifted, betraying their pursuit only by such signs as a beast or a bird or a gliding serpent might make—a twig crackling in the awful, sweat-soaked night, a drench of dew showering from the screening foliage of a giant tree, a whisper at even from the rushes of a water-level—a hint of death for every mile and every hour—they amused ...
— Options • O. Henry
... some invisible influence that like the eye of a basilisk, held me enchained. I remember turning my head towards a certain quarter of the wall as if I half expected to encounter there the bewildering glance of a serpent. Yet far from being apprehensive of any danger, I only wondered over the weakness of mind that ...
— A Strange Disappearance • Anna Katharine Green
... shouted Ezra, doubling up his fists. "Thou wilt call my sister a blind mole, wilt thou? Thou serpent, feeding upon the dust! Thou snake! Rise not up or I will rub thy ...
— Christmas Light • Ethel Calvert Phillips
... apt; And duller shouldst thou be than the fat weed That rots itself in ease on Lethe wharf,[105] Wouldst thou not stir in this. Now, Hamlet, hear: 'Tis given out that, sleeping in mine orchard,[106] A serpent stung me; so the whole ear of Denmark Is by a forged process[107] of my death Rankly abus'd: but know, thou noble youth, The serpent that did sting thy father's ...
— Hamlet • William Shakespeare
... its different names from its various contorted forms; sometimes resembling a horn, and often assuming a shape not unlike that of a serpent. ...
— The Field and Garden Vegetables of America • Fearing Burr
... detect signs of wrong doing, ready to help by private counsel, and—when parents consent—to give information to any needy child. In dealing with this subject the teacher needs to be as wise as the serpent and as harmless as the dove, not only for her own sake but for the sake of ...
— The Renewal of Life; How and When to Tell the Story to the Young • Margaret Warner Morley
... Mellstock church where the others had tuned their venerable psalmody so many hundreds of times; had never, in all likelihood, entered a church at all. All were devil's tunes in his repertory. 'He could no more play the Wold Hundredth to his true time than he could play the brazen serpent,' the tranter would say. (The brazen serpent was supposed in Mellstock to be a musical instrument particularly ...
— Life's Little Ironies - A set of tales with some colloquial sketches entitled A Few Crusted Characters • Thomas Hardy
... silver, with a diadem gold. In later times the books have been blazoned as Bibles. In a "tricking" in the volume before mentioned, in the College of Arms, St. John the Evangelist stands behind the shield in the attitude of benediction, and bearing in his left hand a cross with a serpent rising from it (much more suitable for the scriveners or law writers, by the bye). On one side of the shield stands the Evangelist's emblematic eagle, holding an inkhorn in his beak. The Company never received any grant of arms or ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury
... of whom are barbarous, some cruel, many miserable, many unhappy, save for brief moments not of hope, but of defiance, distilled in the alembic of the brain from gin: what better life could steam up from such a Phlegethon! Look there: "Cream of the Valley!" As if the mocking serpent must with sweet words of Paradise deepen the horrors of the hellish compound, to which so many of our brothers and sisters made in the image of God, fly as to their only Saviour from ...
— Robert Falconer • George MacDonald
... heaven, and morning and evening to tend and feed Ningirsu's sacred ass, called Ug-kash, and the ass of Eridu. The shepherd of Ningirsu's kids was the god Enlulim, and he tended the sacred she-goat who suckled the kids, and he guarded her so that the serpent should not steal her milk. This god also looked after the oil and the strong drink of E-ninnu, and saw that ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, And Assyria In The Light Of Recent Discovery • L.W. King and H.R. Hall
... straight, and looked after him, his clear blue eyes sparkling with two rays,—one of honest patriotic wrath, one of affection and regret for George; while Long, from the corner, eyed all with a serpent's wisdom in his gaze, oracularly uttering, as the ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I, No. 1, Nov. 1857 • Various
... ruin follows time and means ill spent. Pause, O, ye youths! before you yet begin A course that may lead you to every sin! Restrain your feet from entering those holes Which prove the ruin of so many souls. Would ye not pause, if right across your path There lay a monstrous serpent, full of wrath? Would we, fool-hardy, rush into his jaws To certain death? or would ye rather pause? Youths, ye have cause, yea, weighty cause, to dread This horrid serpent, on strong liquor fed, Which lurks in every place where Rum ...
— The Emigrant Mechanic and Other Tales In Verse - Together With Numerous Songs Upon Canadian Subjects • Thomas Cowherd
... games are said to have been established in honor of the victory that Apollo gained at Delphi over the serpent Py'thon, on setting out to erect his temple. This monster, said to have sprung from the stagnant waters of the deluge of Deucalion, may have been none other than the malaria which laid waste the surrounding country, and ...
— Mosaics of Grecian History • Marcius Willson and Robert Pierpont Willson
... tongue! Ah, my nasty foreign temper! Why did I let her irritate me? I, the elder of the two—why did I not set her an example of self-control? Who can tell? When does a woman know why she does anything? Did Eve know—when Mr. Serpent offered her the apple—why she ...
— Poor Miss Finch • Wilkie Collins
... Paymaster-in-Chief, these visions of mine became less insistent. I was at length obliged to confess that another youthful illusion was fading; prize-money began to take its place in my mind along with the sea-serpent and similar figures of marine mythology. I was frankly hurt; I ceased even to raise my hat when passing the Admiralty Offices on ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 159, November 10, 1920 • Various
... had a thousand other superstitions. If they beheld a serpent or lizard, or heard anyone sneeze, they would always retrace their steps, and on no account go further at that time, for such an occurrence would be an evil omen. The ministers of the Devil also cast lots for them; this was another fraud and deceit which ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898: Volume XII, 1601-1604 • Edited by Blair and Robertson
... of this execrable usurpation on the human understanding have, in general, the firmest assurance that all things in the system are right: it has itself secured them against knowing anything that could discompose their sense of certainty. No fell savage, or serpent, or monster, ever had a more perfect instinct to avail itself of an impervious obscurity for its lurking-place, than this imposture has shown to keep out all mental light from its realm. The delusion is so strong and absolute in ignorance, is so identified with it, and so systematically ...
— An Essay on the Evils of Popular Ignorance • John Foster
... of food, saw a Serpent asleep in a sunny nook, and flying down, greedily seized him. The Serpent, turning about, bit the Crow with a mortal wound. The Crow in the agony of death exclaimed: "O unhappy me! who have found in that which I deemed a most happy windfall ...
— Aesop's Fables - A New Revised Version From Original Sources • Aesop
... the shows:—Cora, the Beautiful Serpent Charmer. Cora was outside beating a drum, and was quite the reverse of beautiful; she may have had the faculty of charming serpents, but not men. A cluster of young soldiers stood without, shook their heads, and ...
— In Troubadour-Land - A Ramble in Provence and Languedoc • S. Baring-Gould
... afterward the judge of the dead. In this we find the greatest mystery in the Egyptian religion. Typhon was the god of the evil spirits, a wicked, rebellious devil, who held in his grasp all the terrors of disease and of the desert. Sometimes he was in the form of a frightful serpent, again in the form ...
— History of Human Society • Frank W. Blackmar
... noises that they made—heart-quaking cries, squealing sounds, gruntings, and, most trying of all, a loud, piercing whistle whose sibilant pulsations penetrated the ear like thrusts of a needle. I pictured to myself a colossal serpent as the most probable author of this terrifying sound, but the error of my fancy was demonstrated by a tragedy which shook even ...
— A Columbus of Space • Garrett P. Serviss
... the mystic and dreaded jettatura as well as his blessing. If Maurice Kirkwood carried that destructive influence, so that his clear blue eyes were more to be feared than the fascinations of the deadliest serpent, it could easily be understood why he kept his look away from all around him whom he feared he ...
— A Mortal Antipathy • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... perfervid protestations Dolores listened with growing fright; her eyes were wide and they were fixed hypnotically upon the speaker; she presented much the appearance of a rabbit charmed by a serpent. But to Longorio she did not exist; she was a chattel, a servant, and therefore devoid of soul or intelligence, or use beyond that of serving ...
— Heart of the Sunset • Rex Beach
... banks of the tumultuous stream, and a short distance up in the gorge a lazuli bunting sat on a telegraph wire and piped his merry lay. Soon the canyon narrowed, grew dark and forbidding, and the steep walls rose high on both sides, compelling the railway to creep like a half-imprisoned serpent along the foot of the cliffs; then the birds disappeared, not caring to dwell in such dark, more than half-immured places. Occasionally a magpie could be seen sailing overhead at an immense height, crossing over from one hillside to the other, turning his ...
— Birds of the Rockies • Leander Sylvester Keyser
... know what the Bible tells us about Adam and Eve in the beginning and how they obeyed the devil who talked to them through the serpent. He got Eve to disobey the only commandment that God had given them. She ate of the fruit, which was forbidden, and gave to Adam and he did eat. (Gen. 3rd chapter). They no longer could talk to God as before, but hid themselves. ...
— The Key To Peace • A. Marie Miles
... a great wave broke over Achill. None had seen it coming, with great crawling leaps like a serpent, but at dead of night it leaped the land, and hissed on the cottage hearths and weltered gray about the mud floors. The next day broke on ruin in Achill. The bits of fields were washed away, the little mountain sheep were ...
— An Isle in the Water • Katharine Tynan
... prove it, Below the moon, or else above it. What Adam dream'd of when his bride Came from her closet in his side; Whether the devil tempted her By a High-Dutch interpreter; If either of them had a navel; Who first made music malleable; Whether the serpent, at the fall, Had cloven feet, or none at all; All this without a gloss or comment, He could unriddle in a moment, In proper terms such as men smatter, When they throw out and miss the matter. For ...
— English Satires • Various
... remorse, O England! Fittingly thine own feet bleed, Submissive to the purblind guides that lead Thy weary steps along this rugged course. Yet ... when I glance abroad, and track the source More selfish far, of other nations' deed, And mark their tortuous craft, their jealous greed, Their serpent-wisdom or mere soulless force, Homeward returns my vagrant fealty, Crying, "O England, shouldst thou one day fall, Shatter'd in ruins by some Titan foe, Justice were thenceforth weaker throughout all The world, ...
— The Poems of William Watson • William Watson
... thee, O Eurydice! The serpent slew thee, O Eurydice! Stealing amongst the grass, Eurydice; The long rank grass, that stretched Briarian arms To clasp thee to itself, Eurydice! And soon they laid thee from the sight of men; Laid thee beneath the rankly waving grass; Opening Earth's portals wide ...
— Poems • Walter R. Cassels
... easy. But grapevines are smitten by a mysterious disease called "cellular degeneration," and phylloxera; a black scale that injures orange and olive, and a white scale that is worse. Apples are not free from worms; the gopher is sure to go for every root it can find. There was a serpent even in the original Eden. The historian remarks: "The cloddish, shiftless farmer is perhaps safer in Massachusetts." I think of experiences at "Gooseville," and decide not to buy, nor even rent a ranch, nor accept one ...
— A Truthful Woman in Southern California • Kate Sanborn
... flashed in the summer sun—not for one of you, for I have seen and despise you all. To you all love is a sealed book, which you shall never open—a tree of knowledge that will never turn into a curse for you—a beautiful serpent that, as you gaze upon its changing hues, will never ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol 3 No 3, March 1863 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... of wronging, of going beyond, and defrauding of my neighbour, it is like that first prank that the devil played with our first parents, as the altar that Uriah built of Ahaz, was taken from the fashion of that that stood at Damascus, to be the very pattern of it. The serpent beguiled me, says Eve; Mr. Badman beguiles his creditors. The serpent beguiled Eve with lying promises of gain; and so did Mr. Badman beguile his creditors. The serpent said one thing and meant another, when ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... whether it were ingenuous, or had in it an element of the scriptural wisdom of the serpent, Langmaid could not have said. As a lawyer, he ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... thought, not of himself, but of the people whom he had come to serve. If he died as he lay the rumour might spread that some of the natives had killed him; and, therefore, he seized a piece of chalk and wrote on the table, "A serpent has killed me." But lo! the text flashed suddenly upon him: "They shall take up serpents; and if they drink any deadly thing it shall not hurt them." He seized the serpent, flung it from him, lay down to sleep in perfect peace, and next morning ...
— History of the Moravian Church • J. E. Hutton
... cautious step from his shelter, leaning far over to see, a smile of triumph baring his gleaming teeth; another step, while the crowd broke the stifling quiet with shifted feet. Morgan, quick as a serpent strikes, raised ...
— Trail's End • George W. Ogden
... pretty much the same direction as imaginative people in our own country have done, and have not only added wings to their serpents to send them air-faring, but have also invented a near relation to these in the shape of a travelling sea-serpent, which is not, however, of such large dimensions as those with which we are familiar. From this it is only a short step to the well-known half-human, half-fish being and the sea-lion or tiger; stone representations ...
— Corea or Cho-sen • A (Arnold) Henry Savage-Landor
... * * * * * * * * * And tell of Time, what gifts for thee he bears, What griefs and wonders in the winding years. For thou must change and be a Serpent Thing Strange, and beside thee she whom thou didst bring Of old to be thy bride from Heaven afar, Harmonia, daughter of the Lord of War. Yea, and a chariot of kine—so spake The word of Zeus—thee and thy Queen shall take Through many lands, Lord of a wild array Of orient spears. And ...
— Hippolytus/The Bacchae • Euripides
... to her to find that Robert was fair, with a snub nose, merry eye, and rather a schoolboy manner. "A serpent in duckling's plumage," was her private comment; merciful chance had revealed him to her ...
— The Toys of Peace • Saki
... like a snake. A snake that has wrapped itself around the Kabit, holding it helpless ... a serpent...." He gestured helplessly, a sort of horror in his eyes. I think he had convinced himself he had only imagined the serpent, until I had seen the ...
— The Terror from the Depths • Sewell Peaslee Wright
... the giantess, "there's the sea-serpent pie I've warmed up, and I've opened a can of elephant's heads by way ...
— Prince Vance - The Story of a Prince with a Court in His Box • Eleanor Putnam
... brought to the young doctor there was a greater shock in the sudden thought of the possible source of the riches which the pearls represented. A feeling of horror rushed over him, as if he had seen that soft, white throat encircled by a serpent, and he sprang forward to tear ...
— Round Anvil Rock - A Romance • Nancy Huston Banks
... I find, though it may be temporarily stifled, cannot die, and, when it dare not speak aloud, will whisper. And at this instant I thought I felt the revived varletess (on but a slight retrograde motion) writhing round my pericardium like a serpent; and in the action of a dying one, (collecting all its force into its head,) fix its plaguy ...
— Clarissa, Volume 6 (of 9) - The History Of A Young Lady • Samuel Richardson
... sister Amelie, but his countenance was marred with traces of debauchery. His face was inflamed, and his dark eyes, so like his sister's, by nature tender and true, were now glittering with the adder tongues of the cursed wine-serpent. ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... with their cool courage and martial energy would be no mean factor in it. Austin would be one of his lieutenants, a sharer in his greatness and reward. His eloquence was wonderful, and Ned felt once more the fascination of the serpent. This was a man to whom only the grand and magnificent appealed, and already he had achieved ...
— The Texan Star - The Story of a Great Fight for Liberty • Joseph A. Altsheler
... way the expulsion of Adam and Eve from Paradise. This Adam and Eve stone is considered very rare, there being very few known throughout the country. This one differs from the others in the absence of the serpent, which is usually represented on them. Another monument of considerable interest is to be seen within the chapel. It is a memorial tablet recently erected by the present Laird of Ardvoirlich upon the wall of the east gable and containing the following inscription:—"This chapel, ...
— Chronicles of Strathearn • Various
... was hailing the brig, I spied a tract of water lying between us, where no great waves came, but which yet boiled white all over and bristled in the moon with rings and bubbles. Sometimes the whole tract swung to one side, like the tail of a live serpent; sometimes, for a glimpse, it would all disappear and then boil up again. What it was I had no guess, which for the time increased my fear of it; but I now know it must have been the roost or tide-race, which had carried me away so ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 6 • Charles H. Sylvester
... own device," cried the delighted helmsman, catching at his young chief's great plan. "Ho, war-wolves all, bite ye your way through the Swedish fens! Up with the serpent banner, and farewell ...
— Historic Boys - Their Endeavours, Their Achievements, and Their Times • Elbridge Streeter Brooks
... completely wasted and shriveled him he was changed into a grasshopper. 6. PLUTON, Pluto, god of the nether world, the abode of the dead. 8. ARCHMORE, Archemorus or Opheltes, son of Lycurgus, king of Nemea, died in infancy from the bite of a serpent. ...
— French Lyrics • Arthur Graves Canfield
... to be observed in some of the most recent speculations. I well know that I myself am apt to press a theory of totems too far, and in the following pages I suggest reserves, limitations, and alternative hypotheses. Il y a serpent et serpent; a snake tribe may be a local tribe named from the Snake River, not a totem kindred. The history of mythology is the history of rash, premature, and exclusive theories. We are only beginning to learn caution. Even the prevalent anthropological ...
— Modern Mythology • Andrew Lang
... a more pure begynynge euen by goddes commaundement then the brasen serpent? It was erected god both willinge and commandinge it. It was sett forthe with miracles / for whosoeuer dyd beholde it he was deliuered from the ...
— A Treatise of the Cohabitation Of the Faithful with the Unfaithful • Peter Martyr
... You will find that all the arguments in favor of king-craft were of this class; they always bestrode the necks of the People, not that they wanted to do it, but because the People were better off for being ridden! That is their argument, and this argument of the Judge is the same old Serpent that says: you work, and I eat; you toil, and I will enjoy ...
— The Great Conspiracy, Complete • John Alexander Logan
... how well off they were, till the serpent came," Archie suggested. "I have a notion we shall have a better time than ever, ...
— Teddy: Her Book - A Story of Sweet Sixteen • Anna Chapin Ray
... lands, and in the ancient forests, serpents, scorpions, and other venomous reptiles abounded. Unfortunately, they were not only to be found on land. A sailor in search of marteaux, a very rare kind of bivalve mussel, was stung by a serpent. The fearful suffering and violent convulsions which followed only subsided at the expiration of five or six hours, and at last, the theriac which was administered to him after the bite, effected a cure. This accident was a sad damper to conchological ...
— Celebrated Travels and Travellers - Part 2. The Great Navigators of the Eighteenth Century • Jules Verne
... trees joined the sky and the form of the barn was before her dyed in heavy purple. She was ever about to shriek, but no sound came from her constricted throat. She gazed at the ground with the expression of countenance of one who watches the sinister-moving grass where a serpent approaches. ...
— The Little Regiment - And Other Episodes of the American Civil War • Stephen Crane
... when they went into the drawing-room at Lady Singleton's, was this very Clarence Hervey, who was not in a masquerade dress. He had laid a wager with one of his acquaintance, that he could perform the part of the serpent, such as he is seen in Fuseli's well-known picture. For this purpose he had exerted much ingenuity in the invention and execution of a length of coiled skin, which he manoeuvred with great dexterity, by means of internal wires; his grand difficulty had been to manufacture ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. III - Belinda • Maria Edgeworth
... very end of one of the lower branches, and, while he was climbing the stem, drop to the ground and run off. The height was great, though, and the ground so hard that I had sufficient reason to fear that I might injure myself in my fall. Besides this, I felt certain that the huge serpent could drop the moment he saw what I was about, and make chase after me. Terrible indeed were my sensations. What was passing seemed like a horrid dream. I could scarcely believe that it was all true. The serpent seemed fully twenty feet long, with a large head, and a yellow ...
— My First Voyage to Southern Seas • W.H.G. Kingston
... then thrusts his head into his trunk and sucks out his breath, or bites him in the ears where he cannot reach with his trunk. When the elephant becomes faint with the loss of blood, he falls down upon the serpent, now gorged with blood, and with the weight of his body crushes the dragon to death. Thus his own blood and that of the elephant run out of the serpent now mingled together, which cooling is congealed into that substance which the apothecaries call sanguis draconis or cinnabar[214]. ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume VII • Robert Kerr
... regarded as his work; on that ground it inspired great distrust in the public as well as the magistrates. "The people, to whom everything that came from this minister looked suspicious, knew not whether beneath these flowers there were not a serpent concealed, and were apprehensive that this establishment was, at the very least, a new prop to support is domination, that it was but a batch of folks in his pay, hired to maintain all that he did and ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume V. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... of the social evolution is not represented by a closed circle, which, like the serpent in the old symbol, cuts off all hope of a better future; but, to use the figure of Goethe, it is represented by a spiral, which seems to return upon itself, but which always advances ...
— Socialism and Modern Science (Darwin, Spencer, Marx) • Enrico Ferri
... reconciled by strict reasoning with the logical contents of old dicta, gave him wonderful advantage. His adversary, as he strode confidently along the smooth grass, suddenly found himself treading on a serpent; he had overlooked a condition, a proviso, a word of hypothesis or contingency, that sprang from its ambush and brought his triumph to naught on the spot. If Mr. Gladstone had only taken as much trouble that his hearers should understand exactly what it was that he meant, as he took trouble ...
— The Life of William Ewart Gladstone, Vol. 1 (of 3) - 1809-1859 • John Morley
... nor afford to make powerful and unscrupulous foes, if he is himself vulnerable in his private character. Nor will clean conduct by itself enable a man to render good service. I have always been fond of Josh Billings's remark that "it is much easier to be a harmless dove than a wise serpent." There are plenty of decent legislators, and plenty of able legislators; but the blamelessness and the fighting edge are not always combined. Both qualities are necessary for the man who is to wage active battle against the powers that prey. He must be clean of life, so that he can laugh when ...
— Theodore Roosevelt - An Autobiography by Theodore Roosevelt • Theodore Roosevelt
... crystal; the passions and the pleasures of human life symbolized together, and the mystery of its redemption; for the mazes of interwoven lines and changeful pictures lead always at last to the Cross, lifted and carved in every place and upon every stonel sometimes with the serpent of eternity wrapt round it, sometimes with doves beneath its arms, and sweet herbage growing forth from its feet; but conspicuous most of all on the great rood that crosses the church before the altar, raised in bright blazonry against the shadow of the apse. And although in the recesses of ...
— Stones of Venice [introductions] • John Ruskin
... high-roofed house with a projecting upper story, hung a sign bearing a green serpent on a red ground, over a stall, open to the street, which the owner was sheltering with a ...
— Grisly Grisell • Charlotte M. Yonge
... charm thy life, from the weapons of strife, From stone and from wood, from fire and from flood, From the serpent's tooth, and the beasts of blood, From sickness I charm thee, and time shall not ...
— The Life and Letters of Elizabeth Prentiss • George L. Prentiss
... is forever to be regretted that these precious ancient works should have been destroyed to make place for the present town; but within a few years one of the most marvelous of the Mound Builders' works, the great Serpent Mound near Loudon, in Adams County, has been preserved to after time by the friends of science, and put in the keeping of the Peabody Museum at ...
— Stories Of Ohio - 1897 • William Dean Howells
... of this hell-broth; for, at this juncture, the dictation and compulsion suddenly ceased. I stood upon my feet, no longer a slave. It seemed as if some grand, calm Ithuriel had touched with his spear-point the venomous toad that sat by my ear, or the wily serpent that 'held me (enchanted) with his glittering eye.' From that moment to this, I have not been, for an instant, seriously annoyed by ...
— Continental Monthly, Volume 5, Issue 4 • Various
... on, wildly pursuing the beautiful shape, like an eagle enfolded by a serpent and feeling the poison in his breast. His limbs grow lean, his hair thin and pale. Does death contain the secret of his happiness? At last he pauses "on the lone Chorasmian shore," and sees a frail shallop in which he trusts himself to ...
— Shelley • Sydney Waterlow
... like the sea-serpent," said March, drying his hands on the towel, while he glanced up and down the list. "But we sha'n't have any trouble. I've no doubt there are half a dozen things there that will do. You haven't gone up-town? Because we must be near the ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... to the chief painters of the Renaissance, he gave to Michael Angelo the dragon of contemplation, and to Mantegna the serpent of sagacity. For Raphael, by a happier instinct, he reserved man, the microcosm, the symbol of powerful grace, incarnate intellect. This quaint fancy of the Milanese critic touches the truth. What distinguishes the whole work of Raphael, is its humanity in the double sense of the ...
— Renaissance in Italy Vol. 3 - The Fine Arts • John Addington Symonds
... the world knows now, if it did not in 1918-19, that the Russian Socialist Federated Soviet Republic was, and is, a highly centralized tyranny, frankly called by its own leaders "The Dictatorship of the Proletariat." The Russian people prayed for "a fish and received a serpent." ...
— The History of the American Expedition Fighting the Bolsheviki - Campaigning in North Russia 1918-1919 • Joel R. Moore
... first time employed, to support our small band. Three or four regiments of French infantry were approaching rapidly, when a well-directed fire of rockets fell amongst them. The consternation of the Frenchmen was such, when these hissing, serpent-like projectiles descended, that a panic ensued, and they retreated upon Bayonne. The next day the bridge of boats was completed, and the whole army crossed. Bayonne was eventually invested after a contest, in which it was supposed our loss exceeded ...
— Reminiscences of Captain Gronow • Rees Howell Gronow
... the contents of the case, and saw a rather large brooch made in the form of a jewelled serpent. "Opals, diamonds and gold," he said slowly, then looked up eagerly. "Sell it ...
— The Opal Serpent • Fergus Hume
... are not applied in time. I was once bit by one on the cheek whilst asleep, and presently after all that part of my face turned as black as ink. I was cured-by the application of a bluish kind of stone (the same, perhaps, they call the serpent-stone in the East Indies, and which is a composition.) The stone stuck for some time of itself on my face, and dropping off, was put into milk till it had digested the poison it had extracted, and then applied again till the pain abated, and I ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 17 • Robert Kerr
... on a version of the child's tale of Beauty and the Beast, Gozzi's La Donna Serpente. In Gozzi's form a lady is changed to a serpent: the handsome and valiant prince comes along and all ends well. Wagner had not then dreamed of the Nibelung's Ring with its menagerie of nymphs who could sing under water, giants, dwarfs, bears, frogs, crocodiles, "wurms," dragons and birds with the gift of articulate speech; and ...
— Richard Wagner - Composer of Operas • John F. Runciman
... pushed his spectacles high on his forehead to have a better sight of so strange an attitude for his sister to take. At last Aunt Susan pointed to something gliding away in the grass, and gasped: "A serpent! oh, dear, oh, dear, a serpent!" Vainly did my husband try to calm her fright by explaining that it was only an adder going to seek the moisture of the river-bank and never intending to attack any one, that they were plentiful and frequently ...
— Philip Gilbert Hamerton • Philip Gilbert Hamerton et al
... fixed upon him, like a trapped creature horrified beneath the mesmeric gaze of a great serpent, the girl watched the approach of the man. Her hands were free, the Swedes having secured her with a length of ancient slave chain fastened at one end to an iron collar padlocked about her neck and at the other to a long stake driven ...
— The Son of Tarzan • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... story of the dragons of St. Riok and of St. Pol de Leon seems to me particularly instructive. The dragon of St. Riok was six fathoms long; his head was derived from the cock and the basilisk, his body from the ox and the serpent; he ravaged the banks of the Elorn in the time of King Bristocus. St. Riok, then aged two years, led him by a leash to the sea, in which the monster drowned himself of his own accord. St. Pol's dragon was sixty feet long and not less terrible. The blessed ...
— Penguin Island • Anatole France
... following are the principal emblems of the Apostles:— St. Andrew, a cross saltier; St. Bartholomew, a knife; St. James the Great, a pilgrim's staff, wallet, escallop shell; St. James the Less, a fuller's bat, or saw; St. John, a chalice and serpent; St. Jude, a boat in his hand, or a club; St. Matthew, a club, carpenter's square, or money-box; St. Matthias, a hatchet, battle-axe, or sword; St. Paul, a sword; St. Peter, keys; St. Philip, a tau cross, or a spear; St. Simon, fishes; St. ...
— English Villages • P. H. Ditchfield
... is a legendary serpent," replied the Pastor. "Your English story of St. George and the dragon is a contest with a Lindorm, and we have many variations of the story. The principal incidents, however, coincide with your English story. One story of ...
— A Danish Parsonage • John Fulford Vicary
... then be no good, because there will be no evil? But is there melody in a choir though none in it sings faultily, and health in the body though no member is sick; and yet cannot virtue have its existence without vice? But as the poison of a serpent or the gall of an hyena is to be mixed with some medicines, was it also of necessity that there must have been some conjunction of the wickedness of Meletus with the justice of Socrates, and the dissolute conduct of Cleon with the probity of Pericles? And could not ...
— Essays and Miscellanies - The Complete Works Volume 3 • Plutarch
... a serpent of fire, writhing here below in endlessly intricate coils; up there along the steps and parapets, a long-drawn, slow-moving line; and from the whole incalculable number came gusts and roars of singing, for each carried a burning torch and sang with his group. The music was of all kinds. ...
— Lourdes • Robert Hugh Benson
... said. "The tip of a finger or the whole of a hand, it is all the same! It is a mistake, this love! That old story of the Garden and the Serpent is as true as truth. Man and Woman were content to live and adorn the world until one day they espied the stupid red Apple—and straightway they must eat! Look even at this Cartel! He is an artist; he might make ...
— Max • Katherine Cecil Thurston
... thief—she stole round the house, as she thought, unobserved. She sat down on the little green mound beside the rain-barrel, and reached behind it. Suddenly she started back as if a serpent had stung her. Again she reached quite around the barrel, as far as she could stretch her little arms; but nothing was there. Then she peered carefully into the place; but no shoes were to be found. It is plain now,—quite ...
— The Allis Family; or, Scenes of Western Life • American Sunday School Union
... cringing Curly. The brute was standing there, sullen and defiant. Reynolds knew that he would soon be free, and then he would deal with the cur. He heard Glen speak and saw Sconda dismount and disarm the miners. Last of all he came to Curly, and when the Indian reached for his revolver, the serpent spat at him and cursed wildly. With a marvelous restraint, Sconda merely took the weapon from the enraged man's pocket, and then walking over to Reynolds, swiftly cut the cords which bound him to the tree ...
— Glen of the High North • H. A. Cody
... same instructresses had they done skilful deeds of valour and arms, when learning the art with Scathach ('the Modest') and with Uathach ('the Dreadful') and with Aife ('the Handsome'). [2]Yet was it the felling of an oak with one's fists, and the stretching of the hand into a serpent's nest, and a spring into the lair of a lion, for hero or champion in the world, aside from Cuchulain, to fight or combat with Ferdiad on whatever ford or river or mere he set his shield.[2] And neither ...
— The Ancient Irish Epic Tale Tain Bo Cualnge • Unknown
... an esculent, it was considered efficacious in cases of gout, jaundice, cramps, shortness of breath, wheezing of the lungs; for cleansing of the blood and improving the complexion; to use as an eye-water or to increase the flow of milk; as a remedy for serpent bites or an antidote for poisonous herbs and mushrooms; and for people who "are growen fat to abate their unwieldinesse and make ...
— Culinary Herbs: Their Cultivation Harvesting Curing and Uses • M. G. Kains
... all the colored teachers in a few years." Such a law "is a barbarous souvenir to make the country remember its bloody dealings with its black brother." "Though slavery is dead, its spirit yet lives; 'the serpent's head is crushed, but his tail still writhes, and sometimes it lashes out spitefully.'" We who are engaged in teaching in Orange Park are glad that the American Missionary Association is to test, and is already testing, ...
— The American Missionary - Volume 50, No. 1, January, 1896 • Various
... when the warriors, painted red and black, returned, carrying the scalps of their slain foes on branches of evergreen pine, while they chanted the sonorous song of victory; and such was the Dance of the Serpent, the dance of lawless love, where the women and young girls were allowed ...
— The Winning of the West, Volume One - From the Alleghanies to the Mississippi, 1769-1776 • Theodore Roosevelt
... unspeakable grief, beguiling her woes with childish ornaments of "gaudy broom" and plumes from the eagle's wing. But sadder far is the spectacle of millions of men made for fellowship with God, building their hopes on the divinity dwelling in an amulet of tiger's teeth or serpent's fangs or curious shells. And it ought to enlarge our natures with a Christ-like sympathy when we contemplate those dark and desperate faiths which are but nightmares of the soul, which see in all the universe only malevolent spirits to be appeased, which, looking heavenward for a father's ...
— Oriental Religions and Christianity • Frank F. Ellinwood
... Serpent-thing is the outer covering of the tyre on one of our driving wheels," he explained. "And we're in luck because, after that ghastly road it isn't the tyre itself. This is nothing; I'll tear it off, and the good old ...
— My Friend the Chauffeur • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... Bookes. Of byting Satyres. Corrected and amended with some Additions, by I. H. Imprinted at London for Robert Dexter, at the signe of the Brasen Serpent ...
— Catalogue of the Books Presented by Edward Capell to the Library of Trinity College in Cambridge • W. W. Greg
... are two species which furnish the most powerfully pungent condiment known to commerce; but the tiny dark brown seeds of the Black Mustard are sharper than the serpent's tooth, whereas the pale brown seeds of the White Mustard, often mixed with them, are far more mild. The latter (Brassica alba) is a similar, but more hairy, plant, with slightly larger yellow flowers. Its pods are constricted like a necklace ...
— Wild Flowers Worth Knowing • Neltje Blanchan et al
... evidently beside itself with terror. It showed all its teeth, the slaver dropping from its jaws, and would certainly have bitten me if I had touched it. It did not seem to recognize me. Whoever has seen at the Zoological Gardens a rabbit fascinated by a serpent, cowering in a corner, may form some idea of the anguish which the dog exhibited. Finding all efforts to soothe the animal in vain, and fearing that his bite might be as venomous in that state as in the madness of hydrophobia, I left him alone, placed my weapons on the table beside the ...
— The Best Ghost Stories • Various
... Azores with two pinases, the one called the Serpent, and the other the Mary Sparke of Plimouth, both of them belonging to Sir Walter Raleigh, written by John Euesham Gentleman, wherein were taken the gouernour, of the Isle of Sainct Michael, and Pedro Sarmiento ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques, and Discoveries of The English Nation, v. 7 - England's Naval Exploits Against Spain • Richard Hakluyt
... one day there came to the Bagree camp a mysterious message. A yogi, his hair matted with filth till it stood twisted and writhed on his head like the serpent tresses of Medusa, his lean skeleton ash-daubed body clothed in yellow, on his forehead the crescent of Eklinga, in his hand a pair of clanking iron tongs, crawled wearily to the tents where were the decoits, and ...
— Caste • W. A. Fraser
... divided into Paradise and Gehenna. The doctrine of the fall of man, through his participation in the representative guilt of his first parents, is Pharisaic; as is the strange legend, which St. Paul seems to have believed (2 Cor. xi. 3), that the Serpent carnally seduced Eve, and so infected the race with spiritual poison. Justification, in Pharisaism as for St. Paul, means the verdict of acquittal. The bad receive in this life the reward for any small merits which they may possess; the sins of ...
— Outspoken Essays • William Ralph Inge
... Spectator has remarked, "an attempt at a detailed summary might destroy the careful balance which is essential to Lord Dawson's purpose." It might indeed; and many a true word is written inadvertently and despite the wisdom of the serpent. As Lord Dawson believes that Malthusian practice is not of necessity sinful, and as he is urging the Church to remove a ban on that practice, it is necessary for him to prove in the first place that his opinion is right and that the teaching of the Church is wrong. Elsewhere in these pages I have ...
— Birth Control • Halliday G. Sutherland
... lake, and a dirty smudge on the blue showed where the Far Harbor and Beaverton boat had gone over the horizon. But there, over the point and dangerously close to the land, hung another smudge, gradually pushing its way like a writhing, black serpent, lakewards. Thus I was rudely jerked back to face the problem with which we had left the island ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... the awning stretched, the poles assured! Noontide above; except the wave's crisp dash, Or buzz of colibri, or tortoise' splash, The margin's silent: out with every spoil Made in our tracking, coil by mighty coil, This serpent of a river to his head I' the midst! Admire each treasure, as we spread The bank, to help us tell our history Aright; give ear, endeavour to descry The groves of giant rushes, how they grew Like demons' endlong tresses we sailed ...
— The Poetry Of Robert Browning • Stopford A. Brooke
... And made the beauties of the season thine. With rustling sound the yellow foliage flies, And wantons with the wind in rapid whirls, The gurgling rivulet to the vallies hies, Whilst on its bank the spangled serpent curls. * * * * * Pale rugged Winter bending o'er his tread; His grizzled hair bedropt with icy dew; His eyes a dusky light congeal'd and dead, His robe a tinge of ...
— Lives of the English Poets - From Johnson to Kirke White, Designed as a Continuation of - Johnson's Lives • Henry Francis Cary |
