"Cobra" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... hand was a ring—a shield-shaped bloodstone set in gold, with a monogram that might have been either "B.K." or "B.L." On the third finger of the right hand was a silver ring in the shape of a coiled cobra, much worn and tarnished. Gunga Dass deposited a handful of trifles he had picked out of the burrow at my feet, and, covering the face of the body with my handkerchief, I turned to examine these. I give the full list in the hope that it may lead to the identification ...
— Indian Tales • Rudyard Kipling
... part human and part beetle and has a face the color of the meat of an avocado. His head is shaped like a pear standing on its stem and has two eyes spaced about six inches apart and they are as friendly as those of a spitting cobra irked by hives. He is about four feet tall and has two pairs of arms. I guess I am still a little delirious or I would not have told the thing he would make a ...
— Operation Earthworm • Joe Archibald
... of it all!" the priest retorted indignantly. "The half for me, or I wash my hands of it and tell Gungadhura that you know the secret! I will trust him to find a way to draw thy cobra from its hole!" ...
— Guns of the Gods • Talbot Mundy
... Lady Bellamy's face, but it went as quickly as it came, and the hard, determined look returned. The mysterious eyes grew cold and glittered, the head erected itself. At that moment Lady Bellamy distinctly reminded Mr. Fraser of a hooded cobra ...
— Dawn • H. Rider Haggard
... That is a cobra he takes out; you know it by its large, flat head. It seems sleepy and stupid, but its bite is deadly. It is possible, of course, that he has abstracted the poison-fangs which make its bite fatal, but even without them I shouldn't care to handle ...
— Round the Wonderful World • G. E. Mitton
... the Pasteur Institute in Lille, France, several years ago discovered antivenomous serum. That serum is efficient for the bites of most of the venomous snakes of different countries, including the rattlesnake, cobra, python, etc. ...
— The Home Medical Library, Volume I (of VI) • Various
... is a gigantic figure of Siva in his character as The Destroyer. His face is turned to the east and wears a stern, commanding expression. His head-dress is elaborate and crowned by a tiara beautifully carved. In one hand he holds a citron and in the other the head of a cobra, which is twisted around his arm and is reaching towards his face. His neck is adorned with strings of pearls, from which hangs a pendant in the form of a heart. Another necklace supports a human skull, the peculiar symbol of Siva, with twisted snakes growing from the ...
— Modern India • William Eleroy Curtis
... races between earth and heaven; strange tribes of the middle spaces whose destinies were fixed and complete as our own, but between whose lives and ours were fixed barriers not to be crossed? Had I met one of these beings, inimical to man as a cobra, intelligent as man, hunting Its victim by ...
— The Thing from the Lake • Eleanor M. Ingram
... the Ranee's court." At these words the poor girl went down to the river very sorrowful, for she saw no hope of escape, as her father was from home. As she knelt by the river-side, washing her saree and crying bitterly, some of her tears fell into the hole of an old Seven-headed Cobra, who lived on the river-bank. This Cobra was a very wise animal, and seeing the maiden, he put his head out of his hole, and said to her: "Little girl, why do you cry?" "Oh, sir," she answered, "I am very unhappy; ...
— Young Folks Treasury, Volume 2 (of 12) • Various
... Crystal, drawing her shoulders up, as if at the sight of a cobra in her path. "Why is Eddie coming to lunch? ...
— The Beauty and the Bolshevist • Alice Duer Miller
... the jar with a little tent not two feet in diameter. After a few passes of the hand, the tent was lifted. The seed had already sprouted, and had become a twig with leaves. Covering the plant once more, he called our attention to a cobra-charmer, who played harmlessly with a hooded and venomous snake. At last he threw the tent wholly aside, and there stood a fully developed little mango tree, perhaps two feet high. It seemed impossible that the folds of the tent, which had ...
— A Tour of the Missions - Observations and Conclusions • Augustus Hopkins Strong
... at Bholat will learn of the massacre, and will learn too, that not quite all were killed. He will come hotfoot to find the four we could not find. For these British are as cobras; slay the he cobra and the she one comes to seek revenge. Slay the she one and beware! Her husband will track thee down, and strike thee. They ...
— Told in the East • Talbot Mundy
... not our snowy birds of the Atlantic. We are lonesome out here, and the Albatross sweeps beside us, hooded like a cobra, an evil creature trying to hoodoo us, with owlish eyes set in a frame like ghastly ...
— The Story of the Philippines and Our New Possessions, • Murat Halstead
... hair, and tie up a large bunch with a black string. Put round the neck a cobra-capella, and dress him in the garments by making nine folds round the waist. He stands on a rock eating men's flesh. The persons that were possessed with devils are put ...
— The Ethnology of the British Colonies and Dependencies • Robert Gordon Latham
... revealed the tail of a large cobra disappearing among the improprieties. Jim ran to a rude cupboard where pistols and ammunition were kept, and began to load ...
— The Settler and the Savage • R.M. Ballantyne
... did he come to be there? If Malcolm's judgment of her was correct, Caley might have told him. Was she already false? She pondered within herself, and cast no look upon her maid until she had concluded how best to carry herself towards the earl. Then glancing at the hooded cobra beside her—"What an awkward thing that Lord Liftore, of all moments, should appear just then!" she ...
— The Marquis of Lossie • George MacDonald
... woman's spangled dress. The basket lid was resting on their heads, and as the music and the chanting rose to a wild weird shriek the lid rose too, until suddenly the woman snatched the lid away and the snakes were revealed, with hoods raised, hissing the cobra's hate-song that is ...
— King—of the Khyber Rifles • Talbot Mundy
... seek yet, where I learned the art of healing, an antidote for the cobra's bite. I know of ...
— The Spinner's Book of Fiction • Various
... since I had a tame green one, who lived under the door-step, and would come out and play with me on sunny days. These snakes I found very interesting, only they got under their blankets and wouldn't come out, and I wasn't allowed to poke them; so I missed seeing several of the most curious. An ugly cobra laid and blinked at me through the glass, looking quite as dangerous as he was. There were big and little snakes,—black, brown, and speckled, lively and lazy, pretty and plain ones,—but I ...
— Aunt Jo's Scrap-Bag • Louisa M. Alcott
... is still in town," said Colonel Ashley. "I passed his place a while ago. He has a pair of beautiful Benares candlesticks, in the form of hooded cobra snakes, that I want to get. Singa Phut is still ...
— The Diamond Cross Mystery - Being a Somewhat Different Detective Story • Chester K. Steele
... spirit was completely broken by some distress of mind under which you were labouring, I determined to rouse your energies by moving you to anger. Because To light a flame, we need but stir the embers; The cobra, when incensed, extends his head And springs upon his foe; the bravest men Display their ...
— Sakoontala or The Lost Ring - An Indian Drama • Kalidasa
... come up and lay his hands on the cards, and say, 'No one shall play here but with mine'—aqui no se juega sino con mis barajas. If the gamblers are cowed, they give him dos cuartos, a halfpenny each. If, however, one of the challenged be a spirited fellow, he defies him. Aqui no se cobra el barato sino con un punal de Albacete—'You get no change here except out of an Albacete knife.' If the defiance be accepted, vamos alla is the answer—'Let's go to it.' There's an end then of the cards, all flock to the more interesting ecarte; instances have occurred, where ...
— A Supplementary Chapter to the Bible in Spain • George Borrow
... eyes of venomous green. Her feet were in sandals and her skirt was slit to the knees, so that when she walked one caught a glimpse of other slim serpents painted just above her bare ankles. Wound about her neck was a huge, glittering, cotton-stuffed cobra, and her bracelets were in the form of tiny garter snakes. Altogether a very charming and beautiful costume—one that made the more nervous among the older women shrink away from her when she passed, and the more troublesome ...
— O. Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1920 • Various
... most wonderful antidote to the poison of a snake's fangs. In his exhibitions he would allow a cobra to bite a dog or a rabbit, and, in a short time after he had applied his nostrum the animal would thoroughly revive; he advertised his desire to perform upon humanity, but, of course, he could find no one would be fool enough to risk his ...
— The Miracle Mongers, an Expos • Harry Houdini
... saves them from being crushed by the falling limb of a banyan-tree, and then he drags them away from an arch which immediately after gives way. By and by, as they rest under a tree, the king falls asleep. A cobra creeps up to the queen, and Luxman kills it with his sword; but, as the owls had foretold, a drop of the cobra's blood falls on the queen's forehead. As Luxman licks off the blood, the king starts ...
— Myths and Myth-Makers - Old Tales and Superstitions Interpreted by Comparative Mythology • John Fiske
... not The cobra, since defiled. He watched, when the beasts had gone Our kissing and singing wild. Beautiful friend he was, Sage, not a tempter grim. Many a year should pass Ere ...
— General William Booth enters into Heaven and other Poems • Vachel Lindsay
... said Phil, as he coolly stalked out, and left Acton curled up on his chair, like a cobra balancing for ...
— Acton's Feud - A Public School Story • Frederick Swainson
... dropped almost simultaneously with the rifle, landing with both feet on Furneaux's back, and thus completing the little man's discomfiture. By that time the two policemen were nearly upon him, but he was lithe and fierce as a cobra, and had seized the rifle again before they could close with him. Jabbing the nearer adversary with the muzzle, he smashed a lamp and sent its owner sprawling backward. Then, swinging the weapon, he aimed a murderous blow at the ...
— The Strange Case of Mortimer Fenley • Louis Tracy
... by whirling with astonishing rapidity in a kind of frenzied dance around the wicker basket that contained the serpents, which were covered by a goatskin. Suddenly he stopped, plunged his naked arm into the basket, and drew out a cobra de capello, or else a haje, a fearful reptile which is able to swell its head by spreading out the scales which cover it, and which is thought to be Cleopatra's asp, the serpent of Egypt. In Morocco it is known as the buska. The ...
— Complete Hypnotism: Mesmerism, Mind-Reading and Spiritualism • A. Alpheus
... devilish Weyler sailed away from the beautiful "Queen of the Antilles," and wondered that the cruel, infernal, tyrannical wretch was not ignominiously slaughtered by some of the victims of his starvation reign. A rattlesnake-cobra-tarantula ...
— Shakspere, Personal Recollections • John A. Joyce
... greyhound that very likely would bite their legs for them. But my affection for dogs has an understratum of fear. These excellent creatures, so good, so faithful, so devoted, so loving, may go mad at any moment, and then they become more dangerous than a lance-head snake, an asp, a rattlesnake or a cobra capella. This reacts on my love for dogs. Then dogs strike me as a bit uncanny; they have such a searching, intense glance; they sit down in front of you with so questioning a look that it is fairly embarrassing. ...
— My Private Menagerie - from The Works of Theophile Gautier Volume 19 • Theophile Gautier
... schoolmarm! What puzzles me is the need for new steps, to be learned from expensive teachers, when it's so easy to slide down hill in this part of New York. But here endeth the sermon, for I recognize the amiable Pinkie at that other table, where she is studying your face with the malevolence of a cobra." ...
— The Voice on the Wire • Eustace Hale Ball
... story of "Brave Seventee Bai,"[157] that heroine kills "a very large Cobra" which comes out of a lake. Touching the waters with a magic diamond taken from the snake, she sees them roll back "in a wall on either hand," between which she passes into a splendid garden. In it she finds a lovely girl who proves to be the Cobra's daughter and who is delighted ...
— Russian Fairy Tales - A Choice Collection of Muscovite Folk-lore • W. R. S. Ralston
... in the nest without answering, for from the thick grass at the foot of the bush there came a low hiss—a horrid cold sound that made Rikki-tikki jump back two clear feet. Then inch by inch out of the grass rose up the head and spread hood of Nag, the big black cobra, and he was five feet long from tongue to tail. When he had lifted one-third of himself clear of the ground, he stayed balancing to and fro exactly as a dandelion-tuft balances in the wind, and he looked at Rikki-tikki with the wicked ...
— The Kipling Reader - Selections from the Books of Rudyard Kipling • Rudyard Kipling
... met a Rifaee darweesh with his basket of tame snakes. After a little talk he proposed to initiate me, and so we sat down and held hands like people marrying. Omar sat behind me and repeated the words as my 'Wakeel,' then the Rifaee twisted a cobra round our joined hands and requested me to spit on it, he did the same and I was pronounced safe and enveloped in snakes. My sailors groaned and Omar shuddered as the snakes put out their tongues—the darweesh and I smiled at each other ...
— Letters from Egypt • Lucie Duff Gordon
... material; and round his forehead, arms and knees were fillets of snakeskin. At his side hung his pouch of medicines, and in his hand he held no spear, but a wand of ivory, whereof the top was roughly carved so as to resemble the head of a cobra reared up to strike. ...
— The Wizard • H. Rider Haggard
... Westerner would take in preference that same harmless piece of rope. In his hands it takes on life, it gains a strange and sinister quality. One instant it lies passive, or slowly whirled in a careless circle—the next its noose darts out like the head of a striking cobra, the coil falls and fastens, and then it draws tighter and tighter, remorselessly as a boa ...
— Trailin'! • Max Brand
... truth. The medical examination proved that the fellow had been killed by snake poison—cobra, to be exact, which is ...
— Death At The Excelsior • P. G. Wodehouse
... noise is hushed,—a pause! Satyavan lets the weapon drop— Too well Savitri knows the cause, He feels not well, the work must stop. A pain is in his head,—a pain As if he felt the cobra's fangs, He tries to look around,—in vain, A mist before his vision hangs; The trees whirl dizzily around In a fantastic fashion wild; His throat and chest seem iron-bound, He staggers, like ...
— Ancient Ballads and Legends of Hindustan • Toru Dutt
... would almost as soon believe that the cat curls the end of its tail when preparing to spring, in order to warn the doomed mouse. It is a much more probable view that the rattlesnake uses its rattle, the cobra expands its frill and the puff-adder swells while hissing so loudly and harshly, in order to alarm the many birds and beasts which are known to attack even the most venomous species. Snakes act on the same principle which makes the hen ruffle her feathers and expand her wings when a dog approaches ...
— On the Origin of Species - 6th Edition • Charles Darwin |
