"Python" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... it by law; the players who entered into competition at the Pythian games being enjoined to represent successively the circumstances that had preceded, accompanied and followed the victory of Apollo over Python. Some years after this, came Susarion of Megara, the first inventor of comedy who appeared at the head of a company of actors attacking the vices of his time. This was 562 years before Christ, and in twenty-six years after, that is 536 ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor - Vol I, No. 2, February 1810 • Samuel James Arnold
... are 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 ...
— Impressions of South Africa • James Bryce
... indignation of the Cape Colony Boers, and embittered racial feeling there. It put the British cause in the wrong in the eyes of the whole world, and made the Boers appear as a gallant little people struggling in the folds of a merciless python-empire. It increased immensely the difficulty of the British government in negotiating with the Transvaal for better treatment of the Uitlanders. It stiffened the backs of Kruger and his party. The German Kaiser telegraphed his congratulations on the defeat of the Raid 'without the aid of friendly ...
— The Expansion of Europe - The Culmination of Modern History • Ramsay Muir
... said, I forgot everything. In racing across an open space I ran full tilt upon a colony of snakes. They did not deter me. I was mad. They struck at me, but I ducked and dodged and ran on. Then there was a python that ordinarily would have sent me screeching to a tree-top. He did run me into a tree; but the Swift One was going out of sight, and I sprang back to the ground and went on. It was a close shave. Then there was my old enemy, the hyena. From my conduct he was sure ...
— Before Adam • Jack London
... 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 limit. Captain ...
— The Beauties of Nature - and the Wonders of the World We Live In • Sir John Lubbock
... 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 the same purpose, watching the effect of his Discus. ...
— Table-Talk - Essays on Men and Manners • William Hazlitt
... They clamoured at his palace gates, and threatened the attendants until they forced their way in. When the gates were thrown open they all filed past his bed one by one, dressed only in their tunics. On this day Python and Seleukus, who had been to the temple of Serapis, enquired whether they should bring Alexander thither. The god answered that they must leave him alone. The eight and twentieth day of the month, ...
— Plutarch's Lives Volume III. • Plutarch
... home through a part of the jungle not far from his bungalow, he heard a soft, low hiss close to his ear, and, looking up, saw a python swing itself from the branch of a tree and make off through the long grass. He had been out antelope-shooting, and his loaded rifle hung by his stirrup. Springing from the frightened horse, he was ...
— Novel Notes • Jerome K. Jerome
... 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
... 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 ...
— The Lost World • Arthur Conan Doyle
... fine scherm; and why, in the name of fortune, were they exerting themselves to create such a terrific row? The answer was not long in coming; for, as I sat there intently scanning the scene through my telescope, I saw the head and about six feet of the body of an enormous python upreared from inside the scherm, its appearance being greeted by a yell of delight from the monkeys that caused Prince to snort and stamp with excitement. I saw the huge reptile up-rear itself still further and attempt to get out of the scherm; but ...
— Through Veld and Forest - An African Story • Harry Collingwood
... tongue in every mouth behind her. So she had come back! Well, of all the nerve! Did you ever! Was she going to stay? What did she think she was going to do? And so on all the way home, to where awaited the heavy Sunday dinner on which Westville gorged itself python-like—if it be not sacrilege to compare communicants with such heathen beasts—till they could scarcely move; till, toward three o'clock, the church paper sank down upon the distended stomachs of middle age, and there arose from all the easy chairs of Westville ...
— Counsel for the Defense • Leroy Scott
... a Big Python. Once I witnessed an example of snake intelligence on a large scale, ...
— The Minds and Manners of Wild Animals • William T. Hornaday
... 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 ...
— The English Novel in the Time of Shakespeare • J. J. Jusserand
... crooked serpent" (Job xxvi. 13), expressions which are almost Vedic. From celestial phenomena the myth of the Apollo Serpent descended to impersonate the phenomena of earth, of which we have examples in the Greek fable of the Python, and others. Apollo again appears as the god which agitates and dissolves the waters, and the serpent as the winding course of a river, and also as other sources of water. The sun causes the river water to evaporate, which is symbolized by the dragon's conflict with Apollo, and the victory of the ...
— Myth and Science - An Essay • Tito Vignoli
... of pure disembodied terror stood in Winsome's eyes. Fascinated like an antelope in the coils of a python she gazed, her eyes dilating and contracting—the world whirling about her, the soul of her bounding and panting ...
— The Lilac Sunbonnet • S.R. Crockett
... doing? She wasn't an anxiety of my department. I suppose she was there for the only reason I had—because she asked for it. It was the same next day, except that instead of more arrows we found a python in the bunkers. Came aboard over the hawsers, I suppose. We were a lively lunatic asylum below while killing it with fire-shovels and crowbars. That was what the voyage was like. The whole lot of it was the same, ...
— London River • H. M. Tomlinson
... and Epistrophus, the sons Of great Iphitus, son of Naubolus, Were led the Phocian forces; these were they Who dwelt in Cyparissus, and the rock Of Python, and on Crissa's lovely plain; And who in Daulis, and in Panope, Anemorea and IIyampolis, And by Cephisus' sacred waters dwelt, Or in Lilaea, by Cephisus' springs. In their command came forty dark-ribb'd ships. These were ...
— The Iliad • Homer
... is thence called the summer solstice. According to Grecian fable, the crab was transported to heaven at the request of Juno, after it had been slain by Hercules during his battle with the serpent Python, but the evident design of the name is to represent the apparent backward motion of the sun in June, which is said to resemble the ...
— The Ruins • C. F. [Constantin Francois de] Volney
... patronizing, significant way—and ordered a dinner that included nearly everything on the dinner card except Lubly's thumb. The dinner was brought to me in relays and I ate it—ate it all! This step I know now was ill-advised. It is true that for a short time I felt as I imagine a python in a zoo feels when he is full of guinea-pigs—sort of gorged, you know, and sluggish, and ...
— Europe Revised • Irvin S. Cobb
... 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 ...
— Four Young Explorers - Sight-Seeing in the Tropics • Oliver Optic
... not 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 Roman and the Teuton - A Series of Lectures delivered before the University of Cambridge • Charles Kingsley
... a 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 ...
— The Golden Woman - A Story of the Montana Hills • Ridgwell Cullum
... 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 portrait—an embarrassing form ...
— The Life of John Ruskin • W. G. Collingwood
... early times till the 4th century A.D. every four years, near Delphi, in honour of Apollo, who was said to have instituted them to commemorate his victory over the Python; originally were contests in singing only, but after the middle of the 6th century B.C. they included instrumental music, contests in poetry and art, athletic exercises, ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... the black bass may be described as generally bad. It is a fish devoid of any of the cardinal virtues. It is ever engaged in internecine war, and will any day forego a square meal for the sake of a fight. It gorges itself like a python, and when hooked is as game as a salmon, and quite as vigorous in proportion to size. In the Potomac it has been known to weigh as much as six pounds, but bass of that weight are very rare, from three ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, October, 1877, Vol. XX. No. 118 • Various
... delivered by a young priestess called Pythia or Phoebas, placed on a tripos, or stool with three feet, called also cortina, from the skin of the serpent Python with which it was covered, it is uncertain after what manner these oracles were delivered, though Cicero supposes the Pythoness was inspired, or rather intoxicated by certain vapours which ascended ...
— Thaumaturgia • An Oxonian
... grace her majesty. Apollo first his golden rays among, Did form the beauty of her bounteous eyes; He graced her with his sweet melodious song, And made her subject of his poesies. The warrior Mars bequeathed her fierce disdain, Venus her smile, and Phoebe all her fair, Python his voice, and Ceres all her grain, The morn her locks and fingers did repair. Young Love, his bow, and Thetis gave her feet; Clio her praise, Pallas ...
— Elizabethan Sonnet Cycles - Phillis - Licia • Thomas Lodge and Giles Fletcher
... 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 ...
— The French Revolution • Thomas Carlyle
... form and were slowly tightening in a python-like constriction that forced Jimmie's organs upward into his ribs and shut off his heart action. Again Jimmie recalled vividly his experiences in trying to break a "body scissors" on the mat, This time, however, he cast aside the rules of conduct that forbid fouls and determined ...
— Boy Scouts Mysterious Signal - or Perils of the Black Bear Patrol • G. Harvey Ralphson
... 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 in ...
— The Treasure of the Incas • G. A. Henty
... to 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 about ...
— The Wouldbegoods • E. Nesbit
... 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 ...
— Blown to Bits - or, The Lonely Man of Rakata • Robert Michael Ballantyne
... food-economy campaign a notable example has been set by the python at the Zoo, who has decided to ...
— Punch, 1917.07.04, Vol. 153, Issue No. 1 • Various
... 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 ...
— The Cords of Vanity • James Branch Cabell et al
... drives fishes 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
... of the eight-foot python that had been creeping up round that corner in the process of stalking that cat whizzed by beneath him like a ...
— The Way of the Wild • F. St. Mars
... cry of warning there occurred a sudden and violent rustling and switching of the long grass in front of him, something struck him a violent blow on the shoulder, and in an instant he found himself enveloped in the coils of an enormous python, the great head of which towered threateningly above him, as it opened wide its gaping jaws within a foot of his face and emitted a loud, sibilant, angry hiss. Its hot, foetid breath struck him full in the face and, ...
— With Airship and Submarine - A Tale of Adventure • Harry Collingwood
... the face of the distant upper crags. Then, a grinding tore the earth; something white glistening viscous crumpled—coiled with untellable furious speed, shaggy and formless, out from the upper peaks—coiled and writhed out like a giant python in titanic torture. For an instant, for less than the fraction of an instant, it poised and coiled and looped as a great white snake in and out among the far upper meadows: then ruptured free with ear splitting wrench. ...
— The Freebooters of the Wilderness • Agnes C. Laut
... lives of the poor, use them as a surplus to pay for the extravagances of the rich; and when men who have climbed above their fellows on golden ladders, tremble at the crack of the blackmailer's whip and come down at the call of an obscene newspaper. An age when the python of political corruption casts its "rings" about the neck of proud cities and sovereign States, and throttles honesty to silence and liberty to death. It is such an age, dark, confused, shameful, ...
— The Americanism of Washington • Henry Van Dyke
... 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
... gullet, or about two inches behind the head. 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, and are sucked into its comparatively ...
— Missionary Travels and Researches in South Africa - Journeys and Researches in South Africa • David Livingstone
... most dangerous ambushes which can be met on the road by animals who resort to a spring is that prepared by the Python. This gigantic snake hangs by his tail to the branch of a tree and lets himself droop down like a long creeper. The victim who comes within his reach is seized, enrolled, pounded in the knots which the snake forms ...
— The Industries of Animals • Frederic Houssay
... enormous fruit bats and some of the skins of these bats, which are of great commercial value. Large collections of birds' eggs, attractively displayed; numerous specimens of stuffed wild boars and deer were displayed. Fine specimens of python, 21 feet long and 1 foot in diameter, and a collection of crocodiles, large iguanas, and lizards were prominent features in ...
— Final Report of the Louisiana Purchase Exposition Commission • Louisiana Purchase Exposition Commission
... man; which the anaconda is said always to do, if it can find him unprepared. Stories are told of desperate encounters between travellers in the forests of the Amazon and pythons or boas. A French traveller narrates how, on one occasion, the whole of his attendants took to flight on seeing a huge python approaching,—with the exception of a gallant native, who, attacking the monster vigorously with a long, lithe pole, struck it a blow which paralysed its powers; when, the party returning, it was ...
— The Western World - Picturesque Sketches of Nature and Natural History in North - and South America • W.H.G. Kingston
... amongst the appearances and works of Satan false Christs, false prophets, Pagan oracles, magicians, sorcerers, and sorceresses, those who are inspired by the spirit of Python, the obsession and possession of demons, those who pretend to predict the future, and whose predictions are sometimes fulfilled; those who make compacts with the devil to discover treasures and enrich themselves; those who make ...
— The Phantom World - or, The philosophy of spirits, apparitions, &c, &c. • Augustin Calmet
... 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 to twine itself ...
— Rujub, the Juggler • G. A. Henty
... of 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
... left 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 ...
— The Argosy - Vol. 51, No. 2, February, 1891 • Various
... make a wild assault on everything they come across, and, lacking the check of reason they push on without discretion or distinction to destroy the vessels of reason. Then the wise Apollo becomes the Python's prey, and Phronesis, the pious mother, becomes subject to the power of Phrenzy. Then winged Pegasus is shut up in the stall of Corydon, and eloquent Mercury is strangled. Then wise Pallas is struck down by the dagger of error, and the charming Pierides are smitten by the truculent ...
— The Philobiblon of Richard de Bury • Richard de Bury
... the fancy, but permanent creatures of God; whereof those which they thought were good to them, they esteemed the Angels of God, and those they thought would hurt them, they called Evill Angels, or Evill Spirits; such as was the Spirit of Python, and the Spirits of Mad-men, of Lunatiques, and Epileptiques: For they esteemed such as were troubled with such ...
— Leviathan • Thomas Hobbes
... Apollo, "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
... Molech, and do not pass it through the fire, (or if) he passed it through the fire, and did not hand it to Molech?" "He is not guilty till he hand it to Molech, and pass it through the fire." One has a familiar spirit, when the Python speaks from his arm. But the wizard speaks with his mouth. These are to be stoned, and inquiry from them ...
— Hebrew Literature
... of an immense python and the clawed legs of a dinosaur," said Marable, speaking as though he were delivering a lecture. The sight, without doubt, fascinated him as a scientist. ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science July 1930 • Various
... vast mass of water springs into the air from the foot of a great cavernous rock; there is a succession of exquisite cascades called the Race-Course, filled with graceful statuary; a colossal group of Apollo slaying the Python, who in his death agony bleeds a torrent of water; the Basket of Flowers, which throws up a system of forty jets; the great single jet called Fame, which leaps one hundred and thirty feet into the air, a Niagara reversed; and the crowning glory of the garden, the Baths of Diana, an immense stage ...
— Castilian Days • John Hay
... withered him, As a summer flower that blows too soon 695 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 ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Volume I • Percy Bysshe Shelley
... 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 ...
— Poetical Works of Akenside - [Edited by George Gilfillan] • Mark Akenside
... being more easily touched by the good tidings of the Gospel. [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 end ...
— A Key to the Knowledge of Church History (Ancient) • John Henry Blunt
... half-hearted "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 floor. ...
— The Jargon File, Version 4.0.0
... 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 the spine; nevertheless it retained ...
— Hunting the Lions • R.M. Ballantyne
... soft, easy tread of the python, or the Pathan, or some animal with a "pth" in it. Probably I mean the panther. He bore himself confidently, and his mouth was a trap from which no superfluous word escaped. He was the strong, silent ...
— Happy Days • Alan Alexander Milne
... had been sitting at his table, surrounded by the snakes that for him took the place of a family. On the table was a bowl of milk from which a large bull-snake, in a gay Turkey-carpet design, was drinking. A yellow and black python lay coiled in several figures of eight in the armchair, and an intelligent-looking small dust-coloured snake with a broad nose and an active tongue leaned out of the ferryman's ...
— Living Alone • Stella Benson
... here. Here is the "Tiger 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! ...
— The American Architect and Building News, Vol. 27, Jan-Mar, 1890 • Various
... That did not 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 unselfishness. In order to save himself, he was ...
— Kari the Elephant • Dhan Gopal Mukerji
... dragon, and whether it were a crocodile or a serpent is uncertain. There is reason to think that the monsters of early creation were slow in becoming extinct, or it is not impossible that either a crocodile or a python might have been brought over by storms or currents from Africa, and have grown to a more formidable size than usual in solitude among the marshes, while the island was changing owners. The reptile, whatever it might be, was the object of extreme dread; it devoured ...
— A Book of Golden Deeds • Charlotte M. Yonge
... God and Python. Anna Coleman Ladd Apollo, the god of light, shoots at the python (the symbol ...
— Sculpture of the Exposition Palaces and Courts • Juliet James
... organizing committee was M. Python, president of Freiburg's State Council. Seventy-two papers on technical topics were printed and circulated beforehand. The participating members numbered seven hundred. The discussions developed the ...
— Stories from Everybody's Magazine • 1910 issues of Everybody's Magazine
... below there was nothing to indicate that a few miles to the eastward 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 ...
— Aces Up • Covington Clarke
... 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
... number of thefts and murders increased with astounding rapidity. The police, collected in augmented proportions, lost its head and was swept off its feet. But it must also be said that, having gorged itself with plentiful bribes, it resembled a sated python, willy-nilly drowsy and listless. People were killed for anything and nothing, just so. It happened that men would walk up to a person in broad daylight somewhere on an unfrequented street and ask: "What's your name?" "Fedorov." "Aha, Federov? Then take ...
— Yama (The Pit) • Alexandra Kuprin
... Glossop loves food. He just lives for it. He always eats six or seven meals a day, and then starts in again after bedtime. I think it's rather wonderful.' Your aunt seemed interested, and said it reminded her of a boa constrictor. Angela said, didn't she mean a python? And then they argued as to which of the two it was. Your uncle, meanwhile, poking about with that damned pistol of his till human life wasn't safe in the vicinity. And the pie lying there on the table, and me unable to touch it. ...
— Right Ho, Jeeves • P. G. Wodehouse
... proceed 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
... Doubtless in their 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 ...
— The Border Boys Across the Frontier • Fremont B. Deering
... appear to be any species of cult unless we include the Warramunga cult of the mythical Wollunqua totem animal, whom they seek to placate by rites. In Africa the chief centre of serpent worship was Dahomey; but the cult of the python seems to have been of exotic origin, dating back to the first quarter of the 17th century. By the conquest of Whydah the Dahomeyans were brought in contact with a people of serpent worshippers, and ended by adopting from them the cult which they at first despised. At Whydah, ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 2, Part 1, Slice 1 • Various
... revealed any sensual dominance, though the Bacchus, notwithstanding its plastic superiority, rather inclines that way. The Apollo has been loudly extolled for the pride of its attitude and its divine calm in the encounter with the serpent Python; and still it is said that "a god could not have cause for so great pride in the conquest of a reptile." But the art-critics have exaggerated the import of the figure, which is wonderfully beautiful without being accurately expressive. The civilization of ...
— Delsarte System of Oratory • Various
... 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 years may pass, and numerous generations may arise and disappear, until ...
— The Theories of Darwin and Their Relation to Philosophy, Religion, and Morality • Rudolf Schmid
... "yard," "garden" and "garth." Of choral dances 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 ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 3 - "Chitral" to "Cincinnati" • Various
... this district, and "knew a motor when they saw it." Even a drove of sheep (near the wonderful fortress of Peschiera with its coiled python of a river) seemed comparatively indifferent as they surged round us in a foaming wave of wool. But then, sheep have no facial expression. All other four-footed things show emotion by a change of countenance, just as human beings do—more, because they don't conceal their feelings—but ...
— My Friend the Chauffeur • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... behind. 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
... 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, ...
— Tropic Days • E. J. Banfield
... pell-mell through such a war of elemental forces in desert 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 ...
— Gideon's Band - A Tale of the Mississippi • George W. Cable
... here in earth adown, As olde bookes make mentioun, He was the moste lusty* bacheler *pleasant Of all this world, and eke* the best archer. *also He slew Python the serpent, as he lay Sleeping against the sun upon a day; And many another noble worthy deed He with his bow wrought, as men maye read. Playen he could on every minstrelsy, And singe, that it was a melody To hearen of his cleare ...
— The Canterbury Tales and Other Poems • Geoffrey Chaucer
... 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, ...
— Sanders' Union Fourth Reader • Charles W. Sanders
... stranger had put upon him, had at last succeeded in drawing the revolver. He had stopped, and now he deliberately raised it to Tarzan's breast and pulled the trigger. The hammer fell with a futile click on an empty chamber—the ape-man's hand shot out like the head of an angry python; there was a quick wrench, and the revolver sailed far out across the ship's rail, and ...
— The Return of Tarzan • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... picturesque American. Magdalena, in a suit of her father's old clothes, was handing his books through the library window to Miss Folsom. Miss Geary was scrambling up the ladder, a hose coiled about her like a python. The leader of the company stood on the roof directly above the front door, giving orders with imperious voice and gesture. But although the flames leaped high about her, starting the leaves of a neighbouring tree into sharp relief, he could ...
— The Californians • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
... Python won, This robe, in which the deed was done, 90 These, Parnell glorying in the feat, Hung on these shelves, the Muses' seat. Here Ignorance and Hunger found Large realms of wit to ravage round; Here Ignorance and Hunger fell— Two foes in one I sent to hell. Ye poets, who my labours see, Come ...
— Poetical Works of Johnson, Parnell, Gray, and Smollett - With Memoirs, Critical Dissertations, and Explanatory Notes • Samuel Johnson, Thomas Parnell, Thomas Gray, and Tobias Smollett
... that case, thou and I together, old hunter, might make him see reason." Here Baloo rubbed his faded brown shoulder against the Panther, and they went off to look for Kaa the Rock Python. ...
— The Jungle Book • Rudyard Kipling
... picturing the dawn, Stevenson has not neglected the verbs. "Welled," "whitened," "trembled," "brightened," "warmed," "kindled," and so on through the paragraph. Try to change them, and it is apparent that something is lost by any substitution. Kaa, the python, "pours himself along the ground." If he is angry, "Baloo and Bagheera could see the big swallowing-muscles on either side of Kaa's throat ...
— English: Composition and Literature • W. F. (William Franklin) Webster
... cattle I would poison the "kill" with strychnine. In this way I secured several very fine animals, getting two at one time, so successfully poisoned that their bodies actually lay on the dead bullock. One time I shot an enormous python, some eighteen feet in length, which took several men to carry home. Monkeys were plentiful and of several kinds. I was very fond of wandering amongst the high-tree jungle and quietly watching their antics. In the dense forest there is little undergrowth, so that one can ...
— Ranching, Sport and Travel • Thomas Carson
... silence, and that they 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
... 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
... hours' climb we look down on the Lake, with its many bays. A sleepy glare floats over it. Further on we came on a ledge of rocks, and looked sheer down 500 feet or 600 feet into its dark green waters. We saw three zebras and a young python here, ...
— The Last Journals of David Livingstone, in Central Africa, from 1865 to His Death, Volume II (of 2), 1869-1873 • David Livingstone
... 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 ...
— Over Strand and Field • Gustave Flaubert
... 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 fleet, the horrid monster slew: A thousand arrows in his ...
— The Metamorphoses of Publius Ovidus Naso in English blank verse Vols. I & II • Ovid
... backward, step by step, step by step, all the time striving, with might and main, to prevent himself from doing so! His eyes were set rigidly upon Ki-Ming, like the eyes of a rabbit fascinated by a python. Ki-Ming continued to point. ...
— The Hand Of Fu-Manchu - Being a New Phase in the Activities of Fu-Manchu, the Devil Doctor • Sax Rohmer
... 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 ...
— Tales of the Malayan Coast - From Penang to the Philippines • Rounsevelle Wildman
... he might concoct. This was the actual comfort President Wilson's message gave Germany. The negative result was felt among the Allied nations which, struggling against the German Monster like Laocoon in the coils of the Python, took Mr. Wilson's praise of Germany's imaginary love of justice and humanity as a death-warrant for themselves. They could not believe that he who wrote such words, or the American people who swallowed them, could ever be roused to give succor to ...
— Theodore Roosevelt; An Intimate Biography, • William Roscoe Thayer
... night was a lion, No, years ago, night was a python Weaving designs against space With undulations of his being— Night ...
— A Woman of Thirty • Marjorie Allen Seiffert
... summer, the relic of a by-gone world where such monsters swarmed. But it has its limit, the kindlier forces of Nature work against it, and the silent arrows of the sun are still, as of old, fatal to the frosty Python. Geology tells us that such enormous devastators once covered the face of the earth, but the benignant sunlight of heaven touched them, and they faded silently, leaving no trace, but here and there the scratches of their talons, ...
— The Writings of James Russell Lowell in Prose and Poetry, Volume V - Political Essays • James Russell Lowell
... an aunt in Yucatan Who bought a Python from a man And kept it for a pet. She died, because she never knew These simple ...
— More Beasts (For Worse Children) • Hilaire Belloc
... of that which man ought not to be. Why should not he, so like the worst of men, have some bond or kindred with the evil beings who were not men? Why should not the graceful and deadly cobra, the horrid cerastes, the huge throttling python, and even more, the loathly puff-adder, undistinguishable from the gravel among which he lay coiled, till he leaped furiously and unswerving, as if shot from a bow, upon his prey—why should not they too be kindred to that evil power ...
— The Hermits • Charles Kingsley
... "Python, my lad, not pison," said the doctor. "That class of serpent is harmless. Don't miss it, Sir James, and don't shatter its head if you can ...
— Dead Man's Land - Being the Voyage to Zimbambangwe of certain and uncertain • George Manville Fenn
... only preliminary stuff to sauce the palate of the patron for a greater feast to come and suitably to lead up to the introduction of the star. Soon the star was projected upon the screen, a purring, graceful panther of a woman, to change at once into a sinuous python of a woman and then to merge the feline and the ophidian into a sinister, splendid, menacing composite bespeaking the dramatic conception and the dramatic presentment of all feminine evil, typifying in every move of the lithe, half-clad body, in every shift of the big ...
— Sundry Accounts • Irvin S. Cobb
... chose the moment for this meeting, desiring to carry on with the policy which he had adopted. By his system the Comas had maneuvered after the python method—it crushed, ...
— Joan of Arc of the North Woods • Holman Day
... Kipling. A young elephant (before the days of trunks), according to this authority, when drinking at a riverside had his moderate and well-shaped snout seized by a crocodile. The little elephant pulled and the crocodile pulled, and by the help of a friendly python the elephant got the best of it. He extricated himself from the jaws of death. But, oh! what a difference in his appearance! His snout was drawn out so as to form that wonderful elongated thing with two nostrils at the end which we call the elephant's trunk, and was henceforth transmitted (a first-rate ...
— More Science From an Easy Chair • Sir E. Ray (Edwin Ray) Lankester
... full of exultation. On a branch above them, a python, awakened by those vibrations, revealed itself in an iridescent ...
— Sacrifice • Stephen French Whitman
... introduced to one natural history topic per chapter, be it a plant, a tree or an animal. There are various perils that have to be overcome—the upas tree, an ourang-outang, a tree that drops its fruit like a heavy bomb, a python, and quite a few more. Luckily they don't meet any unfriendly Dyaks during the journey they undertake to get from their landing-place to the town of Bruni, many hundreds ...
— The Castaways • Captain Mayne Reid
... these is the Paloeophis toliapicus of the London Clay of Sheppey, first made known to science by the researches of Professor Owen. The nearly-allied Paloeophis typhoeus of the Eocene beds of Bracklesham appears to have been a Boa-constrictor-like Snake of about twenty feet in length. Similar Python-like Snakes (Paloeophis, Dinophis, &c.) have been described from the Eocene deposits of the United States. True Lizards (Lacertilians) are found in some abundance in the Eocene deposits,—some being small terrestrial forms, like the common European lizards ...
— The Ancient Life History of the Earth • Henry Alleyne Nicholson
... one they call Phoenix, the other Elaea, even to the present time, as if Lucina had not been delivered between two trees, but fountains. A place hard by, called Ptoum, is shown, where they say she was affrighted by the appearance of a boar; and the stories of the Python and Tityus are in like manner appropriated by these localities. I omit many of the points that are used as arguments. For our tradition does not rank this god amongst those that were born, and then made immortal, as Hercules and Bacchus, whom their virtue raised ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough
... connexion in substance with antiquity, on which Maury specially insists, is certain enough, but does not concern us here, where the question is about the theory. In the Zauber-Bibl. i. p. 137 (in the treatise Pneumatologia vera et occulta), the snake Python is put down among the demons, with the remark that Apollo was called after it.—Magic formulae with antique gods: Heim, Incantamenta magica (in the Neue Jahrbb. f. Philologie, Suppl. xix. 1893, p. 557; I owe this reference to the kindness of my colleague, Prof. Groenbeck). Pradel, Religionsgesch. ...
— Atheism in Pagan Antiquity • A. B. Drachmann
... with her hand on the quiver and a doe by her side, and the unfortunate Laocoon and his two little sons, struggling in the fearful coils of two huge serpents, and stretching their arms to the skies with heart-rending cries. I also saw Apollo Belvidere. He had just slain the Python and was standing by a great pillar of rock, extending his graceful hand in triumph over the terrible snake. Oh, he was simply beautiful! Venus entranced me. She looked as if she had just risen from the foam of the ...
— Story of My Life • Helen Keller
... 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. After that the ...
— With Cochrane the Dauntless • George Alfred Henty
... the Apollo though, in whom alone no fault has yet been found. They tell you, he has just killed the serpent Python. "Let us beg of him," says one of the company, "just to turn round and demolish those cursed snakes which are devouring the poor old man and his boys yonder." This was like the speech of Marchez donc to the fine bronze horse under the heavenly statue of Marcus Aurelius at the ...
— Observations and Reflections Made in the Course of a Journey through France, Italy, and Germany, Vol. I • Hester Lynch Piozzi
... said Mouldy gloomily. "Means I shall have to order another monkey-jacket." A bull terrier thrust a python-like head between the rails and wagged his tail. The drifter grated her fenders alongside ...
— The Long Trick • Lewis Anselm da Costa Ritchie
... performing active 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 feast to all ...
— Negritos of Zambales • William Allan Reed
... sympathetic studies of struggles in the animal world. Mr. Marshall's white elephant will linger as a memory, even as his ghost remains, longer than the sagacious play-fellow of Mr. Gilbert's little Indian; but nobody can forget the battle the latter fought with the python. ...
— O Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1919 • Various
... remote tower of the building and near its utmost summit, to a richly-carpeted passage, from the ceiling of which three mosaic lamps shed dim violet, scarlet and pale-rose lights around. At the end I perceived two figures standing as if in silent guard on each side of a door tapestried with the python's skin. One was a post-replica in Parian marble of the nude Aphrodite of Cnidus; in the other I recognised the gigantic form of the negro Ham, the prince's only attendant, whose fierce, and glistening, and ebon visage broadened into a grin of intelligence as I came nearer. Nodding to him, ...
— Prince Zaleski • M.P. Shiel
... nearer houses beginning to stand out sharp and black against the red glow beyond. It was a barn behind a huge frame house that was afire, the dry hay burning like powder, and by the time they reached it the flames were already dwindling. The hose was lying like a python all about the streets, while upon the neighbouring roofs were groups of firemen with helmets and axes; some were shouting into the street below, and others were holding the spouting nozzles of the hose. "Ah," exclaimed an old man, standing near ...
— Vandover and the Brute • Frank Norris
... given, how to square its actions with probability, according to the nature assumed of it. Hobbes did not see, that the skill and beauty of these fictions lay in bringing them within those very regions of truth and likelihood in which he thought they could not exist. Hence the serpent Python ...
— English Critical Essays - Nineteenth Century • Various
... as we could see; mountains of incredible, nightmare shapes, and of great ledges set with gigantic busts of ancient heroes, some nobly carved, some hideously caricatured, roughly hewn in gray limestone, or red rock that looked like bronze. On we went, climbing up and up, a road like a python's back; but not yet was there any glimpse of the old "robber fortress" of Les Baux about which I had read, and later dreamed, last night. I knew it would be wonderful, astonishing, a Dead City, a Pompeii of the Feudal Age, yet different from any other ...
— The Motor Maid • Alice Muriel Williamson and Charles Norris Williamson
... of the Carthaginian gods, living apart from human passions in her intense love for the goddess, Tanit; Salammbo, in the earnest excess of her religious fervor, eagerly accepting the mission given her by the puzzled Saracharabim; Salammbo, twining the gloomy folds of the python about her perfumed limbs; Salammbo, resisting, then yielding to the fierce love of Matho; Salammbo, dying when her erstwhile lover expires; Salammbo, in all her many phases reminds us of some early Christian martyr or saint, though the sweet spirit of the Great Teacher is hidden ...
— Violets and Other Tales • Alice Ruth Moore |
