"Reptile" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Shire Lane. There were Sir Geoffrey Notch, a gentleman of an ancient family, who had wasted his estate in his youth, and called every thriving man a pitiful upstart; Major Matchlock, with his reminiscences of the Civil War; Dick Reptile, and the Bencher who was always praising the wit of former days, and telling stories of Jack Ogle, with whom he pretended to have been intimate in his youth. Very little use was afterwards made of ...
— The Tatler, Volume 1, 1899 • George A. Aitken
... spirits—even ancestral spirits—taking up an abode in the bodies of beasts, birds, or reptiles, or even in plants or stones, caused them to view with respect of a superstitious kind many natural objects. Some one thing—a beast, bird, reptile, fish, plant, or strange stone had been fixed on as the abode of his tutelary spirit by some father of a family. The family grew into a clan, and the clan to a tribe, and the object sacred in the eyes of its father ...
— Pioneers in Canada • Sir Harry Johnston
... before now, how that insect Wencestao Retana was rewarded with a cooked up deputyship to the Cortes, that salaried reptile of the Philippine convents, who, with the aid of that tyrant General Weyler, his worthy godfather, the despotic incendiary of the town of Calamba, of ominous memory amongst us, does nothing but vomit rabid foam, insulting us by day and night with calumnies and shrieks, in that paper whose ...
— The Story of the Philippines and Our New Possessions, • Murat Halstead
... be One of the hundred thousand human flies That swarm within yon filthy city's walls. Here, I at least may live in solitude, Free from a forced communion with a race, Whose presence makes me feel that I am bound, By nature, to the thing I loathe the most, Earth's stateliest, proudest, meanest reptile, man! The beauty of a god adorns his form, The foulness of a fiend is in his heart; The viper's, or the scorpion's filthy nest Nurses a far less deadly, poisonous brood Than are the hellish lusts, the avarice,— The pride—the hate—the ...
— Mazelli, and Other Poems • George W. Sands
... for a moment boldly in the eyes. Lynch, recovering from his laughter, answered his look from his humbled eyes. The long slender flattened skull beneath the long pointed cap brought before Stephen's mind the image of a hooded reptile. The eyes, too, were reptile-like in glint and gaze. Yet at that instant, humbled and alert in their look, they were lit by one tiny human point, the window of a ...
— A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man • James Joyce
... serpent and the coming of the rains. These facts would give strength to the theory that god B is to be identified as a rain god. In Dresden 33a, 35a, god B is seated on the open jaws of a serpent, while the body of the reptile encloses a blue field evidently signifying water. The number nineteen appears on this blue color. It will be noted that there are nineteen spots on the serpents in Pl. 11, figs. 1, 2. In Tro-Cortesianus 3a-6a, corresponding ...
— Animal Figures in the Maya Codices • Alfred M. Tozzer and Glover M. Allen
... the encampment, he accidentally trod upon a rattlesnake, and the venomous reptile, sounding his rattle, made a spring and fastened his teeth into the boy's pants, just below the knee. I chanced to be looking towards him at the moment, and saw him, without the least hesitation draw his sheath-knife, and sever its head from its body, with one stroke, leaving ...
— The Young Trail Hunters • Samuel Woodworth Cozzens
... rain-swept mountain the prostrate rider had regained his senses and now was crawling painfully towards the road-house. Seen through the dark he would have resembled some misshapen, creeping monster, for he dragged himself, reptile-like, close to the ground. But as he came closer the man heard a cry which the wind seemed guarding from his ear, and, hearing it, he rose and rushed blindly forward, staggering like a ...
— The Spoilers • Rex Beach
... that monster!" shouted the Baron, forgetting all about firmness and dignity. "Don't dare to allude to the reptile in my presence. Look here!" He seized up a great jug labelled "Chateau Lafitte," and turned it ...
— The Dragon of Wantley - His Tale • Owen Wister
... acquaintance with the snake people. In descending at a sharp angle from the side of a fallen tree, his fore-feet just scraped the end of the tail of a nine-foot carpet snake, whose colouring was vivid and fresh. Before Finn knew what had happened, one coil of the sinuous reptile's body was about his left hind-leg, and, as the startled Wolfhound wheeled in his tracks, the big snake's head rose at him with a forbidding, long-drawn "Ps-s-s-s-t!" of defiance. The rapidly tightening ...
— Finn The Wolfhound • A. J. Dawson
... some months I had been alone, and my husband had just returned from one of his sporting and scientific expeditions in South America. He had already won fame as a naturalist, and had succeeded in bringing home alive quite a variety of beasts, usually of the reptile order, whose extreme rarity seemed to me a ...
— Lords of the Housetops - Thirteen Cat Tales • Various
... the Reptile House?" Cassandra asked him, not from a genuine desire to visit the reptiles, but in obedience to her new-born feminine susceptibility, which urged her to charm and conciliate the other sex. Denham began to give her directions, and Katharine and ...
— Night and Day • Virginia Woolf
... the ancient Grecians made The soul's fair emblem, and its only name— But of the soul, escap'd the slavish trade Of mortal life!—For in this earthly frame Ours is the reptile's lot, much toil, much blame, Manifold motions making little speed, And to deform and kill the things whereon ...
— Literary Remains (1) • Coleridge
... the structure brave, the manifold music I build, Bidding my organ obey, calling its keys to their work, Claiming each slave of the sound, at a touch, as when Solomon willed Armies of angels that soar, legions of demons that lurk, Man, brute, reptile, fly—alien of end and of aim, 5 Adverse, each from the other heaven-high, hell-deep removed— Should rush into sight at once as he named the ineffable Name, And pile him a palace straight, to pleasure the princess ...
— Selections from the Poems and Plays of Robert Browning • Robert Browning
... some butterflies, small grasshoppers, several sorts of spiders, some small black ants, and vast numbers of scorpion-flies, with whose chirping the woods resound. The only noxious one is the sand-fly, very numerous here, and almost as troublesome as the musquitoe; for we found no reptile here, except two or three sorts of small ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 15 (of 18) • Robert Kerr
... a little and turned to look at the edge of the cliff. On hands and knees, like a gigantic reptile, he crawled, then lay flat on the ground, on the extreme edge, his eyes peering down into those depths wherein floating vapors lolled and stirred, with subtle movements like ...
— The Nest of the Sparrowhawk • Baroness Orczy
... over I threw myself on a chair; my heart beat wildly. "O, Heaven!" I murmured, "how can it be possible! O, superb monster! O, beautiful reptile! How you writhe, how you coil in and out, sweet adder, with supple and spotted skin! Thy cousin the serpent has taught thee to coil about the tree of life, holding between thy lips the apple of temptation. O, Melusina! ...
— The Confession of a Child of The Century • Alfred de Musset
... that miserable reptile, instead of this honest man? Beside, think of the illogical position. If this man is a spy, you have to admit that there is a war between your people and his, and that your ...
— The Hero of Ticonderoga - or Ethan Allen and his Green Mountain Boys • John de Morgan
... tinned Australian meats, of which I had an ample stock. They were very much disposed to remain in the house and give my servants their view of the cause of Krause's strange disappearance, which was—as they had previously told me—that he had been seized and devoured by an enormous reptile, half eel and half turtle, which had been known to swallow not only human beings, but such trifles as double canoes, groves of coco-nut trees, etcetera; but on my telling them that I was very tired and wanted a quiet house, ...
— The Strange Adventure Of James Shervinton - 1902 • Louis Becke
... four of such glands; they vary in size according to the age of the reptile, but they are generally about as large as a hazel-nut, when dried. Two glands are situated in the groin, and two in the throat, a little in advance of the fore-legs. I have noticed two species of crocodiles throughout all the rivers of Abyssinia, and ...
— The Nile Tributaries of Abyssinia • Samuel W. Baker
... which the crocodile travelled to the water was very deeply furrowed, thus proving how the great lizard had repeatedly dragged its heavy bulk over the same spot on its way to drink at the stream, and I bethought me of a plan to deal with the reptile. The only weapon I had upon me when kidnapped from my ship was a short sabre or manchette, which I wore as a sidearm. But this I hoped would prove a formidable weapon when put to the use for ...
— Adventures in Southern Seas - A Tale of the Sixteenth Century • George Forbes
... seen through the transparent lids, was a carved figure. The weird denizens of the Venusian polar swamps were there, along with lifelike effigies of Terran animals, a Martian sand-mouse in all its monstrous ferocity, and the native animal and reptile life of half a hundred different worlds. Weeks put down a second tray beside the first, again displaying a menagerie of strange life forms. But when he clicked open one of the compartments and handed the figurine it contained to the ...
— Plague Ship • Andre Norton
... daintily on his chest. When he saw me he calmed down and dismissed the menagerie for the nonce. 'Dearie,' he said, taking my shrinking little hand in his, 'it was awful. It's only by mere chance that you find me custodian of this Reptile Bazar instead of one of these "mangled remains" things. It was this way. I had been down to the bar lapping up a few drinks and pretty soon a band comes up the street. I go out to look it over and there is nothing ...
— The Sorrows of a Show Girl • Kenneth McGaffey
... we shall not disturb his dying moments." Two years later the magazine seemed to think he had some power of kicking left, for it returned to the charge in consequence of his review of Lockhart's "Life of Scott." In this article he was called a "spiteful miscreant," an "insect," a "grub," a "reptile." The "Quarterly Review" was as virulent and violent as the magazines, but the attack was more skillful as well as longer and more elaborate. By garbling extracts it cleverly insinuated a good deal more than it said, and it so contrived to ...
— James Fenimore Cooper - American Men of Letters • Thomas R. Lounsbury
... capable of affection for those to whom they have been accustomed, and by whom they have been well treated, and therefore we give full credit to several accounts of this sort related of the wolf, the lion, and even the cat and the reptile: but in no other animal—in no other, even in the genus 'Canis'—do we find the qualities of the domestic dog, or the slightest ...
— The Dog - A nineteenth-century dog-lovers' manual, - a combination of the essential and the esoteric. • William Youatt
... two series of changes for granted, most of the present peculiarities and anomalies in the distribution of species may be directly traced to them. In our own islands, with a very few trifling exceptions, every quadruped, bird, reptile, insect, and plant, is found also on the adjacent continent. In the small islands of Sardinia and Corsica, there are some quadrupeds and insects, and many plants, quite peculiar. In Ceylon, more closely connected to India than Britain is to Europe, many animals and plants are different from those ...
— The Malay Archipelago - Volume I. (of II.) • Alfred Russel Wallace
... parent's sepulchre; then, having gain'd "Hyperion's city through the yielding air, "Before the sacred portal lays it down. "If of stupendous wonder aught ye find "In this, hyaenas must your wonder move; "Alternate changing, females now they bear; "And annual alter unto males again: "That reptile too, which feeds on wind and air; "And what it touches, straight its hue assumes. "India by cluster-bearing Bacchus gain'd, "Lynxes upon the conquering god bestow'd: "And, (so they tell) whate'er their bladders void, "Concretes to gems, and hardens in the air. "Thus too, the ...
— The Metamorphoses of Publius Ovidus Naso in English blank verse Vols. I & II • Ovid
... to conceal his head. As on the road he moved, a clown he met, Who with his stick an adder tried to get, From out a thicket, where it hissing lay, And hoped to drive the countryman away: Our knight his object asked; the clown replied, To slay the reptile anxiously I tried; Wherever met, an adder I would kill: The race should be extinct if I'd ...
— The Tales and Novels, Complete • Jean de La Fontaine
... the lion house, on the other side, is the reptile house, where live snakes, crocodiles, and lizards, and all sorts of curious animals. The most interesting are the enormous snakes, called boa-constrictors, with bodies nearly as thick as a child's, and ...
— The Children's Book of London • Geraldine Edith Mitton
... Quick as only a reptile can be, he canted, to remedy the error, but the impetus of his ten-foot bulk was still upon him; it carried him by. You cannot stop ten feet of bulk and five-feet-seven of girth of flesh and bone and muscle and armor-plates, going at Old Nick may know how many knots, ...
— The Way of the Wild • F. St. Mars
... This flag was of bunting, showing a pine-tree on a plain white ground, with the words "Liberty Tree" and "Appeal to God" prominently displayed. This flag was chiefly used until the adoption of the stars and stripes. The "rattlesnake flag," with a reptile in the act of striking, and the legend "Don't tread on me," was largely used by ...
— The Naval History of the United States - Volume 1 (of 2) • Willis J. Abbot
... opulence, through the unlatched wicket in some porte-cochere—red-painted brick pavement, foliage of dark palm or pale banana, marble or granite masonry and blooming parterres; or through a chink between some pair of heavy batten window-shutters, opened with an almost reptile wariness, your eye gets a glimpse of lace and brocade upholstery, silver and bronze, and ...
— Old Creole Days • George Washington Cable
... husband. Do you suppose she left that poison to rankle in the tender soul of her darling? Would it have been moral parricide for a son of the great divine to have repudiated the doctrine which degraded his blameless infancy to the condition and below the condition of the reptile? Was it parricide in the second or third degree when his descendant struck out that venomous sentence from the page in which it stood as a monument to what depth Christian heathenism could sink under the teaching of the great master of logic and spiritual inhumanity? ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... kuracilo, rimedo. remember : memori. remove : translogx'igxi, -igi. rent : luprezo. repeat : ripeti, rediri. repent : penti. report : raporti; famo; (official) protokolo. represent : reprezenti. reptile : rampajxo. republic : respubliko. repugnance : antipatio. require : bezoni, postuli. resemble : simili. reserve : rezervi. resign : eksigxi. resignation : resignacio; eksigxo. resin : rezino. "-wood," keno. ...
— The Esperanto Teacher - A Simple Course for Non-Grammarians • Helen Fryer
... time, my dear sir! I have not fallen so low as that. What hurts me is that you could think even for a moment that I would agree to go to Kotlicki, to Kotlicki, who is more repulsive to me than the basest reptile!" she ...
— The Comedienne • Wladyslaw Reymont
... hole for its habitation. She collected her courage, and having clapped her hands and waved the lantern about to scare any alligators that might still be lurking there, hearing and seeing nothing more, she descended to where she had trodden upon the reptile. Evidently this was its bed, for its long body had left an impress upon the mud, and all about lay the remains of creatures that it had brought in for food. Moreover, a path ran outwards, its well-worn trail distinct even in ...
— Benita, An African Romance • H. Rider Haggard
... accredited in the garb of sanctity. The instant there is a flaw, a 'damned spot' to be concealed, it is glossed over with a doubtful name. Again, we dress up our enemies in nicknames, and they march to the stake as assuredly as in san Benitos.... Strange, that a reptile should wish to be thought an angel; or that he should not be content to writhe and grovel in his native earth, without aspiring to the skies! It is from the love of dress and finery. He is the Chimney-sweeper on May-day all the year round: the soot peeps through the ...
— Hazlitt on English Literature - An Introduction to the Appreciation of Literature • Jacob Zeitlin
... forever to his service by a pension of three hundred a year. Burke demanded some leisure for the literature that had made his name. Hamilton justified Leland's description of him as a selfish, canker-hearted, envious reptile by refusing. Burke, who always spoke his mind roundly, described Hamilton as an infamous scoundrel, flung back his pension and returned to freedom, independence, and poverty. But he was soon to enter the service of another statesman under less ...
— A History of the Four Georges and of William IV, Volume III (of 4) • Justin McCarthy and Justin Huntly McCarthy
... animals, and of amusing himself with their dying convulsions. He also frequently took pleasure in roasting them alive. He once received a present of a very large snake from some person who seemed to understand how to please this remarkable young prince. After a time, however, the favorite reptile allowed itself to bite its master's finger, whereupon Don Carlos immediately retaliated by ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... namely, that those men and women, who do not even approximately fulfil the conditions of their elevated rank, who will not endeavour after the great human-divine idea, striving to ascend, are sent away back down to that stage of development, say of fish or insect or reptile, beyond which their moral nature has refused to advance. Who has not seen or known men who appeared not to have passed, or indeed in some things to have approached the development of the more human of the lower animals! Let those take care who look contemptuously upon the animals, lest, ...
— Hope of the Gospel • George MacDonald
... feels an impulse to kill his neighbor, lest he be killed by him. Revenge and retaliation follow. And all this, as before said, may be among honest men only. But this is not all. Every foul bird comes abroad, and every dirty reptile rises up. These add crime to confusion. Strong measures deemed indispensable, but harsh at best, such men make worse by maladministration. Murders for old grudges, and murders for self, proceed under any cloak that will best serve ...
— The Papers And Writings Of Abraham Lincoln, Complete - Constitutional Edition • Abraham Lincoln
... tattle is political, become serviceable to men engaged in great affairs. They may even ask you to their houses, if that is your ambition. You may urge that they condone your deeds, and are even art and part in them. But you must also be aware that they call you, and think you, a reptile. You are not one of those who will do the devil's work without the devil's wages; but do you seriously think that the wages ...
— Essays in Little • Andrew Lang
... serpent of the Mosaic account of the Creation, it personified, in the imaginations of the vulgar, the notion of cunning, so that even the jurists designated a cunning fraud by the appellation of a "stellionatus." Perotti expressly assures us that this reptile was called by the Romans tarantula; and since he himself, who was one of the most distinguished authors of his time, strangely confounds spiders and lizards together, so that he considers the Apulian tarantula, which he ranks among the class ...
— The Black Death, and The Dancing Mania • Justus Friedrich Karl Hecker
... know more than you aim to tell, Mr. Keller," continued Pesky. "Don't you figure it's up to you, if we let you out of this thing, to whack up any information you've got? The kind of reptile that kills from ...
— Mavericks • William MacLeod Raine
... boats are at hand they turn out promptly to attack the crocodile, if it rises to the surface; but there is small chance of rescue. If the victim has sufficient presence of mind and strength to thrust his thumbs against the eyes of the reptile it may release him, escape in this way is not unknown. In the case of a fatal issue, the men of the village turn out to avenge the outrage, and, in the case of the seizure of an important person, those of neighbouring villages will join them. All available boats are manned ...
— The Pagan Tribes of Borneo • Charles Hose and William McDougall
... "These sights are the shadows of that fairer Paradise which is our home, where there is no beast of prey, no venomous reptile, no sin. My child, should I not feel this more than you? Those who are shut up in crowded cities see but the work of man, which is evil. It is the compensation of my flight from Carthage that I am brought before the ...
— Callista • John Henry Cardinal Newman
... dead snake should be put in her room, and she be taught how harmless the thing is for which she had such an aversion. An Indian servant, who, for some reason or other, has a deadly hatred for the whole family, substitutes a live reptile. Clementine appears at the window with the venomous creature coiled round her neck, screaming with wild terror. The spectators on the stage think that the snake is dead, and that she is only screaming from "nerves," but in reality she is being slowly strangled. I began screaming in a ...
— The Story of My Life - Recollections and Reflections • Ellen Terry
... tuft of trees, he beheld the head and fiery eyes of an immense serpent or dragon, with the widest jaws that ever a dragon had, and a vast many rows of horribly sharp teeth. Before Cadmus could reach the spot, this pitiless reptile had killed his poor companions, and was busily devouring them, making but ...
— Myths That Every Child Should Know - A Selection Of The Classic Myths Of All Times For Young People • Various
... reply, a snake, warmed by the hot sun, curled upward from the terraced wall behind them, where it had basked, and glided swiftly between them. Nobili's heel was on it; in an instant he had crushed its head. But there between them lay the quivering reptile, its speckled scales catching the light. Enrica shrieked ...
— The Italians • Frances Elliot
... nostril, a form presses against my palm in all its dilating softness, with rounded petals, slightly curled edges, curving stem, leaves drooping. When I would fain view the world as a whole, it rushes into vision—man, beast, bird, reptile, fly, sky, ocean, mountains, plain, rock, pebble. The warmth of life, the reality of creation is over all—the throb of human hands, glossiness of fur, lithe windings of long bodies, poignant buzzing of insects, the ruggedness of the steeps as ...
— The World I Live In • Helen Keller
... point to another life, the only true life of the soul? There is such a manifest disproportion between all objects of earthly attainment and the capacities of the spirit, that, unless man is immortal, he is vastly more to be pitied than the meanest reptile that crawls upon the earth. So I thought as I was walking this morning and saw a frog swimming in a puddle of water. I could hardly help envying him when I considered that his condition was suited to his nature, and that he has no ...
— The Life and Letters of Elizabeth Prentiss • George L. Prentiss
... The reptile thus disturbed instantly struck backwards after the fashion of its species, so that its fangs, just missing Tabitha's hands, sank deep into the kid's neck. She screamed and there was a great disturbance. ...
— Smith and the Pharaohs, and Other Tales • Henry Rider Haggard
... fox invited down A cock, who on a tree had flown. "Do you not know, my friend," says he, "Bird, beast, fish, reptile, man agree, To live henceforth in amity? Come down and celebrate the day." "Troth," quoth the cock, "you truly say; For hounds I see come o'er the dell, With open mouths, the news to tell." "Adieu," says Ren. "'Tis best to go; Those dogs ...
— Aesop, in Rhyme - Old Friends in a New Dress • Marmaduke Park
... redress lex talionis, in opposition to the Edgefield lex loci, as Mr. McDuffe truthfully says, "God has planted in the breast of man a higher and holier principle than that by which he is prompted to resist oppression; the vilest reptile that crawls on the earth, without the gift of reason to comprehend the injustice of its injuries, would bite, or sting, or bruise the hand by which they were inflicted. Is it to be expected, then, ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 7, 1922 • Various
... forehead became contracted with horror—he stood silent a few seconds, petrified and overwhelmed with his emotions—his body shrinking back in an attitude of repulsion and dislike, as if a venomous reptile were before his sight. His regard then fell full on Loup Bergund, and the terrible severity of its expression made the unworthy tyrant shrink ...
— Barn and the Pyrenees - A Legendary Tour to the Country of Henri Quatre • Louisa Stuart Costello
... rising, Telling likewise of Nimaera, Who their every purpose ruleth, Tends it in its first conception, Baffles wholly and destroys it, Or unto completion brings it, Bringeth out its faults or virtues, Shewing where its merit lieth. Then shall every beast that liveth, Every bird and every reptile, Every fish and every insect, Raise their own peculiar voices— (Terrible, or sweet, or puny); And will testify their own way Of the powers of King Nimaera, Who their being's fire feedeth, Gives them space for life and glory, With that limit ends their being; For no hidden spirit ...
— A Leaf from the Old Forest • J. D. Cossar
... arm is modified for flight in a wholly different way—the fingers here being very short and all run together, while the chief expanse of the wing is composed of the shoulder and fore-arm. In frogs and lizards, again, we find hands more like our own; but in an extinct species of flying reptile the modification was extreme, the wing having been formed by a prodigious elongation of the fifth finger, and a membrane spread over it and the rest of the hand. (Fig. 5.) Lastly, in serpents the hand and ...
— Darwin, and After Darwin (Vol. 1 and 3, of 3) • George John Romanes
... name should be uttered in such a worthless ear. Thou hast done me one injury, and thou see'st I have repaid it. But prosecute this farther villainy, and be assured I will put thee to death like a foul reptile, whose very slaver is fatal to humanity. Rely upon this, as if Machiavel had sworn it; for so surely as you keep your purpose, so surely will I prosecute my revenge.—Follow me, Lance, and leave him to think on what I have ...
— Peveril of the Peak • Sir Walter Scott
... business," Mr. Troy answered, looking at the old rogue who had disgraced an honorable profession, as he might have looked at a reptile which had just risen rampant at his feet. "What is your fee for ...
— My Lady's Money • Wilkie Collins
... bad or good, so am I reminded of a Whig or Tory measure. When the newspaper is brought in, I walk round and round it as a dog will do round the spot he is about to lie down upon. I would fain not touch it; but at last, like a fascinated bird who falls per force into the reptile's mouth, so do I plunge into its columns, read it with desperation, and when the poison has circulated, throw it away in despair. If I am reminded to say grace at dinner, I commence "My Lords, and gentlemen;" and when I seek my bed, as ...
— Olla Podrida • Frederick Marryat (AKA Captain Marryat)
... eyes; the horn-like fangs, at the roots of which he well knew were the sacks filled almost to bursting with the most deadly of all poisons; the thin neck, swelling out until the scaly belly of the loathsome reptile was visible. ...
— Oonomoo the Huron • Edward S. Ellis
... be setting in church, perhaps in the most solemn part of the sermon, he'd feel something give two or three quick kinder jerks under his vest, and presently that reptile would bawl right out in the meeting 'Bloo-oo-oo-ood-a-noun! Bloo-oo-oo-ood-a-nou-ou-oun!' and keep it up until the sexton would come along and run out two or three boys for profaning the sanctuary. And at last he'd fix it on poor old Barnes, and then tell him that if he wanted ...
— Elbow-Room - A Novel Without a Plot • Charles Heber Clark (AKA Max Adeler)
... to crawl slowly up the rock, dragging himself along on his belly like a veritable reptile. Two or three times he narrowly escaped sliding down into the abyss below, but finally he succeeded in ...
— Ticket No. "9672" • Jules Verne
... into the reptile house, and the snakes fascinated Roy. He paused before a glass box ...
— The Boy from the Ranch - Or Roy Bradner's City Experiences • Frank V. Webster
... flashed menacingly, and its tongue vibrated with a hissing sound as it gazed at Tom. Its tail was wound round the trunk of the tree. Ned was powerless, for his arms were pinioned to his side by the coils of the reptile. ...
— Under Drake's Flag - A Tale of the Spanish Main • G. A. Henty
... description I was regaled as I completed my toilet, and I hurried out of doors for an opportunity to think without disturbance. Strolling past the henyard I saw a meditative turtle, and picking him up and shouting to my nephews I held the reptile up for their inspection. Their window-blinds flew open, and a unanimous though not exactly harmonious "Oh!" ...
— Helen's Babies • John Habberton
... with equal unction on those who, in many instances, have taken their places, geographically, if not their place, socially, in Irish every-day existence. There is little doubt but that after the monsters of the Primal Periods had been practically extinguished, a stray reptile, here and there, escaped the general doom, and, as Mr. Yeats says of his lug-worm, may have-sung with "its grey and muddy mouth" of how "somewhere to North or West or South, there dwelt a gay, exulting, gentle ...
— Mount Music • E. Oe. Somerville and Martin Ross
... and as a dragon of the sea, saith ezekiel; hereby, plainly meaning a whale; in truth, some versions of the Bible use that word itself. Besides, it would much subtract from the glory of the exploit had St. George but encountered a crawling reptile of the land, instead of doing battle with the great monster of the deep. Any man may kill a snake, but only a Perseus, a St. George, a Coffin, have the heart in them to march boldly up to a whale. Let not the modern paintings of this scene mislead ...
— Moby-Dick • Melville
... had laughed his caution to scorn. Did she not know herself and her own innocence? Was she not living in her father's house, and with her father? Should she quail beneath the stings and venom of such a reptile as Quintus Slide? "Oh, Phineas," she said, "let us be braver than that." He would much prefer to have stayed away,—but still he went to her. He was conscious of her dangerous love for him. He knew well that it was not returned. He was aware that it would be best for both ...
— Phineas Redux • Anthony Trollope
... holding up an exquisite rose-colored reptile. "The tritulus annularis or pink garter snake! Almost unheard of in ...
— The Cruise of the Kawa • Walter E. Traprock
... out a charming sketch by Rubens, clear and pearly beyond conception. It is St. George and the Dragon, the dragon hero and his horse in the air, and the dragon must certainly have been an African lion. Mr. Beckford called the beast, or reptile, a mumpsimus (sic). "Do look at the Pontimeitos in the beautiful sketch," said he, "there is a bit from his pencil certainly his own. Don't imagine that those great pictures that bear his name are all his pictures. He was too much of a gentleman for such drudgery, ...
— Recollections of the late William Beckford - of Fonthill, Wilts and Lansdown, Bath • Henry Venn Lansdown
... Giant put him, with the cage, on the top of the tower; and when our friends left the hollow mountain through the gap the Giant had made, the poor sorceress was being changed from bird to beast, and from beast to fish or reptile, as fast as the little demon was satisfied with her performance in any one character; and he may be keeping up this amusing pastime yet, ...
— Ting-a-ling • Frank Richard Stockton
... embroidery. True, the differences between the descendant and the ancestor are slight, and it may be asked whether the same living matter presents enough plasticity to take in turn such different forms as those of a fish, a reptile and a bird. But, to this question, observation gives a peremptory answer. It shows that up to a certain period in its development the embryo of the bird is hardly distinguishable from that of the reptile, and that the individual develops, throughout the embryonic life in general, a series ...
— Creative Evolution • Henri Bergson
... India, the cobra di capello holds foremost rank, though it is claimed that a still more deadly reptile has been found in the interior, and I believe the British Museum has one of these terrible creatures, whose bite brings death with the suddenness of the lightning stroke. However, the cobra has been known to strike two persons in instant succession, proving fatal ...
— The Jungle Fugitives • Edward S. Ellis
... from a letter by "W. C. R." in the Field about the end of 1868, which gives a very curious incident of a crocodile stealing up to a pack of otters fishing, and got within thirty yards; "but no sooner was the water broken by the hideous head of the reptile, than an otter, which evidently was stationed on the opposite bank as a sentinel, sounded the alarm by a whistling sort of sound. In an instant those in the water rushed to the bank and disappeared among the jungle, no doubt much to the disgust of ...
— Natural History of the Mammalia of India and Ceylon • Robert A. Sterndale
... make of you," Ptaha persisted in addressing the tramp. "Peasant you are not, and gentleman you are not, but some sort of a thing between.... The other day I was washing a sieve in the pond and caught a reptile—see, as long as a finger, with gills and a tail. The first minute I thought it was a fish, then I looked—and, blow it! if it hadn't paws. It was not a fish, it was a viper, and the deuce only knows what it was.... So that's like you.... ...
— The Witch and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... splash as the fellow reached the water. Doubtless he was a good swimmer, as about all these natives seemed to be, and barring his falling a prey to some loitering alligator or other reptile, he would be able to gain the neighboring ...
— The Aeroplane Boys on the Wing - Aeroplane Chums in the Tropics • John Luther Langworthy
... where the animals were, making its way through the holes nibbled by the Mangouste underneath the doors. A cold shudder seized me when I guessed the reality of the sense of something gliding over me in the night. The hunger of the reptile had steered him straight to the cage of the mice, whose cry of agony at the presence of the great enemy of mouse-kind had fortunately roused me from my lethargy,—for the rattle of the snake is but a drowsy sound, and will not awaken the sleeper. How the Mangouste came to appear ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume V, Number 29, March, 1860 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... "Reptile!" he grumbled to himself, "for a sheep, for a piece of cloth of gold, thou wouldst be ready to sell thy daughter's body, thy son's ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXII. - June, 1843.,Vol. LIII. • Various
... disgraced, Who found their pride on titles which they stain, And, mean themselves, are of their fathers vain; Who would a bill of privilege prefer, And treat a poet like a creditor; 150 The generous ardour of the Muse condemn, And curse the storm they know must break on them! 'What! shall a reptile bard, a wretch unknown, Without one badge of merit but his own, Great nobles lash, and lords, like common men, Smart from the vengeance of a scribbler's pen?' What's in this name of lord, that I should fear To bring their vices to the public ear? Flows not the honest blood of humble ...
— Poetical Works • Charles Churchill
... artificial aid of the muses, saying that his own deep feeling was enough to inspire him. As the romantic movement progressed, it would be easy to show that distaste for the eighteenth century mannerism resulted in more and more flippant treatment of the goddesses. Beattie refers to a contemporary's "reptile Muse, swollen from the sty." [Footnote: See On a Report of a Monument to a Late Author.] Burns alludes to his own Muse as a "tapitless ramfeezled hizzie," [Footnote: See the Epistle to Lapraik.] and sets the fashion ...
— The Poet's Poet • Elizabeth Atkins
... motionless, and the woman in the dim background ceased her weird rubbing of the drum. Haddo seized the snake and opened its mouth. Immediately it fastened on his hand, and the reptile teeth went deep into his flesh. Arthur watched him for signs of pain, but he did not wince. The writhing snake dangled from his hand. He repeated a sentence in Arabic, and, with the peculiar suddenness of a drop of water falling from a roof, the snake fell ...
— The Magician • Somerset Maugham
... conception is found both in Malay and Hindu mythology, differing somewhat in details, but always relating to some monster reptile. In the Manek Maya, one of the ancient epics of Java, Anta Boga, the deity presiding over the lowest region of the earth, is a dragon-like monster with ninety nostrils. The same conception is ...
— Day Symbols of the Maya Year • Cyrus Thomas
... and the boat soon came down to half-speed. The five hunters, including Achang, had their rifles ready for use, though they still retained their seats. The reptile was not asleep; and he appeared to have some notions of his own, for he was not disposed to wait for the coming of the boat. He settled down in the dark water so that he could not be seen, but the surface was disturbed ...
— Four Young Explorers - Sight-Seeing in the Tropics • Oliver Optic
... extraordinary degree of arrogance, by dictating to future parliaments, and prescribing to future ministers a mode of action to be adopted some thirty years hence. He remarked:—"None but a novice, a sycophant, a mere reptile of a minister, would allow this act to prevent him doing what, in his own judgment, circumstances might require at the time; and a change in the situation of the country might render that which is proper at one time inapplicable at another. In short, ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... we're all monsters, we all make men weep, and mothers, and babes at the breast, but of all, let it be settled here, now, of all I am the lowest reptile! I've sworn to amend, and every day I've done the same filthy things. I understand now that such men as I need a blow, a blow of destiny to catch them as with a noose, and bind them by a force from without. Never, never should I have risen ...
— The Brothers Karamazov • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... original poet; and Nature, in return for his love, seems to adopt him as her especial child, and shows him secrets which few others are allowed to witness. He is familiar with beast, fish, fowl, and reptile, and has strange stories to tell of adventures and friendly passages with these lower brethren of mortality. Herb and flower, likewise, wherever they grow, whether in garden or wild wood, are his familiar friends. He is also on intimate terms with the clouds, and can tell the portents of ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 107, September, 1866 • Various
... regains The sunken walls, the tomb-encumber'd plains, Pursues the dwindling nations where they shrink, And skirts with slime its deleterious brink. The fox himself has fled his gilded den, Nor holds the heritage he won from men; Lapwing and reptile shun the curst abode, And the foul dragon, now no more a god, Trails off his train; the sickly raven flies; A wide strong-stencht Avernus chokes the skies. So pride and ignorance fall a certain prey To the stanch ...
— The Columbiad • Joel Barlow
... many a prisoned Creature held for sale, Stolen from the happy Freedom of its life: Dull drooping birds, That uttered shriek and wail, And beast and reptile Full ...
— Cole's Funny Picture Book No. 1 • Edward William Cole
... of mathematics. The old antinomies of the infinite were, I imagine, the irritant that first woke his faculties from their dogmatic slumber. You all remember Zeno's famous paradox, or sophism, as many of our logic books still call it, of Achilles and the tortoise. Give that reptile ever so small an advance and the swift runner Achilles can never overtake him, much less get ahead of him; for if space and time are infinitely divisible (as our intellects tell us they must be), by the time Achilles reaches ...
— A Pluralistic Universe - Hibbert Lectures at Manchester College on the - Present Situation in Philosophy • William James
... snake which was wriggling rapidly along past her, a little creature whose scales looked like oxidised silver in the afternoon sunshine, and she was about to rise and try to capture the burnished reptile, knowing from old experience that it was harmless, when at one and the same moment she became aware that Grip was missing, and that Ram Shackle and the big labourer from the farm, Jemmy Dadd, were coming up a hollow away to the right, one by which they could reach the down-like fields ...
— Cutlass and Cudgel • George Manville Fenn
... strike and swear, while his eyes flashed like the fires of an orthodox perdition. We have heard him hiss, and seen him writhe his body like the serpent when crawling, and dart out his tongue, and play it exactly like that reptile. These exhibitions were intermingled with the most ...
— Modern Spiritualism • Uriah Smith
... lines long. It is not only a part, but a mirror, of the great whole. It has a definite relation to the whole world, and the whole world has a relation to it. Really, by-the-by, I cannot give you a better instance of what I mean, than in my little diatribe on the Geryon Trifurcifer, a small reptile which I found, some years ago, inhabiting the mud of the salt lakes of Balkhan, which fills up a long-desired link between the Chelonia and the Perenni branchiate Batrachians, and, as I think, though Professor Brown differs ...
— Alton Locke, Tailor And Poet • Rev. Charles Kingsley et al
... vacant place (there being only one room) to commence his own meal, when up he jumped like a madman, spluttering the food out of his mouth, and shouting and skipping about the room with both hands clutched tightly to the hinder part of his inexpressibles. "Oh, by Jasus! help, sir, help! I've a reptile or some divil up my breeches! Oh! bad luck to him, he's biting me! Oh! oh! it's sure a sarpint that's stinging me! quick, sir, or he'll be the ...
— Eight Years' Wandering in Ceylon • Samuel White Baker
... throwing the reptile into the underbrush he explained the seizure. The astrologer, Ormes, had predicted that he would meet his death neither from natural sickness nor from poison, nor yet by the sword or cord, but from the ...
— Romance of Roman Villas - (The Renaissance) • Elizabeth W. (Elizbeth Williams) Champney
... creatures anything like it in nature, and because it had appeared to me for a purpose, and bore some mysterious signification. I looked at the beast well; it was brown in colour and had a shell; it was a crawling kind of reptile, about eight inches long, and narrowed down from the head, which was about a couple of fingers in width, to the end of the tail, which came to a fine point. Out of its trunk, about a couple of inches below its head, came two legs at an ...
— The Idiot • (AKA Feodor Dostoevsky) Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... Reptile skins if not put in the pickle jar had better be packed in salt after poisoning as when entirely dry they are practically ruined. Skins of fish are best kept in either a saturated solution of salt (water with salt added until no more will dissolve), alcohol or formaldehyde ...
— Home Taxidermy for Pleasure and Profit • Albert B. Farnham
... "Brute and bird, reptile and the fly, Ay and, I nothing doubt, even tree, shrub, plant And flower o' the field, are all in a common pact To worthily defend the trust of trusts, Life from ...
— Browning as a Philosophical and Religious Teacher • Henry Jones
... the mother, to her horror, saw a deadly reptile coiled in the very path along which the child was rolling his "bushee," and with true frontier woman's pluck, ran and snatched up the bare-footed Fernando, when only within two feet of the deadly serpent, carried him to the house, and with the stout staff assailed ...
— Sustained honor - The Age of Liberty Established • John R. Musick,
... through the cavern and he was thrown violently forward on his hands and knees. Again came that dizzy, sickening shaking of the earth, that nauseating sense of being lifted to a height and suddenly let fall, that squirming of the ground beneath him as though it were a gigantic reptile. ...
— Doubloons—and the Girl • John Maxwell Forbes
... The natives begged for the flesh in order to dry it and use it as a specific against asthma, as they believed that any asthmatic person who lived on the flesh for a certain time would be infallibly cured. Another native wished the fat as an antidote for rheumatic pain. The head of this huge reptile was presented to an American, who in turn presented it to the Boston Museum. Unfortunately La Gironiere's picturesque descriptions must often be taken with a grain of salt. For some information regarding ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898: Volume XVI, 1609 • H.E. Blair
... do not recall one instance of wanton murder among serpents. It is well known that some snakes devour other snakes; but that is not crime. The record of the crocodilians is not so clear. It is a common thing for the large alligators in our Reptile House to battle for supremacy and in these contests several fatalities have occurred. Some of these occurrences are not of the criminal sort; but when a twelve-foot alligator attacks and kills a six-foot individual, entirely out of ...
— The Minds and Manners of Wild Animals • William T. Hornaday
... thou Infinite Spirit! transform the reptile again into his dog-shape? in which it pleased him often at night to scamper on before me, to roll himself at the feet of the unsuspecting wanderer, and hang upon his shoulders when he fell! Transform him again into his favorite likeness, that he ...
— Faust • Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe
... was animated by human breath. This person was apparently lying on his back, his face hid, his form not to be traced, a wild confusion of shawls and cushions, out of which, like some wily and dangerous reptile, glided the spiral involutions of his pipe. Next to the invisible sat a little wiry man with a red nose, sparkling eyes, and a white beard. His black turban intimated that he was a Hebrew, and indeed he was well known as Barizy of the Tower, a description ...
— Tancred - Or, The New Crusade • Benjamin Disraeli
... as its glittering skin and as cool to the touch. Long ago as this happened it is just as vivid to my mind as if it had happened yesterday. I can see her coming back to us through the orchard trees, her face shining with joy because she had rescued the reptile from imminent death, her return greeted with loud expressions of horror and amazement, which she only answered with a little laugh and the question, "Why should you kill it?" But why was she glad, so innocently glad as it seemed to me, as if she had done some meritorious ...
— Far Away and Long Ago • W. H. Hudson
... see on the shore the white sea-horse, the symbol of Brittany. A monstrous serpent entwines him, seizing him round the hind legs and the body with his enormous coils. The sea-steed turns his head to seize the reptile. The combat is unequal. You are alone; ...
— Legends & Romances of Brittany • Lewis Spence
... it was my turn. So far I had thrown fair, without twist or trickery, but I knew one turn of the wrist that could do cruel work. Should I use it? Pemaou had tried to murder me. I looked at his red-and-white body, and reptile eyes, and hate rushed to my brain like liquor. I took ...
— Montlivet • Alice Prescott Smith
... with mine were cutting out the timber blockade in the Gap. I had no thought of my lizard, but one of his orderlies caught sight of it on my shoulder. With the common prejudice among the soldiers that the harmless thing was a deadly poisonous reptile, he stood a moment staring and half transfixed, thinking me in deadly peril. Then, with a jump, he struck it off my shoulder with his open hand, and stamped it dead with his heavy boot heel, sure he had saved my life. But when one of my attendants exclaimed reproachfully, ...
— Military Reminiscences of the Civil War V2 • Jacob Dolson Cox
... working-dress, you were perfectly able to produce as much effect with words as by deadly blows!" "I might very likely have succeeded," answered Pentaur, "but the most savage temper ruled the crowd; there was no time for reflection, and when I struck down the villain, like some reptile, who had seized the innocent girl, the lust of fighting took possession of me. I cared no more for my own life, and to save the child ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... up. When the law breaks down, honest men must find a remedy for themselves. I will not lift a finger to save this reptile. ...
— The Doctor's Dilemma • George Bernard Shaw
... result. We simply claim the right to deny the truth of every statement made by him in yesterday's paper, to annul all apologies he coined as coming from us, and to hold him up to public commiseration as a reptile endowed with no more intellect, no more cultivation, no more Christian principle than animates and adorns the sportive jackass-rabbit of the Sierras. ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... of homologous parts—an idea which found a famous modern expositor in Goethe, as we shall see when we come to deal with eighteenth-century science. Empedocles expresses the idea in these words: "Hair, and leaves, and thick feathers of birds, are the same thing in origin, and reptile scales too on strong limbs. But on hedgehogs sharp-pointed hair bristles on their backs."(14) That the idea of transmutation of parts, as well as of mere homology, was in mind is evidenced by a very remarkable sentence in which Aristotle asserts, "Empedocles says that fingernails rise from sinew ...
— A History of Science, Volume 1(of 5) • Henry Smith Williams
... the beasts of the field, Mrs. Eddy says that "The beast and reptile made by Love and Wisdom were neither carnivorous nor poisonous." Ferocious tendencies in animals are entirely the product of man's imagination. Daniel understood this, we are told, and that is why the lions did ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol 31, No 2, June 1908 • Various
... flexible that it folded back in its mouth, and that the frog would sit at the edge of an ant-hill and throwing out the tongue with its sticky point, would pick off the ants one by one as they came out. When I learnt all this, I began to watch such a curious reptile; my fears vanished, and like Kingsley's little daughter, who had been wisely led to care for all living things and came running to show her father a "dear delightful worm" she had found! so I, too, ...
— Wild Nature Won By Kindness • Elizabeth Brightwen
... did not form an attractive object in the lovely landscape surrounded by hills, in and out amongst which the Reptile River ran, for a building hastily raised of corrugated iron never was and never will ...
— Dead Man's Land - Being the Voyage to Zimbambangwe of certain and uncertain • George Manville Fenn
... Petrolacosaurus kansensis Lane, a Pennsylvanian reptile from Kansas. Univ. Kansas Paleont. Contrib., Vertebrata, Art. 1: 1-41. 1958. An embolomerous amphibian in the Garnett fauna (Pennsylvanian) of Kansas. Jour. ...
— A New Order of Fishlike Amphibia From the Pennsylvanian of Kansas • Theodore H. Eaton
... few days, that the men might rest after their fatigue. No insect was to be seen in this dreary country, nor any species of reptile—not even the common earth-worm. Large bodies of ice, called icebergs, filled up the valleys between high mountains, so dark as, when contrasted with the snow, to appear black. The colour of the ice was a lively light green. Opposite to the place where ...
— The Life of Horatio Lord Nelson • Robert Southey
... kind—a thought instantly darted into his mind, that tho' the anguish had the sensation of glowing heat—it might, notwithstanding that, be a bite as well as a burn; and if so, that possibly a Newt or an Asker, or some such detested reptile, had crept up, and was fastening his teeth—the horrid idea of which, with a fresh glow of pain arising that instant from the chesnut, seized Phutatorius with a sudden panick, and in the first terrifying disorder of the passion, it threw him, as it has done the best generals upon earth, ...
— The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman • Laurence Sterne
... note below informed the public that 4 A.M. was the time. Hardly had the audience grasped this important fact when a long waterproof serpent was seen uncoiling itself from behind a stump. An inch-worm, perhaps, would be a better description, for it travelled in the same humpy way as that pleasing reptile. Suddenly a very wide-awake and active fowl advanced, pecking, chirping, and scratching vigorously. A tuft of green leaves waved upon his crest, a larger tuft of brakes made an umbrageous tail, and a shawl of ...
— Eight Cousins • Louisa M. Alcott
... Spirit said: 395 'When Luxury and Lust's exhausted stores No more can rouse the appetites of kings; When the low flattery of their reptile lords Falls flat and heavy on the accustomed ear; When eunuchs sing, and fools buffoonery make, 400 And dancers writhe their harlot-limbs in vain; Then War and all its dread vicissitudes Pleasingly agitate their stagnant hearts; ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... three men sat silent, Sir Jasper gazing straight in front of him, Sir John Dene twirling his cheroot between his lips, his eyes fixed upon the bald dome-like head of Malcolm Sage, whose eyes were still intent upon his horned reptile, which he had adorned with wings. He appeared to ...
— Malcolm Sage, Detective • Herbert George Jenkins
... Zoo on Whit-Monday, and one anxious father who had mislaid a couple of infants stayed for a long time in the reptile-house, looking suspiciously at the swollen appearance of the ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, June 18, 1919 • Various
... when it was evident that their calls were not going to be heeded. With that she threw a stone at the nearest alligator. Her aim was exceptionally good. Betty admitted that herself, afterward, the missile falling on the broad and scaly back of the reptile. ...
— The Outdoor Girls in Florida - Or, Wintering in the Sunny South • Laura Lee Hope
... "that yesterday I took a turn in Medicis' kitchen, I suppose the reptile accidentally fell into my pocket; these creatures are very short-sighted. Since I have got it," added he, "I should like to keep it. I will tame it and paint it red, it will look livelier. I am sad since Phemie's departure; it will ...
— Bohemians of the Latin Quarter • Henry Murger
... The reptile haunts the sweetest bower, The rose blooms on the thorn; There 's poison in the fairest flower That greets the opening morn. The hemlock and the night-shade spring In garden and in grove; But oh! the upas of the soul ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volume III - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... figures, surmounting the piers of the arcade, also the first group over the tower entrance, show earliest forms of human, animal, reptile and bird life, symbolizing the ...
— The Jewel City • Ben Macomber
... just inside the door. Pity, mercy, and tenderness were qualities as inherent in her as perfume in a wild flower, but there was something else in her as well—as there is death in some perfumes. If he had been actually a poisonous reptile instead of a snake soul in the body of a man Bas Rowlett could have been to her, ...
— The Roof Tree • Charles Neville Buck
... sheltered and weather-fended from all the elements of experience; a young man, whose feet had never wandered; whose very eye had never turned to the right or to the left; whose whole track had been as curveless as the motion of a fascinated reptile! It was a young man, whose heart was solitary, because he had existed always amidst objects of futurity, and whose imagination, too, was unpopulous, because those objects of hope, to which his habitual wishes had transferred, ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 2, July, 1850. • Various
... of man! Many a time, when I have seen the lordly features of the descendants of Solomon and Joshua (features that stamp the nobility of the eastern world born to mastery and command) sharpened and furrowed by petty cares,—when I have looked upon the frame of the strong man bowed, like a crawling reptile, to some huckstering bargainer of silks and unguents,—and heard the voice, that should be raising the battle-cry, smoothed into fawning accents of base fear, or yet baser hope,—I have asked myself, if ...
— Leila or, The Siege of Granada, Book I. • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... that fire,—which, symbolically, was the origin of all that was bright and glorious in the soul of man,—and in the midst of it, behold a little reptile, sporting with evident enjoyment of the fervid heat! ...
— A Virtuoso's Collection (From "Mosses From An Old Manse") • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... gently he was made Of nicely tempered mud, That man no lengthened part had played Anterior to the Flood. 'Twas all in vain; he heeded not, Referring plant and worm, Fish, reptile, ape, and Hottentot, To ...
— The Book of Humorous Verse • Various
... perhaps the great High Cock O'lorum himself, taking an airing in the fields. I have never yet been able to settle the question, as every fall I start up a few of these gigantic specimens, which perch on the trees. They are about three inches long, of a gray striped or spotted color, and have quite a reptile look. ...
— Wake-Robin • John Burroughs
... whose nutriment is love, and its offspring art, music, divine song, and still holier philosophy. To the last this super-refined creature seemed undisturbed by remorse. What place can we fancy for such a reptile, and what do we learn from such a career? Talfourd has so wisely summed up the whole case for us that I leave the dark tragedy with the recital of this solemn sentence from a paper on the culprit ...
— Yesterdays with Authors • James T. Fields
... could not touch a toad. It was true that the beast had amused him, and that he had chatted to it; but after all, this was a piece of childish folly—an unmanly way, to say the least, of relieving the tedium of captivity. What was Monsieur Crapaud but a very ugly (and most people said a venomous) reptile? To what a folly he had been condescending! With these thoughts, Monsieur the Viscount steeled himself against the glances of his topaz-eyed friend, and when the steps of thee men were heard upon the stairs, he did not move from the ...
— Frances Kane's Fortune • L. T. Meade
... this tiresome creature and get more and more exasperated with him, I am conscious that he has, little by little, destroyed my happy mood and dragged the pure, beautiful morning down to the level of his own ugliness. He looks like a great sprawling reptile striving with might and main to win a place in the world and reserve the footpath for himself. When we reached the top of the hill I determined to put up with it no longer. I turned to a shop window and stopped in order to give him an opportunity of getting ...
— Hunger • Knut Hamsun
... custody for an attempt upon his life. Again I was taken to the magistrate, but not again discharged so easily. My character and previous offences were exhibited. The magistrate, serious with judicial sorrow, looked upon me as you would turn an eye towards a reptile that defiles the earth. I appealed to him, and in a loud and animated voice proclaimed my grievances. It was suggested that I was a lunatic, and whilst the justice committed me to hard labour, he benevolently promised that the ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 54, No. 335, September 1843 • Various
... bleeding under the clutch of the black leopard. "But," you say, "how can I find out whether a book is good or bad, without reading it?" There is always something suspicious about a bad book. I never knew an exception. Something suspicious in the index or the style of illustration. This venomous reptile almost always carries a ...
— Brave Men and Women - Their Struggles, Failures, And Triumphs • O.E. Fuller
... and, quick as thought, once more rose above her victim. The snake was now uncoiled, and writhing over the ground. Another rush from the peccary, another spring, and the sharp hoofs of the animal came down upon the neck of the serpent, crushing it upon the hard turf. The body of the reptile, distended to its full length, quivered for a moment, and then lay motionless along the grass. The victor uttered another sharp cry, that seemed intended as a call to her young ones, who, emerging from the weeds where they had concealed themselves, ...
— Chambers' Edinburgh Journal - Volume XVII., No 422, New Series, January 31, 1852 • Various
... petty perfidy Have I not seen what human things could do? From the loud roar of foaming calumny To the small whisper of the as paltry few— And subtler venom of the reptile crew, The Janus glance[510] of whose significant eye, Learning to lie with silence, would seem true— And without utterance, save the shrug or sigh, Deal round to ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 2 • George Gordon Byron
... a famous embroglio between our chaouch and the marabout. The latter had caught a waran, or large species of lizard, and skinned it to dispose of the skin. The chaouch impudently swore he had been eating the flesh of the reptile—a direful accusation. A tremendous war of words ensued; and not of words only, for presently the holy man came in for a gratification of ropes' end. All the Fezzanees rushed forward to save the honour of the marabout; and the chaouch retreated to my tent in search of arms. A stupid joke ...
— Narrative of a Mission to Central Africa Performed in the Years 1850-51, Volume 1 • James Richardson
... encompassed him. Besides the risk of encountering the Apaches, there was the ever-present peril from wild beasts and venomous serpents. None of the latter as yet had disturbed him, but he was likely to step upon some coiling reptile, unseen in the dark, ...
— Through Apache Lands • R. H. Jayne
... he wove, Insidious, and intent on scenes of spoil And death:—So mounts Ambition, and aloft On his proud summit meditates new scenes Of plunder and dominion, till the breeze Of fortune change, that blows to empty air 250 His feeble, frail support, and once again Leaves him a reptile, struggling in the dust! But what the world itself, what in His view Whose dread Omnipotence is over all! A twinkling air-thread in the vast of space. And what the works of that proud insect, Man! His mausoleums, fanes, and pyramids, Frown in the dusk of long-revolving ...
— The Poetical Works of William Lisle Bowles, Vol. 1 • William Lisle Bowles
... shoot at. Deciding that the reptile must have squirmed away, the captain, his face wearing a sheepish smile, shoved his weapons back into their holsters and strode back to the camp, ...
— The Pony Rider Boys with the Texas Rangers • Frank Gee Patchin
... from which not only familiar faces, but even the window sashes themselves, were gone. The great unfinished serpent-like flume, crossing the river on gigantic trestles, had advanced as far as the town, stooping over it like some enormous reptile that had sucked its life blood and was gorged with ...
— Devil's Ford • Bret Harte
... that day should ever dawn," said Aramis, tranquilly, "we will think over a means of dispensing with the friendship, or of braving the dislike of M. Colbert. But tell me, my dear Fouquet, instead of conversing with this reptile, as you did him the honor of styling him, a conversation the need for which I do not perceive, why do you not pay a visit, if not to the king, at least ...
— Ten Years Later • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... the vertebrate series have risen through the fish, the reptile, the mammal, to man, unless the manward impulse was inherent in the first vertebrate; something that struggled, that pushed on and up from the more simple to the more complex forms? Why did not unicellular ...
— The Breath of Life • John Burroughs
... below its surface crawl The reptile horrors of the Night— The dragons, lizards, serpents—all The hideous brood that hate the Light; Through poison fern and slimy weed, And under ragged, jagged stones They scuttle, or, in ghoulish greed, They ...
— John Smith, U.S.A. • Eugene Field
... notes to the Baviad and Maeviad. All this is like the fable of 'The Kitten and the Leaves.' But when they get their brass collar on and shake their bells of office, they set up their backs like the Great Cat Rodilardus, and pounce upon men and things. Woe to any little heedess reptile of an author that ventures across their path without a safe-conduct from the Board of Control. They snap him up at a mouthful, and sit licking their lips, stroking their whiskers, and rattling their bells over the imaginary fragments of their devoted prey, to the alarm and astonishment ...
— Table-Talk - Essays on Men and Manners • William Hazlitt
... the universe; and yet you have the folly to believe you are acquainted with the past, the present, and the future. I am an intelligence somewhat superior to you, though there are millions of beings as much above me in power and in intellect as man is above the meanest and weakest reptile that crawls beneath his feet; yet something I can teach you: yield your mind wholly to the influence which I shall exert upon it, and you shall be undeceived in your views of the history of the world, and of the system you inhabit." At this moment the bright light disappeared, ...
— Consolations in Travel - or, the Last Days of a Philosopher • Humphrey Davy
... about you, Monty, will make Marseilles burn! He's got you down as a drunken pirate, my boy, with no less than eleven wives. But be asked me one night whether I thought what he'd written about the nurse was strong enough, and he read it aloud to me. You'd never believe what the reptile had dared suggest in his devil's log-book! I'm expelled for threatening to ...
— The Eye of Zeitoon • Talbot Mundy
... me. The knowledge that Sir Peter admired me absolutely degraded me in my own eyes. I felt as if I could not hold up my head. I had spoken to no one of what had passed within me, and I trusted it had not been noticed; but all my joy was gone. It was as if I stood helpless while a noisome reptile coiled its folds ...
— The First Violin - A Novel • Jessie Fothergill
... story. In the story the manatees escaped. Two of those which I captured were sent to the New York Aquarium, where one of them lived for twenty months. The crocodiles which the boys sent to the Zoological Park may be seen to-day, alive and well in the reptile house. The frequent swamping of canoes and skiffs by porpoises, or dolphins, tarpon and manatees are ...
— Dick in the Everglades • A. W. Dimock
... Agassiz. When he displays an interest in plant life, she sees in him another Burbank. When she finds him drawing pictures at his desk, she smiles approval, for she sees in him another Raphael. She does not disdain the lowliest insect, reptile, or plant when she finds it within the circle of the child's interests. She is willing, nay eager, to ransack the universe if only she may come upon elements of nutrition for her pupils. From every flower that blooms she gathers honey ...
— The Vitalized School • Francis B. Pearson
... essentials similar to a fish, and he saw in this visible transformation a picture of the evolutionary transformation. "An amphibian," he writes,[106] "is at first a fish under the name of tadpole, and then a reptile [sic] under that of frog.... In this observed fact is realised what we have above represented as an hypothesis, the transformation of one organic stage into the stage immediately superior." But it is not clear that he considered ...
— Form and Function - A Contribution to the History of Animal Morphology • E. S. (Edward Stuart) Russell
... said Livia. 'How strange, that Aurelian, who knows so well how to subdue the world, should have so little power to shake off this reptile.' ...
— Aurelian - or, Rome in the Third Century • William Ware
... seconds ago its snout pointed the other way. No, that must be fancy. He was swimming now, they were all swimming, Alan and Jeekie holding their pistols and little stock of cartridges above their heads to keep them dry. The gold head of Big Bonsa appeared to be lifting itself up in the water, as a reptile might, in order to get a better view of these proceedings, but doubtless it was the ripples that they caused which gave it this appearance. Only why did the ripples make it come towards them, quite ...
— The Yellow God - An Idol of Africa • H. Rider Haggard
... higher in their appearance in point of time. If such be not the case,—if fish made their first appearance, not in their least perfect, but in their most perfect state,—not in their nearest approximation to the worm, but in their nearest approximation to the reptile,—there is no room for progression, and the argument falls. Now, it is a geological fact, that it is fish of the higher orders that appear first on the stage, and that they are found to occupy exactly the same level during ...
— Evolution - An Investigation and a Critique • Theodore Graebner
... I have promised a description, is the boa-constrictor. The species is common in the Philippines, but it is rare to meet with a specimen of very large dimensions. It is possible, nay probable, that centuries of time are necessary for this reptile to attain its largest size; and to such an age, the various accidents to which animals are exposed, rarely suffer it to attain. Full-sized boas are consequently to be met with only in the gloomiest, most remote, ...
— Adventures in the Philippine Islands • Paul P. de La Gironiere
... have almost always a placental mode of reproduction, i.e. the blood of the foetus is placed in nutritive relation with the blood of the mother by means of vascular prominences. No trace of such a structure exists in any bird or in any reptile, and yet it crops out again in certain sharks. There indeed it might well be supposed to end, but, marvellous as it seems, it reappears in very lowly creatures; namely, in certain of the ascidians, sometimes called ...
— On the Genesis of Species • St. George Mivart |
