"Serpent" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... them asunder. Lodovico happened not to be with them when they were engaged in painting together the Farnesian gallery at Rome. A rumour spread that in their present combined labour the engraver had excelled the painter. This Annibale could not forgive; he raved at the bite of the serpent: words could not mollify, nor kindness any longer appease, that perturbed spirit; neither the humiliating forbearance of Agostino, the counsels of the wise, nor the mediation of the great. They separated for ever! a separation in which they both ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. II (of 3) - Edited, With Memoir And Notes, By His Son, The Earl Of Beaconsfield • Isaac D'Israeli
... the advance agent of that mysterious combination known to the financial world as an "English syndicate," an elusive sort of commercial sea-serpent with its head in London and its tail around the globe. The "inquiry" which had so gladdened the colonel's heart the morning ofthe breakfast with aunt Nancy had proceeded from this ...
— Colonel Carter of Cartersville • F. Hopkinson Smith
... hours. I know well enough I ought to tell that good lady of all the times you've been here out of hours. Yes, dear, I know it well enough, and sometimes it makes me uneasy in my bed. But you have the beguiling of the serpent himself, Grace Wolfe, and you know it, and ...
— Peggy • Laura E. Richards
... puppies, naming each, 130 And naming those, his friends, for whom they were: Then crost the common into Darnley chase To show Sir Arthur's deer. In copse and fern Twinkled the innumerable ear and tail. Then, seated on a serpent-rooted beech, 135 He pointed out a pasturing colt, and said: "That was the four-year-old I sold the Squire." And there he told a long long-winded tale Of how the Squire had seen the colt at grass, And how it was the thing his daughter wish'd, 140 And how ...
— Selections from Wordsworth and Tennyson • William Wordsworth and Alfred Lord Tennyson
... little serpent?" said an old Tartar woman to her grandson, who, having awakened before daylight, was crying for want of something better to do. "Be quiet, or I will kick you ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXII. - June, 1843.,Vol. LIII. • Various
... the Treaty of Paris were not carried out without considerable procrastination on the part of Russia, which, by its method of evacuating Kars and surrendering Ismail and Reni, and by laying claim to Serpent's Island at the mouth of the Danube, compelled England to send a fleet to the Black Sea, to enforce strict observance of the Treaty. By the end of the year the matter was arranged, though in the meantime the possibility ...
— The Letters of Queen Victoria, Volume III (of 3), 1854-1861 • Queen of Great Britain Victoria
... Tete Noire, I had turned up the valley towards Trient, I noticed a rain-cloud forming on the Glacier de Trient. With a west wind, it proceeded towards the Col de Balme, being followed by a prolonged wreath of vapor, always forming exactly at the same spot over the glacier. This long, serpent-like line of cloud went on at a great rate till it reached the valley leading down from the Col de Balme, under the slate rocks of the Croix de Fer. There it turned sharp round, and came down this valley, at right angles to its former progress, and finally ...
— Modern Painters Volume I (of V) • John Ruskin
... reality in the other. Thus Isaac carrying the wood which was to be employed in the sacrifice of himself, was explained by Jesus Christ carrying his cross, on which he was to finish his sacrifice; and the brazen serpent was illustrated by our Saviour's crucifixion. With these pictures, and many books and relics, St. Bennet brought from Rome in his last voyage, John, abbot of St. Martin's, precentor in St. Peter's church, whom he prevailed ...
— The Lives of the Fathers, Martyrs, and Principal Saints - January, February, March • Alban Butler
... resemblaunce by imagerie or pourtrait, alluding to the painters terme, who yeldeth to th'eye a visible representation of the thing he describes and painteth in his table. So we commending her Maiestie for the wisedome bewtie and magnanimitie likened her to the Serpent, the Lion and the Angell, because by common vsurpation, nothing is wiser then the Serpent, more courageous then the Lion, more bewtifull then the Angell. These are our verses in the end of the seuenth Partheniade. Nature that seldome ...
— The Arte of English Poesie • George Puttenham
... distance it looked like a monster sea serpent on a spree. It was really a dragon, at least that's what the Chinese call it; but it was in fact the finest exhibit ever beheld of what a diseased imagination can do for a victim of strong drink. It could easily claim the prize as being the ...
— The Adventures of Uncle Jeremiah and Family at the Great Fair - Their Observations and Triumphs • Charles McCellan Stevens (AKA 'Quondam')
... which consists in not doing anything wrong, but being wholly unable to accomplish anything positive for good. My favorite quotation from Josh Billings again applies: It is so much easier to be a harmless dove than a wise serpent. My duty was to combine both idealism and efficiency. At that time the public conscience was still dormant as regards many species of political and business misconduct, as to which during the next decade it became sensitive. I had to work with the ...
— Theodore Roosevelt - An Autobiography by Theodore Roosevelt • Theodore Roosevelt
... as he put fresh priming into the pan of his piece. "We must be careful in walking here, it seems. This wretched old musket! Lucky for us that our lives did not depend on it. I wonder if it was a poisonous serpent?" ...
— The Red Eric • R.M. Ballantyne
... He has the power of an evil genius, and we should be on our guard against his wiles." One of the large serpents immediately went and twisted himself around it to the top, and pressed it very hard. The greatest pressure happened to be on his throat; he was just ready to cry out when the serpent let go. Eight of them went in succession and did the like, but always let go at the moment he was ready to cry out. "It cannot be he," they said. "He is too great a weak-heart for that." They then coiled themselves in a circle about their Prince. It was a long time before they fell asleep. When ...
— Young Folks Treasury, Volume 2 (of 12) • Various
... Walpole's opinion. "Of The Fleece," he says, "which never became popular, and is now universally neglected, I can say little that is likely to call it to attention. The woolcomber and the poet appear to me such discordant natures, that an attempt to bring them together is to couple the serpent with the fowl."-E. ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole Volume 3 • Horace Walpole
... cast an anxious glance over the wide sweep below and beyond, seeing nothing but timber and hills, with the silver thread of a creek winding serpent-wise through the green. But of habitation or trail there was never a sign. And it was after ten o'clock. They were over four hours ...
— North of Fifty-Three • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... shore where she landed; there is the orchard where we opened our hearts to each other in the sunshine, and where she returned to life to give me two lives. There in the distance are the tops of the poplars of the great avenue which unrolls its length like a green serpent issuing from the waves. There are the chalets, mossy turf, and woods of chestnut-tree, the sheltered paths upon the highest mountain-planes where I picked flowers, strawberries, and chestnuts to fill her lap. There she said this; there I confessed ...
— Raphael - Pages Of The Book Of Life At Twenty • Alphonse de Lamartine
... the Fiend our foe Had unto man in hearte, for his wealth, Sent a serpent, and made her for to go To deceive EVE; and thus was manis health Bereft him by the Fiend, right in a stealth, The woman not knowing of the deceit, God wot! Full far ...
— Fifteenth Century Prose and Verse • Various
... visited. Virulent smallpox was a feature of the plague, and the pious offices of priests and the incantations of the medicine-men alike proved unavailing. Clearly, some black spell had been cast upon the nation. First it was ascribed to a serpent, then to a spotted frog, then to a demon in the muskets of the French. The Jesuits were accused of compassing death by magic. The striking clock, which aforetime had merely astonished them, was now an engine of calamity; ...
— Old Quebec - The Fortress of New France • Sir Gilbert Parker and Claude Glennon Bryan
... "The tip of a finger or the whole of a hand, it is all the same! It is a mistake, this love! That old story of the Garden and the Serpent is as true as truth. Man and Woman were content to live and adorn the world until one day they espied the stupid red Apple—and straightway they must eat! Look even at this Cartel! He is an artist; he might make the world listen to his music. But, no! He sees a little butterfly, ...
— Max • Katherine Cecil Thurston
... art Sprung from Scythian Caucasus, And Tygers of Hircania gaue thee sucke: Ah foolish Dido to forbeare this long! Wast thou not wrackt vpon this Libian shoare, And cam'st to Dido like a Fisherswaine? Repairde not I thy ships, made thee a King, And all thy needie followers Noblemen? O Serpent that came creeping from the shoare, And I for pitie harbord in my bosome, Wilt thou now slay me with thy venomed sting, And hisse at Dido for preseruing thee? Goe goe and spare not, seeke out Italy, I hope ...
— The Tragedy of Dido Queene of Carthage • Christopher Marlowe
... the principal emblems of the Apostles:— St. Andrew, a cross saltier; St. Bartholomew, a knife; St. James the Great, a pilgrim's staff, wallet, escallop shell; St. James the Less, a fuller's bat, or saw; St. John, a chalice and serpent; St. Jude, a boat in his hand, or a club; St. Matthew, a club, carpenter's square, or money-box; St. Matthias, a hatchet, battle-axe, or sword; St. Paul, a sword; St. Peter, keys; St. Philip, a tau cross, or a spear; St. ...
— English Villages • P. H. Ditchfield
... accomplish this, our own armies must be kept constantly recruited with numbers and with confidence. As for American slavery, it perishes from the face of the earth utterly. We have had enough of the serpent which the young Republic warmed in its too kind bosom. Now it dies; there is no help for it: if you object to the heel upon its head, and place your own head there to sheild it, God pity you, my friend, for you will have need of more than human pity! This war is to ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 86, December, 1864 • Various
... seemed so different. She was a serpent—a veritable serpent," said Hilary Vance in his ...
— Happy Pollyooly - The Rich Little Poor Girl • Edgar Jepson
... wishfully about that apple; but it takes Eve to wake in him the living impulse to take it. Just so with matters of personal neatness. He knows—oh, yes, knowing is his long suit!—he knows he "ought" to be neat; and he thinks he wants to be; but unless Eve and the serpent come along he hasn't ...
— Happiness and Marriage • Elizabeth (Jones) Towne
... up intent on revenge, but was checked by the question of how to avenge himself. To bring Tatiana Markovna, with lanterns, and a crowd of servants and to expose the scandal in a glare of light; to say to her, "Here is the serpent you have carried for two and twenty years in your bosom"—that would be a vulgar revenge of which he knew himself to be incapable. Such a revenge would hit, not Vera, but his aunt, who was to him like his mother. His head drooped ...
— The Precipice • Ivan Goncharov
... Intendant's favor as he liberally bestowed on all the sex; but that did not content Angelique: she looked with sharpest eyes of inquisition upon the bright glances which now and then shot across the room where she sat by the side of Bigot, apparently steeped in happiness, but with a serpent biting at her heart, for she felt that Bigot was really unimpressible as a stone under her ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... was nothing in Aea except the furious people and the fire-breathing bulls. O how pitiful it was that the strange hero and his friends should have come to such a place for the sake of the Golden Fleece that was watched over by the sleepless serpent in ...
— The Golden Fleece and the Heroes who Lived Before Achilles • Padraic Colum
... both himself and Capt. Helm. And should not this circumstance be a warning to parents and guardians, to young men and children, "to look not upon the wine when it is red," and remember that at last "it will bite like a serpent and sting like an adder?" Should it not also remind those who have guests to entertain, of the sinfulness of putting the cup to their neighbor's lips? Certainly it should. But I must ...
— Twenty-Two Years a Slave, and Forty Years a Freeman • Austin Steward
... sheet of brown paper pinned to a tree, and on it was drawn a clock-face, the hands pointing to four. A small 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 ...
— Eight Cousins • Louisa M. Alcott
... have existed." All these sayings are gathered from Nationalist papers, which would supply thousands of similar character, and up to the time of O'Brien's interference, none of an opposite sort. But, as Serjeant Buzfuz would have said, the serpent was on the trail, the viper was on the hearthstone, the sapper and miner was at work. Thanks to the patriot's influence, the Paradise was soon to ...
— Ireland as It Is - And as It Would be Under Home Rule • Robert John Buckley (AKA R.J.B.)
... into the same two classes as our Psalmist does—the one secret; the other palpable and open. The former, which, as I explained in my last sermon, are sins hidden, not from others, but from the doer, may fairly be likened to the pestilence that stalks slaying in the dark, or to the stealthy, gliding serpent, which strikes and poisons before the naked foot is aware. The other resembles the 'destruction that wasteth at noonday,' or the lion with its roar and its spring, as, disclosed from its covert, it leaps ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... of putting the fear of God into the Spaniards, both at sea and ashore. The mention of their names made Philip's flesh creep. Even Admiral Santa Cruz, in common with his compatriots, thought Drake was "The Serpent"—"The Devil." And the Spanish opinion of him helped Drake to win many a tough battle. Amongst the thrilling examples are his dashes into Corunna and Cadiz. Drake never took the risk before calculating the cost and making certain of where the vulnerable weak spot of the enemy lay, ...
— Drake, Nelson and Napoleon • Walter Runciman
... become a dragon, and your wife becoming a beast, shall receive in exchange the form of a serpent, Harmonia, the daughter of Mars, whom you had, being a mortal. And as the oracle of Jove says, you shall drive with your wife a chariot of heifers, ruling over barbarians; and with an innumerable army you ...
— The Tragedies of Euripides, Volume I. • Euripides
... manner in both hemispheres the worship of the sun-disk or circle, and of the serpent, was universal, and more surprising still is the similarity of the word signifying "God" in the principal languages of east and west. Compare the Sanscrit "Dyaus" or "Dyaus-pitar," the Greek "Theos" and Zeus, the Latin "Deus" and "Jupiter," the Keltic "Dia" and "Ta," pronounced ...
— The Story of Atlantis and the Lost Lemuria • W. Scott-Elliot
... obtained their liberty; and soon after the rising and devouring flames began to enwrap the entire building, a splendid and emblematic sight was presented to the wondering and upgazing throngs. Bursting through the central casement, with flap of wings and lashing coils, appeared an eagle and a serpent wreathed in fight. For a moment they hung poised in mid-air, presenting a novel and terrible conflict. It was the earth and air (or their respective representatives) at war for mastery; the base and the lofty, the groveller and ...
— A Unique Story of a Marvellous Career. Life of Hon. Phineas T. • Joel Benton
... vest, And there, like slumbering serpent's crest, The jeweled haft of poniard bright Glittered a moment on the sight. "Ha! start ye back? Fool! coward! knave! Think ye my noble father's glaive Would drink the life-blood of a slave? The pearls that on the handle flame Would blush ...
— Poems Teachers Ask For, Book Two • Various
... technical terms. And each performer was allowed a fair share of the feats accomplished: the combatants took turns in executing the strangest exploits. Alternately they were beaten down on one knee, even lower still, till they crawled serpent-wise about the boards; they leaped into the air to avoid chopping blows at their lower members; they suddenly span round on their heels, recovering themselves in time to guard a serious blow, aimed with too much deliberation at some vital portion of their frames; occasionally ...
— A Book of the Play - Studies and Illustrations of Histrionic Story, Life, and Character • Dutton Cook
... way," said he, "in which I can speak to you without receiving wounds that sting like the fangs of a serpent? Be patient with me. If I offend, try to be a little forbearing just now, for the sake of yourself, if for nothing else. See, I am humbling myself. I ask your forbearance. I wish to speak for your own good. For, as it is, you are doing you know ...
— The Living Link • James De Mille
... edge of the lily patch, Reuben dived again and again, groping desperately among the long, serpent-like stems. The Perdu at this point—and even in his horror he noted it with surprise—was comparatively shallow. He easily got the bottom and searched it minutely. The edge of the dark abyss, into which he strove in vain to penetrate, was many feet distant from the spot where the ...
— Earth's Enigmas - A Volume of Stories • Charles G. D. Roberts
... Braccio Ugolino, attore di detta persona d' Orfeo.' In place of this ode the revised text contains a long 'Coro delle Driadi,' with two speeches in terza rima by the choragus, announcing and lamenting the death of Euridice, who as she fled from Aristeo has been stung in the foot by a serpent. After this the news of her death is reported to Orfeo—by a shepherd in the original, by a dryad in the revised version. That the substitution of the chorus for the Sapphic ode is an improvement from the poetic point of view will hardly ...
— Pastoral Poetry and Pastoral Drama - A Literary Inquiry, with Special Reference to the Pre-Restoration - Stage in England • Walter W. Greg
... Bridget grumpily, and then she told me in a confidential whisper that she was a much-injured woman in regard to "that ungrateful step-daughter," who was making her understand the words of Scripture about the pang that was sharper than a serpent's tooth. ...
— The Woman Thou Gavest Me - Being the Story of Mary O'Neill • Hall Caine
... Mr. Davis, fixing her with a glittering eye. "Do you remember the serpent I 'ad tattooed on ...
— Ship's Company, The Entire Collection • W.W. Jacobs
... of an hour to execute this movement, during which the double file of tapers resembled two long parallel streams of flame. That which ever excited one's admiration was the ceaseless march of this serpent of fire, whose golden coils crept so gently over the black earth, winding, stretching into the far distance, without the immense body ever seeming to end. There must have been some jostling and scrambling every now and then, for some of ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... spoke with a capital S in her mind; but was not quite sure whether what Mrs. Scherman meant might be a line of Atlantic steamers or the sea-serpent. ...
— Real Folks • Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney
... and silk new-wed Henry cover; Wealthy his bride, brought from land o' Rhine But serpent stings tease the perjured lover, Bid slumbers sweet ...
— The Son of His Mother • Clara Viebig
... language (which is twin, the literal and the vulgar) difficult, but not invincible (at least I hope not). I shall go on. I found it necessary to twist my mind round some severer study, and this, as being the hardest I could devise here, will be a file for the serpent. ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. III - With His Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore
... picture still moved on: now he was quite alone, the whole hearth-stone was his; he sat there very old and very grey, cold and hunger-bitten; a little while, and a pauper's funeral passed from that hearth into the street—it was his own—and what of his soul? He started as if bitten by a serpent, and hurried on. ...
— Frank Oldfield - Lost and Found • T.P. Wilson
... aggravation, my anger could never be hot enough; the gall of my ink was milk to that of my heart. The bitterness of my feelings was tormenting; words that could burn, contempt that could kill, shame that could annihilate, these and nothing less could satisfy me. Could the serpent revenge fly, how would it dart and sting! Happily for man it can only crawl. That I had been treated with great injustice was true: but of justice my notions were very inadequate; of revenge I had more than enough ...
— The Adventures of Hugh Trevor • Thomas Holcroft
... the gods, plague may take hold of a district and literally take its tithe of the population. At any moment, life is liable to be terminated with appalling suddenness by cholera or the bite of a venomous serpent. ...
— New Ideas in India During the Nineteenth Century - A Study of Social, Political, and Religious Developments • John Morrison
... [These are found in great plenty at Ancona and other parts of the Adriatic, where they go by the name of Bollani, as we are informed by Keysler.] Among the fish of this country, there is a very ugly animal of the eel species, which might pass for a serpent: it is of a dusky, black colour, marked with spots of yellow, about eighteen inches, or two feet long. The Italians call it murena; but whether it is the fish which had the same name among the antient Romans, ...
— Travels Through France and Italy • Tobias Smollett
... leaf; shrinking as if a serpent were in his path; with a face which changed from white to red, from red to white, the stranger met these questions. But Rust's eye never left his face. There was no trace of anger nor emotion, in his marble features. He merely said: 'I ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, May 1844 - Volume 23, Number 5 • Various
... This uncleanness of death repelled him too much. One should die quickly, like the Romans, one should be master of one's fate in dying as in living. He was convulsed in the clasp of this death of his father's, as in the coils of the great serpent of Laocoon. The great serpent had got the father, and the son was dragged into the embrace of horrifying death along with him. He resisted always. And in some strange way, he was a tower of ...
— Women in Love • D. H. Lawrence
... In the churchyard is a remarkable lantern-cross—not Celtic but mediaeval; it is described by Blight as "the most elaborate of the kind in Cornwall. What is intended to be represented by this carving is not very evident; an angel seated on a block in a corner holds a serpent turning round a pillar, and with its head touching the face of a king. By the king's side is the figure of a queen kneeling before a lectern." There is also in the graveyard a curious monument, the stern of a boat, bearing the record of ten seamen who drifted ashore in ...
— The Cornwall Coast • Arthur L. Salmon
... shop-door. If it be a shop-door, there will be carved above it either a negro's head with the mouth wide open or the smirking face of a Turk. Sometimes the sign is an elephant, a goose, a horse's head, a bull, a serpent, a half-moon, a windmill, and sometimes an outstretched arm holding some article that is for sale in the shop. If it be a house-door—in which case it is always kept closed—it bears a brass plate on which is written the name of the tenant, another plate ...
— Holland, v. 1 (of 2) • Edmondo de Amicis
... from the size and appearance of the leaves of their seedlings, the probable nature of the fruit; for, as Van Mons remarks,[828] variations in the leaves are generally accompanied by some modification in the flower, and consequently in the fruit. In the Serpent melon, which has a narrow tortuous fruit above a yard in length, the stem of the plant, the peduncle of the female flower, and the middle lobe of the leaf, are all elongated in a remarkable manner. On the other ...
— The Variation of Animals and Plants Under Domestication, Volume II (of 2) • Charles Darwin
... to him, is Ndengei, or Degei, 'who seems to be an impersonation of the abstract idea of eternal existence.' This idea is not easily developed out of the conception of a human soul which has died into a ghost and may die again. His myth represents him as a serpent, emblem of eternity, or a body of stone with a serpent's head. His one manifestation is given by eating. So neglected is he that a song exists about his lack of worshippers and gifts. 'We made men,' says Ndengei, ...
— The Making of Religion • Andrew Lang
... animals with which these deities were identified came to be regarded individually and collectively as concrete expressions of the Water-god's powers. Thus the cow and the gazelle, the falcon and the eagle, the lion and the serpent, the fish and the crocodile became symbols of the life-giving and the life-destroying powers of water, and composite monsters or dragons were invented by combining parts of these various creatures to express ...
— The Evolution of the Dragon • G. Elliot Smith
... lack of reminders of old times. The cathedral, which was begun before the Christian era could express its age with four figures, has two fine portals, with quaint carving, and bronze doors of very old work, whereon the story of Eve and the serpent is literally given,—a representation of great theological, if of small artistic value. And there is the old clock and watch tower, which for eight hundred years has enabled the Augsburgers to keep the time of day and to look out over the ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... Serpent! Toad! Nasty degraded painted Jezebel! Forgive her! No,—never; not though she were on her knees! She was contemptible before, but doubly contemptible in that she could humble herself to make an apology so false, so feeble, and so fawning. It was thus that she regarded her correspondent's ...
— Is He Popenjoy? • Anthony Trollope
... from a deep sleep, with a sense of sweet visions and experiences—he looked round. Mrs. Graves sate beside him smiling, but the horror suddenly darted back into his mind with a spasm of fear, as if he had been bitten by a poisonous serpent. ...
— Watersprings • Arthur Christopher Benson
... he sharpened. And the arrow-points he poisoned. In the black blood of the serpent, In the blood of hissing adders. Thus he made his arrows ready, And his bow was fit for ...
— Kalevala, Volume I (of 2) - The Land of the Heroes • Anonymous
... and rolled into the wallow once more. It had taken a direct hit, just beneath the right ear, and even as Mike watched, its trunk writhed feebly like a dying serpent, then fell forward into the mud. The gigantic ears twitched, then flickered and flopped, and the huge body rolled ...
— This Crowded Earth • Robert Bloch
... entreated them to spare it, and to give it to him instead which they willingly did, and he went on his way, followed by the dog. A little further on he came upon a cat, which someone was going to put to death. He implored its life, and the cat followed him. Finally, in another place, he saved a serpent, which was also handed over to him and now they made a party of four—the dog behind Jenik, the cat behind the dog, and the serpent ...
— The Green Fairy Book • Various
... they be pressed to expound the place, by and by it is drawn into an allegory. For they take not the creation of man at the first to be historical (according to the letter), but mere allegorical: alleging that Adam signifieth the earthly man ... the Serpent to be within man; applying still the allegory, they destroy ...
— The Digger Movement in the Days of the Commonwealth • Lewis H. Berens
... flecked marble, with panels of Sienna and Griote. Between the panels are rich carvings, done in Antwerp, representing the temptation and fall in Eden; Abraham's offering of his son Isaac; Moses raising the brazen serpent in the wilderness; the annunciation to the Virgin; the birth scene in the stable; the Crucifixion and the Resurrection. The slab of the altar is inlaid with five crosslets, representing the five wounds, and ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 488, May 9, 1885 • Various
... his other adored mistress—the Republic. He would have liked to be in action already, with his gun on his shoulder. But the insurgents moved slowly. They had orders to make as little noise as possible. Thus the column advanced between the rows of elms like some gigantic serpent whose every ring had a strange quivering. The frosty December night had again sunk into silence, and the Viorne alone seemed to ...
— The Fortune of the Rougons • Emile Zola
... a sea-serpent," he said. "It bit a hole in my ulster, for which I am not grateful." Then in a lower tone to Shirley: "That was certainly a strange proceeding. I am sorry you were startled; and I am under greatest obligations ...
— The Port of Missing Men • Meredith Nicholson
... summer was woefully disappointed. Even had she formed no previous plan of remaining there, it is improbable that Hilda would have gathered energy to stir from Rome. A torpor, heretofore unknown to her vivacious though quiet temperament, had possessed itself of the poor girl, like a half-dead serpent knotting its cold, inextricable wreaths about her limbs. It was that peculiar despair, that chill and heavy misery, which only the innocent can experience, although it possesses many of the gloomy characteristics ...
— The Marble Faun, Volume II. - The Romance of Monte Beni • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... games are said to have been established in honor of the victory that Apollo gained at Delphi over the serpent Py'thon, on setting out to erect his temple. This monster, said to have sprung from the stagnant waters of the deluge of Deucalion, may have been none other than the malaria which laid waste the surrounding country, ...
— Mosaics of Grecian History • Marcius Willson and Robert Pierpont Willson
... felt. But the pope sent him the rarest of his gifts—"the dove of pearls." Sobieski, in spite of the ingratitude of Leopold, pursued his victories over the Turks; and, like Charles Martel, ten centuries before, freed Europe from the danger of a Mohammedan yoke. But he saved a serpent, when about to be crushed, which turned and stung him for his kindness. The dismemberment of his country soon ...
— A Modern History, From the Time of Luther to the Fall of Napoleon - For the Use of Schools and Colleges • John Lord
... "Nor a serpent without some sort of Eden built around it. The thing's mate will be along after it pretty soon. Look out for it down there. The best place to catch it is right behind its ears," came the ...
— A Master's Degree • Margaret Hill McCarter
... grains. The girdle, finally, was a golden ribbon ornamented With thirty-nine rose-colored stones. The scepter of his Majesty the Emperor had been made by M. Odiot; it was of silver, entwined with a golden serpent, and surmounted by a globe on which Charlemagne was seated. The hand of Justice and the crown, as well as the sword, were of most exquisite workmanship, but it would take too long to describe them; they were from the establishment ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... "What devil brings that serpent here?" he muttered to himself. "I must intercept her. She must not go on board the train. She must not approach my little wood violet. Good ...
— For Woman's Love • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth
... where profound silence reigned. Clear was the night and starry. As the Prophet turned to close the door he perceived the busy crab, and the thought of his beloved grandmother, sinking now to rest on the second floor all unconscious of the propinquity of the scorpion, the contiguity of the serpent, filled his expressive eyes with tears. He shut the door, stood in the hall and listened. He heard a chair crack, the ticking of a clock. There was no other sound, and he felt certain that Mr. Ferdinand and Gustavus had heeded his anxious medical directions and gone ...
— The Prophet of Berkeley Square • Robert Hichens
... seized a twig or stalk with its teeth, and it would then remain resting for a few moments till the twig gave away, when it would roll over many times on the ground, loudly yelping, but still dragged onwards. Presently I saw in the direction we were going a huge serpent, thick as a man's thigh, its head lifted high above the grass, and motionless as a serpent of stone. Its cavernous, blood-red mouth was gaping wide, and its eyes were fixed on the struggling fox. When about twenty yards from the serpent the fox began moving very rapidly over the ground, its struggles ...
— The Purple Land • W. H. Hudson
... fascination upon her. He rolled his eyes at her with a violence approaching to agony; he bowed; he displayed in every possible and captivating attitude his one living leg—but his surpassing strength was in the adulation of his serpent tongue—and she bore it all so stoically; she would smile upon him when he made a good hit, as upon an actor on the boards—she would, at times, even condescend to improve some of his compliments upon herself; ...
— Rattlin the Reefer • Edward Howard
... first chapters of Genesis, like the Parables of our Lord, were not intended to be understood literally; the very names therein show this clearly. A tree of life, a tree of knowledge of good and evil, a talking serpent, how can any man for a moment suppose these to be natural trees and a natural snake? Do serpents ever talk? the garden eastward in Eden, and an Ark which would not hold the hides and teeth of all the animals on earth—were these ...
— Personal Experience of a Physician • John Ellis
... even in weak hands, would give a loud report and a bright flash that might be heard and seen at a great distance. Taking these things into consideration, he thrust back the knife which he had half unsheathed, and, retreating with the slow, gliding motion of a serpent, got beyond the chance of being detected, just as Bumpus rose to follow Poopy to ...
— Gascoyne, The Sandal Wood Trader - A Tale of the Pacific • R. M. Ballantyne
... showed that she stood on the brink of a newly-dug grave. She started back at the appalling sight—and was upheld from falling by her attendants, on whose faces she saw a malignant grin; while the tones of Dom Lupo's voice seemed to hiss in her ears, like the serpent triumph ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. XVII. No. 473., Saturday, January 29, 1831 • Various
... ring of truth was in his voice. But the Rector felt that he was listening to the excuses of a serpent. ...
— The Incomplete Amorist • E. Nesbit
... with big serpents, and skeletons dancing together. All about these pictures were blooming vines and foliage such as never grew in this world, and coiled among the branches of the vines there was always the scaly body of a serpent, and behind every flower there was a serpent's head. It was a veritable Dance of Death by one who had felt its sting. In the wood box lay some boards, and every inch of them was cut up in the same manner. Sometimes the work was very rude and careless, and looked as though the hand of the workman ...
— A Collection of Stories, Reviews and Essays • Willa Cather
... frozen look on the wretch's face now, and he kept his eyes on those two figures as if he had no power to turn them away, as if, like a serpent, they fascinated him. Then of a sudden he gave vent to a loud scream and dashed from the hall, upsetting his comrades ...
— With Joffre at Verdun - A Story of the Western Front • F. S. Brereton
... moment she is surprised, and fails to understand. Then she forgets the change of place in new sensations of terror. For across the park something is coming, she knows not what; it will pass her by. She watches a brown and yellow serpent, cubits high. Cubits high. It rears aloft its tawny hide, scenting its prey. The great coiling body, the small head, small as a man's hand, the black beadlike eyes shine out upon the intoxicating ...
— A Mere Accident • George Moore
... the Pacific, on which the Rover floated almost motionless. That beautiful and mysterious phosphorescence which sometimes illumines the sea was gleaming in vivid flashes in the vessel's wake, and a glowing trail of it appeared to follow the rudder like a serpent of lambent fire. ...
— Lost in the Forest - Wandering Will's Adventures in South America • R.M. Ballantyne
... by, And the first thing he worships is Terror. Anon, Still impell'd by necessity hungrily on, He conquers the realms of his own self-reliance, And the last cry of fear wakes the first of defiance. From the serpent he crushes its poisonous soul; Smitten down in his path see the dead lion roll! On toward Heaven the son of Alcmena strides high on The heads of the Hydra, the spoils of the lion: And man, conquering terror, is ...
— Lucile • Owen Meredith
... of miscarried glory and waited to see what it would do. This was all done with comparatively little danger. Fraught with all the more danger for us was the thing which was considered the simplest and lowest product of the art of pyrotechnics, and was so rated by us, viz., the serpent. Very often the serpents I made would not burn properly, because I had not used the right mixture, no doubt, and that always vexed me greatly. When a Catherine-wheel refused to turn, that could at least be tolerated, for a Catherine-wheel is a comparatively difficult ...
— The German Classics Of The Nineteenth And Twentieth Centuries, Volume 12 • Various
... There lay the dreaded serpent, coiled in a ring round the wall. Ragnar, nothing daunted, struck it boldly with his spear, and before it could move in defence struck it a second blow, pressing the spear until it pierced through the monster's body. So fiercely did ...
— Historical Tales, Vol. 9 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality. Scandinavian. • Charles Morris
... counteract the influence of devils on the spinal marrow of human beings. In his treatise on this subject, he remarked that there was high authority for the opinion that the spinal marrow, when decomposed, became a serpent. Whether this opinion were or were not correct, he thought it unnecessary to decide. Perhaps, he said, the eminent men in whose works it was found had meant only to express figuratively the great truth, that the Old Serpent ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 3 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... of danger, were playing and splashing the water with their paddles, until the canoe floating with the current, drifted near the shore. Five stout Indians lay there concealed, one of whom, noiseless and stealthy as the serpent, crawled down the bank until he reached the rope that hung from the bow, turned its course up the stream, and in a direction to be hidden from the view of the fort. The loud shrieks of the captured girls were heard, but too late ...
— Daniel Boone - The Pioneer of Kentucky • John S. C. Abbott
... saw white spirits and black spirits contending in the skies. While he thus so largely lived in a religious or mystical world and was immersed, he was not a professional Baptist preacher. On May 12, 1828, he was left no longer in doubt. A great voice said unto him that the Serpent was loosed, that Christ had laid down the yoke, that he, Nat, was to take it up again, and that the time was fast approaching when the first should be last and the last should be first. An eclipse of the sun in February, 1831, was interpreted as the sign for ...
— A Social History of the American Negro • Benjamin Brawley
... giant oaks lay shattered and broken, the sight had caused her deep grief, until she wove a legend about them and turned them into monsters for Perseus to subdue with Medusa's head. One, indeed, whose trunk was gnarled and twisted, became the serpent of the brazen scales who sleepeth not, ...
— Halcyone • Elinor Glyn
... this feat by adopting a stratagem which invariably deceives those who are ignorant of their habits and tactics. When suddenly pursued the Banattee sinks into the grass, and, serpent-like, creeps along with wonderful rapidity, not from but towards his enemy, taking care, however, to avoid him, so that when the pursuer reaches the spot where the pursued is supposed to be hiding, he hears him shout a yell of defiance far ...
— The Dog Crusoe and His Master - A Story of Adventure in the Western Prairies • Robert Michael Ballantyne
... nyamee (eat) all de fruit ob de garden, but (be out, except) de tree of knowledge. And he said to Adam, "Adam! you no muss nyamee dis fruit, else you dead." De serpent come to say to Mammy Eve, "Dis fruit berry good; he make you too wise." Mammy she take lillee (little) bit, and bring de oder harf gib Daddy Adam. Daddee no will taste it fuss time, but Mammy tell him it be berry good. Den him ...
— To The Gold Coast for Gold, Vol. II - A Personal Narrative • Richard Francis Burton and Verney Lovett Cameron
... and tried with all our strength to push our heads through her feathers. She gave us some smart taps with her claw, and ordered us back to the interior of the nest; and when she at length told us in a frightened whisper that papa was fighting with a ferocious serpent, we huddled together as close as we could in the very bottom of our hole. We knew that serpents murdered young parrots and ate them, for only the day before we had heard a neighbor telling mamma that one of these monsters had eaten six little ...
— Harper's Young People, November 11, 1879 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... distance and drawing it slowly back again. He had approached along a small trail, but before he could reach the goat it was necessary to cross an open space a few yards in width, and to do this the animal flattened himself like a huge striped serpent. His head was extended so that the throat and chin were touching the ground, and there was absolutely no motion of the body other than the hips and shoulders as the beast slid along at an amazingly rapid rate. But at the instant the cat gained the ...
— Camps and Trails in China - A Narrative of Exploration, Adventure, and Sport in Little-Known China • Roy Chapman Andrews and Yvette Borup Andrews
... religious observances of the Ancients, whether expressed in the legends of the sun-myths or of star and serpent worship, we find the universally recognized fact that only those qualities of mind and soul can be expected to endure, or reach immortal godhood, which are of an exalted character. Which is to say what the present day orthodox ...
— Sex=The Unknown Quantity - The Spiritual Function of Sex • Ali Nomad
... remember that a French critic spoke of her as cette pauvre Melusine. I ought to have been ashamed, perhaps, but I had, not the slightest idea who Melusina was until I hunted up the story, and found that she was a fairy, who for some offence was changed every Saturday to a serpent from her waist downward. I was of course familiar with Keats's Lamia, another imaginary being, the subject of magical transformation into a serpent. My story was well advanced before Hawthorne's wonderful ...
— Elsie Venner • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... they twain addressed their dear son, supplicating him much; nor did they persuade the mind of Hector; but he awaited huge Achilles, coming near. And as a fierce serpent at its den, fed on evil poisons, awaits[700] a man, but direful rage enters it, and it glares horribly, coiling itself around its den; so Hector, possessing inextinguishable courage, retired not, leaning his ...
— The Iliad of Homer (1873) • Homer
... look upon and desirable to enjoy, for all that met the eye was fair and tempting to behold. But the bracelet suddenly took the form of a snake, and attacked him who was carrying it with its poisoned tooth; the horn lengthened out into a serpent, and took the life of the man who bore it; the tusk wrought itself into a sword, and plunged into ...
— The Danish History, Books I-IX • Saxo Grammaticus ("Saxo the Learned")
... claim no relief from suffering save death, though in the case of a human being 'twould suffice to temper vengeance with mercy, as thou saidst. Wherefore I, albeit no eagle, witting thee to be no dove, but a venomous serpent, mankind's most ancient enemy, am minded, bating no jot of malice or of might, to harry thee to the bitter end: natheless this which I do is not properly to be called vengeance but rather just retribution; seeing that vengeance should be in excess ...
— The Decameron, Vol. II. • Giovanni Boccaccio
... attractive for every one to read. A free entertainment—whoever likes to come! ... No refusal! I'm making the dust fly in Moscow ... to my glory! ... Eh? will you come? Ah, I've one girl there ... a serpent! Black as your boot, spiteful as a dog, and eyes ... like living coals! One can never tell what she's going to do—kiss or bite! ... Will you come, uncle? ... Well, ...
— A Desperate Character and Other Stories • Ivan Turgenev
... viper; I have often heard talk of brilliantly colored serpents; and I suppose there are such,—as there are gay poisons, like the foxglove and kalmia—types of deceit; but all the venomous serpents I have really seen are grey, brick-red, or brown, variously mottled; and the most awful serpent I have seen, the Egyptian asp, is precisely of the color of gravel, or only a little greyer. So, again, the crocodile and alligator are grey, but the innocent lizard green and beautiful. I do not mean that the rule is invariable, otherwise it would be more ...
— Modern Painters, Volume IV (of V) • John Ruskin
... real or imagined incident—and polish their work, and come to conclusions, and satisfy the reader. This poet celebrates natural propensities in himself; and that is the way he celebrates all. He comes to no conclusions, and does not satisfy the reader. He certainly leaves him what the serpent left the woman and the man, the taste of the Paradise tree of the knowledge of good and evil, ...
— Walt Whitman Yesterday and Today • Henry Eduard Legler
... future. Josephine and Rose were working: not fancy-work but needle-work; Dr. Aubertin writing. Every now and then he put the one candle nearer the girls. They raised no objection: only a few minutes after a white hand would glide from one or other of them like a serpent, and smoothly convey the light nearer to ...
— White Lies • Charles Reade
... heretofore, and you ought not to blame me in the least for feeling hurt when at this late day you indulge in mysteries. Now kiss me, and forget my ugly temper, and set it all down to that Pandora legacy of sleepless curiosity, which dear mother Eve received in her impudent tete-a-tete with the serpent, and which she spitefully saw fit to bequeath to every daughter who has succeeded her. So—we are at peace once more? Now keep your horrid ...
— Infelice • Augusta Jane Evans Wilson
... mystery: then recalls both arm and leg, and with bump in ambush awaits the next poser. Take the square of three, multiply it by seven, divide it by four, add fifty to it, take thirteen from it, multiply it by two, double it, give me the result in pence, and say how many halfpence. Wise as the serpent is the four feet of performer on the nearest approach to that instrument, whose right arm instantly appears, and quenches this arithmetical fire. Tell me something about Great Britain, tell me something about ...
— The Uncommercial Traveller • Charles Dickens
... now fell on the Earth and as a serpent coils and creeping stretches forth its slimy ...
— Tales of Aztlan • George Hartmann
... Eden was a quite fascinating jungle, in which all the wild animals conversed with intelligence and affability. You don't suppose Eve would have stood there alone, calmly listening while the serpent talked theology, unless conversations with animals had been an every-day occurrence. Think how you'd flee to me, if an old cow in the park suddenly asked you a question. But do let's keep to the point. I've got a new plot, and I ...
— The Upas Tree - A Christmas Story for all the Year • Florence L. Barclay
... call upon Mrs. Eaton. All the other influences that were brought to bear upon the President's singular mind were nothing in comparison with this. Daniel Webster uttered only the truth when he wrote, at the time, to his friend Dutton, that the "Aaron's serpent among the President's desires was a settled purpose of making out the lady, of whom so much has been said, a person of reputation"; and that this ridiculous affair would "probably determine who should be the successor ...
— Famous Americans of Recent Times • James Parton
... the sun was rising. Beneath them again she saw the grass-grown roofs of that earthly hell, the City of the People of the Mist, and the endless plain beyond through which the river wandered like a silver serpent. There also was the further portion of the huge wall of the temple built by unknown hands in forgotten years, and rising above the edge of that gap in the cliff through which she was looking, appeared a black mass which she knew to be the head and shoulders of the hideous colossus, ...
— The People Of The Mist • H. Rider Haggard
... far from the Izaak Bridge, the equestrian statue of Peter the Great stands out in bold relief on a pedestal of granite; the mighty Czar, casting an eagle look over the waters of the Neva, while his noble steed rears over the yawning precipice in front, crushing a serpent beneath his hoof. The spirit of Peter the Great still lives throughout Russia; but it is better understood in the merciless blasts of winter than in the soft glow of the ...
— The Land of Thor • J. Ross Browne
... and forthwith the river was turned to blood. The second angel crying likewise, at thy bidding, O Lord, emptied his vial; and when the third angel had emptied his, three animals of the shape of frogs crawled out of the river; and then from over the mountains came a great serpent to devour the frog-shapen beasts, and after devouring them he vomited forth a great flood, and the woman that had been seated on it was borne away. It was Thaddeus that spoke the last words, and he would have continued ...
— The Brook Kerith - A Syrian story • George Moore
... it was taking the bread out of poor people's mouths. And there was no hoping for a better state of affairs. Things would only go from bad to worse,—she knew that from many tokens. At Nanterre a woman had had a baby born with a serpent's head; the lightning had struck the church at Rueil and melted the cross on the steeple; a were-wolf had been seen in the woods of Chaville. Masked men were poisoning the springs and throwing plague powders in ...
— The Gods are Athirst • Anatole France
... "The Art of Living," for unquestionably "life demands art,"—an aphorism, by the way, not, as most people think, of Pope but of Wordsworth. (Wordsworth, remember, had a great deal of the Eighteenth Century in him.) That chapter, however, would easily become a book or a serpent, as says the ...
— The Adventure of Living • John St. Loe Strachey
... serpent ever prove, Yet harmless as the turtle-dove, Still winning souls by guileful love And deep invention— So once the great Apostle strove ...
— Cottage Poems • Patrick Bronte
... holding solemn assembly in the Jain temples and the hall of audience, built by the famous Rajah Purmal at Ajeegur. While exploring his way along the ruined and overgrown ramparts, he had a narrow escape from the fangs of a large venomous serpent, ("the Katula Rekula Poda, No. 7 of Russell,") on which he was on the point of treading, and which, in commendable gratitude for its forbearance; he allowed to glide off unharmed by his fowling-piece; "but he was the first reptile that ever escaped without the ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. 341, March, 1844, Vol. 55 • Various
... take themselves away. Their motions appeared to grow less energetic, their chirping became almost inaudible, and their wings seemed hardly to expand as they flew, or rather fluttered, around the head of the serpent. One of them at length dropped down upon the ground within reach of the snake, and stood with open bill, as if exhausted, and unable to move farther. We were expecting to see the snake suddenly launch forth upon his feathered victim; when all at once his coils ...
— Chambers' Edinburgh Journal - Volume XVII., No 422, New Series, January 31, 1852 • Various
... 'The serpent whispered Lilith's name: ('Twas thus he drove me to my shame) Pluck yonder fruit, he said, and know, How Adam loved HER, long ago. (Fools, fools, ...
— Poems of Experience • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... then are led into a marble alcove, and seated flat upon the floor. The attendant stands behind us, and we now perceive that his hands are encased in dark hair-gloves. He pounces upon an arm, which he rubs until, like a serpent, we slough the worn-out skin, and resume our infantile smoothness and fairness. No man can be called clean until he has bathed in the East. Let him walk directly from his accustomed bath and self-friction with towels, to the Hammam el-Khyateen, ...
— The Lands of the Saracen - Pictures of Palestine, Asia Minor, Sicily, and Spain • Bayard Taylor
... seen. The ground sloped both towards and from it. It was of immense size, and threw out arms that struck into the soil like those of the banyan-tree, and rose again from it. Two of the branches thus inserted themselves twice, which gave to each the appearance of a serpent moving along by gathering itself up in folds. One of the large boughs of this tree had been torn off by the wind before we left Alfoxden, but five remained. In 1841 we could barely find the spot where the ...
— The Prose Works of William Wordsworth • William Wordsworth
... stone wall of the quay trailed its length, winding like a heavy, chill serpent. Behind him, too, could be seen black blurs of some sort, while in front, in the opening between the wall and the side of that coffin, he could see the sea, a silent waste, with the storm-clouds crawling above it. Everything was cold, black, malignant. ...
— Creatures That Once Were Men • Maxim Gorky
... creek, whose sinuous course was distinctly marked by the dense growth that clothed its steep banks. Now and then luxuriant fields of corn covered the level lands with an emerald mantle, while sheep and cattle roamed through the adjacent champaign; and in the calm, cool morning air, a black smoke-serpent crawled above the tree-tops, mapping out the track over which the long train of cars darted and thundered. Mr. Paul Murray, the first proprietor of the estate, and father of the present owner, had early in life spent much time in France, where, espousing the royalist cause, his ...
— St. Elmo • Augusta J. Evans
... The doom of the wanderer is on you, and the blessing. Take it on the word of a fortune-teller." She spread out her hands smiling her wide, gay smile with a touch of irony, of feminine experience, the serpent-bought wisdom of Eve in it. "You know what it means to hear the red gods calling, calling; to know that no matter what binds you, whether white arms or ropes of gold, ...
— The Silver Butterfly • Mrs. Wilson Woodrow
... patriotism for profits. And I know both co-operators and Chartists who were loud-mouthed for social and political reform, who now care no more for it than a Whig government; and decline to attend a public meeting on a fine night, while they would crawl like the serpent in Eden, through a gutter in a storm, after a good security. They have tasted land, and the gravel has got into ...
— Thrift • Samuel Smiles
... still alive. The disease under which Roquefort suffered seemed to have its seat in the marrow, for his bones by degrees lost all solidity and power of resistance, so that his limbs refused to bear his weight, and he went about the streets crawling like a serpent. Both died in such dreadful torture that they regretted having escaped the scaffold, which would have spared them ...
— Massacres Of The South (1551-1815) - Celebrated Crimes • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... old cantors, one of them limping; then the trumpet ("serpent"), and last, the cur with his gold embroidered stole. He smiled and nodded a greeting; then, with his eyes half closed, his lips moving in prayer, his beretta well over his forehead, he followed his surpliced bodyguard, walking in the direction of ...
— Une Vie, A Piece of String and Other Stories • Guy de Maupassant
... the subtile, destructive fluid. The odor of escaping gas which is so unpleasant is really a blessing, in that it informs the householder of his danger. A cock that turns completely around and, after extinguishing the light, permits the escape of the gas, is more dangerous than a poisonous serpent. Yet there may be nothing radically wrong with this fixture, and the use of the screwdriver may make it as good as new. Gas should never be turned low when there is a draught in the room, nor allowed to burn near hanging draperies. Care should always ...
— Practical Suggestions for Mother and Housewife • Marion Mills Miller
... that were explosions of colours, on seductive marines, on landscapes of a rhythmic, haunting beauty—the Italian temperament had become unleashed. Fire, gold, and purple flickered and echoed in Monticelli's canvases. Irony, like an insinuating serpent, began to creep into this paradise of melting hues. The masterful gradations of tone became bewildered. Poison was eating the man's nerves. He discarded the brush, and standing before his canvas he squeezed his tubes ...
— Promenades of an Impressionist • James Huneker
... design, I went about the streets thinking over the delights of that voice, the abominable, pretty body of this demon, and saying a thousand wicked things to myself. Then pierced and drawn by a blow of the devil's fork, who had planted himself already in my head as a serpent in an oak, I was conducted by this sharp prong towards the jail, in spite of my guardian angel, who from time to time pulled me by the arm and defended me against these temptations, but in spite of his holy advice and his assistance I was dragged by a million claws stuck into my heart, ...
— Droll Stories, Complete - Collected From The Abbeys Of Touraine • Honore de Balzac
... am afraid of paradise," cried the duchess, with a merry smile. "I have a horror of the serpent." ...
— Marie Antoinette And Her Son • Louise Muhlbach
... a long silence. Mr. Grimm still sat with his elbows on his knees, staring, staring at the vague white splotch which was Miss Thorne's face and bare neck. One of her white arms hung at her side like a pallid serpent, and her hand was at rest on the seat ...
— Elusive Isabel • Jacques Futrelle
... the serpent, the lying, poisoning little serpent, always concealed in the gardens of dreams. They don't, Ban; people don't live happy ever after. I could believe in fairy-tales up to that point. Just there ugly old Experience holds up her bony finger—she's a horrid hag, Ban, but we'd all be dead ...
— Success - A Novel • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... the room Grace Carden slipped away from Mr. Coventry, and wound her way like a serpent through the crowd, and found Jael Dence at the door. She caught her by the arm, and pinched her. She was all trembling. Jael drew her up the ...
— Put Yourself in His Place • Charles Reade
... structure. The spines in the quills in the tails of woodpeckers, and in the brown creeper, are other cases in point. The nuthatch has no spines on its tail, because it can move in all directions, as well with head down as with head up. I have read of a serpent somewhere that feeds upon eggs. As the serpent has no lips or distendable cheeks, and as its mechanism of deglutition acts very slowly, an egg crushed in the mouth would be mostly spilled. So the eggs are swallowed ...
— The Last Harvest • John Burroughs
... with them he must plough ere nightfall four acres in the field of Ares; and he must sow them with serpents' teeth, of which each tooth springs up into an armed man. Then he must fight with all those warriors; and little will it profit him to conquer them, for the fleece is guarded by a serpent, more huge than any mountain pine; and over his body you must step if you would ...
— The Heroes • Charles Kingsley
... a sea-serpent, scientific men now have little doubt; but many people have not seen it who thought they did. One curious deception of this sort is thus related by ...
— The Youth's Companion - Volume LII, Number 11, Thursday, March 13, 1879 • Various
... course, that I was jealous of my husband. But I was not jealous for him only as a husband, I was even more jealous for him as the simplest, best, most saintly man I had ever known. And the preacher's wife who does not cultivate the wisdom of a serpent and as much harmlessness of the dove as will not interfere with her duty to him in protecting him from such women—whose souls are merely mortal and who are to be found in so many congregations—may have a damaged priest on her hands before she knows it. And there ...
— A Circuit Rider's Wife • Corra Harris
... get into touch with POPE, and time for POPE and retinue to reach the slope of Fiesole. SAV., glancing down across ridge, sees these sleuth-hounds, points them out to LUC. and cries Bewray'd! LUC. By whom? SAV. I know not, but suspect | The hand of that sleek serpent Niccolo | Machiavelli.—SAV. and LUC. rush down c., but find their way barred by the footlights.—LUC. We will not be ta'en Alive. And here availeth us my lore | In what pertains to poison. Yonder herb | [points to a herb growing down r.] Is deadly ...
— Seven Men • Max Beerbohm
... Ivy formed the cup—kissubion—into which life entered, and from which it was drained as wine; so, too, from its wood was made the sacred chest (kiste) in which, in the Dyonisiac mysteries, the same secret was preserved under the form of a serpent, while in the Eleusinian it hid the dread pomegranate which Persephone had tasted. For they were all one and the same, this wine and serpent and pomegranate—the type of life and of knowledge—of human birth, and human intellect—of the world's generation and of eternal ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 3, No. 1 January 1863 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... the form of a serpent, loves Lycius, a young Corinthian. In order to win him she prays to Hermes, who answers her appeal by transforming her into a lovely maiden. Lycius meets her in the wood, is smitten with love for her, and goes ...
— Edward MacDowell • Lawrence Gilman
... authors write, There liv'd a Serpent, the delight, Of an ingenuous child; Proud of his kindness, the brave boy. Fed and caress'd it with ...
— Ballads - Founded On Anecdotes Relating To Animals • William Hayley
... crashing door, a footstep on the stair Blundering like a drunkard's, heavily down; And with his gasping face one tragic mask Of horror,—may God help me to forget Some day the frozen awful eyes of one Who, fearing neither hell nor heaven, has met That ultimate weapon of the gods, the face And serpent-tresses that turn flesh to stone— Stukeley stumbled, groping his way out, Blindly, past me, into the ...
— Collected Poems - Volume Two (of 2) • Alfred Noyes
... reawakened sense of the cruel unfairness of life. Her flesh crept with the touch of her rain-soaked clothing. And in her thoughts temptation stirred like a whispering serpent. ...
— Nobody • Louis Joseph Vance
... know how far wise and clever and patriotic men may occasionally go in the way of giving "your son" a stone for bread, and a serpent for a fish,—may get the nation's money for that which is not bread, and give their own labor for that which satisfies no one; industriously making sawdust into the shapes of bread, and chaff into the appearance of meal, ...
— Spare Hours • John Brown
... always carries with it the venom of a serpent. I have long known your history, though the world generally believed you to be the actual daughter of Mr. and Mrs. Marchmont, who adopted you when you were scarcely ...
— A Woman of the World - Her Counsel to Other People's Sons and Daughters • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... Meanwhile, in cretaceous strata, he unearthed remains of about two hundred birds with teeth, six hundred pterodactyls, or flying dragons, some with a spread of wings of twenty-five feet, and one thousand five hundred mosasaurs of the sea-serpent type, some of them sixty feet or more in length. In a single bed of Jurassic rock, not larger than a good-sized lecture-room, he found the remains of one hundred and sixty individuals of mammals, ...
— A History of Science, Volume 3(of 5) • Henry Smith Williams
... it was, and six feet through, a blunt-ended, untapered serpent that glistened a moist crimson color in the rays of the sun. The trees quaked and rocked as it brushed against them in its deliberate advance. Dead leaves many feet across and too heavy for the combined ...
— The Raid on the Termites • Paul Ernst
... his shoulders and pushes him gently back into his chair. "When you see her you will adore her, and she sent her love to you this morning, and this, too," laying a photograph of Monica before the Squire, who glances at it askance, as though fearful it may be some serpent waiting to sting him for the second time; but, as he looks, his ...
— Rossmoyne • Unknown
... arms I reached the Gothic shore, To work the loathly serpent's death. I slew the reptile of the heath.'" Death Song of ...
— Legends of the Middle Ages - Narrated with Special Reference to Literature and Art • H.A. Guerber
... of my almost forgotten boyhood I remember reading in the Book of all books that the Wise Man, in a fit of blank despair, declared that there were several things under heaven which he could neither gauge nor understand, viz., "The way of a serpent upon a rock, and the way of a man with a maid," and I beg leave to doubt if Solomon, in all his wisdom, could understand the little ways of a camp liar in his frisky glory. Whence he cometh, whither he goeth, and why he was born, are conundrums which might tax the ingenuity of all ...
— Campaign Pictures of the War in South Africa (1899-1900) - Letters from the Front • A. G. Hales
... quieter is the more normal. At any rate where Luther had one vision on an exceptional occasion, Loyola had hundreds and had them daily. Ignatius saw the Trinity as a clavichord with three strings, the miracle of transubstantiation as light in bread, Satan as a glistening serpent covered with bright, mysterious eyes, Jesus as "a big round form shining as gold," and the Trinity again ...
— The Age of the Reformation • Preserved Smith
... and Shibli Bagarag was ware of the power of five slaves upon him; and they seized him familiarly, and placed him in position, and made ready his clothing for the reception of fifty other thwacks with a thong, each several thwack coming down on him with a hiss, as it were a serpent, and with a smack, as it were the mouth of satisfaction; and the people assembled extolled the Chief Vizier, saying, 'Well and valiantly done, O stay of the State! and such-like to ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... visionary? the unicorn, the kraken, the sea-serpent, are all, perhaps, zoological facts. The unicorn, for instance, so far from being a lie, is rather too true; for, simply as a monokeras, he is found in the Himalaya, in Africa, and elsewhere, rather too often for ...
— Miscellaneous Essays • Thomas de Quincey
... Joseph and his coat of many colours, and David, and Daniel in the lions' den. You had to go straight through the Bible now, skipping Leviticus because it was full of things you couldn't understand. When you had done with Moses lifting up the serpent in the wilderness you had to read about Aaron and the sons of Levi, and the wave-offerings, and the tabernacle, and the ark of the covenant where they kept the five golden emerods. Mamma didn't know what emerods were, but Mark said they were ...
— Mary Olivier: A Life • May Sinclair
... worked on it long and lovingly. Now as the Galician gently rubbed and polished and turned the ring this way and that, the light revealed crude tiny figures, a man and a woman under a tree. And was that a vine or a serpent? They studied ...
— His Family • Ernest Poole
... showed plainly that the friends of the original bill had been driven from their high ground. It was like applying for the position of a major-general, and then accepting the place of a corporal. It was as though they had asked for a fish, and accepted a serpent instead. It seriously lamed the cause of emancipation. It filled the slaves with gloom, and their friends with apprehension. On the other hand, those who profited by barter in flesh and blood laughed secretly to themselves at the abortive attempt of the anti-slavery friends to call a halt on ...
— History of the Negro Race in America From 1619 to 1880. Vol 1 - Negroes as Slaves, as Soldiers, and as Citizens • George W. Williams
... unto years of sense enough, to sin after the similitude of the transgression committed by Adam. Nevertheless the Transgression of Adam, who had all mankind Foederally, yea, Naturally, in him, has involved this Infant in the guilt of it. And the poison of the old serpent, which infected Adam when he fell into his Transgression, by hearkening to the Tempter, has corrupted all mankind, and is a seed unto such diseases as this Infant is now laboring under. Lord, what are we, and what are our children, but ...
— Medical Essays • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... rather nearer to the middle angle of the W. This, however, is not a bright star; and cannot possibly be mistaken for the expected visitant. (The place of Tycho's star is indicated in my School Star-Atlas and also in my larger Library Atlas. The same remark applies to both the new stars in the Serpent-Bearer, presently to be described.) ...
— Myths and Marvels of Astronomy • Richard A. Proctor
... late, for the captain's piece was already at his shoulder, and as he drew trigger the charge struck the serpent about a third of its length from the head, making it heave up out of the water, while a convulsion ran through it, and then it lay motionless ...
— Mother Carey's Chicken - Her Voyage to the Unknown Isle • George Manville Fenn
... certain Brahman, artfully seizing upon the moment when his mind was foolish with the fumes of conquest, informed him there was but one obstacle to his acquisition of eternal power. 'What is that?' said King Anang Pal.—'It is,' said the Brahman, 'the serpent Sechnaga, who lies under the earth and stops it, and who at the same time has charge of Change and Revolution.—'Well, and what then?' said King Anang Pal.—'If the serpent were dead there would be no change,' said the ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, April, 1876. • Various
... fatal balls of murdering basilisks:] It was anciently supposed that this serpent could destroy the object of its vengeance ...
— King Henry the Fifth - Arranged for Representation at the Princess's Theatre • William Shakespeare
... still uppermost, and though he twined and twisted like a serpent, I held on while my head seemed almost bursting. The thought of Jacob wrestling through the night sustained me, and now at last 'Brownie's' clutch upon ...
— Border Ghost Stories • Howard Pease
... reputation, had served to win her affection; and; not knowing his embarrassments, she had encouraged a worldly hope that if Evelyn should reject his hand it might be offered to her. Under this impression she had trifled, she had coquetted, she had played with the serpent till it had coiled around her; and she could not escape its fascination and its folds. She was sincere,—she could have resigned much for Lord Vargrave; but his picture startled and appalled her. For difficulties in a palace she might be prepared; perhaps even for some privations ...
— Alice, or The Mysteries, Book III • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... distinguished by squirrel tails fastened to their caps. They were reputed to be the best marksmen in the service, and were generally allowed, in action, to take their own positions and fire at will. Crawling through thick woods, or trailing serpent-like through the tangled grass, these mountaineers were for a time the terror of the Confederates; but when their mode of fighting had been understood, their adversaries improved upon it to such a degree that at the date ...
— Campaigns of a Non-Combatant, - and His Romaunt Abroad During the War • George Alfred Townsend
... perfidious Missing Link; the ungrateful Missing Link that I warmed in this bosom, and that has turned and stung the hand that fed him. But now I know all, the villain is unmasked, and if the slimy trail of the serpent enters the abode of peace again, by Heaven! I'll beat the ...
— The Missing Link • Edward Dyson
... sea-serpent," said March, drying his hands on the towel, while he glanced up and down the list. "But we sha'n't have any trouble. I've no doubt there are half a dozen things there that will do. You haven't gone up-town? Because we must be near the 'Every ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... fibre of her nature, and with a passion far stronger than could be felt for him by the golden-haired doll with the shallow eyes. For Giles she would have lost the world, but she would not have him lose his for her. And, after all, she had no right to creep like a serpent into the Eden of silly, prattling Daisy. In her own puny way the child—for she was little else—adored Giles, and as he was her affianced lover it would be base to come between her and her god. But Anne knew in her heart ...
— A Coin of Edward VII - A Detective Story • Fergus Hume
... is. We have found that in all the principal moral judgments, Europe has become unanimous, including likewise the countries where European influence prevails in Europe people evidently KNOW what Socrates thought he did not know, and what the famous serpent of old once promised to teach—they "know" today what is good and evil. It must then sound hard and be distasteful to the ear, when we always insist that that which here thinks it knows, that which here glorifies itself with praise and blame, and calls itself good, is the instinct of ...
— Beyond Good and Evil • Friedrich Nietzsche
... Margaret laughed her strange laugh and said, "Yes, my own hair, you discoverer of open secrets!" And putting up her hands she unbound the fillet, and it fell, a slender coil of black amongst the golden flood of her head, like a serpent gliding down the sunglade on ...
— Martin Pippin in the Apple Orchard • Eleanor Farjeon |
