"Asp" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... may also be short for Crispin, the etymology being the same in any case. Apps is sometimes for asp, the tree now called by the adjectival name aspen (cf. linden). We find Thomas atte apse in the reign ...
— The Romance of Names • Ernest Weekley
... call asp-wood, ma'am, which is a kind of sallow; they lay up great quantities of it in the autumn as a provision for winter, when they are frozen up for ...
— The Settlers in Canada • Frederick Marryat
... the thoughtless one to step aside and pluck; but though they are beautiful to the eye, and their fragrance borne to us by the breeze, seems to woo us temptingly, yet, concealed within their leaves is a deadly scorpion or poisonous asp, whose sting is instant death, or some, perhaps, contain a more slow and sluggish poison, that creeps into the mind, and instilling its venom by slow degrees, corrupts the whole. Conscience has well been called the tell tale of ...
— Withered Leaves from Memory's Garland • Abigail Stanley Hanna
... The name Cleopatra was a very favorite one among the Lagides, and of the queens who bore it she who has become famous through Shakespeare (and more lately through Makart) was the seventh, the sister and wife of Ptolemy XIV. Her tragical death from the bite of a viper or asp did not occur until 134 years later than the date of my narrative, which I ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... few others, I have not noted. Another remarkable fact is the disposition to invert the order of some consonants in some words; as the r in thrush, brush, rush, run, &c., pronouncing them dirsh, birsh, hirsh, hirn; also transposition of p and s in such words as clasp, hasp, asp, &c., sounded claps, haps, aps, &c. I have not inserted all these words in the Glossary, as these general remarks will enable the student to detect the words which are so inverted. It is by no means improbable that the order ...
— The Dialect of the West of England Particularly Somersetshire • James Jennings
... lizards flabby, Centipedes, and hydras scabby, Asp, and slug, and toad, whose gem ...
— Fringilla: Some Tales In Verse • Richard Doddridge Blackmore
... said to be a tyranny tempered by ridicule. The dynasty ended in the person of the celebrated Cleopatra, who, after the battle of Actium, caused herself, as is related in the legends, to be bitten by an asp. She took poison that she might not fall captive to Octavianus, and be led in his triumph ...
— History of the Intellectual Development of Europe, Volume I (of 2) - Revised Edition • John William Draper
... was delightful, but in parts it was difficult. Fragments of "The Tempest," and of other plays, remain stranded in my memory from these readings: Ferdinand and Miranda at chess, Cleopatra cuffing the messenger, the asp in the basket of figs, the Friar and the Apothecary, Troilus on the Ilian walls, a vision of Cassandra in white muslin with her hair down. People forbid children to read this or that. I am sure they need not, and that even in our infancy the magician, Shakespeare, brings us nothing ...
— Adventures among Books • Andrew Lang
... see the first of 'Antony and Cleopatra' [1]. It was admirably got up, and well acted—a salad of Shakspeare and Dryden. Cleopatra strikes me as the epitome of her sex—fond, lively, sad, tender, teasing, humble, haughty, beautiful, the devil!—coquettish to the last, as well with the "asp" as with Antony. After doing all she can to persuade him that—but why do they abuse him for cutting off that poltroon Cicero's head? Did not Tully tell Brutus it was a pity to have spared Antony? and did he not speak the Philippics? and are not "words ...
— The Works of Lord Byron: Letters and Journals, Volume 2. • Lord Byron
... the end was near. It was probably on this Sunday that they destroyed their papers, lists of names and other incriminating evidence. The shadow of the approaching catastrophe deepened and spread rapidly around and above them as they watched and waited helplessly under the huge asp of slavery, which enraged and now completely coiled, was about to strike. The stroke fell first on Peter, Rolla, Ned, and Batteau Bennett. The last, although but a boy of eighteen, was one of the most active of the younger leaders ...
— Right on the Scaffold, or The Martyrs of 1822 - The American Negro Academy. Occasional Papers No. 7 • Archibald H. Grimke
... suffice for them also. Finally he took his battered old hat from a nearby branch, brushed it carefully, arranged the crown so that fewer holes appeared, and put it upon his head. His clean shirt, spread upon a quaking-asp but by no means dry, afforded the best of reasons why he should not hurry; so, drawing a stained and stubby pipe and sack of tobacco from another pocket, Mr. Crusoe lay beneath a friendly cottonwood at the water's edge and gave himself ...
— Virginia of Elk Creek Valley • Mary Ellen Chase
... When his messengers returned, at the hour fixed, to conduct her away, they found only the dead body of Cleopatra stretched upon her couch, and by her side her two faithful attendants, Iris and Charmion. It is said that she died from the bite of an asp, a venomous Egyptian serpent, which had been secretly conveyed to her concealed in a basket of fruit; ...
— Historic Tales, Volume 11 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... up his rider Bellerophon, must he humble himself and grant whatever favours are asked him, fearing to be called hard and ungentle. They say that the Egyptian Bocchoris, who was by nature very severe, had an asp sent him by Isis, which coiled round his head, and shaded him from above, that he might judge righteously. Bashfulness on the contrary, like a dead weight on languid and effeminate persons, not daring to refuse or contradict anybody, makes jurors deliver unjust verdicts, and shuts the mouth ...
— Plutarch's Morals • Plutarch
... while you could, and leave it something in your Will. But how much? And, as if he could not make that calculation looking out into the mild freedom of the country night, he turned back and went up to the chimney-piece. There were his pet bronzes—a Cleopatra with the asp at her breast; a Socrates; a greyhound playing with her puppy; a strong man reining in some horses. 'They last!' he thought, and a pang went through his heart. They had a thousand years ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... the retort lay in the word "stout." But Iris was not accustomed to cross-examination. During a three months' residence on the island she had learnt how to avoid Lady Tozer. Here it was impossible, and the older woman fastened upon her asp-like. Miss Iris Deane was a toothsome morsel for gossip. Not yet twenty-one, the only daughter of a wealthy baronet who owned a fleet of stately ships—the Sirdar amongst them—a girl who had been mistress of her father's house since her return from Dresden ...
— The Wings of the Morning • Louis Tracy
... words—words poured forth like the wild dirges, the fierce death-songs of the old Goths when they died deserted on the bloody battle-field, or were cast bound into deep dungeons, a prey to the viper and the asp. Thus she spoke:— 'I swore to be avenged! while I went forth from Aquileia with the child that was killed and the child that was wounded; while I climbed the high wall in the night-time, and heard the tumult of the beating waves near ...
— Antonina • Wilkie Collins
... have not been in that section since 1892. On all the cliffs are benches or terraces—a cliff of 300 to 1,000 feet at the top, then a bench, then another cliff, and so on to the bottom. The benches are well grassed, and there is more or less timber, quaking asp, spruce and juniper in the side canyons. There are plenty of springs along the cliffs, and as they face the south, the winter range is good. The top of the plateau is an open park country, and at that time was, and is yet, for that matter, full of deer and bear, but I never saw ...
— American Big Game in Its Haunts • Various
... tongues, A dismal universal hiss, the sound Of public scorn. Dreadful was the din Of hissing through the hall, thick swarming now With complicated monsters, head and tail, Scorpion and asp, and Amphisbaena dire, Cerastes horned, Hydrus, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 11, Issue 67, May, 1863 • Various
... tremuloides, Michx. (QUAKING-ASP. AMERICAN ASPEN.) Leaves roundish heart-shaped, with a short sharp point, and small, quite regular teeth; downy when young, but soon smooth on both sides; margins downy. Leafstalk long, slender, compressed, causing the ...
— Trees of the Northern United States - Their Study, Description and Determination • Austin C. Apgar
... creatures—with no flesh on her bones." On the other hand, however, she enjoyed later much complimentary disparagement from her own sex. Miss Celestina Howard, second leader in the ballet at the Varieties, had, with great alliterative directness, in after-years, denominated her as an "aquiline asp." Mlle. Brimborion remembered that she had always warned "Mr. Jack" that this woman would "empoison" him. But Mr. Oakhurst, whose impressions are perhaps the most important, only saw a pale, thin, deep-eyed woman, raised above ...
— Tales of the Argonauts • Bret Harte
... made everyone very miserable. Directly she went out, Imperia told the ladies of Rome that she should die it if she were deserted by this gentleman, and would cause herself, like Queen Cleopatra, to be bitten by an asp. She declared openly that she had bidden an eternal adieu her to her former gay life, and would show the whole world what virtue was by abandoning her empire for this Villiers de l'Ile Adam, whose servant she would rather be than ...
— Droll Stories, Complete - Collected From The Abbeys Of Touraine • Honore de Balzac
... As yet no part of his body was swollen, except very slightly about the wound; however, there was a rapidly increasing rigidity of the muscles of the neck and throat, and within half an hour after he was bit, he was utterly unable to swallow even liquids. The small whip—snake, the most deadly asp in the whole list of noxious reptiles peculiar to South America, was not above fourteen inches long; it had made four small punctures with its fangs, right over the left jugular vein, about an inch below the chin. There was no blood oozing from them, but a circle ...
— Tom Cringle's Log • Michael Scott
... its every nook, From the Red Sea to the cold Caspian shore, In earth, in heaven one only Phoenix dwells. What fortunate, or what disastrous bird Omen'd my fate? which Parca winds my yarn, That I alone find Pity deaf as asp, And wretched live who happy hoped to be? Let me not speak of her, but him her guide, Who all her heart with love and sweetness fills— Gifts which, from him o'erflowing, follow her, Who, that my sweets may sour and cruel be, Dissembleth, ...
— The Sonnets, Triumphs, and Other Poems of Petrarch • Petrarch
... the envelope was Quaking-Asp Grove, which was beyond White Lodge, on the main transcontinental highway. Slowly Bill took from the envelope a note ...
— Mystery Ranch • Arthur Chapman
... way, as the grammar schools of England are amongst her most eminent distinctions, and, with submission to the innumerable wretches (gentlemen I should say) that hate England "worse than toad or asp," have never been rivalled by any corresponding institutions in other lands, I may as well take this opportunity of explaining the word grammar, which most people misapprehend. Men suppose a grammar school to mean a school where they teach grammar. But this ...
— Autobiographic Sketches • Thomas de Quincey
... carry bows and arrows, or sword and buckler, and play at dice and draughts, and give no alms except to their dogs. 'Our places are taken by hawks and hounds, or by that strange creature, woman, from whom we taught our pupils to flee as from an asp or basilisk. This creature, ever jealous and implacable, spies us out in a corner hiding behind some ancient cabinet, and she wrinkles her forehead and laughs us to scorn, and points to us as the only rubbish in the house; and she complains that we are totally ...
— The Great Book-Collectors • Charles Isaac Elton and Mary Augusta Elton
... appearance. There was the envious Kenrick and the savage Wolcot, the asp George Steevens and the polecat John Williams. It did not, however, occur to them to search the parish register of Lynn, in order that they might be able to twit a lady with having concealed her age. That truly chivalrous exploit was reserved for ...
— The Diary and Letters of Madame D'Arblay Volume 1 • Madame D'Arblay
... night-black eyes hath past the shining. But still a queen! that brow, so icy cold, Its diadem of starry jewels beareth— Robed in the royal purple, and the gold, No conqueror's chain that form imperial beareth. To grace Death's triumph was but left for thee, Daughter of Afric, by the asp set free! ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII No. 6 June 1848 • Various
... and leaders: ruling party is the Arab Socialist Resurrectionist (Bath) Party; the Progressive National Front is dominated by Bathists but includes independents and members of the Syrian Arab Socialist Party (ASP), Arab Socialist Union (ASU), Syrian Communist Party (SCP), Arab Socialist Unionist Movement, and ...
— The 1991 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... virtue, and although she was so young, hope had often whispered to him of a joyous future when she, whom her father designated as "Sunshine," should also shed a halo of sunlight around another fireside. But now the illusion was painfully dispelled, for sooner would he have taken the Egyptian asp to his bosom than chosen for a companion one whom he knew to possess a ...
— Tempest and Sunshine • Mary J. Holmes
... they permitted (if they did not arrange) the Armenian massacres at Adana, and the Balance of Power began faintly to wonder whether the Young Turks in their deposition of Abdul Hamid had not slain an asp and hatched a cockatrice. Given that their aims originally were sincere, we can but marvel at the swiftness of the corruption which in little more than a year had begun to lead them not into paths of reform and ...
— Crescent and Iron Cross • E. F. Benson
... as children only, that you will find medicine for your healing and true wisdom for your teaching. There is poison in the counsels of the men of this world; the words they speak are all bitterness, 'the poison of asps is under their lips,' but, 'the sucking child shall play by the hole of the asp.' There is death in the looks of men. 'Their eyes are privily set against the poor;' they are as the uncharmable serpent, the cockatrice, which slew by seeing. But 'the weaned child shall lay his hand on the cockatrice den.' There is ...
— The Crown of Wild Olive • John Ruskin
... forest that edged the mesa, and just back of Fernando's camp, a Ranger trail cuts through a patch of quaking-asp and meanders through the heavy-timbered land toward the Blue range, a spruce-clad ridge of southern hills. Close to the trail two saddle horses ...
— Sundown Slim • Henry Hubert Knibbs
... is reprinted in the corrected edition of Lord Macaulay's Essays:—"There was no want of low minds and bad hearts in the generation which witnessed her (Miss Burney's) first appearance. There was the envious Kenrick and the savage Wolcot; the asp George Steevens and the polecat John Williams. It did not, however, occur to them to search the parish register of Lynn, in order that they might be able to twit a lady with having concealed her age. That truly chivalrous exploit was reserved for a bad writer of ...
— Autobiography, Letters and Literary Remains of Mrs. Piozzi (Thrale) (2nd ed.) (2 vols.) • Mrs. Hester Lynch Piozzi
... a Mexican pony rider came in, mortally wounded, having been shot by the savages from ambush while passing through a dense thicket in the vicinity known as Quaking Asp Bottom. Although given tender care, the poor fellow died within a few hours after his arrival. The mail was waiting and it must go. Kelley, who was the lightest man in in the place—he weighed but one hundred pounds—was now ordered by the boss to take the dead man's ...
— The Story of the Pony Express • Glenn D. Bradley
... minutes the dainty equipage was out of sight. When nothing more of it could be seen than the cloud of dust stirred up by its rolling wheels, I turned to look at my companion. His face was stern, and his brows were drawn together in a frown. Stung already! I thought. Already the little asp of jealousy commenced its bitter work! The trifling favor HIS light-o'-love and MY wife had extended to me in choosing MY arm instead of HIS as a momentary support had evidently been sufficient to pique his pride. God! what blind bats men are! With all their high ...
— Vendetta - A Story of One Forgotten • Marie Corelli
... deadly brood appears; First the dull Asp its swelling neck uprears; The huge Hemor'rho[:i]s, vampire of the blood; Chersy'ders, that pollute both field and flood; The Water-serpent, tyrant of the lake; The hooded Cobra; and the Plantain snake; Here with distended jaws the Prester ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook, Vol. 3 • E. Cobham Brewer
... arms. Cleopatra then fell into the hands of Octavius, who intended to carry her to Rome to grace his triumph. To save herself from this humiliation, and weary with a life which, full of sin as it had been, was a constant series of sufferings, she determined to die. A servant brought in an asp for her, concealed in a vase of flowers, at a great banquet. She laid the poisonous reptile on her naked arm, and died immediately of ...
— History of Julius Caesar • Jacob Abbott
... hand, most of the serpents, large and small, are indigenous. Some are harmless, like the colubers; others are venomous, such as the soy tale, the cerastes, the haje viper, and the asp. The asp was worshipped by the Egyptians under the name of uraeus. It occasionally attains to a length of six and a half feet, and when approached will erect its head and inflate its throat in readiness for darting forward. The bite is ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 1 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... clearly in what manner she perished, for there were found merely slight indentations on her arm. Some say that she applied an asp which had been brought in to her in a water-jar or among some flowers. Others declare that she had smeared a needle, with which she was wont to braid her hair, with some poison possessed of such properties that it would not injure the ...
— Dio's Rome, Vol. III • Cassius Dio
... crawling, craven, sneaking, snaking brute; Purposeless spite, and hatred absolute, In hideous shape incarnate! Venomed Gad In Civilisation's path; malignant-mad, And blindly biting; raising an asp-neck In Beauty's foot-tracks, and prepared to wreck The ordered work of ages in a day, To raze and shatter, to abase and slay. Blind as the earthquake, headlong as the storm, Yet in such hideous subter-human form, Vulgar as venomous! Dragon indeed, And dangerous, but with no soul save ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 102, April 16, 1892 • Various
... it; and it was long before any of her detractors thought of this mode of annoyance. Yet there was no want of low minds and bad hearts in the generation which witnessed her first appearance. There was the envious Kenrick and the savage Wolcot, the asp George Steevens, and the polecat John Williams. It did not, however, occur to them to search the parish register of Lynn, in order that they might be able to twit a lady with having concealed her age. That truly ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 2 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... that fatal foe, Virtue shall shrink from his torpedo grasp— For not more fatal thro' the Wretches veins Benumb'd in Death's cold pains Creeps the chill poison of the deadly asp. ...
— Poems • Robert Southey
... following day she was found lying dead on a golden couch in royal attire, with her two women lifeless at her feet. The manner of her death was unknown. It was generally believed that she had died by the bite of an asp, which a peasant had brought to her in a basket full of figs. She was 39 years of age at the time of her death. Egypt was made a Roman province. Octavian did not return to Rome till B.C. 29, when ...
— A Smaller History of Rome • William Smith and Eugene Lawrence
... names, the word "culverin" has a metaphorical meaning. It derives from the Latin colubra (snake). Similarly, the light gun called aspide or aspic, meaning "asp-like," was named after the venomous asp. But these digressions should not obscure the fact that both culverins and demiculverins were highly esteemed on account of their range and the effectiveness of fire. They were used for precision shooting such as building demolition, and an expert gunner ...
— Artillery Through the Ages - A Short Illustrated History of Cannon, Emphasizing Types Used in America • Albert Manucy
... Scripture, the most interesting in the list given in the preceding page is that which stands the seventh in order. Speaking of the happy time revealed by the prophetical spirit, Isaiah remarks that "the sucking child shall play on the hole of the asp, and the weaned child shall put his hand on the cockatrice' den." The editor of Calmet's Dictionary imagines that the naja, or cobra di capello, is the serpent here alluded to by the holy penman, and which is known to possess the most energetic poison. We cannot indeed discover ...
— Palestine or the Holy Land - From the Earliest Period to the Present Time • Michael Russell
... silver setting of the past generation; her arms were bare, round, but slender rather than large, in keeping with her lithe round figure. On her wrists she wore bracelets: one was a circlet of enamelled scales; the other looked as if it might have been Cleopatra's asp, with its body turned to gold and ...
— Elsie Venner • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... smote him so fairly in the face that he shrank back, and pressed his hand to a swelling cheek. "I said I hated and despised you. What I despise, though, is beneath my hate. I would tread on you as on a viper or a desert asp, as a noxious creature that is not fit to live. I have played my game; and though it was not I who won, but Agias who won for me, I am well content. Drusus lives! Lives to see you miserably dead! Lives to grow to glory and honour, to happiness and a noble old age, when the worms have long since ...
— A Friend of Caesar - A Tale of the Fall of the Roman Republic. Time, 50-47 B.C. • William Stearns Davis
... heart of mine! that when life's summer hour For thee with love's bright blossoms hung the bough, Too quickly found an asp beneath the flower— And is naught left thee ...
— International Weekly Miscellany Vol. I. No. 3, July 15, 1850 • Various
... here, Kallikrates," she said to Leo, who had run up to help her down, "where one might sleep. Two thousand years ago did thou and I and that Egyptian asp rest therein, but since then have I not set foot here, nor any man, and perchance it has fallen," and, followed by the rest of us, she passed up a vast flight of broken and ruined steps into the outer court, and looked round into the gloom. Presently she seemed to recollect, ...
— She • H. Rider Haggard
... not only in cold blood, but with resolute infliction of Ugolino's utmost grief;—not in the dungeon, but in the full light of day—his son being first put to death before his eyes. And among the pieces of heraldry most significant in the middle ages, the asp on the shield of the Guelphic viscounts is to be much remembered by you as a sign of this merciless cruelty of mistaken religion; mistaken, but not in the least hypocritical. It has perfect confidence in itself, and can answer with serenity for all its deeds. The serenity ...
— Val d'Arno • John Ruskin
... this noblest of all empresses, was marked to be stricken down by the red hand of anarchy, to whose crime, and poison, and danger we open our national ports with an unwisdom which is criminal stupidity, and of which we shall inevitably reap the benefit. America cannot warm the asp of anarchy in her bosom without expecting it to turn ...
— Abroad with the Jimmies • Lilian Bell
... estimate, the elevation of the junction is assumed as given by our barometrical observations in 1842. On the easternmost branch, up which we took our way, we first came among the pines growing on the top of a very high bank, and where we halted on it to noon; quaking asp (populus tremuloides) was mixed with the cottonwood, and there were excellent grass and rushes ...
— The Exploring Expedition to the Rocky Mountains, Oregon and California • Brevet Col. J.C. Fremont
... transformed. No human foot approached her cave—no mortal dared. The warrior, who feared not a hundred foes, quailed at the sight of Elgiva, the enchantress, the worker of wonders. Unclean reptiles crawled around her cave—the asp, the loathsome toad, and the hissing adder. Two owls sat in the farthest corner of the cave, and their eyes were as lamps in its darkness. They sat upon skulls of the dead. A tame raven croaked in the midst of it. It was told that the reptiles, the owls, and the raven, were objects ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Volume VI • Various
... "in that day" does not refer to "at the end of the days," in ver. 1, but is connected with, and resumes ver. 4^a That the verb [Hebrew: asP] has here the signification "to assemble," and not that "to receive," is shown by ii. 12, and especially by Ezek. xi. 17. The word refers to the announcement of Israel's being carried away, which was formerly made, and with which the scattering is connected. ...
— Christology of the Old Testament: And a Commentary on the Messianic Predictions, v. 1 • Ernst Wilhelm Hengstenberg
... amours; first fascinated Caesar, to whom she bore a son, and whom she accompanied to Rome, and after Caesar's death took Mark Antony captive, on whose fall and suicide at Actium she killed herself by applying an asp to her arm, to escape the shame of being taken to Rome to grace the triumph of the victor ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... dust was raised a gory clot (23) In guise of Asp, sleep-bringing, swollen of neck: Full was the blood and thick the poison drop That were its making; in no other snake More copious held. Greedy of warmth it seeks No frozen world itself, nor haunts the sands Beyond the Nile; yet has ...
— Pharsalia; Dramatic Episodes of the Civil Wars • Lucan
... irrational men" (Tenure of Kings), and he rates them to their face as "owls and cuckoos, asses, apes, and dogs" (Sonnet xii.); not because they will not listen to him, but "because they "hate learning more than toad or asp" (Sonnet ix.). ...
— Milton • Mark Pattison
... other high ground, the valleys being generally clear or covered with sagebrush. Still higher up yellow pines become abundant and in places spread out into magnificent forests, while in some mountain regions scrub oak, quaking asp, and even spruce ...
— The Cliff Ruins of Canyon de Chelly, Arizona • Cosmos Mindeleff
... deity some animal was sacred. Thus Apis, the sacred bull of Memphis, was the representative of Osiris; the cow was sacred to Isis, and to Athor her mother. Sheep were sacred to Kneph, as well as the asp. Hawks were sacred to Ra; lions were emblems of Horus, wolves of Anubis, hippopotami of Set. Each town was jealous of the honor of its special favorites among ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume I • John Lord
... were by thee And decked full fair. And, beauteous to see, Fine woven weft and web, and the tall screen O'errun with painted bloom, crystal, with gleam Of Lilith's face—thou madest these. Mayhap Beetle and asp likewise didst tint—didst wrap The green about my rose, and richly fringe My cocoa-tree, or peacock's train didst tinge With dazzling hues. Methought thou wert a prince, But now Lilith should humbly kneel, since Thou art far higher than she ...
— Lilith - The Legend of the First Woman • Ada Langworthy Collier
... defamation, Who will hear thee? and to artifice, What canst thou perform? But, my son, despise not thou the malice of the weakest, remember that venom supplies the want of strength, and that the lion may perish by the puncture of an asp." ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson - Volume IV [The Rambler and The Adventurer] • Samuel Johnson
... to conclude in secret the final arrangements. The ground about the quaking asp grove, and nearest El Capitan, afforded the best concealment close to the Gap. And to this point Scott was directed to bring what men he could before ...
— Nan of Music Mountain • Frank H. Spearman
... from our swords, and I felt that I had met a master of fence, I knew it was Simon despite his mask. There lived not a man like him. Tall and thin, with long, bird-like limbs and a stooping back, with the features concealed by the white mask all but the eyes, which glittered like those of an angry asp, he seemed more spirit than man; and I felt as if I were crossing blade with some uncanny phantom of the woods rather than a thing of flesh and blood, as after a fierce bout we circled round, watching each ...
— Orrain - A Romance • S. Levett-Yeats
... not by intrinsic beauty, to the Boston play-goer. Gulliver, with the Liliputians swarming upon him; the painty-necked ostriches and pelicans; the mummied mermaid under a glass bell; the governors' portraits; the stuffed elephant; Washington crossing the Delaware; Cleopatra applying the asp; Sir William Pepperell, at full length, on canvas; and the pagan months and seasons in plaster,—if all these are, indeed, the subjects,—were dim phantasmagoria amid which she and Bartley moved scarcely more real. The usher, in his dress-coat, ran up ...
— A Modern Instance • William Dean Howells
... entreaty in his voice. That hunted helplessness with which a question so slight yet so momentous was received, was forcing in on him a thought that he flung away like an asp. ...
— Under Two Flags • Ouida [Louise de la Ramee]
... if marrd husb can shro 1st flr suite, beaut furn, pri bth rm, sth asp, telephne, mo 'bus psses dr, ex cellar kept. Mrs. Bland, "Nil Desperandum," ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, January 28, 1914 • Various
... nd when, contemptuous of imperial pow'r, Disease shall chase the phantoms of ambition, May penitence attend thy mournful bed, And wing thy latest pray'r to pitying heav'n! [Exeunt Dem. Asp. with part ...
— Dr. Johnson's Works: Life, Poems, and Tales, Volume 1 - The Works Of Samuel Johnson, Ll.D., In Nine Volumes • Samuel Johnson
... awe-inspiring object of which the base was surrounded by billowy vapours, a huge, couchant animal fashioned of black stone, with a head carved to the likeness of that of a lion, and crowned with the uraeus, the asp-crested symbol of majesty in old Egypt. How big the creature might be it was impossible to say at that distance, for we were quite a mile away from it; but it was evident that no other monolithic ...
— Queen Sheba's Ring • H. Rider Haggard
... cropped all round to a level with the beard. His feet and arms were bare, except for thin ribbons of downy, purple feathers, which circled the wrists and ankles. No crown was on his head, but among the stringy wig-curls the sinuous body of an asp bent in and out, and the curved neck and threatening head surmounted ...
— Pharaoh's Broker - Being the Very Remarkable Experiences in Another World of Isidor Werner • Ellsworth Douglass
... wand, While Moses held it in his hand; But, soon as e'er he laid it down, Twas a devouring serpent grown. Our great magician, Hamet Sid, Reverses what the prophet did: His rod was honest English wood, That senseless in a corner stood, Till metamorphos'd by his grasp, It grew an all-devouring asp; Would hiss, and sting, and roll, and twist. By the mere virtue of his fist: But, when he laid it down, as quick Resum'd the figure of a stick. So, to her midnight feasts, the hag Rides on a broomstick ...
— Poems (Volume II.) • Jonathan Swift
... cray'on asp'en tal'on glu'ten de'mon cab'in wag'on cit'ron ci'on drag'on sud'den kitch'en si'phon flag'on fel'on mit'ten co'lon lin'den lem'on pis'ton o'men grav'el mel'on her'on bar'rel bev'el chan'nel ...
— McGuffey's Eclectic Spelling Book • W. H. McGuffey
... to leap upon the back and fasten its teeth in the head of the cobra. It is this display of instinctive ingenuity that Lucan[1] celebrates where he paints the ichneumon diverting the attention of the asp, by the motion of his bushy tail, and then seizing it in the midst ...
— Sketches of the Natural History of Ceylon • J. Emerson Tennent
... never in my life felt any antipathy to serpents, and he evidently regarded me as a sapengro, or snake-master. The first day I met him he put into my hands a cobra which had the fangs extracted, and then handled an asp which still had its poison teeth. On his asking me if I was afraid of it, and my telling him "No," he gave it to me, and after I had petted it, he always manifested an understanding,—I cannot say ...
— The Gypsies • Charles G. Leland
... which still held Juan's, by degrees Gently, but palpably confirm'd its grasp, As if it said, 'Detain me, if you please;' Yet there 's no doubt she only meant to clasp His fingers with a pure Platonic squeeze: She would have shrunk as from a toad, or asp, Had she imagined such a thing could rouse A feeling dangerous to ...
— Don Juan • Lord Byron
... presents her compliments," and went on to thank me, civilly enough, for my attendance the night before, would not give me the trouble to repeat my visit, and inclosed a fee, double the amount of the fee prescribed by custom. I flung the money, as an asp that had stung me, over the high wall, and tore the note into shreds. Having thus idly vented my rage, a dull gnawing sorrow came heavily down upon all other emotions, stifling and replacing them. At the mouth of the lane I halted. ...
— A Strange Story, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... When that sweet asp, death, fastens on our vein of earthly life, we all feel, like the dying queen of Egypt, that we have "immortal longings" in us. Since the soul thus holds by a pertinacious instinct to the eternity of her own existence, it is more rational to conclude that ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger
... progressing, and never benefited a soul. It occupies the mind with that which is injurious and thus keeps out the things that might benefit and bless. It is an active and real manifestation of the fable of the man who placed the frozen asp in his bosom. As he warmed it back to life the reptile turned and fatally bit his benefactor. Worry is as a dangerous, injurious book, the reading of which not only takes up the time that might have been spent in reading a good, instructive, and helpful book, ...
— Quit Your Worrying! • George Wharton James
... the Admiral, "what stuff these young fellows talk! Never was a better sloop than the Asp in her day. For an old built sloop, you would not see her equal. Lucky fellow to get her! He knows there must have been twenty better men than himself applying for her at the same time. Lucky fellow to get anything so soon, with no ...
— Persuasion • Jane Austen
... alas for this false thought of that wrong deed! the poisonous gold has touched thy heart, and left on it a spot of cancer: the asp has bitten thee already, simple soul. This little seed will grow into a huge black pine, that shall darken for a while thy heaven, and dig its evil roots around thy happiness. Put it away, Roger, put it away: covet ...
— The Complete Prose Works of Martin Farquhar Tupper • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... ingratitude. She then enumerated her own heavy expenses, all but the L. 400 a year she spent in bedizening her carcass, and finally, amidst a multitude of petty insults, she offered to relieve Mrs. Dodd of—Julia. Now Poetry has reconciled us to an asp in a basket of figs; but here was a scorpion in a bundle of nettles. Poor Mrs. Dodd could not speak after reading it. She handed it to Edward, and laid her white forehead wearily in her hand. Edward put the letter in an envelope and sent it back with a line in his own ...
— Hard Cash • Charles Reade
... has a horned viper, cerastes is the name under which you gentlemen of science know it, and it is the most deadly of all Egyptian snakes. It is commonly known as Cleopatra's Asp, for that is the serpent which was brought in a basket of figs to the paramour of Caesar in order that she might not endure ...
— The Magician • Somerset Maugham
... on earth is sadder Than the dream that cheated the grasp, The flower that turned to the adder, The fruit that changed to the asp, When the dayspring in darkness closes, As the sunset fades from the hills, With the fragrance of perished roses, And ...
— Vera Nevill - Poor Wisdom's Chance • Mrs. H. Lovett Cameron
... one Tree more as famous and highly set by as any of the rest, if not more, tho it bear no fruit, the benefit consisting chiefly in the Holiness of it. This Tree they call Bo-gauhah; we, the God-tree. It is very great and spreading, the Leaves always shake like an Asp. They have a very great veneration for these Trees, worshipping them; upon a Tradition, That the Buddou, a great God among them, when he was upon the Earth, did use to sit under this kind of Trees. There are many of these Trees, which they plant all the Land over, and have ...
— An Historical Relation Of The Island Ceylon In The East Indies • Robert Knox
... bird, reptile, amphibian, fish, crustacean, shellfish, mollusk, worm, insect, arthropod, microbe. [microscopic animals] microbe, animalcule &c. 193. [reptiles] alligator, crocodile; saurian; dinosaur [extinct]; snake, serpent, viper, eft; asp, aspick[obs3]. [amphibians] frog, toad. [fishes] trout, bass, tuna, muskelunge, sailfish, sardine, mackerel. [insects] ant, mosquito, bee, honeybee. [arthropods] tardigrade, spider. [classificatiopn by ...
— Roget's Thesaurus |
