"Serpent" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... middle entrance of the great hall, at the root of which were four silver lions, having pipes discharging pure cows milk. Four pipes were conveyed up the body of the tree to its top, which spread out into four great boughs, hanging downwards; on each of these boughs was a golden serpent, all their tails twining about the body of the tree, and each of these formed a pipe, one discharging wine, a second caracosmos, a third ball, or mead made of honey, and the fourth teracina or drink made of rice; each particular drink having a vessel at the foot of the tree ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 1 • Robert Kerr
... needed stirring. As he broke the black surface of coal, a flame shot up, red, lambent, a serpent's tongue. It had a voice; it tempted. He took the packet of letters ...
— The Crown of Life • George Gissing
... had said road agent, which means highwayman in California, we could not have been more surprised. A successful book agent must have the hide of a rhinoceros, the guile of a serpent, the obstinacy of a mule, and the persuasive notes of ...
— Bunch Grass - A Chronicle of Life on a Cattle Ranch • Horace Annesley Vachell
... would never be able to lug the dead weight of the Rambler through the Highlands. The enthusiastic pioneer, however, was loud in the praises of his companion; Goldsmith thought him not equal to Burke, 'who winds into a subject like a serpent.' The other, with more than wonted irrelevance, maintained that Johnson was 'the Hercules who strangled serpents in his cradle;' and with these characteristic utterances they parted, never again to meet. Throughout his great work, Boswell shews ever a curious ...
— James Boswell - Famous Scots Series • William Keith Leask
... joys, and drink deep of the nectar in the gilded cup of unhallowed pleasures—beware! Though the draught be delicious as the wines of Cypress, and though the goblet be crowned with flowers, fragrant as the perfume of love's sighs—a coiled serpent lurks in the dregs of the cup, whose deadly fang will strike deep in the heart and leave there the cankering sores of remorse and dark despair. Ye who bask in the smiles of beauty, and voluptuously repose on the ...
— City Crimes - or Life in New York and Boston • Greenhorn
... ancient forests, serpents, scorpions, and other venomous reptiles abounded. Unfortunately, they were not only to be found on land. A sailor in search of marteaux, a very rare kind of bivalve mussel, was stung by a serpent. The fearful suffering and violent convulsions which followed only subsided at the expiration of five or six hours, and at last, the theriac which was administered to him after the bite, effected a cure. This accident was a sad damper to conchological enthusiasm. ...
— Celebrated Travels and Travellers - Part 2. The Great Navigators of the Eighteenth Century • Jules Verne
... device. From out the most central recess of this melancholy vaulting, depended, by a single chain of gold with long links, a huge censer of the same metal, Saracenic in pattern, and with many perforations so contrived that there writhed in and out of them, as if endued with a serpent vitality, a ...
— Famous Modern Ghost Stories • Various
... eternally, seeing I have neither father, mother, brother, nor sister, and shall never know any nearer tie than the chance friendships which spring up on the world's wayside, and wither where they spring. I know there are those who would bid me cast off this love as it were a serpent from my bosom. No! Rather let it creep in there, and fold itself close and secret. What matter, even if its ...
— Olive - A Novel • Dinah Maria Craik, (AKA Dinah Maria Mulock)
... a singular dream. He was walking through Brithlow Wood with Lady Louise on his arm, the moonlight sifting through the tall trees as he had seen it last. Suddenly, with a rustle and a hiss, a huge green serpent glided out, reared itself up, and glared at them with eyes of deadly menace. And somehow, though he had not yet seen the lad's face, he knew the hissing serpent and the preserver of his life were one and the same. With horrible hisses the monster encircled him. Its fetid breath ...
— The Baronet's Bride • May Agnes Fleming
... hard-working one, and a model Member from a constituency's point of view. But the only big question he mastered was his own right to take his seat. Once he got it, he became a respectable and respected Member of Parliament, and nothing more. So, with the wisdom of the serpent, he did not enter the House quietly to fight a wearisome and impossible battle against the inveterate prejudices of the Members. No, Bradlaugh defied the House of Commons; he horrified it, he insulted it, he lectured it, he laughed at it, he tricked it, he shamed it, he humiliated it, he conquered ...
— The Confessions of a Caricaturist, Vol. 1 (of 2) • Harry Furniss
... farmer. "It's a wild and lonesome bit of country that this creek runs through, and I've heard tell of bad water an' whirlpools. The channel winds worse than any serpent. Why, it must be all of two hundred miles to ...
— Canoe Boys and Campfires - Adventures on Winding Waters • William Murray Graydon
... graves, in the brown grass and withered leaves, behind a tall shaft, around which coiled a carved marble serpent with hooded head-there, amid the dead, crouched a woman's figure, with a stony face and blue chatoyant eyes, that glared with murderous hate at the sweet countenance of the happy bride. When St. Elmo tenderly ...
— St. Elmo • Augusta J. Evans
... strange and terrible religion, called the Religion of the Druids. It seems to have been brought over, in very early times indeed, from the opposite country of France, anciently called Gaul, and to have mixed up the worship of the Serpent, and of the Sun and Moon, with the worship of some of the Heathen Gods and Goddesses. Most of its ceremonies were kept secret by the priests, the Druids, who pretended to be enchanters, and who carried magicians' wands, ...
— A Child's History of England • Charles Dickens
... roundness of the moon, the undulations of the serpent, the entwinement of clinging plants, the trembling of the grass, the slenderness of the rose-vine and the velvet of the flower, the lightness of the leaf and the glance of the fawn, the gaiety of the sun's rays and tears of the mist, the inconstancy of the wind and the timidity ...
— Woman - Her Sex and Love Life • William J. Robinson
... Isis. He had wandered far, had clothed himself in another habit than that worn by his people, and by the time he reached the temple he had spent his arrows, and had nothing but his useless bow left. In this predicament, he saw a monstrous serpent who made after him, and he fled. He had nothing to fight with, and was about to be caught in the serpent's fearful coils when the doors of the temple opened and three ladies ran out, each armed with a fine ...
— Operas Every Child Should Know - Descriptions of the Text and Music of Some of the Most Famous Masterpieces • Mary Schell Hoke Bacon
... Paradise since the first Eden the inevitable trail of the serpent has been over all, and too often it comes in its halcyon hours. Insidiously and surely came the stealthy trail of our serpent in the declining health of my husband, and the impending danger to the ...
— The World As I Have Found It - Sequel to Incidents in the Life of a Blind Girl • Mary L. Day Arms
... astonishing that they believed it due to divine intervention. We know, in fact, that Osiris or Bacchus was considered as the discoverer of the vine and of milk; that Iris was the genius of the waters of the Nile; and that the Serpent, or good genius, was the first cause of all these things. Since, moreover, sacrifices had to be made to the gods in order to obtain benefits, the flow of milk, wine, or water, as well as the hissing of the serpent, when the sacrificial flame was lighted, appeared to demonstrate ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 385, May 19, 1883 • Various
... of the Holy Ghost like the beloved John. A fair flower-garden to children of grace; a fruitful vine-branch. A sparkling fire, with force of warmth and heat to the sons of life, for instituting and illustrating charity. A lion in strength and power; a dove in gentleness and humility. A serpent in wisdom and cunning to do good. Gentle, humble, merciful towards sons of life; dark, ungentle towards sons of death. A servant of labor and service of Christ. A king in dignity and power for binding and loosening, for liberating ...
— The Most Ancient Lives of Saint Patrick - Including the Life by Jocelin, Hitherto Unpublished in America, and His Extant Writings • Various
... equal to a great ceremonial sacrifice (Asyamedh Jagna.) Come, one and all. Let us offer our sacrifice before the altar in chorus, and pray that in this ceremony all white serpents may perish in its flames as the vipers perished in the serpent slaying ceremony of Janmajob. Keep in mind that it is not ...
— Indian Unrest • Valentine Chirol
... beautiful example of her work being a copy of the Epistles of St. Paul, now at the Bodleian. The black silk binding is covered with devices embroidered by the Princess during her sequestration at Woodstock, representing the Judgment of Solomon and the Brazen Serpent, and these have been reproduced by Dibdin in 'Bibliomania.' From an inventory published in Archaeologia we learn that, in the sixteenth year of her reign, the Queen possessed a book of the Evangelists, of which the covers were ...
— The Book-Hunter in London - Historical and Other Studies of Collectors and Collecting • William Roberts
... child, and causes misery, unrest and heartache incomputable. A few years ago we were congratulating ourselves that the devil at last was dead, and that the tears of pity had put out the fires of hell, but the serpent of superstition was only ...
— Love, Life & Work • Elbert Hubbard
... 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, ...
— The Adventure of Living • John St. Loe Strachey
... person they saw, when they went into the drawing-room at Lady Singleton's, was this very Clarence Hervey, who was not in a masquerade dress. He had laid a wager with one of his acquaintance, that he could perform the part of the serpent, such as he is seen in Fuseli's well-known picture. For this purpose he had exerted much ingenuity in the invention and execution of a length of coiled skin, which he manoeuvred with great dexterity, by means of internal wires; his grand difficulty ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. III - Belinda • Maria Edgeworth
... cattle, so that he was afraid that, unless he could return quickly, his wife and children would starve. However, the Senate engaged to provide for his family, and he remained, making expeditions into the country round, in the course of which the Romans really did fall in with a serpent, as monstrous as their imagination had depicted. It was said to be 120 feet long, and dwelt upon the banks of the river Bagrada, where it used to devour the Roman soldiers as they went to fetch water. It had such tough scales that they were obliged to attack it with ...
— The Junior Classics • Various
... familiarity with his merit, and that we might live tolerably together, or, at least, part friends—but no; her aversion increased daily, and she communicated it to the others; they treated me insolently, and him very strangely—running away whenever he came as if they saw a serpent—and plotting with their governess—a cunning Italian—how to invent lyes to make me hate him, and twenty such narrow tricks. By these means the notion of my partiality took air, and whether Miss Thrale sent him word slily or not I cannot tell, ...
— Autobiography, Letters and Literary Remains of Mrs. Piozzi (Thrale) (2nd ed.) (2 vols.) • Mrs. Hester Lynch Piozzi
... length in the apple-tree shade, Lay and laughed and talked to the maid, Who twisted her hair in a cunning braid, And writhed it in shining serpent-coils, And held him a day and night fast ...
— Poems • Christina G. Rossetti
... snarling; serrated with rocks seen and unseen, tortured by currents maliciously whimsical, encircled by tides that sweep up from the Antarctic world with the devouring force of a monstrous serpent projecting itself towards its prey. The captain of these tides, travelling up through the Atlantic at a thousand miles an hour, enters the English Channel, and drives on to the Thames. Presently retreating, it meets another ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... with this concentrated essence of the vilest of all poison—imagine this, we say—but don't do it either! If you have never seen a rattlesnake, don't go near one, unless you have a chance to kill it, even if his fangs have been extracted. The heel shall bruise the serpent, and that is the best use to which they ...
— Adrift in the Wilds - or, The Adventures of Two Shipwrecked Boys • Edward S. Ellis
... Angell of light: 2. Cor. 11. 14. And further, [h]most of the learned doe hold, that those bodies wherein they doe appeare, are fashioned of the[i] aire, (though it is not to be denied, but they can enter into other, as the Diuell did into the Serpent, deceiuing Eue, Gen. 3. 1.) which if it continuing pure and in the owne nature,[k] hath neither colour nor figure, yet condensed receiueth both, as wee may behold in the clouds, which resemble sometime one, sometime another shape, and so in them is seene the representation ...
— A Treatise of Witchcraft • Alexander Roberts
... afeared we have been nourishing a serpent in our bosoms," said Nicholas, in his sternest manner. "I had ...
— The King's Daughters • Emily Sarah Holt
... in the sight of armed men marching steadily together; men well disciplined, keeping step to the measured clank of their armor. Like a great serpent the soldiers of Cologne issued from the forest, coming down two and two, for the path was narrow. They would march four abreast when they reached the river road, and the evolutions which accomplished this doubling of the columns, without changing step or ...
— The Sword Maker • Robert Barr
... alone." Then the King and the Minister took two bows and two bolts and repairing to the tree indicated by Solomon, clomb up into it and there sat in silence till the mid-day heat had passed away and it was near upon the hour of mid-afternoon prayer, when they descended and looking about them saw a serpent-couple[FN366] issue from the roots of the tree. The King gazed at them, marvelling to see them ringed with collars of gold about their necks, and said to Faris, "O Wazir, verily these snakes have golden torques! By Allah, this is forsooth a rare thing! Let us catch them ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 7 • Richard F. Burton
... the gold and silver were only a part of that small provision which would be hers by and by, and if she borrowed it, it was borrowing of herself. The tree of the knowledge of good and evil had shaken its fruit into her lap, and, without any serpent to tempt her, she took thereof and ...
— The Guardian Angel • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... neighborhood the Saviour suffered cannot be doubted, and within that closed wall may have been the very spot where he bowed in his agony, and where he heard the tongue of Judas utter his treacherous "Rabbi!" and where he felt the serpent-breath of the traitor as that ...
— Among the Trees at Elmridge • Ella Rodman Church
... embedded and broken. It is also, no doubt, the dreaded species which Sallust describes as infesting the region of Gafsa. But Lucan goes a little too far in his account of Cato's expedition into these parts; this veracious historian has inserted a few pages of sublime serpent nonsense, exquisite fooling.... ...
— Fountains In The Sand - Rambles Among The Oases Of Tunisia • Norman Douglas
... serpent's heart to Gudrun, and she ate thereof, and became greater-hearted, and wiser than ere before: and the son of ...
— The Story of the Volsungs, (Volsunga Saga) - With Excerpts from the Poetic Edda • Anonymous
... describes the wooing of Isaac's bride (xxiv.), and the meeting of Jacob and Rachel at the well, xxix. 2-14; in this source, too, which appears to be the most primitive of all, there are speaking animals—the serpent, e.g., in Genesis iii. (and the ass in Num. xxii. 28). The story of the origin of sin, in every respect a masterpiece, is told by J; we do not know whether to admire more the ease with which Jehovah, like a skilful judge, by a few penetrating questions ...
— Introduction to the Old Testament • John Edgar McFadyen
... committed a murder, and was pursued by the relations of the man whom he murdered. On his reaching the river Nile he saw a Lion on its bank and being fearfully afraid, climbed up a tree. He found a serpent in the upper branches of the tree, and again being greatly alarmed, he threw himself into the river, where a crocodile caught him and ate him. Thus the earth, the air, and the water alike refused shelter ...
— Aesop's Fables • Aesop
... has no eyes; he is a burrowing mole,' said one tauntingly; 'he creeps about the woods like a serpent, and falls into the trap of the hunters: a beaver is wiser than he. He is very cunning, but he cannot deceive a Sioux: he is very brave, but he is a prisoner, and not a wound shows that he struggled. Go; it is a squaw whom my people have ...
— Tales for Young and Old • Various
... the Democratic party are the most dangerous enemies of the country, of its peace, prosperity, and welfare. Let both sections of the country unite to give a final, crushing blow to the influence of Democratic leaders. Let the serpent be fully expelled from Paradise, and our country will soon be a ...
— The Life, Public Services and Select Speeches of Rutherford B. Hayes • James Quay Howard
... he will even amble long and 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 ...
— Happiness and Marriage • Elizabeth (Jones) Towne
... me, Percy," said the father, with a mournful pride in his tone; "I have not deserved this, at least from you. You know not, boy—you know not all that has hardened this heart; but to you it has not been hard, and a taunt from you—yes, that is the serpent's tooth!" ...
— Godolphin, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... my laugh, And whirl the ancient snows of Hecla sheer into Orion's eyes. I dance on the deep under the big Indian stars, And wrap the water spout about my sinuous hips As a dancer winds her girdle. The ocean's horrid crew, The octopus, the serpent, and the shark, with the heart of a coward, Plunge downward when they hear my feet above on the sea-floor, And hide in their slimy coverts. Brave men pray upon the straining decks Till comes my mood to end them, and I strew ...
— Pan and Aeolus: Poems • Charles Hamilton Musgrove
... the case that even parents in old age have had occasion to say with the forsaken King Lear, "How sharper than a serpent's tooth it is to have a thankless child!" It is right training in early life alone that ...
— The American Woman's Home • Catherine E. Beecher and Harriet Beecher Stowe
... big fellow of about forty, stared at a vine-tree, quite exposed to view, which stood close to the farmhouse, twining like a serpent under the shutters the entire ...
— A Comedy of Marriage & Other Tales • Guy De Maupassant
... uses of things because they do not fit in with the modern abuses. When the tares are found in the wheat, the greatest promptitude and practicality is always shown in burning the wheat and gathering the tares into the barn. And since the serpent coiled about the chalice had dropped his poison in the wine of Cana, analysts were instantly active in the effort to preserve the poison and to ...
— Eugenics and Other Evils • G. K. Chesterton
... to the Baron's ear, who waited for an opportunity to make the proper use of it. Not long after, the two principal incendiaries came to an open rupture, and Markham threatened Wenlock that he would shew his uncle what a serpent he had harboured in his bosom. The Baron arrested his words, and insisted upon his ...
— The Old English Baron • Clara Reeve
... "No sooner were all their backs towards me, than I said to myself that the human race happily is not spiderine. I girt up my loins, or rather fetched my tails up under my arms very closely, and glided away, with the silence of the serpent, and the craft of the enemy of our fallen race. Great care was needful, and I exercised it; and here you behold me, unshot and unshot-at, and free from all anxiety, except a pressing urgency for a bowl of your admirable soup, Maria, and a cut from ...
— Springhaven - A Tale of the Great War • R. D. Blackmore
... said; "not from my own and only child. The serpent's tooth hath not such fangs, such power to sting, as the base ingratitude of one undutiful boy. But this fills the cup. I have done with you—for ever, unless you give me your sacred word of honour now, at this minute, never to ...
— The Thin Red Line; and Blue Blood • Arthur Griffiths
... home gold cups and chains or jewels to show where he had been. Their captains were called Sea Kings, and some them went a great way, even into the Mediterranean Sea, and robbed the beautiful shores of Italy. So dreadful was it to see the fleet of long ships coming up to the shore, with a serpent for the figure-head, and a raven as the flag, and crowds of fierce warriors with axes in their hands longing for prey and bloodshed, that where we pray in church that God would deliver us from lightning and tempest, and battle and murder, our forefathers ...
— Young Folks' History of England • Charlotte M. Yonge
... winking amid the gloom of space. The two stars called the Aselli, which lie on either side of the cluster Praesepe, 'are said' (by astrologers) 'to be of a burning nature, and to give great indications of a violent death, or of violent and severe accidents by fire.' The star called Cor Hydrae, or the serpent's heart, denotes trouble through women (said I not rightly that Astrology was a masculine science?); the Lion's heart, Regulus, implied glory and riches; Deneb, the Lion's tail, misfortune and disgrace. ...
— Myths and Marvels of Astronomy • Richard A. Proctor
... copious springs, and promised to furnish an abundant supply of water. To furnish water for the numerous mills about Mountain City and in Nevada gulch a large ditch had been dug, which started up in the mountains near the Snowy range, and wound like a huge serpent around promontories and the sides and heads of numerous gulches, with a slight incline, for some fifteen miles. It passed around the hills which bordered Leavenworth gulch, a few hundred yards above our mill site. About the time the mill was completed the water was turned off from ...
— A Gold Hunter's Experience • Chalkley J. Hambleton
... synod further says that this pious and orthodox creed of the divine grace would be sufficient for the full knowledge and confirmation of the orthodox faith. But as the author of evil, who in the beginning availed himself of the aid of the serpent, and by it brought the poison of death upon the human race, has not desisted, but in like manner now, having found suitable instruments for the accomplishment of his will—that is to say, Theodorus, who was ...
— A Source Book for Ancient Church History • Joseph Cullen Ayer, Jr., Ph.D.
... but recollect, Father Joliet," I went on more seriously, "that the last time I met you you begged me not to talk of Francine if I would not break your heart. I have to add to this the news brought me from Heidelberg, that this Kraaniff was a serpent who had fascinated some young girl for an approaching meal.—How dare you, Charles," I cried suddenly, recalled to the consciousness of his presence by this souvenir of his oratory, "stand here staring? Show the young man out directly, ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science Vol. XV., No. 85. January, 1875. • Various
... enlightened me—after the first set-to, at all events, but my imagination was in a state of ecstasy. I cursed love, my nature, and above all the inconceivable weakness which had allowed me to receive into my house the serpent that had deprived me of an angel, and made me hate myself at the thought of having defiled myself with her. I resolved to die, after having torn to pieces with my own hands the monster who ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... literature, being, so to speak, the permanent mode of communication,—conveying ideas and emotions not merely from man to man, but from generation to generation,—is the predominant means by which this development of consciousness is attained. It is a pretty support we derive from the enemy. But mark the serpent in the grass—"the adjustment of the individual and the race to external reality." The real aim of evolution is purely external, the adjustment of man to environment; consciousness has value in so far as it promotes this adjustment. Flatly, to me, this is pure nonsense, a putting of ...
— The Jessica Letters: An Editor's Romance • Paul Elmer More
... bloody-minded than a crocodile, but thou gentle as a lamb; his tongue more ominous of ill than that of a screeching night-owl, but thine sweeter than the morning lark; his touch more odious than that of a venomous serpent, but thine more pleasant than that of ...
— The Seven Champions of Christendom • W. H. G. Kingston
... France. In the spring of 896, the citizens of Rouen, scarcely yet recovered from the miseries inflicted upon them by the fierce Danish rover, Hasting, were dismayed by the sight of a fleet of long low vessels with spreading sails, heads carved like that of a serpent, and sterns finished like the tail of the reptile, such as they well knew to be the keels of the dreaded Northmen, the harbingers of destruction and desolation. Little hope of succor or protection was there from King ...
— Cameos from English History, from Rollo to Edward II • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... help, but the Indians were at first too scared to come to his aid. At last one ventured near, and laid hold of the serpent's tail; and the others helping, they succeeded in unwinding the reptile and getting Mr. Ralston out of its clutches. He was more dead than alive, but even then would not give up the chase. As soon as he was sufficiently recovered they started ...
— The Great Round World And What Is Going On In It, April 1, 1897 Vol. 1. No. 21 - A Weekly Magazine for Boys and Girls • Various
... concerted action on the part of the pack seemed to have come; for, with one savage snarl, the first row rushed straight on. There came a flash, then the hiss of a white-tongued fiery serpent. As the first wolf reared on his haunches, the smell of burning hair and roasting flesh halted the half-maddened pack, and, falling over one another, again ...
— Lost In The Air • Roy J. Snell
... (Dummkopf) studies not their Meaning; but simply whether they are well or ill cut, what he calls Moral or Immoral! Still worse is it with your Bungler (Pfuscher): such I have seen reading some Rousseau, with pretences of interpretation; and mistaking the ill-cut Serpent-of-Eternity for a common poisonous reptile." Was the Professor apprehensive lest an Editor, selected as the present boasts himself, might mistake the Teufelsdrockh Serpent-of-Eternity in like manner? For which reason it was ...
— Sartor Resartus - The Life and Opinions of Herr Teufelsdrockh • Thomas Carlyle
... naked figures of the last judgment were unworthy of a house of prayer. The artist introduced his censor in his painting as Minos judge of the infernal regions, with long ears like those of the other devils, and a serpent's tail. Paul III when appealed to is said to have answered, that if his Ceremoniere had been in Purgatory, he might have helped him out, but out of hell there was no redemption. This Papal witticism Platner could not find in any writer earlier than Richardson (See Beschreibung der Stadt ...
— The Ceremonies of the Holy-Week at Rome • Charles Michael Baggs
... truth. On truth the word is based. Both sages and gods have esteemed truth. The man who speaks truth in this world attains the highest imperishable state. Men shrink with fear and horror from a liar as from a serpent. In this world the chief element in virtue is truth; it is called the basis of everything. Truth is lord in the world; virtue always rests on truth. All things are founded on truth; nothing is higher than it. Why, then, should I not be true to my promise, and ...
— India: What can it teach us? - A Course of Lectures Delivered before the University Of Cambridge • F. Max Mueller
... them and make them stronger. Take the people of Israel as an example: they overcame the serpents, not by looking at them and wrestling with them, but by turning their eyes away from them and looking in a different direction, namely, at the brazen serpent, and they conquered. In this struggle that is the right and sure way of winning the victory. A person afflicted with such thoughts said to a certain wise man: What evil thoughts come into my mind! He received the answer: Well, let them pass out again. That remark taught the person ...
— Luther Examined and Reexamined - A Review of Catholic Criticism and a Plea for Revaluation • W. H. T. Dau
... than anything else. But it was not his appearance that fascinated the serpentine one, it was the look he cast down upon those two lucky diggers; a scowl of tremendous hatred—hatred unto death. Instinct told the serpent there must be more in this than extempore envy. He waited and watched, and, when the black-maned one moved away, he followed him about everywhere till at last ...
— It Is Never Too Late to Mend • Charles Reade
... and over again, these strangely contorted rocks stretched as far as the eye could reach, sinking, however, as they receded, and leading the mind, though not the eye, down to the plain below, through which a turbid stream wound its way rebelliously, like some great twisting, twirling, silvery-scaled serpent. ...
— Werwolves • Elliott O'Donnell
... Thirdly, there are those similes most characteristic of euphuism, though less commonly found than the two kinds just mentioned, namely, those drawn from "unnatural natural history." Such are the comparisons to "the serpent Regius that hath scales as glorious as the sun and a breath as infectious as aconitum is deadly," to "the hyena, most guileful when she mourns," to "the colors of a polype which changes at the sight of ...
— Rosalynde - or, Euphues' Golden Legacy • Thomas Lodge
... being a temperance orator who thundered forth denunciations of rum and the theater with the bitterness of a Juvenal inveighing profligate Rome. The people crowded the orator's hall, upon the walls of which hung the customary banners: a serpent springing from the top of a barrel; the steamboat, Alcohol, bursting her boiler and going to pieces, and the staunch craft, Temperance, safe and sound, sailing away before a fair wind. With perfect self-command, gift of mimicry and dramatic gestures, the lecturer swayed his audience; now bubbling ...
— The Strollers • Frederic S. Isham
... knowing that Southern Arabia and even Ethiopia had by the Alexandrians been sometimes called India, he says that this hero conquered even India beyond the Ganges. On the other hand, the fabulous conquest of the great serpent, the enemy of the human race, which we see sculptured on the sarcophagus of Oimenepthah, he describes as an historic fact of the reign of Ptolemy Philadelphus. He tells us how this huge beast, forty-five feet long, was ...
— History Of Egypt From 330 B.C. To The Present Time, Volume 10 (of 12) • S. Rappoport
... Orders She Combeth Not Her Head She Cometh Not, She Said Trial of a Servant Trail of the Serpent Essays of a Liar Essays of Elia Soap and Tables AEsop's Fables Pocketbook's Hill Puck of Pook's Hill Dentist's Infirmary Dante's Inferno Holy Smoke ...
— Toaster's Handbook - Jokes, Stories, and Quotations • Peggy Edmund & Harold W. Williams, compilers
... three evil children—here Dickie would, for what reason he knew not, always feel his mother hold him more closely, while her voice took a deeper tone—Fenrir the wolf, who, when Thor sought to bind him, bit off the brave god's right hand; and Joermungand the Midgard serpent, who, tail in mouth, circles the world; and Hela, the pale queen, who reigns in Niflheim over the dim kingdoms of the dead. And of Baldur the bright shining god, joy of Asgard, slain in error by Hoeder his blind twin-brother; for whom all things on earth—save ...
— The History of Sir Richard Calmady - A Romance • Lucas Malet
... man of sin, the child of perdition, the wicked one, the beast vomited forth from the abyss, the abomination of desolation; he came out of the tribe of Dan, of whom it is written: 'Dan shall be a serpent by the way, an adder in the path.' Soon shall return to the earth the prophets Elijah and Enoch, Moses, Jeremiah and Saint John the Evangelist; and soon shall dawn that day of wrath which shall grind the age in a mill and beat ...
— The Life of Joan of Arc, Vol. 1 and 2 (of 2) • Anatole France
... not know, papa; I have read of the eye of the serpent, which frightens the little birds and prevents them from making a single movement. I could not move, and the two men drew near me. They pressed their long hands upon my forehead and wished to drag me off. Then finally ...
— The Son of Monte-Cristo, Volume I (of 2) • Alexandre Dumas pere
... the apples of the Hesperides, the wedding present of Ge to Juno. Of all the labors of Hercules, perhaps this was the most arduous. Juno had left these apples with the Hesperides for safekeeping. These goddesses lived on Mount Atlas, and the serpent Ladon helped them to guard their precious trust. Hercules did not know just where the apples were kept, and this made his task all the more difficult. When, therefore, he arrived at Mount Atlas he offered to hold up the world for Atlas if he would go and fetch the apples. ...
— A History of Art for Beginners and Students - Painting, Sculpture, Architecture • Clara Erskine Clement
... Luzerners: They would follow their forefathers in everything, in adherence to the Federal Compact, and in love, but only when it did not deviate from the faith. Seditious persons now try to undermine this, as once the serpent sneaked around our first parents in Paradise. From such poison they would preserve their children and children's children. They had been prompted to do what they now did, in the face of censure, by the intrigues, embassies and negotiations of other cantons among themselves, in ...
— The Life and Times of Ulric Zwingli • Johann Hottinger
... its size, I may state, with due care not to exaggerate, that I saw fish, of the size of full grown cod, swimming about in the lower lid. A short examination convinced me that what I saw was the head of some mighty marine monster, nothing more nor less than the great sea-serpent, and that the elevation I had seen was his upper jaw. The crews of the boats confirmed the opinion when they came on board, for they stated that when they were close to what they believed was the ...
— Marmaduke Merry - A Tale of Naval Adventures in Bygone Days • William H. G. Kingston
... you; ye endure their tortures daily; yet ye crouch for more. Ye believe that God beholds you; ye know that he will punish you, even worse than ye punish yourselves; and still ye lick the dust where the Old Serpent went before you. ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXIX. - March, 1843, Vol. LIII. • Various
... of the Chats faced them with the sheer plunge of their sixteen cataracts; now they glided beneath overhanging cliffs, where, seeing but unseen, the crouched wildcat eyed them from the thicket; now through the maze of water-girded rocks, which the white cedar and the spruce clasped with serpent-like roots, or among islands where old hemlocks darkened the water with deep green shadow. Here, too, the rock-maple reared its verdant masses, the beech its glistening leaves and clean, smooth stem, and behind, stiff and sombre, rose the balsam-fir. Here in the tortuous channels the ...
— Pioneers Of France In The New World • Francis Parkman, Jr.
... what he thought was Dick's mistake, and forgetting himself, half turned in the revolving chair, while the muzzle of the revolver was shifted for just the fraction of a second. It was enough. With the quickness of a serpent, Dick's hand shot out, and the heavy weight caught the negro above the right ear, and with a groan he slid from the ...
— That Printer of Udell's • Harold Bell Wright
... smiles, their faces curiously traced into a work of art, in the languid movements of a pantomimic dance. The soul behind those eyes? the temperament under that at times almost terrifying mask? Salammbo is as inarticulate for us as the serpent, to whose drowsy beauty, capable of such sudden awakenings, hers seems half akin; they move before us in a kind of hieratic pantomime, a coloured, expressive thing, signifying nothing. Matho, maddened ...
— Figures of Several Centuries • Arthur Symons
... of death indeed, worse than a thousand deaths to a soul that apprehends it; and the less it is apprehended, the worse it is; because it is the more certain, and must shortly be found, when there is no brazen serpent to heal that sting. Now, what comfort have you provided against this day? What way do you think to take out this sting? Truly, there is no balm for it, no physician for it, but one; and that the Christian only is acquainted with. ...
— The Works of the Rev. Hugh Binning • Hugh Binning
... the new keyboard of quarter tones was nigh. For Scriabine appears to have wakened in the piano all its latent animality. Under his touch it loses its old mechanical being, cries and chants like a bird, becomes at instants cat, serpent, flower, woman. It is as if the currents of the man's life had set with mysterious strength toward the instrument, till it became for him an eternally fresh and marvelous experience, till between him and the inanimate thing there came to be an ...
— Musical Portraits - Interpretations of Twenty Modern Composers • Paul Rosenfeld
... 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, and which some ...
— Mosaics of Grecian History • Marcius Willson and Robert Pierpont Willson
... known a few cold winters. And you don't know what these flowers mean? Let me tell you. A maiden stands in the dawn. Her feet are on the moon and the stars circle round her head. And under her foot she crushes the head of the serpent who betrayed our first parents in Paradise. And see, Spring courts the maiden and brings her his roses. And Winter, too, courts the maiden, and because he has no other flowers he makes these to grow on the surface of the water and on the window-panes. But they are stiff and cold, ...
— I.N.R.I. - A prisoner's Story of the Cross • Peter Rosegger
... may, and there is great truth in it, some naughty sprites, some bad fairies, were flitting around and about that apparently peaceful atmosphere. That sunny home, governed by all that was sweet and good, was not without its serpent. ...
— A World of Girls - The Story of a School • L. T. Meade
... with Absentee Snakes. It is believed that the Serpent who tempted Eve (from the "way he had with the women") was one of these ...
— This Giddy Globe • Oliver Herford
... the pleasures of human life symbolized together, and the mystery of its redemption; for the mazes of interwoven lines and changeful pictures lead always at last to the cross, lifted and carved in every place and upon every stone; sometimes with the serpent of eternity wrapt round it, sometimes with doves beneath its arms, and sweet herbage growing forth from its feet; but conspicuous most of all on the great rood that crosses the church before the altar, raised in bright blazonry against ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume 7 - Italy, Sicily, and Greece (Part One) • Various
... wound like a silvery serpent through the stretch of green, succulent grass, narrowing gorge and obtruding rock and boulder. Now and then the path led across the water, which was so shallow that it only plashed about the fetlocks of the horses. Captain Dawson, in his impetuosity, kept a few paces in ...
— A Waif of the Mountains • Edward S. Ellis
... that she does not. She is dazzled by his showiness and his fluency, his horsemanship and his dancing; but love him she does not It is fascination, such a fascination as leads a moth to flutter round a candle, or a bird to drop into the rattlesnake's mouth,—and never was flame more dangerous, or serpent more deadly. He is unworthy of her, Lucy,—thoroughly unworthy. This man, who calls himself devoted to a creature as innocent as she is lovely,—who pretends to feel a pure and genuine passion for this pure and too-believing girl, passes ...
— The Beauty Of The Village • Mary Russell Mitford
... us, and drew pictures of Mornac, sabre in hand, decapitating a nest full of American rattlesnakes and British cobras, and Rochefort printed a terrible elaboration of the fable of the farmer and the frozen serpent." ...
— The Maids of Paradise • Robert W. (Robert William) Chambers
... This doorway is of early thirteenth-century work; it is round-headed, and is French in character. There is a legend that a party of French monks, terrified by a dragon which rose out of the sea, possibly an ancestor of the sea-serpent of more modern days, put in to Christchurch haven, and were entertained by the canons, with whom they abode for many years; possibly this door may be of their workmanship or design. In the south wall a large aumbry or cupboard, in the thickness of the walls, ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: Wimborne Minster and Christchurch Priory • Thomas Perkins
... deserts, but this is believed to be a fiction invented in the Caravans. In Congo there is a small species a few sizes larger than the Conger eel, while in the section of country visited by CUMMING the Boa is the biggest serpent Going. ...
— Punchinello, Vol.1, No. 12 , June 18,1870 • Various
... of the dragons of St. Riok and of St. Pol de Leon seems to me particularly instructive. The dragon of St. Riok was six fathoms long; his head was derived from the cock and the basilisk, his body from the ox and the serpent; he ravaged the banks of the Elorn in the time of King Bristocus. St. Riok, then aged two years, led him by a leash to the sea, in which the monster drowned himself of his own accord. St. Pol's dragon was sixty feet long and not less ...
— Penguin Island • Anatole France
... first Maker of men, Mark Twain created Adam in his own image; and his rare Eve is no less the companion with whom, half a lifetime before, he had begun the marriage journey. Only here the likeness ceases. No Serpent ever entered their Eden. And they never left it; it traveled with them so long ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... saw the temples. Of the temple of AEsculapius little remains but an altar of black stone, adorned with a cornice imitating the scales of a serpent. His statue in terra-cotta was found in the cell. The temple of Isis is more perfect. It is surrounded by a portico of fluted columns, and in the area around it are two altars, and many ceppi for statues; ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Vol. V (of X) - Great Britain and Ireland III • Various
... right for just half a minute. Then something began to bulge at the end. It kept growing larger and larger, forming into what is called a Pharaoh's serpent, ...
— The Wizard of the Sea - A Trip Under the Ocean • Roy Rockwood
... that infernal queen's pawn opening it would have been different. She beat me six times running, and on the last game I pulled a superb orang-outang, but it was too late. She saw mate in four and gave me that serpent smirk I ...
— Competition • James Causey
... the country, and returning with blossoming shrubs to adorn the churches, and flowers with which to strew the path of the Deliverer. Under cover of these zealous preparations did discontent, like a serpent under the blossoms of the meadow, prepare to fix its poisonous tooth. There were men abroad in the streets who looked upon these preparations for rejoicing with a determination that the rejoicings should ...
— The Hour and the Man - An Historical Romance • Harriet Martineau
... a horrible neurotic numbness. The dark strong flow that polarizes us to the earth's center is hampered, broken. We become flimsy fungoid beings, with no roots and no hold in the earth, like mushrooms. The serpent has bruised our heel till we limp. The lame gods, the enslaved gods, the toiling limpers moaning for the woman. You don't find the sun and moon playing at pals in the sky. Their beams cross the great gulf which ...
— Fantasia of the Unconscious • D. H. Lawrence
... Miss Carleton, quickly; "from my first glimpse of her she has seemed to me like a malign presence about the place, a veritable serpent in this beautiful Eden!" ...
— That Mainwaring Affair • Maynard Barbour
... Sclaves, it was difficult to read the recesses of his mind. With them, loyalty and candor, familiarity and the most captivating ease of manner, by no means imply confidence, or impulsive frankness. Like the twisted folds of a serpent rolled upon itself, their feelings are half hidden, half revealed. It requires a most attentive examination to follow the coiled linking of the glittering rings. It would be naive to interpret literally their courtesy full of compliment, ...
— Life of Chopin • Franz Liszt
... loves itself; but, though self-love may now and then give out a degree of virtue, slavery has none to lead those beyond its own atmosphere. To avoid, then, the terrors to which, even on the free soil of the north, a fugitive slave is constantly liable, as also that serpent-like prejudice—for into the puritanic regions of New England, forsooth, does slavery spread its more refined objections to colour—which makes the manners of one class cold and icy, while acting like a dagger in the hearts of the other, was it necessary ...
— Our World, or, The Slaveholders Daughter • F. Colburn Adams
... Indian. Drink and pass! he cried, handing the heavy charged flagon to the nearest seaman. The crew alone now drink. Round with it, round! Short draughts —long swallows, men; 'tis hot as Satan's hoof. So, so; it goes round excellently. It spiralizes in ye; forks out at the serpent-snapping eye. well done; almost drained. That way it went, this way it comes. Hand it me — here's a hollow! Men, ye seem the years; so brimming life is gulped and gone. Steward, refill! Attend now, my braves. I have mustered ye all round ...
— Moby-Dick • Melville
... like to see that!" he cried. "What is it like down there? Do sharks come by,—swish! with their great tails? And why don't they eat you, like the man in the geography book? And is there really a sea-serpent? And do the oysters open and shut their mouths, so that you can see the pearls, or how do you know which are the ...
— Nautilus • Laura E. Richards
... family, read with interest the name on Harry's card, seemed about to ask a question, but forbore, and took his leave amid the general confusion, without even giving his address. When sought next day, he was not to be found, and to the children he at once became as much a creature of romance as the sea-serpent or the ...
— Malbone - An Oldport Romance • Thomas Wentworth Higginson
... goes on, never heeding her,—'I can show you what the papers said of it at the time—Morning Chronicle and Examiner—spoke most ighly of it. My son as an infant Ercules, stranglin the serpent over the piano. Fust conception of my picture of 'Non Hangli ...
— The Newcomes • William Makepeace Thackeray
... furniture before he took in another sentence. That is just as a dentist jams one little bit of gold-foil home, and then another, and then another. He does not put one large wad on the hollow tooth, and then crowd it all in at once. Capel Lofft says that this reflection—going forward as a serpent does, by a series of backward bends over the line—will make a dull book entertaining, and will make the reader master of every book he reads, through all time. For my part, I think this is cutting it rather fine, this chopping the book up into ...
— How To Do It • Edward Everett Hale
... example, limited himself to the conversion of water into wine, He would have fallen short of the performance of Jannes and Jambres; for it is a smaller thing to convert one liquid into another than to convert a dead rod into a living serpent. But Jannes and Jambres, we are informed, were not good. Hence, if Mr. Mozley's test be a true one, a point must exist, on the one side of which miraculous power demonstrates goodness, while on the other side it does not. How is this 'point ...
— Fragments of science, V. 1-2 • John Tyndall
... be at first only passive, and yet afterward become active. For example, Gideon's ephod and the brazen serpent were monuments of God's mercies, and were neither evil nor appearances of evil; so that when people were first scandalised by them the scandal was merely passive, but the keeping and retaining of them, after that scandal rose out of them, made the scandal to become active also, ...
— The Works of Mr. George Gillespie (Vol. 1 of 2) • George Gillespie
... 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 ...
— Earth's Enigmas - A Volume of Stories • Charles G. D. Roberts
... collection; she had a clear record behind her of ten years of devotion, honesty, and disinterestedness; it was a magnificent investment, and now she proposed to realize. In one day, Remonencq's hint of money had hatched the serpent's egg, the craving for riches that had lain dormant within her for twenty years. Since she had cherished that craving, it had grown in force with the ferment of all the evil that lurks in the corners of the heart. How she acted upon the ...
— Cousin Pons • Honore de Balzac
... Patrick has great influence up in Heaven. He knew his fine Erse people would presently need more room than there was on Earth for them. So he'd a world set aside, and marked by the sign that no least trace of a serpent could exist on it. No creature like the one that blarneyed Mother Eve could be ...
— Attention Saint Patrick • William Fitzgerald Jenkins
... unsullied bliss, Her Demogorgon's doom shall Sin bewail, The undying serpent at the spheres shall hiss, And lash the empyrean with ...
— The Bon Gaultier Ballads • William Edmonstoune Aytoun
... some reason or other, to look down upon his own body, what was not his horror to find himself transformed into a serpent! His very cries and groans, on making the discovery, were turned into serpent's hisses. What was he to do? To go back like this to his native world, where snakes are hated, would be certain death. No plan presented itself to his mind. But, unconsciously, ...
— Aino Folk-Tales • Basil Hall Chamberlain
... upon the ledge and looked at the clearing. The Major saw nothing—merely the black background of earth, forest and sky. Nor did Henry see anything, but he believed that he heard something, a faint, sliding sound, perhaps like that of a great serpent when it trails its long length over the grass and leaves. It was such a noise as this that he was expecting, and he sought with attentive ear ...
— The Riflemen of the Ohio - A Story of the Early Days along "The Beautiful River" • Joseph A. Altsheler
... in the order of the late works should come in, if we may venture to judge from the technique of a work that is practically a ruin, the Adam and Eve of the Prado, in which, for the usual serpent with the human head of the feminine type, Titian has substituted as tempter an insignificant amorino. Far more enjoyable than this original in its present state is the magnificent copy, with slight yet marked variations, left behind by Rubens. ...
— The Later works of Titian • Claude Phillips
... forest, naked, all scratched and bleeding with thorns, with no courage in his heart, no strength in his hands! Look at me! I am not weak, but strong and black and fierce; I live here—this is my home; I fear nothing; I am like a serpent, and like brass and tempered steel—nothing can bruise or break me: my teeth are like fine daggers; when I strike them into the flesh of any creature I never loose my hold till I have sucked out all the blood in his heart. But you, weak little wretch, I hate you! ...
— A Little Boy Lost • Hudson, W. H.
... For the later Yoga see further Book V. I have recently received A. Avalon, The Serpent Power, from which it appears that the danger of the process lies in the fact that as Kundalini ascends, the lower parts of the body which she leaves become cold. The preliminary note on Yoga in Grieraon and Barnett's Lalla-Vakyani (Asiat. Soc.'s Monographs, vol. XVII. 1920) contains much valuable ...
— Hinduism and Buddhism, Vol I. (of 3) - An Historical Sketch • Charles Eliot
... hurled invisibly by Ravana upon them, and fall senseless. While Ravana seeks to restore Kumbhakarna, Hanuman, reviving, goes to fetch amrita, and tearing up the mountain that contains it, returns to the field: his very approach restores Lakshmana, who jumps up with increased animation, like a serpent starting from his shrivelled skin or the sun bursting from clouds. So Raghu's youngest hope, restored by heavenly herbs, burns with more than wonted ardour, wonders a moment what has chanced and then, all on fire for glory, rushes to the fight. Rama also revives, and instigated by the ...
— Tales from the Hindu Dramatists • R. N. Dutta
... to the camping-place I nearly trod on a large puff-adder; this I killed with a stone. Almost immediately afterwards the boy who had been sent for firewood came up with a vicious-looking black and yellow serpent squirming, broken-backed, on his stick. This was more than my nerves could stand, so after filling the billy and the canteens with water, we retired to a spot a few hundred yards away, up the hillside. Here the vegetation was less rank, so we ...
— Reminiscences of a South African Pioneer • W. C. Scully
... waters of 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 ...
— Lost in the Forest - Wandering Will's Adventures in South America • R.M. Ballantyne
... the Dragon!' said Graham, playing upon the name. 'Humph! he is more like the latter than the former. Mr Michael Cargrim is the young serpent as Satan is the ...
— The Bishop's Secret • Fergus Hume
... the great sea-serpent?" observed little Maikar, who had speedily recovered from the flattening to which Bladud had subjected him, and was busy enlivening a knot of young fellows in the bow ...
— The Hot Swamp • R.M. Ballantyne
... old woman growled, and pulled out a long knife, and drew it across the white neck of the child. Here something crawled forth from behind that they seemed not to perceive, or it must have struck them with the same thrilling terrour as Emilius. A serpent curled its loathsome neck, scale after scale, lengthening and still lengthening, out of the darkness, and stoopt down over the child, whose lifeless limbs hung from the old woman's arms: its black tongue lickt up the spirting red blood, and a green sparkling ...
— The Old Man of the Mountain, The Lovecharm and Pietro of Abano - Tales from the German of Tieck • Ludwig Tieck
... thane, is as a book where men May read strange matters. To beguile the time, Look like the time; bear welcome in your eye, Your hand, your tongue: look like the innocent flower, But be the serpent ...
— Familiar Quotations • John Bartlett
... destroy? God meant that all should freely life enjoy. The youthful knight for reptiles had, we find, Less dread than what prevails with human kind; He bore them in his arms:—they marked his birth; From noble Cadmus sprung, who, when on earth, At last, to serpent was in age transformed; The adder's bush the clown no longer stormed; No more the spotted reptile sought to stay, But seized the time, and ...
— The Tales and Novels, Complete • Jean de La Fontaine
... ten thousand eyes, the pressure of ten thousand hands, and the tone of ten thousand voices? Profound and ingenious policy! Instead of curing the disease, to remove those symptoms by which alone its nature can be known! To leave the serpent his deadly sting, and deprive him only of ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 2 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... Morbihan, or 'Little Sea,' an inland sea which gives its name to a department in the south of Brittany. The tumulus is 25 feet high, and covers a fine gallery 40 feet long, the stones of which bear the markings alluded to. Whorls and circles abound in the ornamentation, serpent-like figures, and the representation of an axe, similar to those to be seen in some of the Grottes aux Fees, or on the Dol des Marchands. The sculptures appear to have been executed with metal tools. ...
— Legends & Romances of Brittany • Lewis Spence
... fields, on the opposite side of the road to the residence of Justice Hare, and as Mr. Carlyle walked down the road to business in his unsuspicion (not one time in fifty did he choose to ride; the walk to and fro kept him in health, he said), Captain Levison would be strolling down like a serpent behind the hedge, watching all his movements, watching his interviews with Barbara, did any take place, watching Mr. Carlyle turn into the grove, as he sometimes did, and perhaps watch Barbara run out of the house to meet him. It was all related over, and with miserable ...
— East Lynne • Mrs. Henry Wood
... that as Jurgen and the Princess were nearing Gihon, a man came riding toward them, full armed in black, and having a red serpent with an apple in its mouth painted ...
— Jurgen - A Comedy of Justice • James Branch Cabell
... serpent was at my side with the speed of thought, his long clear knife glancing in one hand, while the fingers of the other were laid on his lips. He could not have said more plainly, "Hold your tongue or I'll cut your throat;" but Sneezer now startled him by rushing between us, and ...
— Tom Cringle's Log • Michael Scott
... present tense of the subjunctive mood, and that of the indicative when preceded by as soon as, after, before, till, or when, is generally used with reference to future time; as, "If he ask a fish, will he give him a serpent?"—Matt., vii, 10. "If I will that he tarry till I come, what is that to thee? Follow thou me."—John, xxi, 22. "When he arrives, I will send for you." The imperative mood has but one tense, and that is always present with regard ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown
... to mend the heart design'd, Quenching the fiery passions of mankind; When lurking hate and deadly rage combine, To charm the serpent of revenge is mine; By heavenly verse the furious deed restrain, And bid the lost ...
— Translations of German Poetry in American Magazines 1741-1810 • Edward Ziegler Davis
... and blue—so that the groups of dancers seemed to be in the midst of fireworks. In some respects, this performance recalled the military dance of the ancients, in the midst of naked swords; but this Tartar dance was rendered yet more fantastic by the colored fire, which wound, serpent-like, above the dancers, whose dresses seemed to be embroidered with fiery hems. It was like a kaleidoscope of sparks, whose infinite combinations varied at each ...
— Michael Strogoff - or, The Courier of the Czar • Jules Verne
... happened to stand about Him. "What man of you having a hundred sheep, and losing one, would not leave the ninety and nine in the wilderness, and go after that which was lost?" Or, again, "What man of you if his son ask for bread will he give him a stone, or if he ask for a fish will he give him a serpent?" This plainness, this almost prosaic camaraderie, is the note of all very ...
— Heretics • Gilbert K. Chesterton
... it," said Mr. Davis, fixing her with a glittering eye. "Do you remember the serpent I 'ad tattooed on my leg for ...
— Ship's Company, The Entire Collection • W.W. Jacobs
... and frequently found in other States, were the result of intention rather than accident. These are sometimes called "Effigy Mounds." In Wisconsin, even implements, as well as animals, are symbolized. The beaver, the tortoise, the elephant, the serpent, the alligator seem to be their favorite animals, whose images they have endeavored to perpetuate in mounds, of course on a large scale. In Adams county, Ohio, on a steep bluff, 150 feet above the level of Brush Creek, may be ...
— Mound-Builders • William J. Smyth
... the price tempting—only five hundred pounds. That economist, the Prince of Wales, could not resist it, and has bought one of those dickybirds. If the maker finds such customers, he will not end like one of his profession here, who made the serpent in Orpheus and Eurydice;(757) and who fell so deeply in love with his own works, that he did nothing afterwards but make serpents, of all sorts and sizes, till he was ruined and broke. I have not a tittle to add-but that the Lord Mayor did not fetch Madame du Barry in the City-royal coach; but ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole, V4 • Horace Walpole
... for the palace. It was a long, hard journey, on account of the melon-vines, that not only blocked the road, but even chased him. Many a narrow escape had he from being crushed to death in the embrace of some young tendril that would shoot out, wriggling and writhing toward him like a great green serpent. ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. 5, Nov 1877-Nov 1878 - No 1, Nov 1877 • Various
... and remnants of the columns of defence, rose and poured volley after volley, as they could, into the thick and concealing woods that lay before them. None the less, there appeared soon a long, dusty, faded line, trotting, running, walking, falling, stumbling, but coming on. It swept like a long serpent parallel to the works, writhing, smitten but surviving. It came on through the wood, writhing, tearing at the cruel abattis laid to entrap it. It writhed, roared, but it broke through. It swept over the rail fences that lay between ...
— The Girl at the Halfway House • Emerson Hough
... of their victory; festivals are celebrated and sacraments received with clean hearts and lips, and all the church's sons rejoice as it were in the fostering bosom of a mother. For this holy union remained between Christ their head and the members of his church, until the Arian treason, fatal as a serpent, and vomiting its poison from beyond the sea, caused deadly dissension between brothers inhabiting the same house, and thus, as if a road were made across the sea, like wild beasts of all descriptions, and darting ...
— On The Ruin of Britain (De Excidio Britanniae) • Gildas
... said Nicanor. "Nay then, I do not care, which is nearer truth. If I do not fear a fangless serpent in the grass, why ...
— Nicanor - Teller of Tales - A Story of Roman Britain • C. Bryson Taylor
... Lucifer which instead of being in the centre occupies the base of the picture. At the summit "Eriton cruda, che richiamava l'ombre a' corpi sui," is precisely in the same attitude as in the Pisan Camposanto, a figure holding a banner coiled around by a serpent, and near it is a simoniac with his entrails torn out, the identical figure from the Pisan Hell. The back view of the figure which a demon raises to throw into the jaws of a terrible monster is also copied ...
— Fra Angelico • J. B. Supino
... those that desire the Day of God! Wherefore would ye have the Day of God? It is darkness and not light. It is when one flees from a lion, And a bear meets him; Or goes into a house and leans his hand upon a wall, And a serpent bites him. Shall not the Day of God be darkness and not light, Yea, murky darkness, without a ...
— Stories of the Prophets - (Before the Exile) • Isaac Landman
... came to the Bagree camp a mysterious message. A yogi, his hair matted with filth till it stood twisted and writhed on his head like the serpent tresses of Medusa, his lean skeleton ash-daubed body clothed in yellow, on his forehead the crescent of Eklinga, in his hand a pair of clanking iron tongs, crawled wearily to the tents where were the decoits, and bleared ...
— Caste • W. A. Fraser
... now not Heav'n can bound, Now, serpent-like, in prose he sweeps the ground; In quibbles angel and archangel join, And God the ...
— Specimens of the Table Talk of S.T.Coleridge • Coleridge
... begin the new with a clean record. It is a measure absolutely necessary. The snake does not put on his new skin over the old one. He sloughs off the first, before he dons the second. He would be a very clumsy serpent, if he did not. One cannot have successive layers of friendships any more than the snake has successive layers of skins. One must adopt some system to guard against a congestion of the heart from plethora of loves. I go in for the much-abused fair-weather, skin-deep, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 10, Number 59, September, 1862 • Various
... Scorpion, and Balance, is the Serpent, reaching to the Crown with the end of its snout. Next, the Serpent-holder grasps the Serpent about the middle in his hands, and with his left foot treads squarely on the foreparts of the Scorpion. A little way from the head of the Serpent-holder is the head of the so-called ...
— Ten Books on Architecture • Vitruvius
... emperor, who had not lost consciousness for one moment, started as if stung by a serpent, and sprang at the physician's throat screaming while he ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... up and brooded over these months and years! all,—sparing her not a thought, not a passionate word. She tries to repel him, to escape, to scream for help; but he looks down her eyes with his own, holds her fast, and she gasps for breath. So the serpent coils about the dove, and stamps his ...
— Idolatry - A Romance • Julian Hawthorne
... in love?—is not that enough for you, eh? But must she be lascivious, gross, with a hoarse voice, a head of hair like fire, and rebounding flesh? Do you prefer a body cold as a serpent's skin, or, perchance, great black eyes more sombre than mysterious caverns? Look at these eyes ...
— The Temptation of St. Antony - or A Revelation of the Soul • Gustave Flaubert
... victim of Sekosini's wiles and his serpent tongue," answered the chief. "I should never have joined the conspiracy had he not led me secretly to believe that when thou wert gone I should be made king in thy stead. And the prospect dazzled me, for I believed that I ...
— The Adventures of Dick Maitland - A Tale of Unknown Africa • Harry Collingwood
... a sea-serpent which lived for years in that cove yonder," said the Captain, pointing to a pleasant bay on the starboard, "but I have not seen it lately. Unless I am in error, it had a pitched battle hereabouts with a kraken. I don't remember who got the better of the fight—but ...
— Tales of Fantasy and Fact • Brander Matthews
... but she had one son of a former marriage, who proved a noble trustworthy boy; and by degrees he crept into my heart, and raked together the cinders of my dead affections, and kindled a feeble flame that warmed my shivering old age. When I felt assured that I was not thawing another serpent to sting me for my pains, I adopted Thorton Prince, and with the aid of a Legislative enactment, changed his name to Prince Darrington. Only a few months elapsed, before his mother, of whom I was very fond, died of consumption and my boy and I comforted each other. Then I made my second ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson
... marries the Earth. The tendency of men being to claim descent from a God, for each family with this claim a myth of a separate divine amour was needed. Where there had existed Totemism, or belief in kinship with beasts, the myth of the amour of a wolf, bull, serpent, swan, and so forth, was attached to the legend of Zeus. Zeus had been that swan, serpent, wolf, or bull. Once more, ritual arose, in great part, from ...
— The Homeric Hymns - A New Prose Translation; and Essays, Literary and Mythological • Andrew Lang
... do you know, my dear, it was one of the most remarkable cigars I ever smoked." Mrs. Gallilee laid down her pen, and eyed him with an annihilating frown. In the extremity of his confusion Mr. Gallilee ventured nearer. He felt the sinister fascination of the serpent in the expression of those awful eyebrows. "How well you are looking! How amazingly well you are looking this morning!" He leered at his learned wife, ...
— Heart and Science - A Story of the Present Time • Wilkie Collins
... in each other's arms, time had no shore, and life was not. It might have been ten seconds, it might have been an eternity—they could not have told—no pang entered that serene haven where their souls were lapped in perfect happiness; no serpent entered into Eden; no harsh note struck upon their enchanted ears, nor jarring sight upon their sun-dazzled vision. Where in that moment was the duty and the honour that was a part of the man's very self? What to Vera was the rich marriage and the life ...
— Vera Nevill - Poor Wisdom's Chance • Mrs. H. Lovett Cameron
... was myself, who had stolen up last, had sidled behind the group: I am highest of all on the hill-top, there stand fixed while the others stoop! From head to foot in a serpent's twine am I tightened: I touch ground? No more than a gibbet's rigid corpse ...
— Browning's England - A Study in English Influences in Browning • Helen Archibald Clarke
... Puritanism, do not exclude it from their bare, white-washed fanes. In the Muensterthal, for instance, a valley of Romonsch speech, off the Lower Engadine, a tree decked with candles, festoons, presents, and serpent-squibs, stands in church at Christmas, and it is difficult for the minister to conduct service, for all the time, except during the prayers, the people are letting off fireworks. On one day between Christmas Eve and New Year there is ...
— Christmas in Ritual and Tradition, Christian and Pagan • Clement A. Miles
... error upon which Mill most insists, is our proneness to substitute a hasty inference for a just representation of the fact before us; as when a yachtsman, eager for marvels, sees a line of porpoises and takes them for the sea-serpent. Every one knows what it is to mistake a stranger for a friend, a leaf for a sparrow, one word for another. The wonder is that we are not oftener wrong; considering how small a part present sensation has in perception, and how much of every object observed is supplied ...
— Logic - Deductive and Inductive • Carveth Read
... great massive pedestal, as it were, supporting mountain piled on mountain, with caps of snow whitening their summits, and great glaciers hanging on their sides. Before us lay the town,—built upon a gnarled spur of primitive rock, which seemed to have crept from underneath the lofty cliffs, as a serpent from its hiding-place, and, after wriggling through the sea, to have stopped at length, when it had almost completely enclosed a beautiful sheet of water about a mile long by half a mile broad, leaving ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 117, July, 1867. • Various
... heathen nations; perhaps among almost all of them, at some time or other. It is the custom now among the Red Indians in North America, where you will find one man in a tribe called 'The Bull,' another 'The Panther,' and another 'The Serpent,' and so on; showing that they would like to be, if they could, as strong as the bull, as cruel as the panther, as venomous as the serpent. What wonder that those Red Indians, who have so put on the likeness of the beasts, are now dying off the face of the earth like the beasts ...
— Sermons for the Times • Charles Kingsley
... superior; "would to God that instead of reviling each other, all denominations of Christians would join in thus bruising the head of the serpent which seeks ...
— The Privateer's-Man - One hundred Years Ago • Frederick Marryat
... armed with large hooks, adorned with silk fringe, in four rows one above another; two other files of men in armor, some bearing maces with long handles; others, maces in the form of a hand, or of a serpent: others, equipped with large hammers and long hatchets like a crescent. Other guards bearing sharp axes: some, weapons like scythes, only strait. ...
— A Treatise on the Art of Dancing • Giovanni-Andrea Gallini
... strange being, sensible of his serpent-like fascination, even while he repelled her. It flashed across her consciousness that he was something more than human, something worse—the embodiment of malevolent purpose—a man devoid of good—the ...
— The Devil - A Tragedy of the Heart and Conscience • Joseph O'Brien
... Account of such things as have really happened, or at least of such things as have happened according to the received Opinions of Mankind. Milton's Fable is a Masterpiece of this Nature; as the War in Heaven, the Condition of the fallen Angels, the State of Innocence, and Temptation of the Serpent, and the Fall of Man, though they are very astonishing in themselves, are not only credible, but actual Points ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... fact, the various ways of forming nicknames or descriptive names, are all used in the pre-Conquest personal names. We find Orme, i.e. serpent or dragon (cf. Great Orme's Head), Wulf, i.e. Wolf, Hwita, i.e. White, and its derivative Hwiting, now Whiting, Saemann, i.e. Seaman, Bonda, i.e. Bond, Leofcild, dear child, now Leif child, etc. But, except ...
— The Romance of Names • Ernest Weekley
... and who never gave their prisoners better quarter than to devour them, but that they must likewise endure heats that were insupportable, and rains that were intolerable, every drop of which was changed into a serpent: that, if they penetrated farther into the country, they would be assaulted by monsters a thousand times more hideous and destructive than all the beasts mentioned ...
— The Memoirs of Count Grammont, Complete • Anthony Hamilton
... objects of the Druid worship were chiefly serpents, in the animal world, and rude heaps of stone, or great pillars without polish or sculpture, in the inanimate. The serpent, by his dangerous qualities, is not ill adapted to inspire terror,—by his annual renewals, to raise admiration,—by his make, easily susceptible of many figures, to serve for a variety of symbols,—and by all, to be an object of religious observance: accordingly, no object of idolatry has ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. VII. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... must see through dreams, Be mine Elysian gleams, Be mine by morning streams To watch and wander; So may my spirit cast (Serpent-like) off the past, And my free soul at ...
— English Songs and Ballads • Various
... me, sisters, in my realm of wo, Whose only glory streams From its lost childhood, like the artic glow Which sunless Winter dreams! In the red desert moulders Babylon, And the wild serpent's hiss Echoes in Petra's palaces of stone And ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII No. 6 June 1848 • Various
... destruction of "Lutheranism" in France as an accomplished fact! The passage is not unworthy of notice. After explaining the significance of the fleurs-de-lis on the royal escutcheon by the wonderful efficacy of the lily as the antidote of the serpent's poison, and remarking that the kings of France had thrice extracted the mortal virus from the bite of Mohammed, "serpentis venenosi," the writer adds: "Et, his temporibus, videmus nostram fidem et religionem Christianam sanatam esse a morsu pestiferi ...
— The Rise of the Hugenots, Vol. 1 (of 2) • Henry Martyn Baird |
