"Viper" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... about Ms jury. But withal, he gave no fair grounds for any such retort as is falsely attributed to Emmet, the very style of which proves its falsity. It is now well known that the apostrophe in the death-speech, commencing "you viper," alleged to have been addressed to Plunkett, was the interpolation many years afterwards of that literary Ishmaelite—Walter Cox of the Hibernian Magazine,—who through such base means endeavoured to aim a blow at Plunkett's reputation. The personal reputation of ...
— A Popular History of Ireland - From the earliest period to the emancipation of the Catholics • Thomas D'Arcy McGee
... am," said Zell, sternly. "As the one stung is related to the viper that stung him," and with a withering look ...
— What Can She Do? • Edward Payson Roe
... large eyes, for thy sake it is, O thou of the splendour of the filaments of the lotus, that Kama is incessantly piercing me with his keen shafts without stopping for a moment! O amiable and cheerful girl, I have been bitten by Kama who is even like a venomous viper. O thou of swelling and large hips, have mercy on me! O thou of handsome and faultless features, O thou of face like unto the lotus-petal or the moon, O thou of voice sweet as that of singing Kinnaras, my life now depends on thee! Without thee, O timid one, I am unable to live! ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 1 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... receives no more gratitude than it deserves. The young of her own sex secretly rejoiced at her unamiability, regarding it as a providential set-off against her beauty, while they detested and denounced her as a—well, they would say viper in the manger, who spoiled everybody else's lovers and would have none of her own. For with all Mithridata's severity, there was no getting rid of the young men, the giddy moths that flew around her brilliant but baleful candle. Not all the cold water thrown ...
— The Twilight of the Gods, and Other Tales • Richard Garnett
... that shuts away the shore-line to the south. The long stretch of sands is delightful. They are dotted all over with the glaucous leaves and brilliant flowers of the yellow-horned poppy, and bristling blue viper's bugloss, and on the inland edge there is a scattered border of the rest-harrow's pink butterfly blossoms. The short turf beyond is sprinkled with the little white bladder campion and thrift ...
— Devon, Its Moorlands, Streams and Coasts • Rosalind Northcote
... provoked; He looks upon you as worthy of nothing else but to be cast into the fire;... you are ten thousand times as abominable in His eyes as the most hateful and venomous serpent is in ours.' The comparison of man to a loathsome viper is one of the metaphors to which Edwards most habitually recurs (e.g. vii. 167, 179, 182, 198, 344, 496). No relief is possible; Edwards will have no attempt to explain away the eternity of which ...
— Hours in a Library, Volume I. (of III.) • Leslie Stephen
... he is her husband. He can make her live with him. He can—" Here he broke out cursing and blaspheming, and called Grace a viper, and half thrust her away from him with horror, and his face filled with jealous anguish: he looked like a man dying ...
— Put Yourself in His Place • Charles Reade
... skull, stag's horn, the heads of mice, the eyes of crabs, owl's brains, liver of frogs, viper's fat, grasshoppers, bats, etc., these supplied the alkalis which were prescribed. Physicians were accustomed to order doses of the gall of wild swine. It is presumed the tame hog was not sufficiently efficacious. There were ...
— Life in a Thousand Worlds • William Shuler Harris
... till—till it became, as it always does when left to itself, a fool, a very fool. Its plunderings might have been overlooked, and so might its insolence, had it been common insolence, but it—, and then the roar of indignation which arose from outraged England against the viper, the frozen viper which it had permitted to warm itself upon ...
— Lavengro - The Scholar, The Gypsy, The Priest • George Borrow
... recognizing him when in the future they should chance to meet. And then she abated her severity to the extent of thanking the Count with tears in her eyes for the service that he had done her in tearing off this viper's disguise. Naturally, the Count was charmed by Ma-dame Carthame's energetic indignation. He perceived that his unselfish investigations of the actions of Monsieur Jaune were bearing excellent fruit. Already, as he believed, the way toward ...
— Short Story Classics (American) Vol. 2 • Various
... of my rank with these vulgar furies," complained one, who much resembled the others, but was far more hideous than a winged serpent. "Oh, that he would send hither seven hundred of the basest demons of hell in exchange for thee, thou poisonous hellworm," cried another ugly viper. "Many thanks to you," quoth a gigantic devil, overhearing them, "we regard our place and worth as something better; though ye would cause everyone as much pain as we, yet we do not choose to be deprived of our office in your favor." "And Lucifer ...
— The Visions of the Sleeping Bard • Ellis Wynne
... the beast dropped at once, covering its face with its brush, and keeping only its quick, vigilant eye fixed upon the invaders of its repose. 'Come to the fire if ye will!' said she, turning to Glaucus and his companions. 'I never welcome living thing—save the owl, the fox, the toad, and the viper—so I cannot welcome ye; but come to the fire without welcome—why ...
— The Last Days of Pompeii • Edward George Bulwer-Lytton
... deadliest rapier in the western shires. Poor boy! he would scarcely have had the heart to do his uttermost against Mabel's father; but better will and skill would have availed little against the thirsty point that came creeping along his blade and leaping over his guard like a viper's tongue. At the sixth pass his enemy shook him heavily off his sword, wounded to the death. He had tried explanation before, utterly in vain; but the true heart would make one effort more to get justice done, before it ...
— Sword and Gown - A Novel • George A. Lawrence
... should still be allowed to eat horseflesh and to practice exposure of infants.[980] In old German law infanticide was treated as the murder of a relative. The guilty mother was buried alive in a sack, the law prescribing, with the ingenious fiendishness of the age, that a dog, a cat, a rooster, and a viper should also be placed in the sack.[981] In ancient Arabia the father might kill newborn daughters by burying them alive. The motive of the old custom was anxiety about provision for the child and shame at the disgrace of having become ...
— Folkways - A Study of the Sociological Importance of Usages, Manners, Customs, Mores, and Morals • William Graham Sumner
... he again filled the glass; "we cannot be too much so. We must avoid rum and gin as we would a viper! How I abhor the very name of rum! O, Mr. Dayton, think of the misery it has brought upon man! I had a sister once, a beautiful, kind-hearted creature. She was married to an industrious man; all was fair, prospects bright. By degrees he got into ...
— Town and Country, or, Life at Home and Abroad • John S. Adams
... soldiers, no commander, For this King Ferdinand of Hungary Is but a tyro. Gallas? He's no luck, And was of old the ruiner of armies. And then this viper, this Octavio, Is excellent at stabbing in the back, But ne'er meets Friedland in the ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. III • Kuno Francke (Editor-in-Chief)
... prepared to welcome the young heir to his home. But, alas! no human skill could avert the dark fate which clung to him. The last night he had to pass alone in the turret, a bundle of faggots was conveyed to him as usual, in which lay concealed a viper, which clung to his hand. The bite was fatal; and, instead of being borne in triumph, the dead body of his only son was the sad spectacle which met the sight ...
— Three Years in Europe - Places I Have Seen and People I Have Met • William Wells Brown
... the house was the ladies'-maid, a thin and wizened spinster, Madeleine Vivet by name. This Madeleine, in spite of, nay, perhaps on the strength of, a pimpled complexion and a viper-like length of spine, had made up her mind that some day she would be Mme. Pons. But in vain she dangled twenty thousand francs of savings before the old bachelor's eyes; Pons had declined happiness accompanied by so ...
— Cousin Pons • Honore de Balzac
... marvellous network which the fern extends as a canopy over the wood strawberry; she had listened to the murmuring of streams through the long reeds and stems of the water-grass, where the hissing of the "amorous viper" may be heard; she had followed the wild leaps of the Will-with-a-wisp as it bounds over the surface of the meadows and marshes; she had pictured to herself the chimerical dwelling-places toward which it perfidiously attracts the benighted ...
— Life of Chopin • Franz Liszt
... can play at fencing as well as you, Mr. REDMOND BARRY. Ah! you change colour, do you—your secret is known, is it? You come like a viper into the bosom of innocent families; you represent yourself as the heir of my friends the Redmonds of Castle Redmond; I inthrojuice you to the nobility and genthry of this methropolis' (the Captain's brogue was large, and his words, by preference, long); 'I take you ...
— Barry Lyndon • William Makepeace Thackeray
... the idea that there is no reason why you should not be courageous. If any fear-thoughts come to you cast them off as you would the deadly viper. Form the habit of never thinking of anything unfavorable to yourself or anyone else. In dealing with difficulties, new or old, hold ever the thought, "I am courageous." Whenever a doubt crosses the threshold of your mind, banish it. Remember, ...
— The Power of Concentration • Theron Q. Dumont
... opera should he shun? Where crowds of critics smiling run, To applaud their Allegrante. Why is it worse than viper's sting, To see them clap, or hear her sing? Surely he's ...
— Autobiography, Letters and Literary Remains of Mrs. Piozzi (Thrale) (2nd ed.) (2 vols.) • Mrs. Hester Lynch Piozzi
... his head had swollen up till it was almost as big as his body. It frightened me so much that I screamed. Martine came running up, and she began screaming too, and everybody came. I explained what had happened the day before, and the farmer said that the sheep must have been bitten by a viper. He would have to be cared for, and must be left in the stable until the swelling had gone down. I asked nothing better than to look after the poor brute, but when I was alone with it I felt frightened to death. That enormous head, which wobbled on the little body, made me half crazy ...
— Marie Claire • Marguerite Audoux
... perhaps unusual for a gentleman to conduct his love-making with his hat on, but the audience was not "viper-critical" and allowed some latitude to Mr. Montague Ponsonby. They admired the ardor with which he pressed his suit, the fervor of his protestations of fidelity, the dramatic roll of his dark eyes, ...
— The Princess of the School • Angela Brazil
... he continued, "while I skin this painted viper. I have your oath; you will not reveal. I am an alchemist, sir. Since I was twenty-two years old, I have pursued the wonderful and subtle secret. Yes, to unfold the mysterious Rose guarded with ...
— Stories by Modern American Authors • Julian Hawthorne
... bring Caroline anything, no matter what, it is never equal to what Monsieur Deschars has done. If you allow yourself the slightest gesture or expression a little livelier than usual, if you speak a little bit loud, you hear the hissing and viper-like remark: ...
— Petty Troubles of Married Life, Part First • Honore de Balzac
... vitality, serves as a remedy for boils. The sting of a hornet is healed by the house-fly crushed and applied to the wound. The gnat, feeble creature, taking in food but never secreting it, is a specific against the poison of a viper, and this venomous reptile itself cures eruptions, while the lizard is the antidote to the scorpion.[191] Not only do all creatures serve man, and contribute to his comfort, but also God "teacheth us through the beasts of the earth, and maketh us wise through the fowls of heaven." He endowed many ...
— The Legends of the Jews Volume 1 • Louis Ginzberg
... persons who have been bitten by a viper, and who have nevertheless recovered by the application of timely remedies, are never again the same in health as they were before. At times they are swollen, or feel acute pains, or have a morbid and depraved appetite for what they should not eat. At other times they feel a general languor, which ...
— The Happiness of Heaven - By a Father of the Society of Jesus • F. J. Boudreaux
... whit of his vigilance. Leslie then asked permission to purchase supplies for his army, that he might evacuate Charleston. The wary Greene refused to allow it, for in so doing he might be nourishing a viper ...
— Washington and the American Republic, Vol. 3. • Benson J. Lossing
... it. Sir J. D. Hooker, in describing this species in the Botanical Magazine, t. 6, 152, says that the aspect of the curved scape as it bears aloft its buds and hairy flowers is very suggestive of the head and body of a viper about to strike. Dr. Haughton, F.R.S., told me long ago that Darlingtonia californica always reminds him of a cobra when raised and puffed out in a rage, and certainly the likeness is ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 384, May 12, 1883 • Various
... under no restraint, and whether all self-command was lost in passion, or whether there was an idea that bullying might gain the day, Mrs. Morton's voice rose into a shrill scream as she denounced the nasty, mean-spirited viper, ...
— That Stick • Charlotte M. Yonge
... this cruel feeling still exists in Barbadoes. Prejudice is the last viper of the slavery-gendered brood that dies. But it is evidently growing weaker. This the reader will infer from several facts already stated. The colored people themselves are indulging sanguine hopes that prejudice will shortly die away. They could discover ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... head of a fish of that name, the Chelonites, a grass-green stone found in a swallow's belly, the Draconites, which must be cut out of the head of a live serpent, the Hyaenia from the eye of the Hyaena, and the Saurites from the bowels of a green lizard. All these and the Echites, or viper-stone, were credited with extraordinary magical virtues, and many of the assertions of later writers about the toad-stone are clearly due to their having calmly transferred the marvellous stories about other imaginary stones to the imaginary toad-stone. The only stone in ...
— More Science From an Easy Chair • Sir E. Ray (Edwin Ray) Lankester
... said, still speaking very distinctly and quietly, "I was desperately ambitious. I was bitten by the viper whose poison, stealing through all a man's veins, is emulation. My only desire, my only aim in life was to beat all the men of my year, to astonish all the authorities of the hospital to which I was attached by the brilliance of my attainments and ...
— Tongues of Conscience • Robert Smythe Hichens
... other 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 fatal, like that of the cerastes; birds are ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 1 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... variance. It was my duty, as your captain, to propose that our laws should be enforced. Tell me, now, what is it that you wish. I am only here as your captain, and to take the sense of the whole crew. I have no animosity against that lad; I have loved him—I have cherished him; but like a viper, he has stung me in return. Instead of being in arms against each other, ought we not to be united? I have, therefore, one proposal to make to you, which is this: let the sentence go by vote, or ballot, if you please; and whatever the ...
— The Pirate and The Three Cutters • Frederick Marryat
... the proverb, 'If his ear were as quick as his eye, No man should pass him by'—caught sight of us immediately, and he turned back. The hedge was hollow there, and the mound grown over with close-laid, narrow-leaved ivy. The viper did not sink in these leaves, but slid with a rustling sound fully exposed above them. His grey length and the chain of black diamond spots down his back, his flat head with deadly tooth, did not harmonise as the green snake does with leaf and grass. ...
— Field and Hedgerow • Richard Jefferies
... brain from the [2641] lower parts, "as smoke out of a chimney") to dote, speak, and do that which becomes them not, their persons, callings, wisdoms. One by reason of those ascending vapours and gripings, rumbling beneath, will not be persuaded but that he hath a serpent in his guts, a viper, another frogs. Trallianus relates a story of a woman, that imagined she had swallowed an eel, or a serpent, and Felix Platerus, observat. lib. 1. hath a most memorable example of a countryman of his, that by chance, falling into a pit where frogs ...
— The Anatomy of Melancholy • Democritus Junior
... The dead despondency of those sunk eyes, Where once, had he thus met her by surprise, He would have seen himself, too happy boy, Reflected in a thousand lights of joy: And then the place,—that bright, unholy place, Where vice lay hid beneath each winning grace And charm of luxury as the viper weaves Its wily covering of sweet balsam leaves,[87]— All struck upon his heart, sudden and cold As death itself;—it needs not to be told— No, no—he sees it all plain as the brand Of burning shame can mark—whate'er the hand, That could from Heaven and him such brightness sever, ...
— The Complete Poems of Sir Thomas Moore • Thomas Moore et al
... am not mad—pray Heaven I were! Oh, that they had strangled me in the first hour of my birth, as they would a viper, rather than I should have lived through all this life of misery and guilt, to end it by this last, worst ...
— The Midnight Queen • May Agnes Fleming
... men no more since the world hath such as thee. I was a viper to fling thy poor dinner away; a ...
— The Cloister and the Hearth • Charles Reade
... at Carpaccio, even in my copy. The colorist says, "First of all, as my delicious paroquet was ruby, so this nasty viper shall be black"; and then is the question, "Can I round him off, even though he is black, and make him slimy, and yet springy, and close down—clotted like a pool of black blood on the earth—all the same?" Look at him beside Michael ...
— Lectures on Landscape - Delivered at Oxford in Lent Term, 1871 • John Ruskin
... thought the prettiest, was named Laura; she was a married young lady with one child. They were to depart on the morrow. At about eleven or twelve o'clock that night, Laura came to where my bed was fixed, and asked me to take her to see Tommy, this being her last opportunity. "You little viper," I was going to say, but I jumped up and led her quietly across the camp to where Tommy was fast asleep. I woke him up and said, "Here, Tommy, here's Laura come to say 'good-bye' to you, and she wants to give you a kiss." To this the uncultivated young cub replied, rubbing ...
— Australia Twice Traversed, The Romance of Exploration • Ernest Giles
... Bishop had been reading the Rev. F. Robertson's sermon about St. Paul and the viper. It was late, and being rather sleepy he carried the book in one hand and a candle in the other into his dressing-room, and was just going to set the candle down, when his eye fell on a cobra, coiled ...
— Sketches of Our Life at Sarawak • Harriette McDougall
... you shall not be the loser. Get up, you little viper!"—this to Williams, who was still writhing himself into the most ...
— The Firm of Girdlestone • Arthur Conan Doyle
... secure. As to her virtues, amiability seems to have been of their number. "Unmatcht for beauty, chaster than the ayre," wrote one poet. When they opened her head it was discovered she had little brain; and gossip attributed the fact to her having drunk viper-wine—by her husband's advice—for her complexion. This sounds absurd only to those who have not perused the Receipts in Physick and Chirurgery. Little brain or not, her husband praised her wits. Ben Jonson wrote with devotion of her "who was ...
— The Closet of Sir Kenelm Digby Knight Opened • Kenelm Digby
... little old man, with a humpback, a sack, and a large shallow box. He was dressed in a queer costume, had a wolf's brush in his hat, and remarkably tight-fitting leather leggings. "Tre! fra altri una vipera meschia." "Oh! oh! aspetta," added we—we must see the viper. Upon which there was a broad grin all round the circle; but the driver stopped, and down we got. The old man, seeing our intention to be serious, got a chair for us from a cottage, and putting his box on his knee, looked ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 58, Number 360, October 1845 • Various
... ending by turning on its back, limp and apparently lifeless. When it thinks danger is past it recovers its normal position and quickly gets away. This snake is known popularly as the "Flat-headed Adder," the "Puff Adder," "Viper" and ...
— Pathfinder - or, The Missing Tenderfoot • Alan Douglas
... that daredevil boy down at Llanystumdwy all those years ago. I am quite sure that the peers who observed him surveying them did not think he was benignant. If I am any judge of feelings, they looked upon him, as he stood there at the bar, as a particularly malignant type of viper. With a genial smile Lloyd George exchanged a chatty word or two with an M. P. at his side. No one would have guessed that there was bitterness in his soul at this assembly or that with grim purpose he was even now marking out the destruction of ...
— Lloyd George - The Man and His Story • Frank Dilnot
... paces up and down the room, holding the sketch close to his eyes, holding it away from him, patting it, clapping his son delightedly on the shoulder. "Capital! capital! We'll have the picture printed, by Jove, sir; show vice it's own image; and shame the viper in his own nest, sir. That's what ...
— The Newcomes • William Makepeace Thackeray
... words, for they are true. I come not to spy out the secrets of Tartarus, nor to try my strength against the three-headed dog with snaky hair who guards the entrance. I come to seek my wife, whose opening years the poisonous viper's fang has brought to an untimely end. Love has led me here, Love, a god all powerful with us who dwell on the earth, and, if old traditions say true, not less so here. I implore you by these abodes full of terror, these realms of silence and uncreated things, unite again the ...
— Bulfinch's Mythology • Thomas Bulfinch
... speculations, to the Browns, who are at breakfast—a meal that has been intruded upon by John; who has recounted enough of a certain story to put Jemima in hysterics, and Angelina in a fainting fit—bringing down a hurricane of abuse upon him—John, the impertinent menial—John, the venomous viper, that has recoiled upon its benefactor—John, the dark villain, that has plotted with the unworthy man, Spohf, who, of course, out of mere envy, mere spite, mere jealousy, would try to overturn that harmony that is not to be broken so easily—that ...
— Christmas Comes but Once A Year - Showing What Mr. Brown Did, Thought, and Intended to Do, - during that Festive Season. • Luke Limner
... thing! What did you want to kill the poor young creatures for? And then to boast of it!—But no, not a viper. A lady.' ...
— Grey Roses • Henry Harland
... may attribute the unhappy change to overwork, overstudy, or some similar cause; but from a somewhat extended observation we are thoroughly convinced that the very vice which we are considering is the viper which blights the prospects and poisons the existence of ...
— Plain Facts for Old and Young • John Harvey Kellogg
... is the trust I built my hopes upon! Thus one by one they leave me. Oh ye gods! Treason and cowardice alone stir up The sullen currents of their slavish souls. Oh, what a fool am I with all my hopes! I would destroy yon viper's nest, that Rome,— Which is long since a ...
— Early Plays - Catiline, The Warrior's Barrow, Olaf Liljekrans • Henrik Ibsen
... from the Evangelists[115] that, when St. Paul, after he had been shipwrecked, and escaped to the island of Malta, a viper fastened on his hand as he was laying a bundle of sticks, he had gathered, on the fire; and that, by a miracle, and to the great astonishment of the spectators, inhabitants of the island, he not only suffered no harm, but also cured, by the divine power, the chief of the island, ...
— Thaumaturgia • An Oxonian
... saw a lawyer killing a viper On a dunghill hard by his own stable; And the Devil smiled, for it put him in mind Of Cain and ...
— English Satires • Various
... slave to him. "Oh! do not despise me for my feebleness! I have lived in the palace. I can wind like a viper through the walls. Come! in the Ancestor's Chamber there is an ingot of gold beneath every flagstone; an underground ...
— Salammbo • Gustave Flaubert
... food drives them to frenzy, or kills them. They will all eat flesh, and when shut up in a cage without nourishment, have been known to devour each other. There is a remarkable instance of a mole, when in confinement, having a viper and a toad given to it, both of which it killed and devoured. All squeeze out the earthy matter which is inside worms, before eating them, which they do with the most eager rapidity. In June and July, they prowl upon the surface of the ground, generally at night, but they ...
— Anecdotes of the Habits and Instinct of Animals • R. Lee
... 501. This word properly means, 'a female viper;' but it here refers to the Hydra, or dragon of the marsh of Lerna, which Hercules slew. It was fabled to be partly a woman, and partly a serpent, and to have been begotten by Typhon. According to some accounts, ...
— The Metamorphoses of Ovid - Vol. I, Books I-VII • Publius Ovidius Naso
... me. I was a mental incompetent, but like many others in a similar position I was both by antecedents and by training a gentleman. Vitriol could not have seared my flesh more deeply than the venom of this human viper stung my soul! Yet, as I was rendered speechless by delusions, I could offer not so much as a word of protest. I trust that it is not now too late, however, to protest in behalf of the thousands of outraged patients in private and state hospitals whose mute submission ...
— A Mind That Found Itself - An Autobiography • Clifford Whittingham Beers
... Had a viper raised its head in M. Wilkie's path he would not have recoiled more quickly. "Never!" he exclaimed. "Ah, no! What do you take ...
— Baron Trigault's Vengeance - Volume 2 (of 2) • Emile Gaboriau
... kick 'em an' wale 'em. An' they notice it less 'an the ass did to Balaam; In this way they screw into second-rate offices Wich the slaveholder thinks 'ould substract too much off his ease; The file-leaders, I mean, du, fer they, by their wiles, Unlike the old viper, grow fat on their files. Wal, the Wigs hev been tryin' to grab all this prey frum 'em An' to hook this nice spoon o' good fortin' away frum 'em, 120 An' they might ha' succeeded, ez likely ez not, In lickin' the Demmercrats ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell
... to bite, whereas Doctor Brazil informed me that it was almost impossible to make the mussurama bite a man. The king-snake will feed greedily on other snakes in the presence of man—I knew of one case where it partly swallowed another snake while both were in a small boy's pocket. It is immune to viper poison but it is not immune to colubrine poison. A couple of years ago I was informed of a case where one of these king-snakes was put into an enclosure with an Indian snake- eating cobra or hamadryad ...
— Through the Brazilian Wilderness • Theodore Roosevelt
... tried to squeeze more money out of me. He had been living in luxury for some time, while I was broke almost continually. I kicked and refused to give up. Then he had the insolence to threaten me with exposure. I lost my head and choked him. Directly after that he turned like a viper and blowed everything to Merriwell. That was my downfall. I had to skip. Is there any reason why I should not ...
— Frank Merriwell's Races • Burt L. Standish
... followed you into the Louvre court. Take care! She has noticed, envious creature, that you are very much moved as you take leave of your companion, and that you let your hand remain for a second in his! This old maid 'a l'anglaise' has a viper's tongue. To-morrow you will be the talk of the Louvre, and the gossip will spread to the 'Ecole des Beaux-Arts', even to Signol's studio, where the two daubers, your respectful admirers, who think of cutting their throats ...
— A Romance of Youth, Complete • Francois Coppee
... it has made me beautiful, could I with justice complain of you for not loving me? Moreover, you must remember that the beauty I possess was no choice of mine, for, be it what it may, Heaven of its bounty gave it me without my asking or choosing it; and as the viper, though it kills with it, does not deserve to be blamed for the poison it carries, as it is a gift of nature, neither do I deserve reproach for being beautiful; for beauty in a modest woman is like fire at a distance or a sharp sword; the one does not burn, ...
— Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... of women are thus bound up generally differ from those to which men commit their external souls. A witch never has a panther for her familiar, but often a venomous species of serpent, sometimes a horned viper, sometimes a black serpent, sometimes a green one that lives in banana-trees; or it may be a vulture, an owl, or other bird of night. In every case the beast or bird with which the witch or wizard has contracted this mystic alliance is an individual, ...
— The Golden Bough - A study of magic and religion • Sir James George Frazer
... having offered him the smallest injury, though it was of a well known venomous species. The surrounding Indians, who beheld this singular spectacle with astonishment—like the barbarians of Melita, when the Apostle Paul shook off the viper—began to consider him as a sort of divinity, and determined to follow him wherever he went. They now, in fact, eagerly flocked after him, in crowds, with the idea that no harm could possibly come to them while they were in his ...
— The Life of the Right Honourable Horatio Lord Viscount Nelson, Vol. I (of 2) • James Harrison
... thing, as fair as may be, Without a dad conceived a baby, And brought him forth without the pother In labour made by teeming mother. Yet the cursed brat feared not to gripe her, But gnawed, for haste, her sides like viper. Then the black upstart boldly sallies, And walks and flies o'er hills and valleys. Many fantastic sons of wisdom, Amazed, foresaw their own in his doom; And thought like an old Grecian noddy, A human ...
— Gargantua and Pantagruel, Complete. • Francois Rabelais
... Plutarch's account of what Thespesius saw when his soul was ravished away into hell for a time, we are told that he saw the soul of Nero dreadfully tortured, transfixed with iron nails. The workmen forged it into the form of a viper; when a voice was heard out of an exceeding light ordering it to be transfigured into a milder being; and they made it one of those creatures that sing and croak in the sides of ponds and marshes.14 When Rosalind finds the verses with which her enamored Orlando had hung the trees, ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger
... practical and otherwise, which were perpetually made at his expense, and yet never ceased, it seemed wilfully, to expose himself to them. He was constantly wounded, and yet his good-nature was such that he could not bear malice: the viper might sting him, but he never learned by experience, and had no sooner recovered from his pain than he tenderly placed it once more in his bosom. His life was a tragedy written in the terms of knockabout ...
— The Moon and Sixpence • W. Somerset Maugham
... time,' said he. There is a big boat-house at the bottom of the garden containing a large sea-going motor-boat. The proprietor calls himself English, but does not look like one. He is doubtless a snake, one whom they call naturalise, a viper whom we English have warmed in our bosoms.' So spake the Inspector. The Sub-Lieutenant whistled. He said only, 'Send for little Tommy; it is a job for him.' A call was sent forth, and there came into the room a scrap of an infant, habited in short pantaloons and a green shirt. The child ...
— The Lost Naval Papers • Bennet Copplestone
... all—all, and have but few words to cast upon a thing so vile as you have become. If I submit to your presence for a moment it is because that agony must be endured in order that I may cast you from me at once, like the viper that ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 2 August 1848 • Various
... for our good impart, To purify thy brother's heart. Yes, we are base, and vile, and hateful, Cruel, and shameless, and ungrateful— Impotent and heartless tools, Slaves, and slanderers, and fools. Come then, if charity doth sway thee, Chase from our hearts the viper-brood; However stern, we will obey thee; Yes, we will ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Vol 58, No. 357, July 1845 • Various
... sculpture is priesthood; it preserves the ideas of an epoch, and you give its chair to a maker of toys and mantelpieces, an ornamentationist, a seller of bric-a-brac! Ah! as Chamfort said, one has to swallow a viper every morning to endure the life of Paris. Well, at any rate, Art remains to a few of us; they can't prevent ...
— Unconscious Comedians • Honore de Balzac
... tyrant! Thrash him! Hang him! Tar and feather the viper's fry! the wizard! the body-snatcher!" bellowed the mob, one member of which was raving with delirium tremens, and another was a madman ...
— Doctor Grimshawe's Secret - A Romance • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... the wall Andropono and Moschine He cast into the ditch: a priest the first; The second, but a worshipper of wine, Drained, at a draught, whole runlets in his thirst; Aye wonted simple water to decline, Like viper's blood or venom: now immersed In this, he perishes amid that slaughter; And, what breeds most affliction, dies ...
— Orlando Furioso • Lodovico Ariosto
... "How come you think I'd soil my shadow letting that viper trail it, boss? I never disobeyed you before, Mr. Secretary, but that trash can show hisself out!" and Jonas withdrew to his own office, while Brown, shrugging his shoulders, opened and ...
— The Enchanted Canyon • Honore Willsie Morrow
... struggles, so wearisome at times that it almost seemed better to yield than to feel the continued anguish of such mighty temptations. All this the man must always go through who has warmed in his bosom the viper whose poisoned fang has sent infection into his blood. But through God's grace Hazlet was victorious: and as, when the civilisation of some infant colony is advancing on the confines of a desert, the wild beasts retire before it, until they become rare, and their howling is ...
— Julian Home • Dean Frederic W. Farrar
... "That viper? Certainly. Nobody is talking of her. Nobody expects better of her. There is no villainy she will stick at, if it feed her spite; and she hates her son. Her signing it is of no ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... conclude, for want of time only—I have but touched on the beginning of my subject,—understand clearly and finally this simple principle of all art, that the best is that which realizes absolutely, if possible. Here is a viper by Carpaccio: you are afraid to go near it. Here is an arm-chair by Carpaccio: you who came in late, and are standing, to my regret, would like to sit down in it. This is consummate art; but you can only have that with consummate means, and exquisitely trained ...
— Ariadne Florentina - Six Lectures on Wood and Metal Engraving • John Ruskin
... 9-18. The lines cut, 6-8, read in translation: "No tigress wild for her lost cubs, / No viper burned by the noon sun, / No scorpion begets such fear." In line 11, line 8 of the translation, Nicole reads canenti for the received cacanti. The latter reading will yield in translation a ...
— An Essay on True and Apparent Beauty in which from Settled Principles is Rendered the Grounds for Choosing and Rejecting Epigrams • Pierre Nicole
... accession the Visconti had already rooted out the Correggi and Rossi of Parma, the Scotti of Piacenza, the Pelavicini of San Donnino, the Tornielli of Novara, the Ponzoni and Cavalcabo of Cremona, the Beccaria and Languschi of Pavia, the Fisiraghi of Lodi, the Brusati of Brescia. Their viper had swallowed all these lesser snakes.[1] But the Carrara family still ruled at Padua, the Gonzaga at Mantua, the Este at Ferrara, while the great house of Scala was in possession of Verona. Gian Galeazzo's ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volume 1 (of 7) • John Addington Symonds
... moment will be granted. Thunders are the rumbling which S. Elias makes with his car. Amulets are worn, especially near the Turkish border. It is considered lucky to spill wine on oneself. To meet a snake, a viper in the house, or a centipede crawling over the walls is also lucky. On the other hand, misfortune attends crackling wood, the birth of black lambs, the entering a house left foot first, sitting at table seven or thirteen in number, giving drink with the left hand, spilling oil or salt, ...
— The Shores of the Adriatic - The Austrian Side, The Kuestenlande, Istria, and Dalmatia • F. Hamilton Jackson
... [To Piz. But martial law shall punish thy offence. And you, [To the Christian Priest. Who saucily teach monarchs to obey, And the wide world in narrow cloisters sway; Set up by kings as humble aids of power, You that which bred you, viper-like, devour, You ...
— The Works of John Dryden, Vol. II • Edited by Walter Scott
... make it appear to the world that there never lived a viler viper upon the face of the earth than thou. Thou art a monster; thou hast an English face, but a Spanish heart. Thou viper! for I thou thee, thou traitor! Have I ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. II (of 3) - Edited, With Memoir And Notes, By His Son, The Earl Of Beaconsfield • Isaac D'Israeli
... was no mystic. She swung her eyes back to me: "TK!" she gasped. She recoiled from me. She'd had a viper to her bosom. ...
— Vigorish • Gordon Randall Garrett
... reminded. So that is your name—not Eve—but Clodagh, who was a Poisoner, you see? She poisoned a poor man who trusted her: and that is your name now—not Eve, but Clodagh—to remind me, you most dangerous little speckled viper! And in order that I may no more see your foolish little pretty face, I decree that, for the future, you wear a yashmak to cover up your lips, which, I can see, were meant to be seductive, though dirty; and you ...
— The Purple Cloud • M.P. Shiel
... kindness in disguise, become snakes and scorpions to whip him. Tired of various pursuits, he at last becomes an author, and publishes a book, which is very much admired, and which he loves with his usual inordinate affection; the book, consequently, becomes a viper to him, and at last he flings it aside and begins another; the book, however, is not flung aside by the world, who are benefited by it, deriving pleasure and knowledge from it; so the man who merely wrote to gratify self, has already done good to others, and got himself an honourable ...
— The Romany Rye - A Sequel to 'Lavengro' • George Borrow
... bring her to. This the smuggler paid no sort of regard to: and we all began to suspect some mistake: as the light increased, and we could use our glasses with effect, we found too certainly that there was. The smuggler was painted so as to resemble the Viper; and Sir Morgan had taken her for that vessel on the night before: but we now suspected (and the event proved) that she was her partner, the Rattlesnake—a ship of much greater force with a piratical crew from the South Seas, and strengthened by some of the picked ...
— Walladmor: - And Now Freely Translated from the German into English. - In Two Volumes. Vol. II. • Thomas De Quincey
... the name's a good one. It's more viperous than any other snake of the viper bunch, an' its disposition is mean and yellow right through. ...
— Plotting in Pirate Seas • Francis Rolt-Wheeler
... Bart 'ave sich a brat, I 'ope he dies in his cradle, instead of growing to a galler's thief in th' use of words which make me shudder, let alone my pretty. Ugh!" she shook her fist at Tray. "You Old Bailey viper, though ...
— The Opal Serpent • Fergus Hume
... prove himself a discreet servant of Alfonso. Soon after reaching Ferrara, Tasso thought that he was gaining ground. He hints that the duke showed signs of raising him to such greatness and showering favors upon him so abundant that the sleeping viper of Court envy stirred. Montecatino now persuaded his master that prudence and his own dignity indicated a very different line of treatment. If Tasso was to be great and honored, he must feel that his reputation flowed wholly from the princely favor, not from ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volumes 1 and 2 - The Catholic Reaction • John Addington Symonds
... be red instead of white, but as it is difficult to get red cloth, except in the shape of handkerchiefs, a substitution has been made, the two colors having a close mythologic relation. In former days a piece of buckskin and the small glossy, seeds of the Viper's Bugloss (Echium vulgare) were used instead of the cloth and beads. The formulistic name for the bead is sn[)i]kta, which the priests are unable to analyze, the ordinary word for beads or ...
— Seventh Annual Report • Various
... said the tyrant. "You shall do that. Down with you. And you conspire with him against me, do you, viper? There, that ...
— Wuthering Heights • Emily Bronte
... what they can do to us. If the lady who bought the red hat could have known the hidden nature of it, could have had a vision of herself as she was transformed by it, she would as soon have taken a viper into her bosom as have placed the red tempter on her head. Her whole previous life, her feeling of the moment, show that it was not vanity that changed her, but the inconsiderate association with a Thing that happened to strike her fancy, and which seemed innocent. But no Thing is really ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... vice : (prefix), vie-, victim : viktimo, oferajxo. victory : venko, triumfo, sukceso. view : vidajxo; perspektivo. vigilant : vigla. vine : vinberujo. violate : malrespekti, malvirtigi. violence : perforto. violet : violo. violin : violono. viper : vipero, kolubro. virago : megero. virgin : virgulino, virga. virile : vira. virtue : virto. virus : veneno, viruso. viscid : glueca. vision : vizio, vidado. visit : viziti. vocabulary : vortaro. voice : vocxo. void : eljxeti, ...
— The Esperanto Teacher - A Simple Course for Non-Grammarians • Helen Fryer
... letter-box! I opened it because the postman rang and that doesn't happen every day. It was full of straw and horsehair and spiders' webs, with enough feathers to make a quilt, and, in the midst of all that, a beast that I didn't see hissed at me like a viper!" ...
— International Short Stories: French • Various
... have a thousand times heard me call the young man to whom you are so faithful a friend, my son. Little did I then think he was indeed related to me at all.—Your friend, madam, is my nephew; he is the brother of that wicked viper which I have so long nourished in my bosom.—She will herself tell you the whole story, and how the youth came to pass for her son. Indeed, Mrs Miller, I am convinced that he hath been wronged, and that I have been abused; abused by one whom you too justly suspected of being a villain. He is, in ...
— The History of Tom Jones, a foundling • Henry Fielding
... But in the spider we find a very different piece of machinery for the injection of the poison. It is formed by a pair of peculiarly modified legs which act as jaws, and are armed each with a powerful claw, at the tip of which, as in the poison-fang of the viper, is a small hole. Out of this hole a drop of poison oozes when the prey is seized, and this has the effect of paralysing the victim. The poison is formed in a curious bag, or 'gland' (G.L), which communicates with the claw by means of ...
— Chatterbox, 1905. • Various
... and bear before his coming, The wild-cat glared, the viper hissed; And died the long day's insect-drumming. Where things of night began their humming, And witchly phantoms went to ...
— Tales of the Chesapeake • George Alfred Townsend
... drew from the bosom of her gown a very small coffer of silver, its chiseling worn smooth by innumerable caresses. Poor soul! it was in her bosom that she had cherished this pretty little box, more cruelly fatal than a viper. ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1920 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... viper yet!" he muttered between his teeth, and, reaching out for the first thing to hand, his long smooth fingers locked around the neck of the Great Dane—so tight that the dog, half strangled and snarling, ...
— The Title Market • Emily Post
... my face!" roared the Nottingham wrestler, pushing his way to the front, "you little viper, so I snatched at him to give him ...
— Robin Hood • Paul Creswick
... that tradition delivered by so many, of the young vipers killing their mother in raving[l69] her belly to win furth, and that wt the horrid peine she suffers in the bringing furth her young she dies, which also I have heard Mr. Douglas—preaching out of the last of the Acts about that Viper that in the Ile of Malta (wheir they are a great more dangerous then any wheir else) cleave to Pauls hand—affirme at least as a thing reported by naturalists, the etymon of the Greek word [Greek: hechidnae] ...
— Publications of the Scottish History Society, Vol. 36 • Sir John Lauder
... the attraction which the uncanny and even the horrible have for most minds. I have seen a delicate woman half fascinated, but wholly disgusted, by one of the most unseemly of reptiles, vulgarly known as the "blowing viper" of the Alleghanies. She would look at it, and turn away with irresistible shuddering and the utmost loathing, and yet turn to look at it again and again, only to experience the same spasm of disgust. In spite of her ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... buttress was built across a chord of the apse, in the early part of the thirteenth century. In the course of the restoration of the tower which was recently carried out, this buttress was taken away, and its removal laid bare a fresco painting, representing St. Paul and the viper at Melita. This piece of decoration, as need hardly be said, must have been put in before the construction of the buttress which has concealed and preserved it for nearly seven centuries; it is conjectured, ...
— The Cathedral Church of Canterbury [2nd ed.]. • Hartley Withers
... effective—as a parlour-trick. Those hens pecked the catch loose, and that cockatrice fairly staggered them. It was to them a clear case of "nourishing a viper." But all ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, May 21, 1919. • Various
... horse done to you? What had this poor woman done to you? What, sir, had your heavenly Father done to you, that you should fill your mouth with curses against us all? Your enemy was none of us, but that viper, strong drink. ...
— Women of the Country • Gertrude Bone
... rupture; he only desired the prosperity of the march, and that peace should reign throughout the camp; but Bombay was suspicious of him, and malignantly abused him, for what reason Baraka could not tell. When I spoke of this to Bombay, like a bird fascinated by the eye of a viper, he shrank before the slippery tongue of his opponent, and could only say, "No, Sahib—oh no, that is not it; you had better turn me off, for his tongue is so long, and mine so short, you never will believe me." I tried to ...
— The Discovery of the Source of the Nile • John Hanning Speke
... emphatically, raising his head, and dashing away bitter tears; "the world has decided that question for me, and all have said in one harsh, united voice, 'You shall not rise.' It has ground me under its heel as vindictively as if I were a viper. You are so unlike the world that you don't know it. It has given ...
— A Knight Of The Nineteenth Century • E. P. Roe
... themselves, mother dear, and our friend is not a fool." He tapped his teeth with a thumb nail reflectively. "Yes—yes—yes. We must curtail his activities. Can't have the old viper sending messages. Settle down at ...
— Men of Affairs • Roland Pertwee
... attacks them with gloomy malignity, as if he were dragging to justice an assassin or incendiary. The one stings like a fly, sucks a little blood, takes a gay flutter, and returns for more; the other bites like a viper, and would be glad to leave inflammations and gangrene behind him. When I think on one, with his confederates, I remember the danger of Coriolanus, who was afraid that girls with spits, and boys with stones, should slay him in puny battle; when the other crosses my imagination, ...
— Prefaces and Prologues to Famous Books - with Introductions, Notes and Illustrations • Charles W. Eliot
... leader of the little "Young England Party," and was to be seen in Punch's cartoon as a viper gnawing at the "old file," Sir Robert Peel. Then came the triumph of Free Trade, duly celebrated by John Leech in one ...
— The History of "Punch" • M. H. Spielmann
... that my daughter was safe, and out of the power of that viper, whom I have warmed in my bosom, death would ...
— La Vendee • Anthony Trollope
... himself with the greatest moderation and even kindness towards me, and never uttered one single offensive or unkind sentence in the whole of his eloquent harangue. But the little, waspish, black-hearted viper, Gibbs, whose malignant, vicious, and ill-looking countenance was always the index of his little mind, made a most virulent, vindictive, and cowardly attack upon me, which was so morose and unfeeling, and so uncalled for by the circumstances, that, if I had not been held ...
— Memoirs of Henry Hunt, Esq. Volume 1 • Henry Hunt
... habits—those false links, which bind At times the loftiest to the meanest mind—[sd] Have given her power too deeply to instil The angry essence of her deadly will;[se] If like a snake she steal within your walls, Till the black slime betray her as she crawls; If like a viper to the heart she wind, And leave the venom there she did not find; 50 What marvel that this hag of hatred works[sf] Eternal evil latent as she lurks, To make a Pandemonium where she dwells, And reign the Hecate of domestic hells? Skilled by ...
— The Works Of Lord Byron, Vol. 3 (of 7) • Lord Byron
... 1775, we surprised a large viper, which seemed very heavy and bloated, as it lay in the grass basking in the sun. When we came to cut it up, we found that the abdomen was crowded with young, fifteen in number; the shortest of which measured full seven inches, and were about the size of full-grown earth-worms. This little ...
— The Natural History of Selborne, Vol. 2 • Gilbert White
... write your promises in water, or better in oil, black-scaled viper. We know what time of day it is with us, and what ...
— A Victor of Salamis • William Stearns Davis
... "Well, you little viper," he said, taking her by the arm when he had fastened the reins to a hook in front of the leathern apron which closed the carriole and the horse had started on a trot, "do you think you can keep Bonnebault by giving way to such violence? If you were a wise girl you would promote ...
— Sons of the Soil • Honore de Balzac
... nature, Sir, and she will and must do it, or I don't believe she'd have her health. But never mind,' said Brass, 'never mind. I've carried my point. I've shown my confidence in the lad. He has minded the office again. Ha ha! Ugh, you viper!' ...
— The Old Curiosity Shop • Charles Dickens
... own outpourings of genius, a poem called "The Tigress," in which someone, presumably the author, described the torments involved in his adoration of a feminine person with "jetty brows and lambent eyes," whose kiss was like "a viper's sting" and who had, so to speak, raised the very dickens with his feelings. He read it with passionate fervor, and Captain Dan, listening, decided that the Tigress must ...
— Cap'n Dan's Daughter • Joseph C. Lincoln
... of the story of "The Cock." One (Pitre, No. 279), "The Wolf and the Finch," opens like the Venetian. The animals are: Cock, king; Hen, queen; Viper, chambermaid; Wolf, Pope; and Finch, keeper of the castle. The wolf then proceeds to confess the others, and eats them in turn until he comes to the finch, which plays a joke on him and flies away. The conclusion ...
— Italian Popular Tales • Thomas Frederick Crane
... reflections could we stop here, and contemplate the ascending prosperity and increasing vigor of this religious community. But the one half has not yet been told,—the beginning has hardly been begun. Could I borrow the language of the spirits of wrath,—was my pen transmuted to a viper's tooth dipped in gore,—was my paper transformed to a vellum which no light could illume, and which only darkness could render legible, I could, and I would, record a tale of blood, of which the ...
— A Collection of College Words and Customs • Benjamin Homer Hall
... with the suspected liquid and made the unfortunate prisoner drink every drop of it. When he had finished, we waited for a few minutes (like the people who watched St. Paul on the Island of Melita after he had shaken off the viper into the (p. 313) fire) to see if he would swell up or die, but as nothing of that kind happened we all began to fill our water-bottles. Just as the last man was about to fill his, a big shell landed in the garden next to us, and he, catching up his empty bottle, ran off saying, "I'm not thirsty ...
— The Great War As I Saw It • Frederick George Scott
... whims, and, instead of leaving you with a curse, as all the rest did that ever knew you, and as you deserve, I bought your consent to lead a respectable life, and be blessed with a virtuous love. You took the bribe, but robbed me of the blessing—viper! You have destroyed me, body and soul—monster! perhaps blighted her happiness as well; you she-devils hate an angel worse than Heaven hates you. But you shall suffer with us; not your heart, for you have none, but your pocket. You have broken ...
— A Terrible Temptation - A Story of To-Day • Charles Reade
... aware of all this they would not only be careful how they marry immoral men, but they would shrink from personal contact with them as from a viper. Not one, but many girls who have held somewhat lax ideas concerning the propriety of allowing young men to be familiar have reaped the result in a contamination merely through the touch of the lips. To-day a young woman in good social standing is a sufferer ...
— What a Young Woman Ought to Know • Mary Wood-Allen
... Romans, viper-like, Seek to bewray their fellow-citizens. O wretched world, from whence with speedy flight True love, true zeal, true honour ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. VII (4th edition) • Various
... the greenhouse to the barn, I saw three kittens (for we have so many in our retinue) looking with fixed attention at something, which lay on the threshold of a door, coiled up. I took but little notice of them at first, but a loud hiss engaged me to attend more closely, when behold—a viper! the largest I remember to have seen, rearing itself, darting its forked tongue, and ejaculating the afore-mentioned hiss at the nose of a kitten, almost in contact with his lips. I ran into the hall for a hoe with a long handle, with which I intended to assail him, and returning in a few seconds ...
— Cowper • Goldwin Smith
... exclaimed old Hinkley, who re-entered the room at this moment, and had heard the last words of the speaker. "You shall not leave the house. Had I fifty sons, and they were all to behave in the manner of this viper, they should all leave it before you should stir from ...
— Charlemont • W. Gilmore Simms
... have kicked a man when he was down,' he said. 'He would have tried to do good even to the viper he had nourished.' ...
— A Dozen Ways Of Love • Lily Dougall
... lion, tiger, wolf, or bear knew greed Hungrier than that man felt for human blood; Nor viper with more venomous fang ...
— The Autobiography of Benvenuto Cellini • Benvenuto Cellini
... better care of himself," cried the king fiercely. "Not alone have you wronged me to enrich yourself, but you are ever intriguing with my enemies. I have nourished in my breast a viper; but I will cast you off—will crush you as I would ...
— Windsor Castle • William Harrison Ainsworth
... How such a viper came to warm itself on the bishop's hearth no one could say. Mrs Pansey herself did not know in what particular way Mr Cargrim had wriggled himself—so she expressed it—into his present snug position. But, to speak frankly, there was no wriggling ...
— The Bishop's Secret • Fergus Hume
... 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 ...
— A Friend of Caesar - A Tale of the Fall of the Roman Republic. Time, 50-47 B.C. • William Stearns Davis
... also used. It was thought that the poison of the Spanish fly existed in the body, while the head and wings contained the antidote. "A hair of the dog that bites you" is the cure for hydrophobia, the fat of the viper was the remedy for its bite, and "three scruples of the ashes of the witch, when she had been well and carefully burnt at a stake, is a sure catholicon against all ...
— Three Thousand Years of Mental Healing • George Barton Cutten
... Such "viper thoughts" did at this time coil around his mind, and were for him "Reality's dark Dream." In this state of mind he suddenly left Cambridge for London, and strolled about the streets till night came on, and then rested ...
— The Life of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - 1838 • James Gillman
... turbulent mother. He was sent to a reformatory at ten years of age, and there showed himself, as he has always done when his organization had given him a chance, quiet, well-behaved, and obedient. Then at fourteen years old he had a great fright from a viper—a fright which threw him off his balance, and started the series of psychical oscillations on which he has been tossed ever since. At first the symptoms were only physical, epilepsy and hysterical paralysis of the legs; and at the asylum of Bonneval, whither ...
— Real Ghost Stories • William T. Stead
... things to say to the Englishman just fresh from his island-country, and she urged him with an enthusiasm of curiosity, which ere long thawed Hunsden's reserve as fire thaws a congealed viper. I use this not very flattering comparison because he vividly reminded me of a snake waking from torpor, as he erected his tall form, reared his head, before a little declined, and putting back his hair from his broad Saxon forehead, showed unshaded the ...
— The Professor • (AKA Charlotte Bronte) Currer Bell
... industrious has he been. The most loathsome reptiles, as we see in the economy of nature, have their uses; "the toad, ugly and venomous, wears yet a precious jewel in his head;" the spider, cunning and fierce, is not without his uses; the wily serpent has his office, the viper was not made in vain, and as the mighty plan of the Great Creator of the Universe is above the comprehension of man, we may wonder at, but never understand why beings in the guise of men, were ever formed, who know no patriotism, no gratitude, none of the ...
— The Great North-Western Conspiracy In All Its Startling Details • I. Windslow Ayer
... upon your course, and let him crawl on upon his. Take no more heed of him than if he were a viper. Archibald, ...
— East Lynne • Mrs. Henry Wood
... folded arms, looked at him with quiet scorn. "It is the nature of the viper to use his venom," he said calmly. "Such a thing ...
— Prisoners of Hope - A Tale of Colonial Virginia • Mary Johnston
... "That woman is a viper!" he said. "In my house she has enjoyed every comfort and every consideration, and in return she has dealt me this foul blow. She will ...
— Helping Himself • Horatio Alger
... to deny the force of the language. But I cannot separate thought and form: and if I do occasionally admire this Hebrew God, it is with the same sort of admiration that I feel for a viper, or a ...—(I'm trying in vain to find a Shakespearean monster as an example: I can't find one: even Shakespeare never begat such a hero of Hatred—saintly and virtuous Hatred). Such a book is a terrible ...
— Jean Christophe: In Paris - The Market-Place, Antoinette, The House • Romain Rolland
... first thought of all of us, on finding a snake in the grass, would be, Is it a venomous one? So I think you will like to know that poisonous snakes are rare in Europe; and Mr. Wood [Footnote: Natural History p. 521.] tells us that the Viper, which is our only venomous serpent, is one of those least dangerous to life, although far from a friend to those who shrink from pain. It may be known by dark spots down the back. When we speak of venomous serpents, we mean those whose ...
— Twilight And Dawn • Caroline Pridham
... least expecting or prepared to sustain the pang. Not an honest gentlemanly gout that will exhibit itself and meet one fairly toe to toe with the inflammation of undisguised passion; but an adder, a viper of the nerves that stings and flies; and darts and disappears before the flesh has even time to blush for its existence; so subtle yet so tormenting, so deep yet so evanescent, that the patient in his agony half wonders whether ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, April 1844 - Volume 23, Number 4 • Various
... there has accidentally some occult desiccative property been found out of curing kibed heels, or as if in the radish we eat for food there has been found out some aperitive operation. Galen reports, that a man happened to be cured of a leprosy by drinking wine out of a vessel into which a viper had crept by chance. In this example we find the means and a very likely guide and conduct to this experience, as we also do in those that physicians pretend to have been directed to by the example of some beasts. But in most of their other experiments wherein they affirm they ...
— The Essays of Montaigne, Complete • Michel de Montaigne
... uneasy in mind had they been left with you. They were rale good dogs, and would mind you, master Oscar, most as well as me. I am satisfied of one thing, that there is no beere in the hisland, and you won't be eat up, and certainly there never can be another such viper as that there, as took two dogs, swallowing Daisy. But I write, young gents, to beg you to be careful, and to mind them sharks; I have heard they swallow all things, and are particular fond of bright ...
— Yr Ynys Unyg - The Lonely Island • Julia de Winton
... with you, Eudora; but while I love you, I cannot and ought not to love the bad feelings you cherish. Believe me, my dear friend, the insults of others can never make us wretched, or resentful, if all is right within our own hearts. The viper that stings us is always nourished within us. Moreover, I believe, dearest Eudora, that half your wrongs are in your own imagination. I too am a foreigner; but I have been very happy ...
— Philothea - A Grecian Romance • Lydia Maria Child
... have been the time for the asking; and Algernon waited dinnerless until the healthy-going minutes distended and swelled monstrous and horrible as viper-bitten bodies, and the venerable Signior, Time, became of unhealthy hue. For this was the first dinner which, during the whole course of the young man's career, had ever been failing to him. Reflect upon the ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... capybara, Linn.; chiguire.) the galinazo vulture,* (* Vultur aura, Linn., Zamuro, or Galinazo: the Brazilian vulture of Buffon. I cannot reconcile myself to the adoption of names, which designate, as belonging to a single country, animals common to a whole continent.) the crocodile, the viper, and the rattlesnake. The gaseous emanations, which are the vehicles of this aroma, seem to be evolved in proportion only as the mould, containing the spoils of an innumerable quantity of reptiles, worms, and insects, begins ...
— Equinoctial Regions of America • Alexander von Humboldt |
