"Basilisk" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... of Christians. The Nature of Things is not dumb, but very loquacious, affording Matter of Contemplation. The Description of a neat Garden, where there is a Variety of Discourse concerning Herbs. Of Marjoram, Celandine, Wolfs-Bane, Hellebore. Of Beasts, Scorpions, the Chamaeleon, the Basilisk; of Sows, Indian Ants, Dolphins, and of the Gardens of Alcinous. Tables were esteemed sacred by the very Heathens themselves. Of washing Hands before Meat. A Grace before Meat out of Chrysostom. Age is to be honoured, and ...
— Colloquies of Erasmus, Volume I. • Erasmus
... ever love me! All will hate and flee from me, as from a basilisk or cockatrice, or the Loathly Worm ...
— Grisly Grisell • Charlotte M. Yonge
... lay an egg! And do you know what's in that egg? A basilisk. No one can stand the sight of such a thing; people know that, and now you know it too—you know what is in me, and what a champion of all ...
— Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen • Hans Christian Andersen
... what an appalling rencontre! She looked as pale as the corpses which she adored; she would have shrieked, but had no more voice than a ghost; she would have fled, but was riveted as with the gaze of a basilisk. ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I. February, 1862, No. II. - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... carriage. No doubt his object was a sinister one, and when I saw him speak to the constable at the station, I had no doubt in my own mind that my liberty was not worth five minutes' purchase. But even so, anything seemed better than his basilisk eye in the corner of ...
— Boycotted - And Other Stories • Talbot Baines Reed
... curious animal, not often seen, was the well-named Gila monster or Escorpion (Heloderma suspectum), the only existing animal that fills the description of the Basilisk or Cockatrice of mediaeval times; not the Basilicus Americanus, which is an innocent herbivorous lizard. This Gila monster is a comparatively small, but very hideous creature, in appearance like a lizard, very sluggish in ...
— Ranching, Sport and Travel • Thomas Carson
... was of the blond type known as "medium," and her measurements even went the required 38-25-42 standard a little better. She had been at Zizzbaum's two years, and knew her business. Her eye was bright, but cool; and had she chosen to match her gaze against the optic of the famed basilisk, that fabulous monster's gaze would have wavered and softened first. ...
— The Trimmed Lamp • O. Henry
... a scowl, into which it seemed as if he would willingly have thrown the power of the fabled basilisk. Then stepping proudly forward, he stalked into the room. He was followed by Lawford and Gray at a little distance. The messenger remained in the doorway. The unhappy young woman had heard the disturbance, and guessed the cause too truly. It ...
— The Surgeon's Daughter • Sir Walter Scott
... for our lord and master Ogul, whose cattle thou seest on the bank of that river at the end of the meadow. We are his most humble slaves. The lord Ogul is sick. His physician hath ordered him to eat a basilisk, stewed in rose water; and as it is a very rare animal, and can only be taken by women, the lord Ogul hath promised to choose for his well-beloved wife the woman that shall bring him a basilisk; let me go on in my search; for thou seest what I shall lose if I am prevented ...
— Library of the World's Best Mystery and Detective Stories • Edited by Julian Hawthorne
... by the plentiful application of metaphysics. Hence even such strong men as St. Isidore of Seville treasured up accounts of the unicorn and dragons mentioned in the Scriptures and of the phoenix and basilisk in profane writings. Hence such contributions to knowledge as that the basilisk kills serpents by his breath and men by his glance, that the lion when pursued effaces his tracks with the end of his tail, that the pelican nourishes her young with her own blood, that serpents lay aside their ...
— History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom • Andrew Dickson White
... periodical rest in her lap, and without any abating or concealment, fixes PIKE with a basilisk glare which continues. He is unconscious of all this, his back being three-quarters ...
— The Man from Home • Booth Tarkington and Harry Leon Wilson
... turned up on the losing side, one of the other players cried with a laugh, 'Good-luck, Signor Vertua, good-luck! Don't lose heart. Go on staking; you look to me as if you would finish with breaking the bank through your immense winnings.' The old man shot a basilisk-like look upon the mocker and hurried away, but only to return at the end of half an hour with his pockets full of gold. In the last taille he was, however, obliged to cease playing, since he had again lost all the money he ...
— Weird Tales, Vol. II. • E. T. A. Hoffmann
... look it? Good heavens, girl, you needn't basilisk me so, to see if I do! You glare as if I were some kind of abnormal beast eating with its eyes, or ...
— Everyman's Land • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... warning came this time from the eyes of a man, a lithe, keen-faced man who flashed a look of triumphant malice on us as he disappeared in the waiting-room of the ferry-shed. But the keen face, and the basilisk glance were burned into my mind in that moment as deeply as though I had known then what ...
— Blindfolded • Earle Ashley Walcott
... those features and that voice once were, now would I rather have encountered the eyes of a basilisk and the notes ...
— Jane Talbot • Charles Brockden Brown
... in fight: On the deck strange accents and shouting; rough furcowl'd men of the north, Genoa's brown-neck'd sons, and whom swarthy Smyrna sends forth: Freights of the south; drugs potent o'er death from the basilisk won, Odorous Phoenix-nest, and spice of a sunnier sun:— Butts of Malvasian nectar, Messene's vintage of old, Cyprian webs, damask of Arabia mazy with gold: Sendal and Samite and Tarsien, and sardstones ruddy as wine, Graved by Athenian diamond with forms of beauty ...
— The Visions of England - Lyrics on leading men and events in English History • Francis T. Palgrave
... bryche That er was bothe stoute and ryche." In the Romance of Alexander, ed. Stevenson, we find the form bicchid briched (?). Cf. shille and shrille, etc. "And on the a[gh]tent day, eftire the prime A basilisk in a browe, breis (annoys) thaim unfaire, A stra[gh]till and a stithe worme stinkande of elde, And es so bitter, and so breme, and bicchid (foul) in himselfe, That with the stinke and the strenth he stroyes no[gh]t allane, Bot quat he settes on his si[gh]t, he slaes ...
— Early English Alliterative Poems - in the West-Midland Dialect of the Fourteenth Century • Various
... soon. By some fatality I had drawn the body directly to the spot where the last fading shafts of light would hover about its face. Not for a paradise of peace would I touch the loathsome thing again to hide it in the shadows. I could neither take my eyes from it nor put my hands upon it. Like the basilisk of fable it held my gaze charmed, fixed it, bound it fast. Crouch as I might in the remotest corner, cover my face in my mantle, still that searching, penetrating thing pierced all obstacles, glared grisly and distinct ...
— The Black Wolf's Breed - A Story of France in the Old World and the New, happening - in the Reign of Louis XIV • Harris Dickson
... situated near the south-east entrance to Rocky Pass, between Basilisk and Hayter Islands, and formed, in all probability, during their sojourn in these parts, the centre of their various excursions to the islands ...
— The First Discovery of Australia and New Guinea • George Collingridge
... valleys. 'They saw it, they marvelled'—in wonder, perhaps, at its beauty, as they first catch sight of its glittering whiteness from some hill crest on their march; or, perhaps, stricken by some strange amazement, as if, basilisk-like, its beauty were deadly, and a beam from the Shechinah had shot a nameless awe into their souls—'they were ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... Jaculus there, and Seps (25) whose poisonous juice Makes putrid flesh and frame: and there upreared His regal head, and frighted from his track With sibilant terror all the subject swam, Baneful ere darts his poison, Basilisk (26) In sands deserted king. Ye serpents too Who in all other regions harmless glide Adored as gods, and bright with golden scales, In those hot wastes are deadly; poised in air Whole herds of kine ye follow, and with coils Encircling close, crush in the mighty bull. Nor does the elephant ...
— Pharsalia; Dramatic Episodes of the Civil Wars • Lucan
... is his mind that is more crooked than his back. He is a perilous man with women, for the Devil hath given him such a tongue and such an eye that he charms them even as the basilisk. Marriage may be in their mind, but never in his, so that I could count a dozen and more whom he has led to their undoing. It is his pride and his boast over ...
— Sir Nigel • Arthur Conan Doyle
... pig-whip in his hand, and by an adroit turn of his muscular wrist he parried a blow that would have stopped the old Jew's eloquence perhaps forever. As it was, the corn-factor's stick cut like a razor through the air, and made a most musical whirr within a foot of the Jew's ear. The basilisk look of venom and vengeance he instantly shot back amounted to ...
— It Is Never Too Late to Mend • Charles Reade
... victory, or the milder snake Crushing the bones of some frail antelope Within his brazen folds—the dewy lawn, Offering sweet incense to the sunrise, smiles 380 To see a babe before his mother's door, Share with the green and golden basilisk That comes to lick his feet, his ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Volume I • Percy Bysshe Shelley
... her defences against the basilisk fascinating Philippa; and with a vow to keep them apart and deprive him of his chance, she relapsed upon the stiff frigidity which was not natural to her. It lasted long enough to put him on his guard under ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... paint forth their fairest fair, Or in part but to express That exceeding comeliness Which their fancies does so strike, They borrow language of Dislike, And instead of Dearest Miss, Honey, Jewel, Sweetheart, Bliss, And, those forms of old admiring, Call her Cockatrice and Syren, Basilisk and all that's evil, Witch, Hyena, Mermaid, Devil, Ethiop wench, and Blackamoor, Monkey, Ape, and twenty more, Friendly Traitress, Loving Foe: Not that she is truly so, But no other way they know A contentment to express, Borders so upon ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Vol. 5 • Edited by E. V. Lucas
... Walked in the wilderness; Soft words of grace he spoke Unto lost desert-folk That listened wondering. He heard the bitterns call From ruined palace-wall, Answered them brotherly. He held communion With the she-pelican Of lonely piety. Basilisk, cockatrice, Flocked to his homilies, With mail of dread device, With monstrous barbed stings, With eager dragon-eyes; Great rats on leather wings And poor blind broken things, Foul in their miseries. And ever with him went, Of all his ...
— Georgian Poetry 1916-17 - Edited by Sir Edward Howard Marsh • Various
... though in darting readiness to sting. Full of a vague, wild longing, he instinctively stretched out his arms, . . then on a sudden impulse turned swiftly away, in a dizzy effort to escape from the basilisk fire-gleam of those sombre, haunting eyes that plunged into his inmost soul, and there aroused such dark desires, such retrospective evil, such wild weakness as shamed the betterness of his nature! Sah-luma's clear, mocking laugh just then ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli
... chair gazing at it, and the more I gazed the more it disquieted me. I had never before been affected in the same way by any painting. The emotions it caused were strange and indefinite. They were something like what I have heard ascribed to the eyes of the basilisk; or like that mysterious influence in reptiles termed fascination. I passed my hand over my eyes several times, as if seeking instinctively to brush away this allusion—in vain—they instantly reverted to the picture, and its chilling, creeping influence ...
— Tales of a Traveller • Washington Irving
... attributed to Ammon), and his worship was universal in Ethiopia. The sheep are sacred to him, of which there were large flocks in the Thebaid, kept for their wool. And the serpent or asp, a sign of kingly dominion,—hence called basilisk,—is sacred to Kneph. As Creator, he appears under the figure of a potter with a wheel. In Philae he is so represented, forming on his wheel a figure of Osiris, with the inscription, "Num, who forms on his wheel ...
— Ten Great Religions - An Essay in Comparative Theology • James Freeman Clarke
... endanger these interests; hence he believed it to be specially incumbent upon him to preserve at least Prussia from this noxious influence and to push her over to the other side, to the side of the coalition, than to allow her to be devoured, like a poor little bird, by the French basilisk. These endeavors, which kept up a continual conflict between him and the special favorites and confidants of the king, Haugwitz and Kockeritz, had gained him the love and esteem of all Prussian patriots, and secured him an extraordinary popularity. These two favorites ...
— LOUISA OF PRUSSIA AND HER TIMES • Louise Muhlbach
... Anon, as the whim caught him, he would pile it up and hedge it with great silver pins, fan-shape, such as country girls use, till it took the semblance, now of a tower, now of a wheel, now of some winged beast—sphinx or basilisk—couching on the girl's head. Then, stepping back a little, he would clasp his hands over his eyes, and with head in air sing some snatch of triumph, or laugh aloud for the very wildness of his power; and so the game went on, that seemed a feast of delight to the man—a feast? an orgy ...
— Earthwork Out Of Tuscany • Maurice Hewlett
... upon us, living and loving mortals, that stony stare of death,—lest we too, as smit with the basilisk, be turned into monumental stone, and all the dear grace and movement of ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 7, No. 44, June, 1861 • Various
... least, which can boast of not being poetry. Ay, in this MS. which Shakib is packing along with Al-Mutanabbi in the bottom of his trunk to evade the Basilisk touch of the Port officials of Beirut, is packed all the hopes of the Modern School. Pack on, Shakib; for whether at the Mena House, or in the hasheesh-dens of Cairo, the Future is drinking to thee, and ...
— The Book of Khalid • Ameen Rihani
... from admirers, but she could always do with a bit more. Besides, most of the incense came by post. Living a quiet and retired life in the country, it was rarely that she got it handed to her face to face. She melted quite perceptibly. She did not cease to look like a basilisk, but she began to look like a basilisk who has had ...
— The Girl on the Boat • Pelham Grenville Wodehouse
... time were born in the valleys of the Nile and the Ganges. By the fathers in the church Jesus Christ was named the New Sun, and in the early days of Christianity the Egyptians struck a coin representing O. B. or the holy Basilisk, with rays of light darting from his head, on the reverse side of which was figured "Jesus Christ as the New ...
— The God-Idea of the Ancients - or Sex in Religion • Eliza Burt Gamble
... its gaze the person who looked on it. Thus Henry VI. says to Suffolk, "Come, basilisk, and kill the innocent gazer with ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama, Vol 1 - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook • The Rev. E. Cobham Brewer, LL.D.
... successor, and Maximin was summoned to the emperor's court and promoted to the office of prefect of the praetorium, where he was as cruel as ever, having indeed greater power of inflicting injury, like a basilisk serpent. ...
— The Roman History of Ammianus Marcellinus • Ammianus Marcellinus
... you were in the Museum, Cairn," Ferrara continued, still having his basilisk eyes fixed upon the other from beneath the drooping lids, "and I called to you ...
— Brood of the Witch-Queen • Sax Rohmer
... Lo! the wonder! Basilisk, the fabled viper! Superstition names it so. Look at it, I pray, with calmness, 'Twas thy mind that was at fault. God's great goodness is displayed here; He, I trow, rewards thy eloquence In the monster which thou seest: All this ...
— Jewish Literature and Other Essays • Gustav Karpeles
... there our splendid churches is in all their pride and glory, Saint Peter's famous Basilisk and Saint Mary's Maggiory; And them benighted Prodestants, on Sunday they must go Outside the town to the preaching-shop by the gate ...
— Ballads • William Makepeace Thackeray
... thy fellows?" he asked of a fisherman, whose dark eye glittered in that light, like the organ of a basilisk. ...
— The Bravo • J. Fenimore Cooper
... astonishment the blow did not fall. Roach changed the basilisk gaze with which he had regarded him to ...
— Prisoners of Hope - A Tale of Colonial Virginia • Mary Johnston
... even so is it shaped in his entrails, in this black hypocrite's breast. O, the art of hell has deceived me! The Abyss sent up to me the most spotted of the spirits, the most skilful in lies, and placed him as a friend by my side. Who may withstand the power of hell? I took the basilisk to my bosom, with my heart's blood I nourished him; he sucked himself glutfull at the breasts of my love. I never harboured evil towards him; wide open did I leave the door of my thoughts; I threw away the key of wise foresight. In the starry ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... if thou dost but see her, she will stupefy thee, kill thee straight, and, Medusa like, turn thee to a stone; thou canst not pull thine eyes from her, but, as an adamant doth iron, she will carry thee bound headlong whither she will herself, infect thee like a basilisk. It holds both in men and women. Dido was amazed at Aeneas' presence; Obstupuit primo aspectu Sidonia Dido; and as he feelingly verified out ...
— The Anatomy of Melancholy • Democritus Junior
... glossy, raven hair, and his eyes like some mad animal's flashing with light and resolution, yet with a certain strange calmness, holds aloft in one hand a large knife—walks along not much back from the footlights—turns fully toward the audience his face of statuesque beauty, lit by those basilisk eyes, flashing with desperation, perhaps insanity—launches out in a firm and steady voice the words Sic semper tyrannis—and then walks with neither slow nor very rapid pace diagonally across to the back of the stage, and disappears. (Had not all this terrible scene—making the mimic ones ...
— Complete Prose Works - Specimen Days and Collect, November Boughs and Goodbye My Fancy • Walt Whitman
... commanded your presence in order to talk over a few matters. First: I must request that for the future, at balls and similar affairs, dancing spurs be worn, so as to avoid such unpleasant accidents as we had night before last. One gentleman, who shall be nameless,"—and as he said it he fixed a basilisk eye on Lieutenant von Meckelburg—"tore off with his spurs the whole edge on the robe of Frau Captain Stark. This must not occur again, gentlemen, and from now on I shall officially punish similar behavior. Furthermore, it is customary among persons ...
— A Little Garrison - A Realistic Novel of German Army Life of To-day • Fritz von der Kyrburg
... to order, be it what it may, high or low, great or small, sweet or bitter, honor, wealth, life, or any other object, what can shake its peace? It is true, our nature is so crafty that it worms itself through everything; a selfish sight is like the basilisk's, it destroys. ...
— The Autobiography of Madame Guyon • Jeanne Marie Bouvier de La Motte Guyon
... cruel that she was! 'Tis thus that the basilisk charms the poor bird that falls a ...
— The Struggles of Brown, Jones, and Robinson - By One of the Firm • Anthony Trollope
... from table was given by Madame de Staemer. She whisked her chair back with extraordinary rapidity, the contrast between her swift, nervous movements and those still, basilisk ...
— Bat Wing • Sax Rohmer
... eyes would carry with them the execution which the eyes of the basilisk are said to do, I would make it my first ...
— Clarissa, Volume 2 (of 9) • Samuel Richardson
... although hinting at some horrid and appalling crimes. No one knew what they exactly were, for the old woman had outlived her contemporaries, and the tradition was imperfect; but she had been handed down to the next generation as one to be avoided as a basilisk. ...
— Snarley-yow - or The Dog Fiend • Frederick Marryat
... diseases given by a glance are ophthalmia and jaundice, say the ancients; and in these cases, the fascinator loses the disease as his victim takes it A similar peculiarity is to be remarked in the superstition of the basilisk, who kills, if he sees first, but when he is seen first, dies. No animals, it is said, can bear the steady gaze of man, and there are some persons who by this means seem to exercise a wonderful power over them. Animals, however, have sometimes their revenge on man. It is an old superstition, that ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 32, June, 1860 • Various
... breathing herself, listening absorbed, here became conscious, by some sort of prescience, of the basilisk gaze her guardian's wife ...
— The Unseen Bridgegroom - or, Wedded For a Week • May Agnes Fleming
... basilisk unto mine eye, Kills me to look on't. Let there be no honour Where there is beauty; truth, where semblance; love Where there's another man. The vows of women Of no more bondage, be to where they are made, Than they are to their virtues, which is ...
— Cymbeline • William Shakespeare [Tudor edition]
... whence we should find a clear passage across, was about two miles distant. I never remember seeing or feeling anything to be compared with the darkness of that pine wood, but our guide seemed to have the eyes of a basilisk. We formed Indian file, our guide leading, and crept along as best we could. At last, after stealthily progressing for half an hour, a glimmer of starlight through the trees showed us that we were getting to the ...
— Sketches From My Life - By The Late Admiral Hobart Pasha • Hobart Pasha
... panther's treacherous seeming, That looks so lovely to beguile its prey; Seek not to match the basilisk's false gleaming, That charms the fancy only ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 363, January, 1846 • Various
... adventure to relate. Even the old travelers, who saw the phoenix expire in her odoriferous nest, whence the chick soon flew forth regenerated, or who found dead lions slain by the quills of some "fretful porcupine," or who knew that the stare of the basilisk was death—even those who saw unicorns graze and who heard mermaids sing—were veracious when compared with the explorers of railroad routes across the continent. Senator Jefferson Davis did much to encourage them by having their reports ...
— Perley's Reminiscences, Vol. 1-2 - of Sixty Years in the National Metropolis • Benjamin Perley Poore
... Avenging Spirit of this great man's life, relaxed nothing of his severity. He looked on at these dinners when the bosom was not there, as he looked on at other dinners when the bosom was there; and his eye was a basilisk to Mr Merdle. He was a hard man, and would never bate an ounce of plate or a bottle of wine. He would not allow a dinner to be given, unless it was up to his mark. He set forth the table for his own dignity. If the guests chose to partake of what was served, he saw no objection; but it was served ...
— Little Dorrit • Charles Dickens
... myself!" he answered, "you say true: I do not: so I take a stranger's due." Self-love like this is knavish and absurd, And well deserves a damnatory word. You glance at your own faults; your eyes are blear: You eye your neighbour's; straightway you see clear, Like hawk or basilisk: your neighbours pry Into your frailties with as keen an eye. A man is passionate, perhaps misplaced In social circles of fastidious taste; His ill-trimmed beard, his dress of uncouth style, His shoes ill-fitting, may provoke a smile: ...
— The Satires, Epistles, and Art of Poetry • Horace
... basin that receives them below. On one of the islands thus formed, the natives make a portage. Here, then, we took our station close to a cascade: our opponents commenced building a hut on one side of the path, we on the other. While this operation was in progress, basilisk looks denoted the strength of feeling that pervaded the breasts of either party, but not a word was exchanged between us. Our hut was first completed, when our champion clambered aloft, and crowed defiance; three times he crowed (aloud), but no ...
— Service in the Hudson's Bay Territory • John M'lean
... proves her self still to be the Devil of a Lady, for she bears Malice, and will never forgive me, that I would not let her be an Angel; but like a very Devil as she is, she endeavours to kill me at a Distance; and indeed the Poison of her Eyes, (Basilisk-like) is very strong, and she has a strange Influence upon me; but I that know her to be a Devil, strive very hard with my self to drive the Memory of her out of ...
— The History of the Devil - As Well Ancient as Modern: In Two Parts • Daniel Defoe
... just before supper, Mrs. Gaunt came up to her room, to cool her fevered hands and brow, and found this creature crouched by her fire, all in a heap, with pale cheek, and black eyes that glittered like basilisk's. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 106, August, 1866 • Various
... stepping into the chamber. A glance would tell her to be the maid, if the overheard conversation had not already declared it. A little brown-skinned damsel, scarce five feet in height, with raven hair hanging in double plait down her back, and black eyes that sparkle like those of a basilisk. ...
— The Lone Ranche • Captain Mayne Reid
... plants and flowers that were blooming in the balcony, but it gradually became more and more slow on the wing, and at last poised itself unusually steadily for an insect of its class. Below it, on the window sill, near the wall, with head erect, and its little basilisk eyes upturned towards the lovely fly, crouched a chameleon lizard, its beautiful body, when I first looked at it, was a bright sea-green. It moved into the sunshine, a little away from the shade of the laurel bush, which grew on the side it first appeared ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 20, No. - 582, Saturday, December 22, 1832 • Various
... instead, and courage, a desire of masterhood, cunning, and a wish for mischief. And yet, as eyes, they were very beautiful. The eyelashes were long and perfect, and the long, steady, unabashed gaze with which she would look into the face of her admirer fascinated while it frightened him. She was a basilisk from whom an ardent lover of beauty could make no escape. Her nose and mouth and teeth and chin and neck and bust were perfect, much more so at twenty-eight than they had been at eighteen. What wonder that with such charms still ...
— Barchester Towers • Anthony Trollope
... dangling loosely about his shoulders, the broad frightful countenance, which, however, was devoid of paint, the glittering, basilisk-like eyes, the sinewy half-bent finger, with the right fingers closed like a vise around the handle of the knife at his waist, while gently drawing it forth, the catlike advance,—all these made him so terrible an enemy that the bravest man might well ...
— A Waif of the Mountains • Edward S. Ellis
... watched the retreating figure of the prelate till the door closed behind it; then he smiled at Mollendorf, who had not the courage to return it, and who stared at the parchment in his hand as if it were possessed of basilisk eyes. ...
— The Puppet Crown • Harold MacGrath
... taken from the names of some animals which never existed at all. The writers of the Middle Ages told many tales or fables of animals and monsters which were purely imaginary, but in which the people of those days firmly believed. We sometimes hear people use the expression a "basilisk glare," which other people would describe as a "look that kills," meaning a look of great severity or displeasure. There is a little American lizard which zoologists call the "basilisk," but this is not the basilisk from which this expression comes. The basilisk ...
— Stories That Words Tell Us • Elizabeth O'Neill
... with a basilisk stare till Renouard had conceded a casual: "I dare say," and only then went on to explain that old Dunster, during his European tour, had been made rather a lion of in London, where he stayed with the Moorsoms—he meant the father and the girl. The professor ...
— Within the Tides • Joseph Conrad
... of the medicining of the body, some things on the subject of medicine in general, which could be better said there than here, because the wrath of professional dignitaries,—the eye of the 'basilisk,' was not perhaps quite so terrible in that quarter then, as it was in some others. For though 'the Doctors' in that department, did manage, in the dark ages, to possess themselves of certain weapons of their ...
— The Philosophy of the Plays of Shakspere Unfolded • Delia Bacon
... the slightest alarm, he could spring up, sword in hand. His broad black eyes, in which sleep contended with a desire to listen to the music, were fixed on Vidal, who saw them glittering in the reflection of the silver lamp, like those of a dragon or a basilisk. ...
— The Betrothed • Sir Walter Scott
... ... Well! well! As if I had any such longing! Its stupidity attracts me. No! no! I will not!" He looks fixedly on the ground. But the grass lights up, and, in the twistings of the flames, stands erect the Basilisk, a huge, violet serpent, with a trilobate crest and two teeth—one ...
— The Temptation of St. Antony - or A Revelation of the Soul • Gustave Flaubert
... completely hide his eyes," but he sends for "twelve mighty heroes," and orders them to take iron forks and lift up the hair about his eyes, and then he gazes at the destroyer of his family. The glance of the Servian Vy is supposed to be as deadly as that of a basilisk, but the patriarch of the Russian story does not injure his captive. He merely sends him on an errand which leads to a fresh set of adventures, of which we need not ...
— Russian Fairy Tales - A Choice Collection of Muscovite Folk-lore • W. R. S. Ralston
... woman waiting outside there seemed to possess for Eliza Hamlyn somewhat of the fascination of the basilisk; for she never stirred from the window until the ...
— The Argosy - Vol. 51, No. 4, April, 1891 • Various
... to remark that the Professor's Wanderings, so far as his stoical and cynical envelopment admits us to clear insight, here first take their permanent character, fatuous or not. That Basilisk-glance of the Barouche-and-four seems to have withered-up what little remnant of a purpose may have still lurked in him: Life has become wholly a dark labyrinth; wherein, through long years, our Friend, flying from spectres, has ...
— Sartor Resartus, and On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in History • Thomas Carlyle
... it seems to leave an impress even upon the countenance. The feature, from having a dark, sinister aspect, becomes open, serene, and sunny. A countenance so impressed, has neither the vacant stare of the idiot, nor the crafty, penetrating look of the basilisk, but the clear, placid aspect of truth and goodness. The woman who has such a face is beautiful. She has a beauty which changes not with the features, which fades not with years. It is beauty of ...
— Searchlights on Health - The Science of Eugenics • B. G. Jefferis and J. L. Nichols
... become disengaged from the block, the eye looks out, the nose gains refinement, the mouth is developed. When the last cube is reached, there remains nothing to finish save the details of the head-dress and the basilisk on the brow. No scholar's model in basalt has yet been found;[39] but the Egyptians, like our monumental masons, always kept a stock of half-finished statues in hard stone, which could be turned out complete in a few hours. The hands, ...
— Manual Of Egyptian Archaeology And Guide To The Study Of Antiquities In Egypt • Gaston Camille Charles Maspero
... succession of this uncle, to whom they paid great attention every day, going to look if the good man had his eyes open, and in fact found him always with his eye clear, bright, and piercing as the eye of a basilisk, which pleased them greatly, since they loved their uncle very much—in words. On this subject an old woman related that for certain the canon was the devil, because his two nephews, the procureur and the captain, conducting their uncle at night, without a lamp, ...
— Droll Stories, Volume 1 • Honore de Balzac
... foul-eyed, hungry-taloned, flitting noiselessly in circles, that grew ever and ever narrower, sure, and unfaltering to the final triumphant swoop! Or no—Rather a coiled and quiescent father, horrible-eyed, lying in slimy rings at the foot of the tree, basilisk gaze fixed upward, while the enthralled bird fluttered hopelessly down, twig by twig, ever nearer ...
— Queed • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... that his sole object had been to cover his change of position. For, when he sat down again, it was where he could see my face. I therefore felt justified in plying the fan he had offered me, in such a way as to shut off his somewhat basilisk gaze. And so a ...
— The Mill Mystery • Anna Katharine Green
... aware that I was liberated, the shifty spectre, whose basilisk eye had not released me, stood at ...
— Vesty of the Basins • Sarah P. McLean Greene
... turn away my face? I never yet saw enemy that lookt So dreadful, but that I thought my self As great a Basilisk as he; or spake So horribly, but that I thought my tongue Bore Thunder underneath, as much as his: Nor beast that I could turn from: shall I then Begin to fear sweet sounds? a Ladies voice, Whom I ...
— Philaster - Love Lies a Bleeding • Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher
... fashionable city to-day there walk a thousand libertines. They are a moving pest. Their breath is the sirocco of the desert. Their bones have in them the decay of the pit. They have the eye of a basilisk. They have been soaked in filth, and steeped in uncleanliness, and consumed in sin, and they are all adrip with the loathsomeness of eternal death. I take hold of the robe of one of these elegant gentlemen, and pull it aside, and say, ...
— The Abominations of Modern Society • Rev. T. De Witt Talmage
... sporting with this radical Amaryllis either in shade or in sunshine; so I sought Henry Winter Davis. Like the fallen angel, Davis preferred to rule in hell rather than serve in heaven or on earth. With the head of Medusa and the eye of the Basilisk, he might have represented Siva in a Hindoo temple, and was even more inaccessible to sentiment than Thaddeus Stevens. Others, too numerous and too insignificant to particularize, were seen. These were the cuttle-fish of the party, whose appointed duty it ...
— Destruction and Reconstruction: - Personal Experiences of the Late War • Richard Taylor
... could make void, What is confirm'd in Court: no, no, Don Henrique, You shall know that I find my self abus'd, And adde to that, I have a womans anger, And while I look upon this Basilisk, Whose envious eyes have blasted all my comforts Rest confident I'le study my dark ends, And not ...
— The Spanish Curate - A Comedy • Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher
... comely, So gentee, alamode, and handsome, I'll never marry man that wants one; And till you can demonstrate plain, You have one equal to your mane, 750 I'll be torn piece-meal by a horse, Ere I'll take you for better or worse. The Prince of CAMBAY's daily food Is asp, and basilisk, and toad; Which makes him have so strong a breath, 755 Each night he stinks a queen to death; Yet I shall rather lie in's arms Than ...
— Hudibras • Samuel Butler
... against the Scots,' Katharine said. 'But the beasts of the field strike as well against the foes of their kind—the bull of the herd against lions; the Hyrcanian tiger against the troglodytes; the basilisk against many beasts. It is the province of a man to smite not only against the foes of his kind but—and how much the more?—against the ...
— Privy Seal - His Last Venture • Ford Madox Ford
... the cankered effort of a barren tree," cast back Weng over his shoulder. "Look to your own offspring, basilisk. It is given me to speak." Even as he spoke there was a great cry from the upper part of the house, the sound of many feet and much turmoil, but he went on his ...
— Kai Lung's Golden Hours • Ernest Bramah
... Savoy owned the beautiful Castle of Chillon, which you have perhaps seen, on the shores of the Lake of Geneva. But he could not be happy, because he and the people about him thought that in a hole in the rock under one of the cellars a basilisk lived—a very terrible dragon—and they all went in fear of it. So the Count paid a brave mason a large sum of money (and the payment is solemnly set down in his account book) to break a way into this hole and turn the basilisk out; and I have no doubt that he and his people were greatly ...
— The Book of Art for Young People • Agnes Conway
... Or in part but to express That exceeding comeliness Which their fancies doth so strike, They borrow language of dislike; And, instead of Dearest Miss, Jewel, Honey, Sweetheart, Bliss, And those forms of old admiring, Call her Cockatrice and Siren, Basilisk, and all that's evil, Witch, ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb IV - Poems and Plays • Charles and Mary Lamb
... glance could destroy, if Lady Auriol had been a Gorgon or a basilisk or a cockatrice, then had I been ...
— The Mountebank • William J. Locke
... not an owl, but a large goat-sucker, a Nycteribius, I believe, who goes by the name of jumby-bird among the English Negroes: and no wonder; for most ghostly and horrible is his cry. But worse: he has but one eye, and a glance from that glaring eye, as from the basilisk of old, is certain death: and worse still, he can turn off its light as a policeman does his lantern, and become instantly invisible: opinions which, if verified by experiment, are not always found to be in accordance with facts. But that is no reason why they ...
— At Last • Charles Kingsley
... feelings of alarm that had never yet affected their manly bosoms in danger or in war. Their faces paled a little, but their courage stood the test, for they sat still till she came close enough to let her piercing dark eyes be seen peering at them like those of a basilisk from out the folds of ...
— The Hot Swamp • R.M. Ballantyne
... passageways and haunted the cabins. Marsha's snake was back. There was Lazar's dragon, which seemed to grow larger every day. There was also a basilisk, a pterodactyl, a vampire bat with a five-foot wingspread, an old-fashioned red spade-tailed demon and ...
— Subjectivity • Norman Spinrad
... that night, none has left a more unpleasant odour in my memory than the manner of that woman in the chamber of death. Her voice was incredibly hard. Her dull, basilisk eyes, seeking in mine the answers to her questions, gave me an eerie sensation that makes my blood run cold whenever I ...
— The Man with the Clubfoot • Valentine Williams
... so: 'It is not the usual handwriting; but from her, no doubt'——Merciful God!' I impulsively exclaimed, as I suddenly lifted my eyes to his. 'What is the matter?' A mortal pallor had spread over Mr Arbuthnot's before animated features, and he was glaring at the letter in his hand as if a basilisk had suddenly confronted him. Another moment, and the muscles of his frame appeared to give way suddenly, and he dropped heavily into the easy-chair from which he had risen to take the letters. I was terribly alarmed, and first loosening his neckerchief, for he seemed choking, I said: ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 438 - Volume 17, New Series, May 22, 1852 • Various
... BARB, to clip gold BARBEL, fresh-water fish BARE, meer; bareheaded; it was "a particular mark of state and grandeur for the coachman to be uncovered" (Gifford) BARLEY-GREAK, game somewhat similar to base BASE, game of prisoner's base BASES, richly embroidered skirt reaching to the knees, or lower BASILISK, fabulous reptile, believed to slay with its eye BASKET, used for the broken provision collected for prisoners BASON, basons, etc., were beaten by the attendant mob when bad characters were "carted" ...
— Every Man Out Of His Humour • Ben Jonson
... that period three-deckers of sixty-four guns, and two-deckers of only thirty guns. With regard to the guns themselves, the demi-cannon was probably a 32-pounder, the cannon petro a 24-pounder, and the basilisk a 12-pounder; the whole culverin an 18-pounder, and the demi-culverin a 9-pounder; the saker a 6-pounder, and the mignon a 4-pounder. The smaller guns were called swivels, and were mounted on upright ...
— How Britannia Came to Rule the Waves - Updated to 1900 • W.H.G. Kingston
... away on a rocky ledge was a thing of horror. Basilisk eyes in a hairy head; gray, stringy hairs; and the fearful head ended in narrow, outthrust jaws, where more of the gray hairs hung like moss from lips that writhed and curled and sucked at the air with ...
— Astounding Stories, May, 1931 • Various
... as many as the properties which were assigned to it. It was called the one thing, the essence, the philosopher's stone, the stone of wisdom, the heavenly balm, the divine water, the virgin water, the carbuncle of the sun, the old dragon, the lion, the basilisk, the phoenix; and many other names were given ...
— The Story of Alchemy and the Beginnings of Chemistry • M. M. Pattison Muir
... galleys, as they do on the delightful maps of those ages when books on geography were actually readable. Dragons will wander about the waste places, and the phoenix will soar from her nest of fire into the air. We shall lay our hands upon the basilisk, and see the jewel in the toad's head. Champing his gilded oats, the Hippogriff will stand in our stalls, and over our heads will float the Blue Bird singing of beautiful and impossible things, of things that are lovely and that never happen, of things that are not and that ...
— Intentions • Oscar Wilde
... the Assessor trembled, dropped his wine-glass from his hand, and levelled at Thaddeus the glance of a basilisk. The Assessor was less noisy and less given to gestures than the Notary, thinner and shorter; but he was terrible at masquerade, ball, or village diet, for they said of him that he had a sting in his tongue. He could make up such witty jests ...
— Pan Tadeusz • Adam Mickiewicz
... Murillo, whose St. John I should like to own. As far as my own pleasure is concerned, I could not say as much for any other picture; for I have always found an infinite weariness and disgust resulting from a picture being too frequently before my eyes. I had rather see a basilisk, for instance, than the very best of those old, familiar pictures in the Boston Athenaeum; and most of those in the National Gallery might soon affect me in ...
— Passages From the English Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... Europe," said he, as if even a particular country were too cabined to satisfy his nostalgia for wide spaces. "I must have room, my son, for the development of my genius. I must dream great things, and immortal visions are blasted under the basilisk eye of Lady Molyneux." ...
— The Beloved Vagabond • William J. Locke
... spite of his love for Isabel, and his natural terror of such a rival, he felt himself irresistibly drawn towards the very man he had most cause to suspect and dread. It was like the fascination of the basilisk. He held out his hand to Zicci, saying, "Well, then, if we are to be rivals, our swords must settle our rights; till then I would fain ...
— Zicci, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... bed, comfortable enough now in its appearance that the stifling curtains were withdrawn; no temptation to invade it came to arouse me from the chair into which I had thrown myself. It was as if I felt myself under the spell of some invisible influence that like the eye of a basilisk, held me enchained. I remember turning my head towards a certain quarter of the wall as if I half expected to encounter there the bewildering glance of a serpent. Yet far from being apprehensive of any danger, I only wondered over the ...
— A Strange Disappearance • Anna Katharine Green
... to be guided by circumstances, and to watch carefully that nothing might escape me. I drew back as far as I could, and even reconnoitred the door and passage, to consider whether absolute escape might not be practicable. But there paraded Cristal Nixon, whose little black eyes, sharp as those of a basilisk, seemed, the instant when they encountered ...
— Redgauntlet • Sir Walter Scott
... to use it, especially as the sick man had slept well the preceding night and had awakened without any fever, although still very weak. After the prince's departure, the sister immediately sent a servant for a new medicine apparently—for the "egg of a basilisk"—which she affirmed had the power to restore strength even to people in agony; as for herself, she wandered about the mansion; she was humble and was dressed in a lay dress, but similar to that worn by members ...
— The Knights of the Cross • Henryk Sienkiewicz
... iron, are characteristic of monkish geographical science; the recipe for the making of Spanish gold is interesting, as affording us a clew to the meaning of the mediaeval traditions respecting the basilisk. Pliny says nothing about the hatching of this chimera from cocks' eggs, and ascribes the power of killing at sight to a different animal, the catoblepas, whose head, fortunately, was so heavy that it could not be held up. Probably the word "basiliscus" ...
— On the Old Road Vol. 1 (of 2) - A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays and Articles on Art and Literature • John Ruskin
... looked at every one present with great earnestness, but more particularly fixed his basilisk eyes upon the akhon, who evidently could not stand the scrutiny, but exclaimed 'Allah il Allah!'—there is but one God—stroked down his face and beard, and blew first over one shoulder and then over ...
— The Adventures of Hajji Baba of Ispahan • James Morier
... the days while Friedrich was first trying Horse Artillery], Rear-Admiral Rodney sails from Portsmouth with a few Frigates, and Six Bomb-ketches [FIREDRAKE, BASILISK, BLAST, and such nomenclatures [List of him, in Beatson, Naval and Military Memoirs (London, 1804), ii. 241; his Despatch excellently brief, ib. ii. 323]]; and in the afternoon of Tuesday, 3d, arrives in the frith or bay of Havre. Steers himself properly into 'the Channel of Honfleur' ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XIX. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... slight alteration on the stage. It was so ordinary an occurrence for him to fail to appear at a meal that no one was surprised. Only Anne covered a deep uneasiness beneath her resolute serenity of manner. She could not forget that basilisk stare. It haunted her almost to the exclusion of everything else. She had no thought to spare for the letter regarding her husband. She could only think of Nap. What had that stare concealed? She felt that if she could have got past those baffling, challenging eyes ...
— The Knave of Diamonds • Ethel May Dell
... quenched my eyes with dewy sleep this night; But fiery fumes mount upward to my brains, And, when I breathe, methinks my nostrils hiss! I shall turn basilisk, and with my sight Do my hands' work on Diomede ...
— The Works of John Dryden, Vol. 6 (of 18) - Limberham; Oedipus; Troilus and Cressida; The Spanish Friar • John Dryden
... faithful messenger the look of a basilisk, and flounced to her own room. The young ladies instantly stepped out on the balcony, and got one on each side of Harrington, with the feminine instinct of propitiation; for they felt sure the enemy would tell, ...
— The Woman-Hater • Charles Reade
... waiting on the platform in the great hall where Sykes and McGuire had stood, and their basilisk eyes glared unwinkingly down at the three who were thrown ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science January 1931 • Various |
