"Adder" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... say, Go where you know God wants you. Where the streams of sin are sweeping the people down to damnation and dark despair—go there. Where the poor people are being ruined by that cup which not only curses now, but at the last 'biteth like a serpent and stingeth like an adder'—go there. Where struggling souls are crying for sympathy and help—go there. Where the youth of our land are being polluted by depraved men and women among whom they earn their daily bread—go there. Where God seems unknown, or His claims unheeded ...
— Standards of Life and Service • T. H. Howard
... Surely an adder crawled from that tiny golden cylinder and upon the smooth white paper distilled its subtle venom. I, poor fool, exulting in the splendid throes of accomplishment, never dreamed that the real christening ...
— Frenzied Finance - Vol. 1: The Crime of Amalgamated • Thomas W. Lawson
... Spartan stoicism, continued to wear an ingratiating smile, though the character of the deaf adder that stoppeth her ear and will not hearken, seemed to her at that moment ...
— The Unbearable Bassington • Saki
... words were uttered I sat up upon the topmost step of the gallery; for some time I felt stunned in somewhat the same manner as I once subsequently felt after being stung by an adder. I soon arose, however, and retired to my bed, where, notwithstanding what I had done, I was not slow ...
— Lavengro - The Scholar, The Gypsy, The Priest • George Borrow
... said, "if it will relieve your feelings;—but in justice to me, let me know why you do so! What is my offence? I give you a piece of commonplace information concerning the movements of the Court this afternoon, and you jump off your seat as if an adder ...
— Temporal Power • Marie Corelli
... which sin gives to its votaries; full of soft words and tempting promises in the beginning, they find, in the end, that "it biteth like a serpent, and stingeth like an adder." Thoughts like these passed through Rodney's mind, as the jailer led him to a room in which were confined three other lads, all older than himself. At that time, the system of solitary confinement had not been adopted ...
— The Runaway - The Adventures of Rodney Roverton • Unknown
... to the post office constant. None of us says anything, not even to ourselves; but when it gets to whar she shoves you away from the letter place, an' begins talkin' milk and honey to him right under your nose, onless you're as blind as steeple bats, an' as deaf as the adder of scriptoore which stoppeth her y'ear, you're shore bound to ...
— Faro Nell and Her Friends - Wolfville Stories • Alfred Henry Lewis
... godly, industrious life, doing the duty which lies nearest you, avoiding sin as you would an adder, because it is sure sooner or later to sting you, if you touch it, is the straight road, and the only road, to happiness, either in this life, or in the life to come. Pleasure and amusement, drinking and jollity, ...
— True Words for Brave Men • Charles Kingsley
... Who like his Cheops[422] stinks above the ground, Fierce as a startled adder, swell'd, and said, Rattling an ancient ...
— Poetical Works of Pope, Vol. II • Alexander Pope
... a commentary. The eternal duty of resistance is farther taught by the words. Hope of victory, encouragement to struggle, the assurance that even these savage beasts may be subdued, and the lion and adder (the hidden and the glaring evils—those which wound unseen, and which spring with a roar) may be overcome, led in a silken leash or charmed into harmlessness, are given in the command, which is also a ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus and Numbers • Alexander Maclaren
... represented as a woman of florid complexion, with dishevelled hair, and her whole appearance angry and menacing. In one hand she brandishes a poniard and a hissing adder, whilst in the other she carries a burning torch. Her dress is torn and disorderly, and her hair intertwined with venomous snakes. This divinity was never invoked by mortals, except when they desired her assistance for ...
— Myths and Legends of Ancient Greece and Rome • E.M. Berens
... Dahlia," I said, with dignity, "if you don't want to be in on the ground floor, that is your affair. But you are missing an intellectual treat. And, anyway, no matter how much you may behave like the deaf adder of Scripture which, as you are doubtless aware, the more one piped, the less it danced, or words to that effect, I shall carry on as planned. I am extremely fond of Angela, and I shall spare no effort to bring the sunshine ...
— Right Ho, Jeeves • P. G. Wodehouse
... woman rushing to Mrs. Seabright and throwing her arms about her neck. Between sobs she said, "Mother, mother, do with me what you will, just so you allow me to be with her when I choose. Oh, mother, how I wish you were now what you were before the adder bit you." ...
— The Hindered Hand - or, The Reign of the Repressionist • Sutton E. Griggs
... her work probably incited to the same sort of experiment. Miss Weld of Boston sent a picture made up in the same way, of a background of material which lent itself to the representation of a field of swampy ground where the spotted leaves of the adder's tongue, the yellow water-lily, with its compact balls, and the flaming cardinal flower are growing, while swamp grasses are nodding above. This was as good in its way as any sketch of them could be, and affected one with the sentiment of the scene, as it is the mission ...
— The Development of Embroidery in America • Candace Wheeler
... not touch that cup that is offered to you by the harlot world, spiced and fragrant and foaming; 'at the last it biteth like a serpent, and stingeth like an adder.' But take the pure joys which the Christ, loved, trusted, obeyed, summoned to your feast and welcomed in your heart, will bring to you; and these shall grow and greaten until the ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. John Chapters I to XIV • Alexander Maclaren
... Lamb had no sense of the rhythmical in prose composition. Rhythmus, or pomp of cadence, or sonorous ascent of clauses, in the structure of sentences, were effects of art as much thrown away upon him as the voice of the charmer upon the deaf adder. We ourselves, occupying the very station of polar opposition to that of Lamb, being as morbidly, perhaps, in the one excess as he in the other, naturally detected this omission in Lamb's nature at an early stage of our acquaintance. Not ...
— Biographical Essays • Thomas de Quincey
... unwary or accurst To bring my feet again into the snare Where once I have been caught; I know thy trains, Though dearly to my cost, thy gins, and toils; Thy fair enchanted cup and warbling charms No more on me have power, their force is null'd; So much of adder's wisdom have I learnt To fence my ear against thy sorceries. If in my flower of youth and strength, when all men Loved, honour'd, fear'd me, thou alone couldst hate me, Thy husband, slight me, sell me, and forego me; How wouldst thou use me now, blind, and thereby Deceivable, in most ...
— Bunyan Characters (Second Series) • Alexander Whyte
... endless traps for them, especially for Macey, who certainly felt Vane's disappearance most at heart, but was continually forgetting him on coming face to face with something fresh. Now it was an adder coiled up in the warm sunshine on a little dry bare clump among some dead furze. It was evidently watching him but making no effort to get out ...
— The Weathercock - Being the Adventures of a Boy with a Bias • George Manville Fenn
... Wyat. An adder's bite would have been less painful. His hands convulsively clutched together; his hair stood erect upon his head; a shiver ran through his frame; and he tottered back several paces. When he recovered, Henry had bidden good-night to the object of his love, and, having nearly gained the door, ...
— Windsor Castle • William Harrison Ainsworth
... Pax, with a sigh, "it was a child, that was. Her name was Mariar, but we called 'er Merry. Her father's name—the Brute's, you know—was Blackadder, and a blacker adder don't wriggle its slimy way through filthy slums nowhere—supposin' him to be yet unscragged, for he was uncommon hard on his wife—that's my Aunt Georgie. Her name was Georgianna. I wonder how it is that people never give people their right names! Well, ...
— Post Haste • R.M. Ballantyne
... me say this for the much-vaunted vin ordinaire of Europe: In the end it biteth like a serpent and stingeth like an adder—not like the ordinary Egyptian adder, but like a patent adder in the office of a loan shark, which is the worst stinger of the whole adder family. If consumed with any degree of freedom it puts a downy coat on ...
— Europe Revised • Irvin S. Cobb
... and the fatling together; and a little child shall lead them. And the cow and the bear shall feed; their young ones shall lie down together.... And the sucking child shall play on the hole of the asp, and the weaned child shall put his hand on the adder's den. They shall not hurt nor destroy in all my holy mountain; for the earth shall be full of the knowledge of the Lord, as the ...
— The Conquest of Fear • Basil King
... the expression of a parrot, you might have some idea of it. She was hobbling along with a stick, in quite the proper manner, but I felt certain that all that was put on, and that she could have glided as swift as an adder if she pleased. I confess I was afraid of her. I had a feeling that she ...
— The Five Jars • Montague Rhodes James
... me, "are both of them poor good-for-nothing critturs. This one is my wife. I married her sixty-four years ago. She is eighty-four years old, and as deaf as an adder, and the ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 84, October, 1864 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... during his early life. Once, he fell into a creek of the sea, once out of a boat into the river Ouse, near Bedford, and each time he was narrowly saved from drowning. One day, an adder crossed his path. He stunned it with a stick, then forced open its mouth with a stick and plucked out the tongue, which he supposed to be the sting, with his fingers; "by which act," he says, "had not God been merciful ...
— Books and Authors - Curious Facts and Characteristic Sketches • Anonymous
... I. 'Is it thus? Strong drink is an adder and subtractor, too. Is it the heat or the call of ...
— Options • O. Henry
... hunger and sorrow he pined away to death? Who so ill-favouredly and monstrously put the Emperor Frederick's neck under his feet, and, as though that were not sufficient, added further this text out of the Psalms, "Thou shalt go upon the adder and cockatrice, and shalt tread the lion and dragon under thy feet"? Such an example of scorning and contemning a prince's majesty, as never before that was heard tell of in any remembrance; except, I ween, either of Tamerlane's, the king ...
— The Apology of the Church of England • John Jewel
... life was uneventful for so far-travelling a dog, though it held its moments of eccentricity, as when he leaped through the window of a four-wheeler into Kensington, or sat on a Dartmoor adder. But that was fortunately of a Sunday afternoon—when adder and all were torpid, so nothing happened, till a friend, who was following, lifted him off the ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... some remarkable providences, but they neither startled nor melted him. He once fell into the sea, and another time out of a boat into Bedford river, and either time had a narrow escape from drowning. One day in the field with a companion, an adder glided across their path. Bunyan's ready switch stunned it in a moment; but with characteristic daring, he forced open the creature's mouth, and plucked out the sting—a foolhardiness which, as he himself observes, might, but for God's mercy, have brought him to ...
— Life of Bunyan • Rev. James Hamilton
... safely say, among hands, they gave him the d——d lie fifty times! James M. Davis, a respectable mechanic, asked him if he would say that to Major Donelson's face? He replied, that he heard the hissing of an adder, or a goose, and went through with certain stereotyped phrases you have all heard from his lips. This call upon him by Mr. Davis was not named in my newspaper report, nor in my letter to Major Donelson. Indeed, I did not anticipate ...
— Americanism Contrasted with Foreignism, Romanism, and Bogus Democracy in the Light of Reason, History, and Scripture; • William Gannaway Brownlow
... in which this was spoken, John saw the necessity of acquiescence. "I did but jest," he said; "and you turn upon me like an adder! Name whom you will, in the fiend's ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 6 • Charles H. Sylvester
... a sword was raised during the consultation over the proposed treaty with Mordred, sound the trumpet and fall on! for he had no confidence in Mordred. Mordred had given a similar order to his people. Well, by and by an adder bit a knight's heel; the knight forgot all about the order, and made a slash at the adder with his sword. Inside of half a minute those two prodigious hosts came together with a crash! They butchered away all day. Then the king—however, we have started ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... anger, and therefore is unworthy of a great soul, which ought not to suffer its equanimity to be disturbed by ingratitude or villainy. The injuries done us by the base are as much unworthy of our angry notice as those done us by the insects and the beasts; and when we crush the adder, or slay the wolf or hyena, we should do it without being moved to anger, and with no more feeling of revenge than we have in rooting ...
— Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry • Albert Pike
... find that I had so good a guardian as puss had proved. I turned into bed again and went to sleep. In the morning I discovered that the snake was a very venomous adder, but that the cat was not a bit the worse for eating it. I afterwards learned that there are certain sorts of poison which may be swallowed without danger, yet if it should touch the slightest scratch or excoriation of the skin, would ...
— Manco, the Peruvian Chief - An Englishman's Adventures in the Country of the Incas • W.H.G. Kingston
... not know which, that fed, Billali told me, upon the waterfowl, also large quantities of a hideous black water-snake, of which the bite is very dangerous, though not, I gathered, so deadly as a cobra's or a puff adder's. The bull-frogs were also very large, and with voices proportionate to their size; and as for the mosquitoes—the "musqueteers," as Job called them—they were, if possible, even worse than they had been on the river, and tormented us greatly. Undoubtedly, ...
— She • H. Rider Haggard
... a rock adder—one of the deadliest of African snakes. Barely more than three inches in length, and a dull gray in color, it was small wonder that Harry in his excitement had not seen it as he was about ...
— The Boy Aviators in Africa • Captain Wilbur Lawton
... Sigmund laughed, and answered: "I have heard of that son of a king, Who might not be scared from his bread for all the worms of the land." And therewith he went to the meal-sack and thrust therein his hand, And drew forth an ash-grey adder, and a deadly worm it was: Then he went to the door of the cave and set it down in the grass, While the King's son quaked and quivered: then he drew forth his sword from the sheath, And said: "Now fearest thou this, that men call the serpent ...
— The Story of Sigurd the Volsung and the Fall of the Niblungs • William Morris
... shrew as resembling the village scolds who used to be promptly ducked in horse-ponds in the unregenerate days; but the scold was an individual who was usually chastised for making a dead-set at her husband alone. The real shrew is like the puff-adder or the whip-snake—she tries to bite impartially all round; and she is often able to bite in comparative silence, but with a most deadly effect. The vulgar shrieker is a deplorable source of mischief, but she cannot match the reticent stabber who is always ready, out of sheer wickedness, ...
— Side Lights • James Runciman
... for the sake of your private applause—and the hope of vengeance on a woman, who, if she did ill in murdering my father, has been bitterly repaid by nourishing a serpent in her bosom, that had the tooth, but not the deafened ear, of the adder." ...
— Peveril of the Peak • Sir Walter Scott
... mistress, you who know so much know what is in this letter," said Sir John, staring at Fareham's superscription as if he had come suddenly upon an adder. ...
— London Pride - Or When the World Was Younger • M. E. Braddon
... Borders. In a letter written by the distinguished Welsh archaeologist Edward Lhwyd, and dated Linlithgow, December 17, 1699, he states that betwixt Wales and the Highlands he had seen at least fifty different forms of the party-coloured glass bead or amulet known under the name of Adder-beads or Snake stones.[226] In Scotland he found various materials used as healing amulets, particularly some pebbles of remarkable shape and colour, and hollow balls and rings of coloured glass. "They have also," he says, "the Ombriae pellucidae, ...
— Archaeological Essays, Vol. 1 • James Y. Simpson
... when from this comfortable high estate a common adder, preserved in spirits of wine, was the cause of his downfall and Bully Harberth the means of ...
— Snake and Sword - A Novel • Percival Christopher Wren
... last Aunt Susan pointed to something gliding away in the grass, and gasped: "A serpent! oh, dear, oh, dear, a serpent!" Vainly did my husband try to calm her fright by explaining that it was only an adder going to seek the moisture of the river-bank and never intending to attack any one, that they were plentiful and frequently to be met with, when their first care was to pass unnoticed; our poor aunt would not be persuaded to descend from her pedestal for some time, ...
— Philip Gilbert Hamerton • Philip Gilbert Hamerton et al
... her make hath told her tale. Summer is come, for every spray now springs: The hart hath hung his old head on the pale; The buck in brake his winter coat he flings; The fishes flete with new repaired scale. The adder all her slough away she slings; The swift swallow pursueth the flies smale; The busy bee her honey now she mings; Winter is worn ...
— Book of English Verse • Bulchevy
... mirror on the wall opposite, but she did not see it at all, so absorbed was she in her thoughts. In her feelings, too. In the wonder of the hour. This remarkable Gerald, with his head packed full of knowledge, with his speech that charmed you as whistling does an adder, with his capacity to paint pictures that the rest could not even understand, and then his rarity, the sweetness of his manners, the fascination of all that unknown in him which came, she had concluded, from his foreign bringing-up—he had ...
— Aurora the Magnificent • Gertrude Hall
... I'm your besht fren, an' shay it wish tearsh in m' eyes. Lemme beg o' you t' reform ere it ish too late. Beware of it, my fren, beware of it. It shtingeth like a serpent, an' biteth like a multiplier—I mean an adder. You haven't got my shuperb self-control, an' so yer only shafety lies in total abstinence. Cheese it, my fren, cheese it on she sheductive but ...
— The Red Acorn • John McElroy
... are remarkable for their colors. They are banded around their bodies with rings of bright colors. They will eat rats and mice and other snakes. The Milk Snake or "Checkered Adder" is popularly supposed to be fond of milk. Scientists tell us that this is a fallacy. It feeds on mice, rats, other snakes and lizards. The Red Milk Snake is prettily colored—red and yellow—and is the type found in the south. All the King Snakes have pronounced patterns. More than in any other ...
— Pathfinder - or, The Missing Tenderfoot • Alan Douglas
... song that it forgets to feed and dies singing." "When a snake catches sight of a nude man, it is so filled with fear that it does not dare to look at him; but if the man is dressed, the snake looks upon him as a weakling and springs upon him." "The adder guards the balsam; if a man desires to steal the balsam, he must first send the adder to sleep by playing on a musical instrument. But if the adder discovers that it is being duped, it closes one of its ears with its tail and rubs the other ...
— The Evolution of Love • Emil Lucka
... the rough countryman, but hardly had they been uttered, when Viola sprang from her chair, as though an adder had stung her. "Uncle," she cried, and a small fist hovered before Gabriel's eyes in such a threatening manner that he involuntarily closed them. But the child, whose features reminded him so strongly of his dead sister, could not ...
— A Ghetto Violet - From "Christian and Leah" • Leopold Kompert
... and bushy shrubs, Where milky hedgehogs nurse their prickly cubs: And here and there a mandrake grows, that strikes The hearers dead with their loud fatal shrieks; Under whose spreading leaves the ugly toad, The adder, and the snake, make their abode. Here dwelt Orandra; so the witch was hight, And hither had she toiled him by a sleight: She knew Anaxus was to go to court, And, envying virtue, she made it her sport To hinder him, sending her airy spies Forth with delusion to entrap ...
— Specimens with Memoirs of the Less-known British Poets, Complete • George Gilfillan
... scarlatina, jaundice, bile; Deborah could cure them all, and a dozen diseases besides. But this was not all. What she could not cure by her medicine she could by her charms, for with these she was abundantly supplied. Ringworms, warts, gout, adder's stings, whooping cough, measles, she could charm every one of them, and what was more, no one who was a friend of Deborah's went away uncured, if a ...
— Roger Trewinion • Joseph Hocking
... had been dumb rather than that you had mentioned it now," said Mowbray, starting, as if stung by an adder—"What, Clara's pittance!—the trifle my aunt left her for her own fanciful expenses—her own little private store, that she puts to so many good purposes—Poor Clara, that has so little!—And why not rather your own, Master Meiklewham, ...
— St. Ronan's Well • Sir Walter Scott
... A queen who presented England with a threadless needle, fell in love with some foreigners, was unsuccessful in her love and naval affairs, and finally became a mummy through the auspices of an adder. Ambition: An Egyptian St. Patrick. Also Royal lovers. Recreation: Barging with ...
— Who Was Who: 5000 B. C. to Date - Biographical Dictionary of the Famous and Those Who Wanted to Be • Anonymous
... coachman. Polson's mind did not go back to a time when he did not remember Duncan, and to Irene he was like a fixed part of the scheme of nature. He had one defect which at this instant made him invaluable. He resented any imputation of the fact angrily, but he had been deaf as an adder for years. ...
— VC — A Chronicle of Castle Barfield and of the Crimea • David Christie Murray
... arranged a feast for Sir Modred and his men. And as they feasted all went merrily till an adder glided out of a little bush and stung one of the knight's men. And the pain was so great, that the man quickly drew his ...
— Stories of King Arthur's Knights - Told to the Children by Mary MacGregor • Mary MacGregor
... "Stay, adder, stay, that by thy pattern my sister may draw the fashion and work of a rich ribbon, that I may present to my beloved, by which means thy beauty and the excellent order of thy scales shall for ever be preferred before all ...
— The Essays of Montaigne, Complete • Michel de Montaigne
... I have been hesitating between Moorcock and Black Adder, but I thought you would ...
— Crown and Sceptre - A West Country Story • George Manville Fenn
... Erasmus's English friends attempt to restrain their young, ambitious compatriot. Erasmus on his part irritated him furtively. He reveals in this whole dispute a lack of self-control and dignity which shows his weakest side. Usually so anxious as to decorum he now lapses into invectives: The British adder, Satan, even the old taunt ascribing a tail to Englishmen has to serve once more. The points at issue disappear altogether behind the bitter mutual reproaches. In his unrestrained anger, Erasmus avails himself of the ...
— Erasmus and the Age of Reformation • Johan Huizinga
... horse tail, Equisetum fluviatile, with its fluted stem and verticillate series of linear brandies. Two other species of the same genus, Equisetum sylvaticum and Equisetum arvense, flourish on the drier parts of the moor, blent with two species of minute ferns, the moonwort and the adder's tongue,—ferns that, like the magnificent royal fern (Osmunda regalis), though on a much humbler scale, bear their seed cases on independent stems, and were much sought after of old for imaginary virtues, ...
— The Testimony of the Rocks - or, Geology in Its Bearings on the Two Theologies, Natural and Revealed • Hugh Miller
... ruddy rascal, He the lively Lemminkainen, Struck his left shoe in the snowdrift, Like an adder in the meadow, Pushed his staff of pinewood forward, As it were a living serpent, 200 And he said as he was gliding, Grasping firm the pole he carried: "Let the men who live in Lapland, Help me all to bring the ...
— Kalevala, Volume I (of 2) - The Land of the Heroes • Anonymous
... to be obliged to pass David Milliken a second time; "though there warn't no sign that he cared anything about it one way or 'nother, bein' blind as a bat, 'n' deef as an adder, 'n' dumb as a fish, 'n' settin' stockstill there with no coat on, 'n' the wind blowin' up for rain, 'n' four o' the Millikens layin' in the churchyard with gallopin' consumption." It was in this frame of mind that she purchased ...
— Timothy's Quest - A Story for Anybody, Young or Old, Who Cares to Read It • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... said Lyon Berners in extreme anxiety and displeasure, as he left Rosa's side, and made his way around the table, until he stood immediately behind his wife. He touched her on her shoulder to attract her attention. She started as if an adder had stung her, but she never ...
— Cruel As The Grave • Mrs. Emma D. E. N. Southworth
... for you," said Mr. Holiday eagerly. He was a lightning adder, and not in the least averse to showing off. The clergyman, still smiling, ...
— The Spread Eagle and Other Stories • Gouverneur Morris
... Hymenophyllum Tunbridgense, with many of the same tribe. I see a little fern which, to my eyes, is our English Asplenium Trichomanes. Every English fern which I know has a variety something like it here, though seldom identical. We have one to correspond with the adder's tongue and moonwort, with the Adiantum nigrum and Capillus Veneris, with the Blechnum boreale, with the Ceterach and Ruta muraria, and with the Cystopterids. I never saw a Woodsia here; but I think that ...
— A First Year in Canterbury Settlement • Samuel Butler
... it," said Joel, trying to twitch back again; "it's an ugly mean old adder, Polly, but he's most ...
— The Adventures of Joel Pepper • Margaret Sidney
... half tempted to turn him loose. The "major-domo" had singled out Sponsilier and was trying issues with him, Bob Quirk was dropping them right and left, when the deposed commandant sprang upon a table, and in a voice like the hiss of an adder, commanded peace, and the disorder ...
— The Outlet • Andy Adams
... her seat as if stung by an adder. Alexis Razumovsky, who still knelt at her feet, uttered loud lamentations, in which Woronzow and Grunstein soon joined. With calm triumph Lestocq observed the effect ...
— The Daughter of an Empress • Louise Muhlbach
... it myself. What I had done was partly in self-defence, and I did not consider it a crime. And then, he whose life I had taken was an evil man, with the devil's dues in him, and I felt no more remorse after killing him than if I had trodden on a poisonous adder. But now I see things differently. In coming here I exposed you to danger at the hands of the State. I ask your pardon, and I beg you to let ...
— The Eternal City • Hall Caine
... igloo has been dark; But now the rag wick sends a spark That glitters in the icy air, And wakes frost sapphires everywhere; Bright, bitter flames, that adder-like Dart here and there, yet fear to strike The gruesome gloom wherein THEY lie, My comrades, oh, so keen to die! And I, the last — well, here I wait The clock to strike the hour of eight. ...
— Rhymes of a Rolling Stone • Robert W. Service
... man of the sea, and the sea would not rest until it had got him back. So the grave was opened, and he really was found with his thumb in his mouth. So they laid him upon a cart and harnessed two oxen before it; and as if stung by an adder, the oxen ran away with the man of the sea over heath and moorland to the ocean; and then the sand ceased flying inland, but the hills that had been heaped up still remained there. All this Juergen heard and treasured ...
— What the Moon Saw: and Other Tales • Hans Christian Andersen
... in town. I remember a terrible fright a large picnic party, at which I assisted, was thrown into while lunching in the garden of a villa, almost in the town of Rio, by a lady jumping up from her seat with a deadly whip-snake hanging on her dress. I once myself sat on an adder who put his fangs through the woollen stuff of my inexpressibles and could not escape. The same thing happened with the lady's dress; in that case also we caught the snake, as it could ...
— Sketches From My Life - By The Late Admiral Hobart Pasha • Hobart Pasha
... in the lake," said Taliesin, the bard[125]; "a spotted adder on the mountain, a star, a priest. This was long, long ago; since then, I have slept in a hundred worlds, ...
— Reincarnation - A Study in Human Evolution • Th. Pascal
... fire now flashed like lightning on to the body of one of the other two, piercing him in the navel, and then falling on the ground, and lying stretched before him. The wounded man, fascinated and mute, stood looking at the adder's eyes, and endeavouring to stand steady on his legs, yawning the while as if smitten with lethargy or fever; the adder, on his part, looked up at the eyes of the man, and both of them breathed hard, and sent forth a smoke that mingled ...
— Stories from the Italian Poets: With Lives of the Writers, Volume 1 • Leigh Hunt
... enjoy their lives until immediately before the catastrophe, takes none of its horror from the mode of death. To be dismembered alive is certainly not an agreeable experience, and I suggest that you should observe how, for instance, a water-adder swallows a frog; how the poor creature, seized by the hind legs, gradually disappears down its throat, while its eyes project staring out of their sockets; how it does not cease struggling desperately even as ...
— The Silesian Horseherd - Questions of the Hour • Friedrich Max Mueller
... Adder, or Surda Echidna of Linnaeus.—Under this head may be classed all that portion of the spectators (for audience they properly are not) who, not finding the first act of a piece answer to their preconceived notions ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 11, Issue 67, May, 1863 • Various
... electric eel, infests the warm streams, and inflicts its torture without discrimination upon all who dare invade its domain. Snakes lurk in the fetid swamps and lagoons, the brilliant coral and the deadly mapina. Beneath the forest leaves coils the brown adder, whose sting proves fatal ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking
... their appointment was, and they were agreed and accorded thoroughly; and wine was fetched, and they drank. Right so came an adder out of a little heath bush, and it stung a knight on the foot. When the knight felt himself stung, he looked down and saw the adder; then he drew his sword to slay the adder, and thought of none other harm. But when the hosts on both ...
— Stories of King Arthur and His Knights - Retold from Malory's "Morte dArthur" • U. Waldo Cutler
... and timber, often wide enough to contain within it a winding footpath, or a rough cart-track. Under its shelter the earliest primroses, anemones, and wild hyacinths were to be found; sometimes the first bird's nest; and, now and then, the unwelcome adder. Two such hedgerows radiated, as it were, from the parsonage garden. One, a continuation of the turf terrace, proceeded westward, forming the southern boundary of the home meadows; and was formed into a rustic shrubbery, with occasional seats, entitled "The Wood Walk." The other ran straight ...
— Jane Austen, Her Life and Letters - A Family Record • William Austen-Leigh and Richard Arthur Austen-Leigh
... were capable of affording better fun. Some seasons afterwards, when our Hunt was disbanded, the shopkeepers' apprentices continued, with the youngsters, to work our mongrel hounds; but eventually Joker's death from the bite of an adder put an end to their pastime, for the bobtail and the terrier were the only possible leaders of ...
— Creatures of the Night - A Book of Wild Life in Western Britain • Alfred W. Rees
... lost child! which I can feel for the tenderness of the inexperienced heart! My Virgin Eve, which the Serpent has entered into your youthful paradise, and you will find; alas! too late, that you have warmed an adder into your bosom!" ...
— Two Years Ago, Volume I • Charles Kingsley
... before him. All horrent the cobra exalts his hooded head, and the spanning jaws fly open. Quivers and chitters the tail of the cheerful rattlesnake; silently slips out the forked tongue, and is as silently absorbed. The fangless adder warps up the leg of the Professor, lays clammy coils about his neck, and pokes a flattened head curiously into his open mouth. The young man of Colusa is interested; his feelings transcend expression. Not a syllable breathes he, but with ...
— The Fiend's Delight • Dod Grile
... should Queen Armida wed, A goodly swain to be a princess' fere, A lovely partner of a lady's bed, A noble head a golden crown to wear: His glosing sire his errand daily said, And sugared speeches whispered in mine ear To make me take this darling in mine arms, But still the adder ...
— Jerusalem Delivered • Torquato Tasso
... she-goats come, without a master's word, And home with udders brimming broad returns the friendly herd. There round the fold no surly bear its midnight prowl doth make, Nor teems the rank and heaving soil with the adder and the snake; There no contagion smites the flocks, nor blight of any star With fury of remorseless heat the sweltering herds doth mar. Nor this the only bliss that waits us there, where drenching rains By watery Eurus swept along ne'er devastate the plains, Nor are ...
— Horace • Theodore Martin
... in yonder dell Pursues his daily toil; As witness many a prostrate trunk, Bereft of leafy spoil, Hard by its wooden stump, whereon The adder loves ...
— The Poetical Works of Thomas Hood • Thomas Hood
... on, And my head's one that its spite was spent on; Thirty years are fled since that morning, 805 And with them all my head's adorning. Nor did the old Duchess die outright, As you expect, of suppressed spite, The natural end of every adder Not suffered to empty its poison-bladder; 810 But she and her son agreed, I take it, That no one should touch on the story to wake it, For the wound in the Duke's pride rankled fiery, So, they made ...
— Selections from the Poems and Plays of Robert Browning • Robert Browning
... will float, and that against a stream. This "egg," it will be seen, was from Gaul. The British variant of the superstition was that the snakes thus formed a ring of poison matter, larger or smaller according to the number engaged, which solidified into a gem known as Glain naidr, "Adder's glass."[65] The small rings of green or blue glass, too thick for wear, which are not uncommonly found in British burial-places, are supposed to represent this gem. So also, possibly, are the much larger rings of roughly-baked clay which occur throughout the Roman ...
— Early Britain—Roman Britain • Edward Conybeare
... up, for it has been sung in noble poetry and music; and whether it be true or not, it stands forever as a warning to us, not to seek for help from evil persons, or to gain good ends by evil means. For if we use an adder even against our enemies, it will ...
— Myths That Every Child Should Know - A Selection Of The Classic Myths Of All Times For Young People • Various
... the red leather before me. It was of most unusual workmanship, apparently Indian, being made of some kind of dark brown, mottled wood, bearing a marked resemblance to a snake's skin; and the top of the cane was carved in conformity, to represent the head of what I took to be a puff-adder, fragments of stone, or beads, being inserted to represent the eyes, and the whole thing being finished with an ...
— The Devil Doctor • Sax Rohmer
... bitterly, and the Star-Child was glad and ran back to his playmates. But when they saw him coming they ran away from him in fear. He went to the well and looked in. Lo, his face was as the face of a toad and his body was scaled like an adder. He flung himself down on ...
— Tell Me Another Story - The Book of Story Programs • Carolyn Sherwin Bailey
... Norfolk, Va., south, the other all over the eastern country from Texas to Massachusetts. They are usually confounded, however, with two perfectly harmless snakes, the cotton mouth with the common water snake, the copperhead with the so-called spreading adder, but as their differences have to be learned from actual inspection and are very hard to express in a description which would help to identify living specimens, it is wisest to keep away ...
— Boy Scouts Handbook - The First Edition, 1911 • Boy Scouts of America
... wroth, and swore that Raud should suffer the worst of deaths, and the King commanded that he be taken and bound with his back to a pole and that a bit of wood be placed betwixt his teeth so that his mouth might be open, and caused an adder to be taken and set in his mouth, but the adder would in no wise enter therein but writhed away when Raud blew upon it. Then did the King cause the adder to be taken & put in a hollow stick of angelica and set in the mouth of Raud (albeit some ...
— The Sagas of Olaf Tryggvason and of Harald The Tyrant (Harald Haardraade) • Snorri Sturluson
... sixty, insatiably greedy of such fleshly comforts as had ever come within her knowledge—soft cushions, heavily sweetened dishes, finer clothing than her neighbors. She had cold eyes, and nature had formed her mouth and jaw like the little silver-striped adder that I found one day, mangled by some passing cart, in the yellow dust of the road. Her lips were stretched for ever in that same flat, immutable smile. When she moved her head, you caught the gleam ...
— A Village Ophelia and Other Stories • Anne Reeve Aldrich
... a kingfisher slowly floating toward the beach. The kingfisher is a sacred bird which should always be respected; knowing this, I let it alight and did not stir, for fear of frightening it. At the same moment I saw a beautiful green adder come from a cleft of the mountain and crawl along the sand toward the bird. When they were near each other, without either seeming surprised at the meeting, the adder coiled itself around the neck of the kingfisher, as if tenderly ...
— Laboulaye's Fairy Book • Various
... Oscar, deaf as the adder, kept on. Conn yelled at his mother to use her control; she remembered that she had one, a thing like an old-fashioned pocket watch, around her neck on a chain, ...
— The Cosmic Computer • Henry Beam Piper
... bell-bird, the coach-whip, the tewinga, the laughing-jackass, the rifle-bird and regent, filled the air with sound, if not with music. And the black snake, the brown snake, the whip, the diamond, and the death adder glided gently among the fallen leaves and grasses, and held themselves in cheerful readiness for intruders. That was why a condition was attached to ...
— Seven Little Australians • Ethel Sybil Turner
... "I know, I know, Mr. Sutcliffe, it was mean of me," he said, "and I know I ought to apologise to her. But if you had seen the look on her face, and had suffered what I have suffered, you'd have spoken too. Why, she might think I was an adder. But there, I dare say she knew who I was, and that I had just come out ...
— The Day of Judgment • Joseph Hocking
... single adder bit me, it would go farther to convince me that the next adder would bite me too than if fifty young Buffons told me ...
— Love Me Little, Love Me Long • Charles Reade
... Arthur and a certain number of knights should meet Mordred with an equal number, and discuss the terms of peace. It had been strictly enjoined on both parties that no weapon should be drawn, and all would have gone well had not an adder been lurking in the grass. One of the knights drew his sword to kill it, and this unexpected movement proved the signal for one of the bloodiest battles ...
— Legends of the Middle Ages - Narrated with Special Reference to Literature and Art • H.A. Guerber
... the way you repay me? I, who have kept you out of the workhouse, treated you like my own child? And then to go and write filthy, rascally, Radical ballads on me and mine! This comes of your Methodism, you canting, sneaking hypocrite!—you viper—you adder—you snake—you—!' And the squire, whose vocabulary was not large, at a loss for another synonym, rounded off his oration by a torrent of oaths; at which Argemone, taking Honoria's hand, walked proudly out of ...
— Yeast: A Problem • Charles Kingsley
... station-cook in terror, nearly every time he bakes, Mixes up among the doughboys half-a-dozen poison-snakes: Where the wily free-selector walks in armour-plated pants, And defies the stings of scorpions, and the bites of bull-dog ants: Where the adder and the viper tear each other by the throat, There it was that William Johnson ...
— The Man from Snowy River • Andrew Barton 'Banjo' Paterson
... natural feelings of any sort this comfortless evil spirit ever curls the lip. Inhabiting modern young ladies, it is especially superior to the maternal instinct, and cringes from a baby in a railway carriage as from an adder. At the dropping of an 'h' it shrinks as though the weighty letter had fallen upon its great toe, and it will forgive anything rather than a provincial accent. It lives entirely in the surfaces of things, and, as the surface of life is frequently ...
— Prose Fancies • Richard Le Gallienne
... adder, whom athwart the way Some wheel hath crushed, or traveller, passing by, Maimed with a stone, as unaware he lay, And left sore mangled, on the point to die, In vain his coils would lengthen, fain to fly: One half erect, his burning eyes around He darts, and lifts his hissing throat on high, Defiant, ...
— The Aeneid of Virgil - Translated into English Verse by E. Fairfax Taylor • Virgil
... March, his shoes are purple, He is new and high; Makes he mud for dog and peddler, Makes he forest dry; Knows the adder's tongue his coming, And begets her spot. Stands the sun so close and mighty That our minds are hot. News is he of all the others; Bold it were to die With the blue-birds ...
— Poems: Three Series, Complete • Emily Dickinson
... pangs of a guilty conscience; one whose thoughts or eyes wander among other objects may, by a lucky word, be called back to attention; but the sleeper shuts up all avenues to his soul; he is "like the deaf adder, that hearkeneth not to the voice of the charmer, charm he never so wisely;" and we may preach with as good success to the grave ...
— Three Sermons, Three Prayer • Jonathan Swift
... day on the moor will the cotton-grass Weave its white, long bands together; And softly the snake and the adder pass Through the stems of the ...
— The Old Willow Tree and Other Stories • Carl Ewald
... hath sorrow? who hath contention? who hath wounds without cause? They that tarry long at the wine, they that go to seek mixed wine. Look not thou upon the wine; at the last it biteth like a serpent, and stingeth like an adder." Prov. 23:29-32. ...
— Select Temperance Tracts • American Tract Society
... next bearer's gripe It wrought, is now by Cassius and Brutus Bark'd off in hell, and by Perugia's sons And Modena's was mourn'd. Hence weepeth still Sad Cleopatra, who, pursued by it, Took from the adder black and sudden death. With him it ran e'en to the Red Sea coast; With him compos'd the world to such a peace, That of his temple Janus barr'd ...
— The Divine Comedy, Complete - The Vision of Paradise, Purgatory and Hell • Dante Alighieri
... so lovely, that anyone, especially the clerks, would have believed the heavens were open above them, behold, her good man, who comes upon her near the old cross. She, at that time lazily swinging her charming little foot over the side of the litter, drew in her head as though she had seen an adder. She was a good wife, for I know some who would have proudly passed their husbands, to their shame and to the great ...
— Droll Stories, Volume 1 • Honore de Balzac
... toleration or favour for the lower orders, that is, for the great mass of our fellow-creatures, treated as an indecorum and breach of the harmony of well-regulated society. In short, I prefer a bear-garden to the adder's den; or, to put this case in its extremest point of view, I have more patience with men in a rude state of nature outraging the human form than I have with apes 'making mops and mows' at the extravagances they have first provoked. ...
— Table-Talk - Essays on Men and Manners • William Hazlitt
... we feared," they said. "He is unrepentant and he is worthy of death. It is not expedient that the young adder should live. There is poison under his tongue, and he speaks things not lawful for an Israelite to hear. Let him die, that we may see him no more, and that our children be not corrupted by ...
— The Witch of Prague • F. Marion Crawford
... thirteen, to be the leader of the body of three thousand men which were to join in the Crusade preached by Pope Pius II. On the 2nd of June, 1464, the ducal standard, bearing the golden lion of the house of Sforza and the adder of the Visconti, was solemnly committed to the charge of the young Crusader, before the eyes of the whole court, on the piazza in front of the old palace, which was gaily decorated for the occasion with garlands and tapestries. But the Pope died, and ...
— Beatrice d'Este, Duchess of Milan, 1475-1497 • Julia Mary Cartwright
... mill stream The mountain roses fall; And fern and adder's-tongue Grow on the old mill wall. The tarn is on the upland moor, Where not a leaf doth grow; And through the mountain gashes, The merry mill stream dashes Down to the sea below. But in the quiet hollows The red trout groweth prime, For ...
— The Illustrated London Reading Book • Various
... the adder itself to the cries, When wisdom, humanity, justice implore, You would have our proud eagle to feed on the eyes Of those who have taught him so ...
— War Poetry of the South • Various
... "A good deal of ceremony to-night about crushing an adder." Athos shrunk into his corner, pale and motionless as ...
— Twenty Years After • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... ire when this adder's tongue struck his wound. But it told, as intended: the old ...
— The Cloister and the Hearth • Charles Reade
... himself if he chooses, As the only subjects of conversation. As a twister of words and meanings, And a skilled welder of fallacies, And a swift emerger from ineluctable traps of logic, And a wit with an adder's tongue, And a laugher, And an unafraid facer of enemies, Oppositions, hatreds, She never knew her equal. She was at once very cruel, and very tender, Very selfish and very generous Very little and very magnanimous. Scrupulous ...
— Toward the Gulf • Edgar Lee Masters
... both these noble visitors again another season. For it is noticeable how common such things tend to become when once they are discovered. An enthusiastic botanical collector told me that for years he searched far and near for the adder's-tongue fern, till one day he stumbled upon it in a place over which he had long been in the habit of passing. Marking the peculiarities of the spot he straightway wrote to a kindred spirit, whom he knew to have been engaged in the same hunt, suggesting ...
— Birds in the Bush • Bradford Torrey
... "Unstable as water, thou shalt not excel;" and of Dan, "Dan shall be a serpent by the way, an adder in the path, that biteth the horse heels, so that his ...
— The Astronomy of the Bible - An Elementary Commentary on the Astronomical References - of Holy Scripture • E. Walter Maunder
... of the forest issues boldly from his den, and the spear of the powerful pierces his heart. The deadly adder lurks in his covert till the ...
— The Indian Princess - La Belle Sauvage • James Nelson Barker
... Cal. Thou must sad chance by fore-cast, wise resist, Or being done say boote-les had I wist. Caes. But for to feare wher's no suspition, Will to my greatnesse be derision. Cal. There lurkes an adder in the greenest grasse, Daungers of purpose alwayes hide their face: Caes. Perswade no more Caesar's resolu'd to go. Cal. The Heauens resolue that hee may safe returne, 1630 For if ought happen ...
— The Tragedy Of Caesar's Revenge • Anonymous
... words than he had anticipated. Even the austere and exacting are usually appeased by the signs of contrition, but the nature of Deerslayer did not require proofs of intense feelings so strong in order to bring him down to a level with the regrets felt by the girl herself. He arose, as if an adder had stung him, and the accents of the mother that soothes her child were scarcely more gentle and winning than the tones of his voice, as he now expressed his contrition at having ...
— The Deerslayer • James Fenimore Cooper
... their own. Sir Arthur Helps has well said: "What! dull, when you do not know what gives its loveliness of form to the lily, its depth of color to the violet, its fragrance to the rose; when you do not know in what consists the venom of the adder, any more than you can imitate the glad movements of the dove. What! dull, when earth, air, and water are all alike mysteries to you, and when as you stretch out your hand you do not touch anything ...
— The Pleasures of Life • Sir John Lubbock
... himself and Capt. Helm. And should not this circumstance be a warning to parents and guardians, to young men and children, "to look not upon the wine when it is red," and remember that at last "it will bite like a serpent and sting like an adder?" Should it not also remind those who have guests to entertain, of the sinfulness of putting the cup to their neighbor's lips? Certainly it should. But I ...
— Twenty-Two Years a Slave, and Forty Years a Freeman • Austin Steward
... said, wishing to do her duty by all mankind, even by them as had ever been her bitterest enemies, she would not listen to him. With that she stopped her ears, and shook her head from side to side, to intimate to Mr Dennis that though he talked until he had no breath left, she was as deaf as any adder. ...
— Barnaby Rudge • Charles Dickens
... Plutarch has observed, that the medical science would be brought to the utmost perfection, when poison should be converted into physic. Thus, in the mortal disease of Judaism and idolatry, our blessed Lord converted the adder's venom of Saul the persecutor, into that cement which made Paul the chosen vessel. That manly activity, that restless ardor, that burning zeal for the law of his fathers, that ardent thirst for the blood of Christians, did the Son of God find necessary in the man ...
— Essays on Various Subjects - Principally Designed for Young Ladies • Hannah More
... they were not an inspiring spectacle. A soldier, stripped of his arms and held by his foes, becomes of a sudden a pitiable, almost a contemptible object. You think instinctively of an adder that has lost its fangs, or of a wild cat that, being shorn of teeth to bite with and claws to tear with, is now a more helpless, more impotent thing than if it had been created without teeth and claws in the first place. These similes are poor ones, I'm afraid, ...
— Paths of Glory - Impressions of War Written At and Near the Front • Irvin S. Cobb
... the girl had never been deep; and, the moment she fancied she and her son were drawing toward each other, she became to her the thawed adder: she wished the adder well, but was she bound to harbor it after it had begun to bite? There are who never learn to see anything except in its relation to themselves, nor that relation except as fancied by themselves; and, this ...
— Mary Marston • George MacDonald
... decoration, and that the women of the Court, in all their blaze of diamonds set off with Parisian rouge, could not match the blooming health, the sparkling eye, and modest deportment of the dear girls of her native land. When presented to the King, she declared that her reception stung her like an adder, although His Majesty was kind enough to salute her cheek. She thought Queen Charlotte rather embarrassed and Mrs. Adams confessed to a disagreeable feeling. Yet the Queen simply inquired whether Mrs. Adams had gotten into her ...
— The United States of America Part I • Ediwn Erle Sparks
... poisons and a specific against epilepsy. Culpepper speaks of it as a sure panacea for apoplexy, palsy, and falling sickness, a belief current in Sweden, where finger rings are made of its wood. An old-fashioned charm for the bite of an adder was to place a cross formed of hazel-wood on the wound, and the burning of a thorn-bush has long been considered a sure preventive of mildew in wheat. Without multiplying further illustrations, there can be no doubt that the therapeutic ...
— The Folk-lore of Plants • T. F. Thiselton-Dyer
... from that bite!" teased Josh, to scare me. But I remained unscared. I sucked the blood from the tiny punctures, feeling secure, after I had done it. I remembered how Queen Eleanore had saved the life of Richard Coeur de Lion in the Holy Land, when he had been bitten by an adder, by sucking out the venom. I enjoyed the thrill of ...
— Tramping on Life - An Autobiographical Narrative • Harry Kemp
... ample use of the treacherous juice, Which some folks say stings like an adder, They went back again at the handkerchief men, Who slowly ...
— John Smith, U.S.A. • Eugene Field
... young man, throwing her from him, as if stung by an adder. "Birth, education, the prejudices of society, have placed an eternal barrier between us. Impoverished though I be, I never can so far forget myself as to mate with ...
— Mark Hurdlestone - Or, The Two Brothers • Susanna Moodie
... empty-handed, the strength for ever gone from arms that were invincible; to crawl, a poor crushed worm, the mark for all men's pity, where one had thought to win the meed of all men's praise, ah, then to live is agony! Each breath becomes a venomed adder's sting. ...
— The Little Colonel's Chum: Mary Ware • Annie Fellows Johnston
... forestall His rod: What! and so lose The strength which comes by suffering? Well, if grief Be gain, mine's double—fleeing thus the snare Of yon luxurious and unnerving down, And widowed from mine Eden. And why widowed? Because they tell me, love is of the flesh, And that's our house-bred foe, the adder in our bosoms, Which warmed to life, will sting us. They must know— I do confess mine ignorance, O Lord! Mine earnest will these painful limbs may prove. . . . . . And yet I swore to love him.—So I do No more than I have sworn. Am ...
— The Saint's Tragedy • Charles Kingsley
... wood, And ancient towers crown his brow. That cast an awful look below; Whose rugged sides the ivy creeps, And with her arms from falling keeps. 'Tis now the raven's bleak abode; 'Tis now th' apartment of the toad; And there the fox securely feeds. And there the poisonous adder breeds, Concealed in ruins, moss, and weeds; While ever and anon there fall Huge heaps of hoary, mouldered wall. Yet time has seen, that lifts the low And level lays the lofty brow,— Has seen this broken pile complete, Big with ...
— England, Picturesque and Descriptive - A Reminiscence of Foreign Travel • Joel Cook |
