"Adder" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... inhabitants have fastened on it the longest and clumsiest of all. It comes from the Mohegan words Apo-keep-sink, meaning a safe, pleasant harbor. Harbor it might be for canoes, but for nothing bigger, for it was only the little cove that was so called between Call Rock and Adder Cliff,—the former indicating where settlers awaiting passage hailed the masters of vessels from its top, and the latter taking its name from the ...
— Myths And Legends Of Our Own Land, Complete • Charles M. Skinner
... nobler beast 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
... eye darted a look at her which was like the spring of an adder, dwelling for just a second on the girl's face, and then scuttling off in an uncleanly, poisonous way for hiding corners. He saw that she was thin, and believed to a certain extent in Coronado's hints of poison, so that his glance was more cowardly ...
— Overland • John William De Forest
... 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 embracing it; they remained ...
— Laboulaye's Fairy Book • Various
... sexes. Usually we are apt to think of the 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, to ...
— Side Lights • James Runciman
... 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, ...
— Bunyan Characters (Second Series) • Alexander Whyte
... in 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 up ...
— Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry • Albert Pike
... post,—as said before - And as deaf as twenty similes more, Including the adder, that deafest of snakes, Which never ...
— Playful Poems • Henry Morley
... the natural depravity of man, And his freedom to redeem 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 ...
— Toward the Gulf • Edgar Lee Masters
... were none left behind save the sick and the very old. None were painted; they were all for peace, and were as women. We crept close to them, and hid in the thick bushes which grew upon the edge of their camp, for the Shawanos are the cunning adder and not the foolish rattlesnake. We saw them preparing to offer a sacrifice to the Great Spirit. We saw them clean the deer, and hang his head, horns, and entrails upon the great white pole with a forked top, which stood over the roof ...
— Folk-Lore and Legends: North American Indian • Anonymous
... drawn they were to come-on swiftly and slay that traitor, Sir Mordred, 'for I in no wise trust him.' And in like wise spake Sir Mordred unto his host. Then they two met, and agreed on the truce, and wine was fetched and they drank, and all was well. But while they were drinking an adder crept out of a bush, and stung one of the fourteen Knights on his foot, and he drew his sword to slay the adder, not thinking of anything but his pain. And when the men of both armies beheld that drawn sword, they blew trumpets and horns and shouted grimly, and made them ready ...
— The Book of Romance • Various
... under, thrusts in flanconade and tierce, feint and double-feint, and sudden disengagements. The sweat trickled down the vicomte's face; Victor's forehead glistened with moisture. Suddenly Victor stooped; swift as the tongue of an adder his blade bit deeply into the vicomte's groin, making a terrible wound. The vicomte caught his breath in a ...
— The Grey Cloak • Harold MacGrath
... illustration for his argument. "Some chaps," he said, "'ud be thankful to have toes to be trod on"; and ducking to avoid a coming missile, he added cheerfully, "But there's even an advantage about having wooden legs at times. Heard once of a chap that reckoned 'em just the thing. Trod on a death-adder unexpected-like in his camp, and when the death-adder whizzed round to strike it, just struck wood, and the chap enjoyed his supper as usual that night. That chap had a wooden leg," he added, unnecessarily explicit; ...
— We of the Never-Never • Jeanie "Mrs. Aeneas" Gunn
... were vicious and damnable. If you are compelled to choose between writing a letter with false signature vitriolic of any man's integrity or any woman's honor on the one hand, and the writing a letter with a red-hot nail dipped in adder's poison on a sheet woven of leper scales, choose the latter. It were healthier, nobler, and could better endure the test of man's review and ...
— Around The Tea-Table • T. De Witt Talmage
... and that's but right, Strong drink (it hath an adder's bite!) Was what had put him in the mud, The only kind ...
— Shapes of Clay • Ambrose Bierce
... the English always beat him? He remembered his hatred of Denzil while at Eton, and the dog's life he had often led there. Well, he would hit back with an adder's sting when the chance came to him. He would like to see both Ardayres ruined and England herself in the dust, numbed and conquered. All his English life and education had never made him anything but an alien ...
— The Price of Things • Elinor Glyn
... blessed with happy purpose. All is not known yet even in Australia. The number of "observers" who believe that snakes swallow their young in time of danger, and allow them to emerge when it is past, and that the end of the death adder to avoid is the tail, which is fitted with a slightly curved spur, become fewer every year; but we are still sincere in many of the honourable points of ignorance. Some discredit such facts as climbing fish, oysters "growing" on living trees, birds hatching eggs without ...
— The Confessions of a Beachcomber • E J Banfield
... words, every one of them an adder, Alfred turned on her furiously, and his long arm shot out of its own accord, and the fingers opened like an eagle's claw. She saw, and understood, but never blenched. Her vindictive eye met his dilating ...
— Hard Cash • Charles Reade
... gave an exclamation and leaped back out of the grass. "Come out of that grass, Walt," he cried, "I have been bitten by a puff adder. I ...
— The Boy Chums in the Forest - or Hunting for Plume Birds in the Florida Everglades • Wilmer M. Ely
... went well enough; it takes ladies a few weeks to find out each other's weak points. But then the new Mrs. Tunnygate unexpectedly yet undeniably began to exhibit the serpent's tooth, the adder's tongue or the cloven hoof—as the reader's literary traditions may lead him to prefer. For no obvious reason at all she conceived a violent hatred of Mrs. Appleboy, a hatred that waxed all the more virulent on account of its object's innocently ...
— Tutt and Mr. Tutt • Arthur Train
... be unimpeachable, your utility will be much questioned, if you wish to spare a royalist because he is a brave man," said Barrere. "By the same argument, I presume, you would refrain from knocking an adder on the head, because he rose boldly ...
— La Vendee • Anthony Trollope
... Sigmund asked whether his orders had been carried out. The lad replied by showing the bread, and when closely questioned he artlessly confessed that he had been obliged to knead into the loaf a great adder which was hidden in the meal. Pleased to see that the boy, for whom he felt a strange affection, had successfully stood the test which had daunted his brothers, Sigmund bade him refrain from eating of the loaf, for although he was proof against the bite of a reptile, he could not, like his mentor, ...
— Myths of the Norsemen - From the Eddas and Sagas • H. A. Guerber
... quickset, but an irregular border of copse-wood 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 ...
— Memoir of Jane Austen • James Edward Austen-Leigh
... my boy, not to catch hold of the tail of a puff adder," he exclaimed, as Percy again dismounted. "They are pretty numerous hereabouts, and you may chance to put your hand close to one of their holes while you are ...
— Hendricks the Hunter - The Border Farm, a Tale of Zululand • W.H.G. Kingston
... the yellow fireflies; Hawkweeds, Loosestrifes, Primroses bloom, and the bushy Wild Indigo. The variety of hues increases; delicate purple Orchises bloom in their chosen haunts, and Wild Roses blush over hill and dale. On peat meadows the Adder's-Tongue Arethusa (now called Pogonia) flowers profusely, with a faint, delicious perfume,—and its more elegant cousin, the Calopogon, by its side. In this vicinity we miss the blue Harebell, the identical harebell of Ellen Douglas, which I remember waving its exquisite flowers along ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 62, December, 1862 • Various
... people don't tell such things about their friends in public conveyances," exclaimed Mistigris. "As for me, I'm not listening to you; I'm deaf: 'discretion plays the better part of adder.'" ...
— A Start in Life • Honore de Balzac
... spiritual equally with material, all manner of qualities, entities, existences whatsoever, in this strange visible and invisible Universe, are equally inflexible of nature; that, they will, one and all, with precisely the same obstinacy, continue to obey their own law, not our law; deaf as the adder to all charm of parliamentary eloquence, and of voting never so often repeated; silently, but inflexibly and forevermore, declining to change themselves, even as sulphuric acid declines to become sweet milk, though you vote so to the end of the world. This, it sometimes ...
— Latter-Day Pamphlets • Thomas Carlyle
... 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 ...
— Droll Stories, Complete - Collected From The Abbeys Of Touraine • Honore de Balzac
... the worse wit, or somewhat, for I shall not now deserve it. Well, then[207], I commit myself to my fortunes and your contents; contented to die, if your severe judgments shall judge me to be stung to death with the adder's hiss. ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. VII (4th edition) • Various
... tear it up by the roots, though it be twisted with the chords of your life. Profit by the example of the miserable sinner that has passed from us, and embrace the means of grace while it is called to-day 'ere your conscience is seared as with a fire-brand, and your ears deafened like those of the adder, and your heart hardened like the nether mill-stone. Up, then, and be doing—wrestle and overcome; resist, and the enemy shall flee from you—Watch and pray, lest ye fall into temptation, and let the stumbling of others be your ...
— The Abbot • Sir Walter Scott
... high on his forehead to have a better sight of so strange an attitude for his sister to take. At 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, and not before she was ...
— Philip Gilbert Hamerton • Philip Gilbert Hamerton et al
... comity room. A Congressman came out, coughin' behind his hand, an' put his handkerchief into th' northwest corner iv his coat. 'Ladies,' says he, 'what can I do f'r ye?' he says. 'Ye must save th' ar-rmy fr'm th' malt that biteth like a wasp an' stingeth like an adder,' says they. 'Ye bet ye'er life I will, ladies,' says th' Congressman with a slight hiccup. 'I will do as ye desire. A sojer that will dhrink beer is a disgrace to th' American jag,' he says. 'We abolished public dhrinkin' in th' ...
— Mr. Dooley Says • Finley Dunne
... been bitten by a cobra, or a rattlesnake, or a puff-adder, there are many remedies, but few people who can recommend them from personal experience. It is to be feared that most of them unfortunately die before writing their testimonials. Perhaps they were ...
— The Strand Magazine, Volume V, Issue 28, April 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... have been tempted to seize, there is a serpent that starts up amongst all the flowers. When the evil act is done—opposite of the prophet's roll—it is sweet in the lips, but oh! it is bitter afterwards. 'At the last it biteth like a serpent, and stingeth like an adder!' ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... an awful explosion of passion. The old man had evidently been a reckless desperado in other days, and many in the village suspected strongly that he had once been a pirate. He was addicted to drinking, and now and then, when bitten by the adder, would talk strangely. He would commence narrating some wonderful hurricane he had experienced on the Spanish Main, and would launch out upon the number of times he had headed boarding parties, and once, in a state of great intoxication at the village ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 3 September 1848 • Various
... to look over all her companion's books, drawings,—for she, like her twin brother, was an artist,—keepsakes, and treasures of every sort. One day she came upon something that made her start back as if stung by an adder. It was a little portrait in an oval frame, a man's face, highly idealised by the artist, and yet strikingly true to life. Evidently the hand of love had depicted those lineaments. The eyes were bright, the lips wore a proud smile, the ...
— Manasseh - A Romance of Transylvania • Maurus Jokai
... fowls; and with the Agazonbae, who are dog-faced; and with the Sibans, who have horses' feet, and run more swiftly than horses. A third of our company died in battle, and a third died of want. The rest murmured against me, and said that I had brought them an evil fortune. I took a horned adder from beneath a stone and let it sting me. When they saw that I did not sicken they ...
— Selected Prose of Oscar Wilde - with a Preface by Robert Ross • Oscar Wilde
... the mad 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 miller and the miller's ...
— The Illustrated London Reading Book • Various
... only concerned with the injuries inflicted by the venomous varieties of snakes, the most important of which are the hooded snakes of India, the rattle-snakes of America, the horned snakes of Africa, the viper of Europe, and the adder ...
— Manual of Surgery - Volume First: General Surgery. Sixth Edition. • Alexis Thomson and Alexander Miles
... heads of all the forest people she called him beloved! Like the fang of an adder the word stung Dupont's brain. And like fire touched to powder, swiftly as lightning illumines the sky, the glory of it blazed in Reese Beaudin's face. And all that were there ...
— Back to God's Country and Other Stories • James Oliver Curwood
... lizard, for example, which frequents moors and sandhills, does not lay or deposit its eggs at all, but hatches them out in its own body, and so apparently brings them forth alive: while among snakes, the same habit occurs in the adder or viper. The very name viper, indeed, is a corruption of vivipara, the snake which produces living young. Still more closely do some birds resemble mammals in the habit of secreting a sort of milk for the sustenance of their nestlings. Most people think ...
— A Book of Natural History - Young Folks' Library Volume XIV. • Various
... "Sirrah," he cried, "here is your nightly haunt, these are your companions,—come with me, sir, come,—ah, will you resist your"—father he was about to say, but he recoiled from the word as from an adder, and, casting upon his son a look of unspeakable disdain, he shook the writhing criminal, who the next moment escaped from his hold, and slunk away, still looking backward over his shoulder and muttering curses upon his begetter. The advocate stood watching him in silence, as, ...
— The Advocate • Charles Heavysege
... Ha, excellent! I was awaiting this. Thou wilt inoculate our knightly veins With thy corrupted Jewish blood. Thou 'lt foist This adder on my bosom. Henry Schnetzen Is no weak dupe, whom every lie may start. Make ready, Jew, ...
— The Poems of Emma Lazarus - Vol. II. (of II.), Jewish Poems: Translations • Emma Lazarus
... morning the water-snake went over to see Crawlie, the adder, who lived in a stony and hilly part of Liberty Forest. He told him all about the death of the old water-snake, and begged that he who could deal such deadly thrusts would undertake the work of vengeance. But Crawlie was not exactly disposed to go ...
— The Wonderful Adventures of Nils • Selma Lagerlof
... you—, look at this! Is this 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 the room, with one glance at Lancelot of mingled shame and love. ...
— Yeast: A Problem • Charles Kingsley
... the 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 elk home; And let all the Lapland women Set to work to wash the kettles; And let all ...
— Kalevala, Volume I (of 2) - The Land of the Heroes • Anonymous
... as 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 ...
— The Witch of Prague • F. Marion Crawford
... in tumuli in Wales, Cornwall, and the Highlands are called "serpents' glass" (glain naidr), and are believed to be formed in the same way as the "egg." These, as well as old spindle-whorls called "adder stones" in the Highlands, are held to have magical virtues, e.g. against the bite of a serpent, and are ...
— The Religion of the Ancient Celts • J. A. MacCulloch
... search of game. I came to a belt of jungle so dense that the only way to get through it was to creep on all fours along the tracks made by hyenas and smaller game; and as I was crawling along I saw close in front of me a deadly puff-adder; in another second I ...
— Adventures in Many Lands • Various
... Arthur 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 sword ...
— Stories of King Arthur's Knights - Told to the Children by Mary MacGregor • Mary MacGregor
... threatening against him his empty ban, he compelled the pious and mighty German emperor, Frederick Barbarossa, to prostrate himself at his feet while he stepped upon him and said, Thou shalt tread upon the lion and adder; and when the emperor protested against such shameful pride and said, Non tibi, sed Petro (Not to thee, but to Peter), the Pope, with increasing scorn, replied, "Et mihi, et Petro" (Both to me, and to Peter). This is pride carried almost ...
— Epistle Sermons, Vol. III - Trinity Sunday to Advent • Martin Luther
... Juliette with an unexpressed query in his adder-like eyes. She shrugged her shoulders, and made a gesture as if ...
— I Will Repay • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... good care not to be deluded that, though he sat by to see fair play, yet it was always with his elbows on the table and his fingers in his ears, regardless of appearing to the priest in the character of the deaf adder. After all, he was not the object, and good Pere Bonami at first thought the day his own, when he found that almost all his arguments against Calvinism were equally impressed upon Berenger's mind, but the differences soon revealed themselves; and the priest, though ...
— The Chaplet of Pearls • Charlotte M. Yonge
... the Wolflake, and came to a hut, painted gray, that stood clear of the ground, upon the bones of four great birds' feet. Upon the four corners of the hunt were carved severally the figures of a lion, a dragon, a cockatrice and an adder, to proclaim the miseries of carnal and intellectual sin, and ...
— Figures of Earth • James Branch Cabell
... snake In the caldron boil and bake; Eye of newt and toe of frog, Wool of bat and tongue of dog, Adder's fork and blind-worm's sting, Lizard's ...
— Bulfinch's Mythology • Thomas Bulfinch
... wouldst live in honor, die in peace, Have the fine words the marble-workers learn To carve so well, upon thy funeral-stone, And earn a fair obituary, dressed In all the many-colored robes of praise, Be deafer than the adder to the cry Of that same foundling truth, until it grows To seemly favor, and at length has won The smiles of hard-mouthed men and light-upped dames, Then snatch it from its meagre nurse's breast, Fold it in silk and give it food from ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... its character—"Dan is a lion's whelp that leapeth forth from Bashan" on the Hermon;* "a serpent in the way, an adder in the path, that biteth the horse's heels, so that his rider falleth backward."** The new position they had taken up enabled them to protect Galilee for centuries against the incursions of ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 6 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... from woodland lake to woodland lake, through brush-hidden brooklets, without a portage. In this region the liverwort blooms fragrantly beside the snow-bank in early spring, and here the arbutus exists as in New England. The adder-tongues and violets and anemones are here in rare profusion in their time, and the wandering gray wolf, last of his kind, almost, treads softly over knolls carpeted with wintergreen and decorated with scarlet berries. It is a country of blue water and pure air, of forest depths and long ...
— A Man and a Woman • Stanley Waterloo
... in horse-radish, or horse-chesnut; most likely the old form of the word gave name to the horse as the big beast where there was not an elephant or other greater one. The dragon-fly is, in some parts called the "tanging ether" or tanging adder, from tang, a long thin body, and a sting. Very few Dorset folk believe that the dragon-fly stings horses any more than that the horse ...
— Poems of Rural Life in the Dorset Dialect • William Barnes
... useful in the border (Fig. 252). They are common in rich woods and copses. Dig the tubers in late summer and plant them directly in the border. The large ones will bloom the following spring. The same may be said of the erythronium, or dog's-tooth violet or adder's tongue, and of very ...
— Manual of Gardening (Second Edition) • L. H. Bailey
... across a burnt body, as black as an adder, Sits the sprite of a sheep-dog (was ever sight sadder?) For, as the dry thunder splits louder and faster, This sprite of a sheep-dog howls ...
— The Poems of Henry Kendall • Henry Kendall
... she would have jumped from an adder, but she did not spring far—not, indeed, beyond arm's length—and then, quick as thought, she raised her little hand and dealt him a box on the ear with such right goodwill that it sounded among the ...
— Barchester Towers • Anthony Trollope
... thousand different lights; brought home to us a thousand different roads, comes the same everlasting doom,—"Vain man, who thinkest that thou canst live in God's world and yet despise His will, know that, in every smiling, comfortable sin, thou art hatching an adder to sting thee in the days of old age, to poison thy cup of sinful joy, even when it is at thy lips; to haunt thy restless thoughts, and dog thee day and night; to rise up before thee, in the silent, sleepless hours of night, like an ...
— Twenty-Five Village Sermons • Charles Kingsley
... species of small alligator or enormous iguana, I do 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, however, ...
— She • H. Rider Haggard
... a viper 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
... A painstaking adder of figures, I have audited the gentleman's accounts and found them correct to the farthing. He must pay for his terrier's sickness and have four guineas in hand against the dog's board and lodging, in case, after all, he was to stay at the Dogs' Home. ...
— Anthony Lyveden • Dornford Yates
... ruddy glow there is the blood of sacrifice, and in its flash the eye of uncoiled adders, and in the foam the mouth-froth of eternal death. Not knowing what a horrible mixture it is, men take it up and drink it down—the sacrificial blood, the adder's venom, the death-froth—and smack their lips and call it ...
— The Abominations of Modern Society • Rev. T. De Witt Talmage
... costume of the table, and every profession of 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. I can endure the brutality (as it is termed) ...
— Table-Talk - Essays on Men and Manners • William Hazlitt
... one night, when his light was shining quite brightly, to see if any one was moving. When the earth people were all asleep was the time he chose for playing with his three dogs. He called them dogs, but the earth people called them snakes, the death adder, the black snake, and the tiger snake. As he looked down on to the earth, with his three dogs beside him, Bahloo saw about a dozen daens, or black fellows, crossing a Creek. He called to them saying, "Stop, I want you ...
— Australian Legendary Tales - Folklore of the Noongahburrahs as told to the Piccaninnies • K. Langloh Parker
... village nearest to the sea, within ten minutes' walk of the shingly beach. Here I was glad to rest. Above, on the giant downs, were stony waste places, and heather and gorse, where the rabbits live, and had for neighbours the adder, linnet, and wheatear, and the small grey titlark that soared up and dropped back to earth all day to his tinkling little tune. On the summit of the cliff I had everything I wanted and had come to seek—the wildness and freedom of untilled earth; an unobstructed ...
— Afoot in England • W.H. Hudson
... the clouds, And, like a steeple, overpeers the church: But we'll pull down his haughty insolence; And, as Pope Alexander, our progenitor, Trod on the neck of German Frederick, Adding this golden sentence to our praise, "That Peter's heirs should tread on Emperors, And walk upon the dreadful adder's back, Treading the lion and the dragon down, And fearless spurn the killing basilisk," So will we quell that haughty schismatic, And, by authority apostolical, Depose him from ...
— Dr. Faustus • Christopher Marlowe
... left foot, and with his left hand from under his right foot, and let him twist two threads of wool, and dip them in the mud, and put them into his nose." If a man be bitten by a mad dog he must die, unless some remedy be found for him. "Abai says he must take the skin of a male adder, and write upon it, 'I, M, the son of the woman N, upon the skin of a male adder, write against thee, Kanti Kanti Klirus, but some say, Kandi Kandi Klurus, Lord of Hosts. Amen. Selah.' Let him also cast off his clothes, and bury them in a graveyard for twelve ...
— Hebrew Literature
... not he, it is you who are gloomy. Throw off your sinister air. How long will this taciturn reverie last in which you are sunk? You make yourself a laughing-stock—you act like a fool. You resemble a sphinx of the desert engaged in meditating upon a serpent, and who mistakes an innocent adder for a viper." M. Langis understood what she wished to say to him, but he did not throw off his ...
— Samuel Brohl & Company • Victor Cherbuliez
... The time draweth nigh. He is born, the man of sin, the child of perdition, the wicked one, the beast vomited forth from the abyss, the abomination of desolation; he came out of the tribe of Dan, of whom it is written: 'Dan shall be a serpent by the way, an adder in the path.' Soon shall return to the earth the prophets Elijah and Enoch, Moses, Jeremiah and Saint John the Evangelist; and soon shall dawn that day of wrath which shall grind the age in a mill and beat it in a mortar, according to the testimony ...
— The Life of Joan of Arc, Vol. 1 and 2 (of 2) • Anatole France
... look into the cold face of one he loved and not feel, creeping like a thousand-fanged adder into his desolate heart, the awful fear that death's the ...
— Volume 1 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... days these roofs burn in the sun and spirals of heat arise. Tar flows from the joints in the tin. Tar and the adder—is it not a bright day that brings them forth? Now washing hangs limp upon the line. There is no frisk in undergarments. These stockings that hang shriveled and anaemic—can it be possible that they once trotted to a lively tune, or that a lifted skirt upon a crosswalk drew the eye? The very ...
— Chimney-Pot Papers • Charles S. Brooks
... OF REPTILES, the common Adder or Viper, locally known as the Hag-Worm, is numerous in the moorland districts. It seldom if ever attacks human beings, but occasionally dogs and sheep get bitten with fatal results. The Slow or Blind Worm is also to be found here, as are the ...
— The Evolution Of An English Town • Gordon Home
... you'll hear her speak To France in cannon tones that will make quake Napoleon on his throne! That great mock-god. Who seeks to free all men that he may fit Their necks to his own yoke! (With growing intensity) That adder who Would coil about the world! That serpent scruffed With white deceit and low ambition's slime, That crept into the garden of my dream And cankered bud and root, nursed by my toil, Fed with my dearest blood! Ay, he will quake, And cry for ...
— Semiramis and Other Plays - Semiramis, Carlotta And The Poet • Olive Tilford Dargan
... these human wild beasts being so near Aurora, while he should so soon be far away. Thus occupied he did not heed his steps, and suddenly felt something soft under his feet, which struggled. Instantaneously he sprang as far as he could, shuddering, for he had crushed an adder, and but just escaped, by his involuntary and mechanical leap, ...
— After London - Wild England • Richard Jefferies
... Vrouw Grobelaar. "Why can't I mind that as well as anything else? I tell you, my girl, that things are not quite so simple as you take them to be. Even a herd of swine can house a devil, mark you. A bit of stick in the path can be a puff adder, and there are spells tucked away in the words of the Psalms even. And the spruit! Why, you crazy child, a spruit is just the place for things to lurk in wait. Yes, slippery things that have no name in man's ...
— Vrouw Grobelaar and Her Leading Cases - Seventeen Short Stories • Perceval Gibbon
... the side of the upper stone are supporters of a different character. Supporters,—not captives nor victims; the Cockatrice and Adder. Representing the most active evil principles of the earth, as in their utmost malignity; still, Pedestals of Christ, and even in their deadly life, ...
— Our Fathers Have Told Us - Part I. The Bible of Amiens • John Ruskin
... irrevocable past. This man's very heart, if Roderick might be believed, had been changed into a serpent, which would finally torment both him and itself to death. Observing a married couple, whose domestic troubles were matter of notoriety, he condoled with both on having mutually taken a house adder to their bosoms. To an envious author, who depreciated works which he could never equal, he said that his snake was the slimiest and filthiest of all the reptile tribe, but was fortunately without a sting. A man of impure life, and a brazen face, asking Roderick if there were any serpent ...
— Mosses from an Old Manse and Other Stories • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... the instruction of man. 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 who ...
— Essays on Various Subjects - Principally Designed for Young Ladies • Hannah More
... he ejaculated. "What an extraordinary experience! Will you believe me, Doctor, when I tell you that as I drew this penknife out of my waistcoat pocket it actually seemed to change into an adder in my hand? There was the flat, wicked-looking head, the malevolent eyes, the characteristic markings of the body, and, above all, there was the feeling of it writhing strongly in my grasp, as though it were trying ...
— The Adventures of Dick Maitland - A Tale of Unknown Africa • Harry Collingwood
... anywhere near a flat stone," exclaimed Sylvia, "or an adder may come out, and that ...
— Betty Vivian - A Story of Haddo Court School • L. T. Meade
... the moor will the cotton-grass Weave its white, long bands together; And softly the snake and the adder pass Through the ...
— The Old Willow Tree and Other Stories • Carl Ewald
... as if an adder had stung her, uttering a shriek of rage, of pain; for Jasper Losely, who had hitherto listened to her, stupefied, astounded, here burst into a fit of merriment, in which there was such undisguised contempt, such an enjoyment of the ludicrous, provoked by the idea of the marriage pressed upon him, ...
— What Will He Do With It, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... mintioned be th' stanch an' faithful press. Set here, ol' la-ad, an' warrum ye'er toes by th' fire. Set here an' r-rest fr'm th' gratichood iv ye'er fellow-counthrymen, that, as Shakspere says, biteth like an asp an' stingeth like an adder. R-rest here, as ye might r-rest at th' hearth iv millyons iv people that cud give ye no house but ...
— Mr. Dooley's Philosophy • Finley Peter Dunne
... whole, perhaps his 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 creature with ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... 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 ...
— The Saint's Tragedy • Charles Kingsley
... fantastic humors of Furibon. One day as he was walking in the garden, finding the heat increase, he retired into a shady grove and began to play upon the flute to amuse himself. As he played, he felt something wind about his leg, and looking down saw a great adder: he took his handkerchief, and catching it by the head was going to kill it. But the adder, looking steadfastly in his face, seemed to beg his pardon. At this instant one of the gardeners happened to come to the place where Leander ...
— The Little Lame Prince - And: The Invisible Prince; Prince Cherry; The Prince With The Nose - The Frog-Prince; Clever Alice • Miss Mulock—Pseudonym of Maria Dinah Craik
... ghostly fear. Eild, eld. Eke, also. Elbuck, elbow. Eldritch, unearthly, haunted, fearsome. Elekit, elected. Ell (Scots), thirty-seven inches. Eller, elder. En', end. Eneugh, enough. Enfauld, infold. Enow, enough. Erse, Gaelic. Ether-stane, adder-stone. Ettle, aim. Evermair, evermore. Ev'n down, ...
— Poems And Songs Of Robert Burns • Robert Burns
... heroine under her circumstances, but they are those of a deeply-feeling, strongly-resentful peasant-girl. Anguish has driven her from the ingle-nook of home to the white-shrouded and icy hills. Crouched under the "cauld drift," she recalls every image of horror—"the yellow-wymed ask," "the hairy adder," "the auld moon-bowing tyke," "the ghaist at e'en,", "the sour bullister," "the milk on the taed's back." She hates these, but ...
— Shirley • Charlotte Bronte
... certain. Whether such men have laughed or wept, we have laughed at their laughter as much as at their weeping. Whether they cursed or blessed the world, they have never fitted it. It is true that men have shrunk from the sting of a great satirist as if from the sting of an adder. But it is equally true that men flee from the embrace of a great optimist as from the embrace of a bear. Nothing brings down more curses than a real benediction. For the goodness of good things, like ...
— Manalive • G. K. Chesterton
... the snakes, driven forth from their blazing coverts, and glancing through the ring, unscared by its waning lamps; all undulating by me, bright-eyed, and hissing, all made innocuous by fear—even the terrible Death-adder, which I trampled on as I halted at the verge of the circle, did not turn to bite, but crept harmless away. I halted at the gap between the two dead lamps, and bowed my head to look again into the crystal ...
— The Lock and Key Library • Julian Hawthorne, Ed.
... sum of money being placed at his disposal was sufficient—like the "bright day that brings forth the adder"—to call into life the activity of all his duns; and how liberally he made the fund available among them, appears from the following letter of Whitbread, addressed, not to Sheridan himself, but, apparently, (for the direction is wanting,) to some ...
— Memoirs of the Life of Rt. Hon. Richard Brinsley Sheridan Vol 2 • Thomas Moore
... Dalton, walking to where he stood, beaten down and trampled, yet full of poison as an adder's tooth, "be it known that I pity you:—your dagger has been turned into your own heart!—The human flesh you bribed me to destroy, lives! What message brought Jeromio from ...
— The Buccaneer - A Tale • Mrs. S. C. Hall
... rage and fear in the most sibilant of hisses. The 'Happy Family' were experiencing an amount of beatitude which was evidently too cordial for philosophical enjoyment. A long tongue of flame had crept under the cage, completely singing every hair from the cat's body. The felicitous adder was slowly burning in two and busily engaged in impregnating his organic system with his own venom. The joyful rat had lost his tail by a falling bar of iron; and the beatific rabbit, perforated by a red-hot nail, looked as if nothing would ...
— A Unique Story of a Marvellous Career. Life of Hon. Phineas T. • Joel Benton
... "The hairy adder I dinna like, When I the fell creature meet, Neither like I the moon-baying tyke. Nor the Meg-o'-moniefeet. I canna thole the yellow-wamed ask, Sae fearful a thing to see; But mair than a', and ower them a', I ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Volume XXIV. • Revised by Alexander Leighton
... now. Ishmael, you say, is a usurper, yet to believe an Idumaean sooner than Ishmael is to sting like an adder. By the drunken son of Semele, what it is to be a Jew! All men and things, even heaven and earth, change; but a Jew never. To him there is no backward, no forward; he is what his ancestor was in the beginning. In this sand I draw you a circle—there! Now tell me what more a Jew's ...
— Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ • Lew Wallace
... yield thee, or by Him who made The world, thy heart's blood dyes my blade!"— "Thy threats, thy mercy, I defy! 405 Let recreant yield, who fears to die." —Like adder darting from his coil, Like wolf that dashes through the toil, Like mountain-cat who guards her young, Full at Fitz-James's throat he sprung; 410 Received, but recked not of a wound, And locked his arms his foeman round. Now, gallant Saxon, hold thine own! No maiden's hand ...
— Lady of the Lake • Sir Walter Scott
... which, by observing the Figure diligently, is easie enough to be perceiv'd; and from several particulars, I suppose the Animal has a power of displaying them, and shutting them in again as it pleases, as a Cat does its claws, or as an Adder or Viper can ...
— Micrographia • Robert Hooke
... THE TAIL. Mr. Courthope does not condescend to italicize his pun; but a swallow-tailed and adder-tongued pun like this must be paused upon. Compare Mr. Murray's Tale of the Town of Lucca, to be seen between the arrival of one train and the departure of the next,—nothing there but twelve churches and a cathedral,—mostly of the ...
— Love's Meinie - Three Lectures on Greek and English Birds • John Ruskin
... and biting me on the ankle vanished in the swamp. It must have been some sort of a water-snake, but I did not know. All I knew was that I had been bitten by a snake that might be poisonous. It could easily have been an adder, or a karait—even a cobra—though I had not a minute in which to observe a hood or any distinctive marks. I immediately collected my faculties to think what was the best thing to do. I knew I had no time to ...
— Banked Fires • E. W. (Ethel Winifred) Savi
... that odour of the bean-field; that when Jesus smelled such a scent about Jerusalem or in Galilee, he thought of his Father. And if God means it, it is mine, even if I should never smell it again. The music of the spheres is mine if old age should make me deaf as the adder. Am I mystical again, reader? Then I hope you are too, or will be before you have done with this same beautiful mystical life of ours. More and more nature becomes to me one of God's books of poetry—not his grandest—that is history—but his ...
— The Seaboard Parish Volume 1 • George MacDonald
... person; and this unsolicited usurper of my hearth is nothing whatever to me, unless perhaps the object of my entire abhorrence. Yet am I none the less compelled to justify the ensuing action before an irrational audience, which faces common logic in very much the attitude of Augustine's famed adder! Decidedly I think that, on the whole, ...
— The Cords of Vanity • James Branch Cabell et al
... "She is depraved in mind; and now I am certain the little adder has wound herself round the colonel. She has heard us say he was a baron. To be a baroness! little fool! Ah! I'll get rid of her, I'll apprentice her ...
— Pierrette • Honore de Balzac
... and Syllables—This defect makes the words an ambassador sound like a nambassador, or an adder like a nadder. ...
— The Handy Cyclopedia of Things Worth Knowing - A Manual of Ready Reference • Joseph Triemens
... an adder even to tears, So sweet a song, from mouth so full of grace. Before I saw thee, my Odora! ne'er I thought this world could ever grow so fair To me. Love throws a rosy, sparkling tissue On mountain, hill, lake, tree, shrub, leaf ...
— Lays of Ancient Virginia, and Other Poems • James Avis Bartley
... record no speech worth reading, and yet these powerful men shrank under his glance. As the nostrils of his big three-angled nose dilated, the scream of an eagle rang in his voice, his huge ugly hand held the crook of his cane with the clutch of a tiger, his tongue flew with the hiss of an adder, and his big deformed foot seemed to grip the floor as the claw ...
— The Clansman - An Historical Romance of the Ku Klux Klan • Thomas Dixon
... for that there was no atonement; but though forgiveness was impossible, forgetfulness was possible still, and he was determined to forget, to stamp the thing out, to crush it as one would crush the adder that had stung one. Indeed, what right had Basil to have spoken to him as he had done? Who had made him a Judge over others? He had said things that were dreadful, horrible, not to ...
— The Picture of Dorian Gray • Oscar Wilde
... the hounds are at a bay; Whereat she starts, like one that spies an adder Wreath'd up in fatal folds just in his way, The fear whereof doth make him shake and shudder; Even so the timorous yelping of the hounds 881 Appals her senses, ...
— Venus and Adonis • William Shakespeare
... with clasped hands, praying. Finding that his son, the hope of his name, still did not come to him, great tears rose in his eyes, dry so long, and rolled down his withered cheeks. At this moment, Etienne, hearing no further sounds, glided to the opening of his grotto like a young adder craving the sun. He saw the tears of the stricken old man, he recognized the signs of a true grief, and, seizing his father's hand, he kissed him, saying in the voice of ...
— The Hated Son • Honore de Balzac
... and expanded head, known as the blowing viper, or puff adder, is one of the most amusing representatives of the tendency to "play dead" that could well be found. If you strike him the faintest blow with the lightest stick, he at once goes into apparent convulsions, in which he seems to suffer the ...
— The Meaning of Evolution • Samuel Christian Schmucker
... close one's ears; turn a deaf ear to. render deaf, stun, deafen. Adj. deaf, earless[obs3], surd; hard of hearing, dull of hearing; deaf-mute, stunned, deafened; stone deaf; deaf as a post, deaf as an adder, deaf as a beetle, deaf as a trunkmaker[obs3]. inaudible, out of ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... 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 ...
— Erasmus and the Age of Reformation • Johan Huizinga
... composed that inimitable passage. There is all the truth and all the humour and all the satire in Old Prejudice that our author has accustomed us to in his best pieces. The common people always get the best literature along with the best religion in John Bunyan. 'They are like the deaf adder that stoppeth her ear, and which will not hearken to the voice of charmers charming never so wisely,' says the Psalmist, speaking about some bad men in his day. Now, I will not stand upon David's natural history here, but his moral and religious meaning is ...
— Bunyan Characters - Third Series - The Holy War • Alexander Whyte
... She haunted the mind, though she passed from the sight. When Roger Montrose sought his pillow that night, 'Twas to dream of La Travers. He thought she became A burning red rose, with each leaf like a flame. He stooped down and plucked it, and woke with a start, As it turned to an adder ...
— Three Women • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... one of the bouncers go for his sap. "Try it, you gorilla," I told him, wrenching around, now that I was free on his side. "Try it and I'll rip the retinas off your eyeballs the way you'd skin a peach!" He recoiled as though I were a Puff Adder. The other bouncer let go of me, too. I skidded in the slippery sawdust, scared half to death, but got my back against a wall just as the stick-man who had slugged me lost his orientation completely and fell to his knees in the sawdust. It would be ...
— Vigorish • Gordon Randall Garrett
... movement on the stone caught my gaze, and I saw that the two men yet stood motionless, but across the sunlit patch which had crept nearer the centre where the hollowed bowl was, a great adder, greater than any I had ever seen, thick and spade-headed, had coiled itself in shining folds peaceably and seeming not to heed the men. Only its head was raised a little, and it swayed as in time to the chant of the priest, ...
— A Prince of Cornwall - A Story of Glastonbury and the West in the Days of Ina of Wessex • Charles W. Whistler |
