"Centipede" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the master word of the cult. The rattlesnake is "deadly." The copperhead and moccasin are "deadly." So is the wholly mythical puff adder. In hardly less degree is the tarantula "deadly," while varying lethal capacities are ascribed to the centipede, the scorpion, the kissing-bug, and sundry other forms of insect life. The whole matter is based upon the slenderest foundations. I don't mean, by this, that these ill-famed species are wholly innocuous. It would be highly inadvisable to snatch a kiss from a copperhead or to stroke a tarantula's ...
— Stories from Everybody's Magazine • 1910 issues of Everybody's Magazine
... surface, although they smouldered still within their breasts. They would go with him, they said. But let him look to himself, they swore threateningly. If he betrayed them again, there were men among them who would kill him as remorselessly as they would stamp on a centipede. If he behaved himself and the expedition on which he was to lead them proved successful, they might forgive him—all but old Hornigold. Truth to tell, there was no one among them who felt himself so wronged or so badly treated as the one-eyed ...
— Sir Henry Morgan, Buccaneer - A Romance of the Spanish Main • Cyrus Townsend Brady
... lingered and clung to the close foliage, and each needle of the million million leaflets drew its tongue across the organ blast. A countless multitude of sighs made one continued distant undertone to the wild roar of the gable close at hand. Something seemed to be running with innumerable centipede feet over the mouth of the chimney, for the long deep moan, as I listened, resolved itself into a quick succession of touches, just as you might play with your finger-tips, fifty times a second tattooing ...
— Field and Hedgerow • Richard Jefferies
... Billy's back on tiny needle-pointed fringe of feet like a centipede. There was a sudden constriction in his throat and a leaden weight on each eye. He could not have opened them if he had tried, for a great white light stabbed across them and seemed to be holding them down for inspection. The thing ...
— The City of Fire • Grace Livingston Hill
... the Doctor. "I'm the talking man here. Yes! gentlemen," addressing the attentive cowboys, "I can cure anything that touches the ground—biped, quadruped, or centipede—glanders, botts, greased hoofs, heaves, blind staggers, it makes no odds. My universal, self-acting, double compound elixir of equestrian ointment will perform a cure in each and every case. It is cheap! It is sure! It is patented! It is the best, ...
— Jim Cummings • Frank Pinkerton
... our native boys came with torches of fire to my rescue. They are the largest and the most ferocious ant we know anything about. In an incredibly short space of time they can kill any goat, chicken, duck, hog or dog on the place. In a few hours there is not a rat, mouse, snake, centipede, spider, or scorpion in your house, as they are chased, killed and carried away. We built a fire and slept inside ...
— The Upward Path - A Reader For Colored Children • Various
... a long, dislocated trunk of a wild Banian; like a huge centipede crawling on its hundred branches, sawn of even lengths for legs. This table was set out with wry-necked gourds; deformities of calabashes; and shapeless trenchers, dug out ...
— Mardi: and A Voyage Thither, Vol. II (of 2) • Herman Melville
... with much success. Of poisonous insects there are few. Those sometimes met with are the species of tarantula known as the hairy spider, the spider known as guava, and the blue spider, also the scorpion and the centipede. Their sting produces intense pain, inflammation and fever. They are found in crevices, under stones, in caves, and in rotten wood. The last two are often seen in old houses, but daily use of the broom and duster will make them appear ...
— Santo Domingo - A Country With A Future • Otto Schoenrich
... tribe of creatures still existing, (nereidina and serpulina,) and which may often be found beneath stones on a sea-beach. One of these, figured by Mr. Murchison, is furnished with feet in vast numbers all along its body, like a centipede. The occurrence of annelids is important, on account of their character and status in the animal kingdom. They are red-blooded and hermaphrodite, and form a link of connexion between the annulosa (white-blooded worms) ...
— Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation • Robert Chambers
... you black rascal, now out with it, or you'll hear a dead nigger fall," at the same time presenting a gun. It works like a charm, the negro begs and agrees to tell. A Yankee can't be foiled, for he has more ways than a centipede has legs. ...
— History of the Eighty-sixth Regiment, Illinois Volunteer Infantry, during its term of service • John R. Kinnear
... lady. For a gentleman it is more difficult to find souvenirs. We must acknowledge that it is always difficult to select a present for a gentleman. Unless he has as many feet as Briareus had hands, or unless he is a centipede, he cannot wear all the slippers given to him; and the shirt-studs and sleeve-buttons are equally burdensome. Rings are now fortunately in fashion, and can be as expensive as one pleases. But one almost regrets the disuse of snuff, as that ...
— Manners and Social Usages • Mrs. John M. E. W. Sherwood
... orders. Look thou, underling! that thou obeyest mine.—Stand round me, men. Ye see an old man cut down to the stump; leaning on a shivered lance; propped up on a lonely foot. 'Tis Ahab—his body's part; but Ahab's soul's a centipede, that moves upon a hundred legs. I feel strained, half stranded, as ropes that tow dismasted frigates in a gale; and I may look so. But ere I break, yell hear me crack; and till ye hear THAT, know that Ahab's hawser tows his purpose yet. Believe ye, men, ...
— Moby Dick; or The Whale • Herman Melville
... one vital thing in a certain person's rather hand-to-mouth existence—oh, yes, in spite of everything! I know it now. Anne Charteris," the colonel cried, "I wouldn't marry you or any other woman breathing, even though you were to kneel and implore me upon the knees of a centipede. For I belong to Patricia; and the rivet stays ...
— The Rivet in Grandfather's Neck - A Comedy of Limitations • James Branch Cabell
... dead horse seems to have more legs than a centipede when you try to drag it through a narrow space, and they all stick out in different directions. Of course, this one stuck and then there was more trouble, for when I took an axe to dismember it, ...
— Side Show Studies • Francis Metcalfe
... sensible as asking a man whether he prefers chrysanthemums or billiards. Christ did not love humanity; He never said He loved humanity: He loved men. Neither He nor anyone else can love humanity; it is like loving a gigantic centipede. And the reason that the Tolstoians can even endure to think of an equally distributed affection is that their love of humanity is a logical love, a love into which they are coerced by their own theories, a love which would be an insult to ...
— Twelve Types • G.K. Chesterton
... absorption. He sat upright. He grabbed for a cigarette and inhaled it tremendously. "It's going like cutting butter with a hot knife. I started cross-examining today. I gave him three and a half hours of it, straight off the ice, and I'm not through with him yet. Not half. If he had as many legs as a centipede he'd still not have one left to stand on when I'm through with him. I doubt he'll have his marrow bones to crawl out on, the way he's crumpling up. Even old Hounslow at his worst can't possibly misdirect the jury, the way I've gummed their noses on ...
— This Freedom • A. S. M. Hutchinson
... the short man said, with insolent familiarity. (Among the bayfarers he had gained the nickname of "The Centipede" on account of his long arms.) "Hello, Taft," he repeated, with the same touch of insolence. "Wot 'r ...
— Tales of the Fish Patrol • Jack London
... of moonlight that fell upon something evil that wriggled across the white and black slabs of marble from beneath the door curtain. The moonlight glistened the bronze skin of the silent, crawling thing that was a huge snake, or a giant centipede; it was even like a square-snouted, shovel-headed mugger that had crept up out of the slimy river that circled sluggishly the eastern ...
— Caste • W. A. Fraser
... were dressed in sheepskins and warm materials, had sheepskin caps on their heads; there was he with his bare arms, in well-worn grey trousers, his shirt fastened together at the neck with a piece of wood. Sitting among them, defenceless as a centipede, without anyone belonging to him, puffing clouds of smoke, he inwardly blessed this adventure, in which everything had turned out so well. The Cossacks looked at the fire, and they too said: 'This is ...
— Selected Polish Tales • Various
... of the thing. Its pale jointed body was some twenty feet in length, and had apparently been developed from that of a centipede, with scores of racing legs that carried it with startling ...
— Astounding Stories, May, 1931 • Various
... that fingers cannot stop, or to confess that it cried out against a double injustice, that of life and that of death: she had crossed the border of the region of horror, and went about with a worm coiled in her heart, like a centipede in the stone of ...
— The Marquis of Lossie • George MacDonald
... swerve—a little. Then call to your men to draw in their oars like lightning while the enemy are still working theirs. If your oarsmen can do the trick in time, you can now ride down the whole of the foemen's exposed oar bank, while saving your own. He is left crippled and helpless, like a huge centipede with all the legs on one side stripped away. You can now back off deliberately, run out your oars, an in cold blood charge his exposed flank. If he does not now surrender, his people are dead men. Excellent to describe! ...
— A Day In Old Athens • William Stearns Davis
... centipede just crawled in my bunk, This tropical service is certainly punk, Not a chance in the world to go over the hill, And half my time is spent in the mill. But why should I worry, I'll soon be free. A "G. C. M." does the trick ...
— Rhymes of the Rookies • W. E. Christian
... cried, casting down my pen. "It is so seldom that he cuddles that I'll sacrifice myself upon the altar of aunthood. Well, once upon a time, Billy, there was a dear little blue hen who stole away—sit still now! You've more legs than a centipede!—who stole away every day and went under the barn where it was so cool and shady, and laid a lovely little smooth, cream-coloured egg. Then when she had laid it, she was so proud that she could never help coming out and cackling at the top of her voice, 'Cut-cut-cut-ka-dah-cut!' And ...
— At Home with the Jardines • Lilian Bell
... apprehension and alarm. I have had these strange creatures under observation many weeks, and invariably found that when one was interfered with in any way it used its snake-like aft end as a bogey, curving it round towards the molesting hand. A fowl that will attack an 8-inch centipede without hesitation, makes a sensational fuss and clatter when it detects a stick insect, especially when the stick insect feints, however ineffectually, with its perfectly harmless tail. If it is capable of imposing upon a sagacious fowl, the effect of its terrifying aspect upon an ...
— The Confessions of a Beachcomber • E J Banfield
... pond-water which has been poisoned by snakes, from drinking water which has been used for flowers, or tea which has stood uncovered through the night, from eating the flesh of a fowl which has swallowed a centipede, and wearing clothes which have been soaked with perspiration and ...
— Chinese Sketches • Herbert A. Giles
... his right hand his magic sword, holding in his left a cup containing the draught of immortality, and riding a tiger which in one paw grasps his magic seal and with the others tramples down the five venomous creatures: lizard, snake, spider, toad, and centipede. Pictures of him with these accessories are pasted up in houses on the fifth day of the fifth moon to ...
— Myths and Legends of China • E. T. C. Werner
... torn from them; they were pinched and scratched any- and everywhere; Ballbody kept rolling up them and over them, confining his attentions to no one in particular; the scorpion kept grabbing at their legs with his huge pincers; a three-foot centipede kept screwing up their bodies, nipping as he went; varied as numerous were their woes. Nor was it long before the last of them had fled from ...
— The Princess and the Curdie • George MacDonald
... fatal the bite of a centipede is," took up Colonel Jones, complacently. "Once I was sitting in camp with a hunter, who suddenly hissed out: 'Jones, for God's sake don't budge! There's a centipede on your arm!' He pulled his Colt, and shot the blamed centipede off as clean as a whistle. But the ...
— The Last of the Plainsmen • Zane Grey
... his knees and the striking contrast between their sheltered whiteness and the desert brown of his face.... Milky pale they gleamed at him from the glass.... Bony hard, they flaunted their angles at every move.... He was grateful that he was not a centipede. ...
— The Fortieth Door • Mary Hastings Bradley
... on Molly, in a reflective tone, "that you can make a catch; but you can try. There is the chaplain—horrid old centipede! And there's old Walford"—Molly never favoured any man with a Mr to his name—"an ugly, spiteful old bear that nobody'll have: he's rich enough; and he might look your way if you play your cards well. Any way, you'll not have much chance else; so you'd better keep your eyes pretty well ...
— The Maidens' Lodge - None of Self and All of Thee, (In the Reign of Queen Anne) • Emily Sarah Holt
... cursed make it as dangerous to the traveller as other tropical countries in which ferocious animals abound. Hardly a tree or a shrub can be found that does not contain or conceal some stinging abomination. The whole of these are not, of course, deadly, but a tarantula bite, or a centipede sting, will cripple a strong man for weeks, while a feeble constitution stands a fair chance of succumbing. But of all these pests, none can equal the snakes, which not only swarm, but seem to have no ...
— Australian Search Party • Charles Henry Eden
... how to turn to the left at each corner, but also at giving himself an opportunity to make remarks about their feet and the position thereof, and at the end of five minutes each girl feels as if she were a centipede, and you, Esmeralda, secretly wonder whether something in the way of mucilage of thumb-tacks might not be used to keep your own riding boots close to the saddle. "And don't let your left foot swing," says the teacher in closing his exhortations; ...
— In the Riding-School; Chats With Esmeralda • Theo. Stephenson Browne
... say," replied the professor, who was digging away energetically, and dislodging ants, a centipede or two, and a great many other insects. "This is evidently where the altar must have stood, and most likely we shall find here either a bronze figure of the deity in whose honour the temple was erected, or its fragments ...
— Yussuf the Guide - The Mountain Bandits; Strange Adventure in Asia Minor • George Manville Fenn
... the manners and customs of the place and people, particularly those of the coloured servant, Chunga, astonished her immensely. The white lady had a great horror of creeping things of all kinds; she could hardly bear to get into her bath, for she sometimes found a centipede, as long as ...
— Little Folks (October 1884) - A Magazine for the Young • Various
... pick of Von Tempsky's cow-boys. And I must tell of one other thing. It was down in Kona,—or up, rather, for the Kona people scorn to live at less than a thousand feet elevation. We were all on the lanai of Doctor Goodhue's bungalow. I was talking with Dottie Fairchild when it happened. A big centipede—it was seven inches, for we measured it afterwards—fell from the rafters overhead squarely into her coiffure. I confess, the hideousness of it paralysed me. I couldn't move. My mind refused to work. There, within two feet of me, the ugly venomous ...
— The House of Pride • Jack London
... had once learned. For my part, I quite agree with Harry. There are a great many things that I have no desire to know. I do not want to know in what words the King of Ashantee says, "Cut off the heads of those women." I do not want to know whether a centipede really has ninety-six legs or one hundred and four. I never did know. I never shall. I have no occasion to know. And I am glad not to have my mind lumbered up with the unnecessary information. On the other hand, that which I have once learned or read ...
— How To Do It • Edward Everett Hale
... music of his own composition, and gravely sucking his thumb and dribbling. He is lost in contemplation of a crack between the tiles. The lines of the tiles grimace like faces. The imperceptible hole grows larger, and becomes a valley; there are mountains about it. A centipede moves: it is as large as an elephant. Thunder might crash, the ...
— Jean-Christophe, Vol. I • Romain Rolland
... of the mountain with its Mediterranean flora, so rich that it recalled the Corsican maquis; full of beautiful fungi and varied insects, where, under the flat stones exposed to the burning sun, the centipede burrowed and the scorpion slept; where a special fauna abounded—of curious dung-beetles, scarabaei, the Copris, the Minotaur, etc.—which only a little farther north grow rapidly scarcer and then ...
— Fabre, Poet of Science • Dr. G.V. (C.V.) Legros
... was lying powerless in your mouth. Cold shivers begin to creep downwards from the nape of your neck and all up you at the same time, until they seem to meet in the small of your back. About this time you feel as if a centipede, all of whose feet have been carefully iced, has begun to run about in the roots of your hair. The next agreeable sensation is the breaking out of a cold sweat all over. Then you are certain that some one has cut the muscles at ...
— The Story of My Life - Recollections and Reflections • Ellen Terry
... could not eat the liver any more than she could the fruit or the fish eggs; and when Aponitolau heard the dogs barking, he knew that she had thrown it away. Then he grew suspicious and, changing himself into a centipede, [32] hid in a crack in the floor. And when his wife again wished for some of ...
— Philippine Folk Tales • Mabel Cook Cole
... each wild bird or quadruped as a sacred thing, which under no circumstances may be utilized by man. We are not fanatical Hindus of the castes which religiously avoid the "taking of life" of any kind, and gently push aside the flea, the centipede and the scorpion. The reasoning powers of such people are strictly limited, the same as those of people who are opposed to the removal by death of the bandits and ...
— The Minds and Manners of Wild Animals • William T. Hornaday
... would be the work of half an hour to criticise—that is to say praise—the poem sufficiently to please Charlie. Then I had good reason to groan, for Charlie, discarding his favorite centipede metres, had launched into shorter and choppier verse, and verse with a motive at the back of it. This is what ...
— The Works of Rudyard Kipling One Volume Edition • Rudyard Kipling
... nothing is useless, but if not, all are useless. 'The neck of the crane may seem too long to some idle on-lookers, but there is no surplus in it. The limbs of the tortoise may appear too short, but there is no shortcoming in them.' The centipede, having a hundred limbs, can find no useless feet; the serpent, having no foot, ...
— The Religion of the Samurai • Kaiten Nukariya
... aloes, 3 drachms of opium, 1 ounce of mandrake-root, 5 drachms of salanum, 7 drachms of poppy-seed, 1/2 ounce of assafoetida, and 1/2 ounce of parsley. As soon as the saucepan containing these ingredients began to boil Hamar threw into it two adders' heads, three toads and a centipede. ...
— The Sorcery Club • Elliott O'Donnell
... with the universal West Indian look of comfort; and its noble span of roof overhead, all cut from island timber—another proof of what the wood-carver may effect in the island hereafter. Certainly distractions were frequent and troublesome, at least to a newcomer. A large centipede would come out and take a hurried turn round the Governor's seat; or a bat would settle in broad daylight in the curate's hood; or one had to turn away one's eyes lest they should behold—not vanity, but—the magnificent head of a Cabbage-palm ...
— At Last • Charles Kingsley
... that they are unpalatable food, as is believed to be the case with the colors of certain brilliantly-colored caterpillars; it may be in other ways. In Kirby and Spence one case is recorded in which the phosphorescence of the common phosphorescent centipede (Geophilus electricus) was actually seen apparently to serve as a means of defence against an enemy. "Mr. Shepherd," says that authority, "once noticed a scarabeus running round the last-mentioned insect when shining, as if wishing, but ...
— Young Folks' Library, Volume XI (of 20) - Wonders of Earth, Sea and Sky • Various
... I went to dress for dinner, I found on my table a nasty-looking black beast about six inches long. It looked very formidable in the half-light, like a scorpion or centipede. It turned out, however, to be quite harmless, and a sort of millipede, and rather handsome, with jet-black rings, and hundreds of orange-coloured legs. There are a great many venomous snakes in Ceylon, but they always get out of the way ...
— A Voyage in the 'Sunbeam' • Annie Allnut Brassey
... that? Almost ever since Ottawa was, the C.P.R. has been said to own it. Governments of either party have never been inhospitable to the benign octopus—centipede it became—that had its origin in the Parliament of Canada and wrecked one Tory Government. The penalty of transcontinental railways is that they require to have mortgages on governments. Presently the worm turns. But that usually costs more money than the mortgage. We are now paying ...
— The Masques of Ottawa • Domino |
