"Python" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the python is the only other creature that dares to attack the orang-utan, and that when it does so victory usually declares for the man-monkey, which bites ...
— Blown to Bits - The Lonely Man of Rakata, the Malay Archipelago • R.M. Ballantyne
... could have worn that gown, with its unbroken line from throat to hem, its smooth, high, black satin collar, its writhing tail that went slip-slip-slipping after her. In it she had looked like a sleek and wicked python that had fasted for a long, ...
— Cheerful—By Request • Edna Ferber
... phrase of Rombus equals the order given by the Pedant to his son when sending him to Venice to engage in commerce: "Since thou hast never desired to drink of the pool engendered by the hoof of the feathered horse,[248] and as the lyric harmony of the learned murderer of Python has never inflated thy speech, try if in merchandise Mercury will lend thee his Caduceus. So may the turbulent AEolus be as affable to thee as to the peaceful nests of halcyons. In short, Charlot, thou must go." ...
— The English Novel in the Time of Shakespeare • J. J. Jusserand
... in the center, with a great blood-red handkerchief tied around his head, and, despite the forest, he noticed with a great sinking of the heart how far the hostile line extended. It could wrap itself like a python around ...
— The Scouts of the Valley • Joseph A. Altsheler
... functions; and on {106} the first of the 10,000 stages of development the extremity can not perform its functions. Just think of the cetacea! Of the hind extremity, only its carrier, the pelvis, has been developed; and even this is only represented by the two hip-bones, hanging in the flesh. As to the python, the hind extremities are more complete, but they lie hidden under the skin, and therefore are of no use for local movement. Such examples show that in the history of the development of an organ thousands of years may pass, and numerous ...
— The Theories of Darwin and Their Relation to Philosophy, Religion, and Morality • Rudolf Schmid
... all having a definite and identical astronomical bearing and evident use, the common possession of so-called myths all telling the one story, and only slightly modified locally, such as the birth-stories of Huitzilopochtli and of Herakles, and the stories of the travail of Latona pursued by the Python and of the Woman clothed with the Sun in Revelation; or the universal tradition of seven ancestral caves or cities in America, compared with the Tibetan and Puranic stories of the seven lotus-leaves of ['S]veta-dvipa, the first continental home of ...
— Commentary Upon the Maya-Tzental Perez Codex - with a Concluding Note Upon the Linguistic Problem of the Maya Glyphs • William E. Gates
... a very slim, blushing and confused snake,—short, too, for a python. And she had a turned-up nose, and was quite young. Her scales were stylish. And, although certainly abashed, apprehensive and timorous, she yet had, about her delicate mouth, the signs of terrible determination, of ruthlessness, of an ambition that nothing could thwart. Mr. Prohack might ...
— Mr. Prohack • E. Arnold Bennett
... Macedonians, therefore, supposing he was dead, came with great clamors to the gates, and menaced his friends so that they were forced to admit them, and let them all pass through unarmed along by his bedside. The same day Python and Seleucus were dispatched to the temple of Serapis to inquire if they should bring Alexander thither, and were answered by the god, that they should not remove him. On the twenty-eighth, in the evening, he died. ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough
... George came to us from the East; where, under various forms, as Apollo and the Python, as Bellerophon and the Chimaera, as Perseus and the Sea-monster, we see perpetually recurring the mythic allegory by which was figured the conquest achieved by beneficent Power over the tyranny of Wickedness, and which reappears in Christian art in the legends of St. Michael and ...
— Literary and General Lectures and Essays • Charles Kingsley
... the uttermost orb in space, there is life in moving matter, as perfect in particulars, and as magnificent in range, as the animation which swells the tiny lung of the polyp, or vitalizes the uncouth python floundering in the saurian slime ...
— The Continental Monthly , Vol. 2 No. 5, November 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... wild asses, monkeys, porcupines, and zebras. There were three or four cages full of poisonous snakes, one variety of which I recognized, the curse of India—the hooded cobra. Then there was a big python, picked up at Rio, and a boa-constrictor, taken aboard at ...
— The Grain Ship • Morgan Robertson
... checked by the arrival of Kali, who brought with him the slain zebra and its colt, which had been partly devoured by Saba. It was the good fortune of the mastiff that he rushed after Kali, and was not present at the encounter with the python for he would have chased after him and, overtaking him, would have perished in his murderous coils before Stas could come to his aid. For eating the zebra he received, however, from Nell a tongue-lashing which after all he did not take ...
— In Desert and Wilderness • Henryk Sienkiewicz
... Christ. The Tundun-porpoise story seems to have arisen in gratitude to the porpoise, which drives fishes inshore, for the natives to catch. Neither Tharamulun nor Hobamoc (Australian and American Gods of healing and soothsaying), who appear to men as serpents, are borrowed from Asclepius, or from the Python of Apollo. The processes have been quite different, and in Apollo, the oracular son of Zeus, who declares his counsel to men, I am apt to see a beautiful Greek modification of the type of the mediating Son of the primal Being of savage belief, adorned ...
— The Homeric Hymns - A New Prose Translation; and Essays, Literary and Mythological • Andrew Lang
... products of the forests,—and also for travel and as bearers of burdens. Wild elephants are hunted and trapped in Siam; and tigers, bears, deer, monkeys, and wild pigs abound in the jungles. Crocodiles live at the mouths of the rivers; and the cobra, python, and other ...
— Four Young Explorers - Sight-Seeing in the Tropics • Oliver Optic
... to the town library. He had the room all to himself, and a man requires nothing less than this when he wants to dash his cap on the table, throw himself astride a chair, and stare at a high brick wall with a frown which would not have been beneath the occasion if he had been slaying "the giant Python." The conduct that issues from a moral conflict has often so close a resemblance to vice that the distinction escapes all outward judgments founded on a mere comparison of actions. It is clear to you, I hope, ...
— The Mill on the Floss • George Eliot
... gular teeth placed there break the shell without spilling the contents, as would be the case if the front teeth were large. The shell is then ejected. Others appear to be harmless, and even edible. Of the latter sort is the large python, metse pallah, or tari. The largest specimens of this are about 15 or 20 feet in length. They are perfectly harmless, and live on small animals, chiefly the rodentia; occasionally the steinbuck and pallah ...
— Missionary Travels and Researches in South Africa - Journeys and Researches in South Africa • David Livingstone
... strongly, full of exultation. On a branch above them, a python, awakened by those vibrations, revealed itself in an iridescent ...
— Sacrifice • Stephen French Whitman
... invited her genially to his telephone. He had been sitting at his table, surrounded by the snakes that for him took the place of a family. On the table was a bowl of milk from which a large bull-snake, in a gay Turkey-carpet design, was drinking. A yellow and black python lay coiled in several figures of eight in the armchair, and an intelligent-looking small dust-coloured snake with a broad nose and an active tongue leaned out ...
— Living Alone • Stella Benson
... have said, I forgot everything. In racing across an open space I ran full tilt upon a colony of snakes. They did not deter me. I was mad. They struck at me, but I ducked and dodged and ran on. Then there was a python that ordinarily would have sent me screeching to a tree-top. He did run me into a tree; but the Swift One was going out of sight, and I sprang back to the ground and went on. It was a close shave. Then there was my ...
— Before Adam • Jack London
... we kept on. Don't you know, how in the stories it is always in a terrific gale that the caged lion or gorilla or python breaks loose and terrorizes the ship? We don't sport a menagerie on the ——, but I did pick up the contents of the dry gun-cotton case, which had broken and spilt the torpedo detonators around on deck contiguous to the hot radiator! And, of course, the decks ...
— World's War Events, Volume III • Various
... the influence of the drama was established so far that it was soon found necessary to regulate it by law; the players who entered into competition at the Pythian games being enjoined to represent successively the circumstances that had preceded, accompanied and followed the victory of Apollo over Python. Some years after this, came Susarion of Megara, the first inventor of comedy who appeared at the head of a company of actors attacking the vices of his time. This was 562 years before Christ, and in twenty-six years after, that is 536 ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor - Vol I, No. 2, February 1810 • Samuel James Arnold
... struggling there in the monster folds Of a serpent that round him twines; Sir Walter a moment the scene beholds, Then to save the beast inclines. His good sword stout From its sheath leaps out, When down it falls on the Python's [Headnote 1] crest, And cleaves the coils that the lion invest; And the noble beast, From its thrall released, Shows grateful ...
— Sanders' Union Fourth Reader • Charles W. Sanders
... said Heriot; 'you won't be happy till you 've been racked by that nice instrument of torture, and the fair Bulsted will do it for you if you like. You don't want a snake or a common serpent, you want a Python.' ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... from the stars. There, to avenge his mother, from her home Chased by the angered goddess while as yet She bore him quick within her, Paean came (When Themis ruled the tripods and the spot) (8) And with unpractised darts the Python slew. But when he saw how from the yawning cave A godlike knowledge breathed, and all the air Was full of voices murmured from the depths, He took the shrine and filled the deep recess; Henceforth ...
— Pharsalia; Dramatic Episodes of the Civil Wars • Lucan
... with the food-economy campaign a notable example has been set by the python at the Zoo, who has decided to give up his ...
— Punch, 1917.07.04, Vol. 153, Issue No. 1 • Various
... breasts of wives and widows equally. He has even aforetime forced the gods, wrought up to a frenzy by his blazing torch, to forsake the heavens and dwell on earth under false appearances. Whereof the proofs are many. Was not Phoebus, though victor over huge Python and creator of the celestial strains that sound from the lyres of Parnassus, by him made the thrall, now of Daphne, now of Clymene, and again of Leucothea, and of many others withal? Certainly, this was so. And, finally, hiding his brightness under the form of a shepherd, did ...
— La Fiammetta • Giovanni Boccaccio
... see; mountains of incredible, nightmare shapes, and of great ledges set with gigantic busts of ancient heroes, some nobly carved, some hideously caricatured, roughly hewn in gray limestone, or red rock that looked like bronze. On we went, climbing up and up, a road like a python's back; but not yet was there any glimpse of the old "robber fortress" of Les Baux about which I had read, and later dreamed, last night. I knew it would be wonderful, astonishing, a Dead City, a Pompeii of the Feudal Age, yet different from any other ancient ...
— The Motor Maid • Alice Muriel Williamson and Charles Norris Williamson
... of the dragon Fafnir reminds us of Python, whom Apollo overcame; and, as Python guarded the Delphic Oracle, ...
— The Story of Siegfried • James Baldwin
... inevitably. He ground his teeth and cursed. His curse was half a prayer. For answer there was the unearthly chuckle just below his ear. His hand was moved back, down, around! He was helpless as a child in the arms of its father—no, helpless as a sheep in the constricting coils of a python. ...
— The Untamed • Max Brand
... well for you to sneer, and talk about art. But there are already in this world a deal more Standard Works than any man can hope to digest in the average lifetime. I don't quarrel with them, for, personally, I find even Ruskin, like the python in the circus, entirely endurable so long as there is a pane of glass between us. But why, in heaven's name, should you endeavour to harass humanity with one more battalion of morocco-bound reproaches for sins of omission, whenever humanity goes into the library to take a nap? ...
— The Cords of Vanity • James Branch Cabell et al
... than in Indra-worship, and will be treated below. The snake or dragon killed by Indra is Vritra, the restrainer, who catches and keeps in the clouds the rain that is falling to earth. He often is called simply the snake, and as the Budhnya Snake, or snake of the cloud-depths, is possibly the Python (Budh-nya).[10] There is here a touch of primitive belief in an old enemy of man—the serpent! But the Budhnya Snake has been developed in opposite ways, ...
— The Religions of India - Handbooks On The History Of Religions, Volume 1, Edited By Morris Jastrow • Edward Washburn Hopkins
... one natural history topic per chapter, be it a plant, a tree or an animal. There are various perils that have to be overcome—the upas tree, an ourang-outang, a tree that drops its fruit like a heavy bomb, a python, and quite a few more. Luckily they don't meet any unfriendly Dyaks during the journey they undertake to get from their landing-place to the town of Bruni, many hundreds ...
— The Castaways • Captain Mayne Reid
... you examples, from more advanced art, of true Greek representation; the subjects being the two contests of leading import to the Greek heart—that of Apollo with the Python, and of Hercules with the Nemean Lion. You see that in neither case is there the slightest effort to represent the [Greek: lyssa] or agony of contest. No good Greek artist would have you behold the suffering, either of gods, ...
— The Crown of Wild Olive • John Ruskin
... any species of cult unless we include the Warramunga cult of the mythical Wollunqua totem animal, whom they seek to placate by rites. In Africa the chief centre of serpent worship was Dahomey; but the cult of the python seems to have been of exotic origin, dating back to the first quarter of the 17th century. By the conquest of Whydah the Dahomeyans were brought in contact with a people of serpent worshippers, and ended by adopting from them the cult which they at first despised. At Whydah, the chief centre, ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 2, Part 1, Slice 1 • Various
... shepherd-god, Sir W. Jones recognizes the features of Apollo Nomius, who fed the herds of Admetus, and slew the dragon Python; and he leaves it to etymologists to determine whether Gopala—i. e., the cow-herd—may not be the same word as Apollo. We are also assured, on the authority of Colonel Vallancey, that Krishna in Irish ...
— Chips From A German Workshop, Vol. V. • F. Max Mueller
... in the Zoological Gardens is positive that certain snakes, for instance Crotalus and Python, distinguish him from all other persons. Cobras kept together in the same cage apparently feel some attachment towards each other. (61. Dr. Gunther, 'Reptiles of ...
— The Descent of Man and Selection in Relation to Sex • Charles Darwin
... step on it. That did not help, so he curled up his trunk behind to try to get me to step on. Each time he made an effort like that, however, he sank deeper into the mud. I saw the trunk curling back and creeping up to me like a python crawling up a hillside to coil around its prey. There was no more trumpeting or calling from the elephant, but a sinister silence through which he was trying to reach me. He had come to the end of his unselfishness. In order to save himself, he was ...
— Kari the Elephant • Dhan Gopal Mukerji
... Professor Challenger," said he, "if you could see your way to make any remarks which may occur to you without seizing me by the chin. Even the appearance of a very ordinary rock python does not appear to ...
— The Lost World • Arthur Conan Doyle
... no flame. The meat is done, and a superb gravy formed, before the containing plantain leaves are burnt through—plantain leaves will stand an amazing lot in the way of fire. This dish is really excellent, even when made with python, hippo, or crocodile. It makes the former most palatable; but of course it does not remove the musky taste from crocodile; nothing ...
— Travels in West Africa • Mary H. Kingsley
... peculiar lurching stride that covered a surprising distance in a very short time. Soon we were in the heart of the vast wilderness. We passed by colonies of monkeys, who severely reprimanded us from their secure retreat among the tree-tops. One of the soldiers killed a python with his Krag—a swollen creature, that could hardly be distinguished from the overhanging vines—that measured twenty feet from head to tail. The Moros silently unslipped their knives, and dextrously removed the ...
— The Great White Tribe in Filipinia • Paul T. Gilbert
... am unbridled desire, immaculate. I am a vestal bacchante. No man has known me, and I might be the virgin pythoness at Delphos, and have under my naked foot the bronze tripod, where the priests lean their elbows on the skin of the python, whispering questions to the invisible god. My heart is of stone, but it is like those mysterious pebbles which the sea washes to the foot of the rock called Huntly Nabb, at the mouth of the Tees, and which ...
— The Man Who Laughs • Victor Hugo
... rifle to his shoulder, and fired before the captain had time to say anything more. The python began to writhe and wriggle in the bush, and Felix fired again. Then he dropped off into the water. The rest of the company had been aft with the ladies, but they all rushed forward at the report of the rifle. The captain stated what the hunter had done, as he rang to stop and back the boat. ...
— Across India - Or, Live Boys in the Far East • Oliver Optic
... God; whereof those which they thought were good to them, they esteemed the Angels of God, and those they thought would hurt them, they called Evill Angels, or Evill Spirits; such as was the Spirit of Python, and the Spirits of Mad-men, of Lunatiques, and Epileptiques: For they esteemed such as were ...
— Leviathan • Thomas Hobbes
... Droops in the smile of the waning moon, When it scatters through an April night The frozen dews of wrinkling blight. None now hoped more. Gray Power was seated Safely on her ancestral throne; 700 And Faith, the Python, undefeated, Even to its blood-stained steps dragged on Her foul and wounded train, and men Were trampled and deceived again, And words and shows again could bind 705 The wailing tribes of human kind In scorn and famine. Fire and blood ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Volume I • Percy Bysshe Shelley
... the agency of God, and of a certainty through the secret workings of the "Old Boy" himself. It was called Necromancy, or the Black Art. It had attractions for the Jews and they yielded to some extent to the temptation of consulting the Python. For this reason Moses condemned the evil as an abomination. These are his words, taken ...
— Explanation of Catholic Morals - A Concise, Reasoned, and Popular Exposition of Catholic Morals • John H. Stapleton
... head of the eight-foot python that had been creeping up round that corner in the process of stalking that cat whizzed by beneath ...
— The Way of the Wild • F. St. Mars
... leavest, Genius, Thou wilt raise above the mud-track With thy fiery pinions. He will wander, As, with flowery feet, Over Deucalion's dark flood, Python-slaying, ...
— The Poems of Goethe • Goethe
... move backward, step by step, step by step, all the time striving, with might and main, to prevent himself from doing so! His eyes were set rigidly upon Ki-Ming, like the eyes of a rabbit fascinated by a python. Ki-Ming ...
— The Hand Of Fu-Manchu - Being a New Phase in the Activities of Fu-Manchu, the Devil Doctor • Sax Rohmer
... are serpents' skeletons. Doubtless in their sacrificial ceremonies these people also offered up rattlesnakes, which seem to have been a sort of sacred reptile among them; much as, in a sense, the cat was sacred to the ancient Egyptians, and the python is worshiped in certain parts ...
— The Border Boys Across the Frontier • Fremont B. Deering
... optimism expressed in picturesque American. Magdalena, in a suit of her father's old clothes, was handing his books through the library window to Miss Folsom. Miss Geary was scrambling up the ladder, a hose coiled about her like a python. The leader of the company stood on the roof directly above the front door, giving orders with imperious voice and gesture. But although the flames leaped high about her, starting the leaves of a neighbouring tree into sharp relief, he ...
— The Californians • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
... also place amongst the appearances and works of Satan false Christs, false prophets, Pagan oracles, magicians, sorcerers, and sorceresses, those who are inspired by the spirit of Python, the obsession and possession of demons, those who pretend to predict the future, and whose predictions are sometimes fulfilled; those who make compacts with the devil to discover treasures and enrich themselves; those who make use of charms; evocations by ...
— The Phantom World - or, The philosophy of spirits, apparitions, &c, &c. • Augustin Calmet
... were not without sympathy with the Uitlanders. It aroused the indignation of the Cape Colony Boers, and embittered racial feeling there. It put the British cause in the wrong in the eyes of the whole world, and made the Boers appear as a gallant little people struggling in the folds of a merciless python-empire. It increased immensely the difficulty of the British government in negotiating with the Transvaal for better treatment of the Uitlanders. It stiffened the backs of Kruger and his party. The German Kaiser telegraphed his congratulations on the defeat of the Raid 'without the ...
— The Expansion of Europe - The Culmination of Modern History • Ramsay Muir
... not to be regarded as a wonder that, when the party, early in the day, were passing a thicket out of which glided a very large serpent, the major should give a shout and incontinently discharge both barrels at it simultaneously. It chanced to be a python of great size, full fifteen feet long, and thicker than a man's thigh, but a really harmless species of serpent. The major, however, did not know this, or did not care. His shots, although fired at random, hit the creature in the spine; nevertheless ...
— Hunting the Lions • R.M. Ballantyne
... lonely and dark. The few people who lived there kept themselves hidden among the rocks as if in dread of some great danger. They told Apollo that near the foot of the mountain where the steep cliff seemed to be split in two there lived a huge serpent called the Python. This serpent often seized sheep and cattle, and sometimes even men and women and children, and carried them up to his dreadful den ...
— Old Greek Stories • James Baldwin
... Mr. Glossop loves food. He just lives for it. He always eats six or seven meals a day, and then starts in again after bedtime. I think it's rather wonderful.' Your aunt seemed interested, and said it reminded her of a boa constrictor. Angela said, didn't she mean a python? And then they argued as to which of the two it was. Your uncle, meanwhile, poking about with that damned pistol of his till human life wasn't safe in the vicinity. And the pie lying there on the table, and me unable to touch it. You begin ...
— Right Ho, Jeeves • P. G. Wodehouse
... of Ichcha the whole pack of cards began to totter slowly, and then tumble down to the ground. The scene was like that of some huge python awaking from a long sleep, as it slowly unfolds its numberless coils with a quiver that runs ...
— The Hungry Stones And Other Stories • Rabindranath Tagore
... "Python, my lad, not pison," said the doctor. "That class of serpent is harmless. Don't miss it, Sir James, and don't shatter its head if you ...
— Dead Man's Land - Being the Voyage to Zimbambangwe of certain and uncertain • George Manville Fenn
... United States was a mere jelly-fish nation which would tolerate any enormity he might concoct. This was the actual comfort President Wilson's message gave Germany. The negative result was felt among the Allied nations which, struggling against the German Monster like Laocoon in the coils of the Python, took Mr. Wilson's praise of Germany's imaginary love of justice and humanity as a death-warrant for themselves. They could not believe that he who wrote such words, or the American people who swallowed them, could ever be roused to give succor to ...
— Theodore Roosevelt; An Intimate Biography, • William Roscoe Thayer
... mythology thought them the columns of Hercules; people fond of natural history thought them a representation of the python, because, according to Pausanias, a similar heap of stones, on the road from Thebes to Elissonte, was called "the serpent's head," and especially because the rows of stones at Carnac present the sinuosities of a serpent. People ...
— Over Strand and Field • Gustave Flaubert
... the notes on Round Island (386/1. In Wallace's "Island Life," page 410, Round Island is described as an islet "only about a mile across, and situated about fourteen miles north-east of Mauritius." Wallace mentions a snake, a python belonging to the peculiar and distinct genus Casarea, as found on Round Island, and nowhere else in the world. The palm Latania Loddigesii is quoted by Wallace as "confined to Round Island and two other adjacent islets." See Baker's "Flora of ...
— More Letters of Charles Darwin Volume II - Volume II (of II) • Charles Darwin
... PYTHON. Native name WAKEL or WA-A-KEL. This snake is considered by the natives a great delicacy, and by their account resembles mutton in flavour, being also remarkably fat. I requested them to let me taste the specimen from which the drawing was made; but they devoured ...
— Journals Of Expeditions Of Discovery Into Central • Edward John Eyre
... rushed down their ladders screaming, "Harimau! Harimau!" (A tiger! A tiger!) The next morning she found that her pet dog, Fatima, named after herself, had been killed by one stroke of the great beast's paw. Once a monster python swung from a cocoanut tree through the window of her home, and wound itself round and round the post of her mother's loom. It took a dozen men to tie a rope to the serpent's tail, ...
— Tales of the Malayan Coast - From Penang to the Philippines • Rounsevelle Wildman
... Open conflict with Satan.] At Philippi is noticeable the conflict between the visible power of Satan and the Power of {39} One stronger than he, in the casting out by St. Paul of the evil spirit of Python from the soothsaying woman. This was an earnest of the final issue of that great contest between the kingdom of Satan and the Kingdom of God, which was now beginning in the very strongholds of darkness, and is to continue to ...
— A Key to the Knowledge of Church History (Ancient) • John Henry Blunt
... his natural jealousy aside—preferring to suffer rather than that she should be lost. God only knew how he was suffering day by day, hour by hour; but it were better that he should suffer than that she should be abandoned to the spiritual constriction of the old Roman python. It was horrible to think, but the powerful coils would break and crush to pulp; then the beast would lubricate and swallow. Anything were better than this; Ulick's kisses would never be more to ...
— Sister Teresa • George Moore
... into his saddle, "we'll hit the trail before this old Python here finds something else to forebode about. For all I care the moon can turn green, an' grow a hump like a camel just so she gives us light enough to see by." He led the way across the little plateau and the others followed. With eyes tight-shut and hands gripping the saddle-horn, Alice ...
— The Texan - A Story of the Cattle Country • James B. Hendryx
... growths that sneak and crawl Beneath the soil. Or as we leave the lake And walk the forest I behold lianas, Smilax or woodbine climbing round the trunks Of giant trees that live and out of earth, And out of air make strength and food and ask No other help. And in this place I see Spiral bryony, python of the vines That coils and crushes; and that banyan tree Whose spreading branches drop new roots to earth, And lives afar from where the parent trunk Has sunk its roots, so that the healthful sun Is darkened: as a people might be darkened By ignorance or want or tyranny, Or dogma ...
— Toward the Gulf • Edgar Lee Masters
... fifty-two guilds in gowns, each headed by their Master and their banner, gorgeous in tint, but with homely devices, such as stockings, saw and compasses, weavers' shuttles, and the like. Master Lambert looked up and nodded a smile from beneath a banner with Apollo and the Python, which Ridley might be excused for taking for St. Michael and the Dragon. The Mayor in scarlet, white fur and with gold collar, surrounded by his burgomasters in almost ...
— Grisly Grisell • Charlotte M. Yonge
... seat, Where throning he her faith in him maintained; Bound Reason to believe delayed defeat Was triumph; and what strength in her remained To head against the ultimate foreseen rout, Insensate taxed; of his impenitent will, Servant and sycophant: without ally, In Python's coils, the Master Craftsman still; The smiter, panther springer, trapper sly, The deadly wrestler at the crucial bout, The penetrant, the tonant, tower of towers, Striking from black disaster starry showers. Her supreme player of man's primaeval game, He won his harnessed ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... saw the puff of snow dust fly up in a toss of mist over the face of the distant upper crags. Then, a grinding tore the earth; something white glistening viscous crumpled—coiled with untellable furious speed, shaggy and formless, out from the upper peaks—coiled and writhed out like a giant python in titanic torture. For an instant, for less than the fraction of an instant, it poised and coiled and looped as a great white snake in and out among the far upper meadows: then ruptured free with ear splitting wrench. The air ...
— The Freebooters of the Wilderness • Agnes C. Laut
... the name of fortune, were they exerting themselves to create such a terrific row? The answer was not long in coming; for, as I sat there intently scanning the scene through my telescope, I saw the head and about six feet of the body of an enormous python upreared from inside the scherm, its appearance being greeted by a yell of delight from the monkeys that caused Prince to snort and stamp with excitement. I saw the huge reptile up-rear itself still further and attempt to get out of the scherm; but it could not do so without ...
— Through Veld and Forest - An African Story • Harry Collingwood
... lips were both cruel and sensitive. His hand slid back along "Nigger Baby's" neck, paused, and rested on her knee. Then, suddenly, he came a big step closer, threw both his arms, tightening with a python's strength, about her and hid his face against ...
— Hidden Creek • Katharine Newlin Burt
... hold their breath no longer, they stood up. Their red assailants were floating off on the current; but the fiery poison remained, and they bathed each other's scarlet and scorched shoulders assiduously, forgetful for the moment of everything besides. At this moment a gigantic water python reared its head from the leafage close by, fixed its flat, lidless, glittering eyes upon them, and drew back to strike. But in the next second Loob's ready spear was thrust clean through its throat, ...
— In the Morning of Time • Charles G. D. Roberts
... me it was an enormous python, or serpent of the boa species, that are common in the northern coast of America. Probably it had been brought to the island on a drifted tree, and being so prodigious a reptile, the wounds it had received were not likely ...
— The Little Savage • Captain Frederick Marryat
... a moment her surprise died out, and into her eyes crept a strange look of repulsion and even fear. She had no words to offer. She made no move. It was almost as if she sat fascinated like some harmless bird held by the hypnotic stare of a python. So long did she remain silent that Buck at last turned and looked into her face. And something like alarm caught and held him when he beheld her gray look of horror as she faced the gloomy crags mounting up ...
— The Golden Woman - A Story of the Montana Hills • Ridgwell Cullum
... species with arms sometimes 30 feet long, so as to be 60 feet from tip to tip. The body, however, is small in proportion. The Giraffe attains a height of over 20 feet; the Elephant, though not so tall, is more bulky; the Crocodile reaches a length of over 20 feet, the Python of 60 feet, the extinct Titanosaurus of the American Jurassic beds, the largest land animal yet known to us, 100 feet in length and 30 in height; the Whalebone Whale over 70 feet, Sibbald's Whale is said to have ...
— The Beauties of Nature - and the Wonders of the World We Live In • Sir John Lubbock
... and power of Elias' (after whom it was long named), fasting, like Elias, forty days and forty nights, wrestling with the demons of the storm, and the snakes of the fen, and the Peishta-more (the monstrous Python of the lakes), which assembled at the magic ringing of his bell, till he conquered not by the brute force of a Hercules and Theseus, and the monster-quellers of old Greece, but by the spiritual force of which (so the text was then applied) it is written, 'This kind cometh not out but by prayer ...
— The Roman and the Teuton - A Series of Lectures delivered before the University of Cambridge • Charles Kingsley
... are seldom poisonous," cried Jerry. "This may be a python or a boa escaped from some circus, though I haven't heard of any animal shows ...
— Ned, Bob and Jerry on the Firing Line - The Motor Boys Fighting for Uncle Sam • Clarence Young
... music plays in the background. The last attempt is a half-hearted "Candygram!" When the door is opened, a shark bursts in and chomps the poor occupant. There is a moral here for those attracted to candygrammars. Note that, in many circles, pretty much the same ones who remember Monty Python sketches, all it takes is the word "Candygram!", suitably timed, to get people rolling on ...
— The Jargon File, Version 4.0.0
... for the bath. When a more complex and significant action is permitted, it is most often represented as just finished, so that eager expectancy is excluded, as in the image of Apollo just after the slaughter of the Python, or of Venus with the apple of Paris already in her hand. The Laocoon, with all that patient science through which it has triumphed over an almost unmanageable subject, marks a period in which sculpture has begun ...
— The Renaissance: Studies in Art and Poetry • Walter Horatio Pater
... which, according to accounts, may attain a length of seven or eight metres. It is able to remain long under water, moves slowly on land, and can climb trees. Deer and pigs are its usual food, but at times it attacks and eats natives. A few years previously this python devoured a Katingan, and as it remains at the same place for some time after a meal, two days later it was found and killed. These Dayaks kill it with knives, spears being ineffectual, and the meat is eaten. A very large lizard is also said to be ...
— Through Central Borneo: - An Account of Two Years' Travel in the Land of Head-Hunters - Between the Years 1913 and 1917 • Carl Lumholtz
... earlier of the foregoing scenes were being enacted, the famine had been drawing its python grasp tighter and tighter around the unhappy island. The first symptoms of the dread potato disease showed themselves in the autumn of 1845, and even that year there was much suffering, though a trifle to what was to follow. Many remedies were tried, both to stop the blight ...
— The Story Of Ireland • Emily Lawless
... the reasoning is purely analogical; and I only wish it to be inferred that that nose, humped like a dromedary—prominent as Cape Wrath—nobler than Caesar's, or the great captain's—had precisely the same influence on me as the envenomed Python of the American woods has upon the squirrel. It fascinated me—threw a spell over me—enchanted my faculties—made me love to gaze upon what I abhorred, and think of nothing but one feature—one nose, which nevertheless held a more prominent place in the temple of my imagination, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction No. 485 - Vol. 17, No. 485, Saturday, April 16, 1831 • Various
... tree above his head swayed a huge python, one of those reptiles that are able to crush a man's bones in their coils. A few yards away crouched a savage panther, its glaring red eyes fixed full on the helpless Claus. One of those monstrous spotted spiders whose sting is ...
— The Life and Adventures of Santa Claus • L. Frank Baum
... and we were just beginning to arrange the different parts. The rest of the hose that was on the ground was Kaa, the Rock Python, and Pincher was Grey Brother, only we couldn't find him. And while most of us were talking, Dicky and Noel got messing about with the ...
— The Wouldbegoods • E. Nesbit
... miles to the eastward mighty armies were striving over a tortured strip of blasted land that for years to come would lie fruitless and barren. Here all was peace, with never a hint—yes, far below on the white ribbon of roadway a long, dark python was slowly dragging itself forward. It was a familiar sight to Larkin and McGee—troops moving up to the theatre of war. And over on another road a long procession of humpbacked brown toads were plodding eastward. Motor lorries, carrying munitions and supplies. Strange ...
— Aces Up • Covington Clarke
... was out hunting, he came upon a strange sight. An enormous python had caught an antelope and coiled itself around it; the antelope, striking out in despair with its horns, had pinned the python's neck to a tree, and so deeply had its horns sunk in the soft wood that neither creature ...
— The Orange Fairy Book • Andrew Lang
... Apollo without making one observation on the character of this figure. He is supposed to have just discharged his arrow at the Python; and by the head retreating a little towards the right shoulder, he appears attentive to its effect. What I would remark is the difference of this attention from that of the Discobolus, who is engaged in the same purpose, watching the effect of his Discus. The graceful, ...
— Table-Talk - Essays on Men and Manners • William Hazlitt
... all in coils and curves like a dead python, and deposited him upon his bed. When we returned three ...
— The Stark Munro Letters • J. Stark Munro
... to the South Where mile on mile the earth is burnt away And poisonous serpents slither through the flames; Where on precipitous paths or in deep woods Tigers and leopards prowl, And water-scorpions wait; Where the king-python rears his giant head. O Soul, go not to the South Where the three-footed tortoise ...
— More Translations from the Chinese • Various
... said Apollo, "what dost thou with the warlike bow? Such burden best befits my shoulders, for did I not slay the fierce serpent, the Python, whose baleful breath destroyed all that came nigh him? Warlike arms are for the mighty, not for boys like thee! Do thou carry a torch with which to kindle love in human hearts, but no longer lay claim to my ...
— Good Stories For Great Holidays - Arranged for Story-Telling and Reading Aloud and for the - Children's Own Reading • Frances Jenkins Olcott
... Olympus? Down the stream, Look how the mountains with their double range Embrace the vale of Tempe: from each side Ascending steep to heaven, a rocky mound 320 Cover'd with ivy and the laurel boughs That crown'd young Phoebus for the Python slain. Fair Tempe! on whose primrose banks the morn Awoke most fragrant, and the noon reposed In pomp of lights and shadows most sublime: Whose lawns, whose glades, ere human footsteps yet Had traced an entrance, were ...
— Poetical Works of Akenside - [Edited by George Gilfillan] • Mark Akenside
... "I'm real glad it wasn't a snake, because they always give me the creeps, you remember, I hate 'em so. Just think what a fine pickle we'd be in now if a monster anaconda or a big boa constrictor or python, broke loose from a show, should climb up on our bridge boat, and start to chasin' us all overboard. Things look bad enough as they are without our takin' on a bunch of new trouble. So, Toby, please don't glimpse anything else, and give ...
— Afloat on the Flood • Lawrence J. Leslie
... located big ivory cache under left gate-post. Went back to camp for men, found dying Arab. Gigantic buffalo gored him. Rest gone with camels. Big python showed up; all scared out. Found camel in trees and stayed to look around. Stories true. Shot two buffalo—suggested prehistoric type, great horns. Shot ...
— The Rogue Elephant - The Boys' Big Game Series • Elliott Whitney
... flash the head of a python arose, and with gaping jaws struck as the branch fell from my hand.' In a moment I had whipped the tomahawk from my belt and slashed at the body of the snake squirming at my feet, as, baffled for a moment by ...
— Tropic Days • E. J. Banfield
... the night where I was. Should that horror settle down upon me again, I felt that I must succumb to it. It would crush the life out of me as infallibly as though I were in the folds of some huge python. Long before ...
— The Argosy - Vol. 51, No. 2, February, 1891 • Various
... WORLD. She lends it to the girls who do not take it, and they find out about Crete and Greece. We are studying about the Eastern Question, and your magazine helps us to find what we want. Do you know any more about the big python that was found in Florida, or was it just ...
— The Great Round World and What Is Going On In It, Vol. 1, No. 28, May 20, 1897 - A Weekly Magazine for Boys and Girls • Various
... upon them from all sides, to contract its coils like a python, but still the house was untouched, save by the drifting smoke and ashes. Darker and darker the night came down, a black cap over all this red struggle, but with its contrast deepening the vivid colours of the combat that ...
— Before the Dawn - A Story of the Fall of Richmond • Joseph Alexander Altsheler
... they kill, but their chief food is roots. They kill great numbers of snakes. Even the largest python is no match for a herd of peccaries if they catch him before he can take ...
— The Treasure of the Incas • G. A. Henty
... and brushed the crumbs off his trousers. Thomas continued operations on the bun with the concentrated expression of a lunching python. ...
— The Politeness of Princes - and Other School Stories • P. G. Wodehouse
... its way through levels of woodland and open stretches of meadow, looping sinuously as a sluggish python—a python that rested its mouth upon the shore of Lake Athabasca while its tail was lost in a great area of spruce forest and poplar groves, of reedy sloughs ...
— Burned Bridges • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... dwelled here in earth adown, As olde bookes make mentioun, He was the moste lusty* bacheler *pleasant Of all this world, and eke* the best archer. *also He slew Python the serpent, as he lay Sleeping against the sun upon a day; And many another noble worthy deed He with his bow wrought, as men maye read. Playen he could on every minstrelsy, And singe, that it was a melody To hearen ...
— The Canterbury Tales and Other Poems • Geoffrey Chaucer
... arrived in London, must have all sorts of things to prattle about? But the little man was dealing strenuously with a breaded cutlet, while the stout boy, grimly silent, surrounded fish-pie in the forthright manner of a starving python. As for the elder woman, she seemed to be wrestling with ...
— Piccadilly Jim • Pelham Grenville Wodehouse
... number of thefts and murders increased with astounding rapidity. The police, collected in augmented proportions, lost its head and was swept off its feet. But it must also be said that, having gorged itself with plentiful bribes, it resembled a sated python, willy-nilly drowsy and listless. People were killed for anything and nothing, just so. It happened that men would walk up to a person in broad daylight somewhere on an unfrequented street and ask: "What's your name?" "Fedorov." "Aha, Federov? Then take this!" and they would ...
— Yama (The Pit) • Alexandra Kuprin
... the cage where serpents of every kind were twisting and squirming about, among them the terrible boa-constrictor, and the python; but Mrs. Steiner could not look at them, and asked the boys to stay but a little while, but they could halt at the tanks of the South American alligator, the rhinoceros, the great turtle, and the hippopotamus; all animals which the boys ...
— Pixy's Holiday Journey • George Lang
... more than fifteen feet in length. I thought at first, that the camudu was a boa; but I saw with surprise, that the scales beneath the tail were divided into two rows. It was therefore a viper (coluber); perhaps a python of the New Continent: I say perhaps, for great naturalists appear to admit that all the pythons belong to the Old, and all the boas to the New World. As the boa of Pliny was a serpent of Africa and of the south of Europe, it would have been well if the boas of America had ...
— Equinoctial Regions of America V2 • Alexander von Humboldt
... swept; And soon from forth its bursting sides emerged A dazzling form, broad-bosomed, bold of eye, And wild her hair, save where with laurels bound. Not more majestic stood the healing God,[146:1] 435 When from his bow the arrow sped that slew Huge Python. Shriek'd Ambition's giant throng, And with them hissed the locust-fiends that crawled And glittered in Corruption's slimy track. Great was their wrath, for short they knew their reign; 440 And such commotion made they, and uproar, As when ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... the nymph and Bassarid, Or thymy meadows such as Simois glasses, Lured his exulting feet, my jocund kid, But veldt and kloof and waving jungle grasses, Where lurk the python with unwinking lid, And the lean lion, growling, as he passes, His futile wrath against the hoarse baboons That drape ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, Oct. 10, 1917 • Various
... and violent rustling and switching of the long grass in front of him, something struck him a violent blow on the shoulder, and in an instant he found himself enveloped in the coils of an enormous python, the great head of which towered threateningly above him, as it opened wide its gaping jaws within a foot of his face and emitted a loud, sibilant, angry hiss. Its hot, foetid breath struck him full in the face and, in conjunction with the overpowering musky smell ...
— With Airship and Submarine - A Tale of Adventure • Harry Collingwood
... are many venomous species, seem to be less feared than in India or the wilder parts of Australia. The python grows to twenty feet or more, but is, of course, not poisonous, and never assails man unless first molested. The black momba, which is nearly as large as a rattlesnake, is, however, a dangerous creature, being ready to attack man without provocation, and the bite may prove fatal in less than ...
— Impressions of South Africa • James Bryce
... this district, and "knew a motor when they saw it." Even a drove of sheep (near the wonderful fortress of Peschiera with its coiled python of a river) seemed comparatively indifferent as they surged round us in a foaming wave of wool. But then, sheep have no facial expression. All other four-footed things show emotion by a change of countenance, just as human beings do—more, because ...
— My Friend the Chauffeur • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... melt, crumble, are overcome by the onrush of primordial things, and where once was the white man's city is now the eternal jungle, and the vines and thrusting roots and rank herbage blot out the very memory of a futile civilization, while the monkey and the jackal and the python come again into ...
— Towards the Great Peace • Ralph Adams Cram
... best of our Puritan and Nonconformists' works, so that we find him using the Latin words primum mobile, carefully noting in the margin that he meant 'the soul'; and from hence he must have scraped acquaintance with Python, Cerberus, and the furies of mythology, whom he uses in this war, describing accurately their names ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... the dart of the python, the fierce onset of the kingly tiger, the sudden flash of the forked and quivering lightning, was the grasp made at the outstretched arm by the practised Brahmin. His tenacious fingers closed tightly round the other's wrist. One sudden wrench, and he had the blacksmith's arm bent back and ...
— Sport and Work on the Nepaul Frontier - Twelve Years Sporting Reminiscences of an Indigo Planter • James Inglis
... can we exclude them if we wish to express what they have expressed? A tale like Kipling's The Elephant's Child would be ruined without those clinging epithets, such as "the wait-a-bit thorn-bush," "mere-smear nose," "slushy squshy mud-cap," "Bi-Colored-Python-Rock-Snake," and "satiable curtiosity." No one could substitute other words in this tale; for contrasts of feeling and humor are so tied up with the words that other words would fail to tell the real story. If an interjection has seemed an insignificant part of speech, note the vision of tropical ...
— A Study of Fairy Tales • Laura F. Kready
... tops of trees. A climbing ring. How made and used. The climbing operation. Harry sees another forest to the south. Clear in the west. The wounded yak calls a halt. Resuming the journey. Harry in the grasp of a giant anaconda. John severs its body with a bolo. Boa constrictor. The python. The Cashew tree. Gum arabic. Seeing the West River. Discovering signs of habitations to the south. Course to be followed in meeting the natives. Hearing voices in the night. Crackling of twigs. A party of savages. The next morning. Examining ...
— The Wonder Island Boys: The Mysteries of the Caverns • Roger Thompson Finlay
... was dead, saying that he must have it for a curiosity if we did not, and probably it stretched a little in the process, for it proved to be a python, twenty feet in ...
— Through Forest and Stream - The Quest of the Quetzal • George Manville Fenn
... century, especially in connection with the study of myths and religions. The fragment of gibberish to which I refer generally takes the form of saying "This god or hero really represents the sun." Or "Apollo killing the Python MEANS that the summer drives out the winter." Or "The King dying in a western battle is a SYMBOL of the sun setting in the west." Now I should really have thought that even the skeptical professors, whose skulls are as ...
— A Miscellany of Men • G. K. Chesterton
... I thought that very likely I should let go my hold and fall down. I am not ashamed to confess having had that feeling, but I tried to conquer it, and it soon wore off, and then I began to consider how I might best escape the dreadful Python. At first I thought that I would climb up to the very highest branch, in the hopes that the boa would not venture to follow me there, for fear of breaking it with his weight; and then it occurred to me that I might ...
— My First Voyage to Southern Seas • W.H.G. Kingston
... life by your coolness, my boy," he said. "I believe this serpent is rare in the island, for I have never seen one like it; and it is far more dangerous than the larger python, of which there are many. They can swallow a deer whole, but seldom attack human beings. They would take our friend Merlin down in a gulp; but he probably has sagacity enough to keep out of their way, so you need not ...
— In the Eastern Seas • W.H.G. Kingston
... de capello Legends concerning it Instance of land snakes found at sea Singular tradition regarding the robra de capello Uropeltidae.—New species discovered in Ceylon Buddhist veneration for the cobra de capello The Python Tree snakes Water snakes Sea snakes Snake stones Analysis of ...
— Sketches of the Natural History of Ceylon • J. Emerson Tennent
... eyes, and leaving an active tongue in every mouth behind her. So she had come back! Well, of all the nerve! Did you ever! Was she going to stay? What did she think she was going to do? And so on all the way home, to where awaited the heavy Sunday dinner on which Westville gorged itself python-like—if it be not sacrilege to compare communicants with such heathen beasts—till they could scarcely move; till, toward three o'clock, the church paper sank down upon the distended stomachs of middle age, and there arose from all the easy ...
— Counsel for the Defense • Leroy Scott
... twilight time Of every people, in every clime, Dragons and griffins and monsters dire, Born of water, and air, and fire, Or nursed, like the Python, in the mud And ooze of the old Deucalion flood, Crawl and wriggle and foam with rage, Through dusk tradition and ballad age. So from the childhood of Newbury town And its time of fable the tale comes down Of a terror ...
— Selections From American Poetry • Various
... and to the right a fine collection of the enormous fruit bats and some of the skins of these bats, which are of great commercial value. Large collections of birds' eggs, attractively displayed; numerous specimens of stuffed wild boars and deer were displayed. Fine specimens of python, 21 feet long and 1 foot in diameter, and a collection of crocodiles, large iguanas, and lizards were prominent features in the ...
— Final Report of the Louisiana Purchase Exposition Commission • Louisiana Purchase Exposition Commission
... "above all" and "through all." The Roman Catholic Church has, perhaps, humanized religion too far. For every god and goddess of Greece she has given us, on some immortal canvas, an archangel or a saint to be adored and loved. Instead of Apollo and the Python we have Guido's St. Michael and the Dragon; in place of the light, airy Mercury she provides a St. Sebastian; instead of the "untouched" Diana, some heavenly Agnes or Cecilia. The Catholic heaven is peopled, all the way up, with beautiful human forms; and on the upper throne we have holiness ...
— Ten Great Religions - An Essay in Comparative Theology • James Freeman Clarke
... heavens; His hand has formed the crooked serpent" (Job xxvi. 13), expressions which are almost Vedic. From celestial phenomena the myth of the Apollo Serpent descended to impersonate the phenomena of earth, of which we have examples in the Greek fable of the Python, and others. Apollo again appears as the god which agitates and dissolves the waters, and the serpent as the winding course of a river, and also as other sources of water. The sun causes the river water to evaporate, which is symbolized by the dragon's ...
— Myth and Science - An Essay • Tito Vignoli
... sons Of great Iphitus, son of Naubolus, Were led the Phocian forces; these were they Who dwelt in Cyparissus, and the rock Of Python, and on Crissa's lovely plain; And who in Daulis, and in Panope, Anemorea and IIyampolis, And by Cephisus' sacred waters dwelt, Or in Lilaea, by Cephisus' springs. In their command came forty dark-ribb'd ships. These were the leaders of the Phocian ...
— The Iliad • Homer
... desire To speack with thee, but I all unawere Of thy design, did ward him gently off. Quezox: 'Twere well, thus ever do when skins are white. But did this hombre show a mighty girth? Muchacho: In sooth he did, Senor; his leg like to A python gorged with infant carabao Did to his body make comparison. Quezox: Ha! bid him hence. I know this hombre well! Go twist thy tongue into a double knot So ...
— 'A Comedy of Errors' in Seven Acts • Spokeshave (AKA Old Fogy)
... fishes, the reptiles seem fairly modest creatures. The ordinary snake does not lay more than twenty or thirty eggs, and even the python is content to stop at a hundred. The crocodile, though a wicked animal, lays only twenty or thirty; the tortoise as few as two or four; and the turtle does not exceed two hundred. But I am not really interested in eggs—not, at least, in any eggs but birds' ...
— The Pleasures of Ignorance • Robert Lynd
... things, but they leave their limitations, and they have no place here. 'Every man his own Redeemer' will not work. You can no more extricate yourself from the toils of sin than a man can release himself from the folds of a python. You can no more climb to heaven by your own effort than you can build a railway to the moon. You must sue in forma pauperis, and be content to accept as a boon an unmerited place in your Father's heart, an undeserved seat at His bountiful ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ephesians; Epistles of St. Peter and St. John • Alexander Maclaren
... Cordeliers,—shoots his glittering war-shafts into your new Cordeliers, your Heberts, Momoros, with their brawling brutalities and despicabilities: say, as the Sun-god (for poor Camille is a Poet) shot into that Python Serpent sprung ...
— The French Revolution • Thomas Carlyle
... think, to a natural disappointment in the results. In the old times a man didn't feel that he had dined well in England unless for an hour or two afterward he had the comfortable gorged sensation of a python full of pigeons. ...
— Eating in Two or Three Languages • Irvin S. Cobb
... himself third, as is written in the Life of Scipio. Indeed Pyrrhus devoted the whole of his intellect to the art of war, regarding it as the only study fit for a king, and holding all other occupations to be frivolous. At a wine party he was once asked whether he thought Python or Kaphisias the better flute player, to which he answered that Polysperchon was the best general, as though that were the only subject on which a king should form or express an opinion. Yet he was mild-tempered and gentle ...
— Plutarch's Lives, Volume II • Aubrey Stewart & George Long
... The tripod.—Ver. 635. The tripod on which the priestess of Apollo or 'Pythia,' sat when inspired, was called 'Cortina,' from the skin, 'corium,' of the serpent Python, which, when it had been killed by Apollo was ...
— The Metamorphoses of Ovid - Literally Translated into English Prose, with Copious Notes - and Explanations • Publius Ovidius Naso
... crocodile in a dustbin encourages me to write to you on a similar subject. I note with profound dismay the proposal to turn Hyde Park into a Zoological Garden. At least this is not an unfair deduction from the scheme to instal a huge python in the neighbourhood of Hyde Park Corner. I do not profess to know much about snakes, but I believe the python is a most dangerous reptile, and I see it stated that the pythons which have just arrived at Regent's Park are "large and vigorous, already active ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 159, July 28th, 1920 • Various
... countenance as he looked round; and that countenance was one that might have haunted the nymphs of Delos; the face of Apollo, not as the hero, but the shepherd—not of the bow, but of the lute—not the Python-slayer, but the young dreamer by shady places—he whom the sculptor has portrayed leaning idly against the tree—the boy-god whose home is yet on earth, and to whom the Oracle and ...
— Night and Morning, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... Ascalaphus the bold, 625 And bold Iaelmenus, expert in arms. Beneath Epistrophus and Schedius, took Their destined station on Boeotia's left, The brave Phocensians; they in forty ships From Cyparissus came, and from the rocks 630 Of Python, and from Crissa the divine; From Anemoria, Daulis, Panopeus, And from Hyampolis, and from the banks Of the Cephissus, sacred stream, and from Lilaea, seated at its fountain-head. 635 Next from beyond Euboea's happy isle In forty ships conveyed, stood ...
— The Iliad of Homer - Translated into English Blank Verse • Homer
... of Coeus and Phoebe. She was gifted with wonderful beauty, and was tenderly loved by Zeus, but her lot was far from being a happy one, for Hera, being extremely jealous of her, persecuted her with inveterate cruelty, and sent the dreadful serpent Python[14] to terrify and torment her wherever she went. But Zeus, who had observed with the deepest compassion her weary wanderings and agonized fears, resolved to create for her some place of refuge, however ...
— Myths and Legends of Ancient Greece and Rome • E.M. Berens
... not end here; for it is shown in a still more aggravated form where within the limits of the same natural group of organisms a rudiment is sometimes present and sometimes absent. For instance, although in nearly all the numerous species of snakes there are no vestiges of limbs, in the python we find very tiny rudiments of the hind-limbs. (Fig. 8.) Now, is it a worthy conception of deity that, while neglecting to maintain his unity of ideal in the case of nearly all the numerous species of snakes, ...
— Darwin, and After Darwin (Vol. 1 and 3, of 3) • George John Romanes
... varieties of this large family; some, like the rattlesnake, cannot climb or swim, but crawl along the ground, the terror of unwary travellers who may tread upon them in the dim forest-paths; others are Water-snakes; some, like the Boa and Python, are dreaded, although not venomous, because, of their enormous strength, and power of crushing their victims in their close embrace; others, like the Cobra, for their deadly bite; while many—we might almost say most—snakes are quite harmless, for it has been reckoned that not more ...
— Twilight And Dawn • Caroline Pridham
... ground with a stick and then seize it in a cleft bamboo and prick out the poison-fangs with a large needle. They think that the teeth of the iguana are also poisonous and they knock them out with a stick, and if fresh teeth afterwards grow they believe them not to contain poison. The python is called Ajgar, which is said to mean eater of goats. In captivity the pythons will not eat of themselves, and the snake-charmers chop up pieces of meat and fowls and placing the food in the reptile's mouth massage it down the body. They feed the pythons only once in ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India - Volume IV of IV - Kumhar-Yemkala • R.V. Russell
... mind that quailed not before visible dangers; but, with all its powers of decisive action, it retained so much of Corsican eeriness as to chafe at the unknown,[58] and to lose for the moment the faculty of forming a vigorous resolution. Like the python, which grips its native rock by the tail in order to gain its full constricting power, so Bonaparte ever needed a groundwork of fact for the due exercise of ...
— The Life of Napoleon I (Volumes, 1 and 2) • John Holland Rose
... these were their scutcheons. Now, over these did the great Diabolus make superior captains, and they were in number seven: as, namely, the Lord Beelzebub, the Lord Lucifer, the Lord Legion, the Lord Apollyon, the Lord Python, the Lord Cerberus, and the Lord Belial; these seven he set over the captains, and Incredulity was lord-general, and, Diabolus was king. The reformades also, such as were like themselves, were made some of them captains of hundreds, and some of ...
— The Holy War • John Bunyan
... 1881. Early in the next year he went for change of scene to stay with the Severns at his old home on Herne Hill. He seemed much better, and ventured to reappear in public. On March 3rd he went to the National Gallery to sketch Turner's Python. On the unfinished drawing is written: "Bothered away from it, and never went again. No light to work by in the next month." An artist in the Gallery had been taking notes of him for a surreptitious portrait—an embarrassing form ...
— The Life of John Ruskin • W. G. Collingwood
... of a Big Python. Once I witnessed an example of snake intelligence on a large scale, which profoundly ...
— The Minds and Manners of Wild Animals • William T. Hornaday
... and his two little sons, struggling in the fearful coils of two huge serpents, and stretching their arms to the skies with heart-rending cries. I also saw Apollo Belvidere. He had just slain the Python and was standing by a great pillar of rock, extending his graceful hand in triumph over the terrible snake. Oh, he was simply beautiful! Venus entranced me. She looked as if she had just risen from ...
— Story of My Life • Helen Keller
... python about twenty-two feet long arrived from Singapore with its old skin dried down upon its body. The snake had been many weeks without a bath, and it had been utterly unable to shed its old skin on schedule time. It was necessary to remove all ...
— The Minds and Manners of Wild Animals • William T. Hornaday
... warm little hand in her own, which had suddenly seemed to turn to ice. "My heart is going bump-bump-bump like a scared wild rabbit's; but I keep saying over and over to myself what the python said. Don't you remember in Kaa's hunting? 'A brave heart and a courteous tongue, said he, they shall carry thee far through the jungle, manling.' It can't be such a very big jungle that I'm going into, and godmother ...
— The Little Colonel's House Party • Annie Fellows Johnston
... Python, of Byzantium, was a very corpulent man. He once said to the citizens, in addressing them to make friends after a political dispute: "Gentlemen, you see how stout I am. Well, I have a wife at home ...
— Flowers from a Persian Garden and Other Papers • W. A. Clouston
... beast we loosed was the python. Ivy did the loosing and I stood by with a big rifle to guard against trouble; but, bless you, there was no need. One and all, the beasts knew the old Boldero was doomed, and one and all they cried and begged and made eyes ...
— IT and Other Stories • Gouverneur Morris
... was at the expense of Apollo, the great sun god. Apollo was himself a mighty archer, and had slain with his arrows the python of Delphi. Proud of his victory, he mocked at the little god of love, advising him to leave his arrows for the warlike, and content himself with the torch of love. Cupid, vexed at the taunt, replied threateningly, "Thine arrows ...
— Michelangelo - A Collection Of Fifteen Pictures And A Portrait Of The - Master, With Introduction And Interpretation • Estelle M. Hurll
... from St. Augustine, Fla., of the capture of a huge python by Walter Ralston, a young man who was employed in the ...
— The Great Round World And What Is Going On In It, April 1, 1897 Vol. 1. No. 21 - A Weekly Magazine for Boys and Girls • Various
... very early times till the 4th century A.D. every four years, near Delphi, in honour of Apollo, who was said to have instituted them to commemorate his victory over the Python; originally were contests in singing only, but after the middle of the 6th century B.C. they included instrumental music, contests in poetry and art, athletic ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... that it is not conceivable that the Hawaiian notion of a mo'o was derived from objects present in his island home. The word mo'o may have been a coinage of the Hawaiian speechcenter, but the thing it stood for must have been an actual existence, like the python and cobra of India, or the pterodactyl of a past geologic period. May we not think of it as an ancestral memory, an impress, of Asiatic sights ...
— Unwritten Literature of Hawaii - The Sacred Songs of the Hula • Nathaniel Bright Emerson
... very numerous. Crawfurd mentions forty species of snakes, including the python and the cobra. Alligators in great numbers infest the tidal waters of the rivers. Iguanas and lizards of several species, marsh-frogs, and green tree-frogs abound. The land-leeches are a great pest. Scorpions and centipedes are abundant. There ...
— The Golden Chersonese and the Way Thither • Isabella L. Bird (Mrs. Bishop)
... any one doing? She wasn't an anxiety of my department. I suppose she was there for the only reason I had—because she asked for it. It was the same next day, except that instead of more arrows we found a python in the bunkers. Came aboard over the hawsers, I suppose. We were a lively lunatic asylum below while killing it with fire-shovels and crowbars. That was what the voyage was like. The whole lot of it was the same, and you knew quite well that the farther you went the less anything ...
— London River • H. M. Tomlinson |
