"Reptile" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... him by the arm). Stay! who is the bride-groom? Speak, reptile, speak! Who? When? Reply, thou traitor, Or ...
— The Death of Balder • Johannes Ewald
... conscious of an animal in us, which awakens in proportion as our higher nature slumbers. It is reptile and sensual, and perhaps cannot be wholly expelled; like the worms which, even in life and health, occupy our bodies. Possibly we may withdraw from it, but never change its nature. I fear that it may ...
— Walden, and On The Duty Of Civil Disobedience • Henry David Thoreau
... isles is their emphatic uninhabitableness. It is deemed a fit type of all-forsaken overthrow, that the jackal should den in the wastes of weedy Babylon; but the Encantadas refuse to harbor even the outcasts of the beasts. Man and wolf alike disown them. Little but reptile life is here found: tortoises, lizards, immense spiders, snakes, and that strangest anomaly of outlandish nature, the aguano. No voice, no low, no howl is heard; the chief sound of life ...
— The Piazza Tales • Herman Melville
... structure brave, the manifold music I build, Bidding my organ obey, calling its keys to their work, Claiming each slave of the sound, at a touch, as when Solomon willed Armies of angels that soar, legions of demons that lurk, Man, brute, reptile, fly,—alien of end and of aim, Adverse, each from the other heaven-high, hell-deep removed,— Should rush into sight at once as he named the ineffable Name, And pile him a palace straight, to pleasure the princess ...
— Robert Browning: How To Know Him • William Lyon Phelps
... the side of severe science, to his devoting the "Reptile" department of his zooelogical section chiefly to spiders, with incidental remarks on fleas and mosquitos. Perhaps it is to balance Captain Stedman in Surinam, who under the head of ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 102, April, 1866 • Various
... to the magistrate, but not again discharged so easily. My character and previous offences were exhibited. The magistrate, serious with judicial sorrow, looked upon me as you would turn an eye towards a reptile that defiles the earth. I appealed to him, and in a loud and animated voice proclaimed my grievances. It was suggested that I was a lunatic, and whilst the justice committed me to hard labour, he benevolently ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 54, No. 335, September 1843 • Various
... reply, a snake, warmed by the hot sun, curled upward from the terraced wall behind them, where it had basked, and glided swiftly between them. Nobili's heel was on it; in an instant he had crushed its head. But there between them lay the quivering reptile, its speckled scales catching the light. ...
— The Italians • Frances Elliot
... correspondent of Notes and Queries for May 24, 1851, furnishes two remedies then in use at Withyam, Sussex. "A common snake, held by its head and tail, is slowly drawn by someone standing by nine times across the front part of the neck of the person affected, the reptile being allowed, after every third time, to crawl about for awhile. Afterwards the snake is put alive in a bottle, which is corked tightly, and then buried in the ground. The tradition is, that as the snake decays, the swelling vanishes. The ...
— Three Thousand Years of Mental Healing • George Barton Cutten
... the descent-system into agreement with the actual facts, the incongruity between the two has become obvious." Thus, for instance, the well-known archaeopteryx is not, as was maintained, a connecting link between reptile and bird, but a member of a blindly ending side branch. In fact palaeontological research has proven incapable of finding the transitions between different species, clearly determined by the theory. But the overwhelming abundance of matter called for new endeavors to master it. It was then further ...
— At the Deathbed of Darwinism - A Series of Papers • Eberhard Dennert
... The reptile was of a species with which Brayton was unfamiliar. Its length he could only conjecture; the body at the largest visible part seemed about as thick as his forearm. In what way was it dangerous, if in any way? Was it venomous? Was it a constrictor? His knowledge of nature's danger signals did ...
— Stories by Modern American Authors • Julian Hawthorne
... he stopped before the huge globe. In turn, he contemplated it in silence, even as his master had done. Then, bending over it, and embracing it, as it were, in his arms, he gloated with his reptile-eye on it for some moments, drew his coarse finger along its polished surface, and tapped his flat, dirty nail on three of the places dotted with red crosses. And, whilst he thus pointed to three towns, in very different parts of the world, he named ...
— The Wandering Jew, Complete • Eugene Sue
... cheeks burn, a rattlesnake had crawled out of the side of the sod house and thrust its ugly head in under the screen door. He was not afraid of snakes, but he knew enough of Gospellism to feel the significance of the reptile lying coiled there upon her doorstep. His lips were cold when he kissed Lena goodbye, and he went ...
— The Troll Garden and Selected Stories • Willa Cather
... he will "hate them right sore, even as though they were his own enemies"—which indeed they were. He knows by painful experience that they deserve no quarter; that there is no use giving them any; to spare them is to make them insolent; to fondle the reptile is to be bitten by it. True poetry, as the messenger of heavenly beauty, is decaying; true refinement, true loftiness of thought, even true morality, are at stake. And so he writes his "Dunciad." And ...
— Literary and General Lectures and Essays • Charles Kingsley
... like the fable of 'The Kitten and the Leaves.' But when they get their brass collar on and shake their bells of office, they set up their backs like the Great Cat Rodilardus, and pounce upon men and things. Woe to any little heedess reptile of an author that ventures across their path without a safe-conduct from the Board of Control. They snap him up at a mouthful, and sit licking their lips, stroking their whiskers, and rattling their bells over the imaginary fragments of their devoted prey, to the alarm and astonishment ...
— Table-Talk - Essays on Men and Manners • William Hazlitt
... Selina Jemima Townsend as she appeared when afraid. Afraid—of what? Why, a poor tiny reptile, a harmless frog, that had jumped into her hat full of daisies, with a croak, as much as to say—"How do you do? Good morning, Lady Townsend; I am glad to see you down in the country." But what do you think she did? Why, the little lady scampered away as fast as she could to her governess, ...
— The Royal Picture Alphabet • Luke Limner
... begged for the flesh in order to dry it and use it as a specific against asthma, as they believed that any asthmatic person who lived on the flesh for a certain time would be infallibly cured. Another native wished the fat as an antidote for rheumatic pain. The head of this huge reptile was presented to an American, who in turn presented it to the Boston Museum. Unfortunately La Gironiere's picturesque descriptions must often be taken with a grain of salt. For some information regarding the reptiles of the islands see Report of U.S. Philippine ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898: Volume XVI, 1609 • H.E. Blair
... symbolic ring of pure gold. It has the image of a serpent, whose head, in relief, set with a ruby, is connected by a fine chain with a tiny circlet which fastens the jaws of the reptile." ...
— La-bas • J. K. Huysmans
... made use of the test for lizards and hedge-hogs—to wit, the application of madder dye to the Adam's apple, turning it lemon yellow if any sort of reptile is within, and violet if there is a mammal—but it failed to operate as the books describe. Being thus led to suspect a misplaced and wild-growing bone, perhaps from the vertebral column, the doctor decided to have recourse to surgery, and so, after the proper propitiation of the gods, ...
— A Book of Burlesques • H. L. Mencken
... distinguishable double star, of which each component was visible to the naked eye. And very, very far away he heard the beastly yellings he knew must be the outlaws, the Ragged Men, feasting horribly on half-scorched flesh torn from the quivering, yet-living flanks of a monstrous reptile. ...
— The Fifth-Dimension Tube • William Fitzgerald Jenkins
... along the whole coast of the Continent, and in the position the ship had taken, without the ordinary defences of the harbour. In this state, the vessel, to one who knew her real character, appeared like some beast of prey, or venomous reptile, that lay in an assumed lethargy, to delude the unconscious victim within the limits of its leap, or nigh enough to receive the deadly blow of ...
— The Red Rover • James Fenimore Cooper
... advise the Tadpole to get his tail cut off, as a badge of the reptile nature in him, and to achieve the higher sphere of the Croakers at a single hop? Why, it is all he steers by; without it, he would be as helpless as a compass under the flare of Northern Lights; and he ...
— The Function Of The Poet And Other Essays • James Russell Lowell
... thou forth then, state Thy wrong, thou sole aggrieved—disconsolate— While every beast, bird, reptile, insect, gay And glad acknowledges the ...
— Browning's England - A Study in English Influences in Browning • Helen Archibald Clarke
... frequently took pleasure in roasting them alive. He once received a present of a very large snake from some person who seemed to understand how to please this remarkable young prince. After a time, however, the favorite reptile allowed itself to bite its master's finger, whereupon Don Carlos immediately retaliated by biting off ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... the Reptile House?" Cassandra asked him, not from a genuine desire to visit the reptiles, but in obedience to her new-born feminine susceptibility, which urged her to charm and conciliate the other sex. Denham began to give her directions, and Katharine ...
— Night and Day • Virginia Woolf
... of interest at Rusthall Common is the group of rocks, of which the largest, the Toad Rock, bears a most singular resemblance to the reptile from which it is named. The High Rocks, situated further on, and just in the county of Sussex, are also very remarkable, rising from 30 to 60 ...
— What to See in England • Gordon Home
... series—certain substances condensing out of cosmic vapour, some of them combining to form the variety of rocks, soils, metals, &c., and others giving rise to protoplasm which grows' and develops into a thousand shapes and hues, of insect, fish, reptile, bird, ...
— Creation and Its Records • B.H. Baden-Powell
... of the waters, and as a dragon of the sea," saith Ezekiel; hereby, plainly meaning a whale; in truth, some versions of the Bible use that word itself. Besides, it would much subtract from the glory of the exploit had St. George but encountered a crawling reptile of the land, instead of doing battle with the great monster of the deep. Any man may kill a snake, but only a Perseus, a St. George, a Coffin, have the heart in them to march boldly up ...
— Moby Dick; or The Whale • Herman Melville
... of California than any one who had gone before. He was no great soldier or king, only a priest in the brownish gray cloak of the order of St. Francis. He was slight in figure, and limped painfully from a sore on his leg, caused, it is supposed, by the bite of some poisonous reptile. The chance companions who traveled with him begged him to stop and rest beside a stream, but he would not. Then, as he grew more weary, they entreated him to seek shelter in a ranch house near by and give ...
— History of California • Helen Elliott Bandini
... Dave's suggestion, Dunston Porter hurried back to one of the bungalows. He reappeared with a shotgun, and lost no time in making for the vicinity of the rock where the reptile had been seen. In the meanwhile the four boys rejoined Luke and Shadow, and all swam ...
— Dave Porter At Bear Camp - The Wild Man of Mirror Lake • Edward Stratemeyer
... of the revolutionist. Either he is cutting off the heads of his enemies or his own is being cut off. Science gives us means which make it possible to accomplish the wholesale destruction of these beasts quietly and deliberately." Elsewhere he says, "Those of the reptile brood who are not put to the sword remain as a thorn in the flesh of the new society; hence it would be both foolish and criminal not to annihilate utterly ...
— Violence and the Labor Movement • Robert Hunter
... out? Go by science into nature, and there's no proof of it; God never forgives what seems to be the mistake of even a reptile!" ...
— Four Girls at Chautauqua • Pansy
... which Peter fixed upon her was such as the rattlesnake casts upon its victim, and Sybil felt like a poor fluttering bird under the fascination of that venomous reptile. She could not remove her eyes from his, though she trembled as she gazed. We have said that Peter's orbs were like those of the toad. Age had not dimmed their brilliancy. In his harsh features you could only read bitter scorn or ...
— Rookwood • William Harrison Ainsworth
... I threw myself on a chair; my heart beat wildly: "Oh, heaven!" I murmured, "how can it be possible? Oh, superb monster! Oh! beautiful reptile! How you writhe, how you coil in and out, sweet adder, with supple and spotted skin! Thy cousin the serpent has taught thee to coil about the tree of life holding between thy lips the apple of temptation. ...
— Child of a Century, Complete • Alfred de Musset
... the ancient Grecians made The soul's fair emblem, and its only name— But of the soul, escaped the slavish trade Of earthly life! For in this mortal frame Ours is the reptile's lot, much toil, much blame, Manifold motions making little speed, And to deform and kill the things ...
— Books and Habits from the Lectures of Lafcadio Hearn • Lafcadio Hearn
... eating. Man, taking a different view of the subject, naturally met that mistake by another; he viewed the crocodile as a thing sometimes to worship, but always to run away from. And this continued until Mr. Waterton changed the relations between the animals. The mode of escaping from the reptile he showed to be, not by running away, but by leaping on its back, booted and spurred. The two animals had misunderstood each other. The use of the crocodile has now been cleared up—it is to be ridden; ...
— Miscellaneous Essays • Thomas de Quincey
... their turn. And this degradation increases with the frequency of the spectacle. Persons in such habits are apt to lose sight of the dignity of mankind, and to consider them as made for administration to their pleasures, or in an animal or a reptile light. But the Quakers, who know nothing of such spectacles, cannot, at least as far as these are concerned, lose either their own dignity of mind, or behold others lose it. They cannot therefore view men under the degrading light of animals for ...
— A Portraiture of Quakerism, Volume III (of 3) • Thomas Clarkson
... on, and the warm sun bursts forth, a formidable snake-like creature, nearly three feet in length, is often seen frequenting the plantations of the sweet potato, or coiled up beneath the roots of an old tree; its keen eye watching for any small reptile or insect which may be passing. The head is small in proportion to the body, and of a pyramidal form—mottled at the sides with black and green, the jaws edged with yellow. Its abdomen is bright yellow; and the upper part ...
— The Western World - Picturesque Sketches of Nature and Natural History in North - and South America • W.H.G. Kingston
... time, his head aching with throbs, it was with a sense of falling. He found that he was on a litter that had just been set down. Evidently this was by order of the colonel, who was standing over Hugo in the company of some officers. All were regarding him as if he were a species of reptile. ...
— The Last Shot • Frederick Palmer
... by different Magnitudes, each of which gives rise to a different Species. Let a Man trace the Dog or Lion-Kind, and he will observe how many of the Works of Nature are published, if I may use the Expression, in a variety of Editions. If we look into the Reptile World, or into those different Kinds of Animals that fill the Element of Water, we meet with the same Repetitions among several Species, that differ very little from one another, but in Size and Bulk. You find the same Creature that is drawn at ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... forms there are varying degrees of mentation with accompanying nerve centers and sense-organs, but little or no signs of consciousness, gradually ascending until we have dawning consciousness in the reptile kingdom, etc., and fuller consciousness and a degree of intelligent thought in the still higher forms, gradually increasing until we reach the plane of the highest mammals, such as the horse, dog, elephant, ape, etc., which animals have complex nervous ...
— A Series of Lessons in Raja Yoga • Yogi Ramacharaka
... not pointed me out, I had slept till E'en Doomsday, a poor insignificant reptile; Half lawyer, half actor, pert, dull, and inglorious, Obscure, and unheard of—but now I'm notorious: Fame has but two gates, a white and a black one; The worst they can say is, I got in at the back one: If the end be obtained 'tis equal what portal I enter, since I'm to ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, D. D., Volume IV: - Swift's Writings on Religion and the Church, Volume II • Jonathan Swift
... was washing her utensils in the river. The brute was hardly dead, much distended by the prey, and the mother was standing beside it. A very touching group was this: the parent with her hands clasped in agony, unable to withdraw her eyes from the cursed reptile, which still clung to life with that tenacity for which its tribe are so conspicuous; beside these the two athletes leaned on the bloody bamboo staffs, with which they had all but despatched ...
— Himalayan Journals (Complete) • J. D. Hooker
... and above ether, a purposeful, sentient force that laps like an ocean the furthest-flung star, that transfuses all that ether bears, that sees and speaks and feels in us and in you, that is incorporate in beast and bird and reptile, in tree and grass and all living things, that sleeps in rock and stone, that finds sparkling tongue in jewel and star and in all dwellers within the firmament. And this ...
— The Moon Pool • A. Merritt
... but three passengers on board a train of eight cars? What forced three rail trains from the tracks and shot down engineers with their hands on the valves? Communism. For hundreds of miles along the track leading from the great West I saw stretched out and coiled up the great reptile which, after crushing the free locomotive of passengers and trade, would have twisted itself around our republican institutions, and left them in strangulation and blood along the pathway of nations. The governors of States and the President ...
— T. De Witt Talmage - As I Knew Him • T. De Witt Talmage
... with air before the huge reptile dragged him beneath the surface, and then, with all the might of his great muscles, fought bitterly for freedom. But out of his native element the ape-man was too greatly handicapped to do more than excite the monster to greater ...
— The Beasts of Tarzan • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... a poisonous serpent and fastened it above his head, so that the venom of the reptile falling, drop by drop, upon his face, would cause the most terrible pain. But Sigyn, Loki's loyal wife, the only person in heaven or earth who cared what became of him, took a cup and held it up to catch the burning drops as they fell, and she only left his side when the cup ...
— Told by the Northmen: - Stories from the Eddas and Sagas • E. M. [Ethel Mary] Wilmot-Buxton
... face working strangely, "By God! If Purdy'd laid a finger on her I'd of—of tore him to pieces!" The Texan stared—surprised at the terrible savagery of the tone. The man continued, his voice dropped low: "It was that that outlawed me, years ago—killin' the damn reptile that ruined my little girl. I stood by the law, them days. He was arrested an' had his trial—an' they give him a year! One year for that! She died before he was out—her, an' the baby both. An' he died the day he got out—an' I was outlawed—an' I'm damn proud ...
— Prairie Flowers • James B. Hendryx
... door and thought herself unobserved, an expression of intense disgust came out upon her expressive face, and with her lace handkerchief she rubbed the hand he had kissed, as if removing the slime of a reptile; and the large mirror at the further end of the room had faithfully reflected the suggestive little pantomime. He saw and understood all ...
— What Can She Do? • Edward Payson Roe
... they were merely people hurrying up and down the street. She had stopped and made their acquaintance, and now she knew them all, and they were her good friends, excepting a few, such as the poison-vines, and here and there a plant or reptile, with which she was never on terms ...
— What Might Have Been Expected • Frank R. Stockton
... some animals excrete urea and others uric acid. As uric acid is a satisfactory and unirritating form in which waste nitrogen is expelled from the body of the active alert bird, as well as from the slow moving reptile, it is surprising if a very much smaller quantity acts as a poison in man. Many physicians are convinced that uric acid is absolutely unirritating. Uratic deposits may occur to an enormous extent in gouty persons ...
— The Chemistry of Food and Nutrition • A. W. Duncan
... as snakes, liz-ards, etc. Re-coil', to start back, to shrink from. 2. Co'bra, a highly venomous reptile inhabiting the East Indies. In-fest'ed, troubled, annoyed. 3. Sub'tile, acute, piercing. In-fus'es, intro-duces. 4. Ob-structs', hinders. De-lir'i-um, a wandering of the mind. 5. Ran'kle, to rage. Par'ox-ysm, a fit, a convulsion. 7. Worm, a spiral metallic pipe used in distilling liquors. ...
— McGuffey's Fifth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey
... cabins or vacant shop windows, from which not only familiar faces, but even the window sashes themselves, were gone. The great unfinished serpent-like flume, crossing the river on gigantic trestles, had advanced as far as the town, stooping over it like some enormous reptile that had sucked its life blood and was gorged ...
— Devil's Ford • Bret Harte
... an airing in the fields. I have never yet been able to settle the question, as every fall I start up a few of these gigantic specimens, which perch on the trees. They are about three inches long, of a gray striped or spotted color, and have quite a reptile look. ...
— Wake-Robin • John Burroughs
... in length, as large as the body of a man, with a head like a turtle, but carried high out of the water, with the body of a snake, but with the vertical motion of a caterpillar, and of a dark-brown color, this enormous reptile brought such fear to the honest fisherman as induced him to make a rapid retreat ...
— The New England Magazine, Volume 1, No. 1, January 1886 - Bay State Monthly, Volume 4, No. 1, January, 1886 • Various
... animal last night, And viewed him o'er by candle-light; I marked him well, 'twas black as jet. You stare, but sirs, I've got him yet, And can produce him.' 'Pray, sir, do; I'll lay my life the thing is blue.' 'And I'll be sworn, that when you've seen The reptile, you'll pronounce him green.' 'Well, then, at once to end the doubt,' Replies the man, 'I'll turn him out; And when before your eyes I've set him, If you don't find him black, I'll eat him.' He said—then, full before their sight Produced the beast, ...
— Dynevor Terrace (Vol. I) - or, The Clue of Life • Charlotte M. Yonge
... Burke forever to his service by a pension of three hundred a year. Burke demanded some leisure for the literature that had made his name. Hamilton justified Leland's description of him as a selfish, canker-hearted, envious reptile by refusing. Burke, who always spoke his mind roundly, described Hamilton as an infamous scoundrel, flung back his pension and returned to freedom, independence, and poverty. But he was soon to enter the service of another statesman under less ...
— A History of the Four Georges and of William IV, Volume III (of 4) • Justin McCarthy and Justin Huntly McCarthy
... they were all swimming, Alan and Jeekie holding their pistols and little stock of cartridges above their heads to keep them dry. The gold head of Big Bonsa appeared to be lifting itself up in the water, as a reptile might, in order to get a better view of these proceedings, but doubtless it was the ripples that they caused which gave it this appearance. Only why did the ripples make it come towards them, quite gently, ...
— The Yellow God - An Idol of Africa • H. Rider Haggard
... David "and we agreed to help him produce it. We have been practising it for two weeks, only we don't generally end up with a scuffle. I hope you will pardon us, Grace, but the desire to shake that husky Egyptian reptile was irresistible." ...
— Grace Harlowe's Sophomore Year at High School • Jessie Graham Flower
... imitations of serpent grace in gold and gems;—a princess would not scorn to wear a diamond spider. But what art could utilize successfully the form of the centipede? It is a form of absolute repulsiveness,—a skeleton-shape half defined:—the suggestion of some old reptile- spine astir, crawling with its fragments ...
— Two Years in the French West Indies • Lafcadio Hearn
... for conscience, especially for a conscience without light. Conscience may be a giant; that makes a Socrates or a Jesus: it may be a dwarf; that makes an Atreus or a Judas. The puny conscience soon turns reptile; the twilight thickets, the brambles, the thorns, the marsh waters under branches, make for it a fatal haunting place; amid all this it undergoes the mysterious infiltration of ill suggestions. The optical illusions, the unexplained images, the scaring hour, the ...
— Studies in Literature • John Morley
... shrink From the more holy alchemy enjoin'd, Call'd for by that disgust the heart conceives At the usurping empire of pretence; At all those useless and disgraceful chains, Which tie us down, and imp with aptest wings, Falsehood and selfishness, who ought to creep In their own reptile slime, and dart away When eyes perceiv'd their presence. Oh! could those Adventure in too perilous a path, If without other guide than the bright stars, The love of what is lofty and divine, Or the desire of gaining for mankind, Now fettered ...
— Vignettes in Verse • Matilda Betham
... the prehistoric figures, surmounting the piers of the arcade, also the first group over the tower entrance, show earliest forms of human, animal, reptile and bird life, ...
— The Jewel City • Ben Macomber
... sprang from her seat as if bitten by a poisonous reptile. "Not marry him!" she shrieked; "but I say you shall marry him! yes, if you have to be dragged with violence ...
— Frederick the Great and His Court • L. Muhlbach
... up to a great ugly bullfrog, who, charmed by a snake, was too terrified to move. The snake was just about to swallow it whole, when Mark seized a large stone and threw it with all his strength into the reptile's wide-open mouth. Down went the stone into his ...
— The Two Story Mittens and the Little Play Mittens - Being the Fourth Book of the Series • Frances Elizabeth Barrow
... waste papers and rifled tins of picnickers. Up this stream, and down it, among its pseudo-sylvan glades and depressions, wandered the bright and unruffled Alvarita. Once she saw evidence of the recreant reptile's progress in his distinctive trail across a spread of fine sand in the arroyo. The living water was bound to lure him; he ...
— Heart of the West • O. Henry
... districts, to the puff adder or sand viper as to the rattlesnake or copperhead. This is a suggestive bit of superstition, since there's no such thing as an adder or viper on the Western hemisphere and never has been one, unless it came, carefully pickled, in a jar. What passes for the supposedly deadly reptile is the common hog-nosed or bull snake. It is about as dangerous as an infuriated rabbit. But it puts up one of the best "bluffs" known to natural history. When caught at its favorite occupation of basking in the ...
— Stories from Everybody's Magazine • 1910 issues of Everybody's Magazine
... venomous creature, but never till a full realization of our position in regard to this organized band of traitors, did we ever experience sensations akin to those of the unfortunate traveler; and when the loathsome reptile had got into a position where it was safe to attempt its destruction, and when this attempt was successful, no greater relief or deeper emotions of gratitude could have been felt by him—a moment before exposed to instant and terrible ...
— The Great North-Western Conspiracy In All Its Startling Details • I. Windslow Ayer
... is very vague. To him he is in one verse "a sort of busy worm," and in another "a puny rankling reptile." Hannett, in his work on book-binding, gives "Aglossa pinguinalis" as the real name, and Mrs. Gatty, in her Parables, christens it ...
— Enemies of Books • William Blades
... great extent at the result. We simply claim the right to deny the truth of every statement made by him in yesterday's paper, to annul all apologies he coined as coming from us, and to hold him up to public commiseration as a reptile endowed with no more intellect, no more cultivation, no more Christian principle than animates and adorns the sportive jackass-rabbit of the Sierras. ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... human nature in the face; full of lean excuses for self-imposed starvation, only revelling in the impurity and duskiness of its own shut-up heart. At last the joy-bells ring its knell, while it crawls into eternity like a vile reptile, leaving a slimy ...
— Turns of Fortune - And Other Tales • Mrs. S. C. Hall
... he was thrown violently forward on his hands and knees. Again came that dizzy, sickening shaking of the earth, that nauseating sense of being lifted to a height and suddenly let fall, that squirming of the ground beneath him as though it were a gigantic reptile. ...
— Doubloons—and the Girl • John Maxwell Forbes
... discovered. They looked all around the room, but no weapons, and no indication of any means of poison, were to be found. They discovered something that appeared like the slimy track of an animal on the wall, toward a window, which they thought might have been produced by an asp; but the reptile itself was nowhere to be seen. They examined the body with great care, but no marks of any bite or sting were to be found, except that there were two very slight and scarcely discernible punctures on the arm, which some persons fancied might ...
— Cleopatra • Jacob Abbott
... was right. I should have brained him in the hall of the club." On the following morning Pratt had called upon him at his inn with Crosbie's apology. "His apology!" said the squire. "I have it in my pocket. Poor reptile; wretched worm of a man! I cannot understand it. On my honour, Bernard, I do not understand it. I think men are changed since I knew much of them. It would have been impossible for me to write such a letter as that." He ...
— The Small House at Allington • Anthony Trollope
... is one thing that always puzzles me: as inheritors of the mentality of our reptile ancestors we have improved the inheritance by a thousand grades; but in the matter of the morals which they left us we have gone backward as many grades. That evolution is strange & to me unaccountable & unnatural. ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... of them looked as if they had been cut in two; and on the peaks of several were large blocks of rock. As we were woodding I spoke of going up to one of them but was told it was dangerous on account of rattle-snakes. There is a curious fact connected with that reptile. Cannon river flows into the Mis^i from the west—it is a long & narrow stream—nine miles above Lake Pepin. They are never found north of that stream, although they abound below it. One of the hills we saw yesterday had 3 or 4 large blocks of rock upon it, called the pot ...
— Old Fort Snelling - 1819-1858 • Marcus L. Hansen
... tribe; a species of the latter was noticed of a rich black plumage, and very like the black cockatoo of New South Wales. Kangaroos from their traces must be numerous, but only a very few were noticed; the only reptile that was found was a black snake, which Mr. Cunningham saw for a moment as it glided past him. This gentleman made a large collection of seeds and dried specimens from the vast variety of beautiful plants and flowers with which nature ...
— Narrative of a Survey of the Intertropical and Western Coasts of Australia - Performed between the years 1818 and 1822 • Phillip Parker King
... it was only for a moment, for through the pant of my right leg I felt that same crawling sensation and I knew in an instant that it was a mate following the one that had just passed over the bridge of flesh. As soon as it reached the bare leg the dirty reptile went through the same horrible stunts as the first one. The agony seemed impossible to bear and when at last the thing had completed its journey and was at a safe distance away, I leaped into the air—how far I shall leave the reader to surmise. ...
— Dangers of the Trail in 1865 - A Narrative of Actual Events • Charles E Young
... their first victim! All had been carried out in a method which showed that the paralysing drug and the deadly reptile had been used before ...
— The Sign of Silence • William Le Queux
... the stairs, from which only she apprehended surprise. Her great mouth was open, and her eyes absolutely goggled with eagerness. She was devouring all that was passing there. I drew back into the shadow with a kind of disgust and horror. She was transformed into a great gaping reptile. I felt that I could have thrown something at her; but a kind of fear made me recede again toward my room. Indignation, however, quickly returned, and I came back, treading briskly as I did so. When I reached the angle of the gallery again. ...
— Uncle Silas - A Tale of Bartram-Haugh • J.S. Le Fanu
... at once, and with a start, I saw a limb swing down to stare at me with the boa's glittering eyes. He was so exactly the colour of the bare bough, and lay so still, I had not seen him till he came to take a look at me. A very villainous-looking reptile he was, and I felt grateful that I didn't live in a country where such unpleasant neighbours might pop in upon you unexpectedly. He was kind enough to take a promenade and show me his size, which seemed immense, as he stretched himself, and then ...
— Aunt Jo's Scrap-Bag • Louisa M. Alcott
... which were seen during the nights of spring in that distant time. The largest of these six is a great Ship resting on the southern horizon. Just above, a Raven is perched on the stretched-out body of a reptile. A figure of a Centaur appears to have just left the Ship, and is represented as offering up an animal on an Altar. The animal is now shown as a Wolf, but Aratus, our earliest authority, states that he did not know what kind of animal it was that was being thus offered up. The cloud ...
— The Astronomy of the Bible - An Elementary Commentary on the Astronomical References - of Holy Scripture • E. Walter Maunder
... think of those mysteries altogether; the word-formula will be enough; it is that, not thought, not action, that saves. I believe in—such and such an arrangement of consonants and vowels;—and therefore I am saved, and highly superior; and you, poor reptile, who possess not this arrangement, but some other and totally false one;—you, thank God, are damned. You are lost; you shall go to hell; I scorn and look down on you from the heights of the special favor of the Maker of the Stars and Suns: as if I lay already snug ...
— The Crest-Wave of Evolution • Kenneth Morris
... was of a brick-red hue, for a scarcely perceptible moment turned white, almost ashy; all his blood rushed to his heart, so furious and maddening was his longing to spring on this dangerous reptile and crush it; but he controlled the brutal impulse, suppressing it with the force that made him so formidable. He put on a polite manner and the tone of obsequious civility which he had practised since assuming the garb of a priest of a superior Order, ...
— Scenes from a Courtesan's Life • Honore de Balzac
... Dickens) a soul whose nutriment is love, and its offspring art, music, divine song, and still holier philosophy. To the last this super-refined creature seemed undisturbed by remorse. What place can we fancy for such a reptile, and what do we learn from such a career? Talfourd has so wisely summed up the whole case for us that I leave the dark tragedy with the recital of this solemn sentence from a paper on the culprit ...
— Yesterdays with Authors • James T. Fields
... noted in a previous article, American naturalists have regarded the heloderm as quite harmless—an opinion well sustained by the judgment of many persons in Arizona and other parts of the West by whom the reptile has been kept as an interesting though ugly pet. While the Indians and native Mexicans believe the creature to be venomous, we have never heard an instance in which the bite ...
— Scientific American Supplement, Vol. XV., No. 388, June 9, 1883 • Various
... just means that Christ by incarnation, life, death, resurrection, ascension, and present work from the throne, has broken the power of evil in its central hold. He has crushed the serpent's head, his heel is firmly planted on it, and, though the reptile may still 'swinge the scaly horror of his folded tail,' it is but the dying flurries of the creature. He was manifested 'that He might destroy the ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. Mark • Alexander Maclaren
... skull of the Carboniferous amphibians was made of close-set bony plates, like the skull of the reptile, rather than like that of the frog, with its open spaces (Figs. 313 and 314). Unlike modern amphibians, with their slimy skin, the Carboniferous amphibians wore an armor of bony scales over the ventral surface and sometimes over the ...
— The Elements of Geology • William Harmon Norton
... provision likely to answer no good purpose, and as exhibiting an extraordinary degree of arrogance, by dictating to future parliaments, and prescribing to future ministers a mode of action to be adopted some thirty years hence. He remarked:—"None but a novice, a sycophant, a mere reptile of a minister, would allow this act to prevent him doing what, in his own judgment, circumstances might require at the time; and a change in the situation of the country might render that which is proper at one time inapplicable at another. In short, the scheme is nugatory and ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... supplanted Eunice in Philip's affection. She was once engaged to marry him; I am engaged to marry him now. She is resolved that he shall never make me his wife. He will die if I delay any longer. He will die if I don't crush her, like the reptile she is. She comes here—and what does she do? Keeps him prisoner under her own superintendence. Who gets his medicine? She gets it. Who cooks his food? She cooks it. The doors are locked. I might be a witness of what goes on; and I am kept out. The servants ...
— The Legacy of Cain • Wilkie Collins
... which it came. Its plumage is like a mirror which reflects the snow, the moss, or the lichens in turn. It is, indeed, a feathered chameleon, but with changes of colour taking place more slowly than is the case in the reptile. ...
— The Log of the Sun - A Chronicle of Nature's Year • William Beebe
... home I killed a viper in our serpentine path, and Mrs. Fernor says I am by that token to overcome an enemy. Is Taylor or Hessey dead? The reptile was dark and dull, his blood being yet sluggish from the cold; howbeit, he tried to bite, till I cut him in two with a stone. I thought of Hessey's long ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb (Vol. 6) - Letters 1821-1842 • Charles and Mary Lamb
... of a single bullet the whole contents of the automatic's magazine poured out and every missile took effect in the reptile's huge head. In its death agony it straightened out its folds and Frank's senseless body dropped from them, seemingly limp ...
— The Boy Aviators' Polar Dash - Or - Facing Death in the Antarctic • Captain Wilbur Lawton
... reptile, Ives, shan't have his profit of it." Banneker rose and, disdaining even the diplomacy of an ...
— Success - A Novel • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... amazement not a reptile was in sight! "Did you ever see the like?" ejaculated Whopper. "Is this true, or ...
— Young Hunters of the Lake • Ralph Bonehill
... very moment of the serpent's departure the day lost its brightness, and a thick shadow came behind me and covered me all over, and the farther the serpent crept, the more lowering grew the heavens, and it seemed almost as if the reptile dragged after it in its course the masses of thick, black clouds that appeared to follow in its wake, Not long afterward, just as a white stone flung into deep water gradually vanishes from the eyes of the beholder, so it, ...
— La Fiammetta • Giovanni Boccaccio
... individuals, Adam, Eve, and the Serpent. There are the mysterious tree, with its wonderful fruit,—the beautiful, but inquisitive woman,—the thoughtful, but too compliant man,—and the insinuating reptile. One speaks, the other rejoins, and the third fills up the chasm of interest. The plot thickens, the passions are displayed, and the tragedy hastens to its end. Then is heard the voice of the Lord God walking in the cool ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 22, Aug., 1859 • Various
... what he calls Moral or Immoral! Still worse is it with your Bungler (Pfuscher): such I have seen reading some Rousseau, with pretences of interpretation; and mistaking the ill-cut Serpent-of-Eternity for a common poisonous reptile." Was the Professor apprehensive lest an Editor, selected as the present boasts himself, might mistake the Teufelsdrockh Serpent-of-Eternity in like manner? For which reason it was to be altered, not without underhand ...
— Sartor Resartus - The Life and Opinions of Herr Teufelsdrockh • Thomas Carlyle
... the dogs sometimes made prizes of rabbits and hares, which are plentiful here, and numbers of which we often shot for our dinners. Among the other animals there was a reptile I was not so much disposed to find amusement from, the rattlesnake. These snakes are very abundant here, especially during the spring of the year. The latter part of the time that I was on shore, I did not meet with so ...
— Two Years Before the Mast • Richard Henry Dana
... circular cairn, or circle of stones forming the head, a chamber containing burnt bones, charcoal and burnt hazelnuts, and an implement of flint were found. The removal of peat, moss and heather from the back of the reptile showed that the whole length of the spine was carefully constructed, with regularly and symmetrically placed stones at such angles as to throw off rain... The spine is, in fact, a long narrow causeway made of large stones, ...
— See America First • Orville O. Hiestand
... (acr.). There is also a process overhanging the glenoid cavity (g.) wherein the humerus articulates, which process is called coracoid (co.); it is ossified from two separate centres, and represents a very considerable bone in the bird, reptile, and frog. Along the dorsal edge of the scapula of the rabbit is unossified cartilage, which is called the supra-scapula (s.sc.). In man there runs from the acromion to the manubrium of the sternum a bone, the collar-bone or clavicle. ...
— Text Book of Biology, Part 1: Vertebrata • H. G. Wells
... for the occasional rush of some great iguana or other reptile, and the sound of the wings of the flocks of wildfowl passing over us from time to time, the march was deathly silent. But at night it was different, for then the bull-frogs boomed incessantly, as did the bitterns, while ...
— She and Allan • H. Rider Haggard
... shame, and curses without number, Upon that reptile head be laid, Whose insults now shall vex the slumber Of him—that sad discrowned shade! No! for his trump the signal sounded, Her glorious race when Russia ran; His hand, 'mid strife and battle, founded ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Vol 58, No. 357, July 1845 • Various
... whatsoever reason you will, in one of those questionable labyrinths still existing in the most civilized Italian cities, would certainly not run less risk than in facing the dangers of the forest. The dart, the trap, the attack of beast and reptile may be, with courage and calmness, averted or parried, but the evils which menace man, under the hypocritical euphemisms of Society (ever ready to vaunt its impeachableness) injure not only the body but, ...
— My Friends the Savages - Notes and Observations of a Perak settler (Malay Peninsula) • Giovanni Battista Cerruti
... guide them, they could easily make out what was taking place, as the reptile now made for the place of refuge already sought ...
— Rob Harlow's Adventures - A Story of the Grand Chaco • George Manville Fenn
... Forms like some bedlam Statuary's dream, The craz'd creations of misguided whim; Forms might be worshipp'd on the bended knee, And still the second dread command be free; Their likeness is not found on earth, in air, or sea! Mansions that would disgrace the building taste Of any mason reptile, bird or beast: Fit only for a doited monkish race, Or frosty maids forsworn the dear embrace, Or cuifs of later times, wha held the notion, That sullen gloom was sterling, true devotion: Fancies that our guid Brugh ...
— Poems And Songs Of Robert Burns • Robert Burns
... birth. The idea of special creation or any altogether exceptional mode of production is absolutely extinct! Yet more: this is held also to apply to many higher groups as well as to the species of a genus, and not even Mr. Darwin's severest critics venture to suggest that the primeval bird, reptile, or fish must have been "specially created." And this vast, this totally unprecedented change in public opinion has been the result of the work of one man, and was brought about in the short space of twenty years! This is the answer to those who continue to ...
— Darwinism (1889) • Alfred Russel Wallace
... became contracted with horror—he stood silent a few seconds, petrified and overwhelmed with his emotions—his body shrinking back in an attitude of repulsion and dislike, as if a venomous reptile were before his sight. His regard then fell full on Loup Bergund, and the terrible severity of its expression made the unworthy tyrant shrink beneath his glance ...
— Barn and the Pyrenees - A Legendary Tour to the Country of Henri Quatre • Louisa Stuart Costello
... had lived a beautiful purple life, went to sleep under a tree in the forest. Jove sent a huge serpent to destroy him. The man awakened as the reptile drew near. ...
— Fables For The Times • H. W. Phillips
... confounded. Cow-boys dashed from nowhere in particular and did amazing things with a bit of rope, sending it through the air with snaky undulations after flying cattle. The rope, taking on lifelike coils, would pursue the flying beast like an aerial reptile, then the noose would fall true, and the thing was done. A second later a couple of cow-boys would be examining the disputed ...
— Judith Of The Plains • Marie Manning
... right places are very seldom disagreeable. A spider on your dress is a horror, but a spider outdoors is rather interesting. Besides, the loam had a fine, soft feel that was absolutely pleasant; but a hideous black and yellow reptile with horns and hoofs, that winked up at me from it, was decidedly unpleasant and out of place, and I at once concluded that the soil was sufficiently mellow for my purposes, and smoothed it off directly. Then, with delighted fingers, in sweeping circles, and fantastic whirls, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 55, May, 1862 • Various
... it come to this; I am about to leave you forever, and yet you shrink from me as if I were a reptile," ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 2 August 1848 • Various
... reptiles—alligators, huge bird-eating spiders, and snakes of many varieties. Snakes, both the poisonous and non-poisonous kinds, find here conditions precisely to their liking. The bush-master is met with in the more open places, and there are many that are venomous, but the most terrifying, though not a biting reptile is the water-boa, the sucuruju (Eunectes murinus) or anaconda. It lives to a great age and reaches a size almost beyond belief. Feeding, as generally it does at night, it escapes common observation, and white ...
— In The Amazon Jungle - Adventures In Remote Parts Of The Upper Amazon River, Including A - Sojourn Among Cannibal Indians • Algot Lange
... "All right, mum," in a cringing tone, and left. She was a determined-looking woman, and Alligator's yellow eyes glared unpleasantly—besides, the dog's chawing-up apparatus greatly resembled that of the reptile he ...
— While the Billy Boils • Henry Lawson
... descended almost upon it. But for the tremendous effort of Jack he would have dropped squarely upon the velvety body, with consequences too frightful to be thought of; but his great leap carried him over it, while the attack of Fred upon the reptile, in the effort to save his companion, diverted the attention of the rattlesnake for ...
— Two Boys in Wyoming - A Tale of Adventure (Northwest Series, No. 3) • Edward S. Ellis
... tapering leaves, or perhaps as "the war plant," by reason of its nutritive and stimulating qualities for those who do battle. It is known also [215] to many as "Poor-man's Treacle," or "Churls Treacle," from being regarded by rustics as a treacle, or antidote to the bite of any venomous reptile. ...
— Herbal Simples Approved for Modern Uses of Cure • William Thomas Fernie
... every part of the visible surface of the island swept, in anxious and almost alarmed search for the abodes of inhabitants. Nothing of this sort, however, could be discovered. The island was unquestionably without a human being, our young man alone excepted. Nor could he see any trace of beast, reptile, or of any animal but birds. Creatures gifted with wings had been able to reach that little paradise; but to all others, since it first arose from the sea, had it probably been unapproached, if not unapproachable, until that day. It appeared to be ...
— The Crater • James Fenimore Cooper
... a little and turned to look at the edge of the cliff. On hands and knees, like a gigantic reptile, he crawled, then lay flat on the ground, on the extreme edge, his eyes peering down into those depths wherein floating vapors lolled and stirred, with subtle movements like spirits ...
— The Nest of the Sparrowhawk • Baroness Orczy
... "Robespierreiad." Assisted by his brother and by Danton, Robespierre, in the sitting of November 5th, overpowered the Girondins, and went to the Jacobins to enjoy the fruits of his victory, where Merlin de Thionville declared him an eagle, and a barbarous reptile. From that moment he never ceased to promote the death of Louis XVI., with an asperity and a perseverance almost incredible. In short, until the fatal day of the martyrdom of that amiable and unfortunate prince, ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 4 of 8 • Various
... aversion to Storri, and she could not have told you why. The mystery of it, however, put no question to her; she yielded with folded hands, passive to its influence. She did not hate Storri, she shrunk from him; his nearness chilled her like the nearness of a reptile. Kipling, the matchless, tells how a Russian does not become alarming until he tucks in his shirt, and insists upon himself as the most Eastern of Western peoples instead of the most Western of Eastern peoples. There is truth to sit at the bottom of this. Dorothy would have met Storri ...
— The President - A novel • Alfred Henry Lewis
... his mother say? She, who all her life had spurned the play-actor as she would a reptile. And she was right, Will saw that clearly; there was a sorcery about such people against ...
— The Northern Light • E. Werner
... drew the vitality from my frame as it did the color from my gown; worse than these, the everywhere present rocks were the chosen haunts of the one enemy of a peaceful bird lover, the rattlesnake, and I hesitated to pursue the bird, because I invariably forgot to watch and listen for the reptile. Bird study under these conditions was impossible, but the place presented a phase of nature unfamiliar to me, and for a time so fascinating that every morning my steps turned of themselves "up the stony ...
— A Bird-Lover in the West • Olive Thorne Miller
... the jingle-bell, and the boat soon came down to half-speed. The five hunters, including Achang, had their rifles ready for use, though they still retained their seats. The reptile was not asleep; and he appeared to have some notions of his own, for he was not disposed to wait for the coming of the boat. He settled down in the dark water so that he could not be seen, but the surface was disturbed ...
— Four Young Explorers - Sight-Seeing in the Tropics • Oliver Optic
... lighter Air, In Beasts, and Apes, and Vermin, paints the Fair: The good Scriblerus in like forms displays The reptile ...
— An Essay on Satire, Particularly on the Dunciad • Walter Harte
... of the New Holland snakes; the animal bitten seldom recovers. The Aborigines have a great dread of this reptile; they however eat of it if they kill it themselves, but there is a superstition amongst them about snakes, which prevents their eating them ...
— Journals Of Expeditions Of Discovery Into Central • Edward John Eyre
... devastation which a winged serpent or dragon (a Wiber) was committing in the surrounding country. The stone was draped with scarlet cloth, to allure and excite the creature to a furor, scarlet being a colour most intolerably hateful and provoking to it. It was studded with iron spikes, that the reptile might wound or kill itself by beating itself against it. Its destruction, it is alleged, was effected by this artifice. It is said to have had two lurking places in the neighbourhood, which are still called Nant-y-Wiber, one at Penygarnedd, the other near Bwlch Sychtyn, in the parish ...
— Welsh Folk-Lore - a Collection of the Folk-Tales and Legends of North Wales • Elias Owen
... outrageous, inherently repulsive to all Solarian senses. And no less hideous were the animal-like forms of life, which slithered and slunk rapaciously through that fantastic pseudo-vegetation. Snake-like, reptile-like, bat-like, the creatures squirmed, crawled, and flew; each covered with a dankly oozing yellow hide and each motivated by twin common impulses—to kill and insatiably and indiscriminately to devour. Over this reeking ...
— Triplanetary • Edward Elmer Smith
... of trees, he beheld the head and fiery eyes of an immense serpent or dragon, with the widest jaws that ever a dragon had, and a vast many rows of horribly sharp teeth. Before Cadmus could reach the spot, this pitiless reptile had killed his poor companions, and was busily devouring them, making but ...
— Tanglewood Tales • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... toilet, flatterer at the board, Now trips a lady, and now struts a lord. Eve's tempter, thus the rabbins have expressed— A cherub's face—a reptile all the rest. Beauty that shocks you, facts that none can trust, Wit that can creep, and pride that bites ...
— The Wits and Beaux of Society - Volume 1 • Grace Wharton and Philip Wharton
... wi' cook stoves packed full o' Scotch dew, an' the Mounted Police hangin' t' m' tail till A scuttled the Boundary. Good days—rip roaring days for the makin' of strong men! We were none o' y'r cold blooded reptile calculatin' kind! May we fight valiant for God now as we wrestled for the Devil then! Oh, to be young again an' not spill life in wassail! to give the blows for right instead of wrong! Man, what a view y' have here—what ...
— The Freebooters of the Wilderness • Agnes C. Laut
... are angry, and lo! all is darkness again. It is right to torment one who loves you? Obey Your elder; 'twere best; and you'll thank me one day. Settle down in one nest on one tree (taking care That no cruel reptile can clamber up there); As it is with your lovers you're fairly perplext; One day you choose one bough, another the next. Whoe'er at all struck by your graces appears, Is more to you straight than the comrade of years; While he's like the friend ...
— Theocritus • Theocritus
... do not need this Goliath of a frog. I am merely valuing the reptile for your future guidance. Let ...
— The Idler Magazine, Volume III, April 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... the gall of an honest man, even after the lapse of two centuries and a half, to turn over those long forgotten pages and mark the depths to which political and theological party spirit could descend. That human creatures can assimilate themselves so closely to the reptile, and to the subtle devil within the reptile, when a party end is to be gained is enough to make the very name of ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... the Old World are the favourite resorts of monkeys and snakes; and the former when they find one of the latter asleep, seize it by the neck, scramble from their branch, and dash the reptile's head against a stone, all the time grinning ...
— Anecdotes of the Habits and Instinct of Animals • R. Lee
... other-personality is very vague. About the only memory it has is that of falling. But many of us have sharper, more distinct other-personalities. Many of us have the flying dream, the pursuing-monster dream, color dreams, suffocation dreams, and the reptile and vermin dreams. In short, while this other-personality is vestigial in all of us, in some of us it is almost obliterated, while in others of us it is more pronounced. Some of us have stronger and ...
— Before Adam • Jack London
... said Livia. 'How strange, that Aurelian, who knows so well how to subdue the world, should have so little power to shake off this reptile.' ...
— Aurelian - or, Rome in the Third Century • William Ware
... transferred to the human system. If a snake or a lizard be killed, and a few drops of its blood be dried upon a plate or in a gourd, the person next eating or drinking from the contaminated vessel will soon become the unwilling landlord of a reptilian tenant. There are other avenues, too, by which the reptile may gain admittance; but when expelled by the conjure doctor's arts or medicines, it always leaves at the point where it entered. This belief may have originally derived its existence from the fact that certain tropical insects sometimes lay their eggs beneath the skins of animals, ...
— The Conjure Woman • Charles W. Chesnutt
... Geoffrey Notch, a gentleman of an ancient family, who had wasted his estate in his youth, and called every thriving man a pitiful upstart; Major Matchlock, with his reminiscences of the Civil War; Dick Reptile, and the Bencher who was always praising the wit of former days, and telling stories of Jack Ogle, with whom he pretended to have been intimate in his youth. Very little use was afterwards made of ...
— The Tatler, Volume 1, 1899 • George A. Aitken
... won, actuated either by treason or caprice, you try to make all my toil and all my suffering unavailing. You try to thwart me on the very threshold of success! No! I swear, by God's sacred name, it shall not be! I will rather crush you, you miserable scoundrel—crush you like a venomous reptile!" ...
— The Count's Millions - Volume 1 (of 2) • Emile Gaboriau
... down upon him with contempt, as though he were some loathsome reptile writhing at his feet. "Silence!" he said, in a harsh whisper—"Remember, we are watched here! Get up!—why do you kneel to me? I have nothing to do with you, beyond such office as the Church enjoins!" And a cold smile darkened, rather than lightened ...
— Temporal Power • Marie Corelli
... and another of whip-cord; finally, a stout coil of rope."— When she again came to the foot of the tower, provided according to her husband's commands, he directed her to touch the head of the insect with a little of the ghee, to tie one end of the silk thread around him, and to place the reptile on the wall of the tower. Seduced by the smell of the butter, which he conceived to be in store somewhere above him, the beetle continued to ascend till he reached the top, and thus put the vizier in possession of the end of the silk thread, who drew up the packthread by means of the silk, the small ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 13, No. 354, Saturday, January 31, 1829. • Various
... wages—you, in pure wantonness, must lift up your heels and prance away into your so-called new liberty. You're a fair sample of what's to come, Cornelius. You've spent your first wages for whiskey. Silence, you perfidious reptile! ...
— John March, Southerner • George W. Cable
... destruction, which, after a terrible conflict, he accomplished. He was accompanied in this adventure by a vassal of whose fidelity he had no suspicion, but who, seeing his lord overcome by fatigue, after having vanquished the reptile, suddenly bethought himself of monopolizing the glory of the action. Instigated by this foul ambition, he assassinated his lord, and, returning to Normandy, promulgated a fictitious narrative of the encounter; and, to further ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 14, No. 396, Saturday, October 31, 1829. • Various
... sc. 3. It is a real trial of charity to read this scene with tolerable temper towards Fletcher. So very slavish—so reptile—are the feelings and sentiments represented as duties. And yet remember he was a bishop's son, and the duty to ...
— Literary Remains, Vol. 2 • Coleridge
... be at peace. Everywhere else we are beset with this enemy. They are in the streets, in the churches, on the plain. We meet them in the shade of the woods, and have to pass them basking on the sea-shore. There is no peace but high up in the mornes—too high for the wild beast, and the reptile, ...
— The Hour and the Man - An Historical Romance • Harriet Martineau
... As the opening overture of an opera contains all the musical elements to be therein developed, so this living prelude of the Creative work comprises all the organic elements to be successively developed in the course of time. When Cuvier first saw the teeth of a Wealden Reptile, he pronounced them to be those of a Rhinoceros, so mammalian were they in their character. So, when Sommering first saw the remains of a Jurassic Pterodactyl, he pronounced them to be those of a Bird. These mistakes were not due to ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, August, 1863, No. 70 - A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics • Various
... the encampment, he accidentally trod upon a rattlesnake, and the venomous reptile, sounding his rattle, made a spring and fastened his teeth into the boy's pants, just below the knee. I chanced to be looking towards him at the moment, and saw him, without the least hesitation draw his sheath-knife, and sever its head from its body, with one ...
— The Young Trail Hunters • Samuel Woodworth Cozzens
... a very worm by birth, Vile reptile, weak and vain! A while he crawls upon the earth, Then shrinks to ...
— The Poetical Works Of Alexander Pope, Vol. 1 • Alexander Pope et al
... said, pointing to a reptile which was gliding along the edge of a ditch. 'I am afraid of ...
— Sarrasine • Honore de Balzac
... speculation of a seeker for election. Monsieur Jerome Thuillier has held himself impassible before these shameful imputations because justice and truth are patient, and he bided his time to scotch the reptile. That time ...
— The Lesser Bourgeoisie • Honore de Balzac |
