"Serpent" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Then, fully dressed, Forrester went with the High Priestess to a golden door half-hidden in the hangings at the side of the room. She made a series of mystical signs: the circle, the serpent and others Forrester couldn't ...
— Pagan Passions • Gordon Randall Garrett
... centre, was a large silver star, emitting a light resembling that which the full moon sheds on a tropical scene, but far more brilliant. Around this was a broad golden circle or band; and beneath, the silver image of a serpent—perfectly reproducing a typical terrestrial snake, but coiled, as no snake ever coils itself, in a double circle or figure of eight, with the tail wound around the neck. On the left was a crimson shield or what seemed to be such, small, round, ...
— Across the Zodiac • Percy Greg
... which shows war in its truest aspect. A long column of vehicles, which we had seen moving for some time across the plain, and whose movement, by the torches of the escort, looked from the ramparts like the trailing of an immense phosphoric serpent, approached the gates. The announcement was soon made that it was a large detachment of prisoners and wounded, who had arrived from the desperate but decisive battle in Flanders. All the medical officers of the garrison ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 55, No. 343, May 1844 • Various
... either side of the cluster Praesepe, 'are said' (by astrologers) 'to be of a burning nature, and to give great indications of a violent death, or of violent and severe accidents by fire.' The star called Cor Hydrae, or the serpent's heart, denotes trouble through women (said I not rightly that Astrology was a masculine science?); the Lion's heart, Regulus, implied glory and riches; Deneb, the Lion's tail, misfortune and disgrace. The southern ...
— Myths and Marvels of Astronomy • Richard A. Proctor
... me: never more Thy face come back to me. For thou hast made My whole life sore. Fare hence, and be forgotten.... Sing thy song, And braid thy brow, And be beloved and beautiful—and be In beauty baleful still ... a Serpent Queen To others not yet curst in loving thee As I ...
— Ishmael - In the Depths • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth
... Niello work here mentioned there is a delineation of the Fall, in which the serpent has given to it a human head with a most sweet, crafty expression. Now in these two instances the style is somewhat rude; but there are passion and feeling in it. This is not a question of mere execution, but of mind, however ...
— The Germ - Thoughts towards Nature in Poetry, Literature and Art • Various
... was certain: first the fury, then the apathy of madness. He was no longer tortured with a visible haunting presence, such as had borne him down on that fatal night, but we saw plainly that he had taken the spectre into his own breast, and nursed it, as a bosom serpent, upon his rapidly ...
— Atlantic Monthly Vol. 6, No. 33, July, 1860 • Various
... vale below them;—Windermere,—and, far beyond Windermere, Ingleborough in Yorkshire. But how shall I speak of the deliciousness of the third prospect! At this time, that was most favoured by sunshine and shade. The green Vale of Esk—deep and green, with its glittering serpent stream, lay below us; and, on we looked to the Mountains near the Sea,—Black Comb pre-eminent,—and, still beyond, to the Sea itself, in dazzling brightness. Turning round we saw the Mountains of Wastdale ...
— The Prose Works of William Wordsworth • William Wordsworth
... In 1799 he accompanied Mlle. de Verneuil sent to lure and betray Alphonse de Montauran, the young chief of the Bretons who were risen against the Republic. For two years Corentin was attached to this strange girl as a serpent to a tree. [The Chouans.] In 1803 he and his chief, Peyrade, were entrusted with a difficult mission in the department of Aube, where he had to search the home of Mlle. de Cinq-Cygne. She surprised him at the moment ...
— Repertory Of The Comedie Humaine, Complete, A — Z • Anatole Cerfberr and Jules Franois Christophe
... am the victim of Sekosini's wiles and his serpent tongue," answered the chief. "I should never have joined the conspiracy had he not led me secretly to believe that when thou wert gone I should be made king in thy stead. And the prospect dazzled me, for I believed that I could govern better ...
— The Adventures of Dick Maitland - A Tale of Unknown Africa • Harry Collingwood
... waves, and some o'er the planking have pressed. For the king is a lord and a god: he was born of the golden seed That erst upon Danae fell— his captains are strong at the need! And dark is the glare of his eyes, as eyes of a serpent blood-fed, And with manifold troops in his train and with manifold ships hath he sped— Yea, sped with his Syrian cars: he leads on the lords of the bow To meet with the men of the West, the spear-armed force of the foe! Can any make head and resist him, when he comes ...
— Suppliant Maidens and Other Plays • AEschylus
... away!" said she, as she turned her back upon him. Her face of beauty seemed turned to stone, like unto the Medusa's head with its serpent locks. He descended to the street, a weak, lifeless thing; he entered his room like a night-walker, and in the rage of his grief, he seized his hammer, brandished it high in the air and sought to destroy the beautiful marble form. He did not observe—so excited ...
— The Ice-Maiden: and Other Tales. • Hans Christian Andersen
... not speculate much upon the mingled nature of his feelings, and how his instinct and selfishness were combating together. He firmly believed that everything he did was right, that he ought on all occasions to have his own way—and like the sting of a wasp or serpent his hatred rushed out armed and poisonous against anything like opposition. He was proud of his hatred as of everything else. Always to be right, always to trample forward, and never to doubt, are not these the great qualities ...
— Vanity Fair • William Makepeace Thackeray
... Julian had pretended to ridicule, with the puerilities and absurdities of Pythagoras, Thales, Plato, &c., of whom Julian was an admirer to a degree of folly. In the third, he vindicates the history of the Serpent, and of Adam's fall; and retorts the ridiculous Theogony of Hesiod, &c. In the fourth, he shows that God governs all things by himself, not by inferior deities, as Julian pretended, the absurdity of which he sets forth: ...
— The Lives of the Fathers, Martyrs, and Principal Saints - January, February, March • Alban Butler
... swaying movement which only a well-made woman can make just before sitting down for the first time in a perfectly new gown. It is a slightly serpentine motion; and as there is nothing to show that Eve did not meet the Serpent again after she had taken to clothes, she may have learnt the trick from him. There is certainly something diabolical about it ...
— The Primadonna • F. Marion Crawford
... looked appreciatively at the representation of the patron of Ireland, which was remarkable no less for vigour of outline and colouring than for conveying an impression of exceeding cheerfulness, as both the saint himself and the serpent which was wriggling from beneath his feet were smiling in the most affable ...
— North, South and Over the Sea • M.E. Francis (Mrs. Francis Blundell)
... handmaid, and, by the Mosaical law, bound her to allegiance like a serf,—even they greeted, with solemn rapture, all great and holy women as heroines, prophetesses, judges in Israel; and, if they made Eve listen to the serpent, gave Mary as a bride to the Holy Spirit. In other nations it has been the same down to our day. To the Woman who could conquer a triumph was awarded. And not only those whose strength was recommended to the heart by association with goodness and beauty, but those who were bad, if they ...
— Woman in the Ninteenth Century - and Kindred Papers Relating to the Sphere, Condition - and Duties, of Woman. • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... Yet this depth, which would not drown a red spider, was the ocean. In my mind I followed that bed of shining sand, bared of its hiding waters, out and out, till I was lost in an awful wilderness of chasms, precipices, and mountain-peaks, in whose caverns the sea-serpent may dwell, with his breath of pestilence; the kraken, with "his skaly rind," may there ...
— The Seaboard Parish Vol. 3 • George MacDonald
... riding through orchards and grass I came to a wide defile two or three miles long, winding like a serpent, and the sides full of caves. I climbed up to some to describe them to Richard. The country was truly an abomination of desolation, nothing but naked rockery for miles and miles, with the everlasting fire of the sun ...
— The Romance of Isabel Lady Burton Volume II • Isabel Lady Burton & W. H. Wilkins
... had been widely practiced; on June 18, 1774, the young king Louis XVI., was inoculated for smallpox, and the fashionable ladies of the day wore in their hair a miniature rising sun and olive tree entwined by a serpent supporting a club, the "pouf a l'inoculation" of Mademoiselle Rose Bertin, the court milliner to Marie Antoinette. In Germany inoculation was in vogue all through the seventeenth century, as also in Holland, Switzerland, ...
— Popular Science Monthly Volume 86
... crown their great deeds by electing to the presidency such a man as Prince Louis Napoleon, simply because 'C'est le neveu de son oncle!'[184] A curious precedent for a president, certainly; but, oh heavens and earth, what curious things abroad everywhere just now, inclusive of the sea serpent! I agree with you that much of all is very melancholy and disheartening, though holding fast by my hope and belief that good will be the end, as it always is God's end to man's frenzies, and that ...
— The Letters of Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1 of 2) • Frederic G. Kenyon
... serpent had stung him, so unexpected, so direct. He jumped aside and turned deadly pale. She knew her chance arrow had struck the truth. But he recovered himself almost immediately when he saw what a harmless looking ...
— Marcia Schuyler • Grace Livingston Hill Lutz
... childish recollections, entwined with the most sacred associations, draws back the hoary sinner into the paths of piety. It is on fried fish, mayhap, that the Jewish matron grows fat. In the days of the Messiah, when the saints shall feed off the Leviathan; and the Sea Serpent shall be dished up for the last time, and the world and the silly season shall come to an end, in those days it is probable that the saints will prefer their Leviathan fried. Not that any physical frying will be necessary, for in those happy times (for whose coming every faithful Israelite prays ...
— Children of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... in colour. Then in coasting Trinidad he caught a glimpse of land at the delta of the Orinoco, and called it Isla Santa, or Holy Island.[594] But, on passing into the gulf of Paria, through the strait which he named Serpent's Mouth, his ships were in sore danger of being swamped by the raging surge that poured from three or four of the lesser mouths of that stupendous river. Presently, finding that the water in the gulf was fresh to the taste, he gradually reasoned his way to the correct conclusion, that the billows ...
— The Discovery of America Vol. 1 (of 2) - with some account of Ancient America and the Spanish Conquest • John Fiske
... Exchange. He received no word from friend or foe without. Only the king's messenger could reach him. He paused not a moment for food or drink, and at three o'clock when the market closed he stood with a hundred yards of tape from the ticker coiled serpent like about his legs, the wreck of empires of wealth beneath his feet, his heart still beating a single wild cry—"more, ...
— The Root of Evil • Thomas Dixon
... surprising to one who has seen her a great deal, and has felt the peculiarity of her power, to find in Lehmann's portrait of her—which is, perhaps, the most characteristic of all that have been taken—a subtle resemblance to a serpent, which is at once fascinating and startling. Mrs. Jameson mentions that when she first saw her in Hermione, she was reminded of a Lamia, or serpent nature in woman's form. As you look at Lehmann's portrait this feeling is irresistible. ...
— Literary and Social Essays • George William Curtis
... escaping gas which is so unpleasant is really a blessing, in that it informs the householder of his danger. A cock that turns completely around and, after extinguishing the light, permits the escape of the gas, is more dangerous than a poisonous serpent. Yet there may be nothing radically wrong with this fixture, and the use of the screwdriver may make it as good as new. Gas should never be turned low when there is a draught in the room, nor allowed to burn near hanging draperies. Care should always be taken in turning out a gas-stove or a ...
— Practical Suggestions for Mother and Housewife • Marion Mills Miller
... No. 14, for one of them had sixty men and five women on board. Some of the ancient Norwegian ships were quite large. I have read in Traditions of Norwegian Kings, by Snorro Sturrleson, about Ormen Lange (the Long Serpent), a large and handsome ship which belonged to King Olaf Tryggveson. That part of the keel which touched the ground when the ship was being built measured 112 feet. The ship carried a crew of more than 600 men. It was Leif Ericsson, not Olaf Ericsson, ...
— Harper's Young People, March 9, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... fall, and nature covers them where they lie with a new vegetation which altogether obliterates their hasty decay. It is four miles of beautiful and inextricable confusion, untrodden by human feet except on the narrow track. "Of every tree in this garden thou mayest freely eat," and no serpent or noxious thing trails its hideous form through ...
— The Hawaiian Archipelago • Isabella L. Bird
... Government!" Thus begins the government bulletin of to-day, to which I say Amen! with all my heart, since it ushers in the news of the termination of the revolution. And what particularly attracts my attention is, that instead of the usual stamp, the eagle, serpent, and nopal, we have to-day, a shaggy pony, flying as never did mortal horse before, his tail and mane in a most violent state of excitement, his four short legs all in the air at once, and on his back a man in a jockey-cap, furiously blowing a ...
— Life in Mexico • Frances Calderon De La Barca
... has a prince. That ill-omened and chaotic agglomeration of diverse forms of evil has yet a kind of anarchic order in it, and, like the fabled serpent's locks on the Gorgon head, they intertwine and sting one another, and yet they are a unity. We hear very little about 'the prince of the world' in Scripture. Mercifully the existence of such a ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: St. John Chaps. XV to XXI • Alexander Maclaren
... Bible given in her Key to the Scriptures we are told that when we come upon the word "fire," we are to translate it as "fear," and the word "fear" as "heat"; while we must remember that Eve never put the blame for her sin upon the serpent, but, having "learnt that corporeal sense is the serpent," she was the first to confess her misdeed in having followed the dictates of the flesh instead ...
— Modern Saints and Seers • Jean Finot
... a long silence. Mr. Grimm still sat with his elbows on his knees, staring, staring at the vague white splotch which was Miss Thorne's face and bare neck. One of her white arms hung at her side like a pallid serpent, and her hand was at rest on ...
— Elusive Isabel • Jacques Futrelle
... fists, drew her lips between her teeth, and fairly hissed, "Serpent, yourself! Murderess! I know all —and I shall tell all! You'll regret the day you scorned the friendship—the ...
— Raspberry Jam • Carolyn Wells
... A serpent, neighbour to a smith, (A neighbour bad to meddle with,) Went through his shop, in search of food, But nothing found, 'tis understood, To eat, except a file of steel, Of which he tried to make a meal. The file, without a spark of passion, Address'd ...
— The Fables of La Fontaine - A New Edition, With Notes • Jean de La Fontaine
... a tree, he and his wife, in all delight of life, till they came to the time of the hatching of their young, which was the midsummer season, when a Serpent issued from its hole and crawled up the tree wriggling around the branches till it came to the Crows' nest, where it coiled itself up and there abode all the days of the summer, whilst the Crow was driven away and found no opportunity to clear his home nor any ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 9 • Richard F. Burton
... Praed Sorrows of Werther Thackeray The Yankee Volunteer Thackeray Courtship and Matrimony Thackeray Concerning Sisters-in-law Punch The Lobsters Punch To Song Birds on a Sunday Punch The First Sensible Valentine Punch A Scene on the Austrian Frontier Punch Ode to the Great Sea Serpent Punch The Feast of Vegetables and the Flow of Water Punch Kindred Quacks Punch The Railway Traveler's Farewell to his Family Punch A Letter and an Answer Punch Papa to his Heir Punch Selling off at the Opera-house Punch Wonders of the Victorian Age ...
— The Humourous Poetry of the English Language • James Parton
... in the bush, let him tell them to come forth. You see that a Dahcotah is not afraid. Mahtoree is a great chief! A warrior, whose head is white, and who is about to go to the Land of Spirits, cannot have a tongue with two ends, like a serpent." ...
— The Prairie • J. Fenimore Cooper
... after-years, Shelley often spoke about another reptile, no mere creature of myth or fable, the "Old Snake," who had inhabited the gardens of Field Place for several generations. This venerable serpent was accidentally killed by the gardener's scythe; but he lived long in the poet's memory, and it may reasonably be conjectured that Shelley's peculiar sympathy for snakes was due to the dim recollection of his childhood's favourite. Some of the games he invented to please ...
— Percy Bysshe Shelley • John Addington Symonds
... he felt the endless years in Amsterdam slip off him like the coils of some icy serpent, as he recognized the genial voice of the Porto physician, and though he was back again in the dungeon of the Holy Office, it was not the gloom of the vault that he felt, but sunshine and blue skies and spring and youth. Through the soft mist of delicious ...
— Dreamers of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... most boys are learning to fight and to explain at home how they got their clothes torn. He wore out spectacles almost as fast as his brothers wore out copper-toed boots; but he did not begin to acquire wisdom until he was just making forty. Up to that time, if the serpent is the standard, Professor Litton was about as ...
— In a Little Town • Rupert Hughes
... groweth green and great, A serpent round the sea serenely curled, A lonely soul that fails to find a mate, A boy redundant in ...
— Without Prejudice • Israel Zangwill
... figure of a scented woman reading his letter haunted him, and at moments Ingram was added to the picture, and he saw them uniting in mockery of him—prosaic, prosperous author, and strange, romantic serpent-woman! ...
— Cleo The Magnificent - The Muse of the Real • Louis Zangwill
... to a beauty with painted cheeks and almond-shaped eyes. You may handle the quaintest of ideas carried out in ivory; a skeleton carrying a baboon—calculated to beat Holbein's "Dance of Death" all to pieces; skulls with cobras intertwined—indeed, the serpent is everywhere; and all with ...
— The Strand Magazine, Volume V, Issue 29, May 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... and uncle pushed his spectacles high on his forehead to have a better sight of so strange an attitude for his sister to take. At last Aunt Susan pointed to something gliding away in the grass, and gasped: "A serpent! oh, dear, oh, dear, a serpent!" Vainly did my husband try to calm her fright by explaining that it was only an adder going to seek the moisture of the river-bank and never intending to attack any one, ...
— Philip Gilbert Hamerton • Philip Gilbert Hamerton et al
... and 1876. Meanwhile, in cretaceous strata, he unearthed remains of about two hundred birds with teeth, six hundred pterodactyls, or flying dragons, some with a spread of wings of twenty-five feet, and one thousand five hundred mosasaurs of the sea-serpent type, some of them sixty feet or more in length. In a single bed of Jurassic rock, not larger than a good-sized lecture-room, he found the remains of one hundred and sixty individuals of mammals, representing twenty species and nine genera; while beds of the same age have yielded ...
— A History of Science, Volume 3(of 5) • Henry Smith Williams
... in convincing him that it was only a branch that had caressed his ankle, and not a venomous serpent; for Noodles confessed that if he dreaded anything on the face of the earth it was just snakes, any kind of crawling varmints, from the common everyday garter species to the big boa constrictor to be seen in the menagerie that came with the ...
— Boy Scouts on a Long Hike - Or, To the Rescue in the Black Water Swamps • Archibald Lee Fletcher
... wagging. Thank the Lord, she died!— Dropped in the middle of a fierce harangue, Like a spent horse. It was an even thing, Whether she talked herself or me to death. The latest sign of life was in her tongue; It wagged till sundown, like a serpent's tail, Long after all the rest of her was cold. Alas! ...
— Representative Plays by American Dramatists: 1856-1911: Francesca da Rimini • George Henry Boker
... the Temple are the immediate ancestors of Masonry. But the point which is of most interest in connection with our inquiry is where Dom Benoit asserts that Satan is the god of Freemasonry, citing an obscure grade in which the ritual is connected with serpent-worship, and another in which the recipient is adjured "in the sacred name of Lucifer," to "uproot obscurantism." It is, however, only a loose and general accusation, for he says also that the Masonic deity is "the creature," that is, ...
— Devil-Worship in France - or The Question of Lucifer • Arthur Edward Waite
... raise the price of stocks or lower that of grain? Tush! let it pass. To each back its own burden. So he carries the piteous tale whereby his heart is aching for sympathy, and Those Others give him stones for bread and a serpent for a fish. Then he looks up to heaven, and asks if there be indeed a God to suffer all this wrong; or if there be, How long, O Lord, how long! The artistic temperament is not merely artistic perception, with which it is so often confounded. You may be steeped to the lips in that ...
— The Idler Magazine, Vol III. May 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... undoubtedly a talisman) down to that equally memorable, and bearing the same name, at Western Rome. We may pass, by a vast transition of two and a half millennia, to that great talisman of Constantinople, the triple serpent, (having perhaps an original reference to the Mosaic serpent of the wilderness, which healed the infected by the simple act of looking upon it, as the symbol of the Redeemer, held aloft upon the Cross for ...
— Narrative And Miscellaneous Papers • Thomas De Quincey
... a leaf. This phase of his villainy had not occurred to her. She was like a bird trying to avoid the charmed eye of the serpent. ...
— Beverly of Graustark • George Barr McCutcheon
... my thane, is as a book where men May read strange matters. To beguile the time, Look like the time; bear welcome in your eye, Your hand, your tongue: look like the innocent flower, But be the serpent under 't. ...
— Familiar Quotations • John Bartlett
... been. Their captains were called Sea Kings, and some them went a great way, even into the Mediterranean Sea, and robbed the beautiful shores of Italy. So dreadful was it to see the fleet of long ships coming up to the shore, with a serpent for the figure-head, and a raven as the flag, and crowds of fierce warriors with axes in their hands longing for prey and bloodshed, that where we pray in church that God would deliver us from lightning and tempest, and battle and murder, our forefathers used to add, ...
— Young Folks' History of England • Charlotte M. Yonge
... have found the form of a serpent invariably pictured over the doorways of the Indian Temples, and on the interior walls, the impression of a ...
— Indian Legends and Other Poems • Mary Gardiner Horsford
... way, my charming angel, whom nobody believes to be a demon," said Thugut, laughing. "I feel precisely like you, my beautiful Victoria; I love you twice as ardently, because I penetrated your true nature; because, when you are smiling upon others, I alone perceive the serpent, while others only behold the roses, and because I alone know this angelic figure to conceal the soul of a demon. Thus we love each other because we belong to each other, Victoria; you call me the prince of darkness, and you are assuredly the crown-princess of hell. ...
— LOUISA OF PRUSSIA AND HER TIMES • Louise Muhlbach
... painted lips. And the wonder of wonders was that the great creature, who was so awkward on the stage, so very absurd the moment she sought to act the chaste woman, was able without effort to assume the role of an enchantress in the outer world. Her movements were lithe as a serpent's, and the studied and yet seemingly involuntary carelessness with which she dressed was really exquisite in its elegance. There was a nervous distinction in all she did which suggested a wellborn Persian cat; she was an aristocrat in vice and proudly and rebelliously ...
— Nana, The Miller's Daughter, Captain Burle, Death of Olivier Becaille • Emile Zola
... evil: for thou art with me; thy rod and thy staff they comfort me." It is not really death that we have to grapple with. It is only the shadow of death. We do not fear the shadow of a sword, or the shadow of a serpent. The above verse of the twenty-third Psalm is very frequently misquoted. It is called the dark valley. But you remember that when Bunyan's pilgrim came down to the valley it was not dark, for Jesus, the light, was with him. The sting of death is not simply concealed; it is completely ...
— Gathering Jewels - The Secret of a Beautiful Life: In Memoriam of Mr. & Mrs. James Knowles. Selected from Their Diaries. • James Knowles and Matilda Darroch Knowles
... exhibited an appalling collection of the most terrific monsters: lions, as large as cows, gambolling amongst rocks; ourang-outangs, of eight feet in height, walking with sticks in their hands, as grave and stately as drum-majors; and a serpent, as thick as a hogshead, and of interminable length—in truth, without any beginning, middle, or end—twining round an unfortunate black, and crushing him to death in its ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, XXII • various
... the suspicions of her cousin were the offspring, not only of hatred, but of knowledge; if that face of beauty was in truth only a mask, and Eleanore Leavenworth was what the words of her cousin, and her own after behavior would seem to imply, how could I bear to sit there and see the frightful serpent of deceit and sin evolve itself from the bosom of this white rose! And yet, such is the fascination of uncertainty that, although I saw something of my own feelings reflected in the countenances of many about me, not a man in all that assemblage showed any disposition ...
— The Leavenworth Case • Anna Katharine Green
... understand what follows, we own, surpasses our comprehension. Mr Bracy, the poet, recounts a strange dream he has just had, of a dove being almost strangled by a snake; whereupon the Lady Geraldine falls a hissing, and her eyes grow small, like a serpent's,—or at least so they seem to her friend; who begs her father to 'send away that woman.' Upon this the Baron falls into a passion, as if he had discovered that his daughter had been seduced; at least, we can understand him in no other sense, though no hint of such a kind is ...
— Early Reviews of English Poets • John Louis Haney
... been perfectly sincere in classifying German spies with sea-serpents; and here was a sea-serpent right before his eyes, raising his head through the floor of ...
— Jimmie Higgins • Upton Sinclair
... consternation and amazement of everybody, the khaki ribbon crept, not towards the houses, but seemed for a dreadful moment to hesitate, to wobble, then turned its head slowly and irrevocably away from the town. The men swore. They felt that they were a scale on the skin of a long, sombre, khaki serpent, whose head had acted contrary to the wishes of its belly. And the body of the serpent quivered with indignation. The Subaltern himself felt that he had been cheated, lured on by false pretences, and generally treated shamefully. He knew perfectly well ...
— "Contemptible" • "Casualty"
... of beauty!—not only the historic wonder of beauty, that "burnt the topless towers of Ilium" for the smile of Helen, and fired the palaces of Babylon by the hand of Thais, but the beauty which springs up in all times and places, and carries a torch and wears a serpent for a wreath as truly as any of the Eumenides. Paint Beauty with her foot upon a skull and a ...
— A Mortal Antipathy • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... on his cheek, that they seemed rather prominent. These singular eyes had in them something indescribably domineering and piercing, which took possession of the soul by a grave and thoughtful look, a look as bright and lucid as that of a serpent or a bird, but which held one fascinated and crushed by the swift communication of some tremendous sorrow, or ...
— The Exiles • Honore de Balzac
... pillory is all reprint: I have no doubt I confounded some of it with some of the manuscript or slips which I had received from my much not-agreed-with correspondent. He adds that my mistake was intentional, and that my reason is obvious to the reader. This is information, as the sea-serpent said when he read in the newspaper that he had ...
— A Budget of Paradoxes, Volume II (of II) • Augustus de Morgan
... probably are, stars from which Noah might be seen stepping into the Ark, Eve listening to the temptation of the serpent, or that older race, eating the oysters and leaving the shell-heaps behind them, when the Baltic was an open sea' (Froude's 'Science ...
— Tracks of a Rolling Stone • Henry J. Coke
... ring of truth was in his voice. But the Rector felt that he was listening to the excuses of a serpent. ...
— The Incomplete Amorist • E. Nesbit
... thou shalt yet add to the simplicity of the dove the wisdom of the serpent. Thou art innocent because ignorant; but thou shalt be weighed anon in the balance and not be found wanting; and then shalt thou reconquer the holy spear lost in Sin, rewon in Purity and Sacrifice, and be to the ...
— Parsifal - Story and Analysis of Wagner's Great Opera • H. R. Haweis
... perfect happiness which the first woman found in her terrestrial paradise gave her at length a sort of nausea of sweet things, and made the countess wish, like Rivarol reading Florian, for a wolf in the fold. Such, judging by the history of ages, appears to be the meaning of that emblematic serpent to which Eve listened, in all probability, out of ennui. This deduction may seem a little venturesome to Protestants, who take the book of Genesis more seriously than the ...
— A Daughter of Eve • Honore de Balzac
... address in a Mahometan, we may be amused too at the leniency that describes some of the propagandist methods of the eighteenth century. Condorcet becomes rapturous as he tells in a paragraph of fine sustention with what admixture of the wisdom of the serpent the humane philosophers of his century 'covered the truth with a veil that prevented it from hurting too weak sight, and left the pleasure of conjecturing it; caressing prejudices with address, ...
— Critical Miscellanies (Vol. 2 of 3) - Essay 3: Condorcet • John Morley
... serpent has entered our Eden. The rancor and excitement of New Orleans have invaded this place. If an incautious word betrays any want of sympathy with popular plans, one is "traitorous," "ungrateful," "crazy." If one remains silent, and controlled, then one is "phlegmatic," "cool-blooded," ...
— Strange True Stories of Louisiana • George Washington Cable
... was rising. Beneath them again she saw the grass-grown roofs of that earthly hell, the City of the People of the Mist, and the endless plain beyond through which the river wandered like a silver serpent. There also was the further portion of the huge wall of the temple built by unknown hands in forgotten years, and rising above the edge of that gap in the cliff through which she was looking, appeared a black mass which she knew to be ...
— The People Of The Mist • H. Rider Haggard
... wonder, and which they could not explain, were described under forms and names which were familiar to them. Thus the thunder was to them the bellowing of a mighty beast or the rolling of a great chariot. In the lightning they saw a brilliant serpent, or a spear shot across the sky, or a great fish darting swiftly through the sea of cloud. The clouds were heavenly cows, who shed milk upon the earth and refreshed it; or they were webs woven by heavenly women, who drew water from the fountains on high and poured it down as ...
— Fairy Tales; Their Origin and Meaning • John Thackray Bunce
... the author of Perran Zabuloe, has just issued a little volume entitled The Cross and the Serpent, being a brief History of the Triumph of the Cross through a long Series of Ages in Prophecy, Types, and Fulfilments. Though the present work belongs to one of the two classes which, for obvious reasons, we do not undertake to notice in our columns, ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 34, June 22, 1850 • Various
... asleep, a great serpent came softly from the thicket. It lifted high its shining crest and saw the man at the foot of the tree. "I will kill him!" it hissed. "I could have eaten that cat last night if he had not called, 'Watch, little cat, watch!' I will kill ...
— The Book of Nature Myths • Florence Holbrook
... higher ground, Still, like a gleaming serpent, wound The heavy graded iron trail; But, inch by inch, the overflow Dragged down the road bed, till the slow Back-water crept across the rail. And where the ghostly trestle spanned A stretch of marshy bottom-land, The stealthy under current gnawed At ...
— The Poets and Poetry of Cecil County, Maryland • Various
... seen assembling, and passing into the sacred building, with a quiet, silent reverence. The service, with the exception of the Old Testament lesson and the sermon, which was interpreted, was in Ojebway, and old and young listened attentively as the preacher told the story of the Brazen Serpent, and pointed his hearers to Him who said of Himself, "I, if I be lifted up, will draw all men ...
— Missionary Work Among The Ojebway Indians • Edward Francis Wilson
... bird-charming on the part of the snake, so I looked on from behind the fence. The birds charged the snake and harassed him from every side, but were evidently under no spell save that of courage in defending their nest. Every moment or two I could see the head and neck of the serpent make a sweep at the birds, when the one struck at would fall back, and the other would renew the assault from the rear. There appeared to be little danger that the snake could strike and hold one of the birds, ...
— Birds and Bees, Sharp Eyes and, Other Papers • John Burroughs
... he said. "Promise me that, whatever happens, you will not strike the first blow, and that you will not argue with her. Contradict, denounce, defy. But give no reasons. If you do you are lost. She is subtler than the serpent, skilled in all the tricks of logic, and you will became a laughing-stock, ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Volume V. • Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton, Eds.
... which are recorded in Scripture. The fire interrupting the rebuilding of the Jewish temple, and the death of Arius, are instances, in Ecclesiastical history, of such solemn events. On the other hand, difficult instances in the Scripture history are such as these: the serpent in Eden, the Ark, Jacob's vision for the multiplication of his cattle, the speaking of Balaam's ass, the axe swimming at Elisha's word, the miracle on the swine, and various instances of prayers or prophecies, in which, as ...
— Collected Essays, Volume V - Science and Christian Tradition: Essays • T. H. Huxley
... with Lionel Payne, and he had followed the career of the young expert with curious interest, being, as much as was possible to his selfish nature, a friend and admirer of the rising young detective. And Lionel Payne, open and manly himself, and seeing no trace of the serpent in the seeming disinterestedness of Arthur, introduced him proudly into his happy home. Arthur was struck by the beauty of the young wife, and became ...
— Madeline Payne, the Detective's Daughter • Lawrence L. Lynch
... but in our opinion the controversy is to no purpose, since in the spirit of the Syrian priests the two ideas are inseparable and one expression in itself embraces both, the world being conceived as eternal (supra, n. 76). See for Egypt, Horapoll., Hieroglyph., I (serpent as symbol of the [Greek: aion] and [Greek: kosmos]). At Palmyra, too, the title "lord of all" is found, [Hebrew: MR' KL] (Lidzbarski, loc. cit.); cf. Julian, Or., IV, p. 203, 5 (Hertlein): [Greek: Ho basileus ton holon Helios], and infra, n. 81; n. 87. Already at Babylon the title ...
— The Oriental Religions in Roman Paganism • Franz Cumont
... so staying him, thrusteth his head into his tronke and exhausteth his breath, or else biteth him in the eare, whereunto he cannot reach with his tronke, and when the Elephant waxeth faint, he falleth downe on the serpent, being now full of blood, and with the poise of his body breaketh him: so that his owne blood with the blood of the Elephant runneth out of him mingled together, which being colde, is congealed into that ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques, and Discoveries of - The English Nation, Vol. 11 • Richard Hakluyt
... wisdom of the serpent and the harmlessness of the dove. Zeke, nervously fingering the whip handle, looked down into the guileless face and mentally vowed never to betray ...
— Jewel - A Chapter In Her Life • Clara Louise Burnham
... astonishing that they believed it due to divine intervention. We know, in fact, that Osiris or Bacchus was considered as the discoverer of the vine and of milk; that Iris was the genius of the waters of the Nile; and that the Serpent, or good genius, was the first cause of all these things. Since, moreover, sacrifices had to be made to the gods in order to obtain benefits, the flow of milk, wine, or water, as well as the hissing of the serpent, when the sacrificial flame was lighted, appeared ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 385, May 19, 1883 • Various
... to the same theme of comparison of wisdom and folly, only now with regard to the use of the tongue. The most gifted charmer (lit. master of the tongue) is of no worth after the serpent has bitten. The waters that flow commend the spring whence they issue. Grace speaks for the wise: folly, from beginning to end, proclaims the fool; and nowhere is that folly more manifested than in the boastfulness of ...
— Old Groans and New Songs - Being Meditations on the Book of Ecclesiastes • F. C. Jennings
... wayward and blind, if he be indulgent to it. It is of capital importance for us to discipline the heart,[FN209] otherwise it will discipline us. Passions are like legs. They should be guided by the eye of reason. No wise serpent is led by its tail, so no wise man is led by his passion. Passions that come first are often treacherous and lead us astray. We must guard ourselves against them. In order to gratify them there arise mean desires-the desires to please sight, hearing, smell, taste, and ...
— The Religion of the Samurai • Kaiten Nukariya
... impoverishment, and many hardships, that has not come on us on account of any presumptuous transgression of God's law so much as simply out of some combination of unfortunate circumstances in which we may have only done our duty, but have not done it in the most serpent-like way. And when we are made to suffer unjustly or disproportionately all our days for our error of judgment or our want of the wisdom of this world, or what not, we are sorely tempted to be bitter and proud and resentful and unforgiving, and to go back from duty and endurance ...
— Bunyan Characters - First Series • Alexander Whyte
... arose; the cigarette dropped from his fingers. The moon had again broken through the clouds, and this time much nearer. Not a mile away was the patch of light that it threw upon the waves. Back of it, to the rim of the sea was a lane of moonlight; a gigantic gleaming serpent racing over the edge of the world straight ...
— The Moon Pool • A. Merritt
... occupies the base of the picture. At the summit "Eriton cruda, che richiamava l'ombre a' corpi sui," is precisely in the same attitude as in the Pisan Camposanto, a figure holding a banner coiled around by a serpent, and near it is a simoniac with his entrails torn out, the identical figure from the Pisan Hell. The back view of the figure which a demon raises to throw into the jaws of a terrible monster is also copied entire from the ...
— Fra Angelico • J. B. Supino
... thus far, had not I presently perceived his drift and wormed him of these dismal cogitations of the spirit. He beat about, and hovered, and fluttered, and chirped mournfully, like the poor infatuated bird that beholds the serpent's mouth open, into which it is immediately to drop and be devoured. However, having begun, I was determined to make him unburden his whole heart. If hereafter he can possibly find courage to face me, in order to reproach, I have my lesson ready. ...
— Anna St. Ives • Thomas Holcroft
... feared, Since I hoped I dared; Everywhere alone As a church remain; Spectre cannot harm, Serpent cannot charm; He deposes doom, Who ...
— Poems: Three Series, Complete • Emily Dickinson
... princesses and their property he took to the spot above which his comrades kept watch, who hoisted them out of the cavern, but left Martin in it to die. As he wandered about disconsolately, he found the bearded dwarf, whom he slew. And soon afterwards he was conveyed out of the cavern by a flying serpent, and was able to punish his treacherous friends, and to recover the princesses, all three of whom ...
— A Philological Essay Concerning the Pygmies of the Ancients • Edward Tyson
... the neighboring mountain a mighty engine loomed out from the gathering darkness—a fiery-headed monster—and with its long train of coaches crawled serpent-like around the rocky height, then vanished as it came. The clouds which had been roving indolently across the western horizon suddenly formed in line and moved steadily—a solid battalion—upward towards the zenith, while from the east another phalanx, ...
— At the Time Appointed • A. Maynard Barbour
... symbolism. I am inclined to think that it was made up of abstract propositions, derived from antediluvian traditions. Dr. Oliver thinks it probable that there were a few symbols among these Primitive and Pure Freemasons, and he enumerates among them the serpent, the triangle, and the point within a circle; but I can find no authority for the supposition, nor do I think it fair to claim for the order more than it is fairly entitled to, nor more than it can be fairly proved to possess. When Anderson calls Moses a Grand Master, Joshua his Deputy, ...
— The Symbolism of Freemasonry • Albert G. Mackey
... The master looked at him: it was not hard to understand the matter. "Votini," he said, "do not let the serpent of envy enter your body; it is a serpent which gnaws at the brain and ...
— Cuore (Heart) - An Italian Schoolboy's Journal • Edmondo De Amicis
... constellation of the Zodiac in which the Vernal Equinox successively occurred, as explained hereafter, they dedicated the six divisions of that cycle, corresponding to the destructive months of Autumn and Winter, to him as Lord of Evil, and as such, symbolizing him by the serpent, marked the beginning of his reign by the constellation "Serpens," placed in conjunction with the Autumnal Equinox. Personifying in him the opposing principles of Good and Evil, he was to the ancients both God and Devil, or the varied God, who, ...
— Astral Worship • J. H. Hill
... my married life I bought a small country estate which my wife and I looked upon as a paradise. After enjoying its delight for a little more than a year our souls were saddened by the discovery that our Eden contained a serpent. This was ...
— The Magic Egg and Other Stories • Frank Stockton
... which it indicated brought great grief to the discoverer. She judged that Joan was little better than heathen after all; she greatly feared that the girl had perished but half-believing. Any soul which could thus cherish the slough of a serpent must most surely have been wandering afar out of the road of faith. The all-embracing credulity of Joan was, in fact, a phenomenon beyond Mary's power to estimate or translate; and her present discovery, therefore, caused her both pain and ...
— Lying Prophets • Eden Phillpotts
... ones. To begin with, I collected the Set on the height of the Citadel, which commands all Cairo, the platform of the Pyramids (not only the Ghizeh Pyramids but the sixty odd others, which newcomers don't talk about): the tawny Mokattam Hills, and the silver-blue serpent of the Nile. From this vantage place I pointed out the things we had to see in the city spread out below us, so that on the vaguest minds the picture might be painted in its entirety, before they began to absorb details on that mosaic map which was Cairo. ...
— It Happened in Egypt • C. N. Williamson & A. M. Williamson
... motorcycle carried our pennants. Twenty thousand yellow badges were given away in one day. The squaws from the reservation did their native dances waving suffrage banners, and the snake charmer on the midway carried a Votes for Women pennant while an enormous serpent coiled around her body. I spoke during the fair four and five times a day and held street meetings downtown in the evening. When not thus engaged I assisted Mrs. Pyle and her committee in distributing thousands of pieces of literature and was amazed at the eagerness of the people to ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume V • Ida Husted Harper
... had changed his thick flannel shirt for linen of the finest quality, his mountain knickerbockers for a suit of serpent-green that turned the heads of all the women in Tarascon ...
— Tartarin On The Alps • Alphonse Daudet
... former, which, as I explained in my last sermon, are sins hidden, not from others, but from the doer, may fairly be likened to the pestilence that stalks slaying in the dark, or to the stealthy, gliding serpent, which strikes and poisons before the naked foot is aware. The other resembles the 'destruction that wasteth at noonday,' or the lion with its roar and its spring, as, disclosed from its covert, ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... hound! Without fear! He always quoted Uncas and his father, who from his wisdom was called the Great Serpent, as models of heroism ...
— The Prairie • J. Fenimore Cooper
... recently there, and would probably soon return. Mr. Lisle took two or three agitated turns about the room, one of which brought him close to the writing-desk, and his glance involuntarily fell upon the unfinished letter. Had a deadly serpent leaped suddenly at his throat, the shock could not have been greater. At the head of the sheet of paper was a clever pen-and-ink sketch of Lucy Stevens and himself—he, kneeling to her in a lovelorn, ludicrous attitude, and she, laughing immoderately at his lachrymose ...
— The Experiences of a Barrister, and Confessions of an Attorney • Samuel Warren
... a block or two, he suddenly halted before a jeweller's shop. Arrayed in the window were priceless gems that shone in the glare of electricity, like mystical serpent-eyes—green, pomegranate and water-blue. And as he stood there the dazzling radiance before him was transformed in the prism of his mind into something great and very wonderful that might, ...
— The House of the Vampire • George Sylvester Viereck
... amiably; "David is right; we have a pigsty of a dining-room at our house." He paused to bend over and touch with an ecstatic finger a flake of lichen covering with its serpent green the damp, black bark in the crotch of the old tree. ...
— The Iron Woman • Margaret Deland
... startled by the sight of a figure slowly climbing toward him up the slope. A second glance told him that it was Jethro's. Vaguely troubled, he watched his approach; for good Priest Ware, while able to obey one-half the scriptural injunction, had not the wisdom of the serpent, and women, as typified by Cynthia, were a continual puzzle to him. That very evening, Moses Hatch had called, had been received with more favor than usual, and suddenly packed off about his business. Seated in the moonlight, the minister ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... assumption among mankind," said her husband. "In reality, it is frightful pride and overweening arrogance to think that we shall live for ever—become like God. These were the serpent's wily words, and he is ...
— The Sand-Hills of Jutland • Hans Christian Andersen
... read as much as any other's; the gold and silver were only a part of that small provision which would be hers by and by, and if she borrowed it, it was borrowing of herself. The tree of the knowledge of good and evil had shaken its fruit into her lap, and, without any serpent to tempt her, she took thereof and ...
— The Guardian Angel • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. |
