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Scorpion   /skˈɔrpiən/   Listen
Scorpion

noun
1.
(astrology) a person who is born while the sun is in Scorpio.  Synonym: Scorpio.
2.
The eighth sign of the zodiac; the sun is in this sign from about October 23 to November 21.  Synonyms: Scorpio, Scorpio the Scorpion.
3.
Arachnid of warm dry regions having a long segmented tail ending in a venomous stinger.



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"Scorpion" Quotes from Famous Books



... Robert were able to assert his rights by main force. Little by little, one town after the other of the Duchy went over to Robert, and Medea da Carpi found herself surrounded in the mountain citadel of Urbania like a scorpion surrounded by flames. (This simile is not mine, but belongs to Raffaello Gualterio, historiographer to Robert II.) But, unlike the scorpion, Medea refused to commit suicide. It is perfectly marvelous how, without money or allies, she could so long keep her ...
— Hauntings • Vernon Lee

... minister has been, all unknown to me till now, at that same school of prayer to which his Master was put in the days of His flesh, and out of which He brought the experiences that He afterwards put into the Friend at midnight, and the Importunate widow, as also into the Egg and the scorpion, the Bread and the stone, the Knocking and the opening, the Seeking and ...
— Bunyan Characters - First Series • Alexander Whyte

... hour in which the ascent allowed no delay; for the meridian circle had been left by the Sun to the Bull, and by the Night to the Scorpion;[1] wherefore as the man doth who, whatever may appear to him, stops not, but goes on his way, if the goad of necessity prick him, so did we enter through the gap, one before the other, taking the stairway which by its narrowness unpairs ...
— The Divine Comedy, Volume 2, Purgatory [Purgatorio] • Dante Alighieri

... not poisonous, is protected by having horny spines upon its head and back. The little rattlesnake known as the "side-winder" is perhaps the most dangerous of all, although the tarantula, centipede, and scorpion are formidable foes. The Gila monster, long believed to be so dangerous, is now considered ...
— The Western United States - A Geographical Reader • Harold Wellman Fairbanks

... miracle. The very hailstones that fell upon his head could not be grasped in both hands. His guns and powder brought down birds no other marksman had a chance of hitting. When he was a child, he grasped a scorpion without injury, and saw a salamander "living and enjoying himself in the hottest flames." After his fever at Rome in 1535, he threw off from his stomach a hideous worm—hairy, speckled with green, black, and ...
— Renaissance in Italy Vol. 3 - The Fine Arts • John Addington Symonds

... renew. I worse than these whose sore no salve can cure, Whose grief no herb nor plant nor tree can ease; Remediless, I still must pain endure, Till I my Chloris' furious mood can please; She like the scorpion gave to me a wound, And like the scorpion she ...
— Elizabethan Sonnet Cycles - Idea, by Michael Drayton; Fidessa, by Bartholomew Griffin; Chloris, by William Smith • Michael Drayton, Bartholomew Griffin, and William Smith

... their producers, inhabit the fields, delight in toil, and labour in hope. The warlike steed,[40] buried in the ground, is the source of the hornet. If you take off the bending claws from the crab of the sea-shore, {and} bury the rest in the earth, a scorpion will come forth from the part {so} buried, and will threaten ...
— The Metamorphoses of Ovid - Literally Translated into English Prose, with Copious Notes - and Explanations • Publius Ovidius Naso

... had poured Its torrents forth as in Deucalion's time, And whelmed the world in waters. Or if thou, Phoebus, beside the Nemean lion fierce Wert driving now thy chariot, flames should seize The universe and set the air ablaze. These are at peace; but, Mars, why art thou bent On kindling thus the Scorpion, his tail Portending evil and his claws aflame? Deep sunk is kindly Jupiter, and dull Sweet Venus' star, and rapid Mercury Stays on his course: Mars only holds the sky. Why does Orion's sword too brightly ...
— Pharsalia; Dramatic Episodes of the Civil Wars • Lucan

... thermometer, and with pleasure we heard of it sinking to 120 degrees, 118 degrees, etc. At last the fierce sun retired and I crept out more dead than alive. The next day we secured some comfort from a large wet towel wrapped about the head and body. At sunset, rising to go out, a scorpion fell upon my clothes. The night before we found a black scorpion in our tent, that made us uneasy, so we ...
— Life of Henry Martyn, Missionary to India and Persia, 1781 to 1812 • Sarah J. Rhea

... go with me into the den of Hag Zogbaum, in 'Scorpion Cove;' and 'Scorpion Cove' is in Pell street. Necessity next drove me there. It is early spring, we will suppose; and being in the Bowery, we find the streets in its vicinity reeking with putrid matter, hurling pestilence into the dark dwellings of the unknown ...
— Justice in the By-Ways - A Tale of Life • F. Colburn Adams

... inspiration, displays, so as to quite deceive the senses, the heavens with all their stars moving in just and harmonious order. Here on summer nights you see Lyra and Altair triumphantly blazing in the middle sky as they sweep their mighty arch through the ample zenith; and low in the south, the Scorpion crawls along the verge with the red Antares at his heart, and the bright arrows of the Archer forever pursuing him. Here in winter, gazing up through the warm and perfumed air, you behold those bright orbs that immemorially suggest the icy blasts of January: Aldebaran; the mighty suns of ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. III, No IV, April 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various

... the stone fish (SYNANCEIA HORRIDA), the death adder of the sea, called also the sea-devil, because of its malice; the warty ghoul because, perhaps, of its repulsiveness; the lion fish, because of its habit of lurking in secret places; the sea scorpion for its venom; and by the blacks "Mee-hee." Loathsome, secretive, inert, rough and jagged in outline, wearing tufts and sprays of seaweed on its back, scarcely to be distinguished from the rocks among which it lurks, it is armed with spines steeped ...
— The Confessions of a Beachcomber • E J Banfield

... you mean, and I know what I will; but, like Laocoon in the folds of the snake, the serpent of habit coils around me, and I fear its strength is too powerful for mine. Perhaps, had my angel of to-day been my angel when first a man, I had never wooed the scorpion which is stinging me to death; but all I can do I will. This is all I can promise. Keep this stick to remember me: it will support you when tottering with the weight of years, and with strength will endure. When age has done her work, and you are in the grave, give it ...
— The Memories of Fifty Years • William H. Sparks

... all tyranny. There, at least, you will be permitted to weep. That is all that I can do for you. My heart is broken when I think of the powerlessness of my love. They say that when one crushes the scorpion which has wounded him, he is cured; even my death will not repair the wrong that I have done you; it will only be one grief the more. Can you understand how desperate is the feeling which I experience now? For months past, to be loved by you has been the sole desire of my heart, ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet

... rich man And spent his money so fast that he failed. She lashed him with a scorpion tongue And made him believe at last With her incessant reasonings That he was a fool, and so had failed. In middle life he started over again, But became tangled in a law-suit. Because of these things he ...
— Toward the Gulf • Edgar Lee Masters

... captain of Civil Guards among them, very loquacious and very courteous, and much deferred to by the rest of us. At Bobadilla, where again we had tea with hot goat's milk in it, we changed cars, and from that on we had the company of a Rock-Scorpion pair whose name was beautifully Italian and whose speech was beautifully English, as the speech of those born at Gibraltar ...
— Familiar Spanish Travels • W. D. Howells

... remark the want in fine weather; one does bitterly on bad days. There has been no attempt to make a port or even a debarcadere by connecting the basaltic lump Loo (Ilheu) Fort with the Pontinha, the curved scorpion's tail of rock and masonry, Messieurs Blandy's coal stores, to the west. Big ships must still roll at anchor in a dangerous open roadstead far off shore; and, during wet weather, ladies, well drenched by the surf, must be landed with the aid of a crane in what should be ...
— To the Gold Coast for Gold - A Personal Narrative in Two Volumes.—Vol. I • Richard F. Burton

... another tailed comet appeared, even more beautiful and resplendent than the first. At its head [al pie] was a burning star. It appeared in the east. It had a declination of eight degrees, and it pointed southwestward to the sign of the Scorpion, which is the sign of Manila. These two comets lasted some three months. They write from Japon, Maluco, and India that they ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898: Volume XVIII, 1617-1620 • Various

... personages. Pepa had likewise two daughters, one of whom, a very remarkable female, was called La Tuerta, from the circumstance of her having but one eye, and the other, who was a girl of about thirteen, La Casdami, or the scorpion, from the ...
— The Zincali - An Account of the Gypsies of Spain • George Borrow

... scorpion, boiled like shellfish, with the above ingredients; the cold meat is separated from the shell and is eaten ...
— Cooking and Dining in Imperial Rome • Apicius

... Shall scourge this howler home to thee again. Yes, yes, rash man, Jove and myself do know That from this wrong shall rouse an Anteros, Fierce as an Ate, with a hot right hand, That shall afflict thee with the touch of fire, Till, scorpion-like, thou turn and sting thyself. What dost thou think—that I shall perish here, Gnawed by the tooth of hungry savageness? Think what thou list, and go what way thou wilt. I, that have truth and heaven on my ...
— The International Monthly Magazine, Volume 5, No. 1, January, 1852 • Various

... obscure nature's handwriting and to veil it in mist and disguise. But the body is God's canvas, and nature's handwriting goes ever on. Each faculty is a brush, and with it reason thinks out the portrait. Even the wolf may give something to the features, and also the snake and scorpion. Soon will come an hour when men will hear not the voice of the sirens singing praises in the ear, nor the plaudits of men of low deeds and conscience, but an hour when men shall stand in the presence of the all-revealing ...
— A Man's Value to Society - Studies in Self Culture and Character • Newell Dwight Hillis

... am I? The victim of infidelity and you, the bearer of a cursed existence, the scoff and scorn of the world, the monument of a broken vow and a guilty life, a being scourged by the scorpion lash of conscience, blasted by periodical insanity, pelted by the winter's storm, scorched by the summer's heat, withered by starvation, hated by man, and touched into my inmost spirit by the anticipated tortures ...
— Phil Purcel, The Pig-Driver; The Geography Of An Irish Oath; The Lianhan Shee • William Carleton

... bread, and you have got a stone: break your teeth on it, and don't shriek because the nerves are martyrized; do not doubt that your mental stomach—if you have such a thing—is strong as an ostrich's; the stone will digest. You held out your hand for an egg, and fate put into it a scorpion. Show no consternation: close your fingers firmly upon the gift; let it sting through your palm. Never mind; in time, after your hand and arm have swelled and quivered long with torture, the squeezed scorpion will die, and you will have learned the great lesson how to endure without a sob. ...
— Shirley • Charlotte Bronte

... as though she had inadvertently trodden on the tail of a scorpion. She had seen Beatrice angry, but not as now. There was something not unlike desperation in the eyes that were ...
— The Native Born - or, The Rajah's People • I. A. R. Wylie

... say, and give my curses wings! May the words of love I've spoke be changed to scorpion stings! Oh, she filled my heart with joy, she emptied my heart of doubt, And now, with a scratch of a pen, she lets ...
— Farm Ballads • Will Carleton

... be denied that some of the best portions of Byron's and Pope's writings were scourged out of them by the scorpion thongs of adverse criticism; and the virulence of the Xenien Sturm waged by Schiller and Goethe against the army of critics who assaulted them, attests the fact that even appreciative Germany sometimes nods in her critical councils. Certainly I have had my share of scourging; ...
— St. Elmo • Augusta J. Evans

... only of the mentule boast, D'ye claim alone what damsels be the best To swive: as he-goats holding all the rest? 5 Is't when like boobies sit ye incontinent here, One or two hundred, deem ye that I fear Two hundred —— at one brunt? Ay, think so, natheless all your tavern-front With many a scorpion I will over-write. 10 For that my damsel, fro' my breast took flight, By me so loved, as shall loved be none, Wherefor so mighty wars were waged and won, Does sit in public here. Ye fain, rich wights, All woo her: thither too (the ...
— The Carmina of Caius Valerius Catullus • Caius Valerius Catullus

... visited the White House. He was the able, bold, unscrupulous leader of leaders, and men came to see him. He rarely smiled, and when he did it was the smile of the cynic and misanthrope. His tongue had the lash of a scorpion. He was a greater terror to the trimmers and time-servers of his own party than to his political foes. He had hated the President with sullen, consistent, and unyielding venom from his first nomination at Chicago down to the last rumour of his ...
— The Clansman - An Historical Romance of the Ku Klux Klan • Thomas Dixon

... said Balaam's ass. But you're not an ass—beg pardon; and you're not Balaam—you're Job. And we've all got to be little Jobs, learning how to spell patience backwards. We've lost our jobs and we've found a Job. It's picking up a scorpion when you're looking for an egg.—Tell us what you propose doing.... Remove an obstacle from the way! ...
— Touch and Go • D. H. Lawrence

... into useful objects. In other words, life depended on human power over the natural materials of the earth. At the same time there were many things which could not be controlled by power over the earth and its elements,—the sting of the scorpion, the bite of the adder, the rise of the Nile, sickness, the sudden onslaught of the enemy, the straying of cattle, the disfavor of the god. For these evils man's only hope was magic,—the set words spoken in the proper manner ...
— The Egyptian Conception of Immortality • George Andrew Reisner

... fitter evacuation than this. Besides, I might not well refrain, for ubi dolor, ibi digitus, one must needs scratch where it itches. I was not a little offended with this malady, shall I say my mistress Melancholy, my Aegeria, or my malus genius? and for that cause, as he that is stung with a scorpion, I would expel clavum clavo, [62]comfort one sorrow with another, idleness with idleness, ut ex vipera Theriacum, make an antidote out of that which was the prime cause of my disease. Or as he did, of whom [63]Felix Plater speaks, that thought he had some of Aristophanes' ...
— The Anatomy of Melancholy • Democritus Junior

... were stealing to the doors nearest them. Curdie whispered to the two creatures next him. Off went Ballbody, rolling and bounding through the crowd like a spent cannon shot, and when the foremost reached the door to the corridor, there he lay at the foot of it grinning; to the other door scuttled a scorpion, as big as a huge crab. The rest stood so still that some began to think they were only boys dressed up to look awful; they persuaded themselves they were only another part of the housemaid's and page's ...
— The Princess and the Curdie • George MacDonald

... now, Doctor." That air was Liberty. Reader, have you ever been in a place where her name was contraband? All such places are alike. Here, as in Rome, men who have thoughts disguise them; and painful circumlocution conveys the meaning of friend to friend. For treachery lies hid, like the scorpion, under your pillow, and your most trusted companion will betray your head, to save his own. I am told that this sub-treason reached, in the days of Lopez, an incredible point. After every secret meeting of those affected to the invaders, each conspirator ran to save himself by denouncing ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 4, No. 24, Oct. 1859 • Various

... atheism was a crime against humanity. The Protestant might be the victim of a mistake, but the atheist was the deliberate son of darkness, the source of fearful dangers. An atheist in their midst was like a scorpion in a flower-bed—no one could tell when and where he would sting. Rough misdemeanours among them had been many, there had once been a murder in the parish, but the undefined horrors of infidelity were more shameful than crimes the eye ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker

... other's character and inclinations. The father, by way of founding a claim to his son's grateful affection, declares that he has 'trodden the dangerous path to the heart of the prince' and killed his predecessor,—all for the sake of his son. He admits that he is suffering the 'eternal scorpion-stings of conscience,' and yet he expects Ferdinand to follow him without a whimper, and he is angry when the young man indignantly renounces the usufruct of his father's crimes. Although Ferdinand ...
— The Life and Works of Friedrich Schiller • Calvin Thomas

... it! But, then, his debts, his overwhelming debts. All the rest might be faced. His desperate engagement might be broken; his family might be reconciled to obscurity and poverty: but, ruin! what was to grapple with his impending ruin? Now his folly stung him; now the scorpion entered his soul. It was not the profligacy of his ancestor, it was not the pride of his family then, that stood between him and his love; it was his own culpable and heartless career! He covered his face with his hands; something touched ...
— Henrietta Temple - A Love Story • Benjamin Disraeli

... were made to me by a medical gentleman to whom I mentioned the Chinese doctor's prescription of scorpion tea, and they seem to me so curious that I ...
— Tales of Old Japan • Algernon Bertram Freeman-Mitford

... fifteen minutes after twelve; Thurtell is by this time a good way on his journey, baiting at Scorpion perhaps; Ketch is bargaining for his cast coat and waistcoat; the Jew demurs at first at three half-crowns, but, on consideration that he may get somewhat by showing 'em ...
— Selected English Letters (XV - XIX Centuries) • Various

... aroused by violent knocking at the door in the early gray dawn—so violent that two large centipedes and a scorpion drop on to the bed. They have evidently been tucked away among the folds of the bar all night. Well "when ignorance is bliss 'tis folly to be wise," particularly along here. I get up without delay, and find myself quite well. The cat has ...
— Travels in West Africa • Mary H. Kingsley

... younger folk on their side, not to be behind in shamelessness, eclipsed them in the display of naked charms. The woman wore Satan on her forehead in the shape of a horned head-dress: on the feet of the bachelor and the page he was visible in the tapering scorpion-like tips of their shoes. Under the mask of animals they represented the lowest side of brute nature. The famous child stealer, Retz, here took his first flight in villany. The great feudal ladies, unbridled Jezebels, with less sense of ...
— La Sorciere: The Witch of the Middle Ages • Jules Michelet

... prevent such horrid fray, Hung forth in Heaven his golden scales, yet seen Betwixt Astrea[6] and the Scorpion sign, Wherein all things created first he weighed, The pendulous round Earth with balanced air In counterpoise, now ponders all events, Battles and realms. In these he put two weights, The sequel each of parting and of fight: ...
— The Astronomy of Milton's 'Paradise Lost' • Thomas Orchard

... the Archer, Scorpion, and Balance, is the Serpent, reaching to the Crown with the end of its snout. Next, the Serpent-holder grasps the Serpent about the middle in his hands, and with his left foot treads squarely on the foreparts of ...
— Ten Books on Architecture • Vitruvius

... two pet pythons that followed her around like kittens. Not such a devilish lot of choice between a frog and a snake—except on the side of the frog? What? Anyway, any pet that girl wants is hers, I don't care if it's a leaping twelve-toed lobster or a whale-bodied scorpion. Get me?" ...
— The Moon Pool • A. Merritt

... become a viper to him, he has banished it, and is about another, which he finishes and gives to the world; it is a better book than the first, and every one is delighted with it; but it proves to the writer a scorpion, because he loves it with inordinate affection; but it was good for the world that he produced this book, which stung him as a scorpion. Yes; and good for himself, for the labour of writing it amused ...
— The Romany Rye - A Sequel to 'Lavengro' • George Borrow

... nothing about the case," responded the conjurer. "A red scorpion is inside her body feeding on her vitals. I see a woman hiding something in a black-gum tree that hangs over running water. It is at the hour when spirits walk. The first creature that runs over the cleft where the hand is hidden is the one to torment your sister. That first ...
— Shapes that Haunt the Dusk • Various

... glance at the intensely dramatic and impassioned Cecco taking Pina into a corner of the dining-room and, seizing her hand, despairingly endeavour to find out his next duty. Then, with incredibly stiff back, he extends his right hand to the guest, as if the proffered plate held a scorpion instead of a tidbit. There is an extra butler to be obtained when the function is a sufficiently grand one to warrant the expense, but as he wears carpet slippers and Pina flirts with him from soup to fruit, we find ourselves no ...
— Penelope's Postscripts • Kate Douglas Wiggin

... him that I had several times, when in Italy, seen the experiment of placing a scorpion within a circle of burning coals; that it ran round and round in extreme pain; and finding no way to escape, retired to the centre, and like a true Stoick philosopher, darted its sting into its head, and thus at once freed itself from its woes. 'This must end 'em[158].' ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 2 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill

... species out of 3,000,000 should develop into man, that it certainly was not the case. All had the same start, many had similar environments. Yet witness the motly products of evolution: Man, ape, elephant, skunk, scorpion, lizard, lark, toad, lobster, louse, flea, amoeba, hookworm, and countless microscopic animals; also, the palm, lily, melon, maize, mushroom, thistle, cactus, microscopic bacilli, etc. All developed from one germ, all in some ...
— The Evolution Of Man Scientifically Disproved • William A. Williams

... stage customs what offends me most Is the slip-door, and slowly rising ghost. Tell me—nor count the question too severe— Why need the dismal powdered forms appear? When chilling horrors shake the affrighted king, And guilt torments him with her scorpion sting, When keenest feelings at his bosom pull, And fancy tells him that the seat is full; Why need the ghost usurp the monarch's place, To frighten children with his mealy face? The king alone should form the phantom there, And talk and tremble at ...
— A Book of the Play - Studies and Illustrations of Histrionic Story, Life, and Character • Dutton Cook

... beloved! what pangs my breast has borne To find thee false, ungrateful, and forsworn! A shade and darkness o'er my prospect spreads, The damps of night and death's eternal shades. The scorpion's sting, by disappointment brought, And all the horrors of despairing thought, Sad as they are, I might, perhaps, endure, And bear with patience what admits no cure. But here my bosom is to madness moved; I suffer by the wrongs of him ...
— The Coquette - The History of Eliza Wharton • Hannah Webster Foster

... charmed before, The various terrors of that distant shore; Those matted woods where birds forget to sing, But silent bats in drowsy clusters cling; Those poisonous fields with rank luxuriance crown'd, Where the dark scorpion gathers death around, Where at each step the stranger fears to wake The rattling terrors of the vengeful snake, Where crouching tigers wait their hapless prey, And savage men, more murderous still than they. Far different these from every ...
— An Historical Account of the Settlements of Scotch Highlanders in America • J. P. MacLean

... happened? What? What? She was trembling so that she could barely stand, yet she forced her quaking limbs to move. Back she stumbled, back through the glaring sunlight. Once she fell, and saw a lizard—or was it a scorpion?—flick from her path. And then she was up again, panting, sobbing, utterly unnerved, but struggling with all her failing strength to reach the ruined temple, to see for herself ...
— The Keeper of the Door • Ethel M. Dell

... I were to arrange a world-tour for myself, instead of following some other traveller about in imagination, my course would be settled, not, in the first place, by questions of climate or scenery or the larger inhabitants, but by consideration of those smaller natives—the Tarantula, the Scorpion, and the Centipede. If I were told that in such-and-such a country one often found a lion in one's bath, I might be prepared to risk it. I should feel that there was always a chance that the lion might not object to me. But if I heard that one might find a tarantula ...
— If I May • A. A. Milne

... associated with water. The vulture-headed figure in Dresden 38b and the vulture as a bird in Tro-Cortesianus 10a both appear in the rain. The peccary (Dresden 68a), and the turkey (Tro-Cortesianus 10b) appear associated with the rain as well as with the constellation bands. The scorpion (Tro-Cortesianus 7a) encloses the rain within ...
— Animal Figures in the Maya Codices • Alfred M. Tozzer and Glover M. Allen

... is alive and now married; and Doctor Sculco still resides in his aristocratic palazzo up that winding way in the old town, with the escutcheon of a scorpion—portentous emblem for a doctor—over its entrance. He is a little greyer, no doubt; but the same genial and alert personage as in ...
— Old Calabria • Norman Douglas

... active toxins, the initial injections are made with toxin modified by heat or by the addition of various chemical substances. Immunity of the same nature can be acquired in the same way against snake and scorpion poisons, and against certain vegetable toxins, e.g. ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 2 - "Baconthorpe" to "Bankruptcy" • Various

... the inhabitants. The hills are covered with wood, and the vallies with herbage; and the air in general is so pure, that, notwithstanding the heat, our flesh meat kept very well two days, and our fish one. We met with no frog, toad, scorpion, centipied, or serpent of any kind: And the only troublesome insects that we saw were ants, of which there ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 12 • Robert Kerr

... their reputation required it, and giving orders that the Latin-grammar master should be taken alive. He then dismissed them to their quarters, and the fight began with a broadside from 'The Beauty.' She then veered around, and poured in another. 'The Scorpion' (so was the bark of the Latin-grammar master appropriately called) was not slow to return her fire; and a terrific cannonading ensued, in which the guns of 'The ...
— Holiday Romance • Charles Dickens

... the ship Scorpion, he with the other officers of the ship were dining with the Captain (Johnson) who had just looked at the glass; it being a very fine day no one had any apprehension of a squall. The dinner was hardly ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 17, No. 476, Saturday, February 12, 1831 • Various

... back on him. He started forward to open the door for her, his hand touched hers on the knob, she started as if a scorpion had stung her, but he only cast a smile in her face and allowed ...
— A Noble Woman • Ann S. Stephens

... Croly has so superbly described in "Salathiel." His "Epistle to Curio" is a masterpiece of vigorous composition, terse sentiment, and glowing invective. It gathers around Pulteney as a ring of fire round the scorpion, and leaves him writhing and shrivelled. Out of Dryden and Pope, it is perhaps the best satiric ...
— Poetical Works of Akenside - [Edited by George Gilfillan] • Mark Akenside

... giving orders that the Latin-Grammar-Master should be taken alive. He then dismissed them to their quarters, and the fight began with a broadside from The Beauty. She then veered round, and poured in another. The Scorpion (so was the bark of the Latin-Grammar-Master appropriately called) was not slow to return her fire, and a terrific cannonading ensued, in which the guns of The Beauty ...
— Captain Boldheart & the Latin-Grammar Master - A Holiday Romance from the Pen of Lieut-Col. Robin Redforth, aged 9 • Charles Dickens

... and sensitive mind from annoyances that might have irritated him; now softening, now exciting conversation, guiding it with the address of a gifted and polished man, or lashing out of it with the scorpion-whip of his satire much that would have vexed the more soft and simple spirit of the valetudinarian. These are things which it is good to think of: it is good to know that there are literary men, who have other principles besides vanity; who can divide the approbation of their fellow ...
— The Life of Friedrich Schiller - Comprehending an Examination of His Works • Thomas Carlyle

... that broods o'er guilty woes, Is like the Scorpion girt by fire; In circle narrowing as it glows,[dn] The flames around their captive close, Till inly searched by thousand throes, And maddening in her ire, One sad and sole relief she knows— The sting she ...
— The Works Of Lord Byron, Vol. 3 (of 7) • Lord Byron

... all the living things upon the earth—the breath of your mouth alone gave life to my heart. Even this very day, I dreaded being chosen of the Gods. But now, who has so utterly transformed me if it be not the Gods? You are to me as nothing, now. And I who trembled at a scorpion, who wept at the pricking of a thorn, I am all joy at the thought of dying soon. How could this be if the ...
— Woman on Her Own, False Gods & The Red Robe - Three Plays By Brieux • Eugene Brieux

... freely tattooed on the face and body. One dot is made in the centre of the forehead and three on the left nostril in the form of a triangle. All the limbs and the fingers and toes may also be tattooed, the most common patterns being a peacock with spread wings, a fish, cuckoo, scorpion, a child's doll, a sieve, a pattern of Sita's cookroom and representations of all female ornaments. Some women think that they will be able to sell the ornaments tattooed on their bodies in the next world and subsist on ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India - Volume II • R. V. Russell

... Dick, though bitter experience had taught him that von Kerber's last question might reveal some disagreeable feature hitherto unseen, just as the sting of the scorpion lies in its tail. ...
— The Wheel O' Fortune • Louis Tracy

... him—because of the divine germ that is in him. He has a claim on God, then, a divine claim, for any pain, want, disappointment, or misery, that would help to show him to himself as the fool he is; he has a claim to be punished to the last scorpion of the whip, to be spared not one pang that may urge him towards repentance; yea, he has a claim to be sent out into the outer darkness, whether what we call hell, or something speechlessly worse, if nothing less will do. He has a claim to be compelled ...
— Unspoken Sermons - Series I., II., and II. • George MacDonald

... not," he agreed, in his courteous, rather tired voice. "If, for instance, you were out with a friend and met a scorpion in a rage who stung you both, you'd want to take it out of the scorpion, wouldn't you, not ...
— The Knave of Diamonds • Ethel May Dell

... silence fell. The curious activity of desert-life, interrupted for the time by the presence of the fugitives, resumed its tenor and droned on about them. The rasping grasshopper, the darting lizard, the scorpion creeping among the rocks, a high-flying bird, a small, skulking, wild beast put sound and movement in the desolation of the region. The horizon was marked by undulating hills to the west; to the east, by sharper peaks. The scant growth was blackened ...
— The Yoke - A Romance of the Days when the Lord Redeemed the Children - of Israel from the Bondage of Egypt • Elizabeth Miller

... he do? . . . He is stupefied; he neither lets go the reins, nor is able to control them. In his fright, too, he sees strange objects scattered everywhere in various parts of the heavens, and the forms of huge wild beasts. There is a spot where the Scorpion bends his arms into two curves, and, with his tail and claws bending on either side, he extends his limbs through the space of two signs of the zodiac. As soon as the youth beheld him, wet with the sweat of black venom, and threatening wounds with the ...
— Ragnarok: The Age of Fire and Gravel • Ignatius Donnelly

... salubrious climate, productive soil, rich mineral deposits and rare archaeological remains. It also has a diversified fauna and flora. The peccary, Gila monster, tarantula, centipede, scorpion and horned toad are specimens of its strange animal life; and, the numerous species of cacti, yucca, maguey, palo verde and mistletoe are samples of its curious vegetation. It is, indeed, the scientist's Paradise where much valuable material ...
— Arizona Sketches • Joseph A. Munk

... has placed a long serpent which hangs vertically downwards, and shows by its curves that it is struggling in her grip. Between the limbs of the goddess and the horse's mane there is something that bears a vague resemblance to a scorpion. ...
— A History of Art in Chaldaea & Assyria, v. 1 • Georges Perrot

... her back, his head and neck gone, but his body still firmly attached. (J.H. Fabre, Souvenirs Entomologiques, fifth series, p. 307.) Fabre also describes in great detail (ibid., ninth series, chs. xxi-xxii) the sexual parades of the Languedoc scorpion (Scorpio occitanus), an arachnid. These parades are in public; for their subsequent intercourse the couple seek complete seclusion, and the female ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 3 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis

... fish, white shark, sturgeon, skate, John Dorey, salmon, grayling, porpoise, electrical eel, horned silure, pilot fish, mackerel, trout, red char, smelt, carp, bream, road goldfish, pike, garfish, perch, sprat, chub, telescope carp, cod, whiting, turbot, flounder, flying scorpion, sole, sea porcupine, sea cock, flying fish, trumpet fish, common eel, turtle, lobster, crab, shrimp, star fish, streaked gilt head, remora, lump fish, holocenter, torpedo. No. 6, then gives the class to No. 7; and as variety is the life and soul of the plan, his post may be supplied ...
— The Infant System - For Developing the Intellectual and Moral Powers of all Children, - from One to Seven years of Age • Samuel Wilderspin

... of peace and good order. The early appearance of a large fleet of European warships in the Bosphorus apparently assured the protection of foreigners in that quarter, where the presence of the American stationnaire the U. S. S. Scorpion sufficed, tinder the circumstances, to represent the United States. Our cruisers were thus left free to act if need be along the Mediterranean coasts should any unexpected contingency arise affecting the numerous American interests in the ...
— State of the Union Addresses of William H. Taft • William H. Taft

... abasement of the great and the elevation of the small, besides fearful droughts in regions over which that sign predominates; in the Virgin, they imply many grievous ills to the female portion of the population; in the Scorpion, they portend a plague of reptiles, especially locusts; in the Fishes, they indicate great troubles from religious differences, besides war and pestilence. When, like the one described by Milton, they 'fire the length of Ophiuchus ...
— Myths and Marvels of Astronomy • Richard A. Proctor

... and the breakfast table sweet with their presence. Blue-bells and butter-cups and primroses had their time, and lovely they looked, helped out by the yellow furze blossoms which Eleanor was very fond of. Then the scorpion grass, of both kinds, proclaimed that it was summer; and borage was bright in the sitting-room. Eleanor could hardly look at it without an inward smile and sigh, remembering the cheering little couplet which attached to it by old usage; and Julia from whose lips she had first heard ...
— The Old Helmet, Volume II • Susan Warner

... throne. He, the beggar man, was—was what? But his retinue,—that squalid, sordid, parti-colored band of vacant, dull-faced filth and viciousness—was writhing over the land, and he and they seemed almost crouching underneath the scorpion lash of one tall skeleton, that looked like Death, and the twisted woman whom men called Pain. Yet ...
— Darkwater - Voices From Within The Veil • W. E. B. Du Bois

... scorpions were few and far between at De Aar, so one could feel fairly secure from these pests. How different it was in the Sudan campaign, especially at some camps like Um Teref, where batches of soldiers black and white came to be treated for scorpion stings, which in one case were fatal. A propos of reading we were wonderfully well provided with all manner of literature by the kindly forethought of good people in England. The assortment was ...
— With Methuen's Column on an Ambulance Train • Ernest N. Bennett

... those discovered by Messrs. Meek and Worthen in the lower part of the Coal Measures at Morris, Illinois, and described by Mr. Scudder, reveal carboniferous myriopods (two species of Euphorberia) more highly organized than Pauropus, and a carboniferous scorpion (Buthus?) closely resembling a species now living in California, together with another scorpion-like animal, Mazonia Woodiana, while the Devonian insects described from St. John by Mr. Scudder, are nearly as highly organized as our grasshoppers and May flies. Dr. Dawson has also discovered a well ...
— Our Common Insects - A Popular Account of the Insects of Our Fields, Forests, - Gardens and Houses • Alpheus Spring Packard

... starry. As the Prophet turned to close the door he perceived the busy crab, and the thought of his beloved grandmother, sinking now to rest on the second floor all unconscious of the propinquity of the scorpion, the contiguity of the serpent, filled his expressive eyes with tears. He shut the door, stood in the hall and listened. He heard a chair crack, the ticking of a clock. There was no other sound, and he felt certain that Mr. Ferdinand ...
— The Prophet of Berkeley Square • Robert Hichens

... Diana argued with herself, as she sat looking down at the bright creature who had done her this worst, last wrong which one woman can do to another. This passionate heart, which ached with such cruel pain, was prone to evil, and to-day the scorpion Jealousy was digging his sharp tooth into its very core. It was not possible for Diana Paget to feel kindly disposed towards the girl whose unconscious hand had shattered the airy castle of her dreams. Was it not a hard thing that the bright creature, whom every ...
— Birds of Prey • M. E. Braddon

... his contributions to the species question and the foundation of a scientific review, Huxley published in 1860 only two special monographs ("On Jacare and Caiman," and "On the Mouth and Pharynx of the Scorpion," already mentioned as read in the previous year), but he read "Further Observations on Pyrosoma" at the Linnean Society, and was busy with paleontological work, the results of which appeared in three papers the following year, the most important of which was the Memoir called ...
— The Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley Volume 1 • Leonard Huxley

... by the addition of dried fish and vegetables, adding occasionally such portions of animals as are usually thrown away by civilized people. Rats, cats, and dogs are not declined by his omnivorous appetite, and he is charged with craving nearly all sorts of vermin, such as snakes, slugs, scorpion's eggs, and caterpillars, which he complacently adds to his stews. Without the physical strength or size of Europeans, he makes up in industry what he lacks in muscle; and as his food costs about one fifth the sum which we generally ...
— Due West - or Round the World in Ten Months • Maturin Murray Ballou

... a precursor of the Calicurgi (The Calicurgus, or Pompilus, is a Hunting Wasp, feeding her larvae on Spiders. Cf. "The Life and Love of the Insect": chapter 12.—Translator's Note.) dwelling in the prehistoric coal-forests. Her prey was some hideous Scorpion, that first-born of the Arachnida. How did the Hymenopteron master the terrible prey? Analogy tells us, by the methods of the present slayer of Tarantulae. It disarmed the adversary; it paralysed the venomous sting by a stroke administered at a point which we could ...
— Bramble-bees and Others • J. Henri Fabre

... Some will take up their lodging at the Ram, some at the Bull, and others at the Twins; some at the Crab, some at the Lion Inn, and others at the sign of the Virgin; some at the Balance, others at the Scorpion, and others will be quartered at the Archer; some will be harboured at the Goat, some at the Water-pourer's sign, some at the Fishes; some will lie at the Crown, some at the Harp, some at the Golden Eagle and the Dolphin; some at the ...
— Gargantua and Pantagruel, Complete. • Francois Rabelais

... restored to me, and looking back along the passage, I saw, clinging to an irregularity in the moldy wall, the most gigantic scorpion I had ever set eyes upon! It was fully as ...
— The Hand Of Fu-Manchu - Being a New Phase in the Activities of Fu-Manchu, the Devil Doctor • Sax Rohmer

... was yet alive when I was about three years old, and he had passed his hundredth. One day they had been altering a certain conduit pertaining to a cistern, and there issued from it a great scorpion unperceived by them, which crept down from the cistern to the ground, and slank away beneath a bench. I saw it, and ran up to it, and laid my hands upon it. It was so big that when I had it in my little hands, it put out its tail on one side, and on the other thrust ...
— The Autobiography of Benvenuto Cellini • Benvenuto Cellini

... in animals to the crustacea, as to the lobster, crab, scorpion, etc., and in great measure deprive them of the beauty which we find in higher orders, so that we are reduced to look for their beauty to single parts and joints, and ...
— Modern Painters Volume II (of V) • John Ruskin

... living form that epithets such as the 'seizer,' the 'one that lurks,' and the like apply with peculiar aptness. In a tablet belonging to a long series of incantations,[349] we find references to various animals—the serpent, the scorpion, monsters—that are regarded as the ...
— The Religion of Babylonia and Assyria • Morris Jastrow

... envy her sterile friend, who in turn may complain of her loneliness; but if they balance what they gain with what they lose, they will find the both sides are equal. The law of balance strictly forbids one's monopoly of happiness. It applies its scorpion whip to anyone who is given to pleasures. Joy in extremity lives next door to exceeding sorrow. "Where there is much light," says Goethe, "shadow is deep." Age, withered and disconsolate, lurks under the skirts of blooming youth. The celebration of birthday ...
— The Religion of the Samurai • Kaiten Nukariya

... tarantulas and centipedes, and sometimes a scorpion. But these don't crawl around much at night. The only thing to worry about ...
— The Call of the Canyon • Zane Grey

... terror, as a huge scorpion, malevolent, and with its tail raised to strike, scuttled away and vanished through a gaping void where once the corridor-door had swung. "Oh, oh! Where am ...
— Darkness and Dawn • George Allan England

... supper, a game iv cards, lock th' windy, wind th' clock an' so to bed. That may do f'r th' East. But in th' West, we demand Sthrenuse Life an' Sudden Death. We're people out here on th' des'late plains where th' sun sets pink acrost th' gray desert an' th' scorpion clings to th' toe. We don't want pianny tuners or plasther saints to govern us. We want men who go to bed with their spurs on, an' can break a gun without spikin' their thumbs. We'll have thim too. Undher precedin' administhrations, th' job wint to th' la-ads with no more qualifications thin ...
— Observations by Mr. Dooley • Finley Peter Dunne

... laws of the Sabbatical year apply, but they are not to be cleared off from being private property, nor is their price to be cleared off from being private property." "And which are these?" "The root of the deceitful scallion, and the root of the mint, and scorpion grass,(68) and the bulbs of the milk-flower, and the spikenard, and a kind of dye-stuff, the dye-plant, and the wormwood,—to them the laws of the Sabbatical year apply, and to their price the laws of the Sabbatical year apply. They are not to be cleared off from being ...
— Hebrew Literature

... legs of the black spider and bound together with black horse hair; a black thimble-like cup, not much longer than the cup of an acorn, made of the black switch of a mule containing the liver of a scorpion. The horny head and neck of the huge black beetle, commonly known to negroes as the black Betsy Bug; the rattle and button of a rattlesnake; the fang-tooth of a cotton-mouth moccasin, the left hind foot of a frog, seeds of the stinging nettle, and pods of peculiar plants, all incased ...
— The Bishop of Cottontown - A Story of the Southern Cotton Mills • John Trotwood Moore

... heathenish magical nostrums; Digging in leaves and at stumps for centipedes, pismires, and spiders, Grubbing in poisonous pools for hot salamanders and toadstools; Charming the bats from the flues, snaring the lizards by twilight, Sucking the scorpion's egg and milking ...
— Songs and Other Verse • Eugene Field

... poison-glands of civilization everywhere; but the secretions of those hideous crypts and blind passages that empty themselves into the thoroughfares of English towns are so deadly, that, but for her penal colonies, England, girt by water, as the scorpion with flame, would perish, self-stung, by her own venom. The legates of the great Anti-Civilization have colonized England, as England has colonized Botany Bay. They know the venal ruffianism of the fist and bludgeon, as well as that of ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 75, January, 1864 • Various

... to pass that when I had been cast into the outer darkness, I saw a great ditch which was more than two hundred cubits deep, and it was filled with reptiles; each reptile had seven heads, and the body of each was like unto that of a scorpion. In this place also lived the Great Worm, the mere sight of which terrified him that looked thereat. In his mouth he had teeth like unto iron stakes, and one took me and threw me to this Worm which never ceased to eat; then immediately all the [other] beasts gathered together near ...
— Egyptian Ideas of the Future Life • E. A. Wallis Budge

... curse; bitter pill, bitter draught; waters of bitterness. annoyance, grievance, nuisance, vexation, mortification, sickener[obs3]; bore, bother, pother, hot water, "sea of troubles" [Hamlet], hornet's nest, plague, pest. cancer, ulcer, sting, thorn; canker &c. (bane) 663; scorpion &c. (evil doer) 913; dagger &c. (arms) 727; scourge &c. (instrument of punishment) 975; carking care, canker worm of care. mishap, misfortune &c. (adversity) 735; desagrement[Fr], esclandre[Fr], rub. source of irritation, source of annoyance; wound, open sore; sore subject, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus

... of wire, Knit like a net, where hearts, set all on fire, Struggled in pants, and could not get releast; Her arms were all with golden pincers drest, And twenty-fashion'd knots, pulleys, and brakes, And all her body girt with painted snakes; Her down-parts in a scorpion's tail combin'd, Freckled with twenty colours; pied wings shin'd Out of her shoulders; cloth had never dye, Nor sweeter colours never viewed eye, In scorching Turkey, Cares, Tartary, Than shin'd about this spirit notorious; Nor was Arachne's web so glorious. Of lightning, and of ...
— Hero and Leander and Other Poems • Christopher Marlowe and George Chapman

... be provided with a sting in their tail, like the common scorpion. By way of change, I turn them out now with a sting in their head, like the common mosquito. Mosquitoes are much less dangerous than scorpions, but they're a deal ...
— Post-Prandial Philosophy • Grant Allen

... and other requisites for an assault were preparing, he rode round the city with some Numidian horsemen, in order to observe in what quarter the attack might be best made. Having advanced towards the rampart, the person who happened to stand next him was struck by a weapon from a scorpion; and, terrified at an accident in which he had been exposed to so much danger, he retired, gave directions for sounding a retreat, and fortified a camp out of the reach of weapons. The Roman fleet from Messana came to Locri several hours before night. The troops ...
— History of Rome, Vol III • Titus Livius

... heard of it, more especially as there were found many to believe Ben-Abid's words. She stood before her room upon the terrace, where Zouaves were playing cards with the dancers in the sun, and she cursed him in a shrill voice, calling him son of a scorpion, and requesting that Allah would send great troubles upon his relations, even upon his aged grandmother. That the miraculous reputation of her treasure should be thus scouted, and herself insulted, vexed her to ...
— Halima And The Scorpions - 1905 • Robert Hichens

... locusts. He had caught a goodly number, when he saw a Scorpion, and mistaking him for a locust, reached out his hand to take him. The Scorpion, showing his sting, said: "If you had but touched me, my friend, you would have lost me, and all ...
— Aesop's Fables • Aesop

... falling most likely into the ink-bottle first, and then spinning about with their long legs, smearing everything with which they came in contact, till she used to run away and implore her husband to "kill them all and have done with it." The children thought it was rather fun, except when a scorpion stung them. They had a play about the lizards, which were pretty and harmless, and they used to count how many different kinds of ...
— Little Folks (October 1884) - A Magazine for the Young • Various

... San Diego and Coronado Islands from Grossmont Grade on Palomar Mountain Pelican Bay, Klamath Lake On Klamath River Klamath Lake and Link River Spring Creek Wood River, Oregon The Killican Williamson River Scorpion Harbor, Santa Cruz Island Smugglers' Cove, San Clemente Island Arch Rock, Santa Cruz Island Cueva Valdez, Santa Cruz Island Lily Rock, Idyllwild The Entrance and Mission Arches, Glenwood Mission Inn, ...
— Out of Doors—California and Oregon • J. A. Graves

... when he who climbs, had need To walk uncrippled: for the sun had now To Taurus the meridian circle left, And to the Scorpion left the night. As one That makes no pause, but presses on his road, Whate'er betide him, if some urgent need Impel: so enter'd we upon our way, One before other; for, but singly, none That steep and narrow scale ...
— The Divine Comedy, Complete - The Vision of Paradise, Purgatory and Hell • Dante Alighieri

... twelve coins for the same year tells us that the house of the sun, in the language of the astrologers, is in the lion, that of the moon in the crab, the houses of Venus in the scales and the bull, those of Mars in the scorpion and the ram, those of Jupiter in the archer and the fishes, those of Saturn in the sea-goat and aquarius, those of Mercury in the virgin and the twins. On the coins of the same year we have the eagle and thunderbolt, the sphinx, the bull Apis, the Nile and crocodile, ...
— History Of Egypt From 330 B.C. To The Present Time, Volume 11 (of 12) • S. Rappoport

... pleasure that the rest of Arezzo rose against his right (for right he had:) the depreciation of the lowest of mankind is more painful, than the applause of the highest is pleasing. The sting of the scorpion is more in torture than the possession of any thing short of Venus would ...
— The Diary of an Ennuyee • Anna Brownell Jameson

... hands on her lap was of another type altogether—of that type of which it is impossible to predicate anything except that it makes itself felt in every company. Any respectable astrologer would have had no difficulty in assigning her birth to the sign of the Scorpion. In outward appearance she was not remarkable, though extremely pleasing, and it was a pleasingness that grew upon acquaintance. Her beauty, such as it was, was based upon a good foundation: upon regular features, a slightly cleft rounded chin, a quantity of dark coiled hair, ...
— The Necromancers • Robert Hugh Benson

... stung, scorpion! Now Menelaus's Greek horns are out o' doors, there's a new cuckold starts up on ...
— The Works of John Dryden, Vol. 6 (of 18) - Limberham; Oedipus; Troilus and Cressida; The Spanish Friar • John Dryden

... persecutions and night-long battles with sanguinary fleas. The discomforts and grievances of his palate under the ordeal of foreign cooking were a real relish for us. On a hot morning in the tropics, we see him pulling on his stocking with a scorpion in it, and dancing in involuntary joy under the effects of the sting. Let him dance; it is all for our amusement. Let him meet with what he will—robbers, cannibals, jungle-tigers, and rattlesnakes, the more the better—since we know that he will get off alive, and come to regard ...
— International Weekly Miscellany Vol. I. No. 3, July 15, 1850 • Various

... raid on the ranch. The fracas which followed the Hawk's escape from the trap was bloody and grim enough, and resulted in the erasure of Judd and all his men save one; but the important thing to the following affair was that Judd's ship, the Scorpion, fell into Carse's hands with one prisoner and the ship's log, containing the space coordinates for a prearranged assignation of Judd ...
— The Affair of the Brains • Anthony Gilmore

... still are the blue or white flowers of the FIELD FORGET-ME-NOT, SCORPION GRASS, or MOUSE-EAR (M. arvenis), whose stems and leaves are covered with bristly hairs. It blooms from August to July in dry places, even on hillsides, an unusual locality in which to find a member of this moisture-loving clan. All the flowers remain ...
— Wild Flowers, An Aid to Knowledge of Our Wild Flowers and - Their Insect Visitors - - Title: Nature's Garden • Neltje Blanchan

... in a whisper, glancing about him as if apprehensive of being overheard—"he may be here, in Cairo, bringing with him the scorching breath of the desert—the scorpion wind!" ...
— Brood of the Witch-Queen • Sax Rohmer

... enough for a whole generation of snakes, but in the wisdom attributed to serpents he was woefully wanting. He would run by my side in the street as I rode, expecting that I would pause to accept a large wiggling scorpion as a gift, or purchase a viper, I suppose for a riding-whip or a necktie. One day when I was in a jam of about a hundred donkey-boys, trying to outride the roaring mob, and all of a fever with heat and dust, Abdullah spied me, and, joining ...
— The Gypsies • Charles G. Leland

... the boys came out to meet him as before, saying: 'Give me my bird!' and he put a scorpion into the hand of each, and it stung him, and he died. But to the youngest only he ...
— The Grey Fairy Book • Various

... philosophy of my poem. For it is man's natural and inveterate stupidity (Schopenhauer calls it Will) that forces man to live and continue his species. Reason is the opposing force. As time goes on reason becomes more and more complete, until at last it turns upon the will and denies it, like the scorpion, which, if surrounded by a ring of fire, will turn and sting itself to death. Were the man to escape, and returning find the woman dead, it would not be reason but accident which put an end ...
— Mike Fletcher - A Novel • George (George Augustus) Moore

... And hence so dear to poor, weak womankind. But why are those, Calvinus, thought to 'scape Unpunished, whom in every fearful shape Guilt still alarms, and conscience ne'er asleep Wounds with incessant strokes 'not loud but deep', While the vexed mind, her own tormentor, plies A scorpion scourge, unmarked by human eyes? Trust me, no tortures which the poets feign, Can match the fierce, the unutterable pain He feels, who night and day, devoid of rest, Carries his own ...
— Post-Augustan Poetry - From Seneca to Juvenal • H.E. Butler

... its body made an excellent canja. We saw parties of monkeys; and the false bellbirds uttered their ringing whistles in the dense timber around our tents. The giant ants, an inch and a quarter long, were rather too plentiful around this camp; one stung Kermit; it was almost like the sting of a small scorpion, and pained severely for a couple of hours. This ...
— Through the Brazilian Wilderness • Theodore Roosevelt

... been thankful to cry off. Roy, however, must not suspect the truth—Roy, who himself might be the stumbling-block. The suspicion stung like a scorpion; though it soothed a little his ...
— Far to Seek - A Romance of England and India • Maud Diver

... the tattooer of the Indian village, who offers her services for a small fee. Hindu females are very fond of having their bodies tattooed. The Korathy first makes a sketch of the figure of a scorpion or a serpent on the part of the body offered to her for tattooing, then takes a number of sharp needles, dips them in some liquid preparation which she has ready, and pricks the flesh most mercilessly. In a few days the whole appears green. This is considered a mark of ...
— Tales of Ind - And Other Poems • T. Ramakrishna

... his mouth wide, and revealed to Leothric the ranks of his sabre teeth, and his leather gums flapped upwards. But while Leothric made to smite at his head, he shot forward scorpion-wise over his head the length of his armoured tail. All this the eye perceived in the hilt of Sacnoth, who smote suddenly sideways. Not with the edge smote Sacnoth, for, had he done so, the severed end of the tail had still come hurtling on, as some pine tree that the avalanche has hurled ...
— The Sword of Welleran and Other Stories • Lord Dunsany

... shafts of polished conversation Wei Chang had followed Fa Fai's indication and had seated himself upon a low bench without any very definite perception of his movements. He now arose with the unstudied haste of one who has inconvenienced a scorpion. ...
— Kai Lung's Golden Hours • Ernest Bramah

... to the wolves, instead of throwing her boy over the back of the sleigh in the usual way, is also highly praised. But their devotion shrinks to nothing when compared with that of any poor mother scorpion of Mexico's sandy tracts. ...
— Editorials from the Hearst Newspapers • Arthur Brisbane

... various birth. Loathsome, unsightly, swoln to obscene bulk, Lurk'd the dark toad beneath the infected turf; The slow-worm crawl'd, the light cameleon climb'd, And changed his colour as his pace he changed; The nimble lizard ran from bough to bough, Glancing through light, in shadow disappearing; The scorpion, many-eyed, with sting of fire, Bred there,—the legion-fiend of creeping things; Terribly beautiful, the serpent lay, Wreath'd like a coronet of gold and jewels, Fit for a tyrant's brow; anon he flew Straight ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 10, - Issue 286, December 8, 1827 • Various

... held that the Gospels were not to be taken literally, 266-m. Origin of things according to Anaxagoras, 495-m. Origin of the Truth taught by Deity to the first men, 687-l. Origination of matter from spirit incapable of expression, 673-m. Orion killed by the sting of the Scorpion, 454-m. Ormuzd and Ahriman: antagonism of Good and Evil typified by the contest between, 594-l. Ormuzd and Ahriman each created twenty-four Deities, 662-l. Ormuzd and Ahriman each gave six emanations, 662-l. Ormuzd and Ahriman ever at war; Light and Darkness contest, 662-l. Ormuzd and ...
— Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry • Albert Pike

... "Kitmudgar, remove that scorpion from the punka, before it drops into the Sahib's plate.—Hold, miscreant! who told you ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 4, February, 1858 • Various

... abundance of false bank-notes had completely captivated him. The forger was certainly arrested in the hotel where he had put up, but the dinner and the chumming were inventions; at any rate, Balzac affirmed they were, uttering furious anathemas against the scorpion Girardin, who had allowed so illustrious a name to be taken ...
— Balzac • Frederick Lawton

... among you, of whom if his son ask bread, he will give him a stone; or a fish, will instead of a fish give him a serpent? (12)Or if he shall ask an egg, will he give him a scorpion? (13)If ye then, being evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit ...
— The New Testament of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. • Various

... on the eleventh tablet of the Gilgamesh epic, abounds in supernatural terror. To seek the gift of immortality from his ancestor, Ut-napishtim, the hero undertakes a weary and perilous journey. He passes the mountain guarded by a scorpion man and woman, where the sun goes down; he traverses a dark and dreadful road, where never man trod, and at last crosses the waters of death. During the deluge, which is predicted by his ancestor, the gods themselves are stricken ...
— The Tale of Terror • Edith Birkhead

... Bang. "I am bewitched and bedevilled. Murder! a scorpion has dropped from the roof into my mouth, and stung me on the nose. Murder! Tom—Tom Cringle—Captain—Transom, my dear fellows, awake and send for the doctor. Oh ...
— Tom Cringle's Log • Michael Scott

... tale a minute to point out the constellation of the Scorpion, and to say, "Those stars are Pipiri Ma, the children, who lived at Mataiea long ago. That is a strange story of their leaving their parents' house for ...
— Mystic Isles of the South Seas. • Frederick O'Brien

... through the black man's soul with light and power, as he spoke; it thrilled through the sinner's soul, too, like the bite of a scorpion. Legree gnashed on him with his teeth, but rage kept him silent; and Tom, like a man disenthralled, spoke, in a ...
— Uncle Tom's Cabin • Harriet Beecher Stowe

... sneer. When a scorpion nursed at my bosom sneers at me, I leave it to its own reflections. But I don't speak of the years in which that scorpion has been enjoying a salary and smoking canaster at my expense. I refer to an earlier dodge in its checkered existence. ...
— What Will He Do With It, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... a little composed, I tied up my thumb with a rag torn from my shirt. The wound in a few minutes' time had grown exceedingly painful—for the tooth of a rat is almost as poisonous as the bite of a scorpion—and small as was the scratch, I anticipated a good deal ...
— The Boy Tar • Mayne Reid

... we reached the city of Illel. It was night-time when we came to the grove that is outside the walls, and the air was sultry, for the Moon was travelling in Scorpion. We took the ripe pomegranates from the trees, and brake them, and drank their sweet juices. Then we lay down on our carpets, and waited ...
— Selected Prose of Oscar Wilde - with a Preface by Robert Ross • Oscar Wilde

... me of the Scorpion's suicide, sworn to by some, denied by others. What truth is there in the story of the Scorpion who, surrounded by a circle of fire, puts an end to his suffering by stabbing himself with his poisoned sting? ...
— The Glow-Worm and Other Beetles • Jean Henri Fabre

... finds brotherly admission. Weary and despairing is he beyond all earthly despair, for the very altar of his God seems to have failed him. He asked for bread, and has got a stone,—he asked a fish, and has got a scorpion. Again and again the worldly, almost scoffing, tone of the superior to whom he has been confessing sounds like the hiss of a serpent ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IX., March, 1862., No. LIII. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics, • Various

... vacate the houses, and leave them to the ants, who soon stream in. Those who have seen them say that it is a wonderful spectacle. Nothing living escapes them. They search every hole, nook, and cranny. Here, dozens may be seen surrounding a great spider or scorpion; there, they chase sprawling long-legged creatures across the window-panes; yonder, hundreds of them may be observed dragging out a rat or a mouse which they have killed: even snakes can not escape from the sharp and poisonous bite of these bold foragers. It takes ...
— Harper's Young People, October 19, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various

... did her." She seemed most wroth. But she repented sore In truth, and pined away in sorrow deep. In other days she had no wish nor whim Unsatisfied. Now all were for the King. The Queen's heart angrier grew from day to day As if a scorpion's sting had wounded her. And her distress grew greater when she thought Upon the love of other days. Her heart Was inconsolable because so bitterly She missed the pomp and glory of her court. But Bidasari to the King one day Said: "Send back these ...
— Malayan Literature • Various Authors

... essential to membership in the Christian Church, as well as what was essential to its existence and prosperity. I may also observe, that if the existence of class-meetings cannot be maintained except by the terror of the scorpion-whip, or rather executioner's sword, of expulsion from the church, it says little for them as a privilege, or place of delightful and joyous resort. My own conviction is, that if class-meetings, like love-feasts, were maintained ...
— The Story of My Life - Being Reminiscences of Sixty Years' Public Service in Canada • Egerton Ryerson

... by no means stimulating enough for the blase taste of Martial's day. The age cried for point, and with point Martial supplies it to the full extent of its demand. His pungency is sometimes wonderful; the whole flavour of many a sparkling little poem is pressed into one envenomed word, like the scorpion's tail whose last joint is a sting. The marvel is that with that biting pen of his the poet could find so many warm friends. But the truth is, he was far more than a mere sharp-shooter of wit. He had a genuine love of good fellowship, a warm ...
— A History of Roman Literature - From the Earliest Period to the Death of Marcus Aurelius • Charles Thomas Cruttwell

... Gilgamish set out to go to the west he was attacked either by men or animals, but he overcame them and went on until he arrived at Mount Mashu, where it would seem the sun was thought both to rise and to set. The approach to this mountain was guarded by Scorpion-men, whose aspect was so terrible that the mere sight of it was sufficient to kill the mortal who beheld them; even the mountains collapsed under the glance of their eyes. When Gilgamish saw the Scorpion-men he was smitten with fear, and ...
— The Babylonian Story of the Deluge - as Told by Assyrian Tablets from Nineveh • E. A. Wallis Budge

... horror ever excluded study? Since when has malady banished medicine? Can one imagine a naturalist refusing to study the viper, the bat, the scorpion, the centipede, the tarantula, and one who would cast them back into their darkness, saying: "Oh! how ugly that is!" The thinker who should turn aside from slang would resemble a surgeon who should ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo



Words linked to "Scorpion" :   astrology, house, someone, sign, arachnoid, mansion, somebody, star divination, soul, star sign, arachnid, sign of the zodiac, person, individual, planetary house, mortal



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