"Serpent" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... ship's company, viz., the sight of a twenty-five feet bottle-nosed whale, which every one rushed to see, and which for some time played around the ship, accompanied by a couple of porpoise. The animal caused as much excitement as if it had been the mythical sea serpent itself. We saw them in dozens afterwards, but never with the same enthusiasm. Of course, the first whale had to be immortalised, and two of our party sketched and painted it; not without difficulty, however, for the rolling of the ship sent the water-colours or the turpentine sliding away ...
— A Girl's Ride in Iceland • Ethel Brilliana Alec-Tweedie
... 8. Reptiles and Insects. The forms of the serpent and lizard exhibit almost every element of beauty and horror in strange combination; the horror, which in an imitation is felt only as a pleasurable excitement, has rendered them favorite subjects in all periods of art; and the unity of both lizard ...
— The Stones of Venice, Volume I (of 3) • John Ruskin
... in the form of a serpent, loves Lycius, a young Corinthian. In order to win him she prays to Hermes, who answers her appeal by transforming her into a lovely maiden. Lycius meets her in the wood, is smitten with love for her, and goes with her to her enchanted palace, where the ...
— Edward MacDowell • Lawrence Gilman
... 'The serpent whispered Lilith's name: ('Twas thus he drove me to my shame) Pluck yonder fruit, he said, and know, How Adam loved HER, long ago. (Fools, fools, ...
— Poems of Experience • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... comforted. I had a perfectly beastly time ahead of me, but now it was all glorified and coloured with the thought of the girl who had sung 'Cherry Ripe' in the garden. I commended the wisdom of that old serpent Bullivant in the choice of his intermediary, for I'm hanged if I would have taken such orders ...
— Mr. Standfast • John Buchan
... dreams of the most distressing kind. We imagine a wild beast, or a serpent in pursuit of us; or a rock is detached from some neighboring cliff, and is about to roll upon and crush us; and yet all our efforts to fly are unavailing. We seem chained to the spot; but while in the very jaws ...
— The Young Mother - Management of Children in Regard to Health • William A. Alcott
... remarkable one at Lochnell, near Oban, in Argyllshire, which promises to become as celebrated as Stonehenge itself, combining as it does not only the mystic circle, but a representation, clearly defined, of the mysterious serpent, the worship of which entered so largely into all the Oriental religions of remote antiquity. There are other circles in Lewis and the various islands of the Hebrides, and as far north as Orkney and Shetland. It was, as we learn from various authorities, the practice of the Druidical priests ...
— The Celtic Magazine, Vol. 1, No. 2, December 1875 • Various
... widow thrust back upon my hands! Fine luck, eh? And then, to cap all, she takes her six hundred a year and goes off by herself, and gives me the cold shoulder completely. What is it Shakespeare says? 'How sharper than a serpent's teeth'——" ...
— The Market-Place • Harold Frederic
... in its movements to gain sanctuary under a furze bush. Soon after, while reaching out his hand to get at a cluster of blackberries, he saw beneath him in an open sunny patch, where all was yellow sand, a curled-up grey serpent, not three feet from his extended hand. It was thick and short, the tail being joined on to the body without the graduation seen in the others, while the creature's neck looked thin and small behind the flat, ...
— The Vast Abyss - The Story of Tom Blount, his Uncles and his Cousin Sam • George Manville Fenn
... When a young man he was given a lute. Practised in obscurity, and later appeared before large audiences. Made several successful concert tours. Married Eurydice. Spent a happy honeymoon. The bride did not wear shoes. She was bitten by a serpent. She died. O. descended to the abode of Old Nic, and charmed him with some Grecian ragtime. Nic promised to return the lady if O. would promise to get out of the place without looking around to see what other respectable people were there. O. started for ...
— Who Was Who: 5000 B. C. to Date - Biographical Dictionary of the Famous and Those Who Wanted to Be • Anonymous
... grief entirely contradicted by his face, "see, this woman has been bewitched: the poison of your pernicious doctrines has reached the very interior of my house. I fancied I would be able to educate my daughter in the love of good principles, but I have warmed a very serpent at my heart. Luckily, I see my faithful Alete attending only to the positive and who now says that dinner is ready or Christmas-day. Christmas ...
— International Miscellany of Literature, Art and Science, Vol. 1, - No. 3, Oct. 1, 1850 • Various
... greenstone, high raised from the valley-sole, facing north-west, and reducible to two main blocks, is scattered over with these "inscriptions," that spread in all directions. Most of them are Arab Wusum, others are rude drawings of men and beasts, amongst which are conspicuous the artless camel and the serpent; and there is a duello between two funny warriors armed with sword and shield. These efforts of art resemble, not a little, the "Totem" attempts of the "Red Indians" in North and South America. There are, however, two scrapings evidently alphabetic, and probably Nabathan, which ...
— The Land of Midian, Vol. 2 • Richard Burton
... He had gone out to a New Year party with relatives. Asako felt her loneliness all of a sudden; and she was grateful for the moral comfort of cousin Sadako's sword. She drew it from its sheath and examined the blade, and the fine work on the hilt, with care and alarm, like a man fingering a serpent. ...
— Kimono • John Paris
... back from the steely glitter as men step back from a serpent; "are you afraid of burglars? or when and why do you deal death out of that ...
— Manalive • G. K. Chesterton
... sword fish, the tonne,—or the eccentricities. Some are very thin round disks, with long, brilliant, wormy feelers in lieu of fins, flickering in all directions like a moving pendent silver fringe;—others bristle with spines;—others, serpent-bodied, are so speckled as to resemble shapes of red polished granite. These are moringues. The balaou, couliou, macriau, lazard, tcha-tcha, bonnique, and zorphi severally represent almost all possible tints of blue and violet. The souri is rose-color and yellow; the ...
— Two Years in the French West Indies • Lafcadio Hearn
... but the vision before him. He was living in the world that never was; the sound of flutes was wafted on the breeze from fairyland. Pulsing bosom and sheen of sun-kissed shoulders.... Ah! maddening modesty and virtue, how inconsistent are thy ways! No wonder so many forget about the cursed serpent.... ...
— Reno - A Book of Short Stories and Information • Lilyan Stratton
... longer be skirted, for they can be luxuriously crossed,—and by one of the best carriage-roads in Europe. Beginning at Eaux Bonnes, and running in the main parallel with the central crest, it rears itself serpent-like over four of these great intervening barriers, attaining and crossing in turn the broad valleys between them, connecting northward with the stations, southward with the springs. This immense band, sinuous and unbroken, ...
— A Midsummer Drive Through The Pyrenees • Edwin Asa Dix
... from the porch they go And, but the landlord, none had cause of woe: His cup was vanished; for, in secret guise, The younger guest purloined the glittering prize. As one who spies a serpent in his way, Glistening and basking in the summer ray, Disordered, stops to shun the danger near, Then walks with faintness on, and looks with fear,— So seemed the sire, when, far upon the road, The shining ...
— McGuffey's Sixth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey
... two globes; three Mapps; two queres of larg paper to make tables; a paper fol-booke; A Ruleing penn; 24 dossen Chains; A geniological roul; and a larg serpent or ...
— The Care of Books • John Willis Clark
... Brady, the girl who loved Jim Denton. As she faced them for a second both saw that her eyes gleamed dangerously. Without even stopping she made a remark to Faith—the words were hissed between her teeth with the venom of a serpent. ...
— For Gold or Soul? - The Story of a Great Department Store • Lurana W. Sheldon
... of the sacred serpent, which in the ancient language of Canaan was variously pronounced, was derived from "ob" (inflare), perhaps from his peculiarity of inflation when irritated. See Bryant's Analysis, vol. i.; Deane's Worship of ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 77, April 19, 1851 • Various
... giant oaks lay shattered and broken, the sight had caused her deep grief, until she wove a legend about them and turned them into monsters for Perseus to subdue with Medusa's head. One, indeed, whose trunk was gnarled and twisted, became the serpent of the brazen scales who sleepeth not, guarding the ...
— Halcyone • Elinor Glyn
... her work being a copy of the Epistles of St. Paul, now at the Bodleian. The black silk binding is covered with devices embroidered by the Princess during her sequestration at Woodstock, representing the Judgment of Solomon and the Brazen Serpent, and these have been reproduced by Dibdin in 'Bibliomania.' From an inventory published in Archaeologia we learn that, in the sixteenth year of her reign, the Queen possessed a book of the Evangelists, of which the covers were decorated ...
— The Book-Hunter in London - Historical and Other Studies of Collectors and Collecting • William Roberts
... Like a flock of serpent-throated black-plumed swans, With the mandoline, viol, and the drum, Gems afire on arms ungloved, Fluttering fans, Floating mantles like a great moth's streaky ...
— The Poems of Emma Lazarus - Vol. I (of II.), Narrative, Lyric, and Dramatic • Emma Lazarus
... Sunne that Morrow see. Your Face, my Thane, is as a Booke, where men May reade strange matters, to beguile the time. Looke like the time, beare welcome in your Eye, Your Hand, your Tongue: looke like th' innocent flower, But be the Serpent vnder't. He that's comming, Must be prouided for: and you shall put This Nights great Businesse into my dispatch, Which shall to all our Nights, and Dayes to come, Giue solely soueraigne ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare
... tertiary species between the years 1870 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 three ...
— A History of Science, Volume 3(of 5) • Henry Smith Williams
... there is a manner of serpent, by the which men assay and prove, whether their children be bastards or no, or of lawful marriage: for if they be born in right marriage, the serpents go about them, and do them no harm, and if they be born in avoutry, the ...
— The Travels of Sir John Mandeville • Author Unknown
... upper blue, with huge dazzling clouds moving, like herds of white elephants pasturing across heavenly fields, too slowly for the eye to note their motion; and below, the far-reaching, tremulous sheen of reed and bulrush, the wet lair of serpent, wild-cat, and alligator. Now and then there was the cool blue of sunny, wind-swept waters winding hither and thither toward the sea, and sometimes miles of deep forest swamp through which the railroad went by broad, frowzy, treeless clearings flanked with impassable oozy ditches; but ...
— Bonaventure - A Prose Pastoral of Acadian Louisiana • George Washington Cable
... how well off they were, till the serpent came," Archie suggested. "I have a notion we shall have a better time than ever, now ...
— Teddy: Her Book - A Story of Sweet Sixteen • Anna Chapin Ray
... one, What bred 'twixt Thomas Rhodes and John Cabanis The deadly strife? His daughter Flossie, she, Returning from her wandering with a troop Of strolling players, walked the village streets, Her bracelets tinkling and with sparkling rings And words of serpent wisdom and a smile Of cunning in her eyes. Then Thomas Rhodes, Who ruled the church and ruled the bank as well, Made known his disapproval of the maid; And all Spoon River whispered and the eyes Of all the church frowned on her, till she knew They feared her and condemned. ...
— Spoon River Anthology • Edgar Lee Masters
... regarded as his work; on that ground it inspired great distrust in the public as well as the magistrates. "The people, to whom everything that came from this minister looked suspicious, knew not whether beneath these flowers there were not a serpent concealed, and were apprehensive that this establishment was, at the very least, a new prop to support is domination, that it was but a batch of folks in his pay, hired to maintain all that he did and to observe the actions and sentiments of others. It went ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume V. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... ordained in heaven for some divine motion of the soul, till Adam, with his loss of Paradise, debauched it with jealousies, fears and curiosities, and mixed it with all that was afflicting; but you'll say he had reason to be jealous, whose woman, for want of other seducers, listened to the serpent, and for the love of change, would give way even to a devil; this little love of novelty and knowledge has been entailed upon her daughters ever since, and I have known more women rendered unhappy and miserable from this torment of ...
— Love-Letters Between a Nobleman and His Sister • Aphra Behn
... anything else to disturb our corn except the wild varmints; and the old serpent himself, with a fence to help him, couldn't ...
— David Crockett: His Life and Adventures • John S. C. Abbott
... now the sun 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 head and shoulders of the hideous colossus, on whose dizzy ...
— The People Of The Mist • H. Rider Haggard
... Bearers. He climbed up to the robin's nest, And out there darted, from his rest, A serpent with a crimson crest, And stung him in ...
— The Golden Legend • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... mystic chant—tones low and sweet as music in dreams by maids who sleep in Dian's bosom, yet wilder, fiercer than trumpets blown for war. As a sailor drawn to his doom by siren song, or a bird spellbound by some noxious serpent, she advances fearfully and slow until she is swept into his strong arms and held quivering there like a splotch of foam in a swift eddy of the upper Nile. The room swims before her eyes and fills with mocking demons that welcome her to the realm ...
— Volume 1 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... eternity. It is amusing to notice that many of the moderns, whether sceptics or mystics, have taken as their sign a certain eastern symbol, which is the very symbol of this ultimate nullity. When they wish to represent eternity, they represent it by a serpent with his tail in his mouth. There is a startling sarcasm in the image of that very unsatisfactory meal. The eternity of the material fatalists, the eternity of the eastern pessimists, the eternity of the supercilious theosophists and higher ...
— Orthodoxy • G. K. Chesterton
... insect bites had become festering wounds, as indeed was the case with all of us. Poisonous ants, biting flies, ticks, wasps, bees were a perpetual torment. However, no one had yet been bitten by a venomous serpent, a scorpion, or a centipede, although we had killed all of the ...
— Through the Brazilian Wilderness • Theodore Roosevelt
... of. A shout drew my attention, and on looking up a sight met my gaze which drove all thoughts of ruby-hunting from my mind, and made self-preservation my only concern. The rope by which I had descended, relieved of my weight, swayed like a serpent endowed with life, and for this reason, perhaps, it was being fiercely attacked, about midway from the top, by a flock of white eagles which tore at the hemp with beak and claws. I ran to the cradle; but I had ...
— Adventures in Southern Seas - A Tale of the Sixteenth Century • George Forbes
... it was a minstrel, with a harp at his back, who stopped to rest and exchange a song for a horn of mead. Once the Queen herself, riding in a shining gilded wagon, came in and bought some of the graceful spiral bracelets. She said that Alwin's eyes were as bright as a young serpent's; but she did not ...
— The Thrall of Leif the Lucky • Ottilie A. Liljencrantz
... young man, who, after all, has rendered us a service. As to myself, who am accused of acting thoughtlessly in wishing to introduce him among us, I consider this opinion an insult to my dignity. I have acted in the affair with the wisdom of the serpent; if a formal vote does not maintain me this character for prudence, ...
— Bohemians of the Latin Quarter • Henry Murger
... themselves. Some of them had already fought with giants and slain dragons; and the younger ones, who had not yet met with such good fortune, thought it a shame to have lived so long without getting astride of a flying serpent or sticking their spears into a Chimaera, or at least thrusting their right arms down a monstrous lion's throat. There was a fair prospect that they would meet with plenty of such adventures before finding the Golden Fleece. As soon as they could furbish up their helmets and shields, therefore, ...
— Famous Tales of Fact and Fancy - Myths and Legends of the Nations of the World Retold for Boys and Girls • Various
... the watch solemnly struck ten. A little later, groups of lights appeared in the distance and a great crowd wound its way, like some great serpent, along the roads in the darkness, ...
— The Home and the World • Rabindranath Tagore
... purple clusters pour'd the foamy wine, Thy genius did his sallow brows adorn, And made the beauties of the season thine. With rustling sound the yellow foliage flies, And wantons with the wind in rapid whirls, The gurgling rivulet to the vallies hies, Whilst on its bank the spangled serpent curls. * * * * * Pale rugged Winter bending o'er his tread; His grizzled hair bedropt with icy dew; His eyes a dusky light congeal'd and dead, His robe a ...
— Lives of the English Poets - From Johnson to Kirke White, Designed as a Continuation of - Johnson's Lives • Henry Francis Cary
... seemed also to have absorbed some instruction from his failure, and instead of leaping at once, began a stealthy advance, coming over the side of the canoe with the gliding motion of a serpent, and evidently wishing to get so near that his victim could not escape again by ...
— The Land of Mystery • Edward S. Ellis
... comments were a continual delight to us. Uncle Jesse was one of those interesting and rare people who, in the picturesque phraseology of the shore folks, "never speak but they say something." The milk of human kindness and the wisdom of the serpent were mingled in Uncle Jesse's ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1909 to 1922 • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... no bodies, how could they appear? A. Angels could appear by taking bodies to render themselves visible for a time; just as the Holy Ghost took the form of a dove and the devil took the form of a serpent. ...
— Baltimore Catechism No. 3 (of 4) • Anonymous
... stores, carts for baggage, and vehicles of every known description, occupying a space of road nearly four miles in length, and which, at the infrequent curves in the highway, they could see winding behind them like the tail of some great serpent. And last of all, at the extreme rear of the column, came the herds, "rations on the hoof," a surging, bleating, bellowing mass of sheep and oxen, urged on by blows and raising clouds of dust, reminding one of the old warlike peoples of the ...
— The Downfall • Emile Zola
... with every day our Union shall grow closer. Let faction die; political intrigue cease to rear its serpent head; let doubt become trust; suspicion, faith! Countrymen, let us also learn to pity the unhappy race whom this war must free. You cannot now prevent it; its first tocsin of liberty pealed with the first gun fired at Fort Sumter. After long ages of barbaric ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 2, August, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... getting things wrong end foremost," answered Cap, with a condescending nod. "You have thought of your lakes and rifts as the ship; and of the ocean and the tides as the boat. Neither Arrowhead nor the Serpent need doubt what you have said concerning both, though I confess myself to some difficulty in swallowing the tale about there being inland seas at all, and still more that there is any sea of fresh water. I have come this long journey as much to satisfy ...
— The Pathfinder - The Inland Sea • James Fenimore Cooper
... lands, and in the ancient forests, serpents, scorpions, and other venomous reptiles abounded. Unfortunately, they were not only to be found on land. A sailor in search of marteaux, a very rare kind of bivalve mussel, was stung by a serpent. The fearful suffering and violent convulsions which followed only subsided at the expiration of five or six hours, and at last, the theriac which was administered to him after the bite, effected a cure. This accident was a sad damper to conchological enthusiasm. ...
— Celebrated Travels and Travellers - Part 2. The Great Navigators of the Eighteenth Century • Jules Verne
... he, 'that I shall go when it suits my own convenience; that I quit the castle, he dares to call his, as I would the nest of a serpent, and that this is not the last he shall hear from me. Tell him, I will not leave ANOTHER murder on his conscience, if I ...
— The Mysteries of Udolpho • Ann Radcliffe
... find that the tide has gone out and that the Golondrina is more than fifty metres above the waves. 'I'll wait,' I said to myself. But at this moment I see, thrusting its head out from the tree-top that I was then on, a serpent; I seize a branch, swing up and back for a while so that I can land as far as possible from the lobster, when the damned branch breaks on me ...
— The Quest • Pio Baroja
... Uchchaisravas, from Amrit-wave which burst; Of elephants Airavata; of males the Best and First; Of weapons Heav'n's hot thunderbolt; of cows white Kamadhuk, From whose great milky udder-teats all hearts' desires are strook; Vasuki of the serpent-tribes, round Mandara entwined; And thousand-fanged Ananta, on whose broad coils reclined Leans Vishnu; and of water-things Varuna; Aryam Of Pitris, and, of those that judge, Yama the Judge I am; Of Daityas dread Prahlada; ...
— The Bhagavad-Gita • Sir Edwin Arnold
... is to the story of an owl going to heaven for having, with his beaks, broken a thousand eggs laid by a she-serpent of deadly poison. The Burdwan Pundits have made nonsense of the first line of verse 8. There is no connection between the first and the second lines of this verse. K.P. Singha has rendered ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 3 - Books 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12 • Unknown
... this beautiful earth, Are hunger and nakedness, cold and pain, Over God's sinless creation of love The serpent glides ...
— Victor Roy, A Masonic Poem • Harriet Annie Wilkins
... to Life had to be intensified into unconditional Will to Power; we hold that hardness, violence, slavery, danger in the street and in the heart, secrecy, stoicism, arts of temptation and devilry of all kinds; that everything evil, terrible, tyrannical, wild-beast-like and serpent-like in man contributes to the elevation of the species just as much as its opposite—and in saying this we do not even say enough.—FR. ...
— Gems (?) of German Thought • Various
... canal-boats, and a thousand others; but we have done nothing for the poor Gipsy child or its home. In things pertaining to their present and eternal welfare they have asked for bread and we have given them a stone; and they have asked for fish and we have given them a serpent. We have allowed them to wander and lose themselves in the dark wilds of sin and iniquity without shedding upon their path the light of Gospel truths or the blessings of education; and to-day the Gipsy children are dying, where thousands have died ...
— Gipsy Life - being an account of our Gipsies and their children • George Smith
... explained this to my sister, and often when we were in our own street she would call out 'March!' to see if the long row of houses would not begin to move. However, we liked the old part of Berlin better, where the streets, with their capricious and serpent-like windings, reminded us of the crooked alleys of Moscow. The streamlets of the Spree exercised a powerful attraction over us. Blondchen thought they played hide-and-seek with children, who would run ...
— The Malady of the Century • Max Nordau
... sister Bridget. It was, some thought, wrong to begin with Paul, as all experience, but especially scriptural testimony, taught that temptation was more likely to succeed when woman was the subject or the instrument. So thought Parson Grinoble; and, with true serpent wisdom, he concluded that it was through the woman, the weaker sex, that, in this instance, Popery was to be conquered. Besides, this old hand at proselytism read somewhat of the epistles of St. Paul, and read there of the success of his predecessors in unbelief in seducing "silly women," and ...
— The Cross and the Shamrock • Hugh Quigley
... she continued, in a voice not so subdued but that Heliodora could hear every word. 'I alone can discover for you what you wish to know. Give yourself no more trouble in suing to a woman of whom you are weary—a woman evil and dangerous as a serpent. When you choose to seek me, dear lord, I will befriend you. Till that day, fare you well, and beware of other things than the silver-hilted dagger—which she would draw upon me did she dare. But she knows that I too have my little bosom friend—' she touched her waist—'though ...
— Veranilda • George Gissing
... Inbred sin goes back to the fall of man in the garden of Eden. If not as old as the human race, it is at least as old as the fall. Since sin entered through the beguiling of our mother, Eve, by the serpent, inbred sin has existed as a unit of evil in every child of Adam and Eve. The only exception is the man, Christ Jesus, the God man, the Divine man, the promised seed that should bruise the serpent's head. But as He, the Lord Jesus Christ, was manifested to destroy ...
— The Theology of Holiness • Dougan Clark
... promised to furnish an abundant supply of water. To furnish water for the numerous mills about Mountain City and in Nevada gulch a large ditch had been dug, which started up in the mountains near the Snowy range, and wound like a huge serpent around promontories and the sides and heads of numerous gulches, with a slight incline, for some fifteen miles. It passed around the hills which bordered Leavenworth gulch, a few hundred yards above our mill site. About the time the mill was completed the water was turned off from this ...
— A Gold Hunter's Experience • Chalkley J. Hambleton
... And because he had fallen from heaven, and had become miserable forever, he sought also the misery of all mankind. Wherefore, he said unto Eve, yea, even that old serpent, who is the devil, who is the father of all lies, wherefore he said: Partake of the forbidden fruit, and ye shall not die, but ye shall be as God, ...
— The Book Of Mormon - An Account Written By The Hand Of Mormon Upon Plates Taken - From The Plates Of Nephi • Anonymous
... here is foreign to the one great thought of the painter. The four irregular spaces at the corners are filled with representations of important deliverances of the Jewish people from evil,—David slaying Goliath, the hanging of Haman, the serpent raised in the wilderness, and Judith with the head of Holofernes. The connection in Michael Angelo's mind evidently was that God, who had always provided a help for His people, would also in His own time give ...
— Barbara's Heritage - Young Americans Among the Old Italian Masters • Deristhe L. Hoyt
... per cent. which has a psychological flavour, we soon discover that among those hundred and nine, more than a half are simply definitions of the type of this: "Foolish are they who trust women or good luck, as both like a young serpent creep hither and thither," or this: "Men who are rich are like those who are drunk; in walking they are helped by others, they stagger on smooth roads and talk confusedly." It cannot be said that any psychological observations of the fool's or of the rich man's mind are recorded here. ...
— Psychology and Social Sanity • Hugo Muensterberg
... surrounding them were better known, and consequently more explicable by common sense than the real mysteries of the deep, untrodden forests of New England. The gravest divines not only believed stories similar to that of the double-headed serpent, and other tales of witchcraft, but they made such narrations the subjects of preaching and prayer; and as cowardice makes us all cruel, men who were blameless in many of the relations of life, and even praiseworthy in some, became, from superstition, ...
— Curious, if True - Strange Tales • Elizabeth Gaskell
... 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 ...
— The Hawaiian Archipelago • Isabella L. Bird
... cursed his eldest daughter Goneril so as was terrible to hear; praying that she might never have a child, or if she had, that it might live to return that scorn and contempt upon her which she had shown to him: that she might feel how sharper than a serpent's tooth it was to have a thankless child. And Goneril's husband, the Duke of Albany, beginning to excuse himself for any share which Lear might suppose he had in the unkindness, Lear would not hear him out, but in a rage ordered his horses to be saddled, ...
— Tales from Shakespeare • Charles Lamb and Mary Lamb
... care to put into Latin. At Capua, three days ago, a woman gave birth to a serpent, a winged dragon, which flew away towards Rome. I talked at Neapolis with a man who ...
— Veranilda • George Gissing
... westward of the Pin Portage is called Sandfly Lake; it is seven miles long and a wide channel connects it with the Serpent Lake, the extent of which to the southward we could not discern. There is nothing remarkable in this chain of lakes except their shapes, being rocky basins filled by the waters of the Missinippi, insulating the massy eminences and meandering with almost imperceptible current between ...
— The Journey to the Polar Sea • John Franklin
... know the history of this science. But the multiplicity of treatises already in use, is a reason, not for silence, but for offering more. For, as Lord Bacon observes, the number of ill-written books is not to be diminished by ceasing to write, but by writing others which, like Aaron's serpent, shall ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown
... animal," cries one, "Sure never lived beneath the sun; A lizard's body, lean and long; A fish's head; a serpent's tongue; 10 Its foot with triple claw disjoined; And what a length of tail behind! How slow its pace! And then its hue!— Who ever saw ...
— Story Hour Readings: Seventh Year • E.C. Hartwell
... attack on the underlying strata, and the resulting canyon, while at first not more than two hundred feet deep, rapidly increases this depth, as the strata run up and the river runs down. The canyon is narrow, and seen from a height resembles, as previously mentioned, a dark serpent lying across a plain. As the formation down to the Little Colorado is mainly a fine-grained grey marble, Powell concluded to call this division by a separate name, and gave it the title it now bears, Marble Canyon. There is no separation between Marble Canyon and the following one, the Grand ...
— The Romance of the Colorado River • Frederick S. Dellenbaugh
... road, but even chased him. Many a narrow escape had he from being crushed to death in the embrace of some young tendril that would shoot out, wriggling and writhing toward him like a great green serpent. ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. 5, Nov 1877-Nov 1878 - No 1, Nov 1877 • Various
... earth, is the first mainland inhabited by living creatures, three hundred and sixty-five species,[26] all essentially different from those of our own earth. Some have human heads set on the body of a lion, or a serpent, or an ox; others have human bodies topped by the head of one of these animals. Besides, Tebel is inhabited by human beings with two heads and four hands and feet, in fact with all their organs doubled excepting only the trunk.[27] It happens sometimes that the parts of these double persons quarrel ...
— The Legends of the Jews Volume 1 • Louis Ginzberg
... seemingly about to dart forward, was the largest serpent they had ever seen; the sunlight checkered its bright colored folds. Its red tongue darted wickedly in and out as it faced the ...
— The Boy Aviators' Polar Dash - Or - Facing Death in the Antarctic • Captain Wilbur Lawton
... the delicate odors of burning spices; at the top of the door a great jeweled lantern cast a rich, yellow light down the panels, and the girl gasped involuntarily at the sight revealed to her. Each panel was formed of scales that overlapped like a serpent's; the scales were roughly hammered gold and silver, richly chased, and studded thickly with gems—without any conjecture she knew them to be precious vessels that should have graced an altar, split, perhaps with a ...
— The Pirate Woman • Aylward Edward Dingle
... been obtained, and the similarity of these to some of the thought-forms is remarkable; they suffice to demonstrate how readily vibrations may be transformed into figures. Thus compare fig. 4 with fig. 12, the mother's prayer; or fig. 5 with fig. 10; or fig. 6 with fig. 25, the serpent-like darting forms. Fig. 7 is added as an illustration of the complexity attainable. It seems to us a most marvellous thing that some of the drawings, made apparently at random by the use of this machine, should exactly correspond to higher types of thought-forms created ...
— Thought-Forms • Annie Besant
... Coastguardsman arrived. The light was applied. Suddenly the group of spray-washed men, and a few pale-faced spectators who had ventured to descend, and part of the overhanging cliffs, burst into intense light as the great rocket went out to sea with a wild roar. It was like a horrid fiery serpent, and carried a line tied to its tail! It plunged into the waves, and all was dark again, but there was no cheer from the wreck. The aim had not been good, and the rocket-line had missed ...
— The Thorogood Family • R.M. Ballantyne
... actual, visible, material body—Man, so called, though, in fact, but his outer shell—to deal with. Let us bear in mind that Science teaches us that in about every seven years we change skin as effectually as any serpent; and this so gradually and imperceptibly that, had not science after years of unremitting study and observation assured us of it, no one would have had the slightest suspicion of the fact.... Hence, if a man, partially flayed alive, may sometimes survive and be covered with a new skin, so our ...
— Five Years Of Theosophy • Various
... amorous), and thus be contemplating matrimony, relieved the aching humiliation of all that had happened in the sea-mist. It shed a new and lurid light on Withers, it made her mistress feel that she had nourished a serpent in her bosom, to think that Withers was contemplating so odious an act of selfishness as matrimony. It would be necessary to find a new parlour-maid, and all the trouble connected with that would not nearly be compensated for by being able to buy fish at a lower ...
— Miss Mapp • Edward Frederic Benson
... again, the hearer desiring it to be repeated, as if he would assure himself that he had heard aright. Especially was the repetition of these words eagerly desired: "The blood of Jesus Christ His Son cleanseth us from all sin."(102) "As Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, even so must the Son of man be lifted up: that whosoever believeth in Him should not perish, ...
— The Great Controversy Between Christ and Satan • Ellen G. White
... place of inexpressible delight and beauty, with the four great rivers proceeding from a fountain in the center; and, rising from the edge of the fountain, an enormous tree, with wide-spreading branches, but without either bark or leaves. He was ordered to look a second time, when he saw a serpent twisted round the tree; and a third time, when the tree had raised itself to heaven, and bore on its summit a ...
— The Worship of the Church - and The Beauty of Holiness • Jacob A. Regester
... which the gods prepare, They drink the viewless tonic of the air, Sweet with the breath of startled antelopes Which speed before them over swelling slopes. Now like a serpent writhing o'er the moor, The column curves and makes a slight detour, As Custer leads a thousand men away To save a ground bird's nest ...
— Custer, and Other Poems. • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... and trudged on up the hillside to the storied Forest of Fontainebleau. We sat down on a log and watched the winding Seine stretching away like a monstrous serpent, away down across the meadow; just at our feet was the white village of By; beyond was Thomeray, and off to the left rose the spires ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Vol. 2 of 14 - Little Journeys To the Homes of Famous Women • Elbert Hubbard
... his teeth clenched; his breath hissed like the threat of a serpent, as he drew a long ...
— The Broom-Squire • S. (Sabine) Baring-Gould
... seemed to be meant to protect it from invasion. It was in the year 1325 that the Aztecs paused upon the shore of the lake, and saw, as the sun rose, a splendid eagle perched upon a prickly pear which shot out of a crevice in the rock. It held a large serpent in its claws, and its broad wings were opened towards the rising sun. The Aztecs saw in this a most favourable omen, and there and then set about building themselves a city, laying its foundations upon piles ...
— The True Story Book • Andrew Lang
... cease to wind their serpent coils around Christianity, and to defile the Bible with their filthy lickings. The Lord Jesus will not suffer such persons to bear even a true testimony to him, and his followers will not permit them to ascribe their falsehoods to him, without reproof. ...
— Fables of Infidelity and Facts of Faith - Being an Examination of the Evidences of Infidelity • Robert Patterson
... hypocrisy, if I find you a serpent that I have warmed in my bosom, you will be a wicked ...
— The Celibates - Includes: Pierrette, The Vicar of Tours, and The Two Brothers • Honore de Balzac
... poor girl has rushed to her false parent—has thrown her arms around her, and is weeping on her shoulder. Oh! it is a maddening sight. But it is nothing to what follows. The temptress, with the subtlety of the old serpent, is pouring lies into her ear, telling her they both are captives, and both will perish unless she consents to purchase their deliverance at the price of her soul, and she offers her a bond to sign—such a bond as, alas! thou and I, Chattox, have signed. But Alizon ...
— The Lancashire Witches - A Romance of Pendle Forest • William Harrison Ainsworth
... in which the hero, reproached for his youth, puts on a false beard before attacking Morrigan in her form as an eel. This is expressed by smerthain, "to attach", and is thus connected with and gave rise to the name Smertullos. On the altar Smertullos is attacking an eel or serpent. Hence Pollux is Smertullos-Cuchulainn.[486] Again, the name Cernunnos signifies "the horned one," from cernu, "horn," a word found in Conall's epithet Cernach. But this was not given him because he was horned, but because of the angular shape of his head, the angle (cern) being ...
— The Religion of the Ancient Celts • J. A. MacCulloch
... prevalent, was one in the existence of a kind of half nature, such as that in Centaurs, dragons, and griffins. In the Assyrian cuneiform inscriptions lately deciphered, we read, of one Heabani, a semi-bovine hermit, supposed to have lived 2,200 B.C. Thus the accounts in Scripture of the serpent accosting Eve, and of Balaam arguing with his ass, would not have seemed so remarkable then as they do to us. In an Egyptian novel—the oldest extant, cir. 1,400 B.C.—a cow tells Bata that his elder brother is standing before him with his dagger ready to ...
— History of English Humour, Vol. 1 (of 2) - With an Introduction upon Ancient Humour • Alfred Guy Kingan L'Estrange
... soul is set down in its principles, and he that doth any way confute that spirit, presently it falls a raging, and cries out, serpent, liar, wolf, dragon, devil, be silent with thy serpentine wisdom, and smoke of the bottomless pit. Now in this the devil is wonderfully cunning; for least he should indeed be discovered, he doth set the face hard against the truth, and counteth it such ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... that day. Nobody knew my secret, not even my husband, for he was away in England, with some harvesters, at the time. He never suspected. I never dared lisp a word of it to the priest. I shut it all close in my heart, where it stung like a serpent and ate like a poison. It is killing me. O my poor, dear, injured lads, can you forgive me ...
— Stories of Many Lands • Grace Greenwood
... the consequences of the possibility of their falling into the hands of foes. But here, all of a sudden, their path is intercepted by the actual presence of a formidable foe. One of the pursuers? No, but one equally defiant. It is a huge serpent of the 'Whip snake' species, which never gives way, but always takes a bold and defiant stand. It took its stand about fifty yards ahead, ready for battle, its head, and about a yard of its length, in semi-erect posture, and displaying every sign of its proverbial enmity ...
— An Historical Account of the Settlements of Scotch Highlanders in America • J. P. MacLean
... condition of mind 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
... the all but irresistible impulse that was forcing him over the brink of the pit. Beads of cold sweat started out on his forehead. His face creased with furrows of unbearable agony. His mouth gaped. The serpent had ...
— Out of the Primitive • Robert Ames Bennet
... from Scythian Caucasus, And Tygers of Hircania gaue thee sucke: Ah foolish Dido to forbeare this long! Wast thou not wrackt vpon this Libian shoare, And cam'st to Dido like a Fisherswaine? Repairde not I thy ships, made thee a King, And all thy needie followers Noblemen? O Serpent that came creeping from the shoare, And I for pitie harbord in my bosome, Wilt thou now slay me with thy venomed sting, And hisse at Dido for preseruing thee? Goe goe and spare not, seeke out Italy, I hope that ...
— The Tragedy of Dido Queene of Carthage • Christopher Marlowe
... perhaps smile at some of these combinations. This is the substance and order of the former part of the play. God enters, creating the world, he breathes life into Adam, leads him into Paradise, and opens his side while sleeping. Adam and Eve appear naked, and not ashamed; and the old Serpent enters, lamenting his fall. He converses with Eve. She eats part of the forbidden fruit, and gives part to Adam. They propose, according to the stage directions, to make themselves, subligacula a folis quibus tegamus pudenda, cover their nakedness with leaves and converse with ...
— A History of Pantomime • R. J. Broadbent |
