"Venomous" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... light of failure no doubt it must be written down a military folly. Ships against forts had long been held a futile and unequal contest. But it was not the forts that saved Constantinople. In the narrow gulf leading to the Sea of Marmora no less than eight mine fields zigzagged their venomous coils across the channel. The strong, unchanging current of the Dardanelles, flowing steadily south, carried with it all floating mines dropped in the upper reaches. Torpedo tubes ranged on the shore discharged their missiles halfway across the Straits. Before warships could enter these ...
— Winning a Cause - World War Stories • John Gilbert Thompson and Inez Bigwood
... legal sense, malice is the intent to injure, even tho with no personal ill will; as, a highwayman would be said to entertain malice toward the unknown traveler whom he attacks. Malice is direct, pressing toward a result; malignity is deep, lingering, and venomous, tho often impotent to act; rancor (akin to rancid) is cherished malignity that has soured and festered and is virulent and implacable. Spite is petty malice that delights to inflict stinging pain; grudge is deeper than spite; it is sinister and bitter; ...
— English Synonyms and Antonyms - With Notes on the Correct Use of Prepositions • James Champlin Fernald
... a spider as ever dangled from an old ceiling. Giovanni bent towards the insect, and emitted a deep, long breath. The spider suddenly ceased its toil; the web vibrated with a tremor originating in the body of the small artisan. Again Giovanni sent forth a breath, deeper, longer, and imbued with a venomous feeling out of his heart: he knew not whether he were wicked, or only desperate. The spider made a convulsive gripe with his limbs and hung dead across ...
— Mosses from an Old Manse and Other Stories • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... Story Girl who sat there, telling that weird tale in a sibilant, curdling voice. She had put on a new personality like a garment, and that personality was a venomous, evil, loathly thing. I would rather have died than have touched the slim, brown wrist on which she supported herself. The light in her narrowed orbs was the cold, merciless gleam of the serpent's eye. I felt frightened of this unholy creature ...
— The Story Girl • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... with Flashman in one sense, for he never laid finger on either of them again; but whatever harm a spiteful heart and venomous tongue could do them, he took care should be done. Only throw dirt enough, and some of it is sure to stick; and so it was with the fifth form and the bigger boys in general, with whom he associated more or less, and they not at all. Flashman managed to get Tom and East into disfavour, ...
— Tom Brown's Schooldays • Thomas Hughes
... The false front was hanging half a dozen inches from his skull. Mademoiselle Cormon raised her eyes, saw that skull in all its nudity, and lowered them, abashed. Du Bousquier cast upon the chevalier the most venomous look that toad ever darted on ...
— An Old Maid • Honore de Balzac
... of this second repulse she has given me; it ought to increase her terror, for it does but add to my despair. My distempered soul will take no medicine but one, and that must be administered; though more venomous than the sting of scorpion or tooth of serpent, ...
— Anna St. Ives • Thomas Holcroft
... thank you—yes! Let me sit down amongst you." And he sat down, the child by his side, and partook of their fare, and was merry with them,—the proud Philip!—had he not begun to discover the "precious jewel" in the "ugly and venomous" Adversity? ...
— Night and Morning, Volume 3 • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... with a loss of about 400 killed, the moral of it all was hidden from the wise men of the West. Patronising things were said of the Japanese as conquerors—of the Chinese; but few persons realised that a new Power had arisen. It seemed the easiest of undertakings to despoil the "venomous dwarfs" of the fruits of their triumph ...
— The Development of the European Nations, 1870-1914 (5th ed.) • John Holland Rose
... From the beginning he had been anxious to employ the savages against the settlers, and when the home government bade him hire them he soon proved himself very expert, as well as very ruthless, in their use. [Footnote: Haldimand MSS. Germaine to Carlton, March 26, 1777.] He rapidly acquired the venomous hatred of the backwoodsmen, who held him in peculiar abhorrence, and nicknamed him the "hair-buyer" general, asserting that he put a price on the scalps of the Americans. This allegation may have been untrue as affecting Hamilton personally; he always endeavored to get the war parties to bring in ...
— The Winning of the West, Volume Two - From the Alleghanies to the Mississippi, 1777-1783 • Theodore Roosevelt
... my creatures, my thoughts, is with the sun, and beyond the sun, overtakes the sun, and overgoes the sun in one pace, one step, everywhere. And then, as the other world produces serpents and vipers, malignant and venomous creatures, and worms and caterpillars, that endeavour to devour that world which produces them, and monsters compiled and complicated of divers parents and kinds; so this world, ourselves, produces all these in us, in producing diseases, and sicknesses of all those sorts: venomous ...
— Devotions Upon Emergent Occasions - Together with Death's Duel • John Donne
... influenced all the actions of the government, that all proceedings which in themselves were simple and reasonable, became venomous and corrupted when conducted by the ministry, and only added to the general disorder and discontent, instead of producing the good effects which they might have ...
— Memoirs of the Private Life, Return, and Reign of Napoleon in 1815, Vol. I • Pierre Antoine Edouard Fleury de Chaboulon
... and showed that they did by obeying, though if looks could kill Frank would have been blasted by the venomous glance that the German leader shot ...
— Army Boys on German Soil • Homer Randall
... "seems very much afraid that my pen will be transformed into a venomous serpent when I employ it to address thee, my dear brother, and no wonder, for I like to pay my debts, and, as I received ten dollars' worth of scolding,[7] I should be guilty of injustice did I not return the favor. Well! ...
— The Grimke Sisters - Sarah and Angelina Grimke: The First American Women Advocates of - Abolition and Woman's Rights • Catherine H. Birney
... Hardie raised his head from his book and eyed his crouching venomous assailant full in the face, majestically, as one can fancy a lion rearing his ponderous head, and looking lazily and steadily at a snake that has just hissed in a corner. Each word of Skinner's was a barbed icicle to ...
— Hard Cash • Charles Reade
... moved forward, his gaze fixed intently upon the slowly waving head before him with its glistening little diamond eyes. Nearer and nearer he crept till only a few feet separated him from that venomous head with its ...
— The Boy Chums in the Forest - or Hunting for Plume Birds in the Florida Everglades • Wilmer M. Ely
... floor the stick with its leathern thong with which the man had castigated the tender body of his motherless child. She held it in her hand, looking at it with the angry aversion that she might have turned upon a venomous serpent. Then slowly, with unspeakable rebuke, she swung her gaze upon the wretch in the chair. For a moment she silently accused him. Then he dropped his head in his hands and sobbed. He seemed in his voiceless way to say that he, too, had been castigated by a million invisible ...
— The Precipice • Elia Wilkinson Peattie
... myself, equally in vain. As I ceased from the effort, again that creep of horror came over me; but this time it was more cold and stubborn. I felt as if some strange and ghastly exhalation were rising up from the chinks of that rugged floor, and filling the atmosphere with a venomous influence hostile to human life. The door now very slowly and quietly opened as of its own accord. We precipitated ourselves into the landing-place. We both saw a large pale light—as large as the human figure, but shapeless and unsubstantial—move ...
— The Boy Scouts Book of Stories • Various
... entirely disappeared from particular localities. The rattlesnake is now wholly unknown in many large districts where it was extremely common half a century ago, and Palestine has long been, if not absolutely free from venomous serpents, at least very nearly so. [Footnote: Russell denies the existence of poisonous snakes in Northern Syria, and states that the last instance of death known to have occurred from the bite of a serpent near Aleppo took place a hundred years before his time. In Palestine, the climate, ...
— The Earth as Modified by Human Action • George P. Marsh
... not less instructive, for it contains, "with their lively figures: names, conditions, kindes and natures of all venomous beasts: with their severall poisons and antidotes; their deepe hatred to mankind and the wonderfull worke of God in their creation and destruction." Among serpents are included: bees, drones, wasps, hornets, ...
— The English Novel in the Time of Shakespeare • J. J. Jusserand
... the Dey, laying aside his pipe and talking earnestly; "it may well chance, as it has happened before, that thy counsel may lighten my care. I am sad because two of my chief officers are snakes in the grass. They are venomous too, and their bite will prove deadly if it be not avoided. Canst thou ...
— The Pirate City - An Algerine Tale • R.M. Ballantyne
... when a soul is vehemently moved to wickedness, as occurs mostly in little old women, according to the above explanation, the countenance becomes venomous and hurtful, especially to children, who have a tender and most impressionable body. It is also possible that by God's permission, or from some hidden deed, the spiteful demons co-operate in this, as the witches may have some compact ...
— Summa Theologica, Part I (Prima Pars) - From the Complete American Edition • Thomas Aquinas
... another. Margaret, whose wit was superior to the rest, writ a treatise on the four last things, which Sir Thomas declared was finer than his; she composed several Orations, especially one in answer to Quintilian, defending a rich man, which he accused for having poisoned a poor man's bees with certain venomous flowers in his garden, so eloquent and forcible that it may justly rival Quintilian himself. She also ...
— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753) - Volume I. • Theophilus Cibber
... 'bout these things?' said Ortheris. 'You're bound to find all out quicker nor you want to, any'ow.' He jerked the cartridge out of the breech-block into the palm of his hand. ''Ere's my chaplain,' he said, and made the venomous black-headed bullet bow like a marionette. ''E's goin' to teach a man all about which is which, an' wot's true, after all, before sundown. But wot 'appened after ...
— Life's Handicap • Rudyard Kipling
... been brought from the catacombs of the ancient Pharaohs. Of these she ordered several to be taken. From thence she resorted to a gallery, where, under the guard of fifty female negroes, mute, and blind of the right eye, were preserved the oil of the most venomous serpents, rhinoceros horns, and woods of a subtle and penetrating odor, procured from the interior of the Indies, together with a thousand other horrible rarities. This collection had been formed for a purpose like the present by Carathis herself, from a presentiment that she might one day ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 4 • Charles Dudley Warner
... the marsh, the small one which passed so close to Jean Poquelin's house was filled, and the street, or rather a sunny road, just touched a corner of the old mansion's dooryard. The morass ran dry. Its venomous denizens slipped away through the bulrushes; the cattle roaming freely upon its hardened surface trampled the superabundant undergrowth. The bellowing frogs croaked to westward. Lilies and the flower-de-luce sprang up in the place of reeds; smilax and poison-oak gave way to the purple-plumed ...
— Old Creole Days • George Washington Cable
... matched, the two. If Alwin lacked any of the Black One's strength, he made it up in skill and quickness. The bright steel began to fly fast and faster, until its swish was like the venomous hiss of serpents. The color came and went in Helga's cheek; her mouth worked nervously. Sigurd's eyes were fixed upon the two like glowing lamps, as to and fro they went with vengeful fury. In all the valley there ...
— The Thrall of Leif the Lucky • Ottilie A. Liljencrantz
... justification for our comments. When a gentleman who avows himself a disappointed aspirant for Parliamentary honours, and who owns his regret that he did not become a petty Castle placeman, is discovered writing in an important English Liberal paper, venomous little innuendos at the expense of sorely attacked Irish leaders which excite the enthusiasm of the Liarish Times, it was high time to intimate to the Manchester Guardian the source from which its Irish information is derived. The case ...
— Ireland Under Coercion (2nd ed.) (2 of 2) (1888) • William Henry Hurlbert
... to have such a snake bite me in his house; but I was not thinking of that when I named the venomous reptile. This event, and the quantity of his own vile fluids he consumed, made him sensitive on the subject of snakes. I was afraid he would soon see more of them than ...
— Up the River - or, Yachting on the Mississippi • Oliver Optic
... shade, expiring at every step, and finally, at the base of the hill, on the brink of the swamp, discovered a rill of tepid water, that evaporated before it had trickled a hundred yards. If a sleek and venomous water-snake—for there were thousands of them hereabout—had coiled in the channel, I would still have sucked the draught, bending down as I did. Then I bethought me of my pony. He had neither been fed nor watered for twenty hours, ...
— Campaigns of a Non-Combatant, - and His Romaunt Abroad During the War • George Alfred Townsend
... clear," said Blondet, "that we are at liberty to inform Europe that a serpent dropped from your Excellency's lips this evening, and that the venomous creature failed to inoculate Mlle. Tullia, the prettiest dancer in Paris; and to follow up the story with a commentary on Eve, and the Scriptures, and the first and last transgression. But have no fear, you ...
— A Distinguished Provincial at Paris • Honore de Balzac
... faire —, to be heard; to understand; faire —, to give to understand. enti-er, -re, whole. entraner, to sweep on, away. entre, between, among, in, above. entre, f., entrance. envelopper, to wrap. envenim, venomous. envi; l'—, vieing with one another. envie, f., envy; porter — , to envy. envier, to envy. environner, to surround. envisager, to review, consider. envoyer, to send, send forth. pars, scattered. perdu, bewildered, helpless. pier, to spy. plor, weeping. pouse, f., wife. pouvantable, ...
— Esther • Jean Racine
... drove out early in the day to Meudon, taking with him in his pocket a copy of the last issue of "Les Actes des Apotres," a journal whose merry sallies at the expense of the innovators greatly diverted the Seigneur de Gavrillac. The venomous scorn it poured upon those worthless rapscallions afforded him a certain solatium against the discomforts of expatriation by which he was afflicted as a result of their ...
— Scaramouche - A Romance of the French Revolution • Rafael Sabatini
... or amuse the world have to dread malevolence and interested censure, instead of receiving thanks. If your part of our country is at all free from that odious spirit, you are to be envied. In our region we are given up to every venomous mischievous passion, and as we behold all the public vices that raged in and destroyed the remains of the Roman Commonwealth, so I wish we do not experience some of the horrors that brought on the same revolution. When we see ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole, V4 • Horace Walpole
... had seemed to some of the officers, to Archer and his family, especially to Lilian, far the more accomplished and attractive of the two, the entrance of that disturbing rattler on the scene had destroyed the equilibrium of affairs. Willett had had no experience with the venomous little reptile, Harris had had much, and Harris's utter sang froid, and cool, commanding words had averted what might have been a tragedy. One start, one sudden move of the girl at that critical moment might well have been ...
— Tonio, Son of the Sierras - A Story of the Apache War • Charles King
... brass railing, leaned out and looked back. Durand had staggered to his feet, plastered with mud from head to knees, and was shaking furiously a fist at him. The face of the man was venomous with rage. ...
— The Big-Town Round-Up • William MacLeod Raine
... the Lord Almighty, ordained wide wanderings for the serpent, the venomous worm, and 905 spoke further in ...
— Genesis A - Translated from the Old English • Anonymous
... travellers went westward towards North India, and after being on the way for a month, they succeeded in getting across and through the range of the Onion mountains. The snow rests on them both winter and summer. There are also among them venomous dragons, which, when provoked, spit forth poisonous winds, and cause showers of snow and storms of sand and gravel. Not one in ten thousand of those who encounter these dangers escapes with his life. The people ...
— Chinese Literature • Anonymous
... perversity of man is as strong and piercing as the thorn of the jungle. With eyes of suspicion and venomous anger do they accuse and persecute them who ...
— Buddhist Psalms • Shinran Shonin
... has not considered one of the reasons for Atheism. What he calls "causes" are only occasions. He does not discuss, or even refer to, the objections to Theism that are derived from the tentative operations of nature, so different from what might be expected from a settled plan; from ugly, venomous and monstrous things; from the great imperfection of nature's very highest productions; from the ignorance, misery, and degradation of such a vast part of mankind; from the utter absence of anything like a moral government of the universe. Only towards the ...
— Flowers of Freethought - (Second Series) • George W. Foote
... the soil being fertile exceedingly, the whole land is covered with a dense and rank vegetation. I have yet to find a square smig of it that is open ground, or one that is not the lair of some savage beast, the haunt of some venomous reptile, or the roost of some offensive bird. Crackers and Coons alike are long extinct, and these are ...
— The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce • Ambrose Bierce
... she had changed her mind—she still meant to tell him everything. But to hold the letter was like holding a venomous snake—she wanted to exterminate it, to forget that she had ever seen the blotted repulsive characters. And she could not bear to have Amherst's eyes rest on it, to have him know that any man had dared to write to her in that tone. What vile meanings ...
— The Fruit of the Tree • Edith Wharton
... on earth he sank to sleep, If slumber his eyelids knew, He lay where the deadly vine doth weep In venomous tears, and nightly steep ...
— Reminiscences of Two Years in the United States Navy • John M. Batten
... her room, and she be taught how harmless the thing is for which she had such an aversion. An Indian servant, who, for some reason or other, has a deadly hatred for the whole family, substitutes a live reptile. Clementine appears at the window with the venomous creature coiled round her neck, screaming with wild terror. The spectators on the stage think that the snake is dead, and that she is only screaming from "nerves," but in reality she is being slowly strangled. I began screaming in a frantic, heartrending manner, and ...
— The Story of My Life - Recollections and Reflections • Ellen Terry
... this was generally the case, there wanted not some to exercise the invidious task of criticism, or rather of malevolent detraction. Among those, the highest name is that of Swift; the most distinguished for venomous and persevering malignity, that ...
— The Dramatic Works of John Dryden Vol. I. - With a Life of the Author • Sir Walter Scott
... in, designed by Col W Rhodes. On the floor lay a curious sample of an Old World man-trap, not sent from New York, but direct from England, a terror to poachers and apple stealers, French swords and venomous looking bayonets, of very ancient design, a rusty, long Indian musket barrel together with tibiae and tarsi, labelled 1759-60, presents from H. J. Chouinard, Esq., the owner in 1865 of the site of the battlefield ...
— Picturesque Quebec • James MacPherson Le Moine
... him," said de Sigognac, striking his heel savagely on the ground, as if he actually had the spider under it. "I will crush the life out of him, the venomous beast!" and the fierce, determined expression of his usually calm, mild countenance showed that this was no idle threat, but that he ...
— Captain Fracasse • Theophile Gautier
... old kitchen this is!" said Mr. Donnithorne, looking round admiringly. He always spoke in the same deliberate, well-chiselled, polite way, whether his words were sugary or venomous. "And you keep it so exquisitely clean, Mrs. Poyser. I like these premises, do you know, beyond any ...
— Adam Bede • George Eliot
... natural, of an envious venomous description; this is another ever-widening shadow in the sunshine. In fact we perceive he has, besides the inner obstacles and griefs, two classes of outward ones: There are Lions on his path and also Dogs. Lions are the Ex-Bishop of Mirepoix, and certain other dark Holy Fathers, or potent orthodox ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. X. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—At Reinsberg—1736-1740 • Thomas Carlyle
... good knight overturned hundreds at a touch. The perils that lay in the discoverer's path, and the sufferings he had to sustain, were scarcely inferior to those that beset the knight-errant. Hunger and thirst and fatigue, the deadly effluvia of the morass with its swarms of venomous insects, the cold of mountain snows, and the scorching sun of the tropics, these were the lot of every cavalier who came to seek his fortunes in the New World. It was the reality of romance. The life of the Spanish adventurer ...
— History Of The Conquest Of Peru • William Hickling Prescott
... scorbutic complaints, and other cutaneous eruptions. The smell of garlic is an infallible remedy against the vapours, faintings, and other hysteric affections. The common poppy is an antidote to the stings of venomous insects, and a remedy for inflammation of the eyes: it also cures the pleurisy, and spitting of blood. Sage taken in any form tends to cleanse and enrich the blood: it makes a good cordial, and is highly useful in cases of nervous debility. It is often given in fevers with a view to promote perspiration, ...
— The Cook and Housekeeper's Complete and Universal Dictionary; Including a System of Modern Cookery, in all Its Various Branches, • Mary Eaton
... countenance changed when he heard the cap spoken of, and he looked about him hastily to see where the "beastly thing" could have got to, but in another moment old Mrs. Nuessler pointed at little Louisa Hawermann, and said with a venomous smile, like a stale roll dipped in fly-poison: "It must be plaited all over again." "What's the matter?" cried her daughter-in-law, and starting up as she spoke, she saw the ends of the cap ribbons ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VIII • Various
... how tall he is!" said the king. "He seems taller dead than when he was living." Then giving the gory body a kick, he exclaimed, "Venomous beast, thou shalt cast ...
— Henry IV, Makers of History • John S. C. Abbott
... the howling monkeys, which St. Hillaire has graphically compared to the ax of the woodman as he strikes the branches of the trees, nor the sharp jingle of the rings of the rattlesnake (not an aggressive reptile, it is true, but one of the most venomous); neither the bawling voice of the horned toad, the most hideous of its kind, nor even the solemn and sonorous croak of the bellowing frog, which, though it cannot equal the bull in size, can surpass him ...
— Eight Hundred Leagues on the Amazon • Jules Verne
... the eyes of the child, killed it, and burned its cradle. Ordered to fence the fields, he built a fence from earth to heaven, using entire pine-trees for fencing materials, and interweaving their branches with venomous serpents. Ordered to tend the herds in the woodlands, he changed the cattle to wolves and bears, and drove them home to destroy his mistress because she had baked a stone in the centre of his oat-loaf, causing him to break his knife, the only ...
— The Kalevala (complete) • John Martin Crawford, trans.
... less. Of course, it is just luck, but I take every precaution, as you know, and use my guns on their machine guns in, I hope, a judicious manner, giving the gunners little maps of where we have spotted them along all our long front; and so we crush the scamps. They are a venomous crew. They marked a bridge that we cross over a ditch, consisting of two planks and a hand-rail, and they turned their Maxims on to that. A couple of men were there, and they lay down on the bridge whilst the ...
— Letters of Lt.-Col. George Brenton Laurie • George Brenton Laurie
... there. The blood flows into the vase and he uses it, in a way which I shall explain in a moment, to strike his enemies with death. Formerly he operated on chickens and guinea pigs, but he used the grease, not the blood, of these animals, become thus execrated and venomous tabernacles. ...
— La-bas • J. K. Huysmans
... declared that the fellow has heaped provocations, insults, and affronts on you, or something to that effect? He has done the same by me. He is made of venomous insults and affronts, from the crown of his head to the sole of his foot. Are you so hopeful or so stupid, as not to know that he and the other will treat your application with contempt, and light ...
— Our Mutual Friend • Charles Dickens
... all concern our safer and innocent Sallet Furniture) I forbear it; and referr those who long after this beloved Ragout, and other Voluptuaria Venena (as Seneca calls them) to what our Learned Dr. Lyster[33] says of the many Venomous Insects harbouring and corrupting in a new found-out Species of Mushroms had lately in deliciis. Those, in the mean time, which are esteemed best, and less pernicious, (of which see the Appendix) are such as rise in rich, airy, and dry [34]Pasture-Grounds; ...
— Acetaria: A Discourse of Sallets • John Evelyn
... moment all was desolation. It was like being ordered into the Valley of the Shadow of Death. Dense everglades, swamp-fevers, malaria in the air, poisonous underbrush, and venomous reptiles and insects, and now and then a wily unseen foe picking off the men, one by one, as they painfully cut out roads through the thickets,—these were the features of military life in Florida at that period. Men who would have marched boldly ...
— Castle Nowhere • Constance Fenimore Woolson
... while performing my ablutions with a large sponge, a centipede, four and a half inches long, crawled out of one of the orifices, and, ran over my hand. The venomous reptile was killed, without any harm being done. It had probably been hidden in one of a number of large land-shells, which I brought on board a day or two ago. His touch upon my hand was the most disagreeable sensation that I ...
— Journal of an African Cruiser • Horatio Bridge
... of others. He had loved a bit and gambled much, with equal misfortune, and the next day he had forgotten. He had lived the free, clean life of a man who wins joyously or goes down with defiance in his throat, but this venomous thing that Runnion had planted in him had seeped and circulated through his being until every fibre was penetrated with a bitter poison. Most of his troubles could be grappled with bare hands, but here was one against which force would not ...
— The Barrier • Rex Beach
... matter of fact, the Victory repeatedly ceased firing, believing that the Redoutable had struck, but still the venomous and deadly fire from the tops of that vessel continued; and it was to this circumstance, indeed, that Nelson owed his death. He would never put small-arms men in his own tops, as he believed their fire interfered with the working of the sails, and, indeed, ...
— Deeds that Won the Empire - Historic Battle Scenes • W. H. Fitchett
... beyond the outlaw's known depredations and the constant threat of his presence in the district. At least no reason he would have admitted publicly. But then Wild Bill was not a man to bother with reasons much at any time. And it was the venomous hatred of the man which now drove him to a decision of the first importance. And such was his satisfaction in the interest of his decision, that, for the time being, at least, poker was robbed of its charm, faro had become a game of no consequence whatever, ...
— The Twins of Suffering Creek • Ridgwell Cullum
... Quebec, and sailed for France, landing at Rochelle on the 13th of December. No man can, in this world, accomplish great results without exposing himself to malignant attacks. Bitter enemies assailed La Salle with venomous hostility. Their hostility was excited by the monopoly of the fur trade, which he enjoyed over all the vast regions he had explored. They despatched atrocious charges against him to the government, denouncing him as a robber, and denying the discoveries which he professed ...
— The Adventures of the Chevalier De La Salle and His Companions, in Their Explorations of the Prairies, Forests, Lakes, and Rivers, of the New World, and Their Interviews with the Savage Tribes, Two Hu • John S. C. Abbott
... particulars, how many creatures are at deadly feud with men? Lions, wolves, bears, &c. Some with hoofs, horns, tusks, teeth, nails: How many noxious serpents and venomous creatures, ready to offend us with stings, breath, sight, or quite kill us? How many pernicious fishes, plants, gums, fruits, seeds, flowers, &c. could I reckon up on a sudden, which by their very smell many of them, touch, taste, cause some grievous ...
— The Anatomy of Melancholy • Democritus Junior
... of the climate, and the fertility of the soil, alike adapted for the production of corn or of vines; the valuable minerals with which it abounded; its rich pastures covered with innumerable flocks, and its woods free from wild beasts or venomous serpents. Above all, they regretted the large amount of the revenue of Britain, whilst they confessed, that such a province well deserved to become the seat of an independent monarchy. [27] During the space of seven years it was possessed by Carausius; and ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 1 • Edward Gibbon
... cried; and he saw a man standing there, and inquired what he would have. And the deacon said; "holy Father, I have sought thee from far, and now I have found thee, I should have joy enough if I might come to thee, but I cannot for these venomous beasts that are here so many." When the holy man heard this, he fell down on his knees, and prayed GOD that He would destroy those worms: and all soon a grisly storm arose with a thunder, and slew all the worms. Then said the ...
— The Form of Perfect Living and Other Prose Treatises • Richard Rolle of Hampole
... the other with only a venomous glance toward the seat of the scorner, "I thought to myself what's the matter with taking a look at the swells feeding in the big restaurant. You may not know it, people, but Sherry's is the ree-churchiest place in Nuh Yawk to eat dinner. It's ...
— Success - A Novel • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... His grey length and the chain of black diamond spots down his back, his flat head with deadly tooth, did not harmonise as the green snake does with leaf and grass. He was too marked, too prominent—a venomous foreign thing, fit for tropic sands and nothing English or native to our wilds. He seemed like a reptile that had escaped from the ...
— Field and Hedgerow • Richard Jefferies
... how it is that there is so much beauty throughout nature; for this may be largely attributed to the agency of selection. That beauty, according to our sense of it, is not universal, must be admitted by every one who will look at some venomous snakes, at some fishes, and at certain hideous bats with a distorted resemblance to the human face. Sexual selection has given the most brilliant colours, elegant patterns, and other ornaments to the males, and sometimes to both sexes ...
— Little Masterpieces of Science: - The Naturalist as Interpreter and Seer • Various
... Clerguemont and St. Frazal de Vantalon, but she addressed herself principally to recent converts, to whom she preached concerning the Eucharist that in swallowing the consecrated wafer they had swallowed a poison as venomous as the head of the basilisk, that they had bent the knee to Baal, and that no penitence on their part could be great enough to save them. These doctrines inspired such profound terror that the Rev. Father Louvreloeil himself tells us that Satan by his ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... but I preferred failure to hypocrisy, and would not sell my birthright of conscience for a mess of pottage. Two of my ancient, sour-faced assistants were bigoted members of the fashionable church, and at once set me down as a corruptor of youth because I was an advocate of the liberal faith. The venomous spite of one of these forcibly suggested the spirit of the inquisition, and one day she found her blackboard decorated with the following truthful poem, suggested by her spirit and the first ...
— The Gentleman from Everywhere • James Henry Foss
... everything on their way. Not that there was much to see at first, save that the captain was right about the inhabitants, for everywhere among the stones which lay heating in the morning sun they came upon coiled-up serpents, many of which were undoubtedly venomous; but there were other reptiles as well, for lizards darted about by the hundred, when disturbed, to make for their holes in crevices and cracks of the stonework, their scales glistening as if made of burnished metal, bronze, deadened silver, mingled with ...
— Old Gold - The Cruise of the "Jason" Brig • George Manville Fenn
... most common are snakes, lizards, and tortoises. In the long grass of the Moghan district, on the lower course of the Araxes, the snakes are so numerous and venomous that many parts of the plain are thereby rendered impassable in the summer-time. A similar abundance of this reptile near the western entrance of the Girduni Siyaluk pass induces the natives to abstain from using ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 3. (of 7): Media • George Rawlinson
... good eating. We observed several large ants' nests formed on the branches of these trees; they were about the size of a bushel measure. The insect is half an inch in length; its bite is severe, but not very venomous. We could only make good our landing at one spot, covered with long, coarse grass, which the natives twist into ropes for the rigging of their canoes, and the finest of it they clean, stain with different colours, and fabricate ...
— A Sailor of King George • Frederick Hoffman
... and gems, are now, by deceit of Satan, so utterly perverted that they are the true and living image of Satan, and, as it were, filthy or rather consisting of an infernal flame, not otherwise than when the sweetest and purest mass, infected with the most venomous ferment, is altogether and substantially changed and transformed into a lump of the same ferment." (Gieseler 3, 2, 254.) Original sin "is not a mere accident in man, but his inverted and transformed essence or new form itself, just as when a most wholesome medicine is changed into the most baneful ...
— Historical Introductions to the Symbolical Books of the Evangelical Lutheran Church • Friedrich Bente
... in attemptingto pat Beauty on the head. It is to be hoped his advances to the mistress will be more favourably received, as all his overtures towards a caress are greeted by the pestilent little cur with a wary kindling of the eye, and a most venomous growl. ...
— Bracebridge Hall, or The Humorists • Washington Irving
... other, accompanied by the scornful laughter of those that had been balked in their hopes and expectations. The melamed, towering above the crowd, threw out insulting remarks, or burst into harsh laughter full of venomous malice. Under the second wall opposite the melamed stood Ber on a bench. These two men, standing opposite each other, presented a striking contrast. The melamed shook his head and waved his arms, wildly shouting and laughing; ...
— An Obscure Apostle - A Dramatic Story • Eliza Orzeszko
... accepted and received into heaven. Dear friends, when Moses was leading the Israelites out of Egypt, the land of persecution, of slavery, of idolatry, through the wilderness, they were visited by a plague of venomous serpents whose bite sent fiery pains through their bodies, which speedily terminated by their death. God then ordered Moses to make a brazen serpent (the serpent being among the Egyptians the emblem of the healing power, which was well understood by them ...
— Count Ulrich of Lindburg - A Tale of the Reformation in Germany • W.H.G. Kingston
... happiness. But to relieve this image of its appealing claims upon my pity or remorse, to arm myself against a possibility of relenting, I associated this figure of the wretch groveling out of sight with all that was venomous and treacherous in the nature of reptiles. I refused to consider him human. Had I dared to look into his heart—now that the wretch's last hope was extinct—to gaze upon the misery which filled it to overflowing, if, indeed, he were not dead, and his heart broken, how could I have held my head erect, ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Vol. 3, July, 1851 • Various
... shrunken with famine, cried to him for rain, as to the blessed Antony's successor. He saw them, and grieved over them; and lifting up his hand to heaven, obtained rain at once. But the thirsty and sandy land, as soon as it was watered by showers, sent forth such a crowd of serpents and venomous animals that people without number were stung, and would have died, had they not run together to Hilarion. With oil blessed by him, the husbandmen and shepherds touched their wounds, and all ...
— The Hermits • Charles Kingsley
... every case to reconcile Tolstoy the great artist with Tolstoy the almost venomous reformer. It is difficult to believe that a man who draws in such noble outlines the dignity of the daily life of humanity regards as evil that divine act of procreation by which that dignity is renewed from age to age. ...
— Varied Types • G. K. Chesterton
... Richard had deliberately killed Lemuel Shackford; but as Mr. Slocum reached the final pages of the diary, a horrible probability insinuated itself in his mind. Could Richard have done it accidentally? Could he—in an instant of passion, stung to sudden madness by that venomous old man—have struck him involuntarily, and killed him? A certain speech which Richard had made in Mr. Slocum's presence not long before came back to him ...
— The Stillwater Tragedy • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... Levinus Lemnius tells us: "Divers experiments shew what power and quality there is in Man's fasting Spittle, when he hath neither eat nor drunk before the use of it: for it cures all tetters, itch, scabs, pushes, and creeping sores: and if venomous little beasts have fastened on any part of the body, as hornets, beetles, toads, spiders, and such like, that by their venome cause tumours and great pains and inflammations, do but rub the place with fasting Spittle, and all those effects will be gone and dispersed. Since ...
— Three Thousand Years of Mental Healing • George Barton Cutten
... Spanish olive, was not easily to be distinguished under the surface of crimson. However, as this mode of painting themselves was practised by both sexes, perhaps it was at first introduced as a defence against the venomous insects, so common in tropical climates, or possibly they considered the brilliancy of the colour as highly ornamental." These Charaibes had other ways of deforming themselves, some of which resembled what we shall find described in the course of this work. They ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 13 • Robert Kerr
... throne of grace, in the name and merit of our Blessed Mediator, taking all possible opportunities, public, private, and secret, to pour out our supplications to the God of our salvation. Prayer is the most proper and potent antidote against the old Serpent's venomous operations. When legions of devils do come down among us, multitudes of prayers should go up to God. Satan, the worst of all our enemies, is called in Scripture a dragon, to note his malice; a serpent, to note his subtilty; a lion, ...
— Salem Witchcraft, Volumes I and II • Charles Upham
... godmother of their flag, and of being in some dark league against him—"hell only knew what"—along with that snail of a cousin whom everybody but Kincaid himself and the silly old uncle knew to be the fallen man's most venomous foe. Throughout the storm the grandmother's fingers pattered soothing caresses, while Flora stood as unruffled by his true surmises as by any, a look of cold interest in her narrowed eyes, and her whole bodily and spiritual frame drinking relief from his transport. ...
— Kincaid's Battery • George W. Cable
... the lion's hatred, was their fear of the woman; and greater than their fear of her was their terror of that long serpent which, no matter how far it might dart through space, remained always in the woman's hand. They well knew its venomous bite, and as they slunk from side to side, their eyes were upon its ...
— Fran • John Breckenridge Ellis
... to a fair,' so that they could not fire without hitting some; in fact, a volley brought down three tigers and two wolves, besides one creature 'of an ill-gendered kind, between a tiger and a leopard.' Before long they met an 'ugly, venomous, deformed kind of a snake or serpent,' which had 'a hellish, ugly, deformed look and voice;' indeed, they would have recognised in it the being who most haunted De Foe's imaginary world—the devil—except that they could not think what business the devil could have where there were no people. ...
— Hours in a Library, Volume I. (of III.) • Leslie Stephen
... copies of writs in one day (by their attorney, Valentine Price, of Leicester); to such a degree of rage and fury were these old gentlewomen raised, at what one should have thought every heart would have rejoiced, and kindly lent an assisting hand." Mr. Hanbury gives many instances of the "venomous rage and passion" of these two old women. They had, says he, "the mortification to find themselves totally despised. Not a gentleman or lady would go near them, two neighbouring clergymen excepted, who were invited to dine with them upon venison." They attempted making a tool ...
— On the Portraits of English Authors on Gardening, • Samuel Felton
... grasped the fugitive by the middle: and while the overthrown two were running up, and the key without seeking the lock, a short, venomous tussle was waged just near the door, till Hogarth, wringing his naked body free, tossed his antagonist by the knees to slide into the path of the two on-comers; at the same time, catching up his ...
— The Lord of the Sea • M. P. Shiel
... had already stung my ankles, to the numbers that were likely soon to pierce me with their venomous darts? Already these were swarming up the last terrace. They would soon cover the apex of the cone upon which I was standing. They would crawl up my ...
— The Bush Boys - History and Adventures of a Cape Farmer and his Family • Captain Mayne Reid
... in imagination and with effort, he felt as if he were in some uneasy chair, put out in a cold wind, and deprived of every outlook. He found nothing there on which to rest his eye, or his thought. Emptiness, emptiness, weariness. A little humiliation which, like a tiny, but venomous worm, was boring into the bottom of his heart. It was not wonderful, therefore, that when he thought of how he had used his time, and of all that he had seen, heard, and passed through, there was on his lips one of those smiles most bristling with pins points, while ...
— The Argonauts • Eliza Orzeszko (AKA Orzeszkowa)
... venomous eyes toward the speaker for just an instant. Then he stood respectfully looking at his master again. Ned saw the movement, the quick hostility of the glance, and felt surer ...
— Boy Scouts in the Canal Zone - The Plot Against Uncle Sam • G. Harvey Ralphson
... trained up these youths here to what they are now. Aye, some of 'em from before they were able to say a grace of two lines long to have more parts in their pates than would fill so many Dry-vats. And to be serious with you, if after all this, by the venomous practice of some, who study nothing more than his destruction, he should fail us, both Poets and Players would be at ...
— Shakespearean Playhouses - A History of English Theatres from the Beginnings to the Restoration • Joseph Quincy Adams
... of San Lorenzo!" he muttered, "there are serpents and venomous insects in this pit of purgatory. Oh, misericordia! what has pierced my leg? Why should my son drag me through this hole? Ah! blessed Saint Barnabas! a slimy reptile ...
— Captain Brand of the "Centipede" • H. A. (Henry Augustus) Wise
... provided with serpents—rather too well provided—and the Bush child has to be careful in regard to putting his hand into rabbit burrows or walking barefoot, as there are several varieties of venomous snake. But the snakes are not at all the great danger that some imagine. You might live all your life in Australia and never see one; but in a few country parts it has been found necessary to enclose the homesteads on the stations ...
— Peeps At Many Lands: Australia • Frank Fox
... stood her in greater stead than breeding and education: she had the power of enslaving gallant hearts and holding them in thrall with many artful devices. They liked her Bohemianism, her wit, her geniality, her audacious slang, and her collection of droll epithets that fittingly described her venomous critics of a self-appointed nobility. When she could not reach the heights of such superior persons she proceeded to ridicule them with a tongue that rattled out vivid invective which outmatched anything they could say of her. It probably made her more enemies, but it satisfied ...
— Drake, Nelson and Napoleon • Walter Runciman
... admiration—and lo! a large serpent, shining with green and gold, twisted itself among the flowers in manifold involutions; and wheresoever the beautiful viper glided, the blossoms became crisped and blackened, as if fire had passed over them. With a sudden spring the venomous creature coiled itself about Eudora's form, and its poisoned tongue seemed just ready to glance into her heart; yet still the maiden laughed ...
— Philothea - A Grecian Romance • Lydia Maria Child |
