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More "Constrictor" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... a man of morals, of ethical duty, of certain obligations to an elder sister, of responsibility to host or hostess, or to society, would have been little better than to try to teach table etiquette to a boa-constrictor. There was only one thing that could force him to become sober for one instant and to reflect, and that was the menace of successful rivalry. But even then his sober mood would last only as long as he was maturing panic ...
— Too Old for Dolls - A Novel • Anthony Mario Ludovici
... The boa-constrictor—sawar, as the Malays called it—lived in the jungle and rice-swamps. Sometimes it attained an enormous size. An Englishman told me that he and some Malays were exploring the jungle to find traces of antimony ...
— Sketches of Our Life at Sarawak • Harriette McDougall
... I said wyding, walking in the water. Mr. Bulky was wyding, one morning, with rod in hand, when, all of a sudden, he felt something on his leg. Looking down, he sawr a big black water-snyke coiled round his boot, and jabbing awy at his leg. It hung on to him like a boa-constrictor, and squeezed his leg so tight that it gyve him a bad attack of gout. He had to get on shore and sawr it in two with his knife before the snyke would leave go. Fortunately, the brutes are not venomous, but that beggar's teeth scratched Mr. Bulky's ...
— Two Knapsacks - A Novel of Canadian Summer Life • John Campbell
... a heavy blow from his fist. At the third blow the blood poured out of the mouth of the carpenter, who writhed under the pressure of his adversary's knee like a buffalo stifled by a boa-constrictor; he succeeded at last in freeing one hand, which he thrust ...
— Gerfaut, Complete • Charles de Bernard
... Boa Constrictor are down to-day. Two hundred and seventeen dollars to the ton. I've got all the stuff I can carry, so I don't mind letting you in. The papers will have it to-morrow, though they're doing their best ...
— Peak and Prairie - From a Colorado Sketch-book • Anna Fuller
... and the condor, From the gust upon the river, From the sudden earthquake shiver, From the trip of mule or donkey, From the midnight howling monkey, From the stroke of knife or dagger, From the puma and the jaguar, From the horrid boa-constrictor That has scared us in the pictur', From the Indians of the Pampas Who would dine upon their grampas, From every beast and vermin That to think of sets us squirmin', From every snake that tries on The traveller his p'ison, From every ...
— The Poetical Works of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Complete • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... habitations of men. The lianes, or creeping plants, now become plentiful, and embrace almost every tree, rising often to the height of fifty or sixty feet, and encircling them with the apparent force of the boa-constrictor. Most of them are poisonous; indeed, it is from these creeping parasites that the Indians, both in North and South America, obtain the most deadly venom. Strange that these plants, in their appearances and their habits so similar to the serpent tribe, ...
— Diary in America, Series One • Frederick Marryat (AKA Captain Marryat)
... of the net-work in which he now held the whole arrondissement of Ville-aux-Fayes. To avoid too many explanations it is necessary to state, once for all, succinctly, the genealogical ramifications by means of which Gaubertin wound himself about the country, as a boa-constrictor winds around a tree,—with such art that a passing traveller thinks he beholds some natural effect of ...
— Sons of the Soil • Honore de Balzac
... to dread greatly the boa-constrictor or an enormous serpent resembling it; "and being influenced by certain superstitious notions they even fear to kill it. The man who happened to put it to death, whether in self-defence or otherwise, was formerly required to lie in a running stream ...
— The Golden Bough - A study of magic and religion • Sir James George Frazer
... cannot understand this swift forward motion of serpents. The seizure of prey by the constrictor, though invisibly swift, is quite simple in mechanism; it is simply the return to its coil of an opened watch-spring, and is just as instantaneous. But the steady and continuous motion, without a visible fulcrum (for the whole body moves at the same instant, and I have often ...
— The Queen of the Air • John Ruskin
... which directly or indirectly affect the digestion, such as puerperal laminitis, drinking of large quantities of cold water and exposure to cold and rain when the body is warm. All of these various conditions might be said to affect the vaso-constrictor nerves in such manner that the natural tendency (because of the peculiar structure of the sensitive laminae and their mode of attachment to the non-sensitive wall) which solipeds have for this affection is indirectly ...
— Lameness of the Horse - Veterinary Practitioners' Series, No. 1 • John Victor Lacroix
... have surmised that serpents have no sense of taste, because the boa-constrictor in the Zoological Gardens swallowed his blanket. Chemistry may, however, assist us in solving the mystery, and induce us to draw quite an opposite conclusion from the curious circumstance alluded to. May ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 419, New Series, January 10, 1852 • Various
... now hurried to the window and looked out. In the moonlight they could distinctly see a huge reptile, either a python or a boa-constrictor, coiled up in the angle formed by the juncture of the airplane body and the broad base of the left wing. The creature was so long that its tail passed up over the rounded fuselage and out upon the other wing. Bob flashed his electric ...
— Around the World in Ten Days • Chelsea Curtis Fraser
... authority with the officials, so we had no delay, as Isnaga took us under his wing. I almost wished that the custom-house had confiscated my thick clothes and the fur-lined coat; and as for the boa, it looked like a vicious constrictor of its own name, and I wished it at the ...
— In the Courts of Memory 1858-1875. • L. de Hegermann-Lindencrone
... that,' she brought out slowly. 'Troo-too-too-too-too-oo-oo...' the bassoon growled with startling fury, executing the final flourishes. I turned round, caught sight of the red neck of Mr. Ratsch, swollen like a boa-constrictor's, beneath his projecting ears, and very disgusting ...
— The Jew And Other Stories • Ivan Turgenev
... to do My Lady never knew; for she was so frightened at the long words that she ran for her life, and locked herself into her bedroom, for fear of being squashed by the words and strangled by the sentence. A boa constrictor, she said, was bad company enough: but what was a boa constrictor made ...
— The Water-Babies - A Fairy Tale for a Land-Baby • Charles Kingsley
... there was a colossal menagerie. In it there were more than twenty elephants, giraffes, hippopotami, rhinoceroses, zebras, dromedaries, camels, and the rarest kinds of antelopes. Then came the reptiles,—from the boa constrictor, who was ten yards long, to the smallest blind-worm, amongst them some of the most dangerous kinds. Crocodiles twenty feet long, monstrous toads, tortoises as big as donkeys. Then there were the wild beasts too. Lions from Abyssinia, from ...
— The Curly-Haired Hen • Auguste Vimar
... me. I shouted in the hope of frightening them away, but, although they paused, irresolute, at the sound of my voice, they came on again, drawing closer every minute. They were of all sizes, some of great length, black and venomous-looking. One monstrous reptile of the constrictor species continued to watch me from an adjacent rock upon which it lay, its forked tongue darting in and out of its mouth. I felt that my reason was leaving me. Endurance has its limits—I could bear no more. Death or ...
— Adventures in Southern Seas - A Tale of the Sixteenth Century • George Forbes
... next morning the shepherd and the monkey once more formed in procession and wended their way to the old pump. The new rope could hang an elephant. It was thick as a boa-constrictor, and the shepherd took a full hour to adjust the noose and get the gallows into working order. Then the fatal moment came. With a mightier shove than before the monkey was launched into the air, and the rope stiffened and held like a ship's hawser. But the executioner had not calculated ...
— The Monkey That Would Not Kill • Henry Drummond
... the chief young lady asked what Mr. and Mrs. Fitz would like, and named a thousand things, each better than the other, to all of which Fitz instantly said yes. The wretch was in such a state of infatuation that I believe if that lady had proposed to him a fricasseed elephant, or a boa-constrictor in jelly, he would have said, "O yes, ...
— A Little Dinner at Timmins's • William Makepeace Thackeray
... monkey-room with their parasols! These appendages were the feelers with which some of the softer sex used to touch Cross's monkeys, and, as the old gentleman used to insist, helped to kill them. Parasols were freely used to touch the boas and other snakes feeding in the same warm room. No doubt a boa-constrictor could not live comfortably if his soft, muscular sides got fifty pokes a day from as many sticks or parasols. Edward Cross, mild, gentle, gentlemanly, Prince of show-keepers, used to be very indignant at the inquisitorial ...
— Heads and Tales • Various
... gastronome is conscious of an expenditure of vital power, an expenditure so vast that the brain is atrophied (as it were), that a second brain, located in the diaphragm, may come into play, and the suspension of all the faculties is in itself a kind of intoxication. A boa constrictor gorged with an ox is so stupid with excess that the creature is easily killed. What man, on the wrong side of forty, is rash enough to work after dinner? And remark in the same connection, that all great men have been moderate eaters. The exhilarating effect of the wing of a chicken upon invalids ...
— Poor Relations • Honore de Balzac
... with it, made me disbelieve my other senses; but Miss Lusignan is now about the thirtieth who has shown me that marvellous feat, with a calm countenance that belies the herculean effort. Nature has her every-day miracles: a boa-constrictor, diameter seventeen inches, can swallow a buffalo; a woman, with her stays bisecting her almost, and lacerating her skin, can yet for one moment make herself seem slack, to deceive a juvenile physician. ...
— A Simpleton • Charles Reade
... Comin', ez 't doos, entirely free 'f expense. This year I made the follerin' observations Extrump'ry, like most other tri'ls o' patience, An', no reporters bein' sent express To work their abstrac's up into a mess Ez like th' oridg'nal ez a woodcut pictur' Thet chokes the life out like a boy-constrictor, 70 I've writ 'em out, an' so avide all jeal'sies 'twixt nonsense o' my own an' some ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell
... entered her poor little Eden—even the green-eyed monster constrictor, who, if given full swing, would not spare a bone ...
— Humorous Ghost Stories • Dorothy Scarborough
... in a back street where he could have the long-desired meal in private, he came to a small taxidermist's, glanced in as he passed, and beheld the pride and joy of the taxidermist's heart—a magnificent and really well-mounted boa-constrictor, and fell shrieking, struggling, and screaming ...
— Snake and Sword - A Novel • Percival Christopher Wren
... of 'em. When the fickle public tired of giving up its dimes to see 'em, a guy named Merritt and myself had a choice collection on hand, and we went on the road with the big show for the summer, thinking perhaps our business would pick up in the fall. Our two great attractions were the biggest boa-constrictor in captivity, which we called 'Jointless Jake,' and the heaviest fat man in the world. That snake was about two hundred feet long, and while the fat man wasn't much on length, he held the record for belt measurement. ...
— Side Show Studies • Francis Metcalfe
... door of the chateau will be opened for me at this hour; and as for spending the night upon this branch, I possibly might not object to do so, but I declare it is impossible for any other animal than a boa-constrictor to do it." ...
— Ten Years Later • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... the lizard, and, like his, they extend over the palate, the more effectually to cut off the return of the swallowed masses of food. About a hundred and twenty have been counted in the throat of the boa-constrictor; but their number varies considerably in the different species. They are not organs of the highest order, and nature is not ...
— The History of a Mouthful of Bread - And its effect on the organization of men and animals • Jean Mace
... and not the road. If there's a more solid road in the country, Ben, than the South Midland, I've got to hear of it. It's big, but it's growing—swallowing up everything that comes in its way, like a regular boa constrictor. Think what it was when I came into it immediately after the war; and to-day it's one of the few roads that is steadily increasing its earnings in ...
— The Romance of a Plain Man • Ellen Glasgow
... the shores and in the woods and groves, all teeming with prolific life, which the hot sun and frequent rains induce, the giant cranes and brilliant-plumaged herons disport themselves, and gorgeous butterflies almost outshine the feathered denizens. From the tangled boughs the pendant boa-constrictor coils himself, and hissing serpents, basking crocodiles, and prowling jaguars people the untrodden wilds of jungle and lagoon. In these great virgin forests tribes of monkeys find their home, and the tapir and the cougar have their being. Mangroves, palms, rubber-trees, ...
— Mexico • Charles Reginald Enock
... zaman-hi," alluding to a peculiarity highly prized by Egyptians; the use of the constrictor vaginae muscles, the sphincter for which Abyssinian women are famous. The "Kabbazah" ( holder), as she is called, can sit astraddle upon a man and can provoke the venereal-orgasm, not by wriggling and moving but by tightening and loosing the male member with ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 4 • Richard F. Burton
... are; marching along by the low grounds here, intending to sweep gradually leftwards towards Janus-Hill quarter; there to sweep home upon him, coil him up, left and rear and front, in their boa-constrictor folds, and end his trifle of an Army and him. "Why not, if we do our duty at all, annihilate his trifle of an Army; take himself prisoner, and so end it?" Report says, Soubise had really, in some moment of enthusiasm lately, ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XVIII. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—Seven-Years War Rises to a Height.—1757-1759. • Thomas Carlyle
... walk out much on account of the presence of wild beasts. Elephants were numerous—it was because of the destruction they had wrought on the farms that fishing had become the main support of the township. Early one morning a commotion broke out: a boa constrictor had been seen during the night, and bands of men armed with clubs, cutlasses, and muskets set off, yelling, to hunt the monster. Whenever she moved out she was followed by all the men, women, and children. On every side she saw skulls, rudely carved ...
— Mary Slessor of Calabar: Pioneer Missionary • W. P. Livingstone
... lovely. It is situated on a plateau, from the extremity of which the bank descends to the Green River. On both sides is the wild forest, and round the giant trunks the enamoured vine twines itself with the affectionate pertinacity of a hungry boa-constrictor, and boars its head in triumph to the topmost branches. But vegetable life is not like a Venus who, "when unadorned, is adorned the most;" and, the forest having cast off its summer attire, presents ...
— Lands of the Slave and the Free - Cuba, The United States, and Canada • Henry A. Murray
... now can find full justification for itself on the simple ground that it exists! Under such an argument a howitzer is as good as a plough, a sword is as good as a sickle, a pillory is as good as a baby-wagon. By such reasoning a shark is as useful as a horse. By this logic a boa-constrictor is as good as a reindeer, a tiger is as useful and salutary in his office as an ox or a St. Bernard, and a cancer is as beautiful as a blush. That is, everything is good, not because it is useful and just, but ...
— The Arena - Volume 18, No. 92, July, 1897 • Various
... to do anything scientific in that constrictor-like hold, and as they swayed and strove he began to realize that unless he could break it, it would very speedily break him. Hunt-Goring's face, purple and devilish, with lips drawn back and teeth clenched upon his cigarette, glared into his own. There was something unspeakably ...
— The Keeper of the Door • Ethel M. Dell
... boa-constrictor in the Zoo were gems of humanity in comparison with those of the negroid-Egyptian's as he turned to obey, and then stopped mulishly until a third little reminder chipped splinters from the marble at his heel, whereupon he stooped and recovered his headgear, minus ...
— Desert Love • Joan Conquest
... the offal thrown away by the butcher. If successful in gaining this prize they were not long in disposing of it, cooking evidently being considered a waste of time. A famished "black-fellow" after a heavy meal used to remind me of pictures of the boa-constrictor who has swallowed an ox, and is resting ...
— Spinifex and Sand - Five Years' Pioneering and Exploration in Western Australia • David W Carnegie
... elegant, graceful. Then, sir, this is a sketch, made by an American friend of mine: Whee-whaw-Kantamaraw's wigwam, King of the—Cannibal Islands, I think he said, sir. Log, you observe; scalps, and boa-constrictor skins: curious. Something like this, sir, would look neat, I think, for the front door; don't you? Then, the lower windows, I've not quite decided upon; but what would you say to Egyptian, sir? I think I should like my windows Egyptian, with ...
— The Poetry of Architecture • John Ruskin
... Holding the right idea of man in my [1] mind, I can improve my own, and other people's individ- uality, health, and morals; whereas, the opposite image of man, a sinner, kept constantly in mind, can no more improve health or morals, than holding in thought the [5] form of a boa-constrictor can aid an ...
— Miscellaneous Writings, 1883-1896 • Mary Baker Eddy
... sleep all sense of insecurity. It was true he was armed, but of what avail is a rifle against the unexpected spring of a jaguar or leopard—from a bough some ten or twenty feet directly over one's head—or the sudden lunge of a boa constrictor! ...
— Werwolves • Elliott O'Donnell
... sat on the round stool before the piano, motionless, as though expecting something. And as though taking advantage of the darkness and her extreme lassitude, an oppressive, overpowering desire began to assail her. Like a boa-constrictor it gripped her limbs and her soul, and grew stronger every second, and no longer menaced her as it had done, but stood clear before her ...
— The Party and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... if possible, recapture it at the very earliest opportunity. Though the Advertiser has succeeded in temporarily securing three lions, a chimpanzee, a couple of hyaenas, and a young hippopotamus in the Vicarage drawing-room, and has managed to envelope a boa-constrictor in a lawn-tennis net, yet, as five full-grown Bengal tigers, and about thirty other wild beasts of a miscellaneous character are at large in the village, and have, to his knowledge, already devoured the Postman, ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 93, August 13, 1887 • Various
... came this morning in a 'tramp' from South America. One of them, a boa constrictor, got loose and coiled around a windlass. The cook was passing and it caught him. He fainted with fright and the beast squeezed him to death. It's a fine story—lots of amusing and dramatic details. I wrote it for a column and I think they won't cut ...
— The Great God Success • John Graham (David Graham Phillips)
... like one who is in the embrace of the boa-constrictor and unable to defend himself. She had not ...
— The Poor Plutocrats • Maurus Jokai
... thoughts. It could easily now have darted away, but it felt that it was driven to bay, and began to show fight in the most vicious fashion, snapping its flat beak, hissing, snorting, rattling its plumage, and undulating its long neck, as it danced about, till it looked like a boa constrictor which had partially developed into ...
— Diamond Dyke - The Lone Farm on the Veldt - Story of South African Adventure • George Manville Fenn
... where it started from the ground, was as thick as a man's wrist, and it twisted and wound about an oak sapling as if it were a great African constrictor seeking to strangle the young tree. Other vines branched out from the sides until not only was the particular sapling enfolded and smothered, but the greedy vine reached out and grasped ...
— Through Forest and Fire - Wild-Woods Series No. 1 • Edward Ellis
... cages containing wolves, hyenas, wild hogs, wild asses, monkeys, porcupines, and zebras. There were three or four cages full of poisonous snakes, one variety of which I recognized, the curse of India—the hooded cobra. Then there was a big python, picked up at Rio, and a boa-constrictor, taken aboard at one of ...
— The Grain Ship • Morgan Robertson
... been bitten by mosquitos as big as jackdaws—at least as jack-snipes; he had sat down to rest on the trunk of a fallen tree, and it whisked him over on his face, and turned out to he a rattle-snake—at least, a boa- constrictor! Nay, Henry discoursed on the ponies he had himself tamed, the rabbits he had shot, the trees he had climbed, the nests he had found, the rats he had killed, in terms he durst not use when his brother was by; or if he did, and ...
— The Stokesley Secret • Charlotte M. Yonge
... spread like lightning. Villa—the magic word! The Great Man, the salient profile, the unconquerable warrior who, even at a distance, exerts the fascination of a reptile, a boa constrictor. ...
— The Underdogs • Mariano Azuela
... that he turned about a dozen somersaults, and then, for the amusement of the Giant and his friends, he changed the old sorceress successively into a lion, a pig, an old hen, a turtle, a kangaroo, a boa-constrictor, an ape, a lobster, a cat, a crocodile, and a crane. He declared his intention of going through these exercises until he had used up the whole animal kingdom, and seemed delighted to think that he could have a complete menagerie in one cage. In order that he might ...
— Ting-a-ling • Frank Richard Stockton
... entirely free 'f expense. This year I made the follerin' observations Extrump'ry, like most other tri'ls o' patience, An', no reporters bein' sent express To work their abstrac's up into a mess Ez like th' oridg'nal ez a woodcut pictur' Thet chokes the life out like a boy-constrictor, I've writ 'em out, an' so avide all jeal'sies 'Twixt nonsense o' my own an' ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 103, May, 1866 • Various
... heather roots. Wherever he could find four legs, he was pretty sure to find a head and a tail. His beasts were a most comic menagerie, and right fruitful of laughter. But they were not so grotesque and extravagant as Lina and her followers. One of them, for instance, was like a boa constrictor walking on four little stumpy legs near its tail. About the same distance from its head were two little wings, which it was forever fluttering as if trying to fly with them. Curdie thought it fancied it did fly with them, when it was merely plodding on busily with its four little ...
— The Princess and the Curdie • George MacDonald
... shows no fear of the snake. His thick hide seems to protect him. The "skin" of the rattle-snake or the "hiss" of the deadly "moccasin," are alike unheeded by him. He kills them as easily as he does the innocent "chicken snake" or the black constrictor. The latter often escapes from its dreaded enemy by taking to a bush or tree; but the rattle-snake and the moccasin are not tree-climbers, and either hide themselves in the herbage and dead leaves, ...
— The Hunters' Feast - Conversations Around the Camp Fire • Mayne Reid
... Here is a man whose food by nature is curry and rice, before a hillock of which he sits cross-legged, and putting his five fingers into it, makes a large bolus, which he pushes into his mouth. He repeats this till all is gone, and then he sleeps like a boa- constrictor until he recovers his activity; or else he feeds on great flat cakes of wheat flour, off which he rends jagged-pieces and lubricates them with some spicy and unctuous gravy. All our ways of life, our ...
— Behind the Bungalow • EHA
... the midst of an affecting appeal in Court on a slander case delivered himself of the following flight of genius. "Slander, gentlemen, like a boa constrictor of gigantic size and immeasurable proportions, wraps the coil of its unwieldy body about its unfortunate victim, and, heedless of the shrieks of agony that come from the utmost depths of its victim's soul, loud and reverberating as the night thunder that rolls in the heavens, it finally breaks ...
— Law and Laughter • George Alexander Morton
... known only to her own room-mate) that she was slightly of African blood. Reader,—the consternation and horror which succeeded this "new development," are, without exaggeration, perfectly indescribable. The people drew long breaths, as though they had escaped from the fangs of a boa constrictor; the old ladies charged their daughters, that should Miss —— be seen in that village again, by no means to permit themselves to be seen in the street with her; and many other charges were delivered by said mothers, equally absurd, and equally foolish. ...
— The American Prejudice Against Color - An Authentic Narrative, Showing How Easily The Nation Got - Into An Uproar. • William G. Allen
... Dumps, now that the enormity of her sin was brought home to her, and the articles eaten so carefully enumerated, began to feel very much like a boa-constrictor, and the tears fell from her eyes as ...
— Diddie, Dumps, and Tot • Louise-Clarke Pyrnelle
... hideous fight was coming to an end—though a hungry constrictor, battling with the huge rhinoceros, and crushing his mailed ribs beneath its folds, could not have been so fierce or fearful; fewer now, and fainter are her struggles; that face is livid blue—the eyes have started out, and ...
— The Complete Prose Works of Martin Farquhar Tupper • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... said. "Look at that boa-constrictor you have out there. It is stuffed and in a glass case. Don't you know that in its natural surroundings you yourself would come mighty near stepping on one without seeing it? You would. If you had that thing set up as it should be, these museum visitors of yours would pass the ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1921 and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... of the boa-constrictor in the Zoo were gems of humanity in comparison with those of the negroid-Egyptian's as he turned to obey, and then stopped mulishly until a third little reminder chipped splinters from the marble at his heel, whereupon he stooped ...
— Desert Love • Joan Conquest
... but overran a small—but quite big enough—boa-constrictor, which must have aimed to drop from a tree upon the hare passing below, and missed. It was in an even more evil temper, in consequence, than snakes usually are, and struck at the jackal with its head and shut mouth. The ...
— The Way of the Wild • F. St. Mars
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