"Serpent" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... guileless one! thou shalt yet add to the simplicity of the dove the wisdom of the serpent. Thou art innocent because ignorant; but thou shalt be weighed anon in the balance and not be found wanting; and then shalt thou reconquer the holy spear lost in Sin, rewon in Purity and Sacrifice, and be to the frail Amfortas the chosen savior ...
— Parsifal - Story and Analysis of Wagner's Great Opera • H. R. Haweis
... enemies, not witnesses of God. The one destroyed idol temples, the other Christian shrines. The one has been saved the woe of persecuting the Bride of the Lamb; the other is of all races the veriest brood of the serpent which the Church has encountered since she was set up. For 800 years did the sandal gates remain at Mahmood's tomb, as a trophy over idolatry; and for 800 years have Seljuk and Othman been our foe, singled out as such, and denounced by ...
— Historical Sketches, Volume I (of 3) • John Henry Newman
... pretence. Every nation on earth, whether friends or enemies, will unite in despising you. 'Tis an incendiary war upon society, which nothing can excuse or palliate,—an improvement upon beggarly villany—and shows an inbred wretchedness of heart made up between the venomous malignity of a serpent and the spiteful ...
— The Writings Of Thomas Paine, Complete - With Index to Volumes I - IV • Thomas Paine
... a triumph of nineteenth-century ingenuity. To pose as loyal subjects and to disarm suspicion by protestations of friendship and brotherly love may be a more effective means of attaining your end, but it smacks too much of the serpent. The Ribbonmen were rough and rugged, but comparatively respectable. The Irish Separatists are just as disloyal, and infinitely more treacherous. The parchment "loyalty to Her Most Gracious Majesty the Queen," which Lord Houghton is in some places receiving, is revolting ...
— Ireland as It Is - And as It Would be Under Home Rule • Robert John Buckley (AKA R.J.B.)
... eternal youth. After age had completely wasted and shriveled him he was changed into a grasshopper. 6. PLUTON, Pluto, god of the nether world, the abode of the dead. 8. ARCHMORE, Archemorus or Opheltes, son of Lycurgus, king of Nemea, died in infancy from the bite of a serpent. ...
— French Lyrics • Arthur Graves Canfield
... of this very peculiar multipede you must be satisfied, for I can tell you no more. I went a little further, as the nursery rhyme says, and met with a snake, and not being able to determine, at ignorant first sight, whether it was a malignant serpent or not, I ingloriously took to my heels, and came home on the full run. It is the first of these exceedingly displeasing animals I have encountered here; but Jack, for my consolation, tells me that they ...
— Journal of a Residence on a Georgian Plantation - 1838-1839 • Frances Anne Kemble
... hanged him by the neck to a bough of a tree, and in about fifteen minutes he seemed dead; but he again became very troublesome during the operation of skinning, twisting his body in all manner of ways. This serpent ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 3, August, 1850. • Various
... however, the two gods had punished Laomedon very severely for breaking his promise. Apollo, after being restored to heaven, sent a plague upon the city of Troy, and Neptune sent up from the sea an enormous serpent which killed many of ...
— The Story of Troy • Michael Clarke
... at a loss, and not able to draw the people over to his opinion by any human reason, set his machines to work, as in a theatre, and employed prodigies and oracles. The serpent of Athena, kept in the inner part of her temple, disappeared; the priests gave it out to the people and declared, by the suggestion of Themistocles, that the goddess had left the city, and taken her flight before ...
— The Boys' and Girls' Plutarch - Being Parts of The "Lives" of Plutarch • Plutarch
... from its casements, and then suddenly disappear. The clanking of chains succeeded, together with the howlings of persons as in great pain. Then a ghastly spectre, in pea-green, with long, white beard and serpent's tail, appeared at the principal windows, shaking his fist at the passers-by. This went ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 97, November, 1865 • Various
... 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 ...
— A History of Pantomime • R. J. Broadbent
... the giantess, "there's the sea-serpent pie I've warmed up, and I've opened a can of elephant's heads ...
— Prince Vance - The Story of a Prince with a Court in His Box • Eleanor Putnam
... another unknown quantity of female force arose beside my mother's lamp. A certain young Cannon, distantly of our stock, must needs go see the world, and he returned with a fair demon of a bride, and settled, too, at Cannon's Ferry. He lived to see the wondrous serpent he had warmed in his arms, and died, they say, of the sting. But she lived on, and, shrinking back into the woods to a little farm my mother's sons rented to her, she lighted there a Jack-o'-the-lantern many a traveller has pursued who never returned ...
— The Entailed Hat - Or, Patty Cannon's Times • George Alfred Townsend
... nought. Does that cry of suffering raise the price of stocks or lower that of grain? Tush! let it pass. To each back its own burden. So he carries the piteous tale whereby his heart is aching for sympathy, and Those Others give him stones for bread and a serpent for a fish. Then he looks up to heaven, and asks if there be indeed a God to suffer all this wrong; or if there be, How long, O Lord, how long! The artistic temperament is not merely artistic perception, with which it is so often confounded. You may be steeped to the lips in that temperament, and ...
— The Idler Magazine, Vol III. May 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... youngest daughter of Henry Braddon, solicitor, and widow of John Maxwell, publisher, was born in London in 1837. Early in life she had literary aspirations, and, as a girl of twenty-three, wrote her first novel, "The Trail of the Serpent," which first appeared in serial form. "Lady Audley's Secret" was published in 1862, and Miss Braddon immediately sprang into fame as an authoress, combining a graphic style with keen analysis of character, and exceptional ...
— The Worlds Greatest Books - Vol. II: Fiction • Arthur Mee, J. A. Hammerton, Eds.
... going to Lancashire to buy goods for his department to-morrow—he was absent there for four or five days every three weeks. This was his last evening of Paradise for a while; and the Serpent had ...
— Mrs. Day's Daughters • Mary E. Mann
... seme to speake. Boethius was excellent in these feates. To whom, Cassiodorus writyng, sayth. Your purpose is to know profound thynges: and to shew meruayles. By the disposition of your Arte, Metals do low: Diomedes of brasse, doth blow a Trumpet loude: a brasen Serpent hisseth: byrdes made, sing swetely. Small thynges we rehearse of you, who can Imitate the heauen. &c. Of the straunge Selfmouyng, which, at Saint Denys, ...
— The Mathematicall Praeface to Elements of Geometrie of Euclid of Megara • John Dee
... right men to whom to entrust his secret purpose and its execution in co-operation with himself. The step was indeed crucial and in taking it he needed not alone the mental qualities which he had exhibited in his role of underground agitator, viz.: serpent-like cunning and intelligence under the direction of the most alert and flexible discretion, but as well a practical and profound knowledge of the human nature with which he had to deal, a keen and infallible insight ...
— Right on the Scaffold, or The Martyrs of 1822 - The American Negro Academy. Occasional Papers No. 7 • Archibald H. Grimke
... speak Is a most curious sort of freak. Though Serpent would its form describe, Yet it is of the feathered tribe. And 'tis the snake, I do believe, That tempted poor old Mother Eve, For never woman did exist Who could its subtle ...
— A Phenomenal Fauna • Carolyn Wells
... of vertue, rather they imploie their onely industrie to gather some profite of vertue and then (followinge the nature of the dogge) they retourne to their vomite, and vomite forth their venime hidden in their serpent's breast. As it came to passe and was euident in a certaine man, that was Stewarde of this nobleman's house (truly a very happye house, as well for the honest loue betwene the Lord and the Lady, as for the vertue and clemency wherewith both the one and the other were accompanied) ...
— The Palace of Pleasure, Volume 1 • William Painter
... drew nearer to the front of the house the mummers became aware that music and dancing were briskly flourishing within. Every now and then a long low note from the serpent, which was the chief wind instrument played at these times, advanced further into the heath than the thin treble part, and reached their ears alone; and next a more than usually loud tread from a dancer would come the same way. With nearer approach these ...
— The Return of the Native • Thomas Hardy
... Verzy, and Verzenay, as well as at Sillery, and concentrated their produce in the capacious cellars of her chteau, afterwards sending it forth with her own guarantee, under the general name of Sillery, which, like Aaron's serpent, thus swallowed up the others. The Marchale's social position enabled her to secure for her wines the recognition they really merited, added to which she was a keen woman of business. She also possessed much taste, ...
— Facts About Champagne and Other Sparkling Wines • Henry Vizetelly
... with pride, but he followed on the trail without a word and behind him came the whole regiment, implicit in its trust, and winding without noise like a great coiling serpent through ...
— The Rock of Chickamauga • Joseph A. Altsheler
... started as if a serpent had stung her, and Vane decided that he did not like her. Then he turned to the kindly old ...
— Mufti • H. C. (Herman Cyril) McNeile
... inside the nesting-place of all the serpents in the world; but Fear is their king. We who are here to serve, have no weapons; and we cannot overcome malignant things with kindness. If you will deliver the people from that serpent-king, by destroying his evil life, all the snakes will go further back into the jungle. For many generations—if the gods will, for always—the innocent people will be safe. I will take you there, if you will ...
— Son of Power • Will Levington Comfort and Zamin Ki Dost
... nothing in Aea except the furious people and the fire-breathing bulls. O how pitiful it was that the strange hero and his friends should have come to such a place for the sake of the Golden Fleece that was watched over by the sleepless serpent in ...
— The Golden Fleece and the Heroes who Lived Before Achilles • Padraic Colum
... creed, every Englishman is equal to five Americans and five hundred Frenchmen: consequently there would be some to spare of him. This happy thought saved me. I was let off upon solemnly promising to deliver Hingston into their arms, bound, Laocoon-like, by the serpent spells of their charms, or, like Regulus, potted and preserved in a barrel of fingernails, for ...
— The Complete Works of Artemus Ward, Part 7 • Charles Farrar Browne
... were, then suddenly appearing unawares before me; while something in his manner suggested a subtle, cold-blooded, venomous nature. Those swift glances of his, which perpetually came and went with such bewildering rapidity, reminded me, not of the immovable, stony gaze of the serpent's lidless eyes, but of the flickering little forked tongue, that flickers, flickers, vanishes and flickers again, and is never for one moment at rest. Who was this man, and what did he there? Why was he, though manifestly ...
— The Purple Land • W. H. Hudson
... invisible spiritual element the destiny of myriads of animal beings, and according to the nature of that invisible spiritual element it may develop into a Humboldt or an oyster, an elephant, a humming-bird, or a serpent? ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, May 1887 - Volume 1, Number 4 • Various
... painted face and the bones; for from the shadow of a hut at the back of the fire came another, who rushed into the light and swayed wildly to the barbarous music. The newcomer was naked as a babe new born; wild as a beast of the field; lithe as a serpent; and crazy to savageness with ...
— Vrouw Grobelaar and Her Leading Cases - Seventeen Short Stories • Perceval Gibbon
... medicinal qualities as an esculent, it was considered efficacious in cases of gout, jaundice, cramps, shortness of breath, wheezing of the lungs; for cleansing of the blood and improving the complexion; to use as an eye-water or to increase the flow of milk; as a remedy for serpent bites or an antidote for poisonous herbs and mushrooms; and for people who "are growen fat to abate their unwieldinesse and make ...
— Culinary Herbs: Their Cultivation Harvesting Curing and Uses • M. G. Kains
... she lay on her face, raised her elbows on the tiger's head, and supported her chin in her hands. Perfectly straight out her body was, the twisted purple drapery outlining her perfect shape, and flowing in graceful lines beyond—like a serpent's tail. The velvet pillows fell scattered at ...
— Three Weeks • Elinor Glyn
... man, Holding his turquoise-tinted fan, Alighted from the palanquin; We followed: never painter dreamed Of how that dark rich temple gleamed With gules of jewelled gloom within; And as we wondered near the door A priest came o'er the polished floor In sandals of soft serpent-skin; His mitre shimmered bright and blue With pigeon's breast-plumes. When he knew Our quest he stroked his broad white chin, And looked at us with slanting eyes And smiled; then through his deep disguise We knew him! ...
— Collected Poems - Volume One (of 2) • Alfred Noyes
... the 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 ...
— Narrative of a Journey to the Shores of the Polar Sea, in the Years 1819-20-21-22, Volume 1 • John Franklin
... help, but the Indians were at first too scared to come to his aid. At last one ventured near, and laid hold of the serpent's tail; and the others helping, they succeeded in unwinding the reptile and getting Mr. Ralston out of its clutches. He was more dead than alive, but even then would not give up the chase. As soon as he was sufficiently recovered they started after ...
— The Great Round World And What Is Going On In It, April 1, 1897 Vol. 1. No. 21 - A Weekly Magazine for Boys and Girls • Various
... it upon a person reputed to be a brave man, but who was nevertheless horribly frightened. One night, after getting snugly into bed, this gentleman felt something cold and slimy along side of him, he touched it with his foot; it seemed a round elongated body; he placed his hand upon it; it was a serpent coiled upon itself! In an ecstacy of terror, he leaped from the bed with a cry of disgust and horror, when Ganguernet made his appearance, shaking his fat sides and roaring out: 'What a capital joke!' It was an eel-skin filled with water, ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, January 1844 - Volume 23, Number 1 • Various
... dog had probably never read Olaus Magnus, though that worthy Archbishop wrote something very like dog-Latin; but, as dwellers on the margin of the "Atlantic," we have too great a respect for a prelate who believed in the kraaken and the sea-serpent, not to refer our valued Cynophilist to the Thirty-Ninth Chapter of the Eighteenth Book De Gentibus Septentrionalibus, where he will find the same story told of ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 25, November, 1859 • Various
... study to account for this sad and unwarrantable change on the part of the Boers we will be following the trail of the serpent and track it right up to its Hollander lair and to its at first unsuspected ...
— Origin of the Anglo-Boer War Revealed (2nd ed.) - The Conspiracy of the 19th Century Unmasked • C. H. Thomas
... old-time belief every lake or spring had its invisible guardian, supposed to sometimes take the form of a serpent or dragon. The spirit of a lake or pond was commonly spoken of as Ik['e]-no-Mushi, the Master of the Lake. Here we find the title "Master" given to a dragon living in a well; but the guardian of wells ...
— The Romance of the Milky Way - And Other Studies & Stories • Lafcadio Hearn
... to break his mother's heart, is this boy,' said Miss Wren, half appealing to Eugene. 'I wish I had never brought him up. He'd be sharper than a serpent's tooth, if he wasn't as dull as ditch water. Look at him. There's a pretty object ...
— Our Mutual Friend • Charles Dickens
... their admiration of us, and evinced great interest in our clothes, especially those of the quartermaster's wife, who, being a recent arrival in the Philippines, had yet the enviable trail of the Parisian serpent upon her apparel. One heavy cloth walking-skirt of hers, fitting smoothly over the hips and with no visible means by which it could be got into, animated the same inquiry from these people as good King George is said to have made anent the mystery of getting the apple into ...
— A Woman's Journey through the Philippines - On a Cable Ship that Linked Together the Strange Lands Seen En Route • Florence Kimball Russel
... found that five hundred were for Father Rapp, and two hundred and fifty for Count Leon. Father Rapp, when I told him the numbers, with his usual ready wit, quoted from the book of Revelation, 'And the tail of the serpent drew the third part of the stars of heaven, and did cast them ...
— The Communistic Societies of the United States • Charles Nordhoff
... In this speech Lincoln warned the President not to try to "escape scrutiny by fixing the public gaze upon the exceeding brightness of military glory—that attractive rainbow that rises in showers of blood, that serpent's eye that charms but to destroy." In writing, a few days after the delivery of this speech, to Mr. Herndon, Lincoln said: "I will stake my life that if you had been in my place you would have voted just as I did. Would you have voted what you felt and knew to be a lie? I know you would ...
— The Every-day Life of Abraham Lincoln • Francis Fisher Browne
... with an agonized scream, so piercing and so appallingly human that all the camp sprang awake. The outcry came but once, sounding from some place not far off, near the water's edge, and in the direction toward which the huge serpent had disappeared. Before the watcher had time to tell the others of what he had seen, one of the boatmen discovered the rut left in the soft ground by the reptile. Thereafter Knowlton kept his own counsel, listening ...
— The Pathless Trail • Arthur O. (Arthur Olney) Friel
... to a certain extent the good and the bad qualities of the mythical or historical beings that had been transferred upon them. For instance, the serpent, which shines near the northern pole, was the author of medical cures, because it was the ...
— The Oriental Religions in Roman Paganism • Franz Cumont
... felt the endless years in Amsterdam slip off him like the coils of some icy serpent, as he recognized the genial voice of the Porto physician, and though he was back again in the dungeon of the Holy Office, it was not the gloom of the vault that he felt, but sunshine and blue skies and spring and youth. Through the soft mist of delicious tears he ...
— Dreamers of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... the prince of darkness, had betrayed him; Delilah, the queen of Night, had shorn his hair; the dreadful Boar had wounded him; Hercules was struggling with Death itself; he had fallen under the influence of those malign constellations—the Serpent and the Scorpion. Would the god grow weaker and weaker, and finally succumb, or would he conquer after all? We can imagine the anxiety with which those early men and women watched for the first indication ...
— Pagan & Christian Creeds - Their Origin and Meaning • Edward Carpenter
... the night as black as pitch. The air was simply yelling. The clouds seemed down on your head almost, and the rain fell as if heaven was sinking and they were baling out the waters above the firmament. One great roller came writhing at me, like a fiery serpent, and I bolted. Then I thought of the canoe, and ran down to it as the water went hissing back again; but the thing had gone. I wondered about the egg then, and felt my way to it. It was all right and well out of reach of the maddest waves, so I sat down beside it and cuddled it for ...
— The Country of the Blind, And Other Stories • H. G. Wells
... the tales of death Divine and birth, Strange loves of Hawk and Serpent, Sky and Earth, The marriage, and the slaying of the Sun. The shrines of gods and beasts he wandered through, And mocked not at their godhead, for he knew Behind all creeds ...
— Grass of Parnassus • Andrew Lang
... That is, in Italian, "the rough rind," a name given to rustics. 'Scorzone' is also the name for a little black venomous serpent. ...
— The Autobiography of Benvenuto Cellini • Benvenuto Cellini
... the terror which held her captives thrall. Hence it is not surprising to one who has seen her a great deal, and has felt the peculiarity of her power, to find in Lehmann's portrait of her—which is, perhaps, the most characteristic of all that have been taken—a subtle resemblance to a serpent, which is at once fascinating and startling. Mrs. Jameson mentions that when she first saw her in Hermione, she was reminded of a Lamia, or serpent nature in woman's form. As you look at Lehmann's portrait this feeling is irresistible. The ...
— Literary and Social Essays • George William Curtis
... people that came from there," said Helen: "they were too tired to talk much about the country, but something in their attitude and appearance seemed to suggest that they had seen the sea-serpent. Dear doctor, I have no desire to ...
— Free Joe and Other Georgian Sketches • Joel Chandler Harris
... not spent three years with Isaac Gardon without learning that there was sin in giving way to her keen hatred; and she forced herself to silence, while Berenger said, reading her face, 'Keep it back, sweet heart! Make it not harder for me. I would as soon go near a dying serpent, but it were barbarity to leave him ...
— The Chaplet of Pearls • Charlotte M. Yonge
... sympathies and expressions of interest in all that concerned his friend. It seemed to him that his easy refinement of manner, in such contrast with the ceremonious stiffness of the New England customs of speech, was but the sliming over of the Serpent's tongue, preparatory to a dreadful swallowing of soul and body; and the careless grace of talk, which so charmed the innocent Rachel, appeared to the exacting Puritan a token of the enslavement of his old friend to sense and the ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 89, March, 1865 • Various
... in hand, to kill a Serpent Which spits her poyson in our kingdomes face. And that we speake not of (?); lives still That Witch Victoria, wife to Bellizarius? Is Death afraid to touch the Hagge? does hunger Tremble to gnaw ...
— Old English Plays, Vol. I - A Collection of Old English Plays • Various
... by the fever of jealousy, she fully sustained her reputation for perspicacity. Her conclusions were seldom wrong, and, indeed, the barrister, although he had professional motives for endeavouring to cloak himself with something of the wisdom of the serpent, was characterized far more by the somewhat stolid innocence of that proverbially moral, but less interesting creature, the dove; and it was an easy task for a keen observer, such as her ladyship undoubtedly was, to read him line ...
— A Comedy of Masks - A Novel • Ernest Dowson and Arthur Moore
... her body joins with that of the serpent-ivy round the tree trunk above her: a double myth—of her fall, and her support afterwards by her husband's strength. "Thy desire shall be to thy husband." The fruit of the tree—double-set filbert, telling nevertheless the ...
— Mornings in Florence • John Ruskin
... clothed himself in another habit than that worn by his people, and by the time he reached the temple he had spent his arrows, and had nothing but his useless bow left. In this predicament, he saw a monstrous serpent who made after him, and he fled. He had nothing to fight with, and was about to be caught in the serpent's fearful coils when the doors of the temple opened and three ladies ran out, each armed ...
— Operas Every Child Should Know - Descriptions of the Text and Music of Some of the Most Famous Masterpieces • Mary Schell Hoke Bacon
... will smoke against thee, and all the curses written in this book shall be upon thee, and thy name shall be blotted out from under heaven." It was unbelief of God's threatening that first ruined man, it is this still that keeps so many from the remedy, and makes their misery irrecoverable. The serpent brought them to this question, "Hath God said ye shall die." And then presently the question entertained becometh a conclusion, Ye shall not surely die. Thus ye see how the liar, from the beginning, was contrary to the God of truth, and he murdered us by ...
— The Works of the Rev. Hugh Binning • Hugh Binning
... found that good young ladies, while of course they have all the innocence of the dove, do display upon emergencies a considerable share of the wisdom of the serpent. And on this same mother wit and wisdom, Rose called internally, when that day, about eleven o'clock, she was summoned to the library, to ...
— Pink and White Tyranny - A Society Novel • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... beach I 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 and I lose ...
— The Quest • Pio Baroja
... him in sullen, contemptuous silence, loathing and yet dreading him more than they did a serpent, for he conducted a house of ill-repute for the exclusive use of white men and Negro girls, and, being diligent in endeavoring to bring to his home any and all Negro girls to whom his white patrons might take a fancy, had great influence with ...
— The Hindered Hand - or, The Reign of the Repressionist • Sutton E. Griggs
... Burton, and went toward the camp. But when they reached the slope behind which it lay, much to Sim's discomfiture, my father, instead of lying down at the foot of it, as he expected, and creeping up the side of it, after the doom of the serpent, walked right up over the brow, and straight into the camp, followed by Wagtail. There was nothing going on,—neither tinkering nor cooking; all seemed asleep; but presently out of two or three of ...
— The Vicar's Daughter • George MacDonald
... despite his prolonged sojourn in the malaria of political wire-pulling, his heart seems to be as the heart of a little child. If some who remember 'the old Parliamentary hand' should whisper that innocence of the dove is sometimes compatible with the wisdom of the serpent, I make no dissent. It is easy to be a dove, and to be as silly as a dove. It is easy to be as wise as a serpent, and as wicked, let us say, as Mr. Governor Hill or Lord Beaconsfield. But it is the combination that is difficult, and in Mr. Gladstone the ...
— The Grand Old Man • Richard B. Cook
... walked along they passed many curious things, such as Wolves in Sheep's Clothing, the skin of a Tiger nailed to a barn door, St. George and the Dragon, Father Knickerbocker, barrels of political mud, a huge serpent labeled "Anarchy," a drug store window full of bottles of Political Dope and boxes of Political Pills, an orchard of Political Plum Trees, and other objects which the Hatter said were as old as the hills. "I'm afraid there's nothing to ...
— The So-called Human Race • Bert Leston Taylor
... me, sisters, in my realm of wo, Whose only glory streams From its lost childhood, like the artic glow Which sunless Winter dreams! In the red desert moulders Babylon, And the wild serpent's hiss Echoes in Petra's palaces of stone ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII No. 6 June 1848 • Various
... to the Pope, that the naked figures of the last judgment were unworthy of a house of prayer. The artist introduced his censor in his painting as Minos judge of the infernal regions, with long ears like those of the other devils, and a serpent's tail. Paul III when appealed to is said to have answered, that if his Ceremoniere had been in Purgatory, he might have helped him out, but out of hell there was no redemption. This Papal witticism Platner could not find ...
— The Ceremonies of the Holy-Week at Rome • Charles Michael Baggs
... maid was quartered in a closet within the drawing-room, so extremely small, that, to avoid developing the whole of its accommodations, she was obliged to writhe in and out of the door like a beautiful serpent. Withers, the wan page, slept out of the house immediately under the tiles at a neighbouring milk-shop; and the wheeled chair, which was the stone of that young Sisyphus, passed the night in a shed belonging to the same dairy, where new-laid ...
— Dombey and Son • Charles Dickens
... his hand upon the other's arm, and Hostilius started as if he had touched a serpent. Then he became calmer, and a troubled look was in the eyes that sought ...
— The Lion's Brood • Duffield Osborne
... of the serpent as well as the simplicity of the dove. He has gone but a little way in this matter who supposes that it is an easy thing for a man to speak the truth, "the thing he troweth;" and that it is a casual function, ...
— Friends in Council (First Series) • Sir Arthur Helps
... was breaking. Moon and stars were gone, and the east was dull pink, like faded roses. A ribbon of silver mist, marking the course of the stream below, drew itself like a serpent through the woods that were changing from gray to green. The dank smell of early morning rose from the dew-drenched earth, and in the countless trees of the forest the ...
— Audrey • Mary Johnston
... they who expect their Lord. You walk amidst realities that will hide themselves unless you gaze for them; therefore, watch. You walk amidst enemies that will steal subtly upon you, like some gliding serpent through the grass, or some painted savage in the forest; therefore, watch. You expect a Lord to come from heaven with a relieving army that is to raise the siege and free the hard-beset garrison from its fears and its toilsome work; therefore, ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... Davis' Straits, whilst we are looking for them beneath the arctic circle, we hear that they have pierced into the opposite region of polar cold, that they are at the antipodes, and engaged under the frozen Serpent of the South. Falkland Islands, which seemed too remote and romantic an object for the grasp of national ambition, is but a stage and resting-place in the progress of their victorious industry. Nor is the equinoctial heat ...
— Public Speaking • Clarence Stratton
... knees. Its fourth sent it into the gaping mouth of the cheeky one. At the same instant the squibs and candles burst forth from all points, pouring their fires on the naked shoulders of the red men with a hiss that the whole serpent race of America might have failed to equal, while the other zigzags went careering about as if the hut were filled ...
— The Prairie Chief • R.M. Ballantyne
... without my learning anything. Guiche showed too much consideration for my feelings; he had no doubt come to an understanding with Madame, and both of them, by a friendly plot, agreed to postpone the solution of the problem. Why have I not a determined inveterate enemy—that serpent, De Wardes, for instance; that he would bite is very likely: but I should not hesitate any more. To hesitate, to doubt—better by far ...
— The Vicomte de Bragelonne - Or Ten Years Later being the completion of "The Three - Musketeers" And "Twenty Years After" • Alexandre Dumas
... this arm behold I clasp This amulet. One dawn two murderers Despatched to kill thee, stealing to thy bed Were frightened by a snake which from beneath Thy pillow glided. From that serpent's skin I made this charm. Wear it, and thou shalt prosper; But lose ...
— Nero • Stephen Phillips
... key-pattern symbolizing respectively waves, mountains and storm clouds. The animal forms used are those of the tao-tieh (glutton), a fabulous monster (possibly a conventionalized tiger) representing the powers of the earth, the serpent and the bull. These two last in later pieces combine to form the dragon, representing the power of the air. In the Chow dynasty libation vessels were also made in the form of a deer, a ram or a rhinoceros. These characteristics are shown in figures ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 2 - "Chicago, University of" to "Chiton" • Various
... as a vine, A vine with birds in all its boughs; Serpent and scarab for a sign Between the beauty of her brows And the amorous deep ...
— A Channel Passage and Other Poems - Taken from The Collected Poetical Works of Algernon Charles - Swinburne—Vol VI • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... whiteness on their heads; But in their visages the dazzled eye Was lost, as faculty that by too much Is overpower'd. "From Mary's bosom both Are come," exclaim'd Sordello, "as a guard Over the vale, ganst him, who hither tends, The serpent." Whence, not knowing by which path He came, I turn'd me round, and closely press'd, All frozen, ...
— The Divine Comedy, Complete - The Vision of Paradise, Purgatory and Hell • Dante Alighieri
... an hour, he was dead,—dead, while the body of the serpent with the mangled head was ...
— The Giraffe Hunters • Mayne Reid
... enough; the gall of my ink was milk to that of my heart. The bitterness of my feelings was tormenting; words that could burn, contempt that could kill, shame that could annihilate, these and nothing less could satisfy me. Could the serpent revenge fly, how would it dart and sting! Happily for man it can only crawl. That I had been treated with great injustice was true: but of justice my notions were very inadequate; of revenge I had more than enough for ...
— The Adventures of Hugh Trevor • Thomas Holcroft
... prince began to relate the state of his case, saying, " O friend, I have seen a damsel, but whether she be a musician from Indra's heaven, a maiden of the sea, a daughter of the serpent kings, or the child of an ...
— Vikram and the Vampire • Sir Richard F. Burton
... cried, stepping 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 ...
— Manalive • G. K. Chesterton
... naked into the world, feeble, incapable of flying like the bird, running like the stag, or creeping like the serpent; without means of defense, in the midst of terrible enemies armed with claws and stings; without means to brave the inclemency of the seasons, in the midst of animals protected by fleece, by scales, by ...
— Life and Literature - Over two thousand extracts from ancient and modern writers, - and classified in alphabetical order • J. Purver Richardson
... world do anything to spoil her. Have not I been leading the most exemplary life, talking systems and visiting cottages with Rachel and playing with the boys, and singing with the clergyman; and here am I pounced on, as if I were come to be the serpent in ...
— The Clever Woman of the Family • Charlotte M. Yonge
... across the desert, hollowed out by long usage, and so covered with bones that they gave the impression of a continuous white ribbon. Long, snouty heads were scattered everywhere, and the lines of ribs were so continuous that it looked in places like the framework of a monstrous serpent. The endless road gleamed in the sun as if it were paved with ivory. For thousands of years this had been the highway over the desert, and during all that time no animal of all those countless caravans had died there without being preserved by the dry, antiseptic air. No wonder, ...
— A Desert Drama - Being The Tragedy Of The "Korosko" • A. Conan Doyle
... the slope. A second glance told him that it was Jethro's. Vaguely troubled, he watched his approach; for good Priest Ware, while able to obey one-half the scriptural injunction, had not the wisdom of the serpent, and women, as typified by Cynthia, were a continual puzzle to him. That very evening, Moses Hatch had called, had been received with more favor than usual, and suddenly packed off about his business. Seated in the moonlight, the minister wondered vaguely whether Jethro Bass were troubling the ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... considered only as a definition, is indisputably correct. A dragon is a serpent breathing flame: the word means that. The tacit assumption, indeed (if there were any such understood assertion), of the existence of an object with properties corresponding to the definition, would, in the present instance, be false. Out of ...
— A System Of Logic, Ratiocinative And Inductive • John Stuart Mill
... flood are spread. Sometimes the sacred spot Hears human sounds profane, when As from Ophir or from Memphre Stretches the caravan. From far the eyes, its trail Along the burning shale Bending its wavering tail, Like a mottled serpent scan. These deserts are of God! His are the bounds alone, Here, where no feet have trod, To Him its centre known! And from this smoking sea Veiled in obscurity, The foam one seems to see In fiery ...
— Poems • Victor Hugo
... Ages, are but a poetic detail, a legendary recital, a picturesque decoration; and its cosmogony, borrowed in haste from Babylon by the last compiler of the Bible, with the stories of the apple and the serpent, over which so many Christian generations have labored, never greatly disturbed the imagination of the rabbis, nor weighed very heavily upon the thought of the Jewish philosophers. Its rites were never "an instrument of faith," an expedient to "lull" rebellious ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern — Volume 11 • Various
... high, and was covered with trees; but here in the hollow it was open. A stream ran along between us and the height. On this side of the stream stood a mighty tree, towards which my companion led me. It was an oak, with such a bushy head and such great roots rising in serpent rolls and heaves above the ground, that the ...
— Wilfrid Cumbermede • George MacDonald
... of the Serpent and his Cast Skin.—New Britain and Annamite story of immortality, the serpent, and death, 69 sq.; Vuatom story of immortality, the lizard, the serpent, and death, 70; Nias story of immortality, the crab, and ...
— The Belief in Immortality and the Worship of the Dead, Volume I (of 3) • Sir James George Frazer
... night, Midway between eve and dawn, See the chase, the rout, the flight In deep forest; oread, faun, Goat-foot, antlers laid on neck; Ravenous all the line for speed. See yon wavy sparkle beck Sign of the Virgin Lady's lead. Down her course a serpent star Coils and shatters at her heels; Peals the horn exulting, peals Plaintive, is it near or far. Huntress, arrowy to pursue, In and out of woody glen, Under cliffs that tear the blue, Over torrent, ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... me two things," he said. "Promise me that, whatever happens, you will not strike the first blow, and that you will not argue with her. Contradict, denounce, defy. But give no reasons. If you do you are lost. She is subtler than the serpent, skilled in all the tricks of logic, and you will became a laughing-stock, and run ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Volume V. • Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton, Eds.
... heard of the tamed snakes belonging to the serpent-charmers of India and Africa, but it is seldom that the harmless serpents of civilized countries have been domesticated. But the common snake, sometimes called the garter-snake, which harmlessly ...
— Round-about Rambles in Lands of Fact and Fancy • Frank Richard Stockton
... will always be inanimate and cold. The traveller is also aware of a sympathy of mood between himself and the road he travels. We have all seen ways that have wandered into heavy sand near the sea-coast, and trail wearily over the dunes like a trodden serpent. Here we too must plod forward at a dull, laborious pace; and so a sympathy is preserved between our frame of mind and the expression of the relaxed, heavy curves of the roadway. Such a phenomenon, indeed, our reason might perhaps resolve with a little trouble. We might reflect that the present ...
— Essays of Travel • Robert Louis Stevenson
... seek her society frankly and publicly and exhort her openly, he knew that this was impossible; still more, he remembered her unmistakable fright at his first expression of faith; he must "be wise as the serpent and harmless as the dove." He must work upon her soul alone, and secretly. He, who would have shrunk from any clandestine association with a girl from mere human affection, saw no wrong in a covert intimacy for the purpose of religious salvation. Ignorant as he was of the ways of the world, ...
— Selected Stories • Bret Harte
... remain resting for a few moments till the twig gave away, when it would roll over many times on the ground, loudly yelping, but still dragged onwards. Presently I saw in the direction we were going a huge serpent, thick as a man's thigh, its head lifted high above the grass, and motionless as a serpent of stone. Its cavernous, blood-red mouth was gaping wide, and its eyes were fixed on the struggling fox. When about twenty yards from the serpent the fox began moving very rapidly over the ground, its struggles ...
— The Purple Land • W. H. Hudson
... stranger 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
... flight of the angels' wings, And the creeping of the polyps in the sea, And the growth of the vine in the valley. And he took hold of my lips, And out he tore my sinful tongue, With its empty and false speech. And the fang of the wise serpent Between my terrified lips he placed With bloody hand. And ope he cut my breast with a sword, And out he took my trembling heart, And a coal blazing with flame He shoved into the open breast. Like a corpse I lay in the desert; And the voice ...
— Lectures on Russian Literature - Pushkin, Gogol, Turgenef, Tolstoy • Ivan Panin
... The flatt'ring train, the sentinel that guards me, The slave that waits, all give some new alarm, And from the means of safety dangers rise. Ev'n victory itself plants anguish here, And round my laurels the fell serpent twines. ...
— The Grecian Daughter • Arthur Murphy
... phrase, he is 'deprived of water' (aud). The pious make oblations to his cenotaph twice a year, and propitiate his ghost with offerings of water to allay his thirst in the lower world. The primaeval serpent-worship is perpetuated in the reverence paid to traditional village-snakes. Of the local ghosts some are beneficent. Sometimes they are only mischievous, like Robin Goodfellow, and will milk the cows, and ...
— Rambles and Recollections of an Indian Official • William Sleeman
... life, and sent the before vitiated blood coursing hotly, and, at last, healthfully through all the veins and arteries of the national body—persistently encroach alike upon Government and society. The slime of that serpent was over everything in the North as well as the South, and if it did not kill out the popular virtue and patriotism as completely here as there, where it is intimately interwoven with the life of the people, the difference is due to that very ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No 4, October, 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... deeply—they may deceive! Hope with her Dead Sea fruits is there, Sin is spreading her gilded snare, Disease with a ruthless hand would smite, And Care spread o'er thee her withering blight. Hate and Envy, with visage black, And the serpent Slander, are on thy track; Falsehood and Guilt, Remorse and Pride, Doubt and Despair, in thy pathway glide; Haggard Want, in her demon joy, Waits to degrade thee and then destroy; And Death, the insatiate, ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 5 November 1848 • Various
... said I; then taking off my hat I stood uncovered before the chair, and said in the best Welsh I could command, 'Shade of Huw Morus, supposing your shade haunts the place which you loved so well when alive—a Saxon, one of the seed of the Coiling Serpent, has come to this place to pay that respect to true genius, the Dawn Duw, which he is ever ready to pay. He read the songs of the Nightingale of Ceiriog in the most distant part of Lloegr, when he was a brown-haired boy, and now that ...
— The Pocket George Borrow • George Borrow
... the 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 Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... ridiculous Iron Mask; I poked around your Northern forests, among your vagabond Indians, a solemn French idiot, personating the ghost of a dead Dauphin, that the gaping world might wonder if we had 'a Bourbon among us'; I have played sea-serpent off Nahant, and Woolly-Horse and What-is-it for the museums; I have interviewed politicians for the Sun, worked up all manner of miracles for the Herald, ciphered up election returns for the World, and thundered ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... tone, half to Sarah and half to herself: "See, the tempter has again prepared his snares; be watchful, and pray for guidance, that you fall not into them. Sinful affection lies in wait behind brotherly love, just as the serpent concealed itself among the pleasant fruits of the tree of knowledge. See, then, that you love in the spirit, and not in the flesh. If you love in the spirit, and if you meet with one who seeks the same God, you should love that seeker; and should he be only——" here her words became very ...
— Skipper Worse • Alexander Lange Kielland
... serpent in the old story, 'If you eat of the fruit of the tree of knowledge you shall be as gods'? The promise was true in words, but apparently there was some mistake about the tree. Perhaps it was the tree of selfish knowledge, or else the fruit was not ripe. The ...
— Equality • Edward Bellamy
... hath sorrow? who hath contention? who hath wounds without cause? They that tarry long at the wine, they that go to seek mixed wine. Look not thou upon the wine; at the last it biteth like a serpent, and stingeth like ...
— Select Temperance Tracts • American Tract Society
... and bordered by so dark a circle sharply defined on his cheek, that they seemed rather prominent. These singular eyes had in them something indescribably domineering and piercing, which took possession of the soul by a grave and thoughtful look, a look as bright and lucid as that of a serpent or a bird, but which held one fascinated and crushed by the swift communication of some tremendous sorrow, or ...
— The Exiles • Honore de Balzac
... he answered. 'Sit not musing with some serpent in your breast, or some new persuasion to offer Father Adam ...
— The Red Book of Heroes • Leonora Blanche Lang
... "How sharper than a serpent's tooth it is to have a child that's ungrateful for the best of teaching and sound doctrine! Many's the time," said the elder, lifting his eyes and hands,—"many's the time I've showed her the truth; many's ...
— John Ward, Preacher • Margaret Deland
... were tame pleasures; she would often climb The steepest ladder of the crudded rack Up to some beaked cape of cloud sublime, And like Arion on the dolphin's back Ride singing through the shoreless air;—oft-time 485 Following the serpent lightning's winding track, She ran upon the platforms of the wind, And laughed to bear the fire-balls ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Volume I • Percy Bysshe Shelley
... she afterward recall having left the room, and the memory was solely of the wicked gleam in the serpent eyes of her enemy Rab, and of the sound of papers being torn by her husband, as she, dazed and fainting, managed to creep away and reach ...
— In the Valley • Harold Frederic
... 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 ...
— The Land of Midian, Vol. 2 • Richard Burton
... few days after we arrived. To appreciate the full significance of this, you should know what American newspapers are. One of them actually printed a long account of my going away, with every paragraph headed in large print, 'Domestic Unhappiness,' 'The Serpent in the Laboratory,' 'The Temptation,' 'The Flight,' 'The Pursuit,' and so on, all invented, of course. Other papers give the most outrageous anecdotes. Old jokes are revived and ascribed to us. I am accused of tearing his hair out, and he of coming home late ...
— The Irrational Knot - Being the Second Novel of His Nonage • George Bernard Shaw
... him and his mother—you shall hear how, at another time. I suppose I felt a presentiment that the boy would have some evil influence over me. At any rate, when I accidentally touched him, I trembled as if I had touched a serpent. You will think me superstitious—but, after what you have said, it is certainly true that he has been the indirect cause of the misfortune that has fallen on me. How came he to steal the papers? Did you ask the Rector, when ...
— The Black Robe • Wilkie Collins
... servant of James, as he had been of Elizabeth, the king, who valued him, desired he would not stand the trial with his wife and daughter; but the old man pleaded that he was a husband and a father, and must fall with them. "It is a fall!" said the king: "your wife is the serpent; your daughter is Eve; and you, ...
— Literary Character of Men of Genius - Drawn from Their Own Feelings and Confessions • Isaac D'Israeli
... at this last sentence, into a whisper; yet, had any one been there to listen, the whisper would have sounded louder and more terrible than the most violent vociferation of angry passion. It breathed a sudden concentration of evil intelligence, that startled like the hiss of a serpent. ...
— Bressant • Julian Hawthorne
... some of the lowest order of priests for the astonishment, if not the edification, of their flocks. An attempt was made by them to represent the effigy of Martin Luther, whom the monks believed to be in league with Satan, under the form of a winged serpent with a forked tail and hideous claws. Unfortunately Martin's effigy, when ignited, refused to fly, and, instead of doing what was required of it, fell against the chimney of a house to which it set fire. The flames spread furiously in every direction, and ...
— Up in the Clouds - Balloon Voyages • R.M. Ballantyne
... reawakened sense of the cruel unfairness of life. Her flesh crept with the touch of her rain-soaked clothing. And in her thoughts temptation stirred like a whispering serpent. ...
— Nobody • Louis Joseph Vance
... beasts of prey, threatened England from the prows of those ships, as they came onward through the water; and were reflected in the shining shields that hung upon their sides. The ship that bore the standard of the King of the sea- kings was carved and painted like a mighty serpent; and the King in his anger prayed that the Gods in whom he trusted might all desert him, if his serpent did not strike its ...
— A Child's History of England • Charles Dickens
... of the largest serpents they had seen: it is called liffa by the Arabs, and its bite is said to be mortal, unless the part is instantly cut out. It is a mistaken idea that all the serpent tribe are called liffa; this species alone bears the name; it has two horns, and is of a light brown colour. Major Denham's old Choush Ghreneim had a distorted foot, which was but of little use to him except on horseback, from the bite of one of those poisonous reptiles, notwithstanding the part ...
— Lander's Travels - The Travels of Richard Lander into the Interior of Africa • Robert Huish
... beyond all former precedent, bursting into luxuriance of bloom, and most of them bearing beautiful flowers, which, however, in two or three instances, had the sort of natural repulsiveness that the serpent has in its beauty, compelled against its will, as it were, to warn the beholder of an unrevealed danger. The young man had long ago, it must be added, demanded of his grandfather the documents included in the legacy of Professor Swinnerton, and had spent days and nights ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 87, January, 1865 • Various
... with whom he had been talking over the future—"the property must all come to him some time,—it would be a vast satisfaction to me to tell the old man that we can get along without any of his ill-gotten gains. He made the bulk of his fortune during the war, you know. The old sea-serpent," continued Mr. Slocum, with hopeless confusion of metaphor, "had a hand in fitting out more than one blockade-runner. They used to talk of a ship that got away from Charleston with a cargo of cotton that netted the share-holders upwards of two hundred thousand dollars. He denies ...
— The Stillwater Tragedy • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... in with the modern abuses. When the tares are found in the wheat, the greatest promptitude and practicality is always shown in burning the wheat and gathering the tares into the barn. And since the serpent coiled about the chalice had dropped his poison in the wine of Cana, analysts were instantly active in the effort to preserve the poison and to pour away ...
— Eugenics and Other Evils • G. K. Chesterton
... True, one thing remained to temper the distrust: sporadic communication had been established, a thing new and yet heavy with pretense, which again like a serpent at its tail spelled mutual distrust. But it was there, begrudging, and all the smaller tribes knew of it too—those scattered ones who were little more than clans. All the peoples of the valley watched and waited, aware of this thing between ...
— The Beginning • Henry Hasse
... Under other circumstances, we might have stopped to admire the wonderful variety of shrubs and creepers which formed the undergrowth; as it was, we had to keep our eyes constantly about us, for at any moment we might have to encounter a huge boa or anaconda, or we might tread upon some venomous serpent, or a tree-snake might dart down upon us from the boughs above. Monkeys, as before, chattered and grinned at us. Parrots, and occasionally large gaily-plumed macaws, flew off from amongst the topmost ...
— In New Granada - Heroes and Patriots • W.H.G. Kingston
... isles of Eden have this advantage over the scriptural Eden, that apparently it was not woman and her seed who were expelled, when once she set foot here, but the serpent and his seed: women now abound in the Summer Islands, and there is not a snake anywhere to be found. There are some tortoises and a great many frogs in their season, but no other reptiles. The frogs are fabled of a note so deep and hoarse that its vibration almost ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... launched above a hundred articles against the writers you speak of; but I confess that in attacking them it was to attempt something like criticism. Be just; if you condemn them, you must condemn Homer, whose Iliad turns on Helen of Troy; you must condemn Milton's Paradise Lost. Eve and her serpent seem to me a pretty little case of symbolical adultery; you must suppress the Psalms of David, inspired by the highly adulterous love affairs of that Louis XIV. of Judah; you must make a bonfire of Mithridate, ...
— Parisians in the Country - The Illustrious Gaudissart, and The Muse of the Department • Honore de Balzac
... nor hell in our religion until the white man brought them to us, yet Unk-to-mee, the Spider, was doubtless akin to that old Serpent who tempted mother Eve. He is always characterized as tricky, treacherous, and at the same time affable and charming, being not without the gifts of wit, prophecy, and eloquence. He is an adroit magician, able to assume almost any form at will, and impervious to any amount of ridicule ...
— The Soul of the Indian - An Interpretation • [AKA Ohiyesa], Charles A. Eastman
... initiate sees renewed the old struggle between the lower and the higher natures. For everything which the candidate for initiation formerly had to go through must be repeated in one who follows the Christian path. Just as Osiris was threatened by the evil Typhon so now "the great dragon, that old serpent" (xii. 9) must be overcome. The woman, the human soul, gives birth to lower knowledge, which is an adverse power if it is not raised to wisdom. Man must pass through that lower knowledge. In the Apocalypse it appears as the "old serpent." From the remotest times the serpent had ...
— Christianity As A Mystical Fact - And The Mysteries of Antiquity • Rudolf Steiner
... to the spirit lake, he said, "Here is the home of the K[o]k-k[o]; I will guide you to the kiva and open for you the door." After entering the kiva the Kaek-l[o] viewed all those assembled and said, "Let me see; are all my people here? No; the K[o]-l[o]-oo-w[)i]t-si (plumed serpent) is not here; he must come," and two of the K[o]k-k[o] (the Soot-[i]ke) were dispatched for him. This curious creature is the mythical plumed serpent whose home is in a hot spring not distant from the village of Tk[a]p-qu[e]-n[a], ...
— The Religious Life of the Zuni Child - Bureau of American Ethnology • (Mrs.) Tilly E. (Matilda Coxe Evans) Stevenson
... from beneath it. Even now it only lives in a tropical and secondary sense, as 'a brazen face'; or if in a literal, in poetic diction or in the consecrated language of Scripture, as 'the brazen serpent'; otherwise we say 'a brass farthing', 'a brass candlestick'. It is the same with 'oaten', 'birchen', 'beechen', 'strawen', and many more, whereof some are obsolescent, some obsolete, the language manifestly tending now, as it has tended for a long time past, to the getting quit of ...
— English Past and Present • Richard Chenevix Trench
... wings displayed silver, with a diadem gold. In later times the books have been blazoned as Bibles. In a "tricking" in the volume before mentioned, in the College of Arms, St. John the Evangelist stands behind the shield in the attitude of benediction, and bearing in his left hand a cross with a serpent rising from it (much more suitable for the scriveners or law writers, by the bye). On one side of the shield stands the Evangelist's emblematic eagle, holding an inkhorn in his beak. The Company never received any grant of arms or supporters, but about ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury
... present, imagining serpents coming up the legs of the table, with their infernal flat heads, and their tongues like the Devil's tail (evidently taken from that model, in the magic lanterns and other such popular representations), elongated for dinner. I saw one small serpent, whose father was asleep, go up to a guinea pig (white and yellow, and with a gentle eye—every hair upon him erect with horror); corkscrew himself on the tip of his tail; open a mouth which couldn't have swallowed the guinea pig's nose; dilate ...
— The Life of Charles Dickens, Vol. I-III, Complete • John Forster
... in a moral point of view. Our human nature was bitten and poisoned by the infernal serpent, in the earthly paradise, and although a powerful antidote was given us in the Redemption, some of the venom remained in us; and as long as we live here below, we shall feel its effects. We shall always feel the sting of concupiscence, and retain an inclination to ...
— The Happiness of Heaven - By a Father of the Society of Jesus • F. J. Boudreaux
... all sin is to be avoided, according to Ecclus. 21:2: "Flee from sins as from the face of a serpent." Now Cassian says (De Instit. Monast. x): "Experience shows that the onslaught of sloth is not to be evaded by flight but to be conquered by resistance." Therefore sloth ...
— Summa Theologica, Part II-II (Secunda Secundae) • Thomas Aquinas
... apply to the handsome, resolute young fellow who followed his mother up the gravel path, but at the moment Geoffrey Greville appeared in Mrs Ramsden's eyes as the destroyer of her happiness, the serpent who had brought discord into Eden! She was in truth an honest little Puritan in whose sight the good things of the world were but as snares and pitfalls. So far from feeling any pleasure in the thought that her daughter might one ...
— Flaming June • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... to relish the act of studying Content with the superficial Could play anybody else's hand better than his own Culture is certain to mock itself in time Disease of conformity Disposition of people to shift labor on to others' shoulders Do not like to be insulted with originality Eve trusted the serpent, and Adam trusted Eve Fit for nothing else, they can at least write Good form to be enthusiastic and not disgraceful to be surprised Housecleaning, that riot of cleanliness which men fear Idle desire to be busy without ...
— Quotes and Images From The Works of Charles Dudley Warner • Charles Dudley Warner
... wit prodigiously was made, All men, professions, actions to invade, With so much furious vigour, as if it Had lived o'er each of them, and each had quit, Yet with such happy sleight and careless skill, As, like the serpent, doth with laughter kill, So that although his noble leaves appear Antic and Gottish, and dull souls forbear To turn them o'er, lest they should only find Nothing but savage monsters of a mind,— No shapen ...
— Gargantua and Pantagruel, Complete. • Francois Rabelais
... nation as a nation, have fallen, endangered as all of them were, in spite of the volcanic outburst of the startled North which answered the roar of the first gun at Sumter? Worse than all, are we permitted to doubt that in the very bosom of the North itself there was a serpent, coiled but not sleeping, which only listened for the first word that made it safe to strike, to bury its fangs in the heart of Freedom, and blend its golden scales in close embrace with the deadly reptile of the cotton-fields. Who would not wish that ...
— Pages From an Old Volume of Life - A Collection Of Essays • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... each other's looks when they were not in costume. It was a question whether Cornelia who came as herself, was lovelier than Charmian, who was easily recognizable as Cleopatra, with ophidian accessories in her dress that suggested at once the serpent of old Nile, and a Moqui snake-dancer. Cornelia looked more beautiful than ever; her engagement with Ludlow had come out and she moved in the halo of poetic interest which betrothal gives a girl with all other girls; it was thought an inspiration that she should not have come in costume, ...
— The Coast of Bohemia • William Dean Howells
... to know who took it?" and thrusting the orange in her pocket, she finished hastily her work, went out of sight and sound, and feasted upon the coveted dainty. No sooner was it devoured than she repented heartily. The serpent had tempted her; she had yielded; now, when the mischief was done, he called her a fool, and promised her she should be discovered; he did not tell her how soon; and though China was filled with fears, she little dreamed that that very moment ...
— Hubert's Wife - A Story for You • Minnie Mary Lee
... which from that day the monks waged, in their conclaves of sloth and sosherie, against the children of the town, denouncing them to their parents as worms of the great serpent and heirs of perdition, only served to make their young spirits burn fiercer. As their joints hardened and their sinews were knit, their hearts grew manful, and yearned, as my grandfather said, with the zealous longings of a righteous ...
— Ringan Gilhaize - or The Covenanters • John Galt
... the further we went the more monotonous and dead Nature became. I could never have pictured such a lifeless wood to myself. No sound of insects was to be heard, no chirp or song of bird; and not even the trail of a serpent was ...
— On Commando • Dietlof Van Warmelo
... misshaped and horrible, and they suffered great misery, moaning and bewailing continually. Through the intervention of Myingwa (a vague conception known as the god of the interior) and of Baholikonga (a crested serpent of enormous size, the genius of water), the "old men" obtained a seed from which sprang a magic growth of cane. It penetrated through a crevice in the roof overhead and mankind climbed to a higher plane. A dim light appeared in this stage and vegetation was produced. Another magic ...
— A Study of Pueblo Architecture: Tusayan and Cibola • Victor Mindeleff and Cosmos Mindeleff
... and Troy. In disguise, therefore, Minerva urges Ulysses, wiliest of the Greeks, to silence the clown Thersites, and admonish his companions that if they return home empty-handed they will be disgraced. Only too pleased, Ulysses reminds his countrymen how, just before they left home, a serpent crawled from beneath the altar and devoured eight young sparrows and the mother who tried to defend them, adding that this was an omen that for nine years they would vainly besiege Troy but would ...
— The Book of the Epic • Helene A. Guerber
... lashes, yellow eyes shone out, clear and bright as the eyes of a leopardess. She drew her body up to her full height and the copper castanets began to tinkle with such challenge in their piercing sound that the whole crowd trembled with emotion. Vivid, slender, supple as a serpent, the damsel whirled rapidly, her nostrils dilated, and a strange cry came crooning from her throat. With each impetuous movement, two dark little breasts held tight by a green silk net, trembled like ...
— The Satyricon, Complete • Petronius Arbiter
... beliefs. To this day if an ordinary man is asked to give his recollections of the story of Adam and Eve he is sure to put Milton as well as Genesis into them. For instance, the Miltonic Satan is almost sure to take the place of the scriptural serpent. The influence Milton has had is unfortunately also seen in less satisfactory ways. He claimed to justify the ways of God to men. Perhaps he did so to his own mind {144} which, in these questions, was curiously matter-of-fact, ...
— Milton • John Bailey
... works so much evil, is like that serpent of the Indies whose habitat is under a shrub, the leaves of which afford the antidote to its venom; in nearly every case it brings the remedy with the wound it causes. For example, the man whose life is one of routine, who has ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... as cunning as a serpent. He would not have hesitated to assail these two Senecas, for, truth to tell, he could never feel much love for the conquerors of his people. He did not fear them; but he saw the way to win his point without such ...
— The Daughter of the Chieftain - The Story of an Indian Girl • Edward S. Ellis
... parched leaf; shrinking as if a serpent were in his path; with a face which changed from white to red, from red to white, the stranger met these questions. But Rust's eye never left his face. There was no trace of anger nor emotion, in his marble features. He merely said: ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, May 1844 - Volume 23, Number 5 • Various
... stands out that only about eighty persons, so far as is ascertainable, have ever died from snake bite in the United States. Nowhere in the Civil War records does a death from this cause appear, though hundreds of thousands of men were living "on the country," and at a time when the serpent clan was much more ...
— Stories from Everybody's Magazine • 1910 issues of Everybody's Magazine
... instant of horrified inaction, and in that instant a tongue of flame shot like a fiery serpent through the closed curtains behind the dancer. In a moment the cry was caught up and repeated in a dozen directions, and even as it went from mouth to mouth ...
— The Safety Curtain, and Other Stories • Ethel M. Dell
... man is what it is, because the defenseless Adam and Eve of Milton's imagination yielded to the nearly all-powerful Satan whom he has delineated. Milton has in some sense invented this difficulty; for in the book of Genesis there is no such inequality. The serpent may be subtler than any beast of the field; but he is not necessarily subtler or cleverer than man. So far from Milton having justified the ways of God to man, he has loaded the common ...
— Harvard Classics Volume 28 - Essays English and American • Various
... him, trying to make something of his strange experiences, when his eye was caught by a glitter and a gleam in the grass, which caused him to spring affrightedly backward, as from the glittering eye and gleaming crest of a rattlesnake. But no serpent was there. The more the pity! Only the red moccasins, adjusted side by side, with their old air of easy self-assurance, and now in open view before him. Yet, but the moment previous his look had chanced to be resting on that very spot, and naught but the tufted grass had he seen there! With their ...
— The Red Moccasins - A Story • Morrison Heady
... grazed, an occasional small prickly pear cactus, and the ever present, pungent sage. Verdure-covered islands dotted the course of the stream, which was quiet and sluggish, doubling back and forth like a serpent over many a useless mile. Nine miles of rowing brought us back to a point about three miles from the mouth of Whirlpool Canyon; where the river again enters the mountain, deliberately choosing this course to one, unobstructed for several miles, ...
— Through the Grand Canyon from Wyoming to Mexico • E. L. Kolb
... and lovingly. Now as the Galician gently rubbed and polished and turned the ring this way and that, the light revealed crude tiny figures, a man and a woman under a tree. And was that a vine or a serpent? They studied it long ...
— His Family • Ernest Poole
... said that he was inconsistent in his lessons. He dragged in all that came to his hand for the astonishment of Liubka. Once he brought along for her a large self-made serpent—a long cardboard hose, filled with gunpowder, bent in the form of a harmonica, and tied tightly across with a cord. He lit it, and the serpent for a long time with crackling jumped over the dining room and the bedroom, filling the place with smoke and stench. Liubka was ...
— Yama (The Pit) • Alexandra Kuprin
... seven Above our abodes he hover'd With lances that yawn'd for carnage; But vanish'd, afore his chaps With slaughter of Thebes were glutted; Afore the flicker of pitchy flame Might to the crown of turrets climb. So fierce the rattle of war around Was pour'd on his rear by the serpent-foe Hard match'd in deadly encounter. For Jove the over-vaunting tongue Supremely hates. Their full fed stream Of gold, of clatter, and of pride He saw, and smote with brandish'd flame Him, who at summit of his goal Would raise the peal ...
— Memoir and Letters of Francis W. Newman • Giberne Sieveking
... get into touch with POPE, and time for POPE and retinue to reach the slope of Fiesole. SAV., glancing down across ridge, sees these sleuth-hounds, points them out to LUC. and cries Bewray'd! LUC. By whom? SAV. I know not, but suspect | The hand of that sleek serpent Niccolo | Machiavelli.—SAV. and LUC. rush down c., but find their way barred by the footlights.—LUC. We will not be ta'en Alive. And here availeth us my lore | In what pertains to poison. Yonder herb | [points ...
— Seven Men • Max Beerbohm
... terrific violence, and whole provinces were depopulated. In the city of Kief alone, seven thousand perished in the course of ten weeks. Universal terror, and superstitious fear spread through the nation. An earthquake indicated that the world itself was trembling in alarm; an enormous serpent was reported to have been seen falling from heaven; invisible and malignant spirits were riding by day and by night through the streets of the cities, wounding the citizens with blows which, though unseen, were heavy and murderous, ...
— The Empire of Russia • John S. C. Abbott
... Everything was horribly distinct in that white light. The firs of Caddam were so near that it seemed to have arrested them in a silent march upon the hill. The grass would not hide a pebble. The ground was scored with shadows of men and things. Twice the light flickered and recovered itself. A red serpent shot across it, and ...
— The Little Minister • J.M. Barrie
... elegance of a Parisian beauty; but our charming Princess convinced me that this is a heresy in taste. When I beheld the grace with which she wore her ermine, and the art with which she knew how to vary its serpent folds as she moved, or as she spoke, the variety it gave to her costume and attitudes; the development it afforded to a fine hand and arm, the resource in the pauses of conversation, and that soft and attractive air which it seemed to impart even to the play of her wit, I could no longer ...
— Tales And Novels, Vol. 8 • Maria Edgeworth
... Galle we witnessed from the steamer a remarkable sight, a desperate fight, it seemed to be a fight and not play, between a sea-serpent, which seemed to be about fifteen feet long, and a huge ray. The battle was fought on the surface of the water and even out of it, as the ray several times threw himself into the air. How it ended we could not see. Anyway we had seen the sea-serpent, though not the fabulous ...
— Ranching, Sport and Travel • Thomas Carson
... upward and forward. You may have noticed the tightly inflated portion underneath as they left the ground." While speaking he had moved rather near, when suddenly a partially concealed mouth opened, showing the unmistakable tongue and fangs of a serpent. It emitted a hissing sound, and the small eyes gleamed maliciously. "Do you believe it is a poisonous species?" asked Ayrault. "I suspect it is," replied the doctor; "for, though it is doubtless able to leap with great ...
— A Journey in Other Worlds • J. J. Astor |
