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Venom   /vˈɛnəm/   Listen
Venom

noun
1.
Toxin secreted by animals; secreted by certain snakes and poisonous insects (e.g., spiders and scorpions).
2.
Feeling a need to see others suffer.  Synonyms: malice, maliciousness, spite, spitefulness.



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"Venom" Quotes from Famous Books



... threw back her cap strings. The denial that she minded who knew it may not appear relevant, but desiring to be spiteful she could not at the moment find a better way of showing her spite than by declaring her indifference to the publication of her virtues. If there was no venom in the substance of the declaration there was much in the manner of it. Mrs. Bingham brought back the ...
— Pages from a Journal with Other Papers • Mark Rutherford

... hast thou come?" asked Moling. "For a blessing," the Devil replied. "Thou shalt not have it," said Moling, "for thou deservest it not." "Well, then," said the Devil, "bestow the full of a curse on me." "What good were that to thee?" asked Moling. "The venom and the hurt of the curse will be on the lips from which it will come." After further parley, the Devil paid ...
— A Celtic Psaltery • Alfred Perceval Graves

... she rose obediently and came forward in the silent way she had, stepping lightly, straight and slim and darkly beautiful. Applehead glanced at her sourly, and her lashes drooped to hide the venom in her eyes as she passed him ...
— The Heritage of the Sioux • B.M. Bower

... officiousness. I therefore flatter myself that the congress will receive with indulgence and lenity the opinion I shall offer. The scheme of simply disarming the tories seems to me totally ineffectual; it will only embitter their minds and add virus to their venom. They can, and will, always be supplied with fresh arms by the enemy. That of seizing the most dangerous will, I apprehend, from the vagueness of the instruction, be attended with some bad consequences, and can answer no good one. It opens ...
— The Life of George Washington, Vol. 2 (of 5) • John Marshall

... to purchase poison for them all," said the little poet scowling. The cheekbones stood out sharply beneath the tense bronzed skin. The black hair was tangled and unkempt and the beard untrimmed, the eyes darted venom. "One of them—Gideon, M.P., the stockbroker, engaged me to teach his son for his Bar-mitzvah, But the boy is so stupid! So stupid! Just like his father. I have no doubt he will grow up to be a Rabbi. I ...
— Children of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill

... moderate power of thrust can strike them: their claws, once strong enough to tear out a thousand eyes, only fall with a feeble pat that scarce raises the skin: their tongues, from their toothless old gums, dart a venom which is rather disagreeable than deadly. See them trailing their languid tails, and crawling home to their caverns at roosting-time! How weak are their powers of doing injury! their maleficence how feeble! How changed are they since the brisk days when their eyes shot wicked fire; ...
— The Virginians • William Makepeace Thackeray

... to this that we have sufficient reason to believe that the Massagetse and the other nomads of these parts regarded the use of poisoned arrows as legitimate in warfare, and employed the venom of serpents, and the corrupted blood of man, to make the wounds ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 6. (of 7): Parthia • George Rawlinson

... deliver the message. To do so would have been worse taste than Fetters had displayed in sending it. Having got the best of the encounter, Caxton had no objection to letting his defeated antagonist discharge his venom against the absent colonel, who would never know of it, and who was already breasting the waves of a sorrow so deep and so strong as almost to overwhelm him. For he had loved the boy; all his hopes had centred around this beautiful man child, who had ...
— The Colonel's Dream • Charles W. Chesnutt

... It had remained for his own flesh and blood to be threatened ere he had taken decisive action. The viper had lain within his reach, and he had neglected to set his heel upon it. Men and women had suffered and had died of its venom; and he had not crushed it. Then Robert, his son, had felt the poison fang, and Dr. Cairn, who had hesitated to act upon the behalf of all humanity, had leapt to arms. He charged himself with a parent's selfishness, and his conscience ...
— Brood of the Witch-Queen • Sax Rohmer

... full of venom. Shawnees, though armed now with rifles, were good bowmen, and whatever he suspected might be confirmed by the failure of the belt bearers to show skill, or not to shoot at all. He held in his hand the great bow that ...
— The Forest Runners - A Story of the Great War Trail in Early Kentucky • Joseph A. Altsheler

... not repress a shudder. He had often seen the dreaded "baigan"—a bright blue snake which frequented waterholes and lagoons, and whose venom equalled that of the deadly fer-de-lance of Martinique and St Vincent. Years before he had seen a cattle dog swimming in a lagoon attacked by a "baigan," which bit it on the lip, and, although a stockman, as soon as the animal was ...
— Tom Gerrard - 1904 • Louis Becke

... take exceptions at the slave? Lan. All stomach him, but none dare speak a word. Y. Mor. Ah, that bewrays their baseness, Lancaster! Were all the earls and barons of my mind, We'd hale him from the bosom of the king, And at the court-gate hang the peasant up, Who, swoln with venom of ambitious pride, Will be the ruin of the realm and us. War. Here comes my Lord of Canterbury's grace. Lan. His countenance bewrays he ...
— Edward II. - Marlowe's Plays • Christopher Marlowe

... seems drawn with special spite and venom, as a satire upon the first critics that rose up among the assembled people to question the divine right of kings to do wrong. We may be sure the real Thersites, from whom the poet drew his picture, was ...
— Mosaics of Grecian History • Marcius Willson and Robert Pierpont Willson

... for ever and ever, Greed, sick with envy, and nets lifted high, Full of inherited hatred. Every one saw it, and every one felt The secret venom, gushing forth, Year after year, Heavy and breath-bated years. But hearts did not quiver ...
— New York Times Current History: The European War, Vol 2, No. 1, April, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various

... no danger at all in the proportion or quantity of knowledge, how large soever, lest it should make it swell or out-compass itself; no, but it is merely the quality of knowledge, which, be it in quantity more or less, if it be taken without the true corrective thereof, hath in it some nature of venom or malignity, and some effects of that venom, which is ventosity or swelling. This corrective spice, the mixture whereof maketh knowledge so sovereign, is charity, which the Apostle immediately addeth to the former clause; for so he ...
— The Advancement of Learning • Francis Bacon

... disgrace. 'Non talis auxilii, nec defensoribus ipsis.' No, when England seeks leaders, it will not be the sycophants of power, those who worship alternately democracy and autocracy, who slaver over despotism one day with their venom, and the next with their still ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 2, August, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various

... critic. A literary man or a flunkey, as you like. He is in the pay of a local speculator here, and so is bound to praise everything and be ecstatic over every one, though for his part he is soaked through and through with the nastiest venom, to which he does not dare to give vent. I am afraid he's an awful scandalmonger; he'll run at once to tell every one I'm in the theatre. ...
— The Torrents of Spring • Ivan Turgenev

... much more irritating than the bites of flies, partly because the barbed sting is left in the wound and partly because of the quantity and quality of the venom. When a swarm attacks an animal ...
— Special Report on Diseases of the Horse • United States Department of Agriculture

... houses of the gods, figure in that literature irrationally rational, as their tombs. Thus we are gravely informed [Note: Annals of Four Masters.] that "the Dagda Mor, after the second battle of Moy Tura, retired to the Brugh on the Boyne, where he died from the venom of the wounds inflicted on him by Kethlenn"—the Fomorian amazon—"and was there interred." Even in this passage the writer seems to have been unable to dispossess his mind quite of the traditional belief that the Brugh was ...
— Early Bardic Literature, Ireland • Standish O'Grady

... out his gums were as blue as indigo, and he was so swelled up with his own venom he looked dropsical. I judged his bite would have caused death in from twelve to fourteen minutes, preceded by coma and convulsive rigors. We called him old Colonel Gila Monster or Judge Stinging ...
— Europe Revised • Irvin S. Cobb

... according to Augustine (De Trin. xii, 12, 13) the sensuality is signified by the serpent. But there was nothing serpent-like in Christ; for He had the likeness of a venomous animal without the venom, as Augustine says (De Pecc. Merit. et Remiss. i, 32). Hence in Christ there was no ...
— Summa Theologica, Part III (Tertia Pars) - From the Complete American Edition • Thomas Aquinas

... employ himself on you. He will soon flit to other prey, when you disregard him. It is my way: I never publish a sheet, but buzz! out fly a swarm of hornets, insects that never settle upon you, if you don't strike at them and whose venom is diverted to the ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole Volume 3 • Horace Walpole

... this moment to be visiting Nicomedia, where he had spent a great part of his youth, heard Eusebius' version of the story. It was only a question of words, said the wily Bishop; what was really distressing about it was the spite and the venom with which the Patriarch of Alexandria had pursued an innocent and holy man for having dared to differ from him in opinion. Arius was then presented to the Emperor as a faithful and unjustly persecuted priest, a part which he knew ...
— Saint Athanasius - The Father of Orthodoxy • F.A. [Frances Alice] Forbes

... at the beginning of the present year, by his verses to the Princess Charlotte, had afforded a vent for much of this reserved venom; and the tone of disparagement in which some of his assailants now affected to speak of his poetry was, however absurd and contemptible in itself, precisely that sort of attack which was the most calculated to wound his, at once, proud and diffident spirit. As long as they confined ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. III - With His Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore

... much more heard of, then least desired to bee seene or knowne, she-kinde of serpent; the venom'd sting of whose poysonous tongue, worse then the biting of a scorpion, proues more infectious farre then can be cured. Shee's of all other creatures most vntameablest, and couets more the last word in scoulding, ...
— Microcosmography - or, a Piece of the World Discovered; in Essays and Characters • John Earle

... swear to cherish in my heart this hate Till my last heart-throb wanes; So may the sacred venom of my blood Mingle and ...
— With Our Soldiers in France • Sherwood Eddy

... he followed with his helpless burden. The form he bore was not heavy. In fact, it was so fragile that it seemed impossible that it could harbor so much venom and hatred. ...
— The Wall Between • Sara Ware Bassett

... have spoken about at such a stupid moment to a man so stupid as I was. My heart positively ached with pity for her tactless and unnecessary straightforwardness. But something hideous at once stifled all compassion in me; it even provoked me to greater venom. I did not care what happened. ...
— Notes from the Underground • Feodor Dostoevsky

... fly-specks. With his brown hairy arms he grasped Uli as if he would pull him apart like an old rag. But Uli held his ground and the milker made no headway. He grew more and more angry, took hold with ever greater venom, spared neither arms nor legs, and butted with his head like an animal, until at last Uli had enough of it, collected all his strength, and gave him such a swing that he flew over the grain-pile into the middle of the floor and fell on the further side; there he lay with all fours ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VIII • Various

... animated nature around her, without much reference to selection or fitness, but always with a fearlessness that was the result of her own observation, and unhampered by tradition or other children's timidity. She had no superstition regarding the venom of toads, the poison of spiders, or the ear-penetrating capacity of earwigs. She had experiences and revelations of her own,—which she kept sacredly to herself, as children do,—and one was in regard to a rattlesnake, partly induced, however, by the indiscreet warning ...
— Openings in the Old Trail • Bret Harte

... For the last ten miles Mr. Mortimer had been nursing a sullen hatred for all created things; and, when entering the house, he came upon Mr. Bennett hopping about in the hall, endeavouring to detain him and tell him some long and uninteresting story, his venom concentrated ...
— The Girl on the Boat • Pelham Grenville Wodehouse

... because she would go on scandal-mongering about Diana Warwick. I broke with her. I told her I'd have out any man who abused Diana Warwick, and I broke with her. By Jove! Redworth, those women can prove spitfires. They've bags of venom under their tongues, barley-sugar though they look—and that's her colour. But I broke with her for good. I doubt if I shall ever call on her again. And in ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith

... Utopian idea of the perfection of an always elective monarchy began to shake the stability of even the monarchy itself, certain of the public teachers evinced correspondent signs of this destructive species of freemasonry; and about the same period the Voltaire venom of infidelity against all the laws of God and man being poured throughout the whole civilized world, the general effect had so banefully reached the seats of national instruction in Poland, that several of the most venerated personages, ...
— Thaddeus of Warsaw • Jane Porter

... farther on these villages ceased and thenceforward we only encountered some nomads, little bushmen who lived on game which they shot with poisoned arrows. Once they attacked us and killed two of the Mazitu with those horrid arrows, against the venom of which no remedy that we had in our medicine chest proved of any avail. On this occasion Savage exhibited his courage if not his discretion, for rushing out of our thorn fence, after missing a bushmen with both barrels at a distance of five yards—he was, I think, the worst shot I ever saw—he ...
— The Ivory Child • H. Rider Haggard

... dreaded the terrors of your brow, sir; he has attacked even you—he has—and I believe you have no reason to triumph in the encounter.' And again: 'Kings, lords, and commons are but the sport of his fury.' Speaking of the 'Letter to the king,' Burke said: 'It was the rancor and venom with which I was struck. In these respects the North Briton is as much inferior to him as in strength, wit, and judgment.' The Government tried every means in their power to discover the author, but in vain. Woodfall, ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 5, May, 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various

... the Almighty are within me; My spirit drinketh in the venom thereof. The terrors of God move against me, He useth me like to ...
— The Sceptics of the Old Testament: Job - Koheleth - Agur • Emile Joseph Dillon

... left, like an iron wall, so that Israel passed through without danger. Why was it? In order that so death might be made to serve life. Divine power overcomes the assaults of Satan. Thus it was in Paradise. Satan purposed to slay all mankind by his venom. But what happens? By reason of the truly happy guilt of our first parents, as the Church sings, it comes to pass that the Son of God became incarnate ...
— Commentary on Genesis, Vol. II - Luther on Sin and the Flood • Martin Luther

... destructiveness for its own sake in those who get their living by it. A poor poem or essay does not do much harm after all; nobody reads it who is like to be seriously hurt by it. But a sharp criticism with a drop of witty venom in it stings a young author almost to death, and makes an old one uncomfortable to no purpose. If it were my business to sit in judgment on my neighbors, I would try to be courteous, at least, to those who had done any good service, but, above all, I would handle tenderly ...
— The Poet at the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.

... genius of the people, and how eagerly they followed the first satires, thought it would be worth his pains to refine upon the project, and to write satires, not to be acted on the theatre, but read. He preserved the groundwork of their pleasantry, their venom, and their raillery on particular persons and general vices; and by this means, avoiding the danger of any ill success in a public representation, he hoped to be as well received in the cabinet as Andronicus had been upon the stage. The event was answerable to his expectation. ...
— Discourses on Satire and Epic Poetry • John Dryden

... have I." Prance had venom in his level voice. "But he is no Frenchman. He is English as you—a Phayre out ...
— The Path of the King • John Buchan

... been, and I may be yet—and you too. I have been pursued by warriors, Tandakora at their head. I have not seen them, but I know from the venom and persistence of the pursuit that he leads them. I eluded them by coming down the cliff and hiding among the bushes here. I stood in the water ...
— The Lords of the Wild - A Story of the Old New York Border • Joseph A. Altsheler

... measured the distance that separated him from the peg whence hung his waterproof with the pistol in its pocket. But the man restrained himself and moved to the door. There he stood and cursed him with a violence and a venom which Dickson had not believed possible. The full hand was on ...
— Huntingtower • John Buchan

... sent, Armed not alone with satire's scorpion stings, But with the magic power even on the face, By their malevolent taunts and biting sneers, To raise three blistering blots[36] that typified Disgrace, dishonour, and a coward's shame, Which with their mortal venom him would kill, Or on the hour, or ere nine days had sped, If he declined the combat, and refused Upon the instant to come forth with them, And so, for honour's sake, Ferdiah came. For he preferred to die a warrior's death, Pierced to the heart by a proud foeman's spear, Than by the ...
— Poems • Denis Florence MacCarthy

... cast a look at Canalis as full of venom as the tooth of a snake, and they were so disconcerted by Modeste's amused smile that they were ...
— Modeste Mignon • Honore de Balzac

... me first, for which of them you lie in ambush; for, methinks, you have the mien of a spider in her den. Come, I know the web is spread, and whoever comes, Sir Cranion stands ready to dart out, hale her in, and shed his venom. ...
— The Works of John Dryden, Vol. 6 (of 18) - Limberham; Oedipus; Troilus and Cressida; The Spanish Friar • John Dryden

... Whose womb unmeasurable, and infinite breast, Teems, and feeds all; whose self-same mettle, Whereof thy proud child, arrogant man, is puff'd. Engenders the black toad and adder blue, The gilded newt and eyeless venom'd worm; Yield him, who all thy human sons doth hate, From forth thy plenteous bosom, one ...
— Shakespeare: His Life, Art, And Characters, Volume I. • H. N. Hudson

... kills, or withers, or corrupts. Socrates, indeed, might walk arm and arm with Hygeia, whilst pestilence, with a thousand furies running to and fro, and clashing against each other in a complexity and agglomeration of horrors, was shooting her darts of fire and venom all around him. Even such was Milton; yea, and such, in spite of all that has been babbled by his critics in pretended excuse for his damning, because for them too profound, excellencies,—such was Shakspeare. ...
— Literary Remains, Vol. 2 • Coleridge

... 649 [Obs.]; painfulness &c (cause of pain) 830; scourge &c (punishment) 975; damnosa hereditas [Lat.]; white elephant. sting, fang, thorn, tang, bramble, brier, nettle. poison, toxin; teratogen; leaven, virus venom; arsenic; antimony, tartar emetic; strychnine, nicotine; miasma, miasm^, mephitis^, malaria, azote^, sewer gas; pest. [poisonous substances, examples] Albany hemp^, arsenious oxide, arsenious acid; bichloride of mercury; carbonic ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget

... rate, the little donkey was everywhere at once, biting, striking, kicking, squealing, with the venom and speed and precision of a rattlesnake, while Mignon ...
— Down the Mother Lode • Vivia Hemphill

... if to spit venom at the word; pursed they remained. All she did was to take her glove and rub hard at a spot on the window-pane. She rubbed as if she would rub something out for ever—some stain, some indelible contamination. Indeed, the spot remained for all her rubbing, and ...
— Monday or Tuesday • Virginia Woolf

... surprising that the good Macvey Napier (rather awkwardly, and giving Macaulay much trouble to patch things up) should have said that he would like a "gentleman-like" article from Mr. Hunt for the Edinburgh; and the taunt about the Cockney School undoubtedly derived its venom from this weakness of his. Lamb was not descended from the kings that long the Tuscan sceptre swayed, and had some homely ways; Keats had to do with livery-stables, Hazlitt with shady lodging-houses and lodging-house keepers. But Keats might have been, whatever his weaknesses, ...
— Essays in English Literature, 1780-1860 • George Saintsbury

... and crop for that young scamp. A bully, a coward, a puling milksop, is all the character he beareth. He giveth himself born airs, as if every inch of the Riding belonged to him. He hath all the viciousness of Yordas, without the pluck to face it out. A little beast that hath the venom, without the courage, of a toad. Ah, how I should like ...
— Mary Anerley • R. D. Blackmore

... fate befell him! So the accursed spirit, doomed to woe, lamented his afflictions. (And through the foul abyss a flame of fire raged, with venom mingled): ...
— Codex Junius 11 • Unknown

... his thought, who first in poison steeped The weapon formed for slaughter—direr his, And worthier of damnation, who instilled The mortal venom in the social cup, To fill the veins with death instead ...
— Rob Roy, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott

... with sudden fury and faced his visitor, every mask of restraint thrown to the winds. His little bead-eyes flashed with the venom of a snake coiled to strike. He stood close to the doctor and looked up at his tall massive figure, stretching his own diminutive form in a desperate effort to stand on a level ...
— The Root of Evil • Thomas Dixon

... training of course comes under the heading of breaking and not of hunting. A young horse "turned out" in the open, not unfrequently gives a companion a playful kick, which very seldom inflicts any injury, because it has no "venom" in it, and the hoof that administers the tap is unshod. I have even seen mares with a foal at foot, give the young one a slight push with the hind hoof, to make him get out of the way. The motives of such taps are of course entirely different from ...
— The Horsewoman - A Practical Guide to Side-Saddle Riding, 2nd. Ed. • Alice M. Hayes

... slave— What is there in thee that a Prince should shrink from Of open force? We dread thy treason, not Thy strength: thy tooth is nought without its venom— The serpent's, not ...
— The Works of Lord Byron - Poetry, Volume V. • Lord Byron

... to some other woe as the pledge of its purification; so that what separately would have been hateful for itself, passes mysteriously into an object of toleration, of hope, or even of prayer, as a counter-venom to the taint of some more mortal poison. Poverty, for instance, is in both senses necessary for man. It is necessary in the same sense as thirst is necessary (i. e. inevitable) in a fever—necessary as ...
— Narrative And Miscellaneous Papers • Thomas De Quincey

... earthly joys, however innocent they be, is sweet indeed to the taste; but afterward it is converted into gall, and into the venom of ...
— Pepita Ximenez • Juan Valera

... was of a Napoleonic order. He was uneducated, but he possessed that exact knowledge of mankind that makes leaders; and his shrewdness was the result of caution and suspicion. But like all men of his breed, he hated with peculiar venom the well-born; he loved to grapple with them, to wrest their idleness from them, to compel them to work for a living, to humiliate them. The fiber in McQuade was coarse; he possessed neither generosity nor magnanimity; the very men who feared him ...
— Half a Rogue • Harold MacGrath

... with two thousand scorpions lashing, stinging, and tormenting them, while the tortured victims cried bitterly. Each of the scorpions had seventy thousand heads, each head seventy thousand mouths, each mouth seventy thousand stings, and each sting seventy thousand pouches of poison and venom, which the sinners are forced to drink down, although the anguish is so racking that their eyes melt in their sockets. Nasargiel explained: "These are the sinners who caused the Israelites to lose their money, who exalted themselves above the community, ...
— The Legends of the Jews Volume 1 • Louis Ginzberg

... author of 'The Defence of Learning,' observes, that knowledge has some thing of venom and malignity in it, when taken without its proper corrective; and what that is, the inspired St. Paul teaches us, by placing it as the immediate antidote—'Knowledge puffeth up, but charity edifieth.' Perhaps it is the vanity of human wisdom, unchastised by this correcting principle, ...
— Golden Steps to Respectability, Usefulness and Happiness • John Mather Austin

... not courage and had proved it, for he was sorely battered. But the pluck in him was whipped and now venom alone bade him ...
— Once Aboard The Lugger • Arthur Stuart-Menteth Hutchinson

... concerning Isabella. Meantime the serenaders are dispersed and routed by a band of the alderman's servants and clerks. Sir Credulous courting Lucretia, who loathes him, meets Knowell bringing a tale of a jealous rival able to poison at a distance by means of some strangely subtle venom, upon which the Devonshire knight conceals himself in a basket, hoping to be conveyed away to his old uncle in Essex, whereas he is merely transported next door. Sir Patient, who surprises his lady writing a love-letter, which she turns off by appending Isabella's name thereto, ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn - Volume IV. • Aphra Behn

... prominent characteristic—an idiosyncrasy with the animal—that enables him to entwine himself into the greater part of the Church and other institutions of the country, which having once entered there, leaves his venom, which put such a spell on the conductors of those institutions, that is only on condition that a colored person consents to go to the neighborhood of his kindred brother monster the boa, that he may find admission in the one or the ...
— The Condition, Elevation, Emigration, and Destiny of the Colored People of the United States • Martin R. Delany

... amazement, O'Donnell only threw out his head and chuckled; but it was an evil chuckle, and there was venom gleaming in his ...
— Nuala O'Malley • H. Bedford-Jones

... be acceptable. .The intensity of their cruelty is the only strength of the governing faction; the extent of their abominations alone makes them terrible. Hundreds will fly from one Indian snake, so potent is its venom, so sure to inflict death: but let one brave man set his heel upon its head, and the noxious animal is destroyed for ever: so it is with the party who now rules the Convention. Now that we have with us the all-powerful prestige of victory, let us march at once to Paris; hundreds will join ...
— La Vendee • Anthony Trollope

... Acres was facing Prim, who sat with his hands spread upon the desk in front of him, his elbows sticking out, his hair bristling, his mouth sucked in, and his eyes spitting venom. He looked like a reptile about to spring, and Acres had much the expression of a rabbit facing the reptile, slowly being ...
— The Co-Citizens • Corra Harris

... took a poisonous serpent and fastened it above his head, so that the venom of the reptile falling, drop by drop, upon his face, would cause the most terrible pain. But Sigyn, Loki's loyal wife, the only person in heaven or earth who cared what became of him, took a cup and held it up ...
— Told by the Northmen: - Stories from the Eddas and Sagas • E. M. [Ethel Mary] Wilmot-Buxton

... medicine could cure him; and begging forgiveness of Hamlet, he died, with his last words accusing the king of being the contriver of the mischief. When Hamlet saw his end draw near, there being yet some venom left upon the sword, he suddenly turned upon his false uncle, and thrust the point of it to his heart, fulfilling the promise which he had made to his father's spirit, whose injunction was now accomplished, and his foul ...
— Tales from Shakespeare • Charles and Mary Lamb

... there are no women, or only women who are too sleepy to be jealous. Here am I, doing nothing to please myself, trying to do the best thing for everybody else, and all the comfort I get is to have fire shot at me from women's eyes, and venom spirted at me from women's tongues. If Beatrice takes another jealous fit into her head—and it's likely enough, Tina is so unmanageable—I don't know what storm she may raise. And any hitch in this marriage, especially of that sort, might be a fatal business for the old gentleman. ...
— Scenes of Clerical Life • George Eliot

... not yet had he drunk of Lethe's stream; And lately had he learned with truth to deem Love has no gift so grateful as his wings: How fair, how young, how soft soe'er he seem, Full from the fount of Joy's delicious springs[dg] Some bitter o'er the flowers its bubbling venom flings.[16.B.] ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 2 • George Gordon Byron

... the cauldron go; In the poison'd entrails throw.— Toad, that under coldest stone, Days and nights has thirty-one Swelter'd venom sleeping got, Boil thou first ...
— The Mysteries of All Nations • James Grant

... a thin squirt of brown liquid through the hole—venom of some sort, apparently. The Harn hastily drew back out ...
— Cat and Mouse • Ralph Williams

... heavy nasal, hurled from the lungs with that force and venom peculiar to the Spanish tongue. It came from Don Rodrigo, who had pulled the lanyard, and who now pulled it again and again, crazed first with joy, then with rage because the emptied gun ...
— The Missourian • Eugene P. (Eugene Percy) Lyle

... crimes, a woman slays her mate,— What can I call her? The most poisonous snake; A Scylla, with her lair among the rocks, Lying in wait for luckless mariners; Death's dam, against her kin implacably Breathing her venom. What a shout she raised Of exultation, as for battle won! She feigns rejoicing at her lord's return. Believe or disbelieve me; naught I care That which must come, must come. Thou soon shalt see And rue the truth of this ...
— Specimens of Greek Tragedy - Aeschylus and Sophocles • Goldwin Smith

... under the name of Claudius Ruprecht. It might even have happened that another country than that of my birth would receive the glory which a heaven-sent idea is to bestow upon France. Now, I am more than ever determined that her venom shall not sully me. She may cause a little ridicule to arise, but that I can scorn. The laugh at Montmorency will not reach Paris, far less echo around the globe! For a long time I hoped to enlighten her and redeem her, but I have failed. But I am bound to enlighten you and save you, am ...
— The Son of Clemenceau • Alexandre (fils) Dumas

... Could you even excel Latinus in scoffing; against my trifles you could say no more than I myself have said: then to what end contend tooth against tooth? You must have flesh, if you want to be full; lose not your labour then; cast your venom upon those that admire themselves; I know already that these things ...
— The Essays of Montaigne, Complete • Michel de Montaigne

... thus infected with a natural Contagion, Whence is it, that only Bewitched Persons are hurt thereby? If the vulgar Error concerning the Basilisks killing with the Look of his Poysonful Eye were a Truth, whatever person that Serpent cast his Eye upon would be poysoned. So if Witches had a physical Venom in their Eyes, others as well as Fascinated Persons would be sensible thereof; there is as much Truth in this fancy of Physical Venom in the Eye of a Witch, as there is in what Pliny[66] and others relate concerning the Thibians, viz. that they have two Apples ...
— The Wonders of the Invisible World • Cotton Mather

... reader will perceive, at different dates, though principally by Sheridan, owes some of its stanzas to Tickel, and a few others, I believe, to Lord John Townshend. I have strung together, without regard to chronology, the best of these detached lampoons. Time having removed their venom, and with it, in a great degree, their wit, they are now, like dried snakes, mere harmless objects ...
— Memoirs of the Life of Rt. Hon. Richard Brinsley Sheridan Vol 2 • Thomas Moore

... the logic articulated by any scholar. The Peri excluded from Paradise, brought many generous gifts to heaven in order to regain it. She brought the dying sigh of a patriot; the kiss of a faithful girl imprinted upon the lips of her bridegroom, when they were distorted by the venom of the plague. She brought many other fair gifts; but the doors of Paradise opened before her only when she brought with her the first prayer of a man converted to charity and brotherly love for ...
— Select Speeches of Kossuth • Kossuth

... Face so bold, and Teeth so sharp, Of Viper's venom, why dost carp? Why are my Verses by thee weigh'd In a false Scale? May Truth be said; Whilst thou to get the more esteem, A Learned Poet fain wouldst seem, Skelton, thou art, let all men know it, Neither Learned, nor ...
— The Lives of the Most Famous English Poets (1687) • William Winstanley

... day, grew pitiful toward unsuspicious, doomed thousands, and pitiless toward Philip and his Spanish soldiers and followers, or that, to use his own words from the famous "Apology," "From that moment I determined in earnest to clear the Spanish venom from the land." Watch his flushed face; his eyes, like coals taken fresh from an altar of vengeance; his hand, nervously fingering his sword-hilt; his form, dilating as if for the first time he guessed he had come to manhood,—and I miss in reckoning ...
— A Hero and Some Other Folks • William A. Quayle

... shape of huge writhing, convulsing, monstrous, grappling—come quick-moving lines of help. They rush through them, over them. The thirteen cannon behind the struggling hydra of gray seem one vortex—sulphurous, flaming, spitting, as from one vast mouth, scorching fire, huge mouthfuls of granite venom. Back—back, the gray masses break in sinuous, definite, ...
— The Iron Game - A Tale of the War • Henry Francis Keenan

... He could take a malignant pleasure in the misfortune of an ally. Henry also saw the white teeth of Timmendiquas gleam as his lips curved into a smile. But in him the appeal was to a sense of humor, not to venom. He seemed to have little ...
— The Riflemen of the Ohio - A Story of the Early Days along "The Beautiful River" • Joseph A. Altsheler

... thou shalt surely find That those who longed to see thee fail, And, lingering hopelessly behind, Spat venom on ...
— Poems • John L. Stoddard

... for an instant believe that she was guilty of the crime with which she had been originally charged and for which she had served a sentence in prison. For the rest, he could understand in some degree how the venom of the wrong inflicted on her had poisoned her nature through the years, till she had worked out its evil through the scheme of which he was the innocent victim. He cared little for the fact that recently she had devoted ...
— Within the Law - From the Play of Bayard Veiller • Marvin Dana

... quinsy choked his guiltless breath, And o'er his face the blackening venom stole, Festus disdained to wait a lingering death, Cheered his sad friends and freed his dauntless soul. No meagre famine's slowly-wasting force, Nor hemlock's gradual chillness he endured, But like a Roman chose the nobler ...
— Post-Augustan Poetry - From Seneca to Juvenal • H.E. Butler

... gruesome phases of the belief in conjuration suggest possible poisoning, a knowledge of which baleful art was once supposed to be widespread among the imported Negroes of the olden time. The blood or venom of snakes, spiders, and lizards is supposed to be employed for this purpose. The results of its administration are so peculiar, however, and so entirely improbable, that one is supposed to doubt even the initial use of ...
— The Conjure Woman • Charles W. Chesnutt

... play-house earth: Pent there since our last fire, and, Lilly says, Foreshows our change of state, and thin third-days. 'Tis not our want of wit that keeps us poor; For then the printer's press would suffer more. Their pamphleteers each day their venom spit; They thrive by treason, and we starve by wit. Confess the truth, which of you has not laid 20 Four farthings out to buy the Hatfield maid? Or, which is duller yet, and more would spite us, Democritus his wars with Heraclitus? Such are the authors who have run us down, And exercised ...
— The Poetical Works of John Dryden, Vol II - With Life, Critical Dissertation, and Explanatory Notes • John Dryden

... coal-hole, greasy and grimy finger-marks engrained on the handle which he loved to keep so smooth and clean. Innumerable her offences of the kind. Independent of these, the sight of her general incompetence filled him with a seething rage, which found vent not in lengthy tirades but the smooth venom of his tongue. Let him keep the outside of the house never so spick and span, inside was awry with her untidiness. She was unworthy of the House with the Green Shutters—that was the gist of it. Every time he set eyes on the poor trollop, the ...
— The House with the Green Shutters • George Douglas Brown

... vengeance they determine to be fools; Through spleen, that little nature gave, make less, Quite zealous in the way of heaviness; To lumps inanimate a fondness take; And disinherit sons that are awake. These, when their utmost venom they would spit, Most barbarously tell you—"He's a wit." Poor negroes, thus, to show their burning spite To cacodemons, say, they're dev'lish white. Lampridius, from the bottom of his breast, Sighs o'er one child; but triumphs in the rest. How just his grief! ...
— The Poetical Works of Edward Young, Volume 2 • Edward Young

... it is not for a man of sense to dispute the road with such an animal. You will be more exposed than others to have these animals shaking their horns at you, because of the relation in which you stand with me. Full of political venom, and willing to see me and to hate me as a chief in the antagonist party, your presence will be to them what the vomit-grass is to the sick dog, a nostrum for producing ejaculation. Look upon them exactly with that eye, and pity them as objects to whom you can administer only occasional ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson

... minute enquiries concerning the death of one Padre Tommaso, whom the Jews were suspected of having murdered in 1840. These enquiries naturally have his foes further umbrage, and they in return angrily discharge their venom at him. In his book The Jew, published after his death, [242] he lashes the whole people. He seems in its pages to be constantly running up and down with a whip and saying: "I'll teach you to be 'an Ebrew ...
— The Life of Sir Richard Burton • Thomas Wright

... impudence were boundless, and were the cause of Napoleon bestowing some wholesome discipline upon her, which, like a true heroine, she resented, and sent forth from her exile streams of relentless wailing, adorned by a fluency of venom that would have put the most militant suffragette in our time ...
— The Tragedy of St. Helena • Walter Runciman

... the throne one might scarce find your equal, and will ye brave a venture which no man may achieve! The folk hath fled out of the land, none may withstand that beast, no shaft is so fell as the venom which he shooteth on all who near him; and the man whom it reacheth, and upon whom it shall light (I am he who lieth not), he dieth ere the third day be past, had he never a wound upon him. This hath been the worse for many. Then is the beast greater ...
— The Romance of Morien • Jessie L. Weston

... lesson from the pie,— Pert and pretentious, and as sly; And to detest man's raids and mulctures, From eagles, kites, goshawks, and vultures; But most of all abhorrence take From the base toad or viler snake, With filthy venom in the bite, Of envies, jealousies, and spite. Thus from Dame Nature and Creation Have I deduced my observation; Nor found I ever thing so mean, That gave no moral ...
— Fables of John Gay - (Somewhat Altered) • John Gay

... When condition or quality is not specified you must get the worst. She was drastic or nothing.... And there's one or two possible alternatives to some of these other things. You got FRESH rattlesnake venom." ...
— Twelve Stories and a Dream • H. G. Wells

... them. The angry bull butts with his horns, as did his progenitors before him; the lion, the leopard, and the tiger, seek only with their talons and their fangs to gratify their sanguinary fury; and even the subtle serpent darts the same venom, and uses the same wiles, as did his sire before the flood. Man alone, blessed with the inventive mind, goes on from discovery to discovery, enlarges and multiplies his powers of destruction; arrogates the tremendous weapons of Deity ...
— Knickerbocker's History of New York, Complete • Washington Irving

... bloodless corps "Heaven-born, thou ly'st;—-but what thy body form'd "A god becomes,—resuscitated twice. "Thou too, my dearest and immortal sire! "To ages never-ending, born to live, "Shalt wish for death in vain; when writhing sad "From the dire serpent's venom in thy limbs, "By wounds instill'd. The pitying gods will change "Thy destin'd fate, and let immortal die: "The triple sisters shall thy thread divide. "More yet untold remains;"—Deep from her chest The sighs burst forth, and starting tears stream down, Laving her ...
— The Metamorphoses of Publius Ovidus Naso in English blank verse Vols. I & II • Ovid

... Tortoise. There were other stories about the Great Old Snake which lived in the garden. This really was seen, and perhaps it was the same serpent which two hundred years before had been known to lurk about the countryside. "He could jut out his neck an ell," it was said, "and cast his venom about four rods; a serpent of countenance very proud, at the sight or hearing of men or cattle, raising his head seeming to listen and look about with great arrogancy." But if it was this same serpent it had lost its venom, and in the days when Bysshe and ...
— English Literature For Boys And Girls • H.E. Marshall

... culture, and the most eminent service which man can render to man. The scheme of our life is providentially arranged with reference to that end; and the thousand shocks, agitations, and moving influences of our experience, the supreme invitations of love, the venom of calumny, and all toil, trial, sudden bereavement, doubt, danger, vicissitude, joy, are hands that shake and voices that assail the lethargy of our deepest powers. Now it is in the power of truth divinely awakened in one soul to assist its awakening in another. For as nothing so quickly ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 84, October, 1864 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various

... body, till her breath would be gone. Often Pincy, would cry, 'Oh Missee, don't kill me!' 'Oh Lord, don't kill me!' 'For God's sake don't kill me!' But Mrs. Ruffner would beat and stamp away, with all the venom of a demon. The cause of Pincy's flogging was, not working enough, or making some mistake in baking, &c. &c. Many a night Pincy had to lie on the bare floor, by the side of the cradle, rocking the baby of her mistress, and if she would fall asleep, and suffer the child to cry, so as to waken ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society

... the critics and playwrights hate me because they fear me. I have never spared them. I have exposed them and their ignorance, and want of scholarship, in print. They know I spoke the truth. Their hatred is witness to my veracity. They have been nursing their venom for years. Now with one consent they pour it forth. It is a vile plot and conspiracy. They were sworn to swamp me, so they formed a ring. They did not care what they spent so long as they succeeded in crushing me. Every one has been bought, miserably, scandalously ...
— The Far Horizon • Lucas Malet

... him the bigot chant was sung, And was said the bigot prayer, And wild hearts with many a thought were stung, That left its venom there, To madden in many a midnight cave. Be silent, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 55, No. 340, February, 1844 • Various

... glorious— Each Vandal's music day or night! Vain! vain! Each isle of hidden Hope! Alas! Alas! Each olpe of Remorse! Each vaulted soul and spiral thought, Swirl in the throes of waters cold; Where rivers with the venom crawls, Croak bat-faced incubi till hoarse. And succubi that Hecate taught, Bedecked in byss and spangled gold, Sing runes unto the dungeoned halls. Then burning ghauts and crimsoned peaks, Vomit each, green, abhorrent clouds; The Temple's ...
— Betelguese - A Trip Through Hell • Jean Louis de Esque

... heaven," and then compare with this declaration such a statement as this: "Reprobate infants are vipers of vengeance which Jehovah will hold over hell in the tongs of his wrath, till they writhe up and cast their venom in his face." We deliberately assert that no depraved, insane, pagan imagination ever conceived of a fiend malignant and horrible enough to be worthily compared with this Christian conception of God. Edwards repeatedly says, in his two sermons ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger

... bosom heave! Tranquil her soul, as sleeping Infant's breath; Meek were her manners as a vernal Eve. Knowledge, that frequent lifts the bloated mind, 5 Gave her the treasure of a lowly breast, And Wit to venom'd Malice oft assign'd, Dwelt in her bosom in a Turtle's nest. Cease, busy Memory! cease to urge the dart; Nor on my soul her love to me impress! 10 For oh I mourn in anguish—and my heart Feels the keen pang, ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge

... red In the face of a soulless putrescence, doomed, damned, deflowered and dead; Oh, robed in the rags of thy raging, like tempests that thunder afar, In a night that is fashioned of Chaos discerned in the light of a star, For the verse that is venom and vapour, discrowned and disowned of the free, Take thou from the shape that is Murder, none other will thank thee, thy fee. Yea, Freedom is throned on the Mountains; the cry of her children seems vain When they fall and are ground into dust by the heel of the lords of the plain. Calm-browed ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 99., August 23, 1890. • Various

... patch looked as if it was alive with flashing, coiling, darting red things. It was like a mass of snakes squirming in agony, and now and again a clear white jet of light came out of the darkness, as if one of them was spitting venom at the sky. In reality, the boys were looking at one of those terrible electric storms which tear across Central Australia after a severe drought, and the lurid colours were caused by lightning flashing inside a ...
— In the Musgrave Ranges • Jim Bushman

... guard now," said Mabyn. "But if you act friendly all the time, he'll forget. We've got plenty of time; do nothing for a few days. I'll keep away from there too. He'll think it's all right. Then"—Mabyn's whisper was pure venom—"sneak up behind him and knock him on the head with an axe! Choose a moment when the girl is asleep or delirious. We will throw his body in the lake. No one will ever know how ...
— Two on the Trail - A Story of the Far Northwest • Hulbert Footner

... And hereof are three manners of kinds. The third manner is made of three parts of gold, and of the fourth of silver: and kind electrum is of that kind, for in twinkling and in light it shineth more clear than all other metal, and warneth of venom, for if one dip it therein, it maketh a great chinking noise, and changeth oft into divers colours as the ...
— Mediaeval Lore from Bartholomew Anglicus • Robert Steele

... heroism when they saw it; for when the lawyer, with a certain obvious reluctance, laid his hand on the bolts of the door with the remark, "This is not my work, you know; I am but following out instructions very minutely given me," the smothered growls and grunts which rose in reply lacked the venom which had been infused into all ...
— Room Number 3 - and Other Detective Stories • Anna Katharine Green

... dimensions, comically indecent, covered with tinsel and decorated with laurels, they stood shivering, awaiting the command to "Go!" to run the gauntlet of all this sinister crowd, overwelling with long-repressed venom, seething with taunts and lewdness. At last a mounted officer gave the word, and, amid a colossal shout of glee from the mob, the half-naked, grotesque figures, with their strange Oriental faces of sorrow, ...
— Dreamers of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill

... of danger and sat up, feeling tenderly of his throat. Next he picked up his turban and crawled to the open door. He pulled himself up and stood there, weakly. But there was venom enough in his eyes. The tableau lasted a minute or two; then slowly he closed the ...
— The Adventures of Kathlyn • Harold MacGrath

... dear friends, are not the only questions contained in it. No Christian can hate; no Christian can malign. Nevertheless, do we not often both hate and malign those unhappy men who are insensible to God's mercies? And I fear this unchristian spirit swells darkly, with all its venom, in the marble of our hearts, not because our brother is insensible to these mercies, but because he is insensible to our faculty of persuasion, turning a deaf ear unto our claim upon his obedience, or a blind or sleepy eye upon the fountain of light, whereof we deem ourselves the sacred ...
— Citation and Examination of William Shakspeare • Walter Savage Landor

... of the exclamation, took it as the ironical pity of the successful woman, and her hatred was strengthened by a large infusion of venom at the very moment when her cousin had cast off her last shred of distrust of the tyrant of ...
— Cousin Betty • Honore de Balzac

... She had a refuge now, one spot that the venom of scandal could not poison, where she could study and work—work hard, although there could be no more lessons—one spot where Peter would not have to protect her, where Peter, indeed, would never find her. This thought, which should have brought ...
— The Street of Seven Stars • Mary Roberts Rinehart

... day and night again seized me. Pains innumerable, and intolerable, rushed upon me. Each new thought was a new serpent. Mine was the head of Medusa: with this difference; my scorpions shed all their venom inward. ...
— The Adventures of Hugh Trevor • Thomas Holcroft

... adder, by her pent In smooth lips!—oh, Sybarite blind! Oh, woman allied to the serpent! Oh, beauty with venom combined! Oh, might overcoming the mighty! Oh, glory departing! oh, shame! Oh, altar of false Aphrodite, What strength is ...
— Poems • Adam Lindsay Gordon

... Jimmy safely to the centre of the rug did the irate mother pour out the full venom of her resentment toward him. From the mixture of English and Italian that followed, it was apparent that she was accusing Jimmy of ...
— Baby Mine • Margaret Mayo

... only too much justification for holding that the military authorities were indisposed to take the proper disciplinary action. Its effect detracted from the excellent opinion which the troops generally had earned by their conduct: it instilled venom into the resentment of those few cases (and it was beyond hope that they should not occur) in which soldiers had either lost their heads or yielded to the temptation of ...
— John Redmond's Last Years • Stephen Gwynn

... the chronic inebriate, the problem of environmental influences is again met in an acute form, aggravated by the venom of controversy engendered by bigotry and self-interest. That many chronic inebriates owe their condition almost wholly to heredity, and are likely to leave offspring of the same character, is indisputable. As ...
— Applied Eugenics • Paul Popenoe and Roswell Hill Johnson

... side were coming methods of war so wantonly cruel, so useless save as inflicting needless agony, as only hate could devise. No strategic value justified them. They were spontaneous outgrowths of venom, nursed during the winter deadlock and now grown to ...
— The Amazing Interlude • Mary Roberts Rinehart

... slaughter of the Dardan priest. It is good to see how his gigantic intellect reaches after repose, and truthfully finds it, in the falling hand of the near figure, and in the deathful decline of that whose hands are held up even in their venom coldness to the cross; and though irrelevant to our present purpose, it is well also to note how the grandeur of this treatment results, not merely from choice, but from a greater knowledge and more faithful rendering of truth. For whatever knowledge of the human frame there ...
— Modern Painters Volume II (of V) • John Ruskin



Words linked to "Venom" :   animal toxin, malignity, zootoxin, malevolence



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