"Asp" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... into the world almost black," and that this was the fact. This colour, which lasted for some time, was attributed to a picture which hung at the foot of his mother's bed, and which she often looked at. It represented a Moor bringing to Cleopatra a basket of flowers, containing the asp by whose bite she destroyed herself. He said that she also told him, "You have a great deal of money about you, but it does not belong to you;" and that he had actually in his pocket two hundred louis for the Duc de La Valliere. ...
— Memoirs And Historical Chronicles Of The Courts Of Europe - Marguerite de Valois, Madame de Pompadour, and Catherine de Medici • Various
... thought of this mode of annoyance. Yet there was no want of low minds and bad hearts in the generation which witnessed her first appearance. There was the envious Kenrick and the savage Wolcot, the asp George Steevens, and the polecat John Williams. It did not, however, occur to them to search the parish register of Lynn, in order that they might be able to twit a lady with having concealed her age. That truly chivalrous exploit ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 2 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... back that wavering scent of coffee, which rose fresh and sudden now, and trailed away the next moment to the mere color of a smell. Now she had it, now she lost it, as she wound over rugged ridges and through groves of quaking-asp and balm of Gilead trees, always mounting among the hills, her eager horse taking the way without guidance, as keen on the scent ...
— The Rustler of Wind River • G. W. Ogden
... and snake-bite, though hidden in blossoms, are hatred's old arms. And what is your May Queen at heart, oh, true hearts, that succumb to her charms? Dropped and deep in the blossoms, with eyes that flicker like fir The asp of Murder lies hid, which with poison shall feed your desire. More than these things will she give, who looks fairer than all these things? Not while her sceptre's a snake, and her orb the red horror that rings Devilish, ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 102, April 30, 1892 • Various
... much iv ye as we did whin ye'er name was first mintioned be th' stanch an' faithful press. Set here, ol' la-ad, an' warrum ye'er toes by th' fire. Set here an' r-rest fr'm th' gratichood iv ye'er fellow-counthrymen, that, as Shakspere says, biteth like an asp an' stingeth like an adder. R-rest here, as ye might r-rest at th' hearth iv millyons iv people that cud give ye ...
— Mr. Dooley's Philosophy • Finley Peter Dunne
... also. Finally he took his battered old hat from a nearby branch, brushed it carefully, arranged the crown so that fewer holes appeared, and put it upon his head. His clean shirt, spread upon a quaking-asp but by no means dry, afforded the best of reasons why he should not hurry; so, drawing a stained and stubby pipe and sack of tobacco from another pocket, Mr. Crusoe lay beneath a friendly cottonwood at the water's edge and ...
— Virginia of Elk Creek Valley • Mary Ellen Chase
... was near. It was probably on this Sunday that they destroyed their papers, lists of names and other incriminating evidence. The shadow of the approaching catastrophe deepened and spread rapidly around and above them as they watched and waited helplessly under the huge asp of slavery, which enraged and now completely coiled, was about to strike. The stroke fell first on Peter, Rolla, Ned, and Batteau Bennett. The last, although but a boy of eighteen, was one of the most active of the ...
— Right on the Scaffold, or The Martyrs of 1822 - The American Negro Academy. Occasional Papers No. 7 • Archibald H. Grimke
... "you all ride down the road to where the bridge is—that's the main stream again, and she's pretty big—regular river, all right. Wait for me there at the bridge. I'll see if I can pick out a fish or so. I see a dry quaking asp lying here that some fellow has left, and I'll just try it myself. You know, get a quaking-asp pole that's dry and hasn't been dead too long, it's the lightest and springiest natural fishing rod that grows. The tip is strong enough, if it hasn't rotted, and ...
— The Young Alaskans on the Missouri • Emerson Hough
... unable to find they will make. No, the loathliest asp that e'er lurked in the brake To spring on the passer unwary, Was not such an anguis in herba as this is, Mean worm, which of all warning rattles and hisses Is ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 98 January 11, 1890 • Various
... planets was borrowed by them from Egypt, where for many ages the sun and the moon had been studied in connection with their movements in the zodiac. In that country these serpentine movements were symbolized by the uroeus, or asp, worn upon the crown above the head of every Pharaoh. So closely was the Jewish religion connected with worship of the planetary bodies that Moses is said to have disappeared upon Mount Nebo, a word which shows the mountain to have been sacred to the moon; while Elijah ...
— The Woman's Bible. • Elizabeth Cady Stanton
... to take up his rider Bellerophon, must he humble himself and grant whatever favours are asked him, fearing to be called hard and ungentle. They say that the Egyptian Bocchoris, who was by nature very severe, had an asp sent him by Isis, which coiled round his head, and shaded him from above, that he might judge righteously. Bashfulness on the contrary, like a dead weight on languid and effeminate persons, not daring to refuse or contradict anybody, makes jurors deliver unjust verdicts, ...
— Plutarch's Morals • Plutarch
... melancholy man. He only made one remark to me during that long forty-mile drive through the wilderness. About dinner time he drove the horse under a quaking asp tree, tied a nose bag of oats over its head and took a wad of bread and bacon from his greasy pocket. The bacon and bread had little flakes of smoking tobacco all over it, because he carried his grub and tobacco in the same ...
— Remarks • Bill Nye
... names, the word "culverin" has a metaphorical meaning. It derives from the Latin colubra (snake). Similarly, the light gun called aspide or aspic, meaning "asp-like," was named after the venomous asp. But these digressions should not obscure the fact that both culverins and demiculverins were highly esteemed on account of their range and the effectiveness of fire. They were used ...
— Artillery Through the Ages - A Short Illustrated History of Cannon, Emphasizing Types Used in America • Albert Manucy
... contradict it; and it was long before any of her detractors thought of this mode of annoyance. Yet there was no want of low minds and bad hearts in the generation which witnessed her first appearance. There was the envious Kenrick and the savage Wolcot, the asp George Steevens and the polecat John Williams. It did not, however, occur to them to search the parish-register of Lynn, in order that they might be able to twit a lady with having concealed her age. That truly chivalrous exploit ...
— Famous Reviews • Editor: R. Brimley Johnson
... goes round the garden at both sides to the further end, where a gap in it, like a great gateway, leaves the view open to the sky beyond the western edge of the roof, except in the middle, where a life size image of Ra, seated on a huge plinth, towers up, with hawk head and crown of asp and disk. His altar, which stands at his feet, is a single white stone.) Now everybody can see us, nobody will think of listening to us. (He sits down on the bench ...
— Caesar and Cleopatra • George Bernard Shaw
... of the amentaceous trees, and the earliest of these are the pussy willow, the quaking asp, and the hazel. All of them are quick to respond to the kindly influences of a vase of water and a sunny window and we may have all three of these first blossoms in a spring bouquet at home by the first of March. Towards the last of February the catkins of the pussy willows and the ...
— Some Winter Days in Iowa • Frederick John Lazell
... Becky Glibbans should never wear gloves for my marriage, I was averse to sending her any at all, but my mother insisted that no exceptions should be made. I secretly took care, however, to mark a pair for her, so much too large, that I am sure she will never put them on. The asp will be not a little vexed at the disappointment. Adieu for a time, and believe that, although your affectionate Rachel Pringle be gone that way in which she hopes you will soon follow, one not less sincerely ...
— The Ayrshire Legatees • John Galt
... Asp Springs and Muddy to Fort Bridger. Here are a group of white buildings, built round a plaza, across the middle of which runs a creek. There are a few hundred troops here under the command of Major Gallergher, a gallant officer and a gentleman, well worth knowing. ...
— The Complete Works of Artemus Ward, Part 4 • Charles Farrar Browne
... at Elephantina, Lord of the Inundations. He wears the ram's head with double horns (by mistake of the Greeks attributed to Ammon), and his worship was universal in Ethiopia. The sheep are sacred to him, of which there were large flocks in the Thebaid, kept for their wool. And the serpent or asp, a sign of kingly dominion,—hence called basilisk,—is sacred to Kneph. As Creator, he appears under the figure of a potter with a wheel. In Philae he is so represented, forming on his wheel a figure of Osiris, with the inscription, "Num, who forms on his wheel the Divine ...
— Ten Great Religions - An Essay in Comparative Theology • James Freeman Clarke
... the suckling child shall play on the hole of the asp, and the weaned child shall put his ...
— The Book Of Mormon - An Account Written By The Hand Of Mormon Upon Plates Taken - From The Plates Of Nephi • Anonymous
... the wreck of her life, out of the depths of the dust of humiliation, had sprung the beautiful blossom of love, shedding its intoxicating fragrance over ruin; yet, because the asp of treachery lurked in the exquisite, folded petals, she shut her eyes to the bewildering loveliness, and loyalty strove to tear it up by the roots, to trample it out; learning thereby, that the fibrous thread had struck deep into her ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson
... much his friend and intimate companion, and who made it when Piero was old; which Francesco still has a work by the hand of Piero that I must not pass by, a very beautiful head of Cleopatra, with an asp wound round her neck, and two portraits, one of his father Giuliano, and the other of his grandfather Francesco Giamberti, ...
— Lives of the Most Eminent Painters Sculptors and Architects - Vol. 04 (of 10), Filippino Lippi to Domenico Puligo • Giorgio Vasari
... her protestations not to survive him. Having bathed, and ordered a sumptuous banquet, she attired herself in the most splendid manner. After partaking of the banquet, she commanded all, except her two women, to leave the apartment. She had contrived to have an asp secretly conveyed to her in a basket of fruit, and then wrote to Augustus, to inform him of her fatal purpose, desiring to be buried in the same tomb with Antony. 38. Augustus, upon receiving the letter, instantly despatched messengers in hopes to stop the fulfilment of her intentions; ...
— Pinnock's Improved Edition of Dr. Goldsmith's History of Rome • Oliver Goldsmith
... up the sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more. The wolf also shall dwell with the lamb; and the cow and the bear shall feed; and the lion shall eat straw like the ox; and the sucking child shall play the hole of the asp, and the wean'd child put his hand on the cockatrice's den. They shall not hurt nor destroy in all my holy mountain; for the earth," that is our earthly tabernacle, "shall be full of the knowledge of the Lord, as ...
— Complete Prose Works - Specimen Days and Collect, November Boughs and Goodbye My Fancy • Walt Whitman
... lying neath the fresh dyed mulberry-tree The sword and cloth of Pyramus I see: There is the number of the joyless days Wherein Medea won no love nor praise: There is the sand my Ariadne pressed; The footprints of the feet that knew no rest While o'er the sea forth went the fatal sign: The asp of Egypt, the Numidian wine, My Sigurd's sword, my Brynhild's fiery bed, The tale of years of Gudrun's drearihead, And Tristram's glaive, and Iseult's shriek are here, ...
— Poems By The Way & Love Is Enough • William Morris
... approached her cave—no mortal dared. The warrior, who feared not a hundred foes, quailed at the sight of Elgiva, the enchantress, the worker of wonders. Unclean reptiles crawled around her cave—the asp, the loathsome toad, and the hissing adder. Two owls sat in the farthest corner of the cave, and their eyes were as lamps in its darkness. They sat upon skulls of the dead. A tame raven croaked in the midst of it. It was told that the reptiles, the owls, and the raven, ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Volume VI • Various
... larger animals—the Nile and Euphrates turtles (Trionyx Egypticus and Trionyx Euphraticus), iguanas (Stellio vulgaris and Stellio spinipes), geckos, especially the Egyptian house gecko (O. lobatus), snakes, such as the asp (Coluber haje) and the horned snake (Coluber cerastes), and the chameleon. The Egyptian turtle is a large species, sometimes exceeding three feet in length. It is said to feed on the young of the crocodile. Both it and the Euphrates turtle are of the soft ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 5. (of 7): Persia • George Rawlinson
... beard. His feet and arms were bare, except for thin ribbons of downy, purple feathers, which circled the wrists and ankles. No crown was on his head, but among the stringy wig-curls the sinuous body of an asp bent in and out, and the curved neck and threatening ...
— Pharaoh's Broker - Being the Very Remarkable Experiences in Another World of Isidor Werner • Ellsworth Douglass
... and marble sphere, and agile prow Of pinnace light well wroughten were by thee And decked full fair. And, beauteous to see, Fine woven weft and web, and the tall screen O'errun with painted bloom, crystal, with gleam Of Lilith's face—thou madest these. Mayhap Beetle and asp likewise didst tint—didst wrap The green about my rose, and richly fringe My cocoa-tree, or peacock's train didst tinge With dazzling hues. Methought thou wert a prince, But now Lilith should humbly kneel, since Thou art far higher than she deemed, if thou Madest ...
— Lilith - The Legend of the First Woman • Ada Langworthy Collier
... least philosophic of readers, who hates philosophy 'as toad or asp,' must yet be aware, that, where new growths are not germinating, it is no sort of praise to be free from the throes of growth. Where expansion is hopeless, it is little glory to have escaped distortion. Nor is it any blame that the rich fermentation of ...
— The Notebook of an English Opium-Eater • Thomas de Quincey
... his toes. To ride—anywhere—what a contrast to plodding along with the burros! To feel a horse between his knees again! To swing up and ride—ride across the mesa to that dim line of hills where the sun touched the blue of the timber and the gold of the quaking-asp and burned softly on the far woodland trail that led south and south across the silent ranges! Pete snatched a rope from the pack and walked out toward the pony. That good animal, a bit afraid of the queer figure in the flapping overalls and flop-brimmed sombrero, ...
— The Ridin' Kid from Powder River • Henry Herbert Knibbs
... deadly rifles crackled still, And still their crashing volleys rolled and roared. Our rifles blazed upon the blaze below; The blaze below upon the blaze above, And in the blaze the buzz of myriad bees Whose stings were deadlier than the Libyan asp. Five times our colors fell—five times arose Defiant, flapping on the ...
— The Feast of the Virgins and Other Poems • H. L. Gordon
... makes its arrangements to leap upon the back and fasten its teeth in the head of the cobra. It is this display of instinctive ingenuity that Lucan[2] celebrates where he paints the ichneumon diverting the attention of the asp, by the motion of his bushy tale, and then seizing it in the midst of ...
— Ceylon; an Account of the Island Physical, Historical, and • James Emerson Tennent
... beauty, her charms, and her amours; first fascinated Caesar, to whom she bore a son, and whom she accompanied to Rome, and after Caesar's death took Mark Antony captive, on whose fall and suicide at Actium she killed herself by applying an asp to her arm, to escape the shame of being taken to Rome to grace the triumph of the ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... up, and well acted—a salad of Shakspeare and Dryden, Cleopatra strikes me as the epitome of her sex—fond, lively, sad, tender, teasing, humble, haughty, beautiful, the devil!—coquettish to the last, as well with the 'asp' as with Antony. After doing all she can to persuade him that—but why do they abuse him for cutting off that poltroon Cicero's head? Did not Tully tell Brutus it was a pity to have spared Antony? and ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. II - With His Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore
... Tartarean boor, into the infernal kitchen!... Loathsome cobbler,... dingy collier,... filthy sow (scrofa stercorata),... perfidious boar,... envious crocodile,... malodorous drudge,... wounded basilisk,... rust-coloured asp,... swollen toad,... entangled spider,... lousy swine-herd (porcarie pedicose),... lowest of the low,... cudgelled ...
— History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom • Andrew Dickson White
... that no poison caused a less painful death than the fangs of the asp, she had resolved that the bite of one of these reptiles should release her from the burden of life. The clever Ethiopian had thought of inducing her friend Pyrrhus to procure the adder, but it had required all Aisopion's skill in persuasion, and the touching ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... to be stricken down by the red hand of anarchy, to whose crime, and poison, and danger we open our national ports with an unwisdom which is criminal stupidity, and of which we shall inevitably reap the benefit. America cannot warm the asp of anarchy in her bosom without expecting it to ...
— Abroad with the Jimmies • Lilian Bell
... Hunger and green Thirst Like asp with adder fight, We have little care of prison fare, For what chills and kills outright Is that every stone one lifts by day Becomes ...
— The Ballad of Reading Gaol • Oscar Wilde
... sympathy. The poor disappointed girl accepted the decree of fate, known to no other but Amelie, while in revenge upon herself—a thing not rare in proud, sensitive natures—she appeared in society more gay, more radiant and full of mirth than ever before. Heloise hid the asp in her bosom, but so long as its bite was unseen she laughed cruelly at the pain of it, and deceived, as she thought, the eyes of the world as ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... soon as e'er he laid it down, Twas a devouring serpent grown. Our great magician, Hamet Sid, Reverses what the prophet did: His rod was honest English wood, That senseless in a corner stood, Till metamorphos'd by his grasp, It grew an all-devouring asp; Would hiss, and sting, and roll, and twist. By the mere virtue of his fist: But, when he laid it down, as quick Resum'd the figure of a stick. So, to her midnight feasts, the hag Rides on a broomstick for a nag, ...
— Poems (Volume II.) • Jonathan Swift
... world of ours unconsciously, and under many motives. Perhaps we said that before, but no matter. Sometimes a gloomy fellow, with a murderous cast of countenance, sits down doggedly to the task of blackening one whom he hates worse 'than toad or asp.' For instance, Procopius performs that 'labour of hate' for the Emperor Justinian, pouring oil into his wounds, but, then (as Coleridge expresses it in a 'neat' sarcasm), oil of vitriol. Nature must have meant the man for a Spanish Inquisitor, ...
— The Posthumous Works of Thomas De Quincey, Vol. 1 (2 vols) • Thomas De Quincey
... assumed as given by our barometrical observations in 1842. On the easternmost branch, up which we took our way, we first came among the pines growing on the top of a very high bank, and where we halted on it to noon; quaking asp (populus tremuloides) was mixed with the cottonwood, and there were excellent grass and rushes for ...
— The Exploring Expedition to the Rocky Mountains, Oregon and California • Brevet Col. J.C. Fremont
... be as you will, but the deadly reality of the thing is with us, and warring against us, and on our true war with it depends whatever life we can win. Deadly reality, I say. The puff-adder or horned asp is not more real. Unbelievable,—those,—unless you had seen them; no fable could have been coined out of any human brain so dreadful, within its own poor material sphere, as that blue-lipped serpent—working its way sidelong in the ...
— Time and Tide by Weare and Tyne - Twenty-five Letters to a Working Man of Sunderland on the Laws of Work • John Ruskin
... and leaders: ruling party is the Arab Socialist Resurrectionist (Bath) Party; the Progressive National Front is dominated by Bathists but includes independents and members of the Syrian Arab Socialist Party (ASP), Arab Socialist Union (ASU), Socialist Unionist Movement, ...
— The 1990 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency
... sits on HATSHEPSU'S chair, And with a solemn and ironic eye He sees TAHUTMES strap the balsamed hair Unto his royal chin and wonders why; He sees the stewards and chamberlains bow down, Plays with the asp upon HATSHEPSU'S crown, And thinks, "A goodly land, this ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, Sept. 26, 1917 • Various
... an asp, And bliss coquetting flies the grasp: And, waking up, snap goes the slight Poor cord that held my foolish kite,— Your slave, you may not care to know it, Your humble slave ...
— London Lyrics • Frederick Locker
... disobedience and ingratitude. She then enumerated her own heavy expenses, all but the L. 400 a year she spent in bedizening her carcass, and finally, amidst a multitude of petty insults, she offered to relieve Mrs. Dodd of—Julia. Now Poetry has reconciled us to an asp in a basket of figs; but here was a scorpion in a bundle of nettles. Poor Mrs. Dodd could not speak after reading it. She handed it to Edward, and laid her white forehead wearily in her hand. Edward put the letter in an envelope and sent it back with a line in his own hand ...
— Hard Cash • Charles Reade
... we call asp-wood, ma'am, which is a kind of sallow; they lay up great quantities of it in the autumn as a provision for winter, when they are ...
— The Settlers in Canada • Frederick Marryat
... love!" resumed she. "It is one draught,—a jewel fused in nectar; drink the pearl and bring the asp!" ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. II, No. 8, June 1858 • Various
... Shaking Asp Leaves to be always in a Quiver?—The wind or vibration of the air only causes the quiver ...
— Burroughs' Encyclopaedia of Astounding Facts and Useful Information, 1889 • Barkham Burroughs
... baffled. She pretended all submission; but when the ministers of Octavian came to carry her away, they found her lying dead upon her couch, attended by her faithful waiting-women, Iras and Charmion. The manner of her death was never ascertained; popular belief ascribed it to the bite of an asp which had been conveyed to her in ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 2 • Various
... the purest kind. My ancestor was a Mansouri Arab, from the province of Nejd in Arabia Felix, who with the whole of his tribe was established by Shah Ismael of Persia in some of the finest pastures of Irak, and where they have lived ever since. My great ancestor, Katir, ben Khur, ben Asp, ben Al Madian, was of the tribe of Koreish, and that brought him in direct relationship with the family of our blessed Prophet, from whom all the best blood of ...
— The Adventures of Hajji Baba of Ispahan • James Morier
... far country where a palace rose, In which I reigned with Cleopatra's pride: "Come, Charmian! bring the asp for my repose." And queenly, men shall say, ...
— Poems • Elizabeth Stoddard
... enemy of the asp. It is a native of Egypt and when it sees an asp near its place, it runs at once to the bed or mud of the Nile and with this makes itself muddy all over, then it dries itself in the sun, smears itself again with mud, ...
— The Notebooks of Leonardo Da Vinci, Complete • Leonardo Da Vinci
... in chains beneath the throne of the emperor; and Justinian, planting a foot on each of their necks, contemplated above an hour the chariot-race, while the inconstant people shouted, in the words of the Psalmist, "Thou shalt trample on the asp and basilisk, and on the lion and dragon shalt thou set thy foot!" The universal defection which he had once experienced might provoke him to repeat the wish of Caligula, that the Roman people had but one head. Yet I shall presume to observe, that such a wish is unworthy ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 4 • Edward Gibbon
... he never disappointed me in my opinion of him. I never in my life felt any antipathy to serpents, and he evidently regarded me as a sapengro, or snake-master. The first day I met him he put into my hands a cobra which had the fangs extracted, and then handled an asp which still had its poison teeth. On his asking me if I was afraid of it, and my telling him "No," he gave it to me, and after I had petted it, he always manifested an understanding,—I cannot say sympathy. I should have liked to see that ...
— The Gypsies • Charles G. Leland
... that horror? We all feel it, yet how imaginative it is, how disproportioned to the real strength of the creature! There is more poison in an ill-kept drain, in a pool of dish-washing at a cottage door, than in the deadliest asp of Nile. Every back yard which you look down into from the railway as it carries you out by Vauxhall or Deptford, holds its coiled serpent; all the walls of those ghastly suburbs are enclosures of tank temples for serpent worship; ...
— The Queen of the Air • John Ruskin
... were bare, round, but slender rather than large, in keeping with her lithe round figure. On her wrists she wore bracelets: one was a circlet of enamelled scales; the other looked as if it might have been Cleopatra's asp, with its body turned to gold ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... little dwarf. He suggested to Vergilius unwelcome thoughts of a new sort of Cupid—deformed, evil, and hideous—typifying the degenerate passions of Rome. There were in the quiver of this Cupid arrows which carried the venom of the asp. Some at the table mocked his grinning face and made a jest of his deformity. When he could be heard he mimicked the speech and manners ...
— Vergilius - A Tale of the Coming of Christ • Irving Bacheller
... on earth is sadder Than the dream that cheated the grasp, The flower that turned to the adder, The fruit that changed to the asp, When the dayspring in darkness closes, As the sunset fades from the hills, With the fragrance of perished roses, And ...
— Vera Nevill - Poor Wisdom's Chance • Mrs. H. Lovett Cameron
... in supporting such an argument; also Benedict XI. was pope but eight months. One day a veiled woman, a pretended lay-sister of Sainte-Petronille at Perugia, came to him while he was at table, offering him a basket of figs. Did it conceal an asp like Cleopatra's? The fact is that on the morrow ...
— The Companions of Jehu • Alexandre Dumas
... School."—By the way, as the grammar schools of England are amongst her most eminent distinctions, and, with submission to the innumerable wretches (gentlemen I should say) that hate England "worse than toad or asp," have never been rivalled by any corresponding institutions in other lands, I may as well take this opportunity of explaining the word grammar, which most people misapprehend. Men suppose a grammar school to mean a school where they teach grammar. But this is not ...
— Autobiographic Sketches • Thomas de Quincey
... may also be short for Crispin, the etymology being the same in any case. Apps is sometimes for asp, the tree now called by the adjectival name aspen (cf. linden). We find Thomas atte apse in ...
— The Romance of Names • Ernest Weekley
... Cornelia smote him so fairly in the face that he shrank back, and pressed his hand to a swelling cheek. "I said I hated and despised you. What I despise, though, is beneath my hate. I would tread on you as on a viper or a desert asp, as a noxious creature that is not fit to live. I have played my game; and though it was not I who won, but Agias who won for me, I am well content. Drusus lives! Lives to see you miserably dead! Lives to grow to glory and honour, ...
— A Friend of Caesar - A Tale of the Fall of the Roman Republic. Time, 50-47 B.C. • William Stearns Davis
... made everyone very miserable. Directly she went out, Imperia told the ladies of Rome that she should die it if she were deserted by this gentleman, and would cause herself, like Queen Cleopatra, to be bitten by an asp. She declared openly that she had bidden an eternal adieu her to her former gay life, and would show the whole world what virtue was by abandoning her empire for this Villiers de l'Ile Adam, whose servant she would rather be than reign of Christendom. The English cardinal remonstrated ...
— Droll Stories, Complete - Collected From The Abbeys Of Touraine • Honore de Balzac
... Hydaspes old, Exploring ocean in its every nook, From the Red Sea to the cold Caspian shore, In earth, in heaven one only Phoenix dwells. What fortunate, or what disastrous bird Omen'd my fate? which Parca winds my yarn, That I alone find Pity deaf as asp, And wretched live who happy hoped to be? Let me not speak of her, but him her guide, Who all her heart with love and sweetness fills— Gifts which, from him o'erflowing, follow her, Who, that my sweets may sour and cruel be, Dissembleth, ...
— The Sonnets, Triumphs, and Other Poems of Petrarch • Petrarch
... pain— A father's love and mortal's agony With an immortal's patience blending:—Vain The struggle: vain against the coiling strain And gripe, and deepening of the dragon's grasp, The old man's clench, the long envenom'd chain Rivets the living links,—the enormous asp Enforces pang on pang, and ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole, V4 • Horace Walpole
... Kumad!" (May God sweep your road!), All Akbar had exclaimed as I mounted at the door, and as we pass through the city gate the old sentinel, when told that I am at last starting on the promised journey to Meshed on the asp-i-awhan, supplements this with "Padaram daromad!" (My father has come out!), a Persian metaphorical exclamation, signifying that such wonderful news has had the effect of calling his father from ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle Volume II. - From Teheran To Yokohama • Thomas Stevens
... on the envelope was Quaking-Asp Grove, which was beyond White Lodge, on the main transcontinental highway. Slowly Bill took from the envelope a note ...
— Mystery Ranch • Arthur Chapman
... been treated with some preservative, this head now was little more than a skull still covered with dark hair, but set upon its brow appeared an object that Alan recognized at once, a simple band of plain gold, and rising from it the head of an asp. Without doubt it was the uraeus, that symbol which only the royalties of Old Egypt dared to wear. Without doubt also either this man had brought it with him from the Nile, or in memory of his rank and home he had fashioned it ...
— The Yellow God - An Idol of Africa • H. Rider Haggard
... are benches or terraces—a cliff of 300 to 1,000 feet at the top, then a bench, then another cliff, and so on to the bottom. The benches are well grassed, and there is more or less timber, quaking asp, spruce and juniper in the side canyons. There are plenty of springs along the cliffs, and as they face the south, the winter range is good. The top of the plateau is an open park country, and at that time was, and ...
— American Big Game in Its Haunts • Various
... Carneades, you were to know that an asp was lying hidden anywhere, and that some one who did not know it was going to sit upon it, whose death would be a gain to you, you would act wickedly if you did not warn him not to sit down. Still, you would not be liable to punishment; for who could prove ...
— Cicero's Tusculan Disputations - Also, Treatises On The Nature Of The Gods, And On The Commonwealth • Marcus Tullius Cicero
... loyal and offered him pardon in the king's name. God giving force to these words, Durrey changed his intention, and refused to kill the father of his spirit. But the Indian who accompanied him, shutting his ears, like an asp, to the voices of health, seeing that his chief would not do the deed, unsheathed a weapon called igua in those parts, and approached quickly in order to strike the father. But since the chiefs of the village who ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898 - Volume 41 of 55, 1691-1700 • Various
... mine! that when life's summer hour For thee with love's bright blossoms hung the bough, Too quickly found an asp beneath the flower— And is naught left thee ...
— International Weekly Miscellany Vol. I. No. 3, July 15, 1850 • Various
... It has hindered millions from progressing, and never benefited a soul. It occupies the mind with that which is injurious and thus keeps out the things that might benefit and bless. It is an active and real manifestation of the fable of the man who placed the frozen asp in his bosom. As he warmed it back to life the reptile turned and fatally bit his benefactor. Worry is as a dangerous, injurious book, the reading of which not only takes up the time that might have been spent in reading a good, instructive, and helpful book, but, at the same ...
— Quit Your Worrying! • George Wharton James
... great company of men and of people, and busieth to slay him, and passeth all difficulties and spaces of ways, and with wreak of the said death of his mate. And is not let, ne put off, but it be by swift flight, or by waters or rivers. Marcianus saith that the asp grieveth not men of Africa or Moors; for they take their children that they have suspect, and put them to these adders: and if the children be of their kind, this adder grieveth them not, and if they be of other kind, anon they die by ...
— Mediaeval Lore from Bartholomew Anglicus • Robert Steele
... which rendered it necessary to put into the nearest port, as the principal one, causing a leak in the after gunroom, could not be repaired at sea. It was also considered expedient to get rid of the Asp in order to lessen the straining of the ship during the prospective passage round Cape Horn, which so much top weight was considered materially to increase. On May 14th the land about Cape Maria Van Diemen and the ...
— Voyage Of H.M.S. Rattlesnake, Vol. 2 (of 2) • John MacGillivray
... power detain Those dimpled cheeks, those temples violet-tinged, Those lips of nectar and those eyes of heaven! Charoba, though indeed she never drank The liquid pearl, or twined the nodding crown, Or when she wanted cool and calm repose Dreamed of the crawling asp and grated tomb, Was wretched up to royalty: the jibe Struck her, most piercing where love pierced before, From those whose freedom centres in their tongue, Handmaidens, pages, courtiers, priests, buffoons. Congratulations here, there ...
— Gebir • Walter Savage Landor
... sez I. 'You've shquibbed off your revolver like a child wid a cracker; you can make no play wid that fine large sword av yours; an' your hand's shakin' like an asp on a leaf. Lie still ...
— Indian Tales • Rudyard Kipling
... and gorgeously apparelled, though save for the white beneath, her robes were those of a queen rather than of a priestess. About her radiant brow ran a narrow band of gold, whence rose the head of a hooded asp cut out of a single, crimson jewel, beneath which in endless profusion the glorious waving hair flowed down and around, hiding even the folds ...
— Ayesha - The Further History of She-Who-Must-Be-Obeyed • H. Rider Haggard
... of the retort lay in the word "stout." But Iris was not accustomed to cross-examination. During a three months' residence on the island she had learnt how to avoid Lady Tozer. Here it was impossible, and the older woman fastened upon her asp-like. Miss Iris Deane was a toothsome morsel for gossip. Not yet twenty-one, the only daughter of a wealthy baronet who owned a fleet of stately ships—the Sirdar amongst them—a girl who had been mistress of her father's house since her return from Dresden three ...
— The Wings of the Morning • Louis Tracy
... very well the statue of Cleopatra while yet in the clay. There she sat in the centre of the large, empty studio, pondering on Augustus and on the asp. The hue of the clay added a charm to the figure which even the pure marble has not quite maintained. Story said that he never was present while the cast of one of his statues was being made; he could not endure the sight of the workmen throwing ...
— Hawthorne and His Circle • Julian Hawthorne
... which still held Juan's, by degrees Gently, but palpably confirm'd its grasp, As if it said, 'Detain me, if you please;' Yet there 's no doubt she only meant to clasp His fingers with a pure Platonic squeeze: She would have shrunk as from a toad, or asp, Had she imagined such a thing could rouse A feeling dangerous to ...
— Don Juan • Lord Byron
... faintly sweet. Her features were regular, but of a type strange to Simpkins, the nose slightly aquiline, the lips full and red—vividly so by contrast to the clear white of the skin—and the forehead low and straight. Black hair waved back from it, and was caught up by the coils of a golden asp, from whose lifted head two rubies gleamed. Doubtless a woman would have pronounced her gown absurd and her way of wearing her hair an intolerable affectation. But it was effective with the less discriminating animal—instantly ...
— The False Gods • George Horace Lorimer
... we mounted again and followed MacRae in a cautious file around clumps of willow and rustling quaking-asp to the place where the blaze should have shown. But no glint of fire appeared in any direction; the coulee-bottom lay more dark and silent, if that were possible, than the gloomy hills above. Perplexed, MacRae halted, and we bunched together, whispering, ...
— Raw Gold - A Novel • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... the basket, and drew out a cobra de capello, or else a haje, a fearful reptile which is able to swell its head by spreading out the scales which cover it, and which is thought to be Cleopatra's asp, the serpent of Egypt. In Morocco it is known as the buska. The charmer folded and unfolded the greenish-black viper, as if it were a piece of muslin; he rolled it like a turban round his head, and continued his dance while the serpent maintained ...
— Complete Hypnotism: Mesmerism, Mind-Reading and Spiritualism • A. Alpheus
... the heart on, as one loves a Skye terrier. Her father was a poor man—very poor, almost degraded, you understand—so, in my unfortunate munificence, I lifted her out of her poverty, gave her some of my own genius, and took her to my bosom, as Cleopatra took the asp; and she stung me, just in the same way, villainous ingrate! This girl has treated me shamefully. I had made such an engagement for her—such concessions—carriage for herself, dressing-maid always in attendance, ...
— The Old Countess; or, The Two Proposals • Ann S. Stephens
... rats, and lizards flabby, Centipedes, and hydras scabby, Asp, and slug, and toad, whose ...
— Fringilla: Some Tales In Verse • Richard Doddridge Blackmore
... out of sight. When nothing more of it could be seen than the cloud of dust stirred up by its rolling wheels, I turned to look at my companion. His face was stern, and his brows were drawn together in a frown. Stung already! I thought. Already the little asp of jealousy commenced its bitter work! The trifling favor HIS light-o'-love and MY wife had extended to me in choosing MY arm instead of HIS as a momentary support had evidently been sufficient to pique his pride. God! what ...
— Vendetta - A Story of One Forgotten • Marie Corelli
... if they do not quake like a trembling asp-leaf, and look more miserable than one of the wicked elders pictured in the painted cloth.[399] Should they but come to the credit to be arraigned for their valour before a worshipful bench, their very looks would hang 'em, and they were indicted but ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. IX • Various
... where I went one day on purpose to find out the red marble on which Pope Alexander III. sate, and placed his foot upon the neck of the Emperor: the stone has this inscription half legible round it, Super aspidem et basiliscum ambulabis[Footnote: Thou shalt tread on the asp and the basilisk]. How does this lovely Piazza di San Marco render a newly-arrived spectator breathless with delight! while not a span of it is unoccupied by actual beauty; though the whole appears uncrowded, as in the works of ...
— Observations and Reflections Made in the Course of a Journey through France, Italy, and Germany, Vol. I • Hester Lynch Piozzi
... the intrinsic value of people, it is no longer respectable in the least. Listen to the panegyric which neighbor makes of neighbor. White on white is ferocious; if the lily could speak, what a setting down it would give the dove! A bigoted woman prating of a devout woman is more venomous than the asp and the cobra. It is a shame that I am ignorant, otherwise I would quote to you a mass of things; but I know nothing. For instance, I have always been witty; when I was a pupil of Gros, instead of daubing wretched ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... historian, born at Phalerus, a seaport of Athens; was held in high honour in Athens for a time as its political head, but fell into dishonour, after which he lived retired and gave himself up to literary pursuits; died from the bite of an asp; left a number of ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... the kid; The calf and the young lion shall feed together; And a little child shall lead them. And the cow and the bear shall make friends; Their young ones shall lie down together; And the lion shall eat straw like the ox. And the sucking child shall play on the hole of the asp, And the weaned child shall stretch out his hand to the serpent's eye. None shall do evil or act corruptly in all my holy mountain, For the earth shall be full of the knowledge of the Lord as the ...
— Stories of the Prophets - (Before the Exile) • Isaac Landman
... caused her to draw away from Chauvelin, as she would from a venomous asp, was certainly not fear. It was hate! She hated this man! Hated him for all that she had suffered because of him; for that terrible night on the cliffs of Calais! The peril to her husband who had become so infinitely dear! The humiliations and self-reproaches ...
— The Elusive Pimpernel • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... lying prostrate upon the billiard-table here, you could hit him a square blow in the neck if you had a hundred axes. Delilah might as well cry for her scissors, for all the good it would do us in our predicament. If Cleopatra had her asp with her it might be more to the purpose. One deadly little snake like that let loose on the upper deck would doubtless drive these boors into the sea, and even then our condition would not be bettered, for there ...
— The Pursuit of the House-Boat • John Kendrick Bangs
... believe you would poison them. But they do not know if the meat was killed with a poisonous arrow or if an asp may have inadvertently bitten the fruit. These things may happen, but they do not believe you ...
— Plays of Gods and Men • Lord Dunsany
... a belt, certain rods passing, produced a sharp triple sound through the vibrating motion of her arm. An oblong vessel, in the shape of a boat, depended from her left hand, on the handle of which, in that part which was conspicuous, an asp raised its erect head and largely swelling neck. And shoes, woven from the leaves of the victorious palm-tree, covered her immortal feet. Such, and so great a goddess, breathing the fragrant odor of the shores of Arabia the happy, ...
— Woman in the Ninteenth Century - and Kindred Papers Relating to the Sphere, Condition - and Duties, of Woman. • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... leaves upon which all the graces smiled. But there was a canker at the heart of all this loveliness, the deadly breath of the Upas tree sometimes pierced its incense, the hidden head of a coiled asp now and then stirred the laces nestling at her breast. And the tiny asp that slept on her heart was Rumor, that she could not kill, yet whose sting meant death. And when it moved, her lips whitened with ...
— Volume 10 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... who noted where the flat, spade headed little serpent fell. "Looks wonderfully like an asp, such as they have in Egypt. ...
— Fire Island - Being the Adventures of Uncertain Naturalists in an Unknown Track • G. Manville Fenn
... the serpent deadly brood appears; First the dull Asp its swelling neck uprears; The huge Hemor'rho[:i]s, vampire of the blood; Chersy'ders, that pollute both field and flood; The Water-serpent, tyrant of the lake; The hooded Cobra; and the Plantain snake; Here with distended jaws the Prester strays; And Seps, whose bite both flesh and bone ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook, Vol. 3 • E. Cobham Brewer
... a support can we not boldly tread upon the asp and the basilisk, and trample under foot the lion and the dragon?[2] As it is in temptation that we learn to know the greatness of our courage and of our fidelity to God, so it is by suffering temptation that we make progress in strength ...
— The Spirit of St. Francis de Sales • Jean Pierre Camus
... capitulated to her, and Mark Antony threw a fleet, an empire and his own honor to the winds to follow her to his destruction. Disarmed at last before the frigid Octavius, she found her peerless body measured by the cold eye of her captor only for the triumphal procession, and the friendly asp alone spared ...
— Cleopatra • Jacob Abbott
... body was swollen, except very slightly about the wound; however, there was a rapidly increasing rigidity of the muscles of the neck and throat, and within half an hour after he was bit, he was utterly unable to swallow even liquids. The small whip—snake, the most deadly asp in the whole list of noxious reptiles peculiar to South America, was not above fourteen inches long; it had made four small punctures with its fangs, right over the left jugular vein, about an inch below the chin. There was no blood oozing from them, but a circle about the size of a crownpiece ...
— Tom Cringle's Log • Michael Scott
... Atlas; shall I build your pyramid for you before he goes down?" And Pthah answered, "Yea, sister, if thou canst put thy winged shoulders to such work." And Neith drew herself to her height; and I heard a clashing pass through the plumes of her wings, and the asp stood up on her helmet, and fire gathered in her eyes. And she took one of the flaming arrows out of the sheaf in her left hand, and stretched it out over the heaps of clay. And they rose up like flights of locusts, and spread themselves in the air, so that ...
— The Ethics of the Dust • John Ruskin |
