"Python" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... scientifically labeled, and to the right a fine collection of the enormous fruit bats and some of the skins of these bats, which are of great commercial value. Large collections of birds' eggs, attractively displayed; numerous specimens of stuffed wild boars and deer were displayed. Fine specimens of python, 21 feet long and 1 foot in diameter, and a collection of crocodiles, large iguanas, and lizards were prominent features ...
— Final Report of the Louisiana Purchase Exposition Commission • Louisiana Purchase Exposition Commission
... me it was an enormous python, or serpent of the boa species, that are common on the northern coast of America. Probably it had been brought to the island on a drifted tree, and being so prodigious a reptile, the wounds it had received ...
— The Little Savage • Captain Marryat
... behind. It was gaining. He could hear its triumphant roar. It would catch him soon. Only a few minutes and a fiery arm would reach out like a python and wrap about him. The thought made ...
— The Boy Scout Fire Fighters • Irving Crump
... in earth adown, As olde bookes make mentioun, He was the moste lusty* bacheler *pleasant Of all this world, and eke* the best archer. *also He slew Python the serpent, as he lay Sleeping against the sun upon a day; And many another noble worthy deed He with his bow wrought, as men maye read. Playen he could on every minstrelsy, And singe, that it was a melody To hearen of his cleare voice ...
— The Canterbury Tales and Other Poems • Geoffrey Chaucer
... mattress from his back, and putting it on the ground tried to step on it. That did not help, so he curled up his trunk behind to try to get me to step on. Each time he made an effort like that, however, he sank deeper into the mud. I saw the trunk curling back and creeping up to me like a python crawling up a hillside to coil around its prey. There was no more trumpeting or calling from the elephant, but a sinister silence through which he was trying to reach me. He had come to the end of his unselfishness. In order to save himself, he was willing ...
— Kari the Elephant • Dhan Gopal Mukerji
... of light is founded in the Doric worship of Apollo, and the Ionic worship of Athena, as the spirits of life in the light, and of life in the air, opposed each to their own contrary deity of death—Apollo to the Python, Athena to the Gorgon—Apollo as life in light, to the earth spirit of corruption in darkness;—Athena, as life by motion, to the Gorgon spirit of death by pause, freezing or turning to stone: both of the great divinities taking their glory from the evil they have ...
— Lectures on Art - Delivered before the University of Oxford in Hilary term, 1870 • John Ruskin
... forgot everything. In racing across an open space I ran full tilt upon a colony of snakes. They did not deter me. I was mad. They struck at me, but I ducked and dodged and ran on. Then there was a python that ordinarily would have sent me screeching to a tree-top. He did run me into a tree; but the Swift One was going out of sight, and I sprang back to the ground and went on. It was a close shave. Then there was my old enemy, the hyena. From my conduct he was ...
— Before Adam • Jack London
... formeti, forigi. Put down demeti. Put instead of anstatauxigi. Put in order reguligi, ordigi. Put right rektigi. Put up with suferi, toleri. Putrefaction putrajxo. Putrescence putro—eco. Putrify putrigi. Putty mastiko. Puzzle enigmo. Pyramid piramido. Python ...
— English-Esperanto Dictionary • John Charles O'Connor and Charles Frederic Hayes
... anachronism of summer, the relic of a by-gone world where such monsters swarmed. But it has its limit, the kindlier forces of Nature work against it, and the silent arrows of the sun are still, as of old, fatal to the frosty Python. Geology tells us that such enormous devastators once covered the face of the earth, but the benignant sunlight of heaven touched them, and they faded silently, leaving no trace, but here and there the scratches of their talons, and the gnawed boulders scattered ...
— The Writings of James Russell Lowell in Prose and Poetry, Volume V - Political Essays • James Russell Lowell
... of the populace did not alarm Hamilcar's daughter. She was disturbed by loftier anxieties: her great serpent, the black python, was drooping; and in the eyes of the Carthaginians, the serpent was at once a national and a private fetish. It was believed to be the offspring of the dust of the earth, since it emerges from its depths and has no need of feet to traverse it; its mode of progression ...
— Salammbo • Gustave Flaubert
... There are a number of definite caravan routes connecting Timbuctoo and the Central Soudan with the Niger and coast-lands. Dates and salt are the chief products; the giraffe, wild ass, lion, ostrich, python, &c., are found; it is chiefly inhabited by nomadic and often warlike Moors, Arabs, Berbers, and various negro races. The greater part is within the sphere of French influence. "When the winds waken, and lift and winnow ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... Python, a huge serpent engendered from the mud of the deluge, and slain by Apollo. In other words, pytho is the miasma or mist from the evaporation of the overflow, dried up by the sun. (Greek, puthesthai, "to rot;" because the serpent was left ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook, Vol. 3 • E. Cobham Brewer
... to deliberate, and to make suggestions. One old man offers a clump of grass. Then there is a rising in the basket. The green herbs are agitated; the flowers fall, and the head of a python appears. ...
— The Temptation of St. Antony - or A Revelation of the Soul • Gustave Flaubert
... fleece, which is also guarded by a dragon, and is very hard to secure. Like all the Greek sun-gods and heroes, Sigurd has golden hair and bright blue eyes. His struggle with Fafnir reminds us of Apollo's fight with Python, while the ring Andvaranaut can be likened to Venus's cestus, and the curse attached to its possessor is like the tragedy of Helen, who brought endless bloodshed upon all connected ...
— Myths of the Norsemen - From the Eddas and Sagas • H. A. Guerber
... it when it was dead, saying that he must have it for a curiosity if we did not, and probably it stretched a little in the process, for it proved to be a python, twenty feet ...
— Through Forest and Stream - The Quest of the Quetzal • George Manville Fenn
... than this when he wants to dash his cap on the table, throw himself astride a chair, and stare at a high brick wall with a frown which would not have been beneath the occasion if he had been slaying "the giant Python." The conduct that issues from a moral conflict has often so close a resemblance to vice that the distinction escapes all outward judgments founded on a mere comparison of actions. It is clear to you, I hope, that Stephen was not a hypocrite,—capable of deliberate doubleness for a selfish end; ...
— The Mill on the Floss • George Eliot
... the eight-foot python that had been creeping up round that corner in the process of stalking that cat whizzed by beneath ...
— The Way of the Wild • F. St. Mars
... genially to his telephone. He had been sitting at his table, surrounded by the snakes that for him took the place of a family. On the table was a bowl of milk from which a large bull-snake, in a gay Turkey-carpet design, was drinking. A yellow and black python lay coiled in several figures of eight in the armchair, and an intelligent-looking small dust-coloured snake with a broad nose and an active tongue leaned out of the ...
— Living Alone • Stella Benson
... Senecas. Henry caught a glimpse of "Indian" Butler in the center, with a great blood-red handkerchief tied around his head, and, despite the forest, he noticed with a great sinking of the heart how far the hostile line extended. It could wrap itself like a python around ...
— The Scouts of the Valley • Joseph A. Altsheler
... people who lived there kept themselves hidden among the rocks as if in dread of some great danger. They told Apollo that near the foot of the mountain where the steep cliff seemed to be split in two there lived a huge serpent called the Python. This serpent often seized sheep and cattle, and sometimes even men and women and children, and carried them up to his dreadful den and ...
— Old Greek Stories • James Baldwin
... the men rushed down their ladders screaming, "Harimau! Harimau!" (A tiger! A tiger!) The next morning she found that her pet dog, Fatima, named after herself, had been killed by one stroke of the great beast's paw. Once a monster python swung from a cocoanut tree through the window of her home, and wound itself round and round the post of her mother's loom. It took a dozen men to tie a rope to the serpent's tail, ...
— Tales of the Malayan Coast - From Penang to the Philippines • Rounsevelle Wildman
... the python is the only other creature that dares to attack the orang-utan, and that when it does so victory usually declares for the man-monkey, which bites and ...
— Blown to Bits - The Lonely Man of Rakata, the Malay Archipelago • R.M. Ballantyne
... do not pass it through the fire, (or if) he passed it through the fire, and did not hand it to Molech?" "He is not guilty till he hand it to Molech, and pass it through the fire." One has a familiar spirit, when the Python speaks from his arm. But the wizard speaks with his mouth. These are to be stoned, and inquiry from ...
— Hebrew Literature
... mouth, but I thought that very likely I should let go my hold and fall down. I am not ashamed to confess having had that feeling, but I tried to conquer it, and it soon wore off, and then I began to consider how I might best escape the dreadful Python. At first I thought that I would climb up to the very highest branch, in the hopes that the boa would not venture to follow me there, for fear of breaking it with his weight; and then it occurred to me that I might possibly escape by working my way along ...
— My First Voyage to Southern Seas • W.H.G. Kingston
... high and thirty-three feet in breadth he was represented as Apollo hurling his darts at an enormous Python, under one of whose fore-paws struggled an unfortunate burgher, while the other clutched a whole city; Tellus, meantime, with her tower on her head, kneeling anxious and imploring at the feet of her deliverer. ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... been powerless only a minute before. Better risk discovery, better risk everything, than be left to pass the night where I was. Should that horror settle down upon me again, I felt that I must succumb to it. It would crush the life out of me as infallibly as though I were in the folds of some huge python. Long before ...
— The Argosy - Vol. 51, No. 2, February, 1891 • Various
... indignation of the Cape Colony Boers, and embittered racial feeling there. It put the British cause in the wrong in the eyes of the whole world, and made the Boers appear as a gallant little people struggling in the folds of a merciless python-empire. It increased immensely the difficulty of the British government in negotiating with the Transvaal for better treatment of the Uitlanders. It stiffened the backs of Kruger and his party. The German Kaiser telegraphed his congratulations on the ...
— The Expansion of Europe - The Culmination of Modern History • Ramsay Muir
... Paloeophis toliapicus of the London Clay of Sheppey, first made known to science by the researches of Professor Owen. The nearly-allied Paloeophis typhoeus of the Eocene beds of Bracklesham appears to have been a Boa-constrictor-like Snake of about twenty feet in length. Similar Python-like Snakes (Paloeophis, Dinophis, &c.) have been described from the Eocene deposits of the United States. True Lizards (Lacertilians) are found in some abundance in the Eocene deposits,—some being small terrestrial forms, like the common European ...
— The Ancient Life History of the Earth • Henry Alleyne Nicholson
... death cry of a monkey. Probably some python or other snake has seized it in its sleep; and the other noise is the outcry of its companions heaping abuse upon the snake, but unable to do ...
— Among Malay Pirates - And Other Tales Of Adventure And Peril • G. A. Henty
... arisen in gratitude to the porpoise, which drives fishes inshore, for the natives to catch. Neither Tharamulun nor Hobamoc (Australian and American Gods of healing and soothsaying), who appear to men as serpents, are borrowed from Asclepius, or from the Python of Apollo. The processes have been quite different, and in Apollo, the oracular son of Zeus, who declares his counsel to men, I am apt to see a beautiful Greek modification of the type of the mediating Son of the primal Being ...
— The Homeric Hymns - A New Prose Translation; and Essays, Literary and Mythological • Andrew Lang
... the Gospel. [Sidenote: Open conflict with Satan.] At Philippi is noticeable the conflict between the visible power of Satan and the Power of {39} One stronger than he, in the casting out by St. Paul of the evil spirit of Python from the soothsaying woman. This was an earnest of the final issue of that great contest between the kingdom of Satan and the Kingdom of God, which was now beginning in the very strongholds of darkness, and is to continue ...
— A Key to the Knowledge of Church History (Ancient) • John Henry Blunt
... "Python, my lad, not pison," said the doctor. "That class of serpent is harmless. Don't miss it, Sir James, and don't shatter its head if you can ...
— Dead Man's Land - Being the Voyage to Zimbambangwe of certain and uncertain • George Manville Fenn
... moved at the contact, and before the unfortunate man could utter a cry of warning there occurred a sudden and violent rustling and switching of the long grass in front of him, something struck him a violent blow on the shoulder, and in an instant he found himself enveloped in the coils of an enormous python, the great head of which towered threateningly above him, as it opened wide its gaping jaws within a foot of his face and emitted a loud, sibilant, angry hiss. Its hot, foetid breath struck him full in the ...
— With Airship and Submarine - A Tale of Adventure • Harry Collingwood
... without touching the floor at all. He described a perfect parabola. It was just the way I should have tossed him had I been Destiny. He gripped the table-legs like a vise, coiling himself around them like a poor navy-blue python with a green face. He thought the worst was over, but in his last clutch at the locker he had accidentally opened it, and at the next lurch of the yacht all the cans bounded out and battered his unprotected back like a shower of grape-shot. The yacht ...
— As Seen By Me • Lilian Bell
... "above all" and "through all." The Roman Catholic Church has, perhaps, humanized religion too far. For every god and goddess of Greece she has given us, on some immortal canvas, an archangel or a saint to be adored and loved. Instead of Apollo and the Python we have Guido's St. Michael and the Dragon; in place of the light, airy Mercury she provides a St. Sebastian; instead of the "untouched" Diana, some heavenly Agnes or Cecilia. The Catholic heaven is peopled, all the way up, with beautiful human ...
— Ten Great Religions - An Essay in Comparative Theology • James Freeman Clarke
... for you to sneer, and talk about art. But there are already in this world a deal more Standard Works than any man can hope to digest in the average lifetime. I don't quarrel with them, for, personally, I find even Ruskin, like the python in the circus, entirely endurable so long as there is a pane of glass between us. But why, in heaven's name, should you endeavour to harass humanity with one more battalion of morocco-bound reproaches for sins of omission, whenever humanity goes into the library ...
— The Cords of Vanity • James Branch Cabell et al
... something—for the moment it was impossible to say precisely what it was—had flashed into view from out of the long grass, within a yard or so of where the deer stood, and the next second the unfortunate creature was enveloped in the coils of a huge python. As the watchers of the unexpected tragedy sprang to their feet they distinctly heard the bones of the deer crack as the serpent constricted its coils about its victim; and then Earle, with an ejaculation of anger, sprang out from behind the bush, and, ...
— In Search of El Dorado • Harry Collingwood
... Glossop loves food. He just lives for it. He always eats six or seven meals a day, and then starts in again after bedtime. I think it's rather wonderful.' Your aunt seemed interested, and said it reminded her of a boa constrictor. Angela said, didn't she mean a python? And then they argued as to which of the two it was. Your uncle, meanwhile, poking about with that damned pistol of his till human life wasn't safe in the vicinity. And the pie lying there on the table, and me unable to touch it. You begin to understand why I said I had ...
— Right Ho, Jeeves • P. G. Wodehouse
... XIV. gives you examples, from more advanced art, of true Greek representation; the subjects being the two contests of leading import to the Greek heart—that of Apollo with the Python, and of Hercules with the Nemean Lion. You see that in neither case is there the slightest effort to represent the [Greek: lyssa] or agony of contest. No good Greek artist would have you behold the suffering, either ...
— The Crown of Wild Olive • John Ruskin
... person—binding on a sandal or preparing for the bath. When a more complex and significant action is permitted, it is most often represented as just finished, so that eager expectancy is excluded, as in the image of Apollo just after the slaughter of the Python, or of Venus with the apple of Paris already in her hand. The Laocoon, with all that patient science through which it has triumphed over an almost unmanageable subject, marks a period in which sculpture has begun to aim at effects legitimate, ...
— The Renaissance: Studies in Art and Poetry • Walter Horatio Pater
... Well, of all the nerve! Did you ever! Was she going to stay? What did she think she was going to do? And so on all the way home, to where awaited the heavy Sunday dinner on which Westville gorged itself python-like—if it be not sacrilege to compare communicants with such heathen beasts—till they could scarcely move; till, toward three o'clock, the church paper sank down upon the distended stomachs of middle age, and there arose from all the easy ...
— Counsel for the Defense • Leroy Scott
... though, in whom alone no fault has yet been found. They tell you, he has just killed the serpent Python. "Let us beg of him," says one of the company, "just to turn round and demolish those cursed snakes which are devouring the poor old man and his boys yonder." This was like the speech of Marchez donc to the fine bronze horse under the heavenly statue of Marcus Aurelius at the Capitol, ...
— Observations and Reflections Made in the Course of a Journey through France, Italy, and Germany, Vol. I • Hester Lynch Piozzi
... sandwich and brushed the crumbs off his trousers. Thomas continued operations on the bun with the concentrated expression of a lunching python. ...
— The Politeness of Princes - and Other School Stories • P. G. Wodehouse
... poisonous," cried Jerry. "This may be a python or a boa escaped from some circus, though I haven't heard of any animal shows ...
— Ned, Bob and Jerry on the Firing Line - The Motor Boys Fighting for Uncle Sam • Clarence Young
... partly due to the lack of fats, but due most of all, I think, to a natural disappointment in the results. In the old times a man didn't feel that he had dined well in England unless for an hour or two afterward he had the comfortable gorged sensation of a python ...
— Eating in Two or Three Languages • Irvin S. Cobb
... Frishmuth. 4. Bondage by Carl Augustus Heber. 5. Boy Pan with Frog by Clement J. Barnhorn. 6. Sundial by Gail Sherman Corbett. 7. Three fountain groups in one basin, all by Anna Coleman Ladd. Of these the Sun God and Python has been especially admired as a spirited and graceful bit of work. 8. (On the lagoon side of the circle) Mother of the Dead by C. S. Pietro-a sincere and powerfully realistic work, and quite unlike anything else in the outdoor gallery. 9. (In walk) Chief Justice Marshall ...
— An Art-Lovers guide to the Exposition • Shelden Cheney
... than seven feet high, naked except for the cloak which is fastened around the neck and hangs over the extended left arm. It is supposed to represent the god in the moment when he has shot the arrow to destroy the monster Python (See Chapter II). The victorious divinity is in the act of stepping forward. The left arm which seems to have held the bow is outstretched, and the head is turned in the same direction. In attitude and proportion the graceful majesty of ...
— TITLE • AUTHOR
... passed the cage where serpents of every kind were twisting and squirming about, among them the terrible boa-constrictor, and the python; but Mrs. Steiner could not look at them, and asked the boys to stay but a little while, but they could halt at the tanks of the South American alligator, the rhinoceros, the great turtle, and the hippopotamus; all animals which the boys had never seen except in pictures ...
— Pixy's Holiday Journey • George Lang
... he was, with a comrade standing over him. He himself slept so for a little while. But one of the men heard something move among the hanging tendrils of the baobab, investigated with his bayonet-point, and managed to transfix a twelve-foot python. After that there was, not so much desire for sleep. The fakir either slept with his eyes open or else dispensed with sleep. No one seemed able to ...
— Told in the East • Talbot Mundy
... Mowgli, and we were just beginning to arrange the different parts. The rest of the hose that was on the ground was Kaa, the Rock Python, and Pincher was Grey Brother, only we couldn't find him. And while most of us were talking, Dicky and Noel got messing about with ...
— The Wouldbegoods • E. Nesbit
... the appearances and works of Satan false Christs, false prophets, Pagan oracles, magicians, sorcerers, and sorceresses, those who are inspired by the spirit of Python, the obsession and possession of demons, those who pretend to predict the future, and whose predictions are sometimes fulfilled; those who make compacts with the devil to discover treasures and enrich themselves; those ...
— The Phantom World - or, The philosophy of spirits, apparitions, &c, &c. • Augustin Calmet
... 61: The tripod.—Ver. 635. The tripod on which the priestess of Apollo or 'Pythia,' sat when inspired, was called 'Cortina,' from the skin, 'corium,' of the serpent Python, which, when it had been killed by Apollo was used to ...
— The Metamorphoses of Ovid - Literally Translated into English Prose, with Copious Notes - and Explanations • Publius Ovidius Naso
... widows equally. He has even aforetime forced the gods, wrought up to a frenzy by his blazing torch, to forsake the heavens and dwell on earth under false appearances. Whereof the proofs are many. Was not Phoebus, though victor over huge Python and creator of the celestial strains that sound from the lyres of Parnassus, by him made the thrall, now of Daphne, now of Clymene, and again of Leucothea, and of many others withal? Certainly, this was so. And, finally, hiding his brightness ...
— La Fiammetta • Giovanni Boccaccio
... the dragon Fafnir reminds us of Python, whom Apollo overcame; and, as Python guarded the Delphic Oracle, the ...
— The Story of Siegfried • James Baldwin
... of the streams; one they call Phoenix, the other Elaea, even to the present time, as if Lucina had not been delivered between two trees, but fountains. A place hard by, called Ptoum, is shown, where they say she was affrighted by the appearance of a boar; and the stories of the Python and Tityus are in like manner appropriated by these localities. I omit many of the points that are used as arguments. For our tradition does not rank this god amongst those that were born, and then made immortal, as Hercules and Bacchus, whom their virtue raised above a mortal ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough
... noticeable with crocodiles, which wait for whole days without moving, concealed in the water or deep grass, until their prey comes within striking distance, when they pounce upon it. The same is true of the python snake, which hangs from a tree so immovable that he appears like a vine or a branch of the tree. If an animal attempts to pass, he ...
— The Human Side of Animals • Royal Dixon
... a stick and then seize it in a cleft bamboo and prick out the poison-fangs with a large needle. They think that the teeth of the iguana are also poisonous and they knock them out with a stick, and if fresh teeth afterwards grow they believe them not to contain poison. The python is called Ajgar, which is said to mean eater of goats. In captivity the pythons will not eat of themselves, and the snake-charmers chop up pieces of meat and fowls and placing the food in the reptile's mouth massage it ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India - Volume IV of IV - Kumhar-Yemkala • R.V. Russell
... teacher, Miss Cushman, takes THE GREAT ROUND WORLD. She lends it to the girls who do not take it, and they find out about Crete and Greece. We are studying about the Eastern Question, and your magazine helps us to find what we want. Do you know any more about the big python that was found in Florida, or was it just ...
— The Great Round World and What Is Going On In It, Vol. 1, No. 28, May 20, 1897 - A Weekly Magazine for Boys and Girls • Various
... Carver!" she would scream above the din of the rough meals, but soon she found that Joan's slow movements accomplished a tremendous amount of work in an amazingly short time. There was no pause in the girl's activity. She poured out her strength as a python pours his, noiselessly, evenly, steadily, no haste, no waste. And the ...
— The Branding Iron • Katharine Newlin Burt
... proof-sheet; so that he stood in the same ridiculous attitude into which he had thrown Dennis, as his own trumpeter. Dennis, whose brutal energy remained unsubdued, was a rhinoceros of a critic, shelled up against the arrows of wit. This monster of criticism awed the poet; and Dennis proved to be a Python, whom the golden shaft of Apollo could ...
— Calamities and Quarrels of Authors • Isaac D'Israeli
... struggles in the animal world. Mr. Marshall's white elephant will linger as a memory, even as his ghost remains, longer than the sagacious play-fellow of Mr. Gilbert's little Indian; but nobody can forget the battle the latter fought with the python. ...
— O Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1919 • Various
... whereof those which they thought were good to them, they esteemed the Angels of God, and those they thought would hurt them, they called Evill Angels, or Evill Spirits; such as was the Spirit of Python, and the Spirits of Mad-men, of Lunatiques, and Epileptiques: For they esteemed such as were troubled with such ...
— Leviathan • Thomas Hobbes
... wavered staggeringly under the blow, a soft something slipped about Barlow's throat and tightened like the coils of a python. And behind something was pressing him to his death. The other Bagree springing to the assistance of Hunsa had looped his roomal about the Sahib's throat with ...
— Caste • W. A. Fraser
... CANCER])—Is the fourth sign of the zodiac, which the sun enters on the 21st day of June, and is thence called the summer solstice. According to Grecian fable, the crab was transported to heaven at the request of Juno, after it had been slain by Hercules during his battle with the serpent Python, but the evident design of the name is to represent the apparent backward motion of the sun in June, which is said to resemble ...
— The Ruins • C. F. [Constantin Francois de] Volney
... it. One long vine struggled to right itself against the current, to gain the shelter of the island again. It seemed most lifelike, and suddenly Piang realized with a shudder that it was alive. A python had been knocked from the falling tree and was being dragged along. Only the end of its tail was twined about a log; desperately it strove to work its way back, and Piang watched with dread. Its struggles grew weaker and weaker, ...
— The Adventures of Piang the Moro Jungle Boy - A Book for Young and Old • Florence Partello Stuart
... Professor Challenger," said he, "if you could see your way to make any remarks which may occur to you without seizing me by the chin. Even the appearance of a very ordinary rock python does not appear ...
— The Lost World • Arthur Conan Doyle
... well, he rubbed his hands and chuckled over you; if you died, he bleated about the Will of Providence, and his daughters sent flowery, home-made wreaths to place upon your grave, and it all went down, adding to the python-length of the bill for ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves
... paddle. The bones of the front feet still remain under the flesh. Animals of the horse type have had the central toe strengthened, for running purposes, at the expense of the rest. The serpent has lost its limbs from disuse, but in the python a rudimentary limb-bone is ...
— The World's Greatest Books - Volume 15 - Science • Various
... and rich canopies; and in picturesque corners there were censers, great church candlesticks, and palms; then think of the smell of burning incense and wax and you will have imagined the sentiment of our apartment in Rue de la Tour des Dames. I bought a Persian cat, and a python that made a monthly meal off guinea pigs; Marshall, who did not care for pets, filled his rooms with flowers—he used to sleep beneath a tree of gardenias in full bloom. We were so, Henry Marshall and George Moore, when we went to live in ...
— Confessions of a Young Man • George Moore
... States was a mere jelly-fish nation which would tolerate any enormity he might concoct. This was the actual comfort President Wilson's message gave Germany. The negative result was felt among the Allied nations which, struggling against the German Monster like Laocoon in the coils of the Python, took Mr. Wilson's praise of Germany's imaginary love of justice and humanity as a death-warrant for themselves. They could not believe that he who wrote such words, or the American people who swallowed them, could ever be roused ...
— Theodore Roosevelt; An Intimate Biography, • William Roscoe Thayer
... beside the golden statue of Apollo, and his tomb bore the inscription, "Here lies Dionysus dead, the son of Semele." According to one account, Apollo himself was buried at Delphi; for Pythagoras is said to have carved an inscription on his tomb, setting forth how the god had been killed by the python and buried under ...
— The Golden Bough - A study of magic and religion • Sir James George Frazer
... that, when the party, early in the day, were passing a thicket out of which glided a very large serpent, the major should give a shout and incontinently discharge both barrels at it simultaneously. It chanced to be a python of great size, full fifteen feet long, and thicker than a man's thigh, but a really harmless species of serpent. The major, however, did not know this, or did not care. His shots, although fired at random, hit the creature in the spine; nevertheless it retained ...
— Hunting the Lions • R.M. Ballantyne
... picturesque American. Magdalena, in a suit of her father's old clothes, was handing his books through the library window to Miss Folsom. Miss Geary was scrambling up the ladder, a hose coiled about her like a python. The leader of the company stood on the roof directly above the front door, giving orders with imperious voice and gesture. But although the flames leaped high about her, starting the leaves of a neighbouring tree into sharp relief, he could not ...
— The Californians • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
... power of Elias' (after whom it was long named), fasting, like Elias, forty days and forty nights, wrestling with the demons of the storm, and the snakes of the fen, and the Peishta-more (the monstrous Python of the lakes), which assembled at the magic ringing of his bell, till he conquered not by the brute force of a Hercules and Theseus, and the monster-quellers of old Greece, but by the spiritual force ...
— The Roman and the Teuton - A Series of Lectures delivered before the University of Cambridge • Charles Kingsley
... to grace her majesty. Apollo first his golden rays among, Did form the beauty of her bounteous eyes; He graced her with his sweet melodious song, And made her subject of his poesies. The warrior Mars bequeathed her fierce disdain, Venus her smile, and Phoebe all her fair, Python his voice, and Ceres all her grain, The morn her locks and fingers did repair. Young Love, his bow, and Thetis gave her feet; Clio her ...
— Elizabethan Sonnet Cycles - Phillis - Licia • Thomas Lodge and Giles Fletcher
... three brothers. Again, the revolt of the Giants, Prometheus's theft of fire, his creation of mankind, and the punishment that followed; the might of Eros and of Anteros, the wanderings of the island Delos, the travail of Leto, the Python's destruction, the evil design of Tityus, the flight of eagles, whereby the earth's centre was discovered. He must know of Deucalion, in whose days the whole world suffered shipwreck, of that single chest wherein were preserved the remnants of the human race, of the new generation ...
— Works, V2 • Lucian of Samosata
... venomous species, seem to be less feared than in India or the wilder parts of Australia. The python grows to twenty feet or more, but is, of course, not poisonous, and never assails man unless first molested. The black momba, which is nearly as large as a rattlesnake, is, however, a dangerous creature, being ready to attack ...
— Impressions of South Africa • James Bryce
... few miles to the eastward mighty armies were striving over a tortured strip of blasted land that for years to come would lie fruitless and barren. Here all was peace, with never a hint—yes, far below on the white ribbon of roadway a long, dark python was slowly dragging itself forward. It was a familiar sight to Larkin and McGee—troops moving up to the theatre of war. And over on another road a long procession of humpbacked brown toads were plodding eastward. Motor lorries, carrying munitions ...
— Aces Up • Covington Clarke
... dust fly up in a toss of mist over the face of the distant upper crags. Then, a grinding tore the earth; something white glistening viscous crumpled—coiled with untellable furious speed, shaggy and formless, out from the upper peaks—coiled and writhed out like a giant python in titanic torture. For an instant, for less than the fraction of an instant, it poised and coiled and looped as a great white snake in and out among the far upper meadows: then ruptured free with ear ...
— The Freebooters of the Wilderness • Agnes C. Laut
... said Apollo, "what dost thou with the warlike bow? Such burden best befits my shoulders, for did I not slay the fierce serpent, the Python, whose baleful breath destroyed all that came nigh him? Warlike arms are for the mighty, not for boys like thee! Do thou carry a torch with which to kindle love in human hearts, but no longer lay claim to ...
— Good Stories For Great Holidays - Arranged for Story-Telling and Reading Aloud and for the - Children's Own Reading • Frances Jenkins Olcott
... it. Hobbes did not see, that the skill and beauty of these fictions lay in bringing them within those very regions of truth and likelihood in which he thought they could not exist. Hence the serpent Python of Chaucer, ...
— English Critical Essays - Nineteenth Century • Various
... she, too, would have worked and schemed and pushed herself out into the front of the ranks. She combined with him as only an ambitious woman can combine, and she supplied all he lacked. It filled her mind, and she never awoke the jealousy that lay like a sleeping python in the heart of Draycott Wilder. It was when they were in India that Clarice, for the first time, lost her grip and allowed her senses to get the better of her common sense, and she became for a brief time a woman with a very troublesome heart. Hector Copplestone, a young man newly come ...
— The Pointing Man - A Burmese Mystery • Marjorie Douie
... reptiles seem fairly modest creatures. The ordinary snake does not lay more than twenty or thirty eggs, and even the python is content to stop at a hundred. The crocodile, though a wicked animal, lays only twenty or thirty; the tortoise as few as two or four; and the turtle does not exceed two hundred. But I am not really interested in eggs—not, ...
— The Pleasures of Ignorance • Robert Lynd
... man ought not to be. Why should not he, so like the worst of men, have some bond or kindred with the evil beings who were not men? Why should not the graceful and deadly cobra, the horrid cerastes, the huge throttling python, and even more, the loathly puff-adder, undistinguishable from the gravel among which he lay coiled, till he leaped furiously and unswerving, as if shot from a bow, upon his prey—why should not they too be kindred to that evil power who had been, in the holiest and most ancient books, personified ...
— The Hermits • Charles Kingsley
... mythology thought them the columns of Hercules; people fond of natural history thought them a representation of the python, because, according to Pausanias, a similar heap of stones, on the road from Thebes to Elissonte, was called "the serpent's head," and especially because the rows of stones at Carnac present the sinuosities of a serpent. People fond of cosmography discovered a zodiac, like ...
— Over Strand and Field • Gustave Flaubert
... the quietude of a moment, standing and looking before one at the moss-bearded trees and the python-like loops of the lianas, one can see the struggle crystallized, just as in the still marble of the Laocoon one sees the ...
— The Pools of Silence • H. de Vere Stacpoole
... on Round Island (386/1. In Wallace's "Island Life," page 410, Round Island is described as an islet "only about a mile across, and situated about fourteen miles north-east of Mauritius." Wallace mentions a snake, a python belonging to the peculiar and distinct genus Casarea, as found on Round Island, and nowhere else in the world. The palm Latania Loddigesii is quoted by Wallace as "confined to Round Island and two other adjacent islets." See Baker's "Flora of the Mauritius ...
— More Letters of Charles Darwin Volume II - Volume II (of II) • Charles Darwin
... stowed in that hold cages containing wolves, hyenas, wild hogs, wild asses, monkeys, porcupines, and zebras. There were three or four cages full of poisonous snakes, one variety of which I recognized, the curse of India—the hooded cobra. Then there was a big python, picked up at Rio, and a boa-constrictor, taken aboard at one of ...
— The Grain Ship • Morgan Robertson
... overcome by the onrush of primordial things, and where once was the white man's city is now the eternal jungle, and the vines and thrusting roots and rank herbage blot out the very memory of a futile civilization, while the monkey and the jackal and the python ...
— Towards the Great Peace • Ralph Adams Cram
... of the nearer houses beginning to stand out sharp and black against the red glow beyond. It was a barn behind a huge frame house that was afire, the dry hay burning like powder, and by the time they reached it the flames were already dwindling. The hose was lying like a python all about the streets, while upon the neighbouring roofs were groups of firemen with helmets and axes; some were shouting into the street below, and others were holding the spouting nozzles of the hose. "Ah," exclaimed an old man, standing near to Ida and ...
— Vandover and the Brute • Frank Norris
... charmed life; We come not scathless from the strife! The Python's coil about us clings, The trampled Hydra ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... impact of Ichcha the whole pack of cards began to totter slowly, and then tumble down to the ground. The scene was like that of some huge python awaking from a long sleep, as it slowly unfolds its numberless coils with a quiver that runs ...
— The Hungry Stones And Other Stories • Rabindranath Tagore
... kill, but their chief food is roots. They kill great numbers of snakes. Even the largest python is no match for a herd of peccaries if they catch him before he can take ...
— The Treasure of the Incas • G. A. Henty
... with arms sometimes 30 feet long, so as to be 60 feet from tip to tip. The body, however, is small in proportion. The Giraffe attains a height of over 20 feet; the Elephant, though not so tall, is more bulky; the Crocodile reaches a length of over 20 feet, the Python of 60 feet, the extinct Titanosaurus of the American Jurassic beds, the largest land animal yet known to us, 100 feet in length and 30 in height; the Whalebone Whale over 70 feet, Sibbald's Whale is said to have reached 80-90, ...
— The Beauties of Nature - and the Wonders of the World We Live In • Sir John Lubbock
... where's the wit that mire-befouled to the swamp-demon yields? Oh, birds of Iris-glitter, black and bitter will be the wakening when those gaudy plumes Fall crushed and leaden, as your senses deaden In poisonous Python fumes! ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 100, April 4, 1891 • Various
... twilight time Of every people, in every clime, Dragons and griffins and monsters dire, Born of water, and air, and fire, Or nursed, like the Python, in the mud And ooze of the old Deucalion flood, Crawl and wriggle and foam with rage, Through dusk tradition and ballad age. So from the childhood of Newbury town And its time of fable the tale comes down Of a terror which haunted bush ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, Issue 17, March, 1859 • Various
... Self-reliance and self-help are very good things, but they leave their limitations, and they have no place here. 'Every man his own Redeemer' will not work. You can no more extricate yourself from the toils of sin than a man can release himself from the folds of a python. You can no more climb to heaven by your own effort than you can build a railway to the moon. You must sue in forma pauperis, and be content to accept as a boon an unmerited place in your Father's heart, an undeserved seat at His bountiful table, an unearned share in His wealth, from the hands ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ephesians; Epistles of St. Peter and St. John • Alexander Maclaren
... riding home through a part of the jungle not far from his bungalow, he heard a soft, low hiss close to his ear, and, looking up, saw a python swing itself from the branch of a tree and make off through the long grass. He had been out antelope-shooting, and his loaded rifle hung by his stirrup. Springing from the frightened horse, he was just ...
— Novel Notes • Jerome K. Jerome
... full of exultation. On a branch above them, a python, awakened by those vibrations, revealed itself in an ...
— Sacrifice • Stephen French Whitman
... the Zoological Gardens is positive that certain snakes, for instance Crotalus and Python, distinguish him from all other persons. Cobras kept together in the same cage apparently feel some attachment towards each other. (61. Dr. Gunther, 'Reptiles of British ...
— The Descent of Man and Selection in Relation to Sex • Charles Darwin
... de capello Tame snakes (note) Anecdotes of the cobra de capello Legends concerning it Instance of land snakes found at sea Singular tradition regarding the robra de capello Uropeltidae.—New species discovered in Ceylon Buddhist veneration for the cobra de capello The Python Tree snakes Water snakes Sea snakes Snake stones Analysis of one Caecilia Frogs ...
— Sketches of the Natural History of Ceylon • J. Emerson Tennent
... other people on to talk about themselves, or else, to artists and writers and their sort, discovered an amazing, discouraging knowledge of the trades by which they earned their living. "One feels," said Mrs. Malcolm, "that one is eyeing a sensitive python. He ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1917 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... same natural group of organisms a rudiment is sometimes present and sometimes absent. For instance, although in nearly all the numerous species of snakes there are no vestiges of limbs, in the python we find very tiny rudiments of the hind-limbs. (Fig. 8.) Now, is it a worthy conception of deity that, while neglecting to maintain his unity of ideal in the case of nearly all the numerous species of snakes, he ...
— Darwin, and After Darwin (Vol. 1 and 3, of 3) • George John Romanes
... [103] Python, of Byzantium, was a very corpulent man. He once said to the citizens, in addressing them to make friends after a political dispute: "Gentlemen, you see how stout I am. Well, I have a wife at home who is still stouter. Now, when we are good friends, we can sit ...
— Flowers from a Persian Garden and Other Papers • W. A. Clouston
... the path after it. Nothing there but starlight. I must have gone on for half a mile. Nothing: only ahead of me, along the path, the monkeys would chatter and break into an uproar, and then stop short—every treetop silent, as they do when a python comes along. I went back to the clearing, sat down on the mat, stayed there by clinching my will power, so to speak,—and watched myself for other symptoms, till morning. None came. The fire, when I heaped it, was as hot as any could be. By dawn I had persuaded myself that it was a dream. ...
— The Spinner's Book of Fiction • Various
... bursting sides emerged A dazzling form, broad-bosomed, bold of eye, And wild her hair, save where with laurels bound. Not more majestic stood the healing God,[146:1] 435 When from his bow the arrow sped that slew Huge Python. Shriek'd Ambition's giant throng, And with them hissed the locust-fiends that crawled And glittered in Corruption's slimy track. Great was their wrath, for short they knew their reign; 440 And such commotion made ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... live, but she gave me the following information about them. They are all like herself, and they have no houses nor crops, because they are afraid of the Manbos that surround them. Their food is the core[16] of the green rattan and of fishtail palm,[17] the flesh of wild boar, deer, and python, and such fish and grubs, etc., as they find in their wanderings. They sleep anywhere; sometimes even in trees, if they have ...
— The Manbos of Mindano - Memoirs of the National Academy of Sciences, Volume XXIII, First Memoir • John M. Garvan
... slowly, inevitably. He ground his teeth and cursed. His curse was half a prayer. For answer there was the unearthly chuckle just below his ear. His hand was moved back, down, around! He was helpless as a child in the arms of its father—no, helpless as a sheep in the constricting coils of a python. ...
— The Untamed • Max Brand
... that patronizing, significant way—and ordered a dinner that included nearly everything on the dinner card except Lubly's thumb. The dinner was brought to me in relays and I ate it—ate it all! This step I know now was ill-advised. It is true that for a short time I felt as I imagine a python in a zoo feels when he is full of guinea-pigs—sort of gorged, you know, and sluggish, ...
— Europe Revised • Irvin S. Cobb
... wade through death to meet with it; Then in his self the lymbeck turns, And his elixir'd poyson urns. Arachne, once the fear oth' maid Coelestial, thus unto her pray'd: Heaven's blew-ey'd daughter, thine own mother! The Python-killing Sun's thy brother. Oh! thou, from gods that didst descend, With a poor virgin to contend, Shall seed of earth and hell ere be A rival in thy victorie? Pallas assents: for now long time And pity had clean rins'd her crime; When straight ...
— Lucasta • Richard Lovelace
... there in the monster folds Of a serpent that round him twines; Sir Walter a moment the scene beholds, Then to save the beast inclines. His good sword stout From its sheath leaps out, When down it falls on the Python's [Headnote 1] crest, And cleaves the coils that the lion invest; And the noble beast, From its thrall released, Shows ...
— Sanders' Union Fourth Reader • Charles W. Sanders
... adjustment of the serpent to its environment which delights naturalists was to the Wesleyan divine simply an evil result of the sin of Adam and Eve. Yet here again geology was obliged to confront theology in revealing the PYTHON in the ...
— History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom • Andrew Dickson White |
