"Basilisk" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... rest in her lap, and without any abating or concealment, fixes PIKE with a basilisk glare which continues. He is unconscious of all this, his back being three-quarters to ...
— The Man from Home • Booth Tarkington and Harry Leon Wilson
... splendid churches is in all their pride and glory, Saint Peter's famous Basilisk and Saint Mary's Maggiory; And them benighted Prodestants, on Sunday they must go Outside the town to the preaching-shop by the gate ...
— Ballads • William Makepeace Thackeray
... none will ever love me! All will hate and flee from me, as from a basilisk or cockatrice, or the Loathly Worm of ...
— Grisly Grisell • Charlotte M. Yonge
... be asked for every day. They carry bows and arrows, or sword and buckler, and play at dice and draughts, and give no alms except to their dogs. 'Our places are taken by hawks and hounds, or by that strange creature, woman, from whom we taught our pupils to flee as from an asp or basilisk. This creature, ever jealous and implacable, spies us out in a corner hiding behind some ancient cabinet, and she wrinkles her forehead and laughs us to scorn, and points to us as the only rubbish in the house; and she complains that we ...
— The Great Book-Collectors • Charles Isaac Elton and Mary Augusta Elton
... words of grace He spoke Unto lost desert-folk That listened wondering. He heard the bitterns call From ruined palace-wall, Answered them brotherly. He held communion With the she-pelican Of lonely piety. Basilisk, cockatrice, Flocked to his homilies, With mail of dread device, With monstrous barbed slings, With eager dragon-eyes; Great rats on leather wings And poor blind broken things, Foul in their miseries. And ever with Him went, Of all His wanderings Comrade, with ragged ...
— Fairies and Fusiliers • Robert Graves
... Hand clasp'd frankly in hand, not steel-clad buffets in fight: On the deck strange accents and shouting; rough furcowl'd men of the north, Genoa's brown-neck'd sons, and whom swarthy Smyrna sends forth: Freights of the south; drugs potent o'er death from the basilisk won, Odorous Phoenix-nest, and spice of a sunnier sun:— Butts of Malvasian nectar, Messene's vintage of old, Cyprian webs, damask of Arabia mazy with gold: Sendal and Samite and Tarsien, and sardstones ruddy as wine, Graved by Athenian ...
— The Visions of England - Lyrics on leading men and events in English History • Francis T. Palgrave
... communication. The references to the "land of Havilah" for gold, and to "Mount Calybe" for iron, are characteristic of monkish geographical science; the recipe for the making of Spanish gold is interesting, as affording us a clew to the meaning of the mediaeval traditions respecting the basilisk. Pliny says nothing about the hatching of this chimera from cocks' eggs, and ascribes the power of killing at sight to a different animal, the catoblepas, whose head, fortunately, was so heavy that it could not be held up. Probably the word "basiliscus" in Theophilus ...
— On the Old Road Vol. 1 (of 2) - A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays and Articles on Art and Literature • John Ruskin
... comeliness Which their fancies doth so strike, They borrow language of dislike; And, instead of Dearest Miss, Jewel, Honey, Sweetheart, Bliss, And those forms of old admiring, Call her Cockatrice and Siren, Basilisk, and all that's evil, Witch, ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb IV - Poems and Plays • Charles and Mary Lamb
... more it disquieted me. I had never before been affected in the same way by any painting. The emotions it caused were strange and indefinite. They were something like what I have heard ascribed to the eyes of the basilisk; or like that mysterious influence in reptiles termed fascination. I passed my hand over my eyes several times, as if seeking instinctively to brush away this allusion—in vain—they instantly reverted to the picture, and ...
— Tales of a Traveller • Washington Irving
... was wont to look erect on heaven, and see in his mirror the image of his God? What Egyptian drug have you poured into his veins, and turned the ambling fountains of the heart into black and burning pitch? Give me back my husband! Undo your basilisk spells, and give me back the man that stood with me ...
— The Universal Reciter - 81 Choice Pieces of Rare Poetical Gems • Various
... dark basilisk-like eyes on the soldier, gazed a moment, as if to read his soul; then he jerked a thumb backward, over his own shoulder, and said, ...
— Wyandotte • James Fenimore Cooper
... and Piali decided to attack St. Elmo and to leave to Dragut the responsibility of sanctioning the operations or breaking them off. Batteries were erected on Mount Sceberras, in which ten 80-pounders were brought into action, besides a huge basilisk throwing balls of 160 pounds, and two 60-pounder coulevrines. The Turks at the height of their power put great faith in novel and massive artillery, which, though clumsy, and at times more dangerous to their own gunners than the enemy, was ...
— Knights of Malta, 1523-1798 • R. Cohen
... The features were pale and rigid, the teeth firmly set, and the glassy eyes wide open and staring. The awful expression of those dead orbs seemed, bold as I was, to freeze my very soul as with the power of a basilisk. For a single moment I repented the deed; but that feeling soon passed, ...
— Venus in Boston; - A Romance of City Life • George Thompson
... he presented the fatal pledge to the eyes of the astonished youth, upon whom it operated like the poisonous sight of the basilisk, for in an instant, the whole passions of his soul were in the most violent agitation. "What!" cried he, in an ecstasy of rage, "is she so abandoned to perfidy, so lost to shame, so damned to constancy, to gratitude, and virtuous love, as to meditate the means of leaving me without ...
— The Adventures of Ferdinand Count Fathom, Complete • Tobias Smollett
... the surgeon, 'that basilisk stare has chilled me through, my friends. I can hear bells ringing in my ears! I may take leave of you; you ...
— Parisians in the Country - The Illustrious Gaudissart, and The Muse of the Department • Honore de Balzac
... resolution, yet with a certain strange calmness, holds aloft in one hand a large knife—walks along not much back of the foot-lights—turns fully towards the audience his face of statuesque beauty, lit by those basilisk eyes, flashing with desperation, perhaps insanity—launches out in a firm and steady voice the words Sic Semper Tyrannis—and then walks with neither slow nor very rapid pace diagonally across to the back of the stage, and disappears. ...
— Our American Holidays: Lincoln's Birthday • Various
... astonishment the blow did not fall. Roach changed the basilisk gaze with which he had regarded him ...
— Prisoners of Hope - A Tale of Colonial Virginia • Mary Johnston
... see in his face, and even the slight shiver of his frame, the repugnance and aversion which the Christian felt for one whom he knew to be so dangerous and so criminal. It was indeed the gaze of the bird upon the basilisk—so silent was it and so prolonged. But shaking off the sudden chill that had crept over him, Olinthus extended his right arm towards Arbaces, and said, in a ...
— The Last Days of Pompeii • Edward George Bulwer-Lytton
... fatality I had drawn the body directly to the spot where the last fading shafts of light would hover about its face. Not for a paradise of peace would I touch the loathsome thing again to hide it in the shadows. I could neither take my eyes from it nor put my hands upon it. Like the basilisk of fable it held my gaze charmed, fixed it, bound it fast. Crouch as I might in the remotest corner, cover my face in my mantle, still that searching, penetrating thing pierced all obstacles, glared grisly and distinct ...
— The Black Wolf's Breed - A Story of France in the Old World and the New, happening - in the Reign of Louis XIV • Harris Dickson
... we shall find, under the head of the medicining of the body, some things on the subject of medicine in general, which could be better said there than here, because the wrath of professional dignitaries,—the eye of the 'basilisk,' was not perhaps quite so terrible in that quarter then, as it was in some others. For though 'the Doctors' in that department, did manage, in the dark ages, to possess themselves of certain weapons of their own, which are said ...
— The Philosophy of the Plays of Shakspere Unfolded • Delia Bacon
... to own. As far as my own pleasure is concerned, I could not say as much for any other picture; for I have always found an infinite weariness and disgust resulting from a picture being too frequently before my eyes. I had rather see a basilisk, for instance, than the very best of those old, familiar pictures in the Boston Athenaeum; and most of those in the National Gallery might soon affect me in the ...
— Passages From the English Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... later, Esther, in her dressing-gown, came to breathe the air, leaning on Lucien; any one who saw them might have taken them for the originals of some pretty English vignette. Esther was the first to recognize the basilisk eyes of the Spanish priest; and the poor creature, stricken as if she had been shot, gave ...
— Scenes from a Courtesan's Life • Honore de Balzac
... breast. O, the art of hell has deceived me! The Abyss sent up to me the most spotted of the spirits, the most skilful in lies, and placed him as a friend by my side. Who may withstand the power of hell? I took the basilisk to my bosom, with my heart's blood I nourished him; he sucked himself glutfull at the breasts of my love. I never harboured evil towards him; wide open did I leave the door of my thoughts; I threw away the key of wise foresight. In the starry ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... stranger's due." Self-love like this is knavish and absurd, And well deserves a damnatory word. You glance at your own faults; your eyes are blear: You eye your neighbour's; straightway you see clear, Like hawk or basilisk: your neighbours pry Into your frailties with as keen an eye. A man is passionate, perhaps misplaced In social circles of fastidious taste; His ill-trimmed beard, his dress of uncouth style, His shoes ill-fitting, ...
— The Satires, Epistles, and Art of Poetry • Horace
... the sensations of that night, none has left a more unpleasant odour in my memory than the manner of that woman in the chamber of death. Her voice was incredibly hard. Her dull, basilisk eyes, seeking in mine the answers to her questions, gave me an eerie sensation that makes my blood run cold whenever I ...
— The Man with the Clubfoot • Valentine Williams
... that in doing so she would incur a great risk, but it seemed easier to lose her greatest treasure entirely than only to half possess it; and when she had once looked this thought in the face it attracted her, as with the gaze of a basilisk, more ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... better trick, the insult he spared Christ— Lure him the lure o' the letters, Aretine! Lick him o'er slimy-smooth with jelly-filth O' the verse-and-prose pollution in love's guise! The cockatrice is with the basilisk! There let him grapple, denizens o' the dark, Foes or friends, but indissolubly bound, In their one spot out of the ken of God Or care of man for ever ...
— Introduction to Robert Browning • Hiram Corson
... living and loving mortals, that stony stare of death,—lest we too, as smit with the basilisk, be turned into monumental stone, and all the dear grace and movement of ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 7, No. 44, June, 1861 • Various
... the names of some animals which never existed at all. The writers of the Middle Ages told many tales or fables of animals and monsters which were purely imaginary, but in which the people of those days firmly believed. We sometimes hear people use the expression a "basilisk glare," which other people would describe as a "look that kills," meaning a look of great severity or displeasure. There is a little American lizard which zoologists call the "basilisk," but this is not the basilisk from which this expression comes. The basilisk which the people ...
— Stories That Words Tell Us • Elizabeth O'Neill
... the wretch, that I did not possess the eyes of a basilisk, for I should certainly have blasted him on the spot. Pausing, however, one salutary moment, to confirm myself in the love of virtue, by noting how abominable a villain looks, I hasted to the general with the ...
— The Life of General Francis Marion • Mason Locke Weems
... destroy, if Lady Auriol had been a Gorgon or a basilisk or a cockatrice, then had I been a slain ...
— The Mountebank • William J. Locke
... Having no will but for what God sees meet to order, be it what it may, high or low, great or small, sweet or bitter, honor, wealth, life, or any other object, what can shake its peace? It is true, our nature is so crafty that it worms itself through everything; a selfish sight is like the basilisk's, it destroys. ...
— The Autobiography of Madame Guyon • Jeanne Marie Bouvier de La Motte Guyon
... kill with its gaze the person who looked on it. Thus Henry VI. says to Suffolk, "Come, basilisk, and kill the innocent gazer ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama, Vol 1 - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook • The Rev. E. Cobham Brewer, LL.D.
... lay an egg; and do you know what there is in that egg? In that egg lies a basilisk. No one can stand the sight of a basilisk. Men know that, and now you know it too—you know what is in me, and what a cock ...
— What the Moon Saw: and Other Tales • Hans Christian Andersen
... dinner—table. Someone said that he was superintending some slight alteration on the stage. It was so ordinary an occurrence for him to fail to appear at a meal that no one was surprised. Only Anne covered a deep uneasiness beneath her resolute serenity of manner. She could not forget that basilisk stare. It haunted her almost to the exclusion of everything else. She had no thought to spare for the letter regarding her husband. She could only think of Nap. What had that stare concealed? She felt ...
— The Knave of Diamonds • Ethel May Dell
... in bounding triumph he gave the little wooden bear a drink of ale, as if it had uttered this chunk of solid wisdom, and then treated himself to a good long pull. But the glance of triumph which shot from his black-basilisk eyes, and the joyous smile which followed these feats of philology, were absolutely irresistible. All that remained for me to do was to yield ...
— The English Gipsies and Their Language • Charles G. Leland
... for a moment the name of Aaron Burr, and the eloquent language of Mr. Wirt on the treasonable schemes of that bold, talented, but unchastened politician. All was now ruin and devastation on the site of forsaken gardens, into the shaded recesses of which a basilisk had once entered. Some stacks of chimneys were all that was left to tell the tale. It seemed remarkable that twelve short years should have worked so complete a desolation. It would appear as if half a century had intervened, so thorough ...
— Personal Memoirs Of A Residence Of Thirty Years With The Indian Tribes On The American Frontiers • Henry Rowe Schoolcraft
... Thus have we view'd the city, seen the sack, And caus'd the ruins to be new-repair'd, Which with our bombards' shot and basilisk[s] [196] We rent in sunder at our entry: And, now I see the situation, And how secure this conquer'd island stands, Environ'd with the Mediterranean sea, Strong-countermin'd with other petty isles, And, toward Calabria, [197] back'd ...
— The Jew of Malta • Christopher Marlowe
... the bane of miscreant eyes glinting stern under wrinkled brows. A basilisk. E quando vede l'uomo l'attosca. Messer Brunetto, I ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce
... loosely about his shoulders, the broad frightful countenance, which, however, was devoid of paint, the glittering, basilisk-like eyes, the sinewy half-bent finger, with the right fingers closed like a vise around the handle of the knife at his waist, while gently drawing it forth, the catlike advance,—all these made him so terrible an enemy that the ...
— A Waif of the Mountains • Edward S. Ellis
... good deal, but they had a substantial offset to the cold in a plentiful supply of seal-meat. On the whole, they were in a much better condition then when they left the 'Aurora'. Nineteen in all, they had an odd assemblage of names, which seemed to grow into them until nothing else was so suitable: Basilisk, Betli, Caruso, Castor, Franklin, Fusilier, Gadget, George, Ginger, Ginger Bitch, Grandmother, Haldane, Jappy, John Bull, Johnson, Mary, Pavlova, Scott and Shackleton. Grandmother would have been better known as Grandfather. ...
— The Home of the Blizzard • Douglas Mawson
... can buy out your stain. You will live deserted in the midst of your species; you will go into crowded societies, and no one will deign so much as to salute you. They will fly from your glance as they would from the gaze of a basilisk. Where do you expect to find the hearts of flint that shall sympathise with yours? You have the stamp of ...
— Caleb Williams - Things As They Are • William Godwin
... reptile, ophidian; basilisk, cockatrice, amphisbaena. Associated Words: ophiology, ophiolatry, ophiophagous, ophiography, herpetology, ophidian, ophiologic, ophiomorphous, herpetologist, herpetotomy, herpetotomist, ophiologist, ophiomancy, echidna, echidnine, fang, uraeus, ...
— Putnam's Word Book • Louis A. Flemming
... whatever she swears, she'll do,' replied Bowles. 'Have a care, my Lord Colambre; if she sets her heart upon you for Lady Isabel, she has you. Nothing can save you. Heart she has none, so there you're safe, my lord,' said the other officer; 'but if Lady Isabel sets her eye upon you, no basilisk's is surer.' ...
— The Absentee • Maria Edgeworth
... kind-hearted youth and of an obliging disposition, and would willingly have done what was asked of him, but there were obstacles, first and foremost of which ranked the fact that, taking advantage of his position on the back desk (whither he thought the basilisk eye of Authority could not reach), he had substituted Bab Ballads for the words of Virgil, and was engrossed in the contents of that modern classic. The subsequent explanations lasted several hours. In fact, it is probable that the master does not understand the facts ...
— Tales of St. Austin's • P. G. Wodehouse
... friend goes shaking and white; He eyes me as the basilisk: I have turned, it appears, his day to ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 2 (of 4) • Various
... Surrounded by a silent, curious group, he crouched over the board counter and wolfed a ravenous meal. When he had finished he rose, turned, and stared questioningly at the circle of hostile faces; his eyes still glittered with that basilisk glare of hatred and defiance. There was something huge, disconcerting, about the man. Not once had he appealed for mercy, not once had he complained, not once had he asked about his brother; he showed neither curiosity nor concern over Jim's ...
— The Winds of Chance • Rex Beach
... it could make void, What is confirm'd in Court: no, no, Don Henrique, You shall know that I find my self abus'd, And adde to that, I have a womans anger, And while I look upon this Basilisk, Whose envious eyes have blasted all my comforts Rest confident I'le study my dark ends, ...
— The Spanish Curate - A Comedy • Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher
... shade of a cluster of chestnuts, is a rude block of stone, called the "King's Chair," where Philip used to sit in silent revery, watching as from an eyry the progress of the enormous work below. If you go there, you will see the same scene upon which his basilisk glance reposed,—in a changed world, the .same unchanging scene,—the stricken waste, the shaggy horror of the mountains, the fixed plain wrinkled like a frozen sea, and in the centre of the perfect picture the vast chill ...
— Castilian Days • John Hay
... Castleton, solely because of the Englishman's obtuseness. And there was another thing much stranger than this and quite as amusing. Dorothy Coombs knew Monty was a liar; but she was so fascinated by the glittering, basilisk eyes he riveted upon her, so taken in by his horrible tales of blood, that despite her knowledge she could not help ...
— The Light of Western Stars • Zane Grey
... succession, that the friends of the former knew not where to plant the succoring blow. It is true there were short and fleeting moments, when the fiery eyes of Magua were seen glittering, like the fabled organs of the basilisk through the dusty wreath by which he was enveloped, and he read by those short and deadly glances the fate of the combat in the presence of his enemies; ere, however, any hostile hand could descend on his devoted head, its place was filled by the scowling visage of Chingachgook. In this manner ...
— The Last of the Mohicans • James Fenimore Cooper
... rascal. He that dares be false To a master, though unjust, will ne'er be true To any other. Look not for reward, Or favour from me; I will shun thy sight, As I would do a basilisk's. ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor, Vol. I, No. 4, April 1810 • Various
... much and seriously indisposed by indolence and intemperance, he requested to know what he was to do, and the doctor ordered him to eat a basilisk, stewed in rose water, which he asserted would effect a complete cure. His slaves searched in vain for a basilisk; at last they met with Zadig, who was introduced to this mighty lord, and spoke to him in ...
— Popular Lectures on Zoonomia - Or The Laws of Animal Life, in Health and Disease • Thomas Garnett
... have looked at his father-in-law at this juncture if he had had a free and untrammelled choice; but Mr. Brewster's eye drew his with something of the fascination which a snake's has for a rabbit. Mr. Brewster's eye was fiery and intimidating. A basilisk might have gone to him with advantage for a course of lessons. His gaze went right through Archie till the latter seemed to feel his back-hair curling crisply in ...
— Indiscretions of Archie • P. G. Wodehouse
... bathed her hot forehead, and dried with his hard old hand the tears that fell from eyes that a moment before had flashed like a basilisk's. ...
— A Son of Hagar - A Romance of Our Time • Sir Hall Caine
... It is his mind that is more crooked than his back. He is a perilous man with women, for the Devil hath given him such a tongue and such an eye that he charms them even as the basilisk. Marriage may be in their mind, but never in his, so that I could count a dozen and more whom he has led to their undoing. It is his pride and his boast ...
— Sir Nigel • Arthur Conan Doyle
... with a coif of the same, and a casque wherein three grey heron's feathers. This was the badge of the house: Jehane wore heron's feathers. He had a blue surcoat and blue housings for his horse. Behind him, esquire of honour, rode the young Amadeus of Savoy, carrying his banner, a white basilisk on a blue field. Saint-Pol was a burly man, bearing his honours squarely ...
— The Life and Death of Richard Yea-and-Nay • Maurice Hewlett
... over the balustrade. A female stood beside a pillar, gazing intently towards him. Her eye caught his own; it was as if a basilisk had smitten him. Trembling, yet fascinated, he could not turn away his glance; a smile passed on her dark-red visage—a grin ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 2 (of 2) • John Roby
... impress even upon the countenance. The feature, from having a dark, sinister aspect, becomes open, serene, and sunny. A countenance so impressed, has neither the vacant stare of the idiot, nor the crafty, penetrating look of the basilisk, but the clear, placid aspect of truth and goodness. The woman who has such a face is beautiful. She has a beauty which changes not with the features, which fades not with years. It is beauty of ...
— Searchlights on Health - The Science of Eugenics • B. G. Jefferis and J. L. Nichols
... an earnest life! New York City furnishes two-thirds of the convicts of the state. We have one murder and ten suicides every week. More than eighty thousand men and women are arrested here every year. Fifty thousand pass through that basilisk's den we saw to-day. We have a hundred thousand child workers out of whose tender flesh we are coining gold. Three hundred thousand of our women are hewers of wood and drawers of water, robbed of their divine right of love and motherhood. There are ...
— The One Woman • Thomas Dixon
... disengaged from the block, the eye looks out, the nose gains refinement, the mouth is developed. When the last cube is reached, there remains nothing to finish save the details of the head-dress and the basilisk on the brow. No scholar's model in basalt has yet been found;[39] but the Egyptians, like our monumental masons, always kept a stock of half-finished statues in hard stone, which could be turned out complete in a few hours. The hands, feet, and bust needed only a few last touches; ...
— Manual Of Egyptian Archaeology And Guide To The Study Of Antiquities In Egypt • Gaston Camille Charles Maspero
... young lion, and the fatling shall come together, and a little child shall lead them. And the heifer, and the she bear shall feed together, and the lion shall eat straw like the ox. And the suckling shall play upon the hole of the asp; and upon the den of the basilisk shall the new weaned child lay his hand. They shall not hurt, nor destroy in my holy mountain, for the earth shall be full of the knowledge of the Lord as the waters cover the sea. And it shall come to ...
— The Grounds of Christianity Examined by Comparing The New Testament with the Old • George Bethune English
... glance did they betray the least interest in each other. But some days after my establishment had begun to run smoothly, one of the military ladies asked me to dinner. The punkah string was pulled by a murderous-looking ex-insurrecto, who fixed me with a basilisk glance, half entreaty, half reproach. It became so painful that toward the end of dinner I asked my hostess if his expression was due to his general frame of mind or to a special aversion toward pedagogues. She replied that he was probably bracing himself to approach ...
— A Woman's Impression of the Philippines • Mary Helen Fee
... Nycteribius, I believe, who goes by the name of jumby-bird among the English Negroes: and no wonder; for most ghostly and horrible is his cry. But worse: he has but one eye, and a glance from that glaring eye, as from the basilisk of old, is certain death: and worse still, he can turn off its light as a policeman does his lantern, and become instantly invisible: opinions which, if verified by experiment, are not always found to ...
— At Last • Charles Kingsley
... struck blows against the Scots,' Katharine said. 'But the beasts of the field strike as well against the foes of their kind—the bull of the herd against lions; the Hyrcanian tiger against the troglodytes; the basilisk against many beasts. It is the province of a man to smite not only against the foes of his kind but—and how much the more?—against ...
— Privy Seal - His Last Venture • Ford Madox Ford
... an old account book. A certain Count of Savoy owned the beautiful Castle of Chillon, which you have perhaps seen, on the shores of the Lake of Geneva. But he could not be happy, because he and the people about him thought that in a hole in the rock under one of the cellars a basilisk lived—a very terrible dragon—and they all went in fear of it. So the Count paid a brave mason a large sum of money (and the payment is solemnly set down in his account book) to break a way into this hole and turn the basilisk ...
— The Book of Art for Young People • Agnes Conway
... emblem peculiarly abhorrent to the Basilisk (the Device of Basel) it was the Crescent-and-star. But nothing could better serve to recall the rough outline of Basel in Holbein's day than this very emblem. As the Rhine suddenly swerves from its first wild rush westward and races away, northerly, ...
— Holbein • Beatrice Fortescue
... sepulchres. That is the Duke Lorenzo. Mark him well. He meditates, his head upon his hand. What from beneath his helm-like bonnet scowls? Is it a face, or but an eyeless skull? 'Tis lost in shade; yet, like the basilisk, It fascinates, and is intolerable. His mien is noble, most majestical! Then most so, when the distant choir is heard At morn or eve—nor fail thou to attend On that thrice-hallowed day, when all are there; When all, propitiating ...
— Modern Painters Volume II (of V) • John Ruskin
... Andeol de Clerguemont and St. Frazal de Vantalon, but she addressed herself principally to recent converts, to whom she preached concerning the Eucharist that in swallowing the consecrated wafer they had swallowed a poison as venomous as the head of the basilisk, that they had bent the knee to Baal, and that no penitence on their part could be great enough to save them. These doctrines inspired such profound terror that the Rev. Father Louvreloeil himself tells us that Satan by his efforts ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... radical Amaryllis either in shade or in sunshine; so I sought Henry Winter Davis. Like the fallen angel, Davis preferred to rule in hell rather than serve in heaven or on earth. With the head of Medusa and the eye of the Basilisk, he might have represented Siva in a Hindoo temple, and was even more inaccessible to sentiment than Thaddeus Stevens. Others, too numerous and too insignificant to particularize, were seen. These were the cuttle-fish of the ...
— Destruction and Reconstruction: - Personal Experiences of the Late War • Richard Taylor
... down stairs to open the door, and shortly afterward Maria Remedios, who was not now a woman but a basilisk enveloped in a mantle, entered Dona Perfecta's room. Her face, flushed with ...
— Dona Perfecta • B. Perez Galdos
... be." If she had not stared hard at Miss Carroll's trunk, and tried anxiously to make out the name on a very small label, she would have done what she had boasted of never doing, whatever the world did to her: she would have cried. As it was, she wore the expression of a budding basilisk. ...
— Winnie Childs - The Shop Girl • C. N. Williamson
... a card and this the very next moment turned up on the losing side, one of the other players cried with a laugh, 'Good-luck, Signor Vertua, good-luck! Don't lose heart. Go on staking; you look to me as if you would finish with breaking the bank through your immense winnings.' The old man shot a basilisk-like look upon the mocker and hurried away, but only to return at the end of half an hour with his pockets full of gold. In the last taille he was, however, obliged to cease playing, since he had again lost all the money he had ...
— Weird Tales, Vol. II. • E. T. A. Hoffmann
... England. England, in her Gothic legislation, seemed to be inspired with this principle, Homo errans fera errante pejor. One of the special statutes classifies the man without a home as "more dangerous than the asp, dragon, lynx, or basilisk" (atrocior aspide, dracone, lynce, et basilico). For a long time England troubled herself as much concerning the gipsies, of whom she wished to be rid as about the wolves of which she had been cleared. In that the Englishman differed from the Irishman, who prayed to the saints for the ...
— The Man Who Laughs • Victor Hugo
... for it and cannot do so. A horrible envy took possession of him—an envy which bordered on madness. The gall flew to his heart when he beheld a work which bore the stamp of talent. He gnashed his teeth, and devoured it with the glare of a basilisk. He conceived the most devilish plan which ever entered into the mind of man, and he hastened with the strength of madness to carry it into execution. He began to purchase the best that art produced of every kind. Having bought a picture at a great ...
— Taras Bulba and Other Tales • Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol
... will go study mischief, And put a look on, arm'd with all my cunnings. Shall meet him like a basilisk, and strike him. Love! put destroying flame into mine eyes, Into my smiles deceits, that I may torture him— That I may make him love to death, and ...
— Characteristics of Women - Moral, Poetical, and Historical • Anna Jameson
... to-day there walk a thousand libertines. They are a moving pest. Their breath is the sirocco of the desert. Their bones have in them the decay of the pit. They have the eye of a basilisk. They have been soaked in filth, and steeped in uncleanliness, and consumed in sin, and they are all adrip with the loathsomeness of eternal death. I take hold of the robe of one of these elegant gentlemen, and pull it aside, ...
— The Abominations of Modern Society • Rev. T. De Witt Talmage
... though, before I began to feel that I was the object of very earnest scrutiny on the part of an individual or individuals nearby. Turning suddenly, I met the basilisk gaze of Pearl and Ruby. Their dreadful remark came to me with crushing force. They had begun, as they coarsely put it, 'to pick up something.' Lobster-like, finding myself in hot water, I turned several beautiful shades of red immediately. I became terror-stricken—I, the dignified ...
— The Statesmen Snowbound • Robert Fitzgerald
... welcome as those features and that voice once were, now would I rather have encountered the eyes of a basilisk and the notes of the ...
— Jane Talbot • Charles Brockden Brown
... was "Jules Duval," and her fingers had shrunk from the folds of rose paper, as though scorched by flame. Lying there on the top of the billets-doux, the elegant, graceful chirography of the "Madame Odille Orme" drew her gaze, like the loathsome fascination of a basilisk, and taking a package of notes from her pocket, she held them for a moment close to the satin envelope. Upon one the name of the popular actress; on the others—in the same peculiar beautiful characters—"Minnie ...
— Infelice • Augusta Jane Evans Wilson
... 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
... and Gun; Nay, some have out liv'd the Doctor's Pill; Who takes a Woman must be undone, That Basilisk is sure to kill. The Fly that sips Treacle is lost in the Sweets, So he that tastes Woman, Woman, Woman, He that ...
— The Beggar's Opera • John Gay
... admirers, but she could always do with a bit more. Besides, most of the incense came by post. Living a quiet and retired life in the country, it was rarely that she got it handed to her face to face. She melted quite perceptibly. She did not cease to look like a basilisk, but she began to look like a basilisk who ...
— The Girl on the Boat • Pelham Grenville Wodehouse
... I had time to trace effect to cause. The warning came this time from the eyes of a man, a lithe, keen-faced man who flashed a look of triumphant malice on us as he disappeared in the waiting-room of the ferry-shed. But the keen face, and the basilisk glance were burned into my mind in that moment as deeply as though I had known then what ...
— Blindfolded • Earle Ashley Walcott
... went on, "is symbolized by a shrub with pinkish flowers, a kind of bitter-sweet, as it is popularly called, and by Herb Basil, which ever since the Middle Ages has had the same character ascribed to it of cruelty and rage as to its namesake, the basilisk, in the animal world." ...
— The Cathedral • Joris-Karl Huysmans
... prevented; all my hopes are crost, Check'd, and abated; fie, a freezing sweat Flows forth at all my pores, my entrails burn: What should I do? Rome! Rome! O my vext soul, How might I force this to the present state? Are there no players here? no poet apes, That come with basilisk' s eyes, whose forked tongues Are steeped in venom, as their hearts in gall? Either of these would help me; they could wrest, Pervert, and poison all they hear or see, With senseless glosses, and allusions. Now, if you be good devils, fly ...
— The Poetaster - Or, His Arraignment • Ben Jonson
... proves her self still to be the Devil of a Lady, for she bears Malice, and will never forgive me, that I would not let her be an Angel; but like a very Devil as she is, she endeavours to kill me at a Distance; and indeed the Poison of her Eyes, (Basilisk-like) is very strong, and she has a strange Influence upon me; but I that know her to be a Devil, strive very hard with my self to drive the Memory of her out of ...
— The History of the Devil - As Well Ancient as Modern: In Two Parts • Daniel Defoe
... Emanuel. Monsieur Emanuel's eye was certainly often upon her. He would sit and watch her perseveringly for minutes together. I have seen him give her a quarter-of-an-hour's gaze, while the class was silently composing, and he sat throned on his estrade, unoccupied. Conscious always of this basilisk attention, she would writhe under it, half-flattered, half-puzzled, and Monsieur would follow her sensations, sometimes looking appallingly acute; for in some cases, he had the terrible unerring penetration of instinct, and pierced in its hiding-place ...
— Villette • Charlotte Bronte
... "I have seen a basilisk. Thank God, I saw him first; for being so seen, and seeing not me, he will do ...
— Kenilworth • Sir Walter Scott
... must ever see the one face which for me blotted out all others in the room, and endure the silent contempt which I believed I saw upon it. Probably it was my own feeling of inward self-contempt which made me believe I saw that expression there. His face had for me a miserable, basilisk-like attraction. When I was there he was there, I must look at him and endure the silent, smiling disdain which I at least believed he bestowed upon me. How did he contrive to do it? How often our eyes met, and every ...
— The First Violin - A Novel • Jessie Fothergill
... the passageways and haunted the cabins. Marsha's snake was back. There was Lazar's dragon, which seemed to grow larger every day. There was also a basilisk, a pterodactyl, a vampire bat with a five-foot wingspread, an old-fashioned red spade-tailed demon ...
— Subjectivity • Norman Spinrad
... among them were two pieces taken from the Muscovites, each of them weighing 18,000 lbs. weight, and carrying a bullet of 96 lbs. weight, as much more as the greatest whole cannon carries. There was also a basilisk of nineteen feet in length, very extraordinary, and a great mortar-piece of brass of a fathom and three fingers in diameter at the mouth of it; with many other pieces of brass ordnance taken from the Poles in their wars with them, which were now but of little use; nor were those huge ...
— A Journal of the Swedish Embassy in the Years 1653 and 1654, Vol II. • Bulstrode Whitelocke
... as the dauntless hounds advance, Whirringly skirrs my stalwart lance— Whirringly skirrs; and from the scale Bounds, as a reed aslant the mail. Onward—but no!—the craven steed Shrinks from his lord in that dread need— Smitten and scared before that eye Of basilisk horror, and that blast Of death, it only seeks to fly— And half the mighty ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXVIII. February, 1843. Vol. LIII. • Various
... Yet these reports were vague, although hinting at some horrid and appalling crimes. No one knew what they exactly were, for the old woman had outlived her contemporaries, and the tradition was imperfect; but she had been handed down to the next generation as one to be avoided as a basilisk. ...
— Snarley-yow - or The Dog Fiend • Frederick Marryat
... with basilisk eyes. "I think I'd rather not dance any more. I'm an old married woman now. If you don't mind, I'll be one of the customers at your shop. I'll come in in the rippingest gown Jim can buy. I'll feel more comfortable, too, under ...
— We Can't Have Everything • Rupert Hughes
... obscurity, Aramis seemed to feel a basilisk glance, like a white-hot iron, escape from his friend's eyes, and plunge into ...
— Louise de la Valliere • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... on the general subject of the character of poisonous matters, illustrated by some gruesome and Munchausen-like tales, borrowed mainly from Avicenna and Ruffus, on the wonders of acquired immunity to poisons, the horrors of the basilisk, the armaria (?), the deaf adder (aspis surda) and the red-hot regulus of Nubia, leads naturally to the consideration of some special poisons derived from the three kingdoms of nature. Very characteristically Gilbert displays his caution in the discussion ...
— Gilbertus Anglicus - Medicine of the Thirteenth Century • Henry Ebenezer Handerson
... dropped his wine-glass from his hand, and levelled at Thaddeus the glance of a basilisk. The Assessor was less noisy and less given to gestures than the Notary, thinner and shorter; but he was terrible at masquerade, ball, or village diet, for they said of him that he had a sting in his tongue. He could make up such witty jests that you might have had them printed in the ...
— Pan Tadeusz • Adam Mickiewicz
... scientiam ipsa se abscondit; sed studioso fit obviam. But the managing of this argument with integrity and truth, which I note as deficient, seemeth to me to be one of the best fortifications for honesty and virtue that can be planted. For, as the fable goeth of the basilisk—that if he see you first, you die for it; but if you see him first, he dieth—so is it with deceits and evil arts, which, if they be first espied they leese their life; but if they prevent, they endanger. So that we are much beholden to Machiavel and others, that write what men ...
— The Advancement of Learning • Francis Bacon |
