"Cobra" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... captain, who was named Indudu, perhaps because he or his father had longed to the Dudu regiment, crawled into the hut, whence presently emerged sounds not unlike those which once I heard when a ringhals cobra followed a hare that I had wounded into a hole, a muffled sound of struggling and terror. These ended in the sudden and violent appearance of Kaatje's fat and dishevelled form, followed by ...
— Finished • H. Rider Haggard
... Apache^, hoodlum, hood, plug-ugly [U.S.], Red Skin, tough [U.S.]; Mohawk, Mo-hock, Mo-hawk; bludgeon man, bully, rough, hooligan, larrikin^, dangerous classes, ugly customer; thief &c 792. cockatrice, scorpion, hornet. snake, viper, adder, snake in the grass; serpent, cobra, asp, rattlesnake, anaconda^. canker-worm, wire-worm; locust, Colorado beetle; alacran^, alligator, caymon^, crocodile, mosquito, mugger, octopus; torpedo; bane &c 663. cutthroat &c (killer) 461. cannibal; anthropophagus^, anthropophagist^; bloodsucker, vampire, ogre, ghoul, gorilla, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... schoolmarm! What puzzles me is the need for new steps, to be learned from expensive teachers, when it's so easy to slide down hill in this part of New York. But here endeth the sermon, for I recognize the amiable Pinkie at that other table, where she is studying your face with the malevolence of a cobra." ...
— The Voice on the Wire • Eustace Hale Ball
... with the doctor and professor such natural history objects as presented themselves were examined—lizards among the rocks, a few snakes, harmless, and the poison-bearing cobra; but away from the river, birds were rare, save those of prey, and as to animals they were heard more than seen. A gazelle or two, little and graceful, bounded across the track, but it was at night that the howling of the jackals and the long, hideous ...
— In the Mahdi's Grasp • George Manville Fenn
... I myself, in person, had painful experience of the awful effects of snake's poison. I have received a dose of the cobra's poison into my system; luckily a minute dose, or I should not have survived it. The accident happened in a very curious way. I was poisoned by the snake but not bitten by him. I got the poison second-hand. Anxious to witness the effects of the poison of the cobra upon a rat, I took up a couple ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 6 • Various
... to be there? If Malcolm's judgment of her was correct, Caley might have told him. Was she already false? She pondered within herself, and cast no look upon her maid until she had concluded how best to carry herself towards the earl. Then glancing at the hooded cobra beside her—"What an awkward thing that Lord Liftore, of all moments, should appear just then!" she ...
— The Marquis of Lossie • George MacDonald
... wild roses are very nice. But nobody ever thinks of either of them if the name is abruptly mentioned in a gossip or a poem. On the other hand, there are tame tigers and tame cobras, but if one says, "I have a cobra in my pocket," or "There is a tiger in the music-room," the adjective "tame" has to be somewhat hastily added. If one speaks of beasts one thinks first of wild beasts; if of flowers one thinks ...
— Alarms and Discursions • G. K. Chesterton
... the second finger of the left hand was a ring—a shield-shaped bloodstone set in gold, with a monogram that might have been either "B.K." or "B.L." On the third finger of the right hand was a silver ring in the shape of a coiled cobra, much worn and tarnished. Gunga Dass deposited a handful of trifles he had picked out of the burrow at my feet, and, covering the face of the body with my handkerchief, I turned to examine these. I give the full ...
— Indian Tales • Rudyard Kipling
... it?' we all shouted confusedly, as we rushed up to him and looked round in expectation of encountering a tiger—a cobra—we hardly knew what, but assuredly something terrible, since it had been sufficient to cause such evident emotion in our usually self-contained comrade. But neither tiger nor cobra was visible—nothing but Cameron pointing ...
— Clairvoyance • Charles Webster Leadbeater
... mantle. Still there was no path—at least to be trodden by human foot. Birds flew around, scared in their solitary haunts. The armadilla and the wolf stood at a distance with glaring eyes. The fearful-looking guana scampered off upon the decaying limbs of the live-oak, or the still more fearful cobra di capella glided almost noiselessly over the ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 4 October 1848 • Various
... goes to the chiefs, who divide as they please among their immediate adherents; but certain fish, turtles—which abound in Kuria,—and the whole produce of the coco-palm, belong exclusively to Tembinok'. 'A' cobra berong me,' observed his majesty with a wave of his hand; and he counts and sells it by the houseful. 'You got copra, king?' I have heard a trader ask. 'I got two, three outches,' his majesty replied: 'I think three.' Hence the commercial importance of Apemama, the trade of ...
— In the South Seas • Robert Louis Stevenson
... she says, is because of the consensus of opinion that arsenic is deadly. Such would probably be her explanation of the destructive processes which go on in the world without the knowledge of man; fire consumes the forest, the tiger kills the antelope, and the bite of the cobra kills the tiger because the human mind has attributed such tendencies to fire, to the tiger, and to ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol 31, No 2, June 1908 • Various
... hair of pure gold. Compare in this book: Princess Jahuran, p. 43, the Monkey Prince, p. 50, Sonahri Rani, p. 54, Jahur Rani, p. 93, Prince Dima-ahmad and Princess Atasa, Notes, p. 253. Also, Hira Bai, the cobra's daughter in Old Deccan Days, p. 35. So many princely heroes and heroines in European fairy tales are noteworthy for their dazzling golden hair that I will only mention one of them, Princess Golden-Hair, one of whose hairs ...
— Indian Fairy Tales • Anonymous
... some most wonderful antidote to the poison of a snake's fangs. In his exhibitions he would allow a cobra to bite a dog or a rabbit, and, in a short time after he had applied his nostrum the animal would thoroughly revive; he advertised his desire to perform upon humanity, but, of course, he could find no one would be fool enough to risk ...
— The Miracle Mongers, an Expos • Harry Houdini
... True Heroism Thrilling Incident Incident in the War of Mexican Independence Sketch from Life on the Ocean Escape from Shipwreck The Hunter's Wife Deaf Smith, the Texan Spy Escape from a Shark Adventure with Pirates A Sea-Fowling Adventure Adventure with a Cobra di Capello Combat of Wild Animals Perilous Incident on a Canadian River Leopard Hunting Hunting the White Rhinoceros A Leopard Hunt Life in California A Storm among the Icebergs Fall of the Rossberg The Rifleman of Chippewa Shipwreck of the Blendenhall Adventures of Sergeant Champe ...
— Thrilling Adventures by Land and Sea • James O. Brayman
... simultaneously with the rifle, landing with both feet on Furneaux's back, and thus completing the little man's discomfiture. By that time the two policemen were nearly upon him, but he was lithe and fierce as a cobra, and had seized the rifle again before they could close with him. Jabbing the nearer adversary with the muzzle, he smashed a lamp and sent its owner sprawling backward. Then, swinging the weapon, he aimed a murderous blow at the ...
— The Strange Case of Mortimer Fenley • Louis Tracy
... Those cobra species are man-haters. They love to attack and do damage. They go out of their way to bite people. They crawl into huts and bungalows, especially during the monsoon rains, and they infest thatch roofs. But are they wise, and retiring, like ...
— The Minds and Manners of Wild Animals • William T. Hornaday
... were having asphalte laid down in the printing-room, to keep away white ants. The room had been emptied to do this, and Stahl went in to inspect the work after the men had gone to their breakfast at eleven o'clock. He saw a large cobra at the end of the room, and hit it with a stick he had in his hand; but the stick broke in two, and the cobra reared itself up with inflated hood. Another minute must have seen Stahl a prey to ...
— Sketches of Our Life at Sarawak • Harriette McDougall
... crooning noise, and the great cobra swayed its inflated neck to and fro as though to some mysterious rhythm, the native with naked hand and arm ...
— The Swindler and Other Stories • Ethel M. Dell
... and to destroy." An enlargement, possibly, of prehistoric man's reminiscence of now extinct monsters, the dragon is, in its artistic development, a mythical embodiment of all the powers of moisture to bless and to harm. We shall see how, when Buddhism entered China, the cobra-de-capello, so often figured in the Buddhistic representations of India, ...
— The Religions of Japan - From the Dawn of History to the Era of Meiji • William Elliot Griffis
... by snake-bite. Snakes in the bungalow. The cobra; how it shows fight. An exciting contest. The night-watchman; his jingling-stick; his slumber. Village night-scare. Supposed dacoits. The village ...
— India and the Indians • Edward F. Elwin
... two feet in diameter. After a few passes of the hand, the tent was lifted. The seed had already sprouted, and had become a twig with leaves. Covering the plant once more, he called our attention to a cobra-charmer, who played harmlessly with a hooded and venomous snake. At last he threw the tent wholly aside, and there stood a fully developed little mango tree, perhaps two feet high. It seemed impossible that the folds of the tent, which had been shaken out at the beginning, ...
— A Tour of the Missions - Observations and Conclusions • Augustus Hopkins Strong
... habit over the reason. He found that his habit of starting back at the sudden approach of danger was so firmly established that no will-power could enable him to keep his face pressed up against the cage of the cobra in the Zoological Gardens when the snake struck at him, although he knew the glass was so thick that there could be no danger, and although he exerted the full force of his will. But we venture to say that one could overcome even this strongly ingrained habit, by gradually training the ...
— A Series of Lessons in Raja Yoga • Yogi Ramacharaka
... been bitten by a cobra, or a rattlesnake, or a puff-adder, there are many remedies, but few people who can recommend them from personal experience. It is to be feared that most of them unfortunately die before writing their testimonials. Perhaps they were too long deciding which thing to ...
— The Strand Magazine, Volume V, Issue 28, April 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... men of genius that I fancy most have erectile heads like the cobra-di-capello. You remember what they tell of William Pinkney, the great pleader; how in his eloquent paroxysms the veins of his neck would swell and his face flush and his eyes glitter, until he seemed on the verge of apoplexy. The hydraulic arrangements for supplying the brain with ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes
... wings, gave it a most gorgeous appearance. My Ghorka guide could give me no information as to what particular divinity this figure was intended to represent. The other pillar was crowned by the figure of a Newar monarch with an unpronounceable name, who was watched over by a cobra, standing upon its tail, and looking over his head with its ...
— A Journey to Katmandu • Laurence Oliphant
... say," said Phil, as he coolly stalked out, and left Acton curled up on his chair, like a cobra balancing for its stroke. ...
— Acton's Feud - A Public School Story • Frederick Swainson
... known the character of that reptile, she would have trembled all the more. She saw before her one of the most venomous of serpents, the black naja, or "spitting-snake"—the cobra of Africa—far more dangerous than its congener the cobra de capello of India, because far more active in its movements, and equally fatal ...
— Popular Adventure Tales • Mayne Reid
... quote the impression he made upon the colonel. "I expected to see a great man, but at the first glance I saw that I was in the presence of a master. The Thug was tall, active, and slenderly formed; his head was nearly oval; his eye most strongly resembled that of a cobra di capello; its dart was perfectly wild and maniacal, restless, brilliant, metallic, and concentrated." The colonel had a narrow escape from irretrievably affronting this eminent professor of murder, by unguardedly enquiring whether ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. 341, March, 1844, Vol. 55 • Various
... wrong person," she replied, with wide eyes. "I never heard of it. Or did you say 'cobra'? Of course I know what a cobra is—it's a snake. I've seen ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, April 23, 1919 • Various
... a soldier could get "jungling leave"; when he could go off with a Winchester and a pal and a native guide for two or three months; when the Government paid so many rupees for a tiger skin, so many for a cobra—a scale of rewards for bringing back the ...
— At Suvla Bay • John Hargrave
... conversationalists were temporarily frost-bitten, and the watery helpings of fish were eaten in a constrained silence. But with the inevitable roast beef a Scot of unshakeable manner, decorated with a yellow forehead-lock as erect as a striking cobra, turned to follow up what he apparently conceived to ...
— The Nest Builder • Beatrice Forbes-Robertson Hale
... lance (Craspedocephalus lanceolatus) renders the paradise of Martinique almost uninhabitable; the tic paloonga (Daboii russelli) is the scourge of Cinghalese coffee estates; the giant ehlouhlo of Natal (unclassified) by its presence secures a forbidding waste for miles about; the far famed cobra de capello (Naja tripudians) ravages British India in a death ratio of one-seventh of one per cent. of the dense population, annually, and is the more dangerous in that an assumed sacred character secures it largely from molestation and retributive justice; and in Europe and America ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 421, January 26, 1884 • Various
... on the quivering form with a fearsome growl; then shook it savagely, tore it apart, cast it aside. Over the ground it now undulated, its shining yellow breast like a target of gold. Again it stopped. Now in pose like a pointer, exquisitely graceful, but oh, so wicked! Then the snaky neck swung the cobra head in the breeze and the brown one sniffed and sniffed, advanced a few steps, tried the wind and the ground. Still farther and the concentrated interest showed in its outstretched neck and quivering tail. Bounding into a thicket it went, when out ...
— Rolf In The Woods • Ernest Thompson Seton
... late Indian Buddhism survives among the Jains but there is no proof that the multiplication of temples and images was a feature of this style. But in some points it is clear that the Jains have followed the artistic conventions of the Buddhists. Thus Parsvanatha is sheltered by a cobra's hood, like Gotama, and though the Bo-tree plays no part in the legend of the Tirthankaras, they are represented as sitting under such trees and a living tree ...
— Hinduism and Buddhism, Vol I. (of 3) - An Historical Sketch • Charles Eliot
... "The general at Bholat will learn of the massacre, and will learn too, that not quite all were killed. He will come hotfoot to find the four we could not find. For these British are as cobras; slay the he cobra and the she one comes to seek revenge. Slay the she one and beware! Her husband will track thee down, and strike thee. ...
— Told in the East • Talbot Mundy
... and drew back in sudden horror. This tiny thing had taken the semblance of a snake. A vicious cobra cast at her feet would be less alarming, for the reptile could be killed, whilst his venomous fangs would only be used ...
— The Wings of the Morning • Louis Tracy
... peril in which I found myself was in itself sufficient to cause the cheek of the bravest man to pale, for from that box there slowly issued forth a large, hideous cobra, which, coiling with sinuous slowness in front of my face held its hooded head erect, ready ...
— The Sign of Silence • William Le Queux
... a Rifaee darweesh with his basket of tame snakes. After a little talk he proposed to initiate me, and so we sat down and held hands like people marrying. Omar sat behind me and repeated the words as my 'Wakeel,' then the Rifaee twisted a cobra round our joined hands and requested me to spit on it, he did the same and I was pronounced safe and enveloped in snakes. My sailors groaned and Omar shuddered as the snakes put out their tongues—the darweesh ...
— Letters from Egypt • Lucie Duff Gordon
... you. Perceiving that your Majesty's spirit was completely broken by some distress of mind under which you were laboring, I determined to rouse your energies by moving you to anger. Because To light a flame, we need but stir the embers; The cobra, when incensed, extends his head And springs upon his foe; the bravest men Display their ...
— Hindu Literature • Epiphanius Wilson
... cobra, dark and hissing, Karna's gleaming lightning dart, Struck the helpless archer Arjun on his broad and ...
— Maha-bharata - The Epic of Ancient India Condensed into English Verse • Anonymous
... the devilish Weyler sailed away from the beautiful "Queen of the Antilles," and wondered that the cruel, infernal, tyrannical wretch was not ignominiously slaughtered by some of the victims of his starvation reign. A rattlesnake-cobra-tarantula human deformity! ...
— Shakspere, Personal Recollections • John A. Joyce
... of our irrepressible, indomitable native Yankee, who has been everywhere, seen everything and knows everything. He has explored the arid jungles of Africa, drawn forth the spotted cobra by his prehensile tail, snowballed the Russian bear on the snowy slopes of Alpine forests, and sold wooden nutmegs to the unsuspecting innocents of Patagonia. He has peddled patent medicines in the Desert of Sahara, and hung his hat and carved ...
— Entertainments for Home, Church and School • Frederica Seeger
... and fluent man had now become to Hogarth like manna, or rather a vice, like opium: for in those grey eyes of the cleric was hinted anon the baleful glint of the cobra's. ...
— The Lord of the Sea • M. P. Shiel
... in Batavia during a fever, when his ship lost a man every few days, and how they went reeling ashore with the body, and got still more intoxicated by way of precaution against the plague. He would talk of finding a cobra-di-capello, or hooded snake, under his pillow in India, when he slept ashore there. He would talk of sailors being poisoned at Canton with drugged "shampoo," for the sake of their money; and of the Malay ruffians, ...
— Redburn. His First Voyage • Herman Melville
... began by whirling with astonishing rapidity in a kind of frenzied dance around the wicker basket that contained the serpents, which were covered by a goatskin. Suddenly he stopped, plunged his naked arm into 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 ...
— Complete Hypnotism: Mesmerism, Mind-Reading and Spiritualism • A. Alpheus
... I am familiar with the country for miles in every direction. We shall have to travel for the first two or three days through a thick jungle, and it is too dangerous work to undertake in the night-time. This, you know, is the land of the cobra and the tiger, not to mention a few other animals and reptiles equally unpleasant in their nature. Last night," continued the doctor, "I saw a glare in the sky off to the westward on the opposite side of the river in the direction of Meerut. I ...
— The Jungle Fugitives • Edward S. Ellis
... with their keen, searching glance under her crape veil, as if she were measuring Alured all over when the child walked into church with me; and, indeed, when he went to the Zoological Gardens some time later, and saw the cobra di ...
— Lady Hester, or Ursula's Narrative • Charlotte M. Yonge
... one of the finest harbors known, having at its entrance a bar, at the extremes of which rise two rocks. This bay is twenty-four leagues in length, and eight in width, and has in it many islands; some are cultivated and possess sugar-works. The most celebrated of them is named De Cobra, off which island ships cast anchor. On the opposite side of this city, a natural wall of rocks, called Los Organos, extends itself as far as the sea, and forms a perfect line of defence independently of the ...
— The World of Waters - A Peaceful Progress o'er the Unpathed Sea • Mrs. David Osborne
... the rubber-tree where the cobra slips in peace Are wonders that he has waved from the earth as a presage of his power. And the giant stems of the bamboo-grass, the pool astounded, sees, Are a marvel to keep it still ...
— Many Gods • Cale Young Rice
... gun. The offended blacks had discovered the guilty pair on the outskirts of Breeza Downs, and Oola's husband, with a company of braves, had attacked their gunya. Then—to quote Oola—'that feller husband throw spear at Wombo—hit Oola long-a COBRA (head) with NULLA NULLA. Him close-up carry off Oola. My word! Wombo catch him PHO PHO. Plenty quick husband belonging to me TUMBLE DOWN.' And ...
— Lady Bridget in the Never-Never Land • Rosa Praed
... which he was Administrador was in the Province of Camagey, at Cobra; an overnight trip from Havana, Lee had learned. It was Sunday evening now, and they would have to give up their room at the Inglaterra Tuesday. Obviously there wasn't time to write Daniel and have a reply by then. The other desirable hotels were as full as ...
— Cytherea • Joseph Hergesheimer
... madam, we do not stock 'Cobra,' as we are seldom asked for it. Do you wish polish for the class of shoes ...
— Conversation - What to Say and How to Say it • Mary Greer Conklin |
