Serpents Quotes

Children listen to superstitious tales, the story goes, that that spot, in the heart of the "Big Cane," is a haunted place. For more than a quarter of a century, human voices had rarely, if ever, disturbed the silence of the clearing. Rank and noxious weeds had overspread the once cultivated field - serpents sunned themselves on the doorway of the crumbling cabin. It was indeed a dreary picture ~ Solomon Northup

Getting married is like putting one's hand in a bag containing 99 serpents and one eel. ~ Thomas More

If the characters are not wicked, the book is. We must tell stories the way God does, stories in which a sister must float her little brother on a river with nothing but a basket between him and the crocodiles. Stories in which a king is a coward, and a shepherd boy steps forward to face the giant. Stories with fiery serpents and leviathans and sermons in whirlwinds. Stories in which murderers are blinded on donkeys and become heroes. Stories with dens of lions and fiery furnaces and lone prophets laughing at kings and priests and demons. Stories with heads on platters. Stories with courage and crosses and redemption. Stories with resurrections. ~ G.K. Chesterton

Check it out."
Jonah removed the bubble wrap and held up the picture for his three cousins.
Dan took a step backward. The shock was almost as powerful as it had been the day before at the Uffizi. "It's perfect! It's every bit as disgusting as the real one!"
Amy nodded. "And so fast. We only called you yesterday."
Jonah shrugged. "Even the Janus take a short cut every now and then. You can do a lot with digitization these days. You break the picture down to squares and reproduce them one at a time. The other two are just as fly."
"You mean, hog ugly," Hamilton amended.
"The serpents don't help," Dan put in critically. "Live fat spaghetti. Lady, if you're thinking of a modeling career, forget it!"
The rapper clucked sympathetically. "You guys just don't appreciate the power of the visual image. The Wiz used to be like that–until Gangsta Kronikles. When you're in film industry, you understand the whole picture's-worth-a-thousand-words deal."
Hamilton rolled his eyes. "Here we go again. ~ Gordon Korman

A likely story indeed!" said the Pigeon, in a tone of the deepest contempt. "I've seen a good many little girls in my time, but never one with such a neck as that! No, no! You're a serpent; and there's no use denying it. I suppose you'll be telling me next that you never tasted an egg!"
"I have tasted eggs, certainly," said Alice, who was a very truthful child; "but little girls eat eggs quite as much as serpents do, you know."
"I don't believe it," said the Pigeon; "but if they do, then they're a kind of serpent: that's all I can say. ~ Lewis Carroll

All men possess in their bodies a poison which acts upon serpents; and the human saliva, it is said, makes them take to flight, as though they had been touched with boiling water. The same substance, it is said, destroys them the moment it enters their throat. ~ Pliny The Elder

Temptation is as old as time; or at least, the history of temptation extends as far back as the moment Eve gave Adam that serpent's apple. But what sets the lady apart from the tramp is the ability to acknowledge she needs to clean up her act - and then, of course, the fact that she actually does clean up her act. ~ Derek Blasberg

When serpents bargain for the right to squirm
and the sun strikes to gain a living wage -
when thorns regard their roses with alarm
and rainbows are insured against old age
when every thrush may sing no new moon in
if all screech-owls have not okayed his voice
- and any wave signs on the dotted line
or else an ocean is compelled to close
when the oak begs permission of the birch
to make an acorn - valleys accuse their
mountains of having altitude - and march
denounces april as a saboteur
then we'll believe in that incredible
unanimal mankind (and not until) ~ E. E. Cummings

If the snake sheds his skin before a new skin is ready, naked he will be in the world, prey to the forces of chaos. Without his skin he will be dismantled, lose coherence and die. Have you, my little serpents, a new skin? ~ Tony Kushner

The serpent's objective is clear. He seeks to drive a wedge of doubt into Adam and Eve's confidence in what God has told them. Satan knows the power of undermining a human being's confidence in what God has revealed. Sadly, the serpent's temptation was successful. Adam and Eve second-guessed God's trustworthiness and then rejected his command. They sinned and ate the forbidden fruit. This was the beginning of the fallen world we all experience. All generations following would have a natural bent for rebelling against God and being skeptical or indifferent to what he has said. To this day, Satan's objective has not changed. Though his questions look a little different at times, they all contain the same idea ~ Jon Morrison

The more south we were, the more deep a sky it seemed, till, in the Valley of Mexico, I thought it held back an element too strong for life, and that the flamy brilliance of blue stood off this menace and sometimes, like a sheath or silk membrane, shoed the weight it held in sags. So when later he would fly high over the old craters on the plain, coaly bubbles of the underworld, dangerous red everywhere from the sun, and then coats of snow on the peak of the cones - gliding like a Satan - well, it was here the old priests, before the Spaniards, waited for Aldebaran to come into the middle of heaven to tell them whether or not life would go on for another cycle, and when they received their astronomical sign built their new fire inside the split and emptied chest of a human sacrifice. And also, hereabouts, worshipers disguised as gods and as gods in the disguise of birds, jumped from platforms fixed on long poles, and glided as they spun by the ropes - feathered serpents, and eagles too, the voladores, or fliers. There still are such plummeters, in market places, as there seem to be remnants or conversions or equivalents of all the old things. Instead of racks or pyramids of skulls still in their hair and raining down scraps of flesh there are corpses of dogs, rats, horses, asses, by the roads; the bones dug out of the rented graves are thrown on a pile when the lease is up; and there are the coffins looking like such a rough joke on the female form, sold in the open shops, bl ~ Saul Bellow

These friendly eyes, these lustful eyes, these hopeless, sad, dispirited eyes, these energetic amber eyes needing no escape, these serpent's eyes, cat's eyes, sorcerer's eyes, the eyes of future family men, funeral directors, and unsuspecting officers of the law, the mischievous eyes of plotters and planners, soon-to-be soldiers, or underworld attorneys on retainer, the eyes of maniacs and fanatics, hipsters and wallflowers, dreamers and the object of dreams, I gazed into them all and knew that they were human eyes, each pair offering insight toward a new tomorrow. ~ Ace Boggess

Recurrent invasions racked the city of Theodora in the centuries of its history; no sooner was one enemy routed than another gained strength and threatened the survival of the inhabitants. When the sky was cleared of condors, they had to face the propagation of serpents; the spiders' extermination allowed the flies to multiply into a black swarm; the victory over the termites left the city at the mercy of the woodworms. One by one the species incompatible to the city had to succumb and were extinguished. By dint of ripping away scales and carapaces, tearing off elytra and feathers, the people gave Theodora the exclusive image of human city that still distinguishes it. ~ Italo Calvino

As if ripping from the depths of the earth the knotted roots of a rare tree, that's how I write to you, and those roots as if they were powerful tentacles like voluminous naked bodies of strong women entwined by serpents and by carnal desires for fulfillment, and all this is the prayer of a black mass, and a creeping plea for amen: because the bad is unprotected and needs the approval of God: that is creation. ~ Clarice Lispector

The universal hero myth always refers to a powerful man or god-man who vanquishes evil in the form of drag- ons, serpents, monsters, demons, and so on, and who liberates his people from destruction and death.

The narration or ritual repetition of sacred texts and ceremonies, and the worship of such a figure with dances, music, hymns, prayers, and sacrifices, grip the audience with numinous emotions and exalt the individual to an identification with the hero. ~ C.G. Jung

What you are asking God to do will induce a major impact on your life. That major impact cannot happen with minor faith. He will carry out His divine plan by providing you with opportunities to advance yourself in Him. Jesus said, in Luke, 10:19, "Behold, I give unto you power to tread on serpents and scorpions, and over all the power of the enemy: and nothing shall by any means hurt you." He will teach you the skills you need to be a force in your industry, but He will not force you into success. You must reach out and walk through those doors, which are open just for you. ~ V.L. Thompson

Watch constantly against those things which are thought to be no temptations. The most poisonous serpents are found where the sweetest flowers grow. Cleopatra was poisoned by an asp that was brought to her in a basket of fair flowers. Sharp-edged tools, long handled, wound at last. ~ Charles Spurgeon

Fairy tales are about trouble, about getting into and out of it, and trouble seems to be a necessary stage on the route to becoming. All the magic and glass mountains and pearls the size of houses and princesses beautiful as the day and talking birds and part-time serpents are distractions from the core of most of the stories, the struggle to survive against adversaries, to find your place in the world, and to come into your own.

Fairy tales are almost always the stories of the powerless, of youngest sons, abandoned children, orphans, of humans transformed into birds and beasts or otherwise enchanted away from their own lives and selves. Even princesses are chattels to be disowned by fathers, punished by step-mothers, or claimed by princes, though they often assert themselves in between and are rarely as passive as the cartoon versions. Fairy tales are children's stories not in wh they were made for but in their focus on the early stages of life, when others have power over you and you have power over no one.

In them, power is rarely the right tool for survival anyway. Rather the powerless thrive on alliances, often in the form of reciprocated acts of kindness -- from beehives that were not raided, birds that were not killed but set free or fed, old women who were saluted with respect. Kindness sewn among the meek is harvested in crisis...

In Hans Christian Andersen's retelling of the old Nordic tale that begins with a stepmother, "The Wild Sw ~ Rebecca Solnit

Pray knowing that you pray to your heavenly Father. Pray in confidence that when you ask you will receive; when you seek you will find; when you knock it will be opened. Pray knowing that you pray to a God who doesn't give stones or serpents to his kids. Believe Jesus, and pray accordingly. ~ Peter Leithart

How sharper than a serpent's tooth is an awakening without tea! ~ Kyril Bonfiglioli

Sharper than a serpent's tooth is a daughter's ingratitude. Still, the proudest spirits can be broken, with love. ~ Neil Gaiman

Men believe the cure for war is war as the curandero prescribes the serpent's flesh for its bite. ~ Cormac McCarthy

O world, world when I was younger I thought there was some order governing you and your deeds. But now you seem to be a labyrinth of errors, a frightful desert, a den of wild beasts, a game in which men move in circles ... a stony field, a meadow full of serpents, a flowering but barren orchard, a spring of cares, a river of tears, a sea of suffering, a vain hope. ~ Fernando De Rojas

The last time you were feeling heartbroken, you took shots at a chandelier with a mundane gun and nearly drowned yourself in the Serpentine." said Matthew.
"I wasn't trying to drown myself," James pointed out. "Besides, Magnus Bane saved me."
"Don't mention that," said Matthew, as James uncapped the flask. "You know how angry I am about that. I idolize Magnus Bane, you had one chance to meet him, and you embarrassed us all."
"I'm quite sure I never mentioned any of you to him," said James, and tipped the flask back. He choked. It was blue ruin: the cheapest, harshest kind of gin. It went down like lightning. He coughed and thrust the flask away.
"Even worse," said Matthew. "How sharper than the serpent's tooth it is to have an ungrateful parabatai. ~ Cassandra Clare

As St. Paul points out, Christ never meant that we were to remain children in intelligence: on the contrary, He told us to be not only "as harmless as doves," but also "as wise as serpents." He wants a child's heart, but a grown-up's head. ~ C.S. Lewis

But it was no good trying to tell about the beauty. It was just that life was beautiful beyond belief, and that is a kind of joy which has to be lived.

Sometimes, when they came down from the cirrus levels to catch a better wind, they would find themselves among the flocks of cumulus: huge towers of modeled vapor, looking as white as Monday's washing d as solid as meringues. Perhaps one of these piled-up blossoms of the sky, these snow-white droppings of a gigantic Pegasus, would lie before them several miles away. They would set their course toward it, seeing it grow bigger silently and imperceptibly, a motionless growth; and then, when they were at it, when they were about to bang their noses with a shock against its seeming solid mass, the sun would dim. Wraiths of mist suddenly moving like serpents of the air would coil about them for a second. Grey damp would be around them, and the sun, a copper penny, would fade away. The wings next to their own wings would shade into vacancy, until each bird was a lonely sound in cold annihilation, a presence after uncreation. And there they would hang in chartless nothing, seemingly without speed or left or right or top or bottom, until as suddenly as ever the copper penny glowed and the serpents writhed. Then, in a moment of time, they would be in the jeweled world once more: a sea under them like turquoise and all the gorgeous palaces of heaven new created, with the dew of Eden not yet dry. ~ T.H. White

The Book of Numbers relates that when the people murmured rebelliously against God, they were punished with a plague of fiery serpents, so that many lost their lives. When they repented, Moses was told by God to make a brazen serpent and set it up for a sign, and all those bitten by the serpents who looked upon that sign would be healed. Our Blessed Lord was now declaring that He was to be lifted up, as the serpent had been lifted up. As the brass serpent had the appearance of a serpent and yet lacked its venom, so too, when He would be lifted up upon the bars of the Cross, He would have the appearance of a sinner and yet be without sin. As all who looked upon the brass serpent had been healed of the bite of the serpent, so all who looked upon Him with love and faith would be healed of the bite of the serpent of evil. ~ Fulton J. Sheen

The snake charmer should not touch the serpents before his child's eyes, knowing that the child will try to imitate him in all things. ~ Eileen Goudge

As if I were any man's idea! As if I exist because a man has an idea of me! As if I will be betrayed by him, lend him my body as an instrument for his idea, to be a mere apparatus of his dead theory. But they are too fussy to be able to act; they are all impotent, they can't take a woman. They come to their own idea every time, and take that. They are like serpents trying to swallow themselves because they are hungry. ~ D.H. Lawrence

She leaped onto the serpent's head and scratched and growled like a really angry black wig. ~ Rick Riordan

Red cross donation, baby! the ghost yelled. ~ Serpent's Shadow Rick Riordan

How sharper than a serpent's tooth, I remember Jeeves saying once, it is to have a thankless child, and it isn't a dashed sight better having a thankless aunt. ~ P.G. Wodehouse

So if you go to a King Tut exhibit someday and notice cracks or burn marks on the artifacts, or maybe a statue with its head glued on backward-well, sorry. that was probably our fault ~ Serpent's Shadow Rick Riordan

When the Devil was a woman,
When Lilith wound
Her ebony hair in heavy braids,
And framed
Her pale features all 'round
With Botticelli's tangled thoughts,
When she, smiling softly,
Ringed all her slim fingers
In golden bands with brilliant stones,
When she leafed through Villiers
And loved Huysmans,
When she fathomed Maeterlinck's silence
And bathed her Soul
In Gabriel d'Annunzio's colors,
She even laughed
And as she laughed,
The little princess of serpents sprang
Out of her mouth.
Then the most beautiful of she-devils
Sought after the serpent,
She seized the Queen of Serpents
With her ringed finger,
So that she wound and hissed
Hissed, hissed
And spit venom.
In a heavy copper vase;
Damp earth,
Black damp earth
She scattered upon it.
Lightly her great hands caressed
This heavy copper vase
All around,
Her pale lips lightly sang
Her ancient curse.
Like a children's rhyme her curses chimed,
Soft and languid
Languid as the kisses,
That the damp earth drank
From her mouth,
But life arose in the vase,
And tempted by her languid kisses,
And tempted by those sweet tones,
From the black earth slowly there crept,
Orchids -
When the most beloved
Adorns her pale features before the mirror
All 'round with Botticelli's a ~ Hanns Heinz Ewers

I care with the brightened curiosity of one who loves a subject for no rational reason, but who loves it nonetheless and prodigally. This is the ardor of the academic Austenologist who believes that if she looks beneath the floorboards of the right dusty attic, she will find the diary entry explaining why Jane Austen rejected her one marriage proposal the day after she'd accepted it; of the birder in Costa Rica tiptoeing through tails of biting ants and fer-de-lance serpents in hopes of glimpsing a rare hummingbird that no one has seen for fifteen years. I could list such loves forever, the sort that visit our imaginations on the cusp of the impossible but that we cannot erase from our minds. We follow the trail with whatever breadcrumbs we can gather, with hope, with love, with an almost magical combination of urgency and patience... ~ Lyanda Lynn Haupt

I know it is very hard to rise above the influences of party prejudice. Often, it almost drowns the sentiment of patriotism. Party rancor and party hatred are the last serpents which the genius of patriotism can crush. ~ Joseph P. Bradley

I dreamt of a maid at a feast with purple serpents in her hair, venom dripping from their fangs. And later I dreamt that maid again, slaying a savage giant in a castle built of snow. ~ George R R Martin

The spot where God's triumph is achieved, God's victory over sin, over lawlessness, is the cross of Calvary- the cross on which the Son of God died. In that cross and through the cross the works of the devil were destroyed, and the One who conquered him is yet to bruise the serpent's head in the final triumph when He comes again, as recorded in prophecy. ~ Arno C. Gaebelein

Think'st thou there are no serpents in the world But those who slide along the grassy sod, And sting the luckless foot that presses them? There are who in the path of social life Do bask their spotted skins in Fortune's sun, And sting the soul. ~ Joanna Baillie

My goal is to sweep the reader away from his world and bring him along for the adventure. Learning something new shouldn't feel like work, nor should today's younger reader be underestimated. If done correctly, there is no need to "dumb down" the plot or simplify words. When someone tells me he thought The Serpent's Ring was easy to read, I know I succeeded in my storytelling. ~ H.B. Bolton

The only part of Christian teachings which will be truly accepted by the Chinese people is Christ's injunction to be "harmless as doves" but "wise as serpents. ~ Lin Yutang

The dense fog manifests ever-living gravestones, the tunes of decadence, the hearts that were doomed to dance alone. Here lies untouched beauty, a brittle dream, an unseen sea-born nightmare, an isolated acheirous harf, fishbones without flesh, a face without letters, the hypnotic power o Apollonian destruction. Ashes kiss the grapefruit essential oil skin, the soul beats with eaten sons and daughters, soaking wet serpents with cuspid tongues lollop for legendary goddesses. ~ Laura Gentile

Let him that sows the serpent's teeth not hope to reap a joyous harvest. Every crime has, in the moment of its perpetration, its own avenging angel,
dark misgivings at the inmost heart. ~ Friedrich Schiller

Admirable, however, as the Paris of the present day appears to you, build up and put together again in imagination the Paris of the fifteenth century; look at the light through that surprising host of steeples, towers, and belfries; pour forth amid the immense city, break against the points of its islands, compress within the arches of the bridges, the current of the Seine, with its large patches of green and yellow, more changeable than a serpent's skin; define clearly the Gothic profile of this old Paris upon an horizon of azure, make its contour float in a wintry fog which clings to its innumerable chimneys; drown it in deep night, and observe the extraordinary play of darkness and light in this sombre labyrinth of buildings; throw into it a ray of moonlight, which shall show its faint outline and cause the huge heads of the towers to stand forth from amid the mist; or revert to that dark picture, touch up with shade the thousand acute angles of the spires and gables, and make them stand out, more jagged than a shark's jaw, upon the copper-coloured sky of evening. Now compare the two. ~ Victor Hugo

Presently a serpent sought them out privately, and came to them walking upright, which was the way of serpents in those days. The serpent said the forbidden fruit would store their vacant minds with knowledge. So they ate it, which was quite natural, for man is so made that he eagerly wants to know; whereas the priest, like God, whose imitator and representative he is, has made it his business from the beginning to keep him from knowing any useful thing. ~ Mark Twain

Fire had danced in her eyes as she assaulted him with her serpent's tongue. ~ Shakuita Johnson

Behold, I send you forth as sheep in the midst of wolves: be ye therefore wise as serpents, and harmless as doves" (Matthew 10:16, KJV) ~ Matthew 10:16

Echoing off the tile walls, the sizzle-splash of the falling water sounded like the hissing of serpents and the brittle laughter of strange children. ~ Dean Koontz

Military glory
that attractive rainbow, that rises in showers of blood
that serpent's eye, that charms to destroy ... ~ Abraham Lincoln

I have often had apparitions of hosts of serpents with heads at their tails, but not one was able to bite me; and many other visions. ~ Jan Hus

Until I am free to write bilingually and to switch codes without having always to translate, while I still have to speak English or Spanish when I would rather speak Spanglish, and as long as I have to accommodate the English speakers rather than having them accommodate me, my tongue will be illegitimate. I will no longer be made to feel ashamed of existing. I will have my voice: Indian, Spanish, white. I will have my serpent's tongue - my woman's voice, my sexual voice, my poet's voice. I will overcome the tradition of silence. ~ Gloria E Anzaldua

We are no longer blessed with innocence, nor do we deserve to be. Paradise may have been lost, but paradise is a bad bargain. It costs too much. It conceals serpents, and is littered with graves. ~ Susan Rivers

And, finally, about silence - An idle or unnecessary word is the
same thing as excessive speech; hence, Augustine says in the first
book of his
Retractions,
"I cannot call it excessive speech when what
is said is needed, no matter how many words are used."
12
Solomon
tells us, "In excessive speech sin shall not be wanting, but he that
refraineth his lips is most wise."
13
Where
sin shall not be wanting,
we
must especially beware and guard against the condition all the more
when it is so dangerous and difficult to avoid. This is what Saint
Benedict did, saying, "Monks should study silence at all times."
14
Studying silence
is something more than simply
keeping silent,
for
study is the pointed application of the mind to accomplish a given
task. We do many things in negligence or even against our will, but
we cannot
study
a thing without acting with purpose and will
The apostle James, however, tells us how difficult it is to curb the
tongue, but also how beneficial it will be. "We all offend in many
things," he says,
but if any man offend not in word, then he is a perfect
man. . . . For every nature of beasts and birds and serpents
and the rest is tamed, and hath been tamed, by the nature of
man, but the tongue no man can tame. . . . The tongue is
indeed a small part of the body . . . but see how small a fire
Pierre Abelard

Those who give you a serpent when you ask for a fish, may have nothing but serpents to give. ~ Khalil Gibran

So Spring comes merry towards me here, but earns
No answering smile from me, whose life is twin'd
With the dead boughs that winter still must bind,
And whom today the Spring no more concerns.
Behold, this crocus is a withering flame;
This snowdrop, snow; this apple-blossom's part
To breed the fruit that breeds the serpent's art.
Nay, for these Spring-flowers, turn thy face from them,
Nor stay till on the year's last lily-stem
The white cup shrivels round the golden heart. ~ Dante Gabriel Rossetti

You teach your daughters
how to rub poison on their skin
remember
to teach your sons
how not to be serpents. ~ Ijeoma Umebinyuo

How sharper than a serpent's tooth it is to have a thankless child! ~ William Shakespeare

They would set their course toward it, seeing it grow bigger silently and imperceptibly, a motionless growth
and then, when they were at it, when they were about to bang their noses with a shock against its seeming solid mass, the sun would dim. Wraiths of mist suddenly moving like serpents of the air would coil about them for a second. Grey damp would be around them, and the sun, a copper penny, would fade away. The wings next to their own wings would shade into vacancy, until each bird was a lonely sound in cold annihilation, a presence after uncreation. And there they would hang in chartless nothing, seemingly without speed or left or right or top or bottom, until as suddenly as ever the copper penny glowed and the serpents writhed. ~ T.H. White

Since time immemorial, the serpent has symbolized organic vitality. Serpents move in curves and so does energy. The serpent developed from the Light created on the first cosmic day. In the firmament it manifests as the life-breath that animates souls. In the physical universe it manifests electro-magnetism, the light in substance so to speak. ~ Stefan Emunds

It is written, 'Be wise as serpents and innocent as doves' (Mt. 10:16). Being like serpents means not ignoring the attacks and wiles of the devil. Like is quickly shown to like. The simplicity of the dove denotes purity of action. ~ Syncletica Of Alexandria

I was a coward. I used to be haunted by the fear of thieves, ghosts and serpents. I did not dare to stir out of doors at night. Darkness was a terror to me. It was almost impossible for me to sleep in the dark, as I would imagine ghosts coming from one direction, thieves from another and serpents from a third. I could not therefore bear to sleep without a light in the room. ~ Mahatma Gandhi

If poisonous minerals, and if that tree, Whose fruit threw death on else immortal us, If lecherous goats, if serpents envious Cannot be damned; alas; why should I be? ~ John Donne

The credit system has encircled this beautiful globe of ours like a serpent's coil, and if we do not mind, it bids fair to crush us out of breath. ~ Mahatma Gandhi

Do you happen to have a pocket mirror?
"I'm afraid not. Why?"
"I've made you late, which means by now Lady Berwick has sprouted serpents from her head, and I can't look at her directly. ~ Lisa Kleypas

Possibly, mrs. laird ... i'd say. except he's dead, you see. well, not completely dead. he's more of a resurrected god. he judges mortal spirits and feeds the hearts of the wicked to his pet monster.oh, and he has blue skin. i'm sure he'd make quite an impression on career day, for all those students aspiring to grow up and become ancient egyptian deities ~ Serpent's Shadow Rick Riordan

She had fire dancing in her eyes as she assaulted him with her serpent's tongue. Tonight she was not his wife but his little sister. ~ Shakuita Johnson

The Conscious will is represented by the Sacred Woman, Maria, Isis, who crushes the descending serpent's head. ~ Samael Aun Weor

It is a sort of quasi-monastic diabolical vision. In a landscape populated with larvae - flowing and undulating larvae called forth like a cascade of leeches by tolling bells - three female figures rise up phantasmally, enshrouded with gauze like Spanish madonnas. They are the 'three brides': the bride of Heaven, the bride of the Earth and the bride of Hell...

The bride of Hell, with her two serpents writhing about her temples to hold her veil in place, has the most attractive mask: the most profound eyes, the most vertiginous smile that one could ever see.

If she existed, how I would love that woman! I feel that if that smile and those eyes were in my life they would be all the cure I need!

I could never tire of the study and contemplation of that hallucinatory visage.

"The Three Brides" is very peculiar in its detail and composition. It is the whimsy of a dream rendered with astonishing fastidiousness: the delusion of an opium-smoker composed in the style of Holbein. ~ Jean Lorrain

Of the many fearsome beasts and monsters that roam our land, there is none more curious or more deadly that the Basilisk, known also as the King of Serpents. This snake, which may reach gigantic size, and live many hundreds of years, is born from a chicken's egg, hatched beneath a toad. Its methods of killing are more wonderous, for aside from its deadly and venomous fangs, the Basilisk has a murderous stare, and all who are fixed with the beam of its eye shall suffer instant death. Spiders flee before the Basilisk, for it is their mortal enemy, and the Basilisk flees only from the crowing of the rooster, which is fatal to it. ~ J.K. Rowling

I never thought my life would end like this. Being hunted by mythological creatures in my pajamas. Honestly, it never entered my mind. ~ Amanda Carlson

The Sons of the Serpent - they want you angry. At the world. They need us all to feel like victims. And it's an easy get, because times suck. Every day is a battle. We all feel like we're on the wrong end of the wrecking ball. We feel at the mercy of forces beyond our control, and that makes us scared. And that's rocket fuel for S.O.B.'s like the Serpents. They prey on us when we're frightened. They tell us our enemies are the immigrants down the street, or the food stamp family next door. They encourage us to turn our fear into rage, and we fall for it because it's 'empowering.' Except it's not. We don't become 'empowered.' We become weaponized. ~ Mark Waid

Behold I give unto you power to tread on serpents ... and nothing shall by any means hurt you. Luke 10:19 ~ Paulo Coelho

Not your dark poisons again,
White sleep!
This fantastically strange garden
Of trees in deepening twilight
Fills up with serpents, nightmoths,
Spiders, bats.
Approaching stranger!
Your abandoned shadow
In the red of evening
Is a dark pirate ship
Of the salty oceans of confusion.
White birds from the outskirts of the night
Flutter out over the shuddering cities
Of steel. ~ Georg Trakl

Suddenly pressing both hands on her heart, she fell to the ground, and the mist rose from her and melted in the air. I ran to her. But she began to writhe in such torture that I stood aghast. A moment more and her legs, hurrying from her body, sped away serpents. From her shoulders fled her arms as in terror, serpents also. Then something flew up from her like a bat, and when I looked again, she was gone. ~ George MacDonald

Words are mighty, words are living:Serpents with their venomous stings,Or bright angels, crowding round us,With heaven's light upon their wings:Every word has its own spirit,True or false, that never dies;Every word man's lips have utteredEchoes in God's skies. ~ Adelaide Anne Procter

To Eden with me you will not leave
To live in a cottage of crazy, crooked eaves.
In your own happy home you take care these nights;
When you let your little cat in, please turn on the lights!
Something scurries behind and finds a cozy place to stare,
Something sent to you from paradise, with serpents to spare:
Tongues flowering; they leap out laughing, lapping. Dissapear ~ Thomas Ligotti

At this slower pace the journey took a couple of days, and I fought off a few minor threats along the way
griffins, carnivorous plants, giant serpents, hostile centaurs, that sort of thing, purely routine
and I was beginning to get bored when at last the dusky towers of Castle Roogna hove into view. ~ Piers Anthony

Let me explain: there are dragons, and then there are drakons.
Drakons are several millennia older than dragons, andmuch larger. They look like giant serpents. Most don't have wings. Most don't breathe fire (though some do). All are poisonous. All are immensely strong, with scales harder than titanium. Their eyes can paralyze you; not the turn-you~to-stone Medusa-type paralysis, buttheoh~my~gods-that~big~snake~is~going~to~eat~me type of paralysis, which is just as bad. ~ Rick Riordan

Before the eyes of monks intent on meditation, what is the meaning of those ridiculous grotesques, those monstrous shapes and shapely monsters? Those sordid apes? Those lions, those centaurs, those half-human creatures, with mouths in their bellies, with single feet, ears like sails? Those spotted tigers, those fighting warriors, those hunters blowing their horns, and those many bodies with single heads and many heads with single bodies? Quadrupeds with serpents' tails, and fish with quadrupeds' faces, and here an animal who seems a horse in front and a ram behind, and there a horse with horns, and so on; by now it is more pleasurable for a monk to read marble than manuscript, and to admire the works of man than to meditate on the law of God. Shame! For the desire of your eyes and for your smiles! ~ Umberto Eco

I was living and dying in all the fibers of what is chewed and digested and in all the fibers that absorb the sun, consuming and digesting. Under the thatched arbor of a restaurant on a river-bank, where Olivia had waited for me, our teeth began to move slowly, with equal rhythm, and our eyes stared into each other's with the intensity of serpents' - serpents concentrated in the ecstasy of swallowing each other in turn, as we were aware, in our turn, of being swallowed by the serpent that digests us all, assimilated ceaselessly in the process of ingestion and digestion, in the universal cannibalism that leaves its imprint on every amorous relationship and erases the lines between our bodies and sopa de frijoles, huachinango a la vera cru-zana, and enchiladas. ~ Italo Calvino

In 'The Serpent's Egg,' I created a Berlin which no one recognized, not even I. ~ Ingmar Bergman

There is a certain irony here, because many of the first werewolves to be outed in society from the 16th through the 18th centuries were actually women. Just as our American ancestors had their Salem Witch Trials, Europe had its Werewolf Trials, and a large number of the so-called "werewolves" tortured and burned at the stake were female. […] In the 17th-century werewolf trials of Estonia, women were about 150 percent more likely to be accused of lycanthropy; however, they were about 100 percent less likely to be remembered for it."

"Here's also a pronounced lack of female werewolves in popular culture. Their near absence in literature and film is explained away by various fancies: they're sterile, an aberration, or - most galling of all - they don't even exist.Their omission from popular culture does one thing very effectively: It prevents us, and men especially, from being confronted by hairy, ugly, uncontrollable women. Shapeshifting women in fantasy stories tend to transform into animals that we consider feminine, such as cats or birds, which are pretty and dainty, and occasionally slick and wicked serpents. But because the werewolf represents traits that are accepted as masculine - strength, large size, violence, and hirsutism - we tend to think of the werewolf as being naturally male. The female werewolf is disturbing because she entirely breaks the rules of femininity. ~ Julia Oldham

Yes, I could see these enormous elephants, whose trunks were tearing down large boughs, and working in and out the trees like a legion of serpents. I could hear the sounds of the mighty tusks uprooting huge trees! ~ Jules Verne

In the Caduceus, the two serpents are called Ob and Od. As they twine around each other, they create the magickal wand of Double Power. The Unification of the Ob and Od is picture by the globe that crowns the Caduceus. The globe which climaxes the Caduceus symbolizes the Nur Muhammadi, or Light of Mohammed, the Aur (Light) in Hebrew, which is the result of the state of equilibrium existing between the two serpent forces. This Light is the SUPREME ESSENCE. Wilhelm Reich called this serpent energy the Orgone. It has also been referred to as: Ki, Kundalini, Mana, Prana, Vril, Animal Magnetism, the Odic Force, the Astral Light, the Élan Vital, the Libido, the Atmospheric 'I' and Ether. ~ Laurence Galian

There, too, she would sit for hours gazing seawards. No tiniest speck of sail that crossed the waters could escape her watchful eyes, and as she watched she dreamed that some day one of these distant sails should bear down towards her, and one should come, in whose hand she would lay her own, and they two would flee to the far East. But as the changeless years went by and brought him not, the girl grew sullen, and a sense of wrong possessed her, for the older she grew, the clearer became her consciousness of a world beyond her, and the greater her longing to seek it.
("The Serpent's Head") ~ Emilia Francis Strong Dilke

Never forget the gender of mother earth. This planet is a body through which arterial tides pulse and surge, and within this fluid murk stir serpents, inchoate monstrosities of the amniotic id. ~ Robert Dunbar

Where there are no bees there is no honey.
Where there are no flowers there is no perfume.
Where there are no clouds there is no rain.
Where there are no stars there is no light.
Where there are no roses there are no thorns.
Where there are no skies there are no stars.
Where there are no storms there are no rainbows.
Where there are no animals there are no forests.
Where there are no plants there are no jungles.
Where there are no seeds there are no harvests.
Where there are no spiders there are no webs.
Where there are no ants there are no colonies.
Where there are no worms there are no fish.
Where there are no mice there are no serpents.
Where there are no carcasses there are no vultures.
Where there are no stones there are no pebbles.
Where there are no rocks there are no mountains.
Where there are no deserts there are no oases.
Where there are no stars there are no galaxies.
Where there are no worlds there are no universes. ~ Matshona Dhliwayo

If you imagine, friend, that I do not have those
black serpents in the pit of my body,
that I am not crushed in fragments by the tough
butterfly wing
broken and crumpled like a black silk stocking,
if you imagine that my body is not
blackened
burned wood,
then you imagine a false woman. ~ Diane Wakoski

Cold as winter, strong as stone;
She faced the darkness all alone.
A silver goddess; a reflection.
A mirage; a recollection.
No return; no turning back.
The past is gone, the future, black.
Serpents gather in their nest,
And she stands above the rest.
Shadows hunt; she hunts the shadow.
The moon is risen; she stands below.
She views her world through the eyes of others.
Black and white; there are no colors,
As she looks down upon a shattered youth.
A shattered mirror shows a shattered truth. ~ Amelia Atwater-Rhodes

Mind you, I cannot swear that my story is true. It may have been a dream; or worse, a symptom of some severe mental disorder. But I believe it is true. After all, how are we to know what things there are on earth? Strange monstrosities still exist, and foul, incredible perversions. Every war, each new geographical or scientific discovery, brings to light some new bit of ghastly evidence that the world is not altogether the same place we fondly imagine it to be. Sometimes peculiar incidents occur which hint of utter madness.

How can we be sure that our smug conceptions of reality actually exist? To one man in a million dreadful knowledge is revealed, and the rest of us remain mercifully ignorant. There have been travelers who never came back, and research workers who disappeared. Some of those who did return were deemed mad because of what they told, and others sensibly concealed the wisdom that had so horribly been revealed. Blind as we are, we know a little of what lurks beneath our normal life. There have been tales of sea serpents and creatures of the deep; legends of dwarfs and giants; records of queer medical horrors and unnatural births. Stunted nightmares of men's personalities have blossomed into being under the awful stimulus of war, or pestilence, or famine. There have been cannibals, necrophiles, and ghouls; loathsome rites of worship and sacrifice; maniacal murders, and blasphemous crimes. When I think, then, of what I saw and heard, and compare it with ~ Robert Bloch

Behold, I am sending you out as sheep in the midst of wolves, so be p wise as serpents and q innocent as doves. ~ Anonymous

Only hinted at in some of these tales, and clearly stated in others, it is apparent that there was a long and continuing conflict between paganism and Christianity in the early centuries A.D. This may also be the explanation behind other well creation tales, such as the slaying by St Barry of a 'great serpent' in County Roscommon. The saint thrust his crozier at it before it disappeared into Lough Lagan, and where his knee touched the ground, a holy well, Tobar Barry, sprang up. Although the serpent may represent paganism, and the saint's victory is therefore the victory of Christianity over paganism, we cannot entirely ignore the possibility that some of the serpents in similar Irish tales may have been real water monsters, which are still seen from time to time in the lakes of Ireland and Scotland. These eerie, ugly monsters, with their aura of primeval mystery, appropriately symbolize the uncouth savagery which the Christians attributed to all non-Christian beliefs; but that is not to say that the monsters were totally symbolic and did not have a reality of their own. ~ Colin Bord

Woman, your heart is a mapless maze. Could I bottle confusion and drink it a thousand years, I could not confound myself so much as you do between waking and breakfast. You are grown so devious that serpents would applaud your passage, would the gods but give them hands. ~ Scott Lynch

I left him thinking it over. If I were a bookie, I should feel justified in offering a hundred to eight against."
"You can't have approached him properly. I might have known you would muck it up," said young Bingo. Which, considering what I had been through for his sake, struck me as a good bit sharper than the serpent's tooth. ~ P.G. Wodehouse

You are sheep among wolves. Be wise as serpents, yet innocent as doves. ~ Dennis Lehane

By and large, the making of motion pictures is all about, 'Let's ratchet it up.' And I always think, 'We don't need to ratchet this up.' If you do, don't call it 'Captain Phillips' or 'The Maersk Alabama.' Call it something else, and then you have carte blanche to do anything, down to sea serpents and aliens. ~ Tom Hanks

Right now, I've got the weight of several worlds on my shoulders. My best friend is living in a cancer ward, and there's nothing I can do for him. The Serpents have hired the Jester to spark race riots with faked news stories, and I don't know how to smoke him out. My enemies are hiding all around, watching everything I do, and I can't find them. For the first time in months I find myself in the familiar, paralyzing grip of overwhelming depression. ~ Mark Waid

Jehennam is a region fraught with all kinds of horrors. The very trees have writhing serpents for branches, bearing for fruit the heads of demons. We forbear to dwell upon the particulars of this dismal abode, which are given with painful and often disgusting minuteness. It is described as consisting of seven stages, one below the other, and varying in the nature and intensity of torment. The first stage is allotted to Atheists, who deny creator and creation, and believe the world to be eternal. The second for Manicheans and others that admit two divine principles ; and for the Arabian idolaters of the era of Mahomet. The third is for the Brahmins of India ; the fourth for the Jews ; the fifth for Christians ; the sixth for the Magians or Ghebers of Persia ; the seventh for hypocrites, who profess without believing in religion. The fierce angel Thabeck, that is to say, the Executioner, presides over this region of terror. We must observe that the general nature of Jehennam, and the distribution of its punishments, have given rise to various commentaries and expositions among the Moslem doctors. It is maintained by some, and it is a popular doctrine, that none of the believers in Allah and his prophets will be condemned to eternal punishment. Their sins will be expiated by proportionate periods of suffering, varying from nine hundred to nine thousand years.
Some of the most humane among the doctors contend against eternity of punishment to any class of sinners, saying th ~ Washington Irving

The locals would just have to assume there'd been gas explosion. (we tented to cause a lot of those) ~ Serpent's Shadow Rick Riordan

Did you never wonder why the old books are so full of dragons chasing after maidens? The serpents think the girls are orphans, and long to get them away in a lair so that they may grow up strong and tall. ~ Catherynne M Valente