A Snake Is A Snake Quotes & Sayings

Then he said, Let me tell you a story from our tradition, a story about King Solomon. King Solomon gave a teaching once about the snake and the bee. The snake, King Solomon said, defends itself by killing. But the bee defends itself by dying. You know how a bee dies after a sting? Like that. It dies to defend. So, each creature has a method that is suitable to its strength. — Teju Cole

A poisonous snake is not dangerous, not any more than a loaded gun is dangerous - in each case, if you handle it properly. The thing that made that coral snake dangerous was that I hadn't known what it was, what it could do. If, in my ignorance, I had handled it carelessly, it would have killed me as casually and as innocently as a kitten scratches. — Robert A. Heinlein

A snake bite emergency kit is a body bag. — Mitch Hedberg

An interview with Quinn is like fighting a yellow snake in a sandpit.' Desmond — Jess Kidd

How many times do we hear: 'Come on, you Christians, be a little bit more normal, like other people, be reasonable!' This is real snake charmer's talk: 'Come on, just be like this, okay? A little bit more normal, don't be so rigid ... ' But behind it is this: 'Don't come here with your stories, that God became man!' The Incarnation of the Word, that is the scandal behind all of this! We can do all the social work we want, and they will say: 'How great the Church is, it does such good social work. But if we say that we are doing it because those people are the flesh of Christ, then comes the scandal. And that is the truth, that is the revelation of Jesus: that presence of Jesus incarnate. — Pope Francis

Speaking of these attitudes turned Temple's mind to a parallel: "I find a very high correlation," she said, "between the way animals are treated and the handicapped. ... Georgia is a snake pit - they treat [handicapped people] worse than animals. ... Capital-punishment states are the worst animal states and the worst for the handicapped. — Oliver Sacks

But if the world is watching, we might as well tell the truth. And the truth is, the church doesn't offer a cure. It doesn't offer a quick fix. The church offers death and resurrection. The church offers the messy, inconvenient, gut-wrenching, never-ending work of healing and reconciliation. The church offers grace. Anything else we try to peddle is snake oil. It's not the real thing. — Rachel Held Evans

People project a grey energy that is very destructive to weaken you, to drain you - just as the snake uses position to capture its victim. — Frederick Lenz

The Devil is a Five-headed Snake, says the father. The son says, Nay, it's a Six-headed one. And then their hearts burn with hate for each others and they live apart for many years. — Subramanya Bharathi

The way of Providence is a little rude. The habit of snake and spider, the snap of the tiger and other leapers and bloody jumpers, the crackle of the bones of his prey in the coil of the anaconda-these are in the system, and our habits are like theirs. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

Hope is the light you follow; faith is believing there is actually a light
they are the refusal to give up when you have no reason to go on.
Snake to Ara (Mark of Betrayal, Book 4 dark Secrets) — A.M. Hudson

My mother is not evil, Faith reminded herself. She is just a perfectly sensible snake, protecting her eggs and making her way in the world as best she can. — Frances Hardinge

Another time, I was at the bar getting a drink and this geezer is stood at the bar with a ciggie in his mouth, trying his best to look rock hard. He takes a drag and points his finger in my face and drawls, 'Don't I know you?'
He was looking snake-eyed at me like a typical big screen gangster.
I stood in front of him and drawled back, 'I don't know, but they call me Richy Horsley,' and then bang, I batter him with a left hook that landed with a strange dull thud. Mr Movie Gangster was stood there leaning against the bar and staring out in to space, knocked out standing up. — Stephen Richards

36 - Mowing (from A Boy's Will, 1915) There was never a sound beside the wood but one, And that was my long scythe whispering to the ground. What was it it whispered? I knew not well myself; Perhaps it was something about the heat of the sun, Something, perhaps, about the lack of sound-- And that was why it whispered and did not speak. It was no dream of the gift of idle hours, Or easy gold at the hand of fay or elf: Anything more than the truth would have seemed too weak To the earnest love that laid the swale in rows, Not without feeble-pointed spikes of flowers (Pale orchises), and scared a bright green snake. The fact is the sweetest dream that labour knows. My long scythe whispered and left the hay to make. — Leslie Laurio

Every orchid or rose or lizard or snake is the work of a dedicated and skilled breeder. There are thousands of people, amateurs and professionals, who devote their lives to this business. Now imagine what will happen when the tools of genetic engineering become accessible to these people. — Freeman Dyson

One of the lowest creatures on earth is the politician who tries to eliminate his political rivals using unlawful methods and even violence! To halt the march of such demonic people, never use the same immoral methods, because to defeat a poisonous snake you don't have to be a poisonous snake yourself! — Mehmet Murat Ildan

If I seem to take part in politics, it is only because politics encircles us today like the coil of a snake from which one cannot get out, no matter how much one tries. I wish therefore to wrestle with the snake. — Mahatma Gandhi

I stare at his forearms. I can make out a naked woman with a snake going up her vagina. She's holding a knife, slitting her own throat. There are three playing cards on the back of his right hand: the Queen of Spades, the Jack of Hearts and the Joker. Red flames lick his elbow.
There's a watch tattooed on his left wrist with 'Fuck Time' inscribed on its face. Fuck o'clock.
He's not that tall, but his body is carefully cut. The lines of his face, his cheekbones and jaw, are sharp and precise. I can see the tufts of his blond underarm hairs and under them the ladder of his ribs. He's beautiful, in the way that a knife is beautiful. — Kirsty Eagar

My work speaks of the finite and the infinite, of the macroscopic and the microscopic, the internal and external, by the masculine and feminine powers, but sex is like a snake, it slithers through everything. — Ernesto Neto

Nearly all ancient peoples worshiped sex in some form and ritual, and not the lowest people but the highest expressed their worship most completely [ ... ]. The sexual character and functions of primitive deities were held in high regard, not through any obscenity of mind, but through a passion for fertility in women and in the earth. Certain animals, like the bull and the snake, were worshiped as apparently possessing or symbolizing in a high degree the divine power of reproduction.
The snake in the story of Eden is doubtless a phallic symbol, representing sex as the origin of evil, suggesting sexual awakening as the beginning of the knowledge of good and evil, and perhaps insinuating a certain proverbial connection between mental innocence and bliss. — Will Durant

She was yawning, and he saw the red interior of her mouth as if it had been a snake's. She had stretched one arm so high above her coiled-up cable of hair that he could see its satin delicacy above the sunburn; her face was flushed with sleep, and her eyelids hung heavy over their pupils.The brim-fulness of her nature breathed from her.It was a moment when a woman's soul is more incarnate than at any other time; when the most spiritual beauty bespeaks itself flesh; and sex takes the outside place in the presentation. — Thomas Hardy

She got a long pointed nose and big fleshy mouth. Lips look like black plum. Eyes big, glossy. Feverish. And mean. Like, sick as she is, if a snake cross her path, she kill it — Alice Walker

He is the playfulness of creation, scandal and utter goodness, the generosity of the ocean and the ferocity of a thunderstorm; he is cunning as a snake and gentle as a whisper; the gladness of sunshine and the humility of a thirty-mile walk by foot on a dirt road. — John Eldredge

If there were ever two sentences that you will not respond well to, 'Don't move. There's a snake behind your foot,' is it. — Warren Hutcherson

Who says that tradition cannot be changed? The traditions which go against the human values has to be changed, otherwise it is like a poisonous snake that is hanging on our neck to kill us. — Pratibha Ray

The Bible is still the only dirty book I've ever read, at least in its current incarnation as a weapon of the homophobes. Bible scholarship keeps trying to catch up, proving that all the hatred of gay is just stupid translation, though the snake-oil preachers don't want to hear it. — Paul Monette

The rather uncomfortable feeling most of us have when we're around snakes is evidence of how this ancient experience continues to influence us today. Throughout the long prehistory of our species and those that preceded it, snakes were a mortal threat. And so we learned our lesson. Others didn't, but that had a nasty habit of dying. So natural selection did its work and the rule
beware of snakes
was ultimately hardwired into every human brain. It's universal. Go anywhere on the planet, examine any culture. People are wary of snakes. Even if
as in the Arctic
there are no snakes. Our primate cousins shared our long experience and they feel the same way: Even monkeys raised in laboratories who have never seen a snake will back away at the sight of one. — Daniel Gardner

Somehow, the notion that Professor Moriarty had parents - might have been a child - never sat right. A viper is a snake straight from the egg. I couldn't help but picture little Jamie as a balding midget in a sailor suit, spying Cook and the baker's boy rolling in the flour on the kitchen table through his toy telescope, and blackmailing them for extra buns. — Kim Newman

The palpable sense of mystery in the desert air breeds fables, chiefly of lost treasure ... It is a question whether it is not better to be bitten by the little horned snake of the desert that goes sidewise and strikes without coiling, than by the tradition of a lost mine. — Mary Hunter Austin

Wawashkesh
these apples are
for you,
red on the white
snow,
their cider tang
will find you
in the gray woods.
There is a story
how a snake
offered an apple,
so sweet, so cold,
those bite was
sorrow.

--excerpt from Eric Gadzinski's poem "Wawashkeshgiwis" from The Way North — Ron Riekki

They say that time is the greatest healer, but let me tell you this: there are some things that can never be healed. Sometimes you think these things are gone and can never hurt you again - like a snake in a basket - quite safe, until you take off the lid. I have taken the lid off the basket, and the snake still bites. Its fangs are long and sharp. — Bernie Morris

The first EDSer to see a snake kills it. At GM, first thing you do is organize a committee on snakes. Then you bring in a consultant who knows a lot about snakes. Third thing you do is talk about it for a year. — Ross Perot

I pulled out my mp3 player and stuck the buds in, and letting out a big breath, I started to scroll through my music for something appropriate to kill by. John Tesh, it is. — Derekica Snake

Though I knew I had the potential to do this locked in me like a poisonous pet snake, I knew I didn't have the part of a person you must have to turn that potential kinetic, to be the kind of person who can let their awful plow. — Catherine Lacey

So, these tools, like light switches, exist. When fear arises, remember that it is a hallucinated snake or that it's not useful or that it's not real. All three work. There's many more, ones we can come up with ourselves, if we wish. As long as it works, it's valid. Key is this, when in darkness, have a light switch you've chosen standing by. — Kamal Ravikant

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

He is sharp," admitted the colonel, "but that's all there is to him. He can wiggle and squirm like a snake; but he's got no dignity, and no learnin', and what he don't know about law would make a book bigger than the biggest dictionary you ever saw." "Land's — George W. Ogden

Did you even realize who was at that table?" The one with long, dark, wavy hair laughs. "I mean, let's just for a minute acknowledge that you just sang to two of the members from Corrosive Velocity and Jackson Shaw! Like, from The Forgotten, Jackson Shaw."
"Sid, keep it down." The other hisses so low, I'm almost unable to hear her.
Realizing this is my snake charmer, I slip into autopilot with the gathering fans: nod, smile, and sign.
"You've got to be more excited. I mean, the man is seven feet of lickable body graffiti. Whew! I'd climb his beanstalk any day. — Sadie Grubor

Elves are wonderful. They provoke wonder.
Elves are marvellous. They cause marvels.
Elves are fantastic. They create fantasies.
Elves are glamorous. They project glamour.
Elves are enchanting. They weave enchantment.
Elves are terrific. They beget terror.
The thing about words is that meanings can twist just like a snake, and if you want to find snakes look for them behind words that have changed their meaning.
No one ever said elves are nice.
Elves are bad. — Terry Pratchett

Our lips now conjoin like the glittery coils of a wet snake dancing in the amazon. Kissing Nadia sends me into a savoring affair for that which is most delectable, always tasting the delicate layers that exist in her myriad of emotion. Always, Nadia's opulent lips gratify and subdue by easing my sensitivity as she drags her fingers down my stomach like a tree scattering its roots. I now brush my lips over Nadia's, dipping into her mouth like a brush that falls into a bucket of paint, osculating under this euphoric form of affection. — Luccini Shurod

Say, "I can do everything ." "Even if poison of a snake is powerless if you can firmly deny it." — Swami Vivekananda

22. I am the Snake that giveth Knowledge & Delight and bright glory, and stir the hearts of men with drunkenness. To worship me take wine and strange drugs whereof I will tell my prophet, & be drunk thereof! They shall not harm ye at all. It is a lie, this folly against self. The exposure of innocence is a lie. Be strong, o man! lust, enjoy all things of sense and rapture: fear not that any God shall deny thee for this. — Aleister Crowley

There is the sword for one thing. Sometimes slung over his back, sometimes laid across his lap, this sword was destined to become more famed throughout the Islamic world than King Arthur's sword Excalibur ever would be in Christendom. Like Excalibur, it came with supernatural qualities, and it too had a name: Dhu'l Fikar, the "Split One," which is why it is shown with a forked point, like a snake's tongue. In fact it wasn't the sword that was split but the flesh it came in contact with, so that the name more vividly translates as the Cleaver or the Splitter. — Anonymous

Contrary to John Anthony West's assertion (in his book, Serpent in the Sky: The High Wisdom of Ancient Egypt) that there are no other possible interpretations of the mummy figure looking at the stars on the depiction in the tomb of Tutankhamen beyond being a matter of consciousness, many proofs point to ancient Egypt's aspiration to be among the stars and it is an essential part of its theology. It is after all evident that [the Pyramid Texts describe early conceptions of an afterlife in terms of eternal travelling with the sun god amongst the stars]. Staying loyal to the Upper Heavens' authority or breaking away from it, made ancient Egypt yearn to such a high position beyond Earth's physical realm where the Sun's shadow (i.e., snake) of the Lower Heavens' authority cannot fly. — Ibrahim Ibrahim

When a man finds the woman he really loves, the one he respects and wants to call wife, there is nothing on earth he won't do for her. No mountain he won't hike. No river he won't wade. No door he won't open. She is Eve and there's not a snake crawling that can keep them apart. — Yolanda Joe

Jim was the one who told me that my emotional life made him dangle his stethoscope like a snake charmer: my moods weren't hard to see but they were hard to read, and even harder to diagnose. It was ostensibly a complaint, but I think he liked his metaphor, and liked that our moments of distance were subtle enough to require this kind of formulation. Meaning that I was a complex creature and so was he; that he became even more complex in his attempt to bridge the gap between our complexities; that he could create a complicated image to house this complex of complications. This is how writers fall in love: they feel complicated together and then they talk about it. — Leslie Jamison

If I did not move and dance between them the three would turn to stone, for they are passive [ ... ] They would fall asleep if I lay still somewhere. Henry, Gonzalo, Hugh. [ ... ] It is only my dancing, my dancing which animates them. I slide out of Gonzalo's bed like a snake. I slide out of Henry's bed. I slide out of Hugh's bed. [ ... ]
I dance untrammeled - return to each full of the space in between, that change of air. Dancing, I find my flame and my joy, because I dance, slide, run, to the boat, to quai de Passy, to Villa Seurat; I keep the wind in the folds of my dress, the rain on my hair, and light in my eyes. — Anais Nin

People," Wax said, "are like cords, Steris. We snake out, striking this way and that, always looking for something new. That's human nature, to discover what is hidden. There's so much we can do, so many places we can go." He shifted in his seat, changing his center of gravity, which caused the sphere to rotate upward on its tether.
"But if there aren't any boundaries," he said, "we'd get tangled up. Imagine a thousand of these cords, zipping through the room. The law is there to keep us from ruining everyone else's ability to explore. Without law, there's no freedom. That's why I am what I am. — Brandon Sanderson

But the Australians, what do the Australians do? How do they structure their landscape? For a start they postulate a primal builder, whose work they presume only to interpret: the mythical animal who was active in the "dreamtime," that is, a primal era, beyond verification, as the name indicates. A time of sleep. The visible landscape is an effect of causes that are to be found in the dreamtime. For example, the snake that dragged itself over this plain creating these undulations, etc., etc. These.. curious Aborigines make sure their eyes are closed while events take place, which allows them to see places as records of events. But what they see is a kind of dream, and they wake into a reverie, since the real story (the snake, not the hills) happened while they were asleep. — Cesar Aira

But for the rest of us, cool has a shelf life. If you're a quarterback in high school, you're cool. But ten years later, working as a sullen bouncer at the only nightclub in town, your "cool" is on life support. Which is why so many young girls who never said no end up with losers in pants hanging below their asses and no known income to speak of. These cads were charming in high school; now they're as useless as shoulder pads on a snake. — Greg Gutfeld

Broken Horses is an artistic triumph. Beautifully written, acted and imaged, this film wraps slowly around you like a king snake and squeezes, — James Cameron

Youth wasn't like the skin of a snake that you sloughed off and never saw again but rather a feeling that you tuck away because you think you don't need it any more and it's only when you come across it by accident that you realise just how much fun it really is — Mike Gayle

I Brought My Grandma's Teeth to School

I brought my grandma's teeth to school to share for show-and-tell.
Billy showed his sneakers. It was more like show-and-smell.
Kevin brought a violin and showed he couldn't play.
Katie brought a snake to school - too bad it got away.
Our class likes show-and-tell a lot, so we were sad to hear
our teacher say that show-and-tell is canceled till next year. — Robert Pottle

Ignorant: a state of not knowing what a pronoun is, or how to find the square root of 27.4, and merely knowing childish and useless things like which of the seventy almost identical-looking species of the purple sea snake are the deadly ones, how to treat the poisonous pith of the Sago-sago tree to make a nourishing gruel, how to foretell the weather by the movements of the tree-climbing Burglar Crab, how to navigate across a thousand miles of featureless ocean by means of a piece of string and a small clay model of your grandfather, how to get essential vitamins from the liver of the ferocious Ice Bear, and other such trivial matters. It's a strange thing that when everyone becomes educated, everyone knows about the pronoun but no one knows about the Sago-sago. — Terry Pratchett

The skin of a python is no less precious to the snake than fur is to the fox. — Maneka Gandhi

A profession is like a great snake that wraps itself around you. Once you are enwrapped, you are in a slow fight for the rest of your life, and the lightness of youth leaves you. — Mark Helprin

There is nothing in this existence which is not connected to your spiritual process. Everything is. It is from this that Indian culture created this idea (which now might have taken on extreme forms) that if you see a tree, you bow down; if you see a rock, you bow down; if you see a cow, you bow down; if you see a snake you bow down. Whatever it is, it does not matter what. Every creature, every form, whatever you see, if it makes an impression on you, you bow down to it. — Sadhguru

An enormous bartender came over. He looked like the pullout centerfold for Leather Biker Monthly. Extra big and extra scary. He had long hair, a long scar, and tattoos of snakes slithering up both arms. He shot the two men a glare and - poof - they were gone. Like the glare had evaporated them. Then he turned his eyes toward Esperanza. She met the glare and gave him one back. Neither backed down. "Lady, what the fuck are you?" he asked. "Is that a new way of asking what I'm drinking?" "No." The mutual glaring continued. He leaned two massive snake-arms on the bar. "You're too good-looking to be a cop," he said. "And you're too good-looking to be hanging out in this toilet. — Harlan Coben

And God was like, "It's not a tumor. That's your appendix. Appendixes go at the end. Read a book, dude." Then Adam was all, "Really? Because I don't want to second-guess you but it seems like a design flaw. Also that snake in the garden told me it doesn't even do anything." And God shook his head and muttered, "Jesus, that fucking snake is like TMZ." And then Adam was like, "Who's Jesus?" and God said, "No one yet. It's just an idea I'm throwing around." And — Jenny Lawson

I have my tombstone already. A tombstone company in the East gave it to me when I jumped Snake Canyon. My plot is in Montana. — Evel Knievel

A lot of people who work with wildlife work with wildlife to satisfy their own egos. And I don't really agree with that. What I do is get in nice and close to the animal to make the animal look good. My aim in this world is to make that brown snake, that crocodile, that koala, that red-backed spider, that black widow, look good. That's my job. I have absolutely no problem with my ego or my staff's ego. — Steve Irwin

There seems to be a different Chicago around every street corner, behind every bar, and within every apartment, two-flat, cottage, or bungalow. City of immigrants or city of heartless plutocrats, say what you will, Chicago almost defies interpretation. In many ways Chicago is like a snake that sheds its skin every thirty years or so and puts on a new coat to conform to a new reality. — Dominic A. Pacyga

It is convenient for the old men to blame Eve. To insist we are damned because a country girl talked to the snake one afternoon long ago. Children must starve in Somalia for that, and old women be abandoned in our greatest cities. It's why we will finally be thrown into the lakes of molten lead. Because she was confused by happiness that first time anyone said she was beautiful. Nevertheless, she must be the issue, so people won't notice that rocks and galaxies, mathematics and rust are also created in His image. — Jack Gilbert

An expense of ends to means is fate;Morganization tyrannizing over character. The menagerie, or forms and powers of the spine, is a book of fate: the bill of the bird, the skull of the snake, determines tyrannically its limits. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

Without my protectionm your journey is doomed before you begin.'
Great! I thought. Even the snake is a critic! — E.D. Baker

We are in our own dark Eden where the snake is not selling the Tree of Knowledge. He is selling love, and if you take a bite of that apple, you will go the way of Abel when this is clearly the land of Cain. — Shane Kuhn

In her book Anger: The Misunderstood Emotion, Carol Tavris recounts a story about a Bengali cobra that liked to bite passing villagers. One day a swami - a man who has achieved self-mastery - convinces the snake that biting is wrong. The cobra vows to stop immediately, and does. Before long, the village boys grow unafraid of the snake and start to abuse him. Battered and bloodied, the snake complains to the swami that this is what came of keeping his promise.
"I told you not to bite," said the swami, "but I did not tell you not to hiss."
"Many people, like the swami's cobra, confuse the hiss with the bite," writes Tavris. — Susan Cain

The name itself is trouble. "Slough" means, literally, muddy field. A snake sloughs, or sheds, its dead skin. John Bunyan wrote of the "slough of despond" in Pilgrim's Progress. In the 1930s, John Betjeman wrote this poem about Slough: Come friendly bombs and fall on Slough! It isn't fit for humans now, There isn't grass to graze a cow, Swarm over, Death! Then he got nasty. To this day, the residents of Slough rankle when anyone mentions the poem. The town's reputation as a showpiece of quiet desperation was cemented when the producers of the TV series The Office decided to set the show in Slough. — Eric Weiner

The carved images on the early Minoan sealstones are tantalising, inscrutable. The Nature Goddess is yanked from the soil like a snake or a sheaf of barley; the Mistress of the Animals suckles goats and gazelles. There are male Adorants certainly - up on tiptoe, their outstretched arms hoisted in a kind of heil, their bodies arched suggestively, pelvis forward, before the Goddess - but there are no masculine deities, not a single one in sight. No woman worth her salt, one might think, could fail to be intrigued. — Alison Fell

If the invention of derivatives was the financial world's modernist dawn, the current crisis is unsettlingly like the birth of postmodernism. For anyone who studied literature in college in the past few decades, there is a weird familiarity about the current crisis: value, in the realm of finance capital, parallels the elusive nature of meaning in deconstrucitonism. According to Jacques Derrida, the doyen of the school, meaning can never be precisely located; instead, it is always 'deferred,' moved elsewhere, located in other meanings, which refer and defer to other meanings - a snake permanently and necessarily eating its own tail. This process is fluid and constant, but at moments the perpetual process of deferral stalls and collapses in on itself. Derrida called this moment an 'aporia,' from a Greek term meaning 'impasse.' There is something both amusing and appalling about seeing his theories acted out in the world markets to such cataclysmic effect. — John Lanchester

It was the first time they had ever talked face to face and Breece divined in a moment of dizzy revelation something about Sutter that no one had noticed before. Why, he is mad, Breece thought. He's not what people say about him at all. He's not just mean as a snake or eccentric or independent. He's as mad as a hatter, and I don't know how they've let him go so long. — William Gay

Loss is essential, loss is part and parcel of that necessary calamity called life. Mind you, I'm not complaining. Thanks to some inexplicable universal guiding force, it is always the worthless things we lose - slough off, like a moulting snake. Losing and losing again, is the very basis of the process, til all we are left with is the bare essence of human existence ... — Rohinton Mistry

I think in rural settings, people have a different appreciation for animals than might the city dweller. In parts of India where poisonous snake bite is common, people have a much different value system. I live in a city. I'm not thinking about wolves, lions, etc. — Henry Rollins

turn to say as much to Tomas when his lips find mine in a gentle kiss. My heartbeat quickens. I can't see his face in the darkness, but I know Tomas is giving me the chance to pull away. But I don't. I lean in and feel Tomas's mouth smile against mine before the kiss deepens. I snake a hand around his neck and hold tight as a thrilling shiver travels through me. Despite our tenuous situation, nothing has ever felt this perfect. — Joelle Charbonneau

People think we don't give a toss about the game, but when I walked out of Windsor Park that night I felt lower than a snake's belly. The reality is still there. — Rio Ferdinand

A snake that could harm you, you don't have much choice to kill. You wouldn't be able to leave a cobra in your sock drawer. But a snake that is no threat will greatly define the man who decides to kill it anyways. — Tiffany McDaniel

My memory is coming back. It is curious how it comes. Each day, a rush of pieces, loosely connected, unimportant bits, snake through me. They click, click, click into my brain, like links being snapped together. And then they are done. A small chain of memories that fill in one tiny part of my life. They come out of nowhere, and most are not important. — Mary E. Pearson

If slander be a snake, it is a winged one - it flies as well as creeps. — Douglas William Jerrold

Then meditate on your perceptions. The Buddha observed, "The person who suffers most in this world is the person who has many wrong perceptions, and most of our perceptions are erroneous." You see a snake in the dark and you panic, but when your friend shines a light on it, you see that it is only a rope. You have to know which wrong perceptions cause you to suffer. Please write beautifully the sentence, "Are you sure?" on a piece of paper and tape it to your wall. Love meditation helps you learn to look with clarity and serenity in order to improve the way you perceive. — Thich Nhat Hanh

I saw him as the supplier of my life. In a dream, in a hole, I saw the great snake of life, devouring its own tail. Life eats life, the image of the snake seemed to tell me. Life devours itself. You are part of this, and so is Gup. The snake is the whip in my father;s hand. The whip is in my hand and reaches from my bloodied back to whip my father's hand. The torturer and the tortured are each playing a part and cannot be without the other. — Douglas Clegg

When she comes down to supper I don't like her any better; in fact, a hell of a lot less. She's put on a shiny dress, all fishscales, like this was still India or the boat. On her head she's put a sort of beaded cap that fits close-like a hood. A mottled green-and-black thing that gleams dully in the candlelight. Not a hair shows below it, you can't tell whether she's a woman or what the devil she is. Right in front, above her forehead, there's a sort of question-mark worked into it, in darker beads. You can't be sure what it is, but it's shaped like a question mark. ("Kiss of the Cobra") — Cornell Woolrich

There certainly are situations where I feel not empowered or uninspired. Particularly when the person's agenda is to intimidate through abusing their position or their authority. When I am present and in a nonreactive state, then I can become like snake and slide through their "intimidation net" back into the creative plane. When I am in a reactive state, I usually regret responding, because usually all that happens is that the intimidator feels righteously vindicated. — Tori Amos

Where are the men?" the little prince at last took up the conversation
again. "It is a little lonely in the desert ... "
"It is also lonely among men," the snake said. — Antoine De Saint-Exupery

The kundalini energy is often compared to a snake that is coiled up. Because it is coiled up it can spring very quickly. It can jump and extend itself very far. — Frederick Lenz

John H. Watson might have been many things - a doctor, a storyteller, and by most accounts a kind and decent man-but he clearly wasn't a zoologist. There's no such thing as a swamp adder. And the idea that Sherlock Holmes deduced its existence from a saucer of milk is ridiculous- snakes have zero interest in milk. They also can't hear anything but vibrations, so they wouldn't hear a whistle. But they do breathe, so a snake couldn't survive in a locked safe. — Brittany Cavallaro

The thin child knew enough fairy stories to know that a prohibition in a story is only there to be broken. The first humans were fated to eat the apple. The dice were loaded against them. The grandfather was pleased with himself. The thin child found no one in this story with whom to sympathise. Except maybe the snake, which had no asked to be made use of as a temper.
The snake wanted simply to coil about in the branches.
What was there in the beginning in the Asgard stories?
In the first age there was nothing. Nor sand, nor the sea, nor cold waves; there was no earth, no sky on high. The gulf galped and grass grew nowhere. — A.S. Byatt

In the woods, too, a man casts off his years, as the snake his slough, and at what period soever of life is always a child. In the woods is perpetual youth. — Ransom Riggs

The worst things I knows of is rattlesnakes and some kinds o' people. And a rattlesnake minds his own matters if he ain't bothered. A man's got a right to kill ary thing, snake or man, comes messin' up with him. — Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings

CLEOPATRA TO THE ASP

The bright mirror I braved: the devil in it
Loved me like my soul, my soul:
Now that I seek myself in a serpent
My smile is fatal.

Nile moves in me; my thighs splay
Into the squalled Mediterranean;
My brain hides in that Abyssinia
Lost armies foundered towards.

Desert and river unwrinkle again.
Seeming to bring them the waters that make drunk
Caesar, Pompey, Antony I drank.
Now let the snake reign.

A half-deity out of Capricorn,
This rigid Augustus mounts
With his sword virginal indeed; and has shorn
Summarily the moon-horned river

From my bed. May the moon
Ruin him with virginity! Drink me, now, whole
With coiled Egypt's past; then from my delta
Swim like a fish toward Rome. — Ted Hughes

I found it again at last! Page 156 - 157 of *My Soul to Keep* by Melanie Wells.

Dr. Dylan Foster is thinking to herself while searching through literature on snake lore, "Then there was all the mystical stuff. Once again, the dearth of comparative religion in my theology training nearly skunked me. Four years of sod-busing in seminary had taught me exactly nothing more than what I already knew--in grander proportions, of course, and to near-microscopic levels of minutia. In the end, I got out of there with a solid hermeneutical method, an encyclopedic understanding of dispensational theology, and the ability to conjugate verbs and deconstruct participles in Greek and Hebrew--all notable skills--but without even passable knowledge of anything outside one extremely narrow strip of theological territory."

"When it was all said and done, I'd spent four years and trainload of money to get indoctrinated, not educated. Lousy planning, if you ask me. — Melanie Wells

A human being is still more likely to die of a bee sting, snake bite or, Lord knows, automobile accident than by shark attack. We do not execute the perpretrators of death by car. We should not butcher an animal for an inadvertent homicide. — Peter Benchley

I'm cracking up in this fucking Fishbinder Problem Box. A terrible seizure is coming on, I can feel its sinister pulsation creeping up my spine as I gnaw my tail apprehensively, grinding my teeth with anxiety, wishing I had some DDT to drown these rats in misery, repetitive cycles of poetry, symptoms of psychotic activity, rhyming of lines endlessly, results in Mazes D and E, dervish spinning round me vis-a-vis, Poole, Broome, Helvicki, help me, please, somebody, take a look at my pedigree, Albino Number 243, Doctor of Psychology, rashes, warts, and a small goatee, expert in lobotomy, performed six times on a chimpanzee, sweet land of liberty, Jesus this is agony, poisonous snake subfamily, here he comes after me! — William Kotzwinkle

Perhaps it is a testament to the power of modern marketing savvy that an obese man with heart disease and high blood pressure became one of the richest snake oil salesmen ever to live, selling a diet that promises to help you lose weight, to keep your heart healthy and to normalize your blood pressure. — T. Colin Campbell

Suzanne glanced over at her, eyebrow raised. "Is there an anaconda?" she asked, like it had suddenly occurred to her she could be totally wrong.
Tamara should only be so lucky. "No, there's no anaconda, I can promise you that." Not even a garden snake. — Erin McCarthy

A Buddhist teacher once said that a poisonous snake is only poisonous when you walk toward it. — Daniel Gottlieb

Propaganda is a soft weapon; hold it in your hands too long, and it will move about like a snake, and strike the other way. — Jean Anouilh

Life is a game of snakes and ladders, sir. You are steadily progressing accros the board, rolling sixes on the dice and thinking you are going to win - suddenly you land on a long snake and slide several rows down, far away from the destination again. -Mr. Ali- — Farahad Zama

We love to congratulate ourselves on the forward-leaning liberal society that we live in, and the truth is it's a bunch of rattle snake-handling fundamentalists that are much closer to Stalin than they are to FDR or anybody else like that. — Terence McKenna

Coelho is, of course, entitled to his dumb opinion, just as I am entitled to think Coelho's work is a nauseous broth of egomania and snake-oil mysticism with slightly less intellect, empathy and verbal dexterity than the week-old camembert I threw out yesterday. — Stuart Kelly

It seems that there is never to be any perfect rest. Even in Eden the snake rears its head among the laden boughs of the Tree of Knowledge. The silence of the dreamless night is broken by the roar of the avalanche; the hissing of sudden floods; the clanging of the engine bell marking its sweep through a sleeping American town; the clanking of distant paddles over the sea ... — Bram Stoker