Wise Serpent Quotes & Sayings

He is as wise as a serpent and as innocent as a dove. — Paulo Coelho

Still anyone who trusts a serpent deserves its bite. The wise see a creature for what it is, not what it says it may be. — Alice Hoffman

What so pure, which envious tongues will spare?
Some wicked wits have libell'd all the fair,
With matchless impudence they style a wife,
The dear-bought curse, and lawful plague of life;
A bosom serpent, a domestic evil,
A night invasion, and a mid-day devil;
Let not the wise these sland'rous words regard,
But curse the bones of ev'ry living bard. — Alexander Pope

Yes," Nicholas replied, in a bored voice. "The name is Dutch. Dragonwyck, meaning place of the dragon. It derives from an Indian legend about a flying serpent whose eyes were fire and whose flaming breath withered the corn."
"Heavens!" With a light laugh, Miranda asked her new employer if the red men had sent forth a champion to do battle with the dragon.
The patroon's face was dark, unsmiling. "To appease him the wise men of the tribe sacrificed a pure maiden on the rocky bluff you see above you."
Miranda's laughter died. Something in Nicholas Van Ryn's cruel, handsome features made her imagine herself in the Indian maiden's place. — Anya Seton

The tongue is a venomous serpent, which is why the wise cage it. — Matshona Dhliwayo

Don't blow your tomorrows, don't throw away your love. You've got to be wise as a serpent, harmless as a dove. — Gerry Rafferty

There's an old Cheyenne saying about how, when a man is as wise as a serpent, he can afford to be as harmless as a dove. — Larissa Ione

The Serpent is wise in that it lives in immediacy, without the need for the elaborate intellectual frameworks Humankind is — Margaret Atwood

If you step on a serpent, it will reply you with its fangs. — Matshona Dhliwayo

Examining this water ... I found floating therein divers earthy particles, and some green streaks, spirally wound serpent-wise ... and I judge that some of these little creatures were above a thousand times smaller than the smallest ones I have ever yet seen, upon the rind of cheese, in wheaten flour, mould, and the like. — Antonie Van Leeuwenhoek

When your heart flows broad and full like a river, a blessing and a danger to those living near: there is the origin of your virtue.
When you are above praise and blame, and your will wants to command all things, like a lover's will: there is the origin of your virtue.
When you despise the agreeable and the soft bed and cannot bed yourself far enough from the soft: there is the origin of your virtue.
When you will with a single will and you call this cessation of all need "necessity": there is the origin of your virtue.
Verily, a new good and evil is she. Verily, a new deep murmur and the voice of a new well!
Power is she, this new virtue; a dominant thought is she, and around her a wise soul: a golden sun, and around it the serpent of knowledge. — Friedrich Nietzsche

Passing just lately over this lake, ... and examining this water next day, I found floating therein divers earthy particles, and some green streaks, spirally wound serpent-wise, and orderly arranged, after the manner of the copper or tin worms, which distillers use to cool their liquors as they distil over. The whole circumference of each of these streaks was about the thickness of a hair of one's head ... all consisted of very small green globules joined together: and there were very many small green globules as well. [The earliest recorded observation of the common green alga Spyrogyra.] — Antonie Van Leeuwenhoek

Be wise as a serpent and wary as a dove! — Mark Twain

When I was young, I asked my priest how to get to heaven and still protect yourself from all the evil in the world. He told me what God told His children;'You are sheep among wolves, be wise as the serpent, yet innocent as doves. — Dennis Lehane

The enemy hides in Shadow, Master of the Hunt. Therefore be as wise as a serpent, having seen the face of the Adversary. — Katherine Kurtz, Deborah T. Harris

I have always been fond of Josh Billings's remark that "it is much easier to be a harmless dove than a wise serpent." There are plenty of decent legislators, and plenty of able legislators; but the blamelessness and the fighting edge are not always combined. Both qualities are necessary for the man who is to wage active battle against the powers that prey. — Theodore Roosevelt

And again, though we cannot prove, we feel, that we are deathless. We perceive that life is not like those dramas so beloved by the people - in which every villain is punished, and every act of virtue meets with its reward; we learn anew every day that the wisdom of the serpent fares better here than the gentleness of the dove, and that any thief can triumph if he steals enough. If mere worldly utility and expediency were the justification of virtue, it would not be wise to be too good. And yet, knowing all this, having it flung into our faces with brutal repetition, we still feel the command to righteousness, we know that we ought to do the inexpedient good. — Will Durant