Snakes Quotes - Page 19

• POTABLE, n. Suitable for drinking. Water is said to be potable; indeed, some declare it our natural beverage, although even they find it palatable only when suffering from the recurrent disorder known as thirst, for which it is a medicine. Upon nothing has so great and diligent ingenuity been brought to bear in all ages and in all countries, except the most uncivilized, as upon the invention of substitutes for water. To hold that this general aversion to that liquid has no basis in the preservative instinct of the race is to be unscientific-and without science we are as the snakes and toads.

  Ambrose Bierce

  Country, Drinking, Science

  Ambrose Bierce (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Ambrose Bierce (Illustrated)”, p.2484, Delphi Classics

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• The crookedness of the serpent is still straight enough to slide through the snake hole.

  Abraham Verghese

  Slides, Enough, Holes

  Abraham Verghese (2012). “Cutting for Stone”, p.385, Random House India

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• Hot weather brings out snakes and slaveholders, and I like one class of the venomous creatures as little as I do the other.

  Harriet Ann Jacobs

  Class, Weather, Black

  Harriet Ann Jacobs (2006). “Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl - Literary Touchstone Classic”, p.194, Prestwick House Inc

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• Thin ribbons of fear snake bluely through you like a system of rivers. We need a cloudburst or soothing landscape fast, to still this panic. Maybe a field of dracaena, or a vast stand of sugar pines—generous, gum-yielding trees—to fill our minds with vegetable wonder and keep dread at bay.

  Amy Gerstler

  Fear, Vegetables, Rivers

  Amy Gerstler (2000). “Medicine”, p.21, Penguin

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• [St. Patrick] was a terror to any snake that came in his path, whether it was the cold, slimy reptile sliding along the ground or the more dangerous snake that oppresses men through false teachings. And he drove the snakes out of the minds of men, snakes of superstition and brutality and cruelty.

  Arthur Brisbane

  Teaching, Men, Mind

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• Well, it's a lot less dangerous - working with snakes and mountaibn lions and dangerous animals - than working in Hollywood [laughs]. Hollwood will kill you.

  Bernie Krause

  Animal, Laughing, Hollywood

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• You never die from a snake bite, you can't be unbitten it's in the way, what continues to pour through you long after the bite has taken place.

  Bob Proctor

  Taken, Long, Way

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• That's what love is made of, snakes, snails, and puppy dog tails, sugar, spice, and everything nice.

  Smokey Robinson

  Dog, Nice, Love Is

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• 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

  Moving, Hands, Long

  Jean Anouilh, Lillian Hellman (1999). “The Lark”, p.11, Dramatists Play Service Inc

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• Description needs to slide into a story like a snake through grass - silently, almost invisibly, without calling attention to itself. It should enrich every story moment without slowing the action.

  Marion Dane Bauer

  Needs, Attention, Stories

  Marion Dane Bauer (1996). “Our Stories: A Fiction Workshop for Young Authors”, p.44, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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• A madness of tender caressing seized her. She purred as a tiger might have done, while she undulated like a snake.

  Elinor Glyn

  Done, Might, Madness

  Elinor Glyn (1907). “Three Weeks”

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• Devoutly the teachers point out huge fumigated domes; but beneath the statues there's no love, no love beneath the eyes set in crystal. Love is there, in flesh ripped by thirst, in the tiny hut struggling against the flood; love is there, in ditches where snakes of hunger wrestle, in the sad sea that rocks dead gulls, and in the darkest stinging kiss under pillows.

  Federico Garcia Lorca

  Teacher, Struggle, Eye

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• If you annoy the Hog-nosed Snake enough, he will roll over on his back and play dead. If you turn him right-side up, he will roll over to prove that he is dead... While he is playing dead, you can go straight up to him and step on his head or smash him with a big club.

  Will Cuppy

  Play, Clubs, Sides

  "The Hog-Nosed Snake". "How to Become Extinct". Book by Will Cuppy, 1941.

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• Other countries may boast of this and that, but nobody can touch the United States for poisonous snakes. We have about twenty species, most of them deadly, and Europe has only five or six, none of them much good. We have fifteen kinds of Rattlesnakes alone and nobody else has even one. [Footnote: There is a species in Central and South America, but it probably came from here.]

  Will Cuppy

  Country, Europe, America

  "How to Become Extinct". Book by Will Cuppy, 1941.

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• You guys (Boko Haram) are trying so hard to convince everybody that you're such badasses. But all you've done with this kidnapping is highlight who the real badasses are, the kids you kidnapped. Compared to a teenager who knows that her desire for an education could get her dragged into a snake infested jungle to be sold as a bribe to some demented, stick-chewing cartoon villain but still gets up and goes to class everyday, fully aware of that danger - compared to their courage - I'd say Boko Haram is a bunch of little girls. But, you know what? You don't deserve that compliment.

  Jon Stewart

  Girl, Badass, Teenager

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• To be aroused in the dark by five feet of cold, green snake gliding over one's face is unpleasant.

  David Livingstone

  Dark, Feet, Gliding

  David Livingstone, Charles Livingstone (1865). “Narrative of an Expedition to the Zambesi and Its Tributaries: And of the Discovery of the Lakes Shirwa and Nyassa. 1858-1864”, p.152

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• 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

  Rude, Atheism, Spiders

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (2008). “The Spiritual Emerson: Essential Works by Ralph Waldo Emerson”, p.78, Penguin

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• It will not hurt me when I am old,      A running tide where moonlight burned           Will not sting me like silver snakes;The years will make me sad and cold,      It is the happy heart that breaks.

  Sara Teasdale

  Running, Hurt, Heart

  Sara Teasdale, William Drake (1984). “Mirror of the Heart: Poems of Sara Teasdale”, MacMillan Publishing Company

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• My mother early on taught us to respect all animals, and I mean all animals - not just cats and dogs but rats and snakes and spiders and fish and wildlife, so I really grew up believing they are just like us and just as deserving of consideration.

  Joanna Lumley

  Mother, Dog, Believe

  "Joanna Lumley: Animals Are Just Like Us". Interview with Dan Mathews, www.peta.org. December 6, 2010.

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• It isn't true that the laws of nature have been capriciously disturbed; that snakes have talked; that women have been turned into salt; that rods have brought water out of rocks.

  Arthur Conan Doyle

  Rocks, Law, Water

  Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (2013). “Collected Works of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (Delphi Classics)”, p.4043, Delphi Classics

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• Lily Brown writes with and against things in poems that are coiled up tight as springs (or snakes). A believer in the power of the line, she writes, 'I think the plastics/and sink them' then 'Where is the sand/man hiding the dirt.' These terse, biting poems will make you look around and wonder.

  Rae Armantrout

  Spring, Writing, Men

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• I've done about every kind of fishing you can imagine, but I've never noodled. And the reason I've never noodled is because I don't want to get bit by a water moccasin. I'm just too afraid of snakes.

  Tim Blake Nelson

  Fishing, Water, Want

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• Credit cards are like snakes: Handle 'em long enough, and one will bite you.

  Elizabeth Warren

  Long, Cards, Ems

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• 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

  Engineering, Orchids, People

  Freeman Dyson (2015). “Dreams of Earth and Sky”, p.2, New York Review of Books

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• I've done movies for certain reasons; I did 'Anaconda' because the black man lives. Simple. The black man isn't dead in the first three pages, like Jurassic Park. It's like, 'The black man kills the snake with a Latino girl? Damn! I got to do this.'

  Ice Cube

  Girl, Simple, Men

  "Ice Cube and Kevin Hart pair up for a ride". Interview with Sonia Saraiya, www.avclub.com. January 17, 2014.

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