Quotes and Sayings About Snakes
-
Every time some new huckster of angst-ridden metaphor is appointed by Art Forum, the congregation genuflects, stroking the catalog like a handful of Rosary beads, and starts spreading that old gospel according to Hyperbole. No questions asked... And thus the bill of goods is sold, all along the line. An art historical snake, swallowing its own tale.
-- Abe Ajay -
The crookedness of the serpent is still straight enough to slide through the snake hole.
-- Abraham Verghese -
I'm after a snake and please God I'll scotch it.
-- Adam Hochschild -
To use a Southern euphemism, our space program has been snake-bit.
-- Al Gore -
Woman is a misbegotten man and has a faulty and defective nature in comparison to his. Therefore she is unsure in herself. What she cannot get, she seeks to obtain through lying and diabolical deceptions. And so, to put it briefly, one must be on one's guard with every woman, as if she were a poisonous snake and the horned devil. ... Thus in evil and perverse doings woman is cleverer, that is, slyer, than man. Her feelings drive woman toward every evil, just as reason impels man toward all good.
-- Albertus Magnus -
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 -
ADDER, n. A species of snake. So called from its habit of adding funeral outlays to the other expenses of living.
-- Ambrose Bierce -
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 -
I am like a snake who has already bitten. I retreat from a direct battle while knowing the slow effect of the poison.
-- Anais Nin -
Ah, come now. I look like an angel, but I'm not. The old rules of nature encompass many creatures like me. We're beautiful like the diamond-backed snake, or the striped tiger, yet we're merciless killers
-- Anne Rice -
What have you come to Earth for?' 'I'm having difficulties with a flower,' the little prince said. 'Ah!' said the snake. And they were both silent.
-- Antoine de Saint-Exupery -
[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 -
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 -
My favorite moments? Where it's all going swimmingly, the sun's out and I've got a fire going and a nice snake on the barbecue.
-- Bear Grylls -
I try and eat really healthy when I'm home, but I certainly don't eat worms and snakes.
-- Bear Grylls -
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 -
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 -
I'm not scared of snakes, spiders or heights. I have three children; as a mum, you can't be afraid of things like that.
-- Britt Ekland -
You can't talk of the dangers of snake poisoning and not mention snakes.
-- C. Everett Koop -
A story can fly like a bee, so straight and swift you catch only the hum of its passing. Or move so slowly it seems motionless, curled in upon itself like a snake in the sun. It can vanish like smoke before the wind. Linger like perfume in the nose. Change with every telling, yet always remain the same.
-- Cameron Dokey -
Maybe it’s animalness that will make the world right again: the wisdom of elephants, the enthusiasm of canines, the grace of snakes, the mildness of anteaters. Perhaps being human needs some diluting.
-- Carol Emshwiller -
She knew herself, how she had slowly, over years, become a cat, a wolf, a snake, anything but a girl. How she had wrung out her girlhood like death.
-- Catherynne M. Valente -
Even if a snake is not poisonous, it should pretend to be venomous.
-- Chanakya -
But there's a juicy artery in your groin," he said after a pause to regroup, his voice as slithery as a snake on a slide. "Don't you talk dirty," I told him. "I won't listen to that.
-- Charlaine Harris -
In the middle ages, people took potions for their ailments. In the 19th century they took snake oil. Citizens of today's shiny, technological age are too modern for that. They take antioxidants and extract of cactus instead.
-- Charles Krauthammer -
I went out in my yard and saw a snake, so I got really scared, and I came back inside to get a shovel, and beat the hell out of that snake. Then I didn't have cable for a week.
-- Charlie Viracola -
...don't create snakes out of ropes. You have enough to worry about.
-- Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni -
To be crazy is not necessarily to writhe in snake pits or converse with imaginary gods. It can sometimes be not knowing what to do in the morning.
-- Christopher Lehmann-Haupt