"Gladiator" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... as himself, that he is necessarily an infamous character. What if, at eighteen years of age, without a friend in the world, trusting to the powerful frame and intrepid spirit with which Nature had endowed me, I flung myself into the ring? Who should be a gladiator if I were not? Is that a crime? What if, at a later period, with a brain for calculation which none can rival, I invariably succeeded in that in which the greatest men in the country fail! Am I to be branded because I have made half a million by a good book? What if ...
— Henrietta Temple - A Love Story • Benjamin Disraeli
... now, Kenny," choked the little painter, winking and making horrible faces at the littered chair, "don't you go to taking on. Don't you do it. I'll call up Westcott. The old gladiator!" Somehow he turned his sniffle to a snort. "What in thunder does she want to be painted for anyway? She's got a nose like a triangle and the composition of her face is ...
— Kenny • Leona Dalrymple
... one, I see,' said he who had spoken to Probus, 'who breeds hounds for the theatres—I thought I had seen him before. His ordinary stock is not less than five hundred blood-hounds. He married the sister of the gladiator Sosia. His ...
— Aurelian - or, Rome in the Third Century • William Ware
... westering; the shadow of the Palatine begins to creep across the Forum, and the villas on the Alban hills burn in the setting rays, and the Romans, before retiring to their homes, demand their last grand spectacle,—the death of some poor unhappy captive or gladiator. The victim steps upon the arena amid the deep stillness of the overwhelming multitude. It is no mimic combat his: he is "appointed to death." This lets us into the peculiar force of Paul's words, "I think that God hath set forth us the apostles last, as ...
— Pilgrimage from the Alps to the Tiber - Or The Influence of Romanism on Trade, Justice, and Knowledge • James Aitken Wylie
... Juno, and of an Apollo, is to be sought not at Rome, but in Greece, if we contrast the Greek population, delighting in the bloodless athletic contests of boxing, racing, and intellectual rivalry at Olympia, with the Roman people gloating over the agony of a gladiator. Now the reason pronounces that the beautiful must not only be life and form, but a living form, that is, beauty, inasmuch as it dictates to man the twofold law of absolute formality and absolute reality. Reason also utters the decision that man shall only PLAY with beauty, and he SHALL ...
— Literary and Philosophical Essays • Various
... an exhibition, and I trust will never undergo it. It is certainly unfit for it. I have never written but for the solitary reader, and require no experiments for applause beyond his silent approbation. Since such an attempt to drag me forth as a gladiator in the theatrical arena is a violation of all the courtesies of literature, I trust that the impartial part of the press will step between me and this pollution. I say pollution, because every violation of a right is such, and I claim my ...
— Life of Lord Byron, With His Letters And Journals, Vol. 5 (of 6) • (Lord Byron) George Gordon Byron
... impressing the blacks by an almost intuitive instinct; and as the huge savage lay dead on the ground, I placed my foot over the wound, folded my arms, and looked round triumphantly upon the enthusiastic crowd, like a gladiator of old. ...
— The Adventures of Louis de Rougemont - as told by Himself • Louis de Rougemont
... covered with beautiful woods, and there were fine flourishing cities at its foot. So little was the terrible nature of the valley on the top understood, that in A. D. 72, Spartacus, a rebellious Roman gladiator, encamped there with some thousands of fighting men, and the Roman soldiers were let down the precipices in order ...
— The San Francisco Calamity • Various
... The palaces of the Pharaohs, or of Darius; then the pomp of the Ptolemies, or of the Seleucids—came into Europe on the neck of some vulgar drunken wife of a Roman proconsul, to glitter for a few centuries at every gladiator's butchery in the amphitheatre; then went away with Placidia on a Gothic ox- waggon, to pass into an Arab seraglio at Seville; and then, perhaps, back from Sultan to Sultan again to its native India, ...
— The Roman and the Teuton - A Series of Lectures delivered before the University of Cambridge • Charles Kingsley
... (241-197 B.C.) and Eumenes II. (197-159 B.C.) it developed an independent and powerful school of sculpture, of whose productions we fortunately possess numerous examples. The most famous of these is the Dying Gaul or Galatian (Fig. 183), once erroneously called the Dying Gladiator. Hordes of Gauls had invaded Asia Minor as early as 278 B.C., and, making their headquarters in the interior, in the district afterwards known from them as Galatia, had become the terror and the scourge of the whole region. Attalus ...
— A History Of Greek Art • F. B. Tarbell
... Louvre. Studied three statues half an hour each—the Venus Victrix, Polyhymnia, and Gladiateur Combattant. The first is mutilated; but if disarmed she conquers all hearts, what would she achieve in full panoply? As to the Gladiator, I noted as follows on my catalogue: A pugilist; antique, brown with age; attitude, leaning forward; left hand raised on guard, right hand thrown out back, ready to strike a side blow; right leg bent; straight line from the ...
— Sunny Memories of Foreign Lands V2 • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... Severance again, but this time tinily and with a flavor of third acts about her, and she started to relax rather beautifully into a Dying Gladiator pose. ...
— Young People's Pride • Stephen Vincent Benet
... perhaps be made for retaining the popular title of one of the illustrations. The learned are, we believe, agreed that the statue known as the "Dying Gladiator" does not represent a gladiator at all. Yet it seemed pedantic, in view of Byron's famous description, to let it appear under any ...
— Roman life in the days of Cicero • Alfred J[ohn] Church
... have made an impression in childhood, the soonest recur to the mind in these distressing cases. I thought of poor Hagar with her Ishmael, exposed to perish with thirst in The Desert: it was exactly my case, whilst dim vistas of childhood now filled up the chasms of opening memory. Byron's dying gladiator, in the last struggles of death, saw the green banks of the Rhine, the flowery scenes of his childhood's days, and, amid the horrid din of the Roman amphitheatre, heard the innocent shouts of his little playmates. I was now suffering a dreadful thirst, and might perish unless the ...
— Travels in the Great Desert of Sahara, in the Years of 1845 and 1846 • James Richardson
... controlled the royal will. The story of this famous tour exhibits alike the greatness of his powers and the littleness of his character.[121] The homage paid to him was not undeserved, for he was assuredly the foremost gladiator of the whig party, and had given proofs of more varied ability than any living politician or lawyer. But the dignified eloquence of which he was capable on rare occasions was here submerged in a flood of egotistical rhetoric, which carried him away so far that he assumed a political ...
— The Political History of England - Vol XI - From Addington's Administration to the close of William - IV.'s Reign (1801-1837) • George Brodrick
... consider perfect; let us suppose that upon a close examination you discover in one of the figures a gross defect of design, a limb distorted, or a muscle that belies nature, such as has been discovered, they say, in one of the arms of an antique gladiator; you would experience a feeling of displeasure, but you would not throw that picture in the fire; you would merely say that it is not perfect but that it has qualities that ...
— The Confession of a Child of The Century • Alfred de Musset
... I had once an opportunity, on a tour through Italy, to observe, while she took little or no notice of other works of art, would gaze, as if fascinated, at the writhings of Laocooen and his sons in the folds and fangs of the serpents, at the sculptured death of the Gladiator, and even at the ghastly, repulsive pictures of martyrdoms and barbaric mutilations and tortures,—the hideous monstrosities of a diseased and degraded imagination found in the churches and convents of Rome, which made others turn their ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 6, Issue 35, September, 1860 • Various
... this quip would leave us cold. The 'Isles of Greece' seem rather tawdry too; but on the 'Address to the Ocean,' or on 'The Dying Gladiator,' 'time has ...
— Essays of Travel • Robert Louis Stevenson
... stable boy, spruce and smart in his holiday attire, met them with a broom in his hand, and followed them. In the shed there were five horses in their separate stalls, and Vronsky knew that his chief rival, Gladiator, a very tall chestnut horse, had been brought there, and must be standing among them. Even more than his mare, Vronsky longed to see Gladiator, whom he had never seen. But he knew that by the etiquette of the race course ...
— Anna Karenina • Leo Tolstoy
... either about its professors or about the number of its students. It is probable, however, that Peder Galle, who was cantor of the Upsala Chapter so early as 1504,[12] and whose powers as a theological gladiator will become known to us further on, was one of the professors. Another was Henrik Sledorn,[13] whom Gustavus later made his chancellor. Of the progress made by Gustavus in his studies we know nothing. It may well be surmised, ...
— The Swedish Revolution Under Gustavus Vasa • Paul Barron Watson
... ease Arrange it, if you only please.' Close on eight years it now must be, Since first Maecenas numbered me Among his friends, as one to take Out driving with him, and to make The confidant of trifles, say, Like this, 'What is the time of day?' 'The Thracian gladiator, can One match him with the Syrian?' 'These chilly mornings will do harm, If one don't mind to wrap up warm;' Such nothings as without a fear One drops into the chinkiest ear. Yet all this tune hath envy's glance On me looked more and more askance. ...
— Horace • Theodore Martin
... said, "to be the son of the greatest gladiator of our fathers' days, of the man esteemed the best swordsman Italy ever saw live out his term of service and live to retire ...
— Andivius Hedulio • Edward Lucas White
... with the quiet contempt of the intellectual gladiator that he is, Tom Van Dorn has risen in this community as no other man young or old since its founding. His spacious home is the temple of hospitality; his magnificent talent is given freely, often to the poor and needy to whom his money ...
— In the Heart of a Fool • William Allen White
... his expression changing swiftly to large graciousness and tenderness. "Of course, I couldn't have expected anything else of you. Ah, Henley! A brave soul. He stands out among contemporary rhymesters—magazine rhymesters—as a gladiator stands out in the midst of a band ...
— Martin Eden • Jack London
... bed one night expecting to find Jack asleep, Frank discovered him tramping round and round the room airily attired in a towel, and so dizzy with his brisk revolutions that as his brother looked he tumbled over and lay panting like a fallen gladiator. ...
— Jack and Jill • Louisa May Alcott
... Tiber gave an additional embellishment to this house, which was ornamented, internally, with the most perfect elegance. The saloon was decorated with copies, in plaster, of the best statues in Italy—Niobe, Laocoon, Venus de Medicis, and the Dying Gladiator. In the apartment where Corinne received company were instruments of music, books, and furniture not more remarkable for its simplicity than for its convenience, being merely arranged so as to render the conversation easy, ...
— Corinne, Volume 1 (of 2) - Or Italy • Mme de Stael
... develop in the features and forms of men in fierce strife, whether determination and devotion, and all the other attributes of that unselfishness which constitutes heroism, as in the warrior of Agasias; and distress not agitated nor unworthy, though mortal, as in the Dying Gladiator, or brutal ferocity and butchered agony, of which the lowest and least palliated examples are those battles of Salvator Rosa, which none but a man, base-born and thief-bred, could have dwelt upon for an instant without sickening, of which I will only name that example in the Pitti ...
— Modern Painters Volume II (of V) • John Ruskin
... settled on a thousand acres o' land here in New England. Dan has eight gangs o' human oxen from Italy at work for him getting in his fertilizers. He rides a horse all day an' is as cordy as a Roman gladiator. Do you know what it means? Ten thousand like him are going into the same work, the greed o' the middleman will be checked, an' one o' these days the old earth 'll be lopsided ...
— Keeping up with Lizzie • Irving Bacheller
... a blow that, had it been stricken in the days of Olympian and Nemean contests—where Pindar and his peers were "reporters"—might well have earned a dithyramb; a blow that would have gladdened the sullen spirit of the old gladiator who trained the Cool Captain, if the prophet had lived to see his auguries fulfilled, or if sights and sounds from upper earth could penetrate to the limbo of defunct athletae. Nothing born of woman could ...
— Sword and Gown - A Novel • George A. Lawrence
... that permission would be granted me to reproduce at least one of the Robert Montgomery Bird manuscripts, now owned by the University of Pennsylvania. Naturally, a collection of representative plays should include either Bird's "The Gladiator," or one of his other more or less oratorical and poetical pieces, written under the inspiration of Edwin Forrest. The intention to include John Augustus Stone's "Metamora" brought to light, after correspondence with the Forrest Home in Philadelphia, ...
— Representative Plays by American Dramatists - 1765-1819 • Various
... possible to raise the slaves of the city in aid of his revolutionary plans, and they flocked to him in great numbers; but he afterwards abandoned his intention, thinking that to mix up the cause of citizens with that of slaves would not be judicious.[357] It is here too that the gladiator slaves first meet us as a political arm; Cicero had the next spring to defend P. Sulla on the charge, among others, of having bought gladiators during the conspiracy with seditious views, and the senate had to direct ...
— Social life at Rome in the Age of Cicero • W. Warde Fowler
... aristocracy among those engaged in the trades or lower professions. Below them in the hierarchy came those who gained a livelihood by the artes ludicrae, like the actor, professional dancer, juggler, or gladiator, and in the lowest caste were the carpenters, weavers, and other artisans whose occupations ...
— The Common People of Ancient Rome - Studies of Roman Life and Literature • Frank Frost Abbott
... ever made by any President; but, as no evil is entirely unmixed, good has come of this, as from many others. Ambitious, unscrupulous, energetic, indefatigable, voluble, and plausible,—a political gladiator, ready for a "set-to" in any crowd,—he is beaten in his own chosen field, and stands to-day before the country as a convicted usurper, a political criminal, guilty of a bold and persistent attempt to possess himself of the legislative powers solemnly secured to ...
— Collected Articles of Frederick Douglass • Frederick Douglass
... manifestation of weakness without sympathy, and gave directions for 'a young man to be got in' to wrestle with the luggage. When that gladiator had disappeared from the arena, peace ensued, and the new ...
— The Mystery of Edwin Drood • Charles Dickens
... deposited poison prepared against the last extremity. Wounded to the heart by this general desertion, and perhaps by some special case of ingratitude, such as would probably enough be signalized in the flight of his personal favorites, he called for a gladiator of the household to come and dispatch him. But none appearing,—"What!" said he, "have I neither friend nor foe?" And so saying, he ran towards the Tiber, with the purpose of drowning himself. But that paroxysm, like all the rest, proved transient; and he expressed ...
— The Caesars • Thomas de Quincey
... his career of imbittered opposition because of his quarrel with Walpole; but it is likely enough that even if no quarrel had ever taken place and he never had been Walpole's friend and colleague, he would sooner or later have become the foremost gladiator of ...
— A History of the Four Georges, Volume I (of 4) • Justin McCarthy
... files of gladiators entered, holding their knives to Nero that he might see that they were sharp. It was then the eyes of the vestals lighted; artistic death was their chiefest joy, and in a moment, when the spectacle began and the first gladiator fell, above the din you could hear their cry "Hic habet!" and ...
— Imperial Purple • Edgar Saltus
... seat[314],' his thoughts upon this aweful change were in general full of dismal apprehensions. His mind resembled the vast amphitheatre, the Colisaeum at Rome. In the centre stood his judgement, which, like a mighty gladiator, combated those apprehensions that, like the wild beasts of the Arena, were all around in cells, ready to be let out upon him. After a conflict, he drives them back into their dens; but not killing them, they were still assailing him. To my question, whether we might not fortify our minds ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 2 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill
... transfers his allegiance from standard to standard, at the pleasure of fortune or the highest bidder; and to whose insatiable thirst for plunder and warm quarters we owe much of that civil dissension which is now turning our swords against our own bowels. I had scarce patience with the hired gladiator, and yet could hardly help laughing at ...
— A Legend of Montrose • Sir Walter Scott
... Caesar, laughing, and turning down the thumb, as was done in the Circus, in sign that the gladiator had received a blow and ...
— Quo Vadis - A Narrative of the Time of Nero • Henryk Sienkiewicz
... honest-minded and supposedly pure man into her toils, and then throws him over for the next man she meets who is handsomer and lustier. In Bizet's opera the men are the soldier Don Jos, and the bullfighter, Escamillo; in De Lara's Hars, a singer, and Helion, a gladiator. Both operas end with the arena as a background—the Plaza de Toros in Seville, on the one hand, the Roman Circus, on the other. But here the resemblances end unless we pursue the traces of Bizet's music into De Lara's score, and this I shall ...
— Chapters of Opera • Henry Edward Krehbiel
... play was the 'Gladiator.' I did not like part of it much, but other portions were really splendid. In the latter part of the last act. . . the man's whole soul seems absorbed in the part he is playing; and it is real startling to see him. I am sorry I did not see him play ...
— The Boys' Life of Mark Twain • Albert Bigelow Paine
... peril seemed only to run into another. Then, as she deliberated and alternately put her foot forward and withdrew it again in a fruitless attempt to muster courage to run the gauntlet, two men emerged from the wine shop, and staggered toward her—a slave and a gladiator, linked arm in arm, and singing a wild song in discordant keys. Both appeared to be under the influence of wine, though in different degrees; for while the former had set no bounds to his license, the latter had somewhat restrained his propensities, in view of the demands upon his strength ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No. 6, December 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... are to be seen the time-worn broken granite benches, from whence myriads of human beings once gazed down on the area below, where the gladiator shouted, and the lion and the leopard yelled: all around, beneath these flights of benches, are vaulted excavations from whence the combatants, part human part bestial, darted forth by their several ...
— The Bible in Spain • George Borrow
... pre-eminent as the Champion who like a great Gladiator fought the battle of civil freedom, Pym is no less conspicious in having grasped the principles on which it must be fought. He saw that if either Crown or Parliament must go down, better for England that it should be the crown. He saw also, that the vital ...
— The Evolution of an Empire • Mary Parmele
... others, to whom I ventured to expose my qualms on the way home, declared them preposterous, and that the game was magnificent discipline for both mind and body. Come to that, the vicissitudes of a matador are magnificent discipline for both mind and body. So are those of a gladiator. Yet I have my doubts whether Leggatt would like to be the father of either. Nevertheless, although he is a citizen of far greater consideration than I, he gave me to understand that he would be proud to be described in the newspapers as the father ...
— The Opinions of a Philosopher • Robert Grant
... interfered with he could awaken it at last to content and happiness. This letter, however, might be the torch which would kindle the old love with tenfold intensity. Long hours he fought his temptation like a gladiator, for fine as had been Mildred's influence over him, he was still intensely human. At last he gained the victory, and went home quiet, but more exhausted than he had ever been from a long hot day's toil in the harvest-field. He had resolved to keep absolute faith with Mildred, ...
— Without a Home • E. P. Roe
... epigram. Society draws caricatures, and in this way flings in the teeth of fallen kings the affronts which it fancies it has received from them; society, like the Roman youth at the circus, never shows mercy to the fallen gladiator; mockery and money are its vital necessities. "Death to the weak!" That is the oath taken by this kind of Equestrian order, instituted in their midst by all the nations of the world; everywhere it makes for the elevation of the rich, and its motto is deeply graven in hearts that wealth has ...
— The Magic Skin • Honore de Balzac
... of casts, the fighting gladiator, the discobulus, the Venus of Milo, and hundreds of smaller pieces, masks, torsos, and the heads of the Parthenon horses. Flattened paint-tubes and broken bits of charcoal littered the floor and cluttered the chairs and shelves. A strong odour ...
— Vandover and the Brute • Frank Norris
... in the open, are not bred in Jesuit forcing-houses. Even the Jesuits themselves have acknowledged this, and perhaps the strongest of all arguments supplementary to those given by Father Paul were uttered by Padre Curci, eminent in his day as a Jesuit gladiator, but who realized finally the impossibility of accomplishing great things with men moulded by ...
— Autobiography of Andrew Dickson White Volume II • Andrew Dickson White
... consider perfect. Let us say that upon a close examination you discover in one of the figures a gross defect of design, a limb distorted, or a muscle that belies nature, such as has been discovered, they say, in one of the arms of an antique gladiator. You would experience a feeling of displeasure, but you would not throw that picture in the fire; you would merely say that it is not perfect, but that it has qualities that are ...
— Child of a Century, Complete • Alfred de Musset
... says of the gladiator?" said Guy, calmly wiping his sabre. "How graphic is that passage commencing 'Inter nos,' etc." The sport continued until the heads of twenty desperadoes had been gathered in. The rest seemed inclined to disperse. ...
— The Luck of Roaring Camp and Other Tales • Bret Harte
... dispel her gloomy forebodings. The sound of the tea-bell terminated her reverie, and rising, she walked slowly to the dining-room, throwing her head as erect as possible, and compressing her mouth like some gladiator summoned to the fatal arena of ...
— Vashti - or, Until Death Us Do Part • Augusta J. Evans Wilson
... it may be objected that in every particular species there are various central forms, which are separate and distinct from each other, and yet are undeniably beautiful; that in the human figure, for instance, the beauty of the Hercules is one, of the gladiator another, of the Apollo another, which makes so ...
— Seven Discourses on Art • Joshua Reynolds
... illustrious men of the time, encouraged informers and false accusations, and filled Rome with terror. In the midst of these cruelties he often sang, danced, or played the buffoon in public, fought as a gladiator in the circus, and ordered the people to worship him as a second Hercules. His lieutenant Marcellus, in A.D. 184, defeated the Caledonians, after they had passed the long wall of Hadrian, and had ravaged ...
— A Smaller History of Rome • William Smith and Eugene Lawrence
... were also my good ancestors, who tore Italy to pieces, joined hands with German Emperors, upset Popes, seized everything they could lay hands upon, and turned the country into a sort of perpetual gladiator's show. That is a proud and promising inheritance for an aspiring patriot, is it not? The less you and I talk of patriotism, the better—seeing what our people have done in history to make patriotism ...
— Taquisara • F. Marion Crawford
... the populace were affected with shame and indignation when they beheld their sovereign enter the lists as a gladiator, and glory in a profession which the laws and manners of the Romans had branded with the justest note of infamy. [36] He chose the habit and arms of the Secutor, whose combat with the Retiarius formed one of the most lively scenes in the bloody sports of the amphitheatre. The ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 1 • Edward Gibbon
... sleep, at once agitated and pleasant, that one sleeps on the eve of a duel—when one is sure of killing one's man. At least, that is the effect of this impatience on me. And you, Percy?" said the robust gladiator to Mortimer. ...
— A Romance of the West Indies • Eugene Sue
... that glade of the evergreens where he had practised daily with his improvised punching-bag since the second week in July. A quick glance about photographed on his brain the details of the arena in which he was so soon to play the gladiator. ...
— Jim Spurling, Fisherman - or Making Good • Albert Walter Tolman
... Laura's eyes; and her one pleasure was to sit pale and still before her easel, day after day, filling her portfolios with the faces he had once admired. Her sisters observed that every Bacchus, Piping Faun, or Dying Gladiator bore some likeness to a comely countenance that heathen god or hero never owned; and seeing this, they privately rejoiced that she had found such ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. VI.,October, 1860.—No. XXXVI. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... yards. Here was a darksome passage where murder might be (and no doubt had been) done. Here was an echoing gateway to a coaching inn, with a watchman ready to hit evil boys over the head with his clapper if they tried to ring his bell, the bell that announced the arrival of the Dumfries coach "Gladiator" after thirty hours' detention at the Beeftub in Moffatdale, or the shorter breathed "four" from Selkirk and Peebles that had changed horses last at Cockmuir Inn at the ...
— The Dew of Their Youth • S. R. Crockett
... don't waste no time lookin' for holds, but casyooally, yet no less s'fficiently, snags onto Sorehead. Fixin' his ten claws in him, the Bug fo'thwith embarks upon sech feats in the way of ground an' lofty tumblin' with that gladiator, as to make what happens ...
— Faro Nell and Her Friends - Wolfville Stories • Alfred Henry Lewis
... passion, such as marble shows When exquisitely chiselled, still lay there, But fixed as marble's unchanged aspect throws O'er the fair Venus, but for ever fair;[246] O'er the Laocoon's all eternal throes, And ever-dying Gladiator's air, Their energy like life forms all their fame, Yet looks not life, for they ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 6 • Lord Byron
... mark out the really excellent boys. Ti'a is the man who has just been fined half his wages; he is a beautiful old man, the living image of 'Fighting Gladiator,' my favourite statue - but a dreadful humbug. I think we keep him on a little on account of his looks. This sign o marks those who have been two years or upwards in the family. I note all my old boys ...
— Vailima Letters • Robert Louis Stevenson
... they are models of elegance. She has been doing Dan's head, and it is not quite finished. I never saw her so interested in any work, and it's very well done. He is so striking and big he always makes me think of the Dying Gladiator or some of those antique creatures. There's Bess now. Dear child, how sweet she looks tonight!' answered Daisy, waving her hand as the Princess went by with Grandpa on ...
— Jo's Boys • Louisa May Alcott
... "I say, Monsieur the Gladiator, why didn't you kill when you were about it? I say, why didn't you kill?" and Monsey held his thumbs down, as he ...
— The Shadow of a Crime - A Cumbrian Romance • Hall Caine
... down to equally powerful tails, corkscrewed around each other viciously, winding up into something resembling tightly twisted lamp cord; and the two Vorkuls, each helpless, fell to the mat with a crash. Fast as was Zerexi, the gladiator from the flagship, Sintris was the merest trifle faster. Like the straightening of a twisted spring of tempered steel that long body uncoiled as they struck the floor, and up under those shielding wings—an infinitesimal fraction of a second slow ...
— Spacehounds of IPC • Edward Elmer Smith
... reply. He only nodded toward the exhorter, a man with a puffy jumble of features and the form of a gladiator, who was uttering ...
— Other Main-Travelled Roads • Hamlin Garland
... did not venture to oppose his last wish. The gladiator wanted to make his last toilet and be elaborately arrayed in order to fall in the arena of life as a hero falls, and even in death to excite the wonder and the applause of ...
— Marie Antoinette And Her Son • Louise Muhlbach
... Andrea leaped with a lighter heart from the window, intending to slip through the hands of the gendarmes. Tall and well proportioned as an ancient gladiator, and muscular as a Spartan, he walked for a quarter of an hour without knowing where to direct his steps, actuated by the sole idea of getting away from the spot where if he lingered he knew that he would surely be taken. Having passed through the Rue Mont Blanc, guided by the instinct ...
— The Count of Monte Cristo • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... human rights; it is the meanest when it is fought for petty advantages (as, by way of example, for accession of territory which adds nothing to the security of a frontier), and still more when it is fought simply as a gladiator's trial of national prowess. This is the principle upon which, very naturally, our British school-boys value a battle. Painful it is to add, that this is the principle upon which our adult neighbors the French ...
— Memorials and Other Papers • Thomas de Quincey
... gladiators." In the arena they engaged in sham fights till the spectators demanded blood. Then, "sometimes one provided one's self nets for wrapping up the adversary, who, hit by a trident much, frequently die. When the gladiator was deadly wounded, forsaking the arm, struck down and stretching the index, asked the people grace of life. The spectators decided up his destiny, turning the thumb to the breast, or toward the ground. The thumb turned toward the ground was the unlucky's death doom, ...
— Roman Holidays and Others • W. D. Howells
... noble days, when England was so very merry, it often happened that a man who has been battered out of all resemblance to humanity was left to dress himself as best he could on a bleak marsh, and his chivalrous friends made the best of their way home, while the defeated gladiator was reckoned at a dog's value. Now-a-days those sorely-entreated creatures would have their valets. In one department of industry assuredly the value of labour has altered. The very best of the brutal old school once fought desperately for four ...
— Side Lights • James Runciman
... explanation of Hood's desperate act in waiting in front of Nashville and inviting the destruction or capture of his army. The crushing blow he there received was like a death-blow delivered by a giant full of strength and vigor upon a gladiator already beaten and reduced in strength nearly to exhaustion. Sherman was not very far wrong when he said that "the battle of Nashville was fought at Franklin." The gladiator had been reduced to less than one third of his former strength by a ...
— Forty-Six Years in the Army • John M. Schofield
... Roman walked along the Via Sacra humming an Alexandrian tune; the favourite comic actor, the delight of the city, whose jokes set the theatre in a roar, was an Alexandrian; the Retiarius, who, with no weapon but a net, fought against an armed gladiator in the Roman forum, and came off conqueror in twenty-six such battles, was an Alexandrian; and no breed of fighting-cocks was thought equal to those reared in ...
— History Of Egypt From 330 B.C. To The Present Time, Volume 11 (of 12) • S. Rappoport
... as well as she could, he left his seat and went to the door. He whistled a cheery stave, which did not, however, prevent a broad drop or two (much more like the "first of a thunder-shower" than those which oozed from the wound of the gladiator) from gathering on the lids of his gray eyes, and plashing thence to the threshold. He cleared his vision with his sleeve, and the melting mood over, a very ...
— Shirley • Charlotte Bronte
... to defend his Church in prose against Stillingfleet. But the art of saying things well is useless to a man who has nothing to say; and this was Dryden's case. He soon found himself unequally paired with an antagonist whose whole life had been one long training for controversy. The veteran gladiator disarmed the novice, inflicted a few contemptuous scratches, and turned away to encounter more formidable combatants. Dryden then betook himself to a weapon at which he was not likely to find his match. ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 2 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... stones. On hearing the dying voice of his friend, Aramis had sprung to land. Two of the Bretons followed him, with each a lever in his hand—one being sufficient to take care of the bark. The dying rattle of the valiant gladiator guided them amidst the ruins. Aramis, animated, active and young as at twenty, sprang towards the triple mass, and with his hands, delicate as those of a woman, raised by a miracle of strength the ...
— The Man in the Iron Mask • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... gift of sarcasm, but, unlike the Dean of St. Patrick's, and the forensic gladiator alluded to above, he never employed it in a spirit of hatred and contempt towards the mass ...
— James Otis The Pre-Revolutionist • John Clark Ridpath
... to health, is of the very first importance, and, within proper bounds, is absolutely requisite for the healthy and full development of animal life. It is possible to carry muscular activity too far, or rather to make it exclusive of the exercise of other powers. The gladiator of old was not found to make the best soldier, nor did the wood-cutter bear the fatigues of the war as well as the cultivated citizen. But as a basis for other culture it is all-important. And it is ...
— The Education of American Girls • Anna Callender Brackett
... Peniston's youth, fashion had returned to town in October; therefore on the tenth day of the month the blinds of her Fifth Avenue residence were drawn up, and the eyes of the Dying Gladiator in bronze who occupied the drawing-room window resumed their ...
— House of Mirth • Edith Wharton
... had walked in black somewhere—and finished off with patches of creamy white on head and ears. There was an extraordinary air of hard, tough, cool, cruel, fighting-power and slow ferocity about the beast—a very natural born gladiator of the wild places. ...
— The Way of the Wild • F. St. Mars
... reserves all her good things for this her last service to her children. She sends her keys there, to the bedside of the dying man, to open to him the gate to the calm and peaceful walks of justification. She sends her oils thither, too, to anoint the Christian gladiator for his last and final struggle with his powerful enemies. She sends her divine manna, to strengthen him and sustain him for the trying and unknown journey; and she sends the music of her sweet hymns and litanies to cheer him on, and the light of indulgences and benedictions to guide his ...
— The Cross and the Shamrock • Hugh Quigley
... least Arsenius had seen done—a deed which has lasted to all time, and done, too, to the eternal honour of his order, by a monk—namely, the abolition of gladiator shows. For centuries these wholesale murders had lasted through the Roman Republic and through the Roman Empire. Human beings in the prime of youth and health, captives or slaves, condemned malefactors, and even ...
— The Hermits • Charles Kingsley
... this herd was known as "Gladiator." He was always looking for a fight, and never refused a challenge, whether from another bull or from what he considered his ...
— Ted Strong's Motor Car • Edward C. Taylor
... pretend indifference to pain; it is enough that he endure it with courage, since, beyond all question, it is sharp, bitter, and hard to bear. And what is this courage? Partly excitement, partly the impulse of honour or of shame, partly the habituation which steels the endurance of the gladiator. Keep, therefore—this is the conclusion—stern restraint over the feminine elements of your soul, and learn not only to despise the attacks of pain, ...
— Cicero - Ancient Classics for English Readers • Rev. W. Lucas Collins
... Welcome, O Fighting Gladiator, and Recumbent Cleopatra, and Dying Warrior, whose classic outlines (reproduced in the calcined mineral of Lutetia) crown my loaded shelves! Welcome, ye triumphs of pictorial art (repeated by the magic graver) ...
— Atlantic Monthly Vol. 3, No. 16, February, 1859 • Various
... make his bushy eyebrows more prominent. Behind these his round deepset eyes seemed to flash like lightning at the end of summer behind the fading foliage. He was of small stature, but very broad-shouldered; in fact, built like a gladiator. The rags in which he was clad were defiantly filthy. His face was short and of a vulgar type, like that of Socrates; and if the fire of genius glowed in his strongly marked features, I certainly could not perceive it. He appeared to me a wild beast, an unclean animal. Filled with a sense of loathing, ...
— Mauprat • George Sand
... was vindictive—he had high self-esteem—he had the destructive organ more than the combative;—what had once provoked his wrath it became his instinct to sweep away. Therefore, though all his nerves were quivering, and hot tears were in his eyes, he approached Lenny with the sternness of a gladiator, and said between his teeth, which he set hard, choking back the sob ...
— The International Magazine, Volume 2, No. 3, February, 1851 • Various
... for Germany early showed its apprehension that France might recover its military strength. When that fallen but indomitable foe again struggled to its feet in 1875, the Prussian military caste planned to give the stricken gladiator the coup de grace and was only prevented by the intervention of England and Russia. Later this acute and neurotic apprehension took the form of a hatred and fear of Russia, and this notwithstanding the fact that the Kaiser had ...
— The Evidence in the Case • James M. Beck
... been playing for the last sixteen days at the Broadway Theater, but I never went to see him till last night. The play was the "Gladiator." I did not like parts of it much, but other portions were really splendid. In the latter part of the last act, where the "Gladiator" (Forrest) dies at his brother's feet (in all the fierce pleasure of gratified revenge), the man's whole ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... wretch! with a gladiator's fortitude, loosens the shameful coil in which its last agonies have twisted it, fiercely erects its head once more, lashes defiantly with its tail, and then—click! click! click!—stings ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 4, February, 1858 • Various
... grown accustomed to these little daily rifts. For the great, patient, clumsy, happy-go-lucky man she entertained an intense pity. But it was not the kind that humiliates; on the contrary, it was of a mothering disposition; and the ex-gladiator dimly recognized it, and felt more comfortable with her than with any other woman excepting Nora. She understood him perhaps better than either mother or daughter; he was too late: he belonged to a distant time, the beginning of the Christian era; and often she pictured him braving the net and ...
— The Place of Honeymoons • Harold MacGrath
... in 'Messaline' (1899). The musical ideas are poor in quality, but the score is put together in a workmanlike manner, and the orchestration is often clever. The libretto, which recounts the intrigues of the Empress Messalina with two brothers, Hares and Helion, a singer and a gladiator, is in the highest degree repellent, and it would need far better music than Mr. de Lara's to reconcile a London audience to so outrageous a subject. Mr. de Lara's latest production, 'Sanga' (1906), does not seem to have sustained the promise of 'Messaline.' Another composer whom necessity ...
— The Opera - A Sketch of the Development of Opera. With full Descriptions - of all Works in the Modern Repertory • R.A. Streatfeild
... this difference about the fox," I said, "that it is really in a sense born to be hunted. For not only is it a fierce hunter itself, but it would not be allowed to exist at all, so to say, unless it consented to being hunted. Like a gladiator it accepts a comfortable living for a certain time, on condition of its providing at last a spirited exhibition of dying. In other words, it is preserved entirely for the purpose of being hunted. It must accept life on that ...
— Vanishing Roads and Other Essays • Richard Le Gallienne
... blood of the arena, I begged that boon, while all the Roman maids and matrons, and those holy virgins they call vestal, and the rabble, shouted in mockery, deeming it rare sport, forsooth, to see Rome's fiercest gladiator turn pale, and tremble like a very child, before that piece of bleeding clay; but the praetor drew back as if I were pollution, and sternly said, 'Let the carrion rot! There are no noble men but Romans!' ...
— Elson Grammer School Literature, Book Four. • William H. Elson and Christine Keck
... vanity aroused within her the heroism of a gladiator dying on the arena, with a smile ...
— The Honor of the Name • Emile Gaboriau
... in one of the saloons of the sculpture-gallery in the Capitol at Rome. It was that room (the first, after ascending the staircase) in the centre of which reclines the noble and most pathetic figure of the Dying Gladiator, just sinking into his death-swoon. Around the walls stand the Antinous, the Amazon, the Lycian Apollo, the Juno; all famous productions of antique sculpture, and still shining in the undiminished majesty and beauty of ...
— The Marble Faun, Volume I. - The Romance of Monte Beni • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... you will behave like children who at one time play as wrestlers, then as gladiators, then blow a trumpet, then act a tragedy, when they have seen and admired such things. So you also do: you are at one time a wrestler (athlete), then a gladiator, then a philosopher, then a rhetorician; but with your whole soul you are nothing: like the ape you imitate all that you see; and always one thing after another pleases you, but that which becomes familiar displeases you. For you have never undertaken anything after consideration, ...
— A Selection from the Discourses of Epictetus With the Encheiridion • Epictetus
... modeling. She, with a few others of still later date, comes near to the old art, which has as much possibility for our imaginative survey as the plot of "The Marble Faun," so marvelously, so intricately, so unslavishly finished. In looking at the Dying Gladiator, we wonder whether he has already passed on from mastering the thought of his approaching death to the remembrance of his wife and children; or whether upon the agony of the physical pang and the insult ...
— Memories of Hawthorne • Rose Hawthorne Lathrop
... he should be able to make a fight for his life. Meanwhile the gladiators who fought with men and not with beasts were in the position of professionals, who might be slaves, condemned brigands, mutineers, prisoners of war, or volunteers. The picture drawn by Byron, although the so-called "Dying Gladiator" which inspired him is in reality no gladiator but a Gaulish warrior, perhaps fairly represents one class of combatant, but it represents only one. In the case of these "swordsmen" a number of successful fights might in the end secure freedom and something more ...
— Life in the Roman World of Nero and St. Paul • T. G. Tucker
... which the earl alluded, the white sails of which were just visible to his eyes and those of his companion, from the eminence on which they stood, was the honorable East India Company's ship Gladiator, to which belonged the boat that had conveyed the Earl and his party to the shore, in the manner before related. She was bound to Rio Janeiro, from thence to Batavia, and as they had a long passage from the Downs, Captain Rowland was easily persuaded to allow his distinguished ...
— Blackbeard - Or, The Pirate of Roanoke. • B. Barker |
