"Gorgon" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... continuity signals, but after a time they reappeared. The Niagara deviated from the great arc of a circle on which the cable was to be laid, and the error was traced to the iron of the cable influencing her compass. Hence the Gorgon, one of her consorts, was ordered to go ahead and lead the way. The Niagara passed several icebergs, but none injured the cable, and on August 4 she arrived in Trinity Bay, Newfoundland. At 6. a.m. next morning the shore end was landed into the telegraph-house which ...
— Heroes of the Telegraph • J. Munro
... troop {46} Of women strange to look at sleepeth there Before this wanderer, seated on their stools; Not women they, but Gorgons I must call them; Nor yet can I to Gorgon forms compare them; I have seen painted shapes that bear away The feast of Phineus. Wingless, though, are these, And swarth, and every way abominable. They snort with breath that none may dare approach, And from their eyes a loathsome humour pours, And such their ...
— Story of Orestes - A Condensation of the Trilogy • Richard G. Moulton
... sweet humility with a strong sense of their wickedness. Then comes Law, with its whips and bonds, to chastise and tie up "the offending Adam"—that is, the Adam without a pocket,—and then the gentle violence of kindly Mother Church leads the poor man far from the fatal presence of his Gorgon wants, to consort him with meek-eyed Charity,—to give him glimpses of the Land of Promise,—to make him hear the rippling waters of Eternal Truth,—to feast his senses with the odours of Eternal sweets. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 1, October 9, 1841 • Various
... standing on a pedestal, leans upon her spear. The Gorgon's skin covers her breast, and a linen peplum descends in regular folds even to her toe-nails. Her grey eyes, which shine beneath her vizor, gaze ...
— The Temptation of St. Antony - or A Revelation of the Soul • Gustave Flaubert
... "we have lives of our own.... There's no use attempting the impossible. You're so unprejudiced about some things, so used, as you say, to looking at the Gorgon, that I don't know why you're afraid to face our case, and see it as it really is—unless you think the sacrifice is not ...
— The Age of Innocence • Edith Wharton
... 30th HMS "Gorgon" arrived, towing the brig which brought out Mrs Livingstone and some ladies about to join the University mission, as well as the sections of a new iron steamer intended for the navigation of Lake Nyassa. The name of the "Lady Nyassa" was ...
— Great African Travellers - From Mungo Park to Livingstone and Stanley • W.H.G. Kingston
... said Fink, "why they have had the madness to attack the strongest side of our fortress! It can only be that your peaceful visage has had the effect of the Gorgon's head upon them. Henceforth you will be described as a scarecrow in all ...
— Debit and Credit - Translated from the German of Gustav Freytag • Gustav Freytag
... on the wall, within a crumbling frame Of tarnish'd gold, scowl'd down a pictured form In the habiliments of bygone days— With ruff, and doublet slash'd, and studded belt— 'Twas the same face—the Gorgon curls the same, The same lynx eye, the same peak-bearded chin, And the same nose, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 349, November, 1844 • Various
... gently on thy suppliant's head, Dread Goddess, lay thy chastening hand! Not in thy Gorgon terrors clad, Not circled with the vengeful band (As by the impious thou art seen) With thundering voice, and threatening mien, With screaming Horror's funeral cry, Despair, and ...
— The Golden Treasury - Of the Best Songs and Lyrical Poems in the English Language • Various
... madness, he shook off, to fall back senseless and exhausted; his strained and bloodshot eyes starting from their sockets, the slaver gathering round his lips, his raven hair standing on end, his delicate and symmetrical features distorted into a hideous and Gorgon aspect. It was, indeed, an appalling and sublime spectacle, full of an awful moral, the meeting of the foes! Here stood Maltravers, strong beyond the common strength of men, in health, power, conscious superiority, premeditated vengeance—wise, ...
— Ernest Maltravers, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... "what a push and swagger"; {kai ama edun te kai gorgon idein}, "a la fois doux et terrible a voir," see Victor Cherbuliez, "Un ...
— On Horsemanship • Xenophon
... Almeida, I learned that the "Medea" sloop-of-war was lying off Oporto, and expected to sail for England in a few days. The opportunity was not to be neglected. The official despatches, I was aware, would be sent through Lisbon, where the "Gorgon" frigate was in waiting to convey them; but should I be fortunate enough to reach Oporto in time, I had little doubt of arriving in England with the first intelligence of the fall of Ciudad Rodrigo. Reducing my luggage, therefore, to the smallest possible compass, and having provided myself ...
— Charles O'Malley, The Irish Dragoon, Volume 2 (of 2) • Charles Lever
... the notion peeped up in Grant's mind that the whirligig of existence might see Doris his wife. But the conceit resembled the Gorgon's teeth, which, when sown in the ground, sprang forth as armed men. The very accident which revealed a not unpleasing possibility had established a grave obstacle in the way of its ultimate realization. Already there was a cloud between him and the Martins, ...
— The Postmaster's Daughter • Louis Tracy
... at that bust which stood there so placidly before him, just as the poor youth did at the British Museum, who threw a stone at the Portland vase, to prove that he also was a man, and had volition, and was not to be looked into stone by the Gorgon of society. Fortunately, however, Sir John Steventon himself ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 58, Number 360, October 1845 • Various
... Kids, with the She-Goat at his left shoulder. Above the Bull and the Ram is Perseus, having at his right...[11] with the Pleiades moving beneath, and at his left the head of the Ram. His right hand rests on the likeness of Cassiopea, and with his left he holds the Gorgon's head by its top over the Ram, laying it at ...
— Ten Books on Architecture • Vitruvius
... wedding feast. I said I would come. And then, because I was young and full of the boast of youth, and because the king was now ceasing to be a terror to me, I said that I would bring to his wedding feast the head of the Gorgon. ...
— The Golden Fleece and the Heroes who Lived Before Achilles • Padraic Colum
... done it!" said the youth, brushing himself, and assuming all the dignity of which he was master. "Wonder who that is? Housekeeper, perhaps? Quite the Gorgon, whoever it is. Wish I ...
— Margaret Montfort • Laura E. Richards
... he, "is this you that I hear? Why you are warmer in your denunciation of this little wisp of a woman than you ever were of fat old Madame Gorgon, with her prodigious paste diamonds. Really, you take it too hard. And you, too, who used to skate so nimbly over the glib surface of society, and cut such coquettish figures of eight upon the ...
— The Potiphar Papers • George William Curtis
... am something revived at this testimony of your obedience; but I cannot admit that traitor,—I fear I cannot fortify myself to support his appearance. He is as terrible to me as a Gorgon: if I see him I swear I shall turn to stone, ...
— The Way of the World • William Congreve
... gently on thy suppliant's head, Dread goddess, lay thy chastening hand! Not in thy Gorgon terrors clad, 35 Not circled with the vengeful band (As by the impious thou art seen), With thundering voice and threatening mien, With screaming Horror's funeral cry, Despair, and fell Disease, ...
— Select Poems of Thomas Gray • Thomas Gray
... gentle breath of love, Low murmuring, cool thy bosom's fiery glow. Orestes, fondly lov'd,—canst thou not hear me? Hath the terrific Furies' grisly band Completely dried the life-blood in thy veins? Creeps there, as from the Gorgon's direful head, A petrifying charm through all thy limbs? If hollow voices, from a mother's blood, Call thee to hell, may not a sister's word With benediction pure ascend to heaven, And summon thence some gracious power ...
— Iphigenia in Tauris • Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
... body of a man," and was "every way equal," or "circular." It was plated with twelve circles of bronze, and had twenty [Greek: omphaloi], or ornamental knobs of tin, and the centre was of black cyanus (XI. 31-34). There was also a head of the Gorgon, with Fear and Panic. The description is not intelligible, and I do not ...
— Homer and His Age • Andrew Lang
... recent investigation beginning to penetrate the depth of meaning couched under the Athenaic symbols: but I may note rapidly, that her aegis, the mantle with the serpent fringes, in which she often, in the best statues, is represented as folding up her left hand, for better guard; and the Gorgon, on her shield, are both representative mainly of the chilling horror and sadness (turning men to stone, as it were), of the outmost and superficial spheres of knowledge—that knowledge which separates, ...
— Selections From the Works of John Ruskin • John Ruskin
... because consciousness of a weakness may lead us to give it rein. Perfect strength can coexist only with perfect knowledge, but neither is attainable by man. Man should pay to be screened from himself, lest his sword fail,—lest the Gorgon's head on his breast change him ...
— Idolatry - A Romance • Julian Hawthorne
... figure. He feared to employ the tenderness of tone necessary in his conversations with Chrystie, and as he listened and made out that she wanted to break her next engagement, he turned and fastened a gorgon's glance on the woman in the doorway, jerking his head ...
— Treasure and Trouble Therewith - A Tale of California • Geraldine Bonner
... with shapes Of intermittent motion, aspect vague, And mystic bearings, which o'ercreep the earth, Keeping slow time with horrors in the blood;" the Gorgon's petrific Head, the Bear's frightful form, Berenice's streaming Hair, the curdling length of Ophiuchus, and the Hydra's horrid shape. The poetic eye of old religion saw gods in the planets walking their ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger
... stucco, on the front of the main building, consisting of the lotus, the sistrum, representations of gods, Harpocrates, Anubis, and other objects of Egyptian worship. The figures on one side of this temple are Perseus with the Gorgon's head; on the other side, Mars and Venus, with Cupids bearing the arms of Mars. We next observe three altars of different sizes. On one of them is said to have been found the bones of a victim unconsumed, the last sacrifice having probably been stopped by the dreadful ...
— Dreams, Waking Thoughts, and Incidents • William Beckford
... was in the mind so delicately and so aristocratically entempled in that graceful, slender, ultra-feminine body of Margaret Severence's, as she descended the stairs, putting fresh gloves upon her beautiful, idle hands, he would have borrowed wings of the wind and would have fled as from a gorgon. ...
— The Fashionable Adventures of Joshua Craig • David Graham Phillips
... requires the fabulous Jack to overcome the hoary giants of prejudice and custom, or the irrepressible energy of the Gorgon. It has been helpful to remember away "down North" the stand which Archbishop Ireland took for public schools. When the Episcopal clergyman for Labrador, whom we had been influential in bringing out from England, decided to start an ...
— A Labrador Doctor - The Autobiography of Wilfred Thomason Grenfell • Wilfred Thomason Grenfell
... Up a stark cliff we went, then crossed the web Just as the red moon bloomed upon the hills And silvered all the Panticapean vale. The funnel of the web was in the mouth Of a vast tomb, whose outside, hewn on rock, Outlined a Gorgon's face with jaws agape— Some stern Medusa, Stheno, or Euryale, Changed to the stone that in the elder days She changed the sons of men who looked on her. We passed the funnel, entering the tomb. About my arms the spider threw his cords, And shackled them. I dared not move, but lay ...
— Stories in Verse • Henry Abbey
... are afraid of Athene and the Gorgon; at least so you say, though you do not mind Zeus's thunderbolt a bit. But why do you let the Muses go scot free? do they toss their plumes and ...
— Works, V1 • Lucian of Samosata
... and as Perseus flew before them, some blood-drops fell from the severed head of Medusa, and from them bred the vipers that are found in the desert to this day. But bravely did the winged shoes of Hermes bear Perseus on, and by nightfall the Gorgon sisters had passed from sight, and Perseus found himself once more in the garden of the Hesperides. Ere he sought the nymphs, he knelt by the sea to cleanse from his hands Medusa's blood, and still does the seaweed that we find on sea-beaches ...
— A Book of Myths • Jean Lang
... took care of them. A cruel tyrant named Polydectes wanted Danae to be his wife, and, as she would not consent, he shut her up in prison, saying that she should never come out till her son Perseus had brought him the head of the Gorgon Medusa, thinking he must be lost by the way. For the Gorgons were three terrible sisters, who lived in the far west beyond the setting sun. Two of them were immortal, and had dragon's wings and brazen claws and serpent hair, but their ...
— Aunt Charlotte's Stories of Greek History • Charlotte M. Yonge
... Perseus upholding the Gorgon's head before Polydectes's guests and turning them to stone wrought hardly more of a miracle than this calm announcement of Themistocles. Men stared at him vacantly, stunned by the tidings, then Adeimantus's frightened wrath ...
— A Victor of Salamis • William Stearns Davis
... And they were built for kings and persons of spacious lives, but they have been sublet to smaller folk. Or does no one live inside? You never see a curtain stir. There is never a face at a window. Everything is stone and dead. One might think that a Gorgon had gone riding on a 'bus top, and had thrown his cold eye upon the house fronts." Flint paused. "How can one live obscurely, as these folk do, in the twilight, in so beautiful a shell? Even a crustacean sometimes shows his ...
— Chimney-Pot Papers • Charles S. Brooks
... haughty, with the cast-bronze countenance of Roman emperors. But the old men bear rigid faces of carved basalt, gazing fixedly before them as though at some time or other in their past lives they had met Medusa: and truly Etna in eruption is a Gorgon, which their ancestors have oftentimes seen shuddering, and fled from terror-frozen. The white-haired old women, plying their spindle or distaff, or meditating in grim solitude, sit with the sinister set features of Fates by ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Complete - Series I, II, and III • John Symonds
... rapidly became desperate. He could not bear to be in Ida's presence. Her friendly, formal accent was unendurable to him. Their blank, unrecognizing expression, as they rested on him in mere kindliness, made her lovely eyes awful to him as a Gorgon's. ...
— Miss Ludington's Sister • Edward Bellamy
... wishes by proposing its publication: but I was rather curtly answered with a "Did I suppose these gnats were intended to be shrined in amber? these mere minnows to be treated with the high consideration due only to potted char and white bait? these fleeting thoughts fixed in stone before that Gorgon-head, the public? these ephemeral fancies dropped into the true elixir of immortality, printer's-ink? these——" I stopped him, for this other mighty mouthful of images betrayed the hypocrite—"Yes, I did." An involuntary smile assured me he did too, and the cause ...
— The Complete Prose Works of Martin Farquhar Tupper • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... could have no reference to my situation. Yet, unreasonable as it may appear, I confess that my feelings were not altogether so ecstatic as when I first called Mrs. Bullfrog mine. True, she was a sweet woman and an angel of a wife; but what if a Gorgon should return, amid the transports of our connubial bliss, and take the angel's place. I recollected the tale of a fairy, who half the time was a beautiful woman and half the time a hideous monster. Had I taken that very fairy to be the wife of my bosom? While such whims and chimeras were ...
— Mosses from an Old Manse and Other Stories • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... that country! No wonder that he paused! No wonder if, in his imagination, wrought upon by his conscience, he had beheld blood instead of water; and heard groans instead of murmurs. No wonder if some Gorgon horror had turned him into stone upon the spot.—But, no!—he cried, "The die is cast!" He plunged!—He crossed!—and Rome was free ...
— The American Union Speaker • John D. Philbrick
... it, and two stone sweeps of staircase meeting in a stone terrace before the principal door. A stony business altogether, with heavy stone balustrades, and stone urns, and stone flowers, and stone faces of men, and stone heads of lions, in all directions. As if the Gorgon's head had surveyed it when it ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern — Volume 11 • Various
... report, but subsequently by certain intelligence, and while all were in suspense from dread of the impending danger, the dependents of the court, hammering on the same anvil day and night (as the saying is), at the prompting of the eunuchs, held up Ursicinus as a Gorgon's head before the suspicious and timid emperor, continually repeating that, because on the death of Silvanus, in a dearth of better men, he had been sent to defend the eastern districts, he had become ambitious of ...
— The Roman History of Ammianus Marcellinus • Ammianus Marcellinus
... may recognize true education from false. False education is a delightful thing, and warms you, and makes you every day think more of yourself. And true education is a deadly cold thing with a Gorgon's head on her shield, and makes you every day ...
— Time and Tide by Weare and Tyne - Twenty-five Letters to a Working Man of Sunderland on the Laws of Work • John Ruskin
... "Gorgon—Gorgon of Poitou," he returned with enthusiasm. "They are getting as rare now as this," he declared, nodding to the cobwebbed bottle, as he rose, drew the ...
— A Village of Vagabonds • F. Berkeley Smith
... advantage of my state, and flourished things before my eyes, at which Emily instantly forbade me to look. It is true that they were objects not often seen by bachelor man, except in shop windows and on the advertising pages of women's magazines; but silk petticoats and cobwebby lace frills have no Gorgon qualities, and I was not turned to stone by the sight of them. I even found courage to ask of the company at large if they were the sort of thing that young ladies ought to have in their wardrobes. The answer was emphatically in ...
— Set in Silver • Charles Norris Williamson and Alice Muriel Williamson
... the shield or buckler of Zeus, fashioned for him by Hephaestus, furnished with tassels and bearing the Gorgon's head in the centre. Originally symbolical of the storm-cloud, it is probably derived from aisso, signifying rapid, violent motion. When the god shakes it, Mount Ida is wrapped in clouds, the thunder rolls and men are smitten with fear. He sometimes lends it to Athene and (rarely) to Apollo. In ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... Doctor Stewart and reported that Mrs. Watson was in a critical condition. I understood also that legal steps were being taken to terminate my lease at Sunnyside. Louise was out of danger, but very ill, and a trained nurse guarded her like a gorgon. There was a rumor in the village, brought up by Liddy from the butcher's, that a wedding had already taken place between Louise and Doctor Walkers and this roused me for the ...
— The Circular Staircase • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... kindly step in, sir?" the elderly Gorgon had returned to ask. She led Mr. Ware along the hall-way to a door near the end, and opened it for him to pass ...
— The Damnation of Theron Ware • Harold Frederic
... guardian terrors, whose out-flashing swords Beleaguer Paradise and the holy Tree Sciential. Step by step the way is fought That leads from Darkness, through her miscreant hordes, Back to the heavens of wise, and true, and free: Minerva's Gorgon, Ammon's cyclic Asp, And the fierce flame-sword of the Cherubim, That flashed like hate across the pallid gasp Of exiled Eve and Adam, flare, and glare, And hiss venenate, round the steps of him Who thirsts for heavenly Wisdom, if ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 3, No. 18, April, 1859 - [Date last updated: August 7, 2005] • Various
... at present rising strongly into consciousness, a danger inherent in this too-long contemplation of Hades; it is the danger of the Gorgon, the monster whose view turns the spectator into stone, taking away all sensation, emotion, life. The Greek sooner or later must quit Hades, and flee from its shapes; the supersensible world he must transfuse into the sensible, else the former ...
— Homer's Odyssey - A Commentary • Denton J. Snider
... start. She was full six feet high, wore a man's greatcoat over the rest of her dress, had in her hand a goodly sloe-thorn cudgel, and in all points of equipment, except her petticoats, seemed rather masculine than feminine. Her dark elf-locks shot out like the snakes of the gorgon, between an old-fashioned bonnet called a bongrace, heightening the singular effect of her strong and weather-beaten features, which they partly shadowed, while her eye had a wild roll that indicated something like real ...
— Guy Mannering • Sir Walter Scott
... act of singing "Pray Goody," when my eyes suddenly met those of my papa, who was staring like the head of Gorgon; and though his gaze did not turn me to stone, it turned me sick. I was stupified, forgot my part, ran off, and left the manager and the music to make the best of it. My father, who could hardly believe his eyes, was convinced when he saw my confusion. I ran into the dressing-room, ...
— Frank Mildmay • Captain Frederick Marryat
... fell at length upon a cobbler, Giles Gorgon by name, who produced several new grins of his own invention, having been used to cut faces for many years together over his last. At the very first grin he cast every human feature out of his countenance; at the second he became the ...
— Essays and Tales • Joseph Addison
... life for such a climax? Many men have said to Fame and Wisdom, 'Let me look upon your face and die'; many have come to view their Gorgon features and cheerfully paid the price, and still more have perished miserably ...
— Said the Observer • Louis J. Stellman
... these dire Goddesses in the shape of dogs will kill me, these gorgon-visaged ministers ...
— The Tragedies of Euripides, Volume I. • Euripides
... all we ought to frighten something in the way of compensation out of the gorgon," said Nickie, vengefully. Our reprobate hero was a man who knew ...
— The Missing Link • Edward Dyson
... that a friendly person had come up, was with him beating off raven, gorgon, and satyr. He saw that this person was very big, and caught an old, oft-noted trick in the swing of his arm. To-night, in carnival time, when there was trouble, it seemed quite natural and with a touch of home that Old Steadfast ...
— Foes • Mary Johnston
... darling!—but there it is). And he can't make up his mind to leave Upcote for twenty-four hours till this girl is safely off the scene! He means to take her to Paris himself on Monday. I only hope he has found a proper sort of Gorgon to leave ...
— The Case of Richard Meynell • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... characteristic of them both; it seems to me it shows that the poet did not so absolutely crawl in the dust before her, as did almost all the so called men of her court; though he did certainly flatter her after a fashion in which few queens can be flattered. His description of the belligerent old Gorgon as the "Fair Vestal throned by the West" seems like the poetry and fancy of the beautiful Fairy Queen wasted upon the ...
— Sunny Memories Of Foreign Lands, Volume 1 (of 2) • Harriet Elizabeth (Beecher) Stowe
... you are as brave a youth as I believe you to be," replied King Polydectes, with the utmost graciousness of manner. "The bridal gift which I have set my heart on presenting to the beautiful Hippodamia is the head of the Gorgon Medusa with the snaky locks; and I depend on you, my dear Perseus, to bring it to me. So, as I am anxious to settle affairs with the princess, the sooner you go in quest of the Gorgon, the better I shall ...
— Myths That Every Child Should Know - A Selection Of The Classic Myths Of All Times For Young People • Various
... open palm, and as Beryl saw the button, a gasping, gurgling sound broke from her. She snatched it, stared at it. Then the Gorgon head slipped through her fingers, she threw herself against the window, shook the iron bar frantically; and one desperate cry seemed to tear its way through her clinched teeth, over her ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson
... necessary to explain to the reader that John was no other than John Perkins, Esquire, of the Middle Temple, barrister-at-law, and that Miss Lucy was the daughter of the late Captain Gorgon, and Marianne Biggs, his wife. The Captain being of noble connections, younger son of a baronet, cousin to Lord X——, and related to the Y—— family, had angered all his relatives by marrying a very silly pretty young woman, who kept a ladies'-school at Canterbury. She ...
— The Bedford-Row Conspiracy • William Makepeace Thackeray
... Good Hope; the algazelle, and the addax and its young from North Africa; the sing-sing, and the koba from Western Africa; the sassaybi; the chamois of the Alps—the subject of many a stirring mountain song; the goats of North Africa; the strange Siberian ibex; the grue and gorgon from the Cape; varieties of the domestic goat, and the beautiful Cashmere goat. Here also are specimens of sheep, including the wild sheep from the Altai; the bearded sheep of North Africa; the American arguli; ...
— How to See the British Museum in Four Visits • W. Blanchard Jerrold
... where is set Cellini's godlike Perseus, bronze or gold, (How name the metal, when the statue flings Its soul so in your eyes?) with brow and sword Superbly calm, as all opposing things, Slain with the Gorgon, were no more abhorred Since ended? No, the people sought no wings From Perseus in the Loggia, nor implored An inspiration in the place beside From that dim bust of Brutus, jagged and grand, Where Buonarroti passionately ...
— The Poetical Works of Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Volume IV • Elizabeth Barrett Browning
... good-humouredly, "be not always a boder of ill. Thou deemest a Goth worse than a gorgon or hydra, whereas, I assure you, they are very good fellows after all, if you stand up to them like a man, and trust their word. Old Meinhard is a ...
— More Bywords • Charlotte M. Yonge
... conduct like a mouse in a cat's ear. Through all the other islands a stream of native visitors comes and goes, travelling by families, spending years on the grand tour. Apemama alone is left upon one side, the tourist dreading to risk himself within the clutch of Tembinok'. And fear of the same Gorgon follows and troubles them at home. Maiana once paid him tribute; he once fell upon and seized Nonuti: first steps to the empire of the archipelago. A British warship coming on the scene, the conqueror was driven to disgorge, his career checked in the outset, his dear-bought armoury sunk in his own ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 18 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... its appearance. The peculiar V-shaped mouth with its pointed upper lip, the absence of brow ridges, the absence of a chin beneath the wedgelike lower lip, the incessant quivering of this mouth, the Gorgon groups of tentacles, the tumultuous breathing of the lungs in a strange atmosphere, the evident heaviness and painfulness of movement due to the greater gravitational energy of the earth—above all, the extraordinary ...
— The War of the Worlds • H. G. Wells
... diminutive mote, But vortex-like that tube of tin Sucked the censorious particle in; And, truth to tell, for as willing an organ As ever listened to serpent's hiss, Nor took the viperous sound amiss, On the snaky head of an ancient Gorgon! ...
— Playful Poems • Henry Morley
... that coast to be devoured by a monster of the deep) on condition he might make her his wife: but Phineas, her uncle, sought to prevent him, by attempting, with a party, to carry off the bride. The attempt, notwithstanding, was rendered abortive; for the hero, by showing them the head of the Gorgon, at once turned ...
— Roman Antiquities, and Ancient Mythology - For Classical Schools (2nd ed) • Charles K. Dillaway
... each other.—If marble could see and feel, the separation might be prudent,—if it could only see, it would certainly lose its coldness, and learn to feel; and, in such a case, the charms of these two figures would produce an effect quite opposite to that of the Gorgon's head, which turned flesh into stone. Did I pretend to describe to you the Venus, it would only set your imagination at work to form ideas of her figure; and your ideas would no more resemble that figure, than the Portuguese face of Miss ——, who has enchanted ...
— Letters of the Right Honourable Lady M—y W—y M—e • Lady Mary Wortley Montague
... out as the deliverer, the destroyer of evil? Theseus ridding the land of robbers, and delivering it from the yearly tribute of boys and maidens to be devoured by the Minotaur; Perseus slaying the Gorgon, and rescuing Andromeda from the sea-beast; Heracles with his twelve famous labours against giants and monsters; and all ...
— Health and Education • Charles Kingsley
... paint him usually projected against strong effects of light, in lurid chiaroscuro;—enlarging the whites of his eyes, and making him frown, grin, and gnash his teeth on all occasions, so as to appear among the other Apostles invariably in the aspect of a Gorgon. ...
— Giotto and his works in Padua • John Ruskin
... reading Hawthorne's story of The Gorgon's Head with a fourth-year class, the writer stopped at an interesting point and asked, "Do you ever stop to talk over what you read? Or do you always 'go on' and 'keep going on'?" "We always go right on," replied several. "We sometimes stop," said a few, among whom was ...
— How To Study and Teaching How To Study • F. M. McMurry
... cry of battle? where must I bring my aid? where must I sow dread? who wants me to uncase my dreadful Gorgon's head?(1) ...
— The Acharnians • Aristophanes
... he said; "what! hast thou not a word of oily compliment to me on my happy marriage?—not a word of most philosophical consolation on my disgrace at Court?—Or has my mien, as a wittol and discarded favourite, the properties of the Gorgon's head, the turbatae Palladis arma, as Majesty ...
— The Fortunes of Nigel • Sir Walter Scott
... desert which widens to his view. Of one thing only must he be quite certain: that under no circumstances will he discover any lack of worth in himself when the veil is raised; the sight of it would be the Gorgon that would kill him. Therefore, if he wants to remain undeceived, let him in his inmost being feel his own worth. For to feel the lack of it is not merely the greatest, but also the only true affliction; all other sufferings of the mind may not only ...
— The Essays of Arthur Schopenhauer; The Art of Controversy • Arthur Schopenhauer
... Advocate General had deceived her. Escape was impossible; I groaned and sweated with anguish, but listen I must, and had to suffer martyrdom for an hour, when the Governor's door opened, and he himself looked out. On seeing the Gorgon he tried to withdraw, but she pounded like a tigress through the door-way, and slamming the door after her, secured an audience with his Excellency, which she took care should not be a short one. I ...
— The Bushman - Life in a New Country • Edward Wilson Landor
... familiar terms with them and ends by borrowing the form of one of them (she becoming for the time absorbed into her two sisters)—for as medieval devil he has no right of entree into that classical scene in which he and Faust are now to play their parts. It is therefore in the form of a Phorkyad or Gorgon that Mephisto will appear when we next ...
— The Faust-Legend and Goethe's 'Faust' • H. B. Cotterill
... It is enough, for any retribution, That guilt retain remembrance of itself. Guilt is a thing, however bolstered up, That the great scale-adjusting Nemesis, And Furies iron-eyed, will not let sleep. Sail on unscarred—thou canst not sail so far, But that the gorgon lash of vipers fanged Shall scourge this howler home to thee again. Yes, yes, rash man, Jove and myself do know That from this wrong shall rouse an Anteros, Fierce as an Ate, with a hot right hand, That shall afflict thee with the touch of fire, Till, ...
— The International Monthly Magazine, Volume 5, No. 1, January, 1852 • Various
... war-ballads at three yards an obolus? "3. Show the strong presumption there is, that Nox was the god of battles. "4. State reasons for presuming that the practice of lithography may be traced back to the time of Perseus and the Gorgon's head. "5. In what way were the shades on the banks of the Styx supplied with spirits? "6. Show the probability of the College Hornpipe having been used by the students of the Academia; and give passages from Thucydides and Tennyson ...
— The Adventures of Mr. Verdant Green • Cuthbert Bede
... Wilberforce as one pea to another, and you might fancy, that, at some ordinary moment, when he least expected it, and before he had time to smooth away his knowing complication of wrinkles, he had seen the Gorgon's head, and whitened into marble,—not only his personal self, but his coat and small-clothes, down to a button and the minutest crease of the cloth. The ludicrous result marks the impropriety of bestowing the age-long duration of marble upon small, characteristic individualities, ...
— Our Old Home - A Series of English Sketches • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... oppose to the individual in the assertion of his rights, is far more compact and powerful than in Russia, or even in Germany. Even where it does not employ the arm of the law, society knows how to use that quieter, but more crushing pressure, that calm, Gorgon-like look which only the bravest and stoutest hearts know how ...
— Chips From A German Workshop, Vol. V. • F. Max Mueller
... through the hall, thick swarming now With complicated monsters head and tail, Scorpion, and Asp, and Amphisbaena dire, Cerastes horned, Hydrus, and Elops drear, And Dipsas; (not so thick swarmed once the soil Bedropt with blood of Gorgon, or the isle Ophiusa,) but still greatest he the midst, Now Dragon grown, larger than whom the sun Ingendered in the Pythian vale or slime, Huge Python, and his power no less he seemed Above the rest still to retain; they all Him followed, ...
— Paradise Lost • John Milton
... latter busts we count by scores, Half-emperors and quarter-emperors, Each with his bay-leaf fillet, loose-thonged vest, Loric and low-browed Gorgon on the breast, One loves a baby face, with violets there, Violets instead of laurel in the hair, As those were all the little locks ...
— Dramatic Romances • Robert Browning
... At this moment I hear from Rome of a great dinner given by Lamoriciere to his staff, or by his staff to him (I don't know which), only that the health of Henri Cinq was suggested and drunk at it. Gorgon telegraphed the news to Paris. What then? English newspapers (even such papers as the 'Daily News') have stated that Lamoriciere was doing Napoleonic business at Rome. ...
— The Letters of Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Volume II • Elizabeth Barrett Browning
... by the Scaean gates again hath bitter Juno place The first of all, and wild and mad, herself begirt with steel, Calls up her fellows from the ships. Look back! Tritonian Pallas broods o'er topmost burg on high, All flashing bright with Gorgon grim from out her stormy sky; The very Father hearteneth on, and stays with happy might The Danaans, crying on the Gods against the Dardan fight. Snatch flight, O son, whiles yet thou may'st, and let thy toil be o'er, I by thy side will bring ...
— The AEneids of Virgil - Done into English Verse • Virgil
... dense. Suddenly a trumpet blared. At the gate was Pontius Pilate. On his head was a high and dazzling helmet. His tunic was short, open at the neck. His legs were bare. He was shod with shoes that left the toes exposed. From his cuirass a gorgon's head had, in deference to local prejudice, been effaced; in its stead were scrolls and thunderbolts. From the belt rows of straps, embroidered and fringed, fell nearly to the knee. He held his head in the air. His features were excellent, and his beard hung ...
— Mary Magdalen • Edgar Saltus
... make the future luxuriant and gigantic, so long as he is thinking about the past. When he tries to think about the future itself, his mind diminishes to a pin point with imbecility, which some call Nirvana. To-morrow is the Gorgon; a man must only see it mirrored in the shining shield of yesterday. If he sees it directly he is turned to stone. This has been the fate of all those who have really seen fate and futurity as clear and inevitable. The Calvinists, with their perfect creed of predestination, were turned to stone. ...
— What's Wrong With The World • G.K. Chesterton
... perfectly well I wanted to marry you. But you fly off without a word and bury yourself in this benighted place with a gorgon who nags and ...
— Death At The Excelsior • P. G. Wodehouse
... Medusa incident got tacked on to the preceding three, with which it is very loosely combined, the only point of connection being with the Life Token. Strangely enough, in the ancient form of the folk-tale, the Gorgon is an almost essential part of the story, though the Life Token has disappeared, and the Supernatural Birth only applies to the hero and not to his animal companions. In the modern European folk-tales these animal friends are rather supernumeraries and are occasionally replaced by the formula of ...
— Europa's Fairy Book • Joseph Jacobs
... Of the loves of Mr. Perkins and Miss Gorgon, and of the two great factions in the town ...
— The Bedford-Row Conspiracy • William Makepeace Thackeray
... tonic. Ashe was positively grateful to the "old gorgon" who wrote it. He ran up-stairs, his pulses tingling in defence of Kitty. He would show Lady Grosville that she could not write to him, at any rate, in ...
— The Marriage of William Ashe • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... head of Medusa, whose horrid aspect of snaky hair and scaly body turned to stone every beholder, rescues the maiden from chains, and leads her away by the bands of love. Nothing could be more poetical than the life of Perseus. When he went to destroy the dreadful Gorgon, Medusa, Pluto lent him his helmet, which would make him invisible at will; Minerva loaned her buckler, impenetrable, and polished like a mirror; Mercury gave him a dagger of diamonds, and his winged sandals, ...
— Recreations in Astronomy - With Directions for Practical Experiments and Telescopic Work • Henry Warren
... fearing Zeus, they halted for a space, And lo, Apollo's priestess with a train Of holy maidens came into that place, And far did she outshine the rest in grace, But in her eyes such dread was frozen then As glares eternal from the Gorgon's face Wherewith Athene quells the ...
— Helen of Troy • Andrew Lang
... terror, horror, dismay, consternation, panic, scare, stampede [of horses]. intimidation, terrorism, reign of terror. [Object of fear] bug bear, bugaboo; scarecrow; hobgoblin &c. (demon) 980; nightmare, Gorgon, mormo[obs3], ogre, Hurlothrumbo[obs3], raw head and bloody bones, fee-faw-fum, bete noire[Fr], enfant terrible[Fr]. alarmist &c. (coward) 862. V. fear, stand in awe of; be afraid &c. adj.; have qualms &c. n.; apprehend, sit upon thorns, eye askance; distrust &c. (disbelieve) ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... her book, her beautiful hair making a spot of fire in the room. Marcella caught the expression of her profile, and her own face took a look of pain. She would have liked to go instantly to the girl's side, with some tenderness, some caress. But that gorgon Lady Kent, now looking extremely fierce, was in the way, and moreover other young men had arrived to take the ...
— Sir George Tressady, Vol. I • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... has already let fall over his nose, from far deeper motives. Tommy does not assume the hat primarily because it is Uncle William's hat, but because it is not Tommy's hat. It is a ritual investiture; and is akin to those Gorgon masks that stiffened the dances of Greece or those towering mitres that came from the mysteries of Persia. For the essence of such ritual is a profound paradox: the concealment of the personality combined with the exaggeration of the ...
— A Miscellany of Men • G. K. Chesterton
... and other spelles like terrible, He bad awake blacke Plutoes griesly Dame,[*] And cursed heaven and spake reprochfull shame Of highest God, the Lord of life and light; 330 A bold bad man, that dar'd to call by name Great Gorgon,[*] Prince of darknesse and dead night, At which Cocytus[*] quakes, and Styx ...
— Spenser's The Faerie Queene, Book I • Edmund Spenser
... lawlessness, exercised what now seems such an amazing fascination over the least revolutionary of European nations. Unfitted for scientific work and full of ardour, Mr. Carlyle found his mission in rushing with all his might to the annihilation of this terrible poet, who, like some gorgon, hydra, or chimera dire planted at the gate, carried off a yearly tale of youths and virgins from the city. In literature, only a revolutionist can thoroughly overpower a revolutionist. Mr. Carlyle had fully as much daring as Byron; his writing at its best, if without the many-eyed ...
— Critical Miscellanies, Vol. I - Essay 2: Carlyle • John Morley
... queen for ever chaste, Wherewith she tamed the brinded lioness And spotted mountain-pard, but set at nought The frivolous bolt of Cupid; gods and men Feared her stern frown, and she was queen o' the woods. What was that snaky-headed Gorgon shield That wise Minerva wore, unconquered virgin, Wherewith she freezed her foes to congealed stone, But rigid looks of chaste austerity, 450 And noble grace that dashed brute violence With sudden adoration and blank awe? So dear to Heaven is saintly chastity That, when a soul is found sincerely ...
— Milton's Comus • John Milton
... troublesome matter to find one to suit," the squire said thoughtfully. "I don't want a harsh sort of Gorgon, to repress her spirits and bother her life out with rules and regulations; and I won't have a giddy young thing, because I should like to have the child with me at breakfast and lunch, and I don't want a fly-away young woman who will expect all sorts of attention. ...
— With Wolfe in Canada - The Winning of a Continent • G. A. Henty
... a little, and she looked anxious. Not Perseus, coming at last in sight of his Gorgon, had a heart more sick with fear than hers was ...
— The Beloved Woman • Kathleen Norris
... than the sight could penetrate, ere it gave birth to the arch from its summit. Dead crusaders lay around in stone, and strove with grim visage to draw the sword and smite the worshippers of Mohammed, as if in the very act they had been petrified by a new Gorgon's head. The steps of the intruders seemed sacrilegious, breaking the solemn stillness of the night as the father led the son into the chapel of the ...
— The House of Walderne - A Tale of the Cloister and the Forest in the Days of the Barons' Wars • A. D. Crake
... fair-haired man, whose muscles were like the great gnarled round heads of a beech-tree. When a man possesses that particular shape of muscle he is sure to be a hard nut to crack. And so poor PATRICKSEN found him, merely getting his own wretched back broken for his trouble. GORGON GORGONSEN Was Governor of Iceland, and lived at Reykjavik, the capital, which was not only little and hungry, but was also a creeping settlement with a face turned to America. It was a poor lame place, with its ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 100., Jan. 10, 1891 • Various
... vein is gushing, Vixen vengeance lulls my heart: See, the Gorgon gang is rushing! Never, never ...
— Rejected Addresses: or, The New Theatrum Poetarum • James and Horace Smith
... Boreas: beware Lest the strong spirit of the stormy blast Snatch thee aloft, and sweep thee to the void, On wings of raving wintry hurricane! Wend by the noisy tumult of the wave, Until thou reach the Gorgon-haunted plains Beside Cisthene. In that solitude Dwell Phorcys' daughters, beldames worn with time, Three, each swan-shapen, single-toothed, and all Peering thro' shared endowment of one eye; Never on them doth the sun shed his rays, Never falls radiance of the midnight moon. ...
— Suppliant Maidens and Other Plays • AEschylus
... exclaims, "how like the Gorgon of the Arabian Nights thou art! For does not every one whom thou favorest undergo a pitiful transformation even from the first bedding with thee? Does not everything suffer from thy look, thy touch, thy breath? The rose loses ...
— The Book of Khalid • Ameen Rihani
... solid tufa stone. A low stone seat against the wall on each hand and a small hanging lamp were all the furniture of this apartment, awful in its emptiness and mystery. On every side there were dark openings into cells whence came gleams of white, indefinite forms: a great Gorgon's head gazed at us from the ceiling, and from the walls in every direction started the crested heads and necks of sculptured serpents. We entered one by one the nine small grotto-like compartments which surround the central cavern: the white shapes turned out to be cinerary urns, enclosing ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science Vol. XV., No. 85. January, 1875. • Various
... whom I was fain to look on, Theseus and Peirithous, renowned children of the gods. But ere that might be the myriad tribes of the dead thronged up together with wondrous clamour: and pale fear gat hold of me, lest the high goddess Persephone should send me the head of the Gorgon, that dread monster, from ...
— DONE INTO ENGLISH PROSE • S. H. BUTCHER, M.A.
... importance are the metopes from Selinuntium, which, though much damaged, show marks of high excellence. They are of clearly different dates, though all very archaic. The oldest represent Perseus cutting off the Gorgon's head, and Hercules killing two thieves. Perseus has the calm, sleepy look of a Hindoo god,—while Gorgon's head, with goggle eyes and protruding tongue, resembles a Mexican idol. Hercules and the thieves have more of an Egyptian character. The ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 6, No. 34, August, 1860 • Various
... work. There are little departures from Greek models, which indicate the "barbarian" workman, as the introduction of trees in the backgrounds, the shape of the furniture, the recurved wings of the Gorgon, and the idea of hunting the wild bull. But the figures, the proportions, the draperies, the attitudes, the chariot, the horse, are almost pure Greek. There is a grace and ease in the modelling, an elegance, a variety, to which Asiatic art, left to itself, never attained. The style, however, ...
— History of Phoenicia • George Rawlinson
... the subject of Perseus because it symbolised his own victory over the Gorgon of tyrannicide and Republican partisanship. Donatello's Judith, symbolising justifiable regicide, and Michel Angelo's David, symbolising the might of innocent right against an overbearing usurper, already decorated the Florentine piazza. Until lately, both of these masterpieces stood ...
— The Autobiography of Benvenuto Cellini • Benvenuto Cellini
... Hercules talking with Atlas, an enormous giant who holds the sky on his shoulders, or sailing across the sea in an immense bowl; Perseus transforming a king and all his subjects to stone, by exhibiting the Gorgon's head. No particular accuracy in costume need be aimed at. My stories will bear out the artist in any liberties he may be inclined to take. Billings would do these things well enough, though his characteristics are grace and delicacy rather than wildness of fancy. The book, if it comes out of my ...
— Yesterdays with Authors • James T. Fields
... could destroy, if Lady Auriol had been a Gorgon or a basilisk or a cockatrice, then had I ...
— The Mountebank • William J. Locke
... Critics, whisper thee, litigious wretches! Oblivion's hand shall finish all my Sketches. But see, my soul such bug-bears has repell'd With magnanimity unparallel'd! Take up the volumes, every care dismiss, And smile, gruff Gorgon! while I tell thee this: Not one shall lie neglected on the shelf, All shall be sold—I'll ...
— Poetic Sketches • Thomas Gent
... heel, and strode away without another word. Long after he was out of sight the chaplain stood fixed in the same attitude of panic-stricken, helpless despondency. By my faith! even in these degenerate days, we have petrifying influences left that may match the head of the Gorgon. ...
— Sword and Gown - A Novel • George A. Lawrence
... suddenly become agitated, and Buck was left wondering the more. She was stirred with strange feelings which embodied a dozen different emotions, and it was the sight of that great black crown, like the head of a Gorgon, which had inspired them. Its fascination was one of cruel attraction. Its familiarity suggested association with some part of her life. It seemed as if she belonged to it, or that it belonged to her—that in some curious way it was actually a part of her life. And all the time her detestation, ...
— The Golden Woman - A Story of the Montana Hills • Ridgwell Cullum
... is signalling: Let her have it! and in some moments more yonder to the far north the Florida breaks into quick-flashing ecstasy, like quick-winking Gorgon glances; and the north-east catches it in a single boom; and in ten seconds more it is as if Nature, with sudden yell, feels to her womb the birth-hour come and rueful throes: and where ships had been appears in one minute nothing ...
— The Lord of the Sea • M. P. Shiel
... was the temple of Minerva from which he had taken all the pictures. There were doors to this temple of such beauty that books had been written about them. He stripped the ivory ornaments from them, and the golden balls with which they had been made splendid. He tore off from them the head of the Gorgon and carried it away, leaving them to be rude doors, Goth ...
— Life of Cicero - Volume One • Anthony Trollope
... loses her brilliant complexion. Yet, for reasons best known to herself, her colour continues to be bright, though her spirits and her temper seem to suffer in the effort to keep it so. As old age advances, she is as likely as not to become a gorgon of immaculate propriety, and will be heard lamenting over the laxity of manners which permits girls to do what was never dreamt of when she ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 98, March 15, 1890 • Various
... artificial boundaries that divide Man from his species. State of blessedness! Till that ill-omen'd hour when Cain's stern son Delved in the bowels of the earth for gold, Accursed bane of virtue! of such force As poets feign dwelt in the Gorgon's locks, Which whoso saw, felt instant the life-blood Cold curdle in his veins, the creeping flesh Grew stiff with horror, and the heart forgot To beat. Accursed hour! for man no more To JUSTICE paid his homage, but forsook Her altars, ...
— Poems, 1799 • Robert Southey
... driving from his court, Disown'd. Now one in heaven is glorious plac'd; The other, laden with the well-known spoil Of the fierce snaky monster, cleaves the air, On sounding pinions. High the victor sails O'er Lybia's desarts, and the gory drops Fall from the gorgon's head; the Ground receives The blood, and warms it into writhing snakes. Hence does the country with ...
— The Metamorphoses of Publius Ovidus Naso in English blank verse Vols. I & II • Ovid
... with whom Eliphalet Duncan had fallen in love was the daughter of Mother Gorgon. But he never saw the mother, who was in 'Frisco, or Los Angeles, or Santa Fe, or somewhere out West, and he saw a great deal of the daughter, who was up in the White Mountains. She was traveling with her brother ...
— Masterpieces of Mystery In Four Volumes - Mystic-Humorous Stories • Various
... want of parts. Bless us! Morgan,[20] art thou there, man? Bless mine eyes! art thou the chairman? Chairman to yon damn'd committee! Yet I look on thee with pity. Dreadful sight! what, learned Morgan Metamorphosed to a Gorgon![21] For thy horrid looks, I own, Half convert me to a stone. Hast thou been so long at school, Now to turn a factious tool? Alma Mater was thy mother, Every young divine thy brother. Thou, a disobedient varlet, Treat thy mother like a harlot! Thou ungrateful to ...
— Poems (Volume II.) • Jonathan Swift
... a matter of experiment! As if you could take it up or lay it down as an idle frolic! As if the dire goddess that presides over it, with her murderous spear in hand, and her gorgon at her breast, was a coquette to be flirted with! We ought with reverence to approach that tremendous divinity, that loves courage, but commands counsel. War never leaves where it found a nation. It is never to be ...
— Selections from the Speeches and Writings of Edmund Burke. • Edmund Burke
... faintly; and once more she turned her eyes to Richard. It was a true and tender glance, one would have said, and accompanied by an attempt at a smile of encouragement. But if it had been a glance of a gorgon, it could not have had a more appalling effect; it literally seemed to turn him ...
— Bred in the Bone • James Payn
... And gorgon shield,—or, power to fright Man's folly, dreadful shone, And many a blockhead (easy change!) ...
— The Poetical Works of Edward Young, Volume 2 • Edward Young
... walnut shell. So I told him, but people don't see what infants they are themselves, and I want to hinder him from putting his foot in it before he has seen her aunt—cousin—sister, or whoever it is that has the charge of her; and she has depicted to him a Gorgon, with Medusa's hair, claws and all—a fancy ...
— Modern Broods • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... (howbeit much of what he saith is the same with what I did confute in my Nihil Respondes, and his book, coming forth a month after, takes no notice of that second piece of mine, but speaketh only to the first). Meanwhile, let him not believe that his big looking title can, like Gorgon's head, blockify or stonify rational men, so as they shall not perceive the want or weakness of argument. It hath ever been a trick of adversaries to calumniate the way of God and his servants, as being against authority, but I ...
— The Works of Mr. George Gillespie (Vol. 1 of 2) • George Gillespie
... Egypt, meant, physically, little more than the blue of the air; but the Greek, in a climate of alternate storm and calm, represented the wild fringes of the storm-cloud by the serpents of her aegis; and the lightning and cold of the highest thunderclouds, by the Gorgon on her shield: while morally, the same types represented to him the mystery and changeful terror of knowledge, as her spear and helm its ruling and defensive power. And no study can be more interesting, or more useful to you, than that of the different meanings ...
— The Ethics of the Dust • John Ruskin
... dignity of its own nature, and thus prepared itself for all moral corruption; and the massive sepulchral monuments in which the hopeless despair of heathenism had, as it were, become petrified by the Gorgon gaze of death. That Appian Way should be to us the most interesting of all the roads of the world; for by it came to us our civilisation and Christianity—the divine principles and hopes that redeem the soul, retrieve the vanity of existence, ...
— Roman Mosaics - Or, Studies in Rome and Its Neighbourhood • Hugh Macmillan
... the avenging Furies, "Gorgon-like, vested in sable stoles, their locks entwined with clustering snakes," has fled to Delphi to invoke the aid of Apollo. He clasps the navel-stone and in his exhaustion falls asleep. Around him sleep the ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 1 • Charles Dudley Warner
... the gospel of freedom! but alas! rich friends there were none. Oh, if he could cry to the Church for help in this hour of his need! but it was slowly dawning on him that not from the Church would help come to his cause; for a grievous thing had happened to the Church. The slave gorgon sat staring from the pews, and turning the pulpits to stone, turning also to stone the hearts ...
— William Lloyd Garrison - The Abolitionist • Archibald H. Grimke
... not be nursed by you!" he cried. "I won't have you near me, glaring at me with your Gorgon stare. Send another nurse to me—send the doctor. Get out of my sight, Gorgon! Don't ...
— A Sheaf of Corn • Mary E. Mann
... famous Lame One fashion him of gold with his hands. On his feet he had winged sandals, and his black-sheathed sword was slung across his shoulders by a cross-belt of bronze. He was flying swift as thought. The head of a dreadful monster, the Gorgon, covered the broad of his back, and a bag of silver—a marvel to see—contained it: and from the bag bright tassels of gold hung down. Upon the head of the hero lay the dread cap [1804] of Hades which had the awful gloom of night. Perseus ...
— Hesiod, The Homeric Hymns, and Homerica • Homer and Hesiod
... dark, but the old man was familiar with his menagerie out there on the parapet; he loved his stone monsters—the owl, the griffin, the gorgon, and stroked them every time that he passed them. But the creature with a man's body, goat's feet and horns, inspired him with a certain awe, as it stood there leaning on its hands like a priest, and bending forward as if to preach to the godless city or to hurl anathemas at it. ...
— Historical Miniatures • August Strindberg
... he was willing to try the war for a year or two, and, if it did not succeed, then to vote for peace." As if war was a matter of experiment! As if you could take it up or lay it down as an idle frolic! As if the dire goddess that presides over it, with her murderous spear in her hand and her Gorgon at her breast, was a coquette to be flirted with! We ought with reverence to approach that tremendous divinity, that loves courage, but commands counsel. War never leaves where it found a nation. It is never to be entered into without a mature deliberation,—not a deliberation ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. V. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... that mocks her coal-black veil, Heard her light, lively tones in Lady's bower, Seen her long locks that foil the painter's power, Her fairy form, with more than female grace, Scarce would you deem that Saragoza's tower Beheld her smile in Danger's Gorgon face, Thin the closed ranks, and lead in ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 2 • George Gordon Byron
... the Evening Star, who held up the sky upon his shoulders, in the midst of the Fortunate Islands, the gardens of the daughter of the Evening Star, full of strange golden fruits; and that Perseus had turned him into stone, when he passed him with the Gorgon's Head. ...
— Madam How and Lady Why - or, First Lessons in Earth Lore for Children • Charles Kingsley
... and humiliated emperor, I should stab myself with my own sword rather than submit to such a disgrace. It seems I have not yet engraved my name deeply enough into the marble tablets of history, and I shall prove to these overbearing princes, who believe their legitimacy to be the Gorgon's head they only need show in order to crush me—I shall prove to them WHO I AM, AND TO WHOM the future belongs, whether to THEM or to ME! However, it is unnecessary to say so much about ...
— LOUISA OF PRUSSIA AND HER TIMES • Louise Muhlbach
... ship and of the raft, the terrible loss of Life, the cannibalism, the cruelty, the sufferings, and all the disgraceful and inhuman proceedings, which have branded the modern Medusa with a name of infamy worse than that of the Gorgon,—the monster after which she was called,—originated in the want of that order and prompt obedience, which the pages of this volume are intended to record, to the ...
— Narratives of Shipwrecks of the Royal Navy; between 1793 and 1849 • William O. S. Gilly
... the very man who has heard the tormented spirits crying out for the second death, who has read the dusky characters on the portal within which there is no hope, who has hidden his face from the terrors of the Gorgon, who has fled from the hooks and the seething pitch of Barbariccia and Draghignazzo. His own hands have grasped the shaggy sides of Lucifer. His own feet have climbed the mountain of expiation. His own brow has ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 1 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... It was famous for a temple erected in honor of Kali, the fearful wife of the god Siva, the most cruel, vindictive and relentless of all the heathen deities. The temple still stands, being more than 400 years old, and "Kali, the Black One," still sits upon her altar, hideous in appearance, gorgon-headed, wearing a necklace of human skulls and dripping with fresh blood from the morning sacrifice of sheep and goats. She brings pestilence, famine, war and sorrows and suffering of all kinds, and can only be propitiated by the sacrifice of life. Formerly nothing ...
— Modern India • William Eleroy Curtis
... chamber, and destroy your sight With a new Gorgon:—do not bid me speak; See, and ...
— Macbeth • William Shakespeare [Collins edition]
... goat's skin), the shield of Zeus, made of the hide of the goat AMALTHEA (q. v.), representing originally the storm-cloud in which the god invested himself when he was angry; it was also the attribute of Athena, bearing in her case the Gorgon's head. ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... by John Graham, Head of the House of Graham & Company, Pork-Packers in Chicago, familiarly known on 'Change as "Old Gorgon Graham," to his Son, Pierrepont, facetiously known to his intimates ...
— Letters from a Self-Made Merchant to His Son • George Horace Lorimer
... o'clock came the sallow Frenchwoman, with the face of a Gorgon and the figure of a Juno, who posed for the ensemble. She stood against the dark crimson background, outlined pure and white like a marvel of Phidian sculpture upon which the Spirit of Life had slightly breathed. So still, so white, so coldly, purely statuesque she seemed, ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 22. July, 1878. • Various
... with what they were in times gone by, and I had gradually learned the blessed lesson which is taught by familiarity with sorrow, that the greater part of what is dreadful in it lies in the imagination. The true Gorgon head is seldom seen in reality. That it exists I do not doubt, but it is not so commonly visible as we think. Again, as we get older we find that all life is given us on conditions of uncertainty, and yet we walk courageously on. The labourer marries and has children, when there is ...
— Mark Rutherford's Deliverance • Mark Rutherford
... the assistance of Minerva, for having released Andromeda from her confinement on the rock to which she was chained. He is represented in the preceding illustration holding a drawn sword in his right hand and in his left the head of Medusa, the Gorgon, whose terrifying appearance changed all who beheld her into stone, and whom he had destroyed with the assistance of the wings he had borrowed from Mercury, the helmet from Pluto, the sword from Vulcan, and the ...
— The Ruins • C. F. [Constantin Francois de] Volney |
