"Legendary" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the appearance of Jesus Christ is told with that strange mixture of the natural and impossible, that distinguishes legendary tale from fact. He is represented as suddenly coming in and going out when the doors are shut, and of vanishing out of sight, and appearing again, as one would conceive of an unsubstantial vision; then again he is hungry, sits down to meat, and ...
— The Writings Of Thomas Paine, Complete - With Index to Volumes I - IV • Thomas Paine
... himself as an ordinary,—or extraordinary,—man, seems more or less preposterous; while to conceive him as endowed with dash, spirit, and a love of adventure is judged almost as absurd and impossible. The only potentate that ever appears, in legendary lore, to have indulged himself to his heart's content in the sport of adopting a disguise and going about unrecognised among his subjects, is the witty and delightful hero of the 'Arabian Nights' Entertainment,' Caliph Haroun Alraschid, who, ...
— Temporal Power • Marie Corelli
... would have to give 100 hours a year distributed over the whole year. These hours of work would become hours of recreation spent among friends and children in beautiful gardens, more beautiful probably than those of the legendary Semiramis. ...
— The Conquest of Bread • Peter Kropotkin
... less a person that Alexander Hamilton himself—called to discuss the terms of this last document. By the bye, Hamilton's part in the affair is traditional and legendary rather than a matter of official record;—certainly his name does not appear in connection with the will. But Hamilton was the lawyer of Randall's sister, and a close family friend, so the story may more easily be ...
— Greenwich Village • Anna Alice Chapin
... Scotch or Irish fugitives, and besides its natural strength it was respected as a sanctuary, having been the abode at one time of Saint Columba. A mass of broken masonry on a cliff overhanging the sea is a remnant of the castle, in which Robert Bruce watched the leap of the legendary spider. To this island, when Essex entered Antrim, Macconnell and the other Scots had sent their wives and children, their aged, and their sick, for safety. On his way through Carrickfergus, when returning from Dublin, the Earl ...
— Castles and Cave Dwellings of Europe • Sabine Baring-Gould
... in his Glossary, pp. 209. 445., enters largely into the legendary history of the Sangreal, as well as the question of its orthography. He takes some pains to refute the etymology given above, and quotes Roquefort (Dict. de la Langue Romane) to prove that graal or greal signifies ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 76, April 12, 1851 • Various
... great names I have already enumerated, but by some equally high which I have omitted. On this subject it would be impossible to overlook the names of Lever, Maxwell, or Otway, or to forget the mellow hearth-light and chimney-corner tone, the happy dialogue and legendary truth which characterize the exquisite fairy legends of Crofton Croker. Much of the difficulty of the task, I say, has been removed by these writers, but there remains enough still behind to justify me in giving a short dissertation ...
— The Ned M'Keown Stories - Traits And Stories Of The Irish Peasantry, The Works of - William Carleton, Volume Three • William Carleton
... Scotland, and having but one very small Shetland pony between them, each one walked and rode alternately. When they reached the bridge, at a point where the river becomes sombre and romantic, Byron, who was on foot, recollected a legendary prophecy, which says:— ...
— My Recollections of Lord Byron • Teresa Guiccioli
... was raised to this legendary king of the Brigantes, has totally disappeared. It may have been a mighty barrow surrounded with great stones and containing the golden ornaments worn by Peredurus, but if it existed outside the imaginations of the Chroniclers it would probably ...
— The Evolution Of An English Town • Gordon Home
... vol. i. (an article written on the occasion of Browning's death) says that he was told by Carlyle of his first meeting with Browning—as Carlyle rode upon Wimbledon Common a "beautiful youth," walking there alone, stopped him and asked for his acquaintance. The incident has a somewhat legendary air.] ...
— Robert Browning • Edward Dowden
... rock, like one of those antediluvian creatures who have occasionally been released by a stroke of the pickax from their stony prison. Nell became a fashionable wonder without knowing it. Superstitious folks made her story a new subject for legendary marvels, and were inclined to think, as Jack Ryan told Harry, that Nell was ...
— The Underground City • Jules Verne
... author relates the stirring tale of the Scottish War of Independence. The extraordinary valour and personal prowess of Wallace and Bruce rival the deeds of the mythical heroes of chivalry, and indeed at one time Wallace was ranked with these legendary personages. The researches of modern historians have shown, however, that he was a living, breathing man—and a valiant champion. The hero of the tale fought under both Wallace and Bruce, and while the strictest historical accuracy has been maintained with respect to public events, the work is full ...
— Captain Bayley's Heir: - A Tale of the Gold Fields of California • G. A. Henty
... is a legendary hero, indefinitely dating back. May not his monody, then, be a spontaneous melody, that has been with us since Mardi began? What bard composed the soft verses that our palm boughs sing at even? Nay, Yoomy, that monody was not written ...
— Mardi: and A Voyage Thither, Vol. II (of 2) • Herman Melville
... master of himself. His immense strength not only burst his bonds, but broke prison, and this invincible Samson was once more free in Aberdeen, inspiring that respectable city with a legendary dread. The reward of one hundred pounds was offered in vain. Had he shown himself on the road in broad daylight, none would have dared to arrest him, and it was not until his plans were deliberately laid, that he crossed the sea. The more violent period of his career ...
— A Book of Scoundrels • Charles Whibley
... poetry, and it is often urged that the features of Nature in America must seem tame because they have no legendary wreaths to decorate them. It is perhaps hard for those of us who are untravelled to appreciate how densely even the ruralities of Europe are overgrown with this ivy of associations. Thus, it is fascinating ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, No. 47, September, 1861 • Various
... stage and caravan laboring across the plains, and the swift mustang flying from post to post, frequently intercepted by the wily savage, were but things of yesterday, though fast becoming legendary. When those slower methods by which correspondence was conveyed at a great expense and delay, and current literature was to a great extent debarred, were supplanted by a continuous line of stages, it was considered a revolution in the wheel of progress, and the consummation. ...
— The Bay State Monthly, Vol. 1, Issue 1. - A Massachusetts Magazine of Literature, History, - Biography, And State Progress • Various
... is legitimate to admire knights who ride about "redressing human wrongs," fighting dragons and rescuing fair ladies from wicked giants, and at this stage there is no need to draw a hard and fast line between history and legendary literature. It is good to introduce children, especially boys, to some of the Arthurian legends if only to impress the ideal, "Live pure, speak true, right wrong, else wherefore born?" Stories should always help children to understand human beings, ...
— The Child Under Eight • E.R. Murray and Henrietta Brown Smith
... companion of history. For each age it creates a typical figure, in which are fixed, for the information of future times, the fleeting, subtle emotions as well as the permanent effects produced by historical events, and this constitutes the value of legendary lore in tracing the development and characteristics of a people. At the same time its magic charms connect the links ...
— Jewish Literature and Other Essays • Gustav Karpeles
... since the war who had not learned reading, penmanship ("up to the right, down to the left, my dear"), geography, history, arithmetic, deportment, and the fine arts, in the Academy for Young Ladies. The brilliant military record of the General still shed a legendary lustre upon the school, and it was earnestly believed that no girl, after leaving there with a diploma for good conduct, could possibly go wrong or become eccentric in her later years. To be sure, she ...
— Virginia • Ellen Glasgow
... contains the following legendary account of the origin of this custom, which, like so many others, was an Anglo-Saxon ...
— The Customs of Old England • F. J. Snell
... of days grown pale In golden dreams float softly by, Like some old legendary tale, Before fond memory's moistened eye! The boatman calls—go hence in peace! God bless you, wife and child, and sire! Bless all your fields with rich increase, And crown each ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VII. • Various
... to be this. The sudden and universal Naturalism, or inclination to copy ordinary natural objects, which manifested itself among the painters of Europe, at the moment when the invention of printing superseded their legendary labors, was no false instinct. It was misunderstood and misapplied, but it came at the right time, and has maintained itself through all kinds of abuse; presenting in the recent schools of landscape, perhaps only the first fruits of its power. That instinct ...
— The Crown of Wild Olive • John Ruskin
... seem to you to be of his own invention? Name those based, ostensibly at least, upon the poet's own experience. To what extent do you find his narrative work purely objective, i. e., without admixture of reflective or didactic elements? What themes are of mythical or legendary origin? Of those having a historical basis, how many are drawn from English sources? Does his use of narrative material ever show a deficiency of emotion; i. e., could the story have been better told in prose? Has he the ...
— A Study of Poetry • Bliss Perry
... all the beautiful Old World associations, poetical and legendary, that cluster about the holly at Christmas time, although our native tree furnishes most of our holiday decorations. So far back as Pliny's day, the European holly had all manner of supernatural qualities attributed to it: its insignificant ...
— Wild Flowers, An Aid to Knowledge of Our Wild Flowers and - Their Insect Visitors - - Title: Nature's Garden • Neltje Blanchan
... anew, as Gilmore reinvented gunnery. Sheridan's first famous ride was on a barebacked, bridleless horse which he mounted in the pasture where it was feeding, and clung to with his knees and elbows in its long flight down the highway. No poet has yet put this legendary feat into verse, but all my readers know the poem which celebrates Sheridan's ride from Winchester to Cedar Creek. This ride not only saved the day, but it stamped with the fiery little man's character the history of the whole campaign in the Valley of the Shenandoah; ...
— Stories Of Ohio - 1897 • William Dean Howells
... Dexter was working it with one hand only. In the other he held a harp of a pattern which I had hitherto only seen in pictures. The strings were few in number, and the instrument was so small that I could have held it easily on my lap. It was the ancient harp of the pictured Muses and the legendary Welsh bards. ...
— The Law and the Lady • Wilkie Collins
... Castelfranco took up the brush. How the panel exchanged the Pyrenees for the North Shore passed dimly through my mind as barely worth recalling. It was the usual story of the rich and enterprising American collector. Hanson Brooks had bought it and hung it in "The Curlews," where it bid fair to become legendary once more, but at last had lent it with his other pictures to the Prestonville Museum of Science and the Fine Arts, the goal of my present quest. While the picture lay perdu at Brooks's, there had been disquieting gossip; the Pretorian ...
— The Collectors • Frank Jewett Mather
... verses were very silly; and, recalling the big, blundering boy who had written them, Billy began to wonder—somewhat forlornly—whither he, too, had vanished. He and the girl he had gone mad for both seemed rather mythical—legendary as King Pepin. ...
— The Eagle's Shadow • James Branch Cabell
... Legendary being! Cast down from Khedivial heights one day and up again on high with Kitchener the next. But, in Heaven's name, what has taken you to the Soudan? What made you go and risk your life at Omdurman? The same old desperation, ...
— The Great Hunger • Johan Bojer
... Tibet, the Chinese, the Burmese, and the Siamese taking it into their lands disfigured it, and spoilt it with heresies. We cannot forget that, persecuted by conquer-ing Brahmans, and expelled from India, it found, at last, a shelter in Ceylon where it still flourishes like the legendary aloe, which is said to blossom once in its lifetime and then to die, as the root is killed by the exuberance of blossom, and the seeds cannot produce anything but weeds. All this we may overlook, as I said before. But the ...
— From the Caves and Jungles of Hindostan • Helena Pretrovna Blavatsky
... found later that the Arabs, while they added much of their own to it, still were but the preservers of Greek-Hellenistic knowledge and we are convinced that the alchemists were right when they indicated in their traditions the legendary Egyptian Hermes as their ancestor. This legendary personage is really the Egyptian god Thoth, who was identified with Hermes in the time of the Ptolemies. He was honored as the Lord of the highest wisdom and it was ...
— Hidden Symbolism of Alchemy and the Occult Arts • Herbert Silberer
... ignorant of the dramatic adventures imputed to this legendary hero, could not bear to think of the position she had been placed in that awful night, when, threatened and robbed by Fantomas, she had escaped death by a series of unknown and unguessable circumstances: ...
— Messengers of Evil - Being a Further Account of the Lures and Devices of Fantomas • Pierre Souvestre
... misleading, even his appearance. In legendary portraits he appears as a dark southerner with black hair and sparkling eyes. But he was really very fair and had blue eyes,[5] and Joseph d'Ortigue tells us they were deep-set and piercing, though sometimes clouded by melancholy or languor.[6] ...
— Musicians of To-Day • Romain Rolland
... staircase came to an end; save that, on one side of the little entry where it terminated, a flight of a dozen steps gave access to the roof of the tower and the legendary shrine. On the other side was a door, at which Miriam knocked, but rather as a friendly announcement of her presence than with any doubt of hospitable welcome; for, awaiting no response, she lifted the latch ...
— The Marble Faun, Volume I. - The Romance of Monte Beni • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... that one used to be able to walk from one end of North Africa to the other in the shade. Allowing for some exaggeration, this means that either the legendary African forest of the Romans continued to subsist, or that certain bare tracts covered themselves with timber in post-Roman periods of abandonment, before the Arabs and their goats had time—for it must have required time—to change the climate and ...
— Fountains In The Sand - Rambles Among The Oases Of Tunisia • Norman Douglas
... the reporter and taking down people's words under their own roof. Every day Sir Walter was ready by one o'clock to accompany us either in driving or walking, often in both, and in either there was the same inexhaustible flow of legendary lore, romantic incident, apt quotation, curious or diverting story; and sometimes old ballads were recited, commemorative of some of the localities through which he passed. Those who had seen him only amidst ...
— Marriage • Susan Edmonstone Ferrier
... incidents to reckon with. About the year 520 a certain northern chief, called by the chronicler Chochilaicus (who is generally identified with the Hygelac of the epic), led a huge plundering expedition up the Rhine. After a succession of battles he was overcome by the Franks, but—and now we enter a legendary region once more—not until a gigantic nephew of Hygelac had performed heroic feats of valor, and had saved the remnants of the host by a marvelous feat of swimming. The majority of scholars now hold that these historical events and personages were celebrated in the ...
— English Literature - Its History and Its Significance for the Life of the English Speaking World • William J. Long
... the same government. As to Corea, though in the days of Confucius it was unknown to the Chinese, the legends of both countries ascribe the founding of its civilization and monarchy to a Chinese minister exiled there during the twelfth century B. C. Japanese legendary history goes back to 600 B. C.;—that is, to the closing of the Age of the Mysteries, and the opening of that of the Religions:— I imagine that means that about that time a break with history occurred, and the past ...
— The Crest-Wave of Evolution • Kenneth Morris
... Dumnoniorum, now Exeter, appears to have been a cantonal capital developed out of one of the great market centres of the Celtic tribes, and as such it was the most westerly of the larger Romano-British towns. The legendary history of the place, both temporal and ecclesiastical, goes far back to the days when, for a late posterity, it is difficult to separate fact from fable. It is, however, quite established that here was the capital ...
— Exeter • Sidney Heath
... Ireland in the mind is already done, and only needs retelling by the new writers. More important, however, for the literature we are imagining as an offset to the cosmopolitan ideal would be the creation of heroic figures, types, whether legendary or taken from history, and enlarged to epic proportions by our writers, who would use them in common, as Cuculain, Fionn, Ossian, and Oscar were used by the generations of poets who have left us the bardic history of Ireland, wherein one would write of the battle fury of a hero, and another ...
— Imaginations and Reveries • (A.E.) George William Russell
... acquiesce. But in innumerable cases there appears to be no room for that explanation. The rocks display the fossil remains of whole races of primeval animals produced apparently only to become extinct. Of the earth itself, man's destined habitation, large portions are utterly uninhabitable. The legendary war between the powers of good and evil, God and Satan, Ormuzd and Ahriman, was a fable naturally devised, though the birth of the two powers and the division of existence between them is inconceivable. ...
— No Refuge but in Truth • Goldwin Smith
... Death, why canst thou not sometimes be timely? Hadst thou taken this old blacksmith to thyself ere his full ruin came upon him, then had the young widow had a delicious grief, and her orphans a truly venerable, legendary sire to dream of in their after years; and all of them a care-killing competency. But Death plucked down some virtuous elder brother, on whose whistling daily toil solely hung the responsibilities of some other family, ...
— Moby Dick; or The Whale • Herman Melville
... several following breathe the spirit of Scandinavism described above. Yellow-blue. The flag of Sweden shows a yellow cross on a blue ground. Christian Fourth, King of Denmark and Norway, 1588-1648. Haakon Earl, see Note 14. Palnatoki, the legendary leader of the Jomsborg vikings. Ancient enemies are now allies, and so also Tordenskjold (see Note 5) fights by the side of, not against, Charles XII. Jennythe famous singer, Jenny Lind, 1820-1887. Ltzen. Gustavus Adolphus prayed and his troops sang ...
— Poems and Songs • Bjornstjerne Bjornson
... "the Lord of counsel" (bk. i. 208), "the all-seeing Jove" (bk. xiii. 824). Indeed the mere expression "Father of gods and men" (bk. i. 639), so often applied to Zeus, and him alone, is proof sufficient that, in spite of all the legendary stories of gods and heroes, the idea of Zeus as the Supreme God, the maker of the world, the Father of gods and men, the monarch and ruler of the world, was not ...
— Christianity and Greek Philosophy • Benjamin Franklin Cocker
... original intention to let you off so easily. I started with the idea of giving you a rapid but glowing and eloquent word-picture of the valley of the Rhine from Cologne to Mayence. For background, I thought I would sketch in the historical and legendary events connected with the district, and against this, for a foreground, I would draw, in vivid colours, the modern aspect of the scene, with ...
— Diary of a Pilgrimage • Jerome K. Jerome
... and enthusiasm. When the mind is saturated with the literature of a place, it is quick to seize on what appeals to the imagination, and this appeal is the one which must be considered in every case where there is an historical or legendary background to give salient relief to palace or temple, statue or painting. Without this background the noblest work seems dull and lifeless. With it the palace stamps itself upon the imagination, the temple stirs the emotions, the statue speaks, the ...
— The Critic in the Orient • George Hamlin Fitch
... should set his heart on; for who would wish to be chattered about by the people that will live in these islands three hundred years hence? We should not understand them nor they us. Avaunt, therefore, all legendary immortalities, and let us be content, Ross, to be remembered by our friends, and, perhaps, to have our names passed on by disciples to another generation! A fair and natural immortality this is; let us share it together. Our bark lies ...
— A Mummer's Wife • George Moore
... to the Iron Age the growth and ascent of Heywood's dramatic power may fairly be said to correspond in a reversed order with the degeneracy and decline of human heroism and happiness in the legendary gradation or degradation of the classical four ages. "The Golden Age" is a delightful example of dramatic poetry in its simplest and most primary stage; in "The Silver Age" the process of evolution ...
— The Age of Shakespeare • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... two or more receivers of alms. The Sabbath services consisted of prayers, and reading of the scriptures—both law and prophets,—and an address or sermon. It was in the sermon that the people learned to know the "traditions of the elders," whether as applications of the law to the daily life, or as legendary embellishments of Hebrew history and prophecy. The preacher might be any one whom the ruler of the synagague recognized as worthy to address ...
— The Life of Jesus of Nazareth • Rush Rhees
... four puppet emperors within five years. He was, in fact, the real ruler of Italy at this time. After his death Orestes, another German general, went a step beyond Ricimer's policy and placed his own son on the throne of the Caesars. By a curious coincidence, this lad bore the name of Romulus, legendary founder of Rome, and the nickname of Augustulus ("the little Augustus"). The boy emperor reigned less than a year. The German troops clamored for a third of the lands of Italy and, when their demand was refused, proclaimed Odoacer king. ...
— EARLY EUROPEAN HISTORY • HUTTON WEBSTER
... bride to be a person of importance, was not intolerably requited by three months of wretched misery; after so much she is suffered to escape. From Edgar Linton, as we have seen, Heathcliff's blows fell aside unharming, as the executioner's strokes from a legendary martyr. He never learnt how secondary a place he held in his wife's heart, he never knew the misery of his only daughter—misery soon to be turned into joy. He lived and died, patient, happy, trustful, unvisited by the violence and fury that had ...
— Emily Bront • A. Mary F. (Agnes Mary Frances) Robinson
... Office were not all contained in one book, as they are now in the Breviary, which is an abridgment or compendium of several books. The recitation of the Office required the Psaltery, the Lectionary, the Book of Homilies, the Legendary, the Antiphonarium, the Hymnal, the Book of Collects, the Martyrology, the Rubrics. The Psaltery contained the psalms; the Lectionary (thirteenth century) contained the lessons of the first and second nocturn; the Book of Homilies, the homilies ...
— The Divine Office • Rev. E. J. Quigley
... Fremont, Legendary Lore, Various Namings, Physical Characteristics, Glacial Phenomena, Geology, Single Outlet, Automobile Routes, Historic Towns, Early Mining Excitements, Steamer Ride, Mineral Springs, Mountain and Lake Resorts, Trail and Camping Out Trips, Summer Residences, Fishing, ...
— The Lake of the Sky • George Wharton James
... never knew he had one like— Ah! the Archduchess must have sent him this; So there thou art, thou legendary hat! 'Tis many years—Good day!—What sayst thou? What? No, from thy little sable pyramid Twelve years of splendor gaze on me in vain, I do not fear thee now. The leathern tag With which he constantly could take thee ...
— L'Aiglon • Edmond Rostand
... left me there. I got to work at once. He was much interested in the Old Testament stories and said there were points of truth about them, although they had evidently come down to the modern writer—he called him a modern writer—in a legendary form. I thought his remarks impertinent and with difficulty refrained from saying so. Leaving the story of the Deluge and all that, I spoke of other matters, telling him of eternal life and Heaven and Hell, of which the poor benighted man had ...
— When the World Shook - Being an Account of the Great Adventure of Bastin, Bickley and Arbuthnot • H. Rider Haggard
... projected epic on Brutus, the legendary found of Britain, "would have more resembled the 'Henriade' than the 'Iliad,' or even the 'Gierusalemme Liberata'; that it would have appeared (if this scheme had been executed) how much, and for what reasons, the man that is skillful in painting modern ...
— A History of English Romanticism in the Eighteenth Century • Henry A. Beers
... can use the pencil to greater ends under cover of the motley, and encase bitter truths with the gilt of a printed jest. Like Giotto and his legendary feat, he can draw you a perfect circle with his pen—and perhaps he is the only man in the country who can do it. His is the rare gift that in him sense of fun, of dignity, and of art is equal. He will brook nothing more serious in his sallies ...
— The History of "Punch" • M. H. Spielmann
... if a secret de Polichinelle can be said to involve concealment, was a necessary part of the play. In so far as it was effectual, it operated as a measure of relief to those critics and playgoers who are so obsessed by my strained legendary reputation that they approach my plays in a condition which is really one of derangement, and are quite unable to conceive a play of mine as anything but a trap baited with paradoxes, and designed to compass their ethical perversion and intellectual ...
— Fanny's First Play • George Bernard Shaw
... in the less no more than in the more successful, do we find anything of what the poet has so well characterised in one of his early reviews as the 'spurious style of tawdry and affected simplicity which trickles through the legendary ditties' of the eighteenth century. 'The hunt is up' in earnest; and we are chasing the tall deer in the open hills, not coursing rabbits with toy ...
— Sir Walter Scott - Famous Scots Series • George Saintsbury
... rattlesnakes' nest, it might have been named. Wherever we brushed among the bushes, our passage woke their angry buzz. One dwelt habitually in the wood-pile, and sometimes, when we came for firewood, thrust up his small head between two logs, and hissed at the intrusion. The rattle has a legendary credit; it is said to be awe-inspiring, and, once heard, to stamp itself for ever in the memory. But the sound is not at all alarming; the hum of many insects, and the buzz of the wasp convince the ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 2 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... written for the Vontadour Theatre, devoted to comic opera; but the company were found unable to sing the difficult music. Meyerbeer was inspired by Weber's "Der Freischtitz" to attempt a romantic, semi-fantastic legendary opera, and trod very closely in the footsteps of his model. It was determined to so alter the libretto and extend and elaborate the music as to fit it for the stage of the Grand Opera. MM. Scribe and Delavigne, the librettists, and Meyerbeer, devoted busy days and nights to hurrying on the ...
— Great Italian and French Composers • George T. Ferris
... were to forget the few it can boast. Joseph Train, our historian, made the acquaintance of Scott in 1814, and during the eighteen years following he rendered important services to "The Great Unknown" as a collector of some of the legendary stories used as foundations for what were then called the Scotch Novels. But it is a common error that Train found the groundwork of the Manx part of "Peveril of the Peak." It was Scott who directed Train to the Isle of Man as a fine subject for study. Scott's brother Thomas ...
— The Little Manx Nation - 1891 • Hall Caine
... thought our remembering Alcestis, for though women have not much of Ares in them, yet when possessed by Love they are bold even to the death, beyond what one would expect from their nature. For if we may credit legendary lore, the stories about Alcestis, and Protesilaus, and Eurydice the wife of Orpheus, show that the only one of the gods that Hades pays attention to is Love; although to everybody else, as Sophocles says, "he knows of no forbearance ...
— Plutarch's Morals • Plutarch
... haughty malignity of their ungenerous natures, in depreciating Wieland, at a time when old age had laid a freezing hand upon the energy which he would once have put forth in defending himself. He was the Voltaire of Germany, and very much more than the Voltaire; for his romantic and legendary poems are above the level of Voltaire. But, on the other hand, he was a Voltaire in sensual impurity. To work, to carry on a plot, to affect his readers by voluptuous impressions,—these were the unworthy aims of Wieland; and though a good-natured critic would not refuse to make some allowance ...
— Biographical Essays • Thomas de Quincey
... have to date that tremendous catastrophe since the deposition of our tertiary formations, and therefore it might possibly be subsequent to the introduction of the present race into the world. May not some of the legendary myths of the ancient world as mystified by the Greeks, have for a foundation the disappearance of a former great planet from the system? The idea of the existence of seven planets is one of the oldest records of antiquity; but the earth of course would not be counted one, and therefore in after times, ...
— Outlines of a Mechanical Theory of Storms - Containing the True Law of Lunar Influence • T. Bassnett
... the Rosicrucian philosophy was a strange offshoot from Alchemy, and made up in equal proportions of Pagan Platonism, Christian Quietism, and Jewish Mysticism. See Bulwer's 'Zanoni.' Pope has blended some of its elements with old legendary stories about ...
— The Poetical Works Of Alexander Pope, Vol. 1 • Alexander Pope et al
... went on. It did not seem that his audience was greatly impressed. It was bewildered and dazed. But the fire leapt up behind him giving him a legendary splendour, and the whole picture was romantic and unreal like a gaudy ...
— The Secret City • Hugh Walpole
... attest the reality of all these events, which, though they were so recent, had already been relegated to the domain of the legendary? ...
— The Honor of the Name • Emile Gaboriau
... without her to help him. And perhaps it might be so. She must already know, or strongly suspect, that he was engaged in some deep, mysterious research; it might be that, with her sources of mysterious knowledge among her legendary lore, she knew of this. Then, oh, to think of those dreams which lovers have always had, when their new love makes the old earth seem so happy and glorious a place, that not a thousand nor an endless succession of years can ...
— Septimius Felton - or, The Elixir of Life • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... sculptured gables and the Gothic churches, of the wonderful Schloss, with its moat and its clustering towers. But it has a little look of some other parts of the principality. One might fancy one's self among those grand old German forests, those legendary mountains; the sort of country one sees from the ...
— The Europeans • Henry James
... personality in his poem. And he narrates, in a mooning, digressive, good-natured, drowsy tone, with only a rare awaking of interest, a story which he has heard from some one else, and that some one else from a series of other some one elses (Chrestien de Troyes, a legendary Provencal Chiot or Guyot, perhaps even the original Welsh bard); all muddled, monotonous, and droning; events and persons ill-defined, without any sense of the relative importance of anything, without clear perception of what it is all about, or at least without the ...
— Euphorion - Being Studies of the Antique and the Mediaeval in the - Renaissance - Vol. II • Vernon Lee
... Dee."—What is the historical, traditional, or legendary allusion in this epithet, bestowed by Milton ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 216, December 17, 1853 • Various
... legendary side, which is always in evidence in the case of a celebrated man,—that gossip, for example, which avers that Maupassant was a high liver and a worldling. The very number of his volumes is a protest to the contrary. One could not write so ...
— Selected Writings of Guy de Maupassant • Guy de Maupassant
... that the Babu proved to be an excellent storyteller, often beguiling the tedium of wakeful hours in the shed by relating interminable narratives from the Hindu mythology, and in particular the exploits of the legendary hero Vikramaditya. So accomplished was he in this very oriental art that it was not uncommon for one or other of the sentries to listen to him through the opening in the shed wall, and the head warder who locked the prisoners' fetters would himself sometimes squat down at the door before leaving ...
— In Clive's Command - A Story of the Fight for India • Herbert Strang
... might have been dolorous, which might have been ironic, with the sweat running from under its steel casque, looms now in the memory, huge, statuesque, silent but questioning, like an overshadowing challenge, like a gigantic legendary form charged with tragedy and drama; and its eyes, seen in memory again, search us in privacy. Yet that figure was the "Cuthbert." It was derided by those onlookers who were not fit to kneel and touch ...
— Waiting for Daylight • Henry Major Tomlinson
... in the strange death of his first wife was a matter of current belief among his contemporaries. "He is infamed by the death of his wife," said Burghley, and the tale has since become so interwoven with classic and legendary fiction, as well as with more authentic history, that the phantom of the murdered Amy Robsart is sure to arise at every mention of the Earl's name. Yet a coroner's inquest—as appears from his own secret correspondence with his relative and agent at Cumnor—was ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... that there is "nothing sacred" in his religion. Mr. Hartland offers me a case in point. In Mrs. Langloh Parker's Australian Legendary Tales (pp. 11, 94), are myths of low adventures of Baiame. In her More Australian Legendary Tales (pp. 84-99), is a very poetical and charming aspect of the Baiame belief. Mr. Hartland says that I will "seek to put" the first set of stories out of court, as "a kind of joke ...
— Myth, Ritual, and Religion, Vol. 1 • Andrew Lang
... that no exploit recorded of any human being or traditional of any legendary hero, outclasses as a feat of strength, coolness, courage and perfect coordination of all the mental and physical faculties, this act of Commodus' in killing two successive lions with a palm-wood club. A charging lion is an object so terrifying as to chill the blood of a distant onlooker. Very unusually ...
— Andivius Hedulio • Edward Lucas White
... in various ways, some of which were simply rude and others mysteriously sardonic. Young officers were warned kindly by their more experienced comrades not to stare openly at the colonel's scar. But indeed an officer need have been very young in his profession not to have heard the legendary tale of that duel originating ...
— A Set of Six • Joseph Conrad
... thousand years, since that nigh legendary figure Einstein wrote and thought in the far-off mists of time, the scientists endeavored to reduce life and the universe to terms of a mathematical formula. And they thought they had succeeded. Throughout the world, machines did the work of man, ...
— Astounding Stories, July, 1931 • Various
... the old legendary stories put in verse by modern writers provoked him to caricature them thus one ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 2 • Boswell
... outright. A cocoanut stump, faced by a sheet of copper recording the circumstance, is the great circumnavigator's monument. A few miles beyond, is the enclosure of Haunaunau, the City of Refuge for western Hawaii. In this district there is a lava road ascribed to Umi, a legendary king, who is said to have lived 500 years ago. It is very perfect, well defined on both sides with kerb-stones, and greatly resembles the chariot ways in Pompeii. Near it are several structures formed of four ...
— The Hawaiian Archipelago • Isabella L. Bird
... against dragons. From his early reading came visions of Hercules and Theseus, of Perseus and Bellerophon. But he did not put himself with such champions. He was merely serving a primitive little village, carried by its primitive state farther back than that world in which the more or less legendary Greek heroes lived. ...
— The Great Sioux Trail - A Story of Mountain and Plain • Joseph Altsheler
... the South, determined now to realize Dumouriez' dream of conquering Holland in order to appropriate its resources, pecuniary, naval, and colonial. Pichegru it was who won immortal fame by this conquest, which in truth needs not the legendary addition of his cavalry seizing a Dutch squadron in the Zuyder Zee. A singular incident attended the journey of Malmesbury with the future Princess of Wales towards Helvoetsluys, on their way to England. Unaware of the inroads of the French horse, they had to beat a speedy retirement, ...
— William Pitt and the Great War • John Holland Rose
... autocrat, and Ezzelino, the legendary tyrant, we obtain the earliest specimens of two types of despotism in Italy. Their fame long after their death powerfully affected the fancy of the people, worked itself into the literature of the Italians, and created a consciousness of tyranny in the minds ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volume 1 (of 7) • John Addington Symonds
... native scholars and collectors, they have not as yet been presented in a popular manner to English-speaking readers. The probable reasons for what would appear to be an otherwise incomprehensible omission on the part of those British writers who make a popular use of legendary material are that many Breton folk-tales strikingly resemble those of other countries, that from a variety of considerations some of them are unsuitable for presentation in an English dress, and that most of the folk-tales proper certainly possess a strong ...
— Legends & Romances of Brittany • Lewis Spence
... genius to discover the pathways along which she was to send her sons. Bold, fearless, untiring, cruel often, at other times kind and firm, they went into new seas and lands, seeking a Northwest Passage, or to "singe the beard of the King of Spain," or to find the legendary treasures of the New Indies—yet all of them were serving unconsciously the genius of their race in laying the foundations of new worlds. Perhaps of them all Smith saw most clearly the value of the settlement in Virginia, and just as clearly was he aware that the jealousies ...
— The Princess Pocahontas • Virginia Watson
... whether Rosa Bud and Helena Landless ever played on them! Looking round, we half expect to witness the famous courting scene in Edwin Drood, and afterwards "the matronly Tisher to heave in sight, rustling through the room like the legendary ghost of a dowager in silken skirts, [with her] 'I trust I disturb no one; but there was a paper-knife—Oh, thank you, I am sure!'" An excellent local institution, called "The Rochester Men's Institute," ...
— A Week's Tramp in Dickens-Land • William R. Hughes
... which led to them, occupied the whole floor of one of the square towers of the Castle. The walls of the bower were painted green, relieved by golden stars; and on every wall-space between the doors and windows was a painted "history"—namely, a medallion of some Biblical, historical, or legendary subject. The subjects in this room had evidently been chosen with reference to the tastes of a girl. They were,—the Virgin and Child; the legend of Saint Margaret; the Wheel of Fortune; Saint Agnes, with her lamb; a fountain with doves perched ...
— Earl Hubert's Daughter - The Polishing of the Pearl - A Tale of the 13th Century • Emily Sarah Holt
... his country from the ravages of the Danes, and the restorer of order and civil government, AE. has earned the title of the father of English prose writing. The earlier part of his life was filled with war and action, most of the details regarding which are more or less legendary. But no sooner had he become King of Wessex, in 871, than he began to prepare for the work of re-introducing learning into his country. Gathering round him the few scholars whom the Danes had left, and sending for others from abroad, he endeavoured to form a literary ...
— A Short Biographical Dictionary of English Literature • John W. Cousin
... depicts the moment when Evander, the aged seer-king, and his son Pallas point out to the wanderer the site of the future Capitol. Again we find the same poetical presentation, not representation, of a legendary subject, again the same feeling for the beauties of nature. How Giorgione has revelled in the glories of the setting sun, the long shadows of the evening twilight, the tall-stemmed trees, the moss-grown rock! ...
— Giorgione • Herbert Cook
... the now tested reality of his might had in former legendary times thrown its shadow before it; we find some book naturalists—Olassen and Povelson—declaring the Sperm Whale not only to be a consternation to every other creature in the sea, but also to be so incredibly ...
— Moby Dick; or The Whale • Herman Melville
... the cultivated stranger comes among them with his philological and sociological explanations, their pretty significance seems to me to be gone. I do not care a brass farthing what they are all about; they are old, they are legendary; as performed by people who have grown up among them, and seen them practised from childhood as a matter of course, they have a certain grace of congruity about them, as the schoolmen say. But printed gravely in a book they seem to me to be nothing but ...
— The Silent Isle • Arthur Christopher Benson
... to the close of a complicated and dreary sonata, I heard Margrave abruptly ask her if she could play the Tarantella, that famous Neapolitan air which is founded on the legendary belief that the bite of the tarantula excites an irresistible desire to dance. On that highbred spinster's confession that she was ignorant of the air, and had not even heard of the legend, Margrave said, "Let me play it to you, with variations of my own." Miss Brabazon ...
— A Strange Story, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... touches of pathos and humour. The unlettered Indian has no rich store of written history from which to draw his illustrations. He takes them from Nature's ever-open book—the sheltered lake, the winding stream, the storm-swept forest—and from the legendary lore of his tribe. Tecumseh was one of the most renowned of a race of orators. The stately Algonquian language displayed its greatest beauty when spoken by him. His eloquence flowed as freely as a mighty river, or again, thundering like a cataract, ...
— Tecumseh - A Chronicle of the Last Great Leader of His People; Vol. - 17 of Chronicles of Canada • Ethel T. Raymond
... the right, perhaps a mile away, a long range of foothills ran down to the horizon, with here and there the great canons, through which entrance was effected to the upland country, each canon bearing a historical or legendary name. ...
— Last of the Great Scouts - The Life Story of William F. Cody ["Buffalo Bill"] • Helen Cody Wetmore
... symbolical; Krishna was its centre, and the rest were wooing him. Desire and its frustration and fulfilment were the theme. Yet it was not sensual, or not merely so. The Hindus interpret in a religious spirit this legendary sport of Krishna with the milkmaids. It symbolises the soul's wooing of God. And so these boys interpreted it. Their passion, though it included the flesh, was not of the flesh. The mood was rapturous, ...
— Appearances - Being Notes of Travel • Goldsworthy Lowes Dickinson
... elevation between that town and the sea, and its history dates back to legendary ages, when Brutus and Corineus came to Albion with their Trojan warriors, and found the land inhabited by great giants, who terrified their men with their enormous size and horrid noises. Still they were enabled to drive them away by hurling darts and spears into their bodies. The leader of the giant ...
— From John O'Groats to Land's End • Robert Naylor and John Naylor
... exhibition of virile intellectual health. Not that they think of him as morbid,—his poetry surely could not make this impression,—but rather that the popular conception of him is, after all these years, a legendary Keats, the poet who was killed by reviewers, the Keats of Shelley's preface to the Adonais, the Keats whose story is written large in the world's book of Pity and of Death. When the readers are confronted with a fair ...
— The Bibliotaph - and Other People • Leon H. Vincent
... mention of evil is in the legendary Scriptural 526:15 text in the second chapter of Genesis. God pronounced good all that He created, and the Scriptures declare that He created all. The "tree of 526:18 life" stands for the idea of Truth, and the sword which guards it is the type of divine Science. The "tree of knowledge" stands for ...
— Science and Health With Key to the Scriptures • Mary Baker Eddy
... departure, however, he entertained the King, the two Queens, and the principal nobility at one of those elaborate fetes which have now become merely legendary; and which combined a comedy, a concert, and a ballet, with other incidental amusements, sufficient, as it would appear in these days, to have afforded occupation for a week even to the most dissipated pleasure-seekers; but which during the ...
— The Life of Marie de Medicis, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Julia Pardoe
... may form a judgment from the three which are extant (for the so-called Funeral Oration of Demosthenes is a bad and spurious imitation of Thucydides and Lysias), conformed to a regular type. They began with Gods and ancestors, and the legendary history of Athens, to which succeeded an almost equally fictitious account of later times. The Persian war usually formed the centre of the narrative; in the age of Isocrates and Demosthenes the Athenians were still living ...
— Menexenus • Plato
... just now Kendric's thoughts had more to do with the present and the immediate future than with a remote and legendary history. ...
— Daughter of the Sun - A Tale of Adventure • Jackson Gregory
... of Gregorians alluded to by Pope. Who wrote Shakspeare's Henry VIII.? Inaccuracy of the Common Division into Acts of King Lear, Much Ado About Nothing, and Twelfth Night. The Christian Iconography and Legendary Art of the Middle Ages; with especial regard to the Nimbus and Representations of the Divinity; with many illustrations. Facts for a New Biographia Britannica, consisting of unpublished Documents relating to John ...
— Notes & Queries, No. 40, Saturday, August 3, 1850 - A Medium Of Inter-Communication For Literary Men, Artists, Antiquaries, • Various
... possesses a written history extending over two thousand five hundred years, while its sovereigns have formed an unbroken dynasty since 660 B.C., but that the "authentic history begins about 400 A.D." "Authentic history" is, I consider, not a very apt phrase in this connection. Most Japanese history is legendary, and authenticity in history, Japanese or European, even much later than 400 A.D., is hopeless to look for. I have no intention of leading my readers into, as I should find a difficulty in extricating them from, the mazes of Japanese history at any date. I simply propose ...
— The Empire of the East • H. B. Montgomery
... thought that he had forgotten; that he had conquered passion; but it reappeared with the violence of a tempest, reminding him of the terrible man he had been formerly—the bold adventurer, the descendant of brave, legendary chieftains. Each evening on his knees he flayed his skin with haircloth, he tried to banish the phantom of the regretted wife by calling from its coffin the skeleton which must now be there. But she constantly appeared before him, living, ...
— The Dream • Emile Zola
... adored. A man who could give millions away and sup on dry bread was apt to conquer, not provinces alone, but hearts. Besides, he had begun well and his people had done their best. The House of Julia, to which he belonged, descended, he declared, from Venus. The ancestry was less legendary than typical. Cinna drafted a law giving him the right to marry as often as he chose. His mistresses were queens. After the episodes in Gaul, when he entered Rome his legions warned the citizens to have an eye on their wives. At seventeen he fascinated ...
— Imperial Purple • Edgar Saltus
... unparalleled heirlooms to which I have alluded, and many more besides, hospitably asked me if there was anything else that I would care to see, he meant the pieces of plate that they had in the cupboards, the curiously graven swords of other princes, historic jewels, legendary seals, but I who had had a glimpse of their marvelous staircase, whose balustrade I believed to be solid gold and wondering why in such a stately house they chose to dine in the basement, mentioned the word "upstairs." A profound hush came ...
— Tales of Wonder • Lord Dunsany
... mythology of diverse races. By what means were they communicated? As I have pointed out, in my compilation of Maori legends, there is one of Maui, which recalls to you the finding of Arthur, in Tennyson's "Idylls of the King." The same legendary idea occurs; a child cradled by the sea, none knowing that it had ...
— The Romance of a Pro-Consul - Being The Personal Life And Memoirs Of The Right Hon. Sir - George Grey, K.C.B. • James Milne
... sense of a filial relation to him! And this involved more; for so thoroughly had the old man come to regard the boy as his offspring, that he had nourished in him his own pride of family; and it added a sting of mortification to Malcolm's sorrow, that the greatness of the legendary descent in which he had believed, and the honourableness of the mournful history with which his thoughts of himself had been so closely associated, were swept from him utterly. Nor was this all even yet: in losing these he had had, as it were, to let ...
— Malcolm • George MacDonald
... Reade, "White Lies," although somewhat crude, otherwise ranks with his best. The action is uninterrupted and swift, the characters sharply defined, if legendary, the dialogue always sparkling, the plot cleanly executed, the whole full of humor and seasoned with wit. So well has it caught the spirit of the scene that it reads like a translation, and, lest we should mistake the locale, everybody ...
— Atlantic Monthly,Volume 14, No. 82, August, 1864 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various |
