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Minerva   Listen
noun
Minerva  n.  (Rom. Myth.) The goddess of wisdom, of war, of the arts and sciences, of poetry, and of spinning and weaving; identified with the Grecian Pallas Athene.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Minerva" Quotes from Famous Books



... these. Or to praise the cleanness of the street wherein he dwelt? or the provident painting of his posts, against he should have been praetor? or, leaving his parent, come to some special ornament about himself, as his rapier, or some other of his accountrements? I have it: thanks, gracious Minerva! ...
— Cynthia's Revels • Ben Jonson

... these historical touches, which are very impertinent when I write to you. Passing the strait between the islands of Andros and Achaia, now Libadia, we saw the promontory of Lunium, now called Cape Colonna, where are yet standing the vast pillars of a temple of Minerva. This venerable sight made me think, with double regret, on a beautiful temple of Theseus, which, I am assured, was almost entire at Athens, till the last campaign in the Morea, that the Turks filled it with powder, and it was accidentally blown up. You may ...
— Letters of the Right Honourable Lady M—y W—y M—e • Lady Mary Wortley Montague

... truth, an excessive sensibility of temper, without any control over it—he had all the nervous contortions of the Sybil, without her inspiration; and shifting, in his many-shaped life, through all characters and all pursuits, "exalting the olive of Minerva with the grape of Bacchus," as he phrases it, he was a lover, a tutor, a recruiting officer, a reviewer, and, at length, a clergyman; but a poet eternally! His mind was so curved, that nothing ...
— Calamities and Quarrels of Authors • Isaac D'Israeli

... Several months ago I was sojourning at Naples, a city utterly to my own heart. One day I entered the temple of Minerva to offer up my prayers, not for myself more than for the city on which Pallas smiles no longer. The temple was empty and deserted. The recollections of Athens crowded fast and meltingly upon me. Imagining myself still alone, my prayer gushed from my heart to my lips, ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol VI. • Various

... grateful veneration of posterity. The austere virtues of his soul gained him the title of Beato (blessed) and for the lovely lines traced by his brush, he was called Angelico. A marble monument was erected over his tomb in the church of the Minerva, with his effigy and the following inscription, said to have been dictated by Pope ...
— Fra Angelico • J. B. Supino

... page, entitled, "Imitate him!" heaping him with praise and giving him some advice. It had called him, "The cultivated young gentleman and rich capitalist;" two lines further on, "The distinguished philanthropist;" in the following paragraph, "The disciple of Minerva who had gone to the mother country to pay his respects to the true home of the arts and sciences;" and a little further on, "The Filipino Spaniard." Capitan Tiago burned with generous zeal to imitate him and wondered whether he ought ...
— The Social Cancer - A Complete English Version of Noli Me Tangere • Jose Rizal

... is drawing his loaves out of the oven," remarked Kenyon. "Do you smell how sour they are? I should fancy that Minerva (in revenge for the desecration of her temples) had slyly poured vinegar into the batch, if I did not know that the modern Romans prefer their bread in the ...
— Hours in a Library, Volume I. (of III.) • Leslie Stephen

... Ruijsbroeck the Admirable, said of love: "Its profoundest abyss is its most beautiful form." Wisdom requires no form; her beauty must vary, as varies the beauty of flame. She is no motionless goddess, for ever couched on her throne. She is Minerva who follows us, soars to the skies with us, falls to the earth with us, mingles her tears with our tears, and rejoices when we rejoice. Truly wise you are not unless your wisdom be constantly changing ...
— Wisdom and Destiny • Maurice Maeterlinck

... whole mystery became clear as day-light. The eyes that I had seen were the headlights of the 24 H.P. Silent Knight Minerva of Captain ——. He had gone on a pleasure-trip to the next station and was returning home with two friends and his wife in his motor car when in that part of the road he saw something like a man standing in ...
— Indian Ghost Stories - Second Edition • S. Mukerji

... her friendships; but it went hardly with her to ingratiate those persons for whom she felt a natural repulsion, or even sometimes to be gentle with them. Later in life she learned to call no man "common or unclean;" but coming into the world, as she did, full grown, like Minerva in the legend, with keen eyes, and every sense alive to discern pretension, untruth, ungodliness in guise of the church, and all the uncleanness of the earth, these things were as much a surprise to her as it was, on the other hand, to find the wondrous world of art and the ...
— Authors and Friends • Annie Fields

... presentiment of an indefinite future haunted me in my dreams that night, as I lay upon my little snow-white bed. The next morning, with two band-boxes tied up in silk handkerchiefs, and a hair trunk, I turned my back upon Minerva Cottage forever. ...
— The Luck of Roaring Camp and Other Tales • Bret Harte

... hanging on a clothes-horse by the fire. Her face had been pale when he encountered her, but now it was warm and pink with her exertions and the heat of the stove. Yet it was in perfect and passionless repose, which imparted a Minerva cast to the profile. When she glanced up, her lineaments seemed to have all the soul and heart that had characterized her mother's, and had been with her a true index of the spirit within. Could it be possible that in this case the manifestation was fictitious? He had ...
— The Well-Beloved • Thomas Hardy

... Woden Frigga, the Mother of the Gods Jupiter and His Eagle The Head of Jupiter Diana The Man in the Moon The Man in the Moon Venus Orion with His Club The Great Bear in the Sky The Great Bear and the Little Bear Castor and Pollux Minerva Boreas, the God of the North Wind Tower of the Winds at Athens Orpheus Mercury Ulysses Cover of a Drinking Cup Iris The Head of Iris Neptune A Greek Coin Silenus Holding Bacchus Aurora, the Goddess ...
— Classic Myths • Retold by Mary Catherine Judd

... Patricia, flinging an arm about the young sage. "My word, but you're a crafty young one! I'd have raved about it till even Michael Angelo or Raphael couldn't have satisfied the expectations of the beholder. How do you come by so much wisdom, Miss Minerva?" ...
— Miss Pat at School • Pemberton Ginther

... MINERVA's pride, There are, whose endless numbers have pourtray'd; They, to each tree that spreads its branches wide, Prefer the [4]tawny Olive's scanty shade. Many, in JUNO's honor, sing thy meads, Green ARGOS, glorying in thy agile ...
— Original sonnets on various subjects; and odes paraphrased from Horace • Anna Seward

... were seen seated side by side. They needed not to rise for any worshipper or any change; they were prepared for all things, as those initiated to their mysteries knew. More obvious is the meaning of these three forms, the Diana, Minerva, and Vesta. Unlike in the expression of their beauty, but alike in this,—that each was self-sufficing. Other forms were only accessories and illustrations, none the complement to one like these. Another ...
— Woman in the Ninteenth Century - and Kindred Papers Relating to the Sphere, Condition - and Duties, of Woman. • Margaret Fuller Ossoli

... is very ancient. "I have seen," says Baini "in many manuscripts both anterior and posterior to the 11th century the melodies of the preface, of the Pater noster, of the Exultet, and of the Gloria precisely such as the modern" (T. 2, p. 92). In a splendid roll of the Minerva (signed D. 1. 2) of the 9th century, are contained the Exultet, the solemn benediction of the baptismal font, and the administration of all the ecclesiastical orders. Nor is this the only roll containing ...
— The Ceremonies of the Holy-Week at Rome • Charles Michael Baggs

... absurdities put forth on the occasion alluded to. But to our fair correspondent: 'APPEAR, bright Spirits of the ancient Nine! (for you were women, and can well appreciate my appeal) arrayed in all the panoply of your charms! Thou, MINERVA! aid me with thy wisdom! Ye, most lovely GRACES! attend me with the power of honey-like persuasiveness! And thou, JOHN NEAL! arrayed in the drapery of the softer sex, gracefully to maintain the lofty eminence ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, January 1844 - Volume 23, Number 1 • Various

... knocked about, that the captain now shifted his flag into the 'Minerva' frigate, and took me and many other men with him. One of our first duties was to carry off the English garrison and privateers and merchantmen from Corsica, which had declared for the French. We soon afterwards fought several actions with the enemy, and then war broke ...
— The Grateful Indian - And other Stories • W.H.G. Kingston

... faintly in the moonlight. Fauns and satyrs peeped from the dense foliage. Here there showed a Venus sculptured in some Ionian isle before ever Caesar and his cohorts had pressed the soil of Gallia beneath their Roman sandals; there, a Ganymede or a Ceres or a Minerva gleamed wan and beautiful; beneath an ilex-tree a Bacchus leaned lightly on his marble thyrsus. It seemed as if all the hierarchy of Olympus had descended to dwell in this royal pleasure-ground at the bidding of ...
— Calvert of Strathore • Carter Goodloe

... was in the service of superstition. The four greatest manifestations of human intellect which founded the four principal kingdoms of art, Egyptian, Babylonian, Greek, and Italian, were developed by the strong excitement of active superstition in the worship of Osiris, Belus, Minerva, and the Queen of Heaven. Therefore, to speak briefly, it may appear very difficult to show that art has ever yet existed in a consistent and thoroughly energetic school, unless it was engaged in the propagation of falsehood, or ...
— The Two Paths • John Ruskin

... the travellers proceeded to Cape Colonna, by the way of Katapheke. The road was wild and rude, but the distant view of the ruins of the temple of Minerva, standing on the loneliness of the promontory, would have repaid them for the trouble, had ...
— The Life of Lord Byron • John Galt

... the cool blonde, disposed the folds of her white gown more gracefully about her, and touched up the eyebrow of the Minerva she was drawing. ...
— A Modern Cinderella - or The Little Old Show and Other Stories • Louisa May Alcott

... unvalued object of my love, Flaccus, the darling of Antenor's hearth, Forego Pierian songs, the sisters' dances: No girl among them ever gave a dime. Phoebus is nought; Minerva has the cash, Is shrewd, is only usurer to the gods. What's there in Bacchus' ivy? The black tree Of Pallas bends with mottled leaves and weight. On Helicon there's only water, wreaths, The divine lyres, and profitless applause. Why do you dream ...
— An Essay on True and Apparent Beauty in which from Settled Principles is Rendered the Grounds for Choosing and Rejecting Epigrams • Pierre Nicole

... devotion," all so arranged that the open portion might be cleared, and the stock- in-trade locked up if not carried away. Each stall had its own sign, most of them sacred, such as the Lamb and Flag, the Scallop Shell, or some patron saint, but classical emblems were oddly intermixed, such as Minerva's AEgis, Pegasus, and the Lyre of Apollo. The sellers, some middle-aged men, some lads, stretched out their arms with their wares to attract the passengers in the street, and did not fail to beset Ambrose. The more lively looked at his Lincoln green and shouted verses of ballads at him, fluttering ...
— The Armourer's Prentices • Charlotte Mary Yonge

... provided with a quaintly modish copy of the flowered gown of Spring in Botticelli's famous picture; but the mailclad Brynhild still climbs the mountains with her legs carefully hidden in a long white skirt, and looks so exactly like Mrs. Leo Hunter as Minerva that it is quite impossible to feel a ray of illusion whilst looking at her. The ideal of womanly beauty aimed at reminds Englishmen of the barmaids of the seventies, when the craze for golden hair was at its worst. Further, whilst Wagner's stage ...
— The Perfect Wagnerite - A Commentary on the Niblung's Ring • George Bernard Shaw

... the month may bring to Oxford, it never brings gloom or despondency to Oxford men. They are a happily constituted set of beings, and can always create their own amusements; they crown Minerva with ...
— The Adventures of Mr. Verdant Green • Cuthbert Bede

... you are a dog of wisdom!" cried Billy Brackett, looking in the direction thus indicated. "I vow, Bim, your name ought to be 'Solomon Minerva,' and I must have a 'howl' engraved on your collar the first chance I get. That is, if you ever arrive at the dignity of owning any collar besides that old strap. Your light looks as though it might proceed from a camp-fire, and I reckon it's on the main channel too. At any rate, we'll pull down ...
— Raftmates - A Story of the Great River • Kirk Munroe

... Mars or Minerva, to wit? or possibly Apollo? Or what was the god who was supposed to preside over the ...
— A Red Wallflower • Susan Warner

... tumultuous snow, Which flows in shapes as tall as trees When wintry winds do blow!— As if with keenness for our fate, Our faltering few steps on To white rest, and a place of rest Invisible at dawn,— And yet with neither love nor hate, Those stars like some snow-white Minerva's snow-white marble eyes ...
— A Boy's Will • Robert Frost

... her throne holds with one hand the scepter, in the other the balance. Minerva and Cupid are at her sides. Abundance and Prosperity distribute metals, laurels, 'et d'autres recompenses,' to the Genii of the Fine Arts. Time, crowned with the productions of the seasons, leads France to ...
— The Harbours of England • John Ruskin

... and was the best of all Amongst the rar'st of good ones,—sitting sadly, Hearing us praise our loves of Italy For beauty that made barren the swell'd boast Of him that best could speak, for feature, laming The shrine of Venus, or straight-pight Minerva, Postures beyond brief nature, for condition, A shop of all the qualities that man Loves woman for, besides that hook of wiving, Fairness ...
— Cymbeline • William Shakespeare [Tudor edition]

... feet of chamois fall, Free as the generous air, Strains nobler far than clarion call Wake freedom's welcome, where Minerva's silver sandals still Are loosed, and not effete; Where echoes still my day-dreams thrill, Woke by ...
— Poems • Mary Baker Eddy

... sense of having exerted his strength to hurt something sweet and tender as a flower; and yet the girl seemed to tower above him. Nature, in putting the fresh sympathetic soul of a child into the grand body of a Minerva, had set a problem that was ...
— The Gold-Stealers - A Story of Waddy • Edward Dyson

... embarrassed in our attempt to comprehend this gross primitive mode of thought. It is thus that fetishism has often been confounded with polytheism, when to the latter has been applied the common expression of idolatry, which strictly relates to the former only; since the priests of Jupiter or Minerva would, no doubt, have as justly repelled the vulgar reproach of worshipping images, as do the Catholic doctors of the present day a like unjust accusation of the Protestants. But though we are happily sufficiently remote from fetishism to find a difficulty in conceiving it, yet each ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXIX. - March, 1843, Vol. LIII. • Various

... 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, which would carry him through the air. Coming to the loathsome thing, he would not look upon her, lest he, too, be turned to stone; but, guided by the reflection in the buckler, ...
— Recreations in Astronomy - With Directions for Practical Experiments and Telescopic Work • Henry Warren

... yellow hair of the north. The physical attributes of a deity, or a hero, are usually to be regarded as those of the race to which he belongs. The golden locks of Apollo and Achilles are the sign of a similar characteristic in the nations of which they are the types; and the blue eye of Minerva belies the absurd doctrine that would identify her ...
— Harold, Complete - The Last Of The Saxon Kings • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... situated behind, formed of ivy, was called Chen-Osiris, the tree of Osiris. The Virgin has likewise been Ceres, whose mysteries were the same with those of Isis and Mithra; she has been the Diana of the Ephesians; the great goddess of Syria, Cybele, drawn by lions; Minerva, the mother of Bacchus; Astraea, a chaste virgin taken up into heaven at the end of a golden age; Themis at whose feet is the balance that was put in her hands; the Sybil of Virgil, who descends into hell, or sinks ...
— The Ruins • C. F. [Constantin Francois de] Volney

... opportunity to form a judgment upon the whole, and transmit their orders, without being disturbed by any thoughts of personal safety. Even so, brave barbarian, in the art of embroidery, (marvel not that we are a proficient in that mechanical process, since it is patronized by Minerva, whose studies we affect to follow,) we reserve to ourselves the superintendence of the entire web, and commit to our maidens and others the execution of particular parts. Thus, in the same manner, thou, valiant Varangian, being ...
— Waverley Volume XII • Sir Walter Scott

... to be instantly rebuffed by learning that no rooms are let to ladies, or more delicately parried by being told that the terms are forty dollars a week! If one have attractions and friends, it is equivocal; if one have them not, it is equally desperate. Should Minerva herself alight there with a purse that would not compass Willard's, one cannot imagine what would become of her. She would probably be seen wandering at late night, with bedimmed stars and bedraggled gauze, until some vigorous officer should lead her to the station-house for vagrancy. Thus when ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 102, April, 1866 • Various

... places to men, but they did bring men to places, as in the well-known instance in the Eumenides, where, during an evident retirement of the chorus from the orchestra, the scene is changed to Athens, and Orestes is first introduced in the temple of Minerva, and the chorus of Furies come in afterwards in pursuit ...
— Shakespeare, Ben Jonson, Beaumont and Fletcher • S. T. Coleridge

... Herodotus is said to have read his History, and Isocrates to have recited his Panegyric at the Olympic games. The four sacred games were the Olympic, Pythian, Isthmian, and Nemean; and to these should be added the Panathenaea, or festival of Minerva. The five exercises before mentioned, together with music, in its classic sense, formed the programme. In the lesser Panathenaea occurred, first, the torch-race; next, the gymnastic exercises; thirdly, a musical contention, instituted by Pericles; and lastly, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, No. 19, May, 1859 • Various

... Sweet Horace, Minerva and the Muses stand auspicious to thy designs! How farest thou, sweet man? frolic? ...
— The Poetaster - Or, His Arraignment • Ben Jonson

... the sciences is not found in some aged doctor who has employed many years in contemplation, but in a Princess still young, and whose countenance and years would more fitly represent one of the Graces than a Muse or the sage Minerva. In conclusion, I not only remark in your Highness all that is requisite on the part of the mind to perfect and sublime wisdom, but also all that can be required on the part of the will or the manners, in which benignity and gentleness are so conjoined with majesty that, though fortune ...
— The Principles of Philosophy • Rene Descartes

... centre of an opening of perhaps a dozen acres, about a mile from where the sinuous Androscoggin debouches full grown, like Minerva from the head of Jupiter, from its parent reservoir, the picturesque Umbagog, stood a newly rigged log house, of dimensions and finish which indicated more taste and enterprise than is usually exhibited ...
— Gaut Gurley • D. P. Thompson

... the day, In love-dreams languishingly pining, Her needle bright neglected lay, Like truant genius idly shining. Jessy, 'tis in idle hearts That love and mischief are most nimble; The safest shield against the darts Of Cupid, is Minerva's thimble. ...
— The Humourous Poetry of the English Language • James Parton

... the eagle pleaseth Jove, Of pretty fowls kind Venus likes the dove, Of trees Minerva doth the olive love, Of all ...
— Rosalynde - or, Euphues' Golden Legacy • Thomas Lodge

... did not please the lady who noted down what I had said, and the abbe, having obtained what he wanted, laughed at me in his turn. I perceived by the ill success of this my late beginning the necessity of making another attempt to flatter 'invita Minerva'. ...
— The Confessions of J. J. Rousseau, Complete • Jean Jacques Rousseau

... very little interest in the gods of his fathers. A few times a year he went to the temple, but merely as a matter of custom. He looked on patiently when the people celebrated a religious festival with a solemn procession. But he regarded the worship of Jupiter and Minerva and Neptune as something rather childish, a survival from the crude days of the early republic and not a fit subject of study for a man who had mastered the works of the Stoics and the Epicureans and the other great philosophers ...
— The Story of Mankind • Hendrik van Loon

... best remains of Ionic buildings at Athens are the temples of Erecthens and Minerva Pulias in the Acropolis, and the little temple on the banks of the Ilissus; but in Asia Minor the examples of this order are far more numerous; and some of the finest are to be found amongst the magnificent ruins at Brauchidia, at Priene, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction. - Volume 19, No. 531, Saturday, January 28, 1832. • Various

... are thy skies as blue, thy crags as wild, Sweet are thy groves, and verdant are thy fields, Thine olive ripe as when Minerva smiled, And still his honeyed wealth Hymettus yields; There the blithe bee his fragrant fortress builds, The free-born wanderer of thy mountain air; Apollo still thy long, long summer gilds, Still in his beam ...
— The World's Best Poetry, Volume 8 • Various

... be able to inform him, that the poets have evermore accommodated themselves to the public humour, and make him sensible, that the gods have planted more toil and sweat in the avenues of the cabinets of Venus than in those of Minerva. And when he shall once find him begin to apprehend, and shall represent to him a Bradamante or an Angelica—[Heroines of Ariosto.]—for a mistress, a natural, active, generous, and not a viragoish, but a manly beauty, in comparison of a soft, ...
— The Essays of Montaigne, Complete • Michel de Montaigne

... "Great Minerva! don't you know? You're painfully new even yet, Marjorie Anderson. There, don't get raggy; I'll tell you. On the last evening of every term the whole school meets in the big hall—just the girls, without any of the ...
— A Patriotic Schoolgirl • Angela Brazil

... in Academiis florentissimis consociatum iri bene multos, qui, non pingui Minerva, sed acuto iudicio in has controversias inspecturi sunt, et horum responsa nugatoria libraturi, laetus hunc diem campi praestolabor, ut qui contra sylvestres tumulos mendiculorum inermium nobilitatem et ...
— Ten Reasons Proposed to His Adversaries for Disputation in the Name • Edmund Campion

... Moeris itself, whose origin he ascribes to the hand of man, and the two Pyramids which are situated a little above the lake. He seems to have admired many of the Egyptian temples, and especially that of Minerva at Sais, and of Vulcan and Isis at Memphis, and the colossal monolith that was three years in course of transportation from Elephantina to Sais, though 2000 men were ...
— Celebrated Travels and Travellers - Part I. The Exploration of the World • Jules Verne

... this. I dare not let it escape. I fear the consequences; yet I hope your indulgence will at least hear my petition. Can you not anticipate what I would say, and what I am about to express? Will not you, like Minerva, who sprung from the brain of Jupiter, release me from thy winding chains or cure me—" "Say no more, Elfonzo," answered Ambulinia, with a serious look, raising her hand as if she intended to swear eternal ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain

... earliest ages embroidery has been used to decorate garments. The ancient Greeks embroidered the hems of their graceful draperies in the well-known Greek fret and other designs so invariably seen on the old Greek vases. The legend that Minerva herself taught the Greeks the art of embroidery illustrates how deeply the art was understood; and the pretty story told by an old botanist of how the foxglove came by its name and its curious bell-like flowers is worth repeating. In the old Greek days, when gods and goddesses ...
— Chats on Old Lace and Needlework • Emily Leigh Lowes

... Cypher's was Milly. Milly was a waitress. She was a grand example of Kraft's theory of the artistic adjustment of nature. She belonged, largely, to waiting, as Minerva did to the art of scrapping, or Venus to the science of serious flirtation. Pedestalled and in bronze she might have stood with the noblest of her heroic sisters as "Liver-and-Bacon Enlivening the World." ...
— The Four Million • O. Henry

... to-day what the relation of the Goddess of Wisdom was to the God of War, in Homer, when, to use the Latin names which are perhaps more familiar, to the general reader than the Greek, Mars "indulged in lawless rage," and Jove sent Juno and Minerva ...
— Raemaekers' Cartoons - With Accompanying Notes by Well-known English Writers • Louis Raemaekers

... And this is the Secretary whose genius, in the estimation of brother Abraham, is to extinguish the genius of Bonaparte. Pompey was killed by a slave, Goliath smitten by a stripling; Pyrrhus died by the hand of a woman. Tremble, thou great Gaul, from whose head an armed Minerva leaps forth in the hour of danger; tremble, thou scourge of God, for a pleasant man is come out against thee, and thou shalt be laid low by ...
— Sydney Smith • George W. E. Russell

... famed for her beautiful hair, which Minerva turned into serpents because Neptune loved her. According to Grecian mythology, Perseus made himself immortal by conquering Medusa, whose head he cut off, and the blood dripping from it filled Africa with snakes. Miss ...
— Lives of Girls Who Became Famous • Sarah Knowles Bolton

... London, look carefully in the British Museum at the casts from the statues in the pediment of the Temple of Minerva at AEgina. You have there Greek work of definite date—about 600 B. C., certainly before 580—of the purest kind; and you have the representation of a noble ideal subject, the combats of the AEacidae at Troy, with Athena herself looking on. But there is no attempt ...
— Aratra Pentelici, Seven Lectures on the Elements of Sculpture - Given before the University of Oxford in Michaelmas Term, 1870 • John Ruskin

... my special Minerva may not always be unwilling, but she must not be called upon as she has been in times past. Now that the teacups have left the table, an occasional evening call is all that my readers must look for. Thanking them for their kind companionship, and hoping ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)

... Is the friend of the Wop, The friend of the Chink and the Harp, The friend of all nations And folk of all stations, The friend of the shark and the carp. He sits in his chair With his feet on the table, And lists to the prayer Of Minerva and Mabel, Veritas, Pro Bono, Taxpayer, and the rest, Who wail on his shoulder and ...
— The So-called Human Race • Bert Leston Taylor

... should be the tune of the thought of the Poet. To write a love song in alexandrines, an idyl in hexameters, would be to incarnate the shy spirit of a girl in the brawny frame of a Hercules, to incase the loving soul of a Juliet in a gauntleted Minerva. Genius and deep sympathy with human nature can alone guide the Poet aright in this delicate and difficult path; it lies too near the core of our unconscious being to be susceptible of the trim regularity of rule—he must trust his own intuitions while he studies with care what has already been ...
— The Continental Monthly, Volume V. Issue I • Various

... offended with nature for making him a man, and not a woman;" and the affirmation of the Pedasians, from your friend Herodotus, that, whenever any calamity befell them, a prodigious beard grew on the chin of the priestess of Minerva. You ever thought a man in woman's disguise a profanation—a woman in man's a horror. The fair sex were never, in your eyes, the weaker and the worse; how oft have you delighted in their outward grace and moral purity, contrasting ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 54, No. 337, November, 1843 • Various

... camp to see, The dwellings waste, the shore all void where they were wont to be: Here dwelt the band of Dolopes, here was Achilles set, 29 And this was where their ships were beached; here edge to edge we met. Some wonder at unwedded maid Minerva's gift of death, That baneful mountain of a horse; and first Thymoetes saith 'Twere good in walls to lead the thing, on topmost burg to stand; Whether such word the fate of Troy or evil treason planned I know not: Capys and the rest, who better counsel have, Bid take the fashioned guile of Greeks, ...
— The AEneids of Virgil - Done into English Verse • Virgil

... at length breaking the silence, 'this is marvellous to behold; and yet, had I the ear of the pope of the infidels, I should recommend an addition which would be to the purpose. I mean such a statue of the goddess Minerva as once stood in the great ...
— The Boy Crusaders - A Story of the Days of Louis IX. • John G. Edgar

... Those scales hung badly now, lopsidedly. One was up in the clouds. He resolved that the other should correct it. After a cold bath and a sleep he would go round to Angelo's and have an hour's hard fencing. Cold water, the Englishman's panacea for every ill, cold steel, the pioneer's Minerva, would tonic this errant brain of his and drill it into its customary obedience. So he ...
— Flames • Robert Smythe Hichens

... be able to recognise the forms referred to in the preceding paragraph as we come to them. The most complete Greek Doric temple was the Parthenon, the work of the architect Ictinus, the temple of the Virgin Goddess Athene (Minerva) at Athens, and on many accounts this building will be the best ...
— Architecture - Classic and Early Christian • Thomas Roger Smith

... engaged the same number of French servants, then went to a jeweller and bought many articles. At the inn he put the chains and rings he had obtained, into pretty little boxes, and wrote on them in neat Gothic characters with special care: "Helena, Anna, Minerva, Europa and Lucia;" one ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers

... speech, like Minerva herself, came from the head. Alfred was overcome by it to tears. At that the doctor's heart was touched, and even began to fancy it ...
— Hard Cash • Charles Reade

... Cornelia and her Children. Paris. Venus and Cupid. Rome. Villa Borghese: Toilet of Minerva. Venice. Academy: The Marriage of Cana; Madonna in Glory; Vanity, Orpheus, and Eurydice; Rape of Proserpine; Virgin in Glory. Verona. Man and Woman playing Chess; Triumph of Bacchus. Vienna. Woman ...
— The Venetian School of Painting • Evelyn March Phillipps

... exclaimed Brian. 'If Miss Pew were Minerva, with all the weight and influence of her father, the Thunderer, to back her up, I would defy her. Confess now, dear Fraeulein—liebste Fraeulein'—how tender his accents sounded in German!—'you do not think it wrong for me to see the lady of my love for a few all-too-happy ...
— The Golden Calf • M. E. Braddon

... imported to work upon the National Central Railway, was at hand, and managed to snatch him away—for the time at least. Ultimately, Captain Mitchell succeeded in taking everybody off in his own gig to one of the Company's steamers—it was the Minerva—just then, as luck would ...
— Nostromo: A Tale of the Seaboard • Joseph Conrad

... or an Asylum, or whatever name you call the place where job-lot charity children live. And that's what I am, an Inmate. Inmates are like malaria and dyspepsia: something nobody wants and every place has. Minerva James says they are like veterans—they die ...
— Mary Cary - "Frequently Martha" • Kate Langley Bosher

... nations invented protective divinities for their orchards (such as Pomona, Vertumnus, Priapus, &c.), and benevolent patrons for their fruits: thus, the olive-tree grew under the auspices of Minerva; the Muses cherished the palm-tree, Bacchus the fig and grape, and the pine and its cone were consecrated to ...
— The Book of Household Management • Mrs. Isabella Beeton

... a defect in "Telemaque" which is perhaps deeper still. No woman in it exercises influence over man, except for evil. Minerva, the guiding and inspiring spirit, assumes of course, as Mentor, a male form; but her speech and thought is essentially masculine, and not feminine. Antiope is a mere lay-figure, introduced at the end of the book because Telemachus must needs be allowed to have hope of ...
— The Ancien Regime • Charles Kingsley

... a little Country House, place of escape from his big Potsdam Palace; and gets plans drawn for it,—place which became very famous, by the name of SANS-SOUCI, in times coming. His thoughts are wholly pacific; of Life to Minerva and the Arts, not to Bellona and the Battles:—and yet he knows well, this latter too is an inexorable element. About his Army, he is quietly busy; augmenting, improving it; the staff of life to ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XIV. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle

... nerves were somewhat shaken; Pardon me if my pulse went pit-a-pat When I observed your tiny head had taken To a "Minerva" hat. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, April 15, 1914 • Various

... had the same source, and adopted the same division of things which were to be desired and avoided. But what am I about? said he, interrupting himself; am I in my senses while I am explaining these things to you? for although it may not be exactly a case of the pig teaching Minerva, still it is not very wise of any one to attempt to ...
— The Academic Questions • M. T. Cicero

... have following sail'd, Eager to listen, on the advent'rous track Of my proud keel, that singing cuts its way, Backward return with speed, and your own shores Revisit, nor put out to open sea, Where losing me, perchance ye may remain Bewilder'd in deep maze. The way I pass Ne'er yet was run: Minerva breathes the gale, Apollo guides me, and another Nine To my rapt sight the arctic beams reveal. Ye other few, who have outstretch'd the neck. Timely for food of angels, on which here They live, yet never know satiety, Through the ...
— The Divine Comedy, Complete - The Vision of Paradise, Purgatory and Hell • Dante Alighieri

... and illogical than to compare the young doctor, or any other young professional man, to a new piece of machinery, fresh from the manufactory, complete and perfect in all its parts? And yet something like this is attempted in the article before us. Even as Minerva sprang from the brain of Jove the complete and perfect goddess of learning, so would our Utopian writer have the young doctors to come from the brains of their medical professors complete and perfect; only, if his idea be correct, their medical professors have so little brains that the annual ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - February, 1876, Vol. XVII, No. 98. • Various

... conveyed by Sheridan in a sedan-chair from her father's house in the Crescent, to a post-chaise which waited for them on the London road, and in which she found a woman whom her lover had hired, as a sort of protecting Minerva, to accompany ...
— Memoirs of the Life of the Rt. Hon. Richard Brinsley Sheridan V1 • Thomas Moore

... each day also had its ritual, in which the Roman deities of the heaven were the objects of worship, not, as by the Tiber bank, Greek deities of the earth and the nether world. On the first two days Augustus and Agrippa offered the proper victims to Jupiter and Juno respectively on the Capitol; Minerva is omitted, and probably the other two are reckoned in Greek fashion as a married pair. The form of prayer was the same as that used by night, with the necessary modifications. Thus the great Capitoline temple ...
— The Religious Experience of the Roman People - From the Earliest Times to the Age of Augustus • W. Warde Fowler

... has done infinitely more things of which I have not spoken, such as the Christ that is in the Church of the Minerva, a St. Matthew in Florence; when he began it he designed to carve all the twelve Apostles to be placed near twelve pilasters in the Duomo. His cartoons for several works of paintings, and of designs for buildings, both public and private, are infinite ...
— Michael Angelo Buonarroti • Charles Holroyd

... dred bow Fair silver-shafted Queen for ever chaste, Wherwith she tam'd the brinded lioness And spotted mountain pard, but set at nought The frivolous bolt of Cupid, gods and men Fear'd her stern frown, and she was queen oth' Woods. What was that snaky-headed Gorgon sheild That wise Minerva wore, unconquer'd Virgin, Wherwith she freez'd her foes to congeal'd stone? But rigid looks of Chast austerity, 450 And noble grace that dash't brute violence With sudden adoration, and blank aw. So dear to ...
— The Poetical Works of John Milton • John Milton

... camps of its governors. The golden Iris will weep for her boastful standards, and together with her inhabitants will groan for the conquered towns. Believe me, it is not in my power, O man, dear to Mars! Minerva denies to an Ethiopian to celebrate the wars of generals. Buchanan would sing thee in a poem, he would describe thee as equal to Achilles in counsel and in war. That famous poet, the honour of his country, is more worthy to relate thy exploits, and is scarcely inferior ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 2, 1917 • Various

... "Don't interrupt, Minerva! I say that I left this fellow Sasnett imploring her, paying her undue compliments with this charitable end in view, while Acres waited outside the door of the directors' room. This poor adventurer whom you behold bound at present to your chariot wheel, is none other than ...
— The Co-Citizens • Corra Harris

... presented to my eyes. By virtue of one of the strangest of nature's freaks, the thought half draped in black, which was tossing about in my brain, emerged from it and stood before me personified, living; it had come forth like Minerva from Jupiter's brain, tall and strong; it was at once a hundred years old and twenty-two; it was alive and dead. Escaped from his chamber, like a madman from his cell, the little old man had evidently crept behind a long line of people who were ...
— Sarrasine • Honore de Balzac

... vulgar chops and stews, and hashes, First course,—a phoenix at the head, Done in its own celestial ashes: At foot, a cygnet, which kept singing All the time its neck was wringing. Side dishes, thus,—Minerva's owl, Or any such like learned fowl; Doves, such as heaven's poulterer gets When Cupid shoots his mother's pets. Larks stew'd in morning's roseate breath, Or roasted by a sunbeam's splendour; And nightingales, be-rhymed to death— Like young pigs ...
— Books and Authors - Curious Facts and Characteristic Sketches • Anonymous

... particularly imposing in the judgments, nearly always severe, of individuals, and the reader lays down the present book sure that here, at last, he has found a truly superior person. Schoolcraft is simply "poor Schoolcraft," and of course subsides; Miss Martineau is "that Minerva mediocre;" Carlyle is "Thomas Carlyle with his bilious howls and bankrupt draughts on hope." Hawthorne, he learns, though we cannot tell from whence, "thought it inexpressibly ridiculous that any one should notice man's miseries, these being his staple product," and ...
— Lippincott's Magazine. Vol. XII, No. 33. December, 1873. • Various

... am deaf; I will thee not hear. No, no, if Jupiter here himself now were, And all the gods, and Juno his wife, And loving Minerva that abhorreth all strife: If all these, I say, would desire me to be content, They did their wind but in vain spent;[588] I will have battle in Wales or in Kent, And some of the knaves I will all-to rent.[589] Where is the valiant ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Volume I. • R. Dodsley

... us, that Pluto himself, whose Habitation was in the very Center of the Earth, was so affrighted at the Shock, that he leapt from his Throne. Homer afterwards describes Vulcan as pouring down a Storm of Fire upon the River Xanthus, and Minerva as throwing a Rock at Mars; who, he tells us, cover'd ...
— The Spectator, Volume 2. • Addison and Steele

... you shut yourself up in your own individual thoughts. A mistake! The most powerful genius of modern times failed in this enterprise. Descartes conceived the project of forgetting all that he had known, and of producing a system of doctrine which should come forth from his brain as Minerva sprang all armed from the brain of Jupiter. Now-a-days a mere schoolboy, if he has been well taught, ought to be able to prove that Descartes was mistaken, because the current of tradition entered his mind together with the words of the language. It is not so easy as we may suppose to break the ...
— The Heavenly Father - Lectures on Modern Atheism • Ernest Naville

... not." said the guest, "I will do my devoir as becomes a man who finds himself within five miles of Oxford; for I am not come from the field of Mars to discredit myself amongst the followers of Minerva." ...
— Kenilworth • Sir Walter Scott

... would be combined; and the authority of avowal would be united to the security of concealment. The serpents in Virgil, after they had destroyed Laocoon, found an asylum from the vengeance of the enraged people behind the shield of the statue of Minerva. And, in the same manner, everything that is grovelling and venomous, everything that can hiss, and everything that can sting, would take sanctuary in the recesses of ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 1 (of 4) - Contibutions to Knight's Quarterly Magazine] • Thomas Babington Macaulay

... triggers and flints; if clothes, ods frogs and tambours; if music, ods minnums [minims] and crotchets; if ladies, ods blushes and blooms. This he learnt from a militia officer, who told him the ancients swore by Jove, Bacchus, Mars, Venus, Minerva, etc., according to the sentiment. Bob Acres is a great blusterer, and talks big of his daring, but when put to the push "his courage always oozed out of his fingers' ends." J. Quick was the original ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama, Vol 1 - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook • The Rev. E. Cobham Brewer, LL.D.

... all the other gods of the Veda and the Vedic religion, whether three in number, or thirty-three, or, as one poet said, "three thousand three hundred and thirty-nine gods."[259] They are all but names, quite as much as Jupiter and Apollo and Minerva; in fact, quite as much as all the gods of every religion who are called by such ...
— India: What can it teach us? - A Course of Lectures Delivered before the University Of Cambridge • F. Max Mueller

... "There was the Minerva, too," said the captain as Jacob paused to light his cigar again. "I forgit how many emigrants went down on that ship, but I remember picking up on the beach next day a clay pipe, with a stem nigh a yard long, not even chipped. It seemed curious that a useless ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. XVII, No. 99, March, 1876 • Various

... the city, the first building which arrested the attention of Pausanias was the Pompeium, so called because it was the depository of the sacred vessels, and also of the garments used in the annual procession in honor of Athena (Minerva), the tutelary deity of Athens, from whom the city derived its name. Near this edifice stood a temple of Demeter (Ceres), containing statues of that goddess, of her daughter Persephone, and of Iacchus, all executed by Praxiteles; ...
— Christianity and Greek Philosophy • Benjamin Franklin Cocker

... Mrs. Lecount, "you do yourself a wrong! Permit me to assure you that you possess a commanding figure—a figure of Minerva. A majestic simplicity in the form of a woman imperatively demands a majestic simplicity in the form of that woman's dress. The laws of costume are classical; the laws of costume must not be trifled with! Plaits for Venus, puffs for Juno, folds for Minerva. I venture to ...
— No Name • Wilkie Collins

... one. His disciples imparted his systems to others, which surrounded him with a sort of mystery, and rendered him the object of a species of reverence. He had the authority which complete political science procures, and the constitution might have emerged from his head completely armed, like the Minerva of Jupiter, or the legislation of the ancients, were it not that in our days every one sought to be engaged in the task, or to criticise it. Yet, with the exception of some modifications, his plans were generally ...
— History of the French Revolution from 1789 to 1814 • F. A. M. Mignet

... helmet, and the martial mien, Might dignify Minerva's awful charms; But more resistless far the Idalian queen— Smiles, graces, gentleness, ...
— The Minstrel; or the Progress of Genius - with some other poems • James Beattie

... tree and the laurel shot forth their hallowed branches to their beloved Latona, emblem of the divine parturition? And with the Delian nymphs shall I celebrate in song the golden chaplet and bow of Diana? Or, in the Athenian city, shall I upon the saffron robe harness the steeds to the car of Minerva splendid in her chariot, representing them in embroidery upon the splendid looms of brilliant threads, or the race of Titans, which Jove the son of Saturn sends to eternal rest with his flaming lightning? Alas, my children! Alas, my ancestors, and my paternal land, which is overthrown, buried in ...
— The Tragedies of Euripides, Volume I. • Euripides

... the father and the baby on the same day, and said that I would be godfather to any children that might be born on the estate during my residence in Jamaica. This was soon spread about, and, although I have not yet been here a week, two women are in the straw already, Jug Betty and Minerva: the first is wife to my head driver, The Duke of Sully, but my sense of propriety was much gratified at finding that Minerva's husband was called Captain. I think nobody will be able to accuse me of neglecting the religious education of my negroes, for I have not only promised to baptize ...
— Introduction to the Science of Sociology • Robert E. Park

... of California is Minerva, with a spear and shield and the grizzly bear at her feet. Before the discovery of gold they were quite numerous. They roamed in full possession, apparently, of the country—no one to molest them or make them afraid. It was a very formidable animal, weighing from seven to eight ...
— The Adventures of a Forty-niner • Daniel Knower

... scolded," she said; "you are free: besides, they say every one is afraid of you, because, like Minerva, you are ...
— The Queen's Necklace • Alexandre Dumas pere

... Phoebi numerosus alumnus, Vix omnes numeros Vertiginosus habet. Intentat charo capiti vertigo ruinam: Oh! servet cerebro nata Minerva caput. Vertigo nimium longa est, divina poeta; Dent tibi ...
— The Poems of Jonathan Swift, D.D., Volume I (of 2) • Jonathan Swift



Words linked to "Minerva" :   bird of Minerva, Roman mythology, Roman deity



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