"Mythological" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... vases from Delos, holding the ashes of the dead. An interesting collection of candelabra, from the Etruscan sepulchres, is arranged in the next cases (52, 53). These candelabra were highly esteemed throughout ancient Greece. They are decorated chiefly with mythological subjects, and have, attached to them, vessels for dipping into larger vessels. Those in the next case (54) are of the Roman period. Having glanced at the censers and bronze lamps in the next cases (56-57) the visitor may pass on to the case numbered 58-64, ...
— How to See the British Museum in Four Visits • W. Blanchard Jerrold
... and "elf-like" scherzo movement was suggested to the composer by Dore's picture of a knight in a wood, surrounded by mythological forest folk. The music is imaginative and cleverly written, but MacDowell afterwards considered the movement as a whole to be "an aside" from the general content of the sonata. The present writer ...
— Edward MacDowell • John F. Porte
... stopped work. What he had done was then painted out. An Italian fresco-painter, Mr. Brimidi, was more obedient to orders and willing to answer the roll-calls, so he was permitted to cover the interior walls of the new Capitol with his work—allegorical, historical, diabolical, and mythological. ...
— Perley's Reminiscences, Vol. 1-2 - of Sixty Years in the National Metropolis • Benjamin Perley Poore
... had rightly chosen among the powers invisible, and found their choice a great god above all gods. So the future may suffer not from the loss but the multiplicity of faith; and its fate be far more like the cloudy and mythological war in the desert than like the dry radiance of theism or monism. I have said nothing here of my own faith, or of that name on which, I am well persuaded, the world will be most wise to call. But I do believe that the tradition ...
— The New Jerusalem • G. K. Chesterton
... to be found in the myths? In them is a creation of the spirit, of the unconsciously creative soul. The soul has well-defined laws. In order to create beyond itself, it must work in a certain direction. At the mythological stage it does this in images, but these are built up according to the laws of the soul. We might also say that when the soul advances beyond the stage of mythological consciousness to deeper truths, these bear the same ...
— Christianity As A Mystical Fact - And The Mysteries of Antiquity • Rudolf Steiner
... God's practical Earth, he could not by any means precisely get to know; believes that it does not itself in the least precisely know. Believes that nobody knows;—that it is a mystery, a kind of Heathen myth; and stranger than any piece of the old mythological Pantheon; for it practically presides over the destinies of many millions of ...
— Latter-Day Pamphlets • Thomas Carlyle
... more remarkable since the conception of lucky and unlucky days was carried by the Egyptians to the extremes of absurdity. "One day was lucky or unlucky," says Erman,(3) "according as a good or bad mythological incident took place on that day. For instance, the 1st of Mechir, on which day the sky was raised, and the 27th of Athyr, when Horus and, Set concluded peace together and divided the world between them, were lucky days; on the other hand, the 14th of Tybi, on which Isis and Nephthys mourned for Osiris, ...
— A History of Science, Volume 1(of 5) • Henry Smith Williams
... leaving southern India, Burma and Siam to its rival, began early to lean towards the deification of Buddha as a personal Saviour. New Buddhas and B[o]dhisatvas were added, and new worlds were provided for them to live in; in China, especially, there was an enormous extension of the mythological element. In fact, the Mah[a]y[a]na system of Buddhism, inspired, as has been observed, by a progressive spirit, but without contradicting the inner significance of the teachings of Buddha, broadened its scope and assimilated other ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 2 - "Chicago, University of" to "Chiton" • Various
... With strict regard to Aristotle's rules, The Vade Mecum of the true sublime, Which makes so many poets, and some fools: Prose poets like blank-verse, I'm fond of rhyme, Good workmen never quarrel with their tools; I've got new mythological machinery, And ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 6 • Lord Byron
... Murometz (Ilya of Murom), the Old Kazak," and his characteristic feats, as well as those attributed to his "heroic steed, Cloud-fall," are supposed, by the school of Russian writers who regard all these poems as cosmic myths, rather than as historical poems, to preserve the hero's mythological significance as the ...
— A Survey of Russian Literature, with Selections • Isabel Florence Hapgood
... Athens—whatever, in short, was precious or rare or curious in the most distant countries. The luxuries of the bath almost exceed belief, and on the walls were magnificent frescoes and paintings, exhibiting an inexhaustible productiveness in landscape and mythological scenes, executed in lively colors. From the praises of Cicero, Seneca, and Pliny, and other great critics, we have a right to infer that painting was as much prized as statuary, and equaled it in artistic excellence, although so little remains ...
— The Old Roman World • John Lord
... follows is brief, but of peculiar interest. It does not appear to aim at a connected history of events, but in the form of a chant to refer certain incidents to the katuns in which they occurred. It has more of a mythological character, and the repetitions remind one of ...
— The Maya Chronicles - Brinton's Library Of Aboriginal American Literature, Number 1 • Various
... out of place here to refer to a superstition pervading the islands of the Pacific ocean, which seems strangely coincident with the conception of the physical symbol of this day. This is a mythological monster known in some sections by the name Taniwha, and in others ...
— Day Symbols of the Maya Year • Cyrus Thomas
... This argument against mechanism is a good instance of the difficulties which mythological habits of mind import unnecessarily into science. An equilibrium would not displace itself! But an equilibrium is a natural result, not a magical entity. It is continually displaced, as its constituents are modified by internal movements or external agencies; ...
— Winds Of Doctrine - Studies in Contemporary Opinion • George Santayana
... familiar with both modes of thought, to present modestly, but firmly, their views; to compare the antagonistic pretensions calmly, impartially, philosophically. History shows that, if this be not done, social misfortunes, disastrous and enduring, will ensue. When the old mythological religion of Europe broke down under the weight of its own inconsistencies, neither the Roman emperors nor the philosophers of those times did any thing adequate for the guidance of public opinion. They left religious affairs to take their chance, and accordingly those affairs fell into ...
— History of the Conflict Between Religion and Science • John William Draper
... identifications with each other and with the heavenly bodies, and explanations of their natures. It is needless to say that all this material is of enormous value for the study of the religion of the Babylonians and Assyrians, and enables us to reconstruct at first hand their mythological system, and note the changes which took place in the course of their long national existence. Many interesting and entertaining legends illustrate and supplement the information given by the bilingual lists of gods, the bilingual ...
— The Religion of Babylonia and Assyria • Theophilus G. Pinches
... The first part is mythological and mirthsome. It is the original nucleus around which the other parts have gathered. Some years since, the writer was led to investigate the world-wide myth of the Man in the Moon, in its legendary and ludicrous aspects; and one study being a stepping-stone to another, the ...
— Moon Lore • Timothy Harley
... upon the bills as a musical presentment of the mythological story of Orpheus and Eurydicc. That did very well as a figure to represent it, but it was taken by the audience as a theme; and they all fixed their eyes upon the explanation, thereby to judge the symphony. It was ...
— Early Letters of George Wm. Curtis • G. W. Curtis, ed. George Willis Cooke
... "abstract," "contents," and "synopsis." "This is not the sort of thing for me," he murmured, and turned his attention to a third bookcase, which contained books on the Arts. Extracting a huge tome in which some by no means reticent mythological illustrations were contained, he set himself to examine these pictures. They were of the kind which pleases mostly middle-aged bachelors and old men who are accustomed to seek in the ballet and similar frivolities a further spur to their waning passions. ...
— Dead Souls • Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol
... as of temper meets us! We see, not historic or domestic scenes alone; not alone scenes in which the rhythmic dream of beauty and of style is aimed at; but works also, not a few, of purely imaginative character—fanciful, mythological, allegorical, symbolic—amongst which latter, one especially, I think, is dominant in its powerful originality and the weird charm of its decorative pomp. In the region of landscape, no less, every mood is touched, and every association evoked, ...
— Modern Eloquence: Vol II, After-Dinner Speeches E-O • Various
... a great future,—a promise broken by his early death. Frederik Paludan-Mller (q.v.; 1809-1876) developed, as a poet, a magnificent career, which contrasted in its abundance with his solitary and silent life as a man. His mythological or pastoral dramas, his great satiric epos of Adam Homo (1841-1848), his comedies, his lyrics, and above all his noble philosophic tragedy of Kalanus, prove the immense breadth of his compass, and the inexhaustible ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 8, Slice 2 - "Demijohn" to "Destructor" • Various
... notwithstanding all the endeavours of theologians to give it the appearance of the history of human beings, has preserved its mythological features with an outline and colouring, easily to be recognised by every son of Urania [Ur of the Chaldees is subsequently made to contain the root of Uranus]. We have just seen that the Egyptians have their harvest about the time which the sun passes over the equator, and if ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 215, December 10, 1853 • Various
... at his uncle's. The charm was irresistible, however, because his fancy flung a rosy light over this homely privilege. He appreciated highly the fare that was set before him. There was a kind of fresh-looking abundance about it which made him think that people must have lived so in the mythological era, when they spread their tables upon the grass, replenished them from cornucopias, and had no particular need of kitchen stoves. But the great thing that Felix enjoyed was having found a family—sitting in the midst of gentle, generous people whom he might ...
— The Europeans • Henry James
... nude.[1518] In Denmark the historian tells us that people slept naked because linen was dear, and that the custom lasted into the seventeenth century. In the sixteenth century nobles began to wear nightshirts.[1519] Upon the entry of kings into cities, until the sixteenth century, mythological subjects were represented in the streets by nude women.[1520] From the thirteenth to the fifteenth centuries it was the custom that girls served knights in the bath.[1521] Through the Middle Ages the sexes bathed together, and not innocently.[1522] The Germans were ...
— Folkways - A Study of the Sociological Importance of Usages, Manners, Customs, Mores, and Morals • William Graham Sumner
... devoted to an admiration of power, whether of masculine force or feminine beauty. It should be remembered, too, in her extenuation that since her arrival, she had been the unconscious priestess of a mythological worship, perhaps not more ennobling to her womanhood than that which distinguished an older Greek democracy. I think that Brown was dimly conscious of this. But his only confidant was Jack Hamlin, whose INFELIX reputation naturally precluded any open ...
— Selected Stories • Bret Harte
... becomes a star. The Pleiades are seven New Zealand chiefs, brothers, who were slain together in battle and are now fixed in the sky, one eye of each, in the shape of a star, being the only part of them that is visible. It has been observed that the mythological doctrine of the glittering host of heaven being an assemblage of the departed heroes of earth never received a more ingenious version.3 Certainly it is a magnificent piece of insular egotism. It is noticeable here that, in the Norse mythology, ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger
... look up a mythological subject because of the time occupied. This book remedies that difficulty because in it can be found at a glance just what is wanted. It is comprehensive, convenient, condensed, and the information is presented in such an interesting manner as when once read to be always remembered. ...
— Slips of Speech • John H. Bechtel
... me to compare the founder of the fair and famous city of Athens with him, and to contrast Theseus with the father of unconquered glorious Rome. Putting aside, then, the mythological element, let us examine his story, and wherever it obstinately defies probability, and cannot be explained by natural agency, let us beg the indulgence of our readers, who will kindly make allowance ...
— Plutarch's Lives, Volume I (of 4) • Plutarch
... to laugh at," answered Orsino. "Did the mythological personage whose name I have forgotten laugh when the sphynx proposed ...
— Don Orsino • F. Marion Crawford
... time he gave himself up to the painting of pagan subjects such as the Birth of Venus from the Sea, and the lovely allegory of Spring with Venus, Cupid, and the Three Graces. He was one of the early artists to break through the old wall of religious convention, painting frankly mythological subjects, and he did them in an exquisite ...
— The Book of Art for Young People • Agnes Conway
... celestial Paradise as a lovely garden, in which Mary walks as queen, and he says of her celestial maidens, (perhaps a reminiscence of the mythological German swan-maidens): ...
— The Evolution of Love • Emil Lucka
... such, or even ten, a book full will be monotonous. At its best, however, his writing of "natural romance" is of great beauty. "Still Waters," for one, is almost perfect, as perfect as this sort of thing may be. It is wrought of his own experiences with just enough of mythological data to give it the texture ...
— Irish Plays and Playwrights • Cornelius Weygandt
... investigation, and one is astonished at the scanty gleaning of battle-poetry, camp-songs, and rhymes that have been scattered in the wake of great campaigns, and many of the above-mentioned are more historical or mythological than descriptive of war. The quantity of political songs and ballads, serious and satirical, which were suggested by the great critical moments of modern history, is immense. Every country has, or might have, its own peculiar collections. In ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 57, July, 1862 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... the completion of the St. Peter Martyr, is one less of great altar-pieces and poesie such as the miscalled Sacred and Profane Love (Medea and Venus), the Bacchanals, and the Bacchus and Ariadne, than it is of splendid nudities and great portraits. In the former, however mythological be the subject, it is generally chosen but to afford a decent pretext for the generous display of beauty unveiled. The portraits are at this stage less often intimate and soul-searching in their summing up of a human personality than they are official presentments ...
— The Later works of Titian • Claude Phillips
... Gentle Shepherd, a pastoral that puts to shame the numerous semi-classical and mythological poems which appeared under that name in England. It is essentially a rural poem, in which the action and language harmonize with what we know, or think we know, of country manners and life. There is neither striking ...
— The Age of Pope - (1700-1744) • John Dennis
... was called "Common Comfort." Common Sense might have been more to the purpose, but appeared to have no part in the play. Desiring Heart, being of an inquisitive disposition, propounded a series of puzzling questions, mythological in their nature, which seemed like classical conundrums, having reference, mainly, to the proceedings of Venus, Neptune, Juno, and other divinities. They appeared to have little to do with Matthias or the matter in hand, but Common Comfort knew better. That clerical personage, accordingly, in ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... edition of his mythological and legendary lore "The Age of Fable," "The Age of Chivalry," and "Legends of Charlemagne" are included. Scrupulous care has been taken to follow the original text of Bulfinch, but attention should be called to some additional ...
— Bulfinch's Mythology • Thomas Bulfinch
... creative, fertile. romantic, high flown, flighty, extravagant, fanatic, enthusiastic, unrealistic, Utopian, Quixotic. ideal, unreal; in the clouds, in nubibus [Lat.]; unsubsantial^ &c 4; illusory &c (fallacious) 495. fabulous, legendary; mythical, mythic, mythological; chimerical; imaginary, visionary; notional; fancy, fanciful, fantastic, fantastical^; whimsical; fairy, fairy-like; gestic^. Phr. a change came o'er the spirit of my dream [Byron]; aegri somnia vana [Lat.]; dolphinum ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... a picture-gallery belonging to the palace that is quite of a piece with the furniture, where are the mythological pieces relative to the kings before alluded to, and where the English visitor will see some astonishing pictures of the Duke of Wellington, done in a very characteristic style of Portuguese art. There is also a chapel, which has been decorated ...
— Notes on a Journey from Cornhill to Grand Cairo • William Makepeace Thackeray
... rationalising account of it, we might suppose it to be a mythical form of a raid of pirates, who, not catching the woman, carried off something of hers, which proved an object of contention in Egypt. But such renderings are unlikely, and we may the rather expect to find some explanation in a mythological parallel. ...
— Egyptian Tales, Second Series - Translated from the Papyri • W. M. Flinders Petrie
... the sort called applied, i.e., added after the completion of the structure itself. Pictures in low relief covered the alabaster revetment. They depicted hunting-scenes, battles, deities, and other mythological subjects, and are interesting to the architect mainly for their occasional representations of buildings and details of construction. Above this wainscot were friezes of enamelled brick ornamented with symbolic ...
— A Text-Book of the History of Architecture - Seventh Edition, revised • Alfred D. F. Hamlin
... earnestness in these paragraphs rather convincing to the skeptic. Nor would the book be complete without this eulogy. We have had everything else; a story for who wanted a story, theories upon the education of children, a body of mythological divinity, a discussion of methods of public speaking, advice for men who are about to marry, a theological sparring match, in which a man of straw is set up to be knocked down, and is knocked down, a thousand illustrations ...
— The Bibliotaph - and Other People • Leon H. Vincent
... mind—that sense of defeat, even in conquest, which Goethe has embodied,—a picture of the loftiest grief of which the soul is capable, and which may remind us of the profound and august melancholy which the Great Sculptor breathed into the repose of the noblest of mythological heroes, when he represented the God resting after his labours, as if more convinced of their vanity than elated ...
— Eugene Aram, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... that he who was banished through the envy excited by his being styled the Just, was represented as unmoved as if the injustice of his countrymen no more affected the even tenour of his mind, than the passions of mortals disturb those of the mythological divinities ...
— The Idler in France • Marguerite Gardiner
... downfall of the mythological hypothesis an interpretation of the dream has been wanting. The conditions of its origin; its relationship to our psychical life when we are awake; its independence of disturbances which, during the state of sleep, seem to compel notice; its many peculiarities ...
— Dream Psychology - Psychoanalysis for Beginners • Sigmund Freud
... characteristic of our times, that this very form, this very activity of the spirit, which is essentially ourselves, is so easily ignored or denied. Some confound the spiritual activity of man with the metaphorical and mythological activity of so-called nature, which is mechanism and has no resemblance to human activity, save when we imagine, with Aesop, that arbores loquuntur non tantum ferae. Some even affirm that they have never observed in ...
— Aesthetic as Science of Expression and General Linguistic • Benedetto Croce
... there is no real association of morals with religion. The old stories were full of the adventures of Jupiter, or Zeus, with the heroines, mortal women, whom he loved. Of some 1900 wall paintings at Pompeii, examined by a German scholar and antiquary, some 1400 represent mythological subjects, largely the stories of the loves of Jupiter. The Latin dramatist Terence pictures the young man looking at one of these paintings and saying to himself, "If Jupiter did it, why should not I?" Centuries later we find Augustine quoting that ...
— The Jesus of History • T. R. Glover
... wrote to her. I can even now recall passages out of that passionate epistle. I well remember how it took me a whole morning to write it; how I crammed it with quotations from Horace; and how I fondly compared her to most of the mythological divinities. I then copied it out on pale pink paper, folded it in the form of a heart, and directed it to Miss Angelina Lascelles, and left it, about dusk, with the money-taker at the pit door. I signed myself, if I remember rightly, Pyramus. What would ...
— In the Days of My Youth • Amelia Ann Blandford Edwards
... representative as possible. With such a language, and such a master of it as Snorri to choose from, this combination is not difficult to realise. The beginner is indeed to be envied who makes his first acquaintance with the splendid mythological tales of the North, told in an absolutely perfect style. As the death of Olaf Tryggvason is given in the Reader only from the longer recension of the Heimskringla, I have been able to give the shorter text, which ...
— An Icelandic Primer - With Grammar, Notes, and Glossary • Henry Sweet
... the learning of Shakespeare, and easily shows that he was full of mythological lore. So was all Elizabethan literature. Every English scribbler then knew what most men have forgotten now. Nobody was forced to go to the original authorities- -say, Plato, Herodotus, and Plutarch—for what was accessible ...
— The Valet's Tragedy and Other Stories • Andrew Lang
... that has distorted | spent in translating, suppose one cannot show| phrases and clauses | parsing, and quizzing teaching ability in | lest we be accused of | on historical and such a subject. | dishonesty in | mythological allusions. | preparation. The rest | Every "pony" user is | of the time is spent on| soon caught, because | questions of syntax, | he is asked so many | references, footnotes, | questions on each | and the identification | sentence. There ...
— College Teaching - Studies in Methods of Teaching in the College • Paul Klapper
... the tales into three classes—Mythological, Humorous, and Nurse-tales. Of the mythological I have already given several specimens in your journal, but I will give the following, as it illustrates another link in the transmission of MR. KEIGHTLEY'S Hindustani ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 196, July 30, 1853 • Various
... him, and meat-offerings and entrance into the presence of the god Osiris shall be granted unto him, together with a homestead for ever in the Field of Peace, as unto the followers of Horus." [Footnote: These are a class of mythological beings, or demi-gods, who already in the Vth dynasty were supposed to recite prayers on behalf of the deceased, and to assist Horus and Set in performing funeral ceremonies. See my Papyrus of ...
— Egyptian Ideas of the Future Life • E. A. Wallis Budge
... Then you ask yourself: How is it possible? If their burden were what it seems to be, they would be crushed to earth instead of striding proudly along. Admirable figures! As you say, the spectacle takes one back into mythological times. Would you not call it a procession of Titans, children of the Gods, storing up mountain-blocks for some earth-convulsing battle? Your eyes deceive you. Like Thomas, the doubting apostle, you must touch with your hands. And even then you are not wholly convinced. ...
— South Wind • Norman Douglas
... the philosophical and theological theories in vogue among the thoughtful spirits of the Jewish community. Their "natural philosophy" offers little that is likely to interest and nothing of a nature to instruct the well-informed reader of to-day. But the mythological concreteness and palpitating vitality of all its elements profoundly impress us, less because of the curious standard they supply by which to gauge the intellectual level of that age than as the symbols chosen by the ...
— The Sceptics of the Old Testament: Job - Koheleth - Agur • Emile Joseph Dillon
... Bactrian prophet far back into antiquity 2. Foucher, (Mem. de l'Acad. xxvii. 253,) Tychsen, (in Com. Soc. Gott. ii. 112), Heeren, (ldeen. i. 459,) and recently Holty, identify the Gushtasp of the Persian mythological history with Cyaxares the First, the king of the Medes, and consider the religion to be Median in its origin. M. Guizot considers this opinion most probable, note in loc. 3. Hyde, Prideaux, Anquetil du ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 1 • Edward Gibbon
... suitable distinction. Though there is no intentional injustice towards them on the part of the world, their merit not having been perceived, they may yet repine against fortune, or fate, or by whatever name they choose to call the supposed mythological power of Destiny. It has, however, occurred to me, as a consolatory thought, that men of merit should consider thus:-How much harder would it be if the same persons had both all the merit and all the prosperity. Would not this be a miserable distribution for the poor dunces? ...
— Life Of Johnson, Volume 4 (of 6) • Boswell
... Maka-lei. The name of a famous mythological tree which had the power of attracting fish. It did not poison, but only bewitched or fascinated them. There were two trees bearing this name, one a male, the other a female, which both grew at a place in Hilo called Pali-uli. One of these, the female, was, according to tradition, ...
— Unwritten Literature of Hawaii - The Sacred Songs of the Hula • Nathaniel Bright Emerson
... help of Horapollo, Chiflet's gnostic gems, and other repertories of the same class, one might, peradventure, make a tolerable case in favour of the mythological identity of the legend of Ladybird—that is, the sun-chafer, or barn-bie, the fire-fly, "whose house is burnt, and whose bairns are ten," of course the first ten days of the Egyptian year[4]—with the ...
— Notes & Queries 1850.01.26 • Various
... the sound of their feet in the tall grass and the wind howl when their voices filled the caves? Are we not, moreover, in the land of fairies, in the home of the Knights of the Round Table and of Merlin, in the mythological birthplace of vanished epopees? These, no doubt, revealed something of the old worlds which have become mythical, and told something of the cities that were swallowed up, of Is and Herbadilla, splendid and barbaric places, filled with the loves of their ...
— Over Strand and Field • Gustave Flaubert
... in Roman mythological poetry the well-known picture by Ovid is but one among the many exhibitions of this same belief in a primeval golden age—a Saturnian cycle; one of the constantly recurring attempts, so universal and so natural in ...
— History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom • Andrew Dickson White
... the spot very lately, but, according to the best of my recollection, it has not now any feature in keeping with the mythological character of the fiend of the moor and fen. The neighbouring district of down and common land would not be an inappropriate habitat for such a personage. It has few trees of any pretension to age, and is still covered in ...
— Notes and Queries, No. 181, April 16, 1853 • Various
... remind man, Plato tells us in his mythological fashion, of this perfect Beauty, because we had seen it once before in another life, before our souls were born into this world, 'that blissful sight and spectacle' (Phaedrus, 250 B) when we followed Zeus in his winged car and all the ...
— Progress and History • Various
... stairway, and evidences have been forthcoming that in the later Sumerian period the structure was lavishly adorned. It is referred to in the fragments of early literature which have survived as "the splendid house, shady as the forest", that "none may enter". The mythological spell exercised by Eridu in later times suggests that the civilization of Sumeria owed much to the worshippers of Ea. At the sacred city the first man was created: there the souls of the dead passed towards the great Deep. Its proximity to the sea—Ea ...
— Myths of Babylonia and Assyria • Donald A. Mackenzie
... which, with the common fate of mythological stories, is now generally neglected. We have been too early acquainted with the poetical heroes to expect any pleasure from their revival; to show them as they have already been shown, is to disgust by repetition; to give them ...
— Lives of the Poets: Gay, Thomson, Young, and Others • Samuel Johnson
... waistcoat; the breeches were of black velveteen, held above the knee by a band of gold braid, with embroidered ends, which fell over black silk stockings. At the end of the ante-chamber where this numerous personnel was grouped, opened a long gallery, ornamented with old tapestries representing mythological subjects in lively and well-preserved coloring. This room, which was intended to serve as a ballroom at need, was next to two large drawing-rooms. The walls of one were covered with a rich material, on which hung costly paintings; the furniture and the ceiling of the other were ...
— Zibeline, Complete • Phillipe de Massa
... one in art; and I wish I could read to you a passage of Plato about the legend of Boreas and Oreithyia,* and the breeze and shade of the Ilissus—notwithstannding its severe reflection upon persons who waste their time on mythological studies; but I must go on at once to the fable with which you are all generally familiar, that of ...
— The Queen of the Air • John Ruskin
... 200 B.C., and was chiefly celebrated as an epic poet. Besides mythological epics, he wrote metrical histories of Thessaly, Elis, Achaea, and Messene; Pausinias quotes verses from the last of these, /Messen./ i. 6, xvii. 11. Seutonius, /Tiberius/, c. 70, mentions him along with Euphorion as having been greatly admired by Tiberius. There are nine epigrams by him, erotic ...
— Select Epigrams from the Greek Anthology • J. W. Mackail
... poets themselves could render them. But happily for us and for their own fame, the intention of the writers as men is often at complete variance with the genius of the same men as poets. To the force of their intention we owe their mythological ornaments, and the greater definiteness of their imagery; and their passion for the beautiful, the voluptuous, and the artificial, we must in part attribute to the same intention, but in part likewise to their natural dispositions ...
— Literary Remains (1) • Coleridge
... time may elapse before a mythological gallery for Chaldaea, in which all the important members of the Mesopotamian pantheon shall take their places and be known by the names they bore in their own day, can be formed, but even now the principles upon which they were represented by art may be stated. The images of the various gods ...
— A History of Art in Chaldaea & Assyria, v. 1 • Georges Perrot
... Protestant theology, and with that mind of artificial vacancy to read Paradise Lost and Samson Agonistes, how strange and great and mad would the genius of Milton appear. We should wonder at his creative mythological imagination, but we should marvel past all comprehending at his conceptions of the divine order, and the destiny of man. To attempt to understand Shelley without the aid of Godwin is a task hardly more promising than it would be to ...
— Shelley, Godwin and Their Circle • H. N. Brailsford
... rose hues of the blossoms on the tea-rose, the aqua-marine tints of the Mediterranean Sea. Truly oriental they were, giving a hint of the Eastern origin of the Old One. Like some godmother in the fairy tale, like some ancient wife of mythological times, the Old One had wrought into these designs her own life. And what had been her thoughts during those long hours and days ...
— Virgilia - or, Out of the Lion's Mouth • Felicia Buttz Clark
... which we discerned the new St. George, serene, impeccable, moving through an orchard of ever-blooming cherry-trees, gracefully vanquishing dragons with a touch, and shedding fragrance and radiance around him. Out of that mythological mist we groped our way, to find ourselves beneath the rolling clouds of oratory, above which the head of the hero was pinnacled in remote grandeur, like a sphinx poised upon a volcanic peak, isolated and mysterious. That altitudinous figure still dominates the cloudy landscapes ...
— The Americanism of Washington • Henry Van Dyke
... return from Elba, an historical fact as marvellous and incredible as the exploits of some mythological demi-god, found General D'Hubert still quite unable to sit a horse. Neither could he walk very well. These disabilities, which Madame Leonie accounted most lucky, helped to keep her brother out of all possible mischief. His frame of mind ...
— A Set of Six • Joseph Conrad
... moons had risen over the turrets and minarets of Cairo, illumining every visible object with as clear a lustre as that of day. Then it was that warriors and nobles of mediaeval days were seen strolling with mythological goddesses and out-of-date peasants of Italy and Spain; then audacious "toreadors" were perceived whispering in the ears of crowned queens, and clowns were caught lingering amorously by the side of impossible flower-girls ...
— Ziska - The Problem of a Wicked Soul • Marie Corelli
... two answers and only two have been given in the course of the ages, and they are both of them current to-day. One of the answers is biological—man is an animal, a certain kind of animal; the other answer is a mixture partly biological and partly mythological or partly biological and partly philosophical—man is a combination or union of animal with something supernatural. An important part of my task will be to show that both of these answers are radically wrong and that, ...
— Manhood of Humanity. • Alfred Korzybski
... not smile at these mythological comparisons. George Sand had, as it were, restored for herself that condition of soul to which the ancient myths are due. A great current of naturalist poetry circulates through these pages. In Theocritus and in Rousard there are certain ...
— George Sand, Some Aspects of Her Life and Writings • Rene Doumic
... Slave of the Lamp, or a freed dryad, or something fairy-taley or mythological," she declared. "It was worth it, though, to see those girls' faces. Thank you, Giovanni! I'm ever so much obliged. Sorry if I've spoilt your bed of violets. Is that Delia calling us? Coming, dearie. Where are the rest ...
— The Jolliest School of All • Angela Brazil
... divinities admit of the most curious illustration and explanation from Chaldaean sources. We can scarcely doubt but that, in some way or other, there was a communication of beliefs—a passage in very early times, from the shores of the Persian Gulf to the lands washed by the Mediterranean, of mythological notions and ideas. It is a probable conjecture that among the primitive tribes who dwelt on the Tigris and Euphrates, when the cuneiform alphabet was invented and when such writing was first applied to the ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 1. (of 7): Chaldaea • George Rawlinson
... furnished. It lay in the logic of the case that some of these attempts should advance the bold claim to deal with all knowledge whatsoever and to offer a theory of the universe as a whole. Religion, both in its mythological and in its theological stages, had offered a theory of the universe as a whole. The great metaphysical systems had offered theories of the universe as a whole. Both had professed to include all facts. Notoriously both theology and metaphysics had dealt in most inadequate ...
— Edward Caldwell Moore - Outline of the History of Christian Thought Since Kant • Edward Moore
... under his right leg. Southeast, "Earth," a woman leaning against a tree, apparently sleeping; at back two human figures struggle to uproot tree, symbol of man's war with nature. Southwest "Air" woman holding star to ear; birds, symbol of air; Icarus, mythological aviator who fell into sea, tied to wings of woman, typifying man's effort ...
— The City of Domes • John D. Barry
... Os Lusiades, or the Lusitanians (i.e., Portuguese), comprises ten books, containing 1102 stanzas in heroic iambics, and is replete with mythological allusions. Its ...
— The Book of the Epic • Helene A. Guerber
... by which formerly a place in the Providence of God had been allotted to everything, even to moral evil,[52] became corrupted, under the influence of Parsism, by the conception of two kingdoms, of God and of the Devil. The angels, originally the messengers of Providence, became under mythological names, Gabriel, Raphael, Michael, &c., so many middle beings who filled the space between the Deity, existing apart from the world, and the world. The lower world (sheol, [Greek: aides]), formerly the general abode of the dead, of bad ...
— A Comparative View of Religions • Johannes Henricus Scholten
... possibilities. If then Imagination carries us beyond the limits of graphic art let us by all means employ it. Upon this phase of art the realist can but look with folded arms. The dwellers in the charmed world of Greek mythological fancy came on tiptoe to the borders only of the daily life ...
— Pictorial Composition and the Critical Judgment of Pictures • Henry Rankin Poore
... Brun changed his design, seeing the King had no love for Bacchus, but he left the Thundering Jove, and all the other mythological flatteries, in regard to which no ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... dithyrambs, "weaves flowery chains to unite forever Austria and Gaul. Peoples shed tears, but tears of enthusiasm and gratitude. Long live Louise and Napoleon!" In every street, in every square, there were transparencies, mottoes, flags, mythological emblems, temples of Hymen, angels of peace and ...
— The Happy Days of the Empress Marie Louise • Imbert De Saint-Amand
... forehead. It would be impossible to describe her as she then appeared. Not sensuous enough for an Aphrodite, and too subdued for a Hebe, she would yet, with the adjunct of doves or nectar, have stood sufficiently well for either of those personages, if presented in a pink morning light, and with mythological scarcity of attire. ...
— A Laodicean • Thomas Hardy
... it is to ignore the psychological nature of Political Economy is evident from the errors of Karl Marx, who personifies things in a manner almost mythological. Thus, according to him, modesty should be ascribed to a coat which exchanges for a piece of linen, and purpose to the linen, etc. (Das Kapital, 1867, I, 19, 22, seq.) The greatest fault of this intelligent but not very acute man, his inability to reduce ...
— Principles Of Political Economy • William Roscher
... refined Renaissance design. In the oval medallions supported by cupids, is found a domestic scene by a Fragonard or a Chardin; and the portraits of innocent children by Greuze replace the courting shepherds and mythological goddesses of Boucher and Lancret. Sculpture, too, becomes more refined and decorous in ...
— Illustrated History of Furniture - From the Earliest to the Present Time • Frederick Litchfield
... happened that the mythological tales with which Miss Phelps regaled her small charges from time to time were not a part of the regular course of study laid out for her grade, and at this pupil's blunt criticism, the teacher's face became scarlet; but she quickly regained her poise, ...
— Heart of Gold • Ruth Alberta Brown
... game of taw. How were they to be inspired by such subjects? From having seen Talma and Mademoiselle Georges flaunting in sham Greek costumes, and having read up the articles Eudamidas, Hecuba, in the "Mythological Dictionary." What a classicism, inspired by rouge, gas-lamps, and a few lines in Lempriere, and copied, half from ancient statues, and half from a naked guardsman at one ...
— The Paris Sketch Book Of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh • William Makepeace Thackeray
... is called the "Younger Edda." And it is to these two books that we owe the preservation of almost all that is now known of the myths and the strange religion of our Saxon and Norman forefathers. But, besides these, there are a number of semi-mythological stories of great interest and beauty,—stories partly mythical, and partly founded upon remote and forgotten historical facts. One of the oldest and finest of these is the story of Sigurd, the son of Sigmund. There ...
— The Story of Siegfried • James Baldwin
... purely mythological scheme arouses the antagonism of Judah Halevi. It is all pure conjecture, he says, and there is not an iota of proof in it. People believe it and think it is convincing, simply because it bears the name of a Greek philosopher. ...
— A History of Mediaeval Jewish Philosophy • Isaac Husik
... sequel of the story, relating to the misfortunes of Nala and Damayanti after marriage, will be referred to presently. The famous tale herewith briefly summarized occurs in the Mahabharata, the great epic or mythological cyclopaedia of India, which embraces 220,000 metric lines, and antedates in the main the Christian era. The story of Savitri also occurs in the Mahabharata; and these two episodes have been pronounced by specialists the gems not only of that great ...
— Primitive Love and Love-Stories • Henry Theophilus Finck
... completely without place-influence. There is in the volume much more exuberance of fancy, grotesque at times, amore conscious exercise of the picturing imagination than we find in Sterne. There is use, too, of mythological figures quite foreign to Sterne, an obvious reminiscence of Jacobi's Anacreontic experience. He exaggerates Yorick's sentimentalism, is more weepy, more tender, more sympathizing; yet, as Longo does not sufficiently emphasize, he does not touch the whimsical ...
— Laurence Sterne in Germany • Harvey Waterman Thayer
... first gives a mythological birth of Shakespeare. What is said of that mighty genius is true; but it is not said happily: the real effects of this poetical power are put out of sight by the pomp of machinery. Where truth is sufficient to fill the mind, fiction is worse than useless; ...
— Select Poems of Thomas Gray • Thomas Gray
... suggest a basis for reckoning time; they are of the greatest use in primitive agriculture; and everywhere the moon is held to have vast influence on the whole of organic life. Hahn has suggested that the reason why mythological systems do not usually present the moon in the supreme position which we should expect, is that its immense importance is so ancient a fact that it tends, with mythological development, to become overlaid by other ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 1 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... Marcel. "You are always in the clouds. The idea of coming and asking me for that mythological amount at a period when one is always under the equator of necessity. You must have ...
— Bohemians of the Latin Quarter • Henry Murger
... will, at least, get the freedom of the play-house by it. But at all times he chides, with good-humored impatience, the tardiness of his fellow- laborer in applying to the managers. Fears are expressed that Foote may have made other engagements,—and that a piece, called "Dido," on the same mythological plan, which had lately been produced with but little success, might prove an obstacle to the reception of theirs. At Drury Lane, too, they had little hopes of a favorable hearing, as Dibdin was one of the principal butts ...
— Memoirs of the Life of the Rt. Hon. Richard Brinsley Sheridan V1 • Thomas Moore
... exclusively with mythological subjects, and nothing of the Italian element comprised in modern pantomime had been apparent in our stage performances. It is probable that even upon their first introduction to our theatre the real significance of the characters ...
— A Book of the Play - Studies and Illustrations of Histrionic Story, Life, and Character • Dutton Cook
... was most discomforting, because it reminded me of love; and I knew that I never could love this half-baked little barbarian. I was very much interested in her account of the Wieroo, which up to this time I had considered a purely mythological creature; but Ajor shuddered so at even the veriest mention of the name that I was loath to press the subject upon her, and so the Wieroo still remained ...
— The People that Time Forgot • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... possibly of popular origin; this, together with their epic or narrative character, would account for the striking absence from them of some of the chief characteristics of Skaldic poetry: the obscuring of the sense by the elaborate interlacing of sentences and the extensive use of kennings or mythological synonyms, and the complication of the metre by such expedients as the conjunction of end-rhyme with alliteration. Eddie verse is governed solely by the latter, and the strophic arrangement is simple, only two forms occurring: (1) couplets of alliterative ...
— The Edda, Vol. 1 - The Divine Mythology of the North, Popular Studies in Mythology, - Romance, and Folklore, No. 12 • Winifred Faraday
... much the better, I am fond of mystery. There is almost always something to be gained when people begin by saying 'hush.' In any case you cannot do better than address yourself to your servant," continued the captain, resuming his mythological language. "You see in me the grandson of Hippocrates, the god of silence. So do ...
— The Conspirators - The Chevalier d'Harmental • Alexandre Dumas (Pere)
... antiquity of Slavic popular poetry is manifest among other things, in the frequent mythological features which occur. In the ballads of the Teutonic nations, we recollect very few instances of talking animals. As to those which talk in nursery tales, we are always sure to discover in them enchanted princes or princesses. In one Scotch ballad, "The Gray Goshawk," a horse speaks; and, in a ...
— Historical View of the Languages and Literature of the Slavic - Nations • Therese Albertine Louise von Jacob Robinson
... all seasons of the year, Diana plunges into a cold bath on rising. As soon as day breaks, she mounts a horse, and, followed by swift hounds, rides through dewy verdure to her royal lover to whom—fascinated by her mythological pomp—she seems no more a woman but a goddess. Thus he styles her in verses ...
— Women of Modern France - Woman In All Ages And In All Countries • Hugo P. Thieme |
