"Olympics" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... score of contests back to a tie, and the result of these Olympic games now rested entirely on the victors ...
— The Dozen from Lakerim • Rupert Hughes
... spent in debauchery and crimes, he turned Christian, and, to obliterate the memory of his youthful ill practices, divided his inheritance among the people. Ultimately he burned himself to death in public at the Olympic games, A.D. 165. Lucan has held up this immolation to ridicule in his Death of Peregrinus; and C. M. Wieland has an historic romance in ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook, Vol. 3 • E. Cobham Brewer
... strengthen the lights," said the torch-bearer. "This is the headquarters of the union of all those who chant hymns, take part in the Olympic games, dance after the manner of satyrs and play the Greek trilogies. A league of fun-makers they are. Also these actors do lay claim to the greatest of all antiquity for their order, saying that no less a one than Homer himself did found it. Also they make claim ...
— The Coming of the King • Bernie Babcock
... to her old books and the heroes in them. She was dissatisfied with France and Frenchmen. She says: "I sighed as I thought of Athens, where I could have equally admired the fine arts without being wounded by the spectacle of despotism. I transported myself in thought to Greece—I was present at the Olympic games, and I grew angry at finding myself French. Thus struck by all of grand which is offered by the republics of antiquity, I forgot the death of Socrates, the exile of ...
— Paris: With Pen and Pencil - Its People and Literature, Its Life and Business • David W. Bartlett
... the whole city was once thrown into excitement by the news that one of her sons had won the first prize in prose and verse in competition, before the emperor, with the assembled scholars of the empire—an [Page 21] an honour comparable to that of poet laureate or of a victor in the Olympic games. When that distinction falls to a city, it is believed that, in order to equalise matters, the event is sure to be followed by three years of dearth. In this instance, the highest mandarins escorted ...
— The Awakening of China • W.A.P. Martin
... feature of that sport. And the modern prize fight and boxing championship has something of the gladiatorial spirit. The enormous interest in the Dempsey-Carpentier contest is evidence of the increasingly debauched taste of the world's democracies. The Olympic Games have much more to be said in their favour. But whilst they encourage professional athleticism it can hardly be said that they encourage Europe to be more athletic. The Sokol movement in Czecho-slovakia and the ...
— Europe—Whither Bound? - Being Letters of Travel from the Capitals of Europe in the Year 1921 • Stephen Graham
... of Greece, and to stimulate and publicly reward talent, as well as bodily vigor. They afforded orators, poets, and historians the best opportunities of rehearsing their productions. 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, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, No. 19, May, 1859 • Various
... sovereigns of harps! What God? what Hero? What Man shall we celebrate? Truly Pisa indeed is of Jove, But the Olympiad (or, the Olympic games) did Hercules establish, The first-fruits of the spoils of war. But Theron for the four-horsed car That bore victory to him, It behoves us now to voice aloud: The Just, the Hospitable, The Bulwark of Agrigentum, Of renowned ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... a Greek athlete, Milo of Crotona (in southern Italy), frequent victor in the Olympic games. By lifting and carrying a bull-calf daily, he was able, so the legend runs, ultimately to carry the full-grown bull. He came to his death by trying to pull asunder a split tree, which, reacting, held him fast ...
— Novelas Cortas • Pedro Antonio de Alarcon
... present himself at any court of Christendom is recognised upon his producing a ticket signed by a Lord Chamberlain of some other court, to the effect that 'the Bearer is known at St. James's,' or 'known at the Tuileries,' etc.; so, after the final establishment of the Olympic games, the Greeks looked upon a man's appearance at that great national congress as the criterion and ratification of his being a known or knowable person. Unknown, unannounced personally or by proxy at the great periodic Congress of Greece, even a prince was a homo ignorabilis; one whose ...
— The Posthumous Works of Thomas De Quincey, Vol. II (2 vols) • Thomas De Quincey
... superiority. Often when he ploughed the placid waters of the Avon, or buffeted the breakers of the moaning sea, have I gazed in rapture at his manly, Adonis form, standing on the sands, like a Grecian wrestler, waiting for the laurel crown of the Olympic games. ...
— Shakspere, Personal Recollections • John A. Joyce
... rule: whether he sings the gods, and kings, the offspring of the gods, by whom the Centaurs perished with a just destruction, [by whom] was quenched the flame of the dreadful Chimaera; or celebrates those whom the palm, [in the Olympic games] at Elis, brings home exalted to the skies, wrestler or steed, and presents them with a gift preferable to a hundred statues: or deplores some youth, snatched [by death] from his mournful bride—he elevates both his strength, and courage, and ...
— The Works of Horace • Horace
... excursions. I could not refuse attending my father, in the summer of 1759, to the races at Stockbridge, Reading, and Odiam, where he had entered a horse for the hunter's plate; and I was not displeased with the sight of our Olympic games, the beauty of the spot, the fleetness of the horses, and the gay tumult of the numerous spectators. As soon as the militia business was agitated, many days were tediously consumed in meetings of deputy-lieutenants at Petersfield, Alton, and Winchester. ...
— Memoirs of My Life and Writings • Edward Gibbon
... youth justice and moderation, and to make the rest of my countrymen more happy, let me be maintained at the public expense the remaining years of my life in the Pyrtaneum, an honour, O Athenians which I deserve more than the victors of the Olympic games: they make their countrymen more happy in appearance, but I have made you so in reality." This exasperated the judges still more, and they condemned him to drink hemlock. Upon this he addressed the court and more particularly the judges who had decided in his favour, ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor, Vol. I, No. 4, April 1810 • Various
... assures us, that no Lacedaemonian matron, however high her quality, was ashamed to act for hire on the public stage. He adds, that throughout Greece, it was deemed the highest honour to obtain the prize in the Olympic games, and no man blushed to be a performer in plays and pantomimes, and give himself a spectacle to the people. Nulla Lacedaemoni tam est nobilis vidua, quae non in scenam eat mercede conducta. Magnis in laudibus tota fuit Graecia, victorem Olympiae ...
— A Dialogue Concerning Oratory, Or The Causes Of Corrupt Eloquence • Cornelius Tacitus
... benefactor, and who has need of leisure in order to give you good advice? There is nothing so suitable, O Athenians! as that such a man should be maintained in the Prytaneum, and this much more than if one of you had been victorious at the Olympic games in a horserace, or in the two or four horsed chariot race: for such a one makes you appear to be happy, but I, to be so; and he does not need support, but I do. If, therefore, I must award a sentence according to my just deserts, I award this, ...
— Apology, Crito, and Phaedo of Socrates • Plato
... indispensable to this end. The earliest definite time for the dating of events was established at Babylon,—the era of Nabonassar, 747 B.C. The Greeks, from about 300 B.C., dated events from the first recorded victory at the Olympic games, 776 B.C. These games occurred every fourth year. Each Olympiad was thus a period of four years. The Romans, though not until some centuries after the founding of Rome, dated from that event; i.e., from 753 B.C. The Mohammedan era begins ...
— Outline of Universal History • George Park Fisher
... therefore, departed unto his own palace, like a conqueror in the Olympic games, and with him went Nachor. When alone, the prince called him and said, "Think not that I am ignorant of thy tale, for I wot, of a surety, that thou art not saintly Barlaam, but Nachor the astrologer; and I marvel how it seemed thee good to act this play, and to think ...
— Barlaam and Ioasaph • St. John of Damascus
... of the day. She loved the race for its own sake, this young athlete; and though she took the crowns and the compliments very much as a matter of course, she had come to look on life as nothing but an endless round of Olympic games. And just as she forgot each successive event in the excitement of the next, she also had forgotten the losers and those who were tumbled in the dust. Until she had ...
— Superseded • May Sinclair
... expecting you a long time," interrupted one of the Milesians. "You are the first man to bring us news of the Olympic games!" ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... method of bringing the Aetolian war to a conclusion, (for these ambassadors attended the late council of the Romans and Aetolians at Heraclea,) intelligence is brought that Machanidas intended to attack the Elians while busied in preparing for the celebration of the Olympic games. Thinking it his duty to prevent such an attempt, he dismissed the ambassadors with a gracious answer to the effect, that he had neither caused the war, nor would he be any obstacle to the restoration of peace, if it should be possible on equitable and honourable ...
— History of Rome, Vol III • Titus Livius
... to see the ruins of the enormous temple of Jupiter where chariot races were run and the Olympic games wuz fought that Paul speaks of so many times in his ...
— Around the World with Josiah Allen's Wife • Marietta Holley
... on the grounds mentioned above. On the contrary they would be most useful in a variety of ways in which the sixpence and threepenny bit are of no service whatever. In thoroughly honest households they could be employed as letter-weights or for practising the discus-throw for the next Olympic Games (if any), or for keeping open a swing door while a tea-tray is carried through. We hope the idea will be vigorously followed up. A 15/-piece representing the British Army crossing the Aisne River under fire would be certain to be popular, as also would a 17/6 piece showing the arrival of the ...
— Punch or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, December 2, 1914 • Various
... May 30, 1914, made a new world's record by putting the 18-pound shot 46 feet 2-3/4 inches. The climax of achievement was reached when T.F. Kiely won the all-round championship of the world at New York. The distinguished part taken by Irishmen or sons of Irishmen in all departments of the Olympic games is so recent and so well known as to call for no comment. Ireland is far indeed from being ...
— The Glories of Ireland • Edited by Joseph Dunn and P.J. Lennox |
