"Acanthus" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... I told you about the second indentation of the acanthus," said the elder workman, without looking round; "a light, light hand—no holes in ...
— Marzio's Crucifix and Zoroaster • F. Marion Crawford
... wine?" I asked of the temple-guardian at Paestum, when he ministered to my thirst. "Vino di Calabria," he answered, and what a glow in the name! There I drank it, seated against the column of Poseidon's temple. There I drank it, my feet resting on acanthus, my eyes wandering from sea to mountain, or peering at little shells niched in the crumbling surface of the sacred stone. The autumn day declined; a breeze of evening whispered about the forsaken shore; on the far summit lay a long, still ...
— The Private Papers of Henry Ryecroft • George Gissing
... cornices and pyramidal roofs, like many Asiatic tombs. The openings of the rock-cut tombs have frames or pediments carved with rich surface ornament showing a similar mixture of types—Roman triglyphs and garlands, Syrian-Greek acanthus leaves, conventional foliage of Byzantine character, and naturalistic carvings of grapes and local plant-life. The carved arches of two of the ancient city gates (one the so-called Golden Gate) in Jerusalem display rich acanthus foliage somewhat like that of the tombs, but ...
— A Text-Book of the History of Architecture - Seventh Edition, revised • Alfred D. F. Hamlin
... grotesques—two sea-monsters, biting each other; harpy-birds; a dragon with a twisted tail; little men grinning and squatting in adaptation to coigns and angles of the windows. The toothed and chevron patterns of the north are quaintly blent with rude acanthus scrolls and classical egg-mouldings. Over the western porch is a Gothic rose window. Altogether this church must be reckoned one of the most curious specimens of that hybrid architecture, fusing and appropriating different manners, which perplexes the student in Central Italy. It ...
— New Italian sketches • John Addington Symonds
... breathing forms of Parian stone, That rise round grandeur's marble halls; The vivid hues by painting thrown Rich o'er the glowing walls; Th' acanthus on Corinthian fanes, In sculptured beauty waving fair— These perished all—and what remains? —Thou, thou alone ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 3, No. 1 January 1863 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... watched Hipparchus spit and cough and groan. I moved to the car and unpacked bread and meat, A cheese, some fruit, a skin of wine, two bowls. Amyntas was all joy to see such things; Ran off and pulled acanthus for our plates; Chattering, he helped me set all forth,—was keen To choose rock basin where the wine might cool; Approved, was full as happy as I to praise: And most he pleased me, when he set a place For poor Hipparchus. Thus our eager work, While Delphis, in ...
— Georgian Poetry 1911-12 • Various
... of the real relations of form and size between animals, plants, and natural objects, together with a quicker sense of the effects of perspective. That is just what I wanted, and my purpose is rather that he should know things than copy them. I would rather he showed me a plant of acanthus even if he drew a capital with ...
— Emile • Jean-Jacques Rousseau
... me too wrought the same Alcimedon A pair of cups, and round the handles wreathed Pliant acanthus, Orpheus in the midst, The forests following in his wake; nor yet Have I set lip to them, but lay them by. Matched with a heifer, who ...
— The Bucolics and Eclogues • Virgil
... in common use has been gathered from the dust-bin of the ages. What ornamental motif of any universality, worth, or importance is less than a hundred years old? We continue to use the honeysuckle, the acanthus, the fret, the egg and dart, not because they are appropriate to any use we put them to, but because they are beautiful per se. Why are they beautiful? It is not because they are highly conventionalized representations of natural forms which are themselves beautiful, but because they express ...
— Architecture and Democracy • Claude Fayette Bragdon
... AEgaean Iasus Iassus Akanthus Acanthus Kabala Cabalia Akarnania Acarnania Nile Nilus Akesines Acesines Olympieion Olympieum Akte Acte Oneium OEneum Chaeroneia Chaeronea Palike Palica Dekeleia Decelea Pattala Patala Dyrrachium Dyrrhachium Peiraeum ...
— The Atlas of Ancient and Classical Geography • Samuel Butler
... is all heart-breaking. I don't only mean those beautiful graves, overgrown with acanthus and violets, but the mutilated arches and columns and dumb appealing fragments looming up in the glowing sunshine under the ...
— The Poems of Emma Lazarus - Vol. I (of II.), Narrative, Lyric, and Dramatic • Emma Lazarus
... of antiquity. Simple meals of rice and bananas progress round cooking-pots of burnished copper. Pink pomelo and purple mangosteen vary the repast; strips of green banana leaf folded into cups fastened with an acanthus thorn, or serving as plates for Dame Nature's prodigality, provide the accessories of the feast as well as the provisions. The Javanese populace, wonderfully free from those household cares which involve so much time and trouble in Northern ...
— Through the Malay Archipelago • Emily Richings
... oftentimes of great importance by comparison with its shape, fashion, or mode. It is of value in your eyes to know whether your family plate is in substance of gold or of silver; but whether such a vessel is round or square, ornamented with a wreath of acanthus or ivy, supported by tigers or by fawns, may be a trivial consideration, or even worse; for the fashion of your plate, after it has once become obsolete, may count against you for so much loss as something that will cost a good deal of money to alter. ...
— The Posthumous Works of Thomas De Quincey, Vol. 1 (2 vols) • Thomas De Quincey
... swell the revenues of the King and Queen of Spain. A brief survey of this first island was all he could afford time for; and after the first exquisite impression of the white beach, and the blue curve of the bay sparkling in the sunshine, and the soft prismatic colours of the acanthus beneath the green wall of the woods had been savoured and enjoyed, he was anxious to push on to the rich lands of the Orient of which he believed this island to be ...
— Christopher Columbus, Complete • Filson Young
... made up to the requisite height with another stone, and two are octagonal. Most of them have but the slightest projection for base, the level of the pavement having apparently been raised. Most of the caps have Byzantine thistly acanthus worked with great use of the drill, one has quaint gambolling beasts and birds within arched forms in place of foliage, which show imitation of Oriental ornamental forms, and one, which has hollows for inlays of squares and diamonds, bounded by the leaf shapes, is ...
— The Shores of the Adriatic - The Austrian Side, The Kuestenlande, Istria, and Dalmatia • F. Hamilton Jackson
... the last and fairest of all—the divine Proserpine. Not the form, for it is but a bust rising from a capital of acanthus leaves, which curve around the breast and arms and turn gracefully outward, but the face, whose modest maiden beauty can find no peer among goddesses or mortals. So looked she on the field of Ennae—that "fairer flower," so soon to be ...
— Views a-foot • J. Bayard Taylor |
