"Cerberus" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... sensuous natures that ever idleness made love to. The thing was in the air!—in the summer, in the blood—as little to be resisted as the impulse to eat when you are hungry, or drink when you thirst. Besides, what particular harm had been done, what particular harm could have been done with such a Cerberus of a husband? As to the outcry which had followed one special incident, nothing could have been more uncalled for, more superfluous. Aldous had demanded contrition, had said strong things with the flashing eyes, the set mouth of a Cato. And the culprit had turned ...
— Marcella • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... "detail," and, after bidding us all good-night, the huntress-maiden retired to her tent—at the entrance of which the ever-faithful and ever-watchful Wolf placed himself. There did the great dog stretch his body—a sentinel couchant—with such grim Cerberus-like resolution, that even Wingrove might not have dared to cross the threshold of that sacred precinct? As yet we had not assumed our Indian disguises. The opening scene of the travestie was reserved for the morning; and, after arranging the hours of our respective watches—the ...
— The Wild Huntress - Love in the Wilderness • Mayne Reid
... Gaius. Campania. Canius. Cassiodorus. categories, the ten. Catholic Church, faith; religion. Catholics. Cato. Catullus. Caucasus. Centaurs. Cerberus. Ceres. Chremes. Christ, advent of; baptism; life and death; resurrection and ascension; nature; person; divinity; humanity; Perfect Man and Perfect God. Christian faith, religion. Cicero, De diuinatione; Tusc. Circe. Claudian. Claudianus, Mamertus, coemptio. Conigastus, consistere, Consolation ...
— The Theological Tractates and The Consolation of Philosophy • Anicius Manlius Severinus Boethius
... half asleepe, and turning on the other side, answered, What know I whether you have murthered your Companion whom you brought in yesternight, or no, and now seeke the means to escape away? O Lord, at that time I remember the earth seemed ready to open, and me thought I saw at hell gate the Dog Cerberus ready to devour mee, and then I verily beleeved, that Meroe did not spare my throat, mooved with pitty, but rather cruelly pardoned mee to bring mee to the Gallowes. Wherefore I returned to my chamber, and there devised with my selfe in what sort I should finish ...
— The Golden Asse • Lucius Apuleius
... witness infer our whole massive Hercules, a bulk that sprawls and stretches beyond the rivers through the tunnels piercing their beds and that towers into the skies with innumerable tops—a Hercules blent of Briareus and Cerberus, but not so bad a monster as it seemed then to ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... CERBERUS, the three-headed or three-throated monster that guarded the entrance to the nether world of Pluto, could be soothed by music, and tempted by honey, only Hercules overcame him by sheer strength, dragging him by neck and crop ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... I, as I finished reading it over, "take that as a sop to the old Cerberus. She may think it prudent, as I have talked of letters, to believe me and make friends. I will ...
— Japhet, In Search Of A Father • Frederick Marryat
... another act had been got through, in the course of which Sardanapalus had suffered from a distressing nightmare. He took Mr Buskin's card out of his pocket, and, hurrying out as fast as he could manage, stumped his way round to the stage door. Cerberus would fain have stopped him, but Austin flourished his card in passing, and enquired of the first civil-looking man he met where the manager was to be found. He was piloted through devious ways and under strange scaffoldings, to the foot of ...
— Austin and His Friends • Frederic H. Balfour
... I believe, however, that the snake is not there as a welcome visitor, but comes in the role of a self-appointed assessor and tax gatherer. I picked up and adopted a little bulldog which had been either abandoned on the cars or lost by its owner, not then thinking that this little Cerberus, as I called it, should later prove, on one occasion, to be my true and only friend when I was in dire distress and in the ...
— Tales of Aztlan • George Hartmann
... stood thus lost, peering down at the silvery whirlpools and its sombre environment, we were bedewed with a light mist, spray sent upward by the frothing waters. Our terrible female Cerberus gabbled on, and so to be rid of her we descended. There is a Restaurant on the French, also on the Swiss side of the basin we had just crossed, and we chose the latter, not with particular success. Very little we got either to eat or drink, and a very long while we had to wait for it, but ...
— Holidays in Eastern France • Matilda Betham-Edwards
... were, into the cosmological, and that into the ontological. After this reluctant regressus of the three into one, shutting up like a spying-glass, which (with the iron hand of Hercules forcing Cerberus up to daylight) the stern man of Koenigsberg resolutely dragged to the front of the arena, nothing remained, now that he had this pet scholastic argument driven up into a corner, than to break its ...
— Theological Essays and Other Papers v1 • Thomas de Quincey
... one of Dogberry's watch. He could not even preach hell with any vigour; for as a gentleman he recoiled from the vulgarity of the doctrine, yielding only a few feeble words on the subject as a sop to the Cerberus that watches over the dues of the Bible—quite unaware that his notion of the doctrine had been drawn from the AEneid, and not from ...
— Robert Falconer • George MacDonald
... last, Mother Cerberus, I assure you I do not acknowledge your authority to dismiss me!" retorted Capitola. "So show me to the ...
— Capitola the Madcap • Emma D. E. N. Southworth
... delineation; but with the exception of War, who appears in the attributes of Mars, they are represented simply as examples of Old age, Malady, &c., not as the agents by whom these evils are inflicted upon others. Cerberus and Charon occur in their appropriate offices, but the monstrous forms Gorgon, Chimaera, &c., are judiciously suppressed; and the poet is speedily conducted to the banks of that "main ...
— Memoirs of the Court of Queen Elizabeth • Lucy Aikin
... "Am I Cerberus, to be coaxed and cheated by a well-buttered sop of flattery? Return to your mutton, reverend sir, and know that I am incorruptible, and disdain to betray my cause for your ...
— Infelice • Augusta Jane Evans Wilson
... a third, "he's one of those sly Gnostics! I have seen the chap before, with his hangdog look. He is one of Pluto's whelps, first cousin to Cerberus, ...
— Callista • John Henry Cardinal Newman
... been contented in her underground kingdom, where she ruled with Pluto. It was supposed to be below the volcanic grounds in southern Italy, near Lake Avernus. The entrance to it was guarded by a three-headed dog, named Cerberus, and the way to it was barred by the River Styx. Every evening Mercury brought all the spirits of the people who had died during the day to the shore of the Styx, and if their funeral rites had been properly performed, ...
— Aunt Charlotte's Stories of Greek History • Charlotte M. Yonge
... sheets belonged to the number just received, not to the preceding number. I drove immediately to the Moscow office and demanded the censor. "You can tell me what you want with him," said the ante-room Cerberus. "Send me the censor," said I. After further repetition, he retired and sent in a man who requested me to state my business. "You are not the censor," I said, after a glance at him. "Send him out, or I will go to him." Then they ...
— Russian Rambles • Isabel F. Hapgood
... and caressing whine brought me out of my heavy stupor: it was my friend, Cerberus, my intelligent and faithful dog, who had been placed as a sentinel near the door. Chilled through and through, he was asking me what was the matter and why, in such terribly cold weather, I ...
— Contemporary Russian Novelists • Serge Persky
... renders men crusty and quarrelsome when hungry, is completely pacified, silenced, and put to rest; whereupon a host of honest, good-fellow qualities and kind-hearted affections, which had lain perdue, slily peeping out of the loopholes of the heart, finding this Cerberus asleep, do pluck up their spirits, turn out one and all in their holiday suits, and gambol up and down the diaphragm—disposing their possessor to laughter, good humor, and a thousand friendly ...
— Knickerbocker's History of New York, Complete • Washington Irving
... Art, especially of statues, are proverbially unsatisfactory; only a vague idea can be given in words, to the unprofessional reader; otherwise we might dwell upon the eager, intent attitude of Orpheus as he seems to glide by the dozing Cerberus, shading his eyes as they peer into the mysterious labyrinth he is about to enter in search of his ravished bride;—we might expatiate on the graceful, dignified aspect of Beethoven, the concentration of his thoughtful brow, and the loving serenity of his expression,—a kind of embodied musical ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. II, No. 8, June 1858 • Various
... infernal regions. Over it, AEneas stands before the Cumoean Sybil, a very injured painting. Below, Orpheus in Hades plays before Pluto and Persephone to win back Eurydice, who lies bound before them. On the right Hercules rescues Theseus from Hades, and slays Cerberus, and on the left, Eurydice, following Orpheus, looks back, and is re-seized by the demons. These are all exceedingly good and dramatic paintings, and are ...
— Luca Signorelli • Maud Cruttwell
... messenger of mighty Jove, That with his sword hath quail'd all earthly kings, Could not persuade you to submission, But still the ports [271] were shut: villain, I say, Should I but touch the rusty gates of hell, The triple-headed Cerberus would howl, And make [272] black Jove to crouch and kneel to me; But I have sent volleys of shot to you, Yet could not enter till the breach ...
— Tamburlaine the Great, Part II. • Christopher Marlowe
... beyond the grave Semitic face of the second Jewish secretary, on the farther side of the torrent of boiling amber sunshine pouring through a central opening in the roof of the inner hall that succeeded the vestibule of the mosaic Cerberus. An atrium some forty feet in length, paved with squares of black and yellow marble with an oblong pool in the midst of it, upon whose still crystal surface pink and crimson petals of roses had been strewn in patterns, and in the centre of ...
— When Winter Comes to Main Street • Grant Martin Overton
... down carved in a stately wreath')—'Implentur veteris Bacchi pinguisque ferinae Anno Dom 1655.' 10. The Arms of the late Earl of Yarmouth. 11. The Arms of the Duke of Norfolk. 12. Neptune on a Dolphin. 13. A Lion supporting the Arms of Norwich. 14. Charon carrying a reputed Witch to Hell. 15. Cerberus. 16. An Huntsman. 17. Actaeon [with three dogs, and this legend, 'Actaeon ego sum Dominum cognoscite vestrum']. 18. A White Hart couchant [underneath appears in the engraving the artist's name—Johannes Fairchild struxit]. 19. ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 20, March 16, 1850 • Various
... of the Styx, upon which the shades are tossed about like dead leaves. At sight of the branch dedicated to Proserpine, Charon took me in his bark, which groaned beneath my weight, and I alighted on the shores of the dead, and was greeted by the mute baying of the threefold Cerberus. I pretended to throw the shade of a stone at him, and the vain monster fled into his cave. There, amidst the rushes, wandered the souls of those children whose eyes had but opened and shut to the kindly light of day, and there in a gloomy cavern Minos judges men. I penetrated into ...
— Penguin Island • Anatole France
... said Simpkins to this Cerberus of the threshold. "Mrs. Athelstone in?" and he drew out his letter of introduction; for he had instantly decided to use it in place of a card, as being more likely ...
— The False Gods • George Horace Lorimer
... course, and the sly fellow knew very well that it was no caricature—that is, if he peeped, as he pretends—but a tolerably correct likeness that might have satisfied Sall herself. By-the-by, I have a great mind to bestow it upon him as a 'sop for Cerberus,' should her jealousy ever be aroused by your reports of his devotion to me, or admiration rather, most unequivocally avowed, it must be acknowledged. I really had no intention of injuring Sally, and, if you think it best, will make the ...
— Miriam Monfort - A Novel • Catherine A. Warfield
... friend, guarded by the vigilance of a huge mastiff, who flew at me, and would have torn me to pieces but for the assistance of a woman, whose countenance was not less grim than that of the dog; yet she with great humanity relieved me from the jaws of this Cerberus, and was prevailed on to carry up my ...
— Selected English Letters (XV - XIX Centuries) • Various
... Charon's fare for wafting the departed soul over the Infernal River. Besides this, the corpse's mouth was furnished with a certain cake, composed of flour, honey, &c. This was designed to appease the fury of Cerberus, the infernal doorkeeper, and to procure a safe and quiet entrance. These examples are ...
— An introduction to the mortuary customs of the North American Indians • H. C. Yarrow
... wretches lie buried in this ostentatious piece of vanity; and this, like the other, is but a monument of the City's shame and dishonour, instead of its glory; come, let us take a walk in, and view its inside. Accordingly we were admitted in thro' an iron gate, within which sat a brawny Cerberus, of an Indico-colour, leaning upon a money-box; we turned in through another Iron-Barricado, where we heard such a rattling of chains, drumming of doors, ranting, hollowing, singing, and running, that I could think of nothing ...
— Chapters in the History of the Insane in the British Isles • Daniel Hack Tuke
... brought sometimes little ones from her to me, and he would tell me little secret things that he had overheard her say that made me throb with joy and swear at him for repeating his mistress' conversation. But best of all, Jube was a perfect Cerberus, and no one on earth could have been more effective in keeping away or deluding the other young fellows who visited the Dalys. He would tell me of it afterwards, chuckling softly to himself. 'An,' Doctah, ...
— The heart of happy hollow - A collection of stories • Paul Laurence Dunbar
... from Wenham before it's finished and I can send her a presentation copy! Everything was green and white in the tea-house, except the dear little things to be sold there: weather-cocks, and door-stops, and old china. We bought specimens of these as sops to Cerberus—I mean, as presents for Aunt Mary—and when there was no longer a pretext for lingering we crept ...
— The Lightning Conductor Discovers America • C. N. (Charles Norris) Williamson and A. M. (Alice Muriel)
... forbearance, in keeping your thoughts to yourself, for I did not deserve that from you. If I did flirt a little with Major F., it was done more to provoke the spleen of that ill-natured old maid, who acts the part of Cerberus for his proud, pompous wife, than for any wish to ...
— Flora Lyndsay - or, Passages in an Eventful Life • Susan Moodie
... search of Eurydice, entered the lower world through the rocky jaws of Taenarus, a cape in the south of Greece (see Virgil Georg. iv. 467, Taenarias fauces); here also Hercules emerged from Hell with the captive Cerberus. ...
— Milton's Comus • John Milton
... out his great hairy, oily paw, saying, "Let me see the pretty watch." "Not necessary," I replied, putting it back in my pocket and calmly eying him, although my heart began to beat fast. I was alone in the tower with this hairy Cerberus, who, for all I knew, might ...
— Vanished towers and chimes of Flanders • George Wharton Edwards
... womens bloods, That when tis calmest, is most dangerous! Not any wrinkle creaming in their faces, 315 When in their hearts are Scylla and Caribdis, Which still are hid in dark and standing foggs, Where never day shines, nothing ever growes But weeds and poysons that no states-man knowes; Nor Cerberus ever saw the damned nookes 320 Hid with the veiles of womens vertuous lookes. But what a cloud of sulphur have I drawne Up to my bosome in this dangerous secret! Which if my hast with any spark should light Ere D'Ambois were engag'd in some sure plot, 325 I were blowne ...
— Bussy D'Ambois and The Revenge of Bussy D'Ambois • George Chapman
... just been made by the samurai of Kaga to join them to the capital. Since then the road by the sea had been built, and the Harinoki pass had ceased to be in practice what it purported to be in print. It had in a double sense reverted to type. There was small wonder at this, for it was a very Cerberus of a pass at best, with three heads to it. The farthest from Etchiu was the Harinoki toge ...
— Noto, An Unexplored Corner of Japan • Percival Lowell
... Cerberus[*] His three deformed heads did lay along, Curled with thousand adders venemous, 300 And lilled forth his bloudie flaming tong: At them he gan to reare his bristles strong, And felly gnarre, until ...
— Spenser's The Faerie Queene, Book I • Edmund Spenser
... there is a school where small boys are trained for these positions, where their finer instincts are rigorously uprooted and rudeness systematically inculcated by competent professors. Of this school the candy-eating Cerberus of Messrs Goble and Cohn had been the star scholar. Quickly seeing his natural gifts, his teachers had given him special attention. When he had graduated, it had been amidst the cordial good wishes of the entire faculty. They had taught him all they knew, and they ...
— The Little Warrior - (U.K. Title: Jill the Reckless) • P. G. Wodehouse
... the Inland Revenue Department requires every newspaper to produce with each issue. This ill-favored individual, owner of a yellow countenance covered with red excrescences, to which he owed his nickname of "Coloquinte," indicated a personage behind the lattice as the Cerberus of the paper. This was an elderly officer with a medal on his chest and a silk skull-cap on his head; his nose was almost hidden by a pair of grizzled moustaches, and his person was hidden as completely in an ample blue overcoat as the body of ...
— Lost Illusions • Honore De Balzac
... obtusity. He should have been aware that Burgo was a danger to be avoided; and he should have been aware also that Mrs Marsham was a duenna not to be employed. When a woman knows that she is guarded by a watch-dog, she is bound to deceive her Cerberus, if it be possible, and is usually not ill-disposed to deceive also the owner of Cerberus. Lady Glencora felt that Mrs Marsham was her Cerberus, and she was heartily resolved that if she was to be kept in the proper line at all, she would not be ...
— Can You Forgive Her? • Anthony Trollope
... admit any persons without subjecting them to the rigorous investigation of the pair of eyes that providence had been pleased to place in my head. To those who pleased me not, I was little better than a Cerberus whom it was very difficult to pass; whilst to others, I was all easiness and condescension, ushering them straight to the sanctum sanctorum, in which, behind a desk covered with letters and papers, stood—for he never sat down to his desk—the respectable individual ...
— Lavengro - The Scholar, The Gypsy, The Priest • George Borrow
... knocked on the door of No. 6, the entire studio, and No. 5 also, vibrated. As a rule Agg, the female Cerberus of the shanty, answered any summons from outside; but George hoped that to-night she would be absent; he knew by experience that on Sunday nights she usually paid a visit to her obstreperous family ...
— The Roll-Call • Arnold Bennett
... exhibited as a lusus naturae; evidently very aged,—for its face and ears were gray, the rest of it a rusty reddish black; it had immensely long ears, pricked up like horns; it was a dog that must have been brought from foreign parts; it might have come from Acheron, sire by Cerberus, so portentous, and (if not irreverent the epithet) so infernal was its aspect, with that gray face, those antlered ears, and its ineffably weird demeanour altogether. A big dog, too, and evidently a strong one. All prudent folks would ...
— What Will He Do With It, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... reared in a cultivated community, with the advantages of education, he might have been one of the bright young fellows who manage other young fellows, who control debating societies, who are prominent in mysterious associations, the secret of which is at once guarded and represented by a Cerberus ...
— The Young Mountaineers - Short Stories • Charles Egbert Craddock
... did not have its usual effect on the severe elder brother. Cerberus did not bite at the honey cake. The archdeacon's brow did not lose a ...
— Notre-Dame de Paris - The Hunchback of Notre Dame • Victor Hugo
... foul birds with sure darts he slew; The golden fruit he stole—in vain The dragon's watch; with triple chain From hell's depths Cerberus he drew. ...
— The Consolation of Philosophy • Boethius
... I should feel that there was no knowing whether he had not buried himself under false pretences, and was, in reality, enjoying life at the Antipodes. I don't know anybody else who can be, 'like Cerberus, three gentlemen at once.' I shall nail him to one alias for the future, if I catch him. But there seems very little chance of my catching him at all. I've come on a wild-goose chase, and can't ...
— Under False Pretences - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant
... to cry down all the rest: applause, advice, derision. Glaucon heard the derisive hootings, "pretty girl," "pretty pullet," from the serried host of the Laconians along the left side of the stadium; but an answering salvo, "Dog of Cerberus!" bawled by the Athenian crowds opposite, and winged at Lycon, returned the taunts with usury. As the champions approached the judges' stand a procession of full twenty pipers, attended by as many fair boys in flowing white, marched from ...
— A Victor of Salamis • William Stearns Davis |
