"Demeter" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... eyes there had been no pity for Arachne; the pomp and peacocks of Hera were all that was really noble about her; and the Father of the Gods himself had been too fond of the daughters of men. The two most deeply suggestive figures of Greek Mythology were, for religion, Demeter, an Earth Goddess, not one of the Olympians, and for art, Dionysus, the son of a mortal woman to whom the moment of his birth had proved also the moment of ...
— De Profundis • Oscar Wilde
... old times, more human than the rest, who turned back, for love perhaps, if not for fear, and said that for love's sake life still was sweet, and brought a milk-white dove to Aphrodite's altar, or dropped a rose before Demeter's feet? There must have been, for man is man, and woman, woman. And if in the next month, or even the next year, or after many years, that youth or maid took heart to bear a Christian's death, was there then no forgiveness, ...
— The Witch of Prague • F. Marion Crawford
... language strange to her; and sometimes when she heard she feared, and vague, undefined superstitions came back to her,—the superstitions of earlier youth. A mother fears everything, even the gods, for her new-born. The mortals shrieked aloud when of old they saw the great Demeter seeking ...
— Zanoni • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... in the Empire in gods born in this way aided such a conception. Many thousands were converted to Christianity when a place was found in that religion for a feminine goddess, and these abandoned the worship of Isis, Demeter, and Diana for that of the Virgin Mary. Thus began an evolution which is still going on, and we see now that it was impossible that the world should understand at once the spiritual meaning of life as Christ taught it—that material facts merely symbolize ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... straight undid His travel-soiled attire, then called aloud On both his children, and bade some one fetch Pure water from a running stream. And they, Hasting together to the neighbouring hill Of green Demeter, goddess of the Spring, Brought back their sire's commission speedily, And bathed, and clothed him with the sacred robe. When he was satisfied, and nothing now Remained undone of all he bade them do, The God of darkness ...
— The Seven Plays in English Verse • Sophocles
... C. H. W.—Ceres, called Demeter by the Greeks, was the goddess of agriculture. She was pictured by the ancients holding a torch and sheaf of corn, a basket filled with flowers at her side, and a garland of wheat ears interwoven in her hair. Her festival fell on the 19th of April, the beginning of seed-time. ...
— Harper's Young People, April 13, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... 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; and beyond were several porticoes leading from the city gates to the outer Ceramicus, while the intervening space was occupied by various temples, ...
— Christianity and Greek Philosophy • Benjamin Franklin Cocker
... that part of the room where the banquet was prepared. Aspasia filled a golden basket with Athenian olives, Phoenician dates, and almonds of Naxos, and whispering a brief invocation, placed it on a small altar, before an ivory image of Demeter, which stood in the midst of the table. Seats covered with crimson cloth were arranged at the end of the couches, for the accommodation of women; but the men reclined in Asiatic fashion, while beautiful damsels sprinkled perfumes on their heads, and ...
— Philothea - A Grecian Romance • Lydia Maria Child
... of fact it is of no importance whether Benedetto Marcello found it or made it. The rite is the poet's rest. It may be an old hymn to Demeter or also illustrate Coela enarrant gloriam Domini. It is susceptible of nodes or modes as far apart as hyperphrygian and mixolydian and of texts so divergent as priests haihooping round David's that is Circe's or what am I saying Ceres' ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce
... of this error even went so far as to perform pagan rites, and thus the deceitful fire which after Julian had been quenched by Jovian, was now rekindled by permission of Valens. The rites of the Jews, of Dionysus and Demeter were no longer performed in a corner as they would have been in a pious reign, but by revellers running wild in the forum. Valens was a foe to none but to them ...
— A Source Book for Ancient Church History • Joseph Cullen Ayer, Jr., Ph.D.
... mentions [300][Greek: Phrouron echeis apelethron Ophin]. Such an one guarded the nymph Chalcomeda, [301][Greek: Parthenikes agamoio boethoos.] The Goddess Proserpine had two [302]dragons to protect her, by the appointment of her mother Demeter. ...
— A New System; or, an Analysis of Antient Mythology. Volume II. (of VI.) • Jacob Bryant
... expressing himself with a certain donnish carefulness of speech that I found pleasant to listen to, "the Harvest Festival is undoubtedly a survival of the prehistoric worship of that Corn Goddess who, in classical times, was called Demeter and Ioulo and Ceres, but whose cult as an Earth-Mother and Corn-Spirit is of much greater antiquity. For there is no doubt that this Vegetation Spirit has been worshipped from the earliest times by agricultural peoples; the wheat ...
— Trivia • Logan Pearsall Smith
... him for its own, as Demeter, in the days of her desolation, took the child Demophoon to nurture him as her own on the food of gods, and to plunge him through the flames of a fire that would give him immortal life. As the pusillanimous and sordid fears of the mortal ...
— Wisdom, Wit, and Pathos of Ouida - Selected from the Works of Ouida • Ouida
... sequel to the strange arrival of the derelict in the storm last night is almost more startling than the thing itself. It turns out that the schooner is Russian from Varna, and is called the Demeter. She is almost entirely in ballast of silver sand, with only a small amount of cargo, a number of great ...
— Dracula • Bram Stoker
... He drove Heaven, his father, and Earth, his mother, far apart. And far apart they stay, for they have never been able to come near each other since. And Cronos married to Rhea had for children Hestia, Demeter, Hera, Aidoneus, and Poseidon, and these all belonged to the company of the deathless gods. Cronos was fearful that one of his sons would treat him as he had treated Heaven, his father. So when another child was born to him and his wife Rhea he ...
— The Golden Fleece and the Heroes who Lived Before Achilles • Padraic Colum
... terrible than the lioness who has licked her murdered cubs. No Pythoness at the dizziest height of the sacred frenzy, no Demeter wrought to delirium by maternal bereavement, was ever imagined by poet or painter as half so grand, and terrible, and awe-inspiring, ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves
... being, who himself conducts and orders the changes of the seasons, but in Greece we find gods whom man can accompany in the tragedy of their fall and the triumph of their rise. We shall see afterwards that the rustic worships of Demeter and Proserpine were brought forward at a critical period in Greek religion, to supply an element which was much required in it. These worships, similar, as Mr. Frazer suggests,[1] to those still kept up by our own peasantry, were doubtless of immemorial ...
— History of Religion - A Sketch of Primitive Religious Beliefs and Practices, and of the Origin and Character of the Great Systems • Allan Menzies
... an island close to Britain, Demeter and Persephone are venerated with rites similar to ...
— The Witch-cult in Western Europe - A Study in Anthropology • Margaret Alice Murray
... dear to him and as inspiring as of old; men and affairs and letters were not slurred by his intact and energetic mind. His Demeter and other Poems, with the dedication to Lord Dufferin, appeared in the December of the year. The dedication was the lament for the dead son and the salutation to the Viceroy of India, a piece of resigned and manly regret. The Demeter and ...
— Alfred Tennyson • Andrew Lang
... like other men under similar conditions, only with a lucidity and precision peculiar to himself, makes the reply, "it is something like myself." Every power of nature he presumes to be a spiritual being, impersonating the sky as Zeus, the earth as Demeter, the sea as Poseidon; from generation to generation under his shaping hands, the figures multiply and define themselves; character and story crystallise about what at first were little more than names; till at last, from the womb of the dark enigma that haunted him in the beginning, there emerges ...
— The Greek View of Life • Goldsworthy Lowes Dickinson
... mountain dwelt Zeus (the king), "while the mansions of the other deities were arranged upon plateaus, or in ravines lower down the mountain. These deities, including Zeus, were twelve in number: Zeus (or Jupiter), Hera (or Juno), Poseidon (or Neptune), Demeter (or Ceres), Apollo, Artemis (or Diana), Hephaestos (or Vulcan), Pallas Athena (or Minerva), Ares (or Mars), Aphrodite (or Venus), Hermes (or Mercury), and Hestia (or Vesta)." These were doubtless the twelve gods from whom the Egyptians ...
— The Antediluvian World • Ignatius Donnelly
... reverse, varied in one case by the figure of a ram, in another by the representation of a temple, in a third by a nude hero grasping a spear. One Mysian medal, bearing the epigraph 'Antinous Iacchus,' represents him crowned with ivy, and exhibits Demeter on the reverse. A single specimen from Ancyra, with the legend 'Antinous Heros,' depicts the god Lunus carrying a crescent moon upon his shoulder. The Bithynian coins generally give youthful portraits of ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Complete - Series I, II, and III • John Symonds
... more. Every year, as we saw, men went to be initiated into the rites of Demeter at Eleusis, a few miles from Athens. And we read how one of the great Athenian orators, Lysias, went there and took with him to be initiated a harlot, with whom he was living, and the woman's proprietress—a squalid ...
— The Jesus of History • T. R. Glover
... this early condition of hetairism as a law of nature, and believes that after its infraction by the introduction of individual marriage, expiation was required to be made to the Earth Goddess, Demeter, in temporary prostitution. Hence he explains the widespread custom of religious prostitution. This fanciful idea may be taken to represent Bachofen's method of interpretation. There is an intermediate ...
— The Position of Woman in Primitive Society - A Study of the Matriarchy • C. Gasquoine Hartley
... then, as has been said, that she impressed him most deeply. She was no longer the milkmaid, but a visionary essence of woman—a whole sex condensed into one typical form. He called her Artemis, Demeter, and other fanciful names half teasingly, which she did not like because ...
— Tess of the d'Urbervilles - A Pure Woman • Thomas Hardy |
