"Epic poem" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... writer with breathless expectation, but is dragged along with an infinite number of pins and wheels, like those with which the Lilliputians dragged Gulliver pinioned to the royal palace.—Sir Charles Grandison is a coxcomb. What sort of a figure would he cut, translated into an epic poem, by the side of Achilles? Clarissa, the divine Clarissa, is too interesting by half. She is interesting in her ruffles, in her gloves, her samplers, her aunts and uncles—she is interesting in all that is uninteresting. ...
— Hazlitt on English Literature - An Introduction to the Appreciation of Literature • Jacob Zeitlin
... in it. There is no poem or novel that is worth the Memoirs of Saint Helena, although it is written in ridiculous fashion. What I think of Napoleon, if you wish to know, is that, made for glory, he had the brilliant simplicity of the hero of an epic poem. A hero must ...
— The Red Lily, Complete • Anatole France
... bald translation of the Ilias (studying poetry as he did mathematics, when it was too late)—Mr. Hobbes, I say, begins the praise of Homer where he should have ended it. He tells us that the first beauty of an epic poem consists in diction, that is, in the choice of words, and harmony of numbers; now the words are the coloring of the work, which in the order of nature is last to be consider'd. The design, the disposition, the manners, and the thoughts, are all before it: where any of those are wanting ...
— Prefaces and Prologues to Famous Books - with Introductions, Notes and Illustrations • Charles W. Eliot
... occasions, by no means frequent, when some striking or remarkable expressions of a speaker, or contemporary writer, are to be preserved. Unity of style and expression is as indispensable in a history which is to move the heart, or fascinate the imagination, as in a tragedy, a painting, or an epic poem. ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 350, December 1844 • Various
... a native of Rudiae, was taken to Rome by Cato the Younger. Here he supported himself by teaching Greek. His epic poem, the Annales, relates the traditional Roman history, from the arrival of Aeneas to ...
— History of Rome from the Earliest times down to 476 AD • Robert F. Pennell
... asserted as probable that the Poet Laureate,—Homer, will be invited to compose an epic poem commemorating the events of the raid. An edition of 20,000 copies will be issued, including 50 on India paper, with corruptions ...
— The Casual Ward - academic and other oddments • A. D. Godley
... constituent part of the small bookshops of the Hessian peasant-folk, so precious to him because of the divine power of its influence, to his mind a pure, old, genuine "Jesus wine." This was the well known "Habermaennchen," the epic poem and the private chapel of the warrior as well as of the serving man. And not alone with the exalted spectacle of divine omnipotence on the furious or rapturous sea—but even in the camps and quarters the masses of soldiers did not neglect public worship ...
— The Voyage of The First Hessian Army from Portsmouth to New York, 1776 • Albert Pfister
... exception, without any reason, against some particular letter in the alphabet, so as not to admit it once into a whole poem. One Tryphiodorus was a great master in this kind of writing. He composed an "Odyssey" or epic poem on the adventures of Ulysses, consisting of four- and-twenty books, having entirely banished the letter A from his first book, which was called Alpha, as lucus a non lucendo, because there was not an Alpha in it. His second ...
— Essays and Tales • Joseph Addison
... Dryden's: "it would doubtless have improved our numbers and enlarged our language; and might perhaps have contributed by pleasing instruction to rectify our opinions and purify our manners." It is not that such criticism is false but that it is beside the mark. An epic poem may do all these things, as a statesman may play golf or act as churchwarden: but when he dies it is not his golf or his churchwardenship that we feel the loss of. Put this remark of Johnson's by ...
— Dr. Johnson and His Circle • John Bailey
... he is not to be placed in the first rank with Homer, and Virgil, and Milton, I think clearly he is at the head of the second, before either Statius or Silius Italicus—though I allow to each of these their merits; but, perhaps, an epic poem was beyond the genius of either. I own, I have often thought, if Statius had ventured no farther than Ovid or Claudian, he would have succeeded better; for his Sylvae are, in my opinion, much ...
— Amelia (Complete) • Henry Fielding
... professing great admiration for his works. M. Barthe was enchanted. He was in a flutter of gratified vanity, and, to show his delight at the condescension of the chevalier, he proposed to write an epic poem in honor of his house. This farce lasted during the evening. The assembled company were in convulsions of suppressed laughter, which broke out when, at the moment of M. Barthe's most ecstatic admiration and respect ...
— Great Singers, First Series - Faustina Bordoni To Henrietta Sontag • George T. Ferris
... that rather an arbitrary and peevish canon of friend Horace. The AEneid, you know, begins just as he says an epic ought not to begin; and the AEneid is the greatest Latin Epic. In the next place the use of Modesty is to keep a man from writing an epic poem at all but, if he will have that impudence, why then he had better have the courage to plunge into the Castalian stream, like Virgil and Lucan, not crawl in funking and holding on by the Muse's apron-string. But—excuse me —quorsum haec tam putida tendunt? What have the Latin poets ...
— Hard Cash • Charles Reade
... conflict which they never afterwards resumed; leaving the Araucans alone, of all the American races with which they came in contact, a liberty which they were unable to tear from them. It is a subject for an epic poem, and whatever admiration is due to the heroism of a brave people whom no inequality of strength could appal and no defeats could crush, these poor Indians have a right to demand of us. The story of the war was well known in Europe: and Hawkins, in coasting ...
— Froude's Essays in Literature and History - With Introduction by Hilaire Belloc • James Froude |
