"Epicurean" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... meal of the day, and, occupying often two or three hours, it is made not merely an epicurean feast, but also an intellectual and social banquet. Strong coffee, served in the tiniest of porcelain cups, follows the guests on their return to the drawing-rooms, and music, conversation, reading and company fill up the hours ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 12, No. 32, November, 1873 • Various
... the easy-going face of the bluff epicurean in uniform, said to himself, "If it required any brains I could ...
— The False Chevalier - or, The Lifeguard of Marie Antoinette • William Douw Lighthall
... out of the cover will still protrude the legs of unadjustable "broilers" and the green fringes of garden-stuff, and all this not counting in the oyster-pail, or the great watermelon which has to be carried separately by its wooden handle. The epicurean prospect of the Sunday dinner reflected in the restful face as well as materialized in the basket can hardly fail to elicit a gentle thought from the sternest ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, November 1885 • Various
... has heard of that other Dutch love—for good things on the table. This epicurean trait perhaps has been exaggerated; Mrs. Grant herself had her doubts at first; but she, like most visitors, soon realized that a Dutchman's "tea" was a fair banquet. ...
— Woman's Life in Colonial Days • Carl Holliday
... who encountered Paul." The leading tenets of both these sects were diametrically opposed to the doctrines of Christianity. The ruling spirit of each was alien from the spirit of Christ. The haughty pride of the Stoic, the Epicurean abandonment to pleasure, placed them in direct antagonism to him who proclaimed the crucified and risen Christ to be ...
— Christianity and Greek Philosophy • Benjamin Franklin Cocker
... point of view became frankly Philistine. The luxurious hotel, with its air of invincible respectability; the snowy napery, the cut glass, the shaded lights, the deferential service; all these appealed irresistibly to the epicurean in him. It was as if he had come suddenly to his own again after an undeserved season of deprivation, and the effect of it was to push the hardships and perils of the preceding weeks and months ...
— The Price • Francis Lynde
... though hot. A grim Epicurean stolidity crept over me as I sat down before it. A man had better make the most of his last chance at mock-turtle. Fifteen minutes were enough to ...
— Men, Women, and Ghosts • Elizabeth Stuart Phelps
... carried out, would lead most men to the 'Epicurean sty' which, sceptic as I am, I loathe the thought of; it deserves the rebuke which Johnson gave the man who pleaded for a 'natural and savage condition,' as he called it. 'Sir,' said the Doctor, 'it is a brutal doctrine; a bull might as well say, I have this grass and this cow,—and ...
— The Eclipse of Faith - Or, A Visit To A Religious Sceptic • Henry Rogers
... magistrate's temples. The Colonel was tall, spare, dried up, but muscular; the lines in his pale face told a tale of vehement passions or of terrible sorrows; but his comrade's jolly countenance beamed with health, and would have done credit to an Epicurean. Both men were deeply sunburnt. Their high gaiters of brown leather carried souvenirs of every ditch and swamp that they crossed ...
— Farewell • Honore de Balzac
... his way in the world. No, no, the world wasn't worth it. He wanted to ignore it, to go his own way apart, like a casual pilgrim down the forsaken sidetracks. He loved his wife, his cottage and garden. He would make his life there, as a sort of epicurean hermit. He loved the past, the old music and dances and customs of old England. He would try and live in the spirit of these, not in the spirit of the world ...
— England, My England • D.H. Lawrence
... not of aspiration, but of defiance; not of the Christian, not even of the Stoic, but rather of the Epicurean. It says—I cannot rise. I do not care to rise. I will be contentedly and valiantly that which I am; and face circumstances, though I cannot conquer them. But it is defiance under defeat. The mountain- ...
— Literary and General Lectures and Essays • Charles Kingsley
... sun, Joy of thy dominion! Sailor of the atmosphere; Swimmer through the waves of air; Voyager of light and noon; Epicurean of June; Wait, I prithee, till I come Within earshot of thy ...
— Poems - Household Edition • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... costly a feast, some doubting whether the scene which they saw was real, as scarce trusting their own eyes; at a signal given, the dishes were uncovered, and Timon's drift appeared: instead of those varieties and far-fetched dainties which they expected, that Timon's epicurean table in past times had so liberally presented, now appeared under the covers of these dishes a preparation more suitable to Timon's poverty, nothing but a little smoke and luke-warm water, fit feast for this knot of mouth-friends, whose professions were indeed smoke, and their hearts luke-warm ...
— Books for Children - The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Vol. 3 • Charles and Mary Lamb
... have taken some liberties, will give the reader a more lively idea of the reckless, jovial, turbulent Paris student, than any with which a foreigner could furnish him: the grisette is his heroine; and dear old Beranger, the cynic-epicurean, has celebrated him and her in the most delightful verses in the world. Of these we may have occasion to say a word or two anon. Meanwhile let us follow Monsieur de Bernard in his amusing descriptions of his countrymen somewhat farther; and, having ...
— The Paris Sketch Book Of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh • William Makepeace Thackeray
... Pedro de Angulo arrived in the Quiche country, where the cacique, who since his baptism was known as Don Juan, showed them the same hospitality as he had to Fray Luis. While some of the Indians received them as messengers bringing glad tidings, there were others who cast epicurean glances upon them and decided that they would taste well served with ...
— Bartholomew de Las Casas; his life, apostolate, and writings • Francis Augustus MacNutt
... returned John. "She has a sylph-like, aesthetic appearance, but I give you my word she has the most epicurean eye. She hasn't left a prize berry in those fields. ...
— The Opened Shutters • Clara Louise Burnham
... sip it would show a lamentable want of decorum. A Spaniard lifts the little glass to his lips, and with a comic, abrupt motion tosses the contents into his mouth, immediately afterwards drinking water, a tumbler of which is always given with the spirit. It is really the most epicurean of intoxicants because the charm lies in the after-taste. The water is so cool and refreshing after the fieriness; it gives, without the gasconnade, the emotion Keats experienced when he peppered his mouth with cayenne for the greater enjoyment of ...
— The Land of The Blessed Virgin; Sketches and Impressions in Andalusia • William Somerset Maugham
... epicurean Tubby Hopkins voted dinner that day a great success, and Hiram, with becoming modesty, took his congratulations blushingly. In mid-afternoon, after seeing that the camp was in good working order, the scout masters started for ...
— The Boy Scouts of the Eagle Patrol • Howard Payson
... to produce that dissimilarity to his former self I had observed in him. He was still, however, eminently handsome: and, in exchange for whatever his features might have lost of their high, romantic character, they had become more fitted for the expression of that arch, waggish wisdom, that Epicurean play of humour, which he had shown to be equally inherent in his various and prodigally gifted nature; while, by the somewhat increased roundness of the contours, the resemblance of his finely formed mouth and chin to those of the Belvedere ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. IV - With His Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore
... greatest number of lovers—suitors who frequently became her tormentors. Menage, her teacher, who threatened to leave her never to see her again, was brought back to her by kind words, such as: "Farewell, friend—of all my friends the best." The Abbe Marigny, that "delicate epicurean, that improviser of fine triolets, ballads, vaudevilles, that enemy of all sadness and sticklers for morality," charmed her, at times, with sentimental ...
— Women of Modern France - Woman In All Ages And In All Countries • Hugo P. Thieme
... Intercourse at Chatillon most agreeable. The diplomatists dined alternately with each other; M. de Caulaincourt liberally passing for all the Ministers, through the French advanced posts, convoys of all the good cheer in epicurean wises, etc., that Paris could afford; nor was female society wanting to complete the charm and banish ennui from the Chatillon Congress, which I am sure will be long recollected with sensations of pleasure by all the Plenipotentiaries there ...
— Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Louis Antoine Fauvelet de Bourrienne
... young fellows entered one evening a small cabaret near the Comedie Italienne (now Opera Comique), found the wine to their taste and the cuisine excellent, praised host and fare to their friends, and the modest cabaret developed into the Cafe Anglais, most famous of epicurean temples, frequented during the Second Empire by kings and princes, to whom alone the haughty proprietor would devote personal care. The sumptuous cafes Tortoni, founded in 1798, and De Paris, opened 1822, have long since passed away. So has the Cafe Hardy, whose ...
— The Story of Paris • Thomas Okey
... synthesis; and in the second place, the axioms of their thought, their suspiciousness of change, their theories of Moira, of degeneration and cycles, suggested a view of the world which was the very antithesis of progressive development. Epicurean, philosophers made indeed what might have been an important step in the direction of the doctrine of Progress, by discarding the theory of degeneration, and recognising that civilisation had been ...
— The Idea of Progress - An Inquiry Into Its Origin And Growth • J. B. Bury
... His zealots sailed from bay to bay, and from island to island; they were everywhere received with feasting; wore fine clothes; sang, danced, acted; gave exhibitions of dexterity and strength; and were the artists, the acrobats, the bards, and the harlots of the group. Their life was public and epicurean; their initiation a mystery; and the highest in the land aspired to join the brotherhood. If a couple stood next in line to a high-chieftaincy, they were suffered, on grounds of policy, to spare one child; all other children, who had a father or a mother in the company of Oro, ...
— In the South Seas • Robert Louis Stevenson
... first- class camp and furlough. It is their misfortune. We should enjoy as many things as we can, and not sorrow over them. We should not make our life one of sorrow when it could as well be one of comfort and pleasure. I don't mean comfort and pleasure in an epicurean sense, but in a moral one. Still first-classmen do have many duties to perform, but there is withal one consolation at least, there are no upper classmen to keep the plebe or yearling in his place. There is no feeling of humbleness because ...
— Henry Ossian Flipper, The Colored Cadet at West Point • Henry Ossian Flipper
... damned Epicurean rascal is this! My heart is ready to crack with impatience. Who says this is improvident jealousy? My wife hath sent to him; the hour is fixed; the match is made. Would any man have thought this? See the hell of having a false woman! My bed shall be abused, my coffers ransacked, my reputation gnawn ...
— The Merry Wives of Windsor • William Shakespeare [Craig, Oxford edition]
... sagacious old soul who visits me yearly for young pie-plant actually hurried out and begged for a basketful of the roots at once, thus taking time—and the rhubarb—by the forelock. And the old epicurean harpy whose passion is asparagus, having accosted me gruffly on the street with an inquiry as to the truth of my engagement and been quietly assured, how true it was, informed me to my face that any ...
— Aftermath • James Lane Allen
... seventeenth century, as specially represented for France by Descartes, had materialism for its antagonist from its hour of birth. In person this antagonist confronted Descartes in the shape of Gassendi, the restorer of Epicurean materialism. French and English materialism always remain in close relationship with Democritus ...
— Selected Essays • Karl Marx
... determination to extract pleasure and profit even from the ill will of his adversaries. "Behold my philosophy," he cried, "to live joyously as possible, laughing at the world, at passionate people, and at all their calumnies." It is evident that his philosophy, if it had any real existence, was sufficiently Epicurean. It was, however, mainly compounded of pretence, like his whole nature and his whole life. Notwithstanding the mountains high as heaven, the cool grottos, the trout, and the best Burgundy wines in the world, concerning which he descanted so eloquently, he soon became in reality most impatient ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... that Milton was a bad husband, when, as far as any one can judge of the matter, it was Mrs. Milton who was the bad wife? And why, oh! why should we be told by Mr. Moore,—a man who, to judge by Captain Rock and the Epicurean, wants neither learning nor diligence,—why are we to be told, with peculiar emphasis, that Lord Bacon never married, when Lord Bacon not only married, but his marriage was so advantageous as to be an absolute epoch in his career? Really, ...
— Paul Clifford, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... high-class restaurants. At Delmonico's, where if you had "French and money" you could get in that day "a dinner which, as a work of art, ranks with a picture by Huntington, a poem by Willis, or a statue by Powers," he meets such a musical critic as Richard Grant White, such an intellectual epicurean as N. P. Willis, such a lyric poet as Charles Fenno Hoffman. But it would be a warm day for Delmonico's when the observer in this epoch could chance upon so much genius at its tables, perhaps because genius among us has no longer the French or the money. ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... freedman of some Epicurean, first taught philosophy, then rhetoric, and last of all, grammar. (511) Having closed his school, he followed Rutilius Rufus, when he was banished to Asia, and there the two friends grew old together. He also ...
— The Lives Of The Twelve Caesars, Complete - To Which Are Added, His Lives Of The Grammarians, Rhetoricians, And Poets • C. Suetonius Tranquillus
... for all eternity"; but no translation can convey the organ-voice of the verse, in which the two strong and lonely words "noble" and "eternity" stand solitary for the last line.) In consequence of my taking up the cudgels against a live Dean for the manly moral sense of the dear old Epicurean, the office became impressed with a vague idea that I know something about Latin literature—whereas, as a matter of fact I have forgotten even the line before the one I quoted. However, in the ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Maisie Ward
... on this was an exquisite button-hole bouquet. The bills of fare were on large sheets of cardboard, handsomely engraved, and the succession of thirteen courses, beginning with oysters and ending with coffee, was an epicurean treat. In accordance with Washington etiquette, President Arthur sat at the host's right hand, and on his right sat Judge Gray. At the left of the host sat Chief Justice Waite; directly opposite sat Senator Dawes; at the right hand end of the long table was George Bancroft, and at the left hand ...
— Perley's Reminiscences, Vol. 1-2 - of Sixty Years in the National Metropolis • Benjamin Perley Poore
... sumptuous. Fish shot in the river by one of our escort on the way, a bowl of ground maize cooked in oil, raw ham, eggs, bread, cheese and onions, the whole washed down in draughts of fiery spirits. Not a feast, I grant you, in an epicurean sense, but highly acceptable in Montenegro. We were waited upon by two women, who were always most careful to leave the room backwards. Our meal was very jolly, and at its conclusion we took corners in the room and slept. About three p.m. we started again for home, taking ...
— The Land of the Black Mountain - The Adventures of Two Englishmen in Montenegro • Reginald Wyon
... temporarily, and the plan suited her mother excellently. For one thing, Mrs. De Graf could go home and tell her Cloverton gossips that she had stopped at the most "fashionable" hotel in New York; a second point was that she loved to feast with epicurean avidity upon the products of a clever chef, being one of those women who live to eat, rather ...
— Aunt Jane's Nieces in Society • Edith Van Dyne
... was extremely hungry, and had carefully avoided luncheon in order to give my appetite a chance. We sat down to a huge bowl of cold, greasy soup, in which enormous lumps of meat swam, as though for their life, awaiting rescue at the prongs of a fork. In addition to this epicurean dish was a teeming plate of water-soaked potatoes, delicately boiled. That was all. Letitia said that it was Swedish, and the most annoying part of the entertainment was that I was alone in my critical disapprobation. Letitia was so engrossed with a little Swedish conversation book that she brought ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume I. (of X.) • Various
... Diet in Augsburg," 1549, with a preface by Flacius.—"Apology of Matthias Flacius Illy., Addressed to the University of Wittenberg, regarding the Adiaphora," 1549.—"Writing of Matthias Flacius Illy. against a Truly Heathen, yea, Epicurean Book of the Adiaphorists (in which the Leipzig Interim is Defended) in Order to Guard Oneself against the Present Counterfeiters of the True Religion," 1549.—"Answer of Magister Nicolas Gallus and Matthias Flacius Illy. to the ...
— Historical Introductions to the Symbolical Books of the Evangelical Lutheran Church • Friedrich Bente
... An epicurean or a Hobbist readily allows, that there is such a thing as a friendship in the world, without hypocrisy or disguise; though he may attempt, by a philosophical chymistry, to resolve the elements of this passion, if I may so speak, into those of ...
— An Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals • David Hume
... proportions, had become bloated with the indolence of confirmed gluttony. A garment (the toga virilis) of virgin whiteness covered his limbs; along the edge of the garment was the broad hem of Tyrian purple indicative of the imperial dignity; and around the hoary brow of the epicurean, was woven a chaplet ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 62, No. 384, October 1847 • Various
... confirm him in this epicurean dictum, whereupon he sucks the cigar at intervals behind Mrs. L.S.'s back, during the ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Volume 102, January 30, 1892 • Various
... Florence had ever heard of in his Italian itinerary, the whole washed down with strange wines from the same sunny land. Florence's fondness for this sort of thing gave zest to a story Field told of his friend's experience in London, in the summer of 1890. The epicurean actor had made an excursion up the Thames with a select party of English clubmen. Two days later Florence was still abed at Morley's, and, as he said, contemplated staying there forever. Sir Morell Mackenzie was called to see him. After sounding his lungs, listening to his heart, thumping ...
— Eugene Field, A Study In Heredity And Contradictions - Vol. I • Slason Thompson
... which had mastered his whole heart, and induced him to live an isolated life with the person he loved in a town of Romagna, far from all that could flatter his vanity and from all intercourse with his countrymen, was brought against him to show that he lived the life of an Epicurean, and brought misery into the ...
— My Recollections of Lord Byron • Teresa Guiccioli
... know of at all, in their domestic state, and among these are two small plants called chick-weed and groundsel, which grow abundantly along the hedges and in the fields on the outskirts of the smoky city. Both chick-weed and groundsel are insignificant little things, but the epicurean lark, canary, or goldfinch finds in it a most agreeable and beneficial article of diet, quite as much superior to other green stuff as—in the minds of some boys and girls—ice-cream and sponge-cake are superior ...
— St. Nicholas, Vol. 5, No. 5, March, 1878 • Various
... asceticism: there is scientific asceticism which asserts that truth is alone satisfying: there is aesthetic asceticism which asserts that art is alone satisfying: there is amatory asceticism which asserts that love is alone satisfying. There is even epicurean asceticism, which asserts that beer and skittles are alone satisfying. Wherever the manner of praising anything involves the statement that the speaker could live with that thing alone, there lies the germ and essence of asceticism. When William Morris, for example, says that "love is enough," ...
— Varied Types • G. K. Chesterton
... 'Your Epicurean philosophy teaches you, I am aware,' said I in reply, 'to draw happiness as you best can from all the various institutions of Providence and of man—not to contend but to receive, and submit, and be thankful. It is a philosophy well ...
— Zenobia - or, The Fall of Palmyra • William Ware
... it. The summum bonum with me is now truly epicurean, ease of body and tranquillity of mind; and to these I wish to consign my remaining days. Men have differed in opinion, and been divided into parties by these opinions, from the first origin of societies; and in all governments, ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson
... no such simple mythology as this. He must needs shake Silenus from a drunken sleep and bid him tell of Chaos and old Time, of the infancy of the world and the birth of the gods. This mixture of obsolescent theology and Epicurean philosophy probably possessed little reality for Vergil himself, and would have conveyed no meaning whatever to the Sicilian shepherds. Its introduction stamps his eclogues with that unreality which has been the reproach of the pastoral ...
— Pastoral Poetry and Pastoral Drama - A Literary Inquiry, with Special Reference to the Pre-Restoration - Stage in England • Walter W. Greg
... while handsome brown curls adorned the brow of the statesman. One was tall, gallant, high-strung, and the lines of his pallid face showed terrible passions or frightful griefs. The other had a face that was brilliant with health, and jovially worth of an epicurean. Both were deeply sun-burned, and their high gaiters of tanned leather showed signs of the bogs and the thickets ...
— Adieu • Honore de Balzac
... Concerning the Principles of things purely Corporeal: For though because I seem not satisfi'd with the Vulgar Doctrines, either of the Peripatetick or Paracelsian Schools, many of those that know me, (and perhaps, among Them, Eleutherius himself) have thought me wedded to the Epicurean Hypotheses, (as others have mistaken me for an Helmontian;) yet if you knew how little Conversant I have been with Epicurean Authors, and how great a part of Lucretius himself I never yet ...
— The Sceptical Chymist • Robert Boyle
... sister smiled at this Epicurean maxim. It was evident that the fever of independence was at its crisis in ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... enthralling! Pleasure for which I have lived only, without which I must die! Die! By the great Gods! I will die! What avails life, when all its joys are gone? Or what is death, but one momentary pang, and then—quiet? Yes! I will die. And the world shall learn that the soft Epicurean can vie with the cold Stoic in carelessness of living, and contempt of death—that the warm votaress of Aphrodite can spend her glowing life-blood as prodigally as the stern follower of Virtue! Lucretia died, and was counted great and noble, because she cared ...
— The Roman Traitor (Vol. 1 of 2) • Henry William Herbert
... Divine indifference and indulgence, and there be a studious avoiding of all judicial aspects and relations; if the natural man is not searched by law and alarmed by justice, but is only soothed and narcotized by the idea of an Epicurean deity destitute of moral anger and inflicting no righteous retribution,—then, there will be no conviction of sin. Whenever the preaching of the law is positively objected to, and the preaching of the gospel is proposed in its place, it will be found that the "gospel" ...
— Sermons to the Natural Man • William G.T. Shedd
... down to the Epicurean philosophy, 'Let us eat, drink, and be merry, for to-morrow we die'? I seem on a narrow island, the ocean is all around me, and the tide is rising, rising. It will cover soon my standing-place, and then what becomes ...
— Barriers Burned Away • E. P. Roe
... Pascal signalises what he believes to be the two great opposing systems of human philosophy at all times; the rational, dogmatic, or Stoical, on the one hand—the sceptical, or Epicurean, on the other. He takes Epictetus as the representative of the one; Montaigne as the representative of the other. In depicting dogmatism at other times, he seems to have Descartes especially in view; but in speaking of scepticism and Pyrrhonism (which is his own expression), it is ...
— Pascal • John Tulloch
... himself that in that remote neighborhood the scandal would be of little consequence to him, who, as soon as he should be married, would claim the estate of the Hidden House in right of his wife, put it in charge of an overseer and then, with his bride, start for Paris, the paradise of the epicurean, where he designed ...
— Capitola's Peril - A Sequel to 'The Hidden Hand' • Mrs. E.D.E.N. Southworth
... and pull his wig when he reads your illustration," said Bolingbroke, laughing. "We shall never agree in our reasonings on that part of philosophy. Swift loves to go out of his way to find privation or distress, and has no notion of Epicurean wisdom; for my part, I think the use of knowledge is to make us happier. I would compare the mind to the beautiful statue of Love by Praxiteles. When its eyes were bandaged the countenance seemed grave and sad, but the moment you removed ...
— Devereux, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... wheresoever it was." Yet, when he looked for wisdom in the Christian Scriptures, all the literary man, the rhetorician in him, was repelled by the simplicity of the style. Without going further than Mr. Pater's book, "Marius, the Epicurean," and his account of Apuleius, an English reader may learn what kind of style a learned African of that date found not too simple. But Cicero, rather than Apuleius, was Augustine's ideal; that verbose and sonorous eloquence captivated him, as it did the early scholars when ...
— Adventures among Books • Andrew Lang
... almost ascetic indifference to material matters, in direct contrast to Perry's vivid enjoyment of the good things of life, came to have a tragic significance in later days. Perry loved a warm hearth in winter, a cool porch in summer. He had the Southerner's epicurean appreciation of the fine art of feasting. The groaning board had been his inheritance from a rollicking, rackety set of English ancestors, to whom dining was a rather splendid ceremony. On his mother's table had been fish and ...
— The Gay Cockade • Temple Bailey
... (they alone are the true Church, sal terrae, cum sint omnium insulsissimi). Formalists, out of fear and base flattery, like so many weather-cocks turn round, a rout of temporisers, ready to embrace and maintain all that is or shall be proposed in hope of preferment: another Epicurean company, lying at lurch as so many vultures, watching for a prey of Church goods, and ready to rise by the downfall of any: as [281]Lucian said in like case, what dost thou think Democritus would have done, had he ...
— The Anatomy of Melancholy • Democritus Junior
... bad temper! Well, he is of no value to us, except as a contribution to our larder, so we may as well be going. We will mark the spot where he lies, and send Mafuta and Jantje for one of his feet, which will furnish us with an epicurean dinner to- night. And now I suppose we may as well go and look for the wagon, for of course the giraffes cleared out ...
— The Adventures of Dick Maitland - A Tale of Unknown Africa • Harry Collingwood
... of what expression crossed my face when he thus spoke, but it was one which provoked him: he accused me of being reckless, worldly, and epicurean; ambitious of greatness, and feverishly athirst for the pomps and vanities of life. It seems I had no "devouement," no "recueillement" in my character; no spirit of grace, faith, sacrifice, or self-abasement. Feeling the inutility of answering these ...
— Villette • Charlotte Bronte
... (which Sheridan has done little more than versify) is as follows:—"Why so often ask me, How long my love shall yet endure? Alas, my Caelia, can I resolve the question? Do I know how long my life shall yet endure?" [Footnote: The Epicurean] ...
— Memoirs of the Life of the Rt. Hon. Richard Brinsley Sheridan V1 • Thomas Moore
... life been longer spared), to have erected, at his own expence, a monument to Pope.[79] We can gather even from his rapid and hurried "Letter on the Rev. W. L. Bowles's Strictures," his attachment to the high name of Pope:—"If Lucretius had not been spoiled by the Epicurean system, we should have had a far superior poem to any now in existence. As mere poetry, it is the first of Latin poems. What then has ruined it? His ethics. Pope has not this defect; his moral is as pure as his poetry is glorious."—"Pope's ...
— On the Portraits of English Authors on Gardening, • Samuel Felton
... and not a mechanical instrument like the watch, is as well adapted to testify to design. He sees, first, that the eye is transparent when every other part of the body is opaque. Was this the result of a mere Epicurean or Lucretian "fortuitous concourse" of living "atoms"? He is not yet certain it might not be so. Next he sees that it is spherical, and that this convex form alone is capable of changing the direction of the light which ...
— Darwiniana - Essays and Reviews Pertaining to Darwinism • Asa Gray
... at the end of last century, but they are rapidly disappearing now. The Musulman of Kerman is, according to Khanikoff, an epicurean gentleman, and even in regard to wine, which is strong and plentiful, his divines are liberal. "In other parts of Persia you find the scribblings on the walls of Serais to consist of philosophical axioms, texts ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo Volume 1 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa
... of wrinkling pleasantry. His mother's and sister's doing, Pere Jerome would explain; they would not permit this apartment—or department—to suffer. Therein, as well as in the parlor, there was odor, but of a more epicurean sort, that explained interestingly the Pere Jerome's ...
— Old Creole Days • George Washington Cable
... royal, or in a fast thing with the Melton men from Thorpe Trussels to Ranksborough; but three drops of rain when on duty were a totally different matter, to be resented with any amount of dandy's lamentations and epicurean diatribes. ...
— Under Two Flags • Ouida [Louise de la Ramee]
... in his creations was a private perception of subtile excellences of thought and style, too refined and self-satisfying to be contagious; and the public was untouched, whilst the "gentle" reader was full of placid enjoyment. Indeed, we fear that this kind of reader is something of an Epicurean,—receives a new genius as a private blessing, sent by a benign Providence to quicken a new life in his somewhat jaded sense of intellectual pleasure; and after having received a fresh sensation, he is apt to be serenely indifferent whether the creator of it starve ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 31, May, 1860 • Various
... must also be his, for not only has he to be capable of judging and humouring the overstrung men and women of talent with whom he deals—those fragile, sensitive flowers from whom he extracts the honey wherewith to gratify the palate of a journalistically epicurean public—but he must also have a thorough knowledge of that public to enable him to direct those who work for him, for they, shut up in their studies and studios, may not realise that the man at the look-out ...
— The Confessions of a Caricaturist, Vol 2 (of 2) • Harry Furniss
... the bone. This ignominious dissoluteness, or rather, if we may venture to designate it by the only proper word, blackguardism of feeling and manners, could not but spread from private to public life. The cynical sneers, and epicurean sophistry, which had driven honour and virtue from one part of the character, extended their influence over every other. The second generation of the statesmen of this reign were worthy pupils of the schools in which they had been trained, of the gaming-table of ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 1 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... seemed that his route to the coveted island was not to be an epicurean one. Some other way of entering limbo must ...
— The Four Million • O. Henry
... multitudes yearly consigned to the tomb, by the indulgence of a fastidious and unnatural appetite? Headaches, flatulencies, cholics, dyspepsias, palsies, apoplexies, and death, pursue the Epicurean train, as ravens follow the march of an armed host, to prey on those who fall in the "battle of the warrior, with their garments rolled in blood." The truth of this statement will not be questioned. Yet where is the physician, possessing sufficient moral courage ...
— A Dissertation on the Medical Properties and Injurious Effects of the Habitual Use of Tobacco • A. McAllister
... Natura Deorum,' is the best clew we have to guide us through this dark abyss" (the moral and religious teachings of the philosophers).[295] After, in the first two books, the arguments for the existence and providence of the gods have been set forth and denied, by Velleius the Epicurean, Cotta the academician, and Balbus the Stoic; in the third book, Cotta, the head of the priesthood, the Pontifex Maximus, proceeds to refute the stoical opinion that there are gods who govern the universe and provide for the ...
— Ten Great Religions - An Essay in Comparative Theology • James Freeman Clarke
... happy. Why should I look for happiness,—unless it be when the struggle of many worlds shall have altogether purified my spirit? But thinking like that,—believing like that,—how can I enter into the sweet Epicurean Paradise which that child has ...
— Marion Fay • Anthony Trollope
... proposals. But that Michelangelo did not abandon the idea of going to Rome appears from a letter of Sebastiano's written on the 24th of February. It was the first which passed between the friends since the terrible events of 1527 and 1530. For once, the jollity of the epicurean friar has deserted him. He writes as though those awful months of the sack of Rome were still present to his memory. "After all those trials, hardships, and perils, God Almighty has left us alive and in health, by His mercy and piteous kindness. ...
— The Life of Michelangelo Buonarroti • John Addington Symonds
... said Doe, in a corner of the Officers' ante-room one night before dinner, "I'm an Epicurean. Surely the Body doesn't prompt to pleasure only to be throttled? There's something in what they were saying at Mess yesterday that these things are normal and natural. I mean, human nature is human nature, and you can't alter it. I don't think any man is, or can ...
— Tell England - A Study in a Generation • Ernest Raymond
... fine arts. It had its philosophers, statesmen, orators, lawyers, priests, poets and painters. It had its high and low orders in society. But when Paul beheld the city his spirit was moved in him, for he saw that it was wholly given to idolatry. Some of the Epicurean and Stoic philosophers encountered him and said: "He seemeth to be a setterforth of strange gods." They said this among themselves, because he preached unto them Jesus and the resurrection. But they did not seem inclined to do him ...
— Life and Labors of Elder John Kline, the Martyr Missionary - Collated from his Diary by Benjamin Funk • John Kline
... other hand, they may quite as fairly be regarded as merely giving expression to the tenet of the Epicurean philosophy, that however much we may suffer from physical pain or inconvenience, it is still possible to be happy. "We know what we are; we know not what we ...
— Horace • Theodore Martin
... reprehensible than the pagans or idolaters. We could not discover that they performed any sacrifices or sacred rites of any kind, neither had they any temples or other places for worship. Their way of living, which is exceedingly voluptuous, I consider as epicurean[6]. Their houses, which are common to all, are built in the shape of a bell, firmly constructed of large pieces of timber, and covered over with palm leaves, so strong as to be able to resist winds and ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. III. • Robert Kerr
... guns on his camel. I asked him what they were for. He coolly replied, "I don't know. God knows." The camels browse or crop herbage all the way along, daintily picking and choosing the herbage and shrubs which they like best. My chief occupation in riding is watching them browse, and observing the epicurean fancies of these reflective, sober-thinking brutes of The Desert. I observe also as a happy trait in the Arab, that nothing delights him more than watching his own faithful camel graze. The ordinary drivers sometimes allow them to graze, and wait till they have ...
— Travels in the Great Desert of Sahara, in the Years of 1845 and 1846 • James Richardson
... the notes of Epicurean philosophy fall almost unconsciously from his lips. With poetry at hand, he appears to feel no misgivings. A large faith he might seem to have in what is called "natural optimism," the beauty and benignity of nature, if let alone, in her mechanical round of changes with ...
— Essays from 'The Guardian' • Walter Horatio Pater
... and the quietness with which he made himself at home on the subject of his little Epicurean comforts, amused the ladies, but particularly Miss Mannering, who immediately gave the counsellor a great deal of flattering attention; and more pretty things were said on both sides during the service of the tea-table than ...
— Guy Mannering • Sir Walter Scott
... was certain not to be. There it was, already filled with the fragrant Salonica glittering with the gilt pastile, which, not too healthfully, adulterates the seductive weed with odours that pacify the repugnant censure of the fastidious—for Maltravers was an epicurean even in his worst habits;—there it was, I say, in that pretty hand which he had to touch as he took it; and while he lit the weed he had again to blush and shrink beneath those great ...
— Ernest Maltravers, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... vilipending the grapes that we cannot reach? Not so; offer me delicacies that I may reject them, wine that I may pour it into the kennel, Tyrian purple that I may trample upon it, gold that I may fling it away; if it break an Epicurean's head, ...
— The Twilight of the Gods, and Other Tales • Richard Garnett
... drawn an audible breath. The Bishop of London somewhat wrinkled his shaggy brows, like a person in shrewd and epicurean amusement, while the Queen subscribed the parchment, ...
— Chivalry • James Branch Cabell
... an Epicurean! I really think she is worse than Papa. This disgraceful letter looks like Ferdinand's writing, and she tells him so; and, Evan! will you believe that instead of being certain it's impossible any gentleman could do such a thing, ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... apply to the priests; not because they are the greatest drunkards (far from it; they are mildly epicurean, or even abstemious) but by reason of their unrivalled knowledge of personalities. They know exactly who has been able to keep his liquor of such and such a year, and who has been obliged to sell or partially adulterate it; they ...
— Old Calabria • Norman Douglas
... souls of saints; and the "Golden Legend" is full of the miracles they wrought. Your friend Horace left a less noble posterity, and I see one of his descendants in the person of that tavern poet, who at this moment is serving out wine in cups under the epicurean motto of his sign. ...
— The Crime of Sylvestre Bonnard • Anatole France
... to make a successful monk, one must be either a Pharisee or an epicurean. The Pharisee takes an inventory of the works named in the Law of God, and sets out to perform these in an external, mechanical manner. He adds a few works of his own invention for good measure. Every work performed counts; it constitutes ...
— Luther Examined and Reexamined - A Review of Catholic Criticism and a Plea for Revaluation • W. H. T. Dau
... opponents of the Epicureans; they nobly antagonized the mere pursuit of pleasure held out as the one end of life by the Epicurean, and glorified duty. ...
— A Friend of Caesar - A Tale of the Fall of the Roman Republic. Time, 50-47 B.C. • William Stearns Davis
... offered us his coach, but with the polite reservation that he could not assert that it would fulfil every requirement, and that, owing to the stones on his road having been newly laid down, we were not to mind if we were very much jolted. Our Epicurean garden-god then took leave of us with the incomparable skill which he ...
— Thoughts out of Season (Part One) • Friedrich Nietzsche
... magnificence or to adopt it. Why, he is as plain in manners and mode as St. Simon himself. His dress you have seen; as to equipage his only conveyance is a public fiacre; as to diet, household arrangements and everything else of a personal nature, nothing can be more republican and less epicurean than is witnessed at his house. His study, Albert de Morcerf's pavilion, is said to be the only sumptuous apartment in the whole establishment; and that sumptuousness is of a character entirely literary and practical. His retinue consists of three ...
— Edmond Dantes • Edmund Flagg
... he was proud. While in London he had procured from the Heralds' College his family arms, whose crest was stamped upon a quantity of plate he had brought with him to California. The plate, together with an exceptionally good cook, which he had also brought, and his own epicurean tastes, he utilized in the usual practical Californian fashion by starting a rather expensive half-club, half-restaurant in the lower part of the building—which he ruled somewhat autocratically, as became his crest. The restaurant was too expensive for me to patronize, but ...
— Under the Redwoods • Bret Harte
... unique book-lined workshop was the only one that had opened to him, when the more pious shoemakers of the Ghetto had professed to be "full up." He was, indeed, surprised to find Zussmann a believer in the Supernatural, having heard whispers that the man was as great an "Epicurean" as himself. Had not Zussmann—ay, and his wigless wife, Hulda, too—been seen emerging from the mighty Church that stood in frowsy majesty amid its tall, neglected box-like tombs, and was to the Ghetto merely a topographical point and the chronometric standard? And yet, ...
— Dreamers of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... coloured. [See the extremely learned disquisition on the whole subject in Dr. H. C. Lea's History of the Inquisition in Spain, 1907, vol. iii. book vi chap. vii.] Smollett must have enjoyed himself vastly in the market at Nice. He gives an elaborate and epicurean account of his commissariat during the successive seasons of his sojourn in the neighbourhood. He was not one of these who live solely "below the diaphragm"; but he understood food well and writes about it with a catholic gusto ...
— Travels Through France and Italy • Tobias Smollett
... an epicurean than a social success. Mrs. Halliday had made hot biscuit, and opened a jar of strawberry preserves, and sliced a cold chicken which she had originally intended for to-morrow's dinner; but, in spite of that, she was forced to sit by and watch her two ...
— The Wall Street Girl • Frederick Orin Bartlett
... in these beautiful villas on the shores of the Italian lakes, the son of Monnica gave himself up once more to the sweetness of life. "I liked an easy life," he avows in all simplicity. He felt himself to be more Epicurean than ever. He might have chosen Epicureanism altogether, if he had not always kept a fear of what is beyond life. But when he was the guest of Manlius Theodoras, fronting the dim blue mountains of lake Como, framed in the high windows of the triclinium, he did not think much about what is beyond ...
— Saint Augustin • Louis Bertrand
... though in certain limited series there may be a great appearance of seriousness, he who in the main treats things with a degree of good-natured scepticism and radical levity will find that the practical fruits of his epicurean hypothesis verify it more and more, and not only save him from pain but do honor to his sagacity. While, on the other hand, he who contrary {107} to reality stiffens himself in the notion that certain things absolutely should be, and rejects the truth that at bottom ...
— The Will to Believe - and Other Essays in Popular Philosophy • William James
... establishing a duality of gods whose respective provinces are the happiness and unhappiness of the human race, the step was easy to the conviction of the superior activity of a malignant god. The benevolent but epicurean security of the first deity might seem to have little concern in defeating or preventing the malicious schemes of the other. All the infernal apparatus of later ages was easy to be supplied by a ...
— The Superstitions of Witchcraft • Howard Williams
... all, Epicurean philosophers, Ye men of fashion cynical, Of Levshin's school ye followers,(67) Priams of country populations And dames of fine organisations, Spring summons you to her green bowers, 'Tis the warm time of labour, flowers; The time for mystic strolls which late Into ...
— Eugene Oneguine [Onegin] - A Romance of Russian Life in Verse • Aleksandr Sergeevich Pushkin
... sentiment had been involuntary on his part. She blessed him in her heart for being at once so susceptible and so strong. She fancied that there was a shade of sadness in his coolness which lent it attraction. With that shadow of the epicurean which is apt to be found upon all civilised hearts, she felt that it did her good to realise how nice he was, just as a fresh flower or a strong wind would have done her good. She said to him that she supposed he would not be staying much longer in Chellaston, and he replied that ...
— What Necessity Knows • Lily Dougall
... glittering beauty, cold and cruel, that appealed to him. He always felt at home in such surroundings. Beneath his idealism and love of humanity there was still hidden somewhere the nerve of an Epicurean. ...
— The One Woman • Thomas Dixon
... leather, and a dining-room in pale green with English furniture, not to mention the various bedchambers and dressing-rooms. Built in the time of Louis XIV. the mansion retained an aspect of noble grandeur, subordinated to the epicurean tastes of the triumphant bourgeoisie, which for a century now had reigned by virtue of the omnipotence ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... Naturally neither cruel nor vindictive, he had gradually grown pitiless in all that conduced to self-aggrandizement or self-indulgence; incapable of a generosity that involved even slight sacrifice, a polished handsome epicurean, an experienced man of the world, putting aside all scruples in the attainment of ...
— Infelice • Augusta Jane Evans Wilson
... I don't know." There was an unconcealed triumph in his tones; but he had no intention of being hasty, he meant to extract the last drop of epicurean pleasure that was possible in this situation. Penfield was not lacking in dramatic sense, and he had no intention of losing any fine points in the narration of his news by careless and ...
— The Silver Butterfly • Mrs. Wilson Woodrow
... shouted, standing at the rail and bowing, flourishing his arm as though he were snapping the long whip lash he took into the ring with him, "this little exciting episode—this epicurean taste of the thrills to follow in the big tent—although of an impromptu nature, merely goes to show the versatility of Twomley and Sorber's Herculean Circus and Menagerie, and our ability, when the unexpected happens, to grapple with circumstances and throw them, sir—throw ...
— The Corner House Girls Growing Up - What Happened First, What Came Next. And How It Ended • Grace Brooks Hill
... directly it comes in contact with practical affairs, the form of the possessive instinct. And the attitude towards art of the "collector" or the leisured "epicurean," for whom it is merely a pleasant sensation among other sensations, is an attitude which undermines the basis of its life. The very essence of art is that it should be a thing common to all, within the reach of all, ...
— The Complex Vision • John Cowper Powys
... the meaning of them. From time to time he glanced up at Janet as she flitted about the room. By George, she was more desirable than he had ever dared to imagine! He felt temporarily balked, but hopeful. On his way to the mill he had dwelt with Epicurean indulgence on this sight of her, and he had not been disappointed. He had also thought that he might venture upon more than the mere feasting of his eyes, yet found an inspiring alleviation in the fact that she by no means absolutely repulsed him. ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... and flatter them; he will never consult them seriously, nor really trust them, but he will make them believe that he does both. They are invaluable as tools, though contemptible in themselves. This, of course, represents the tone too characteristic of the epicurean British nobleman. Yet with all this cynicism, Chesterfield's morality is perfectly genuine in its way. He has the sense of honour and the patriotic feeling of his class. He has the good nature which is compatible with, and even congenial to, a certain cynicism. He is said to ...
— English Literature and Society in the Eighteenth Century • Leslie Stephen
... appeared by writings found there, that the crime was one of revenge: it was supposed to have been committed in broad daylight. Savary was a citizen of Paris, very rich, without occupation, and lived like an epicurean. He had some friends of the highest rank, and gave parties, of all kinds of pleasure, at his house, politics sometimes being discussed. The cause of this assassination was never known; but so much of it was found out, that no one dared ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... the old Duchess, Mrs. Fairmile, and Dr. Lelius, alone. The Duchess had been the penniless daughter of an Irish clergyman, married en secondes noces for her somewhat queer and stimulating personality, by an epicurean duke, who, after having provided the family with a sufficient store of dull children by an aristocratic mother, thought himself at liberty, in his declining years, to please himself. He had left her the dower-house—small but delicately ...
— Marriage a la mode • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... than all the princes in Christendom, and that valuable member of society is himself, Gulielmus Temple, Baronettus. One sees him in his retreat; between his study-chair and his tulip-beds, clipping his apricots and pruning his essays,—the statesman, the ambassador no more; but the philosopher, the Epicurean, the fine gentleman and courtier at St. James's as at Shene; where in place of kings and fair ladies, he pays his court to the Ciceronian majesty; or walks a minuet with the Epic Muse; or dallies by the south wall with the ruddy ...
— Harvard Classics Volume 28 - Essays English and American • Various
... of him as being also a Providence ruling the world, that is of moral value and significance, and was due in particular to the lofty dignity with which he declaimed six lines of Lucretius, setting forth the Epicurean view of the gods as unconcerned with mankind. There were probably not ten men in the House of Commons who could follow the sense of the lines so as to appreciate their bearing on his argument. But these stately and sonorous hexameters—hexameters that ...
— William Ewart Gladstone • James Bryce
... is immediately at a loss, and knows not what to answer. A Copernican or Ptolemaic, who supports each his different system of astronomy, may hope to produce a conviction, which will remain constant and durable, with his audience. A Stoic or Epicurean displays principles, which may not be durable, but which have an effect on conduct and behaviour. But a Pyrrhonian cannot expect, that his philosophy will have any constant influence on the mind: or if it had, that its influence would be beneficial to society. On the contrary, ...
— An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding • David Hume et al
... than would a scientist who would admit that, except by the "up and down" process, quartz has ever fallen from the sky—but Continuity: it is not excommunicated if part of or incorporated in a baptized meteorite—St. Catherine's of Mexico, I think. It's as epicurean a distinction as any ever made by theologians. Fassig lists a quartz pebble, found in a hailstone (Bibliography, part 2-355). "Up and down," of course. Another object of quartzite was reported to have fallen, in the autumn ...
— The Book of the Damned • Charles Fort
... misery, and despair, and there is no help, for retributive justice marches on with impressive solemnity. Imperial despotism, disproportionate fortunes, unequal divisions of society, the degradation of woman, slavery, Epicurean pleasures, practical atheism, bring forth their wretched fruits. The vices and miseries of society cannot be arrested. Glory is succeeded by shame; all strength is in mechanism, and that wears out; vitality passes away; the empire is weak from ...
— The Old Roman World • John Lord
... a crime for her sake. So far so good; the motive of the crime must be found in Australia. Whyte had spent nearly all his money in England, and, consequently, Musette and her lover arrived in Sydney with comparatively very little cash. However, with an Epicurean-like philosophy, they enjoyed themselves on what little they had, and then came to Melbourne, where they stayed at a second-rate hotel. Musette, I may tell you, had one special vice, a common one—drink. She loved champagne, and drank a good deal of it. Consequently, on arriving at Melbourne, ...
— The Mystery of a Hansom Cab • Fergus Hume
... rather an Epicurean of the nobler sort; and he had this one great merit, that he succeeded so far as to be happy. "I love my fate to the core and rind," he wrote once; and even while he lay dying, here is what he dictated (for it seems he was already too feeble to control the ...
— Familiar Studies of Men & Books • Robert Louis Stevenson
... Rutherford amused his declining years by teaching Charley to whistle "The king shall hae his ain again," and to gibber "Send the old rogue to Hanover;" for which he was always rewarded by a sugar-plum or a dole of wassail (Scotch short-bread). Those epicurean indulgences at length induced a state of obesity; and so depraved became the appetite of the bird, that, rejecting his natural food, he used to pluck out the feathers from those parts of the back within his reach, and bruise them with ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 484 - Vol. 17, No. 484, Saturday, April 9, 1831 • Various
... an evil age, Wisdom hath been assailed by peril? Did I not often in days of old, before my servant Plato lived, wage stern warfare with the rashness of folly? In his lifetime, too, Socrates, his master, won with my aid the victory of an unjust death. And when, one after the other, the Epicurean herd, the Stoic, and the rest, each of them as far as in them lay, went about to seize the heritage he left, and were dragging me off protesting and resisting, as their booty, they tore in pieces the garment which I had woven with ...
— The Consolation of Philosophy • Boethius |
