"Heroic" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... One finds oneself choosing even among the acts of "Tristan und Isolde," finding the first far inferior to the poignant, magnificent third. Sometimes, one glimpses a little too long behind his work not the heroic agonist, but the man who loved to languish in mournful salons, attired in furred ...
— Musical Portraits - Interpretations of Twenty Modern Composers • Paul Rosenfeld
... supported him during his lawsuit against the Revue de Paris, had promised its voice in his favour. Again cruel Fate dogged his footsteps, as in May he tumbled out of his tilbury, and his head came violently into contact with what he calls the "heroic pavements of July"; the accident being a sad result of his childish delight in driving at a tremendous pace in the Bois, which is rebuked by his sage adviser, Madame Carraud. Certainly carriages, horses, and a stable, seemed ...
— Honore de Balzac, His Life and Writings • Mary F. Sandars
... Knowing the nature of the enemies he had to contend with, poor Mr. Jacob Prying was silent on the subject of his religious doubts till the advent of Paul to the farm. Like the ancient noble Roman, who, under the garb of folly, concealed his profound heroic wisdom, uncle Jacob was content to be called an infidel and unbeliever, so that he might preserve his heart undefiled, and ready for that precious pearl "of great price" which his heart sighed for, and which he was about now to receive; becoming, in his latter days, a further ...
— The Cross and the Shamrock • Hugh Quigley
... whether or not it was associated with a mute syllable. This mannerism had no purpose beyond indicating to the audience the end of a passage and giving the claque the signal to applaud. Offenbach did not belong to that heroic strain to which success is the least of its cares. So he adopted this mannerism, and often his ingeniously turned and charming couplets are ruined by this silly absurdity now gone ...
— Musical Memories • Camille Saint-Saens
... acted an heroic character, badly studied; and being a novice on such a stage, I forgot my part before a pair of lovely ...
— Stories by Foreign Authors: German (V.2) • Various
... utter despondency, touched her more keenly than his anger. She knew that he was mean and selfish, that it was of his own loss he thought; and yet she pitied him. He was old and helpless and miserable; so much the more pitiable because of his selfishness and meanness. For the heroic soul there is always some comfort; but for the grovelling nature suffering knows no counterbalance. The ills that flesh is heir to seem utterly bitter when there is no grand spirit to dominate the flesh, and soar triumphant above the regions of earthly pain. Captain Paget's ...
— Charlotte's Inheritance • M. E. Braddon
... musing on Belleisle and his Anti-Pragmatic industries and grandiosities,—"how Chief-Bully Belleisle stept down into the ring as a gay Volunteer, and foolish Chief-Defender George had to follow dismally heroic, as a Conscript of Fate,"—drops these words: in regard to ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XIII. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... spoke feelingly, with heroic endurance indeed; and if Malcolm should dare give his account of the fracas, he trusted to the word of a gentleman to outweigh that of ...
— The Marquis of Lossie • George MacDonald
... without any points of contrast, and I wish Tintoret had not condescended to paint it. This and the six preceding paintings have all been uninteresting,—I believe chiefly owing to the observance in them of Sir Joshua's rule for the heroic, "that drapery is to be mere drapery, and not silk, nor satin, nor brocade." However wise such a rule may be when applied to works of the purest religious art, it is anything but wise as respects works of color. Tintoret is never quite himself unless ...
— The Stones of Venice, Volume III (of 3) • John Ruskin
... Duke of Bronte; great at heart as a Titan; gallant and heroic as all the world and age of chivalry; leader of the might of England; commander of her strength on the deep; hurler of her ...
— Shirley • Charlotte Bronte
... stratagems, to regurgitate it. These are little children's imaginings. Among the Hindoos the same myth takes the form of an alluring epic—the dragon watching over the celestial waters, of which he has taken possession, is wounded by Indra after a heroic battle, and ...
— Essay on the Creative Imagination • Th. Ribot
... like Henry Martyn, who at that same time, in far different surroundings, was intent upon his plans of mission work in India, was own son in the faith to David Brainerd. But they were elder sons in a great family. The pathetic story of that heroic youth, as told by Jonathan Edwards, was a classic at that time in almost every country parsonage; but its influence was especially felt in the colleges, now no longer, as a few years earlier, the seats of the scornful, but the homes of serious and religious ...
— A History of American Christianity • Leonard Woolsey Bacon
... Arinez, but Picton's men were not to be denied. They burst through the rearguard, and the battle now became a running fight, extending over some five miles of broken country. At the last slopes, close to Vittoria, the defenders made a last heroic stand, and their artillery dealt havoc among the assailants; but our fourth division, rushing forward into the smoke, carried a hill that commanded their left, and the day was won. Nothing now remained for the French but a speedy retreat, while the gallant Reille could ...
— The Life of Napoleon I (Volumes, 1 and 2) • John Holland Rose
... the officers of both armies, enemies to each other, exchanged politenesses and cigars during the suspension of arms. He told fine military anecdotes, and Madame Roger, seeing her son's face excited with enthusiasm at these heroic deeds, became gloomy at once. Maurice noticed ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... song contains nearly the closest savage parallel to the various household tales which find their heroic and artistic shape in the Jason saga. Still more surprising in its resemblances is the Malagasy version of the narrative. In the Malagasy story, the conclusion is almost identical with the winding up of the Scotch fairy tale. The girl hides in a tree; her face, seen reflected in a well, is ...
— Custom and Myth • Andrew Lang
... this book was published about twenty years after Lincoln's death at the close of the Civil War. At that time many of the men who had taken a prominent part in the affairs, military and civil, of that heroic period, many who had known Lincoln and had come in personal contact with him during the war or in his earlier years, were still living. It was a vivid conception of the value of the personal recollections ...
— The Every-day Life of Abraham Lincoln • Francis Fisher Browne
... Directors, disapproving indeed the measure, but receiving the testimony of his conscience in justification of his conduct, and taking up the whole ground, honorably acquit him, and commend this action as an instance of heroic zeal in their service. ...
— The Works Of The Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. IX. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... a nervous chord somewhere in the slave's throat that trembled on the key of the heroic, and her nostrils, slightly rounded, her head, free of carriage as the wild colt's, and a light from her soft eyes that seemed to be reflected on their long, silken lashes, bore out a spirit tamed by servitude, which still could kindle to everything ...
— The Entailed Hat - Or, Patty Cannon's Times • George Alfred Townsend
... state of affairs when Finland, after a heroic defence, was conquered (1809) by Russia. The high-minded and liberal Emperor, Alexander I., considered that the new conquest could not be better preserved than by attaching his new subjects with bonds of affection to himself. To this end he summoned the representatives of ...
— Through Finland in Carts • Ethel Brilliana Alec-Tweedie
... cap and plume, and a deep emerald satin curtain hangs on his right hand. These portraits are just about as wonderful as any you may remember,—in his best style and in capital condition. But I know you would say that the great portrait of Charles on horseback is more grand. It is a sort of heroic poem; he looks like Sir Galahad, or Chivalry itself, going forth to conquer wrong and violence. His eager, worn face looks out from the helmet so calmly and so steadily, the flash of his armor, which gleams like ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 25, November, 1859 • Various
... not yield Lisa until she is certain that the Soul Haven colonists will accept the twins without a caretaker; but unless the matter is quietly settled by the new year I shall find some heroic means of changing her mind. I have considered the matter earnestly for many months without knowing precisely how to find sufficient money for the undertaking. My own income can be stretched to cover her maintenance, but it is not sufficient to give her the proper sort of education. She is beyond ...
— Marm Lisa • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... letter, which appeared recently in the Daily Graphic, is well and truly written: "Having served as chaplain of one of the largest recruiting depots in England, may I thank you for your article on the Heroic Blackguard style of literature in vogue just now. Soldiers have often remarked to me that they were represented as 'drunken roughs who couldn't speak the Queen's English.' As a matter of fact, a steadier, better behaved, better mannered class it would be difficult ...
— The Story of Baden-Powell - 'The Wolf That Never Sleeps' • Harold Begbie
... living," rejoined the other, with a needlessly resentful-heroic manner, that was lost, or seemed to be, ...
— Dr. Sevier • George W. Cable
... this story with eager and unflagging interest. The episodes are in Mr. Henty's very best vein—graphic, exciting, realistic; and, as in all Mr. Henty's books, the tendency is to the formation of an honorable, manly, and even heroic character."—Birmingham Post. ...
— Miss Ashton's New Pupil - A School Girl's Story • Mrs. S. S. Robbins
... of Greek ostracism, and one can almost imagine that it was devised by the man's friends—a sort of heroic treatment prescribed by a great spiritual physician. Personality repels as well as attracts: the people grow tired of hearing Aristides called the Just—he is exiled. For a few days there is a glad relief; ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great Philosophers, Volume 8 • Elbert Hubbard
... to my will!" —Still cynical, you see. He couldn't help it. He had seen much, felt much. He snapped the snuff box, Shook his white periwig, trimmed a long quill pen, And then began to write, most carefully, These couplets, in the old heroic style:— ...
— The New Morning - Poems • Alfred Noyes
... success, prescribe to Tennyson,—indeed without it he can never be a poet in act,—is to write for the next two or three years in none but one or two well-known and strictly defined metres, such as the heroic couplet, the octave stanza, or the octo-syllabic measure of the Allegro and Penseroso. He would, probably, thus get imbued with a sensation, if not a sense, of metre without knowing it, just as Eton boys get to write such good Latin verses ...
— Specimens of the Table Talk of S.T.Coleridge • Coleridge
... danger in the Master's return to Judea. "The Jews will kill him; he will go back to certain death," he said. But Thomas would not forsake Jesus, though he was going straight to martyrdom. "Let us also go, that we may die with him." Thus, mingled with his fear, was a noble and heroic love for Jesus. The hopelessness of Thomas as he thought of Jesus going to Bethany makes his devotion and his cleaving to him all the braver and nobler. He was sure it was a walk to death, but he faltered not ...
— Personal Friendships of Jesus • J. R. Miller
... one's imaginary vision to scenes of glorious and touching antiquity. The tellers of the stories of which Homer's Iliad was compounded; the transmitters of the legend and history which make up the Gesta Romanorum; the travelling raconteurs whose brief heroic tales are woven into our own national epic; the grannies of age-old tradition whose stories are parts of Celtic folk-lore, of Germanic myth, of Asiatic wonder-tales,—these are but younger brothers and sisters to the generations of story-tellers whose inventions are but vaguely outlined ...
— How to Tell Stories to Children - And Some Stories to Tell • Sara Cone Bryant
... sum up all that England owes to Puritanism, the story would be a great one indeed. As regards the United States, we may safely say that what is noblest in our history to-day, and of happiest augury for our social and political future, is the impress left upon the character of our people by the heroic men who came to New England early in ...
— American Political Ideas Viewed From The Standpoint Of Universal History • John Fiske
... a thought could be given to the possible consequences of such a step. Spurred by the heroic attitude and fine courage displayed by his wife, Mr. Celliers lost not a moment in availing himself of ...
— The Petticoat Commando - Boer Women in Secret Service • Johanna Brandt
... land their long sojourn. Amistris too, and he whose strenuous spear Was foremost in the fight, Amphistreus fell, And gallant Ariomardus, by whose death Broods sorrow upon Sardis: Mysia mourns For Seisames, and Tharubis lies low— Commander, he, of five times fifty ships, Born in Lyrnessus: his heroic form Is low in death, ungraced with sepulchre. Dead too is he, the lord of courage high, Cilicia's marshal, brave Syennesis, Than whom none dealt more carnage on the foe, Nor perished by a more heroic end. So fell the brave: so speak I of ...
— Suppliant Maidens and Other Plays • AEschylus
... navigation. He had been a number of years in the service of the Portuguese, and had acquired all the experience that their voyages and discoveries could afford. His courage had been put to the severest test; and the exercise of every amiable as well as heroic virtue, the kindred qualities of a great mind, had secured him an extensive reputation. He had married a Portuguese lady, by whom he had two sons, Diego and Ferdinand; the younger of these is the ...
— The Columbiad • Joel Barlow
... artillery had taken up a position, and a bitter struggle ensued. The battle raged indecisively for a long time, when suddenly a bright flame issued from the gate. A patriot, Pasquale Sottocorni, had stealthily reached the palace and set it on fire. He was the first victim of his heroic deed, and died with ...
— The Son of Monte-Cristo, Volume I (of 2) • Alexandre Dumas pere
... order: for that is the simplest. And I have begun with—not Chaucer, nor Spenser, nor the ballads, but—Shakespeare and Agincourt; for it seemed to me that a book of heroism could have no better starting-point than that heroic pair of names. As for the ballads, I have placed them, after much considering, in the gap between old and new, between classic and romantic, in English verse. The witness of Sidney and Drayton's example notwithstanding, it is not until 1765, when Percy publishes ...
— Lyra Heroica - A Book of Verse for Boys • Various
... back the Imperial cuirassiers, and bears away the King's body—easily distinguished from the rest of the slain by its heroic stature. But many still are the vicissitudes of that memorable day. Pappenheim brings fresh masses and fresh courage into the field. He is slain; content to die, since Gustavus, the foe of the Emperor and of his faith, breathes no longer; but Piccolomini and ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 11 • Various
... chiefly to the method of expectancy, restricting himself to combating my generally flaccid state, and invigorating me rather than contending with details. He has prescribed the heroic remedies of the soul, desiring me to communicate when he found me weak. But, if I am not mistaken, he is now turning his batteries. Either he is giving up a line of attack which has failed, or else, on the contrary, he is improving it, his treatment having produced, without my being ...
— The Cathedral • Joris-Karl Huysmans
... the stiff, not the officer, who commanded the deck that moment. By some strange magic I could not as yet fathom, the little parson had assumed the same heroic proportions Newman had assumed the day he chased the skipper from the poop. Oh, it was no physical change that took place; it was rather as if the man doffed a mask and revealed himself to us in his true self. There he stood, a full head shorter than his antagonist, with ...
— The Blood Ship • Norman Springer
... the cotton out of her ears, the bird said to her, "Heroic princess, be not angry with me for joining with those who exerted themselves to preserve my liberty. Though in a cage, I was content with my condition; but since I am destined to be a slave, I would rather be yours than any other person's, ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments vol. 4 • Anon.
... clearing a great blocked culvert, lest an unexpected thaw or rain might flood the right of way. To these men it was all in the day's work and unconscious passengers snored away in their berths, unknowing of the heroic toil their safety required. ...
— The Peace of Roaring River • George van Schaick
... of the Cayuga Lake in Western New York. My great-grandfather, General Benjamin Ledyard, was one of its first settlers, and came there in 1794. He was a native of New London County, Ct., a nephew of Col. William Ledyard, the heroic martyr of Fort Griswold, and the cousin of John Ledyard, the celebrated traveller, whose biography was written by Jared Sparks. When General Ledyard came to Aurora some of the Cayuga tribe of Indians ...
— Recollections of a Long Life - An Autobiography • Theodore Ledyard Cuyler
... world, your freedom and mine, my friends, as well as their own. It is high time the Government at Washington, impelled by the patriotic ardor of our thinking citizens, declared the enemies of England and France to be our enemies, and joined hands with those heroic countries to stamp out forever the teutonic menace to liberty and civilization. In the meantime I say to the red-blooded youth of America: Glory awaits you on the war-scarred fields of France. Go forth! There is no barrier in the way. Remember that when the ragged ...
— The Flag • Homer Greene
... mighty stones, poured his heroic wreak On other squadrons of the foe, whiles yet warm blood did break Thro' his cleft veins: but when the wound was quite exhaust and crude, The eager anguish did approve his princely fortitude. As when most sharp and bitter pangs distract a labouring dame, Which the divine Ilithiae, that ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Vol. 5 • Edited by E. V. Lucas
... unsuccessful ones would not entitle the company to a bounty and so would be a dead loss to it. The practical commercial difficulty would be the uncertainty and the cost in time and money of the first experiments. Purely commercial capital would not touch such heroic operations during the experimental stage; and in any case the strength of mind needed for so momentous a new departure could not be fairly expected from the Stock Exchange. It will have to be handled by ...
— Revolutionist's Handbook and Pocket Companion • George Bernard Shaw
... edifices. It, however, shows our author in a new walk of poetry. This magnificent tower, or castle is built on inaccessible cliffs of flint: the walls are of gold, bright as the sun, and decorated with 'olde historyes and pictures manyfolde:' the turrets are beautifully shaped. Among its heroic inhabitants are Henry VIII., ['in his maiestie moste hye enhaunsed as ought a conquerour,' no doubt an allusion to the battle of the Spurs and his other exploits in France in 1513], Howard Duke of Norfolk, ['the floure of chiualry'], and the Earl ...
— The Ship of Fools, Volume 1 • Sebastian Brandt
... never more so than when he sent this message to Sir John French: "The splendid pluck, spirit, and endurance shown by my troops in the desperate fighting which has continued for so many days against vastly superior forces fills me with admiration." That sovereign message to his heroic soldiers—such as his ancestor Henry V. might have addressed to his 10,000 long-enduring conquerors on the night of Agincourt—was nobly supplemented by this passage from the following day's Speech from the Throne: "My Navy and Army continue, ...
— The Illustrated War News, Number 15, Nov. 18, 1914 • Various
... this, Nelson would have become the greatest man in the service." The man was rightly estimated; but he who delivered this opinion did not understand the effect of domestic love and duty upon a mind of the true heroic stamp. ...
— The Life of Horatio Lord Nelson • Robert Southey
... and there were then happening in Paris events which appeared to the wife of General Bonaparte worthy of close observation. His long absence had diminished the number of his friends, and at the same time gave strength to and increased his enemies, who were ever busy to defame and vilify his heroic deeds, and to turn them into a crime; they represented that the expedition to Egypt, notwithstanding the glorious exploits of the French army, should have had more striking results, and the louder they cried out, the more feeble and timid were ...
— The Empress Josephine • Louise Muhlbach
... impart their respective features; it would be enriched with all that is beautiful in woman's love or enduring in parental affection. It is full of incident, and full of pathos. It verges towards the terrible, it is shaken with the passionate, it rises into the heroic. Pursued in the true spirit of Jewish theology, the awful presence of God would overhang and pervade it, while the agency of his providence should attend on the evolutions ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 22, Aug., 1859 • Various
... is spiteful. He laughed at me. He was impudent, Alyosha," Ivan said, with a shudder of offense. "But he was unfair to me, unfair to me about lots of things. He told lies about me to my face. 'Oh, you are going to perform an act of heroic virtue: to confess you murdered your father, that the valet murdered him at your ...
— The Brothers Karamazov • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... property, appointing learned and edifying bishops to the vacant Sees, restoring seminaries and clerical education. The clergy, who had been infected more or less by the Jansenist heresy, now purified in the crucible of persecution, have resumed the sound doctrines and the heroic virtues of the apostolic men who will ever be the brightest glory of their land—Thomas of Villa-Nova, Francis Xavier, Ignatius of Loyola, Peter of Alcantara, Francis Borgia, St. John of the Cross, and Saint Theresa. ...
— Pius IX. And His Time • The Rev. AEneas MacDonell
... gaining ground, as the current of superstition increased in strength which marks this last period of the republic; but the augur's art and the spectio of the magistrate were still surviving as mere constitutional fossils, and were not destined to share largely in Augustus' heroic attempt to put fresh life into the ius divinum. Vile damnum, as Tacitus said of the foreign quacks banished to Sardinia by Tiberius; for neither in the sphere of religion nor later in that of politics can the art of divination be said to have ...
— The Religious Experience of the Roman People - From the Earliest Times to the Age of Augustus • W. Warde Fowler
... the Otomies, a warlike race inhabiting part of the great mesa or central tableland north of Anahuac. These were the people who so grievously harassed the Spaniards after the Noche Triste and against whom the heroic battle of Otumba was fought. Except to the east, whence approach was easy from the coast, the territory of Tlascala was surrounded by mountains, and this natural defence was continued by the building of an extraordinary wall or fortification ...
— Mexico • Charles Reginald Enock
... this heroic cast of bronze which so faithfully portrays the destiny of a dumb animal, man's most useful and willing slave, always ready to share its master's fate, even unto death—to my mind is a most eloquent, if silent, ...
— Tales of Aztlan • George Hartmann
... not the sculptor's magic art, "Tis not th' heroic deeds of yore, That fill and gratify the heart. No! 'tis affection's tender lore— The thought of friends, and love's first sigh, When youth, and hope, ...
— Marriage • Susan Edmonstone Ferrier
... think of Sir Henry Hardinge, with his son, 'dear little Arthur,' riding in front of the lines at Ferozeshah. I hope no English painter will endeavour to illustrate that scene; for who is there to do justice to it? The history of the world contains no more brilliant and heroic picture. No, no; the men who perform these deeds with such brilliant valour, and describe them with such modest manliness—SUCH are not Snobs. Their country admires them, their Sovereign rewards them, and PUNCH, the universal railer, ...
— The Book of Snobs • William Makepeace Thackeray
... fondness for every kind of amusement, and their peculiar attachment to dancing; yet the love of pleasure had not rendered them effeminate. With the assistance of their allies, they drew together a formidable army and fought the Peruvians with such heroic valour as to defeat them in a battle, which, according to Garcilasso, was continued during three ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 5 • Robert Kerr
... first declared openly in favor of the unions question; at Torda, surrounded by Wallachian fanatics, he unfolded the banner of union. When it became Kemenyi's conviction that the crisis could not be removed in a peaceable way, he drew again his sword, and his heroic exploits during the memorable winter campaign under Bem, in Transylvania, contributed highly to the glory of the Hungarian arms. Having been appointed, by the Archduke Stephen, of Austria, Major of the Transylvanian National Guard, he distinguished himself ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 5, No. 3, March, 1852 • Various
... great stronghold of Cyprus, Famagousta. This powerful fortress was invested by land and sea, and although defended by only 7000 Venetian troops, under their gallant commandant, General Bragadino, it sustained a vigorous siege for more than ten months, until the heroic garrison was reduced by sickness and starvation. During this time an extraordinary apathy was exhibited by Venice, which should at all hazards have determined upon the relief of this important position. On 23rd January, 1571, the only effective ...
— Cyprus, as I Saw it in 1879 • Sir Samuel W. Baker
... gulps and struggles, and then Noddy began to cough. But all danger from strangulation had passed, thanks to the heroic ...
— The Ocean Wireless Boys And The Naval Code • John Henry Goldfrap, AKA Captain Wilbur Lawton
... religions as to a simpler creed and a more abstruse one. Hence a man's belief as a good citizen and his belief as an intelligent individual were not in contrast so far as the truth was concerned, but merely in the matter of form, in the manner of presentation. Varro's heroic effort, supported as it was by all the learning of his day and all the influence that his fame lent to his words, was nevertheless a failure. The religion of the state was dead; politics had killed it. It was a political power alone which could restore life to it, but that was the work ...
— The Religion of Numa - And Other Essays on the Religion of Ancient Rome • Jesse Benedict Carter
... also to Minerva. Now the mythology of Cephalus is not only in unison with Pausanias, but the admission of that person would in no degree affect the harmony of the Attic types, or principles of Athenian worship. Cephalus was as celebrated for heroic virtues as ...
— How to See the British Museum in Four Visits • W. Blanchard Jerrold
... fire and sword. Here gaunt ruin stalked and want entered his own home, made desolate as all the hearthstones of his people. Here the peace that ensued was the peace of the desert! Here the army, defeated and broken, came back after the long heroic struggle to blackened chimneys, sole vestige of home, and the South, with not even bread for her famished children, still stood in solemn silence by those deeper furrows watered with blood. The suffering that he endured was the common suffering of those ...
— Poems of Henry Timrod • Henry Timrod
... two such artists. Edward Gibbon and Thomas Carlyle. The elder historian may be compared to one of the great Alpine roadways— sublime in its conception, heroic in its execution, superb in its magnificent uniformity of good workmanship. The younger resembles one of his native streams, pent in at times between huge rocks, and tormented into foam, and then effecting its escape down some precipice, and spreading into cool ...
— Obiter Dicta • Augustine Birrell
... glance, several of your propositions startled me as paradoxical. That the martial clangour of a trumpet had something in it vastly more grand, heroic, and sublime than the twingle-twangle of a jew's-harp; that the delicate flexure of a rose-twig, when the half-blown flower is heavy with the tears of the dawn, was infinitely more beautiful and elegant than the upright stub of a burdock; and that, ...
— The Letters of Robert Burns • Robert Burns
... rehearsed, 'Twas in the garden that I found him first. Even there I found him—there the full-grown cat, His head, with velvet paw, did gently pat; As curious as the kittens each had been To learn what this phenomenon might mean. Fill'd with heroic ardour at the sight, And fearing every moment he would bite, And rob our household of our only cat That was of age to combat with a rat, With outstretch'd hoe I slew him at the door, And taught him ...
— The Children's Garland from the Best Poets • Various
... as those that first professed them. So thieves that rob in small parties and break houses, when they are taken, are hanged; but when they multiply and grow up into armies and are able to take towns, the same things are called heroic actions, and acknowledged for such by all the world. Courts of justice, for the most part, commit greater crimes than they punish, and do those that sue in them more injuries than they can possibly ...
— Character Writings of the 17th Century • Various
... quietly, a little subjective joy from the state of his heart. He would let the flower bloom for a day before plucking it up by the roots. Upon this latter course he was perfectly resolved, and in view of such an heroic resolution the subjective interlude appeared no more than his just privilege. The project of leaving Blanquais-les-Galets at nine o'clock in the morning dropped lightly from his mind, making no noise as it fell; but another took its place, which ...
— Confidence • Henry James
... on those interior waters, and under many disadvantages, within little more than two years, exceeding in numbers the whole naval force of the country at the commencement of the present Administration. Satisfactory and important as have been the performances of the heroic men of the Navy at this interesting period, they are scarcely more wonderful than the success of our mechanics and artisans in the production of war vessels, which has created a new form ...
— The Papers And Writings Of Abraham Lincoln, Complete - Constitutional Edition • Abraham Lincoln
... in this hour of distress and defeat, the Prince seemed more heroic than many a conqueror in his day of triumph. With all his hopes blasted, with the whole fabric of his country's fortunes shattered by the colossal crime of his royal ally, he never lost his confidence in himself nor his unfaltering trust in God. All ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... Lutherans cease preaching, Margrave George of Brandenburg finally declared: "Rather than deny my God and suffer the Word of God to be taken from me, I will kneel down and have my head struck off." (C. R. 2, 115.) That characterizes the pious and heroic frame of mind of all who signed the Augustana in 1530 In a letter, of June 18, to Luther, Jonas relates how the Catholic princes and estates knelt down to receive the blessing of Campegius when the latter entered the city, but that the Elector remained standing and ...
— Historical Introductions to the Symbolical Books of the Evangelical Lutheran Church • Friedrich Bente
... in savage finery of paint and feathers; no sculptor's ideal form, or novelist's heroic countenance; but a mild-looking person, in an old shooting jacket and red flannel shirt, with a straw hat shading his pale coppery complexion. He wield a tomahawk or march on a war trail! Never. And where was ...
— Cedar Creek - From the Shanty to the Settlement • Elizabeth Hely Walshe
... race, a home for freemen in which every citizen's privilege was every man's right—these were the exciting themes upon which I was nurtured. As a child I could have slain king, duke, or lord, and considered their deaths a service to the state and hence an heroic act. ...
— Autobiography of Andrew Carnegie • Andrew Carnegie
... ordinary hearsay. But it is important to remember that before the age of writing in Iceland there was a saga-telling age, a most remarkable period of intellectual activity, by means of which the deeds and events of the seething life of the heroic age were carried over into the age of writing.[7-1] The general trustworthiness of this saga-telling period has been attested in numerous ways from foreign records. Thus Snorri Sturlason's "The Sagas of the Kings ...
— The Northmen, Columbus and Cabot, 985-1503 • Various
... as I firmly believe that no single individual can follow the highest pattern of an earthly life, unless his hope and faith link on to a future, so I find it proved in all biographies and annals, that all unselfish, noble, and heroic lives are those which parents lead for their children and their children's children. We have such lives among us in city, state, and nation, private and public, high and humble." May we be true to the reputation and tradition ...
— Parks for the People - Proceedings of a Public Meeting held at Faneuil Hall, June 7, 1876 • Various
... very terrible, and that only from the very strongest sense of duty would she have undertaken them. Now her open avowal of Christianity, when she must have known what were the penalties that the confession entailed, seemed to him heroic. ...
— Beric the Briton - A Story of the Roman Invasion • G. A. Henty
... all. He was dignified, and tall, very handsome, no doubt,—and a lord. The grand question was that;—could she love him? Could she make another picture, and paint him as her hero? There were doubtless heroic points in the side wave of that coal-black lock,—coal-black where the few grey hairs had not yet shown themselves, in his great height, and solemn ...
— Is He Popenjoy? • Anthony Trollope
... those which precede and follow them, in virtue of a certain archaic freshness and of a greater freedom from traces of late interpolation and editorial trimming. Jephthah, Gideon and Samson are men of old heroic stamp, who would look as much in place in a Norse Saga as where they are; and if the varnish-brush of later respectability has passed over these memoirs of the mighty men of a wild age, here and there, it has not succeeded in effacing, or even in seriously obscuring, the essential ...
— The Evolution of Theology: An Anthropological Study - Essay #8 from "Science and Hebrew Tradition" • Thomas Henry Huxley
... spite of his heroic attempts at cheering up the sick man, Con was undergoing a frightful experience. In the first place, there were practically no medicines and no disinfectants in the shack. The boy found a cake of tar soap, ...
— The Shagganappi • E. Pauline Johnson
... and sighed, and wept, the tears streaming and freezing down their cheeks as they toiled; and it was patent that their agony was real. The situation was desperate, and Smoke's prescription was heroic. ...
— Smoke Bellew • Jack London
... indefatigable zeal. Sleep, Hamilcar, softly as a sultana, in this library, that shelters thy military virtues; for verily in thy person are united the formidable aspect of a Tatar warrior and the slumbrous grace of a woman of the Orient. Sleep, thou heroic and voluptuous Hamilcar, while awaiting the moonlight hour in which the mice will come forth to dance before the Acta Sanctorum ...
— The Crime of Sylvestre Bonnard • Anatole France
... counting, indeed, among the members of his family the Duke of Osmonde, who was one of the richest and most envied nobles in Great Britain, his dukedom being of the oldest, his numerous estates the most splendid and beautiful, and the long history of his family full of heroic deeds. This nobleman was also a distant kinsman to the Earl of Dunstanwolde, and at this ball, for the first time for months, Sir ...
— A Lady of Quality • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... important point, though one which is rarely appreciated. However, there is no reason why we should condemn "misled by cold definite rules of taste" even such pictures as Rembrandt's Bathing Woman in the Louvre, though here the proportions of the work are heroic. Oil painting was an art not practised by the Greeks, and this medium lends itself to beauties which their materials put entirely out of reach. Besides, Rembrandt appealed to an audience who had been educated ...
— Albert Durer • T. Sturge Moore
... an attempt was to be made to arrest Donald. The young men gathered in the hotel round the constables, and told blood-curdling stories of his dare-devilism in the North-West. The constables were fat, phlegmatic, and anything but heroic. What they had been accustomed to was an unexciting and steady beat in the drowsy old city of Quebec, and small but unfailingly regular drinks of whiskey blanc. This duty was new. Worst of all, ...
— The Hunted Outlaw - Donald Morrison, The Canadian Rob Roy • Anonymous
... mention the laughing ogling lady of Cadiz, whose manners, I very much regret to say, were a great deal too lively for my sense of propriety; nor those fair sufferers, her companions, who lay on the deck with sickly, smiling female resignation: nor the heroic children, who no sooner ate biscuit than they were ill, and no sooner were ill than they began eating biscuit again: but just allude to one other martyr, the kind lieutenant in charge of the mails, and who bore his cross with what I can't but think a ...
— Notes on a Journey from Cornhill to Grand Cairo • William Makepeace Thackeray
... could for a moment have been revealed to those seated aft, the face that all thought dull and uninteresting would have riveted their attention, and set each one questioning whether there might not be something both heroic and romantic underneath. The set determination of his look can best be explained by telling what had given ...
— The Honorable Peter Stirling and What People Thought of Him • Paul Leicester Ford
... Knights of the Holy Grail, the Pilgrim Fathers. There are the Victors in the intellectual wrestlings of the world,—the thinkers, poets, sages; the Victors in great sorrows, who conquer the savage pain of heart and desolation of spirit which arise from heroic human grief,—Oedipus and Antigone, Iphigenia, Perseus, Prometheus, King Lear, Samson Agonistes, Job, and David in his penitential psalm. And there are the Victors in the yet deeper strivings of the soul—in its inner battles and spiritual conquests—Milton's Adam, Paracelsus, Dante, the ...
— The Warriors • Lindsay, Anna Robertson Brown
... cousin Cecily. This interdependence of its periods is what welds life into a whole; even able and wilful young men have, for good and evil, to reckon with it. Otherwise morality would be in a bad case, and even logic rather at sea. The disadvantage is that the difficulties in the way of heroic or ...
— Tristram of Blent - An Episode in the Story of an Ancient House • Anthony Hope
... years, tall, well-built, a fine, dashing young fellow; he had blue eyes and rosy cheeks; his red-gold hair curled in rings beneath a wretched little patched cap, which was pulled down over his very eyebrows. And how in the world was that tattered little coat ever got upon those shoulders of heroic mould! ...
— A Reckless Character - And Other Stories • Ivan Turgenev
... Sephora, "In the city where Our kindred distant dwelt—blood has been shed— Dreamer, had such heroic boy been there, Belike he's numbered with ...
— Zophiel - A Poem • Maria Gowen Brooks
... the ocean; and all her future triumphs, her power and good repute among the nations, depended upon the zeal and fidelity with which each citizen held up the hands of those who were toiling to maintain it. The name of this heroic company was "the ...
— The Jungle • Upton Sinclair
... Henry pass'd and gazed in passing by; Till I beheld them pacing in the park Close by a coppice where 'twas cold and dark; When such affection with such fate appear'd, Want and a father to be shunn'd and fear'd, Without employment, prospect, cot, or cash; That I have judged th' heroic souls were rash. Now shifts the scene,—the fair in tower confined, In all things suffers but in change of mind; Now woo'd by greatness to a bed of state, Now deeply threaten'd with a dungeon's grate; Till, suffering much, and being tried ...
— The Borough • George Crabbe
... a solar personification, and the epic is interesting to modern writers not only on account of its description of the Deluge, but also for the pomp and dignity of its style, and for its noble delineation of heroic character. ...
— Babylonian and Assyrian Literature • Anonymous
... boys will read this story with eager and unflagging interest. The episodes are in Mr. Henty's very best vein—graphic, exciting, realistic, and, as in all Mr. Henty's books, the tendency is to the formation of an honorable, manly, and even heroic character." —Birmingham Post. ...
— Katie Robertson - A Girls Story of Factory Life • Margaret E. Winslow
... digression, but I feel it my duty to open the eyes of my countrymen and prevent them from supporting on all occasions the unjust acts of their Government, which reflect dishonour on a great and enlightened nation; which can boast, among its annals, of some of the most heroic, splendid, and disinterested characters that ever the ...
— After Waterloo: Reminiscences of European Travel 1815-1819 • Major W. E Frye
... out to be a marvel of art and architecture, and as his heroic proportions were far too great for anybody's hat or coat, they draped an Indian blanket around him and stuck a Japanese parasol on the top of his head to protect him ...
— Patty's Social Season • Carolyn Wells
... had ruined myself in politics she began to cry,—and tears were not her habit. Then she got my father's picture and kissed it and talked to it about me, just as if he were there with us; and for a time I felt that I was of heroic stature. ...
— The Plum Tree • David Graham Phillips
... three desperate charges, his sorry steed was slain under him, one of the Christian chiefs make a powerful effort for his rescue, bore him to a neighbouring eminence, and presented to him a more suitable coat of armour, and a horse more worthy of the heroic rider. ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 2 • Richard F. Burton
... Empire, Morrow, New York, 1949. History, largely political, of the XIT Ranch. Not so careful in documentation as Haley's XIT Ranch of Texas, and not so detailed on ranch operations, but thoroughly illuminative on the not-heroic side of big businessmen in big land deals. The ...
— Guide to Life and Literature of the Southwest • J. Frank Dobie
... fact as that suggested bareness, but nonetheless it worked happily into the sentimental interest I had always taken in the early movements of my countrymen as visitors to Europe. When Americans went abroad in 1820 there was something romantic, almost heroic in it, as compared with the perpetual ferryings of the present hour, when photography and other conveniences have annihilated surprise. Miss Bordereau sailed with her family on a tossing brig, in the days of ...
— The Aspern Papers • Henry James
... refusing to accept the yielding of Quebec as the end of French power in their proud province, had remained in arms and active, and had only yielded when the musket and the torch had done their work, and smoking ruins marked the places where homes had been. They took their fortune with something of the heroic calm of men to whom an idea was more than aught else. Jean Jacques' father, grandfather, and great-great- grandfather had lived here, no one of them rising far, but none worthless or unnoticeable. They all had had "a way of their own," as their neighbours said, and had been provident on the whole. ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... it unworthy of remark that, while the noblest-minded and most heroic sea-officers—men of the topmost stature, including Lord Nelson himself—have regarded flogging in the Navy with the deepest concern, and not without weighty scruples touching its general necessity, still, one who has seen much of midshipmen can truly say that he has seen but few midshipmen who ...
— White Jacket - or, the World on a Man-of-War • Herman Melville
... acquaintances, there has been many a quiet and apparently diffident girl, without pretence or affectation of any kind, who when some unexpected and stunning blow has fallen either upon herself or upon some one within the circle of her affections, has manifested a spirit so resolute or a devotion so heroic, that she has at once constituted herself the lofty example whom all admire and endeavor to follow. The unrecorded calamities of ordinary life, and the annals of human affection, as they occur from day to day around us, are full of such noble instances of ...
— The Black Prophet: A Tale Of Irish Famine • William Carleton
... have a simple love for men of foreign nationalities, Frenchmen, Germans, Americans, and Englishmen, who respect their qualities, are glad to meet them and make them so warmly welcome, cannot regard war with them as anything heroic. We cannot even imagine without horror the possibility of a disagreement between these people and ourselves which would call for reciprocal murder. Yet we are all bound to take a hand in this slaughter which is bound to come to pass to- morrow ...
— The Kingdom of God is within you • Leo Tolstoy
... Belgium's demands were extremely modest.[136] They were formulated, not as the guerdon for her heroic defense of civilization, but as a plain corollary flowing direct from each and every principle officially recognized by the heads of the Conference—right, nationality, legitimate guarantees, and economic requirements. Tested by any or all of these accepted touchstones, everything ...
— The Inside Story Of The Peace Conference • Emile Joseph Dillon
... of the Tanais, in that land of the morning, to which neither Grecian letters nor Roman arms had ever penetrated, there was a great city called Asgaard. Of its founder, of its history, we know nothing; but looming through the mists of antiquity we can discern an heroic figure, whose superior attainments won for him the lordship of his own generation, and divine honours from those that succeeded. Whether moved by an irresistible impulse, or impelled by more powerful neighbours, it is impossible to say; ...
— Letters From High Latitudes • The Marquess of Dufferin (Lord Dufferin)
... year, meditated an heroic poem on the 'Siege of Jerusalem', by Titus. This is the pride and the stronghold of my hope, but I never think of it except in my best moods. The work to which I dedicate the ensuing years of my life, is one which highly pleased Leslie, in prospective, and ...
— Biographia Epistolaris, Volume 1. • Coleridge, ed. Turnbull
... difficulties with which they have to struggle, when I see how manfully that struggle is maintained by Lord Melbourne, when I see that Lord John Russell has excited even the admiration of his opponents by the heroic manner in which he has gone on, year after year, in sickness and domestic sorrow, fighting the battle of Reform, I am led to the conclusion that the weakness of the Ministers is of that sort which makes it our duty to give them, not opposition, but support; ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 4 (of 4) - Lord Macaulay's Speeches • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... noble-looking woman, which was the one off-set to the general tone of villainy with which the room was charged, filled me with curiosity, if I might call it by no other name, that made my acquiescence in the demand thus made upon me positively heroic. But there seemed no other course for me to follow, and with a last lingering glance at the genial fire and a quick look about me, which, happily, encountered hers, I stooped my head to suit the low and narrow doorway opened for my accommodation, and instantly found myself in darkness. ...
— Room Number 3 - and Other Detective Stories • Anna Katharine Green
... have no idea how heroic my death would seem to some fools if they could know Nucingen last night offered me two millions of francs if I would love him as I love you. He will be handsomely robbed when he hears that I have kept my word and died of him. ...
— Scenes from a Courtesan's Life • Honore de Balzac
... girl,"—but revealed free from the shabby banality of a white platform dress, in the simple drapery of the sarong, there was that in her form and in the proportions of her body which suggested a reduction from a heroic size. ...
— Victory • Joseph Conrad
... precedent for direct taxation which the invaders eventually used as the financial basis of efficient government. At length a foolish massacre of the Danish "uitlanders" in England precipitated the ruin of Anglo-Saxon monarchy; and after heroic resistance by Edmund Ironside, England was absorbed in the empire ...
— The History of England - A Study in Political Evolution • A. F. Pollard
... retorted, satisfied that nothing short of the heroic treatment would avail with this woman; "and if I do not mistake, I think you know very well ...
— The Mill Mystery • Anna Katharine Green
... is set before any other class of art-workers. The pianist must be able to render with appropriate sentiment the simplicity and fresh naivete of the earlier classics, Haydn, Mozart; the grandeur of Bach; the heroic measures of Beethoven; the morbid elegance of Chopin; the romanticism of Schumann; the ...
— Piano Mastery - Talks with Master Pianists and Teachers • Harriette Brower
... Noah is a brilliant and admirable example of faith, who opposed the judgments of the world with an heroic steadfastness of mind in the assurance that he was righteous while all the rest ...
— Commentary on Genesis, Vol. II - Luther on Sin and the Flood • Martin Luther
... bear themselves nobly, they may wear a crown of that plant consecrated to Venus, of which they know the potency. Those may boast of the laurel who sing worthily of things pertaining to heroes, substituting heroic souls for speculative and moral philosophy, and praising them and setting as mirrors and exemplars for political ...
— The Heroic Enthusiasts,(1 of 2) (Gli Eroici Furori) - An Ethical Poem • Giordano Bruno
... Indian summer, Grandpa sits; and lets the paper Lie upon his knee unheeded. Shine his cheeks like winter apples, Gleams his smile like autumn sunshine, As he looks on little Harry, First-born of the house of Graham, Bravely cutting teeth in silence, Cutting teeth with looks heroic. Some deep thought seems moving Grandpa, Ponders he awhile in silence, Then he turns, and says to Grandma, "Nancy, do you think that ever There ...
— Poems • Marietta Holley
... this incident, the attempts at Johnnyboy's physical reformation still went on. More than that, it was argued by some complacent casuists that the pluck displayed by the child was the actual result of this somewhat heroic method of taking exercise, and NOT an inherent manliness distinct from his physical tastes. So he was made to run when he didn't want to—to dance when he frankly loathed his partners—to play at games that he despised. ...
— The Bell-Ringer of Angel's and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... their families than to see their families supported by the magnificent generosity of the subscribers. I am not consoled by the false, written-up, Drury Lane aspects of that event, which is neither drama, nor melodrama, nor tragedy, but the exposure of arrogant folly. There is nothing more heroic in being drowned very much against your will, off a holed, helpless, big tank in which you bought your passage, than in dying of colic caused by the imperfect salmon in the tin ...
— Notes on Life and Letters • Joseph Conrad
... gazed at his natty khaki attire, the row of merit badges on his sleeve, the trophies of his heroic triumphs. She was not the first to feel the lure of a uniform. But it was the first uniform she had ever seen at close range, for in the wartime she had been in that frowning brick ...
— Pee-wee Harris • Percy Keese Fitzhugh
... the sardine and anchovy, I must confess that the fish of the Mediterranean are what, in the Duchy, we should call 'poor trade.' I don't wish to disparage the Bouillabaisse, which is a dish for heroes, and deserves all the heroic ...
— From a Cornish Window - A New Edition • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... the prisoner is by the bolts and bars, so these poor schoolmasters, with their small salaries and large classes, were as much prisoners as we were, and much more responsible and anxious ones. They could not impose the heroic attitude on their employers; nor would they have been able to obtain places as schoolmasters if their habits had been heroic. For the best of them their employment was provisional: they looked forward ...
— A Treatise on Parents and Children • George Bernard Shaw
... make wounds, and not cicatrices (which, my dear, are wounds partially healed); nay, that a man generally dies after receiving one such projectile on his chest, much more after having his bosom furrowed by a score of them. No, my love; no bosom, however heroic, can stand such applications, and the author only means that the French soldiers faced the cannon and took them. Nor, my love, must you suppose that the column was melted: it was the cannon was melted, not the column; but such phrases are often ...
— The Second Funeral of Napoleon • William Makepeace Thackeray (AKA "Michael Angelo Titmarch") |
