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Niobe

noun
1.
(Greek mythology) the daughter of Tantalus whose boasting about her children provoked Apollo and Artemis to slay them all; Niobe was turned to stone while bewailing her loss.






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"Niobe" Quotes from Famous Books



... upon Washington Allston. There was a small vase of oracular gas from Delphos, which I trust will be submitted to the scientific analysis of Professor Silliman. I was deeply moved on beholding a vial of the tears into which Niobe was dissolved; nor less so on learning that a shapeless fragment of salt was a relic of that victim of despondency and sinful regrets,— Lot's wife. My companion appeared to set great value upon some Egyptian darkness in a blacking-jug. Several of ...
— A Virtuoso's Collection (From "Mosses From An Old Manse") • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... as striking as the moral contrast of their hearts. The one, so chastened, sad, and gentle; the other, so capable of pride and passion; so darkly excitable, and yet so mysteriously beautiful. The one, like a Niobe seen in the softest moonshine; the other, a Venus, lighted in ...
— The Evil Guest • J. Sheridan Le Fanu

... [1110]: the "Catalogues" probably ended (ep. "Theogony" 963 ff.) with some such passage as this: 'But now, ye Muses, sing of the tribes of women with whom the Sons of Heaven were joined in love, women pre-eminent above their fellows in beauty, such as was Niobe (?).' Each succeeding heroine was then introduced by the formula 'Or such as was...' (cp. frags. 88, 92, etc.). A large fragment of the "Eoiae" is extant at the beginning of the "Shield of Heracles", which may be mentioned here. The "supplement" (ll. 57-480) is nominally Heracles and Cycnus, but ...
— Hesiod, The Homeric Hymns, and Homerica • Homer and Hesiod

... tour, and she had to leave Mrs. Wilson and Eve for a whole week, the tears would not be denied; and, to show how perilous a road matrimony is, these two risked a misunderstanding on their wedding-day, thus: Lucy, all alone in the post-chaise with David, dissolved—a perfect Niobe—gushing at short intervals. Sometimes a faint explanation gurgled out with the tears: "Poor Eve! her dear little face was working so not to cry. Oh! oh! I should not have minded so much if she had cried right out." Then, again, it was "Poor Mrs. Wilson! I was only a week with her, for all ...
— Love Me Little, Love Me Long • Charles Reade

... length, each part assumes its proper magnitude. In the drama the result is far from answering to the poet's expectation. The proof is that the poets who have dramatised the whole story of the Fall of Troy, instead of selecting portions, like Euripides; or who have taken the whole tale of Niobe, and not a part of her story, like Aeschylus, either fail utterly or meet with poor success on the stage. Even Agathon has been known to fail from this one defect. In his Reversals of the Situation, however, he shows a marvellous ...
— Poetics • Aristotle

... the bulk of the little library. Midwinter turned to leave the room, when an object on one side of the window, which he had not previously noticed, caught his attention and stopped him. It was a statuette standing on a bracket—a reduced copy of the famous Niobe of the Florence Museum. He glanced from the statuette to the window, with a sudden doubt which set his heart throbbing fast. It was a French window. He looked out with a suspicion which he had not felt yet. The view before him was the view of a lawn and garden. ...
— Armadale • Wilkie Collins

... mouth, but as she marked the chilling repose of the countenance, so indicative of conscious power and well-regulated strength, why did memory travel swiftly back among the "Stones of Venice," repeating the description of the hawthorn on Bourges Cathedral? "A perfect Niobe of May." Had this man petrified in his youth before the steady stylus of time left on his features that subtle tracery which passing years engrave on human faces? The motto of his magazine, Veritas sine clementia, ruled his life, and, putting aside the lenses ...
— St. Elmo • Augusta J. Evans

... scenes to those we had recently encountered in poor down-trodden Ireland, the Niobe of nations, besprinkled with the tears of centuries for the loss of her ...
— Shakspere, Personal Recollections • John A. Joyce

... punishing Lycus and Dirce for cruel treatment of Antiope (q.v.), they built and fortified Thebes, huge blocks of stone forming themselves into walls at the sound of Amphion's lyre (Horace, Odes, iii. 11). Amphion married Niobe, and killed himself after the loss of his wife and children (Ovid, Metam. vi. 270). The brothers were buried in one grave and worshipped as the Dioscuri "with white horses'' (Eurip. ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia

... the Niobe, who has an apartment to herself: and now, thought I, dear Mrs. Siddons has never seen this figure: but those who can see it or her, without emotions equally impossible to contain or to suppress, deserve the fate of Niobe, and have already ...
— Observations and Reflections Made in the Course of a Journey through France, Italy, and Germany, Vol. I • Hester Lynch Piozzi

... her bow was bended strong, Therein a shaft headed with mortal steel, So fit to shoot she singled forth among Her foes who first her quarries' strength should feel, So fit to shoot Latona's daughter stood When Niobe she ...
— Jerusalem Delivered • Torquato Tasso

... dealt with criminally, free speech, free action, the noble inheritance of our ancestors, were gone, and the liberties of the country no more. Collecting himself for a last effort, he represented the Goddess of Liberty, like Niobe, all tears, weeping over the fate of her children, should the iniquity, ...
— The Lost Hunter - A Tale of Early Times • John Turvill Adams

... of the Annuals, comes to woo us with the kindred charms of poetry and playful humour—romance and real life—full of kindly feelings, sighs and tears, such as Niobe shed, and smiles that with their witchery light up the finest affections to cherish drooping nature, and guide our footsteps along this world of weal and woe. To be more explicit, the character of the present volume is well told by Mr. Haynes ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 20, - Issue 573, October 27, 1832 • Various

... well marvel at the skill of the artist who, during his interminable task of sculpture, held fast the model's fleeting outline—so fleeting, at that particular age of life, that every month, and every week, brings about new conditions of surface and texture. A child of Niobe? Very likely. There is suffering also here, a suffering different from theirs; struck by the Sun-God's arrow, he is in the act of sinking to earth. Over this tension broods a divine calm. Here is the antidote to mummified ...
— Alone • Norman Douglas

... a series of letters containing shameless realistic caricatures was handed to him the afternoon following. They came fast and thick. Not a day's interval of grace was allowed. Niobe under the shafts of Diana was hardly less violently and mortally assailed. The deadliness of the attack lay in the ridicule of the daily habits of one of the most sensitive of men, as to his personal appearance, and the opinion of the world. He might have concealed the sketches, but he could ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith

... that love-wander'd maid, death-pale, Her very heart's blood froze, Love's Niobe, in her own vale, Now reckless of all woes— Love's victim fair, and true, find meet, As ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 10, Issue 262, July 7, 1827 • Various

... the sun, a coy disdainful guest, flung a glittering mist over what Nature had intended to be one of the most enchanting spots on earth, until, in a fit of ill-temper—with one of the gods, no doubt—she gave it to Niobe as a permanent outlet for her discontent. When it does not rain at Sitka it pours, and when once in a way she draws a deep breath of respite and lifts her grand and glorious face to the sun, in ...
— Rezanov • Gertrude Atherton

... to say that the chief pleasure he had in visiting Rome was to find the Greek gods and the heroes and heroines of Greek story throned in the Vatican. He preferred Niobe to the Mater Dolorosa and Helen to both; the worship of sorrow must give place, he declared, to the worship of ...
— Oscar Wilde, Volume 1 (of 2) - His Life and Confessions • Frank Harris

... from his great black eyes as he crosses the waste. Far as the eye can see there is nothing but a melancholy plain, studded here and there with a ruin, and populous only with the visionary forms of the past; and its tragic beauty prepares your mind for passing into the solemn shadow of the great Niobe of cities. But it was not thus in the brilliant days of the Empire. For fifteen miles beyond the walls the Appian Way stretched to the beautiful blue Alban hills, through a continuous suburb of the city, adorned with all the charms of nature and art, palatial ...
— Roman Mosaics - Or, Studies in Rome and Its Neighbourhood • Hugh Macmillan

... over the terrible snake. Oh, he was simply beautiful! Venus entranced me. She looked as if she had just risen from the foam of the sea, and her loveliness was like a strain of heavenly music. I also saw poor Niobe with her youngest child clinging close to her while she implored the cruel goddess not to kill her last darling. I almost cried, it was all so real and tragic. General Loring kindly showed me a copy of one of the wonderful bronze doors of the Baptistry of Florence, ...
— Story of My Life • Helen Keller

... see why the Prince's chauffeur had acquired the countenance of a male Niobe. Wormlike resignation to utter misery was, we had judged, his prevailing characteristic; but hard work, ingratitude, and goodness knows how much abuse, caused the worm to ...
— My Friend the Chauffeur • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson

... long my grief has kept me drunk: Sure there 's a lethargy in mighty woe; Tears stand congealed, and cannot flow. ........ Tears for a stroke foreseen, afford relief; But unprovided for a sudden blow, Like Niobe, we marble grow, And ...
— English Literature, Considered as an Interpreter of English History - Designed as a Manual of Instruction • Henry Coppee

... contemporary of Praxiteles, and was the author of the celebrated group of Niobe, which is one of the chief ornaments of the gallery of sculpture at Florence. He flourished about three hundred and fifty years before Christ, and wrought chiefly in marble. He was employed in decorating the Mausoleum which Artemisia erected to her ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume III • John Lord

... Francesca do not enjoy it all quite as intensely as I, so they considerately give me the lion's share. Every morning, after an exhilarating interview with the Niobe of our kitchen (who thinks me irresponsible, and prays Heaven in her heart I be no worse), I put on my goloshes, take my umbrella, and trudge up and down the little streets and lanes on real and, if need be, imaginary errands. The Duke of Wellington said, 'When fair ...
— Penelope's Experiences in Scotland • Kate Douglas Wiggin

... Maria, what a brute you make me feel. Please don't," I cried, and raising my cousin from her Niobe-like attitude, I comforted her as well as I could. She only said, "Oh, Regie dear, how kind you are," and laid her sleek head against my arm with an air of rest and trustfulness that touched my generosity to the quick. What ...
— A Flat Iron for a Farthing - or Some Passages in the Life of an only Son • Juliana Horatia Ewing

... Medici, on the Pincian mount, on which were formerly situated the splendid gardens of Lucullus: it once contained a vast number of masterpieces of every kind; but the grand dukes Leopold and Ferdinand have removed the finest works (among them, the group of Niobe, by Scopas) to Florence. This palace, however, is yet worthy of being visited. Under the portico of the Villa Negroni are the two fine statues of Sylla and Marius, seated on the sella curulis. In the extensive garden, which is three miles in circuit, some beautiful ...
— Anecdotes of Painters, Engravers, Sculptors and Architects and Curiosities of Art (Vol. 3 of 3) • S. Spooner

... making of the ivory shoulder of Pelops after Demeter has eaten the shoulder of flesh. With that you have Broteas, the brother of Pelops, carving the first statue of the mother of the gods; and you have his sister, Niobe, weeping herself to stone under the anger of the deities of light. Then Pelops himself, the dark-faced, gives name to the Peloponnesus, which you may therefore read as the "isle of darkness;" but its central city, Sparta, the "sown ...
— Lectures on Art - Delivered before the University of Oxford in Hilary term, 1870 • John Ruskin

... Niobe, Queen of Thebes, was proud of many things. Amphion, her husband, had received from the Muses a wonderful lyre, to the music of which the stones of the royal palace had of themselves assumed place. Her father was Tantalus, who had been entertained by the gods; ...
— Famous Tales of Fact and Fancy - Myths and Legends of the Nations of the World Retold for Boys and Girls • Various

... When haughty Niobe, with joy and pride, Saw all her shining offspring grace her side; She view'd their charms, exulting at each line, And then oppos'd 'em to the race divine! Enrag'd Latona urg'd the silver bow: Immortal vengeance laid their beauties low. No more a mother now—too much ...
— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753) - Vol. IV • Theophilus Cibber

... capable of accommodating a ballet of two hundred cooks. The elegantly proportioned drawing-room (to which a fourth wall has been since added) was the subject of special mention in several leading newspapers after the production of Epigrams at the Niobe Theatre; while each of the twelve bedrooms represents some recent triumph in the Problematical Drama. An attractive feature is the fitting of an artificial sunlight attachment to the outside of each window; while every room is provided ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156., March 5, 1919 • Various

... Thence he had embarked in a Greek vessel for Tripoli; had been nearly wrecked through the skipper's intemperance, and had finally been put ashore at Malta. He had also been Byron-smitten, and had followed in the wake of the author of "Childe Harold" to the Levant; had contemplated "the Niobe of nations" among the ruins of Rome; had witnessed the dance of the dervishes amid the fallen temples of Athens; and had "felt his patriotism gain force upon the plain of Marathon."[202] He had twice visited South America as the agent of a company formed for the working ...
— The Story of the Upper Canada Rebellion, Volume 1 • John Charles Dent

... first of all I'll try To show how this portentous quack beguiled the silly fools Whose tastes were nurtured, ere he came, in Phrynichus's schools. He'd bring some single mourner on, seated and veiled, 'twould be Achilles, say, or Niobe—the face you could not see— An empty show of tragic woe, ...
— The Frogs • Aristophanes

... red of their fair fleet limbs, were not really what they appeared to be. The curved brow of Apollo was like the sun's disc crescent over a hill at dawn, and his feet were as the wings of the morning, but he himself had been cruel to Marsyas and had made Niobe childless. In the steel shields of Athena's eyes there had been no pity for Arachne; the pomp and peacocks of Hera were all that was really noble about her; and the Father of the Gods himself had been too fond of the daughters of men. The two ...
— De Profundis • Oscar Wilde

... Niobe is feigned to have been turned into stone, from her never speaking, I suppose, in her grief. But they imagine Hecuba to have been converted into a bitch, from her rage and bitterness of mind. There are others who love to converse ...
— The Academic Questions • M. T. Cicero

... was due the assembling, under the Uffizi roof, of all the outlying pictures then belonging to the State, including those in the gallery of the hospital of S. Maria Nuova, which owned, among others, the famous Hugo van der Goes. It was he also who brought together from Rome the Niobe statues and constructed a room for them. Leopold II added ...
— A Wanderer in Florence • E. V. Lucas

... and crying like Niobe or Niagara, Mrs. Peters threw her arms around her lord and dissolved upon him. Mr. Peters would have striven to extricate the dollar bill from its deposit vault, but his arms were ...
— The Voice of the City • O. Henry

... mother who is left! She is weeping now alone, Like a Niobe bereft Of her own; And at length I dare to speak To the woman seated there, With the tears upon her ...
— Poems • John L. Stoddard

... Must I remember: why she would hang on him, As if encrease of Appetite had growne By what is fed on; and yet within a month? Let me not thinke on't: Frailty, thy name is woman. A little Month, or ere those shooes were old, With which she followed my poore Fathers body Like Niobe, all teares. Why she, euen she. (O Heauen! A beast that wants discourse of Reason Would haue mourn'd longer) married with mine Vnkle, My Fathers Brother: but no more like my Father, Then I to Hercules. ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare

... curious to notice that, at Rome, he singles out, like his cousin in 'Childe Harold' or 'Manfred', as the most striking objects, the general aspect of the "marbled wilderness", the moonlight view of the amphitheatre, the Laocoon, the Belvedere Apollo, and the group of Niobe and her daughters. One other taste he shared with Byron—he was a lover of dogs, and "Rover" was ...
— The Works Of Lord Byron, Letters and Journals, Vol. 1 • Lord Byron, Edited by Rowland E. Prothero

... all care for the Apollo Belvidere and the Venus of Milo because it tickles our vanity to view the physical perfection of the race to which we belong; it is our own possibilities of anguish that we pity in the Laocoon and the Niobe; it is"— ...
— The Philistines • Arlo Bates

... Their meals often passed in silence, and, from the grace of their attitudes, the beautiful proportions of their figures, and their naked feet, you might have fancied you beheld an antique group of white marble, representing some of the children of Niobe; if those eyes which sought to meet those smiles which were answered by smiles of the most tender softness, had not rather given you the idea of those happy celestial spirits, whose nature is love, and who are not obliged to have recourse to words for the expression of that intuitive ...
— Paul and Virginia • Bernardin de Saint Pierre

... who didst make thy vengeful might To Niobe and Tityos known, And Peleus' son, when Troy's tall height Was nigh his own, Victorious else, for thee no peer, Though, strong in his sea-parent's power, He shook with that tremendous spear The Dardan tower. He, like a pine by axes sped, Or ...
— Odes and Carmen Saeculare of Horace • Horace

... and Niobe were there, DISRAELI much the worse for wear, Samson before he'd cut his hair, Lord BYRON and Apollo; A female group surrounded by A camel (though I don't know why)— And all of them were ten feet high And ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, Feb. 26, 1919 • Various

... Heav'n and Earth! Must I remember? Why, she would hang on him, As if Increase of Appetite had grown By what it fed on; yet within a Month! Let me not think. Frailty! Thy Name is Woman. A little Month; e'er yet those Shoes were old, With which she follow'd my poor Father's Body, Like Niobe, all Tears; Why she, even she, (Oh Heav'n, a Beast that wants Discourse of Reason, Would have mourn'd longer) married with mine Uncle, My Father's Brother; but no more like my Father, Than I to Hercules. Within a Month, E'er yet the Salt of most unrighteous Tears Had left ...
— Some Remarks on the Tragedy of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark, Written by Mr. William Shakespeare (1736) • Anonymous

... say one single word; but that need not have been surprising—only how very straight her back was, how fixed her marble mouth and chin! It was more like Diana's head than ever—Diana when she was shooting all Niobe's daughters, thought Kate, in her dreamy, vague alarm. Then she looked at Josephine on the back seat, to see what she thought of it; but the brown sallow face in the little bonnet was quite still and like itself—beyond Kate's power ...
— Countess Kate • Charlotte M. Yonge

... of his day. They waste their time on the description of the marvels of art, the spectacular side of human civilization, and the surface-beauties of Nature.[342] They write trivial epics on the voyage of Argo, the sack of Troy, Niobe, Thyestes, Cadmus, Ariadne, the Battle of the Giants[343]. They tell of the terrors of the underworld[344], and the loves of the gods[345]: they seek the false rather than the true, they neglect the genuine wonders of Nature, the laws that ...
— Post-Augustan Poetry - From Seneca to Juvenal • H.E. Butler

... spite of such minor attractions as those of Niobe and her daughters, at once to achieve the Tribune, feeling, as poppa said, that it would be most unfortunate to have our admiration all used up before we reached it. The guide led the way, and it was beguiled with the fascinating experience of the Miss Binghams, who had ...
— A Voyage of Consolation - (being in the nature of a sequel to the experiences of 'An - American girl in London') • Sara Jeannette Duncan

... scholar. Since 1889 Lie has published "Evil Forces"—"Onde Magter," a volume of poetry, and two collections of shorter stories, "Otte Fortoellinger" and "Trold." He has recently completed another novel, which will shortly appear, and is, it is believed, to be entitled "Niobe." Jonas Lie completed his sixtieth year on the 6th of November last, and this interesting occasion has been celebrated by a festival given in his honour by the students of his old University at Christiania. A special number of Samtiden, ...
— The Visionary - Pictures From Nordland • Jonas Lie

... her laurels. Myrrha was followed by Marie Stuart, and Marie Stuart by Medea. In the latter part Madame Ristori excited the greatest enthusiasm. Ary Scheffer designed her costumes for her; and the Niobe that stands in the Uffizzi Gallery at Florence, suggested to Madame Ristori her famous pose in the scene with the children. She would not consent, however, to remain in France, and we find her subsequently ...
— Reviews • Oscar Wilde

... passion—the Fragments of Sophocles. Some day ("never," said Herbert) he would edit them. At present they were merely in his blood. With the zeal of a scholar and the imagination of a poet he reconstructed lost dramas—Niobe, Phaedra, Philoctetes against Troy, whose names, but for an accident, would have thrilled the world. "Is it worth it?" he cried. "Had we better be planting potatoes?" And then: "We had; but this is ...
— The Longest Journey • E. M. Forster

... cry once heard will never be forgotten. It seems like one in deep distress. "A stranger," says Waterton, "would never believe the sound to be the voice of a bird. He would say it was the last groan of a midnight murdered victim, or the cry of Niobe for her children before she was turned into stone. Suppose a person in great sorrow, who begins with a loud note, Ha, ha, ha, ha! and so on, each note lower and lower, till the last is scarcely heard, pausing a moment or two between every note, and some idea may be formed of the ...
— The Western World - Picturesque Sketches of Nature and Natural History in North - and South America • W.H.G. Kingston

... beneath the afflictive weight Of gloomy cares portentous of her fate;— Yet on her brow still soft Affection beams, Tho' Desperation prompts her sombre dreams. Parental feelings thrill her tortur'd breast, And all the frantic mother stands confest— A very Niobe—sad, hapless name! In figure, features, and in all the same: The same in all as Vengeance fierce pursued Far to a wild and cheerless solitude. For Salmo's bard has sung (by Heaven's decrees) In awful pomp she mounted on the breeze— Borne by the buoyant wind—a ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 17, No. 477, Saturday, February 19, 1831 • Various

... Madame de Camps, that in 1831 you and I went together to the Beaux-Arts to see the exhibition of works which were competing for the Grand Prix in sculpture? The subject given out for competition was Niobe weeping for her children. Do you also remember my indignation at one of the competing works around which the crowd was so compact that we could scarcely approach it? The insolent youth had dared to turn that sacred subject into jest! His Niobe was infinitely touching in her beauty ...
— The Deputy of Arcis • Honore de Balzac

... had converted to nearly as much use as ornament; for a plaster Apollo, in addition to watching the "arrow's deathful flight," had been appointed custodier of a Taglioni and a Mackintosh, which he wore with easy negligence over his head—a distracted Niobe, in the same manner, had undertaken the charge of a grey silk hat and a green umbrella. The Gladiator wore a lady's bonnet; the Farnese Hercules looked like an old-fashioned watchman, and sported a dreadnought coat. A glaring red paper gave a rich appearance ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXLII. Vol. LV. April, 1844 • Various

... perfectly conscious of the difference between Phidias and his pupils. Even now, if one takes the pains to think of it, the difference between such works as the so-called "Genius" of the Vatican and the Athenian marbles, or between the Niobe group at Florence and the Venus torso at Naples, for example, seems markedly individual enough, though the element of style is still to our eyes the most prominent quality in each. Indeed, if one really ...
— French Art - Classic and Contemporary Painting and Sculpture • W. C. Brownell

... took the heavy head on her lap, and looked up at the two men with a pale set face which indicated a resolve that neither of them was strong enough to overrule. They tried their utmost to persuade her, but in vain. She was fixed as a new Niobe—a stony image of young despair. So Roderick mounted his horse and rode off towards Lyndhurst, and honest Jack Wimble tied the other two horses to the gate, and took his stand beside them, a few paces from those two motionless figures on the ...
— Vixen, Volume I. • M. E. Braddon

... of the goddesses for their excellent good parts, and dancing amongst the rest, saith [5997]Constantine, "and for that cause flung headlong from heaven, and buried in a pit, but the earth took pity of them, and brought out cypress trees to preserve their memories." [5998]Niobe, Arachne, and Marsyas, can testify as much. But it is most grievous when it is for a kingdom itself, or matters of commodity, it produceth lamentable effects, especially amongst tyrants, in despotico Imperio, and such as are ...
— The Anatomy of Melancholy • Democritus Junior

... look like some one in a dream. I really might imagine you a piece of rare statuary—one of the Niobe group strayed from the Florentine gallery to meet the wistful gaze ...
— Marguerite Verne • Agatha Armour

... along their beat of boulevard, the idlers of the quarter dubbed them "the pair of nutcrackers," a nickname which makes any portrait of Schmucke quite superfluous, for he was to Pons as the famous statue of the Nurse of Niobe in the Vatican is to the ...
— Cousin Pons • Honore de Balzac

... you a perfect Niobe, if you go on at this rate, Cherry. Really, we must not have these lessons, if they excite ...
— The Pillars of the House, V1 • Charlotte M. Yonge

... suffer, it is also his fortune to forget. Oblivion and sorrow share our being, as Darkness and Light divide the course of time. It is not in human nature to endure extremities, and sorrows soon destroy either us or themselves. Perhaps the fate of Niobe is no fable, but a type of the callousness of our nature. There is a time in human suffering when succeeding sorrows are but like snow falling on an iceberg. It is indeed horrible to think that our peace of mind should arise, not ...
— Vivian Grey • The Earl of Beaconsfield

... grief of Niobe, fair Athen's queen, For her seven sons, magnanimous in field, For her seven daughters, fairer than the fairest, Is not to be compared with ...
— 2. Mucedorus • William Shakespeare [Apocrypha]

... had hated Glaucon? One answer remained,—unwittingly the athlete had offended some god, forgotten some vow, or by sheer good fortune had awakened divine jealousy. Poseidon had been implacable toward Odysseus, Athena toward Hector, Artemis toward Niobe,—Glaucon could only pray that his present welcome amongst the Persians might not draw down another ...
— A Victor of Salamis • William Stearns Davis

... you'd more pluck. If you're going to arrive at Brackenfield with a red nose and your eyes all bunged up, I'll disown you, or lose you on the way. Crystal clear, I will! I'll not let you start in a new school nicknamed 'Niobe', so ...
— A Patriotic Schoolgirl • Angela Brazil

... soul must have suffered!" cried the sympathetic Mademoiselle Servin, as the door closed on the Englishwoman. "I did not think it was in her to feel so deeply. I thought she was stone, and now I begin to think it must be of such stone as Niobe—the petrification of despair." ...
— Charlotte's Inheritance • M. E. Braddon

... entered and proceeded to shake the human bundle, calling the man again by name; when, after a little while, he disinterred his terrified face from amidst the folds of his coverings, looking as pale as a Niobe ...
— The Wreck of the Nancy Bell - Cast Away on Kerguelen Land • J. C. Hutcheson

... expression of the Soul that the creator of the Niobe has presented to us. All the means by which Art tempers even the Terrible, are here made use of. Mightiness of form, sensuous Grace, nay, even the nature of the subject-matter itself, soften the expression, through this, that Pain, transcending all expression, annihilates itself, ...
— The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries: - Masterpieces of German Literature Translated into English, Volume 5. • Various

... time to which Daedalus belonged the prehistoric period, and his works and those of other artists of his day have all perished. Two very ancient specimens of sculpture remain—the Lion Gate of Mycenae and the Niobe of Mount Sipylus; but as their origin is not known, and they may not be the work of Greek artists, it is best for us to pass on to about 700 B.C., when the records ...
— A History of Art for Beginners and Students - Painting, Sculpture, Architecture • Clara Erskine Clement

... be kinglier, say, than I am? Even so, you will not sit like Theseus. You would prove a model? The Son of Priam Has yet the advantage in arms' and knees' use. You're wroth—can you slay your snake like Apollo? You're grieved—still Niobe's the grander! You live—there's the Racers' frieze to follow: ...
— Introduction to Robert Browning • Hiram Corson

... of his intimate friends. After he had taken his station, and made the usual prelude, he commanded Cluvius Rufus, a man of consular rank, to proclaim in the theatre, that he intended to sing the story of Niobe. This he accordingly did, and continued it until nearly ten o'clock, but deferred the disposal of the crown, and the remaining part of the solemnity, until the next year; that he might have more frequent opportunities of performing. But that being ...
— The Lives Of The Twelve Caesars, Complete - To Which Are Added, His Lives Of The Grammarians, Rhetoricians, And Poets • C. Suetonius Tranquillus

... few drops of thy sprinkling," replied De Bracy; "but this damsel hath wept enough to extinguish a beacon-light. Never was such wringing of hands and such overflowing of eyes, since the days of St Niobe, of whom Prior Aymer told us. [30] A water-fiend hath ...
— Ivanhoe - A Romance • Walter Scott

... a bicycle; he's a trick rider, and does all sorts of stunts. And Venus is a summer girl, dressed up in a stunning gown and a Paris hat. And Hercules has a punching-bag—to make himself stronger, you know. And Niobe has quantities of handkerchiefs, dozens and dozens of them; she's an awfully ...
— Patty at Home • Carolyn Wells

... not as the author of all things, but of good only. We will not suffer the poets to say that he is the steward of good and evil, or that he has two casks full of destinies;—or that Athene and Zeus incited Pandarus to break the treaty; or that God caused the sufferings of Niobe, or of Pelops, or the Trojan war; or that he makes men sin when he wishes to destroy them. Either these were not the actions of the gods, or God was just, and men were the better for being punished. But that the deed was evil, and God the author, is a wicked, suicidal fiction which we will ...
— The Republic • Plato

... by the dozen and simpering china shepherdesses by the score. There were plaster casts of the whole of Signora Anina's family of nine children, from the elder fiery Achilles to the younger hysterical Niobe. There were perfume-bottles enough to start a coiffeur in business, and woolly lambs enough for a dozen pastoral poems or as many bucolic butchers. But the piano was piled high with Beethoven's sonatas and Chopin's delicious dream-music, while a deluge of French novels ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 26, July 1880. • Various

... on it," said the King, "some evil spirit is abroad this morning; and the wenches are all bewitched, I think. Cheer up, my girl. What, in the devil's name, has changed thee at once from a Nymph to a Niobe? If thou standest there longer thou wilt grow to the very marble wall—Or—oddsfish, George, have you been bird-bolting in ...
— Peveril of the Peak • Sir Walter Scott

... cigarette in his long holder and began to smoke a little moodily. It was about a week after his disturbing adventures in J. B. Wheeler's studio, and life had ceased for the moment to be a thing of careless enjoyment. Mr. Wheeler, mourning over his lost home-brew and refusing, like Niobe, to be comforted, has suspended the sittings for the magazine cover, thus robbing Archie of his life-work. Mr. Brewster had not been in genial mood of late. And, in addition to all this, Lucille was ...
— Indiscretions of Archie • P. G. Wodehouse

... lesson, when there was a knock at the door and the head came in with the Herr Insp. For a moment I thought he had come about that matter, and I went as white as a sheet (at least the girls say I did; Hella says I looked like Niobe mourning for her children). Thank goodness, the sum was an easy one, and besides I can always do sums; in Maths and French I am the best in the class. But the Herr Insp. saw that I had tears in my ...
— A Young Girl's Diary • An Anonymous Young Girl

... ordinarily affect it: I have several water-pots more or less, whereon is the story how Cassandra killed her son's, and the dead boys are so well embossed, you'd think them real. I have also a drinking cup left me by an advocate of mine, where Daedalus puts Niobe into the Trojan horse, as also that other of Hermerotes; that they may stand as a testimony, there's truth in cups, and all this massy; ror will I part with what I understand of ...
— The Satyricon • Petronius Arbiter

... in a westerly and north-westerly direction for long stretches of 3,500 m., 4,000 m., 2,000 m., until we came to an equilateral-triangular island, 300 m. each side—Erminia Island. A small channel not more than 20 m. across separated this from an irregularly-shaped island, 600 m. long—Niobe Island. After this came a low island of sand and gravel 5 ft. high and 300 m. long, with merely a few trees upon it, whereas the other two islands were covered with dense and most beautiful vegetation. The main channel of the ...
— Across Unknown South America • Arnold Henry Savage Landor

... doctor in the hall below. For goodness' sake, do try and look a little less like a modern Niobe when he comes up. Here, take baby," and she hugged the little fellow close and imprinted a kiss upon his dimpled cheek. "I must run down and detain him a moment until you can get ...
— 'Laramie;' - or, The Queen of Bedlam. • Charles King

... waiters; but that which actually at last put me in a fever was the sight of the female attendant of the ladies' cabin, whose form was so buckled up in stays of the most rigid order, that the heat, American-bred as she was, appeared to have rendered her a Niobe, for she was tall and as straight as a poplar-tree, and much of the colour of its inner rind. Oh! the heat, the intolerable heat, on Lake Erie that night! The worthy captain declared he had never experienced its like, and that as for rest it was ...
— Canada and the Canadians, Vol. 2 • Richard Henry Bonnycastle

... and bitter voice and, clinging to his arm, a girl in a cloak, whom I judged to be his sister. Her eyes were like pools of ink and tragic with imploring, Laughter would have made her lovely. As it was, with her lashes wet I could only think of Niobe and a passion of tears. I have rarely seen in a woman's face so much of the right kind of sweetness. It was an exquisite vigor of sweetness, not in the least the ...
— Kenny • Leona Dalrymple

... reading her face till doomsday. Besides, at the time you saw Gabrielle Desmarets, her mode of life had perhaps given to her an aspect not originally in her countenance. And I can only answer your poetic conceit by a poetic illustration—Niobe turned to stone; but she had a great many daughters before she petrified. Pardon me, if I would turn off by a jest a thought that I see would shock you, as myself, if gravely encouraged. Encourage it not. Let us suppose it only a chance that inquiry might confirm this conjecture; but let ...
— What Will He Do With It, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... heaped despair Of men and women writhing under blow, Harrowed and hideous in a filthy lair, Some personating Image wherein woe Was wrapt in beauty from offending much, They called it Cybele, or Niobe, Or laid it corpse-like on a bier for such, Where all the world might drop for Italy Those cadenced tears which burn not where they touch,— "Juliet of nations, canst thou die as we? And was the violet crown that crowned thy head So over-large, though new buds made it rough, It slipped ...
— The Poetical Works of Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Volume IV • Elizabeth Barrett Browning

... to slip away at that moment and hide behind one of the statues in the passage during the exit of his step-mother with the weeping Niobe; but when the sound of their footsteps had died away in the distance, he rushed into the oak parlour, and seizing Winnie round the waist, treated her to several convulsive hugs and various ...
— Aunt Judith - The Story of a Loving Life • Grace Beaumont

... a little, appeared the sweet shy face of my weeping Niobe of the park. I felt she saw and recognized me, and my face grew warmer at the thought. I made bold to ask one of the gentlemen standing near me who the lady might be, and not desiring to point at her, ...
— The Black Wolf's Breed - A Story of France in the Old World and the New, happening - in the Reign of Louis XIV • Harris Dickson

... forward, she pursued the innocent creatures, while the audience involuntarily closed their eyes and recoiled before the harrowing spectacle, which almost elicited a stifled cry of horror. But her fine genius invested the character with that classic dignity and beauty which, as in the Niobe group, veils the excess of human agony in the drapery of ...
— Great Singers, First Series - Faustina Bordoni To Henrietta Sontag • George T. Ferris

... said Cecilia, "should she assume the character of Hope? Could she not have been equally dejected and equally elegant as Niobe, or some ...
— Cecilia Volume 1 • Frances Burney

... evidence of Popol Vuh, the Quichua sacred book, is to be accepted) changed into stone the lion, serpent and tiger gods. The Standing Rock on the Upper Missouri is adored by the Indians, and decorated with coloured ribbons and skins of animals. This stone was a woman, who, like Niobe, became literally petrified with grief when her husband took a second wife. Another stone-woman in a cave on the banks of the Kickapoo was wont to kill people who came near her, and is even now approached with great respect. The Oneidas and Dacotahs claim descent ...
— Myth, Ritual, and Religion, Vol. 1 • Andrew Lang

... scene is spectacular, and the music is not striking—for Wagner, though Marschner or Spontini might have owned it with pride. The entry of the nobles bringing Frederick's corpse, the entry also of Elsa, "like Niobe, all tears," are theatrically powerful. Elsa's entry is a particularly beautiful example of what I have previously called Wagner's dramatict use of the leitmotiv. There are twenty bars of accompaniment, ...
— Richard Wagner - Composer of Operas • John F. Runciman

... to continue for some little time, if a man gets thoroughly interested in his subject and thinks he is talking rather well, before he discovers that his petite blonde divinity is either a frozen statue, or a veritable Niobe as to tears. And not one man in three hundred and nineteen ever suspects ...
— The Spinster Book • Myrtle Reed

... Niobe—weeping not for her children, she never had any, but for her youth. She is the religion of half Mayfair, though I don't know whether she's got a religion. Men who wouldn't look at her when she was sixteen, twenty-six, thirty-six, worship her now she's sixty. And ...
— The Woman With The Fan • Robert Hichens

... that the ship was more than a ship to him. Its death was as the death of many children. It might mean the death of many children. She stood over him, weeping for him like another Niobe among her slaughtered family. The business man in his tragedy had to have some woman at hand to do his weeping for him. He did not know how to sob ...
— The Cup of Fury - A Novel of Cities and Shipyards • Rupert Hughes

... Journeying beside the bowed painter (who names some of his fellow-sufferers), Dante's attention is directed by Virgil to the pavement beneath his feet, where he sees carved Briareus, Nimrod, Niobe, Arachne, Saul, etc.,—in short, all those who dared measure themselves with the gods or who cherished overweening opinions of their attainments. So absorbed is Dante in contemplation of these subjects that he starts when told ...
— The Book of the Epic • Helene A. Guerber

... disappointed not to find a tender Niobe, but feeling that his dignity demanded the first apology, he made none, only came leisurely in and laid himself upon the sofa with the singularly relevant remark, "We are going to have a ...
— Little Women • Louisa May Alcott

... pass friends, a multitude of strangers, the forests, the fields, the marching clouds. There is the ear gate, and therein go trooping all sweet songs, all conversation and eloquence, all laughter with Niobe's woe and grief. There is conversation, and thereby we cross the threshold of another's mind, and wander through the halls of memory and the chambers of imagination. But these faculties are limited. The ear was made for one sweet song, not for a thousand. Conversation is with one ...
— A Man's Value to Society - Studies in Self Culture and Character • Newell Dwight Hillis

... he dropped the lute to his feet with a clatter, and, wrapping himself in the syrma, stood as if petrified, like one of those statues of Niobe which ornamented the courtyard of the Palatine. Soon a storm of applause broke the silence. But in the distance this was answered by the howling of multitudes. No one doubted then that Caesar had given command to burn ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 03 • Various

... about two hours in the gallery, and for the first time saw the Niobe. This statue has been for a long time a favourite of my imagination, and I approached it, treading softly and slowly, and with a feeling of reverence; for I had an impression that the original Niobe would, like the original Venus, surpass all the casts and copies I had seen both ...
— The Diary of an Ennuyee • Anna Brownell Jameson

... pyles let no man raise To her name for after-dayes; Some kind woman, borne as she, Reading this, like Niobe, Shall turne marble, and become Both her mourner ...
— The Natural History of Wiltshire • John Aubrey

... was that it was a moonstruck man that slept in my room in Woolstone-lane. I knew that Cynthia's darts had been as effective as though he had been a son of Niobe!' ...
— Hopes and Fears - scenes from the life of a spinster • Charlotte M. Yonge

... means of retaliation. And it is odd that it was not till thirty years after that I perceived one. It then struck me that the eternal intercession might have been equally odious to her. To find herself prostrate for ever, weeping like Niobe, and, if the Gazette was to be believed, refusing to raise herself from the mud or the flinty pavement till I had been forgiven, and reinstated in my rank—ah, how loathsome that must have been to her! Ah, how loathsome the whole cycle of favours were to me, considering from whom they ...
— The Posthumous Works of Thomas De Quincey, Vol. 1 (2 vols) • Thomas De Quincey

... Campanile is still unfinished;" so he shapes his thoughts into his scenery. Shall man be satisfied in art with the crystallised joy of Apollo, or the petrified grief of Niobe, when there are a million more expressions of joy and grief to render? In that way felt Giotto and his crew. "We will paint the whole of man," they cried, "paint his new hopes and joys and pains, and never pause, because we shall never quite succeed. We will paint the soul in all its infinite ...
— The Poetry Of Robert Browning • Stopford A. Brooke

... poplars by the roadside, which, like mourners by an open grave, had been bowing their heads to the earth, and brandishing their long arms, with their silver tresses spread out on the winds, now stood as if dead, with an expression of dumb grief like the statue of Niobe on Sipylos. Only the trembling aspen shook ...
— Pan Tadeusz • Adam Mickiewicz

... seen; Queen of the nether skies, where half the year Thy silver beams descend, and light the gloomy sphere! Goddess of maids, and conscious of our hearts, So keep me from the vengeance of thy darts, 220 Which Niobe's devoted issue felt, When hissing through the skies the feather'd deaths were dealt; As I desire to live a virgin life, Nor know the name of mother or of wife. Thy votress from my tender years I am, And love, like ...
— The Poetical Works of John Dryden, Vol II - With Life, Critical Dissertation, and Explanatory Notes • John Dryden

... booth. As I drove along the ridge of Hempstead Hill, by Jack Straw's castle, I paused at the spot where Columbine and I had sat down so disconsolately in our ragged finery, and looked dubiously upon London. I almost expected to see her again, standing on the hill's brink, "like Niobe all tears;"—mournful as ...
— Tales of a Traveller • Washington Irving

... then she stood in silence, fixed and breathless; But presently the threatening arm slid down; The fierce, destroying frown Departed from her eyes, which took a deathless Expression of despair, like Niobe's— Her dead ones ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 1 July 1848 • Various

... vision of Louise de la Valliere, "like Niobe, all tears," flying to the arms of the abbess of the Visitandines for refuge from the anguish of beholding the insolent De Montespan enthroned in her place. It took all the eloquence and persuasive powers of Colbert to induce the fair weeper to return ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, December 1878 • Various

... grief has kept me dumb: Sure there's a lethargy in mighty woe, Tears stand congeal'd, and cannot flow; And the sad soul retires into her inmost room: Tears, for a stroke foreseen, afford relief; But, unprovided for a sudden blow, Like Niobe we marble grow; And ...
— The Poetical Works of John Dryden, Vol I - With Life, Critical Dissertation, and Explanatory Notes • John Dryden

... of skill betwixt Pallas and Arachne. Transformation of Arachne to a spider. Pride of Niobe. Her children slain by Apollo and Diana. Her change to marble. The Lycian peasants changed to frogs. Fate of Marsyas. Pelops. Story of Tereus, Procne, and Philomela. Their change to birds. Boreas and Orithyia. Birth of ...
— The Metamorphoses of Publius Ovidus Naso in English blank verse Vols. I & II • Ovid

... colored marble is not at all adapted to statuary, yet in this instance it gives a wonderful effect and is strikingly suitable, as the slight reddish colour gives a full idea of the flesh after the skin is torn off. It makes one shudder to look at it. In one of the halls are the statues of Niobe and her daughters, a beautiful group. Then there is the celebrated copy of the group of the Laocoon by Bandinelli, which none but the most perfect and skilful connoisseur could distinguish from the original. But it is totally impossible for me to describe the ...
— After Waterloo: Reminiscences of European Travel 1815-1819 • Major W. E Frye

... most fully with men and women in repose, when intellect, not the heart, rules. His prose has all the purity of outline and harmony of Greek plastic art. He could not wield the painter's brush, but the great sculptor had yet power to depict the grief of a "Niobe," the agony of the "Laocooen," or the majesty of a "Moses." Like a sculptor, he rarely ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 104, June, 1866 • Various

... huntress Diana—at one time haughty, rapid, imperious, with eyes and arrows that dart and kill. Harry watched and wondered at this young creature, and likened her in his mind to Artemis with the ringing bow and shafts flashing death upon the children of Niobe; at another time she was coy and melting as Luna shining tenderly upon Endymion. This fair creature, this lustrous Phoebe, was only young as yet, nor had nearly reached her full splendor: but crescent and brilliant, our young ...
— The History of Henry Esmond, Esq. • W. M. Thackeray

... nothing; she melts away into a name, to which we can fix no other characteristic by which to distinguish her. We recognize her no longer. Her position is that of an agonized mother; and we can no more fancy her under a different aspect, than we can imagine the statue of Niobe in a ...
— Characteristics of Women - Moral, Poetical, and Historical • Anna Jameson

... O Niobe! with what afflicted eyes Thee I beheld upon the pathway traced, Between thy seven and seven ...
— Dante's Purgatory • Dante

... paints the eastern skies, The sight is granted to thy longing eyes: But now the peaceful hours of sacred night Demand reflection, and to rest invite: Nor thou, O father! thus consumed with woe, The common cares that nourish life forego. Not thus did Niobe, of form divine, A parent once, whose sorrows equall'd thine: Six youthful sons, as many blooming maids, In one sad day beheld the Stygian shades; Those by Apollo's silver bow were slain, These, Cynthia's arrows stretch'd upon the plain: So was her pride chastised by wrath ...
— The Iliad of Homer • Homer

... way. She buried her little face on the pillow which so brief a while before had been pressed by the round head of William Bannister and mourned like a modern Niobe. ...
— The Coming of Bill • P. G. Wodehouse

... to admire his own unselfishness. Sometimes, after a drenching on account of the David Lockwin Annex—a costly fabric—Mr. Harpwood marvels that men should be created so for the solace of widows! The other ladies show their discontent. Fortunes are on every hand, and Esther is like Niobe, all tears. Why does Harpwood turn all tears, weeping for Lockwin? This causes Harpwood ...
— David Lockwin—The People's Idol • John McGovern

... yet a third time. The crazy "murderess" had veered her course, but what was that other object nearby? A Niobe weeping for her own and the world's sorrows! Or this one over here—a shrieking maniac calling on all Hell's legions for vengeance on fancied enemies! Beyond, gibbering victims of paresis, white-haired idiots, wasted sufferers ...
— Orphans of the Storm • Henry MacMahon

... instead of the pitiful, peddling, Anglicized Rome, first viewed in unutterable dismay from the coupe of the vettura,—a Rome all full of taverns, lodging-houses, cheating chambermaids, vilest valets de place, and fleas! A Niobe of nations indeed! Ah! why, secretly the heart blasphemed, did the sun omit to kill her too, when all the glorious race which wore her crown fell beneath his ray? Thank Heaven, it is possible to wash away all this dirt, and ...
— At Home And Abroad - Or, Things And Thoughts In America and Europe • Margaret Fuller Ossoli

... Juan every hilltop is crowned with these monuments of antiquity. It is like the castled Rhine. Ruins looking in the faces of ruins. It is a tragedy in stone. It is like Niobe and her daughters. Moreover, if we take this route we shall pass the Moquis. The independent Moquis are a fragment of the ancient ruling race of New Mexico. They live in stone-built cities on lofty eminences. They weave blankets of exquisite patterns ...
— Overland • John William De Forest

... peer in all the sea For verdure, vale, or river, flower or leaf,— If first to no man else, thou'rt first to me. New loves may come with duties, but the first Is deepest yet,—the mother's breath and smiles; Like that kind face and breast where I was nursed Is my poor land, the Niobe of isles. ...
— The World's Best Poetry, Volume 8 • Various

... maids. What's the use of being pretty, either, when Violet, though she be but a bag of bones, has got the Marquis? I have been out two seasons now, and nothing has come of all the trying. And yet I was the belle of the season, wasn't I, Alice?' And now, looking more than ever like a cameo Niobe, Olive stared at her sister piteously. 'Oh yes, Alice, I know I shall be an old maid; and isn't it dreadful, and I the belle of the season? It makes me so unhappy. No one ever heard of the belle (and I was the belle not of one, but of two ...
— Muslin • George Moore

... fell, pursued, and torn By Cynthia's wrath, more eager than his hounds; And here—ah me, the place is fatal!—see The weeping Niobe, translated hither From Phrygian mountains; and by Phoebe rear'd, As the proud ...
— Cynthia's Revels • Ben Jonson

... her with awe-stricken admiration. Her beauty was elevated into sublimity by the intensity of her suppressed passion. She was different to all other women that he had ever seen. His cousin was pretty, his uncle's wife was lovely, but Clara Talboys was beautiful. Niobe's face, sublimated by sorrow, could scarcely have been more purely classical than hers. Even her dress, puritan in its gray simplicity, became her beauty better than a more beautiful dress would have become a less ...
— Lady Audley's Secret • Mary Elizabeth Braddon

... wanted it to be known to Butch, and Coach Corridan, but I got all shivery when I tried to confess, and I—couldn't! Nay, Theophilus, you faithful friend, I'm so glad, old man, that beside yours truly, the celebrated Pollyanna resembles Niobe, weeping for her ...
— T. Haviland Hicks Senior • J. Raymond Elderdice

... Niobe of nations! there she stands, Childless and crownless, in her voiceless woe; An empty urn within her wither'd hands, Whose holy dust was scatter'd long ago. The Scipios' tomb contains no ashes now; The very sepulchres lie tenantless Of their heroic dwellers; dost thou flow, ...
— A Love Story • A Bushman

... What sorrows have ye sung, And tragic stories, chronicled in stone,— Sad Philomel restored her ravish'd tongue, And transform'd Niobe in dumbness shown; Sweet Sappho on her love forever calls, And Hero on ...
— The Poetical Works of Thomas Hood • Thomas Hood

... magnanimous and it was a disinterested resolution, and if her fault was grievous, grievously hath she answered it. When this war occurred, she, beyond dispute, occupied the primacy in the Union; she is to-day the Niobe of nations, veiled and weeping the loss of her sons, her property confiscated and her homes in ashes. Perhaps, you may say, the punishment is not disproportionate to her trespass, but nevertheless there she is, and I say for her, that Virginia is loyal to the Union. [Applause.] And never more, ...
— Modern Eloquence: Vol III, After-Dinner Speeches P-Z • Various

... the trout and the pike. If a man loves prints you have an excellent clue to his character; take for instance, the inventory of mine at College:—Four views of the ruins at Rome; Charles Fox; Belisarius; Niobe; and four Landscapes of Poussin; and Claude Lorraine. These last are of constant source of pleasure. I become acquainted with the inhabitants in every house, and know every inch of ground in the prospect. They have formed ...
— Reminiscences of Samuel Taylor Coleridge and Robert Southey • Joseph Cottle

... eleventh chapter of his Art of Poetry, wherein we find the condemnation of Le Cid"; in the name of Plato, "in the tenth book of his Republic"; in the name of Marcellinus, "as may be seen in the twenty-seventh book"; in the name of "the tragedies of Niobe and Jephthah"; in the name of the "Ajax of Sophocles"; in the name of "the example of Euripides"; in the name of "Heinsius, chapter six of the Constitution of Tragedy; and the younger Scaliger in his poems"; and finally, in the name of the Canonists and Jurisconsults, under the title ...
— Prefaces and Prologues to Famous Books - with Introductions, Notes and Illustrations • Charles W. Eliot

... her. He arrived at Patesville by an early morning train before the town was awake, and walked unnoticed from the station to his mother's house. His meeting with his sister was not without emotion: he embraced her tenderly, and Rena became for a few minutes a very Niobe of grief. ...
— The House Behind the Cedars • Charles W. Chesnutt

... gods have shown, In turning Niobe to stone: But man's superior power you see, Who turns a ...
— The Life And Letters Of Maria Edgeworth, Vol. 1 • Maria Edgeworth

... Niobe, which follows, is one of the most perfect works that ever grew into life under a sculptor's chisel. Mutilated as it is, without head and arms, I never saw a more expressive figure. Ilioneus, the son of Niobe, is represented ...
— Views a-foot • J. Bayard Taylor

... to him in the next, by the unquenchable worm—as he'll find out when he tries his 'down, dog' tricks; his 'drop that, will you?' None of that down there in the fire. What says the Book? My dear, my dear," and she took the girl in her arms with a fine look about her of Niobe amid arrows, "I've a bosom for your head and a roof to shelter us both, and we'll see what we shall see. There's castles and towers for the great oneyers and their minions; but mine is in the Fulham Road, ...
— Rest Harrow - A Comedy of Resolution • Maurice Hewlett

... stranger. The salix babylonica, or the weeping willow, in its geographical range, sweeps through the plains of Judea, and by the ruins of Babylon, from the verge of the Mediterranean to the frontiers of Japan—a lovely line of beauty—the Niobe of vegetation! Sad memorial of the mournful march of the captive Hebrews. It is, we think, a very striking circumstance, that these countries should even now retain such unchanged lineaments of their ancient ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 19, - Issue 553, June 23, 1832 • Various

... the thought of the people. Admit all Dickens' faults twice over, we still have one of the greatest writers of modern times. Such people as these creations of Dickens never lived, says your little critic. Nor was Prometheus, type of the spirit of man, nor was Niobe, mother of all mothers, a truthful picture of the citizen one was likely to meet often during a morning's stroll through Athens. Nor grew there ever a wood like to the Forest of Arden, though every Rosalind ...
— Idle Ideas in 1905 • Jerome K. Jerome

... the mother plead with her son, obey the promptings of nature, and bid him live for her sake. She had stood through all the fearful scene, not like a Niobe in tears, but with hands clasped and eyes upraised, as one who sees the invisible, and drinks in courage from words inaudible to other ears than her own. She heard the king, approached her young son, laid her hand on his shoulder, and gazed on him with unutterable ...
— Hebrew Heroes - A Tale Founded on Jewish History • AKA A.L.O.E. A.L.O.E., Charlotte Maria Tucker

... Lawless—I say, Lawless!" "Well, what's the row?" was the reply. "Have the French landed? or is the kitchen chimney on fire? eh! What do I behold! Fairlegh, lightly and elegantly attired in nothing but his shirt, and Thomas standing like Niobe, the picture of woe! Here's a ...
— Frank Fairlegh - Scenes From The Life Of A Private Pupil • Frank E. Smedley

... enacting Niobe, I shall believe that you are chagrined at the prospect of having the sister you have repeatedly besought me to give you," he said, playfully—for him. "You have not asked me her name, and where she lives. What has become of your curiosity? ...
— At Last • Marion Harland

... he laid out the money in a silver pencil-case; which article, after he had related the above anecdote, he took out of his pocket and assured me he never would part with. He then favoured me with the following history of Woollett's plate of the 'Niobe,' and, as it is interesting, I shall endeavour to relate it in ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury

... of Niobe down to the best song in the "Princess," how many beautiful lines have been devoted to those outward ...
— Guy Livingstone; - or, 'Thorough' • George A. Lawrence

... to her feet, and pressed her children to her arms with an expression as terrified and full of agony as that of the noble and touching statue of the Greek Niobe. ...
— Frederick the Great and His Court • L. Muhlbach

... sir. My fellow is of no more use to me at sea than an automaton would be, and I shall be glad to get rid of his rueful countenance. He is a capital servant on terra firma, but a perfect Niobe ...
— The Redskins; or, Indian and Injin, Volume 1. - Being the Conclusion of the Littlepage Manuscripts • James Fenimore Cooper

... before the wind, we fired broadsides as we cracked on. It was tit-for-tat for a while with splinters flying and neither of us in the eye of advantage, but at last the Araminta shot away the main-mast and wheel of the Niobe, and she wallowed like a tub in the trough of the sea. We bore down on her, and our carronades raked her like a comb. Then we fell thwart her hawse, and tore her up through her bowline-ports with a couple of thirty-two-pounders. But before we could board her she veered, lurched, ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker

... wide the doors for us and, passing reverently inside, we are confronted by the magnificent equestrian statue of Mr. Bookham Pryce, the founder of the firm. This masterpiece of the Post-Cubist School was originally entitled, "Niobe Weeping for her Children," but the gifted artist, in recognition of Mr. Pryce's princely offer of one thousand guineas for the group, waived his right ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 159, July 7th, 1920 • Various

... Dieu! woman never held man—or king—by sighing," she thought, and laughed, remembering the Countess of Chateaubriant; a veritable Niobe when the monarch had ...
— Under the Rose • Frederic Stewart Isham

... children, has a barren Juno. The queen is compounded of Juno, Venus, and Minerva. His poem on the dutchess of Grafton's lawsuit, after having rattled awhile with Juno and Pallas, Mars and Alcides, Cassiope, Niobe, and the Propetides, Hercules, Minos, and Rhadamanthus, at last concludes ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D. in Nine Volumes - Volume the Eighth: The Lives of the Poets, Volume II • Samuel Johnson

... her following his body 'like Niobe, all tears.' And then within a month—'O God! a beast would have mourned longer'—she married again, and married Hamlet's uncle, a man utterly contemptible and loathsome in his eyes; married him in what to Hamlet was incestuous wedlock;[43] ...
— Shakespearean Tragedy - Lectures on Hamlet, Othello, King Lear, Macbeth • A. C. Bradley

... What! would they spread their earthquake even o'er cash? And when land crumbles, bid firm paper crash?[335] So rent may rise, bid Bank and Nation fall, 640 And found on 'Change a Fundling Hospital? Lo, Mother Church, while all religion writhes, Like Niobe, weeps o'er her offspring—Tithes;[336] The Prelates go to—where the Saints have gone, And proud pluralities subside to one; Church, state, and faction wrestle in the dark, Tossed by the deluge in their common ark. Shorn of her bishops, banks, and dividends, Another Babel soars—but ...
— The Works of Lord Byron - Poetry, Volume V. • Lord Byron

... bulls afresh, with the blackest eyes he could paint (because he had none himself), and he got the angels down from Lincoln choir, and gilded their wings like his gingerbread of old times; and he sent for everything else he could think of, and put it in his booth. There are the casts of Niobe and her children; and the Chimpanzee; and the wooden Caffres and New-Zealanders; and the Shakespeare House; and Le Grand Blondin, and Le Petit Blondin; and Handel; and Mozart; and no end of shops, and buns, and beer; and all the little-Pthah-worshippers ...
— The Crown of Wild Olive • John Ruskin

... shall number to my rest (As many must not see me) shall, though too late, Though in my evening, yet perceive a will, Since I can do no good, because a woman, Reach constantly at something that is near it; I will redeem one minute of my age, Or, like another Niobe, I'll weep, Till I ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 4 • Charles Dudley Warner

... Chepstow?" repeated Cleek, glancing over at the countess, who stood, a very Niobe in her grief and despair, holding out two imploring hands in silent supplication. "That is your ladyship's ...
— Cleek: the Man of the Forty Faces • Thomas W. Hanshew



Words linked to "Niobe" :   mythical being, Greek mythology



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