"Oedipus" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... a mountain near Thebes. Apollo told Creon that she could not be vanquished, till some one had expounded her riddle. The riddle was—"What creature is that, which has four legs in the morning, two at noon, and three at night?" Oedipus expounded it, telling her it was a man,—who when a child, creepeth on all fours; in his middle age, walketh on two legs, and in his old age, two and a staff. This put the Sphynx into a great rage, who, finding her riddle solved, threw herself down and ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 10, Issue 265, July 21, 1827 • Various
... They were the intellectual all of our ancestors. They are but a part of our treasures. Over what tragedy could Lady Jane Grey have wept, over what comedy could she have smiled, if the ancient dramatists had not been in her library? A modern reader can make shift without Oedipus and Medea, while he possesses Othello and Hamlet. If he knows nothing of Pyrgopolynices and Thraso, he is familiar with Bobadil, and Bessus, and Pistol, and Parolles. If he cannot enjoy the delicious irony of Plato, he may find some compensation in that of Pascal. ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 2 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... letter S is an emblem of a somewhat different kind; and, as it proves, more difficult to bring to a satisfactory solution than the symbols of heraldic blazon. As an initial it will bear many interpretations—it may be said, an indefinite number, for every new Oedipus has some fresh conjecture to propose. And this brings me to render the account required by Dr. Rock of the reasons which led me to conclude that the letter S originated with the office of Seneschallus or Steward. I must still refer to the Gentleman's ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 51, October 19, 1850 • Various
... of management caused me some amusement. The solemn clang of a gong presaging doom as dire as OEDIPUS'S (and incidentally inaudible to cigarette smokers in the foyer) gives notice of the resumption of the play, while at the end of the Acts the curtain flutters up and down at a feverish pace as if the idea was to get in as many "calls" as possible before the applause stops. Are we as guileless ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, June 25, 1919 • Various
... the emotions are to elevate, and the tragedy is to please us by the tears it draws! Imagine our shock if a poet were to place on the stage some wise gentleman with whom we dined yesterday, and who was discovered to have killed his father and married his mother. But when Oedipus commits those unhappy mistakes nobody is shocked. Oxford in the nineteenth century is a long way off from Thebes three thousand or ...
— Kenelm Chillingly, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... Pitt. It is true he might have been that keystone now; and would have accepted it, but not without Lord Temple's consent, and Lord Temple positively refused. There was evidently some trick in this, but what is past my conjecturing. 'Davus sum, non OEdipus'. ...
— The PG Edition of Chesterfield's Letters to His Son • The Earl of Chesterfield
... is all charmingly simple and easy! The beginners of the English novel had only a few little tricks in their box in the way of incident and are for the most part innocent of plot in the Wilkie Collins sense of the word. The opinion of Coleridge that the "Oedipus Tyrannus," "The Alchemist" and "Tom Jones" are "the three most perfect plots ever planned" is a curious comment upon his conception of fiction, since few stories have been more plotless than Fielding's best book. The fact is, biographical fiction like ...
— Masters of the English Novel - A Study Of Principles And Personalities • Richard Burton
... anxious to retain his services, and a sort of general office seems to have been created for him, the duties of which were to supply music for any dramatic works which the king took it into his head to have so embellished. And, though it is to this that we owe the noble "Antigone," "Oedipus," "Athalie," "Midsummer Night's Dream," and other music, this work to dictation was very worrying, and one cannot think without impatience of the annoyances to which he was subjected. The king could not understand why he shrank from writing music to the choruses of AEschylus's "Eumenides." ...
— Great Men and Famous Women, Vol. 8 (of 8) • Various
... escaped the foul touch of the Freudians. Dr. Alfred Robitsek in "Symbolisches Denken in der chemischen Forschung," Imago, V. I, p. 83, has deduced from it that Kekule was morally guilty of the crime of OEdipus as well ...
— Creative Chemistry - Descriptive of Recent Achievements in the Chemical Industries • Edwin E. Slosson
... anguish thus Still brood o'er OEdipus? And weave enigmas to mislead anew, And stultify the blind Dull heads of human-kind, And inly make thy moan, That, mid the hated crew, Whom thou so long couldst vex, Bewilder and perplex, Thou yet couldst find a subtler ...
— Ancient Egypt • George Rawlinson
... the Eumenides, but in deathless tenacity, the rich aroma of Sophocles' narcissus, and the soft crocus light linger there still; while from thickets of olive, nightingales break their hearts in song, as thrilling as the melody that smote the ears of doomed and dying Oedipus. ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson
... of OEdipe, by Voltaire, affords room for the display of the most characteristic qualities of Talma and Mademoiselle Georges; and when we saw them act OEdipus and Jocasta in this piece, we agreed that there were certainly no actor and actress, of equally transcendent merit, who act together in either of the London theatres. The distress of the play is of too horrible and repulsive a kind, we should conceive, to be ever ...
— Travels in France during the years 1814-1815 • Archibald Alison
... animates Sophocles breaks out with incomparable beauty in the last words of oedipus, when the old banished king sees through the darkness of death a mysterious light dawn, which illumines his blind eyes, and which brings to him the assurance of a ...
— Christianity and Greek Philosophy • Benjamin Franklin Cocker
... structure and relations of other European nations—would be justifiable. But to be justifiable they must be adequate; and to be adequate they must be unexpected and thorough. What should they be? The OEdipus who solves this riddle for France is the man of the hour. He was found in Bonaparte. What mean these ringing words from the headquarters at Nice, which, on March twenty-seventh, 1796, fell on the ears ...
— The Life of Napoleon Bonaparte - Vol. I. (of IV.) • William Milligan Sloane
... cultivated that undue tenderness, deplored by Montaigne, which we now regard as almost normal in family life, and solemnly label, if we happen to be psycho-analysts, the Oedipus-complex or the Electra-complex. Sexual love is closely related to parental love; the tender emotion, which is an intimate part of parental love, is also an intimate part of sexual love, and two emotions which are each closely related to a third emotion cannot ...
— Little Essays of Love and Virtue • Havelock Ellis
... Franks had killed every one of the Saracens; how Ganelon was accused of treachery, tried by combat, and sentenced to be torn to pieces by wild horses. The story is a true tragedy, terrible as the tragedy of Oedipus. From another source we gather the ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 5 of 8 • Various
... in an Irish romance is in itself no proof of the Druidic origin of that form of the romance, nor even of the existence of that element in the romance's earliest form: upon such a principle the archaic character of the motif of the "Oedipus Coloneus" would prove it to be the oldest of the Greek tragedies, while as a matter of fact it seems to be doubtful whether the introduction of this motif into the story of Oedipus was not due to Sophocles himself, although of course he drew the idea of it, if not from the original legend of Oedipus, ...
— Heroic Romances of Ireland Volumes 1 and 2 Combined • A. H. Leahy
... Eyes as well as Courage to copy out a 'brouillon,' I will see what can be done. Only, you and Professor Goodwin must not feel any way bound to print them, even if you both approved of them; and that is not at all certain. How would you two Scholars approve of two whole Scenes omitted in either OEdipus (as I know to be the case), and the Choephori {259a} reduced almost to an Act? So that would be, I doubt. Then, as you know, Sophocles does not strike Fire out of the Flint, as old AEschylus does; and though my Sophocles has lain by me (lookt at now and then) ...
— Letters of Edward FitzGerald in Two Volumes - Vol. II • Edward FitzGerald
... bellies, and let the bell-wether go over their backs. The application of this dilemma he left to the house."[310] It must be confessed that the bearing of the point was more ambiguous than some of the important ones that formed the matters of their debates. Davus sum, non Oedipus! It is probable that this fantastical politician did not vote with the opposition; for Eliot, Wentworth, and Coke, protested against the interpretation ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... hypocrisy, and other vices, considered as ridiculous. It would be safer to double and treble all the tragedies of our greatest poets, and use all their subjects over and over, as has been done with Oedipus and Sophonisba, than to bring again upon the stage, in five acts, a Miser, a Citizen turned gentleman, a Tartuffe, and other subjects sufficiently known. Not that these popular vices are less capable of diversification, or are less varied by different circumstances, than the ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson in Nine Volumes - Volume V: Miscellaneous Pieces • Samuel Johnson
... then from Oiolycos was begotten Aigeus, after whom are called the Aigeidai, a powerful clan 132 in Sparta: and the men of this tribe, since their children did not live to grow up, established by the suggestion of an oracle a temple to the Avenging Deities 133 of Laios and OEdipus, and after this the same thing was continued 134 in Thera by the descendants of ...
— The History Of Herodotus - Volume 1(of 2) • Herodotus
... own vices, and existing in the greatest perfection which it can at any given time conceive. Somewhat the same lesson as that of the Oresteia is taught later, with more of sweetness and harmony, but not with more force, in the Oedipus Coloneus of Sophokles. And in Pindar we see the same tendencies inchoate. Like Aeschylus he does by implication subordinate to morality both politics and religion. He ignores or flatly denies tales that ...
— The Extant Odes of Pindar • Pindar
... the OEdipus Saga enthralled the imagination of antiquity and inspired dramas amongst the world's masterpieces. Later forms of the tale may be found ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn - Volume V • Aphra Behn
... weary, after an encounter with a band of dissatisfied performers in the library, said: "One could have put one's heart into making an Antigone of her; that's what I wanted—the filial Antigone, leading Oedipus through the olive groves of Colonus. It's bitter, instead of that, to have to rig Mrs. Scott out as Cassandra; will you believe it, Mary, she insists on being Cassandra—with that figure, that nose! And she has fixed her heart on the scene where Cassandra stands in the car outside ...
— A Fountain Sealed • Anne Douglas Sedgwick
... London, I think more calculated for an audience in the university. The subject is the Music of the Grecian Theatre; in which I have, I hope naturally, introduced the various characters with which the chorus was concerned, as OEdipus, Medea, Electra, Orestes, etc. etc. The composition too is probably more correct, as I have chosen the ancient tragedies for my models, and only copied the ...
— The Poetical Works of William Collins - With a Memoir • William Collins
... once allow Mr. Jowett most of what he asks. We may freely grant that if the Tragedies of Sophocles had exercised the same wondrous dominion over the world which the Books of the Bible have exercised:—if Oedipus and Jocasta and Creon; if Theseus and Dejanira and Hercules; if Ajax, Ulysses and Minerva;—had done for the world what Enoch and Noah;—what Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob;—what Joseph, and Joshua, and Hannah, and Samuel, and David;—what Elijah ...
— Inspiration and Interpretation - Seven Sermons Preached Before the University of Oxford • John Burgon
... use even of mechanical contrivances to delude the imagination of the spectator, and to entice him away from the associations of everyday life. The cothurnus lifted the actor to heroic stature, the mask prevented the ludicrous recognition of a familiar face in "Oedipus" and "Agamemnon"; it precluded grimace, and left the countenance as passionless as that of a god; it gave a more awful reverberation to the voice, and it was by the voice, that most penetrating and sympathetic, one might almost say incorporeal, organ of expression, that the great ...
— The Function Of The Poet And Other Essays • James Russell Lowell
... is already to hand in the original romances of our present period; and a wonderfully great and perfect idea it is. Not the much and justly praised arrangement and poetical justice of the Oresteia or of the story of Oedipus excel the Arthuriad in what used to be called "propriety" (which has nothing to do with prudishness), while both are, as at least it seems to me, far inferior in varied and poignant interest. That the attainment of the Graal, the healing of the maimed king, and the fulfilling of the ...
— The Flourishing of Romance and the Rise of Allegory - (Periods of European Literature, vol. II) • George Saintsbury
... there comes into the window of the Eyes the semblance of it, unless it be repressed within, and shut from view by great power of will. Wherefore some one formerly plucked out his eyes that an inward shame should not appear without, as Statius the Poet says of the Theban Oedipus when he says that with eternal night he ...
— The Banquet (Il Convito) • Dante Alighieri
... is greatly to be pitied;—even Friedrich pities him, the martyr of bodily ailments and of spiritual; and sends him "extract of quinquina" at one time. [Letter of Voltaire's.] Three miserable months; which only an OEdipus could read, and an OEdipus who had nothing else to do! The issue is well known. Of precise or indisputable, on the road thither, here are fractions that ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XVI. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—The Ten Years of Peace.—1746-1756. • Thomas Carlyle
... Eucharist[5]. For "those things" says St. Cyril of Alexandria "are generally derided, which are not understood" adv. Julianum. The pagans, at the instigation, it would appear, of the Jews and early heretics, availed themselves of this secret discipline to charge the Christians with the detestable crimes of Oedipus and Thyestes, pretending that in their secret assemblies they murdered an infant covered with flour, and drank his blood. (Cecilius ap. Minut. Fel.) It was solely with the view of refuting these calumnies, ...
— The Ceremonies of the Holy-Week at Rome • Charles Michael Baggs
... about psychology, the world will be rather dull. The Freudians have said that the play of Hamlet is the result of Shakespeare's Oedipus Complex. If Shakespeare had not had an unconscious hatred of his father, Hamlet would never have been written. In other words, if Bacon had discovered the psychology of the unconscious, Shakespeare might ...
— A Dominie in Doubt • A. S. Neill
... he said, rather affectedly, 'I should prefer to see the quotations given in the original language;' and he was rash enough to instance the print from the death of OEdipus, as a case in point. The unfortunate part of this was, that, on the plate in question, the passage was really engraved in Greek characters under the mezzotint. Fuseli heard of this criticism: 'I will soon bring his knowledge to the test,' ...
— Art in England - Notes and Studies • Dutton Cook
... (ours?) were even to strike him in his shame Or (as he thinks) his glory, on the stage, And so too truly make't a Tragedy; When all the people cannot chuse but clap So sweet a close, and 'twill not Caesar be That shall be slaine, a Roman Prince; Twill be Alcmaeon or blind Oedipus. ...
— Old English Plays, Vol. I - A Collection of Old English Plays • Various
... character of early riddles is seen in that proposed by the Sphinx to OEdipus. "What is that which goes on four legs in the morning, on two in the middle of the day, and on three in the evening?" And in the riddle of Cleobulus, one of the ...
— History of English Humour, Vol. 1 (of 2) - With an Introduction upon Ancient Humour • Alfred Guy Kingan L'Estrange
... go and tell Gruben all about it. But how should I be able to escape from the house? The Professor might return at any moment. And suppose he called me? And suppose he tackled me again with this logomachy, which might vainly have been set before ancient Oedipus. And if I did not obey his call, who could answer for what ...
— A Journey to the Interior of the Earth • Jules Verne
... married her. Wretched man, what is he to do with these exigeant and never-to-be-satisfied women? Our mothers pined because our fathers drank and were rakes. Our wives pine because we are virtuous but inadequate. Who is this sphinx, this woman? Where is the Oedipus that will solve her riddle of happiness, and then strangle her?—only to marry his ...
— The Lost Girl • D. H. Lawrence
... Scrutator; and the other signed Indagator, upon a passage in Tacitus. I might add, what attracted considerable notice at the time, and that is my paper in the Gentleman's Magazine, upon the inscription of OElia Lelia, which I subscribed OEdipus.So you see I am not an apprentice in the mysteries of author-craft, and must necessarily understand the taste and temper of the times. And now, once more, what do you ...
— The Antiquary, Complete • Sir Walter Scott
... darkness, and as the vile man, clearly one of St Paul's 'god haters'" (that time the Sixth were reading the "Romans") "thundered by, he smote him with a stone above the eye, and left him discomfited and, like OEdipus, well nigh blind. ...
— The Loom of Youth • Alec Waugh
... son of OEdipus, I felt terror when I heard the din from the clatter of the cars, when the wheel-whirling naves rattled, and [the din] of the fire-wrought bits, the rudders[110] of the horses, passing through their ...
— Prometheus Bound and Seven Against Thebes • Aeschylus
... and his name is Talma," exclaimed Napoleon, smiling. "These German princes may take a lesson from Talma as to the manner in which a king should bear himself in prosperity as well as in adversity. You will, therefore, perform Oedipus, Cinna, Mohammed, and Andromache, that kings may see how true monarchs ought to behave. I could have wished, however, that you had prepared not only the tragedies of Racine, Corneille, and Voltaire, but also some of ...
— Napoleon and the Queen of Prussia • L. Muhlbach
... outcast children in culture-lore are Krishna, Zeus, Paris, Oedipus, King Arthur, Claribel's child in the 'Faerie Queene' (canto xii.), etc. For the stories in folk-lore, see the English Folk-lore Journal. For the solar theory of the origin of this story, see Cox, 'Mythology ...
— Shakespeare Study Programs; The Comedies • Charlotte Porter and Helen A. Clarke
... of a single life, the genius of ages and millions. Our sense of the dignity of human nature is exalted by the simple recollection, that Isocrates [143] was the companion of Plato and Xenophon; that he assisted, perhaps with the historian Thucydides, at the first representation of the Oedipus of Sophocles and the Iphigenia of Euripides; and that his pupils Aeschines and Demosthenes contended for the crown of patriotism in the presence of Aristotle, the master of Theophrastus, who taught at Athens with the founders of the Stoic and Epicurean sects. ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 4 • Edward Gibbon
... "It would take Oedipus himself all his time to do that,"—said Gervase, forcing a laugh which had no mirth in it, for he was conscious of a vaguely unpleasant sensation—a chill, as of some dark presentiment, which oppressed his mind. "When ...
— Ziska - The Problem of a Wicked Soul • Marie Corelli
... taking Tragedies among the Ancients were built on this last sort of Implex Fable, particularly the Tragedy of Oedipus, which proceeds upon a Story, if we may believe Aristotle, the most proper for Tragedy that could be invented by the Wit of Man. [3] I have taken some Pains in a former Paper to shew, that this kind of Implex Fable, wherein the Event is ...
— The Spectator, Volume 2. • Addison and Steele
... the grandchildren became grannies they repeated the same old tales to the new generation. Homer knew the stories and made up the 'Odyssey' out of half a dozen of them. All the history of Greece till about 800 B.C. is a string of the fairy tales, all about Theseus and Heracles and Oedipus and Minos and Perseus is a Cabinet des Fees, a collection of fairy tales. Shakespeare took them and put bits of them into 'King Lear' and other plays; he could not have made them up himself, great as he was. Let ladies and gentlemen think of this when they sit down to write fairy ...
— The Lilac Fairy Book • Andrew Lang
... representation of classic tragedy, and which is perhaps the perfectest reproduction of the Greek theatre in the world. Alfieri is the only poet of modern times, whose works have been judged worthy of this stage, and no drama has been given on it since 1857, when the "Oedipus Tyrannus" of Sophocles was played. We found it very silent and dusty, and were much sadder as we walked through its gayly frescoed, desolate anterooms than we had been in the Campo Santo. Here used to sit, ...
— Italian Journeys • William Dean Howells
... in one of his manuscript books some remarks on a line in the "Oedipus Tyrannus", which show at once the critical subtlety of Shelley's mind, and explain his apprehension of those 'minute and remote distinctions of feeling, whether relative to external nature or the living beings ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Volume I • Percy Bysshe Shelley
... has seen it five times already. I loathed its cleverness. I loathed the element of surprise in it. I laughed, and loathed my own laughter. The man who wrote it would put cap and bells on St. Francis of Assisi and make a mock of OEdipus." ...
— The Way of Ambition • Robert Hichens
... this faculty became positively distressing to me: at night, when I lay awake in bed, vast processions passed along in mournful pomp; friezes of never-ending stories, that to my feelings were as sad and solemn as if they were stories drawn from times before OEdipus or Priam, before Tyre, before Memphis. And at the same time a corresponding change took place in my dreams; a theatre seemed suddenly opened and lighted up within my brain, which presented nightly spectacles of more than earthly splendour. And the four following facts may ...
— Confessions of an English Opium-Eater • Thomas De Quincey
... well felt and well said; a little less technically than it is my weakness to desire to see it put, but clear and adequate. You are very right to express your admiration for the resource displayed in OEdipus King; it is a miracle. Would it not have been well to mention Voltaire's interesting onslaught, a thing which gives the best lesson of the difference of neighbour arts? - since all his criticisms, which had been fatal to a narrative, ...
— The Letters of Robert Louis Stevenson - Volume 1 • Robert Louis Stevenson
... of Polynices, one of OEdipus's sons, means in the original "much quarrelling." In the altercations between the two brothers, in AEschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides, this conceit is employed; and it is remarkable, that so poor a conundrum could not be rejected ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part D. - From Elizabeth to James I. • David Hume
... so dreaded that few dared so much as to name them. They were supposed to be constantly hovering about those who had been guilty of any enormous crime. Thus Orestes, having murdered his mother Clytemnestra, was haunted by the Furies. OEdipus, indeed, when blind and raving, went into their grove, to the astonishment of all the Athenians, who durst not so much as behold it. The Furies were reputed so inexorable, that if any person polluted with murder, incest, or any flagrant impiety, entered the temple which Orestes ...
— Roman Antiquities, and Ancient Mythology - For Classical Schools (2nd ed) • Charles K. Dillaway
... a little circumstance which now occurs to me respecting the kings manufactured by Napoleon. I recollect that during the King of Etruria's stay in Paris—the First Consul went with that Prince to the Comedie Francaise, where Voltaire's 'OEdipus' was performed. This piece, I may observe, Bonaparte liked better than anything Voltaire ever wrote. I was in the theatre, but not in the First Consul's box, and I observed, as all present must have done, the ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... not even another Oedipus could have conjectured. The young master very obviously did not wish to be observed, and in such times Peters at could be blinder than the bat noon-day and more secret than the River Styx. He turned away, unhurried, ...
— Trailin'! • Max Brand
... of the programme, it may be interesting to note, contained Arthur Foote's overture, "In the Mountains," Van der Stucken's suite, "The Tempest," Chadwick's "Melpomene" overture, Paine's "Oedipus Tyrannus" prelude, a romance and polonaise for violin and orchestra by Henry Holden Huss, and songs by Margaret Ruthven Lang, Dudley Buck, Chadwick, Foote, Van der Stucken. The concert ended with an "ouverture festivale sur l'Hymne Americaine, 'The ...
— Edward MacDowell • Lawrence Gilman
... is a dark riddle; and, although I am a very Oedipus, I confess I have not yet unravelled it. Come, there is Washington Irving's autograph for you; read it; is it not quite in character? Shall I write any more? One of Sir Walter's, or Mr. Southey's, or Mr. Milman's or Mr. Disraeli's? or shall I sprawl ...
— Vivian Grey • The Earl of Beaconsfield
... hateful to the Gods, and most abominable and unholy. The reason is that everywhere, in jest and earnest alike, this is the doctrine which is repeated to all from their earliest youth. They see on the stage that an Oedipus or a Thyestes or a Macareus, when undeceived, are ready to kill themselves. There is an undoubted power in public opinion when no breath is heard adverse to the law; and the legislator who would enslave these enslaving passions must consecrate such a public opinion all through ...
— Laws • Plato
... we should see it issue from the mind of the agent by a natural gradation, under the influence and with the concurrence of external circumstances. It is thus that we see spring up, grow, and come to maturity under our eyes, the curiosity of Oedipus and the jealousy of Iago. It is also the only way to fill up the great gap that exists between the joy of an innocent soul and the torments of a guilty conscience, between the proud serenity of the happy man and his terrible catastrophe; in short, between the state of calm, in which ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... dreadful truth in those words of Hamilton,—Philosophy having become a meditation, not merely of death, but of annihilation, the precept know thyself has become transformed into the terrific oracle to Oedipus— ...
— A Candid Examination of Theism • George John Romanes
... which is to take place in Beneventum. See to what cobblers rise in our time, in spite of the saying, 'Ne sutor ultra crepidam!' Vitelius is the descendant of a cobbler; but Vatinius is the son of one! Perhaps he drew thread himself! The actor Aliturus represented Oedipus yesterday wonderfully. I asked him, by the way, as a Jew, if Christians and Jews were the same. He answered that the Jews have an eternal religion, but that Christians are a new sect risen recently in Judea; that in the time of Tiberius the Jews ...
— Quo Vadis - A Narrative of the Time of Nero • Henryk Sienkiewicz
... Long may your highness joy this highest place: Thyself the root and cause of mine own wrong. But must I leave to view my lady's face, And, banish'd from my prince's royal court, Wander,[83] as erst the unhappy Oedipus, Whose pain my foes will make their chiefest sport— My most unhappy chance ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. VI • Robert Dodsley
... Geraldine Jewsbury, a curious neurotic creature, who had seen much of the late Mrs. Carlyle, but who had an almost morbid love of offensive tattle. Froude describes himself as a witness for six years, at Cheyne Row, "of the enactment of a tragedy as stern and real as the story of Oedipus." According to ...
— Famous Affinities of History, Vol 1-4, Complete - The Romance of Devotion • Lyndon Orr
... informed that it has nothing whatever to do with the Irish Question. If any reader expects to find the Great Enigma solved by the LILLY who toils and spins, then he must not be surprised if the author says to him in effect, "Davus sum, non Oedipus." ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 103, December 17, 1892 • Various
... say, "How about Bernard Shaw?" when he treacherously went on, "How would it be then to give a Greek drama—say 'Oedipus Tyrannus'?" ...
— Main Street • Sinclair Lewis
... or, in the spirit of a spurious morality, of involving both crime and criminal in a common odium. It is to discrimination between the doer and the deed, that we owe the sublimest revelations of the human heart: in this discrimination lies the key to the emotions produced by the Oedipus and Macbeth. In the brief poem before us a whole drama is comprehended. Marvellous is the completeness of the pictures it presents—its mastery over emotions the most opposite—its fidelity to nature ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Vol. 53, No. 331, May, 1843 • Various
... who became king. It was in his reign that Dionysus appears as a god in Boeotia, the giver of the vine, and obtains divine honors in Thebes. Among the descendants of Cadmus was Laius. He is forewarned by an oracle that any son he should beget would destroy him, and hence he caused the infant OEdipus to be exposed on Mount Cithanon. Here the herdsmen of Polybus, king of Corinth, find him, and convey him to their lord who brings him up as his own child. Distressed by the taunts of companions as to his unknown parentage, he goes to Delphi, to inquire the name ...
— Ancient States and Empires • John Lord
... author of one or two plays, who published his memoirs in Dublin in 1750. Dr. Clancy was blind, and the playbill was headed with the line from Milton, "The day returns, but not to me returns." The play was "Oedipus," and the part of Tiresias, the blind prophet, was undertaken by Dr. Clancy. The advertisements expressed a hope that "as this will be the first instance of any person labouring under so heavy a deprivation performing on the stage, the novelty as well as ...
— A Book of the Play - Studies and Illustrations of Histrionic Story, Life, and Character • Dutton Cook
... great height, his bushy beard and stormy forehead, the eyes over which shaggy eyebrows hung like the shrubs on a cliff-edge, his face lined and set like a thing in bronze—all were signs of a power which, in passion, would be like that of OEdipus: in the moment of justice or doom would, with unblinking eyes, slay and cast aside as debris is tossed upon ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... the sea coast [Greek: parabomios akte], from the numbers of altars. Oedipus Tyrannus. ...
— A New System; or, an Analysis of Antient Mythology. Volume I. • Jacob Bryant
... the anger either of Apollo or Athena is temporary and partial:—and also, while Apollo or Athena only slay, the power of Demeter and the Eumenides is over the whole life; so that in the stories of Bellerophon, of Hippolytus, of Orestes, of Oedipus, you have an incomparably deeper shadow than any that was possible to the thought of later ages, when the hope of the Resurrection had become definite. And if you keep this in mind, you will find every name and legend of the oldest history become full of meaning to you. All the mythic ...
— Lectures on Art - Delivered before the University of Oxford in Hilary term, 1870 • John Ruskin
... conundrums, charades &c. are invariably poor creatures; as are those who have a knack at finding out such trifles. The same remark applies to punsters. It is difficult for a man of sterling talent to perpetrate a pun, or to solve an enigma. On the latter account, Oedipus must have been ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 583 - Volume 20, Number 583, Saturday, December 29, 1832 • Various
... assures us, in his Poetics, that the best known myths dramatised on the Athenian stage were known to very few of the Athenian audience. It is not impossible that the story of Saint-Germain, though it seems as familiar as the myth of Oedipus or Thyestes, may, after all, not be vividly present to the memory of every reader. The omniscient Larousse, of the Dictionnaire Universel, certainly did not know one very accessible fact about Saint-Germain, ...
— Historical Mysteries • Andrew Lang
... by puppets or in a dumb show, and yet be tragical. No analytic or psychological interest in varieties of character—in [Greek: th]—could have uttered the passion of Brynhild or of Gudrun. Aristotle knew that psychological analysis and moral rhetoric were not the authors of Clytemnestra or Oedipus. The barbarian poets are on a much lower and more archaic level than the poets with whom Aristotle is concerned, but here, where comparison is not meaningless nor valueless, their imaginations are seen to work in the same sound and productive ...
— Epic and Romance - Essays on Medieval Literature • W. P. Ker
... eighteen hundred eighty-one saw the first production of what is generally considered Paine's most important composition, and by some called the best work by an American,—his setting of the choruses of the "Oedipus Tyrannos" of Sophokles. It was written for the presentation by Harvard University, and has been sung, in whole or in part, very frequently since. This masterpiece of Grecian genius is so mighty in conception and so mighty in execution that it has not lost ...
— Contemporary American Composers • Rupert Hughes
... I should like the 'Oedipus Rex,'" he replied gravely; "but I could not read it. It all seemed unreal to me. Then I thought of St. Augustine, but he was worse still. The fathers of the Church were still further away from me; they all ...
— Oscar Wilde, Volume 2 (of 2) - His Life and Confessions • Frank Harris
... torrents. Low she lies, and shews "Her ancient ruins, and her numerous tombs "For all her riches. Sparta once was great; "And fam'd Mycene once in power was strong; "With Athens; and the town Amphion rais'd. "Now a mean spot is Sparta; low now lies "Lofty Mycene; what of Thebes remains, "The town of OEdipus, except his tale? "What of Pandion's Athens, but the name? "And now begins the fame of Dardan Rome "To rise; the waves of Tiber from the hills "Of Appenine descending, bathe her walls: "Plac'd on a huge foundation shall she fix "Her empire's base. By increase ...
— The Metamorphoses of Publius Ovidus Naso in English blank verse Vols. I & II • Ovid
... historical or pseudo-historical romances, and mythological tales, including the imitations of Ovid. The earliest in date of the first group (about 1150-1155) is the ROMANCE OF THEBES, the work of an unknown author, founded upon a compendium of the Thebaid of Statius, preceded by the story of OEdipus. It opened the way for the vast ROMANCE OF TROY, written some ten years later, by Benoit de Sainte-More. The chief sources of Benoit were versions, probably more or less augmented, of the famous records of the Trojan war, ascribed to the Phrygian Dares, an imaginary defender ...
— A History of French Literature - Short Histories of the Literatures of the World: II. • Edward Dowden
... halfpence, and the fountains flow with water. "If then my existing possessions are insufficient for me, at any rate I am sufficient for them, and so they too are sufficient for me. Do you not see that Polus acted the part of Oedipus in his royal state with no less beauty of voice than that of Oedipus in Colonos, a wanderer and beggar? Shall then a noble man appear inferior to Polus, so as not to act well every character imposed upon him by Divine Providence; ...
— Seekers after God • Frederic William Farrar
... what bread and butter are to its lodging-house the body: observe, we do not hazard a remark so false as that the one produces the other—their relations are far from being mutual; but we only suggest that the mind, as well as the body, hobbles like a three-legged OEdipus, resting on its proper staff of life. And what can be more provocative of scribbling than travel? How eagerly we hasten to describe unheard-of adventures, how anxiously record exaggerated marvels! to prove some printed hand-book quite ...
— The Complete Prose Works of Martin Farquhar Tupper • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... disorganization of the personality. The suppressed wish, when suppression results in disturbances of the conscious life, has been called by psychoanalysts a complex. Freud and his colleagues have isolated and described certain of these complexes. Most familiar of these are the Oedipus complex, which is explained as an effect of the unconscious conflict of father and son for the love of the mother; and the Electra complex, which similarly has as its source the unconscious struggle of mother and daughter for the affection of the ...
— Introduction to the Science of Sociology • Robert E. Park
... return I find myself rewarded with sour looks and unpleasant speeches, sans any consciousness of deserving them. I cannot ask a plain question, without being answered in riddles that would have crazed the brain of OEdipus." ...
— The Knight of the Golden Melice - A Historical Romance • John Turvill Adams
... Michelangelo and Goethe, held in reserve for their maturity and age. It is of no use to persuade ourselves, as some have done, that we possess the best work of men untimely slain. Had Sophocles been cut off in his prime, before the composition of "Oedipus"; had Handel never merged the fame of his forgotten operas in the immortal music of his oratorios; had Milton been known only by the poems of his youth, we might with equal plausibility have laid that flattering unction to our heart. And yet how shallow ...
— Percy Bysshe Shelley • John Addington Symonds
... Oedipus, who solved the riddle of the Sphinx, was the murderer of his father. Basil Montagu was Procter's father-in-law. Procter's address was ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb (Vol. 6) - Letters 1821-1842 • Charles and Mary Lamb
... dart, which Diana had once given her. The dog is turned into stone, while hunting a wild beast, which Themis has sent to ravage the territories of Thebes, after the interpretation of the riddle of the Sphinx, by Oedipus. ...
— The Metamorphoses of Ovid - Vol. I, Books I-VII • Publius Ovidius Naso
... Paine improved his good reputation both here and in Europe by composing what is called his Greek music; that is, an overture to the play of "Oedipus Tyrannus," which was acted at Harvard in the spring of that year. Of course his seashore friends wished to hear him play it himself, and after the applause which followed had subsided, he said: "A little approbation is ...
— Sketches from Concord and Appledore • Frank Preston Stearns
... there needs no great Oedipus to solve the difficulty of this passage. Nothing has ever been more common, than for lovers to compare their mistresses eyes to suns and stars. And what does Henriquez say more here than this, 'That though his mistress be obscure by her birth; yet her eyes are ...
— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753),Vol. V. • Theophilus Cibber
... Tyler—who may be Mr. Bertie, Mr. Smyth, Mr. Pyke, Mr. Tiler, for what we know. She hath turned away the clerk of her visiting-book, a poor fellow with a great family of children. Read me this riddle, good Mr. Shortface, and oblige your admirer—OEDIPUS." ...
— The History of Henry Esmond, Esq. • W. M. Thackeray
... the infinite enigma, countless lesser enigmas, old as the world, awaited the coming of man. Oedipus had to face one Sphinx; humanity, thousands of thousands,—all crouching among bones along the path of Time, and each with a deeper and a harder riddle. All the sphinxes have not been satisfied; myriads line the way of the future to devour lives yet unborn; but millions ...
— Kokoro - Japanese Inner Life Hints • Lafcadio Hearn
... but I shudder, child of Oedipus! I heard the clash and clang! The axles rolled and rumbled; woe to us ...
— Suppliant Maidens and Other Plays • AEschylus
... his philosophy through the medium of wit, and is never so pathetic as when he is humorous. To turn truth into a paradox is not difficult, but George Meredith makes all his paradoxes truths, and no Theseus can thread his labyrinth, no OEdipus ...
— Reviews • Oscar Wilde
... identity,—farces like The Comedy of Errors and melodramas like The Lyons Mail, for example. The crowd, too, will accept without demur any condition precedent to the story of a play, however impossible it might seem to the mind of the individual. Oedipus King has been married to his mother many years before the play begins; but the Greek crowd forbore to ask why, in so long a period, the enormity had never been discovered. The central situation of She Stoops to Conquer seems impossible to the individual mind, but is ...
— The Theory of the Theatre • Clayton Hamilton
... a strong, positive identification with his mother rather than his father. It is part of the unresolved Oedipus complex. He sees his mother as a kind, loving individual, always ready to help. Even if the mother did something socially unacceptable, the individual would defend her vehemently. The father who might do something wrong would rarely be excused. Just the opposite is true with the female ...
— A Practical Guide to Self-Hypnosis • Melvin Powers |
