"Proteus" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... a church as this had Venus none. The walls were of discoloured jasper stone Wherein was Proteus carved, and o'erhead A lively vine of green sea agate spread, Where by one hand lightheaded Bacchus hung, And, with the other, wine from grapes out wrung. Of crystal shining fair the pavement was. The town of Sestos called it Venus' glass. There might you see the ...
— Hero and Leander • Christopher Marlowe
... loving Proteus; Home-keeping youth have ever homely wits;— I rather would entreat thy company To see the wonders of the world abroad." Two ...
— Afloat And Ashore • James Fenimore Cooper
... publishing what I then wrote, I had expressed my own convictions for the gratification of my own feelings, and finished by tranquilly paraphrasing into a chemical allegory the Homeric adventure of Menelaus with Proteus. Oh! with what different feelings, with what a sharp and sudden emotion did I re-peruse the same question yester-morning, having by accident opened the book at the page upon which it was written. I was moved; for it was Admiral Sir Alexander Ball who first proposed the question ...
— Confessions of an Inquiring Spirit etc. • by Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... passed from a murmur to a noise, from a noise to a tumult, from a tumult to a tempest. He was himself, any, every one else. Alone, and polyglot. As there are optical illusions, there are also auricular illusions. That which Proteus did to sight Ursus did to hearing. Nothing could be more marvellous than his facsimile of multitude. From time to time he opened the door of the women's apartment and looked at Dea. Dea was listening. On his part the boy exerted himself to the utmost. Vinos and Fibi trumpeted conscientiously, and ...
— The Man Who Laughs • Victor Hugo
... if there are water-babies, they must grow into water-men, ask him how he knows that they do not? and then, how he knows that they must, any more than the Proteus of the Adelsberg caverns ...
— The Water-Babies - A Fairy Tale for a Land-Baby • Charles Kingsley
... cause against furious oppressors. The issues are not as plain, the edge is not as sharp as we suppose when we look back on the result. The question to be fought out between king and parliament was not monarchy or republic, democracy or aristocracy, freedom or the proteus that resists or betrays freedom. At many points the Stuart cause resembles that of constitutional monarchy on the Continent, as it was in France under Lewis XVIII, and in Prussia under the Emperor William. If Bismarck had been there he ...
— Lectures on Modern history • Baron John Emerich Edward Dalberg Acton
... analogous cases not being known. The difficulty is, that amongst the blind insects of the caves in distant parts of the world there are some of the same genus, and yet the genus is not found out of the caves or living in the free world. I have little doubt that, like the fish Amblyopsis, and like Proteus in Europe, these insects are "wrecks of ancient life," or "living fossils," saved from competition and extermination. But that formerly SEEING insects of the same genus roamed over the whole area in ...
— The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, Volume II • Francis Darwin
... the eyes and ears of the great King of the universe, seeing and hearing all things; seraphically illuminated; companions of the holy company of unbodied souls and immortal angels; turning themselves, Proteus-like, into any shape, and having the power of working miracles. The most pious and abstracted brethren could slack the plague in cities, silence the violent winds and tempests, calm the rage of the sea and rivers, walk in the air, frustrate the malicious aspect of witches, cure all diseases, ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions - Vol. I • Charles Mackay
... The joy of well-doing is the prize of having done well, and we must deserve the prize before we win it. There is nothing sweeter than virtue; but we do not know this till we have tried it. Like Proteus in the fable, she first assumes a thousand terrible shapes when we would embrace her, and only shows her true self to those who refuse to let ...
— Emile • Jean-Jacques Rousseau
... without hesitating to consider the component parts, or doubling, proving, and selecting, like other painters." Hence Giordano was also called, Il proteo della pittura, and Il Falmine della pittura—the Proteus, and the Lightning of painting. As an instance of the latter, it is recorded that he painted a picture while his guests were ...
— Anecdotes of Painters, Engravers, Sculptors and Architects, and Curiosities of Art, (Vol. 2 of 3) • Shearjashub Spooner
... Toxins.—The inoculation of pure cultivations of the organism into some selected situation, together with the subcutaneous, intraperitoneal, or intravenous injection of a toxin—e. g., one of those elaborated by the proteus group—either simultaneously with, before, or immediately after, the injection of the feeble virus. By this means the natural resistance of the animal is lowered, and the organism inoculated is enabled to multiply and produce its pathogenic ...
— The Elements of Bacteriological Technique • John William Henry Eyre
... connection with this is the conversation between Julia and her maid Lucetta, in Two Gent. I, ii, 76-93, about the letter from Proteus. ...
— Shakespeare and Music - With Illustrations from the Music of the 16th and 17th centuries • Edward W. Naylor
... Shakespeare, who tell you that what they think most admirable in him is his Wortspiel, his verbal quibbles; and one of these, a man of no slight culture and refinement, once cited to a friend of ours Proteus's joke in "The Two Gentlemen of Verona"—"Nod I? why that's Noddy," as a transcendant specimen of Shakespearian wit. German facetiousness is seldom comic to foreigners, and an Englishman with a swelled cheek might ...
— The Essays of "George Eliot" - Complete • George Eliot
... musing alone on the battlements, he muttered to himself, "Thou art a fool, stout earl, not to have welcomed the union between thy power and my wit. Thou goest to a court where without wit power is nought. Who may foresee the future? Marry, that was a wise ancient fable, that he who seized and bound Proteus could extract from the changeful god the prophecy of the days to come. Yea! the man who can seize Fate can hear its voice predict to him. And by my own heart and brain, which never yet relinquished what affection yearned for, or thought aspired to, I read, as in a book, Anne, that thou ...
— The Last Of The Barons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... "homely" the entire event of the tragedy turning on betrayal of home duty. Hermione ([Greek: erma]), "pillar-like," ([Greek: he eidos eche chryses 'Aphrodites]). Titania ([Greek: titene]), "the queen;" Benedict and Beatrice, "blessed and blessing;" Valentine and Proteus, enduring (or strong), (valens), and changeful. Iago and Iachimo have evidently the same root—probably the Spanish Iago, Jacob, "the supplanter," Leonatus, and other such names, are interpreted, or played with, in the plays themselves. ...
— The Crown of Wild Olive • John Ruskin
... days. If their mirror showed them no change, the world had altered around them without their suspecting it, while they continued to copy their antiquated models. It is a curious imitative instinct, a slavery of the brain, to remain hypnotised by some point in the past, instead of trying to follow Proteus in his course—the life of change. One picks up the old skin which the young snake has thrown off long ago, and tries to sew it together again. These pedantic admirers of old revolutions believe that those of the future will be ...
— Clerambault - The Story Of An Independent Spirit During The War • Rolland, Romain
... rather be A pagan, suckled in a creed outworn; So might I standing on this pleasant lea, Have glimpses that would make me less forlorn— Have sight of Proteus rising from the sea, Or hear old ...
— History of Rationalism Embracing a Survey of the Present State of Protestant Theology • John F. Hurst
... slumber to which all must come, O Eratosthenes, after pondering over high matters; nor did Cyrene where thou sawest the light receive thee within the tomb of thy fathers, O son of Aglaus; yet dear even in a foreign land art thou buried here, by the edge of the beach of Proteus. ...
— Select Epigrams from the Greek Anthology • J. W. Mackail
... exceeded the material; for there Mulciber had carved the sea circling round the encompassed Earth; and the orb of the Earth, and the Heavens which hang over that orb. {There} the waves have {in them} the azure Deities, both Triton, sounding {with his shell}, and the changing Proteus, and AEgeon,[1] pressing the huge backs of whales with his arms; Doris,[2] too, and her daughters, part of whom appear to be swimming, part, sitting on the bank, to be drying their green hair; some {are seen} borne upon fishes. The features ...
— The Metamorphoses of Ovid - Vol. I, Books I-VII • Publius Ovidius Naso
... as an advance through a succession of Protean disguises of truth, each "one grade above its last presentment,"[138] until, at the rare moment, by the excepted eye, the naked truth was grasped. But Browning became steadily more reluctant to admit that these fortunate moments ever occurred, that the Proteus was ever caught. Things would be known to the soul as they were known to God only when it was emancipated by death. Infinity receded into an ever more inaccessible remoteness from the finite. For the speaker in Christmas-Eve man's mind was the image of God's, reflecting ...
— Robert Browning • C. H. Herford
... is a variable as Proteus. There are sympathetic inks. A young celibate has told us in confidence that he has written a letter on the fly-leaf of a new book, which, when the husband asked for it of the bookseller, reached the hands of his mistress, who had ...
— Analytical Studies • Honore de Balzac
... arrives at the palace of Menelaus, from whom he receives some fresh information concerning the return of the Greecians, and is in particular told on the authority of Proteus, that his father is detained by Calypso. The suitors, plotting against the life of Telemachus, lie in wait to intercept him in his return to Ithaca. Penelope being informed of his departure, and of their designs to slay him, becomes inconsolable, but ...
— The Odyssey of Homer • Homer
... Peregri'nus Proteus, a cynic philosopher, born at Parium, on the Hellespont. After a youth spent in debauchery and crimes, he turned Christian, and, to obliterate the memory of his youthful ill practices, divided his inheritance among the people. Ultimately he burned himself to death ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook, Vol. 3 • E. Cobham Brewer
... dared on, Plunging at once into untravelled realms, And bringing, as the harvest of their toil, Arms which will make each potent talisman, Each charm, and spell, and dire enchantment sink In endless infamy—without a hope To trick their bloated, and their wither'd limbs, In any Proteus vestment of disguise, Again to awe ...
— Vignettes in Verse • Matilda Betham
... goat, thou mate of the white herd, and O ye blunt-faced kids, where are the manifold deeps of the forest, thither get ye to the water, for thereby is Milon; go, thou hornless goat, and say to him, 'Milon, Proteus was a herdsman, and that of seals, though ...
— Theocritus, Bion and Moschus rendered into English Prose • Andrew Lang
... "Freshwater fish, my dears. I wish you would wait for us! I don't want you to attend the submarine wedding of our old friends Tame and Isis." To which Pica rejoined, likewise talking out of Spenser, that Proteus would provide a nice ancient nymph to tend on them. Her father then chimed in, saying, "You will spare our nerves by keeping to dry land unless you can secure the ancient mariner who was ...
— More Bywords • Charlotte M. Yonge
... now like sleeping flowers; For this, for every thing, we are out of tune; It moves us not—Great God! I'd rather be A Pagan suckled in a creed outworn; So might I, standing on this pleasant lea, Have glimpses that would make me less forlorn; Have sight of Proteus coming from the sea; Or hear old Triton blow his ...
— Poems In Two Volumes, Vol. 1 • William Wordsworth
... where he always dramatizes himself as the hero, who has no continuity of purpose, and no capacity of self-sacrifice except in spasms of impulse, and in emotional feeling which is real to itself; a spiritual Proteus who deceives even himself, and only now and then recognizes his own moral illusiveness, like Hawthorne's scarecrow-gentleman before the mirror: but with the irresistible instincts also of the born literary creator ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 4 • Charles Dudley Warner
... the city of Verona two young gentlemen, whose names were Valentine and Proteus, between whom a firm and uninterrupted friendship had long subsisted. They pursued their studies together, and their hours of leisure were always passed in each other's company, except when Proteus visited a lady he was in love ...
— Tales from Shakespeare • Charles and Mary Lamb
... stocking thrown? That very night he longs to lie alone. The fool, whose wife elopes some thrice a quarter, 150 For matrimonial solace dies a martyr. Did ever Proteus, Merlin, any witch, Transform themselves so strangely as the rich? Well, but the poor—the poor have the same itch; They change their weekly barber, weekly news, Prefer a new japanner to their shoes, Discharge their garrets, move their beds, and ...
— The Poetical Works Of Alexander Pope, Vol. 1 • Alexander Pope et al
... recounted how Odysseus saved him when they were in the wooden horse, when one false sound would have betrayed them. On the next morning Telemachus told the story of the ruin of his home; Menelaus prophesied the end of the suitors, then preceded to recount how in Egypt he waylaid and captured Proteus, the changing god of the sea, whom he compelled to relate the fate of the Greek leaders and to prophesy his own return; from him he heard that Odysseus was with Calypso who kept him by force. On learning this important piece of news Telemachus was eager to ...
— Authors of Greece • T. W. Lumb
... a diabolical purpose, the form of a woman is not always the best disguise. There are men quite insusceptible to feminine witchcraft. But the fox is never at a loss for a disguise; he can assume more forms than Proteus. Furthermore, he can make you see or hear or imagine whatever he wishes you to see, hear, or imagine. He can make you see out of Time and Space; he can recall the past and reveal the future. His power has not been destroyed by the introduction of Western ideas; for did ...
— Glimpses of an Unfamiliar Japan - First Series • Lafcadio Hearn
... wake, and I pull them up ready to burst. Sometimes I go hunting right in the midst of this element that has long seemed so far out of man's reach, and I corner the game that dwells in my underwater forests. Like the flocks of old Proteus, King Neptune's shepherd, my herds graze without fear on the ocean's immense prairies. There I own vast properties that I harvest myself, and which are forever sown by the hand of the Creator of ...
— 20000 Leagues Under the Seas • Jules Verne
... understood. The Spaniards "ain't kinder like our folks," nor "folksy". Mistakes not all on one side. Spanish proverb regarding certain languages. Not complimentary to English. Stormy weather. Storm king a perfect Proteus. River on a rampage. Sawmill carried away. Pastimes of the miners during the storm. MS. account of storm sent in keg via river to Marysville newspaper. Silversmith makes gold rings during storm. Raffling and reraffling of same as pastime. Some natural gold rings. Nugget in shape of eagle's head ...
— The Shirley Letters from California Mines in 1851-52 • Louise Amelia Knapp Smith Clappe
... same power of changing the form has found a place in ancient and modern story. The Proteus of heathen mythology ever found means of safety and protection by his sudden assumption of ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments • Anonymous
... that supreme charm of our poetry, that creator of our metre; verse that is inexhaustible in the verity of its turns of thought, unfathomable in its secrets of composition and of grace; assuming, like Proteus, a thousand forms without changing its type and character; avoiding long speeches; taking delight in dialogue; always hiding behind the characters of the drama; intent, before everything, on being in its place, and when it falls to its lot to be beautiful, ...
— Prefaces and Prologues to Famous Books - with Introductions, Notes and Illustrations • Charles W. Eliot
... prodigies is in most cases a refutation of their claim upon our notice,[329] and even those which are not in themselves exceptionable become so from the circumstances or manner in which they took place. Apollonius is said to have been an incarnation of the God Proteus; his birth was announced by the falling of a thunderbolt and a chorus of swans; his death signalized by a wonderful voice calling him up to Heaven; and after death he appeared to a youth to convince him of the immortality ...
— Historical Sketches, Volume I (of 3) • John Henry Newman
... the sheriff's officer in arranging for special bail. These very uncanonical services one might have fancied sufficient, with spinning and spelling, for filling up the temporal cares of any one man's time. But this restless Proteus masqueraded through a score of other characters—as seedsman, harvester, hedger and ditcher, etc. We have no doubt that he would have taken a job of paving; he would have contracted for darning old Christopher's silk stockings, or for a mile of sewerage; or he would have contracted ...
— The Posthumous Works of Thomas De Quincey, Vol. II (2 vols) • Thomas De Quincey
... Proteus and Thetis, or introduce in tragedies, or any other poems, Hera transformed into the guise ...
— Christianity and Greek Philosophy • Benjamin Franklin Cocker
... there any mystery in what is said of Belphoebe, that her hair was sprinkled with flowers and blossoms which had been entangled in it as she fled through the woods? Or is it necessary to have a more distinct idea of Proteus, than that which is given of him in his boat, with the frighted Florimel at his ...
— Hazlitt on English Literature - An Introduction to the Appreciation of Literature • Jacob Zeitlin
... intends to make his fortune in this ancient capital of the world must be a chameleon susceptible of reflecting all the colours of the atmosphere that surrounds him—a Proteus apt to assume every form, every shape. He must be supple, flexible, insinuating; close, inscrutable, often base, sometimes sincere, some times perfidious, always concealing a part of his knowledge, indulging ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... and why attempt to include all its species and their unknown varieties in narrow classes? Why say that there are only two modes of life, instinct on the one hand and intelligence on the other, "when we know how subtle and illusive is this Proteus, and that there are not two things only, but a thousand dissimilar things" (8/20.): or rather is it not always the same thing, everywhere present and acting in living matter, and susceptible of infinite degrees, ...
— Fabre, Poet of Science • Dr. G.V. (C.V.) Legros
... minutes the storm seemed gradually to subside, and a calm to succeed. His look and bearing changed; something of depression seemed to steal over him; his voice became deep and melancholy, and the first syllables which he uttered showed this Proteus recalled to himself, and tamed by two words. "Hapless existence!" he exclaimed; then pausing, seemed to muse, and after a while continued, "'tis but too true; comedian or tragedian, all for me is an affair of acting and costume; so it has been hitherto, and such it is likely to continue. ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 2, No. 12, May, 1851. • Various
... unpleasant contact with the iron hoop of the garrote. Either warned by this narrow escape, or because the comparatively tranquil state of Spain afforded no scope for his restless activity, since 1823 this political Proteus had lived in retirement, eschewing apparently all plots and intrigues; although he was frequently seen in the very highest circles of the capital, where his great experience, his conversational powers, and social qualities ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 61, No. 379, May, 1847 • Various
... stretching away till lost in the blaze of the horizon, the Circean promontory, even the picturesque fisherman, whom we saw throwing his nets from an insulated rock at some distance from the shore, and whom a very trifling exertion of fancy might have converted into some sea divinity, a Glaucus, or a Proteus, formed altogether a picture of the most wonderful and luxuriant beauty. In England there is a peculiar charm in the soft aerial perspective, which even in the broadest glare of noonday, blends and masses the forms of the distant landscape; and in that mingling of colours ...
— The Diary of an Ennuyee • Anna Brownell Jameson
... polyhedric Peter, or a Peter with many sides. He changes colours like a chameleon, and his coat like a snake. He is a Proteus of a Peter. He was at first sublime, pathetic, impressive, profound; then dull; then prosy and dull; and now dull—oh so very dull! it is an ...
— Peter Bell the Third • Percy Bysshe Shelley
... my friend! By Proteus, the old shepherd of the seals, you slumber uneasily. If I had not caught hold of you, you would have tumbled into the Eunostos. It is as true as that my mother sold salt fish, that I ...
— Thais • Anatole France
... lasted, the despot of his masters, he exercised boundless control by enacting their parts with such fidelity that they were themselves deceived. It is impossible not to admire the facility with which this accomplished Proteus successively assumed the characters of Philip and of Margaret, through all the complicated affairs and ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... dream-journey, being, however, on this occasion wide awake, when lo and behold! in accordance with the laws of the association of ideas the same Canon again flashed across me; so being now awake I held it as fast as Menelaus did Proteus, only permitting it to ...
— Beethoven's Letters 1790-1826 Vol. 2 • Lady Wallace
... Lovelace a perfect Proteus. He now applauds her for that treatment of him which before he had resented; and communicates to her two letters, one from Lady Betty Lawrance, the other from Miss Montague. She wonders he did not produce those letters ...
— Clarissa, Volume 3 (of 9) • Samuel Richardson
... have it otherwise. The reader is already somewhat acquainted with the name of William Jasper—perhaps Sergeant Jasper is the better known. This brave man possessed remarkable talents for a scout. He could wear all disguises with admirable ease and dexterity. Garden styles him "a perfect Proteus".* He was equally remarkable for his strategy as for his bravery; and his nobleness and generosity were, quite as much as these, the distinguishing traits of his character. Such was the confidence in his fidelity and skill that a roving commission ...
— The Life of Francis Marion • William Gilmore Simms
... city was managed in this way. First a scene was let down as far back as possible on the stage. This, Pasquale said, represented "una citta qualunque." The collection of little wooden houses on Captain Shandy's bowling-green was not a more perfect Proteus of a town than Pasquale's back cloth. This evening it was Barcelona. In front of it, about halfway to the footlights, was a low wall of fortifications. Just behind the fortifications the Spaniards were hooked up into rather high links of the chains, ...
— Diversions in Sicily • H. Festing Jones
... "Anaerobic bacilli and spores," he replied, excitedly. "The things that produce the well-known 'gas gangrene' of the trenches, the gas phlegmon bacilli—all sorts, the bacillus aerogenes capsulatus, bacillus proteus, pyogenic cocci, and others, actively gas-forming microbes that can't live in air. The method I took to develop and discover them was that of Col. Sir Almroth Wright of the British army ...
— The Treasure-Train • Arthur B. Reeve
... excepting in their present secluded abodes. Far from feeling surprise that some of the cave-animals should be very anomalous, as Agassiz has remarked in regard to the blind fish, the Amblyopsis, and as is the case with the blind Proteus, with reference to the reptiles of Europe, I am only surprised that more wrecks of ancient life have not been preserved, owing to the less severe competition to which the scanty inhabitants of these dark abodes ...
— On the Origin of Species - 6th Edition • Charles Darwin
... found he was mistaken. He wrote, "I am in receipt of your last, which is very encouraging. You were quite right to do as you did. Give Rudd & Carleton no loop-hole. They will soon owe us a good round sum, and will writhe like Proteus ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, December, 1885 • Various
... in quiet, and without dread and perplexity, those arts of peace from which my cares have been hitherto so forcibly diverted? The ear of Fancy, it is said, can discover the voice of sea-nymphs and tritons amid the bursting murmurs of the ocean; would that I could do so, and that some siren or Proteus would arise from these billows to unriddle for me the strange maze of fate in which I am so deeply entangled! Happy friend!' he said, looking at the bed where Dinmont had deposited his bulky person, 'thy cares are confined to the narrow round of a healthy and thriving occupation! Thou canst ...
— Guy Mannering, or The Astrologer, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... up-gather'd now like sleeping flowers; For this, for everything, we are out of tune; It moves us not.—Great God! I'd rather be A Pagan suckled in a creed outworn; So might I, standing on this pleasant lea, Have glimpses that would make me less forlorn; Have sight of Proteus rising from the sea; Or hear old Triton blow ...
— The Log of the Sun - A Chronicle of Nature's Year • William Beebe
... concerning wit: "It is, indeed, a thing so versatile, multiform, appearing in so many shapes and garbs, so variously apprehended of several eyes and judgments, that it seemeth no less hard to settle a clear and certain notion thereof than to make a portrait of Proteus, or to define the figure of the fleeting wind." Nor is it fitting to attempt exact distinctions between wit and humor, which are essentially two aspects of one thing. It is enough to realize that humor is the product of nature rather than ...
— Jokes For All Occasions - Selected and Edited by One of America's Foremost Public Speakers • Anonymous
... yesterday is that he seems the same. There are obvious resemblances that strike us at once. He looks the same, he acts the same, he has the same mannerisms, the same kind of voice, and he answers to the same name. If Proteus, with the best intention in the world, but with an unlimited variety of self-manifestations, were to call every day, we should greet him always as a stranger. We should never feel at home with so versatile a person. A character must have a certain degree of monotony ...
— Humanly Speaking • Samuel McChord Crothers
... this surprising letter cannot be a forgery of thy own, in order to carry on some view, and to impose upon me. Yet, by the style of it, it cannot though thou art a perfect Proteus too. ...
— Clarissa, Or The History Of A Young Lady, Volume 8 • Samuel Richardson
... but concerning the king and statesman. We perceive, however, that there is no inappropriateness in his maintaining the character of chief speaker, when we remember the close connexion which is assumed by Plato to exist between politics and dialectic. In both dialogues the Proteus Sophist is exhibited, first, in the disguise of an Eristic, secondly, of a false statesman. There are several lesser features which the two dialogues have in common. The styles and the situations of the speakers are very similar; there is the same love of division, and in both of them the mind ...
— Statesman • Plato
... difficulty in getting Ackermann, Sherwood, or any of the art publishers of the day, to undertake its publication. But Egan's hands were full, and he declined the offer. Two years later on, author and artist again met, and the result was that "The Life of an Actor, Peregrine Proteus," made its appearance, "illustrated by twenty-seven coloured scenes and nine woodcuts, representing the vicissitudes of the stage". The publisher was Arnold, of Tavistock Street, Covent Garden, who ...
— English Caricaturists and Graphic Humourists of the Nineteenth Century. - How they Illustrated and Interpreted their Times. • Graham Everitt
... other the inundation of the urinal deluge, could not tell what to say nor what to think. Some said that it was the end of the world and the final judgment, which ought to be by fire. Others again thought that the sea-gods, Neptune, Proteus, Triton, and the rest of them, did persecute them, for that indeed they found it to ...
— Gargantua and Pantagruel, Complete. • Francois Rabelais
... women; where, in some measure, I gave the 'ton'. This gave me the reputation of having had some women of condition; and that reputation, whether true or false, really got me others. With the men I was a Proteus, and assumed every shape, in order to please them all: among the gay, I was the gayest; among the grave, the gravest; and I never omitted the least attentions of good-breeding, or the least offices of friendship, that could either please, ...
— The PG Edition of Chesterfield's Letters to His Son • The Earl of Chesterfield
... embryo. When tadpoles were placed in a perforated box, and that box sunk in the Seine, light being the only condition thus abstracted, they grew to a great size in their original form, but did not pass through the usual metamorphose which brings them to their mature state as frogs. The proteus, an animal of the frog kind, inhabiting the subterraneous waters of Carniola, and which never acquires perfect lungs so as to become a land animal, is presumed to be an example of arrested development, from the same cause. When, in connexion with ...
— Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation • Robert Chambers
... Callistratus in the archonship of Pythodorus. 10. He farmed it two years, receiving no olive tree, sacred or otherwise, nor any olive stump. Demetrius had it the third year. In the fourth year I let it to Alcias, a freedman of Antisthenes who has been dead three years. Finally, Proteus ...
— The Orations of Lysias • Lysias
... the cases of Manchester and ... Sheffield," cried James Otis. "If these places are not represented, they ought to be." This ought is the fundamental premise of the entire colonial argument. "Shall we Proteus-like perpetually change our ground, assume every moment some new strange shape, to defend, to evade?" asks a Virginian in 1774. This was precisely what could not be avoided. For the end determined the means. If, therefore, the distinction between ...
— Beginnings of the American People • Carl Lotus Becker
... I saw her coming towards me; for I knew that she was no mortal woman. But her look was gracious, and her voice was sweet; so I took courage as she said: 'Who art thou, stranger, and why lingerest thou with thy company in this desert place? I am Eidothea, daughter of Proteus, the ancient one of the sea; and I am ready to help thee, if thou wilt tell me ...
— Stories from the Odyssey • H. L. Havell
... details of the changes of form and feature which superstition has assumed in different ages; but it is humiliating to human nature to reflect, that the conquests obtained by philosophy over her great adversary, are in reality very small. Superstition, like the fabled Proteus, appears under an endless variety of forms; but she is also, like the god, ...
— Architectural Antiquities of Normandy • John Sell Cotman
... April we caught the northeast Trades shortly after turning Cape Palmas, and kept them till close upon Grand Canary. They were a complete contrast with the Harmatan, the firmament looking exceptionally high, and the sun shining hot, while a crisp, steady gale made the 'herds of Proteus' gambol and disport themselves over the long ridges thrown up by the cool plain of bright cerulean. The horizon, when clear, had a pinkish hue, and near coast and islands puffy folds of dazzling white, nearly 5,000 feet high, were based upon dark-grey streaks of cloudland simulating ...
— To the Gold Coast for Gold - A Personal Narrative in Two Volumes.—Vol. I • Richard F. Burton
... foreigner, and the Athenians and Spartans will not appoint a foreigner to be their general. 'No, that is not the real reason; there are many examples to the contrary. But Ion has long been playing tricks with the argument; like Proteus, he transforms himself into a variety of shapes, and is at last about to run away in the disguise of a general. Would he rather be regarded as inspired or dishonest?' Ion, who has no suspicion of ...
— Ion • Plato
... stopped and turned round to see whether it was a god or a sea animal, and observed with wonder his shape and color. Glaucus partly emerging from the water, and supporting himself against a rock, said, "Maiden, I am no monster, nor a sea animal, but a god; and neither Proteus nor Triton ranks higher than I. Once I was a mortal, and followed the sea for a living; but now I belong wholly to it." Then he told the story of his metamorphosis, and how he had been promoted to his present dignity, and added, "But what avails all this if it fails ...
— Bulfinch's Mythology • Thomas Bulfinch
... o'er the wide world driven, Have wrought out pain and punishment for ill deed unforgiven, Till Priam's self might pity us. Witness the star of bane Minerva sent; Euboea's cliffs, Caphereus' vengeful gain! 260 'Scaped from that war, and driven away to countries sundered wide, By Proteus' Pillars exiled now, must Menelaues bide; And those AEtnaean Cyclop-folk Ulysses look upon: Of Pyrrhus's land why tell, or of Idomeneus, that won To ruined house; of Locrian men cast on the Libyan shore? Mycenae's lord, the duke and king ...
— The AEneids of Virgil - Done into English Verse • Virgil
... gathering a cabinet of curiosities since I was nine years old (I am now fourteen), and I have stones and shells and pieces of wood from a great many of the States, from the arctic regions, from South America, Oceanica, and Europe—more than two hundred in all. Among the rest is a Proteus (Menobranchus maculatus) taken from the Winooski River by Thompson, once State Geologist of Vermont. I would like to know if any other of your correspondents has got a Proteus, and also ...
— Harper's Young People, February 17, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... amusement which a traveller fond of natural history may find in this region, it has had a peculiar object of interest for me in the extraordinary animals which are found in the bottom of its subterraneous cavities: I allude to the Proteus anguinus, a far greater wonder of nature than any of those which the Baron Valvasa detailed to the Royal Society a century and half ago as belonging to Carniola, with far too romantic ...
— Consolations in Travel - or, the Last Days of a Philosopher • Humphrey Davy
... protopterus in Africa, the lepidosiren in the tributaries of the Amazon, and the ceratodus in the swamps of Southern {49} Australia. On the thirteenth stage, there are the gilled amphibians (sozobranchia), proteus and axolotl; on the fourteenth, the tailed amphibians (sozura), newt and salamander; on the fifteenth, the purely hypothetical primaeval amniota or protamnia (amnion is the name given to the chorion which surrounds the germ-water and embryo of the three higher classes ...
— The Theories of Darwin and Their Relation to Philosophy, Religion, and Morality • Rudolf Schmid
... looked up with a start. Like Proteus who changed his shape to save himself the trouble of prophesying, he swiftly changed the key to save himself providing accurate information that he ...
— The Extra Day • Algernon Blackwood
... mused Jacobs, a wizened elder, the kennel man, who yet bowed to the coachman in his own yard. "We may put him among the dogs, I believe. We've Proteus, and Prophet; ...
— Rest Harrow - A Comedy of Resolution • Maurice Hewlett
... that is the Christian preachers, were most in agreement with the Cynics (see Lucian's Peregrinus Proteus), both on the negative and on the positive side; but for that very reason they were hard on one another (Justin and Tatian against Crescens)—not only because the Christians gave a different basis for the ...
— History of Dogma, Volume 1 (of 7) • Adolph Harnack
... black hair and blue eyes, arrayed in a mantle of azure, holding a trident in his right hand, and embracing his queen with his left arm. He stands upright in his chariot, drawn by sea horses, and is attended by nymphs. Proteus is the son of Neptune, but some say he is the offspring of Oceanus and Tethys. His business is to tend the sea-calves. He can turn himself into any shape. Triton, the son and trumpeter of Neptune, is a man to the middle ...
— The Mysteries of All Nations • James Grant
... much-abused term? On this point the Quarterly Reviewer is silent. Mr. Mivart, on the contrary, is perfectly explicit, and the whole tenor of his remarks leaves no doubt that by "religion" he means theology; and by theology, that particular variety of the great Proteus, which is expounded by the doctors of the Roman Catholic Church, and held by the members of that religious community to be the sole form of absolute ...
— Darwiniana • Thomas Henry Huxley
... God's ways of disposing of Kingdoms and some Clergymen's ways of disposing of them, 1691; Sherlock and Xanthippe 1691; Saint Paul's Triumph in his Sufferings for Christ, by Matthew Bryan, LL.D., dedicated Ecclesim sub cruce gementi; A Word to a wavering Levite; The Trimming Court Divine; Proteus Ecclesiasticus, or observations on Dr. Sh—'s late Case of Allegiance; the Weasil Uncased; A Whip for the Weasil; the Anti-Weasils. Numerous allusions to Sherlock and his wife will be found in the ribald writings of Tom Brown, Tom Durfey, and Ned ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 4 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... gates, by his famed father's hand, Great Cibber's brazen brainless brothers stand, One cell there is, concealed from vulgar eye. The cave of Poverty and Poetry. Keen, hollow winds howl through the bleak recess, Emblem of music caused by emptiness. Hence bards, like Proteus long in vain tied down, Escape in monsters, and amaze the town. Hence Miscellanies spring, the weekly boast Of Curll's chaste press and Lintot's rubric post; Hence hymning Tyburn's elegiac lines; Hence Journals, ...
— English Poets of the Eighteenth Century • Selected and Edited with an Introduction by Ernest Bernbaum
... very Proteus of a theme. Its entrance is like a thunder-clap in a cloudless sky. The conductor lifts his stick, ...
— Wagner • John F. Runciman
... one living principle? Does organized existence, and perhaps all material existence, consist of one Proteus principle of life capable of gradual circumstance-suited modifications and aggregations without bound, under the solvent or motion-giving principle of heat or light? There is more beauty and unity of design in this continual balancing of life to circumstance, ...
— Evolution, Old & New - Or, the Theories of Buffon, Dr. Erasmus Darwin and Lamarck, - as compared with that of Charles Darwin • Samuel Butler
... fanatics, or when the nerve supplying it with nervous power is effectually destroyed, the muscles wither. So again, when the eye is destroyed the optic nerve becomes atrophied, sometimes even in the course of a few months.[734] The Proteus is furnished with branchiae as well as with lungs: and Schreibers[735] found that when the animal was compelled to live in deep water the branchiae were developed to thrice their ordinary size, and the lungs were partially atrophied. When, ...
— The Variation of Animals and Plants Under Domestication, Volume II (of 2) • Charles Darwin
... internal harmony, and its thoughts and acts accord with the symmetry of the law, innate in all things. Not, as drunk from the cups of Circe, does he go dashing and stumbling, now in this and then in that ditch, now against this or that rock, or like a shifting Proteus, changing now to this, now to the other aspect, never finding place, fashion, or ground to stay and settle in; but, without spoiling the harmony, conquers and overcomes the horrid monsters, and however much he may swerve, he easily ...
— The Heroic Enthusiasts,(1 of 2) (Gli Eroici Furori) - An Ethical Poem • Giordano Bruno
... sombre character. But now, after these long preparations, the drama opens, the scenes become rapid and lifelike; events, long impeded, accumulate and pass quickly before us, the action is connected and hastens to an end. We shall see Derues like an unwearied Proteus, changing names, costumes, language, multiplying himself in many forms, scattering deceptions and lies from one end of France to the other; and finally, after so many efforts, such prodigies of calculation and activity, end by ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - DERUES • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE
... of the war naturally put a stop to the annual rejoicing. Southern enthusiasm is, however, hard to down, and directly the war was over, Comus reappeared in all his glory. A few years later the Knights of Momus were created, and in 1876 the Krewe of Proteus had its first carnival. Many other orders have followed, but these are the more ...
— My Native Land • James Cox
... Giallar-horn, which could be heard throughout all the world, proclaiming the gods' passage to and fro over the quivering bridge Bifroest, was like the trumpet of the goddess Renown. As he was related to the water deities on his mother's side, he could, like Proteus, assume any form at will, and he made good use of this power on the occasion when he frustrated Loki's attempt to steal ...
— Myths of the Norsemen - From the Eddas and Sagas • H. A. Guerber
... if the truth gives you pain, pray remember it gives me agony. However, I must tell you the man was not what he looked, a mere blacksmith; he is a sort of Proteus, who can take all manner of shapes: at the time I'm speaking of, he was a maker of carving tools. Well, sir, you could hardly believe the effect of this accidental interview with that man: the next day, when I renewed my ...
— Put Yourself in His Place • Charles Reade
... sheets; From the same hand how various is the page! What civil war their brother pamphlets wage! Tracts battle tracts, self-contradictions glare; Say, is this lunacy?—I wish it were. If such our writers, startled at the sight, Felons may bless their stars they cannot write! How justly Proteus' transmigrations fit The monstrous changes of a modern wit! Now, such a gentle stream of eloquence As seldom rises to the verge of sense; Now, by mad rage, transform'd into a flame, Which yet fit engines, well applied, ...
— The Poetical Works of Edward Young, Volume 2 • Edward Young
... snow and hail at last The Sire has sent in vengeance down: His bolts, at His own temple cast, Appall'd the town, Appall'd the lands, lest Pyrrha's time Return, with all its monstrous sights, When Proteus led his flocks to climb The flatten'd heights, When fish were in the elm-tops caught, Where once the stock-dove wont to bide, And does were floating, all distraught, Adown the tide. Old Tiber, hurl'd in tumult back From mingling with the Etruscan main, Has threaten'd Numa's court with wrack ...
— Odes and Carmen Saeculare of Horace • Horace
... seemed lukewarm to him,—which he could not endure,—or if they actually threatened to break with him. Never since Luther has there been such a belligerent, relentless, untiring writer. As soon as he put pen to paper he was like Proteus, everything: sage or intriguer, historian or poet, whatever the situation demanded, always an active, fiery, intellectual—sometimes also an ill-mannered—man, with never a moment's thought of his royal position. Whatever he ...
— The German Classics Of The Nineteenth And Twentieth Centuries, Volume 12 • Various
... the wave's circulation, Behold the shimmer, The wild dissipation, And, out of endeavor To change and to flow, The gas become solid, And phantoms and nothings Return to be things, And endless imbroglio Is law and the world,— Then first shalt thou know, That in the wild turmoil, Horsed on the Proteus, Thou ridest to ...
— Poems - Household Edition • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... Fancy! still that voice, those notes prolong. As sweet as when that voice with rapturous falls 55 Shall wake the soften'd echoes of Heaven's Halls! [52:1]O (have I sigh'd) were mine the wizard's rod, Or mine the power of Proteus, changeful God! A flower-entangled Arbour I would seem To shield my Love from Noontide's sultry beam: 60 Or bloom a Myrtle, from whose od'rous boughs My Love might weave gay garlands for her brows. When Twilight stole across the fading vale, To fan ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... the intermittent clouds of vapour sent up from the crater assume the most fantastic shapes—trees, ships, men, birds, animals—ever changing like the forms of Proteus. It would seem as if the Spirit of the Mountain were idly amusing himself, like a child blowing bubbles, or a vendor at a fair-stall carving out little figures of gingerbread to tickle the fancy of country boys and girls. The clouds so formed sometimes cause amusement ...
— The Naples Riviera • Herbert M. Vaughan
... manners and customs, features and figures, of nearly all mankind. He gets on with every one, for every one is gratified by seeing himself reflected in him. And he can jump from one frame to another as freely as Proteus or the populace. And yet, with all that, he is perfectly honest to any allegiance he undertakes. He would not betray us to Vypan, Goad, and Terryer for your great nugget and the ...
— Erema - My Father's Sin • R. D. Blackmore
... Eusebius in a coma! answering all comers, like one of the heads in the play of Macbeth! But I was to tell you how to sit—that is the way, get into a coma—that will be the painter's best chance of having you; or, when he has been working for hours, he may find you a Proteus, and that you have slipped through his fingers after all his toil to catch you. I will tell you what happened to a painter of my acquaintance. A dentist sat to him two days—the third the painter worked away very hard—looked at the picture, then at his sitter. "Why, sir," said he; "I find I have ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 55, No. 340, February, 1844 • Various
... which he has engaged. I wish it, however, distinctly understood that I do not suppose that the experience of others whose use of opium had been similar to my own, would necessarily correspond to mine in all or even in many respects. Opium is the Proteus of medicine, and science has not yet succeeded in tearing away the many masks it wears, nor in tracing the marvellously diversified aspects it is capable of assuming. Among many cases of the relinquishment of opium with which I have been made acquainted, nothing is more perplexing than the difference ...
— The Opium Habit • Horace B. Day
... But my presumption to the contrary is more strongly corroborated by what had recently passed: the Duchess had actually prevailed on the King to see Bolingbroke secretly in his closet. That intriguing Proteus, aware that he might not obtain an audience long enough to efface former prejudices, and make sufficient impression on the King against Sir Robert, and in his own favour, went provided with a memorial, which he left in the closet. and begged his Majesty to peruse ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 1 • Horace Walpole
... conversation. An incident related by him often became upon the instant a little acted drama. His mimetic powers were in many respects marvellous. In voice, in countenance, in carriage, almost, it might be said, at moments, in stature, he seemed to be a Proteus. ...
— Charles Dickens as a Reader • Charles Kent
... Red blood-cells of various Vertebrates (equally magnified). 1. of man, 2. camel, 3. dove, 4. proteus, 5. water-salamander (Triton), 6. frog, 7. merlin (Cobitis), 8. lamprey (Petromyzon). a surface-view, b ...
— The Evolution of Man, V.2 • Ernst Haeckel
... this play, though not so highly wrought as in some others, have often much sweetness of sentiment and expression. There is something pretty and playful in the conversation of Julia with her maid, when she shows such a disposition to coquetry about receiving the letter from Proteus; and her behaviour afterwards and her disappointment, when she finds him faithless to his vows, remind us at a distance of Imogen's tender constancy. Her answer to Lucetta, who advises her against following her lover in disguise, is ...
— Characters of Shakespeare's Plays • William Hazlitt
... shape thou well canst run, Proteus, 'twixt rise and set of sun, Well pleased with logger-camps in Maine As where Milan's pale Duomo lies A stranded glacier on the plain, Its peaks and pinnacles of ice Melted in many a quaint device, And sees, across the city's din, Afar its silent ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume V, Number 29, March, 1860 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... writing for the pianoforte. Thalberg was perfect in his genre, but he cannot be compared to an artist of the breadth, universality, and, above all, intellectual and emotional power of Liszt. It is possible to describe the former, but the latter, Proteus-like, is apt to elude the grasp of him who endeavours to catch hold of him. The Thalberg controversy did not end with Fetis's article. Liszt wrote a rejoinder in which he failed to justify himself, but succeeded in giving the poor savant some hard hits. I do not think Liszt would have ...
— Frederick Chopin as a Man and Musician - Volume 1-2, Complete • Frederick Niecks
... Comus, Momus, and Proteus, are understood to be connected with three of the city's four leading clubs, all of which stand within easy range of one another on the uptown side of Canal Street: the Boston Club (taking its name from an old card game); the Pickwick (named for Dickens' genial gentleman, a statue of whom stands ...
— American Adventures - A Second Trip 'Abroad at home' • Julian Street
... It seems as every ship their sovereign knows, His awful summons they so soon obey; So hear the scaly herd when Proteus blows, And so to pasture ...
— The Poetical Works of John Dryden, Vol I - With Life, Critical Dissertation, and Explanatory Notes • John Dryden
... Run, fetch two cushions to raise up his head, And bring a little key to ope his teeth. [Exit DRAWER. Pursuivant, your warrant and your box— These must with me; the shape of Fauconbridge Will hold no longer water hereabout. Gloster will be a Proteus every hour, That Elinor and Leicester, Henry, John, And all that rabble of hate-loving curs, May minister me more ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. VII (4th edition) • Various
... flow. For this the Poet looks thy world around, Where form and life and reasoning man are found; He loves the mind, in all its modes, to trace, And all the manners of the changing race; Silent he walks the road of life along, And views the aims of its tumultuous throng: He finds what shapes the Proteus-passions take, And what strange waste of life and joy they make, And loves to show them in their varied ways, With honest blame or with unflattering praise: 'Tis good to know, 'tis pleasant to impart, These turns and movements of the human heart: The stronger features of the soul ...
— The Borough • George Crabbe
... have been manoeuvring to-day a little revengefully. That, you will say, is out of character. So baleful a passion does not easily find admission among those softer ones which you well know I cherish. However, I am a mere Proteus, and can assume any shape that ...
— The Coquette - The History of Eliza Wharton • Hannah Webster Foster
... Eidothee or Eidothea, is the daughter of Proteus—the old man of the sea. A legend concerning her is found in the 4th ...
— A Handbook to the Works of Browning (6th ed.) • Mrs. Sutherland Orr
... whose intellect and character were infinitely subtle and complex, the blending of all opposites, it is possible to sustain the most conflicting opinions, and perhaps in the end no critic can seize this Proteus. Saint-Simon noticed how in his noble countenance every contrary quality was expressed, and how all were harmonised: "Il fallait faire effort pour cesser de le regarder." During the early years of his clerical career he acted as superior to female converts from Protestantism, and as missionary ...
— A History of French Literature - Short Histories of the Literatures of the World: II. • Edward Dowden
... Proteus, I thank thee for thine honest care; Which to requite, command me while I live. This love of theirs myself have often seen, Haply when they have judg'd me fast asleep, And oftentimes have purpos'd to forbid Sir Valentine her company and my court; But, fearing lest my jealous aim might ...
— The Principles of English Versification • Paull Franklin Baum
... from the well-known relationship of most of their other productions. Far from feeling any surprise that some of the cave-animals should be very anomalous, as Agassiz has remarked in regard to the blind fish, the Amblyopsis, and as is the case with the blind Proteus with reference to the reptiles of Europe, I am only surprised that more wrecks of ancient life have not been preserved, owing to the less severe competition to which the inhabitants of these dark abodes will probably ...
— On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection • Charles Darwin
... Face to all occasions. Ile drowne more Saylers then the Mermaid shall, Ile slay more gazers then the Basiliske, Ile play the Orator as well as Nestor, Deceiue more slyly then Vlisses could, And like a Synon, take another Troy. I can adde Colours to the Camelion, Change shapes with Proteus, for aduantages, And set the murtherous Macheuill to Schoole. Can I doe this, and cannot get a Crowne? Tut, were it farther off, ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare
... was son of Memphis, and according to Herodotus, must have succeeded the first—since Proteus lived at the time of the siege of Troy, which, according to Usher, ...
— History of the Negro Race in America From 1619 to 1880. Vol 1 - Negroes as Slaves, as Soldiers, and as Citizens • George W. Williams
... CHARLES PROTEUS STEINMETZ Consulting Engineer, with the General Electric Co.; Professor of Electrical Engineering, Union College. Author of "The Theory and Calculation of Alternating-Current Phenomena," "Theoretical Elements ...
— Cyclopedia of Telephony & Telegraphy Vol. 1 - A General Reference Work on Telephony, etc. etc. • Kempster Miller
... Proteus informed Menelaus that he would be conveyed to the Islands of the Blessed, because he was the husband of Helen, and the son-in-law of Jupiter. No incentives to goodness from the consideration of a future state are held out by the older poets to the female sex, ...
— The Christian Foundation, Or, Scientific and Religious Journal, Volume I, No. 11, November, 1880 • Various
... amphibia. Out of the dipneusta arose the class of amphibia, having five toes (the pentadactyla). The gill amphibians are man's most ancient ancestors of the class amphibia. Besides possessing lungs as well as the mud-fish, they retain throughout life regular gills like the still-living proteus and axolotl. Most gilled batrachia live in North America. The paddle-fins of the dipneusta changed into five-toed legs, which were afterwards transmitted to the ...
— Was Man Created? • Henry A. Mott
... of a quarter of a mile, leaning against the trunk of a gigantic kauri, stood a human being, the Proteus of those subterranean regions, a new son of Neptune, watching this ...
— A Journey to the Interior of the Earth • Jules Verne
... these are the two grand instruments. From this account, some may begin to think that in treating of grammar we are dealing with something too various and changeable for the understanding to grasp; a dodging Proteus of the imagination, who is ever ready to assume some new shape, and elude the vigilance of the inquirer. But let the reader or student do his part; and, if he please, follow us with attention. We ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown
... no doubt that the dodo was one of those instances, well known to naturalists, of a species, or part of a species, remaining permanently in an undeveloped state. As the Greenland whale never acquires teeth, but remains a suckling all its life; as the proteus of the Carniolian caverns, and the axolotl of the Mexican lakes, never attain a higher form than that of the tadpole; so the dodo may be described as a permanent nestling covered with down, and possessing only the rudiments of tail and wings. Nor are we to consider ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 440 - Volume 17, New Series, June 5, 1852 • Various
... is forgotten, and at last the "pat of butter" is expected as pleasantly as the pipe or the cup of coffee. It prevents the skin from chaps and sores, obviates the evil effects of heat, cold, and wet, and neutralises the Proteus-like malaria poison. The Somal never fail to anoint themselves when they can afford ghee, and the Bedouin is at the summit of his bliss, when sitting in the blazing sun, or,—heat acts upon these people as upon serpents,—with his back opposite a roaring fire, ...
— First footsteps in East Africa • Richard F. Burton
... with the treasure of the realm, While soldiers mutiny for want of pay. He wears a lord's revenue on his back, And, Midas-like, he jets it in the court, With base outlandish cullions at his heels, Whose proud fantastic liveries make such show As if that Proteus, god of shapes, appear'd. I have not seen a dapper Jack so brisk: He wears a short Italian hooded cloak, Larded with pearl, and in his Tuscan cap A jewel of more value than the crown. While others walk below, ...
— Edward II. - Marlowe's Plays • Christopher Marlowe
... of this; but Lelex quotes, as an example, the case of Baucis and Philemon, who were changed into trees, while their house became a temple, and the neighbouring country a pool of water. Acheloues then tells the story of the transformations of Proteus and of Metra, and how Metra supported her father Erisicthon, ...
— The Metamorphoses of Ovid - Literally Translated into English Prose, with Copious Notes - and Explanations • Publius Ovidius Naso
... rescue party—in many ways parallels, and pointedly illustrates, the Hudson expedition. There was dissension in Greely's command almost from the start. Surgeon Pavy's angry protests compelled the sending back in the "Proteus"—paralleling the sending back of Coleburne in the pink—of one member of the company; and Lieutenant Kislingbury—paralleling Juet's insubordination—objected so strongly to Greely's regulations that he gave in his resignation and tried, ...
— Henry Hudson - A Brief Statement Of His Aims And His Achievements • Thomas A. Janvier
... the surface, which, from its thickness or thinness takes the impression of everything that approaches it, whereas friends endeavour to be like one another in character, and feeling, and language, and pursuits, and disposition. It requires a not very fortunate or very good Proteus,[346] able by jugglery to assume various forms, to be frequently at the same time a student with the learned, and ready to try a fall with wrestlers, or to go a hunting with people fond of the chase, or to get drunk with ...
— Plutarch's Morals • Plutarch
... These are the very words of Jamblicus de Symbolis Aegyptiorum, c. 2, sect. 7. The sun was the grand Proteus, ...
— The Ruins • C. F. [Constantin Francois de] Volney
... observation (that is, of Nature as it appears to us when unquestioned by art), and azote or nitrogen in the nomenclature of experiment (that is, of Nature in the state so beautifully allegorized in the Homeric fable of Proteus bound down, and forced to answer by Ulysses, after having been pursued through all his metamorphoses into his ultimate form.(14)) That nothing real does or can exist corresponding to either pole exclusively, ...
— Hints towards the formation of a more comprehensive theory of life. • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... had thus greeted them? The bay seemed perfectly lonely. Not a sound was to be heard but the regular dip of the oars, the cry of a startled bird, and the splash of a flock of seals, which had been sunning themselves on the shore, and which floundered into the sea like Proteus' flock of yore before Ulysses. Would that Proteus himself had still been there to be captured and interrogated! For the place was so entirely deserted that, saving for the remains of the wreck, he must have believed himself mistaken in the locality, and the lieutenant began to question him whether ...
— A Modern Telemachus • Charlotte M. Yonge
... convulsed society, I did not gather to be dreaded, or not with a like fear. The spirit of Aana that ate souls is certainly a fearsome inmate; but the high gods, even of the archipelago, seem helpful. Mahinui—from whom our convict-catechist had been named— the spirit of the sea, like a Proteus endowed with endless avatars, came to the assistance of the shipwrecked and carried them ashore in the guise of a ray fish. The same divinity bore priests from isle to isle about the archipelago, and by his aid, ...
— In the South Seas • Robert Louis Stevenson
... it is for that Proteus, self-love, to elude the presence of mind, the inexorable eye, the fast ...
— Classic French Course in English • William Cleaver Wilkinson
... The Britons, once a savage kind, By you were brighten'd and refined, Descendants to the barbarous Huns, With limbs robust, and voice that stuns: But you have moulded them afresh, Removed the tough superfluous flesh, Taught them to modulate their tongues, And speak without the help of lungs. Proteus on you bestow'd the boon To change your visage like the moon; You sometimes half a face produce, Keep t'other half for private use. How famed thy conduct in the fight With Hermes, son of Pleias bright! Outnumber'd, half encompass'd ...
— Poems (Volume II.) • Jonathan Swift
... this heat of itself cannot overcome the stronger affinity which now chains the fuel to the oxygen. It must go forward, not backward, about its business, forever and ever. It may pass, but not cease. The sharp-eyed Faraday has been following far away this Proteus, with a strong suspicion that it changes at last into gravity, in which shape it returns straight to the sun, carrying down with it, probably, those flinty showers of meteors which, striking fire in the atmosphere of the prime luminary, replenish its overflowing fountain of life. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. II, No. 8, June 1858 • Various
... of disease-causing protozoan parasites which are similar to the amoeba or proteus-animalcule, and a third, which belong to the group of "ciliated infusoria." They are not so minute as the preceding set, and are not usually referred to as "microbes." They inhabit the intestine of man and animals, and cause, in some instances, dysentery. These two later ...
— More Science From an Easy Chair • Sir E. Ray (Edwin Ray) Lankester
... course, You'll mark in plenty, la Proteus: A bear become a little horse— Presumably from too much throat-use! A thousandfold must go untold; But, should you miss your farm-yard sunny, And miss your ducks and drakes, behold We'll make you ducks and ...
— In Divers Tones • Charles G. D. Roberts
... ship their sov'reign knows, His awful summons they so soon obey: So hear the scaly herds when Proteus blows, And so to ...
— Lives of the Poets, Vol. 1 • Samuel Johnson
... done in one way, however, may sometimes be done in another. Not only was London the central stronghold of English Presbyterianism; the power of Presbyterianism there centralized was a kind of Proteus. One of its forms was the Westminster Assembly, a large nucleus of which consisted of ministers from London and the suburbs; another, since May 1647, was the London Provincial Synod. But, in aid of these ...
— The Life of John Milton Vol. 3 1643-1649 • David Masson
... allowed. They are included, as a bed of flowers, between the high walls of duty; love-flowers even grow there, to be plucked, under the blue sky. But take care not to be tempted by that wonderful female Proteus, Lady Meed, the great corruptress. She disappears and reappears, and she, too, assumes all shapes; she is everywhere at the same time: it seems as if the serpent of Eden had become the immense reptile ...
— A Literary History of the English People - From the Origins to the Renaissance • Jean Jules Jusserand
... Sandie Macleod, who has at times an excessive flow of spirits, and had it now, was, in his days of absconding, known by the name of M'Cruslick[499], which it seems was the designation of a kind of wild man in the Highlands, something between Proteus and Don Quixote; and so he was called here. He made much jovial noise. Dr. Johnson was so delighted with this scene, that he said, 'I know not how we shall get away.' It entertained me to observe him sitting by, while we danced, sometimes in deep meditation,—sometimes smiling complacently,—sometimes ...
— Life Of Johnson, Volume 5 • Boswell
... indiff'rence of the playful herd, None by his fellow chosen or preferr'd! No bonds of amity the flocks enthrall, But each associates and is pleased with all; So graze the dappled deer in num'rous droves, And all his kind alike the zebra loves' The same law governs where the billows roar And Proteus' shoals o'erspread the desert shore; 140 The sparrow, meanest of the feather'd race, His fit companion finds in ev'ry place, With whom he picks the grain that suits him best, Flits here and there, and late returns to rest, And whom if chance the ...
— Poemata (William Cowper, trans.) • John Milton
... see the untouched Artemis gliding rapidly among the mossy trunks. Beneath, in the deep abysses of earth, reigned the gloomy Pluto with the sad Persephone, home-sick for the upper air. By the sea-shore Proteus wound his horn, the Sirens sang their fatal song among the rocks, the Nereids and Oceanides gleamed beneath the green waters, the vast Amphitrite stretched her wide-embracing arms, and Thetis with her water-nymphs lived in their submarine grottos. When the morning dawned, Eos, or Aurora, went ...
— Ten Great Religions - An Essay in Comparative Theology • James Freeman Clarke
... him, they said, there succeeded to the throne a man of Memphis, whose name in the tongue of the Hellenes was Proteus; for whom there is now a sacred enclosure at Memphis, very fair and well ordered, lying on that side of the temple of Hephaistos which faces the North Wind. Round about this enclosure dwell Phenicians of Tyre, ...
— The History Of Herodotus - Volume 1(of 2) • Herodotus
... with a quick warning wink and a wave of his hand to introduce us. "I pescatori da maremma. . . . To them enter Proteus with his attendant nymphs. . . . They rush on him and bind him with strings of sausages (will the Donna Julia oblige by tucking up her sleeves and fetching the sausages from the back kitchen, with a brazier?) The music, slow at first, becomes agitated as the old ...
— Sir John Constantine • Prosper Paleologus Constantine
... the organisation of vertebrates. Yet the mole, which habitually makes no use of the sense of sight, has eyes so small that they can hardly be seen; and the aspalax, whose habits-resemble a mole's, has totally lost its sight, and shows but vestiges of eyes. So also the proteus, which ...
— The World's Greatest Books - Volume 15 - Science • Various
... "The demons of the Greeks were the ghosts and genii of departed men." "All Pagan antiquity affirms," says Dr. CAMPBELL, "that from Titan and Saturn, the poetic progeny of Coelus and Terra, down to AEsculapius, Proteus, and Minos, all their divinities were the ghosts of dead men; and were so regarded by the most erudite of ...
— A Brief Commentary on the Apocalypse • Sylvester Bliss
... power which seated him on one of the two glory-smitten summits of the poetic mountain, with Milton as his compeer not rival. While the former darts himself forth, and passes into all the forms of human character and passion, the one Proteus of the fire and the flood; the other attracts all forms and things to himself, into the unity of his own ideal. All things and modes of action shape themselves anew in the being of Milton; while Shakespeare becomes all things, yet ...
— Biographia Literaria • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... he took his proper form, and began to question me. 'Son of Atreus,' he said, 'who hath taught thee how to make me a prisoner? What is it thou wouldst know?' 'Tell me what god is angry with me, O Proteus,' I replied. 'Why am I detained on this island? Why can I not reach my home?' 'Thou didst not make acceptable sacrifices to Zeus,' said Proteus. 'And thou wilt never see thy home again until thou hast offered up a hundred ...
— Odysseus, the Hero of Ithaca - Adapted from the Third Book of the Primary Schools of Athens, Greece • Homer
... fallen heart and a fallen world—"All seek their own!" Selfishness is the great law of our degenerated nature. When the love of God was dethroned from the soul, self vaulted into the vacant seat, and there, in some one of its Proteus shapes, continues to reign. ...
— The Mind of Jesus • John R. Macduff
... mythical antiquity—the Chimaera has given us 'chimerical,' Hermes 'hermetic,' Pan 'panic,' Paean, being a name of Apollo, the 'peony,' Tantalus 'to tantalize,' Hercules 'herculean,' Proteus 'protean,' Vulcan 'volcano' and 'volcanic,' and Daedalus 'dedal,' if this word, for which Spenser, Wordsworth, and Shelley have all stood godfathers, may find allowance with us. The demi-god Atlas figures ...
— On the Study of Words • Richard C Trench
... many things unsaid on this topic, but not longer omit our homage to the Efficient Nature, natura naturans, the quick cause, before which all forms flee as the driven snows, itself secret, its works driven before it in flocks and multitudes, (as the ancient represented nature by Proteus,[500] a shepherd), and in undescribable variety. It publishes itself in creatures, reaching from particles and spicula, through transformation on transformation to the highest symmetries, arriving at consummate results without a shock or a leap. A little heat, ...
— Essays • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... liking. And, even at this late hour of the day, it is still conceivable that such of them as would verily prefer to see, suppose, instead of a tramp with a harmonium, Orpheus with his lute, or Arion on his dolphin, pleased Proteus rising beside him from the sea,—might, standing on the "pleasant lea" of Margate or Brighton, ...
— On the Old Road Vol. 1 (of 2) - A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays and Articles on Art and Literature • John Ruskin
... warres, to try their fortune there; Some, to discover Islands farre away; Some, to the studious Universities; For any, or for all these exercises, He said, thou Proteus, your sonne was meet; And did request me, to importune you To let him spend his time no more at home; Which would be great impeachment to his age, In having knowne no travaile in his youth. (Antonio) Nor need'st thou much importune me to that Whereon, this month I have been hamering, I have ...
— English Travellers of the Renaissance • Clare Howard
... to the house. The author of 'La Cite Antique' cites, among other ancient texts bearing upon the subject, an interesting invocation from the tragedy of Helen, by Euripides:—"All hail! my father's tomb! I buried thee, Proteus, at the place where men pass out, that I might often greet thee; and so, even as I go out and in, I, thy son Theoclymenus, call upon thee, father! ..." But in ancient Japan, men fled from the neighbourhood of death. It was long the custom to abandon, ...
— Japan: An Attempt at Interpretation • Lafcadio Hearn
... long established customs and transform the baby and the toy into an intellectual being, desiring equal rights with themselves and asserting her claim to all the immunities they enjoy. Woman must be willing to see herself as she is, the slave of fashion, assuming all the Proteus forms she invents, without reference to health or convenience. She must remember how few of us give evidence of sufficient development to warrant our claims; and whilst we feel a divine impulse to proceed in achieving the enlargement of woman, whilst we hear a voice saying, ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume I • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... and minor seas are to the great deep; but, as the cloud-firmament detaches itself more from the air, and has a wider range of ministry than the minor streams and seas, the highest cloud deity, Hermes, has a rank more equal with Athena than Nereus or Proteus with Neptune; and there is greater difficulty in tracing his character, because his physical dominion over the clouds can, of course, be asserted only where clouds are; and, therefore, scarcely at all in Egypt;* so that ...
— The Queen of the Air • John Ruskin
... different Man, to higher fates assign'd, Unfolds with tardier step his Proteus mind, With numerous Instincts fraught, that lose their force Like shallow streams, divided in their course; Long weak, and helpless, on the fostering breast, In fond dependence leans the infant guest, Till reason ...
— Langstroth on the Hive and the Honey-Bee - A Bee Keeper's Manual • L. L. Langstroth |
