"Sibyl" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... sudden swell of the ocean. Here they were desolate and homesick. The strange people among whom they had fallen did not know they were the children of a king. No one was left to care for them but their old nurse, named Sibyl. ...
— Fairy Book • Sophie May
... imposture, and He makes His own fiat the substitute for its sorceries. He speaks amid the incantations of Balaam, raises Samuel's spirit in the witch's cavern, prophesies of the Messias by the tongue of the Sibyl, forces Python to recognize His ministers, and baptizes by the hand of the misbeliever. He is with the heathen dramatist in his denunciations of injustice and tyranny, and his auguries of divine vengeance upon crime. Even on the unseemly legends ...
— The Idea of a University Defined and Illustrated: In Nine - Discourses Delivered to the Catholics of Dublin • John Henry Newman
... patience, were I to describe many objects of interest and many scenes of beauty I witnessed in New York and the neighbourhood. The Common Schools; the Croton Waterworks, capable of yielding an adequate supply for a million-and-a-half of people; Hoboken, with its sibyl's cave and elysian fields; the spot on which General Hamilton fell in a duel; the Battery and Castle Garden—a covered amphitheatre capable of accommodating 10,000 people; the Park, and the City Hall with its white marble front; Trinity Church; and its wealthy Corporation; Long Island, or ...
— American Scenes, and Christian Slavery - A Recent Tour of Four Thousand Miles in the United States • Ebenezer Davies
... puzzled me like anything; In fact, it puzzled me worse: Isn't schoolman's logic hard enough, Without being in Sibyl's verse? ...
— A Budget of Paradoxes, Volume I (of II) • Augustus De Morgan
... even the moon, The Sibyl, clothed in white, appears, with glance Lyncean, piercing deep and bringing forth From the world's ends great hosts of monstrous things, The monsters born of ...
— Life Immovable - First Part • Kostes Palamas
... been prudent for them to put off their boats and join the ship, as Dalton had directed. The old death-dresser forsook the corpse, and standing on the highest crag, her long hair floating backwards on the breeze, her arms tossing from the effects of terror and astonishment, looked like the sibyl whose spells and orgies have distracted nature by some terrible convulsion. The cliffs and strand at the moment formed a picture that Salvator would have gloried in conveying to his canvass—the line of coast now rising boldly from the ocean, each projecting point catching the glaring blaze, ...
— The Buccaneer - A Tale • Mrs. S. C. Hall
... The candidate, in these initiations, was crowned with myrtle, because, according to the popular theology, the myrtle was sacred to Proserpine, the goddess of the future life. Every classical scholar will remember the golden branch with which Aeneas was supplied by the Sibyl, before proceeding on his journey to the infernal regions[198]—a voyage which is now universally admitted to be a mythical representation of ...
— The Symbolism of Freemasonry • Albert G. Mackey
... Roman now—Syria, Canaan, Greece, Egypt —Germany, Gaul, Britain; the world belongs to Rome, according to the prophecy of the Cumaean Sibyl." ...
— Historical Miniatures • August Strindberg
... the city whose very air became to them the breath of inspiring suggestion? Where but in Rome would have come to Crawford the vision of his "Orpheus" and of his noble Beethoven? or to Story his "Libyan Sibyl," and that exquisite group, "Into the Silent Land"? or to Vedder his marvellous creations of "The Fates Gathering in the Stars," the "Cumaean Sibyl," or the "Dance of the Pleiades"? to Simmons his triumphant "Angel of the Resurrection," ...
— Italy, the Magic Land • Lilian Whiting
... to the mighty queen design'd, And mollify with pray'rs her haughty mind. Thus, at the length, your passage shall be free, And you shall safe descend on Italy. Arriv'd at Cumae, when you view the flood Of black Avernus, and the sounding wood, The mad prophetic Sibyl you shall find, Dark in a cave, and on a rock reclin'd. She sings the fates, and, in her frantic fits, The notes and names, inscrib'd, to leafs commits. What she commits to leafs, in order laid, Before the cavern's entrance are display'd: ...
— The Aeneid • Virgil
... limited to one supreme plastic form like Zeus at Olympia or Athena in the Acropolis, but distracted, as in a fever dream, into a thousand symbols and reflections. But then, the Church, that new Sibyl, had a thousand secrets to make the absent near. Into this kingdom of reverie, and with it into a paradise of ambitious refinements, the earthly love enters, and becomes a prolonged somnambulism. Of religion it learns ...
— Aesthetic Poetry • Walter Horatio Pater
... painted room, which had been brought all the way from Sienna, and there they found Mrs. Dawson—a beautiful, worn, world-weary Mrs. Dawson, with one streak of gray in the front of her dark hair, her tragic eyes, and her long violet and black draperies—a perfect Sibyl. ...
— The Beauty and the Bolshevist • Alice Duer Miller
... portfolio yourself and threw it where it was discovered, and as for the vessel you spoke at random; but as you are an honest man, confess that you were afraid of the results. I am never so bold as that, and when my father asks me questions of that kind, my replies are more obscure than a sibyl's. I don't wish him to lose confidence in my oracle, nor do I wish him to be able to reproach me with a loss that ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... hope; but only for a few months, having himself died that same year. Poor Duke; rather a good man, by all the accounts I could hear; though not of qualities that shone. He is at present "Duke of Brunswick-Bevern,"—such his actual nomenclature in those ever-fluctuating Sibyl's-leaves of German History-Books, Wilhelmina's and the others;—expectant Duke of Brunswick in General; much a friend of Friedrich Wilhelm. A kind of Austrian soldier he was formerly, and will again be for brief times; ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. IX. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... king refused to give her the price demanded, she went away, burnt three of them, and returning to the king, demanded the same price for the remaining six. Again the king declined the purchase. The sibyl, after burning three more of the volumes, demanded the original sum for the remaining three. Tarquin paid the money, and Amalthaea was never more seen. Aulus Gellius says that Amalthaea burnt the books in the king's presence. Pliny affirms that the original number ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama, Vol 1 - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook • The Rev. E. Cobham Brewer, LL.D.
... Frederick II, who strove to found a new society of humane culture in the South of Europe, and to anticipate the advent of the spirit of modern tolerance. He, too, and all his race were exterminated by the papal jealousy. Truly we may say with Michelet that the sibyl of the Renaissance kept offering her books in vain to feudal Europe. In vain, because the time was not yet. The ideas projected thus early on the modern world were immature and abortive, like those headless trunks and zoophytic members of half-moulded humanity ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... say to the vipers," said Jucundus, "is, 'Let well alone. We did well enough without you; we did well enough till you sprang up.' A plague on their insolence; as if Jew or Egyptian could do aught for us when Numa and the Sibyl fail. That is what I say, Let Rome be true to herself and nothing can harm her; let her shift her foundation, and I would not buy her for this water-melon," he said, taking a suck at it. "Rome alone can harm Rome. Recollect ...
— Callista • John Henry Cardinal Newman
... Elizabeth as she passed the bridge. There was also an artificial dolphin swimming upon the water, with a band of musicians within it. As the queen advanced across the park, men and women, in strange disguises, came out to meet her, and to offer her salutations and praises. One was dressed as a sibyl, another like an American savage, and a third, who was concealed, represented an echo. This visit was continued for nineteen days, and the stories of the splendid entertainments provided for the company—the plays, the bear-baitings, the fireworks, the huntings, the mock ...
— Queen Elizabeth - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... temple of Jupiter, begun by his father. He also obtained the SIBYLLINE BOOKS. A woman from Cumae, a Greek colony, came to him, and offered for sale nine books of oracles and prophecies; but the price seemed exorbitant, and he refused to purchase them. The sibyl then burned three, and, returning, asked the same price for the remaining six. The king again refused. She burned three more, and obtained from the monarch for her last three the original price. These books were preserved in the Capitol, and held in great respect. They were destroyed ...
— History of Rome from the Earliest times down to 476 AD • Robert F. Pennell
... and shall we see Those sibyl-leaves of destiny, Those calm eyes, nevermore? Those deep, dark eyes so warm and bright, Wherein the fortunes of the man Lay slumbering in prophetic light, In characters a child might scan? So bright, and gone forth utterly! Oh ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell
... Orat. ad Sanctos, c. 19 20. He chiefly depends on a mysterious acrostic, composed in the sixth age after the Deluge, by the Erythraean Sibyl, and translated by Cicero into Latin. The initial letters of the thirty-four Greek verses form this prophetic sentence: Jesus Christ, Son of ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 2 • Edward Gibbon
... before; it appears to have no reputation as a work of art, nor am I at all positive that it deserves any. For me, however, it did as much as sculpture could, under the circumstances, even if the artist of the Libyan Sibyl had wrought it, by reviving my interest in the sturdy old Englishman, and particularly by freshening my perception of a wonderful beauty and pathetic tenderness in the incident of the penance. So, the next ...
— Our Old Home - A Series of English Sketches • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... of admonition, while around me appeared hosts of beings of another world. My senses reeled. I called for help, and must have cried aloud, for just then I heard my mother's voice from the adjoining room,—'What is it, Sibyl?' and when I awoke she ...
— Dawn • Mrs. Harriet A. Adams
... essential condition of attainment, they will find that these priests and "magi climbing up some other way," and whom Jesus designated as "thieves and robbers," could never function or pass beyond the so-called "astral plane." Here is where the Sibyl and the ...
— The New Avatar and The Destiny of the Soul - The Findings of Natural Science Reduced to Practical Studies - in Psychology • Jirah D. Buck
... mediaeval sanctities, Overbeck's conservative self-devotion, a market-place by Ostade, Reynolds's "Strawberry Girl," one of Copley's colonial grandees in a New England farmer's parlor, a cabinet gem by Greuze, a dog or sheep of Landseer's, the misty depths of Turner's "Carthage," Domenichino's "Sibyl," Claude's sunset, or Allston's "Rosalie,"—how much of eras in Art, events in history, national tastes, and varieties of genius do they each foreshadow and embalm! Even when no special beauty or skill is manifest, the character of features transmitted by pictorial art, their antiquity or ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 4, February, 1858 • Various
... Caverford's portrait, has the rapt eye of the Cumaean sibyl. One of Moore's fine friends, an admirer of Bessy's, speaks to him of her "wild, poetic face," and the Duchess of Sussex thought her like "Lady Heathcote in the days of her beauty." That is putting her very high, for, according to Cosway, Lady Heathcote was a lovely young woman ...
— In a Green Shade - A Country Commentary • Maurice Hewlett
... Delphic Sibyl. In ancient mythology, the Sibyls were certain women who possessed the power of prophecy. One of these who made her abode at Delphi in Greece was called ...
— Essays • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... writing-desk. A story for a magazine, which it was imperative should be finished to-morrow, appealed to her already partially stupefied brain. She forced her unwilling pen into the service, whisked the table round into the draught, and began. In about five minutes the sibyl caught the inspiration of her god, and heat and sleeplessness were alike forgotten. This sounds very poetic, but it wasn't at all. Keturah regrets to say that she had on a very unbecoming green wrapper, and several ink-spots on ...
— Men, Women, and Ghosts • Elizabeth Stuart Phelps
... all things seem yellow," say the French; and Paul said, "To the pure all things are pure: but unto them that are defiled is nothing pure." According to Serapion, as quoted by Clemens Alexandrinus, the tradition was that the face which appears in the moon is the soul of a Sibyl. Plutarch, in his treatise, Of the Face appearing in the roundle of the Moone, cites the poet Agesinax as saying ...
— Moon Lore • Timothy Harley
... Incomparable Sibyl cease, I pray! Hand us thy liquor without more delay. And to the very brim the goblet crown! My friend he is, and need not be afraid; Besides, he is a man of many a grade, Who ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... decisive expression convey the fatal news to the assassin that he had been discovered. In this torturing dilemma fear prompted an expedient, which to Lottchen appeared madness, and to Louisa herself the act of a sibyl instinct with blind inspiration. "Here," said she, "is our dancing room. When shall we all meet and dance again together?" Saying which, she commenced a wild dance, whirling her candle round her head until the motion extinguished it; then, eddying round her sister in narrowing circles, ...
— The Lock and Key Library • Julian Hawthorne, Ed.
... libri fatales (Books of Fate), and these, together with the Sibylline Books, were kept in the Temple of Capitoline Jupiter. Nothing seemed more natural than to suppose that Tarquin, who built that temple, purchased also the sacred books of the Sibyl.' —Ihne. ...
— Helps to Latin Translation at Sight • Edmund Luce
... is alone in the world,—alone in the home where loneliness had seemed from the cradle a thing that was not of nature. And at first the solitude and the stillness were insupportable. Have you, ye mourners, to whom these sibyl leaves, weird with many a dark enigma, shall be borne, have you not felt that when the death of some best-loved one has made the hearth desolate,—have you not felt as if the gloom of the altered home was too heavy for thought to bear?—you would ...
— Zanoni • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... well, from the garden-walk below. Juan Can, when he first hobbled out on the stout crutches Alessandro had made him of manzanita wood, dragged himself all the way round the house, to have a look at Senor Felipe and a word with him. The Senora sat there, in the big carved chair, looking like a sibyl with her black silk banded head-dress severely straight across her brow, and her large dark eyes gazing out, past Felipe, into the far south sky. Ramona lived there too, with her embroidery or her book, sitting on cushions ...
— Ramona • Helen Hunt Jackson
... air, and blow away with a change of wind; but beliefs are rooted in human wants and weakness, and die hard. The oaks of Dodona are prostrate, and the shrine of Delphi is desolate; but the Pythoness and the Sibyl may be consulted in Lowell Street for a very moderate compensation. Nostradamus and Lilly seem impossible in our time; but we have seen the advertisements of an astrologer in our Boston papers year after year, which seems to imply ...
— Medical Essays • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... question but our Poet drew the Image in what follows from that in Virgil's sixth Book, where AEneas and the Sibyl stand before the Adamantine Gates, which are there described as shut upon the Place of Torments, and listen to the Groans, the Clank of Chains, and the Noise of Iron Whips, that were heard in those Regions of Pain ...
— The Spectator, Volume 2. • Addison and Steele
... objections, being recognized by both ladies as trouser-pocket ones, carried no weight. It ended in Flora going off with half a crown in her glove and an urgent request from her father to make it as difficult as possible for the sibyl by giving a ...
— Sailor's Knots (Entire Collection) • W.W. Jacobs
... in her hand, before the grate, as if she questioned a sibyl, she saw again the face of the Marquis de Re. She saw it so precisely that it surprised her. The Marquis de Re had been presented to her by her father, who admired him, and he appeared to her grand and dazzling for his ...
— The Red Lily, Complete • Anatole France
... his narrative he wins her love, but at the command of Jupiter abandons her. Unable to retain him, Dido, in the despair of her passion, destroys herself. After passing through many dangers, under the guidance of the Sibyl of Cumae, he descends into the kingdom of the dead to consult the shade of his father. There appear to him the souls of the future heroes of Rome. On his return, he becomes a friend of the king of Latium, who promises to him the ...
— Handbook of Universal Literature - From The Best and Latest Authorities • Anne C. Lynch Botta
... genius wrote some delightful novels to show their purpose, and to illustrate their manner of how-not-to-do-it in grappling with the grand social questions of the age. In "Coningsby" they sing canticles and carry about the boar's head; in "Sibyl" they sing hymns to the Holy Virgin and the song of labor, and steal title-deeds, after setting houses on fire to distract attention from their immediate object; and in "Tancred" they go on pilgrimage to the Holy Sepulchre, by way of reviving their faith. All this is so well done, that Young ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 13, No. 78, April, 1864 • Various
... scanned those singular columns! Shall I confess to what purpose? I read the long lists of uncontinental names over and over, but I lingered not at all upon those like "Muriel," "Hermione," "Violet," and "Sibyl," nor over "Balthurst," "Skeffington-Sligo," and "Covering-Legge"; no, my search was for the Sadies and Mamies, the Thompsons, Van Dusens, and Bradys. In that ...
— The Beautiful Lady • Booth Tarkington
... The Sibyl sank her head upon her breast so that her nose and chin quite disappeared, and she stood before them like some furry headless beast. There was a long pause. Alwin nervously followed the pairs of eyes, noiselessly appearing and disappearing, from floor to ceiling, ...
— The Thrall of Leif the Lucky • Ottilie A. Liljencrantz
... ... with infinite polish and grace asked pardon for the flying words of debate, and drew easy forgiveness from the member (Mr Goulburn), whom a few hours before he had mocked as 'a weird sibyl'; the other member (Sir James Graham), whom he could not say he greatly respected, but whom he greatly regarded; and the third member (Sir C. Wood), whom he bade learn that petulance is not sarcasm, and insolence is not invective. ...
— The Letters of Queen Victoria, Vol 2 (of 3), 1844-1853 • Queen Victoria
... be a portion of this canal. On the east side of the lake are remains of baths, including a great octagonal hall known as the Temple of Apollo, built of brickwork, and belonging to the 1st century. The so-called Grotto of the Cumaean Sibyl, on the south side, is a rock-cut passage, ventilated by vertical apertures, possibly a part of the works connected with the naval harbour. To the south-east of the lake is the Monte Nuovo, a volcanic hill upheaved in 1538, with a deep extinct crater ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 1 - "Austria, Lower" to "Bacon" • Various
... his guest, his face serious after the fading of his brief smile. The soft-footed sandalled throng that packed the narrow street shuffled and padded by unnoticed. No customer interrupted them. They might have been alone in a Sibyl's cell on ...
— The Unwilling Vestal • Edward Lucas White
... you had heard him talk of Pitt, you would never have known what to make of that great statesman. He treated him as the German commentators do Shakspeare, and invested him with all imaginary meanings and objects, that would have turned the grand practical man into a sibyl. Well, he was a Pittite; the tailor a fanatic for Thelwall and Cobbett. Mr. Burley wrote a poem wherein Britannia appeared to the tailor, complimented him highly on the art he exhibited in adorning the persons of her sons; and bestowing upon him a ...
— My Novel, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... &c., which is memorable on this account, that a brother poet, on reading the passage, mistook it, (from not understanding the allegorical expressions,) either sincerely or maliciously, for a description of the house-dog. Now, this little anecdote seems to embody the poor Sibyl's history,—from a stern icy sovereign, with a petrific mace, she lapsed into an old toothless mastiff. She continued to snore in her ancient kennel for above a thousand years. The last person who attempted to stir her up with a long pole, ...
— Narrative And Miscellaneous Papers • Thomas De Quincey
... ceilings, stained windows, and a barbaric profusion of carving, groining and all manner of costly contrivances for absorbing money and labor, made on me the impression of waste rather than taste, seeming to give form and substance to the orator's simile of "the contortions of the sibyl without her inspiration." A better acquaintance with the edifice, or with the principles of architecture, might serve to correct this hasty judgment; but surely Westminster Abbey ought to afford a place of worship equal in capacity, ...
— Glances at Europe - In a Series of Letters from Great Britain, France, Italy, - Switzerland, &c. During the Summer of 1851. • Horace Greeley
... and the old sibyl immediately appeared from the stairs, whither she had discreetly retired to wait during Annetta's visit. "Bring water, and that bottle of my wine from downstairs. You know, the bottle of old wine of Stefanone's ...
— Casa Braccio, Volumes 1 and 2 (of 2) • F. Marion Crawford
... Lady Penelope to Tyrrel; "we know what we are, we know not what we may be.—And now, Mr. Tyrrel, I have been your sibyl to guide you through this Elysium of ours, I think, in reward, I deserve a ...
— St. Ronan's Well • Sir Walter Scott
... tears and supplications; and several of the other gipsy women were awakening strong sympathy among the young girls and maid-servants in the background. The pretty, black-eyed gipsy girl, whom I have mentioned on a former occasion as the sibyl that read the fortunes of the general, endeavoured to wheedle that doughty warrior into their interests, and even made some approaches to her old acquaintance, Master Simon; but was repelled by the latter with all the dignity of office, having assumed ...
— Bracebridge Hall • Washington Irving
... leisurely travel. Wherever Nature is thus seen to be taking to herself, making her own, what man has first made and grown tired of, she is twice an enchantress, strangely combining in one charm the magic of a wistful, all but forgotten, past with her own sibyl-line mystery. ...
— Vanishing Roads and Other Essays • Richard Le Gallienne
... the infamous Pedro. Burke has said that if Pedro was not absolutely the most cruel of men, he was undoubtedly the greatest blackguard who ever sat upon a throne, and King Juan was far from meriting similar condemnation. Sibyl de Foix, his stepmother, had exercised so strange and wonderful a power over his father, that when Juan came to the throne he was more than eager to turn upon this enchantress and make her render up the wide estates which the late ...
— Women of the Romance Countries • John R. Effinger
... very pavement bears the story of Odysseus, and each passage-way is a Via Sacra, and every stone is old with years whose tale is told by hundreds or by thousands, and the wounded Adonis can be adored beside the tempted Christ of Sistine, and the serious beauty of the Erythean Sibyl lives beside the laughing grace of ivy-crowned Thalia, and the Jupiter Maximus frowns on the mortals made of earth's dust, and the Jehovah who has called forth woman meets the first smile of Eve. A Divine City indeed, ...
— Wisdom, Wit, and Pathos of Ouida - Selected from the Works of Ouida • Ouida
... force compell'd The virgin to the marriage bond to yield. The triumph seem'd at last to reach the shore Where lofty Baise hears the Tuscan roar. 'Twas on a vernal morn it touch'd the land, And 'twixt Mount Barbaro that crowns the strand And old Avernus (once an hallow'd ground); For the Cumaean sibyl's cell renown'd. Linterno's sandy bounds it reach'd at last, Great Scipio's favour'd haunt in ages past; Famed Africanus, whose victorious blade The slaughterous deeds of Hannibal repaid, And to his country's heart a bloody passage made. Here in a calm retreat his ...
— The Sonnets, Triumphs, and Other Poems of Petrarch • Petrarch
... at first took no official notice of the communication. But, like the Cumaean sibyl to Tarquin, the message came again. It was not received, but it made an unofficial impression. It was repeated. Who was this mysterious stranger? Whence came he, and what ...
— True to His Home - A Tale of the Boyhood of Franklin • Hezekiah Butterworth
... was king a strange thing happened at Rome. One day an unknown woman came to the king, bearing in her arms nine books, which she offered to sell to him at a certain price. She told him that they contained the prophecies of the Sibyl of Cumae, and that from them might be learned the destiny of Rome and the way to ...
— Historic Tales, Volume 11 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... the church the little children play about among the groups of mothers with orange kerchiefs on their heads and heavy silver rings on every finger. Strange processions with cowled faces and crucifix and banners borne aloft sweep into the piazza and up the church steps. Old women with Sibyl-like faces sit spinning at their doors. Maidens with water-jars on their heads which might have been dug up at Pompeii; priests with broad hats and huge cloaks; sailors with blue shirts and red girdles; urchins who almost instinctively cry for a "soldo" and break into ...
— Stray Studies from England and Italy • John Richard Green
... have struck The chord that answers to your gloomy thoughts. Bah! on your sibyl and her prophecy! Put Guido's blood aside, and yet, I say, ...
— Representative Plays by American Dramatists: 1856-1911: Francesca da Rimini • George Henry Boker
... up again. "I want to remark further that not only is Patty going to live in Vernondale, but she's going to have a house very near this one. I've picked it out," and Marian wagged her head with the air of a mysterious sibyl. "I won't tell you where it is just yet, but it's a lovely house, and big enough to accommodate Uncle Fred and Patty, and a guest or two besides. I've selected the room that I prefer, and I hope you will furnish ...
— Patty at Home • Carolyn Wells
... adored "Peter Pan" that he produced it in Paris, June 1, 1909, at the Vaudeville Theater, with an all-English cast headed by Pauline Chase. Robb Harwood was Captain Hook, and Sibyl Carlisle played Mrs. Darling. It was produced under the direction of Dion Boucicault. The first presentation was a great hit, and the play ran for five weeks. On the opening night Barrie and Frohman each had ...
— Charles Frohman: Manager and Man • Isaac Frederick Marcosson and Daniel Frohman
... Sibyl—that is what you are, darling!" the Princess returned. "I wish I could ever know what has so utterly changed you from our convent days," and she sighed impatiently. "Then you were the merriest madcap, ready to tease any one and to have ...
— The Man and the Moment • Elinor Glyn
... prodigality of the song-impulse compared with the slenderness of the actual survivals. Autumn leaves are not more fugitive. Even when preserved by sacred ritual, like the Vedas and the Hebrew Psalter, what we possess is only an infinitesimal fraction of what has perished. The Sibyl tears leaf after leaf from her precious volume and scatters them to the winds. How many glorious Hebrew war-songs of the type presented in the "Song of Deborah" were chanted only to be forgotten! We have but a handful of the lyrics of Sappho and of the odes of Pindar, while ...
— A Study of Poetry • Bliss Perry
... the Roman Catholic Church in the testimony of the sibyl is shown by the well-known hymn, said to have been composed by Pope Innocent III, at the close of the thirteenth century, beginning ...
— The Old Masters and Their Pictures - For the Use of Schools and Learners in Art • Sarah Tytler
... a greater. I will conclude what I have to say of him singly, with this one remark: a lady of my acquaintance, who keeps a kind of correspondence with some authors of the fair sex in France, has been inform'd by them, that Mademoiselle de Scudery, who is as old as Sibyl, and inspir'd like her by the same God of Poetry, is at this time translating Chaucer into modern French. From which I gather that he has been formerly translated into the old Provencal (for how she should come to understand old English ...
— Prefaces and Prologues to Famous Books - with Introductions, Notes and Illustrations • Charles W. Eliot
... death.[10] This was one of those vague auguries, delivered at random by fools or impostors, which the caprice of fortune sometimes matches with a corresponding and conforming event. But without trusting to the African sibyl's prediction, Bonaparte may have formed his match under the auspices of ambition as well as love. The marrying Madame Beauharnois was a mean of uniting his fortune with those of Barras and Tallien, the first of whom governed France as ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 10, Supplementary Number, Issue 263, 1827 • Various
... the whole time had not taken his eyes from her, this ready obedience of Crispus produced a wonderful and pervading impression. It seemed to him that among the Christians Lygia was a kind of sibyl or priestess whom they surrounded with obedience and honor; and he yielded himself also to that honor. To the love which he felt was joined now a certain awe, in presence of which love itself became something almost insolent. He could not familiarize himself, however, with the thought ...
— Quo Vadis - A Narrative of the Time of Nero • Henryk Sienkiewicz
... iron; Moses is starting from his seat for some tremendous conflict. Every figure lavished on the decoration of the Sistine Chapel reaches, when it does not surpass, the limit of human physical development. Sibyl and Prophet, {682} Adam and Eve, man and God are all hurled together with a riot of ...
— The Age of the Reformation • Preserved Smith
... The "Libyan Sibyl" was then in the fullness of her powers. She had been born of slave parents about 1798 in Ulster County, New York. In her later years she remembered vividly the cold, damp cellar-room in which slept the slaves of the ...
— A Social History of the American Negro • Benjamin Brawley
... individual judgment, he doubted collective wisdom. Yet now that his protegee had been accepted by others, he questioned that judgment and became her critic. It struck him that her sudden outburst was strained; it seemed to him that in this mere contortion of passion the sibyl's robe had become rudely disarranged. He spoke to Hamlin, and ...
— A Sappho of Green Springs • Bret Harte
... was really unhealthy for transcendentalists. No doubt his dislike of Margaret Fuller arose from this feeling of his that she was always acting a part, always straining after an effect. He loved simple, natural, unaffected people, and the part of a sibyl was very distasteful to him. He suspected the inspiration of green tea in much that Margaret said, and very ungallantly pronounced her a humbug. But as he did this only upon the paper of his own private diary, with no thought ...
— Home Life of Great Authors • Hattie Tyng Griswold
... endure. That is the reason, in my opinion, why, among so many men of talent, France to-day counts not one great writer. In a society like ours, to seek for literary glory seems to me an anachronism. Of what use is it to invoke an ancient sibyl when a muse is on the eve of birth? Pitiable actors in a tragedy nearing its end, that which it behooves us to do is to precipitate the catastrophe. The most deserving among us is he who plays best this part. Well, I no longer aspire to this ...
— What is Property? - An Inquiry into the Principle of Right and of Government • P. J. Proudhon
... "untaught sallies of the spirit," the surmises and vaticinations of the mind,—the "imperfect theories, and sentences which contain glimpses of truth." In a word, he would have us leave the laboratory and its crucibles for the sibyl's cave and its tripod. We can all—or most of us, certainly—recognize something of truth, much of imagination, and more of danger in speculations of this sort. They belong to visionaries and to poets. ...
— Ralph Waldo Emerson • Oliver Wendell Holmes
... of meal-time is twice blest: for prisoners and men without appetite it punctuates and makes time of eternity. I dawdled over my chop and pint of brown stout until Mrs. McRankine, after twice entering to clear away, with the face of a Cumaean sibyl, so far relaxed the tension of unnatural calm as to inquire if I meant to be ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 20 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... she passed to imprecation, she would not curse like an ordinary woman, but like a poetess, gaining rather than losing dignity. She would rise to the evil occasion, no hag, but a largely-offended sibyl, whom nothing thereafter should ever appease. To forgive was a virtue unknown to Mistress Conal. Its more than ordinary difficulty in forgiving is indeed a special fault of the Celtic character.—This must not however be confounded with a desire for revenge. The latter ...
— What's Mine's Mine • George MacDonald
... he makes one of his heroes say, 'how great projects were executed, great advantages gained, and great calamities averted. Show me the generals and the statesmen who stood foremost, that I may bend to them in reverence.... Let the books of the Treasury lie closed as religiously as the Sibyl's. Leave weights and measures in the market-place; Commerce in the harbour; the Arts in the light they love; Philosophy in the shade. Place History on her rightful throne, and at the sides ...
— Historical and Political Essays • William Edward Hartpole Lecky
... were speculations beyond the sibyl of his odd adoration; Annapla was too intent upon her own elderly love-affairs to be interested ...
— Doom Castle • Neil Munro
... the sons of that very corregidor frequented the nightly dances at the Gitaneria, and were deeply enamoured with some of the dark-eyed singing-girls? What availed making complaints, when perhaps a Gypsy sibyl, the mother of those very girls, had free admission to the house of the corregidor at all times and seasons, and spaed the good fortune to his daughters, promising them counts and dukes, and Andalusian knights in marriage, or prepared philtres for his lady by which she was always to ...
— The Zincali - An Account of the Gypsies of Spain • George Borrow
... education to which Mr. Morton attended with great care. As soon as his father's back was turned, Master Tom's eyes wandered from the slate to the muffin, as it leered at him from the slop-basin. Never did Pythian sibyl, seated above the bubbling spring, utter more oracular eloquence to her priest, than did that muffin—at least the parts of it yet extant—utter to the fascinated senses of Master Tom. First he sighed; then ...
— Night and Morning, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... alas! How much distracted are your thoughts; and how Disjointed all your words! The sibyl's leaves more orderly were laid. Where is that harmony of mind, that prudence, Which guided all you did? that sense of glory, Which raised you high above the rest of kings, As kings are o'er the ...
— The Works of John Dryden, Vol. II • Edited by Walter Scott
... Brandon, with a more profound mournfulness in his voice. "You speak like a Sibyl. I pray Heaven that your words may not be ...
— Cord and Creese • James de Mille
... Segredos altered its name before or after it was produced and became A farsa chamada Auto da Lusitania. In the burlesque passage concerning Gil Vicente in this play (III. 275-6) we learn that he was instructed for seven years and a day in the Sibyl's cave and informed by the Sibyl of the secrets which she ...
— Four Plays of Gil Vicente • Gil Vicente
... terrible and strange, figures of the past or of the future, from which she could not turn her face. The curve of her upper lip, where it lay along its fellow and made a dimpled end, sharpened and grew bleak. Poring and smiling into the fire, she looked like a Sibyl envisaging the fate of men, not concerned in it, yet absorbed, interested in the play, not at all in the persons. This friend of Mrs. Benson, this midnight mate of young gardeners, disturber of high ladies' comfort, serene controller of Wanless, she was, it would seem, ...
— Rest Harrow - A Comedy of Resolution • Maurice Hewlett
... which were almost like the breaking of a physical light upon his mind; as the great Augustus was said to have seen a mysterious physical splendour, yonder, upon the summit of the Capitol, where the altar of the Sibyl now stood. With a prayer, therefore, for inward quiet, for conformity to the divine reason, he read some select passages of Plato, which bear upon the harmony of the reason, in all its forms, with itself—"Could there be Cosmos, that wonderful, reasonable order, ...
— Marius the Epicurean, Volume Two • Walter Horatio Pater
... occult sciences—in chiromancy and cartomancy. He had been told of a sibyl even more astonishing than Mademoiselle Lenormand, and he resolved that Madame de Girardin, Mery and Theophile Gautier should drive with him to the abode of the pythoness at Auteuil. The address given them ...
— Women in the Life of Balzac • Juanita Helm Floyd
... languages," said the fisherman; "and thus he is acquainted with foreign affairs sooner than we. Then they are now fighting in France! Blood flows in the streets; it will not be so in Denmark before the Turk binds his horse to the bush in the Viborg Lake. And then, according to the prophecy of the sibyl, it will be near the end ...
— O. T. - A Danish Romance • Hans Christian Andersen
... her. What had happened, too, was so far out of her hands that a trace of philosophical acceptance, recognition, came to her support. The loveliest woman alive must do the same, meet in a looking-glass—that eternal accompanying sibyl—her disaster. She rose, her lips firmly set, composed and pale, and returned to the neglected flowers ...
— Linda Condon • Joseph Hergesheimer
... will go get a leaf of brass, And with a gad of steel will write these words, And lay it by. The angry northern wind Will blow these sands, like Sibyl's leaves, abroad, ...
— Shakespearean Tragedy - Lectures on Hamlet, Othello, King Lear, Macbeth • A. C. Bradley
... since you invented her, didn't you? That's what she says; she's awfully sweet on you," Nick kindly pursued. "What I ought to do is to try something as different as possible from that thing; not the sibyl, the muse, the tremendous creature, but the charming woman, the person one knows, differently arranged as she appears en ville, she calls it. I'll do something really serious and send it to you out there with my respects. It will remind you of home and perhaps a little even ...
— The Tragic Muse • Henry James
... Sibyl, they are with their own nurse, and Graham will be far more likely to put them all at ease than I should. They will hear that "Miss 'Unter, is the missis, and lets every one know she is. Miss 'Ester keeps the maids on their legs all day long because ...
— Bulbs and Blossoms • Amy Le Feuvre
... his landing happened to be his aunt, whose appearance, as, bent to the earth with age and infirmities, she ascended a hill, supporting herself upon a long staff, Nicholas compares to that which we might conceive the Sibyl bore, when she presented herself to Tarquin. Yet, when she came up to Korro-korro, the chief, we are told, having fallen upon her neck, and applied his nose to hers, the two continued in this posture for some minutes, talking together in ...
— John Rutherford, the White Chief • George Lillie Craik
... revelation was found. Repeated cries from the man who, hearing his closet door beaten in, draws back the bolts which he had apparently drawn himself, his eyes quite wild, and his whole person in extraordinary disorder, would have caused the ancient heathens to take him for a sibyl full of enthusiasm, and must appear to us rather the consequence of some convulsion than of a conversation with a ...
— The Phantom World - or, The philosophy of spirits, apparitions, &c, &c. • Augustin Calmet
... since blank paper is denied the press, He mingles the whole alphabet by guess: In various sets, which various words compose, Of which, he hopes, mankind the meaning knows. So sounds spontaneous from the sibyl broke, Dark to herself the wonders which she spoke; The priests found out the meaning, if they could; And nations star'd at what none understood. Clodio dress'd, danc'd, drank, visited, (the whole And great concern of an immortal soul!) Oft have I ...
— The Poetical Works of Edward Young, Volume 2 • Edward Young
... tingling with shame, and hurried down the beach. Presently it occurred to him, however, that it was not quite chivalrous in him to leave little Elsie there alone with the dark-minded sibyl. Who knew but that she might need his help? He paused, and was about to retrace his steps, when he heard some one approaching, whom he instinctively knew to be Elsie. As she came nearer, the moon, which hung transfixed upon the flaming spear ...
— Ilka on the Hill-Top and Other Stories • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen
... The godlike hero with a frown Struck all his rage and malice down; Then how can we dread William Wood, If by thy presence he's withstood? Where wisdom stands to keep the field, In vain he brings his brazen shield; Though like the sibyl's priest he comes, With furious din of brazen drums The force of thy superior voice Shall strike him dumb, ...
— Poems (Volume II.) • Jonathan Swift
... Sometimes she read Disraeli's "Sibyl," while I built a sand fortress round her; or she read "Venetia," "Oliver Twist," "The Life of Mary II.," "Romany Rye," and "The Lives of the Last Four Popes." She remembered Pio Nono with unflagging interest, and mentions his ...
— Memories of Hawthorne • Rose Hawthorne Lathrop
... spots of sward, where I reclined, scarcely knowing which way caprice was leading me. My mind was full of the tales of the place, and glowed with a vehement desire of exploring the world beyond the grot. I longed to ascend the promontory of Misenus, and follow the same dusky route down which the Sibyl ...
— Dreams, Waking Thoughts, and Incidents • William Beckford
... use the elixir which would keep them always young. Under its influence, a gem brightens yearly which is only seen to more advantage through the fissures Time makes in the casket. [Footnote: Appendix F.] No one thinks of Michael Angelo's Persican Sibyl, or St. Theresa, or Tasso's Leonora, or the Greek Electra, as an old maid, more than of Michael Angelo or Canova as old bachelors, though all had reached the period in life's course appointed to ...
— Woman in the Ninteenth Century - and Kindred Papers Relating to the Sphere, Condition - and Duties, of Woman. • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... immediately put his army in motion. So the former out of kindness and the latter through corrupt influence restored the king contrary to the wish of the commonwealth, paying no heed either to it or to the utterances of the Sibyl. Gabinius was later brought to trial for this, but on account of Pompey's influence and the money at his command was not convicted. Public administration had so deteriorated among the Romans of that day that when some of the magistrates and jurymen received from him only a very ...
— Dio's Rome • Cassius Dio
... frequently leave fewer traces than the occurrences of a private family. The public administration is, so to speak, oral and traditionary. But little is committed to writing, and that little is wafted away forever, like the leaves of the Sibyl, by the smallest breeze. ...
— Democracy In America, Volume 1 (of 2) • Alexis de Tocqueville
... bicycle. Lorania, you and I must ride! Sibyl Hopkins, you heartless child, what are you ...
— Different Girls • Various
... movements and personal habits, even to her tone of voice and manner of speaking, Miss Roxy was vigorous, spicy, and decided. Her mind on all subjects was made up, and she spoke generally as one having authority; and who should, if she should not? Was she not a sort of priestess and sibyl in all the most awful straits and mysteries of life? How many births, and weddings, and deaths had come and gone under her jurisdiction! And amid weeping or rejoicing, was not Miss Roxy still the master-spirit,—consulted, ...
— The Pearl of Orr's Island - A Story of the Coast of Maine • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... that the Sibyl at the festival of Adonis was right when she sang in the Jalemus that the gods did half the work of ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... course by the magic of his gaze, and, suffering the gay crowds to pass on, he has given himself up with delight to the divination of its mystic revelations, while he continued to weave his incantations and spells only for the entranced Sibyl ...
— Life of Chopin • Franz Liszt
... churches described by Paspates in his Byzantine Studies, published in 1877, nine have either entirely disappeared or lost more of their original features. It was no part of wisdom to let the books of the cunning Sibyl become rarer and knowledge poorer by neglecting to secure all that was obtainable when she made her first or ...
— Byzantine Churches in Constantinople - Their History and Architecture • Alexander Van Millingen
... the Sibyl, who offered her nine books of destiny to the Roman king, has been destroying, century after century, one after another of the rich volumes of antiquities which she formerly tendered to the keeping of our Scottish fathers. But though, unhappily, our predecessors, like King Tarquin, rejected ...
— Archaeological Essays, Vol. 1 • James Y. Simpson
... marks; and it is, I think, an important function of a university to create an intellectual atmosphere in which the love of excellence shall become contagious, which whosoever breathes shall, like the Sibyl, feel the inspiration of ...
— Education and the Higher Life • J. L. Spalding
... therein, as I found, dwelt now John Field, an Irishman, and his wife, and several children, from the broad-faced boy who assisted his father at his work, and now came running by his side from the bog to escape the rain, to the wrinkled, sibyl-like, cone-headed infant that sat upon its father's knee as in the palaces of nobles, and looked out from its home in the midst of wet and hunger inquisitively upon the stranger, with the privilege of infancy, not knowing but it was the last of a noble line, and the ...
— Walden, and On The Duty Of Civil Disobedience • Henry David Thoreau
... and no one came. A reason for delay was easily imagined, and I summoned patience to wait. I opened a book; touched the instrument; surveyed the vases on the mantel-tree; the figures on the hangings, and the print of Apollo and the Sibyl, taken from Salvator, and hung over the chimney. I eyed my own shape and garb in the mirror, and asked how my rustic appearance would be regarded by that supercilious and voluptuous being to whom I was about ...
— Arthur Mervyn - Or, Memoirs of the Year 1793 • Charles Brockden Brown
... But will that sweet day come? Tell me, Aseffa, You who are half a sibyl,—shall we go down That ...
— Semiramis and Other Plays - Semiramis, Carlotta And The Poet • Olive Tilford Dargan
... felt that it had no resting place for me! God! God! what a forlorn and miserable creature is man, when, in his affliction, he cannot say to the worm, I shall be yours! I might have cast away, indeed, the YENARKON—the Giver of Life—the elixir of the Sibyl—but that would have been to subject myself to a power of darkness, in whose fell wrath I should have suffered the casting away of ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction. - Volume XIII, No. 376, Saturday, June 20, 1829. • Various
... our lovely nest in the hills which overlook the Mediterranean, whose blue waters remind me of Newport harbor and our old days there. Ah, my sweet saint, blessed was the day I first learned to know you! for it was you, more than anything else, that kept me back from sin and misery. I call you my Sibyl, dearest, because the Sibyl was a prophetess of divine things out of the Church; and so are you. The Abbe says, that all true, devout persons of all persuasions belong to the True Catholic Apostolic Church, and will in the ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 26, December, 1859 • Various
... great lonely Tomb. In those days, the house where I live now was not built; all up here Hampstead-ways was grass and fields. It was over these fields that Herbert Spencer and George Eliot used to walk on their way to Hampstead Heath. The Sibyl has gone, but the great Philosopher still remains, to brighten the sunshine. It was not my luck to know him then—would it had been!—but he is my friend and neighbour in these latter days, and, thanks to him, I still get glimpses of the manners ...
— The Idler Magazine, Vol III. May 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... events recorded professes to be found in the cave of the Cumsean Sibyl, near Naples, where they had remained for centuries, outlasting the changes of nature and, when found, being still two hundred and fifty years in advance of the time foretold. The accounts are all written on the sibylline leaves; they are in all languages, ...
— Mrs. Shelley • Lucy M. Rossetti
... generous blood, will no longer bear the ligatures which past time have woven for the decrepit. Look down upon that multitude, Mackinnon; they shall all be free." And then, still clutching him by the arm and still standing at the top of those stairs, she gave forth her prophecy with the fury of a sibyl. ...
— Stories By English Authors: Italy • Various
... more to Germany. Perhaps the Irish strain in her blood made her a little superstitious. At any rate, just before starting, she consulted a clairvoyante. She felt that she had her money's worth, for the Sibyl declared that she would "exercise much influence on a monarch and the destiny of a kingdom." A long shot, and, as it ...
— The Magnificent Montez - From Courtesan to Convert • Horace Wyndham
... nose and chin of Timothy, together with the hump on one shoulder. A warm dispute ensued, and being maintained with much acrimonious altercation, might have dissolved the new-cemented friendship of those two originals, had it not been interrupted by the old sibyl, who, coming into the parlour, intimated that the doctor waited for them above. She likewise told them, that he never admitted more than one at a time. This hint occasioned a fresh contest. The ...
— The Adventures of Sir Launcelot Greaves • Tobias Smollett
... our loves. Music is the memory of love. What Prophet will enter the temple of the modern arts and drive away with his divine scourge the vile money-changers who fatten therein?" Her voice was shrill as she paced the room. A very sibyl this, her crest of hair agitated, her eyes sparkling with wrath. He missed the ...
— Visionaries • James Huneker
... Heart's Queen Hoiden's Conquest, A Lily of Mordaunt, The Little Marplot, The Little Miss Whirlwind Lost, A Pearle Magic Cameo, The Marguerite's Heritage Masked Bridal, The Max, A Cradle Mystery Mona Mysterious Wedding Ring, A Nameless Dell Nora Queen Bess Ruby's Reward Sibyl's Influence Stella Rosevelt That Dowdy Thorn Among Roses, A Sequel to a Girl in a Thousand Thrice Wedded Tina Trixy True Aristocrat, A Two Keys Virgie's Inheritance Wedded By Fate Welfleet Mystery, The Wild Oats Winifred's Sacrifice ...
— The Masked Bridal • Mrs. Georgie Sheldon
... me had exactly the person of a prophetess—not, indeed, of the divine sibyl imagined by Domenichino, so sweetly distracted betwixt love and mystery, but of a good business-like, practical prophetess, long used to the exercise of her sacred calling. I have been told by those who knew Lady Hester Stanhope in her ...
— Eothen • A. W. Kinglake
... of joy and pleasures; where the sunny exposure of plenty, and the hot walls of profusion, produce those blissful fruits of luxury, exotics in this world, and natives of paradise!—Thou withered sibyl, my sage conductress, usher me into thy refulgent, adored presence!—The power, splendid and potent as he now is, was once the puling nursling of thy faithful care and tender arms! Call me thy son, thy cousin, thy kinsman, or favourite, and adjure the ...
— The Letters of Robert Burns • Robert Burns
... for bishops recently appointed, and he was no longer to receive payment for services which he refused to render. Peter's pence were still paid, and might continue to be paid, if the pope would recollect himself; but, like the Sibyl of Cuma, Henry destroyed some fresh privilege with each delay of justice, demanding the same price for the preservation of what remained. The secondary streams of tribute now only remained to the Roman See; and communion ...
— The Reign of Henry the Eighth, Volume 1 (of 3) • James Anthony Froude
... womanhood of whom I have spoken was thinking. It is fit that we skim the surface before we dive into the deeps—especially so attractive a surface as woman's. He was, doubtless, thinking less of woman as a home comfort or a beauty, and much more of her as she once used to be among our far-off sires, Sibyl and Priestess. Is it but an insular fancy to suppose that Englishmen, beyond any other race, still retain the most living faith in the sanctity of womanhood? and, if so, can it be doubted that it is an inheritance from those wild child-hearted Vikings, who were first among ...
— Prose Fancies • Richard Le Gallienne
... find it. If any of them keep to the grass paths, where the diamonds are swept aside; and hold their hands over their eyes so as not to be dazzled, the grass paths lead forward gradually to a place where one sees a little opening in the golden rocks. You were at Chamouni last year, Sibyl; did your guide chance to show you the pierced rock of the Aiguille ...
— The Ethics of the Dust • John Ruskin
... and borrowed some hints from Dandolo (Chron. Venet. p. 323—330) and Gunther, (Hist. C. P. c. 14—18,) who added the decorations of prophecy and vision. The former produces an oracle of the Erythraean sibyl, of a great armament on the Adriatic, under a blind chief, against Byzantium, &c. Curious enough, were the prediction anterior ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 6 • Edward Gibbon
... to a luncheon at Lansdowne House, Lord Rosebery's residence, not far from our hotel. My companion tells a little incident which may please an American six-year-old: "The eldest of the four children, Sibyl, a pretty, bright child of six, told me that she wrote a letter to the Queen. I said, 'Did you begin, Dear Queen?' 'No,' she answered, 'I began, Your Majesty, and signed myself, Your little humble servant, Sibyl.'" A very cordial and homelike reception at this great house, where a couple ...
— Our Hundred Days in Europe • Oliver Wendell Holmes
... a whirlwind and flung herself at Gisela's feet. Her face was flaming white. She looked like a sibyl. "I knew it would be you!" she cried in her sweet bell-like tones. "I have had visions of you leading us out of this awful war. You have only to talk to the women—your word was gospel to them before ...
— The White Morning • Gertrude Atherton
... which travelers on the Appian Way embarked on a canal; Arpinum, the birthplace of Cicero; Aquium, where Juvenal and Thomas Aquinas were born, famous for a purple dye; Formiae, a favorite residence of Cicero. In Campania were Cumae, the abode of the Sibyl; Misenum, a great naval station; Baiae, celebrated for its spas and villas; Puteoli, famous for sulphur springs; Neapolis, the abode of literary idlers; Herculaneum and Pompeii, destroyed by an eruption of Vesuvius; Capua, the capital of Campania, ...
— The Old Roman World • John Lord
... for the handkerchief, she approached the window, but no sooner did the little boy become aware of her intention than, with a rebellious shake of his curly head, he buried his nose in his little chapped fists, and, regardless of Sibyl's advice, that he had better be good, he firmly stood his ground, determined to resist Chany to ...
— Plantation Sketches • Margaret Devereux
... whither she desires, and never is he any the wiser. She will throw obstacles in his way, or she will tear down walls that rise up before him; she will make a mile out of a rod, or turn a mountain into a mole-hill: and none but the Cumaean Sibyl could tell why. And as Laura was of the disposition to walk down by the cemetery, to take a final view of the sea before it melted into the sky, what was more natural than that Fitzgerald should follow her? They walked on in the peace of twilight, unmindful of the curiosity ...
— A Splendid Hazard • Harold MacGrath
... and obscure you are, my dear," she answered. "You speak like a sibyl. But one thing I see, and that is that you are not so perfectly happy as you would have us believe, seeing that you feel the need of consolations. Then, why do you wish me to ...
— Jacqueline, v2 • Th. Bentzon (Mme. Blanc)
... too delicious!" said Sibyl Ray, a girl who had just been admitted into the upper school. "We met this—this young lady, and she said she wanted to go to the kitchen to get some raw meat; and when I told her I didn't know the way she just took ...
— Betty Vivian - A Story of Haddo Court School • L. T. Meade
... excavation,—for it was an old disused clay-pit, at the bottom of which the cottage was situated,—he speedily succeeded in arousing the ancient sibyl, and having committed Edgeworth Bess to her care, with a promise of an abundant reward in case she watched diligently over her safety, and attended to her comforts till his return,—to all which Black Mary readily agreed,—he departed with a heart ...
— Jack Sheppard - A Romance • William Harrison Ainsworth
... pool of water and sundry other arrangements suggest to a lively imagination its designation. It certainly has the recommendation of being the most retired bath-room ever known. That of the Neapolitan sibyl is public ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I., No. IV., April, 1862 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... Foreword The Indian Sibyl's Prophecy The Flight of Padre Peyri Father Zalvidea's Money La Beata Juana Father ...
— Old Mission Stories of California • Charles Franklin Carter
... surrounded with blazing fagots, better worth embracing than a willing bride. He is a very knight errant in defence of his religious notions, and does battle wherever he comes. He hath already a quarrel with the monks of Sibyl's Isle yonder about some point of ...
— The Fair Maid of Perth • Sir Walter Scott
... cypresses, and other kinds of large timber proper to the East. The fall of water, always agreeable in a warm climate, and generally produced by artificial means, was here natural, and had been chosen, something like the Sibyl's temple at Tivoli, for the seat of a goddess to whom the invention of Polytheism had assigned a sovereignty over the department around. The shrine was small and circular, like many of the lesser temples of the rustic deities, and enclosed by the wall of an outer court. After its desecration, ...
— Waverley Volume XII • Sir Walter Scott
... turn'd to jest, And, under much impertinence, Possess'd no common share of sense; Who could deceive the flying hours With chat on butterflies and flowers; Could talk of powder, patches, paint, With the same zeal as of a saint; 380 Could prove a Sibyl brighter far Than Venus or the Morning Star; Whilst something still so gay, so new, The smile of approbation drew, And females eyed the charming man, Whilst their hearts flutter'd with their fan; ...
— Poetical Works • Charles Churchill
... he says: "The following year they repeated the expedition so that the Indians retired to the densest parts of the forests, where it cost considerable trouble to induce them to become quiet. For a woman, who proclaimed herself a sibyl or prophetess, preached to them that they should not obey the Spaniards any longer, for the latter had allied themselves with the Moros to ...
— History of the Philippine Islands Vols 1 and 2 • Antonio de Morga
... claims it's a finer picture than any they saw in the museums, that time he took mamma to Europe. But it's horribly out of date to have those things in dining-rooms, and I caught Bobby Lamhorn giggling at it; and Sibyl made fun of it, too, with Bobby, and then told papa she agreed with him about its being such a fine thing, and said he did just right to insist on having it where he wanted it. She makes me ...
— The Turmoil - A Novel • Booth Tarkington
... simulated frame which surrounds the fresco, are hexagonal spaces containing half figures of prophets with labels, containing texts referring to the passion of Christ; and below them on the right, the Erythrean Sibyl. In the lower part of the frieze, are ten rounds, containing portraits of the most illustrious members of the Dominican Order. In the centre St. Dominic, on the left Pope Innocent V., Cardinal Ugone, Father Paulo the Florentine, the Archbishop ...
— Fra Angelico • J. B. Supino
... told their tale of glory, Decreed to that eternal sky; And through that ancient grove, her story With sibyl ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. 341, March, 1844, Vol. 55 • Various
... bring his visions to maturity unless he has a certain experience. You demand of us to be imaginative, and you deny us that which feeds the imagination. In labor we must be as passionate as the inspired sibyl; in life we must be mere machines. It won't do. When you have got an artist to deal with, you must take him as he is, good and bad together. I don't say they are pleasant fellows to know or easy fellows to live with; I don't say they satisfy themselves any better than other ...
— Roderick Hudson • Henry James
... sibyl leaf all read, Dark Nemesis is grim and sullen; She bends again her vengeful head— Woe! woe! to old Craigullan. The next by fatal count of Time, The next by her foreboding fears—- Jane falls, like those in early prime— She falls ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Volume XXIV. • Revised by Alexander Leighton
... in a dream; whilst he sleeps, his head recumbent on the lap of the goddess, in the innermost recess of her sanctuary. His vision resembles the Trojan's rather than the Greek's adventure. "A slipshod sibyl," ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 58, Number 358, August 1845 • Various
... Sardinia, and fought with the harpies there; how he was then carried southward to Sicily, where he generously took on board an English sailor, whom a man-of-war had unhappily left there, and who was in imminent danger of being devoured by the Cyclops; how he landed in the bay of Naples, saw the Sibyl, and descended to Tartarus; how he held a long and pathetic conversation with Poniatowski, whom he found wandering unburied on the banks of Styx; how he swore to give him a splendid funeral; how he had also an ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 1 (of 4) - Contibutions to Knight's Quarterly Magazine] • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... from that imperious sibyl, Sea, Thou mayest learn if thou wilt hearken well, When God's white star-fires beacon home the ships; The solemn secrets of infinity, Unto the inner sense translatable, Hang trembling ...
— From The Lips of the Sea • Clinton Scollard
... Footstep," and from that time on, the idea of this footprint on the threshold-stone of the ancestral mansion seems to have associated itself inextricably with the dreamy substance of his yet unshaped romance. Indeed, it leaves its mark broadly upon Sibyl Dacy's wild legend in "Septimius Felton," and reappears in the last paragraph of that story. But, so far as we can know at this day, nothing definite was done until after his departure for Italy. It was then, ...
— Sketches and Studies • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... age by Cumae's Sibyl sung Has come and gone, and the majestic roll Of circling centuries begins anew: Justice returns, returns old Saturn's reign, With a new breed of men sent down from heaven. Only do thou, at the boy's birth in whom The iron shall cease, ...
— The Bucolics and Eclogues • Virgil
... hearts, and not to the meeting of a fortuitous concourse of male and female evening-dresses. I have now before me a very brilliant published account of a reception at George Eliot's house. Those assemblies were company, and company of the finest kind. The exaggerated fuss made by the sibyl's husband in order to secure silence while she was speaking sometimes became a little embarrassing when men of a humorous turn were there; but nevertheless the best in England met in that drawing-room, and ...
— The Ethics of Drink and Other Social Questions - Joints In Our Social Armour • James Runciman
... what I have to say of him singly, with this one remark: a lady of my acquaintance, who keeps a kind of correspondence with some authors of the fair sex in France, has been informed by them that Mademoiselle de Scudery, who is as old as Sibyl, and inspired like her by the same god of poetry, is at this time translating Chaucer into modern French. From which I gather that he has been formerly translated into the old Provencal (for how she should come to understand old English I know not). But the matter of fact being ...
— English literary criticism • Various
... a half-crazy woman, part sibyl and part gypsy. She is the ruler and terror of the gypsy race. Meg Merrilees was the nurse of Harry Bertram.—Sir W. Scott, Gay Mannering (time, ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook, Vol. 3 • E. Cobham Brewer
... of the sibyl was much darker than the antechamber; the color of the walls could scarcely be distinguished. The ceiling, blackened by smoke, far from reflecting the little light that came from a window obstructed by pale and sickly vegetations, absorbed the greater part of it; but ...
— Unconscious Comedians • Honore de Balzac
... 'misanthropos' (Shakespeare) if 'misanthropi' (Bacon) 'misanthrope'; 'psalterion' (North) 'psaltery'; 'chasma' (Henry More) 'chasm'; 'idioma' and 'prosodia' (both in Daniel, prose) 'idiom' and 'prosody'; 'energia', 'energy', and 'Sibylla', 'Sibyl' (both in Sidney); 'zoophyton' (Henry More) 'zoophyte'; 'enthousiasmos' (Sylvester) 'enthusiasm'; 'phantasma' (Donne) 'phantasm'; 'magnes' (Gabriel Harvey) 'magnet'; 'cynosura' (Donne) 'cynosure'; 'galaxias' (Fox) 'galaxy'; 'heros' (Henry More) ...
— English Past and Present • Richard Chenevix Trench
... her as much as he had loved her. She dying gave it to me, and bade me, if I ever married, to give it to my wife. I did so; take heed of it. Make it a darling as precious as your eye.' 'It is possible?' said the frighted lady. 'Tis true,' continued Othello 'it is a magical handkerchief; a sibyl that had lived in the world two hundred years, in a fit of prophetic fury worked it; the silkworms that furnished the silk were hallowed, and it was dyed in a mummy of maidens' hearts conserved.' Desdemona, hearing the wondrous ...
— Tales from Shakespeare • Charles and Mary Lamb
... fountains, you would think—among the ilexes and grottoes under the little round Temple; a wonderful mixture of wildness and art, a place, with its high air, its leaping waters and glimpses of distant plain, such as one would really wish for a sibyl, and might imagine for Delphi. An enchanted place with its flight and twitter of birds above the water. I should like to follow the ...
— The Spirit of Rome • Vernon Lee
... fair one?" continued the gentleman who, for his own pleasure, had led the conservers of law and order. "Produce the sibyl, honest Dogberry! Faith, if the lady be not an ingrate, you've henceforth a friend ...
— Audrey • Mary Johnston
... time, left a strong impression on his mind. Mrs. Byron had, it seems, in her first visit to this person, (who, if I mistake not, was the celebrated fortune-teller, Mrs. Williams,) endeavoured to pass herself off as a maiden lady. The sibyl, however, was not so easily deceived;—she pronounced her wise consulter to be not only a married woman, but the mother of a son who was lame, and to whom, among other events which she read in the stars, it was predestined that his life ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. I. (of VI.) - With his Letters and Journals. • Thomas Moore |
