"Achilles" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... river is navigable for the length of a forty days' voyage, it is so altered by the water of this scanty stream as to become tainted and unlike itself, and flows thus tainted into the sea between the Greek towns of Callipidae and Hypanis. At its mouth there is an island named Achilles. Between these two rivers is a vast land filled with forests and ...
— The Origin and Deeds of the Goths • Jordanes
... exposed, since they are not escaped by the highest and brightest of mankind, may surely be endured with patience by criticks and annotators, who can rank themselves but as the satellites of their authours. How canst thou beg for life, says Achilles to his captive, when thou knowest that thou art now to suffer only what must another day be ...
— Preface to Shakespeare • Samuel Johnson
... conspicuous burial places finds frequent expression in early literatures. The tomb of Achilles was situated "high on a jutting headland over wide Hellespont that it might be seen from off the sea." Elpenor asks Ulysses to bury him in the same way. neas places the ashes of Misenus beneath a high mound on a headland of ...
— Anglo-Saxon Grammar and Exercise Book - with Inflections, Syntax, Selections for Reading, and Glossary • C. Alphonso Smith
... devil's own concoction," declared Teddy Duncombe, Major Hone's warmest friend and admirer, who was watching from the great stand near the refreshment-tent. "It never fails. We call him Achilles because he always carries all ...
— The Tidal Wave and Other Stories • Ethel May Dell
... most unnatural and aggravated murders ever recorded. Col. Ward, the deceased, was a man of high standing in the state, and very much esteemed by his neighbors, and by all who knew him. The brothers concerned in this 'murder, most foul and unnatural,' were Lafayette, Chamberlayne, Caesar, and Achilles Jones, (the ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... of Noli Me Tangere suggests the reflection that the story of Achilles' heel is a myth only in form. The belief that any institution, system, organization, or arrangement has reached an absolute form is about as far as human folly can go. The friar orders looked upon themselves ...
— The Social Cancer - A Complete English Version of Noli Me Tangere • Jose Rizal
... places, and among the powers of the air. The action is simple in proportion to its remoteness from the reality of life, and rapid in proportion to its simplicity. It arises from the operation of the most elementary passions, the wrath of Achilles or the pride of Satan, in collision with an overruling power. For the animal wants and tricks of fortune, which entangle the web of man's affairs, it has no place. The animal element, if not banished from view altogether, becomes merely the organ of ...
— An Estimate of the Value and Influence of Works of Fiction in Modern Times • Thomas Hill Green
... we gazed from heaven o'er Ilion Dreaming on earth below, mistily crowned With towering memories, and beyond her shone The wine-dark seas Achilles heard resound! Only, and after many days, we found Dabbled with dew, at border of a wood Bedded in hyacinths, open and a-glow Thy Homer's Iliad.... Dryad tears had drowned The rough Greek type and, as with honey or blood, One crocus with crushed gold Stained the great page that told Of gods ...
— Collected Poems - Volume Two (of 2) • Alfred Noyes
... firmament and knew their names, and the constellations in which they are situated, yet he makes no direct allusion to any of them in his poem. Neither Arcturus, which is mentioned in the Book of Job, nor Sirius, which attracted the attention of Homer, who compared the brightness of Achilles' armour to the dazzling brilliancy of the dog-star, finds a place in 'Paradise Lost.' And yet the superior magnitude and brilliancy of some stars when compared with those of others did not escape Milton's observation when, in describing the lofty eminence ...
— The Astronomy of Milton's 'Paradise Lost' • Thomas Orchard
... he, upon the present occasion, "I am just now like the half-pike, or spontoon of Achilles, one end of which could wound and the other cure—a property belonging neither to Spanish pike, brown-bill, partizan, halberd, Lochaber-axe, or indeed any other modern staff-weapon whatever." This compliment he repeated twice; but as Annot scarce heard him the first time, and did not ...
— A Legend of Montrose • Sir Walter Scott
... part of Heav'n Now alienated, distance and distaste, Anger and just rebuke, and judgement giv'n, 10 That brought into this World a world of woe, Sinne and her shadow Death, and Miserie Deaths Harbinger: Sad task, yet argument Not less but more Heroic then the wrauth Of stern Achilles on his Foe pursu'd Thrice Fugitive about Troy Wall; or rage Of Turnus for Lavinia disespous'd, Or Neptun's ire or Juno's, that so long Perplex'd the Greek and Cytherea's Son; If answerable style I can obtaine 20 Of my Celestial Patroness, who deignes ...
— The Poetical Works of John Milton • John Milton
... wonderful progress in the arts, her citizens had acquired the epithet of {poludaidaloi},[1415] and had come to be recognised generally as the foremost artificers of the world in almost every branch of industry. Sidonian metal-work was particularly in repute. When Achilles at the funeral of Patroclus desired to offer as a prize to the fastest runner the most beautiful bowl that was to be found in all the world, he naturally chose one which had been deftly made by highly-skilled ...
— History of Phoenicia • George Rawlinson
... a banquet in the "Iliad." But the Achilles of this extensive repast was Manin, the rough Manin who, according to those that were next to him, consumed no less than eleven calabashes of wine. Certainly Manin deserved being called, if not a Sueve, as that would offend Saleta, at least a Lombard. ...
— The Grandee • Armando Palacio Valds
... related here essentially as found in the Nibelungen Lied. It is quite differently told in the older versions. Siegfried's invulnerability save in one spot reminds us of Achilles, who also was made invulnerable by a bath, and who could be wounded ...
— The Story of Siegfried • James Baldwin
... epic on mythology, Wesley remarks, "But this [mythology] being now antiquated, I cannot think we are oblig'd superstitiously to follow his Example, any more than to make Horses speak, as he does that of Achilles." To the question of the formidable Boileau, "What Pleasure can it be to hear the howlings of repining Lucifer?" our critic responds flippantly, "I think 'tis easier to answer than to find out what shew of Reason he had for asking it, or why Lucifer mayn't howl as pleasantly as either Cerberus, ...
— Epistle to a Friend Concerning Poetry (1700) and the Essay on Heroic Poetry (second edition, 1697) • Samuel Wesley
... the idea for a while as calculated to impair the value of both charters. There was also a moment when the two were reported to have had a serious disagreement and Mr. Lloyd George, having suddenly quitted Paris for rustic seclusion, was likened to Achilles sulking in his tent. But one of the two always gave way at the last moment, just as both had given way to M. Clemenceau at the outset. When the difference between Japan and China cropped up, for example, the ...
— The Inside Story Of The Peace Conference • Emile Joseph Dillon
... expect or ask or the impossible. He will drink the wine of the country, even when sour, without a grimace; pass without grumbling a sleepless night; plod through dust ankle deep, without a murmur; there is but one vulnerable feature in his armor, and with Achilles, it is his heel! And it is literally the heel that, is the sensitive spot. I will venture the assertion that the long-distance tramper—not even excepting Brother Weston—who has not at some time or another ...
— A Tramp Through the Bret Harte Country • Thomas Dykes Beasley
... this kind of cutting, which may be called a comic section, are recorded in history, both ancient and modern. Even Hector cut his stick (with Achilles after him) at the siege of Troy. The Persians cut their stick at Marathon. Pompey cut his stick at Pharsalia, and so did Antony at Actium. Napoleon Bonaparte ...
— The Comic Latin Grammar - A new and facetious introduction to the Latin tongue • Percival Leigh
... half-singing, half-hissing z-z-z-ip of the minie-ball—numbs the ardor of the bravest. It is such a malignant, direct, devilish admonition of murder; it comes so unexpectedly, no matter how well you are prepared, that Achilles himself would feel a spasm of fear. And when it strikes it does its work with such a venomous, exultant splutter, that there seems something animate, demoniac in it. The volley, as I said, came as the men were hurried down the hill by their own ...
— The Iron Game - A Tale of the War • Henry Francis Keenan
... old relics, Roman antiquities, variety of colours. A good picture is falsa veritas, et muta poesis: and though (as [3314]Vives saith) artificialia delectant, sed mox fastidimus, artificial toys please but for a time; yet who is he that will not be moved with them for the present? When Achilles was tormented and sad for the loss of his dear friend Patroclus, his mother Thetis brought him a most elaborate and curious buckler made by Vulcan, in which were engraven sun, moon, stars, planets, sea, land, men fighting, running, riding, women scolding, hills, dales, towns, castles, brooks, rivers, ...
— The Anatomy of Melancholy • Democritus Junior
... Scamander. The Grecian camp had stretched twelve miles along the shore from the Sigaean to the Rhaetian promontory, and the flanks of the army were guarded by the bravest chiefs who fought under the banners of Agamemnon. The first of these promontories was occupied by Achilles with his invincible Myrmidons, and the dauntless Ajax pitched his tents on the other. After Ajax had fallen a sacrifice to his disappointed pride and to the ingratitude of the Greeks, his sepulchre was erected on the ground where he had defended the navy against the rage of Jove and Hector, ...
— Gibbon • James Cotter Morison
... Wonderful enough, they did find old bricks, enclosing a sort of hollow cavity, bricks of an ancient day; and though they got nothing else ('Polyte said he knew who had beaten them to this treasure—it was Achilles Dufrayne of Calcasieu, curse him!) they both explained how easy it would be to deceive the fair captive into thinking we really had found the ring's setting as well as the ring itself, in a pirate treasure-box. I would not do that, on the ground that ...
— The Lady and the Pirate - Being the Plain Tale of a Diligent Pirate and a Fair Captive • Emerson Hough
... morning received a summons from your father, who returned, it appears, two days ago, and is now at the Adelphi Hotel. I am sorry to say, that stepping out of his carriage when travelling, he missed his footing, and has snapped his tendon Achilles. He is laid up on a couch, and, as you may suppose, his amiability is not increased by the accident, and the pain attending it. As he has requested me to bring forward immediate evidence as to your identity, and ...
— Japhet, In Search Of A Father • Frederick Marryat
... Like Achilles (if the bilious Shade will permit the impudent comparison), they dragged their enemy, Gout, at their horses' heels for a term, and vengeance being accomplished went to ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... ruthful spectacle Hath fortune offered to my hapless heart? My father slain with such a fatal sword, My mother murthered by a mortal wound? What Thracian dog, what barbarous Mirmidon, Would not relent at such a rueful case? What fierce Achilles, what had stony flint, Would not bemoan this mournful Tragedy? Locrine, the map of magnanimity, Lies slaughtered in this foul accursed cave, Estrild, the perfect pattern of renown, Nature's sole wonder, in whose beauteous breasts All ...
— 2. Mucedorus • William Shakespeare [Apocrypha]
... Other Matters Our Tour Translation from an Unpublished Work of Herodotus The shield of Achilles, with variations Prospectus of the Great Split Society Powers A skit on examinations An Eminent Person Napoleon at St. Helena THE TWO DEANS The Battle of Alma Mater On the Italian Priesthood Samuel Butler ...
— Samuel Butler's Cambridge Pieces • Samuel Butler
... breaking a butterfly on the wheel is poor pastime, and not a very athletic sport. The glory, too, to be won is so small that it scarcely compensates for the pain we inflict, and may, perchance, eventually feel. Is Achilles inclined to be proud of the strength of his arm, or the keenness of his falchion, as he grovels in the dust at the slain Amazon's side? Nay, he would give half his laurels to be able to close that awful gaping wound—to see the proud lips soften for a moment from their ...
— Sword and Gown - A Novel • George A. Lawrence
... the passionate fidelity of Penelope.[1] Yet more than this; when the poet has to speak of the matter, he never fails to rise to the occasion in a way that even now we can see to be unsurpassable. The Achilles of the Iliad may speak scornfully of Briseis, as insufficient cause to quarrel on;[2] the silver-footed goddess, set above all human longings, regards the love of men and women from her icy heights ...
— Select Epigrams from the Greek Anthology • J. W. Mackail
... Achilles had a tender spot That even guarding gods forgot, When clothing him in armor; And I have proved this charge o' mine For fear, and sloth, and vice, and wine, ...
— Rung Ho! • Talbot Mundy
... of Wellington is so called sometimes, and is represented by a statue of Achilles of gigantic size in Hyde Park, London, ...
— 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.
... eyes, The lightnings blaze across the vaulted skies, And, as the thunder shakes the heav'nly plains, A deep felt horror thrills through all my veins. When gentler strains demand thy graceful song, The length'ning line moves languishing along. When great Patroclus courts Achilles' aid, The grateful tribute of my tears is paid; Prone on the shore he feels the pangs of love, And stern Pelides tend'rest passions move. Great Maro's strain in heav'nly numbers flows, The Nine inspire, and all the bosom glows. O could I rival thine and Virgil's page, Or claim the Muses with the ...
— Religious and Moral Poems • Phillis Wheatley
... made invulnerable, was, however, like Achilles, vulnerable at one point: not in its heel, but in its head, or rather, in the two heads into which it ran out-the Legislative Assembly, on the one hand, and the President on the other. Run through the Constitution and it will be found that only those paragraphs wherein the relation of the ...
— The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte • Karl Marx
... mystery of two psychologies. In that Brazilian business two of the most famous men of modern history acted flat against their characters. Mind you, Olivier and St. Clare were both heroes—the old thing, and no mistake; it was like the fight between Hector and Achilles. Now, what would you say to an affair in which Achilles was timid ...
— The Innocence of Father Brown • G. K. Chesterton
... Hypakyris, which starts from a lake, and flowing through the midst of the nomad Scythians runs out into the sea by the city of Carkinitis, skirting on its right bank the region of Hylaia and the so-called racecourse of Achilles. ...
— The History Of Herodotus - Volume 1(of 2) • Herodotus
... Homer, Virgil, and Dante. Below on the right, Sappho, supposed to be addressing Corinna, Petrarch, Propertius, and Anacreon; on the left Pindar and Horace, Sannazzaro, Boccaccio, and others. Beneath this, in grisaille, are,—Alexander placing the poems of Homer in the tomb of Achilles, and Augustus preventing ...
— The Old Masters and Their Pictures - For the Use of Schools and Learners in Art • Sarah Tytler
... modern times of a young hero, chiselled by artists belonging to a race no longer heroic, but capable of comprehending and expressing the aesthetic charm of heroism. Standing before it, we may say of Gaston what Arrian wrote to Hadrian of Achilles: "That he was a hero, if hero ever lived, I cannot doubt; for his birth and blood were noble, and he was beautiful, and his spirit was mighty, and he passed in youth's prime away from men." Italian sculpture, under the condition of the cinquecento, had ...
— New Italian sketches • John Addington Symonds
... drilling-lessons were always protracted by episodes of warlike narrative, much more interesting to Tom than Philip's stories out of the Iliad; for there were no cannon in the Iliad, and besides, Tom had felt some disgust on learning that Hector and Achilles might possibly never have existed. But the Duke of Wellington was really alive, and Bony had not been long dead; therefore Mr. Poulter's reminiscences of the Peninsular War were removed from all suspicion of being mythical. Mr. Poulter, ...
— The Mill on the Floss • George Eliot
... of Homer the poetical object is to kindle, nourish, sustain and allay the anger of Achilles. This end is constantly kept in view; and the action proper to attain it is conducted with wonderful judgment thro a long series of incidents, which elevate the mind of the reader, and excite not only a veneration ...
— The Columbiad • Joel Barlow
... They were identified by miracle. A true relic-worship set in. The superstition of the old Greek times reappeared; the times when the tools with which the Trojan horse was made might still be seen at Metapontum, the sceptre of Pelops at Chaeroneia, the spear of Achilles at Phaselis, the sword of Memnon at Nicomedia, when the Tegeates could show the hide of the Calydonian boar and very many cities boasted their possession of the true palladium of Troy; when there were statues of Minerva that could brandish ...
— History of the Conflict Between Religion and Science • John William Draper
... to the court. One of them thought that Pallas was a very second-rate person compared to her; the other pretended that the lady in question was an imitation of Venus alluring Mars; and thereupon the two gentlemen fought as fiercely as Hector and Achilles." ...
— Louise de la Valliere • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... it. From the experience of the ages we have learned to expect to find, coupled with great strength, a proportionate weakness, and usually it devours the greater part, as the seven lean kine devoured the seven fat in Pharaoh's vision. Achilles was a god in all his nobler parts, but his feet were of the earth and to the earth they held him down, and he died stung by an ...
— A Collection of Stories, Reviews and Essays • Willa Cather
... he would be in the misery of the deserted woman; and instead of considering AEneas as a model of heroic virtue, would adjudge him as personally base. From this we see that the novelistic attitude toward character is much more intimate than the epic attitude. The wrath of Achilles is significant to Homer, not so much because it is an exhibition of individual personality as because it is a factor in jeopardizing the victory of the Greeks. Considered as types of individual character, most of Homer's heroes are mere boys. It is the cause for which they fight ...
— A Manual of the Art of Fiction • Clayton Hamilton
... unforeseen satisfaction of the desire of beauty. Yet the Odyssey, with its marvellous adventure, is more romantic than the Iliad, which nevertheless contains, among many other romantic episodes, that of the immortal horses of Achilles, who weep at the death of Patroclus. Aeschylus is more romantic than Sophocles, whose Philoctetes, were it written now, might figure, for the strangeness of its motive and the perfectness of its execution, as typically romantic; while, ...
— Appreciations, with an Essay on Style • Walter Horatio Pater
... any cynic's tooth! Shakespeare, as under the guidance at once for good and for evil of his alternately Socratic and Swiftian familiar, has set himself as if prepensely and on purpose to brutalise the type of Achilles and spiritualise the type of Ulysses. The former is an enterprise never to be utterly forgiven by any one who ever loved from the very birth of his boyhood the very name of the son of the sea-goddess in the glorious words of ...
— A Study of Shakespeare • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... Troilus and Cressida, said Coleridge, is the hardest to characterize. The figures of the old Homeric world fare but hardly under the glaring light of modern standards of morality which Shakspere turns upon them. Ajax becomes a stupid bully, Ulysses a crafty politician, and swift-footed Achilles a vain and sulky chief of faction. In losing their ideal remoteness, the heroes of the Iliad lose their poetic quality, and the lover of Homer ...
— Brief History of English and American Literature • Henry A. Beers
... our claim to being the sons of his mind.—Dr. Gannius, in contempt, throws off the mask: he also is a concurrent. And not only is he the chosen by election of the chief Universities of his land, he has behind him, as Athene dilating Achilles, the clenched fist of the Prince of thunder and lightning of his time. German, Japan shall be! he publicly swears before them all. M. Falarique damascenes his sharpest smile; M. Bobinikine double-dimples his puddingest; M. Mytharete rolls a forefinger ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... in-working of the All, and of its moral aim. The Indian mythology ends in the same ethics; and it would seem impossible for any fable to be invented to get any currency which was not moral. Aurora[117] forgot to ask youth for her lover, and though Tithonus is immortal, he is old, Achilles[118] is not quite invulnerable; the sacred waters did not wash the heel by which Thetis held him. Siegfried,[119] in the Niebelungen, is not quite immortal, for a leaf fell on his back whilst he was bathing in the dragon's blood, and that spot which it covered ...
— Essays • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... I dare say, Hector; and really I did not mean to give you such immense offence in treating a point of remote antiquity, a subject on which I always am myself cool, deliberate, and unimpassioned. But you are as hot and hasty, as if you were Hector and Achilles, and ...
— The Antiquary, Complete • Sir Walter Scott
... the composite Olympian religion. In the Phoenician share we find, as might be expected, both Assyrian and Egyptian elements. The best indication we possess of the Hellenic function is that given by the remarkable prayer of Achilles to Zeus in Iliad, xvi., 233-248. This prayer on the sending forth of Patroclus is the hinge of the whole action of the poem, and is preceded by a long introduction (220-232) such as we nowhere else find. The tone is monotheistic; no partnership of gods appears in it; and the immediate ...
— Great Men and Famous Women, Vol. 7 of 8 • Charles F. (Charles Francis) Horne
... as token of dedication to any particular object or deity was of common occurrence. Achilles' hair was dedicated as an offering to the river Spercheios in case of his safe return.(98) Knowing that this is impossible, in his grief at the death of Patroklos, with apologies to the god he cuts his flowing locks and lays them in the hand of ...
— On The Structure of Greek Tribal Society: An Essay • Hugh E. Seebohm
... also that now he had naught to fear save his own axe and therefore he counselled him to guard it well, since if it was lifted against him in another's hands it would bring him down to death, which nothing else could do. Like to the heel of Achilles whereof the great Homer sings—have you ...
— She and Allan • H. Rider Haggard
... same time, of martial feelings. Sir Francis Doyle speaks very justly of Sir Walter as "among English singers the undoubted inheritor of that trumpet-note, which, under the breath of Homer, has made the wrath of Achilles immortal;" and I do not doubt that there was something in Scott's face, and especially in the expression of his mouth, to suggest this even to his early college companions. Unfortunately, however, even "one crowded hour ...
— Sir Walter Scott - (English Men of Letters Series) • Richard H. Hutton
... 'stunt' unknown elsewhere. They perform in couples; and when he mentions them, it is in the dual number. Preternatural voices are an Homeric tradition: Stentor "spoke loud as fifty other men"; when Achilles roared at the Trojans, their whole army was frightened. In Crete such voices are said to be still common: shepherds carry on conversations at incredible distances—speak to, and are answered by, men not yet in sight.—Dequincey gives several other such coincidences; none of them, by itself, might ...
— The Crest-Wave of Evolution • Kenneth Morris
... the other hand, the idol-worshippers would fain have Napoleon born as a god or Titan. Premature pangs seize the mother at church. She hurries home, barely reaching her apartment when the heroic babe is delivered, without an accoucheur, on a piece of tapestry inwrought with an effigy of Achilles! This probably occurred. It was the ...
— The Arena - Volume 18, No. 92, July, 1897 • Various
... are complicated and polished, their comprehension as a realization of desire is fairly evident. A boy of eight dreamt that he was being driven with Achilles in a war-chariot, guided by Diomedes. The day before he was assiduously reading about great heroes. It is easy to show that he took these heroes as his models, and regretted that he was not living in ...
— Dream Psychology - Psychoanalysis for Beginners • Sigmund Freud
... it is life, not death, that is of interest to the living; death is rather a negation than anything distinctly realised. The state of the dead in Homer is shadowy and triste, a state not to be desired, as Achilles so painfully expresses it in a famous passage; but the life of the Achaean in the poems is vivid—nay, such a vivid realisation of life can alone account for the production of such poems. So, too, the immigrant ...
— The Religious Experience of the Roman People - From the Earliest Times to the Age of Augustus • W. Warde Fowler
... death, was published a second volume of fables, more political than the former. His opera of Achilles was acted, and the profits were given to two widow sisters, who inherited what he left, as his lawful heirs; for he died without a will, though he had gathered three thousand pounds[35]. There have appeared, likewise, under ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D. in Nine Volumes - Volume the Eighth: The Lives of the Poets, Volume II • Samuel Johnson
... clear to Georgie. She wanted to have a short private consultation with Peppino, and he waited rather hopefully for their return, for Peppino, he felt sure, was bored with this Achilles-attitude of sitting sulking in the tent. They came back wreathed in smiles, and instantly embarked on the question of what to do after dinner. No romps: certainly not, but why not the tableaux again? The ...
— Queen Lucia • E. F. Benson
... [Footnote 22: Achilles, Ajax, Buonaparte, King George, Hannibal, Peter Pindar, Neptune, Tippoo Saib, Washington. A few only bore the names ...
— The History of Tasmania , Volume II (of 2) • John West
... their feelings, and imitate their acts. And so there comes to be something traditional even in the management of the passions. Shakespeare's historical plays were the only history to the Duke of Marlborough. Thousands of Greeks acted under the influence of what Achilles or Ulysses did, in Homer. The poet sings of the deeds that shall be. He imagines the past; he ...
— Friends in Council (First Series) • Sir Arthur Helps
... here was the omission of the only gate of Troy really known to fame, the Scaean, which looked on the tomb of the founder Laomedon; before which stood Hector, "full and fixed," awaiting the fatal onslaught of Achilles; where Achilles, in turn, received his death-wound from the shaft of Paris; and through which, finally, the wooden horse was triumphantly conveyed ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 204, September 24, 1853 • Various
... like Achilles, are pursued by ten thousand girls. I deeply sympathize, though it is not an inconvenience that has troubled me, even in my ...
— The Daughters of Danaus • Mona Caird
... divining cup of Genesis to the Amalthean horns, and the goblet of Oberon, which he gave to Huon of Bordeaux, the supernatural power of which, passing into an hundred shapes of fiction, may be found in our baronial halls—a pledge, to a certain extent, like the invulnerability of Achilles, of the good fortune of its possessor. It is wonderful that Shakespeare, who is so happy in the verisimilitude of his fairy lore, and so apt to embellish his plot with its mythology, should not have thought of causing the king-making Earl of Warwick to lose the horn of ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 1 (of 2) • John Roby
... Than the Amazonian, &c.] Penthesile, Queen of the Amazons, succeeded Orythia. She carried succours to the Trojans, and after having given noble proofs of her bravery, was killed by Achilles. Pliny saith, it was she that invented the battle-ax. If any one desire to know more of the Amazons, let ...
— Hudibras • Samuel Butler
... not have stories which inspire dread of death; no Achilles saying in the under-world that it were better to be a slave in the flesh than Lord of the Shades. And again, no heroes—and gods still less—giving way to frantic lamentations and uncontrolled emotions, even ...
— The World's Greatest Books—Volume 14—Philosophy and Economics • Various
... jumping up from my chair and turning off the gas-log. "Don't! Nobody asked you to come in the first place, and nobody's going to complain if you sulk in your tent like Achilles. I don't want to see you. I could fake up a better ghost than you are anyhow—in fact, I fancy that's what's the matter with you. You know what a miserable specimen you are—couldn't frighten a mouse if you were ten ...
— Ghosts I have Met and Some Others • John Kendrick Bangs
... his soul passes into the shape of Achilles, which rises from the ground; while the phantom has disappeared, part by part, as the figure was ...
— The Works of Lord Byron - Poetry, Volume V. • Lord Byron
... regaining his liberty. Without delay it made for the open gateway, ran between the feet of the advancing Fritz, upset him, causing him to measure his length with that of the hog's back, then after a few turns about the yard, upset the pursuing Achilles-Franz and ran to the top of a heap of sodden straw, where it shook off Odysseus-Fritz, then ran nimbly down and out the gateway to the road. To fill to overflowing the measure of their ill-luck, some of the Trojans who had ...
— Pixy's Holiday Journey • George Lang
... other hand, a taste more fastidious, or more perverse, will scarcely be satisfied with pathos which in process of time has come to seem "obvious." The pathos of early death in the prime of beauty is less obvious in Homer, where Achilles is to be the victim, or in the laments of the Anthology, where we only know that the dead bride or maiden was fair; but the poor May Queen is ...
— Alfred Tennyson • Andrew Lang
... occasion. He even indulged in a classical joke. "There is something in the name of Helen that attracts," he said. "Were it not for the lady whose face drew a thousand ships to Ilium, we should never have heard of Paris, or Troy, or the heel of Achilles, and all these would be ...
— The Silent Barrier • Louis Tracy
... he was called away at this moment to the further end of the stable. 'Oh,' sighed I, 'for Xanthus, horse of Achilles!' ...
— The Delectable Duchy • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... the morning, a splendid panorama begins to unfold on this lordly stream—"Achilles of rivers," as Winthrop called it. It is difficult to describe the charm of this trip. Residents of the East pronounce it superior to the Hudson, and travelers assert there is nothing like it in the Old World. It is simply delicious ...
— Oregon, Washington and Alaska; Sights and Scenes for the Tourist • E. L. Lomax
... of the "Great Achilles" that will sustain us. For this task comes to Liberals as a sacred trust from Mr. Gladstone. It is from him that they have learnt that race-hatred is poison, and that the only true union between nations is—in a phrase that has outlived the silly laughter of the shallow—the "Union of Hearts."[5] ...
— Home Rule - Second Edition • Harold Spender
... only child of an American millionaire, strays one day into the shop of a Greek fruit-dealer, Achilles Alexandrakis, and watches the flight of a butterfly that the Greek liberates from its grey cocoon. The story is of the friendship that grew out of this meeting, and a rescue that grew out of the friendship. This blend of the spirit of the old world and the new, meeting in the grimy Chicago ...
— Werwolves • Elliott O'Donnell
... of English faults he was, as Cardinal Newman has said, "an Englishman to the backbone"; and he was, further, a fastidious, high-tempered English gentleman, in spite of his declaiming about "pampered aristocrats" and the "gentleman heresy." His friends thought of him as of the "young Achilles," with his high courage, and noble form, and "eagle eye," made for such great things, but appointed so soon to die. "Who can refrain from tears at the thought of that bright and beautiful Froude?" is the expression of one of them shortly before his death, and when it was quite certain that the doom ...
— The Oxford Movement - Twelve Years, 1833-1845 • R.W. Church
... the Great," said the Professor. "You would prefer the fame of Achilles to that of Homer, who told the story of his wrath and its direful consequences. I am afraid that I should hardly agree with you. Achilles was little better than a Choctaw brave. I won't quote Horace's line which characterizes him so admirably, ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... Parents of Ulysses How People Lived in the Time of Ulysses The Wooing of Helen of the Fair Hands The Stealing of Helen Trojan Victories Battle at the Ships The Slaying and Avenging of Patroclus The Cruelty of Achilles, and the Ransoming of Hector How Ulysses Stole the Luck of Troy The Battles with the Amazons and Memnon—the Death of Achilles Ulysses Sails to seek the Son of Achilles.—The Valour of Eurypylus The Slaying of Paris How Ulysses Invented the Device of ...
— Tales of Troy: Ulysses the Sacker of Cities • Andrew Lang
... what heroes should conquer, and what should be conquered. This doctrine runs throughout the poem of Homer called the Iliad; so that he makes the fates determine the ends of his two chief heroes, Hector and Achilles. And though the former was knocked down several times in the different engagements and dangerously wounded, yet as the fates had decreed that he should fall by the hand of Achilles, he is rescued from destruction by a deity, because the time of his death was not yet ...
— A Solemn Caution Against the Ten Horns of Calvinism • Thomas Taylor
... foreign investment has picked up. Slovakia's economy exceeded expectations in 2001-03, despite the general European slowdown. Unemployment, at an unacceptable 15% in 2003, remains the economy's Achilles heel. The government faces other strong challenges in 2004, especially the cutting of budget and current account deficits, the containment of inflation, and the strengthening of the ...
— The 2003 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency
... a glance that she was sincere in disclaiming the name of an artist. The drawing was a mere simple outline of a group, representing Briseis being led away from her lover by the messengers of Agamemnon. The king stood on one side ready to receive her, and on the other, Achilles, with averted face, in an attitude of deep dejection. The natural centre of the group, however, was the figure of Briseis. The poise of her classic head as she looked back over her shoulder at her beloved hero was full of the tenderest suggestions. She seemed to offer no resistance ...
— Ilka on the Hill-Top and Other Stories • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen
... myself that I've made much headway. R. is like a rhinoceros. Can't find a vulnerable spot anywhere. He seems morally calloused. I say seems because I can scarcely believe that a boy of sixteen can really be as absolutely unmoral as he appears. Perhaps, eventually, I will find an Achilles' heel. ...
— The New Boy at Hilltop • Ralph Henry Barbour
... some one would marry her, some one would take her away and own her, body and soul, and cheat him of what had been within his grasp and all but his; and yet he was ashamed, because he no longer wanted her for his wife, but only as a possession—as Achilles wanted Briseis and was wroth when she was taken from him. He felt shame at the thought, because he had already honoured her in his imagination as his wife, and because to dream of her as anything as near, yet less in honour, was a sort ...
— Fair Margaret - A Portrait • Francis Marion Crawford
... with felicitous humour, told how Esau, and Cato, Clovis, William Rufus, and Rob Roy not only had red hair, but each was celebrated for having it; how Ossian sung a "lofty race of red-haired heroes," how Venus herself was golden-haired, as well as Patroclus and Achilles. "Thus does it appear," the article concluded, "that in all ages and in all countries, from Paradise to Dragon River, has red or golden hair been held in highest estimation. But for his red hair, the country of Esau would not have been called Edom. But ...
— A Political History of the State of New York, Volumes 1-3 • DeAlva Stanwood Alexander
... this valley, evidently full of excitement, who either had despatched his foe, or had not yet taken part in the battle; probably the latter, for he had lost none of his limbs; whose mother had charged him to return with his shield or upon it. Or perchance he was some Achilles, who had nourished his wrath apart, and had now come to avenge or rescue his Patroclus. He saw this unequal combat from afar—for the blacks were nearly twice the size of the red—he drew near with rapid pace till he stood on his guard within half an inch of the combatants; then, watching ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 7 • Charles H. Sylvester
... name. Of the two great poets to whom the world's unrepealable verdict has assigned the foremost place in their several kinds, we know in one case absolutely nothing, and next to nothing in the other. To the question, Who sung the wrath of Achilles and the wanderings of the much-versed Odysseus? tradition answers with a name to which no faintest shadow of a person corresponds. To the question, Who composed "Hamlet" and "Othello"? history answers with a person so indistinct that recent speculation has dared to question the agency ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume XIII • John Lord
... inquired of him the way to the village. After he had received the desired information, and was about taking his leave, the youth said, "Are you not Major Elfonzo, the great musician [2]—the champion of a noble cause —the modern Achilles, who gained so many victories in the Florida War?" "I bear that name," said the Major, "and those titles, trusting at the same time that the ministers of grace will carry me triumphantly through all my laudable undertakings, and if," continued the Major, "you, sir, are the ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... imperfectly harmonized that what he was found but a stuttering expression in what he wrote and did. There were gaps in his mind; or, to use Victor Hugo's image, "his intellect was a book with some leaves torn out." His force, great as it was, was that of an Ajax, rather than that of an Achilles. Few dramatists of the time afford nobler passages of description and reflection. Few are wiser, deeper, manlier in their strain of thinking. But when we turn to the dramas from which these grand things have been detached, we find extravagance, confusion, huge thoughts lying in helpless heaps, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 122, December, 1867 • Various
... dissolv'd; and the multitude rose and disperst them, Each making speed to the ships, for the needful refreshment of nature, Food and the sweetness of sleep; but alone in his tent was Achilles, Weeping the friend that he lov'd; nor could Sleep, the subduer of all things, Master his grief; but he turn'd him continually hither and thither, Thinking of all that was gracious and brave in departed Patroclus, ...
— Blackwoods Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 365, March, 1846 • Various
... been the irreligious politics of the present leaders of the Quakers, that, for the sake of they scarce know what, they would cut off every hope of such a blessing by tying this continent to Britain, like Hector to the chariot wheel of Achilles, to be dragged through all the ...
— The Writings Of Thomas Paine, Complete - With Index to Volumes I - IV • Thomas Paine
... moreover tell you, and do you meditate well upon it, that) you yourself are not destined to live long, for even now death is drawing nigh unto you, and a violent fate awaits you,—about to be slain in fight by the hands of Achilles, the irreproachable ...
— Notes & Queries, No. 38, Saturday, July 20, 1850 • Various
... the gods, but the Homeric heroes into "elemental combinations and physical agencies"; for there is nothing new in the mythological philosophy recently popular, which saw the sun, and the cloud, and the wind in Achilles, ...
— Myth, Ritual, and Religion, Vol. 1 • Andrew Lang
... gods is given, Or that, as Paris, from the strife severe, The Venus draws her darling,—Whom the heaven So prospers, love so watches, I revere! And not the man upon whose eyes, with dim And baleful night, sits Fate. The Dorian lord, August Achilles, was not less divine That Vulcan wrought for him the shield and sword— That round the mortal hover'd all the hosts Of all Olympus—that his wrath to grace, The best and bravest of the Grecian race Fell by the Trojan steel, what time the ghosts ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - April 1843 • Various
... him as the man through whom success must come. However, he became angered at Agamemnon and withdrew from the contest, and victory seemed about to fall to the Trojans. One day Patroclus, the friend and kinsman of Achilles, distressed at the Greek fortunes, removed of Achilles his armor, and at the head of Achilles's own men, went forth to do battle with the Trojans. He was slain by Hector, the son of Priam, the bravest of the Trojan defenders, and in anger at his friend's ...
— Journeys Through Bookland - Volume Four • Charles H. Sylvester
... even his enemies confessed this young Stuart a worthy leader of men. Usually suffused with a gentle pensiveness not unbecoming, the ardour of his welcome had given him on this occasion the martial bearing of a heroic young Achilles. With flushed cheek and sparkling ...
— A Daughter of Raasay - A Tale of the '45 • William MacLeod Raine
... tears for their dead sons, in deep despair, Mothers of Memnon and Achilles shed, If gods in mortal grief have any share, O Muse of tears! bow down thy ...
— The Elegies of Tibullus • Tibullus
... for our hero! A statuesque foot Would suffer by wearing that heavy-nailed boot— Its owner is hardly Achilles. However, he's happy! He cuts a great "fig" In the land where a coat is no part of the rig— In the country of damper ...
— The Poems of Henry Kendall • Henry Kendall
... the table and took up his Homer; for he was too agitated to sleep. But it was in vain that he tried to interest himself in it. The rhythm had lost its music, the thought its power; it was in vain that he tried to forget himself in the reply of Achilles, or the struggle ...
— The Bridge of the Gods - A Romance of Indian Oregon. 19th Edition. • Frederic Homer Balch
... with Captain Lockett (226) that this "Sabb warrior," this Arabian Achilles, is the celebrated Bonus Deus or Hellespontiacus of the Ancients. The oration ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 8 • Richard F. Burton
... France, demoralised by the conviction that few of their number will be again in their homes. We are treated every day, too, to the details of deeds of heroism on the part of Mobiles and Nationaux, which would make Achilles himself jealous. There is, we are told, a wonderful artilleryman in the fort before St. Denis, the perfection of whose aim carries death and ...
— Diary of the Besieged Resident in Paris • Henry Labouchere
... The notion of a clumsy fellow who falls off his horse is indeed a stock and stale subject. But Mr. Winkle is not a stock and stale subject. Nor is his horse a stock and stale subject; it is as immortal as the horses of Achilles. The notion of a fat old gentleman proud of his legs might easily be vulgar. But Mr. Pickwick proud of his legs is not vulgar; somehow we feel that they were legs to be proud of. And it is exactly this that we must look for in these Sketches. We must ...
— Appreciations and Criticisms of the Works of Charles Dickens • G. K. Chesterton
... do I despair of seeing the tobacco-box, and the "parcel-gilt goblet" which I have thus brought to light the subject of future engravings, and almost as fruitful of voluminous dissertations and disputes as the shield of Achilles or the far-famed ...
— The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent. • Washington Irving
... saeclorum nascitur ordo. Jam redit et Virgo, redeunt Saturnia regna; . . . . . . Alter erit tum Tiphys, et altera quae vehat Argo Delectos heroas; erunt etiam altera bella, Atque iterum ad Trojam magnus mittetur Achilles." ...
— Astronomy of To-day - A Popular Introduction in Non-Technical Language • Cecil G. Dolmage
... standing upon one's head in a swing, before a lady that ought to have your best attention;—however, for all Lark's protestations, we saw some one-sided smiles, as much as to say, his vulnerable part, like that of Achilles, lay in the heels—an insinuation Lark could well afford to allow, for he does not live to dance, alone, ...
— Christmas Comes but Once A Year - Showing What Mr. Brown Did, Thought, and Intended to Do, - during that Festive Season. • Luke Limner
... wandering slow, O'er sad Achaia's plain, Will feel his bosom warmly glow, And memory fire his brain— Achilles' strength—and Homer's song Across his ...
— Lays of Ancient Virginia, and Other Poems • James Avis Bartley
... were not: what Caesar would have lived to do had he believed the soothsayer: what might have been: possibilities of the possible as possible: things not known: what name Achilles bore when he lived ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce
... connects an army with its base of supplies is the heel of Achilles—its most vital and vulnerable point. It is a great achievement in war to compel an enemy to make heavy ...
— History and Comprehensive Description of Loudoun County, Virginia • James W. Head
... of this as improper, and that as vulgar, and the other as unbecoming, which are the characteristics of the pseudo-correct and pseudo-classical school of criticism. He was a great admirer of Cowper, and yet he is shocked by Cowper's use, in his translation of Homer, of the phrases, "to entreat Achilles to a calm" (evidently he had forgotten Shakespeare's "pursue him and entreat him to a peace"), "this wrangler here," "like a fellow of no worth." He was certainly not likely to be unjust to Charles James Fox. So he is unhappy, rather than contemptuous, ...
— Essays in English Literature, 1780-1860 • George Saintsbury
... 186). They attacked the Phrygians, who were assisted by Priam, then a young man (Iliad, iii. 189), although in his later years, towards the end of the Trojan war, his old opponents took his side against the Greeks under their queen Penthesileia, who was slain by Achilles (Quint. Smyr. i.; Justin ii. 4; Virgil, Aen. i. 490). One of the tasks imposed upon Heracles by Eurystheus was to obtain possession of the girdle of the Amazonian queen Hippolyte (Apollodorus ii. 5). He was accompanied by his friend Theseus, who carried off the princess Antiope, sister of Hippolyte, ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... had discovered the heel of Achilles. Uncle Jim had no stomach for cold water. The broom floated away, pitching gently on the swell. Mr. Polly, infuriated with victory, thrust Uncle Jim under again, and drove the punt round on its chain in such a manner that when Uncle Jim came up for the fourth time—and now he was nearly out of ...
— The History of Mr. Polly • H. G. Wells
... of the gazing and applauding amphitheatre of cloud-cushioned gods. He could depict the personal appearance of Cybele, and sketch the character of Enceladus. He had instructed Zeus, as Chiron had instructed Achilles; he remembered Poseidon afraid of the water, and Pluto of the dark. He called to mind and expounded ancient oracles heretofore unintelligible: he had himself been told, and had disbelieved, that the happiest ...
— The Twilight of the Gods, and Other Tales • Richard Garnett
... said Spinola with a courtly flourish, "although there are certainly not wanting an Austrian Agamemnon, a Dutch Hector, and an Italian Achilles." The last allusion was to the speaker's namesake and kinsman, the Marquis Anibrose Spinola, of whom much was to be heard in the world from ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... has produced, certainly the only Liberal politician she has ever produced, the late Mr. Gladstone, compared the union between Great Britain and Ireland to "the union between the mangled corpse of Hector and the headlong chariot of Achilles." (1890.) ...
— The Crime Against Europe - A Possible Outcome of the War of 1914 • Roger Casement
... become vastly larger. This republic now extends, with a vast breadth, across the whole continent. The two great seas of the world wash the one and the other shore. We realize, on a mighty scale, the beautiful description of the ornamental border of the buckler of Achilles:— ...
— The Great Speeches and Orations of Daniel Webster • Daniel Webster
... Why, like Job's mates, fill its poor belly with the east wind, or try to draw out leviathan with a hook, or his tongue with a cord thou lettest down? Yet who treads of the fight between invulnerable Achilles and heroic Hector, and admires Achilles? The admiral of the American fleet, sick of the premature pother, signaled the lazy solidity to return. The loathly monster, slowly, like a bull-dog wrenched from his victim, rolled snarling, lazily, ...
— Lippincott's Magazine Of Popular Literature And Science, No. 23, February, 1873, Vol. XI. • Various |
