"Charon" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... spirits; and on the left to dash back to earth the damned, who in their audacity attempt to scale the heavens. Evil spirits drag down these wicked ones into the abyss, the proud by the hair of the head, and so also every sinner by the member through which he sinned. Beneath them is seen Charon with his black boat, just as Dante described him in the "Inferno," on muddy Acheron, raising his oar to strike some laggard soul. As the bark touches the bank, pushed on by Divine justice, all these souls strive to fling themselves ...
— Michael Angelo Buonarroti • Charles Holroyd
... write to you some little account of his manners and conversation, which you know very well, or you would not have sent him to me. I only now hope I shall not see him to-morrow; and should I learn that he shall have departed in one of those Plutonian engines to the keeping of Charon himself, I should only regret that I had not put an obol into his hand, lest he should be presented with a return-ticket. What did he say, and what did he not say? He called my daughter "Miss," and said he should like music ...
— Blackwoods Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 366, April, 1846 • Various
... that the dead nowadays were coming in such numbers. They were coming in thousands where they used to come in fifties. It was neither Charon's duty nor his wont to ponder in his grey soul why these things might be. ...
— Fifty-One Tales • Lord Dunsany [Edward J. M. D. Plunkett]
... was his frank answer. "It is easy to send men over the Styx after having been Charon's substitute for so many years. But the trade was not pleasant to learn, and, bless the gods, you may not have to be apprenticed ...
— A Friend of Caesar - A Tale of the Fall of the Roman Republic. Time, 50-47 B.C. • William Stearns Davis
... retainer as he is, complains bitterly of the attempt made years ago by the late Knight of Kerry to establish a steam ferry. But ferrymen are always stern sticklers for vested rights. Doubtless Charon claimed heavy compensation when the Styx Ferry was disestablished. Apart from the ferryman, however, the Valentians are by no means enamoured of their insular position. "That ould blackgyard of a ferry" is, in fact, just now a serious ...
— Disturbed Ireland - Being the Letters Written During the Winter of 1880-81. • Bernard H. Becker
... and race, preoccupied with divers interests and cares. Necessity and the waiter drive them all to a sepulchral syssition, whereof the cook too frequently deserves that old Greek comic epithet—[Greek: hadou mageiros]—cook of the Inferno. And just as we are told that in Charon's boat we shall not be allowed to pick our society, so here we must accept what fellowship the fates provide. An English spinster retailing paradoxes culled to-day from Ruskin's handbooks; an American citizen ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Complete - Series I, II, and III • John Symonds
... is Charon, of Greek mythology, who was supposed to ferry the souls of the dead over the river ...
— McGuffey's Sixth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey
... the second century B.C. Plautus in the Captivi alluded to these paintings as familiar;[850] and we must not forget that the Etruscans habitually chose the most gruesome and cruel of the Greek fables for illustration, and especially delighted in that of Charon, one likely enough to strike the popular imagination. The play-writers themselves were responsible for inculcating the belief, as Boissier remarked in his work on the Roman religion of the early empire.[851] In the theatre, with women and children present, Cicero says in the ...
— The Religious Experience of the Roman People - From the Earliest Times to the Age of Augustus • W. Warde Fowler
... of later times, has been, in this respect, neither an allegorist nor an imitator; and, consequently, he alone has introduced the ancient fictions with effect. His Minos, his Charon, his Pluto, are absolutely terrific. Nothing can be more beautiful or original than the use which he has made of the River of Lethe. He has never assigned to his mythological characters any functions inconsistent with the creed of the Catholic ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 1 (of 4) - Contibutions to Knight's Quarterly Magazine] • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... half the studio with its half-finished, threatening shapes, greater than life-size, and its vast brood of green snakes, each darting forth two sharp, forked tongues. In the foreground, to the left, could be discerned Charon in his boat, a haggard, wild-looking figure,—a powerful and well conceived design, but of the schools, schooly. There was far more of genius and less of artificiality in a canvas of smaller dimensions, also unfinished, ...
— The Gods are Athirst • Anatole France
... the scorn of the whole world in some of his finest sonnets. He did not live long to enjoy the reward of his treachery and it was popularly believed in Italy that he had poisoned himself in his despair, or put an end to his wretched life by falling upon his own sword. Even Charon, sang the poet, shuddered when he heard the traitor's name, and refused to let him enter ...
— Beatrice d'Este, Duchess of Milan, 1475-1497 • Julia Mary Cartwright
... Others who have temples are not therefore Gods. But let us go on. You call Jupiter and Neptune Gods; their brother Pluto, then, is one; and if so, those rivers also are Deities which they say flow in the infernal regions—Acheron, Cocytus, Pyriphlegethon; Charon also, and Cerberus, are Gods; but that cannot be allowed; nor can Pluto be placed among the Deities. What, then, will you say ...
— Cicero's Tusculan Disputations - Also, Treatises On The Nature Of The Gods, And On The Commonwealth • Marcus Tullius Cicero
... But Charon rose and caught his hair In fingers sharp and long. "Loose me, old ferryman: play fair: Try ...
— Forty-Two Poems • James Elroy Flecker
... far more steadily wrong side up, perhaps because we had lashed all our loads in place and they acted as ballast. Will took the pole and acted the part of Charon, our proper pilot contenting himself with perching on the rear end lamenting the ill-fortune noisily until Kazimoto struck him and threatened to throw him ...
— The Ivory Trail • Talbot Mundy
... stay! why bid the dead arise? Why call them back from Charon's wherry? Come, Yankee Mark, with twinkling eyes, Confuse these ghouls with something merry! Come, Kipling, with thy soldiers three, Thy barrack-ladies frail and fervent, Forsake thy themes of butchery And be the ...
— The Idler Magazine, Volume III., July 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... stalk about her door Like a strange soul upon the Stygian banks Staying for waftage. O, be thou my Charon, And give me swift transportance to these fields Where I may wallow in the lily beds Propos'd for the deserver! O gentle Pandar, from Cupid's shoulder pluck his painted wings, and fly ...
— The History of Troilus and Cressida • William Shakespeare [Craig edition]
... sidled away obliquely for mid-stream. I stood at one end of it. The figure of Charon could be seen at the other, of long acquaintance with this passage, using his sweep with the indifference of habitude. Perhaps it was not Charon. Yet there was some obstruction to the belief that we were bound for no more than the steamer Aldebaran, anchored ...
— London River • H. M. Tomlinson
... and let Time see Its flowering crest impearled and orient. A sonnet is a coin: its face reveals The soul,—its converse, to what Power 'tis due:— Whether for tribute to the august appeals Of Life, or dower in Love's high retinue, It serve; or, 'mid the dark wharf's cavernous breath, In Charon's palm it pay the toll to Death. DANTE ...
— The Principles of English Versification • Paull Franklin Baum
... uncertain voyage, I had time not only to coax into quietness my restive horse, but also to conclude that it would never do to dismiss our Charon on the other bank, as half an hour might put on our track a squad of cavalry, who, in our ignorance of the roads and country, would soon return us to Rebeldom and a rope. A man who would take twenty dollars for twenty minutes' work, after swearing that ...
— Thirteen Months in the Rebel Army • William G. Stevenson
... fellow-men and danced a last war-dance. Amid the wild yells of the invisible dancers could be heard the barking of their dogs. Then, sliding down the roots, the spirits disappeared in the cave. Within its recesses was a river flowing between sandy shores. All were impelled to cross it. The Charon of this Styx was no man, but a ferrywoman called Rohe. Any soul whom she carried over and who ate the food offered to it on the further bank was doomed to abide in Hades. Any spirit who refused returned to its body on ...
— The Long White Cloud • William Pember Reeves
... millions of delicate wild flowers. And oh, the retrospect view! It was wonderful, too, crossing by ferry, and looking back. Albertson's ferry we chose, and one car at a time rolled sedately on to a flatboat to be rowed to the opposite side of the river by a very young Charon in ...
— The Lightning Conductor Discovers America • C. N. (Charles Norris) Williamson and A. M. (Alice Muriel)
... and stormy night when the good Antony arrived at the creek (sagely denominated Haerlem river) which separates the island of Manna-hata from the mainland. The wind was high, the elements were in an uproar, and no Charon could be found to ferry the adventurous sounder of brass across the water. For a short time he vapored like an impatient ghost upon the brink, and then, bethinking himself of the urgency of his errand, took a hearty embrace of ...
— Knickerbocker's History of New York, Complete • Washington Irving
... the earliest opportunity to acquaint you, that I parted from the fleet last Thursday, with the Charon, hospital ship, which I saw safe into Portland this morning: Captain Grindall, (the only captain wounded,) who took his passage on board her, was much recovered. On the day I left the fleet, Admiral Cornwallis, with ...
— Memoirs and Correspondence of Admiral Lord de Saumarez, Vol. I • Sir John Ross
... dear. He's only too happy to rest,— After making three millions in gold, dear. He's played out, it must be confessed,— And I—I'm to wed an old Baron Three weeks from to-day, in great style (He's as homely and gaunt as old Charon, And they say that his past has been vile); And I've promised to cut you hereafter,— Small chance, though, we ever shall meet,— So let's turn our old love into laughter, And face the thing through. Shall we, sweet? Can you give me up, Jack, to this roue, Just because we may always be poor? ...
— When hearts are trumps • Thomas Winthrop Hall
... had, along with his black stringy hair and his dirty and tattered clothes, such a singularly wild and infernal look, that he actually struck me as a real Charon. His voice, and the questions he asked me, were not of a kind to remove this notion, so that, far from its requiring any effort of imagination, I found it not easy to avoid believing that, at length, I had actually reached Avernus, was about ...
— Travels in England in 1782 • Charles P. Moritz
... upon the part of all present to get up closer, so as the more readily to hear what he said, as a result of which poor old Boswell was pushed overboard, and fell with a loud splash into the Styx. Fortunately, however, one of Charon's pleasure-boats was close at hand, and in a short while the dripping, sputtering spirit was drawn into it, wrung out, and sent home to dry. The excitement attending this diversion ...
— The Pursuit of the House-Boat • John Kendrick Bangs
... Charon, the Ferryman of renown, was cruising slowly along the Styx one pleasant Friday morning not long ago, and as he paddled idly on he chuckled mildly to himself as he thought of the monopoly in ferriage which in the course of years he had managed ...
— A House-Boat on the Styx • John Kendrick Bangs
... Doc Dickson and Pap Spooner, had passed to the shades, and the legend ran that when their disembodied spirits reached the banks of Styx, the ruling passion of their lives asserted itself for the last time. They demurred loudly, impatiently, at the exorbitant fee, ten cents, demanded by Charon. ...
— Bunch Grass - A Chronicle of Life on a Cattle Ranch • Horace Annesley Vachell
... down unto a darker stream Alone, O friend, yet even in death's deep night Your eyes may grow accustomed to the dark And Styx for you may have the ripple and gleam Of your familiar river, and Charon's bark Tarry by that ...
— The Collected Poems of Rupert Brooke • Rupert Brooke
... their cards as Captain Sentry and Sir Roger de Coverley: Swift came in and sat down without speaking a word, and quitted the room as abruptly: Otway and Chatterton were seen lingering on the opposite side of the Styx, but could not muster enough between them to pay Charon his fare: Thomson fell asleep in the boat, and was rowed back again—and Burns sent a low fellow, one John Barleycorn, an old companion of his who had conducted him to the other world, to say that he had during his lifetime been drawn out of his retirement as ...
— Hazlitt on English Literature - An Introduction to the Appreciation of Literature • Jacob Zeitlin
... They also had a dodecad of six male and six female deities, the Consentes and Complices, making a council of gods, whom Jupiter consulted in important cases. Vertumnus was an Etruscan; so, according to Ottfried Mueller, was the Genius. So are the Lares, or household protectors, and Charun, or Charon, a power of the under-world. The minute system of worship was derived by Rome from Etruria. The whole system of omens, especially by lightning, came from the ...
— Ten Great Religions - An Essay in Comparative Theology • James Freeman Clarke
... genius of the place and people, or presage to themselves the honour of so magnificent a sepulchre as was given to Nero's turbot), that, as soon as the hook is cast in, they press to it as the ghosts in Lucian did to Charon's boat, and cling to the iron as miners do to a rope that is let down when the light of their candle ...
— Ideal Commonwealths • Various
... rhymes, A monument to after-times— "Here Cassy lies, by Celia slain, And dying, never told his pain." Vain empty world, farewell. But hark, The loud Cerberian triple bark; And there—behold Alecto stand, A whip of scorpions in her hand: Lo, Charon from his leaky wherry Beckoning to waft me o'er the ferry: I come! I come! Medusa see, Her serpents hiss direct at me. Begone; unhand me, hellish fry: "Avaunt—ye cannot say 'twas I."[1] Dear Cassy, thou must purge and bleed; I fear thou wilt be mad indeed. But now, by friendship's sacred ...
— The Poems of Jonathan Swift, D.D., Volume I (of 2) • Jonathan Swift
... would, as a poet, can scarcely be a liar. The astronomer, with his cousin the geometrician, can hardly escape when they take upon them to measure the height of the stars. How often, think you, do the physicians lie, when they aver things good for sicknesses, which afterwards send Charon a great number of souls drowned in a potion before they come to his ferry. And no less of the rest which take upon them to affirm. Now for the poet, he nothing affirmeth, and therefore never lieth; for, as I take it, to lie is to affirm that to be true which is false: ...
— A Defence of Poesie and Poems • Philip Sidney
... portals to him. So, as he wrote to Professor Bartholomew Price on May 20, in answer to the invitation,] "It will be a sort of apotheosis coincident with my official death, which is imminent. In fact, I am dead already, only the Treasury Charon has not yet settled the conditions upon which I am to be ferried over to ...
— The Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley Volume 2 • Leonard Huxley
... the way of death, then wilt thou overtake a lame ass laden with wood, and a lame driver, who will pray thee reach him certain cords to fasten the burden which is falling from the ass: but be thou cautious to pass on in silence. And soon as thou comest to the river of the dead, Charon, in that crazy bark he hath, will put thee over upon the further side. There is greed even among the dead: and thou shalt deliver to him, for the ferrying, one of those two pieces of money, in such wise that he take [88] it with his hand from between thy lips. ...
— Marius the Epicurean, Volume One • Walter Horatio Pater
... hundred of the trained gladiators, most of them from the school of Sosia, set against a hundred picked captives of all nations. Not less than a half of each number got it. These fellows look as if they had done their best. You've fought your last battle, old boys—unless you have a bout with Charon, who will be loath, I warrant you beforehand, to ferry over such a slashed and swollen company. Now ought you in charity,' he continued, addressing a half-naked savage, who was helping to drag the bodies from the cart, 'to have these trunks well washed ere you bury ...
— Aurelian - or, Rome in the Third Century • William Ware
... with him at the place appointed to meet the skiff, and, with a pertinacity that at another time and in other circumstances we never should have adopted, we all but insisted on being admitted into the boat. An angry growling consent was extorted from the surly Charon, and we hastily entered the frail bark, which seemed hardly calculated to convey us in safety ...
— The Backwoods of Canada • Catharine Parr Traill
... were piled wooden coffins. People were diverted at sight of this, inferring from the number of coffins the greatness of the spectacle. Now marched in men who were to kill the wounded; these were dressed so that each resembled Charon or Mercury. Next came those who looked after order in the Circus, and assigned places; after that slaves to bear around food and refreshments; finally, pretorians, whom every Caesar had always at ...
— Quo Vadis - A Narrative of the Time of Nero • Henryk Sienkiewicz
... not be as great as the reward of those who make charitable contribution while yet they have power to keep their money. Charity, in last will and testament, seems sometimes to be only an attempt to bribe Charon, the ferryman, to land the boat in celestial rather than infernal regions. Mean as sin when they disembark from the banks of this world, they hope to be greeted as benefactors when they come up the beach on the other side. Skinflints when they die, they hope ...
— Brave Men and Women - Their Struggles, Failures, And Triumphs • O.E. Fuller
... experienced a sort of home-coming, mingled with a peculiar dream-like feeling, that they were arriving on a strange planet, after having been ferried across Stygian currents on a Charon's raft. Out there, on the ocean and over the ocean, hovered a gruesomeness of solitudes, in which the human being, himself seeing everything, remains unseen, unknown, forgotten by God and the world. To be happy in ...
— Atlantis • Gerhart Hauptmann
... black smoke-drift. But what was the Kremlin, that had seen a city perish, to this Bench where my father languished! There was no comparing them for tragic horror. And the Kremlin had snow-fields around it; this Bench was caught out of sight, hemmed in by an atmosphere thick as Charon breathed; it might ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... Booking-Office is still decked about with holly, For the Season that at any rate's conventionally "jolly," Is by no means wholly over, and the very hard-worked Baron Feels rather like a sort of tired-out literary Charon, With an over-laden ferry-boat, and passengers too numerous. For seasonable "novelties"—and "notions" quaint and humorous Still crowd on him, and claim his constant critical attention, Some may escape his notice, but a few more he must mention MARCUS WARD'S ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari Volume 98, January 4, 1890 • Various
... far other than at peace. The great bombs rose in vast curves overhead, with trails of light, and, seeming to hesitate in mid-air, exploded, or fell on town or ship or in the stream between. As we looked, awe-struck, hot shot set fire to the "Charon," a forty-four-gun ship, nigh to Gloucester, and soon a red rush of fire twining about mast and spar rose in air, lighting the sublime spectacle, amid the crash of guns, the rattle of musketry, and multitudinous ...
— Hugh Wynne, Free Quaker • S. Weir Mitchell
... and the flowers themselves were much like bunches of primroses, only darker in colour and divested of their leaves. Unlike AEneas, we passed forward without any floral spoils—for, indeed, we had no such awkward personage as Charon to reckon with—among dark, cool, tree-arched avenues of figs and banyans to the northern limit. On our way we paused once to notice a fine "sacred fig" of India (urostigma), a tree with remarkably angular boughs; and again when Dr. Treub stopped, and, pointing to the frangipane blossom, said, ...
— A Visit to Java - With an Account of the Founding of Singapore • W. Basil Worsfold
... originally (as later asserted) a fee to Charon the ferryman to Hades, but simply a "minimum precautionary sum, for the dead man's use" (Dr. Jane Harrison), placed in the mouth, where a Greek ...
— A Day In Old Athens • William Stearns Davis
... he did not succeed, he resolved to live on the same frugal fare as his great friend. A secret correspondence was opened with his friends at Thebes, the chief of whom were Phyllidas, secretary to the polemarchs, and Charon. The dominant faction, besides the advantage of the actual possession of power, was supported by a garrison of 1500 Lacedaemonians. The enterprise, therefore, was one of considerable difficulty and danger. In the execution of it Phyllidas took a leading part. It was arranged that he should ...
— A Smaller History of Greece • William Smith
... cautiously begin once more, leading on the infinite melodies of the June afternoon. As the freshened air invites them forth, so the smooth and stainless water summons us. "Put your hand upon the oar," says Charon in the old play to Bacchus, "and you shall hear the sweetest songs." The doors of the boathouse swing softly open, and the slender wherry, like a water-snake, steals silently in the wake ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, No. 47, September, 1861 • Various
... this outward world and unjustifiably applied to the fortunes of the mind in the invisible sphere of the future. The figment of a judicial transportation of the soul from one place or planet to another, as if by a Charon's boat, is a clattering and repulsive conceit, inadmissible by one who apprehends the noiseless continuity of God's self executing laws. It is a jarring mechanical clash thrust amidst the smooth evolution of spiritual destinies. It compares with the facts as the supposition that the planets ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger
... blinds the sun, Sound that lives when sounds are done, Music that rebukes the birds, Language lovelier than words, Hue and scent that shame the rose, Wine no earthly vineyard knows, Silence stiller than the shore Swept by Charon's stealthy oar, Ocean more divinely free Than Pacific's boundless sea, — Ye who love have learned it true. Dear, ...
— The Little Book of Modern Verse • Jessie B. Rittenhouse
... transfer along with them into civil life, and appear in all companies as if it were at the head of their regiments, with a sort of deportment that ought to have been dropt behind, in that short passage to Harwich. It puts me in mind of a dialogue in Lucian,[11] where Charon wafting one of their predecessors over Styx, ordered him to strip off his armour and fine clothes, yet still thought him too heavy; "But" (said he) "put off likewise that pride and presumption, those high-swelling words, and that ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, D. D., Volume IX; • Jonathan Swift
... observer, not imbued with the knowledge of our intentions, would indicate us to be a combination of perturbed spirits, rowed by Charon across ...
— Stories of Comedy • Various
... Portuguese, Negroes, and Ticuna Indians. The musquitoes hold high carnival at this place. In two hours we were at San Antonio, a military post on the Peruvian frontier, commanded by a French engineer, Manuel Charon, who also studied in the United States. One large building, and a flag-staff on a high bluff of red clay, were all that was visible of San Antonio; but the "Morona" brought down a gang of Indians (impressed, no doubt) to build a fort for twenty guns. The site is in dispute, a Brazilian claiming ...
— The Andes and the Amazon - Across the Continent of South America • James Orton
... garments. Placing food with the corpse or in its mouth, and money in the hand, finds its analogue in the custom of the ancient Romans, who, some time before interment, placed a piece of money in the corpse's mouth, which was thought to be Charon's fare for wafting the departed soul over the Infernal River. Besides this, the corpse's mouth was furnished with a certain cake, composed of flour, honey, &c. This was designed to appease the fury of Cerberus, the infernal doorkeeper, ...
— An introduction to the mortuary customs of the North American Indians • H. C. Yarrow
... save when he stooped a trifle to reach forward with his paddle, was Sorez, who might have passed for Charon. His thin frame, his hollow cheeks, the intense look of his burning eyes gave him a ghostly air. The raft moved without a sound, scarcely rippling the waters before it, scarcely disturbing in its wake ...
— The Web of the Golden Spider • Frederick Orin Bartlett
... registers in 1678. The law required (for purposes of protecting trade) that all the dead should be buried in woollen winding-sheets. The price of the wool was the obolus paid to the Charon of the Revenue. After March 25, 1667, no person was to be "buried in any shirt, shift, or sheet other that should be made of woole only." Thus when the children in a little Oxfordshire village lately ...
— Books and Bookmen • Andrew Lang
... each year which they spent among the graves of their dead, communing with their spirits, and bringing them presents—a kind of All-souls-day. (Dorman, "Prim. Superst.," p. 35.) The Stygian flood, and Scylla and Charybdis, are found among the legends of the Caribs. (Ibid., p. 37.) Even the boat of Charon reappears in the traditions ...
— The Antediluvian World • Ignatius Donnelly
... in the Annals of troops "along their march capturing the City of Nineveh, that most ancient capital of Assyria": "Capta in transitu urbis Ninos vetustissima sedes Assyriae" (An. XII. 13). In Lucian's amusing Dialogue, entitled "Charon," when Mercury points out the tomb of Achilles on Cape Sigaeum and that of Ajax on the Rhoetaean promontory, Charon wants to see Nineveh, with Troy, Babylon, Mycenae, and Cleone, the following being the conversation; "I want to point out to you," says Mercury, "the tomb ...
— Tacitus and Bracciolini - The Annals Forged in the XVth Century • John Wilson Ross
... Acheron of Tartarus from hence the road doth go, That mire-bemingled, whirling wild, rolls on his desert flow, And all amid Cocytus' flood casteth his world of sand. This flood and river's ferrying doth Charon take in hand, Dread in his squalor: on his chin untrimmed the hoar hair lies Most plenteous; and unchanging flame bides in his staring eyes: 300 Down from his shoulders hangs his gear in filthy knot upknit; And he himself poles on his ship, ...
— The AEneids of Virgil - Done into English Verse • Virgil
... well, only there wouldn't be any reward," retorted Francois. "The prince would only capture us again and then—" He shrugged. "I know his temper and have no desire for the longer voyage with old man Charon—" ...
— A Man and His Money • Frederic Stewart Isham
... or lakelet in the southern parts of Cairo, long ago filled up; Von Hammer believes it inherited the name of the old Charon's Lake of Memphis, over which corpses ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 6 • Richard F. Burton |
