"Colossus" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... have been at full strength, and a new network of strategic railways would have enabled her to let loose upon the two Germanic empires a vast flood of fighting men drawn from the inexhaustible reservoir of her population. The struggle with the colossus of the North, despite the vaunted technical superiority of the German army, would in all likelihood have ended in the triumph of overwhelming might. In the France of 1917, again, the three years' term of service would have begun to produce its full results, and her first-line ...
— World's War Events, Vol. I • Various
... seven most remarkable objects of the ancient world. They are: The Pyramids of Egypt, Pharos of Alexandria, Walls and Hanging Gardens of Babylon, Temple of Diana at Ephesus, the Statue of the Olympian Jupiter, Mausoleum of Artemisia, and Colossus ...
— One Thousand Secrets of Wise and Rich Men Revealed • C. A. Bogardus
... more applied to Mr. Salt, and undertook the furtherance of his scheme, to convey to England the bust of Memnon. So eager was he, that the same day, the Italian set out for the ruins of Thebes, and hired a hundred natives, whom he made clear away the sand which half covered the stone colossus. With a large staff in his hand, Belzoni commanded his army of Mussulmans, directed their labors, astonished them with displays of his physical strength, learned to speak their language with marvelous facility, and speedily came to ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 2, No. 12, May, 1851. • Various
... I think of writing to you, which has been three or four times every week these six months, it gives me something so like the idea of an ordinary-sized statue offering at a conversation with the Rhodian colossus, that my mind misgives me, and the affair always miscarries somewhere between purpose and resolve. I have at last got some business with you, and business letters are written by the stylebook. I say my business ...
— The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. • Robert Burns and Allan Cunningham
... finest in the kingdom. The furnaces were already built at the foot of the tower; and the mould commenced; but, they remembered that the wood work of the tower would not be strong enough to bear such a colossus. The mould was broken, and they made another which was smaller. The operation was commenced on monday the 2nd of august 1501, at eight o'clock in the evening, after a general procession round the Cathedral and the archbishop's palace. The circumference of this bell was thirty feet, ...
— Rouen, It's History and Monuments - A Guide to Strangers • Theodore Licquet
... stool was shattered and the cabin rang with their violence. The sight of that post-mortem cruelty recalled Carthew to the life of instinct, and his revolver was in hand and he had aimed and fired before he knew. The ear-bursting sound of the report was accompanied by a yell of pain; the colossus paused, swayed, tottered, and fell headlong on the ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 13 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... lustihood. hugeness &c. adj.; enormity, immensity, monstrosity. giant, Brobdingnagian, Antaeus, Goliath, Gog and Magog, Gargantua, monster, mammoth, Cyclops; cachalot, whale, porpoise, behemoth, leviathan, elephant, hippopotamus; colossus; tun, cord, lump, bulk, block, loaf, mass, swad, clod, nugget, bushel, thumper, whooper, spanker, strapper; "Triton among the minnows" [Coriolanus]. mountain, mound; heap &c. (assemblage) 72. largest portion &c. 50; full size, life size. V. be large &c. adj.; become ...
— Roget's Thesaurus • Peter Mark Roget
... indeed when I was at Rome to say here stood the Capitol, there the Colossus of Nero, here was the Amphitheatre of Titus, there the Aqueduct of——, here the Forum, there the Catacombs, here the Temple of Venus, there of Jupiter, here the Pantheon, and the like; but I never designed to write a book. As much as ...
— Memoirs of a Cavalier • Daniel Defoe
... settlement of the Polish Question. The eastern turn given to his policy in 1807 was at an end—but not before Russia had taken another step towards the Bosphorus. With one leg planted at the mouth of the Danube, the Colossus now prepared to stride over Central Europe. The aims of Catherine II. in 1792 were at last to be realized. While Europe was wrestling with Revolutionary France, the Muscovite grasp was to tighten on Poland. It is not surprising that Alexander, on January 13th, commented on the "brilliance ...
— The Life of Napoleon I (Volumes, 1 and 2) • John Holland Rose
... all criticisms have been made, stands as a literary colossus. He had imaginative power which makes his finest passages fairly crash upon the reader's brain like blasting thunderbolts. His novels, even when translated, are read and reread by people of every degree of education. There is something vast, something ...
— Famous Affinities of History, Vol 1-4, Complete - The Romance of Devotion • Lyndon Orr
... principle of publicity in legislation. Here James Otis, as a pioneer patriot, poured forth his soul when his tongue was as a flame of fire,—John Adams, on the side of freedom, first showed himself to be a Colossus in debate,—Joseph Hawley first publicly denied that Parliament had the right to rule in all cases whatsoever,—and the unequalled leadership of Samuel Adams culminated, when he felt obliged to strive for ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 58, August, 1862 • Various
... difference between the Colossus of Rhodes and King HENRY VIII was that while Colossus was only a wonder, King H. ...
— Punchinello, Vol.1, No. 12 , June 18,1870 • Various
... entered upon his reign by filling up the spaces made by the demolitions of Nero, and by the fire, with large buildings, the most conspicuous and massive of them being the Coliseum. It is not known whether this name was given to it from its tremendous size or from the Colossus of Nero which ...
— Little Folks (October 1884) - A Magazine for the Young • Various
... picture. In the knowledge of individual instruments and the grouping of them for effect, in warmth of imagination and brilliancy of color, and in his daring combinations and fantastic moods, which are sometimes carried to the very verge of eccentricity, he is a colossus among modern musicians. He died in Paris, March ...
— The Standard Oratorios - Their Stories, Their Music, And Their Composers • George P. Upton
... even this, then Festus Clasby talked to the small farmer about a mortgage on the land, so that now and again small farmers became herds for Festus Clasby. In this way was he able to maintain his position with his back to the hills and his toes in the valley, striding his territory like a Colossus. When you saw his name on the signboard standing stark from the landscape, and when you saw Festus Clasby behind his counter, you knew instinctively that both had always stood for at least twenty ...
— Waysiders • Seumas O'Kelly
... the middle of the amphitheater, naked, more like a stone colossus than a man, with a collected expression, and at the same time the sad look of a barbarian; and while surveying the empty arena, he gazed 10 wonderingly with his blue childlike eyes, now at the spectators, now at Caesar, now at the grating of the cunicula, whence, as he thought, his executioners ...
— Story Hour Readings: Seventh Year • E.C. Hartwell
... public works, and in beautifying the city. A new Forum was built, a Temple of Peace, public baths, and the famous COLOSSEUM was begun, receiving its name from the Colossus, a statue of Nero, ...
— History of Rome from the Earliest times down to 476 AD • Robert F. Pennell
... we talked to them of a man in the abstract, as common to all men in particular (so that though we spoke of him as a thing that we could point at with our fingers, yet none of them could perceive him), and yet distinct from every one, as if he were some monstrous Colossus or giant. Yet for all this ignorance of these empty notions, they knew astronomy, and were perfectly acquainted with the motions of the heavenly bodies, and have many instruments, well contrived and divided, by which they very accurately compute the course ...
— Ideal Commonwealths • Various
... doctor, as Anton produced the fruit, and the servant came in with a basket of wine; "a sweet Colossus, a remarkable specimen indeed! With your leave, I'll make the punch. The proportions must have some reference to ...
— Debit and Credit - Translated from the German of Gustav Freytag • Gustav Freytag
... forces in Europe; the infantry of Spain, the science of Italy, the lance-knights of Germany, for which Ferdinand sighed, were at his disposal; and the wealth of the Indies was poured out at his feet. He bestrode the narrow world like a Colossus, and the only hope of lesser men lay in the maintenance of Francis's power. Were that to fail, Charles would become arbiter of Christendom, Italy a Spanish kingdom, and the Pope little more than the Emperor's ...
— Henry VIII. • A. F. Pollard
... by the tone was Andre-Louis startled by the obscenities with which the Colossus did not hesitate to interlard his first speech to a total stranger. He laughed outright. There was ...
— Scaramouche - A Romance of the French Revolution • Rafael Sabatini
... blowing; but the clouds had scattered before its violence like a flock of frightened sheep, and a pale light was beginning to shine upon the drenched fields. Gloomy and majestic in its century-old impassibility, the Pont du Gard—a colossus upheld by two mountains, and accustomed to defy alike the tempest and the ravages of time—seemed to laugh at the gale which beat against its massive pillars and rushed into its gigantic arches with a sound like thunder. ...
— Which? - or, Between Two Women • Ernest Daudet
... be a dead world, like the moon, except that it once supported a civilization nearly as advanced as our own. They tell of a giant human, a veritable colossus, who ...
— The Devolutionist and The Emancipatrix • Homer Eon Flint
... COLOSSUS, any gigantic statue, specially one of Apollo in bronze, 120 ft. high, astride over the mouth of the harbour at Rhodes, reckoned one of the seven wonders of the world, erected in 280 B.C., destroyed by an earthquake 56 years after, and sold to a Jew centuries later for old metal; besides ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... leathern belt, which caused the enormous skirts and pockets to set off with a very warlike sweep. His ponderous legs were cased in a pair of foxy-colored jack-boots, and he was straddling in the attitude of the Colossus of Rhodes, before a bit of broken looking-glass, shaving himself with a villainously dull razor. This afflicting operation caused him to make a series of horrible grimaces, which heightened exceedingly the grisly terrors of his visage. On Antony ...
— Knickerbocker's History of New York, Complete • Washington Irving
... France, even in the seventeenth century, authors who described in these terms the appearance of flowers in spring: "There perhaps at the end of the combat, a pink all bleeding falls from fatigue; there a rosebud, elated at the ill-success of her antagonist, blooms with joy; there the lily, that colossus among the flowers, that giant of curdled cream, vain of seeing her image triumph at the Louvre, raises herself above her companions, and looks at them with contemptuous arrogance." The same author, who is Cyrano de Bergerac, calls ice "an hardened light, a petrified ...
— The English Novel in the Time of Shakespeare • J. J. Jusserand
... execution, more flowing in their outline, more easy to read. Dr. Johnson, though perhaps no very excellent authority on the more intangible graces of literature, was disposed to deny to Milton the capacity of creating the lighter literature: "Milton, madam, was a genius that could cut a colossus from a rock, but could not carve heads upon cherry-stones." And it would not be surprising if this generation, which has access to the almost infinite quantity of lighter compositions which have been produced since ...
— Harvard Classics Volume 28 - Essays English and American • Various
... San Felice, covered with historical paintings; Giuliano del Tasso adorned the Ponte Santa Trinita with statues; Antonio San Gallo made a temple on the Piazza della Signoria, and Baccio Bandinelli prepared a colossus in the Loggia dei Lanzi. Various decorations adorned other streets, and Andrea del Sarto surpassed them all with a facade to the Duomo, painted in monochrome on wood. His friend Sansovino designed the architecture, and he painted the sculpture and adornments with such effect that the Pope declared ...
— Fra Bartolommeo • Leader Scott (Re-Edited By Horace Shipp And Flora Kendrick)
... the Roman Gate begins the long Viale dei Colli,—Avenue of the Hills,—which climbs and winds, broad, shady, quiet, between lines of gardens and villas, occupied largely by foreigners, to the Piazzale, whence Michelangelo's boyish colossus gazes with a slight frown across Florence, outspread at his feet. Mr. Foss, as he mounted the easy grade, and noted with a liking unabated after years the pleasantness of each habitation glimpsed through iron railings and embowering green, thought ...
— Aurora the Magnificent • Gertrude Hall
... unwillingness to seek renewal. But humanity must seek renewal and growth. For centuries it has condemned itself to use no more than a modicum of its spiritual resources. It is like a half-paralysed colossus. It allows some of its organs to atrophy. Are we not weary of these infirm nations, of these scattered members of a great body, which ...
— The Forerunners • Romain Rolland
... nation and its chiefs have mistaken these holy truths. They must abide then the consequences of their blindness. The decree is past; the day approaches when this colossus of power shall be crushed and crumbled under its own mass. Yes, I swear it, by the ruins of so many empires destroyed. The empire of the Crescent shall follow the fate of the despotism it has copied. A nation of strangers shall drive ...
— The Ruins • C. F. [Constantin Francois de] Volney
... entrance of the cove they see the canoes spreading out to intercept them. The big fierce-looking men, too, are in a state of wild excitement, evidently purposing an attack. They cast off their skin wraps from their shoulders, displaying their naked bronze bodies and arms, like those of a Colossus. Each has in his hand what appears to be a bit of cord uniting two balls, about the size of small oranges. It is the bolas, an innocent-looking thing, but in reality a missile weapon as deadly in practised ...
— The Land of Fire - A Tale of Adventure • Mayne Reid
... special mission, and Marseilles and Toulon retain to this day the memory of his cruelty. But all was forgotten when, on the 9th Thermidor, he proclaimed himself against Robespierre, and assisted in casting from the altar the Supreme Being, the colossus who, being an apostle, had made himself a god. Freron, repudiated by the Mountain, which abandoned him to the heavy jaws of Moise Bayle; Freron, disdainfully repulsed by the Girondins, who delivered him over to the imprecations of Isnard; Freron, as the terrible and picturesque orator of the ...
— The Companions of Jehu • Alexandre Dumas, pere
... the Northern floods that lash'd and curl'd Around the granite fragments of great Rome Outspread Colossus-like athwart the world, Foam'd down, and the new nations found their home, That earlier Europe, law and arts and arms, Fell into far-off shade, Or lay like some fair maid ...
— The Visions of England - Lyrics on leading men and events in English History • Francis T. Palgrave
... attempt to suppress Hume; he had only to cover his opinions by some decent professions of belief. One symptom of the general state of mind is the dying out of the deist controversies. The one great divine, according to Brown's Estimate, was Warburton, the colossus, he says, who bestrides the world: and Warburton, whatever else he may have been, was certainly of all divines the one whose argument is most palpably fictitious, if not absolutely insincere. He marks, however, the tendency of the argument to become ...
— English Literature and Society in the Eighteenth Century • Leslie Stephen
... man, he doth bestride the narrow world Like a Colossus; and we petty men Walk under his huge legs and peep about To find ourselves dishonorable graves. Men at some time are masters of their fates: The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars, But in ourselves,that we are underlings. "Brutus" and "Caesar": what should be in that "Caesar"? Why ...
— Julius Caesar • William Shakespeare [Hudson edition]
... of the absolute honesty of purpose after listening to Allen's unconsciously irresistible testimony. In words made pregnant by the simplicity of their utterance, he described Gorham the man and Gorham the Colossus of the business world; he pictured the waves of avarice and intrigue and discontent which he thought he saw beating against the feet of this towering figure, unheeded and unrecognized because so far beneath it; he told of his own puny efforts to warn this giant of the storm ...
— The Lever - A Novel • William Dana Orcutt
... while Holroyd went away to persuade the yard porter to get whisky, although his proper place was not in the dynamo shed but behind the engines, and, moreover, if Holroyd caught him skulking he got hit for it with a rod of stout copper wire. He would go and stand close to the colossus and look up at the great leather band running overhead. There was a black patch on the band that came round, and it pleased him somehow among all the clatter to watch this return again and again. Odd thoughts spun with the whirl of it. Scientific people tell us that ...
— The Door in the Wall And Other Stories • H. G. Wells
... fortress, with the great bell-tower springing from its embattled verge as a mountain-pine from the edge of a cliff. At its base, in its projected shadow, gleamed certain dim sculptures which I wonderingly approached. One of the images, on the left of the palace door, was a magnificent colossus, shining through the dusky air like a sentinel who has taken the alarm. In a moment I recognised him as Michael Angelo's David. I turned with a certain relief from his sinister strength to a slender figure in bronze, stationed beneath the high light loggia, which opposes the free and ...
— The Madonna of the Future • Henry James
... Angus now," said Margray, bending forward at the pictures shifting through the door-way. "He'd do for the Colossus at what-you-may-call-it; and there's our Effie, she minds me of a yellow-bird, hanging on his arm and talking: I wonder if that's what my mother means,—I wonder will my mother compass it. See Mary Strathsay there! She's white and fine, I'll warrant; see her move like a swan on the waters! ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 11, No. 63, January, 1863 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... beginning, under his second signature, Camillus.... I gave a copy or two, by way of experiment, to honest-hearted men of common understanding, and they were not able to parry the sophistry of Curtius. I have ceased, therefore, to give them. Hamilton is really a colossus to the anti-republican party.... For God's sake, take up your pen, and give a fundamental reply to Curtius and Camillus." But Madison did not yield to Jefferson's entreaty. In these papers Webster reviewed the treaty article by article, and kept closely to ...
— Noah Webster - American Men of Letters • Horace E. Scudder
... grieved for it. But even to retain your good opinion, Deucalion—which I value more than that of any man living—I cannot do here as you have done. It would be impossible, even if I wished it. You must not judge all other men by your own strong standard: a Tatho is by no means a colossus like a Deucalion. And besides, I have a wife and children, and they must be provided for, even ...
— The Lost Continent • C. J. Cutcliffe Hyne
... morning with a very ill grace to my aunt Susan's insistence upon the resources of his dress-suit. In my memory those black legs of his, in a particularly thin and shiny black cloth—for evidently his dress-suit dated from adolescent and slenderer days—straddle like the Colossus of Rhodes over my approach to my mother's funeral. Moreover, I was inconvenienced and distracted by a silk hat he had bought me, my first silk hat, much ennobled, as his was also, by a ...
— Tono Bungay • H. G. Wells
... VICTOR HUGO in a few pages is to carve a colossus on a cherry-stone. His work dominates half a century. In the years of exile he began a new and greater career. During the closing ten years his powers had waned, but still they were extraordinary. Even with death he did not retire; ...
— A History of French Literature - Short Histories of the Literatures of the World: II. • Edward Dowden
... above the silent decks, striding along the deep, as if the masts were gigantic stilts, while beneath you and between your legs, as it were, swim the hugest monsters of the sea, even as ships once sailed between the boots of the famous Colossus at old Rhodes. There you stand, lost in the infinite series of the sea, with nothing ruffled but the waves. The tranced ship indolently rolls; the drowsy trade winds blow; everything resolves you into languor. For the most part, in this tropic whaling life, a sublime uneventfulness ...
— Moby-Dick • Melville
... nerves—with such an exquisite touch, his organization must be of supernal delicacy—but little muscular vigor. Consider his narrow shoulders and slender arms—height of figure has nothing to do with muscular incompatibility; d'Albert is almost a dwarf, yet a colossus of strength. So let us call Pachmann, a survival of an older school, a charming school. Touch was the shibboleth of that school, not tone; and technic was often achieved at the expense of more spiritual qualities. ...
— Old Fogy - His Musical Opinions and Grotesques • James Huneker
... have disappeared ages ago, no one knows how nor precisely when. It is clear that the nation which produced them has fallen into a kind of unconscious stupor, which has been its mental condition ever since, and which to-day raises puny Europe to the stature of a giant before the fallen colossus. ...
— Irish Race in the Past and the Present • Aug. J. Thebaud
... soberly at this school, at the colossus he had helped to create. He had the feeling that it was wrong somehow, that if people would only think about it they could find that ...
— There Will Be School Tomorrow • V. E. Thiessen
... of roads, Telford continued to be the very highest authority, his friend Southey jocularly styling him the "Colossus of Roads." The Russian Government frequently consulted him with reference to the new roads with which that great empire was being opened up. The Polish road from Warsaw to Briesc, on the Russian frontier, 120 miles in length, was constructed ...
— The Life of Thomas Telford by Smiles • Samuel Smiles
... lower East Side, looking down from their windows as she passed through the congested streets pushing steadily with head bent, thought of her either as an infinitesimal molecule at the bottom of the mass where the light of idealism seldom penetrates or else as a female Colossus striding from end to end of the Devil's Own city only ankle-deep in the debris from which she wrested an existence. But to Great Taylor it seemed not to matter what people thought. She sang her song through the cavernous streets, the only song she knew: "Rags, old ...
— O. Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1921 • Various
... This colossus of French literature, having been for a long time in correspondence with the great Frederic, became particularly anxious to see that monarch. On his arrival in a village where the head-quarters of the Prussian army were then established, ...
— Paris As It Was and As It Is • Francis W. Blagdon
... inside a cave) closing up the mouth of the cave and sealing up the masonry, then leaving the Natives, men, women and children, to smother to death with their belongings inside the cave. Further, Mr. Stent accompanied Cecil Rhodes to the Mattopo hills, where the late Colossus went unarmed to hold with the Matabele chiefs the pourparler which brought about the peace of Southern Rhodesia. In the siege of Mafeking, Mr. Stent was Reuter's war correspondent, and all things considered, it must be conceded that ...
— Native Life in South Africa, Before and Since • Solomon Tshekisho Plaatje
... eyes upon the Colossus who had just been introduced to her. She had just the slightest down on her upper lip, a suspicion of a mustache, which seemed darker when she spoke. There was a pleasant odor about her, pervading, intoxicating, some perfume of America or of the Indies. Other people came in, marquesses, ...
— Yvette • Henri Rene Guy de Maupassant
... crevice in the colossus, the crack into which she might introduce her fingers, to break it open. She imagined plans of assault, she thought of using force, and then she fell back on stratagem, on some piece of treachery which would open to her ...
— Doctor Pascal • Emile Zola
... at Lexington, Ky.; the Great Wall of China; Judge Von Rosenberg (the Colossus of Roads); the Hanging Gardens at Albany; a San Antonio Sunday school; Mrs. Frank ...
— Rolling Stones • O. Henry
... tinklings of tiny bells at wrist and anklet as the Kabaros drummed; and hard by, in the brake, brown nymphs, their little breasts pointing to the zenith, moved in languorous rhythms, droning hoarse sacrificial chaunts. The colossus Memnon hymned; priests of Baal screamed as they lacerated themselves with knives; Druid priestesses crooned sybillic incantations. And over this pageant of woman and music the proud sun of old Egypt scattered ...
— Melomaniacs • James Huneker
... whose stunted babes lie under little mounds with rude, wooden crosses in the dreary textile burial grounds; up from the weak, the wicked, the ignorant, the hopeless martyrs of the satanic social system that makes possible the activities of such human vultures as the colossus whose great mills now hurled their defiant roar at this girl, this ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking
... the wall behind him, and turned a switch so that the room became brightly lighted. Then, reluctantly, he came out from behind the piano, swinging between his crutches, and leaving Rose to escape at the first favorable opportunity. His descent from colossus to cripple had an unpleasant effect. And the question, "How the deuce do you work the pedals?" was jerked from Blythe, usually a ...
— The Penalty • Gouverneur Morris
... Samnites are so utterly destroyed by the Romans that their sites are unknown; a portion of the spoil is cast into a brazen colossus, and placed in ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 2 • Various
... at the foot of a hill, in the form of an amphitheatre: it possessed a very convenient and safe harbour, at the entrance of which there were two rocks; and on these, which were fifty feet asunder, the famous Colossus was placed. The arsenals of Rhodes were filled with every thing requisite for the defence of the city, or the equipment of a large fleet: its walls, which were extremely high, were defended by towers: its houses were built of stone: in short, the whole city presented a striking ...
— Robert Kerr's General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 18 • William Stevenson
... was that he became a sort of Colossus of the English-speaking theater. Figuratively, he stood astride the mighty sea in which he was to meet his death, with one foot planted securely in England and the ...
— Charles Frohman: Manager and Man • Isaac Frederick Marcosson and Daniel Frohman
... unforeseen. His indefatigability infected his comrades, they became more eager the longer the struggle lasted. The conflict was magnified by the sacrifice it demanded, and by the strength of the opposition; Meyer gradually became a colossus whom all must stake their welfare to hew down. Families were ruined thereby, but the more sacrifice the struggle demanded the more recklessly they struggled on. And they were full of jubilation on ...
— Pelle the Conqueror, Complete • Martin Andersen Nexo
... appearance, too, he sought to create a sensation. He was not dressed, he was costumed. He wore long stockings, knickerbockers and a tight-fitting jacket, and when he stood up, tried to produce effects with his calves, spread his legs wide apart as if, like the Colossus of Rhodes, ships were to pass beneath, and affected sporting and athletic attitudes generally. He was accompanied by a lady who had at first roused the horrified disgust of the others by her appetite, which surpassed every known human limit, and then proceeded to make herself ...
— The Malady of the Century • Max Nordau
... their colony; they had to admit it to their financial calculations, and all the time they would fain have crushed the great pioneer under their feet. They had, indeed, hoped to see him humbled and abashed after his one fatal mistake, instead of which he had gone calmly on his way—a Colossus indeed—with the set purpose, as a guiding star ever before his eyes, to retrieve the error which they had fondly imagined would have delivered him into their hands. Truly an impressive and curious study was that House of Assembly in the session ...
— South African Memories - Social, Warlike & Sporting From Diaries Written At The Time • Lady Sarah Wilson
... administrator had governed. No country came under Bonaparte's observation without recalling historical recollections to his mind. On passing the island of Candia his imagination was excited, and he spoke with enthusiasm of ancient Crete and the Colossus, whose fabulous renown has surpassed all human glories. He spoke much of the fall of the empire of the East, which bore so little resemblance to what history has preserved of those fine countries, so often moistened with the blood of man. The ingenious fables of mythology ...
— Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Louis Antoine Fauvelet de Bourrienne
... of our work, it seems desirable to make some mention of it here, at least so far as relates to those terrible convulsions whose destructiveness has given them special prominence in the history of great disasters. Ancient notable examples are those which threw down the famous Colossus of Rhodes and the Pharos of Alexandria. The city of Antioch was a terrible sufferer from this affliction, it having been devastated some time before the Christian era, while in the year 859 more than 15,000 of its houses were destroyed. Of countries subject to earthquakes, Japan ...
— The San Francisco Calamity • Various
... it struck my father one day that it would be interesting to see this comparative stripling put on the gloves with the great burly Frenchman. Sir David realised that his only chance with his huge brawny opponent was to tire him out, for should this formidable Colossus once get home on him, he would be done. He made great play with his foot-work, skipping round his big opponent and pommelling every inch of his anatomy that he could reach, and successfully dodging the smashing blows that his slow-moving antagonist tried to deal him. Suddenly, and quite ...
— Here, There And Everywhere • Lord Frederic Hamilton
... first, on our right, was bristling with churches. There was one at the foot of the Colossus of the Sun, where the bodies of the two Persian martyrs, Abdon and Sennen, were exposed at the time of the persecution of Decius. There were four dedicated to the Saviour (S. Salvator in Tellure, de Trasi, de Insula, de rota Colisei), a sixth ...
— Pagan and Christian Rome • Rodolfo Lanciani
... Napoleon, who had hitherto accompanied his army, started in a sledge for Paris, in great haste, a conspiracy having broken out there during his absence. General Mallet, with a few others, had conceived the design of overthrowing this colossus of power. His enterprise was daring; and as it was grounded on a false report of Napoleon's death, it was necessary to deceive too many for success to be probable. Besides, the empire was still firmly established, and it was ...
— History of the French Revolution from 1789 to 1814 • F. A. M. Mignet
... This Colossus straddling toward him would thrash him within an inch of his life. The boy was ...
— The Fighting Edge • William MacLeod Raine
... man, he doth bestride the narrow world Like a Colossus, and we petty men Walk under his huge ...
— The New Hudson Shakespeare: Julius Caesar • William Shakespeare
... "Hallo!" and, looking around, Jamie was discovered surveying them critically as he stood in an independent attitude, like a small Colossus of Rhodes in brown linen, with a bundle of molasses candy in one hand, several new fishhooks cherished carefully in the other, and his hat well on the back of his head, displaying as many freckles as one somewhat limited nose could ...
— Rose in Bloom - A Sequel to "Eight Cousins" • Louisa May Alcott
... their names upon the two southern colossi, doubtless the only ones then clear of sand. These graffiti are of the highest value for the early history of the alphabet, and as proving the presence of Greek mercenaries in the Egyptian armies of the period. The upper part of the second colossus (from the south) has fallen; the third was repaired by Sethos II. not many years after the completion of the temple. This great temple was wholly rock-cut, and is now threatened by gradual ruin by sliding on the planes of stratification. A small ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... in these characteristics of the Mosaic institutions that, as in the fragments of a Colossus, we may read the greatness of the mind whose impress they bear—of a mind in advance of its surroundings, in advance of its age; of one of those star souls that dwindle not with distance, but, glowing with the radiance of essential ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 3 of 8 • Various
... working on him. That little imp of doubt which had vexed him in the cab as he drove home from Ovington Square had not died in the night. It had grown and waxed more formidable. And, now, aided by this ally from without, it had become a colossus, straddling his soul. Derek looked frequently at the clock, and cursed the unknown cabman whose delay was prolonging the scene. Something told him that only flight could serve him now. He never had been able to withstand his mother in one of her militant ...
— The Little Warrior - (U.K. Title: Jill the Reckless) • P. G. Wodehouse
... been superseded and the Rambler gone out of fashion. His name was the highest at this time (1755) in the ranks of pure literature. The fame of Warburton possibly bulked larger for the moment, and one of his flatterers was comparing him to the Colossus which bestrides the petty world of contemporaries. But Warburton had subsided into episcopal repose, and literature had been for him a stepping-stone rather than an ultimate aim. Hume had written works of far more enduring influence than Johnson; but they were little read though ...
— Samuel Johnson • Leslie Stephen
... From this point of view the high terminal Hill of Hoy, towards the west, presents what is really a striking profile of Sir Walter Scott, sculptured in the rock front by the storms of ages, on so immense a scale, that the Colossus of Rhodes, Pharos and all, would scarce have furnished materials enough to supply it with a nose. There are such asperities in the outline as one might expect in that of a rudely modelled bust, the work ...
— The Cruise of the Betsey • Hugh Miller
... to do, I joined them, and won. I lectured them on incautious play, and they said something in South-African, which the street Arabs here speak to perfection, and which, I fancy, was both flattering and apologetic. Called on CECIL, the Colossus of Rhodes, but he was absent at the time. Fine place, the Cape. "Why," I asked myself, "do our people go to Ramsgate, Southend, Herne Bay, and even Scarborough, when there is such a splendid seaside place as this to come to?" But no; because their people have done it before them, so ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 101. July 4, 1891 • Various
... force of the deluge striking a fat, froggy-looking little Dutchman, who was puffing and blowing at a bassoon infinitely larger than himself. He was just launching out into a prodigious strain, but it expired while yet in the bloom of youth. He remained for a short time in the famous posture of the Colossus of Rhodes, vainly endeavoring to shake off the cigar-stumps and other little et ceteras which were clinging to him like cerements, uttering the while unintelligible oaths. Then he struck for his ...
— Punchinello Vol. 1, No. 21, August 20, 1870 • Various
... rascal had fled as soon as he had witnessed the awful colossus in such close vicinage. Recovering from my astonishment, I thought it prudent to retire also—especially, with a pea-shooter loaded with treacherous sawdust cartridges in my hand. As I looked behind, I saw him waving his trunk, which I understood ...
— How I Found Livingstone • Sir Henry M. Stanley
... occur again to discourse this very heart aching subject. Now, as we approach the colossus of Liberty, Miss Maria Rose made her morning appearance and before we all could exchange the "Bon Jour" salutations to her, she gracefully grasped the gentleman from Boston by the arm and walking up and down the bridge with soldierly step, began in an apparently joyful voice to sing, audibly ...
— Conversion of a High Priest into a Christian Worker • Meletios Golden
... the fallen leaves of giant trees; beyond was a succession of smaller crests, frequently quite barren, sometimes covered with sun-scorched verdure. On the horizon, which was hidden by a transparent mist, the two volcanoes of the plateau stood out in bold relief against the blue sky, facing the other colossus, which seemed to protect us with its shadow. The peaks of these mountains, clad with their perpetual snow, can be seen by sailors forty ...
— Adventures of a Young Naturalist • Lucien Biart
... the financier and the speculator execrated him no more. He stretched a hand to protect or to manipulate the power of wealth in every corner of the country. Forcible, cold and unerring, in all he did he ministered to the national lust for magnitude; and a grateful country surnamed him the Colossus. ...
— The Woman in Black • Edmund Clerihew Bentley
... like that should cause a man so much pain!" exclaimed a giant, as he rolled in his hand and examined with eager curiosity the acorn which his friend the dwarf had obligingly taken from the huge eye into which it had fallen just as the colossus was on the point of shooting a bird perched in the branches ...
— Architects of Fate - or, Steps to Success and Power • Orison Swett Marden
... Quito; the volcano of Puracey, near Popayan; and perhaps also Hecla, in Iceland. In the third and last we may rank the majestic figure of Chimborazo, and, (if it be allowable to place by the side of that colossus a hill of Europe,) the ...
— Equinoctial Regions of America • Alexander von Humboldt
... which a friend had treated him at Baratte's on a day of affluence. They had partaken of oysters, fish, and game. But Baratte's had sadly fallen, and all the carnival life of the old Marche des Innocents was now buried. In place thereof they had those huge central markets, that colossus of ironwork, that new and wonderful town. Fools might say what they liked; it was the embodiment of the spirit of the times. Florent, however, could not at first make out whether he was condemning the picturesqueness of Baratte's or ...
— The Fat and the Thin • Emile Zola
... he doth bestride the narrow world, Like a Colossus, and we petty men Walk under his huge legs, and peep about ...
— Familiar Quotations • Various
... sacred agony is reflected? The working classes are preparing for war, nations are dying, nations are springing to new life, the Armenians are massacred, Asia, awaking from its sleep of a thousand years, hurls down the Muscovite colossus, the keeper of the keys of Europe: Turkey, like Adam, opens its eyes on the light of day: the air is conquered by man: the old earth cracks under our feet and opens: it devours a whole people.... All these prodigies, accomplished ...
— Jean Christophe: In Paris - The Market-Place, Antoinette, The House • Romain Rolland
... "No, my Colossus of Roads! no. I am in doubt whether or not I shall enlist in a marching regiment, or—Give me your advice on it! I fancy I have a great turn for the stage, ever since I saw Garrick in 'Richard.' Shall I turn stroller? It must be a ...
— Paul Clifford, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... up to industry an immense tract of productive soil in the most fertile parts of Asia, abounding in wheat and corn land, and full of superior water power. But in this superb rivalry between the United States and the colossus of Europe and Asia, the former nation has an immense start as to time, and a still greater advantage in the character of its population. And in addition to these we have the undoubted and constantly increasing supremacy of the English language. Just as during the Middle ...
— The Arena - Volume 18, No. 92, July, 1897 • Various
... littleness as the others in their vastness. For who will not be astounded at the fact that our body, which a little while ago was imperceptible in the universe, itself imperceptible in the bosom of the whole, is now a colossus, a world, or rather a whole, in respect of the nothingness which we cannot reach? He who regards himself in this light will be afraid of himself, and observing himself sustained in the body given him by ...
— Pascal's Pensees • Blaise Pascal
... acquaintance with the geography, manners, and productions of remote nations, than would have been found in compositions of the age of Camillus. But he troubles himself little about dates, and having heard travellers talk with admiration of the Colossus of Rhodes, and of the structures and gardens with which the Macedonian king of Syria had embellished their residence on the banks of the Orontes, he has never thought of inquiring whether these things existed in the age ...
— Lays of Ancient Rome • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... danger to fear from China, the new Colossus of Asia," the Prime Minister pointed out. "Even Russia herself has not made such strides within the last fifteen years as China. The secession of the Asiatic countries from the League of Nations demanded certain precautions which Russia ...
— The Great Prince Shan • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... interruption, probably a smart box on the ear, cheated him of his fame, except so far as this poor record may rescue it. Dead long ago. I remember him well, a grown man, as a visitor at a later period; and, for some reason, I recall him in the attitude of the Colossus of Rhodes, standing full before a generous wood-fire, not facing it, but quite the contrary, a perfect picture of the content afforded by a blazing hearth contemplated from that point of view, and, ...
— The Poet at the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... stared harder than ever, and now he identified the face with the pictures he had seen. Waterman, the Colossus of finance, the Croesus of copper and gold! How many trusts had Waterman organized! And how many puns had been made ...
— The Metropolis • Upton Sinclair
... think to himself—"Suppose this black colossus seizes me by the collar, it will go hard with me;" but he thought, "Oh! how delighted Timea will be when she ...
— Timar's Two Worlds • Mr Jkai
... But greatness has its penalties. While the Minister of Foreign Affairs spent his days in collecting plaques, and the Minister of War his in strutting about the boulevards, and the Minister of Commerce his in composing verses, Delcasse laboured to save his country—laboured as a colossus labours, sweating, panting, throwing every fibre of his being into the struggle—which was all the more trying, all the more terrific, because he felt that it must ...
— The Destroyer - A Tale of International Intrigue • Burton Egbert Stevenson
... other, and the rest of his face was streaked with paint of different colours: I did not measure him, but if I may judge of his height by the proportion of his stature to my own, it could not be much less than seven feet. When this frightful Colossus came up, we muttered somewhat to each other as a salutation, and I then walked with him towards his companions, to whom, as I advanced, I made signs that they should sit down, and they all readily complied: There were among them many women, who seemed to ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 12 • Robert Kerr
... of various meetings with Smuts. Some were amid the tumult of debate or in the shadow of the legislative halls, others out in the country at Groote Schuur, the Prime Minister's residence, where we walked amid the gardens that Cecil Rhodes loved, or sat in the rooms where the Colossus "thought in terms of continents." It ...
— An African Adventure • Isaac F. Marcosson
... hated venomously, Dr. Johnson, who was afraid of her, and he, she says, “hated me.” She could not endure his mannerisms, but mimicked his gestures and curious demeanours; calling him “a despot,” “the old literary Colossus,” an “envious calumniator,” “surly Samuel Johnson,” “the massive Being,” “the old ...
— Anna Seward - and Classic Lichfield • Stapleton Martin
... constructiveness which has endowed our language with such a world of creations from the pen of Scott, betrayed him also into inventiveness per force of brick and mortar—just as the same bent of genius which created the Castle of Otranto, created also that other colossus of lath and plaster, Strawberry Hill—the author of the Scotch novels was fain to sacrifice to the evil genius of the times; and behold! as the assiduous slave of the circulating libraries, he extinguished one of the greatest spirits of Great Britain. But ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 55, No. 343, May 1844 • Various
... sidereus propius videt astra colossus Et crescunt media pegmata celsa via, Invidiosa feri radiabant atria regis Unaque jam tola ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 2 • George Gordon Byron
... beauty of art is to deceive the eye. Ancient historians acquaint us with only seven wonders in the world: the Temple of Diana, at Ephesus; the magnificent sepulchre of the king Mausolus, from whence is derived the word mausoleum; the bronze Colossus of the Sun, in Rhodes; the statue of Jupiter Olympius, of gold and ivory, formed by the masterly hand of Phidias, the first of architects; the palace of Cyrus, King of Media, built by Memnon of stones united by gold; the walls of Babylon, constructed by Semiramis ...
— Anecdotes of Painters, Engravers, Sculptors and Architects and Curiosities of Art (Vol. 3 of 3) • S. Spooner
... sketched out together were folly. We were wasting time when, bending over our maps, we foresaw a skilful advance on the heels of Belgium's invaders, followed by a huge victory, dearly bought, perhaps, but one that would upset the German Colossus at a single blow. The whole thing was an illusion. And I thought what a fool I had been. I thought of my regiment. How much of it was there left? How many of those good fellows were lying dead on foreign soil? How many friends ...
— In the Field (1914-1915) - The Impressions of an Officer of Light Cavalry • Marcel Dupont |
