"Prester" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... away from Gnawbit's, and made my way towards Charlwood Chase to join the "Blacks," although who those "Blacks" were, and whereabouts in the Chase they lived, and what they did when they were there, I had no more definite idea than who the Emperor Prester John or the Man ...
— The Strange Adventures of Captain Dangerous, Vol. 1 of 3 • George Augustus Sala
... stones and great pearls; and the steps that he goeth up to the table be of precious stones mixed with gold. Under the firmament is not so great a lord, nor so mighty, nor so rich, as the great Khan. Neither Prester John, that is emperor of the high India, nor the Sultan of Babylonia, nor the Emperor of Persia. All these be not in comparison to the great Khan, neither of might, nor of nobleness, nor of royalty, nor of riches; for in all these he passeth all earthly princes. Wherefore it ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 26, December, 1859 • Various
... and six demi-queues* of Beaune wine, white and claret, the best that could be found. I have it from my husband, who is a cinquantenier**, at the Parloir-aux Bourgeois, and who was this morning comparing the Flemish ambassadors with those of Prester John and the Emperor of Trebizond, who came from Mesopotamia to Paris, under the last king, and who ...
— Notre-Dame de Paris - The Hunchback of Notre Dame • Victor Hugo
... They were the property of his feudatory, the (black) "Marquess of Pemba" (Bembe): Barbot mentions their being mistaken for gold, and feels himself bound to warn his readers that the metal was brought "from Sondy, not from Abyssinia or the empire of Prester John." They lost all their mystery about A.D. 1855, when they were undertaken by an English company, Messrs. John Taylor & Co. of London, after agreement with the concessionists, Messrs. Francisco A. Flores and Pinto Perez of Loanda. Between ...
— Two Trips to Gorilla Land and the Cataracts of the Congo Volume 2 • Richard F. Burton
... tropic, and does not come within five (hardly more than six) degrees of the equator. Plain it is, therefore, that Taprobane, it construed very strictly, is an ens rationis, made up by fanciful composition from various sources, and much like our own mediaeval conceit of Prester John's country, or the fancies (which have but recently vanished) of the African river Niger, and the golden city Tombuctoo. These were lies; and yet also, in a limited sense, they were truths. They were expansions, often fabulous and impossible, engrafted upon some basis of fact by ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 54, No. 337, November, 1843 • Various
... a pretty passage that befell between the Golden King and Prester John, as it was related by the people ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo, Volume 2 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa
... the family ambitions of various popes. Their frequent use and abuse brought ecclesiastical censures into public contempt, and princes soon ceased to be frightened with false fires. James IV., when excommunicated, said he would appeal to Prester John, and that he would side with any council against the Pope, even if it contained only three bishops.[653] The Vicar of Christ was lost in the petty Italian prince. Corruptio optimi pessima. The lower dragged the higher ...
— Henry VIII. • A. F. Pollard
... fifteen months ago, Jaff, and since then you've plucked hairs out of Prester John's beard, or been entertained by a Viceroy of China, which comes to the same thing. I was right in saying you had no ...
— Jaffery • William J. Locke
... still only while he steers, 270 And does not make a noise and stir Like ev'ry common mariner, Knew nothing of the card, nor star, And did not guide the man of war; Nor we, because we don't appear 275 In councils, do not govern there; While, like the mighty PRESTER JOHN, Whose person none dares look upon, But is preserv'd in close disguise, From being made cheap to vulgar eyes, 280 W' enjoy as large a pow'r unseen, To govern him, as he does men; And in the right of our Pope JOAN, Make Emp'rors at our feet ...
— Hudibras • Samuel Butler
... d'Instruction a Monsieur le Comte de Frontenac sur l'Entreprise de la Nouvelle York, 7 Juin, 1689. "Si parmy les habitans de la Nouvelle York il se trouve des Catholiques de la fidelite desquels il croye se pouvoir asseurer, il pourra les laisser dans leurs habitations apres leur avoir fait prester serment de fidelite a sa Majeste.... Il pourra aussi garder, s'il le juge a propos, des artisans et autres gens de service necessaires pour la culture des terres ou pour travailler aux fortifications en qualite de prisonniers.... II faut retenir en prison ...
— Count Frontenac and New France under Louis XIV • Francis Parkman
... points out that these were undoubtedly musical instruments. Castanheda (v. xxviii.), describing the embassy to "Prester John" under Dom Roderigo de Lima in 1520 (the same year), states that among the presents sent to that potentate were "some organs and a clavichord, and a player for them." These organs are also mentioned in Father Alvares's account of their ...
— A Forgotten Empire: Vijayanagar; A Contribution to the History of India • Robert Sewell
... passed the place where I had drawn Brother Thomas from the water; but thereof I said no word, for indeed my dreams were haunted by his hooded face, like that of the snake which, as travellers tell, wears a hood in Prester John's country, and is the most venomous of beasts serpentine. So concerning Brother Thomas I held my peace, and the barque, swinging round a corner of the bank, soon brought us into a country with no sign of war on it, and here the poplar- trees had not been felled for ...
— A Monk of Fife • Andrew Lang
... brandy of his own whimsical wit. If we don't become "like little children"; in other words like jovial, middle-aged swashbucklers, and protest our belief in Flying Pigs, Pusses in Boots, Jacks on the top of Beanstalks, Old Women who live in Shoes, Fairies, Fandangos, Prester Johns, and Blue Devils, there is no hope for us and we are condemned to a dreadful purgatory of pedantic and atheistic dullness, along with Li Hung Chang, George Eliot, Herbert Spencer and other heretics whose view of the Dogma of the Immortality of the Soul differs from that ...
— One Hundred Best Books • John Cowper Powys
... contradict some one who was talking to some other person, the writer dropped the Celtic languages and literature, and asked him whether he did not think it a funny thing that Temugin, generally called Genghis Khan, should have married the daughter of Prester John? {373} The Lion, after giving a side-glance at the writer through his left spectacle glass, seemed about to reply, but was unfortunately prevented, being seized with an irresistible impulse ...
— The Romany Rye - A Sequel to 'Lavengro' • George Borrow
... listened attentively, with a learned air, as though making a mental note for some ornithological society in New York. "Bluebird seen in Erie County, October 1, 1908!" So might Sir John Mandeville have noted the occurrence of birds of paradise in the domains of Prester John. ...
— October Vagabonds • Richard Le Gallienne
... to be put in prison, in prison already himself, for he may not go where he will. For if he could he would go into Portugal, Italy, Spain, France, Germany, and England, and as far in the other direction too—both into Prester John's land and into the ...
— Dialogue of Comfort Against Tribulation - With Modifications To Obsolete Language By Monica Stevens • Thomas More
... combination of luck and courage manages to frustrate it. From beginning to end it is a book of stark adventure. The leader of the rising is a black missionary, who believes himself the incarnation of the mediaeval Abyssinian emperor Prester John. By means of a perverted Christianity, and the possession of the ruby collar which for centuries has been the Kaffir fetish, he organizes the natives of Southern Africa into a great army. But a revolution depends upon small things, ...
— Daisy's Aunt • E. F. (Edward Frederic) Benson
... human cargoes; we have faced the terrible storms which blow ever around the Cape de Boa Esperanza; and finally, we have sailed away out over the great ocean beyond, amid the palm-clad coral islands, with the knowledge that the realms of Prester John lie somewhere behind the golden haze which shimmers upon the horizon. After such a flight as that we would feel, as we came back to the Hampshire village and the dull realities of country life, like wild birds who had been snared ...
— Micah Clarke - His Statement as made to his three Grandchildren Joseph, - Gervas and Reuben During the Hard Winter of 1734 • Arthur Conan Doyle
... this enterprising Venetian, in company with his father and uncle, all of them merchants, journeyed from Venice, by the way of Constantinople, Trebizond, on the Black Sea, and Central Asia, until they reached first the land of Prester John, and then that golden country, known as Cathay, where the great ruler, Kubla Khan, treated them with gracious consideration, and employed young Polo as his ambassador. This was none other than China, and ...
— Modern Eloquence: Vol III, After-Dinner Speeches P-Z • Various
... attack the Moslems from the rear. According to one form of the story the kingdom consisted of the Ten Tribes of Israel, [5] who had been converted to Christianity by Nestorian missionaries. [6] Over them reigned a priest-king named Prester (or Presbyter) John. The popes made several attempts to communicate with this mythical ruler. In the thirteenth century, however, Franciscan friars did penetrate to the heart of Asia. They returned to Europe with marvelous tales of the ...
— EARLY EUROPEAN HISTORY • HUTTON WEBSTER
... so happens that the size of the foot of Hercules has no more to do with the real point of the allusion than the length of Prester John's; therefore ex pede Herculem is a most unfortunate illustration,—particularly awkward in a specimen sample, the excellence of which may be ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 193, July 9, 1853 • Various
... new ways. She could not sail across the ocean in search of them as he had done—he was her great adventure, he realized, a personified book of strange tales to fire her imagination, as his had been stirred as a boy by stories of the kingdom of Prester John, of the El Dorado, of the Spanish Main and of the lost Raleigh Colony. The tobacco, which he had learned to smoke while with the Pamunkeys, soothed him; he was in no immediate danger; the warm sun was pleasant and the bright-eyed girl beside him was a sympathetic audience. He was ...
— The Princess Pocahontas • Virginia Watson
... betwixt there and the end of the world. There is the country of the Amazons, and the country of the dwarfs, and the country of the fair but evil women who slay with beholding, like the basilisk. Beyond that again is the kingdom of Prester John and of the great Cham. These things I know for very sooth, for I had them from that pious Christian and valiant knight, Sir John de Mandeville, who stopped twice at Beaulieu on his way to and from Southampton, ...
— The White Company • Arthur Conan Doyle
... cure, Ont leu le vostre; et sur ce leur ay dict: "Sire Michel, sire Bonaventure, La soeur du Roy a pour moy faict ce dit." Lors eulx cuydans que fusse en grand credict, M'ont appele monsieur a cry et cor, Et m'a valu vostre escript aultant qu'or; Car promis m'ont non seulement d'attendre, Mais d'en prester, foy de marchant, encor, Et j'ay promis, foy de ...
— Avril - Being Essays on the Poetry of the French Renaissance • H. Belloc
... the Americas saw the handwriting on the wall, they sent out to see the man Moyen, with orders to penetrate to his very side, as a spy, their most trusted Secret Agent—Prester Kleig. ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science April 1930 • Various
... ride to the end of the world—the very gates of Jericho, and the judgment-seat of Prester John, for thee!" ejaculated ...
— Bride of Lammermoor • Sir Walter Scott
... presents exchanged between the whites and their new parents, were doubtless eagerly and bitterly canvassed. It was felt that a few years ago the honours would have gone elsewhere. In this unwonted business, in this reception of some hitherto undreamed-of and outlandish potentate—some Prester John or old Assaracus—a few years back it would have been the part of Moipu to play the hero and the host, and his young men would have accompanied and adorned the various celebrations as the acknowledged leaders of society. And now, by a malign vicissitude of fortune, Moipu must sit ...
— In the South Seas • Robert Louis Stevenson
... Army was advancing to the House—the broken-down, ragged, wasted remnant of an Army of Heroes. Sent forth, too late, to 'smash' Prester John, and relieve the Equator, they had all but overcome the Desert, and had only been defeated by space. Too many of them lay like the vanished legions of Cambyses, swathed by the sand and lulled by the music of the night wind. The remnant had returned of their own motion. It was an impressive ...
— 'That Very Mab' • May Kendall and Andrew Lang
... keep your old wont still; a Man can begin no Discourse to you, be it of Prester John, but you ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn, Vol. II • Aphra Behn
... she laughed at him. "I knew you'd be somebody else if I only waited long enough. Now you're Prester John and Don Quixote rolled into one. You propose by the simple process of financing the operation to turn our slums into Happy Valleys, our missions into gardens of resurrection. It's a very beautiful purpose, Jerry, quite worthy of your colorful ...
— Paradise Garden - The Satirical Narrative of a Great Experiment • George Gibbs
... willing me to live. I was a puppet in her hands like the wild tom-cat. At that moment I declare I could have purred and rubbed my head against her knee. I would have done anything she bade me. If she had sent me to fetch the Cham of Tartary's cap or a hair of the Prester John's beard, I would have telephoned forthwith to Rogers to pack a suit-case and book a seat ...
— Simon the Jester • William J. Locke
... JOHN, PRESTER, a supposed king and priest of a mediaeval kingdom in the interior of Asia; converted to Christianity by the Nestorian missionaries; was defeated and killed in 1202 by Genghis Khan, who had been tributary to him but had revolted; he was ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... founded a separate sect, in which he might have held a place not much inferior to that which Mahomet held among the faithful. But he spoke the truth when he said, 'So far as I know myself, I have no more concern for the reputation of Methodism than for the reputation of Prester John.'[731] When he heard of accusations being brought against him of 'shackling free-born Englishmen' and of 'doing no less than making himself a Pope,' he defended his power with an artless simplicity which was very characteristic ...
— The English Church in the Eighteenth Century • Charles J. Abbey and John H. Overton
... indistinguishable, in European imagination, from the general multitude of fictitious countries mentioned in fairy-tales or in romances of chivalry. Perhaps no part of Marco's story was so likely to interest his readers as his references to Prester John. In the course of the twelfth century the notion had somehow gained possession of the European mind that somewhere out in the dim vastness of the Orient there dwelt a mighty Christian potentate, known as John the Presbyter or "Prester."[333] ...
— The Discovery of America Vol. 1 (of 2) - with some account of Ancient America and the Spanish Conquest • John Fiske
... of mystery about this peculiar outbreak of lawlessness that seemed to be directed so pointedly against the British trade. The town of Rio Medio was alluded to as one of the unapproachable towns of the earth—closed, like the capital of Prester John to the travellers, or Mecca to the infidels. Nobody I ever met in Jamaica had set eyes on the place. The impression prevailed that no stranger could come out of it alive. Incredible stories were told of it in the island, and indignation at its existence grew at ...
— Romance • Joseph Conrad and F.M. Hueffer
... likely to change his name, and to become known, say at Winchester, as John de Nottingham; or if his father were a priest who was a well-known person, he would not improbably be styled John Fiz-al-Prester. [Note 1.] It will readily be seen that the majority of these names were not likely to descend to a second generation. The son of John William-son would be Henry John-son, or Henry Alice-son; he might ...
— One Snowy Night - Long ago at Oxford • Emily Sarah Holt
... afterwards shortened into "Prester" and "Priest," is derived from the Greek word ...
— A Key to the Knowledge of Church History (Ancient) • John Henry Blunt
... defined faith and were curious of all beliefs that came their way. Gradually the West became convinced that the Tartars might be converted to Christianity, and fight side by side beneath the Cross against the hated Crescent. There grew up the strange legend of Prester John, a Christian priest-king, ruling somewhere in the heart of Asia; and indeed little groups of Nestorian Christians did still survive in eastern Asia at this time.[14] Embassies began to pass between Tartar khans and western monarchs, and there began also a great series of missions of Franciscan ...
— Medieval People • Eileen Edna Power
... by Cymosco king of Friza (bk. iv.), and also in the siege of Paris (bk. vi.). We have the Moors established in Spain, whereas they were not invited over by the Saracens for nearly 300 years after Charlemagne's death. In bk. xvii. we have Prester John, who died in 1202; and in the last three books we have Constantine the Great, ...
— 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.
... for Our Lady's sake," said the voice of one of these laughing invisibles. "Nectabanus, thou shalt be made ambassador to Prester John's court, to show them how wisely thou canst ...
— The Talisman • Sir Walter Scott
... preamble to the edict of Paris issued two years later, Henry rehearses the ordinance and its motives: "Et pour ceste cause des nostre nouvel avenement a la couronne, voulans a l'exemple et imitation de feu nostredit seigneur et pere, travailler et prester la main a purger et nettoier nostre royaume d'une telle peste, nous aurions pour plus grande et prompte expedition desdites matieres et procez sur le fait desdites heresies, erreurs et fausses doctrines ordonne et estably une chambre particuliere en nostre parlement a Paris, pour seulement ...
— The Rise of the Hugenots, Vol. 1 (of 2) • Henry Martyn Baird
... Cipangu, or Japan, of Hindustan, and that marvellous region which the world learned to know as Farther India. From far-voyaging sailors he brought home accounts of Zanzibar and Madagascar, and the semi-Christian country of Abyssinia, where some accounts located that mysterious potentate called Prester John. He had traversed Persia and had picked up a vast amount of information concerning the country of Siberia, with its polar snows and bears, its dog-sledges, and its almost everlasting winter. He traversed ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 5 of 8 • Various
... Ingres, for instance. He is, it seems, quite a tremendous potentate. I recognize his legitimate sway, like that of Prester John, or of the Great Mogul. Only I happen not to obey it, for I am a born subject of the King of Hearts. And who should that be but Apollo-Wolfgang-Amadeus, driving with easy wrist his teams, tandem or abreast, of ...
— Hortus Vitae - Essays on the Gardening of Life • Violet Paget, AKA Vernon Lee
... belief that he was an abstract idea. And I remember that once, when I happened to mention that I had dined at a coffee-house in company with Abraham Newland, everybody looked scornfully at me, as though I had pretended to have played at billiards with Prester John, or to have had an affair of honor with the Pope. And, by the way, the Pope would be a very improper person to murder: for he has such a virtual ubiquity as the father of Christendom, and, like the cuckoo, is so often heard ...
— Miscellaneous Essays • Thomas de Quincey
... Society, for this is fundamentally the Society." He himself spoke to St. Ignatius about it, and I was told to remind him of it when the work in regard to the founding of the college was finished. And when it was over, and the business with Prester John settled and the courier had departed, we continued the history on the 9th of March, 1555. About this time Pope Julius became ill, and died on the 23d of the same month. The narrative was then postponed until the election of the new Pope, who died soon ...
— The Autobiography of St. Ignatius • Saint Ignatius Loyola
... their enemies has given us the word assassin. To quote from Mandeville's "Travels," which has the essentials of the story, though the chief is here called Gatholonabes, and his domain is not in Syria but in the island Mistorak, "in the Lordship of Prester John:" ...
— Coleridge's Ancient Mariner and Select Poems • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... Sidney, who did not allow the sense of defeat to overcome his duty, "and be certain to play those balls well back. It was all through my stepping out to them that caused my collapse. Only be cautious and take things coolly, and you and Prester John ...
— Tom Finch's Monkey - and How he Dined with the Admiral • John C. Hutcheson
... of the crusading spirit of the age that Prince Henry's first ventures down the African coast were in pursuance of a vague plan to ascend one of the African rivers and unite with the legendary Christian monarch Prester John (Presbyter or Bishop John, whose realm was then supposed to be located in Abyssinia) in a campaign against the Turk. But crusading zeal changed to dreams of wealth when his ships returned from the Senegal coast ...
— A History of Sea Power • William Oliver Stevens and Allan Westcott
... Prester John, whose story is familiar to readers of John Buchan's fine romance of the same name, still has disciples. Like Chilembwe he was a preacher who had acquired so-called European civilization. He dreamed of an Africa for the blacks and took his inspiration ...
— An African Adventure • Isaac F. Marcosson
... confections of Egypt and the fruits and wines of Greece, and the woven stuffs of Asia till the marts of Flanders had the savour of Araby. Presently in our booths could be seen silks of Italy, and choice metals from Innsbruck, and furs from Muscovy, and strange birds and beasts from Prester John's country, and at our fairs such a concourse of outlandish traders as put Venice to shame. 'Twas a long fight and a bitter for Willebald and me, since, mark you, we had to make a new road over icy mountains, with a horde of freebooters hanging on the skirts of our merchant trains ...
— The Path of the King • John Buchan
... Lyons of dyvers colours as ye redd, grene, black, and white. And in our land be also unicornes and these Unicornes slee many Lyons.... Also there dare no man make a lye in our lande, for if he dyde he sholde incontynent be sleyn."—Mediaeval Epistle, of Pope Prester John. ...
— Collected Poems - Volume One (of 2) • Alfred Noyes |
