"Adonis" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... quand le soir tombe, Que jadis, animal ou plante, j'ai souffert, Lorsque Adonis saignant dormait pale en sa tombe; Et mon coeur reverdit, quand tout ...
— French Lyrics • Arthur Graves Canfield
... you please; for I dearly love good-nature; and as you have found me out to be a comical fellow, so I have no skill in physiognomy, if you are not one of the best-natured gentlemen in the universe." Jones now walked downstairs neatly drest, and perhaps the fair Adonis was not a lovelier figure; and yet he had no charms for my landlady; for as that good woman did not resemble Venus at all in her person, so neither did she in her taste. Happy had it been for Nanny the chambermaid, if she had seen with the eyes ...
— The History of Tom Jones, a foundling • Henry Fielding
... venerated religious object—just as we are told that similar misgivings were occasioned by the occurrence, about this same time, of the melancholy festival of the Adonia, wherein the women loudly bewailed the untimely death of Adonis. The mutilation of the Hermae, however, was something much more ominous than the worst accident. It proclaimed itself as the deliberate act of organized conspirators, not inconsiderable in number, whose names and final purpose were ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Vol. V (of X) - Great Britain and Ireland III • Various
... had believed, thinking, as all women think, that their own particular male has been specially favoured of the gods and is therefore an Adonis in the eyes of every ...
— The Hawk of Egypt • Joan Conquest
... by Signor Venturi as the master's own,[72] and with that view I am entirely agreed. The stories represented are not easily determinable (as is so often the case with Giorgione), but probably refer to the legends of Adonis.[73] The splendour of colour, the lurid light, the richness of effect, are in the highest degree impressive. What artist but Giorgione would have so revelled in the glories of the evening sunset, the orange horizon, the distant blue hills? The same gallery ...
— Giorgione • Herbert Cook
... good madam, while all are rejoicing in your joy? Are you afraid that we court-dames shall turn your Adonis's brain for him?" ...
— Westward Ho! • Charles Kingsley
... fear lest another should approach the object of his love, and occupy a place in the heart which he had not even demanded as his own. He was positively in a hurry. What if some undergraduate should get an introduction to Eva—some gay and handsome Adonis—and should suddenly carry ...
— Julian Home • Dean Frederic W. Farrar
... touching form of this conception is seen in such myths as the change of Philemon into the oak, and of Baucis into the linden; of Myrrha into the myrtle; of Melos into the apple tree; of Attis into the pine; of Adonis into the rose tree; and in the springing of the vine and grape from the blood of the Titans, the violet from the blood of Attis, and the hyacinth from ...
— History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom • Andrew Dickson White
... had been as good-looking as either of his brothers—or as both of them, for that matter, because there wasn't much choice between them—he might have played havoc with the chances of more than one man at home, but he was no Adonis. To be perfectly candid, he was what a brawny Westerner would call a "shrimp." There is no call to describe ...
— Her Weight in Gold • George Barr McCutcheon
... The people have introduced a new God called Adonai or Adonis. He is from the East, and ...
— Historical Miniatures • August Strindberg
... But it could be destroyed by picks and axes. A squad of soldiers was detailed to the job. They did it thoroughly. The gardener took me there to see. Not a scrap of the mosaic remained. The fountain was smashed to bits. A headless Venus and a smashed and battered Adonis were lying prone upon ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 2, May, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... Black Adonis, A Garston Bigamy, The Her Husband's Friend His Foster Sister His Private Character In Stella's Shadow Love at Seventy Love Gone Astray Moulding a Maiden Naked Truth, The New Sensation, A Original Sinner, An Out of Wedlock Speaking of Ellen Stranger Than Fiction Sugar Princess, ...
— A Black Adonis • Linn Boyd Porter
... at the prow, this from you, et tu Brute! I feared the lines would not scan, but it's not expected that every man in the crew must be an Adonis because the figure-head of the craft is a thing of beauty. One failure begets another, 'tis said, so perhaps you'll ...
— Rodney, the Ranger - With Daniel Morgan on Trail and Battlefield • John V. Lane
... at the unusual sight of the heavens; while the greatness of the fear he is in (as it is supposed) is the cause of his silence. And if it be lawful to intermix our discourse with fables, it is said that Adonis was slain by a boar. Now Adonis is supposed to be the same with Bacchus; and there are a great many rites in both their sacrifices which confirm this opinion. Others will have Adonis to be Bacchus's paramour; and Phanocles ...
— Essays and Miscellanies - The Complete Works Volume 3 • Plutarch
... in her arms, called him her heavenly Adonis, her darling, her little white ass, and lavished a thousand ardent caresses ...
— The Well of Saint Clare • Anatole France
... forth their children at the ear. Was not Bacchus engendered out of the very thigh of Jupiter? Did not Roquetaillade come out at his mother's heel, and Crocmoush from the slipper of his nurse? Was not Minerva born of the brain, even through the ear of Jove? Adonis, of the bark of a myrrh tree; and Castor and Pollux of the doupe of that egg which was laid and hatched by Leda? But you would wonder more, and with far greater amazement, if I should now present you with that chapter of Plinius, wherein he treateth of strange ...
— Gargantua and Pantagruel, Complete. • Francois Rabelais
... appears to be this: Osiris is the god of the earth, and his life is the life of the vegetation, dying and reviving with the course of the seasons, mourned by his wife Isis and succeeded by his son Horus, the sun-god. It is apparently a form of the common Tammuz or Adonis story of the Semites. This fact brings with it ...
— The Egyptian Conception of Immortality • George Andrew Reisner
... with purple-colour'd face Had ta'en his last leave of the weeping morn, Rose-cheek'd Adonis tried him to the chase; Hunting he lov'd, but love he laugh'd to scorn; 4 Sick-thoughted Venus makes amain unto him, And like a bold-fac'd suitor 'gins to ...
— Venus and Adonis • William Shakespeare
... Awry's castle is the high mountain of Baissie Baal, interpreted to me altar of Baal. I should think it would mean death of Baal. (Was Baal ever the same as Tommuz, the Adonis of Scripture?) In the valley beyond is a village still named Beltane (Baal teine—Baal's fire), so that the mountain must have been used at one time for the worship of Baal. The name of the mountain is now corrupted ...
— The Letters of "Norah" on her Tour Through Ireland • Margaret Dixon McDougall
... a Greek singing-girl in Idyllium xv, at the festival of Adonis. In the Arabian Nights, the Caliph is represented at his feasts surrounded by troops of the most beautiful ...
— Persian Literature, Volume 1,Comprising The Shah Nameh, The - Rubaiyat, The Divan, and The Gulistan • Anonymous
... hillside here and ran down in a little laughing brook through lawns full of tiny pink and white daisies, and broad fields of tangled weeds and flowers, red anemones, blue iris, purple mallows, scarlet adonis, with here and there a strip of cultivated ground shimmering with silky leeks or dotted with young cucumbers. There was a broken aqueduct cut in the rock at the side of the valley, and the brook slipped ...
— Out-of-Doors in the Holy Land - Impressions of Travel in Body and Spirit • Henry Van Dyke
... inquire, we should find that they kept a fat feller on purpose. But you just come, and try how it eats." And, as Mr. Verdant Green's bedroom barely afforded standing room, even for one, Mr. Bouncer walked into the sitting-room, while his friend arose from his couch like a youthful Adonis, and proceeded to bathe his ambrosial person, by taking certain sanatory measures in splashing about in a species ...
— The Adventures of Mr. Verdant Green • Cuthbert Bede
... shoe-leather. "He's a handsome hos, 'squire," said the man. I replied that he did seem to be a good-looking animal; but, said I, "he does not quite come up to the description of a horse I have read." "Whose hos was it?" said he. I replied it was the horse of Adonis. He said he didn't know him; but, he added, "there is so many hosses stolen, that the descriptions are stuck up now pretty common." To put him at his ease (for he seemed to think I suspected him ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume IV. (of X.) • Various
... rich, Sosicrates, but being poor thou art loved no longer; what magic has hunger! And she who before called thee spice and darling Adonis, Menophila, now inquires thy name. Who and whence of men art thou? where is thy city? Surely thou art dull in learning this saying, that none is friend to him ...
— Select Epigrams from the Greek Anthology • J. W. Mackail
... "King Charles, 1648" (sic). See An Account of what appeared on Opening the Coffin of King Charles the First, by Sir H. Halford, Bart., 1813, pp. 6, 7. Cornelia Knight, in her Autobiography (1861, i. 227), notes that the frolic prince, the "Adonis of fifty," who was in a good humour, and "had given to Princess Charlotte the centre sapphire of Charles's crown," acted "the manner of decapitation on my shoulders." He had "forgotten" Cromwell, who, as Lord Auchinleck reminded Dr. Johnson, had "gart kings ken that they had a ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Vol. 7. - Poetry • George Gordon Byron
... are in love with me. There is not a penny-worth of truth in all of it—they all lie, but the form of the lie is beautiful because they are all well-bred people. The Count Skorzewski visits me also—you must have heard of him, I am sure. I recommend him to you as a model for Adonis. Ha! ha! You do not recognize the ...
— So Runs the World • Henryk Sienkiewicz,
... just discovered that this young Speranza's father was Speranza, the opera baritone. You remember him? And his mother was the daughter of a Cape Cod sea captain. How's that? Spain, Cape Cod, opera, poetry and the Croix de Guerre. And have you looked at the young fellow's photograph? Combination of Adonis and 'Romeo, where art thou.' I've had no less than twenty letters about him and his poetry already. Next Sunday we'll have a special 'as is.' Where can I get hold of ...
— The Portygee • Joseph Crosby Lincoln
... conducting a paper, the News, which the latter had started. Thereafter the brothers embarked upon the Examiner, a paper of pronounced Radical views. The appearance in this journal of an article on the Prince Regent in which he was described in words which have been condensed into "a fat Adonis of fifty," led to H. being fined L500 and imprisoned for two years. With his customary genial philosophy, however, the prisoner made the best of things, turned his cell into a study, with bookcases and a piano, and his yard into a garden. ...
— A Short Biographical Dictionary of English Literature • John W. Cousin
... often dislike or distrust the moral aspect of the poet's impartial sensitiveness to all outward beauty,—the impartiality which makes him throw all his strength into his pictures of Acrasia's Bower of Bliss, the Garden of Adonis, and Busirane's Masque of Cupid. But there is no gainsaying the beauty which never fails and disappoints, open the poem where you will. There is no gainsaying its variety, often so unexpected and novel. Face to face with the Epicurean idea of beauty ...
— Spenser - (English Men of Letters Series) • R. W. Church
... you'd agree with me that it would be rather foolish of her, and very disappointing and disillusioning later on for her to marry the kind of a man she thinks she wants to marry. She has a notion that the man she marries must be a cross between Adonis, and—and Diamond Dick! She wants a man who carries six-shooters in all his pockets, and who fears neither God, ...
— Peter the Brazen - A Mystery Story of Modern China • George F. Worts
... handsome brother, forgot his momentary obliviousness, and returned her greeting warmly. Nevertheless, there was a slight movement of reserve among the gentlemen at the unlooked-for irruption of this sunburnt Adonis, until Calvert, disengaging himself from Maggie's side, came forward with his usual frank imperturbability and quiet tact, and claimed Jim as his friend and ...
— The Heritage of Dedlow Marsh and Other Tales • Bret Harte
... divine looks. Inanimate creatures, I suppose, have a touch of this. When a drop of [4848]Psyche's candle fell on Cupid's shoulder, I think sure it was to kiss it. When Venus ran to meet her rose-cheeked Adonis, as an elegant [4849]poet of ...
— The Anatomy of Melancholy • Democritus Junior
... "It is the cause." I mean your chaperon is Bringing some well-curled juvenile. Adieu! I shall retire. I'd spare that poor Adonis, ...
— The Book of Humorous Verse • Various
... imagine how far she carries this. She has in her room a few pictures and engravings, and what do you imagine they are? An Adonis, a Cephalus, a Paris, an Apollo? Not a bit of it! Fine portraits of Saturn, of King Priam, of old Nestor, and of good father ...
— The Miser (L'Avare) • Moliere
... offence to my old friends the Whigs, by not condoling with Buonaparte. Since his sentence of transportation, he has begun to look wonderfully comely in their eyes. I would they had hanged him, that he might have died a perfect Adonis. Every reasonable creature must think the Ministers would have deserved the cord themselves, if they had left him in a condition again to cost us the loss of 10,000 of our best and bravest, besides thirty millions of good ...
— Memoirs of the Life of Sir Walter Scott, Volume V (of 10) • John Gibson Lockhart
... did not die (I believe) till 1797. That state of Burkes's health, connected with the expectation of finding him still there, brought for some weeks crowds of inquirers, many of whom saw the childish Adonis, then scarcely seven years old, and inflicted upon him what he viewed as the martyrdom of their caresses. Thus began a persecution which continued as long as his years allowed it. The most brilliant complexion that could be imagined, the features of an Antinous, and perfect symmetry ...
— Autobiographic Sketches • Thomas de Quincey
... by taking down Halliwell's 'Dictionary of Old Plays,' and noticing that about every third drama has an Italian title. Meanwhile the poems composed by the chief dramatists—Shakspere's 'Venus and Adonis,' Marlowe's 'Hero and Leander,' Marston's 'Pygmalion,' and Beaumont's 'Hermaphrodite'—are all of them conceived in the Italian style, by men who had either studied Southern literature, or had submitted to its ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Second Series • John Addington Symonds
... mean a man who permits a woman to support him without making any effort on his part to do a man's work. He may be an Adonis and gifted to the point of genius, but I have no ...
— The Dude Wrangler • Caroline Lockhart
... this while gazed on the perfection of Ganymede, as deeply enamored on his perfection as Montanus inveigled with hers; for her eye made survey of his excellent feature, which she found so rare, that she thought the ghost of Adonis had been leaped from Elysium in the shape of a swain. When she blushed at her own folly to look so long on a stranger, she mildly made answer to ...
— Rosalynde - or, Euphues' Golden Legacy • Thomas Lodge
... suggesting the careless European wheat-field, in which "shillock" or wild mustard rears its gamboge head above the green. Midian wants not only the charming oleander and the rugged terebinth, typical of the Desert; but also the "blood of Adonis," the lovely anemone which lights up the Syrian landscape like the fisherman's scarlet cap in a sea-piece. This stage introduced us to the Hargul (Harjal, Rhazya stricta), whose perfume filled the valley with the clean smell of the henna-bloom, the Eastern privet—Mr. Clarke ...
— The Land of Midian, Vol. 2 • Richard Burton
... they were Osiris and Isis: in India, Mahadeva and Bhavani: in Phœnicia, Thammuz (or Adonis) and Astarte: in Phrygia, Atys and Cybele: in Persia, Mithras and Asis: in Samothrace and Greece, Dionusos or Sabazeus and Rhea: in Britain, Hu and Ceridwen: and in Scandinavia, Woden and Frea: and in every instance ...
— Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry • Albert Pike
... daughters, for instance, will at once occur to the reader, and upon this Mr. Fenton has some observations, to which I may refer the student who wishes to pursue this curious subject further,[75] while Mr. Frazer, in his recent study of Adonis, has discussed the practice with his usual extent of knowledge.[76] Again, it should be remembered that in our own chronicle histories Vortigern is said to have married his own daughter, though the legend and the supposed consequences of the marriage ...
— Folklore as an Historical Science • George Laurence Gomme
... Agriculture (here, perhaps by confusion with Apis, figured as a Bull), was torn to pieces by Typho and embalmed after death in a sacred chest. This myth, reproduced in Syria and Greece in the legends of Thammuz, Adonis, and perhaps Absyrtus, represents the annual death of the Sun or the Year under the influences of the winter darkness. Horus, the son of Osiris, as the New Year, in his turn overcomes Typho.—It suited the genius of Milton's time to regard this primaeval ...
— The Golden Treasury - Of the Best Songs and Lyrical Poems in the English Language • Various
... an arrow, and nimble as a chamois; but yet with a steady, earnest look about him, although a secret smile is playing round his handsome, mustachioed mouth, that tells you of a strong and persevering character. He is shaped like an Adonis, and his short jacket, breeches, pale striped stockings, and tightly laced boots; the broad leathern embroidered band about his waist, and the steeple-crowned hat with the little coquettish feather, all help to make ...
— A Tramp's Wallet - stored by an English goldsmith during his wanderings in Germany and France • William Duthie
... Characterized by surpassing ability in both comedy and tragedy, extraordinary insight into human character, and supreme mastery of language. Besides his plays, which are too well known to require listing, he wrote "Sonnets," "Venus and Adonis" and "The Rape of Lucrece." A Good Name, 109; Cowards, 194; Good Deeds, 216; Having Done and Doing, 52; Opportunity, 54; Order and the Bees, 75; Painting the Lily, 188; Polonius's Advice to Laertes, 49; Sadness ...
— It Can Be Done - Poems of Inspiration • Joseph Morris
... Venus and Adonis.—This poem was published in 1593 with a dedication to the Earl of Southampton, then a youth. In the dedication Shakespeare speaks of the poem as "the first heire of my invention," from which some conclude that it was the first poem ever made ...
— William Shakespeare • John Masefield
... even challenged, I believe, by the adherents of the Baconian faith. The tasks which the greatest of our poets set himself when near the age of thirty, and to which he presumably brought all the powers of which he was then conscious, were the uninspired and pitilessly prolix poems of VENUS AND ADONIS and THE RAPE OF LUCRECE, the first consisting of some 1,200 lines and the second of more than 1,800; one a calculated picture of female concupiscence and the other a still more calculated picture of female ...
— Montaigne and Shakspere • John M. Robertson
... Olympus, beyond the Pillars of Hercules, he had gone daily to his abode, and had come daily again in the morning to behold the temples they built to his worship. They personified him as BRAHMA, AMUN, OSIRIS, BEL, ADONIS, MALKARTH, MITHRAS, and APOLLO; and the nations that did so grew old and died. Moss grew on the capitals of the great columns of his temples, and he shone on the moss. Grain by grain the dust of his temples crumbled and fell, and ...
— Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry • Albert Pike
... be a cipher, and a decimal cipher at that. If some men were not all pocket they would never be Johns, for no Jill would be so demented as to "come tumbling after" them. I have seen a pocket marry off a hump-back, a twisted foot and sixty winters' fall of snow upon the head, while a pocketless Adonis sighed in vain for Beauty's glance. A full pocket balances an empty skull as a good heart cannot; a plethoric pocket overshadows ...
— The Secret of a Happy Home (1896) • Marion Harland
... sex requiring their support; but these are very different from stays or waist-bands. I find that an enterprising firm is advertising corsets for gentlemen (!), and a woodcut may be seen in some papers representing a young Adonis laced up in regular ladies' fashion, so that, if it were not for his luxurious moustache, one would certainly take the drawing to be meant for a woman. It is almost impossible to imagine that a man could ever make such a fool of himself; on the other hand, it is clear that these advertisements ...
— The Mechanism of the Human Voice • Emil Behnke
... sowing the crops, a common practice is to sow small quantities of grain in baskets or pots in rich soil, so that it will sprout and grow up quickly, the idea being to ensure that the real crop will have a similarly successful growth. These baskets are the well-known Gardens of Adonis fully described in The Golden Bough. They are grown for nine days, and on the tenth day are taken in procession by the women and deposited in a river. The women may be seen carrying the baskets of wheat to the river after ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India—Volume I (of IV) • R.V. Russell
... leading man. Very well, be patient. In due course he will appear. Donna has been dreaming much of this hero of late. His name is Gerald Van Alstyne, and he is tall, with curly golden hair, piercing blue eyes and a cleft chin; in short, a veritable Adonis and different, so different, from the traveling salesmen who leer at her across the counter and the loutish youths of San Pasqual who, despairing of her favor, call her by her first name because they know it annoys her. Donna has not the slightest doubt but that this ...
— The Long Chance • Peter B. Kyne
... countenance. Again and again he stopped me to make inquiries about Fidel, the new vaquero. That lucky rascal was a good-looking native, a much larger youth than the aspiring Don Blas, and I pictured him to the padre as an Adonis. To the question if he was in the ranch at present, fortune favored me, as Fidel and nearly all the regular vaqueros were cutting timbers in the encinal that day with which to build new corrals at one ...
— A Texas Matchmaker • Andy Adams
... her religion for a consort's crown, was the wife of the Czar Alexander I; and he himself was married to the Princess Theresa of Saxe-Hildburghausen, a lady described as "plain, but exemplary." Still, so far as personal appearance goes, Ludwig himself was no Adonis. Nestitz, indeed, has pictured him as "having a toothless jaw and an expressionless countenance." But his consort did her duty; and, at approved intervals, presented him with a quiverful of four sons and three daughters. Of his sons, one of them, Otto, was, as a lad of sixteen, selected by the Congress ...
— The Magnificent Montez - From Courtesan to Convert • Horace Wyndham
... his violin. If we were not there, he could come down to the slums at Goerck Street, and would play for an hour or two and talk philosophy. I would talk for the benefit of his music. Henry E. Dixey, then at the height of his 'Adonis' popularity, would come in in those days, after theatre hours, and would entertain us with stories—1882-84. Another visitor who used to give us a good deal of amusement and pleasure was Captain Shaw, the head of the London Fire Brigade. He was good company. ...
— Edison, His Life and Inventions • Frank Lewis Dyer and Thomas Commerford Martin
... the bare arm of the milkmaid, Adonis drew the figure down a pith toward the small lake that was on one edge of the ...
— The Motor Girls • Margaret Penrose
... absent loves. 'Tis thine, whate'er is pleasant, good, or fair: All nature is thy province, life thy care: Thou madest the world, and dost the world repair. Thou gladder of the mount of Cytheron, Increase of Jove, companion of the sun! If e'er Adonis touch'd thy tender heart, Have pity, goddess, for thou know'st the smart! Alas! I have not words to tell my grief; To vent my sorrow would be some relief; 150 Light sufferings give us leisure to complain; We groan, but cannot speak, in greater pain. O goddess! tell thyself what ...
— The Poetical Works of John Dryden, Vol II - With Life, Critical Dissertation, and Explanatory Notes • John Dryden
... Montague's familiars, and a most ingrained coquette, thus writes from Sillery in favour of a military protege on the 16th September, 1766, to the "divine" Emily, who had just been packed oft to Montreal to recover from a love fit. "Sir George is handsome as an Adonis ... you allow him to be of an amiable character; he is rich, young, well-born, and he ...
— Picturesque Quebec • James MacPherson Le Moine
... immediately beginning to draw near to its end, as the first yellow leaf crosses it, in the first severer wind. She is the last day of spring, or the first day of autumn, in the threefold division of the Greek year. Her story is, indeed, but the story, in an intenser form, of Adonis, of Hyacinth, of Adrastus—the king's blooming son, fated, in the story of Herodotus, to be wounded to death with an iron spear—of Linus, a fair child who is torn to pieces by hounds every spring-time—of the English Sleeping Beauty. ...
— Greek Studies: A Series of Essays • Walter Horatio Pater
... (the dear familiar name I must take the liberty henceforward to distinguish my Adonis by), with a smile full of meaning, took me gently by the hand, and said: "Come, my dear, I will show you a room that commands a fine prospect over some gardens"; and without waiting for an answer, in which he relieved ...
— Memoirs Of Fanny Hill - A New and Genuine Edition from the Original Text (London, 1749) • John Cleland
... need it, and as for me, nothing could make me a modern Adonis. Seriously, though, a man couldn't get in there, I suppose. At least that is one of the many things I want you to find out. Under the circumstances, you are the only person in whom I have confidence enough to believe that she can get at the facts there. Find out all you can ...
— The Ear in the Wall • Arthur B. Reeve
... to judge; but it strikes me that the men about my own age who affect to be fast are a more languid race than the men from ten to twenty years older, whom they regard as slow. The habit of dram-drinking in the morning is a very new idea, an idea greatly in fashion at the moment. Adonis calls for a "pick-me-up" before he has strength enough to answer a billet-doux from Venus. Adonis has not the strength to get nobly drunk, but his delicate constitution requires stimulants, and he is ...
— Kenelm Chillingly, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... of Mr. Seward, and among the rest I was presented to him. His appearance did not impress me as fantastically as it had impressed some others. I was familiar with the Western type, and whilst Mr. Lincoln was not an Adonis, even after prairie ideals, there was about him a dignity ...
— Marse Henry, Complete - An Autobiography • Henry Watterson
... treatment was harsh and ignominious; but their fame, such as it might be, was wide, and their rewards often solid. Contemporary writers also complain that, however brutal and ugly they were, there were always women ready to adore them and to consider them as beautiful as Adonis. At Pompeii a scribbling calls one of them "the sigh of the girls." Nevertheless no Roman with much self-respect, unless forced by a malignant emperor, would bear the stigma of having appeared as a gladiator, any more than in modern ...
— Life in the Roman World of Nero and St. Paul • T. G. Tucker
... quite true, Marcus; and this Son is worshipped under the various names of Hermes, Mithra, Adonis, ...
— Thais • Anatole France
... song called "Bormus" from its subject, a beautiful boy of that name, who, having gone to fetch water for the reapers, was, while drawing it, borne down by the nymphs of the stream. Such were the cries for the youth Hylas, swallowed up by the waters of a fountain, and the lament for Adonis, whose untimely death was ...
— Handbook of Universal Literature - From The Best and Latest Authorities • Anne C. Lynch Botta
... Salamis was similarly opposed by Amathus about 385-380 B.C. in conjunction with Citium and Soli (Diod. Sic. xiv. 98); and even after Alexander the city resisted annexation, and was bound over to give hostages to Seleucus (Diod. Sic. xix. 62). Its political importance now ended, but its temple of Adonis and Aphrodite (Venus Amathusia) remained famous in Roman ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... Charlie? I thought he was the prince of cavaliers. Annabel says he dances 'like an angel,' and I know a dozen mothers couldn't keep him at home of an evening. Have you had a tiff with Adonis and so fall back on poor me?" asked Mac, coming last to the person of whom he thought first but did not mention, feeling shy about alluding to a subject ...
— Rose in Bloom - A Sequel to "Eight Cousins" • Louisa May Alcott
... you revered, and the prejudice cedes to judgment. Through prejudice you have believed the fables with which your childhood was cradled; you have been told that the Titans made war on the gods, and Venus was amorous of Adonis; when you are twelve you accept these fables as truths; when you are twenty you look on them as ...
— Voltaire's Philosophical Dictionary • Voltaire
... Christ, Benozzo painting the life of Abraham, Ghirlandajo painting the life of the Virgin, Giotto painting the life of St. Francis, were worse employed, or likely to produce a less healthy art, than Titian painting the loves of Venus and Adonis, than Correggio painting the naked Antiope, than Salvator painting the slaughters of the thirty years' war? If you will not let me call the one kind of labor Christian, and the other unchristian, at least you will let me call the one moral, and the other immoral, and that is ...
— Lectures on Architecture and Painting - Delivered at Edinburgh in November 1853 • John Ruskin
... strove to defile her fame. It is sufficient, also, to warrant our regarding the picturesque but scarcely dignified story of her vain pursuit of Phaon and her frenzied leap from the Cliff of Leucas as nothing more than a poetic myth, reminiscent, perhaps, of the myth of Aphrodite and Adonis—who is, indeed, called Phaon in some versions. The story is further discredited by the fact that we find no mention of it in Greek literature— even among those Attic comedians who would have clutched at it so eagerly and given it so gross a turn—till a date more than two hundred years after ...
— Sappho: One Hundred Lyrics • Bliss Carman
... which he went about ordinary affairs. He was never in difficulties, never at a loss; the Bush was his living-room, bedroom, and larder. He had already shown himself independent of what the stores could provide when a meal was wanted. Mike might have been a pink Adonis in another climate and under other conditions; his gray eyes and fair moustache were in almost ludicrous contrast with his tanned hide—he appeared to be bound ...
— In the Roaring Fifties • Edward Dyson
... have never seen a man of your age so much in love; and, it must be acknowledged, that a young and handsome man would be incapable of such mad passion. An Adonis admires himself as much as he admires us; he loves on the end of his teeth; and then to love him is his due, hardly is he grateful; but to love a man like you, my master, oh! that would be to raise him from earth to heaven; ...
— Mysteries of Paris, V3 • Eugene Sue
... group, with his arms folded and his feet well apart, in an attitude of easy admiration: 'The Wounded Adonis, attended by the Loves and ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... leisurely movement of the times, the new work of the French composers was produced in 1659. This was "La Pastorale," performed with the greatest applause at the chateau of Issy. This was followed by several other works in similar style, "Ariane," "Adonis" and the like, and in 1669 Perrin secured a patent giving him a monopoly of operatic performances in France for a ...
— A Popular History of the Art of Music - From the Earliest Times Until the Present • W. S. B. Mathews
... traitors for their extravagant interpretation of remarks attributed to Atys. It is improbable that Tolstoy wrote a book to prove that all modern ills could be cured by literal obedience to all the orders of Adonis. We do not find wild Bolshevists calling themselves Mithraic Socialists as many of them call themselves Christian Socialists. Leaving orthodoxy and even sanity entirely on one side, the very heresies and insanities of our time prove that after nearly two thousand ...
— The New Jerusalem • G. K. Chesterton
... have, as an independent nation, no seen and known object for their loyalty. Since the days of Brian Boroime at his mythic court of Tara, the Irish people have hardly set eyes upon the monarch of their country: perhaps (if we except the conquering William of the Boyne) our elderly Adonis, George the Fourth, was the sole specimen of English Majesty that has illuminated Ireland; until our gracious Queen herself made two very short but notable visitations in 1849 and 1853: yet even in ...
— My Life as an Author • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... acted Ignition. "Come with me both of you," she said, and they were soon in the female department. Up came keeperesses directly, smirking and curtseying to her, and pretending not to look at Adonis. "Which of you nurses tanked ...
— Hard Cash • Charles Reade
... some time before this Adonis was quite satisfied with himself. He re-touched the paint on his shoulders several times, and modified the glare of that on his wide-mouthed, high-cheek-boned visage before he could tear himself away; but at last he ...
— The Dog Crusoe and his Master • R.M. Ballantyne
... common world, I myself am, I trust, often amiable—always in some respects exemplary. In my castle, I am always all that I ought to be—all that I wish to be. I am as stately as Juno, as beautiful as Adonis, as elegant as Chesterfield, as edifying as Mrs. Chapone, as eloquent as Burke, as noble as Miss Nightingale, as perennial as the Countess of Desmond, and as robust as Dr. Windship. I also understand everything but entomology and numismatology; and if I do not understand ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No 3, September 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... valuable animals. "They are a fine lot, sir," he said, gravely, as he went down the long line. "A remarkably fine lot! I have never seen a better show. This fellow—why, isn't he Lord Winstay's bay, Adonis?" ...
— At Love's Cost • Charles Garvice
... mournful Niobe's mute cell, Low through yon sedges pastoral Syrinx breathed, And through those groves wail'd the sweet Philomel; The tears of Ceres swell'd in yonder rill— Tears shed for Proserpine to Hades borne; And, for her lost Adonis, yonder hill Heard ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 54, No. 334, August 1843 • Various
... wherever I went, I brought joy; at Cyprus the grasses sprang up beneath my feet, the golden-filleted Horae crowned me with a wreath of gold and clothed me in immortal robes. Then, also, was renewed my grief; for Adonis, whom I had chosen, was slain in the chase and carried to Hades. Six months I wept his loss, when he rose again and I triumphed. Thus in Egypt I mourned for Osiris, for Atys in Phrygia, and for Proserpina at Eleusis,—all of whom passed to the underworld, were restored for a season, and ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 4, No. 23, September, 1859 • Various
... suspicions on the part of the ladies raised this handsome golden-haired Adonis to a higher pinnacle of favour than ever. It seemed to Tom that so long as a crime was carried out with dash, and verve, and success, it only brought a man fame and honour. He shivered sometimes when he ...
— Tom Tufton's Travels • Evelyn Everett-Green
... passed mistress of flirting. She had, unless rumor was badly at fault, jilted an appalling list of the striplings who believed that beard-growing and love-making were conventionally contemporaneous events. But they had "mooned" about her and made themselves absurd in vain, while this unconscious Adonis calmly walked, talked, and acted as if she could know nothing else than love him, and one day she started in delicious misery to find that she did—that is, she thought she might if—if? But there her dreams became nebulous—they were rosy ...
— The Iron Game - A Tale of the War • Henry Francis Keenan
... shirt-buttons, enamelled pencil cases, extraordinary fine French boots with soles no thicker than a sheet of scented note-paper, embroidered vests, incense-burning sealing-wax, alabaster statuettes of Venus and Adonis, tortoise-shell snuff-boxes, inlaid toilet-cases, ivory-handled hair-brushes and mother-of-pearl combs, and a hundred other luxurious appendages scattered about this ...
— White Jacket - or, the World on a Man-of-War • Herman Melville
... pink that surely the lips of divinity had scarcely brushed to the smiling scarlet that suggested Aphrodite's mouth, from the imperial purple of a Caesar's pomp to the crimson so deep that it was almost black, black as the congealed blood on the torn thigh of Adonis. Here, when the stars eluded or deceived him, King Louis would come, creeping down the winding stairs of his tower, with the names of saints upon his thin lips, to breathe the sunlit or moonlit fragrance of his roses, to seek a little rest ...
— If I Were King • Justin Huntly McCarthy
... maliciously miscarried the discus, is a circumstance we hardly need to remind us that we have here, of course, only one of many transparent, unmistakable, parables or symbols of the great solar change, so sudden in the south, like the story of Proserpine, Adonis, and the like. But here, more completely perhaps than in any other of those stories, the primary elemental sense had obscured itself behind its really tragic analogue in human life, behind the figure of the dying youth. We know little ...
— Plato and Platonism • Walter Horatio Pater
... frequently reveals itself. Only a few months before the appearance of Mrs. Blaize in 'The Bee' for October 27, 1759, he had written in the 'Critical Review', vii. 263, when noticing Langhorne's 'Death of Adonis', as follows:—'It is not thus that many of our moderns have composed what they call elegies; they seem scarcely to have known its real character. If an hero or a poet happens to die with us, the whole band of elegiac poets raise the dismal chorus, ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Oliver Goldsmith • Oliver Goldsmith
... and Greek poetry, of Adonis and the death of Baldur in the Northern Saga. But even here, where the subject almost suggests it, there is no trace of ...
— The Development of the Feeling for Nature in the Middle Ages and - Modern Times • Alfred Biese
... of Julian, (p. 329. Commentaire de Spanheim, p. 252.) Constantine boasts, that he had recovered the province (Dacia) which Trajan had subdued. But it is insinuated by Silenus, that the conquests of Constantine were like the gardens of Adonis, which fade and wither almost ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 1 • Edward Gibbon
... Brienne,—who, after being secretary of state, had retired to the Oratoire,—was engaged in bringing out a better collection of Christian lyrics. To this work he pressed La Fontaine, whom he called his particular friend, to lend his name and contributions. Thus the author of "Psyche," "Adonis," and "Joconde," was led to the composition of pious hymns, and versifications of the Psalms of David. Gifted by nature with the utmost frankness of disposition, he sympathized fully with Arnauld and Pascal ...
— The Fables of La Fontaine - A New Edition, With Notes • Jean de La Fontaine
... young, ugly or handsome, all are lovers; and are as liberal of their amorous sighs, and addresses, as if each were an Adonis. Clifton is well acquainted with foreign manners, or I can perceive their gallantry to me would make him half mad. As it is, he has been little less than rude, to one or two of the most forward of ...
— Anna St. Ives • Thomas Holcroft
... in love the extreme of ugliness counts as triumphantly as the charms of Adonis. Ever since I read certain passages of Faust, part II, Eduard von Hartmann's "Philosophy of the Unconscious," and Lermontoff's "Hero of our Times," I am convinced that to love a man very good-looking, or, on the contrary, a perfect horror, is ...
— Secret Memoirs: The Story of Louise, Crown Princess • Henry W. Fischer
... presented to him. His appearance did not impress me as fantastically as it had impressed Colonel McClure. I was more familiar with the Western type than Colonel McClure, and, whilst Mr. Lincoln was certainly not an Adonis, even after prairie ideals, there was about him ...
— America First - Patriotic Readings • Various
... calm fingers. So, as it never entered his head to kiss the finger tips of poor Jane, it never entered his head to fancy himself in love with her. Therefore, when she threw herself into his arms, he hugged her in a very sincere and brotherly way, but kissed her with a pair of cast lips of Adonis. Of course he would never forget her. Jane went to bed and sobbed her heart out. Paul slept but little. The breaking up of the home meant the end of many precious and gentle things, and without them he knew that his life would be the poorer. ...
— The Fortunate Youth • William J. Locke
... Mediterranean and survived in the Temple Prostitution and the Mysteries. Man as yet felt himself only as a part of nature, and aspired to no more than a life in harmony with her laws. The worship of fertility and the endless renewal of life was the object of the orgiastic cults of Adonis and Astarte in the East, and Dionysus and Aphrodite in Greece; unbridled licentiousness and blind gratification of the senses ...
— The Evolution of Love • Emil Lucka
... reverence is uncommon fond of," said Fry, with a sneer and a chuckle; so he flung open the door, and if the man had not hung his head Susan would hardly have recognized in his uniform corduroy and close-cropped hair the vulgar Adonis who had sat glittering opposite her at table the last time ...
— It Is Never Too Late to Mend • Charles Reade
... favourites, Kate Hubbard, a younger sister of Miss Patsey's—one who from childhood had always been welcome among them. William Cassius Clapp had curly hair, bright black eyes, and pink cheeks—and, consequently, was generally thought an Adonis: his wife was a diminutive little creature, quite pretty, and very amiable; a sort of mixture of Miss Patsey and Charlie, without the more striking qualities of either. Some of her friends had thought her thrown away upon Clapp; but she seemed perfectly ...
— Elinor Wyllys - Vol. I • Susan Fenimore Cooper
... call to-morrow, because he is extremely fond of me. Oh! if you had heard all his pretty love phrases! I suppose he has learnt them out of a book. They couldn't be his own. Germans are not romantic—how can they be? But he—ah! he is Adonis in the flesh—with corsets!" And we ...
— The Count's Chauffeur • William Le Queux
... for a dissertation on the jars of lettuce and fennel grown by the Greeks for the annual Adonis festivals, is needless. But it may be noted that Bramston, with those of his day,—Swift excepted,—scans the "o" in balcony long, a practice which continued far into the nineteenth century. "Contemplate," said Rogers, "is bad enough; but balcony makes me sick."[17] ...
— De Libris: Prose and Verse • Austin Dobson
... here now like giants, as ye are! the strength of brass in your toughened sinews; but to-morrow some Roman Adonis, breathing sweet odors from his curly locks, shall come, and with his lily fingers pat your brawny shoulders, and bet his sesterces upon your blood! Hark! Hear ye yon lion roaring in his den? 'Tis three ...
— The American Union Speaker • John D. Philbrick
... garments were of lawn, The lining purple silk, with gilt stars drawn; Her wide sleeves green, and bordered with a grove, Where Venus in her naked glory strove To please the careless and disdainful eyes Of proud Adonis, that before her lies; Her kirtle blue, whereon was many a stain, Made with the blood of ...
— The Book-Bills of Narcissus - An Account Rendered by Richard Le Gallienne • Le Gallienne, Richard
... aucthour of Loue: loued Ado- nis the soonne of Cynara kyng of Cypres. But Mars called the God of battaile, loued Uenus, beyng nothyng loued of Uenus: but Mars loued Uenus as feruently, as Uenus lo- ued Adonis. Mars beyng a God, loued Uenus a goddes, but Uenus onely was inflamed with the loue of Adonis, a mor- tall man. Their loue was feruent, and exremely set on fire in bothe, but their kinde and nature were contrary, wherev- pon Mars beyng in gelousie, sought meanes to destroie, ...
— A booke called the Foundacion of Rhetorike • Richard Rainolde
... any of my questions, because he was arranging a dramatic effect, he took me to the Albani gallery and placed me before a statue representing Adonis stretched ...
— The Deputy of Arcis • Honore de Balzac
... springs she saw—two radiant Tuscan springs, What time the wild red tulips are aflame In the new wheat, and wreaths of young vine frame The daffodils that every light breeze swings; And the anemones that April brings Make purple pools, as if Adonis came Just there to die; and Florence scrolls her name In every blossom Primavera flings. Now, when the scented iris, straight and tall, Shall hedge the garden gravel once again With pale blue flags, at May's exulting call, And when the amber roses, wet with rain, Shall tapestry the ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 1 (of 4) • Various
... and he will dim even those ruddy fires and look like a transfigured Adonis backed against ...
— Chapters from My Autobiography • Mark Twain
... 1617, by Mr. Octavius Gilchrist, who however rather leans to the opinion of William Barkstead being the author, from the circumstance of his having, as early as 1607, paraphrased, much in a similar way, the interesting tale of Myrrha, the mother of Adonis, from the 10th Book of the Metamorphoses. (See Restitutu, vol. i. ...
— Notes & Queries, No. 19, Saturday, March 9, 1850 • Various
... coarse speech, incivility, neglect of the little attentions she expects of a man and which men of breeding render as a matter of course. A woman is more likely to fall in love with a homely man of pleasing address than with an Adonis so clad in self-complacency that he thinks politeness unnecessary, or one who does not know ...
— Mother's Remedies - Over One Thousand Tried and Tested Remedies from Mothers - of the United States and Canada • T. J. Ritter
... a fish called by lian the Adonis, or Darling of the Sea; so called, because it is a loving and innocent fish, a fish that hurts nothing that hath life, and is at peace with all the numerous inhabitants of that vast watery element; and truly, I think most Anglers are so disposed to ...
— The Complete Angler • Izaak Walton
... all, more or less, gods in exile, with that charm of a long residence in the Middle Ages which makes, for instance, the sweetheart of Ritter Tannhaeuser so infinitely more seductive than the paramour of Adonis; that charm which, when we meet it occasionally in literature, in parts of Spenser, for instance, or in a play like Peel's "Arraignment of Paris," is so ...
— Renaissance Fancies and Studies - Being a Sequel to Euphorion • Violet Paget (AKA Vernon Lee)
... In the Adonis room the beautiful Venus Anadyomene engrossed my chief attention; and in the cabinet of Venus the Venus Callipygos forms an exquisite sidepiece to ...
— A Visit to the Holy Land • Ida Pfeiffer
... London, and after a hard struggle with poverty, he became first an actor, then a successful playwright and theater manager. Having gained not only fame but a modest fortune, he retired in 1611 to live at ease in Stratford until his death in 1616. Besides the two long poems, "Venus and Adonis" and "Lucrece," which first won popularity for him, he has written thirty-seven plays, ranging from the lightest comedy, through romance and historical narrative, to the darkest tragedy. Whatever form his verse takes,—sonnet, song, or dramatic poetry,—it shows ...
— Graded Poetry: Seventh Year - Edited by Katherine D. Blake and Georgia Alexander • Various
... profession of an actor. Yet his earliest effort in composition was not of the dramatic kind; for in 1593 he dedicated to his great patron the earl of Southampton, as "the first heir of his invention," his Venus and Adonis, a narrative poem of considerable length in the six-line stanza then popular. In the subsequent year he also inscribed to the same noble friend his Rape of Lucrece, a still longer poem of similar form in the stanza of seven lines, and containing passages of vivid ...
— Memoirs of the Court of Queen Elizabeth • Lucy Aikin
... O Zeus! in the Gasteres. Wild birds were they, strong of talon, clanging of wing, and clamorous of gullet. Wild birds, O Zeus! wild birds; now cropping the tender grass by the river of Adonis, and breaking the nascent reed at the root, and depasturing the sweet nymphaea; now again picking up serpents and other creeping things on each hand of old Aegyptos, whose head is ...
— Imaginary Conversations and Poems - A Selection • Walter Savage Landor
... the women, with pitiable wailing, deplored with their customary weepings the hope of their nation thus cut off in the early bloom of youth; as the worshippers of Venus are often seen to do in the solemn festival of Adonis, which the mystical doctrines of religion show to be some sort of image of the ripened ...
— The Roman History of Ammianus Marcellinus • Ammianus Marcellinus
... formed by similar combinations; the most frequent is the quatrain couplet, called, from Shakespeare's poem, the Venus and Adonis stanza, ababcc^{5} (compare the end of the English sonnet and the ottava rima).[55] Familiar examples are Wordsworth's To a ...
— The Principles of English Versification • Paull Franklin Baum |
