"Arena" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... impunity, but she passes. She makes her stilted passage across the arena upon which the new womanhood of Western Europe shows its worth. It is an exit. There is likely to be something like a truce in the fashions throughout Europe for some years. It is in America if anywhere that the holy fires of smartness and the ...
— What is Coming? • H. G. Wells
... gives unity to whatsoever it looks on with love; thus does the little Dwelling-place of men, in itself a congeries of houses and huts, become for us an individual, almost a person. But what thousand other thoughts unite thereto, if the place has to ourselves been the arena of joyous or mournful experiences; if perhaps the cradle we were rocked in still stands there, if our Loving ones still dwell there, if our Buried ones there slumber!" Does Teufelsdrockh as the wounded eagle is said to make for its own eyrie, and indeed military deserters, ...
— Sartor Resartus - The Life and Opinions of Herr Teufelsdrockh • Thomas Carlyle
... exhibit a wholesome disregard of mere tradition and authority. "Milton's translation of Horace's Ode to Pyrrha," he says, for example, "is universally known and generally admired, in our opinion much above its merit." If the present writer might for a moment venture into such an arena, he would express the honest belief that that translation is the very worst translation that was ever made of anything. But there is the happy rendering of simplex munditiis, which counts ...
— Goldsmith - English Men of Letters Series • William Black
... mentioned that in England France, and Germany also the Edison fundamental lamp patent was stubbornly fought in the judicial arena, and his claim to be the first inventor of practical incandescent lighting was uniformly ...
— Edison, His Life and Inventions • Frank Lewis Dyer and Thomas Commerford Martin
... window a stream of sunshine flooded the floor and distributed itself impartially about the room. The fresh arena of spring blossoms softened the crisp morning air with a pleasant perfume; feathered throats chirped happily in pursuit of the ...
— The Substitute Prisoner • Max Marcin
... the Magazine, crenelled for musketry, commands, with the aid of a couple of good field-glasses, an excellent and secret view of the arena on which the redoubted O'Flaherty and the grim Nutter were about to put their metal to the proof. General Chattesworth, who happened to have an appointment, as he told his sister at breakfast, in town about that hour, forgot it just as he reached the Magazine, ...
— The House by the Church-Yard • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... indeed the poor girl, whose pregnancy had swelled and stoutened every part of her, even to her face, and the vertical, squared outlines of her cheeks, did distinctly suggest those virgins, so strong and mannish as to seem matrons rather, in whom the Virtues are personified in the Arena Chapel. And I can see now that those Virtues and Vices of Padua resembled her in another respect as well. For just as the figure of this girl had been enlarged by the additional symbol which she carried in her body, without appearing to understand what it meant, without any rendering in her ...
— Swann's Way - (vol. 1 of Remembrance of Things Past) • Marcel Proust
... heads hanging, jolted by the bumping of the cart; their throats parched with thirst, despair and terror; unfortunate beings who did not even have, as in the times of Nero and Commodus, the fight in the arena, the hand-to-hand struggle with death. Powerless, motionless, the lust of massacre surprised them in their fetters, and battered them not only in life but in death; their bodies, when their hearts had ceased to beat, ...
— The Companions of Jehu • Alexandre Dumas
... Tom Peters, while his face lit up in joy. "How are you, dear Miss Newell?" Clara greeted him coldly. Her face had an abiding pallor now. Her lover's flight and shame had prostrated her for weeks. Her soul was the arena of contending instincts. Alone of all the world she still believed in Everard's innocence, felt that there was something more than met the eye, divined some devilish mystery behind it all. And yet that damning letter from the anonymous lady shook her sadly. Then, too, ...
— The Idler, Volume III., Issue XIII., February 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly. Edited By Jerome K. Jerome & Robert Barr • Various
... age, he had held public office almost continuously. In the state assembly, as Mayor of Elmira, as Lieutenant-Governor with Cleveland and later as Governor, he developed an unrivalled knowledge of New York as a political arena. In 1892 he was at the height of his power and the presidency seemed to be within his grasp. The methods which he used were typical of the man—the manipulation of the ...
— The United States Since The Civil War • Charles Ramsdell Lingley
... in the sun! Let him ask his great-grandfather, the Sun, for the warm blood of a warrior!" And he had warm blood. He was a genial man, liking notoriety and excitement. He always seized an opportunity to leap into the center of the arena. ...
— Indian Heroes and Great Chieftains • [AKA Ohiyesa], Charles A. Eastman
... thousand times before seized on and relinquished—tilts valiantly at his men of straw—thrice slays the dead—and in short, strong-limbed as he is, and with all his full-grown thews and sinews, plays upon this new arena all the vagaries of a child. It may be said of philosophy, as it has been said of love,—it is, or it has been, or it will one day ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 61, No. 379, May, 1847 • Various
... because it is looked upon as spiritual suicide. The inner solidarity of the national character, the positive assurance of the fulfillment of all national duties, and the absolute silence of the people towards strangers—these are the weapons with which Japan enters the arena, clothed in a rattling ready-made steel armor, the like of which her opponents have yet to manufacture. The discretion shown by the Japanese press in all questions relating to foreign policy is regarded ...
— Banzai! • Ferdinand Heinrich Grautoff
... significant of the illusion of error, of the false claims that misrepresent God, good. Sin, sickness, and death have 538:18 no record in the Elohistic introduction of Genesis, in which God creates the heavens, earth, and man. Until that which contradicts the truth of being enters into the arena, 538:21 evil has no history, and evil is brought into view only as the unreal in contradistinction to ...
— Science and Health With Key to the Scriptures • Mary Baker Eddy
... interpretation of the artist's thought. Andrea Pisano's figure of Hope, raising hands and eyes toward an offered crown, seems but a repetition of the motive expressed by Giotto in the chiaroscuro frescoes of the Arena chapel.[72] Owing to similar causes, drapery, which in Greece had served to illustrate the structure or the movement of the body it clothed, was used by the Italian sculptors to conceal the limbs, and to ...
— Renaissance in Italy Vol. 3 - The Fine Arts • John Addington Symonds
... only I, for my own part, never saw any of those newly nam'd Bodies so resolved; but Helmont, who was much better vers'd in the Chymical Anatomizing of Bodies then either Sennertus or I, has somewhere this resolute passage;[12] Scio (saies he) ex arena, silicibus & saxis, non Calcariis, nunquam Sulphur aut Mercurium trahi posse; Nay Quercetanus himself, though the grand stickler for the Tria Prima, has this Confession of the Irresolubleness of Diamonds;[13] ...
— The Sceptical Chymist • Robert Boyle
... d'Orleans, the amiable Infanta, who had proved so patient as well as so munificent a host—and who had, without murmur or reproach, seen her previously tranquil and pious Court changed by the dissipation and cabals of her foreign guests into a perpetual arena of strife and even bloodshed—the Infanta Isabella Clara Eugenia, whose very name was reverenced throughout the whole of the Low Countries, expired on the 1st of December at the age of sixty-eight, after having governed Flanders ...
— The Life of Marie de Medicis, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Julia Pardoe
... by which his barbarism had become semified was that of the public arena, in which, by exhibitions of manly and beastly valor, the minds of his subjects ...
— A Chosen Few - Short Stories • Frank R. Stockton
... or rejoicing in the freedom of undress. The several roofs of the large house, rising in successive terraces three stories high, form an irregular amphitheatre filled with humanity of all sizes, shapes, ages, clothing, in glaring contrast with one another. In the arena formed by the court-yard, form and colour intermingle with more order and regularity; and at the same time greater brilliancy is exhibited. The fantastic headdresses of the women nod and vibrate like waving plants of Indian corn; the lustrous hair and the gaudy costumes glisten ...
— The Delight Makers • Adolf Bandelier
... a thread through all these events was a little counterplot. The Corsicans at Toulon were persons of importance, and had shown their mettle. Salicetti, Buonaparte, Arena, and Cervoni were now men of mark; the two latter had, like Buonaparte, been promoted, though to much lower rank. As Salicetti declared in a letter written on December twenty-eighth, they were scheming ...
— The Life of Napoleon Bonaparte - Vol. I. (of IV.) • William Milligan Sloane
... glittering armlets, stood behind, holding feathered canopies to shield their mistresses from the sun. All this confusing concourse of wealth and poverty each moment increasing in breadth, and density, as every avenue emptied new swarms into the packed arena, until it seemed as though not only all Rome, but half the empire had ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol V. Issue III. March, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... thus all enclosed in the mile-long space between St. George and the Palisade. Upon that narrow strip of earth, scarce six paces in width, more than five thousand men met in mortal combat—a narrow arena for so many gladiators, hemmed in on both sides by the sea. The patriots had, with solemn ceremony, before starting upon their enterprise, vowed to destroy the dyke and relieve Antwerp, or to perish in the attempt. They were ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... fashion, assuming for both a sharply polemic manner, and ranging among their respective followers all the other writers of their time. Then imagine the issue between them to be drawn not only in the field of letters, but also in the pulpit, the theatre, and the political arena, and some slight notion may be obtained of the condition of affairs which preceded the advent of Bjoernson and the true birth of Norwegian literature ...
— Bjoernstjerne Bjoernson • William Morton Payne
... prisoner." The court was densely crowded, and as I emerged into it, the sea of faces, suddenly caught en masse, seemed cold and alien. The feeling was only momentary, but I fancy it resembled the weird thrill that must have swept through the ancient captive as he entered the Roman arena from his dark lair, and confronted the vague host of indifferent faces that were to watch his ...
— Prisoner for Blasphemy • G. W. [George William] Foote
... the arena excited little or no condemnation, the prevalence of various other sorts of immorality, at variance with the practice of better days, could not fail to call ...
— Outline of Universal History • George Park Fisher
... English school now wholly perished,—these are too surely superseded, in the windows that stop the crowd, by the thrilling attraction with which Dore, Gerome, and Tadema have invested the gambling table, the dueling ground, and the arena; or by the more material and almost tangible truth with which the apothecary-artist stereographs the stripped actress, and the ...
— Ariadne Florentina - Six Lectures on Wood and Metal Engraving • John Ruskin
... are deeply sensible of the mercies of God. He gave us for fifty years a most precious son. He has now only hidden him for a very brief space from the sight of our eyes. It seems a violent transition from such thoughts to the arena of political contention, but the transition may be softened by the conviction we profoundly hold that we, in the first and greatest of our present controversies, work for the honor, well-being and future peace of our opponents not ...
— The Grand Old Man • Richard B. Cook
... listened to your damned insolence. Now you shall listen to me! I had meant to retire soon from the world of active business. I was almost satisfied. You have altered my plans. Just once again I shall return to the arena and I shall never leave it again, until I have accomplished my single purpose." He halted with eyes burning like those of a maniac, and the fever of passion shaking him. Words ...
— Destiny • Charles Neville Buck
... and would have escaped had not Hanscom intercepted him. The room was instantly in an uproar. Several of Busby's friends leaped to his aid, and for a few minutes it seemed as if the coroner's court had resolved itself into an arena for battling bears. Busby fought desperately, and might have gained his freedom, after all, had not Rawlins ...
— They of the High Trails • Hamlin Garland
... which her grandmother encountered in the visit to Madame De Boismorel, and it appeared to her that the world was exceedingly unjust, and that the institutions of society were highly absurd. Thus was her mind training for activity in the arena of revolution. She was pondering deeply all the abuses of society. She had become enamored of the republican liberty of antiquity. She was ready to embrace with enthusiasm any hopes of change. All the games and amusements of girlhood ...
— Madame Roland, Makers of History • John S. C. Abbott
... stairs for the triumphal entry. The splendour of this parade may not be marred by any clown costumes, so the two novices are left upstairs, peering through holes in the dressing-room wall. The big arena is all an expanse of eager faces. The band strikes up a stirring ditty. A wave of excitement sweeps through the dingy quarters of the Garden. The show is on, and how delirious ...
— Pipefuls • Christopher Morley
... country township, all the influences that operate to divide men into sects and parties are keenly and continuously felt. To a dweller there, it is well-nigh impossible to keep out of the arena of strife. Now that there is so much confusion and division in religious matters, strong feeling is more easily stirred on any secular subject that may happen to arise for discussion. If the Wee ...
— Literary Tours in The Highlands and Islands of Scotland • Daniel Turner Holmes
... struggles that evening over the study fire, I had supposed that they had begun only after her husband's death, and that her life with him had in some measure trained her for the fight. That she should have been pitched into the arena, a mere child, with no experience of life, appalled me. And, as she spoke, there came to me the knowledge that now I could never do what I had come to do. I could not give her up. She needed me. I tried not to ...
— The Little Nugget • P.G. Wodehouse
... height of pre-eminence which no other novel of its time has reached. The clashing of rivalry and the deepest human passions, the perfect reproduction of brilliant Roman life, and the tense, fierce atmosphere of the arena have kept their deep fascination. A ...
— The Blue Wall - A Story of Strangeness and Struggle • Richard Washburn Child
... was tempted to believe that the Henry Deux chair itself had spoken. "I have often told you that life is not a romance; you have seen me crushed, worn and weary with my literary labors; your turn has now come to enter the arena. You are a man,"—the child was but twelve,—"you are a man now, and must prove yourself to be one. For a year,—the year that I have been supposed to neglect you,—I have permitted you to run free, ...
— Jack - 1877 • Alphonse Daudet
... headlands, which jut out into the ocean all along the coasts of California, Oregon, and Washington Territory, served as landmarks to direct the mariner in his course. All he has to do is to steer from one to another; from Point Reyes outside the Golden Gate to Point Arena, the next in succession, and so on till he comes to Cape Flattery, upon rounding which he enters the Straits of Fuca, towards the end of ...
— Handbook to the new Gold-fields • R. M. Ballantyne
... would not have accepted him. From the very first there had been an exasperating fascination in the tricksiness with which she had—not met his advances, but—wheeled away from them. She had been brought to accept him in spite of everything—brought to kneel down like a horse under training for the arena, though she might have an objection to it all the while. On the whole, Grandcourt got more pleasure out of this notion than he could have done out of winning a girl of whom he was sure that she had a strong inclination for him personally. And yet this pleasure in mastering reluctance flourished ...
— Daniel Deronda • George Eliot
... read this, ever watch through a night with something on your mind you are to be forced to speak of in the morning—a compulsion awaiting you as a lion awaiting the debut of a reluctant martyr in the arena of the Coliseum? Did you, so watching, feel—not the tedium—but the maddening speed of the hours, the cruelty of the striking clocks? Were you conscious of a grateful reliance on your bedroom door, still closed between you ...
— Somehow Good • William de Morgan
... Joe—do you mean—?" She sensed that something was wrong, but walking around the circus arena, with performers coming and going, was not the place to speak of it. Joe ...
— Joe Strong The Boy Fire-Eater - The Most Dangerous Performance on Record • Vance Barnum
... to go outside the charmed soil of Greece. Only on the banks of the Nile will the new culture find a shrine, whose remote and mysterious authority frees it from the spell of Hellenism, now no longer the exponent of the world's thought, while it is near enough to the arena where human progress is fighting its way onward, to inspire and be inspired by the mighty nation that is succeeding Greece as ...
— A History of Roman Literature - From the Earliest Period to the Death of Marcus Aurelius • Charles Thomas Cruttwell
... "Notice had been posted on all the public places that on a certain day the bull called 'El Moro' would be introduced into the arena, and that, when he should have been goaded to the utmost fury, a young girl would appear and reduce the animal to quiet subjection. The people of Cadiz had heard of 'El Moro' as the most magnificent bull ever brought into the city, and it soon became known that the girl just advertised was a peasant ...
— Cole's Funny Picture Book No. 1 • Edward William Cole
... joyously, cool-eyed, alert, heart and soul in the work ahead; yet ever with that other self within him, which stood apart as a spectator in the arena, and watched through the smoke and crimson light of battle the faces of those who fought,—the fierce delight of one, the black hate of another, red wounds, and the swift black swoop of Death. His heart sang its high song of triumph which his lips would fain have echoed, ...
— Nicanor - Teller of Tales - A Story of Roman Britain • C. Bryson Taylor
... proud. He had hoped quiet in his sullen lair, But Man and Destiny beset him there: 900 Inured to hunters, he was found at bay; And they must kill, they cannot snare the prey. Stern, unambitious, silent, he had been Henceforth a calm spectator of Life's scene; But dragged again upon the arena, stood A leader not unequal to the feud; In voice—mien—gesture—savage nature spoke, And from his eye the ...
— The Works Of Lord Byron, Vol. 3 (of 7) • Lord Byron
... returns to its beginnings and repeats itself. The Romans ruled the world, yes. They were so mighty, the Romans, so invincible, that they could permit themselves a vice or two, they could afford to live at the arena, they had their fun with young boys and animals. Then one day retribution overtook them, their children's children lost battles everywhere, and their children's children again only sat—sat and looked ...
— Look Back on Happiness • Knut Hamsun
... the law of God." The two are contrary to one another; so that when the heart goes out in its inclination, it is immediately hindered and opposed by the law. Sometimes the collision between them is terrible, and the soul becomes; an arena of tumultuous passions. The heart and will are intensely determined to do wrong, while the conscience is unyielding and uncompromising, and utters its denunciations, and thunders its warnings. And what a dreadful ...
— Sermons to the Natural Man • William G.T. Shedd
... supreme artist in fiction, and the trashy confections of the literary artisans—e.g., Sienkiewicz, Dumas, Lew Wallace, and their kind. Conrad's materials, at bottom, are almost identical with those of the artisans. He, too, has his chariot races, his castaways, his carnivals of blood in the arena. He, too, takes us through shipwrecks, revolutions, assassinations, gaudy heroisms, abominable treacheries. But always he illuminates the nude and amazing event with shafts of light which reveal not only the last detail of its workings, but also the complex of origins and inducements behind it. ...
— A Book of Prefaces • H. L. Mencken
... renown, is visiting Chicago in the company of her father. Mamma Leiter plans a garden party in compliment to Ambassador and Madame Cambon, while brother Joseph courts fame from the arena of Buffalo Bill; but for a clear space of a day or two we have learned naught of Daisy of the violet orbs. They are the loveliest eyes in Washington, by contrast with which the commoner grays and blues appeal to the enamoured diplomats but as ...
— The Onlooker, Volume 1, Part 2 • Various
... brandish a redoubtable weapon: starvation. Already thousands of acres that might be richly fertile lie idle or are pasture for herds of wild bulls for the arena. The great land-owning families hold estates all over Spain; if in a given region the workers become too exigent, they decide to leave the land in fallow for a year or two. In the villages it becomes a question of starve or emigrate. To emigrate many certificates are needed. ...
— Rosinante to the Road Again • John Dos Passos
... European bankers his property had been diminished; he had a family to support; yet, neither dispirited nor complaining, he reentered his profession, and, devoting his leisure hours to literature and science, apparently abandoned the political arena, without manifesting a design or desire to return to it. But he was not destined to remain long in private life. At this period the Federalists had lost the control of national affairs, but they retained their superiority in Massachusetts. ...
— Memoir of the Life of John Quincy Adams. • Josiah Quincy
... conditions for being members of one federation. If they had sufficiently the same interests, they have not, and never can have, a sufficient habit of taking counsel together. They are not part of the same public; they do not discuss and deliberate in the same arena, but apart, and have only a most imperfect knowledge of what passes in the minds of one another. They neither know each other's objects nor have confidence in each other's principles of conduct. Let any Englishman ask himself how he should like his destinies to depend on an assembly of which ...
— Critical Miscellanies (Vol. 3 of 3) - Essay 9: The Expansion of England • John Morley
... on his strong arm was a pleasure not declined by reigning belles. Many looks that to other men might have been the arrows of Cupid were directed toward him, but they glanced harmlessly from his polished armor. Society was to him what business was to his brother,—an arena in which he easily manifested his power. At the same time he was a manly fellow, and had no taste for corner flirtations or the excitement of drawing perilously near to a committal with those who would have responded to marked attentions. The atmosphere he loved was that of general ...
— A Young Girl's Wooing • E. P. Roe
... was now most interesting. We were close spectators looking down upon the exhibition as though upon an arena. I never saw such fury in an elephant; the air was full of stones and dust, as he kicked with such force that the tiger for the moment was lost to view in the tremendous struggle, and being kicked away ...
— Wild Beasts and their Ways • Sir Samuel W. Baker
... his mates without much observation. He was reticent in speech and reserved in manner, and he was averse to intimacy; he had, nevertheless, a full share in collegiate life and showed no signs of withdrawal from the common arena. He did not indulge in sports, saving some rough-and-tumble play, nor did he ride horseback or drive, nor apparently did he care for that side of youthful life at all, though he was willing to fight on occasion, and joined the military ...
— Nathaniel Hawthorne • George E. Woodberry
... the history of the work, which, with the Origin of Species, marks an epoch in the history of biological sciences—the work with which the cautious, peace-loving investigator ventured forth from his contemplative life into the arena of strife and unrest, and laid himself open to all the annoyances that deep-rooted belief and prejudice, and the prevailing tendency of scientific thought at the ...
— Evolution in Modern Thought • Ernst Haeckel
... great walled arena in which previous rulers of Baroda have had fights between elephants, tigers, lions and other wild beasts for the amusement of their court and the population generally. And they remind you of those we read about ...
— Modern India • William Eleroy Curtis
... from the lists, leaving them free for the younger knights to run a course at the ring. The first to enter the arena was Sir Thomas Wyat; and as he was known to be a skilful jouster, it was expected he would come off triumphantly. But a glance from the royal balcony rendered his arm unsteady, and he ...
— Windsor Castle • William Harrison Ainsworth
... Collins appears to have been attended by painful circumstances, and one may be permitted to regret the disappearance from the literary arena of this vigorous pundit. He had an agreeable face, with pendant hair and the chin of a fighter. His industry must have been terrific, and personally I can forgive anything to him who consistently and violently works. He had also acquired much learning. Indeed, I should suppose ...
— Books and Persons - Being Comments on a Past Epoch 1908-1911 • Arnold Bennett
... chosen a maid more with a view to my likings than to those of my sweetheart. I told him that I should not fail to call on him, and he replied that he would be happy to see me at any hour, and that I should easily find him at his casino at St. Pierre d'Arena, where he often ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... begin a manager must be located who knew all the ins and outs and ups and downs of the grain business; also a seat upon the Winnipeg Grain Exchange must be purchased before the farmers could enter the arena as dealers in grain. None of the officers of the young company which was about to try its wings overlooked the fact that nothing could be more foolhardy than for farmers like themselves, direct from the green pastures, to attempt the plunge they were about ...
— Deep Furrows • Hopkins Moorhouse
... the blessed memory of that dear old grandmother, or the gentle words and caressing hand of that blessed mother gone to the unknown world, to face in its stead the idea of a female justice of the peace or township constable? For my part I want when I go to my home—when I turn from the arena where man contends with man for what we call the prizes of this paltry world—I want to go back, not to be received in the masculine embrace of some female ward politician, but to the earnest, loving look and touch of a true woman. I want to go back ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume IV • Various
... a shower of golden rain it falls on men and women alike. See how they grovel for it, the brutes, the vampires! How they fight and grab and sprawl over it! How they shriek and howl and curse! It is like an arena of wild beasts; it is pandemonium. Oh, how I despise them! My gorge rises, but—to the end, to the end. I ...
— The Trail of '98 - A Northland Romance • Robert W. Service
... gone by many lives were often lost in these holy scrimmages. For example, in the year 1834, the famous Ibrahim Pasha witnessed the frantic scene from one of the galleries, and, being moved with compassion at the sight, descended with a few guards into the arena in the chimerical hope of restoring peace and order among the contending Christians. He contrived to force his way into the midst of the dense crowd, but there the heat and pressure were so great that he fainted away; a body of soldiers, ...
— Balder The Beautiful, Vol. I. • Sir James George Frazer
... Arena for April, most beautifully and expressively contemplates the schools which are to be. He says: "I will picture what I believe to be the common school of the twentieth century. There will be handsome schoolhouses in abundance, placed in the center ...
— A Broader Mission for Liberal Education • John Henry Worst
... of tracks, so similar to hieroglyphics as to justify an initiatory reverence in a Cadmian mind, drawn indefinitely across the smooth-spread yellow sand, led me, curious, to the arena of his achievements. A dozen similar tracks led from different directions, converging to a pile of dung, and here half a dozen Scarabaei, of as many sizes, were cutting and carving, and every now and then another came buzzing up from the leeward, flying in ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 108, October, 1866 • Various
... this lethargic slumber. But when the Queen appeared at the entrance of the copse they were on foot in an instant, and melodious voices announced their eagerness to display their valour. They then hastened into a vast arena, magnificently decorated in the exact style of the ancient tournaments. Fifty dancers dressed as pages presented to the knights twenty-five superb black horses, and twenty-five of a dazzling whiteness, all most richly caparisoned. The party led by Augustus ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... wild beasts! It will doubtless be a welcome surprise to the lookers-on. Which of them can say they have ever seen the daughter of a free Roman citizen who never yet came before the law, torn to pieces in the sand of the arena? They delight in anything new! Yes, murder me, as you did Plautilla, although I never offended either you or your mother! Better die a hundred deaths than parade my dishonor before the eyes of the multitude ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... formulated. Behind the ostentatious and imposing public personages of the different periods, the arbiters of laws and policies have been the men of property. They it was who really ruled both the arena and ...
— Great Fortunes from Railroads • Gustavus Myers
... himself into the political arena in order to save his reason. Often at midnight, he would rise from his uneasy bed, buckle on his pistols, and ride like mad over the country, returning only when his horse was spent. He never saw Miss Ward again, and she married Peyton Randolph, ...
— Threads of Grey and Gold • Myrtle Reed
... cruelties. The bulls did exceeding well; but the Irish wolf-dog exceeded, which was a tall greyhound, a stately creature indeed, who beat a cruel mastiff. One of the bulls tossed a dog full into a lady's lap as she sat in one of the boxes at a considerable height from the arena. Two poor dogs were killed; and so all ended with the ape on horseback, and I most heartily weary of the rude and dirty pastime, which I had not seen, I think, in ...
— Shakespearean Playhouses - A History of English Theatres from the Beginnings to the Restoration • Joseph Quincy Adams
... happen only at the departure of a boat train! But if I was not thinking about her, I was thinking about her fifteen trunks, and Cleopatra's sixteen and Biddy's and Miss Guest's two. The maids were worse than useless, and I had no valet. I have never had a valet. I clawed, I fought, I wrestled in an arena where it was impossible to tell the wild beasts from the martyrs. I rescued small bags from under big boxes, and dashed off with a few samples to the train, in order to secure places. All other able-bodied men, including Sheridan and the artist sculptor ...
— It Happened in Egypt • C. N. Williamson & A. M. Williamson
... are embodied to-day in the Acta Sanctorum. We can see in even the most simple and non-miraculous early Christian records of the martyrdom of women that the writers were fully aware of the delicate charm of the heroine who, like Perpetua at Carthage, tossed by wild cattle in the arena, rises to gather her torn garment around her and to put up her disheveled hair.[76] It was an easy step to the stories of romantic adventure. Among these delightful stories I may refer especially to the legend of Thekla, which has been placed, incorrectly it may be, as early as the first ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 6 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... became evident that this condition of affairs would carry the tariff questions once more into the political arena, as an active issue between parties. Thus far, the new Republican organization had passively acquiesced in existing laws on the subject; but the general distress caused great bodies of men, as is always the case, to look to the action of the Government for relief. ...
— Twenty Years of Congress, Vol. 1 (of 2) • James Gillespie Blaine
... except the color and the group of the Nations of the East above the Arch of the Rising Sun. The colonnade is Corinthian, all the arches are Roman, the sculpture is classic, the paintings are romantic, mystic,—the Court of the Universe may properly hold all things. It is thus an arena for the expression of universal themes, on which the nations of the East and West look down from their lofty Arches of Triumph. With this key, the symbolism of the sculpture in the court is easy. The Stars, by Calder, stand ...
— The Jewel City • Ben Macomber
... it was rage, and resistance, and redress—but not despondency nor despair. I grant that those are not amiable feelings; but, in this world of bustle and broil, and especially in the career of writing, a man should calculate upon his powers of resistance before he goes into the arena. ...
— Selected English Letters (XV - XIX Centuries) • Various
... then as they came so they retire, and each one betakes himself to his own dwelling. And the king withdraws to the interior of his palace by that gate which I have already mentioned — that which stands between the two buildings that are in the arena (TERREYRO); the courtesans and bayaderes[442] remain dancing in front of the temple and idol for a long time. This is what is done during the morning of each day of these nine days, with the ceremonies I have mentioned, and each day more splendid ...
— A Forgotten Empire: Vijayanagar; A Contribution to the History of India • Robert Sewell
... editor had found himself handicapped by a lack of the mysterious enrichment that a tour through college gives the least absorbent mind. He was determined to provide it for his boy, though Joel felt that every moment's delay in leaping into the commercial arena was so much delay in arriving ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1920 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... people cannot, of course, put his case in that court. It was with full realization of the difficulties, of the certainty of repeated defeats, and of the overwhelming power against them that the socialists entered this great arena to fight their battle. Universal suffrage is a merciless thing. How often has it served the purpose of stripping the socialist naked and exposing him to a terrible humiliation! Again and again, in the history ...
— Violence and the Labor Movement • Robert Hunter
... present a fully rounded sketch of human evolution. So far as his physical form is concerned, man became practically completed ages ago, as the supreme effort of nature in the moulding and vitalizing of matter. When the arena of the struggle for existence became transferred from the body to the mind, variation in the body, once so active, rapidly declined; and with the full employment of the intellect in the conflict with ...
— Man And His Ancestor - A Study In Evolution • Charles Morris
... economist, born at Salisbury; though blind, it was his early ambition to enter the arena of politics, and he devoted himself to the study of political economy, of which he became professor at Cambridge; entering Parliament, he became Postmaster-General under Mr. Gladstone in 1880; he wrote and published works on ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... and from the stories circulating—perhaps circulated by the agents of the management—divined that no common attraction was to be presented. Besides, to displace La Belle Stamboulane worthily on the stage, that chosen arena where the female gladiator carries the day, a miracle of beauty, wit and skill was requisite. Elsewhere, ability, practice, art, artifice, many gifts and accomplishments may triumph, but the fifth element as indispensable as the others, air, water, fire and earth—it is ...
— The Son of Clemenceau • Alexandre (fils) Dumas
... and that is that so long as Tariff Reform and Imperial policy are intimately connected together there is not, so far as can at present be judged, the most remote chance of Imperialism emerging from the arena of party strife. It is true, and is, moreover, a subject for national congratulation, that there has been of late years a steady growth of Imperialist ideas. The day is probably past for ever when Ministers, whether Liberal or Conservative, could speak of the colonies as a burden, ...
— Political and Literary essays, 1908-1913 • Evelyn Baring
... a railroad magnate, and in full sympathy with his boy's love for the open; indeed, it was from the elder Wellington that Jerry, no doubt, inherited his love for fair play, whether in games on the baseball or football arena, or in sports afield; his sympathies seemed to be always with the under dog in the fight, and he would scorn to shoot a rabbit or a quail unless in full flight; or to take a game-fish by any other means than the methods in ...
— The Outdoor Chums - The First Tour of the Rod, Gun and Camera Club • Captain Quincy Allen
... coral world, over which the ship was passing. For many hours the Triton had sailed thus, through water as clear as crystal, revealing full sixty feet below the dazzling lights and ever-changing shadows of the uneven bottom. Now and again she would pass over a broad arena of sand, gleaming white amid encircling walls of living coral many-hued, and gently swaying weed and sponge of red and yellow, which, though so far below, seemed to rise and touch the frigate's keel and then with quivering motion sink again astern. And as the ship's great hull cast ...
— Rodman The Boatsteerer And Other Stories - 1898 • Louis Becke
... the arena in front of the sacred edifice; and at length a gentle tread and a rustling of velvet met his ears. Then, in a few moments, as if emerging from the darkness, the majestic form of Nisida appeared; and when Stephano approached ...
— Wagner, the Wehr-Wolf • George W. M. Reynolds
... sex, who boast themselves your teachers—making yet this wise use of the slander: never be so bold in authorship, as to hazard the loss of your sweet, retiring, modest, amiable, natural dependence: never stand out as champions on the arena of strife, but if you will, strew it with posies for the king of the tournament; it ill becomes you to be wrestlers, though a Lycurgus allowed it, and Atalanta, another Eve, was tripped up by an apple in the foot-race. So digressing, ...
— The Complete Prose Works of Martin Farquhar Tupper • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... position to-day only to announce the decision to which the Government have come with respect to the Transvaal. The case of the Transvaal is urgent. It is the nerve-centre of South Africa. It is the arena in which all questions of South African politics—social, moral, racial, and economic—are fought out; and this new country, so lately reclaimed from the wilderness, with a white population of less than 300,000 souls, already reproduces ...
— Liberalism and the Social Problem • Winston Spencer Churchill
... Beleon.] Item prope Acon ad ripam dictam Beleon, est fossa multum vtilis, et mirabilis quae dicitur fossa Mennon, haec est rotunda circumferentia, cuius diameter continet prope 100. cubitos, plena alba et resplendente arena, et mundi ex qua conficitur mundum et perlucidum vitrum. Pro hac arena venitur per aquas, et per terras, et exportatur manibus et vehiculis prope et procul, et quantumcunque de die exhauritur, repleta mane altero reperitur: Et est in fossa ventus grandis et ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques and Discoveries - of the English Nation. v. 8 - Asia, Part I. • Richard Hakluyt
... audience, closely packed, knelt or stood. We joined the worshipers, but looked around with curious eyes. When the prayers were ended the street was one living mass of people, all moving toward the outskirts of the town. We went with the tide, and with the tide entered the arena, where a bull fight was on—curious transition from church to arena. It was a great sight—I mean that of seeing the people—there were 15,000 present in that amphitheatre. It looked just like the old Roman arena, and to us was in all its ...
— Bidwell's Travels, from Wall Street to London Prison - Fifteen Years in Solitude • Austin Biron Bidwell
... reforms they want to see abolished, which of them are useless, which of them are not necessary? Contrary to the fond delusion of the revolutionary group, the defenders of the present system don't and won't hand out anything; everything obtained is wrenched from them; and in the political arena, armed with the ballot box and the knowledge of its use, there is nothing ...
— Socialism As It Is - A Survey of The World-Wide Revolutionary Movement • William English Walling
... with its fluted Corinthian columns, its noble entablature, its massive pediment, its perfect proportions; reluctantly turned down the Boulevard Victor Hugo, past the Lycee and the Bourse, made the circuit of the mighty, double-arched oval of the Arena, and then retraced his steps. As he expected, M. Bocardon had left the bureau. It was the hour of absinthe. The porter named M. Bocardon's habitual cafe. There, in a morose corner of the terrace, Aristide found the ...
— The Joyous Adventures of Aristide Pujol • William J. Locke
... revivified after the lapse of a certain period—say five or six hundred years. Resuming existence at the expiration of this time, he would invariably find his great work converted into a species of hap-hazard note-book—that is to say, into a kind of literary arena for the conflicting guesses, riddles, and personal squabbles of whole herds of exasperated commentators. These guesses, etc., which passed under the name of annotations, or emendations, were found so completely to have enveloped, distorted, and overwhelmed ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 5 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... steer was rounded up and chased from the arena, and once more Mayor Maloney, watch in ...
— The Texan - A Story of the Cattle Country • James B. Hendryx
... always pathetic. Christian saw old age as a tragedy, a disaster, to alleviate which no effort on the part of the young could be too great; the pathos and the pity of it were ever before her eyes. In contest with her father, if contest there were to be, she would go into the arena with her right hand tied behind ...
— Mount Music • E. Oe. Somerville and Martin Ross
... fought a battle in defence of Rome, not first to have retreated, giving out that he was acting with a subtlety worthy of Themistokles himself, and then to have regarded every day spent in Thessaly without fighting as a disgrace. The plain of Pharsalia was not specially appointed by heaven as the arena in which he was to contend with Caesar for the empire of the world, nor was he summoned by the voice of a herald either to fight or to avow himself vanquished. There were many plains, and innumerable cities and countries which his command of the sea would have enabled him ...
— Plutarch's Lives Volume III. • Plutarch
... late friends of Shunan joined the riders who now crowded into the open space from the opposite sides of the arena. ...
— The Junior Classics • Various
... life in many capitals up to the limit of his vitality, and was still covetous of notice from the sex who had, in a checkered career, given him much pleasure, and had provided him with far more anxiety. But he was almost uncannily able and astute, as every man found who entered the arena of diplomacy to treat with him or circumvent him. Suavity, with an attendant mordant wit, and a mastery of tactics unfamiliar to the minds and capacities of Englishmen, made him a great factor in the wide world of haute politique; but it also ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... too, following many and follow'd by many, inaugurate a religion, I descend into the arena, (It may be I am destin'd to utter the loudest cries there, the winner's pealing shouts, Who knows? they may rise from me yet, ...
— Leaves of Grass • Walt Whitman
... pictured him, the beau-ideal of muscular Christian, the Fighting Parson, eighteen hands high, terrific in wind and limb, with a golden mane and a Greek profile; a Pekinese in the drawing-room, a bull-dog in the arena; a soupcon of Saint FRANCIS with a dash of JOHN ...
— Punch, Volume 153, July 11, 1917 - Or the London Charivari. • Various
... that country, to fight a large royal tiger, whose ferocity was raised to the highest point by want of food and artificial irritation. The only weapon allowed to the human combatant was a lance, with the point broken off. After wrapping a cloth round his left fist and arm, the man entered the arena with an air of undaunted calmness, and fixed a steady, menacing gaze upon the brute. The tiger sprang furiously upon his intended victim, who, with extraordinary boldness and rapidity, thrust his left fist into ...
— Stories about Animals: with Pictures to Match • Francis C. Woodworth
... senatorial contest. Should that be an indictment? She craved excitement—expected to hold the stage in any episode; her position as the wife of an eminent jurist gave her a certain prestige in the political arena where pretty women were not unwelcome. The power they wielded, whether consciously or not, was almost unlimited—Winifred had seen enough of the average legislator to appreciate ...
— A Man of Two Countries • Alice Harriman
... seals gives particular force to this cry of the martyrs. For nearly three centuries the civil power of Pagan Rome had been employed to crush the cause of God. During ten terrible seasons of persecution they had been crucified, slain with the sword, sawn asunder, devoured by beasts in the arena, and given to the flames. When Constantine, a nominal Christian emperor, ascended the throne and protected religion by law, it was believed that persecutions must cease; but soon the discovery was made that the sword had only changed hands, there having ...
— The Revelation Explained • F. Smith
... there exulted that he had solved the great mystery. Dr. Wallis, the Savilian professor of mathematics at Oxford,[381] with a deep aversion to Hobbes's political and religious sentiments, as he understood them, rejoiced to see this famous combatant descending into his own arena. He certainly was eager to meet him single-handed; for he instantly confuted Hobbes, by his "Elenchus Geometriae Hobbianae." Hobbes, who saw the newly-acquired province of his mathematics in danger, and which, like every new possession, ...
— Calamities and Quarrels of Authors • Isaac D'Israeli
... of mind; and, lastly, that industry which opened to him, in the reading and in the making of books, a new world from which all the sordid pettiness, and the infinite annoyances, of the political arena were banished. There is but little more to tell of that strenuous life, which had seen so much of storm and tempest, varied by gleams of sunshine, and, above all, illuminated by an imagination so rich, and by an historic sense ...
— The Life of Edward Earl of Clarendon V2 • Henry Craik
... well-built ship would not obey the helm, but went on its way all along Peloponnesus: and the lord, far-working Apollo, guided it easily with the breath of the breeze. So the ship ran on its course and came to Arena and lovely Argyphea and Thryon, the ford of Alpheus, and well-placed Aepy and sandy Pylos and the men of Pylos; past Cruni it went and Chalcis and past Dyme and fair Elis, where the Epei rule. And at the time when she was making for Pherae, exulting in the ...
— Hesiod, The Homeric Hymns, and Homerica • Homer and Hesiod
... antagonist—for the possession of two tusks gave the rogue a great advantage—nerved him. Holding on to the tree he dragged himself up and looked around for his rifle. He could not see it, and he dared not cross the arena in which the two huge combatants ...
— The Elephant God • Gordon Casserly
... treasure in adding to its natural beauties the adornments of art. Scattered through this region—through the Provence of to-day, and, over on the other side of the Rhone, through Languedoc—are the remnants of their magnificent creations: the Pont-du-Gard; the arena, and the baths, and the Tour-Magne, and the beautiful Maison-Carree, at Nimes; at Arles the arena, the palace of Constantine, and the wreck of the once exquisite theatre; the baths at Aix; the triumphal ...
— The Christmas Kalends of Provence - And Some Other Provencal Festivals • Thomas A. Janvier
... hearing how he passed his time in London, perceiving what an animated existence it was, so full of variety and occupation, showed some fears lest his stay in Italy, leading such a peaceful, retired, concentrated sort of life, away from the political arena presented by his own country, might entail too great a sacrifice offered on the altar of affection. "Oh no," said he, "I regret nothing belonging to that great world, where all is artificial, where one can not live to one's self, where one is obliged to be too much occupied with ...
— My Recollections of Lord Byron • Teresa Guiccioli
... teacher. Society pours in its influences upon us like the thousand streams that flood the ocean. Scholastic men and women may speak of book Education; it is mine to speak of life Education. Life is my field and my theme; that great common arena where men and women do battle with the ...
— Aims and Aids for Girls and Young Women • George Sumner Weaver
... part of the population against the rest, so as to facilitate the victory of Kornilov-Kerensky. Instead of doing their duty, the Right Socialist Revolutionaries and the Cadets have transformed the Duma into an arena of political attack upon the Soviets of Workers', Soldiers' and Peasants' Deputies, against the revolutionary Government of peace, bread ...
— Ten Days That Shook the World • John Reed
... another instance for a moment, there is this pure intellect, bidding good-by to the political arena, to the commercial strife, saying farewell to the dreams of beauty, and falling back upon the cells of the brain, traversing the corridors of thought, and entering first here and there into that labyrinth of instinct, or association, or accumulative learning. Certainly, there is a power of a delight ...
— The world's great sermons, Volume 8 - Talmage to Knox Little • Grenville Kleiser
... water for the exhibition of mock naval engagements. Then, when the water was let out again, great scaffolding poles were inserted into stone sockets, and a platform suspended on a level with the dens, from which the wild beasts were let into the arena. And here the gladiators fought, and the Christians and criminals were torn to pieces, to make sport for the countless multitude sitting, crowded tier upon tier around, while the blue heavens looked down on the inhuman and bloody sight, and the poor ...
— Fair Italy, the Riviera and Monte Carlo • W. Cope Devereux
... conqueror—strong, pitiless, unswerving. Eagle eyes, quick to discern and unfaltering to pursue; jaw square and intrepid; mouth formed to keep secrets and cajole men to his will—a face that hid much and revealed little. It told of power and intellect, but the soul of the man was a hidden thing. Not in the arena where he had fought and triumphed, giving fierce blow for blow, was it to be shown; but here, looking down on the homeland, with the strength of the hills about him, it rose dominantly and claimed its own. The old bond held. Yonder below him was home—the old house ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1905 to 1906 • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... exception of a score or so that were lost to view? I do not know, but I fancy he felt his loneliness. I think there must have rushed over him a feeling akin to that of a gladiator tossed into the arena and bade to fight for his life. I think that solitary little black figure standing there felt that for the particular time and place he bore the weight and responsibility of his race; that for him to fail meant general defeat; but he won, and nobly. His oration was Wendell Phillips's ...
— The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man • James Weldon Johnson
... Tom a blow and vanished again into the crowd. For a moment or two he kept his head and temper; the assailants individually were too insignificant to put out his strength upon; but head and temper were rapidly going;—he was like a bull in the arena with the picadores sticking their little javelins in him. A smart blow on the nose, which set a myriad of stars dancing before his eyes, finished the business, and he rushed after the last assailant, dealing blows to right and left, on small and ...
— Tom Brown at Oxford • Thomas Hughes
... the sea and realize what a terrible depth it is. The roar, meanwhile, is horrible. You are stunned by it as by the roar of a great waterfall. You see a wave of unusual magnitude rolling in from far beyond the wild revelry of waters on 'The Rips.' It leaps into the arena as if fresh and eager for the fray, clutches another Bacchanal like itself, and the two towering floods rush swiftly toward the shore. Instinctively you run backward to escape what seems an impending ...
— Elsie at Nantucket • Martha Finley
... her pupils the story of the emotional lady who, to put her lover to the test, bade him pick up the glove which she had thrown down into the arena between the tiger and the lion. The lover does her bidding in order to vindicate his character as a brave knight. One boy after hearing the story at once states his contempt for the knight's acquiescence, which he declares ...
— The Art of the Story-Teller • Marie L. Shedlock
... That was sufficient for him. But he surveyed the surrounding mountains well before he spoke. They had halted in a sort of cup-like hollow, with towering sides surmounted by huge glaciers down which the wind was now whistling with vicious force. There were only two exits from this vast arena. The one by which the travellers had entered it, and the other directly ahead of them; the latter was only to be approached by a wide ledge which skirted one of the mountains and inclined sharply upwards. Higher up the mountain ...
— The Hound From The North • Ridgwell Cullum
... heads, small and round, rest squarely upon necks columnar as the trunks of trees. Woollen tunics, open at the breast, sleeveless and loosely girt, drape their bodies, leaving bare arms and legs of such development that they at once suggest the arena; and when thereto we add their careless, confident, insolent manner, we cease to wonder that the people give them way, and stop after they have passed to look at them again. They are gladiators—wrestlers, runners, boxers, swordsmen; professionals ...
— Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ • Lew Wallace
... its humanity, is one thing; to receive it because it is like God, or for its childhood, is another. The former will do little to destroy ambition. Alone it might argue only a wider scope to it, because it admits all men to the arena of the strife. But the latter strikes at the very root of emulation. As soon as even service is done for the honour and not for the service-sake, the doer is that moment outside the kingdom. But when we receive ...
— Unspoken Sermons - Series I., II., and II. • George MacDonald
... armor and descended into the arena. Whether he spoke well or ill, we leave it to those to say who care to turn back to the files of the papers of that campaign. Perhaps, however, it may be well to add that an entirely unbiassed person, after reading his opening speeches, delivered in the ...
— The Honorable Peter Stirling and What People Thought of Him • Paul Leicester Ford
... or in a visit to the summer theaters across the river; or to the Royal Gardens of Vauxhall, where he was on terms of friendship with the great Simpson, and where he shook the principal comic singer or the lovely equestrian of the arena by the hand. And while he could watch the grimaces or the graces of these with a satiric humor that was not deprived of sympathy, he could look on with an eye of kindness at the lookers on too; at the roystering youth bent upon enjoyment, and here taking it: at the honest parents, ...
— The History of Pendennis, Vol. 2 - His Fortunes and Misfortunes, His Friends and His Greatest Enemy • William Makepeace Thackeray
... United Provinces, losing an arm at the battle of Fleurus, a victory he did much to win. In 1623 he gathered an army and broke into lower Saxony, but was beaten by Tilly at Stadtlohn and driven back to the Netherlands. When in 1625 Christian IV., king of Denmark, entered the arena of the war, he took the field again in the Protestant interest, but after some successes he died at Wolfenbuettel on the 16th of June 1626. Christian, who loved to figure as "the friend of God, the enemy of ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 3 - "Chitral" to "Cincinnati" • Various
... auto, the result may be to {smash the stack} — often resulting in {heisenbug}s of the most diabolical subtlety. The term 'overrun screw' is used esp. of scribbles beyond the end of arrays allocated with 'malloc(3)'; this typically trashes the allocation header for the next block in the {arena}, producing massive lossage within malloc and often a core dump on the next operation to use 'stdio(3)' or 'malloc(3)' itself. See {spam}, {overrun}; see also {memory leak}, {memory smash}, {aliasing bug}, {precedence lossage}, ...
— The Jargon File, Version 4.0.0
... no answer. None of them had the courage to make the attempt. Then Pepin jumped from his seat, rushed into the arena, and with a thrust of ...
— Famous Men of the Middle Ages • John H. Haaren
... an astonishing skill in surf-riding on boards, in canoes, and without artificial support. Such skill was ranked on a par with or perhaps the same as proficiency in the pastimes of war, as did the Greeks, who addressed Diagoras, after he and his two sons had been crowned in the arena: "Die, for thou hast nothing short of divinity to desire." These ambitions had been ended in Tahiti by the frowns of the missionaries, to whom athletics were a species of diabolical possession, unworthy souls destined for hell or heaven, with but a brief ...
— Mystic Isles of the South Seas. • Frederick O'Brien
... took in the first sniff of that intoxicating circus smell that will stay by me while this clay endures. The place was beset by a hum and a glitter and a mist; suspense brooded large o'er the blank, mysterious arena. Strung up to the highest pitch of expectation, we knew not from what quarter, in what divine shape, the ...
— Dream Days • Kenneth Grahame
... been almost exclusively of a political character. The Girondins were fighting their last upon the bloody arena of the Revolution. One by one they fell still fighting, still preaching moderation, still foretelling disaster and appealing to that people, whom they had roused from one slavery, in order to throw it ...
— I Will Repay • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... did not extend to the arena, which was usually left open, but were universally adopted in all the Roman amphitheatres, after their introduction by Q. Catullus. The vast extent and extraordinary commodiousness of the amphitheatres erected by the Romans, prove not only the love of the sports exhibited in ...
— The Idler in France • Marguerite Gardiner
... ally of a power that he had hitherto always treated as an enemy. The whole of the four hundred thousand pounds were liberally intrusted to the country, the former fancy-dealer's apprentice entering the arena of virtuous and patriotic speculation, as a bull; and, if with more caution, with at least some portion of the energy and obstinacy of the desperate animal that gives title to this class of adventurers. Success crowned his laudable efforts; gold rolled in upon him like water on ...
— The Monikins • J. Fenimore Cooper
... held by fibres of thine. The diver and the miner cling to thee for safety, and they that hunt the wild-bird's egg on the sea-shaken cliff, as they swing over the frightful abyss. With the lasso the bold Matador, like the Retiarius of the ancient arena, makes the cast that is for life. Then the fine arts!—Carrara sends her block for the Laocoon by aid of thine; and what were all the galleries in Europe but a collection of gilt frames, but for thy backing and support. By thy subserviency alone (for what were ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, Number 361, November, 1845. • Various
... were hers, but crowded with what sensational memories! A hundred and a few odd pounds, every ounce vivid with health and rhythmic with desire; every thought a kiss loved, missed, or hoped for; a frail little flame that needed only time to destroy an arena of gladiators. Curving, pearly nails with flecks of white in them, a light low laugh, a sweet low voice! Perhaps this was her charm, a sort of samosen tone—low lilting minors that have to do with dusk and ...
— Fate Knocks at the Door - A Novel • Will Levington Comfort
... lurking bandolero. Sometimes, in winding through the narrow valleys, he is startled by a hoarse bellowing, and beholds above him on some green fold of the mountain side a herd of fierce Andalusian bulls, destined for the combat of the arena. There is something awful in the contemplation of these terrific animals, clothed with tremendous strength, and ranging their native pastures in untamed wildness, strangers almost to the face of man: they know no one but the solitary ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 19, Issue 547, May 19, 1832 • Various
... bottom of the garden formed a picturesque background to the whole. The smooth-shaven lawn must not be unmentioned; it made a delightful promenade; it had been the scene of many a joyous party, and it was to be the arena on which the young invited guests of to-day were to bear witness to the artistic taste, as well as to do justice to the profusion of good things provided ...
— Aunt Mary • Mrs. Perring |
