"Augean" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... course, merely a smile of compassion; what alarmed the sensible, respectable "Philistine" was the method of cleansing the Augean stable recommended by these enthusiasts. Having discovered in the course of their desultory reading that most of the ills that flesh is heir to proceed directly or indirectly from uncontrolled sexual passion and the lust of gain, they proposed to seal hermetically these two great sources of ...
— Russia • Donald Mackenzie Wallace
... have the Augean stables of these corrupt offices swept of their filth. Ned, the scoundrel, shall be sent to the right about; Mr. Darby, for his honesty, shall have each ...
— The Black Baronet; or, The Chronicles Of Ballytrain - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton
... you, old boy!" cried Allan. "Why am I like the resident manager of the Augean stable, before Hercules was called in to sweep the litter out? Because I have had my place to keep up, and I've gone and made an infernal mess of it! Why don't you laugh? By George, he doesn't see the point! Let's try again. Why am I like the ...
— Armadale • Wilkie Collins
... winter wore itself away, Mr Cheesacre, happy as he was amidst the sports of Norfolk, and prosperous as he might be with the augean spoils of Oileymead, fretted himself with an intense anxiety to bring to a close that affair which he had on his hands with the widow Greenow. There were two special dangers which disturbed him. She would give herself and all her money to that adventurer, ...
— Can You Forgive Her? • Anthony Trollope
... The Augean task of cleansing the Treasury has commenced, and brooms and scrubbing-brushes are at a premium—a little anticipative, it is true, of the approaching turn-out; but the dilatory idleness and muddle-headed ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various
... exhibited the results of a British occupation to the same extent as Limasol. The chief commissioner, Colonel Warren, R.A., was an officer of great energy and ability, and he had grappled vigorously with every difficulty and cleansed the Augean stables thoroughly. The town is about a mile and a half in length, and faces the sea in a position somewhat similar to that of Larnaca. The quay is washed by the waves, which in stormy weather dash ...
— Cyprus, as I Saw it in 1879 • Sir Samuel W. Baker
... worse than dogs to be despised and spat upon. Would that God gave us the strength and the wisdom to become voluntary scavengers of the nation as the 'suppressed' classes are forced to be. There are Augean stables enough and to spare for ...
— Freedom's Battle - Being a Comprehensive Collection of Writings and Speeches on the Present Situation • Mahatma Gandhi
... against them. No doubt until then we shall continue to hold up the British home as the Holy of Holies in the temple of honorable motherhood, innocent childhood, manly virtue, and sweet and wholesome national life. But with a clever turn of the hand this holy of holies can be exposed as an Augean stable, so filthy that it would seem more hopeful to burn it down than to attempt to sweep it out. And this latter view will perhaps prevail if the idolaters of marriage persist in refusing all proposals for reform and treating ...
— Getting Married • George Bernard Shaw
... no longer! God has given me the power to stop them; and God do so to me, and more also, if I do not use that power. To-morrow I sweep out this Augean stable of villainy, and leave not a Jew to blaspheme and cheat ...
— Hypatia - or, New Foes with an Old Face • Charles Kingsley
... printing-office in that old day and in that remote region, perhaps. To Major Sleeman was given the general superintendence of the giant task of ridding India of Thuggee, and he and his seventeen assistants accomplished it. It was the Augean Stables over again. Captain Vallancey, writing in a Madras journal in those old ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... instance, we, the xth Brigade of the yth Division, are suddenly uprooted from billets at A and planted down in barracks at B, displacing the pth Brigade of the qth Division in the operation. We have barely cleaned tip after the pth—an Augean task—and officers have just concluded messing, furnishing, and laundry arrangements with the local banditti, when the Practical Joke Department, with its tongue in its cheek, bids us prepare to go under canvas at C. Married officers hurriedly despatch advance ...
— The First Hundred Thousand • Ian Hay
... such news, Philibert!" replied the Governor in at one of despondency. "It needs the wisdom of Solon to legislate for this land, and a Hercules to cleanse its Augean stables of official corruption. But my influence at Court ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... we cannot help regarding the enormous accumulation of railway bills for next session with feelings of peculiar abhorrence. Last spring every exertion of the whole combined pitchforks was required to cleanse that Augean stable: can Sir Robert Peel have the inhumanity next year to request them to buckle to a tenfold augmented task? In our humble opinion, (and we know something of the matter,) flesh and blood are unable to stand it. The private business of this country, if conducted on ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, Number 361, November, 1845. • Various
... more feeble, so excitable, so liable to be misled by fancy, by feeling, are likely, in a position foreign to their nature, not only to stand upright themselves, but, like Atlas of old, to bear the weight of the whole political world on their shoulders—like Hercules, to cleanse the Augean stables of the political coursers—to do, in short, all that man has failed to do? No; it is, alas! only too clear that something more than the ballot-box, whether in male or female hands, is needed here. And it is the same in social life. The public ...
— Female Suffrage • Susan Fenimore Cooper
... kind favor of the 15th is received. I heartily agree with you that [no] general movement can be made that will clean out the Augean stable. If the Democracy were overthrown, it would result in giving place to a greater ...
— Abraham Lincoln, A History, Volume 2 • John George Nicolay and John Hay
... look of quiet resolution. "I think I've been through all the buts. It's an infernal climate, of course, but then I am used to the East—I know what precautions to take. And it would be a big thing to clean up that Augean stable." ...
— The Hermit and the Wild Woman and Other Stories • Edith Wharton
... taking it all in all, this sweeping is a homage which the sewer pays to civilization, and as, from this point of view, Tartuffe's conscience is a progress over the Augean stables, it is certain that the sewers ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... not have kept that quarter clean; the Augean stables were nothing to it. But look at these fellows we are coming to now. You seem to be a bit of a military critic; what do you think of them, and how do ...
— For Fortune and Glory - A Story of the Soudan War • Lewis Hough
... men," he exclaimed, in no very amiable tone. "I thought the ship was wrecked, with all that splashing and scrubbing. One would suppose that the vessel was as dirty as those Augean stables that fellow Hercules had to clean, by all ...
— The Pirate of the Mediterranean - A Tale of the Sea • W.H.G. Kingston
... that a general movement can be made that will clean out the Augean Stable. If the Democracy were overthrown it would result in giving place to a greedier and hungrier ...
— The Great Conspiracy, Complete • John Alexander Logan
... fastidious orthodoxy this question from the consideration of the public, it is but a concealed brothel, although it calls itself an orthodox pulpit. (Applause and hisses). I know what I say; your hisses can not change it. Go, clean out the Gehenna of New York! (Applause). Go, sweep the Augean stable that makes New York the lazar-house of corruption! You know that on one side or the other of these temptations lies very much of the evil of modern civilized life. You know that before them, statesmanship folds its hands ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume I • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... muddle, which oftentimes drew forth rebukes from Lucy. She was resolved to train her Harry into better ways when she had the wifely right to correct him, but, as she frequently remarked, it would be the thirteenth labour of Hercules to cleanse this modern Augean stable. ...
— The Bishop's Secret • Fergus Hume
... not far from Mount Olympus, owned a herd of oxen 3,000 in number. They were stabled in stables that had not been cleaned out for thirty years. The stench was terrible and greatly troubled the health of the land. Eurystheus set Hercules the task of cleaning out these Augean stables ...
— Young Folks Treasury, Volume 2 (of 12) • Various
... conversation of M. C——. He has so many interesting anecdotes to relate respecting the French Revolution. With regard to his present occupations, which are directed towards rural economy, he tells me that he has succeeded in a plan of cleansing the town from its Augean filth, and making it very profitable to himself; and that he calculates to obtain a revenue thereby of twenty thousand franks annually. He has, in short, undertaken to be the grand scavenger of the town, and the Government, in addition to a salary of 2,500 francs per annum, which ...
— After Waterloo: Reminiscences of European Travel 1815-1819 • Major W. E Frye
... the orator, with a smile that singularly illumined his thin, but powerful features. "As I gave it up! Into what dregs of vice, what a sink of iniquity was I plunged! The very cleansing of my soul was an Augean task. Knavery, profligacy, laxity of morals, looseness of principles—that was what the stage did for me; that was the labor of Hercules to be cleared away! Give it up, Mr. Barnes!" And with a last penetrating look, he ...
— The Strollers • Frederic S. Isham
... of all kinds it behoves Washington and those concerned in Washington to make themselves free. It is the Augean stables through which some American Hercules must turn a purifying river before the American people can justly boast either of their capital or of their government. As to the material mud, enough ...
— Volume 2 • Anthony Trollope
... election Major Lewis wrote to a friend that the General was "resolved on making a pretty clean sweep of the departments." It is expected, he added, that "he will cleanse the Augean stables, and I feel pretty confident that he will not disappoint the popular expectation in this particular." If a complete overturn was ever really contemplated, the plan was not followed up; and it is more than possible ...
— The Reign of Andrew Jackson • Frederic Austin Ogg
... Horseley appears to have been in his way a Christian Hercules, and well adapted for cleansing even an Augean stable of apostasy.] ...
— The Life of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - 1838 • James Gillman |
