"Centaur" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... living, throbbing contact—they form the mightiest force in flesh and blood. Along the marvellous electric currents of life there flashes from the man to the horse, intelligence, feeling, purpose, even thought perhaps, so that to the true horseman the centaur can never be wholly ...
— Round Anvil Rock - A Romance • Nancy Huston Banks
... small hours chasing each other over the dial. For hours, almost whole days, he would sit silent at the helm of his boat on the Isis, his rapt eye peopling the vacant air with unutterable visions. He swam like a dolphin, rode like a Centaur, and De Quincey called him the best unprofessional male dancer he had ever seen. Three times he was vanquished by a huge shoemaker,—so the story goes,—champion of the "Town": at the fourth meeting, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 11, No. 65, March, 1863 • Various
... three great laws ascribed to Triptolemus are referred to,—namely, to honour parents; to worship the gods with the fruits of the earth; to hurt no living creature. The first two laws are also ascribed to the centaur Cheiron. ...
— Familiar Quotations • John Bartlett
... in travelling from them to us. Now it takes light only one second to traverse 186,300 miles, and yet it requires four and a third years for the light from the nearest star to reach us. This is a star of the first magnitude, Alpha in the constellation of the Centaur. The next nearest star is a faint one of between the seventh and eighth magnitudes, and its light takes seven years to come. From a sixth magnitude star in the constellation of the Swan, the light requires eight years; and from Sirius, the brightest star in the ...
— The Astronomy of the Bible - An Elementary Commentary on the Astronomical References - of Holy Scripture • E. Walter Maunder
... Christ and his apostles in mosaic; turning to the side walls, they could see Nero, Galba, and six other Roman emperors, Diana hunting the stag, Hylas stolen by the nymphs, Cybele on the chariot drawn by lions, a lion attacking a centaur, the chariot of Apollo, figures performing mysterious Egyptian rites, and other such profanities, represented in opus sectile marmoreum, a sort of Florentine mosaic. This unique set of intarsios was destroyed ...
— Pagan and Christian Rome • Rodolfo Lanciani
... round him. Blurts of crimson light Splashed the white grains like blood. Past the cave's mouth Shone with a large, fierce splendor, wildly bright, The crooked constellations of the South; Here the Cross swung; and there, affronting Mars, The Centaur stormed aside a froth of stars. Within, great casks, like wattled aldermen, Sighed of enormous feasts, and cloth of gold Glowed on the walls like hot desire. Again, Beside webbed purples from some galleon's hold, A black chest bore the skull and bones in white Above ...
— Young Adventure - A Book of Poems • Stephen Vincent Benet
... old virago evidently spoke from a broad background of experience. She was at least half convincing. While the Captain repelled her charge against his quiet, hard-working brown helper, he admitted it against Cissie Dildine, whom he did not know. She was an animal, a female centaur, a wanton and a strumpet, as all negresses are wantons and strumpets. All white men in the South firmly believe that. They believe it with a peculiar detestation; and since they used these persons very profitably ...
— Birthright - A Novel • T.S. Stribling
... This is true of objects that never were seen by the eye, that never could be seen. It is as true of what are called the highest flights of imagination as of the lowest flights. The mind must SEE the angel or the demon, the hippogriff or centaur, ...
— The Principles of Success in Literature • George Henry Lewes
... metamorphosis they like. If they see a debauchee with long flowing locks and hairy as a beast, like the son of Xenophantes,[505] they take the form of a Centaur[506] in derision of his ...
— The Eleven Comedies - Vol. I • Aristophanes et al
... Medicine," is said to have claimed to be the seventeenth in direct descent from Esculapius.[99:2] Although the god of healing may be said to have been also the first practising physician, his distinguished teacher Chiron, the wise Centaur, was without doubt the first medical professor whose name has been handed down. To Chiron is usually ascribed the honor of having introduced among the Grecians the art of Medicine, in the thirteenth century B. ...
— Primitive Psycho-Therapy and Quackery • Robert Means Lawrence
... could spare them another hour; in the evening before dinner say another. Three hours a day. They might pay themselves in calls, with interest, in twelve months. I think I shall propose it to them. Ah, my centaur, ...
— Barnaby Rudge • Charles Dickens
... for many labors, and a happy climax to their honors, to make an equestrian statue of Washington for our country. I wish they might all do it, as each would show a different kind of excellence. To present the man on horseback, the wise centaur, the tamer of horses, may well be deemed a high achievement of modern, as it was of ancient art. The study of the anatomy and action of the horse, so rich in suggestions, is naturally most desirable to the artist; ...
— At Home And Abroad - Or, Things And Thoughts In America and Europe • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... however, was of short duration. In about half an hour admiral Boscawen's mizen-mast and topsail-yards were shot away, and the enemy hoisted all the sail they could carry. Mr. Boscawen having shifted his flag from the Namur to the Newark, joined some other ships in attacking the Centaur, of seventy-four guns, which, being thus overpowered, was obliged to surrender. The British admiral pursued them all night, during which the Souveraine and the Guerrier altered their course, and deserted their commander. At day-break, M. de la Clue, whose left leg had been broke in ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. - From William and Mary to George II. • Tobias Smollett
... necessary for a prince to understand how to avail himself of the beast and the man. This has been figuratively taught to princes by ancient writers, who describe how Achilles and many other princes of old were given to the Centaur Chiron to nurse, who brought them up in his discipline; which means solely that, as they had for a teacher one who was half beast and half man, so it is necessary for a prince to know how to make use of both natures, and that one ...
— The Prince • Niccolo Machiavelli
... explanation, for otherwise we should have had to imagine people with canine bodies, inasmuch as we see as many dogs as horses, if not more. But the fact is correct and the explanation may be that we imagine a centaur because of the appropriate size, the implied power, and because it is not a wide leap from a horseman to a centaur. In short, here also we see that the imagination prefers to work where difficulties ...
— Robin Hood • J. Walker McSpadden
... blood-stirring trumpet. Clouds of dust ever and anon excited in the distance denoted the arrival of a regiment of Cavalry. Even now one approaches; it is the Red Lancers. How gracefully their Colonel, the young Count of Eberstein, bounds on his barb! Has Theseus turned Centaur? His spur and bridle seem rather the emblems of sovereignty than the instruments of government: he neither chastises nor directs. The rider moves without motion, and the horse judges without guidance. It would seem ...
— Vivian Grey • The Earl of Beaconsfield
... left his house, striking about him, and laying into the horse with his whip, the neighbours rushed to their windows, the children took refuge in the bosoms of their mothers, and everybody gazed in terror at the fearful centaur. Certainly the Baron de los Oscos presented at such times a formidable aspect, with his scarred face, bloodshot eyes, waxed, fierce-looking moustache, and his figure looking like part ...
— The Grandee • Armando Palacio Valds
... it, because it burned steadily. It was probably a fire lighted by settlers trailing to the farther North. While the night wore on he rode as slowly back to the town as he had galloped from it like a centaur with a captive. ...
— Northern Lights • Gilbert Parker
... will-power he forced out the knowledge of a better tack. As to horses, where was his equal at putting one over a jump? At the exact hair's-breadth of time, he had changed from human being to spirit. It was no longer Alan Donn and his horse when he dropped his hands on the neck. There was fusion. A centaur sprang.... On the links he remembered him, the smiling mask, the stance, the waggle, the white ball. The face set, the eyes gleamed.... The terrific explosion.... Not a man and a stick and a piece ...
— The Wind Bloweth • Brian Oswald Donn-Byrne
... Behind Perseus is the Rape of Polixena, amarble group, by Pio Fedi, in 1864. In the centre is an antique group supposed to represent Ajax dragging the body of Patrocles—restored by S.Ricci. Next it is the marble group, by G.Bologna, representing Hercules slaying the Centaur. In this Piazza is also the Fountain of Neptune, by Ammanati (pupil of Bandinelli), 1571. It is crowded with nymphs and satyrs, presided over by a statue of Neptune (19 feet high) in a car drawn by four horses. Adjoining ...
— The South of France—East Half • Charles Bertram Black
... M. D., appears as a Centaur, as we look at him through the lapse of thirty centuries, the modern country-doctor, if he could be seen about thirty miles off, could not be distinguished from a wheel-animalcule. He inhabits a wheel-carriage. He thinks of stationary dwellings as Long Tom Coffin ...
— Elsie Venner • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... "if you love that young man of yours and want to keep him, make him promise to give up riding. A more reckless and more brilliant horseman I have never seen. He took that double jump at the gate and that stream like a centaur. But he will break his neck sooner or later, and he ought to be stopped." Young Paddock was so delighted with his prospective brother-in-law's great riding that that night in the smoking-room he made him a present of Satan before all ...
— Van Bibber and Others • Richard Harding Davis
... strange, delightful, lingering sense of clouds and water and sun. Such a world, the world of really imaginative Greek sculpture, we still see, reflected in many a humble vase or battered coin, in Bacchante, and Centaur, and Amazon; [36] evolved out of that "vasty deep"; with most command, in the consummate fragments of the Parthenon; not, indeed, so that he who runs may read, the gifts of Greek sculpture being always ...
— Greek Studies: A Series of Essays • Walter Horatio Pater
... Heros Combattant, actually, a warrior attacking a mounted Amazon. An inscription states that it is the work of Agasias of Ephesus. To the R. is a fine Marsyas, doomed to be flayed alive by order of Apollo; to L. 562, the Borghese Centaur, and near the exit, 529, the charming Diana of Gabii, a Greek girl fastening her mantle. We pass to the Salle du Tibre, in the centre of which stands the famous Diana and the Stag, acquired for Francis I., much admired and over-rated by the sculptors of the renaissance: at the end is ...
— The Story of Paris • Thomas Okey
... bulk commands, Which rising, like a tow'ring city stands; Three Trojans tug at ev'ry lab'ring oar; Three banks in three degrees the sailors bore; Beneath their sturdy strokes the billows roar. Sergesthus, who began the Sergian race, In the great Centaur took the leading place; Cloanthus on the sea-green Scylla stood, From whom Cluentius draws his ...
— The Aeneid • Virgil
... of Bulwer-Lytton. The marriage and its results were so predominant in the career of the man, and poisoned it so deeply to the latest hour of his consciousness, that to attempt a biography of him without clear reference to them would have been like telling the story of Nessus the Centaur without mentioning the poisoned arrow of Heracles. But Lord Lytton ...
— Some Diversions of a Man of Letters • Edmund William Gosse
... enthusiasm of Captain Sarrasin. He liked a girl who rode, that was certain. Mrs. Sarrasin rode like that rarest of creatures, except the mermaid, a female Centaur, and if he had had a dozen daughters, they would all have been trained to ride, one better than the other. The riding, therefore, was clearly in the favour of Dolores, so far as Captain Sarrasin's estimate was concerned. But then the idea of a hotel-keeper's daughter riding in the Row and ...
— The Dictator • Justin McCarthy
... first book of the Achilleid, tells how Thetis, to prevent Achilles from going to the siege of Troy, bore him sleeping away from his instructor, the centaur Chiron, and carried him to the court of King Lycomedes, on the Island of Scyros, where, though concealed in women's garments, Ulysses and Diomed discovered him. Statius relates how wonderstruck Achilles was when ...
— The Divine Comedy, Volume 2, Purgatory [Purgatorio] • Dante Alighieri
... his rifle, but, as the man came on without fear, he dropped it again. Some strange effect of the moonlight exaggerated the rider and his horse, making both look gigantic, blending them together in such manner that a tremendous centaur seemed to be riding them down. In an instant or two the general effect vanished and as a clear beam fell upon the man's face Dick uttered ...
— The Tree of Appomattox • Joseph A. Altsheler
... had been feebly attempted by Philip of Side, a prolix and contemptible writer. Even the work of Cyril has not entirely satisfied the most favorable judges; and the Abbe de la Bleterie (Preface a l'Hist. de Jovien, p. 30, 32) wishes that some theologien philosophe (a strange centaur) would undertake the refutation ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 2 • Edward Gibbon
... for the hunting. The Eatons kept open house. Travelers wrote about the hospitality that even strangers were certain to find there, and carried away with them the picture of Howard Eaton, "who sat his horse as though he were a centaur and looked a picturesque and noble figure with his clean-shaven cheeks, heavy drooping moustache, sombrero, blue shirt, and neckerchief with flaming ends." About the time Roosevelt arrived, friends who had availed themselves ...
— Roosevelt in the Bad Lands • Hermann Hagedorn
... the same hero who is celebrated by Homer in the Iliad; but it is the previous history of Achilles, not his conduct in the Trojan war, which forms the subject of the poem of Statius. While the young hero is under the care of the Centaur Chiron, Thetis makes a visit to the preceptor's sequestered habitation, where, to save her son from the fate which, it was predicted, would befall him at Troy, if he should go to the siege of that ...
— The Lives Of The Twelve Caesars, Complete - To Which Are Added, His Lives Of The Grammarians, Rhetoricians, And Poets • C. Suetonius Tranquillus
... canter,' says I. 'Shake the New York dust off your hoofs and be a real agreeable kind of a centaur. You broke the ice, you know, and we're getting better acquainted every minute. Seems to me I asked ...
— Sixes and Sevens • O. Henry
... it! We shall inform ourselves Into all sensuous life; the goat-foot faun, The centaur, or the merry, bright-eyed elves That leave they: dancing rings to spite the dawn Upon the meadows, shall not be more near Than you and I to Nature's mysteries, ...
— The Book-Bills of Narcissus - An Account Rendered by Richard Le Gallienne • Le Gallienne, Richard
... Centaurea, represented here by the blue ragged sailor of gardens, and not our Centaury, a distinctly American group of plants, which, Ovid tells us, cured a wound in the foot of the Centaur Chiron, made by ...
— Wild Flowers, An Aid to Knowledge of Our Wild Flowers and - Their Insect Visitors - - Title: Nature's Garden • Neltje Blanchan
... on with the trusty escort along the edge of the crimson boiling, in which the boiled were making loud shrieks. I saw folk under it up to the brow, and the great Centaur said, "These are tyrants who gave themselves to blood and pillage. Here they weep their pitiless offenses: here is Alexander, and cruel Dionysius who caused Sicily to have woeful years. And that front which hath such black hair is ...
— The Divine Comedy, Volume 1, Hell [The Inferno] • Dante Alighieri
... hears our speech? Wine it is that wounds thee, honey sweet wine, that is the bane of others too, even of all who take great draughts and drink out of measure. Wine it was that darkened the mind even of the Centaur, renowned Eurytion, in the hall of high-hearted Peirithous, when he went to the Lapithae; and after that his heart was darkened with wine, he wrought foul deeds in his frenzy, in the house of Peirithous. Then wrath fell on all the ...
— DONE INTO ENGLISH PROSE • S. H. BUTCHER, M.A.
... a centaur, swirled by me to do the thing I ordered. Behind me rode Beverly Clarenden bareheaded, his face aglow with power. As I looked back the dust engulfed him for a moment, and then I heard an arrow sing, and a sharp cry of pain. The dust had lifted ...
— Vanguards of the Plains • Margaret McCarter
... This the outpost could not read, but they recognised some word among the characters, and pointed it out to each other with uncouth murmurings. They were strange folk, with eyes like pebbles and squat frames and short, broad faces, but each horse and man moved in unison like a centaur. ...
— The Path of the King • John Buchan
... unseasonably, but I almost died of laughter." But in regard to any good points his action is quite the opposite. He says he can run quickly, but his friend flies; he says he can ride pretty well, but his friend is a Centaur on horseback. He says "I am not a bad poet, and don't ...
— Plutarch's Morals • Plutarch
... say, in answer to a question as to her present feelings: 'I feel that I am carried away by a centaur!' The comparison had been used ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... million years quotha! nay, not so much. It depends on the speed and the direction taken. If they were able to cover, say, the distance from Liverpool to New York in a tenth of a second, they would get to Alpha in the constellation Centaur, perhaps the nearest of the fixed stars, in twenty or thirty years—a mere bagatelle. But why should we stop there?" went on Gazen. "Why should we not build large vessels for the navigation of the ether—artificial planets in fact—and go cruising about in space, from universe ...
— A Trip to Venus • John Munro
... tract, with secular arms an immense elm Reareth a crowd of branches, aneath whose lofty protection Vain dreams thickly nestle, clinging unto the foliage on high: And many strange creatures of monstrous form and features Stable about th' entrance, Centaur and Scylla's abortion, And hundred-handed Briareus, and Lerna's ...
— A Study of Poetry • Bliss Perry
... beauteous maid! let this example move Your mind, averse from all the joys of love. Deign to be loved, and every heart subdue! What nymph could e'er attract such crowds as you? 70 Not she whose beauty urged the Centaur's arms, Ulysses' queen, nor Helen's fatal charms. Ev'n now, when silent scorn is all they gain, A thousand court you, though they court in vain— A thousand sylvans, demigods, and gods, That haunt our mountains and our Alban woods. But if you'll prosper, mark what I advise, Whom age and long ...
— Poetical Works of Pope, Vol. II • Alexander Pope
... the east, there is arising a colossal centaur called the Russian Empire. With a civilized head and front, it has the sinews of a huge barbaric body. There one man's brain moves 70,000,000. There all the traditions of the people are of aggression and conquest in the west. There ...
— The United States in the Light of Prophecy • Uriah Smith
... singer, lying upon bear-skins and fragrant boughs, Cheiron the ancient Centaur, the wisest ...
— Young Folks Treasury, Volume 2 (of 12) • Various
... a most accomplished cavalier, a perfect centaur in fact, noticing the amazed and somewhat alarmed glances of the Inca's men at the movements of his restless horse, suddenly determined to exhibit his skill at the manege. Striking spurs to his charger, he caused him to curvet and prance in the open before the Inca, showing at the same ...
— South American Fights and Fighters - And Other Tales of Adventure • Cyrus Townsend Brady
... the present case), that will not ensure a good effect, unless the mixture is harmonious and well-proportioned; it is possible that the resultant of two beauties may be bizarre. The readiest instance to hand is the centaur: not a lovely creature, you will admit, but a savage, if the paintings of its drunken bouts and murders go for anything. Well, but on the other hand is it not possible for two such components to result in beauty, as the combination of wine and ...
— Works, V1 • Lucian of Samosata
... and he shall swim, he shall fence, and he shall row," he said. "He shall learn all gallant sports, as becomes an English gentleman. And he shall ride,—not as I ride, God forbid! like a monkey strapped on a dog at a fair, but as a centaur, as a young demigod. We will set him, stark naked, on a bare-backed horse, and see that he's clean-limbed, perfect, without spot or ...
— The History of Sir Richard Calmady - A Romance • Lucas Malet
... her with horror. She struggled to free herself, her horse began to rear, she screamed for help with all her might, but nothing answered her save an echo. The situation seemed critical for Jacqueline. As to M. de Talbrun, he was quite at his ease, as if he were accustomed to make love like a centaur; while the girl felt herself in peril of being thrown at any moment, and trampled under his horse's feet. At last she succeeded in striking her aggressor a sharp blow across the face with her riding-whip. Blinded for a moment, he ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... was, Hercules had in time to meet death himself. He had married a nymph named Deianira, and was taking her home, when he came to a river where a Centaur named Nessus lived, and gained his bread by carrying travellers over on his back. Hercules paid him the price for carrying Deianira over, while he himself crossed on foot; but as soon as the river was between them, the faithless Centaur began to gallop away with the lady. Hercules ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 5 of 8 • Various
... happen, as it did to Michael Angelo, that our appreciation of the actual form of the human body should be too keen and overmastering to allow us to relish even so charming and imaginative an extravagance. The centaur is another beautiful monster. The imagination can easily follow the synthesis of the dream in which horse and man melted into one, and first gave the glorious suggestion of their ...
— The Sense of Beauty - Being the Outlines of Aesthetic Theory • George Santayana
... life, and in spite of the limpid springs in his eyes, Henri had a lion's courage, a monkey's agility. He could cut a ball in half at ten paces on the blade of a knife; he rode his horse in a way that made you realize the fable of the Centaur; drove a four-in-hand with grace; was as light as a cherub and quiet as a lamb, but knew how to beat a townsman at the terrible game of savate or cudgels; moreover, he played the piano in a fashion which would have enabled him to become an artist should he fall on calamity, and ...
— The Girl with the Golden Eyes • Honore de Balzac
... Brush, more than once; "you ride like a centaur and none knows better how to use firearms, but there are Indians in these mountains and they sometimes approach nigh enough to be seen from New Constantinople. Then, too, your father brought word that other miners are working their way toward us. More than likely there are bad men ...
— A Waif of the Mountains • Edward S. Ellis
... run, a compound of walk, trot, and canter, or rather of a trot and a canter, the latter broken down and frittered away through the instrumentality of a ferocious Mameluke bit, but as easy as an armchair; and this was, I speak it feelingly, a great convenience, as a sailor is not a Centaur, not altogether of a piece with his horse, as it were; yet both Captain Transom and myself were rather goodish horsemen for nauticals, although rather apt to go over the bows upon broaching—to suddenly. Don Ricardo's costume would have been thought a little out of the way in ...
— Tom Cringle's Log • Michael Scott
... unusefully shuffled by a writer of secret history.[97] We may be surprised to find the grave Sully practising this artifice on several occasions. In the civil wars of France the Duke of Savoy had taken by surprise Saluces, and struck a medal; on the reverse a centaur appears shooting with a bow and arrow, with the legend Opportune! But when Henry the Fourth had reconquered the town, he published another, on which Hercules appears killing the centaur, with the word Opportunius. The great minister was the author of this retort![98] A medal of the Dutch ambassador ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... transformation, and of that of Nyctimene into an owl), and having persisted in informing Phoebus of the intrigues of Coronis. Her son AEsculapius being cut out of the womb of Coronis and carried to the cave of Chiron the Centaur, Ocyrrhoe, the daughter of Chiron, is changed into a mare, while she is prophesying. Her father in vain invokes the assistance of Apollo, for he, in the guise of a shepherd, is tending his oxen in the country of Elis. He neglecting ...
— The Metamorphoses of Ovid - Vol. I, Books I-VII • Publius Ovidius Naso
... after the party of four had started next morning that Miss Clinker suddenly thought, with a start: "She may have been alluding to quite the other Cheiron—the Centaur—and in that case I have given her some ...
— Halcyone • Elinor Glyn
... anew with his red-roweled spurs into the torn flanks of his horse, and rode on, careless of all save that he must hurry, that his was a great race against the racing day, that he must find her before the night had sought her out. The very shadow which he and his horse cast—a distorted, black centaur sort of thing, running silently across the desert—was one with the desert in its cursed menace. For a moment ago it had hidden under his horse's belly, and now it ran beside him, ever lengthening, ever pushing farther to the eastward, a grim avowal ...
— Under Handicap - A Novel • Jackson Gregory
... the use of animal fluids alone is recorded—e.g., the arrows of Hercules, which were dipped in the gall of the Lernaean hydra. Hercules himself at last fell a victim to the blood stained tunic of the dead Centaur Nessus. As late as the middle of the last century Blumenbach persuaded one of his class to drink 7 oz. of warm bullock's blood in order to disprove the then popular notion that even fresh blood was a poison. The young ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 643, April 28, 1888 • Various
... the virgin lamp, and watch the smoke of old altars coiling among the cypress boughs. The redwoods of the West become columns of Doric eloquence and simplicity. The mountains and lakes of the West have become settings for the reading of the "Centaur" of Maurice de Guerin. You see the reason for the titles chosen because you feel that the poetry of line and the harmonic accompaniment of color is the primal essential. They are not so dynamic as suggestive in their quality of finality. The way is left open, in other words, for you ...
— Adventures in the Arts - Informal Chapters on Painters, Vaudeville, and Poets • Marsden Hartley
... W. ?): Pair of sphinxes, Exterior architrave: pairs Centaur, wild hog, man pursuing of sphinxes in centre of E. & woman, two men in combat, W. fronts (?), Herakles and etc. Triton, Herakles and Centaurs, symposium, ...
— The American Journal of Archaeology, 1893-1 • Various
... connected with them, and probably showed how these influenced human affairs or might be used as guides. The "Precepts of Chiron" was a didactic poem made up of moral and practical precepts, resembling the gnomic sections of the "Works and Days", addressed by the Centaur Chiron ...
— Hesiod, The Homeric Hymns, and Homerica • Homer and Hesiod
... for life. With a supreme effort some mariners would reach the board and eagerly scan the blue, transparent deep, hoping to see a naiad's pink shoulder flash in the hollow of an azure wave, or a drunken gay centaur dash along and in frenzy splash the wave with his hoof. But the sea was like a wilderness, and the deep was dumb ...
— Famous Modern Ghost Stories • Various
... caused to be burned there books of magic and curious secrets, the value of which amounted to the sum of 50,000 pieces of silver.[154] We have before said a few words concerning Simon the magician, and the magician Elymas, known in the Acts of the Apostles.[155] Pindar says[156] that the centaur Chiron cured several enchantments. When they say that Orpheus rescued from hell his wife Eurydice, who had died from the bite of a serpent, they simply mean that he cured her by the power of charms.[157] The poets have employed magic verses to make themselves ...
— The Phantom World - or, The philosophy of spirits, apparitions, &c, &c. • Augustin Calmet
... heavenly visitant, whom he believed none other than the Lord! And since horses, because of the fly, are virtually unknown in most parts of the country, the natives were dumfounded by our mounted men, strange centaur-like animals that they called "Kabure," after my mounted Boer forces, of whom at first they were mortally afraid. Even bodies of well-trained armed native soldiers have been seen to throw away their ...
— World's War Events, Volume III • Various
... examine, whether our ideas are capable of being true or false, but in the more ordinary acceptation of those words: and so I say that the ideas in our minds, being only so many perceptions or appearances there, none of them are false; the idea of a centaur having no more falsehood in it when it appears in our minds, than the name centaur has falsehood in it, when it is pronounced by our mouths, or written on paper. For truth or falsehood lying always in some affirmation or negation, ...
— An Essay Concerning Humane Understanding, Volume I. - MDCXC, Based on the 2nd Edition, Books I. and II. (of 4) • John Locke
... The Centaur Nessus, in dying by the arrow of Heracles, which had been dipped in the venom of the Hydra, persuaded the bride Deanira, whose beauty was the cause of his death, to keep some of the blood from the wound as a love-charm ...
— The Seven Plays in English Verse • Sophocles
... Hercules's servitude was now ended, but his great performances were not. He fought with the centaurs and giants. When his period of slavery had ended, he married Dejanira; with her he went to Trachinia. At the river Evenus he encountered the centaur Nessus. Nessus, under pretence of carrying Dejanira over, attempted to offer her violence, which caused Hercules to slay him with a poisoned arrow. Nessus, before expiring, instructed Dejanira how to prepare a love potion for Hercules. He erected an altar to Zeus ...
— The Mysteries of All Nations • James Grant
... the garden, and this horse was ordered as soon as the light failed. He would say, "Mes amis et mes amies, je regrette, mais mon cheval m'attend." And the women liked to see him mount, and many thought, I am sure, that he looked like a Centaur as he ...
— Memoirs of My Dead Life • George Moore
... for mental {484} manipulation they must now be recalled; but they are not merely recalled—they are rearranged and give a new result that may never have been perceived. A typical product of imagination is composed of parts perceived at different times and later recalled and combined, as a centaur is composed of man and horse, or a mermaid of woman and fish. Imagination is like reasoning in being a mental reaction; but it differs from reasoning in being manipulation rather than exploration; reasoning consists in seeing relationships that exist between facts, ...
— Psychology - A Study Of Mental Life • Robert S. Woodworth
... translation into the stars, became the natural conclusion of a great many tales. The heroes of mythology, or even those of human society, continued to live in the sky in the form of brilliant stars. There Perseus again met Andromeda, and the Centaur Chiron, who is none other than Sagittarius, was on terms of good fellowship ...
— The Oriental Religions in Roman Paganism • Franz Cumont
... bronco, in stopping a night stampede of many hundred maddened animals, or in the performance of a hundred other feats of reckless and daring horsemanship, the cowboy is absolutely unequalled; and when he has his own horse gear he sits his animal with the ease of a centaur. Yet he is quite helpless the first time he gets astride one of the small eastern saddles. One summer, while purchasing cattle in Iowa, one of my ranch foremen had to get on an ordinary saddle to ride out of town and see a bunch ...
— Hunting the Grisly and Other Sketches • Theodore Roosevelt
... outlaw known as Jazz. The horse was a sorrel, and it knew all the tricks of its kind. It went sunfishing, tried weaving and fence-rowing, at last toppled over backward after a frantic leap upward. The rider, long-bodied and lithe, rode like a centaur. Except for the moment when he stepped out of the saddle as the outlaw fell on its back, he stuck to his seat as though ...
— Tangled Trails - A Western Detective Story • William MacLeod Raine
... broke, orders were given to open out and allow the cavalry to pass ahead and reconnoitre our front. I had always felt proud of Virginian horsemanship, but those Texans were in a class by themselves. Centaur-like they sat their horses, and for our amusement, while passing at full gallop, swung from their saddles and picked up hats and handkerchiefs. There was something about the Texans that fascinated ...
— Reed Anthony, Cowman • Andy Adams
... Sorcerers that change the minde: Soule-killing Witches, that deforme the bodie: Disguised Cheaters, prating Mountebankes; And manie such like liberties of sinne: If it proue so, I will be gone the sooner: Ile to the Centaur to goe seeke this slaue, I greatly feare my ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare
... frequent occurrence on transom-stones in England, are very seldom found in the duchy: the writer of the present article never recollects to have met with any; and Mr. Cotman's more extensive researches have brought him acquainted only with a single instance, a centaur, in the act of discharging his arrow at a stag, in the ...
— Architectural Antiquities of Normandy • John Sell Cotman
... centaur race below Deriding wings above. Manful they meet and fight to overthrow All they are wearied of,— Manful they build, demolish, drive, are driven,— But you are free, who have more greatly striven, Yours is the light above their lightless ...
— Perpetual Light • William Rose Benet
... shall behold no more With long stride making down the beechy glade, Clear-eyed, with firm lips laughing,—at his heels The clamor of his fifty deep-tongued hounds; Him the wise Centaur ...
— In Divers Tones • Charles G. D. Roberts
... endowed as he with the power of forming a correct judgment. Men of almost every description had sought her smiles, but he did not suffer by comparison. His tall, lithe figure was instinct with manly grace. There was a fascinating trace of reckless boldness in his blue eyes. He rode like a centaur, and at will made his light boat, in which Amy was usually seated, cut through the water with spray flying from its prow. In Miss Hargrove's present mood for rural life she wished for his acquaintance, and was a little piqued that he had not sought hers, ...
— Nature's Serial Story • E. P. Roe
... dumb animals have fallen in love with men; for there was a cock who took a fancy to a man of the name of Secundus, a cupbearer of the king; and the cock was nicknamed "the Centaur." This Secundus was a slave of Nicomedes, the king of Bithynia; as Nicander informs us in the sixth book of his essay on 'The Revolutions of Fortune.' And at AEgium, a goose took a fancy to a boy; as Clearchus relates in the first book of ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 2 • Charles Dudley Warner
... lingering fame conveys 80 In song, where Fame as yet hath left no sign Beyond the sound whose charm is half divine; Which leaves no record to the sceptic eye, But yields young History all to Harmony; A boy Achilles, with the Centaur's lyre In hand, to teach him to surpass his sire. For one long-cherished ballad's[378] simple stave, Rung from the rock, or mingled with the wave, Or from the bubbling streamlet's grassy side, Or gathering mountain echoes as they glide, 90 Hath greater power o'er each true heart and ear, Than ...
— The Works of Lord Byron - Poetry, Volume V. • Lord Byron
... there was one negative result and two positive. The first mentioned is a son Malcolm, whom I have not met. He has a commission in the cavalry, is a devil at billiards, can't read a map, and rides like a Centaur. ...
— The Parts Men Play • Arthur Beverley Baxter
... a beautiful pedestal in the garden attracted him first. It proved to be the statue of a centaur. An inscription informed the unlearned visitor that it exactly represented Chiron, the beloved of Apollo and Diana, instructed by them in the mysteries of hunting, medicine, music, and prophecy. The inscription also bade the stranger look out at a certain part of the heavens, ...
— Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ • Lew Wallace
... winds in the Southern hemisphere was to me the very acme of bliss. I was thoroughly in sympathy with the passage of Humboldt where he speaks of the tropical skies and vegetation in the following beautiful manner:—"He on whom the Southern Cross has never gleamed nor the Centaur frowned, above whom the clouds of Magellan have never circled, who has never stood within the shadow of great palms, nor clothed himself with the gloom of the primeval forests, does not know how the soul seems to have a new birth in the midst ...
— As I Remember - Recollections of American Society during the Nineteenth Century • Marian Gouverneur
... as high as to their brow Immers'd, of whom the mighty Centaur thus: "These are the souls of tyrants, who were given To blood and rapine. Here they wail aloud Their merciless wrongs. Here Alexander dwells, And Dionysius fell, who many a year Of woe wrought for fair Sicily. That brow Whereon ...
— The Divine Comedy, Complete - The Vision of Paradise, Purgatory and Hell • Dante Alighieri
... not so numerous as they were perfect in their way, in some of which, as in the Infant Hercules strangling the Serpent, he displayed great dramatic power. [Footnote: Lucian on Zeuxis.] Lucian highly praises his Female Centaur as one of the most remarkable paintings of the world, in which he showed great ingenuity in his contrasts. His Jupiter Enthroned is also extolled by Pliny, as one of his finest works. He acquired a great fortune, ...
— The Old Roman World • John Lord
... highly intricate, and shows a tendency towards the introduction of an adventurous element; it turns upon the tribute of youths and maidens exacted from the island of Scyros by the king of Thrace. The figure of the satyr is replaced by a centaur who carries off one of the nymphs. Her cries attract two youths who succeed in driving off the monster, but are severely wounded in the encounter. The nymph, Celia, thereupon falls in love with both her rescuers at once, and it is only ...
— Pastoral Poetry and Pastoral Drama - A Literary Inquiry, with Special Reference to the Pre-Restoration - Stage in England • Walter W. Greg
... all that place a heap of wreckage lay, Triglyphs and pediments and carven portals, With centaur, sphinx, chimera, satyrs gay— Figures of fabled ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VI. • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... Ariadne is really asleep, and Hercules, in wine, really sinks to the ground; the dancing girl floats in the air as though in her native element; the centaur gallops without an effort; it is simple reality—the very reverse of realism—nature such as she actually is when she is pleasant to behold, in the full effusion of her grace, advancing like a queen because she is a queen, and because she could not move in ...
— The Wonders of Pompeii • Marc Monnier
... was all bone and sinew and muscle. He rode like a Centaur, as if he were a part of the horse, as easily and gracefully as a chip does the waves. The outlaw was furious with hate, blind with a madness that surged through it; but all its weaving and fence-rowing could ...
— A Daughter of the Dons - A Story of New Mexico Today • William MacLeod Raine
... the camp and nearer to the shore there was a second ditch and wall, and behind it were the beaks of the ships and the host of Aquaiusha, even of his own dear people the Achaeans. There were the old blazons, and the spears that had fought below Troy town. There were the two lions of Mycenae, the Centaur of the son of Polypaetas, son of Pirithous; there were the Swan of Lacedaemon, and the Bull of the Kings of Crete, the Rose of Rhodes, the Serpent of Athens, and many another knightly bearing of old ...
— The World's Desire • H. Rider Haggard and Andrew Lang
... were the first to surmount the difficulty that had baffled the telescopic resources of the HERSCHELS. BESSEL detected a parallax of one-third of a second in the star 61 Cygni, and in the constellation of the Centaur HENDERSON found another star whose parallax amounted to one second. Of the million of fixed glittering points that adorn the sky, these are the only two whose distances have been calculated, and to express them, miles, leagues, or orbits ...
— An Expository Outline of the "Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation" • Anonymous
... recorded here, From Colonel By, who first lived there; 'Twas then a grove of thickest shade, What civilization's hand hath made, The Indian, with its withering skill, It has done for the "Colonel's Hill." Who comes, so centaur like in grace, Good spirits pictured in his face? 'Tis Isaac Smith, let truth not vary, A gentleman from Tipperary, Beloved by all, 'twere hard to mate him, He had no enemies to hate him, His friends were neither scarce nor few They numbered every soul he knew. Who e'er ...
— Recollections of Bytown and Its Old Inhabitants • William Pittman Lett
... expression half laughing, half demoniac. On the first round his cap had fallen off, and the shaggy hair of his head and face streamed in the wind, adding greatly to the fierceness of his looks. He had perfect control of himself and horse, and rode like a centaur, ready to take any advantage which circumstances or guile threw in his way. He also had held in his horse with bit and bridle, reserving his best efforts for the closing part of ...
— The Kentucky Ranger • Edward T. Curnick
... Donatello may have copied them in Rome, for they belonged at this time to the Papal glyptothek, from which they were subsequently bought. The subjects of these roundels are Ulysses and Athena, a faun carrying Bacchus, two incidents of Bacchus and Ariadne, a centaur, Daedalus and Icarus, a prisoner before his victor, and the Diomede. Gems became very popular and expensive: a school of engravers grew up who copied, invented, and forged. Carpaccio introduced them into his pictures,[135] and Botticelli used them so freely ...
— Donatello • David Lindsay, Earl of Crawford
... panels are similar; two have small canopies. On the other face are foliage scrolls with animals within them; on Eve's side an ass, horse, camel, elephant, hippopotamus, and the Oriental motif of a griffin stooping over its prey; on Adam's side a woman riding on a horse, a centaur with a dart, a mermaid, a sea-horse, and at the bottom a griffin devouring a scroll, with a human head attached. Below the ornament are semi-nude caryatid figures on one side; on the other they have turbans and shoes, and one has ankle band-ages. In the angle ...
— The Shores of the Adriatic - The Austrian Side, The Kuestenlande, Istria, and Dalmatia • F. Hamilton Jackson
... as brave as he was gentle and jolly, and as hardy as he was brave. At five years old he killed his first fox; at seven he could manage his horse like a young centaur; and at twelve he had his first successful bear hunt. He was as obstinate as he was hardy; he steadily refused to learn Latin or French—the languages of the court—until he heard that the kings of Denmark and Poland understood ...
— The Junior Classics • Various
... centaur lived there. When the hermit came the centaur gave a shrill cry, wept and lamented, ...
— Miscellanies • Oscar Wilde
... down, was the beautiful Altar; higher up, the Triangle; while on the left were the Sword-fish and the Flying-fish. Turning to look forward, we beheld a more splendid display. Then, over the bow of the vessel, between the Centaur, which lay low, and Musca Indica, which rose high, there blazed the bright stars of the Southern Cross—a constellation, if not the brightest, at least the most conspicuous and attractive in all the heavens. All around there burned other stars, separated ...
— A Strange Manuscript Found in a Copper Cylinder • James De Mille
... and it was from this simple origin, according to some explanations, that the fable of the Centaurs sprung. We must remark, that we place no confidence in the proposed etymology of the word Centauros, and almost as little in the explanation of the story. The centaur Chiron in Homer was a model of justice, and the poet appears to have had no idea of the monstrous combination of two animals. Pindar, in his second Pythian Ode, first makes us acquainted with the Hippocentaur, or half horse and half man. Though it cannot be imagined ...
— How to See the British Museum in Four Visits • W. Blanchard Jerrold
... capitol, particularly for its fine collection of statues. The most remarkable among them were the Fighting Gladiator; Silenus and a Faun; Seneca, in black marble, or rather a slave at the baths; Camillus; the Hermaphrodite; the Centaur and Cupid; two Fauns, playing on the flute; Ceres; an Egyptian; a statue of the younger Nero; the busts of Lucius Verus, Alexander, Faustina and Verus; various relievos, among which was one representing Curtius; an ...
— Anecdotes of Painters, Engravers, Sculptors and Architects and Curiosities of Art (Vol. 3 of 3) • S. Spooner
... (1856) asks: "What Centaur have we here, half man, half beast, neighing defiance to all the world? What conglomerate of thought is this before us, with insolence, philosophy, tenderness, blasphemy, beauty, and gross indecency tumbling in drunken confusion ...
— Walt Whitman Yesterday and Today • Henry Eduard Legler
... has temporarily baffled the disease, but for me there can be no restoration. Day by day I feel the ebbing of strength and energy, and the approach of my deliverer, death; but I realize also, what the Centaur uttered to Melampus, 'I decline unto my last days calm as the setting of the constellations; but I feel myself perishing and passing quickly away, like a snow-wreath ...
— Vashti - or, Until Death Us Do Part • Augusta J. Evans Wilson
... in Nature for just this kind of thing, and since he believes there is "absolutely no limit to the variety and adaptiveness of Nature even in a single species." If there is no such limit, then I suppose we need not be surprised to meet a winged horse, or a centaur, or ...
— Ways of Nature • John Burroughs
... please. Then without tropes, my Lord, An overmuch severeness, I repeat, When faith is wavering makes the waverer pass Into more settled hatred of the doctrines Of those who rule, which hatred by and by Involves the ruler (thus there springs to light That Centaur of a monstrous Commonweal, The traitor-heretic) then tho' some may quail, Yet others are that dare the stake and fire, And their strong torment bravely borne, begets An admiration and an indignation, And hot desire to imitate; so the plague Of schism spreads; were there but three or four Of ...
— Queen Mary and Harold • Alfred Lord Tennyson
... bas-reliefs of jesting subject:—two cocks carrying on their shoulders a long staff to which a fox (?) is tied by the legs, hanging down between them: the strut of the foremost cock, lifting one leg at right angles to the other, is delicious. Then a stag hunt, with a centaur horseman drawing a bow; the arrow has gone clear through the stag's throat, and is sticking there. Several capital hunts with dogs, with fruit trees between, and birds in them; the leaves, considering the early time, singularly well set, with the edges outwards, ...
— The Stones of Venice, Volume I (of 3) • John Ruskin
... the historian of the Dutch Republic. Much has been written of Bismarck's reckless and dissipated life at the university, which differed not essentially from that of other nobles. He had a grand figure, superb health, extraordinary animal spirits, and could ride like a centaur. He spent but three semestres at Goettingen, and then repaired to Berlin in order to study jurisprudence under the celebrated Savigny; but he was rarely seen in the lecture-room. He gave no promise of the great abilities ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume X • John Lord |
