"Delphic" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the poet's "tripartite design" (p. 7, line 10) or to the Triple Alliance of England, Holland, and Sweden against France (1677/8, as in Absalom and Achitophel, line 175) but either to a treatise which had occasioned some stir in the scientific world some twenty years previously: "the Delphic problem" proposed by Hobbes to the Royal Society on the duplication of the cube, which might have come to the ears of Buckingham as well as to those of the court,[3] or perhaps to the triple confederacy of Essex, Halifax, ...
— Anti-Achitophel (1682) - Three Verse Replies to Absalom and Achitophel by John Dryden • Elkanah Settle et al.
... sculptured columns, Among thy secret treasures and thine altars, Ion, the Delphic priest, who lays aside The snow-white raiment of the sacrifice And takes up the wayfarer's knotty staff. I am no ministrant, nor have I held The dreadful mystic key, nor have I touched Boldly or timidly the sacred ...
— Life Immovable - First Part • Kostes Palamas
... them, Death ant. 1. March'd with them, Hatred and Strife Met them entering their halls. For from the day when the first Heracleidae received That Delphic hest to return, What hath involved them, but blind Error ...
— Poetical Works of Matthew Arnold • Matthew Arnold
... it a second time. Like all prophecies, it was somewhat Delphic; but he could get the general drift. In that golden script he was looking into the heart of all Thomahlia—into its greatness, its culture, its civilisation itself. It was the soul of the Blind Spot, the reason and the wherefore of all ...
— The Blind Spot • Austin Hall and Homer Eon Flint
... stool at the fireside, and Heinrich plied him with a multitude of questions: Where did he come from? whom had he last served? how did he like Aladdin? and did he think they should get on well? To all these queries the Genie returned evasive answers; he was Delphic to the verge of unintelligibility. He would only nod mysteriously, muttering beneath his breath in some unknown tongue, probably Arabic—in which, however, his master thought he could distinguish the words "roast" and "boiled" with significant frequency. This Genie must have ...
— Cobwebs From an Empty Skull • Ambrose Bierce (AKA: Dod Grile)
... place prodigiously, and everybody near and far seems quite "angelic," as Julian would say. . . . Last Sunday Mrs. Emerson and her three children came to make a call. The Study is the pet room, the temple of the Muses and the Delphic Shrine. The beautiful carpet lays the foundation of its charms, and the oak woodwork harmonizes with the tint in which Endymion is painted. At last I have Endymion where I always wanted it—in my husband's Study, ...
— Memories of Hawthorne • Rose Hawthorne Lathrop
... content to trust implicitly to his friend's information. The Count, indeed, had rather avoided than sought advice on the subject, and the piper, after several confidential conversations and the passage of a sum of silver into his sporran, displayed an equally Delphic tendency. ...
— Count Bunker • J. Storer Clouston
... Persian, and E., W.: Solomon as a young { Delphic Sibyl. A somewhat man. E.: David as an old { far-fetched design man with an air of { borrowed from mediaeval melancholy, thinking { art. Angels from above of the Temple of which Clerestory { delivering their message. he may only get ready { Architectural background, the ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: The Cathedral Church of St. Paul - An Account of the Old and New Buildings with a Short Historical Sketch • Arthur Dimock
... a peaceable Neighbor and Crowned Head,—witness it, ye Heavens and thou Earth!" Dauphiness falling on her knees to Most Christian Majesty; "Princess and dearest Sister" to Most Christian Majesty's Pompadour; especially no end of Pleading to the German Reich, in a furious, Delphic-Pythoness or quasi-inspired ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XVII. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—The Seven-Years War: First Campaign—1756-1757. • Thomas Carlyle
... religion of Nature, of Zeus, to the more spiritual religion of Apollo—of redemption. But the popular and inward religion of the Eleusinian mysteries, the worship of souls and ancestors, always persisted underneath. "In so far as it is possible to speak of a Delphic theology, among its more important elements must be counted the belief in the continuation of the life of souls after death in its popular forms, and in the worship of the souls of the dead."[13] There were the Titanic and the Dionysiac ...
— Tragic Sense Of Life • Miguel de Unamuno
... sentences inscribed upon the Delphic oracle, hugely accommodated to the usages of man's life: "Know thyself,"[736-1] and "Nothing too much;" and upon these all other ...
— Familiar Quotations • John Bartlett
... self-conscious; but is at his best when the wheel of his burning spirit, revolving as the planets do, throws off sparks or streams of fire. To the accuracy of this observation witness both Browning and Tennyson. When they were "possessed," as the Delphic oracle would say, they marched toward truth like an invincible troop. Truth seemed the missing half of their own sphere, toward which, by a subtle and lordly gravitation, they swung. When Tennyson's instincts speak, he is democrat; when ...
— A Hero and Some Other Folks • William A. Quayle
... the nations of Europe are ready to fly at each other's throats, and that the only way to deter them is to make them realise how extremely perilous to themselves would be any such military enterprise. Can any one doubt that this is the real meaning of the phrase? If we listen to the Delphic oracles of diplomacy on this subject of the Balance of Power, we shall understand that in nine cases out of ten a man invoking this phrase means that he wants the Balance of Power to be favourable to himself. It is not so ...
— Armageddon—And After • W. L. Courtney
... affection for him. The Honourable Brush, though not given to expressing his feelings, betrayed some surprise at the volumes Mr. Crewe had contributed to the stream of bills; and Mr. Botcher, in a Delphic whisper, invited Mr. Crewe to visit him in room forty-eight of the Pelican that evening. To tell the truth, Mr. Crewe returned the feeling of his companions warmly, and he had even entertained the idea of asking them both to dine ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... step with the stern precision of soldiers. Together they wheeled through the open doors of the Commercial Trust Building, together they left-turned into the elevator, and simultaneously raised their heads to examine its roof, as though in its panelled ceiling was concealed some Delphic oracle who would answer the riddle which circumstances ...
— Bones in London • Edgar Wallace
... his aldermanic seat, but a little uncertain whether it was a throne or a stool of repentance. Still Billy talked loudly of the things he meant to do; and, as usual in his troubles, went to consult the delphic Mr. Murdock; and Mr. Murdock went to see Mr. Early; and Mr. Early, after very much demur, went to see Mr. Percival. Sebastian did not like to mix himself publicly in politics, and ...
— Jewel Weed • Alice Ames Winter
... "A Delphic utterance, if ever there was one," he said, and laughed partly in relief. She had not said that Mr. Sefton would ...
— Before the Dawn - A Story of the Fall of Richmond • Joseph Alexander Altsheler
... him safe enough," said the major, complacently stroking his chin. The major better understood the Delphic answer of ...
— Raiding with Morgan • Byron A. Dunn
... One, however, is not the only type of mystic ecstasy. That intoxication of emotion which seizes upon the negro camp meeting of to-day, as it did upon the Delphic priestesses two thousand years ago, seems at first glance to have nothing in common psychologically with the blessed nothingness of Gautama and Meister Eckhart. But the loss of the feeling of personality and the sense of possession by a divine ...
— The Psychology of Beauty • Ethel D. Puffer
... of the holy men of old on themes whereon they were qualified to speak is rational and right. To make of their writings a new oracle whose mysterious meanings we are to guess, as the ancient Greeks puzzled over the messages of the Delphic shrine, is to revive Paganism in Christianity. "No prophecy is of any private interpretation." No passage in the Bible was written, centuries ago, with reference to your private affairs. All that is there written concerned men and affairs of distant days. The ...
— The Right and Wrong Uses of the Bible • R. Heber Newton
... piety be wanting in the priests, equity in the judges, or the magistrates be found rated at a price, what justice or religion is to be expected? which are the only two attributes make kings akin to God, and is the Delphic sword, both to kill sacrifices and ...
— Discoveries and Some Poems • Ben Jonson
... the fleet, and though thought to be peculiarly English, was used by the Delphic oracle, when applied to by the Athenians on the Persian invasion: "Defend ...
— The Sailor's Word-Book • William Henry Smyth
... hold their ground.[51:1] What this god's original name was at Delos we cannot be sure: he has very many names and 'epithets'. But he early became identified with a similar god at Delphi and adopted his name, 'Apollon', or, in the Delphic and Dorian form, 'Apellon'—presumably the Kouros projected from the Dorian gatherings called 'apellae'.[51:2] As Phoibos he is a sun-god, and from classical times onward we often find him definitely identified with the Sun, a distinction which came easily ...
— Five Stages of Greek Religion • Gilbert Murray
... doubly a Delphic oracle for vagueness to me," said Mrs. Orton Beg, "because Colonel Colquhoun's name ...
— The Heavenly Twins • Madame Sarah Grand
... thing of it—with a couple of days' work. My head would not work in town—merely turned from side to side—never nodded (except sleepily). I send you the proofs just to show you I'm at work. I'm going to translate all the story of Delphic answer before Anabasis: and his speech after ...
— The Life of John Ruskin • W. G. Collingwood
... notion prevalent about Pindar, the very contradiction to the truth. It was imagined that he 'had a demon'; that he was under a burthen of prophetic inspiration; that he was possessed, like a Hebrew prophet or a Delphic priestess, with divine fury. Why was this thought?—simply because no mortal read him. Laughable it is to mention, that Pope, when a very young man, and writing his Temple of Fame (partly on the model of Chaucer's), when he came to the great ...
— The Uncollected Writings of Thomas de Quincey—Vol. 1 - With a Preface and Annotations by James Hogg • Thomas de Quincey
... is, it must be remembered, a sort of Delphic oracle of the marine genus, who invariably keeps his mystic intentions locked within the secret recesses of his own breast and only gives them utterance, when the occasion arrives for him to speak, through the lips of his ...
— Crown and Anchor - Under the Pen'ant • John Conroy Hutcheson
... mind employed on such subjects, and which night and day contemplates them, contains in itself that precept of the Delphic God, so as to "know itself," and to perceive its connexion with the divine reason, from whence it is filled with an insatiable joy. For reflections on the power and nature of the Gods raise in us a desire of imitating their eternity. Nor does the mind, that sees the necessary ...
— The Academic Questions • M. T. Cicero
... accounted for the social and political disabilities of woman. Goguet quotes the story from Saint Augustine, who got it from Varro. Cecrops, building Athens, saw starting from the earth an olive-plant and a fountain, side by side. The Delphic oracle said that this indicated a strife between Minerva and Neptune for the honor of giving a name to the city, and that the people must decide between them. Cecrops thereupon assembled the men, and the women also, who then had a right to vote; and the result was that Minerva carried the ...
— Women and the Alphabet • Thomas Wentworth Higginson
... which, when perfectly placid and clear, reflects the very image of the Deity. When you stand, therefore, in front of the shrine to worship, you see your own image reflected on its shining surface, and the act of worship is tantamount to the old Delphic injunction, "Know Thyself." But self-knowledge does not imply, either in the Greek or Japanese teaching, knowledge of the physical part of man, not his anatomy or his psycho-physics; knowledge was to be of a ...
— Bushido, the Soul of Japan • Inazo Nitobe
... ribbon. And there be yet{313:1} who contend for the Alexandrian laurel, and the tinus as more ductile; but without any good evidence. Pliny I find says nothing of this question, naming only the Cyprian and Delphic; besides, the figure, colour of the rind and leaf, crackling in the fire, which it impugns, (as 'tis said it does lightning) gives plainly the honour of it to the common bay. We say nothing of its sacred use in the Gentile lustration, purgation, and ...
— Sylva, Vol. 1 (of 2) - Or A Discourse of Forest Trees • John Evelyn
... me of thy favour'd tree Come to the foot, and crown myself with leaves; For to that honour thou, and my high theme Will fit me. If but seldom, mighty Sire! To grace his triumph gathers thence a wreath Caesar or bard (more shame for human wills Deprav'd) joy to the Delphic god must spring From the Pierian foliage, when one breast Is with such thirst inspir'd. From a small spark Great flame hath risen: after me perchance Others with better voice may pray, and gain ...
— The Divine Comedy • Dante
... 'Like Delphic Hag of old, by Fiend possest, He swells, wild Frenzy heaves his panting breast, His bristling hairs stick up, his eyeballs glow, And from his mouth long strakes ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... sent to consult the Delphic oracle respecting the issue of the Messenian war, then raging, ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama, Vol 1 - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook • The Rev. E. Cobham Brewer, LL.D.
... had seized her citadel in time of profound peace. The sentence of the council, that Sparta should pay a fine of five hundred talents, was a departure of Grecian custom, and Sparta refused to pay it, which refusal led to her exclusion from the council, the Delphic temple, and the Pythian games, and this exclusion again arrayed the different States of Greece against each other, as to the guardianship ...
— Ancient States and Empires • John Lord
... shoulder, calling me a Delphic oracle, and haled me from the premises through the garden gate, with the lightning rapidity of ...
— The Beloved Vagabond • William J. Locke
... of the great Theban hero, Oidipous, well illustrates the multiplicity of conceptions which clustered about the daily career of the solar orb. His father, Laios, had been warned by the Delphic oracle that he was in danger of death from his own son. The newly born Oidipous was therefore exposed on the hillside, but, like Romulus and Remus, and all infants similarly situated in legend, was duly rescued. He was taken to Corinth, where he grew up to manhood. Journeying once to Thebes, ...
— Myths and Myth-Makers - Old Tales and Superstitions Interpreted by Comparative Mythology • John Fiske
... shed Upon thy laurelled head, Hurtled by many cares and many wrongs! Malignity lets none Approach the Delphic throne; A hundred lane-fed curs bark down Fame's hundred tongues. ...
— The Poet's Poet • Elizabeth Atkins
... the dress and manners of the Ionians had undergone a change, it became the custom to cut off the long hair of the boys on their attaining the age of epheboi, and devote it as an offering to a god, for instance, to the Delphic Apollo or some local river-god. Attic citizens, however, by no means wore their hair cropped short, like their slaves, but used to let it grow according to their own taste or the common fashion. Only dandies, as, for instance, Alkibiades, let their hair fall down to their shoulders in long locks. ...
— Museum of Antiquity - A Description of Ancient Life • L. W. Yaggy
... may imagine, our first walk was to the shrine of the Delphic oracle, at the bottom of the cleft between the two peaks. The hewn face of the rock, with a niche, supposed to be that where the Pythia sat upon her tripod, and a secret passage under the floor of the ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Vol VIII - Italy and Greece, Part Two • Various
... through whom they might attend to them. The attention of all was turned to a particular one: the lake in the Alban grove swelled to an unusual height without any rain, or any other cause which could account for the matter independently of a miracle. Commissioners were sent to the Delphic oracle to inquire what the gods portended by this prodigy; but an interpreter of the fates was presented to them nearer home in a certain aged Veientian, who, amid the scoffs thrown out by the Roman and Etrurian ...
— The History of Rome, Books 01 to 08 • Titus Livius
... fragrance of the rose has penetrated me, and the spirit of thy nature hath passed within me, to embalm, to sanctify, to inspire. Have they slandered me to thee, Ione? Thou wilt not believe them. Did the Delphic oracle itself tell me thou wert unworthy, I would not believe it; and am I less incredulous than thou I think of the last time we met—of the song which I sang to thee—of the look that thou gavest me in return. Disguise it as thou wilt, Ione, ...
— The Last Days of Pompeii • Edward George Bulwer-Lytton
... Hyperion, o'er the Delphic dale Reigning meanwhile in glory, Ocean know Thine absence, and outstretch'd an icy veil, A marble pavement, o'er his waters blue; Past the Varangian fiord and Zembla hoar, And from Petsora north to dark ...
— The Visions of England - Lyrics on leading men and events in English History • Francis T. Palgrave
... considerate. If Miss Smith sang pretty well, and Miss Watson very well, and with the power of singing difficult part music at sight, they did so for the same reason that the lark sings, and chiefly under the same gentle tuition—that of nature, glad almighty nature, breathing inspiration from her Delphic tripod of happiness, and health, and hope. Mrs. Schreiber pretended to no intellectual gifts whatever; and yet, practically, she was wiser than many who have the greatest. First of all other tasks which she imposed upon ...
— Memorials and Other Papers • Thomas de Quincey
... low degree, shall be acknowledged as having originally adapted the Aeolic verse to Italian measures. Melpomene, assume that pride which your merits have acquired, and willingly crown my hair with the Delphic laurel. ...
— The Works of Horace • Horace
... present case the real point at issue is clear enough. It is a question of fighting not Philip but the whole body of states who were represented at the Delphic Council, for they would fly to arms at once if Athens renounced the Peace; against such a combination she could not survive, just as the Phocians could not cope with the combined attack of Macedonia, Thessaly and Thebes, natural enemies united for a ...
— Authors of Greece • T. W. Lumb
... Bellamys left Arthur in very low spirits. His sensations were similar to those which one can well imagine an ancient Greek might have experienced who, having sent to consult the Delphic oracle, had got for his pains a very unsatisfactory reply, foreshadowing evils but not actually defining them. Lady Bellamy was in some way connected with the idea of an oracle in his mind. She looked oracular. ...
— Dawn • H. Rider Haggard
... had its ancles pierced, and put it out in a wood to die; but it was found by a shepherd, and brought to Corinth, where the queen named it OEdipus, or Swollen Feet, and bred it up as her own child. Many years later OEdipus set out for the Delphic oracle, to ask who he was; but all the answer he received was that he must shun his native land, for he would be the slayer of his own father. He therefore resolved not to return to Corinth, but on his journey he met in a narrow pass with a chariot going to Delphi. A quarrel arose, and in ...
— Aunt Charlotte's Stories of Greek History • Charlotte M. Yonge
... that the hymnist was rather disparaging than celebrating the Delphian sanctuary. Taking the Hymn as a whole, more is done for Delos in three lines, says Mr. Verrall, than for Pytho or Delphi in three hundred. As a whole, the spirit of the piece is much more Delian (Ionian) than Delphic. So Mr. Verrall regards the Cento as "a religious pasquinade against the sanctuary on Parnassus," a pasquinade emanating from Athens, under the Pisistratidae, who, being Ionian leaders, had a grudge against "the Dorian Delphi," "a comparatively modern, unlucky, and from the first unsatisfactory" ...
— The Homeric Hymns - A New Prose Translation; and Essays, Literary and Mythological • Andrew Lang
... veils his ignorance, but his commentator in the eighteenth century (Delphic Classics) tells the tale without any doubts as to its truth. "Non nascitur e semine proprio arboris, at neque ex insidentum volucrum fimo, ut putavere veteres, sed ex ipso arborum vitali excremento." This was the opinion of the great Lord Bacon; ...
— The plant-lore & garden-craft of Shakespeare • Henry Nicholson Ellacombe
... She was like a chicken thrusting its head into a corner and thinking itself out of danger because it cannot see the danger. She had no notion that she was giving him the least clue to the truth, but considered herself speaking with more than Delphic prudence. She rather liked to coast along the shores of her trouble and see how near she could approach without running aground; but she ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 30, April, 1860 • Various
... is the pet room, the temple of the Muses and the Delphic shrine. The beautiful carpet lays the foundation of its charms, and the oak woodwork harmonizes with the tint in which Endymion is painted. At last I have Endymion where I always wanted it—in my husband's study, and it occupies one whole division of the wall. ...
— Nathaniel Hawthorne • George E. Woodberry
... lycanthropists and witches ascribed the power of disembodying themselves to the use of ointments. Antiquity furnishes no parallel to the horrors of these malignant and homicidal manias. Their analogues may be found in the fabled styes of Circe, or in the frenzied raptures of the Sybilline and Delphic priestesses; but the extent, the variety, and the hideousness of the disease in modern times, infinitely surpass all that was ever dreamt of in Pagan credulity. The points of resemblance, however, are ...
— The International Monthly Magazine - Volume V - No II • Various
... to come here; but at present we can find no authentic accounts of it, nor that any person has declared that they actually are, though there is great probability that they will soon be here, if ever." This, from a Loyalist source, is a singularly worded paragraph, and is richly Delphic. ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 56, June, 1862 • Various
... and yonder close-curled wild thyme are laid before the maidens of Helicon, and the dark-leaved laurels before thee, Pythian Healer, since the Delphic rock made this thine ornament; and this white-horned he-goat shall stain your altar, who nibbles the tip of ...
— Select Epigrams from the Greek Anthology • J. W. Mackail
... wig is a Delphic mystery, whether brains be in it or not. It is a of sublunary wisdom—an umbrella ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 360 - Vol. XIII. No. 360, Saturday, March 14, 1829 • Various
... without question, very soon to die, it is hard for you in the condition you are, either to know yourselves, or what is yours, according to the delphic inscription. I, who make the laws, am of opinion, that you neither are yourselves your own, nor is that yours of which you are possessed. Both your goods and you belong to your families, as well those past as those to come; but, further, both your family and goods ...
— The Essays of Montaigne, Complete • Michel de Montaigne
... Delphic oracle to "flee for his life when he saw a goat drink from the river Neda." Consequently, all goats were driven from the banks of this river; but one day, The[)o]clos observed that the branches of a fig tree bent into the stream, and it immediately flashed into his mind that the Messenian ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook, Vol. 3 • E. Cobham Brewer
... unit in favoring free coinage. Recent Republican and Democratic platforms had been phrased with Delphic genius to suit the East and West at once. The best known statesmen of both parties had "wobbled" upon the question. The Republican party contained a large element favorable to silver, while the Democratic President, at least, had boldly ...
— History of the United States, Volume 5 • E. Benjamin Andrews
... duped others, it seemed he also duped himself. Moreover, and this was perhaps the secret of his continued success, his "visions" were invariably symbolic and mysterious; they possessed an adaptability of character that was truly Delphic. Indeed, his hearers were compelled to put their own interpretation upon his visions. The seer seldom pretended to understand or explain ...
— Native Life in South Africa, Before and Since • Solomon Tshekisho Plaatje
... that a single individual will be the prime cause of a decision to overturn the deliberate act of a whole State or of the United States; yet we are admonished to receive their opinions as the ancients did the responses of the Delphic oracle, or the Jews, with more propriety, the communications from Heaven delivered by Urim and Thummim to the High Priest of God's ...
— John Marshall and the Constitution - A Chronicle of the Supreme Court, Volume 16 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Edward S. Corwin
... would speak with friends. One by one the questions prepared by Mr. Harrison were read, and Mr. Godbe and Mr. Harrison, with pencil and paper, took down the answers as they heard them given by the spirits."* The instruction which they thus received was Delphic in its clearness—that which was true in Mormonism should be preserved and the ...
— The Story of the Mormons: • William Alexander Linn
... round me, and they quite resembled, for all the help and light they contained, their Delphic predecessors. ...
— Lady Baltimore • Owen Wister
... slept within the Delphic bower, What time our victim sought Apollo's grace? Nay, drawn into ourselves, in that deep place Where good and evil meet, we bode our hour. For not inexorable is our power. And we are hunted of the prey we chase, Soonest gain ground on them that flee ...
— Artemis to Actaeon and Other Worlds • Edith Wharton
... fierce wrath the noble song arose, That made Ulysses and Achilles foes; How o'er the feast they doom the fall of Troy; The stern debate Atrides hears with joy; For Heaven foretold the contest, when he trod The marble threshold of the Delphic god, Curious to learn the counsels of the sky, Ere yet he loosed the ...
— The Odyssey of Homer • Homer, translated by Alexander Pope
... said so many things that others of her sex neither knew nor dared to say. He avoided and put off all introduction to her. Madame Sand was ignorant of this. In consequence of that captivating simplicity, which is one of her noblest charms, she did not divine his fear of the Delphic priestess. At last she was presented to him, and an acquaintance with her soon dissipated the prejudices which he had obstinately nourished ...
— Life of Chopin • Franz Liszt
... given to see the little philosophical figure, with its steeple-hat and loose flowing skirts, and eyes in a fine frenzy, 'pacing and repacing in austerest thought' that foolish Street; which to him was a true Delphic avenue, and supernatural Whispering-gallery, where the 'Ghosts of Life' rounded strange secrets in his ear. O thou philosophic Teufelsdroeckh, that listenest while others only gabble, and with thy quick tympanum hearest the ...
— Sartor Resartus, and On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in History • Thomas Carlyle
... various marvelous feats of strength, and on reaching manhood succeeded in delivering the Thebans from the oppression of the Minyae. In a fit of madness sent upon him by Juno, he slew his own children; and on consulting the Delphic oracle as to how he should cleanse himself from this crime, he was ordered to submit himself for twelve years to Eurystheus, king of Tiryns, and to perform whatever tasks were appointed him. Hercules obeyed the oracle, and during the twelve ...
— Ritchie's Fabulae Faciles - A First Latin Reader • John Kirtland, ed.
... meantime, daily and hourly they all pumped Mr Tadpole, who did not find it difficult to keep up his reputation for discretion; for knowing nothing, and beginning himself to be perplexed at the protracted silence, he took refuge in oracular mystery, and delivered himself of certain Delphic sentences which adroitly satisfied those who consulted him while ...
— Sybil - or the Two Nations • Benjamin Disraeli
... temple of Athena near Assesos, he rebuilt two temples for the goddess at his own expense. The Milesians sustained the struggle courageously, until two reverses at Limeneion and in the plain of the Maeander at length induced them to make terms. Their tyrant, Thrasybulus, acting on the advice of the Delphic Apollo and by the mediation of Periander of Corinth, concluded a treaty with Alyattes in which the two princes, declaring themselves the guest and the ally one of the other, very probably conceded extensive commercial privileges to one another both by ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 8 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... spoken, and making her receptions agreeable to all comers. But you would have imagined that Hinze had been prepared by general report to regard this introduction to her as an opportunity comparable to an audience of the Delphic Sibyl. When she had delivered herself on the changes in Italian travel, on the difficulty of reading Ariosto in these busy times, on the want of equilibrium in French political affairs, and on the pre-eminence of German music, he would know what to think. Felicia was evidently embarrassed ...
— Impressions of Theophrastus Such • George Eliot
... my delight, where the boon Delphic god Drinks sack and keep his bacchanalia, And has his incense and his altars smoking, And speaks in sparkling prophecies; thence I come, My brains perfumed with the rich Indian vapour, And heightened with conceits.... ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury
... hear, and more than these In bird's song, and in poet's scroll; Something underneath the whole, A music yet unbreathed.—unsung— Unwritten—incommunicable; Whispered from no mortal tongue: What seer nor prophet may rehearse In oracle, or Delphic fable, Since the old dead gods were young, And made with man their dwelling-place; But he shall hear, of all his race, The dread wherefore of life and death; He shall behold the ultimates Of fears and doubts, and scores and hates, And the sure final crown of faith. And in his ...
— The Coming of the Princess and Other Poems • Kate Seymour Maclean
... be vexed, Most Holy Father, if from time to time in the course of my narrative I repeat certain particulars, or allow myself some digressions. I feel myself carried away by a sort of joyous mental excitement, a kind of Delphic or Sibylline breath, when I read of these things; and I am, as it were, forced to repeat the same fact, especially when I realise to what an extent the propagation of our religion is involved. Yet amidst all these marvels and fertility, there is one point which causes me small satisfaction; ...
— De Orbe Novo, Volume 1 (of 2) - The Eight Decades of Peter Martyr D'Anghera • Trans. by Francis Augustus MacNutt
... with spirit and heat the Delphic choir, Which, kindled first by thy Promethean breath, Glow'd here awhile, lies quench'd now in thy death. The Muses' garden, with pedantic weeds O'erspread, was purg'd by thee, the lazy seeds Of servile imitation thrown away, And fresh invention ...
— Gossip in a Library • Edmund Gosse
... hereditary or legitimately acquired. These each affect philosophy, and represent it too; they of the caste hereditary in grande tenue, they of the new men with much pompous parade of words, and all the Delphic mystics of the schools. They are none of your journeymen—your everyday spouters—in the Commons or common places. They exhibit only on state occasions, after solemn midnight preparation made; their intended movements are duly heralded ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 54, No. 334, August 1843 • Various
... that factious or enthusiastic dotards dream, And all the incoherent jargon of the schools; Though all the fumes of fear, hope, love, and shame, Contrive to shock your minds with many a senseless doubt; Doubts where the Delphic God would grope in ignorance and night, The God of learning and of light Would want a God himself ...
— The Poems of Jonathan Swift, D.D., Volume I (of 2) • Jonathan Swift
... China to Peru, which, when it first emerges into notice, is not seen to be entangled with religious ritual and observance."[112] In Greece the lawgivers were supposed to be divinely inspired, Minos from Jupiter, Lykurgos from the Delphic god, Zaleukos from Pallas.[113] The earliest notions of law are connected with Themis the Goddess of Justice.[114] In Rome it is to Romulus himself that is attributed the first positive law, and it is by a college of ...
— Folklore as an Historical Science • George Laurence Gomme
... exceeded all the former follies and flatteries, was the proposal of Dromoclides of Sphettus; who, when there was a debate about sending to the Delphic Oracle to inquire the proper course for the consecration of certain bucklers, moved in the assembly that they should rather send to receive an oracle from Demetrius. I will transcribe the very words of ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough
... regular oracle is open for consultation. At Dodona we read that the Selloi or Helloi, a band or family of priests of ascetic habits, interpret the rustling of the sacred oak, and Agamemnon consults the Pythia, the Delphic priestess, before ...
— History of Religion - A Sketch of Primitive Religious Beliefs and Practices, and of the Origin and Character of the Great Systems • Allan Menzies
... and lovely And yet thou art not ours. What Delphic saying compels thee Of kings or ...
— The Little Book of Modern Verse • Jessie B. Rittenhouse
... of God, and affect authority over religious and not civil opinions, the Amphictyonic council was not very efficient in good: even in its punishment of sacrilege, it was only dignified and powerful whenever the interests of the Delphic temple were at stake. Its most celebrated interference was with the town of Crissa, against which the Amphictyons decreed war B. C. 505; the territory of Crissa was then dedicated to the god of ...
— Athens: Its Rise and Fall, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... her bark, and that swift foot Which th' angry Gods had fast'ned with a root To the fix'd earth, doth now unfetter'd run To meet th' embraces of the youthful Sun. She hangs upon him, like his Delphic Lyre; Her kisses blow the old, and breath new, fire; Full of her God, she sings inspired lays, Sweet odes of love, such as deserve the Bays, Which she herself was. Next her, Laura lies In Petrarch's learned arms, drying those eyes That did in such sweet smooth-paced numbers ...
— Pastoral Poetry and Pastoral Drama - A Literary Inquiry, with Special Reference to the Pre-Restoration - Stage in England • Walter W. Greg
... Menil, if next year a dolphin comes to swim near your boat, I pray you play to him on the flute the Delphic Hymn to Apollo. Do you like ...
— The Red Lily, Complete • Anatole France
... rolling-pin, and puffs the smoke thereof into the face of each warrior, from the eldest to the youngest; while they, putting their hands funnel-wise round their mouths, draw into the sinuosities of the brain that more than Delphic vapor of prophecy; which boy presently falls down in a swoon, and being dragged out by the heels and laid by to sober, enter another to puff at the sacred cigarro, till he is dragged out likewise, and ...
— Tobacco; Its History, Varieties, Culture, Manufacture and Commerce • E. R. Billings
... happiest of Dickens's creations; stupid as an owl, he has nevertheless an oracular mode of delivering himself, and the simple-minded Cuttle places as much reliance upon this wooden-headed sailor as the ancients did on the mysterious utterance of the Delphic Apollo. That the powerful will of Macstinger should hold himself in subjugation so long as he was under the dominion of her eye was a matter of course; but that this man of wisdom should be so easily boarded and captured by the enemy, is so absolutely beyond his simple comprehension ...
— English Caricaturists and Graphic Humourists of the Nineteenth Century. - How they Illustrated and Interpreted their Times. • Graham Everitt
... used in "OEdipus," vol. vi. p. 149. to impress, by a description of the feelings of the unfortunate pair towards each other, a presentiment of their fatal relationship. The prophecy of Nostradamus is also obviously imitated from the response of the Delphic Pythoness to OEdipus.—Ibid. ...
— The Works Of John Dryden, Vol. 7 (of 18) - The Duke of Guise; Albion and Albanius; Don Sebastian • John Dryden
... two allies, culminating in at least one bloody mix-up between Turkish and Bulgarian troops. In these circumstances Bulgaria appealed to Germany, but was deeply chagrined to receive from the Wilhelmstrasse a Delphic utterance which might have been interpreted as an indorsement of Turkish claims. The reason for this was that Germany was then overrunning the Ukraine preparatory to the occupation of Transcaucasia ...
— World's War Events, Volume III • Various
... past achievement only prophesies Of triumphs more unheard of. These Are shadows yet, but time will write thy name In letters golden as the sun That blazed upon the sight of those who came To worship in the temple of the Delphic One. ...
— Christopher Columbus and His Monument Columbia • Various
... the Delphic oracle foretold That the first Greek who touched the Trojan strand Should die; but me the threat could not withhold: A generous cause a victim did demand; And forth I leapt upon the sanely plain; A self-devoted ...
— The Story of Troy • Michael Clarke
... their decree on the hill of Mars, in which it behooveth thee to be victorious. But Hermione, to whose neck thou art holding the sword, it is destined for thee, Orestes, to wed, but Neoptolemus, who thinks to marry her, shall never marry her. For it is fated to him to die by the Delphic sword, as he is demanding of me satisfaction for his father Achilles. But to Pylades give thy sister's hand, as thou didst formerly agree, but a happy life now coming on awaits him. But, O Menelaus, suffer Orestes to reign over Argos. But depart and rule over the Spartan land, having it ...
— The Tragedies of Euripides, Volume I. • Euripides
... been, the Spartans could have read them. They were ancient customs, some of them older probably than the settlement in Laconia, of which the origin is unknown; they occasionally received the sanction of the Delphic oracle, but there was a still stronger obligation by which they were enforced,—the necessity of self-defence: the Spartans were always living in the presence of their enemies. They belonged to an ...
— Laws • Plato
... Thessaly contain'd, Than young Coronis,—to the Delphic god Most dear while chaste, or while her fault unknown. But Corvus, Phoebus' watchman, spy'd the deed Adulterous;—and inexorably bent To tell the secret crime, his flight directs To seek his master. Him the daw pursues, On plumes quick waving, ...
— The Metamorphoses of Publius Ovidus Naso in English blank verse Vols. I & II • Ovid
... that confessed Jesus Christ; secondly, that God had communicated to the Pagans certain glimmerings of light, to the end they might be saved. Likewise the Sibyls, for instance the Cumaean, the Egyptian and the Delphic, did these not foreshadow, amid the darkness of the Gentiles, the Holy Cradle, the Rods, the Reed, the Crown of Thorns and the Cross itself? For which reason St. Augustine admitted the Erythraean Sibyl into the City of God. Fra Mino gave thanks to God for having taught him so much ...
— The Well of Saint Clare • Anatole France
... near it erect a statue to himself, as Apollo would come to them alone of the Italian Greeks, and he would be seen following in the form of a raven. The townsmen were troubled at the apparition, and consulted the Delphic oracle, which confirmed all that Aristeas had said; and Apollo received his temple and Aristeas his statue in ...
— Greek and Roman Ghost Stories • Lacy Collison-Morley
... of Delphi— dare the ledges of Pallas but keep me foremost, keep me before you, after you, with you, never forget when you start for the Delphic precipice, never forget when you seek Pallas and meet in thought yourself drawn out from yourself like the holy serpent, never forget in thought or mysterious trance— I ...
— Hymen • Hilda Doolittle
... found by Satan, he began And stuck the bits together—hence the creases, The twists, the crooked botches, that we find— Sad counterfeits of Nature's perfect moulding; Hearts wrongly placed—a topsy-turvy mind— Things that deserve the scorn of all beholding. It needs no oracle in Delphic shade To name the model from ...
— The Death of Saul and other Eisteddfod Prize Poems and Miscellaneous Verses • J. C. Manning
... the vengeance of the Erinyes. At length he took refuge with Minerva at Athens. The goddess afforded him protection, and appointed the court of Areopagus to decide his fate. The Erinyes brought forward their accusation, and Orestes made the command of the Delphic oracle his excuse. When the court voted and the voices were equally divided, Orestes was acquitted by ...
— Bulfinch's Mythology • Thomas Bulfinch
... we know most is, however, quite differently engaged. He has devoted his life to a mission to his fellow men, and especially to his fellow citizens. If we may so far trust Plato's Apology, the occasion of that was the answer received from the Delphic oracle by Chaerephon, whom we know from Aristophanes as one of the leading disciples of Socrates in the earlier part of his life. Chaerephon asked the god of Delphi whether there was any one wiser than Socrates, and this of course implies that Socrates had a reputation for 'wisdom' ...
— The Legacy of Greece • Various
... he assumes a tone of authority which might better suit some veteran Bard than a raw candidate for the Delphic bays: for, before he proceeds to the regular process of Invocation, he clears the way, by driving from his presence (with sundry hard names; and bitter reproaches on her father, mother, and all the family) a venerable Personage, whose ...
— An English Garner - Critical Essays & Literary Fragments • Edited by Professor Arber and Thomas Seccombe
... and sufficiently accounted for our visit to Jersey, and the temporary postponement of my last trip to England before our marriage. My mother, Johanna, and I, kept our own counsel, and answered the many questions asked us as vaguely as the Delphic oracle. ...
— The Doctor's Dilemma • Hesba Stretton
... what Milton denominates "the sty of Epicurus." The discouraging religious condition of the present age is due to the great lack, not merely in the lower but the higher classes, of calm, clear self-intelligence. Men do not know themselves. The Delphic oracle was never less obeyed than now, in this vortex of mechanical arts and luxury. For this reason, it is desirable that the religious teacher dwell consecutively upon topics that are connected with that which is within man,—his settled motives of action, and all those spontaneous on-goings ...
— Sermons to the Natural Man • William G.T. Shedd
... be the Poet, who the sonnet-claim, Severest of the orders that belong Distinct and separate to the Delphic song 70 Shall reverence, nor its appropriate name Lawless assume: peculiar is its frame— From him derived, who spurn'd the city throng, And warbled sweet the rocks and woods among, Lonely Valclusa! and that heir of Fame, 75 Our greater Milton, hath in many a lay Woven ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... subtle and profound remark of Hegel's that the riddle which the Sphinx, the Egyptian symbol of the mysteriousness of Nature, propounds to Oedipus is only another way of expressing the command of the Delphic oracle, "Know thyself." And when the answer is given the Sphinx casts herself down from her rock. When man knows himself, the mysteriousness of ...
— Architects of Fate - or, Steps to Success and Power • Orison Swett Marden
... friend, who condoled with him on his gloomy prospects, that he "had a card to play yet which neither party dreamed of." The Attorney-General and the District Attorneys of New York and Philadelphia were as mysterious as Delphic oracles, while other Federal officers in those cities were profound and significant in their head-shakings and winks in reference to disclosures which were to be made just before the Presidential election, and which were to ...
— Perley's Reminiscences, Vol. 1-2 - of Sixty Years in the National Metropolis • Benjamin Perley Poore |
