"Hermes" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... stay'd his fury, and began To give her leave to rise: away she ran; After went Mercury, who us'd such cunning, As she, to hear his tale, left off her running; (Maids are not won by brutish force and might But speeches full of pleasure, and delight;) And, knowing Hermes courted her, was glad That she such loveliness and beauty had As could provoke his liking; yet was mute, And neither would deny nor grant his suit. Still vow'd he love: she, wanting no excuse To feed him with delays, as women use, Or thirsting after ...
— Hero and Leander and Other Poems • Christopher Marlowe and George Chapman
... the eighteenth century landscape had had no place; Hermes once gave a few lines to sunset, but excused it as an extravagance, and begged readers and critics not to think that he only wanted to ...
— The Development of the Feeling for Nature in the Middle Ages and - Modern Times • Alfred Biese
... them most of all in this, that the divine object which he worshiped was conceived both in form and character after the human. Zeus, Phoebus Apollo, Pallas Athene, Aphrodite, Ares, Hephaestus, Hestia, Hermes, Artemis, were originally powers of nature personified, as some epithets in Homer[4] still indicate; but they became, sometimes under the same names, types of power and lordship, science and art, courage and sensuous beauty. While Dionysus, Demeter, Hades, and Persephone remained earthly, ...
— A Comparative View of Religions • Johannes Henricus Scholten
... polytheism of Greece and Rome. While by this ramification of the Trimourti the Asiatic myths became adapted to the imaginations of various races in the lands they reached by the agency of certain sages whom men elevated to be demi-gods—Mithra, Bacchus, Hermes, Hercules, and the rest —Buddha, the great reformer of the three primeval religions, lived in India, and founded his Church there, a sect which still numbers two hundred millions more believers than Christianity can show, ...
— Louis Lambert • Honore de Balzac
... to an island where they became slaves of the king, Polydectes, who sought to marry Danae; failing in his suit, and to compel her to submission, he ordered Perseus off to fetch him the head of the Medusa; who, aided by Hermes and Athena, was successful in his mission, cut off the head of the Medusa with the help of a mirror and sickle, brought it away with him in a pouch, and after delivering and marrying Andromeda in his ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... good. He had half forgotten how good they were. The meeting became a babble in his ears, a transparency of listening shapes before his eyes.... He was back in Rio; back in youth. He was waiting with a fever in his blood at that dinner at old Hermes Pessoa's preposterous house, that was built like—so far as it was like anything else on earth—the Villa d'Este mingled with the Alhambra. The dinner, considered as a matter of food, had come to an end, and for some little time had been a matter of drink; most of the guests had gathered ...
— The Judge • Rebecca West
... their operations, when we see the seal of an army set to them. It was an ancient way of celebrating the memory of such as deserved well of the state, to afford them that kind of statuary representation, which was then called Hermes, which was the head and shoulders of a man standing upon a cube, but those shoulders without arms and hands. Altogether it figured a constant supporter of the state, by his counsel; but in this hieroglyphic, which they ...
— Devotions Upon Emergent Occasions - Together with Death's Duel • John Donne
... light, half golden, and half dusky, and full of many blended colours, where the marbles and the pictures live, sole dwellers in the deserted dwellings of princes; to come out where the oranges are all aglow in the sunshine, and the red camellias are pushing against the hoary head of the old stone Hermes, and to go down the width of the mighty steps into the gay piazza, alive with bells tolling, and crowds laughing, and drums abeat, and the flutter of carnival banners in the wind; and to get away from it all with a full heart, and ...
— Wisdom, Wit, and Pathos of Ouida - Selected from the Works of Ouida • Ouida
... is written in the form of a dialogue, the parties being Cono, a country-gentleman, Metella, his wife, Rigo, a courtier, and Hermes, a servant. The first book relates to tillage, and farm-practice in general; the second, to orcharding, gardens, and woods; the third, to cattle; and the fourth, to fowl, fish, and bees. He had evidently been an attentive reader of the older authors ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, August, 1863, No. 70 - A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics • Various
... Lat. testudo), the common lyre of the ancient Greeks, which had a convex back of tortoiseshell or of wood shaped like the shell. The word chelys was used in allusion to the oldest lyre of the Greeks which was said to have been invented by Hermes. According to tradition he was attracted by sounds of music while walking on the banks of the Nile, and found they proceeded from the shell of a tortoise across which were stretched tendons which the wind had set in vibration (Homeric Hymn to Hermes, 47-51). The word ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 1 - "Chtelet" to "Chicago" • Various
... roused the oxen vast; O'er shadowy mountain and resounding dell, And flower-paven plains, great Hermes passed; 120 Till the black night divine, which favouring fell Around his steps, grew gray, and morning fast Wakened the world to work, and from her cell Sea-strewn, the Pallantean Moon sublime Into her watch-tower just began to ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Volume I • Percy Bysshe Shelley
... volante, the Pegasus, ches les narines de feu. When I bestryde him, I soare, I am a Hawke: he trots the ayre: the Earth sings, when he touches it: the basest horne of his hoofe, is more Musicall then the Pipe of Hermes ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare
... on a pack ass or a mule attached to a clumsy cart with solid wheels, and laden with all kinds of market produce. The roadway, be it said, is not good, and all carters have their troubles; therefore, there is a deal of gesticulating and profane invocation of Hermes and all other gods of traffic; for, early as it is, the market place is already filling, and every delay promises a loss. There are still other companions bound toward the city: countrymen bearing cages of poultry; others ...
— A Day In Old Athens • William Stearns Davis
... would amount to many hundreds. But this principle of division and arrangement, if followed out in detail, would lead to great perplexity, without producing any beneficial result. The division of Mr. Harris, in his Hermes, is much more curious than instructive. He has fourteen moods; his interrogative, optative, hortative, promissive, precautive, requisitive, enunciative, &c. But as far as philosophical accuracy and the convenience and advantage of the learner are concerned, it ...
— English Grammar in Familiar Lectures • Samuel Kirkham
... no longer vain And worthless deemed by me, Whate'er this sterile genius has produced, Expect at last, the rage of envy spent, An unmolested happy home, Gift of kind Hermes and my watchful friend, Where never flippant tongue profane Shall entrance find, And whence the coarse unlettered multitude Shall babble far remote. Perhaps some future distant age, Less tinged with prejudice, and better taught, Shall furnish minds of power To ...
— The Life of John Milton Vol. 3 1643-1649 • David Masson
... the old public punishment still continued, for in 1600 (the year before the execution of Essex) we read that "Mrs. Fowler's case was decided" by sentencing that lady to be whipped in Bridewell; while a Captain Hermes was sent to the pillory, his brother was fined L100 and imprisoned, and Gascone, a soldier, was sentenced to ride to the Cheapside pillory with his face to the horse's tail, to be there branded in the face, ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury
... to accept the concensus of their opinion, which seems to divide between the Phoenicians and the Egyptians as being the inventors of the foremost of all the arts. "For, in Phoenicia, had lived Taaut or Thoth the first Hermes, its inventor, and who later carried his art into Egypt where they first wrote in pictures, some 2200 ...
— Forty Centuries of Ink • David N. Carvalho
... follies are miscall'd the crimes of fate. When to his lust AEgysthus gave the rein, Did fate, or we, the adulterous act constrain? Did fate, or we, when great Atrides died, Urge the bold traitor to the regicide? Hermes I sent, while yet his soul remain'd Sincere from royal blood, and faith profaned; To warn the wretch, that young Orestes, grown To manly years, should re-assert the throne. Yet, impotent of mind, and uncontroll'd, He plunged into the gulf which ...
— The Odyssey of Homer • Homer, translated by Alexander Pope
... now left of Saint Michael, the glittering hierarch? Can he still endure the light of sun? Or has he not shrivelled into a spectral Hermes, a grisly psychopomp, bowing his head in minished glory, and leading men's souls no longer aloft but downwards—down to the pale regions of things that have been? And will it be long ere he, too, is thrust by some flaming Demogorgon into these same realms of Minos, into that shadowy ...
— Old Calabria • Norman Douglas
... his case, yet I gained much more substantial advantage from the popular approval on his condemnation than I should have got from his gratitude if he had been acquitted.[40] I am very glad to hear what you say about the Hermathena. It is an ornament appropriate to my "Academia" for two reasons: Hermes is a sign common to all gymnasia, Minerva specially of this particular one. So I would have you, as you say, adorn the place with the other objects also, and the more the better. The statues which you sent me before I have not yet seen. They are in ...
— The Letters of Cicero, Volume 1 - The Whole Extant Correspodence in Chronological Order • Marcus Tullius Cicero
... fleet put in at a town distant from Carthage no less than two hundred and eighty stades (now it so happened that a temple of Hermes had been there from of old, from which fact the place was named Mercurium; for the Romans call Hermes "Mercurius"), and if he had not purposely played the coward and hesitated, but had undertaken to go straight for Carthage, he would have captured it at the first onset, and he would have reduced ...
— History of the Wars, Books III and IV (of 8) - The Vandalic War • Procopius
... I saw her. She was the exquisitely formed, slim and glowing creature I had seen before, when she launched herself into the night as a God of Homer—Hermes or Thetis—launched out from Olympus' top into the sea—"[Greek: ex aitheros empese ponto]," and words fail me to describe the perfection of her being, a radiant simulacrum of our own, the inconscient self-sufficiency, the buoyancy and freedom which she showed me. You may sometimes see boys ...
— Lore of Proserpine • Maurice Hewlett
... is very simple: 'Prepare for the coming Christ.' We stand at the cradle of a new subrace, and each race or subrace has its own messiah. Hermes is followed by Zoroaster; Zoroaster by Orpheus; Orpheus by Buddha; Buddha by Christ. We now await with confidence a manifestation of the Supreme Teacher of the world, who was last manifested in Palestine. Everywhere in the West, not less than in the East, ...
— Our Day - In the Light of Prophecy • W. A. Spicer
... not have sent you the Play till Night had I thought you would sit up that same night to read it. Indeed, I had put it away for the Night Post: but my old Hermes came in to say he was going into Town to market, and so he took it with ...
— Letters of Edward FitzGerald to Fanny Kemble (1871-1883) • Edward FitzGerald
... lamp, at midnight hour, Be seen in some high lonely tower, Where I may oft outwatch the Bear, With thrice great Hermes. ...
— Gryll Grange • Thomas Love Peacock
... Lyveden was concerned, an Olympian banquet. The assemblage, indeed, was remarkable, and the hostess—a very Demeter—must have been the oldest present by some twenty years. The sprightliness of Hermes alone, in the guise of the man called Berry, kept a lively ...
— Anthony Lyveden • Dornford Yates
... force, but I cannot bring it out. It may sound like a joke, but I do feel something corresponding to that tale of the Destinies falling in love with Hermes.' ...
— Memoirs of Margaret Fuller Ossoli, Vol. I • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... Odysseus, but no escape came for eight years. Then Athene begged the gods to help him. They called on Hermes, who commanded Calypso to let him go. She wanted him to stay with her but promised to send him away. She told him to make a raft which she would furnish with food and clothing ...
— Young Folks Treasury, Volume 2 (of 12) • Various
... with the Hermetic philosophers of ancient Egypt, all things were interrelated by correspondence, analogy, and similitude. "As above, so below," is the teaching on the Smaragdine Table of Hermes. Therefore, whatever happened to the divine Epinoia, the Supreme Mother, among the Aeons, happened also to the human Spiritual Soul or Monadic Essence, in its evolution through all stages of manifestation. This Soul is shut into ...
— Simon Magus • George Robert Stow Mead
... the other from Seth. Jabal and Jubal, we are told, inscribed their knowledge of science and handicraft on two pillars, one of marble, the other of lateres; and after the flood one of the pillars was found by Hermes, and the other by Pythagoras, who taught the sciences they found written thereon. Other MSS give Euclid the part here assigned to Hermes. Surely this is all fantastic enough, but the blending of the names of Hermes, the "father of Wisdom," who is so supreme a figure ...
— The Builders - A Story and Study of Masonry • Joseph Fort Newton
... writer of 'slams.' He is as debonair and inconsequential as a young Hermes to whom only the serious lessons of life can teach sympathy and true insight, if he ...
— Poet Lore, Volume XXIV, Number IV, 1912 • Various
... Hermes cunning Poor Argus funning, He made him drink like a buffer; To his great surprise Sew'd up all his eyes, And stole away ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 14, Issue 380, July 11, 1829 • Various
... architecture are piled close to one another. Egyptian pylons rise above Greek temples. Obelisks exhibit themselves like spears between battlements of red brick. In the centres of squares there are statues of Hermes with pointed ears, and of Anubis with dogs' heads. Antony notices the mosaics in the court-yards, and the tapestries hung from the cross-beams ...
— The Temptation of St. Antony - or A Revelation of the Soul • Gustave Flaubert
... world,—these of the old religion,—dwelling in a worship which makes the sanctities of Christianity look parvenues and popular; for "persuasion is in soul, but necessity is in intellect." This band of grandees, Hermes, Heraclitus, Empedocles, Plato, Plotinus, Olympiodorus, Proclus, Synesius and the rest, have somewhat so vast in their logic, so primary in their thinking, that it seems antecedent to all the ordinary distinctions of rhetoric and literature, and to be at once ...
— Essays, First Series • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... galop on his lion to Olympus, singing to his {404} lyre in praise of Love, the Conqueror, to whom men and Gods bow. Olympus appears beyond the clouds. There the Gods are assembled in council to decide the fate of Odysseus. Athene and Hermes plead for the sorely-tried hero. Zeus answers that the immortal Gods know and have determined every step of man's life. He gives his sanction to Athene and Hermes to watch over and defend Odysseus. Again clouds hide the scene. When they part we find ourselves ...
— The Standard Operaglass - Detailed Plots of One Hundred and Fifty-one Celebrated Operas • Charles Annesley
... productions—sometimes he breathed martial strains in honour of Marlborough's victories, sometimes formed adulatory addresses to members of the Royal Family. His "Pills to purge Melancholy," at times approached humour. The following is taken from the "Banquet of the Gods," and refers to Hermes ...
— History of English Humour, Vol. 1 (of 2) - With an Introduction upon Ancient Humour • Alfred Guy Kingan L'Estrange
... I may surely trust mine eye,— It is the bark of Hermes, or the shell Of Iris, wafted gently to the sighs Of the light breeze along the rippling swell; But no: it is a skiff where sweetly lies An infant slumbering, and his peaceful rest Looks as if ...
— Poems • Victor Hugo
... of Junius, who is to him, as to many people, more than entirely the enigma of an enigma, Hermes Trismegistus, or the mediaeval Prester John. Not only are most people unable to solve the enigma, but they have no idea of what it is that they are to solve. I have to inform Schlosser that there are three separate questions about Junius, of ...
— The Notebook of an English Opium-Eater • Thomas de Quincey
... had endured a year and more, Now wholly changed from what he was before, It happen'd once, that, slumbering as he lay, He dream'd (his dream began at break of day) That Hermes o'er his head in air appear'd, And with soft words his drooping spirits cheer'd: His hat, adorn'd with wings, disclosed the god, And in his hand he bore the sleep-compelling rod: 550 Such as he seem'd, when, at his sire's command, On Argus' head he laid the snaky wand. Arise, he said, to conquering ...
— The Poetical Works of John Dryden, Vol II - With Life, Critical Dissertation, and Explanatory Notes • John Dryden
... avenged? Guide, then, Telemachus, Wisely, for thou canst, that, all unharmed, He reach his native land, and, in their barks, Homeward the suitor-train retrace their way." He spake, and turned to Hermes, his dear son: "Hermes, for thou, in this, my messenger Art, as in all things, to the bright-haired nymph Make known my steadfast purpose, the return Of suffering Ulysses. Neither gods Nor men shall guide his voyage. On a raft, Made firm with bands, he shall depart and ...
— Poetical Works of William Cullen Bryant - Household Edition • William Cullen Bryant
... it) as Aristotle saith, and assigneth the cause of this uncleanness and saith, that in boisterous lead is evil quicksilver heavy and fenny. Also that brimstone thereof is evil vapour and stinking. Therefore it freezeth not well at full. Hermes saith that lead in boiling undoeth the hardness of all sad and hard bodies, and also of the stone adamant. Aristotle speaketh of lead in the Meteorics and saith that lead without doubt when it is molten is as quicksilver, but it melteth not without heat, and then ...
— Mediaeval Lore from Bartholomew Anglicus • Robert Steele
... under. A submarine had attacked her an hour before, and struck her with two torpedoes. The first destroyed her screws, and she was then an easy prey; the second entered her saloon in the stern. She was the Hermes, an old vessel, and of no great value at the present day, but it was tragic to see a great cruiser expiring, stabbed in the dark. Thanks to her buoyancy, she was only sinking slowly, and there was ample time for the whole of her crew to escape. Very different would be the fate of an unarmed vessel, ...
— A Surgeon in Belgium • Henry Sessions Souttar
... Hermes Bentivogli—Giovanni's youngest son—was on guard at the palace with several other young Bolognese patricians, and he incited these to go with him to make an end of the traitors who had sought to destroy the peace by ...
— The Life of Cesare Borgia • Raphael Sabatini
... surviving brothers intrusted with the care of the government and laws, joining with them Hermus, one of the nobility of Athens, from whom a place in the city is called the House of Hermus; though by an error in the accent it has been taken for the House of Hermes, or Mercury, and the honor that was designed to the hero, transferred to ...
— The Boys' and Girls' Plutarch - Being Parts of The "Lives" of Plutarch • Plutarch
... besides, Imagined rather oft than elsewhere seen; That stone, or like to that, which here below Philosophers in vain so long have sought, In vain, though by their powerful art they bind Volatile Hermes, and call up unbound In various shapes old Proteus from the sea, Drained through a limbec to his native form. What wonder then if fields and regions here Breathe forth elixir pure, and rivers run Potable gold, when, with one ...
— The Astronomy of Milton's 'Paradise Lost' • Thomas Orchard
... contradicted themselves, thinking one thing and teaching their pupils another. Homer, Hesiod, Demosthenes, Herodotus, Thucydides, Isocrates, and Lysias were indebted to the gods for all their science. Did they not think that they were under the protection of Hermes and of the Muses? It seems to me, therefore, absurd that those who explain their writings should despise the gods they honored. But when I think it is absurd, I do not say that, on account of their pupils, they should ...
— A Source Book for Ancient Church History • Joseph Cullen Ayer, Jr., Ph.D.
... came about that Zeus was compelled to send a messenger down to the Underworld to bring Persephone back to the mother who grieved so much for the loss of her. Hermes was the messenger whom Zeus sent. Through the darkened places of the earth Hermes went, and he came to that dark throne where the lord Aidoneus sat, with Persephone beside him. Then Hermes spoke to the lord of the Underworld, saying that Zeus commanded that ...
— The Golden Fleece and the Heroes who Lived Before Achilles • Padraic Colum
... There is no such soul-absorbing pursuit as the race which men run whose goal is the glittering Temple of Plutus. The golden apples which tempted Atalanta to slacken her pace are always rolling before the modern runner, and the greed of gain lends the wings of Hermes to his feet. Mr. Sheldon had sighed for pleasures sometimes in the days of his Bloomsbury martyrdom. He had sat by his open window on sultry summer evenings, smoking his solitary cigar, and thinking moodily of all the pleasant ...
— Birds of Prey • M. E. Braddon
... knewe, The science of himself is trewe Upon the forme as it was founded, Wherof the names yit ben grounded 2600 Of hem that ferste it founden oute; And thus the fame goth aboute To suche as soghten besinesse Of vertu and of worthinesse. Of whom if I the names calle, Hermes was on the ferste of alle, To whom this art is most applied; Geber therof was magnefied, And Ortolan and Morien, Among the whiche is Avicen, 2610 Which fond and wrot a gret partie The practique of Alconomie; Whos ...
— Confessio Amantis - Tales of the Seven Deadly Sins, 1330-1408 A.D. • John Gower
... Greek mythology, Hermes made a lyre, which is a kind of harp, out of the shell of a tortoise, and on a vase in the Museum at Munich is a figure of Polyhymnia playing a harp with thirteen strings, of the form which was ...
— Chatterbox, 1906 • Various
... gods then left us in our need Like base and common men? Were even the sweet grey eyes Of Artemis a lie, The speech of Hermes but a trick, The ...
— The Principles of English Versification • Paull Franklin Baum
... That whosoever passed that way And drank, his shape was quickly lost. Some into swine she turn'd, but most To lions arm'd with teeth and claws; Others like wolves with open jaws Did howl; but some—more savage—took The tiger's dreadful shape and look. But wise Ulysses, by the aid Of Hermes, had to him convey'd A flow'r, whose virtue did suppress The force of charms, and their success: While his mates drank so deep, that they Were turn'd to swine, which fed all day On mast, and human food had left, Of shape and voice at once bereft; Only the mind—above all charms— Unchang'd ...
— Poems of Henry Vaughan, Silurist, Volume II • Henry Vaughan
... consequences; he reaches no scientific demonstration upon any point. Far from establishing the existence of a law of aesthetics among the Greeks, he simply remarks upon the extreme simplicity of their beginnings, and shows by what gropings they came from Hermes to the most perfect works ...
— Delsarte System of Oratory • Various
... out to this day, although the best authorities ascribe the work to Caius Petronius, the Arbiter Elegantiarum at the court of Nero. "The question as to the date of the narrative of the adventures of Encolpius and his boon companions must be regarded as settled," says Theodor Mommsen (Hermes, 1878); "this narrative is unsurpassed in originality and mastery of treatment among the writings of Roman literature. Nor does anyone doubt the identity of its author and the Arbiter Elegantiarum of Nero, whose ...
— The Satyricon, Complete • Petronius Arbiter
... one soft summary curve, and echoing it in the curve of the wine-skin that swells around him. Himself, as a living man, were too loathsome for words; but here, thanks to Hokusai, he is not less admirable than Pheidias' Hermes, or the Discobolus himself. Yes! Swathed in his abominable surplusage of bulk, he is as fair as any statue of astricted god or athlete that ...
— Yet Again • Max Beerbohm
... bless thee, gentle Hermes! Once I sinned, and strove Vainly with my haughty brother 'Gainst Olympian Jove. Now my doubts his love hath vanquished; Evil knows not he, Whose free-streaming grace prepared Such gift of gods for me. Henceforth I and ...
— Mosaics of Grecian History • Marcius Willson and Robert Pierpont Willson
... from the next. Since in classic times a herm, or hermes, was used to mark distances on the roads, so here the hermes is used to mark distances, or periods ...
— Palaces and Courts of the Exposition • Juliet James
... Each mote that staggers down the sun V He is a priest VI Through hissing snow, through rain, through many hundred Mays VII Gods dine on prayer and sacred song VIII A smile will turn away green eyes IX Two Kings there were, one Good, one Bad X I see that Hermes unawares XI Semiramis, the whore of Babylon XII Bring hemlock, black as Cretan cheese XIII Walking through the town last night XIV The change of many tides has swung the flow XV Piero di Cosimo XVI I would know what cannot be known ...
— The Five Books of Youth • Robert Hillyer
... inconsistencies of a man who is at once, by his own confession, 'God in Nature and a weed by the wall.' His weakness strives after infinite power. Conscious of a divinity within, he struggles to express it worthily; but ah! says Hermes Trismegistus,—'It is hard to conceive God, but impossible to express him.' Freedom within chafes at the iron necessity without, 'a necessity deep as the world,' all-controlling, imperial, which he acknowledges in the very depths ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol I, Issue I, January 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... desire of self-preservation gathered them into cities; but when they were gathered together, having no art of government, they evil-intreated one another, and were again in process of dispersion and destruction. Zeus feared that the entire race would be exterminated, and so he sent Hermes to them, bearing reverence and justice to be the ordering principles of cities and the bonds of ...
— The Moral Economy • Ralph Barton Perry
... lots, and now the Delian god, Now Hermes is employ'd from Jove's abode, To warn him hence, as if the peaceful state Of heavenly powers ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... deepest depth of the water; on the rock of Nemi, and the fortress-like Orsini villa; on the Alban Mount itself, where it cut the clear sky. I presently came up with Mr. James and Aristodemo, who led us on serenely, a young Hermes in the transfiguring light. One almost looked for the winged feet and helmet of the messenger god! Mr. James paused—his eyes first on the boy, then on the surrounding scene. "Aristodemo!" he murmured, smiling, and more to himself than ...
— A Writer's Recollections (In Two Volumes), Volume II • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... of the whole, the parting of husband and wife. In the museum at Naples there is the wonderful Greek treatment of this theme, in sculptured high relief. The sculptor has chosen the moment of parting. Hermes, the messenger of the gods to recall Eurydice, has twined his hand gently around the left hand of the woman. With her right hand she still touches her husband, but the dread instant is upon them all. The sculptor, representing the persons in three dimensions, ...
— A Study of Poetry • Bliss Perry
... when the teacher comes all the world will listen and obey. It seems to me that teacher after teacher has uttered the truth—Hermes, Zoroaster, Buddha, Confucius, Orpheus, Jesus—and that the trouble is not lack of teachers but lack of disciples. In the teachings of Jesus Christ, the world has a model wherewith to mould the old order of hate and selfishness into a new rule of love ...
— Mountain Meditations - and some subjects of the day and the war • L. Lind-af-Hageby
... ecclesiastical art by his splendid series of monographs on the cathedrals, and his topographical works. A fine monument of its class is one by Bacon (22), which represents Moral Philosophy mourning over a medallion of James Harris, author of "Hermes" and father of the first Earl of Malmesbury; to whose memory close by is a full-length portrait figure by Chantrey. A figure (23) of Benevolence lifting the veil from a bas-relief of the good Samaritan, by Flaxman, commemorates ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: The Cathedral Church of Salisbury - A Description of its Fabric and a Brief History of the See of Sarum • Gleeson White
... call," continued Peter; "it will be over soon, and we must set out. The dead will not need to tarry. Look at that trail of fire along the avenue; dost see yon line of sparkles, like a rocket's tail? That's the path the corpse will take. St. Hermes's flickering fire, Robin Goodfellow's dancing light, or the blue flame of the corpse-candle, which I saw flitting to the churchyard last week, was not so pretty a sight—ha, ha! You asked me for a song a moment ago—you shall have one ...
— Rookwood • William Harrison Ainsworth
... cunning and successful stratagem. Odysseus was wily. He was a clever hero. His maternal grandfather Autolykos was, by endowment of Hermes (a god of lying and stealing), a liar and thief ...
— Folkways - A Study of the Sociological Importance of Usages, Manners, Customs, Mores, and Morals • William Graham Sumner
... breakfast. Aesculapius says that as Zeus has hitherto considered the quality of his food so much, it is probable that in these lower conditions it may prove to be quantity which will interest him most. He was greatly pleased with a curious kind of aromatic tube which Hermes ...
— Hypolympia - Or, The Gods in the Island, an Ironic Fantasy • Edmund Gosse
... precisely musical. Why is Hermes "The Flitter"? But I have often ventured to remonstrate against these archaistic peculiarities, which to some extent mar our pleasure in Mr. Morris's translations. In his version of the rich Virgilian measure they are especially out of place. The "AEneid" is rendered with a roughness which ...
— Adventures among Books • Andrew Lang
... suspected—who could tell what kind of powers? hidden under the white veil of that youthful form; and pausing to ponder the matter, found themselves also fallen into the snare. The sight of him made old people feel young again. Even the sage monk Hermes, devoted to study and experiment, was unable to keep the fruit-seller out of his mind, and would fain have discovered the secret of his charm, partly for the friendly purpose of explaining to the lad himself his perhaps more ...
— Imaginary Portraits • Walter Horatio Pater
... himself, they either attributed these passions to a god, or deified them; frequently they did both: it was thus love became a deity; that eloquence, poetry, industry, were transformed into gods, under the names of Hermes, Mercury, Apollo; the stings of conscience were called the Furies: the people, bowed down in stupid ignorance, had no eyes but for these emblematical persons, under which nature was masked: they attributed to their influence the good, ...
— The System of Nature, Vol. 2 • Baron D'Holbach
... scroll he saw appear. Those jetty locks Canopus o'er him threw, And tinged his temple curls a musky hue; Mars dyed his ruddy cheek; and from his eyes The Archer-star his glittering arrow flies; His wit from Hermes came; and Soha's care, (The half-seen star that dimly haunts the Bear) Kept off all evil eyes that threaten and ensnare, The sage stood mazed to see such fortunes meet, And Luna kissed the earth ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 1 • Richard F. Burton
... early Woden worship. The boundaries of estates, as mentioned in charters, give instances of trees, stones, and posts, used as landmarks, and dedicated to Woden, thus conferring upon them a religious sanction, like that of Hermes amongst the Greeks. Anglo-Saxon worship generally gathered around natural features; and sacred oaks, ashes, wells, hills, and rivers are among the commonest memorials of our heathen ancestors. Many of them were reconsecrated after the introduction of Christianity ...
— Early Britain - Anglo-Saxon Britain • Grant Allen
... destroyed by the fire of the Turkish shore guns; British trawler Agantha is sunk by a German submarine off Longstone, the crew being subjected to rifle fire from the submarine while taking to the boats; German submarine U-31 sinks British steamer Olivine and Russian bark Hermes, the crews being saved; German Baltic fleet, returning from bombardment of Libau, is cut off from its base by German mines, which have gone adrift in large numbers ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 3, June, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... headlong drawn from hell, He voided a black poison from his mouth, Call'd Aconitum, whereof ink was made: That ink, with reeds first laid on dried barks, Serv'd me awhile to make rude works withal, Till Hermes, secretary to the gods, Or Hermes Trismegistus, as some will, Weary with graving in blind characters And figures of familiar beasts and plants, Invented letters to write lies withal. In them he penn'd the fables of the gods, The giants' war, ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. VIII (4th edition) • Various
... you wrong, Young fellow from Socrates' land? — You, like a Hermes so lissome and strong Fresh from the Master Praxiteles' hand? So you're of Spartan birth? Descended, perhaps, from one of the band — Deathless in story and song — Who combed their long hair at Thermopylae's pass? Ah, I forget the straits, alas! More tragic ...
— The Little Book of Modern Verse • Jessie B. Rittenhouse
... Hermes," 16: "The Cosmos is all-formed [Pantomorphos]—not having forms external to itself, but changing them, itself within itself"; also the "Perfect Sermon," xix. 3: "The thirty-six, who have the name of Horoscopes, ...
— The Gnosis of the Light • F. Lamplugh
... he appeared in what he hoped would be the irresistible form—a recently discovered fragment of Polybius, an advance copy of the forthcoming issue of "The Historical Review," the note-book of Professor Carl Voertschlaffen... One day, all-prying Hermes told him of Clio's secret addiction to novel-reading. Thenceforth, year in, year out, it was in the form of fiction that Zeus wooed her. The sole result was that she grew sick of the sight of novels, and found a perverse pleasure ...
— Zuleika Dobson - or, An Oxford Love Story • Max Beerbohm
... he: it was the Helper Hermes He called the grave: and this he showed by adding It was his sire's ...
— The Frogs • Aristophanes
... known; Fair order and beauty establish their throne; For order, and beauty, and just regulation, Support all the works of this ample creation. For this, in compassion to mortals below, The gods, their peculiar favour to show, Sent Hermes to Bath in the shape of a beau: That grandson of Atlas came down from above To bless all the regions of pleasure and love; To lead the fair nymph thro' the various maze, Bright beauty to marshal, his glory and ...
— The Wits and Beaux of Society - Volume 1 • Grace Wharton and Philip Wharton
... alcove, the shelves of which were burdened with ancient volumes and with those rolls of papyrus in which was treasured up the eldest wisdom of the earth. Perhaps the most valuable work in the collection, to a bibliomaniac, was the Book of Hermes. For my part, however, I would have given a higher price for those six of the Sibyl's books which Tarquin refused to purchase, and which the virtuoso informed me he had himself found in the cave of Trophonius. Doubtless ...
— A Virtuoso's Collection (From "Mosses From An Old Manse") • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... Ibis stalked to the silvery steps of the Houris; the Graces held hands. Phoebus Apollo appeared; his face was as a silver shield, so shining was it. He improvised upon a many-stringed lyre made of tortoise shell, and his music was shimmering and symphonious. Hermes and his Syrinx wooed the shy Euterpe; the maidens went in woven paces: a medley of masques flamed by; and the great god Pan breathed into his pipes. Stannum saw Bacchus pursued by the ravening Maenads; saw Lamia and her ophidian flute; and sorrowfully ...
— Melomaniacs • James Huneker
... or portuaries, with the Use of St. Paul's, or of Sarum, or mayhap St. Austin's Confessions. He made his way along, with his eye diligently heedful of the signs, and at last recognised the Winged Staff, or caduceus of Hermes, over a stall where a couple of boys in blue caps and gowns and yellow stockings were making a purchase of a small, grave- looking, elderly but bright cheeked man, whose yellow hair and beard were getting intermingled with grey. They were evidently those ...
— The Armourer's Prentices • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... Phoreus and Ceto were the parents of the Gorgons — Stheno, Euryale. and Medusa, of whom the latter alone was mortal, (Hesiod. "Theogony", 276.) Phorcus was a son of Pontus and Gaia (sea and land), ibid, 287. (21) The scimitar lent by Hermes (or Mercury) to Perseus for the purpose; with which had been slain Argus the guardian of Io (Conf. "Prometheus vinctus", 579.) Hermes was born in a cave in Mount Cyllene in Arcadia. (22) The idea seems to be that the earth, bulging at the equator, ...
— Pharsalia; Dramatic Episodes of the Civil Wars • Lucan
... unless you know the thing, from the beginning of the Work to the end, you know nothing thereof. Indeed I have told you enough, yet you are ignorant how the Stone of Philosophers is made, and again, how the Glassy Seal of Hermes is broaken, in which Sol gives forth Splendor from his Metallick Rayes, wonderfully coloured, and in which Speculum, the Eyes of Narcissus behold Metals transmutable, and from which Rayes the Adept gather their fire, by the help of which, ...
— The Golden Calf, Which the World Adores, and Desires • John Frederick Helvetius
... attain qualities to lose them; life is a series of farewells, even in art; even our proficiencies are deciduous and evanescent. So here with these exquisite pieces the XVIIth, XVIIIth, and IVth of the present collection. You will perhaps never excel them; I should think the 'Hermes,' never. Well, you will do something else, and of that I am in expectation. - ...
— Letters of Robert Louis Stevenson - Volume 2 • Robert Louis Stevenson
... a false message from the city to which he is sent, or be proved to have brought back, whether from friends or enemies, in his capacity of herald or ambassador, what they have never said, let him be indicted for having violated, contrary to the law, the commands and duties imposed upon him by Hermes and Zeus, and let there be a penalty fixed, which he shall suffer or pay if ...
— Laws • Plato
... the Hermes of Olympia, and the fact that so far he is pretty well the only Greek statue which historical evidence unhesitatingly gives us as an original masterpiece, it struck me that, could one become really familiar with him, could eye and soul learn all the fulness of his perfection, we should ...
— Laurus Nobilis - Chapters on Art and Life • Vernon Lee
... written (scriptures) has been handed down also to us, inscribed by the power of God on hearts new, according to the renovation of the book. Thus those of highest repute among the Greeks dedicate the fruit of the pomegranate to Hermes, who they say is speech, on account of its interpretation. For speech conceals much.... That it is therefore not only to those who read simply that the acquisition of the truth is so difficult, but that not even to those whose ...
— Esoteric Christianity, or The Lesser Mysteries • Annie Besant
... belief that the Hermes (that is, Mercury) of the Greeks is the same Herminius or Arimanius. He may have been an inventor or promoter of the arts and of a slightly more civilized life among his own people and in the countries where he held supremacy, while amongst his enemies ...
— Theodicy - Essays on the Goodness of God, the Freedom of Man and the Origin of Evil • G. W. Leibniz
... saying I took my way up from the ship and the sea-shore. But on my way, as I drew near through the glades to the home of the enchantress Circe, there met me Hermes with his golden rod, in semblance of a lad wearing youth's bloom on his lip and all youth's charm at its heyday. He clasped my hand and spake and greeted me. 'Whither away now, wretched wight, amid these mountain-summits alone and astray? And yonder in the styes of Circe, ...
— Sir John Constantine • Prosper Paleologus Constantine
... up, and hastily, in a melodious voice, quoted some scraps of guide-book. Rosamund did not find what she wanted among them. She knew already about the ruins, about the Nike of Paeonius and the Hermes of Praxiteles. So she left the young Greek to his waking dream, and possessed her soul in a patience that was not difficult. She liked to dwell in anticipation. And she felt that any secret this land was about to reveal to her would be, must ...
— In the Wilderness • Robert Hichens
... Alessandro, gesticulating with one hand, "may you be my Hermes, my swiftfoot messenger. Tell me what you ...
— Little Novels of Italy • Maurice Henry Hewlett
... consequence of some celebrated action, so my illustrious friend was often called DICTIONARY JOHNSON, from that wonderful atchievement of genius and labour, his Dictionary of the English Language; the merit of which I contemplate with more and more admiration. BOSWELL. In like manner we have 'Hermes Harris,' 'Pliny Melmoth,' 'Demosthenes Taylor,' 'Persian Jones,' 'Abyssinian Bruce,' 'Microscope Baker,' 'Leonidas Glover,' 'Hesiod ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 1 • Boswell
... were taken to Venice, but Louis XII claimed them, and they were given up. Thus the King of France found himself master of Ludovico Sforza and of Ascania, of a legitimate nephew of the great Francesco Sforza named Hermes, of two bastards named Alessandro and Cortino, and of Francesco, son of the unhappy Gian Galeazza who had ...
— The Borgias - Celebrated Crimes • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... whom we are glad to get rid after three hours' infliction of his stupidity and endurance of his ignorance, without acquiring one idea, Greek, Roman, Norman, or Saracen, out of all his erudition. After going through the whole tour with such a fellow for a Hermes, we come at last upon the far-famed theatre, where we did not want him. Here, however, a very intelligent attendant, supported by the king of Naples on a suitable pension of five baiocchi a-day, takes us out of the hands of the Philistine, and with a plan of the ground to aid us, proceeds ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXLV. July, 1844. Vol. LVI. • Various
... Pyrgos. But I amused myself by addressing the inhabitants, in the English language, with an eloquent oration that soon gathered them under my control; and thereafter I set a hundred of them at the pleasant task of trying to push the train for Olympia on its way to take me to the Hermes of Praxiteles. I knew no word of their language, nor did they of mine; but they understood that that train should be started, if human force were sufficient to help the cars upon their way: and finally, when the engine ...
— The Unpopular Review, Volume II Number 3 • Various
... character of each. And he set over against Poseidon Phoebus, the cold and wet against the hot and dry: Athene to Ares, the rational to the irrational, that is, the good to the bad. Hera to Artemis, that is, the air to the moon, because the one is stable and the other unstable. Hermes to Latona, because speech investigates and remembers, but oblivion is contrary to these. Hephaestus to the River God, for the same reason that the sun is opposed to the sea. The spectator of the fight was the primary god, and he is made taking joy ...
— Essays and Miscellanies - The Complete Works Volume 3 • Plutarch
... and their hearts were touched. Zeus himself coaxed Venus with kind words till at last she relented, and remembered that anger hurt her beauty, and smiled once more. All the younger gods were for welcoming Psyche at once, and Hermes was sent to bring her hither. The maiden came, a shy newcomer among those bright creatures. She took the cup that Hebe held out to her, drank the divine ambrosia, and ...
— Good Stories For Great Holidays - Arranged for Story-Telling and Reading Aloud and for the - Children's Own Reading • Frances Jenkins Olcott
... most cunning of men. He was a Master Thief, and could steal a man's pillow from under his head, but he does not seem to have been thought worse of for this. The Greeks had a God of Thieves, named Hermes, whom Autolycus worshipped, and people thought more good of his cunning tricks than harm of his dishonesty. Perhaps these tricks of his were only practised for amusement; however that may be, Ulysses became as artful as his grandfather; he was ...
— Tales of Troy: Ulysses the Sacker of Cities • Andrew Lang
... the lake and morass near Tyana were ascribed to the wrath of Zeus and Hermes, who, having visited the cities which formerly stood there, and having been refused shelter by all the inhabitants save Philemon and Baucis, rewarded their benefactors, but sunk the wicked cities beneath the ...
— History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom • Andrew Dickson White
... once common become scarce and costly—e.g., Lawrence's 'Lectures on Man'; Walker's 'Analysis of Beauty'; Millingen's 'Curiosities of Medical Experience'; Beckford's 'Vathek' in French; Jeremy Bentham's works; and Harris's 'Hermes.' Possibly the disappearance of these and many other books may be attributed to certain definite causes. For example, in the early years of this century one of the commonest books at 1s. or 1s. 6d. was Theobald's 'Shakespeare Restored'; but fifty years ...
— The Book-Hunter in London - Historical and Other Studies of Collectors and Collecting • William Roberts
... the celebrated Resting Hermes which we had been looking at side by side. He said the right things about that wholly admirable piece. Nothing profound. His taste was natural rather than cultivated. He had obviously seen many fine things in his life and appreciated them: but he had no jargon of a dilettante or the ...
— A Set of Six • Joseph Conrad
... twelve great gods and goddesses of Olympus, who were named by the Greeks,—Zeus, Poseidon, Apollo, Ares, Hephaestos, Hermes, Here, Athene, Artemis, Aphrodite, Hestia, Demeter. 2. Numerous other divinities, not included among the Olympic, but some not less important than the twelve. Such are Hades, Helios, Dionysus, the Charites, the Muses, the Nereids, ...
— Outline of Universal History • George Park Fisher
... sacrificed.[1139] Uranus (Heaven) married his sister Ge (Earth), and Il or Kronos was the issue of this marriage, as also were Dagon, Baetylus, and Atlas. Ge, being dissatisfied with the conduct of her husband, induced her son Kronos to make war upon him, and Kronos, with the assistance of Hermes, overcame Uranus, and having driven him from his kingdom succeeded to the imperial power. Besides sacrificing Ieoud, Kronos murdered another of his sons called Sadid, and also a daughter whose name is not given. Among his wives were Astarte, Rhea, Dione, Eimarmene, ...
— History of Phoenicia • George Rawlinson
... Greek mythology, the son of Hermes and father of Anticleia, mother of Odysseus. He lived at the foot of Mount Parnassus, and was famous as a thief and swindler. On one occasion he met his match. Sisyphus, who had lost some cattle, suspected Autolycus of being the thief, but was unable to bring it home to him, since he possessed the ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 1 - "Austria, Lower" to "Bacon" • Various
... his "Hermes," says, "A preposition is a part of speech, devoid itself of signification; but so formed as to unite two words that are significant, and that refuse ...
— Lectures on Language - As Particularly Connected with English Grammar. • William S. Balch
... Admiralty book of a sort of orange hue, called Islands of the Eastern Pacific Ocean, Vol. III., which appeared from its imprint to be the latest authority, and showed marks of frequent consultation in the passages about the French Frigate Shoals, the Harman, Cure, Pearl, and Hermes reefs, Lisiansky Island, Ocean Island, and the place where we then lay—Brooks or Midway. A volume of Macaulay's Essays and a shilling Shakespeare led the van of the belles lettres; the rest were novels: several Miss Braddons—of course, Aurora Floyd, which has penetrated to every isle ...
— The Wrecker • Robert Louis Stevenson and Lloyd Osbourne
... Barrancas, six miles from the town. Before it lay eight English men-of-war at anchor, the source of military supplies for the fort, on which floated the flags of both England and Spain. The fleet was in command of Captain Lord Percy, whose flagship was the "Hermes," while Colonel Nichols commanded the troops. This latter boastful and imprudent officer was foolish enough to issue a proclamation to the inhabitants of Louisiana and Kentucky to take up arms against their country. A body of Indians were also drilled in the service of the British, ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume XII • John Lord |
