"Madonna" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the camp-fire! And she had let Colin McKeith believe that Bridget O'Hara was the embodiment of his Ideal—height five foot seven at the least: weight ten stone or more: smooth-parted, Greek-coiled hair: a cross between a goddess and a Madonna—that was Colin's Ideal—Good Heavens! What did he now behold? A very little woman. One of the snippets he despised. Not an ounce of the traditional dignity about her. Lady Bridget gave the impression of an old-fashioned, precocious child, dressed ...
— Lady Bridget in the Never-Never Land • Rosa Praed
... Helen Edgar Allan Poe "A Voice by the Cedar Tree" Alfred Tennyson Song, "Nay, but you, who do not love her" Robert Browning The Henchman John Green1eaf Whittier Lovely Mary Donnelly William Allingham Love in the Valley George Meredith Marian George Meredith Praise of My Lady William Morris Madonna Mia Algernon Charles Swinburne "Meet we no Angels, Pansie" Thomas Ashe To Daphne Walter Besant "Girl of the Red Mouth" Martin MacDermott The Daughter of Mendoza Mirabeau Bonaparte Lamar "If She be made of White and Red" Herbert ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 4 (of 4) • Various
... stated and the answer dimly foreshadowed on the very first page. The spirited young lady, with raven hair, says, "All life is an inextricable confusion;" and the meek young lady, with auburn hair, looks at the picture of the Madonna which she is copying, and—"There seemed the solution of that mighty enigma." The style of this novel is quite as lofty as its purpose; indeed, some passages on which we have spent much patient study are quite beyond our reach, in spite of the illustrative ...
— The Essays of "George Eliot" - Complete • George Eliot
... you think so? Many and many a time has she talked to me of you, and I have heard her pray to the holy Madonna to bless you, and ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 5, No. 3, March, 1852 • Various
... sketching another in its stead,—faces and dogs' heads, and men in sledges, and old women in their furs, and pine-trees, and cocks and hens, and all sorts of animals, and now and then—very reverently—a Madonna and Child. It was all very rough, for there was no one to teach him anything. But it was all life-like, and kept the whole troop of children shrieking with laughter, or watching breathless, with wide ...
— The Nuernberg Stove • Louisa de la Rame (AKA Ouida)
... the Bible in no respect differs from the attitude of mind of Catholicism towards the Church. The mental habit of him who imagines that Balaam's ass spoke, in no respect differs from the mental habit of him who imagines that a Madonna of wood or stone winked; and the one, who says that God's Church makes him believe what he believes, and the other, who says that God's Word makes him believe what he believes, are for the philosopher perfectly alike in not really and truly knowing, when they say God's ...
— Selections from the Prose Works of Matthew Arnold • Matthew Arnold
... favourite arm chair which stands under the statue of the 'Slave whetting his knife' (L'Arrotino), and taking possession of it I enjoyed myself for a couple of hours; for here at one glance I had the 'Madonna del Cardellino,' Pope Julius II., a female portrait by Raphael, and above it a lovely Holy Family by Perugino; and so close to me that I could have touched it with my hand the Venus de' Medici; beyond, that of ...
— The Way of All Flesh • Samuel Butler
... boys, and Perugino once drew a Greek Ganymede for his native town, but the painter who most shows the influence of this type is Correggio, whose lily-bearer in the Cathedral at Parma, and whose wild- eyed, open-mouthed St. Johns in the 'Incoronata Madonna' of St. Giovanni Evangelista, are the best examples in art of the bloom and vitality and radiance of this adolescent beauty. And so there is extreme loveliness in this figure of Love by Mr. Stanhope, and the whole picture is full of grace, though ...
— Miscellanies • Oscar Wilde
... emptied his cinders, broken his coal, and filled his furnaces, he slept the sleep of exhaustion and intoxication; for a stoker must drink if he lives. In the darkness of his life there was but one bright spot, his mother. She was like the Madonna in a chapel where all the lights are extinguished save the one that burns before her shrine. Now that he had become a man, much of the mystery of her life had become clear to him. His respect for Charlotte was changed to tender pity, and ...
— Jack - 1877 • Alphonse Daudet
... the parsonage, at church a double pride!— Like the Madonna and her babe they filled the 'Amen-side'— Crouched at my feet in the old gig, my boy, so fair and frank, Naswongo's darkest marshes cheered, and sluices ...
— Tales of the Chesapeake • George Alfred Townsend
... from the golden-fruited trees, and, kissing and pressing them to her bosom, she proceeded to remove the faded flowers of the morning from before a little rude shrine in the rock, where, in a sculptured niche, was a picture of the Madonna and Child, with a locked glass door in front of it. The picture was a happy transcript of one of the fairest creations of the religious school of Florence, done by one of those rustic copyists of whom Italy is full, who appear to possess the instinct of painting, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 7, No. 43, May, 1861 • Various
... Madonna or a stray Angelo?" David asked. "Or a ghost? What is the matter? Is it another phase of ...
— The Crimson Blind • Fred M. White
... the picture that will remain longest in your memory—the dim candle-light in the white-washed chapel at the Indian Reservation at Pala, during Benediction of the Blessed Sacrament—the young Indian Madonna, with her naked baby lying in her ...
— The Pride of Palomar • Peter B. Kyne
... Then the man, coming forward, let fall his cloak, revealing a rich dress of close-fitting violet silk, sword and dagger hanging from his jewelled girdle; he plucked away the mask, and disclosed the handsome, weak face of Giovanni Sforza, Lord of Pesaro and Cotignola, the discarded husband of Madonna Lucrezia, ...
— The Historical Nights' Entertainment • Rafael Sabatini
... the "St. John" and "Madonna and Child" by Raphael, many works by Leonardo Da Vinci, Corregio, ...
— See America First • Orville O. Hiestand
... headwaters of Lake Mesantic. Some plain wooden armchairs were set against the walls that had been rough plastered and washed with burnt sienna brown. On them was hung an exquisite engraving—the Sistine Madonna and Child. There were also a few etchings, among them a copy of Whistler's The Thames by London Bridge, and a view of Niagara by moonlight. A mineral cabinet, filled to overflowing with fine specimens, extended the entire ...
— Flamsted quarries • Mary E. Waller
... or sympathies either in himself, or in those for whom he painted. His larger sacred subjects are merely themes for the exhibition of pictorial rhetoric,—composition and color. His minor works are generally made subordinate to purposes of portraiture. The Madonna in the church of the Frari is a mere lay figure, introduced to form a link of connection between the portraits of various members of the Pesaro family ...
— Stones of Venice [introductions] • John Ruskin
... strongly tempted to adorn her new dwelling with those specimens of her skill, which had long been the glory of her apartment in the convent, yet she resisted the impulse, and contented herself with hanging over the chimney-piece of her school-room a Madonna of her ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. 6 • Maria Edgeworth
... was flat, and there the Cathedral stood, and from her niche above the great west entrance the beautiful statue of the Madonna with the Babe in her arms looked across the square, and over the huddled red roofs, and far away out to the hills and valleys with their evergreen oaks and plantations of grey olives, ...
— A Child's Book of Saints • William Canton
... seen to descend into the streets of Johnstown, Pennsylvania, to save her image on the Catholic church in that place, when it was swept by a deluge in which hundreds of persons perished. It was the wrath of the Madonna that caused just such a flood in New Mexico long years ago. There is in the old Church of Our Lady of Guadalupe, in Santa Fe, a picture that commemorates the appearance of the Virgin to Juan Diego, an Indian in Guadalupe, ...
— Myths And Legends Of Our Own Land, Complete • Charles M. Skinner
... finished our coffee we went for a walk—not the two old ladies, who settled down at once to their embroidery frames; one of them showed me her work—really quite beautiful—a church ornament of some kind, a painted Madonna on a ground of white satin; she was covering the whole ground with heavy gold embroidery, so ...
— Chateau and Country Life in France • Mary King Waddington
... semi-lies had the success he expected. He was invited to share the meals of the family, and was treated with the respect due to his name, his birth, and his title. He had his reasons for capturing the good-will of the merchant and his wife; he scented his madonna as the ogre scented the youthful flesh of Tom Thumb and his brothers. But in spite of the confidence he managed to inspire in the worthy pair the latter maintained the most profound silence as to the said madonna; and not ...
— Juana • Honore de Balzac
... in black and white," suggested his host. "Her face is her fortune. She's sitting to Brierly—that's my host—for his latest effort. He's painting her as the Madonna or Britannia—I really forget which. A new type, you know. The servants in this house are engaged for their faces. They had a villainous scoundrel of a man-servant—a returned soldier—engaged as Judas Iscariot, who bolted last week with the silver spoons. But ...
— The Moon Rock • Arthur J. Rees
... to be abominable, I looked upon his as ridiculous and dangerous. As for the countess, I have simply said, half in jest, that so perfect a person was not to my taste; and that I should be very unhappy if my wife were a Madonna, who hardly ever deigned to put her foot ...
— Within an Inch of His Life • Emile Gaboriau
... between that Madonna and the Princeton chap and it got on my nerves," Annabel complained. "The frames screamed at each other, anyway. I can't stand gold and ebony and oak in a medley. A little lower, Ruth. You know ...
— Blue Bonnet in Boston - or, Boarding-School Days at Miss North's • Caroline E. Jacobs
... a lot about this. It's terrible what mysteries there are! Too many riddles weigh men down on earth. We must solve them as we can, and try to keep a dry skin in the water. Beauty! I can't endure the thought that a man of lofty mind and heart begins with the ideal of the Madonna and ends with the ideal of Sodom. What's still more awful is that a man with the ideal of Sodom in his soul does not renounce the ideal of the Madonna, and his heart may be on fire with that ideal, genuinely on fire, just as in his days of youth and innocence. Yes, man is broad, ...
— The Brothers Karamazov • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... comfortable sitting room Mrs. J. Burton Francis sat, at peace with herself and all mankind. The glory of the short winter afternoon streamed into the room and touched with new warmth and tenderness the face of a Madonna on ...
— Sowing Seeds in Danny • Nellie L. McClung
... Vienna and St. Petersburg. Among the personal relics seen in the museum is the coat of mail worn by Cortez during his battles from Vera Cruz to the capital, also the silk banner which was borne in all his fights. This small flag bears a remarkably lovely face of the Madonna, which must have been the work of a master hand. The shield of Montezuma is also exhibited, with many arms, jewels, and picture writings, these last relating to historic matters, both Toltec and Aztec. The great sacrificial stone of the aborigines, placed on the ground ...
— Aztec Land • Maturin M. Ballou
... presenting them. A swift look of wonderment passed under the reverend gentleman's beetle-brows as he bent over her hand. Could this tall, beautiful girl be the daughter of little Jules Levice? Where did she get that pure Madonna face, that regal bearing, that mobile and expressive mouth? The explanation was sufficient when Mrs. Levice entered. They stood talking, not much, but in that wandering, obligatory way that precedes any undertaking. They were ...
— Other Things Being Equal • Emma Wolf
... more beautiful background to their historical paintings and half-length portraits than by introducing mountains and rocks of as fantastic and jagged a form as possible, although the latter often contrast strangely enough beside a mild, calmly serene Madonna face, or even beside the likeness of a prosaically respectable commonplace citizen of some free Imperial town. At that time, therefore, savagely broken-up, barren mountain scenery was considered the ideal type of natural scenic beauty, ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VIII • Various
... had no English, so smiled expansively, her bony arms folded across her stomach. Her oldest daughter, a frail-looking girl in the twenties, but with a sad and spiritual beauty of the Madonna in her big eyes and straight black hair, gave us a shy good-day. Three boys, just alike in their slender, stolid Indian good looks, except that they differed in size, nodded with the awkwardness of the male. Two babies stared solemnly. A little ...
— The Forest • Stewart Edward White
... charge of one of the nurses, a gentle, madonna-faced woman. She was quickly put to bed, and everything done for her that skill and experience could suggest. Hubert Varrick begged permission to sit by her couch and watch ...
— Kidnapped at the Altar - or, The Romance of that Saucy Jessie Bain • Laura Jean Libbey
... returning life glimmered back into his brain, he first was dimly aware of a pale Madonna face that appeared to hover close above him. His clearing gaze gradually made out the girl's features. There was no colour even in her lips. Her eyes were ...
— Bloom of Cactus • Robert Ames Bennet
... crowded right up to the edge of the grave: it was Herr Carovius. He looked over his nose glasses at Jordan and Daniel and Eleanore. It seemed to him that the latter, with her pale face and her black dress, was more beautiful than the most beautiful Madonna any Italian or Spaniard had ever immortalised ...
— The Goose Man • Jacob Wassermann
... aloud to a sacristan this passage and that, asking him to read them also, so that I might adjust my pronunciation to his. On one occasion, from a height near Government House, I watched, if I may so express myself, a celebrated icon in action—a jeweled portrait of the Madonna, said to have been painted by St. Luke. On the plain below was the broad bed of a river, dry from continued drought. Unanswered prayers for rain had for some time been frequent and at last this miraculous relic had been brought forth from its hiding place, as a charm which was bound to ...
— Memoirs of Life and Literature • W. H. Mallock
... even to Shakespeare would have been to invent, to devise, to create; not to modify, to adapt, to adjust. Bloody Mary has been transfigured into a tragic and poetic malefactress: but only by the most audacious and magnificent defiance of history and possibility. Madonna Lucrezia Estense Borgia (to use the proper ceremonial style adopted for the exquisitely tender and graceful dedication of the "Asolani") died peaceably in the odor of incense offered at her shrine in the choicest Latin verse of such accomplished poets and acolytes as Pietro Bembo ...
— The Age of Shakespeare • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... dying she became a widow, and not wishing to marry again went to live with her brother. Messer Antonio had a vineyard behind the house where he resided, and as it was bounded on all sides by gardens, any person could have access to it without difficulty. One morning, shortly after sunrise, Madonna Dianora, as the sister of Messer Antonio was called, had occasion to go into the vineyard as usual to gather herbs for seasoning the dinner, and hearing a slight rustling among the leaves of a vine she turned her eyes in that direction, and heard something ...
— The Prince • Niccolo Machiavelli
... itself in this case exactly in the same manner as hereditary princes do whose fathers live too long. But what served more completely to confuse the case was a report from the nunnery. The nuns had assembled in the refectory, and were busied in dressing up a Madonna for the next festival, hoping to surpass by its magnificence their rivals the black nuns, when suddenly the old porteress entered, told the licentious story, and added, that the Dominican, whose name she had forgot, would certainly ...
— Faustus - his Life, Death, and Doom • Friedrich Maximilian von Klinger
... while Rosa was as winsome and gentle-featured, as sweet and placid in her consciousness of well being and doing, as a cathedral saint. In fact, it always seemed to me that she never looked so like a madonna as she did immediately after destroying the better part of a two-dollar roast and such other trifles as chanced to be within reach in the hour ...
— The Van Dwellers - A Strenuous Quest for a Home • Albert Bigelow Paine
... moralistic or Platonic. According to this, art is an image of the good, and has value in so far as through expression it enables us to experience edifying emotions or to contemplate noble objects. The high beauty of the "Sistine Madonna," for example, would be explained as identical with the worth of the religious feelings which it causes in the mind of the beholder. The advantage of art over life is supposed to consist in its power to create in the imagination better ...
— The Principles Of Aesthetics • Dewitt H. Parker
... true woman means to be yet more mother than wife. The madonna conception expresses man's highest comprehension of woman's real nature. Sexual relations are brief, but love and care of offspring are long. The elimination of maternity is one of the great calamities, if not ...
— Youth: Its Education, Regimen, and Hygiene • G. Stanley Hall
... a tear rolled down the leprous cheek. Ay! indeed! my poor little Madonna, my little child, whose beauty was such a dream of Paradise, was changed. The large, lustrous eyes were untouched; but the fair cheek was one hideous, leprous sore. The black, glossy hair was now a few dirty wisps. The child, whose face and figure every one turned around to look at a second time, ...
— My New Curate • P.A. Sheehan
... cannot be said to have produced a tale without a miracle. His heroine, too, if we may judge by his descriptions of her, is 'all a wonder and a wild desire.' At the age of seventeen she 'was one of the Great Maker's masterpieces . . . a living likeness of the Dresden Madonna.' One rather shudders to think of what she may become at forty, but this is an impertinent prying into futurity. She hails from 'Maryland, my Maryland!' and has 'received a careful, if not a superior, education.' Need we add that she marries the heir to an earldom who, ...
— Reviews • Oscar Wilde
... measure and without end. The first is truth, the last is good. The one appeals to the sense and understanding, the other to the will and the affections. The truly beautiful and grand attracts the mind to it by instinctive harmony, is absorbed in it, and nothing can ever part them afterwards. Look at a Madonna of Raphael's: what gives the ideal character to the expression,—the insatiable purpose of the soul, or its measureless content in the object of its contemplation? A portrait of Vandyke's is mere indifference and ...
— Table-Talk - Essays on Men and Manners • William Hazlitt
... Champnees a bon garcon. A Spanish student, in a velvet coat and with long black hair, insisted upon charcoaling mustachios and imperial upon his host's countenance, in honor of his countryman who had distinguished himself as a patron of art. Later, a laughing girl whose blue-black hair was banded Madonna-wise around a head considerably otherwise, washed it off with a table napkin dipped in wine. She sat on his knee to perform the operation, scanned his clean face with satisfaction, and taking him by the ears as by handles, kissed him gaily. Then she ...
— The Purple Heights • Marie Conway Oemler
... of the dawn and the labors of the day; between fancy and reality, the spirit and the life. Modeste was a pure young girl, inquisitive after knowledge, understanding her destiny, and filled with chastity,—the Virgin of Spain rather than the Madonna ...
— Modeste Mignon • Honore de Balzac
... daughter of all women, as her mother before her, and she was the mother of all women to come after her. She was Sar, the corn-goddess. She was Isthar who conquered death. She was Sheba and Cleopatra; she was Esther and Herodias. She was Mary the Madonna, and Mary the Magdalene, and Mary the sister of Martha, also she was Martha. And she was Brunnhilde and Guinevere, Iseult and Juliet, Heloise and Nicolette. Yes, and she was Eve, she was Lilith, she was Astarte. She ...
— The Jacket (The Star-Rover) • Jack London
... the circular one, was larger than the rest, being quite two inches across. In the centre of the top half was the Madonna with Child, seated, a male and female figure on either side. Below were three female figures on either side, the two scenes being divided by a festoon of flowers, while around the edge ran in somewhat more modern characters—those ...
— The House of Whispers • William Le Queux
... are soul-cakes found; they are met with in Belgium, southern Germany, and Austria. In western Flanders children set up on All Souls' Eve little street altars, putting a crucifix or Madonna with candles on a chair or stool, and begging passers-by for money "for cakes for the souls in Purgatory." On All Souls' morning it is customary, all over the Flemish part of Belgium, to bake little cakes of finest white flour, called ...
— Christmas in Ritual and Tradition, Christian and Pagan • Clement A. Miles
... lay like a miniature Madonna, of that type which the old painters could not tell from Venus, when they had completed her. Her long dark lashes clung to her cheeks; on her face was perfect peace—her little arrangements were evidently all right again. And old Jolyon, in the twilight of the room, stood adoring her! It was ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... germ arose from hidden depths of myth and legend, and, like heathen superstitions in the first centuries of Christianity, found its most fruitful soil among the people. It has often been disguised beyond recognition by legends, and by the worship of the Madonna and saints, but it has never been destroyed, and it keeps its ...
— The Development of the Feeling for Nature in the Middle Ages and - Modern Times • Alfred Biese
... booked two voyages ahead, and he knew the value of popularity. He was never carried off his feet, but enjoyed it simply and heartily. He had fallen in love one summer voyage with a tall and soft-mannered Canadian girl, a Hebe with the face of a Madonna, with thoughtful, waiting blue eyes. She was only nineteen, and, of course, Captain Dixon carried everything before him. The girl was astonished at her good fortune; for this wooer was a king on his own great decks. No princess could be good enough for him, had ...
— Tomaso's Fortune and Other Stories • Henry Seton Merriman
... Madonna! on whose bosom slumber'd, The infant, Christ, with sunny brow, The viewless hours have pass'd unnumber'd, Since we adored thy shrine as now; But not the gorgeous sky, Nor the blue expansive sea, To us such beauty could supply, As ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 20, Issue 558, July 21, 1832 • Various
... I had once thought her, but tonight in her plain white frock and sober conventional surroundings she seemed to show something of the quiet poise of a nurse or a nun. She seemed to exemplify the thought that the ideal woman is both wood-nymph and madonna. By contrast to the Nietzschian intriguer I had left that morning at Briar Hills, she was a paragon of all virtues. Nietzsche! The philosopher of the sty! ...
— Paradise Garden - The Satirical Narrative of a Great Experiment • George Gibbs
... her body's defection by loving the child very much when it was born. She knew she would have no passion for it as she had for Richard, but she foresaw herself being consciously and slantingly tender over it, like a primitive Madonna over the Holy Child. There was, of course, no such solution of the problem. It became plain that there was not going to be in that hour when she knew the unnatural horror of a painless parturition. She had not been at all shocked by the violence she had endured at Richard's birth. It ...
— The Judge • Rebecca West
... general? He was like a drunken man in your presence; it was as if he had laid eyes upon the shining Madonna. I could hear ...
— Heart of the Sunset • Rex Beach
... Hold, father, hold! You know her—yes, a Jewess In her domestic piety, her soul Large, simple, splendid like a star, her heart Suffused with Syrian sunshine—but no more— The aspect of a Princess of Thuringia, Swan-necked, gold-haired, Madonna-eyed. I love her! If you will quench this passion, take my life! [He falls at his father's feet. FREDERICK, in a paroxysm of rage, seizes ...
— The Poems of Emma Lazarus - Vol. II. (of II.), Jewish Poems: Translations • Emma Lazarus
... there was characterized by all the joy of sweet reunion and eager acceptance of hospitalities so lavishly bestowed. It was with mingled emotions of pleasure and pain I greeted my old friend, Carrie Fringer. In person she was of a peculiar type of beauty, a face regular in features as a Madonna, beaming with the soft, love-light of rare, sweet eyes, in whose depths were imprisoned not only an intense brightness, but the still deeper glow of a soul of love and truth. Curls of soft brown hair fell upon her symmetrical shoulders and softened ...
— The World As I Have Found It - Sequel to Incidents in the Life of a Blind Girl • Mary L. Day Arms
... faces to the subject he had chosen. In a word, he humanized the altar-pieces and the cloister frescoes upon which he worked. In this way the painters rose above the ancient symbols and brought heaven down to earth. By drawing Madonna and her son like living human beings, by dramatizing the Christian history, they silently substituted the love of beauty and the interests of actual life for the principles of the Church. The saint or angel became an occasion for the display of physical perfection, and to ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... "sweet" in the guest's opinion—the whole of the short service; conducted with such simple dignity and reverence by the Madonna-like ranch mistress; the music so well chosen, the few prayers so feelingly offered, and the brief exhortation read from the words of a famous divine who had the rare gift of touching men's hearts. And he so expressed himself, as well as his surprise, over ...
— Jessica, the Heiress • Evelyn Raymond
... an Englishman, an artist, who lived in Italy—my mother a peasant woman from Lombardy, such as these who come to work in the mills. When she was young she was beautiful—like a Madonna ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... Robert. It would add greatly to the effect if the countess would join us in the costume of a peasant from Puzzoli or Sorrento. Our group would then be quite complete, more especially as the countess is quite beautiful enough to represent a madonna." ...
— The Count of Monte Cristo • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... adorned it. "Here," said he, "are heads worthy to crown that striking figure in the gondola. Behold that all-surpassing portrait by Giorgione, of such beauty as painters and poets may dream of but never find, and yet not superhuman in its type. Too impassioned for an angel; too brilliant for a Madonna; and with too much of thought and character for a Venus—she is merely woman. Belonging to no special rank or class in society, and neither classical nor ideal, she personifies all that is most lovely in her sex; and, whether ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. 341, March, 1844, Vol. 55 • Various
... the pain seemed unbearable. What the outcome would be God only knew. With a quick movement, as if seeking relief, he rose to his feet and walked to the portrait. Then lifting his hands above his head with the movement of a despairing suppliant before the Madonna he cried out: ...
— Colonel Carter's Christmas and The Romance of an Old-Fashioned Gentleman • F. Hopkinson Smith
... the position of the Great Holbein and of the Madonna de S. Sisto there, which have ...
— On the Old Road, Vol. 2 (of 2) - A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays and Articles on Art and Literature • John Ruskin
... spoken slightingly of this latter poet, it was only in contrast with Virgil, and in view of his strained Latinity. When he is himself, and wraps his fancies only in his own sparkling Tuscan, we forget his classic frigidities, and his quarrels with Madonna Clarice, and are willing to confess that no pen of his time was dipped with such a relishing gusto into the colors of the hyacinths and trembling pansies, and into all the blandishments of a gushing ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, August, 1863, No. 70 - A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics • Various
... handkerchiefs, and forehead cloths, and a very long train. The chapel is plain but very pretty, and in the middle of the choir under a flat marble lies the foundress. Madame de Cambis, one of the nuns, who are about forty, is beautiful as a Madonna.(1092) The abbess has no distinction but a larger and richer gold cross: her apartment consists of two very small rooms. Of Madame de Maintenon we did not see less than twenty pictures. The young one looking over her shoulder ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole Volume 3 • Horace Walpole
... artistic creation of the modern world—"The Sistine Madonna"—Raphael has with almost infinite pictorial power of genius tried to express in visible form this Birth of God. Behind curtains which hang suspended from nowhere and stretch across the universe, dividing the visible from ...
— Spiritual Reformers in the 16th & 17th Centuries • Rufus M. Jones
... noble life, with a special tenderness, I think, for furred and feathered creatures. To all outcast and hungry things the Thwaite is a veritable Bethlehem, or House of Bread, and to her, their sweet "Madonna Nourrice," no less than to her Teacher, the sparrows and linnets that crowd its thresholds are in a very particular sense ...
— Hortus Inclusus - Messages from the Wood to the Garden, Sent in Happy Days - to the Sister Ladies of the Thwaite, Coniston • John Ruskin
... with the air of "liberte de moeurs" which prevailed throughout Germany. He liked Dresden, and enjoyed his visit to its picture gallery, where he especially admired a Madeleine and two Virgins by Correggio, as well as two by Raphael, one of them presumably the San Sisto Madonna. The gem of the whole collection, however, in his opinion, was Holbein's Madonna; and he longed to have Madame Hanska's hand in his while he gazed at it. As he was away from her, he was very restless, and soon tired of all he saw. He longed to be back in ...
— Honore de Balzac, His Life and Writings • Mary F. Sandars
... his party each a tiny leaflet. He schooled his face to betray no incredulity when the keepers of the various holy relics recited their virtues, and related the miracles wrought by them. And when Blanka knelt in prayer before a statue of the Madonna, he withdrew respectfully to a distance. It was an earnest petition she offered before the blessed Virgin, a prayer for rescue from her enemies, and for strength to resist every temptation. And she knew not that her rescuer and her tempter were one and the same person, and ...
— Manasseh - A Romance of Transylvania • Maurus Jokai
... of the controversy from the beginning to the end. There was a contrariety of claims between the Roman and Anglican religions, and the history of my conversion is simply the process of working it out to a solution. In 1838 I illustrated it by the contrast presented to us between the Madonna and Child, and a Calvary. The peculiarity of the Anglican theology was this,—that it "supposed the Truth to be entirely objective and detached, not" (as in the theology of Rome) "lying hid in the bosom of the Church as if one ...
— Apologia Pro Vita Sua • John Henry Cardinal Newman
... expression common to her features had been temporarily obliterated by the holy suffering of motherhood, and the face of the "foreign dancing-woman," born and bred in a quarter of the world where virtue is a cheap commodity, was as pure and serene as the face of a Madonna. ...
— The Lamp of Fate • Margaret Pedler
... comical account of the King of Naples, who, it seems, during the late troubles walked up and down his room, wringing his hands, and apostrophizing a figure of the Virgin with "Madonna mia! Madonna mia! ma che imbroglio che m'ha fatto quel Vicario del figlio tuo!" Isn't ...
— Records of Later Life • Frances Anne Kemble
... wight, who does not only not respond to his rapture, but who should drop an unseasonable intimation of preferring one of his anterior bargains to the present!—The last is always his best hit—his "Cynthia of the minute."—Alas! how many a mild Madonna have I known to come in—a Raphael!—keep its ascendancy for a few brief moons—then, after certain intermedial degradations, from the front drawing-room to the back gallery, thence to the dark parlour,—adopted in turn by each of the Carracci, under successive lowering ascriptions of filiation, ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Volume 2 • Charles Lamb
... Kuan-yin was also identified with an ancient Chinese heroine called Miao-shen.[37] This is parallel to the legend of Ti-tsang (Kshitigarbha) who, though a male Bodhisattva, was a virtuous maiden in two of his previous existences. Evidently Chinese religious sentiment required a Madonna and it is not unnatural if the god of mercy, who was reputed to assume many shapes and to give sons to the childless, came to be thought of chiefly in a feminine form. The artists of the T'ang dynasty usually represented ...
— Hinduism And Buddhism, Volume II. (of 3) - An Historical Sketch • Charles Eliot
... and very slim, with gracious, sloping shoulders and a long throat, the chin slightly lifted: pale, with great appealing violet eyes under haughty brows, and quantities of yellow-brown hair dressed in some sort of Madonna style. ...
— The Lion's Mouse • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... visions at his own risk. While he dreamed of the brotherhood of man, his classmate with the corporation practice distanced him in the pursuit of position. While he led himself through the valley of the shadow of temptation, and feared no evil because of the Madonna vision in his soul, even the Madonnas preferred Lancelot and Tristram to Galahad. It wasn't an easy world for a man who wanted to keep faith with himself. It was a pinchbeck world, of pretence and pull,—that world that lies drowned out there. And yet I believe ...
— The Master-Knot of Human Fate • Ellis Meredith
... jacket wore a soft linen shirt perforated by a Mexican drawn-work pattern beneath which glowed a bright red silk undergarment. Women's gowns on the flowing and Grecian order were not uncommon. These were usually coupled with the incongruity of parted hair brought low and madonna-wise over the ears. As the two entered, a very powerful blond man was just finishing the declamation of a French poem. He was addressing it directly at two women ...
— The Rules of the Game • Stewart Edward White
... No importunate beggar can stand and rattle his tin box on the summit, and if he could, there is no passenger to heed or hear him; the Sabine model belle is not there to offer herself to the first artist who wants a madonna or a saint, nor amateur bandits, nor faun-like children playing on the steps; even the patient goats, long since milked, lie panting under the convent wall; not a dog is visible on the large immondezaro ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, Number 385. November, 1847. • Various
... foot slowly in front of the other, then stopped and craned her neck, casting a suspicious look to right and left. Then giving a graceful little jump and shaking out her tail feathers, she hopped up to the Black Madonna. Then she stood stock still a few moments, scrutinising the sleeping watchman and questioning the darkness and silence with eyes and ears alert. At last with a mighty flutter of wings she alighted on the table ...
— The Merrie Tales Of Jacques Tournebroche - 1909 • Anatole France
... undertakings. The king believed the physician's statement, that the said termination to this accouchement was caused by the too chaste life the queen had led, and believing himself responsible for it, he founded the Church of the Madonna, which is one of the finest in the town of Palermo. The Sire de Monsoreau, who was a witness of the king's remorse, told him that when a king got his wife from Spain, he ought to know that this queen would require more attention than any other, because ...
— Droll Stories, Volume 3 • Honore de Balzac
... road home. Yes, your excellence. You see it was the fete of the Madonna, and we danced and drank together—I and Peppino—all the night; and this morning about an hour ago says he to me, 'Gaetano, do you take your horses, and go find two travellers and a servant who are under a coach-house ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Vol. 53, No. 331, May, 1843 • Various
... from the only plate worth looking at of Raphael's Madonna of St. Sixtus. I'll give fifty ...
— Home Lights and Shadows • T. S. Arthur
... dresses go to Fidy," she said with reckless generosity, "the blue skirt to Lobelia, and my Madonna—" Her eyes rested wistfully on her most cherished possession. "I think I'd like Rosy to have ...
— Calvary Alley • Alice Hegan Rice
... recently-published scientific works. It might have been the room of a business man who was at the same time a priest and a scholar. There were roller maps upon the walls, and two or three engravings, Bougereau's "Virgin of Consolation," the "Madonna dei Ansidei" of Raffaelle, and a "Crucifixion" over the chimneypiece, which had three little statuettes in tinted alabaster—a St. Ignatius at one end, a St. Anthony of Padua at the other; in the middle, the Virgin bearing ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves
... starvation, to have recourse to a trade which most of them loathe, many regard with indifference, and some few follow in obedience to the laws of their constitution. But on the brink of the gulf of prostitution in Paris, the young girl of sixteen, beautiful and pure as the Madonna, had met with Castanier. The old dragoon was too rough and homely to make his way in society, and he was tired of tramping the boulevard at night and of the kind of conquests made there by gold. For some time past he had desired to bring a certain regularity into an ...
— Melmoth Reconciled • Honore de Balzac
... a similar way. Special regulations dealt with all these, and it is only at the end of the list that anconae are mentioned. The ancona was a gilded framework, having a compartment containing a picture of the Madonna and Child, and others with single figures of the saints, and these were the only pictures proper produced at this date. The demand for anconae was, however, large, and they were very early placed, not only in the churches, but in ...
— The Venetian School of Painting • Evelyn March Phillipps
... no strange land to good Americans. It's a bonnie, sweet, clean bit of earth made by God out of the same batch he used for our own world of the West. Oh, Yellow-hair, I mind the first day I ever saw Scotland. 'Twas across Princess Street—across acres of Madonna lilies in that lovely foreland behind which the Rock lifted skyward with Edinburgh Castle atop made out of grey silver slag! It was a brave sight, Yellow-hair. I never loved America more than at that moment when, in my heart, I married ...
— In Secret • Robert W. Chambers
... Madonna; after which she broke into a slow smile. "Well, I don't care, so long as ...
— What Maisie Knew • Henry James
... "Santa Madonna! Thou forgettest, Stefano, that not even the confessor has any trouble with a job in which he has been employed. Not a caratano less than a hundred will buy a stroke of his art. Your blows, for two sequins, leave ...
— The Bravo • J. Fenimore Cooper
... glass on bedecked dresser or carved mantel. Not even the tinted muslins I had seen in some nurseries; but a plain set of furniture on a plain carpet with but one object of real adornment within the four walls. That was a picture of the Madonna opposite the bed, and that was beautiful. But the frame was of the cheapest—a ...
— The Millionaire Baby • Anna Katharine Green
... artist definite foresight is denied. His life is full of surprises at new necessities. When the present demand shall have been fulfilled, what shall follow? Shall it be Madonna, or Laocooen? His errand is like that of the commander who bears sealed instructions; and he may drift for years, ere he knows wherefore. Thorwaldsen waited, wandering by the Tiber a thousand days,—then in ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 27, January, 1860 • Various
... was Sunday, and Eveley remained quietly on a couch, with Marie waiting upon her like a tender Madonna. Nolan came up, too, and insisted upon the full story of what ...
— Eve to the Rescue • Ethel Hueston
... resources, and in the frenzy of a grand inspiration, works out his conception to its minutest detail of essential form, leaving the work of surface finish for the occupation of cooler leisure. What the Sistine Madonna was to Raphael, it seems that 'Macbeth' was to Shakespeare—a magnificent impromptu; that kind of impromptu which results from the application of well-disciplined powers and rich stores of thought to a subject suggested by occasion. I am inclined to regard 'Macbeth' ...
— The Galaxy - Vol. 23, No. 1 • Various
... Bletto bore a standard, one side of which was emblazoned with the crucified Saviour, and the other with the Virgin Mary. The image of Him who said, "Love-your enemies," and the gentle face of the Madonna, were to smile from heaven upon deeds which might cause a shudder in the depths of hell. Their brief orisons concluded, they swept forward to the city. Three thousand Spaniards, under their Eletto, were ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... 1. Madonna, wherefore hast thou sent to me Sweet-basil and mignonette? Embleming love and health, which never yet In the same wreath might be. Alas, and they are wet! 5 Is it with thy kisses or thy tears? For never rain or dew Such fragrance drew From plant or flower—the ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Volume I • Percy Bysshe Shelley
... eve, as they do in Scotland on Hallowe'en. If you sleep with one stocking on, you will find on May morning in the toe a hair the color of your sweetheart's. Girls try to find out the temperament of their husbands-to-be by keeping a linen thread for three days near an image of the Madonna, and at midnight on May Eve ...
— The Book of Hallowe'en • Ruth Edna Kelley
... traditions of womanhood. One presents the Madonna brooding over the mystery of motherhood; the other, more confusedly, tells of the acolyte, the priestess, the clairvoyante of the unknown gods. This latter exists complete in herself, a personality as definite and as significant as a symbol. She is behind all the processes ...
— The Hours of Fiammetta - A Sonnet Sequence • Rachel Annand Taylor
... action. Whose is the "spirit" of the characters that we know as Micawber, Oliver Twist, Uriah Heep—is it Dickens, or have each of these characters a personal spirit, independent of their creator? Have the Venus of Medici, the Sistine Madonna, the Apollo Belvidere, spirits and reality of their own, or do they represent the spiritual and mental power of their creators? The Law of Paradox explains that both propositions are true, viewed from the proper viewpoints. Micawber is both Micawber, and yet Dickens. And, again, ...
— The Kybalion - A Study of The Hermetic Philosophy of Ancient Egypt and Greece • Three Initiates
... respect her maiden hesitation. You have spoken wisely, Bertram. Listen: you know the partition behind the picture of the Madonna in the picture-gallery. Carry our brave friend thither, and take heed that the spring is ...
— The Merchant of Berlin - An Historical Novel • L. Muhlbach
... narrow, tortuous vicoletto, lighted only by a single lamp burning in the niche of a Madonna. The purity and transparency of the air gave a celestial softness and clearness to the very darkness itself; and one could find one's way without difficulty under such a limpid night. But in a little while we began to pass through a "venella," or, ...
— The Crime of Sylvestre Bonnard • Anatole France
... 'Piu bellisima che la madonna!' said Roejean, loud enough for her to hear. Then turning to Caper, 'Let's andiammo,' (travel,) said he, 'that woman's face will haunt me for a month. I've seen it before; yes, seen her shut up in ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I, No. VI, June, 1862 - Devoted To Literature and National Policy • Various
... old wooden chair, fixed a taper on the end of a candlestick, lit it, and placed it near a small waxen Virgin, sheltered in her niche of stone. It was the family custom to kneel before this protecting Madonna of the domestic hearth, and to beg her kindly watchfulness during the coming night; but on this evening Gerande ...
— A Winter Amid the Ice - and Other Thrilling Stories • Jules Verne
... crowned with a flat-topped cap and two long, straight plumes; clothed in the schenti; his flesh sometimes painted blue. There are various forms of this god (there were almost as many varieties of Ammon in Egypt as there are varieties of the Madonna in Italy or Spain), but he is most generally described as King of the Gods, ...
— TITLE • AUTHOR
... other record or memorial in existence. In those vaults which still remain closed, owing to the indolence or stupidity of the existing generation, eaten up as it is by monkery, and spending more upon a fete to the Madonna, or the liquifying of St Januarius's blood, than would lay open half the city, there is every probability that some of the most important literature of antiquity still lies buried. Why will not some English company, tired of railroad speculations and American stock, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 57, No. 352, February 1845 • Various
... stepsister, who at the moment was being particularly nice to the Mariner (I fancy by way of showing the Outcast how nice she can be—to others), glanced up from a map of Holland, which Starr had opened, across his knees. "It's like a very young Madonna and Child, painted by a Dutch master. I wish you could ...
— The Chauffeur and the Chaperon • C. N. Williamson
... an uncongenial husband, falls in love with a brilliant, heartless society man, with the usual result. The crime is the hero's inability to understand the meaning of genuine love. 'Mensonges' (Lies) is a striking picture of the endless falsities of a Parisian woman of innocent Madonna-like beauty. It was dramatized and played at the Vaudeville in 1889, but without much success. 'Le Disciple' is an elaborate attempt to prove that present scientific theories tend to corrupt manners and to encourage pessimism. In 'Cosmopolis,' a study ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 5 • Various
... and feed the youngsters, my chuck," said he; "I know where to meet Don Urbano, and please Madonna you shall feed ...
— Little Novels of Italy • Maurice Henry Hewlett
... first-born child, my little child, Mine for a few short weeks, whose touch, whose look Thrilled all my soul and thrills it to this day. I loved; but, hear me swear, I kept me pure! (Remember that, Madonna, when I come Before thy throne to-morrow. Be not stern, Or gaze upon me with reproachful look, Making my little angel hide his face And weep, while all the others turn glad ...
— Verses • Susan Coolidge
... just come down to breakfast; Mrs. T. in her large dust-colored morning-dress and Madonna front (she looks rather scraggy of a morning, but I promise you her ringlets and figure will stun you of an evening); and having read the ...
— A Little Dinner at Timmins's • William Makepeace Thackeray
... of the Madonna dell' Arco called me again to Naples, where I took up my quarters at an hotel in the middle of the city, near the Toledo Street, and found an excellent host and hostess. I had already resided here, but only in the winter. I had now to see ...
— The True Story of My Life • Hans Christian Andersen
... yours, Lucy dear," said Miss Wodehouse, standing up on a chair to take down from the wall two little pictures which hung side by side. They were copies both, and neither of great value; one representing the San Sisto Madonna, and the other a sweet St Agnes, whom Lucy had in her earlier days taken to her heart. Lucy's slumbering attention was roused by this sacrilegious act. She gave a little scream, and dropped her work out of ...
— The Perpetual Curate • Mrs [Margaret] Oliphant |
