"Muse" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... part of an unpublished poem, by Coleridge, whose Muse so often tantalizes with fragments which indicate her powers, while the manner in which she flings them from her betrays her caprice, yet whose unfinished sketches display more talent than the laboured ...
— Ivanhoe - A Romance • Walter Scott
... though the muse her Homer thrones High above all the immortal quire; Nor Pindar's raptures she disowns, Nor hides the plaintive Caean lyre; Alcaeus strikes the tyrant soul with dread, Nor yet is ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D, In Nine Volumes - Volume the Third: The Rambler, Vol. II • Samuel Johnson
... danced in his boots ("and glad he could so get away"), he was hardly in worse heart or trim than a seventeenth century author here and there whose original seriousness or work-a-day piety would have been content to go plodding flat-foot or halting, as the muse might naturally incline with him, but whom the tune, the grace, and gallantry of the time beckoned to tread a perpetual measure. Lovelace was a dancer of genius; nay, he danced to rest his wings, for he was winged, ...
— Flower of the Mind • Alice Meynell
... staff, as I have said, I often muse thus, when some object recalls the memory of one and another who have finished their course and been gathered to their fathers. In every city and village, wherever there is human life, with its evil passions and good ...
— Home Scenes, and Home Influence - A Series of Tales and Sketches • T. S. Arthur
... flower-laden. To our left towered the great viaduct, over which the train rolls, depositing its passengers far, far above the tops of the houses, far above the tallest steeple. It was a very striking picture, and H.C. shouted for joy and felt the muse rekindling within him. Upon all shone the glorious sun, above all was the glorious sky, blue, liquid and almost tangible, as only foreign skies can be. The fatigues of yesterday, the terrible adventures of the past night, all were forgotten. Nay, that midnight ...
— The Argosy - Vol. 51, No. 1, January, 1891 • Various
... poet, for her beauty. She inspired his muse when turning the corner of George Street, Edinburgh. The lines addressed to her are to be found in his Poems. She was also a highly-gifted artist. The illustrations in the work called the Stirling Heads are from her pencil. It was ...
— Marriage • Susan Edmonstone Ferrier
... is that a man ought to be able to return to the Muse as he comes back to his wife after he's ceased to interest ...
— The Long Run - 1916 • Edith Wharton
... said the minstrel to Guarine, "that my muse would find a tender part at last. Dost thou remember the bull-fight we saw in Spain? A thousand little darts perplexed and annoyed the noble animal, ere he received the last deadly thrust from the lance ...
— The Betrothed • Sir Walter Scott
... des The Muse of the Department Eugenie Grandet A Bachelor's Establishment A Distinguished Provincial at Paris The Government Clerks Scenes from a ...
— Ursula • Honore de Balzac
... has not seemingly regretted the inability of Byron to trammel his muse with the uncongenial fetters of Pope's metre, and has certainly never quarrelled with Tom Moore for not assuming the manners and diction of ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 3, No. 1 January 1863 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... except the occasional cruel throbbings in her bosom, looked pleased and delighted, and although she perfectly realized the king's impatience, tantalizingly prolonged his sufferings by unexpectedly resuming the conversation at the very moment the king, absorbed in his own reflections, began to muse over his secret attachment. Everything seemed to combine—not alone the little teasing attentions of the queen, but also the queen-mother's interruptions—to make the king's position almost insupportable; for he knew not how to control the restless longings ...
— Louise de la Valliere • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... I marvel that a gentleman, and a gallant officer, can find no other subject for his muse, in these times of trial, than in such beastly invocations to that notorious follower of the camp, the filthy Elizabeth Flanagan. Methinks the goddess of Liberty could furnish a more noble inspiration, and the sufferings of your ...
— The Spy • James Fenimore Cooper
... that to Chaucer, and not to Gower, should be applied the flattering appellation of "the father of our poetry;" though, as Johnson says, he was the first of our authors who can be said to have written English. To Chaucer, however, are we indebted for the first effort to emancipate the British muse from the ridiculous trammels of French diction, with which, till his time, it had been the fashion to interlard and obscure the English language. Gower, on the contrary, from a close intimacy with the French and Latin poets, found it easier to follow the beaten ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 13 Issue 364 - 4 Apr 1829 • Various
... quaintly and sly Takes his tea, Cayenne pepper, and cold apple-pie. Some gaze on the Cygnets that glide like a dream, And bend down to admire their fair forms in the stream; Some laugh at their fancies, or muse on a flower, And all are delighted, so happy the hour. Wouldst thou gaze with emotions far purer than mirth On one of the fairest creations of earth, Go at even, and breathe the pure breath of the breeze, From the seat by the Lake, 'neath those ...
— The Peacock 'At Home' AND The Butterfly's Ball AND The Fancy Fair • Catherine Ann Dorset
... 'The Muse must out,'" continued Joy defiantly. "Or would you rather I didn't have ...
— The Wishing-Ring Man • Margaret Widdemer
... fit polish can my verse attain, Not mine is strength to try the task sublime: My genius, measuring its power to climb, From such attempt doth prudently refrain. Full oft I oped my lips to chant thy name; Then in mid utterance the lay was lost: But say what muse can dare so bold a flight? Full oft I strove in measure to indite; But ah, the pen, the hand, the vein I boast, At once were vanquish'd by the ...
— The Sonnets, Triumphs, and Other Poems of Petrarch • Petrarch
... where is it to be found? Plays don't grow on bushes, even in this agricultural district. And I have yet to discover any dramatists hereabouts, unless"—jocularly—"you are a Tom Taylor or a Tom Robertson in disguise. Are you sure you have never courted the divine muse? Men of position have frequently been ...
— The Strollers • Frederic S. Isham
... Brunswick, who embraced Catholicism on the occasion of the marriage of his daughter with the emperor Charles VI., are equally bad. Lauremberg's satires, written A.D. 1564, are excellent. He said with great truth that the French had deprived the German muse of her nose and had patched on another quite unsuited to her German ears. Moscherosch (Philander von Sittewald) wrote an admirable and cutting satire upon the manners of the age, and Greifenson von Hirschfeld is worthy of mention as the author of the first historical romance that gives an accurate ...
— Germany from the Earliest Period Vol. 4 • Wolfgang Menzel, Trans. Mrs. George Horrocks
... casts, which his father carried out and sold; but as he increased in skill, he chose his subjects from popular songs and ballads, such as "Young Roger came tapping at Dolly's window," "My name is Jack Hall," "I am a bold shoemaker, from Belfast Town I came," and other productions of the mendicant muse. The copies of pictures and casts were commonly sold for three half-crowns each; the original sketches—some of them a little free in posture, and not over delicately handled, were framed and disposed of for any sum from two to five ...
— Anecdotes of Painters, Engravers, Sculptors and Architects, and Curiosities of Art, (Vol. 2 of 3) • Shearjashub Spooner
... several of the British Colonies. The stamps of British East Africa bear a flaming sun and the legend "light and liberty," typical of the light of civilization and progress now dawning upon that part of the world. And on one of the late issues of Portugal is a beautiful allegory of the muse of history watching Da Gama's ...
— What Philately Teaches • John N. Luff
... Louis XIV. and in literary society. She won the friendship and admiration of the most eminent literary men of the age—some of her more zealous flatterers even going so far as to style her the tenth muse and the French Calliope. Her poems were very numerous, and included specimens of nearly all the minor forms, odes, eclogues, idylls, elegies, chansons, ballads, madrigals, &c. Of these the idylls alone, and only some of them, have stood the test of time, the others ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 8, Slice 2 - "Demijohn" to "Destructor" • Various
... sicknesse, by excesse, being lead, With faint weake hands holding his pained head. Thus was the roofe adorn'd: but for the bed, The which those sacred limmes encanaped, I could say much: yet poised with her selfe, That gorgeous worke did seeme but drossy pelfe. All-conquering Loue inspire my weaker Muse, And with thy iocund smiles daigne to infuse Heauen-prompted praises to my vntaught story, That I may write her worth, and tell thy glory. Vpon her backe she lay (o heauenly blisse!); Smiling like Ioue, being couzend of ...
— Seven Minor Epics of the English Renaissance (1596-1624) • Dunstan Gale
... irons in the fire and was always able to write. The different properties that Father accumulated in his lifetime were alone enough to take all his time were it not for his happy nature and wonderful faculty of being able to put them aside when the muse nudged his elbow. ...
— My Boyhood • John Burroughs
... Emperor, to decide their pretensions by a single combat; in which case he offered himself as the Bavarian champion; but in this endeavour he also proved unsuccessful. Then turning his attention to the delights of poetry, he became so enamoured of the muse, that he neglected every other consideration, and she as usual gradually conducted him to the author's never-failing goal—a place of rest appointed for all those sinners whom the profane love of poesy ...
— The Adventures of Ferdinand Count Fathom, Complete • Tobias Smollett
... and run away with the Capting, and they're off to Gretney Green!" We would devote a chapter to describe the emotions of Mrs. Firkin, did not the passions of her mistresses occupy our genteeler muse. ...
— Vanity Fair • William Makepeace Thackeray
... produced works of sweeter minstrelsy and greater historical value than the fabliaux, Romans, and Chansons de gestes of their brethren on the continent. The conquest itself became a grand theme for their muse. ...
— English Literature, Considered as an Interpreter of English History - Designed as a Manual of Instruction • Henry Coppee
... applicable to art, for art and science are not coextensive; nay, to some extent, are even inimical to each other. Indeed, to call a work of art purely and simply "scientific," is tantamount to saying that it is dry and uninspired by the muse. In dwelling so long on this point my object was not so much to elucidate Liszt's meaning as Chopin's ...
— Frederick Chopin as a Man and Musician - Volume 1-2, Complete • Frederick Niecks
... vacillation, read a most impressive lesson to aspiring minds infatuated by success, and regardless of moral or religious restraints. O that, in this age of insubordination, selfishness, and enterprise, a poet would arise, animated with Shakespeare's "Muse of fire," embody the events of those seventeen years of wo, and invest the detestable Regicide with the same terrible immortality which marks the murderous Thane in his progress from obedience and honour to ...
— The Loyalists, Vol. 1-3 - An Historical Novel • Jane West
... dream that they talked more in their sleep at this time than ever they did in all their journey; and being in a muse thereabout, the gardener said even to me: Wherefore musest thou at the matter? It is the nature of the fruit of the grapes of these vineyards to go down so sweetly, as to cause the lips of them that ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to prose. Volume III (of X) - Great Britain and Ireland I • Francis W. Halsey
... I muse upon the distant town In many a dreamy mood. Above my head the sunbeams crown The graveyard's giant rood. The lupin blooms among the tombs. The ...
— Shapes of Clay • Ambrose Bierce
... operation that the doctor had perceived from the very first moment was necessary. After a long talk with him, perhaps, my pen stops. I pause: and when I pause I know the inspiration has gone. As the ancients would say, the Muse or the God has departed and dictates no more. I fling aside the paper and look at my watch. Several hours passed in the hospital, but I'll go round to the club now. And I go. I know Tomkins is dead. It only ...
— To-morrow? • Victoria Cross
... poetry of the Jews is clearly traceable to the service of religion. To celebrate the praises of God, to decorate his worship, and give force to devout sentiments, was the employment of the Hebrew Muse." ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 22, Aug., 1859 • Various
... turned up in some numbers. But then the Caithness painted pebbles were equally without precedent, yet are undisputed. The proverbial fence seems, in these circumstances, to be the appropriate perch for Science, in fact a statue of the Muse of Science might represent her as sitting, in contemplation, on the fence. The strong, the very strong point against authenticity is this: numbers of the disputed objects were found in sites of the early Iron ...
— The Clyde Mystery - a Study in Forgeries and Folklore • Andrew Lang
... hath begun; He follow till I die. Ile hear no Truce, Wrong gets no Grave in me: Abuse pell-mell encounter with abuse; Write he again, Ile write eternally; Who feeds Revenge, hath found an endless Muse. If Death ere made his black Dart of a Pen, My Pen his special Bayly shall become: Somewhat Ile be reputed of 'mongst men, By striking of this Dunce or dead or dumb: Await the World the Tragedy of Wrath, What next I paint shall tread ...
— The Lives of the Most Famous English Poets (1687) • William Winstanley
... was young, While yet in early Greece she sung, The Passions oft, to hear her shell, Thronged around her magic cell, Exulting, trembling, raging, fainting, Possessed beyond the Muse's painting: By turns they felt the glowing mind Disturbed, delighted, raised, refined,— Till once, 'tis said, when all were fired, Filled with fury, rapt, inspired, From the supporting myrtles round ...
— MacMillan's Reading Books - Book V • Anonymous
... ear may be offended by the "barbarous adjunct of rhyme," and by the solecisms and false quantities which sometimes occur, "et alia multa damna atque outragia," others may be amused with these emulations of the cloistered muse of the Middle Ages. The witty author of Whistlecraft has shown that he had a true relish for them, and has successfully tried his hand, ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 82, May 24, 1851 • Various
... youth's bright falchion: there the muse Lifts her sweet voice: there awful Justice opes ...
— Ideal Commonwealths • Various
... the fam'd sisters never durst aspire To sound a verse, or touch the tuneful lyre. 'Till Bristol's charms dissolv'd the native cold; Bad me survey her eyes, and thence be bold. Thee, lovely Bristol! thee! with pride I chuse, The first, and only subject of my muse; That durst transport me like the bird of Jove, To face th' immortal source of light above! Such are thy kindred beams— So blessings, with a bounteous hand they give, So they create, and ...
— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753) - Vol. IV • Theophilus Cibber
... this he is but a feeble thing, unable to utter his oracles." I can imagine all this reported to Homer in the Shades and Homer answering with a smile: "Well, and who in the world is denying it? I certainly did not, while I lived and sang upon earth. Nay, I never even sang, but invited the Muse to sing to me and through me. [Greek: Menin haeide theha ... Handra moi hennepe, Moysa.]—Surely the dear fellow might remember the first line of my immortal works! And if he does remember, and is only bringing it up against me that in the intervals of doing my work in life I was ...
— Poetry • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... plum-porridge, furmity; With beef, pork, mutton of each sort More than my pen can make report; Pig, swan, goose, rabbits, partridge, teal, With legs and loins and breasts of veal: But above all the minced pies Must mention'd be in any wise, Or else my Muse were much to blame, Since they from Christmas take their name. With these, or any one of these, A man may dine well if he please; Yet this must well be understood,— Though one of these be singly good, Yet more the merrier is the best As well of dishes as of guest. But ...
— Christmas: Its Origin and Associations - Together with Its Historical Events and Festive Celebrations During Nineteen Centuries • William Francis Dawson
... hope: And yet this Grain (as all must own) To Grooms and Hostlers well is known, And often has without disdain In musty Barn and Manger lain, As if it had been only good To be for Birds and Beasts the Food. But now by new-inspired Force, It keeps alive both Man and Horse. Then speak, my Muse, for now I guess E'en what it is thou wouldst express: It is not Barley, Rye, nor Wheat, That can pretend to do the Feat: 'Tis Oates, bare Oates, that is become The Health of England, Bane of Rome, And Wonder of all Christendom. And therefore Oates ...
— Quaint Gleanings from Ancient Poetry • Edmund Goldsmid
... he would sit and muse, his head in his hand, his well-rounded legs stretched toward the fire, his white, shapely fingers tapping the arms of his chair—each click so many telegraphic records of ...
— Kennedy Square • F. Hopkinson Smith
... a life of incorrigible idleness; they have no need to maintain themselves; they just eat, and sit, and muse; everything is supplied to them, including their yellow robe and betel nut. Their religion ...
— The Road to Mandalay - A Tale of Burma • B. M. Croker
... his career I have realised bow sad it is that he has bequeathed us no ASQUITH legend. Always reserved and intent, he discouraged Press gossip to such a degree as actually to have turned the key on the Tenth Muse. Everybody else might lunch at the hospitable board in Downing Street, but interviewers had no chance. In vain did the Quexes of this frivolous city hope for even a crumb—there was nothing for them. Mr. ASQUITH came into office, held it, and left it without a single concession to ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 152, January 10, 1917 • Various
... conscious truth to hide, To quench the blushes of ingenuous shame, 70 Or heap the shrine of Luxury and Pride With incense kindled at the Muse's flame. ...
— Selections from Five English Poets • Various
... beauties of the Vale of Llangollen certainly exceed every idea I had formed of their grandeur, and on my arrival at the inn in the village, the muse embodied the following ...
— The "Ladies of Llangollen" • John Hicklin
... do love thee, Beaumont, and thy muse, That unto me dost such religion use! How I do fear myself, that am not worth The least indulgent thought thy pen drops forth! At once thou mak'st me happy, and unmak'st; And giving largely to me, more thou takest! What fate is mine, that so itself bereaves? ...
— Discoveries and Some Poems • Ben Jonson
... write, I swear it—she, my faery, my Muse, my Egeria, she to whom I desired to look up in adoration to the last drawing ...
— The Indian Lily and Other Stories • Hermann Sudermann
... bother me? I wish you would bother me, and re-bother me, and talk to me and at me; for what can give me more pleasure? I swear that no muse-stricken rhymester ever reads his own last poem with more delight than I do what you write to me about matters public or private, town or country. Here now is a letter from you full of pleasant matter, but with this dash of the ...
— Cicero - Ancient Classics for English Readers • Rev. W. Lucas Collins
... treasure the future may enshrine in Canadian literature, and however deserving may be the claims of the volumes of verse that have already appeared from the native press, I am bold to claim for these productions of Mrs. MacLean's muse a high place in the national collection and a warm corner in the ...
— The Coming of the Princess and Other Poems • Kate Seymour Maclean
... disobedience, and the fruit Of that forbidden tree whose mortal taste Brought death into the World, and all our woe, With loss of Eden, till one greater Man Restore us, and regain the blissful seat, Sing, Heavenly Muse, that, on the secret top Of Oreb, or of Sinai, didst inspire That shepherd who first taught the chosen seed In the beginning how the heavens and earth Rose out of Chaos: or, if Sion hill Delight thee more, and Siloa's brook that flowed Fast by the oracle ...
— Paradise Lost • John Milton
... how My thoughts were dressed when I was young But tempus fugit! see them now Half clad in rags of every tongue! O philoi, fratres, chers amis! I dare not court the youthful Muse, For fear her sharp response should be, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 121, November, 1867 • Various
... us'd to 't, and she seems Rather to welcome the end of misery Than shun it; a behaviour so noble As gives a majesty to adversity: You may discern the shape of loveliness More perfect in her tears than in her smiles: She will muse for hours together; and her silence, Methinks, expresseth more than if ...
— The Duchess of Malfi • John Webster
... prudence, the icy chain of human law, thawed and vanished at the genial warmth of human nature, who could help it? It was an amiable weakness! At this time the profanation of the word "love" rose to its height; the muse of science condescended to seek admission at the saloons of fashion and frivolity, rouged like a harlot and with the harlot's wanton leer. I know not how the annals of guilt could be better forced into the service of virtue than by such a comment on the present paragraph ...
— The Worlds Greatest Books, Volume XIII. - Religion and Philosophy • Various
... Thyrsis himself had judged "The Higher Cannibalism" and repudiated it. It was born of his pain and weakness, and it was not the work he had come into the world to do. So at the end he had placed a poem, which told of a visit from his muse, after the fashion of Musset's "Nuits"; the muse had been sad and silent, and in the end the poet had torn up the product of his hours of despair, and had renewed his faith with ...
— Love's Pilgrimage • Upton Sinclair
... to express his meaning, when his meaning is not well known to himself, with a certain degree of obscurity, as it is one source of the sublime. But when, in plain prose, we gravely talk of courting the muse in shady bowers, waiting the call and inspiration of genius, finding out where he inhabits, and where he is to be invoked with the greatest success; of attending to times and seasons when the imagination shoots with the greatest vigour, whether at the summer solstice or the ...
— Seven Discourses on Art • Joshua Reynolds
... to return from the donjon, than D'Artagnan placed himself in ambuscade close to the Rue du Petit-Muse, so as to see every one who might leave the gates of the Bastille. After he had spent an hour on the look-out from the "Golden Portcullis," under the pent-house of which he could keep himself a little in the shade, D'Artagnan observed a soldier ...
— The Vicomte de Bragelonne - Or Ten Years Later being the completion of "The Three - Musketeers" And "Twenty Years After" • Alexandre Dumas
... piano stood open, and there was music, and "tables piled with books," and flowers everywhere. The hostess was in a pearl satin gown with flowing train, and sat by a round table reading aloud from poems of Mr. Browning, when the poet himself was announced, "and as she read, in her wonderful muse-like way, he walked in." All the lively company were half laughing and half protesting, and Mrs. Kemble, with her regal air, called him to her side, to submit to him some disputed point, which he evaded. Mrs. Sartoris had a story, with which she amused ...
— The Brownings - Their Life and Art • Lilian Whiting
... those of any singer of ancient or modern times; how his brief life had been but a series of triumphs, petted by the greatest kings, sung by the most famous poets, and finally, adds Father Prosdocimo, "courted (if the grave Muse of history may incline her ear to the gossip of gallantry) by the most charming nymphs, even of the ...
— Hauntings • Vernon Lee
... starting, he would bite his fingers to ascertain whether the scene was reality or a dream. Finally, giving vent to a piteous sigh, while a tear ran down his stained cheek, he placed his elbows upon his knees, and, bending forward, seemed to muse over some event of the past, which the jewel before him ...
— Wild Western Scenes • John Beauchamp Jones
... hopes in pursuit, and dreams as to possibilities; you keep looking round to be satisfied that the gaff is ready to hand, and everything in the boat shipshape for action. As it was after luncheon to-day, you think of anything but a fish taking hold; you swish on monotonously and mechanically; you muse of friends at home and abroad, of the sport you enjoyed yesterday or the day before, of chances lost, perhaps even of your general career through either a well-ordered or misspent life as the case ...
— Lines in Pleasant Places - Being the Aftermath of an Old Angler • William Senior
... my father, and seemed to muse upon it for a moment while he eyed her paternally. "A very good name, O Princess, and ...
— Sir John Constantine • Prosper Paleologus Constantine
... till Martial thou hast well survey'd, Or Owen's wit with Jonson's learning weighed, Forbeare with thanklesse censure to accuse My writ of errour, or condemne my Muse." ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 212, November 19, 1853 • Various
... the rose and carnation-bud's fragrance, 'mongst wonder-flowers' fated! As false at heart As glitter-wave, She held toward him her billowy hair, Where all the ocean's freshness breathes. And lily so red and lily so white Confidingly muse ...
— Lucky Pehr • August Strindberg
... of an epic poem, and his early ambition urged him a step or two in that direction, but his critical faculty, which, despite all his monstrosities of taste, was vital, restrained him from making a fool of himself, and he forswore the muse, puffed the prostitute away, and carried his very saleable wares to another market, where his efforts were crowned with prodigious success. Sir William Fraser introduces his great man to us as observing, in reply to a question, that revenge was the passion which gives pleasure ...
— In the Name of the Bodleian and Other Essays • Augustine Birrell
... unto Poetrie (not printed in Hesperides, but extant in more than one manuscript version) shows that the poet was not unaware of the responsibilities of his profession. "But unto me," he says to his Muse: ...
— The Hesperides & Noble Numbers: Vol. 1 and 2 • Robert Herrick
... fame he despatched his brother Theodorus to Olympia, with orders to repeat there in public, some verses in his name, in competition with some other poets for the poetical prize: the people, however, had too much taste to endure them, and rewarded his muse with groans and hisses. At Athens, however, he had better success; for he obtained the prize there for a composition which he sent in his name, but which was chiefly written by Antiphon, the son of Sophocles, whom he put to death ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor - Vol. I. No. 3. March 1810 • Various
... see my mither— She'll be weel acquant or this, Sair we'll muse at ane anither, 'Tween the auld word an' ...
— A Hidden Life and Other Poems • George MacDonald
... our Muse And the drawers she wears are made Of the stoutest leather—Oh! Do not wrong ...
— Atta Troll • Heinrich Heine
... the ride of Richard Bullen! Sing, O Muse of chivalrous men! the sacred quest, the doughty deeds, the battery of low churls, the fearsome ride and grewsome perils of the Flower of Simpson's Bar! Alack! she is dainty, this Muse! She will have none of this bucking brute and swaggering, ragged ...
— Mrs. Skaggs's Husbands and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... the children of his school. He used to take them to this room during school time for a little a-muse-ment. He man-aged each child as he found best. Some he could persuade to be good. Some he shamed into being good. But this was very dif-fer-ent from the cruel beatings that other teachers of that time gave ...
— Stories of Great Americans for Little Americans • Edward Eggleston
... that felt the wand of Muse— Queen Posy's shaft of subtle art— Seared to the distant heights of blue, Past onyx lees that Sunsets dyed, And put to Vellum Couplets' fuse, Sped same to Fate with timid heart, Then shed dim tears in Sorrow's pew, This work's ...
— Betelguese - A Trip Through Hell • Jean Louis de Esque
... O gall of all good heartes! To see that vertue should dispised bee 450 Of him that first was raisde for vertuous parts, And now, broad spreading like an aged tree, Lets none shoot up that nigh him planted bee. O let the man of whom the Muse is scorned, Nor alive nor dead, be of the ...
— The Poetical Works of Edmund Spenser, Volume 5 • Edmund Spenser
... everything at my own time, and to my own fancy, and never a farthing challenged. Even while he was driving me, I had begun to find my heart go out to Mr. Henry; no doubt, partly in pity, he was a man so palpably unhappy. He would fall into a deep muse over our accounts, staring at the page or out of the window; and at those times the look of his face, and the sigh that would break from him, awoke in me strong feelings of curiosity and commiseration. One day, I remember, we were late upon some business in the steward's room. This room is in the ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition, Vol. XII (of 25) - The Master of Ballantrae • Robert Louis Stevenson
... that Sir John should devote all that money he proposes to make by the aid of his familiar spirit—the ghost of Narcisse—to the building of a temple in honour of the tenth muse, the muse of cookery," said Mrs. Sinclair; "and what do you think, Sir John, of a name I dreamt of last night for your sauce, 'The New Century Sauce'? ...
— The Cook's Decameron: A Study in Taste: - Containing Over Two Hundred Recipes For Italian Dishes • Mrs. W. G. Waters
... mounds, perchance, cover the resting-places of Achilles, Patroclus, Ajax, Hector, and many other heroes who may have served their country as faithfully as these, though their names do not live in the page of history. How gladly would I have trodden the plain, there to muse on the legends which in my youth had already awakened in me such deep and awe-struck interest, and had first aroused the wish to visit these lands—a desire now partially fulfilled! But we flew by with relentless rapidity. The whole region is deserted ...
— A Visit to the Holy Land • Ida Pfeiffer
... The old scholar to whom Clerambault had sent a copy of his poems did not fail to congratulate him politely, praising his great talent, but he did not say that this was his finest work; he even urged him, "after having offered his tribute to the warlike Muse, to produce now a work of pure imagination detached from the present." What could he mean? When an artist submits his work for your approval, is it proper to say to him: "I should prefer to read another one quite different from this?" This was a fresh sign ...
— Clerambault - The Story Of An Independent Spirit During The War • Rolland, Romain
... Anglo-Saxon race, Whose words have won the hearts of young and old; So free from cant, and yet replete with grace, Or prose or verse it glows like burnished gold; Thy muse is ever loyal to the truth, And those who know thee best ...
— Gleams of Sunshine - Optimistic Poems • Joseph Horatio Chant
... though last not least, is Aetion; A gentler shepheard may nowhere be found; Whose Muse, full of high thoughts' invention, Doth like himselfe ...
— An Introduction to Shakespeare • H. N. MacCracken
... Illusions A Distinguished Provincial at Paris A Bachelor's Establishment The Secrets of a Princess The Government Clerks A Study of Woman Scenes from a Courtesan's Life Honorine The Seamy Side of History The Magic Skin A Second Home A Prince of Bohemia Letters of Two Brides The Muse of the Department The Imaginary Mistress The Middle Classes Cousin Betty The Country Parson In addition, M. Bianchon narrated the following: Another Study of Woman La ...
— Pierrette • Honore de Balzac
... brain, and ploughing up those parallel ruts where the wagon trains of common ideas were jogging along in their regular sequences of association. No wonder the ancients made the poetical impulse wholly external. [Greek text which cannot be reproduced]. Goddess,—Muse,—divine afflatus, —something outside always. I never wrote any verses worth reading. I can't. I am too stupid. If I ever copied any that were worth reading, I ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... preferred his plighted troth to the commands and menaces of the dead is an ancestor worth disputing. But the Campbells must rest content: they have the broad lands and the broad page of history; this appanage must be denied them; for between the name of Cameron and that of Campbell, the muse ...
— Ballads • Robert Louis Stevenson
... brilliancy to my mother's salons. Wits, authors, poets, artists, statesmen, whose words could change the fate of Europe, were proud to call the marquise friend. I am an old man now, and you must forgive an old man's prosiness; but a little sadness comes into my thoughts when I muse on the past. How many of those illustrious souls, then so full of life and power, remain? And I, long exiled from all I cherished, how have I progressed? No, no, Eugene; not even to you would I complain. ...
— Marie Gourdon - A Romance of the Lower St. Lawrence • Maud Ogilvy
... Army at Bothwell Bridge. A Cameronian muse was awakened from slumber on this doleful occasion, and gave the following account of the muster of the royal forces, in poetry nearly ...
— Old Mortality, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... content so strongly as you made her seem to do; she speaks of the state of life to which her catechumen "shall" be, not "has" been, called; and thus makes it possible for a dean to resolve to be content with a bishopric, and a bishop to muse upon the complete satisfaction with which he would grasp an archbishop's ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 4, No. 24, Oct. 1859 • Various
... I muse, and hes in thocht How this fals Warld is ay on flocht, Quhair no thing ferme is nor degest; {91a} {91d} And when I haif my mynd all socht, For to be ...
— Playful Poems • Henry Morley
... quickly to restore warmth I muse upon my eccentric friend, and cannot help asking myself this question: Did he really replace the gilded image of the god Mercurius with the rest of the treasures? He seemed to do so; and yet I could not testify to the ...
— A Changed Man and Other Tales • Thomas Hardy
... judges who examined each phrase and word with the minutest critical care before pronouncing their verdict. As might be expected, the poetry produced in those circumstances is of a more or less artificial type, and is wanting in the spontaneous vigour of the earlier essays of the Japanese muse. Conceits, acrostics, and untranslatable word-plays hold much too prominent a place, but for perfection of form the poems of this time are unrivalled. It is no doubt to this quality that the great popularity of the Kokin-shu is due. Sei Shonagon, writing in the early years of the ...
— A History of the Japanese People - From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era • Frank Brinkley and Dairoku Kikuchi
... him until he has been inspired. When he has not attained to this state he is powerless and unable to utter his oracles. Many are the noble words in which poets speak of the actions which they record, but they do not speak of them by any rules of art, they are inspired to utter that to which the Muse ...
— Platform Monologues • T. G. Tucker
... commerce, and lucrative arts, they awakened whatever was either good or bad in the natural dispositions of men. Every road to eminence was opened: eloquence, fortitude, military skill, envy, detraction, faction, and treason, even the muse herself, was courted to bestow importance among a busy, ...
— An Essay on the History of Civil Society, Eighth Edition • Adam Ferguson, L.L.D.
... insight; and whatever faults or obstructions of temperament might cloud it, he was not disobedient to the heavenly vision. In his youth, he said, one day, "The other world is all my art: my pencils will draw no other; my jack-knife will cut nothing else; I do not use it as a means." This was the muse and genius that ruled his opinions, conversation, studies, work, and course of life. This made him a searching judge of men. At first glance he measured his companion, and, though insensible to some fine traits of culture, could very well report his weight and calibre. And this made ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 58, August, 1862 • Various
... merchant, John Jacob Astor, who left him a handsome annuity. This was increased by Mr. Astor's son and heir, a man of well-known liberality; so that between the two there is a chance of the poet's being enabled to 'meditate the tuneful Muse' for the remainder of his days free ...
— International Weekly Miscellany, Vol. I, No. 6 - Of Literature, Art, And Science, New York, August 5, 1850 • Various
... wound up with a gigantic figure, in which the muse of Chancery was represented as mounted upon a golden car, and dispensing from her outstretched hands all sorts of fruits, and flowers, and blessings on humanity;—and having thus brought his noble poem ...
— The Last of the Foresters • John Esten Cooke
... the drooping Muse hath stray'd, And left her debt to Addison unpaid, Blame not her silence, Warwick, but bemoan, And judge, O judge, my bosom by your own. What mourner ever felt poetic fires! Slow comes the verse, that real woe inspires: Grief unaffected ...
— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753),Vol. V. • Theophilus Cibber
... down to breakfast the next morning; but after little more than a nominal presentation of herself there, she escaped from Rose's looks and words of comment and innuendo and regained her own room. And there she sat down in the window to muse, having carefully locked out Clam. She had reason. Clam would certainly have decided that her mistress 'wanted fixing,' if she could have watched the glowing intent eyes with which Elizabeth was going deep into ...
— Hills of the Shatemuc • Susan Warner
... inclinations somewhat silly; she considered his sordid and material. The husband's business was that of a gunmaker in a thriving city northwards, and his soul was in that business always; the lady was best characterized by that superannuated phrase of elegance 'a votary of the muse.' An impressionable, palpitating creature was Ella, shrinking humanely from detailed knowledge of her husband's trade whenever she reflected that everything he manufactured had for its purpose the destruction of life. She could only recover her ...
— Wessex Tales • Thomas Hardy
... know a Manor by the Thames; I've seen it oft through beechen stems In leafy Summer weather; We've moored the punt its lawns beside Where peacocks strut in flaunting pride, The Muse ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, November 4, 1914 • Various
... infantile or animal picture-thinking. If the school is slowly becoming speechless in this sense, if it is lapsing in all departments toward busy work and losing silence, repose, the power of logical thought, and even that of meditation, which is the muse of originality, this is perhaps the gravest of all these types of decay. If the child has no resources in solitude, can not think without the visual provocation, is losing subjective life, enthusiasm for public, social, ethical questions, ...
— Youth: Its Education, Regimen, and Hygiene • G. Stanley Hall
... a fervent worker in diamonds. None of his gems are paste, and a few have a perfection, a solidity, and a fire that fit them for a place in that coronet one might fancy made up of the richest of the jewels of the world's music-makers, and fashioned for the very brows of the Muse herself. ...
— Contemporary American Composers • Rupert Hughes
... breeches. "We find that thar is ther simplest way o' doin' business. Ef we makes a mistake, an' gits ther wrong galoot, nobody ever kicks up much o' a row over it, fer we're naterally lively over thar, an' we must hev somethin' ter 'muse us 'bout ...
— Frank Merriwell's Bravery • Burt L. Standish
... on her, I thought she looked like a personification of her lovely namesake, the glorious creation of Byron's muse. Her beautiful chestnut hair was unfortunately (in compliance with the custom of the country) tinged with a reddish dye. It was combed to the nape of the neck, and a red woolen band was closely twisted round it, so that the most ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 2, July, 1850. • Various
... last had Robin's heart possest, And many a time disturb'd his nightly rest. Full oft' returning from the loosen'd plough, He slack'd his pace, and knit his thoughtful brow; And oft' ere half his thresher's talk was o'er, Would muse, with arms across, at cooling door: His mind thus bent, with downcast eyes he stood, And leant upon his flail in thoughtful mood. His soul o'er many a soft rememb'rance ran, And, mutt'ring ...
— Poems, &c. (1790) • Joanna Baillie
... Celtic genius into contact with the genius of the nations of modern Europe, and enriched all our poetry by it. Woody Morven, and echoing Sora, and Selma with its silent halls!—we all owe them a debt of gratitude, and when we are unjust enough to forget it, may the Muse forget us! Choose any one of the better passages in Macpherson's Ossian and you can see even at this time of day what an apparition of newness and power such a strain must have been to ...
— Selections from the Prose Works of Matthew Arnold • Matthew Arnold
... much to be regretted; for his vivacity of imagination, and force of language, would probably have produced something sublime upon the gunpowder plot[182]. To apologise for his neglect, he gave in a short copy of verses, entitled Somnium, containing a common thought; 'that the Muse had come to him in his sleep, and whispered, that it did not become him to write on such subjects as politicks; he should confine himself to humbler themes:' but the ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 1 • Boswell
... whose exquisite work we see now and again in these chateaux, that some writer has said, that the muse of Ronsard whispered in the ear of the French sculptor, and thus Goujon's masterpieces were poems of Ronsard translated in marble. It is a rather pretty fancy, but Lydia and I cannot remember its author. Walter says that he can understand why the Counts of Blois built their castle here, ...
— In Chteau Land • Anne Hollingsworth Wharton
... a poem in hexameter verse, in good Greek, addressed to King Ptolemy, in which he calls, not only upon Apollo and the Muse, but, like a true Egyptian, upon Hermes, from whose darkly worded writings he had gained his knowledge. He says that the king's greatness might have been foretold from the places of Mars and the Sun at the time of his birth, and that his marriage with his sister Arsinoe arose from the ...
— History Of Egypt From 330 B.C. To The Present Time, Volume 10 (of 12) • S. Rappoport
... and cheek, almost hiding the small ear. The graceful cloak, with its touches of sable on a main fabric of soft white, hid the ugly dress; its ample folds heightened the natural dignity of the young form and long limbs, lent them a stately and muse-like charm. Mrs. Burgoyne and Miss Manisty looked at each other, then at Miss Foster. Both of them had the same curious feeling, as though a veil were being drawn away from something they were just beginning ...
— Eleanor • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... Which will not leave the myrrh-bush on the height; To hear each other's whispered speech; Eating the lotus, day by day, To watch the crisping ripples on the beach, And tender curving lines of creamy spray; To lend our hearts and spirits wholly To the influence of mild-minded melancholy; To muse and brood and live again in memory, With those old faces of our infancy Heaped over with a mound of grass, Two handfuls of white dust, shut in an urn ...
— TITLE • AUTHOR
... One noble writer Spelling treated with rudeness, probably from some accidental pique, or equally insignificant reason. I myself, one of the three survivors before referred to, escaped with a love-pat, as the youngest son of the Muse. Longfellow gets a brief nod of acknowledgment. Bailey, an American writer, "who made long since a happy snatch at fame," which must have been snatched away from him by envious time, for I cannot identify him; Thatcher, who died early, ...
— A Mortal Antipathy • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... humanity, and makes them the words of the Reason. The Imagination may be defined to be, the use which the Reason makes of the material world. Shakspeare possesses the power of subordinating nature for the purposes of expression, beyond all poets. His imperial muse tosses the creation like a bauble from hand to hand, and uses it to embody any caprice of thought that is upper-most in his mind. The remotest spaces of nature are visited, and the farthest sundered things are brought together, by a subtle spiritual connection. We are made aware that magnitude ...
— Nature • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... material for a colour-sonnet here, with these subdued grey tones, those dull coppery-greens, and the glowing reds of the conical caps of those towers. I ought—but I don't. I fancy that half-engagement to MAUD TROTTER must have, scared away the Muse. I wonder if PODBURY has really gone yet? (Here a thump on the back disposes of any doubt as to this.) Er—so ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 101, September 26, 1891 • Various
... them. They soon die quietly of universal neglect. The poetry that ordinarily circulates among a people is poetry of a secondary and conventional sort that propagates established ideas in trite metaphors. Popular poets are the parish priests of the Muse, retailing her ancient divinations to a long since converted public. Plato's quarrel was not so much with poetic art as with ancient myth and emotional laxity: he was preaching a crusade against the established church. For naturalistic deities he wished to substitute moral symbols; ...
— The Life of Reason • George Santayana
... durst assert the juster ancient Cause And have restored Wits Fundamental Laws. Such was the Muse, whose Rules and Practice tell, Natures chief ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... passion makes me grave. I muse upon thy beauty. Thus I'd read My oppressed spirit, for in truth these sounds ...
— Count Alarcos - A Tragedy • Benjamin Disraeli
... characteristic of the man. A servant rushes in to say that the house is on fire; but the scholar answers, 'Tell my wife: you know that I never interfere with the household.' He was married twice over, he used to say, to the Muse of philology as well as to a mortal wife; but he confessed that he would never have got far with the first, if the second had not commanded in the library, always ready to look out passages and to hand ...
— The Great Book-Collectors • Charles Isaac Elton and Mary Augusta Elton
... peaceful, forgittin' his enthusiasm, while I, who took it calm at the time, kep awake to muse on the glory of ...
— Samantha at the World's Fair • Marietta Holley
... have a bowl of coffee. Or rather, I will go into the kitchen myself; I am very good friends with Marianne, the cook; besides, the motto of the house of Bergenheim is liberte, libertas. Coffee is my muse; in this respect, ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... her; Madame Recamier obtained her pension; the brilliant Sophie Gay, now Madame Emile de Girardin, wrote of her poetry, "How could one depict better the luxury of grief?" M. Raspail, the austere republican, called her the tenth muse, the muse of virtue; and Sainte-Beuve himself, thinking less of her literary life than of her family life and manifold compassions, terms her the "Mater Dolorosa of poetry." His memoir, however, is valuable for its own grace as much as for the modest sweetness of its subject: ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Volume 11, No. 26, May, 1873 • Various
... dark for both and say Amen. Nay, muse not, madam: tis no sencelesse Image, But the true essence of your ...
— A Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. III • Various
... given him, they had hung round him a real mantle of purple velvet embroidered with gold. By his side, and seated on a globe, was a tall female form dressed in white, with an open book in one hand, and in the other a wand, pointing towards the portrait. This figure was to represent the Muse of History:—may she one day cast a glance of friendly retrospection on the prototype of her pictured companion! A body of cavalry followed the car, and the carriages of the most distinguished inhabitants of the place closed the procession. ...
— A New Voyage Round the World, in the years 1823, 24, 25, and 26, Vol. 2 • Otto von Kotzebue
... not picture things otherwise. I never thought of thanking her, or of asking myself, "Is she also happy? Is she also contented?" Often on some pretext or another I would leave my lessons and run to her room, where, sitting down, I would begin to muse aloud as though she were not there. She was forever mending something, or tidying the shelves which lined her room, or marking linen, so that she took no heed of the nonsense which I talked—how that I meant to become a general, to marry a beautiful woman, to buy a chestnut ...
— Childhood • Leo Tolstoy
... his time, Poetry and Music were in a very low state of perfection, and as he excelled in both of those arts, it was said that he was the son of Apollo and the Muse Calliope; and it was added, that he charmed lions and tigers, and made even the trees sensible of the melodious tones of his lyre. These were mere hyperbolical expressions, which signified the wondrous charms of his eloquence and of his ...
— The Metamorphoses of Ovid - Literally Translated into English Prose, with Copious Notes - and Explanations • Publius Ovidius Naso
... of the Iconoclasts, says,—"The Olympian Jove, created by the muse of Homer and the chisel of Phidias, might inspire a philosophic mind with momentary devotion; but these Catholic images were faintly and flatly delineated by monkish artists in the last degeneracy of taste and genius." Such comparisons mistake ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 13, No. 76, February, 1864 • Various
... for high, Mr. Diry? My muse come playguey neer running away with me, so I had to wistle "down brakes," and slow her up. Now I'll begin to record my doins on your pages, so that, shuld the toes of my boots be applide to the patent bucket early in my useful carreer, the hull wurld'll kno wot a treassure ...
— The Bad Boy At Home - And His Experiences In Trying To Become An Editor - 1885 • Walter T. Gray
... the lordly crowd I muse, Which haunts the Royal festive hours, The day has come when I've put on The ...
— Japanese Literature - Including Selections from Genji Monogatari and Classical - Poetry and Drama of Japan • Various
... was not the only devout poet who, in the early times, with sacred reverence believed the wonders the inspiring muse gave him as from God. It is not clear from the Biblical record that Adam was imagined the first man. On the contrary, the statement that Cain was afraid that those who met him would kill him, also that he went ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger
... strength which this divine gift confers upon its possessor. Fame, and that too after death, was all which hitherto the poets had promised themselves from this art. It seems to have been left to Wither to discover that poetry was a present possession, as well as a rich reversion, and that the Muse has a promise of both lives,—of this, and of that which ...
— Pastoral Poems by Nicholas Breton, - Selected Poetry by George Wither, and - Pastoral Poetry by William Browne (of Tavistock) • Nicholas Breton, George Wither, William Browne (of Tavistock)
... wreath. The past editions of this work, and they have been many, have elicited the strongest praise here and abroad. The classic poets of every land have valued the praise which rewarded their dedication of the first triumphs of the muse to subjects connected with the cultivation of the soil, to the arts that rendered the breast of our common mother lovely, and wedded the labors which sustain life with the arts that render it happy. ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII. No. 3. March 1848 • Various
... {HORIZONTAL ELLIPSIS} prima fugit." I turned back to the beginning of the third book, which we had read in class that morning. "Primus ego in patriam mecum {HORIZONTAL ELLIPSIS} deducam Musas"; "for I shall be the first, if I live, to bring the Muse into my country." Cleric had explained to us that "patria" here meant, not a nation or even a province, but the little rural neighborhood on the Mincio where the poet was born. This was not a boast, but a hope, at once bold and devoutly humble, ...
— My Antonia • Willa Sibert Cather
... had said it, the idee struck me as bein' sort o' pitiful,—to go to whippin' a ghost. But she didn't seem to notice my remark, for she seemed to be a gazin' upward in a sort of a muse; and she says,— ...
— Sweet Cicely - Or Josiah Allen as a Politician • Josiah Allen's Wife (Marietta Holley)
... place to her purpose, and to make the interest and effectiveness of her work the paramount object. But critics have lashed her out of these erratic ways, and she is now become the meek hand maid of Clio, creeping obediently in the track of the greater Muse, and never venturing on more than colouring and working up the grand outlines that her mistress has left undefined. Thus, in the present tale, though it would have been far more convenient not to have spread the story over such ...
— Stray Pearls • Charlotte M. Yonge
... ate nothing, sat sunk in a muse, and only awoke occasionally to a sense of where he was, and what he was supposed to be doing. On each of these occasions he showed a gratitude and kind courtesy that endeared him to me beyond expression. "Champdivers, ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 20 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... Cesare Borgia. We there listen to the complaint of Roma, who had set all her hopes on the Spanish Popes, Calixtus III and Alexander VI, and who saw her promised deliverer in Cesare. His history is related down to the catastrophe of 1503. The poet then asks the Muse what were the counsels of the gods at that moment, and Erato tells how, upon Olympus, Pallas took the part of the Spaniards, Venus of the Italians, how both then embrace the knees of Jupiter, how thereupon ...
— The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy • Jacob Burckhardt
... coming of age of one of the late Lords Holland; on a pedestal ornamented by a vase, are inscribed some verses by General Fitzpatrick; another placed by Mrs. Fox to mark a favorite spot where Mr. Fox loved to muse, is enriched by a quotation from the "Flower and the Leaf," concluded by ...
— The International Monthly Magazine - Volume V - No II • Various
... It seemed to him that the rising generation, detached from the fountain-head of Jewish culture, would no more be able to read the "Songs of Zion," and that the poet's rhymes were limited in their appeal to the last handful of the worshippers of the Hebrew Muse: ...
— History of the Jews in Russia and Poland. Volume II • S.M. Dubnow
... the Muse of a great woman years ago; and now, alas! she, who, with constant suffering of her own, was called upon to grieve often for the loss of near and dear ones, has suddenly gone from among us, "and silence, against which we dare not cry, aches round us like a strong ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, No. 47, September, 1861 • Various
... muse upon that month Which brought your majesty so near the grave, From that time, thirty weeks had scarce elapsed, Before the ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... young friends, you shall hear to-night! I, who have heard every fine voice in Europe, confidently pledge my respectability that the Ravenswing is equal to them all. She has the graces, sir, of a Venus with the mind of a Muse. She is a siren, sir, without the dangerous qualities of one. She is hallowed, sir, by her misfortunes as by her genius; and I am proud to think that my instructions have been the means of developing the wondrous qualities that ...
— Men's Wives • William Makepeace Thackeray
... thing—from you. Every man to his metier. Yours is to sing of blue skies and west winds, of hay-scented meadows and Watteau-like revellers in a paradise as artificial as a Dutch garden. Take my advice, and keep your muse chained. The other worlds are for ...
— The Master Mummer • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... the Cockpit stage Gives it a soul from her immortal rage, I hear the Muse's birds with full delight Sing where the birds of Mars were wont ...
— Shakespearean Playhouses - A History of English Theatres from the Beginnings to the Restoration • Joseph Quincy Adams
... that boat of cypress wood, Now here, now there, as by the current borne. Nor rest nor sleep comes in my troubled mood; I suffer as when painful wound has torn The shrinking body. Thus I dwell forlorn, And aimless muse, my thoughts of sorrow full. I might with wine refresh my spirit worn; I might go forth, and, sauntering try to cool The fever of my heart; but ...
— Chinese Literature • Anonymous
... a licence which they use As th' ancient priviledge of their free Muse; Yet whether this be leave enough for me To write, great Bard, an Eulogie for thee: Or whether to commend thy Worke, will stand Both with the Lawes of Verse and of the Land, Were to put doubts might ...
— The Works of Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher in Ten Volumes - Volume I. • Beaumont and Fletcher
... not mean to suggest that the custom of lying has suffered any decay or interruption—no, for the Lie, as a Virtue, a Principle, is eternal; the Lie, as a recreation, a solace, a refuge in time of need, the fourth Grace, the tenth Muse, man's best and surest friend, is immortal, and cannot perish from the earth while this Club remains. My complaint simply concerns the decay of the art of lying. No high-minded man, no man of right feeling, can contemplate ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... with the thought that his employer had placed so much confidence in him. He wanted to write a poem, but circumstances forbade his signaling to his muse. On his way to the bunk-house he hesitated and retraced his steps to the ranch office. Corliss told him to come in. He approached his employer deferentially as though about to ask ...
— Sundown Slim • Henry Hubert Knibbs |
