"Mythological" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... tragedies of Euripides and Seneca, but also in German dramas and operas of the eighteenth century which during his youth were frequently produced in Vienna. The immediate impulse to treat this story came to him when, in the summer of 1818, he chanced upon the article Medea in a mythological lexicon. His plan was soon formed and was made to embrace the whole history of the relations of Jason and Medea. For so comprehensive a matter Grillparzer, like Schiller in Wallenstein, found the limits of a single drama too narrow; ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VI. • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... and would also serve him as a means of guarding her mind from the recurrence of those monkish fancies which were especially repugnant to him; and with this thought in his mind, he went to the Via Gualfonda to find Piero di Cosimo, the artist who at that time was pre-eminent in the fantastic mythological design ...
— Romola • George Eliot
... rare or curious in the most distant countries. The luxuries of the bath almost exceed belief, and on the walls were magnificent frescoes and paintings, exhibiting an inexhaustible productiveness in landscape and mythological scenes, executed in lively colors. From the praises of Cicero, Seneca, and Pliny, and other great critics, we have a right to infer that painting was as much prized as statuary, and equaled it in artistic excellence, although ...
— The Old Roman World • John Lord
... strongly idealizing bent. Gods and goddesses were conceived in the likeness of human beings, but human beings freed from eery blemish, made august and beautiful by the artistic imagination. The subjects of architectural sculpture were mainly mythological, historical scenes being very rare in purely Greek work; and these legendary themes offered little temptation to a literal copying of every-day life. But what is most noteworthy is that even in the representation of actual human persons, ...
— A History Of Greek Art • F. B. Tarbell
... under the conditions that then prevailed, to select the books that seemed to them to contain the truth. It is impossible to believe that if the majority at these Councils had supposed that such an account as the account in Genesis of the Creation was mythological, they would thus have attested its literal truth. It never occurred to them to doubt it, because they did not understand the principle that, while a normal event can be accepted, if it is fairly well confirmed, an abnormal event ...
— The Thread of Gold • Arthur Christopher Benson
... affairs of his own Country. Many of his Works are now said to be lost: But there is still an Edda, consisting of several Odes (whence I suspect its Name is derived) written by many several hands, and at different times, which bears his Name. The Book is a Collection of Mythological Fables, relating to the ancient State and Behaviour of the Great Woden and his followers, in terms poetical and adapted to the Service of those that were employ'd in the composure of ...
— Forty Centuries of Ink • David N. Carvalho
... be scarcely necessary to treat, however briefly, of the mythological legend on which this exquisite elegy is founded; yet we venture to do so rather than that the forgetfulness of the reader should militate against his enjoyment of the poem. Proserpine, according to the Homeride (for the story is not without variations), ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... other such symbols of the truth about divine natures which this theology conceals;—this mode he rejects, and asserts that it is in every respect most foreign from erudition. But he considers those mythological discourses about the gods as more persuasive and more adapted to truth, which assert that a divine nature is the cause of all good, but of no evil, and that it is void of all mutation, comprehending in itself the fountain of truth, but never becoming the cause of any deception to others. ...
— Introduction to the Philosophy and Writings of Plato • Thomas Taylor
... close of day. The summits of the Sabine hills appeared of lapis lazuli and pale gold, while their bases and sides were bathed in vapors of violet or purple. Sometimes lovely clouds, like fairy cars, borne along by the evening wind with inimitable grace, recall the mythological tales of the descent of the deities of Olympus. Sometimes old Rome seems to have spread all over the west the purple of her consuls and her Caesars, beneath the last steps of the god of day. This rich decoration does not vanish so quickly as in our ...
— Italy, the Magic Land • Lilian Whiting
... will be monotonous. At its best, however, his writing of "natural romance" is of great beauty. "Still Waters," for one, is almost perfect, as perfect as this sort of thing may be. It is wrought of his own experiences with just enough of mythological data to give it the texture ...
— Irish Plays and Playwrights • Cornelius Weygandt
... the tea-rose, the aqua-marine tints of the Mediterranean Sea. Truly oriental they were, giving a hint of the Eastern origin of the Old One. Like some godmother in the fairy tale, like some ancient wife of mythological times, the Old One had wrought into these designs her own life. And what had been her thoughts during those long hours and ...
— Virgilia - or, Out of the Lion's Mouth • Felicia Buttz Clark
... subject, and to enquire if history will enable us to point out, in what manner they might have received or communicated the superstitions and metaphysical ideas that seem to prevail among them. The obvious coincidence between some parts of the mythological doctrines of the ancient Egyptians and Greeks, with those of China, induced the learned Monsieur de Guignes and many of the Jesuits to infer, that a colony from Egypt, at some remote period, had passed into China. This however ...
— Travels in China, Containing Descriptions, Observations, and Comparisons, Made and Collected in the Course of a Short Residence at the Imperial Palace of Yuen-Min-Yuen, and on a Subsequent Journey thr • John Barrow
... to engraving. Annibale, though he has the honor of having executed the immortal works in the Farnese Gallery, yet owed much there, as elsewhere, to the acquirements and poetical genius of Agostino. In the composition of such mythological subjects the unlettered Annibale was totally inadequate. See vol. i., ...
— Anecdotes of Painters, Engravers, Sculptors and Architects and Curiosities of Art (Vol. 3 of 3) • S. Spooner
... the performers had some initiation into modern methods of operatic acting, and would raise one arm at the word cielo, two arms at certain other words, etc.; but it would be hard to detect any living dramatic idea in those mythological heroes and heroines, Dafnes, Amors, Tirsis, Ariannas dressed up as stage shepherds and shepherdesses. The only raison d'etre of the music in the minds of the fashionable audience was—then as now—to provide a stimulus for conversation and flirting, or a pleasant diversion in ...
— Wagner's Tristan und Isolde • George Ainslie Hight
... ably-developed theory, throws the Bactrian prophet far back into antiquity 2. Foucher, (Mem. de l'Acad. xxvii. 253,) Tychsen, (in Com. Soc. Gott. ii. 112), Heeren, (ldeen. i. 459,) and recently Holty, identify the Gushtasp of the Persian mythological history with Cyaxares the First, the king of the Medes, and consider the religion to be Median in its origin. M. Guizot considers this opinion most probable, note in loc. 3. Hyde, Prideaux, Anquetil du Perron, ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 1 • Edward Gibbon
... Corinna once offered to beautify his earlier efforts with mythological allusions. The pupil, nettled by this criticism, soon brought to his instructress a new poem, of which the first six stanzas touched upon every part of Theban mythology; whereupon she cooled his enthusiasm by remarking with a ...
— Woman's Work in Music • Arthur Elson
... quoting the above: "At all seasons of the year, Diana plunges into a cold bath on rising. As soon as day breaks, she mounts a horse, and, followed by swift hounds, rides through dewy verdure to her royal lover to whom—fascinated by her mythological pomp—she seems no more a woman but a goddess. Thus he styles her ...
— Women of Modern France - Woman In All Ages And In All Countries • Hugo P. Thieme
... figured hand-wrought tapestry. The musty ancient beds remained in the chambers, and their quilts and curtains and canopies were decorated with curious handwork, and the walls and ceilings frescoed with historical and mythological scenes in glaring colors. There was enough crazy and rotten rubbish in the building to make a true brick-a-bracker green with envy. A painting in the dining-hall verged upon the indelicate —but then the Margravine was herself a ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... becomes a labyrinth of faerie towns unknown to history; and scholars can suggest but cannot explain how a Roman ruler or a Welsh chieftain towers up in the twilight as the awful and unbegotten Arthur. The scientific age comes first and the mythological age after it. One working example, the echoes of which lingered till very late in English literature, may serve to sum up the contrast. The British state which was found by Caesar was long believed to have been founded by Brutus. The ...
— A Short History of England • G. K. Chesterton
... brigand. Every Chinese also knows the great satirical novel Hsi-yu-chi ("The Westward Journey"), by Feng Meng-lung (1574-1645), in which ironical treatment is meted out to all religions and sects against a mythological background, with a freedom that would not have been possible earlier. The characters are not presented as individuals but as representatives of human types: the intellectual, the hedonist, the pious man, and the simpleton, are drawn with incomparable skill, with their merits and defects. ...
— A history of China., [3d ed. rev. and enl.] • Wolfram Eberhard
... admit the reality of the Trojan war as a general fact; but beyond this we scarcely venture to proceed a single step."[5] He finds it impossible to adopt the poetical story of its origin, partly from its inherent improbability, and partly "because we are convinced that Helen is a merely mythological person. It would be sufficient," he says, "to raise a strong suspicion of her fabulous nature to observe that she is classed by Herodotus with Io, and Europa, and Medea—all of them persons who, on distinct grounds, must clearly be referred to the domain of mythology. This suspicion ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, No. 382, October 1847 • Various
... whole passage. What an accurate picture does the creative pencil of our great poet present to the mind's eye! The epithet lofty has fallen through the sieves of all the commentators excepting Theobaldus Secundus. It obviously alludes to the high roosting perch of that valiant bird; nor is the mythological imagery in this sentence to be passed by without its merited eulogium. Lingo, by way of agreeable surprise, informs us that the cock is the bird of Pallas—Pallas is the goddess of wisdom, and ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor, Vol. I, No. 5, May 1810 • Various
... elapse before a mythological gallery for Chaldaea, in which all the important members of the Mesopotamian pantheon shall take their places and be known by the names they bore in their own day, can be formed, but even now the principles upon which they were represented ...
— A History of Art in Chaldaea & Assyria, v. 1 • Georges Perrot
... regard to Aristotle's rules, The Vade Mecum of the true sublime, Which makes so many poets, and some fools: Prose poets like blank-verse, I'm fond of rhyme, Good workmen never quarrel with their tools; I've got new mythological machinery, And very ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 6 • Lord Byron
... current hand at the tail of his letters to his wife: and to the elder boys he had begun to print, with laborious care, sheets of childish gossip and pedantic applications. Here, for instance, under date of 26th May 1816, is part of a mythological account of London, with a moral for the three gentlemen, 'Messieurs Alan, Robert, and James Stevenson,' to whom ...
— Records of a Family of Engineers • Robert Louis Stevenson
... and, except in plays acted by the children's companies, there were rarely more than two important female characters in a play. Though without scenery, the Elizabethan stage was by no means devoid of spectacle. Processions, battles, all kinds of mythological beings, ascents to heaven, descents to hell, fire-works, and elaborate properties, were employed. Numerous contemporary plays indicate that neither the fairyland of A Midsummer-Night's Dream, nor the magnificent ...
— The Facts About Shakespeare • William Allan Nielson
... light upon the philosophical and theological theories in vogue among the thoughtful spirits of the Jewish community. Their "natural philosophy" offers little that is likely to interest and nothing of a nature to instruct the well-informed reader of to-day. But the mythological concreteness and palpitating vitality of all its elements profoundly impress us, less because of the curious standard they supply by which to gauge the intellectual level of that age than as the symbols chosen by the poet to ...
— The Sceptics of the Old Testament: Job - Koheleth - Agur • Emile Joseph Dillon
... each delegation was summoned thence to sign the protocol, conventions, and declarations. These were laid out on a long table in the dining-room of the palace, which is adorned with very remarkable paintings of mythological subjects imitating bas-reliefs. ...
— Autobiography of Andrew Dickson White Volume II • Andrew Dickson White
... dearest, are too strong for transcription. I feel, pen in hand, like the mythological Titan at war with Jove, strong enough to hurl mountains, and finding nothing but pebbles. The simile is a good one. You must not judge of me ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... &c.—display, and the spirit of poetry which breathes through all their extravagance. . . . They are at least as full of genius as absurdity." Of Hyperion the Reviewer says: "An original character and distinct individuality is bestowed upon the poet's mythological persons. . . . We cannot advise its completion. For, though there are passages of some force and grandeur, it is sufficiently obvious that the subject is too far removed from all the sources of human interest to be successfully treated by any modern ...
— English literary criticism • Various
... whether this is supposed to be number two, but I can't find any other piece for it (previous 1., next 3.). Sampo Niskanen <sampo.niskanen@iki.fi> —> % 2. Mythological and other ...
— Roget's Thesaurus • Peter Mark Roget
... a released Slave of the Lamp, or a freed dryad, or something fairy-taley or mythological," she declared. "It was worth it, though, to see those girls' faces. Thank you, Giovanni! I'm ever so much obliged. Sorry if I've spoilt your bed of violets. Is that Delia calling us? Coming, dearie. Where are the rest of ...
— The Jolliest School of All • Angela Brazil
... All I could think as I returned their wondering glances was that their world must be very, very old. But I have no time or space to talk of them here. To throw more than a cursory glance at them Would lead me into interminable disquisitions of a mythological, anthropological, craniological, and antediluvian nature for which one would not find universal approval among his readers. To those who would study such questions I say, "Fall to!" There is enough scope for a lifetime to bring ...
— Across China on Foot • Edwin Dingle
... Vocabularies are given of Proper Names, Historical, Mythological, and Geographical. Tables of French Coins, Weights, ...
— The Boat Club - or, The Bunkers of Rippleton • Oliver Optic
... We can scarcely doubt but that, in some way or other, there was a communication of beliefs—a passage in very early times, from the shores of the Persian Gulf to the lands washed by the Mediterranean, of mythological notions and ideas. It is a probable conjecture that among the primitive tribes who dwelt on the Tigris and Euphrates, when the cuneiform alphabet was invented and when such writing was first applied ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 1. (of 7): Chaldaea • George Rawlinson
... the Rationalist, the world is wiser now than it was in Solomon's days. He lived in the old mythological period, when men attributed everything extraordinary to the gods. But the world is too wise now to believe in any supernatural revelation. "The Hebrew and Christian religions like all others have their myths." "The fact is, the pure historic ...
— Fables of Infidelity and Facts of Faith - Being an Examination of the Evidences of Infidelity • Robert Patterson
... of the rising generation. In all communities beyond the stage of barbarism a class of persons was set apart for this duty and no other. Thus, for example, in ancient Peru, one college of priests styled amauta, learned, had exclusive charge over the quipus containing the mythological and historical traditions; a second, the haravecs, singers, devoted themselves to those referring to the national ballads and dramas; while a third occupied their time solely with those pertaining to civil affairs. Such custodians preserved and prepared the archives, learned by heart with ...
— The Myths of the New World - A Treatise on the Symbolism and Mythology of the Red Race of America • Daniel G. Brinton
... On the mythological theories of the eighteenth century, comp. Gruppe, 36 foll.; on Bryant, 40; on Dupuis, 41.—Polemic against Euhemerism from the standpoint of nature-symbolism: de la Barre, Memoires pour servir a l'histoire de la religion en Grece, ...
— Atheism in Pagan Antiquity • A. B. Drachmann
... love with a certain country girl, whose name is Cowslip, to whom he makes a declaration of his passion in a strange mythological, grammatical style and manner, and to whom, among other fooleries, he sings, quite enraptured, the following air, and seems to work himself at least up to such a transport of passion as quite overpowers him. He ...
— Travels in England in 1782 • Charles P. Moritz
... after which date the marriage took place. On the morning sacred to lovers the poet (in a dream, of course, and this time conducted by the arch-dreamer Scipio in person) enters a garden containing in it the temple of the god of Love, and filled with inhabitants mythological and allegorical. Here he sees the noble goddess Nature, seated upon a hill of flowers, and around her "all the fowls that be," assembled as by time honoured custom on St. Valentine's Day, "when every fowl comes there to choose her mate." Their huge noise and hubbub is reduced to order by Nature, ...
— Chaucer • Adolphus William Ward
... main misinterpretations is based upon the reflexive form of the German verb "sich einfuehlen" (to feel oneself into) and it defines, or rather does not define, Empathy as a metaphysical and quasi-mythological projection of the ego into the object or shape under observation; a notion incompatible with the fact that Empathy, being only another of those various mergings of the activities of the perceiving subject with the qualities of the perceived object wherewith we ...
— The Beautiful - An Introduction to Psychological Aesthetics • Vernon Lee
... an historical fact as marvellous and incredible as the exploits of some mythological demi-god, found General D'Hubert still quite unable to sit a horse. Neither could he walk very well. These disabilities, which Madame Leonie accounted most lucky, helped to keep her brother out of all ...
— A Set of Six • Joseph Conrad
... Through it the most just and clear idea of Grecian culture is revealed to the many. The solemn mystery of Egyptian and the grand scale of Assyrian civilization are best attested by the same trophies. How a Sphinx typifies the land of the Pyramids and all its associations, mythological, scientific, natural, and sacred,—its reverence for the dead, and its dim and portentous traditions! and what a reflex of Nineveh's palmy days are the winged lions exhumed by Layard! What more authentic tokens of Mediaeval piety and patience ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. II, No. 8, June 1858 • Various
... dramatic art which developed obscurely under the shadow of Attic Tragedy in the first half of the fifth century B.C., out of the rustic revelry of the Phallic procession and Comus song of Dionysus, perhaps with some outside suggestions from the Megarian farce and its Sicilian offshoot, the mythological court comedy of Epicharmus. The chief note of this older comedy for the ancient critics was its unbridled license of direct personal satire and invective. Eupolis, Cratinus, and Aristophanes, says Horace, assailed with the utmost freedom any one who deserved to be branded ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 2 • Charles Dudley Warner
... not be much perfect peace about a wirreenun's communing with the spirits if it happened to be in mosquito time. The blacks say a little grey-speckled bird rules the mosquitoes, and calls them from their swamp-homes to attack us. In the mythological days this bird—a woman—was badly treated by a man who translated her sons to the sky; having revenged herself on him, she vowed vengeance on all men, and in the form of the mosquito bird wreaks that vengeance. ...
— The Euahlayi Tribe - A Study of Aboriginal Life in Australia • K. Langloh Parker
... not seen the spot very lately, but, according to the best of my recollection, it has not now any feature in keeping with the mythological character of the fiend of the moor and fen. The neighbouring district of down and common land would not be an inappropriate habitat for such a personage. It has few trees of any pretension to age, and is still covered in great part with a dark and scanty vegetation, which is sufficiently dreary ...
— Notes and Queries, No. 181, April 16, 1853 • Various
... "except those who are still too young to pay a farthing for a bath." [16] Nothing can exceed the cool impertinence with which the poet Martial prefers the favour of Domitian to that of the great Jupiter of the Capitol. Seneca, in his lost book "Against Superstitions,"[17] openly sneered at the old mythological legends of gods married and gods unmarried, and at the gods Panic and Paleness, and at Cloacina, the goddess of sewers, and at other deities whose cruelty and license would have been infamous even in mankind. And yet the priests, and Salii, and Flamens, and Augurs continued ...
— Seekers after God • Frederic William Farrar
... through flat and uninteresting country. As there was nothing special to look at, I could just sit still and enjoy the strange exhilaration of that wild drive—the steady pulsation of the magnificent car, which like some mythological monster ate up the long straight road, indifferent to the shrieking opposing wind and lashing rain. On, on, till gradually the furies grew weary, the gray gave place to gold, and the earth wore the "washed" look of a beautiful ...
— An Account of Our Arresting Experiences • Conway Evans
... &c v., imaginative; original, inventive, creative, fertile. romantic, high flown, flighty, extravagant, fanatic, enthusiastic, unrealistic, Utopian, Quixotic. ideal, unreal; in the clouds, in nubibus [Lat.]; unsubsantial^ &c 4; illusory &c (fallacious) 495. fabulous, legendary; mythical, mythic, mythological; chimerical; imaginary, visionary; notional; fancy, fanciful, fantastic, fantastical^; whimsical; fairy, fairy-like; gestic^. Phr. a change came o'er the spirit of my dream [Byron]; aegri somnia vana ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... conventionalizing natural objects, the use of conventional signs as hieroglyphics, a peculiar facility in carving wood and stone, a similarity of angular designs on their pottery and basketry, and of artistic representations connected with their common religious or mythological ideas. Many singular forms of carvings and the method of superimposing figures of animals one upon another in their totem poles are found from Alaska to Panama, except in California. These distinguishing features of an incipient culture are found ...
— Influences of Geographic Environment - On the Basis of Ratzel's System of Anthropo-Geography • Ellen Churchill Semple
... Mythological evidence is also assuming more distinctive grounds. An imitative mound of a gigantic serpent swallowing an egg, has been discovered in one of the forest counties of Ohio, while I have been engaged in penning ...
— Incentives to the Study of the Ancient Period of American History • Henry R. Schoolcraft
... dealt exclusively with mythological subjects, and nothing of the Italian element comprised in modern pantomime had been apparent in our stage performances. It is probable that even upon their first introduction to our theatre the real significance of ...
— A Book of the Play - Studies and Illustrations of Histrionic Story, Life, and Character • Dutton Cook
... the ship he had meant to sail by, and so escaped the fate of the crew and passengers when it went down with all on board—no "special providence" saving them. It looks like a reflection of the pagan mythological tales about heroes rescued by the timely interference of gods and goddesses in battles where thousands of common mortals perish unheeded. It is the aristocratic idea of privilege carried up to religion. The newer view is more democratic, and ...
— Problems of Immanence - Studies Critical and Constructive • J. Warschauer
... air was "Rose-bud, laurel," which had also a pretty refrain; it is full of such expressions as "altars of freedom," "angels of freedom," "wreaths of freedom," and other such mythological things. How the strings responded to the young woman's touch, what expression was in her refrain! It was as if she felt the meaning of those beautiful "flosculi" best of all, and must suffer more than ...
— Debts of Honor • Maurus Jokai
... as, for instance, Albrecht Durer, in his engraving of the prodigal son. But it is one thing if a painter, brought up in a school of realism, introduces such scenes, and quite another thing if a poet, accustomed to an ideal or mythological framework, is driven by inward impulse into realism. Besides which, priority in point of time is here, as in the descriptions of country life, on the side ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... piece of royal pilotage, being on the whole the most characteristic example I remember of the Mythological marine above alluded to, is accordingly recommended to ...
— The Harbours of England • John Ruskin
... Birth of Venus from the Sea, and the lovely allegory of Spring with Venus, Cupid, and the Three Graces. He was one of the early artists to break through the old wall of religious convention, painting frankly mythological subjects, and he did them in an exquisite ...
— The Book of Art for Young People • Agnes Conway
... our ancestors forms an important chapter in the history of the childhood of our race, and this fact has induced us to offer the public an English translation of the Eddas. The purely mythological portion of the Elder Edda was translated and published by A. S. Cottle, in Bristol, in 1797, and the whole work was translated by Benjamin Thorpe, and published in London in 1866. Both these works are now out of print. Of the Younger Edda we have likewise had two translations ...
— The Younger Edda - Also called Snorre's Edda, or The Prose Edda • Snorre
... each nodding from a leaf axil, and the whole forming one-sided racemes. But as the shrub ranges from Newfoundland to Georgia, and westward to Illinois, British Columbia, and Alaska, some people find it blooming even in July. Mythological names were evidently in high favor among the botanists who labeled the genuses comprising the heath family: Phyllodoce, the sea-nymph; Cassiope, mother of Andromeda; Leucothoe; Andromeda herself; Pieris, ...
— Wild Flowers, An Aid to Knowledge of Our Wild Flowers and - Their Insect Visitors - - Title: Nature's Garden • Neltje Blanchan
... his Highness, a great lover of music and dancing, expended prodigious sums. It may be because I was then young, but I think I never saw such an assemblage of brilliant beauty as used to figure there on the stage of the Court theatre, in the grand mythological ballets which were then the mode, and in which you saw Mars in red-heeled pumps and a periwig, and Venus in patches and a hoop. They say the costume was incorrect, and have changed it since; but for my part, I have never ...
— Barry Lyndon • William Makepeace Thackeray
... perfection. It is about eighteen feet square, has been lined and paved with white marble, some of which still remains. The lofty ceiling is covered with bas-reliefs in stucco, of charming grace and spirit, representing various mythological subjects, in square compartments united by light and elegant arabesques. They are really of wonderful merit, and so perfectly preserved, so fresh, that they seem as if done last year. A massive ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Number 9, July, 1858 • Various
... ja historialliselta kannalta katsottuna. Suomi, ser. 2, vol. 5 (1866). Discusses the mythological and historical character of the Kalevipoeg, and its relations to the Kalevala, especially as regards the ...
— The Hero of Esthonia and Other Studies in the Romantic Literature of That Country • William Forsell Kirby
... critics have pushed their work far into the field of both prophecy and exposition. They have relegated to the domain of mythology the clear and unequivocal historical statements of Scripture. Where the intrusion of their mythological theory was too large a demand to make on our credulity, they have attempted a radical exegesis ...
— The Testimony of the Bible Concerning the Assumptions of Destructive Criticism • S. E. Wishard
... a mythological being am I housing? Did she come at all out of Hamdi Effendi's harem? Is she not rather some strange sea-creature that clambered on board the vessel and bewitched the miserable boy, sucked the soul out of him, and drove him to destruction? Or is she a Vampire? ...
— The Morals of Marcus Ordeyne • William J. Locke
... assigned to the planets depended on entirely fanciful considerations. In some cases we seem almost to see the line along which the fancies of the old astrologers led them, just as in some cases we can perceive how mythological superstitions (which are closely related to astrological ideas) had their origin; though it is not quite clear whether the planets were first regarded as deities with special qualities, and these qualities afterwards assigned to the planetary influences, ...
— Myths and Marvels of Astronomy • Richard A. Proctor
... to appear before any soul could be [p.198] converted to the things of Eternal Life. Here Eucken shows that metaphysical concepts such as the Trinity have tended to become purely anthropomorphic and mythological, probably necessary at a certain level of religion, but which have now been superseded by truer conceptions of life and existence. There is no longer any meaning in asking whether the Founder was a "mere man" or a God. He was an intermediate reality between the two. To measure the ...
— An Interpretation of Rudolf Eucken's Philosophy • W. Tudor Jones
... Eastern Europe, the new converts seem to have retained their fondness for the heathen practice used in religious, as in secular, celebrations of theatrical representations, which were chiefly upon mythological subjects, and all of which angered and distressed the priests of the new religion. However, the latter soon found out that it was necessary to reach the minds of these people through their more acutely trained senses and the ...
— The Girl's Own Paper, Vol. VIII, No. 357, October 30, 1886 • Various
... Beaux Arts. All the same, its ideals are of very mixed origin and very little French. Its principles are the same by which the academic art of nearly all the official schools of Europe is governed. This mythological and allegorical art, guided by dogmas and formulas which are imposed upon all pupils regardless of their temperament, is far more international than national. To an impartial critic this statement will show in ...
— The French Impressionists (1860-1900) • Camille Mauclair
... amongst Romans of high rank, both men and women. And for that there was high reason. In the advance of civilization, and in the corresponding decay of idolatrous religions, there was fast arising a new growth of cravings amongst men. Mythological and desperately immoral religions, that spoke only to the blind sense of power, had been giving way through the three previous centuries to a fearful extent. They had receded from the higher natures of both Greece and Rome as the ...
— The Posthumous Works of Thomas De Quincey, Vol. 1 (2 vols) • Thomas De Quincey
... "I think one of the most interesting studies in the world is about these same old saints whom you dislike so much, Malcom. They were heroes; and I think some of them were a great deal grander than those mythological characters you so dote upon. If your uncle will only be so good as to talk to us of the pictures! Let us go at once and thank him. Now, Malcom, you will be enthusiastic about it, will you not? There will be so much time for ...
— Barbara's Heritage - Young Americans Among the Old Italian Masters • Deristhe L. Hoyt
... into the red coals of a fire, or when watching the clouds, our imagination conjures up strange and grotesque forms, so did the men of old see in the grouping of the stars the outlines of weird and curious shapes. Fed with mythological lore, they imagined these to be rough representations of ancient heroes and fabled beasts, whom they supposed to have been elevated to the heavens as a reward for great deeds done upon the earth. We know these groupings of stars ...
— Astronomy of To-day - A Popular Introduction in Non-Technical Language • Cecil G. Dolmage
... known as constellations, the smaller groups (parts of constellations) known as asterisms, and also individual stars, have received names connoting some meteorological phenomena, or symbolizing religious or mythological beliefs. At one time it was held that the constellation names and myths were of Greek origin; this view has now been disproved, and an examination of the Hellenic myths associated with the stars and star-groups ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 7, Slice 2 - "Constantine Pavlovich" to "Convention" • Various
... for the Empire, he had never caught a glimpse of the young lord of Leesville—something which may easily be believed, for the young lord considered Leesville "a hole of a town", and honoured it with his presence only once or twice a year. But his spirit brooded over it; he was to Leesville a mythological figure, either of wonder and awe, or of horror, according to the temperament of the contemplator. One day "Wild Bill" had arisen in the local, and held aloft a page from the "magazine supplement" of one of the metropolitan "yellows". There was an account of how Lacey Granitch had broken ...
— Jimmie Higgins • Upton Sinclair
... odes are largely founded on the best Greek lyric poetry, with which Horace was thoroughly familiar; cf. his first intention to write in Greek (Sat. i. 10, 31-5). Alexandrian influence is little seen, and his mythological allusions are seldom obscure. Examples of imitation (which is commonest in Book i.) are: Od. i. 9, the beginning of which is from Alcaeus (so i. 10; 11; 18); i. 12 (beginning) is from Pindar; i. 27 from Anacreon. Bacchylides is ...
— The Student's Companion to Latin Authors • George Middleton
... of our ancient families went down in the War of Independence, and few of our present aristocracy trace back beyond the revolution of families and property which took place under Bruce. The Earls of Angus, Fife, and Strathearn are little more than mythological personages to the modern genealogist.... It is the common case all ...
— Scottish Cathedrals and Abbeys • Dugald Butler and Herbert Story
... the downfall of the mythological hypothesis an interpretation of the dream has been wanting. The conditions of its origin; its relationship to our psychical life when we are awake; its independence of disturbances which, during the state of sleep, seem to compel notice; its ...
— Dream Psychology - Psychoanalysis for Beginners • Sigmund Freud
... wrote to her. I can even now recall passages out of that passionate epistle. I well remember how it took me a whole morning to write it; how I crammed it with quotations from Horace; and how I fondly compared her to most of the mythological divinities. I then copied it out on pale pink paper, folded it in the form of a heart, and directed it to Miss Angelina Lascelles, and left it, about dusk, with the money-taker at the pit door. I signed myself, if I remember rightly, Pyramus. ...
— In the Days of My Youth • Amelia Ann Blandford Edwards
... design, seeing the King had no love for Bacchus, but he left the Thundering Jove, and all the other mythological flatteries, in regard to which no opinion ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... alike) into a common and highly intellectual and spiritual faith, opposed to which will be the less advanced people under the leadership of the Roman Catholic church, representing the temporal power of Christian priestcraft and the mythological superstitions which have attached themselves to the precepts and teachings of the Christ man of ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, December 1887 - Volume 1, Number 11 • Various
... described as beautiful. The carver had thought proper to ornament the box with some of the ugliest figures I remember to have seen. They appeared to me to be devils. Or perhaps they were intended to represent deities appertaining to some mythological system with which, thank goodness, I am unacquainted. The pipe itself was worthy of the case in which it was contained. It was of meerschaum, with an amber mouthpiece. It was rather too large for ordinary smoking. But then, of course, one doesn't smoke a pipe like that. There are pipes in my ...
— The Lock And Key Library - Classic Mystery And Detective Stories, Modern English • Various
... both the winds and the sea are personified, and mentioned by their mythological names, as in Juvenal; but when they are mentioned in plain language, the application of the epithets suggested by me, is the most obvious; and accordingly my friend himself, in his imitation of the ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 2 • Boswell
... because it reminded me of love; and I knew that I never could love this half-baked little barbarian. I was very much interested in her account of the Wieroo, which up to this time I had considered a purely mythological creature; but Ajor shuddered so at even the veriest mention of the name that I was loath to press the subject upon her, and so the Wieroo still remained ...
— The People that Time Forgot • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... the same word-mixture as that described in the preceding; and dilute it with a double quantity of mild modern Anglo-Saxon. Pour this composition into two vessels of equal size, and into one of these empty a small mythological story. If this does not put your readers to sleep soon enough, add to it the rest of the language, ...
— Every Man His Own Poet - Or, The Inspired Singer's Recipe Book • Newdigate Prizeman
... as the Puranas are derived from the same religious system as the two epics. They repeat the cosmogony of the poems, and they relate more fully their mythological legends. Siva and Vischnu are almost the sole objects of worship in the Puranas. There is a sectarian element in their devotion to these deities which shows their partiality, and prevents them from being authorities for Hindoo belief ...
— Ten Great Religions - An Essay in Comparative Theology • James Freeman Clarke
... Perseus one day laid down upon the sea-shore the famous head of Medusa, the sight of which had the property of turning everything to stone, and that the nymphs, in sport, showed it to the coral shrubs; a fact which explained everything quite naturally. Without exactly holding this mythological explanation, modern philosophers had not got much farther, and coral was still a puzzle to them, which they were not fond of troubling themselves about; till, roused by Trembley's revelations, they examined it more carefully, and discovered in its soft ...
— The History of a Mouthful of Bread - And its effect on the organization of men and animals • Jean Mace
... founded upon a lie, is incapable of any real adaptation to the age, and reconciliation with modern progress. The king in the play is a young, talented, liberal-minded man, who is fully conscious of the anomaly of his position, and determined to save his throne by stripping it of all mediaeval and mythological garniture. He dreams of being a "folk-king," the first citizen of a free people, a kind of hereditary president, with no sham divinity to fall back upon, and no "grace of God" to shield him from criticism and sanctify his blunders. He resents the role ...
— Essays on Scandinavian Literature • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen
... mutilated, are interesting from their subject-matter. The first is addressed to the sun-god Tammuz, the husband of Istar, slain by the boar's tusk of winter, and sought by the goddess in the underground world. It is this visit which is described in the mythological poem known as the "Descent of Istar into Hades" ("Records of the Past," Vol. I, p. 143). The myth of Tammuz and Istar passed, through the Phoenicians, to the Greeks, among whom Adonis and Aphrodite represent the personages of the ancient Accadian legend. ...
— Babylonian and Assyrian Literature • Anonymous
... I've not gone into it. Homeyer would have me think that all religions are but mythological creations invented to satisfy a species of sentimentality—a morbid craving in man for ...
— At Fault • Kate Chopin
... in which I felt no interest. In common, we possessed the box of wooden bricks, and the big portfolio containing tracings by my mother, exquisitely done, of Flaxman's "Outlines of the Iliad and Odyssey" and other classic subjects. We knew by heart the story of all these mythological personages, and they formed a large part of our life. They also served the important use of suggesting to my father his Wonder-Book and Tanglewood Tales stories, and, together with the figures of Gothic fairy-lore, they were the only playmates, with the exception of our father and mother, ...
— Hawthorne and His Circle • Julian Hawthorne
... singularly principal one in art; and I wish I could read to you a passage of Plato about the legend of Boreas and Oreithyia,* and the breeze and shade of the Ilissus—notwithstannding its severe reflection upon persons who waste their time on mythological studies; but I must go on at once to the fable with which you are all generally familiar, that of ...
— The Queen of the Air • John Ruskin
... The serpent's form is also that given to different secondary personifications of the evil principle, different mythological beings created by Angromainyus to ravage the earth, and war with the good, and with the true faith—such as Azhi-Dahaka (the serpent that bites), conquered by Thraetaina, and the dragon Cruvara, slain ...
— The Contemporary Review, Volume 36, September 1879 • Various
... recount here the well-known mythological traditions of the ancient Greeks and Romans referring to the origin of their favorite musical instruments. Suffice it to remind the reader that Mercury and Apollo were believed to be the inventors of the lyre and cithara (guitar); ...
— Brave Men and Women - Their Struggles, Failures, And Triumphs • O.E. Fuller
... present day speculators never seem to think for a moment that these things may conceal, and thereby preserve, some real meaning, or be more than nonsense. The theory of mythological interpretation pushed to such extremes as in the "animistic" explanations of Weber, Keightley, and others, and not absent from the writings of some Americanists (namely, that it was all nothing but ridiculous or concocted ...
— Commentary Upon the Maya-Tzental Perez Codex - with a Concluding Note Upon the Linguistic Problem of the Maya Glyphs • William E. Gates
... altitude, measured by a purely intellectual standard; but morally, this scaffolding was on the same low level of human life and character all the world around. The immortalities erected by Egyptian or Grecian philosophy were no purer, in moral conception and attributes, than the mythological fantasies of the North American Indians. In them all, human nature was to have the old play of its passions and appetites; in some of them, a wider sweep and sway. There was not one in the whole set of Grecian deities half ...
— A Walk from London to John O'Groat's • Elihu Burritt
... splendor created her mythological personality, just as the agility of Mercury created that of the ...
— Astronomy for Amateurs • Camille Flammarion
... vision some such words as "phenomenon," "development," "abstract," "contents," and "synopsis." "This is not the sort of thing for me," he murmured, and turned his attention to a third bookcase, which contained books on the Arts. Extracting a huge tome in which some by no means reticent mythological illustrations were contained, he set himself to examine these pictures. They were of the kind which pleases mostly middle-aged bachelors and old men who are accustomed to seek in the ballet and similar frivolities ...
— Dead Souls • Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol
... contention of the enlightened men and the liberal parties is, that the ministers shall be responsible to the Diet. The time seems at hand when the sovereign's power over his people will not rest on traditions more or less uncertain, on history manufactured by governmental order, on mythological claims based upon the so-called "eternal ages," on prerogatives upheld by the sword, or on the supposed grace of the gods, but will be "broad-based upon the people's will." The power of the rulers will be derived from the consent of the governed. The Emperor will become ...
— The Religions of Japan - From the Dawn of History to the Era of Meiji • William Elliot Griffis
... be merely recorded in verse, the historian will deal with them far better; by means of circumlocutions and the intervention of the immortals, the free spirit, wracked by the search for epigrams having a mythological illusion, should plunge headlong and appear as the prophecy of a mind inspired rather than the attested faith of scrupulous exactitude in speech. This hasty composition may please you, even though it has not yet received its ...
— The Satyricon, Complete • Petronius Arbiter
... secure from her for the hunters quantities of fish. It is interesting to note the similarity of the legend of Nerrvik to that of Jonah. But just as the Eskimos have changed the masculine sun of southern mythologies to the feminine, so the victim of the mythological sea storm in ...
— The Eternal Maiden • T. Everett Harre
... invitation—only intermittently raised Paragot's spirits. It did not affect mine at all. I felt that a glory had faded from Menilmontant. Still, I had the portrait to finish, and the preliminary sketches to make of a deuce of a mythological picture for which Cazalet and Fanchette (who for want of better company had become addicted during August to my colleague) were to serve as models. I had my head and hands full of occupation, whereas the reorganized Paragot had none. He talked in ...
— The Beloved Vagabond • William J. Locke
... which the impressions already considered lead us to describe as the ultimate power in the tragic world? It appears to be a mythological expression for the whole system or order, of which the individual characters form an inconsiderable and feeble part; which seems to determine, far more than they, their native dispositions and their circumstances, and, through these, their action; which is so vast and complex that they can scarcely ...
— Shakespearean Tragedy - Lectures on Hamlet, Othello, King Lear, Macbeth • A. C. Bradley
... considerable fault, one that is quite widespread and one that embraces many sub-divisions. Under this category falls especially the use of mythological propositions, the common vehicle of poets when they have nothing to say. We have rejected many epigrams that are faulty in this kind, as, for example, Grotius on the Emperor Rudolph, which ...
— An Essay on True and Apparent Beauty in which from Settled Principles is Rendered the Grounds for Choosing and Rejecting Epigrams • Pierre Nicole
... viridis, Linn.)—Spearmint, a member of the Labiatae, is a very hardy perennial, native to Mediterranean countries. Its generic name is derived from the mythological origin ascribed to it. Poets declared that Proserpine became jealous of Cocytus's daughter, Minthe, whom she transformed into the plant. The specific name means green, hence the common name, green mint, often applied to it. The old ...
— Culinary Herbs: Their Cultivation Harvesting Curing and Uses • M. G. Kains
... investigation, and one is astonished at the scanty gleaning of battle-poetry, camp-songs, and rhymes that have been scattered in the wake of great campaigns, and many of the above-mentioned are more historical or mythological than descriptive of war. The quantity of political songs and ballads, serious and satirical, which were suggested by the great critical moments of modern history, is immense. Every country has, or might have, its own peculiar collections. In France the troubles of the League ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 57, July, 1862 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... passion he acquired while there for the illegitimate daughter of the King, Maria,—the Fiammetta of his later life,—furnished the fuel for its burning; his first work, the 'Filocopo,' being written as an offering to her. It is a prose love story, mixed with mythological allusions,—after the fashion of the day, which thought more of the classics than of nature; and like all his ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 5 • Various
... persevering hic et ubique powers. Like the old mole, these Truepennies "work i' th' dark:" at the Theatres, the Opera, the Coal Hole, the Cider Cellars, and the whole of the Grecian, Roman, British, Cambrian, Eagle, Lion, Apollo, Domestic, Foreign, Zoological, and Mythological Saloons, they "most do congregate." Once set your eyes upon them, once become acquainted with their habits and manners, and then mistake them if you can. They are themselves, alone: like the London dustmen, the Nemarket jockeys, ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 1, July 17, 1841 • Various
... region of Al Hijaz, the Moslems Holy Land; and its "Arabah," a very small tract which named a very large tract, must not be confounded, as some have done, with the Wady Arabah, the ancient outlet of the Dead Sea. The derivation of "Arab" from "Ya'arab" a fancied son of Joktan is mythological. In Heb. Arabia may be called "Eretz Ereb" (or "Arab")land of the West; but in Arabic "Gharb" (not Ereb) is the Occident and the Arab dates long ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 2 • Richard F. Burton
... case of the English drama. At first in the hands of the monks Dramatic Art was abstract, decorative and mythological. Then she enlisted Life in her service, and using some of life's external forms, she created an entirely new race of beings, whose sorrows were more terrible than any sorrow man has ever felt, whose joys were keener than lover's joys, who had the rage of the Titans and the calm of the gods, ...
— Intentions • Oscar Wilde
... opinion, and his own Christian sentiments, at the expense of attributing to actual consciousness a substantial independence and a directive physical force which were incongruous with it: a force and independence perfectly congruous with the Platonic soul, which had been a mythological being, a supernatural spirit or daemon or incubus, incarnate in the natural world, and partly dominating it. The relations of such a soul to the particular body or bodies which it might weave for itself on earth, to the actions which it performed through such bodies, and to the current ...
— Some Turns of Thought in Modern Philosophy - Five Essays • George Santayana
... that it was 'just an assemblage of deities', and at one time I inclined to this view—that we had here merely (let us say) a tea-party at Apollo's; Dr. Drexel, too, wrote to me lately to express the same idea. But I must confess that nearly all the best archaeologists demand a definite mythological identification, and my colleague, Prof. Gardner, suggests a new view—that the scene is the so-called Judgement of Paris. This mythological incident was often depicted in ancient art, and—strange as it may sound—in the later ...
— Roman Britain in 1914 • F. Haverfield
... sung, too, in mythological language, for his flatterers tried to exhaust all sorts of adulation. On Coronation Day the Prefect of Police had distributed a poem entitled The Crown of Napoleon brought ...
— The Court of the Empress Josephine • Imbert de Saint-Amand
... much the better, I am fond of mystery. There is almost always something to be gained when people begin by saying 'hush.' In any case you cannot do better than address yourself to your servant," continued the captain, resuming his mythological language. "You see in me the grandson of Hippocrates, the god of silence. So do ...
— The Conspirators - The Chevalier d'Harmental • Alexandre Dumas (Pere)
... added Rh (Sansk. Rhu, a deity to whom eclipses are ascribed) and Ked (Sansk. Ketu, the mythological name of the descending node, represented as a headless demon), monsters who are supposed by the Malays to cause eclipses by swallowing the moon. To denote the points of the compass the Malays have native, Sanskrit, and Arabic terms. Utra (uttara),[21] the north, and da[k.]sina (dakshi[n.]a), ...
— A Manual of the Malay language - With an Introductory Sketch of the Sanskrit Element in Malay • William Edward Maxwell
... Goethe has embodied,—a picture of the loftiest grief of which the soul is capable, and which may remind us of the profound and august melancholy which the Great Sculptor breathed into the repose of the noblest of mythological heroes, when he represented the God resting after his labours, as if more convinced of their vanity than elated with ...
— Eugene Aram, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... the legend are thus at least one thousand years old. "There stands the stone to tell if I lie." According to Prof. Rhys (Hibbert Lect. 486-97) the whole story is a mythological one, Kulhwych's mother being the dawn, the clover blossoms that grow under Olwen's feet being comparable to the roses that sprung up where Aphrodite had trod, and Yspyddadon being the incarnation of the sacred hawthorn. ...
— Celtic Fairy Tales • Joseph Jacobs (coll. & ed.)
... were taken as literal; as if one should interpret the saying, "the sun follows the dawn," as meaning that one person pursues another. By this kind of misunderstanding, it has been thought, a throng of mythological tales arose. By some it is held that the names of animals, which had been given to ancestors, were interpreted literally by their savage descendants, or that traditions of having come from a certain mountain or river caused these natural objects to be mistakenly ...
— Outline of Universal History • George Park Fisher
... irreverent. But are we less convinced that only tasks done joyfully, as labours of love, deserve the reward of fuller and finer powers, and obtain it? When Duerer thought of God, he did not only think of a mythological personage resembling an old king; he thought of a mind, an intention, "for God is perfect in goodness." Words so easily come to obscure what they were meant to reveal; and if we think how the notion of perfect goodness rules and sways such a man's mind, we shall ...
— Albert Durer • T. Sturge Moore
... Piratori; Ishanashte of Shumunkot; Kannariki of Poropet (Jap. Horobetsu); and Kuteashguru of Sapporo. Tomtare of Y[u]rap does not appear for the reason mentioned above, which spoilt all his usefulness. The only mythological names which appear are Okikurumi, whom the Ainos regard as having been their civilizer in very ancient times, his sister-wife Turesh, or Tureshi[hi] and his henchman Samayunguru. The "divine symbols," of which such constant mention is made in the tales, are the inao or whittled ...
— Aino Folk-Tales • Basil Hall Chamberlain
... Jove, the mythological ruler of the universe, conceived the creation of the human race, he sent Pandora to the realms of Pluto to bring him the box containing all the good and evil impulses he intended to select from in his creative work. He gave her strict orders not to open the ...
— Pocket Island - A Story of Country Life in New England • Charles Clark Munn
... to moral evil,[52] became corrupted, under the influence of Parsism, by the conception of two kingdoms, of God and of the Devil. The angels, originally the messengers of Providence, became under mythological names, Gabriel, Raphael, Michael, &c., so many middle beings who filled the space between the Deity, existing apart from the world, and the world. The lower world (sheol, [Greek: aides]), formerly the general ...
— A Comparative View of Religions • Johannes Henricus Scholten
... ornament as New England earth would offer him. There were a few rose-bushes, however, and a number of apple-trees, probably the descendants of those planted by the Reverend Mr. Blackstone, the first settler of the peninsula; that half mythological personage who rides through our early annals, seated on the ...
— The Scarlet Letter • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... LV (1958), 31-38, answered by Walter Allen, Jr., pp. 515-518. My chief concern in this article was to show that the kind of poetry described therein, though in years past loosely and variously referred to by such terms as "Ovidian poetry" or "mythological love poetry," and often lumped together indiscriminately with other kinds such as the complaint, the tragical history, and the verse romance, actually constitutes a distinct genre recognized in practice ...
— Seven Minor Epics of the English Renaissance (1596-1624) • Dunstan Gale
... equipment he presented a striking contrast to the brainlessness of the average musician. His tastes were singularly varied and catholic. An omnivorous reader of poetry, an inquisitive delver in the byways of mediaeval literature, an authority in mythological detail, he was at the same time keenly interested in contemporary affairs. He read, and discussed with eagerness and acumen, scientific, economic, and historical deliverances; and he enjoyed books of travel, biographies, dramatic literature. Mark Twain he adored, and delighted ...
— Edward MacDowell • Lawrence Gilman
... others with Him.... the Only Being .... The belief in the Unity of the Supreme God and in His attributes as Creator and Lawgiver of man, whom He has endowed with an immortal soul, .... these are the primitive notions, enchased in the midst of mythological superfetations accumulated in the centuries." Franz Lenormant reached the same conclusion. Elsewhere, Renouf says: "It is incontestably true, that the sublimer portions of the Egyptian religions are not the comparatively ...
— Evolution - An Investigation and a Critique • Theodore Graebner
... and if one of the local papers which recorded the event at the time tells the truth, he had it donned in the vestry, after which there was a procession round the church, Mr. Briggs leading the way, whilst the deacons, including some mythological "Mr. Clinkscales"—that was the name given—and others brought up the rear. If the town's beadle and mace-bearer had been present, the procession would have been complete. In October, 1866, Mr. Briggs retired, with the gown, and he has since, like ...
— Our Churches and Chapels • Atticus
... be, among six or seven hundred of the most beautiful women in the world, to make his choice. The only fault I find in this collection is that there were rather too many Scripture pieces, Crucifixions, Martyrdoms and allegorical pictures, and too few from historical or mythological subjects. Yet perhaps I am wrong in classing the Scripture pieces with Martyrdoms, Crucifixions, Grillings of Saints and Madonnas; there are very many beautiful episodes in the Scriptures which would furnish admirable subjects for painters. ...
— After Waterloo: Reminiscences of European Travel 1815-1819 • Major W. E Frye
... publisher, I might have brought a large amount of accumulated matter, sometimes of a critical character, to bear upon the text. But Pope's version was no field for such a display; and my purpose was to touch briefly on antiquarian or mythological allusions, to notice occasionally some departures from the original, and to give a few parallel passages from our English Homer, Milton. In the latter task I cannot pretend to novelty, but I trust that my other annotations, while ...
— The Iliad of Homer • Homer
... journey, in short, is almost completely without place-influence. There is in the volume much more exuberance of fancy, grotesque at times, amore conscious exercise of the picturing imagination than we find in Sterne. There is use, too, of mythological figures quite foreign to Sterne, an obvious reminiscence of Jacobi's Anacreontic experience. He exaggerates Yorick's sentimentalism, is more weepy, more tender, more sympathizing; yet, as Longo does not sufficiently emphasize, he does not touch the whimsical side of Yorick's work. Jacobi, ...
— Laurence Sterne in Germany • Harvey Waterman Thayer
... was a real advantage. The other was, that people in general attached more value to verse than it deserved, and the power of writing it, was, on this account, worth acquiring. He generally left me to choose my own subjects, which, as far as I remember, were mostly addresses to some mythological personage or allegorical abstraction; but he made me translate into English verse many of Horace's shorter poems: I also remember his giving me Thomson's Winter to read, and afterwards making me attempt (without book) to write something myself on the same subject. ...
— Autobiography • John Stuart Mill
... exist both in the Highlands and Lowlands of Scotland. Of course the mining population must furnish its contingent of legends and fables to this mythological repertory. If the fields are peopled with imaginary beings, either good or bad, with much more reason must the dark mines be haunted to their lowest depths. Who shakes the seam during tempestuous nights? who puts the miners on the track of an as yet unworked vein? ...
— The Underground City • Jules Verne
... disprove his theories. His knowledge was unequal; while in some branches, such as medicine and astronomy, he had made considerable proficiency, there were others, such as chemistry, electricity, mechanics, of which the very names were unknown to him. He was the natural enemy of mythology, and yet mythological ideas still retained their hold over him. He was endeavouring to form a conception of principles, but these principles or ideas were regarded by him as real powers or entities, to which the world had been subjected. He was always tending to argue from ...
— Timaeus • Plato
... so pervades them as to be their wills and do their actions, leaving the mere human vehicle without power, duty, or accountableness,) will they account themselves but as passive matter, moved or fixed, and in all things necessitated, by a sovereign mythological something denominated ...
— An Essay on the Evils of Popular Ignorance • John Foster
... Here he broke off, and began a new work entitled The Philippics, in fifty-eight books. This work dealt with the history of Greece in the Macedonian period, but was padded out to a preposterous bulk by all kinds of digressions on mythological, historical, or social topics. Only a few fragments remain. He earned an ill name among ancient critics by the bitterness of his censures, his love of the marvellous, and the inordinate length of his digressions. His style is by some critics censured as feeble, and extolled by ...
— On the Sublime • Longinus
... I began to sketch a clear summary of the form which the old original Nibelungen myth had assumed in my mind in its immediate association with the mythological legend of the gods—a form which, though full of detail, was yet much condensed in its leading features. Thanks to this work, I was able to convert the chief part of the material itself into a musical drama. It was only by degrees, however, ...
— My Life, Volume I • Richard Wagner
... appears to any asker of curious questions, as he wanders about Rome, the very thinnest deposit of the past. Within the rococo gateway, which itself has a vaguely esthetic self-consciousness, at the end of the cypress walk, you will probably see a mythological group in rusty marble—a Cupid and Psyche, a Venus and Paris, an Apollo and Daphne—the relic of an age when a Roman proprietor thought it fine to patronise the arts. But I imagine you are safe in supposing it to constitute ...
— Italian Hours • Henry James
... accomplished.—Behold ideal felicity, as displayed in the books and illustrations of the time! The natural man buried underneath an artificial civilization is disinterred, and again appears as in early days, as in Tahiti, as in philosophic and literary pastorals, as in bucolic and mythological operas, confiding, affectionate, and happy. "The sight of all these beings again restored to the sweet sentiments of primitive brotherhood is an exquisite delight almost too great for the soul to support," and the Frenchman, more light-hearted and far more childlike ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 2 (of 6) - The French Revolution, Volume 1 (of 3) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... in an armchair, bending closely over the blonde lady and paying her mythological compliments with a smile that never left his face. Jauntily shifting the position of his legs in their tight riding breeches, diffusing an odor of perfume, and admiring his partner, himself, and the fine outlines of his legs in their well-fitting Hessian boots, Nicholas told ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy
... What about the long-drawn-out conversations in books and on the stage that are attributed to historical persons? What about the actions attributed to them, which need not be true but only seem to be so? The supernatural element is the only thing lacking to make such works mythological in ...
— Musical Memories • Camille Saint-Saens
... or less perverted form in the hieroglyphics of Egypt, the idolatry among many nations, and sun-worship, where the spiritual signification has often been lost and men have come to worship the natural objects instead of the spiritual, which they represent. The mythological writings of many nations, and even Masonry, contain remains of this once well known science. The first chapters of Genesis and the entire Word are written in strict accordance with this science. The first chapters of Genesis, like the Parables ...
— Personal Experience of a Physician • John Ellis
... had been made brilliant by many lamps, and their united glare pouring from its top and illuminating not only the surrounding treetops but the broad face of this uplifted disc, roused in the awed spectator a thrill such as in mythological times might have greeted the sudden sight of Vulcan's smithy blazing on Olympian hills. But the clang of iron on iron would have attended the flash and gleam of those unexpected fires, and here all was still save for that steady throb never heard in Olympus or the halls of Valhalla, ...
— Initials Only • Anna Katharine Green
... was Ulysses; which, with the common fate of mythological stories, is now generally neglected. We have been too early acquainted with the poetical heroes to expect any pleasure from their revival; to show them as they have already been shown, is to disgust by repetition; to give them new qualities, or new adventures, is to offend by violating ...
— Lives of the Poets: Gay, Thomson, Young, and Others • Samuel Johnson
... references to 1. Historical events and personages. 2. Literary masterpieces. 3. Scientific truths. 4. Biblical events and truths. 5. Mythological creations. ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 10 - The Guide • Charles Herbert Sylvester
... familiar with both modes of thought, to present modestly, but firmly, their views; to compare the antagonistic pretensions calmly, impartially, philosophically. History shows that, if this be not done, social misfortunes, disastrous and enduring, will ensue. When the old mythological religion of Europe broke down under the weight of its own inconsistencies, neither the Roman emperors nor the philosophers of those times did any thing adequate for the guidance of public opinion. They left religious affairs to take their ...
— History of the Conflict Between Religion and Science • John William Draper
... us, and yet it resembles the most ponderous limestone or granite. Then you ask yourself: How is it possible? If their burden were what it seems to be, they would be crushed to earth instead of striding proudly along. Admirable figures! As you say, the spectacle takes one back into mythological times. Would you not call it a procession of Titans, children of the Gods, storing up mountain-blocks for some earth-convulsing battle? Your eyes deceive you. Like Thomas, the doubting apostle, you ...
— South Wind • Norman Douglas
... themselves in a reckless licence of language and verse. Action, therefore, fell into the background. Refinement, elevation was aimed at. In the place of Hodge, Dame Chat and their company, there now appeared gracious beings of perfect manners and speech; and since things Greek and mythological had become the fashion, Arcadian nymphs and swains, beauteous goddesses and Athenian philosophers were judged the most fitting to stand before the English court. In scene after scene fair ladies talk of love, reverend ...
— The Growth of English Drama • Arnold Wynne |
