"Sibyl" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... thing more striking. The high-wrought interest depicted in their faces, added to the breathless silence that reigned throughout the building, made the spectacle the most imposing I ever beheld. She was the Cumaean Sibyl delivering oracles and labouring under the inspiration of the God of Day.—This address was chiefly of a political character, and she took care to flatter the prejudices of the Americans, by occasionally ...
— A Ramble of Six Thousand Miles through the United States of America • S. A. Ferrall
... sure! Sibyl Eversleigh! I haven't seen her since she was so high. I used to call her my little sweetheart. So Sybby remembered Cousin Jack and came to find him? But when did you meet her?" he asked suddenly, as if this was the only detail of the past which had escaped him, fixing ...
— Trent's Trust and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... of that month. Night and day were in succession introduced by her, when they began to diminish in length; and souls, before arriving at the gates of Hell, were also led by her. In going through these signs, they passed the Styx in the 8th Degree of Libra. She was the famous Sibyl who initiated Eneas, and opened to him the way to the ...
— Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry • Albert Pike
... the evening before their departure, as the maiden Anne was returning from a visit to the wife of a neighbouring farmer, she was intercepted within a mile of her father's house. The sibyl-like figure of Barbara Moor stood before her, and exclaimed—"Stand, maiden! Ye love the young man whom ye call Patrick—whom your father has so called—and who resides beneath his roof. He loves you; and ye shall be wed, if I, who have his destiny in ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Volume III • Various
... The little Sibyl stamped a small foot encased in a red shoe with an impatient movement, and turned once more to contemplate herself in the glass. Miss Winstead, the governess, resumed her letter, and a clock on the mantelpiece ...
— Daddy's Girl • L. T. Meade
... than I should. They will hear that "Miss 'Unter, is the missis, and lets every one know she is. Miss 'Ester keeps the maids on their legs all day long because she won't use hers. Miss H'Amabel does the sporting gent, and is never indoors except to meals; while Miss Sibyl—well, there, she is not much 'count in the fam'ly, for she can't say bo to a goose, and doesn't mind how people ...
— Bulbs and Blossoms • Amy Le Feuvre
... dashing and proud air of Adeline Imposed not upon her: she saw her blaze Much as she would have seen a glow-worm shine; Then turned unto the stars for loftier rays. Juan was something she could not divine, Being no sibyl in the new world's ways; Yet she was nothing dazzled by the meteor, Because she did not pin her faith ...
— Lady Byron Vindicated • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... pianists of the second quarter of this century has been felicitously characterised by an anonymous contemporary: Thalberg, he said, is a king, Liszt a prophet, Chopin a poet, Herz an advocate, Kalkbrenner a minstrel, Madame Pleyel a sibyl, and Doehler ...
— Frederick Chopin as a Man and Musician - Volume 1-2, Complete • Frederick Niecks
... Constantin. Orat. ad Sanctos, c. 19 20. He chiefly depends on a mysterious acrostic, composed in the sixth age after the Deluge, by the Erythraean Sibyl, and translated by Cicero into Latin. The initial letters of the thirty-four Greek verses form this prophetic sentence: Jesus Christ, Son of ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 2 • Edward Gibbon
... disposition to deny anything she might have told me, and I couldn't see that her satisfaction in being justified by the event relieved her little nephew's condition. The truth is that, as the sequel was to prove, Miss Ambient had some of the qualities of the sibyl and had therefore perhaps a right to the sibylline contortions. Her brother was so preoccupied that I felt my presence an indiscretion and was sorry I had promised to remain over the morrow. I put it to Mark that clearly I had best leave them in the morning; to which he replied that, on the ...
— The Author of Beltraffio • Henry James
... almost wholly fails, while the sweetness that was born of it yet distills within my heart. Thus the snow is by the sun unsealed; thus on the wind, in the light leaves, was lost the saying of the Sibyl. ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern — Volume 11 • Various
... Sibyl, they are with their own nurse, and Graham will be far more likely to put them all at ease than I should. They will hear that "Miss 'Unter, is the missis, and lets every one know she is. Miss 'Ester keeps the maids on their legs all day long ...
— Bulbs and Blossoms • Amy Le Feuvre
... gained, and great calamities averted. Show me the generals and the statesmen who stood foremost, that I may bend to them in reverence.... Let the books of the Treasury lie closed as religiously as the Sibyl's. Leave weights and measures in the market-place; Commerce in the harbour; the Arts in the light they love; Philosophy in the shade. Place History on her rightful throne, and at the sides of ...
— Historical and Political Essays • William Edward Hartpole Lecky
... beginning of the seventeenth century. Names are only air, and blow away with a change of wind; but beliefs are rooted in human wants and weakness, and die hard. The oaks of Dodona are prostrate, and the shrine of Delphi is desolate; but the Pythoness and the Sibyl may be consulted in Lowell Street for a very moderate compensation. Nostradamus and Lilly seem impossible in our time; but we have seen the advertisements of an astrologer in our Boston papers year after year, which seems to imply ...
— Medical Essays • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... like anything; In fact, it puzzled me worse: Isn't schoolman's logic hard enough, Without being in Sibyl's verse? ...
— A Budget of Paradoxes, Volume I (of II) • Augustus De Morgan
... seen to be taking to herself, making her own, what man has first made and grown tired of, she is twice an enchantress, strangely combining in one charm the magic of a wistful, all but forgotten, past with her own sibyl-line mystery. ...
— Vanishing Roads and Other Essays • Richard Le Gallienne
... the past or of the future, from which she could not turn her face. The curve of her upper lip, where it lay along its fellow and made a dimpled end, sharpened and grew bleak. Poring and smiling into the fire, she looked like a Sibyl envisaging the fate of men, not concerned in it, yet absorbed, interested in the play, not at all in the persons. This friend of Mrs. Benson, this midnight mate of young gardeners, disturber of high ladies' comfort, serene controller of Wanless, ...
— Rest Harrow - A Comedy of Resolution • Maurice Hewlett
... sibyl leaf all read, Dark Nemesis is grim and sullen; She bends again her vengeful head— Woe! woe! to old Craigullan. The next by fatal count of Time, The next by her foreboding fears—- Jane falls, like those in early prime— She falls amidst ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Volume XXIV. • Revised by Alexander Leighton
... an Icelander of distinction in the fourteenth century, made a collection of treatises in one volume for his own amusement and behoof. It contains the Volosp, the most famous of all the Northern mythical poems, the Sibyl's song of the doom of the gods; it contains also the Landnmabk, the history of the colonisation of Iceland; Kristni Saga, the history of the conversion to Christianity; the history of Eric the Red, and Fstbrra Saga, the story of the two ...
— Epic and Romance - Essays on Medieval Literature • W. P. Ker
... aid implore. Let gifts be to the mighty queen design'd, And mollify with pray'rs her haughty mind. Thus, at the length, your passage shall be free, And you shall safe descend on Italy. Arriv'd at Cumae, when you view the flood Of black Avernus, and the sounding wood, The mad prophetic Sibyl you shall find, Dark in a cave, and on a rock reclin'd. She sings the fates, and, in her frantic fits, The notes and names, inscrib'd, to leafs commits. What she commits to leafs, in order laid, Before the cavern's entrance are ...
— The Aeneid • Virgil
... time are perishable. Of the churches described by Paspates in his Byzantine Studies, published in 1877, nine have either entirely disappeared or lost more of their original features. It was no part of wisdom to let the books of the cunning Sibyl become rarer and knowledge poorer by neglecting to secure all that was obtainable when she made her first or even her ...
— Byzantine Churches in Constantinople - Their History and Architecture • Alexander Van Millingen
... portraits that had slipped down from its frame in the gloomy oaken chamber. She spoke not again even to Mause that day, but seemed as if bent on some deep and solemn exercise. Abstracted from every outward impression, she sat, the image of some ancient sibyl communing with the inward, unseen pageantries of thought—the hidden workings of a power she could not control. Towards night she seemed more accessible. Naturally austere and taciturn, she rarely spoke but when it was absolutely necessary; yet now there was a softened, a subdued tone of feeling, ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 2 (of 2) • John Roby
... society of humane culture in the South of Europe, and to anticipate the advent of the spirit of modern tolerance. He, too, and all his race were exterminated by the Papal jealousy. Truly we may say with Michelet that the Sibyl of the Renaissance kept offering her books in vain to feudal Europe. In vain because the time was not yet. The ideas projected thus early on the modern world were immature and abortive, like those headless trunks and zoophitic members of half-molded ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volume 1 (of 7) • John Addington Symonds
... are especially of great interest for the history of dogma (See Theophrastus' treatise on piety). In the eighth Epistle of Heraclitus, composed by a Hellenistic Jew in the first century, it is said (Bernays, p. 182). "So long a time before, O Hermodorus, saw thee that Sibyl, and even then thou wert" [Greek: eide se pro posoutou aionos, Ermodore he Sibulla ekeine, kai tote estha]. Even here then the notion is expressed that foreknowledge and predestination invest the known and the ...
— History of Dogma, Volume 1 (of 7) • Adolph Harnack
... that the acts of a community frequently leave fewer traces than the occurrences of a private family. The public administration is, so to speak, oral and traditionary. But little is committed to writing, and that little is wafted away forever, like the leaves of the Sibyl, by ...
— Democracy In America, Volume 1 (of 2) • Alexis de Tocqueville
... the god; perhaps the breath divine Has left its ancient gorge and thro' the world Wanders in devious paths; or else the fane, Consumed to ashes by barbarian (14) fire, Closed up the deep recess and choked the path Of Phoebus; or the ancient Sibyl's books Disclosed enough of fate, and thus the gods Decreed to close the oracle; or else Since wicked steps are banished from the fane, In this our impious age the god finds none Whom he may answer." But the maiden's guile Was known, for though ...
— Pharsalia; Dramatic Episodes of the Civil Wars • Lucan
... He whom seer and sibyl sang in ages long gone by; This is He of old revealed in the page of prophecy; Lo! He comes, the promised Saviour; let the ...
— The Hymns of Prudentius • Aurelius Clemens Prudentius
... in perfume found Nor priest nor sibyl vainly learned; On Grecian shrine or Aztec mound ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... where asunder From other tribes—King, Church, and State Spurning, and only dedicate To freedom, sloth, and plunder. Your forest-camp—the forms one sees Banditti like amid the trees, The ragged donkies grazing, The Sibyl's eye prophetic, bright With flashes of the fitful ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 12, No. 341, Saturday, November 15, 1828. • Various
... of the Roman Catholic Church in the testimony of the sibyl is shown by the well-known hymn, said to have been composed by Pope Innocent III, at the close of the thirteenth century, ...
— The Old Masters and Their Pictures - For the Use of Schools and Learners in Art • Sarah Tytler
... will go get a leaf of brass, And with a gad of steel will write these words, And lay it by. The angry northern wind Will blow these sands, like Sibyl's leaves, abroad, ...
— Shakespearean Tragedy - Lectures on Hamlet, Othello, King Lear, Macbeth • A. C. Bradley
... Dalton had directed. The old death-dresser forsook the corpse, and standing on the highest crag, her long hair floating backwards on the breeze, her arms tossing from the effects of terror and astonishment, looked like the sibyl whose spells and orgies have distracted nature by some terrible convulsion. The cliffs and strand at the moment formed a picture that Salvator would have gloried in conveying to his canvass—the line of coast now rising boldly from the ocean, each projecting point catching the glaring ...
— The Buccaneer - A Tale • Mrs. S. C. Hall
... passed without farther parley; and as she descended the staircase, which conducted from the apartment to the gateway, she heard the voice of her aunt behind her, like that of an aged and offended sibyl, denouncing wrath and wo upon her ...
— The Betrothed • Sir Walter Scott
... unhealthy for transcendentalists. No doubt his dislike of Margaret Fuller arose from this feeling of his that she was always acting a part, always straining after an effect. He loved simple, natural, unaffected people, and the part of a sibyl was very distasteful to him. He suspected the inspiration of green tea in much that Margaret said, and very ungallantly pronounced her a humbug. But as he did this only upon the paper of his own private diary, with no thought of it ever being paraded before a critical ...
— Home Life of Great Authors • Hattie Tyng Griswold
... Boethius in their afflictions, in exile, prison, and the contemplation of death, breathes over his petty cares like the sweet south; or Pope or Horace laughs him into good humor; or he walks with neas and the Sibyl in the mild light of the world of the laurelled dead; and the court-house is as completely forgotten as the dreams of a pre-adamite life. Well may he prize that endeared charm, so effectual and safe, without which the brain had long ago been chilled by paralysis, ...
— The American Union Speaker • John D. Philbrick
... dear head you mourn has sunk, for ever, beneath the wave. Virgil might wander forth bearing the golden branch "the Sibyl doth to singing men allow," and might visit, as one not wholly without hope, the dim dwellings of the dead and the unborn. To him was it permitted to see and sing "mothers and men, and the bodies outworn of mighty heroes, boys and unwedded maids, and young men borne ...
— Letters to Dead Authors • Andrew Lang
... hand, before the grate, as if she questioned a sibyl, she saw again the face of the Marquis de Re. She saw it so precisely that it surprised her. The Marquis de Re had been presented to her by her father, who admired him, and he appeared to her grand and dazzling for his thirty years of intimate triumphs and mundane glories. His adventures ...
— The Red Lily, Complete • Anatole France
... me before, yet she knows me. How? She was very glad to get rid of me just now. Why? I am inoffensive enough. There is something uncommon about her; she gives me the idea of having a history, which is anything but desirable for a young woman. What fine eyes she has! She is something like that Sibyl of Guercino's in the Capitol. Why does she object to me? It is rather absurd. I must make her talk, then ...
— A Crooked Path - A Novel • Mrs. Alexander
... Incomparable Sibyl cease, I pray! Hand us thy liquor without more delay. And to the very brim the goblet crown! My friend he is, and need not be afraid; Besides, he is a man of many a grade, Who hath ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... the altars and shrines of imposture, and He makes His own fiat the substitute for its sorceries. He speaks amid the incantations of Balaam, raises Samuel's spirit in the witch's cavern, prophesies of the Messias by the tongue of the Sibyl, forces Python to recognize His ministers, and baptizes by the hand of the misbeliever. He is with the heathen dramatist in his denunciations of injustice and tyranny, and his auguries of divine vengeance ...
— The Idea of a University Defined and Illustrated: In Nine - Discourses Delivered to the Catholics of Dublin • John Henry Newman
... "Peter Pan" that he produced it in Paris, June 1, 1909, at the Vaudeville Theater, with an all-English cast headed by Pauline Chase. Robb Harwood was Captain Hook, and Sibyl Carlisle played Mrs. Darling. It was produced under the direction of Dion Boucicault. The first presentation was a great hit, and the play ran for five weeks. On the opening night Barrie and Frohman ...
— Charles Frohman: Manager and Man • Isaac Frederick Marcosson and Daniel Frohman
... east side of the lake are remains of baths, including a great octagonal hall known as the Temple of Apollo, built of brickwork, and belonging to the 1st century. The so-called Grotto of the Cumaean Sibyl, on the south side, is a rock-cut passage, ventilated by vertical apertures, possibly a part of the works connected with the naval harbour. To the south-east of the lake is the Monte Nuovo, a volcanic hill upheaved ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 1 - "Austria, Lower" to "Bacon" • Various
... alone in the world,—alone in the home where loneliness had seemed from the cradle a thing that was not of nature. And at first the solitude and the stillness were insupportable. Have you, ye mourners, to whom these sibyl leaves, weird with many a dark enigma, shall be borne, have you not felt that when the death of some best-loved one has made the hearth desolate,—have you not felt as if the gloom of the altered home was too heavy for thought ...
— Zanoni • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... E'en as the Sibyl in Northland-dawn drew Forth from the myth-billows gliding, Told all the past, all the future so true, Sank with the lands' last subsiding,— Prophecies leaving, ...
— Poems and Songs • Bjornstjerne Bjornson
... city of Campania, now in ruins; alleged to be the earliest Greek settlement in Italy; famous as the residence of the SIBYL (q. v.), and a place of luxurious ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... ye what," said the old mariner, in a subdued tone, and with a shrewd and suspicious glance of his eye after the old sibyl, "it's a word that may not very well be uttered, but there are many mistakes made in evening stories if old Moll Moray there, where she lives, knows not mickle more than she is willing to tell of the Haunted Ships and their unhallowed ...
— Folk-Lore and Legends - Scotland • Anonymous
... forms with beauty! — questing, unconfined, The mind conceived you, though the quenched mind Goes down in dark where you in dawn ascend. Our songs can but suspend The ultimate silence: yet could song aspire The realms of mortal music to extend And wake a Sibyl's voice or Seraph's lyre — How should it tell the dearness ...
— The Little Book of Modern Verse • Jessie B. Rittenhouse
... this a god decrees; a sibyl wise In prophet-song did this to me proclaim; Who when Bellona kindles in her eyes, Fears neither twisted ...
— The Elegies of Tibullus • Tibullus
... influences of the great masterpieces of the past should linger on in the city whose very air became to them the breath of inspiring suggestion? Where but in Rome would have come to Crawford the vision of his "Orpheus" and of his noble Beethoven? or to Story his "Libyan Sibyl," and that exquisite group, "Into the Silent Land"? or to Vedder his marvellous creations of "The Fates Gathering in the Stars," the "Cumaean Sibyl," or the "Dance of the Pleiades"? to Simmons his triumphant "Angel of the Resurrection," and ...
— Italy, the Magic Land • Lilian Whiting
... "Yes. When Sibyl came in this morning with an imperative demand to be allowed to go off and do good with flowers in the homes of virtuous poverty, as well as the hospitals and prisons, I certainly felt as if there had been an interposition, if you will allow ...
— The Minister's Charge • William D. Howells
... shall have the five periods which these five essays try to describe: the period before the Tarquins, that is the "Religion of Numa"; the later kingdom, that is the "Reorganisation of Servius"; the first three centuries of the republic, that is the "Coming of the Sibyl"; the closing centuries of the republic, that is the "Decline of Faith"; and finally the early empire and the "Augustan Renaissance." Like all attempts to cut history into sections these divisions are more or less arbitrary, but their convenience sufficiently justifies their creation. They ...
— The Religion of Numa - And Other Essays on the Religion of Ancient Rome • Jesse Benedict Carter
... wrote verses. Some of these had been printed on satin paper, and sold for objects of beneficence at charity bazaars. The county newspapers said that the verses "were characterized by all the elegance of a cultured and feminine mind." The other two sisters agreed that Sibyl was the genius of the household, but, like all geniuses, not sufficiently practical for the world. Miss Sarah Chillingly, the youngest of the three, and now just in her forty-fourth year, was looked upon by the others as "a dear thing, inclined to be naughty, ...
— Kenelm Chillingly, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... and supplications; and several of the other gipsy women were awakening strong sympathy among the young girls and maid-servants in the background. The pretty, black-eyed gipsy girl, whom I have mentioned on a former occasion as the sibyl that read the fortunes of the general, endeavoured to wheedle that doughty warrior into their interests, and even made some approaches to her old acquaintance, Master Simon; but was repelled by the latter with all the dignity ...
— Bracebridge Hall • Washington Irving
... Palferine told us) 'she went out with a little coquettish gesture like a woman that has had her way. As she stood in my garrett doorway, tall and proud, she seemed to reach the stature of an antique sibyl.' ...
— A Prince of Bohemia • Honore de Balzac
... Till she had gain'd of gold a sum That raised the station of her spouse— Bought him an office and a house. As she could then no longer bear it, Another tenanted the garret. To her came up the city crowd,— Wives, maidens, servants, gentry proud,— To ask their fortunes, as before; A Sibyl's cave was on her garret floor: Such custom had its former mistress drawn It lasted even when herself was gone. It sorely tax'd the present mistress' wits To satisfy the throngs of teasing cits. 'I tell ...
— The Fables of La Fontaine - A New Edition, With Notes • Jean de La Fontaine
... Cover of a Drinking Cup Iris The Head of Iris Neptune A Greek Coin Silenus Holding Bacchus Aurora, the Goddess of the Dawn Latona Jason Castor, the Horse-Tamer Pollux, the Master of the Art of Boxing Daedalus and Icarus Making Their Wings Juno and Her Peacock Athena Minerva Daphne A Sibyl Ceres Apollo Narcissus Adonis and Aphrodite Woden on the Throne Bellerophon ...
— Classic Myths • Retold by Mary Catherine Judd
... Pandora!' he cried; 'opener of all secret places, caskets, aumbries, caves of the winds, thrice blessed Sibyl of the keyhole!' She nodded her head with ...
— Privy Seal - His Last Venture • Ford Madox Ford
... 'Michelangelesque' formation of the hand and wrist—an articulation as rare to find as it is anatomically beautiful and desirable—he bethought him of a subject that would enable him to introduce his trouvaille. As but one attitude could display the special formation to advantage, the idea of a Sibyl, sitting brooding beside her oracular tripod, was soon evolved, but not so soon was its form determined and fixed. Like Mr. Watts, Sir Frederic Leighton thinks out the whole picture before he puts brush to canvas, or chalk to paper; but, unlike Mr. Watts, once he is decided ...
— Frederic Lord Leighton - An Illustrated Record of His Life and Work • Ernest Rhys
... Lady Sibyl, "the proud maiden of Bernshaw," was from her youth the creature of impulse and imagination—a child of nature and romance. She roved unchecked through the green valleys and among the glens and ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 1 (of 2) • John Roby
... want more, you will say, for the intellectual education of the whole man, and for every man, than so exuberant and diversified and persistent a promulgation of all kinds of knowledge? Why, you will ask, need we go up to knowledge, when knowledge comes down to us? The Sibyl wrote her prophecies upon the leaves of the forest, and wasted them; but here such careless profusion might be prudently indulged, for it can be afforded without loss, in consequence of the almost fabulous fecundity of the instrument which these latter ages have invented. ...
— Harvard Classics Volume 28 - Essays English and American • Various
... parting sacrifice that Helenus predicted that, after long wanderings, his guests would settle in Italy, in a spot where they would find a white sow suckling thirty young. He also cautioned Aeneas about the hidden dangers of Charybdis and Scylla, and bade him visit the Cumaean Sibyl, so as to induce her, if possible, to lend him ...
— The Book of the Epic • Helene A. Guerber
... World attracted her. By skipping the Long Words she could read how Rupert Bansiford led Sibyl Gray into the Conservatory and made Love that scorched the Begonias. Sometimes she just Ached to light out with ...
— Fables in Slang • George Ade
... in the school-room, one afternoon, I was startled to observe these characters as suddenly and mysteriously raised as if by the unseen hand of a modern sibyl on the blackboard:— ...
— Cape Cod Folks • Sarah P. McLean Greene
... loved—until the stranger gave her offence. And if then she passed to imprecation, she would not curse like an ordinary woman, but like a poetess, gaining rather than losing dignity. She would rise to the evil occasion, no hag, but a largely-offended sibyl, whom nothing thereafter should ever appease. To forgive was a virtue unknown to Mistress Conal. Its more than ordinary difficulty in forgiving is indeed a special fault of the Celtic character.—This must not however be confounded with a desire for ...
— What's Mine's Mine • George MacDonald
... Miss Sterling. "More likely Cousin Sibyl has sent me some of her children's stockings to darn. She does that occasionally. I suppose ...
— Polly and the Princess • Emma C. Dowd
... a supernatural character. He considered that the ways of the Gods are not as our ways, and that it is rather the rule than the exception with them to accomplish their designs in the most circuitous manner, and by the most unlikely instruments. He also reflected upon the history of the Sibyl and her books, and shuddered to think that unseasonable obstinacy might in the end cost the temple the whole of its revenues. The result of his cogitations was a resolution, if the old woman should present herself on the following ...
— The Twilight of the Gods, and Other Tales • Richard Garnett
... yours easily, O Sibyl!" replied she. "You will never marry, neither for real nor ideal. You should have fallen in love in the orthodox way, when you were seventeen. You are adaptive enough to have moulded yourself into any nature that you loved, and constant enough to have clung to it through good and evil. You would ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Number 9, July, 1858 • Various
... I saw the Sibyl's finger rest On fate's unturned imagined page, Believed her promise, and was blest With dreams of that heroic age. She sent me, ere my hope was cold, One of the race that ...
— Ionica • William Cory (AKA William Johnson)
... portrait, has the rapt eye of the Cumaean sibyl. One of Moore's fine friends, an admirer of Bessy's, speaks to him of her "wild, poetic face," and the Duchess of Sussex thought her like "Lady Heathcote in the days of her beauty." That is putting her very high, for, according to Cosway, Lady Heathcote was a lovely young woman indeed; ...
— In a Green Shade - A Country Commentary • Maurice Hewlett
... beyond the sibyl of his odd adoration; Annapla was too intent upon her own elderly love-affairs to ...
— Doom Castle • Neil Munro
... rare Sibyl, sing us These runes no more, thy beverage bring us, And quickly fill the goblet to the brim; This drink may by my friend be safely taken: Full many grades the man can reckon, Many good ...
— Faust • Goethe
... tie. Therefore comes an hour from Jove Which his ruthless will defies, And the dogs of Fate unties. Shiver the palaces of glass; Shrivel the rainbow-colored walls, Where in bright Art each god and sibyl dwelt Secure as in the zodiac's belt; And the galleries and halls, Wherein every siren sung, Like a meteor pass. For this fortune wanted root In the core of God's abysm,— Was a weed of self and schism; And ever the Daemonic Love Is the ancestor ...
— Poems - Household Edition • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... and Paul said, "To the pure all things are pure: but unto them that are defiled is nothing pure." According to Serapion, as quoted by Clemens Alexandrinus, the tradition was that the face which appears in the moon is the soul of a Sibyl. Plutarch, in his treatise, Of the Face appearing in the roundle of the Moone, cites the poet Agesinax ...
— Moon Lore • Timothy Harley
... in the name of all the devils of the infernal regions, let us go. The gnawings of my stomach in this rage of hunger are so tearing, that they make it bark like a mastiff. Let us throw some bread and beef into his throat to pacify him, as once the sibyl did to Cerberus. Thou likest best monastical brewis, the prime, the flower of the pot. I am for the solid, principal verb that comes after —the good brown loaf, always accompanied with a round slice of ...
— Gargantua and Pantagruel, Complete. • Francois Rabelais
... rather than by any grammatical ellipsis. [226] Sibylla is the ancient Greek name for a prophetic woman; and at Rome prophecies and counsels (libri Sibyllini) were kept in the Capitol which were believed to have been given as early as the time of the kings by a Sibyl of Cumae. They contained information about festivals, sacrifices, and other religious observances, and the means by which calamities which threatened the state might be averted. They were under the superintendence of a special college of priests, by whom alone they were consulted, on the command ...
— De Bello Catilinario et Jugurthino • Caius Sallustii Crispi (Sallustius)
... book to Tarquin, 8. Hellespontica, 9. Phrygia, 10. Tiburs, by name Albunea, worshipped at Tiber as a goddess. Thus Varro categorizes the Sibyls, and besides these we hear of a Hebrew, a Chaldaean, a Babylonian, an Egyptian, a Sardian Sibyl, and some others. Other writers considerably reduce this number, three being that most usually accepted, and Salmasius, the most learned man that ever lived, summed up the various theories concerning these mysterious beings with the words: "There is nothing on which ...
— Holidays in Eastern France • Matilda Betham-Edwards
... sanctities neglected. Commemoration was made of the stages of mortal life, of the bonds of love and kinship, of peace, of battle, and of mourning for the dead. By a very intelligible figure and analogy the winds became shepherds, the clouds flocks, the day a conqueror, the dawn a maid, the night a wise sibyl and mysterious consort of heaven. These personifications were tentative and vague, and the consequent mythology was a system of rhetoric rather than of theology. The various gods had interchangeable attributes, and, by a voluntary confusion, quite in the ...
— The Life of Reason • George Santayana
... the peasant class, wore the peasant costume. I observed these with interest but certainly as long as they were under the spell of the master they communicated nothing worth preserving; they seemed to show "the contortions of the sibyl ...
— Autobiography of Andrew Dickson White Volume II • Andrew Dickson White
... in which nothing that is written shall endure. That is the reason, in my opinion, why, among so many men of talent, France to-day counts not one great writer. In a society like ours, to seek for literary glory seems to me an anachronism. Of what use is it to invoke an ancient sibyl when a muse is on the eve of birth? Pitiable actors in a tragedy nearing its end, that which it behooves us to do is to precipitate the catastrophe. The most deserving among us is he who plays best this part. Well, I no longer aspire to this ...
— What is Property? - An Inquiry into the Principle of Right and of Government • P. J. Proudhon
... themselves. For all madness is not miserable, or Horace had never called his poetical fury a beloved madness; nor Plato placed the raptures of poets, prophets, and lovers among the chiefest blessings of this life; nor that sibyl in Virgil called Aeneas' travels mad labors. But there are two sorts of madness, the one that which the revengeful Furies send privily from hell, as often as they let loose their snakes and put into men's breasts either the desire of war, or an insatiate thirst after gold, ...
— The Praise of Folly • Desiderius Erasmus
... secure the remaining three, at whatever price they were to be had. He, accordingly, purchased the volumes, which were found to contain predictions of great importance to the Romans. After the disposal of the books, the Sibyl vanished, and was seen ...
— Myths and Legends of Ancient Greece and Rome • E.M. Berens
... facts brought out in the various litigations in which Mrs. Eddy and the church have been involved confirm both the statements and conclusions of this really distinctive work. The official life by Sibyl Wilbur (whose real name seems to be O'Brien) is so coloured as to be substantially undependable. It touches lightly or omits altogether those passages in Mrs. Eddy's life which do not fit in with the picture which Mrs. Eddy herself and the church ...
— Modern Religious Cults and Movements • Gaius Glenn Atkins
... caressings. Hang, baby, hang, mother's love loves such forces, Choke the fond neck that bends still to thy clinging; Black Manhood comes, when violent lawless courses Leave thee a spectacle in rude air swinging. So sang a wither'd Sibyl energetical, And bann'd the ungiving door ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb (Vol. 6) - Letters 1821-1842 • Charles and Mary Lamb
... this footprint on the threshold-stone of the ancestral mansion seems to have associated itself inextricably with the dreamy substance of his yet unshaped romance. Indeed, it leaves its mark broadly upon Sibyl Dacy's wild legend in "Septimius Felton," and reappears in the last paragraph of that story. But, so far as we can know at this day, nothing definite was done until after his departure for Italy. It ...
— Sketches and Studies • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... defence of the most favoured and most faithful of the greater Prophets, runs always parallel in symbolism with the Dorian fable: but the legend of St. Jerome takes up the prophecy of the Millennium, and foretells, with the Cumaean Sibyl, and with Isaiah, a day when the Fear of Man shall be laid in benediction, not enmity, on inferior beings,—when they shall not hurt nor destroy in all the holy Mountain, and the Peace of the Earth shall be as far removed from its present sorrow, as the present gloriously ...
— Our Fathers Have Told Us - Part I. The Bible of Amiens • John Ruskin
... wholly suffused with inward light in which the purity, archness, gentleness and wildness of a young girl combine to shed the tenderest grace and impart the most fascinating allurements. Alongside of this a "Sibyl" by Guercino, with her carefully adjusted coiffure and drapery, is the most spiritual and refined ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume 7 - Italy, Sicily, and Greece (Part One) • Various
... read Disraeli's "Sibyl," while I built a sand fortress round her; or she read "Venetia," "Oliver Twist," "The Life of Mary II.," "Romany Rye," and "The Lives of the Last Four Popes." She remembered Pio Nono with unflagging interest, and mentions his serious illness, and then his recovery. She read "a queer biography ...
— Memories of Hawthorne • Rose Hawthorne Lathrop
... the two-manual harpsichord originated as a device for transposition is well known. In an article titled "Transposing Keyboards on Extant Flemish Harpsichords," Sibyl Marcuse[5] discusses surviving examples that show how the second keyboard was arranged. The upper keyboard was the principal one, with the lower keyboard sounding a fourth below. The strings acted upon by a c key on the upper manual were ...
— Italian Harpsichord-Building in the 16th and 17th Centuries • John D. Shortridge
... be drawn into these mysteries. He had time for everything. It afforded him relaxation, and a means of observation. On one occasion, he followed the refugee to a garden where a person of "perfect lucidity" prophesied. The sibyl was a believer as well as a seer and pretended to communicate with God in person. I do not know exactly what supernal secrets the woman revealed, while she slept, but the result ...
— Delsarte System of Oratory • Various
... sounded the reveil of the modern world; and in the inconclusive termination of the struggle of that day, the Italians were already judged and sentenced as a nation. The armies who met that morning represented Italy and France,—Italy, the Sibyl of Renaissance; France, the Sibyl of Revolution. At the fall of evening Europe was already looking northward; and the last years of the fifteenth century were opening an act which closed in blood at Paris on the ending ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Complete - Series I, II, and III • John Symonds
... I have struck The chord that answers to your gloomy thoughts. Bah! on your sibyl and her prophecy! Put Guido's blood aside, and yet, ...
— Representative Plays by American Dramatists: 1856-1911: Francesca da Rimini • George Henry Boker
... lonely path, where he should tread secure, with no trouble but the loneliness, which would be none to him. For a little while he would seem to keep them company, but soon they would all drop away, the minister, his accustomed towns-people, Robert Hagburn, Rose, Sibyl Dacy,—all leaving him in blessed unknownness to adopt new temporary relations, and ...
— Septimius Felton - or, The Elixir of Life • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... robust health and gone a journey; and we should have a fair wind upon the morrow: that was the result of our consultation, for which we paid a dollar. The next day dawned cloudless and breathless; but I think Captain Reid placed a secret reliance on the sibyl, for the schooner was got ready for sea. By eight the lagoon was flawed with long cat's-paws, and the palms tossed and rustled; before ten we were clear of the passage and skimming under all plain sail, with bubbling scuppers. So we had the breeze, which ...
— In the South Seas • Robert Louis Stevenson
... modern Pindarick Writer, compared with Pindar, is like a Sister among the Camisars [2] compared with Virgil's Sibyl: There is the Distortion, Grimace, and outward Figure, but nothing of that divine Impulse which raises the Mind above its self, and makes the ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... Sibyl's volumes, thou shouldst say; Those that remained, after the six were burned, Being held more precious than the nine together. But listen to my tale. Dost thou remember The Gypsy girl we saw at Cordova Dance the Romalis ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... her great rich eyes a goddess might have commanded through, with their eyebrows of raven-black, like entrances to the caves of the Cumaean sibyl, her small head borne as easily upon her neck as a dove upon a sprig—all flashed upon Milburn's thrilled yet flinching soul, as the revelation ...
— The Entailed Hat - Or, Patty Cannon's Times • George Alfred Townsend
... swarming in the mind of the quiet Pastor of Zschopau, or of the mass of manuscripts proclaiming his faith in the inner Word which he was leaving behind him, to fly over the world like the loose leaves of the Sibyl. ...
— Spiritual Reformers in the 16th & 17th Centuries • Rufus M. Jones
... adduced, rather strangely, the cunctantem ramum, said of the Golden Bough, in the Sixth AEneid. The choice is odd, because the Sibyl has just told AEneas that, if he be destined to pluck the branch of gold, ipse volens facilisque sequetur, "it will come off of its own accord," like the sacred ti branches of the Fijians, which bend down to be plucked for ...
— Alfred Tennyson • Andrew Lang
... Marjorie was an Alaskan-Indian Princess, and Rosalie rigged up a Puck costume which made her irresistible. Isabel chose to be Portia, though that erudite lady seemed somewhat out of place among the mythological characters. But Stella was a startling Sibyl, with book, staff, and a little crystal globe (removed from her paper-weight) in which to read horoscopes. The others went in all ...
— Peggy Stewart at School • Gabrielle E. Jackson
... to pass in the birth of One who should prove to be the true 'King of Kings,' and Augustus Caesar therefore dedicated an altar in his palace to this unknown God." Eusebius and St. Augustine inform us that the first letter of each line of the verses from the Erythrean Sibyl containing this prophecy, formed the word [Greek: ICHTHYS] (a fish), and were taken as representing the sentence: [Greek: Iesous Christos Theou Huios Soter]("Jesus Christ, the Son of God, the Saviour"). Based upon this ...
— Science and the Infinite - or Through a Window in the Blank Wall • Sydney T. Klein
... fables. But therein, as I found, dwelt now John Field, an Irishman, and his wife, and several children, from the broad-faced boy who assisted his father at his work, and now came running by his side from the bog to escape the rain, to the wrinkled, sibyl-like, cone-headed infant that sat upon its father's knee as in the palaces of nobles, and looked out from its home in the midst of wet and hunger inquisitively upon the stranger, with the privilege of infancy, not knowing but it was ...
— Walden, and On The Duty Of Civil Disobedience • Henry David Thoreau
... about among the groups of mothers with orange kerchiefs on their heads and heavy silver rings on every finger. Strange processions with cowled faces and crucifix and banners borne aloft sweep into the piazza and up the church steps. Old women with Sibyl-like faces sit spinning at their doors. Maidens with water-jars on their heads which might have been dug up at Pompeii; priests with broad hats and huge cloaks; sailors with blue shirts and red girdles; ...
— Stray Studies from England and Italy • John Richard Green
... voice and manner of speaking, Miss Roxy was vigorous, spicy, and decided. Her mind on all subjects was made up, and she spoke generally as one having authority; and who should, if she should not? Was she not a sort of priestess and sibyl in all the most awful straits and mysteries of life? How many births, and weddings, and deaths had come and gone under her jurisdiction! And amid weeping or rejoicing, was not Miss Roxy still the master-spirit,—consulted, referred to by all?—was not her word law ...
— The Pearl of Orr's Island - A Story of the Coast of Maine • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... traditions which were then still floating from the fireside to the philosopher's closet: he points his pen, as AEneas brandished his sword at the Gorgons and Chimeras that darkened the entrance of Hell; wanting the admonitions of the sibyl, ...
— Calamities and Quarrels of Authors • Isaac D'Israeli
... was on the table. He did not hurry to open it, for she, and all that she did, was overwhelming. She wrote like the Sibyl; her sorrowful face moved over the stars and shattered their harmonies; last night he saw her with the eyes of Blake, a virgin widow, tall, veiled, consecrated, with her hands stretched out against an everlasting wind. Why should she write? Her letters were not for ...
— The Longest Journey • E. M. Forster
... me that of all I had seen in the world, Tivoli was the most lovely. The old "temple of the Sibyl" on the hill stood on consecrated ground, and consecrated the whole neighbourhood. I loved those waterfalls, which impressed me much more than Trollhaettan [Footnote: Trollhaettan, a celebrated waterfall near Goeteborg in Sweden.], ...
— Recollections Of My Childhood And Youth • George Brandes
... poetic glories in the century which has just then ended, the first names with her will be these.' The prophecy is as little like to commend itself to the pious votary of Keats as to the ardent Shelleyite: there are familiars of the Tennysonian Muse, the Sibyl of Rizpah and Vastness and Lucretius and The Voyage, to whom it must seem impertinent beyond the prophet's wont; there are—(but they scarce count)—who grub (as for truffles) for meanings in Browning. But it was not uttered to please, and in truth ...
— Views and Reviews - Essays in appreciation • William Ernest Henley
... ERIC THE RED 14 The Ancestry of Gudrid 14 The Colonization of Greenland 15 Gudrid's Father emigrates to Greenland 20 The Sibyl and the Famine in Greenland 21 Leif the Lucky and the Discovery of Vinland 23 Thorstein's Attempt to find Vinland 26 The Marriage of Gudrid to Thorstein 27 The Ancestry of Thorfinn Karlsefni; his Marriage with ...
— The Northmen, Columbus and Cabot, 985-1503 • Various
... The den of the sibyl was much darker than the antechamber; the color of the walls could scarcely be distinguished. The ceiling, blackened by smoke, far from reflecting the little light that came from a window obstructed by pale and sickly vegetations, ...
— Unconscious Comedians • Honore de Balzac
... tapestry, was suddenly opened; a voice uttered the word "Enter," and the two women were introduced into a second room, hung with black, and lighted solely by a three-branched lamp that hung from the ceiling. The door closed behind them, and the clients found themselves face to face with the sibyl. ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... prairie-chickens on a chair? He bought it at a furniture-store years and years ago, and he claims it's a finer picture than any they saw in the museums, that time he took mamma to Europe. But it's horribly out of date to have those things in dining-rooms, and I caught Bobby Lamhorn giggling at it; and Sibyl made fun of it, too, with Bobby, and then told papa she agreed with him about its being such a fine thing, and said he did just right to insist on having it where he wanted it. ...
— The Turmoil - A Novel • Booth Tarkington
... looked more Egyptian than ever to-day. She always dressed for her parts; and as a believer in the Unseen, she felt it right, in honour of the sibyl, to wear her hair very low, with some green pins in it, long earrings, and a flowing gown, ...
— The Twelfth Hour • Ada Leverson
... sought the protection of Lodovico Caracci, they successively made such progress in the methods of painting as rendered them the most distinguished representatives of the Bolognese Revival. All three were men of immaculate manners. Guido Reni, beautiful as a Sibyl in youth, with blonde hair, blue eyes, and fair complexion, was, to the end of his illustrious career, reputed a virgin. Albani, who translated into delicate oil-painting the sensuousness of the Adone, studied the forms of Nymphs and Venuses from his lovely wife, and the limbs of ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volumes 1 and 2 - The Catholic Reaction • John Addington Symonds
... and primroses in spring will peep amid anemones from rustling foliage strewn by winter's winds. The heights of Casentino, the Perugian highlands, Volterra, far withdrawn amid a wilderness of rolling hills, and solemn snow-touched ranges of the Spolentino, Sibyl-haunted fastnesses of Norcia, form the most distant horizon-lines of this unending panorama. And then there are the cities, placed each upon a point of vantage: Siena; olive-mantled Chiusi; Cortona, white upon her spreading throne; poetic Montalcino, lifted aloft against the ...
— New Italian sketches • John Addington Symonds
... attainment, they will find that these priests and "magi climbing up some other way," and whom Jesus designated as "thieves and robbers," could never function or pass beyond the so-called "astral plane." Here is where the Sibyl and the "virgin seer" ...
— The New Avatar and The Destiny of the Soul - The Findings of Natural Science Reduced to Practical Studies - in Psychology • Jirah D. Buck
... That lends Corruption lighter wings to fly: Gold imp'd by thee, can compass hardest things, Can pocket States, can fetch or carry Kings; A single leaf shall waft an Army o'er, Or ship off Senates to a distant Shore; A leaf, like Sibyl's, scatter to and fro Our fates and fortunes, as the winds shall blow; Pregnant with thousands flits the Scrap unseen, And silent sells a ...
— War-Time Financial Problems • Hartley Withers
... fountains—garden fountains, you would think—among the ilexes and grottoes under the little round Temple; a wonderful mixture of wildness and art, a place, with its high air, its leaping waters and glimpses of distant plain, such as one would really wish for a sibyl, and might imagine for Delphi. An enchanted place with its flight and twitter of birds above the water. I should like to follow the Anio into ...
— The Spirit of Rome • Vernon Lee
... Classical Philology," vol. II, makes out a very strong case for Puteoli, and his theory of the old town and the new town is as ingenious as it is able. Haley also has Trimalchio in his favor, as has also La Porte du Theil. "I saw the Sibyl at Cumae," says Trimalchio. Now if the scene of the dinner is actually at Cumae this sounds very peculiar; it might even be a gloss added by some copyist whose knowledge was not equal to his industry. On the other hand, suppose Trimalchio is ...
— The Satyricon, Complete • Petronius Arbiter
... through rock of the hardest possible description. But the same age had seen the excavation of other subterranean passages far larger than this, and in the same country, preeminently the Grotto of Posilipo, at Naples, and that of the Cumaean Sibyl, and at length it was accomplished. The people of Veii heard of it, and were filled with alarm. Ambassadors were sent to Rome, with the hope of inducing the Romans to come to some other terms less severe than the surrender of the city; but they were disappointed, and according to the legend, ...
— Among the Brigands • James de Mille
... said Marian, jumping up again. "I want to remark further that not only is Patty going to live in Vernondale, but she's going to have a house very near this one. I've picked it out," and Marian wagged her head with the air of a mysterious sibyl. "I won't tell you where it is just yet, but it's a lovely house, and big enough to accommodate Uncle Fred and Patty, and a guest or two besides. I've selected the room that I prefer, and I hope you ...
— Patty at Home • Carolyn Wells
... us! and shall we see Those sibyl-leaves of destiny, Those calm eyes, nevermore? Those deep, dark eyes so warm and bright, Wherein the fortunes of the man Lay slumbering in prophetic light, In characters a child might scan? So bright, and gone forth utterly! ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell
... difference in his imitation. Our Dunce hero visits Elysium in a dream; whilst he sleeps, his head recumbent on the lap of the goddess, in the innermost recess of her sanctuary. His vision resembles the Trojan's rather than the Greek's adventure. "A slipshod sibyl," ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 58, Number 358, August 1845 • Various
... held the great gold thread of her plan was thrown. She saw the pattern stretch firm and fair before her. Silently and sweetly, with the intentness of a sibyl who pours and holds forth a deep potion, she smiled at him across ...
— Tante • Anne Douglas Sedgwick
... hard-grinding for the exam., A moistened towel garlanding his brow, And coffee simmering on the hob below. High on a three-legged stool uncushioned, he Sits glowering through his goggles painfully, Nagging his brain with all a grinder's might Till one sounds on the drowsy ear of night. Like Sibyl's leaves the papers strew his floor Wrought-out examples, 'wrinkles' by the score, Conundrums algebraic, 'tips' on Conics And thorny 'props' remembered by mnemonics. Betweenwhiles as the slow time lagging goes, He takes the spectacles from off his nose, Removes the damper from his aching ...
— Literary Tours in The Highlands and Islands of Scotland • Daniel Turner Holmes
... entered the house at night and seized warriors to devour them, who might be seen gliding over the sea, with the carcase of the wolf dripping blood from their giant jaws; and there was the more serene, classical, and awful vala, or sibyl, who, honoured by chiefs and revered by nations, foretold the future, and advised the deeds of heroes. Of these last, the Norse chronicles tell us much. They were often of rank and wealth, they were accompanied by trains of handmaids and servants—kings led them ...
— Harold, Complete - The Last Of The Saxon Kings • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... say it amounts to that," Dr. Renshaw returned reluctantly. His age, the kindness of his manner and tone, were disarming, and his listener entertained no more personal resentment toward him than if he were an ancient sibyl uttering of necessity the will of ...
— The Mayor of Warwick • Herbert M. Hopkins
... of the Temple of Jupiter. Its present altar encloses an ancient altar which is said to have been erected by Augustus. "According to a legend of the 12th century, this was the spot where the Sibyl Tibur appeared to the emperor, whom the senate proposed to elevate to the rank of a god, and revealed to him a vision of the Virgin ...
— The Youthful Wanderer - An Account of a Tour through England, France, Belgium, Holland, Germany • George H. Heffner
... it at first took no official notice of the communication. But, like the Cumaean sibyl to Tarquin, the message came again. It was not received, but it made an unofficial impression. It was repeated. Who was this mysterious stranger? Whence came he, and ...
— True to His Home - A Tale of the Boyhood of Franklin • Hezekiah Butterworth
... Lady Penelope to Tyrrel; "we know what we are, we know not what we may be.—And now, Mr. Tyrrel, I have been your sibyl to guide you through this Elysium of ours, I think, in reward, I deserve ...
— St. Ronan's Well • Sir Walter Scott |
