"Cerberus" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... specialist goes at it as at any objective science. His analytical and synthetic processes simply explore in his own subterranean caverns apropos of theology. He has taken over the Bible as the Kaiser has taken over Jerusalem. Wilhelm is becoming the Cerberus of Christianity—sole and surly guardian of ...
— Villa Elsa - A Story of German Family Life • Stuart Henry
... was a dumb dog, a squint-eyed Cerberus with what Count Victor for once condemned as a tribal gibberish for his language, so that he was incapable of understanding what was said to him even if he had been willing ...
— Doom Castle • Neil Munro
... dost cast all I say to the winds to waft afar, and cry, in anger, 'Why, why, dost thou torment me?' then I,—that now for thy sake would go to fetch the golden apples, or to bring thee Cerberus, the watcher of the dead,—would not go forth, didst thou stand at the court-doors and call me. I should have rest from my ...
— Theocritus, Bion and Moschus rendered into English Prose • Andrew Lang
... held the passbook which the Inland Revenue Department requires every newspaper to produce with each issue. This ill-favored individual, owner of a yellow countenance covered with red excrescences, to which he owed his nickname of "Coloquinte," indicated a personage behind the lattice as the Cerberus of the paper. This was an elderly officer with a medal on his chest and a silk skull-cap on his head; his nose was almost hidden by a pair of grizzled moustaches, and his person was hidden as completely in an ample blue overcoat as the body of the ...
— A Distinguished Provincial at Paris • Honore de Balzac
... never pass them, but we walked fast, and reached our door in safety. Here we thundered in vain. The porter was asleep, and for nearly ten minutes we heard voices within, male and female, ineffectually endeavouring to persuade the heavy-headed Cerberus to relinquish his keys. It would have been a choice moment for our friends, had any of them wished to accost us; but either they had not observed us, or perhaps they thought that C—-n walking so late must have ...
— Life in Mexico • Frances Calderon de la Barca
... the soul of their creation any more than the limitations of counterpoint and rhythm laid their incubus on the lyre of Apollo. The porches where Callicrates, Hermogenes, and Callimachus walked were guarded by no such Cerberus as the disciples of Plato encountered at the entrance of ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 7, No. 44, June, 1861 • Various
... of Orpheus was too perfect to know any fear; thankfully he hastened to the dark cave on the side of the promontory of Taenarus, and soon arrived at the entrance of Hades. Stark and grim was the three-headed watchdog, Cerberus, which guarded the door, and with the growls and the furious roaring of a wild beast athirst for its prey it greeted Orpheus. But Orpheus touched his lute, and the brute, amazed, sank into silence. And still he played, and the dog would gently have licked the player's feet, and looked up in his ...
— A Book of Myths • Jean Lang
... in this ostentatious piece of vanity; and this, like the other, is but a monument of the City's shame and dishonour, instead of its glory; come, let us take a walk in, and view its inside. Accordingly we were admitted in thro' an iron gate, within which sat a brawny Cerberus, of an Indico-colour, leaning upon a money-box; we turned in through another Iron-Barricado, where we heard such a rattling of chains, drumming of doors, ranting, hollowing, singing, and running, that I could think of nothing but Don Quevedo's ...
— Chapters in the History of the Insane in the British Isles • Daniel Hack Tuke
... last labor he was to undertake in the region in which his hero strength—so the impious king hoped—would not accompany him. This was a fight with the dark powers of the underworld. He was to bring forth from Hades Cerberus, the dog of Hell. This animal had three heads with frightful jaws, from which incessantly poison flowed. A dragon's tail hung from his body, and the hair of his head and of his back ...
— Famous Tales of Fact and Fancy - Myths and Legends of the Nations of the World Retold for Boys and Girls • Various
... asleepe, and turning on the other side, answered, What know I whether you have murthered your Companion whom you brought in yesternight, or no, and now seeke the means to escape away? O Lord, at that time I remember the earth seemed ready to open, and me thought I saw at hell gate the Dog Cerberus ready to devour mee, and then I verily beleeved, that Meroe did not spare my throat, mooved with pitty, but rather cruelly pardoned mee to bring mee to the Gallowes. Wherefore I returned to my chamber, and there ...
— The Golden Asse • Lucius Apuleius
... Might not then the barbers' aprons be a tradition of the barber-surgeons? I refrained from asking the question in that company. The scheme was, that we should pass for Carabins—such is the nickname of French students in chirurgery—and in this quality demand admission. The Cerberus of the prison grinned at the deceit, but wearied and amused by our importunities, he actually opened the quicket and admitted us. There are two grated doors of this kind, one always locked whilst the other is opened. In an instant ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 19, Issue 546, May 12, 1832 • Various
... asked if his lord was stirring? He answered with a surly aspect, "No." "At what hour does he commonly rise?" said I. "Sometimes sooner, sometimes later," said he, closing the door upon me by degrees. I then told him I was come by his lordship's own appointment, to which intimation this Cerberus replied, "I have received no orders about the matter," and was upon the point of shutting me out, when I recollected myself all of a sudden, and slipping a crown into his hand, begged as a favour that he would inquire, and let me know whether or not the earl was up. The grim janitor relented ...
— The Adventures of Roderick Random • Tobias Smollett
... the door opened. It must have been deserted by its usual Cerberus, for Mme. Giry entered without ceremony, holding a letter in her ...
— The Phantom of the Opera • Gaston Leroux
... poets said so—Odysseus visited its depths and brought back its report—but it was a gloomy place at best. Horace alludes to it always in the tone of the Hebrew Psalmists, or of Hezekiah sick to death, utilizing Minos and Cerberus and Tantalus and Sisyphus for poetic effect, yet ever with an undertone of sadness and alarm. Not Orpheus' self, he says (I, xxiv, 13), in his exquisite lament for dead Quinctilius, can bring back life-blood to the phantom pale who has joined ...
— Horace • William Tuckwell
... insanae sapientiae, a nursery of madness, [453]impudent as a court lady, that blushes at nothing. Jacobus Mycillus, Gilbertus Cognatus, Erasmus, and almost all posterity admire Lucian's luxuriant wit, yet Scaliger rejects him in his censure, and calls him the Cerberus of the muses. Socrates, whom all the world so much magnified, is by Lactantius and Theodoret condemned for a fool. Plutarch extols Seneca's wit beyond all the Greeks, nulli secundus, yet [454] ...
— The Anatomy of Melancholy • Democritus Junior
... came, Braving the region's horrors, from her throne Celestial,—so did ire and hatred goad Her bosom with their stings! Sacred she press'd The groaning threshold,—instant as she stepp'd, Fierce Cerberus his triple head uprais'd, And howl'd with triple throat. The goddess calls The night-born sisters, fierce, implacable: Before the close-barr'd adamantine gates They sit; their tresses twisting round with snakes. The queen through clouds of midnight gloom they see, And instant rise. Here dwell the ...
— The Metamorphoses of Publius Ovidus Naso in English blank verse Vols. I & II • Ovid
... in a high degree. I made a point never to admit any persons without subjecting them to the rigorous investigation of the pair of eyes that providence had been pleased to place in my head. To those who pleased me not, I was little better than a Cerberus whom it was very difficult to pass; whilst to others, I was all easiness and condescension, ushering them straight to the sanctum sanctorum, in which, behind a desk covered with letters and papers, stood—for he never sat down to his desk—the respectable individual whose lawful commands to ...
— Lavengro - The Scholar, The Gypsy, The Priest • George Borrow
... de Piemong." Girolamo, however, though he professes to be as brave as Mars himself has a great repugnance to accompanying his master to the shades below, or to the "casa del diavolo," as he calls it; and while Hercules fights with Cerberus, he shakes and trembles all over, as he does likewise when ...
— After Waterloo: Reminiscences of European Travel 1815-1819 • Major W. E Frye
... from the grip of the pack. At the head of an ice-tongue that nearly closed the gap through which we might enter the open space was a wave-worn berg shaped like some curious antediluvian monster, an icy Cerberus guarding the way. It had head and eyes and rolled so heavily that it almost overturned. Its sides dipped deep in the sea, and as it rose again the water seemed to be streaming from its eyes, as though it were weeping at our escape from the clutch ...
— South! • Sir Ernest Shackleton
... Cerberus, to be coaxed and cheated by a well-buttered sop of flattery? Return to your mutton, reverend sir, and know that I am incorruptible, and disdain to betray my cause for your thirty pieces ...
— Infelice • Augusta Jane Evans Wilson
... astronomiae, added several new constellations to the list, viz. Canes venatici (the Greyhounds), Lacerta (the Lizard), Leo minor (Little Lion), Lynx, Sextans Uraniae, Scutum or Clypeus Sobieskii (the shield of Sobieski), Vulpecula et Anser (Fox and Goose), Cerberus, Camelopardus (Giraffe), and Monoceros (Unicorn); the last two were originally due to Jacobus Bartschius. In 1679 Augustine Royer introduced the most interesting of the constellations of the southern hemisphere, the Crux australis or Southern Cross. ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 7, Slice 2 - "Constantine Pavlovich" to "Convention" • Various
... birds with sure darts he slew; The golden fruit he stole—in vain The dragon's watch; with triple chain From hell's depths Cerberus ...
— The Consolation of Philosophy • Boethius
... infernal regions. Over it, AEneas stands before the Cumoean Sybil, a very injured painting. Below, Orpheus in Hades plays before Pluto and Persephone to win back Eurydice, who lies bound before them. On the right Hercules rescues Theseus from Hades, and slays Cerberus, and on the left, Eurydice, following Orpheus, looks back, and is re-seized by the demons. These are all exceedingly good and dramatic paintings, and ...
— Luca Signorelli • Maud Cruttwell
... of that by and by," answered Pluto. "Do you see these big gates? When we pass these we are at home; and look! there is my faithful dog at the door! Cerberus; Cerberus, come here, ...
— Young Folks Treasury, Volume 2 (of 12) • Various
... one of the monsters who are said to be growing up in Rome—Apollos ravenous as Cerberus. ...
— Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ • Lew Wallace
... such a mist dost show us, That our best friends do not know us, And, for those allowed features, Due to reasonable creatures, Liken'st us to fell Chimeras, Monsters that, who see us, fear us; Worse than Cerberus or Geryon, Or, who first loved a ...
— Pipe and Pouch - The Smoker's Own Book of Poetry • Various
... doors of brass, and dragon-gate of Hell, Grim Cerberus guards, and frights the phantoms back: Ixion, who by Juno's beauty fell, Gives his frail body to the ...
— The Elegies of Tibullus • Tibullus
... and thrown them to wild beasts. The coming election had lost for him its interest. It had cost him dear. Everything might go to Sharp and the dogs; one thing was certain—his wife should not become a Catholic. He remained steadily at Vine Cottage, a Cerberus to guard his domain. The Missioner would leave Windsor on the morrow. Althea wrote him a brief note, which she sent by Mary, asking him ...
— Hubert's Wife - A Story for You • Minnie Mary Lee
... to it the Parthenius.) Coasting past (the latter), they reached Heraclea (2), a Hellenic city and a colony of the Megarians, situated in the territory of the Mariandynians. So they came to anchorage off the Acherusian Chersonese, where Heracles (3) is said to have descended to bring up the dog Cerberus, at a point where they still show the marks of his descent, a deep cleft more than two furlongs down. Here the Heracleots sent the Hellenes, as gifts of hospitality, three thousand measures of barley and two thousand jars of wine, twenty beeves and one hundred sheep. Through the flat country ...
— Anabasis • Xenophon
... a hideous noise, and presently espied a Lion and a Dragon, fighting, biting, and tearing each other. At length Guy, perceiving the Lion ready to faint, encountered the Dragon, and soon brought the ugly Cerberus roaring and yelling to the ground. The Lion, in gratitude to Guy, run by his horse's side like a true born spaniel, till lack of food made him retire ...
— Traditional Nursery Songs of England - With Pictures by Eminent Modern Artists • Various
... the labour of Hercules when he set about bringing up Cerberus from below, and all the work done by Apollo in the years when he ground corn, are but a little matter compared with the attempt to master botany. Great minds have been at it these two thousand years, and yet we are still only nibbling at the edge of the leaf, as the ploughboys bite ...
— Field and Hedgerow • Richard Jefferies
... latter, who by his saving strength delivered the earth from its Augean impurities, and, arrayed in celestial panoply, subdued the monsters of the earth, and at last, descending to Hades, slew the three-headed Cerberus and took away from men much of the fear of death. Such was the train of the Eleusinian Dionysus. If Demeter was the wanderer, he was the conqueror and ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 6, No. 34, August, 1860 • Various
... some of the most wretched and ungenial days of our life in 'learning by heart,' as it is called (oh! most ironical misnomer!), Propria quae maribus, 'Quae genus,' and 'As in praesenti,' a three-headed monster worse than Cerberus: we did learn them ad unguem; and to this hour their accursed barbarisms cling to our memory as ineradicably as the golden lines of AEschylus or Shakspeare. And what was our profit from all this loathsome labour, and the loathsome ...
— The Uncollected Writings of Thomas de Quincey—Vol. 1 - With a Preface and Annotations by James Hogg • Thomas de Quincey
... Cerberus and blackest midnight born, In Stygian Cave forlorn 'Mongst horrid shapes, and shreiks, and sights unholy. Find out som uncouth cell, Where brooding darknes spreads his jealous wings, And the night-Raven sings; There, under Ebon shades, and low-brow'd Rocks, As ragged as thy ...
— Book of English Verse • Bulchevy
... contented in her underground kingdom, where she ruled with Pluto. It was supposed to be below the volcanic grounds in southern Italy, near Lake Avernus. The entrance to it was guarded by a three-headed dog, named Cerberus, and the way to it was barred by the River Styx. Every evening Mercury brought all the spirits of the people who had died during the day to the shore of the Styx, and if their funeral rites had been properly performed, and they had a little coin on the tongue to pay the fare, ...
— Aunt Charlotte's Stories of Greek History • Charlotte M. Yonge
... at the financier's office and sent in his card by the youthful Cerberus who kept watch at the gate. The card got no farther than the ...
— Gunsight Pass - How Oil Came to the Cattle Country and Brought a New West • William MacLeod Raine
... distressing cares, we are tormented by the present, the past, and the future; and, as if we feared we should not be miserable enough, we join to the evil we suffer the remembrance of a former distress and the apprehension of some future calamity. This is the Cerberus with three heads we combat without ceasing. Our life might be gay and happy if we would; but we eagerly seek subjects of affliction to render it irksome and melancholy. We pass the first years of this life in the shades of ignorance, ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. VIII (of X) - Continental Europe II. • Various
... heaven, as long as there is any show of accuracy in the way it is rendered. But, then, you must go straight on, and not go over a difficult phrase until you know it. You must play fair. Orpheus would probably only have provoked Cerberus—certainly wouldn't have put him to sleep—if he had practised, and counted, and gone back six bars and done ...
— Somehow Good • William de Morgan
... has been the problem of every religion. And the great problem of progress has been to smuggle the newly-discovered truth past Cerberus, the priest, by preparing a sop that was to ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great - Volume 12 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Scientists • Elbert Hubbard
... not wholly fancies, master. Two gentlemen of the Palace passed to-day, and looking up at the tablet, one wagered the other on the battle to-morrow between Cerberus and the Golden Dog. I have not forgotten wholly my early lessons in ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... threshold dreadfull Cerberus[*] His three deformed heads did lay along, Curled with thousand adders venemous, 300 And lilled forth his bloudie flaming tong: At them he gan to reare his bristles strong, And felly gnarre, until ...
— Spenser's The Faerie Queene, Book I • Edmund Spenser
... belonged to the number just received, not to the preceding number. I drove immediately to the Moscow office and demanded the censor. "You can tell me what you want with him," said the ante-room Cerberus. "Send me the censor," said I. After further repetition, he retired and sent in a man who requested me to state my business. "You are not the censor," I said, after a glance at him. "Send him out, or I will go to him." Then ...
— Russian Rambles • Isabel F. Hapgood
... outrageous and lawless, was joined in love to her, the maid with glancing eyes. So she conceived and brought forth fierce offspring; first she bare Orthus the hound of Geryones, and then again she bare a second, a monster not to be overcome and that may not be described, Cerberus who eats raw flesh, the brazen-voiced hound of Hades, fifty-headed, relentless and strong. And again she bore a third, the evil-minded Hydra of Lerna, whom the goddess, white-armed Hera nourished, being angry beyond measure with the mighty Heracles. And her Heracles, the son of Zeus, ...
— Hesiod, The Homeric Hymns, and Homerica • Homer and Hesiod
... from his venison pasty a similar intimation of the evil destiny of his cousin, whom he determined, if possible, to rescue from the jaws of Cerberus. ...
— Maid Marian • Thomas Love Peacock
... you," said the white domino, "from any other assailant: no three-headed Cerberus could protect you more effectually: but you will not, therefore, fancy yourself in the lower regions, for, if I mistake not, the torment of three guardians is ...
— Cecilia Volume 1 • Frances Burney
... of icy will? Who knows—or cares to know? At least he "has to learn ere long That constant mind, and hate of wrong" Than steely pride are yet more strong; That shame can strike a blow At comradeship more fatal far Than any chance of fateful war When faction howled with Cerberus throat, When falsehood struck a felon stroke, When forgery did its worst To pull its hated quarry down, To dim, disarm, degrade, discrown. Against the array accurst That ancient chief made gallant head, Dismayed not, nor disquieted At rancour's rude assault. He shared opprobrium undeserved, But ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 99., December 6, 1890 • Various
... preceding, and still further explaining them, increased their probability, and to arrive at Tartarus or Elysium, souls were obliged to cross the rivers Styx and Acheron in the boat of the ferryman Charon, and to pass through the gates of horn or ivory, guarded by the dog Cerberus. Finally, these inventions were applied to a civil use, and ...
— The Ruins • C. F. [Constantin Francois de] Volney
... twelve labours imposed upon Heracles appear in a higher light when we remember that before the last and most difficult one, he is initiated into the Eleusinian mysteries. He is commissioned by King Eurystheus of Mycenae to bring the hell-hound Cerberus from the infernal regions and take it back there again. In order to undertake the descent into hell, Heracles had to be initiated. The Mysteries conducted man through the death of perishable things, therefore into the nether-world, and by initiation they rescued his ...
— Christianity As A Mystical Fact - And The Mysteries of Antiquity • Rudolf Steiner
... an ordinary heretic; he was a bold pantheist, and outraged the dogma of all Christian communions by saying that God, in three persons, was a Cerberus, a monster with three heads. 2. He had already been condemned to death by the Catholic doctors at Vienne in Dauphiny. 3. The affair was judged, not by Calvin, but by the magistrates of Geneva; and if it is objected that his ...
— Henry IV, Makers of History • John S. C. Abbott
... renounced the annexation of Dalmatia she might obtain from Yugoslavia or from the Peace Conference the joy of pressing to her heart the most Italian city of Rieka, which the Treaty of London renounced." This may have been a sop to Cerberus. But Bissolati's appeals to justice and to wisdom fell upon the same stony ground as his demonstration that Dalmatia's strategic value is very slight from a defensive point of view to those who possess ...
— The Birth of Yugoslavia, Volume 2 • Henry Baerlein
... of late origin I will not deny, O Cerberus, that thou hast brought to us many a booty from the island of our enemies, by means of tobacco, a weed the cause of much deceit; for how much deceit is practised in carrying it about, in mixing it, and in weighing it: a weed which entices some people ...
— George Borrow - The Man and His Books • Edward Thomas
... served: the thunderbolt of Zeus, the blazing sun of Apollo, the pipes of Pan, the sword of Mars, the hammer of Vulcan, the poppy of Morpheus, the winged foot of Mercury, the trident of Neptune, the cerberus of Pluto, the peacock of Hera, the owl of Athena, the dove of Venus, the crescent of Diana, and the sprig of wheat that represented Mother Ceres. The Myrmidons grinned in expectation of the good times coming; a Dionysian ...
— Pagan Passions • Gordon Randall Garrett
... of Jupiter slew the Lion, and destroyed the many-headed Hydra; was able to kill the fleet man-eating birds, and brought up from hades the three-headed dog, Cerberus; effectually cleansed the Augean stable from its refuse; killed the bulls and stag whose nostrils breathed fire; slew the poisonous serpent and killed Ach-e-lo-us. The guest-slaying Bu-si-ris was delighted with being stunned ...
— The Christian Foundation, April, 1880
... nay pity for a lover's moan! Ye Powers of Hell, let pity reign in you! To your dark regions led me Love alone: Downward upon his wings of light I flew. Hush, Cerberus! Howl not by Pluto's throne! For when you hear my tale of misery, you, Nor you alone, but all who here abide In this blind world, will weep by Lethe's tide. There is no need, ye Furies, thus to rage; To dart those ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Second Series • John Addington Symonds
... the world. At each side of her an adamant parent held her rigidly to the bar of judgment. An ant crawled upon her neck, but she dared not move. She lowered her eyes before the congregation—a hundred-eyed Cerberus that watched the gates through which her sins were fast thrusting her. Her soul was filled with a delirious, almost a fanatic joy. For she was out of the clutch of the tyrant, Freedom. Dogma and creed pinioned ...
— The Trimmed Lamp • O. Henry
... advantages of education, he might have been one of the bright young fellows who manage other young fellows, who control debating societies, who are prominent in mysterious associations, the secret of which is at once guarded and represented by a Cerberus of three Greek letters. ...
— The Young Mountaineers - Short Stories • Charles Egbert Craddock
... poet, have encouraged Virgil to speak such English as I could teach him, and rewarded his interpreter for the pains he has taken in bringing him over into Britain by defraying the charges of his voyage. Even Cerberus, when he had received the sop, permitted AEneas to pass freely to Elysium. Had it been offered me and I had refused it, yet still some gratitude is due to such who were willing to oblige me. But how much more to those from whom I have received the favours which they have offered ...
— Discourses on Satire and Epic Poetry • John Dryden
... Emmanuel, but the messenger could have no admittance. The Lusts of the Flesh came out of their dens. They held a meeting in the room of Mr. Mischief, and wrote to invite Diabolus to return. Mr. Profane carried their letter to Hell Gate. Cerberus opened it, and a cry of joy ran through the prison. Beelzebub, Lucifer, Apollyon, and the rest of the devils came crowding to hear the news. Deadman's bell was rung. Diabolus addressed the assembly, putting them in hopes of recovering ...
— Bunyan • James Anthony Froude
... I believe, however, that the snake is not there as a welcome visitor, but comes in the role of a self-appointed assessor and tax gatherer. I picked up and adopted a little bulldog which had been either abandoned on the cars or lost by its owner, not then thinking that this little Cerberus, as I called it, should later prove, on one occasion, to be my true and only friend when I was in dire distress and in ...
— Tales of Aztlan • George Hartmann
... rose-bud print, to wait upon the Raymounts the next morning at breakfast, startled them all with a sweet surprise. Every time she left the room the talk about her broke out afresh, and Hester's information concerning her was a welcome sop to the Cerberus of their astonishment. A more striking contrast than that between her and her two aunts could hardly have been found in the whole island. She was like a star between two gray clouds of twilight. But she had not so much share in her own ...
— Weighed and Wanting • George MacDonald
... ought your loyal peers Accomplish may, to ease your lingering grief, I, in the name of all, protest to you, That we will boldly enterprise the same, Were it to enter to black Tartarus, Where triple Cerberus with his venomous throat, Scarreth the ghosts with high resounding noise. We'll either rent the bowels of the earth, Searching the entrails of the brutish earth, Or, with his Ixion's overdaring son, Be bound ...
— 2. Mucedorus • William Shakespeare [Apocrypha]
... the well-known quest, the delightful singer Orpheus took that downward way, coming in sight of old Cerberus centiceps, he astutely feigned inattention to the hostile appearances of the multiple beast, and with a wave of his plectrum over the responsive lyre, he at the stroke raised voice. This much you know. It may be communicated to you, that there was then beheld the most singular ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... the chase, or the hunt? Allow me to differ; people always must hunt something, don't you know; primeval instinct! Used to hunt one another," he laughed. "Sometimes do now. Fox is only a substitute for the joys of the man-hunt; sort of sop to Cerberus, as it ...
— Half A Chance • Frederic S. Isham
... Grillon was the only one who ventured to visit me, at the hazard of incurring disgrace. He came five or six times to see me, and my guards were so much astonished at his resolution, and awed by his presence, that not a single Cerberus of them all would venture to refuse him ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... Pirithous, he accompanied him in his journey to Epirus, in order to steal away the king of the Molossians' daughter. The king, his own name being Aidoneus, or Pluto, called his wife Proserpina, and his daughter Cora, and a great dog which he kept Cerberus, with whom he ordered all that came as suitors to his daughter to fight, and promised her to him that should overcome the beast. But having been informed that the design of Pirithous and his companion was not to court his daughter, but to force her away, he caused them both to be seized, and ...
— The Boys' and Girls' Plutarch - Being Parts of The "Lives" of Plutarch • Plutarch
... Sessions, for keeping dogs unconfined; where said farmer was not only fined five pounds and reprimanded by the magistrates, but sentenced to three months' imprisonment. The effect was wonderful, and the reign of Cerberus ceased in the land.'—'That accounts,' said Lord Spencer, 'for what has puzzled me and Althorp for many years. We never failed to attend the sessions at Northampton, and we never could find out how we had missed ...
— Heads and Tales • Various
... phallus toward its absurd destiny. The transvaluations—the ineffable and inarticulate mysteries he fancied himself embracing—turn out to be a woman with her legs wrapped around him. His desires for the infinite sate themselves in the feeble tickle of orgasm. Cerberus seduced from his Godhood by ...
— Fantazius Mallare - A Mysterious Oath • Ben Hecht
... epithets that the dignified Reuchlin applies to Pfefferkorn are: "A poisonous beast," "a scarecrow," "a horror," "a mad dog," "a horse," "a mule," "a hog," "a fox," "a raging wolf," "a Syrian lion," "a Cerberus," "a fury of hell." In this matter Reuchlin was finally triumphant. This triumph was loudly celebrated by his friend Hutten in another poem, in which the ...
— The Story of the Innumerable Company, and Other Sketches • David Starr Jordan
... that it was no caricature—that is, if he peeped, as he pretends—but a tolerably correct likeness that might have satisfied Sall herself. By-the-by, I have a great mind to bestow it upon him as a 'sop for Cerberus,' should her jealousy ever be aroused by your reports of his devotion to me, or admiration rather, most unequivocally avowed, it must be acknowledged. I really had no intention of injuring Sally, and, if you think it best, will make the amende honorable by ...
— Miriam Monfort - A Novel • Catherine A. Warfield
... ancients, sickened with the absurdities of their own theology. Nor was the unity of the Supreme Being ousted from the Christian creed by the force of reason, but by the sword of civil government, wielded at the will of the fanatic Athanasius. The hocus-pocus phantasm of a God like another Cerberus, with one body and three heads, had its birth and growth in the blood of thousands and thousands of martyrs. And a strong proof of the solidity of the primitive faith, is its restoration, as soon as a nation arises which vindicates to itself the freedom of religious opinion, ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson
... of the strokes of the whip, nothing could move him now. The stifled groans of ruined players, as they passed out, their mute imprecations, their stupefied faces, found him impassive. He was the spirit of Play incarnate. If the young man had noticed this sorry Cerberus, perhaps he would have said, "There is only a pack of cards in that heart ...
— The Magic Skin • Honore de Balzac
... priest's business there is to pray over the master of it, who is dangerously ill; and that, in short, we have been "hunting upon a false scent" altogether. Having imparted this satisfactory information, Cerberus shuts the door in our faces (which are sufficiently blank by this time), and leaves us to think over the ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 22. October, 1878. • Various
... mighty winds swept before them the souls of the dead, whirling them around forever without rest; through regions of chill rain and sleet, where the spirits of those who had been gluttonous in their lifetime were perpetually torn into pieces by a three-headed dog called Cerberus. And after many awful scenes that Dante could hardly bear to witness, he saw in front of him the towers of the dreadful city of Dis, or Satan, in which the spirits of the damned underwent punishments that were worse than any ...
— A Treasury of Heroes and Heroines - A Record of High Endeavour and Strange Adventure from 500 B.C. to 1920 A.D. • Clayton Edwards
... ramrod; piston; stop-gap; wadding, stuffing, padding, stopping, dossil[obs3], pledget[obs3], tompion[obs3], tourniquet. cover &c. 223; valve, vent peg, spigot, slide valve. janitor, doorkeeper, porter, warder, beadle, cerberus, ostiary[obs3]. ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... before seen by any civilized race. It was at once fascinating and hazardous, environed as it was by vigilant and ferocious savages, who guarded its gates with the sleepless watchfulness of the fabled Cerberus. ...
— Voyages of Samuel de Champlain, Vol. 1 • Samuel de Champlain
... author of this character, which was printed again in 1681, and in 1704 with the following title, "The Assembly-man. Written in the Year 1647; but proves the true character of (Cerberus) the observator, MDCCIV." It was also reprinted in the Harleian Miscellany, v. 93. For an account of the author, see the Biographia Britannica, ...
— Microcosmography - or, a Piece of the World Discovered; in Essays and Characters • John Earle
... shirt on, From vulgar ken their charms do cover, From every eye but Muses' lover; In name of every ugly GOD; Whose beauty scarce outshines a toad; In name of PROSERPINE and PLUTO, Who board in hell's sublimest grotto; In name of CERBERUS and FURIES, Those damned aristocrats and tories; In presence of two witnesses, Who are as homely as you please, Who are in truth, I'd not belie 'em, Ten times as ugly, faith, as I am; But being, as ...
— A Collection of College Words and Customs • Benjamin Homer Hall
... she won't be gone from Wenham before it's finished and I can send her a presentation copy! Everything was green and white in the tea-house, except the dear little things to be sold there: weather-cocks, and door-stops, and old china. We bought specimens of these as sops to Cerberus—I mean, as presents for Aunt Mary—and when there was no longer a pretext for lingering we crept reluctantly ...
— The Lightning Conductor Discovers America • C. N. (Charles Norris) Williamson and A. M. (Alice Muriel)
... however mythically represents all utter senseless and carnal desires; mainly that of gluttony; and in the mythic sense of Hades—that is to say, so far as it represents spiritual ruin in this life, and not a literal hell—the dog Cerberus as its gatekeeper—with this special marking of his character of sensual passion, that he fawns on all those who descend, but rages against all who would return (the Virgilian "facilis descendus" being a later recognition ...
— The Queen of the Air • John Ruskin
... murdered that fellow-traveler of yours that you came here with last night, and are running away to save yourself? And now I remember that I saw Tartarus through a hole in the earth just at that hour, and Cerberus looking ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 2 • Charles Dudley Warner
... the honey cake was simply that it was a friendly present to the infernal gods; later came the conceit that it was a sop to fling to the dog Cerberus, who guarded the ...
— A Day In Old Athens • William Stearns Davis
... by one Mr. Pecke, at Skoale in Norfolk. It appears from this ballad, that the sign in question had figures of Bacchus, Diana, Justice, and Prudence, "a fellow that's small, with a quadrant discerning the wind," Temperance, Fortitude, Time, Charon and Cerberus. This sign is noticed in the Journal of Mr. E. Browne (Sir Thomas Browne's Works, ed. Wilkin, i. 53.). Under date of 4th March, 1663-64, he says:—"About three mile further I came to Scoale, where is very handsome inne, and the noblest sighne post in England, about ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 16, February 16, 1850 • Various
... part of Tempe, and the top of Ossa was occupied by Hercules with his club to see that no mortal intruded on the revels of the gods, when Jupiter discovered something at a distance running at full speed towards them. "Heyday! what have we here?" he exclaimed; "as I live, my old friend Cerberus, with a note in his jaws; why what can Pluto have got to say? Here, Cer! Cer! Cer! good dog!" The breathless animal dropped the letter at Jupiter's feet and then took his seat on the ground, panting, as well he might, after so long ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. XX. No. 556., Saturday, July 7, 1832 • Various
... had bulked big. He was there, beyond the grave Semitic face of the second Jewish secretary, on the farther side of the torrent of boiling amber sunshine pouring through a central opening in the roof of the inner hall that succeeded the vestibule of the mosaic Cerberus. An atrium some forty feet in length, paved with squares of black and yellow marble with an oblong pool in the midst of it, upon whose still crystal surface pink and crimson petals of roses had been strewn in patterns, and in the centre of ...
— When Winter Comes to Main Street • Grant Martin Overton
... their way to the ball-room in couples or alone. To find the ball in the full tide of successful operation we should arrive about half-past ten in the evening. Entering then through a long, broad passage, midway of which we deposit five sous each with the Cerberus on guard, we pass into a hall crowded with people. The hall is not larger than that of an average country-tavern ball-room in New England: the space occupied by the dancers will accommodate perhaps fifty quadrille sets. (There are no "side ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 15, - No. 90, June, 1875 • Various
... mouths, as that obdurate guardian of the infernal regions had? Do not shrug your shoulders, my dear comte: I put the question to you with an excellent reason, since poets pretend that, in order to soften Monsieur Cerberus, the visitor must take something enticing with him—a cake, for instance. Therefore, I, who view the matter in a prosaic light, that is to say in the light of reality, I say: one cake is very little for three mouths. If your jealous ...
— Ten Years Later • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... who was one of the party that had ushered Peveril into the presence of this Cerberus, now conveyed him out in silence; and, under his guidance, the prisoner was carried through a second labyrinth of passages with cells opening on each side, to that which was ...
— Peveril of the Peak • Sir Walter Scott
... incoherent; each city cheered its champion and tried to cry down all the rest: applause, advice, derision. Glaucon heard the derisive hootings, "pretty girl," "pretty pullet," from the serried host of the Laconians along the left side of the stadium; but an answering salvo, "Dog of Cerberus!" bawled by the Athenian crowds opposite, and winged at Lycon, returned the taunts with usury. As the champions approached the judges' stand a procession of full twenty pipers, attended by as many fair boys in flowing white, marched from the farther end of the stadium ...
— A Victor of Salamis • William Stearns Davis
... Nymphs; every River, and Fountayn, with a Ghost of his name, and with Nymphs; every house, with it Lares, or Familiars; every man, with his Genius; Hell, with Ghosts, and spirituall Officers, as Charon, Cerberus, and the Furies; and in the night time, all places with Larvae, Lemures, Ghosts of men deceased, and a whole kingdome of Fayries, and Bugbears. They have also ascribed Divinity, and built Temples to meer Accidents, and Qualities; such ...
— Leviathan • Thomas Hobbes
... what's the matter, sir?—down, d-n ye, down!" produced no abatement of Tearum's vociferation, which in part prevented his master from bearing the sounds of alarm which his ferocious vigilance was in the act of challenging. But the mate of the two-legged Cerberus was gifted with sharper ears than her husband. She also was now at the window; "B-t ye, gae down and let loose the dog," she said, "they're sporting the door of the Custom-house, and the auld sap at Hazlewood House has ordered off the guard. ...
— Guy Mannering • Sir Walter Scott
... we ask if these mystic influences of light and of darkness still retain their power. Can we doubt it? We have Milton's Melancholy, "of Cerberus and blackest Midnight born"—"where brooding darkness spreads his jealous wings." All this no mere refurbishing of classical lore, but the outcome of deep sympathy with the poets of the prime. And the same is true ...
— Nature Mysticism • J. Edward Mercer
... suggestion our legal Cerberus exhibited all three of his heads at once. One could keep faith with Miss Mayfield, one could see her "onct in a wile," and one could drink at Jeff's expense. Innocent Jeff saw only generosity and kindness in the man he had half-choked, and a sense of remorse ...
— Jeff Briggs's Love Story • Bret Harte
... fields of asphodel. He began to try what prayers would do, but city prayers were vain against the great rural potentate. Not only did Mr. Plomacy order his exit but, raising his stick to show the way which led to the gate that had been left in the custody of that false Cerberus Barrell, proceeded himself to see the ...
— Barchester Towers • Anthony Trollope
... freezing cold instead of in bed? Frederick found the right answer. Not more than three paces away was the door of Ingigerd's cabin; and he was the faithful dog in three senses, the watchdog, the Cerberus, the dog crazed with the rabies ...
— Atlantis • Gerhart Hauptmann
... that by and by," answered Pluto. "We are just entering my dominions. Do you see that tall gateway before us? When we pass those gates, we are at home. And there lies my faithful mastiff at the threshold. Cerberus! Cerberus! ...
— Myths That Every Child Should Know - A Selection Of The Classic Myths Of All Times For Young People • Various
... Oh Bacchus! This is too much. Here is an universal genius; sophist,—orator,—poet. To what a three-headed monster have I given birth! a perfect Cerberus of intellect! And pray what may your piece be about? Or will your tragedy, like your speech, serve equally for ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 1 (of 4) - Contibutions to Knight's Quarterly Magazine] • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... caressing whine brought me out of my heavy stupor: it was my friend, Cerberus, my intelligent and faithful dog, who had been placed as a sentinel near the door. Chilled through and through, he was asking me what was the matter and why, in such terribly cold weather, I did ...
— Contemporary Russian Novelists • Serge Persky
... not given up all hope of finding proofs of Deroulede's treason, although by the latter's attitude he remained quite convinced that such proof did exist, he was already reckoning upon the cat's paw, the sop he would offer to that Cerberus, the Committee of Public Safety, in exchange for his ...
— I Will Repay • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... wretched life; No gold nor jewels Damon left his wife, Which made the jailer faithful, since 'twere vain To hope, unbribed, this Cerberus ...
— The Tales and Novels, Complete • Jean de La Fontaine
... round the end of the mast) and sunk down upon one knee, about four yards from the water's edge, determining to thrust it down his throat in case he gave me an opportunity. I certainly felt somewhat uncomfortable in this situation, and I thought of Cerberus on the other side of the Styx ferry. The people pulled the cayman to the surface; he plunged furiously as soon as he arrived in these upper regions, and immediately went below again on their slackening the rope. I saw enough not ...
— Wanderings In South America • Charles Waterton
... wounded mariner," returned the female with tones so tremulous that they instantly softened the heart of the nautical Cerberus, "who is come to claim hospitality of a brother in the service; and shelter for the night. We would speak with Captain Henry ...
— The Red Rover • James Fenimore Cooper
... sentences on Wall Street affairs, one would certainly choose a rich American, because he would load one with money and jewels, and absolutely obey one when he was at home, and let one spend most of the time in Europe. But Mrs. Van Brounker-Courtfield says all that is only a sop to Cerberus, to keep the wives from grumbling at not being made love to like women of other nations are; that all men are hunters, and while ours in England chase foxes and are thrilled with politics the New Yorkers hunt dollars, and it is the same thing. Wall Street is their adored mistress, ...
— Elizabeth Visits America • Elinor Glyn
... an empty show, very safely, by giving his single voice, and suffering his light squadron to file off to the other side. And when a question of humanity is agitated, he may dip a sop in the milk of human kindness, to silence Cerberus, and talk of the interest which his heart takes in an attempt to make the earth no longer cry for vengeance as it sucks in its children's blood, though his cold hand may at the very moment rivet their chains, by sanctioning the abominable traffick. A minister ...
— A Vindication of the Rights of Woman - Title: Vindication of the Rights of Women • Mary Wollstonecraft [Godwin]
... act had been got through, in the course of which Sardanapalus had suffered from a distressing nightmare. He took Mr Buskin's card out of his pocket, and, hurrying out as fast as he could manage, stumped his way round to the stage door. Cerberus would fain have stopped him, but Austin flourished his card in passing, and enquired of the first civil-looking man he met where the manager was to be found. He was piloted through devious ways and under strange scaffoldings, to the foot of a steep and very dirty flight of steps—luckily ...
— Austin and His Friends • Frederic H. Balfour
... are they in their fabric than Those images which take a hold on eyes And smite the vision, since through body's pores They penetrate, and inwardly stir up The subtle nature of mind and smite the sense. Thus, Centaurs and the limbs of Scyllas, thus The Cerberus-visages of dogs we see, And images of people gone before— Dead men whose bones earth bosomed long ago; Because the images of every kind Are everywhere about us borne—in part Those which are gendered in the very air Of own accord, in part those others ...
— Of The Nature of Things • [Titus Lucretius Carus] Lucretius
... under the fierce eye of some Cerberus of a schoolmistress, about whose grounds you prowl piteously, searching for small knot-holes in the surrounding board fence, through which little souvenirs of impassioned feeling may be thrust. Sonnets are written for the town papers, full of telling phrases, and with classic allusions ...
— Dream Life - A Fable Of The Seasons • Donald G. Mitchell
... greater gods,—Iris, Hebe, the Horae;, etc. 4. Deities whose personality is less distinct,—Ate, Eris, Thanatos, Hypnos, etc. 5. Monsters, progeny of the gods,—the Harpies, the Gorgons, Pegasus, Chimaera, Cerberus, Scylla and Charybdis, the Centaurs, the Sphinx. Below the gods ...
— Outline of Universal History • George Park Fisher
... TRIPLET, the Cerberus of art, who had the first bark in this legend, and has since been out of hearing, ran from Lambeth to Covent Garden, on receipt of Mr. Vane's note. But ran he never so quick, he had built a full-sized castle in the air before he ...
— Peg Woffington • Charles Reade
... am sure there can be nothing of that," said Lady Susanna, feeling herself to be as energetic as Cerberus, and ...
— Is He Popenjoy? • Anthony Trollope
... by way of the Via Babuino across the Piazza di Spagna, and up the little hill past the convent of English nuns to the Villa Medici. Rosina rang the gate-bell, and the old braided Cerberus admitted them grumblingly. "You are late. But if it is ...
— Olive in Italy • Moray Dalton
... Dog pitiously howl'd. The clamour subsided—The wise Dog again, Resumed his harangue, in a tedious strain;— Spoke of Theseus's hounds, of the true Spartan breed;— And the hounds of Actaeon, so famed for their speed— Of three-headed Cerberus, Guardian of Hell, Whom Orpheus subdued with his musical spell. How Hecuba changed, seeing dead Polydore, And became—Vide Ovid—(here he heard the Dogs snore) "Your patience my friends, I no longer will tire, But brief make excuses, at the earnest ...
— The Council of Dogs • William Roscoe
... the rescue in a recitative of great intrinsic power, which shows at a glance how far Gluck had already distanced his predecessors in variety and dramatic strength. The second act takes place in the underworld. The chorus of Furies is both picturesque and effective, and the barking of Cerberus which sounds through it is a touch, which though its naivete may provoke a smile, is characteristic of Gluck's strenuous struggle for realism. Orpheus appears and pleads his cause in accents of touching entreaty. Time after time his pathetic song is broken by a sternly ...
— The Opera - A Sketch of the Development of Opera. With full Descriptions - of all Works in the Modern Repertory • R.A. Streatfeild
... he does not apply his views to the human body, but only to an imaginary machine which, if it could be constructed, would do all that the human body does; throwing a sop to Cerberus unworthily; and uselessly, because Cerberus was by no means stupid enough ...
— Lay Sermons, Addresses and Reviews • Thomas Henry Huxley
... the third circle, that of the rain eternal, accursed, cold, and heavy. Its rule and quality are never new. Coarse hail, and foul water and snow pour down through the tenebrous air; the earth that receives them stinks. Cerberus, a beast cruel and monstrous, with three throats barks doglike above the people that are here submerged. He has vermilion eyes, and a greasy and black beard, and a big belly, and hands armed with claws: he tears the spirits, flays them, and rends them. The ...
— The Divine Comedy, Volume 1, Hell [The Inferno] • Dante Alighieri |
