"Elysian Fields" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Home of Departed Spirits, guarded by a savage three-headed dog named Cerberus. The only way of reaching the "Home," our guide told us, was by means of the ferry on the River Styx, of which Charon had charge, and to ensure the spirit having a safe passage to the Elysian Fields it was necessary that his toll should be paid with a coin placed beforehand in the mouth or hand of the departed. We did not, however, take the hint about the payment of the toll until after our return journey, ...
— From John O'Groats to Land's End • Robert Naylor and John Naylor
... hole in the ground, and the nymph Arethusa told her how her daughter had been stolen away. Full of indignation, Ceres went to complain to Jupiter, who promised that Proserpine should be restored if she had taken nothing to eat in the realm of Hades. Unfortunately Proserpine, as she walked in the Elysian fields, had gathered and eaten a pomegranate, which act constituted her a subject of those regions. To pacify Ceres, Jupiter permitted that Proserpine should spend six months of every year with Pluto in Hades, ...
— The Princess of the School • Angela Brazil
... know whether I am. Alone, by myself I think I should care nothing for the prettiest Eden in all England. I don't think I would care for a walk through the Elysian fields by myself. I am a chameleon, and take the color of those with whom I live. My future colors will not be very bright, as I take it. It's a gloomy place enough, is it not? But there are fine trees, you see, which are the only things which one ...
— The Claverings • Anthony Trollope
... the picture of no subject. Giorgione creates for us idle figures with radiant flesh, or robed in rich costumes, surrounded by lovely country, and we do not ask or care why they are gathered together. We have all had dreams of Elysian fields, "where falls not any rain, nor ever wind blows loudly," where all is rest and freedom, where music blends with the plash of fountains, and fruits ripen, and lovers dream away the days, and no one asks what went before or what follows after. The Golden Age, the haunt of fauns and nymphs: ...
— The Venetian School of Painting • Evelyn March Phillipps
... removed from us. Death itself is a removal, but the chasm is so wide that the beloved ones who have crossed it disappear within the haze and become as beloved shadows. The Greek genius understood this when he peopled the Elysian fields ...
— Without Dogma • Henryk Sienkiewicz
... observed nor felt the movement of his favorite; his thoughts were absent from the present—absent from the earth! They were wandering in the unknown future, with the spirits of those he longed to see again in the Elysian fields. ...
— Old Fritz and the New Era • Louise Muhlbach
... not change it, could not still it. Those eternal hungers of which Hermione had spoken to Artois—they must have their meaning. Somewhere, surely, there are the happy hunting-grounds, dreamed of by the red man—there are the Elysian Fields where the souls that have longed and suffered will ...
— A Spirit in Prison • Robert Hichens
... Islands—the "Elysian Fields" and "Fortunate Islands" of antiquity—have perhaps figured in fabulous lore more extensively than any others, and have been discovered, invaded, and conquered more frequently than any country in the world. There has scarcely been a nation of any maritime enterprise that has not had to do with ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... cooed Susan, her tones floating in a higher register. "Poor man! Enjoy yourself while you may, my dear," she went on. "When youth is gone, what is left? Women should sow their wild oats as well as men. I don't call them wild oats, though, but paradisaical oats. The Elysian fields ...
— The Strollers • Frederic S. Isham
... bones in his beloved Devon. A William Browne was buried at Tavistock on March 27th, 1643. This may or may not have been our author. "Tavistock,—Wilton,—Dorking," says Mr. Bullen,—"Surely few poets have had a more tranquil journey to the Elysian Fields." ...
— Adventures in Criticism • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... surprise, poor forsaken Dido. A little further on he found the home of the warriors, and held converse with his old Trojan friends. He passed by the place of doom for the wicked, Tartarus; and in the Elysian fields, full of laurel groves and meads of asphodel, he found the spirit of his father Anchises, and with him was allowed to see the souls of all their descendants, as yet unborn, who should raise the glory of their name. They are described on to the very time when the poet wrote to ...
— Young Folks' History of Rome • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... Millais, in this and other works of the kind, thought it desirable rather to paint such grass and foliage as he saw in Kent, Surrey, and other solidly accessible English counties, than to imitate even the most Elysian fields enameled by Claude, or the gloomiest branches of Hades forest rent by Salvator: and yet more, to manifest his own strong personal feeling that the humanity, no less than the herbage, near us and around, was that which it was the ...
— On the Old Road Vol. 1 (of 2) - A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays and Articles on Art and Literature • John Ruskin
... the distance at which I contemplated the whole, to distinguish the line which divided the one from the other. It was all city and all country, all country and all city. Those which lay before me I was ready to believe were the Elysian Fields. I imagined that I saw under my feet the dwellings of purified men and of gods. Certainly they were too glorious for the mere earth-born. There was a central point, however, which chiefly fixed my attention, where ...
— Zenobia - or, The Fall of Palmyra • William Ware
... cymbals and the beat of the timbrels, playing the 'March of Hell.' Whoever has heard such notes may never forget them—music set to the shrieks of the lost in Tartarus—the wild imploring of the forsaken pleading for forgiveness, as the songs from the dwellers in the Elysian fields break on their sinking souls like a ray of golden hope, too soon to be drowned by ...
— Saronia - A Romance of Ancient Ephesus • Richard Short
... plant appraised by the Greeks for its almost perennial flowering, and with which they, in their imagination, covered the Elysian fields, called ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... sort they call mysteries, and they redeem us from the pains of hell, but if we neglect them no one knows what awaits us." And on the other hand we hear, as early as the date of the Odyssey, of the Elysian fields reserved for the souls of the favourites of ...
— The Greek View of Life • Goldsworthy Lowes Dickinson
... heavenly kingdom; throne of God; presence of God; inheritance of the saints in light. Paradise, Eden, Zion, abode of the blessed; celestial bliss, glory. [Mythological heaven] Olympus; Elysium (paradise), Elysian fields, Arcadia^, bowers of bliss, garden of the Hesperides, third heaven; Valhalla, Walhalla (Scandinavian); Nirvana (Buddhist); happy hunting grounds; Alfardaws^, Assama^; Falak al aflak [Ar.] the highest ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... at least that of a princess, since she is my queen and sovereign lady; her beauty more than human, since in her all the impossible and chimerical attributes of beauty which the poets ascribe to their mistresses are realized; for her hair is gold, her forehead the Elysian Fields, her eyebrows rainbows, her eyes suns, her cheeks roses, her lips coral, her teeth pearls, her neck, alabaster, her bosom marble, her hands ivory, her whiteness snow, and her whole person without parallel. She is of those of Toboso de la Mancha; a lineage which, ...
— Wit and Wisdom of Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... in fact a world of Sanchos and it would not be the less so if every Sancho of the number were master of the whole of physical science, and used it to cook his food. Of the two court poets of Caesar's successor, one makes Cato preside over the spirits of the good in the Elysian fields, while the other speaks with respect, at all events, of the soul which remained unconquered in a conquered world—"Et cuneta terrarum subacta praeter atrocem animum Catonis." Paterculus, an officer ...
— Lectures and Essays • Goldwin Smith
... remarkable for their politeness to women, and are not remarkable for scrupulous sentiments of delicacy, were so displeased with her appearance, that they made a lane to the entrance for her, and expelled the modern Eve from the Elysian Fields, not with a "flaming sword of wrath," but with hisses softly uttered, and by gentle tokens of polite disapprobation. She tells her friends, that her cabinet is crowded with letters of the most impassioned love, from persons of the first fame, distinction, ...
— The Stranger in France • John Carr
... upon condition that he will not look upon her until they have safely returned. Orpheus descends to Hades; and though his way is barred by phantoms, his pleading appeals and the tender tones of his harp induce them to make way for him. He finds Eurydice in the Elysian fields, and taking her by the hand leads her on to the upper world. In a fatal moment he yields to her desire to see him, and she sinks back lifeless. Love, however, comes to the rescue, and full of compassion restores her. Thus the happy lovers are reunited; and the opera ...
— The Standard Operas (12th edition) • George P. Upton
... beautiful child—who even in these her infantile years was giving indication of the most brilliant intellect—why should she be doomed to a life of obscurity and toil, while the garden of the Tuileries and the Elysian Fields were thronged with children, neither so beautiful nor so intelligent, who were reveling in boundless wealth, and living in a world of luxury and splendor which, to Phlippon's imagination, seemed more alluring than any idea he could form of heaven? These ...
— Madame Roland, Makers of History • John S. C. Abbott
... frequenters of these Elysian fields, where so many men and shadows daily steal recreation, to the eyes of all drinking in those green gardens their honeyed draught of peace, this husband and wife appeared merely a distinguished-looking couple, animated by a leisured harmony. For ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... cliffs Faded in distance till his aching sight No longer knew them. Then his wearied frame Sank in the arms of sleep. But Julia's shape, In mournful guise, dread horror on her brow, Rose through the gaping earth, and from her tomb Erect (1), in form as of a Fury spake: "Driven from Elysian fields and from the plains The blest inhabit, when the war began, I dwell in Stygian darkness where abide The souls of all the guilty. There I saw Th' Eumenides with torches in their hands Prepared against thy battles; ...
— Pharsalia; Dramatic Episodes of the Civil Wars • Lucan
... surrounded by a profusion of wealth. In a few years she pined away, and died broken-hearted, entered Charon's boat with her first love, and sailed over the River of Death together, to join their friends on the Elysian Fields of Paradise, and left her parents and the man of their choice digging in the mud and dust for gold. But that lady was not Nelly Gordon. She would sooner seek the wild wood's shade; for, "Better is ...
— The Forest King - Wild Hunter of the Adaca • Hervey Keyes
... the Ethiopians [Footnote: There was also a western division of these people.], a land which even Zeus himself so loved to visit that often he was found absent from Olympus when sought by suppliants. The western region, adjoining the ocean stream, formed the Elysian Fields, the abodes of the souls of heroes and of poets. [Footnote: These conceptions, it will be understood, belong to the early period of Greek mythology. As the geographical knowledge of the Greeks became more extended, they modified considerably the topography not only of the ...
— A General History for Colleges and High Schools • P. V. N. Myers
... I tell you?" But the music had broken into a waltz, which precluded any argument, and on the mistress remarking "You young folks are missing a fine dance," involuntarily my arm encircled my old sweetheart, and we drifted away into elysian fields. ...
— A Texas Matchmaker • Andy Adams
... him with their sharp and lustrous eyes. I repeat, that it is impossible to continue melancholy in regions like these, and the ancient Greeks and Romans were right in making them the site of their Elysian fields. Most beautiful they are, even in their present desolation, for the hand of man has not cultivated them since the fatal era of the expulsion of the Moors, which drained Andalusia of at least two-thirds ...
— The Pocket George Borrow • George Borrow
... verbal boons, Congratulates his brave Bayreuth Dragoons Upon their prowess, which, he tells them, yields Joy "to old Fritz up in Elysian fields." Perhaps; but what if he is down below? In any case what we should like to know Is how his modern namesake, Private Fritz, Enjoys the fun of being blown to bits Because his Emperor has ...
— Punch, 1917.07.04, Vol. 153, Issue No. 1 • Various
... ye muses, guide, Where nature wantons in her virgin-pride; To mossy banks edg'd round with op'ning flow'rs, Elysian fields, and amaranthin bow'rs. ... Welcome, ye shades! all hail, ye vernal blooms! Ye bow'ry thickets, and prophetic glooms! Ye forests hail! ...
— Letters from an American Farmer • Hector St. John de Crevecoeur
... make you one-tenth part as comfortable as you are at home; secondly, there isn't the ghost of an amusement here, and if you came, you'd go back to Saint Winifred's with a fit of blue devils, as I always do; thirdly, the change from Semlyn to Fuzby-le-Mud would be like walking from the Elysian fields and the asphodel meadows, into mere borboros as old Edwards would say. So I don't ask you; and yet if you could come—why, the day would be marked with white in the dull ...
— St. Winifred's - The World of School • Frederic W. Farrar
... They did not envy Tiber's haughty streams, Nor wealthy Tagus with his golden ore, Nor clear Hydaspes which on pearls doth roar, Nor golden Gange that sees the sun new born, Nor Achelous with his flowery horn, Nor floods which near Elysian fields do fall: For why? thy sight did serve to them for all. No place there is so desert, so alone, Even from the frozen to the torrid zone, From flaming Hecla to great Quinsey's lake, Which thy abode could not most happy make; All those perfections ...
— Specimens with Memoirs of the Less-known British Poets, Complete • George Gilfillan
... Reincarnation, as, for instance, Ovid, who says: "Nothing perishes, although everything changes here on earth; the souls come and go unendingly in visible forms; the animals which have acquired goodness will take upon them human form"; and Virgil says: "After death, the souls come to the Elysian fields, or to Tartarus, and there meet with the reward or punishment of their deeds during life. Later, on drinking of the waters of Lethe, which takes away all memory of the past, they return to earth." But it must be admitted that Rome was deficient in spiritual insight and beliefs, ...
— Reincarnation and the Law of Karma - A Study of the Old-New World-Doctrine of Rebirth, and Spiritual Cause and Effect • William Walker Atkinson
... no reply. Mary then looked at him as Dido looked at AEneas in the Elysian fields, fierce ...
— Ten Years Later - Chapters 1-104 • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... Happy Isles, referred to in the poem, was a familiar one with the Greek poets. They became in time confounded with the Elysian fields, in which the spirits of the departed good and great enjoyed perpetual rest. It is as such that Ulysses mentions them ...
— Horace • Theodore Martin
... know that people are enjoying themselves away from me, and I feel their absence. The adagio of Beethoven's symphonies, certain scenes from Gluck's Alceste and Armide, an air from his Italian opera Telemacco, the Elysian fields of his Orfeo, will bring on rather bad attacks of this suffering; but these masterpieces bring with them also an antidote—they make one's tears flow, and then the pain is eased. On the other hand, the adagio of some of Beethoven's sonatas and Gluck's Iphigenie en Tauride are ...
— Musicians of To-Day • Romain Rolland
... golden-haired Eunice who brought her flowers and rich stuffs to cover her feet was a divinity of Cyprus in comparison. Petronius tried in vain to find the former charms in her, and, shrugging his shoulders, thought that that shadow from Elysian fields was not worth those struggles, those pains, and those tortures which had almost sucked the life out of Vinicius. But Vinicius, in love now with her spirit, loved it all the more; and when he was watching over her while asleep, ...
— Quo Vadis - A Narrative of the Time of Nero • Henryk Sienkiewicz
... possible for Great-Aunt Sophronisba Scarlett to lug her place in Hyndsville, South Carolina, along with her into the next world, plump it squarely in the middle of the Elysian Fields, plaster it over with "No Trespassing" signs, and then settle herself down to a blissful eternity of serving writs upon the angels for flying over her fences without permission, and setting the saved by the ears in general, she would ...
— A Woman Named Smith • Marie Conway Oemler
... pride, and is deficient in a sense of the congruity and fitness of things. He lifts a pebble from the ground, and puts it aside more carefully than any gem; and on a nail in a cottage-door he will hang the mantle of his thought, heavily brocaded with the gold of rhetoric. He finds his way into the Elysian fields through portals the most ...
— Dreamthorp - A Book of Essays Written in the Country • Alexander Smith
... the stables his pulses were still throbbing with joy and he trod the grass of the Elysian Fields. Young love is pure and noble, a spontaneous emotion that has nothing in it of calculation, and the wild and strange setting of his romance merely served to deepen ...
— The Hosts of the Air • Joseph A. Altsheler
... death by it! The "young'un" often speaks of you. She is getting togged out to go with her mother and do the town in the way of At Homes and such things. What a life! Yet they seem to enjoy it, and pity us. Us! In Wall street! The Elysian Fields of America! Can I do anything for you here? You know I am always glad of ...
— The Smart Set - Correspondence & Conversations • Clyde Fitch
... watches, and make a pretense of great wealth, in order to excite a desire within the hearts of people to emigrate to so happy and rich a country. They give such descriptions of America as make one believe it to contain nothing but Elysian fields, bearing seed of themselves, without toil and labor, mountains full of solid gold and silver, and wells pouring forth nothing but milk and honey, etc. Who goes as a servant, becomes a lord; who goes as a maid, becomes a milady; a peasant becomes a nobleman; a citizen and ...
— American Lutheranism - Volume 1: Early History of American Lutheranism and The Tennessee Synod • Friedrich Bente
... visions, and suffered I know not what. [1008]Errant exangues sine corpore et ossibus umbrae. Others grant the immortality thereof, but they make many fabulous fictions in the meantime of it, after the departure from the body: like Plato's Elysian fields, and that Turkey paradise. The souls of good men they deified; the bad (saith [1009]Austin) became devils, as they supposed; with many such absurd tenets, which he hath confuted. Hierome, Austin, and other Fathers of the church, hold that the ...
— The Anatomy of Melancholy • Democritus Junior
... objects of interest and many scenes of beauty I witnessed in New York and the neighbourhood. The Common Schools; the Croton Waterworks, capable of yielding an adequate supply for a million-and-a-half of people; Hoboken, with its sibyl's cave and elysian fields; the spot on which General Hamilton fell in a duel; the Battery and Castle Garden—a covered amphitheatre capable of accommodating 10,000 people; the Park, and the City Hall with its white marble front; Trinity Church; and its wealthy Corporation; Long Island, or Brooklyn, with its delightful ...
— American Scenes, and Christian Slavery - A Recent Tour of Four Thousand Miles in the United States • Ebenezer Davies
... the latter part of eternity, as the Shades of all the great writers were reposing upon beds of asphodel and moly in the Elysian fields, each happy in hearing from the lips of the others nothing but copious quotation from his own works (for so Jove had kindly bedeviled their ears), there came in among them with triumphant mien a Shade whom none knew. She (for the newcomer showed such evidences of sex as cropped hair ...
— Fantastic Fables • Ambrose Bierce
... which his friend Dekker represents him, shortly after, reaching the Elysian fields, leaves little doubt that his life was shortened not only by his angry passions, but by sheer want: "Marlow, Greene and Peele had got under the shades of a large vyne, laughing to see Nash, that was but newly come to their colledge, still ...
— The English Novel in the Time of Shakespeare • J. J. Jusserand
... not so far.... One of the men paid a visit to the great island, as they called Europe. From him the narrator learned many things about the state of men after death—the conclusion being that the souls of men arrive at the Moon, wherein lie the Elysian Fields of Homer. ...
— The Story of Extinct Civilizations of the West • Robert E. Anderson
... the world, now rising against the southern sky. Between whiles he went for a gallop. After a time Rickie stopped listening, and simply went his way. For Dido was a perfect mount, and as indifferent to the motions of Aeneas as if she was strolling in the Elysian fields. He had had a bad night, and the strong air made him sleepy. The wind blew from the Plain. Cadover and its valley had disappeared, and though they had not climbed much and could not see far, there was a sense of infinite space. The fields were enormous, like fields on the Continent, and the brilliant ...
— The Longest Journey • E. M. Forster
... prejudice in favour of inferior enjoyment, and usurp the place that belongs to the satisfactions of the intellect. These last differ from those of the body, whose development some may assist and others retard. Into the elysian fields of thought enters no satisfaction but brings with it youth, and strength, and ardour; nor is there a thing in this world on which the mind thrives more readily than the ecstasy, nay, the debauch, of eagerness, comprehension, ...
— The Buried Temple • Maurice Maeterlinck |
