"Lesbian" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... flower early, and the sun, Slanting at eve, rest bright, and linger long Upon thy purple bells! O Isabel! Daughter of genius! stateliest of our maids! 170 More beautiful than whom Alcaeus wooed, The Lesbian woman of immortal song! O child of genius! stately, beautiful, And full of love to all, save only me, And not ungentle e'en to me! My heart, 175 Why beats it thus? Through yonder coppice-wood Needs must the pathway turn, that leads straightway On to her father's house. She is alone! The ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... of the gods, and dreading the fate of Socrates, wished to retire from Athens. In a beautiful manner he pointed out his successor. There were two rivals in his schools: Menedemus the Rhodian, and Theophrastus the Lesbian. Alluding delicately to his own critical situation, he told his assembled scholars that the wine he was accustomed to drink was injurious to him, and he desired them to bring the wines of Rhodes and Lesbos. He tasted both, and declared they both did honour to their ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 1 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... to pederasty, the female population fell into the opposite extreme: it took to the love of members of its own sex. This happened especially with the women of the island of Lesbos, whence this aberration was, and still continues to be named, "Lesbian love," for it has not yet died out: it survives among us. The poetess Sappho, "the Lesbian nightingale," who lived about six hundred years before our reckoning, is considered the leading representative of this form ...
— Woman under socialism • August Bebel
... not unlike Tasso; but upon closer examination Sappho appears to be neither a classical play of the serene, typical quality of Iphigenia nor a Kuenstlerdrama in the sense in which Tasso is one. Grillparzer was not inspired by the meagre tradition of the Lesbian poetess, nor yet by anything more than the example of Goethe; he took only the outline of the story of Sappho and Phaon; his play is almost to be called a romantic love story, and the influence strongest upon him in the writing of it was that of Wieland. The situation out ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VI. • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... land," and the heart of man dissolved away in tenderness. Oh, sweet Theocritus! had I thine oaten reed, wherewith thou erst did charm the gay Sicilian plains; or, oh, gentle Bion! thy pastoral pipe wherein the happy swains of the Lesbian isle so much delighted, then might I attempt to sing, in soft Bucolic or negligent Idyllium, the rural beauties of the scene; but having nothing, save this jaded goose-quill, wherewith to wing my flight, ...
— Knickerbocker's History of New York, Complete • Washington Irving
... What could the Muse herself that Orpheus bore, The Muse herself, for her enchanting son, Whom universal nature did lament, When by the rout that made the hideous roar His gory visage down the stream was sent, Down the swift Hebrus to the Lesbian shore? ...
— The Golden Treasury - Of the Best Songs and Lyrical Poems in the English Language • Various
... light, divinely bright, Thy sunny smiles o'er all disperse; And let the music of thy voice, More softly flow than Lesbian verse. By all the witchery of love, By every fascinating art— The worldly spirit strive to move, But spare, O spare, the ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 3 September 1848 • Various |
