"Medusa" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... appalling things. Sir Charles had remained in the churchyard by the grave, he had looked about him from one to the other of the mounds of turf, his imagination already stimulated had been quickened by what he had seen; he stood with the face of a Medusa. ...
— Ensign Knightley and Other Stories • A. E. W. Mason
... and deification of Ino and Melicertes. Change of the Theban women to rocks and birds. Cadmus and Hermione changed to serpents. Perseus. Transformation of Atlas to a mountain. Andromeda saved from the sea monster. Story of Medusa. ...
— The Metamorphoses of Publius Ovidus Naso in English blank verse Vols. I & II • Ovid
... sun. Or we might fly with Perseus on his weary, endless journey—the light pursuing and scattering the darkness; the glittering hero, borne by the mystic sandals of Hermes, bearing the sword of the sunlight, piercing the twilight or gloaming in the land of the mystic Graiae; slaying Medusa, the solemn star-lit night; destroying the dark dragon, and setting free Andromeda the dawn-maiden; and doing many wonders more. Or in Hermes we might trace out the Master Thief of Teutonic, and Scandinavian, and Hindu ...
— Fairy Tales; Their Origin and Meaning • John Thackray Bunce
... him so myself."—"How! did you venture so far?"—"To be sure. I told him that my resolution was definite. 'Pshaw! . . . replied he angrily. 'I knew well that you were opposed to me. If we had come to an action I should have sought you out on the field of battle. I would have shown you the Medusa's head. Would you have dared to fire on me?'—'Without doubt,' I replied. 'Ah! parbleu this is too much,' he said. 'But your troops would not have obeyed you. They had preserved all their affection for me.'—'What ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... in the evening: whilst the cook was chopping his wood every blow was echoed round the bight, although we were eight miles from the shore. After leaving Port Keats we met with large quantities of a very beautiful species of medusa, it appeared to be the Medusa panopyra, figured in Peron's Atlas, (Plate 31 figure 2). It is from this animal that the French have named their Banc des Meduses. No turtle or snakes had for some time been seen and very few sharks; but other fish ...
— Narrative of a Survey of the Intertropical and Western Coasts of Australia - Performed between the years 1818 and 1822 • Phillip Parker King
... chambers; each chamber contains a masterpiece of art. In one is the Apollo Belvedere, in another the Laocoon (both safely arrived from Paris); in the third Antinous; in the fourth the Perseus of Canova, with Medusa's head and his famous group of the two pugilists. Descriptions of the three first would be ...
— After Waterloo: Reminiscences of European Travel 1815-1819 • Major W. E Frye
... Lithuanian; and a Russian variant. There must be many more in Bolte's notes to Grimm, 60. These are sufficient to prove that the whole concatenation of incident is European, though it is difficult to understand how the Medusa incident got tacked on to the preceding three, with which it is very loosely combined, the only point of connection being with the Life Token. Strangely enough, in the ancient form of the folk-tale, the Gorgon is an almost essential part of the story, though ...
— Europa's Fairy Book • Joseph Jacobs
... perfect and the moonlight so bright I could distinctly see the air-roots of our trysting tree when more than a quarter of a mile away. I thought at the time how this tree, with its crown of luxuriant foliage and its writhing roots, might well pass for some gigantic Medusa-head with its streaming serpent-hair. As I neared the tree Lona stepped from behind it and awaited my approach. She was even more impatient than I, I thought, and my heart beat more wildly than ever. "Sweet saint, have I kept you waiting?" I asked, as I came within speaking distance of her. She stood ...
— The Darrow Enigma • Melvin L. Severy
... with hymns of blessing, while the terrible Chorus of the Furies, clothed in black, with blood-stained girdles, and serpents in their hair, in masks having perhaps somewhat of the terrific beauty of Medusa-masks, are convoyed to their new sanctuary by a procession of children, women, and old men in purple robes and torches in their hands, after Athene and the Furies have sung, in response to each other, a chorus from which I must beg leave to give you ...
— Lectures Delivered in America in 1874 • Charles Kingsley
... named he proposed to write a comprehensive biography and entered into correspondence with a publisher in Germany.[A] He confronted the formal culture of the Latin races with the character of the German mind, as it were the head of the Medusa, and the consciousness of his mission kept up his spirits under the most trying circumstances. With Paris as an art centre he had done. Like Mozart's "Idomeneo" to the Opera Seria, "Rienzi" was his last tribute to the Grand Opera. They have ...
— Life of Wagner - Biographies of Musicians • Louis Nohl
... discovery was the fact that the left hand was perfect, and did not hold a bow, but some soft, elastic substance which Stephani believes to be the aegis, or shield, of Jupiter, on which was the head of Medusa. The sight of this shield paralyzed those who saw it; and though it belonged to Jupiter and Minerva, Jupiter sometimes lent it to his son Apollo to aid him in his warfare; such instances are recorded by Homer. After Stephani had told his idea of it, the German scholar Ludwig Preller pointed ...
— A History of Art for Beginners and Students - Painting, Sculpture, Architecture • Clara Erskine Clement
... had not time to feel a sensation of real fear, when cautiously her doorknob was turned and a head intruded itself which struck her as dumb as though Medusa had appeared, and drove the life-blood in a frozen current to ...
— Idle Hour Stories • Eugenia Dunlap Potts
... contains a piece of allegory, that involved in the introduction of Medusa and the Furies, which has earned perhaps a greater reputation for obscurity than it deserves, from the fact that Dante himself calls special attention ...
— Dante: His Times and His Work • Arthur John Butler
... of an untaught folk-imagination, and so far richer in the quality of beauty than the mythology of the North. Even in the sawdust of a mythological dictionary the stories of Atalanta, Narcissus, Pygmalion, Orpheus and Eurydice, Phaethon, Medusa keep their magic. ...
— The Legacy of Greece • Various
... sense-degrading She, Who swayed and sickened, scourged and scarified The unwilling slaves of fashion and discomfort A quarter of a century since! She sat, A spectral, scraggy, beet-nosed, ankle-less, Obtrusive-panted, splay-foot, slattern-shape, Of grim Medusa-faced Immodesty, Caged cumbrously in a stiff, swaying, swollen, Shin-scarifying, hose-revealing frame Of wide-meshed metal, like a monster mousetrap— Hideous, indecent, awkward! Oh, I knew her— This loathly revenant, revisiting The glimpses of the moon. She shamed my sight, ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 104, January 21, 1893 • Various
... same room with it is Girodet's ghastly "Deluge," and Gericault's dismal "Medusa." Gericault died, they say, for want of fame. He was a man who possessed a considerable fortune of his own; but pined because no one in his day would purchase his pictures, and so acknowledge his talent. At present, a scrawl from his pencil brings an enormous ...
— The Paris Sketch Book Of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh • William Makepeace Thackeray
... comfort the millions who weep? Will you give them joy for their sorrow, sweet labour, and satisfied sleep? Sweet is the fragrance of flowers, and soft are the wings of the dove, And no goodlier gift is there given than the dower of brotherly love; But you, O May-Day Medusa, whose glance makes the heart turn cold, Art a bitter Goddess to follow, a terrible Queen to behold. We are sick of spouting—the words burn deep and chafe: we are fain, To rest a little from clap-trap, and probe the wild promise of gain. For new gods we know not of are acclaimed by all babbledom's ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 102, April 30, 1892 • Various
... that it would be better to go and dine with the sharks in Table Bay than sit down again with Ronald Kenna. In her room she lay exhausted and very still for a long time, with the feeling that she had escaped from a red-hot gridiron. She looked in her mirror on entering, expecting to see a vision of Medusa, hair hanging in streaks, eyes distraught, and deep ruts in the cheeks; but her face was charming and composed, and a fixed smile curved her mouth. She shuddered at ...
— Blue Aloes - Stories of South Africa • Cynthia Stockley
... we were reclining? Whose is that letter of your mistress? Do these belong to the cardinal? Upon my honor, this man fancies the world belongs to him. There you stood, stammering, stupefied, annihilated. One might have supposed the Bastille appeared before you, and that the gigantic Medusa had converted you into stone. Is being in love conspiring? You are in love with a woman whom the cardinal has caused to be shut up, and you wish to get her out of the hands of the cardinal. That's a match you are playing with his Eminence; this letter is your game. Why should you expose ...
— The Three Musketeers • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... evolution by leaps from species to species. Koelliker, in 1872, compared the evolution of species with the processes which we can observe in the individual life in cases of alternation of generations. But a polyp only gives rise to a medusa because it has itself arisen from one, and there can be no question of a medusa ever having arisen suddenly and de novo from a polyp-bud, if only because both forms are adapted in their structure as a whole, and in every ...
— Evolution in Modern Thought • Ernst Haeckel
... do I know? More than youre worth—more than I'm getting, because youre a ninetyday wonder, the guy who put the crap on the grass and sent it nuts. Less than he'd have given Minerva-Medusa. Come and get it straight ...
— Greener Than You Think • Ward Moore
... Hence his action often stands still; a circumstance which becomes yet more apparent, from the undue extension of his choral songs. But all his poetry evinces a sublime and earnest mind. Terror is his element, and not the softer affections, he holds up a head of Medusa before the petrified spectators. In his handling Destiny appears austere in the extreme; she hovers over the heads of mortals in all her gloomy majesty. The cothurnus of Aeschylus has, as it were, the weight of iron: ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art - and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel trans John Black
... Tribunate have resulted in scandal, the least thing that the Senate can do is to remove the twenty and the sixty bad members, and replace them by well-disposed persons. The will of the nation is that the government may not be hindered from doing well, and that the head of Medusa may no longer be displayed in our Tribunes and in our Assemblies. The conduct of Sieyes in this circumstance proves perfectly that, after having concurred in the destruction of all the constitutions since 1791, he still wishes to try his hand against ...
— Worlds Best Histories - France Vol 7 • M. Guizot and Madame Guizot De Witt
... selected spot in a dark-blue coupe without armorial bearings, punctually at the hour of three. She wears always the same dress,—a kind of gray pearl-coloured silk, with a 'cachemire' shawl. In age she may be somewhat about twenty—a year or so more or less—and has a face as haunting as a Medusa's; not, however, a face to turn a man into a stone, but rather of the two turn a stone into a man. A clear paleness, with a bloom like an alabaster lamp with the light flashing through. I borrow that illustration from Sare Scott, who ...
— The Parisians, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... glad to see Oliver: I hope he will keep his tongue quiet, about the tea-kettle; for, I shall not give it till I leave the Medusa. ...
— The Letters of Lord Nelson to Lady Hamilton, Vol. I. - With A Supplement Of Interesting Letters By Distinguished Characters • Horatio Nelson
... the rocks where long ago, Above the sea that cries and breaks, Bright Perseus with Medusa's snakes Set free the maiden white ...
— Helen of Troy and Other Poems • Sara Teasdale
... with Oscar, that uneasiness of mind which I had so readily dismissed while I was in Italy, began to find its way back to me again. My imagination now set to work at drawing pictures—startling pictures of Oscar as a changed being, as a Medusa's head too terrible to be contemplated by mortal eyes. Where would he meet us? At the entrance to the village? No. At the rectory gate? No. In the quieter part of the garden which was at the back of the house? Yes! There he stood ...
— Poor Miss Finch • Wilkie Collins
... him. My wife, naturally indignant, had risen from her seat, and maddened with the excitement of the moment, she made a little speech in Arabic (not a word of which he understood) with a countenance almost as amiable as the head of Medusa. Altogether the mise-en-scene utterly astonished him. The woman, Bacheta, although savage, had appropriated the insult to her mistress, and she also fearlessly let fly at him, translating as nearly as she could the complimentary address ...
— Noble Deeds of the World's Heroines • Henry Charles Moore
... occasional glimpses which men get of themselves. Our own characters are the true Medusa-head which turns a man into ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Isaiah and Jeremiah • Alexander Maclaren
... with sticks and stones, and the fairest of them, decked in a panoply of Grecian armour, was conducted in a chariot about the lake. A fabled land! Here, they say, Poseidon was born, and Gorgo and Perseus, Medusa and Pegasus and other comely and wondrous shapes that have become familiar to ...
— Fountains In The Sand - Rambles Among The Oases Of Tunisia • Norman Douglas
... treacherous tide came in. There was not a moment to spare, and as he flew back to the small shelter of the pebbly cove, the water was already gliding close to him, and stretching its arms like a hungry medusa round the seaweed-matted lumps of scattered rock ...
— St. Winifred's - The World of School • Frederic W. Farrar
... Peter protested. "You're not to go smirking through the age and down to posterity—I'd rather see you as Medusa crowned with serpents. That's what you look ...
— The Tragic Muse • Henry James
... great analogy of the alternation of generations. If a Bipinnaria, a Brachiolaria, a Pluteus, is competent to produce the Echinoderm, which is so widely different from it; if a hydroid polype can produce the higher Medusa; if the vermiform Trematode 'nurse' can develop within itself the very unlike Cercaria, it will not appear impossible that the egg, or ciliated embryo, of a sponge, for once, under special conditions, might become a hydroid polype, or ...
— Darwiniana • Thomas Henry Huxley
... saw the third sister—she who was not immortal. She had a woman's face and form, and her countenance was beautiful, although there was something deadly in its fairness. The two scaled and winged sisters were asleep, but the third, Medusa, was awake, and she was tearing with her hands a lizard that ...
— The Golden Fleece and the Heroes who Lived Before Achilles • Padraic Colum
... lips that even at their sweetest could never lose their delicate cruelty, had no sweetness now. They were drawn into a square—inhuman as that of the Medusa; in her eyes were the fires of the pit, and her hair seemed to writhe like the serpent locks of that Gorgon whose mouth she had borrowed; all her beauty was transformed into a nameless thing—hideous, inhuman, blasting! If this was the true soul ...
— The Moon Pool • A. Merritt
... changed to "The Finish," and "The Song of the Outer Reef" to "The Song of the Coral Reef." In one case, an absolutely different title, a misappropriate title, was substituted. In place of his own, "Medusa Lights," the editor had printed, "The Backward Track." But the slaughter in the body of the poems was terrifying. Martin groaned and sweated and thrust his hands through his hair. Phrases, lines, and stanzas were cut out, interchanged, or juggled about in the most incomprehensible ...
— Martin Eden • Jack London
... Someone here is composing, with much citation of texts, a dissertation on the Gorgon Islands: de Gorgonum insulis. Medusa, according to him, was a Libyan savage who lived near Lake Triton, our present Chott Melhrir, and it is there that Perseus ...
— Atlantida • Pierre Benoit
... you into stone!" he exclaimed. "She is a regular Gorgon, with those heavy eyes of hers. I never saw such eyes. I believe she would petrify me if I had to bear them. Don't you give Medusa one of those sweet almonds, Daisy—not one, do ...
— Daisy • Elizabeth Wetherell
... paused. Had he been Medusa, the glance he bent upon his spouse would have transformed her instantly into a not particularly symmetrical statue of concrete. ...
— The Valley of the Giants • Peter B. Kyne
... the head of the Medusa, instead of turning into stone those who looked at it, had given them wings to escape they could not have flown away faster than did those poor savages at the sight ...
— My Friends the Savages - Notes and Observations of a Perak settler (Malay Peninsula) • Giovanni Battista Cerruti
... exclaimed Brown, as soon as she had disappeared behind her tent flaps. "She'll never let on to Medusa, Xantippe, Cassandra and Company. I like ...
— Police!!! • Robert W. Chambers
... shadowed by the frowning of the pure brows and by the long loose locks shivering with electric life, reminds us of those antique cameos on which we still admire the perfect features, the beautiful yet fatal brow, the haughty smile of the Medusa, whose gaze paralyzed and stopped the pulses of the human heart;—Madame Sand in vain sought another form for the expression of the emotions which tortured her insatiate soul. After having draped this figure with the highest art, accumulating every species of masculine ...
— Life of Chopin • Franz Liszt
... Hector, Diana, Greyhound, Camelion, Dragon, Anson, Narcissus, Victorieuse, Weazle, Superb, Medusa, Thames, Cynthia, Delight, Triumph, Active, Maidstone, Port ...
— Memoirs and Correspondence of Admiral Lord de Saumarez. Vol II • Sir John Ross
... powerful imagination. Truly, the Crystal Palace, in all its departments, offers wonderful means of education. I marvel what will come of it. Among the things that I admired most was Benvenuto Cellini's statue of Perseus holding the head of Medusa, and standing over her headless and still writhing body, out of which, at the severed neck, gushed a vast exuberance of snakes. Likewise, a sitting statue, by Michel Angelo, of one of the Medici, ...
— Passages From the English Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... invitation of Victor Hugo to share his home, at a time when his fortunes were at their lowest ebb. Many literary men were here at different times, generously cared for by the host, who called the retreat "the raft of Medusa." There were many pets also, especially dogs, as Victor Hugo almost shared the sentiment of Madame de Stael concerning these animals, "The more I know men, the better ...
— Home Life of Great Authors • Hattie Tyng Griswold
... and more solemn thoughts of the Night than Correggio; and these he tried to express by distorting form, and making her partly Medusa-like. In this lecture, as above stated, I am only dwelling on points hitherto unnoticed of dangerous evil in ...
— Aratra Pentelici, Seven Lectures on the Elements of Sculpture - Given before the University of Oxford in Michaelmas Term, 1870 • John Ruskin
... offering a variety of stations for the growth of these animal forests. In and out among them, moved numbers of blue and red and yellow fishes, spotted and banded and striped in the most striking manner, while great orange or rosy transparent medusa floated along near the surface. It was a sight to gaze at for hours, and no description can do justice to its surpassing beauty and interest. For once, the reality exceeded the most glowing accounts I had ever read of the wonders of a coral sea. There is perhaps ...
— The Malay Archipelago - Volume I. (of II.) • Alfred Russel Wallace
... forms of the zooephyta is entirely wanting in the transitory states of the higher ones. A progress through the inferior groups is sketched out, but no actual transmutation of species is effected. The young medusa, before it attains its destined condition of maturity, successively resembles, but never becomes, a polygastrian, a rotifer, ...
— A Theory of Creation: A Review of 'Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation' • Francis Bowen
... raised herself up slowly, stretching back her head. Her face was like the terrible tortured mask of the Medusa. She had but a moment in which to recover herself. Deliberately she spoke when her companion returned and ...
— The Desert and The Sown • Mary Hallock Foote
... eyes expanded as if they saw far beyond the crystal mountains glittering before the open windows. Her mass of dark hair had fallen, and Mrs. Tolby whispered to Mrs. Prentiss that she looked like the Medusa in the Glyptothek ...
— The White Morning • Gertrude Atherton
... the moonlight with a majesty at once magnificent and ludicrous. She had come swiftly, borne on the wings of a devouring suspicion, and she maintained for a long moment her Medusa stare of horror. Then, it was the ugliest thing that Karen had ever seen, the mask broke. Hatred, fury, malice, blind, atavistic passions distorted her face. It was to fall from one nightmare to another and a worse; for Tante seized her by the shoulders and shook and shook ...
— Tante • Anne Douglas Sedgwick
... the alferez's house closed? Where was the masculine face and the flannel shirt of the Medusa or Muse of the Civil Guard while the procession was passing? Could she have understood how unpleasant was the sight of the swelling veins of her forehead, filled, it seemed, not with blood but with vinegar and bile; of her large cigar, that worthy ornament of her red lips; and of her ...
— Friars and Filipinos - An Abridged Translation of Dr. Jose Rizal's Tagalog Novel, - 'Noli Me Tangere.' • Jose Rizal
... decidedly, 'if Medusa had but one eye, and this dear creature two, I should die as miserably as the lady who loved the Apollo Belvidere. I have had oceans of knights errant—but such! I think of writing a ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. III, No IV, April 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... Greek theatre was remarkable for irreverent farce, for parodies of the great drama of Athens. And here is testimony to the fact: all manner of comic masks, of grotesque visages; mouths distorted into impossible grins, eyes leering and goggling, noses extravagant. I sketched a caricature of Medusa, the anguished features and snaky locks travestied with satiric grimness. You remember a story which illustrates this scoffing habit: how the Roman Ambassador, whose Greek left something to be desired, excited the uproarious derision of the assembled Tarentines—with results that ...
— By the Ionian Sea - Notes of a Ramble in Southern Italy • George Gissing
... with a humorist, on my travels, who had in his chamber a cast of the Rondanini Medusa, and who assured me that the name which that fine work of art bore in the catalogues was a misnomer, as he was convinced that the sculptor who carved it intended it for Memory, the mother of the Muses. In the conversation that followed, my new friend made some extraordinary confessions. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 1, Issue 2, December, 1857 • Various
... equal to anything Medusa could do. He professed to doubt whether, since that infliction, his flesh had been quite what it was before—whether there was not something stony in its texture. The gaze had had such an effect on him as to drive him promptly from the apartment and house; it had even sent him straightway ...
— Shirley • Charlotte Bronte
... magnifying glass was enabled distinctly to discern the moluscae. When magnified, they appeared about the size of a pin's head, of a yellowish brown colour, rather oval-shaped, and having tentaculae. The medusa is a genus of molusca; and I think M. le Seur told me he reckons forty-three or forty-four ...
— A Ramble of Six Thousand Miles through the United States of America • S. A. Ferrall
... Thy name is great, MEDUSA's head thou sure must own. Do as we will, Thy coming still Turns all ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 2, April 9, 1870 • Various
... seen her; and by Cupid The young Medusa made me stupid! A face, that hath no lovers slain, Wants forces, and is near disdain. For every fop will freely peep At majesty that is asleep. But she—fair tyrant!—hates to be Gaz'd on with such impunity. Whose prudent rigour bravely bears And scorns the trick of whining tears, ...
— Poems of Henry Vaughan, Silurist, Volume II • Henry Vaughan
... reluctance, and Orsino guessed that but for his own presence she would not have given it. The expression in her face changed rapidly from that which had been there when they had been alone, hardening very quickly until it reminded Orsino of a certain mask of the Medusa which had once made an impression upon his imagination. Her eyes were fixed and the pupils grew small while the singular golden yellow colour of the iris flashed disagreeably. She did not bend her head as she ...
— Don Orsino • F. Marion Crawford
... hand she, Who wails, Alecto; and Tisiphone I' th' midst." This said, in silence he remain'd Their breast they each one clawing tore; themselves Smote with their palms, and such shrill clamour rais'd, That to the bard I clung, suspicion-bound. "Hasten Medusa: so to adamant Him shall we change;" all looking down exclaim'd. "E'en when by Theseus' might assail'd, we took No ill revenge." "Turn thyself round, and keep Thy count'nance hid; for if the Gorgon dire Be shown, ...
— The Divine Comedy, Complete - The Vision of Paradise, Purgatory and Hell • Dante Alighieri
... after him and closed the doors, bolting them quietly. When he turned he saw a change in his stepmother. Her eyes regarded him with a Medusa-like stare; a spot of dull red smouldered in each cheek. Her lips seemed suddenly thin, were working slightly. He knew that her anger was even greater than his own, though she might express ...
— Juggernaut • Alice Campbell
... only reveals strange treasures and gives water to the thirsty land and makes plain what is doing under cover of darkness; it also sometimes kills, benumbs, or paralyzes. Thus the head of the Gorgon Medusa turns into stone those who look upon it. Thus the ointment of the dervise, in the tale of Baba Abdallah, not only reveals all the treasures of the earth, but instantly thereafter blinds the unhappy man who tests its powers. And thus the hand of glory, which bursts open bars and ...
— Myths and Myth-Makers - Old Tales and Superstitions Interpreted by Comparative Mythology • John Fiske
... lavish. Lydia, feeding on the probabilities in her favor, devoured her helpless wrath along with that pleasanter nourishment; but she could not let her discretion go entirely without the reward of making a Medusa-apparition before Gwendolen, vindictiveness and jealousy finding relief in an outlet of venom, though it were as futile as that of a viper already flung on the other side of the hedge. Hence, each day, after finding out from Lush the likely time for Gwendolen to be riding, ...
— Daniel Deronda • George Eliot
... character. Her work is singularly impersonal. You gather from it that she loved the moors, that from her youth up the burden of a tragic fancy had lain hard upon her; that she had seen the face of sorrow close, meeting that Medusa-glance with rigid and defiant fortitude. So much we learn; but this is very little—a one-sided truth and therefore ...
— Emily Bront • A. Mary F. (Agnes Mary Frances) Robinson
... encountered Van Berg's slightly humorous expression, she colored more deeply than before, and recalled her eyes to the farther angle of the stage with a fixedness and rigidity as great as if it had contained the head of Medusa. ...
— A Face Illumined • E. P. Roe
... Medusa floats like light in light, Medusa, with the loveliest of all fays Pent in its irised bubble of jellied sheen, Trailing long ferns of moonlight, shot with green And crimson rays and white, Waving ethereal tendrils, ghostly sprays, Daring ...
— Collected Poems - Volume Two (of 2) • Alfred Noyes
... wildernesses," until not one of the party, excepting myself, dared move or look round for fear of seeing some dread presence, some shapeless dweller upon the threshold, some horrible apparition, the sight of which, Medusa-like, should blast them into stone. Not infrequently the situation was rendered additionally harrowing by the cook, who would suddenly interrupt the narrative, send an icy thrill down our spines, and cause the unhappy Tim's scalp to bristle even more than usual, by exclaiming ...
— The Rover's Secret - A Tale of the Pirate Cays and Lagoons of Cuba • Harry Collingwood
... springs. Tia Aldonsa looked horribly frightened, and devoutly crossed herself. The blow was so imperative as to command attention; a repetition of the summons would have forced the door from its hinges. With trembling hand Aldonsa opened the wicket, and beheld Juancho's face at the aperture. Medusa's mask, livid amidst its grim and snaky locks, could hardly have produced a more terrible effect upon the poor old woman. Speechless and petrified, she stood with fixed eyeballs, open mouth, and hands extended. True it was, that ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, No. 382, October 1847 • Various
... petrifying effect of her sudden presence on a beauty-worshipping sex. She did not walk as other mortals walk, but floated in fragrantly and Skippy stood staring rock-still, as though Hippo had flashed the head of Medusa. None of which by the way was lost on the keenly ...
— Skippy Bedelle - His Sentimental Progress From the Urchin to the Complete - Man of the World • Owen Johnson
... he, 'and decrees that Psyche shall be left upon a barren rock till a hideous monster shall come and devour her. And it is for this that men have paid her honours which were the portion only of the gods! Far better had she been born with the hair of Medusa and ...
— The Red Romance Book • Various
... other, O Phoebe! the form of thy nascent horns. There are some which bristle with twisted serpents. Shall I speak of those armies which have sometimes appeared in the air? of those clouds which follow as it were along a circle, or which resemble the head of Medusa? Have there not often been seen figures of men or ...
— Young Folks' Library, Volume XI (of 20) - Wonders of Earth, Sea and Sky • Various
... is a fact that had she been Medusa a singularly life-like replica of Dan Pennycook in concrete might have been produced, upon which the posterity of San Pasqual might gaze and be warned of the dangers attendant upon mating with the ...
— The Long Chance • Peter B. Kyne
... the French ships, and chuckled. The Victorieuse and the Medusa appeared to have taken no more than a few scars; but the third ship, the Baleine, listing heavily to larboard so as to keep the great gash in her starboard well above water, ...
— Captain Blood • Rafael Sabatini
... historical scenes were the work of an artist," Henley ventured to observe, looking at a strange head of Medusa. ...
— The Ghost of Guir House • Charles Willing Beale
... passage in which it is difficult to believe that Dante had not the pine-forest in his mind. When Virgil and the poet were waiting in anxiety before the gates of Dis, when the Furies on the wall were tearing their breasts and crying, 'Venga Medusa, e si 'l farem di smalto,' suddenly across the hideous river came a sound like that which whirlwinds make among the shattered branches and bruised stems of forest-trees; and Dante, looking out with fear upon the foam and spray and vapour of the flood, saw thousands of the damned flying before ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Second Series • John Addington Symonds
... Ho left thousands of pages of notes on everything and hardly one complete treatise on anything. He began a hundred studies and finished none of them. He had a queer twist to his mind that made him, with all his power, seek byways. The monstrous, the uncouth, fascinated him; he saw a Medusa in a spider and the universe in a drop of water. He wrote his notes in mirror-writing, from right to left; he illustrated them with a thousand fragments of exquisite drawing, all unfinished and tantalizing alike to ...
— The Age of the Reformation • Preserved Smith
... the fees Of this foul sacrilege beyond report! For Rome still flays and sells him at the court, Where paths are closed to virtue's fair increase. Now were fit time for me to scrape a treasure! Seeing that work and gain are gone; while he Who wears the robe, is my Medusa still. God welcomes poverty perchance with pleasure: But of that better life what hope have we, When the blessed banner leads ...
— Sonnets • Michael Angelo Buonarroti & Tommaso Campanella
... escape as if I'd been a horned toad sealed in a cornerstone. Gruenwald, of course, treated me as though my breath was deadly, my touch foul, and my presence evil. In Gruenwald's eyes, the only difference between me and Medusa the Gorgon was that looking at me did not turn him to stone. He kept at least one eye on me ...
— Highways in Hiding • George Oliver Smith
... inferior organisms. As a class, mammals are higher than birds; and yet they are of lower temperature, and have smaller powers of locomotion. The stationary oyster is of higher organization than the free-swimming medusa; and the cold-blooded and less heterogeneous fish is quicker in its movements than the warm-blooded and more heterogeneous sloth. But the admission that the several aspects under which this increasing contrast shows itself bear variable ratios to one another, does not negative ...
— Essays: Scientific, Political, & Speculative, Vol. I • Herbert Spencer
... of consternation as the features of Mr Bickers came to light, pale and stern. The sudden sight of Medusa's head could hardly have had a more petrifying effect. The victim himself was the first to recover. Stretching his arms and legs in relief, he sat ...
— The Master of the Shell • Talbot Baines Reed
... stick, while I run up on the side-hill yonder and get a pail of snow, which will cool it faster. Ha, ha, ha! you do look handsome; suppose Meeta could see you with your jaws stuck fast together with the candy, and your face looking like the head of Medusa. While you are getting over the lock-jaw, I will trail some on this snow to take home to little Sue, who begged me to bring her back some maple candy. Now let us ride down home on the ox-sled, with the huge tin pails full ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, May 1844 - Volume 23, Number 5 • Various
... Poetry by Lady Charlotte Elliot (from "Medusa" and other poems). Music by Robert B. Addison.—A very poetical setting ...
— The Girl's Own Paper, Vol. VIII, No. 355, October 16, 1886 • Various
... the summit or apex of the helmet was placed a sphinx, with griffins on either side. The figure of the goddess was represented in an erect martial attitude, and clothed in a robe reaching to the feet. On the breast was a head of Medusa, wrought in ivory, and a figure of Victory about four cubits high. The goddess held a spear in her hand, and an aegis lay at her feet, while on her right, and near the spear, was a figure of a serpent, believed ...
— Christianity and Greek Philosophy • Benjamin Franklin Cocker
... Athena (Minerva) had the head of the Gorgon Medusa in her shield; it turned all who looked ...
— Poemata (William Cowper, trans.) • John Milton
... think? Whenever he shut his eyes there arose before them a vision of his mother's face, a face so fearful in its awesome and unnatural calm that vaguely he wondered how he, the outcast son, upon whom it had been turned like the stare of the Medusa's head, withering his very soul, could have seen it and still live. Why did he live? Why was he not dead, he who had a sword at his side? Was it because of his innocence? He was not guilty of this dreadful crime. He had never intended to hand over Dirk van Goorl and Foy and Martin to the Inquisition. ...
— Lysbeth - A Tale Of The Dutch • H. Rider Haggard
... from the central cavity. The proboscis, so characteristic of all Jelly-Fishes, hangs from the central opening; and the tentacles, coiled within the internal cavity up to this time, now make their appearance, and we have a complete little Medusa growing upon the Hydroid head. Gradually the point by which it is attached to the parent-stock narrows and becomes more and more contracted, till the animal drops off and ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 10, Number 59, September, 1862 • Various
... on me, Lazarus," he commanded. "I have heard that your head is like the head of Medusa, and turns into stone all upon whom you look. But I should like to have a close look at you, and to talk to you before I turn into stone," he added in a spirit of playfulness that concealed ...
— Best Russian Short Stories • Various
... microscope, through which he examined one of the stomachs of the medusae. It was found to be full of diatoms, which are flinty-shelled microscopic animals of every variety of shape, such as stars, crosses, semicircles, and spirals—yet soft as are the jelly-fish, they can consume them. This one medusa had in its stomach no less than seven hundred thousand diatoms, so that it would be rather difficult to compute how many the whole shoal consumed for their dinner—they in their turn having to be ...
— My First Voyage to Southern Seas • W.H.G. Kingston
... In the first place, you have not to balance, it is necessary that you should assail the powers that dare to threaten you. In the last century when Portugal and Spain lent an asylum to James II., England attacked both. Have no fears—the image of liberty, like the head of Medusa, will affright the armies of our enemies; they fear to be abandoned by their soldiers, and that is why they prefer the line of expectation, and an armed mediation. The English constitution and an aristocratic liberty will be the basis of the reforms they will ...
— History of the Girondists, Volume I - Personal Memoirs of the Patriots of the French Revolution • Alphonse de Lamartine
... long to carry it out in this way, I resolved upon another expedient, especially as now a wretched little studio had been erected, brick on brick, so miserably built that the mere recollection of it gives me pain. So then I began the figure of Medusa, and constructed the skeleton in iron. Afterwards I put on the clay, and when ...
— The Autobiography of Benvenuto Cellini • Benvenuto Cellini
... were but paltry figures compared with those who, in the great war, went forward to the roaring devils of modern gun-fire, dwelt amid high explosives more dreadful than dragons, breathed in the fumes of poison-gas more foul than the breath of Medusa, watched and slept above mine-craters which upheaved the hell-fire of Pluto, and defied thunderbolts more certain in death-dealing blows than those ...
— Now It Can Be Told • Philip Gibbs
... allowed me to have a quiet night. My hammock was in the loft just above him, and the floor betwixt us half gone to decay, so that in parts of it no boards intervened betwixt his lodging-room and mine. He was very restless and fretful; and had Medusa been my wife, there could not have been more continued and disagreeable hissing in the bed-chamber that night. At daybreak I sent to borrow ten of the negroes who were cutting wood at a distance; I could have done with half ...
— Wanderings In South America • Charles Waterton
... and Leonardo, inspired by that wildness of fancy which was one of his characteristics, took the panel into his own room, and resolved to astonish his father by a most unlooked-for proof of his art. He determined to compose something which should have an effect similar to that of the Medusa on the shield of Perseus, and almost petrify beholders. Aided by his recent studies in natural history, he collected together from the neighboring swamps and the river-mud all kinds of hideous reptiles, as adders, lizards, toads, serpents: insects, as moths, locusts, and other crawling ...
— Great Men and Famous Women, Vol. 8 (of 8) • Various
... appeared that morning at the breakfast table, clad in sombre robes of olive green merino, and a cap bristling with olive-green berries and brambly twigs—a cap which to the more advanced of the pupils suggested the head-gear of Medusa. ...
— The Golden Calf • M. E. Braddon
... as terrifying as the head of Medusa,' he said at last, highly delighted with the plan that ...
— Knights of Art - Stories of the Italian Painters • Amy Steedman
... was elaborately pictorial. Poetry seems to have sought inspiration from painting, while painting, as we have said, inclined to genre, to luxurious representations of the amours of the gods or the adventures of heroes, with backgrounds of pastoral landscape. Shepherds fluted while Perseus slew Medusa. ...
— Theocritus, Bion and Moschus rendered into English Prose • Andrew Lang
... strange lady smiled again and said, "You are too young, for this is Medusa the Gorgon. Return to your home, and when you have done the work that awaits you there, you may be worthy to go in search of ...
— Young Folks Treasury, Volume 2 (of 12) • Various
... by preliminary impediments, and frightful medusa-heads of quackery, which deter many generous souls from entering, is of the half-articulate professions, and does not much invite the ardent kinds of ambition. The intellect required for medicine might be wholly human, and indeed should by all rules be,—the profession ...
— Latter-Day Pamphlets • Thomas Carlyle
... would have been convinced that the only way to insure the friendship and assistance of your surrounding acquaintance is to convince them you do not require it, for when once the petrifying aspect of distress and penury appear, whose qualities, like Medusa's head, can change to stone all that look upon it; when once this Gorgon claims acquaintance with us, the phantom of friendship, that before courted our notice, will vanish into unsubstantial air, and the whole world before us appear a barren waste. Pardon me, ye dear spirits of benevolence, ...
— Charlotte Temple • Susanna Rowson
... with the purpose of devouring the Andromeda of art. And now and then a Perseus, equipped with the shoes of swiftness of the ready writer, with the cap of invisibility of the editorial article, and it may be with the Medusa-head of vituperation, shows himself ready to try conclusions with the scientific dragon. Sir, I hope that Perseus will think better of it [laughter]; first, for his own sake, because the creature is hard of head, strong of jaw, and for some time past has shown a great capacity for going over and ...
— Modern Eloquence: Vol II, After-Dinner Speeches E-O • Various
... one was less the dupe to those menaces which they so solemnly pronounce in their name, than themselves. In the hands of the priests of almost all countries, their divinities resembled the head of Medusa, which, without injuring him who shewed it, petrified all others. The priests are generally the most crafty of men, and many among them are ...
— The System of Nature, Vol. 2 • Baron D'Holbach
... Thrilling Incidents of Battle Family Attacked by Indians Thrilling Incident Adventures of Dr. Bacon A Battle with Snakes Estill's Defeat Incident at Niagara Falls Skater chased by a Wolf Our Flag on the Rocky Mountains Running the Canon The Rescue Shipwreck of the Medusa Hunting the Moose Perilous Escape from Death Fire in the Forest Pirates of the Red Sea General Jackson and Weatherford Cruise of the Saldanha and Talbot A Carib's Revenge Massacre of Fort Mimms The Freshet The Panther's Den Adventure with Elephant's ...
— Thrilling Adventures by Land and Sea • James O. Brayman
... Grecian hero, of whom it was prophesied that he would slay his grandfather. Perseus, like Tammuz and Osiris, was enclosed in a chest which was cast into the sea, to be rescued, however, by a fisherman on the island of Seriphos. This hero afterwards slew Medusa, one of the three terrible sisters, the Gorgons—a demon group which links with Tiamat. In time, Perseus returned home, and while an athletic contest was in progress, he killed his grandfather with a quoit. There is no evidence, however, to show that the displacement of Enlil by Merodach had ...
— Myths of Babylonia and Assyria • Donald A. Mackenzie
... all one-eyed men from their birth; and the griffins were beasts like lions, with wings and mouth like an eagle. Let so much suffice for these griffins. But the statue of Athene is full length, with a tunic reaching to her feet; and on her breast is the head of Medusa worked in ivory, and in one hand she has a Victory four cubits high, in the other hand a spear, and at her feet a shield; and near the spear a dragon which perhaps is Erichthonius. And on the base of the statue is a representation ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Vol VIII - Italy and Greece, Part Two • Various
... appeared at the top of the stairway leading down to the floor below, and that head, like Medusa's, froze the words on the child's lips. It was a long, narrow head covered with black hair, with blue glasses concealing the fact that one eye was sightless. The senior sacristan was accustomed to appear thus without noise or warning of any kind. The two brothers ...
— The Social Cancer - A Complete English Version of Noli Me Tangere • Jose Rizal
... claim, Born to retrieve her sex's fame. The chief among the glittering crowd, Of titles, birth, and fortune proud, (As fools are insolent and vain) Madly aspired to wear her chain; But Pallas, guardian of the maid, Descending to her charge's aid, Held out Medusa's snaky locks, Which stupified them all to stocks. The nymph with indignation view'd The dull, the noisy, and the lewd; For Pallas, with celestial light, Had purified her mortal sight; Show'd her the virtues all combined, Fresh blooming, in young Harley's mind. ...
— The Poems of Jonathan Swift, D.D., Volume I (of 2) • Jonathan Swift
... Henrietta had exclaimed that he appeared ill before on his return, she was dumb now with sorrow at the change. For Paul had looked upon Medusa's head of horror, and, as well as his heart, his face seemed turned to stone. He was gentle with his mother, and let her caress him as much as she would, but nothing any one could say could ...
— Three Weeks • Elinor Glyn
... depths of which the sunshine focussed in funnels of light. Astern, deep down, when there was a breeze, bubbled a procession of milky-turquoise ghosts—the foam flung down by the hull of the Snark each time she floundered against a sea. At night the wake was phosphorescent fire, where the medusa slime resented our passing bulk, while far down could be observed the unceasing flight of comets, with long, undulating, nebulous tails—caused by the passage of the bonitas through the resentful medusa slime. And now and again, from out of the darkness ...
— The Cruise of the Snark • Jack London
... two forms they had beheld, there rose from the earth, obscuring the skies, a vague, dusky vapour, undulous, and coiling like a vast serpent,—nothing, indeed, of its shape and figure definite, but of its face one abrupt glare; a flash from two dread luminous eyes, and a young head, like the Medusa's, changing, more rapidly than I could have drawn breath, into a grinning skull. Then my terror made me bow my head, and when I raised it again, all that I had seen was vanished. But the terror still remained, even when I felt my mother's arm round me and heard her voice. And then, ...
— A Strange Story, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... strange contradiction, ever since the doors are open to every one there has been much talk of unknown and unrecognized genius. When, twelve years earlier, Ingres' "Courtesan," and that of Sigalon, the "Medusa" of Gericault, the "Massacre of Scio" by Delacroix, the "Baptism of Henri IV." by Eugene Deveria, admitted by celebrated artists accused of jealousy, showed the world, in spite of the denials of criticism, that young and vigorous ...
— Pierre Grassou • Honore de Balzac
... universally blamed. The enlistment of the Amazons, notwithstanding the efforts of the Government, still continues. The pretty women keep aloof from the movement; the recruits who have already joined are so old and ugly that possibly they may act upon an enemy like the head of Medusa. ...
— Diary of the Besieged Resident in Paris • Henry Labouchere |
