"Niobe" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... of Louise de la Valliere, "like Niobe, all tears," flying to the arms of the abbess of the Visitandines for refuge from the anguish of beholding the insolent De Montespan enthroned in her place. It took all the eloquence and persuasive powers of Colbert to induce the fair weeper to ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, December 1878 • Various
... beat of boulevard, the idlers of the quarter dubbed them "the pair of nutcrackers," a nickname which makes any portrait of Schmucke quite superfluous, for he was to Pons as the famous statue of the Nurse of Niobe in the Vatican is to the ...
— Cousin Pons • Honore de Balzac
... the time to which Daedalus belonged the prehistoric period, and his works and those of other artists of his day have all perished. Two very ancient specimens of sculpture remain—the Lion Gate of Mycenae and the Niobe of Mount Sipylus; but as their origin is not known, and they may not be the work of Greek artists, it is best for us to pass on to about 700 B.C., when the records of individual ...
— A History of Art for Beginners and Students - Painting, Sculpture, Architecture • Clara Erskine Clement
... them old gossip-tales of mermaids and sea-serpents, when a red-faced, bottle-nosed Frenchman clapped himself right before me, and, placing his spectacles very deliberately astride his proboscis, echoed out, 'Sacre, mille tonnerres! this is the damned pirate who boarded the "Niobe"!'" ...
— Zanoni • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... see why the Prince's chauffeur had acquired the countenance of a male Niobe. Wormlike resignation to utter misery was, we had judged, his prevailing characteristic; but hard work, ingratitude, and goodness knows how much abuse, caused the worm to turn and ...
— My Friend the Chauffeur • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... will never be dissuaded.—Cho. Yet what groans and prayers can raise thy sire from the doomed pool of Hades? you go from woes bearable to woes beyond bearing.—Elec. It is weak to forget parents so lost; rather for me the nightingale that ever wails 'Itys,' or Niobe weeping in stone.—Cho. Thou art not the only one who feels sorrow: there are thy sisters, and another now mourning in a youth obscure, but who will one day return to save.—Elec. Ah! him I yearn for, but he mocks my messages, and promises yet ...
— Story of Orestes - A Condensation of the Trilogy • Richard G. Moulton
... countenance, so indicative of conscious power and well-regulated strength, why did memory travel swiftly back among the "Stones of Venice," repeating the description of the hawthorn on Bourges Cathedral? "A perfect Niobe of May." Had this man petrified in his youth before the steady stylus of time left on his features that subtle tracery which passing years engrave on human faces? The motto of his magazine, Veritas ...
— St. Elmo • Augusta J. Evans
... his cousin in 'Childe Harold' or 'Manfred', as the most striking objects, the general aspect of the "marbled wilderness", the moonlight view of the amphitheatre, the Laocoon, the Belvedere Apollo, and the group of Niobe and her daughters. One other taste he shared with Byron—he was a lover of dogs, and "Rover" was his constant ...
— The Works Of Lord Byron, Letters and Journals, Vol. 1 • Lord Byron, Edited by Rowland E. Prothero
... of man to suffer, it is also his fortune to forget. Oblivion and sorrow share our being, as Darkness and Light divide the course of time. It is not in human nature to endure extremities, and sorrows soon destroy either us or themselves. Perhaps the fate of Niobe is no fable, but a type of the callousness of our nature. There is a time in human suffering when succeeding sorrows are but like snow falling on an iceberg. It is indeed horrible to think that our peace of mind should arise, not from a ...
— Vivian Grey • The Earl of Beaconsfield
... fleet order from Themistocles? But what man had hated Glaucon? One answer remained,—unwittingly the athlete had offended some god, forgotten some vow, or by sheer good fortune had awakened divine jealousy. Poseidon had been implacable toward Odysseus, Athena toward Hector, Artemis toward Niobe,—Glaucon could only pray that his present welcome amongst the Persians might not draw down ...
— A Victor of Salamis • William Stearns Davis
... for cruel treatment of Antiope (q.v.), they built and fortified Thebes, huge blocks of stone forming themselves into walls at the sound of Amphion's lyre (Horace, Odes, iii. 11). Amphion married Niobe, and killed himself after the loss of his wife and children (Ovid, Metam. vi. 270). The brothers were buried in one grave and worshipped as the Dioscuri "with white horses'' ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... only. We will not suffer the poets to say that he is the steward of good and evil, or that he has two casks full of destinies;—or that Athene and Zeus incited Pandarus to break the treaty; or that God caused the sufferings of Niobe, or of Pelops, or the Trojan war; or that he makes men sin when he wishes to destroy them. Either these were not the actions of the gods, or God was just, and men were the better for being punished. But that the deed was evil, and God the ...
— The Republic • Plato
... to see her. He arrived at Patesville by an early morning train before the town was awake, and walked unnoticed from the station to his mother's house. His meeting with his sister was not without emotion: he embraced her tenderly, and Rena became for a few minutes a very Niobe ...
— The House Behind the Cedars • Charles W. Chesnutt
... of letters containing shameless realistic caricatures was handed to him the afternoon following. They came fast and thick. Not a day's interval of grace was allowed. Niobe under the shafts of Diana was hardly less violently and mortally assailed. The deadliness of the attack lay in the ridicule of the daily habits of one of the most sensitive of men, as to his personal appearance, and the opinion of the world. He might have concealed the sketches, but he could ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... "Now has thy son, old man, been restor'd to thee as thou requiredst. He on his bier has been laid, and thyself shall behold and remove him Soon as the dawning appears: but of food meanwhile be we mindful. For not unmindful of food in her sorrow was Niobe, fair-hair'd, Albeit she in her dwelling lamented for twelve of her offspring. Six were the daughters, and six were the sons in the flower of their manhood. These unto death went down by the silvern bow of Apollo, Wrathful to Niobe—those smote Artemis ...
— Blackwoods Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 365, March, 1846 • Various
... inspection of the young men, we have a right to examine their organs. Is Aeagrus[67] accused, he is not acquitted before he has recited a passage from 'Niobe'[68] and he chooses the finest. If a flute-player gains his case, he adjusts his mouth-strap[69] in return and plays us the final air while we are leaving. A father on his death-bed names some husband for his daughter, who is his sole heir; but we care ...
— The Eleven Comedies - Vol. I • Aristophanes et al
... retaliation. And it is odd that it was not till thirty years after that I perceived one. It then struck me that the eternal intercession might have been equally odious to her. To find herself prostrate for ever, weeping like Niobe, and, if the Gazette was to be believed, refusing to raise herself from the mud or the flinty pavement till I had been forgiven, and reinstated in my rank—ah, how loathsome that must have been to her! Ah, how loathsome ...
— The Posthumous Works of Thomas De Quincey, Vol. 1 (2 vols) • Thomas De Quincey
... after a little, appeared the sweet shy face of my weeping Niobe of the park. I felt she saw and recognized me, and my face grew warmer at the thought. I made bold to ask one of the gentlemen standing near me who the lady might be, and not desiring to point at her, simply described her as well as possible, and ...
— The Black Wolf's Breed - A Story of France in the Old World and the New, happening - in the Reign of Louis XIV • Harris Dickson
... fain be kinglier, say, than I am? Even so, you will not sit like Theseus. You would prove a model? The Son of Priam Has yet the advantage in arms' and knees' use. 100 You're wroth—can you slay your snake like Apollo? You're grieved—still Niobe's the grander! You live—there's the Racers' frieze to follow: You ...
— Selections from the Poems and Plays of Robert Browning • Robert Browning
... his art, when he came to that of her father, he drew him with a veil over his face, meaning thereby that no kind of countenance was capable of expressing such a degree of sorrow. Which is also the reason why the poets feign the miserable mother, Niobe, having first lost seven sons, and then afterwards as many daughters (overwhelmed with her losses), to have been at ...
— The Essays of Montaigne, Complete • Michel de Montaigne
... who didst make thy vengeful might To Niobe and Tityos known, And Peleus' son, when Troy's tall height Was nigh his own, Victorious else, for thee no peer, Though, strong in his sea-parent's power, He shook with that tremendous spear The Dardan tower. He, like a pine by axes sped, Or cypress sway'd by angry ...
— Odes and Carmen Saeculare of Horace • Horace
... Adventures of Apollo, the Rape of Ganymede, the Loves of Jupiter and Danae, the Birth of Jupiter, Hector, the Rape of Europa, the Labours of Hercules, Hercules Mad, the Graces, Saturn devouring his Children, the Cybele in honour of Cybele, the Cyclops, the Sorrows of Niobe, the Tragic End of Semele, the Wars of the Titans, the Judgment of Paris, Daphne pursued by Apollo, the Bucolic Dance, ...
— A History of Pantomime • R. J. Broadbent
... the famous antique statue of the huntress Diana—at one time haughty, rapid, imperious, with eyes and arrows that dart and kill. Harry watched and wondered at this young creature, and likened her in his mind to Artemis with the ringing bow and shafts flashing death upon the children of Niobe; at another time she was coy and melting as Luna shining tenderly upon Endymion. This fair creature, this lustrous Phoebe, was only young as yet, nor had nearly reached her full splendor: but crescent and brilliant, our young gentleman of the University, his head full of poetical ...
— The History of Henry Esmond, Esq. • W. M. Thackeray
... is standing near the tomb of the seven virgin daughters of Niobe, close by Adrastus. Seest ...
— The Tragedies of Euripides, Volume I. • Euripides
... the heavy head on her lap, and looked up at the two men with a pale set face which indicated a resolve that neither of them was strong enough to overrule. They tried their utmost to persuade her, but in vain. She was fixed as a new Niobe—a stony image of young despair. So Roderick mounted his horse and rode off towards Lyndhurst, and honest Jack Wimble tied the other two horses to the gate, and took his stand beside them, a few paces from those ...
— Vixen, Volume I. • M. E. Braddon
... hand her bow was bended strong, Therein a shaft headed with mortal steel, So fit to shoot she singled forth among Her foes who first her quarries' strength should feel, So fit to shoot Latona's daughter stood When Niobe she killed and ...
— Jerusalem Delivered • Torquato Tasso
... the usher, than Mrs Root, "like Niobe, all in tears," appeared; with outstretched arms, in the gallery. Her outstretched arms, her pathetic appeals, her sugared promises, had no avail: the simple lady wanted us to go to bed, and Mr Root, to use ...
— Rattlin the Reefer • Edward Howard
... moon never beams without bringing me dreams of the beautiful Annabel Lee." And the sense of loss goes through and through one like a flight of arrows. Another noble picture, more realistic, more sculpturesque, is of Annabel mourning on her knees in her room. Her bended head makes her akin to "Niobe, ...
— The Art Of The Moving Picture • Vachel Lindsay
... enjoyment, while it is passing, but afterwards. I made a good suggestion to Miss Hosmer for the design of a fountain,—a lady bursting into tears, water gushing from a thousand pores, in literal translation of the phrase; and to call the statue "Niobe, all Tears." I doubt whether she adopts the idea; but Bernini would have been delighted with it. I should think the gush of water might be so arranged as to form a beautiful drapery about the figure, swaying and fluttering with every breath of wind, and ...
— Passages From the French and Italian Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... not enjoy it all quite as intensely as I, so they considerately give me the lion's share. Every morning, after an exhilarating interview with the Niobe of our kitchen (who thinks me irresponsible, and prays Heaven in her heart I be no worse), I put on my goloshes, take my umbrella, and trudge up and down the little streets and lanes on real and, if need be, imaginary errands. The Duke of Wellington said, 'When fair in Scotland, always carry ...
— Penelope's Experiences in Scotland • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... fleet limbs, were not really what they appeared to be. The curved brow of Apollo was like the sun's disc crescent over a hill at dawn, and his feet were as the wings of the morning, but he himself had been cruel to Marsyas and had made Niobe childless. In the steel shields of Athena's eyes there had been no pity for Arachne; the pomp and peacocks of Hera were all that was really noble about her; and the Father of the Gods himself had been too fond of the daughters of men. The two ...
— De Profundis • Oscar Wilde
... bespake. Priam! at thy request thy son is loosed, 750 And lying on his bier; at dawn of day Thou shalt both see him and convey him hence Thyself to Troy. But take we now repast; For even bright-hair'd Niobe her food Forgat not, though of children twelve bereft, 755 Of daughters six, and of six blooming sons. Apollo these struck from his silver bow, And those shaft-arm'd Diana, both incensed That oft Latona's children and her own Numbering, she scorn'd the Goddess who had ...
— The Iliad of Homer - Translated into English Blank Verse • Homer
... wide the doors for us and, passing reverently inside, we are confronted by the magnificent equestrian statue of Mr. Bookham Pryce, the founder of the firm. This masterpiece of the Post-Cubist School was originally entitled, "Niobe Weeping for her Children," but the gifted artist, in recognition of Mr. Pryce's princely offer of one thousand guineas for the group, waived his ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 159, July 7th, 1920 • Various
... decoration is that it should indicate strong liking, and that honestly. It matters not so much what the thing is, as that the builder should really love it and enjoy it, and say so plainly. The architect of Bourges Cathedral liked hawthorns; so he has covered his porch with hawthorn,—it is a perfect Niobe of May. Never was such hawthorn; you would try to gather it forthwith, but for fear of being pricked. The old Lombard architects liked hunting; so they covered their work with horses and hounds, and men blowing trumpets two yards long. The base Renaissance architects ...
— The Stones of Venice, Volume I (of 3) • John Ruskin
... doctor in the hall below. For goodness' sake, do try and look a little less like a modern Niobe when he comes up. Here, take baby," and she hugged the little fellow close and imprinted a kiss upon his dimpled cheek. "I must run down and detain him a moment until you can get ...
— 'Laramie;' - or, The Queen of Bedlam. • Charles King
... men who have worked days in the valley of death turned away from this scene there was not a dry eye in the crowd. One touch of nature, and the thought of little ones at home, welded them in heart and sympathy to this Niobe of the valley. ...
— The Johnstown Horror • James Herbert Walker
... Dieu! woman never held man—or king—by sighing," she thought, and laughed, remembering the Countess of Chateaubriant; a veritable Niobe when the monarch had sent ...
— Under the Rose • Frederic Stewart Isham
... animation, than to keep these forms of gods and heroes ever present to our fancy. The assertion may appear somewhat strange at present, but I hope in the sequel to demonstrate its justice: it is only before the groups of Niobe or Laocon that we first enter into the spirit ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art - and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel trans John Black
... There's a Niobe—weeping not for her children, she never had any, but for her youth. She is the religion of half Mayfair, though I don't know whether she's got a religion. Men who wouldn't look at her when she was sixteen, twenty-six, thirty-six, ...
— The Woman With The Fan • Robert Hichens
... she wept, Still dreaming of the dames renown'd of old, Whom hate or love of the Immortals swept Within the toils of Ate manifold; And most she loved the ancient tales that told How the great Gods, at length to pity stirr'd, Changed Niobe upon the mountains cold, To a cold stone; and Procne to ...
— Helen of Troy • Andrew Lang
... in silence, fixed and breathless; But presently the threatening arm slid down; The fierce, destroying frown Departed from her eyes, which took a deathless Expression of despair, like Niobe's— Her dead ones ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 1 July 1848 • Various
... I remember: why she would hang on him, As if encrease of Appetite had growne By what is fed on; and yet within a month? Let me not thinke on't: Frailty, thy name is woman. A little Month, or ere those shooes were old, With which she followed my poore Fathers body Like Niobe, all teares. Why she, euen she. (O Heauen! A beast that wants discourse of Reason Would haue mourn'd longer) married with mine Vnkle, My Fathers Brother: but no more like my Father, Then I to Hercules. Within a Moneth? Ere yet the salt ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare
... on it," said the King, "some evil spirit is abroad this morning; and the wenches are all bewitched, I think. Cheer up, my girl. What, in the devil's name, has changed thee at once from a Nymph to a Niobe? If thou standest there longer thou wilt grow to the very marble wall—Or—oddsfish, George, have you been bird-bolting in this ...
— Peveril of the Peak • Sir Walter Scott
... either on Greenough, Crawford, or Powers, and the two latter upon Washington Allston. There was a small vase of oracular gas from Delphos, which I trust will be submitted to the scientific analysis of Professor Silliman. I was deeply moved on beholding a vial of the tears into which Niobe was dissolved; nor less so on learning that a shapeless fragment of salt was a relic of that victim of despondency and sinful regrets,— Lot's wife. My companion appeared to set great value upon some Egyptian darkness in a blacking-jug. Several of the shelves were covered ...
— A Virtuoso's Collection (From "Mosses From An Old Manse") • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... up to him in the next, by the unquenchable worm—as he'll find out when he tries his 'down, dog' tricks; his 'drop that, will you?' None of that down there in the fire. What says the Book? My dear, my dear," and she took the girl in her arms with a fine look about her of Niobe amid arrows, "I've a bosom for your head and a roof to shelter us both, and we'll see what we shall see. There's castles and towers for the great oneyers and their minions; but mine is in the Fulham Road, my dear; my own property out of a building society ...
— Rest Harrow - A Comedy of Resolution • Maurice Hewlett
... thy longing eyes: But now the peaceful hours of sacred night Demand reflection, and to rest invite: Nor thou, O father! thus consumed with woe, The common cares that nourish life forego. Not thus did Niobe, of form divine, A parent once, whose sorrows equall'd thine: Six youthful sons, as many blooming maids, In one sad day beheld the Stygian shades; Those by Apollo's silver bow were slain, These, Cynthia's arrows stretch'd upon the plain: ...
— The Iliad of Homer • Homer
... proceeded to shake the human bundle, calling the man again by name; when, after a little while, he disinterred his terrified face from amidst the folds of his coverings, looking as pale as a Niobe in marble. ...
— The Wreck of the Nancy Bell - Cast Away on Kerguelen Land • J. C. Hutcheson
... that the reputation of the school might be seriously compromised by Gwen's behaviour, and she did not spare the culprit. Gwen did not often cry at school, but on this occasion she left the Principal's room weeping like Niobe, and poor Winnie, who had been called in to hear the tail end of the lecture, followed blinking a little on ...
— The Youngest Girl in the Fifth - A School Story • Angela Brazil
... triumphed here. For hordes of brutal soldiery had invaded the fertile soil, the tempest of war had swept the land and left it desolate. The South lay battered and bruised, and pros trate in blood, the "Niobe of nations," as sad a victim of ingratitude ...
— The Rivet in Grandfather's Neck - A Comedy of Limitations • James Branch Cabell
... the Pieta of Genoa tell, or the Lorenzo, or the parallel to this very head of Orcagna's, the face of the man borne down in the Last Judgment with the hand clenched over one of the eyes. Neither in that fresco is he wanting in dramatic episode; the adaptation of the Niobe on the spectator's left hand is far finer than Orcagna's condemned queen and princess; the groups rising below, side by side, supporting each other, are full of tenderness, and reciprocal devotion; the contest in the center for the body which a demon ...
— On the Old Road Vol. 1 (of 2) - A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays and Articles on Art and Literature • John Ruskin
... valley for the last time I was struck with the contrast it presented to what it was when I first came there. Then it was verdant, then it glowed, glowed and blossomed like my hopes and my desires. Initiated now into the gloomy secrets of a family, sharing the anguish of a Christian Niobe, sad with her sadness, my soul darkened, I saw the valley in the tone of my own thoughts. The fields were bare, the leaves of the poplars falling, the few that remained were rusty, the vine-stalks were burned, the ...
— The Lily of the Valley • Honore de Balzac
... of Amazons or Centaurs upon basreliefs, indeed, are unmistakable. The subject is indicated here by some external sign. The group of Laocoon appeals at once to a reader of Virgil, and the divine vengeance of Leto's children upon Niobe is manifest in the Uffizzi marbles. But who are the several heroes of the AEginetan pediment, and what was the subject of the Pheidian statues on the Parthenon? Do the three graceful figures of a basrelief ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Complete - Series I, II, and III • John Symonds
... Adam and Niobe were there, DISRAELI much the worse for wear, Samson before he'd cut his hair, Lord BYRON and Apollo; A female group surrounded by A camel (though I don't know why)— And all of them were ten feet high And all, ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, Feb. 26, 1919 • Various
... it is that grief should be so unbecoming!" says Cecil, laughing. "I always think what a guy Niobe must have been if she was indeed ...
— Molly Bawn • Margaret Wolfe Hamilton
... of the dawn; —there is the sea, and over it the wistfulness and pomp and pageantry of the setting sun, and the gentleness of heaven at evening;—there is the whole drama of Day with its tremendous glories; and the huge mystery of Night-time: Niobe Night, silent in ...
— The Crest-Wave of Evolution • Kenneth Morris
... built in Canada. The ships were to be under the control of the Dominion Government, which might, in case of emergency, place them at the disposal of the British Admiralty. The bill was passed in March. In the autumn two cruisers, the Rainbow and the Niobe, were bought from Britain to serve as training ships. In the following spring a naval college was opened at Halifax, and tenders were called for the construction, in Canada, of five cruisers and six destroyers. In June, 1911, at the regular Imperial Conference of that year, an ...
— The Canadian Dominion - A Chronicle of our Northern Neighbor • Oscar D. Skelton
... of the Soul that the creator of the Niobe has presented to us. All the means by which Art tempers even the Terrible, are here made use of. Mightiness of form, sensuous Grace, nay, even the nature of the subject-matter itself, soften the expression, through this, ...
— The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries: - Masterpieces of German Literature Translated into English, Volume 5. • Various
... fascinating a paragon as Eppie herself. Had Silas Marner really existed (nay! even had George Eliot created him in her maturity) neither would he have felt recompensed. Far likelier, he would have been turned to stone, in the first instance, as was poor Niobe when the divine arrows destroyed that unique collection on which she had lavished so many years. Or, may be, had he been a very strong man, he would have found a bitter joy in saving up for a new hoard. Like Carlyle, when the MS. of his masterpiece ...
— Yet Again • Max Beerbohm
... her feet, and pressed her children to her arms with an expression as terrified and full of agony as that of the noble and touching statue of the Greek Niobe. ...
— Frederick the Great and His Court • L. Muhlbach
... Oh, Maria, what a brute you make me feel. Please don't," I cried, and raising my cousin from her Niobe-like attitude, I comforted her as well as I could. She only said, "Oh, Regie dear, how kind you are," and laid her sleek head against my arm with an air of rest and trustfulness that touched my generosity to the quick. What right had I, after all, to accept an affection to ...
— A Flat Iron for a Farthing - or Some Passages in the Life of an only Son • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... her breast had received the shot. With tragic eyes she gazed out above Karen's head; then: "It is true," she said in a low voice, as though communing with herself; "I am indeed alone." She rose. With the slow step of a Niobe she moved down the room ...
— Tante • Anne Douglas Sedgwick
... enacting Niobe, I shall believe that you are chagrined at the prospect of having the sister you have repeatedly besought me to give you," he said, playfully—for him. "You have not asked me her name, and where she lives. ...
— At Last • Marion Harland
... in the Maths lesson, when there was a knock at the door and the head came in with the Herr Insp. For a moment I thought he had come about that matter, and I went as white as a sheet (at least the girls say I did; Hella says I looked like Niobe mourning for her children). Thank goodness, the sum was an easy one, and besides I can always do sums; in Maths and French I am the best in the class. But the Herr Insp. saw that I had tears in my eyes and said something ...
— A Young Girl's Diary • An Anonymous Young Girl |
