"Proteus" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... play is disappointing. The plot is too fantastic; Proteus too much of a cad; Julia, though brave and modest, is yet too faithful; Valentine {149} too easy a friend. The illusion of romance throws a transitory glamour over the scene, but, save in the development of character, the play seems ...
— An Introduction to Shakespeare • H. N. MacCracken
... be A Pagan suckled in a creed outworn; So might I, standing on this pleasant lea, Have glimpses that would make me less forlorn; Have sight of Proteus rising from the sea; Or hear old Triton ...
— A Book of Myths • Jean Lang
... compositor, of the notary public, of the scrivener, and sometimes, we fear, of the sheriff's officer in arranging for special bail. These very uncanonical services one might have fancied sufficient, with spinning and spelling, for filling up the temporal cares of any one man's time. But this restless Proteus masqueraded through a score of other characters—as seedsman, harvester, hedger and ditcher, etc. We have no doubt that he would have taken a job of paving; he would have contracted for darning old Christopher's silk stockings, or for a mile ...
— The Posthumous Works of Thomas De Quincey, Vol. II (2 vols) • Thomas De Quincey
... Egypt—men call it Pharos [Footnote: Pha'- ros.], and it is distant one day's voyage for a ship, if the wind bloweth fair in her wake. Here did the gods keep me twenty days, nor did the sea winds ever blow. Then all my corn would have been spent, and the lives also of my men lost, if the daughter of Proteus [Footnote: Pro'-teus.]had not taken pity on me. Her heart was moved to see me when I wandered alone, apart from my company, for they all roamed about the island, fishing with hooks because hunger gnawed them. So she stood by me and ...
— The Story Of The Odyssey • The Rev. Alfred J. Church
... circulation, Behold the shimmer, The wild dissipation, And, out of endeavor To change and to flow, The gas become solid, And phantoms and nothings Return to be things, And endless imbroglio Is law and the world,— Then first shalt thou know, That in the wild turmoil, Horsed on the Proteus, Thou ridest to power, And ...
— Poems - Household Edition • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... and its thoughts and acts accord with the symmetry of the law, innate in all things. Not, as drunk from the cups of Circe, does he go dashing and stumbling, now in this and then in that ditch, now against this or that rock, or like a shifting Proteus, changing now to this, now to the other aspect, never finding place, fashion, or ground to stay and settle in; but, without spoiling the harmony, conquers and overcomes the horrid monsters, and however much ...
— The Heroic Enthusiasts,(1 of 2) (Gli Eroici Furori) - An Ethical Poem • Giordano Bruno
... deep; but, as the cloud-firmament detaches itself more from the air, and has a wider range of ministry than the minor streams and seas, the highest cloud deity, Hermes, has a rank more equal with Athena than Nereus or Proteus with Neptune; and there is greater difficulty in tracing his character, because his physical dominion over the clouds can, of course, be asserted only where clouds are; and, therefore, scarcely at all in Egypt;* so that the changes which Hermes undergoes in becoming a Greek ...
— The Queen of the Air • John Ruskin
... he talks roughly to those who know less than he does; he has learned to act a part, he pretends to love his pictures, or again he lets you know the price he himself gave for the things, he offers to let you see the memoranda of the sale. He is a Proteus; in one hour he can be Jocrisse, Janot, ...
— Poor Relations • Honore de Balzac
... bay seemed perfectly lonely. Not a sound was to be heard but the regular dip of the oars, the cry of a startled bird, and the splash of a flock of seals, which had been sunning themselves on the shore, and which floundered into the sea like Proteus' flock of yore before Ulysses. Would that Proteus himself had still been there to be captured and interrogated! For the place was so entirely deserted that, saving for the remains of the wreck, he must have believed himself mistaken in the locality, and the lieutenant began to question him whether ...
— A Modern Telemachus • Charlotte M. Yonge
... delivered to him in the street, not by the usual channel, but by a blue-coated serving-man. Two or three days later Humfrey had told him of Langston's interview with Walsingham, which he had at the time laughed to scorn, thinking himself able to penetrate any disguise of that Proteus, and likewise believing that he was ...
— Unknown to History - A Story of the Captivity of Mary of Scotland • Charlotte M. Yonge
... is the conversation between Julia and her maid Lucetta, in Two Gent. I, ii, 76-93, about the letter from Proteus. ...
— Shakespeare and Music - With Illustrations from the Music of the 16th and 17th centuries • Edward W. Naylor
... motion graced. The sundry postures of thy copious Muse Who would express, a thousand tongues must use; Whose fate's no less peculiar than thy art; For as thou couldst all characters impart, So none could render thine, which still escapes, Like Proteus, in variety of shapes; 30 Who was nor this nor that; but all we find, And all we ...
— Poetical Works of Edmund Waller and Sir John Denham • Edmund Waller; John Denham
... both of men or women; where, in some measure, I gave the 'ton'. This gave me the reputation of having had some women of condition; and that reputation, whether true or false, really got me others. With the men I was a Proteus, and assumed every shape, in order to please them all: among the gay, I was the gayest; among the grave, the gravest; and I never omitted the least attentions of good-breeding, or the least offices of friendship, that could either please, ...
— The PG Edition of Chesterfield's Letters to His Son • The Earl of Chesterfield
... many things unsaid on this topic, but not longer omit our homage to the Efficient Nature, natura naturans, the quick cause, before which all forms flee as the driven snows, itself secret, its works driven before it in flocks and multitudes, (as the ancient represented nature by Proteus,[500] a shepherd), and in undescribable variety. It publishes itself in creatures, reaching from particles and spicula, through transformation on transformation to the highest symmetries, arriving at ...
— Essays • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... queen, that supreme charm of our poetry, that creator of our metre; verse that is inexhaustible in the verity of its turns of thought, unfathomable in its secrets of composition and of grace; assuming, like Proteus, a thousand forms without changing its type and character; avoiding long speeches; taking delight in dialogue; always hiding behind the characters of the drama; intent, before everything, on being in its place, and when it falls to its lot to be beautiful, being so only by ...
— Prefaces and Prologues to Famous Books - with Introductions, Notes and Illustrations • Charles W. Eliot
... in planning schemes for entering the Convent, or at least of obtaining from the Nuns some intelligence of Agnes. To execute these schemes was the only inducement which could prevail on him to quit Don Raymond. He became a very Proteus, changing his shape every day; but all his metamorphoses were to very little purpose: He regularly returned to the Palace de las Cisternas without any intelligence to confirm his Master's hopes. One day He took it into his head to disguise himself as a Beggar. ...
— The Monk; a romance • M. G. Lewis
... Giallar-horn, which could be heard throughout all the world, proclaiming the gods' passage to and fro over the quivering bridge Bifroest, was like the trumpet of the goddess Renown. As he was related to the water deities on his mother's side, he could, like Proteus, assume any form at will, and he made good use of this power on the occasion when he frustrated Loki's attempt ...
— Myths of the Norsemen - From the Eddas and Sagas • H. A. Guerber
... "Cytherea!" Lock hands and cry together: it may be That she will heed and hear And come from the waste places of the sea, Leaving old Proteus all discomforted, To cast down from his head Its crown of nameless jewels, to be hurled In ruins, with the ruined royalty Of an old world. The Nereids seek thee in the salt sea-reaches, Seek thee; and ...
— A Handbook for Latin Clubs • Various
... the same.—Mr. Lovelace a perfect Proteus. He now applauds her for that treatment of him which before he had resented; and communicates to her two letters, one from Lady Betty Lawrance, the other from Miss Montague. She wonders he did not produce those letters before, ...
— Clarissa, Volume 3 (of 9) • Samuel Richardson
... one may see that painters are no musicians, else had they furnished their angels not with harps—beautiful and sparkling as the sea-foam, as are their most graceful chords—but with this, of all instruments the most musical, whose tones admit of more variety than any, (the Proteus organ alone excepted,) and whose delicious long-drawn notes must entrance every one not absolutely soulless. Oh, they are excruciatingly delightful! And yet you shall hear this identical violin, in the ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 54, No. 338, December 1843 • Various
... arrives at the palace of Menelaus, from whom he receives some fresh information concerning the return of the Greecians, and is in particular told on the authority of Proteus, that his father is detained by Calypso. The suitors, plotting against the life of Telemachus, lie in wait to intercept him in his return to Ithaca. Penelope being informed of his departure, and of their designs to slay him, becomes inconsolable, but ...
— The Odyssey of Homer • Homer
... any mystery in what is said of Belphoebe, that her hair was sprinkled with flowers and blossoms which had been entangled in it as she fled through the woods? Or is it necessary to have a more distinct idea of Proteus, than that which is given of him in his boat, with the frighted Florimel at his ...
— Hazlitt on English Literature - An Introduction to the Appreciation of Literature • Jacob Zeitlin
... Time, sincere Posterity Always new born, yet no man knows thy birth, The arbitress of pure Sincerity, Yet, changeable, (like Proteus on the earth) Sometime in plenty, sometime joined with dearth. Always to come, yet always present here, Whom all run after, none come ...
— Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 475 - Vol. XVII, No. 475. Saturday, February 5, 1831 • Various
... intended, without hesitating to consider the component parts, or doubling, proving, and selecting, like other painters." Hence Giordano was also called, Il proteo della pittura, and Il Falmine della pittura—the Proteus, and the Lightning of painting. As an instance of the latter, it is recorded that he painted a picture while his guests were ...
— Anecdotes of Painters, Engravers, Sculptors and Architects, and Curiosities of Art, (Vol. 2 of 3) • Shearjashub Spooner
... home In far-renowned Abydos: down on him He hurled Atymnius, the goodly son Whom Pegasis the bright-haired Nymph had borne To strong Emathion by Granicus' stream. Dead by his side he laid Orestius' son, Proteus, who dwelt 'neath lofty Ida's folds. Ah, never did his mother welcome home That son from war, Panaceia beauty-famed! He fell by Odysseus' hands, who spilt the lives Of many more whom his death-hungering spear ...
— The Fall of Troy • Smyrnaeus Quintus
... she had been playing off all her graces, while Sir James admired her in every Proteus form of affectation, Mr. Barclay, as she thought, evidently pained by her coquetry, retired from the sofa, where she sat, and went to Mrs. Hungerford's table, where he took up a book and began to read. Lady Angelica spared no art to distract his attention: she contrived for herself an employment, ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. VII - Patronage • Maria Edgeworth
... thus on a very elastic theory of development that the Modernists rely. 'The differences between the larval and final stages of many an insect are often far greater than those which separate kind from kind.' And so this Proteus of a Church, which has changed its form so completely since the Gospel was first preached in the subterranean galleries of Rome, may undergo another equally startling metamorphosis and come to believe in a ...
— Outspoken Essays • William Ralph Inge
... dread I saw her coming towards me; for I knew that she was no mortal woman. But her look was gracious, and her voice was sweet; so I took courage as she said: 'Who art thou, stranger, and why lingerest thou with thy company in this desert place? I am Eidothea, daughter of Proteus, the ancient one of the sea; and I am ready to help thee, if thou wilt tell ...
— Stories from the Odyssey • H. L. Havell
... at this late hour of the day, it is still conceivable that such of them as would verily prefer to see, suppose, instead of a tramp with a harmonium, Orpheus with his lute, or Arion on his dolphin, pleased Proteus rising beside him from the sea,—might, standing on the "pleasant lea" of Margate or Brighton, have ...
— On the Old Road Vol. 1 (of 2) - A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays and Articles on Art and Literature • John Ruskin
... replaced him, had the King lived to come back. But my presumption to the contrary is more strongly corroborated by what had recently passed: the Duchess had actually prevailed on the King to see Bolingbroke secretly in his closet. That intriguing Proteus, aware that he might not obtain an audience long enough to efface former prejudices, and make sufficient impression on the King against Sir Robert, and in his own favour, went provided with a memorial, which he left in the closet. and begged his Majesty to peruse coolly at his leisure. ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 1 • Horace Walpole
... come to its refined and subtle workings in our nature, when we think of its Proteus-like changeableness, its power of assuming the various guises even of duty or religion; when we reflect how it can clothe itself in the choicest garb of art, or science, or divine philosophy, we find very likely that we are always in danger of being ...
— Sermons at Rugby • John Percival
... [6] play'd: In HERO AND LEANDER [7] one did gain A lasting memory; in Tamburlaine, This Jew, with others many, th' other wan The attribute of peerless, being a man Whom we may rank with (doing no one wrong) Proteus for shapes, and Roscius for a tongue,— So could he speak, so vary; nor is't hate To merit in him [8] who doth personate Our Jew this day; nor is it his ambition To exceed or equal, being of condition More modest: this is all that he intends, (And that too at the urgence of ...
— The Jew of Malta • Christopher Marlowe
... it is for that Proteus, self-love, to elude the presence of mind, the inexorable eye, the fast hand, of this ...
— Classic French Course in English • William Cleaver Wilkinson
... thy world around, Where form and life and reasoning man are found; He loves the mind, in all its modes, to trace, And all the manners of the changing race; Silent he walks the road of life along, And views the aims of its tumultuous throng: He finds what shapes the Proteus-passions take, And what strange waste of life and joy they make, And loves to show them in their varied ways, With honest blame or with unflattering praise: 'Tis good to know, 'tis pleasant to impart, These turns and movements of the human heart: The stronger features ...
— The Borough • George Crabbe
... the spoils of robbers, and to protect the oppressor, the Times printing-office now stands, to diffuse its ceaseless floods of knowledge, to spread its resistless aegis over the poor and the oppressed, and ever to use its vast power to extend liberty and crush injustice, whatever shape the Proteus assumes, whether it sits upon a throne or ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury
... Proteus-like idea, with as many appellations as the nine-titled Corcyra! 'Give me,' I demanded of a scholar some time ago, 'give me a definition of poetry.' 'Tresvolontiers;' and he proceeded to his library, brought me a Dr. Johnson, and overwhelmed me with a definition. Shade of the ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 5 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... genius, but yet no writer was ever further removed from everything like a mannerism derived from habit or personal peculiarities. Rather is he, such is the diversity of tone and color which vary according to the quality of his subjects he assumes, a very Proteus. Each of his compositions is like a world of its own, moving in its own sphere. They are works of art, finished in one pervading style, which revealed the freedom and judicious choice of their author. ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. IV • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... poured freely into space, but our world is a halting place where this energy is conditioned. Here the Proteus works his spells; the selfsame essence takes a million shapes and hues, and finally dissolves into its primitive and almost formless form. The sun comes to us as heat; he quits us as heat; and between his entrance and departure the multiform powers of our globe appear. They are ...
— McGuffey's Sixth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey
... excessive flow of spirits, and had it now, was, in his days of absconding, known by the name of M'Cruslick[499], which it seems was the designation of a kind of wild man in the Highlands, something between Proteus and Don Quixote; and so he was called here. He made much jovial noise. Dr. Johnson was so delighted with this scene, that he said, 'I know not how we shall get away.' It entertained me to observe him sitting by, while we danced, sometimes in deep meditation,—sometimes ...
— Life Of Johnson, Volume 5 • Boswell
... Cambridge, "Freshwater fish, my dears. I wish you would wait for us! I don't want you to attend the submarine wedding of our old friends Tame and Isis." To which Pica rejoined, likewise talking out of Spenser, that Proteus would provide a nice ancient nymph to tend on them. Her father then chimed in, saying, "You will spare our nerves by keeping to dry land unless you can secure the ancient mariner who ...
— More Bywords • Charlotte M. Yonge
... leading carnival societies, Comus, Momus, and Proteus, are understood to be connected with three of the city's four leading clubs, all of which stand within easy range of one another on the uptown side of Canal Street: the Boston Club (taking its name from an old card game); the Pickwick (named for Dickens' genial gentleman, ...
— American Adventures - A Second Trip 'Abroad at home' • Julian Street
... is in most cases a refutation of their claim upon our notice,[329] and even those which are not in themselves exceptionable become so from the circumstances or manner in which they took place. Apollonius is said to have been an incarnation of the God Proteus; his birth was announced by the falling of a thunderbolt and a chorus of swans; his death signalized by a wonderful voice calling him up to Heaven; and after death he appeared to a youth to convince him of the immortality of the soul.[330] He is reported to have known the language of birds; to have ...
— Historical Sketches, Volume I (of 3) • John Henry Newman
... like a painter's model, only more platonic. She is the East to me; for I cannot understand the East pure and undiluted. She is a country-woman of mine on her father's side, and therefore easier to understand. Impersonality and fatalism, the Eastern Proteus, in the grip of self-insistence and idealism, the British Hercules. A butterfly body with this cosmic war shaking it incessantly. Poor child! no wonder she seems ...
— Kimono • John Paris
... length of the passages is now estimated at over 5 1/2 m. The connexion with the Ottokar grotto was established in 1890. The Magdalene grotto, about an hour's walk to the north, is celebrated for the extraordinary subterranean amphibian, the proteus anguinus, first discovered there. It is about a foot in length, lives on snails and worms and is provided with both ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... bush remained untouched, but the universal eucalyptus, which I had expected to find grey and monotonous, was a Proteus it shape and colour, now branching like an oak or a cork tree, now feathered like a birch, or glowing like an arbutus with an endless variety of ...
— A Dictionary of Austral English • Edward Morris
... Organism—Function—Environment, and theories of evolution may be classified in relation to these. To some it has always seemed that the fundamental fact is the living organism,—a creative agent, a striving will, a changeful Proteus, selecting its environment, adjusting itself to it, self-differentiating and self-adaptive. The necessity of recognising the importance of the organism is admitted by all Darwinians who start with inborn variations, but it is open to question whether the whole truth of what we might call ...
— Darwin and Modern Science • A.C. Seward and Others
... alas! Are the illusions of this proteus life! All, all is false: through every phasis still 'T is shadowy and deceitful. It assumes The semblances of things and specious shapes; But the lost traveller might as soon rely On the evasive spirit of the marsh, Whose lantern beams, and vanishes, and flits, O'er bog, and rock, and pit, and ...
— The Poetical Works of Henry Kirke White - With a Memoir by Sir Harris Nicolas • Henry Kirke White
... but their hope is not connected with exertion. Those who court popularity, are not less despicable or less wretched; their reward is uncertain: what is more uncertain than the affection of the multitude? The Proteus character of Wharton, so admirably drawn by Pope, is a striking picture of a man who has laboured through life with the vague ...
— Practical Education, Volume I • Maria Edgeworth
... the lower provinces towards the sea. The towers which were there raised served for lighthouses, and were, at the same time, temples, denominated from some title of the Deity, such as Canoph, Caneph, Cneph; also Perses, Proteus, Phanes, and Canobus. They were on both accounts much resorted to by mariners, and enriched with offerings. Here were deposited charts of the coast, and of the navigation of the Nile, which were engraved on pillars, and in aftertimes sketched ...
— A New System; or, an Analysis of Antient Mythology. Volume II. (of VI.) • Jacob Bryant
... Proteus—came to the rescue at last,' said Guy, laughing; 'I could not stir, and the tree bent so frightfully with the current that I expected every minute we should all go together; so I had nothing for it but to halloo as loud as I ...
— The Heir of Redclyffe • Charlotte M. Yonge
... very interesting observation of Goldmann's deserves mention here. Goldmann found in preparations of the pancreas of proteus sanguineus, containing parasites, that the eosinophil cells in the neighbourhood of the encapsuled parasites were much increased, whereas they were sought for in vain, in more ...
— Histology of the Blood - Normal and Pathological • Paul Ehrlich
... mean I must believe all this man says, because the decurions have put him here?" cried Arnobius. "Here is this Polemo saying that Proteus is matter, and that minerals and vegetables are his flock; that Proserpine is the vital influence, and Ceres the efficacy of the heavenly bodies; that there are mundane spirits, and supramundane; and then his doctrine about triads, monads, and ...
— Callista • John Henry Cardinal Newman
... would admire them) at the caverns of Adelsberg, in Carniola (in the south of Austria, near the top of the Adriatic), which runs, I believe, for miles in length; and in the lakes of which, in darkness from its birth until its death, lives that strange beast, the Proteus a sort of long newt which never comes to perfection—I suppose for want of the genial sunlight which makes all things grow. But he is blind; and more, he keeps all his life the same feathery gills which newts have when they are babies, ...
— Madam How and Lady Why - or, First Lessons in Earth Lore for Children • Charles Kingsley
... subjects from Carthaginian history, and with the river Ebro flowing round the edge as an ingenious variant of the Ocean-river on the shield of Achilles. A Carthaginian fleet cruising off the coast of Italy falls in with Proteus, who takes the opportunity of prophesying the course of the war. Hannibal at Zama pursues a phantom of Scipio, which flies before him and disappears like that of Aeneas before Turnus. Such was the degradation to which the noble epic machinery had now sunk. Soon after the ...
— Latin Literature • J. W. Mackail
... endure by myself in the light of the sunshine Guiltless, the death of a kid!' But the boy still lingered around her, Loth, like a boy, to forego her, and waken the cliffs with his laughter. 'Yon is the foe, then? A beast of the sea? I had deemed him immortal. Titan, or Proteus' self, or Nereus, foeman of sailors: Yet would I fight with them all, but Poseidon, shaker of mountains, Uncle of mine, whom I fear, as is fit; for he haunts on Olympus, Holding the third of the world; and the gods all rise at his coming. ...
— Andromeda and Other Poems • Charles Kingsley
... clothes—made upon the time principle, so that when hard pressed by the authorities he could in a minute or two transmute himself into the appearance of a nun very different from the individual described to them. Indeed he was such a perfect Proteus that no vigilance of the Executive was ever a match for his versatility of appearance, swiftness of foot, and caution. These frequent defeats of the authorities of that day made him extremely popular with ...
— Willy Reilly - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton
... asked, not much enlightened by what he had permitted me to see. "Anaerobic bacilli and spores," he replied, excitedly. "The things that produce the well-known 'gas gangrene' of the trenches, the gas phlegmon bacilli—all sorts, the bacillus aerogenes capsulatus, bacillus proteus, pyogenic cocci, and others, actively gas-forming microbes that can't live in air. The method I took to develop and discover them was that of Col. Sir Almroth Wright of the British army ...
— The Treasure-Train • Arthur B. Reeve
... that war, to distant shores we stray. To Proteus' Pillars, far remote from men An exile, Menelaus wends his way; Ulysses shudders at the Cyclops' den; Why speak of Pyrrhus, by Orestes slain? Or poor Idomeneus, expelled his state? Of Locrians, cast upon the Libyan plain? Of Agamemnon, greatest of the great, ...
— The Aeneid of Virgil - Translated into English Verse by E. Fairfax Taylor • Virgil
... effacing the features of a brute, and putting those of a man in their place, we might be entitled to say that the sun of Proteus has risen ...
— Wanderings In South America • Charles Waterton
... evasive about the man, and he had as many moods and lights as a sea Proteus, ugly and common, like that batrachian order, but often enkindled and exceedingly satisfactory as a servant. He often forgot the place where he left off a certain day's work, and it had to be recalled to him. He was irregular, too, in going and coming, and ...
— Bohemian Days - Three American Tales • Geo. Alfred Townsend
... not hesitate to conceal his thunderbolts when he deigned to love; and Cupid but too often has recourse to the aid of Proteus to secure success. We have, therefore, no ...
— The Poacher - Joseph Rushbrook • Frederick Marryat
... account, while the inveterate fault-finder neutralizes, as far as possible, every attempt made by others to do good. To perform any task perfectly to his liking, would be as impossible as to 'make a portrait of Proteus, or fix the figure of the fleeting air.' To speak favourably of anybody or anything is a trait of generosity entirely foreign to his nature; from temperament and confirmed habit, he 'must be cruel only to be kind.' The only benefit he ...
— Talkers - With Illustrations • John Bate
... sensitive mobile boy, a born poseur, who passes his life in cloud-castles where he always dramatizes himself as the hero, who has no continuity of purpose, and no capacity of self-sacrifice except in spasms of impulse, and in emotional feeling which is real to itself; a spiritual Proteus who deceives even himself, and only now and then recognizes his own moral illusiveness, like Hawthorne's scarecrow-gentleman before the mirror: but with the irresistible instincts also of the born literary creator and constructor. The other characters ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 4 • Charles Dudley Warner
... And frame my Face to all occasions. Ile drowne more Saylers then the Mermaid shall, Ile slay more gazers then the Basiliske, Ile play the Orator as well as Nestor, Deceiue more slyly then Vlisses could, And like a Synon, take another Troy. I can adde Colours to the Camelion, Change shapes with Proteus, for aduantages, And set the murtherous Macheuill to Schoole. Can I doe this, and cannot get a Crowne? Tut, were it farther off, Ile plucke ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare
... is as much an illustration of the mind's powers and depravations as what has befallen us. Each new law and political movement has meaning for you. Stand before each of its tablets and say, 'Under this mask did my Proteus nature hide itself.' This remedies the defect of our too great nearness to ourselves. This throws our actions into perspective; and as crabs, goats, scorpions, the balance and the waterpot lose their meanness when hung as signs in the zodiac, so I ...
— Essays, First Series • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... up with a start. Like Proteus who changed his shape to save himself the trouble of prophesying, he swiftly changed the key to save himself providing accurate information that ...
— The Extra Day • Algernon Blackwood
... sense will enable any one to comprehend what is meant by case. Its real character is extremely simple; but in the different grammars it assumes as many meanings as Proteus had shapes. The most that has been written on it, however, is mere verbiage. What, then, is meant by case? In speaking of a horse, for instance, we say he is in a good case, when he is fat, and in a bad case, ...
— English Grammar in Familiar Lectures • Samuel Kirkham
... I had begun to speak about Cistercian abbeys, I should have been sure to get on crystals presently; and if I had begun upon crystals, I should soon have drifted into architecture." Those who conceive of Ruskin as being thus a kind of literary Proteus like to point to the year 1860, that of the publication of his tracts on economics, as witnessing the greatest and suddenest of his changes, that from reforming art to reforming society; and it is true that this year affords a simple dividing-line ...
— Selections From the Works of John Ruskin • John Ruskin
... inexhaustible inventory of all the manifestations of life, and why attempt to include all its species and their unknown varieties in narrow classes? Why say that there are only two modes of life, instinct on the one hand and intelligence on the other, "when we know how subtle and illusive is this Proteus, and that there are not two things only, but a thousand dissimilar things" (8/20.): or rather is it not always the same thing, everywhere present and acting in living matter, and susceptible of infinite degrees, ...
— Fabre, Poet of Science • Dr. G.V. (C.V.) Legros
... against furious oppressors. The issues are not as plain, the edge is not as sharp as we suppose when we look back on the result. The question to be fought out between king and parliament was not monarchy or republic, democracy or aristocracy, freedom or the proteus that resists or betrays freedom. At many points the Stuart cause resembles that of constitutional monarchy on the Continent, as it was in France under Lewis XVIII, and in Prussia under the Emperor William. If Bismarck had been there he would have been the strength of the ...
— Lectures on Modern history • Baron John Emerich Edward Dalberg Acton
... practice. Sometimes the dead were buried close to the house. The author of 'La Cite Antique' cites, among other ancient texts bearing upon the subject, an interesting invocation from the tragedy of Helen, by Euripides:—"All hail! my father's tomb! I buried thee, Proteus, at the place where men pass out, that I might often greet thee; and so, even as I go out and in, I, thy son Theoclymenus, call upon thee, father! ..." But in ancient Japan, men fled from the neighbourhood of death. It was long the custom to abandon, either temporarily, ...
— Japan: An Attempt at Interpretation • Lafcadio Hearn
... of a quarter of a mile, leaning against the trunk of a gigantic kauri, stood a human being, the Proteus of those subterranean regions, a new son of Neptune, watching this countless herd ...
— A Journey to the Interior of the Earth • Jules Verne
... his proper form, and began to question me. 'Son of Atreus,' he said, 'who hath taught thee how to make me a prisoner? What is it thou wouldst know?' 'Tell me what god is angry with me, O Proteus,' I replied. 'Why am I detained on this island? Why can I not reach my home?' 'Thou didst not make acceptable sacrifices to Zeus,' said Proteus. 'And thou wilt never see thy home again until thou hast offered up a hundred oxen to ...
— Odysseus, the Hero of Ithaca - Adapted from the Third Book of the Primary Schools of Athens, Greece • Homer
... They are included, as a bed of flowers, between the high walls of duty; love-flowers even grow there, to be plucked, under the blue sky. But take care not to be tempted by that wonderful female Proteus, Lady Meed, the great corruptress. She disappears and reappears, and she, too, assumes all shapes; she is everywhere at the same time: it seems as if the serpent of Eden had become the immense reptile that ...
— A Literary History of the English People - From the Origins to the Renaissance • Jean Jules Jusserand
... the two glory-smitten summits of the poetic mountain, with Milton as his compeer, not rival. While the former darts himself forth, and passes into all the forms of human character and passion, the one Proteus of the fire and the flood; the other attracts all forms and things to himself, into the unity of his own ideal. All things and modes of action shape themselves anew in the being of Milton; while Shakespeare becomes all things, yet for ever ...
— English literary criticism • Various
... preparations, the drama opens, the scenes become rapid and lifelike; events, long impeded, accumulate and pass quickly before us, the action is connected and hastens to an end. We shall see Derues like an unwearied Proteus, changing names, costumes, language, multiplying himself in many forms, scattering deceptions and lies from one end of France to the other; and finally, after so many efforts, such prodigies of calculation and activity, end by wrecking himself ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... you grow angry, I have done. Besides, I see old Edie in the court-yard, with whom I have business. Good-bye, HectorDo you remember how she splashed into the sea like her master Proteus, et se jactu ...
— The Antiquary, Complete • Sir Walter Scott
... intellects. Then, in an hour or so, he might follow him to the Mechanics' Institution, and hear an able and stimulating discourse on education, admirably adapted to the peculiar capacity of his auditors; and, toward ten perhaps, at a Literary and Scientific Institution in Marylebone, the same Proteus-like intellect might be found expounding the intricacies of physical science with a never tiring and elastic power. Yet, during all these multitudinous exertions, time would be found for the composition of a discourse ...
— International Miscellany of Literature, Art and Science, Vol. 1, - No. 3, Oct. 1, 1850 • Various
... in one way, however, may sometimes be done in another. Not only was London the central stronghold of English Presbyterianism; the power of Presbyterianism there centralized was a kind of Proteus. One of its forms was the Westminster Assembly, a large nucleus of which consisted of ministers from London and the suburbs; another, since May 1647, was the London Provincial Synod. But, in aid of these two bodies, and including many that belonged to both, there was a third, of vaguer character, ...
— The Life of John Milton Vol. 3 1643-1649 • David Masson
... continents, and then have become extinct, excepting in their present secluded abodes. Far from feeling surprise that some of the cave-animals should be very anomalous, as Agassiz has remarked in regard to the blind fish, the Amblyopsis, and as is the case with the blind Proteus, with reference to the reptiles of Europe, I am only surprised that more wrecks of ancient life have not been preserved, owing to the less severe competition to which the scanty inhabitants of these dark abodes will ...
— On the Origin of Species - 6th Edition • Charles Darwin
... Protean disguises of truth, each "one grade above its last presentment,"[138] until, at the rare moment, by the excepted eye, the naked truth was grasped. But Browning became steadily more reluctant to admit that these fortunate moments ever occurred, that the Proteus was ever caught. Things would be known to the soul as they were known to God only when it was emancipated by death. Infinity receded into an ever more inaccessible remoteness from the finite. For the speaker in Christmas-Eve man's mind was the image of God's, reflecting trace for trace ...
— Robert Browning • C. H. Herford
... Eidothee or Eidothea, is the daughter of Proteus—the old man of the sea. A legend concerning her is found in the 4th book of ...
— A Handbook to the Works of Browning (6th ed.) • Mrs. Sutherland Orr
... as ev'ry ship their sov'reign knows, His awful summons they so soon obey: So hear the scaly herds when Proteus blows, And so to pasture follow through ...
— Lives of the Poets, Vol. 1 • Samuel Johnson
... equilibrium; vacillation &c. (irresolution) 605; fluctuation, vicissitude; alternation &c. (oscillation) 314. restlessness &x. adj. fidgets, disquiet; disquietude, inquietude; unrest; agitation &c. 315. moon, Proteus, chameleon, quicksilver, shifting sands, weathercock, harlequin, Cynthia of the minute, April showers[obs3]; wheel of Fortune; transientness &c. 111[obs3]. V. fluctuate, vary, waver, flounder, flicker, flitter, flit, flutter, shift, shuffle, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... Aarons Brest-plate, and a stone besides Imagind rather oft then elsewhere seen, That stone, or like to that which here below 600 Philosophers in vain so long have sought, In vain, though by thir powerful Art they binde Volatil Hermes, and call up unbound In various shapes old Proteus from the Sea, Draind through a Limbec to his Native forme. What wonder then if fields and regions here Breathe forth Elixir pure, and Rivers run Potable Gold, when with one vertuous touch Th' Arch-chimic Sun so farr from us remote Produces with Terrestrial Humor mixt 610 Here in ...
— The Poetical Works of John Milton • John Milton
... rock, girding a basin of turf, as at Watermouth; again, a recess and beach, with the mouth of a stream; a headland next in order, and so the dark coast runs whimsically eastward, passing from one shape to another like a Proteus, until it unites with the massive sea-front of Exmoor.' At the eastern ridge of the county, the hill on which Oldbarrow Camp stands rises more than eleven hundred feet straight out of ...
— Devon, Its Moorlands, Streams and Coasts • Rosalind Northcote
... to the warres, to try their fortune there; Some, to discover Islands farre away; Some, to the studious Universities; For any, or for all these exercises, He said, thou Proteus, your sonne was meet; And did request me, to importune you To let him spend his time no more at home; Which would be great impeachment to his age, In having knowne no travaile in his youth. (Antonio) Nor need'st thou much importune ...
— English Travellers of the Renaissance • Clare Howard
... "Come, ram, with thy blunt-muzzled kids and sleek wives at thy side, Where winds the brook by woodlands myriad-deep: There is her haunt. Go, Stump-horn, tell her how Proteus plied (A god) the shepherd's trade, ...
— Theocritus • Theocritus
... mind of Frontosus. He may be rightly compared to Proteus, who when he was laid hold of, appeared in every shape but his own, roared as a lion, hissed as a serpent, or foamed away in watery waves, all in order to conceal his true ...
— The Letters of Cassiodorus - Being A Condensed Translation Of The Variae Epistolae Of - Magnus Aurelius Cassiodorus Senator • Cassiodorus (AKA Magnus Aurelius Cassiodorus Senator)
... what will be the organ that nature will form before any others, and which in the simplest animal is the only one constantly found; this is the alimentary canal, the principal organ of digestion common to all except colpodes, vibrios, proteus (amoeba), volvoces, monads, etc. ...
— Lamarck, the Founder of Evolution - His Life and Work • Alpheus Spring Packard
... deception here," when the applicant was suddenly pounced upon by an officer, as one of the greatest impostors in the Metropolis, who, with the eyes of Argus, could transform themselves into a greater variety of shapes than Proteus, and that he had been only fifty times, if not more, confined in different houses of correction as an incorrigible rogue and vagabond, from one of which he had recently contrived to effect his escape. The officer now bore off his prize in ...
— Real Life In London, Volumes I. and II. • Pierce Egan
... the army was raised; that he had returned to the Court at Poitiers, where the King stayed during the siege of Brouage, to be near to M. de Mayenne, in order to afford him whatever succours he stood in need of; that, as the Court is a Proteus, forever putting on a new face, he had found it entirely changed, so that he had been no more considered than if he had done the King no service whatever; and that Bussi, who had been so graciously looked upon ...
— Memoirs And Historical Chronicles Of The Courts Of Europe - Marguerite de Valois, Madame de Pompadour, and Catherine de Medici • Various
... Age Perused in Virgil's golden page, The story of the secret won From Proteus by Cyrene's son— How the dank sea-god showed the swain Means to restore his hives again. More briefly, how a slaughtered bull Breeds honey ...
— Songs from Books • Rudyard Kipling
... intends to make his fortune in this ancient capital of the world must be a chameleon susceptible of reflecting all the colours of the atmosphere that surrounds him—a Proteus apt to assume every form, every shape. He must be supple, flexible, insinuating; close, inscrutable, often base, sometimes sincere, some times perfidious, always concealing a part of his knowledge, indulging in one tone of voice, patient, a perfect master of his own countenance ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... Humor. You find in Germany ardent admirers of Shakespeare, who tell you that what they think most admirable in him is his Wortspiel, his verbal quibbles; and one of these, a man of no slight culture and refinement, once cited to a friend of ours Proteus's joke in "The Two Gentlemen of Verona"—"Nod I? why that's Noddy," as a transcendant specimen of Shakespearian wit. German facetiousness is seldom comic to foreigners, and an Englishman with a swelled cheek might take up Kladderadatsch, the German Punch, without any danger ...
— The Essays of "George Eliot" - Complete • George Eliot
... in different ages; but it is humiliating to human nature to reflect, that the conquests obtained by philosophy over her great adversary, are in reality very small. Superstition, like the fabled Proteus, appears under an endless variety of forms; but she is also, like the god, still ...
— Architectural Antiquities of Normandy • John Sell Cotman
... life as an imperious mistress, and defying the sudden destruction thus coming on him, was burnt without giving any sign of shrinking; imitating, in his death, the philosopher Peregrinus, surnamed Proteus, who having determined to quit the world, at the quinquennial games of Olympia, in the sight of all Greece, mounted a funeral pile which he had built himself, and was there ...
— The Roman History of Ammianus Marcellinus • Ammianus Marcellinus
... argument, so the Advertiser cannot grind out an editorial of equal length without getting hoist with its own logical sequence, split from vermiform appendix to occipitofrontalis by the recoil of its own syllogisms. The Advertiser is unreliable as Proteus; the base vulpine instinct serves it in lieu of brains; the clink of cash in the counting room is the keeper of its conscience. At least such is the pen-portrait drawn of it by the best men in Alabama. Its allusion to $2 wheat is a trick that would disgrace the sophists who practice in our municipal ...
— Volume 10 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... been manoeuvring to-day a little revengefully. That, you will say, is out of character. So baleful a passion does not easily find admission among those softer ones which you well know I cherish. However, I am a mere Proteus, and can assume any shape that will best ...
— The Coquette - The History of Eliza Wharton • Hannah Webster Foster
... this stiff-necked and tyrannical, this lustful and bigoted, this vain and sensual man, whom the wrath of God has made King of England. You must, before all things, be perfect master of the difficult art of coquetry. You must become a female Proteus—today a Messalina, to-morrow a nun; to-day one of the literati, to-morrow a playful child; you must ever seek to surprise the king, to keep him on the stretch, to enliven him. You must never give way to the dangerous feeling ...
— Henry VIII And His Court • Louise Muhlbach
... as to woman's most powerful weapon. The simple fact is, she is armed cap a pie(2). Indeed, Every woman is a sort of feminine Proteus, not only in the myriad shapes she assumes, but also in her amenability to nothing but superior force. Women form, perhaps, where men are concerned, the single exception to the rule that in union there is strength. One woman often enough is irrepressible; two (be the second ...
— Hints for Lovers • Arnold Haultain
... "the earth" is contradistinguished from the rest of the globe. It is an island-land, the civilized land, the land of the Tritons or water-deities, of Proteus, geon, Doris, and Atlas. It ...
— Ragnarok: The Age of Fire and Gravel • Ignatius Donnelly
... sea supplies all my needs. Sometimes I cast my nets in our wake, and I pull them up ready to burst. Sometimes I go hunting right in the midst of this element that has long seemed so far out of man's reach, and I corner the game that dwells in my underwater forests. Like the flocks of old Proteus, King Neptune's shepherd, my herds graze without fear on the ocean's immense prairies. There I own vast properties that I harvest myself, and which are forever sown by the hand of the ...
— 20000 Leagues Under the Seas • Jules Verne
... gesture is an unconscious result—not a conscious effort. It has become nature, because it was once art. Mr. Beerbohm Tree also is deserving of very high praise for his Paris. Ease and elegance characterised every movement he made, and his voice was extremely effective. Mr. Tree is the perfect Proteus of actors. He can wear the dress of any century and the appearance of any age, and has a marvellous capacity of absorbing his personality into the character he is creating. To have method without mannerism is given only to a few, but among the few is Mr. ...
— Reviews • Oscar Wilde
... proclamation of the birth of Apollonius to his mother by Proteus, and the incarnation of Proteus himself, the chorus of swans which sang for joy on the occasion, the casting out of devils, raising the dead, and healing the sick, the sudden appearances and disappearances of Apollonius, his adventures ...
— The Superstitions of Witchcraft • Howard Williams
... Spaniards "ain't kinder like our folks," nor "folksy". Mistakes not all on one side. Spanish proverb regarding certain languages. Not complimentary to English. Stormy weather. Storm king a perfect Proteus. River on a rampage. Sawmill carried away. Pastimes of the miners during the storm. MS. account of storm sent in keg via river to Marysville newspaper. Silversmith makes gold rings during storm. Raffling and reraffling of ...
— The Shirley Letters from California Mines in 1851-52 • Louise Amelia Knapp Smith Clappe
... for you at a quarter before seven, if that will suit you. I return you Sir Proteus[37], and shall merely add in return, as Johnson said of, and to, somebody or other, 'Are we ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. III - With His Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore
... bit of navigation along there. The Proteus was nipped and crushed to kindling in about that same latitude ... h'm" ... Bennett tugged at his mustache. Then, suddenly, as if coming to himself: "Well—these temperatures now. Where were we? 'Eight hundred and seventy-four fathoms, minus ...
— A Man's Woman • Frank Norris
... this Proteus in my gripe? How fix him down in one enduring type? Turn to the poor: their megrims are as strange; Bath, cockloft, barber, eating-house, they change; They hire a boat; your born aristocrat Is not more ...
— The Satires, Epistles, and Art of Poetry • Horace
... mark in plenty, la Proteus: A bear become a little horse— Presumably from too much throat-use! A thousandfold must go untold; But, should you miss your farm-yard sunny, And miss your ducks and drakes, behold We'll make ...
— In Divers Tones • Charles G. D. Roberts
... versatility, mobility; instability, unstable equilibrium; vacillation &c (irresolution) 605; fluctuation, vicissitude; alternation &c (oscillation) 314. restlessness &c adj.. fidgets, disquiet; disquietude, inquietude; unrest; agitation &c 315. moon, Proteus, chameleon, quicksilver, shifting sands, weathercock, harlequin, Cynthia of the minute, April showers^; wheel of Fortune; transientness &c 111 [Obs.]. V. fluctuate, vary, waver, flounder, flicker, flitter, flit, flutter, shift, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... you make no doubt of it! The deeper that you look, sir, All your ancient poets tell you just the same as me,— What about old Ovid and his most indecent book, sir, Morphosizing females into flower and star and tree? What about old Proteus and his 'ighly curious 'abits, Mixing of his old grey beard into the old grey sea? What about old Darwin and the hat that brought forth rabbits, Mud and slime that growed into the pomp of Ninevey? What if there should be One great Power beneath it all, one ...
— Collected Poems - Volume Two (of 2) • Alfred Noyes
... be rudimentary gills. Owen says that the thymus appears in vertebrates with the establishment of the lung as the main or exclusive respiratory organ. It is wanting in all fishes, also in the gill-bearing batrachians, siren and proteus. The thyroid appears in fishes, and Gegenbaur believes that it may have been a useful organ to the Tunicata in their ...
— Man And His Ancestor - A Study In Evolution • Charles Morris
... like sleeping flowers; For this, for every thing, we are out of tune; It moves us not—Great God! I'd rather be A Pagan suckled in a creed outworn; So might I, standing on this pleasant lea, Have glimpses that would make me less forlorn; Have sight of Proteus coming from the sea; Or hear old ...
— Poems In Two Volumes, Vol. 1 • William Wordsworth
... Rosicrucian philosophy. Those few then existing in England and the rest of Europe, were as the eyes and ears of the great king of the universe, seeing and hearing all things; seraphically illuminated; companions of the holy company of unbodied souls and immortal angels; turning themselves, Proteus-like, into any shape, and having the power of working miracles. The most pious and abstracted brethren could slack the plague in cities, silence the violent winds and tempests, calm the rage of the sea and ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds • Charles Mackay
... yielding abundant food-stuffs could be raised on an acre of fresh water, no less than on an acre of dry land. In the Arctic regions, again, land has nothing to do with "production" in the social economy of the Esquimaux, who live on seals and other marine animals; and might, like Proteus, shepherd the flocks of Poseidon if they had a mind for pastoral life. But the seals and the bears are dependent on other inhabitants of the sea, until, somewhere in the series, we come to the minute green plants which ...
— Evolution and Ethics and Other Essays • Thomas H. Huxley
... and the toy into an intellectual being, desiring equal rights with themselves and asserting her claim to all the immunities they enjoy. Woman must be willing to see herself as she is, the slave of fashion, assuming all the Proteus forms she invents, without reference to health or convenience. She must remember how few of us give evidence of sufficient development to warrant our claims; and whilst we feel a divine impulse to proceed in achieving the enlargement of woman, ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume I • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... as this had Venus none. The walls were of discoloured jasper stone Wherein was Proteus carved, and o'erhead A lively vine of green sea agate spread, Where by one hand lightheaded Bacchus hung, And, with the other, wine from grapes out wrung. Of crystal shining fair the pavement was. The town ...
— Hero and Leander • Christopher Marlowe
... multiform, appearing in so many shapes, so many postures, so many garbs, so variously apprehended by several eyes and judgements, that it seemeth no less hard to settle a clear and certain notion thereof, than to make a portrait of Proteus, or to define the figure of the fleeting air. Sometimes it lieth in pat allusion to a known story, or in seasonable application of a trivial saying, or in forging an apposite tale; sometimes it playeth ...
— Life Of Johnson, Volume 4 (of 6) • Boswell
... dream-journey, being, however, on this occasion wide awake, when lo and behold! in accordance with the laws of the association of ideas the same Canon again flashed across me; so being now awake I held it as fast as Menelaus did Proteus, only permitting it to ...
— Beethoven's Letters 1790-1826 Vol. 2 • Lady Wallace
... one living principle? Does organized existence, and perhaps all material existence, consist of one Proteus principle of life capable of gradual circumstance-suited modifications and aggregations without bound, under the solvent or motion-giving principle of heat or light? There is more beauty and unity of design in this continual balancing of life to circumstance, and ...
— Evolution, Old & New - Or, the Theories of Buffon, Dr. Erasmus Darwin and Lamarck, - as compared with that of Charles Darwin • Samuel Butler
... bearded goat, thou mate of the white herd, and O ye blunt-faced kids, where are the manifold deeps of the forest, thither get ye to the water, for thereby is Milon; go, thou hornless goat, and say to him, 'Milon, Proteus was a herdsman, and that of seals, ...
— Theocritus, Bion and Moschus rendered into English Prose • Andrew Lang
... and the various sources of amusement which a traveller fond of natural history may find in this region, it has had a peculiar object of interest for me in the extraordinary animals which are found in the bottom of its subterraneous cavities: I allude to the Proteus anguinus, a far greater wonder of nature than any of those which the Baron Valvasa detailed to the Royal Society a century and half ago as belonging to Carniola, with far too romantic ...
— Consolations in Travel - or, the Last Days of a Philosopher • Humphrey Davy
... and many a haven They sped, and many a crowded arsenal: They saw the loves of Gods and men engraven On friezes of Astarte's temple wall. They heard that ancient shepherd Proteus call His flock from forth the green and tumbling lea, And saw white Thetis with her maidens all Sweep up to ...
— Helen of Troy • Andrew Lang
... city of Verona two young gentlemen, whose names were Valentine and Proteus, between whom a firm and uninterrupted friendship had long subsisted. They pursued their studies together, and their hours of leisure were always passed in each other's company, except when Proteus visited a lady he was in love with; and these visits to his mistress, and this passion ...
— Tales from Shakespeare • Charles Lamb and Mary Lamb
... effects, the other revolutionised the whole style of writing for the pianoforte. Thalberg was perfect in his genre, but he cannot be compared to an artist of the breadth, universality, and, above all, intellectual and emotional power of Liszt. It is possible to describe the former, but the latter, Proteus-like, is apt to elude the grasp of him who endeavours to catch hold of him. The Thalberg controversy did not end with Fetis's article. Liszt wrote a rejoinder in which he failed to justify himself, but succeeded in giving the poor savant some hard hits. I do not think Liszt would have approved ...
— Frederick Chopin as a Man and Musician - Volume 1-2, Complete • Frederick Niecks
... truth gives you pain, pray remember it gives me agony. However, I must tell you the man was not what he looked, a mere blacksmith; he is a sort of Proteus, who can take all manner of shapes: at the time I'm speaking of, he was a maker of carving tools. Well, sir, you could hardly believe the effect of this accidental interview with that man: the next day, when I renewed my addresses, Miss Carden evaded me, and ...
— Put Yourself in His Place • Charles Reade
... ragged Proteus. One cannot be angry with such a fellow. I will just inquire into the present state of his Gospel mission and about the condition of his tribe on the Penobscot; and it may be not amiss to congratulate him on the success of the steam- doctors ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... escape the solicitations of Peleus, assumed in turn the form of a bird, of a tree, and finally of a tigress; but Peleus learnt of Proteus the way of compelling Thetis to yield to his wishes. The gods were present at his nuptials and made the ...
— The Eleven Comedies - Vol. I • Aristophanes et al
... Echinorhynchidae.This is by far the largest family and contains the commonest species; the larva of Echinorhynchus proteus lives in Gammarus pulex and in small fish, the adult is common in many fresh-water fish: E. polymorphus, larval host the crayfish, adult host the duck: E. angustotus occurs as a larva in Asellus aquaticus, as an adult in the perch, pike ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... "The trireme Proteus, coming from Brundisium, entered the harbor of Eunostus only yesterday," he replied; "and an hour ago a mounted messenger brought the letter. Nor was it an ordinary letter but a despatch from the Senate—I know the ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... sheets; From the same hand how various is the page! What civil war their brother pamphlets wage! Tracts battle tracts, self-contradictions glare; Say, is this lunacy?—I wish it were. If such our writers, startled at the sight, Felons may bless their stars they cannot write! How justly Proteus' transmigrations fit The monstrous changes of a modern wit! Now, such a gentle stream of eloquence As seldom rises to the verge of sense; Now, by mad rage, transform'd into a flame, Which yet fit engines, well applied, can tame; Now, ...
— The Poetical Works of Edward Young, Volume 2 • Edward Young
... at last the "pat of butter" is expected as pleasantly as the pipe or the cup of coffee. It prevents the skin from chaps and sores, obviates the evil effects of heat, cold, and wet, and neutralises the Proteus-like malaria poison. The Somal never fail to anoint themselves when they can afford ghee, and the Bedouin is at the summit of his bliss, when sitting in the blazing sun, or,—heat acts upon these people as upon serpents,—with his back ...
— First footsteps in East Africa • Richard F. Burton
... doubt that the dodo was one of those instances, well known to naturalists, of a species, or part of a species, remaining permanently in an undeveloped state. As the Greenland whale never acquires teeth, but remains a suckling all its life; as the proteus of the Carniolian caverns, and the axolotl of the Mexican lakes, never attain a higher form than that of the tadpole; so the dodo may be described as a permanent nestling covered with down, and possessing only the rudiments ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 440 - Volume 17, New Series, June 5, 1852 • Various
... of changing the form has found a place in ancient and modern story. The Proteus of heathen mythology ever found means of safety and protection by his sudden assumption of some new ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments • Anonymous
... Fancy! still that voice, those notes prolong. As sweet as when that voice with rapturous falls 55 Shall wake the soften'd echoes of Heaven's Halls! [52:1]O (have I sigh'd) were mine the wizard's rod, Or mine the power of Proteus, changeful God! A flower-entangled Arbour I would seem To shield my Love from Noontide's sultry beam: 60 Or bloom a Myrtle, from whose od'rous boughs My Love might weave gay garlands for her brows. When Twilight stole across the fading vale, To fan my Love I'd be the Evening ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... not this coy secrecy prevent Th' admiring gaze and warm desires of one Tutored by Love, nor yet would Love consent To hide such lustrous beauty from the sun; Love! that through every change delight'st to run, The Proteus of the heart I who now dost blind, Now roll the Argus eyes that nought can shun! Thou through a thousand guards unseen dost wind, And to the chastest maids familiar ...
— National Epics • Kate Milner Rabb
... vivid ranges of interest, could not easily be at fault in identifying a composition of any length. Defoe's incomparable clearness of statement would alone betray him; that was a gift of nature which no art could successfully imitate. Contemporaries also were quick at recognising their Proteus in his many shapes, and their gossip gives a strong support to internal evidence, resting as it probably did on evidences which were not altogether internal. Though Mr. Lee may have been rash sometimes in quoting little scraps of news as Defoe's, he must be admitted ...
— Daniel Defoe • William Minto
... out pain and punishment for ill deed unforgiven, Till Priam's self might pity us. Witness the star of bane Minerva sent; Euboea's cliffs, Caphereus' vengeful gain! 260 'Scaped from that war, and driven away to countries sundered wide, By Proteus' Pillars exiled now, must Menelaues bide; And those AEtnaean Cyclop-folk Ulysses look upon: Of Pyrrhus's land why tell, or of Idomeneus, that won To ruined house; of Locrian men cast on the Libyan shore? Mycenae's lord, the duke and king of all the Argive war, There, on the threshold ...
— The AEneids of Virgil - Done into English Verse • Virgil
... "He was a delightful Proteus, so wholly transforming himself into his part, and putting off himself with his clothes, as he never (not so much as in the 'tiring house) assumed himself again until the play was done.... He had all ...
— The Drama • Henry Irving
... superfluity, now in starvation. Black, mutinous discontent devours them; simply the miserablest feeling that can inhabit the heart of man. English commerce, with its world-wide, convulsive fluctuations, with its immeasurable Proteus Steam demon, makes all paths uncertain for them, all life a bewilderment; society, steadfastness, peaceable continuance, the first blessings of man are not theirs.—This world is for them no home, but a dingy prison-house, of reckless unthrift, ...
— The Condition of the Working-Class in England in 1844 - with a Preface written in 1892 • Frederick Engels
... a polyhedric Peter, or a Peter with many sides. He changes colours like a chameleon, and his coat like a snake. He is a Proteus of a Peter. He was at first sublime, pathetic, impressive, profound; then dull; then prosy and dull; and now dull—oh so very dull! it ...
— Peter Bell the Third • Percy Bysshe Shelley
... amongst the blind insects of the caves in distant parts of the world there are some of the same genus, and yet the genus is not found out of the caves or living in the free world. I have little doubt that, like the fish Amblyopsis, and like Proteus in Europe, these insects are "wrecks of ancient life," or "living fossils," saved from competition and extermination. But that formerly SEEING insects of the same genus roamed over the whole area in ...
— The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, Volume II • Francis Darwin
... my friend! By Proteus, the old shepherd of the seals, you slumber uneasily. If I had not caught hold of you, you would have tumbled into the Eunostos. It is as true as that my mother sold salt fish, ...
— Thais • Anatole France
... stated to have arisen from a passion for gambling, a propensity which, once indulged, takes deep root in the human mind; and few indeed, lamentably few, are those who can effectually eradicate the fatal passion. Vidocq, who could assume all shapes like a second Proteus, who underwent bitter hardships, and unsparingly jeopardized his life at any time, could not resist the fell temptation which has brought him ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 14, - Issue 389, September 12, 1829 • Various
... society, I did not gather to be dreaded, or not with a like fear. The spirit of Aana that ate souls is certainly a fearsome inmate; but the high gods, even of the archipelago, seem helpful. Mahinui—from whom our convict-catechist had been named— the spirit of the sea, like a Proteus endowed with endless avatars, came to the assistance of the shipwrecked and carried them ashore in the guise of a ray fish. The same divinity bore priests from isle to isle about the archipelago, and by his aid, within the century, persons have ...
— In the South Seas • Robert Louis Stevenson
... trs fcheux, parcequ'il nous faisait voir les choses comme elles sont." I find men victims of illusion in all parts of life. Children, youths, adults, and old men, all are led by one bawble or another. Yoganidra, the goddess of illusion, Proteus, or Momus, or Gylfi's Mocking,—for the Power has many names,—is stronger than the Titans, stronger than Apollo. The toys, to be sure, are various, and are graduated in refinement to the quality of ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I, No. 1, Nov. 1857 • Various
... {even} exceeded the material; for there Mulciber had carved the sea circling round the encompassed Earth; and the orb of the Earth, and the Heavens which hang over that orb. {There} the waves have {in them} the azure Deities, both Triton, sounding {with his shell}, and the changing Proteus, and AEgeon,[1] pressing the huge backs of whales with his arms; Doris,[2] too, and her daughters, part of whom appear to be swimming, part, sitting on the bank, to be drying their green hair; some ...
— The Metamorphoses of Ovid - Vol. I, Books I-VII • Publius Ovidius Naso
... remember the astonishment of the Hamburgers when they were invaded by this cloud of French officials, who, under every form, made researches is their houses, and who came to apply the multiplied demands of the fiscal system. Like Proteus, the administration could take any shape. To only speak of my department, which certainly was not the least odious one, for it was opposed to the habits of the Hamburgers and annoyed all the industries, no idea can be formed of the despair of the inhabitants, subjected ...
— Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Louis Antoine Fauvelet de Bourrienne
... Proteus informed Menelaus that he would be conveyed to the Islands of the Blessed, because he was the husband of Helen, and the son-in-law of Jupiter. No incentives to goodness from the consideration of a future state are held out by the older poets to the female sex, or to the ignoble ...
— The Christian Foundation, Or, Scientific and Religious Journal, Volume I, No. 11, November, 1880 • Various
... been hitherto so forcibly diverted? The ear of Fancy, it is said, can discover the voice of sea-nymphs and tritons amid the bursting murmurs of the ocean; would that I could do so, and that some siren or Proteus would arise from these billows, to unriddle for me the strange maze of fate in which I am so deeply entangled!—Happy friend!" he said, looking at the bed where Dinmont had deposited his bulky person, "thy cares ...
— Guy Mannering • Sir Walter Scott
... cliffs where light reflected from the water dances. Huge caverns open in the limestone; on their edges hang stalactites like beards, and the sea within sleeps dark as night. For some of these caves the maidenhair fern makes a shadowy curtain; and all of them might be the home of Proteus, or of Calypso, by whose side her mortal lover passed his nights in ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Complete - Series I, II, and III • John Symonds |
