"Pygmalion" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... consecrate my life." For a few seconds I stood silent, vibrating with the passion which had been awakened in me. She had by now lost the measure of her haughty isolation, and had softened into womanhood again. It was really like a realization of the old theme of Pygmalion's statue. It was with rather a pleading than a commanding ...
— The Lady of the Shroud • Bram Stoker
... blind man's cane. Beneath your feet the ship, which has seemed until this moment as solid as a rock, stirs the least little bit, as though it had waked up. And now a shiver runs all through it and you are reminded of that passage from Pygmalion and Galatea where Pygmalion ...
— Europe Revised • Irvin S. Cobb
... an edition of The Earthly Paradise was projected, which was to have been a folio in double columns, profusely illustrated by Sir Edward Burne-Jones, and typographically superior to the books of that time. The designs for the stories of Cupid and Psyche, Pygmalion and the Image, The Ring given to Venus, and the Hill of Venus, were finished, and forty-four of those for Cupid and Psyche were engraved on wood in line, somewhat in the manner of the early German masters. About ...
— The Art and Craft of Printing • William Morris
... of her, sole spouse Of the Great Spirit, and on which thou turn'dst To me for comment, is the general theme Of all our prayers: but when it darkens, then A different strain we utter, then record Pygmalion, whom his gluttonous thirst of gold Made traitor, robber, parricide: the woes Of Midas, which his greedy wish ensued, Mark'd for derision to all future times: And the fond Achan, how he stole the prey, That yet he seems by Joshua's ire pursued. Sapphira with ...
— The Divine Comedy • Dante
... embarrassing, the ethereal is heavy. Too much of the heavenly in love is like too much fuel on a fire: the flame suffers from it. Gwynplaine fell into an exquisite nightmare; Dea to be clasped in his arms—Dea clasped in them! He heard nature in his heart crying out for a woman. Like a Pygmalion in a dream modelling a Galathea out of the azure, in the depths of his soul he worked at the chaste contour of Dea—a contour with too much of heaven, too little of Eden. For Eden is Eve, and Eve was a female, a carnal mother, a terrestrial ...
— The Man Who Laughs • Victor Hugo
... models for statues. Pygmalion prayed the gods to give life to the image he adored: I will not pray them to give marble to mine. Never may I lay my wet cheek upon the foot under which is inscribed the name ...
— Imaginary Conversations and Poems - A Selection • Walter Savage Landor
... breath, She knelt to science, Vowing to truth true service to the death, And heart-reliance? Nay,—then for you she underwent eclipse, Appeared as alien As once, before he prayed, those ivory lips Seemed to Pygmalion. ...
— Reviews • Oscar Wilde
... children are easily identified as Una and Julian. They are not only of the same age, but the "slight graceful girl" and "chubby red-cheeked boy" describes them exactly. The idea has been derived from the fable of the Greek sculptor Pygmalion whose statue came to life. That seems far enough off to be pleasantly credible, but to have such a transubstantiation take place in the front yard of a white-fenced American residence, is rather ...
— The Life and Genius of Nathaniel Hawthorne • Frank Preston Stearns
... gaunt and gnarled oak Waving majestic o'er a pigmy race, Pygmalion was; for by the mete of soul Man ranges in the phalanx of his age. His heart was like an ocean, tremulous With radiant aspirations and high thoughts That fretted ever on mortality, Wearing life out with passion and desire, Struggling against the limits ...
— Eidolon - The Course of a Soul and Other Poems • Walter R. Cassels
... Germany during the last quarter of a century by the compilation of a catalogue of figures. It is not my intention to persuade the reader to believe in any such fantastic theory as that the present Kaiser is entirely responsible for this progress. I am no Pygmalion that I can make an Emperor by breathing prayers before pages ...
— Germany and the Germans - From an American Point of View (1913) • Price Collier
... cities of the United States with increasing popularity. Between 1883 and 1889 she had several seasons in London, and was the Rosalind in the performance of As You Like It which opened the Shakespeare Memorial theatre at Stratford-on-Avon. Among her chief parts were Galatea (in W. S. Gilbert's Pygmalion and Galatea), Clarice (in his Comedy and Tragedy, written for her), Hermione, Perdita, and Julia (in The Hunchback.) In 1889 she retired from the stage and in 1890 married Antonio de Navarro, ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... hour, as her eye gradually kindled, her bosom heaved, her breath came fast: but there was no more sign of life in those straight still limbs, and listless feet and hands, than in Pygmalion's ivory bride, before she bloomed into human flesh and blood. The sun sank towards his rest; the roar of the city grew louder and louder without; the soldiers revelled and laughed below: but every ...
— Hypatia - or, New Foes with an Old Face • Charles Kingsley
... be the sum supplied. Sychaeus was her lord, in happier time The richest of Phoenicians far and wide In land, and worshipped by his hapless bride. Her, in the bloom of maidenhood, her sire Had given him, and with virgin rites allied. But soon her brother filled the throne of Tyre, Pygmalion, swoln with sin; 'twixt ...
— The Aeneid of Virgil - Translated into English Verse by E. Fairfax Taylor • Virgil
... at last! It would have suited George better had she remained a half-quickened statue, responsive only to himself, her not over-potent Pygmalion. He sat speechless—with his eyes fixed ...
— Thomas Wingfold, Curate • George MacDonald |
