"Pyrrhic" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... combined with words. Next follows dancing, which is of two kinds; imitative, first, of the serious and beautiful; and, secondly, of the ludicrous and grotesque. The first kind may be further divided into the dance of war and the dance of peace. The former is called the Pyrrhic; in this the movements of attack and defence are imitated in a direct and manly style, which indicates strength and sufficiency of body and mind. The latter of the two, the dance of peace, is suitable to orderly and law-abiding men. These must be distinguished from the Bacchic ...
— Laws • Plato
... closed syllable, like the afore-mentioned taf, fun, mus, to which we may now add fafah, 'i'iy, 'u'uw, form a Sabab khafif, corresponding to the classical long quantity (-). Two moved letters in succession, like mute, 'ala, constitute a Sabab sakil, for which the classical name would be Pyrrhic (U U). As in Latin and Greek, they are equal in weight and can frequently interchange, that is to say, the Sabab khafif can be evolved into a sakil by moving its second Harf, or the latter contracted into the former, by making its second ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 10 • Richard F. Burton
... lance to lance and sword to shield: While still, thro' every varying feat, Their voices heard in contrast sweet With some of deep but softened sound From lips of aged sires around, Who smiling watched their children's play— Thus sung the ancient Pyrrhic lay:— ...
— The Complete Poems of Sir Thomas Moore • Thomas Moore et al
... room. The intruder, the moment that his eye caught Vivian, flew to his master, and, seizing him by the arm, commenced and continued a loud shout of exultation, accompanying his scream the whole time by a kind of quick dance, which, though not quite as clamorous as the Pyrrhic, nevertheless completely drowned the scientific harmony ...
— Vivian Grey • The Earl of Beaconsfield
... could go off at score when he had a single line given him, and he scarcely made a slip, for the poetry seemed ingrained. I have shared a pennyworth of sausage with the brother of a Chief Justice, and I have played a piccolo while an ex-incumbent performed a dance which he described, I think, as Pyrrhic. He fell in the fire and used hideous language in Latin and French, but I do not know whether that was Pyrrhic also. Drink is the dainty harvester; no puny ears for him, no faint and bending stalks: he reaps the rathe corn, and there is only the choicest ...
— The Ethics of Drink and Other Social Questions - Joints In Our Social Armour • James Runciman
... of Milton are, in the main, judicious, but when he ventures on particulars, one cannot always agree with him. He seems to understand that our prosody is accentual merely, and yet, when he comes to what he calls variations, he talks of the "substitution of the Trochee, the Pyrrhic, or the Spondee, for the regular Iambus, or of the Anapaest, the Dactyl, the Tribrach, etc., for the same." This is always misleading. The shift of the accent in what Mr. Masson calls "dissyllabic ...
— Among My Books • James Russell Lowell
... naked, painted, plumed, greased, stamping, uttering sharp yelps, shaking feathered lances, brandishing tomahawks, danced the war-dance before the Governor, to the thumping of the Indian drum. Bougainville looked on astonished, and thought of the Pyrrhic ...
— Montcalm and Wolfe • Francis Parkman
... misspent, that after the first heavy rains had fallen the offensive ought to have been abandoned, and that it was a frightful error of judgment to ask masses of men to attack in conditions where they had not a dog's chance of victory, except at a cost which made it of Pyrrhic irony. ...
— Now It Can Be Told • Philip Gibbs
... kinds of dance—the Pyrrhic, and the common dance; both are here introduced. The Pyrrhic, or military, is performed by Youths wearing swords, the other by the virgins crowned with garlands. The Grecian dance is still performed in this manner in the oriental ...
— The Iliad of Homer - Translated into English Blank Verse • Homer |
