"Styx" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Stygian darkness. The Styx ( 'the abhorred') was the chief river in the lower world. Milton here speaks of darkness as something positive, ejected from the womb of Night, Night being represented as a monster of the lower regions: comp. Par. Lost, i. 63. The pronoun 'her' shows that 'womb' is here ...
— Milton's Comus • John Milton
... path for a human foot. The hills were a purple haze, the trees along their crests making fantastic pictures against the sky. Beyond the land of living men, it seemed, an owl hooted, and a belated dove called and called like a moaning spirit wandering in some lost tarn of the Styx. ...
— Dwellers in the Hills • Melville Davisson Post
... conditions. I must choose, as well as the point of view, a certain moment in my growth, so that the scale may be exaggerated, and the trees on the steep opposite side may seem to climb to heaven, and the sand by the water-door, where I am standing, seem as low as Styx. And I must choose the season also, so that the valley may be brimmed like a cup with sunshine and the songs of birds;—and the year of grace, so that when I turn to leave the river-side I may find the old manse and its ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson, Volume 9 • Robert Louis Stevenson
... Styx, which ninefold her infoldeth Hems not Ceres' daughter in its flow; But she grasps the apple—ever holdeth Her, sad Orcus, down below." SCHILLER, Das Ideal ...
— Phantastes - A Faerie Romance for Men and Women • George MacDonald
... flood we glided, I thought of the Styx, and of Charon rowing some solitary soul to the Land of Shades. Amidst the strange scene, with a chilly wind blowing in my face and midnight clouds dropping rain above my head; with two rude rowers for companions, whose insane oaths still tortured my ear, I asked myself if I was wretched ...
— Villette • Charlotte Bronte
... "Only a transient word or act gives us a short and dubious glimmer, that reveals to us the abysses of his being; dark, lurid, and terrific, as the throat of the infernal pool." As you pass along, you hear the roar of invisible waterfalls, and at the foot of the slope, the River Styx lies before you, deep and black, overarched with rock. The first glimpse of it brings to mind the descent of Ulysses ...
— The International Monthly Magazine, Volume 5, No. 1, January, 1852 • Various
... the first time I have had to ask myself, seriously, "Why this mania for possession?" The ferryman on the Styx is as likely to take it across as our railroad is to "handle" it today. Yet nothing seems able to break a person born with that ...
— On the Edge of the War Zone - From the Battle of the Marne to the Entrance of the Stars and Stripes • Mildred Aldrich
... a common joke against the Irish vessels, to say they are loaded with fruit and timber, that is, potatoes and broomsticks. Irish assurance; a bold forward behaviour: as being dipt in the river Styx was formerly supposed to render persons invulnerable, so it is said that a dipping in the river Shannon totally annihilates bashfulness; whence arises the saying of an impudent Irishman, that he has ...
— 1811 Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue • Captain Grose et al.
... Mundus, ut ad Scythiam Rhipaeasque arduus arces Consurgit, premitur Libyae devexus in austros. Hic vertex nobis semper sublimis; at illum Sub pedibus Styx atra videt Manesque profundi. Georg., ...
— The Discovery of America Vol. 1 (of 2) - with some account of Ancient America and the Spanish Conquest • John Fiske
... vial containing a small amount of material and asked to determine the nature of the contents. The bottle had been found beside a dead German. It proved to be opium, and the owner had evidently been prepared for a painless passage across the Styx when such ...
— On the Fringe of the Great Fight • George G. Nasmith
... Achilles was a great favourite with the ladies from his very birth. He was a fine strapping boy; and his mother was so proud of him, that she readily encountered the danger of being drowned in the river Styx herself, that she might dip her darling in it, and thereby render him invulnerable. Accordingly, every part of the hero was safe, except his heel by which his mother held him amidst the heat of battle; and, like his renowned antitype, the immortal Duke of Wellington, he was never wounded. ...
— Real Life In London, Volumes I. and II. • Pierce Egan
... When to th' infernal Styx she goes, She takes the fogs from thence that rose, And in a bag doth them enclose: When well she had them blended, She hies her then to Lethe spring, {114} A bottle and thereof doth bring, Wherewith she meant to work the thing Which ...
— Playful Poems • Henry Morley
... the other side of Styx could not have been much worse than this, though, by his account, when he got back to earth, it appears that he had fallen in with "Bellua Lernae, horrendum stridens, flammisque, ...
— Wanderings In South America • Charles Waterton
... and the pestilent odour which this water exhales, characterize it very justly as the Tartarus of the poets. There wants only the boat of Charon, which, however, would be unnecessary, as there is only a shallow ford to pass over. The Styx and the kingdom of Pluto are now hid from our sight. Awed by what I had heard and read of these mournful approaches to the dead, I was contented to view them at my feet from the top of a high mountain. The labourer, the shepherd, and the sailor, dare not ...
— The Sonnets, Triumphs, and Other Poems of Petrarch • Petrarch
... die," he exclaimed in a fine rapture, "should I go to heaven, I will fish in the water of life with a fly dressed with a feather from the wing of an angel; should I be unfortunately consigned to another destination, I shall nevertheless hope to angle in Styx with the worm that never dieth." To his editorial successor Spey was a trifle more gracious than she had been to Russel; but she did not wholly open her heart to this neophyte of her stream, serving him up in the pool of Dellagyl with the ugliest, blackest, gauntest ...
— Camps, Quarters, and Casual Places • Archibald Forbes
... clothes, and they were perfectly dry. The excitement and warmth of the body had acted like a drying-room in a laundry. Then I laid down under a fence and went to sleep, and dreamed I was in hades, building a corduroy bridge across the Styx, and that the devil repremanded me for building it in the wrong place. When I awoke I was so stiff with rheumatism that I had to be helped up from under the fence, and they put me in an ambulance with a soldier who had his jaw shot ...
— How Private George W. Peck Put Down The Rebellion - or, The Funny Experiences of a Raw Recruit - 1887 • George W. Peck
... the River Styx, Martha," she explained. "Don't you know? The river of the dead, that the ancients believed in, where Charon rowed ...
— Galusha the Magnificent • Joseph C. Lincoln
... celestial cant, Confess'd his flame, and swore by Styx, Whate'er she would desire, to grant— But wise Ardelia ...
— The Poems of Jonathan Swift, D.D., Volume I (of 2) • Jonathan Swift
... the morn salute From a nocturnal root, Which feels the acrid juice Of Styx and Erebus; And turns the woe of Night, By its own craft, to a ...
— Poems - Household Edition • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... the cushions of the carriage; Henriette's figure in one corner, Hannah, with the child, in another, and the various rugs and trappings of wandering Britons. Everything was contracted, narrow. The sea-passage had the same sinister character. Hadria compared it to the crossing of the Styx in Charon's gloomy ferry-boat. ...
— The Daughters of Danaus • Mona Caird
... who rule the soul! Styx, through hell whose waters roll! Let me be allowed to tell What I heard ...
— Specimens with Memoirs of the Less-known British Poets, Complete • George Gilfillan
... the war.... Oh, such a weariness! So many times had hopes been destroyed! Hundreds of tomorrows just like yesterday and today followed on, each similarly devoted to emptiness and waiting—to waiting for emptiness. Time no longer ran. The year was like a river Styx which encircles life with the circuit of its black and greasy waters, with its somber, watery, silky flood that seems no longer to move. ...
— Pierre and Luce • Romain Rolland
... Schloss with the four big lindens at the corners, are surrounded by a Moat; black abominable ditch, Wilhelmina calls it; of the hue of Tartarean Styx, and of a far worse smell, in fact enough to choke one, in hot days after dinner, thinks the vehement Princess. Three Bridges cross this Moat or ditch, from the middle of three several Terraces or sides of the Schloss; and on the fourth it is ...
— History Of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Volume IV. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—Friedrich's Apprenticeship, First Stage—1713-1728 • Thomas Carlyle
... conceptions of Hades. Homer makes Circe direct Odysseus thus. He is to beach his ship by deep-eddying Oceanus, in the gloomy Cimmerian land. "But go thyself to the dank house of Hades. Thereby into Acheron flow Pyriphlegethon and Cocytus, a branch of the water of the Styx, and there is a rock and the meeting of the ...
— Nature Mysticism • J. Edward Mercer
... ago, and had left their palaces to be tenanted by the mermaids and spirits of the deep, for other occupants I could see none. Spectral fancies began to haunt my imagination. I conceived of the canal we were traversing as the Styx, our gondola as the boat of Charon, and ourselves as a company of ghosts, who had passed from earth, and were now on our silent way to the inexorable bar of Rhadamanthus. A more spectral procession we could ...
— Pilgrimage from the Alps to the Tiber - Or The Influence of Romanism on Trade, Justice, and Knowledge • James Aitken Wylie
... this, I snatched the golden branch from its ancient trunk and I advanced without fear into the smoking gulf that leads to the miry banks of the Styx, upon which the shades are tossed about like dead leaves. At sight of the branch dedicated to Proserpine, Charon took me in his bark, which groaned beneath my weight, and I alighted on the shores of the dead, and was greeted ...
— Penguin Island • Anatole France
... smite the anvil; your face may be brown, your veins knotted, your hands grimed; and yet you may be a hero. And, on the other hand, you may write verses and be a clown. It is not necessary to feed on ambrosia in order to become divine; nor shall one be accursed, though he drink of the ninefold Styx. The Israelites ate angels' food in the wilderness, and remained stiff-necked and uncircumcised in heart and ears. The white water-lily feeds on slime, and unfolds a heavenly glory. Come as the June morning comes. It has not picked its way daintily, ...
— Gala-days • Gail Hamilton
... (alone) Wretch! Thou must meet inevitable ruin. Neptune has sworn by Styx—to gods themselves A dreadful oath,—and he will execute His promise. Thou canst not escape his vengeance. I loved thee; and, in spite of thine offence, My heart is troubled by anticipation For thee. ...
— Phaedra • Jean Baptiste Racine
... to bind us to St. Roch, for we kept missing our way and getting into "streams as black as Styx." But at length the city of Quebec, with its green glacis and frowning battlements, was left behind, and we drove through flat country abounding in old stone dwelling-houses, old farms, and large fields of stubble. We neared the blue hills, and put up our horses in the Indian ...
— The Englishwoman in America • Isabella Lucy Bird
... has been sucked in by the mud-nymphs, and how they have shown him a branch of Styx which here pours into the Thames, and diffuses its soporific vapours over the Temple and its purlieus. He is solemnly welcomed by Milbourn (a reverend antagonist of Dryden), who tells him to "receive these robes which ...
— Alexander Pope - English Men of Letters Series • Leslie Stephen
... as earth to Helios. Who usurps his place there, rashest? Aphrodite's loved one it is! To his son the flaming Sun-God, to the tender youth, Phaethon, Rule of day this day surrenders as a thing hereditary, Having sworn by Styx tremendous, for the proof of his parentage, He would grant his son's petition, whatsoever the sign thereof. Then, rejoiced, the stripling answered: 'Rule of day give me; give it me, Give me place that men may see me how I blaze, ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... ever—— As each wades through that ghastly stream, The satins that rustle and gems that gleam, Will grow pale and heavy, and sink away To the noisome River's bottom-clay! Then the costly bride and her maidens six Will shiver upon the bank of the Styx, Quite as helpless as they were born—— Naked souls, and very forlorn; The Princess, then, must shift for herself, And lay her royalty on the shelf; She, and the beautiful Empress, yonder, Whose robes are now the wide world's wonder, And even ourselves, and our ...
— Little Masterpieces of American Wit and Humor - Volume I • Various
... energetic way that I would follow Lady Lyndon across the Styx if necessary, of course I meant that I would do so, provided nothing more suitable presented itself in the interim. If Lyndon would not die, where was the use of my pursuing the Countess? And somehow, towards the end of the Spa season, ...
— Barry Lyndon • William Makepeace Thackeray
... led her out to her splendid carriage! In such guise I should have adored her. I endowed her with all the pride she lacked, stripped her of her virtues, her natural simple charm, and frank smile, in order to plunge her heart in our Styx of depravity that makes invulnerable, load her with our crimes, make of her the fantastical doll of our drawing-rooms, the frail being who lies about in the morning and comes to life again at night with the dawn of tapers. Pauline ...
— The Magic Skin • Honore de Balzac
... shouted, "a man may not fight cowards, but he can cudgel them! An I have to wait for you on the River Styx, I'll punish you for making me break promise to these ...
— Heralds of Empire - Being the Story of One Ramsay Stanhope, Lieutenant to Pierre Radisson in the Northern Fur Trade • Agnes C. Laut
... last saw it, but is much obstructed by small islands, formed of rafts of vegetation that have grounded in their descent. I fear we may find the river choked in many places below stream. No dependence can ever be placed upon this accursed river. The fabulous Styx must be a sweet rippling brook, compared to this horrible creation. A violent wind acting upon the high waving plain of sugar-cane grass may suddenly create a change; sometimes islands are detached by the gambols of a herd of hippopotami, ...
— Ismailia • Samuel W. Baker
... at these words, and, taking the hero by the hand, rejoined: "Thou art a wise man, and thy answer is well made. I will pledge thee a solemn oath, by the heavens and the earth, and the waters of the Styx, that I have no plan of evil against thee. And I advise thee to do as I have instructed thee, to be ready for ...
— Odysseus, the Hero of Ithaca - Adapted from the Third Book of the Primary Schools of Athens, Greece • Homer
... these words she took an oath by the waters of Styx, which to all the gods is most dread and most awful, that the Harpies would never thereafter again approach the home of Phineus, son of Agenor, for so it was fated. And the heroes yielding to the oath, turned back their flight to ...
— The Argonautica • Apollonius Rhodius
... this subterranean sea dusky figures flitted, bearing ladles filled with the yellow fluid, which they had replenished from its depths. From this lake diverging streams of the same mysterious flood penetrated like mighty rivers the cavernous distance. As they walked by the banks of this glittering Styx, Father Jose perceived how the liquid stream at certain places became solid. The ground was strewn with glittering flakes. One of these the Padre picked up and curiously examined. It ...
— Legends and Tales • Bret Harte
... becometh thee to ask, seeing thou art a party interested in the matter. The emperor in whose care the jewel was left, hath sworn by the river Styx that unless the cup be brought back to the palace ere to-morrow's dawn, he will punish the innocent with the guilty, and that with no sparing hand. He hath already laid hands on some of the more wealthy citizens, and amerced them in divers sums; others are detained ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 2 (of 2) • John Roby
... weed-grown dyke; behind lay the same flat country, colourless, humid; and opposite us, two miles away, scarcely visible in the deepening twilight, ran the outline of a similar shore. Between rolled the turgid Elbe. 'The Styx flowing through Tartarus,' I thought to myself, recalling some ...
— Riddle of the Sands • Erskine Childers
... Nona'cris' Stream, the river Styx, in Arcadia. Cassander says he has in a phial some of this "horrid spring," one drop of which, mixed with wine, would act as a deadly poison. ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook, Vol. 3 • E. Cobham Brewer
... might believe that we were indeed come to the country beyond the Styx. The prospector renders that theory untenable—it, certainly, could never have gone to heaven. However I am willing to concede that we actually may be in another world from that which we have always known. If we are not ON ...
— At the Earth's Core • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... a sharp hill above the Styx, The bruised Christ upon his crucifix, And racked in anguish on his either side Hang Buddha and Mohammed crucified. Their heavy blood falls in a monotone Like deep well-water dropping on a stone. ...
— The Five Books of Youth • Robert Hillyer
... his brother pagans beyond the Styx; but Lisette blooms in evergreen youth. This young French person's theory of woman's rights is different from the one which obtains in New England; nor does she trouble herself at all to seek for woman's mission. She found it years ago. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 92, June, 1865 • Various
... moon. Unmoved by civic pride, unchecked by taste, They 'd smear the general sky with poster's paste And at Dan Phoebus seem to "take a sight." Colossal bottles blot the air, to tell That MUCKSON's Temperance drink is a great sell. Here's a huge hat, as black as sombre Styx, Flanked by the winsome legend, "Ten and Six." Other Sky-signs praise Carpets, Ginghams, Socks, Mugg's Music-hall, and "Essence of the Ox." Bah! GAY's trim Muse might sicken of her rhymes Had she to read these Sky-signs of ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 99, September 6, 1890 • Various
... that he had predicted Gataker's death! But the truth is, it was an empty epitaph to the "Lodgings to let:" it stood empty, reader, for the first passenger that the immortal ferryman should carry over the Styx. ...
— Thaumaturgia • An Oxonian
... treachery of sky that hath so often deceived me?' Such words he uttered, and, clinging fast to the tiller, slackened hold no whit, and looked up steadily on the stars. Lo! the god shakes over either temple a bough dripping with Lethean dew and made slumberous with the might of Styx, and makes his swimming eyes relax their struggles. Scarcely had sleep begun to slacken his limbs unaware, when bending down, he flung him sheer into the clear water, tearing rudder and half the stern away with him, and many a time crying vainly on his comrades: himself [861-871]he rose on flying ...
— The Aeneid of Virgil • Virgil
... into the scooping brine, That shocks his bosom with a double chill; Because, all hours, till the slow sun's decline, That cold divorcer will be 'twixt them still; Wherefore he likens it to Styx' foul tide, Where life grows death upon ...
— The Poetical Works of Thomas Hood • Thomas Hood
... lying as ghost books, in a limbo on the banks of a certain Bristolian Styx, humanly speaking, a Canal; but the other apparatus of life is gathered about me, and performs its diurnal functions. The place pleases me better than I expected: a far lookout on all sides, over green country; a sufficient old City lying in the hollow near; and civilization, ...
— The Life of John Sterling • Thomas Carlyle
... of it. But there was no God connected with it, no future life, no prospect sufficient to redeem a man from the fear of death. It was leather and prunella, that, from first to last. The man had to die and go, melancholy, across the Styx. But Cicero was the first to tell his brother Romans of an intelligible heaven. "Certum esse in caelo definitum locum ubi beati aevo sempiterno fruantur." "There is certainly a place in heaven where the blessed ...
— The Life of Cicero - Volume II. • Anthony Trollope
... which now indicates a slow movement, had at that time its original signification, meaning "going." It was an "allegro moderate." Haendel often wrote "andante allegro." Through ignorance of that fact the beautiful air of Gluck, "Divinities of the Styx," is sung too slowly and the air of Thaos in the "Iphigenia in Tauris" equally so. Berlioz recollected having heard at the opera in his youth a much more animated execution of ...
— On the Execution of Music, and Principally of Ancient Music • Camille Saint-Saens
... redundantly. The airboat crossed a fair-sized river. "That's the Styx," Alexander said. "Grandfather named it. He was a classicist in his way—spent a lot of his time reading books most people never heard of. Things like the Iliad and Gone with the Wind. The mountains he called the Apennines, and that volcano's Mount Olympus. The marshland ...
— The Lani People • J. F. Bone
... the river came in sight, growing slate-colour in the earliest dawn. He could see the boat nuzzling up against the pier, and snoring in its sleep. He said to himself that this was Styx and the fare an obolus. As he jumped on board, with hot face and hotter heart, Charon clicked his signal to the engines; the boat slowly snuffled itself half awake, and shoved out into ...
— Young Lives • Richard Le Gallienne
... posts, I shall be allowed, employed or not employed, to take the brush, and dip into the first colour, and put the first touch on the first intonaco. If that is not granted, I'll haunt every noble Lord and you, till you join my disturbed spirit on the banks of the Styx.' ...
— Little Memoirs of the Nineteenth Century • George Paston
... to ferry over such a slashed and swollen company. Now ought you in charity,' he continued, addressing a half-naked savage, who was helping to drag the bodies from the cart, 'to have these trunks well washed ere you bury them, or pitch them into the Tiber, else they will never get over the Styx—not forgetting too the ferriage—' what more folly he would have uttered, I know not, for the wretch to whom he spoke suddenly seized the lash of the driver of the cart, and laid it over Milo's shoulders, saying, as ...
— Aurelian - or, Rome in the Third Century • William Ware
... to the words of Iris. She took the oath that the gods most dread—the oath by the Water of Styx—that never again would the Harpies show themselves to Phineus. Then Zetes and Calais turned back toward the city of Salmydessus. The island that they drove the Harpies to had been called the Floating Island, but thereafter ...
— The Golden Fleece and the Heroes who Lived Before Achilles • Padraic Colum
... shattered branches and bruised stems of forest-trees; and Dante, looking out with fear upon the foam and spray and vapour of the flood, saw thousands of the damned flying before the face of one who forded Styx with feet unwet. 'Like frogs,' he says, 'they fled, who scurry through the water at the sight of their foe, the serpent, till each squats and hides himself close to the ground.' The picture of the storm among the trees might ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Second Series • John Addington Symonds
... evil-looking thing—and the sudden metamorphosis of its sleek sides into mouths belching forth humanity. I think of Hades. This, by the way, isn't a bad representation of it—the up-to-date Hades. They've got a railway bridge now across the Styx, and Charon has a gold band around his cap, and this might be the arrival platform of ...
— The Morals of Marcus Ordeyne • William J. Locke
... chain. But all east was a bare, bleak, black plateau, as hideous as desolation could render it, according well with the scenery of the desolate grave-stones we had just seen, and the woeful tales about them we had heard. It was the veritable beach of the river Styx. I turned with a chill of horror from the waste back again upon the valley which we had left. How different the view! Here we beheld the ten thousand fair waving palms, which cover the green bosom of The Wady,—a paradise encircled with ridges ...
— Travels in the Great Desert of Sahara, in the Years of 1845 and 1846 • James Richardson
... I did not care for, that I might enjoy the pleasure of their going away. My health is certainly amended, but I did not feel the satisfaction of it till I got home. I have still a little rheumatism in one shoulder, which was not dipped in Styx, and is still mortal; but, while I went to the rooms, or stayed in my chambers in a dull court, I thought I had twenty complaints. I don't ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole Volume 3 • Horace Walpole
... in order against a hasty exit from this vale of hatreds, Mr. Reardon, in unconscious imitation of all the condemned men who had preceded him on the voyage across the Styx, repaired to the dining saloon and partook of a hearty meal. He realized he had undertaken a contract that would require the employment of weapons more formidable than his hard fists, and devoutly he wished that, like the fairy queen, he had but to breathe on them to metamorphose ...
— Cappy Ricks Retires • Peter B. Kyne
... wrangle. We are fascinated by their shame, and loiter, till Virgil chides us and leads us away to that city turreted by giants where great Nimrod blows his horn. Terrible things are in store for us, and we go to meet them in Dante's raiment and with Dante's heart. We traverse the marshes of the Styx, and Argenti swims to the boat through the slimy waves. He calls to us, and we reject him. When we hear the voice of his agony we are glad, and Virgil praises us for the bitterness of our scorn. We tread upon the cold crystal of Cocytus, in ...
— Intentions • Oscar Wilde
... an epistle in verse between the fingers of the statue, addressed to Rogers; in which the goddess entreats him not to come there ogling every day;—for though "partial friends might deem him still alive," she knew by his looks that he had come from the other side of the Styx; and retained her antique abhorrence of the spectral dead, etc. etc. She concluded by beseeching him, if he could not desist from haunting her with his ghostly presence, at least to spare her the added misfortune of being be-rhymed by ...
— The Diary of an Ennuyee • Anna Brownell Jameson
... old Pluto, Persephone's prigger; You'll follow Apollo the Younger—that's me! He's sombre as Styx, and as black as a nigger. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 99, November 15, 1890 • Various
... a pair of oars On cis-Elysian river-shores. Where the immortal dead have sate, 'Tis mine to sit and meditate; To re-ascend life's rivulet, Without remorse, without regret; And sing my Alma Genetrix Among the willows of the Styx. ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 14 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... rainbow (as in the Gothic legends) and the Milky Way; and, since the journey was long, they put boots into the coffin, (for it was made on foot,) and coins to pay the ferrying across a wide sea, even as the Greeks expected to be carried over the Styx by Charon. This abode of the dead, at the end of this long pathway, was an island, a warm, ...
— Ragnarok: The Age of Fire and Gravel • Ignatius Donnelly
... said ignorant Maurice, who had never learned that the old heathens believed the souls of dead people went in a ferryboat across a dark river called the Styx, and that the old man who rowed the boat was ...
— Junior Classics, V6 • Various
... but it is enough. Look at it, and it is harmless enough. But tread on it, touch it, disturb it never so slightly, and instantly the whole surrounding atmosphere is permeated with a stench more infernally and awfully horrible than anything else this side of the Styx! ...
— Brighter Britain! (Volume 1 of 2) - or Settler and Maori in Northern New Zealand • William Delisle Hay
... innocent as a babe. I'd swear it by the Styx," responded that young man, scratching ...
— A Victor of Salamis • William Stearns Davis
... blood disorganization, which often begin in a chilled perineum, and, in conjunction with the local disease that may result, end in handing us over to Father Charon for ferriage across the gloomy Styx long before our life's journey is half over. It is true, neither the savage of Africa or America nor the nomads of Asia are subject to any of these troubles; but with us, hampered with all the benefits of the dress, ...
— History of Circumcision from the Earliest Times to the Present - Moral and Physical Reasons for its Performance • Peter Charles Remondino
... vary let all be merry, And then if e'er a disaster befall, At Styx's ferry is Charon's ...
— Black Beetles in Amber • Ambrose Bierce
... once. No one has done it with v and j treated as consonants; but you and I can do it. Dr. Whewell and I amused ourselves some years ago with attempts. He could not make sense, though he joined words he gave me Phiz, styx, wrong, ...
— Over the Teacups • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... belief that he saw them moving slimily about in the black water, and, in the dim mysterious light, tree-stems and other objects assumed the appearance of hideous living forms, so that he was enabled to indulge the uncomfortable fancy that they were traversing some terrestrial Styx into one ...
— Blown to Bits - The Lonely Man of Rakata, the Malay Archipelago • R.M. Ballantyne
... should he have progeny?" Said they to Destiny; 'One sun we scarcely can endure, And half-a-dozen, we are sure, Will dry the very sea. Adieu to marsh and fen! Our race will perish then, Or be obliged to fix Their dwelling in the Styx!' For such an humble animal, The frog, ...
— A Hundred Fables of La Fontaine • Jean de La Fontaine
... men gang aft agley'? Well, instead of proceeding, as originally intended, to the delightful environs of Glencaid, for a sort of a Summer vacation, I have, on the impulse of the moment, decided upon crossing the Styx. Our somewhat impulsive red friends out yonder are kindly preparing to assist me in making a successful passage, and the citizens of Glencaid, when they learn the sorrowful news of my translation, ...
— Bob Hampton of Placer • Randall Parrish
... studying the procession to destruction, because he must make his living in that way. He is a sort of clean-aproned Charon on a whiskey Styx, ferrying the multitude to perdition on the other side of the river. But what is YOUR ...
— Editorials from the Hearst Newspapers • Arthur Brisbane
... as an emanation from God himself, is but a higher wisdom taught the longing heart by those it has loved and lost. The souls of the dead scratch no messages on greasy slates for stupid eyes, shout none across the Styx that can be heard by vulgar ears; but there be men who can hear in the silent watches of the night the music of lips long mute. There be those for whom the veil that separates the two eternities is no black inpenetrable ...
— Volume 10 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... the moving figures aloft and at the jib-boom end, and suffusing everything with so baleful and unearthly a light that only the slightest effort of the imagination was needed to fancy ourselves a phantom ship, manned by ghosts of the unquiet dead, floating upon the sooty flood of the Styx, with the adamantine foundations of the world arching ponderously and menacingly over our heads and reflecting from their rugged surfaces the flashing of the ...
— The Cruise of the "Esmeralda" • Harry Collingwood
... ones to plot and feign; Come, lightning Passion, that with foot of fire Advancest to the middle of a deed Almost before 'tis plann'd; come, glowing Hate; Come, baneful Mischief, from thy murky den Under the dripping black Tartarean cliff Which Styx's awful waters trickle down— Inspire this coward heart, this flagging arm! How say ye, maidens, do ye know these prayers? Are these words Merope's—is this voice mine? Old man, old man, thou had'st my boy in charge, And he is lost, and thou hast that ...
— Poetical Works of Matthew Arnold • Matthew Arnold
... acceptable to France, is a candidate for the helm of this kingdom, it has never changed from the beginning. It has preserved a perennial consistency. This would be a never-failing source of true glory, if springing from just and right; but it is truly dreadful if it be an arm of Styx, which springs out of the profoundest depths of a poisoned soil. The French maxims were by these gentlemen at no time condemned. I speak of their language in the most moderate terms. There are many who think ...
— Selections from the Speeches and Writings of Edmund Burke. • Edmund Burke
... childhood. Devoted life to his business. Has navigated more people than all the Atlantic liners combined. Ambition: A launch. Recreation: None. Address: The Styx. ...
— Who Was Who: 5000 B. C. to Date - Biographical Dictionary of the Famous and Those Who Wanted to Be • Anonymous
... jahannan[obs3], sheol[obs3]. hell fire; everlasting fire, everlasting torment, eternal damnation; lake of fire and brimstone; fire that is never quenched; worm that never dies. purgatory, limbo, gehenna, abyss. [Mythological hell] Tartarus, Hades, Avernus[Lat], Styx, Stygian creek, pit of Acheron[obs3], Cocytus; infernal regions, inferno, shades below, realms of Pluto. Pluto, Rhadamanthus[obs3], Erebus[Lat]; Tophet. Adj. hellish, infernal, stygian. Phr. dies irae dies illa[Lat]; "the hue ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... about lovely Titaresios that poureth his fair-flowing stream into Peneios. Yet doth he not mingle with the silver eddies of Peneios, but floweth on over him like unto oil, seeing that he is an offspring from the water of Styx, the dread river of ...
— The Iliad of Homer • Homer (Lang, Leaf, Myers trans.)
... Styx, the flood of deadly hate, Sad Acheron of sorrow, black and deep, Cocytus, named of lamentation loud Heard on the rueful stream; fierce Phlegethon, Whose waves of torrent fire ...
— On the Study of Words • Richard C Trench
... no weakling {*} in wit, thou that hast conceived and spoken such a word. Let earth be now witness hereto, and the wide heaven above, and that falling water of the Styx, the greatest oath and the most terrible to the blessed gods, that I will not plan any hidden guile to thine own hurt. Nay, but my thoughts are such, and such will be my counsel, as I would devise for myself, if ever so sore a need came over me. For I too have a righteous mind, ...
— DONE INTO ENGLISH PROSE • S. H. BUTCHER, M.A.
... the Southron's Fatherland Is that last ditch—his final stand? Knowest thou a stream folks call the Styx, Round a plantation of Old Nick's, In which, as Beauregard once swore, His horse should drink when all is o'er? There, there, my Southern friend, you'll find A ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 2, No. 2, August, 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... slowly get ahead, Even when the right is visibly unclouded, That if all men are classed as quick and dead, The judges all are dead, though some unshrouded. Pray Jove that when they're actually crowded On Styx's brink, and Charon rows in sight, His bark prove worse ...
— Shapes of Clay • Ambrose Bierce
... feelin' 'bout as happy as a lot o' old hens worritin' to hatch out a batch o' Easter eggs. Say, pore Joe wus weepin' over his sins, an' I guess we wus all 'most ready to cry. Then the feller up an' sez, 'Fetch out the pernicious sperrit, the nectar o' the devil, the waters o' the Styx, the vile filth as robs homes o' their support, an' drives whole races to perdition!' an' a lot o' other big talk. An', say, we fetched! Yes, sir, we fetched like a lot o' silly, skippin' lambs. We brought out ...
— The Night Riders - A Romance of Early Montana • Ridgwell Cullum
... Leo on either side, we dragged ourselves away from that accursed cliff and Styx-like river up a narrow, winding gorge. Presently it opened out, and there, stretching across the glade, we saw the Gate. Of this all I observed then, for my memory of the details of this scene and of the conversation that passed is very ...
— Ayesha - The Further History of She-Who-Must-Be-Obeyed • H. Rider Haggard
... Cambridge sky, And, flower-lulled in sleepy grass, Hear the cool lapse of hours pass, Until the centuries blend and blur In Grantchester, in Grantchester ... Still in the dawnlit waters cool His ghostly Lordship swims his pool, And tries the strokes, essays the tricks, Long learnt on Hellespont, or Styx; Dan Chaucer hears his river still Chatter beneath a phantom mill; Tennyson notes, with studious eye, How Cambridge waters hurry by ... And in that garden, black and white Creep whispers through the grass all night; And spectral dance, before the dawn, A hundred Vicars ...
— Georgian Poetry 1911-12 • Various
... dead—those who have escaped the dissecting-knife. Scattered about, with little stones and mounds here and there, under the occasional sullen green of cedars, a dead-cart and a spade sticking up as symbols, and the neglected river, deserted as the Styx, plashing against the low banks, we felt the sobering melancholy of the spot and made the prayer of "Give me neither poverty ...
— Tales of the Chesapeake • George Alfred Townsend
... reached me at last from the opposite shore, faint with distance and terror. The warning from an unseen steamer going out was as if a soul, crossing this Styx, now knew all. There is no London on the Thames, after sundown. Most of us know very little of the River by day. It might then be no more native to our capital than the Orientals who stand under the Limehouse gas lamps at night. ...
— London River • H. M. Tomlinson
... her fleets, and thence Pliny took the water, to get a nearer view of the labors of the volcano, after its awakening from centuries of sleep. In the hollow of the ridge, between that naked bluff and the next swell of the mountain, lie the fabulous Styx, the Elysian fields, and the place of the dead, as fixed by the Mantuan. More on the height and nearer to the sea, lie, buried in the earth, the vast vaults of the Piscina Mirabile—and the gloomy caverns of the Hundred Chambers; places ...
— The Water-Witch or, The Skimmer of the Seas • James Fenimore Cooper
... Lord KINNAIRD, who once was hot upon the ball, Give our Arabs chance of football and of cricket. And you'll fairly earn the hearty thanks of all; For the young City Children, doomed to rummage In dim alleys foul as Styx, Never else may know the rapture of a "scrummage," Or "a ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 98, March 15, 1890 • Various
... that gay old misogynist Arthur Schopenhauer persuaded to cross the Styx and revisiting the earth. Apart from his disgust if forced to listen to the music of his self-elected disciple Richard Wagner, what painted work would be likely to attract him? Remember he it was who named Woman the knock-kneed sex—since the new woman is here it matters little ...
— Promenades of an Impressionist • James Huneker
... rather, Since some one had hinted, the youth to annoy, That he wasn't by any means PHOEBUS'S boy! Intending, the rascally son of a gun, To darken the brow of the son of the SUN! "By the terrible Styx!" said the angry sire, While his eyes flashed volumes of fury and fire, "To prove your reviler an infamous liar, I swear I will grant you whate'er you desire!" "Then by my head," The youngster said, "I'll mount the coach when the horses are ...
— The Humourous Poetry of the English Language • James Parton
... Boston, &c. he was able to give me a great deal of information of what is passing in the world, and I pestered him with questions pretty much as our friends Lynch, Nelson, &c. will us, when we step across the Styx, for they will wish to know what has been passing above ground since they left us. You hope I have not abandoned entirely the service of our country. After five and twenty years' continual employment in it, I trust it will be thought I have fulfilled my ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson
... place, but we cannot stay here any longer. We want to reach the underground stream of which we have heard so much—the "River Styx." ...
— Round-about Rambles in Lands of Fact and Fancy • Frank Richard Stockton
... Virgil? He had declared that the mouth of Tartarus lay in Italy, hard by the volcanic lake Avernus; and after the unexpected eruption of Vesuvius in the first century, nothing seemed more clear than that Virgil was right; and that men were justified in talking of Tartarus, Styx, and Phlegethon as indisputable Christian entities. Etna, Stromboli, Hecla, were (according to this cosmogony) in like wise mouths of hell; and there were not wanting holy hermits, who had heard, from within those craters, shrieks, and clanking chains, and the howls of demons tormenting ...
— Westminster Sermons - with a Preface • Charles Kingsley
... why I'm taking up this case. I believe science can really be used to detect crime, any crime, and in the present instance I've just pride enough to stick to this thing until - until they begin to cut ice on the Styx. Whew, but it will be cold out in the country to-night, ...
— The Poisoned Pen • Arthur B. Reeve
... protection of his mother, who was always at hand to guide and support him in the conflict, and to succor him in danger. Achilles, on the other hand, possessed a charmed life. He had been dipped by his mother Thetis, when an infant, in the river Styx, to render him invulnerable and immortal; and the immersion produced the effect intended in respect to all those parts of the body which the water laved. As, how ever, Thetis held the child by the ankles when she plunged him in, the ankles remained unaffected ...
— Romulus, Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... and your pillow-beer, For I wash'd 'em in Styx last night, son, And your blankets both, and dried them upon The brimstony banks of Acheron— It is not ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb IV - Poems and Plays • Charles and Mary Lamb
... slabbering-bib and the extensive rims of my coney-wood umbrella, he chucks me under the chin with his ugly toad-coloured paw, that stunk as bad of brimstone as a card-match new-lighted, saying, 'How now, Honest Jones, I am glad to see thee on this side the river Styx, prithee, hold up thy head, and don't be ashamed, thou art not the first Quaker by many thousands that has sworn allegiance to my government; besides, thou hast been one of my best benefactors on earth, ...
— History of English Humour, Vol. 1 (of 2) - With an Introduction upon Ancient Humour • Alfred Guy Kingan L'Estrange
... ashes, noble princess! Thy will was good, and be that sufficient. I shall not want materials to write a commentary on the history of Frederic, when, in company with thee, I shall wander on the banks of Styx; there the events that happened on this earth ...
— The Life and Adventures of Baron Trenck - Vol. 2 (of 2) • Baron Trenck
... the full that I was nowhere, or to speak more correctly, a wanderer in empty space—that I had left one world behind me and was travelling to another, like a disembodied spirit crossing the gloomy Styx. A strange serenity took possession of my soul, and all that had polluted or degraded it in the lower life seemed to fall away from it like the shadow ...
— A Trip to Venus • John Munro
... poet's prayer: Stern Proserpine relented, And gave him back the fair. Thus song could prevail O'er death and o'er hell, A conquest how hard and how glorious! Though fate had fast bound her With Styx nine times round her, Yet Music and ...
— The Poetical Works Of Alexander Pope, Vol. 1 • Alexander Pope et al
... Achilles, the hero of Homer's Iliad. His mother Thetis, to render him invulnerable, plunged him into the waters of the Styx. The heel by which she held him was not washed by the waters and remained vulnerable. Here he ...
— Essays • Ralph Waldo Emerson |
