"Distich" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... a caution, and a soldier's motto should urge to daring. So we'll none of that. What do you say to the distich in honor of your great ancestor, ...
— The Iron Game - A Tale of the War • Henry Francis Keenan
... Etruscan Kings, not only graced poets by his bounty, but also by being a poet himself; and as JAMES VI., now King of Scotland, is not only a favourer of poets, but a poet; as my friend Master RICHARD BARNFELD hath in this distich passing well recorded, ...
— An English Garner - Critical Essays & Literary Fragments • Edited by Professor Arber and Thomas Seccombe
... monumental effigy in one of the transepts lies the wonderful old Countess of Desmond, who having danced in her youth with Richard III. lived through the Tudor dynasty "to the age of a hundred and ten," and, as the old distich tells us, "died by a fall from ...
— Ireland Under Coercion (2nd ed.) (2 of 2) (1888) • William Henry Hurlbert
... Juvenal or Jonathan Swift, by citing the cases of Eve, the daughters of Lot, Delilah, Herodias, Clytemnestra, and Progne. The way in which women were regarded as at once a blessing and a curse is well illustrated also in a distich of Sedulius: "A woman alone has been responsible for opening the gates of death; a woman alone has been the cause ...
— A Short History of Women's Rights • Eugene A. Hecker
... the vast epics of Vyasa and Valmiki are composed is called the Sloka, which is thus described by Schlegel in his Indische Bibliothek, p. 36: "The oldest, most simple, and most generally adopted measure is the Sloka; a distich of two sixteen syllable-lines, divided at the eighth syllable." According to our prosodial marks, the following ...
— Nala and Damayanti and Other Poems • Henry Hart Milman
... small farmer who played the fiddle well. The boy is said at the age of ten to have carved over the door a Latin distich, which, being translated, runs:— ...
— Highways & Byways in Sussex • E.V. Lucas
... of the House of Hapsburgh in Italy. Thus that house was aggrandised by a war which was to itself most disastrous. But Austria has often found other means of extending her dominion than military triumphs, as is recorded in the celebrated distich of Mathias Corvinus: ...
— Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Louis Antoine Fauvelet de Bourrienne
... effects to any pleasurable purpose. Double and tri-syllable rhymes, indeed, form a lower species of wit, and, attended to exclusively for their own sake, may become a source of momentary amusement; as in poor Smart's distich to the Welsh Squire who had promised ...
— Biographia Literaria • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... Lord Coke, which hath overthrown him from the very roots. The supersedeas was carried to him by Sir George Coppin, who, at the presenting of it, received it with dejection and tears. Tremor et successio non cadunt in fortem et constantem. I send you a distich ...
— Literary Character of Men of Genius - Drawn from Their Own Feelings and Confessions • Isaac D'Israeli
... which the verses were composed. When we made fun of him in our playtime, it was for remarks which we had invented and placed in his mouth ourselves; for instance: "Scan my immortal poem, The Dying Gladiator." The reason of this was simply that, in elucidation of the composition of the antique distich, he made use of his own poem of the above name, which he had included in a Danish reading-book edited by himself. As soon as he took up his position in the ...
— Recollections Of My Childhood And Youth • George Brandes
... probably by another hand. Critically speaking too, not one of all the one hundred and fifty-four is of the conventional and elaborate fourteen-liner sort, with complicated rhymes; but each is a lyrical gem of three four-line stanzas closed by a distich. Milton's eighteen are all of the more artificial Petrarchian sort; which Wordsworth has diligently made his model in more than four hundred instances of very ...
— My Life as an Author • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... after a week's siege, Calais, which had been in the hands of the English for two hundred and ten years, once more became a French town, in spite of the inscription which was engraved on one of its gates, and which may be turned into the following distich:— ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume IV. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... put this distich in an elegy in which he narrated a nocturnal promenade between Rome and Tibur. Observe the word Scythiae instead of Scythicis, and especially, feriat, which is the true reading,—the printed texts say noceat. Thus an excellent correction has been preserved ...
— The Wonders of Pompeii • Marc Monnier
... clever distich concerning the great fleas and the little fleas which tells us that no animal is too humble to have its parasite. Even Major Tifto had his inferior friend. This was a certain Captain Green,—for the friend also affected military honours. He was a man somewhat older than Tifto, of whose antecedents ...
— The Duke's Children • Anthony Trollope
... insisted on matching his epigrammatic powers with Garrick's. It was determined that each should write the other's epitaph. Garrick immediately said his epitaph was finished, and spoke the following distich extempore: ...
— English Satires • Various
... the seer's chamber with considerable eagerness, he found the room completely dark. An unseen hand led him to a seat. Soon he heard a low murmuring chant, as though from voices at a remote distance. By degrees the words grew more articulate, shaping themselves into the same quaint distich that Kelly ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 1 (of 2) • John Roby
... himself: Ego autem dico vobis: diligite inimicos vestros. If you speak of evil thoughts, turn to the Gospel: De corde exeunt cogitationes malae. If of the fickleness of friends, there is Cato, who will give you his distich: ...
— Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... Epigram, with little art composed, Is one good sentence in a distich closed. These points, that by Italians first were prized, Our ancient authors knew not, or despised; The vulgar, dazzled with their glaring light, To their false pleasures quickly they invite; But public ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 5 • Various
... strength and firmness of fibre is excellently well exemplified in the woodcock and the partridge. The former flies most—the latter walks; the wing of the woodcock is always very tough,—of the partridge very tender hence the old doggerel distich,— ...
— The Cook's Oracle; and Housekeeper's Manual • William Kitchiner
... verse used are the elegiac distich (most frequent), scazons, and hendecasyllabics. In vi. 65 he apologizes for using the pure hexameter, which is found only four times. ...
— The Student's Companion to Latin Authors • George Middleton
... el-Faslayn, or "Mixture of the two Seasons"—autumn and winter. The storm is expected to blow three days from the Azyab (south-east) or from the Shirs (south-west). The qualities of the several winds are described in the following distich:— ...
— The Land of Midian, Vol. 1 • Richard Burton
... the whole episode of Lothair's coronation was treated as a papal triumph, and by Innocent's direction a picture was placed in the Lateran palace in which Lothair was represented as kneeling before the throned Pope to receive the imperial crown, while underneath as inscribed the following distich:— ...
— The Church and the Empire - Being an Outline of the History of the Church - from A.D. 1003 to A.D. 1304 • D. J. Medley
... blocked with crowds, each man bearing a candle. They came in streams to kiss his hands and feet and to offer gold and silver, and more than forty marks were given that day. John of Leicester laid a distich at his feet, much admired then, but "bald as his crown" ...
— Hugh, Bishop of Lincoln - A Short Story of One of the Makers of Mediaeval England • Charles L. Marson
... to M. Edouard Fournier ('L'Esprit des Autres', sixth edition, 1881, p. 288), is simply the readjustment of an earlier quatrain, based upon a Latin distich in the ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Oliver Goldsmith • Oliver Goldsmith
... we are above them; a single envious breast is sufficient to give us to the hangman. We have agreed that we are in danger; we have agreed to make an honourable retreat; we cannot do so without money. You know the vulgar distich among our ...
— Paul Clifford, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... to myself, "This is another proof positive." Then I said to him, "And how couldst thou fall in love with one thou hast never seen?" He replied, "Know that I was sitting one day at the window, when, lo! there passed by a man, singing the following distich: ...
— The Book of Noodles - Stories Of Simpletons; Or, Fools And Their Follies • W. A. Clouston
... comestibles, From Slater, and Fortnum and Mason; Billiard, ecarte, and chess tables; Water in vast marble basin; Luminous books (not voluminous) To read under beech-trees cacuminous; One friend, who is fond of a distich, And doesn't get too syllogistic; A valet, who knows the complete art Of service—a maiden, his sweetheart: Give me these, in some rural pavilion, And I'll ...
— The Book of Humorous Verse • Various
... Rowley, with admirable promptitude, and, immediately closing his eyes, as if from habit, repeated the following distich with more ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 20 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... or system of small roundish clouds in the upper regions of the atmosphere, commonly moves in a different current of air from that which is blowing at the earth's surface. It forms the mackerel sky alluded to in the following distich:— ...
— The Sailor's Word-Book • William Henry Smyth
... representative of this school that we may mention was Callinus, an Ephesian of the latter part of the eighth century B.C., to whom the invention of the elegiac distich, the characteristic form of the Ionian poetry, is attributed. Among the few fragments from this poet is the following fine war elegy, occasioned, probably, by a Persian invasion ...
— Mosaics of Grecian History • Marcius Willson and Robert Pierpont Willson
... arranging words in that measure, so that the lines may flow smoothly, that the accents may fall correctly, that the rhymes may strike the ear strongly, and that there may be a pause at the end of every distich, is an art as mechanical as that of mending a kettle or shoeing a horse, and may be learned by any human being who has sense enough to learn anything. But, like other mechanical arts, it was gradually improved by means of ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 2 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... mathematician), who was so poor, that (as Thuanus saith), he was thought "fami non famae scribere." 'Returning into England, he was robb'd by the rebels of what little he had; and dying for grief in great want, anno 1598, was honourably buried nigh Chaucer in Westminster, where this distich concludeth his epitaph on ...
— A Biography of Edmund Spenser • John W. Hales
... men and women, have a very bad name in Eastern tales, the former for treachery and the latter for unchastity. A Persian distich says: ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 6 • Richard F. Burton
... the fashion set by the Roman writers,—then the eighteenth century deluged us with ill-natured witty epigrams of the like brief form. It was not until comparatively modern times that our Western world fully recognized the value of the distich, triplet or quatrain for the expression of beautiful thoughts, rather than for the expression of ill-natured ones. But now that the recognition has come, it has been discovered that nothing is harder than to write a beautiful ...
— Books and Habits from the Lectures of Lafcadio Hearn • Lafcadio Hearn
... 107 The famous Virgil. There is a tale, reported by Donatus, that Vergil once anonymously wrote up on the palace gates a distich in praise of Augustus, which, when nobody was found to own it, was claimed by a certain versifier Bathyllus, whom Caesar duly rewarded, A few days later, however, Virgil again set in the same place a quatrain each line of which commenced 'sic ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn, Vol. I (of 6) • Aphra Behn
... church which struck me most: the eternal and all-seeing eye placed over the door; Fortune's wheel too, composed of six figures curiously disposed, and not unlike our man alphabet, two mounting, two sitting, and two tumbling, over against it: on the outside of the wheel this distich, ...
— Observations and Reflections Made in the Course of a Journey through France, Italy, and Germany, Vol. I • Hester Lynch Piozzi
... sends strange invitations; 'yet,' says Horace, 'except these flights, the only extraordinary thing the duchess did was to do nothing extraordinary, for I do not call it very mad that some pique happening between her and the Duchess of Bedford, the latter had this distich sent to her;— ...
— The Wits and Beaux of Society - Volume 2 • Grace & Philip Wharton
... were ended, and the housewife might rest herself with the more delicate tasks of spinning, knitting, or needlework, for it was in these, "the good old days" we all so plaintively lament, that the distich— ...
— Standish of Standish - A story of the Pilgrims • Jane G. Austin
... where 'a the affront to you? Against your worship when had Selkirk writ? Or Page pour'd forth the torrent of his wit? Or grant the bard[217] whose distich all commend 160 'In power a servant, out of power a friend,' To Walpole guilty of some venial sin; What's that to you who ne'er was ...
— The Poetical Works Of Alexander Pope, Vol. 1 • Alexander Pope et al
... sexton, climbing out of his grave with surprising agility. He fixed his eyes on the cavalier, as though it were the aspect of recognition. He then hummed the following distich, a favourite troll amongst the republican party at ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 2 (of 2) • John Roby
... is possible to compose a Latin distich of the greatest beauty without knowing either the Latin language or prosody. We must examine the possibility and the impossibility, and afterwards see who is the man who says he is the author of the distich, for there are extraordinary people in the world. My brother, ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... more serious than even a bad style. It was said in one place that James had sent his brother as his messenger to heaven, and in another that James had furnished the wings with which his brother had soared to a higher region. There was a still more unfortunate distich, which at the time attracted little notice, but which, a few months later, was remembered and malignantly interpreted. "O King," said the poet, "cease to sigh for a son. Though nature may refuse your wish, the stars will find a ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 2 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... is a distich, in which another poet of beautiful talents has attempted to depreciate a name, to which, probably, few of his readers are ...
— An Essay on the History of Civil Society, Eighth Edition • Adam Ferguson, L.L.D.
... went down the slopes to the darkening vale I heard him crooning to himself in a high, quavering voice the single distich; then in a little his weariness took him again, and he plodded on with no thought save ...
— The Moon Endureth—Tales and Fancies • John Buchan
... by twenty days of rain and wind. This statement being published in the Athenaeum, a cluster of correspondents averred that the belief is common among seamen, in all parts of the world, and among landsmen too. Some one quoted a distich: ...
— A Budget of Paradoxes, Volume I (of II) • Augustus De Morgan
... Turk of the time of Orkhan; I have seen Coswa, the she-camel of the Prophet; I have encountered Kara-bulut, Selim's black steed; I have met the poor poet Fignahi, condemned to go about Stamboul tied to an ass for having pierced with an insolent distich the Grand Vizier of Ibrahim; I have been in the same cafe with Soliman the Big, the monstrous admiral, whom four robust slaves hardly succeeded in lifting from the divan; Ali, the Grand Vizier, who could not find in all Arabia ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 1 • Charles Dudley Warner
... with this trite distich you made hexameters tame; it gushed from that great young heart with a sweet infantine ardour, that even virtue can only pour when young, and youth when virtuous; and, at the words I have emphasised by the poor device of capitals, two lovely, supple arms ...
— Hard Cash • Charles Reade
... something quite plain in words that turn it into something very obscure. As old Fuller says, the writers have a hair hanging to the nib of their pen. Their shortness does not prevent them from being tiresome. They recall the French wit to whom a friend showed a distich: "Excellent," he said; "but isn't it rather ...
— Studies in Literature • John Morley
... lyrics of the opening of Macbeth. The tone is quite familiar;—there is no poetic description of night, no elaborate information conveyed by one speaker to another of what both had immediately before their senses—(such as the first distich in Addison's Cato, which is a translation into poetry of "Past four o'clock and a dark morning!");—and yet nothing bordering on the comic on the one hand, nor any striving of the intellect on the other. It is precisely the language of sensation among men who feared no charge of effeminacy ...
— Shakespeare, Ben Jonson, Beaumont and Fletcher • S. T. Coleridge
... of the following nouns: town, country, case, pin, needle, harp, pen, sex, rush, arch, marsh, monarch, blemish, distich, princess, gas, bias, stigma, wo, grotto, folio, punctilio, ally, duty, toy, money, entry, valley, volley, half, dwarf, strife, knife, roof, muff, staff, chief, sheaf, mouse, penny, ox, foot, erratum, axis, thesis, criterion, bolus, ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown
... Hence, from the nature of his office, and the powers that were intrusted to him by the king, and probably too from the natural bent of his disposition, arose the popular dislike which vented itself in the well-known traditionary distich we have taken ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 1 (of 2) • John Roby
... good for me. Yet I ate some. It gives me the gripes. I avenged myself at dessert with the following distich: ...
— The Memoirs of Victor Hugo • Victor Hugo
... after which it never appeared again. This distich is the first utterance of a piskey ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 59, December 14, 1850 • Various |
