"Dithyrambic" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... which let us say with Mr. Carlyle, 'What should Falsehood do but decease, being ripe, decompose itself, and return to the Father of it?' To whom, alas! I fear, under this inexorable law must in due time revert too many of the fuliginous word-pictures of Mr. Carlyle's own dithyrambic prose ...
— France and the Republic - A Record of Things Seen and Learned in the French Provinces - During the 'Centennial' Year 1889 • William Henry Hurlbert
... a more independent spirit than most parasites, and the history of his sojourn in Syracuse gives us an amusing insight into the state of Court life in Sicily 400 years B.C. He was an Athenian dithyrambic poet and musician; and as Dionysius affected literature, he was welcomed at his palace, where he wrote a poem entitled "The Banquet," containing an account of the luxurious style of living there adopted. Philoxenus was probably the least esteemed guest at these feasts, of which, but for him no record ...
— History of English Humour, Vol. 1 (of 2) - With an Introduction upon Ancient Humour • Alfred Guy Kingan L'Estrange
... includes in his Poetics, what he excludes, and what he ignores, will be a helpful initial step in an investigation of what he meant by poetic. Five kinds of poetry are mentioned by name in the Poetics: epic, dramatic, dithyrambic, nomic, and satiric; and lyric is included by implication as a form of epic, where the poet narrates ...
— Rhetoric and Poetry in the Renaissance - A Study of Rhetorical Terms in English Renaissance Literary Criticism • Donald Lemen Clark
... secret? It is true—I put my life with joy into your power—I love you, love with ardour, as an equal, as a mistress, as a brother-in-arms, as an adored, desired, sweet-hearted woman. O Bride!" he cried, waxing dithyrambic, "bride of my reason and my senses, have pity, have pity ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 7 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... so many cantos. Nature crowded them for him with imagery such as no Laureate could copy in the cold mosaic of language. The rhythm of alternating dawn and sunset, the strophe and antistrophe still perceptible through all the sudden shifts of our dithyrambic seasons and echoed in corresponding floral harmonies, made melody in the soul of Abel, the plain serving- man. It softened his whole otherwise rigid aspect. He worshipped God according to the strict way of his fathers; but a florist's ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 31, May, 1860 • Various
... more harmonious utterance in some of his most careless prose essays, than can be found in his Nathan from the first line to the last. In the numeris lege solutis he is often snatched beyond himself, and becomes truly dithyrambic; in his pentameters the march of the thought is comparatively hampered and irresolute. His best things are not poetically delicate, but have the tougher fibre of proverbs. Is it not enough, then, to be a great prose-writer? ...
— Among My Books - First Series • James Russell Lowell
... bent their powerful backs a little and their great arms swept the paddles through the water at an amazing rate. The soul of Shif'less Sol surged up to the heights. He became dithyrambic and he spoke in a tone not loud, but full of concentrated fire ...
— The Eyes of the Woods - A story of the Ancient Wilderness • Joseph A. Altsheler
... in our day to be dithyrambic on the glory of Literature. Books have become our dearest companions, yielding exquisite delights and inspiring lofty aims. They are our silent instructors, our solace in sorrow, our relief in weariness. With what enjoyment we linger over the ...
— The Principles of Success in Literature • George Henry Lewes
... had to assist in the preparations, to light the fire in the salon, give a hand to my wife in the kitchen, and get what was wanted from the grocer. The supper developed into a dithyrambic orgy. When the champagne was drunk, and the punch began to produce its effects, I delivered a fiery speech which so provoked the hilarity of the company that it seemed as though it would never end. I became so excited that I first ...
— My Life, Volume I • Richard Wagner
... would sweep away Christianity as Christianity swept away polytheism. Toward its Founder, as the type of human love and purity, he is uniformly reverential; there is nothing in that supreme figure that jars with that Religion of Humanity, which 'The Altar of Righteousness' proclaims with high dithyrambic enthusiasm: ...
— Studies in Literature and History • Sir Alfred Comyn Lyall
... me, and a terrified cry of "Marcus!" checked my dithyrambic appeal. She shrank away so that a great corner of the dining-table separated us, and she stared at me as though my words hats been the affrighting utterance of ...
— The Morals of Marcus Ordeyne • William J. Locke
... represented as a shepherd. [1237][Greek: Atlas mathematikos en Libus aner.—Polueidos de ho dithurambopoios ton Atlanta touton POIMENA Libun phesin.] Atlas the great mathematician, was a person of Libya. The Dithyrambic poet Polueidos says, that Atlas was a Libyan shepherd. There was a tradition that the temple of Ammon in Libya was built by a shepherd, from whom it received its name; [1238][Greek: apo tou hidrusamenou poimenos.] It is reported of the Muses, that they were of shepherd extraction, ...
— A New System; or, an Analysis of Antient Mythology. Volume II. (of VI.) • Jacob Bryant
... relationship with the Princes of Wales, or the Geraldines, or Cadwallon ap Madoc of Powis. He hints, not obscurely, that the real reason why he was passed over for the Bishopric of St. David's in 1186 was that Henry II. feared his natio et cognatio, his nation and his family. He becomes almost dithyrambic in extolling the deeds of his kinsmen in Ireland. "Who are they who penetrated into the fastnesses of the enemy? The Geraldines. Who are they who hold the country in submission? The Geraldines. Who are they whom the foemen ...
— The Itinerary of Archibishop Baldwin through Wales • Giraldus Cambrensis
... argument, though in appearance the strongest, is of the least moment of any. For Epaminondas, who all the world knows was educated, and lived his whole life, in much poverty, and also Plato, the philosopher, exhibited magnificent shows, the one an entertainment of flute-players the other of dithyrambic singers; Dion, the Syracusan, supplying the expenses of the latter, and Pelopidas those of Epaminondas. For good men do not allow themselves in any inveterate and irreconcilable hostility to receiving presents ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough
... of epic poetry I have the greatest admiration for Homer.... And as a dithyrambic poet for Melanippides. (4) I admire also Sophocles as a tragedian, Polycleitus as a sculptor, and ...
— The Memorabilia - Recollections of Socrates • Xenophon
... of this kind sometimes writing in a dithyrambic style, as if he were intoxicated; at other times, nay, on the very next page, he will be high-sounding, severe, and deeply learned, prolix to the last degree of dulness, and cutting everything very small, like the late Christian ...
— Essays of Schopenhauer • Arthur Schopenhauer
... meditating. They recognized fully the value of tradition and habit as the great allies of permanence and stability. They all had that distaste for innovation which belonged to their race, and many of them a distrust of human nature derived from their creed. The day of sentiment was over, and no dithyrambic affirmations or fine-drawn analyses of the Rights of Man would serve their present turn. This was a practical question, and they addressed themselves to it as men of knowledge and judgment should. Their problem was how to adapt English principles and precedents ...
— Harvard Classics Volume 28 - Essays English and American • Various
... grow dithyrambic—not just yet. I was so sure of my man that it seemed quite worth while to tumble out at Avignon—a place I had never inspected—and fool away another spell among Roman remains, and Petrarch and the rival Popes, and the opening scenes of the ...
— Foe-Farrell • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... been essentially lyrical. It arose from the dithyrambic chorus that was sung at the festivals of Dionysus. Thespis had introduced the first actor, who, in the pauses of the choral song, related in monologue the adventures of the god or engaged in dialogue with the leader of the chorus. To Aeschylus ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 1 • Charles Dudley Warner
... the world who really did love him, as few women have ever loved. Then man measures woman's love by his own; but when was man's heart stirred by nature's strongest passion like that of devoted woman? while now the world did not contain one heart that was moved to him by anything stronger than dithyrambic delirium. Who knows? But there was Fletcher looking on the corpse of his wife, and waving over her face the light of the small cruse he held in his hand! Was he moved, as he saw the still, death-bound features, that once could not contain the expression which the leaping heart, with that burning ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Vol. XXIII. • Various
... most foolish; and that others less esteemed were really wiser and better. I will tell you the tale of my wanderings and of the 'Herculean' labours, as I may call them, which I endured only to find at last the oracle irrefutable. After the politicians, I went to the poets; tragic, dithyrambic, and all sorts. And there, I said to myself, you will be instantly detected; now you will find out that you are more ignorant than they are. Accordingly, I took them some of the most elaborate passages in their own writings, and asked what was the meaning ...
— Apology - Also known as "The Death of Socrates" • Plato
... those days in some letters, apparently written from Heligoland, which he has inserted in his book on Borne. We quote some passages, not only for their biographic interest as showing a phase of Heine's mental history, but because they are a specimen of his power in that kind of dithyrambic writing which, in less masterly hands, easily ...
— The Essays of "George Eliot" - Complete • George Eliot
... things did not go so well, he was a volcano spitting fire and smoke. To all appearances equally removed from effeminateness and brutality, he was subject, nevertheless, to accesses of both. Now and then a dithyrambic rapture came over him, especially when there was wine in his blood. He would pace about, and if it was daytime, might address a pathetic, sonorous invocation to the sun, or at night, to the constellations, ...
— Atlantis • Gerhart Hauptmann
... the springtide. I am so happy I am afraid. The sense of living fills me with exultation. I want to sing, to dance; I am dithyrambic with delight. ...
— Ballads of a Bohemian • Robert W. Service |
