"Heroical" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the handling of mankind en masse, with big effects of dark and light: broad brush-work on a canvas suited to heroical, even epic, themes,—a sort of fiction the later Zola was to excel in—Balzac will not fail us. His work here is as noteworthy as it is in the fine detailed manner of his most realistical modern studies—or in the searching analysis of ...
— Masters of the English Novel - A Study Of Principles And Personalities • Richard Burton
... pass, and must pass, before they could engage, they were so warmly saluted from the Batteries of the Enemy, and their small Shot, that our Regiments were forc'd to retire in Confusion to their Camp. By which Rebuff all heroical Imaginations were at present laid aside, to consider how they might make ...
— Military Memoirs of Capt. George Carleton • Daniel Defoe
... some light French vaudeville, all jests and smiles, illustrated in motley contrast with helm and hauberk, cope and cowl, praying knights and fighting priests, winged griffins and nimbused saints, flame-breathing dragons and enamoured princes, all mingled together in the illuminated colours and the heroical grotesque romance of the ...
— Wisdom, Wit, and Pathos of Ouida - Selected from the Works of Ouida • Ouida
... be in so strange a world he would have quarrelled violently with his informant. A week ago he was a cynical clear-sighted modern, a contemner of illusions, a swallower of formulas, a breaker of shams—one who had seen through the heroical and found it silly. Romance and such-like toys were playthings for fatted middle-age, not for strenuous and cold-eyed youth. But the truth was that now he was altogether spellbound by these toys. To think that he was serving his lady was rapture-ecstasy, that for her he was ...
— Huntingtower • John Buchan
... the very top of the peak of Teneriffe, it is in very great danger of breaking its neck downwards, but in no possibility of ascending upwards into the seat of tranquillity above the moon. The first ambitious men in the world, the old giants, are said to have made an heroical attempt of scaling Heaven in despite of the gods, and they cast Ossa upon Olympus and Pelion upon Ossa, two or three mountains more they thought would have done their business, but the thunder spoiled all the work when they were come up to the ...
— Cowley's Essays • Abraham Cowley
... from shipwreck, but never remember having beheld more mental anguish and physical suffering than was expressed in the countenances and movements of these eleven sailors. Their story as told to me is a striking and memorable illustration of endurance and hardship on the one hand, and of the finest heroical humanity on the other, in every sense worthy to be known to the British public. I got the whole narrative direct from the chief mate, Mr. William Meldrum Lloyd, and it shall be related here as nearly as possible ...
— Heroes of the Goodwin Sands • Thomas Stanley Treanor
... imagine, then, that the souls, once unfettered from the body, may, together with their torments, be capable of great comforts and divine favors, and break forth into resolute, heroical, ...
— Purgatory • Mary Anne Madden Sadlier
... the Russian soldier, and in fact with everybody. Honour stands for nothing, but with the knout and brandy one can get anything from them except heroical enthusiasm. ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... fair Helen, had Argos' chiefs, her puissance, Set them afield; for Troy rous'd them, a cry not of home, 90 Troy, dark death universal, of Asia grave and Europe, Altar of heroes Troy, Troy of heroical ...
— The Poems and Fragments of Catullus • Catullus
... equipage, Young Albanact, impatient of delay, Led forth his army gainst the straggling mates, Whose multitude did daunt our soldiers' minds. Yet nothing could dismay the forward prince, But with a courage most heroical, Like to a lion mongst a flock of lambs, Made havoc of the faintheart fugitives, Hewing a passage through them with his sword. Yea, we had almost given them the repulse, When suddenly, from out the silent wood, Hubba, with twenty thousand soldiers, ...
— 2. Mucedorus • William Shakespeare [Apocrypha]
... history ever fanned them anew into flame, bringing home to Israel the truths that man does not live by bread alone, and that there are other things of worth than those which Baal can bestow; it brought ever again into the foreground the divineness of heroical self sacrifice of the individual for the good ...
— Prolegomena to the History of Israel • Julius Wellhausen
... always, if they sought to bless his name, "Nay, do not thank me—thank Rubens. Without him, what should I have been?" And these dreams—beautiful, impossible, innocent, free of all selfishness, full of heroical worship—were so closely about him as he went that he was happy—happy even on this sad anniversary of Alois's saint's day, when he and Patrasche went home by themselves to the little dark hut and the meal of black bread, while in the mill-house ...
— Stories By English Authors: Germany • Various
... every failure to accomplish your end by violent means you are forced to further outrages. Violence has no reserves but further violence. Each failure of the violent is met by the desperate cry, the heroical scream: "We will not be beaten. If you will not give in to us for this much, then see! We will go further." Wars always do go further. Wars always end more savagely than they begin. Even our war in South Africa, ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 4, July, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... description of England in twelve-syllabled verse, full of antiquarian and historical details, so accurate as to make the work an authority on such matters. The rushing verse is full of vigour and gusto. Other poems of D. are The Wars of the Barons (1603), England's Heroical Epistles (1598) (being imaginary letters between Royal lovers such as Henry II. and Rosamund), Poems, Lyric and Heroic (1606) (including the fine ballad of "Agincourt"), Nymphidia, his most graceful work, Muses Elizium, ...
— A Short Biographical Dictionary of English Literature • John W. Cousin
... the old English drama, than the heroic plays which were introduced by Charles II. The former, in labouring to exhibit a variety and contrast of passions, tempers, or humours, frequently altogether neglected the dignity of the scene. In the heroical tragedy, on the other hand, nothing was to be indecorous, nothing grotesque: The personages were to speak, not as men, but as heroes; to whom, as statuaries have assigned a superiority of stature, so these poets have given an uniform ...
— The Works of John Dryden, Vol. II • Edited by Walter Scott
... with the Moods of their own Minds. They owe their power over the human mind to their having had a deeper sense than others of what was grand in the objects of nature, or affecting in the events of human life. But to the men I speak of there is nothing interesting, nothing heroical, but themselves. To them the fall of gods or of great men is the same. They do not enter into the feeling. They cannot understand the terms. They are even debarred from the last poor, paltry consolation of an unmanly triumph over ...
— Hazlitt on English Literature - An Introduction to the Appreciation of Literature • Jacob Zeitlin
... against the Spanish treasure fleet, and in 1591 he published a report of the fight, near the Azores, between Grenville's ship, the Revenue, and fifteen great ships of Spain, an action, said Francis Bacon, "memorable even beyond credit, and to the height of some heroical fable." Raleigh was active in raising a fleet against the Spanish Armada of 1588. He was present in 1596 at the brilliant action in which the Earl of Essex "singed the Spanish king's beard," in the harbor of Cadiz. The year before he had sailed to Guiana, in search of the fabled El ...
— Brief History of English and American Literature • Henry A. Beers
... golden tenor voice, who sings so sweetly and sulks so proudly lazy, and Amodio, that ton of juvenile humanity, whose weighty baritone and eagerness to please make up for the see-saw alternation of his two only expressions and gesticulations,—those of vulgar love-making and mock-heroical revenge. These, with Gazzaniga, the charming, lively, natural Gazzaniga, whose voice is fresh, and who can sing and act so charmingly in genial music, such as Donizetti's "Elisir d' Amore," with ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I, No. 1, Nov. 1857 • Various
... punch daily at it with all manner of levers, remains immovable as Ailsa Crag. Heaven alone knows what I shall do with it. I see and say to myself, It is heroical; Troy Town was probably not a more heroic business; and this belongs to thee, to thy own people,—must it be dead forever?—Perhaps yes,—and kill me too into the bargain. Really I think it very shocking that we ...
— The Correspondence of Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson, 1834-1872, Vol II. • Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson
... that night, when your mother wanted to scold poor Jack! And the L300 Austin lent me when I left him: nephew, that was the remaking of me,—the acorn of the oak I have planted. So here they are [added Uncle Jack, with a heroical effort, and he extracted from the pocket-book bills for a sum between three and four thousand pounds]. There, it is done; and I shall sleep better for it!" With that Uncle Jack got up, and ...
— The Caxtons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... my company?" asked the tall, lean man, "I mean until all is over. I, myself, am not quite ready yet for any such heroical performances." ...
— Mother Earth, Vol. 1 No. 4, June 1906 - Monthly Magazine Devoted to Social Science and Literature • Various
... but that we should toil for them, suffer for them, and if need be, as the highest act of goodness, die for them at last? Is not this the very element of goodness which we all confess to be most noble, beautiful, pure, heroical, divine? Divine even in sinful and fallen man, who must forgive because he needs to be forgiven; who must help others because he needs help himself; who, if he suffers for others, deserves to suffer, and probably will suffer, in himself. But how much more heroical, and how much more divine ...
— Westminster Sermons - with a Preface • Charles Kingsley
... very fond of music and are constantly singing. They have a proverb: "He who sings thinks not of evil." Tomaseo thought their folk-songs richer than those of any other nation, ranging as they do over all manner of subjects. They are generally heroical or amorous in character, divided into short verses and sung in two parts; the bass delivers a kind of recitative, and the baritone joins in, the long final note with which each finishes dying away in a full chord. ...
— The Shores of the Adriatic - The Austrian Side, The Kuestenlande, Istria, and Dalmatia • F. Hamilton Jackson
... spice of deviltry lends not an unpleasantly titillating twang to the great mass of respectable flour that goes to make up the pudding of our modern civilization? And pertinent to this question another—Why is it that the pirate has, and always has had, a certain lurid glamour of the heroical enveloping him round about? Is there, deep under the accumulated debris of culture, a hidden groundwork of the old-time savage? Is there even in these well-regulated times an unsubdued nature in the respectable ...
— Howard Pyle's Book of Pirates • Howard I. Pyle
... flying trace of the big Zero be given? Riddling or screening certain cart-loads of heavy old German printed rubbish, [Chiefly the terrible compilation called Helden-Staats und Lebens-Geschichte des, &c. Friedrichs des Andern (History Heroical, Political and Biographical of Friedrich the Second), Frankfurt and Leipzig, 1759-1760, vol, i. first HALF, pp. 171-210. There are ten thick and thin half-volumes, and perhaps more. One of the most ...
— History of Friedrich II of Prussia V 7 • Thomas Carlyle
... I was not more curious at the time," answered the Collector with the politest touch of weariness. "I believe it was for saving the house from fire—something of that sort. As told to me, it sounded rather heroical. But, sir—" he turned again to the Chairman—" I suggest that all this does not affect my plea. Whatever her offence, she has suffered cruelly. She is physically unfit to bear this second punishment; ...
— Lady Good-for-Nothing • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... too spurne at this myne enterprise. Thee one vtterlie ignorant, the oother meanlye letterd. Thee ignorant wyl imagin, that thee passage was nothing craggye, in as much as M. Phaere hath broken thee ice before me: Thee meaner clarcks wyl suppose my trauail in theese heroical verses too carrye no great difficultie, in that yt lay in my choice too make what word I would short or long, hauing no English writer beefore mee in this kind of poetrye with whose squire I should ...
— A History of English Literature - Elizabethan Literature • George Saintsbury
... Emmerson too; so that but for the thoughts of my absent Anna, and perhaps a little uneasiness on the subject of Antonio, I might be perfectly happy. You know how good and friendly Katherine is, and really Charles does all in his power to please. If he were only a little more heroical, he would be a charming young man: for although he is not very handsome, I don't think you notice it in the least when you are intimate with him. Poor Charles, he was terribly mortified about the flash of lightning—but then ...
— Tales for Fifteen: or, Imagination and Heart • James Fenimore Cooper
... Man has been at some Pains in making suitable Returns to an Enemy, and has the Instruments of Revenge in his Hands, to let drop his Wrath, and stifle his Resentments, seems to have something in it Great and Heroical. There is a particular Merit in such a way of forgiving an Enemy; and the more violent and unprovoke'd the Offence has been, the greater still is the Merit of him who ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... Pirithous? Does not the passage of Moses and the Israelites into the Holy Land yield incomparably more poetic variety than the voyages of Ulysses and Aeneas? Are the obsolete, threadbare tales of Thebes and Troy half so well stored with great, heroical, and supernatural actions (since verse will needs find or make such), as the wars of Joshua, of the Judges, of David, and divers others? Can all the transformations of the gods give such copious hints to flourish and expatiate on as the true miracles of Christ, or of His prophets and apostles? What ...
— Poetical Works of Edmund Waller and Sir John Denham • Edmund Waller; John Denham
... himself if he compared this heroical enterprise with the actions of our Black Prince or Henry V.; or with Henry VIII. in demolishing abbeys and rejecting the papal authority; or Queen Elizabeth's exploits against Spain; or her restoring ...
— Calamities and Quarrels of Authors • Isaac D'Israeli
... sweeps the insufferable term into oblivion it will have done some good—these honest unassuming gentlemen have responded heroically to the great appeal; and when the intellectuals have thought of their intellects or their skins, they have thought only of their duty. And it was only the heroical sense of duty that sustained Sir ...
— The Red Planet • William J. Locke
... at hand. The Clayhangers, later, had met at table. A strange repast! A strange father! The children had difficulty in speaking naturally. And then Mrs Hamps had come, ebulliently thanking God, and conveying the fact that the town was thrilled and standing utterly amazed in admiration before her heroical nephew. And yet she had said ardently that she was in no way amazed at her nephew's coolness; she would have been surprised if he had shown himself even one degree less cool. From a long study of ...
— Clayhanger • Arnold Bennett
... happen to us which happens to all those who have the pure, true, and heroical love. If we really love a person, we shall first desire to please them, and therefore the thought of disobeying and paining them will seem more ...
— The Water of Life and Other Sermons • Charles Kingsley
... and old men, and bastards, are envious. For he that can not possibly mend his own case will do what he can to impair another's; except these defects light upon a very brave and heroical nature, which thinketh to make his natural wants part of his honor; in that it should be said, that an eunuch, or a lame man, did such great matters; affecting the honor of a miracle; as it was in Narses[42] the eunuch, and Agesilaus[43] and ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to prose. Volume III (of X) - Great Britain and Ireland I • Francis W. Halsey
... perhaps my brother at the other side of you can tell you of the mighty combat between them and the frogs." Then Heracles shifted the first robber from his back to his front, and the first robber said: "I will tell you what I know about the heroical combat between the frogs and the ...
— The Golden Fleece and the Heroes who Lived Before Achilles • Padraic Colum
... friendless, but of the will to do mighty things; and of how he would say to them always, if they sought to bless his name, "Nay, do not thank me,—thank Rubens. Without him, what should I have been?" And these dreams, beautiful, impossible, innocent, free of all selfishness, full of heroical worship, were so closely about him as he went that he was happy,—happy even on this sad anniversary of Alois's saint's day, when he and Patrasche went home by themselves to the little dark hut and the meal of black bread, whilst ...
— Stories of Childhood • Various
... saws from sages, pleasantries caustic or pathetic from humorists; all these throng Macaulay's pages with the bustle and variety and animation of some glittering masque and cosmoramic revel of great books and heroical men. Hence, though Macaulay was in mental constitution one of the very least Shakesperean writers that ever lived, yet he has the Shakesperean quality of taking his reader through an immense gallery of interesting characters and striking situations. No writer can now expect ...
— Critical Miscellanies, Volume I (of 3) - Essay 4: Macaulay • John Morley
... he came to live among them. What cared she for his ragged shoes or the frayed collar about his neck? Did not the whole community admit him to be a very aristocrat of aristocrats, a diamond of class in a quarry of ashes, a figure at once mysterious and heroical? And this knight of the East, what irony led him away with that white-faced Pole, Lois Boriskoff? What did he see in her? ...
— Aladdin of London - or Lodestar • Sir Max Pemberton
... kiss exchanged between Andrew and Elodie had any such immediate sentimental or tragical or heroical consequences you are mistaken. Andrew responded with all the grace in the world to the invitation. It was a pleasant and refreshing act. He was grateful for her companionship, her sympathy, and her inspired counsel. She carried off her frank comradeship with such ...
— The Mountebank • William J. Locke
... the desert,—yet never was a man more fitted to prize a man, could he find one to match his mood. He finds them, but only in the past. He sings, rather than talks. He pours upon you a kind of satirical, heroical, critical poem, with regular cadences, and generally, near the beginning, hits upon some singular epithet, which serves as a refrain when his song is full, or with which, as with a knitting needle, he catches up the stitches, if he has chanced, now and then, to let fall a row. ...
— Memoirs of Margaret Fuller Ossoli, Vol. II • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... breakfast one morning, with a small son at either elbow, waiting for stray mouthfuls and committing petty larcenies right and left, for Pa was in a brown study. Mrs. Wilkins was frying flap-jacks, and though this is not considered an heroical employment she made it so that day. This was a favorite dish of Lisha's, and she had prepared it as a bait for this cautious fish. To say that the fish rose at once and swallowed the bait, hook and all, but feebly expresses the justice done to the cakes by that long-suffering ...
— Work: A Story of Experience • Louisa May Alcott
... Turberville—once famous in the reign of Queen Elizabeth, but now almost totally forgotten, and whose works are altogether omitted in most selections, we have preserved a little. He was a voluminous author, having produced, besides many original pieces, a translation of Ovid's Heroical Epistles, from which Warton has selected a ...
— Specimens with Memoirs of the Less-known British Poets, Complete • George Gilfillan
... with no very keen flair for poetry will realise John Milton and appraise him more highly, having read Mary Powell and its sequel, Deborah's Diary, than having read Paradise Lost. In The Household of Sir Thomas More she had for hero one of the most charming, whimsical, lovable, heroical men God ever created, by the creation of whose like He puts to shame all that men may accomplish in their literature. In John Milton, whose first wife Mary Powell was, Miss Manning has a hero who, though a supreme poet, was "gey ill to live with," and it is a ...
— Mary Powell & Deborah's Diary • Anne Manning |
