"Prester" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... to the unknown. Whereas, the dream of Columbus's life was to make his way by an unknown route to what was known, or to what he considered to be known. He wished to find out an easy pathway to the territories of Kublai Khan, or Prester-John. ...
— The Life of Columbus • Arthur Helps
... of dyvers colours as ye redd, grene, black, and white. And in our land be also unicornes and these Unicornes slee many Lyons.... Also there dare no man make a lye in our lande, for if he dyde he sholde incontynent be sleyn."—Mediaeval Epistle, of Pope Prester John. ...
— Collected Poems - Volume One (of 2) • Alfred Noyes
... own whimsical wit. If we don't become "like little children"; in other words like jovial, middle-aged swashbucklers, and protest our belief in Flying Pigs, Pusses in Boots, Jacks on the top of Beanstalks, Old Women who live in Shoes, Fairies, Fandangos, Prester Johns, and Blue Devils, there is no hope for us and we are condemned to a dreadful purgatory of pedantic and atheistic dullness, along with Li Hung Chang, George Eliot, Herbert Spencer and other heretics whose view of the Dogma of the Immortality of the Soul ...
— One Hundred Best Books • John Cowper Powys
... master, and I will give you a piece of wax, with which you may take an impression of the wards, for I have taken such a liking to you, I will get a locksmith, a friend of mine, to make new keys, and then I can come in at night and teach you to play better than Prester John in the Indies. It is a thousand pities that a voice like yours should be lost for want of the accompaniment of the guitar; for I would have you to know, brother Luis, that the finest voice in the world loses its perfection when it is not accompanied by some ...
— The Exemplary Novels of Cervantes • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... confections of Egypt and the fruits and wines of Greece, and the woven stuffs of Asia till the marts of Flanders had the savour of Araby. Presently in our booths could be seen silks of Italy, and choice metals from Innsbruck, and furs from Muscovy, and strange birds and beasts from Prester John's country, and at our fairs such a concourse of outlandish traders as put Venice to shame. 'Twas a long fight and a bitter for Willebald and me, since, mark you, we had to make a new road over icy mountains, with a horde of freebooters hanging on the skirts of our ...
— The Path of the King • John Buchan
... Year is upon us, a season which the devout Briton sets aside for taking stock of his short-comings. I know not if Prester John introduced this custom among the Abyssinians: but we ...
— The Delectable Duchy • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... great deal of mystery about this peculiar outbreak of lawlessness that seemed to be directed so pointedly against the British trade. The town of Rio Medio was alluded to as one of the unapproachable towns of the earth—closed, like the capital of Prester John to the travellers, or Mecca to the infidels. Nobody I ever met in Jamaica had set eyes on the place. The impression prevailed that no stranger could come out of it alive. Incredible stories were told of it in the island, ...
— Romance • Joseph Conrad and F.M. Hueffer
... and by a combination of luck and courage manages to frustrate it. From beginning to end it is a book of stark adventure. The leader of the rising is a black missionary, who believes himself the incarnation of the mediaeval Abyssinian emperor Prester John. By means of a perverted Christianity, and the possession of the ruby collar which for centuries has been the Kaffir fetish, he organizes the natives of Southern Africa into a great army. But a revolution depends upon small things, and by frustrating ...
— Daisy's Aunt • E. F. (Edward Frederic) Benson
... your Grace command mee any seruice to the worlds end? I will goe on the slightest arrand now to the Antypodes that you can deuise to send me on: I will fetch you a tooth-picker now from the furthest inch of Asia: bring you the length of Prester Iohns foot: fetch you a hayre off the great Chams beard: doe you any embassage to the Pigmies, rather then hould three words conference, with this Harpy: you haue no employment for me? Pedro. None, but to desire your ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare
... bragged of nothing but of their employment in Ireland and the Low Countries—how they helped Drake to burn St. Domingo, or grave Maurice to hold out Breda. Tom Coryatt, or such weak-pated travellers, would babble of the Rialto and Prester John, and exhibit specimens of unicorns' horns or palm-leaves from the river Nilus. The courtier talked of the fair lady who gave him the glove which he wore in his hat as a favour; the poet of the last satire of Marston or Ben Jonson, ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury
... object. I should not have been here if I had not supposed we were going to find Prester John, to whom I have been appointed father confessor, and at whose court I am to live splendidly, like a cardinal at Rome. Gentlemen, if you will only agree that we shall go there, you shall ...
— Prue and I • George William Curtis
... of scarlet and gold across Ocean-Sea. I wondered what temples, what towns, what spice ships at strange wharfs might lie under it afar. I wondered if there did dwell Prester John and if he would step down to give us welcome. The torrent of event strikes us day and night, all the hours, all the moments. Who can tell with distinctness color and shape ...
— 1492 • Mary Johnston
... issued two years later, Henry rehearses the ordinance and its motives: "Et pour ceste cause des nostre nouvel avenement a la couronne, voulans a l'exemple et imitation de feu nostredit seigneur et pere, travailler et prester la main a purger et nettoier nostre royaume d'une telle peste, nous aurions pour plus grande et prompte expedition desdites matieres et procez sur le fait desdites heresies, erreurs et fausses doctrines ordonne et estably une chambre particuliere en nostre ...
— The Rise of the Hugenots, Vol. 1 (of 2) • Henry Martyn Baird
... the four great rivers which water the south of Russia, the Dnieper, the Don, the Volga, and the Jaik. He afterwards proceeded to the head quarters of another khan, on the eastern shores of the Caspian. After passing a country where the famous Prester John is said to have reigned, he reached the end of his journey, the head quarters of the khan of the Moguls. Besides the information derived from his own observations, he inserts in his narrative all he had collected; so that he may be regarded ...
— Robert Kerr's General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 18 • William Stevenson
... or seven hours by train from London to Aberystwyth, but if you will look at the names on a map of the Cambrian railways, when you begin the Welsh part of your journey, you will seem to be in a stranger and farther country than that of Prester John. Pwllheli, Cerrig y Drudion, Gwerful Goch, Festiniog, Bryn Eglwys, Llanidloes, Maertwro, Carnedd Fibast, Clynog Fwr, Llan-y-Mawddwy Machynlleth, Duffws, are a few out of the hundred names in the hills or along the valleys, giving the near neighborhood ...
— Seven English Cities • W. D. Howells
... way of the family ambitions of various popes. Their frequent use and abuse brought ecclesiastical censures into public contempt, and princes soon ceased to be frightened with false fires. James IV., when excommunicated, said he would appeal to Prester John, and that he would side with any council against the Pope, even if it contained only three bishops.[653] The Vicar of Christ was lost in the petty Italian prince. Corruptio optimi pessima. The lower dragged the higher nature down. If the Papal ...
— Henry VIII. • A. F. Pollard
... fundamentally the Society." He himself spoke to St. Ignatius about it, and I was told to remind him of it when the work in regard to the founding of the college was finished. And when it was over, and the business with Prester John settled and the courier had departed, we continued the history on the 9th of March, 1555. About this time Pope Julius became ill, and died on the 23d of the same month. The narrative was then postponed until ...
— The Autobiography of St. Ignatius • Saint Ignatius Loyola
... stones and great pearls; and the steps that he goeth up to the table be of precious stones mixed with gold. Under the firmament is not so great a lord, nor so mighty, nor so rich, as the great Khan. Neither Prester John, that is emperor of the high India, nor the Sultan of Babylonia, nor the Emperor of Persia. All these be not in comparison to the great Khan, neither of might, nor of nobleness, nor of royalty, nor of riches; for in all these he passeth all earthly princes. Wherefore it is great harm ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 26, December, 1859 • Various
... away from Gnawbit's, and made my way towards Charlwood Chase to join the "Blacks," although who those "Blacks" were, and whereabouts in the Chase they lived, and what they did when they were there, I had no more definite idea than who the Emperor Prester John or the Man in the ...
— The Strange Adventures of Captain Dangerous, Vol. 1 of 3 • George Augustus Sala
... Pekin, and from the coast of Malabar and Ceylon to the borders of Siberia. Early in the eleventh century, Unkh Khan, a Tartar prince on the northern borders of China, invited Nestorian missionaries among his people, and himself became the famous Prester John. Gengis Khan and several of his sons and grandsons, who conquered China and almost all Asia and a part of Europe, were connected with Prester John by marriage. Several of them had Christian wives, ...
— History Of The Missions Of The American Board Of Commissioners For Foreign Missions To The Oriental Churches, Volume I. • Rufus Anderson
... could not sail across the ocean in search of them as he had done—he was her great adventure, he realized, a personified book of strange tales to fire her imagination, as his had been stirred as a boy by stories of the kingdom of Prester John, of the El Dorado, of the Spanish Main and of the lost Raleigh Colony. The tobacco, which he had learned to smoke while with the Pamunkeys, soothed him; he was in no immediate danger; the warm sun was pleasant and the bright-eyed girl beside him was a sympathetic ...
— The Princess Pocahontas • Virginia Watson |
