"Adonis" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... sowing the crops, a common practice is to sow small quantities of grain in baskets or pots in rich soil, so that it will sprout and grow up quickly, the idea being to ensure that the real crop will have a similarly successful growth. These baskets are the well-known Gardens of Adonis fully described in The Golden Bough. They are grown for nine days, and on the tenth day are taken in procession by the women and deposited in a river. The women may be seen carrying the baskets of wheat to the river after the nine ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India—Volume I (of IV) • R.V. Russell
... run dead against classic art: it's a drug. I tried my hand at it when I first came to Rome. Will you believe me, I never sold a picture. Why that very painting'—pointing to the Borgia—'is on a canvas on which I commenced The Subjugation of Adonis.' ...
— Continental Monthly - Volume 1 - Issue 3 • Various
... smiling, with that savage gleam of his eyes; "but those are not women, and the people who made them have left as the tales of Endymion, Adonis, Anchises: a goddess might ...
— Hauntings • Vernon Lee
... sure I have a real friend in the world, for, gild a fool or a monkey, and mark what a troop of flatterers fawn around and follow admiringly at his heels! And as for choosing a wife, why, were I toothless, one-eyed, or deaf as a post, the magic of gold would transform me into an Adonis!" ...
— Graham's Magazine, Vol. XXXII No. 4, April 1848 • Various
... incivility, neglect of the little attentions she expects of a man and which men of breeding render as a matter of course. A woman is more likely to fall in love with a homely man of pleasing address than with an Adonis so clad in self-complacency that he thinks politeness unnecessary, or one who ...
— Mother's Remedies - Over One Thousand Tried and Tested Remedies from Mothers - of the United States and Canada • T. J. Ritter
... well-to-do citizen who noticed him took him into his house and entrusted him with the task of teaching music to his sons and of playing him to sleep in the evening. Franz spent his leisure hours in composing an opera called 'The Death of Adonis,' into which he poured all the music of his soul, all his love, his sorrow, and his infinite desire. He lived for this only, and during all the hours he spent when he was not working at his opera he was like a man in a dream, unconscious ...
— Orpheus in Mayfair and Other Stories and Sketches • Maurice Baring
... divine looks. Inanimate creatures, I suppose, have a touch of this. When a drop of [4848]Psyche's candle fell on Cupid's shoulder, I think sure it was to kiss it. When Venus ran to meet her rose-cheeked Adonis, as an elegant [4849]poet ...
— The Anatomy of Melancholy • Democritus Junior
... touching form of this conception is seen in such myths as the change of Philemon into the oak, and of Baucis into the linden; of Myrrha into the myrtle; of Melos into the apple tree; of Attis into the pine; of Adonis into the rose tree; and in the springing of the vine and grape from the blood of the Titans, the violet from the blood of Attis, and the hyacinth from ...
— History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom • Andrew Dickson White
... quaint gear would mould her to a youth Fair as Adonis on a hunting morn, Yet she'll refuse! A German prudery Sits on her still; more, kneaded by her arts There's no will left to her. I conjured her To hold aloof, sign nothing. But ...
— The Dynasts - An Epic-Drama Of The War With Napoleon, In Three Parts, - Nineteen Acts, And One Hundred And Thirty Scenes • Thomas Hardy
... and Adonis." He had not grace for such a subject—nor for "Lavinia." We should have been glad to have seen some of his works where the subjects and handling agree. We are sorry to see Hogarth's "March to Finchley" so injured by some ignorant cleaner. His "Taste in High ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 54, No. 334, August 1843 • Various
... thought he was the prince of cavaliers. Annabel says he dances 'like an angel,' and I know a dozen mothers couldn't keep him at home of an evening. Have you had a tiff with Adonis and so fall back on poor me?" asked Mac, coming last to the person of whom he thought first but did not mention, feeling shy about alluding to a subject often discussed ...
— Rose in Bloom - A Sequel to "Eight Cousins" • Louisa May Alcott
... a girl who lived long ago, posed for her statue, and had to die after everybody fell in love with her. Was born and painted at sea. Married at an early age. Was a regular heart breaker. V. had an affair with one Adonis, and later with Vulcan. Not much is known of her old-ladyhood, as she refused to pose for statues when advanced in years. Ambition: Parisian gowns, the love of the gods. Recreation: Love. Address: The Louvre, Paris. The Uffizi Gallery, Florence. Clubs: She was too ...
— Who Was Who: 5000 B. C. to Date - Biographical Dictionary of the Famous and Those Who Wanted to Be • Anonymous
... he is; straight as an arrow, and nimble as a chamois; but yet with a steady, earnest look about him, although a secret smile is playing round his handsome, mustachioed mouth, that tells you of a strong and persevering character. He is shaped like an Adonis, and his short jacket, breeches, pale striped stockings, and tightly laced boots; the broad leathern embroidered band about his waist, and the steeple-crowned hat with the little coquettish feather, all help to make up a figure that you would like to see among his native mountains. And yet ...
— A Tramp's Wallet - stored by an English goldsmith during his wanderings in Germany and France • William Duthie
... decorations of Pavilion G. P. R." A specimen of regency taste and sympathies stands on a pedestal in the form of the Hottentot Venus, while a statuette of the fat prince himself, habited in a red coat, white waistcoat, yellow inexpressibles, and silk stockings, is labelled the "British Adonis." The princess recommends her papa to order the officer to bring her over "a Chinaman, instead of getting her a husband among our German cousins." A variety of miscellaneous articles are strewn about the floor, among them a box containing the Regent's wigs and ...
— English Caricaturists and Graphic Humourists of the Nineteenth Century. - How they Illustrated and Interpreted their Times. • Graham Everitt
... Astarte-Aphrodite and Tanit-Artemis-Cybele, being clay copies of the Sacred Trees erected at the entrances to the temples. As Dr. Ohnefalsch-Richter states, these evidently phallic symbols undoubtedly played a part in the worship of the Sun-God Tammuz-Adonis ...
— The Non-Christian Cross - An Enquiry Into the Origin and History of the Symbol Eventually Adopted as That of Our Religion • John Denham Parsons
... Awry's castle is the high mountain of Baissie Baal, interpreted to me altar of Baal. I should think it would mean death of Baal. (Was Baal ever the same as Tommuz, the Adonis of Scripture?) In the valley beyond is a village still named Beltane (Baal teine—Baal's fire), so that the mountain must have been used at one time for the worship of Baal. The name of the mountain is ...
— The Letters of "Norah" on her Tour Through Ireland • Margaret Dixon McDougall
... dust, like the court ladies' hair, and is crowned and diapered with roses, and heavy with fabulous scents from the Arabian phoenix's nest. Little Cupids flutter and twitter here and there among the boughs, as in that feast of Adonis which Ptolemy's sister gave in Alexandria, or as in Eisen's vignettes for ...
— Letters on Literature • Andrew Lang
... the courage of his convictions, he counselled not with his fears. He neither looked to the past with regret nor to the future with apprehension. He might have been a zealot—he was never a hypocrite; he might have been eccentric—he was never ridiculous. He was a Hercules rather than an Adonis. In his warfare he fired hot shot; he did not send in flags of truce; he led forlorn hopes; he did not follow in the wake of charges. When he went forth with his sledge-hammer logic and his saw-mill philosophy, all who ...
— Modern Eloquence: Vol III, After-Dinner Speeches P-Z • Various
... confusment, l'hiver, quand le soir tombe, Que jadis, animal ou plante, j'ai souffert, Lorsque Adonis saignant dormait ple en sa tombe; Et mon coeur reverdit, ...
— French Lyrics • Arthur Graves Canfield
... o'er-assumption, o'er-repletion he, Sedately saunter every dainty couch along, A bright Adonis, as the snowy dove serene? Can you look on, look idly, filthy Romulus? Look idly, gamester, epicure, a ...
— The Poems and Fragments of Catullus • Catullus
... Let's take a look at you. Well, say—" Mr. Brotherton stopped and backed up and paused for dramatic effect. Then he exploded: "Say, boy, if I had you in an olive wood frame, I could get $2.75 or $3.00 for you as Narcissus or a boy Adonis! You surely ...
— In the Heart of a Fool • William Allen White
... as if he were fasting, the master of the ceremonies makes him tarry till he comes to be of a statutable magnitute: after which example, Willfrid's needle in Belvior Castle was a pleasant trial of Roman Catholic sanctity. They have gardens of many acres extent, but not like those of Adonis or Alcinoues; for nothing delightful is to be expected in them, neither order, nor regularity of walk, nor grass-plots, nor variety of flowers in the borders: but you will find all planted with cabbages, turnips, garlick, and musk-melons, which were carried hence to Italy, and are ...
— Ideal Commonwealths • Various
... like a magnet and kept her in a state of feverish craving for a love she knew she could never win. She would have gladly been his servant on the mere chance and hope that possibly in some moment of abandonment he might have yielded to the importunity of her tenderness; Adonis himself in all the freshness of his youth never exercised a more potent spell upon enamoured Venus than this plain, big bearded man over the lonely, untutored Californian girl with the large loveliness of a goddess and the soul of a ...
— The Secret Power • Marie Corelli
... good teeth but the mouth of the one in question was filled with snags that projected in every direction; his chin was excessively retreating, and, to add to it all, his countenance was daubed with different colored paint, in such fantastic streakings that an Adonis himself would have appeared hideous. Such was the jailer of Fred, who heard him addressed once or twice by a name which sounded to him ...
— In the Pecos Country • Edward Sylvester Ellis (AKA Lieutenant R.H. Jayne)
... commands that I describe in detail the charms of this Army Adonis. Far be it that I should disobey so august a command, being, as I am, the prime minister in this her principality of Domestic Felicity. Her brother has never ceased to be among the first in her dear regard. He possessed the merriest black eyes: his mother's eyes, as I, ...
— The Man on the Box • Harold MacGrath
... wasn't," said he. "When Shaugh knew me first, I was the Adonis of the Roscommon militia, with more heiresses in my list than any man in the regiment; but Shaugh and myself ...
— Charles O'Malley, The Irish Dragoon, Volume 1 (of 2) • Charles Lever
... me. I know I am very often sick of seeing them. Here is something fresh,—and not only unlike, but so much more lovely. I quite acknowledge that I may be jealous, but no one can say that I am spiteful. I wish that some republican Adonis or Apollo would crop up,—so that we might have our turn. But I don't think the republican gentlemen are equal to the republican ladies. Do you, ...
— The Duke's Children • Anthony Trollope
... me," he said, smiling down at her. "I'm not the sort of man girls care about, Ellen. Let's face that. The General Manager said when he planned me, 'Here's going to be a fellow who is to have everything in the world, health, intelligence, wit and the beauty of an Adonis, but he has to lack something, so we'll ...
— A Poor Wise Man • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... legend of the Anemone as given by Bion was that it sprung from the tears of Venus, while the Rose sprung from Adonis' blood— ...
— The plant-lore & garden-craft of Shakespeare • Henry Nicholson Ellacombe
... called by lian the Adonis, or Darling of the Sea; so called, because it is a loving and innocent fish, a fish that hurts nothing that hath life, and is at peace with all the numerous inhabitants of that vast watery element; and truly, I think most Anglers are so ...
— The Complete Angler • Izaak Walton
... In the system or romance of Mr. Bailly, (Lettres sur les Sciences et sur l'Atlantide, tom. i. p. 249—256, tom. ii. p. 114—139,) the phoenix of the Edda, and the annual death and revival of Adonis and Osiris, are the allegorical symbols of the absence and return of the sun in the Arctic regions. This ingenious writer is a worthy disciple of the great Buffon; nor is it easy for the coldest reason to withstand ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 4 • Edward Gibbon
... sustained beauty, brought within the sphere of the dullest apprehensions. Shelley, we may notice, dwells upon the ART of the poem; and this perhaps, is what at first sight will strike the student most. He chose as a foundation for his work those laments of Bion for Adonis, and of Moschus for Bion, which are the most pathetic products of Greek idyllic poetry; and the transmutation of their material into the substance of highly spiritualized modern thought, reveals ...
— Percy Bysshe Shelley • John Addington Symonds
... to the Oratoire,—was engaged in bringing out a better collection of Christian lyrics. To this work he pressed La Fontaine, whom he called his particular friend, to lend his name and contributions. Thus the author of "Psyche," "Adonis," and "Joconde," was led to the composition of pious hymns, and versifications of the Psalms of David. Gifted by nature with the utmost frankness of disposition, he sympathized fully with Arnauld and Pascal in the war against the Jesuits; and it would ...
— The Fables of La Fontaine - A New Edition, With Notes • Jean de La Fontaine
... been whispering it many a time, day and night, these last two weeks until—until certain things about him had come to her ears that made her shrink in spite of herself from this handsome, petted young soldier, this Adonis of her father's troop, Neil Blakely, lieutenant ...
— An Apache Princess - A Tale of the Indian Frontier • Charles King
... she spoke, and of the schooling of Sappho, and of the secrets of Rhodope, and of the mourning for Adonis: and the refrain of all her talking was not changed. "For we have but a little while to live, and none knows his fate thereafter. So that a man possesses nothing certainly save a brief loan of his own body: and yet the body of man is capable of much curious pleasure. ...
— Jurgen - A Comedy of Justice • James Branch Cabell
... Beyond Olympus, beyond the Pillars of Hercules, he had gone daily to his abode, and had come daily again in the morning to behold the temples they built to his worship. They personified him as BRAHMA, AMUN, OSIRIS, BEL, ADONIS, MALKARTH, MITHRAS, and APOLLO; and the nations that did so grew old and died. Moss grew on the capitals of the great columns of his temples, and he shone on the moss. Grain by grain the dust of his temples crumbled and fell, and was borne off on the wind, ...
— Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry • Albert Pike
... and rivers of Asia Minor the local gods and goddesses had departed; even their devotees began to doubt whether they had ever been there. If still the Syrian damsels lamented, in their amorous ditties, the fate of Adonis, it was only as a recollection, not as a reality. Again and again had Persia changed her national faith. For the revelation of Zoroaster she had substituted Dualism; then under new political influences she had adopted ...
— History of the Conflict Between Religion and Science • John William Draper
... ill-noted with Government, but it was not till the end of 1812 that a grip could be got of it. Leigh Hunt's offence is in the ordinary books rather undervalued. That he (or his contributor) called the Prince Regent, as is commonly said, "a fat Adonis of fifty" (the exact words are, "this Adonis in loveliness is a corpulent man of fifty") may have been the chief sting, but was certainly not the chief legal offence. Leigh Hunt called the ruler of his country "a violator of his ...
— Essays in English Literature, 1780-1860 • George Saintsbury
... might be, was wide, and their rewards often solid. Contemporary writers also complain that, however brutal and ugly they were, there were always women ready to adore them and to consider them as beautiful as Adonis. At Pompeii a scribbling calls one of them "the sigh of the girls." Nevertheless no Roman with much self-respect, unless forced by a malignant emperor, would bear the stigma of having appeared as a gladiator, ...
— Life in the Roman World of Nero and St. Paul • T. G. Tucker
... Antinea's costume. But what was she beneath all this? A slim young girl, with long green eyes and the slender profile of a hawk. A more intense Adonis. A child queen of Sheba, but with a look, a smile, such as no Oriental ever had. A miracle of ...
— Atlantida • Pierre Benoit
... every where? Life has more lures than any girl For youth and strength; puts forth a share Of beauty, hinting of yet rarer store; And ever with unfathomable eyes, Which baffingly entice, Still strangely does Adonis draw. And life once over, who shall tell the rest? Life is, of all we know, God's best. What imps these eagles then, that they Fling disrespect on life by that proud way In which they soar ...
— Battle-Pieces and Aspects of the War • Herman Melville
... until the day of my death. When I am dead the knocker will pass into other hands equally persistent with those of the mighty men who handed it to me. Fabulous and uncomprehended beings, like Prometheus, Ixion, Adonis, Pan, and others, who have entered into the religious beliefs of all countries and all ages, prove to the world that the hopes we now embody were born with the human races. Chaldea, India, Persia, Egypt, Greece, the Moors, have ...
— Catherine de' Medici • Honore de Balzac
... beautiful Education of the Virgin, in this gallery, beside such a work as Venus and Vulcan at Brussels, and you will see the scale in which he sported. Or the Virgin and Parrot, with a child Christ who might have posed as a youthful Adonis, and the Venus Frigida—both in Antwerp. A pagan was Rubens, for all his religion. We prefer the Christ Crucified between Two Thieves or the Christ on the Cross, the single figure, to the more famous Descent ...
— Promenades of an Impressionist • James Huneker
... lurries,' and clash the rattles, which commemorate their rage against the traitor Judas. So far have we already passed away from the Greek feeling of Mentone. As I listened to the hideous din, I could not but remember the Theocritean burial of Adonis. Two funeral beds prepared: two feasts recurring in the springtime of the year. What a difference beneath this superficial similarity—[Greek: kalos nekus oia katheudon]—attritus aegra macie. But the fast of Good Friday is followed by the festival ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece • John Addington Symonds
... writing the earlier editions of this book, how central, how omnipresent, this complex of ideas was in ancient Greek religion. Attis, Adonis, Osiris, Dionysus, and the rest of the "Year Gods" were not eccentric divagations in a religion whose proper worship was given to the immortal Olympians; they are different names given in different circumstances to this one being who dies and is born again each year, ...
— Five Stages of Greek Religion • Gilbert Murray
... Whose annual Wound in Lebanon allured The Syrian Damsels to lament his fate, In amorous Ditties all a Summers day, While smooth Adonis from his native Rock Ran purple to the Sea, supposed with Blood Of Thammuz yearly wounded: the Love tale Infected Zion's Daughters with like Heat, Whose wanton Passions in the sacred Porch Ezekiel ...
— The Spectator, Volume 2. • Addison and Steele
... words and with a disagreeable utterance, nobody will hear you twice, who can help it. If you write epistles as well as Cicero, but in a very bad hand, and very ill-spelled, whoever receives will laugh at them; and if you had the figure of Adonis, with an awkward air and motions, it will disgust instead of pleasing. Study manner, therefore, in everything, if you would be anything. My principal inquiries of my friends at Paris, concerning you, will be relative to your manner of doing whatever you do. I shall not inquire whether ...
— The PG Edition of Chesterfield's Letters to His Son • The Earl of Chesterfield
... and as far East as India. But in the Mediterranean area the pig played a more prominent part than it did in Egypt.[423] In the latter country Osiris, Isis, and especially Set, were identified with the pig; and in Syria the place of Set as the enemy of Osiris (Adonis) was taken by an actual pig. But throughout the Eastern Mediterranean the pig was also identified with the Great Mother and associated with lunar and sky phenomena. In fact at Troy the pig was represented[424] with the star-shaped ...
— The Evolution of the Dragon • G. Elliot Smith
... an actor. Yet his earliest effort in composition was not of the dramatic kind; for in 1593 he dedicated to his great patron the earl of Southampton, as "the first heir of his invention," his Venus and Adonis, a narrative poem of considerable length in the six-line stanza then popular. In the subsequent year he also inscribed to the same noble friend his Rape of Lucrece, a still longer poem of similar form in the stanza of seven lines, and containing passages of vivid description, of exquisite imagery, ...
— Memoirs of the Court of Queen Elizabeth • Lucy Aikin
... tents. Hither came Solomon, first disguised as a shepherd, to win her love, and afterwards in his royal litter perfumed with myrrh and frankincense to take her to his Cedar House. This, too, was the country of Adonis. In Lebanon the wild boar slew him, and yonder, flowing towards "holy Byblus," were "the sacred waters where the women of the ancient mysteries came to mingle their tears." [231] Of this primitive and picturesque but wanton worship they were reminded frequently ...
— The Life of Sir Richard Burton • Thomas Wright
... business to dispatch; His mind was running on his match. And hearing much of Daphne's fame, His majesty of terrors came, Fine as a colonel of the guards, To visit where she sat at cards; She, as he came into the room, Thought him Adonis in his bloom. And now her heart with pleasure jumps, She scarce remembers what is trumps; For such a shape of skin and bone Was never seen except her own. Charm'd with his eyes, and chin, and snout, Her pocket-glass drew slily out; And grew enamour'd with her phiz, As ...
— Poems (Volume II.) • Jonathan Swift
... grief seems common to mankind all the world over, and the mourning of the Mohurrum finds its counterpart in the old lamentation for the slain Adonis, the emotional tale of Sohrab's death at the hand of his sire Rustom, and the long-drawn sorrow of the Christian Passion. The Persian inclination towards the emotional side of human nature was not slow to discover amid the early martyrs of the Faith ...
— By-Ways of Bombay • S. M. Edwardes, C.V.O.
... Oh fie, miss! Haw! haw!" and the auburn-whiskered Adonis poked Philip in the knee with one hand, and the pale gentleman in the ribs with the other. The latter looked up, and reproachfully; the former drew in his legs, and uttered an ...
— Night and Morning, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... introduces a Greek singing-girl in Idyllium xv, at the festival of Adonis. In the Arabian Nights, the Caliph is represented at his feasts surrounded by troops of the most beautiful females playing ...
— Persian Literature, Volume 1,Comprising The Shah Nameh, The - Rubaiyat, The Divan, and The Gulistan • Anonymous
... advanced to within twenty yards, and received with much apparent delight, and a great deal of capering and dancing about on the sand, some strips of a gaudy handkerchief conveyed to them by a lad decorated with streamers of pandanus leaf at the elbows and wrists—evidently the Adonis of the party. Some of the men had formerly been off to the ship, and one or two carried axes of the usual form, but headed with pieces of our iron hoop, neatly ground to a fine edge. A few coconuts were given us for a knife or two, and we saw their mode of climbing for them, which one man did with ...
— Narrative Of The Voyage Of H.M.S. Rattlesnake, Commanded By The Late Captain Owen Stanley, R.N., F.R.S. Etc. During The Years 1846-1850. Including Discoveries And Surveys In New Guinea, The Louisiade • John MacGillivray
... cipher at that. If some men were not all pocket they would never be Johns, for no Jill would be so demented as to "come tumbling after" them. I have seen a pocket marry off a hump-back, a twisted foot and sixty winters' fall of snow upon the head, while a pocketless Adonis sighed in vain for Beauty's glance. A full pocket balances an empty skull as a good heart cannot; a ...
— The Secret of a Happy Home (1896) • Marion Harland
... Carmen, La Juive, La Fille de Madame Angot and L'Arlesienne through France would mean the rewriting of a "Capitaine Fracasse." To hear the creature talk about it makes my mouth as a brick kiln and my flesh as that of a goose. He was the Adonis, the Apollo, the Don Juan, the Irresistible of the Tournee. Fled truculent bass and haughty tenor before him; from diva to moustachioed contralto in the chorus, all the ladies breathlessly watched for the fall of his handkerchief; he was ...
— The Joyous Adventures of Aristide Pujol • William J. Locke
... the theological symbolization of natural phenomena; and the sacraments, the festivals, and fasts of all the churches have their counterparts in the mysterious processes and manifestations of Nature? and is the contemplation of the resurrection of Adonis or Thammuz more edifying to the soul than to meditate the strange return of the spring which their legends but ecclesiastically celebrate? He who has watched and waited at the white grave of winter, and hears at last the first faint singing among the boughs, or the first strange ...
— Vanishing Roads and Other Essays • Richard Le Gallienne
... face to Ann. Ogden's revelations and especially his eulogy of Biggs' personal appearance had tormented him. He knew that, in his wooing of Mrs. Pett's maid, Celestine, he was handicapped by his looks, concerning which he had no illusions. No Adonis to begin with, he had been so edited and re-edited during a long and prosperous ring career by the gloved fists of a hundred foes that in affairs of the heart he was obliged to rely exclusively on moral worth and charm of manner. He belonged to the old school of ...
— Piccadilly Jim • Pelham Grenville Wodehouse
... your books, and it hasn't cost you a penny. There isn't a doubt in my mind that if it were not for those statues countless people would go to their graves supposing that the great Scottish Burns were little rivulets, and not a poet. What difference does it make to you if they haven't made an Adonis of you? You never set them an example by making one of yourself. If there's deception anywhere, it isn't you that is deceived; it is the mortals. And who cares about them ...
— A House-Boat on the Styx • John Kendrick Bangs
... of all my labors? Is it for this that I fed you on the marrow of bears and lions, that I taught you to subdue dragons, and, like Hercules, strangle serpents in your youthful grasp, only to make you, by all my cares, a feeble Adonis? My nightly watchings of the stars, of the yet warm fibres of animals, the lots I have cast, the points of nativity that I have calculated, have they all falsely indicated that you were born for greatness? Who could have believed that you would ...
— Bulfinch's Mythology • Thomas Bulfinch
... solar emblem, it offers an instructive object of inquiry to the judicious gleaners of the old world's fascinating nursery traditions. Sicilian Diodorus tells us that the earth's lover, Attis (or Adonis), after his resuscitation, acquired the divine title of PAPAN.[2] To hazard the inoffensive query, why one of our commonest great beetles is still allowed to figure under so distinguished a name, will therefore reflect no discredit ...
— Notes & Queries 1850.01.26 • Various
... Black Adonis, A Garston Bigamy, The Her Husband's Friend His Foster Sister His Private Character In Stella's Shadow Love at Seventy Love Gone Astray Moulding a Maiden Naked Truth, The New Sensation, A Original Sinner, An Out of Wedlock ...
— A Black Adonis • Linn Boyd Porter
... it makes a man all quintessence and flame, and lifts him up, in a moment, to the very crystal crown of the sky, where, hovering in the strength of his imagination, he shall behold all the delights of the Hesperides, the Insulae Fortunatae, Adonis' Gardens, Tempe, or what else, confined within the amplest verge of poesy, to be mere umbrae, and imperfect figures, conferred with the most ...
— Every Man Out Of His Humour • Ben Jonson
... man who permits a woman to support him without making any effort on his part to do a man's work. He may be an Adonis and gifted to the point of genius, but I have ...
— The Dude Wrangler • Caroline Lockhart
... way objectionable, did not seem to have occurred to me. Even if it had, I doubt very much if my course would have been altered, for I was bewitched and fascinated and thrilled with the excitement of it all. I was sixteen, remember, and this wonderful Adonis and woman-hater had chosen me, me!—and left all the other girls desolate and sighing, looking after us with longing eyes. Of course, I ...
— Mary Marie • Eleanor H. Porter
... favour makes any one shot-proof against thee, Cupid. I pray thee, light honey-bee, remember thou art not now in Adonis' garden, but in Cynthia's presence, where thorns lie in garrison about the roses. ...
— Cynthia's Revels • Ben Jonson
... be easily obtained by taking down Halliwell's 'Dictionary of Old Plays,' and noticing that about every third drama has an Italian title. Meanwhile the poems composed by the chief dramatists—Shakspere's 'Venus and Adonis,' Marlowe's 'Hero and Leander,' Marston's 'Pygmalion,' and Beaumont's 'Hermaphrodite'—are all of them conceived in the Italian style, by men who had either studied Southern literature, or had submitted ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Second Series • John Addington Symonds
... Venus and Adonis; unique. Edinburgh, by John Writtoun, and are to bee sold in his shop, a little beneath the Salt Trone, 1627 ...
— Bibliomania; or Book-Madness - A Bibliographical Romance • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... and quality of the wearer's legs. When that beatific invention arrives your spindle-legged, knock-kneed imitation of a man will, as far as the public eye is concerned, find himself on as sure a footing as your very Adonis, and a person with a comparatively under-developed understanding will be able to make as good a showing in the world as the man who is really all there. Like charity, these pants will cover a multitude of shins that once exposed to the world would at once give warning ...
— The Autobiography of Methuselah • John Kendrick Bangs
... principal actors in it, were captain Marion, and a young lieutenant, whose name, delicacy, yet a while, bids me suppress. This officer, though in his person as handsome as Absalom, or the blooming Adonis, was as destitute of soul as a monkey. He appeared to have no idea above that of dress and diversion: and provided he could but compass his own little pitiful ends, which were always of the sensual sort, he cared not how shamefully he prevaricated and lied, but would wink, and grin, and chuckle, ...
— The Life of General Francis Marion • Mason Locke Weems
... commentators, critics, and antiquarians for long dispute; but none denied that the actor, Will Shakspere (spelled as heaven pleased), was in the main the author of most of the plays of 1623, and the sole author of Venus and Adonis, Lucrece, and the Sonnets. ...
— Shakespeare, Bacon and the Great Unknown • Andrew Lang
... "It is the cause." I mean your chaperon is Bringing some well-curled juvenile. Adieu! I shall retire. I'd spare that poor Adonis, If ...
— The Book of Humorous Verse • Various
... splendour, and in the power of full, free will; where there were princes, and she could take a prince; nobles, and she could take a noble; where there were men handsome, charming, magnificent, and she could take an Adonis: whom did she take? Gnafron! She could choose from the midst of meteors and thunders, the mighty six-winged seraphim, and she chose the larva crawling in the slime. On one side were highnesses and peers, all grandeur, all opulence, all glory; on the ...
— The Man Who Laughs • Victor Hugo
... occasions of turning him into ridicule, and impeaching him with cowardice, merely because he happened to have an effeminate voice. Whenever Cher'ea came to demand the watch-word from the emperor, according to custom, he always gave him either Venus, Adonis, or some such, implying ...
— Pinnock's Improved Edition of Dr. Goldsmith's History of Rome • Oliver Goldsmith
... given, a certain theme seems to run through them all, and this is found in the myths as well. A drama is enacted, in which the god is lost, is lamented, and is found or returns amid great rejoicing.[3] This was enacted in Egypt where the mourning was for Osiris; and in Greece for Adonis, and later for Bacchus. All these are, of course, sun gods, and the whole dramatization or myth is in keeping with the activities ...
— The Journal of Abnormal Psychology - Volume 10
... as we waited. Presently there emerged an extraordinarily handsome youth, dark as a Spaniard, from some rabbit hole. He faced the Commandant bravely, and answered back with respect but firmness. 'Pourquoi?' asked the Commandant, and yet again 'Pourquoi?' Adonis had an answer for everything. Both sides appealed to the big Captain of Snipers, who was clearly embarrassed. He stood on one leg and scratched his chin. Finally the Commandant turned away angrily in the midst of one ...
— A Visit to Three Fronts • Arthur Conan Doyle
... Adonis, sweet, hide not thy blushing face: What terrors masculine thy soul abash? And why with boyish pout dost mar the grace Of maiden lip ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 2., No. 32, November 5, 1870 • Various
... out of their own material. Hence the mythological creatures of these early painters are all, more or less, gods in exile, with that charm of a long residence in the Middle Ages which makes, for instance, the sweetheart of Ritter Tannhaeuser so infinitely more seductive than the paramour of Adonis; that charm which, when we meet it occasionally in literature, in parts of Spenser, for instance, or in a play like Peel's "Arraignment of Paris," is so ...
— Renaissance Fancies and Studies - Being a Sequel to Euphorion • Violet Paget (AKA Vernon Lee)
... not understand, and perhaps you are wise. Why do you stare at that pavement? There's a story written on it. The old goddess of my people, Aphrodite, loved a certain Adonis—so runs the fable—but he loved not her, and thought only of his sports. Look, she woos him there, and he rejects her, and in her ...
— The Wanderer's Necklace • H. Rider Haggard
... dear familiar name I must take the liberty henceforward to distinguish my Adonis by), with a smile full of meaning, took me gently by the hand, and said: "Come, my dear, I will show you a room that commands a fine prospect over some gardens"; and without waiting for an answer, in which he relieved me extremely, ...
— Memoirs Of Fanny Hill - A New and Genuine Edition from the Original Text (London, 1749) • John Cleland
... people, which has flung itself thus gallantly, in the spirit of purest sacrifice, in front of the onward progress of this new and frightful Juggernaut? Rather one recalls that old persistent creed, exemplified perhaps in the mysteries, now of the Greek Adonis, now of Persian Mithras, and now of the Roman priest of the Nennian lake, that it is only through the gates of sacrifice and death that the world moves on triumphant to rejuvenation and life. Is it, ...
— Beautiful Europe - Belgium • Joseph E. Morris
... bounty, was patronized by the Earl of Southampton, famous in the history of that time for his friendship to the unfortunate Earl of Essex. It was to that nobleman he dedicated his poem of Venus and Adonis, and it is reported, that his lordship gave our author a thousand pounds to enable him to go through with a purchase he heard he had a mind to make. A bounty at that time very considerable, as money then was valued: there are few instances of ...
— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753) - Volume I. • Theophilus Cibber
... infrequently she falls into the toils of those advertising frauds, who frequently combine the vile trade of procuress with the ostensible trade of fortune-telling. When the girl is drawn to this den, the trump card offered her is, of course, the young gentleman, rich as Croesus and handsome as Adonis, with whom she is to fall in love. He is generally described with considerable minuteness, and the time and place of meeting foretold. This may be fictitious, and it is fortunate for her if it is so. Rut the seeress ...
— Danger! A True History of a Great City's Wiles and Temptations • William Howe
... Aurora, the Goddess of the Dawn Latona Jason Castor, the Horse-Tamer Pollux, the Master of the Art of Boxing Daedalus and Icarus Making Their Wings Juno and Her Peacock Athena Minerva Daphne A Sibyl Ceres Apollo Narcissus Adonis and Aphrodite Woden on the Throne ...
— Classic Myths • Retold by Mary Catherine Judd
... very rare quarto edition of "Romeo and Juliet," 1609, and sometimes even had four copies of more than one of the other quartos. Not so very long before this period, old Jolley, the well-known collector, picked up a Caxton at Reading, and a "Venus and Adonis," 1594, at Manchester, in a volume of old tracts, for the ignoble sum of 1s. 3d. Jolley was a wealthy orange-merchant of Farringdon Street, London, and entertained me often with many stories of similar fortunate finds ...
— The Book-Hunter in London - Historical and Other Studies of Collectors and Collecting • William Roberts
... one can imagine how far she carries this. She has in her room a few pictures and engravings, and what do you imagine they are? An Adonis, a Cephalus, a Paris, an Apollo? Not a bit of it! Fine portraits of Saturn, of King Priam, of old Nestor, and of good father Anchises ...
— The Miser (L'Avare) • Moliere
... opera baritone. You remember him? And his mother was the daughter of a Cape Cod sea captain. How's that? Spain, Cape Cod, opera, poetry and the Croix de Guerre. And have you looked at the young fellow's photograph? Combination of Adonis and 'Romeo, where art thou.' I've had no less than twenty letters about him and his poetry already. Next Sunday we'll have a special 'as is.' Where can I get hold of a ...
— The Portygee • Joseph Crosby Lincoln
... Abraham, Ghirlandajo painting the life of the Virgin, Giotto painting the life of St. Francis, were worse employed, or likely to produce a less healthy art, than Titian painting the loves of Venus and Adonis, than Correggio painting the naked Antiope, than Salvator painting the slaughters of the thirty years' war? If you will not let me call the one kind of labor Christian, and the other unchristian, at least you will let ...
— Lectures on Architecture and Painting - Delivered at Edinburgh in November 1853 • John Ruskin
... found one of your northern boatmen dying in his boat. He rowed all the way from Philadelphia on a bet, and if he had reached New Orleans would have won his five thousand dollars, but he died when only ninety-five miles from the city, and was buried by Adonis Le Blanc on ...
— Four Months in a Sneak-Box • Nathaniel H. Bishop
... Severn, I remember, was present on the occasion, by the circumstance of our exchanging looks upon Keats's reading to us portions of his new work that had pleased himself. One of these, I think, was the "Hymn to Pan"; and another, I am sure, was the "Bower of Adonis," because his own expression of face will never pass from me (if I were a Reynolds or a Gainsborough, I could now stamp it forever) as he read the description of the latter, with the descent and ascent of the ear of Venus. The "Hymn to Pan" occurs ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 7, No. 39, January, 1861 • Various
... scoff; I have never seen a man of your age so much in love; and, it must be acknowledged, that a young and handsome man would be incapable of such mad passion. An Adonis admires himself as much as he admires us; he loves on the end of his teeth; and then to love him is his due, hardly is he grateful; but to love a man like you, my master, oh! that would be to raise him from earth to heaven; it would be to accomplish his wildest dreams, his hopes the most ...
— Mysteries of Paris, V3 • Eugene Sue
... have touches, though very rarely, of voluptuous description; but they always leave us with the sense that purity is noble and impurity is evil. It is striking to note the tone in this respect of his successive productions. His youthful poem, "Venus and Adonis," is touched with the disease which had blighted the literature and the life of southern Europe,—the infection of the imagination by sensuality, a sort of intellectual putrescence. In the frank daylight of the early dramas this ...
— The Chief End of Man • George S. Merriam
... my brother, and, ah, me, my sister! Ah, me, Adonis (or Tammuz), and ah, me, his lady (or queen)!" is the wailing cry uttered by the worshippers of Tammuz or Adonis when celebrating his untimely death. It is referred to in Jer. xxii. 18, and in Ezek. ...
— Babylonian and Assyrian Literature • Anonymous
... feast. Adonis was a beautiful youth beloved of Venus. He was killed by a wild boar when hunting, and Venus then had him borne to Elysium, where he sleeps pillowed on ...
— Keats: Poems Published in 1820 • John Keats
... independent nation, no seen and known object for their loyalty. Since the days of Brian Boroime at his mythic court of Tara, the Irish people have hardly set eyes upon the monarch of their country: perhaps (if we except the conquering William of the Boyne) our elderly Adonis, George the Fourth, was the sole specimen of English Majesty that has illuminated Ireland; until our gracious Queen herself made two very short but notable visitations in 1849 and 1853: yet even in the Georgian instance, unfavourable as personally it must have been, the enthusiastic reception ...
— My Life as an Author • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... voices, and not more than five feet high. Surprise artfully excited and cleverly satisfied is the grand aim of the dramatist. How completely is it here fulfilled! for when we discover that the personator of Henrico is meant for an Adonis, ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 1, October 30, 1841 • Various
... through its glowing frame, Ben Jonson and Kit Marlowe, arm in arm, Swaggered into the Mermaid Inn and called For red-deer pies. There, as they supped, I caught Scraps of ambrosial talk concerning Will, His Venus and Adonis. "Gabriel thought 'Twas wrong to change the old writers and create A cold Adonis." —"Laws were made for Will, Not Will for laws, since first he stole a buck In Charlecote woods." —"Where never a buck chewed fern," Laughed Kit, "unless it chewed the fern seed, too, And walked invisible." "Bring me some wine," called Ben, And, with his knife thrumming upon the board, ...
— Collected Poems - Volume Two (of 2) • Alfred Noyes
... Adonis room the beautiful Venus Anadyomene engrossed my chief attention; and in the cabinet of Venus the Venus Callipygos forms an exquisite sidepiece ...
— A Visit to the Holy Land • Ida Pfeiffer
... gentlemen I ever met. These two officers were invited to the ball at the Hotel de Ville that was given by the Parisian municipality to the Emperor and King Victor Emmanuel, and it happened that the young military Adonis had not his uniform with him, whilst the idea of going to the ball without it, and appearing only like a commonplace civilian, was so vexatious as to be inadmissible. He therefore refused to go, and transferred his card to me; so I went ...
— Philip Gilbert Hamerton • Philip Gilbert Hamerton et al
... retired. He was dangerously handsome, in the Italian style, and often played five bars of music over and over again, with one finger, to please his mother. Some women thought he was an Apollo, others described him as an Adonis, but everybody invariably ended or began by calling him an ancient Roman. He was sarcastic, satiric, and very strong. Indeed, on one occasion, he absolutely broke the feathers on a hand-screen, and on another he cracked three walnuts in succession without looking up. But, oh, the ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 100. March 7, 1891. • Various
... before this Adonis was quite satisfied with himself. He re-touched the paint on his shoulders several times, and modified the glare of that on his wide-mouthed, high-cheek-boned visage before he could tear himself away; but at last he did so, and, throwing ...
— The Dog Crusoe and his Master • R.M. Ballantyne
... (sic). See An Account of what appeared on Opening the Coffin of King Charles the First, by Sir H. Halford, Bart., 1813, pp. 6, 7. Cornelia Knight, in her Autobiography (1861, i. 227), notes that the frolic prince, the "Adonis of fifty," who was in a good humour, and "had given to Princess Charlotte the centre sapphire of Charles's crown," acted "the manner of decapitation on my shoulders." He had "forgotten" Cromwell, who, as Lord Auchinleck reminded ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Vol. 7. - Poetry • George Gordon Byron
... struck sweetly through the clamor. A youth, arrayed in crimson, and carrying a small golden harp, marched sedately between the serried ranks that parted right and left at his approach,—thus clearing the way for another personage who followed him,—a graceful, Adonis-like personage in glistening white attire, who wore a myrtle-wreath on his dark, abundant locks, and whom the populace—forgetting for a moment the cause of their recent disturbance—greeted with a ringing and ecstatic ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli
... they are grown very simple. We English are living upon their old gods and goddesses; I roll about in a chariot decorated with cupids, and look like the grandfather of Adonis. ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole - Volume II • Horace Walpole
... from Raphael to this elderly Adonis would have remarked a young man's eyes set in a mask of age, in the case of the Marquis, and in the other case the dim eyes of age peering forth from behind a mask of youth. Valentin tried to recollect when and where he had seen this ...
— The Magic Skin • Honore de Balzac
... traditions produce a "difficulty"? Why had they not done this already? Well, the garden had in some way helped me to frame a fairly reasonable answer for this also. Poor Hortense had become as powerless to woo John to warmth as poor Venus had been with Adonis; and passion, in changing sides, had advanced the boy's knowledge. He knew now the difference between the embraces of his lady when she had merely wanted his phosphates, and these other caresses now that, ...
— Lady Baltimore • Owen Wister
... on th' offensive mountain, built By that uxorious king whose heart, though large, Beguiled by fair idolatresses, fell To idols foul. Thammuz came next behind, Whose annual wound in Lebanon allured The Syrian damsels to lament his fate In amorous ditties all a summer's day, While smooth Adonis from his native rock Ran purple to the sea, supposed with blood Of Thammuz yearly wounded: the love-tale Infected Sion's daughters with like heat, Whose wanton passions in the sacred porch Ezekiel saw, when, by the vision led, His eye ...
— Paradise Lost • John Milton
... of Diodorus was inspired only by a myth,—for the "son of Kinyras" was no other than Adonis,—whereas the verses of Okura express for us the yearning of ...
— The Romance of the Milky Way - And Other Studies & Stories • Lafcadio Hearn
... dead forever, Is dead forever and the loves lament. Venus herself, that was Adonis' lover, Seeing him again, having lived, dead again, Lends her great skyey grief now to be ...
— Antinous: A Poem • Fernando Antonio Nogueira Pessoa
... wing About the cedarn alleys fling Nard and cassia's balmy smells. Iris there with humid bow Waters the odorous banks, that blow Flowers of more mingled hue Than her purfled scarf can shew, And drenches with Elysian dew (List, mortals, if your ears be true) Beds of hyacinth and roses, Where young Adonis oft reposes, Waxing well of his deep wound, In slumber soft, and on the ground Sadly sits the Assyrian queen. But far above, in spangled sheen, Celestial Cupid, her famed son, advanced Holds his dear Psyche, sweet entranced After her wandering ...
— L'Allegro, Il Penseroso, Comus, and Lycidas • John Milton
... began to suspect he had other motives than the insulted laws of hospitality. I reached this discovery, too, in time. The declining health of his partner had made him speculate on the chances of survivorship. He certainly was no longer young, and he had never been an Adonis. Yet his glass did not altogether throw him into the rank of the impracticable. A coronet was a well-known charm, which had often compensated for every other; in short, he had quietly theorized himself into the future ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXII. - June, 1843.,Vol. LIII. • Various
... only ancient part of the present church of St. Paul's, and even this must be comparatively modern, if any confidence may be placed in the current tradition, that the building, in its original state, was a temple of Adonis or of Venus, to both which divinities the early inhabitants of Rouen are reported to have paid peculiar homage. They were worshipped in vice and impurity[63]; nor were the votaries deterred by the evil spirits who haunted the immediate vicinity of the temple, and who gave rise to so fetid and infectious ...
— Account of a Tour in Normandy, Vol. I. (of 2) • Dawson Turner
... Marcus; and this Son is worshipped under the various names of Hermes, Mithra, Adonis, Apollo, ...
— Thais • Anatole France
... of Belphoebe; the story of Florimel and the Witch's son; the Gardens of Adonis, and the Bower of Bliss; the Mask of Cupid; and Colin Clout's vision, in the last book. But some people will say that all this may be very fine, but that they cannot understand it on account of the allegory. They are afraid of the allegory, as if they thought it would bite them: they look at it ...
— Lectures on the English Poets - Delivered at the Surrey Institution • William Hazlitt
... virgin moths and fresh-born butterflies; Who broke that morning from their half-year's sleep, To fly o'er flowers where they were wont to creep. Above the sovereign oak, a sovereign skims, The purple Emp'ror, strong in wing and limbs: There fair Camilla takes her flight serene, Adonis blue, and Paphia silver-queen; With every filmy fly from mead or bower, And hungry Sphinx who threads the honey'd flower; She o'er the Larkspur's bed, where sweets abound. Views ev'ry bell, and hums th' approving sound; Poised ...
— The Borough • George Crabbe
... animals or even among savages, in civilization the man is most successful with women is not the most handsome man, and may be the reverse of handsome.[169] The maiden, according to the old saying, who has to choose between Adonis and Hercules, will turn ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 4 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis |
