"Aphrodite" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... not resist such an opportunity. She gulped down the Ode to Aphrodite during the Litany, keeping herself with difficulty from asking when Sappho lived, and what else she wrote worth reading, and contriving to come in punctually at the end with "the forgiveness of sins, the Resurrection of the body, and the life ...
— The Voyage Out • Virginia Woolf
... plump, thick-ankled, doubtfully decent Venus which the late Greeks made for their Roman masters; it was not that at all. It was their own Aphrodite, delicate, tender and deadly as the foam of the sea whence she ...
— The Heart of Rome • Francis Marion Crawford
... comes they act in the following way, by night: Putting upon their heads what the priestess of Athene gives them to carry (neither she nor they know what these things are), these maidens descend, by a natural underground passage, from an inclosure in the city sacred to Aphrodite of the Gardens. In the sanctuary below they deposit what they carry, and bring back something else closely wrapt up. And these maidens they henceforth dismiss, and other two they elect instead of ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Vol VIII - Italy and Greece, Part Two • Various
... homosexual prose-poems, attracted considerable attention on publication, as it was an attempt at mystification, being put forward as a translation of the poems of a newly discovered Oriental Greek poetess; Bilitis (more usually Beltis) is the Syrian name for Aphrodite. Les Chansons de Bilitis are not without charm, but have been severely dealt with by Wilamowitz-Moellendorff (Sappho und Simonides, 1913, p. 63 et seq.) as "a travesty of Hellenism," betraying ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 2 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... latest comers from the fields. Having got safely within the city, they spent the whole of that night at the house of a man named Charon, and again the next day in the same fashion. Phyllidas meanwhile was busily taken up with the concerns of the polemarchs, who were to celebrate a feast of Aphrodite on going out of office. Amongst other things, the secretary was to take this opportunity of fulfilling an old undertaking, which was the introduction of certain women to the polemarchs. They were to be the most majestic and the most beautiful ...
— Hellenica • Xenophon
... there was no one of higher social importance than the doctors, the colliery-managers, and the chemists, they would shine, with their Della Robbia beautiful Madonna, their lovely reliefs from Donatello, their reproductions from Botticelli. Nay, the large photographs of the Primavera and the Aphrodite and the Nativity in the dining-room, the ordinary reception-room, would make dumb ...
— The Rainbow • D. H. (David Herbert) Lawrence
... dreams of Cowperwood. The charge of seducing women so frequently made against the street-railway magnate, so shocking to the yoked conventionalists, did not disturb him at all. Back of the onward sweep of the generations he himself sensed the mystic Aphrodite and her magic. He realized that Cowperwood had traveled fast—that he was pressing to the utmost a great advantage in the face of great obstacles. At the same time he knew that the present street-car service ...
— The Titan • Theodore Dreiser
... man who most often feels this exultant humility. This was Dick's hour on the mountain. The depth of his own tenderness, the deliciousness of his passion swept over him like a revelation, as he asked himself in wonder how it could be that this love had sprung up at once, like Aphrodite from the waves, where no one could have suspected such a marvel. He himself had been without realization of how his passing interest had deepened its roots until now they fed on every part of him. ...
— Jewel Weed • Alice Ames Winter
... submitting, to use Plato's words, 'to be treated bestially'—is altogether a foul and unlovely favour. And so I think Solon wrote the lines quoted above 'in his hot youth,' as Plato puts it; but when he became older wrote these other lines, 'Now I delight in Cyprus-born Aphrodite, and in Dionysus, and in the Muses: all these give joys to men': as if, after the heat and tempest of his boyish loves, he had got into a quiet haven of marriage and philosophy. But indeed, Protogenes, if we look at the real facts of the case, the love for boys and women is ...
— Plutarch's Morals • Plutarch
... the plain near Babylon, to control the river (Euphrates), which, till then, used to overflow and flood the whole country round about."[470] Lucian, who associates the famous queen with "mighty works in Asia", states that she was reputed by some to be the builder of the ancient temple of Aphrodite in the Libanus, although others credited it to Cinyras, or Deukalion.[471] Several Median places bear her name, and according to ancient Armenian tradition she was the founder of Van, which was formerly called "Shamiramagerd". Strabo ...
— Myths of Babylonia and Assyria • Donald A. Mackenzie
... that seed sown anywhere will grow; and in this saying there is a strong trace of Venus worship, for Friday—Divendre in Provencal—is the day sacred to the goddess of fertility and bears her name. That belief comes to us from the time when the statue of Aphrodite, dug up not long since at Marseille, was worshipped here. Our Pater de Calendo—our curious Christmas prayer for abundance during the coming year—clearly is a Pagan supplication that in part has been diverted into Christian ways; and in like manner comes to us from Paganism the ...
— The Christmas Kalends of Provence - And Some Other Provencal Festivals • Thomas A. Janvier
... In the first place, if he has reached the age of thirty unscathed by Aphrodite, he will reflect that that peculiar feeling of romantic expectation with which he gets up every morning would cease to exist after marriage—and it is a highly agreeable feeling! In its stead, in moments of depression, he would have the feeling of having done ...
— Mental Efficiency - And Other Hints to Men and Women • Arnold Bennett
... the contrary in B.C. 217, when they were carrying out a Greek ceremony of offering a banquet to a set of gods, arranged in pairs, they showed no hesitation in grouping together Mars and Venus to represent the Greek pair Ares and Aphrodite, thus doing violence to Mars by bringing him into a relationship with Venus which was entirely foreign to old Roman thought, and identifying him with Ares, with whom he had nothing to do. Now in B.C. 138 a temple is built to Ares under the name of Mars, close ...
— The Religion of Numa - And Other Essays on the Religion of Ancient Rome • Jesse Benedict Carter
... is its indissoluble connection with righteousness. Other primitive cults have been either domestic, or economic, or political. Thus the Lares and Penates safeguarded the pious Latin family irrespective of its ethical character; the Greek deities, such as Dionysus and Aphrodite, were frankly immoral, but if propitiated they gave plenty and prosperity; the great gods of Rome were political personages who had no regard for private virtues, and their proper worship was performed by State officials ...
— Freedom In Service - Six Essays on Matters Concerning Britain's Safety and Good Government • Fossey John Cobb Hearnshaw
... upward its iridescent spray, now green, now orange, now violet, and rained down again upon its own bosom and into a gilt basin shaped like a grotto with the sea weeping round it. And out of its foam, wraithlike, rose a marble Aphrodite, ...
— Every Soul Hath Its Song • Fannie Hurst
... designless loveliness of tree and sunlight brought to shape. Through this beauty Iprayed deepest and longest, and down to this hour. The shape—the divine idea of that shape—the swelling muscle or the dreamy limb, strong sinew or curve of bust, Aphrodite or Hercules, it is the same. That I may have the soul-life, the soul-nature, let divine beauty bring to me divine soul. Swart Nubian, white Greek, delicate Italian, massive Scandinavian, in all the exquisite pleasure the form gave, and gives, to me ...
— The Story of My Heart • Richard Jefferies
... Oriental in religion and in society. Nothing could be less Hellenic, than the popular cult of Adonis. The fifteenth idyl of Theocritus shows us Greek women worshipping in their manner at an Assyrian shrine, the shrine of that effeminate lover of Aphrodite, whom Heracles, according to the Greek proverb, thought 'no great divinity.' The hymn of Bion, with its luxurious lament, was probably meant to be chanted at just such a festival as Theocritus describes, while a crowd of foreigners ...
— Theocritus, Bion and Moschus rendered into English Prose • Andrew Lang
... a general in the field!" Norbanus added. "So our handsome Pertinax performs his vows to Aphrodite with a constancy that the goddess rewards by forever putting lovely women in his way! Whereas Stoics like you, Sextus, and unfortunates like me, who don't know how to amuse a woman, are made notorious by one least lapse from our austerity. ...
— Caesar Dies • Talbot Mundy
... rule. And for his son he was bringing to his home the daughter of Alector out of Sparta, for his well-beloved son, strong Megapenthes, {*} born of a slave woman, for the gods no more showed promise of seed to Helen, from the day that she bare a lovely child, Hermione, as fair as golden Aphrodite. So they were feasting through the great vaulted hall, the neighbours and the kinsmen of renowned Menelaus, making merry; and among them a divine minstrel was singing to the lyre, and as he began the song two tumblers in the company whirled through ...
— DONE INTO ENGLISH PROSE • S. H. BUTCHER, M.A.
... is beauty! beauty in perfection. What a cloud of sable curls about the face of a houri! What fascinating lips! What glorious black eyes! Your Byron would have worshipped her, and you—you cold, frigid islander!—you played the austere, the insensible in the presence of an Aphrodite ...
— The Professor • (AKA Charlotte Bronte) Currer Bell
... bankruptcy. Its name in ancient Caria denotes its seaside-resort location, Hali-Karnas-Sos meaning literally "Karnassus-by-the-sea," like Boulogne-sur-mer. The city was under the protection of Hermes and Aphrodite, whose temples were near each other. Human nature in the days of Halicarnassus did not much differ from human nature at Monte Carlo or Baden-Baden. The baths had a number of young and handsome eunuchs who waited on the old, debauched, ...
— History of Circumcision from the Earliest Times to the Present - Moral and Physical Reasons for its Performance • Peter Charles Remondino
... 'aphrodite piscatrix' is stalwart and strong (she can swim a mile with ease), she has carried her basket and nets since sunrise, and now at eight o'clock on this summer's morning sits down on the rocks, makes ...
— Normandy Picturesque • Henry Blackburn
... for their governesses. Athena teaches them domestic accomplishments, how to weave, and sew, and the like; Artemis teaches them to hold themselves up straight; Hera, how to behave proudly and oppressively to company; and Aphrodite, delightful governess, feeds them with cakes and honey all day long. All goes well, until just the time when they are going to be brought out; then there is a great dispute whom they are to marry, and in the midst of it they are carried off ...
— The Queen of the Air • John Ruskin
... then westward, set with tiny coves of perfection like Bec-du-Nez, and larger bays, across the mouth of which, after a storm and in calm sunny weather, you see lines of foam stretching from headland to headland, out of the white clots of which the weakest imagination can fancy Aphrodite rising and floating shorewards, to vanish as she touches the beach; the great western promontory of Pleinmont, a scarcely lessened Land's End, with the Hanois rocks beyond; the tamer but still not tame western, northern, and north-eastern coasts, with the Druid-haunted level of L'Ancresse ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 2 - To the Close of the 19th Century • George Saintsbury
... the blow as deeply as her brother. "O Aphrodite!" she prayed, "immortal Aphrodite, high enthroned child of Zeus, my queen, my goddess, my patron, at whose shrine I have daily laid my offerings, to be now my friend, the ...
— Pushing to the Front • Orison Swett Marden
... temple of Bassae; and bearing the huge portal of the house of Paris and the gleaming battlements of Troy. Over the portal hung a great curtain, painted with crimson lions, which, when drawn aside, disclosed two massive gates of bronze; in front of the house was placed a golden image of Aphrodite, and across the ramparts on either hand could be seen a stretch of blue waters and faint purple hills. The scene was lovely, not merely in the harmony of its colour but in the exquisite delicacy of its architectural proportions. No nation has ever felt the pure beauty ...
— Reviews • Oscar Wilde
... that overshadows her tranquil cot,—the same Great Mother that watched over the wise of Samos, the democracy of Corcyra, the graceful and deep-taught loveliness of Miletus, smiles as graciously as of yore. For the North, philosophy and freedom are essentials to human happiness; in the lands which Aphrodite rose from the waves to govern, as the Seasons, hand in hand, stood to welcome her on the shores, Nature ...
— Zanoni • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... are they who share the nuptial bed of the Goddess Aphrodite,[39] when she is moderate, and with modesty, obtaining a calm from the maddening stings, when Love with his golden locks stretches his twin bow of graces, the one for a prosperous fate, the other for the upturning of life. I deprecate this [bow,] O fairest Venus, from our beds, ...
— The Tragedies of Euripides, Volume I. • Euripides
... as his cousin passed by, to inquire her name, and learnt that she was Lady Aphrodite Grafton, the wife of ...
— The Young Duke • Benjamin Disraeli
... minor Goddess, or primal, Iris or Ate, sped straight away on wing to the empty wheatsheaf-ears of the golden-visaged Amabel Fryar-Gunnett, daughter of Demeter in the field to behold, of Aphrodite in her rosy incendiarism for the many of men; filling that pearly concave with a perversion of the uttered speech, such as never lady could have repeated, nor man, if less than a reaping harvester: which verily for women to hear, is to stamp a substantial damnatory verification upon ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... were middle-aged lovers," said Rorie. "The moon must have despised them. Youth is the only season when love is wisdom, Vixen. In later life it means folly and drivelling, wrinkles badly hidden under paint, pencilled eyebrows, and false hair. Aphrodite should ...
— Vixen, Volume III. • M. E. Braddon
... of the mosque Meshed-Ali. Among the commodities that change hands in such places, white doves are very common (LOFTUS, Travels, p. 53). In this perhaps, we may recognize the survival of a pagan rite, the sacrifice of a dove to the Babylonian Istar, the Phoenician Astarte, and the Grecian Aphrodite. It was in the courtyards of one of these temples that those sacred prostitutions of which HERODOTUS speaks, took place (i. 199). The great extent of the inclosures is readily explained by the crowds they were then ...
— A History of Art in Chaldaea & Assyria, v. 1 • Georges Perrot
... golden apple of the Hesperian isle Which thou must only yield to the Most Fair; But not to Juno's great luxurious calm, Nor Dian's curved white moon, Gav'st thou the sunset's boon, Nor to foam-bosomed Aphrodite's rose-lipped smile. ...
— Collected Poems - Volume Two (of 2) • Alfred Noyes
... The beautiful myth of Aphrodite, born of the sea foam, is Venus rising out of the waters of winter, to shine resplendent in the western skies at evening, and typifies the birth of forms, as all organic forms have their origin ...
— The Light of Egypt, Volume II • Henry O. Wagner/Belle M. Wagner/Thomas H. Burgoyne
... the sons of Priam, was most distinguished for heroic qualities and formed a striking contrast to his handsome but effeminate brother Paris. Next to Hector in valour stood AEneas, son of Anchises and Aphrodite (Venus). Even the gods took part in the contest, encouraging their favourite heroes, and sometimes fighting by their ...
— A Smaller History of Greece • William Smith
... deepest woe perceiving she is gone; And in his yearning love For one beyond the sea, A ghost shall seem to queen it o'er the house; The grace of sculptured forms Is loathed by her lord, And in the penury of life's bright eyes All Aphrodite's charm To ...
— Story of Orestes - A Condensation of the Trilogy • Richard G. Moulton
... see you without it," said Peter. "And I quite agree, Julie, you're divine. You are like Aphrodite, ...
— Simon Called Peter • Robert Keable
... de phertat' aeisomenon: xaire, kai olbon exois, oion ge thanontes exousin, esuxian exthras kai philotetos ater. 30 sematos oixomenou soi mnemat' es usteron estai, soi te phile mneme mnematos oixomenou: on Xarites klaiousi theai, klaiei d' Aphrodite kallixorois Mouson terpsamene stephanois. ou gar apach ierous pote geras etripsen aoidous: tende to son phainei mnema tod' aglaian. e philos es makaressi brotos, soi d' ei tini Numphai dora potheina nemein, ustata dor', edosan. tas nun xalkeos upnos ebe kai anenemos ...
— Atalanta in Calydon • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... begins to smile on the hardly-tried exile. If you knew my childhood with its sorrows, my youth with its privations! The vine had not grown for me, woman had not been made for me; Bacchus knew me not; Aphrodite was not my goddess. The chaste Artemis and the wise Pallas guided me past the devious ways of youth to the goal of knowledge, wisdom, and glory. But when I first ...
— Historical Miniatures • August Strindberg
... terms. Feminine divinity and charm should be the characteristics of all brides; but these delectable beings do not enter the world fully formed, like Venus Aphrodite newly risen from the sea ...
— A Son of the Immortals • Louis Tracy
... exoteric and despicable, remained in ignorance, nor dreamed that the verses meant anybody of note; to them they seemed but the calf-sigh of some young writer so deep in his first devotion that he jumbled up his lady-love, Hesper, and Aphrodite, in the same poetic bundle—of which he left the string-ends hanging a little loose, while, upon the whole, it remained a not altogether unsightly bit of prentice-work. Tom had not been at the party, but had gathered fire enough from what he heard of Hesper's appearance there to ...
— Mary Marston • George MacDonald
... of extreme directness and candour. A trick of looking you full, of considering you and her answer together, she had—a mild, steady beam, a radiance within the orb which told of a hidden glory. Her brows were level, eyebrows arched; her bust, though set like Aphrodite's of Melos, was full. The curving corners of the bow of her lips assured her the possession, even when she was most serious, of a lurking smile. Taking off her gardening gloves that she might break the red envelope, she disclosed a pair ...
— Rest Harrow - A Comedy of Resolution • Maurice Hewlett
... Greece—particular trees having been sacred to many of the gods. Thus we have the oak tree or beech of Jupiter, the laurel of Apollo, the vine of Bacchus. The olive is the well-known tree of Minerva. The myrtle was sacred to Aphrodite, and the apple of the Hesperides belonged to Juno.[12] As a writer too in the Edinburgh Review[13] remarks, "The oak grove at Dodona is sufficiently evident to all classic readers to need no detailed mention of its oracles, or its highly sacred character. The sacrifice of Agamemnon ...
— The Folk-lore of Plants • T. F. Thiselton-Dyer
... conquered in the Pythian games, I was appointed to a command in the mercenary troops of the King of Egypt; accompanied the expedition to Cyprus, shared with Aristomachus the renown of having conquered the birthplace of Aphrodite for Amasis, and finally was named commander-in-chief of all the ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... this sombre streak has a deeper root; something of birth and temperament is in it—the stamp and heritage of a race born to suffer. But dominant and fundamental though it was, Hebraism was only latent thus far. It was classic and romantic art that first attracted and inspired her. She pictures Aphrodite the beautiful, arising from the waves, and the beautiful Apollo and his loves,—Daphne, pursued by the god, changing into the laurel, and the enamored Clytie into the faithful sunflower. Beauty, for its own ...
— The Poems of Emma Lazarus - Vol. II. (of II.), Jewish Poems: Translations • Emma Lazarus
... though even they could not mistake the force of observation and expression which characterises his Satires, and which very frequently reappears even in his dreamiest metaphysics, his most recondite love fancies, and his warmest and most passionate hymns to Aphrodite Pandemos. ...
— A History of English Literature - Elizabethan Literature • George Saintsbury
... as the grammarians say, let p become ph, and t th, and you have phather or father], Jupiter Kronos of the Greeks appears as "Vulcanus" of the Latins, "Ares" of the Greeks is "Mars" or Mavors of the Latins, "Poseidon" of the Greeks is "Neptunus" of the Latins, "Aphrodite" of the Greeks is "Venus" of the Latins. This variation is not to be confounded with a mere translation, as where "Paulos" of the Greek becomes "Paulus" in Latin, or "Odysseus" becomes "Ulysses," or as ...
— TITLE • AUTHOR
... her side, too, as near as the plunges of the chestnut would allow, till we reached the gorse that we were to draw; once there, the stronger passion prevailed. Aphrodite hid her face, and the great goddess Artemis claimed her own. As the first hound whimpered, he drew off toward a corner, where a big fence would give a chance of shaking off the crowd, and I do not think he turned his head till ...
— Guy Livingstone; - or, 'Thorough' • George A. Lawrence
... name is derived.—Ver. 538. Venus was called Aphrodite, by the Greeks, from aphros, 'the foam of the sea,' from which she was ...
— The Metamorphoses of Ovid - Vol. I, Books I-VII • Publius Ovidius Naso
... as it leads simple and poetical peoples still, to call the moon a man and to worship him as a god. Objects of fear and reverence would be usually masculines; and objects of love and desire feminines. We may thus find light thrown upon the honours paid to such goddesses as Astarte and Aphrodite: which will also help us to understand the deification by a celibate priesthood of the Virgin Mary. We may, moreover, account partly for the fact that to the sailor his ship is always she; to the swain ...
— Moon Lore • Timothy Harley
... light, are equally cold, and are seen too nakedly through the crystal air to admit of any illusion. Bracing as is this atmosphere, the gods could never breathe it. It would revenge on the ivory limbs of Apollo his treatment of Marsyas. No foam-born Aphrodite could rise warm from yonder wave; not even the cold, sleek Nereids could breast its keen edge. We could only imagine it disturbed, temporarily, by the bath-plunge of hardy Vikings, whom we can see, red and tingling from head ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 13, No. 79, May, 1864 • Various
... that Wagner, as so many another creative genius, spent his love chiefly upon the beings that he begot within his own heart. Every genius is more or less a Pygmalion, and his own imagination is the Aphrodite that gives life to the Galateas that he carves. I have shown by this time that certain musicians have been most excellent lovers, and there would be documents enough to prove Wagner another, but we know it for a fact that his one great passion was for his art. There is not recorded anywhere, ...
— The Love Affairs of Great Musicians, Volume 2 • Rupert Hughes
... Aphrodite's slender fingers, barely resting on the harp-strings, suddenly contracted in a nervous tremor 106 From a drawing by ...
— Iole • Robert W. Chambers
... Olympos were open wide and clanging, Deserted ev'ry palace, the golden city empty. And all the gods were gathered above Olympia's race-course, They smiled upon my Creon and gifts upon him showered. From golden Aphrodite dropped half a hundred graces. Athene made him skillful. Boon Hermes gave him litheness. Fierce Ares added courage, Queen Hera happy marriage. Diana's blessed fingers into his soul shed quiet. Lord Bacchus gave him friendship and graces of the banquet, ...
— Buried Cities: Pompeii, Olympia, Mycenae • Jennie Hall
... said Ingram—"a solitary costume produced by certain conditions of climate and duties, acting in conjunction with a natural taste for harmonious coloring and simple form? That dress, I will maintain, sprang as naturally from the salt sea as Aphrodite did; and the man who suspects artifice in it, or invention, has had his mind perverted by ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 5 • Various
... were mine, all the wealth whereof Croesus was lord, as men tell! Then images of us, all in gold, should be dedicated to Aphrodite, thou with thy flute, and a rose, yea, or an apple, and I in fair attire and new shoon of Amyclae on both ...
— Books and Habits from the Lectures of Lafcadio Hearn • Lafcadio Hearn
... lines may be read the history of his own love. "The Egeria of his dreams—the Venus Aphrodite that sprang in full and supernal loveliness from the bright foam upon the storm-tormented ocean of his thoughts," was a little girl, Elmira Royster, who lived with her father in a house opposite to the Allans in Richmond. ...
— Edgar Allan Poe's Complete Poetical Works • Edgar Allan Poe
... historical character, and to think of a meeting of Buddha and Odin, or even of their respective descendants, at the roots of Mount Caucasus, would be like imagining an interview between Cyrus and Odin, between Mohammed and Aphrodite. ...
— Chips From A German Workshop, Vol. V. • F. Max Mueller
... good looks; belle tournure^; trigness^; bloom, brilliancy, radiance, splendor, gorgeousness, magnificence; sublimity, sublimification^. concinnity^, delicacy, refinement; charm, je ne sais quoi [Fr.], style. Venus, Aphrodite^, Hebe, the Graces, Peri, Houri, Cupid, Apollo^, Hyperion, Adonis^, Antionous^, Narcissus. peacock, butterfly; garden; flower of, pink of; bijou; jewel &c (ornament) 847; work of art. flower, flow'ret gay^; [flowers: list] wildflower; ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... the Titans out from Heaven, huge Earth bare her youngest-born son, Typhœus (Typhaon, Typhœus, Typhon), by the embrace of Tartarus (Hell), through golden Aphrodite (Venus), whose hands, indeed, are apt for deeds on the score of strength, and untiring the feet of the strong god; and from his shoulders there were a hundred heads of a serpent, a fierce dragon playing with ...
— Ragnarok: The Age of Fire and Gravel • Ignatius Donnelly
... your reality, nevertheless,' he said; 'that dark river of dissolution. You see it rolls in us just as the other rolls—the black river of corruption. And our flowers are of this—our sea-born Aphrodite, all our white phosphorescent flowers of sensuous perfection, all ...
— Women in Love • D. H. Lawrence
... these too, to satisfy his need, he shaped into creatures like himself. To the whole range of his inner experience he gave definition and life, presenting it to himself in a series of spiritual forms. In Aphrodite, mother of Eros, he incarnated the passion of love, placing in her broidered girdle "love and desire of loving converse that steals the wits even of the wise"; in Ares he embodied the lust of war; in Athene, wisdom; in ...
— The Greek View of Life • Goldsworthy Lowes Dickinson
... For the least thing she would go off into a ringing laugh—'Ha-ha-ha!' We made our first thorough acquaintance with the Kovalenkos at the headmaster's name-day party. Among the glum and intensely bored teachers who came even to the name-day party as a duty we suddenly saw a new Aphrodite risen from the waves; she walked with her arms akimbo, laughed, sang, danced.... She sang with feeling 'The Winds do Blow,' then another song, and another, and she fascinated us all—all, even Byelikov. He sat down by her and said ...
— The Wife and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... appetite which shocks them is the very origin of the highest qualities of man. It is they, weaklings afraid to look life in the face, dotards and sentimentalists, who have made the body unclean. They have covered the nakedness of Aphrodite with the rags of their own impurity. They have disembowelled the great lovers of antiquity till Cleopatra serves to adorn a prudish tale and Lancelot to point a moral. Oh, Mother Nature, give us back our freedom, with its strength of sinew and its humour! For lack of it we perish in false ...
— The Hero • William Somerset Maugham
... this I was busy on the literary Twins to which I referred at the opening of this paper. What did my isolation matter, when I had all the gods of Greece for company, to say nothing of the fays and trolls of Scottish Fairyland? Pallas and Aphrodite haunted that old garret; out on Waterloo Bridge, night after night, I saw Selene and all her nymphs; and when my heart sank low, the Fairies of Scotland sang me lullabies! It was a happy time. Sometimes, ...
— The Idler Magazine, Vol III. May 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... lap, to worship the goddess. Very similar customs existed in other parts of Western Asia, in North Africa, in Cyprus, and other islands of the Eastern Mediterranean, and also in Greece, where the temple of Aphrodite on the fort at Corinth possessed over a thousand hierodules, dedicated to the service of ...
— Anarchism and Other Essays • Emma Goldman
... same rush and fire. In either book, what we feel to-day to be the great objection to our enjoyment is the lack of verisimilitude. Who can believe in the existence of persons whose titles are the Earl of Fitz-Pompey and Baron Deprivyseal, or whose names are Lady Aphrodite and Sir Carte Blanche? The descriptions are "high-falutin" beyond all endurance, and there is particularly noticeable a kind of stylistic foppery, which is always hovering ...
— Some Diversions of a Man of Letters • Edmund William Gosse
... Goldoni paraphrased, Nicolai and Verdi, The German version of "Donne Curiose," Musical motivi in the opera, Rameau's "La Poule," Cast of the first performance in New York, (footnote)—Naples and opera, "I Giojelli della Madonna," et seq.—Erlanger's "Aphrodite," Neapolitan folksongs, Wolf-Ferrari's individuality, His "Vita Nuova," First performance in America ...
— A Second Book of Operas • Henry Edward Krehbiel
... "There stands the stone to tell if I lie." According to Prof. Rhys (Hibbert Lect. 486-97) the whole story is a mythological one, Kulhwych's mother being the dawn, the clover blossoms that grow under Olwen's feet being comparable to the roses that sprung up where Aphrodite had trod, and Yspyddadon being the incarnation of the sacred hawthorn. Mabon, again (i.e. pp. 21, 28-9), is the Apollo Maponus discovered in Latin inscriptions at Ainstable in Cumberland and elsewhere (Huebner, Corp. Insc. Lat. Brit. Nos. 218, 332, 1345). Granting all this, there is nothing ...
— Celtic Fairy Tales • Joseph Jacobs (coll. & ed.)
... orb, the moon; Prometheus is re-united in indissoluble bonds to his old love, Asia. Asia, withdrawn from sight during the first act, but spoken of as waiting in her exile for the fated hour, is the true mate of the human spirit. She is the fairest daughter of Earth and Ocean. Like Aphrodite, she rises in the Aegean near the land called by her name; and in the time of tribulation she dwells in a far Indian vale. She is the Idea of Beauty incarnate, the shadow of the Light of Life which sustains the world and enkindles ...
— Percy Bysshe Shelley • John Addington Symonds
... vessels stagger round the stormy Cape; and such are the flitting images that make the eyes of old country-born merchants look dim and dreamy, as they sit in their city palaces, warm with the after-dinner flush of the red wave out of which Memory arises, as Aphrodite arose from the ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume V, Number 29, March, 1860 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... and whispers the line upon his lips, while her fragrant breath, beating upon his cheek, sinks into his blood like the jasmines' perfume,—more dangerous to the soul than Aphrodite's kisses or Anacreon's drunken song. By such arts did Cleopatra win the master spirit of the world and make the mailed warrior her doting slave, indifferent alike to honor and to duty, content but to live and love. What wonder that the callow shepherd lad, ...
— Volume 1 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... be twelve, but Esperance appears only in three, which are the best. In one she represents Andromeda fastened to the rock, and Perseus (the Duke) delivers her after overcoming the dragon. In the second, the 'Judgment of Paris,' she appears as Aphrodite, to whom Paris (the Duke) gives the apple. The third is 'Europa and the Bull,' Europa being personified by Esperance. The Duke does not wish to look ridiculous in a bull's hide, so takes liberties ...
— The Idol of Paris • Sarah Bernhardt
... shingle waits the tides Whose waves are stinging kisses, but to me Love brought no peace, nor darkness any rest. I crept and touched the foam with fevered hands And cried to Love, from whom the sea is sweet, From whom the sea is bitterer than death. Ah, Aphrodite, if I sing no more To thee, God's daughter, powerful as God, It is that thou hast made my life too sweet To hold the added sweetness of a song. There is a quiet at the heart of love, And I have pierced the pain and come to peace. I hold my peace, ...
— The Little Book of Modern Verse • Jessie B. Rittenhouse
... wept with laughter! And Aphrodite, she, With keener mockery than white Artemis Who smiled aloof, drew nigh him unabashed In all her blinding beauty. Carelessly, As o'er the brute brows of a stalled ox Across that sooty muzzle and brawny breast, Contemptuously, ...
— Collected Poems - Volume One (of 2) • Alfred Noyes
... drink to Fortune her minions, to Francis Drake and John Hawkins and Martin Frobisher; to all adventurers and their deeds in the far-off seas! I drink to merry England and to the day when every sea shall bring her tribute!—to England, like Aphrodite, new-risen from the main! ...
— Sir Mortimer • Mary Johnston
... the grain Fails never, nor the ceaseless water-spring, Near neighbour of Cephisus wandering, That day by day revisiteth the plain. Nor do the Goddesses the grove disdain, But chiefly here the Muses quire and sing, And here they love to weave their dancing ring, With Aphrodite of ...
— Rhymes a la Mode • Andrew Lang
... in the shrine which Sir Cyril had reared for his Greek collection, of which the gem was a famous head of Aphrodite—an early Aphrodite, divine, removed from all possible pains and agitations of human passion. The room was an absurdity on Campden Hill, said some, but undeniably beautiful in itself. The columns, of singular lightness and grace, were of a fine marble which ...
— The Invader - A Novel • Margaret L. Woods
... is almost entirely absent from American poetry. Even our younger American poets are more profoundly interested in the why and wherefore of things than in the girdle of Helen or the gleaming limbs of 'the white implacable Aphrodite.'" —MR. SYLVESTER VIERECK. ...
— A line-o'-verse or two • Bert Leston Taylor
... Otherwise—colouring apart—the Venus of Milo, no less. I don't say that she was very intelligent. I wonder if the Venus was. But she was obedient to the law of her being—that I do know; and it is a matter of faith with me that Aphrodite can have ...
— In a Green Shade - A Country Commentary • Maurice Hewlett
... further," and he proceeded to the end of that marvelous ebullition of foam and fervor, such as celebrated the birth of Aphrodite herself perchance in the old Greek time; and which, despite my perverse intentions, stirred me as if I had quaffed a draught of pink champagne. Is it not, indeed, all couleur de rose? Hear this bit ...
— Sea and Shore - A Sequel to "Miriam's Memoirs" • Mrs. Catharine A. Warfield
... perfect symmetry and grace of these lovely beings. Their chief beauty appeared in a mobility of expression. It was the divine fire of Thought that illumined every feature, which, while gazing upon the Aphrodite of Praxitiles, we must think was all that the matchless marble lacked. Emotion passed over their features like ripples over a stream. Their eyes were limpid wells of loveliness, where every impulse of their natures ...
— Mizora: A Prophecy - A MSS. Found Among the Private Papers of the Princess Vera Zarovitch • Mary E. Bradley
... waves which beat upon the great dynamic centers of the nerves: primarily upon the hypogastric plexus and the sacral ganglion. From these centers rise new impulses, new vision, new being, rising like Aphrodite from the foam of the new tide of blood. And so individual ...
— Fantasia of the Unconscious • D. H. Lawrence
... truth when I say that she appeared infinitely beautiful to me. Her golden hair, rippling over the delicate ear and gathered into a knot behind, her large violet eyes and blooming white skin, her Grecian profile and stately yet flowing form, might have become an Aphrodite of Xeuxis or Praxiteles; but her serene and gracious countenance beamed with a pure seraphic light which is wanting to the classical goddess, and must be sought in the Madonnas of Raphael. Moreover, she had an indescribable look of girlish innocence, winsome sweetness, and pitiful tenderness, ...
— A Trip to Venus • John Munro
... wool, silver, and gold—had represented various scenes in the history of the gods and heroes: Ixion embracing the cloud; Diana surprised in the bath by Actaeon; the shepherd Paris as judge in the contest of beauty held upon Mount Ida between Hera, the snowy-armed, Athena of the sea-green eyes, and Aphrodite, girded with her magic cestus; the old men of Troy rising to honour Helena as she passed through the Skaian gate, a subject taken from one of the poems of the blind man of Meles. Others exhibited in preference scenes taken from the life of Heracles, the Theban, through flattery to Candaules, ...
— King Candaules • Theophile Gautier
... father. The idea that it would lift him out of the walk-up, out of Harlem and cold veal, was the one excuse for her voyage to Cytherea. The voyage had been eminently respectable. Undertaken with full ecclesiastical sanction, Aphrodite and her free airs had had nothing to do with it. None the less it was to Cytherea that she had gone—and to Lampsacus also, for all she and her geography knew ...
— The Paliser case • Edgar Saltus
... the Parthenon, completed in 438 B.C., was built under the direction of Phidias, who was also the sculptor of the colossal statue of Athena within the temple. The most famous work of Praxiteles Was the statue of Aphrodite of Cnidus, not extant, but represented in the Venus of the Capitol and the Venus ...
— French Lyrics • Arthur Graves Canfield
... the deeds of golden Aphrodite, Who wakens with her smile the lulled delight Of sweet desire, taming the eternal kings Of Heaven, and men, and all the living things That fleet along the air, or whom the sea, 5 Or earth, with her maternal ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Volume I • Percy Bysshe Shelley
... the combat! Why, it is but a few months ago that two young sparks met in mortal conflict because, forsooth, one of them had declared that Venus was the goddess of love and beauty, whilst the other affirmed that it was Aphrodite!" and Lord Claud leaned back upon his pillows and laughed aloud; laughing still more when he found that he had to explain to Tom the nature of the confusion which ...
— Tom Tufton's Travels • Evelyn Everett-Green
... ambition, not of love. So fresh a realm was opened to her that she was herself renewed and restored to that boyish-girlish estate of young womanhood before love has educated it to desire and the slaveries of desire. The Aphrodite that lurks in every woman had been put to flight by the ...
— The Cup of Fury - A Novel of Cities and Shipyards • Rupert Hughes
... evil beauty brought The sexes twain each one its magic dower. Man whispers "Aphrodite!" in his thought, And woman "Eros!" wondering at ...
— Enamels and Cameos and other Poems • Theophile Gautier
... wife at home whom you toiled so hard to win, might, I know, rest quietly, secure in the possession of all the charms of foam-born Aphrodite, yet I warn you. Whoever is as sure of himself as you cares little for the opinion of others. And yet we stand high, friend Lienhard, and therefore are seen by all; but the old Argus who watches for his neighbour's ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... the white implacable Aphrodite, Saw the hair unbound and the feet unsandalled Shine as fire of sunset on western ...
— The Principles of English Versification • Paull Franklin Baum
... goddesses who was there wished to be known as the fairest and each claimed the golden apple—Aphrodite who inspired love; Athene who gave wisdom; and Hera who was the wife of Zeus, the greatest of the gods. But no one at the wedding would judge between the goddesses and say which was the fairest. And then the shepherd Paris came by, and him the ...
— The Adventures of Odysseus and The Tales of Troy • Padriac Colum
... came to the rail, and the yachtsmen stared at her as if she were Aphrodite risen from the sea instead of a mighty pretty girl emerging from a dark companion-way. She had appeared so suddenly! She was so ...
— Blow The Man Down - A Romance Of The Coast - 1916 • Holman Day
... without much substance or solemnity; enhancing the beauty that may be inherent in any part of the national legend, and either rejecting the scandalous chronicle of Olympus or Asgard altogether, or giving it over to the comic graces of levity and irony, as in the Phaeacian story of Ares and Aphrodite, wherein the Phaeacian poet digressed from his tales of war in the spirit of Ariosto, and with an equally accomplished and ...
— Epic and Romance - Essays on Medieval Literature • W. P. Ker
... developments of art were unappreciated. There was no literature in Corinth after Periander, and among the illustrious writers of Greece not a single Corinthian appeared. Nor did it ever produce an orator. What could be expected of a city whose patron goddess was Aphrodite! But Lais was honored in the city, and rich merchants frequented her house. The city was most famous for courtesans, and female slaves, and extravagant luxury. It was like Antioch and Tyre and Carthage. Corinth was probably ...
— The Old Roman World • John Lord
... Both were handsome men, witty, of a genial disposition, yet under a light careless manner brave and ardent, devoted to the pleasure of the chase and all other pleasures, especially to those bestowed by golden Aphrodite, their chosen saint, albeit her name did not ...
— Dead Man's Plack and an Old Thorn • William Henry Hudson
... elegance, comeliness, pulchritude, grace, exquisiteness, charm, attraction. Associated Words: aesthetics, aesthetician, aestheticism, aesthete, aesthetic, esthetology, Apollo, Adonis, Venus, Hebe, Hyperion, Houri, Aphrodite. ...
— Putnam's Word Book • Louis A. Flemming
... the priest hidden within the image may date from the days of the vocal Memnon, and was a favourite in India, especially at the shrine of Somnauth (Soma-nth), the Moon-god, Atergatis Aphrodite, etc. ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 9 • Richard F. Burton
... to the interest of this legend is that we find it in Homer. It is essentially the same with the belt of Aphrodite (Hymn, l. 88). In Iliad xiv., 214, Aphrodite takes it off and lends it to Hr to charm Zeus withal. When we add that just above in the same context (Iliad xiv., 165) Hr also has a curiously contrived ...
— Anglo-Saxon Literature • John Earle
... Heaven, and devouring in a trice the stone that now resists his fangs for millenniums. He had heard the shields of the Corybantes clash around the infant Zeus; he described to Elenko how one day the sea had frothed and boiled, and undraped Aphrodite had ascended from it in the presence of the gazing and applauding amphitheatre of cloud-cushioned gods. He could depict the personal appearance of Cybele, and sketch the character of Enceladus. He had instructed ...
— The Twilight of the Gods, and Other Tales • Richard Garnett |
