"Muse" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... seen that the conditions on the frontier rendered war inevitable, and he accordingly made ready for the future by preparing his brother for the career of a soldier, so far as it could be done. He brought to Mount Vernon two old companions-in-arms of the Carthagena time, Adjutant Muse, a Virginian, and Jacob Van Braam, a Dutch soldier of fortune. The former instructed Washington in the art of war, tactics, and the manual of arms, the latter in fencing and the sword exercise. At the same time Lawrence Washington procured for his brother, then only ...
— George Washington, Vol. I • Henry Cabot Lodge
... play the dark for both and say Amen. Nay, muse not, madam: tis no sencelesse Image, But the true essence ...
— A Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. III • Various
... bitter, bitterrer than Gall Physicians say are always physical: Now Women's Tongues if into Powder beaten, May in a Potion or a Pill be eaten, And as there's nought more bitter, I do muse, That Women's Tongues in Physick they ne'er use. My self and others who lead restless Lives, Would spare that bitter Member of ...
— Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin • Benjamin Franklin
... so," Vashti nodded. "I dare say now," she went on, after seeming to muse for a moment, "you are one of those strong-minded men who find it hard to understand how sensible people can worry over what ...
— Major Vigoureux • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... may be offended by the "barbarous adjunct of rhyme," and by the solecisms and false quantities which sometimes occur, "et alia multa damna atque outragia," others may be amused with these emulations of the cloistered muse of the Middle Ages. The witty author of Whistlecraft has shown that he had a true relish for them, and has successfully tried his hand, ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 82, May 24, 1851 • Various
... left it so disgracefully. The king well knew the unfortunate chevalier for a man as destitute of modesty as merit; when therefore he saw his book upon the mantel-piece of my drawing-room, he said, 'So! you are the inspiring muse of the chevalier de la Morliere; I only warn you, when the day comes for him to be hanged, not to ask me to pardon him." "Be assured," replied I, "that I will never deprive the Place de Greve of one so formed to do honour to it." ...
— "Written by Herself" • Baron Etienne Leon Lamothe-Langon
... in my dream that Christian was in a muse a while. To whom also Hopeful added these words: "Be of good cheer; ...
— The Riches of Bunyan • Jeremiah Rev. Chaplin
... detached from the fountain-head of Jewish culture, would no more be able to read the "Songs of Zion," and that the poet's rhymes were limited in their appeal to the last handful of the worshippers of the Hebrew Muse: ...
— History of the Jews in Russia and Poland. Volume II • S.M. Dubnow
... the presidio he sat down on the balcony that overlooked the patio outside his room. There was nobody about and he began to muse. It was rash to take things for granted, but he thought he had been made the subject of three experiments. Somebody had put a gold onza in the Indian jar; Olsen had tried to find out if he was ambitious; ...
— The Buccaneer Farmer - Published In England Under The Title "Askew's Victory" • Harold Bindloss
... style of VILLON and MAROT as vulgar, and sought nobility, elevation, and distinction. To this end it renewed its vocabulary by wholesale borrowing and adaptation from the Latin, much enriching the language, though giving color to the charge of Boileau that RONSARD'S muse "en ...
— French Lyrics • Arthur Graves Canfield
... ancient. There is no lament in any classical writer for the barbarians. The New Zealanders say that the land will depart from their children; the Australians are vanishing; the Tasmanians have vanished. If anything like this had happened in antiquity, the classical moralists would have been sure to muse over it; for it is just the large solemn kind of fact that suited them. On the contrary, in Gaul, in Spain, in Sicily—everywhere that we know of—the barbarian endured the contact of the Roman, and the Roman allied himself to the barbarian. Modern ...
— Physics and Politics, or, Thoughts on the application of the principles of "natural selection" and "inheritance" to political society • Walter Bagehot
... forbid that we should say that it completes the circle of his powers. On the contrary, it gives us hope of broader effort in new fields of thought and forms of art. But it brings the development of his Muse and of his Creed to a positive and definite point. It enables us to claim one who has been hitherto regarded as belonging to a merely speculative and peirastic school as the willing and deliberate champion of vital Christianity, and of an orthodoxy the ...
— Literary and General Lectures and Essays • Charles Kingsley
... I ever knew, In those last days, I sat in the forsaken orchard Where beyond fields of greenery shimmered The hills at Miller's Ford; Just to muse on the apple tree With its ruined trunk and blasted branches, And shoots of green whose delicate blossoms Were sprinkled over the skeleton tangle, Never to grow in fruit. And there was I with my spirit girded By the flesh half dead, ...
— Spoon River Anthology • Edgar Lee Masters
... Miss Mac-Ivor's society was extremely limited. Her most intimate friend had been Rose Bradwardine, to whom she was much attached; and when seen together, they would have afforded an artist two admirable subjects for the gay and the melancholy muse. Indeed Rose was so tenderly watched by her father, and her circle of wishes was so limited, that none arose but what he was willing to gratify, and scarce any which did not come within the compass of his power. With ...
— Waverley • Sir Walter Scott
... hurried or troubled in this thing. We'll think, and talk things over, and plan. My world is a broader and saner world than yours is, Susan, and when I take you there you will be as honored and as readily accepted as any woman among them all. My wife will set me free—-" he fell into a muse, as they walked along the quiet country road, and Susan, her brain a mad whirl of thoughts, did not interrupt him. "I believe she will set me free," he said, "as soon as she knows that my happiness, and all my life, depend upon it. It can be done; it can be arranged, surely. You ...
— Saturday's Child • Kathleen Norris
... knowledge of the Gaelic tongue, to forge the originals. In 1807, eleven years after his death, these were at last published. The progress of genuine Celtic scholarship during the succeeding century did the rest; and the old blind bard rejoined the mists and vapors which were the inspiration of his Muse. {78} The poems of Ossian are only one, though perhaps the most signal, instance of the forgeries which prevailed like an epidemic at the time of the Romantic Revival. Some of these, like Ireland's Shakespeare forgeries, were little better than cold-blooded mercenary ...
— Romance - Two Lectures • Walter Raleigh
... "Sing, Muse, of the man of much wandering who travelled right far after sacking sacred Troy, and saw the cities of many men and knew their ways. Many a sorrow he suffered on the sea, trying to win a return home for himself and his comrades; yet he could not for all his longing, ...
— Authors of Greece • T. W. Lumb
... all solitary, with the exception of her mute companion, and it was observed that she never, in a single instance, was known to traverse any spot over which she and Osborne had not walked together. Here she would linger, and pause, and muse, and address Ariel, as if the beautiful creature were capable of comprehending ...
— Jane Sinclair; Or, The Fawn Of Springvale - The Works of William Carleton, Volume Two • William Carleton
... and the gray old wolf goes to his den to muse over what has sent Joe Woods on a quest for ...
— The Little Lady of Lagunitas • Richard Henry Savage
... "Your theory is that a man ought to be able to return to the Muse as he comes back to his wife after he's ceased ...
— The Long Run - 1916 • Edith Wharton
... suffice to sit with Shirley in her panelled parlour, where others came and went, and where he could rarely find a quiet moment to show her the latest production of his fertile muse; he must have her out amongst the pleasant pastures, and lead her by the still waters. Tete-a-tete ramblings she shunned, so he made parties for her to his own grounds, his glorious forest; to remoter scenes—woods severed by the Wharfe, ...
— Shirley • Charlotte Bronte
... forth some fine conceptions, and composed one admirable tragedy; Sheridan sketched some brilliant satires; Miss Baillie delineated the passions with epic power; and genius of the highest order in our times, that of Byron and Bulwer, has endeavoured to revive the tragic muse in these islands. But the first declared that he wrote his dramatic pieces with no design whatever to their representation, but merely as a vehicle of noble sentiments in dialogue of verse; and the second is too successful as a novelist to put forth his strength in dramatic poetry, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 363, January, 1846 • Various
... paths of classical literature. How inexhaustible are those old wells of Greek and Roman Letters! The world cannot afford to spare them long. They may be less in fashion at one time than another, but their beauty and life-giving powers are perennial. The Muse of English poesy has always been baptized in ...
— Gifts of Genius - A Miscellany of Prose and Poetry by American Authors • Various
... not change a thousand times a day? Sloth is of all things the most fanciful— 120 And moves more parasangs in its intents Than generals in their marches, when they seek To leave their foe at fault.—Why dost thou muse? ...
— The Works of Lord Byron - Poetry, Volume V. • Lord Byron
... desiring to entertain the King, Queen, and court at his mansion of Vaux-le-Vicomte, asked for a comedy at the hands of the Palais-Royal company, who had discovered the secret of pleasing the Grand Monarque. Moliere had but a fortnight's notice; and he was expected, moreover, to accommodate his muse to various prescribed ...
— The Bores • Moliere
... observation. Then he observes, and intensely. He does not analyse, he does not amass his facts; he concentrates. He wrings out quintessences; and when he has distilled his drops of pure spirit he brews his potion. Something of the kind happens to me now, whether verse or prose be the Muse of my devotion. A stray thought, a chance vision, moves me; presently the flame is hissing hot. Everything then at any time observed and stored in the memory which has relation to the fact is fused and in a swimming flux. Anon, as the Children ...
— In a Green Shade - A Country Commentary • Maurice Hewlett
... my wits to work one morning after an evening of delight, and found the muse complaisant. My fancy spouted like a fountain, the rhymes swam in the water like gilded or silver fishes, so tame you had but to dip in your fingers and take your pick, while allusion and simile crowded so thickly about me that I should have needed an epic rather than my legal fourteen lines ...
— The God of Love • Justin Huntly McCarthy
... BOTANIC MUSE! who in this latter age Led by your airy hand the Swedish sage, Bad his keen eye your secret haunts explore On dewy dell, high wood, and winding shore; 35 Say on each leaf how tiny Graces dwell; How laugh the Pleasures in a blossom's bell; How ...
— The Botanic Garden. Part II. - Containing The Loves of the Plants. A Poem. - With Philosophical Notes. • Erasmus Darwin
... composed a great deal for my own amusement. I wrote both prose and verse, and verse in a great many metres; but it was soon borne in upon me—conclusively after I had been beaten for the Prize Poem[50]—that the Muse of Poetry was not mine. In prose, I was more successful. My work for The Harrovian gave me constant practice, and I twice won the School-Prize for an English Essay. In writing, I indulged to the full my taste for resonant and rolling sound; and my style was ludicrously rhetorical. ...
— Fifteen Chapters of Autobiography • George William Erskine Russell
... fusion of the two natures, but rather a juxtaposition, a remarkably close soldering. Ursule was whimsical, and displayed at times the shyness, the melancholy, and the transports of a pariah; then she would often break out into nervous fits of laughter, and muse lazily, like a woman unsound both in head and heart. Her eyes, which at times had a scared expression like those of Adelaide, were as limpid as crystal, similar to those of kittens ...
— The Fortune of the Rougons • Emile Zola
... comes ashore in the breakers, and as the result of an all-night's struggle with the muse of conventionality Corkey has seven ...
— David Lockwin—The People's Idol • John McGovern
... with the laughter, until at last her cough began to interrupt the bursts, and between laughing and coughing the old lady involuntarily spluttered all over my face. Humiliated, and full of disgust, I escaped rapidly thence to my mother's room, where I washed myself with soap and water, and began to muse on the lady ...
— First Love (Little Blue Book #1195) - And Other Fascinating Stories of Spanish Life • Various
... with her thin nose in the air. Dorothy clung to her, and they reached the house together. It so happened that the story of the attack had been told to Dorothy's father, and Sir Walter was getting a little fun at the expense of Johnnie and his wrestlings with the muse of poetry. A lively, good-humoured sally, at the moment when Dorothy's trembling limbs carried her over the threshold, evoked a peal of stentorian laughter from Master Morgan's capacious lungs. The tearful maid stood bewildered for an instant, then a roar from all ...
— Sea-Dogs All! - A Tale of Forest and Sea • Tom Bevan
... poor Amy Robsart passed there, and the scene between her, Leicester, and the queen, when that prince of villains, Varney, claims her as his wife. But in spite of the romantic and historical associations belonging to the place, I do not think it would have "inspired my muse." ...
— Records of a Girlhood • Frances Anne Kemble
... muse beside the rolling waves; We ponder on the grassy hill; We linger by the new-piled graves, And find that star is shining still. God in his great design hath spread, Unnumber'd rays to lead afar; They beam the brightest ...
— The Illustrated London Reading Book • Various
... city has no claim to praise for wide streets, fine houses, porticos, or symmetrical squares; probably, the architects of the Middle Ages destroyed its perfect plan, and swept away most of the beauties and grandeur which inspired the muse ...
— Barn and the Pyrenees - A Legendary Tour to the Country of Henri Quatre • Louisa Stuart Costello
... riding back from one of these visits—it had been (if the Muse will smile and condescend) to buy a packet of hairpins—when, half-way up the village street, she spied a horseman approaching. An instant later ...
— Lady Good-for-Nothing • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... novelist, and his poetry is said by competent critics to be very good; but the public looks with a more kindly eye upon his novels, and as their author cannot afford to disdain contemporary profit and reputation, he has been obliged rather to show the cold shoulder to the Muse. Theuriet's appearance in letters and his popularity are, I think, to be taken as a sign that a healthy change is going on in the taste of French readers. His books, consciously or unconsciously, are a protest against the system in which young girls are brought ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 22, September, 1878 • Various
... And thou wert bound to me In the long-vanished eld eternally! In the dark troubled tablets which enroll The past my Muse beheld this blessed scroll,— 'One with thy ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 57, July, 1862 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... to say a prayer to the Muse; but I can't remember what it is. No matter. Multiplication Table comes next. Mother says it's just the same thing in India that it is ...
— Dotty Dimple At Home • Sophie May
... "It is very curious." He said in a kind of muse, "I don't know just where I was." Then he began again, "Oh, yes! It was at the ceremony—down there in the library. Some of the country people came in; I suppose they thought they ought, and I suppose ...
— Questionable Shapes • William Dean Howells
... poet should bore us to death with fiddle-faddle minutia of natural objects in preference to that study of the insignificant creature Man, in his relations to his species, to which Mr. Pope limited the range of his inferior muse; and who, practising as he preached, wrote some very nice verses, to which the Lake school and its successors are largely indebted. My Mr. Bowles has exercised his faculty upon Man, and has a powerful inborn gift in that line which only requires ...
— Kenelm Chillingly, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... And let me dream of those rose-scented bowers That lapped my soul in youth's enchanted East! It needs no demon-essence of Hasheesh To flash that sunrise glory in my eyes!— It needs no Flora to bring back those flowers— No gay Apollo to sound liquid reeds— No muse to consecrate the hills and streams— No God or oracle within those groves To render sacred all the emerald glooms: For here dwelt such bright angels as attend The innocent ways of youth's unsullied ...
— The New Penelope and Other Stories and Poems • Frances Fuller Victor
... to muse. "Of course, if you were only practiced in witchcraft you could make a wax image of him and then stick pins in it until he curled ...
— The Monk of Hambleton • Armstrong Livingston
... weary days, besieged him close, Even to the gates and inlets of his life! But it is true, no less, that strenuous, firm, And with a natural gladness, he maintained The citadel unconquered, and in joy Was strong to follow the delightful muse." ...
— The Life of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - 1838 • James Gillman
... the First African Presbyterian Church of the country. Others to occupy the pulpit as supplies and pastors were Benjamin T. Tanner, subsequently a bishop of the A. M. E. Church, William B. Evans, Henry Highland Garnet, J. H. Muse, J. Sella Martin, John B. Reeves, during his connection with Howard University, Dr. Septimus Tustin, George Van Deurs, a Swede, and John Brown, a Scotchman. The last mentioned incumbent was succeeded by the Rev. Francis J. Grimke, ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 7, 1922 • Various
... forthwith taken down and read. I can withdraw or change nothing, nor make the least correction. I must therefore be all the more careful in what I say before you, and that too with regard to more than one form of composition. For there is greater variety in the works of my muse than in all the elaborate achievements of Hippias. If you will give me your best attention I will explain what I mean with greater ...
— The Apologia and Florida of Apuleius of Madaura • Lucius Apuleius
... Deipnosophists was all but ready. All through a golden summer and a quiet Long Vacation it had been maturing, and on the first night of the October term he arranged his piles of notes about him, set a quire of clean manuscript paper on his table, dipped pen in inkpot, and began to muse on the ...
— The White Wolf and Other Fireside Tales • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... statuesque in homely fashion, after having delivered himself of his effective assent: 'Yes. The convict,' and I, far from indulging in a reminiscent excursion into the past, remained sufficiently in the present to muse in a vague, absent-minded way on the respectable proportions and on the (upon the whole) comely shape of his great pedestrian's calves, for he had thrown one leg over his knee, carelessly, to conceal the trouble of his mind by an air of ease. But all the same the knowledge ...
— Chance - A Tale in Two Parts • Joseph Conrad
... be expected that these many republics, monarchies, aristocracies, or whatever form they may take, will long remain at peace with each other? Ask the muse who presides over the pages of history how often has her pen been called upon to record the circumstance of separate nations, of the same blood and antecedents, lying quietly and peaceably beside each other. Family quarrels are proverbially the most bitter of all on earth, and family hatreds the ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. III, No. V, May, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... thus, my love! as on the midway slope Of yonder hill I stretch my limbs at noon, Whilst through my half-closed eye-lids I behold The sunbeams dance, like diamonds, on the main, And tranquil muse upon tranquillity; Full many a thought uncalled and undetained, And many idle flitting phantasies, Traverse my indolent and passive brain, As wild and various as the random gales That swell and ...
— Poems of Coleridge • Coleridge, ed Arthur Symons
... of its road, lashed on by that hard woman, the personification of Necessity, a sort of deputy Fate, Wenceslas, a born poet and dreamer, had gone on from conception to execution, and overleaped, without sounding it, the gulf that divides these two hemispheres of Art. To muse, to dream, to conceive of fine works, is a delightful occupation. It is like smoking a magic cigar or leading the life of a courtesan who follows her own fancy. The work then floats in all the grace of infancy, in the mad joy of ...
— Cousin Betty • Honore de Balzac
... not for us, O plaintive elegist, Thine epicedial tone of sad farewell To joy in wisdom and to thought in youth! Our western Muse would keep her tryst With sunrise, not with sunset, and foretell In boyhood's bliss the dawn ...
— The Poems of Henry Van Dyke • Henry Van Dyke
... Victoria, the kindly humour of Svoermere and Benoni, the autumn-tinted resignation of the Wanderer with the Mute—they follow as the seasons do, each with a charm of its own, yet all deriving from one source. His muse at first is Iselin, the embodiment of adolescent longing, the dream of those "whom delight flies because they give her chase." The hopelessness of his own pursuit fills him with pity for mortals under ...
— Growth of the Soil • Knut Hamsun
... dream, he had been lured by the crystal murmur of a spring up a steep path. There, beneath a laurel-tree, he had beheld—and from her hand had received upon his brow water from the sacred fount,—a woman of a beauty grave and sublime: the Muse ...
— The Wagnerian Romances • Gertrude Hall
... world a secret yet. Whether the nymph to please her swain Talks in a high romantic strain; Or whether he at last descends To act with less seraphic ends; Or, to compound the business, whether They temper love and books together, Must never to mankind be told, Nor shall the conscious Muse unfold." ...
— The Journal to Stella • Jonathan Swift
... clear that humour is a characteristic of the English folk. The legends are not of a very romantic kind, and the maerchen are often humorous in character. So that a certain air of unromance is given by such a collection as that we are here considering. The English folk-muse wears homespun and plods afoot, albeit with a cheerful smile and a ...
— More English Fairy Tales • Various
... time to pass; My youth has days of its lifetime yet; If you only knocked at the door, alas, My heart would open the door, Musette! Still at your name must my sad heart beat; Ah Muse, ah maiden of faithlessness! Return for a moment, and deign to eat The bread that pleasure was wont ...
— Ballads and Lyrics of Old France: with other Poems • Andrew Lang
... as a fervent worker in diamonds. None of his gems are paste, and a few have a perfection, a solidity, and a fire that fit them for a place in that coronet one might fancy made up of the richest of the jewels of the world's music-makers, and fashioned for the very brows of the Muse herself. ...
— Contemporary American Composers • Rupert Hughes
... Diable! how My thoughts were dressed when I was young But tempus fugit! see them now Half clad in rags of every tongue! O philoi, fratres, chers amis! I dare not court the youthful Muse, For fear her sharp response should be, "Papa ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 121, November, 1867 • Various
... and his wrongs,—he presented himself in no other aspect than that of a stern, haughty misanthrope, self-banished from the fellowship of men, and, most of all, from that of Englishmen. The more genial and beautiful inspirations of his muse were, in this point of view, looked upon but as lucid intervals between the paroxysms of an inherent malignancy of nature; and even the laughing effusions of his wit and humour got credit for no other aim than that which Swift boasted of, as ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. 6 (of 6) - With his Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore
... just mentioned. As he now reached the Batenkill, where the stream, here first beginning to find a more peaceful flow, after its headlong descent from the Green Mountains, intersected the road, he suddenly paused and began to muse, with the air of one who has been struck by some new thought tending to divert him from his settled purposes; and, slowly passing on to the bridge, which, after the rude construction of the times, had been thrown across ...
— The Rangers - [Subtitle: The Tory's Daughter] • D. P. Thompson
... losing half The fleeting moments of too short a life, Total extinction of th' enlighten'd soul! Or else, to feverish vanity alive, Wilder'd and tossing through distemper'd dreams? Who would in such a gloomy state remain Longer than nature craves, when every Muse And every blooming pleasure wait without, To bless the ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, - Vol. 10, No. 283, 17 Nov 1827 • Various
... The Muse of China has not disdained to warble harmonious numbers in praise of her favorite beverage. There is a celebrated ballad on tea-picking, in thirty stanzas, sung by a young woman who goes from home early in the day to work, and lightens her labors with song. I give a few of the ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 4, February, 1858 • Various
... The cruel comic muse, who makes our serious suffering ridiculous, had drawn aside the last curtain. Flora felt the laughter rising in her throat, the tears in ...
— The Coast of Chance • Esther Chamberlain
... beyond criticism and her lips were fresh and creamy red—but Mr. Lushington wished she would not do it. The muses are never represented 'biting their lips'; and in his moments of enthusiasm he liked to think that Margaret was his muse. She had thick brown hair that waved naturally, but made no little curls and baby ringlets, such as some young women have, or make. The line of her hair along her forehead and temples, though curved, was rather severe. She had been fair when a little ...
— Fair Margaret - A Portrait • Francis Marion Crawford
... in sleep had passed she did a great deal of languid, undisturbed thinking. She seemed detached from her life, and it passed before her, not poignantly, but merely as something to look upon, quietly muse about. Soon she would step back into it, but now she was resting from it, simply viewing it as an interesting thing which ...
— The Glory Of The Conquered • Susan Glaspell
... to spend the day in Brussels, and he followed them; he still wanted to walk about and muse and ponder, and Brussels is a very nice, gay, and civilized city for such a purpose—a little Paris, with charming streets and shops and a charming arcade, and very good places to eat and drink in, and ...
— The Martian • George Du Maurier
... all regret, the face will shine Upon me while I muse alone; And that dear voice, I once have known, Still speak to me of me ...
— Personal Friendships of Jesus • J. R. Miller
... James's latchkey was very highly polished and the lock well oiled, he never succeeded in opening his door at the first attempt. It was a capricious door. You could not be sure of opening it any more than Beau Brummel could be sure of tying his cravat. It was a muse that had to ...
— Helen with the High Hand (2nd ed.) • Arnold Bennett
... there was in the Universe, and after every mortal thing in their ideal Paradise, was done and said and thought by electricity, they could imagine as further necessary to human happiness, they would probably muse for awhile, and ...
— Dreams - From a volume entitled "Idle Thoughts of an Idle Fellow" • Jerome K. Jerome
... not, he was not the only devout poet who, in the early times, with sacred reverence believed the wonders the inspiring muse gave him as from God. It is not clear from the Biblical record that Adam was imagined the first man. On the contrary, the statement that Cain was afraid that those who met him would kill him, also that he went to the land of Nod and took a wife and builded a city, implies that there ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger
... effort has blown all the wind out of my sails, and if I were not relating actual occurrences I should certainly be run ashore. As it is, sleep may invigorate and bring back my memory. When relating facts it is not necessary to call on any muse, or fast, or roam into a shady bower, where so many have found their thoughts. When relating facts, fancy is hot required to soar untrodden heights where thought has seldom reached; but too freely come back all the weary days, the toils, fears ...
— The Bark Covered House • William Nowlin
... ardour of the bridegroom in the ballad of "The Mistletoe Bough," and with more success. Madame Ling was reading a novel at home. Mr. Carlyle has quoted Tobias Smollett as to the undesirability of giving the historical muse that latitude which is not uncommon in France, and we prefer to leave the tale of Ling's where Mr. Carlyle left that of Brynhild's ...
— Lost Leaders • Andrew Lang
... after him! Do you hear me? Now look out!" And the Judge rang the bell for the servant, scolded her for not lighting the gas that no one had before wished lighted, and stormed out of the room, leaving his wife to follow him, and his daughter to drop again into her chair and muse over the pleasant prospect for after-life lying ...
— Shoulder-Straps - A Novel of New York and the Army, 1862 • Henry Morford
... recollect our evening rambles last year upon the hill of pines? and the dark valley where we used to muse in the twilight? I remember we often fancied the scene like Valombrosa; and vowed, if ever an occasion offered, to visit that deep retirement. I had put off the execution of this pilgrimage from day to day till the warm weather was gone; and the Florentines ...
— Dreams, Waking Thoughts, and Incidents • William Beckford
... be cities who refuse To their own child the honours due, And look ungently on the Muse; But ever shall those cities rue The dry, unyielding, niggard breast, Offering no nourishment, no rest, To that young head which soon shall rise Disdainfully, in might ...
— On The Art of Reading • Arthur Quiller-Couch
... down on the hosts of each clime, While the warriors hand to hand were— Gaul—Austrian and Muscovite heroes sublime, And—(Muse of Fitzgerald arise with a rhyme!) A quantity of Landwehr![37] Gladness was there, For the men of all might and the monarchs of earth, 50 There met for the wolf and the worm to make mirth, And a feast for ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Vol. 7. - Poetry • George Gordon Byron
... had Lycambes on earth living been The time thou wast, his death had been all one; Had he but mov'd thy tartest Muse to spleen Unto the fork he had as surely gone: For why? there lived not that man, I think, Us'd better or more ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. VIII (4th edition) • Various
... the chapters relating to General Pepe's imprisonment, are as amusing as any romance. More than once did he and his fellow-captive muse over an escape, and ponder its possibilities. These were very remote. At last they devised a plan, which they thought would ensure their transfer to a less rigorous confinement, whence they might find means of flight. ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCLXXVI. February, 1847. Vol. LXI. • Various
... it?" Ballantyne repeated. "I ask myself that," and he took the photograph out of Thresk's hands and sat in a sort of muse, staring at it. Then he turned it over and took the edge between his forefinger and his thumb, hesitating whether he would not even at this moment tear it into strips and have done with it. But in the end he cast it upon the table as he had ...
— Witness For The Defense • A.E.W. Mason
... you thought, had drew my Pen On Virtue, see I fight for her agen; Wherefore, I hope my Foes will all excuse Th' Extravagance of a Repenting Muse; Pardon whate'er she has too boldly said, She only acted then in Masquerade; But now the Vizard's off, She's chang'd her Scene, And turns a Modest, Civil Girl agen; Let some admire the Fops whose Talent lie Inventing dull, insipid Blasphemy; I swear I cannot with those Terms dispence, ...
— The Fifteen Comforts of Matrimony: Responses From Women • Various
... dancing, according to classic mythology, were presided over by nine goddesses, or Muses, daughters of Mnemosyne, goddess of memory, "Muse-mother," as Mrs. Browning terms her. The history of woman as a poet has yet to be written, but to her in the early ages poetry owed much of its development and its beauty. Mr. Vance has remarked that "among many of the lowest races the only love-dances in vogue are those performed ...
— The Child and Childhood in Folk-Thought • Alexander F. Chamberlain
... without, But the breeze which over my garden steals Brings from it merely a distant shout Or the echo light of passing wheels; In its din and drive I have now no share, As I muse in my ...
— Poems • John L. Stoddard
... brother-in-law. "Dear me, Gregory," she said. "We've had the tragic muse to supper, haven't we. What is the matter, what has been the matter with Madame von ...
— Tante • Anne Douglas Sedgwick
... and resolved into finer and lovelier truth the purity which completes it as the fragrance completes the rose. That's what they call idealism; the word's vastly abused, but the thing is good. It's my own creed, at any rate. Lovely Madonna, model at once and muse, I call you to witness that I too am ...
— The Madonna of the Future • Henry James
... the hip Both of their sound and rotten sheep: For wits, that carry low or wide, 635 Must be aim'd higher, or beside The mark, which else they ne'er come nigh, But when they take their aim awry. But I do wonder you should choose This way t' attack me with your Muse, 640 As one cut out to pass your tricks on, With fulhams of poetic fiction: I rather hop'd I should no more Hear from you o' th' gallanting score: For hard dry-bastings us'd to prove 645 The readiest remedies of love; Next a dry-diet: but if those fail, Yet this uneasy loop-hol'd ...
— Hudibras • Samuel Butler
... spaces between their suggestions by the intertexture of conventional expressions; a necessity only imposed by the limitedness of the poetical faculty itself; for Milton conceived the Paradise Lost as a whole before he executed it in portions; We have his own authority also for the muse having 'dictated' to him the 'unpremeditated song'. And let this be an answer to those who would allege the fifty-six various readings of the first line of the Orlando Furioso. Compositions so produced are to poetry what mosaic is to painting. This instinct and intuition of the ...
— A Defence of Poetry and Other Essays • Percy Bysshe Shelley
... thought! that doth this month or two avail To somewhat soothe my Muse's anxious care. For certain minds at certain stories rail, Certain poor jests, which nought but trifles are. If I with deference their lessons hail, What would they more? Be you more prone to spare, More kind than they; ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume V. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... sort," he returned laughing. "But you must not make fun of my sweet mistress from Parnassus; it kept me sane and cool to woo my reluctant Muse. At times she frowned, and then I set my teeth hard and worked like a navvy; but when she smiled my pen seemed to fly in the sunlight, and I ...
— Herb of Grace • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... words taken bodily from the Greek or Latin are accented on the penult rather than the antepenult (as analogy would lead us to accent them) because in the original language the penultimate vowel was long: abdo'men, hori'zon, deco'rum, diplo'ma, muse'um, sono'rous, acu'men, bitu'men; and similarly such words as farra'go, etc. We may never be sure just how to accent a large class of names taken from the Latin and Greek without knowing the length of the vowel in the original,—such ...
— The Art Of Writing & Speaking The English Language - Word-Study and Composition & Rhetoric • Sherwin Cody
... the midst of the knot of political celebrities. Lousteau performed the part of cicerone to admiration; with every sentence he uttered Dauriat rose higher in Lucien's opinion. Politics and literature seemed to converge in Dauriat's shop. He had seen a great poet prostituting his muse to journalism, humiliating Art, as woman was humiliated and prostituted in those shameless galleries without, and the provincial took a terrible lesson to heart. Money! That was the key to every enigma. Lucien realized the fact that he was unknown and alone, and that ...
— Lost Illusions • Honore De Balzac
... reproached the style of the inspired record. A third came vauntingly forward with his geographical discoveries and scientific data, and reared the accommodation-theory so many more stories higher than Semler had left it that it almost threatened to fall of its own weight. Strange that the poetic Muse should lend her inspiration to such unholy purposes; but in the poetry of that day there was but little of the Christian element, and he need not be greatly skilled in classic verse who concludes that the ...
— History of Rationalism Embracing a Survey of the Present State of Protestant Theology • John F. Hurst
... Muse hath aw'd the stage, And frighten'd wives and children with her rage, Too long Drawcansir roars, Parthenope weeps, While ev'ry lady cries, and critick sleeps With ghosts, rapes, murders, tender hearts they wound, ...
— Miscellanies, Volume 2 (from Works, Volume 12) • Henry Fielding
... perhaps, too late to await the advent of a Queen of Song from the warm South. The South has had its turn; it has fulfilled its mission; the other end of the balance now comes up. The Northern Muse must sing her lesson to the world. Her fresher, chaster, more intellectual, and (as they only SEEM to some) her colder strains come in due season to recover our souls from the delicious languor of a Music which has been so wholly of the Feelings, ...
— A Unique Story of a Marvellous Career. Life of Hon. Phineas T. • Joel Benton
... Japanese written language has changed in the course of so many centuries. Allowing for a few obsolete words, and sundry slight changes of pronunciation, the ordinary Japanese reader to-day can enjoy these early productions of his native muse with about as little difficulty as the English reader finds in studying the poets of the Elizabethan era. Moreover, the refinement and the simple charm of the Many[o]sh[u] compositions have never been surpassed, and seldom equaled, ...
— The Romance of the Milky Way - And Other Studies & Stories • Lafcadio Hearn
... a mournful muse Soft pity to infuse; He sung the Weaver wise and good, By too severe a fate, Fallen, fallen, fallen, fallen, Fallen from his high estate, And weltering ...
— The Life of Mansie Wauch - tailor in Dalkeith • D. M. Moir
... I feel as if I ought to go home and write verses or smart paragraphs for the society papers after drinking your tea, it is so inspiring. Addison ought to have drunk just such tea before writing one of his Spectators, but unfortunately his muse required old port." ...
— Vixen, Volume I. • M. E. Braddon
... you my Five Act Tragedy entitled——" "Hang your tragedies!" will the Manager exclaim, "Give me a farce like 'Dr. Bill,' my boy!" And once more will the poet put his pride and his tragedy in one pocket, and all the money which the Comic Muse will give him in the other. I back the argumentum ad pocketum ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 98, April 5, 1890 • Various
... deal of nonsense written and uttered about poetry. In an age when verses are more noisily and fluently circulated than ever before, it might seem absurd to plead in the Muse's defence. Yet poetry and the things poets love are pitifully weak to-day. In essence, poetry is the love of life—not mere brutish tenacity of sensation, but a passion for all the honesties that make life free and generous and clean. For two thousand years poets have mocked and taunted ...
— Plum Pudding - Of Divers Ingredients, Discreetly Blended & Seasoned • Christopher Morley
... having a good time, and where once they celebrated the birthday of one of them with a gaiety which would have penetrated, if anything could, the shining chill of the hostelry. In the evening we heard them in the billiard-room below lifting their voices in the lays of our college muse, and waking to ecstasy the living piano in the strains of our national ragtime. They were never intrusively cheerful; one might remain, in spite of them, as dispirited as the place would have one; but as far as the genius loci would let me, I liked ...
— Familiar Spanish Travels • W. D. Howells
... to Germany in the spring of 1890 to engage singers and select a repertory he carried with him a definite policy, formulated by the directors, which was the fruit of a sentimental passion for the amiable Italian muse and a spirit of thrift. Italian opera under their own management seeming still impracticable because of its expensiveness, the directors conceived what they thought would prove to be a happy compromise; they would continue to give ...
— Chapters of Opera • Henry Edward Krehbiel
... sight. "Shall we ever get through saying 'good-bye'? When will these departures cease?" thought I, as I turned from the gate. But I was given no time to muse, for a most amazing clamor arose from a gateway a little higher up the road, and glancing in that direction, I saw old father Poupard leading his horse and cart into the open. He was followed by his wife and daughter-in-law, two brawny peasant women, who were loudly lamenting ...
— My Home In The Field of Honor • Frances Wilson Huard
... you in that question! You cannot possibly sit with folded hands. Come, if you like, let us draw, before it has grown completely dark. Perhaps the other muse,—the muse of drawing ... what's her name? I've forgotten ... will be more gracious to me. Where is your album? Do you remember?—my landscape there is ...
— A Nobleman's Nest • Ivan Turgenieff
... meruaile Helen at my course, Which holds not colour with the time, nor does The ministration, and required office On my particular. Prepar'd I was not For such a businesse, therefore am I found So much vnsetled: This driues me to intreate you, That presently you take your way for home, And rather muse then aske why I intreate you, For my respects are better then they seeme, And my appointments haue in them a neede Greater then shewes it selfe at the first view, To you that know them not. This to my mother, 'Twill be two daies ere ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare
... time, not on the French side now, but across the Spluegen, through Switzerland, his genius touched him again, as had happened in those high regions three years before on the road to Italy. But this time it was not in the guise of the Latin Muse, who then drew from him such artful and pathetic poetical meditations about his past life and pious vows for the future;—it was something much more subtle and grand: the Praise ...
— Erasmus and the Age of Reformation • Johan Huizinga
... very thirsty; nor have I ever met any one who found real pleasure in a statue when he had toothache. There is something to be said for the theory of the sceptical bishop in Browning's poem, that the soul is only free to muse of lofty things ...
— Gossamer - 1915 • George A. Birmingham
... hunting-ground. A Dunbar had Hawthornden's autograph, and a set of tall classic folios bore the handwriting of George Buchanan. Lord Kames, Hume, and a score of others had dedicated works to lairds of Etterick, and the Haystouns themselves had deigned at times to court the Muse. Lewis's own special books-college prizes, a few modern authors, some well-thumbed poets, and a row in half a dozen languages on some matters of diplomatic interest-were crowded into a little oak bookcase which had once graced his college rooms. Thither Wratislaw ultimately turned, dipping, ...
— The Half-Hearted • John Buchan
... sage of huge renown, To Twick'nam bow'rs retir'd, enjoys his wealth, His malice and his muse: in grottoes cool, And cover'd arbours, ...
— Calamities and Quarrels of Authors • Isaac D'Israeli
... had it not. And, in such things as he doth openly, he may bestow somewhat more liberally upon himself in his house after some manner of the world, lest he should give other folk occasion to marvel and muse and talk of his manner and misreport him for a hypocrite. And therein, between God and him, he may truly protest and testify, as did the good queen Hester, that he doth it not for any desire thereof in the satisfying of his own pleasure, but would with as good will ...
— Dialogue of Comfort Against Tribulation - With Modifications To Obsolete Language By Monica Stevens • Thomas More
... she muse, gazing questioningly at the whiteness of the altar flowers and those steady tongues of flame, hearing the silence, as of reverent waiting, which dwelt in the place. But, on the other hand, to give, in this her hour of weakness, that which she had ...
— The History of Sir Richard Calmady - A Romance • Lucas Malet
... of the many volumes of verse upon our table is the collection of poems by Mrs. S. M. B. Piatt.[28] Mrs. Piatt's muse is often thoughtful, but in all that she has given us, of which much is attractive in form and suggestive in substance, these lines that follow are the most valuable. They refer to the altar which Paul found at ...
— The Galaxy, Volume 23, No. 2, February, 1877 • Various
... us to the past. Memory then opens for us a volume that no eye but God's and ours can read;—memories of neglect, of sin, of deep secrets that our hearts have hidden in their innermost folds. Such experiences sometimes there are when we muse upon the external universe; when we reflect upon the vastness of creation, the littleness of human effort, the transciency of human relations; when our souls are drawn away from all ordinary communions, and we feel that we are drifting before an almighty will, bound to ...
— The Crown of Thorns - A Token for the Sorrowing • E. H. Chapin
... sea, from camp, from court, And by a tempest blown into a port, I raise my thoughts to muse of higher things, And echo arms and loves ...
— Memoirs of Lady Fanshawe • Lady Fanshawe
... Fame thy noble bosom fires, Nor vain the hope thy ardent mind inspires; In British breasts whilst Purity remains, Whilst Liberty her blessed abode retains, Still shall the muse of History proclaim To ...
— Our Village • Mary Russell Mitford
... Drawers gyrate as before. It was for "The Cabarus" then, and her Muscadins and Money-changers, that we fought? It was for Balls in flesh-coloured drawers that we took Feudalism by the beard, and did, and dared, shedding our blood like water? Expressive Silence, muse thou their praise!— ...
— The French Revolution • Thomas Carlyle
... old days,—the halcyon days of youth,—after the sap was gathered, and the fuel piled high beside the arch, then it was that we sat down by the blazing fire and watched it burn; heaped on the logs, filled up the kettle, and again sat down to muse, or talk, or read. If the wind whistled afar, the boiling-place was in a sheltered nook; if the rain poured down, or the snow-flakes fell without, we were protected by the sugar-house or shed; if the day was cold the fire was warm; and the heart of ...
— The New England Magazine Volume 1, No. 3, March, 1886 - Bay State Monthly Volume 4, No. 3, March, 1886 • Various
... passionate, are more tender than others; and often, when I walk at this time in Oxford Street by dreamy lamplight, and hear those airs played on a barrel-organ which years ago solaced me and my dear companion (as I must always call her), I shed tears, and muse with myself at the mysterious dispensation which so suddenly and so critically separated us for ever. How it happened the reader will understand from what remains of this ...
— Confessions of an English Opium-Eater • Thomas De Quincey
... day is reckoned on the earth, I've wandered in these dim and awful aisles, Shut from the blue and breezy dome of heaven, ... And now I'll sit me down upon yon broken rock, To muse upon the strange and solemn things Of this mysterious realm. All day my steps Have been amid the beautiful, the wild, The gloomy, the terrific; crystal founts Almost invisible in their serene And pure transparency, high pillared domes With stars and flowers, all fretted like the halls Of ...
— Choice Specimens of American Literature, And Literary Reader - Being Selections from the Chief American Writers • Benj. N. Martin
... carried out. More than this, I can almost promise you that I shall succeed." And then he went to fetch a bottle, in which he had some choice old rye. While he was away, M. Riel, who was alone—for all were absent in the fields, and his comrade had been abroad since the grey dawn—began to muse in ...
— The Story of Louis Riel: The Rebel Chief • Joseph Edmund Collins
... like to change with Clancy — go a-droving? tell us true, For we rather think that Clancy would be glad to change with you, And be something in the city; but 'twould give your muse a shock To be losing time and money through the foot-rot in the flock, And you wouldn't mind the beauties underneath the starry dome If you had a wife and children and a ...
— In the Days When the World Was Wide and Other Verses • Henry Lawson
... now to strike the lyre, That mute and torn so long has lain; And yet I cannot wake the strain, Nor will the Muse one note inspire! Coldly it shakes in accents dire, As if my soul itself to wring, And when its sound seems but to fling A jest at its own low lament; So in sad isolation pent, My soul can neither ...
— Lineage, Life, and Labors of Jose Rizal, Philippine Patriot • Austin Craig
... Change and Time, you come Not knocking at my door, knowing me gone; Here have I dwelt within my heart alone, Watching and waiting, while my muse was dumb ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... achievements, was the real defendant. He was married to a woman with a great literary reputation as a poet and writer who was idolized by the populace for her passionate advocacy of Ireland's claim to self-government; "Speranza" was regarded by the Irish people as a sort of Irish Muse. ...
— Oscar Wilde, Volume 1 (of 2) - His Life and Confessions • Frank Harris |
