"Gorgon" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... each other.—If marble could see and feel, the separation might be prudent,—if it could only see, it would certainly lose its coldness, and learn to feel; and, in such a case, the charms of these two figures would produce an effect quite opposite to that of the Gorgon's head, which turned flesh into stone. Did I pretend to describe to you the Venus, it would only set your imagination at work to form ideas of her figure; and your ideas would no more resemble that figure, than the Portuguese face of Miss ——, who has enchanted our knights, ...
— Letters of the Right Honourable Lady M—y W—y M—e • Lady Mary Wortley Montague
... as brave a youth as I believe you to be," replied King Polydectes, with the utmost graciousness of manner. "The bridal gift which I have set my heart on presenting to the beautiful Hippodamia is the head of the Gorgon Medusa with the snaky locks; and I depend on you, my dear Perseus, to bring it to me. So, as I am anxious to settle affairs with the princess, the sooner you go in quest of the Gorgon, the better I ...
— Myths That Every Child Should Know - A Selection Of The Classic Myths Of All Times For Young People • Various
... at Almeida, I learned that the "Medea" sloop-of-war was lying off Oporto, and expected to sail for England in a few days. The opportunity was not to be neglected. The official despatches, I was aware, would be sent through Lisbon, where the "Gorgon" frigate was in waiting to convey them; but should I be fortunate enough to reach Oporto in time, I had little doubt of arriving in England with the first intelligence of the fall of Ciudad Rodrigo. Reducing ...
— Charles O'Malley, The Irish Dragoon, Volume 2 (of 2) • Charles Lever
... smiled again, and said: "Not yet; you are too young, and too unskilled; for this is Medusa the Gorgon, the mother ...
— Heroes Every Child Should Know • Hamilton Wright Mabie
... race, in which the hero stands out as the deliverer, the destroyer of evil? Theseus ridding the land of robbers, and delivering it from the yearly tribute of boys and maidens to be devoured by the Minotaur; Perseus slaying the Gorgon, and rescuing Andromeda from the sea-beast; Heracles with his twelve famous labours against giants and monsters; ...
— Health and Education • Charles Kingsley
... instinct; but the will to overcome conquers even this last of fears and steels a man's nerves to face anything. The heroes of antiquity set their lances against dragons and creatures that belched forth flame and smoke—brave Perseus slew the Gorgon, and Jason the brass-hooved bulls, and St. George and many another slew his "worm." But the dragons are all dead or driven to the depths of the sea, whence they rise up to chill men's blood; and those who conquer now fight ...
— Wunpost • Dane Coolidge
... very dense. Suddenly a trumpet blared. At the gate was Pontius Pilate. On his head was a high and dazzling helmet. His tunic was short, open at the neck. His legs were bare. He was shod with shoes that left the toes exposed. From his cuirass a gorgon's head had, in deference to local prejudice, been effaced; in its stead were scrolls and thunderbolts. From the belt rows of straps, embroidered and fringed, fell nearly to the knee. He held his head in the air. His features were excellent, and his beard ...
— Mary Magdalen • Edgar Saltus
... had suddenly become agitated, and Buck was left wondering the more. She was stirred with strange feelings which embodied a dozen different emotions, and it was the sight of that great black crown, like the head of a Gorgon, which had inspired them. Its fascination was one of cruel attraction. Its familiarity suggested association with some part of her life. It seemed as if she belonged to it, or that it belonged to her—that in some curious way it was actually a part of her life. And all the time her detestation, ...
— The Golden Woman - A Story of the Montana Hills • Ridgwell Cullum
... the isle of Seriphos, where a fisherman named Dictys took care of them. A cruel tyrant named Polydectes wanted Danae to be his wife, and, as she would not consent, he shut her up in prison, saying that she should never come out till her son Perseus had brought him the head of the Gorgon Medusa, thinking he must be lost by the way. For the Gorgons were three terrible sisters, who lived in the far west beyond the setting sun. Two of them were immortal, and had dragon's wings and brazen claws and serpent hair, but their sister Medusa was mortal, and so beautiful in ...
— Aunt Charlotte's Stories of Greek History • Charlotte M. Yonge
... as one who had looked upon Gorgon, her beautiful eyes yet widely opened and her face pale as death; for he had not even told her ...
— Brood of the Witch-Queen • Sax Rohmer
... Stevenson at least found a final philosophy of some sort to live by, while Mr. Moore is always walking the world looking for a new one. Stevenson had found that the secret of life lies in laughter and humility. Self is the gorgon. Vanity sees it in the mirror of other men and lives. Pride studies it for itself ...
— Heretics • Gilbert K. Chesterton
... the Gorgon's glance for aye The lifeless immortality Reveals in sculptured calmness all Its latest life ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... In the cheap sunshine or by shady springs, With roots and pot-herbs; where thy right hand, Tearing those humane passions from the mind, Upon whose stocks fair blooming virtues flourish, Degradeth nature, and benumbeth sense, And, Gorgon-like, turns active men to stone. We not require the dull society Of your necessitated temperance, Or that unnatural stupidity That knows nor joy nor sorrow; nor your forc'd Falsely exalted passive fortitude Above the active. This ...
— Walden, and On The Duty Of Civil Disobedience • Henry David Thoreau
... his wife engaged in even innocent conversation with her lover, his face still calm, should produce the effect mythologically attributed to the celebrated Gorgon. ...
— The Physiology of Marriage, Part II. • Honore de Balzac
... the Roman pontiff and all his adherents were odious to the people, produced a remarkable caricature, and ingenious invention—a gorgon's head! A church bell forms the helmet; the ornaments, instead of the feathers, are a wolf's head in a mitre devouring a lamb, an ass's head with spectacles reading, a goose holding a rosary: the face is made out with a fish for the nose, ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... of Cyaxares), the king of Persia. And there is a golden vase at each end of the roof, and a golden Victory in the middle of the gable. And underneath the Victory is a golden shield hung up as a votive offering, with the Gorgon Medusa worked on it. The inscription on the shield states who hung it up, and the reason why they did so. For this is what it says: "This temple's golden shield is a votive offering from the Lacedaemonians at ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Vol VIII - Italy and Greece, Part Two • Various
... a push and swagger"; {kai ama edun te kai gorgon idein}, "a la fois doux et terrible a voir," see Victor Cherbuliez, "Un Cheval de Phidias," ...
— On Horsemanship • Xenophon
... his heel, and strode away without another word. Long after he was out of sight the chaplain stood fixed in the same attitude of panic-stricken, helpless despondency. By my faith! even in these degenerate days, we have petrifying influences left that may match the head of the Gorgon. ...
— Sword and Gown - A Novel • George A. Lawrence
... 30th HMS "Gorgon" arrived, towing the brig which brought out Mrs Livingstone and some ladies about to join the University mission, as well as the sections of a new iron steamer intended for the navigation of Lake Nyassa. The name of the "Lady Nyassa" was given ...
— Great African Travellers - From Mungo Park to Livingstone and Stanley • W.H.G. Kingston
... very skilful Hand, to have depicted to the Life the Faces of those Three Persons, at Don Mario's Appearance. He that has seen some admirable Piece of Transmutation by a Gorgon's Head, may form to himself the most probable Idea of the Prototype. The Old Gentleman was himself in a sort of a Wood, to find his Daughter with a Young Fellow and a Priest, but as yet he did not know the Worst, till Hippolito and Leonora came, and ...
— Incognita - or, Love & Duty Reconcil'd. A Novel • William Congreve
... you," said Eustace Bright, "and be all as still as so many mice. At the slightest interruption, whether from great, naughty Primrose, little Dandelion, or any other, I shall bite the story short off between my teeth, and swallow the untold part. But, in the first place, do any of you know what a Gorgon is?" ...
— The Gorgon's Head - (From: "A Wonder-Book For Girls and Boys") • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... experience was a trial of his faith, and that if he stood out a little longer, his doubt would pass away. He lifted his head and glanced at the serpent still coiled upon the hearth. Its eyes were fixed upon him in a gorgon-like stare, and his doubts became positive certainties, as disgust became loathing. The battle had ended. The mystic had been defeated. This sudden collapse had come because the foundations of his faith had ...
— The Redemption of David Corson • Charles Frederic Goss
... "Gorgon—Gorgon of Poitou," he returned with enthusiasm. "They are getting as rare now as this," he declared, nodding to the cobwebbed bottle, as he rose, drew the cork, and filled ...
— A Village of Vagabonds • F. Berkeley Smith
... be nursed by you!" he cried. "I won't have you near me, glaring at me with your Gorgon stare. Send another nurse to me—send the doctor. Get out of my sight, Gorgon! Don't look at ...
— A Sheaf of Corn • Mary E. Mann
... against the devil; if you find a dog and a lion on the same stone, it will be a preservative against dropsy or pestilence. The figure of Orion was believed to give victory in war. If you find a stone, in which is Perseus holding in his right hand a sword, and in his left the Gorgon's head, it is a preservative against lightning and tempest and against the assaults of devils. A stone on which is engraved a long-bearded man sitting on a plough, with a bending in his neck, and four men lying down, and holding ...
— Rambles of an Archaeologist Among Old Books and in Old Places • Frederick William Fairholt
... publication: but I was rather curtly answered with a "Did I suppose these gnats were intended to be shrined in amber? these mere minnows to be treated with the high consideration due only to potted char and white bait? these fleeting thoughts fixed in stone before that Gorgon-head, the public? these ephemeral fancies dropped into the true elixir of immortality, printer's-ink? these——" I stopped him, for this other mighty mouthful of images betrayed the hypocrite—"Yes, I did." An involuntary smile assured me he did too, and the cause proceeded thus: ...
— The Complete Prose Works of Martin Farquhar Tupper • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... bondage. I never in my life said anything merely because I thought it funny; though of course, I have had ordinary human vainglory, and may have thought it funny because I had said it. It is one thing to describe an interview with a gorgon or a griffin, a creature who does not exist. It is another thing to discover that the rhinoceros does exist and then take pleasure in the fact that he looks as if he didn't. One searches for truth, but it may be that one pursues instinctively ...
— Orthodoxy • G. K. Chesterton
... gentle breath of love, Low murmuring, cool thy bosom's fiery glow. Orestes, fondly lov'd,—canst thou not hear me? Hath the terrific Furies' grisly band Completely dried the life-blood in thy veins? Creeps there, as from the Gorgon's direful head, A petrifying charm through all thy limbs? If hollow voices, from a mother's blood, Call thee to hell, may not a sister's word With benediction pure ascend to heaven, And summon thence some gracious power ...
— Iphigenia in Tauris • Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
... swear I am something revived at this testimony of your obedience; but I cannot admit that traitor,—I fear I cannot fortify myself to support his appearance. He is as terrible to me as a Gorgon: if I see him I swear I shall turn to ...
— The Way of the World • William Congreve
... knew," said Fink, "why they have had the madness to attack the strongest side of our fortress! It can only be that your peaceful visage has had the effect of the Gorgon's head upon them. Henceforth you will be described as a scarecrow in ...
— Debit and Credit - Translated from the German of Gustav Freytag • Gustav Freytag
... affright at the very top of one of the towers, a fantastic dwarf climbing, writhing, crawling on all fours, descending outside above the abyss, leaping from projection to projection, and going to ransack the belly of some sculptured gorgon; it was Quasimodo dislodging the crows. Again, in some obscure corner of the church one came in contact with a sort of living chimera, crouching and scowling; it was Quasimodo engaged in thought. Sometimes one caught sight, ...
— Notre-Dame de Paris - The Hunchback of Notre Dame • Victor Hugo
... forbade me to look. It is true that they were objects not often seen by bachelor man, except in shop windows and on the advertising pages of women's magazines; but silk petticoats and cobwebby lace frills have no Gorgon qualities, and I was not turned to stone by the sight of them. I even found courage to ask of the company at large if they were the sort of thing that young ladies ought to have in their wardrobes. The answer ...
— Set in Silver • Charles Norris Williamson and Alice Muriel Williamson
... engine (fig. 26), and the oscillating engine (fig. 27), besides numerous other forms of engine which are less known or employed, such as the trunk (fig. 22), double cylinder (fig. 23), annular, Gorgon (fig. 24), steeple (fig. 25), and many others. The side lever engine, however, and the oscillating engine, are the only kinds of paddle engines which have been received with ...
— A Catechism of the Steam Engine • John Bourne
... gorgon shield,—or, power to fright Man's folly, dreadful shone, And many a blockhead (easy change!) ...
— The Poetical Works of Edward Young, Volume 2 • Edward Young
... placidly before him, just as the poor youth did at the British Museum, who threw a stone at the Portland vase, to prove that he also was a man, and had volition, and was not to be looked into stone by the Gorgon of society. Fortunately, however, Sir John Steventon ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 58, Number 360, October 1845 • Various
... physiognomy of Hellenism. Yet Cyprian artists probably executed the work. There are little departures from Greek models, which indicate the "barbarian" workman, as the introduction of trees in the backgrounds, the shape of the furniture, the recurved wings of the Gorgon, and the idea of hunting the wild bull. But the figures, the proportions, the draperies, the attitudes, the chariot, the horse, are almost pure Greek. There is a grace and ease in the modelling, ...
— History of Phoenicia • George Rawlinson
... suppliant's head, Dread goddess, lay thy chastening hand! Not in thy Gorgon terrors clad, 35 Not circled with the vengeful band (As by the impious thou art seen), With thundering voice and threatening mien, With screaming Horror's funeral cry, Despair, and fell ...
— Select Poems of Thomas Gray • Thomas Gray
... events of 1892 and the causes that led up to the act of Alexander Berkman, one beholds Mammon seated upon a throne built of human bodies, without a trace of sympathy on its Gorgon brow for the creatures it controls. These victims, bent and worn, with the reflex of the glow of the steel and iron furnaces in their haggard faces, carry their sacrificial offerings to the ever-insatiable monster, capitalism. In its greed, however, it reaches out for more; it neither sees the gleam ...
— Mother Earth, Vol. 1 No. 3, May 1906 - Monthly Magazine Devoted to Social Science and Literature • Various
... all; and opposite, High on the wall, within a crumbling frame Of tarnish'd gold, scowl'd down a pictured form In the habiliments of bygone days— With ruff, and doublet slash'd, and studded belt— 'Twas the same face—the Gorgon curls the same, The same lynx eye, the same peak-bearded chin, And the same nose, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 349, November, 1844 • Various
... it out in his heart. It was not that she was physically attractive to him. Mrs. Noble was that. It was not that fascination which Bella aroused, the adventuress, the siren, the gorgon. In Constance there was something different. She was a woman of the world, a man's woman. Then, too, she was so brutally frank ...
— Constance Dunlap • Arthur B. Reeve
... by this you may recognize true education from false. False education is a delightful thing, and warms you, and makes you every day think more of yourself. And true education is a deadly cold thing with a Gorgon's head on her shield, and makes you every day ...
— Time and Tide by Weare and Tyne - Twenty-five Letters to a Working Man of Sunderland on the Laws of Work • John Ruskin
... my situation. Yet, unreasonable as it may appear, I confess that my feelings were not altogether so ecstatic as when I first called Mrs. Bullfrog mine. True, she was a sweet woman and an angel of a wife; but what if a Gorgon should return, amid the transports of our connubial bliss, and take the angel's place. I recollected the tale of a fairy, who half the time was a beautiful woman and half the time a hideous monster. Had ...
— Mosses from an Old Manse and Other Stories • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... well I wanted to marry you. But you fly off without a word and bury yourself in this benighted place with a gorgon ...
— Death At The Excelsior • P. G. Wodehouse
... they fail, 'tis want of parts. Bless us! Morgan,[20] art thou there, man? Bless mine eyes! art thou the chairman? Chairman to yon damn'd committee! Yet I look on thee with pity. Dreadful sight! what, learned Morgan Metamorphosed to a Gorgon![21] For thy horrid looks, I own, Half convert me to a stone. Hast thou been so long at school, Now to turn a factious tool? Alma Mater was thy mother, Every young divine thy brother. Thou, a disobedient varlet, Treat thy mother like a harlot! Thou ungrateful to thy teachers, ...
— Poems (Volume II.) • Jonathan Swift
... silver-shafted queen for ever chaste, Wherewith she tamed the brinded lioness And spotted mountain-pard, but set at nought The frivolous bolt of Cupid; gods and men Feared her stern frown, and she was queen o' the woods. What was that snaky-headed Gorgon shield That wise Minerva wore, unconquered virgin, Wherewith she freezed her foes to congealed stone, But rigid looks of chaste austerity, And noble grace that dashed brute violence With sudden adoration and blank awe? So dear to Heaven is saintly ...
— L'Allegro, Il Penseroso, Comus, and Lycidas • John Milton
... to the preaching of the gospel of freedom! but alas! rich friends there were none. Oh, if he could cry to the Church for help in this hour of his need! but it was slowly dawning on him that not from the Church would help come to his cause; for a grievous thing had happened to the Church. The slave gorgon sat staring from the pews, and turning the pulpits to stone, turning also to stone ...
— William Lloyd Garrison - The Abolitionist • Archibald H. Grimke
... at this act of substantial civility from the Gorgon. "Oh, thank you, Mrs. Undercliff," said she. "No, I am not the least afraid. Let them follow me, I am doing nothing that I am ashamed of. Indeed, I am glad I am thought worth the trouble of following. It shows me I am not so thoroughly ...
— Foul Play • Charles Reade
... women strange to look at sleepeth there Before this wanderer, seated on their stools; Not women they, but Gorgons I must call them; Nor yet can I to Gorgon forms compare them; I have seen painted shapes that bear away The feast of Phineus. Wingless, though, are these, And swarth, and every way abominable. They snort with breath that none may dare approach, ...
— Story of Orestes - A Condensation of the Trilogy • Richard G. Moulton
... sorcerer rise Swift to whose wand a winged volume flies; All sudden, gorgon's hiss and dragon's glare, And ten horned fiends and giants rush to war. Hell rises, heaven descends, and dance on earth, Gods, imps and monsters, music, rage and mirth, A fire, a jig, a battle, and a ball, Till one wide conflagration swallows all; Thence a new world to nature's laws ...
— A History of Pantomime • R. J. Broadbent
... slender, ultra-feminine body of Margaret Severence's, as she descended the stairs, putting fresh gloves upon her beautiful, idle hands, he would have borrowed wings of the wind and would have fled as from a gorgon. ...
— The Fashionable Adventures of Joshua Craig • David Graham Phillips
... the act of singing "Pray Goody," when my eyes suddenly met those of my papa, who was staring like the head of Gorgon; and though his gaze did not turn me to stone, it turned me sick. I was stupified, forgot my part, ran off, and left the manager and the music to make the best of it. My father, who could hardly believe his eyes, was ...
— Frank Mildmay • Captain Frederick Marryat
... leaders, first unrolled Their banners? In the Loggia? where is set Cellini's godlike Perseus, bronze or gold, (How name the metal, when the statue flings Its soul so in your eyes?) with brow and sword Superbly calm, as all opposing things, Slain with the Gorgon, were no more abhorred Since ended? No, the people sought no wings From Perseus in the Loggia, nor implored An inspiration in the place beside From that dim bust of Brutus, jagged and grand, Where Buonarroti passionately ...
— The Poetical Works of Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Volume IV • Elizabeth Barrett Browning
... Rose Hill and confirmed the supposition that the Nepean was an affluent of the Hawkesbury, a matter over which there had been some doubt since its first discovery by Tench. Tench returned to England in H.M.S. Gorgon, in December, 1791. ...
— The Explorers of Australia and their Life-work • Ernest Favenc
... on a pedestal, leans upon her spear. The Gorgon's skin covers her breast, and a linen peplum descends in regular folds even to her toe-nails. Her grey eyes, which shine beneath her vizor, gaze intently into ...
— The Temptation of St. Antony - or A Revelation of the Soul • Gustave Flaubert
... seems, fell at length upon a cobbler, Giles Gorgon by name, who produced several new grins of his own invention, having been used to cut faces for many years together over his last. At the very first grin he cast every human feature out of his countenance; at the second he became the face of spout; ...
— Essays and Tales • Joseph Addison
... somebody called them. And they were built for kings and persons of spacious lives, but they have been sublet to smaller folk. Or does no one live inside? You never see a curtain stir. There is never a face at a window. Everything is stone and dead. One might think that a Gorgon had gone riding on a 'bus top, and had thrown his cold eye upon the house fronts." Flint paused. "How can one live obscurely, as these folk do, in the twilight, in so beautiful a shell? Even a crustacean sometimes shows his nose at his door. And ...
— Chimney-Pot Papers • Charles S. Brooks
... Cerberus at Orpheus' song Ceased from his hissing, and Alcides saw The Hydra ere he slew. This monster born Brought horror with her birth upon her sire Phorcus, in second order God of Waves, And upon Ceto and the Gorgon brood, (20) Her sisters. She could threat the sea and sky With deadly calm unknown, and from the world Bid cease the soil. Borne down by instant weight Fowls fell from air, and beasts were fixed in stone. Whole Ethiop tribes who ...
— Pharsalia; Dramatic Episodes of the Civil Wars • Lucan
... walk the horses! I scorn't, faith: [89] I have other matters in hand: let the horses walk themselves, an they will.— [Reads.] A per se, a; t, h, e, the; o per se, o; Demy orgon gorgon.— Keep further from me, O thou illiterate ...
— Dr. Faustus • Christopher Marlowe
... to Boreas: beware Lest the strong spirit of the stormy blast Snatch thee aloft, and sweep thee to the void, On wings of raving wintry hurricane! Wend by the noisy tumult of the wave, Until thou reach the Gorgon-haunted plains Beside Cisthene. In that solitude Dwell Phorcys' daughters, beldames worn with time, Three, each swan-shapen, single-toothed, and all Peering thro' shared endowment of one eye; Never on them doth the sun shed his rays, Never falls radiance of the midnight moon. But, ...
— Suppliant Maidens and Other Plays • AEschylus
... exercised what now seems such an amazing fascination over the least revolutionary of European nations. Unfitted for scientific work and full of ardour, Mr. Carlyle found his mission in rushing with all his might to the annihilation of this terrible poet, who, like some gorgon, hydra, or chimera dire planted at the gate, carried off a yearly tale of youths and virgins from the city. In literature, only a revolutionist can thoroughly overpower a revolutionist. Mr. Carlyle had ...
— Critical Miscellanies, Vol. I - Essay 2: Carlyle • John Morley
... you into stone!" he exclaimed. "She is a regular Gorgon, with those heavy eyes of hers. I never saw such eyes. I believe she would petrify me if I had to bear them. Don't you give Medusa one of those sweet almonds, Daisy—not one, ...
— Daisy • Elizabeth Wetherell
... Hermes was, storm-footed Son of Zeus, Slaying huge Argus nigh to Inachus' streams, Argus, whose sentinel eyes in turn took sleep. And there was Phaethon from the Sun-car hurled Into Eridanus. Earth verily seemed Ablaze, and black smoke hovered on the air. There Perseus slew Medusa gorgon-eyed By the stars' baths and utmost bounds of earth And fountains of deep-flowing Ocean, where Night in the far west meets the setting sun. There was the Titan Iapetus' great son Hung from the beetling crag of Caucasus In bonds of adamant, ...
— The Fall of Troy • Smyrnaeus Quintus
... it!" said the youth, brushing himself, and assuming all the dignity of which he was master. "Wonder who that is? Housekeeper, perhaps? Quite the Gorgon, whoever it is. Wish I ...
— Margaret Montfort • Laura E. Richards
... head of the house of Graham & Company, pork packers, in Chicago, familiarly known on 'Change as Old Gorgon Graham, to his son, Pierrepont, ...
— Old Gorgon Graham - More Letters from a Self-Made Merchant to His Son • George Horace Lorimer
... every vein is gushing, Vixen vengeance lulls my heart; See, the Gorgon gang is rushing! Never, ...
— Verses and Translations • C. S. C.
... muttered, looking back at the individual in black. "What a gorgon!" he continued, as his eyes travelled to the man in motley. "Gog and Magog, by Heavens!" he commented, as he surveyed ...
— The Duke's Motto - A Melodrama • Justin Huntly McCarthy
... 1349, temporary quietus having come, Kurfurst Ludwig, weary of the matter, gave it over to his Brother: "Have not I an opulent Maultasche, Gorgon-Wife, susceptible to kindness, in the Tyrol; have not I in the Reich elsewhere resources, appliances?" thought Kurfurst Ludwig. And gave the thing over to his next Brother. Brother whose name also is LUDWIG (as their Father's also had been, ...
— History Of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol, II. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—Of Brandenburg And The Hohenzollerns—928-1417 • Thomas Carlyle
... the thick smoke, I saw or seemed to see the interminable column roll steadily downward. I fancied that I beheld great gaps cut in their ranks though closing solidly up, like the imperishable Gorgon. I may have heard some of this next day, and so confounded the testimonies of eye and ear. But I knew that there was a charge, and that the drivers were ordered to stand by their saddles, to run off the guns at any moment. The descent and bottom below me, were now all ablaze, ...
— Campaigns of a Non-Combatant, - and His Romaunt Abroad During the War • George Alfred Townsend
... the depth of meaning couched under the Athenaic symbols: but I may note rapidly, that her aegis, the mantle with the serpent fringes, in which she often, in the best statues, is represented as folding up her left hand for better guard, and the Gorgon on her shield, are both representative mainly of the chilling horror and sadness (turning men to stone, as it were,) of the outmost and superficial spheres of knowledge—that knowledge which separates, in bitterness, hardness, and sorrow, the heart of the full-grown ...
— The Crown of Wild Olive • John Ruskin
... is far more compact and powerful than in Russia, or even in Germany. Even where it does not employ the arm of the law, society knows how to use that quieter, but more crushing pressure, that calm, Gorgon-like look which only the bravest and stoutest hearts know ...
— Chips From A German Workshop, Vol. V. • F. Max Mueller
... railings opposite Town Hall.) Hullo, Gaddy! 'Been trotting out the Gorgonzola! We all thought it was the Gorgon you're mashing. ...
— Soldiers Three • Rudyard Kipling
... Troy, and told [Strophe 2. Here in the haven, How, orb on orb, to strike with cold The Trojan, o'er that targe of gold, Dread shapes were graven. All round the level rim thereof Perseus, on winged feet, above The long seas hied him; The Gorgon's wild and bleeding hair He lifted; and a herald fair, He of the wilds, whom Maia bare, God's Hermes, flew ...
— The Electra of Euripides • Euripides
... opposes the free and elegant span of its arches to the dead masonry of the palace; a figure supremely shapely and graceful; gentle, almost, in spite of his holding out with his light nervous arm the snaky head of the slaughtered Gorgon. His name is Perseus, and you may read his story, not in the Greek mythology, but in the memoirs of Benvenuto Cellini. Glancing from one of these fine fellows to the other, I probably uttered some irrepressible commonplace of praise, for, as if provoked by my voice, a man rose ...
— The Madonna of the Future • Henry James
... to explain to the reader that John was no other than John Perkins, Esquire, of the Middle Temple, barrister-at-law, and that Miss Lucy was the daughter of the late Captain Gorgon, and Marianne Biggs, his wife. The Captain being of noble connections, younger son of a baronet, cousin to Lord X——, and related to the Y—— family, had angered all his relatives by marrying a very silly pretty ...
— The Bedford-Row Conspiracy • William Makepeace Thackeray
... most favored spot on the great round earth to-day. I defy you to find another portion of the globe of equal area and population where the wealth is so well distributed, where so few people go hungry to bed without prospect of breakfast. But the grisly gorgon of Greed and the gaunt specter of Need are coming West and South in the wake of the Star of Empire. Already Texas has begun to breed millionaires and mendicants, sovereigns and slaves. Already we have an aristocracy ...
— Volume 12 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... a stone terrace before the principal door. A stony business altogether, with heavy stone balustrades, and stone urns, and stone flowers, and stone faces of men, and stone heads of lions, in all directions. As if the Gorgon's head had surveyed it when it ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern — Volume 11 • Various
... at that moment she could have looked at a gorgon, say, or a cockatrice, or any other trifle of that nature with infinitely greater composure. The pause that followed Margaret accordingly devoted to a scrutiny of his shoes and sincere regret that their owner was not a mercenary ...
— The Eagle's Shadow • James Branch Cabell
... said, deigning to translate; and finding her own reply. "Ah, yes, the Medusa!" then, as more than one exclaimed in indignant dismay, she said, "No, not the Gorgon, but the beautiful winged head, with only two serpents on the brow and one coiled round the neck, and the ...
— The Three Brides • Charlotte M. Yonge
... present rising strongly into consciousness, a danger inherent in this too-long contemplation of Hades; it is the danger of the Gorgon, the monster whose view turns the spectator into stone, taking away all sensation, emotion, life. The Greek sooner or later must quit Hades, and flee from its shapes; the supersensible world he must transfuse into the sensible, else the former will rush over into the fantastic, the ...
— Homer's Odyssey - A Commentary • Denton J. Snider
... so well. Up a stark cliff we went, then crossed the web Just as the red moon bloomed upon the hills And silvered all the Panticapean vale. The funnel of the web was in the mouth Of a vast tomb, whose outside, hewn on rock, Outlined a Gorgon's face with jaws agape— Some stern Medusa, Stheno, or Euryale, Changed to the stone that in the elder days She changed the sons of men who looked on her. We passed the funnel, entering the tomb. About my arms the spider threw his cords, And shackled them. ...
— Stories in Verse • Henry Abbey
... represented simply as examples of Old age, Malady, &c., not as the agents by whom these evils are inflicted upon others. Cerberus and Charon occur in their appropriate offices, but the monstrous forms Gorgon, Chimaera, &c., are judiciously suppressed; and the poet is speedily conducted to the banks of that ...
— Memoirs of the Court of Queen Elizabeth • Lucy Aikin
... right as a trivet. As far as she is concerned, we are engaged. Her mother is perfectly unbearable. Never met such a Gorgon . . . I don't really know what a Gorgon is like, but I am quite sure that Lady Bracknell is one. In any case, she is a monster, without being a myth, which is rather unfair . . . I beg your pardon, Algy, I suppose I shouldn't ...
— The Importance of Being Earnest - A Trivial Comedy for Serious People • Oscar Wilde
... meaning couched under the Athenaic symbols: but I may note rapidly, that her aegis, the mantle with the serpent fringes, in which she often, in the best statues, is represented as folding up her left hand, for better guard; and the Gorgon, on her shield, are both representative mainly of the chilling horror and sadness (turning men to stone, as it were), of the outmost and superficial spheres of knowledge—that knowledge which separates, in bitterness, hardness, and sorrow, the heart of the full-grown man ...
— Selections From the Works of John Ruskin • John Ruskin
... Perseus upholding the Gorgon's head before Polydectes's guests and turning them to stone wrought hardly more of a miracle than this calm announcement of Themistocles. Men stared at him vacantly, stunned by the tidings, then Adeimantus's ...
— A Victor of Salamis • William Stearns Davis
... descended through a cleft in the earth, and came to the entrance of the city of King Pluto. The shades which sadly wandered back and forth before the gates of the city took flight as soon as they caught sight of flesh and blood in the form of a living man. Only the Gorgon Medusa and the spirit of Meleager remained. The former Hercules wished to overthrow with his sword, but Mercury touched him on the arm and told him that the souls of the departed were only empty shadow pictures and could not be ...
— Famous Tales of Fact and Fancy - Myths and Legends of the Nations of the World Retold for Boys and Girls • Various
... for such a climax? Many men have said to Fame and Wisdom, 'Let me look upon your face and die'; many have come to view their Gorgon features and cheerfully paid the price, and still more have perished ...
— Said the Observer • Louis J. Stellman
... retribution, That guilt retain remembrance of itself. Guilt is a thing, however bolstered up, That the great scale-adjusting Nemesis, And Furies iron-eyed, will not let sleep. Sail on unscarred—thou canst not sail so far, But that the gorgon lash of vipers fanged Shall scourge this howler home to thee again. Yes, yes, rash man, Jove and myself do know That from this wrong shall rouse an Anteros, Fierce as an Ate, with a hot right hand, That shall afflict thee with the touch of fire, Till, scorpion-like, ...
— The International Monthly Magazine, Volume 5, No. 1, January, 1852 • Various
... which he relates. He is the very man who has heard the tormented spirits crying out for the second death, who has read the dusky characters on the portal within which there is no hope, who has hidden his face from the terrors of the Gorgon, who has fled from the hooks and the seething pitch of Barbariccia and Draghignazzo. His own hands have grasped the shaggy sides of Lucifer. His own feet have climbed the mountain of expiation. His own brow has been marked by the purifying angel. The ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume XIII • John Lord
... were in times gone by, and I had gradually learned the blessed lesson which is taught by familiarity with sorrow, that the greater part of what is dreadful in it lies in the imagination. The true Gorgon head is seldom seen in reality. That it exists I do not doubt, but it is not so commonly visible as we think. Again, as we get older we find that all life is given us on conditions of uncertainty, and yet we walk courageously on. The labourer marries and has children, when there is nothing ...
— Mark Rutherford's Deliverance • Mark Rutherford
... tapestry. The Ricahecrians and their formidable chief maintained a stony gloom. Whatever interest they felt in the fate of their captive chief was carefully concealed. The sun, now hanging, broad and red, low in the heavens might have been the Gorgon's head and the ...
— Prisoners of Hope - A Tale of Colonial Virginia • Mary Johnston
... life-size. But far beyond all else in artistic importance are the metopes from Selinuntium, which, though much damaged, show marks of high excellence. They are of clearly different dates, though all very archaic. The oldest represent Perseus cutting off the Gorgon's head, and Hercules killing two thieves. Perseus has the calm, sleepy look of a Hindoo god,—while Gorgon's head, with goggle eyes and protruding tongue, resembles a Mexican idol. Hercules and the thieves have more of an Egyptian character. The material of these bas-reliefs ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 6, No. 34, August, 1860 • Various
... affright, affrightment[obs3]; boof alarm[obs3][U.S.], dread, awe, terror, horror, dismay, consternation, panic, scare, stampede [of horses]. intimidation, terrorism, reign of terror. [Object of fear] bug bear, bugaboo; scarecrow; hobgoblin &c. (demon) 980; nightmare, Gorgon, mormo[obs3], ogre, Hurlothrumbo[obs3], raw head and bloody bones, fee-faw-fum, bete noire[Fr], enfant terrible[Fr]. alarmist &c. (coward) 862. V. fear, stand in awe of; be afraid &c. adj.; have qualms &c. n.; apprehend, sit upon thorns, eye askance; distrust ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... perhaps to distant lands; and I have thought that your life and character are a masterpiece, and it is being copied, and long after you are gone it will bloom or blast in the homes of those who knew you, and be a Gorgon or a Madonna. Look out what you say. Look out what you do. Eternity will hear the echo. The best sermon ever preached is a holy life. The best music ever chanted ...
— New Tabernacle Sermons • Thomas De Witt Talmage
... to madden him with the terror of his piping in desolate places; at another it was the sun-god Apollo, who threatened him with fiery arrows in the parching heat of noon; or it was Pallas Athene, who appeared to him in visions, and shook in his face the Gorgon's head, which turns to stone all living creatures who look on it. But the holy Bishop made the sign of the cross of the Lord, and the right arm of their power was broken, and their ...
— A Child's Book of Saints • William Canton
... Cosimo chose the subject of Perseus because it symbolised his own victory over the Gorgon of tyrannicide and Republican partisanship. Donatello's Judith, symbolising justifiable regicide, and Michel Angelo's David, symbolising the might of innocent right against an overbearing usurper, already decorated the Florentine ...
— The Autobiography of Benvenuto Cellini • Benvenuto Cellini
... gushing, Vixen vengeance lulls my heart: See, the Gorgon gang is rushing! Never, never ...
— Rejected Addresses: or, The New Theatrum Poetarum • James and Horace Smith
... came the sallow Frenchwoman, with the face of a Gorgon and the figure of a Juno, who posed for the ensemble. She stood against the dark crimson background, outlined pure and white like a marvel of Phidian sculpture upon which the Spirit of Life had slightly breathed. So still, so white, so coldly, purely ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 22. July, 1878. • Various
... unknown to them [the aborigines of Port Jackson] for any animal, until we introduced it. When I showed Colbee [an aboriginal] the cows brought out in the Gorgon he asked ...
— A Dictionary of Austral English • Edward Morris
... make him presents freely. He must give up the notion of his father's legacy; but it was not likely he would ever want that trifle; and even if he did—why, it was a compensation to think that in being for ever divided from his family he was divided from Jacob, more terrible than Gorgon or Demogorgon to David's timid green eyes. Thank heaven, he should never see ...
— Brother Jacob • George Eliot
... help seeing them, they are as clear as daylight," returned Emily, warmly. "What do you think he asked me in his last letter—to tell him what sort of a gorgon the new governess was, so as I wrote to-day, I said she was beyond all description, and not to be compared with Miss Manning, so if he does not imagine something awful its very strange, (Isabel ...
— Isabel Leicester - A Romance • Clotilda Jennings
... up the wall and took from her hair the flower as she wept, in exchange for another which—which the Squire had sent her. And she whispered a word of sorrow, and he another of comfort, and came away. And the Gorgons suspected nothing; except perhaps the littlest Gorgon, and she looked ...
— Martin Pippin in the Apple Orchard • Eleanor Farjeon
... that virtue fill'd the space between; Proved, by the ends of being, to have been. 290 When Hopkins dies, a thousand lights attend The wretch who, living, saved a candle's end: Shouldering God's altar a vile image stands, Belies his features, nay, extends his hands; That live-long wig which Gorgon's self might own, Eternal buckle takes in Parian stone.[40] Behold what blessings wealth to life can lend! And see what comfort it ...
— Poetical Works of Pope, Vol. II • Alexander Pope
... who most elaborately describes every city, mountain, field, and river, and cries out with all his might, "May the great averter of evil turn it all on our enemies!" This is colder than Caspian snow, or Celtic ice. The emperor's shield takes up a whole book to describe. The Gorgon's {35} eyes are blue, and black, and white; the serpents twine about his hair, and his belt has all the colours of the rainbow. How many thousand lines does it cost him to describe Vologesus's breeches and his horse's bridle, and how Osroes' hair looked when he swam over the Tigris, what sort ...
— Trips to the Moon • Lucian
... flame. Inferior ministers, for Mars, repair His broken axletrees and blunted war, And send him forth again with furbish'd arms, To wake the lazy war with trumpets' loud alarms. The rest refresh the scaly snakes that fold The shield of Pallas, and renew their gold. Full on the crest the Gorgon's head they place, With eyes that roll in death, ...
— The Aeneid • Virgil
... mighty strength of madness, he shook off, to fall back senseless and exhausted; his strained and bloodshot eyes starting from their sockets, the slaver gathering round his lips, his raven hair standing on end, his delicate and symmetrical features distorted into a hideous and Gorgon aspect. It was, indeed, an appalling and sublime spectacle, full of an awful moral, the meeting of the foes! Here stood Maltravers, strong beyond the common strength of men, in health, power, conscious superiority, premeditated vengeance—wise, ...
— Ernest Maltravers, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... [336]"to honour him with divine titles, and bombast epithets," to smother him with fumes and eulogies, whom they know to be a dizzard, a fool, a covetous wretch, a beast, &c. "because he is rich?" To see sub exuviis leonis onagrum, a filthy loathsome carcass, a Gorgon's head puffed up by parasites, assume this unto himself, glorious titles, in worth an infant, a Cuman ass, a painted sepulchre, an Egyptian temple? To see a withered face, a diseased, deformed, cankered complexion, a rotten carcass, a viperous mind, and Epicurean soul set ...
— The Anatomy of Melancholy • Democritus Junior
... men are in all their generations. They paint him usually projected against strong effects of light, in lurid chiaroscuro;—enlarging the whites of his eyes, and making him frown, grin, and gnash his teeth on all occasions, so as to appear among the other Apostles invariably in the aspect of a Gorgon. ...
— Giotto and his works in Padua • John Ruskin
... you are afraid of Athene and the Gorgon; at least so you say, though you do not mind Zeus's thunderbolt a bit. But why do you let the Muses go scot free? do they toss their plumes and hold ...
— Works, V1 • Lucian of Samosata
... life are grand and haughty, with the cast-bronze countenance of Roman emperors. But the old men bear rigid faces of carved basalt, gazing fixedly before them as though at some time or other in their past lives they had met Medusa: and truly Etna in eruption is a Gorgon, which their ancestors have oftentimes seen shuddering, and fled from terror-frozen. The white-haired old women, plying their spindle or distaff, or meditating in grim solitude, sit with the sinister set features of Fates by their doorways. The ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Complete - Series I, II, and III • John Symonds
... for a moment over his own rough-hewn features; his dark eyes blazed upon her with an instant's startled, piercing scrutiny; he set his hand on the cupboard door. And still Barbara stood paralyzed, rooted to the ground as if the unveiled horror of the Gorgon's stare ...
— The Strand Magazine, Volume V, Issue 29, May 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... corporation with thousands of branch offices throughout the United States had as its purchasing agent for many years an old gorgon. He was "a holy terror" to new salesmen, but became a staunch customer when once his confidence was deservedly gained. And every employee in the office of this tartar loved him for his true kindness ...
— Certain Success • Norval A. Hawkins
... Bull and the Ram is Perseus, having at his right...[11] with the Pleiades moving beneath, and at his left the head of the Ram. His right hand rests on the likeness of Cassiopea, and with his left he holds the Gorgon's head by its top over the Ram, laying it at the ...
— Ten Books on Architecture • Vitruvius
... I wanted to ask you,' Lord Fleetwood observed, bursting with it, 'I was puzzled by a name you write here and there near the end, and permit me to ask, it: Carinthia! It cannot be the country? You write after, the name: "A beautiful Gorgon—a haggard Venus." It seized me. I have had the face before my eyes ever since. You must mean a woman. I can't be deceived in allusions to a woman: they have heart in them. You met her somewhere about Carinthia, ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... did this thing was a gorgon named Madame Victurnien, the guardian and door-keeper of every one's virtue. Madame Victurnien was fifty-six, and re-enforced the mask of ugliness with the mask of age. A quavering voice, a whimsical mind. This old dame had once been young—astonishing fact! In her ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... a gorgon fight! A cruel monster hell-born, Whose hungry maw, ignoring law, Mocks misery's tears to scorn. She may not slay the beast, but aye Her blows will badly scratch it; All praise is due the woman true, Who wields the ...
— The Use and Need of the Life of Carry A. Nation • Carry A. Nation
... again, "we have lives of our own.... There's no use attempting the impossible. You're so unprejudiced about some things, so used, as you say, to looking at the Gorgon, that I don't know why you're afraid to face our case, and see it as it really is—unless you think the ...
— The Age of Innocence • Edith Wharton
... start. She was full six feet high, wore a man's greatcoat over the rest of her dress, had in her hand a goodly sloe-thorn cudgel, and in all points of equipment, except her petticoats, seemed rather masculine than feminine. Her dark elf-locks shot out like the snakes of the gorgon, between an old-fashioned bonnet called a bongrace, heightening the singular effect of her strong and weather-beaten features, which they partly shadowed, while her eye had a wild roll that indicated something like real or ...
— Guy Mannering • Sir Walter Scott
... Florence lived alone as before, in the great dreary house, and the blank walls looked down upon her with a vacant stare, as if they had a Gorgon-like mind to stare her youth and ...
— Ten Girls from Dickens • Kate Dickinson Sweetser
... secondary reason why the spirit of Lew Wee has not long since been disembodied by able hands: His static Gorgon face stays the first murderous impulse; then his genial kitchen aroma overpowers their higher natures and the deed of high justice is weakly postponed. This genial kitchen aroma is warm, and composed cunningly from steaming coffee and frying ham or beef, together with eggs and hot cakes ...
— Ma Pettengill • Harry Leon Wilson
... more specifically mediaeval. He then proceeds to explain the historical, moral, and three allegorical senses of the story of Perseus and the Gorgon—the highest allegory being theological. Further, to defend the allegorical senses of poetry, which conceals a pith of profit under a pleasant rind, Harington explains fully how Demosthenes, Bishop Fisher, ...
— Rhetoric and Poetry in the Renaissance - A Study of Rhetorical Terms in English Renaissance Literary Criticism • Donald Lemen Clark
... to be Queen Mab, papa, but Armine wants to be Perseus with the Gorgon's head, and Jock is the dragon; but the dragon will come before we've ...
— Magnum Bonum • Charlotte M. Yonge
... intelligence, and while all were in suspense from dread of the impending danger, the dependents of the court, hammering on the same anvil day and night (as the saying is), at the prompting of the eunuchs, held up Ursicinus as a Gorgon's head before the suspicious and timid emperor, continually repeating that, because on the death of Silvanus, in a dearth of better men, he had been sent to defend the eastern districts, he had become ambitious of ...
— The Roman History of Ammianus Marcellinus • Ammianus Marcellinus
... turned to stone every beholder, rescues the maiden from chains, and leads her away by the bands of love. Nothing could be more poetical than the life of Perseus. When he went to destroy the dreadful Gorgon, Medusa, Pluto lent him his helmet, which would make him invisible at will; Minerva loaned her buckler, impenetrable, and polished like a mirror; Mercury gave him a dagger of diamonds, and his winged sandals, which would carry ...
— Recreations in Astronomy - With Directions for Practical Experiments and Telescopic Work • Henry Warren
... Santa Claus with a bag full of wonderful gifts on his back and assignments for brilliant careers in his hand. To be sure here and there a gentleman was to be seen wearing a crepe-band on his sleeve for a brother or a brother-in-law who, as officer, had seen that other aspect of the war, the Gorgon's face. ...
— Men in War • Andreas Latzko |
