"Grail" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... I believe, that you have seen this vision, and in this spirit have come to help us. Sir Launfal, in searching for the Holy Grail, found it in ministering to the suffering and diseased at his own door. Ye who are in search of God's best gift can find it to-day in lifting up these ten millions of people at your door, broken by slavery, bound by ignorance, yet groping ...
— Masterpieces of Negro Eloquence - The Best Speeches Delivered by the Negro from the days of - Slavery to the Present Time • Various
... if the idea of generally applicable regions is a mare's nest, as was the search for the Holy Grail, what is the object of the study of geographical distribution? It is nothing less than the history of the evolution of life in space and time in the widest sense. The attempt to account for the present distribution of any group of organisms involves ...
— Darwin and Modern Science • A.C. Seward and Others
... of the Holy Grail and its guardians up to the moment of Parsifal's appearance upon the scene, is—we gather it from Gurnemanz's rehearsal of his memories to the youthful esquires,—as follows: At a time when the pure faith ...
— The Wagnerian Romances • Gertrude Hall
... thought. The modern quest of the Grail is not for the crystal cup that held the holy elements, but for the divine life itself, the principle that inspires men to action. The philosopher of our day is not a hermit, theorizing about vague abstractions, but vitally alive to the problems that confront ...
— An American Suffragette • Isaac N. Stevens
... gentle sound, an awful light! Three angels bear the holy Grail; With folded feet, in stoles of white, On ...
— Two Years Ago, Volume I • Charles Kingsley
... is a necessary result of our finite senses, that the only Reality is the Spiritual, the Here and the Now; that the Riddle of the Universe is not to be solved by the Intellect but by that method which is employed by those who are earnestly following the "Quest of the Grail"—namely, by realising that our True Personality or Transcendental Ego is an emanation from the Absolute; that we are one-with Him, and that it is by following the old Hellenic command "[Greek: Gnothi seauton]" (Know thyself)—namely, by Introspection, that we can hope to attain ...
— Science and the Infinite - or Through a Window in the Blank Wall • Sydney T. Klein
... spectacle, and who felt forever the desire to resolve his experience of life into a literary form. On this matter of the passion for form,—the attempt at perfection, the quest for which was to his mind the real search for the holy grail,—he said the most interesting, the most inspiring things. He mixed with them a thousand illustrations from his own life, from other lives that he had known, from history and fiction, and above all from the annals of the ...
— The Author of Beltraffio • Henry James
... Through Music's witchery o'er Sin and Hell Man is redeemed. The Christ is here! The Soul Now claims its own! Nor hope nor fear Nor prayer nor hunger now, for lo! 'tis here, The expected Kingdom—God's and Man's! 'Tis here! Day-dawn has come! The world-wide quest is o'er! The Grail was never lost! 'Twas folded safe Within the petals of my heart, and thou Enchanter wise, reveal'st ...
— The California Birthday Book • Various
... girl keenly, to know how the picture touched her. Was, then, she thought, this grand, dead Past so shallow to him? These knights, pure, unstained, searching until death for the Holy Grail, could he understand the life-long agony, the triumph of their conflict over Self? These women, content to live in solitude forever because they once had loved, could any man understand that? Or the dead queen, ...
— Margret Howth, A Story of To-day • Rebecca Harding Davis
... now in shining gold: "This is the siege of the noble prince, Sir Galahad." Straightway the young man seated himself there where none other had ever sat without danger to his life; and all who saw it said, one to another: "Surely this is he that shall achieve the Holy Grail." Now the Holy Grail was the blessed dish from which Our Lord had eaten the Last Supper, and it had been brought to the land of Britain by Joseph of Arimathea; but because of men's sinfulness, it had been withdrawn from human sight, only ...
— The Junior Classics, V4 • Willam Patten (Editor)
... than all the pomp and circumstance of commercial expansion and world empire. All about me were nobleness of purpose and heroism of effort, and my days and nights were sunshine and starshine, all fire and dew, with before my eyes, ever burning and blazing, the Holy Grail, Christ's own Grail, the warm human, long-suffering and maltreated, but to be rescued and saved at ...
— Revolution and Other Essays • Jack London
... to her highest ideal, so she set them a task—and, oh, a lot more about what they did; I haven't thought that out—but anyway she married the red duke Wolfang who spurned her task and took her by night with his retainers away from the tower, saying her love was his Holy Grail and to get her was the object of his pilgrimage. ...
— In Our Town • William Allen White
... long, And, binding them all in one blazing sheaf, Had cast them forth; so, young and strong And lightsome as a locust leaf, Sir Launfal flashed forth in his maiden mail To seek in all climes for the Holy Grail.—Lowell. ...
— Higher Lessons in English • Alonzo Reed and Brainerd Kellogg
... view of the criticism already mentioned of the characters and conclusion of this act, I determined to try to make it the very pivot of the whole opera. I wished to do this, if only for the sake of the musical motive appearing in the story of the Holy Grail; but in other respects the plan struck me ...
— My Life, Volume I • Richard Wagner
... the great Holy Grail I caught an eagle when I caught that dove, For now you are the queen of all the dames, Even King Constantine, who seldom marks A lady of the court, comes to your side And flatters you with royal courtesies, Which you receive with far too ...
— Under King Constantine • Katrina Trask
... Table none is so strange as that of Sir Galahad. Its beginning is in the upper chamber at the Last Supper with Jesus and his disciples. Legend says that the cup used by our Savior at the Last Supper was the Holy Grail. Joseph of Arimathea, who bought the cup from Pontius Pilate, used it to catch the blood that flowed from the pierced side of our Lord. The cup, or Holy Grail, was kept in the Convent of the Holy Grail by the descendants of ...
— The Children's Book of Celebrated Pictures • Lorinda Munson Bryant
... me, "she answered, and opened the book before her. "It was the story of the Holy Grail," she added, "and we left off here. Oh, those brave days of King Arthur! It was always ...
— The Deliverance; A Romance of the Virginia Tobacco Fields • Ellen Glasgow
... declaration. Ann looked up and saw his face in the moonlight, white and rather stern. It made her think of the face of some young knight of bygone days taking a sacred vow before he set forth to seek and find the Holy Grail. ...
— The Vision of Desire • Margaret Pedler
... tendency of these writings, in order that he may have a comparative view of the continuity of thought and the value of tradition in the world. Some subjects, like the Arthurian Legends, the Nibelungen Lied, the Holy Grail, Provencal Poetry, the Chansons and Romances, and the Gesta Romanorum, receive a similar treatment. Single poems upon which the authors' title to fame mainly rests, familiar and dear hymns, and occasional and modern verse of value, are also ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 1 • Charles Dudley Warner
... the crown of Kay Khusraw, the sceptre of Anshirwn, The holy grail of high Jamshd, ...
— The Kasidah of Haji Abdu El-Yezdi • Richard F. Burton
... country inn the suit case became a knapsack. Kenny went forth into a world of old houses, apple blossoms and winding roads, likening himself to Peredur who had gone in search of the Holy Grail. The Grail in this case was the holy boon of ...
— Kenny • Leona Dalrymple
... there can be no sublimer vocation for men of action than to extend the boundary of human knowledge in the face of perils and obstacles more formidable and more mysterious than those encountered by the knights of old in the cause of the Lord's sepulchre or the holy grail—they have thus embodied in a form which will ever awaken enthusiasm in imaginative natures, the noble impulses of our latter civilization. To win the favour of that noblest of mistresses, Science; to take authoritative possession, in her name, of the ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... confirmed by the old man's appearance. His fine eyes had a pathetic habit of wandering to the horizon in a questioning fashion that had a queer sort of hopelessness in it, as if his quest were one for the Holy Grail, perhaps; and his expression was mild, vague, and sad. He had a look of race and blood; and yet, at the first glance, one saw that he was lost in dreams, and one guessed that the dreams would never be of great practicability in their application. ...
— The Gentleman From Indiana • Booth Tarkington
... one sick," she thought. "We tell our children the tales of the Red Branch Knights—of King Arthur and the Knights of the Grail—and rejoice afresh over the beauty and wonder of them; we stand by the hour worshiping at the pictures of the saints—simple men and women who just went about doing kindness; and we read the Holy Book—the tales of Christ with his fishermen, wandering about, looking for some good deed to ...
— Seven Miles to Arden • Ruth Sawyer
... left to wither, is not so satisfactory. Of the upper middle class, indeed, at that time, Gissing had very few means of observation. But this defect, common to all his early novels, is more than compensated by the intensely pathetic figure of Gilbert Grail, the tender-souled, book-worshipping factory hand raised for a moment to the prospect of intellectual life and then hurled down by the caprice of circumstance to the unrelenting round of manual toil at the soap and candle factory. Dickens would have ...
— The House of Cobwebs and Other Stories • George Gissing
... Aubrey preserved a true tradition is proved by what we learn of similar practices elsewhere. Thus, in fifteenth-century MSS. of prose romances found in English and also in Welsh, Sir Perceval, in his adventures in quest of the Holy Grail, being at one time ill at ease, congratulates himself that he is not like those men of Wales, where sons pull their fathers out of bed and kill them to save the disgrace of their dying in bed.[104] Keysler cites several instances of this savage custom in Prussia, and ...
— Folklore as an Historical Science • George Laurence Gomme
... had climbed there one day. "I dream a painting!" he said, "The Quest of the Grail. Now I see it running over the four walls of a church, and now I see it all packed into one man who rides. Then again it has seemed to me truer to have it in a man and woman who walk, or perhaps even are ...
— 1492 • Mary Johnston
... self-indulgence, they deny the maxims of the worldly wise. But in accepting Christ's principle and forsaking their palaces that they might be as brothers to beggars, Xavier and Loyola found an exhilaration denied to kings; while each Sir Launfal, in his ease denied the Holy Grail, has in the hour of self-sacrifice discerned the Vision Splendid. To each young patriot and soldier looking eagerly unto the tablets that commemorate the deeds of heroes, to each young scholar aspiring to a place beside the sages, comes this word: Life ...
— The Investment of Influence - A Study of Social Sympathy and Service • Newell Dwight Hillis
... contemporaries, and in his satirical poems scourged the greed and vices of the clergy, whilst on the other hand he took a principal part in spreading a knowledge of the legend of the high-souled King Arthur and of the quest of the Holy Grail. Giraldus Cambrensis again, or Gerald of Wales, wrote on all sorts of subjects with shrewd ...
— A Student's History of England, v. 1 (of 3) - From the earliest times to the Death of King Edward VII • Samuel Rawson Gardiner
... will strike you as a dull and stinking little town, and so I dare say it is. But after lunch we shall go up the hillside to where the theatre stands, at the edge of the pine-woods, and from the porch the trumpets will give out the motif of the Grail, and we shall pass out of the heat into the cool darkness of the theatre. Aren't you thrilled, Comber? Doesn't a holy awe pervade you! Are ...
— Michael • E. F. Benson
... marched away one summer day To fight the boastful Hun, In khaki clad, as fine a lad As ever carried gun, No braver knight e'er went to fight, In shining coat of mail, In days of old, for love or gold, Or for the Holy Grail. ...
— War Rhymes • Abner Cosens
... circles nearer and nearer to his royal or ruinous destiny,—strange spells cast upon bewitched houses or places, that could be removed only by the one hand appointed by Fate. So I pored over the misty legends of the San Grail, and the sweet story of "The Sleeping Beauty," as my first literature; and as the rough years of practical boyhood trooped up to elbow my dreaming childhood out of existence, I fed the same hunger for the hidden ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 30, April, 1860 • Various
... a summer day, I learned that I was to pursue beauty like the Holy Grail. And I see it now in everything. I know that, just as there is far more beauty in nature than ugliness, so there is more goodness in humanity than evil. There is more happiness in life than pain. Yes, there is. As Monty used to say, we are given now and then ...
— Tell England - A Study in a Generation • Ernest Raymond
... the folly of adventurous youth," rang out the melodious and sincere voice of the mandarin. "It is a quest for a grail which will end in a pool of your own blood! Come into ...
— Peter the Brazen - A Mystery Story of Modern China • George F. Worts
... considerable evidence to indicate that the Order of the Garter is of much greater antiquity than is generally believed and that phallic principles were associated with it. A similar contention was made regarding the symbolism associated with the Holy Grail, a sacred vessel apparently connected with primitive rites at a time far antedating Christianity. Associated with the old Churches in Ireland similar phallic emblems have been found, as well as in Europe. These emblems were used as charms by ...
— The Sex Worship and Symbolism of Primitive Races - An Interpretation • Sanger Brown, II
... piece of the same kind, the "Song of Roland," the history of a warrior in the suite of Charlemagne, is said to have been chanted before the battle of Hastings by the Jongleur Taillefer. Other pieces of the same kind were the "Legend of the Chevalier Cygne" ("Lohengrin") "Parsifal" and the "Holy Grail." Each one of these was sung to a short formula of melody, which was performed over and over incessantly, excepting variations of endings employed in the episodes. A very eminent author of pieces of this kind was the Chevalier de Coucy, ...
— A Popular History of the Art of Music - From the Earliest Times Until the Present • W. S. B. Mathews
... had previously met (notably in Paris in 1851), the intimacy between them would seem to have been cemented, if not begun, during one of Tennyson’s visits to his and Browning’s friends, Mr. and Mrs. Knowles at the Hollies, Clapham Common. Here Tennyson read to Browning the ‘Grail’ (which the latter pronounced to be Tennyson’s “best and highest”); and here Browning came and read his own new poem ‘The Ring and the Book,’ when Tennyson’s verdict on it was, “Full of strange vigour and remarkable in many ways, doubtful if it ...
— Old Familiar Faces • Theodore Watts-Dunton
... am I," he said, "the son of Parsifal, the keeper of the Holy Grail. Gladly would I have helped you, O King, in your fight against the barbarians, but an unavoidable fate calls me away. You will, however, be victorious, and under your descendants will Germany become a ...
— Famous Tales of Fact and Fancy - Myths and Legends of the Nations of the World Retold for Boys and Girls • Various
... twelfth and thirteenth centuries, who made of Arthur the pattern king, of Lancelot the pattern knight, and of the Table Round the ideal institute of chivalry; gathering about itself accretions like the Grail Quest and the Tristram story; passing by translation into many tongues, but retaining always its scene in Great or Lesser Britain, the lands of its origin, furnished the modern English romancer with a groundwork of national, though ...
— A History of English Romanticism in the Nineteenth Century • Henry A. Beers
... owing to me, if you fail in the former," said I. "As for the latter, naturally it will depend upon yourself. What shall you call it—'A Chiel takkin' Notes' or 'In Search of the Grail'?" ...
— The Princess Passes • Alice Muriel Williamson and Charles Norris Williamson
... passion for justice and for liberty, which thrilled through the veins of the world's greatest in the past, and woke our pulses to responsive throb, has not yet died wholly out of the hearts of men. Still the quest of the Holy Grail exercises its deathless fascination, but the seekers no longer raise eyes to heaven, nor search over land and sea, for they know that it waits them in the suffering at their doors, that the consecration of the holiest is on the agonising masses ...
— Annie Besant - An Autobiography • Annie Besant
... difficult the task suggested, the greater the power of its wooing. It is doubtful whether any Christian life ever passes through this period without considering the ministry or the mission field, or whether every life does not at some moment long to go in quest of a Holy Grail. ...
— The Unfolding Life • Antoinette Abernethy Lamoreaux
... energy was a thrilling spectacle and who felt for ever the desire to resolve his experience of life into a literary form. On that high head of the passion for form the attempt at perfection, the quest for which was to his mind the real search for the holy grail—he said the most interesting, the most inspiring things. He mixed with them a thousand illustrations from his own life, from other lives he had known, from history and fiction, and above all from the annals of the time that was dear to him ...
— The Author of Beltraffio • Henry James
... in hand, and set forth to conquer. His first phrase, "Das weiss ich nicht" which is about all he has to say in the first act, was coldly received. However, his bare legs and arms were admired from the rear as he stood his half-hour looking at the Holy Grail. In the second act, where he resists Kundry's questionable allurements, he did passably well, though he gave the impression that even for a reiner Thor—the German for a virtuous fool—she had no charms. ...
— The Sunny Side of Diplomatic Life, 1875-1912 • Lillie DeHegermann-Lindencrone
... physical sense was very abruptly broken when we quitted Kirkwall en route for the Holy Grail of our pilgrimage, Noltland Castle, which secludes itself on the far-off island of Westray, and, leaving the quiet of Scapa Flow behind us, encountered once more the tumults of the Pentland Firth. But these were nothing in comparison with those that ...
— Memoirs of Life and Literature • W. H. Mallock
... precisely into a certain pigeonhole of human kind.—What we had not counted on was the fierceness of the stimulus—like the taste of blood to a carnivore or, to the true knight, a glimpse of the veritable Grail. ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1921 and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... now, though. It was sleeping. However, it was due to wake up any second. "Then you're not interested in fencing the Holy Grail?" Mallory asked. ...
— A Knyght Ther Was • Robert F. Young
... Arthur's Seat overhangs Edinburgh, whose presence haunts the Lakes, and Wales, and Cornwall, and the forests of Brittany; the race that held up for us the image of the Holy Grail—that race can claim no small share in the moulding of ...
— Hero-Myths & Legends of the British Race • Maud Isabel Ebbutt
... taboo whereby, as in the case of Cupid and Psyche, the husband forbids the wife to question him as to his identity or to look upon him. The myth has been treated by both French and German romancers, but the latter attached it loosely to the Grail legend, thus turning it ...
— Hero Tales and Legends of the Rhine • Lewis Spence
... Republic at once, in harmony with those popular rights which had been proclaimed, the half-hearted leaders proceeded to look about for a King; and from that time till now they have been in this quest, as if it were the Holy Grail, or happiness on earth. The royal family of Spain was declared incompetent. Therefore a king must be found outside,——and so the quest was continued in other lands. One day the throne is offered ...
— The Duel Between France and Germany • Charles Sumner
... characters as seems advisable there is not a sign. The story is on the whole simpler than that of Tannhaeuser. Lohengrin is son of Parsifal, head of the mystic Montsalvat monastery where the Holy Grail is kept; where the monks never seem precisely to die; and where, without marriage and even without women, children are somehow born to the favoured ones. He comes in a magic boat drawn by a swan to aid Elsa against Telramund and his wife, who falsely accuse her of having murdered ...
— Richard Wagner - Composer of Operas • John F. Runciman
... the nervous and unreasonable quickness of city men, they soon arrived at Mrs. Grail's. The good lady was sitting at one of her front windows, sewing. As she looked into the street, her face was seen to have a sad and thoughtful expression. She came to the door in response to a sharp ring by Wesley Tiffles, ...
— Round the Block • John Bell Bouton
... to count it in, Yet once I watched with Celia, Watched on a ferry an Italian child, One whom America Had changed. His cheek was hardy and his mouth was frail For sweetness, and his eyes were opening wild As with wonder at an unseen figure carrying a grail. Perhaps he faced, as I did in his glance, The spirit of the living dead who, having ranged Through long reverses, forward without fail Carry deliverance From privilege and disinheritance, Until their universal soul shall prove The only answer to ...
— The New World • Witter Bynner
... sense of the beloved as of something secret and far and scarcely to be attained, like the Holy Grail, is the dominant theme of the poems, even in The Song of Wandering Aengus, that poem of almost playful beauty, which tells of the "little ...
— Old and New Masters • Robert Lynd
... dreaminess, the mystery, and the romantic spirituality of the Celt. The legends upon which they were based revolved for the most part round the history of King Arthur and his knights; they told of the strange adventures of Lancelot, of the marvellous quest of the Holy Grail, of the overwhelming and fatal loves of Tristan and Yseult. The stories gained an immense popularity in France, but they did not long retain their original character. In the crucible of the facile and successful ...
— Landmarks in French Literature • G. Lytton Strachey
... there are in King Alfred's new volume,' he said. 'It is always a delight to get anything new from him. His "Holy Grail" and Lowell's "Cathedral" are enough for a holiday, and make ...
— Authors and Friends • Annie Fields
... the torture, the pains, the sufferings, the woes, the vision of the prophet of a loving and perfect humanity, the reason of logic—all these and more are to him inspirations, and strengthen him in his great quest. He is a knight of the Holy Grail that is filled from the river of ...
— Prize Orations of the Intercollegiate Peace Association • Intercollegiate Peace Association
... he consulted ancient tomes and tables of magic characters, muttered prayers in a strange tongue that sounded like INDEXERRORPARALLAXREFRACTION, made cabalistic signs on paper, added and carried one, and then, on a piece of holy script called the Grail—I mean the Chart—he placed his finger on a certain space conspicuous for its blankness and said, "Here we are." When we looked at the blank space and asked, "And where is that?" he answered in the cipher-code of the higher priesthood, "31-15-47 north, 133-5-30 west." And ...
— The Cruise of the Snark • Jack London
... pale-pink granites and brown Spanish tiles without to the St. Gauden lions who guard the great marble staircase within. Sargent's "Religions of the World" is a noble decoration, and Abbey's frieze of the Holy Grail is beautiful, but the panel paintings of Puvis de Chavannes—"The Muses Greeting the Genius of Enlightenment"—are worth while coming from London or ...
— The Lightning Conductor Discovers America • C. N. (Charles Norris) Williamson and A. M. (Alice Muriel)
... every part of the building that was open to the public. I spent rapt hours studying the Abbey pictures. I repeated to myself lines from Tennyson's poem before the glowing scenes of the Holy Grail. Before the "Prophets" in the gallery above I was mute, but echoes of the Hebrew Psalms I had long forgotten throbbed somewhere in the depths of my consciousness. The Chavannes series around the main staircase ...
— The Promised Land • Mary Antin
... the walls of the grand stairway, are magnificent paintings by John La Farge and others, while on the four sides of the main public room are mural paintings by La Farge, depicting the entire history of Sir Arthur and the Holy Grail. ...
— See America First • Orville O. Hiestand
... hands; As safe as Heaven kept the guarded Grail— So safe, so pure, so compassed as with mail— The soul committed, e'en through Death's dark vale, Into ...
— Poems with Power to Strengthen the Soul • Various
... performances. Once, indeed, there was a "Parsifal" festival in Brooklyn, under the direction of Mr. Seidl, in which all the music was sung by the best singers of the Metropolitan Opera House on a stage set to suggest the Temple of the Grail. Only the action and the pictures were new to the city's music lovers. Nevertheless the interest on the part of the public was stupendous. The first five representations were over on January 21st, but before ...
— Chapters of Opera • Henry Edward Krehbiel
... of the Romancers, the San Greal, or Holy Grail, was the cup out of which Jesus Christ partook of the last supper with his disciples. It was brought into England by Joseph of Arimathea, and remained there, an object of pilgrimage and adoration, for many ...
— The Vision of Sir Launfal - And Other Poems • James Russell Lowell
... lies the valley of Avalon, whither Arthur went to heal his overmastering sorrow, and where the air is always sweet with the smell of apple blossoms. In this deep wood lives Merlin, still weaving, as of old, the magic spells. There is the castle of the Grail, and as our eyes fall on it, suddenly there comes a hush, and we seem to hear the sublime antiphony, choir answering choir in heavenly melody, as Parsifal raises the cup, and the light from above smites it into sudden glory. We are travelling eastward, touching here ...
— Under the Trees and Elsewhere • Hamilton Wright Mabie
... Millies with open arms and wings and had drawn fifty pounds on the strength of it. After that came a series of vexatious delays. The chalice became less and less of a commercial man's chalice, acquired more and more the elusive quality of the Holy Grail, and at last ...
— Tono Bungay • H. G. Wells
... 58: In 1726, a deputation from Guyenne, Royergue, and Poitou, appeared before the Languedoc synod, requesting preachers and pastors to be sent to them. The synod agreed to send Maroger as preacher. Betrine (the first of the Lausanne students) and Grail were afterwards sent to join him. Protestantism was also reawakening in Saintonge and Picardy, and pastors from Languedoc journeyed there to administer the sacrament. Preachers were afterwards sent to join them, to awaken the people, ...
— The Huguenots in France • Samuel Smiles
... him then his sword, Braced his slackened mail; Doubting said: "I dreamed the Lord Offered me the Grail." ...
— Poetical Works of George MacDonald, Vol. 2 • George MacDonald
... Chinamen were already busy in their shops. The sky had still the pallor of dawn, and there was a ghostly silence on the lagoon. Ten miles away the island of Murea, like some high fastness of the Holy Grail, guarded its mystery. ...
— The Moon and Sixpence • W. Somerset Maugham
... saw the Grail, The Holy Grail, descend upon the Shrine: I saw the fiery face as of a child That smote itself into the bread, and went; And hither am I come; and never yet Hath what my sister taught me first to see, This Holy Thing, fail'd from my side, nor come Cover'd, but moving with me night ...
— The Ascent of the Soul • Amory H. Bradford
... the swan as symbol and token of all that is strange and beautiful where it has its source. It is less a theme capable of purely musical development to form pattern after pattern of entrancing beauty, like the Grail or Montsalvat theme, than the equivalent in music of tender colour. It never sings out from the orchestra without carrying the imagination for a moment from the scene before one's eyes to the fernem Land. It blends the actual ...
— Wagner • John F. Runciman
... felt that Columbus had several centuries' advantage of him: that Balboa was a meddlesome old chap who might better have stayed in Spain and left American oceans to American boys to discover? Oh! the unutterable regret of youthful hearts that the Golden Fleece and the Holy Grail and other high adventures passed ...
— A Mountain Boyhood • Joe Mills
... special feature of the chansons de geste. Arthur may or may not be a greater figure in himself than Charlemagne; but when the genius of Map (or of some one else) had hit upon the real knotting and unknotting of the story—the connection of the frailty of Guinevere with the Quest for the Grail—complete developments of the fates of minor heroes, elaborate closings of minor incidents, became futile. Endless stories could be keyed or geared on to different parts of the main legend: there might be a Tristan-saga, a Palomides-saga, a Gawain-saga, episodes of Balin or of Beaumains, ...
— The Flourishing of Romance and the Rise of Allegory - (Periods of European Literature, vol. II) • George Saintsbury
... pot's life-giving powers are enhanced by making its rim of pearls. But as the idea spread, its meaning also became extended. At first it was merely a jug of water or a basket of figs, but elsewhere it became also a witch's cauldron, the magic cup, the Holy Grail, the font in which a child is reborn into the faith, the vessel of water here being interpreted in the earliest sense as the uterus or the organ of birth. The Celtic pot, so Mr. Donald Mackenzie tells me, is closely associated with cows, serpents, frogs, dragons, birds, pearls, and ...
— The Evolution of the Dragon • G. Elliot Smith
... put our business ventures there as Abbey has his Sir Galahad do in the Vigil panel of "The Search for the Holy Grail," in Boston Library; and when we have learned to put our homes, and our children, and our souls "In the hollow of God's palm," there will be peace on the journey of life. Yes, that ...
— Giant Hours With Poet Preachers • William L. Stidger
... another chair, wonderfully carven and wrought with gems, that was called the "Seat Perilous," where even Arthur might not sit—for that chair was reserved for the knight who should look upon the "Holy Grail," a vessel containing the blood of Christ that had been taken to Heaven on his death. It could only be beheld by the purest knight that went in quest of it, which Arthur could not do, because he must ...
— A Treasury of Heroes and Heroines - A Record of High Endeavour and Strange Adventure from 500 B.C. to 1920 A.D. • Clayton Edwards
... he said, "that nothing is impossible—to have you here beside me. I said, that day at Surbiton, 'There's many good things in life, but there's only one best, and that's the wild-haired girl who's pulling away at that oar. I will make her my Grail, and some day, perhaps, if God wills, ...
— Ann Veronica • H. G. Wells
... for as Sally sat there, nursing Tom, it suddenly struck her that this was the very situation with which that 'Romance of the Middle Ages' film ended. You know the one I mean. Sir Percival Ye Something (which has slipped my memory for the moment) goes out after the Holy Grail; meets damsel in distress; overcomes her persecutors; rescues her; gets wounded, and is nursed back to life in her arms. Sally had seen it a dozen times. And every time she had reflected that the days of romance are dead, and that that sort of ...
— The Man Upstairs and Other Stories • P. G. Wodehouse
... the "Holy Grail" of selfhood and in the light of our higher understanding we look downward and outward and upward, and the length and the breadth and the height are equal. We pass from the old race thought of limitation and live ...
— Freedom Talks No. II • Julia Seton, M.D.
... were the pines and birches, or the cold northern sky. At the fall of night, exhausted, trailing their long ears almost to the ground, they returned to the cook, who fed them and made much of them. Next morning they were at it as hard as ever. To them it was the quest for the Grail,—hopeless, ...
— The Blazed Trail • Stewart Edward White
... the boys with love, my dear, but they turned on me; I came with gentleness, with my heart 'twixt my hands like a bowl, Like a loving-cup, like a grail, but they spilt it triumphantly And tried to break the vessel, and to violate ...
— Amores - Poems • D. H. Lawrence
... back to our little nest in London. There's no place like home, as I always say. From there we might work together for the great cause of Peace—what I call 'My Grail.'" ...
— This Is the End • Stella Benson
... first by fair promises and then by the demand for his life blood, had sought to force him from liberty to license, from real freedom to debauched freedom. But like Sir Galahad, the Knight of the Holy Grail, he had stood true to his quest, true to his ideal, true to the inward light that unerringly marked the real from the false, true to genuine democracy in its fight against autocracy. And now, greater than all these lures and tests, stood before him Napoleon ...
— The Spirit of Lafayette • James Mott Hallowell
... original Arthurian romance of the twelfth or thirteenth century, when at latest such a poem would be written, in a language other than French, is so far unknown to us; and although as a matter of fact the central motif of the poem, the representation of a Moor as near akin to the Grail Winner, Sir Perceval, has not been preserved in any known French text, while it does exist in a famous German version, I for one find no difficulty in believing that the tradition existed in French, and that the original version of our poem was a ...
— The Romance of Morien • Jessie L. Weston
... realise it; certainly in the morning it will be much nearer; and as for the third day, it will be realised in some great festival of delight. There is, too, a subtle selfishness in this quest after the ideal—the Holy Grail of the imagination. The artist keeps the secret from his brother artists until he can startle them with some gracious surprise. He almost pities them, as he thinks of the revelation that is about to dawn upon unsuspecting and slumberous ...
— The Idler Magazine, Vol III. May 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... deprive many gluttons for punishment of the opportunity to hear "Parsifal." We remember one lady who was concerned because Dalmores stood for a long time with his back to the audience. "Why does he have to do that?" she asked her companion. "Because," was the answer, "he shot the Holy Grail." ...
— The So-called Human Race • Bert Leston Taylor
... largely at command a seriousness of conception lacking in the old Greek. Within the coffin lay an object of a fresh and brilliant clearness among the ashes of the dead—a flask of lively green glass, like a great emerald. It might have been "the wondrous vessel of the Grail." Only, this object seemed to bring back no ineffable purity, but rather the riotous and earthy heat of old paganism itself. Coated within, and, as some were persuaded, still redolent with the tawny sediment of the Roman wine it had held so long ago, it ...
— Imaginary Portraits • Walter Horatio Pater
... revolutions of the twelfth century. The French epics are full of omens of the coming victory of romance, though they have not yet given way. They still retain, in spite of their anticipations of the Kingdom of the Grail, an alliance in spirit with the older Teutonic poetry, and with those Icelandic histories that are the highest literary expression of the Northern spirit ...
— Epic and Romance - Essays on Medieval Literature • W. P. Ker
... collected edition of his poems, in two volumes, issued in 1850. These also included his most ambitious narrative poem, the Vision of Sir Launfal, an allegorical and spiritual treatment of one of the legends of the Holy Grail. Lowell's genius was not epical, but lyric and didactic. The merit of Sir Launfal is not in the telling of the story, but in the beautiful descriptive episodes, ...
— Initial Studies in American Letters • Henry A. Beers
... 'Holy Grail,' 53. This thorn, a patriarchal tree of vast dimensions, was destroyed during the Reformation. But many of its descendants exist about England (propagated from cuttings brought by pilgrims), and still retain its unique season for flowering. In all other respects they are indistinguishable from ...
— Early Britain—Roman Britain • Edward Conybeare
... would come down to earth soon enough!—let him keep that kiss, those few words, her last smile as she vanished into the wood, like the visible signs of the other world that had, at last, been allowed to him. The vision of the Grail had passed from his eyes, but the memory of it was to be his ...
— The Wooden Horse • Hugh Walpole
... of the people who hear it," Bibbs went on, musingly, "according to their own natures as much as according to the music itself. The musician might compose something and play it, wanting you to think of the Holy Grail, and some people who heard it would think of a prayer-meeting, and some would think of how good they were themselves, and a boy might think of himself at the head of a solemn procession, carrying a banner and riding a white horse. And ...
— The Turmoil - A Novel • Booth Tarkington
... Wiping his lips with his napkin, he joined our tete-a-tete. 'Gracious madam, I agree with you. He who seeks from music more than music gives, is on the quest—how shall I put it?—of the Holy Grail.' 'And what,' I struck in, 'is this minimum or maximum that music gives?' 'Dear young friend,' replied the professor, 'music gives melodies, harmonies, the many beautiful forms to which sound shall be fashioned. Just as in the case of shells and fossils, lovely in themselves, interesting ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Complete - Series I, II, and III • John Symonds
... fire, holding out her heart from the threshold, stretching it out at arms' length, crying, 'Who will take this? To whom may I give it?' A vision here of Heaven's core of light. I have seen it. I, Senhouse, have seen the Holy Grail. ...
— Rest Harrow - A Comedy of Resolution • Maurice Hewlett
... Nights or from the classic poets; here were the fit destination of some 'faery frigot,' here some adventurous prince might step ashore among new characters and incidents; and the island prison, where it floated on the luminous face of the lagoon, might have passed for the repository of the Grail. In such a scene, and at such an hour, the impression received was not so much of foreign travel—rather of past ages; it seemed not so much degrees of latitude that we had crossed, as centuries of time that we had re-ascended; leaving, by the same steps, home and to-day. A few children followed ...
— In the South Seas • Robert Louis Stevenson
... by God's grace, the free— Thy woe is transient; joy shall come to thee; It cannot fail. The darkest night gives way to rosy dawn, And thou, perchance, shalt see on Easter morn, The Holy Grail. ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 2, May, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... North Pole. That quest—which has written in its history as many tales of heroism, self-sacrifice, and patient resignation to adversity, as the poets have woven about the story of chivalry and the search for the Holy Grail—was begun only in the middle of the last century, and by an American. But for three hundred years English, Dutch, and Portuguese explorers, and the stout-hearted American whalemen, had been pushing further ...
— American Merchant Ships and Sailors • Willis J. Abbot
... little in these narratives. It was allowed, however, that Titurel the Chief had grown extremely aged, but it was not allowed that he could die in the presence of the Sangrail. He seemed to have been laid in a kind of trance, resting in an open tomb beneath the altar of the Grail; and whenever the cup was uncovered his voice might be heard joining in the celebration. Meanwhile, Amfortas, his son, ...
— Parsifal - Story and Analysis of Wagner's Great Opera • H. R. Haweis
... Gilbert Grail, was spending an hour of his Saturday afternoon in Westminster Abbey. At five o'clock the sky still pulsed with heat; black shadows were sharp edged upon the yellow pavement. Between the bridges of Westminster and Lambeth the river ...
— Thyrza • George Gissing
... the crown of Kay Khusraw, the sceptre of Anushirwan, "The holy grail of high Jamshid, Afrasiyab's ...
— The Kasidah of Haji Abdu El-Yezdi • Richard F. Burton
... some time at the court of Landgrave Hermann in Thuringia. He speaks of himself as 'ignorant of what the books contain,' which is usually taken to mean that he could not read or write. His great work is Parzival, a blend of Arthurian and Grail romance, which he says he got from a French poet Kyot. Nothing is known of any such poet, and some think him an invention. Certain it is, however, that Wolfram had some other source than Chrestien de Troyes' ...
— An anthology of German literature • Calvin Thomas
... and pale With passions of perfume, — if violets blue That hint of heaven with odor more than hue, — If perfect roses, each a holy Grail Wherefrom the blood of beauty doth exhale Grave raptures round, — if leaves of green as new As those fresh chaplets wove in dawn and dew By Emily when down the Athenian vale She paced, to do observance to the May, Nor dreamed of Arcite nor of Palamon, ...
— The Poems of Sidney Lanier • Sidney Lanier
... brain that reminds me of a story told me the other day which brings an old legend very prettily to this country. It is said that when Joseph of Arimathea was hounded from place to place by the Jews, he fled to England taking the Grail with him. The spot where he settled he called Avalon. When Lord Baltimore, a devout Catholic, was given a huge tract of land in the south of this little island, he christened it Avalon in commemoration ...
— Le Petit Nord - or, Annals of a Labrador Harbour • Anne Elizabeth Caldwell (MacClanahan) Grenfell and Katie Spalding
... leaving her like a coward to pay by herself for something which he himself had helped to start. He rose softly and went to the window, staring out into the night. A few moments later he turned back wearing a strange uplifted sort of look, a look perhaps such, as Percival bore when he beheld the Grail. ...
— Wild Wings - A Romance of Youth • Margaret Rebecca Piper
... of Sakya-Muni Buddha. The History of Saints Barlaam and Josaphat; a Christianised version thereof. 3. High Estimate of Buddha's Character. 4. Curious Parallel Passages. 5. Pilgrimages to the Peak. 6. The Patra of Buddha, and the Tooth-Relic. 7. Miraculous endowments of the Patra; it is the Holy Grail of Buddhism. ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo, Volume 2 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa
... mind of the Christian believer this represents the white dove of the New Testament which descended on the Son of Man when the heavens were opened. So in Parsifal the white dove descends, overshadowing the Grail. But ages before Christ the prolific white dove of Syria was worshipped throughout the Orient as the symbol of reproductive Nature: and to this day the Almighty is there believed to manifest himself under this form. In ancient ...
— Bride of the Mistletoe • James Lane Allen
... in a poet's frame, Heart of a hero in a body frail; Thine was the courage clear that did not quail Before the giant champions of shame Who wrought dishonour to the city's name; And thine the vision of the Holy Grail Of Love, revealed through Music's lucid veil, Filling thy life ...
— The Poems of Henry Van Dyke • Henry Van Dyke
... "Richard duke of Gloucester and the Lady Anne'' at the Royal Academy in 1896, and in that year was elected A.R.A., becoming a full R.A. in 1898. Apart from his other paintings, special mention must be made of the large frescoes entitled "The Quest of the Holy Grail,'' in the Boston Public Library, on which he was occupied for some years; and in 1901 he was commissioned by King Edward VII. to paint a picture of the coronation, containing many portraits elaborately grouped. The dramatic subjects, and the ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... other by their seeming fairer than ever they saw afore. Not for then there was no knight might speak one word a great while, and so they looked every man on other, as they had been dumb. Then there entered into the hall the Holy Grail, covered with white samite, but there was none might see it, nor who bare it. And there was all the hall full filled with good odours, and every knight had such meats and drinks as he best loved in this world; and when the Holy Grail had been borne through the hall, then the holy vessel departed ...
— MacMillan's Reading Books - Book V • Anonymous
... accidence or in reading. Next to the stories in the Bible, he loved the Maccabees, because of the likeness to the persecuted state of the Church; and he knew the Morte d'Arthur almost by heart, and thought it part of the history of England. Especially he loved the part that tells of the Holy Grail, the Sacred Cup that was guarded by the maimed King Pelles, and only revealed to the pure in heart and life. Stead had fully confided to him the secret of the cave, in case he should be the one left to deliver up the charge; and, in some strange way, the boy connected the treasure with ...
— Under the Storm - Steadfast's Charge • Charlotte M. Yonge
... errant knight reached Philip's court, where he was received with the highest honors. Then to his paternal castle he wended his way, to be welcomed by his proud parents as gladly as if he had won the Holy Grail. Dancing and rejoicing followed, in which all the neighboring noble families participated, and many a fair damsel shed her smiles—in vain it seems—on the famous ...
— Historical Tales, Vol. 6 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality. French. • Charles Morris
... time upon the sands. And then I knew and saw it to be in its happy beating the pulse that governed the music of the stars. Can the heart conduct the symphony of the body? Tonight the sun set, borne away—a Grail—by angels from the questing Galahad. There was a great silence in my heart as I sat ...
— The Forgotten Threshold • Arthur Middleton
... yet the thought disturbed her a trifle. It did not seem quite right for Monte to have no destination. He was worth something more than merely to revolve in a circle. He should have a Holy Grail. Give him something to fight for, and he would fight hard. Twice to-day she had caught a light in his eyes that had suggested this to her—a clean, white light that had hinted of a Monte with a destination. But would ...
— The Triflers • Frederick Orin Bartlett
... that Swabian era. The brightest sky of spring is not without its clouds in Germany, and the German heart is never happy without some sadness. Whether we listen to a short ditty, or to the epic ballads of the "Nibelunge," or to Wolfram's grand poems of the "Parcival" and the "Holy Grail," it is the same everywhere. There is always a mingling of light and shade,—in joy a fear of sorrow, in sorrow a ray of hope, and throughout the whole, a silent wondering at this strange world. Here is a specimen of an anonymous poem; and anonymous poetry is an invention peculiarly Teutonic. ...
— Chips From A German Workshop. Vol. III. • F. Max Mueller
... developed and satisfied, his pure and open spirit reflects the divine light. He is perhaps the Parsifal for whom we are waiting, depressed and sick at heart, while because of the impurity of our hands the dove can no longer descend in the Holy Grail towards the chalice filled with the blood of ...
— Spontaneous Activity in Education • Maria Montessori
... processional; thurification[obs3], incense, holy water, aspersion. relics, rosary, beads, reliquary, host, cross, rood, crucifix, pax[Lat], pyx, agnus Dei[Lat], censer, thurible, patera[obs3]; eileton[obs3], Holy Grail; prayer machine, prayer wheel; Sangraal[obs3], urceus[obs3]. ritualism, ceremonialism; sabbatism[obs3], sabbatarianism[obs3]; ritualist, sabbatarian[obs3]. holyday, feast, fast. [Christian holy days] ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... got her into distress—we know her quite as well; the celestial knight who rescues her—we know him nearly as well. But the details in which "Lohengrin" differs from all other tales of the same order are precisely those that make it the most enchanting tale of them all. Lohengrin, knight of the Grail, redeemer, yet with a touch of tragedy in his fate, drawn down the river in his magic boat by the Swan from a far mysterious land, a land of perpetual freshness and beauty, is an infinitely more poetic notion than the commonplace angel flapping clumsily ...
— Old Scores and New Readings • John F. Runciman
... flagellation, sackcloth and ashes; penance &c (atonement) 952; telling of beads, processional; thurification^, incense, holy water, aspersion. relics, rosary, beads, reliquary, host, cross, rood, crucifix, pax [Lat.], pyx, agnus Dei [Lat.], censer, thurible, patera^; eileton^, Holy Grail; prayer machine, prayer wheel; Sangraal^, urceus^. ritualism, ceremonialism; sabbatism^, sabbatarianism^; ritualist, sabbatarian^. holyday, feast, fast. [Christian holy days] Sabbath, Pentecost; Advent, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... notified me that there was a little account to settle between us, and he named a day three or four years in the future; place of settlement, the lists where the offense had been given. I said I would be ready when he got back. You see, he was going for the Holy Grail. The boys all took a flier at the Holy Grail now and then. It was a several years' cruise. They always put in the long absence snooping around, in the most conscientious way, though none of them had any idea where the Holy Grail really was, and I don't think any of them actually expected ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... on lonely mountain-meres I find a magic bark; I leap on board: no helmsman steers: I float till all is dark. 40 A gentle sound, an awful light! Three angels bear the Holy Grail; With folded feet, in stoles of white, On sleeping wings they sail. Ah, blessed vision! blood of God! 45 My spirit beats her mortal bars, As down dark tides the glory slides, And star-like ...
— The Ontario High School Reader • A.E. Marty
... accumulation, of uncritical and indiscriminate enthusiasm. Manuscripts were worshipped by these men, just as the reliques of the Holy Land had been adored by their great-grandfathers. The eagerness of the crusades was revived in this quest of the holy grail of ancient knowledge. Waifs and strays of pagan authors were valued like precious gems, revelled in like odoriferous and gorgeous flowers, consulted like oracles of God, gazed on like the eyes of a beloved mistress. The good, the bad, and the indifferent received ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... betwixt the two, and men called it La Lyonesse. And in the good olden days, when Arthur was king, the Lyonesse had her prince, and on her plains and hills were fair rich cities, and through her forests pricked good knights on the quest of the Holy Grail, [see note 2] that none, save unsinning eyes, might ever see. For of all the four-and-twenty Knights of the Round Table, none ever saw the Holy Grail save one, and that was Sir Galahad, that was pure of heart and clean of life. Howbeit, one night came a mighty tempest. ...
— The White Rose of Langley - A Story of the Olden Time • Emily Sarah Holt
... the Lord of the Hill to entertain strangers in. The recollections of Sir Bevis of Southampton furnished Bunyan with his framework. Lions guard the court. Fair ladies entertain him as if he had been a knight-errant in quest of the Holy Grail. The ladies, of course, are all that they ought to be: the Christian graces—Discretion, Prudence, Piety, and Charity. He tells them his history. They ask him if he has brought none of his old belongings with him. He answers yes; but greatly against his will: his inward and carnal cogitations, ...
— Bunyan • James Anthony Froude
... mind; the cosmic glories of the Ring with the resplendent figures of Siegfried and Brunhilde; the self-dedication of Parsifal, the Sir Percival of our Arthurian legends, whom "The sweet vision of the Holy Grail drew from all vain-glories, rivalries and earthly heats." Into the glowing music of Wagner my son read lessons in renunciation, the sordidness of the lust for gold, the sublimity of pure human love, the redemptive power of self-sacrifice. The occasional voluptuousness ...
— War Letters of a Public-School Boy • Henry Paul Mainwaring Jones
... gallant heart is strongly stirred By clink of plate or flight of bird, He has a plumy tail; At night he treads on stealthy pad As merry as Sir Galahad A-seeking of the Grail. ...
— Songs for a Little House • Christopher Morley
... felt-like substance, probably the down of some plant or the wool of some worm, and toned down in keeping with the branch on which it sits by minute tree-lichens, woven together by threads as fine and grail as gossamer. From Robin's good looks and musical turn, we might reasonably predict a domicile of him as clean and handsome a nest as the king-bird's, whose harsh jingle, compared with Robin's evening melody, is as the clatter of pots and kettles beside the tone of a ...
— Wake-Robin • John Burroughs
... only by the vision of a seraphic champion sent by Heaven to espouse her cause, is accompanied on her entrance and sustained all through her scene of trial by the dulcet tones of the wood-winds, the oboe most often carrying the melody. Lohengrin's superterrestrial character as a Knight of the Holy Grail is prefigured in the harmonies which seem to stream from the violins, and in the prelude tell of the bringing of the sacred vessel of Christ's passion to Monsalvat; but in his chivalric character he is greeted by the militant ...
— How to Listen to Music, 7th ed. - Hints and Suggestions to Untaught Lovers of the Art • Henry Edward Krehbiel
... exceptional man. Those who investigate and teach within the university walls must respond to the injunction of the church, "Sursum corda"—lift up the heart to high thinking and impartial search for the unsullied truth in the interests of all the people; this is the holy grail ...
— The Frontier in American History • Frederick Jackson Turner
... literature of Romance and the spirit of chivalry, from the Celtic folk-tales of the present day. Mr. Alfred Nutt has already shown this to be true of a special section of Romance literature, that connected with the Holy Grail, and it seems probable that further study will extend the field of application of ...
— Celtic Fairy Tales • Joseph Jacobs (coll. & ed.)
... glossary by the Rev. Robert Williams in the first volume of his "Selections from the Hengwrt MSS". (6) The first volume of this work is entitled "Y Seint Greal, being the adventures of King Arthur's knights of the Round Table, in the quest of the Holy Grail, and on other occasions. Originally written about the year 1200". The volume, following the manuscript now in the library of W.W.E. Wynne, Esq., at Peniarth, is divided into two parts. The first, fol. ...
— High History of the Holy Graal • Unknown
... that Joe had to carry him a great deal, and in this manner one lad felt the fatigue nearly as much as the other. On the whole, perhaps it was the little Queen of the party, the real Leader of the expedition, who suffered the least. Never did knight of old go in search of the Holy Grail more devoutly than did Cecile go now to deliver up her purse of gold, to keep ...
— The Children's Pilgrimage • L. T. Meade |
