"Medusa" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Perseus, the Grecian hero, of whom it was prophesied that he would slay his grandfather. Perseus, like Tammuz and Osiris, was enclosed in a chest which was cast into the sea, to be rescued, however, by a fisherman on the island of Seriphos. This hero afterwards slew Medusa, one of the three terrible sisters, the Gorgons—a demon group which links with Tiamat. In time, Perseus returned home, and while an athletic contest was in progress, he killed his grandfather with a quoit. ...
— Myths of Babylonia and Assyria • Donald A. Mackenzie
... 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. I dared not move, but lay Upon the smooth stone floor, inured to fear. I fancied ...
— Stories in Verse • Henry Abbey
... think that if the head of the Medusa, instead of turning into stone those who looked at it, had given them wings to escape they could not have flown away faster than did those poor savages at ...
— My Friends the Savages - Notes and Observations of a Perak settler (Malay Peninsula) • Giovanni Battista Cerruti
... year 1816 two stately vessels were sailing on the ocean, in all the pride of perfect equipment and of glorious enterprise. The one was an English frigate, the Alceste, having on board our ambassador to China; the other was a French frigate, the Medusa, taking out the suite of a governor for one of the colonies of France on the coast of Africa. The importance of the mission on which each ship was despatched, and the value of the freight, would seem to assure us that the Alceste and the Medusa were officered and manned by the best ...
— Narratives of Shipwrecks of the Royal Navy; between 1793 and 1849 • William O. S. Gilly
... do is to remove the twenty and the sixty bad members, and replace them by well-disposed persons. The will of the nation is that the government may not be hindered from doing well, and that the head of Medusa may no longer be displayed in our Tribunes and in our Assemblies. The conduct of Sieyes in this circumstance proves perfectly that, after having concurred in the destruction of all the constitutions since 1791, he still wishes to ...
— Worlds Best Histories - France Vol 7 • M. Guizot and Madame Guizot De Witt
... of a magnifying glass was enabled distinctly to discern the moluscae. When magnified, they appeared about the size of a pin's head, of a yellowish brown colour, rather oval-shaped, and having tentaculae. The medusa is a genus of molusca; and I think M. le Seur told me he reckons forty-three or forty-four species ...
— A Ramble of Six Thousand Miles through the United States of America • S. A. Ferrall
... by casting behind them stones which became men and women; Heraulos was changed into stone for offending Mercury; Pyrrhus for offending Rhea; Phineus, and Polydectes with his guests, for offending Perseus: under the petrifying glance of Medusa's head such transformations became ...
— History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom • Andrew Dickson White
... behind his mask, hide the traces of grief and pity. I do not blame you for your suspicions. I once had aspirations, perhaps as high, and purity of soul nearly as great as your own. But what are we? The creatures of fate; the victims of circumstances. We look upon the Medusa-head of destiny, with its serpent curls, and our wills, if not our souls, are turned into stone. God alone, who knows all, can judge the heart of man. But I am pledged, by ties the most awful, to a society which, ...
— Caesar's Column • Ignatius Donnelly
... believe it," panted Madame Balnokhazy, whose face in that moment was like a furious Medusa head. "I believe what you say. I have no doubts about it:" therewith she rose from her seat ...
— Debts of Honor • Maurus Jokai
... passionate sighs and glances was the merest hypocrisy. Had he been alone, nothing would have prevented his dashing head foremost into this imbroglio, in scorn of consequence, convinced that his appearance would be as terrible in its effect as the head of Medusa. But the presence of the widow restrained him. Why ruin his future and dry up the golden spring which had just begun to gush before his eyes, for the sake of taking part in a melodrama? Prudence and self-interest kept him ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... ensuing, a book of stories made up of classical myths. The subjects are: The Story of Midas, with his Golden Touch; Pandora's Box; The Adventure of Hercules in Quest of the Golden Apples; Bellerophon and the Chimera; Baucis and Philemon; Perseus and Medusa." ...
— A Study Of Hawthorne • George Parsons Lathrop
... had not time to feel a sensation of real fear, when cautiously her doorknob was turned and a head intruded itself which struck her as dumb as though Medusa had appeared, and drove the life-blood in a frozen current ...
— Idle Hour Stories • Eugenia Dunlap Potts
... petrifying effect of her sudden presence on a beauty-worshipping sex. She did not walk as other mortals walk, but floated in fragrantly and Skippy stood staring rock-still, as though Hippo had flashed the head of Medusa. None of which by the way was lost on the keenly ...
— Skippy Bedelle - His Sentimental Progress From the Urchin to the Complete - Man of the World • Owen Johnson
... her eyes—all light which would deny To my sad life—in scorn or anger roll, Mine with such true humility reply, Soon their meek glances all her rage control, Were it not so, methinks I less could brook To gaze on hers than on Medusa's mien, Which turn'd to marble all who met her look. My friend, act thus with thine, for closed I ween All other aid, and nothing flight avails Against the wings ...
— The Sonnets, Triumphs, and Other Poems of Petrarch • Petrarch
... expressly for that hero, under the expectation that he would accept the invitation of Victor Hugo to share his home, at a time when his fortunes were at their lowest ebb. Many literary men were here at different times, generously cared for by the host, who called the retreat "the raft of Medusa." There were many pets also, especially dogs, as Victor Hugo almost shared the sentiment of Madame de Stael concerning these animals, "The more I know men, ...
— Home Life of Great Authors • Hattie Tyng Griswold
... opened here, and the rubicund visage of Mr. Fogg appeared like the head of the Medusa. He said that 'Captain' had ordered the blue roan to be saddled and brought over to me, but I knew that this was a cunning device on his part, to revisit the dwelling. Miss Bell, somehow caught the idea that Fogg was enamored of her, and the poor fellow was subjected to a volley ...
— Campaigns of a Non-Combatant, - and His Romaunt Abroad During the War • George Alfred Townsend
... stared at her with the expression of one who is suddenly confronted by some Medusa's head, as if in the straggling wisps of hair that escaped from beneath her hat he saw the writhing serpents. She was going ...
— Half a Rogue • Harold MacGrath
... Kindling a wraith there of earth's vernal green? Even so as I have seen, In night's aerial sea with no wind blust'rous, A ribbed tract of cloudy malachite Curve a shored crescent wide; And on its slope marge shelving to the night The stranded moon lay quivering like a lustrous Medusa newly washed up from the tide, Lay in an oozy pool ...
— Sister Songs • Francis Thompson
... July, at night, Lord Nelson arrived in the Downs, and immediately hoisted his flag on board the Leyden of sixty-four guns; but shifted it, two days after, to the Medusa frigate of thirty-two. Not a moment was now lost in making every preparation for a formidable attack on the French flotilla, by the assistance of which we were menaced with the invasion of the myriads of troops that lined the shore of the enemy from Brest ...
— The Life of the Right Honourable Horatio Lord Viscount Nelson, Vol. II (of 2) • James Harrison
... of Areopagus, as Aristotle says, distributed to every one that served, eight drachmas, which was a great help to the manning of the fleet; but Clidemus ascribes this also to the art of Themistocles. When the Athenians were on their way down to the haven of Piraeus, the shield with the head of Medusa was missing; and he, under the pretext of searching for it, ransacked all places, and found among their goods considerable sums of money concealed, which he applied to the public use; and with this the soldiers and seamen were well provided for ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough
... architecture of the costliest style. Rustic types have been selected for the soldiers, and commonplace details, down to a patched jerkin or a broken shoe, bear witness to the patience and the observation of the master. But over all these things the glamour of Medusa's head has fallen, turning them to stone. We are clearly in the presence of a painter for whom the attractions of nature were subordinated to the fascinations of science—a man the very opposite, for instance, to Benozzo Gozzoli. If Mantegna ...
— Renaissance in Italy Vol. 3 - The Fine Arts • John Addington Symonds
... fancies unite in the Medusa of the Uffizii. Vasari's story of an earlier Medusa, painted on a wooden shield, is perhaps an invention; and yet, properly told, has more of the air of truth about it than anything else in the whole legend. For its real subject is not the serious work of a man, but the ...
— The Renaissance: Studies in Art and Poetry • Walter Horatio Pater
... you she's the wickedest of creatures; Oh, gaze not on the Syren's fatal features, More baneful than the Gorgon head, Medusa. ...
— Turandot: The Chinese Sphinx • Johann Christoph Friedrich von Schiller
... naturally indignant, had risen from her seat, and maddened with the excitement of the moment, she made a little speech in Arabic (not a word of which he understood) with a countenance almost as amiable as the head of Medusa. Altogether the mise-en-scene utterly astonished him. The woman, Bacheta, although savage, had appropriated the insult to her mistress, and she also fearlessly let fly at him, translating as nearly as she could the complimentary address that ...
— Noble Deeds of the World's Heroines • Henry Charles Moore
... ill, The woe of man, that first created curse, Base female sex, sprung from black Ate's loins, Proud, disdainful, cruel and unjust, Whose words are shaded with enchanting wiles, Worse than Medusa mateth all our minds; And in their hearts sit shameless treachery, Turning a truthless vile circumference! O, could my fury paint their furies forth! For hell's no hell, compared to their hearts, Too simple devils to conceal their arts; Born to be plagues unto the thoughts ...
— The Critics Versus Shakspere - A Brief for the Defendant • Francis A. Smith
... Alcithoe and her sisters to bats. Juno's fury. Madness of Athamas; and deification of Ino and Melicertes. Change of the Theban women to rocks and birds. Cadmus and Hermione changed to serpents. Perseus. Transformation of Atlas to a mountain. Andromeda saved from the sea monster. Story of Medusa. ...
— The Metamorphoses of Publius Ovidus Naso in English blank verse Vols. I & II • Ovid
... Vagrant Duke The Splendid Outcast The Black Stone The Golden Bough The Secret Witness Paradise Garden The Yellow Dove The Flaming Sword Madcap The Silent Battle The Maker of Opportunities The Forbidden Way The Bolted Door Tony's Wife The Medusa Emerald ...
— The Vagrant Duke • George Gibbs
... bane of a lifetime; we should see these things till we sickened, and reeled, and grew blind with pain before the ghastly face of the Future, as men in ancient days before the loathsome visage of the Medusa! ...
— Wisdom, Wit, and Pathos of Ouida - Selected from the Works of Ouida • Ouida
... "There, there, my dear lad," said he; "you must not excite yourself. You are trembling all over. Your nerves cannot stand it. We must take these great questions upon trust. What are we, after all? Half-evolved creatures in a transition stage, nearer perhaps to the Medusa on the one side than to perfected humanity on the other. With half a complete brain we can't expect to understand the whole of a complete fact, can we, now? It is all very dim and dark, no doubt; but I think ...
— Round the Red Lamp - Being Facts and Fancies of Medical Life • Arthur Conan Doyle
... the mutilated Venus which is a revelation of the glory that merely human beauty can attain without a gleam borrowed from the divine; fat Vitellius seemed to snore open-eyed beside lean and wakeful Julius Caesar; a mask of Medusa leaned lovingly upon the shoulder of Dante; Apollo Belvedere smiled upon an ecorche—in atelier parlance "skun man;" finished and unfinished studies of heads, bodies and detached sections of bodies hung from nails ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 22. July, 1878. • Various
... in Hamburg, and Amsterdam. He takes a sip of coffee, puffs at his cigar, and comfortably settles back to a taste of more details of the catastrophe, whether observed or fabricated. What a hurrah for the newspaper publishers! A sensation! More readers! That is the Medusa into whose eyes we look, and who tells us what the genuine value of a cargo of human ...
— Atlantis • Gerhart Hauptmann
... and fury on that dangerous coast the treacherous tide came in. There was not a moment to spare, and as he flew back to the small shelter of the pebbly cove, the water was already gliding close to him, and stretching its arms like a hungry medusa round the seaweed-matted lumps of scattered rock ...
— St. Winifred's - The World of School • Frederic W. Farrar
... Between, we have "Baptism of Fire," a picture of wounded men; and "A Hero's Death." The centre piece is devoted to "The Victor," the great general, the master of the feast, the responsible and beflattered chief. In the last three stories, physical pain exposes its hideous countenance like that of Medusa mutilated. The two opening stories deal with mental pain. The hero of the centre piece sees neither the one nor the other; his glory is throned on both; he finds life good, and war even better. From the first page to ...
— The Forerunners • Romain Rolland
... planted there With all its pageants and despair; A peopled hush, a Death not dead, But stricken with Medusa's ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... the part on which his skill is to be exercised. It enables him to see with the mind's eye through the opaque tissues down to the bone on which they lie, as if the skin were transparent as the cornea, and the organs it covers translucent as the gelatinous pulp of a medusa. ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... drove him to open the door. One step brought him to the head of the stairs: he lowered his head over the balustrade in order to listen; and at that moment ascended, from the little parlor, this agonizing cry from the woman-servant, 'Lord Jesus Christ! we shall all be murdered!' What a Medusa's head must have lurked in those dreadful bloodless features, and those glazed rigid eyes, that seemed rightfully belonging to a corpse, when one glance at them sufficed to ...
— The Notebook of an English Opium-Eater • Thomas de Quincey
... almost to have a life of its own, almost Medusa-like, thick, glossy and moist, lying in heavy, sweet-smelling masses over her forehead, over her small ears with their pink lobes, and far down upon her nape. Deep in between the coils and braids it was of a bitumen brownness, but in the ...
— The Octopus • Frank Norris
... The dark eyes of Karamaneh were wonderful and beautiful, the eyes of Dr. Fu-Manchu sinister and wholly unforgettable; but the eyes of this woman were incredible. Their glance was all but insupportable; the were the eyes of a Medusa! ...
— The Hand Of Fu-Manchu - Being a New Phase in the Activities of Fu-Manchu, the Devil Doctor • Sax Rohmer
... Away, away!" said she, as she turned her back upon him. Her face of beauty seemed turned to stone, like unto the Medusa's head with its serpent locks. He descended to the street, a weak, lifeless thing; he entered his room like a night-walker, and in the rage of his grief, he seized his hammer, brandished it high in the air and sought to destroy the beautiful marble form. ...
— The Ice-Maiden: and Other Tales. • Hans Christian Andersen
... the sunshine focussed in funnels of light. Astern, deep down, when there was a breeze, bubbled a procession of milky-turquoise ghosts—the foam flung down by the hull of the Snark each time she floundered against a sea. At night the wake was phosphorescent fire, where the medusa slime resented our passing bulk, while far down could be observed the unceasing flight of comets, with long, undulating, nebulous tails—caused by the passage of the bonitas through the resentful medusa slime. And now and again, from ...
— The Cruise of the Snark • Jack London
... she was, she might have been the head of the Medusa, for Dr. Brunton felt suddenly as if turned to stone. When he went into his house all chance of an hour's sleep was gone. He met his sister in the passage: she stopped and said, "Oh, James, you must have passed the Ladies Moor as you came ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science Volume 15, No. 89, May, 1875 • Various
... embodied, as the Jove of Phidias embodied dignity and command; but the terrific is accumulated on the outside of them, as tusks, claws, etc. One can easily believe that the ancient sculptors, had it been lawful, could have put more horror into the calm features of a Medusa than is contained in all this apparatus and grimace. The concreteness of the antique, the form and meaning existing only for each other, is gone; the union is occasional only, and needs to be ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 13, No. 76, February, 1864 • Various
... vaguely I always want to know, them—I want to know why Medusa turned into a gorgon? What ...
— Halcyone • Elinor Glyn
... an abyss described by Dante. The unfortunate man had never dreamed that the possibility might arise of becoming Clementine's husband, and now he had drowned himself in a ditch of mud. His face was convulsed, when he reached the kiosk, with an agony of grief; his head, like Medusa's, ...
— Paz - (La Fausse Maitresse) • Honore de Balzac
... the Lady Henrietta had exclaimed that he appeared ill before on his return, she was dumb now with sorrow at the change. For Paul had looked upon Medusa's head of horror, and, as well as his heart, his face seemed turned to stone. He was gentle with his mother, and let her caress him as much as she would, but nothing any one could say could move ...
— Three Weeks • Elinor Glyn
... is confirmed by occasional glimpses which men get of themselves. Our own characters are the true Medusa-head which turns a man into stone when he ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Isaiah and Jeremiah • Alexander Maclaren
... grown to be a young man, the king urged him to go in search of adventures, and set him the task of bringing him the head of the terrible Gorgon named Medusa. Perseus asked the aid of the gods for this expedition, which he felt obliged to make, and in answer to his prayers, Mercury and Minerva, the patrons of adventurers, led him to the abode of the Graeae, the woman-monsters, ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. 5, July 1878, No. 9 • Various
... profounder thought. Of the last named he proposed to write a comprehensive biography and entered into correspondence with a publisher in Germany.[A] He confronted the formal culture of the Latin races with the character of the German mind, as it were the head of the Medusa, and the consciousness of his mission kept up his spirits under the most trying circumstances. With Paris as an art centre he had done. Like Mozart's "Idomeneo" to the Opera Seria, "Rienzi" was his last tribute to the Grand Opera. They have forever extinguished the genre ...
— Life of Wagner - Biographies of Musicians • Louis Nohl
... suddenly forced his way through the crowd, going in the direction of the buffet. I had no idea on what a serious mission he was bound, of course, and so I called him to introduce him to the pretty girl, who had with her an aunt, a veritable witch, as hideous as a Medusa, and who, in addition, is afflicted with a wooden leg. Dick gave the aunt only a glance. That was enough, but he was all smiles for her pretty niece, who, I must admit, is somewhat of a flirt. Anyhow she rolled her eyes so eloquently at him that he forgot all about the important ...
— The Mask - A Story of Love and Adventure • Arthur Hornblow
... electric mechanism had been set in motion, they would suddenly lift a foot sideways and stand on one leg. Poised pathetically, as if waiting for the happy signal when they might put the other leg down, these men looked very sad, and I wished that the Medusa's head might be smuggled somehow into the room for their attitudes to be imperishably recorded in cold stone; it would have been a valuable addition to ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 159, July 7th, 1920 • Various
... passed before she came down again. Two somewhat trying hours, to judge from the expression on her face, which wore a look as grim as any ever sported by Medusa. Her eyes were cold and hard as she marched promptly to the closed study door and rapped upon it—a gesture of ...
— The Monk of Hambleton • Armstrong Livingston
... each, if they had wanted to understand it. What a number of pictures! There was no end to them. They must be worth a mint of money. Right at the end, Monsieur Madinier suddenly ordered a halt opposite the "Raft of the Medusa" and he explained the subject to them. All deeply impressed and motionless, they uttered not a word. When they started off again, Boche expressed the general feeling, saying ...
— L'Assommoir • Emile Zola
... celebrated masters of the 16th cent. To the right is the Rape of the Sabines, by G.Bologna, in 1583. Originally this group was intended to represent Youth, Manhood, and Old Age. To the left the statue in bronze of Perseus, with the head of the sorceress Medusa, by B.Cellini. The posture is fine, and full of power and animation, but the head and body of the Medusa are represented streaming with blood with a revolting exaggeration. Also left, Judith and Holofernes in bronze, by Donatello. Behind Perseus is the Rape of ...
— The South of France—East Half • Charles Bertram Black
... being changed to "The Finish," and "The Song of the Outer Reef" to "The Song of the Coral Reef." In one case, an absolutely different title, a misappropriate title, was substituted. In place of his own, "Medusa Lights," the editor had printed, "The Backward Track." But the slaughter in the body of the poems was terrifying. Martin groaned and sweated and thrust his hands through his hair. Phrases, lines, and stanzas ...
— Martin Eden • Jack London
... them in the moonlight with a majesty at once magnificent and ludicrous. She had come swiftly, borne on the wings of a devouring suspicion, and she maintained for a long moment her Medusa stare of horror. Then, it was the ugliest thing that Karen had ever seen, the mask broke. Hatred, fury, malice, blind, atavistic passions distorted her face. It was to fall from one nightmare to another and a worse; for Tante seized ...
— Tante • Anne Douglas Sedgwick
... let him come no more to raise the fees Of this foul sacrilege beyond report! For Rome still flays and sells him at the court, Where paths are closed to virtue's fair increase. Now were fit time for me to scrape a treasure! Seeing that work and gain are gone; while he Who wears the robe, is my Medusa still. God welcomes poverty perchance with pleasure: But of that better life what hope have we, When the blessed banner leads to nought ...
— Sonnets • Michael Angelo Buonarroti & Tommaso Campanella
... Charlotte Elliot (from "Medusa" and other poems). Music by Robert B. Addison.—A very poetical setting of a very ...
— The Girl's Own Paper, Vol. VIII, No. 355, October 16, 1886 • Various
... frustrated this by dismissing the Duke, and degrading him at the same time. The Chief President is said to have been so frightened that he remained motionless, as if he had been petrified by a gaze at the head of Medusa. That celebrated personage of antiquity could not have been more a fury than Madame du Maine; she threatened dreadfully, and did not scruple to say, in the presence of her household, that she would yet find means to give the Regent such a blow as should make him bite the ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... marvel of the rending of walls before the imaginable. Almost, when he knew the blow had started and just ere the edge of steel bit the flesh and nerves it seemed that he gazed upon the serene face of the Medusa, Truth—And, simultaneous with the bite of the steel on the onrush of the dark, in a flashing instant of fancy, he saw the vision of his head turning slowly, always turning, in the devil-devil house beside ...
— The Red One • Jack London
... here were centuries old. Autumn had already shrivelled their tawny leaves, and their high branches, black and contorted, looked like horrid heads of hair, mingled with quaint reptiles such as the ancient sculptors have made on the head of Medusa. This place, which Mademoiselle found cheerful and in which she lived in the summer season, appeared to us as sad and funereal now. The soil was black and muddy from the recent rains and the rotting of the fallen leaves; the trunks of the trees were black and the sky above us was now, ...
— The Mystery of the Yellow Room • Gaston Leroux
... American to me, "but I think that they are excellent. A twenty dollar note used to last me but a week, but now it is as good as Fortunatus's purse, which was never empty. I eat my dinner at the hotel, and show them my twenty dollar note. The landlord turns away from it, as if it were the head of Medusa, and begs that I will pay another time. I buy every thing that I want, and I have only to offer my twenty dollar note in payment, and my credit is unbounded—that is, for any sum under twenty dollars. If they ever do give change again in New York it will make ...
— Diary in America, Series One • Frederick Marryat (AKA Captain Marryat)
... remained in the churchyard by the grave, he had looked about him from one to the other of the mounds of turf, his imagination already stimulated had been quickened by what he had seen; he stood with the face of a Medusa. ...
— Ensign Knightley and Other Stories • A. E. W. Mason
... Perseus having cut off Medusa's head, made the ship Pegas[^e], the swiftest ship hitherto known, and generally called "Perseus's ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook, Vol. 3 • E. Cobham Brewer
... enjoying the destruction of the unfortunate members of the upper classes with a truly democratic relish. One of them even attacked and commenced the swallowing of a Lizzia octopunctata, quite as good a medusa as itself. An animal which can pout out its mouth twice the length of its body, and stretch its stomach to corresponding dimensions, must indeed be "a triton among the minnows;" and a very terrific ...
— Chambers' Edinburgh Journal - Volume XVII., No 423, New Series. February 7th, 1852 • Various
... until finally it set itself in rigid lines. Her mouth was hard, her eyes expanded as if they saw far beyond the crystal mountains glittering before the open windows. Her mass of dark hair had fallen, and Mrs. Tolby whispered to Mrs. Prentiss that she looked like the Medusa in the Glyptothek in ...
— The White Morning • Gertrude Atherton
... Margaret Hugonin, precisely as the Colonel might have ordered a private to go on sentry-duty. Ten days earlier Billy would have jumped at the chance; ten days later he would probably have suggested it himself; but at that exact moment he would have as willingly contemplated matrimony with Alecto or Medusa or any of the Furies. Accordingly, he declined. Frederick R. Woods flew into a pyrotechnical display of temper, and gave him his choice between obeying his commands and leaving his house forever—the choice, ...
— The Eagle's Shadow • James Branch Cabell
... here for rest for me, which I have much needed; and shall remain here for about ten days more, and then home to work, which is my sole pleasure in life. I hope your splendid Medusa work and your experiments on pangenesis are going on well. I heard from my son Frank yesterday that he was feverish with a cold, and could not dine with the physiologists, which I am very sorry for, as I should ...
— More Letters of Charles Darwin - Volume I (of II) • Charles Darwin
... reluctance, and Orsino guessed that but for his own presence she would not have given it. The expression in her face changed rapidly from that which had been there when they had been alone, hardening very quickly until it reminded Orsino of a certain mask of the Medusa which had once made an impression upon his imagination. Her eyes were fixed and the pupils grew small while the singular golden yellow colour of the iris flashed disagreeably. She did not bend her head as she silently ...
— Don Orsino • F. Marion Crawford
... like it, ere you solicit a warrant. Prepare for white squalls, living gales and typhoons; read accounts of shipwrecks and horrible disasters; peruse the Narratives of Byron and Bligh; familiarise yourselves with the story of the English frigate Alceste and the French frigate Medusa. Though you may go ashore, now and then, at Cadiz and Palermo; for every day so spent among oranges and ladies, you will have whole months of rains ...
— White Jacket - or, the World on a Man-of-War • Herman Melville
... anticipation of her re-union with Oscar, that uneasiness of mind which I had so readily dismissed while I was in Italy, began to find its way back to me again. My imagination now set to work at drawing pictures—startling pictures of Oscar as a changed being, as a Medusa's head too terrible to be contemplated by mortal eyes. Where would he meet us? At the entrance to the village? No. At the rectory gate? No. In the quieter part of the garden which was at the back of the house? Yes! There he stood waiting ...
— Poor Miss Finch • Wilkie Collins
... same room with it is Girodet's ghastly "Deluge," and Gericault's dismal "Medusa." Gericault died, they say, for want of fame. He was a man who possessed a considerable fortune of his own; but pined because no one in his day would purchase his pictures, and so acknowledge his talent. ...
— The Paris Sketch Book Of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh • William Makepeace Thackeray
... never," Peter protested. "You're not to go smirking through the age and down to posterity—I'd rather see you as Medusa crowned with serpents. That's what you look ...
— The Tragic Muse • Henry James
... horned toad sealed in a cornerstone. Gruenwald, of course, treated me as though my breath was deadly, my touch foul, and my presence evil. In Gruenwald's eyes, the only difference between me and Medusa the Gorgon was that looking at me did not turn him to stone. He kept at least one eye ...
— Highways in Hiding • George Oliver Smith
... Lonner had made a miscalculation, when he thought that Mr. Fabian would fall into the hands of the Medusa within the bed-curtains. The very thought of the humiliation he had undergone, and the fear of what was yet in store for him, inspired Mr. Fabian with an unusual degree of courage or rather ...
— The Home in the Valley • Emilie F. Carlen
... teeth, the black blood with which it was filled gushed over her face and neck, while the long sucking arms of the fish, in the convulsive paroxysm of the operation, were twisting and writhing about her head, like the snaky hairs of a Medusa. Occupied as both hands were, she could only give her visitor a nod. Mr. Stewart remarks, 'It was the first time I had seen her Majesty, and I soon took my departure, leaving her, as I found her, in ...
— The World of Waters - A Peaceful Progress o'er the Unpathed Sea • Mrs. David Osborne
... half-fictitious: his sufferings were greater than human nature could bear, and the Arabs of the desert could never lead the life described. But since it has been found that the sufferings undergone by the crew of the French frigate, the Medusa, were no less horrible, and of the same kind, and that Clapperton and others who have subsequently crossed the Sahara, confirmed his statements respecting the Arabs,—he has been regarded very differently. And it may be supposed, that if Sir Walter Scott ...
— The American Quarterly Review, No. 17, March 1831 • Various
... its mouth an acorn originally of gold, for which a wooden one is substituted, as is the round stock at the other extremity which was of silver; its lower side has a figure of Bellona, a terminus, &c., carved out of it; its upper, a sphynx, head of Medusa, leaves, and numerous other ornaments upon it; the sides are also beautifully carved, and two steel escutcheons on its sides before the bridge have engraved on them a ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 19. No. 538 - 17 Mar 1832 • Various
... she has resided in Rome, where she was a pupil of Gibson. Two heads, "Daphne" and "Medusa," executed soon after she went to Rome, were praised by critics of authority. "Will-o'-the-Wisp," "Puck," "Sleeping Faun," "Waking Faun," and "Zenobia in Chains" followed each ...
— Women in the fine arts, from the Seventh Century B.C. to the Twentieth Century A.D. • Clara Erskine Clement
... smiling. "Good thing it did. Gave me a bit of a shock, I can tell you, to see the old punt dashing down to the gates, with you sitting huddled up in the bottom, with your hair hanging wild, and your face the colour of chalk. You looked like a young Medusa." ...
— A College Girl • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... heath is this?—what goblin sounds of Macbeth's witches?—Beethoven's Spirit Waltz! the muster-call of sprites and specters. Now come, hands joined, Medusa, Hecate, she of Endor, and ...
— Redburn. His First Voyage • Herman Melville
... fell in with a crash. There was the sudden apparition of the demoniac face, still half hidden by the long trailing black locks of hair that curled like Medusa's around it. A cry of terror filled the room. Three of the men dashed from the door and fled precipitately. The man who had spoken sprang toward his rifle in the chimney corner. But the movement was his last; a blinding ...
— Frontier Stories • Bret Harte
... conflict, waits patiently at the foot of the steps for her playmate; but will wait in vain, for though the face of Death is hidden from us, yet we can see from the terror in the boy's eyes and quivering lips, that, Medusa-like, this grey phantom turns all it looks upon to stone; and the wings of Love are rent and crushed. Except on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel in Rome, there are perhaps few paintings to compare ...
— Miscellanies • Oscar Wilde
... compare, 'Twas thus, when Phlegra bore the giant crew, (6) In Etna's furnace glowed the sword of Mars, Neptunus' trident felt the flame once more; And great Apollo after Python slain Sharpened his darts afresh: on Pallas' shield Was spread anew the dread Medusa's hair; And broad Sicilia trembled at the blows Of Vulcan forging thunderbolts ...
— Pharsalia; Dramatic Episodes of the Civil Wars • Lucan
... gesso, and having prepared it in his own way, he began to think what he could paint upon it, that might be able to terrify all who should come upon it, producing the same effect as once did the head of Medusa. For this purpose, then, Leonardo carried to a room of his own into which no one entered save himself alone, lizards great and small, crickets, serpents, butterflies, grasshoppers, bats, and other strange kinds of suchlike animals, out of the number of ...
— Lives of the Most Eminent Painters Sculptors and Architects - Vol. 04 (of 10), Filippino Lippi to Domenico Puligo • Giorgio Vasari
... secret is out. Natalie is ugly. You laugh already at the poor dupe. But beware of laughing too soon: for he can be no dupe who becomes the husband of Natalie; should her face prove as hideous as that of Medusa. You will perceive from this that I have not yet seen it, nor, truth to tell, am I now so anxious to do so. She has been tormenting herself with the fear that I should cease to love her when I once saw her unmasked, and has reproached herself innumerable times for having encouraged ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 350, December 1844 • Various
... meanwhile hurried on from Great Gaunt Street, and knocking at the great bronze Medusa's head which stands on the portal of Gaunt House, brought out the purple Silenus in a red and silver waistcoat who acts as porter of that palace. The man was scared also by the Colonel's dishevelled appearance, ...
— Vanity Fair • William Makepeace Thackeray
... of a clear, transparent substance like jelly, which were so thin as to be almost invisible to the naked eye. Thus I came to know that the beautiful phosphoric light, which I had so often admired before, was caused by animals; for I had no doubt that these were of the same kind as the medusa or jelly-fish, which are seen in all parts ...
— The Coral Island • R.M. Ballantyne
... 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 ...
— Daisy • Elizabeth Wetherell
... importance of this discovery was the fact that the left hand was perfect, and did not hold a bow, but some soft, elastic substance which Stephani believes to be the aegis, or shield, of Jupiter, on which was the head of Medusa. The sight of this shield paralyzed those who saw it; and though it belonged to Jupiter and Minerva, Jupiter sometimes lent it to his son Apollo to aid him in his warfare; such instances are recorded by Homer. After Stephani had told his idea of it, the German scholar Ludwig Preller ...
— A History of Art for Beginners and Students - Painting, Sculpture, Architecture • Clara Erskine Clement
... before the Medusa-ruin Scott, who is again at his tricks, and refuses officers to volunteers. To carry through in Washington any sensible scheme, more boldness is needed than ...
— Diary from March 4, 1861, to November 12, 1862 • Adam Gurowski
... the apartment of Francois'. Francois did the honours with the activity of a man who is not ashamed of his establishment. His room is comfortably furnished; two modern pendules mounted on bronze, a wardrobe with a Medusa's head, a high bed, and a handsome rose-coloured curtain. If the room was not overburdened with furniture, if there was not much of luxury, yet, to those not early accustomed to superfluities, it might even seem gay. It represented ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 19, - Issue 549 (Supplementary issue) • Various
... persistent lower forms of the zooephyta is entirely wanting in the transitory states of the higher ones. A progress through the inferior groups is sketched out, but no actual transmutation of species is effected. The young medusa, before it attains its destined condition of maturity, successively resembles, but never becomes, a polygastrian, a rotifer, and ...
— A Theory of Creation: A Review of 'Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation' • Francis Bowen
... the shield of Perseus, and is the head of Medusa thereupon? Truly, I have turned Monsieur du ...
— The Grey Cloak • Harold MacGrath
... and lay staring vacantly at the pale square of the window. And then, just when he was least expecting it, he saw the whole face, so close to him and so distinctly, that he started up on his elbow; and in the second or two it remained—a Medusa-face, opaquely white, with deep, unfathomable eyes—he recognised, with a shock, that his peace of mind was gone; that the sudden experience of a few hours back had given his life new meaning; that something had happened to him which could not be ...
— Maurice Guest • Henry Handel Richardson
... occupation is gone, and my despair over your loss is correspondingly greater, for I have time on my hands to brood over it. I was hysterical as a woman yesterday afternoon—so hysterical that I came near upsetting one of the Furies who engaged me to row her down to Madame Medusa's villa last evening; and right at the sluice of the ...
— The Pursuit of the House-Boat • John Kendrick Bangs
... yellow waxen features to Marius, just then so full of animation and country colour. A chamber, curved ingeniously into oval form, which he had added to the mansion, still contained his collection of works of art; above all, that head of Medusa, for which the villa was famous. The spoilers of one of the old Greek towns on the coast had flung away or lost the [20] thing, as it seemed, in some rapid flight across the river below, from the sands of which it was drawn up in a fisherman's ...
— Marius the Epicurean, Volume One • Walter Horatio Pater
... every man, with the single exception of their big sergeant. I don't like to make ugly comparisons to a man whom I believe to be more than half interested in a woman, but it makes me think of the old story about Medusa. One look at her face is too much for a man. That Sergeant McLeod went to grass the instant he caught sight of her, and never ...
— From the Ranks • Charles King
... are 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 shall ...
— Types of Children's Literature • Edited by Walter Barnes
... even at their sweetest could never lose their delicate cruelty, had no sweetness now. They were drawn into a square—inhuman as that of the Medusa; in her eyes were the fires of the pit, and her hair seemed to writhe like the serpent locks of that Gorgon whose mouth she had borrowed; all her beauty was transformed into a nameless thing—hideous, inhuman, blasting! If this was the true soul of Yolara springing to her ...
— The Moon Pool • A. Merritt
... the only Plymouth Rock in the meadows of Hackensack! I wish you to know that the proud blood of many victims rushes through the veins of the Stinger Family. We do not belong to the pity push. Willie, if the gentleman kicks bore a tunnel through his cerebellum, near the medusa, and I will jump in his alimentary canal and ...
— Skiddoo! • Hugh McHugh
... by preliminary impediments, and frightful medusa-heads of quackery, which deter many generous souls from entering, is of the half-articulate professions, and does not much invite the ardent kinds of ambition. The intellect required for medicine might be wholly human, and indeed should by all rules be,—the profession of the Human Healer ...
— Latter-Day Pamphlets • Thomas Carlyle
... through which he examined one of the stomachs of the medusae. It was found to be full of diatoms, which are flinty-shelled microscopic animals of every variety of shape, such as stars, crosses, semicircles, and spirals—yet soft as are the jelly-fish, they can consume them. This one medusa had in its stomach no less than seven hundred thousand diatoms, so that it would be rather difficult to compute how many the whole shoal consumed for their dinner—they in their turn having to be eaten ...
— My First Voyage to Southern Seas • W.H.G. Kingston
... medusa found in the Indian and Red Seas. The body is transparent and brownish, with a black cross in the middle, and has foliaceous white arms ...
— The Sailor's Word-Book • William Henry Smyth
... ships were off from the Sandwich Islands to the long swell of the Pacific, the slimy medusa lights covering the waters with a phosphorescent trail of fire all night, the rockweed and sea leek floating past by day telling their tale of some far land. Cook's secret commission had been very explicit: ...
— Vikings of the Pacific - The Adventures of the Explorers who Came from the West, Eastward • Agnes C. Laut
... earth widely, but the heavens completely; and nightly over them marched the grand procession of their apotheosized divinities. There Hercules perpetually wrought his mighty labors for the good of man; there flashed and faded the changeful star Algol, as an eye in the head of the snaky-haired Medusa; over them flew Pegasus, the winged horse of the poet, careering among the stars; there the ship Argo, which had explored all strange seas of earth, nightly sailed in the infinite realms of heaven; there Perseus perpetually killed ...
— Recreations in Astronomy - With Directions for Practical Experiments and Telescopic Work • Henry Warren
... proboscis, so characteristic of all Jelly-Fishes, hangs from the central opening; and the tentacles, coiled within the internal cavity up to this time, now make their appearance, and we have a complete little Medusa growing upon the Hydroid head. Gradually the point by which it is attached to the parent-stock narrows and becomes more and more contracted, till the animal drops off and ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 10, Number 59, September, 1862 • Various
... great many little feelers that hung down all around like so many mites of snakes, and so it was named Medusa, after that lady in the old times who wore snakes instead of hair, and who felt so badly because she couldn't do them up. Well, our little Medusa floated around and opened and shut her umbrella for a long time—a month, or a year, perhaps—we don't know how long. Then, one ...
— The Junior Classics Volume 8 - Animal and Nature Stories • Selected and arranged by William Patten
... nails each was tearing her breast, they beat themselves with their hands, and cried out so loud that I pressed close to the Poet through dread. "Let Medusa come, so we will make him of stone," they all said, looking down. "Ill was it we avenged not ...
— The Divine Comedy, Volume 1, Hell [The Inferno] • Dante Alighieri
... 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 Three Brides • Charlotte M. Yonge
... which being shaken and mooued vp and downe breathed foorth a most loathsome stench, and strooke such a terrour into the hearts of our men, that being as it were astonished with the snaky visage of Medusa, they were ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques, • Richard Hakluyt
... apex of the helmet was placed a sphinx, with griffins on either side. The figure of the goddess was represented in an erect martial attitude, and clothed in a robe reaching to the feet. On the breast was a head of Medusa, wrought in ivory, and a figure of Victory about four cubits high. The goddess held a spear in her hand, and an aegis lay at her feet, while on her right, and near the spear, was a figure of a serpent, believed to represent ...
— Christianity and Greek Philosophy • Benjamin Franklin Cocker
... other deities were born from a thing that sprouted up like unto a reed shoot when the earth, young and like unto floating oil, drifted about medusa-like, viz.: ...
— Japan • David Murray
... of Medusa; that head of a woman once so beautiful, which Perseus cut off and which beholds in his hand, is only that of the virgin, whose head sinks below the horizon at the very moment that Perseus rises; and the serpents ...
— The Ruins • C. F. [Constantin Francois de] Volney
... expedition was fitted out by the French to go and resume possession of Senegal, which had been restored to them.—My father was reinstated in his place of resident attorney, and taking with him his family repaired immediately to Rochefort to embark on board the Medusa frigate. ...
— Thrilling Narratives of Mutiny, Murder and Piracy • Anonymous
... mankind. Here, burnished bright for wrathful Pallas, shined, With serpent scales, and golden links firm bound, Her dreadful AEgis, and the snakes entwined; And on her breast, with severed neck, still frowned Medusa's head, and ...
— The Aeneid of Virgil - Translated into English Verse by E. Fairfax Taylor • Virgil
... the growth of these animal forests. In and out among them, moved numbers of blue and red and yellow fishes, spotted and banded and striped in the most striking manner, while great orange or rosy transparent medusa floated along near the surface. It was a sight to gaze at for hours, and no description can do justice to its surpassing beauty and interest. For once, the reality exceeded the most glowing accounts ...
— The Malay Archipelago - Volume I. (of II.) • Alfred Russel Wallace
... art was elaborately pictorial. Poetry seems to have sought inspiration from painting, while painting, as we have said, inclined to genre, to luxurious representations of the amours of the gods or the adventures of heroes, with backgrounds of pastoral landscape. Shepherds fluted while Perseus slew Medusa. ...
— Theocritus, Bion and Moschus rendered into English Prose • Andrew Lang
... incident in the Afridi campaign. We were in the dark and partly behind a screen. Then the door opened. I confess the sight of Lady Henry paralyzed me. A great, murderous, six-foot Afridi—that would have been simple enough. But a woman—old and ill and furious—with that Medusa's face—no! My nerves suddenly failed me. What right had I in her house, after all? As she advanced into the room, I slipped out behind her. General Fergus and M. du Bartas joined me in the hall. We walked to Bond Street together. They were ...
— Lady Rose's Daughter • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... upon her! 'Tis not good! Forbear! 'Tis lifeless, magical, a shape of air, An idol. Such to meet with, bodes no good; That rigid look of hers doth freeze man's blood, And well-nigh petrifies his heart to stone:— The story of Medusa thou ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... he had meant, the strangest, swiftest retribution of his life came to him through the change in her face. How could flesh and muscle bring about such an alteration in human line and texture, the Mother of Sorrows transformed to a Medusa head? Her lips parted, trembling over words they could not bring themselves to say. Her eyes widened into darkness. Her brows drew together in a pitiful questioning. And her voice, when she did speak, was a vibrating protest against what her eyes ...
— Old Crow • Alice Brown
... black eyes were flames, her head was thrown up and back, her cheeks were blood scarlet, and her great crop of crow- black hair stood out about her beauteous, wicked little virago face, as if it might change into Medusa's snakes. ...
— A Lady of Quality • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... on, for he had a kind word to say to many hundred poor fellows that day. When I got well I went home for a spell; but before long I heard that Lord Nelson had hoisted his flag as commander-in-chief of the channel squadron on hoard the 'Medusa' frigate. I went on board, and the admiral instantly rated me as quartermaster. We had plenty of work before us, for General Bonaparte, who was now Emperor of France, wanted to come and invade England. ...
— The Grateful Indian - And other Stories • W.H.G. Kingston
... suburbs of Pirna, were attempting to break down the Freyberg gate when on the Emperor's orders it swung open to allow the emergence of a column of infantry of the Imperial Guard, the leading brigade of which was commanded by General Cambronne...It was as if the head of Medusa had appeared... The enemy recoiled horrified, their guns were captured at the double and the gunners killed on their mountings. Simultaneous sorties were made from all the gates of Dresden with the same results, and the allies, abandoning the redoubts they had taken, ...
— The Memoirs of General the Baron de Marbot, Translated by - Oliver C. Colt • Baron de Marbot
... by something terrible. He had sought to make this girl betray herself, if she had anything to betray. But this Medusa ...
— Valley of Wild Horses • Zane Grey
... There are a few that are edible, but generally they have a bitter taste. However, some writers say that Hydnum repandum, or the spreading Hedgehog, is "delicious." This mushroom and the one named "Medusa's head," H. caput Medusae, are perhaps the most conspicuous of the order. The latter is very large. Its color is at first white, then becoming ashy gray. The spines on the upper surface are twisted, ...
— Among the Mushrooms - A Guide For Beginners • Ellen M. Dallas and Caroline A. Burgin
... mediaeval cameos are in reality antiques recut with Christian characters. A Hercules could easily be turned into a David, while Perseus and Medusa could be transformed quickly into a David and Goliath. There are two examples of cameos of the Virgin which had commenced their careers, one as a Leda, and the other as Venus! While a St. John had originally figured as ...
— Arts and Crafts in the Middle Ages • Julia De Wolf Addison
... wildernesses," until not one of the party, excepting myself, dared move or look round for fear of seeing some dread presence, some shapeless dweller upon the threshold, some horrible apparition, the sight of which, Medusa-like, should blast them into stone. Not infrequently the situation was rendered additionally harrowing by the cook, who would suddenly interrupt the narrative, send an icy thrill down our spines, and cause the unhappy Tim's scalp to bristle even ...
— The Rover's Secret - A Tale of the Pirate Cays and Lagoons of Cuba • Harry Collingwood
... nature had cast off her horrible night-mares, and I had once more started into identity, the anguish of the past day and night again seized me. Pains innumerable, and intolerable, rushed upon me. Each new thought was a new serpent. Mine was the head of Medusa: with this difference; my scorpions shed all ...
— The Adventures of Hugh Trevor • Thomas Holcroft |
