"Myth" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... am being told the truth, or whether I am the victim of a myth arising from your fertile imagination (for which you are too well known all over Europe), I will regard the whole story as being true, as I am not in a position to disprove it. I am deeply grieved to have injured an innocent man who has never done me any ill, ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... disingenuous that Mr. Lansing had the sympathy of the country. He should either have told the truth then and there or forever have held his peace; and had he remained mute out of the mystery would have grown a myth. The fictitious Lansing would have become an historical character. But he must needs write a book. It does not make pleasant reading. It does not ...
— The Mirrors of Washington • Anonymous
... worship "Venus," but Apollo and Athena. And he regarded their mythology as a sincere tradition, effective in forming a high moral type, and a great school of art. In the "Ethics of the Dust" he had explained the myth of Athena as parallel to that of Neith in Egypt; and in his fable of Neith and St. Barbara he had hinted at a comparison, on equal terms, of Ancient and Mediaeval mythology. He ended by saying that, though he would not have his young ...
— The Life of John Ruskin • W. G. Collingwood
... brought her teasing up short. "I've been priding myself on keeping up the myth I'm a wide-awake young man and pilot. Never have I passed out before—never. I feel like a washed-out cadet. You've had your fun ...
— A Fine Fix • R. C. Noll
... he celebrated the coronation at Dizful, in bed. And by the time he had slept off his fag, Bala Bala and the Father of Swords and the green chest and the ingenious Magin looked to him more than ever like figures of myth. He was too little of the timber out of which journalists, romancers, or diplomats are made to take them very seriously. The world he lived in, moreover, was too solid to be shaken by any such flimsy device as the one of which he had happened to catch a glimpse. What had been real ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1917 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... which may take its place by the side of the myth of Mucius Scaevola, or the real exploit of that brother of the poet AEschylus, who, when the Persians were flying from Marathon, clung to a ship till both his hands were hewn away, and then seized it with his teeth, leaving his name as a portent even in the splendid ...
— Froude's Essays in Literature and History - With Introduction by Hilaire Belloc • James Froude
... some varied experiences. I used to wake up in the morning, wondering where I should be at night, and yet quite pleased at the uncertainty. Greenmantle became a sort of myth with me. Somehow I couldn't fix any idea in my head of what he was like. The nearest I got was a picture of an old man in a turban coming out of a bottle in a cloud of smoke, which I remembered from a ...
— Greenmantle • John Buchan
... Switzerland, as if it were just around the corner," marveled Ruth. "It has always seemed to me like some myth ...
— Lucile Triumphant • Elizabeth M. Duffield
... no means an indulgent critic of syndicalism, does not believe that Sorel really anticipates the general strike as the inauguration of the new order, but as a myth, which will lead the people on to the fulfillment of the ideal that lies beyond and on the other side of all anticipated ...
— The Trade Union Woman • Alice Henry
... divinities. The Egyptian mythology also (none has as yet been discovered among the Chinese) exhibits a like character. Fruitfulness and drought, the results of the Nile's overflowing and receding, are imaged in the myth of Osiris, Isis, and Typhon. The visible form under which the divine was worshiped in Egypt was the sacred animal, the bull Apis, dedicated to Osiris, the cow, dedicated to Isis, as symbols of agriculture; the bird Ibis, the crocodile, the dog Anubis, and other animals, ...
— A Comparative View of Religions • Johannes Henricus Scholten
... (for a dog) busxumo. Muzzle busxumi. My mia, mian. Myoptic miopa, miopema. Myopy miopeco. Myosotis miozoto. Myriad miriado. Myriametre miriametro. Myrrh mirho. Myrtle mirto. Mysterious mistera. Mystery mistero. Mystify mistifiki. Mystification mistifiko. Myth ...
— English-Esperanto Dictionary • John Charles O'Connor and Charles Frederic Hayes
... physical cosmos by astronomy and geology, and in the spiritual or intellectual world by the great German metaphysicians. The staple of a large share of our poetic literature is yet mainly the result of the long age of fable and myth that now lies behind us. "Leaves of Grass" is, perhaps, the first serious and large attempt at an expression in poetry of a knowledge of the earth as one of the orbs, and of man as a microcosm of the whole, and to give to the imagination these new ...
— Birds and Poets • John Burroughs
... has passed into common use, and it therefore may be worth while noting the probable origin of this myth. Shakespeare, with that wide extent of knowledge which enabled him to draw similes from every department of human ...
— Young Folks' Library, Volume XI (of 20) - Wonders of Earth, Sea and Sky • Various
... a myth for them all," he murmured. "But he will soon be found a terrible reality, and it's Roddy Hardinge will ...
— The Bastonnais - Tale of the American Invasion of Canada in 1775-76 • John Lesperance
... fair myth aloof From hard and actual proof; Preserve some dear delusions as they seem, Since the reality, How bright soe'er it be, Shows dull and cold ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 103, May, 1866 • Various
... of many memories, the central figure in a composition which derives from him its vividness. Unconsciously and innocently he has lent himself to the creation of a picture, and round him, as around the hero of a myth, have gathered thoughts and sentiments of which he had himself no knowledge. On one of these nights I had been threading the aisles of acacia-trees, now glaring red, now azure, as the Bengal lights kept changing. My mind ...
— New Italian sketches • John Addington Symonds
... Maryland. He wrote, printed, published, and sold it in London for sixpence sterling, and then disappeared forever. We do not know certainly that Mr. Cook himself was the actual adventurer who suffered the ills described by him "in burlesque verse." Indeed, "Eben: Cook, Gent." may be a myth—a nom de plume. Yet, there is a certain personal poignancy and earnestness about the whole Story that almost forbid the idea of a secondhand narrative. Nay, I think it extremely probable that it was "Eben: Cook, Gent." or, some ...
— The Sot-weed Factor: or, A Voyage to Maryland • Ebenezer Cook
... kind. Ay, and Love, if Love it be Flaming over I and ME, Love meet they who do not shove Cravings in the van of Love. Courtly dames are here to woo, Knowing love if it be true. Reverence the blossom-shoot Fervently, they are the fruit. Mark them stepping, hear them talk, Goddess, is no myth inane, You will say of those who walk In the woods of Westermain. Waters that from throat and thigh Dart the sun his arrows back; Leaves that on a woodland sigh Chat of secret things no lack; Shadowy branch-leaves, waters clear, Bare or veiled they move ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... granted by the King to Colin Fitzgerald. But as it is conclusively established that the ten pennylands, being the whole extent of Kintail were all the time, before and after, in possession of the Earls of Ross, this historical myth must follow the rest. Even the Laird of Applecross, in his MS. history of the clan, written in 1669, although he adopts the Fitzgerald theory from his friend and contemporary the Earl of Cromartie, has his doubts. After ...
— History Of The Mackenzies • Alexander Mackenzie
... strange; we bring nothing with us, so how can we lose? We take nothing away, so how can we win? We think; we plan; we stack these plans with precision, but Chance always sits at our right, waiting to cut the cards. You speak of 'justice.' It's a myth. The statue above the court-house stands first on one foot, then on the other, tired of waiting, tired of the sharp rocks of technicality, tired of the pompous farce. Why, Dale," he waved a hand toward an opposite corner, "if old Daniel Webster were ...
— The Angel of Lonesome Hill • Frederick Landis
... axes, with lanterns over there, as if in the push of hurry, and making a great deal of noise. "Intending retreat for Zittau to-morrow!" thinks Friedrich, as the false egg-yolk had taught him; or merely, "That poor precautionary fellow!" supposing the false yolk a myth. In short, Daun has got through his nocturnal wildernesses with perfect success. And stands, dreamt of by no enemy, in the places appointed for his 30,000 and him; and that poor old clock of Hochkirch, unweariedly grunting forward to the stroke of five, will strike up something it ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XVIII. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—Seven-Years War Rises to a Height.—1757-1759. • Thomas Carlyle
... evidence is abundant, and therefore confusing, the historian used to the selection and weighing of it performs a most valuable function. Still, the reader who is not acquainted with original authorities does not really know history and is at the mercy of whatever myth or tradition may be handed to him ...
— First and Last • H. Belloc
... proper name. In the religious literature of Babylonia Tammuz appears as the youthful spouse or lover of Ishtar, the great mother goddess, the embodiment of the reproductive energies of nature. The references to their connexion with each other in myth and ritual are both fragmentary and obscure, but we gather from them that every year Tammuz was believed to die, passing away from the cheerful earth to the gloomy subterranean world, and that every ...
— The Golden Bough - A study of magic and religion • Sir James George Frazer
... said. Out of a clear sky the sun beat down upon the car and the brown sand of the narrow road. Many times the boy shot sidelong glances at the silent girl beside him, burning to ask questions about this husband who was never mentioned and who appeared to him to be something of a myth and a mystery. He didn't love Joan, because it had been mutually agreed that he shouldn't. But he held her in the sort of devoted affection which, when it exists between a boy and a girl, is very good and rare and even beautiful and puts them close ...
— Who Cares? • Cosmo Hamilton
... between heaven and earth; these have gone, but Santa Claus remains by virtue of a common understanding that childhood shall not be despoiled of one of its most cherished beliefs, either by the mythologist, with his sun myth theory, or the scientist, with his heartless diatribe against superstition. There is a good deal more to be said on this subject, if this were the place to say it; even superstition has its uses, and sometimes, its sound ...
— Christmas - Its Origin, Celebration and Significance as Related in Prose and Verse • Various
... in an effort to ascertain the balance of human and political forces that bore upon his Su'u territory, ten miles square, bounded by the sea and by landward lines of an inter-tribal warfare that was older than the oldest Su'u myth. Eternally, heads had been taken and bodies eaten, now on one side, now on the other, by the temporarily victorious tribes. The boundaries had remained the same. Ishikola, in crude beche- de-mer, tried to learn the Solomon Islands ...
— Jerry of the Islands • Jack London
... mio capitan. There are some incredulous people who believe the white steed of the prairies to be a myth, and deny his existence altogether. Carrambo! I know that he does exist, and what is more to my present purpose, he is—or was, but two hours ago— within ten miles of where I am writing ...
— The War Trail - The Hunt of the Wild Horse • Mayne Reid
... time to live stood underneath the east window on that eve, and anxiously listened for the dreaded revelation. It is related of a tailor, who was reckoned a wit, and affected disbelief in the Spirit story, that he announced his intention to prove the thing a myth, and so, one Nos G'lan Geua', Shon Robert, as he was called, proceeded to the church just before midnight, and, to his horror, he heard his own name—"Shon ap Robert," uttered by the Spirit. "Hold, hold!" said the tailor, "I am not ...
— Welsh Folk-Lore - a Collection of the Folk-Tales and Legends of North Wales • Elias Owen
... the mother of Jesus, and Joseph was his father. But according to the prevailing opinion, as represented in the first and third synoptists, the relationship was just the other way. With greater apparent plausibility, the divine aeon was substituted for the human father, and a myth sprang up, of which the materialistic details furnished to the opponents of the new religion an opportunity for making the most gross and exasperating insinuations. The dominance of this theory marks the era at which our first and third synoptic gospels were composed,—from ...
— The Unseen World and Other Essays • John Fiske
... of murderous fatalities may well seem supernatural; and the case is typical, it is formidable, it is as symbolic as a myth. But there can be no doubt that analogous chains of circumstances reproduce themselves daily in the countless petty or ridiculous mortifications of merely ordinary lives which are beneath the influence of an ...
— The Buried Temple • Maurice Maeterlinck
... jishin come. Last big jishin Gifu jishin twenty years before. Many thousand people killed. Japanese people say that beneath the earth is one big fish. When the fish move, the earth shake. Silly fabulous myth! Tanaka say, 'It ...
— Kimono • John Paris
... was never tired of recasting and rewriting, from a mere fragment or preface to a finished paper. He has favourite images, favourite maxims, favourite texts, which he cannot do without. "Da Fidei quae sunt Fidei" comes in from his first book to his last. The illustrations which he gets from the myth of Scylla, from Atalanta's ball, from Borgia's saying about the French marking their lodgings with chalk, the saying that God takes delight, like the "innocent play of children," "to hide his works in order to have them found out," and to have kings as "his playfellows in that game," these, with ...
— Bacon - English Men Of Letters, Edited By John Morley • Richard William Church
... ghastly idea!" I said, glancing up at the young man who was watching me as I read. "But you say this cell has never been found. I should say its existence was a myth, and, of course, the curse on the soul of the first-born to keep the door shut as warder is absurd. ...
— A Master of Mysteries • L. T. Meade
... spare?" inquired the other, in a serious tone. They always maintained the myth that Tiberio Colaisso was a very ...
— Sant' Ilario • F. Marion Crawford
... my head to look at Hans, proposing to smite him with words, or physically, since to have this Mameena myth, of which I have detailed the origin in the book called Child of Storm, re-arise out of his hideous little mouth was too much. But before I could get out a syllable he held up ...
— She and Allan • H. Rider Haggard
... to Hudson Bay turned to fur trading and won wealth, and discovered an empire while pursuing the little beaver across a continent, the beginning of all this was not the beaver, but a myth—the North-West Passage—a short way round the world to bring back the spices and silks and teas of India and Japan. It was this quest, not the lure of the beaver, that first brought men into the heart of New World wilds ...
— The "Adventurers of England" on Hudson Bay - A Chronicle of the Fur Trade in the North (Volume 18 of the Chronicles of Canada) • Agnes C. (Agnes Christina) Laut
... (Celtic myth: "The ghosts of Fathers, they say, call away the souls of their race, while they behold them lonely in the midst of woe." "Erin's clouds are hung ...
— Edward MacDowell • Elizabeth Fry Page
... more. J. M. B. quotes as a proverb—one of those without meaning—"As busy as Batty;" and says, "no one knows who Batty was." Surely, the inference that Batty was not a real personage in some distant age—that he was a mere myth—must be a non sequitur from the premises before us. Perhaps Mr. Batty was a person of notable industry—perhaps remarkable for always beings in a "fluster"—perhaps the rural Paul Pry of his day and district. He has left, too, a large progeny; whether as ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 33, June 15, 1850 • Various
... She made that bleak declaration simply, as if he had suggested her possession of green diamonds. Her tone made friendship a myth. ...
— No Clue - A Mystery Story • James Hay
... widely-credited myth about the moon which must be regarded as devoid of foundation. The idea that our satellite and the weather bear some relation has no doubt been entertained by high authority, and appears to be an article ...
— The Story of the Heavens • Robert Stawell Ball
... heard her beginning a Shawnee myth, in which it was explained why the wet-hawk feeds while flying, and how the small turkey-buzzard got its ...
— A Virginia Scout • Hugh Pendexter
... without showing an amount of incredulity scarcely becoming a sane man, to deny the existence of the traveler, and the reality of that voyage which I believed all along to have been a myth—the mystification of ...
— A Journey to the Centre of the Earth • Jules Verne
... "The whole thing's a myth. I'm quoting the one man in the Galaxy who ought to know. The man who commanded the Third ...
— The Cosmic Computer • Henry Beam Piper
... the bare and frozen elder bushes come to momentary bloom again in the thickets and the "critters and beasties" kneel down in their stalls, answering to some dumb mandate of reverence. This, however, is myth, and the fact is more substantially recognized that at this period the roisterous ride the highways, shooting and yelling, and the whiskey jug is tilted and tragedy often bares ...
— The Roof Tree • Charles Neville Buck
... If we had newspaper-accounts of the age of Augustus, the chances are that no other epoch in history would be so absolutely problematical, and Augustus himself would be lucky, if he were not resolved into a myth, and the journal into sibylline oracles. The dissertational department is equally faulty; for to first impressions everything on earth is chameleon-like. The Scandinavian Divinities, the Past, the Present, and the Future, could look upon each other, but neither of them upon herself. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 83, September, 1864 • Various
... mud-puppies. The mud-eel and the Congo "snake" of the Southern States, and the "hell-bender" of the Ohio valley and south are all Salamanders. The belief that any of the Salamanders is poisonous is a myth and ...
— Scouting For Girls, Official Handbook of the Girl Scouts • Girl Scouts
... Fifty-ninth Street. It was not yet ten o'clock, but the departure of the prince made him vaguely uneasy and for his life he could not have waited longer. Perhaps it was not true at all; perhaps none of it had happened. The McDougle Street part had vanished; what if the Boris too were a myth? But as he sprang up the steps at the apartment house St. George knew better. The night before her hand had lain in his for an infinitesimal time, and she had said ...
— Romance Island • Zona Gale
... concerned, is of a more modern origin than people fancy. Of old the Assyrian took the eagle, the ox, and the lion—and not unwisely—as the three highest types of human capacity. The horses of Homer might be immortal, and weep for their master's death. The animals and monsters of Greek myth- -like the Ananzi spider of Negro fable—glide insensibly into speech and reason. Birds—the most wonderful of all animals in the eyes of a man of science or a poet—are sometimes looked on as wiser, and nearer to the gods, than man. The Norseman—the noblest and ablest human ...
— Sanitary and Social Lectures and Essays • Charles Kingsley
... became more desperately in earnest in his search for Vicky. It seemed as if the sight of her, the realization that she was a real woman and not a myth, had whetted his eagerness to discover her hiding place ...
— Vicky Van • Carolyn Wells
... Omei's story go back to the days before writing was, and of myth and legend there is a great store, and naturally enough. This marvel of beauty and grandeur rising stark from the plain must have filled the man of the lowlands with awe and fear, and his fancy would readily ...
— A Wayfarer in China - Impressions of a trip across West China and Mongolia • Elizabeth Kendall
... afraid not—in my time, at least. But we shall have to develop that kind of statesmen or go on the rocks. Public opinion in the old democratic sense is a myth; it must be made by strong individuals who recognize and represent evolutionary needs, otherwise it's at the mercy of demagogues who play fast and loose with the prejudice and ignorance of the mob. The people don't value the vote, they know nothing about the real problems. So far as I can see, ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... Mexican sky. At the north, slate-blue foothills lifted their sharp-edged shoulders three miles away, but only blank walls of Soledad faced the hills, all portals of the old mission appeared to have faced south, as did Soledad. The door facing the hills was a myth. And as Rhodes stood north of the old wall, and searched its thirty-mile circle, he could understand how four generations of gold seekers had failed to find even a clue to the wealth those unknown padres had looked on, and ...
— The Treasure Trail - A Romance of the Land of Gold and Sunshine • Marah Ellis Ryan
... through the stained glass of a Gothic window form a halo round loved heads, like the arm of God, luminous and impalpable, surrounded by a vortex of atoms;—she who had known such glorious apparitions, clothed with the purple and golden glories of the setting sun. The realm of fantasy had no myth with whose secret she was ...
— Life of Chopin • Franz Liszt
... The Dumb Oracle.—Appeared in the University Magazine for June, 1878. The legend on which it is founded, a mediaeval myth here transferred to classical times, is also the groundwork of Browning's ballad, ...
— The Twilight of the Gods, and Other Tales • Richard Garnett
... constant effort of a certain order of minds to wrest facts into agreement with their pet theories of religion or what not. The whole tendency of the more modern investigation shows that the period of myth-transmission is long over ere history begins. The same confusion of different stages of myth-making is to be found in the Greek religion, and indeed in those of all peoples; similar conditions of mind produce similar practices, apart from all borrowing of ideas and ...
— The Story of the Volsungs, (Volsunga Saga) - With Excerpts from the Poetic Edda • Anonymous
... things. There is a saying among Eastern Massachusetts farmer folk that if you will bathe three times in the salt water during the summer you will not feel the cold of the coming winter. Thus is the old myth revived and the modern Achilles may find invulnerability beneath the Styx, nor need his heel be left above the tide for his undoing. And the sea has more than that to give us, more than physical well-being and invulnerability ...
— Old Plymouth Trails • Winthrop Packard
... indeed, but the children here believe it as devoutly as they do that the "Christ-kind" brings their Christmas presents, or as our own little ones do in Santa Claus. No one knows exactly whence came this myth. Many think it a relic of heathen worship; but a writer named Christoph von Schmid, in an interesting story for children, suggests this ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, V. 5, April 1878 - Scribner's Illustrated • Various
... total hermaphrodite we define as the individual who possesses the reproductive organs of the male and the female, both testes and ovaries. So rare is such a combination in man that for a long time its occurrence was doubted, descriptions of it regarded as myth. However, undoubted cases are on record, examined by the most careful of observers, of ovo-testis or mixed reproductive organs. Strangely enough, the history of these cases, shows that at one time the masculine set, and at another the feminine set, will hold sway over the sex traits and functions. ...
— The Glands Regulating Personality • Louis Berman, M.D.
... reach the very heavens. Slaying the Kurus in a great battle and recovering the kingdom, thy son Dhananjaya will, with his brothers, perform three grand sacrifices." I do not doubt the truth of that announcement. I bow unto Dharma that upholds the creation. If Dharma be not a myth, then, O Krishna, thou wilt surely achieve all that the invisible voice said. Neither the loss of my husband, O Madhava, nor loss of wealth, nor our hostility with the Kurus ever inflicted such rending pains on me as that separation from my children. What peace can my heart ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 2 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... pictures of the bull-headed Minotaur falling to the sword of the national hero. No more fortunate has been the German attempt to resolve the story of Minos and the Minotaur, the Labyrinth and Pasiphae, into a clumsy solar myth. The whole legend of the Minotaur, on this theory, was connected with the worship of the heavenly host. The Minotaur was the Sun; Pasiphae, 'the very bright one,' wife of Minos, was the Moon; and the Labyrinth ...
— The Sea-Kings of Crete • James Baikie
... And you needn't believe a word that Kie Wicks says. He doesn't want people to come into this canyon. He believes in the myth about the treasure and he makes it hard for anyone who comes in. One old prospector had to leave because Kie had it in for him. ...
— The Merriweather Girls in Quest of Treasure • Lizette M. Edholm
... the emperor's return are like a myth of the olden time, like a poem of Homer, in which heroes destroy worlds with a blow of the hand, and raise armies out of the ground with a stamp of the foot; in which nations perish, and new ones are born within ...
— Queen Hortense - A Life Picture of the Napoleonic Era • L. Muhlbach
... The myth originated in New Mexico in 1540. Antonio de Mendoza was the viceroy of New Spain. Having practically conquered the New World, the adventurers who formed his court, having no fighting to do with common enemies, began to hack each other. Opportunely ...
— The Round-up - A Romance of Arizona novelized from Edmund Day's melodrama • John Murray and Marion Mills Miller
... time the story passed through many forms and many phases—the myth, e.g. The Labors of Hercules; the legend, e.g. St. George and the Dragon; the fairy tale, e.g. Cinderella; the fable, e.g. The Fox and the Grapes; the allegory, e.g. Addison's The Vision of Mirza; the parable, e.g. The Prodigal Son. Sometimes it was merely to amuse, sometimes ...
— The Short-story • William Patterson Atkinson
... with myth and mystery, Hereward flashed into the fens and out again, like the lightning brand, destroying as he passed. And the hearts of all the French were turned to water; and the land had peace from its ...
— Hereward, The Last of the English • Charles Kingsley
... to my stool, feeling very small and yet indignant, for how was it possible to be definite about ghosts, or to explain the exact facts of the Mameena myth which clung to me ...
— Finished • H. Rider Haggard
... individual interpretation, the Word, with its accompanying myth of a loss, a substitute, and a recovery, becomes a symbol of the personal progress of a candidate from his first initiation to the completion of his course, when he receives a full development ...
— The Symbolism of Freemasonry • Albert G. Mackey
... drugs or wines and made them potent were believed to be of the same order of fact as the potency itself. But the human creature is curious and curiosity is bold. Hence, the discovery that a reported god may be a myth. ...
— The Necessity of Atheism • Dr. D.M. Brooks
... Syndicalism, talking about what he terms the INTUITION of Socialism, and he talks emphatically about the tremendous moral value of strikes, apart from any material gain achieved by them. He believes religiously in a General Strike as the great ideal, but considers it a myth capable of rousing enthusiasm in the workers, an ideal to which they must strive, a myth as inspiring as the belief of the early Christians in the Second Coming of Christ, which, although quite a false belief, ...
— Bergson and His Philosophy • J. Alexander Gunn
... be found useful and quite available to most teachers: Andersen's Norse Mythology, Mabie's Norse Stories, Mara Pratt's Stories from Norseland, Fiske's Myths and Myth Makers, Taylor's Primitive Culture, Vol. ...
— A Primary Reader - Old-time Stories, Fairy Tales and Myths Retold by Children • E. Louise Smythe
... ever existed. And this is a disputed point; for while there are those, like Father Colgan, whose clear faith accepts Saint Patrick just as he stands in history and tradition, yet, on the other hand, there are sceptics, like Ledwick, who contend that the saint is nothing but a prehistoric myth, floating about in the imagination of ...
— Saint Patrick - 1887 • Heman White Chaplin
... is probably a greater disadvantage than we are apt to suspect. Here, too, have existed hardly any of the conditions which obtained in older communities where great literature arose. There is no glamour of old Romance about our early history, no shading off from the actual into a dim region of myth and fable; our beginnings are clearly defined and of an eminently prosaic character. The early settlers were engaged in a hand-to-hand struggle with nature, and in the establishment of the primitive industries. Their strenuous pioneering days were followed by the feverish excitement ...
— An Anthology of Australian Verse • Bertram Stevens
... profession of reasoned atheism[44] he could hardly be omitted as the typical blasphemer. The most curious example of all is the Thais whom we find among the flatterers. She does not attain even to the dignity of a myth, being only a character in a play of Terence, and borrowed by Dante from Cicero; probably the strangest instance on record of the "realization" ...
— Dante: His Times and His Work • Arthur John Butler
... when men first essayed the attempt to fly. In myth, legend and tradition we find allusions to aerial flight and from the very dawn of authentic history, philosophers, poets, and writers have made allusion to the subject, showing that the idea must have early taken root in the restless human heart. ...
— Marvels of Modern Science • Paul Severing
... on the Campanile of Airolo. But he saw instead the fair myth of Endymion. This woman was a goddess to the end. For her no love could be degrading: she stood outside all degradation. This episode, which she thought so sordid, and which was so tragic for him, remained supremely beautiful. To such a height was he lifted, that without ...
— Where Angels Fear to Tread • E. M. Forster
... monkey, that we've been hearing so much of for some years back, and that the niggers on the African coast used to dilate about till they caused the very hair of my head to stand upon end? I'm determined to shoot a gorilla, or prove him to be a myth. And I mean you to come and help me, Ralph; he's quite in your way. A bit of natural history, I suppose, although he seems by all accounts to be a very unnatural monster. And Jack shall go too—I'm resolved on that; and we three shall roam the ...
— The Gorilla Hunters • R.M. Ballantyne
... violate; hidden from the sun (27) Its chill recesses; matted boughs entwined Prisoned the air within. No sylvan nymphs Here found a home, nor Pan, but savage rites And barbarous worship, altars horrible On massive stones upreared; sacred with blood Of men was every tree. If faith be given To ancient myth, no fowl has ever dared To rest upon those branches, and no beast Has made his lair beneath: no tempest falls, Nor lightnings flash upon it from the cloud. Stagnant the air, unmoving, yet the leaves Filled with mysterious trembling; dripped the streams From coal-black fountains; ...
— Pharsalia; Dramatic Episodes of the Civil Wars • Lucan
... the termination of the season of rest, in October, 1858, there was some noble hunting in the neighborhood of Hanover. Five years hence, bears and deer will be a tradition, panthers and raccoons a myth, partridges and quails a vain and melancholy recollection, in what shall then be known as what ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, No. 19, May, 1859 • Various
... courage; nay, rather, as his health grew weaker, did he redouble the pressure of his work. I think there is a grandeur in the story of the last five years of his life, that dwarfs even the tale of his rapid and splendid rise. It reads like some antique myth of the Titans defying Jove's thunder. There is about the man something indomitable and heroic. He had, as we have seen, given a series of readings in 1858-59; and he gave another in the years 1861 to 1863—successful ...
— Life of Charles Dickens • Frank Marzials
... arms. Is it because its shores are haunted with these vague Pagan influences that two convents have risen there to purge the atmosphere? From the Capuchin terrace you look across at the grey Franciscan monastery of Palazzuola, which is not less romantic certainly than the most obstinate myth it may have exorcised. The Capuchin garden is a wild tangle of great trees and shrubs and clinging, trembling vines which in these hard days are left to take care of themselves; a weedy garden, if there ever was one, but none the less charming for that, in the deepening ...
— Italian Hours • Henry James
... did so. Taddeo wrote commentaries on the works of Hippocrates and Galen, but he also translated the ethics of Aristotle, and did much to make the learning of the Arabs easily available for his students. His was a broad, liberal scholarship. Dr. Lewis Pilcher, in his article on "The Mondino Myth,"[14] does not hesitate to say that "to the spirit which, from his professorial chair, Taddeo infused into the teaching and study of medicine undoubtedly is due the high position which for many generations ...
— Old-Time Makers of Medicine • James J. Walsh
... came in sight, their dusty and sweaty shirts grew biting as the poisoned shirt of the Norse myth, their bare feet in the brown dirt grew distressingly flat and hoof-like, and their huge, dirty, brown, chapped, and swollen hands grew so repulsive that the mere remote possibility of some time in the far future "standing a chance" of having an introduction to her, caused them to wipe ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 20, July, 1891 • Various
... by his agglutinative Gallicised denomination of Charlemagne), was a man great in all ways, physically and mentally. Within a couple of centuries after his death Charlemagne became the centre of innumerable legends; and the myth-making process does not seem to have been sensibly interfered with by the existence of sober and truthful histories of the Emperor and of the times which immediately preceded and followed his reign, ...
— Lectures and Essays • Thomas Henry Huxley
... the story from her nurses when she had been a little girl, and she did not believe a word of it, any more than she believed that the marble statue of Cardinal Conti in the library really came down from its pedestal on the eve of All Souls' and walked through the state apartments, or the myth about the armour of Francesco Conti, of which the nurses used to tell her that on the anniversary of the night of his murder his eyes could be seen through the bars of the helmet, glowing with the infernal fire. As for any hidden treasure, ...
— The Heart of Rome • Francis Marion Crawford
... purple-mouthed violets, nor red ripe summer, with its wealth of roses, nor the rich fruit-harvest of autumnal suns, bring wisdom's goodness. The various months teach him no lesson. Let him go. He came like a shadow into our plot, so let him depart. He is not a myth, however, but flesh and blood mortality; and though we have only outlined his weakness—his love of gold, his cold, intriguing spirit—yet the sketch is such that, if he looks at it, he will have the felicity of seeing ...
— Daisy's Necklace - And What Came of It • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... has been employed by Scandinavian scholars in illustrating the symbols supposed to be couched under the myth of the Ygg-drasill, or the great Ash-tree. With this I shall not weary the reader; especially since large systems have been built on very small premises, and the erudition employed has been equally ingenious and unsatisfactory: I content myself ...
— Harold, Complete - The Last Of The Saxon Kings • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... is the Russian version of the myth of the Snow Maiden, which appears in the folk tales of all northern nations. Small at the beginning of the season, the child's rapid growth is emblematic of the rapid increase of the cold, and her sudden disappearance in the woods is typical of the melting of the last snows, which linger ...
— Contes et lgendes - 1re Partie • H. A. Guerber
... we must choose a new Leader, and then, With a Man at our head we shall quit us like men: We shall always retort with a sting when we're stung, With the bees in our bonnet, the D's on our tongue. And the words that are honeyed shall fade like a myth, When an ATKINSON stands in ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 101, August 1, 1891 • Various
... the Regent. Another yet states that Brummell, being asked to ring the said bell, replied, 'Your Royal Highness is close to it.' No one knows the truth of the legend, any more than whether Homer was a man or a myth. It surely does not matter. The friends quarrelled, and perhaps it was time they should do so, for they had never improved one another's morals; but it is only fair to the Beau to add that he always denied the whole affair, and that he himself gave as the ...
— The Wits and Beaux of Society - Volume 2 • Grace & Philip Wharton
... large man entered—a wonderfully fine specimen of Russian manhood. As he stood there, proud but respectful, his flaming red beard falling over his broad chest, he looked like some Viking who had just stepped out of an old myth. ...
— High Noon - A New Sequel to 'Three Weeks' by Elinor Glyn • Anonymous
... deal with the principal hero of Japanese legend, Yamato-Dake, the conqueror. His story is full of myth and fable, but there is history in it, too, and it is well worth the telling. Every ancient nation has its legendary hero, who performs wonderful feats, dares fearful perils, and has not only the strength of man but the power of magic and the ...
— Historic Tales, Vol. 12 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... youngest of the nations aped the legendary traditions of the oldest. After the potent and vigorous King Cotton was killed by starvation, Confederate finance treated him as Jewish myth declares dead King Solomon was treated. In his million-acred temple, he stood—cold, white and useless—leaning upon his broken staff; while timorous leadership gaped ...
— Four Years in Rebel Capitals - An Inside View of Life in the Southern Confederacy from Birth to Death • T. C. DeLeon
... of 1848 I sketched for the first time the complete myth of the "Nibelungen", such as it henceforth belongs to me as my poetic property. My next attempt at dramatizing the chief catastrophe of that great action for our theatre was "Siegfried's Death". After much wavering I was at last, in the autumn of 1850, on the point of sketching ...
— Correspondence of Wagner and Liszt, Volume 1 • Francis Hueffer (translator)
... shall not treat of writing them. That is a different matter, with pains and pleasures of its own, which do not correspond (the word fits nicely to this subject) with those of letters received. For 'tis a metaphysical mistake, or myth of language, like those victoriously exposed by the ingenious M. Tarde, to regard the reading of a letter as the symmetrical opposite (the right glove matching the left, or inside of an outside) of the writing thereof. Save in the case of lovers or moonstruck persons, like those ...
— Hortus Vitae - Essays on the Gardening of Life • Violet Paget, AKA Vernon Lee
... Wheeling station and to the telegraph office where he worked half the night on a rude drawing he was trying to make of the parts of his plant setting machine, oblivious to the fact that he had created a myth that would run through the whole countryside. The French boys and their sisters stoutly declared that a ghost had come into the cabbage fields and had threatened them with death if they did not go away and quit working at night. In a trembling voice their mother backed up their assertion. ...
— Poor White • Sherwood Anderson
... one of the strongholds of Buddhism, I lived nearly a year, engaged in educational work, having many opportunities of learning both the scholastic and the popular forms of Shint[o] and of Buddhism. I was surrounded by monasteries, temples, shrines, and a landscape richly embroidered with myth and legend. During my four years' residence and travel in the Empire, I perceived that in all things the people of ...
— The Religions of Japan - From the Dawn of History to the Era of Meiji • William Elliot Griffis
... two young men had lived among the Samanas for about three years and had shared their exercises, some news, a rumour, a myth reached them after being retold many times: A man had appeared, Gotama by name, the exalted one, the Buddha, he had overcome the suffering of the world in himself and had halted the cycle of rebirths. He was said to wander through the land, teaching, surrounded by ...
— Siddhartha • Herman Hesse
... the tenor without hesitation: "I know that, and I have thought about it. No, I can think of no one. I know you Americans often speak of the Black Hand as a myth coined originally by a newspaper writer. Perhaps it has no organisation. But, Professor Kennedy, to me it is no myth. What if the real Black Hand is any gang of criminals who choose to use that convenient name to extort money? ...
— The Silent Bullet • Arthur B. Reeve
... resemble the giants in the old myth, the gigantes, the earth-born, sons of Gaia, who, thrown in the wrestle, touched her bosom, and rose stronger than before defeat. England stood this test in the sixteenth century, rising from that long humiliating war with France, ...
— The Origins and Destiny of Imperial Britain - Nineteenth Century Europe • J. A. Cramb
... revelation— revolutionary revelation, I may say—that the earth is embosomed in the infinite heavens the same as the stars that shine above us, that the creative energy is working now and here underfoot, the same as in the ages of myth and miracle; in other words, that God is really immanent in his universe, and inseparable from it; that we have been in heaven and under the celestial laws all our lives, and knew it not. Science thus kills religion, poetry, and romance only so far as it dispels our illusions and brings ...
— Time and Change • John Burroughs
... idea of the stenographer back of a screen in the Foreign Office has been abroad, but it is entirely unfounded. Several years ago a Foreign Secretary, perhaps Lord Salisbury, put a screen behind his desk to keep off the draughts and from this precaution the myth arose that it shielded a stenographer who took a complete record of ambassadorial conversations. After an ambassador leaves, the Foreign Secretary, however, does write out the important points in the conversation. Copies are made and printed, and sent to the King, the Prime Minister, ...
— The Life and Letters of Walter H. Page, Volume I • Burton J. Hendrick
... Momoko-him['e] ("Peach-Child Princess"), Takimono-him['e] ("Incense Princess"), and Sasagani-him['e] ("Spider Princess"). Some of these names are difficult to explain,—especially the last, which reminds us of the Greek legend of Arachne. Probably the Greek myth and the Chinese story have nothing whatever in common; but in old Chinese books there is recorded a curious fact which might well suggest a relationship. In the time of the Chinese Emperor Ming Hwang (whom the Japanese ...
— The Romance of the Milky Way - And Other Studies & Stories • Lafcadio Hearn
... this General Clements seems to be a myth, and the talk now is of Rundle and Ian Hamilton, who are supposed to be getting round De Wet from other quarters, while we drive him up this way into their arms. It is said we are going to Bethlehem. I forgot an important event of the evening in the arrival of a bag of mails, parcels only, brought ...
— In the Ranks of the C.I.V. • Erskine Childers
... the President, Mr. Lincoln represents nothing beyond the unavoidable constitutional formula. For all other purposes, as an acting, directing, inspiring, or combining power or agency, Mr. Lincoln becomes a myth. His reality is only manifested by preserving slavery, by sticking to McClellan, by distributing offices, by receiving inspirations from Mr. Seward, and by digging the country's grave. So it is from March 4, 1861, up to this, ...
— Diary from March 4, 1861, to November 12, 1862 • Adam Gurowski
... absurd: it is unjust in its implications towards both God and man. And then, and perhaps we need not say any more about it, we know that it is not true. It did not even originate in the Bible, it did not even originate among the Jews: it is nothing in the world but a pagan myth imported into Jewish tradition just a few hundred years before the birth of Jesus. It is of no more authority in rational human thought than the story of Jason ...
— Our Unitarian Gospel • Minot Savage
... 'so sweet that the very stars drew near to listen.' Later on in the history of the world we find this idea of the effects of music on animals and stars entertained both in Greece and India. The attention of the starry bodies can only be regarded as a beautiful myth, but the writer of this paper personally tested the animal love of music some years ago, when surrounded by a formidable herd of wild cattle ...
— Chatterbox, 1906 • Various
... civilization running smoothly—a well-dressed, easy-going people on the streets and in the cafes, every business house working to full capacity, and all at first glance going well. The children, and especially those of the working class, look healthy and full of life. Starving Vienna seems somewhat of a myth. ...
— Europe—Whither Bound? - Being Letters of Travel from the Capitals of Europe in the Year 1921 • Stephen Graham
... And then again he told himself that, thinking so much of Gerelda, he had imagined that the face he had seen for a moment in the flash-light bore a striking resemblance to hers. And he persuaded himself to believe that the fisherman's story was a myth. ...
— Kidnapped at the Altar - or, The Romance of that Saucy Jessie Bain • Laura Jean Libbey
... taken out of holes every bit as big as themselves. Considering all these things, it would be wonderful indeed if toads were not often found in places and conditions which would naturally give rise to the familiar myth. Throw in a little allowance for human credulity, human exaggeration, and human love of the marvellous, and you have all the elements of a very excellent toad-in-the-hole in the highest ...
— Falling in Love - With Other Essays on More Exact Branches of Science • Grant Allen
... she let me see them; nay, I could have sworn there was a flash of playful mockery in them when she said: "Dear heart! how masterful rough you have grown, all in a moment, my Lord." And then the beautiful eyes filled and she said, "Poor Dick!" in a way to make me suffer all the torments of that old myth-king who could never quaff the water that was ever rising to ...
— The Master of Appleby • Francis Lynde
... did live as a Saint like Patrick, Phadrig as ye call him, who never existed at all. At laste, that's what some of them say. Ye mix the life an' work of half-a-dozen men, an' ye say 'twas all Saint Patrick. Sure, most of him is a myth, a sort of a fog, jist. Ye can't agree among yerselves as to whin he was born." Turning to me, the bearded man said, "Did ye ever hear the pome ...
— Ireland as It Is - And as It Would be Under Home Rule • Robert John Buckley (AKA R.J.B.)
... person! Why, Malkiel is surely a myth, Hennessey, a number of people, a company, a syndicate, or something of ...
— The Prophet of Berkeley Square • Robert Hichens
... surrounded the history of Linlithgow, whose every stone spoke volumes of the storied past. The traditions of the place go far back into the dim shadowy regions where historic fact merges into myth and legend. Solid ground is only reached about the twelfth century. The English had possession of the palace in 1313, and the way it was taken from them was probably unique in the history of such places. The garrison was supplied ...
— From John O'Groats to Land's End • Robert Naylor and John Naylor
... a myth," Helen replied, somewhat puzzled to account for the impression the pale young woman made on her. "It is the invention of my aunt and our family physician. They have a theory that my lungs are affected, and that the air of the ...
— Free Joe and Other Georgian Sketches • Joel Chandler Harris
... much research and investigation might be employed. But there is no need why these researches should be extended to the region of fancy. Gargantua has been proved by some to be of Celtic origin. Very often he is a solar myth, and the statement that Rabelais only collected popular traditions and gave new life to ancient legends is said to be proved by the large number of megalithic monuments to which is attached the name of Gargantua. It was, of course, quite right to make a list of these, to draw up, as it were, a chart ...
— Gargantua and Pantagruel, Complete. • Francois Rabelais
... where the gigantic stranger was most likely to be found. To north and northeast of the mountain went the two Armstrongs, seeking the stranger's trail; while to south and southeastward explored the Crimmins boys. If real, the giant bull had to be located; if a myth, he had to be exploded before raising impossible hopes in the hearts ...
— Kings in Exile • Sir Charles George Douglas Roberts
... labours of these annalists and literati, was so Chinese that its authors did not hesitate to draw largely upon the cosmogonic myths of the Middle Kingdom, and to put into the mouths of Japanese monarchs, or into their decrees, quotations from Chinese literature. "As a repertory of ancient Japanese myth and legend there is little to choose between the Records and the Chronicles. The former is, on the whole, the fuller of the two, and contains legends which the latter passes over in silence; but the Chronicles, as we now ...
— A History of the Japanese People - From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era • Frank Brinkley and Dairoku Kikuchi |
