"Prester" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Kaffir rising, and by a combination of luck and courage manages to frustrate it. From beginning to end it is a book of stark adventure. The leader of the rising is a black missionary, who believes himself the incarnation of the mediaeval Abyssinian emperor Prester John. By means of a perverted Christianity, and the possession of the ruby collar which for centuries has been the Kaffir fetish, he organizes the natives of Southern Africa into a great army. But a revolution ...
— Daisy's Aunt • E. F. (Edward Frederic) Benson
... fetch you a tooth-picker now from the farthest inch of Asia; bring you the length of Prester John's foot; fetch you a hair off the great Cham's beard; do you any embassage ...
— David Elginbrod • George MacDonald
... Afrike beneath the red sea, dwelleth the great and mighty Emperour and Christian king Prester Iohn, well knowen to the Portugales in their voyages to Calicut. His dominions reach very farre on euery side: and hath vnder him many other Kings both christian and heathen that pay him tribute. This mightie prince ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques, and Discoveries of - The English Nation, Vol. 11 • Richard Hakluyt
... of mystery about this peculiar outbreak of lawlessness that seemed to be directed so pointedly against the British trade. The town of Rio Medio was alluded to as one of the unapproachable towns of the earth—closed, like the capital of Prester John to the travellers, or Mecca to the infidels. Nobody I ever met in Jamaica had set eyes on the place. The impression prevailed that no stranger could come out of it alive. Incredible stories were told of it in the ...
— Romance • Joseph Conrad and F.M. Hueffer
... whites and their new parents, were doubtless eagerly and bitterly canvassed. It was felt that a few years ago the honours would have gone elsewhere. In this unwonted business, in this reception of some hitherto undreamed-of and outlandish potentate—some Prester John or old Assaracus—a few years back it would have been the part of Moipu to play the hero and the host, and his young men would have accompanied and adorned the various celebrations as the acknowledged leaders of society. And ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 18 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... of dyvers colours as ye redd, grene, black, and white. And in our land be also unicornes and these Unicornes slee many Lyons.... Also there dare no man make a lye in our lande, for if he dyde he sholde incontynent be sleyn."—Mediaeval Epistle, of Pope Prester John. ...
— Collected Poems - Volume One (of 2) • Alfred Noyes
... of the man. It belongs more properly to him. He is ambitious; and the role which he first assumed is one which ambition can only spoil. He has but a weak faith in principles, and flinches and flies off to "Prester John," or somewhere into the clouds, when at last principle and sentiment must either fly off or fairly take the stubborn British taurus by the horns. And in truth, his early creed was in part merely passionate and ...
— Atlantic Monthly,Volume 14, No. 82, August, 1864 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... observe: "Our sentimental friend the moon Or possibly (fantastic, I confess) It may be Prester John's balloon Or an old battered lantern hung aloft To light poor travellers to their distress." She ...
— Prufrock and Other Observations • T. S. Eliot
... Their frequent use and abuse brought ecclesiastical censures into public contempt, and princes soon ceased to be frightened with false fires. James IV., when excommunicated, said he would appeal to Prester John, and that he would side with any council against the Pope, even if it contained only three bishops.[653] The Vicar of Christ was lost in the petty Italian prince. Corruptio optimi pessima. The lower dragged the higher nature down. ...
— Henry VIII. • A. F. Pollard
... Ages the Church of the East had spread over the whole of Central Asia. The curious legends of the powerful kingdom of Prester John, somewhere in the heart of Asia, grew out of the conversion, by Nestorian merchants in the eleventh century, of a certain King of Kerait, a kingdom of Tartary to the north of China. This king is said to have requested that missionaries might be sent to him from the Church {97} ...
— The Church and the Barbarians - Being an Outline of the History of the Church from A.D. 461 to A.D. 1003 • William Holden Hutton
... unknown. Whereas, the dream of Columbus's life was to make his way by an unknown route to what was known, or to what he considered to be known. He wished to find out an easy pathway to the territories of Kublai Khan, or Prester-John. ...
— The Life of Columbus • Arthur Helps
... long and so large and great upon his feet, as though they were horns of great oxen or of bugles or of kine; so that men make cups of them, to drink of. From thence go men, by many journeys, through the land of Prester John, the great Emperor ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Volume 19 - Travel and Adventure • Various
... their employment in Ireland and the Low Countries—how they helped Drake to burn St. Domingo, or grave Maurice to hold out Breda. Tom Coryatt, or such weak-pated travellers, would babble of the Rialto and Prester John, and exhibit specimens of unicorns' horns or palm-leaves from the river Nilus. The courtier talked of the fair lady who gave him the glove which he wore in his hat as a favour; the poet of the last satire of Marston ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury
... Letters. Whoever gave these the title of Golden Epistles had another kind of opinion of them than I have. The Courtier says, that till his time it was a disgrace to a gentleman to ride on one of these creatures: but the Abyssinians, on the contrary, the nearer they are to the person of Prester John, love to be mounted upon large mules, for ...
— The Essays of Montaigne, Complete • Michel de Montaigne
... who is to him, as to many people, more than entirely the enigma of an enigma, Hermes Trismegistus, or the mediaeval Prester John. Not only are most people unable to solve the enigma, but they have no idea of what it is that they are to solve. I have to inform Schlosser that there are three separate questions about Junius, of which he ...
— The Notebook of an English Opium-Eater • Thomas de Quincey
... Society." He himself spoke to St. Ignatius about it, and I was told to remind him of it when the work in regard to the founding of the college was finished. And when it was over, and the business with Prester John settled and the courier had departed, we continued the history on the 9th of March, 1555. About this time Pope Julius became ill, and died on the 23d of the same month. The narrative was then postponed until the election of the new Pope, who died soon after ...
— The Autobiography of St. Ignatius • Saint Ignatius Loyola
... will give you a piece of wax, with which you may take an impression of the wards, for I have taken such a liking to you, I will get a locksmith, a friend of mine, to make new keys, and then I can come in at night and teach you to play better than Prester John in the Indies. It is a thousand pities that a voice like yours should be lost for want of the accompaniment of the guitar; for I would have you to know, brother Luis, that the finest voice in the world loses its perfection when it is not accompanied by some instrument, ...
— The Exemplary Novels of Cervantes • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... or sacrifyce that to her I may do, fulfyllyng obedience que par aulcun seruice ou sacrifice que luy puisse prester, accomplissant ...
— An Introductorie for to Lerne to Read, To Pronounce, and to Speke French Trewly • Anonymous
... Country. Prester John, in his letter to Manuel Comn[e]nus, says his land is the home of men with horns; of one-eyed men (the eye being in some cases before the head, and in some cases behind it); of giants, forty ells in height (i.e. 120 feet); of the phoenix, ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook, Vol. 3 • E. Cobham Brewer
... Tuttee; Saw the Chrim burn "Musko"; speaks with bated breath Of his sale to the great Turk, when peril of death Chained him to oar their galleys on the sea Until, as gunner, in Persia they set him free To fight their foes. Of Prester John he saith Astounding things. But Queen Elizabeth He worships, and his dear Lord on Calvary. Quaint is the phrase, ingenuous the wit Of this great childish seaman in Palestine, Mocked home through Italy after his release With threats of the Armada; and all of it ...
— The Advance of English Poetry in the Twentieth Century • William Lyon Phelps
... at sea some years, he was unfortunately cast away on that part of Africa inhabited by the Hottentots. Here he met with a strange book, which the Hottentots did not understand, and which gave him some account of Prester John's country; and being a lad of great curiosity and resolution, he determined to see it; accordingly he set out on the pursuit, attended by a young lion, which he had tamed, and made so fond of him, that he followed him like a dog, and obeyed all his commands; ...
— The Story of the White Mouse • Unknown
... and confections of Egypt and the fruits and wines of Greece, and the woven stuffs of Asia till the marts of Flanders had the savour of Araby. Presently in our booths could be seen silks of Italy, and choice metals from Innsbruck, and furs from Muscovy, and strange birds and beasts from Prester John's country, and at our fairs such a concourse of outlandish traders as put Venice to shame. 'Twas a long fight and a bitter for Willebald and me, since, mark you, we had to make a new road over icy mountains, with a horde of freebooters hanging ...
— The Path of the King • John Buchan
... win, I'll ride to the end of the world—the very gates of Jericho, and the judgment-seat of Prester John, for thee!" ...
— Bride of Lammermoor • Sir Walter Scott
... Will your Grace command mee any seruice to the worlds end? I will goe on the slightest arrand now to the Antypodes that you can deuise to send me on: I will fetch you a tooth-picker now from the furthest inch of Asia: bring you the length of Prester Iohns foot: fetch you a hayre off the great Chams beard: doe you any embassage to the Pigmies, rather then hould three words conference, with this Harpy: you haue no employment for me? Pedro. None, but to desire your ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare
... ferocious Hospitaller Folko of Heydenbraten was about to condemn him. It was but a ring, with an emerald in it, that Bevis knew to be sham, and not worth a groat. Rebecca knew about the value of jewels too; but ah! she valued this one more than all the diamonds in Prester John's turban. She kissed it; she cried over it; she wore it in her bosom always and when she knelt down at night and morning, she held it between her folded hands on her neck. . . . Young Bevis Marks ...
— Burlesques • William Makepeace Thackeray
... fixed belief that he was an abstract idea. And I remember that once, when I happened to mention that I had dined at a coffee-house in company with Abraham Newland, everybody looked scornfully at me, as though I had pretended to have played at billiards with Prester John, or to have had an affair of honor with the Pope. And, by the way, the Pope would be a very improper person to murder: for he has such a virtual ubiquity as the father of Christendom, and, like the cuckoo, is so often heard but never seen, that I suspect most people regard ...
— Miscellaneous Essays • Thomas de Quincey
... meat; and that is of fine precious stones, bound all about with purified gold and precious stones and great pearls; and the steps that he goeth up to the table be of precious stones mixed with gold. Under the firmament is not so great a lord, nor so mighty, nor so rich, as the great Khan. Neither Prester John, that is emperor of the high India, nor the Sultan of Babylonia, nor the Emperor of Persia. All these be not in comparison to the great Khan, neither of might, nor of nobleness, nor of royalty, nor of riches; for in all these he passeth ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 26, December, 1859 • Various
... English peerage and squireage. I sent the tract to Capt. Speke,[102] shortly after his arrival in England, thinking he might like {71} to see the old names of the Ethiopian provinces. But I first made a copy of all that relates to Prester John,[103] himself a paradox. The tract contains, inter alia, an account of the four empires; of the great Turk, the great Tartar, the great Sophy, and the great Prester John. This word great (grand), which ...
— A Budget of Paradoxes, Volume I (of II) • Augustus De Morgan
... of Egypt, beyond Nubia, lies a little known and mysterious country now called Abyssinia, formerly a part of Ethiopia, the wonderful kingdom of the renowned Prester John and once ...
— Our Sailors - Gallant Deeds of the British Navy during Victoria's Reign • W.H.G. Kingston
... Portuguese in their travels and voyages discovered a Christian king among the Abyssinians, called Baleel-Gian, they confounded him with the potentate already spoken of. Nor was the blunder extraordinary, since the original Prester John was said to reign over a remote part of India; and the ancients included in that name Ethiopia and all the regions of Africa and Asia bordering on the Red Sea and on the commercial route from Egypt ...
— The Life and Voyages of Christopher Columbus (Vol. II) • Washington Irving
... getting rid of their enemies has given us the word assassin. To quote from Mandeville's "Travels," which has the essentials of the story, though the chief is here called Gatholonabes, and his domain is not in Syria but in the island Mistorak, "in the Lordship of Prester John:" ...
— Coleridge's Ancient Mariner and Select Poems • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... done—for many a long year, in some forgotten corner of his trunk or lumber-room, could no more affect the construction of the indenture between himself and Squire, or afford him any defence against performance of his part of that indenture, than if he had founded on the statutes of Prester John, on the laws of Hum-Bug, Fee-Faw-Fum, or any other Emperor of China for the time being. And so, after hearing very deliberately all that the attorney for Jack had to say to the contrary, they decided that Jack must ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXIX. - March, 1843, Vol. LIII. • Various
... the good man, "what ignoramuses you travellers are! You affect to know what kind of slippers Prester John wears and to have been admitted to the bed-chamber of the Pagoda of China; and yet, when one comes to sound you, you are as ignorant of everything a man of real learning knows as an Englishman is of ...
— Devereux, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... asked the canon, "that is not wholly barbarous and uncultured can find pleasure in reading of how a great tower full of knights sails away across the sea like a ship with a fair wind, and will be to-night in Lombardy and to-morrow morning in the land of Prester John of ...
— The Story of Don Quixote • Arvid Paulson, Clayton Edwards, and Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... Parliament I was Prester John. Devout was my intent; I haunted meetings, Used zealous greetings, Crept full of devotion; Smectymnuus won me first, then holy Nye prevail, (111) Then Captain Kiffin (112) slops me with John of Leyden's tail, Then Fox and Naylor bangs me with Jacob Beamond's flail. ...
— Cavalier Songs and Ballads of England from 1642 to 1684 • Charles Mackay
... The Army was advancing to the House—the broken-down, ragged, wasted remnant of an Army of Heroes. Sent forth, too late, to 'smash' Prester John, and relieve the Equator, they had all but overcome the Desert, and had only been defeated by space. Too many of them lay like the vanished legions of Cambyses, swathed by the sand and lulled by the music of the night wind. The remnant ...
— 'That Very Mab' • May Kendall and Andrew Lang
... discovery of those seas, and undertook to double the Cape of Good Hope, upon the account of traffic, which he desired to establish betwixt the crown of Portugal and the emperor of Ethiopia, commonly called Prester John. This enterprise having succeeded, the kings of Portugal, Alphonso V., John II., and Emanuel I., followed it so happily, that, by little and little, they completed ...
— The Works of John Dryden, Volume XVI. (of 18) - The Life of St. Francis Xavier • John Dryden
... lands and to sample new ways. She could not sail across the ocean in search of them as he had done—he was her great adventure, he realized, a personified book of strange tales to fire her imagination, as his had been stirred as a boy by stories of the kingdom of Prester John, of the El Dorado, of the Spanish Main and of the lost Raleigh Colony. The tobacco, which he had learned to smoke while with the Pamunkeys, soothed him; he was in no immediate danger; the warm sun was pleasant and the bright-eyed girl beside him was a sympathetic audience. ...
— The Princess Pocahontas • Virginia Watson
... feel as keenly interested in any real living cobra or anaconda as in the non-existent great sea-serpent? Are ghosts and vampires less attractive objects of popular study than cats and donkeys? Can the present King of Abyssinia, interviewed by our own correspondent, equal the romantic charm of Prester John, or the butcher in the next street rival the personality of Sir Roger Charles Doughty Tichborne, Baronet? No, the real fact is this: if there were thunderbolts, the question of their nature and ...
— Falling in Love - With Other Essays on More Exact Branches of Science • Grant Allen
... little children"; in other words like jovial, middle-aged swashbucklers, and protest our belief in Flying Pigs, Pusses in Boots, Jacks on the top of Beanstalks, Old Women who live in Shoes, Fairies, Fandangos, Prester Johns, and Blue Devils, there is no hope for us and we are condemned to a dreadful purgatory of pedantic and atheistic dullness, along with Li Hung Chang, George Eliot, Herbert Spencer and other heretics whose view of the Dogma ...
— One Hundred Best Books • John Cowper Powys
... tell you a pretty passage that befell between the Golden King and Prester John, as it was related by the ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo, Volume 2 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa
... sons was sent with an army against the Indians, who subdued the lesser India. These Indians are the Black Saracens, who are also named Ethiopians. From thence the Mongal army marched to fight against the Christians dwelling in the greater India, and the king of that country, known by the name of Prester John, came forth with his army against them. This prince caused a number of hollow copper figures to be made, resembling men, which were stuffed with combustibles, and set upon horses, each having a man behind on the horse, with a pair of bellows to stir up the fire. When approaching to give battle, ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 1 • Robert Kerr
... world learned to know as Farther India. From far-voyaging sailors he brought home accounts of Zanzibar and Madagascar, and the semi-Christian country of Abyssinia, where some accounts located that mysterious potentate called Prester John. He had traversed Persia and had picked up a vast amount of information concerning the country of Siberia, with its polar snows and bears, its dog-sledges, and its almost everlasting winter. He traversed ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 5 of 8 • Various
... prison, in prison already himself, for he may not go where he will. For if he could he would go into Portugal, Italy, Spain, France, Germany, and England, and as far in the other direction too—both into Prester John's land and into ...
— Dialogue of Comfort Against Tribulation - With Modifications To Obsolete Language By Monica Stevens • Thomas More
... the Barbanichs, the Queen of the Basques, the Consort of the Soldan, the Empress of Osbech, the Ciancianfera of Nornieca, the Semistante of Berlinzone, and the Scalpedra of Narsia. But why seek to enumerate them all? They include all the queens in the world, ay, even to the Schinchimurra of Prester John, who has the horns sprouting out of her nether end: so there's for you. Now when these ladies have done with the wine and the comfits, they tread a measure or two, each with the man at whose behest ...
— The Decameron, Vol. II. • Giovanni Boccaccio
... went and I wandered on and on Till I came to the kingdom of Prester John; And there I stood on a crystal stool And sang the song of 'The First Wise Fool': Oh, I sang it low and I sang it high Till John he whimpered and piped ...
— The Vagabond and Other Poems from Punch • R. C. Lehmann
... chronology of the mendacious Septuagint, it is laid down that the Greek and Roman history, soon after both had formally commenced, flowed apart for centuries; nor did they so much as hear of each other (unless as we moderns heard of Prester John in Abyssinia, or of the Great Mogul in India), until the Greek colonies in Calabria, etc., began to have a personal meaning for a Roman ear, or until Sicily (as the common field for Greek, Roman, and Carthaginian) began to have a dangerous meaning for all three. As to the Romans, ...
— The Posthumous Works of Thomas De Quincey, Vol. II (2 vols) • Thomas De Quincey
... If he removed from one place to another, he was likely to change his name, and to become known, say at Winchester, as John de Nottingham; or if his father were a priest who was a well-known person, he would not improbably be styled John Fiz-al-Prester. [Note 1.] It will readily be seen that the majority of these names were not likely to descend to a second generation. The son of John William-son would be Henry John-son, or Henry Alice-son; he might or might not retain the personal name, or the trade-name; ...
— One Snowy Night - Long ago at Oxford • Emily Sarah Holt
... letter supposed to have emanated from the mysterious if not mythical Prester John, it is written: 'The river Indus which issues out of Paradise flows among the plains through a certain province, and it expands, embracing the whole province with its various windings. There are found emeralds, sapphires, carbuncles, topazes, ...
— Storyology - Essays in Folk-Lore, Sea-Lore, and Plant-Lore • Benjamin Taylor
... Abyssinia, with a show of truth, as the seat of the famous Priest-King. However, still some doubted. John de Piano Carpini and Marco Polo, though they acknowledged the existence of a Christian monarch in Abyssinia, yet stoutly maintained as well that Prester John of popular belief reigned in splendour somewhere in ...
— Legends That Every Child Should Know • Hamilton Wright Mabie
... now the law of the land throughout the vast regions of Australasia, and of America north of the Rio Grande. The names of the plays that Shakespeare wrote are household words in the mouths of mighty nations, whose wide domains were to him more unreal than the realm of Prester John. Over half the descendants of their fellow countrymen of that day now dwell in lands which, when these three Englishmen were born, held not a single white inhabitant; the race which, when they were in their prime, was hemmed ...
— The Winning of the West, Volume One - From the Alleghanies to the Mississippi, 1769-1776 • Theodore Roosevelt
... and, as you said yourself, to die and go to the devil is a pity for anyone. As for why I sell so cheap, I must explain to you there is a peculiarity about the bottle. Long ago, when the devil brought it first upon earth, it was extremely expensive, and was sold first of all to Prester John for many millions of dollars; but it cannot be sold at all, unless sold at a loss. If you sell it for as much as you paid for it, back it comes to you again like a homing pigeon. It follows that the price has kept falling in these centuries, ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 17 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... were indistinguishable, in European imagination, from the general multitude of fictitious countries mentioned in fairy-tales or in romances of chivalry. Perhaps no part of Marco's story was so likely to interest his readers as his references to Prester John. In the course of the twelfth century the notion had somehow gained possession of the European mind that somewhere out in the dim vastness of the Orient there dwelt a mighty Christian potentate, known as John the Presbyter or "Prester."[333] At different times he was identified with ...
— The Discovery of America Vol. 1 (of 2) - with some account of Ancient America and the Spanish Conquest • John Fiske
... is called the country of Prester or Presbyter John. We have formerly, in the First Part of this work, had occasion to notice the strange idea of a Christian prince and priest, who was supposed to have ruled among the pagan nations of eastern Tartary. Driven from this false notion, by a more thorough knowledge of Asia, the ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. II • Robert Kerr
... torches, worth two livres a piece; and six demi-queues* of Beaune wine, white and claret, the best that could be found. I have it from my husband, who is a cinquantenier**, at the Parloir-aux Bourgeois, and who was this morning comparing the Flemish ambassadors with those of Prester John and the Emperor of Trebizond, who came from Mesopotamia to Paris, under the last king, and who ...
— Notre-Dame de Paris - The Hunchback of Notre Dame • Victor Hugo
... am in a wayward mood this morning. I received yesterday the last proof-sheets of Woodstock, and I ought to correct them. Now, this ought sounds as like as possible to must, and must I cannot abide. I would go to Prester John's country of free good-will, sooner than I would must it to Edinburgh. Yet this is all folly, and silly folly too; and so must shall be for once obeyed after I have thus written myself out ...
— The Journal of Sir Walter Scott - From the Original Manuscript at Abbotsford • Walter Scott
... said Sidney, who did not allow the sense of defeat to overcome his duty, "and be certain to play those balls well back. It was all through my stepping out to them that caused my collapse. Only be cautious and take things coolly, and you and Prester John will ...
— Tom Finch's Monkey - and How he Dined with the Admiral • John C. Hutcheson
... from the sultan such passports and letters as he might stand in need of, to the other princes in those parts. He then bought a camel, hired proper servants, and set off on his travels. He went through Turkey, Persia, and from thence to Carthage; he next went into the country of Prester John, who rides upon a white elephant, and has kings to wait on him. Fortunatus made him some rich presents, and went on to Calcutta; and, in coming back, he took Jerusalem in the way, and so came again to Alexandria, where he had the good fortune ...
— The Fairy Book - The Best Popular Stories Selected and Rendered Anew • Dinah Maria Mulock (AKA Miss Mulock)
... summer. This is the country of the "Thousand Springs" mentioned by the Chinese pilgrim Huen T'sang, and where was established the kingdom of Black China, supposed by many to have been one of the kingdoms of "Prester John." But far away to our left were the white sands of the Ak-Kum, over which the cloudless atmosphere quivers incessantly, like the blasts of a furnace. Of all these deserts, occupying probably one half of the whole Turkestan ...
— Across Asia on a Bicycle • Thomas Gaskell Allen and William Lewis Sachtleben
... complaisantly. "Know that many strange nations lie betwixt there and the end of the world. There is the country of the Amazons, and the country of the dwarfs, and the country of the fair but evil women who slay with beholding, like the basilisk. Beyond that again is the kingdom of Prester John and of the great Cham. These things I know for very sooth, for I had them from that pious Christian and valiant knight, Sir John de Mandeville, who stopped twice at Beaulieu on his way to and ...
— The White Company • Arthur Conan Doyle
... description of their effects on some of Cato's soldiers. The first bitten was the standard-bearer Aulus, by a dipsas, which afflicted him with intolerable thirst; next Sabellus by a seps, a minute creature whose bite was followed by an instantaneous corruption of the whole body; [59] then Nasidius by a prester which caused his form to swell to an unrecognisable size, and so on through the list of serpents, each episode closing with a brilliant epigram which clenches the effect. [60] Trivialities like these would spoil the greatest poem ever penned. It need not ...
— A History of Roman Literature - From the Earliest Period to the Death of Marcus Aurelius • Charles Thomas Cruttwell
... outlandish in appearance, while many of them have significations which are conspicuously and ludicrously inappropriate. For example, a lager-beer saloon in one of our large cities is kept by Mr. Heiliggeist ("Holy Ghost"); a cigar-shop in another place belongs to Mr. Priesterjahn ("Prester John"); while the pastor of a devout German flock in a third locality is the Rev. Mr. Wuestling ("low scoundrel"). The Hon. Carl Schurz, too, is hardly the sort of man to be named "apron," though it is certainly true that his name is in this country ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - Vol. XVII, No. 102. June, 1876. • Various
... leu le vostre; et sur ce leur ay dict: "Sire Michel, sire Bonaventure, La soeur du Roy a pour moy faict ce dit." Lors eulx cuydans que fusse en grand credict, M'ont appele monsieur a cry et cor, Et m'a valu vostre escript aultant qu'or; Car promis m'ont non seulement d'attendre, Mais d'en prester, foy de marchant, encor, Et j'ay promis, foy de Clement, ...
— Avril - Being Essays on the Poetry of the French Renaissance • H. Belloc
... extravaganza; air drawn dagger, bugbear, nightmare. flying Dutchman, great sea serpent, man in the moon, castle in the air, pipe dream, pie-in-the-sky, chateau en Espagne [Fr.]; Utopia, Atlantis^, happy valley, millennium, fairyland; land of Prester John, kindgom of Micomicon; work of fiction &c (novel) 594; Arabian nights^; le pot au lait [Fr.]; dream of Alnashar &c (hope) 858 [Obs.]. illusion &c (error) 495; phantom &c (fallacy of vision) 443; Fata Morgana &c (ignis fatuus) 423 [Lat.]; vapor &c (cloud) 353; stretch ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... its headquarters at Karakorum. The Syrian Christians, through whom the report came, misinterpreted his Mongolian title Ung-Khan as denoting a priest-king named John, and it was this distant Eastern potentate who came to be known in Europe as Presbyter Johannes or Prester John. It was the Syrian Christians who, in their desire to outvie the boastful arrogance of their Latin neighbours, together with many apochryphal tales invented a letter from this dignitary to some of the sovereigns ...
— The Church and the Empire - Being an Outline of the History of the Church - from A.D. 1003 to A.D. 1304 • D. J. Medley
... terrible storms which blow ever around the Cape de Boa Esperanza; and finally, we have sailed away out over the great ocean beyond, amid the palm-clad coral islands, with the knowledge that the realms of Prester John lie somewhere behind the golden haze which shimmers upon the horizon. After such a flight as that we would feel, as we came back to the Hampshire village and the dull realities of country life, like wild birds who had been snared by the fowler and clapped into narrow ...
— Micah Clarke - His Statement as made to his three Grandchildren Joseph, - Gervas and Reuben During the Hard Winter of 1734 • Arthur Conan Doyle
... screens and secret gardens And insect-laden skies— Where fiery plains stretch on and on To the purple country of Prester John And the ...
— The Ballad of the White Horse • G.K. Chesterton
... land-crabs as they scuttled over the stones, the place was still. The coast Indians were understood to say that among the mountains dwelt a chief whom they called a saint, who wore a flowing robe of white and never spoke aloud, ordering his subjects by signs. This was surely Prester John, the shadowy king of a shadowy kingdom, of whom much was said and written a few centuries ago. He was declared by one author to rule a part of India and was reputed to be a Nestorian priest who had made himself king of the Naymans. Other travellers placed him in China, ...
— Myths & Legends of our New Possessions & Protectorate • Charles M. Skinner
... over France, Provence, Italy, Spain, Germany, England; spring, spring, nothing but spring even in the mysterious countries governed by the Grail King, by the Fairy Morgana, by Queen Proserpine, by Prester John; nay, in the new Jerusalem, in the kingdom of Heaven itself, nothing but spring; till one longs for a bare twig, for a yellow leaf, for a frozen gutter, as for a draught of water in the desert. The green fields and meadows enamelled ...
— Euphorion - Being Studies of the Antique and the Mediaeval in the - Renaissance - Vol. I • Vernon Lee
... Prester John, who was still considered to be ruling in some mystical fashion over an imaginary country, might have welcomed this species of circular communication. It was certainly wasted on the inhabitants of Hispaniola, who were considerably more concerned ...
— South America • W. H. Koebel
... of the Soldan, the Empress of the Usbeg Tartars, the Driggledraggletail of Norroway, the Moll-a-green of Flapdoodleland and the Madkate of Woolgathergreen. But why need I enumerate them to you? There be all the queens in the world, even, I may say, to the Sirreverence of Prester John, who hath his horns amiddleward his arse; see you now? There, after we have drunken and eaten confections and walked a dance or two, each lady betaketh herself to her bedchamber with him at whose instance she hath been brought thither. And you must know ...
— The Decameron of Giovanni Boccaccio • Giovanni Boccaccio
... shortened into "Prester" and "Priest," is derived from the Greek word "Presbyteros," ...
— A Key to the Knowledge of Church History (Ancient) • John Henry Blunt
... strain, A young poet soothed his vein, But he had nor prose nor numbers, To express a princess' slumbers.— Youthful Richard had strange fancies, Was deep versed in old romances, And could talk whole hours upon The Great Cham and Prester John,— Tell the field in which the Sophi From the Tartar won a trophy— What he read with such delight of, Thought he could as eas'ly write of— But his over-young invention Kept not pace with brave intention. Twenty suns did rise and set, And he could no further get; But, unable to proceed, ...
— The Works of Charles Lamb in Four Volumes, Volume 4 • Charles Lamb
... Year is upon us, a season which the devout Briton sets aside for taking stock of his short-comings. I know not if Prester John introduced this custom among the Abyssinians: but we find ...
— The Delectable Duchy • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... Frenchman, talked a little wild; But only wished to look upon her grave. And I—I was the madman! So I said Nothing. But all the same, for all my thoughts, I'd not go back that night to find the keys, No, not for all the rubies in the crown Of Prester John. ...
— Collected Poems - Volume Two (of 2) • Alfred Noyes
... discoursed awhile, and sagely, concerning England and English literature, and then we passed on, via Milton, to Calvin and the Puritan movement in Scotland; next, via Livingstone, to colonial enterprises in Africa; and finally, via Egypt, Abyssinia, and Prester John, to the early history of the eastern churches. Byzantinism—Saint Nilus; that gave me the desired opportunity, and I mentioned ...
— Old Calabria • Norman Douglas
... Jerry were playing quoits with old horseshoes borrowed from the Glen blacksmith. Carl was stalking ants on a sunny hillock. Walter, lying on his stomach among the fern, was reading aloud to Mary and Di and Faith and Una from a wonderful book of myths wherein were fascinating accounts of Prester John and the Wandering Jew, divining rods and tailed men, of Schamir, the worm that split rocks and opened the way to golden treasure, of Fortunate Isles and swan-maidens. It was a great shock to Walter to learn that ...
— Rainbow Valley • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... brackish, but it satisfied them who had been long in want on that necessary. The people of this country are as black as the Guinea negroes; those on the sea-coast being Mahometans, but those of the inland country are Christians, and subjects to Prester John. They go almost naked, having only a cloth round their waists and down to their knees. At the first coming of our people they were much afraid; but after becoming acquainted, and a mutual peace being sworn between them, they supplied our ships with beeves, sheep, ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. VIII. • Robert Kerr
... the Americas saw the handwriting on the wall, they sent out to see the man Moyen, with orders to penetrate to his very side, as a spy, their most trusted Secret Agent—Prester Kleig. ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science April 1930 • Various
... one ear, well wrought, and of good wool. Courage, comrade, up thy heart, billy! We will not be beasted at this bout, for I have got one trick. Ex hoc in hoc. There is no enchantment nor charm there, every one of you hath seen it. My 'prenticeship is out, I am a free man at this trade. I am prester mast (Prestre mace, maistre passe.), Prish, Brum! I should say, master past. O the drinkers, those that are a-dry, O poor thirsty souls! Good page, my friend, fill me here some, and crown the wine, I pray thee. Like a cardinal! ...
— Gargantua and Pantagruel, Complete. • Francois Rabelais
... noise and stir Like ev'ry common mariner, Knew nothing of the card, nor star, And did not guide the man of war; Nor we, because we don't appear 275 In councils, do not govern there; While, like the mighty PRESTER JOHN, Whose person none dares look upon, But is preserv'd in close disguise, From being made cheap to vulgar eyes, 280 W' enjoy as large a pow'r unseen, To govern him, as he does men; And in the right of our Pope JOAN, Make Emp'rors ...
— Hudibras • Samuel Butler
... that aren't so. Every crank's whim, every cretin's philosophy, is fired at him first of all. Every six months comes in the inevitable treatise on the fourth dimension or on making gold from sea-water, or on using moonlight to run dynamos, or on Pope Joan or Prester John. And with it all he must retain his simple-hearted faith in the great art of writing and ...
— Shandygaff • Christopher Morley
... immense high priest of La, is the same person whom we find mentioned in our old books of travels, by the name of Prester John, from a corruption of the Persian word Djehan, which signifies the world, to which has been prefixed the French word prestre or pretre, priest. Thus the priest world, and the god world are in the ...
— The Ruins • C. F. [Constantin Francois de] Volney
... separate sect, in which he might have held a place not much inferior to that which Mahomet held among the faithful. But he spoke the truth when he said, 'So far as I know myself, I have no more concern for the reputation of Methodism than for the reputation of Prester John.'[731] When he heard of accusations being brought against him of 'shackling free-born Englishmen' and of 'doing no less than making himself a Pope,' he defended his power with an artless simplicity which was very characteristic ...
— The English Church in the Eighteenth Century • Charles J. Abbey and John H. Overton |
