"Promethean" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... by a pro-slavery general. History is never so illogical. No, the coming 'man on horseback' on our side must be a great strategist, with the soul of that insane lion, mad old John Brown, in his belly. That is your only Promethean recipe:— ...
— Memoir of John Lothrop Motley, Complete • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... hypnotist to insure concentration—but even this can not account for the pianist's real attractiveness. If Mr. Frohman's "vitality" means the "vital spark," the "life element," it comes very close to a true definition of magnetism, for success without this precious Promethean force is inconceivable. It may be only a smouldering ember in the soul of a dying Chopin, but if it is there it is irresistible until it becomes extinct. Facial beauty and physical prowess all made way for the kind of magnetism that Socrates, George Sand, Julius Caesar, Henry ...
— Great Pianists on Piano Playing • James Francis Cooke
... all the gods Makes heaven drowsy with the harmony. Never durst poet touch a pen to write, Until his ink were tempered with love's sighs; Oh, then his lines would ravish savage ears, And plant in tyrants mild humility. From women's eyes this doctrine I derive: They sparkle still the right Promethean fire; They are the books, the arts, the academes, That show, contain, and nourish all the world; Else, none at all in aught proves excellent; Then fools you were these women to forswear; Or, keeping what is sworn, you will prove fools. For wisdom's sake, a word that all men love; Or for ...
— Shakespeare, Ben Jonson, Beaumont and Fletcher • S. T. Coleridge
... warning. God has given you Jesus Christ. It was worth while for Christ to live; it was worth while for Christ to die, in order that into the souls of all sinful, God-forgetting, devil-following men there might pass this Promethean spark ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ephesians; Epistles of St. Peter and St. John • Alexander Maclaren
... his books. The "Contes Drolatiques" are full of it, and his conversation was also full of it. But the letters constantly show us a man with the edge of his spontaneity gone—a man groaning and sighing, as from Promethean lungs, complaining of his tasks, denouncing his enemies, and in complete ill humor generally with life. Of any expression of enjoyment of the world, of the beauties of nature, art, literature, history, human character, these pages are singularly destitute. And yet we know that such enjoyment—instinctive, ...
— The Galaxy, Volume 23, No. 2, February, 1877 • Various
... time nor space, number nor quantity. As the mathematician approaches the limits already achieved by study, the colder and thinner becomes the air and the fewer the contacts with the affairs of every day. The Promethean fire of pure mathematics is perhaps the greatest of all in man's catalogue of gifts; but it is not most itself, but least so, when, immersed in the manifoldness of phenomenal life, it is made to serve ...
— Four-Dimensional Vistas • Claude Fayette Bragdon
... when the flames their power assume, The more they burn the less they show, The clouds no longer smirch the sky, And then the flames intensest glow When far-off watchers think they die. The fumes of early love my verse Has figured—' 'You must paint the flame!' 'Twould merit the Promethean curse! But now, Sweet, for your praise and blame.' 'You speak too boldly; veils are due To women's feelings.' 'Fear not this! Women will vow I say not true, And men believe thine lips they kiss.' I did not call you "Dear" or "Love," 'I ...
— The Angel in the House • Coventry Patmore
... intermit; 50 The glowing portraits, fresh from life, that bring Home to our hearts the truth from which they spring; These wondrous beings of his fancy, wrought To fulness by the fiat of his thought, Here in their first abode you still may meet, Bright with the hues of his Promethean heat; A Halo of the light of other days, Which still the splendour of its orb betrays. But should there be to whom the fatal blight Of failing Wisdom yields a base delight, 60 Men who exult when minds of heavenly tone Jar in ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 4 • Lord Byron
... the breath of youth's perpetual balm. Thy beams are kissing now The icy brow Of many a youth in slumber deep, Who cannot yield to thee The incense of Love's perfumed breath, For no response gives Death! Ah, 'tis a fearful sight to see Thy lustre on a human face Where the Promethean spark has left no trace, As if it shone upon The marble cold, Of that famed ruin old— ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 5 November 1848 • Various
... ungovernable sea, The seaman, conscious of approaching night; Thou, with industrious fingers, hast outright Mastered that art, of other arts the key, That bids thick night before the morning flee, And lingering day retains for mortal sight. O Promethean workman, thee I hail, Thee hallowed, thee unparalleled, thee bold To affront the reign of sleep and darkness old, Thee William, thee AEneas, thee I sing; Thee by the glimmering taper clear and pale, Of light, and light's purveyance, ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 14 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... ethereal power was given Not to dissolve our clay, But draw Promethean beams from heaven To purge ...
— The Lost Stradivarius • John Meade Falkner
... beauties die; But you fair star! as first created shine, In never fading immortality! Like vice, from virtue's glance, yon clouds retire, Before the smile of one benignant ray, Sleepless and sad, my soul would fain aspire, Promethean like, to snatch ethereal fire, And draw relief from thee! bright harbinger ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 13, - Issue 371, May 23, 1829 • Various |
