"Rubicon" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... rig, from an industrial or reformatory ship on the Thames, suddenly rose. It seemed to me such a wonderfully courageous act—for I knew perfectly what it would mean to him—that I immediately found myself on my feet, and went out feeling that I had crossed the Rubicon, and must do something ...
— A Labrador Doctor - The Autobiography of Wilfred Thomason Grenfell • Wilfred Thomason Grenfell
... Columbus from that appearance. Cause explained. Cloud bursts away in the centre. of congress, and of the different regions from which its members are delegated. Their endeavors to arrest the violence of England compared with those of the Genius of Rome to dissuade Cesar from passing the Rubicon. The demon War stalking over the ocean and leading on the English invasion. Conflagration of towns from Falmouth to Norfolk. Battle of Bunker Hill seen thro the smoke. Death of Warren. American army assembles. Review of its chiefs. ...
— The Columbiad • Joel Barlow
... Wynton, you should experience your first real thrill," said Bower. "This bridge forms here every year at this season, and an army might cross in safety. It is the genuine article, the first and strongest of a series. Yet here you cross the Rubicon. A mixture of metaphors is allowable ...
— The Silent Barrier • Louis Tracy
... tone of confidential intimacy by my uncle, and, in a word, treated in all respects as an equal,—and such was all the work of a few hours. But so it is; the eras in life are separated by a narrow boundary,—some trifling accident, some casual rencontre impels us across the Rubicon, and we pass from infancy to youth, from youth to manhood, from manhood to age, less by the slow and imperceptible step of time than by some one decisive act or passion which, occurring at a critical moment, elicits a long latent feeling, and impresses ...
— Charles O'Malley, The Irish Dragoon, Volume 1 (of 2) • Charles Lever
... embraces the first forty-three lines of the law, and is concerned with the public land of Italy, from the Rubicon southwards. It commences by referring to the condition of this land in the year 133, when Tiberius Gracchus was tribune. The law does not affect to touch any thing which had been enacted concerning this land prior to 133. It either confirms or alters ...
— Public Lands and Agrarian Laws of the Roman Republic • Andrew Stephenson
... when she left him in the vestibule of the mansion. Gathering her gay robes in her jewelled hand, she darted up the broad stairs to her own apartment, the same in which she had received Le Gardeur on that memorable night in which she crossed the Rubicon of her fate. ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... days of January 1831, the Rubicon was passed. The step, though momentous in any case to Madame Dudevant, was one whose ultimate consequences were by none less anticipated than by herself, when to town she came, still undecided whether her future destiny were to decorate screens and tea-caddies, or to write books, but ...
— Famous Women: George Sand • Bertha Thomas
... it is as the imperishable monument of those tragic centuries that we rightly look upon Ravenna: before the empire was founded she was already famous. It was from her silence that Caesar emerged to cross the Rubicon and all unknowing to found what, when all is said, was the most beneficent, as it was the most universal, government that Europe has ever known. In the first years of that government Ravenna became, and through the ...
— Ravenna, A Study • Edward Hutton
... overheard by Maria and her sister, who are watching over his couch. He wakes, and Maria is there, alive before him. In his sleep he has become aware of the true condition of his own heart; nay, he has leapt the Rubicon,—he has declared it. He becomes ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 62, No. 384, October 1847 • Various
... exposition of the power of the government—a sort of Chinese warfare of gongs and tom-toms. The passage of the Potomac and seizure of a city under the aegis of the Confederate Government was actually crossing the Rubicon and carrying the war directly into the southern territory. Fortress Monroe and other fortified points still held by the United States, in the South, were conceded to be in a measure hers, at least by the right of possession; ...
— Four Years in Rebel Capitals - An Inside View of Life in the Southern Confederacy from Birth to Death • T. C. DeLeon
... struggle against the elements," said the poet, falling back helpless in his chair. "Caeser passed the Rubicon, but he could not have ...
— Bohemians of the Latin Quarter • Henry Murger
... so," the latter answered quickly. "We change. Read First Corinthians, seventh chapter, and if you take Paul's advice and don't pass the Rubicon, then you 'll be free to change ...
— The Opened Shutters • Clara Louise Burnham
... city of about 18,000 souls, famous for its Stabilmento de' Bagni and its antiquities, seated upon the coast of the Adriatic, a little to the south-east of the world-historical Rubicon. It is our duty to mention the baths first among its claims to distinction, since the prosperity and cheerfulness of the little town depend on them in a great measure. But visitors from the north will fly from these, to marvel at ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Complete - Series I, II, and III • John Symonds
... ever done in the world? Has it built any cities? Has it invented any telephones, any telegraphs? Has it built any steamships, established any universities, any asylums, any hospitals? Was there any chance in Caesar's crossing the Rubicon? What had chance to do with Napoleon's career, with Wellington's, or Grant's, or Von Moltke's? Every battle was won before it was begun. What had luck to do with Thermopylae, Trafalgar, Gettysburg? Our successes we ascribe to ourselves; ...
— How to Succeed - or, Stepping-Stones to Fame and Fortune • Orison Swett Marden
... over his province and army to a nominee of the Senate, on pain of being declared a public enemy, and when the tribunes who had reversed the resolution of the Senate were obliged to fly for their lives to his camp, he suddenly crossed the river Rubicon, the boundary of his province, and marched ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 1 of 8 • Various
... his Rubicon. Either he must enter the unknown to seek, to strive, to find, or turn back and fail and never know and be always haunted. A friend's strange story had prompted his singular journey; a beautiful rainbow with its mystery and promise had decided him. Once in his life he had ...
— The Rainbow Trail • Zane Grey
... face with the inevitable. I am not speaking of what men talk about in such cases, or of what they do, but of what they feel,—of the fact that, in too many instances, Nature not having meant men for bondage, after they have passed the Rubicon to that spot from which the code of civilized honor does not permit them to turn back, they usually have a period of regret, and are forced to make a real effort to face the Future,—to go ...
— Told in a French Garden - August, 1914 • Mildred Aldrich
... much better than he had anticipated; for Mr. Bayard insisted that he should sit down with them, whether he ate anything or not. But the Rubicon passed, our hero found that he had a pretty smart appetite, and did full justice to the viands set before him. It is true the silver forks, the napkins, the finger bowls, and other articles of luxury and show, to which he had been entirely unaccustomed, bothered him not ...
— Now or Never - The Adventures of Bobby Bright • Oliver Optic
... our private losses made good, our public debts (contracted for defence) discharged; otherwise, we shall be millions worse than we were at that enviable period. Such a request, had it been complied with a year ago, would have won the heart and soul of the Continent—but now it is too late, "The Rubicon is passed." ...
— Common Sense • Thomas Paine
... the earth heard, Nor ever hath forgot, As on from startled throne to throne, Where Superstition sate or conscious Wrong, 130 A shudder ran of some dread birth unknown. Thrice venerable spot! River more fateful than the Rubicon! O'er those red planks, to snatch her diadem, Man's Hope, star-girdled, sprang with them, And over ways untried the feet of Doom ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell
... the Rubicon. 2. Morse invented the telegraph. 3. Ericsson built the Monitor. 4. Hume wrote a history. 5. Morn purples the ...
— Graded Lessons in English • Alonzo Reed and Brainerd Kellogg
... and drew my hind foot across the Rubicon. The die was cast. Come what might, 1 Oakley Villas was on ...
— The Stark Munro Letters • J. Stark Munro
... Roman of celebrity. He advertised to the effect that he had rather be first at Rome than second in a small village. He was a man of great muscular strength. Upon one occasion he threw an entire army across the Rubicon. A general named Pompey met him in what was called the "tented field," but Pompey couldn't hold a Roman candle to Julius. We are assured upon the authority of Patrick Henry that "Caesar had his Brutus." The unbiased reader of history, however, will conclude that, on the contrary, ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Volume 11, No. 26, May, 1873 • Various
... Treasury, reorganize the whole governmental machinery, get it to working dependably and smoothly, and at the same time prepare for a civil war which I hope to win, but of which I can foretell the outcome no better than could the Divine Julius be sure of the outcome of his when he crossed the Rubicon. Amid all these cares and occupations I must keep fit and must do all I can to win the confidence and respect of all classes by rectifying, as far as I may, the consequences of the inattention of my predecessors and of the knavery and venality of their subordinates. And I must hurry off ...
— Andivius Hedulio • Edward Lucas White
... our liberties will be eternal. If a Roman citizen had been asked if he did not fear that the conqueror of Gaul might establish a throne upon the ruins of public liberty, he would have instantly repelled the unjust insinuation. Yet Greece fell; Caesar passed the Rubicon, and the patriotic arm even of Brutus could not preserve the liberties of his devoted country! The celebrated Madame de Stael, in her last and perhaps her best work, has said, that in the very year, almost the very month, ...
— Henry Clay's Remarks in House and Senate • Henry Clay
... the Rubicon" when he lifted the rifle and powder horn from the ground. Had he been checked previous to that he would have turned back to his couch, and made the pretense that what he did was the result of a delirium. But with the possession of his weapon came a self-confidence that would ...
— Camp-fire and Wigwam • Edward Sylvester Ellis
... association; my resolves against possible rashnesses; my fear of the world or its senseless gossip; my prudence, or my self-restraint! These all seemed to vanish in a day; and, yielding myself, slavishly, a willing captive to bright eyes and silvery tones, upon one fine morning I passed the Rubicon of safety, and offered her my hand and heart. But, to my sore dismay, she ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 9 • Various
... could have known this. He had his colleagues make him governor of Gaul. Gaul was a troublesome place to be, and they were quite willing he should go there. For a priest to go among the fighting Gauls—they smiled and stroked their chins! Gaul had definite boundaries on the south—the Rubicon marked the line—but on the north it was without limit. Real-estate owners own as high in the air and as deep in the earth as they wish to go. Caesar alone guessed the greatness ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 7 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Eminent Orators • Elbert Hubbard
... the Rubicon; the boundaries of Cisalpine Gaul and Italy. On this side I am still the Proconsul—not as yet rightly deposed. On the other—Caesar, the Outlaw, the Insurgent, the Enemy of his Country, whose hand is against every man, every man's hand against him. ...
— A Friend of Caesar - A Tale of the Fall of the Roman Republic. Time, 50-47 B.C. • William Stearns Davis
... a limited male, my dear James. I suppose Caesar was the only man who really crossed the Rubicon. And the fuss he made about it! Women jump across with the utmost certainty. My dear Frank, we're behind Paul, whatever happens. He has been fighting for his own hand ever since he was a child, it is true. But he ...
— The Fortunate Youth • William J. Locke
... more than it abases our ancestors. But to whichever view we may incline on sentimental grounds the fact remains that, while Charles Darwin declared language to form no impassable barrier between man and the lower animals, Professor Max Muller calls it the Rubicon which no brute dare cross, and deduces hence the conclusion that man cannot have descended from an ...
— Essays on Life, Art and Science • Samuel Butler
... Back! My soul, tempest-toss'd, Hath her Rubicon cross'd, She shall fly—saved or lost! Void of dread! Sharper pang than the steel, Thou, oh, serpent! shalt feel, Should I set the bruised heel On thy head. ...
— Poems • Adam Lindsay Gordon
... will soon find out that no one but prohibition officers can be trusted to enforce prohibition statutes. I am glad at the present writing there is said to be not a dive in the beautiful city of Topeka, and that she has passed the Rubicon. God grant that no more criminal dens be opened by Republicans, Democrats ...
— The Use and Need of the Life of Carry A. Nation • Carry A. Nation
... mangled wretches, they beheld Piero of Medicina, a sower of dissension, exhibiting to them his face and throat all over wounds; and Curio, compelled to shew his tongue cut out for advising Caesar to cross the Rubicon; and Mosca de' Lamberti, an adviser of assassination, and one of the authors of the Guelf and Ghibelline miseries, holding up the bleeding stumps of his arms, which dripped on his face. "Remember Mosca," ...
— Stories from the Italian Poets: With Lives of the Writers, Volume 1 • Leigh Hunt
... costs. Once the Rubicon crossed, they ate heartily. The basket was emptied. It still contained one pate de foie gras, one pate de mauvette, a piece of smoked ham, Crassane pears, a Pont-l'Eveque cheese, assorted petits-fours, and a cup full of pickled gherkins and onions, Boule de ...
— Mademoiselle Fifi • Guy de Maupassant
... is very doubtful in comparison with those which the Greeks have recorded. Additional doubt is cast upon them by the fact that they are usually associated with famous events. The birth and death of Romulus, and the Passage of the Rubicon by Julius Caesar, are stated indeed to have been accompanied by these marks of the approval or disapproval of ...
— Astronomy of To-day - A Popular Introduction in Non-Technical Language • Cecil G. Dolmage
... is played with four packs of cards, and that the number of points may be continued indefinitely. The essential thing is to win at least one thousand points at the end of each hand; unless a player does this he is said to "pass the Rubicon," becoming twice a loser—that is, the victor adds to his own score the points lost by his adversary. Good play, therefore, consists largely in avoiding the "Rubicon" and in remaining master of the game to the last trick, in order to force one's adversary ...
— Zibeline, Complete • Phillipe de Massa
... in crossing the Rubicon as I revelled in crossing the border. The very word rings out like the sudden sound of bells, or the mysterious music that ...
— The Heather-Moon • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... he could, even now, (before the Rubicon of the cup was passed,) fully justify his high reputation for agreeableness and wit; and a day which it was my good fortune to spend with him, at the table of Mr. Rogers, has too many mournful, as well as pleasant, associations connected with ...
— Memoirs of the Life of Rt. Hon. Richard Brinsley Sheridan Vol 2 • Thomas Moore
... the Alps with 25,000 men and marching by Lyons and Paris was known in the capital, and discussions arose respecting the consequences of this passage of another Rubicon. On the 17th of August 1797 Carnot wrote to him: "People attribute to you a thousand absurd projects. They cannot believe that a man who has performed so many great exploits can be content to live as a private citizen." This observation applied to Bonaparte's reiterated request ...
— Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Louis Antoine Fauvelet de Bourrienne
... Caesar, who would have shown no genius in killing the republic had the republic been already dead. There was still respect for the law and the constitution. Pompey's hesitation when supreme power was within his grasp, Caesar's own pause at the Rubicon, are proofs of it. The civil wars of Marius and Sulla had fearfully impaired, in the eyes of Romans, but they had not utterly destroyed, the majesty of Rome. There were still great characters—characters which ...
— Lectures and Essays • Goldwin Smith
... later the returning expatriate had crossed his Rubicon; in other words, his train had rolled through the majestic steel bridge spanning the clay-colored flood of the Missouri River at Omaha, and he was entering upon scenes which ought to have been familiar—which should have been and were not, ...
— The Honorable Senator Sage-Brush • Francis Lynde
... the lovelorn one upon this piece of news. He said that the Rubicon was now passed, and retreat impossible. We noted the absence of the rosebud, and Jasperson blushingly confessed that he had presented the flower to his best girl after dinner, an act of homage—so we presumed—in recognition ...
— Bunch Grass - A Chronicle of Life on a Cattle Ranch • Horace Annesley Vachell
... a round dozen years without my love—or doubting it—so long as she had her cavaliere servante. It was only when he deserted her that she found life a burden. And now she has crossed the Rubicon. She belongs to her age—the age of Kings' mistresses and light women. And she will be happy, I dare swear, as they are. It is not an age of tears. And when the fair Louise ran away to her Convent the other day, in a passion of penitence, be sure she ...
— London Pride - Or When the World Was Younger • M. E. Braddon
... the autumn of the following year a new play, written by Martin Hillyard and named "The Dark Tower," was produced at the Rubicon Theatre in Panton Street, London. It was Hillyard's second play. His first, produced in April of the same year, had just managed to limp into July; and that small world which concerns itself with the individualities of playwrights ...
— The Summons • A.E.W. Mason
... seemed that the rebellion was more serious than any of us had supposed. We made up our minds, with Bob Hale, that it would be impossible for us ever to be reconciled to him again. We felt as though the Rubicon had been passed, and what had commenced as a mere frolic was likely to end as a very grave affair. Though the boys talked solemnly at first about their rights, and had "struck" to vindicate a principle, they had no idea of the seriousness of ...
— Breaking Away - or The Fortunes of a Student • Oliver Optic
... murders did not end the trouble. The leaders on both sides armed their followers, and bloody battles were fought in the streets. Generals led their armies to Rome, although, according to the laws, to bring an army into Italy south of the Rubicon River was to make war on the republic and be guilty of treason. Once in the city these generals put to death ...
— Introductory American History • Henry Eldridge Bourne and Elbert Jay Benton
... all," Lyle answered, with an eagerness somewhat deeper than the mannish pride of youths who have just crossed the Rubicon that divides them from their much-scorned 'teens.' "I have advanced, and you seem to have stood still; there is scarcely any difference between us now." And Olive, somewhat amused, let her old favourite have ...
— Olive - A Novel • Dinah Maria Craik, (AKA Dinah Maria Mulock)
... (and in such a case the first step, as regarded the power of retreating, was also the final step) which placed him in arms against the state, it happened that his headquarters were at some distance from the little river Rubicon, which formed the boundary of his province. With his usual caution, that no news of his motions might run before himself, on this night Caesar gave an entertainment to his friends, in the midst of which he slipped away unobserved, and with a small retinue ...
— The Caesars • Thomas de Quincey
... and thus in life itself. For between Lois Travers the woman and Lois Travers the light-hearted, high-spirited girl there stretched a year's gulf. Marriage had been to her what it is more or less to all women—a Rubicon, a Book of Revelations in which girlish ideals are rarely realized, sometimes modified, ...
— The Native Born - or, The Rajah's People • I. A. R. Wylie
... our midst." She raised her head and looked round the room. No, there was nothing left to sell or pawn—for her dire necessity had driven her to the pawnshop, that last refuge of the destitute, that dire rubicon which, having passed it, a girl like Celia feels is the last barrier between ...
— The Woman's Way • Charles Garvice
... Rubicon. In the opinion of all those who know most about the case, the forward movement is now beyond recall. Indeed, when the intense hostility of the Border tribes, the uncertain attitude of the Amir, the possibilities of ...
— The Story of the Malakand Field Force • Sir Winston S. Churchill
... restless activity of hand and eye. His father had died in 1847; and when Morris came of age he inherited a fortune of about L900 a year and was his own master. Before the end of 1855 he imparted to his mother his decision about taking Orders. The Rubicon was crossed; but on which road he was to reach his goal was not settled for many years. Twice he had to retrace his steps from a false start and begin a fresh career. The year 1856 saw him still working at Oxford, in the office of Street, ...
— Victorian Worthies - Sixteen Biographies • George Henry Blore
... an attack," said he, and he slapped on every stitch of canvas, so that the Emilie was soon abreast of the Britisher. Boom! A broadside roared into her and she struck her colors. Bold Robert Surcouf had passed the Rubicon,—he had seen the English flag lowered to him, for the first time; and his heart swelled with patriotic pride, in spite of the fact that this was an act of piracy, for which he could be ...
— Famous Privateersmen and Adventurers of the Sea • Charles H. L. Johnston
... with this only difference, the coward sees the danger, and sickens under it; the hero, warmed by the difficulty, dilates, and rises in proportion to that, and in some sort makes use of his very fears to disarm it. A remarkable instance of this we have in the great Caesar, when he came to the Rubicon, and was entering upon a part, perhaps, the most hazardous he ever bore (certainly the most ungrateful), a war with his countrymen. When his mind brooded over personal affronts, perhaps his anger ...
— The Tatler, Volume 1, 1899 • George A. Aitken
... none of her own people were near to see the patronising manner in which Arthurine introduced her to Mr. Foxholm, a heavily-bearded man, whose eyes she did not at all like, and who began by telling her that he felt as if he had crossed the Rubicon, and entering an Arcadia, had found ...
— More Bywords • Charlotte M. Yonge
... out from her, and then the woman will be a holy cratur, much better than she ever was before.' A very learned man was Father Hogan, especially in casting out divils, and a portly, good-looking man too, only he had a large rubicon nose, which people said he got by making over free with the cratur in sacret. I had often looked at the nose, when the divil was upon me, and felt an inclination to seize hold of it, just to see how it felt. Well, he had me to ...
— Wild Wales - Its People, Language and Scenery • George Borrow
... wounds,—hovered about the retiring party, Blake and his fellows within another hour were in sight of the sheltering walls of Frayne; and, after a last, long-range swapping of shots, with Blake and Meisner footing it most of the way, led their crippled mounts in safety toward that Rubicon of the West—the swift flowing Platte. They were still three miles out when Blake found leisure to examine the contents of that beaded pouch, and the first thing drawn from its depths was about the last a Christian would think to find in the wallet of a Sioux—a dainty little billet, ...
— A Daughter of the Sioux - A Tale of the Indian frontier • Charles King
... disband his army by a fixed day, on pain of being considered a public enemy. Pompey sided with the senate. This meant civil war. Antony and Cassius fled to the camp of Caesar, who was enthusiastically supported by his soldiers and "crossed the Rubicon." ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 2 • Various
... that passage until he had acknowledged it absurd and egregiously foolish, anybody who knows anything about the genus irritabile will be certain, that if he lived till "the crack of doom," Don Silva would never have passed the Rubicon. It was thus that the poor fellow was tormented: and every time that he was asked to dine in the cabin, he was requested to bring his Tour, in order that the whole of ...
— Rattlin the Reefer • Edward Howard
... people had no choice; and long before the time of Caesar, nothing remained of republican government but the name and the abuse. Read Plutarch. In the 'Life of Caesar,' and not three pages before the crossing of the Rubicon, he paints the ruined state of the elections,—shows that all elective government was gone,—that the hereditary form had become a necessary relief from the contests of the corrupt,—and that in choosing between Pompey and Caesar, many preferred Pompey, not because ...
— Elements of Military Art and Science • Henry Wager Halleck
... he said coolly, 'back again to its proper owner, I suppose. Well, let it. We have no further need of it, for, like Caesar, we have now crossed the Rubicon. We are no longer convicts from a French prison, my friend, but shipwrecked sailors; you hear?'—with a sudden scintillation from his black eyes— 'shipwrecked sailors; and I will tell the story of the wreck. Luckily, ...
— Madame Midas • Fergus Hume
... to storm so formidable a place as Stirling Castle!" returned Murray. "Having, indeed, passed the Rubicon, we must go forward, but resolution, not rashness, should be the principle of our actions. And my opinion is, that a few minor advantages obtained, our countrymen would flock to our standard, the enemy would be intimidated, and we should ...
— The Scottish Chiefs • Miss Jane Porter
... whole-hearted cheerfulness of Raleigh, when with his small English ships he cast himself against the navies of Spain; or at Xenophon, conducting back from an inhospitable and hostile country, and through unknown paths, his ten thousand Greeks; or Caesar, riding up and down the banks of the Rubicon, sad enough belike when alone, but at the head of his men cheerful, joyous, well dressed, rather foppish, in fact, his face shining with good humor as with oil. Again, Nelson, in the worst of dangers, was as cheerful ...
— Brave Men and Women - Their Struggles, Failures, And Triumphs • O.E. Fuller
... comers, be they whom they might; after which, with her own hand, she drew the heavy bolts across the doors that he had closed behind him, and returned to the King, whose gesture of surprise and annoyance she affected not to remark. She had passed the Rubicon, and she felt that she had no time to lose if she did not desire to become herself the victim of the struggle in which she was engaged; and thus having announced to her son the dismissal of Richelieu and ...
— The Life of Marie de Medicis, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Julia Pardoe
... open resistance excited the rioters still more—they had passed the Rubicon, and were now ready for anything, and "to the jail! to the jail!" arose in wild yells, and the turbulent mass poured like a tumultuous sea around the building. They rushed against the doors, and with united shoulders and bodies ...
— The Great Riots of New York 1712 to 1873 • J.T. Headley
... can be met in the same way. As with nervous pain it seems at first impossible to "relax to it;" but the Rubicon once crossed, we cannot long be irritable,—it is so much simpler not to be, and ...
— Power Through Repose • Annie Payson Call
... say: 'Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do?' I shall go on with the meeting, 'looking unto Jesus, the author and finisher of my faith,' to sustain, protect and guide me in all things." It was, perhaps, the drinking of this cup of persecution that passed our brother across the Rubicon, that burned all the bridges behind him and caused him to bow in humble submission to the ...
— There is No Harm in Dancing • W. E. Penn
... services, Austria being led to expect Bavaria, if she would keep Russia "within her ancient limits." Whitworth mentioned this overture to Cobenzl, and saw him blush for the first time on record.[514] Probably, then, the scheme had some powerful backing; but now Austria had crossed the Rubicon. ...
— William Pitt and the Great War • John Holland Rose
... head of a powerful and well disciplined army that was devoted to him, Caesar advanced on Rome. When he came to a stream called the Rubicon, which marked the limit of his power as governor of Gaul, he hesitated for a brief time, as there was still time for him to draw back from his tremendous venture had he seen fit to do so—but at length he plunged into the stream with the remark, ...
— A Treasury of Heroes and Heroines - A Record of High Endeavour and Strange Adventure from 500 B.C. to 1920 A.D. • Clayton Edwards
... senate for his services, but disappointed in his hopes for a triumph. The war for supremacy between Caesar and Pompey which had for some time been gradually growing more certain, broke out in 49 B.C., when Caesar led his army across the Rubicon, and Cicero after much irresolution threw in his lot with Pompey, who was overthrown the next year in the battle of Pharsalus and later murdered in Egypt. Cicero returned to Italy, where Caesar treated him magnanimously, and for some time he devoted himself ...
— Treatises on Friendship and Old Age • Marcus Tullius Cicero
... to describe the commotions of love, of happiness, of rapture, which filled Reilly's bosom as he took his departure. As for Cooleen Bawn, she had now passed the Rubicon, and there remained nothing for her but constancy to the truth of her affection, be the result what it might. She had, indeed, much of the vehemence of her father's character in her; much of his unchangeable purpose, ...
— Willy Reilly - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton
... wolf in the face,"—or perhaps in the tail too, before all end! "Botta urged and entreated that at least there should be some delay in executing this project. But the King gave him to understand that it was now too late, and that the Rubicon was passed." [Friedrich's ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XI. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... what was passing in the way of policy, exerted an influence on the strategy of the forces on both sea and land; Caesar, for instance, was embarrassed in many of his operations by the Roman Senate, and it was for this reason that he crossed the Rubicon and passed from Gaul into Italy. When William I and Napoleon III went to war in 1870, however, Von Moltke had foreseen the effects of the telegraph and of rapid-mail communications, in giving to the headquarters of the army information of a much greater scope and reliability ...
— The Navy as a Fighting Machine • Bradley A. Fiske
... half clothed at their master's expense, have put by for forty years, and yet not even by aid of interest and compound interest and perquisites and commissions squeezed out of little tradesmen and other time-honored embezzlements, have reached the rubicon of four figures. Five thousand little shopkeepers, active, intelligent and greedy, have bought wholesale and sold retail, yet never mounted so high as this above rent, housekeeping, bad debts and casualties. Many a writer of genius has charmed his nation and adorned her language, yet ...
— It Is Never Too Late to Mend • Charles Reade
... with his troops on the banks of the Rubicon, he halted for a while, and, revolving in his mind the importance of the step he was on the point of taking, he turned to those about him and said, "We may still retreat; but if we pass this little bridge, nothing is left for us but to fight ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... woman greater than ordinary, beckoned to Julius Caesar to pass over the Rubicon, L. Flor. lib. 4. Satyres appeared to Alexander when he besieged Tyrus; Alexander asked the divines, what was the signification of it; they told him the meaning is plain, {Greek Text: Sa Turos} (i.e.) Tyre is thine. Alexander took the ...
— Miscellanies upon Various Subjects • John Aubrey
... of the Apennines he naturally remembers the hardships which Hannibal's army endured, and proceeds to cite, not the authentic narrative of Polybius, not the picturesque narrative of Livy, but the languid hexameters of Silius Italicus. On the banks of the Rubicon he never thinks of Plutarch's lively description, or of the stern conciseness of the Commentaries, or of those letters to Atticus which so forcibly express the alternations of hope and fear in a sensitive mind at a great crisis. His only authority ...
— Critical and Historical Essays, Volume III (of 3) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... Confederation. He was, therefore, free in honour to have taken no part in the insurrection, since it was begun by men from whom he had withdrawn. But when the voice in the night whispered through his window that his former colleagues had crossed the Rubicon, Doheny, like the man he was, rose and rode forth to make the fatal passage and stand ...
— The Felon's Track • Michael Doheny
... result, had not political and personal considerations been permitted to outweigh those of a military character. Politicians are pests in a camp. Caesar was in his fifty-first year when he crossed the Rubicon and began his wonderful series of campaigns in the Civil War,—campaigns characterized by an almost superhuman energy. The most remarkable of his efforts was that which led to his last appearance in ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 13, No. 78, April, 1864 • Various
... without friends, and to crush enemies. The Senate vainly commanded him to disperse his army by a certain day, on pain of being considered an enemy of the country. He continued to advance till he came to the boundaries of Italy, a little river, whose name, the Rubicon, was then made famous forever, which separated Cisalpine Gaul from Umbria. To cross this was practically to declare war, and even the resolute Caesar hesitated awhile. He thought his course over by himself; he even consulted his friends. He professed himself pained ...
— Roman life in the days of Cicero • Alfred J[ohn] Church
... occasion it arrived before the jury under the name of the "Passage of the Rubicon!" but Pharaoh, poorly disguised under Caesar's mantle, was recognized and repulsed with all the honors ...
— International Short Stories: French • Various
... reconciliation, they still refused to abandon the pleasing delusion, and talked over the old plans for redress of grievances, and a constitutional union with the mother country. With little or no belief in the possibility of either, they stood shivering on the banks of the Rubicon, that mythical river of irretrievable self-committal, hesitating to enter its turbid waters. A few of the bolder "shepherds of the people" tried to urge them onward; but no one was bold enough to dash in first and lead them through. Paine seized the opportunity. He had a mind whose eye always ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 25, November, 1859 • Various
... pleasure. She said a gentle word to each girl, and a minute afterwards they had, so to speak, crossed the Rubicon, and were in the heart of Aylmer House; for Aneta had seized Merry's hand, and Cicely followed immediately afterwards, while Molly and Belle found themselves one at each side of ...
— The School Queens • L. T. Meade
... inaccessible. I may now and then get an opportunity to talk again, and in a new background. Who knows? I am counting on nothing but the facts about me. So come on, Future. I've my back against the past. Anyway, as you see, it is too late to argue. I've crossed the Rubicon, and can return only when I have built a ...
— A Hilltop on the Marne • Mildred Aldrich
... the brook; and I placed myself in such a position as to insure his falling into the water, if he attempted such a piece of gymnastics. Tom wore nice clothes, and he did not run the risk of soiling them by a possible accident. He paused on the brink of the stream, and feared to cross the Rubicon. ...
— Seek and Find - or The Adventures of a Smart Boy • Oliver Optic
... applied to a very small tract of country. It was at first confined to the southern portion of Calabria, and was gradually extended northward, till about the time of the Punic wars it indicated the whole peninsula south of the Rivers Rubicon and Macra, the former separating Cisalpine Gaul and Umbria, the latter Liguria and Etruria. Italy, properly so called, is a very mountainous country, being filled up more or less by the broad mass of the Apennines, the offshoots or lateral branches of which, in some parts, descend quite ...
— A Smaller History of Rome • William Smith and Eugene Lawrence
... entered Italy, and wishing to pass the Rubicon, perceived a man of more than ordinary stature, who began to whistle. Several soldiers having run to listen to him, this spectre seized the trumpet of one of them, and began to sound the alarm, and to pass the river. Caesar ...
— The Phantom World - or, The philosophy of spirits, apparitions, &c, &c. • Augustin Calmet
... "I know Great Britain has determined on her system, and that very determination determines me on mine. You know I have been constant and uniform in opposition to her measures. The die is now cast. I have passed the Rubicon. Sink or swim, live or die, survive or perish with my ...
— Life and Public Services of John Quincy Adams - Sixth President of the Unied States • William H. Seward
... was at once communicated to Berlin, whose organized espionage continued to flourish in the French capital. Thereupon Herr Jagow urged Buelow to bestir himself without delay. But the Prince was hard set. On the Italian Cabinet he had lost his hold. It had already crossed the Rubicon and passed over to the Entente. True, the Cabinet was not Italy, was not even the Government of Italy. It was hardly more than a group of mere place-warmers for Giolitti and his partisans. At any moment it ...
— England and Germany • Emile Joseph Dillon
... bring about, and it was an appropriate thing that the closing events in his life should have been recorded for us by his great patron, Caesar, in his narrative of the Civil War. On the 18th or 19th of January, within ten days of the crossing of the Rubicon, we hear of his being sent with a body of troops to occupy Iguvium,[140] and a month later he is in charge of one of the investing camps before the stronghold of Corfinium.[141] With the fall of Corfinium, on the 21st of February, Caesar's rapid march southward began, ...
— The Common People of Ancient Rome - Studies of Roman Life and Literature • Frank Frost Abbott
... walked home, the happier for having crossed his Rubicon. He had opened his campaign with all the success he could have expected. Like a wise man, Iver held nothing true till it was proved; but like a wise man also he dubbed nothing a lie merely because it was new or improbable. ...
— Tristram of Blent - An Episode in the Story of an Ancient House • Anthony Hope
... franker appetites, preserves his independence. But the dog, with one eye ever on the audience, has been wheedled into slavery, and praised and patted into the renunciation of his nature. Once he ceased hunting[9] and became man's plate-licker, the Rubicon was crossed. Thenceforth he was a gentleman of leisure; and except the few whom we keep working, the whole race grew more and more self-conscious, mannered and affected. The number of things that a small dog does naturally is strangely small. Enjoying better ...
— Essays of Robert Louis Stevenson • Robert Louis Stevenson
... hope that good consequences might arise from its adoption. It was opposed by Mr. Burke, Mr. Charles Fox, and Colonel Barre, the latter of whom reprobated the violence of both houses. "In the lords," said he, "the phrase is, 'We have passed the Rubicon!'—in the commons, 'Delenda est Carthago!'" But opposition was of no avail. The bill was carried by an overwhelming majority in the lower house; and when it was taken into the upper house, though it was severely criticised, ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... Rome and of dominating the Senate; Caesar had on his side his army, disciplined by eight years of expeditions. Pompey secured a decree of the Senate that Caesar should abandon his army and return to Rome. Caesar decided then to cross the boundary of his province (the river Rubicon), and to march on Rome. Pompey had no army in Italy to defend himself, and so with the majority of the senators took flight to the other side of the Adriatic. He had several armies in Spain, in Greece, and in Africa. Caesar defeated ...
— History Of Ancient Civilization • Charles Seignobos
... His will sets forth emphatically that he came tardily to realise that posterity is the best thing a man can leave behind him. He had two sisters, both of whom were well along in life, unmarried, and possessed of their brother's disinclination to marry. To encourage them to cross the Rubicon he made the will that entailed the Canaan Tigmores to the heirs, first of one and then the other, under the following provisions: the land was to go to the male heirs of his sister Nancy Peele, from oldest son to oldest son so long as there were male heirs, provided that ...
— Sally of Missouri • R. E. Young
... conquerors, who sought to comprehend even the victims of their wars in the benefits which proceeded from those wars. This view of his career is a sounder one than that which so long prevailed, and which enabled orators to round periods with references to the Rubicon. It is not thirty years since one of the first of American statesmen told the national Senate that "Julius Caesar struck down Roman liberty at Pharsalia," and probably there was not one man in his audience who supposed ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 57, July, 1862 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... countries, to know what language he spoke; but the Satyr only answered with cries, not unlike those of goats and the neighing of horses. This monster had a human body, but the thighs, legs, and feet of a goat. To the above stories may be added that of the Satyr who passed the Rubicon in presence of ...
— Roman Antiquities, and Ancient Mythology - For Classical Schools (2nd ed) • Charles K. Dillaway
... death," saith Sir John de Gaytenby—"we of this nether world, that be ever in sickness and weariness, in tene and in temptation. Know we what they call it which have forded the Rubicon, and stand safe on the pavement of the Golden City? 'Multo magis melius,' saith the Apostle [Philippians One verse 23]: 'much more better' to dissolve and to be with Christ. And the colder be the waters man hath to ford, the gladder and welcomer shall be ...
— In Convent Walls - The Story of the Despensers • Emily Sarah Holt
... the great grey gleaming sea They swept with their rich booty, night and day. Five other prizes, one for every ship, Out of the seas of Spain they suddenly caught And carried with them, laughing as they went— "Now, now indeed the Rubicon is crossed; Now have we singed the eyelids and the beard Of Spain; now have we roused the hornet's nest; Now shall we sail against a world in arms; Now we have nought between us and black death But our own hands, ...
— Collected Poems - Volume One (of 2) • Alfred Noyes
... conversation, and with the greatest emphasis. Thus we have:—'He has played his cards well or ill,'—applied to the management of fortune or one's interest; jacta est alea, 'the die is cast,' as exclaimed Julius Caesar before crossing the Rubicon; 'he has run his RACE—reached the GOAL' a turf adage applied to consummate success or disastrous failure; 'a lucky throw or hit;' 'within an ACE,' meaning one point of gaining a thing; 'he HAZARDS everything;' 'chances are for and against;' 'he was PIQUED,' from the game of piquet, ...
— The Gaming Table: Its Votaries and Victims - Volume II (of II) • Andrew Steinmetz
... life when a man surveys the whole course of existence and judges it soberly. Hitherto he had scarcely so much as shaken off the spell of the fresh and gracious influences that envelop a childhood in the country, like green leaves and grass. He had hesitated on the brink of the Parisian Rubicon, and in spite of the prickings of ambition, he still clung to a lingering tradition of an old ideal—the peaceful life of the noble in his chateau. But yesterday evening, at the sight of his rooms, those ...
— Father Goriot • Honore de Balzac
... similar means. Their emissaries were busy everywhere in the South, early in April, preaching an instant crusade against the old flag—inciting the people to demand instant hostilities against Fort Sumter—and to cross a Rubicon of blood, over which there could be ...
— The Great Conspiracy, Complete • John Alexander Logan
... anxious about Caesar, and as desirous of reaching the truth as to his character, as we have all been in regard to Bismarck in these latter days. I lived in Caesar, and debated with myself constantly whether he crossed the Rubicon as a tyrant or as a patriot. In order that I might review Mr. Merivale's book without feeling that I was dealing unwarrantably with a subject beyond me, I studied the Commentaries thoroughly, and went through a mass of other reading which the object of a magazine article ...
— Autobiography of Anthony Trollope • Anthony Trollope
... ever realize how important a part the ferry and the ford have played in human affairs? How differently would history read without its Caesar crossing the Rubicon, its Xerxes crossing the Hellespont, and its Washington crossing the Delaware, its Paul Revere wherried across the Charles, and its Burr and Hamilton ferried over to Weehawken,—not to speak of the Hebrews going over Jordan, Jacob at the brook ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, November 1885 • Various
... secretly enjoys the solace which she cannot derive from her legal owner. Then, if she is detected, how the world holds up its ten thousand hands in pious horror!—Wives who have young husbands are eloquent in their censure; old women who have long passed the rubicon of love and feeling, denounce her a shameless hussey; while the old reprobate who calls himself her husband, says to his indignant and sympathizing friends—'I took her from a low station in life; I raised her to a position of wealth and rank, and see ...
— City Crimes - or Life in New York and Boston • Greenhorn
... nature of the case, could have been but temporary, if obtained on such terms. The people of the Northern States had set their faces resolutely against secession and, led by Lincoln, had crossed the Rubicon and taken up the gage of battle, which had been thrown ...
— Personal Recollections of a Cavalryman - With Custer's Michigan Cavalry Brigade in the Civil War • J. H. (James Harvey) Kidd
... EPIDEMIC.—Our excellent friend is now convalescent. "Like CAESAR or CAESAR's wife, I forget which it was," she says, "I have passed the Barbican!" Some one having suggested that probably she meant "the Rubicon," Mrs. R. thanked him politely, but added, that she perfectly well knew what she was talking about, and that everyone who was acquainted with history would ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 102, February 6, 1892 • Various
... many uses, and finally to become an object of veneration, "as holy as Westminster Abbey" some one says of her in "The Sphere". For the 2100 of us on board there was to be no retreat whatever happened. We had crossed the Rubicon and burned our boats. ...
— The Incomparable 29th and the "River Clyde" • George Davidson
... between them and Caesar The Aristocracy unfit to govern; their habits and manners They call Pompey to their aid Neither Pompey nor Caesar will disband his forces; Caesar recalled Caesar marches on Home; crosses the Rubicon Ultimate ends of Caesar; the civil war Pompey's incapacity and indecision; flies to Brundusi Caesar defeats Pompey's generals in Spain Dictatorship of Caesar Battle of Pharsalia Death of Pompey in Egypt Battles of Thapsus and of Munda They result in Caesar's supremacy ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume IV • John Lord
... interest and devouring usury sprang, Faith's breach, and hence came war, to most men welcome. Now Caesar overpass'd the snowy Alps; His mind was troubled, and he aim'd at war: And coming to the ford of Rubicon, At night in dreadful vision fearful[594] Rome Mourning appear'd, whose hoary hairs were torn, And on her turret-bearing head dispers'd, 190 And arms all naked; who, with broken sighs, And staring, thus bespoke: ...
— The Works of Christopher Marlowe, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Christopher Marlowe
... Rubicon,' however; and, ever after this, when at home of an afternoon, sometimes with Mick, who, of course, imitated me, sometimes without him on those occasions when he did not get permission to go ashore, I used to have a whiff at father's pipe on the sly— ...
— Young Tom Bowling - The Boys of the British Navy • J.C. Hutcheson
... "The Rubicon is forded," thought Rosa, complacently, the while her compassion for him was sincere and strong. "He can never shut his heart inexorably ...
— At Last • Marion Harland
... and the compromise came to nothing. Both generals distrusted each other, and both were disloyal to the State. The Senate then appointed a successor to Caesar in Gaul, ordered a general levy of troops throughout Italy, and voted money and men to Pompey. Caesar had already crossed the Rubicon, which was high treason, before his last proposal to compromise, and he was on his way to Rome. No one resisted him, for the people had but little interest in the success of either party. Pompey, exaggerating his popularity, thought ...
— Ancient States and Empires • John Lord
... driven out of Rome. The fourth was a driving out, too, though of a more honorable kind, when he was compelled, much against his will, to undertake the government of a province. The fifth was Caesar's passing of the Rubicon, the battle of Pharsalia, and his subsequent adherence to Caesar. The last was his internecine combat with Antony, which produced the Philippics, and that memorable series of letters in which he strove to stir into ...
— Life of Cicero - Volume One • Anthony Trollope
... hear, you have, and what's unknown The same (my Lord) if Tully's, or your own. All that we feel of it begins and ends In the small circle of our foes or friends; To all beside as much an empty shade An Eugene living, as a Caesar dead; Alike or when, or where, they shone, or shine, Or on the Rubicon, or on the Rhine. A wit's a feather, and a chief a rod; An honest man's the noblest work of God. Fame but from death a villain's name can save, As justice tears his body from the grave; When what the oblivion better ...
— Essay on Man - Moral Essays and Satires • Alexander Pope
... face earnest yet serene and bright. We can fancy, too, the commotion which arose, the leaning forward, the holding of the breath, then the dead silence, when the committee appointed to draw the Declaration advanced to the President's table. It was the moment of crossing the Rubicon. It was the burning of the ships behind them. From this moment there was to be no possibility of retreating. Independence declared, it still remained to conquer it. British troops burdened the soil; shiploads of them were at that moment crossing the Atlantic. The Continental army was but an ...
— The Nation in a Nutshell • George Makepeace Towle
... in ancient times, in the north of Italy, which flowed eastward into the Adriatic Sea, called the Rubicon. This stream has been immortalized by the transactions which we are ...
— The Junior Classics • Various
... expression, "I am going to give you a mission after your own heart. You are to take Miss Beresford over there, to where Mrs. Bohun is dealing death to all those boys.—This is Lord Rossmoyne, Miss Beresford: he will see you safely over your rubicon." ...
— Rossmoyne • Unknown
... about to eat her Creator." The confessor asked none of those questions which our author simply qualifies as infamous, and, with a very mild course of catechism and slight dose of devotion, that Rubicon of maturity was passed. Not far beyond it waited a terrible trial, perhaps as great a sorrow as the whole life was to bring. Aurore's diligence in her studies was marred by the secret intention, long cherished, of escaping to her mother, and adopting ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, Issue 49, November, 1861 • Various
... antagonisms. His alternatives have become so lopsided that practically there is only one course open. The initial exercise of judgment was not merely an antecedent to later developments of the plot; it was a Rubicon-crossing, which has committed the hero to a system of interlaced contingencies; and the tendency of this system bears him away, half-conscious of his own impotence, to where the rest is silence. The turning-point is where Hamlet engages the Players ...
— Such is Life • Joseph Furphy
... love,—not Howard's love—but love for itself alone. She was not just the same girl she was when she had entered Florence a few months ago, nor ever again would be; and between her and Bettina,—the sisters who before this had been "as one soul in two bodies,"—ran a mysterious Rubicon, the outer shore of which Bettina's ...
— Barbara's Heritage - Young Americans Among the Old Italian Masters • Deristhe L. Hoyt
... in the matter of your hair. That beard, my fine young man, must be parted with, were it as dear to you as the nymph of your dreams. Here at Florence, we love not to see a man with his nose projecting over a cascade of hair. But, remember, you will have passed the Rubicon, when once you have been shaven: if you repent, and let your beard grow after it has acquired stoutness by a struggle with the razor, your mouth will by-and-by show no longer what Messer Angelo calls the divine prerogative of lips, but will appear ...
— Romola • George Eliot
... his forces were on the other side of the Alps, and he would not wait for them, choosing rather to put his adversaries in confusion by a sudden and unexpected attack, than to fight them when better prepared. When he came to the river Rubicon, which was the boundary of his province, he stood silent a long time, weighing with himself the greatness of his enterprise. At last, like one who plunges down from the top of a precipice into a gulf of immense depth, he silenced his reason, and shut his eyes ...
— The Boys' and Girls' Plutarch - Being Parts of The "Lives" of Plutarch • Plutarch
... she spurned at mean revenge, Or stayed her hand for conquered foeman's moan; As when, the fates of aged Rome to change, By Caesar's side she crossed the Rubicon. Nor joyed she to bestow the spoils she won, As when the banded powers of Greece were tasked To war beneath the Youth of Macedon: No seemly veil her modern minion asked, He saw her hideous face, ...
— Some Poems by Sir Walter Scott • Sir Walter Scott
... Egra. Yield thyself to it. We act as we are forced. I cannot give assent to my own shame 150 And ruin. Thou—no—thou canst not forsake me! So let us do, what must be done, with dignity, With a firm step. What am I doing worse Than did famed Csar at the Rubicon, When he the legions led against his country, 155 The which his country had delivered to him? Had he thrown down the sword, he had been lost, As I were, if I but disarmed myself. I trace out something in me of his spirit. Give me his ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... the Rubicon of a door-mat and stood in the unlighted hall. At the far end he saw light coming from a door that he knew opened into ...
— The Spenders - A Tale of the Third Generation • Harry Leon Wilson
... dictator for life. This of course meant that Caesar was to be placed on the list of the "retired officers," and the idea did not appeal to him. He remembered that he had begun life as a follower of Marius. He decided to teach the Senators and their "dictator" another lesson. He crossed the Rubicon River which separated the province of Cis-alpine Gaul from Italy. Everywhere he was received as the "friend of the people." Without difficulty Caesar entered Rome and Pompey fled to Greece Caesar followed him and defeated his followers near Pharsalus. Pompey ...
— The Story of Mankind • Hendrik van Loon
... is a story connected with the crossing of the Rubicon by Caesar that certainly deserves to be better known than it is.[111] It is only fitting that an event fraught with such momentous consequences should have a supernatural setting of some kind; and Suetonius relates that while Caesar ...
— Greek and Roman Ghost Stories • Lacy Collison-Morley
... preposterous in its superfluity as the misconception just mentioned is preposterous in its perversity. The great if not incomparable power displayed in Webster's delineation of such criminals as Flamineo and Bosola—Bonapartes in the bud, Napoleons in a nutshell, Caesars who have missed their Rubicon and collapse into the likeness of a Catiline—is a sign rather of his noble English loathing for the traditions associated with such names as Caesar and Medici and Borgia, Catiline and Iscariot and Napoleon, than of any sympathetic interest in such incarnations ...
— The Age of Shakespeare • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... room and descended into the quadrangle of the Ecole, crowded with sauntering groups of garrulous students, my spirit was heavy within me, and the expression of my face could hardly have been that of a young man who has safely passed the Rubicon of scientific apprenticeship, and who sees the laurels and honors of the world within his reach. The world? The very thought of its possible homage repelled me, for I knew that its best successes and its loudest praise are accorded to men whose hearts are of steel and ...
— Dreams and Dream Stories • Anna (Bonus) Kingsford
... on the reverse, and continued the use of the Greek language. When it became a Roman colony is doubtful.1 It was occupied as a naval station in the Illyrian war of 178 B.C. (Liv. xli. 1). Caesar took possession of it immediately after crossing the Rubicon. Its harbour was of considerable importance in imperial times, as the nearest to Dalmatia,2 and was enlarged by Trajan, who constructed the north quay, his architect being Apollodorus of Damascus. At the beginning of it stands the marble triumphal arch with a single opening, and ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... the space of about a week a series of diplomatic communications passed between the Chancelleries of Europe, designed on their face to prevent a war and yet so ineffective that the war is precipitated and the fearful Rubicon crossed before the world knew, except imperfectly, the nature of the differences between the Governments involved. The ethical aspects of this great conflict must largely depend upon the record that has been made up by the official communications which can, therefore, ...
— The New York Times Current History of the European War, Vol. 1, January 9, 1915 - What Americans Say to Europe • Various
... The pressure of his strong hands in the unconscious emphasis of his passion became painful; but she did not protest or try to draw away, thinking of his hold in no personal sense but as a part of his self-revelation. "All—all is at stake there!" he continued, staring toward the range. "It's the Rubicon! I have put my career on to-night's cast! Victory means that the world will be at our feet—honor, position, power greater than that of any other two human beings! Do you realize what that means—the honor and the power that will be ours? I shall have directed the greatest army the ...
— The Last Shot • Frederick Palmer
... of his devotedly loyal veterans he crossed the Rubicon. His rapid and successful advance caused Pompeius to abandon Italy and fall back on the Eastern Provinces. The discipline preserved, and the moderation displayed by Caesar won him unexpected favour. Having secured Italy, he turned ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol XI. • Edited by Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton
... they left the little settlement, and, crossing the ferry again, plunged into the primeval forest. Robert felt as if that mock Clyde were the Rubicon of their fate. ...
— Cedar Creek - From the Shanty to the Settlement • Elizabeth Hely Walshe |
