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Satyr   Listen
noun
Satyr  n.  
1.
(Class. Myth.) A sylvan deity or demigod, represented as part man and part goat, and characterized by riotous merriment and lasciviousness. "Rough Satyrs danced; and Fauns, with cloven heel, From the glad sound would not be absent long."
2.
(Zool.) Any one of many species of butterflies belonging to the family Nymphalidae. Their colors are commonly brown and gray, often with ocelli on the wings. Called also meadow browns.
3.
(Zool.) The orang-outang.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Satyr" Quotes from Famous Books



... Luther on Celibacy and Marriage" Dr. Brandes derides with a satyr-like leer all traditional ideas of chastity, ...
— Essays on Scandinavian Literature • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen

... before she saw him, what did she feel when she first beheld the substantial proportions of Corporal Van Spitter! There she beheld the beau ideal of her imagination—the very object of her widow's dreams—the antipodes of Vanslyperken, and as superior as "Hyperion to a Satyr." He had all the personal advantages, with none of the defects of her late husband; he was quite as fleshy, but had at least six inches more in height, and, in the eyes of the widow, the Corporal Van Spitter was the finest man she ever had beheld, and she mentally exclaimed, "There is the man ...
— Snarleyyow • Captain Frederick Marryat

... wandered here A-strolling through this sordid city, And piping to the civic ear The prelude of some pastoral ditty! The demigod had crossed the seas,— From haunts of shepherd, nymph, and satyr, And Syracusan times,—to these Far shores and twenty ...
— The Golden Treasury of American Songs and Lyrics • Various

... "Conversion of St Paul," in the church of San Paolo fuori le Mura, and a "Story of Psyche," in fresco, at the Villa Borghese; a "Martyrdom of Stephen," which earned him the name of the Florentine Correggio, a "Venus and Satyr," a "Sacrifice of Isaac," a "Stigmata of St Francis," at Florence. Cigoli, who was made a knight of Malta at the request of Pope Paul III., was a good and solid draughtsman and the possessor of a rich and harmonious palette. He died, it is said, of grief at the failure of his ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 3 - "Chitral" to "Cincinnati" • Various

... to which Black now directed attention consisted of several females with a number of young ones. They were all huddled in a cleft of the precipice, looking down in apparent surprise at the strangers. On a neighbouring height sat a big old satyr-like male, who had been placed there as a sentinel. Baboons are wise creatures, and invariably place sentinels on points of vantage when the females and their young are feeding on the nutritious bulbs and roots that grow in the ...
— The Settler and the Savage • R.M. Ballantyne

... in decay, Where statues gray Peer, broken, out of tangled weed And thorny seed; Satyr and Nymph, that once made love By walk and grove: And, near a fountain, shattered, green with mould, ...
— The Haunted Hour - An Anthology • Various

... exclaimed he,—"a girl that would grace any throne in Europe! To think of her on the auction-stand, with a crowd of low-bred rascals staring at her, and rich libertines, like that Mr. Bruteman—Pah! I can't endure to think of it. How like a satyr he looked while he was talking to me about their being slaves. It seems he got sight of them when they took an inventory of the furniture. And that handsome little witch, Floracita, whom her father loved so tenderly, to think of her being bid ...
— A Romance of the Republic • Lydia Maria Francis Child

... Arcady's oak its green The Bromian ivy weaves; But no more is the satyr seen Laughing out from the glossy leaves. Hushed is the Lycian lute, Still grows the seed Of the Moenale reed, But the pipe ...
— The Pilgrims Of The Rhine • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... the cliffs and their seat among the bright red berries on the arbutus shrubs, his shepherds flute to each other, as they watch the tunny fishers cruising far below, while the echo floats upwards of the sailors' song. These shepherds have some touch in them of the satyr nature; we might fancy that their ears are pointed like those of Hawthorne's ...
— Theocritus, Bion and Moschus rendered into English Prose • Andrew Lang

... and Herbert P. Horne who sold the tickets. Instead of lecturing, Verlaine read his verses to the scanty audience, all of whom knew each other, in the dim light of Barnard's Inn Hall, and the music of their rhythm was in his voice so that I was not conscious of the satyr-like repulsiveness of his face and head so long as he was reading. When he was not reading, the repulsiveness was to me overpowering and I shrank from his very presence. Nor was the shrinking less when ...
— Nights - Rome, Venice, in the Aesthetic Eighties; London, Paris, in the Fighting Nineties • Elizabeth Robins Pennell

... down to compete with a gladiator," whispered Lord Worthington, eagerly. "Isn't it, Miss Carew? Apollo and the satyr! You must admit that our mutual friend is a splendid-looking fellow. If he could go into society like that, ...
— Cashel Byron's Profession • George Bernard Shaw

... equally beautiful; perhaps, to the superficial ear, is a little more beautiful still: the goddess's own Call, penetrating, wonderful; the well-nigh irresistible song of the Sirens. The Bacchic dance, which stands we suppose for the animal element in love, the Satyr part in man, is hardly beautiful; yet the love-music as a whole, we can concede without difficulty, carries it over the sacred music in beauty of a sort, even as the goddess would have carried off the palm of beauty over the saint. The power of the music of good, as Wagner lets us see, lies ...
— The Wagnerian Romances • Gertrude Hall

... Paris leave one restless, dissatisfied and feverishly unquiet, into the gardens of the Luxembourg. There is a statue there of Verlaine accentuating all the extravagance of that extraordinary visage—the visage of a satyr-saint, a "ragamuffin angel," a tatterdemalion scholar, an inspired derelict, a scaramouch god,—and I recollect how, in its marble whiteness, the thing leered and peered at me with a look that seemed ...
— Suspended Judgments - Essays on Books and Sensations • John Cowper Powys

... wonderful wife turned into a little grimacing monkey I couldn't bear the sight of. So I stayed at home; and then, she stayed away. And when I met her again, she'd changed into someone else. She, my pure white notepaper, was scribbled all over; her clear and lovely features changed in imitation of the satyr-like looks of strange men. I could see miniature photographs of bull-fighters and guardsmen in her eyes, and hear the strange accents of strange men in her voice. On our grand piano, on which only the harmonies of the great masters used to be heard, she now played ...
— The Road to Damascus - A Trilogy • August Strindberg

... against a spruce post, and moodily contemplated the stamping animals in the enclosure. His hat was in his hand, and the mountain breeze assailed his blond hair, which, rumpled and curly, gave him something of the appearance of a satyr at ease. He was worried. He had, an hour before, come to Ching-Fu from the boat; and Eileen had left Ching-Fu for a trip to Kialang-Hien, a village of the third order some fifty li distant, the morning before. Whether to follow or wait ...
— Peter the Brazen - A Mystery Story of Modern China • George F. Worts

... appealed to all his native superstitions, which ascribed to beings of her complexion a more than terrestrial origin. When permitted to approach her, he looked timid and awkwardly strange; suggesting the likeness of some clumsy satyr, drawing in his horns; slowly wagging his tail; crouching abashed ...
— Mardi: and A Voyage Thither, Vol. I (of 2) • Herman Melville

... the most dissolute Army ever seen in the world; but this of Saxe's was very dissolute. Playwright Favart had withal a beautiful clever Wife,—upon whom the courtships, munificent blandishments, threatenings and utmost endeavors of Marechal de Saxe (in his character of goat-footed Satyr) could not produce the least impression. For a whole year, not the least. Whereupon the Goat-footed had to get LETTRE DE CACHET for her; had to—in fact, produce the brutalest Adventure that is known of ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XVI. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—The Ten Years of Peace.—1746-1756. • Thomas Carlyle

... Glaucon, with the chaste loveliness of the Panathenaea before his mind, the scene was one of vast wonderment but scarcely of pleasure. The Persian did nothing by halves. In battle a hero, at his cups he became a satyr. Many of the scenes before the guests emptied the last of the tall silver ...
— A Victor of Salamis • William Stearns Davis

... eclogues, songs, a satyr I have writ, A remedy for those i' th' amorous fit: Love elegies, and funeral elegies, Letters of things of diverse qualities, Encomiastic lines to works of some, A masque, and an epithalamium, Two books of epigrams; all which I mean Shall in this ...
— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753) - Volume II • Theophilus Cibber

... forest grot A satyr and his chips Were taking down their porridge hot; Their cups were at ...
— The Fables of La Fontaine - A New Edition, With Notes • Jean de La Fontaine

... distance. Sir Charles Carew, a man of taste, felt strong artistic pleasure in the Rembrandtesque scene before him—the leaping light, the weird shadows, resolving themselves into figures posed with savage freedom, the dancing satyr, the sombre pines above, and, beyond the pines, the stillness of the stars. Betty drew a little shuddering breath, and her hand went to clasp Patricia's. The latter was looking steadily upward at the ...
— Prisoners of Hope - A Tale of Colonial Virginia • Mary Johnston

... Horace— this man would look at him with a grin and a sly wink. And sometimes Thyrsis would make a casual remark in conversation, and the man would twist it out of its meaning, or make a pun out of it—to find some excuse for his satyr's leer. So at last Thyrsis was moved to say to him—"Don't you ever realize what a state you've got ...
— Love's Pilgrimage • Upton Sinclair

... arm held it off from him an elbow's length one minute. The Thing struggled and reared again. Yes, yes, it was Satan—he felt him all over now—a devil undisguised—but Satan rather in medieval than in Miltonic fashion. His skin was rough and hairy as a satyr's; his odor was foul; his feet were cleft; his horns sharp and terrible. He flung ...
— Michael's Crag • Grant Allen

... tricks Love can do, By quickly making one of two. Thus we will sit and talk, but tell No cruel truths of Philomel, Or Phillis, whom hard fate forced on To kill herself for Demophon; But fables we'll relate; how Jove Put on all shapes to get a Love; As now a satyr, then a swan, A bull but then, and now a man. Next, we will act how young men woo, And sigh and kiss as lovers do; And talk of brides; and who shall make That wedding-smock, this bridal-cake, That dress, this sprig, that leaf, this vine, That smooth and silken columbine. This done, we'll ...
— A Selection From The Lyrical Poems Of Robert Herrick • Robert Herrick

... discretion. They erected no rampart to defend her chastity; they planted no spies to watch over her reputation. They entrusted her honour to her own keeping. They were convinced, that the spotless dictates of conscious innocence, and that divinity that dwells in virtue and awes the shaggy satyr into mute admiration, were her sufficient defence. They left to her the direction of her conduct. The shepherdess, unsuspicious by nature, and untaught to view mankind with a wary and a jealous eye, was a stranger to severity and caprice. She was all gentleness ...
— Imogen - A Pastoral Romance • William Godwin

... of Antiquity, there are none who instruct us more openly in the Manners of their respective Times in which they lived, than those who have employed themselves in Satyr, under what Dress soever it may appear; as there are no other Authors whose Province it is to enter so directly into the Ways of Men, and set their Miscarriages in ...
— The Spectator, Volume 2. • Addison and Steele

... Madame? He was so agitated by your intimate conversation that he brought us all near to death, in any case. Moreover, it jumps to the eyes that the decrepit satyr is mad about ...
— The Lion's Share • E. Arnold Bennett

... before him. But the knowledge appeared merely to increase his belligerence to an insane fury. He broke from Sanderson's restraining grasp and stood off, reeling, looking at Sanderson with the grin of a satyr. ...
— Square Deal Sanderson • Charles Alden Seltzer

... purposes; negative; hostile &c 703. differing toto coelo [Lat.]; diametrically opposite; diametrically opposed; as opposite as black and white, as opposite as light and darkness, as opposite as fire and water, as opposite as the poles; as different as night and day; Hyperion to a satyr [Hamlet]; quite the contrary, quite the reverse; no such thing, just the other way, tout au contraire [Fr.]. Adv. contrarily &c adj.; contra, contrariwise, per contra, on the contrary, nay rather; vice versa; ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget

... delightfull, perfumed & sweet, yeelding an vnknown fragrancie. Their speeches so perswasorie and pleasing, as might robbe the fauour of an indesposed hart, and violently drawe vnto them any mind, though Satyr-like or churlish howsoeuer, to depraue Religion, to binde euery loose conceit, to make any rusty Peasant amorous, and to mollifie any froward disposition. Vppon which occasion, my minde, altogether set on fier with a new desire, and in the extreame ...
— Hypnerotomachia - The Strife of Loue in a Dreame • Francesco Colonna

... to be a Judge, then the suppliants (having first blacked their hands by rubbing it under the bottom of the Pott) beseech his Lo:p [i.e. Lordship] and smutt all his face. ['They play likewise at Hott-cockles.' —Sidenote.] Juvenal, Satyr II. ...
— Ballads of Mystery and Miracle and Fyttes of Mirth - Popular Ballads of the Olden Times - Second Series • Frank Sidgwick

... a young satyr, fresh from the groves of Achaia, with his big, serious mouth and its range of glittering teeth, his shining deer-like eyes, wide apart, his faun curls low on his forehead, his big head set on a short neck, ...
— The City of Delight - A Love Drama of the Siege and Fall of Jerusalem • Elizabeth Miller

... no shadow, would expose his bare head and his dull eyes to the glitter and burning heat of the sun. Red and white butterflies fluttered around; down into the marble cistern ran splashing water from the crooked mouth of a blissfully drunken Satyr; but he sat motionless, like a pale shadow of that other one who, in a far land, at the very gates of the stony desert, also sat ...
— Best Russian Short Stories • Various

... derivation, and prove that from Satyrus the word satira, as it signifies a poem, cannot possibly descend. For satira is not properly a substantive, but an adjective; to which the word lanx (in English a "charger" or "large platter") is understood: so that the Greek poem made according to the manners of a Satyr, and expressing his qualities, must properly be called satirical, and not satire. And thus far it is allowed that the Grecians had such poems, but that they were wholly different in species from that to which the Romans gave ...
— Discourses on Satire and Epic Poetry • John Dryden

... been censured and despised. Such was the clemency of Alexander and Caesar, which nature had so grossly erred in giving them, as a painter would who should dress a peasant in robes of state or give the nose or any other feature of a Venus to a satyr. What had the destroyers of mankind, that glorious pair, one of whom came into the world to usurp the dominion and abolish the constitution of his own country; the other to conquer, enslave, and rule over the whole world, at least as much as was well known to him, and the shortness of his life ...
— The History of the Life of the Late Mr. Jonathan Wild the Great • Henry Fielding

... mosses lay for us Still carpets, cool and plush; Where bloom and branch and ray for us Sleep, waking with a rush— The hush But sounds the satyr hoof ...
— Poems • Madison Cawein

... these conjectures of his as if they were facts; and to do him justice he believed in them. Also, he took pains to rake up every old tale of cruelty, vanity, or lust that had been told in the past about Richard Stanton, and embroider them. Beside the satyr figure which he flaunted like a dummy Guy Fawkes, Max St. George shone a pure young martyr. Never had old Four Eyes enjoyed such popularity among the townfolk of Sidi-bel-Abbes as in these days, and he had ...
— A Soldier of the Legion • C. N. Williamson

... Satyr, like a goat, with horns and hooves to match thy coat of russet brown, I make leaf-circlets and a crown of honey-flowers for thy throat; where the amber petals drip to ivory, I cut and slip each stiffened petal in the rift of carven petal: honey ...
— American Poetry, 1922 - A Miscellany • Edna St. Vincent Millay

... parted under his well-curled moustaches, and his bold eyes aslant upon her, he had the malicious look of a satyr. ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy

... originally only implied its being the haunt of a ferocious banditti. But tradition has ascribed to the Urisk, who gives name to the cavern, a figure between a goat and a man; in short, however much the classical reader may be startled, precisely that of the Grecian Satyr. The Urisk seems not to have inherited, with the form, the petulance of the silvan deity of the classics; his occupation, on the contrary, resembled those of Milton's Lubbar Fiend, or of the Scottish Brownie, though he differed from both in name and appearance. 'The Urisks,' ...
— The Lady of the Lake • Sir Walter Scott

... retired butcher, who had both his legs frozen in the war of 1870, and whom she is very fond of. No doubt he is a cripple, with two wooden legs, but still a vigorous man enough, in spite of his fifty-three years. The loins of a Hercules and the face of a satyr. The superintendent is quite ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume II (of 8) • Guy de Maupassant

... to be originals; whence it has, in fact, appear'd, that they who, since his time, have most excelled in the Comic way, have copied Moliere, and therein were sure of copying nature. In this author, my lord, our youth will find the strongest sense, the purest moral, and the keenest satyr, accompany'd with the utmost politeness; so that our countrymen may take a French polish, without danger of commencing fops and apes, as they sometimes do by an affectation of the dress and manners ...
— The Blunderer • Moliere

... of the room. It was hung with gold and silk tapestry, representing mythological figures and the windows had curtains to match. From the center of the ceiling hung, suspended by a golden chain, a silver gilt lamp, in which burned a perfumed oil. At the side of the bed was a golden satyr, holding in his hand a candelabrum, containing four rose-color ...
— Chicot the Jester - [An abridged translation of "La dame de Monsoreau"] • Alexandre Dumas

... wrote two great tragedies, Sejanus (1603) and Catiline (1611), upon severe classical lines. After ceasing his work for the stage, Jonson wrote many masques in honor of James I and of Queen Anne, to be played amid elaborate scenery by the gentlemen of the court. The best of these are "The Satyr," "The Penates," "Masque of Blackness," "Masque of Beauty," "Hue and Cry after Cupid," and "The Masque of Queens." In all his plays Jonson showed a strong lyric gift, and some of his little poems and songs, like "The Triumph of Charis," "Drink to Me Only with Thine Eyes," ...
— English Literature - Its History and Its Significance for the Life of the English Speaking World • William J. Long

... you oblige me by your obstinacy to treat you with severity? It is in your own power to be happy. You need only resolve to love, and be true to me, and I shall treat you with more mildness." "Thou hideous satyr," answered the lady, "never expect that time should wear away my abhorrence of thee. Thou wilt ever be a monster in my eyes." To these words she added so many reproaches, that the giant grew enraged. "This is too much," ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments vol. 3 • Anon.

... was probably this creature, seldom seen, but when once seen never forgotten, which occasioned the ancient belief in the god Pan, with his sylvans and satyrs. Nay, but for the gift of speech, which we cannot suppose any of the family to have attained, we should have believed the satyr seen by St. Anthony in the desert to have ...
— Waverley Volume XII • Sir Walter Scott

... brain a whirl, her limbs inert. Rape most foul this crowned satyr committed. "He fell upon me as a pack of hounds overwhelm a ...
— Secret Memoirs: The Story of Louise, Crown Princess • Henry W. Fischer

... doting blockhead Agenor, the phlegmatic pea-goose Aesop, rough-footed Lycaon, the luskish misshapen Corytus of Tuscany, nor with the large-backed and strong-reined Atlas. Let him alter, change, transform, and metamorphose himself into a hundred various shapes and figures, into a swan, a bull, a satyr, a shower of gold, or into a cuckoo, as he did when he unmaidened his sister Juno; into an eagle, ram, or dove, as when he was enamoured of the virgin Phthia, who then dwelt in the Aegean territory; into fire, a serpent, ...
— Gargantua and Pantagruel, Complete. • Francois Rabelais

... dinner, imploring me to tell him whether he should enlist for a soldier, or commit suicide, or lie prone on Doria's doormat until it should please her to come out and trample on him. He seemed rather surprised—indeed a trifle hurt—that neither of us called him a Satyr. How could we take his part and not Doria's—especially now that Barbara had come from the bedside of the scandalously entreated lady? He boomed and bellowed about the ...
— Jaffery • William J. Locke

... the throng, whose choice he was, seated aloft upon men's shoulders, with a purple robe thrown on his shoulders, there sat a brawny, grinning, bloated, jibbering thing, with curled lips and savage eyes, and satyr's leer: the creature of greed, of lust, of obscenity, of brutality, of avarice, of desire. This thing the people followed, rejoicing exceedingly, content in the guide whom they had chosen, victorious in the fiend for whom they spurned ...
— Wisdom, Wit, and Pathos of Ouida - Selected from the Works of Ouida • Ouida

... vilified by her foes. There are some eight ungenerous lines with a side reference to the 'Conquests she had won' in Buckingham's A Trial of the Poets for the Bays, and a page or two of insipid spiritless rhymes, The Female Laureat, find a place in State Poems. The same collection contains A Satyr on the Modern Translators. 'Odi Imitatores servum pecus,' &c. By Mr. P——r,[54] 1684. It ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn, Vol. I (of 6) • Aphra Behn

... Presently three of the Ma'zah came in and explained, with their barking voices, that their people had been practicing at the Nshn ("target"); which meant "We have powder in abundance." One of them, at once dubbed El-Nasns ("the Satyr") from his exceeding monstrous ugliness—a baboon's muzzle with a scatter of beard—kindly volunteered to guide us, with the intention of losing the way. The dialogue that took ...
— The Land of Midian, Vol. 1 • Richard Burton

... fair That graced the tales of Ilium years agone? Where are the visions of earth's aureate dawn, When the wing'd bearer bore Jove's nectar rare, When Naiads laughed and wept and sunned their hair At sun-kissed pools, deep-recessed, where the fawn And satyr sought the sloping cool-cropped lawn, And glimpsed the gods and lurking maidens there? Where now is Ganymede, and where is Pan? Where is fair Psyche, where Apollo brave? Are they all fled, affrighted at the span Of centuries? Or sunk beneath the wave Of solemn Lethe? ...
— A Williams Anthology - A Collection of the Verse and Prose of Williams College, 1798-1910 • Compiled by Edwin Partridge Lehman and Julian Park

... the head of a goose and a flowery tail may be a symbolical, but it never can be an agreeable object. When the idea conveyed is a great one, then it is excusable. The Ninevite bull, with a human head and five legs, is a grotesque, but it is also a symbol of majesty and might. A Satyr is a grotesque, but he has been so long recorded and accepted that he has ceased to surprise us; and the Greeks spent so much genius in making him a graceful creature, that he has ...
— Needlework As Art • Marian Alford

... of the satyr, the affectionate glow of the domestic habitue, the rare exalted passion of the lover, the cold, clear attraction of the intellectual platonist, the will to possession of the sex-maniac, the will to voluptuous cruelty of the sex-pervert, the maternal ...
— The Complex Vision • John Cowper Powys

... of August, 1655, or just nine days after the publication of Milton's Pro Se Defensio, there appeared anonymously in London, in the form of a small quarto pamphlet of twenty-two pages, a poem in rhyming heroics, entitled A Satyr against Hypocrites. In evidence that it was the work of a scholar, there were two mottoes from Juvenal on the title-page, one of them the well known "Si natura negat, facit indignatio versum." Of the performance itself there can be no more exact description than that ...
— The Life of John Milton, Volume 5 (of 7), 1654-1660 • David Masson

... the opening in a mossy wall, she caught sight of the villa, with its broken balustrades, its stagnant fountains, and the stone satyr closing the perspective ...
— The Greater Inclination • Edith Wharton

... with a last impression of him leaning back in his dressing-gown, a sodden cigar-end in the corner of his mouth, his beard all slopped with whisky, and his half-glazed eyes looking sideways after me with the leer of a satyr. I had to go into the street and walk up and down for half-an-hour before I felt clean enough to ...
— The Stark Munro Letters • J. Stark Munro

... Feaver shakes me, And the self same wind that makes the young Lambs shrink, Makes me a cold: my fear says I am mortal: Yet I have heard (my Mother told it me) And now I do believe it, if I keep My Virgin Flower uncropt, pure, chaste, and fair, No Goblin, Wood-god, Fairy, Elfe, or Fiend, Satyr or other power that haunts the Groves, Shall hurt my body, or by vain illusion Draw me to wander after idle fires; Or voyces calling me in dead of night, To make me follow, and so tole me on Through ...
— The Faithful Shepherdess - The Works of Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher (Vol. 2 of 10). • Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher

... Broken Heart" very merrily, and after that, changing our dresses in a twinkling, Jack Dawson, disguised as a wild man, and Moll as a wood nymph, came on to the stage to dance a pastoral, whilst I, in the fashion of a satyr, stood on one side plying the fiddle to their footing. Then, all being done, Jack thanks the company for their indulgence, and ...
— A Set of Rogues • Frank Barrett

... her reproof, neared her in a dancing manner, smiling as some ancient satyr may have smiled at the sight of some ...
— The Proud Prince • Justin Huntly McCarthy

... at table when Choulette appeared, with the face of an antique satyr. A terrible joy shone in his phosphorous eyes. Since his return from Assisi, he lived only among paupers, drank chianti all day with girls and artisans to whom he taught the beauty of joy and innocence, the advent of Jesus Christ, and ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet

... the world but this? Is there anything in modern art—we will not demand that it should be equal—but in any way analogous to what Titian has effected, in that wonderful bringing together of two times in the "Ariadne," in the National Gallery? Precipitous, with his reeling Satyr rout about him, re-peopling and re-illuming suddenly the waste places, drunk with a new fury beyond the grape, Bacchus, born in fire, fire-like flings himself at the Cretan. This is the time present. With this telling of the story an artist, and no ordinary ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Volume 2 • Charles Lamb

... kept up on both sides that I chose to await the issue rather than speculate on the origin of this strange exhibition. I therefore, as I could not be accused of an outrage to modesty, permitted myself to maintain what might be invidiously termed a satyr-like watch from behind a forward flinging willow, whose business in life was to look at its image in a brown depth, branches, trunk, and roots. The sole indication of discomfort displayed by the pair was that the lady's hand worked ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith

... and it's easy enough to tell that you're a sailor-man. It you wasn't you wouldn't be here, would ye?" This last with a grin that disclosed a set of strong irregular, tobacco-stained teeth, and imparted to the speaker the expression of a satyr. ...
— Dick Leslie's Luck - A Story of Shipwreck and Adventure • Harry Collingwood

... peeping from within the rings of stones, his chin resting on the edge. His aspect is hideous, and he has one big burning eye-ball in the middle of his forehead. His skin (for he is naked) is covered with long hair, like a shaggy goat (a species of satyr), and two tusks come out of his mouth, like those of a wild boar. A holy Marabout once met him, and interrogated him courageously about his doleful doings amongst these graves. The spectre deigned this answer, "I mourn ...
— Travels in the Great Desert of Sahara, in the Years of 1845 and 1846 • James Richardson

... Mouthings of a mountebank. Venomously malignant. Pretentious twaddle. Degraded helot of literature. His work, like a maniac's robe, bedizened with fluttering tags of a thousand colors. Roaming, like a drunken satyr, with inflamed blood, through every field of ...
— Walt Whitman Yesterday and Today • Henry Eduard Legler

... whom every faun and satyr flies For willing service; whether to surprise The squatted hare, while in half sleeping fits, Or upward ragged precipices flit To save poor lambkins from the eagle's maw; Or by mysterious enticement draw Bewildered shepherds to ...
— Oak Openings • James Fenimore Cooper

... Juvenal had imitated the uncouth manners and vituperative diction of the satyrs, Elizabethan satirists likewise strove to be as rough, harsh, and licentious as possible.[6] Despite the objections to the satire-satyr etymology stated by Isaac Casaubon,[7] scurrilous satire, especially as a political weapon, was a recognizable subspecies in England at least to 1700. The anonymous author, for instance, of A Satyr Against Common-Wealths (1684) contended ...
— An Essay on Satire, Particularly on the Dunciad • Walter Harte

... with small figures, were greatly admired. He left a large number of pictures, chiefly landscapes, which are executed with great skill. Rubens made use of Breughel's hand in the landscape part of several of his small pictures—such as his "Vertumnus and Pomona," the "Satyr viewing the Sleeping Nymph," ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 3 - "Brescia" to "Bulgaria" • Various

... a lower grade of measly, "moral heroes," who (thank heaven and the innate sense of human justice!) are usually well peppered with sorrow and punishment. The hero of romance is a different stripe; Hyperion to a Satyr. He doesn't go around groaning page after page of top-heavy debates as to the inherent justice of his cause or his moral right to thrust a tallow candle between the particular ribs behind which the heart of his enemy is to be found—balancing ...
— The Delicious Vice • Young E. Allison

... through. The ship in which the adventurers sailed was called the Argo, after its builder, Argus; hence our term Argonauts. [183] 261. Silenus. A divinity of Asiatic origin; foster-father to Bacchus and leader of the Fauns (l. 265), satyr-like divinities, half man, half goat, sometimes represented in art as ...
— Matthew Arnold's Sohrab and Rustum and Other Poems • Matthew Arnold

... to this! Hyperion to a satyr! so loving to my mother, That he might not beteem the winds of heaven Visit ...
— Familiar Quotations • Various

... there, and satyrs shall dance there." Satyrs! we repeat; are not satyrs every whit as grotesque and outrageous as werwolves? Why, then, should those who, regarding the Scriptures as infallible, confess to a belief in the satyr, reject the possibility of a werwolf? And for those who are more logically sceptical—who question the veracity of the Bible and are dubious as to its authenticity—there are the chronicles of Herodotus, Petronius Arbiter, Baronius, Dole, Olaus Magnus, Marie de France, ...
— Werwolves • Elliott O'Donnell

... sudden from a gentleman student to a dancing buffoon; for such, in fact, was the character in which I made my debut. I was one of those who formed the groups in the dramas, and were principally, employed on the stage in front of the booth, to attract company. I was equipped as a satyr, in a dress of drab frize that fitted to my shape; with a great laughing mask, ornamented with huge ears and short horns. I was pleased with the disguise, because it kept me from the danger of being discovered, whilst we were in that ...
— Tales of a Traveller • Washington Irving

... no Bagration, it would have been necessary to invent him," said the wit Shinshin, parodying the words of Voltaire. Kutuzov no one spoke of, except some who abused him in whispers, calling him a court weathercock and an old satyr. ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy

... top, he has left a horrible savour that humanity finds still in its nostrils. Now in our time the unhealthy man is on top; but he is not the man mad on sex, like Nero; or mad on statecraft, like Louis XI; he is simply the man mad on money. Our tyrant is not the satyr or the torturer; but ...
— A Miscellany of Men • G. K. Chesterton

... the house; Fabio ran into the garden—and there, in one of the most remote alleys, he descried Valeria. With head bowed upon her breast, and hands clasped on her knees, she was sitting on a bench, and behind her, standing out against the dark green of a cypress, a marble satyr, with face distorted in a malicious smile, was applying his pointed lips to his reed-pipes. Valeria was visibly delighted at her husband's appearance, and in reply to his anxious queries she said that she had a slight headache, but that it was of no consequence, ...
— A Reckless Character - And Other Stories • Ivan Turgenev

... breadth of his thought, the brilliancy of his criticisms, the eloquence of his style were clouded with sensualism. "When you see on his forehead the reflection of a ray from Plato," says Sainte-Beuve, "do not trust it; look well, there is always the foot of a satyr." ...
— The Women of the French Salons • Amelia Gere Mason

... What will stand? Idle blocks of stone, without form or meaning, or simply three beautiful shapes? No; three souls, thinks Mae, three real people, and she looks at the abiding faun, freedom and joy of the Satyr, the continual sentimental sadness of the Antinous, and the perpetual brave death-struggle of the Gladiator. They are living on now, and touching our hearts. Their mute lips open other eloquent mouths to speak for them. Hawthorne and Byron tell us what the Faun's soul, what the Gladiator's ...
— Mae Madden • Mary Murdoch Mason

... she would return in time to give the very substantial assistance in which all believed, and the more sentimental support in which nobody believed, though her distaste arose tenfold after seeing the bridegroom, who looked like an old satyr, all the more because Maura was like a Greek nymph. Mrs. Henderson was much grieved, and had tried remonstrance with her sister, but ...
— Modern Broods • Charlotte Mary Yonge

... fear and trembling she allowed me to take it into my hands. It was, or consisted of, the forefoot of a sheep, cut off at the knee; on the top of the knee part a little wooden ball wrapped in a white rag represented the head, and it was dressed in a piece of red flannel—a satyr-like doll, with one hairy leg and a cloven foot. I praised its pleasing countenance, its pretty gown and dainty little boots; and all I said sounded very precious to Anita, filling her with emotions of ...
— The Purple Land • W. H. Hudson

... he seemed at length to step forward and to stand upon the very threshold of an abyss, beyond which, in vague vapours, lay things unknown, creatures unsuspected hitherto. From this darkness anything might come to them, angel or devil, nymph or satyr. So, at least, he dreamed for a while, giving his imagination the rein. Then, in a revulsion of feeling, he jeered at his folly, mutely scolded his nerves for spurring ...
— Flames • Robert Smythe Hichens

... her. Miss Temple finding herself in her arms before she had taken notice of her, everything that Killegrew had mentioned, appeared to her imagination: she fancied that she saw in her looks the eagerness of a satyr, or, if possible, of some monster still more odious; and disengaging herself with the highest indignation from her arms, she began to shriek and cry in the most terrible manner, calling both heaven and earth ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre

... he was, and to have pity on her. Sated with wine, his breath blew around her nearer and nearer, and his face was there near her face. He was no longer the former kind Vinicius, almost dear to her soul; he was a drunken, wicked satyr, who filled her with repulsion and terror. But her strength deserted her more and more. In vain did she bend and turn away her face to escape his kisses. He rose to his feet, caught her in both arms, and drawing her head to his breast, ...
— Quo Vadis - A Narrative of the Time of Nero • Henryk Sienkiewicz

... enthusiasm, a joyous, sympathetic exuberance with the vital processes of Nature. Dionysos stood for fertility, life, gladness, all the positive, passionate, and jubilant aspects of Nature. And the well-known satyr choruses, the wine and dance and song of the Greek spring festivals, are classic and beautiful illustrations of the religion of enthusiasm. Euripides gives voice to this spirit in the song of the Maenads in ...
— Human Traits and their Social Significance • Irwin Edman

... sustained with consistency. The cold and eager hunter Silvio contrasts with tender and romantic Mirtillo. Corisca's meretricious arts and systematized profligacy enhance the pure affection of Amarilli. Dorinda presents another type of love, so impulsive that it conquers maidenly modesty. The Satyr is a creature of rude lust, foiled in its brutal appetite by the courtesan Corisca's wiliness. Carino brings the corruption of towns into comparison with the innocence ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volumes 1 and 2 - The Catholic Reaction • John Addington Symonds

... Kemble pays well on occasions, and gold would make "Hyperion" of a "satyr." Seriously, Mr. Blackmantle, the town is overrun with monkeys; they are as busy, and as importunate, as Lady Montague's boys on May day, or the Guy Fawkes representatives on the fifth of November. They are "here, there, ...
— The English Spy • Bernard Blackmantle

... passion ambushed by the aerial shrine Comes forth to dance, a hoofed obscenity, His satyr's dance, with laughter in his eye, And cruelty along the scarlet line Of his bright smiling mouth. All uncontrolled, Love's rebel servant, he delights to beat The maddening quick dry rhythm of goatish feet Even in the sanctuary, and makes bold To mime himself the godhead ...
— The Defeat of Youth and Other Poems • Aldous Huxley

... great epics. Jastrow[1893] construes it as a variation of the story of Adam and Eve. Gilgamesh is a hero admired by all women. The elders of Uruk beg his mother, the mother-goddess Aruru (a form of Ishtar), to restrain him. In order to comply she makes of clay Eabani, a satyr-like, hairy wild man, with a tail and horns, who lives with the beasts. Jastrow thinks that this means that he consorted with female beasts, having as yet no female of his own species. No one could ...
— Folkways - A Study of the Sociological Importance of Usages, Manners, Customs, Mores, and Morals • William Graham Sumner

... of Nanteuil's box, an aged sculptor, as venerable and as handsome as an ancient satyr, was gazing with glistening eye and smiling lips at the stage, which at that moment was in a ...
— A Mummer's Tale • Anatole France

... work at this early period we possess probably nothing except a rough scrawl on the plaster of a wall at Settignano. Even this does not exist in its original state. The Satyr which is still shown there may, according to Mr. Heath Wilson's suggestion, be a rifacimento from the master's hand at a subsequent period ...
— The Life of Michelangelo Buonarroti • John Addington Symonds

... himself noting the soft curve and flush of a woman's cheek, the shell-texture of her ear, and the snowy whiteness of her throat. She sat in the full light of the window behind him, leaning as she listened against a pedestal of ebony which upheld the bronze bust of a satyr peering down at her with wrinkled eyes; her throat was displayed by the backward bend of her head, and showed the whiter by contrast with the black gown she wore. Philip's breath came more quickly, and his head seemed to swim. Sensitive to beauty, and starved by asceticism, he was in a ...
— The Puritans • Arlo Bates

... almost at will with her light laughter and chatter. They loved her ideas, watched her as she talked vehemently about politics or economics. And she, while she talked, saw the golden-brown eyes of Anthony gleam like the eyes of a satyr as they watched her. He did not listen to her words, he listened ...
— The Rainbow • D. H. (David Herbert) Lawrence

... and to white men's return to nature, I had never seen a man who so well fitted into the landscape as the owner of the ape. He was the faun to the curling locks and the pointed ears, with not a trace of the satyr; all youth and grace ...
— Mystic Isles of the South Seas. • Frederick O'Brien

... surely time they found it possible to live together in harmony.... And yet it was not that there was any definite bad feeling between them, that he could find any holes in the scheme of his brother's behaviour. It was only that Archelaus, old as he was, still retained the quality of a satyr, of something oddly malevolent, that boded ill. Ishmael tried to break himself of the feeling, life-old with him, though for so many years forgotten, but he found that, though he could force himself not to dwell on it, beyond that he was powerless. There ...
— Secret Bread • F. Tennyson Jesse

... substance of his workes sufficiently aunswere the subtilitie of his titles. Lydgat a translatour onely and no deuiser of that which he wrate, but one that wrate in good verse. Harding a Poet Epick or Historicall, handled himselfe well according to the time and maner of his subiect. He that wrote the Satyr of Piers Ploughman, seemed to haue bene a malcontent of that time, and therefore bent himselfe wholly to taxe the disorders of that age, and specially the pride of the Romane Clergy, of whose fall he seemeth ...
— The Arte of English Poesie • George Puttenham

... Zeus appeared under the form of a satyr, was the daughter of Nicteus, king of Thebes. To escape the anger of her father she fled to Sicyon, where king Epopeus, enraptured with her wonderful beauty, made her his wife without asking her father's consent. This so enraged Nicteus that he declared war against ...
— Myths and Legends of Ancient Greece and Rome • E.M. Berens

... a place of safety, and when he grew up he delivered Erech from its foes, and made it the seat of his kingdom. He slew the tyrant Khumbaba in the forest of cedars, and by means of a stratagem tempted the satyr Ea-bant to leave the woods and become his counsellor and friend. Istar wooed him, but he scorned her offers, and taunted her with her misdeeds to the hapless lovers who had been caught in her toils. ...
— Early Israel and the Surrounding Nations • Archibald Sayce

... to the men; it was the feminine portion of the audience that interested him, and he regarded it with a gloating leer, the expression of a senile satyr. Albeit a little on the seamy side of life, his rank and wealth were such that he himself attracted a good deal of attention, matronly eyes being turned in his direction with not unkindly purport. The marquis perceived the stir his presence occasioned and was not at all displeased; on the ...
— The Strollers • Frederic S. Isham

... disgraceful ones. If authors plead a mission to write, it must be to write that which will do good. A Raphael may boast of inspiration when he paints a Madonna, but not when his brush stoops to a Cyprian or a Satyr. The Pharisees of old prayed unctuously in the market-places: so the George Sands of our day boast of their superior insight into the beautiful and true. We doubt whether both are ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII. No. 5. May 1848 • Various

... lived thus nearly a year, when, one day as they were riding on horseback, Alfred saw Mr. Grossman approaching. "Drop your veil," he said, quickly, to his companion; for he could not bear to have that Satyr even look upon his hidden flower. The cotton-broker noticed the action, but silently touched his hat, and passed with a significant smile on his uncomely countenance. A few days afterward, when Alfred had gone to his business in the city, Loo Loo strolled to her favorite ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. II, No. 8, June 1858 • Various

... Myron has been plausibly recognized in a statue of a satyr in the Lateran Museum (Fig. 106). The evidence for this is too complex to be stated here. If the identification is correct, the Lateran statue is copied from the figure of Marsyas in a bronze group of Athena and Marsyas which stood on the Athenian Acropolis ...
— A History Of Greek Art • F. B. Tarbell

... magnificent concert-grand, open, with music strewn on its polished lid in a confusion of sheets; some piled, some fluttering loose, still others flung to the floor where a chance breeze, or a careless hand, may have scattered them. Near it was the exquisite bronze figure of a young satyr playing the flute, the childish arms and limbs, round and molded, glowing rosy and warm in the lamp light. In one corner was a violin stand, a bow tossed heedlessly across it; and all about were boxes, half packed and disordered. The curtains were drawn. The malachite clock on the mantel-piece ...
— The Black Cross • Olive M. Briggs

... broad brow, garnished with heavy knotted curling horns, with eyes gleaming like a pair of gold buttons, a reddish beard, exhibiting a proud, defiant bearing under those festoons of verdure, and a countenance as bold as that of a prowling satyr—my goat was making a progress upwards towards the very highest of these narrow ledges, and was enjoying a sweet repast ...
— The Man-Wolf and Other Tales • Emile Erckmann and Alexandre Chatrian

... separated me from the walls, I drew up; and turning in the saddle, glanced back to the parapet. A face was there, where hers had been; but, oh, the contrast between her lovely features and those that now met my gaze! Hyperion to the Satyr! Not that the face now before me was ugly or ill-featured. There are some, and women too, who would have termed it handsome; to my eyes it was hideous! Let me confess that this hideousness, or more properly its cause, ...
— The War Trail - The Hunt of the Wild Horse • Mayne Reid

... am!" exclaimed the blackest satyr, and he pointed to one of the lower limbs from which there hung by the tail the most pathetic little bunch of bristles imaginable. "Le'me shake him down, Mister David, I ...
— Andrew the Glad • Maria Thompson Daviess

... of portraits, complete the present equipment of Azay-le-Rideau. Among the portraits that interested us was one of Catherine de Medicis by Clouet, and another by the same artist of Francis I, as he so often appears in his portraits, "with the insufferable smile upon his lips that curl upward satyr-like towards the narrow eyes, the crisp close-cut brownish beard and the pink silken sleeves and doublet." Near by, in strong contrast to the sensual face of Francis, hangs the clear-cut face of Calvin. Here also are the portraits of Henry of Navarre ...
— In Chteau Land • Anne Hollingsworth Wharton

... had seen a woman's face in the window; but I heard that Mrs. Black had been much admired for her beautiful golden hair, and round what had struck me with such a nameless terror there was a mist of flowing yellow hair, as it were an aureole of glory round the visage of a satyr. The whole thing bothered me in an indescribable manner; and when I got home I tried my best to think of the impression I had received as an illusion, but it was no use. I knew very well I had seen what I have tried to describe to you, and I was morally certain that I had seen ...
— Masterpieces of Mystery In Four Volumes - Mystic-Humorous Stories • Various

... Davis, ascribing qualities held by them in common, he proceeded: "The resemblance is great, and it has given his strut additional pomposity. The resemblance is great, it is striking—Hyperion to a satyr; Thersites to Hercules; mud to marble; dunghill to diamond; a singed cat to a Bengal tiger; a whining puppy to a roaring lion. Shade of the mighty Davis, forgive the almost profanation ...
— Shadow and Light - An Autobiography with Reminiscences of the Last and Present Century • Mifflin Wistar Gibbs

... thinly clad as in the golden age, I could not wish a chaster keeper of them. Nay, had I wives in droves like Solomon, I'd make thee Kislah Aga of my harem, Chief eunuch and sole security—What! Call me satyr when I urge in bounds The boundless beauties of pure maidenhood, And bid thee wed them! Thus best advices are Construed amiss, and what we kindly mean Turned into scorn ...
— The Scarlet Stigma - A Drama in Four Acts • James Edgar Smith

... favour of this position But is your modesty truly impregnable? cannot the weapon of stern rebuke arouse your sensibility? must honest indignation mourn a defeat? I intend to try the doubtful experiment, tho' you should analize a satyr to be a proof of your general consequence, and extract incense to your vanity from the blackest records of ...
— The Writings of Samuel Adams, volume II (1770 - 1773) - collected and edited by Harry Alonso Cushing • Samuel Adams

... Satyr and couculde—and sum the Evils up, Shew the great wonder how the Land shou'd 'scape, From Fires, Famines, Pestilence and Rage, To crush so vile, so proffligate an Age? For let the Church be Empty as it will, You'll see ...
— The Fifteen Comforts of Matrimony: Responses from Men • Various

... fled away, and Hother married the princess. Nevertheless Balder took heart of grace and again met Hother in a stricken field. But he fared even worse than before; for Hother dealt him a deadly wound with a magic sword, which he had received from Miming, the Satyr of the woods; and after lingering three days in pain Balder died of his hurt and was buried with royal ...
— Balder The Beautiful, Vol. I. • Sir James George Frazer

... Chevalier's attempts of 1745. Had he succeeded, it would have added one third at least to the Jacobite army. Boswell has oddly described M'Cruslick, the being whose name was conferred upon this gentleman, as something between Proteus and Don Quixote. It is the name of a species of satyr, or esprit follet, a sort of mountain Puck or hobgoblin, seen among the wilds and mountains, as the old Highlanders believed, sometimes mirthful, sometimes mischievous. Alexander Macleod's precarious mode of life and variable spirits occasioned ...
— Life Of Johnson, Volume 5 • Boswell

... precious stones, so fantastic, and surrounded by devices so many and so bizarre, that whoever beholds this work, with its vast variety of invention, stands in amazement before it. Among other details, also, is a Satyr raising part of a pavilion, whose head, in its strange, goatlike aspect, is a marvel of beauty, and all the more because he seems to be smiling and full of joy at the sight of so beautiful a boy. There is also a ...
— Lives of the Most Eminent Painters Sculptors and Architects - Vol. 05 ( of 10) Andrea da Fiesole to Lorenzo Lotto • Giorgio Vasari

... action which characterized the two statues of Myron already mentioned appears in a third, the statue of Marsyas astonished at the flute which Athene had thrown away, and which was to lead its finder into his fatal contest with Apollo. A copy of this work at the Lateran Museum represents the satyr starting back in a rapid mingling of desire and fear, which is stamped on his heavy face, as well as indicated in the ...
— TITLE • AUTHOR

... A SATYR, as he was ranging the forest in an exceedingly cold, snowy season, met with a Traveller half starved with the extremity of the weather. He took compassion on him, and kindly invited him home to a warm, comfortable cave he had in a hollow of a ...
— Favourite Fables in Prose and Verse • Various



Words linked to "Satyr" :   satyr orchid, satyric, pervert, Greek deity, lech, forest god, deviant, deviate, letch, lecher



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