"Sibylline" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... St. Columba, Cumaean Sibyl, seeress of Cumae, consulted by Aeneas, sold Sibylline ...
— Bulfinch's Mythology • Thomas Bulfinch
... duty, in the cause of those to whom the sweet landscapes of England are yet precious, and to whom they may yet teach what they taught me, in early boyhood, and would still if I had it now to learn,—it is my duty to plead with what earnestness I may, that these sacred sibylline books ...
— On the Old Road, Vol. 2 (of 2) - A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays and Articles on Art and Literature • John Ruskin
... lover, but without effect. A few days later she again met her old gipsy crone Hagar Burton, who repeated her sibylline declaration. As Miss Arundell never, by any chance, talked about anything or anybody except Burton, and as she paid liberally for consulting the Fates, this declaration necessarily points to peculiar acumen on the part of ...
— The Life of Sir Richard Burton • Thomas Wright
... Greek colony of Italy on the coast, and the last survivors of the Tarquinii died here. This is the most classic of all these legendary coast towns near Naples, as it was here that the Cumaean Sibyl dwelt with the mysterious sibylline leaves,—the books that were carried to Rome. A colossal Acropolis was once here, fragments of whose walls are now standing; and the rocky foundation is honeycombed with secret passages and openings. It is here that Virgil's "Grotto of the Sibyl" is supposed to have stood,—the ...
— Italy, the Magic Land • Lilian Whiting
... was the customary exclamation, sometimes uttered in a tone of vexation, but more frequently of satisfaction. She was so original and eccentric, had such an inexhaustible store of ghost stories and fairy tales, sang so many crazy old ballads, that children gathered round her, as a Sibylline oracle, and mothers, who were not troubled with a superfluity of servants, were glad to welcome one to their household who had such a wondrous talent for amusing them, and keeping them still. In spite of all her oddities, she ...
— Helen and Arthur - or, Miss Thusa's Spinning Wheel • Caroline Lee Hentz
... concerning the sibyls, sibylline books, and sibylline leaves consult a classical dictionary. 23. VERBE; used currently for the second person of the Trinity; here it goes back to a passage in the first division of the poem, where speaking of God's ...
— French Lyrics • Arthur Graves Canfield
... lip flash with such concentrated haughtiness, curl with so fell a sneer, as those of that fallen consular, of that degraded senator, the haughtiest and most ambitious of a race never deficient in those qualities, he who, drunk with despairing pride, and deceived to his ruin by the double-tongued Sibylline prophecies, aspired to be that third Cornelius, who should be master of ...
— The Roman Traitor (Vol. 1 of 2) • Henry William Herbert
... prisonlike and sepulchral than the others in its eternal shadow. High up in a wall the black hole of a kind of grotto opens, to which a secret corridor coming from the depths used to lead. It was there that the face of the priest charged with the announcement of the sibylline words appeared—and the ceiling of his niche is all covered still with the smoke from the flame of his lamp, which was extinguished more ...
— Egypt (La Mort De Philae) • Pierre Loti
... to in paying for a second, as one would have sufficed to acquit him. This man, such in his own nature, and now inflamed by Catiline, false prophets and fortune-tellers had also corrupted with vain hopes, quoting to him fictitious verses and oracles, and proving from the Sibylline prophecies that there were three of the name Cornelius designed by fate to be monarchs of Rome; two of whom, Cinna and Sylla, had already fulfilled the decree, and that divine fortune was now advancing with the gift of monarchy for the remaining third Cornelius; and that therefore he ought by all ...
— The Boys' and Girls' Plutarch - Being Parts of The "Lives" of Plutarch • Plutarch
... gift of melody. Correggio is the Ariel or Faun; he has surprised laughter upon the face of the universe, and he paints this laughter in ever-varying movement. Michael Angelo is the prophet and Sibylline seer; to him the Renaissance discloses the travail of her spirit; him she endues with power; he wrests her secret, voyaging, like an ideal Columbus, the vast abyss of thought alone. In order that ...
— Renaissance in Italy Vol. 3 - The Fine Arts • John Addington Symonds
... imperfect; unpublished fragments of Plautus, of Isaeus, of Themistius; an unpublished work of the philosopher Porphyrius; some writings of the Jew Philo; the ancient interpreters of Virgil; two books of the Chronicles of Eusebius Pamphilus; the VI. and XIV. Sibylline Books; and the six books of the Republic of Cicero. I saw, too, in the Biblioteca Ambrosiana, fragments of the version of the Bible made in the middle of the fourth century, by Ulfila, bishop of the Maesogoths. ...
— Pilgrimage from the Alps to the Tiber - Or The Influence of Romanism on Trade, Justice, and Knowledge • James Aitken Wylie
... horse to the path, I rode out of the glade; but with very different feelings from those I had on entering it. The words of this ill-starred maiden—attainted with that sibylline cunning peculiar to her race—had filled my heart with most dire forebodings. Her speech could not be mere conjecture, put forth to vex and annoy me? She had scarcely motive enough for this; besides, her display of a positive foreknowledge was proof against the supposition, ...
— The Wild Huntress - Love in the Wilderness • Mayne Reid
... That genia soil receives the fruitful store, And there they grow, and breed a thousand more. Now be their arts display'd, how first they choose A cause and party, as the bard his Muse; Inspired by these, with clamorous zeal they cry, And through the town their dreams and omens fly; So the Sibylline leaves were blown about, Disjointed scraps of fate involved in doubt; So idle dreams, the journals of the night, Are right and wrong by turns, and mingle wrong with right.- Some champions for the rights ...
— The Village and The Newspaper • George Crabbe
... consulted to discover the religious observances necessary to avert great calamities and to expiate prodigies. During the reign of Augustus they were removed to the Temple of Apollo on the Palatine Hill, and all the false Sibylline leaves which were extant were collected and burned. They remained here until shortly after the year 400 A.D., when they were publicly burned by Stilicho, a famous general of Christian Rome, as impious documents of ...
— Historic Tales, Volume 11 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... is possible for those who are not behind their age in scholarship and science; this is a solemn fact, which may be ignored by the partisans of short-sighted bigotry, but which is felt by all, and confessed by most of those who are capable of appreciating its reality and importance. The deep Sibylline vaticinations of Coleridge's philosophical mind, the practical working of Arnold's religious sentimentalism, and the open acknowledgment of many divines who are living examples of the spirit of the age, have all, in different ways, foretold the advent ...
— Theological Essays and Other Papers v1 • Thomas de Quincey
... pontifices were performing in it; a statue of Virtus, standing before some of the gates, fell upon its face; and certain persons rendered inspired by the Mother of the Gods declared that the goddess was angry with them. On this point the Sibylline books were consulted. They made the same statements and prescribed that the statue be taken down to the sea and purified with water from it. In obedience to the order the goddess went very far indeed out into the surges, where she remained ...
— Dio's Rome, Vol. III • Cassius Dio
... that is all," went on her brother-in-law. "Now listen to me. I have been living beyond my means. Last year the canvass to get on the board of guardians of the Sibylline Books—in which that graceless son-in-law of Cicero's, Publius Dolabella, defeated me—cost a deal of money. This year I have the consulship. But it has taken every denarius I own, and more too. All my estates are involved, so that it will require years to ...
— A Friend of Caesar - A Tale of the Fall of the Roman Republic. Time, 50-47 B.C. • William Stearns Davis
... "What? Never read 'Sibylline Leaves'? Why, I will wager my head that you have parsed from them a thousand times! Never read that magnificent hymn before sunrise, in the midst of glaciers and snow- crowned, cloud-piercing peaks? Listen, then; and if you don't feel like falling upon your knees, ...
— Beulah • Augusta J. Evans
... in Rome, and, in fact, in many other cities and countries of the world in those days, a variety of prophetic books, called the Sibylline Oracles, in which it was generally believed that future events were foretold. Some of these volumes or rolls, which were very ancient and of great authority, were preserved in the temples at Rome, under the charge of a board of guardians, who were to ...
— History of Julius Caesar • Jacob Abbott
... the Romans neglected them because they had the Sibylline books, and their auspices (aruspices, or haruspices), which stood them instead of oracles. M. Vandale demonstrates that some remains of the oracles might yet be seen under the Christian emperors. It was then ...
— The Phantom World - or, The philosophy of spirits, apparitions, &c, &c. • Augustin Calmet
... with regard to II. and III., which did obtain posthumous publication, the following caution should be borne in mind by the reader. "To the completion," says Coleridge, "of these four works I have literally nothing more to do than to transcribe; but, as I before hinted, from so many scraps and Sibylline leaves, including margins of blank pages that unfortunately I must be my own scribe, and, not done by myself, they will be all but lost." As matters turned out he was not his own scribe, and the difficulty which ...
— English Men of Letters: Coleridge • H. D. Traill
... Aunt Ellen, I am just as much shocked as you are; but when he does not respect even your opinions, how dare I presume to hope he will show any deference to mine? St. Elmo, what think you of the last Sibylline leaves of your favorite Ruskin? In looking over his new book, I was surprised to find this strong assertion ... Here is the volume now—listen ...
— St. Elmo • Augusta J. Evans
... O'Brien. And the two women looked out of the canvas with the same, self-same piercing intensity, the same glow of passion, the same flame of sensual desire, the same marvellous eloquence; each had a mouth that was ambiguous, enigmatical, sibylline, the mouth of the insatiable absorber of souls; and each had a brow of marble whiteness, immaculately, ...
— The Child of Pleasure • Gabriele D'Annunzio
... she said, with something of a sibylline air. Evidently he was thinking how clever it was of her to have guessed it, and indeed she thought it was a remarkable example of her instinctive understanding of men. And Yaverland, on his side, was letting his mind travel down a channel of feeling which he knew to be silly and sentimental, ...
— The Judge • Rebecca West
... except in the intellectual severity of her outline, and bears marks of age which will grow stronger every year, and make her ugly before long. Still it will be a grandiose, gypsy, or rather Sibylline ugliness, well adapted to the expression of some tragic parts. Only it seems as if she could not live long; she expends force enough upon a part to furnish out ...
— At Home And Abroad - Or, Things And Thoughts In America and Europe • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... now proceeded to pour out another cup of tea, and having mixed and flavored it, she looked in a weird and sibylline manner across ...
— The Pearl of Orr's Island - A Story of the Coast of Maine • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... rather insipid quatrain was tortured into a baleful prophecy. It was considered very ominous that the battery should be first opened against this Sibylline tower. The chimes, too, which had been playing, all through the siege, the music of Marot's sacred songs, happened that morning to be sounding forth from every belfry the twenty-second psalm: "My God, my God, ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... good people be concerned to hear that Pagan fictions will so long retain their influence over literature, let them reflect that, as the Bishop of St David's says, in his "Proofs of the Inspiration of the Sibylline Verses," read at the last meeting of the Royal Society of Literature, "at all events, a ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 1 (of 4) - Contibutions to Knight's Quarterly Magazine] • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... whereas the hypothesis that it was Caesar's intention to rule the Romans as Imperator, the non-Romans as Rex, must be simply dismissed. It is based solely on the story that in the sitting of the senate in which Caesar was assassinated a Sibylline utterance was brought forward by one of the priests in charge of the oracles, Lucius Cotta, to the effect that the Parthians could only be vanquished by a "king," and in consequence of this the resolution was adopted ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... it for them: but the water companies did not choose to take it; and now this part of England is growing so populous and so valuable that it wants all its little rainfall for itself. So there is another leaf torn out of the Sibylline books for the poor old water companies. You do not understand: you will some day. But you may comfort yourself about London. For it happens to be, I think, the luckiest city in the world; and if it had not been, ...
— Health and Education • Charles Kingsley
... deceived him. Impostors! But of what incredible caliber, of what illusion-creating power! For years he could not see a Salvation Army girl without a sense of cerebral exaltation. If he could have met Debora again, he would have forgiven her sibylline deceptions, her father's chicanery. And how did they spin their web? Ferval, student of the occult, greedy of metaphysical problems, at first set it down to Indian Yogi magic. But the machinery—the ...
— Visionaries • James Huneker |
