"Venus" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... quite remarkable energy, he had thereupon repaired to his son's room, opened the window, and begun vigorously to throw his pretty editions, his dainty water-colours, his drawers full of letters, his cast of the Venus of Milo, out on to the lawn, upon which at the moment a heavy rain was ...
— Young Lives • Richard Le Gallienne
... and chaperone, that's it. A real American beauty! And Blithers loudly boasts that his daughter is the prettiest girl in America! Shades of Venus! Can there be such a thing on earth as a prettier girl than this one? Can nature have performed the impossible? Is America so full of lovely girls that this one must take second place to a daughter of Blithers? ...
— The Prince of Graustark • George Barr McCutcheon
... active, and clever, about forty strong. The stewardesses, also of African origin, wore hoops of extravagant dimensions, and open bodies in front, displaying dark brown necks many of them lighted up by a necklace or diamond cross, rivalling Venus herself if she were black. They were really fearful objects to contemplate, for there was a look of display about them which read one a severe lesson on female vanity, so frightful did they appear, and yet rigged out like modern ...
— First Impressions of the New World - On Two Travellers from the Old in the Autumn of 1858 • Isabella Strange Trotter
... these women were very pretty. One resembled Mme. Rey, who played the Queen in "Ruy Blas" in 1840; it was this one who represented Venus. She was admirably shaped. Another was more than pretty: she was handsome and superb. Nothing more magnificent could be seen than her black, sad eyes, her disdainful mouth, her smile at once bewitching ...
— The Memoirs of Victor Hugo • Victor Hugo
... who were, indeed, honoured with the highest distinctions. The Corinthians ascribed their deliverance, and that of the rest of Greece, from the power of Xerxes, to the intercession of the priestess of Venus, and the protection of the goddess. At all the festivals of Venus, the people applied to the courtesans as the most efficacious intercessors; and Solon deemed it advantageous to Athens, to introduce the worship of that goddess, and to constitute them ...
— Female Scripture Biographies, Vol. II • Francis Augustus Cox
... suspicion of the circumstances, he was unable to imagine. Her intense personal sympathy, it might be; he thought so with some gentle pity for her—of the paternal pat-back order of pity. She adored him, by decree of Venus; and the Goddess had not decreed that he should find consolation in adoring her. Nor could the temptings of prudent counsel in his head induce him to run the risk of such a total turnover as the incurring ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... part de son eveque. Cette indiscretion n'eut pas heureusement un resultat aussi facheux; mais ses erreurs sur plusieurs points sont evidentes; il donne 4000 toises de hauteur a l'Etna qui n'en a que 1662; il commet d'autres fautes qui ont ete relevees par les voyageurs venus apres lui. Bartels (Briefe ueber Kalabrien und Sicilien, 2te Auflage, 3 Bd., 8vo., Goetting. 1791-92) est meme persuade que le voyage au sommet de l'Etna, chef-d'oeuvre de narration, n'est qu'un roman, et cet ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 231, April 1, 1854 • Various
... audience! Oh, what a spectacle! No one could have liked it but Crassus—no one else in the world! Not I, for considering his headlong descent from the stars, he seemed to me to have lost his footing rather than to have been deliberately following a path; and, as Apelles, if he had seen his Venus, or Protogenes his Ialysus daubed with mud, would, I presume, have felt great sorrow, so neither could I behold without great sorrow a man, portrayed and embellished with all the colours of my art, suddenly disfigured. Although no one thought, in view of the Clodius business, that I was bound to ...
— The Letters of Cicero, Volume 1 - The Whole Extant Correspodence in Chronological Order • Marcus Tullius Cicero
... Society presented a memorial to his majesty, expressing a wish that proper vessels might be appointed to sail to the southward to observe the transit of Venus over the disc of the sun. The Admiralty accordingly, for this service, purchased the Endeavour barque, and placed her under the command of Lieutenant James Cook. Mr Charles Green was appointed astronomer, and Mr Banks and Dr Solander embarked ...
— How Britannia Came to Rule the Waves - Updated to 1900 • W.H.G. Kingston
... that one star differeth from another in glory, and the same conception applies to noses. To insist that one type of face is ugly because it differs from that of the Venus of Milo is to look at it entirely in a misleading light. It is strange that we should resent people differing from ourselves; we should resent much more violently their resembling ourselves. This principle has made a sufficient hash of literary criticism, in which it is always the custom to complain ...
— The Defendant • G.K. Chesterton
... looked incredulous. She is so deliciously lacking in a sense of humour that in the frivolous society of Jimmie and me she is as much out of place as the Venus de Milo would be ...
— At Home with the Jardines • Lilian Bell
... Heavenly Venus, who presided over the pure sentiment of love, in distinction from Aphrodite, who ...
— Philothea - A Grecian Romance • Lydia Maria Child
... but a challenge was never ignored, and he was greedy of insults. Already he had nigh killed Rob Saunderson's collie, Shep; Jem Burton's Monkey fled incontinently at the sound of his approach; while he had even fought a round with that redoubtable trio, the Vexer, Venus, and Van Tromp. ...
— Bob, Son of Battle • Alfred Ollivant
... be about seventeen, tall and fair, and so exquisitely shaped—you may talk of your Venus de Medicis, your Dianas, your Nymphs, and Galateas; but if Praxiteles, and Roubilliac, and Wilton, were to lay their heads together, in order to make a complete pattern of beauty, they would hardly reach ...
— The Adventures of Sir Launcelot Greaves • Tobias Smollett
... artists have attached to them. Galen represents that the disuse of the organ by the athletes was the cause of its undeveloped form, and that as the organ of these did not figure in the worship of Venus, or participate in the festivals of Bacchus, but was used solely and simply for micturating purposes, impotence was often the result, citing the case of a patient who came to consult him for an obstinate priapism ...
— History of Circumcision from the Earliest Times to the Present - Moral and Physical Reasons for its Performance • Peter Charles Remondino
... whose task it is to describe the known world, has no concern.[452] Nothing could better illustrate the philosophical character of Strabo's mind. In such speculations, so far as his means of verification went, he was situated somewhat as we are to-day with regard to the probable inhabitants of Venus or Mars. ...
— The Discovery of America Vol. 1 (of 2) - with some account of Ancient America and the Spanish Conquest • John Fiske
... Sigismund replied to a lady who complained of it to him, "That they, the good ladies, might keep to their own proper way and holy virtues, and Madame Imperia to the sweet naughtiness of the goddess Venus"—Christian words which shocked the good ladies, to their credit ...
— Droll Stories, Volume 1 • Honore de Balzac
... scornfully.] You see, your Grace, if a woman is pretty, and Valma finds Venus's girdle well marked in her palm; and if he concludes from other signs that she's vain and light and loose; it isn't much to suppose that there are a few horrid men licking their lips at ...
— The Gay Lord Quex - A Comedy in Four Acts • Arthur W. Pinero
... with only slight traces of stratified sand. It is true that the greater number of these fossils (all belonging to species now living on the coast) were broken into angular fragments, not excepting even the thick tests of the Venus mercenaria. . . ...
— Louis Agassiz: His Life and Correspondence • Louis Agassiz
... of Mahomet, en route to pay his respects to the Mountain, being met halfway by the object of his pilgrimage; though to liken the Contessa di Ravello to a mountain is perhaps to brutalise a poetic license. She is a fairy of a woman, a pocket Venus. Gaeta is her name, and her sponsors in baptism must have been endowed with prophetic souls, for she is the very spirit ...
— The Princess Passes • Alice Muriel Williamson and Charles Norris Williamson
... Horace is an eloquent interpreter of the religion of the countryside. He knows, of course, the gods of Greece and the East,—Venus of Cythera and Paphos, of Eryx and Cnidus, Mercury, deity of gain and benefactor of men, Diana, Lady of the mountain and the glade, Delian Apollo, who bathes his unbound locks in the pure waters of Castalia, and Juno, sister and consort of fulminating Jove. ...
— Horace and His Influence • Grant Showerman
... whether new or old, who value what is old, in art or literature, for its accessories, and chiefly for the conventional authority that has gathered about it—people who would never really have been made glad by any Venus fresh-risen from the sea, and who praise the Venus of old Greece and Rome, only because they fancy her grown now ...
— Appreciations, with an Essay on Style • Walter Horatio Pater
... a folio in double columns, profusely illustrated by Sir Edward Burne-Jones, and typographically superior to the books of that time. The designs for the stories of Cupid and Psyche, Pygmalion and the Image, The Ring given to Venus, and the Hill of Venus, were finished, and forty-four of those for Cupid and Psyche were engraved on wood in line, somewhat in the manner of the early German masters. About thirty-five of the blocks were executed by William Morris himself, ...
— The Art and Craft of Printing • William Morris
... religion is not so much what it does contain as what it does not. It is not so much what we find as what we miss, for more than half the gods whom we instinctively associate with Rome were not there under this old regime. Here is a partial list of those whose names we do not find: Minerva, Diana, Venus, Fortuna, Hercules, Castor, Pollux, Apollo, Mercury, Dis, Proserpina, Aesculapius, the Magna Mater. And yet their absence is not surprising when we realise that almost all of the gods in this list represent phases of life ...
— The Religion of Numa - And Other Essays on the Religion of Ancient Rome • Jesse Benedict Carter
... of Porto Venere is a withered and abandoned city, climbing the cliffs of S. Pietro; and on the headland stands the ruined church, built by Pisans with alternate rows of white and black marble, upon the site of an old temple of Venus. This is a modest and pure piece of Gothic architecture, fair in desolation, refined and dignified, and not unworthy in its grace of the dead Cyprian goddess. Through its broken lancets the sea-wind whistles ...
— New Italian sketches • John Addington Symonds
... new feeling in the quaint but strong and rugged Gothic, the beautiful development of which may be seen in the coinage of modern Europe from the fifth to the fifteenth century. The Farnesian Hercules, the Venus de' Medici, the Apollo Belvidere, and the famous equestrian Marcus Aurelius make their appearance upon the ancient medals. Undoubtedly many of the magnificent designs of Grecian medals in particular are but the types of Protogenes and Apelles, as Houdin's model cast of ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No. 6, December 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... assistance, and the astronomer of the Government had referred him to the postmaster at Rahway, "Prognosticator" of the meteorological column in The Courier, who would be instructed to give Mr. Osgood every help, especially as the occultation of Venus was near. Men do not send letters by post in a new country when personal communication is possible, and John Osgood was asked by his father to go to Rahway. When John wished for the name of this rare official, the astronomer's letter was handed over with a sarcastic request ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... only an agreeable flirtation—not but that it's possible there may be something in the shape of a noose matrimonial dangling in the background. She combines, no doubt, in her unrivalled person, the qualities of Hebe, Venus, and Diana—Hebe in youth, Venus in beauty, and Diana in wisdom; so it's said, but I trust incorrectly, as respects one of them—good-bye, mother—try your influence as touching Crazy Jane, ...
— The Emigrants Of Ahadarra - The Works of William Carleton, Volume Two • William Carleton
... Ottima. Then, Venus' body, had we come upon My husband Luca Gaddi's murdered corpse Within there, at his couch-foot, covered close— Would you have pored upon it? Why persist 105 In poring now upon it? For 'tis here As much as there ...
— Selections from the Poems and Plays of Robert Browning • Robert Browning
... Shakespeare pronounced "Venus and Adonis" "the first heir of his invention," apparently implying that it was his first effort at literary composition. He should not have said it. It has been an embarrassment to his historians these many, many years. They have to make him write that graceful and polished ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... and Pastimes of the various Months" of Flanders work, in the "Salle des Etats"—the six pieces of Gobelin work in the Queen's Boudoir on the first floor—the five pieces of the same work, including "Venus's toilet," in Queen Jeanne's room on the second floor, and the four pieces of Brussels in Henry IV.'s bedroom—also on the second floor—are only a few of the ...
— Twixt France and Spain • E. Ernest Bilbrough
... to beat the cars, On Venus I will call. If she greets me fair as I ride the air, To meet ...
— Skyrider • B. M. Bower
... best of all Among'st the rar'st of good ones) sitting sadly, Hearing vs praise our Loues of Italy For Beauty, that made barren the swell'd boast Of him that best could speake: for Feature, laming The Shrine of Venus, or straight-pight Minerua, Postures, beyond breefe Nature. For Condition, A shop of all the qualities, that man Loues woman for, besides that hooke of Wiuing, Fairenesse, which strikes ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare
... conjunction of Venus and Mars, Or something peculiar above in the stars, Attracted the notice of Signor Ruggieri, Who "bolted," and left him alone with his deary.— Monsieur St. Megrin went down on his knees, And the Duchess shed tears large as marrow-fat peas, When,—fancy the shock,—a loud double-knock, Made the ...
— The Bed-Book of Happiness • Harold Begbie
... and enclosing four.] leader, prince, and ruler of the other lights, the mind and regulating power of the universe, so vast as to illuminate and flood all things with his light. Him, as his companions, Venus and Mercury follow on their different courses; and in a sphere still lower the moon revolves, lighted by the rays of the sun. Beneath this there is nothing that is not mortal and perishable, except the souls bestowed upon the human race ...
— De Amicitia, Scipio's Dream • Marcus Tullius Ciceronis
... the native country of Barnabas. [75:3] They probably spent a considerable time in that large island. It contained several towns of note; it was the residence of great numbers of Jews; and the degraded state of its heathen inhabitants may be inferred from the fact that Venus was their tutelary goddess. The preaching of the apostles in this place appears to have created an immense sensation; their fame at length attracted the attention of persons of the highest distinction; and the heart of Paul was cheered by the accession ...
— The Ancient Church - Its History, Doctrine, Worship, and Constitution • W.D. [William Dool] Killen
... good taste they can be induced to enclose it in a cap. A mob-cap, a lace-cap, a low cap, a high cap, a flat cap, a cap with ribbons dangling loose, a cap with ribbons tied under the chin, a peak-cap, an angular cap, a round cap and a pyramid cap! How would Canova's Venus look in a mob-cap? If there be any ornament to the head in wearing a cap, it must surely be a false ornament. The American ladies are persuaded that the head can be ornamented without a cap. A rosebud or two, a woodbine, or a sprig of eglantine look well in the braided hair; ...
— Wanderings In South America • Charles Waterton
... Vs. Luck The Late Benjamin Franklin Mr. Bloke's Item A Medieval Romance Petition Concerning Copyright After-Dinner Speech Lionizing Murderers A New Crime A Curious Dream A True Story The Siamese Twins Speech At The Scottish Banquet In London A Ghost Story The Capitoline Venus Speech On Accident Insurance John Chinaman In New York How I Edited An Agricultural Paper The Petrified Man My Bloody Massacre The Undertaker's Chat Concerning Chambermaids Aurelia's Unfortunate Young Man "After" Jenkins About Barbers "Party Cries" In Ireland The Facts Concerning ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... conception of the term "substance" itself. We must not regard it as a quality, but as a sentiment:—it is the perception, in thinking beings, of the adaptation of matter to their organization. There are many things on the Earth, which would be nihility to the inhabitants of Venus—many things visible and tangible in Venus, which we could not be brought to appreciate as existing at all. But to the inorganic beings—to the angels—the whole of the unparticled matter is substance—that ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 2 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... "Venus was not on that occasion in ascendancy. Thank you for the change." Hawksley swung on his heel and reentered ...
— The Drums Of Jeopardy • Harold MacGrath
... where she was and "convalesce," as she confidently believed, in the spring. Once again came the analogy, which she herself pointed out now, to Heine on his mattress-grave in Paris. She, too, the last time she went out, dragged herself to the Louvre, to the feet of the Venus, "the goddess without arms, who could not help." Only her indomitable will and intense desire to live seemed to keep her alive. She sunk to a very low ebb, but, as she herself expressed it, she "seemed to have always one little window looking out into ...
— The Poems of Emma Lazarus - Vol. I (of II.), Narrative, Lyric, and Dramatic • Emma Lazarus
... conversing." When Adrian became emperor, the affront was remembered, and it prevented Apollodorus from being employed. Nor was the opinion which Apollodorus gave with respect to the plans of a sumptuous temple of Venus forgotten: viz.—upon seeing the statues sitting, as they were, in the temple (which, it seems, wanted much of its due proportion in height), he said, "if the goddesses should ever attempt to stand upon their feet, they would assuredly break their heads against the ceiling." ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 579 - Volume 20, No. 579, December 8, 1832 • Various
... they stop playing with dolls than because other things are liked better, or they are too old, ashamed, love real babies, etc. The Roman girl, when ripe for marriage, hung up her childhood doll as a votive offering to Venus. Mrs. Carlyle, who was compelled to stop, made sumptuous dresses and a four-post bed, and made her doll die upon a funeral pyre like Dido, after speaking her last farewell and stabbing herself with a penknife by way of Tyrian sword. At thirteen or fourteen it is more distinctly realized that dolls ...
— Youth: Its Education, Regimen, and Hygiene • G. Stanley Hall
... gazed at him, recognising in him her sort of person, his speech slipped the business leash. There were hedges of geranium and poinsettia about the villa, pergolas hung with bougainvillea, numberless palms, and a very pleasant orange grove in good bearing; in the courtyard a bronze Venus rode on a sprouting whale, and there were many fountains; and within there was much white marble and pillars of precious stone, and horrible liverish Viennese mosaics, for the house was something of a prodigy, having been built ...
— The Judge • Rebecca West
... endeth its course in two years. The sun abideth in every sign xxx days and ten hours and a half, and full endeth its course in ccclxv days and vi hours. Mercury abideth in every sign xxviii days and vi hours, and full endeth its course in cccxxxviii days. Venus abideth in every sign 29 days, and full endeth its course in 348 days. The moon abideth in every sign two days and a half, and six hours and one bisse less, and full endeth its course from point to point in 27 days and 8 hours. And by entering and out passing of these 7 stars into the 12 ...
— Mediaeval Lore from Bartholomew Anglicus • Robert Steele
... promised me that if I delivered it safely, I should be rewarded with the honour of putting it on the owner's fair arm." A conversation now took place on the nature of ladies' promises—on fashionable bracelets—on the size of the arm of the Venus de Medici—on Lady Delacour's and Miss Portman's—on the thick legs of ancient statues—and on the various defects and absurdities of Mrs. Luttridge and her wig. On all these topics Mr. Hervey displayed much wit, gallantry, and satire, with so happy an effect, that Belinda, when he took leave, ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. III - Belinda • Maria Edgeworth
... volunteering for the Royal Navy, he sailed to North America in the Eagle; then, promoted to be master of the Mercury, he did efficient service in surveying the St. Lawrence in co-operation with General Wolfe. His first voyage of discovery was in the Endeavour with a party to observe the transit of Venus in 1768, and after three years he returned, to start again, on his second voyage, in 1772, with the Resolution and Adventure to verify reports of a southern continent in the Pacific. His third and last voyage in the Resolution led him to explore the coast of North America as far as Icy Cape, ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Volume 19 - Travel and Adventure • Various
... have encountered the young man. After a sort of shyness in the recognition, he turns back with them. Moreover, he has sanctioned my taste in regard to his companions by placing himself on the inner side of the pavement, nearest the Venus to whom I, enacting on a steeple-top the part of Paris on the top of Ida, adjudged ...
— Twice Told Tales • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... sea, the sixth day of Munychion, on which day even to this time the Athenians send their virgins to the same temple to make supplication to the gods. It is farther reported that he was commanded by the oracle at Delphi to make Venus his guide, and to invoke her as the companion and conductress of his voyage, and that, as he was sacrificing a she goat to her by the seaside, it was suddenly changed into a he, and for this cause that goddess ...
— The Boys' and Girls' Plutarch - Being Parts of The "Lives" of Plutarch • Plutarch
... companions in the blither way, Which, else, must be as lost as yesterday. So might he still pass some unheeding hours In the sweet company of birds and flowers. How fair he is, with red lips formed for joy, As softly curved as those of Venus' boy. Methinks his eyes, beneath their silver sheaves, Rest tranquilly like lilies under leaves. Arrayed in innocence, what touch of grace Reveals the scion of a courtly race? Well, I will warn him, though, I fear, too late— ...
— The Poems And Prose Of Ernest Dowson • Ernest Dowson et al
... and a pair of shafts connected by a bar at the ends. The body is usually lacquered and decorated according to its owner's taste. Some show little except polished brass, others are altogether inlaid with shells known as Venus's ear, and others are gaudily painted with contorted dragons, or groups of peonies, hydrangeas, chrysanthemums, and mythical personages. They cost from 2 pounds upwards. The shafts rest on the ground at a steep incline as you get in—it must require much practice to enable ...
— Unbeaten Tracks in Japan • Isabella L. Bird
... a man, my dear good friends. This man would now—I am telling no lie—this man would now be a hundred years old, if not twenty more to boot; his wife, too, was older than any body I know; she was like the Friday-goddess (Venus), and from youth to age had never had a single child. Only those who know what children are in a house can understand the uncontrollable grief in the empty home of the old man and his wife. The poor old man had done every thing in his power to have his ...
— Roumanian Fairy Tales • Various
... contemplation of your fellow-creatures. Think how rare it is to see a woman who truly represents the divine idea! You belong to your race, and not to yourself,—at least, your beauty is a gift not to be considered as a piece of private property. Look at the so-called Venus of Milo. Do you suppose the noble woman who was the original of that divinely chaste statue felt any scruple about allowing the sculptor to reproduce her ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... in need of men, and those who lose with Venus may win with Mars. Enclosed papers you will know best what to do with. Be a mother to the children—you have ...
— Danger Signals • John A. Hill and Jasper Ewing Brady
... in the last resort to force. The lady, debarred by her law from the use of wine, found it, perhaps, on that account all the more palatable, which Pericone observing determined to enlist Bacchus in the service of Venus. So, ignoring her coyness, he provided one evening a supper, which was ordered with all possible pomp and beauty, and graced by the presence of the lady. No lack was there of incentives to hilarity; and Pericone ...
— The Decameron, Volume I • Giovanni Boccaccio
... skins but foul livers; sepulchres, fresh colours but rotten bones; women, fair faces but false hearts. Remember, Alexander, thou hast a camp to govern, not a chamber; fall not from the armour of Mars to the arms of Venus, from the fiery assaults of war to the maidenly skirmishes of love, from displaying the eagle in thine ensign to set down the sparrow. I sigh, Alexander, that, where fortune could not conquer, folly ...
— The Growth of English Drama • Arnold Wynne
... of those noble intellectual cravings of a man of talent which contend in rivalry with the duties of office. The state is so jealous of the exclusive possession of its servants that it would prefer—nor can it be blamed in this—for functionaries to show their powers with the Venus of Cytherea rather than ...
— Literary and Philosophical Essays • Various
... notwithstanding, Sir Terence pursued his course fluently. 'The golden Venus!—Sure, Miss Nugent, you, that are so quick, can't but know I would apostrophise Miss Broadhurst that is, but that won't be long so, I hope. My Lord Colambre, have you seen much ...
— The Absentee • Maria Edgeworth
... when Venus was in the ascendant," said Mrs. Smith. "You clergymen usually are, I believe, Mr. Robarts." So that Mrs. Proudie's carriage was by no means the dullest as they drove into Barchester that day; and by degrees our friend ...
— Framley Parsonage • Anthony Trollope
... the rotunda, overlooking the lagoon, kneels Robert Stackpole's figure of Venus, representing the Beautiful, to whom all art is servant. The panel in front of the altar is by Bruno Louis Zimm, and pictures Genius, the source of Inspiration. Unfortunately, this fine altar has been made inaccessible; it can be seen only from across the lagoon. (p. 137.) The ...
— The Jewel City • Ben Macomber
... account in it, it could not be safe for us wholly to neglect it. To give even dancing, therefore, some improvement, and to make it something more than motion without meaning, the fable of Mars and Venus was formed into a connected presentation of dances in character, wherein the passions were so happily expressed, and the whole story so intelligibly told by a mute narrative of gesture only, that even thinking spectators allowed it both a pleasing and a rational entertainment." This was certainly ...
— A Book of the Play - Studies and Illustrations of Histrionic Story, Life, and Character • Dutton Cook
... rosy-bosomed Hours, Fair Venus' train, appear, Disclose the long-expecting flowers, And wake the purple year! The Attic warbler pours her throat Responsive to the cuckoo's note, The untaught harmony of spring: While, whispering pleasure as they fly, Cool Zephyrs through the ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 3 (of 4) • Various
... folly of marrying now? I do not promise you to live like a monk of La Trappe, but at my age, a man put together like I am can find enough to talk to around the garrisons without marrying anybody. Mars does not borrow the torch of Hymen to light the little aberrations of Venus! Why does man ever tie himself in matrimonial bonds?... For the sake of being a father. I am one already, in the comparative degree, and in a year, if our brave Leon does a man's part, I shall assume the superlative. Great-grandfather! That's a lovely position for a trooper twenty-five years ...
— The Man With The Broken Ear • Edmond About
... breathing, I realised once more what my young Alastor had meant by the purity of high passion. For indeed the moonlight that fell across her bosom was not whiter than my thoughts, nor could any kiss—were it even such a kiss as Venus promised to the betrayer of Psyche—even in its fiercest delirium, be other than dross compared with the wild white peace of those silent hours when we lay thus married ...
— The Quest of the Golden Girl • Richard le Gallienne
... about his anvil and mine, without anybody's knowing anything about it required a thousand stratagems which it would take no end of time to tell of." You will allow that I should make a sorry figure at a forge," writes the queen to her brother Joseph II.; "I should not be Vulcan, and the part of Venus might displease the king more than those tastes of mine of which ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume VI. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... dare stimulate them with champagne. The Cafe de Paris is one of the places where the respectable go to watch les autres and to catch a real gayety by contagion of a gayety that is mechanical and altogether as unreal as play-acting. There is something fantastic about the official temples of Venus; the pleasure-makers are so serious under their masks and the pleasure-getters so quaintly dazzled and deluded. That is, Venus's temples are like those of so many other religions in reverence among men—disbelief and solemn humbuggery at the altar; belief that would ...
— Susan Lenox: Her Fall and Rise • David Graham Phillips
... took with Grace and Julia they met the bright cavalcade of Percy and his sister, and this red-haired Venus. ...
— A Perilous Secret • Charles Reade
... and dense, but, rippling in places, they disclosed blue stretches of the heaven which, in their masses, they concealed. Southampton began with small houses. One had a tattered garden, where a stone copy of the Medicean Venus stood on a patch of squalid turf near a clothes' line and against an ivy-grown wall. Then the green sands were reached. The sea, like liquid granite, sparkled in the distance. Rows of dull dwellings, shops, public-houses, and hotels came next. The train, ...
— Robert Orange - Being a Continuation of the History of Robert Orange • John Oliver Hobbes
... the feathers, which are so lightly touched off, that the very shape of the fingers are seen underneath. The statue of a youth, supposed to be Ganymede, is compared by the connoisseurs to the celebrated Venus, and as far as I can judge, not without reason: it is however, rather agreeable than striking, and will please a connoisseur much more than a common spectator. I know not whether it is my regard to the faculty that inhances the value of the noted ...
— Travels Through France and Italy • Tobias Smollett
... Mademoiselle Irma, who has already thrown her mantle upon the sofa and crowned the bronze Venus de Milo with her otter toque. The young man excuses himself, he is expected ...
— A Romance of Youth, Complete • Francois Coppee
... like a thing in a net. I knew so little and I felt so much. There was indeed no Aphrodite at all in my youthful Pantheon, but instead there was a mysterious and minatory gap. I have told how at last a new Venus was born in my imagination out of gas lamps and the twilight, a Venus with a cockney accent and dark eyes shining out of the dusk, a Venus who was a warm, passion-stirring atmosphere rather than incarnate in a body. And I have told, too, how I ...
— The New Machiavelli • Herbert George Wells
... courses to Mars and Venus thoroughly charted—but considered a trip to Jupiter somewhat impractical. So, what with Dane's presence and the mysterious white streaks that so often shot up into the sky like fuzzy yarn from the AFDC base, it wasn't hard to ...
— This is Klon Calling • Walt Sheldon
... at Siwash a class party was the most exciting event in college. For uncertainty and breath-grabbing anxiety they made the football games seem as tame as a church election. Of course everybody can't be a Venus de Milo or an Apollo with a Beveled Ear, as Petey Simmons used to call him. Every class has its middle-aged young ladies, who are attending college to rest up from ten or fifteen years of school-teaching, and its tall young agriculturalists with restless Adam's apples, whose idea ...
— At Good Old Siwash • George Fitch
... maidens, had been raped into the shadows by the dark god. And looking on these waves, he remembered that it was over them that Jupiter in the form of a bull, a garlanded bull with crested horns, had sped, bearing Europa away for his pleasure. Venus had been washed up by these waves! Poseidon! Sirens and Tritons had disported themselves in this sea, the bluest and the beautifullest, the one sea that mattered, more important than all the oceans; the oceans might dry up to-morrow ...
— Sister Teresa • George Moore
... the folly of the class rather than the individual, it is merely conventional. Genuine coquetry is sometimes carefully thought out, but never sumptuous, and Juno dressed herself more magnificently than Venus. "As you cannot make her beautiful you are making her fine," said Apelles to an unskilful artist who was painting Helen loaded with jewellery. I have also noticed that the smartest clothes proclaim the plainest women; no folly could ...
— Emile • Jean-Jacques Rousseau
... like her father's. Her ideas were seldom nebulous or slow in forming. They sprang forth, full grown, like those mythological creatures: Minerva was an idea of Jove's, as doubtless Venus was an idea of Neptune's. Men with this quality become captains-general of armies or of money-bags. In a man it signifies ...
— The Voice in the Fog • Harold MacGrath
... the Reformers Hotch-potch too, as I have mingled it for him. Jewish Tetragramaton, Stigian Frogs, reeking Pandaemoniums, Debauch'd Protagonists, Nauseous Ribaldry, Ranting Smutt, Abominable Stench, Venus and St George, Juliana, the Witch and the Parson of Wrotham [Footnote: Collier's Epithetes.], with the admirable Popish story of the Woman that went to the Play-House and brought home the Devil with her [Footnote: Collier, p. 257.]—And the Devil's in't indeed, if this charming ...
— Essays on the Stage • Thomas D'Urfey and Bossuet
... most magnificent, which is conceded by everybody, but also I hold them the most impressive mass of buildings in Rome, both outside and inside, and surpassing in every respect every other great public building in the city. Most connoisseurs appraise the Temple of Venus and Rome as our capital's most splendid structure, but I could never bring myself to admit it superior to or even equal to the Baths of Titus. To enter this surpassing building, always congratulating myself on my right to enter the baths and use them; to be one of the courtly throng of ...
— Andivius Hedulio • Edward Lucas White
... interest in the "Venus de Medici," now supposed to have been the work of one of the sons of Praxiteles, and its wonderful symmetry gives it a radiance like that of the sun behind a summer cloud; but Powers cooled down his enthusiasm by objecting ...
— The Life and Genius of Nathaniel Hawthorne • Frank Preston Stearns
... he exclaimed to me when the nuptial ceremony was over, "thou hast profited by my teaching, Fabio! A quiet rogue is often most cunning! Thou hast rifled the casket of Venus, and stolen her fairest jewel—thou hast secured the loveliest maiden in the ...
— Vendetta - A Story of One Forgotten • Marie Corelli
... fallen into errors so numerous, and occasionally so grave, that they are difficult to be accounted for, except on the supposition that some portions of the work were written in great haste. Passing over a few mere oversights, such as a statement from which it would follow that a transit of Venus occurred every eight years, mistakes of dates, ...
— Atlantic Monthly Vol. 6, No. 33, July, 1860 • Various
... artistic. It represented Stroeve's idea of the proper environment for an artist. There were bits of old brocade on the walls, and the piano was covered with a piece of silk, beautiful and tarnished; in one corner was a copy of the Venus of Milo, and in another of the Venus of the Medici. Here and there was an Italian cabinet surmounted with Delft, and here and there a bas-relief. In a handsome gold frame was a copy of Velasquez' Innocent ...
— The Moon and Sixpence • W. Somerset Maugham
... painter, who had been summoned to Venice to paint an altar-piece for some church, the name of which I do not recollect. He had brought with him three paintings, which had been intended for the gallery in the Cornari palace. They consisted of a Madonna, a Heloise, and a Venus, very lightly apparelled. All three were of great beauty; and, although the subjects were quite different, they were so intrinsically equal that it seemed almost impossible to determine which to prefer. The prince alone did ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... "they showed us, upon the top of the hill, a church, now dedicated to the Virgin, which was formerly a temple of Venus; near it dwelt Thomas a Becket, when banished from England.... About half a league from St. Vallier, we saw a house, a little out of the way, where they say Pilate lived in banishment. We met with the owner, who seemed ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 14, Issue 405, December 19, 1829 • Various
... although it was not specially tractable and was at times even harsh. It was she who by her magnificent interpretation of Leonore, in Beethoven's "Fidelio," first revealed the beauty of the part to the public. In Wagner's operas she appeared as Senta, in the "Flying Dutchman"; Venus, in "Tannhaeuser," and actually created the role of Adriano Colonna, in "Rienzi." Goethe, who had earlier failed to appreciate Schubert's matchless setting to his "Erl King," when he heard Madame Schroeder-Devrient sing it, exclaimed: "Had music instead of words been my vehicle of thought, ...
— For Every Music Lover - A Series of Practical Essays on Music • Aubertine Woodward Moore
... most scandalous thing ever seen in Ballybun; it was Venus rising from the sea without a stitch. There she stood with one hand raised toward the sky and the other pointing at the backs of all the pious people in Ballybun as they hurried indignantly home. Some of them blamed McAroon, while ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, January 21st, 1920 • Various
... so beautiful. I sailed on Lago Maggiore; ascended the cathedral of Milan; passed several days in Genoa, and made from thence a journey, rich in the beauties of nature, along the shore to Carrara. I had seen statues in Paris, but my eyes were closed to them; in Florence, before the Venus de Medici, it was for the first time as if scales fell from my eyes; a new world of art disclosed itself before me; that was the first fruit of my journey. Here it was that I first learned to understand the beauty of form—the spirit which reveals itself in form. The life of the people—nature— ...
— The True Story of My Life • Hans Christian Andersen
... who tried to stop them. Then they swarmed into the chateau—a platoon of them with the lieutenant. They were in the drawing-room, quite an elegant place, you know, with the usual gilt furniture and long mirrors. In one corner was a pedestal, with a statue of Venus standing on it. Rather charming, I expect. A few Germans were killed in the room, easily. But upstairs there was a mob who fired down through the ceiling when they found what had happened. The French soldiers prodded the ceiling with their bayonets, ...
— Now It Can Be Told • Philip Gibbs
... unseasonable amorous Embraces, as when a Man enters on the Pleasures of Venus at a time as the monthly Flowings are upon his Wife; For this being against Nature, it is no wonder that it should produce an unnatural Offspring. If therefore a Man's desire be never so great for Copulation at such a time, yet the Woman ought not to admit of his ...
— Tractus de Hermaphrodites • Giles Jacob
... of Venus," said the Bohemian, "not broken off abruptly, but attending and accompanying the line of life, argues a certain and large fortune by marriage, whereby the party shall be raised among the wealthy and the noble by ...
— Quentin Durward • Sir Walter Scott
... long conversation between Astarte and Zadig, consisting of everything that their long-suppressed sentiments, their great sufferings, and their mutual love could inspire in hearts the most noble and tender; and the genii who preside over love carried their words to the sphere of Venus. ...
— International Short Stories: French • Various
... with gilded stern and outspread sails of purple, while oars of silver beat time to the music of flutes and fifes and harps. She herself lay all along, under a canopy of cloth of gold, dressed as Venus in a picture, and beautiful young boys, like painted cupids, stood on each side to fan her. Her maids were dressed like sea nymphs and graces, some steering at the rudder, some working at the ropes.[71] The perfumes diffused themselves from the vessel to the ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 2 • Various
... Rhoecus, who had met but sorry luck, Just laughed in triumph at a happy throw, When through the room there hummed a yellow bee That buzzed about his ear with down-dropped legs As if to light. And Rhoecus laughed and said, Feeling how red and flushed he was with loss, 'By Venus! does he take me for a rose?' And brushed him off with rough, impatient hand. 110 But still the bee came back, and thrice again Rhoecus did beat him off with growing wrath. Then through the window flew the wounded bee, And Rhoecus, tracking him with angry eyes, Saw a sharp mountain-peak ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell
... un excellent roi Dont on ne dit rien dans l'histoire, Qui ne connaissait qu'une Loi: Celle de chanter, rire, et boire. Fervent disciple de Bacchus Il glorifiait sa puissance, Puis, sacrifiait a Venus Les ...
— Mystic Isles of the South Seas. • Frederick O'Brien
... shouted the barin as, still entangled in the net, he approached the shore with a huge fish on his back. With one hand shading his eyes from the sun, and the other thrown backwards, he looked, in point of pose, like the Medici Venus ...
— Dead Souls • Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol
... squadron, consisting of eleven sail of the line and two frigates, suddenly pushed out of Toulon harbour. The Seahorse, Lord Nelson's look-out frigate, accordingly, narrowly escaped being taken: and the Venus sloop of ten guns, with his lordship's dispatches, was actually captured; having, however, previously thrown the dispatches overboard. The Seahorse, instead of watching, at a safe distance, the course of the enemy's fleet, till their destination ...
— The Life of the Right Honourable Horatio Lord Viscount Nelson, Vol. II (of 2) • James Harrison
... reaching to Heaven, with the angels of God ascending and descending on it. The addition of the three principal rounds to the symbolism, is wholly modern and incongruous. The ancients counted seven planets, thus arranged: the Moon, Mercury, Venus, the Sun, Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn. There were seven heavens and seven spheres of these planets; on all the monuments of Mithras are seven altars or pyres, consecrated to the seven planets, as were the seven lamps of the golden ...
— Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry • Albert Pike
... woman once in her life, had to prostitute herself for money to any stranger at the temple of Venus. Solon founded houses of prostitution for the people and furnished them with slaves, "in order to protect the sanctity of marriage against the ...
— The Sexual Question - A Scientific, psychological, hygienic and sociological study • August Forel
... Designed by Rev. Selwyn Image. Representing Venus and Proserpine. To be worked in outline on linen, as No. 1, or in coloured silks on a ...
— Handbook of Embroidery • L. Higgin
... receiue. For prayse be they well worthy for to haue which in well doing do contende. No vertuous dede or zelous worke can want due prayse of the honest, though faulting fooles and youthly heades full ofte do chaunt the faultles checke, that Momus mouth did once finde out in Venus slipper. And yet from faultes I wyll not purge the same, but whatsoeuer they seme to be, they be in number ne yet in substaunce such, but that thy curteous dealing may sone amende them or forget them. Wherefore to giue the full aduertisement ...
— The Palace of Pleasure, Volume 1 • William Painter
... of the day or night was somewhat after eleven o'clock P.M., but even then I could read, and as we travelled only Jupiter and Venus looked at us—no other stars were visible, and towards half-past one these two disappeared, for daylight was so strong; and when the weather was clear after that time only the pale blue sky of the North and its fleecy white clouds were to be seen ...
— The Land of the Long Night • Paul du Chaillu
... said the boy, "and I am somebody in particular. Fact is, sir, if it hadn't been for me there wouldn't have been anybody in particular anywhere. I'm Cupid, sir, God of Love, favorite son of Venus, at ...
— Olympian Nights • John Kendrick Bangs
... flames, but a temple also that was close to it. Milo's house was attacked, and was defended by arms. We are made to understand that all Rome was in a state of violence and anarchy. The Consuls' fasces had been put away in one of the temples—that of Venus Libitina: these the people seized and carried to the house of Pompey, declaring that he should be Dictator, and he alone Consul, mingling anarchy with a marvellous ...
— The Life of Cicero - Volume II. • Anthony Trollope
... relating to Venus' fly-trap (Dionaea muscipula) and other members of the order to which the sun-dew belongs were better known, but Darwin elicited new truths by his ingenious and varied experiments. The rapidity with which the two lobes of the leaf of dionaea close together when anything ...
— Life of Charles Darwin • G. T. (George Thomas) Bettany
... Venus seem'd Dudu, Yet very fit to 'murder sleep' in those Who gazed upon her cheek's transcendent hue, Her Attic forehead and her Phidian nose. * * * * ...
— My Recollections of Lord Byron • Teresa Guiccioli |
