"Achilles" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... to engage, and it may be that there was a little trembling of the unseasoned members that was not to be overmastered. But in a twinkling our Dante was as calm as a tempered veteran, and in the thickest of the scrimmage he urged himself as indifferent to peril as if, like Achilles in the old story, he had been ...
— The God of Love • Justin Huntly McCarthy
... this place may halfe suffice for his praise, which the sweetest singer of all our westerns shepheards hath so exquisitely depainted, that as Achilles by Alexander was counted happy for having such a rare emblazoner of his magnanimitie, as the Meonian Poete; so I account him thrice-fortunate in having such a herauld of his vertues as Spencer; Curteous Lord, Curteous Spencer, I knowe not which hath ...
— Shakespeare's Lost Years in London, 1586-1592 • Arthur Acheson
... you mention, Charles, is the Crimea, which possesses a most delicious climate, although lying contiguous to the Putrid Sea, which bounds it on the north. There is an island in the Euxine,—the Island Leuce, or Isle of Achilles, also called the Isle of Serpents. It is asserted by the ancients to have been presented to Achilles by his mother Thetis. In the Gulf of Perecop there is also another island, called Taman, which contains springs ...
— The World of Waters - A Peaceful Progress o'er the Unpathed Sea • Mrs. David Osborne
... the railing beneath the statue of Achilles was full of parasols and waistcoats; chains and bangles; of ladies and ...
— Jacob's Room • Virginia Woolf
... Venus. On what does the war of Troy turn? On Helen's garter, parbleu! Why did they fight, why did Diomed the divine break over the head of Meriones that great brazen helmet of ten points? why did Achilles and Hector hew each other up with vast blows of their lances? Because Helen allowed Paris to take her garter. With Cosette's garter, Homer would construct the Iliad. He would put in his poem, a loquacious old fellow, like me, ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... distinctive form of the original, make a likeness which is true to life and yet more beautiful. So too the poet, in representing men who are irascible or indolent, or have other defects of character, should preserve the type and yet ennoble it. In this way Achilles is portrayed by Agathon ...
— Poetics • Aristotle
... every word uttered by the chieftain was heard; this may be partly attributed to the distinct manner in which every syllable of the compound words in the Indian language is articulated and accented; but in truth, a savage warrior might often rival Achilles himself for ...
— Astoria - Or, Anecdotes Of An Enterprise Beyond The Rocky Mountains • Washington Irving
... han trusted, doutelees, That if that I, thurgh my disaventure, 415 Had loved other him or Achilles, Ector, or any mannes creature, Ye nolde han had no mercy ne mesure On me, but alwey had me in repreve; This false world, allas! Who ...
— Troilus and Criseyde • Geoffrey Chaucer
... recitations. In point of fact, the instance there is more directly akin to the present argument. A musical cadence, or even possibly an instrumental accompaniment, may have marked the Homeric chant about Achilles and Ulysses. Whereas, obviously, in regard to Herodotus, the readings given by him at the Olympic games were readings in the modern sense, pure and simple. Lucian has related the incident, not only ...
— Charles Dickens as a Reader • Charles Kent
... All this was not really news to him. Like his fellow old pros, Joe Mauser was fully aware of the glory grabbers. There had always been the glory grabbers from mythological Achilles, who sulked in his tent while his best friend died before the walls of Troy, to Alexander, who conquered the world with an army conceived and precision trained by another man whose name is all but forgotten, to the swashbuckling Custer who sacrificed self and squadron ...
— Frigid Fracas • Dallas McCord Reynolds
... or merchants, or stewards, or money-lenders; but if they find a winebibbing, greedy, and utterly useless slave, to him parents commit the charge of their sons, whereas the good tutor ought to be such a one as was Phoenix, the tutor of Achilles. The point also which I am now going to speak about is of the utmost importance. The schoolmasters we ought to select for our boys should be of blameless life, of pure character, and of great experience. For a good training is the source and ...
— Plutarch's Morals • Plutarch
... Peleus' son Achilles, sing, O Muse, The direful wrath, which sorrows numberless Brought on the Greeks, and many mighty souls Of youthful heroes, slain untimely, sent To Pluto's dark abode, their bodies left A prey to dogs and all ...
— Elementary Guide to Literary Criticism • F. V. N. Painter
... Cardinal Newman has said, "an Englishman to the backbone"; and he was, further, a fastidious, high-tempered English gentleman, in spite of his declaiming about "pampered aristocrats" and the "gentleman heresy." His friends thought of him as of the "young Achilles," with his high courage, and noble form, and "eagle eye," made for such great things, but appointed so soon to die. "Who can refrain from tears at the thought of that bright and beautiful Froude?" is the expression of one of them shortly before his death, and when it was quite certain that the doom ...
— The Oxford Movement - Twelve Years, 1833-1845 • R.W. Church
... besides Gussy and Killy," said Lance; "though A-which is all that appears of the great Achilles' unlucky name-is articled to Shapcote, and as for Gussy, or rather Mr. Tanneguy, ...
— The Long Vacation • Charlotte M. Yonge
... would have been satisfied with looking upon Zeus as but another name of his Nous, the highest intellect, the mover, the disposer, the governor of all things, Metrodoros resolved not only the persons of Zeus, Here, and Athene, but likewise those of human kings and heroes—such as Agamemnon, Achilles, and Hektor—into various combinations and physical agencies, and treated the adventures ascribed to them as natural facts hidden under a ...
— Chips From A German Workshop, Vol. V. • F. Max Mueller
... in the winds, and the great pines in the canon seemed to bow to the wrath of the son of Peleus. Mr. Oakhurst listened with quiet satisfaction. Most especially was he interested in the fate of "Ash- heels," as the Innocent persisted in denominating the "swift-footed Achilles." ...
— The Luck of Roaring Camp and Other Tales • Bret Harte
... of one dangerously sick, that he has need of nothing but parsley; which is in effect to say, he's a dead man, and ready for the grave. All sorts of purple and white flowers were acceptable to the dead; as the amaranthus, which was first used by the Thessalians to adorn Achilles's grave. The rose, too, was very grateful; nor was the use of myrtle less common. In short, graves were bedecked with garlands of all sorts of flowers, as appears from Agamemnon's daughter ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 351 - Volume 13, Saturday, January 10, 1829 • Various
... thing in the nation. It had not yet spoken a word. It had to be taught, developed, and made fit for the service of the irritable business world. All manner of discs had to be tried, some smaller and thinner than a dime and others of steel boiler-plate as heavy as the shield of Achilles. In all the books of electrical science, there was nothing to help Bell and Watson in this journey they were making through an unknown country. They were as chartless as Columbus was in 1492. Neither they nor any one else had acquired any experience ...
— The History of the Telephone • Herbert N. Casson
... indeed; she reaps little profit from her English honors: what has she had to do with these Transatlantic Colonies of England? An unfortunate Country, if the English would but think; liable to be strangled at any time, for England's quarrels: the Achilles'-heel to invulnerable England; a sad function for Hanover, if it be a proud one, and amazingly lucrative to some Hanoverians. The Country is very dear to his Britannic Majesty in one sense, very dear to Britain in another! Nay Germany itself, through Hanover, ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XVII. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—The Seven-Years War: First Campaign—1756-1757. • Thomas Carlyle
... you that I myself have seen all the many visions unrolled before you in these instruments? What would you say, if I declared that I had gazed on the dances of Salome and of Esmeralda? that I had beheld the combat of Achilles and Hector and the mounted fight of Saladin and the Knight ...
— Tales of Fantasy and Fact • Brander Matthews
... work was there; Conceit deceitful, so compact, so kind, That for Achilles' image stood his spear, Griped in an armed hand; himself, behind, Was left unseen, save to the eye of mind: A hand, a foot, a face, a leg, a head, Stood for the whole ...
— The Rape of Lucrece • William Shakespeare [Clark edition]
... be that the gulf shall wash us down; It may be we shall touch the Happy Isles, And see the great Achilles, whom ...
— Suburban Sketches • W.D. Howells
... most celebrated preacher of the day,—the great Massillon. It is said that that handsome person goes a great way towards winning converts among the court ladies; it is certain, at least, that when Massillon first entered the profession he was to the soul something like the spear of Achilles to the body; and, though very efficacious in healing the wounds of conscience, was equally ready in the first instance ...
— Devereux, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... Like Achilles (if the bilious Shade will permit the impudent comparison), they dragged their enemy, Gout, at their horses' heels for a term, and vengeance being accomplished went to ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... Achilles' wrath, to Greece the direful spring Of woes unnumber'd, heavenly goddess, sing! 2117 POPE: Iliad, ...
— Handy Dictionary of Poetical Quotations • Various
... pompous and scholastic. He approves the plot of Clarissa in terms of the Iliad, but judges subtle and complex characters by an over-simplified standard of decorum and censures Lovelace as an intricate combination of Achilles and Ulysses! His unnecessary labors to show that Richardson is not really Homeric illustrate the sterile application of epic canons to the novel that vitiates much early ...
— Critical Remarks on Sir Charles Grandison, Clarissa, and Pamela (1754) • Anonymous
... a eulogy on the rose; and again, in the fifty- fifth ode, we shall find our author rich in the praises of that flower. In a fragment of Sappho, in the romance of Achilles Tatius, to which Barnes refers us, the rose is fancifully styled "the eye of flowers;" and the same poetess, in another fragment, calls the favors of the Muse "the ...
— The Complete Poems of Sir Thomas Moore • Thomas Moore et al
... man that is coming home to see his girl, you simply can't kill him. Achilles was a summer rose compared with him. Nature and mankind have not sufficient materials in hand as yet to kill that man. Science has but the strength of a puling babe against his invulnerability. You can waste your time on earthquakes and shipwrecks, volcanic eruptions, ...
— Stage-Land • Jerome K. Jerome
... and allies of the two parties. But when Dares gets to work he proceeds with a rapidity which may be partly due to the desire to contradict Homer. The landing and death of Protesilaus, avenged to some extent by Achilles, the battle in which Hector slays Patroclus (to whom Dares adds Meriones), and that at the ships, are all lumped together; and the funerals of Protesilaus and Patroclus are simultaneously celebrated. Palamedes begins to plot against Agamemnon. The fighting ...
— The Flourishing of Romance and the Rise of Allegory - (Periods of European Literature, vol. II) • George Saintsbury
... Radcliffe, 1912. Miss Hirschensohn drew a comparative picture of a great Hebrew friendship celebrated in the Bible, that of David and Jonathan, and notable friendships in the Greek and Latin classics—Achilles and Patroclus and Euryalus and Nisus. Mrs. Pouzzner spoke upon the Jewish women of the German Salons of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. The Chancellor read communications to THE MENORAH JOURNAL from Viscount Bryce and Hon. Oscar S. Straus (see pages 281 ...
— The Menorah Journal, Volume 1, 1915 • Various
... that if Iphigenia sets foot in Aulis he will give her up to death. He has hardly spoken the words when shouts of joy announce the arrival of Clytemnestra and Iphigenia. The message has miscarried, and they are already in the camp. As a last resource Agamemnon now tells Clytemnestra that Achilles, the lover of her daughter, is false, hoping that this will drive her from the camp. Clytemnestra calls upon Iphigenia to thrust her betrayer from her bosom, and Iphigenia replies so heroically that ...
— The Opera - A Sketch of the Development of Opera. With full Descriptions - of all Works in the Modern Repertory • R.A. Streatfeild
... life of prosperity and peace. But the sword hung over his head; war burst around him, and he fell in combat by the hand of Vigelotes, son of Ruric. Saxo Grammaticus sums up his character in a few words: "He was a wise prince and a great warrior. Like Achilles, he had the principal actions of his life wrought on his shield. The daughter of the king of Scotland casting her eye on it, loved him for the battles he had won, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 10, Issue 281, November 3, 1827 • Various
... a great creation, or rather not so much a creation as a thing arrived at accidentally, but it lacks solidarity. It sprawls, a confused mass of races and creeds, around the world. Its very immensity lays it open to attack, it has a dozen Achilles heels from Ireland to Egypt and ...
— The Diary of a U-boat Commander • Anon
... from the Love Stories of Parthenius, who preserved fragments of a lost epic on the expedition of Achilles against Lesbos, an island allied ...
— Rhymes a la Mode • Andrew Lang
... we encounter them in private life. While at Paris I attended a representation of the death of 'Hector' by Luce de Lancival, and I could never afterwards hear the verses recited in which the author describes the effect produced on the Trojan army by the appearance of Achilles without thinking of Prince Murat; and it may be said without exaggeration that his presence produced exactly this effect the moment he showed himself in front of the Austrian lines. He had an almost gigantic ...
— The Private Life of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Constant
... the vulnerable place, the heel of Achilles, for capitalistic production. Its very basis is the necessity of constant expansion, and this constant expansion now becomes impossible. It ends in a deadlock. Every year England is brought nearer face to face with the question: either the country must go to pieces, or capitalist ...
— The Condition of the Working-Class in England in 1844 - with a Preface written in 1892 • Frederick Engels
... alone true. But mankind had got beyond his barren abstractions: they were beginning to analyze, to classify, to define, to ask what is the nature of knowledge, opinion, sensation. Still less could they be content with the description which Achilles gives in Homer of the ...
— Sophist • Plato
... attacks the tenderest parts of man and beast, cuts them off, and retires contented: buffaloes are often castrated by him. Men who know it, squat down, and kill him with knife or gun. The Zibu or mbuide flies at the tendon Achilles; it is most ...
— The Last Journals of David Livingstone, in Central Africa, from 1865 to His Death, Volume II (of 2), 1869-1873 • David Livingstone
... dear Antilochus had lost; how he complains Of life's too large extent, and copious pains? Of all he meets, he asks what is the cause He liv'd thus long; for what breach of their laws The gods thus punish'd him? what sin had he Done worthy of a long life's misery. Thus Peleus his Achilles mourned, and he Thus wept that his Ulysses lost at sea. Had Priam died before Phereclus' fleet Was built, or Paris stole the fatal Greek, Troy had yet stood, and he perhaps had gone In peace unto the lower shades; his son Sav'd with his plenteous offspring, and the rest ...
— Poems of Henry Vaughan, Silurist, Volume II • Henry Vaughan
... All I can ask of heaven, an early tomb! So shall my days in one sad tenor run, And end with sorrows as they first begun. No parent now remains, my griefs to share, No father's aid, no mother's tender care. The fierce Achilles wrapt our walls in fire, Laid Thebe waste, and slew my warlike sire! His fate compassion in the victor bred; Stern as he was, he yet revered the dead, His radiant arms preserved from hostile spoil, And laid him decent on the funeral pile; Then raised a mountain where his bones were burned; The mountain ...
— The World's Best Poetry, Volume 3 - Sorrow and Consolation • Various
... Abbess Academe Achilles Actium Adam Adonis Adriana Aegeon Aeneas Agamemnon Agincourt Agrippa Ajax Albany, The Duke of (in "Lear") Aleppo Alexander Angelo Anne, Lady Antigone Antipholus Antonio Antonio (Duke in the "Tempest"), Antony, Marc "Antony and Cleopatra" Apelles Apemantus ...
— The Man Shakespeare • Frank Harris
... Kirkland found his level, shoulder to shoulder with Conde and Turenne. The stout Cavalier was second to no soldier in Louis' splendid army; was of the stamp of an earlier race even, better inured to hardship than any save that heroic Prince, the Achilles of his day, who to the graces of a modern courtier joined the temper of an ...
— London Pride - Or When the World Was Younger • M. E. Braddon
... all—if even we see no reason (and there is not much) for believing one single word of it—yet still we ask, Is it not an exquisite story? Is there not heroism in it greater than of all the Ajaxes and Achilles who ever blustered on this earth? Is there not power greater than of kings—God's strength made perfect in woman's weakness? Tender forgiveness, the Saviour's own likeness; glimpses, brilliant and true at the core, however distorted and miscoloured, of that spiritual world where ...
— Literary and General Lectures and Essays • Charles Kingsley
... heroes of Greece flew to arms to avenge the wrong. A host of one hundred thousand warriors was speedily gathered. Agamemnon, brother of Menelaus and "king of men," was chosen leader of the expedition. Under him were the "lion-hearted Achilles," of Thessaly, the "crafty Ulysses" (Odysseus), king of Ithaca, Ajax, "the swift son of Oileus," the Telamonian Ajax, the aged Nestor, and many more—the most valiant heroes of all Hellas. Twelve hundred galleys ...
— A General History for Colleges and High Schools • P. V. N. Myers
... it had not chanced to rain on a certain day at Clifden, when a cricket match was being played in which Frederick, Prince of Wales, happened to be interested. A fretted Prince would not have had to retire to his tent like Achilles, would not have insisted on a game of whist to cheer his humor. There would have been no difficulty in forming a rubber. There would have been no need to seek for a fourth hand. No wistful gentleman-in-attendance seeking the desirable would have had to ask the aid ...
— A History of the Four Georges and of William IV, Volume III (of 4) • Justin McCarthy and Justin Huntly McCarthy
... cheered him both With food and raiment, and those soft attentions, Which are—as I must own—of female growth, And have ten thousand delicate inventions: They made a most superior mess of broth, A thing which poesy but seldom mentions, But the best dish that e'er was cooked since Homer's Achilles ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 6 • Lord Byron
... Niflungars, children of night and of death, search the interior of the earth, discover its hidden treasures and invest them with new life by forging them into weapons and ornaments. The Nibelungs, whom we also find as the Myrmidons accompanying Achilles, the Siegfried of the Greeks—are now with their treasure elevated by the Franks to a moral importance. When Siegfried slew the Nibelungen dragon he gained its treasure. The possession of it increases ...
— Life of Wagner - Biographies of Musicians • Louis Nohl
... array of ships that went to the Trojan war, the great chiefs who commanded, especially Achilles, whose shield they have seen, with its Gorgons, and Sphinxes, and Hermes in flight, and other wondrous figures—suddenly at the end connects itself with the subject of the play by the thought: it was the Prince ...
— Story of Orestes - A Condensation of the Trilogy • Richard G. Moulton
... surely be endured with patience by criticks and annotators, who can rank themselves but as the satellites of their authors. How canst thou beg for life, says Homer's hero to his captive, when thou knowest that thou art now to suffer only what must another day be suffered by Achilles? ...
— Eighteenth Century Essays on Shakespeare • D. Nichol Smith
... success. His education scarce complete, A flock, his scholarship to greet, Came rambling out that way. The new-made wolf his work began, Amidst the heedless nibblers ran, And spread a sore dismay. Such terror did Patroclus[17] spread, When on the Trojan camp and town, Clad in Achilles' armour dread, He valiantly came down. The matrons, maids, and aged men All hurried to the temples then.— The bleating host now surely thought That fifty wolves were on the spot: Dog, shepherd, sheep, all homeward fled, And left a ...
— The Fables of La Fontaine - A New Edition, With Notes • Jean de La Fontaine
... spoke highly of Homer. JOHNSON. 'He had all the learning of his age. The shield of Achilles shews a nation in war, a nation in peace; harvest sport, nay stealing.' [Footnote: My note of this is much too short. Brevis esse laboro, obscurus fio. Yet as I have resolved that THE VERY Journal WHICH DR JOHNSON READ, shall be presented to the publick, I will not expand the text in any considerable ...
— The Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides with Samuel Johnson, LL.D. • James Boswell
... this referred to the offspring of Thetis, who was destined to be greater than his father. Prometheus at last bought pardon for his crime of enriching mankind with his gifts, by revealing the prophecy. Hercules killed the vulture, and set him free; and Thetis was married to Peleus, the father of Achilles. ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Volume I • Percy Bysshe Shelley
... is a translation, by Chateaunieres de Grenaille, from the Italian of Loredano. It consists of variations on classical stories, treated rather in the declamation manner, and ranging in subject from Achilles to "Frine." How many readers (at least among those who read with their eyes only) will affirm on their honour that they identified "Frine" at first reading? In Italian there would, of course, be less hesitation. ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 2 - To the Close of the 19th Century • George Saintsbury
... the sea. By the assistance of a large army of monkeys, Rama marches against Lanka, and when they stand helpless—for the water separates them from Ceylon—he then invokes the goddess of the sea, as Achilles did Thetis, and she comes in radiant beauty, telling them how to bridge the waves. The monkeys bring timber and stones, the bridge is built, Lanka reached, and the battle begins. Indra sends his own chariot ...
— Hindu Literature • Epiphanius Wilson
... tragedy? I suppose, if anything like nearness or firmness of faith in after-life is to be found in Greek legend, you might look for it in the stories about the Island of Leuce, at the mouth of the Danube, inhabited by the ghosts of Achilles, Patroclus, Ajax the son of Oileus, and Helen; and in which the pavement of the Temple of Achilles was washed daily by the sea-birds with their wings, ...
— Aratra Pentelici, Seven Lectures on the Elements of Sculpture - Given before the University of Oxford in Michaelmas Term, 1870 • John Ruskin
... sorely did enfold That grief of body set at nought in Paris' doomful deed, The hated race, and honour shed on heaven-rapt Ganymede— So set on fire, that Trojan band o'er all the ocean tossed, Those gleanings from Achilles' rage, those few the Greeks had lost, 30 She drave far off the Latin Land: for many a year they stray Such wise as Fate would drive them on by every watery way. —Lo, what there was to heave aloft ...
— The AEneids of Virgil - Done into English Verse • Virgil
... have made five thousand prisoners, and killed at least six thousand of the enemy. Adieu, my adorable Josephine. Think of me often. When you cease to love your Achilles, when your heart grows cool towards him, you wilt be very cruel, very unjust. But I am sure you will always continue my faithful mistress, as I shall ever remain your fond lover ('tendre amie'). Death alone ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... he was called away at this moment to the further end of the stable. 'Oh,' sighed I, 'for Xanthus, horse of Achilles!' ...
— The Delectable Duchy • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... jealous of his cousins, the sons of Pandu. A tournament was held, and in the course of the day a warrior named Karna, of unknown origin, appeared on the scene and proved himself a worthy rival of Arjun. The rivalry between Arjun and Karna is the leading thought of the Epic, as the rivalry between Achilles and Hector is the leading ...
— Maha-bharata - The Epic of Ancient India Condensed into English Verse • Anonymous
... beside me the red brick buildings of my first school and the chapel that adjoined it. The fields a little way off were full of boys in white flannels playing cricket. On the asphalt playing ground, just by the schoolroom windows, stood Agamemnon, Achilles, and Odysseus, with their Argives armed behind them; but Hector stepped down out of a ground-floor window, and in the schoolroom were all Priam's sons and the Achaeans and fair Helen; and a little farther away the Ten Thousand drifted ...
— The Sword of Welleran and Other Stories • Lord Dunsany
... made of the name of Stobo. The Captain dwells with no little satisfaction upon the manner in which, after he had been so thoroughly outwitted by Mass David Williamson,—the Covenanting minister, who played Achilles among the women at my Lady Cherrytree's,—he succeeded in circumventing and taking prisoner "a notorious rebel, one Adam Stobow, a farmer in Fife near Culross." And later in the same book occurs a very characteristic passage:—"Having ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, No. 20, June, 1859 • Various
... who was destined to be the greatest warrior of all. This was Achilles, the son of Thetis,—foretold in the day of Prometheus as a man who should far outstrip his own father in glory and greatness. Years had passed since the marriage of Thetis to King Peleus, and their son Achilles was now grown ...
— Old Greek Folk Stories Told Anew • Josephine Preston Peabody
... feel good! You have to live up to your feelings, if you feel like that. And I prayed in the Cathedral. I prayed to be happy. Is that a wrong note for a prayer? I don't believe it is, if it rings true. Anyway, it makes me feel young and strong to pray, like Achilles, after he'd rolled on the earth. And I do feel so young and strong just now, dear! I have to sing in my bath, and when I look out of the window—also sometimes when I look in the glass, for it seems to me that I am growing ...
— Set in Silver • Charles Norris Williamson and Alice Muriel Williamson
... terror broke from Nancy. She reeled in her seat. Stanton viewed her emotion with grim satisfaction. He had found the vulnerable heel of Achilles. ...
— The Lost Despatch • Natalie Sumner Lincoln
... taught them to shoot and to hunt. And for the shooting of arrows should not be let with great breasts, in the 7th year (as it is said), they burnt off their breasts, and therefore they were called Amazons. And as it is said, Hercules adaunted first the fierceness of them, and then Achilles. But that was more by friendship than by strength, as it is contained in deeds and doings of the Greeks, and the Amazons were destroyed and brought to death by great Alexander. But the story of Alexander saith not so. But it is said that Alexander demanded tribute of the Queen ...
— Mediaeval Lore from Bartholomew Anglicus • Robert Steele
... one would marry her, some one would take her away and own her, body and soul, and cheat him of what had been within his grasp and all but his; and yet he was ashamed, because he no longer wanted her for his wife, but only as a possession—as Achilles wanted Briseis and was wroth when she was taken from him. He felt shame at the thought, because he had already honoured her in his imagination as his wife, and because to dream of her as anything as near, yet ...
— Fair Margaret - A Portrait • Francis Marion Crawford
... other chiefs of the host, and from the priests, the stricken father consents at last to send a letter to Clytemnestra at Argos, bidding her bring their young daughter to the camp, on the pretext that she is to become the bride of the hero Achilles. The letter is no sooner despatched than, tormented with remorse, he tries to recall it. In vain. Mother and child arrive, with the babe Orestes; the mother full of exultant joy in such a marriage, the daughter thinking only of her father, on whose neck she throws herself with fond home prattle, ...
— The Coryston Family • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... ages, inquiring even into its trifling details in a ridiculous manner; for he used to try the grammarians, a class of men which, as I have already observed, he much affected, with such questions as these: "Who was Hecuba's mother? What name did Achilles assume among the virgins? What was it that the Sirens used to sing?" And the first day that he entered the senate-house, after the death of Augustus, as if he intended to pay respect at once to his father's ...
— The Lives Of The Twelve Caesars, Complete - To Which Are Added, His Lives Of The Grammarians, Rhetoricians, And Poets • C. Suetonius Tranquillus
... old unhappy wars in which he had been Achilles and the mellifluous Nestor, yet gone his righteous ways unheeded by the cruel kings. . . . "Why, if I've told 'em once, I've told 'em a dozen times to get in a side-line of light-weight pants for gents' summer wear, and ...
— Main Street • Sinclair Lewis
... called them Prutenie, i.e. Prussian tables, in compliment to the reigning duke. Pruteni is an ancient name of the Prussians. Albert (grandson of Albert the Achilles, Margrave of Brandenburg) was in 1511 elected Grand Master of the Teutonic Knights, who then held Prussia. He continued the war which his order had for some time carried on with his uncle, Sigismund I., King of Poland. But he subsequently embraced ...
— Notes & Queries, No. 18. Saturday, March 2, 1850 • Various
... minstrels fare but ill, Reft of those maids, who know the mightiest's will. The cycle of the years, it flags not yet; In many a chariot many a steed shall sweat: And one, to manhood grown, my lays shall claim, Whose deeds shall rival great Achilles' fame, Who from stout Aias might have won the prize On Simois' plain, where Phrygian Ilus lies. Now, in their sunset home on Libya's heel, Phoenicia's sons unwonted chillness feel: Now, with his targe of willow at his breast, ...
— Theocritus • Theocritus
... faith: at sight of swans, the raven Chides blackness, and the snake recoils aghast In fear of poison when a bird flies past. Thersites brands Achilles as a craven; The shoal fed full with shipwreck blames the haven For murderous lust of lives devoured, and vast Desire of doom whose feast is mercy's fast: And Bacon sees the traitor's mark engraven Full on the front of Essex. ...
— A Channel Passage and Other Poems - Taken from The Collected Poetical Works of Algernon Charles - Swinburne—Vol VI • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... the Nibelungen-lied, the story centres on a young hero glowing with beauty and victory, and possessed of loftiness of character; but who meets with an early and untimely death. Such is Baldur the Beautiful of Iceland, and such, also, are Hector and Achilles of Troy. These songs mark the greatness and the waning of the heroic world In the Nibelungen-lied the final event is a great calamity that is akin to a half historical event of the North. Odin descends to the nether world ...
— The Interdependence of Literature • Georgina Pell Curtis
... has now, by recent events, become vastly larger. This Republic now extends, with a vast breadth across the whole continent. The two great seas of the world wash the one and the other shore. We realize, on a mighty scale, the beautiful description of the ornamental border of the buckler of Achilles: ...
— American Eloquence, Volume II. (of 4) - Studies In American Political History (1896) • Various
... second two lines, expressing the dash and roar of the waves, and in the last two, expressing the skimming, continuous motion of Camilla. What he refers to is the onomatopoeia of Homer and Virgil in the passages alluded to. Ajax, the son of Telamon, was, next to Achilles, the bravest of all the Greeks in the Trojan war. When the Greeks were challenged by Hector he was chosen their champion and it was in their encounter that he seized a huge stone and hurled it ...
— An Essay on Criticism • Alexander Pope
... 50; the inhabitants of Orchomenus and Aspledon, 30; the light-armed Locrians, under Ajax son of Oileus, 40; the Phocians as many. The Athenians, under Menestheus, a chief distinguished for his skill in marshalling an army, mustered 50 ships; the Myrmidons from Phthia and Hellas, under Achilles, assembled in 50 ships; Protesilaus from Phylace and Pyrasus, and Eurypylus from Ormenium, each came with 40 ships; Machaon and Podaleirius, from Trikka, with 30; Eumelus, from Pherae and the lake Boebeis, ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 1 • Various
... argument Not less but more heroic than the wrath Of stern Achilles on his foe pursued Thrice fugitive about Troy wall; or rage Of Turnus for Lavinia disespoused; Or Neptune's ire or Juno's, that so long Perplexed the Greek, and Cytherea's son: If answerable style I can obtain Of my celestial Patroness who deigns Her nightly visitation unimplored, And ...
— Milton • John Bailey
... smiled at this new thought and turned into the street where there was the big house with the tower. At the great closed gates of the house, a little man stood with his shoulder leaning against them, wrapped in a grey soldier's coat, with a copper Achilles helmet on his head. He cast a drowsy and indifferent glance at Svidrigailov. His face wore that perpetual look of peevish dejection, which is so sourly printed on all faces of Jewish race without exception. They both, Svidrigailov and Achilles, stared ...
— Crime and Punishment • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... alluded to a description in Arrian of the island of Achilles, the present Isle of Serpents, where there is that temple of the hero, of which, as the historian says, "the care is left to the birds alone, who every morning repair to the sea, wet their wings, and sprinkle the temple, afterwards sweeping with ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. VII - Patronage • Maria Edgeworth
... Achilles had his vulnerable heel, and there are times in the lives of each of us when the arrow of accident, harmless at all other periods, can enter and ruin. Colonel Bancker had kept his secret, or believed that he had kept ...
— Shoulder-Straps - A Novel of New York and the Army, 1862 • Henry Morford
... hinds of a later period would be unable even to lift. He therefore naturally represented their martial exploits as resembling in kind, but far surpassing in magnitude, those of the stoutest and most expert combatants of his own age. Achilles, clad in celestial armour, drawn by celestial coursers, grasping the spear which none but himself could raise, driving all Troy and Lycia before him, and choking Scamander with dead, was only a magnificent exaggeration ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 2 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... They are ready to run risks greater far than they would have run for their children, and to spend money and undergo any amount of toil, and even to die for the sake of leaving behind them a name which shall be eternal. Do you imagine that Alcestis[62] would have died on behalf of Admetus, or Achilles after Patroclus, or your own Codrus in order to preserve the kingdom for his sons, if they had not imagined that the memory of their virtues, which is still retained among us, would be immortal? Nay," she said, "for I am persuaded that all ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to prose. Volume I (of X) - Greece • Various
... did not mean to give you such immense offence in treating a point of remote antiquity, a subject on which I always am myself cool, deliberate, and unimpassioned. But you are as hot and hasty, as if you were Hector and Achilles, and ...
— The Antiquary, Complete • Sir Walter Scott
... harmonized that what he was found but a stuttering expression in what he wrote and did. There were gaps in his mind; or, to use Victor Hugo's image, "his intellect was a book with some leaves torn out." His force, great as it was, was that of an Ajax, rather than that of an Achilles. Few dramatists of the time afford nobler passages of description and reflection. Few are wiser, deeper, manlier in their strain of thinking. But when we turn to the dramas from which these grand things have been detached, we find extravagance, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 122, December, 1867 • Various
... motley hour of mid-afternoon, when foreigners and other pathetic folk drive, thinking themselves to be in fashion, had passed; the right, the proper, hour had come, was nearly gone, before Soames and Irene seated themselves under the Achilles statue. ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... and impetuosity of mind" which Wordsworth is compelled to allow to him, rather than creative or original genius, is the differentia of Dryden. We have compared him to a courser, but he was not one of those coursers of Achilles, who fed on no earthly food, but on the golden barley of heaven, having sprung ...
— The Poetical Works of John Dryden, Vol II - With Life, Critical Dissertation, and Explanatory Notes • John Dryden
... say it before others, as in shops. When in shops he asks the salesman how much money he makes in a day, and which drawer he keeps it in, and why his hair is red, and does he like Achilles, of whom David has lately heard, and is so enamoured that he wants to die to meet him. At such times the shopkeepers accept me as his father, and I cannot explain the peculiar pleasure this gives me. I am always in two minds then, to linger that we may have more of it, and to snatch ...
— The Little White Bird - or Adventures In Kensington Gardens • J. M. Barrie
... to humiliate Hughie and to bring him to a proper state of subjection, he succeeded in shutting him out from the leadership in the game of "Injuns," for Hughie promptly refused a subordinate position and withdrew, like Achilles, to his tent. But, unlike Achilles, though he sulked, he sulked actively, and to some purpose, for, drawing off with him his two faithful henchmen, "Fusie"—neither Hughie nor any one else ever knew another name for the little French boy ...
— Glengarry Schooldays • Ralph Connor
... limits the individual has so many options, such a wide room for moving, that the definition of those conditions, the "psychical diapasons," is only part of the explanation of the particular development. The heel of Achilles in all historical speculations of this class has been the ...
— Evolution in Modern Thought • Ernst Haeckel
... as Greeks to Troy; As glorious as Alcides in thy toils; As happy as Sertorius in thy fight; As valiant as Achilles in thy might: Go, glorious, valiant, happy, fortunate, As all those Greeks and him ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. VII (4th edition) • Various
... dialogue, considered as distinct from the plot, Dryden appears not to have availed himself fully of the treasures of his predecessor. He has pitilessly retrenched the whole scene, in the 3d act, between Ulysses and Achilles, full of the purest and most admirable moral precept, expressed in the most poetical and dignified language[1]. Probably this omission arose from Dryden's desire to simplify the plot, by leaving out the intrigues of the Grecian chiefs, and limiting the ...
— The Works of John Dryden, Vol. 6 (of 18) - Limberham; Oedipus; Troilus and Cressida; The Spanish Friar • John Dryden
... you know, was able, guided by the light of reason alone, to direct his steps towards eternal blessedness, and you sometimes see his heroic bosom prancing on the clouds. Chiron, the Centaur, deserved for his works on the earth to share the abode of the blessed; he it was who gave Achilles his education; and that young hero, when he left the Centaur's hands, lived for two years, dressed as a young girl, among the daughters of King Lycomedes. He shared their games and their bed without allowing ...
— Penguin Island • Anatole France
... the Sigaean to the Rhaetean promontory; and the flanks of the army were guarded by the bravest chiefs who fought under the banners of Agamemnon. The first of those promontories was occupied by Achilles with his invincible myrmidons, and the dauntless Ajax pitched his tents on the other. After Ajax had fallen a sacrifice to his disappointed pride, and to the ingratitude of the Greeks, his sepulchre ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 2 • Edward Gibbon
... towns. Believe me, it is not in my power, O man, dear to Mars! Minerva denies to an Ethiopian to celebrate the wars of generals. Buchanan would sing thee in a poem, he would describe thee as equal to Achilles in counsel and in war. That famous poet, the honour of his country, is more worthy to relate thy exploits, and is scarcely inferior to the majestic Virgil. We live under an Apollo driving his own flame-bringing team. Every ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 2, 1917 • Various
... comprehend the devious thing called a woman; he was more like Achilles among the daughters of Lycomedes than Tannhauser in the enchanted castle. And that is why he wandered sadly along the walls of the mighty palace searching for an outlet through which to escape; but he only saw the ...
— Honey-Bee - 1911 • Anatole France
... the [Greek: oulos oneiros], or evil dream, which, in the second book of the Iliad, Jupiter sends down to Agamemnon, to lure him to give battle to the Trojans in the absence of Achilles. ...
— John Rutherford, the White Chief • George Lillie Craik
... hypocrites. They have caught enough of the spirit of their time not to enjoy having to pose as miracle-mongers, rain-makers and witch-doctors; they would like to say frankly that they do not believe that Jonah ever swallowed the whale, and even that they are dubious about Hercules and Achilles and other demigods. But they are part of a machine, and the old men and the rich men who run the machine have laid down the law. Those who find themselves tempted to think, remember suddenly that they have wives ...
— The Profits of Religion, Fifth Edition • Upton Sinclair
... second later, the clear "Caw! caw!" comes down to us, the sound-waves unable to keep pace with those of light, as the thunder of the storm lags behind the flash. These sturdy birds seem able to stand any severity of the weather, but, like Achilles, they have one vulnerable point, the eyes,—which, during the long winter nights, must be kept deep buried among ...
— The Log of the Sun - A Chronicle of Nature's Year • William Beebe
... the fight at a distance, calmly weighing its course, undisturbed except by distant random shots, it is strange to compare Ney staggering through the gate of Konigsberg all covered with blood; smoke and snow, musket in hand, announcing himself as the rear-guard of France, or appearing, a second Achilles, on the ramparts of Smolensko to encourage the yielding troops on the glacis, or amidst the flying troops at Waterloo, with uncovered head and broken sword, black with powder, on foot, his fifth horse killed ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... suffering from what, to the lay mind, seems a hopelessly incurable injury or malformation. This particular patient had a crippled and paralyzed leg, and to restore its usefulness, it was necessary to cut deeply into the heel, stretch the "Achilles tendon," and make other changes which, without the usual anesthetic, would involve excruciating suffering. According to the attendant nurses, the child belonged to the "noisy" class; that is, he was extremely sensitive to pain, screamed at the approach of the surgeon, and ...
— How To Write Special Feature Articles • Willard Grosvenor Bleyer
... relic-worship set in. The superstition of the old Greek times reappeared; the times when the tools with which the Trojan horse was made might still be seen at Metapontum, the sceptre of Pelops at Chaeroneia, the spear of Achilles at Phaselis, the sword of Memnon at Nicomedia, when the Tegeates could show the hide of the Calydonian boar and very many cities boasted their possession of the true palladium of Troy; when there were ...
— History of the Conflict Between Religion and Science • John William Draper
... occasion. He even indulged in a classical joke. "There is something in the name of Helen that attracts," he said. "Were it not for the lady whose face drew a thousand ships to Ilium, we should never have heard of Paris, or Troy, or the heel of Achilles, and all these would ...
— The Silent Barrier • Louis Tracy
... movement. He accordingly addressed him in quite a gentlemanly manner, and inquired of him the way to the village. After he had received the desired information, and was about taking his leave, the youth said, "Are you not Major Elfonzo, the great musician [2]—the champion of a noble cause —the modern Achilles, who gained so many victories in the Florida War?" "I bear that name," said the Major, "and those titles, trusting at the same time that the ministers of grace will carry me triumphantly through all my laudable undertakings, and if," continued the Major, "you, sir, are the patronizer ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... an older and better hero-worship than this. But the old hero was a being who, like Achilles, was more human than humanity itself. Nietzsche's Superman is cold and friendless. Achilles is so foolishly fond of his friend that he slaughters armies in the agony of his bereavement. Mr. Shaw's sad Caesar says in his desolate pride, "He who has never hoped can ...
— Heretics • Gilbert K. Chesterton
... to assassinate the lover of his sister; he dared to offend the lover of his wife, the vain and insolent Harmatius, who, in the midst of Asiatic luxury, affected the dress, the demeanor, and the surname of Achilles. [8] By the conspiracy of the malecontents, Zeno was recalled from exile; the armies, the capital, the person, of Basiliscus, were betrayed; and his whole family was condemned to the long agony of cold and hunger by the inhuman conqueror, who wanted courage ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 4 • Edward Gibbon
... knew him in Padua,—a fantastical scholar, like such who study to know how many knots was in Hercules' club, of what colour Achilles' beard was, or whether Hector were not troubled with the tooth-ache. He hath studied himself half blear-eyed to know the true symmetry of Caesar's nose by a shoeing-horn; and this he did to gain the name of a ...
— The Duchess of Malfi • John Webster
... [Footnote 22: Achilles, Ajax, Buonaparte, King George, Hannibal, Peter Pindar, Neptune, Tippoo Saib, Washington. A few only bore ...
— The History of Tasmania , Volume II (of 2) • John West
... (north side) for many years Messrs. Rundell and Bridge, the celebrated goldsmiths and diamond merchants, carried on their business. Here Flaxman's chef d'oeuvre, the Shield of Achilles, in silver gilt, was executed; also the crown worn by that august monarch, George IV. at his coronation, for the loan of the jewels of which L7,000 was charged, and among the elaborate luxuries a gigantic ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury
... entreat; for never more shall I return from Hades, when once ye have given me my meed of fire. Nay, never more shall we sit, at least in life, apart from our comrades, taking counsel together; but upon me hateful doom hath gaped—doom which was my portion even at birth. Aye and to thee thyself also, Achilles, thou peer of the gods, it is fated to perish beneath the wall of the wealthy Trojans. Another thing I will tell thee, and will straitly charge thee, if peradventure thou wilt hearken: lay not my bones apart from thine, Achilles, but side by side; for we were brought up ...
— The Haunters & The Haunted - Ghost Stories And Tales Of The Supernatural • Various
... he could not better open up his theme than by explaining what was meant by disinfection. He would do so by an illustration from Greek literature. When Achilles had slain Hector, the body still lay on the plain of Troy for twelve days after; the god Hermes found it there and went and told of it—"This, the twelfth evening since he rested, untouched by worms, untainted by the air." The Greek word for taint in this sense was sepsis, which ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 417 • Various
... undergraduate at St. John's College, Cambridge. He kept no copy of any of them, but his friend the Rev. Canon Joseph McCormick, D.D., Rector of St. James's, Piccadilly, kept copies in a note-book which he lent me. The only one that has appeared in print is "The Shield of Achilles," which Canon McCormick sent to The Eagle, the magazine of St. John's College, Cambridge, and it was printed in the number for December 1902, about ...
— The Note-Books of Samuel Butler • Samuel Butler
... students used to read of his terrific line plunges on the eastern fields and of his titanic defense when his team was hard pushed, and wonder if any of us would ever become great enough to meet him and shake him by the hand. What did we care for the achievements of Achilles and Hector and Hercules and other eminent hasbeens, which we had to soak up at the rate of forty lines of Greek a day? They had old Homer to write them up—the best man ever in the business. But they were too ...
— At Good Old Siwash • George Fitch
... my God, I am glad of it; I thought our hammer of destruction, our thunderbolt, whom the Greeks called Achilles, must be known to the people of Horncastle. Well, Hunyadi ...
— The Romany Rye • George Borrow
... foolish delusion to suppose, that, as the world grows more pacific, the demand for physical courage passes away. It is only that its applications become nobler. In barbarous ages, men fight against men and animals, and need, like Achilles, to be fed on the marrow of wild beasts. As time elapses, the savage animals are extirpated, the savage men are civilized; but Nature, acting through science, commerce, society, is still creating new exigencies of peril, and evoking ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. II., November, 1858., No. XIII. • Various
... underworld, where she tarries for a while. Balder's golden hall of Breidablik is like Apollo's palace in the east; he, also, delights in flowers; all things smile at his approach, and willingly pledge themselves not to injure him. As Achilles was vulnerable only in the heel, so Balder could be slain only by the harmless mistletoe, and his death is occasioned by Loki's jealousy just as Hercules was slain by that of Deianeira. Balder's funeral pyre on Ringhorn reminds us of Hercules's death on Mount OEta, the flames and reddish ...
— Myths of the Norsemen - From the Eddas and Sagas • H. A. Guerber
... the shore and barked at her of course. Cui bono or malo? Why, like Job's mates, fill its poor belly with the east wind, or try to draw out leviathan with a hook, or his tongue with a cord thou lettest down? Yet who treads of the fight between invulnerable Achilles and heroic Hector, and admires Achilles? The admiral of the American fleet, sick of the premature pother, signaled the lazy solidity to return. The loathly monster, slowly, like a bull-dog wrenched from his victim, rolled snarling, lazily, leisurely down the bay, not obeying and yet not disobeying ...
— Lippincott's Magazine Of Popular Literature And Science, No. 23, February, 1873, Vol. XI. • Various
... that I witnessed a manifestation made in his full strength and in the acme of his dominance. It was worth while to see that even in no great mood, the force of his leadership was recognised and reserve power of the man fully felt. Like every Achilles, Gladstone was held by the heel when dipped. One may well feel that he came short as a theologian. The scholars slight his Homeric disquisitions. Consistency was a virtue which he probably too often scouted, but ...
— The Last Leaf - Observations, during Seventy-Five Years, of Men and Events in America - and Europe • James Kendall Hosmer
... succeeded Ninus and had been his spouse; she held the land which the Soldan rules. That other is she who, for love, killed herself, and broke faith to the ashes of Sichaeus. Next is Cleopatra, the luxurious. See Helen, for whom so long a time of ill revolved; and see the great Achilles, who at the end fought with love. See Paris, Tristan,—" and more than a thousand shades he showed me with his finger, and named them, whom love had ...
— The Divine Comedy, Volume 1, Hell [The Inferno] • Dante Alighieri
... friend, who was gifted with noble feelings and good sense, knew that in either profession talents and knowledge were essentials, and before making a choice he was applying himself with great success to the study of mathematics. He ultimately decided upon the military profession, thus imitating Achilles, who preferred the sword to the distaff, and he paid for it with his life like the son of Peleus; though not so young, and not through a wound inflicted by an arrow, but from the plague, which he caught in the unhappy ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... will live forever as a symbolic figure, representative of certain indigenous qualities in American life. Lowell found in Leather-Stocking "the protagonist of our New World epic, a figure as poetic as that of Achilles, as ideally representative as that of Don Quixote, as romantic in his relation to our homespun and plebeian myths as Arthur in his to his mailed and plumed cycle of chivalry." Americans themselves do ...
— The Story of Cooperstown • Ralph Birdsall
... occasion to converse, he transformed himself into any shape and adopted any fashion, that he observed to be most agreeable to them. So that to have seen him at Lacedaemon, a man, judging by the outward appearance, would have said, "'T is not Achilles' son, but he himself, the very man" ...
— The Boys' and Girls' Plutarch - Being Parts of The "Lives" of Plutarch • Plutarch
... glory's but an airy lust, Too often in its fury overcoming all Who would, as 'twere, identify their dust From out the wide destruction which, entombing all, Leaves nothing till the coming of the just, Save change. I've stood upon Achilles' tomb, And heard Troy doubted—time will ...
— The Life of Lord Byron • John Galt
... England. A very pretty piece of water is in this park, which is called "the Serpentine River." The best skating of London is to be seen here, we are told, in hard winters. The entrance from Piccadilly is by a fine threefold arch. Here is the great Achilles of bronze, in honor of Wellington, made out of the cannon which the duke captured in Spain. St. James's and the Green Park: this is the oldest in London, and was made by Henry VIII. A fine arch affords entrance ...
— Young Americans Abroad - Vacation in Europe: Travels in England, France, Holland, - Belgium, Prussia and Switzerland • Various
... equinus, it was necessary to cut the tendon of Achilles, and, if need were, the anterior tibial muscle could be seen to afterwards for getting rid of the varus; for the doctor did not dare to risk both operations at once; he was even trembling already for fear of injuring some important region that ...
— Madame Bovary • Gustave Flaubert
... tell you, and do you meditate well upon it, that) you yourself are not destined to live long, for even now death is drawing nigh unto you, and a violent fate awaits you,—about to be slain in fight by the hands of Achilles, ...
— Notes & Queries, No. 38, Saturday, July 20, 1850 • Various
... strumming of the seven-stringed heroic lyre, torturing of the less heroic fiddle-catgut, in Hellenic Kings' Courts, and English wayside Public Houses; and beating of the studious Poetic brain, and gasping here too in the semi-articulate windpipe of Poetic men, before the Wrath of a Divine Achilles, the Prowess of a Will Scarlet or Wakefield Pindar, could be adequately sung! Honour to you, ye nameless great and ...
— Past and Present - Thomas Carlyle's Collected Works, Vol. XIII. • Thomas Carlyle
... closed behind and hung upon his rear. One aimed a blow full at his heart; but the protecting power which watches over the great and good turned aside the hostile blade and directed it to a side-pocket, where reposed an enormous iron tobacco-box, endowed, like the shield of Achilles, with supernatural powers, doubtless from bearing the portrait of the blessed St. Nicholas. Peter Stuyvesant turned like an angry bear upon the foe, and seizing him, as he fled, by an immeasurable queue, 'Ah, whoreson caterpillar,' roared he, 'here's what ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... for I cannot understand how any one who compares together the description of the Shield of Achilles in the Iliad and that of the Shield of Hercules in the fragmentary form in which we have it, can doubt for a moment that both descriptions came from the same hand. (The theory that Hesiod composed the latter poem can scarcely be entertained by any ...
— Myths and Marvels of Astronomy • Richard A. Proctor
... claimed no right to act as a politician, but acting as a loyal-hearted, clear-headed soldier, he coined a word and hurled a shaft at the enemy that struck him in a part as vulnerable as the heel of Achilles. In his letter to the Lieut.-Gen. of the Army, Winfield Scott, 27th of May, ...
— History of the Negro Race in America from 1619 to 1880. Vol. 2 (of 2) - Negroes as Slaves, as Soldiers, and as Citizens • George Washington Williams
... says Sir Thomas Browne in a suppressed passage of the 'Religio Medici,' 'if I say that I am the happiest man alive. I have that in me that can convert poverty into riches, adversity into prosperity, and I am more invulnerable than Achilles; fortune hath not one place to hit me.' Perhaps on second thoughts, Sir Thomas felt that the phrase savoured of that presumption which is supposed to provoke the wrath of Nemesis; and at any rate, he, of all men, ...
— Hours in a Library, Volume I. (of III.) • Leslie Stephen
... selfishness, and Washington without his reward. He was as obedient to authority as a servant, and royal in authority as a true king. He was gentle as a woman in life, and modest and pure as a virgin in thought; watchful as a Roman vestal in duty; submissive to law as Socrates, and grand in battle as Achilles!" ...
— Modern Eloquence: Vol III, After-Dinner Speeches P-Z • Various
... walk in!" I did, and found the inside ten times worse, and He was making an Index to Homer, a lean wife, suckling a child. He is going to publish the chief beauties, and I believe had just been reading some of the delicate civilities that pass between Agamemnon and Achilles, and that what my servant took for oaths, were only Greek compliments.(118) Adieu! ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole, V4 • Horace Walpole
... had a wonderful collection of these, the values attached to some of them being almost fabulous. One example from the work-shop of Vienna—long celebrated for this description of art,—represented the combat of Hector and Achilles, the cover of the pipe being a golden hemlet cristatus of the Grecian type." Swiss and Tyrolean artists also produce exquisite carving, but use wood as a material; and in the famous collection of Baron ...
— Tobacco; Its History, Varieties, Culture, Manufacture and Commerce • E. R. Billings
... note on this line:—"Prince Memnon's sister; that is, an Ethiopian princess, or sable beauty. Memnon, king of Ethiopia, being an auxiliary of the Trojans, was slain by Achilles. (See Virg. Aen. I. 489., 'Nigri Memnonis arma.') It does not, however, appear that Memnon had any sister. Tithonus, according to Hesiod, had by Aurora only two sons, Memnon and Emathion, Theog. 984. This lady is a ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 217, December 24, 1853 • Various
... follow the example of divine Achilles and 'refresh my soul with tears.' He has that tear-bringing privilege of genius, ...
— Atlantic Monthly Vol. 6, No. 33, July, 1860 • Various
... but he rapidly improved, and with a little practice he reached at last the perfection of wolfish strategy. Just as he had learned all that there was to know a flock approached. The sham wolf ran after it spreading terror all around, even as Patroclus wearing[19] the armour of Achilles spread alarm throughout camp and city, when mothers, wives, and old men hastened to the temples for protection. "In this case, the bleating army made sure there must be quite fifty wolves after them, and fled, dog and shepherd with them, to the neighbouring ...
— The Original Fables of La Fontaine - Rendered into English Prose by Fredk. Colin Tilney • Jean de la Fontaine
... It is for your lordship to stir up that remembrance in his majesty, which his many avocations of business have caused him, I fear, to lay aside; and, as himself and his royal brother are the heroes of the poem, to represent to them the images of their warlike predecessors; as Achilles is said to be roused to glory, with the sight of the combat before the ships. For my own part, I am satisfied to have offered the design, and it may be to the advantage of my reputation to have ...
— The Works of John Dryden, Volume 5 (of 18) - Amboyna; The state of Innocence; Aureng-Zebe; All for Love • John Dryden
... seats in mediocrity, Become your servile minds; but we advance Such virtues only as admit excess, Brave, bounteous acts, regal magnificence, All-seeing prudence, magnanimity That knows no bound, and that heroic virtue For which antiquity hath left no name, But patterns only, such as Hercules, Achilles, Theseus. Back to thy loath'd cell; And when thou seest the new enlightened sphere, Study to know but what those worthies were. ...
— Walden, and On The Duty Of Civil Disobedience • Henry David Thoreau
... in this passage are purely imaginary. Parts of the Mahabharata are very ancient. Yudhishthira is no more an historical personage than Achilles or Romulus. It is improbable that a 'throne of Delhi' existed in 575 B.C., and hardly anything is known about the state of India ...
— Rambles and Recollections of an Indian Official • William Sleeman
... to introduce Homer's simile of the appearance of Achilles' mail to Priam compared with ...
— Biographia Literaria • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... assist him in his exile; but he forbore to speak on this subject until his own fate should be decided. They then talked of Glennaquoich, for whom the Baron expressed great anxiety, although, he observed, he was 'the very Achilles ...
— Waverley • Sir Walter Scott
... her son whenever her counsel or aid was required. A like trait belongs to the Homeric goddesses. Thetis heard from her father's court far away beneath the ocean the terrible sounds of grief that burst from her son Achilles on hearing of the death of his dear friend Patroclus, and quickly ascended to earth all weeping to learn what ailed her son. These Fairy ladies also show a mother's love, immortal though ...
— Welsh Folk-Lore - a Collection of the Folk-Tales and Legends of North Wales • Elias Owen
... To paint Achilles the most goodly of men, though you had for your model the most abject you must depend on him, and can depend on him for the structure of the human body, for its movement and poise. The proof of this is that Raphael used his pupils in his studies for the movements of the ...
— The Mind of the Artist - Thoughts and Sayings of Painters and Sculptors on Their Art • Various
... future. There is a Serbian instrument called the gusle, more interesting than the Greek lyre, because more appropriate for the epic songs. It looks also like the Indian instrument tamboura. Well, as the ancient Greek bards sang their Achilles, using the lyre, and as the ancient Indian singers sang their Krishna with the help of the tamboura, so the Serbian epic singers accompanied with the gusle their songs on their hero of old, Marko. Marko was a historic person, a king's son. He was the never-weary champion ...
— Serbia in Light and Darkness - With Preface by the Archbishop of Canterbury, (1916) • Nikolaj Velimirovic
... has transformed a people. The blind bard singing through the villages of Greece met a rude and simple folk. But Homer opened up a gallery in the clouds, and there unveiled Achilles as the ideal Greek. It became the ambition of every Athenian boy to fix the Iliad in his mind and repeat Achilles in his heart and life. Soon the Achilles in the sky looked down upon 20,000 young Achilles walking through the streets beneath. With what admiration do men recall the intellectual achievements ...
— A Man's Value to Society - Studies in Self Culture and Character • Newell Dwight Hillis
... Jersey legislature made up its mind to retaliate. The city of New York had lately bought a small patch of ground on Sandy Hook, and had built a light-house there. This light-house was the one weak spot in the heel of Achilles where a hostile arrow could strike, and New Jersey gave vent to her indignation by laying a tax of $1,800 a year on it. Connecticut was equally prompt. At a great meeting of business men, held at New London, it was unanimously agreed to suspend all commercial ...
— The Critical Period of American History • John Fiske
... The Boston Times, and one or two other absurdities—as regards, we say the wrath of Achilles—we incurred it-or rather its manifestation—by letting some of our cat out of the bag a few hours sooner than we had intended. Over a bottle of champagne, that night, we confessed to Messrs. Cushing, Whipple, Hudson, Fields, and a few ...
— International Miscellany of Literature, Art and Science, Vol. 1, - No. 3, Oct. 1, 1850 • Various
... this benumbing period were those of hunting scenes, and antique groups such as the Muses, or scenes from the life of Achilles. ...
— The Tapestry Book • Helen Churchill Candee
... Achilles of the Alexandrian poet Rhianus (Grote's History of Greece, 1869, ii. 428), is the legendary hero of the second Messenian War (B.C. 685-668). Thrice he slew a hundred of the Spartan foe, and thrice he offered the Hekatomphonia on Mount Ithome. His name was ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 4 • Lord Byron
... this, however, so little comparative projection is given,—nay, the masterly group of Agamemnon, Nestor, and Ulysses, and, still more in advance, that of Achilles, Ajax, and Thersites, so manifestly occupying the fore-ground, that the subservience and vassalage of strength and animal courage to intellect and policy seems to be the lesson most often in our poet's view, and which he has ...
— Shakespeare, Ben Jonson, Beaumont and Fletcher • S. T. Coleridge
... those whose manners and ideas are the manners and ideas of the Bible, and how Moses was not at all a crop-eared Puritan, but a gallant warrior!' There is the Homeric element in the religion here, the Prophet is a hero like Achilles, and like him directed by God—Allah instead of Athene. He fights, prays, teaches, makes love, and is truly a man, not an abstraction; and as to wonderful events, instead of telling one to 'gulp them down without looking' (as children are told ...
— Letters from Egypt • Lucie Duff Gordon |
