"Alcibiades" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... quotes this paragraph from a popular life of Fitzgerald, published in Dublin: "Not Greece of old in her palmiest days—the Greece of Homer and Demosthenes, of Eschylus, Euripides, and Sophocles, of Pericles, Leonidas, and Alcibiades, of Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle, of Solon and Lycurgus, of Apelles and Praxiteles—not even this Greece, prolific as she was in sages and heroes, can boast such a lengthy bead-roll as Ireland can of names immortal in history!" But "this was for Irish consumption." And popular opinion and even ...
— The Greatest English Classic A Study of the King James Version of • Cleland Boyd McAfee
... an hour ago Alcibiades and Yaxis had departed with their pushcarts, one to the north and one to the south, calling antiphonally as they went, in clear, high voices that came fainter and fainter to Achilles ...
— Mr. Achilles • Jennette Lee
... that Spirit, as he attributes to the Actions of his Heroes; and whose Blindness is more truly chargeable on his Criticks, than on Himself: who, as he wrote without a Rule, was himself a Rule to succeeding Ages. Who as much deserves that Commendation which Alcibiades gave to Socrates, when he compar'd him to the Statues of the Sileni, which to look upon, had nothing beautiful and ornamental; but open them, and there you might discover the Images of all ...
— Discourse on Criticism and of Poetry (1707) - From Poems On Several Occasions (1707) • Samuel Cobb
... the jury, that you need to hear no reason from those who wish to prosecute Alcibiades, for from the start he so conducted himself in the public that it is every one's duty, even if he happen not to be privately injured by him, to consider him an enemy from his other actions. 2. For his ...
— The Orations of Lysias • Lysias
... at this famous antique marble dog of Mr. Jennings, valued at a thousand guineas, said to be Alcibiades's dog.' JOHNSON. 'His tail then must be docked. That was the mark of Alcibiades's dog[652].' E. 'A thousand guineas! The representation of no animal whatever is worth so much, at this rate a dead dog would indeed be better than a living lion.' JOHNSON. 'Sir, it is not the ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 3 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill
... defect filled him with faults. The lack of principle gave him a lack of purpose, and wanting purpose he persevered in no consistent political path. Swift has observed that Bolingbroke "had a great respect for the characters of Alcibiades and Petronius, especially the latter, whom he would gladly be thought to resemble." He came nearer at his worst to Petronius than at his best to Alcibiades. Alcibiades, to do him justice, admired and understood virtue in others, however small the share of it he contrived to keep ...
— A History of the Four Georges, Volume I (of 4) • Justin McCarthy
... school of rhetoric, now and then a dicing room, a playhouse, or a stage. For do not you observe some making fine orations and putting cases at a supper, others declaiming or reading some of their own compositions, and others proposing prizes to dancers and mimics? Alcibiades and Theodorus turned Polition's banquet into a temple of initiation, representing there the sacred procession and mysteries of Ceres; now such things as these, in my opinion, ought not to be suffered by a steward, ...
— Essays and Miscellanies - The Complete Works Volume 3 • Plutarch
... probably draw to them more than their numerical share of the actual administration of government; as the Athenians did not confide responsible public functions to Cleon or Hyperbolus (the employment of Cleon at Pylos and Amphipolis was purely exceptional), but Nicias, and Theramenes, and Alcibiades were in constant employment both at home and abroad, though known to sympathize more with oligarchy than with democracy. The instructed minority would, in the actual voting, count only for their numbers, but as a moral power they would count for much more, in virtue of their knowledge, and ...
— Considerations on Representative Government • John Stuart Mill
... B.C. he had failed in an enterprise against Heracles, a storm having destroyed his fleet. Since then he had distingued himself in several actions, and was destined, some years later, to share the command of the expedition to Sicily with Alcibiades and Nicias. ...
— Peace • Aristophanes
... Nondum experta novi gaudia prima tori. Or a forlorn son for his deceased father. But why? Prior exiit, prior intravit, he came first, and he must go first. [3917]Tu frustra pius, heu, &c. What, wouldst thou have the laws of nature altered, and him to live always? Julius Caesar, Augustus, Alcibiades, Galen, Aristotle, lost their fathers young. And why on the other side shouldst thou so heavily take the death of ...
— The Anatomy of Melancholy • Democritus Junior
... was begun in 1882. At that period our Navy consisted of a collection of antiquated wooden ships, already almost as out of place against modern war vessels as the galleys of Alcibiades and Hamilcar—certainly as the ships of Tromp and Blake. Nor at that time did we have men fit to handle a modern man-of-war. Under the wise legislation of the Congress and the successful administration of a succession of patriotic Secretaries of the Navy, belonging to both political parties, ...
— Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 2 (of 2) of Supplemental Volume: Theodore Roosevelt, Supplement • Theodore Roosevelt
... caprices of caprice," said the old gentleman. "Bordeaux wine was unknown a hundred years ago. Marechal de Richelieu, one of the noted men of the last century, the French Alcibiades, was appointed governor of Guyenne. His lungs were diseased, and, heaven knows why! the wine of the country did him good and he recovered. Bordeaux instantly made a hundred millions; the marshal widened its territory to Angouleme, to Cahors,—in short, to over a hundred miles of circumference! it ...
— The Celibates - Includes: Pierrette, The Vicar of Tours, and The Two Brothers • Honore de Balzac
... when more like than unlike to the ideal of the species. And I mused over the translation of the idea of beauty into actions and intellectual conditions. Was not the death of Socrates more beautiful than his preservation of Alcibiades' life in battle?—though this was none the less ...
— Recollections Of My Childhood And Youth • George Brandes
... I do not know that I praised Xenophon's imagination in recording such things as Alcibiades at Lampsacus; {240} all I meant to say was that the history was not dull which does record such facts, if it be for the imagination of others to quicken them. . . . As to Sophocles, I will not give up my old Titan. Is there not an infusion of Xenophon ...
— Letters of Edward FitzGerald - in two volumes, Vol. 1 • Edward FitzGerald
... those old Greek bathers, into whose hands were delivered Pericles, and Alcibiades, and the perfect models of Phidias. They had daily before their eyes the highest types of Beauty which the world has ever produced; for of all things that are beautiful, the human body is the crown. Now, since the delusion of artists ...
— The Lands of the Saracen - Pictures of Palestine, Asia Minor, Sicily, and Spain • Bayard Taylor
... Alcibiades of Apamea, one of their disciples, came from the East to Rome about 220-230, and endeavoured to spread the doctrines of the sect in the Roman Church. He found the soil prepared, inasmuch as he could announce from the "book" ...
— History of Dogma, Volume 1 (of 7) • Adolph Harnack
... the last of the Villiers family that wore a ducal coronet was far too memorable a person to have died under the cloud of obscurity which Pope's representation presumes. He was the most interesting person of the Alcibiades class [Footnote 9] that perhaps ever existed; and Pope's mendacious story found acceptance only amongst an after-generation unacquainted with the realities of the case. There was not so much as a popular rumor to countenance Pope. The story was a pure, gratuitous invention of his ...
— Theological Essays and Other Papers v2 • Thomas de Quincey
... the highest triumphs of ancient art. It was Antinous come to life in an embroidered cap and a gold-worked jacket, and it was Antinous with a voice like Mario, and who waltzed to perfection. This splendid creature, a modern Alcibiades in gifts of mind and graces, soon heard, amongst his other triumphs, how a rich and handsome Irish girl had fallen in love with him at first sight. He had himself been struck by her good looks and her stylish air, and learning that there could ...
— Lord Kilgobbin • Charles Lever
... fellow who is lying in wait for the periodicals a chance to correct me. That will make him happy for a month, and besides, he will not want to pick a quarrel about anything else if he has that splendid triumph. You remember Alcibiades ...
— The Poet at the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... ordered the denunciation of all who should deny their existence. * * * The practice was in unison with the severity of the law. The proceedings commenced against Protagoras; a price set upon the head of Diagoras; the danger of Alcibiades; Aristotle obliged to fly; Stilpo banished; Anaxagoras hardly escaping death; Pericles himself, after all his services to his country, and all the glory he had acquired, compelled to appear before the tribunals and make his defence; * * a priestess executed for having introduced strange gods; ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 1 • Edward Gibbon
... appears to be to show that man could not, of himself, learn either the nature of the Gods, or the proper manner of worshiping them, unless an instructor should come from Heaven. The following remarkable passage occurs between Socrates and Alcibiades: ...
— Conversion of a High Priest into a Christian Worker • Meletios Golden
... his neighbour Penhaligon's children, Young 'Bert and 'Beida (Zobeida), approach by the street from the Quay bearing between them a stretcher, composed of two broken paddles and part of an old fishing-net, and on the stretcher, covered by a tattered pilot-jack, a small form—their brother 'Biades (Alcibiades), aged four. It gave ...
— Nicky-Nan, Reservist • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch (Q)
... satisfy him as to love, "the modern fair one's jest," or, what is worse, her affectation. His lordship was well aware that among the numbers of young ladies who were ready at a moment's warning to marry him, not one of these would love him for his own sake. Now in common with Marmontel's Alcibiades, and with most men of rank who have any superiority of character, Lord William had an anxious desire to be loved for his own sake; for though, in the opinion of most people of the world, and of some philosophers, the circumstances of rank and fortune form a part of personal merit; yet as these ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. VII - Patronage • Maria Edgeworth
... Nord and La Nation, the avowed organs of Rossian czarism, did not venture to propound. M. de Girardin, whose paper has, since a certain period, taken a liberalistic, even socialistic, infection, is a living example of sundry anomalous eccentricities, such as Alcibiades, Gracchus, Mirabeau, etc., who speak most liberally, and act in a contrary manner. He seems to have been adopted by Rossian diplomatists, and those sanguine of Rossian destiny, as a most convenient defender of czarish ambition—the more so that they found ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No 2, August, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... of these thirty tyrants, had formerly, as well as Alcibiades, been a disciple of Socrates. But both of them being weary of a philosophy the maxims of which would not yield to their ambition and intemperance, they, at length, totally abandoned it. Critias, though formerly a scholar of Socrates, became ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 3 of 8 • Various
... fortnight before the slave-trader could take his prize to more comfortable quarters. Like Alcibiades, who defaced the images of the gods and expected to be pardoned on the ground of eccentricity, so men who abuse God's image hope to escape the vengeance of his wrath under the plea that the law ...
— Clotelle - The Colored Heroine • William Wells Brown
... Christianity assumed a pagan character, which, passing from art into manners, gives to this epoch a strange complexion. Crimes for the moment disappeared, to give place to vices; but to charming vices, vices in good taste, such as those indulged in by Alcibiades and sung by Catullus. Leo X died after having assembled under his reign, which lasted eight years, eight months, and nineteen days, Michael Angelo, Raffaelle, Leonardo da Vinci, Correggio, Titian, Andrea del Sarto, Fra Bartolommeo, Giulio Romano, Ariosto, Guicciardini, ...
— The Cenci - Celebrated Crimes • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... Yet how strangely distorted are all his views! The daily influence of his intercourse with me was like the breath he drew; it has become a part of him. Can he escape from himself? Would he be unlike all other mortals? His feelings are as false as those of Alcibiades. He influenced me, and helped form me to what I am. Others shall succeed him. Shall I be ashamed to owe anything to friendship? But why do I talk?—a child might confute him by defining the term human being. He will gradually work his way into light; if too late ...
— Memoirs of Margaret Fuller Ossoli, Vol. I • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... invisible life often seems to hang tremulous and unreal in their minds, like the pale, faded moon in the light of a gorgeous sunrise. When brought face to face with the great truths of the invisible world, they stand related to the higher wisdom much like the gorgeous, gay Alcibiades to the divine Socrates, or like the young man in Holy Writ to Him for whose appearing Socrates longed;— they gaze, imperfectly comprehending, and at the call of ambition or ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, Issue 17, March, 1859 • Various
... the journey he undertook to establish the governments of the Sicilian cities, wrought miracles here, curing a mad lover of his frenzy by music, and being present on this hill and at Metaponto the same day—a thing not to be done without magic? But at last we see plainly Alcibiades coasting along below, and the ill-fated Athenians wintering in the port, and horsemen going out from Naxos toward Etna on the side of Athens in the death-struggle of her glory. And then, suddenly, after the second three hundred years, all is over, the Greek city betrayed, sacked, destroyed, ...
— Heart of Man • George Edward Woodberry
... scatter'd to disfigure, She had heard; but women hear with more good humour Such aberrations than we men of rigour: Besides, his conduct, since in England, grew more Strict, and his mind assumed a manlier vigour; Because he had, like Alcibiades, The art of living ...
— Don Juan • Lord Byron
... selfe in the ranke of great and renowmed Captaines, such as liued in times passed, yet we may iudge by their examples, how hurtfull backbiters haue beene vnto commonwealths. (M537) I will onely take Alcibiades for witnesse in the commonwealth of the Athenians, which by this meane was cast into banishment, whereupon his citizens felt the smart of an infinite number of mischiefes: insomuch as in the end they were constrained to call him home againe, and acknowledge at length the fault they had committed ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques and Discoveries of - the English Nation. Vol. XIII. America. Part II. • Richard Hakluyt
... Eudes was the Alcibiades, or rather the Saint Just, of the Commune. He had the face and manners of a fashionable tenorino, the luxurious taste of the Athenian, the cruel inflexibility of Robespierre's protege. He was born at Bonay, in the arrondissement of Coutances. His father was a tradesman of the Boulevard ...
— Paris under the Commune • John Leighton
... what men may, have borne what men must." This is the very burden of life, and the last word of tragedy. For now all is vain: courage, wisdom, piety, the bravery of Lamachus, the goodness of Nicias, the brilliance of Alcibiades, all are expended, all wasted, nothing of that brave venture abides, except torture, defeat, and death. No play not poem of individual fortunes is so moving as this ruin of a people; no modern story ...
— Adventures among Books • Andrew Lang
... capital crime to divulge the secrets and mysteries of this feast. Upon this account Diagoras the Melian was proscribed, and had a reward set upon his head. It very nearly cost the poet AEschylus his life, for speaking too freely of it in some of his tragedies. The disgrace of Alcibiades proceeded from the same cause. Whoever had violated this secresy, was avoided as a wretch accursed and excommunicated.(73) Pausanias, in several passages, wherein he mentions the temple of Eleusis, and the ceremonies practised there, stops short, and declares he cannot proceed, because ...
— The Ancient History of the Egyptians, Carthaginians, Assyrians, • Charles Rollin
... your coiffure. So you demand the name of your partner? Ah, mademoiselle, you will be more than content. The partner whom the king has selected for you is one of our youngest, handsomest, most amiable and talented cavaliers; a youth whom Alcibiades would not have been indignant at being compared with, and whom Diana would have preferred, perhaps, to the dreaming and beautiful Endymion, had she found him sleeping. And mark you, you will not only dance with this pearl of creation, but in the next few days ...
— Berlin and Sans-Souci • Louise Muhlbach
... I don't wonder such a handsome, bright, graceful; accomplished young man, who lives in fine style, drives pretty horses, and knows every body, should be a great favorite with the girls and their mothers. Don't you see, Abel Newt is a sort of Alcibiades?" ...
— Trumps • George William Curtis
... year of the war the plague had entered the city. More than half of the people and Pericles, the great leader, had been killed. The plague was followed by a period of bad and untrustworthy leadership. A brilliant young fellow by the name of Alcibiades had gained the favor of the popular assembly. He suggested a raid upon the Spartan colony of Syracuse in Sicily. An expedition was equipped and everything was ready. But Alcibiades got mixed up in a street brawl and was forced to flee. The general who succeeded him was a bungler. First he lost ...
— The Story of Mankind • Hendrik van Loon
... opinions; was polite to everybody; was non-committal; fond of games and spectacles; frivolous among fools, learned among scholars; grave among functionaries, devout among prelates; cunning as a fox, brave as a lion, supple as a dog; all things to all men; an Alcibiades, a Jesuit; with no apparent animosities; handsome, witty, brilliant; preacher, courtier, student; as full of hypocrisy as an egg is of meat; with eyes wide open, and thoughts disguised; all eyes and no heart; reserved or communicative ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume VIII • John Lord
... I suppose. Even she always stopped soon, if she undertook to interfere with Malbone. This charming Alcibiades always convinced them, after the wrestling was over, that ...
— Malbone - An Oldport Romance • Thomas Wentworth Higginson
... illustrious drinkers, and you thrice precious pockified blades (for to you, and none else, do I dedicate my writings), Alcibiades, in that dialogue of Plato's, which is entitled The Banquet, whilst he was setting forth the praises of his schoolmaster Socrates (without all question the prince of philosophers), amongst other discourses ...
— Gargantua and Pantagruel, Complete. • Francois Rabelais
... to Greece, and he discoursed of archaeology; he had once spent a winter digging; they could not see how that helped a man to teach boys to pass examinations, He talked of politics. It sounded odd to them to hear him compare Lord Beaconsfield with Alcibiades. He talked of Mr. Gladstone and Home Rule. They realised that he was a Liberal. Their hearts sank. He talked of German philosophy and of French fiction. They could not think a man profound whose ...
— Of Human Bondage • W. Somerset Maugham
... Salt Cellar and Pepper Box reunited, and the Pewter Spoon clasped in the arms of the loving Cruet, with the curtain descending, than Barnes, who like the immortal Alcibiades Triplet could turn his hand to almost anything, became furiously engaged in painting scenery. A market-place, with a huge wagon, containing porkers and poultry, was dashed off with a celerity that would have made a royal academician turn green with envy. The Tiddly Wink Inn was ...
— The Strollers • Frederic S. Isham
... a beast (in deede) he was: for he could not abide any other man, beinge not able to suffer the company of him, which was of like nature. And if by chaunce hee happened to goe to Athenes, it was onelye to speake with Alcibiades, who then was an excellente Captaine there, wherat many did marueile: and therefore Apemantus demaunded of him, why he spake to no man, but to Alcibiades. "I speake to him sometimes, said Timon, ...
— The Palace of Pleasure, Volume 1 • William Painter |
