"Brutus" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... when at an exhibition he delivered that wonderful speech of Marc Antony over the dead body of Caesar; and when the terrible news of his tragical death reached me, I seemed to hear again the infinite pathos of his voice in the words, "And thou, Brutus!" The man who treacherously took his precious life had been to him as a son, had shared his home, and received from him nothing but favors. Well might he have exclaimed, "And thou, Ne-tus-cho!" as e'en under the protecting ...
— 'Three Score Years and Ten' - Life-Long Memories of Fort Snelling, Minnesota, and Other - Parts of the West • Charlotte Ouisconsin Van Cleve
... and affections, however, often blind our judgment. Nobody but the mother thought the son fitted for the kirk, nor the kirk fitted for him. There was always something original, almost poetical about him; but still Thomas was "no orator as Brutus was." His mother had few means beyond the labour of her hands for their support. She had kept him at the parish school until he was fifteen, and he had learned all that his master knew; and in three years more, by rising early and sitting late at her daily toils, and the savings ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Vol. XXIII. • Various
... even if mistaken ones, on the part of the medival charlatans. But what ointment, what soothing syrup, what panacea has been the result of all this pulverizing of Semiramis and Sardanapalus, Mucius Scvola and Junius Brutus? Are all the characters graven so deeply by the stylus of Clio upon so many monumental tablets, and almost as indelibly and quite as painfully upon school-boy memory, to be sponged out at a blow, like ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I, No. 1, Nov. 1857 • Various
... 'Lives.' {211a} Plutarch is the king of biographers, and the deference which Shakespeare paid his work by adhering to the phraseology wherever it was practicable illustrates his literary discrimination. On Plutarch's lives of Julius Caesar, Brutus, and Antony, Shakespeare based his historical tragedy of 'Julius Caesar.' Weever, in 1601, in his 'Mirror of Martyrs,' plainly refers to the masterly speech in the Forum at Caaesar's funeral which Shakespeare put into Antony's mouth. There ...
— A Life of William Shakespeare - with portraits and facsimiles • Sidney Lee
... is political reflection which has no business here. The Butler, I say, wisely prefers indirect taxation and prospers. How, then, are you to checkmate him? Don't! A wise man never attempts what cannot be accomplished. I work on the assumption that my Butler is, like Brutus, an honourable man, treating him with consideration, and fostering his self-respect, even at the cost, perhaps, of a little hypocrisy. It is a gracious form of hypocrisy, and one that often justifies itself in the end, for the man tends to become what you assume ...
— Behind the Bungalow • EHA
... was such a cruel tyrant that the people rose in rebellion, under the leadership of a man named Brutus, and drove the king and his followers from the city," replied the professor. "Brutus then persuaded the Romans never again to be ruled by a king, so two men were elected each year to govern the people, and the ...
— Rafael in Italy - A Geographical Reader • Etta Blaisdell McDonald
... universal medium of literature. The poets and story writers called themselves Trouveres, and they invented the fabliaux, the dramatic mysteries and romances of ancient chivalry. The first great literary work of this class is a marvellous history of the early kings of England, commencing with Brutus, a grandson of Aeneas, who, sailing among many enchanted Isles, at length settles in England, where he meets Arthur of the Round Table, and the old wizard, Merlin, one of the most popular creations of the Middle Ages. Born of this legend were some of the best known of modern romances. The word romance, ...
— The Interdependence of Literature • Georgina Pell Curtis
... to see Vandenhoff twice, in Brutus and Virginius. Another fine specimen of the conscious school; no inspiration, yet much taste. Spite of the thread-paper Tituses, the chambermaid Virginias, the washerwoman Tullias, and the people, made up of half a dozen chimney-sweeps, ...
— Memoirs of Margaret Fuller Ossoli, Vol. I • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... Most of the great statesmen of Rome in the time of Cicero were either lawyers or generals. Crassus, Pompey, P. Sextus, M. Marcellus, P. Clodius, Asinius Pollio, C. Cicero, M. Antonius, Julius Caesar, Caelius, Brutus, Catullus, were all celebrated for their forensic efforts. Candidates for the bar studied four years under a distinguished jurist, and were required to pass a rigorous examination. The judges were ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume III • John Lord
... same tradition appeared in England about the third century, and from Gildas and Nennius was adopted by Geoffrey of Monmouth. It is from this historian that Wace drew the materials for the metrical tale of Brutus (Brute), the supposed founder of the British race and kingdom. This poem is twenty thousand lines long, and relates the adventures and life of Brutus, the ...
— Legends of the Middle Ages - Narrated with Special Reference to Literature and Art • H.A. Guerber
... assembled, and wounded his insidious host by a pistol-shot; and in the confusion which the sudden explosion occasioned, he opened the door; and, notwithstanding he was fired at, accompanied by his dog Brutus, exerted all the speed which danger could call forth until daylight, which enabled him to perceive a house, and the main road, at no great distance. Upon his arrival at the house, and telling the master of it his story, he called up some ...
— Anecdotes of Dogs • Edward Jesse
... the wife of Brutus," I blundered on, at the same time receiving her permission, by a ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... your sword's point in my heart! I am your son. You are as noble a gentleman as Brutus was! Kill me, then! I am a murderer: but I am a ...
— Mohun, or, The Last Days of Lee • John Esten Cooke
... the suspect had so far failed to touch him. And when, last July, the murder of Marat brought an entire holocaust of victims to the guillotine—from Adam Lux, who would have put up a statue in honour of Charlotte Corday, with the inscription: "Greater than Brutus", to Charlier, who would have had her publicly tortured and burned at the stake for her crime—Droulde alone said nothing, and was ...
— I Will Repay • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... began to inquire after the cause of this disease, the first thing that puzzled us was to find out the reason why bulimy seizes upon those that travel in the snow. As Brutus, one time marching from Dyrrachium to Apollonia in a deep snow, was endangered of his life by bulimy, whilst none of those that carried the provisions for the army followed him; just when the man was ready to faint and die, some of his soldiers were forced to run to the walls of the enemies' city, ...
— Essays and Miscellanies - The Complete Works Volume 3 • Plutarch
... my book the virgin shy May blush while Brutus standeth by, But when he's gone, read through what's writ, And never ...
— The Hesperides & Noble Numbers: Vol. 1 and 2 • Robert Herrick
... have the wit to comprehend virtue by the concealment of it—to say, as that witty old Roman said, that the images of Cassius and Brutus were more remarkable than those of any one else, for the very reason that they were nowhere to be seen—like my virtues? Giovanni, for instance, is the very reverse of me in that, though he has shown such singularly bad taste in resembling my ...
— Saracinesca • F. Marion Crawford
... vacillation; forecasting consequence and result to himself and others; and so absorbed in this terrible secret as to exclude all other interests. We have two studies of such a state of irresolution, in Macbeth and Brutus. Of Macbeth it may truly be said that he has an action upon his mind the burden of which is too heavy for him to bear. It is constantly before him; he is shaken with it, possessed by it, to such a ...
— The Contemporary Review, January 1883 - Vol 43, No. 1 • Various
... and of the First Consul. Of the Emperor, says Lucien, he was too much in retirement to be able to judge equally well. But Lucien was not a fair representative of the Bonapartists; indeed he had never really thought well of his brother or of his actions since Lucien, the former "Brutus" Bonaparte, had ceased to be the adviser of the Consul. It was well for Lucien himself to amass a fortune from the presents of a corrupt court, and to be made a Prince and Duke by the Pope, but he was ...
— Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Louis Antoine Fauvelet de Bourrienne
... tell me what you have said, speaking on her behalf; but I cannot for her sake go back from the task which I have commenced. I hope she may hereafter acknowledge and respect my motives, but I cannot now go as a guest to her father's house." And the Barchester Brutus went out to fortify his own resolution by meditations ...
— The Warden • Anthony Trollope
... him unexpectedly the other day in St. Giles's,' he says, 'were sorry we had passed him without speaking to an old friend, turned and looked after him for some time as to a tale of other days—sighing, as we walked on, Alas, poor Southey!' He fancies himself to be in the mood of Brutus murdering Caesar. It is patriotism struggling with old associations of friendship; if there is any personal element in the hostility, no one is less conscious of it than the possessor. To the whole Lake school his attitude is always the same—justice ...
— Hours in a Library - New Edition, with Additions. Vol. II (of 3) • Leslie Stephen
... wearied him. "But the book of books for me," he says, "and the one which that winter caused me to pass hours of bliss and rapture, was Plutarch, his Lives of the truly great; and some of these, as Timoleon, Caesar, Brutus, Pelopidas, Cato, and others, I read and read again, with such a transport of cries, tears, and fury, that if any one had heard me in the next room he would surely have thought me mad. In meditating certain grand traits of these supreme men, ...
— Modern Italian Poets • W. D. Howells
... been raised, whether Marcus Brutus ought to have received his life from the hands of Julius Caesar, who, he had decided, ought ...
— L. Annaeus Seneca On Benefits • Seneca
... men, and it is in giving illumination to personal and racial characters that the succession of incidents has its value. The picturesque individual, the man who could not be counted with the mass, the David, the Christ, the Brutus, the Caesar, the Plato, the Alfred, the Charlemagne, the Cromwell, the Mirabeau, the Luther, the Darwin, the Helmholtz, the Goethe, the Franklin, the Hampden, the Lincoln, all these give inspiration to history. ...
— Life's Enthusiasms • David Starr Jordan
... investigation, Which, as all spoke at once, and more than once Conjecturing, wondering, asking a narration, Alike might puzzle either wit or dunce To answer in a very clear oration. Dudu had never passed for wanting sense, But being "no orator as Brutus is,"[353] Could not at ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 6 • Lord Byron
... least bumptious. He began very nervously with a carefully prepared Shakespearean quotation—"'I am no orator as Brutus is,'" in compliment to Jenkinson. Then he gave me a lift. He said that my presence there was a proof, if proof were needed, of the solidarity—he would repeat the word—of the solidarity existing in the Progressive ranks. He was sure—he might even say, confident—that ...
— Foe-Farrell • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... the first impulse to the ball of the American Revolution, introduced his celebrated resolution on the Stamp Act into the House of Burgesses of Virginia (May, 1765), he exclaimed, when descanting on the tyranny of the obnoxious Act, "Caesar had his Brutus; Charles I. his Cromwell; and George III...."—"Treason!" cried the speaker; "treason, treason!" echoed from every part of the house. It was one of those trying moments which are decisive of character. Henry faltered not ...
— The Jest Book - The Choicest Anecdotes and Sayings • Mark Lemon
... leaving Florence, Lorenzo repaired first to Bologna and then to Venice, where he informed Philip Strozzi of how he had rid his country of the tyrant. After embracing him in a transport, and calling him the Tuscan Brutus, Strozzi asked the murderer's sisters, Laudamina and Magdalen de' Medici, in marriage for his own sons, Peter and Robert. From Venice Lorenzino issued a memoire justificatif, full of quibbles and paradoxes, in which he tried to explain his lack of energy after the murder ...
— The Tales Of The Heptameron, Vol. II. (of V.) • Margaret, Queen Of Navarre
... let the fact that you cannot go to college excuse yourself to yourself for being a failure. Do not say, "I have no chance because I am not a college man," and blame the world for its injustice. What Cassius exclaimed to Brutus ...
— The Young Man and the World • Albert J. Beveridge
... of the course of politics and but the newspaper of Chrestus. He also refers to these sheets, that is to say, to accounts of public affairs in actis and ex actis, in two letters to Cassius and one to Brutus, written previously to the triumvirate. Suetonius also makes mention of them, and says that Julius Caesar, in his consulship, ordered the diurnal acts of the senate and the people to be published. Tacitus relates a speech of a courtier to Nero to ...
— The Continental Monthly, Volume V. Issue I • Various
... who has just sat down is to be complimented on his speech. In my whole life I have never heard so deceptive and blinding a narration. We know of Brutus stabbing his friend. But what shall we say of a pretended Brutus who ...
— The Honorable Peter Stirling and What People Thought of Him • Paul Leicester Ford
... was detained first at Malta, and then in England, at Ludlow Castle and at Thorngrove, till 1814, when he went to Rome. The Pope, who ever showed a kindly feeling towards the Bonapartes, made the ex-"Brutus" Bonaparte Prince de Canino and Due de Musignano. In 1815 he joined Napoleon and on the final fall of the Empire he was interned at Rome till the ...
— Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Louis Antoine Fauvelet de Bourrienne
... The following is Milton's version of the legend:—"After this, Brutus, in a chosen place, builds Troja Nova, changed in time to Trinovantum, now London; and began to enact laws (Heli being then High Priest in Judea); and, having governed the whole isle twenty-four years, died, and was buried in his new Troy. His three sons—Locrine, Albanact, and Camber—divide ...
— Milton's Comus • John Milton
... with a supper a l'italienne, which lacked neither the cranes of Peretola nor the little sucking-pig scented with aromatic herbs, nor the best vintages of Tuscany, Naples and Sicily. Uncompromising Republicans as Brutus himself, they drank to France and Freedom. Their host acknowledged the toast; then turning to the General whom he had ...
— The Well of Saint Clare • Anatole France
... explanations on this point, and mentioned several special cases of apparitions and phantom illusions of which he had read. He showed how in the lives of many great men such things had taken place. The case of Brutus was one, that of Constantine another. Mohammed, he maintained, saw real apparitions of this sort, and was thus prepared, as he thought, for the prophetic office. The anchorites and saints of the Middle Ages had the same experience. Jeanne d'Arc was a most conspicuous ...
— The Cryptogram - A Novel • James De Mille
... conqueror of Gaul might establish a throne upon the ruins of public liberty, he would have instantly repelled the unjust insinuation. Yet Greece fell; Caesar passed the Rubicon, and the patriotic arm even of Brutus could not preserve the liberties of his devoted country! The celebrated Madame de Stael, in her last and perhaps her best work, has said, that in the very year, almost the very month, when the president of the Directory declared that monarchy would ...
— Henry Clay's Remarks in House and Senate • Henry Clay
... Liberty! the People! these are the sacred objects with which tyrants cloak their usurpations, and which assassins plead in extenuation of their brazen disregard of life, of virtue, of all that is dear and sacred to the race. The dagger of Brutus and the sword of Cromwell, were they not drawn in the name of Liberty—the People? The guillotine of the French Commune and the derringer of J. Wilkes Booth, were they not inspired ...
— Black and White - Land, Labor, and Politics in the South • Timothy Thomas Fortune
... Caesar once," quoted Mr. Fett, in parenthesis. "I was killed i' the capitol; Brutus ...
— Sir John Constantine • Prosper Paleologus Constantine
... name comes easily to Luigi's lips because Lucius Junius Brutus inspired the Romans ...
— Selections from the Poems and Plays of Robert Browning • Robert Browning
... any of your readers suggest a probable etymology for Totnes, the "prime town of Great Britain," as it is called by Westcote[1], who supposes it to have been built by Brutus, 1108 years before the Christian era. Mr. Polwhele, who supposed the numerous Hams in Devon to have owed their names to the worship of Jupiter Hammon, would, I imagine, have derived Totnes from the ...
— Notes & Queries No. 29, Saturday, May 18, 1850 • Various
... just fell for, sonny, is so old it totters. It is the identical trick that started the coolness between Brutus and Julius Caesar." ...
— The Promise - A Tale of the Great Northwest • James B. Hendryx
... the best company of young noblemen; and Horace, by his gratitude to his memory, gives a certain testimony that his education was ingenuous. After this he formed himself abroad by the conversation of great men. Brutus found him at Athens, and was so pleased with him that he took him thence into the army, and made him Tribunus Militum (a colonel in a legion), which was the preferment of an old soldier. All this was before his acquaintance with Maecenas, and ...
— Discourses on Satire and Epic Poetry • John Dryden
... early life was devoted exclusively to literature. His reading, though without order, was select and extensive. He was well versed in ancient history. The heroic characters of Greece and Rome were his especial admiration, and that of Brutus above all others. Of the nations of modern Europe, and their history, he knew everything history could teach. His imagination was fired with the heroic in the character of those of modern times, as well as those of antiquity, and ...
— The Memories of Fifty Years • William H. Sparks
... that degree that they will bear all the pains and pangs that nerves can feel rather than die, cannot afford to call the suicide a coward. It does not seem to me that Brutus was a coward or that Seneca was. Surely Anthony had nothing left to live for. Cato was not a craven. He acted on his judgment. So with hundreds of others who felt that they had reached the end—that ...
— Lectures of Col. R. G. Ingersoll - Latest • Robert Green Ingersoll
... men of old had done something in that way: Brutus had laid his son, without a tear or a groan, on the altar of his country; Virginius had slain his daughter when her perilled honor demanded that violent deed; and only half a century before his own time, Napoleon had given up a beloved Empress ...
— Shoulder-Straps - A Novel of New York and the Army, 1862 • Henry Morford
... belligerents, in the courtroom the excitement mounted. The tide was set now for Lewis Rand. The Federalists watched it with angry eyes; the Republicans greeted with jubilation each new wave. The defeated found some relief in gibes. "Holoa! here's Citizen Bonhomme—red breeches, cockade, and Brutus crop! ...
— Lewis Rand • Mary Johnston
... The other reason which has made his fame less than he deserved, is that notwithstanding the great number of his opinions which, partly through his own efforts, have now been generally adopted, there was, on the whole, a marked opposition between his spirit and that of the present time. As Brutus was called the last of the Romans, so was he the last of the eighteenth century: he continued its tone of thought and sentiment into the nineteenth (though not unmodified nor unimproved), partaking neither in the good nor in the bad influences of the reaction against ...
— Autobiography • John Stuart Mill
... such circumstances. One of the most striking instances of a man who attempted to speak before an antagonistic group and yet by sheer power of his art and language ended by winning them to his own party is in Shakespeare's Julius Caesar when Mark Antony speaks over his dead friend's body. Brutus allows it, but insists on speaking to the people first that he may explain why he and his fellow conspirators assassinated the great leader. It was a mistake to allow a person from the opposite party to have the last word before the populace, but ...
— Public Speaking • Clarence Stratton
... next (484) he is actually raised to the Consulate, an office which, though devoid of power, is still so radiant with the glory of the illustrious men who have held it for near a thousand years, from the days of Brutus and Collatinus, that Emperors covet the possession of it and the mightiest barbarian chiefs in their service long ...
— Theodoric the Goth - Barbarian Champion of Civilisation • Thomas Hodgkin
... time for care; Brooding on hours misspent, To see the spectre of Despair Come to our lonely tent; Like Brutus, 'midst his slumbering host, Summoned to ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 3 (of 4) • Various
... amusing of our author's performances. The old man's merriment in Menenius; the lofty lady's dignity in Volumnia; the bridal modesty in Virgilia; the patrician and military haughtiness in Coriolanus; the plebeian malignity and tribunitian insolence in Brutus and Sicinius, make a very pleasing and interesting variety: and the various revolutions of the hero's fortune fill the mind with anxious curiosity. There is, perhaps, too much bustle in the first act, and too little in ...
— Notes to Shakespeare, Volume III: The Tragedies • Samuel Johnson
... which Kean was the master. He could not have known Cooke, even in the decline of that great tragedian's power, and the little giant was indeed a revelation. He played Iago to Kean's Othello, Titus to his Brutus, and Richmond ...
— Great Men and Famous Women, Vol. 8 (of 8) • Various
... further informed that there are many among us who think they are justified in believing that the assassination of Julius Caesar was a put-up thing—a cut-and-dried arrangement, hatched by Marcus Brutus and a lot of his hired roughs, and carried out only too faithfully according to the program. Whether there be good grounds for this suspicion or not, we leave to the people to judge for themselves, only asking that they will read the following account of the sad occurrence carefully ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... gladiators, the schools of the rhetoricians, as well as studies of the authors, Livy, Virgil, Horace, Propertius, Tibullus, Ovid, each reflecting in his own way the sentiments of the Augustan age. It is a complex and important period of history, and nobly treated by our author. Brutus and Cassius evoke no false sympathy. The character of Augustus is closely analyzed, and the sketch of the Roman dominion, in its political, social, and intellectual outlines, is ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No 3, September 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... and, from henceforth When you are over-earnest with your Brutus, He'll think your mother chides, ...
— Epilepsy, Hysteria, and Neurasthenia • Isaac G. Briggs
... Girdlestone! You're not afraid of dogs, are you, Lucy? Eh? What? You like dogs? That's right! Always be kind to dumb animals. These two dogs dine with me every day, except when there's company. The dog with the black nose is Brutus, and the dog with the white nose is Cassius. Did you ever hear who Brutus and Cassius were? Ancient Romans? That's right—-good girl. Mind your book and your needle, and we'll get you a good husband one of these days. Take away the soup, my ...
— No Name • Wilkie Collins
... our youth, the type of completed beauty and woman's most perfect measure, she who held the chalice of our hope, ruthlessly emptied and crushed it, and, as became a star, passed down our horizon's ways to rise upon some other sky. It may have come when Brutus stabbed us, or when a child whom we had cherished struck us with a serpent-fang of treachery and left the poison to creep upon our heart. One way or another it has been with most of us, that long night of utter woe, and all will own that it is a ...
— Colonel Quaritch, V.C. - A Tale of Country Life • H. Rider Haggard
... Indian possessions, and the imprisonment of Mr. Jones by the Rajah of Humbugpoopoonah?" Indeed, Mr. Verdant Green was so excited by this interesting debate, that on the third night of its adjournment he rose to address the House; but being "no orator as Brutus is," his few broken words were received with laughter, and the honourable gentleman ...
— The Adventures of Mr. Verdant Green • Cuthbert Bede
... offices, now looked down on red-capped patriots assembled to elect the Municipal magistrates and deliberate on the affairs of the Section. The Saints had been dragged from their niches and replaced by the busts of Brutus, Jean-Jacques and Le Peltier. The altar had been stripped bare and was surmounted by the Table of ...
— The Gods are Athirst • Anatole France
... senate Octavius had a party and Antony a party, but the Commonwealth had none." Yet the senate continued to meet in the temple of liberty to talk of the sacredness and beauty of the Commonwealth and gaze at the statues of the elder Brutus and of the Curtii and Decii, and the people assembled in the forum, not, as in the days of Camillus and the Scipios, to cast their free votes for annual magistrates or pass upon the acts of the senate, but to ...
— Messages and Papers of the Presidents: Harrison • James D. Richardson
... whole rent of the landlord, so such enormous usury must in its turn eat up the greater part of those profits. Before the fall of the Roman republic, a usury of the same kind seems to have been common in the provinces, under the ruinous administration of their proconsuls. The virtuous Brutus lent money in Cyprus at eight-and-forty per cent. as we learn from the letters ...
— An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations • Adam Smith
... looked at the grave face of the Senator, set like a rock, but deadly pale, he thought it was no unworthy representative of Brutus or Manlius of old who ...
— More Bywords • Charlotte M. Yonge
... RAN away from home with the circus, Having fallen in love with Mademoiselle Estralada, The lion tamer. One time, having starved the lions For more than a day, I entered the cage and began to beat Brutus And Leo and Gypsy. Whereupon Brutus sprang upon me, And killed me. On entering these regions I met a shadow who cursed me, And said it served me right. . . . ...
— Spoon River Anthology • Edgar Lee Masters
... lands, to ask counsel of Apollo concerning this prodigy. With these two princes, Titus and Aruns by name, went their cousin, Lucius Junius, a youth who seemed so lacking in wit that men called him Brutus,—that is, the "Dullard." One evidence of his lack of wit was that he would eat wild figs with honey. Just in what way this was an evidence of want of good sense we do not know, though doubtless the ...
— Historic Tales, Volume 11 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... into the Senate by Brutus, after the expulsion of Tarquin the proud, to supply the place of those whom that king had slain, were called Conscripti; that is, persons written or enrolled together with the Senators, who alone were ...
— Roman Antiquities, and Ancient Mythology - For Classical Schools (2nd ed) • Charles K. Dillaway
... Brutus' breast No home. When others sat them down to fear He did not so, but in the dewy night When the great wain was turning round the pole He sought his kinsman Cato's humble home. Him sleepless did he find, not for himself Fearing, ...
— Pharsalia; Dramatic Episodes of the Civil Wars • Lucan
... after endurance has ceased to be a virtue. This view is but a return to the wisdom of the ancients, in whose splendid civilization suicide had as honorable place as any other courageous, reasonable and unselfish act. Antony, Brutus, Cato, Seneca—these were not of the kind of men to do deeds of cowardice and folly. The smug, self-righteous modern way of looking upon the act as that of a craven or a lunatic is the creation of priests, Philistines and ...
— The Shadow On The Dial, and Other Essays - 1909 • Ambrose Bierce
... door with an unevenness of gait which would have told the shameful truth if his words had not already done so. Before he reached it, however, the sound of wheels arrested him and, leaning against the wall, he listened with a look of dismay mingled with amusement creeping over his face. "Brutus has bolted now I am in a fix. Can't walk home with this horrid dizziness in my head. It's the cold, Rose, nothing else, I do assure you, and a chill yes, a chill. See here! Let one of those fellows there lend me an arm no use to go after that brute. Won't Mother be frightened ...
— Rose in Bloom - A Sequel to "Eight Cousins" • Louisa May Alcott
... let me give my readers a piece of information. A screaming farce is ever so much more difficult to act than a tragedy of Shakespeare. Any—well, any duffer can act Brutus or Richard the Third or the Ghost of Banquo, but it is reserved only to a few to be able to do justice to the parts of Bartholomew Bumblebee or Miss Anastatia Acidrop. And when one comes to compare the paltry exploits and dull ...
— The Master of the Shell • Talbot Baines Reed
... I know those moments of temptation when virtue has failed to reward us, and we regret having obeyed her! Who has not felt this weakness in hours of trial, and who has not uttered, at least once, the mournful exclamation of Brutus? ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... friendship, though I were not the object; he does it with such a grace. I think his character, divided into ten parts, stands thus—four parts Socrates—four parts Nathaniel—and two parts Shakspeare's Brutus. ...
— The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. • Robert Burns and Allan Cunningham
... effects of which not even the discipline of the legions was a preventive. At the first Battle of Philippi, the young Octavius came near being killed or captured, in consequence of the success of Brutus's attack, which had the effect of throwing his men into utter confusion, so that they fled in dismay. What a change would have taken place in the ocean-stream of history, had the future Augustus been slain or taken by the Republicans on that field ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, No. 48, October, 1861 • Various
... have it. The extent of the law, well laid on, will learn him a lesson. There's old Cato pays me twenty dollars a month, and Cato's seventy-four-four years older than Zeff. In truth, my negro property is all getting careless about paying wages. Old Trot runs away whenever he can get a chance; Brutus has forever got something the matter with him; and Cicero has come to be a real skulk. He don't care for the cowhide; the more I get him flogged the worse he gets. Curious creature! And his old woman, since she broke her leg, and goes with a crutch, thinks she can ...
— Justice in the By-Ways - A Tale of Life • F. Colburn Adams
... recollected what I have now related, and concluded that it was no delirium, but one of those revelations made by God to great and illustrious persons. Ancient history furnishes many examples of the like kind amongst the pagans, as the apparition of Brutus and many others, which I shall not mention, it not being my intention to illustrate these Memoirs with such narratives, but only to relate the truth, and that with as much expedition as I am able, that you may be the sooner ...
— Memoirs And Historical Chronicles Of The Courts Of Europe - Marguerite de Valois, Madame de Pompadour, and Catherine de Medici • Various
... who hold firmly to that generous inspiration which, under all diversities of time and circumstances, has had the same moral source; who contend that such champions of liberty as Brutus, William of Orange, De Witt, Chatham, however haughty and aristocratic the ideas of some of them, were yet of the same political faith, filled with ideas of human nobleness and dignity, conceding much, if not to the masses, at least to the advanced and enlightened classes which in their eyes represented ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 102, April, 1866 • Various
... making as much noise as possible about everything that is of no importance, but seem (as far as one can judge) pretty quiet and good-humoured. They made a mighty hullabaloo at the theatre last night, when Brutus (the play was "Lucretia") ...
— The Letters of Charles Dickens - Vol. 1 (of 3), 1833-1856 • Charles Dickens
... are called lictors. But consuls are also men of very high rank and authority. Brutus was a ...
— The German Classics Of The Nineteenth And Twentieth Centuries, Volume 12 • Various
... in the grim array- Ghosts of ghosts that have gone their way, Which I wouldn't revive for a single day For all the wealth of PLUTUS - Are the horrible ghosts that school-days scared: If the classical ghost that BRUTUS dared Was the ghost of his "Caesar" unprepared, ...
— Fifty Bab Ballads • William S. Gilbert
... persuade us in the way we wish. For it is this which betrays us so frequently, and which, instead of filling us with contempt of death, serves but to show us all that is frightful and fearful. The most it can do for us is to persuade us to avert our gaze and fix it on other objects. Cato and Brutus each selected noble ones. A lackey sometime ago contented himself by dancing on the scaffold when he was about to be broken on the wheel. So however diverse the motives they but realize the same result. For the ...
— Reflections - Or, Sentences and Moral Maxims • Francois Duc De La Rochefoucauld
... a spirit to brook delay. As stern as Brutus, like Brutus he could be as unflinching in the performance of his duty. He called Ralph into the study, and after carefully closing the door, addressed him in a ...
— George Leatrim • Susanna Moodie
... you innumerable examples, conferring story by story, how much the wisest senators and princes have been directed by the credit of history, as Brutus, Alphonsus of Aragon, and who not, if need be? At length the long line of their disputation maketh a point in this, that the one giveth the precept, and ...
— English literary criticism • Various
... any man have a higher notion of the rule of right, and the eternal fitness of things? I cannot help promising myself, from such a dawn, that the meridian of this youth will be equal to that of either the elder or the younger Brutus." ...
— The History of Tom Jones, a foundling • Henry Fielding
... translations, and only two Greek words, misanthropos and threnos, occur in his writings. Yet no single author was so important in providing material for the plays as the Greek Plutarch. His Lives of Julius Caesar, Marcus Brutus, Marcus Antonius, and Caius Martius Coriolanus, in Sir Thomas North's translation, are the direct sources of the great Roman tragedies, and in a less important way the Lives of Antonius and Alcibiades were used in Timon ...
— The Facts About Shakespeare • William Allan Nielson
... but just mildly rebuked Brutus for making no better use of his philosophy, and now—startled by the sudden sight of his bleeding, mangled heart—"Portia is—Dead!" pays involuntary homage to the very philosophy he had so rashly underrated ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 48, Saturday, September 28, 1850 • Various
... on which he might set out and receive lodging and food accordant with the simple life. But to one of Soapy's proud spirit the gifts of charity are encumbered. If not in coin you must pay in humiliation of spirit for every benefit received at the hands of philanthropy. As Caesar had his Brutus, every bed of charity must have its toll of a bath, every loaf of bread its compensation of a private and personal inquisition. Wherefore it is better to be a guest of the law, which though conducted by rules, does not meddle unduly ...
— The Four Million • O. Henry
... Mephistophelian part of tempter, preaching evil, urging to crime, the other allowing himself to be overcome by his evil genius." In some cases these two roles are clearly differentiated; it is easy, as in the case of Iago and Othello, Cassius and Brutus, to say who prompted the crime. In others the guilt seems equally divided and the original suggestion of crime to spring from a mutual tendency towards the adoption of such an expedient. In Macbeth and his wife we have a perfect instance of the latter class. No sooner have the witches ...
— A Book of Remarkable Criminals • H. B. Irving
... got excited, and said in an early speech, "Caesar had his Brutus, Charles the First his Cromwell, and George the Third——" Here he paused and took a long swig of pure water, and added, looking at the newspaper reporters, "If this be treason, make the most of it." ...
— Comic History of the United States • Bill Nye
... Brutus. 'Between the acting of a dreadful thing And the first motion, all the interim is Like a phantasma, or a hideous dream: The Genius and the mortal instruments Are then in council; and the state of man, Like to a little kingdom, suffers then ...
— More Pages from a Journal • Mark Rutherford
... placed; but it is impossible for us who possess Shakespeare, who has most deeply fathomed History and the passions of man, to suffer those amorous couples, that divide between them almost all the pieces of Metastasio alike, under the names of Achilles, of Tircis, of Brutus, and of Corilas, singing, in a manner that hardly touches the surface of the soul, the grief and sufferings of love, so as almost to reduce to imbecility the noblest passion that animates the human heart. ...
— Corinne, Volume 1 (of 2) - Or Italy • Mme de Stael
... five I rose like a ghost from the tomb, and betook me to coffee. No wheels rolled through the streets but the inaudible ones of that uncreated hour. It struck six,—a coach was called,—we hurried to the office but the coach was gone. Here followed a long Brutus-and-Cassius discourse between a shilling-buttoned-waistcoatteer of a porter and myself, which ended in my extending mercy to the suppliant coach-owners, and agreeing to accept a place for Monday. All well thus far. The biped knock of the post alighted on ...
— A Letter Book - Selected with an Introduction on the History and Art of Letter-Writing • George Saintsbury
... younger sons and their cousin to consult the oracle at Delphi, and with them went Lucius Junius, who was called Brutus because he was supposed to be foolish, that being the meaning of the word; but his folly was only put on, because he feared the jealousy of his cousins. After doing their father's errand, the two Tarquins asked who should rule Rome after their father. "He," said the priestess, "who shall first kiss ...
— Young Folks' History of Rome • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... him an inkling of warlike preparations against the Spaniard. Pierce, flattered by this confidence, readily volunteered to lend his aid at any time to whatever enterprise Burr might propose, and, like one of the tools of Brutus, he was ready to say, "Set on your foot; I follow you to do I know not what." Yet he knew more than might be supposed, of the history, official rank and designs of his employer. To the soothing counsel, "You must not bear malice toward that young Virginian; remember, he is one of us." ...
— A Dream of Empire - Or, The House of Blennerhassett • William Henry Venable
... were ambitious; each annual exhibition was crowded, to listen to the speeches "of Coriolanus, Iago, Brutus, and Cassius" by "raw lads from the village and adjoining farms," in all the bravery of local militia uniform—blue coats "faced with red, matross swords, and hats of '76." On such an occasion James Cooper, then a child of eight years, became the pride and admiration of Master ...
— James Fenimore Cooper • Mary E. Phillips
... two pair of stairs; On the first floor lodge'd Doctor Crow;— The Landlord was a torturer of hairs, And made a grand display of wigs, below; From the beau's Brutus, to the parson's grizzle:— Over the door-way was ...
— Broad Grins • George Colman, the Younger
... flood, leads on to fortune Omitted, all the voyage of their life Is bound in shallows, and in miseries. On such a full sea are we now afloat; And we must take the current when it serves, Or lose our ventures." Brutus—Julius Caesar. ...
— Afloat And Ashore • James Fenimore Cooper
... and excellent querist, whom does the schoolmaster flog so resolutely as his own son? Didn't Brutus chop his offspring's head off? You have a very bad opinion indeed of the present state of literature and of literary men, if you fancy that any one of us would hesitate to stick a knife into his neighbour penman, if the latter's death could do ...
— The Book of Snobs • William Makepeace Thackeray
... suppose there's much fear of their attempting a second robbery in the same place," said Mr Vallance. "They're probably far enough away by this time; still, I'm sorry we've no dog now. Poor old Brutus! ...
— A Pair of Clogs • Amy Walton
... man" of North America. He denounced his own father for voting on the wrong side at an election for president, and wrote thunderbolts in the form of pamphlets, under the signature of "Suturb" or Brutus ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook, Vol. 3 • E. Cobham Brewer
... point on the north the Romans were forced back down the slope, and could not hold their positions. Caesar saw it, and sent Labienus with six cohorts to their help. Vercingetorix had seen it also, and attacked the interior lines at the same spot. Decimus Brutus was then despatched also, and then Caius Fabius. Finally, when the fighting grew desperate, he left his own station; he called up the reserves which had not yet been engaged, and he rode across the field, conspicuous in his scarlet dress ...
— Caesar: A Sketch • James Anthony Froude
... clearly as that gentleman sees and defines the pernicious effects of the system, he offered the petitions only to protest against them! Another petition to the same effect, intrusted to another Massachusetts representative, was never noticed at all. "Brutus is an honorable man:—So are they all—all honorable men." Nevertheless, there is, in this popular government, a subject on which it is impossible for the ...
— An Appeal in Favor of that Class of Americans Called Africans • Lydia Maria Child
... your name in respected memory on earth." "In great respect, forsooth," quoth he, "by such a blockhead as this. Are you, sirrah, versed in the four and twenty metres? Can you trace the line of Gog and Magog and of Brutus son of Silvius {48b} down to a century before the destruction of Troy? Can you prophesy when, and how the wars between the lion and the eagle, and between the stag and the red deer will end? Can you?" "Ho there! let ...
— The Visions of the Sleeping Bard • Ellis Wynne
... Favolle," said she to her maid, one day, as she clasped on her beautiful arm a resplendent bracelet, "it must be owned the Duke has a most exquisite taste in trinkets; don't you think so? And, do you know, I don't think him so very—very ugly. When we are married I mean to make him get a Brutus, cork his eyebrows, and have a set of teeth." But just then the smiling eyes, curling hair, and finely formed person of a certain captivating Scotsman rose to view in her mind's eye; and, with a peevish "pshaw!" she threw the ...
— Marriage • Susan Edmonstone Ferrier
... Paterculus all mention these assignments. After the battle of Philippi and the defeat and death of Brutus and Cassius, 170,000 men were provided for, in accordance with these promises, out of the goods of the proscribed and the lands confiscated to the state. The lands of the towns mentioned in Appian were taken under the form of a forced sale, but the purchase ...
— Public Lands and Agrarian Laws of the Roman Republic • Andrew Stephenson
... spoke at once and more than once, Conjecturing, wondering, asking a narration, Alike might puzzle either wit or dunce To answer in a very clear oration. Dudu had never pass'd for wanting sense, But, being 'no orator as Brutus is,' Could not at first ...
— Don Juan • Lord Byron |
