"Corneille" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Prepuce is at Rome in the Church of St. John Lateran; it is also at St. James of Compostelia in Spain; at Anvers; in the Abbey of St. Corneille at Compiegne; at Our Lady of the Dove, in the diocese of Chartres, in the Cathedral of Puy-en-Velay; and in several other ...
— The Grip of Desire • Hector France
... had modelled his court very much on the plan of that of Louis XIV., which he had admired for its gaiety and spirit. Corneille, Racine, Moliere, Boileau, were encouraged by le Grand Monarque. Wycherley and Dryden were attracted by Charles to celebrate the festivities, and to amuse the great and the gay. In various points De Grammont found a resemblance. The queen-consort, Catherine of Braganza, ...
— The Wits and Beaux of Society - Volume 1 • Grace Wharton and Philip Wharton
... virtue, writ in verse, and performed in recitative music. The original of this music, and of the scenes which adorned his work, he had from the Italian operas; but he heightened his characters, as I may probably imagine, from the example of Corneille and some French poets. In this condition did this part of poetry remain at his majesty's return; when, growing bolder, as being now owned by a public authority, he reviewed his "Siege of Rhodes," and caused it be acted as a just drama. But as few ...
— The Works Of John Dryden, Volume 4 (of 18) - Almanzor And Almahide, Marriage-a-la-Mode, The Assignation • John Dryden
... elemental principles, measures not men, breathing and acting in his divine atmosphere. It is strange and marvelous that he never wrote a line about the great men that lived and wrote in his day and age, although Cervantes, Rubens, Camoens, Bruno, Drake, Raleigh, Calderon, Corneille, Rembrandt, Kepler, Galileo, Montaigne, Beaumont and Fletcher, Sidney, Marlowe, Bacon and Ben Jonson were contemporaneous authors, poets, dramatists, ...
— Shakspere, Personal Recollections • John A. Joyce
... far-famed husband Don Rodrigo, widely known as the Cid, many marvellous tales have been told, and it is a matter for regret that so many of them are purely legendary. According to one of the traditions, which was followed by the French dramatic poet Pierre Corneille when he wrote his famous play, Le Cid, in 1636, Ximena is given a much more prominent place in the story than that accorded to her in history. According to this version, Don Diego, father of Don Rodrigo, is given a mortal insult by the braggart ...
— Women of the Romance Countries • John R. Effinger
... language, lent its weight to the precepts of the critics, who applied the rules of Aristotle, as commented by Longinus and Horace, to modern conditions. The appearance of a number of admirable writers—Corneille, Moliere, Racine, Bossuet, La Fontaine, La Bruyere—simultaneously with this critical movement, gave an authority to the new French literature which enabled it to impose its principles upon England and Germany for over a century. For the creative literature ...
— A History of English Romanticism in the Eighteenth Century • Henry A. Beers
... Shakespeare, Spenser, ballads, sagas, the Arthur-Saga, the Nibelungenlied, Wordsworth, Coleridge, Keats, Herbert, Tennyson, Browning, Dante and Christina Rossetti, Whittier, Lowell, Longfellow, to say nothing of Goethe, Corneille, and the Greek, Roman, Persian, Egyptian, Hindu, ...
— The Warriors • Lindsay, Anna Robertson Brown
... Well-educated, his culture was that of a youth of the end of the last century. He had read everything, whether philosophy or belles lettres, which that age had produced in France, and loved to quote from Racine, Corneille, Boileau, Moliere, Montaigne, and Fenelon. Likewise he had gleaned much history from Segur, and much of the old classics from French translations of them; but for mathematics, natural philosophy, or contemporary literature he cared nothing whatever. However, he knew how to be silent ...
— Childhood • Leo Tolstoy
... strictly be confined to twenty-four hours as never to exceed them (for which Aristotle contends, and the Grecian stage has practised). Some longer space on some occasions, I think, may be allowed, especially for the English theatre, which requires more variety of incidents than the French. Corneille himself, after long practice, was inclined to think that the time allotted by the ancients was too short to raise and finish a great action; and better a mechanic rule were stretched or broken than a great beauty were omitted. To raise, and afterwards to calm, ...
— Discourses on Satire and Epic Poetry • John Dryden
... opera. He proved, that, in all the essentials of art, no less than in the truth of nature, the Plays of Shakespeare were incomparably more coincident with the principles of Aristotle, than the productions of Corneille and Racine, notwithstanding the boasted regularity of the latter. Under these convictions were Lessing's own dramatic works composed. Their deficiency is in depth and imagination: their excellence is in the construction of the plot; the good sense of the sentiments; the sobriety of the ...
— Biographia Literaria • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... was cultivated by the French writers of this era, yet it was in the province of the Drama that the greatest number of eminent authors appeared. The three great names here are those of Corneille (1606-1684), Racine ...
— A General History for Colleges and High Schools • P. V. N. Myers
... found a solace for all the crosses of life in listening, in old age, to the verses of Euripides. Napoleon, at St Helena, forgot the empire of the world, on hearing, in the long evenings, the masterpieces of Corneille read aloud. Stratford-on-Avon does not contain the remains of mere English genius, it is the place of pilgrimage to the entire human race. The names of persons of all nations are to be found, as on the summit of the Pyramids, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 363, January, 1846 • Various
... Maria de' Medici, Josse de Langerac, received as master goldsmith in 1594, and the brothers Rogier, are noted as leading goldsmiths who, besides executing many fine jewels, frequently made loans of money to the Queen Regent, and seem to have experienced great difficulty in securing full payment. Corneille Rogier set the jewels worn at her marriage by Anne d'Autriche, wife of Louis XIII. Two brothers, each bearing the name Pierre Courtois, are also noted in old records. One of them, at the time of his death, ...
— Shakespeare and Precious Stones • George Frederick Kunz
... Dance: its Origin. Introduced into France from Italy. Under Henry III., IV., Louis XIII., XIV. Influence of Cardinals Richelieu and Mazarin. Foundation of the Academic de Danse et de Musique. The Court Ballet. Moliere. Corneille. Lalli, &c. The Theatre Ballet. The Influence of Noverre. Its introduction into and its Present Condition in England, &c. Illustrations of Mlles. de Camargo, Duvernay, Taglioni. Fanny Ellsler. Ferraris, Carlotta Grisi. Adeline Genee. Anna Pavlova. ...
— The Dance (by An Antiquary) - Historic Illustrations of Dancing from 3300 B.C. to 1911 A.D. • Anonymous
... day in opposition to Shakespeare. "Corneille is to Shakespeare," replied Mr. Johnson, "as a clipped hedge is to a forest." When we talked of Steele's Essays, "They are too thin," says our critic, "for an Englishman's taste: mere superficial observations on life and manners, without erudition enough ...
— Anecdotes of the late Samuel Johnson, LL.D. - during the last twenty years of his life • Hester Lynch Piozzi
... himself would be disgraced if a kinsman of his should die by the hands of a common executioner. The regent, to his credit, was proof against all their solicitations, and replied to their last argument in the words of Corneille: ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds • Charles Mackay
... abbots: Durement, Abbot of Fecamp, later Bishop of Coutances; Benel, Abbot of Courcelles; De Conti, Abbot of Sainte Catherine; Dacier, Abbot of Saint Corneille of Compiegne; Frique, Abbot of Bee; Jolivet, Abbot of Saint Michael's Mount in Normandy; Labbe, Abbot of Saint George de Bocherville; Leroux, Abbot of Jumieges; Du Masle, Abbot of Saint Ouen; Moret, Abbot of Preaux; ...
— Joan of Arc • Ronald Sutherland Gower
... are at work, the precursors of Bilderdyk and Tollens, the poet of the people. Bruges, in the eighteenth century, produces two writers of merit,—Smidts and Labare. In French Flanders, De Swaen adapts from Corneille, and publishes original dramas. Many songs are composed both in the northern and southern provinces, mostly of a religious character. Philologers seek to revive the neglected idiom with little success. But the century is blank of great names. The Academy of Sciences and ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. VI.,October, 1860.—No. XXXVI. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... nation, like France, unites to applaud images and sentiments that are communicated through their own peculiar forms of speech, it becomes a stranger to distrust his own knowledge, rather than their taste. I dare say that were I more accustomed to the language, I might enjoy Corneille and Racine, and even Voltaire, for I can now greatly enjoy Moliere; but, to be honest in the matter, all reciters of heroic French poetry appear to me to depend on a pompous declamation, to compensate for the poverty of the idioms, and the want of nobleness in the expressions. ...
— Recollections of Europe • J. Fenimore Cooper
... it. I only see the embryo where you see the full-grown author. We will talk further about it when we meet in the Elysian Fields; then we will see, when you present this Herr Johann Wolfgang Goethe, as a German classic writer, to Homer, Horace, Virgil, and Corneille, if they do not turn their backs upon him. Now adieu, Herzberg! So soon as circumstances permit, I shall send for you to go to Silesia, and then you can give me your German translation ...
— Old Fritz and the New Era • Louise Muhlbach
... nothing can take their place. Besides he was always so good, and no matter what they say, so simple. People will recognize later (if they ever return seriously to literature), that he was a great poet. Meanwhile he is an absolutely unknown author. So indeed is Pierre Corneille. ...
— The George Sand-Gustave Flaubert Letters • George Sand, Gustave Flaubert
... naturally connected him with the polite writers of his time: he was joined with lord Buckhurst in the translation of Corneille's Pompey; and is said to have added his help to that of Cowley in the original draught of ...
— Lives of the Poets, Vol. 1 • Samuel Johnson
... it has been the turn of "Polyeucte" and "La Morte de Pompee." Whatever one's objections may be, there is something grandiose in the style of Corneille which reconciles you at last even to his stiff, emphatic manner, and his over-ingenious rhetoric. But it is the dramatic genre which is false. His heroes are roles rather than men. They pose as magnanimity, virtue, glory, instead of realizing them before us. They are always en scene, studied ...
— Amiel's Journal • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... the personage who had so magically turned the tempest into dead calm, as our old and dear Corneille puts it, had modestly retreated to the half-shadow of his pillar, and would, no doubt, have remained invisible there, motionless, and mute as before, had he not been plucked by the sleeve by two young women, who, standing ...
— Notre-Dame de Paris - The Hunchback of Notre Dame • Victor Hugo
... he had a terrible attack of the gout, accompanied by agonies moral and physical which filled the ladies with alarm and pity. Better in 1672, he was able to entertain company to hear Corneille read his new tragedy of "Pulcherie" in January, and Moliere his new comedy, "Les Femmes Savantes," in March. He was now, in premature old age, the venerable figure in the group, the benevolent Nestor of the salons. Let his detractors remember that Mme de Sevigne, who knew what ...
— Three French Moralists and The Gallantry of France • Edmund Gosse
... names of persons or families are invariable in the plural, e.g. les Corneille et les Racine, except certain well-known historical names, chiefly of dynasties, e.g. les Csars, les Tudors, les Bourbons. But when used as common nouns to denote 'persons like' or 'works by' those named, they are variable. In the latter ...
— Le Petit Chose (part 1) - Histoire d'un Enfant • Alphonse Daudet
... astronomer of young England, idem. Mrs Trollope played the Chesterfield and the deuce with the Yankees. Miss Martineau turned the head of the mighty Brougham. Mademoiselle d'Angeville ascended Mont Blanc, and Mademoiselle Rachel has replaced Corneille and Racine on their crumbling pedestals. I might waste hours of your precious time, sir, in perusing a list of the eminent women now competing with the rougher sex for the laurels of renown. But you know it all better than I can tell you. You have done honour due, in your time, to ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 55, No. 340, February, 1844 • Various
... hand. Charlotte Corday d'Armont was the granddaughter of Corneille, the great tragic poet of France. Though of noble descent, she was born in a cottage, for her father was a country gentleman so poor that he could not support his family. His daughters worked in the fields like the peasants, till he was ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 6 of 8 • Various
... their fountain head: But much we hope, he will enjoy at home What's nearer ancient than the modern Rome. Nor fear I mention of the court of France, When I the British genius would advance; There too has Shrewsbury improv'd his taste; Yet still we dare invite him to our feast: For Corneille's sake I shall my thoughts suppress Of Oroonoko, and presume him less: What though we wrong him? Isabella's woe Waters those bays that shall for ever grow. Our foes confess, nor we the praise refuse, The drama glories in the British muse. ...
— The Poetical Works of Edward Young, Volume 2 • Edward Young
... always dressed herself well and superbly, often with some new and pretty conceit. In short, she had many charms in herself to make her well loved. I remember that at Lyons one day she went to see a painter named Corneille who had painted and exhibited in a spacious room portraits of all the great seigneurs, princes, cavaliers, queens, princesses, ladies and maids of honour of the Court, and she being in this room with us we all saw there her portrait ...
— Memoirs And Historical Chronicles Of The Courts Of Europe - Marguerite de Valois, Madame de Pompadour, and Catherine de Medici • Various
... one another, which at other times would have been overheard. In the evening the queen and the Princess Elizabeth read aloud, the books chosen being chiefly works of history, or the masterpieces of Corneille and Racine, as being most suitable to form the minds and tastes of the children; and sometimes Louis himself would seek to divert them from their sorrows by asking the children riddles, and finding some amusement in their attempts to solve them. At bed-time the queen herself ...
— The Life of Marie Antoinette, Queen of France • Charles Duke Yonge
... patron of art and literature that Louis XIV gained much of his celebrity. Molire, who was at once a playwright and an actor, delighted the court with comedies in which he delicately satirized the foibles of his time. Corneille, who had gained renown by the great tragedy of The Cid in Richelieu's time, found a worthy successor in Racine, the most distinguished perhaps of French tragic poets. The charming letters of Madame de Svign are models of prose style and serve at the same time to give ...
— An Introduction to the History of Western Europe • James Harvey Robinson
... of nicknames is that of which we may take Shakespeare as the type. Incidentally we should be thankful that our greatest poet bore a name so much more picturesque than Corneille, crow, or Racine, root. It is agreed among all competent scholars that in compounds of this formation the verb was originally an imperative. This is shown by the form; cf. ne'er-do-well, Fr. vaurien, Ger. Taugenichts, good-for-naught. Thus Hasluck cannot ...
— The Romance of Names • Ernest Weekley
... freehold, as you choose it; it might at least last out a generation, and descend to the author's blood, were they permitted to live on their father's glory, as in all other property they do on his industry.[10] Something of this nature has been instituted in France, where the descendants of Corneille and Moliere retain a claim on the theatres whenever the dramas of their great ancestors are performed. In that country, literature has ever received peculiar honours—it was there decreed, in the affair of Crebillon, ...
— Calamities and Quarrels of Authors • Isaac D'Israeli
... satisfactory what he asked me; so that I did get off this meeting without any ground lost. Soon as dined, my wife and I out to the Duke's playhouse, and there saw "Heraclius," [A tragedy, by Lodowick Carlell, taken from Corneille.] an excellent play, to my extraordinary content; and the more from the house being very full, and great company; among others Mrs. Stewart, very fine, with her locks done up with puffes, as my wife calls them: and several other great ladies had their ...
— The Diary of Samuel Pepys • Samuel Pepys
... despicable, it will be called corrupt, in a Claudius, in a Sejanus, in a Nero: its energies will be admired, we shall be delighted with its manner, fascinated with its efforts, in a Shakespeare, in a Corneille, in a Newton, in a Montesquieu: its baseness will be lamented, when we behold mean, contemptible men, who flatter tyranny, or who servilely cringe at ...
— The System of Nature, Vol. 1 • Baron D'Holbach
... poor translations of Julius Caesar and Romeo and Juliet appeared, and J. C. Gottsched severely criticized Shakespeare's art. In 1759, in a journal, "Litteraturbriefe," Lessing began a warm defense of Shakespeare and declared his superiority to Racine and Corneille. His Hamburgische Dramaturgie (1767) went far in directing the change of taste from French classicism and in establishing Shakespeare in German thought as the greatest of poets, whether ancient or modern. A prose ...
— The Facts About Shakespeare • William Allan Nielson
... the works of the Fathers of the Church, works respecting the Aryans, Calvinists, of Mythology, &c. The epics are to be Homer, Lucan, Tasso, Telemachus, The Henriade, &c." Machiavelli, Fielding, Richardson, Montesquieu, Voltaire, Corneille, Racine, and Rousseau were also among ...
— The Private Library - What We Do Know, What We Don't Know, What We Ought to Know - About Our Books • Arthur L. Humphreys
... the worship of Venus Urania,—spiritual tenderness overcoming sensual desire. Thus faithful to the traditions of this great poet did the austere Michael Angelo do reverence to the virtues of Vittoria Colonna. Thus did the lofty Corneille present in his Pauline a divine model of the love which inspires great deeds and accompanies great virtues. Thus did Shakspeare, in his portrait of Portia, show the blended generosity and simplicity of a ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume VII • John Lord
... plagiarism, Alfieri declared that whether his tragedies were good or bad, they were at least his own. This is true to a certain extent. And yet he was influenced more than he was willing to acknowledge by the French dramatists of the seventeenth century. In common with Corneille and Racine, he observed strictly the three unities of time, place, and action. But the courtliness of language, the grace and poetry of the French dramas, and especially the tender love of Racine, are ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 1 • Charles Dudley Warner
... yet, had they only possessed some fragment of Antigone's strength—the Antigone of Sophocles—would they not then have transformed the destinies of Hamlet and Faust as well as their own? And if Othello had taken Corneille's Pauline to wife and not Desdemona, would Desdemona's destiny then, all else remaining unchanged, have dared to come within reach of the enlightened love of Pauline? Where was it, in body or soul, that grim fatality ...
— Wisdom and Destiny • Maurice Maeterlinck
... Journey to London; The Rival Queens, with the Humours of Alexander the Great (acted 1710), a comical tragedy; Damon and Phyllida (acted 1729), a ballad opera; and adaptations from Beaumont and Fletcher, Dryden, Moliere and Corneille. A bibliography of the numerous skits on Cibber is to be found in Lowe's Bibliographical Account ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 3 - "Chitral" to "Cincinnati" • Various
... Shakespeare been a classical scholar, he would almost certainly have modelled his plays on Seneca or Aeschylus, and the results would have been devastating. Addison's Cato, Johnson's Irene, and the dramas of Racine and Corneille are among the abysmal dullnesses mankind owes to its excessive estimation of the past. Men have always been too ready to forget that we inherit our ancestors' bad points as well as their good ones. Ancestor-worship has deprived the Chinese of the capacity to ...
— G. K. Chesterton, A Critical Study • Julius West
... There is not only nothing so good (in my judgment) as Hamlet, or Lear, or Othello, or Macbeth, but there is nothing like Hamlet, or Lear, or Othello, or Macbeth. There is nothing, I believe, in the majestic Corneille, equal to the stern pride of Coriolanus, or which gives such an idea of the crumbling in pieces of the Roman grandeur, 'like an unsubstantial pageant faded,' as the Antony and Cleopatra. But to match the best ...
— Hazlitt on English Literature - An Introduction to the Appreciation of Literature • Jacob Zeitlin
... his wife, to hear him say to her, to respond with the affectionate and familiar 'toi', was so amusing! It was droll to see her cut out her husband in chemistry, history, and grammar, and make him confound La Fontaine with Corneille. She had such a little air while doing it! And at the close, when he said to her: "If I give you a pony to-morrow, and a good hearty kiss this very minute, shall you be willing to give up getting that degree?" she responded, with such gusto: "Indeed, I shall!" and her manner was ...
— Jacqueline, v2 • Th. Bentzon (Mme. Blanc)
... sentence in Mrs. Humphry Ward's "Marriage of William Ashe," which subtly and strongly protests against the blight of mental isolation. Lady Kitty Bristol is reciting Corneille in Lady Grosville's drawing-room. "Her audience," says Mrs. Ward, "looked on at first with the embarrassed or hostile air which is the Englishman's natural protection against the great things of art." To write a sentence ...
— Americans and Others • Agnes Repplier
... medicine in Paris, and afterwards went to Asia to practice. In 1836 he lived on rue Corneille with Charles Rabourdin, when they helped the ...
— Repertory Of The Comedie Humaine, Complete, A — Z • Anatole Cerfberr and Jules Franois Christophe
... savent mal. Ce merite historique a cause un grand plaisir: je ne le nie pas, mais c'est ce merite historique qui se fanera le premier. . . . Dans 146 ans, Sir Walter Scott ne sera pas a la hauteur ou Corneille nous apparait 146 ans apres sa mort." "To write a modern romance of chivalry." says Jeffrey, in his review of "Marmion" in the Edinburgh, "seems to be much such a phantasy as to build a modern abbey or an English pagoda. . . . [Scott's] genius, seconded by the omnipotence of fashion, has brought ...
— A History of English Romanticism in the Nineteenth Century • Henry A. Beers
... unequivocal; nevertheless, a large share of the applause of the night was confessedly carried off by the veteran Joanny, who played Horace. On June 16th Rachel made her second appearance, personating Emilie in the "Cinna," of Corneille. The receipts fell to five hundred and fifty francs. She repeated her performance of Camille on the 23d; the receipts were only three hundred francs! the poorest house, perhaps, she ever played to in Paris. ...
— Great Men and Famous Women, Vol. 8 (of 8) • Various
... after all, this bad taste is not that of our contemporaries. But what is, in fact, bad taste? Invariably it is the taste of the period which has preceded ours. Bad taste at the time of Ronsard was represented by Marot; at the time of Boileau, by Ronsard; at the time of Voltaire, by Corneille, and by Voltaire in the day of Chateaubriand, whom many people nowadays begin to think a trifle weak. O men of taste in future centuries, let me recommend you the men of taste of to-day! You will laugh at their cramps, their superb disdain, their preference for ...
— Over Strand and Field • Gustave Flaubert
... fortified by communion with my omnipresent God, I do think my reason would have suffered in that thick darkness and solitude. I repeated thousands of lines of Homer, Virgil and the Greek dramatists; then I came to Shakespeare, Corneille, Racine and Victor Hugo; then I tried to think of a text and compose a sermon; but the minutes seemed hours, leaden hours, and they weighed my head down and my heart down, and so did the Egyptian darkness, till I sought refuge in prayer, and ...
— It Is Never Too Late to Mend • Charles Reade
... man, smiling, "remember the words of our great poet Corneille: 'The people give the king his purple and take it back when they please. The beggar, king only by the people's grace, simply gives back his purple to the ...
— Marie Antoinette And Her Son • Louise Muhlbach
... cruel that we lose sight of the mild deity behind her. Compare, in this, Corneille's "Polyeucte," with the "Hamlet." In the first an equal calamity befalls the good, but in their calamity they are blessed. The death of the martyr is the triumph of his creed. But when we have put down the English tragedy,—when Hamlet and Ophelia are confounded in death with Polonius ...
— The Parisians, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... but to give him even the shortest notice, nay, merely to attempt the nomenclature, and furnish a "catalogue raisonne" of all that immense body, would be as wide of our purpose as it would wholly transcend our powers. Such a task would be as vain as—(but here, after the example of Boileau, Corneille, and Pope, let us give our paraphrase of the well-known passage of the ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 367, May 1846 • Various
... the utterance of tenderness, whether in love or sorrow, she appears comparatively less successful; I am not, however, perhaps competent to pronounce upon this point, for Hermione and Emilie, in Corneille's "Cinna," are not characters abounding in tenderness. Lady M—— saw her the other day in "Marie Stuart," and cried her eyes almost out, so she must have some pathetic power. —— was so enchanted with ...
— Records of Later Life • Frances Anne Kemble
... confinement to the imagination as rhyme; yet Ovid's fancy was not limited by it, and Virgil needed it not to bind his. In our own language, Ben Jonson confined himself to what ought to be said, even in the liberty of blank verse; and Corneille, the most judicious of the French poets, is still varying the same sense a hundred ways, and dwelling eternally on the same ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 57, No. 352, February 1845 • Various
... disadvantage of the modern, and he cannot be said to have been well equipped for the business. He had never read a word of Greek, and he achieved the distinction of criticising modern writing without a single reference to the works of Dante, Petrarch, Tasso, Ariosto, Moliere, Racine, Corneille, Chaucer, Spenser, Milton, and Shakespeare. The extraordinary thing is that the book was welcomed, and when a quarrel was struck over his claim that the Letters of Phalaris (which he could not read) were the best Letters in the world, he found ready champions. They were hopelessly defeated ...
— Highways and Byways in Surrey • Eric Parker
... becomes possible through morality, and when the reciprocal suffering comes simply from the idea that a fellow-creature has been made to suffer. This is the situation of Chimene and Rodrigue in "The Cid" of Pierre Corneille, which is undeniably in point of intrigue the masterpiece of the tragic stage. Honor and filial love arm the hand of Rodrigue against the father of her whom he loves, and his valor gives him the victory. Honor and filial love rouse ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... during his long reign of seventy-two years. His ideal was splendor, and he encouraged great men in the intellectual and artistic world to do their work, and shed their glory on the time. Conde, Turenne, Colbert, Moliere, Corneille, La Fontaine, Racine, Fenelon, Boulle, Le Brun, are a few among the long and wonderful list. He was indeed Louis the Magnificent, ...
— Furnishing the Home of Good Taste • Lucy Abbot Throop
... up to the King's chamber to breakfast. At ten the King and his family went down to the Queen's chamber, and there passed the day. He employed himself in educating his son, made him recite passages from Corneille and Racine, gave him lessons in geography, and exercised him in colouring the maps. The Queen, on her part, was employed in the education of her daughter, and these different lessons lasted till eleven o'clock. The remaining time till ...
— Memoirs Of The Court Of Marie Antoinette, Queen Of France, Complete • Madame Campan
... shelves lived Bousset, and other Catholic writers; the modern spirit in religion being represented by Chateaubriand's five volumes of Le Gene du Christianisme and two volumes of Les Martyrs. Corneille and Racine, among poets, had the honour of accessibility. When Monsieur Urbain wanted one of his own books, he had to fetch a little ladder from a cupboard in the hall. Angelot, from a child, was forbidden to use that ladder. The prohibition was ...
— Angelot - A Story of the First Empire • Eleanor Price
... heads, on account of their having high-sounding words in their mouths. Grand, swelling sentiments of liberty I am sure I do not despise. They warm the heart; they enlarge and liberalize our minds; they animate our courage in a time of conflict. Old as I am, I read the fine raptures of Lucan and Corneille with pleasure. Neither do I wholly condemn the little arts and devices of popularity. They facilitate the carrying of many points of moment; they keep the people together; they refresh the mind in its exertions; and they diffuse occasional gayety over ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. III. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... eccentric judgment quite as much as he followed traditional estimate. Homer, Virgil, Dante, and Milton of course had undisputed possession of the department devoted to the "Kings of Epic," as he styled them. Sophocles, Calderon, Corneille, and Shakespeare were all that he admitted to his list of "Kings of Tragedy." Lope he rejected on literary grounds, and Goethe because he thought his moral tendency bad. He rejected Rabelais from his chief humorists, but accepted Cervantes, Le Sage, Moliere, ...
— The End Of The World - A Love Story • Edward Eggleston
... same character placed by different poets in such different lights, that we can discover not the least sameness, or even likeness, in the features? The Sophonisba of Mairet and of Lee is a tender, passionate, amorous mistress of Massinissa: Corneille and Mr Thomson give her no other passion but the love of her country, and make her as cool in her affection to Massinissa as to Syphax. In the two latter she resembles the character of queen Elizabeth; in the ...
— Miscellanies, Volume 2 (from Works, Volume 12) • Henry Fielding
... VII., and Pope Eugene IV., and was in great esteem in spite of the jests of Rabelais and others at its expense. One old author speaks somewhat irreverently of the learned town; calling its students "the flute-players and professors of the jeu de paume of Poitiers." Corneille makes his Menteur a pupil of the college of Poitiers; but Menot, a preacher of the period of the League, has a passage in one of his sermons which is sufficiently complimentary: in relating the Judgment of Solomon, he makes him say to one of the women, ...
— Barn and the Pyrenees - A Legendary Tour to the Country of Henri Quatre • Louisa Stuart Costello
... these two had talked to each other and sung to each other, the applause was tripled, and when the scene changed from Piccadilly Circus at 4 a.m. to the interior of a Spanish palace inhabited by illustrious French actors and actresses who proceeded to play an act of a tragedy by Corneille, the applause was quintupled. At the end of the tragedy the applause was decupled. Then the Spanish palace dissolved into an Abyssinian harem, and Eliza Fiddle in Abyssinian costume was discovered lying upon two thousand cushions of two thousand colours, ...
— Mr. Prohack • E. Arnold Bennett
... was earlier gemeau, still used by Corneille, and earlier still gemel, Lat. gemellus, diminutive of geminus, twin. From one form we have the gimbals, or twin pivots, which keep the compass horizontal. ...
— The Romance of Words (4th ed.) • Ernest Weekley
... Though still some traces of our rustic vein, And splay-foot verse, remained, and will remain. Late, very late, correctness grew our care, When the tired nation breathed from civil war. Exact Racine, and Corneille's noble fire, Showed us that France had something to admire. Not but the tragic spirit was our own, And full in Shakespeare, fair in Otway shone: But Otway failed to polish or refine, And fluent Shakespeare ...
— English Poets of the Eighteenth Century • Selected and Edited with an Introduction by Ernest Bernbaum
... an innovation in diction in a poetical drama, or to imagine anything comparable to the attitude of a Parisian audience at the cheap holiday performances at the Francais or the Odeon, where the severe classic tragedies of Racine, of Corneille, of Victor Hugo, or the well-worn comedies of Moliere or of Beaumarchais are played with small lure of stage upholstery, and listened to with close attention by a popular audience responsive to the exquisite ...
— The Story of Paris • Thomas Okey
... would scarcely have loved her. Of course she had read French and English to some purpose; she could speak Spanish—her grandfather had taught her that; she understood Italian fairly—she had read it aloud on Sunday evenings with the Chevalier. Then there were Corneille, Shakespeare, Petrarch, Cervantes—she had read them all; and even Wace, the old Norman trouvere, whose Roman de Rou she knew almost by heart. Was ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... kept informed of what goes on in it. He does not approve of the comments on the "Dialogue de Sylla et d'Eucrate," by Montesquieu, on the "Eloge de Marc Aurele," by Thomas, on the "Annales" of Tacitus: "Let the young read Caesar's commentaries... Corneille, Bossuet, are the masters worth having; these, under the full sail of obedience, enter into the established order of things of their time; they strengthen it, they illustrate it," they are the literary coadjutors of public authority. Let the spirit ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 6 (of 6) - The Modern Regime, Volume 2 (of 2) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... transcribe the whole of this colloquy, as it deserves repetition; but we can only give a small specimen of it for the amusement of our readers. The gentleman having informed Miladi, that Racine, Corneille, and Voltaire, are "dethroned monarchs," and no longer tolerated at the Theatre, she asks him what is to be seen or heard there, ...
— The American Quarterly Review, No. 17, March 1831 • Various
... give it a fine effect. In the great hall of this building the members of the Academy hold their sittings; the vestibules are adorned by marble statues of men whose intellectual powers have rendered their names renowned throughout the world, as Montesquieu, Moliere, Corneille, Racine, Sully, etc., etc. The Mazarine library is attached to this institution and contains 120,000 printed volumes besides 4,500 manuscripts. There is also under the same establishment the library ...
— How to Enjoy Paris in 1842 • F. Herve
... rescue, and set his reputation, in the estimation of the German public, on that exalted pedestal which it has not ceased to occupy. It was in 1759, in a journal entitled 'Litteraturbriefe,' that Lessing first claimed for Shakespeare superiority, not only to the French dramatists Racine and Corneille, who hitherto had dominated European taste, but to all ancient or modern poets. Lessing's doctrine, which he developed in his 'Hamburgische Dramaturgie' (Hamburg, 1767, 2 vols. 8vo), was at once accepted by the poet Johann Gottfried Herder in the 'Blatter ...
— A Life of William Shakespeare - with portraits and facsimiles • Sidney Lee
... perhaps, be the most satisfactory explanation. I sometimes, you are aware, make her read French poetry by way of practice in pronunciation. She has in the course of her lessons gone through much of Corneille and Racine, in a very steady, sober spirit, such as I approve. Occasionally she showed, indeed, a degree of languor in the perusal of those esteemed authors, partaking rather of apathy than sobriety; and apathy is what I cannot tolerate in those who have the benefit of ...
— Shirley • Charlotte Bronte
... was married to her cousin M. Périer in 1641, and two years afterwards went with him to Clermont, where her husband was appointed a Counsellor in the Court of Aides. Jacqueline was absorbed in her own poetical studies, which received a special impetus from the friendship of Corneille, who had returned at this time to his native town. The illustrious dramatist speedily sought out the Pascal family, and became one of their most intimate associates. A prize being given every year for the best copy of verses ...
— Pascal • John Tulloch
... way. These are the names of the men who returned from this voyage: Jacob Heemskerke, clerk and captain, Peter Peterson Vos, Gerrit de Veer, mate, Jan Vos, surgeon, Jacob Jansen Sterrenburg, Leonard Henry, Laurence William, Jan Hillebrants, Jacob Jansen Hoochwout, Peter Corneille, Jacob ...
— Celebrated Travels and Travellers - Part I. The Exploration of the World • Jules Verne
... justice to the volume. Let old English books, as More's "Utopia," have a cover of stamped and blazoned calf. Let the binder clothe an early Rabelais or Marot in the style favoured by Grolier, in leather tooled with geometrical patterns. Let a Moliere or Corneille be bound in the graceful contemporary style of Le Gascon, where the lace-like pattern of the gilding resembles the Venetian point-lace, for which La Fontaine liked to ruin himself. Let a binding, a la fanfare, in the style of ...
— The Library • Andrew Lang
... idle, reading may grow tedious, though good plays in which each can take his part are generally enjoyed. I was once in a home in Switzerland where the family spent most of the evenings in reading Racine, Moliere, and Corneille. ...
— Girls and Women • Harriet E. Paine (AKA E. Chester}
... In the classic drama the characters are few and dignified; in the romantic drama, as first developed in the age of Shakespeare, the characters are numerous and drawn from every class of society. The same difference is found in the classic school of France, represented by Corneille, Moliere, and Racine, and the romantic school founded ...
— Elementary Guide to Literary Criticism • F. V. N. Painter
... man as Danton—could not have endured life, after enacting such a law, and seeing the ghastly work that it was doing. He could hardly have contented himself with drawing tears from the company in Madame Duplay's little parlour, by his pathetic recitations from Corneille and Racine, or with listening to melting notes from the violin of Le Bas. It is commonly said by Robespierre's defenders that he withdrew from the Committee of Public Safety, as soon as he found out that he was powerless to arrest the ...
— Critical Miscellanies (Vol. 1 of 3) - Essay 1: Robespierre • John Morley
... Louise Bonne de Jersey, Loveaux, Mace, Magnate, Miller, Minister,* Dr. Lucius, Mount Vernon, Mme. Blanche Sannier, Mme. Treyve, Napoleon, Oswego Beurre, Pardee's Seedling, Passe Crasanne, Pater Noster, Paul Ambre, P. Barry, Pierre Corneille, Pitmaston Duchesse, Poire Louise, Pound, President Gilbert, Prince Consort, Prince's St. Germain, Rapalje's Seedling, Raymond de Montlaux, Reeder, Refreshing, Rousselet Bivort, Sarah, Seckel, Secretaire Rodin, Serrurier, ...
— New York at the Louisiana Purchase Exposition, St. Louis 1904 - Report of the New York State Commission • DeLancey M. Ellis
... of successful villany and rampant vice, but few listened to their warnings. They were jeered at by the vulgar, fined, imprisoned, or banished by Ministers and Magistrates. All that was good, noble, and generous in the nation withered in the uncongenial atmosphere. The language of Pascal and of Corneille became the medium of corrupting the minds of millions. The events of the day were some actress who had discovered a new way to outrage decency, or some new play which deified a prostitute or an adulteress. Paris became the world's fair, to which flocked the vain, the idle, ...
— Diary of the Besieged Resident in Paris • Henry Labouchere
... that the imagination of Dante had conceived of the terrible. Sir Joshua Reynolds has exerted his highest genius in depicting the frightful scene described by him, when Ugolino perished of hunger in the tower of Pisa. Alfieri, Metastasio, Corneille, Lope de Vega, and all the great masters of the tragic muse, have sought in his works the germs of their finest conceptions. The first of these tragedians marked two-thirds of the Inferno and Paradiso as worthy of being committed to memory. Modern novelists have ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 57, No. 351, January 1845 • Various
... of these is called the Rocher de Corneille. Round this and up its steep sides the town stands. On its highest summit there was an old castle; and there now is, or will be before these pages are printed, a colossal figure in bronze of the Virgin Mary, made from the cannon taken at Sebastopol. Half-way down the ...
— The Chateau of Prince Polignac • Anthony Trollope
... pride; Ambition, interest, avarice, accuse: These are the province of a tragic Muse. 30 These hast thou chosen; and the public voice Has equall'd thy performance with thy choice. Time, action, place, are so preserved by thee, That even Corneille might with envy see The alliance of his tripled Unity. Thy incidents, perhaps, too thick are sown; But too much plenty is thy fault alone. At least but two can that good crime commit, Thou in design, and Wycherly in wit. Let thy own Gauls condemn thee, if they dare; 40 Contented to be thinly ...
— The Poetical Works of John Dryden, Vol II - With Life, Critical Dissertation, and Explanatory Notes • John Dryden
... elsewhere was almost barren, should be the age of France. From the end of the reign of Louis XIV. to the commencement of the reign of Louis XVI., nature had been prodigal of men to France. This brilliancy continued by so many geniuses of the first order, from Corneille to Voltaire, from Bossuet to Rousseau, from Fenelon to Bernardin Saint Pierre, had accustomed the people to look on this side. The focus of the ideas of the world shed thence its brilliancy. The moral authority of the human mind was no longer ...
— History of the Girondists, Volume I - Personal Memoirs of the Patriots of the French Revolution • Alphonse de Lamartine
... upon those points where they wish to excel, and yet are doubtful whether they do or not. As, for example, Cardinal Richelieu, who was undoubtedly the ablest statesman of his time, or perhaps of any other, had the idle vanity of being thought the best poet too; he envied the great Corneille his reputation, and ordered a criticism to be written upon the "Cid." Those, therefore, who flattered skillfully, said little to him of his abilities in state affairs, or at least but 'en passant,' and as it might ...
— The PG Edition of Chesterfield's Letters to His Son • The Earl of Chesterfield
... this period were strongly influenced by the contemporary literature of France, by the comedies of Moliere, the tragedies of Corneille and Racine, and the satires, epistles, and versified essays of Boileau. Many of the Restoration writers—Waller, Cowley, Davenant, Wycherley, Villiers, and others—had been in France during the exile, and brought back with them ...
— Brief History of English and American Literature • Henry A. Beers
... Mandeville; but at other times he took up books which seem to lie quite aside from his known purposes. [Footnote: See Appendix III.] Voltaire appears to have attracted him constantly; he read him in the original, together with Rousseau. At one time he examined Pascal, at another he read something of Corneille and a part of Racine. Of the English dramatists, he seems at this time to have tried only Massinger; "Inchbald's Theatre" also occurs. The local American histories took his attention pretty often, and he perused a variety of biography,—"Lives of the Philosophers," "Plutarch's ...
— A Study Of Hawthorne • George Parsons Lathrop
... that the hero ever suffers, for he explains the state of his soul, as the coolest man would do, and always thinking of the effect he is making on others, he never lets nature pour forth freely. The kings, the princesses, and the heroes of Corneille or Voltaire never forget their rank even in the most violent excess of passion; and they part with their humanity much sooner than with their dignity. They are like those kings and emperors of our old picture-books, who go to bed ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... Feb. 9. Tinel's three symphonic pictures from the entr'acte music to Corneille's "Polyeucte" given ...
— Annals of Music in America - A Chronological Record of Significant Musical Events • Henry Charles Lahee |
