"Damon and Pythias" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... slander. They would have been far more violent than we, in their hates, and they would have had fewer friendships. Yet they might not have been any poorer in real friendships than we. The real friendships among men are so rare that when they occur they are famous. Friends as loyal as Damon and Pythias were, are exceptions. Good fellowship is common, but unchanging affection is not. We like those who like us, as a rule, and dislike those who don't. Most of our ties have no better footing than that; and those who have many ...
— This Simian World • Clarence Day
... they both began to make ballads for next year's Musenalmanach. Schiller contributed five, among them the famous Diver and The Cranes of Ibycus. In after years he wrote several more, of which the best, perhaps, are The Pledge, a stirring version of the Damon and Pythias story, and The Battle with the Dragon, which, however, was called a romanza instead of a ballad. The interest of all these poems turns mainly, of course, on the story, but also, in no small degree, on the splendid art which the poet displays. They are quite unlike any earlier German ballads, ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. III • Kuno Francke (Editor-in-Chief)
... were great Hercules and Hylas dear, True Jonathan and David trusty tried; Stout Theseus and Pirithoeus his fere; Pylades and Orestes by his side; Mild Titus and Gesippus without pride; Damon and Pythias, whom death could not sever; All these, and all that ever had been tied In bands of friendship, there did live forever; Whose lives although decay'd, yet ...
— Friendship • Hugh Black
... intrinsic value, and serve only as counters to represent the absence of ideas. The critics should really call them in. In the good old days, when the superscription was fresh, and the mint mark bright upon the metal, we should have compared the friendship of two young men to that of Damon and Pythias. These were individuals then still well known in polite society. If their examples have ceased to influence, it cannot be pretended that the extinction of their authority has been the consequence of competition. Our enlightened age has not ...
— Tancred - Or, The New Crusade • Benjamin Disraeli
... students' chambers in Edinburgh, and the little throng of very young men, flushed with wine and with youth, making friendships, and talking of friendships made, and dubbing Alexander Damon and Ian Pythias. Then more wine and a bravura passage. Damon and Pythias opening each a vein with some convenient dagger, smearing into the wound some drops of the other's blood, and going home each with a tourniquet above the right wrist.... Well, that was years ago—and ...
— Foes • Mary Johnston |
