"Delilah" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... to teach, nor to have dominion over her husband.'" Bishop Marbodius calls woman a "pleasant evil, at once a honeycomb and a poison" and indicts the sex,[232] something on the order of Juvenal or Jonathan Swift, by citing the cases of Eve, the daughters of Lot, Delilah, Herodias, Clytemnestra, and Progne. The way in which women were regarded as at once a blessing and a curse is well illustrated also in a distich of Sedulius: "A woman alone has been responsible for opening the gates of death; a woman alone has been the cause ...
— A Short History of Women's Rights • Eugene A. Hecker
... from Milton's "Samson Agonistes," "Hymn on the Nativity," and "Lines on a Solemn Musick." The oratorio was first sung at Covent Garden, Feb. 18, 1743, the principal parts being assigned as follows: Samson, Mr. Beard;[4] Manoah, Mr. Savage; Micah, Mrs. Cibber; Delilah, Mrs. Clive. The aria, "Let the bright Seraphim," was sung by Signora Avolio, for whom it was written, and the trumpet obligato was played by Valentine Snow, a virtuoso of that period. The performance of "Samson" was ...
— The Standard Oratorios - Their Stories, Their Music, And Their Composers • George P. Upton
... a sore temptation to any writer, and of dalliance with a Delilah so seductive it is futile to declare that I am innocent. My principles positively are known to myself; which is a measure of self-knowledge, in these any-thing-arian days, of that cabinet coin-climax the "8th degree of rarity;" ...
— The Complete Prose Works of Martin Farquhar Tupper • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... he painted a picture of "The Feast of Ahasuerus" (or the "Wedding of Samson") and he placed Saskia in the middle of the table to represent Esther or Delilah as the case might be, dressed in a way to horrify her critical relatives, for she looked like a veritable princess laden with ...
— Pictures Every Child Should Know • Dolores Bacon
... and the Serpents, and thirty-two stories of Psyche and Love, which are held to be most beautiful. Hieronymus Cock, also a Fleming, has engraved a large plate after the invention and design of Martin Heemskerk, of Delilah cutting off the locks of Samson; and not far away is the Temple of the Philistines, in which, the towers having fallen, one sees ruin and destruction in the dead, and terror in the living, who are taking to flight. The same master has executed in three smaller plates the Creation of Adam ...
— Lives of the most Eminent Painters Sculptors and Architects - Vol. 06 (of 10) Fra Giocondo to Niccolo Soggi • Giorgio Vasari
... 'a' done it only for that Jezebel he married down to Cartersville and brought home here to the mountains. Effie, like Delilah that made mock of her man Samson, was the cause of it all. Ben just nat'erly couldn't make whiskey fast enough to give that woman all her cravin's and now you see where it got my poor boy. A man's a right," said the old fellow in ...
— Blue Ridge Country • Jean Thomas
... laughed. "Am I, then, such a fool as to think that the wary Tournoire could be put off his guard by a man? No, no. The governor or Montignac was wise in choosing a woman for that delicate task. It is only by a Delilah that a ...
— An Enemy To The King • Robert Neilson Stephens
... mothers," said a famous French Bishop, and every good man owes the best part of himself to his earliest and best teacher and guide—his mother. The origin of most sins also can be traced to the influence of a bad woman. Samson, the giant, becomes the blinded, helpless slave, by trusting to false Delilah. Ahab loses honour and life by making Jezebel his counsellor. Mark Antony, the conqueror, sits helpless at the feet of Cleopatra. Never forget the power of leading others which you have as mothers, wives, or sisters, and take good heed that you lead them in ...
— The Life of Duty, v. 2 - A year's plain sermons on the Gospels or Epistles • H. J. Wilmot-Buxton
... of Samson was dealt with. Delilah was shown to be one of the most heroic of womankind, making greater sacrifices through her splendid patriotism than Joan ...
— Phyllis of Philistia • Frank Frankfort Moore
... the cabin, marching up and down the deck muttering, "Pah! Tis tame adventuring! Takes a dish o' spray to salt the freshness out o' men! Tis the roaring forties put nerve in a man's marrow! Soft days are your Delilah's that shave away men's strength! Toughen your fighters, ...
— Heralds of Empire - Being the Story of One Ramsay Stanhope, Lieutenant to Pierre Radisson in the Northern Fur Trade • Agnes C. Laut
... one of them, very young and with the most marvelous golden hair. I never saw a fairer face. But, as all the world knows, the most beautiful women are often the most wicked. I suppose there wasn't a woman among the Philistines who could compare with Delilah in either face ...
— The Hosts of the Air • Joseph A. Altsheler
... and observed that her smile annoyed him. Not that Margaret was cruel or fond of giving pain for the sake of seeing suffering; but she could be both when she was roused to defend her beliefs, her ideals, or even her tastes. The cool ferocity of some young women is awful. Judith, Jael, Delilah, and Athaliah were not mythical. Is there a man who has not wakened from dreams, to find that the woman he trusted has stolen his strength or is just about to hammer the great nail ...
— Fair Margaret - A Portrait • Francis Marion Crawford
... smile, Who broke the strength of Britain's Isle, And gave the Samson of our land Delilah-like ...
— Welsh Lyrics of the Nineteenth Century • Edmund O. Jones
... Headquarters Study of an Elevation, in Indian Ink A Legend of the Foreign Office The Story of Uriah The Post that Fitted Public Waste Delilah What Happened Pink Dominoes The Man Who Could Write Municipal A Code of Morals ...
— The Works of Rudyard Kipling One Volume Edition • Rudyard Kipling
... to hear those privileged girls stumbling over the story of Sampson? Could it be possible that was ancient history? How did it come to pass that every one did not know all about Sampson, the man who had laid his Lead on Delilah's wicked lap, to be shorn of his strength. If there is any thing in that account, or any lesson to be drawn from it, with which I was not then familiar, it is something I have never learned. Indeed, I seemed to have completed my theological ...
— Half a Century • Jane Grey Cannon Swisshelm
... you were, you'd be safe. If Samson had feared Delilah, he wouldn't have lost his eyes." She broke off and shrugged her shoulders. Then—"And now, if you're satisfied with my authority to question you, what's yours ...
— Anthony Lyveden • Dornford Yates
... length [21] transgressed the laws of his country, and altered his own regular way of living, and imitated the strange customs of foreigners, which thing was the beginning of his miseries; for he fell in love with a woman that was a harlot among the Philistines: her name was Delilah, and he lived with her. So those that administered the public affairs of the Philistines came to her, and, with promises, induced her to get out of Samson what was the cause of that his strength, by which he became unconquerable to his enemies. Accordingly, when they were ...
— The Antiquities of the Jews • Flavius Josephus
... a drama of Action and of Spectacle, however, to which the Music is subordinate. Such a medley of drinking and praying, dancing and devotion, idol-worship and Delilah-craft, I had not before encountered. At least three hundred performers were at once on the stage. The dancing-girls engaged were not less than one hundred in number, apparently all between fourteen and eighteen years of age, generally good-looking, ...
— Glances at Europe - In a Series of Letters from Great Britain, France, Italy, - Switzerland, &c. During the Summer of 1851. • Horace Greeley
... herself; she had the power long before she showed it. That same Hercules who proposed to violate all the fifty daughters of Thespis was compelled to spin at the feet of Omphale, and Samson, the strong man, was less strong than Delilah. This power cannot be taken from woman; it is hers by right; she would have lost it long ago, ...
— Emile • Jean-Jacques Rousseau
... is not!) a proceeding (proceeding, quotha!) of which youths and young men should grow enamoured." As though, forsooth, Golf were a sort of elderly Siren luring limp and languorous youths into illegitimate courses; a passee Delilah, whose enervating fascinations sapped the virile vigour that might be dedicated to "that noblest of sports," Cricket, or even that "much ...
— Punch, Volume 101, September 19, 1891 • Francis Burnand
... an ass heaps upon heaps, with the jaw of an ass I have slain a thousand men." We might also refer to his carrying away the gates of Gaza to the top of a hill that is before Hebron, and to his duping Delilah about the seven ...
— History of English Humour, Vol. 1 (of 2) - With an Introduction upon Ancient Humour • Alfred Guy Kingan L'Estrange
... man, take my advice, and do not give way to its fascinations. Sir, I am a martyr to this stream; it has been the Delilah ...
— My Novel, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... tool; she will acknowledge me as her master, and by God I will teach her how to bind this headstrong fool in chains. He has so far escaped all the pitfalls which Fredersdorf and myself have so adroitly laid for him. Dorris shall be the Delilah who will tame this new Samson. Truly," he continued, as he cast a look of contempt upon the senseless form lying before him, "truly it is a desperate attempt to transform this dirty, pale, thin woman into a Delilah. But the ...
— Frederick the Great and His Court • L. Muhlbach
... that she 'can't pull the wool over your eyes.' Just take a retrospective view. Did your wife ever want any thing that she didn't somehow get it? Whether a new dress, or the dearest secret of your soul, she either, Delilah-like, wheedled it out of you, or, in a passion, you almost flung it at her, as an enraged monkey flings cocoa-nuts ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. II. July, 1862. No. 1. • Various
... defend the Constitution of the United States did not prevent the Civil War. We have at last learned that States may be kept together for a little time, by force; permanently only by mutual interests. We have found that the Delilah of superstition cannot bind with ...
— The Works of Robert G. Ingersoll, Volume VIII. - Interviews • Robert Green Ingersoll
... gazed from him to the black, cold guns. Without them he appeared shorn of strength, defenseless, a smaller man. Was she Delilah? Swiftly, conscious of only one motive—refusal to see this man called craven by his enemies—she rose, and with blundering fingers buckled the belt round his waist where ...
— Riders of the Purple Sage • Zane Grey
... Troyon, he went to Holland, and there fell captive to the genius of Rembrandt. The mystic in Liebermann is less pronounced than one might expect. His clear picture of the visible world holds few secret, haunted spots. I do not altogether believe in his biblical subjects, in the Samson and Delilah, in the youthful Christ and the Doctors of the Law—the latter is of more interest than the former—they strike one as academic exercises. Nevertheless, the lion's paw of Rembrandt left its impress ...
— Ivory Apes and Peacocks • James Huneker
... taste, and by his appearance you might judge him capable of any venture in the getting of money. He would say in his cynical, loud way that the end justifies the means, and with him the end is Angelique des Meloises. She is probably going to be the Delilah of New France, the woman who is shearing it of its upholding strength, but she ...
— The Black Colonel • James Milne
... sun anew. He left the gates in the grass and dew. He went to a county-seat a-nigh. Found a harlot proud and high: Philistine that no man could tame— Delilah was her lady-name. Oh sorrow, Sorrow, She was too wise. She cut off his hair, She ...
— Chinese Nightingale • Vachel Lindsay
... An Exile's Farewell Ars Longa Ashtaroth: A Dramatic Lyric A Song of Autumn Banker's Dream Bellona Borrow'd Plumes By Flood and Field By Wood and Wold Cito Pede Preterit Aetas Confiteor Credat Judaeus Apella Cui Bono Delilah De Te "Discontent" Doubtful Dreams "Early Adieux" "Exeunt" Ex Fumo Dare Lucem Fauconshawe Finis Exoptatus Fragmentary Scenes from the Road to Avernus From Lightning and Tempest From the Wreck Gone Hippodromania; or, Whiffs from the Pipe How we Beat the Favourite "In the Garden" In Utrumque ...
— Poems • Adam Lindsay Gordon
... and amaze seems to center upon four poems, namely: "Delilah," "Ad Finem," "Conversion," ...
— Poems of Passion • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... all went over in the great gale of 1815; I know I used to shake the youngest of them with my hands, stout as it is now, with a trunk that would defy the bully of Crotona, or the strong man whose liaison with the Lady Delilah proved so disastrous. ...
— The Poet at the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... beast, despite some faint signs of past dissipation, was amiable-looking—in fact, a kind of blond Samson, whose corn-colored silken beard apparently had never yet known the touch of barber's razor or Delilah's shears. So that the cutting speech which quivered on her ready tongue died upon her lips, and she contented herself with receiving his stammering apology with supercilious eyelids and the gathered skirts of uncontamination. When she re-entered the schoolroom, her eyes fell upon the ...
— Short Story Classics (American) Vol. 2 • Various
... and smirched with vice the day's sad pages end, For while the short 'large hours' toward the longer 'small hours' trend, With smiles that mock the wearer, and with words that half entreat, Delilah pleads for custom at the corner of the street — Sinking down, sinking down, Battered wreck by tempests beat — A dreadful, thankless trade is hers, that ...
— In the Days When the World Was Wide and Other Verses • Henry Lawson
... sorrowful story I do tell, Which happened of late, in the Indiana state, And a hero not many could excel; Like Samson he courted, made choice of the fair, And intended to make her his wife; But she, like Delilah, his heart did ensnare, Which cost him his honor and ...
— Cowboy Songs - and Other Frontier Ballads • Various
... fellow betrayed (Majorities murder to prove it!) As Samson discovered, Delilah lies, The stigma's stuck on by the cynical wise, And nothing can ever remove it. We'll cast out Delilah and spit on her dead, (That revenge is remarkably human), And pity the victim of underhand tricks So be that it's moral ...
— The Eye of Zeitoon • Talbot Mundy
... found except in somewhat primitive examples. Still less often observed is the oval type of Samson's Wedding feast, Rembrandt (295), in the Royal Gallery, Dresden. Here one might, by pressing the interpretation, see an obtuse-angled double-pyramid with the figure of Delilah for an apex, but a few very irregular pictures seem to fall best under ...
— Harvard Psychological Studies, Volume 1 • Various
... float in the air, and called his mistress Minerva—a deification, parenthetically, which was accepted by Nicholas, his successor, a deacon of the church, who raised her to the eighth heaven as patron saint of lust. To him, as to Simon, she was Ennoia, Prunikos, Helen of Troy. She had been Delilah, Lucretia. She had prostituted herself to every nation; she had sung in the by-ways, and hidden robbers in the vermin of her bed. But by Simon she was rehabilitated. It was she, no doubt, of whom Caligula ...
— Imperial Purple • Edgar Saltus
... Democratic victory and the women on that ticket were elected—Dr. Martha Hughes Cannon to the Senate, Eurithe Le Barthe and Sarah A. Anderson to the House; Margaret A. Caine, auditor of Salt Lake County; Ellen Jakeman, treasurer Utah County; Delilah K. Olson, recorder Millard County; Fannie Graehl (Rep.), recorder Box Elder ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume IV • Various
... with his appearance, and particularly with his toupee. They say he resembles Samson; that all his strength lies in his hair; and that, conscious of this, and recollecting the fate of the son of Manoah, he suffers not the nigh approaches of any deceitful Delilah. They say he is like the Comet, which, about fifteen months ago, appeared so formidable in the Russian hemisphere; and which, exhibiting a small watery body, but a most enormous train, dismayed the Northern and Eastern Potentates with ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XXI. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... driven into the temples of the sleeping warrior. Now she saw Medea in the moment before she tore to pieces her brother and threw the bloody fragments in Aetes's path; Clytemnestra's face while Agamemnon was passing to the bath, Delilah's when Samson lay sleeping on her knee. But all these imagined faces of named women fled like sand grains on a desert wind as the dance went on and the recurrent melody came back and back and back ...
— The Garden Of Allah • Robert Hichens
... here and there with scraps of cotton or silk, or some other odd material; and amongst them, tufts of human hair. The sentiment that motived the use of human hair has been either love or hate—the votive or the triumphal. We know that Delilah was not a stranger to this art. She wove into her web Samson's seven locks of strength, and "fastened them ...
— Needlework As Art • Marian Alford
... with a woman in the valley of Sorek, named Delilah. Then the rulers of the Philistines came to her and said, "Find out by teasing him how it is that his strength is so great and how we may overpower and bind him that we may torture him. Then we will each one of us give you eleven hundred pieces of silver." ...
— The Children's Bible • Henry A. Sherman
... he demanded harshly. "An ungodly woman? I'll have no trafficking in my train. Get you gone, Delilah. Would ...
— Desert Dust • Edwin L. Sabin
... that he had distinctly heard the squeaking of that young Delilah's scissors. "We're not told whether Delilah was Samson's wife," said he. "But the Scriptures were never wrong on a point ...
— The Divine Fire • May Sinclair
... little affair which I do not care to dwell upon with a woman of Gaza, who was no better than she should have been, fell blindly in love with Delilah. And, being in love, he profited not by his late experience (what man or woman ever does who is in love?) and again he told the dearest secret of his heart to a woman, because, forsooth, "she pressed him daily with her words, and urged him, so that his soul was vexed unto death." And ...
— Fair to Look Upon • Mary Belle Freeley
... moody, brooding. She forgot the Delilah-dancer of the afternoon, forgot everything except that this wonderful man-creature ...
— Contrary Mary • Temple Bailey
... fancy I've baited the hook right. Our little Delilah will bring our Samson. It is not enough, Fritz, to have no women in a house, though brother Michael shows some wisdom there. If you want safety, you must have none ...
— The Prisoner of Zenda • Anthony Hope
... and first published in 1877. I had been reading history, and became stirred by the power of such women as Aspasia and Cleopatra over such grand men as Antony, Socrates, and Pericles. Under the influence of this feeling I dashed off "Delilah," which I meant to be an expression of the powerful fascination of such a woman upon the memory of a man, even as he neared the hour of death. If the poem is immoral, then the history which inspired it is immoral. I ...
— Poems of Passion • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... slightly in her hands, her hat was off, her rich brown hair fell loosely about her head, framing it, her dark eyes glowed under her bent brows. The lion's cub crawled up on the divan, and thrust its nose under an arm. Its head clung to her waist. Who was she? thought Gaston. Delilah, Cleopatra—who? She was lost in thought. She remained so until the garden door opened, and Jacques entered ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... not imagine for a moment that my courage will suffer diminution on that account. It was all very well for Samson to allow his hair to be cut off, and for Alcides to handle the distaff at the bidding of his mistress; but Delilah would not have dared to touch one hair of my head, and Omphale should have pulled off my boots for me—at the least sign of revolt I would have given her worse to do: cleaning the skin of the Nemaean lion, for instance, ...
— Captain Fracasse • Theophile Gautier
... That word "Delilah!" rang in her brain to the exclusion of all the world. Vaguely she heard voices shouting—she turned a little and saw Haines facing her with his revolver in his hand, but prevented from moving by the wolf who crouched snarling at ...
— The Untamed • Max Brand
... upon your iniquities? must my ears to-day listen to your impure conversation with that man? Were that man as holy as My prophet David, may he not fall before the unchaste unveiling of the new Bathsheba? Were he as strong as Sampson, may he not find in you his tempting Delilah? Were he as generous as Peter, may he not become a traitor ...
— The Priest, The Woman And The Confessional • Father Chiniquy
... Delilah Joyce was sitting on her front doorstone with a fine disregard of the fact that her little clock had struck eight of the morning, while her bed was still unmade. The Tiverton folk who disapproved of her shiftlessness in letting the golden hours, run thus ...
— Meadow Grass - Tales of New England Life • Alice Brown
... in the heart of the tamer, he thought of Samson and Delilah, and wondered if something of the kind could not be done with natural comeliness instead of a pair of scissors. Guided by instinct, Rounders, who was a shrewd fellow, as has already been said, made his court to Mlle. La Sauteuse, known in ...
— The Galaxy, Volume 23, No. 2, February, 1877 • Various
... indignant; you shall make it good by giving me a bronze group. You began the story of Samson; finish it.—Do a Delilah cutting off the Jewish Hercules' hair. And you, who, if you will listen to me, will be a great artist, must enter into the subject. What you have to show is the power of woman. Samson is a secondary consideration. He is the corpse of dead ...
— Poor Relations • Honore de Balzac
... poor signorina had a longing for that choice little retreat; and between resentment for her lost money and a desire for the pretty house on the one hand, and, on the other, her dislike of the Delilah-like part she was to play, she was sore beset. Left to herself, I believe she would have yielded to her better feelings, and spoiled the plot. As it was, the colonel and I, alarmed at this recrudescence of conscience, managed to stifle its promptings, ...
— A Man of Mark • Anthony Hope
... adorable Delilah; and fear not, even though incited by the foe, by clipping my locks, to dwindle my strength. Give me your sword, man," turning to an officer:—"Ah! I'm ...
— Israel Potter • Herman Melville
... mill, has a warning for us, too. That is what God's heroes come to, if once they prostitute the God-given strength to the base loves of self and the flattering world. We are strong only as we keep our hearts clear of lower loves, and lean on God alone. Delilah is most dangerous when honeyed words drop from her lips. The world's praise is more harmful than its censure. Its favours are only meant to draw the secret of our strength from us, that we may ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... have guessed why Master Rolfe alone went not to the bear-baiting, but joined us in the garden. She said the air was keen, and fetched me her mask, and then herself went indoors to embroider Samson in the arms of Delilah.' ...
— To Have and To Hold • Mary Johnston
... grew softer and softer. She came a step nearer, resting her finger-tips upon a little table, her body leaning towards him. He had a queer vision of her for a moment—no longer the prophetess, a touch of the Delilah in the ...
— A People's Man • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... back to the Rectory at Crailing, to the evening when she had sung this very song to Max Errington, with the unhappy Joan stumbling through the accompaniment. She began to sing, her mind occupied with quite other matters than Delilah's passion of vengeance, and her face expressive of nothing more stirring than a gentle reminiscence. Baroni stopped abruptly and placed a big mirror in front ...
— The Splendid Folly • Margaret Pedler
... she asked dancing ecstatically to and fro; as if she were a Delilah, leading the Philistine maidens in the "Spring Song," and he were another Samson. "I'm expecting to go ...
— Silver and Gold - A Story of Luck and Love in a Western Mining Camp • Dane Coolidge
... master was Major Gaud, and I was born there on his plantation in 1866. You can ask that tax man at Marshall 'bout my age, 'cause he's fix my 'xemption papers since I'm sixty. I had seven brothers and two sisters. There was Frank, Joe, Sandy and Gene, Preston and William and Sarah and Delilah, and they all lived to be old folks and the younges' jus' died last year. Folks was more healthy when I growed up and I'm 93 now and ain't dead; fact is, I feels right pert ...
— Slave Narratives: a Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves. - Texas Narratives, Part 2 • Works Projects Administration
... between his followers and the rest of men. They are crucified to the world, and the world to them. Let us not taste of the intoxicating joys in which the children of the present age indulge; let us allow no Delilah passion to pass her scissors over our locks; and let us be very careful not to receive contamination; to have no fellowship with the unfruitful works of darkness, but to come out and be separate, not touching ...
— John the Baptist • F. B. Meyer
... of Fiction, 127. Llew's vulnerability does not depend on the discovery of his separable soul, as is usual. The earliest form of this Maerchen is the Egyptian story of the Two Brothers, and that of Samson and Delilah is another ...
— The Religion of the Ancient Celts • J. A. MacCulloch
... heaven have fled in terror and dismay, your poor darling will not forsake you. Well might I sit, like Job's friends, seven days, ay, seventy times seven, in silent contemplation of him who—woe is me!—fears that I am but another Delilah, commissioned by his enemies to betray him into their hands. What can I say? what do? Oh that I had never seen the glorious light of the sun or the pure myriads of my happy home, rather than I should have beheld that sight last night. How can I explain the fact that he, whom I, at least, believe ...
— Continental Monthly, Volume 5, Issue 4 • Various
... studying piano when only three years old. I believe it is mostly through his piano concertos and his symphonic poems that his name will live; for his operas have never attained popularity, with perhaps the one exception of "Samson and Delilah." His other operas are: "The Yellow Princess," "Proserpina," "Etienne Marcel," ...
— Critical & Historical Essays - Lectures delivered at Columbia University • Edward MacDowell
... on the vessel's edge and looked down, down into the clear Mediterranean, brilliantly blue as a lake of melted sapphires, I fancied I could see her the Delilah of my life, lying prone on the golden sand, her rich hair floating straightly around her like yellow weed, her hands clinched in the death agony, her laughing lips blue with the piercing chilliness of the washing tide—powerless to move or smile again. She would look well so, I thought—better ...
— Vendetta - A Story of One Forgotten • Marie Corelli
... essential member in the rhythm; but the body and end of a short story is bone of the bone and blood of the blood of the beginning. Well, I shall end by finishing it against my judgment; that fragment is my Delilah. Golly, it's good. I am not shining by modesty; but I do just love the colour and movement of that piece so far ...
— Vailima Letters • Robert Louis Stevenson
... of the lake," who cajoled Merlin in his dotage to tell her the secret "whereby he could be rendered powerless;" and then, like Delilah, she overpowered him, by ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook, Vol. 3 • E. Cobham Brewer
... romantic islands that got into his bones. Every now and then they take a man strangely, and he finds himself like a fly in a spider's web. It may be that there was a softness of fibre in him, and these green hills with their soft airs, this blue sea, took the northern strength from him as Delilah took the Nazarite's. Anyhow, he wanted to hide himself, and he thought he would be safe in this secluded nook till his ship ...
— The Trembling of a Leaf - Little Stories of the South Sea Islands • William Somerset Maugham
... pretty good imitation of Samson, but I ain't cut out for any Delilah. If I'm holding you here, why, cut and ...
— Trailin'! • Max Brand
... gardens flooded with moonlight and the song of nightingales. Although not modeled on heroic lines, she nevertheless possessed the qualifications which most men seek in women and therefore became quite as formidable as Delilah when she chose to assert herself. To say that Mr. Yankton was dazzled but mildly expresses his feelings; he was ravished, though in no mood for banter. Had their meeting occurred under more auspicious circumstances, he ...
— When Dreams Come True • Ritter Brown
... of the cardinal's favorite means; he has not one that is more expeditious. A woman will sell you for ten pistoles, witness Delilah. You are acquainted ...
— The Three Musketeers • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... off with the gate-posts of Gaza, if he ever did so, (and whether he did or not is nothing to us,) or when he visited his Delilah, or caught his foxes, or did anything else, what has revelation to do with these things? If they were facts, he could tell them himself; or his secretary, if he kept one, could write them, if they were worth either telling or writing; and if they ...
— The Writings Of Thomas Paine, Complete - With Index to Volumes I - IV • Thomas Paine
... leisure, just to break ground on the work. Those notes had been written in noisy huts, or by flickering firelight, or on horseback—written in eager activity of mind, and in hope of such an opportunity for amplification as I was now letting slip. But I have one besetting sin; and this Delilah, scissors in hand, had dogged me to Runnymede, and polled me by the skull. Nor could I plead inadvertence when I gravitated into the old familiar vice; but I left the consequences for an after-consideration. ...
— Such is Life • Joseph Furphy
... as she paced to and fro, her handsome figure moving with the grace of a Delilah and her wonderful eyes flashing a greater eloquence than her tongue, as her glance from time to ...
— The Rider of Waroona • Firth Scott
... bacon—tea—coffee—iced tea—or—milk" at the Thayer House, and for ten years thereafter sold dry-goods and kept books at Dorman's store, should have become tainted with the infection of the times. But it is strange that she could have inoculated so sane a little man as Watts. Still, there were Delilah and Samson, and of course Samson was a much larger man than Watts, and Nellie McHurdie was considerably larger than Delilah; and you never can tell about those things, anyway. Also it must not be forgotten that Nellie McHurdie since her marriage had become Grand Preceptress ...
— A Certain Rich Man • William Allen White
... road, pick up again my harmless catkins and snow-drops, and rearrange them. I have hardly finished wiping the mire from the tender, lilac-veined snow-drop petals, before I hear his voice in the distance, in conversation with some one. Clearly, Delilah is coming to see the last of him! I expect that she mostly escorts them to the gate. In my present frame of mind, it would be physically impossible for me to salute her with the bland civility which society enjoins on people of our stage ...
— Nancy - A Novel • Rhoda Broughton
... Purity League, who was Mis' Judge Ballard herself, asking where this unspeakable disrobing business was going to end and calling her attention to the fate that befell Sodom and Gomorrah. But Mis' Ballard she's mixed on names and gets the idea these parties mean Samson and Delilah instead of a couple of twin cities, like St. Paul and Minneapolis, and she writes back saying what have these Bible characters got to do with a lady riding on horseback—in trousers, it is true, but with a coat falling modestly to the knee on ...
— Somewhere in Red Gap • Harry Leon Wilson
... was a pagan. He had with him, on our journey, this woman and her old deformed father who fled when the plague broke out among us. She hoped, I surmise, that we should all die on the way. Even Samson gave up secrets to Delilah, and this Aquila ...
— The City of Delight - A Love Drama of the Siege and Fall of Jerusalem • Elizabeth Miller
... the Conservatory, he composed his first symphony when he was sixteen, and was organist of the Church of St. Marri at the age of eighteen. In 1858 he became organist at the Madeleine. He has produced a number of operas, of which "Le Timbre d'Argent" (1887), "Samson and Delilah" (1877), and "Etienne Marcel" (1879), "Henry VIII" (1883) and "Ascanio," produced in 1890 at the Grand Opera. In addition to these, Saint-Saens has produced a large number of orchestral pieces, including "Le ...
— A Popular History of the Art of Music - From the Earliest Times Until the Present • W. S. B. Mathews
... driving another away. The sculpture over the south door was destroyed in the fire of 1840, but a careful restoration of it has been made. It consists of a man in the middle fighting with a dragon, with sword and shield, and at the sides in the quatrefoils (1) Delilah cutting the hair of Samson, and Samson and the lion; (2) a man and woman fighting. The ends of the aisles are also ornamented with arcading in three storeys, the lowest of which is like the lowest storey of the arcading at the west end of the nave; the second a smaller series of niches ornamented ...
— The Cathedral Church of York - Bell's Cathedrals: A Description of Its Fabric and A Brief - History of the Archi-Episcopal See • A. Clutton-Brock
... wondered at. He was no Massillon, to thunder forth his ecclesiastical rhetoric, even when a Louis le Grand was enthroned among his congregation. Nor did the chaplains who preached on the quarter-deck of Lord Nelson ever allude to the guilty Felix, nor to Delilah, nor practically reason of righteousness, temperance, and judgment to come, when that renowned ...
— White Jacket - or, the World on a Man-of-War • Herman Melville
... finger-prints upon the dagger. The strongest point against the Princess is the motive. She was married to Goldenburg, but was not on the best of terms with him. She was bought by Grell to play the part of Delilah to the blackmailer. My theory is this—bear in mind that it is only a theory at the moment. Grell, for some reason, left her alone with Goldenburg in his study. There was a quarrel, and she stabbed him. It must have been all over in a few seconds, and there was ...
— The Grell Mystery • Frank Froest
... destruction a raven, a salmon, and a wolf. The grateful wolf carries him on his back to the giant's castle, where the lovely princess whom the monster keeps in irksome bondage promises to act, in behalf of Boots, the part of Delilah, and to find out, if possible, where her lord keeps his heart. The giant, like the Jewish hero, finally succumbs to feminine blandishments. "Far, far away in a lake lies an island; on that island stands a church; in that ...
— Myths and Myth-Makers - Old Tales and Superstitions Interpreted by Comparative Mythology • John Fiske
... described as Samson; the Patriarch, as an uncomely Delilah who had speciously shorn it of its strength and beauty; the State, as a political prompter and coadjutor of the Delilah; and Rome, a false God seeking to promote worship unto itself through the debased Church ...
— The Prince of India - Or - Why Constantinople Fell - Volume 2 • Lew. Wallace
... so near of counsel be'n With womanhead, nor knowen of their guise, Nor what they think, nor of their wit th'engine;* *craft *I me report to* Solomon the wise, *I refer for proof to* And mighty Samson, which beguiled thrice With Delilah was; he wot that, in a throw, There may no man ...
— The Canterbury Tales and Other Poems • Geoffrey Chaucer
... rather sadly. "I am not Samson, nor are you Delilah to cajole me. It's of no use, Anastasia. I would have preferred that you came to me voluntarily, but since you cannot, I mean to take you unwilling. Simon," he called, loudly, "does that rascal intend to spin out his dying interminably? Charon's ...
— Gallantry - Dizain des Fetes Galantes • James Branch Cabell
... and ties their horses, and unlimbers their ammunition and equipments, and tiptoes into the house. And I follows, like Delilah when she set the ...
— Options • O. Henry
... thin and sallow. He lies prone on the floor, staring at me with dead, sightless eyes. He whispers from muted lips "Delilah!" and the sound of it is in my ears day and night; ...
— The Bacillus of Beauty - A Romance of To-day • Harriet Stark
... affection of Cordelia. How shall we describe the Pythian greatness of Miriam, the cheerful hospitality of Sarah, the heroism of Rahab, the industry of Dorcas, the devotion of Mary? And we might set off Lady Macbeth with Jezebel, and Cleopatra with Delilah. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 22, Aug., 1859 • Various
... as matters stood then, that exposure and humiliation must arrive. To this hard, level-headed, shrewd woman there was no blinking the outcome of an official inquiry. Alfieri was in Massowah, Alfieri, the man she had wronged as Delilah wronged Samson. If he were arrested, owing to Irene's abduction, he would demand to be confronted with von Kerber, would ask that she, too, should be arraigned with the Austrian, and put forward such an indisputable plea that, ...
— The Wheel O' Fortune • Louis Tracy
... his head. "I've always been of the opinion that Samson's hair needed trimming. His mother probably brought him up with Fauntleroy curls, poor chap. If he'd had his hair cut regularly, he wouldn't have looked such an ass when Delilah got ...
— West Wind Drift • George Barr McCutcheon
... enchantress, that Napoleon escapes between his legs. This was hardly a caricature. It was almost historic verity. While Napoleon was struggling against adverse storms off the coast of Africa, Lord Nelson, adorned with the laurels of his magnificent victory, in fond dalliance with his frail Delilah, was basking in the courts of voluptuous and profligate kings. "No one," said Napoleon, "can surrender himself to the dominion of love, without the forfeiture of some ...
— Napoleon Bonaparte • John S. C. Abbott
... hardships, enjoying sudden wealth, and leading romantic lives. Stories of camp and cabin, with brief Monte-Cristo appearances at San Francisco, are the popular rage. These rough heroes are led captive, even as Samson was betrayed by Delilah. The discovery of quartz mining leads Valois to believe that an American science of geologic mining will be a great help in the future. Years of failure and effort, great experience, with associated capital, will be needed ...
— The Little Lady of Lagunitas • Richard Henry Savage
... intellects while my own were hungering; to grind on in the Philistine's mill, or occasionally make sport for them, like some weary-hearted clown grinning in a pantomime in a "light article," as blind as Samson, but not, alas! as strong, for indeed my Delilah of the West-end had clipped my locks, and there seemed little chance of their growing again. That face and that drawing-room flitted before me from morning till eve, and enervated and distracted my ...
— Alton Locke, Tailor And Poet • Rev. Charles Kingsley et al
... more just than this man, though many surpassed him in tact—the very barbarity of an action so false and so unwomanly suggested that, viewed from her side, it must wear another shape. For even Delilah was a Philistine, and by her perfidy served her country. What was this girl gaining? Revenge, yes; yet, if they kept faith with him, and, the deed signed, let him go free, she had not even revenge. For the rest, she lost by the deed. All that her grandfather had meant for her passed ...
— The Wild Geese • Stanley John Weyman
... living in the valley of Sorek by the name of Delilah. They appoint her the agent in the case. The Philistines are secreted in the same building, and then Delilah goes to work and coaxes Samson to tell what is the secret of his strength. "Well," he says, "if you should take seven green withes such as they fasten wild beasts with and ...
— New Tabernacle Sermons • Thomas De Witt Talmage
... she say of me, Jack? Tell me what she said," he begged. "It can make no difference now; she is less than nothing to me—nay,'tis even worse than that, since she would play Delilah if she could. But oh, Jack, I love her!—I should love her if I stood on the gallows and she stood by to spring the ...
— The Master of Appleby • Francis Lynde
... all of them. Such a story, for instance, is that of a great man having his strength swayed or thwarted by the mysterious weakness of a woman. The anecdotal story, the story of William Tell, is as I have said, popular, because it is peculiar. But this kind of story, the story of Samson and Delilah of Arthur and Guinevere, is obviously popular because it is not peculiar. It is popular as good, quiet fiction is popular, because it tells the truth about people. If the ruin of Samson by a woman, and the ruin of ...
— Heretics • Gilbert K. Chesterton
... and much against his will he had been exhibited, as it were, to help the gaiety of the entertainment. Cotogni, the great sculptor, had suggested that Griggs should appear as Samson, asleep with his head on Delilah's knee, and bound by her with cords which he should seem to break as the Philistines rushed in. He had refused flatly, again and again, till all the noisy party caught the idea and forced him ...
— Casa Braccio, Volumes 1 and 2 (of 2) • F. Marion Crawford
... jewels in her hair, wore now a fashionable costume and a hat that could only have been produced in Paris. Karamaneh was the one Oriental woman I had ever known who could wear European clothes; and as I watched that exquisite profile, I thought that Delilah must have been just such another as this, that, excepting the Empress Poppaea, history has record of no woman, who, looking so innocent, was yet so ...
— The Return of Dr. Fu-Manchu • Sax Rohmer
... story of civilization speaks this truth with trumpet voice. One nation rises upon the ruins of another nation. It is when Samson lies in the lap of Delilah that the enemy steals upon him and ensnares him and binds him. It was when the great Assyrian king walked through his palace, and looking around him said in his pride, "Is not this great Babylon that I have built for the honor of the kingdom and for the ...
— Modern Eloquence: Vol III, After-Dinner Speeches P-Z • Various
... could the wisdom of the nation convince them, until some, of good intentions, made the cheat so plain to their sight, that those who run may read. And thus the design was to treat us, in every point, as the Philistines treated Samson, (I mean when he was betrayed by Delilah) first to put out our eyes, and then bind ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, D. D., Volume IV: - Swift's Writings on Religion and the Church, Volume II • Jonathan Swift
... perhaps invented, by Mark Twain in the early journalistic days in San Francisco. In 'The Golden Era' an excellent example is found in the following observations upon a celebrated painting of Samson and Delilah, then on ...
— Mark Twain • Archibald Henderson
... but has it ever loved? Has it ever leapt in transport, recognizing a long-lost friend? Importunate woman, take your fee, basely extracted from me in a moment of weakness. O, heel of Achilles! O, locks of Samson! Go to, Delilah, and henceforth for this may a ...
— Sir John Constantine • Prosper Paleologus Constantine
... Herrick, the only man he ever speaks to, I think, without compulsion—that I was 'the Delilah type of woman, and ought to have been ...
— The Hermit of Far End • Margaret Pedler
... husbands in chancery; and poor, susceptible Samson, from firing Philistine vineyards and killing lions bare-handed, and the Philistines by the thousands with the jaw-bone of an ass, was reduced through Delilah to bitter repentance and turning Philistine mill-stones; and we know that the familiar infatuation of Antony for Cleopatra ruined Antony; and we are familiar with the well-known maxim of the French police-minister, that to catch a criminal it was but necessary to first locate the ...
— History of Circumcision from the Earliest Times to the Present - Moral and Physical Reasons for its Performance • Peter Charles Remondino
... his nature. His right leg, which was naked, though on the foot was a slipper of Spanish leather, he laid o'er Mistress Kilspinnie's knees as he threw himself back against the pillar of the bed, the better to observe and converse with my grandfather; and she, like another Delilah, began to prattle it with her fingers, casting at the same time glances, unseen by her papistical paramour, towards my grandfather, who, as I have said, was a ...
— Ringan Gilhaize - or The Covenanters • John Galt
... born on the estate of Miss Frances Cree, my mother's mistress. She had set my grandmother Delilah free with her sixteen children, so my mother was free when I was born, but ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves: The Ohio Narratives • Works Projects Administration
... the dead bodies. The dragon is compelled to fetch the waters of life and death, by means of which the hero brings his dead love back to life. Marya, the White Swan, however, proved herself so ungrateful that after awhile she took another husband, and twice she acted the part of Delilah to Mikailo. The third time she tried it he was compelled in self-defence to put an end to her wiles by cutting off her head. This is honest, downright death. There is no mistaking it. But then it is impossible that Marya, ...
— The Science of Fairy Tales - An Inquiry into Fairy Mythology • Edwin Sidney Hartland
... with a savage glare upon one of the bed-posts which contained a tile of porcelain, representing Joseph leaving his garment in the hand of Potiphar's wife; on the post opposite was seen Samson sheared of his glory and Delilah fleeing through the opened door with his seven locks in her hand; a third represented Jezebel being precipitated from a third-story window, and the subject of the fourth I have forgotten. It was a remnant of the not always delicate humor of the seventeenth ...
— Ilka on the Hill-Top and Other Stories • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen
... because the one being whom heaven had given him for his support had delivered him up to his enemies out of the weakness of her womanly love. I awoke in the morning with a vivid memory of this new version of the old story of Samson and Delilah, and on my return to England I wrote the draft of a play with the incident of husband and wife ...
— The Eternal City • Hall Caine
... me, Delilah!" exclaimed Gentz. "You want to show me a beautiful goal in order to make me walk the tortuous paths which may lead thither! No, Delilah, it is in vain! I shall stay here; I shall not go to Austria, for ...
— LOUISA OF PRUSSIA AND HER TIMES • Louise Muhlbach
... famous description of the woman Delilah, sailing like a stately ship of Tarsus "with all her bravery on, and tackle trim," is particular to note "an amber scent of odorous perfume, her harbinger." Perfume as an adjunct of feminine dress has been celebrated from the days of the earliest ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII. No. 30. September, 1873 • Various
... craft that must have been in Delilah's eyes when Samson lay at her feet was in her ...
— Gordon Keith • Thomas Nelson Page
... are as gude as man and wife. They may no be married yet, but they will be as sune as it's safe, and that's how he comes here so often. She has a good reason to speak ye fair, laird, and she has a souple tongue and a beguilin' way, juist a Delilah. Laird, as sure as I'm a livin' man this is a hoose o' deceit, and we are encompassed wi' fausehood as wi' a garment." And although Claverhouse's rebuke was hot, Grimond felt that he had ...
— Graham of Claverhouse • Ian Maclaren
... my—it is in defiance of judgment, will, and experience, and some day you will make me pay a most humiliating penalty for my momentary weakness. To-night I trust you as implicitly as Samson did the smooth-lipped Delilah; to-morrow I shall realize that, like him, I richly deserve to be shorn ...
— St. Elmo • Augusta J. Evans
... locks. But this one in Little Rock done me,' says he. 'She saw me taking a trolley ride with another girl, and when I came 'round on the night she was to leave the door open for me it was fast. And I had keys made for the doors upstairs. But, no sir. She had sure cut off my locks. She was a Delilah,' says Bill Bassett. ...
— The Gentle Grafter • O. Henry
... replied the hermit, "from the scissors of Delilah, and the tenpenny nail of Jael, to the scimitar of Goliath, at which I am not a match for thee—But, if I am to make the election, what sayst thou, good ...
— Ivanhoe - A Romance • Walter Scott
... had a "safeguard from the Gineral. The Gineral had been up to see his darters, Delilah and Susan, and give him a safeguard." Upon examination it was found to be a mere request. Requests don't stand in military (not arbitrary enough). Then the old man declared he had always been a Union man—"allers said this war ...
— Incidents of the War: Humorous, Pathetic, and Descriptive • Alf Burnett
... you had been Samson, Delilah would have made a fool of you just as easily as she did ...
— At Home with the Jardines • Lilian Bell
... the heat of its July"—adapted quotation from "Old Song." "I cannot sing the old song"—except under a sense of the deepest and most unpardonable provocation; and when I do!!—Cave canem, ruat coelum! I bring down the house as Madame DELILAH's SAMSON did. To-night Manon is indeed warmly welcomed. "A nice Opera," says a young lady, fanning herself. "I wish it were an iced Opera," groans WAGSTAFF, re-issuing one of his earliest side-splitters. M. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 102, June 4, 1892 • Various
... to you, then," was the sour retort, for the Marquise was bent upon disagreeing with her. "Have you a conscience, Suzanne, that you could have played such a Delilah part and never give a thought to the man ...
— The Trampling of the Lilies • Rafael Sabatini
... hear Delilah's laugh At Samson bound in fetters; "We captured!" shrieks each lovelier half, "Men think themselves our betters! We push the bolt, we turn the key On warriors, poets, sages, Too happy, all of them, to be Locked in our golden cages!" Beware! the boy with bandaged eyes Has flung ...
— The Poetical Works of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Complete • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. |
