Online dictionaryOnline dictionary
Synonyms, antonyms, pronunciation

  Home
English Dictionary      examples: 'day', 'get rid of', 'New York Bay'




Hermes   /hˈərmiz/   Listen
Hermes

noun
1.
(Greek mythology) messenger and herald of the gods; god of commerce and cunning and invention and theft; identified with Roman Mercury.






WordNet 3.0 © 2010 Princeton University








Advanced search
     Find words:
Starting with
Ending with
Containing
Matching a pattern  

Synonyms
Antonyms
Quotes
Words linked to  

only single words



Share |
Add this dictionary
to your browser search bar





"Hermes" Quotes from Famous Books



... number of baptised converts was forty-eight, of whom forty were native men and women. With the instinct of a true scholar and Christian Carey kept to the apostolic practice, which has been too often departed from—he consecrated the convert's name as well as soul and body to Christ. Beside the "Hermes" of Rome to whom Paul sent his salutation, he kept the ...
— The Life of William Carey • George Smith

... proclaimed their mission in Cheapside, and were at once laid by the heels. But the old public punishment still continued, for in 1600 (the year before the execution of Essex) we read that "Mrs. Fowler's case was decided" by sentencing that lady to be whipped in Bridewell; while a Captain Hermes was sent to the pillory, his brother was fined L100 and imprisoned, and Gascone, a soldier, was sentenced to ride to the Cheapside pillory with his face to the horse's tail, to be there branded in the face, and afterwards ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury

... ships in the bay, so far as I can make them out, are the Hermes, Captain Percy, 22 guns; the Sophia, Captain Lockyer, 18 guns; the Carron, 20 guns; and the Childers, ...
— Captain Sam - The Boy Scouts of 1814 • George Cary Eggleston

... Condemned to serve a mortal for his sin To Zeus in sending violent darts of death, A raising hand irreverent, against The one-eyed forgers of the thunderbolt. For shepherd's crook he held the living rod Of twisted serpents, later Hermes' wand. Him sought the king, discovering soon hard by, Idle as one in nowise bound to time, Watching the restless grasses blow and wave, The sparkle of the sun upon the stream, Regretting nothing, living with the hour: For him, who had his light and song within, Was naught that did ...
— The Poems of Emma Lazarus - Vol. I (of II.), Narrative, Lyric, and Dramatic • Emma Lazarus

... Sly-scheming Hermes "winked" knowingly at Jupiter when he was "pitching his yarn" about the stolen oxen, and Jupiter ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 101. October 24, 1891 • Various

... was begun in us. All our days are so unprofitable while they pass, that 'tis wonderful where or when we ever got anything of this which we call wisdom, poetry, virtue. We never got it on any dated calendar day. Some heavenly days must have been intercalated somewhere, like those that Hermes won with dice of the Moon, that Osiris might be born. It is said all martyrdoms looked mean when they were suffered. Every ship is a romantic object, except that we sail in. Embark, and the romance quits our vessel and hangs on every other sail in the horizon. Our ...
— Essays, Second Series • Ralph Waldo Emerson

... as Platonism, believing in a God entirely above all existence in the universe, needed a connecting link between God and the world, and could use Logos in this sense. Finally, a mediatising writer such as Cornutus could explain that the Logos was Hermes, and so triumphantly {124} reconcile philosophy and myth, by giving a mythological meaning to ...
— Landmarks in the History of Early Christianity • Kirsopp Lake

... cunning and successful stratagem. Odysseus was wily. He was a clever hero. His maternal grandfather Autolykos was, by endowment of Hermes (a god of lying and stealing), a liar ...
— Folkways - A Study of the Sociological Importance of Usages, Manners, Customs, Mores, and Morals • William Graham Sumner

... the writer of 'slams.' He is as debonair and inconsequential as a young Hermes to whom only the serious lessons of life can teach sympathy and true insight, ...
— Poet Lore, Volume XXIV, Number IV, 1912 • Various

... entrayles were hayres: le Cheual volante, the Pegasus, ches les narines de feu. When I bestryde him, I soare, I am a Hawke: he trots the ayre: the Earth sings, when he touches it: the basest horne of his hoofe, is more Musicall then the Pipe of Hermes ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare

... force, but I cannot bring it out. It may sound like a joke, but I do feel something corresponding to that tale of the Destinies falling in love with Hermes.' ...
— Memoirs of Margaret Fuller Ossoli, Vol. I • Margaret Fuller Ossoli

... England, and was gradual in its development. The suggestion that a book, especially a novel, was translated from the English was an assurance of its receiving consideration, and many original German novels were published under the guise of English translations. Hermes roguishly avoids downright falsehood, and yet avails himself of this popular trend by describing his "Miss Fanny Wilkes" upon the title page as "So gut als aus dem Englischen bersetzt," and printing "so gut als" in very small ...
— Laurence Sterne in Germany • Harvey Waterman Thayer

... father of gods and men; Poseidon, ruler of the sea; Apollo, or Phoebus, the god of light, of music, and of prophecy; Ares, the god of war; Hephaestus, the deformed god of fire, and the forger of the thunderbolts of Zeus; Hermes, the wing-footed herald of the celestials, the god of invention and commerce, himself a thief ...
— A General History for Colleges and High Schools • P. V. N. Myers

... Christian Hero. He resided at Great Cherwell, near Lavington, where his house was still pointed out to visitors. A typical shepherd of Salisbury Plain was afterwards pictured by another lady, and described as "wearing a long black cloak falling from neck to heels, a round felt hat, like a Hermes cap without the wings to it, and sometimes a blue milk-wort or a yellow hawk-weed in the brim, and walking with his plume-tailed dog in front leading his sheep, as was customary in the East and as described ...
— From John O'Groats to Land's End • Robert Naylor and John Naylor

... literature is anomalous. It has no centre, or, if it have, it is like that of the sphere of Hermes. It is, divided into many systems, each revolving round its several suns, and often presenting to the rest only the faint glimmer of a milk-and-water way. Our capital city, unlike London or Paris, is not a great central heart from which life and vigor radiate to the extremities, ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 1 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe

... Cabiri, and the polytheism of Greece and Rome. While by this ramification of the Trimourti the Asiatic myths became adapted to the imaginations of various races in the lands they reached by the agency of certain sages whom men elevated to be demi-gods—Mithra, Bacchus, Hermes, Hercules, and the rest —Buddha, the great reformer of the three primeval religions, lived in India, and founded his Church there, a sect which still numbers two hundred millions more believers than Christianity can ...
— Louis Lambert • Honore de Balzac

... suburban. Their house was small and its name was Shelthorpe, but it had an air about it which suggested a certain amount of money and a certain amount of taste. There were decent water-colours in the drawing-room. Madonnas of acknowledged merit hung upon the stairs. A replica of the Hermes of Praxiteles—of course only the bust—stood in the hall with a real palm behind it. Agnes, in her slap-dash way, was a good housekeeper, and kept the pretty things well dusted. It was she who insisted ...
— The Longest Journey • E. M. Forster

... relative to alchymy:—"The ancient books of alchymy, so liberally ascribed to Pythagoras, to Solomon, or to Hermes, were the pious frauds of more recent adepts. The Greeks were inattentive either to the use or the abuse of chemistry. In that immense register where Pliny has deposited the discoveries, the arts, and the errors of mankind, there is not the least mention of the transmutations of metals; and ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 1 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli

... English language, with an eloquent oration that soon gathered them under my control; and thereafter I set a hundred of them at the pleasant task of trying to push the train for Olympia on its way to take me to the Hermes of Praxiteles. I knew no word of their language, nor did they of mine; but they understood that that train should be started, if human force were sufficient to help the cars upon their way: and finally, ...
— The Unpopular Review, Volume II Number 3 • Various

... and converses with the Empress— Persuades the Russians and Turks to cease cutting one another's throats, and in concert cut a canal across the Isthmus of Suez—The Baron discovers the Alexandrine Library, and meets with Hermes Trismegistus—Besieges Seringapatam, and challenges Tippoo Sahib to single combat—They fight—The Baron receives some wounds to his face, but at last vanquishes the tyrant—The Baron returns to Europe, and raises the hull of ...
— The Surprising Adventures of Baron Munchausen • Rudolph Erich Raspe

... for you." I gave this letter back to the postman. He smiled and nodded at me; and I then perceived to my astonishment that he wore a camel's-hair tunic round his waist. I had been on the point of addressing him— I know not why—as Hermes. But I now saw that he must be John the Baptist; and in my fright at having spoken with so great a saint, ...
— Dreams and Dream Stories • Anna (Bonus) Kingsford

... sleep, and put her in a place of safety. Then Eros flew up into the abode of the gods, and besought Zeus to protect Psyche against his mother Aphrodite; and Zeus, calling an assembly of the gods, sent Hermes to bring Psyche thither, and then he declared her immortal, and she and Eros were wedded to each other; and there was a great feast in Olympus. And the sisters of Psyche, who had striven to ruin her, were punished for their crimes, for Eros appeared to them one after the other ...
— Fairy Tales; Their Origin and Meaning • John Thackray Bunce

... ascertain the motive which determined Bacon to give to the supposed author the name of Valerius Terminus, or to his commentator, of whose annotations we have no remains, that of Hermes Stella. It may be conjectured that by the name Terminus he intended to intimate that the new philosophy would put an end to the wandering of mankind in search of truth, that it would be the TERMINUS AD QUEM in which when it was once attained ...
— Valerius Terminus: of the Interpretation of Nature • Sir Francis Bacon

... as I know the craft of Hermes, who is the god of heralds, I will do this thing according to ...
— Stories from the Greek Tragedians • Alfred Church

... characters." He also adds, that what was afterwards called the Egyptian science, the Hermetic art, the art of transmuting metals, was a mere reverie of the middle ages, utterly unknown to antiquity. "The pretended books of Hermes are evidently supposititious, and were written by the Greeks of ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 17, - Issue 479, March 5, 1831 • Various

... is written in the form of a dialogue, the parties being Cono, a country-gentleman, Metella, his wife, Rigo, a courtier, and Hermes, a servant. The first book relates to tillage, and farm-practice in general; the second, to orcharding, gardens, and woods; the third, to cattle; and the fourth, to fowl, fish, and bees. He had evidently been an attentive reader of the older authors I have discussed, and his citations ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, August, 1863, No. 70 - A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics • Various

... Hermes cunning Poor Argus funning, He made him drink like a buffer; To his great surprise Sew'd up all his eyes, And stole ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 14, Issue 380, July 11, 1829 • Various

... Williams, ranging the world before breakfast in quest of adventure or a point of view, all in white, not so very tall perhaps, but uncommonly upright—Sandra Williams got Jacob's head exactly on a level with the head of the Hermes of Praxiteles. The comparison was all in his favour. But before she could say a single word he had gone out of the Museum and ...
— Jacob's Room • Virginia Woolf

... substantial advantage from the popular approval on his condemnation than I should have got from his gratitude if he had been acquitted.[40] I am very glad to hear what you say about the Hermathena. It is an ornament appropriate to my "Academia" for two reasons: Hermes is a sign common to all gymnasia, Minerva specially of this particular one. So I would have you, as you say, adorn the place with the other objects also, and the more the better. The statues which ...
— The Letters of Cicero, Volume 1 - The Whole Extant Correspodence in Chronological Order • Marcus Tullius Cicero

... the absence of upper rooms in the Iliad we have to abolish II. 514, where Astyoche meets her divine lover in her upper chamber, and XVI. 184, where Polymele celebrates her amour with Hermes "in the upper chambers." The places where these two passages occur, Catalogue (Book II.) and the Catalogue of the Myrmidons (Book XVI.) are, indeed, both called "late," but the author of the latter knows the early law of bride-price, ...
— Homer and His Age • Andrew Lang

... counterfeit a gloom, Far from all resort of mirth, Save the cricket on the hearth, Or the bellman's drowsy charm To bless the doors from nightly harm. Or let my lamp, at midnight hour, Be seen in some high lonely tower, Where I may oft outwatch the Bear, With thrice great Hermes, or unsphere The spirit of Plato, to unfold What worlds or what vast regions hold The immortal mind that hath forsook Her mansion in this fleshly nook; And of those demons that are found In fire, air, flood, or underground, Whose power ...
— L'Allegro, Il Penseroso, Comus, and Lycidas • John Milton

... Hermes the winged Horse bestrid, And thorow thick and thin he rid, 70 And floundred ...
— Minor Poems of Michael Drayton • Michael Drayton

... You are so careful of your boy's morals, knowing how troublesome they may be, that you keep him away from the Venus of Milo only to find him in the arms of the scullery maid or someone much worse. You decide that the Hermes of Praxiteles and Wagner's Tristan are not suited for young girls; and your daughter marries somebody appallingly unlike either Hermes or Tristan solely to escape from your parental protection. You have not stifled a single passion nor averted ...
— A Treatise on Parents and Children • George Bernard Shaw

... showed the blood of his Jovian father. His feet were small and shapely with a high-arched instep and his whole form was graceful and symmetrical. Crisply curling yellow hair surmounted a head which Praxiteles would have reveled in as a model for his youthful Hermes. As he faced the Viceroy, his usual pleasant smile was gone and his face was set in grim lines, his clear blue eyes as cold as the ice brought from the polar regions to ...
— Giants on the Earth • Sterner St. Paul Meek

... that when the teacher comes all the world will listen and obey. It seems to me that teacher after teacher has uttered the truth—Hermes, Zoroaster, Buddha, Confucius, Orpheus, Jesus—and that the trouble is not lack of teachers but lack of disciples. In the teachings of Jesus Christ, the world has a model wherewith to mould the old order of hate and selfishness into a new rule of love and brotherhood. ...
— Mountain Meditations - and some subjects of the day and the war • L. Lind-af-Hageby

... things were very good. He had half forgotten how good they were. The meeting became a babble in his ears, a transparency of listening shapes before his eyes.... He was back in Rio; back in youth. He was waiting with a fever in his blood at that dinner at old Hermes Pessoa's preposterous house, that was built like—so far as it was like anything else on earth—the Villa d'Este mingled with the Alhambra. The dinner, considered as a matter of food, had come to an end, and for some little time had been a matter of drink; most of the guests had gathered in a ...
— The Judge • Rebecca West

... view of nature; but he excelled them most of all in this, that the divine object which he worshiped was conceived both in form and character after the human. Zeus, Phoebus Apollo, Pallas Athene, Aphrodite, Ares, Hephaestus, Hestia, Hermes, Artemis, were originally powers of nature personified, as some epithets in Homer[4] still indicate; but they became, sometimes under the same names, types of power and lordship, science and art, courage and sensuous ...
— A Comparative View of Religions • Johannes Henricus Scholten

... and left the two surviving brothers entrusted with the care of the government and laws, joining with them Hermus, one of the nobility of Athens, from whom a place in the city is called the House of Hermus; though by an error in the accent it has been taken for the House of Hermes, or Mercury, and the honor that was designed to the hero transferred ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough

... she ran; After went Mercury, who us'd such cunning, As she, to hear his tale, left off her running; (Maids are not won by brutish force and might But speeches full of pleasure, and delight;) And, knowing Hermes courted her, was glad That she such loveliness and beauty had As could provoke his liking; yet was mute, And neither would deny nor grant his suit. Still vow'd he love: she, wanting no excuse To feed him with delays, as women use, Or ...
— Hero and Leander and Other Poems • Christopher Marlowe and George Chapman

... father's love is thine, And gentler than a mother's. Lord and God, Thy staff is surer than the wizard rod That Hermes bare as priest before thy shrine And herald of thy mercies. We could give Nought, when we would have given: thou ...
— Astrophel and Other Poems - Taken from The Collected Poetical Works of Algernon Charles - Swinburne, Vol. VI • Algernon Charles Swinburne

... moments at my disposal to marshal before you the various personages of whom these fables have been written? Let it suffice to recall the interesting fact to your notice, and invite you to compare the respective biographies of the Brahmanical Krshna, the Persian Zoroaster, the Egyptian Hermes, the Indian Gautama, and the canonical, especially the apocryphal, Jesus. Taking Krshna or Zoroaster, as you please, as the most ancient, and coming down the chronological line of descent, you will find them ...
— The Life of Buddha and Its Lessons • H.S. Olcott

... compares with this the Greek story of the infancy of Hercules. The great child-hero was the son of the god Jupiter and Alcmena, daughter of Electryon, King of Argos. He was exposed by his mother, but the goddess Athene persuaded Hera to give him her breast (another version says Hermes placed Hercules on the breast of Hera, while she slept) and the infant Hercules drew so lustily of the milk that he caused pain to the goddess, who snatched him away. But Hercules had drunk of the milk ...
— The Child and Childhood in Folk-Thought • Alexander F. Chamberlain

... upon all. No one will ever understand even Athenian history, who forgets this idea of the old world, though Athens was, in comparison with others, a rational and sceptical place, ready for new views, and free from old prejudices. When the street statues of Hermes were mutilated, all the Athenians were frightened and furious; they thought that they should ALL be ruined because some one had mutilated a god's image, and so offended him. Almost every detail of life ...
— Physics and Politics, or, Thoughts on the application of the principles of "natural selection" and "inheritance" to political society • Walter Bagehot

... appeared in what he hoped would be the irresistible form—a recently discovered fragment of Polybius, an advance copy of the forthcoming issue of "The Historical Review," the note-book of Professor Carl Voertschlaffen... One day, all-prying Hermes told him of Clio's secret addiction to novel-reading. Thenceforth, year in, year out, it was in the form of fiction that Zeus wooed her. The sole result was that she grew sick of the sight of novels, and found a perverse pleasure in reading history. ...
— Zuleika Dobson - or, An Oxford Love Story • Max Beerbohm

... was dedicated and for which he was content to suffer, {53} in the faith that men in future times would come to see as he did[12]—that man's soul possesses a native capacity to hear the inward Word of God. He often calls Plato and Plotinus and "Hermes Trismegistus" his teachers, who "had spoken to him more clearly than Moses did"[13] and, like these Greek teachers of the nature of the soul's furnishings, he insisted that we come "not in entire forgetfulness and not in utter nakedness," but ...
— Spiritual Reformers in the 16th & 17th Centuries • Rufus M. Jones

... human knowledge.[14] The names of the Oriental Hipparchi and Euclids who solved the first problems of astronomy and geometry were unknown; but a confused and grotesque literature made use of the name and authority of Hermes Trismegistus. The doctrines of the planetary spheres and the opposition of the four elements were made to support systems of anthropology and of morality; the theorems of astronomy were used to establish an alleged method of divination; formulas of incantation, supposed to subject ...
— The Oriental Religions in Roman Paganism • Franz Cumont

... Anubis was the son of Osiris and Nephthys, and the jackal was sacred to him. In the earliest ages even he is prominent in the nether world. He conducts the mummifying process, preserves the corpse, guards the Necropolis, and, as Hermes Psychopompos (Hermanubis), opens the way for the souls. According to Plutarch "He is the watch of the gods as the dog is the watch ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers

... at Athens, surrounded by heathen temples, statues and altars. He does not proceed to demonstrate to the curious multitude that the philosophies of Zeno or Epicurus are wrong; or that the worship of Hermes or Athene is absurd. He throws out at once, bold and stern as a mountain headland, the assertion of the Divine unity, and follows it up with the doctrines of salvation through Christ, the resurrection, and the final judgment. In a few bold strokes he delineates to the astonished skeptics ...
— Amusement: A Force in Christian Training • Rev. Marvin R. Vincent.

... in his "Hermes," says, "A preposition is a part of speech, devoid itself of signification; but so formed as to unite two words that are significant, and that refuse to coalesce or ...
— Lectures on Language - As Particularly Connected with English Grammar. • William S. Balch

... moment I saw her. She was the exquisitely formed, slim and glowing creature I had seen before, when she launched herself into the night as a God of Homer—Hermes or Thetis—launched out from Olympus' top into the sea—"[Greek: ex aitheros empese ponto]," and words fail me to describe the perfection of her being, a radiant simulacrum of our own, the inconscient self-sufficiency, the buoyancy and freedom which she showed me. ...
— Lore of Proserpine • Maurice Hewlett

... represent as a god Hermes, a lusty fellow, a thief, and a covetous, a sorcerer, bowlegged, and an interpreter of speech. It is impossible for such an ...
— Barlaam and Ioasaph • St. John of Damascus

... no portion of the occult teachings possessed by the world which have been so closely guarded as the fragments of the Hermetic Teachings which have come down to us over the tens of centuries which have elapsed since the lifetime of its great founder, Hermes Trismegistus, the "scribe of the gods," who dwelt in old Egypt in the days when the present race of men was in its infancy. Contemporary with Abraham, and, if the legends be true, an instructor of that venerable sage, Hermes was, and ...
— The Kybalion - A Study of The Hermetic Philosophy of Ancient Egypt and Greece • Three Initiates

... turn'd, but most To lions arm'd with teeth and claws; Others like wolves with open jaws Did howl; but some—more savage—took The tiger's dreadful shape and look. But wise Ulysses, by the aid Of Hermes, had to him convey'd A flow'r, whose virtue did suppress The force of charms, and their success: While his mates drank so deep, that they Were turn'd to swine, which fed all day On mast, and human food had left, Of shape and voice at once bereft; Only the mind—above all ...
— Poems of Henry Vaughan, Silurist, Volume II • Henry Vaughan

... inner Ceramicus, where Aspasia resided. The building, like all the private houses of Athens, had a plain exterior, strongly contrasted by the magnificence of surrounding temples, and porticos. At the gate, an image of Hermes looked toward the harbour, while Phoebus, leaning on his lyre, appeared to gaze earnestly at ...
— Philothea - A Grecian Romance • Lydia Maria Child

... said Dion, "I wish Hermes, if he is the god who guides travelers, would bring them this way oftener. I'd like to be a strong man, but I like good things to eat, too, and when we have ...
— The Spartan Twins • Lucy (Fitch) Perkins

... for Italy. On this occasion, however, the queen is able to overcome his doubts by bestowing upon him her crown and sceptre, thus providing him with a kingdom powerful enough to content his ambitions. Yet the gods are not to be satisfied so; Hermes himself is sent to command the Trojan's instant departure for another shore. In vain now does Dido plead. Aeneas departs, and there is nothing left for her in her anguish but to fling herself upon the sacrificial ...
— The Growth of English Drama • Arnold Wynne

... Thinking about the Hermes of Olympia, and the fact that so far he is pretty well the only Greek statue which historical evidence unhesitatingly gives us as an original masterpiece, it struck me that, could one become really familiar with him, could eye and soul learn all the fulness of his perfection, we should have the ...
— Laurus Nobilis - Chapters on Art and Life • Vernon Lee

... himself came in a golden shower Down to the earth to fetch fair Io thence; If Venus in the curled locks was tied Of proud Adonis not of gentle kind; If Tellus for a shepherd's favour died, The favour cruel Love to her assigned; If Heaven's winged herald Hermes had His heart enchanted with a country maid; If poor Pygmalion was for beauty mad; If gods and men have all for beauty strayed: I am not then ashamed to be included 'Mongst those that love, and be ...
— Elizabethan Sonnet Cycles - Idea, by Michael Drayton; Fidessa, by Bartholomew Griffin; Chloris, by William Smith • Michael Drayton, Bartholomew Griffin, and William Smith

... conqueror of the world swings in a galop on his lion to Olympus, singing to his {404} lyre in praise of Love, the Conqueror, to whom men and Gods bow. Olympus appears beyond the clouds. There the Gods are assembled in council to decide the fate of Odysseus. Athene and Hermes plead for the sorely-tried hero. Zeus answers that the immortal Gods know and have determined every step of man's life. He gives his sanction to Athene and Hermes to watch over and defend Odysseus. Again clouds hide the ...
— The Standard Operaglass - Detailed Plots of One Hundred and Fifty-one Celebrated Operas • Charles Annesley

... ideal up and to take as her ideal thousands of great and small Napoleons and Bismarcks, and Goethes and Spencers, or Medics and Cromwells or Kaisers and Kings—no, in the latter case it would be much nicer for the Church to point out the saintly men outside of Christian walls, like St Hermes and St Pythagoras, or St Krishna and St Buddha, or St Lao-Tse and St Confucius, or St Zoroaster and St Abu-Bekr. Better even is unbaptised ...
— The Agony of the Church (1917) • Nikolaj Velimirovic

... PHILIP and to remember more interesting matters.] I fancied Hermes would come in an easy winner. He came in nowhere. Nonpareil was ridden by Henslow—he's a rotten bad rider. He ...
— Representative Plays by American Dramatists: 1856-1911: The New York Idea • Langdon Mitchell

... animal was often mixed with the seed corn or buried in the fields to promote fertility. The swine had been a sacred animal among the Celts, but had apparently become an anthropomorphic god of fertility, Moccus, assimilated to Mercury, perhaps because the Greek Hermes caused fertility in flocks and herds. Such a god was one of a class whose importance was great among the Celts as an ...
— The Religion of the Ancient Celts • J. A. MacCulloch

... of youths, who is the incarnation of spring or the return of life, and lies at the back of so many of the most gracious shapes of the classical pantheon. The Kouros appears as Dionysus, as Apollo, as Hermes, as Ares: in our clearest and most detailed piece of evidence he actually appears with the characteristic history ...
— Five Stages of Greek Religion • Gilbert Murray

... him and said nothing: but he watched him. And no doubt the spirit of Antoinette was hovering near Olivier that night: for Christophe saw her in Olivier's eyes: and it was her image, so suddenly evoked, that made him cross the room and go towards the unknown messenger, who, like a young Hermes, brought him the melancholy greeting of the ...
— Jean Christophe: In Paris - The Market-Place, Antoinette, The House • Romain Rolland

... Greeks, which had a convex back of tortoiseshell or of wood shaped like the shell. The word chelys was used in allusion to the oldest lyre of the Greeks which was said to have been invented by Hermes. According to tradition he was attracted by sounds of music while walking on the banks of the Nile, and found they proceeded from the shell of a tortoise across which were stretched tendons which the wind had set in vibration (Homeric Hymn to Hermes, 47-51). The word has been applied arbitrarily ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 1 - "Chtelet" to "Chicago" • Various

... wreaths which his fellow-artists presented to him by hands no less distinguished than those of the great sculptor Protogenes, and Nicias, the most admired artist after the death of Apelles, seemed, like the wings on the hat and shoes of Hermes, messenger of the gods, to raise him out of himself and into ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers

... Well met, Olympia: I sought thee in my tent, But, when I saw the place obscure and dark, Which with thy beauty thou wast wont to light, Enrag'd, I ran about the fields for thee, Supposing amorous Jove had sent his son, The winged Hermes, to convey thee hence; But now I find thee, and that fear is past, Tell me, Olympia, wilt thou ...
— Tamburlaine the Great, Part II. • Christopher Marlowe

... spake unto him erst Myself, and sent Hermes the shining One, to check and warn him, The husband not to ...
— The Golden Sayings of Epictetus • Epictetus

... the god Hermes, were blocks of marble about the height of the human figure. The upper part was cut into a head, face, neck, and bust; the lower part was left as a quadrangular pillar, broad at the base, without arms, body, ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Vol. V (of X) - Great Britain and Ireland III • Various

... Vandyck found in England what they have given us. They brought their types with them, and Life with her keen imitative faculty set herself to supply the master with models. The Greeks, with their quick artistic instinct, understood this, and set in the bride's chamber the statue of Hermes or of Apollo, that she might bear children as lovely as the works of art that she looked at in her rapture or her pain. They knew that Life gains from art not merely spirituality, depth of thought and feeling, soul-turmoil or soul-peace, but ...
— Selected Prose of Oscar Wilde - with a Preface by Robert Ross • Oscar Wilde

... those slamming doors I lost the last half dist—(hic!) Mos' bu'ful se'ments! what's the Chor's? My voice shall not be missed—(hic!)" His words woke Hermes; "Ah!" he said, "I so love moral theses!" Then winked at Hebe, who turned red, And smoothed her ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I, No. 1, Nov. 1857 • Various

... Hermes obeys; with golden pinions binds His flying feet, and mounts the western winds: And, whether o'er the seas or earth he flies, With rapid force they bear him down the skies. But first he grasps within his awful hand The mark of sov'reign pow'r, his magic wand; With this he draws the ghosts ...
— The Aeneid • Virgil

... Dardanelles, has been destroyed by the fire of the Turkish shore guns; British trawler Agantha is sunk by a German submarine off Longstone, the crew being subjected to rifle fire from the submarine while taking to the boats; German submarine U-31 sinks British steamer Olivine and Russian bark Hermes, the crews being saved; German Baltic fleet, returning from bombardment of Libau, is cut off from its base by German mines, which have gone adrift in large ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 3, June, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various

... Athens, at the corners of streets, in the market place, before temples, gymnasia, and other public places, stood Hermae, or statues of the god Hermes, consisting of a bust of that deity surmounting a quadrangular pillar of marble about the height of the human figure. When the Athenians rose one morning towards the end of May, 415 B.C., it was ...
— A Smaller History of Greece • William Smith

... made him, delineating his paunch in that one soft summary curve, and echoing it in the curve of the wine-skin that swells around him. Himself, as a living man, were too loathsome for words; but here, thanks to Hokusai, he is not less admirable than Pheidias' Hermes, or the Discobolus himself. Yes! Swathed in his abominable surplusage of bulk, he is as fair as any statue of astricted god or athlete that would suffer ...
— Yet Again • Max Beerbohm

... He ends his letter: "Quod superius est sicut quod inferius" ("that which is above is as that which is below"), as the Smaragdine Tablet of Hermes Trismegistus testifies, and it is my belief that this is a world battle in the sense which we do not appreciate. There have been some who have held that the earthly conflict is but a reflection of the war in heaven. What if it be reflected infinitely, if it penetrate to ...
— The Haunters & The Haunted - Ghost Stories And Tales Of The Supernatural • Various

... gone much further in deifying humanity than in humanising divinity. The Hermes of Olympia is a man made into a god; no Christian artist has ever done a tenth as well in presenting the image of God made Man. When imagination soars towards an invisible world it loses love of life ...
— Fair Margaret - A Portrait • Francis Marion Crawford

... unsightly root, But of divine effect. Unknown, and like esteem'd, and the dull swain Treads on it daily with his clouted shoon; And yet more med'cinal is it than that moly That Hermes once to wise Ulysses gave; He call'd it haemony, and gave it me, And bade me keep it as of sovran use 'Gainst all enchantments, mildew, blast, or damp, Or ghastly furies' apparition. And now I find it true; for by this means I knew the foul enchantress, though disguised, Enter'd the very ...
— Bunyan Characters (Second Series) • Alexander Whyte



Words linked to "Hermes" :   Greek mythology, Greek deity



Copyright © 2024 Dictionary One.com