"Hydra" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... on the list," answered the seaman, with decision. "There's the Hydra, a harbor defense turret-ship, but she never leaves ...
— Beyond the City • Arthur Conan Doyle
... admirable work, which are to be found in the journals. If he had read it himself and examined it properly, he would have provided us with a good opportunity of throwing light on many difficulties, which spring again and again like the head of the hydra, in a matter where it is easy to become confused when one has not seen the whole system or does not take the trouble to reason according to a strict plan. For strictness of reasoning performs in subjects that ...
— Theodicy - Essays on the Goodness of God, the Freedom of Man and the Origin of Evil • G. W. Leibniz
... the sword, the men To wield them in their terrible array,— The army, like a lion from his den, Marched forth with nerve and sinews bent to slay,— A human Hydra, issuing from its fen To breathe destruction on its winding way, Whose heads were heroes, which cut off in vain Immediately ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 6 • Lord Byron
... the pursuit of gold went on, more frenzied than ever, and still the greater and richer claims were struck. The price of gold soared and the commodities of life were almost beyond the dreams of avarice. It was a tune in which the worst of men's natures stalked forth, hydra-headed and deaf, roaring for gold, spitting fire, and shedding blood. It was a time when gold and fire and blood were one. It was a tune when a horde of men from every class and nation, of all ages and characters, met on a field were motives and ambitions and faiths and traits ...
— The Border Legion • Zane Grey
... cutting off three of his heads. The fortune of Sidonius far exceeded the customary wealth of a poet; but if he had pursued the allusion, he might have painted many of the Gallic nobles with the hundred heads of the deadly Hydra, spreading over the face of the country, and devouring the substance of a hundred families. II. The difficulty of allowing an annual sum of about nine pounds sterling, even for the average of the capitation of ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 2 • Edward Gibbon
... good of each being' that it spares, and causing 'all corporal and mental endowments to tend towards perfection'? or who need mind suspecting himself to be descended, through an ape, from a triton or a hydra, if he may compensate himself by hoping to have a distant posterity of angels? How well, moreover, would it, if permitted, chime in with any rational religion, besides being, as already hinted, absolutely essential to that part of the Mosaic creed which represents all the variously coloured and ...
— Old-Fashioned Ethics and Common-Sense Metaphysics - With Some of Their Applications • William Thomas Thornton
... best understand the nature of gossip and slander, if the victims of both, will take no notice of the former, but will allow no slander of themselves to go unrefuted during their lifetime, to spring up in a hydra-headed attack upon their children. No woman can be too sensitive as to any charges affecting her moral character, whether in the influence of her companionship, or in the ...
— Our Deportment - Or the Manners, Conduct and Dress of the Most Refined Society • John H. Young
... his editions of the classics, was a man of liberal views and considerable learning, and in his private room were to be found many prohibited volumes, such as Beccaria's Crime and Punishment, Gravina's Hydra Mystica, Concini's History of Probabilism and the Amsterdam editions of ...
— The Valley of Decision • Edith Wharton
... discontents, and the unknown future is pregnant with possibilities of good and the alternative of unimaginable evil. All perceive that something must be done to direct the plunging course of this hydra-headed democracy which, as its onrush is in any case irresistible, may at any moment deviate from the path and fling itself headlong to perdition. When the guns are firing and the battle is joined and the cries of the wounded fill the air, there are not many who can ...
— Personality in Literature • Rolfe Arnold Scott-James
... but he is one of three, Harmachis. Now that Cassius hath gone where all fools go, Rome has thrown out a hydra head. Crush one, and another hisses in thy face. There's Lepidus, and with him, that young Octavianus, whose cold eyes may yet with a smile of triumph look on the murdered forms of empty, worthless Lepidus, of Antony, and of Cleopatra. If ...
— Cleopatra • H. Rider Haggard
... mourn, My joys but shadows, touch of truth my anguish, Griefs ever springing, comforts never born; And still expecting when she will relent, Grown hoarse with crying, "mercy, mercy give," So many vows and prayers having spent That weary of my life I loathe to live; And yet the hydra of my cares renews Still new-born sorrows of her fresh disdain; And still my hope the summer winds pursues, Finding no end nor period of my pain; This is my state, my griefs do touch so nearly, And thus I live because I ...
— Elizabethan Sonnet-Cycles - Delia - Diana • Samuel Daniel and Henry Constable
... form of association which, however faulty in other respects, was successful in excluding feudalism from the principal centres of urban industry. In the larger states, whether kingdoms or not, the rulers, supported by the Church and the commons, bestirred themselves to slay the many-headed Hydra. Feudalism was not extirpated, but it was brought under the law. In many districts it defied repression. To the end of the Middle Ages the Knights of Suabia and the Rhineland maintained the predatory traditions of the Dark Ages; and everywhere feudalism remained a force inimical to national ...
— Medieval Europe • H. W. C. Davis
... was gone the old trembling came again to Democrates. He had Bias light all the lamps. The room seemed full of lurking goblins,—harpies, gorgons, the Hydra, the Minotaur, every other foul and noxious shape was waiting to spring forth. And, most maddening of all, the chorus of AEschylus, that Song of the Furies Democrates had heard recited at the Isthmus, rang ...
— A Victor of Salamis • William Stearns Davis
... the microscope, sticking to a piece of weed (fig. 2). At the top end of the stalk is the mouth, and if you watch carefully you may be fortunate enough to see the long arms catch a water-flea, and carry it towards the mouth. This creature is known as the hydra. In some cases you will see two or even three of these creatures all attached to the same stalk, and if you watch every day, you will at last find that sooner or later this partnership is dissolved, so that the branched hydra has split up into a number of separate individuals—just ...
— Chatterbox, 1906 • Various
... to the belly of a hydra, hung over ocean, and in places its lividity adhered to the waves. Some of these adherences resembled pouches with holes, pumping the sea, disgorging vapour, and refilling themselves with water. Here and there these suctions drew up cones of foam ...
— The Man Who Laughs • Victor Hugo
... and utter change of constitution: and that "they do but lose their labour who think that by any tricks of law they can get the better of these mischiefs of commerce, and see not that they hew at a Hydra." ...
— The Crown of Wild Olive • John Ruskin
... time we find Hydra, as Byron pleasantly called his mother, rushing to the village apothecary and warning that worthy not to sell poison to the poet; and a few moments after her leaving, the astonished apothecary was visited by the poet, who begged that no poison should be sold to his mother. ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 5 (of 14) • Elbert Hubbard
... judgment, had reached out into the void and linked himself to Whitaker—to Brian, to Garry—and his barbs stung. That terror of misgiving, lulled into quietude here in the peace and charm of his life with Joan, stirred within him hydra-headed and drove the color from his face. Then he blazed ...
— Kenny • Leona Dalrymple
... his life to accomplish it, and amid great discouragements. Of his fifty-three expeditions, eighteen were against the Saxons. As soon as he had cut off one head of the monster, another head appeared. How allegorical of human labor is that old fable of the Hydra! Where do man's labors cease? Charlemagne fought not only amid great difficulties, but perpetual irritations. The Saxons cheated him; they broke their promises and their oaths. When beaten, they sued for peace; but the moment his back was turned, they broke out in new insurrections. ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume V • John Lord
... Idomeneus, Ulysses, or others of that sort. These were the ways of our day, so far as the young fellows were concerned, at least: for never, to quote the expression that occurs in the account of Kaulbach's frescoes on the outer walls of the Pinacothek at Munich, never did the hydra of "wiggery" (perruquinisme) erect its heads more fiercely, and no doubt the Classicists called their ...
— My Private Menagerie - from The Works of Theophile Gautier Volume 19 • Theophile Gautier
... entitled Scriptum Domini Protectoris, &c. (Milton's?), and with vehement expressions of his Highness's personal abhorrence of Spain and her policy. He represented her and her allies and dependents as the anti-English and anti-Christian Hydra of the world, while France, though Roman Catholic too, stood apart from all the other Catholic powers in not being under the Pope's lash and so able to be fair and reasonable. He urged the most energetic prosecution of the war that had been ...
— The Life of John Milton, Volume 5 (of 7), 1654-1660 • David Masson
... to disintegrate the whole nation, and unless it were firmly dealt with would probably split up the Makolo into a number of petty tribes, at enmity with each other, and an easy prey to those other nations who surrounded them. Would the king have the courage boldly to seize the hydra-headed menace and choke the life out of it, or would he resort to a policy of temporising and concession? Everybody present awaited the king's action in breathless suspense, while some were already grimly counting the number of spears ...
— The Adventures of Dick Maitland - A Tale of Unknown Africa • Harry Collingwood
... contemned gossip, was giving it ready ear. Had she ever found gossip other than an errant, cowardly liar? Gossip, gossip! Ah, if gossip, when she had made her round, would not leave suspicion behind her; suspicion, hydra-headed! What signified it that Warrington intended to come home to live? What signified it that her brother's wife would live across the way? She was ashamed of her evil thought; presently she would be no better than ...
— Half a Rogue • Harold MacGrath
... working at in my orchids is an admirable illustration of the law. I should certainly conclude that all sexuality had descended from one prototype. Do you not underrate the degree of lowness of organisation in which sexuality occurs—viz., in Hydra, and still lower in some of the one-celled free confervae which "conjugate," which good judges (Thwaites) believe is the simplest form of true sexual generation? (130/1. See Letter 97.) But the whole ...
— More Letters of Charles Darwin - Volume I (of II) • Charles Darwin
... only executed my orders, and I made you the jailer of the infante! Who was it, then, that urged me to do this? Who was it that told me it was indispensable for me to crush the head of this Spanish hydra? Who wished even to persuade me to more energetic measures than imprisonment, in order to get rid of the royal family of Spain? Who told me at that time that it would be wiser and better for the welfare of Europe ...
— NAPOLEON AND BLUCHER • L. Muhlbach
... Crowd us and crush us to this monstrous form To hold our safety up. I sent your grace The parcels and particulars of our grief, The which hath been with scorn shoved from the court, Whereon this Hydra son of war is born; Whose dangerous eyes may well be charm'd asleep With grant of our most just and right desires, And true obedience, of this madness cured, Stoop tamely to the foot ...
— King Henry IV, Second Part • William Shakespeare [Chiswick edition]
... of riddles—often very ingenious as become the possessors of "Attic salt." Another diversion is to compare every guest present to some mythical monster, a process which infallibly ends by getting the "Parasite" likened to Cerberus, the Hydra, or some such dragon, amid the laughter of all the rest. At some point in the amusement the company is sure to get to singing songs:—"Scolia"—drinking songs indeed, but often of a serious moral or poetic character, whereof the oft-quoted song in ...
— A Day In Old Athens • William Stearns Davis
... Siebold thirty years since, but only recently "ascertained as proved"—that these minute creatures are one-celled, and that in the case of these infusoria one single cell is capable of all the various vital functions—including soul-functions—which in the zoophytes (plant-animals), as the hydra and the sponges, are distributed among the cells of the two germ-layers, and in all the higher animals among the different tissues, organs, and apparatus of a highly developed and constructed organism. The psychic functions of sensation and voluntary motion, which are here distributed to such very ...
— Freedom in Science and Teaching. - from the German of Ernst Haeckel • Ernst Haeckel
... seems to have no inconsiderable portion of the paternal penchant for broken heads and other similar divertisements, in three weeks from the receipt of the letter found himself on board the Hydra, and rapidly approaching the classic shores of Sidon, Tyre, Ptolemais; the scenes of scriptural records and deeds of chivalry—Palestine—the Holy Land. But the broad pendant in the mean time had been pulled down on Mount Lebanon, and once more fluttered ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXVI. October, 1843. Vol. LIV. • Various
... too seriously, considering the circumstances. I've told you my plans for the Emperor's future. Princesses are women, and gossip is hydra-headed. When the lady hears—she who has been allowed to understand that the Emperor of Rhaetia only waits for a suitable opportunity of formally asking for her hand—for she will surely hear, that he has seized this very ...
— The Princess Virginia • C. N. Williamson
... pronounced, Tisiphone scourges the doomed one with a whip of scorpions, and then consigns him to the fierce attendants of her sister Furies. Immediately the gates, creaking on their hinges, fly open. Within, the entrance is guarded by a hideous Hydra, with fifty black and gaping mouths. In the pit of Tartarus beyond, the giants who waged war against the ruler of the Gods lie prostrated by his thunderbolts. Beside them, enduring terrible tortures, is Salmoneus. He was a king of Elis in Greece, and was so puffed up by pride that he rode through ...
— The Children's Hour, Volume 3 (of 10) • Various
... bought Hydra House we all hoped that beyond papering and painting, dabbing on a bit of plaster where it was needed, and grubbing the groundsel in the drive, he would allow it to remain in the state of old-world picturesqueness in which he had found it. We would not ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, June 3, 1914 • Various
... that you never know where ignorance lurks. The hydra-headed upas tree and bete noir of self-acting progress, is such ignorance as that, lurking in the very shadow of magnificent educational institutions and hard words of great cast. Nothing can be more disagreeable to the scientist than a bete noir. Nothing gives him greater ...
— Remarks • Bill Nye
... Jenny told them who was who. Money was always at command, And tripped with pleasure hand in hand. Money was equipage, was show, Gallini's, Almack's, and Soho; The passe-partout through every vein Of dissipation's hydra reign. ...
— Specimens with Memoirs of the Less-known British Poets, Complete • George Gilfillan
... was to destroy a hydra or water snake which dwelt in the marsh of Lerna, a small lake near Mycenae. The body of this snake was large and from its body sprang nine heads. Eight of these heads were mortal, but the ninth head ...
— Heroes Every Child Should Know • Hamilton Wright Mabie
... great enemy of reason, virtue, and religion, the multitude; that numerous piece of monstrosity, which, taken asunder, seem men, and the reasonable creatures of God, but, confused together, make but one great beast, and a monstrosity more prodigious than Hydra. It is no breach of charity to call these Fools; it is the style all holy writers have afforded them, set down by Solomon in canonical scripture, and a point of our faith to believe so. Neither in the name of multitude do ...
— A Book of English Prose - Part II, Arranged for Secondary and High Schools • Percy Lubbock
... Crest-fallen, unembraced I now let fall Listless, those hands that lately conquer'd all; When the Nemaean lion own'd their force, And he indignant fell a breathless corse: The serpent slew, of the Lernean lake, As did the Hydra of its force partake: By this, too, fell the Erymanthian boar: E'en Cerberus did his weak strength deplore. This sinewy arm did overcome with ease That dragon, guardian of the golden fleece. My many conquests let some others trace; It's mine ...
— The Academic Questions • M. T. Cicero
... man of sense, Rejoin'd, 'I am aware What power your emperor's servants share. It brings to mind a tale both strange and true, A thing which once, myself, I chanced to view. I saw come darting through a hedge, Which fortified a rocky ledge, A hydra's hundred heads; and in a trice My blood was turning into ice. But less the harm than terror,— The body came no nearer; Nor could, unless it had been sunder'd, To parts at least a hundred. While musing ...
— The Fables of La Fontaine - A New Edition, With Notes • Jean de La Fontaine
... discretion necessary for their guidance, became licentious and turbulent, and the whole kingdom presented a scene of riot and disorder which there were no laws to repress. And now was hatched that political hydra, the Jacobin faction, which no Frenchman will ever be able to ...
— Celebration in Baltimore of the Triumph of Liberty in France • William Wirt
... to the main street of Linrock and to that section where violence brooded, ready at any chance moment to lift its hydra head. For that time of day the street seemed unusually quiet. Few pedestrians were abroad and few loungers. There was a row of saddled horses on each side of the street, the full extent of ...
— The Rustlers of Pecos County • Zane Grey
... rise up against her, and that hydra-headed tyrant Remorse. She closed her eyes to shut out the hideous vision of her crime; she tried to forget this home which her treachery ...
— I Will Repay • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... us afraid of socialism, we who have anything to lose; and yet we let the syndics, and their secretaries, conciliators, and chancellors sow it broadcast in dragon's teeth of petty injustices and petty cruelties, that soon or late will spring up armed men, hydra-headed and torch in hand! ...
— Wisdom, Wit, and Pathos of Ouida - Selected from the Works of Ouida • Ouida
... to bombard Beyrout; the bombardment of Algiers had shown what could be done against stone walls. A new power was now introduced into naval warfare—a considerable number of steam-ships being among the fleet. They were the Gorgon, Cyclops, Vesuvius, Hydra, Phoenix, and Confiance. At that time little confidence was placed in them as vessels of war, though it was acknowledged that they might prove useful in towing line-of-battle ships into action, or in acting as despatch-boats, or as transports for throwing troops ...
— How Britannia Came to Rule the Waves - Updated to 1900 • W.H.G. Kingston
... through the twelve signs of the zodiac; but if this be the case, it is certain that such construction was relatively late, and that the separate adventures must be referred to some more simple facts. If Heracles slays the Hydra, it is more natural to regard this as having represented originally some mundane phenomenon of nature or some simple conflict of the savage life. The same thing is probably true of the adventures ...
— Introduction to the History of Religions - Handbooks on the History of Religions, Volume IV • Crawford Howell Toy
... the eighteenth century, detailing the great struggle through which the slavery problem passed. I have given as fair an idea of the debate on this question, in the convention that framed the Constitution, as possible. It was then and there that the hydra of slavery struck its fangs into the Constitution; and, once inoculated with the poison of the monster, the government was only able to purify itself in the flames of a ...
— History of the Negro Race in America From 1619 to 1880. Vol 1 - Negroes as Slaves, as Soldiers, and as Citizens • George W. Williams
... hundred years; that the Badger had the legs of one side shorter than those of the other; that the Chameleon lived entirely on air, and the Salamander in fire; whilst the sphynx, satyr, unicorn, centaur, hypogriff, hydra, dragon, griffin, cockatrice, &c. &c. &c. were either the creations of fancy, or fabled accounts of creatures of whose real form, origin, nature, and qualities, but the most imperfect ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 19. Issue 539 - 24 Mar 1832 • Various
... minds there seems always to lurk some remains of Pelagianism, a hydra from which though bruised and crushed by the Church—the pillar and bulwark of the Truth—new heads ...
— The Spirit of St. Francis de Sales • Jean Pierre Camus
... eidos, form). The sub-class of the Hydrozoa, which comprises the animals most nearly allied to the Hydra. ...
— The Ancient Life History of the Earth • Henry Alleyne Nicholson
... labor was his conquest of the Lernaean hydra, a formidable serpent or monster which harbored in the fens of Lerna, and infected the region of Argos with his poisonous exhalations. This seems to have been one of the most difficult tasks in which Hercules was ever engaged. The number of heads assigned the ...
— Roman Antiquities, and Ancient Mythology - For Classical Schools (2nd ed) • Charles K. Dillaway
... to General Grant's re-election was hydra-headed, and no less than seven candidates were in the field against him. The contest of 1824 had been called "the scrub-race for the Presidency," and to that of 1872 was given the name of "Go as you please." ...
— Perley's Reminiscences, Vol. 1-2 - of Sixty Years in the National Metropolis • Benjamin Perley Poore
... mother; "your mind is chaos. I tell you there are giants to be fought, hydra-headed ones—the giants of ignorance, of wickedness, of injustice, and they call for a sharper, keener sword than that wielded by ...
— The Coquette's Victim • Charlotte M. Braeme
... flares and torches burn, A Soldan from green earth is hung; His heartless queen is cursed, forsworn, Their souls house neither hope nor love Within Damnation's burning urn. Repress'd with hate and unspent rage As charnel howls clash in each hall, Each gyving hydra rends the air With curses, hawps as rambling souls, Lured by a grizzled warrior sage, Storm moats before each bristling wall And die as imps are bade to swear— Infernal trophies of these shoals! Immingled dreams their senses storm As Westward shadows cloak each ...
— Betelguese - A Trip Through Hell • Jean Louis de Esque
... is never again to go into the woods alone. All the forest looks alike to those who don't know it, and you're lost in a minute. Besides, it's filled with strange and terrible creatures, Robin Hood—that's me, though I have some redeeming qualities—the Erymanthean boar, the Hydra-headed monster, Medusa of the snaky locks, Cyclops, Polyphemus with one awful eye, the deceitful Sirens, the Old Man of the Mountain, Wodin and Osiris, and, last and most terrible of all, ...
— The Shades of the Wilderness • Joseph A. Altsheler
... of them Upis; and styles her, and her associates, [Greek: Koras] [384][Greek: Huperboreous], Hyperborean young women. The Hyperboreans, Alazonians, Arimaspians, were Scythic nations of the same family. All the stories about Prometheus, Chimaera, Medusa, Pegasus, Hydra, as well as of the Grupes, or Gryphons, arose, in great measure, from the sacred devices upon ...
— A New System; or, an Analysis of Antient Mythology. Volume II. (of VI.) • Jacob Bryant
... become a Free State, the leaders of the Southern rebellion will feel that they have received a mortal blow. Especially will this be the case in Arkansas, Louisiana, Texas, Tennessee, Mississippi, and Alabama. We shall have cut the gordian knot of slavery, and the death agonies of the hydra would soon be visible. The importance of the result would be felt in the North also, and the wretched traitors there, far more guilty even than those of the South, will shrink from their atrocious conspiracy to dissolve this Union. ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol 3 No 3, March 1863 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... are thy voluptuous ways! While boyish blood is mantling, who can 'scape The fascination of thy magic gaze? A Cherub-hydra round us dost thou gape, And mould to every taste, thy dear, delusive ...
— Venus in Boston; - A Romance of City Life • George Thompson
... in arms through Europe rings, And fills all mouths with envy or with praise, And all her jealous monarchs with amaze, And rumours loud that daunt remotest kings, Thy firm unshaken virtue ever brings Victory home, though new rebellions raise Their Hydra-heads, and the false North displays Her broken League to imp their serpent wings: O yet a nobler task awaits thy hand, For what can War but endless war still breed, Till Truth and Right from Violence be freed, And ...
— The Life of John Milton Vol. 3 1643-1649 • David Masson
... the blood of Hydra, Lerna's bane, The juice of Hebon, and Cocytus breath, And all the poison of the ...
— The plant-lore & garden-craft of Shakespeare • Henry Nicholson Ellacombe
... rim, is scavenging the water—till a tadpole comes by and scavenges it. How many millions of living creatures are there on that one sprig? Look here!—a brown polype, with long waving arms—a gigantic monster, actually a full half-inch long. He is Hydra fusca, most famous, and earliest described (I think by Trembley). Ere we go home I may show you perhaps Hydra viridis, with long pea-green arms; and rosea, most beautiful in form and colour of all the strange family. You see that lump, just where his stalk joins his bell-head? ...
— Prose Idylls • Charles Kingsley
... destroy faction, and that he could face and dare the greatest and proudest connexions. But this was an Herculean task which neither Chatham nor any other minister has yet been able to accomplish. Faction is an hydra-headed monster, which no man can destroy, either by the charms of his eloquence or ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... eighteenth-century plays such as Fielding's The Author's Farce—the play appears to be writing itself on the stage. He displays all the tricks of satire—exaggeratedly ironic praise, allegorical names (Miss Giggle, Miss Brilliant, Miss Bashfull), stock characters of satire (Pasquin, Marforio, Hydra, Drawcansir), lists of offenses, parodies of polite conversation reminiscent of Swift, and constant topical references: to the Robin Hood Society to which little Bob Smart belongs; to Mother Midnight; to playwrights (Fielding, ...
— The Covent Garden Theatre, or Pasquin Turn'd Drawcansir • Charles Macklin
... Gemini, Cancer, and Leo, and their neighbors Auriga, the Lynx, Hydra, Sextans, and ...
— Pleasures of the telescope • Garrett Serviss
... in dying by the arrow of Heracles, which had been dipped in the venom of the Hydra, persuaded the bride Deanira, whose beauty was the cause of his death, to keep some of the blood from the wound as a love-charm for her husband. Many years afterwards, when Heracles was returning from ...
— The Seven Plays in English Verse • Sophocles
... moles, nor beaked worms return, That mining pass the irremeable bourn.— Fierce in dread silence on the blasted heath Fell UPAS sits, the HYDRA-TREE of death. Lo! from one root, the envenom'd soil below, 240 A thousand vegetative serpents grow; In shining rays the scaly monster spreads O'er ten square leagues his far-diverging heads; Or in one trunk ...
— The Botanic Garden. Part II. - Containing The Loves of the Plants. A Poem. - With Philosophical Notes. • Erasmus Darwin
... surprised to see Turks and Greeks playing newsboy right here in the mysterious land where the giants and genii of the Arabian Nights once dwelt—where winged horses and hydra-headed dragons guarded enchanted castles—where Princes and Princesses flew through the air on carpets that obeyed a mystic talisman—where cities whose houses were made of precious stones sprang up in a night under the hand of the magician, and where busy ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... hydra-head Theology appears To shatter dreams and chill her heart with nameless fears, For Sage and Seer spare not in sharp dissection, 'Till poor Puff, alas! no ...
— Katherine's Sheaves • Mrs. Georgie Sheldon
... the number. The mere necessity of uniformity in the interpretation of the national laws, decides the question. Thirteen independent courts of final jurisdiction over the same causes, arising upon the same laws, is a hydra in government, from which nothing but contradiction and confusion can proceed. Still less need be said in regard to the third point. Controversies between the nation and its members or citizens, can only be properly referred ...
— The Federalist Papers
... agony, old age Shivers in selfish beauty's loathing arms, And youth's corrupted impulses prepare A life of horror from the blighting bane Of commerce, whilst the pestilence that springs From unenjoying sensualism, has filled All human life with hydra-headed woes?" ...
— Percy Bysshe Shelley as a Philosopher and Reformer • Charles Sotheran
... bobbing head With evil eyes, slack lips, and nightmare teeth, And duck beneath the snaky, squirming neck, Pranked with its silly string of bright blue beads, That seemed to wriggle every way at once, As though it were a hydra. Allah's beard! But I was scared, and nearly turned and ran: I felt that muzzle take me by the scruff, And heard those murderous teeth crunching my spine, Before I stooped—though I dodged safely under. I've always been afraid of ugliness. ...
— Georgian Poetry 1913-15 • Edited by E. M. (Sir Edward Howard Marsh)
... hound of Geryones, and then again she bare a second, a monster not to be overcome and that may not be described, Cerberus who eats raw flesh, the brazen-voiced hound of Hades, fifty-headed, relentless and strong. And again she bore a third, the evil-minded Hydra of Lerna, whom the goddess, white-armed Hera nourished, being angry beyond measure with the mighty Heracles. And her Heracles, the son of Zeus, of the house of Amphitryon, together with warlike Iolaus, ...
— Hesiod, The Homeric Hymns, and Homerica • Homer and Hesiod
... original models. Before, however, it can be accepted by the general public as giving an unexaggerated picture of a certain sort of stage-life, it ought to have the imprimatur or the nihil obstat of some generally acknowledged head of the profession; for "the profession" is Hydra-like in this respect—a republican creation, with many heads. THE BARON ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 100. February 14, 1891. • Various
... never for one moment pursued? What hypocrisy or self-deception enabled you to clothe your statements of fact in a moral aura, and to blind yourselves and the world to the truth that you were killing a domesticated dragon who guarded the cave of a devouring hydra, whom you benevolently loosed? Why did you not see that the end of all your devotion was to shift man's responsibility for himself from his shoulders? Do you, because you clothed yourselves in the shreds of a moral respectability which you had not the time (or was it the courage?) to analyse, ...
— Aspects of Literature • J. Middleton Murry
... France, Hear me! Beneath the vengeance of the law Traitors have perish'd countless; more survive: The hydra-headed faction lifts anew Her daring front, and fruitful from her wounds, 85 Cautious from past defects, contrives new wiles Against ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... critic: which is, to travel through this vast world of writings; to peruse and hunt those monstrous faults bred within them; to drag out the lurking errors, like Cacus from his den; to multiply them like Hydra's heads; and rake them together like Augeas's dung; or else to drive away a sort of dangerous fowl who have a perverse inclination to plunder the best branches of the tree of knowledge, like those Stymphalian birds that ate up ...
— A Tale of a Tub • Jonathan Swift
... is carried on by the inhabitants of Hydra, a barren island. The commerce of the Hydriots, as well as of the rest of Greece, was very much benefited by the scarcity of corn which prevailed in France in 1796, and subsequently by the attempts of Bonaparte to shut British ...
— Robert Kerr's General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 18 • William Stevenson
... counsellors," he was of opinion it was not on board a man-of-war. Napoleon is reported to have said that one bad general was better than two good ones; meaning that one head to an army, though of inferior quality, is better than a hydra of Solomons, or Cesars. Captain Mull was much of the same way of thinking, seldom troubling his subordinates with anything but orders. He interfered very little with "working Willy," though he saw effectually that he did his duty. "The ship's gentleman" might ...
— Jack Tier or The Florida Reef • James Fenimore Cooper
... success to the full measure of our most sanguine hopes may be looked for. But, if unwise counsels prevail, if we become divided, if schisms arise, if dissensions spring up, if factions are engendered, if party spirit, nourished by unholy personal ambition, shall rear its hydra head, I have no good to prophesy for you. Without intelligence, virtue, integrity, and patriotism on the part of the people, no republic or representative government ...
— American Eloquence, Volume IV. (of 4) - Studies In American Political History (1897) • Various
... ab Ilio Iactata Tuscis aequoribus sacra Natosque maturosque patres Pertulit Ausonias ad urbes, 56 Duris ut ilex tonsa bipennibus Nigrae feraci frondis in Algido, Per damna, per caedes ab ipso Ducit opes animumque ferro 60 Non Hydra secto corpore firmior Vinci dolentem crevit in Herculem, Monstrumve submisere Colchi Maius Echioniaeve Thebae. 64 Merses profundo: pulchrior evenit; Luctere: multa proruet integrum Cum laude victorem geretque Proelia coniugibus ...
— Helps to Latin Translation at Sight • Edmund Luce
... use than petroleum, and but few things are known less about by the majority of persons. It is hydra-headed. It appears in many forms and under many names. "Burning fluid" is a popular name with many unscrupulous dealers in the cheap and nasty. "Burning fluid" is usually another name for naphtha, or something worse. Gasoline, naphtha, benzine, kerosene, paraffine, and many other dangerous fluids ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 288 - July 9, 1881 • Various
... dossier, and, among others, by a "Requete a Desmoulins, procureur-general de la Lanterne." It relates to a "patriotic inkstand," recently made out of the stones of the demolished citadel, representing a hydra with four heads, symbolizing the nobility, the clergy, the ministry and the judges. "It is from the four patriotic skulls of the hydra that the ink of proscription will be taken for the enemies of the Constitution. This inkstand, cut out of the first stone that ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 2 (of 6) - The French Revolution, Volume 1 (of 3) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... hand, and the smooth and gentle benevolence so softly profest on the other, multitudes have been, and you easily may be, destroyed. The mischief has indeed been met, resisted, and overcome; but it has the heads and the lives of the hydra, and its wounds, which at times have seemed deadly, are much more readily healed than any good man could wish, than any sober man could expect. Hope not to escape the assaults of this enemy: To feel that you are in ...
— The world's great sermons, Volume 3 - Massillon to Mason • Grenville Kleiser
... desired him to produce a collection equal to that in the temple of Delphos, mentioned in the "Ion" of Euripides; where Hercules and his companion Iolaus, are represented in the act of killing the Lernaean hydra with golden sickles, kruseais harpais, where Bellerophon appears on his winged steed, vanquishing the fire-breathing chimera, tan puripneousan; and the war of the giants is described. Here Jupiter stands wielding the red-hot thunderbolts, keraunon amphipuron; there Pallas, dreadful to the view, ...
— The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle, Volume I • Tobias Smollett
... with both his hands, he is opening them and rending them asunder by main force, although the beast is tearing his arms grievously with its claws in self-defence. The third picture, wherein Hercules is slaying the Hydra, is something truly marvellous, particularly the serpent, which he made so lively and so natural in colouring that nothing could be made more life-like. In that beast are seen venom, fire, ferocity, rage, and such vivacity, that he deserves to be celebrated and to be closely imitated ...
— Lives of the Most Eminent Painters Sculptors and Architects - Vol. 3 (of 10), Filarete and Simone to Mantegna • Giorgio Vasari
... the bottle in this pond. I will try and catch a few Hydrae. Strange animals, indeed, they are, and strange is their history; but let us catch a few first. Nothing yet in my bottle like a hydra. Ah! now we have one or two. You see a small creature sticking to the stem of a bit of duckweed; around its mouth are five or six little projections. At present they are contracted; but the hydra is able to lengthen them ...
— Country Walks of a Naturalist with His Children • W. Houghton
... avenues. The brothel, the flat, the assignation house, the tenement, saloons, dance halls, steamers, ice-cream parlors, Turkish baths, massage parlors, street-walking—the thing has woven itself into the texture of city life. Like the hydra, it grows new heads, everywhere. It draws into its service the pleasures of the city. Entangled with the love of gaiety, organized as commerce, it is literally impossible to follow the myriad expressions ...
— A Preface to Politics • Walter Lippmann
... peculiar character presented by a compound animal is propagated by budding, as occurs with differently coloured Hydras, and as Mr. Gosse has shown to be the case with a singular variety of a true coral. Varieties of the Hydra have also been grafted on other varieties, and have retained ...
— The Variation of Animals and Plants Under Domestication, Vol. I. • Charles Darwin
... which, strong from Ilion's fires, Its gods, on Tuscan waters tost, Its sons, its venerable sires, Bore to Ausonia's citied coast; That race, like oak by axes shorn On Algidus with dark leaves rife, Laughs carnage, havoc, all to scorn, And draws new spirit from the knife. Not the lopp'd Hydra task'd so sore Alcides, chafing at the foil: No pest so fell was born of yore From Colchian or from Theban soil. Plunged in the deep, it mounts to sight More splendid: grappled, it will quell Unbroken powers, and fight a fight Whose story widow'd wives shall tell. No heralds shall my deeds ...
— Odes and Carmen Saeculare of Horace • Horace
... girls' trade school in any given locality necessitates the meeting of many problems of a serious nature. Some of these appear immediately and require consideration before a satisfactory curriculum can be developed, but most of them are hydra-headed, and one phase is no sooner settled than another arises. Attention must be given to them whenever they come if any progress is to be made in solving the question of the broadest and yet most practical education for the girl who must ...
— The Making of a Trade School • Mary Schenck Woolman
... to be a veritable hydra. From one head sprang many daughters, the Anabaptists, [Sidenote: Anabaptists] harder to deal with than their mother. For while Lutheranism stood essentially for passive obedience, and flourished nowhere save as a state church, Anabaptism was frankly revolutionary and ...
— The Age of the Reformation • Preserved Smith
... labors of Hercules were trifling in comparison with those which my neighbors have undertaken; for they were only twelve, and had an end; but I could never see that these men slew or captured any monster or finished any labor. They have no friend Iolaus to burn with a hot iron the root of the hydra's head, but as soon as one head is ...
— Walden, and On The Duty Of Civil Disobedience • Henry David Thoreau
... fam'd La Mancha's knight, who launce in hand, Mounted his steed to free th' enchanted land, Our Quixote bard sets forth a monster-taming, Arm'd at all points, to fight that hydra—GAMING. Aloft on Pegasus he waves his pen, And hurls defiance at the caitiff's den. The First on fancy'd giants spent his rage, But This has more than windmills to engage: He combats passion, rooted in the soul, Whose pow'rs, at once delight ye, and controul; Whose magic bondage ...
— The Gamester (1753) • Edward Moore
... a sermon, a sermon, &c. But I have been ever as desirous to suppress my labours in this kind, as others have been to press and publish theirs. To have written in controversy had been to cut off an hydra's head, [157]Lis litem generat, one begets another, so many duplications, triplications, and swarms of questions. In sacro bello hoc quod stili mucrone agitur, that having once begun, I should never make an end. One ...
— The Anatomy of Melancholy • Democritus Junior
... wealth, her site of ancient days, But Cadiz, rising on the distant coast, Calls forth a sweeter, though ignoble praise. Ah, Vice! how soft are thy voluptuous ways! While boyish blood is mantling, who can 'scape The fascination of thy magic gaze? A cherub-hydra round us dost thou gape, And mould to every taste thy dear ...
— Childe Harold's Pilgrimage • Lord Byron
... no battle lightning flickered along the Southern horizon to sober folk with premonition; but the nightly illumination of the metropolis was becoming tinged with a more sinister reflection where licence had already begun to lift a dozen hydra-heads from certain lurid resorts hitherto limited in number and ...
— Ailsa Paige • Robert W. Chambers
... every kind of iniquity which it existed to put down. It was as if in a hospital which should cure the sick, the doctors, instead of curing disease, should make the sick worse and should make the well sick. How was Roosevelt, equally valiant and honest, to conquer this Hydra? He took the straight way dictated by common sense. First of all, he gained the confidence and respect of his men. He said afterwards, that even at its worst, when he went into office, the majority of the Police wanted to do right; that their instincts were loyal; ...
— Theodore Roosevelt; An Intimate Biography, • William Roscoe Thayer
... as a young palm sways before a breeze, and he caught her in his strenuous, young embrace, and held her firmly against him. Her old terrors wakened, and dreadful, unforgettable things stirred in the darkness, where they had lain hidden, and lifted hydra-heads. She cried out wildly, and strove to thrust him from her, but he held her close. There was a shaking among the tangled growths of bush and cactus high up on the opposite bank, and Lynette realised that Beauvayse's ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves
... stage of growth, common to all Radiates, in which they resemble the Polyps, has been called the Hydra state, in consequence of their resemblance to the fresh-water Hydra to be found in quantities on the under side of Duck-Weed and Lily-pads. For any one that cares to examine these animals, it may be well to mention that they are easily found and thrive well in confinement. ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 10, Number 59, September, 1862 • Various
... day; but when I spoke, was in a hurry, "going to his ledger," Had I had as many months as hydra, that would ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various
... fact that Catholicism has already a strong hold upon the affairs of this country, as we find the hydra-headed demon in every branch of our government, and since such is the case, it is folly to deny the fact that if Catholicism is what we have shown it to be, that her influence is demoralizing, and the influence of the priesthood of America upon ...
— Thirty Years In Hell - Or, From Darkness to Light • Bernard Fresenborg
... same old hydra seemed to be still alive on earth, lifting, by turns, its separate heads of envy, intolerance, bigotry and greed. Ignorance, robed with authority, ...
— The Crimson Tide • Robert W. Chambers
... formed by transitional gradations of some kind. Numerous cases could be given amongst the lower animals of the same organ performing at the same time wholly distinct functions; thus the alimentary canal respires, digests, and excretes in the larva of the dragon-fly and in the fish Cobites. In the Hydra, the animal may be turned inside out, and the exterior surface will then digest and the stomach respire. In such cases natural selection might easily specialise, if any advantage were thus gained, a part or organ, which had performed two functions, for one function alone, and thus ...
— On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection • Charles Darwin
... Hurrah hura. Hurricane uragano. Hurry rapidi. Hurry (trans.) rapidigi. Hurt (to wound) vundi. Hurt malutili. Hurtful malutila. Husband edzo. Husbandman terkulturisto. Hush silentigi. Husk sxelo. Hussar husaro. Hustle pusxegi. Hut budo. Hutch kesto. Hyacinth hiacinto. Hydra hidro. Hydrogen hidrogeno. Hydropathy akvokuraco. Hydrophobia hidrofobio. Hydrostatic hidrostatika. Hyena hieno. Hygrometer higrometro. Hygrometry higrometrio. Hymn himno. Hyperbole hiperbolo. Hyphen streketo. Hypnotic ...
— English-Esperanto Dictionary • John Charles O'Connor and Charles Frederic Hayes
... one result, the author, gaining his hundreds of thousands of readers, was to free himself forever of the aristocratic Patron, at whose door once on a time, he very humbly and hungrily knelt for favor. To-day, the Patron is hydra-headed; demos rules ...
— Masters of the English Novel - A Study Of Principles And Personalities • Richard Burton
... Hero rushes, With massy club her hundred heads he crushes, In vain. One crush'd, two hissing heads arise, Till good Iolas to each wound applies The burning brand. Dipt in the Hydra's gall, His arrows slightest ...
— The Twelve Labours of Hercules, Son of Jupiter & Alcmena • Anonymous
... days, there was in Greece a monstrous serpent known as the Hydra of Lerna, because it haunted a marsh of that name whence it issued in search of prey. As his second labor, Hercules was sent to ...
— Young Folks Treasury, Volume 2 (of 12) • Various
... progress of the new theories of social equality, and of man's capacity for self-government. But what in the other event? The evils would be legion—countless in number and direful in effect, not to us alone, but to the whole American race. First and foremost is that hydra precedent. We are fighting, not alone for the stability of any particular form of government, not alone for the sustaining of an administration, not alone for the upholding of those God-given ideas which have made America the most ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. III, No. V, May, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... vengeance dread To Egypt's shores pursued; At Trafalgar its hydra-head For ever sunk subdued. The freedom of mankind was won! The hero's glorious task was done! When Heaven, Oppression's ensigns furl'd, Recall'd ...
— Poems (1828) • Thomas Gent
... conquers the realms of his own self-reliance, And the last cry of fear wakes the first of defiance. From the serpent he crushes its poisonous soul; Smitten down in his path see the dead lion roll! On toward Heaven the son of Alcmena strides high on The heads of the Hydra, the spoils of the lion: And man, conquering terror, ...
— Lucile • Owen Meredith
... upper room of the Della Vita Hospital; and marvellous, among other things in that work, is the Jew who leaves his hands fixed to the bier of the Madonna. With the same mixture, also, he made a large Hercules with the dead Hydra under his feet, for the upper room of the Governor in the Palazzo Pubblico of that city; which statue was executed in competition with Zaccaria da Volterra, who was greatly surpassed by the ability and excellence of Alfonso. ...
— Lives of the Most Eminent Painters Sculptors and Architects - Vol. 05 ( of 10) Andrea da Fiesole to Lorenzo Lotto • Giorgio Vasari
... the soul "in a necklace, in a box, in the heart of a boal fish, in a tank"; in Albania "it is in a pigeon, in a hare, in the silver tusk of a wild boar"; in Rome it is "in a stone, in the head of a bird, in the head of a leveret, in the middle head of a seven-headed hydra"; in Russia "it is in an egg, in a duck, in a hare, in a casket, in an oak"; in Servia it is "in a board, in the heart of a fox, in a mountain"; in Transylvania "it is in a light, in an egg, in a duck, in a pond, in a mountain;" in Norway it is "in an ...
— Indian Fairy Tales • Collected by Joseph Jacobs
... ask him for my place again; he shall tell me I am a drunkard. Had I as many mouths as Hydra, such an answer would stop them all. To be now a sensible man, by-and-bye a fool, and presently a ...
— From Wealth to Poverty • Austin Potter
... Reward, I cannot bear to lift my gaze and mark The gloried light of hopeful, high emprise That, like a bird already poised for flight, Has waked within your eyes. For me no proud illusions point the road, No fancied flowers strew the paths of strife: War only wears a horrid, hydra face, Mocking at strength and courage, youth and life. If you were going forth to cross your sword In fair and open, man-to-man affray, One might be even reconciled and say, "This is not murder; only passion bent On pouring out its poison"—one could pray That the day's end might see the ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 2, May, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... we need only conquer heresy on the stage," remarked the young Duc d'Orleans, alluding to a part he had played the night before,—that of a knight subduing a hydra which bore upon its foreheads the ...
— Catherine de' Medici • Honore de Balzac
... so to me. "Coasting along Tasman's Peninsula, what a shock of pleasant wonder must have struck the early mariner on suddenly sighting Cape Pillar, with its cluster of black-ribbed basaltic columns rising to a height of 900 feet, the hydra head wreathed in a turban of fleecy cloud, the base lashed by jealous waves spouting angry fountains ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... the oppressor, but it was of the sort to gain new strength at every fresh persecution. To slay such men was to sow dragon's teeth and to reap a harvest of still more furious fanatics, who, in their turn being destroyed, would multiply as the heads of the Hydra beneath the blows of Heracles. The even rise and fall of those long lines of stalwart Mussulmans seemed like the irrepressible tide of an ocean, which if restrained, would soon break every barrier raised to obstruct it. ...
— Paul Patoff • F. Marion Crawford
... prevent the Enemy from receiving any supplies of provisions by sea, which His LORDSHIP was informed they were very much distressed for: cruizers were stationed off the Capes St. Vincent, St. Mary's, and Trafalgar; and the frigates Euryalus and Hydra were ordered to keep off the entrance of Cadiz. His LORDSHIP now retired with the Fleet to the vicinity of Cape St. Mary's, about fifty or sixty miles westward of Cadiz; keeping up a constant communication with the frigates in shore, by means ...
— The Death of Lord Nelson • William Beatty
... object. But now comes the question, "What will he do with it?" Question with as many heads as the Hydra; and no sooner does an author dispose of one head than ...
— What Will He Do With It, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... head-dress of the ladies. Actaeon, when he contemplated Diana simplicem munditiis, paid a severe penalty in the transformation of his own head; and so, perhaps, we may incur—but never mind; the task, worthy of a Hercules, (for the hydra of female fashion is more than hundred-headed,) must be gone through with, and the scrivano umillimo must push his pen even under the pole of ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 57, No. 352, February 1845 • Various
... hundred-headed hydra, division of labor, and the unconquered dragon, machinery, what will become of humanity? A prophet has said it more than two thousand years ago: Satan looks on his victim, and the fires of war are kindled, Aspexit gentes, et dissolvit. To save us from two scourges, famine and pestilence, Providence ...
— The Philosophy of Misery • Joseph-Pierre Proudhon
... Opposition, whose members gathered there to read their party organ. The gentlemen of the Ayuntamiento feared the barber more than any ten newspapers combined, and whenever some famous Conservative minister referred in parliament to a "revolutionary hydra" or a "hotbed of anarchy," they pictured to themselves a barbershop like that of Cupido, but much larger perhaps, scattering a poisonous atmosphere of cruel gibe and perverse effrontery ...
— The Torrent - Entre Naranjos • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... believe to have been probably the most powerful force in the making of primitive religion. I hope that after this explicit disclaimer I shall no longer be taxed with embracing a system of mythology which I look upon not merely as false but as preposterous and absurd. But I am too familiar with the hydra of error to expect that by lopping off one of the monster's heads I can prevent another, or even the same, from sprouting again. I can only trust to the candour and intelligence of my readers to rectify this serious misconception of ...
— The Golden Bough - A study of magic and religion • Sir James George Frazer
... rebels were subdued. It takes more than one brave effort to split the rock of ages, to cut off the head of that hydra monster, the Catholic Church and the Spanish throne. Arrest, persecution, and punishment followed the heroic attempt of the little band. Those who could escape the bloodhounds had to flee for safety to foreign shores. ...
— Anarchism and Other Essays • Emma Goldman
... but a stripling, he had killed a huge lion, almost as big as the one whose vast and shaggy hide he now wore upon his shoulders. The next thing that he had done was to fight a battle with an ugly sort of monster, called a hydra, which had no less than nine heads, and exceedingly sharp teeth ...
— The Three Golden Apples - (From: "A Wonder-Book For Girls and Boys") • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... structure. By no sort of legerdemain or surgical skill can we make an individual mammal become two. If we divide it, the whole dies. Not so, however, with some of the lower grades of animal existence. Cut a hydra into thirty or forty pieces, and each piece will become a distinct animal—a facsimile of the original one. In quite an analogous way do a large number of animals at the lower end of the scale propagate, ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 3, No. 1 January 1863 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... politics, and the old Tory member, Lord Lyndhurst of Lyndhurst, at whom the Radical party, with the publican of the Green Drake at their head, had shied rotten eggs, would Lady Redmond assure him that the Grange was not infested with serpents. The old hydra-headed reptile had lived there in his father's time, and there was a young brood left, he heard, that were nourished on Margaret's roses. No, he repeated, if there were serpents at the Grange they would not drive there, for he was afraid of Raby, and he hated parsons, for even blind ones could ...
— Wee Wifie • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... phenomenon—even the most trivial incident of common life—from the philosophical point of view, talked day and night about principles, ideas, subjectivity, Weltauffassung, and similar abstract entities, and habitually attacked the "hydra of unphilosophy" by analysing the phenomena presented and relegating the ingredient elements to the recognised categories. In ordinary life they were men of quiet, grave, contemplative demeanour, but their faces could flush and their blood boil when they discussed the all-important ...
— Russia • Donald Mackenzie Wallace
... the bargain thou dost make, When but to buy uncertain good, sure good thou dost forsake? Feel'st thou sufficient strength to brave the deadliest human fray— When Heart from Reason—Sense from Thought, shall rend themselves away? Sufficient valour, war with Doubt, the Hydra-shape, to wage; And that worst Foe within thyself with manly soul engage? With eyes that keep their heavenly health—the innocence of youth To guard from every falsehood, fair beneath the mask of Truth? Fly, if thou can'st not trust thy heart to guide thee on the way— ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 54, No. 334, August 1843 • Various
... patronage to the other journal; it was patent to that journal that the "shekels" of Senator X really animated the spirit of the Fathers. Yet all agreed it was a great and good and perfect government,—subject only to the predatory incursions of a Hydra-headed monster known as a "Ring." The Ring's origin was wrapped in secrecy, its fecundity was alarming; but although its rapacity was preternatural, its digestion was perfect and easy. It circumvolved all affairs in an atmosphere of mystery; it clouded all things ...
— The Story of a Mine • Bret Harte
... Manege? Towards the Tuileries and Swiss: written Order from his Majesty to cease firing! O ye hapless Swiss, why was there no order not to begin it? Gladly would the Swiss cease firing: but who will bid mad Insurrection cease firing? To Insurrection you cannot speak; neither can it, hydra-headed, hear. The dead and dying, by the hundred, lie all around; are borne bleeding through the streets, towards help; the sight of them, like a torch of the Furies, kindling Madness. Patriot Paris roars; as the bear bereaved of her whelps. On, ye Patriots: vengeance! victory ...
— The French Revolution • Thomas Carlyle
... classes, and to confirm to Great Britain the empire of art. The news of this Herculean prodigy spread dismay through the Union, and even long before it left its cradle, so to speak, it strangled the Hydra of misrule." {223b} ...
— The Condition of the Working-Class in England in 1844 - with a Preface written in 1892 • Frederick Engels
... name of the childless, persecuted widow, Hester Tradescant, is not now on the tomb which she piously erected to the memories of her husband and son; still, on the west end of it, can be traced the form of a hydra tearing a human skull—fit emblem of the foul and vulture-like rapacity ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 81, May 17, 1851 • Various
... suspicious, he sought to shackle public opinion—the fearful hydra to all ambitious aspirants—to know all secrets of the time and states, and render one half of the great nations he held in his grasp spies upon the other! The most profligate principles of Machiavel sink into obscurity ...
— The Humors of Falconbridge - A Collection of Humorous and Every Day Scenes • Jonathan F. Kelley
... joy, that is to say, of "being." We are all fauns and satyrs aspiring to become angels, ugly creatures labouring at our embellishment, monstrous chrysalids trying to become butterflies. Our ideal is no longer the tranquil beauty of the soul, it is the anguish of Laocoon fighting with the hydra of evil. No longer are there happy and accomplished men; we are candidates, indeed, for heaven, but on earth galley-slaves, and we row away our life in the expectation of harbour. It seems possible that this perfecting of which ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol IX. • Edited by Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton
... fables were composed the Summer Solstice was in the sign of Leo, and making the twelve labors begin in it, the first consisted in the killing of a lion, and the second, in rescuing a virgin (Virgo) by the destruction of a Hydra, the constellation in conjunction with her. Upon one of the Assyrian marbles on exhibition in the British Museum these two labors are represented as having been performed by a saviour by the name of Nimroud. In the constellations of Taurus, the bull of ...
— Astral Worship • J. H. Hill
... brows be able to do before the huge monster of the Apocalypse—before that immense and terrible figure outlined in the foreground of all the prophets' pictures? That woman, as pale and beautiful as vice—that great harlot of nations, decked with the wealth of the East, and bestriding a hydra belching forth rivers of poison on all human pathways—is Civilization; is humanity demoralized by luxury and science; is the torrent of venom which will swallow up all virtue, all ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. VII (of X)—Continental Europe I • Various
... couched in a vein different from his ordinary ones. His letters were usually all common form and padding, for as I have already explained, if he wrote about anything that really interested him, his mother always wanted to know more and more about it—every fresh answer being as the lopping off of a hydra's head and giving birth to half a dozen or more new questions—but in the end it came invariably to the same result, namely, that he ought to have done something else, or ought not to go on doing as he proposed. Now, however, there was a new departure, ...
— The Way of All Flesh • Samuel Butler |
