"Spartan" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... water which bubbled up from a boss of cresses by the roadside completed his Spartan breakfast. His next step was to examine his surroundings. "From the top of this hill," said Lynde, "I shall probably be able to see where I am, if that will be any comfort ...
— The Queen of Sheba & My Cousin the Colonel • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... travelled second-class! A few weeks before he would have thought it impossible as well as disgusting to bunk with a stranger whom he had never seen; but as he said to himself, with a shrug of the shoulders which tried to be Spartan, "Misfortune makes strange bedfellows." Max was disciplining himself to put up with hardships of all sorts which would probably become a part of everyday life. His own hand-luggage, a suitcase with his name marked on it, had been dumped down by some steward ...
— A Soldier of the Legion • C. N. Williamson
... sheer defiance of worldly prudence, that made him feel kindly towards the young Dane. Denmark's taking up arms, with its two million inhabitants, against a great power like Prussia, roused his enthusiasm. "It is great, it is Spartan!" he exclaimed. It must certainly be admitted that this human sympathy was not a prominent characteristic, and he wearied me with his hateful verdicts over all those whom I, and by degrees, all Europe, esteemed and admired ...
— Recollections Of My Childhood And Youth • George Brandes
... suspected, and when there was no greater and more exceptional crime than that of discussing the gods, the laws and the customs of the city? What did such a word as "fatherland" signify to an Athenian or Spartan unless it were the cult of Athens or Sparta, and in no wise that of Greece, composed of rival cities always at war with each other? What meaning had the same word "fatherland" among the ancient Gauls, divided ...
— The Crowd • Gustave le Bon
... that the Spartan Burr, whose life was one of incessant labor and whose kindliness toward every one was so well known, should have deserved a commentary like this. The charge of immorality is so easily made and so difficult of disproof that it has been flung promiscuously at all the great men of history, including, ...
— Famous Affinities of History, Vol 1-4, Complete - The Romance of Devotion • Lyndon Orr
... person's house, but insisted on elegant austerity in his own home, whereas Doria loved elegant austerity everywhere. So they had a pure Jacobean entrance hall, a Louis XV drawing-room, an Empire bedroom, and as far as I could judge by the barrenness of the apartment, a Spartan study for Adrian. ...
— Jaffery • William J. Locke
... rite was worked at Quiyough-cohanock, Strachey adds that Sir George Percy (who was with Smith) "was at, and observed" a similar mystery at Kecoughtan. It is plain that the rite was not a sacrifice, but a Bora, or initiation, and the parallel of the Spartan flogging of boys, with the retreat of the boys and their instructors, is very close, and, of course, unnoted by classical scholars except Mr. Frazer. Strachey ends with the critical remark that we shall not know all ...
— Myth, Ritual, and Religion, Vol. 1 • Andrew Lang
... had to sew up a bad cut in Hester's arm. She sat all through school without a word to me, and then I could not close the wound with sticking-plaster, so there was no alternative. She behaved like a Spartan—her black skin made it easier for me, but not for her, I fancy. So much for my first attempt at surgery. It was ...
— Letters from Port Royal - Written at the Time of the Civil War (1862-1868) • Various
... man; from the top of the deck plumb down to the hock kyard, he's nothin' but Jackson. This yere attitood of my grandsire, an' him camped in the swarmin' midst of a Henry Clay country, is frootful of adventures an' calls for plenty nerve. But the old Spartan goes through. ...
— Wolfville Days • Alfred Henry Lewis
... myself upon the bed, but my mind was so agitated, that I could not for a time close my eyes in sleep. The pride and contempt with which the monkeys regarded me, provoked me almost to rage. A more than Spartan patience was needed to listen with indifference to their sneers. At last I slumbered. How long I know not, for in the firmament there is no division of night and day. It is never dark, except at a certain period, when ...
— Niels Klim's journey under the ground • Baron Ludvig Holberg
... out the temple where the dead Are honour'd by the nations—let it be, And light the laurels on a loftier head, And be the Spartan's epitaph on me: "Sparta had many a worthier son than he"; Meantime I seek no sympathies, nor need; The thorns which I have reap'd are of the tree I planted—they have torn me—and I bleed: I should have known what fruit would spring from such ...
— The Life of Lord Byron • John Galt
... the Senate, even if elected. The Democratic party, being in the minority, offered but little opposition, and watched with great amusement this unequal contest between the great dominant party on the one side, and the little Spartan band on the other. The contest was as exciting as it was brief, and despite the great odds of money, official power, political superiority, and the perfect machinery of party organization in favor of her opponents, Mrs. Gordon received about 200 votes, besides as many ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume III (of III) • Various
... faggots, had the cattle driven up the mountains in the night, in order to make the enemy believe he was about to decamp. But this was only a false alarm, for he himself very well knew what his scheme was. When Theopompus the Spartan, by changing clothes with his wife, made his escape out of prison, the deception was not imposed upon himself, but upon his guards. Thus, when an orator speaks falsehood instead of truth, he knows what he is about; he does not yield to it himself, his intention being to ...
— The Training of a Public Speaker • Grenville Kleiser
... silence your Spartan tales— Says bravely, hushing a moan: 'I have yet one left. My boy! go on; Rear freedom's banner high in the sun!' Then sits in ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. II. July, 1862. No. 1. • Various
... the boy, and then looked quickly away. "You are a strange lad, my little Spartan," said he. "I don't think I ever knew a boy quite ...
— Historic Boyhoods • Rupert Sargent Holland
... coincident to the fall of the old regime, the people, from an ignorance which was more their misfortune than their fault, confounded art with luxuries more than questionable, in which their whilom superiors had indulged while they lacked bread. With the curious assumption of Spartan virtue which rings with an almost convincing sound of true metal through so many of the resolutions passed by the National Convention of France, in the days following the holocaust of the Reign of Terror, there was serious debate as to whether ...
— McClure's Magazine, January, 1896, Vol. VI. No. 2 • Various
... of social defects in the principle of the State, the heroes of the French Revolution rather perceived in social defects the source of political abuses. Thus Robespierre saw in great poverty and great riches only an obstacle to pure democracy. Consequently, he desired to establish a general Spartan frugality. ...
— Selected Essays • Karl Marx
... remembered that a modern Utopia must differ from the Utopias of any preceding age in being world-wide; it is not, therefore, to be the development of any special race or type of culture, as Plato's developed an Athenian-Spartan blend, or More, Tudor England. The modern Utopia is to be, before all things, synthetic. Politically and socially, as linguistically, we must suppose it a synthesis; politically it will be a synthesis of once widely different forms of government; socially and morally, ...
— A Modern Utopia • H. G. Wells
... a grave nod of her head. Ever since the artillery had commenced to roar she had been watching eagerly for her son's return, but she was a Spartan mother, and concealed her gnawing anxiety under a cloak of brave silence. And then she remembered what was the ...
— The Downfall • Emile Zola
... Notwithstanding all the Spartan rigor and severity to which he was subjected in his youth, for the purpose of dispelling exaggerated pride of birth and station, he feels assured that the rights and privileges which he enjoys above his fellow-men are of Divine origin. Although ...
— The Secret Memoirs of the Courts of Europe: William II, Germany; Francis Joseph, Austria-Hungary, Volume I. (of 2) • Mme. La Marquise de Fontenoy
... a beauty yet. At any rate she can put on flesh and not be the scarecrow she is." And thus, while her more favoured sisters were revelling in the gaieties of Court life, Marie was sent to tell her beads and to spend Spartan days ...
— Love affairs of the Courts of Europe • Thornton Hall
... The Spartan lawgiver has been censured for the toleration of theft and adultery. Among that race of barbarians these habits were too general to admit of total prevention or universal punishment. By vesting all property in the commonwealth, instead of encouraging theft, he ...
— The Columbiad • Joel Barlow
... was hurrying o'er the deep His Spartan hostess in the Idaean bark, Old Nereus laid the unwilling winds asleep, That all to Fate might hark, Speaking through him:—"Home in ill hour you take A prize whom Greece shall claim with troops untold, Leagued by an oath your marriage tie to break And Priam's kingdom old. ...
— Odes and Carmen Saeculare of Horace • Horace
... good for him. I have seen a physician examining a patient's chest stop all at once, as he brought out a particular sound with a tap on the collarbone, in the attitude of a pointer who has just come on the scent or sight of a woodcock. You remember the Spartan boy, who, with unmoved countenance, hid the fox that was tearing his vitals beneath his mantle. What he could do in his own suffering you must learn to do for others on whose vital organs disease has fastened ...
— Medical Essays • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... pea-soup. The very sight of it raises my gorge. Nor have I any special relish for potatoes, unless they are of good quality and well cooked. I therefore munched the brown bread, and washed it down with cold water. It was a Spartan meal, but a very indigestible one, as I can certify from painful experience. Why a prisoner's stomach should be so grossly abused by a sudden change of diet passes my comprehension. Surely it would not be difficult ...
— Prisoner for Blasphemy • G. W. [George William] Foote
... religious sanction of ancestor-worship affect the social "mores" that, as is shown so clearly in Spartan history, no man could shirk his duty of marriage and of parenthood without social opprobrium. The well-known anecdote related by Plutarch of the youth who, educated rigorously to show respect to the aged fathers, is praised for flouting a grey-haired bachelor and refusing ...
— The Family and it's Members • Anna Garlin Spencer
... than those of monarchies. But if the wars of kings are less cruel, their peace is terrible; better be their foe than their subject.] This defect is inevitable, but of little importance. The great thing is to be kind to our neighbours. Among strangers the Spartan was selfish, grasping, and unjust, but unselfishness, justice, and harmony ruled his home life. Distrust those cosmopolitans who search out remote duties in their books and neglect those that lie nearest. Such philosophers will love the Tartars to ...
— Emile • Jean-Jacques Rousseau
... thousand fields of incident, adventure, and bitter trials, they had proved their stanch heroism and their fortitude; they had lived and endured nobly. I remember the enthusiasm with which they responded to my appeals; I remember their bold bearing during the darkest days; I remember the Spartan pluck, the indomitable courage, with which they suffered in the days of our adversity. Their voices again loyally answer me, and again I hear them address each other upon the necessity of standing by the 'master.' Their boat-song, ...
— History of the Negro Race in America From 1619 to 1880. Vol 1 - Negroes as Slaves, as Soldiers, and as Citizens • George W. Williams
... frown of insulted virtue effaces the smile of complacency, which his eloquent periods are wont to raise, when I read his voluptuous reveries. Is this the man, who, in his ardour for virtue, would banish all the soft arts of peace, and almost carry us back to Spartan discipline? Is this the man who delights to paint the useful struggles of passion, the triumphs of good dispositions, and the heroic flights which carry the glowing soul out of itself? How are these mighty sentiments lowered when he describes the prettyfoot and enticing airs of his ...
— A Vindication of the Rights of Woman - Title: Vindication of the Rights of Women • Mary Wollstonecraft [Godwin]
... though the whole is a work of vivid imagination. We cannot verify, obviously, the facts and motives which led to the siege of Troy, although Herodotus appears to agree that the cause of that war was a Spartan woman's abduction, and only examines the point whether the Asiatic or the European Greeks were first to blame in the matter. Professor Murray prefers to believe in a myth growing out of the strife ...
— Studies in Literature and History • Sir Alfred Comyn Lyall
... present will tell you where you are, and what you have now to depend upon. It may produce a respectable division in America, and unanimity at home: it will give America an option; she has yet had no option. You have said, 'Lay down your arms,' and she has given you the Spartan answer, 'Come, take.'" Lord Chatham here read his motion, which he afterwards said, if earned, would prove the herald of peace, and would open the way for treaty. In conclusion, he again urged the necessity of making peace with America before France ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... friend Achates, sallied forth from the camp at dawn, to learn, if possible, something of the land on which they had been thrown. They had gone but a little way in the depths of the forest when they met Aeneas's mother, Venus, in the guise of a Spartan maid, her bow hung from her shoulders, her ...
— National Epics • Kate Milner Rabb
... country, sleeping at rough inns, and on their arrival searching for an attic in some bleak tenement in a noisy street. Here they were to live almost entirely on the baskets of home produce sent through the carriers at intervals by their thrifty parents. It was and is a Spartan discipline, and it turns out men who have shown their grit and independence in all lands where the ...
— Victorian Worthies - Sixteen Biographies • George Henry Blore
... of the tale who saves himself from cobra or rattler by letting the serpent crawl its slow way over his perfectly controlled body might have withheld even a quiver of the flesh, but I am no Spartan. At my convulsive shudder each horrid claw gripped a death-hold. In one swift motion I seized a corkscrew that lay nearby, pried loose with a quick jerk every single pede and threw the odious thing a dozen yards. A trail of ...
— White Shadows in the South Seas • Frederick O'Brien
... establishment will be found in Hone's "Every-Day Book"; its plan seems to have been unexceptionable. But Dr. James Johnson, writing his "Economy of Health" ten years after, declared that these German exercises had proved "better adapted to the Spartan youth than to the pallid sons of pampered cits, the dandies of the desk, and the squalid tenants of attics and factories," and also adds the epitaph, "This ultra-gymnastic enthusiast did much injury to an important branch of hygiene by carrying it to excess, and consequently by causing its ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 7, Issue 41, March, 1861 • Various
... the daughter of Jove brushed it aside with her hand, as a mother doth a fly from her sleeping child. The bow does not appear to have been extensively used in later times in either the Greek or Roman armies. The ferocious Spartan preferred the close combat with manual weapons, the Athenian won his glory upon the sea, and it was with the pike that Alexander overcame the hosts of Persia. The Cretans, who were the most celebrated archers in Europe, sometimes formed a ...
— The International Monthly Magazine, Volume 5, No. 1, January, 1852 • Various
... the child, and the woman caressed its face and said, "she shall be the fairest woman in Sparta." And from that day the fashion of its countenance was changed, "and the child became the fairest of all the Spartan women." ...
— Helen of Troy • Andrew Lang
... Leonidas and the Spartan minority did not make such a stand at Thermopylae, as we did. Do you know, we had like to have been the majority? Xerxes[1] is frightened out of his senses; Sysigambis[1] has sent an express to Luton to forbid ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole - Volume I • Horace Walpole
... sought the repose of their Spartan pillows. The Captain forgot, in his zeal for Spanish dominion, that daring Sir Francis Drake, in days even then out of the memory of man, piloted the "Golden Hind" into Drake's Bay. He landed near San Francisco in 1578, and remained till the early months of ...
— The Little Lady of Lagunitas • Richard Henry Savage
... me," said Chaumette. "It is a Spartan breakfast. If I had a root I would give you half."—[Lamartine's "History of the Girondists," edit. ...
— Memoirs Of The Court Of Marie Antoinette, Queen Of France, Complete • Madame Campan
... the living-quarters of the crew, kept spotlessly clean and tidy, yet Spartan-like in their simplicity. Two of the men were sound asleep in their bunks. Three more, who were playing cards at a plain deal table, glanced up from their game as the British lads passed by; but their interest was of ...
— The Submarine Hunters - A Story of the Naval Patrol Work in the Great War • Percy F. Westerman
... he simply worshipped, and who finally brought him around to their way of thinking. Markelov had read little, mostly books relating to the thing that chiefly interested him, and was especially attached to Herzen. He retained his military habits, and lived like a Spartan and a monk. A few years ago he fell passionately in love with a girl who threw him over in a most unceremonious manner and married an adjutant, also a German. He consequently hated adjutants too. He tried to write a series of special articles on the shortcomings of our artillery, but had ...
— Virgin Soil • Ivan S. Turgenev
... firm, but two or three words can dishearten it. There is no calamity which right words will not begin to redress. Isocrates described his art, as "the power of magnifying what was small and diminishing what was great";—an acute, but partial definition. Among the Spartans, the art assumed a Spartan shape, namely, of the sharpest weapon. Socrates says, "If any one wishes to converse with the meanest of the Lacedaemonians, he will at first find him despicable in conversation; but, when a proper opportunity offers, this same person, like a skilful jaculator, will hurl a sentence worthy of attention, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 11, September, 1858 • Various
... this woman about Winkelberg. I became poignant and moving on the subject of Winkelberg's misfortunes, his trials, sufferings and, above all, his Spartan stoicism. It pleased me to do this. I felt that I was making some amends and that the thing ...
— A Thousand and One Afternoons in Chicago • Ben Hecht
... mythology the wife of the Spartan king Tyndareus, who was visited by Zeus in the form of a swan and became the mother of Castor and Pollux; was frequently ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... it would have been destroyed. Undoubtedly, however, he would have sympathized with the unknown critic in his complaint of the unsuitableness of sumptuous meals to youths who were destined for the hardships of the camp. At Brienne he had been dubbed "the Spartan," an instance of that almost uncanny faculty of schoolboys to dash off in a nickname the salient features of character. The phrase was correct, almost for Napoleon's whole life. At any rate, the pomp of Paris served but to root his youthful ...
— The Life of Napoleon I (Volumes, 1 and 2) • John Holland Rose
... senseless luxury, the result of wealth which has increased faster than the power of rightly using it, has attained such enormous proportions, and is threatening, in commercial communities especially, to drown all noble aspirations, and Spartan simplicity, and Christian self-devotion, in its muddy flood. Surely never was Gideon's test more wanted for the army of the Lord of hosts ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... even Aunt Hitty was not proof against the magic of Araminta's smile. The girl's face had the creamy softness of a white rose petal, but her cheeks bloomed with the flush of health and she had a most disconcerting trick of blushing. With Spartan thoroughness, Miss Mehitable constantly strove to cure Araminta of this distressing fault, but as yet she had ...
— A Spinner in the Sun • Myrtle Reed
... the banner, and the field, Glory and Greece, around me see! The Spartan, borne upon his ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 1 (of 4) • Various
... the Government of Sparta, slaves to tradition, could not grasp the idea of the plans proposed by the great Athenian. They were half persuaded to recall Leonidas, but hesitated to act until it was too late. The Spartan chief and his few hundred warriors died at their post in self-sacrificing obedience to the letter of their orders. The Persians poured over the Pass and inundated the plains of Attica. The few Athenians who had persisted in defending ...
— Famous Sea Fights - From Salamis to Tsu-Shima • John Richard Hale
... if it can learn from its own sufferings, Germany has reason enough to cherish with a passionate devotion her late achieved unity. And German brutality, which is not the less brutality because Germans regard it as quite natural and right, has its origin in German history. The Prussian is a Spartan, a natural brute, but brutal to himself as well as to others, capable of extremes of self-denial and self-discipline. From the Prussians the softer and more emotional German peoples of the South received the gift of national unity, and they repaid the debt ...
— England and the War • Walter Raleigh
... but that the citizens would have to defend themselves as best they could. Benjamin Clifford took command of the volunteers, and Captain William Anderson organized a small body of sharpshooters called the Spartan Band. As cannon were badly needed, the brethren got two hollow steamboat shafts, cut them in two, plugged up one end, and thus made some cannon. They had no cannon balls, but they used scraps of iron and lead tied up ...
— A Young Folks' History of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints • Nephi Anderson
... though slightly stooping figure, whose name among strangers was King Friedrich II., or Frederick the Great of Prussia, and at home among the common people was Vater Fritz—Father Fred. A king every inch of him, though without the trappings of a king; in a Spartan simplicity of vesture. In 1786 his speakings and his workings came to finis in this world of time. Editors vaguely account this man the creator of the Prussian monarchy, which has since grown so large in ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol XII. - Modern History • Arthur Mee
... against his father. The young prince was seduced by the offers made him, and Egypt became plunged in a civil war. But for the courage and conduct of Agesilaues, which were conspicuously displayed, Tacho would have yielded to despair and have given up the contest. In two decisive battles the Spartan general completely defeated the army of the rebels, which far outnumbered that of Tacho, and replaced the king on his ...
— Ancient Egypt • George Rawlinson
... lacked penetration to divine. But the error serves the purpose of my argument; for I am sure, at least, that the heart of young Scotland will be always touched more nearly by paucity of number and Spartan ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson, Volume 9 • Robert Louis Stevenson
... eastern pediment. There is a substantial resemblance in the drapery, even to the arbitrary little fold in the neck; but the garment here is entirely open on the right side, after the fashion followed by Spartan maidens, whereas there it is sewed together from the waist down; there is here no girdle; and the broad, flat expanse of cloth in front observable there is here narrowed by two folds ...
— A History Of Greek Art • F. B. Tarbell
... to her husband that Emma revealed the real source of her Spartan calm. The wedding was over. There had been a quiet little celebration, after which Jock McChesney had gone West with his very lovely young wife. Emma had kissed her very tenderly, very soberly after the brief ceremony. "Mrs. McChesney," she had said, and her voice shook ever so ...
— Emma McChesney & Co. • Edna Ferber
... cunning art shall here her triumphs bring, And laurel'd bards their choicest anthems sing. Here, honor'd age shall bare its wintery brow, And youth to freedom make a Spartan vow. Here, ripened manhood from its walks profound, Shall come and halt, as ...
— The Poets' Lincoln - Tributes in Verse to the Martyred President • Various
... knew what this quest of the Cave of Gold might mean—hardships, dangers, even death for those she loved. But she was of pioneer stock, had often seen her dearest go forth to face the dangers of the unknown wilderness; and, at last, with something of Spartan-like fortitude, ...
— The Cave of Gold - A Tale of California in '49 • Everett McNeil
... it is true that he is engaged to Miss Stuart," replied Anne, with Spartan composure, "but it is certainly true ...
— Anne Of The Island • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... to be seized by the discursive and ratiocinative intellect, the most eminent statesman or lawyer or general would excel too in the capacity to appreciate beauty; the Roman would have shone in arts as in arms; the Spartan would not have been so barren where the Athenian was so prolific. But beauty is felt, not intellectually apprehended or logically deduced. Its presence is acknowledged by a gush from the soul, by a joyous sentimental recognition, not by a discernment of the understanding. When we exclaim, How beautiful! ...
— Essays AEsthetical • George Calvert
... be so solemnly issued, but I believe that the higher authorities in Germany earnestly desired that the people, and, especially, the officers of the army and navy, should learn not to enjoy themselves too much. A great endeavour was always made to keep them in a life, so far as possible, of Spartan simplicity. For instance, the army officers were forbidden to play polo, not because of anything against the game, which, of course, is splendid practice for riding, but because it would make a distinction in the army ...
— My Four Years in Germany • James W. Gerard
... patriotism, and of justice. Having allowed the organ for the ideal to atrophy in his soul, he could dream of finding some sullen sort of happiness in unreason. He felt that the austere glories of his country, as a Spartan regimen might have preserved them, would not benefit that baser part of him which alone remained. Political virtue seemed a useless tax on his material profit and freedom. The tedium and distrust proper to a disintegrated society ...
— The Life of Reason • George Santayana
... give to usurpation grace, And from his natural rights my son debar? Not so! let him—and none shall be more prompt Than I to help—raise his Messenian friends; Let him fetch succours from Arcadia, gain His Argive or his Spartan cousins' aid; Let him do this, do aught but recommence Murder's uncertain, secret, perilous game— And I, when to his righteous standard down Flies Victory wing'd, and Justice raises then Her ...
— Poetical Works of Matthew Arnold • Matthew Arnold
... his escape. This is the uncompromising minute in the Journals: 'Oct. 16. The letters of Slatin have arrived. I have no remarks to make on them, and cannot make out why he wrote them.' In the afternoon, indeed, he betrays some pity; but it is the pity of a man for a mouse. 'He is evidently not a Spartan... he will want some quarantine... one feels sorry for him.' The next day he is again inexorable, and gives his reasons clearly. 'I shall have nothing to do with Slatin's coming here to stay, unless he has the Mahdi's positive leave, which he is not likely to get; his ...
— The River War • Winston S. Churchill
... little dinner upstairs, sir. I am a moderate man, and can live, if need be, like a Spartan; but to join such good company I will gladly use the knife and fork again. You will excuse the traveller's dress? I keep a room here, which I use only occasionally, and am at present ...
— The Newcomes • William Makepeace Thackeray
... dinners and other domestic amusements. Having been brought up on very simple fare, I fully enjoyed the dinners which the Old East India Company gave, when we sat down about 400 people, and, as I was told, four pounds was paid for each guest. I mention this because I feel that not only has the Spartan diet of my early years given me a relish all through life for convivial entertainments, even if not quite at four pounds a head, but that the general self-denial which I had to exercise in my youth has made me feel a constant gratitude ...
— My Autobiography - A Fragment • F. Max Mueller
... did I fear, but thought he had no weapon; For he was great of heart. LODOVICO. [To Iago.] O Spartan dog, More fell than anguish, hunger, or the sea! Look on the tragic loading of this bed; This is thy work:—the object poisons sight; Let it be hid.—Gratiano, keep the house, And seize upon the fortunes of the Moor, For they succeed on you.—To ...
— Othello, the Moor of Venice • William Shakespeare
... Christ's Hospital in my time was ultra-Spartan;—all domestic ties were to be put aside. "Boy!" I remember Bowyer saying to me once when I was crying the first day of my return after the holidays, "Boy! the school is your father! Boy! the school is your mother! Boy! the school is your brother! the school is your sister! the ...
— Specimens of the Table Talk of S.T.Coleridge • Coleridge
... notice him he would plant himself straight before me, and stand wagging that bud of a tail, and looking up, with his head a little to the one side. His master I occasionally saw; he used to call me "Maister John," but was laconic as any Spartan. ...
— Types of Children's Literature • Edited by Walter Barnes
... nature) he felt himself greatly shaken in his allegiance to the chief, by recollecting the effect produced on his valour by a single glance from the instrument of law. He had not yet lived long enough to be aware that men are sometimes the Representatives of Things; that what the scytale was to the Spartan hero, a sheriff's writ often is to a Waterloo medallist: that a Bow Street runner will enter the foulest den where Murder sits with his fellows, and pick out his prey with the beck of his forefinger. That, ...
— Night and Morning, Volume 3 • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... my superior officer, I wondered whether blood as brave and good dyed the heather at Bannockburn, or streamed down the mountain-gorge where Tell met the Austrians at Morgarten, or stained with crimson glare the narrow pass held by the Spartan three hundred. ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 57, July, 1862 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... by the Athenians under Nicias; being hard pressed, Syracuse appeals to the other Greek states; Cylippus, the Spartan commander, comes with a fleet to the aid of the city. See "DEFEAT OF THE ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 2 • Various
... "Yes!" answered the Spartan mothers with one voice, while the other sisters danced round them, and Kate patted the curly ...
— Aunt Jo's Scrap-Bag VI - An Old-Fashioned Thanksgiving, Etc. • Louisa M. Alcott
... the constitution! But apart from physical inconvenience, the idea of forsaking their homes and husbands was too ridiculous. The notion of living in tents on potted beef and adamantine biscuits was shuddered at. The whole project was voted a wild-cat scheme (and Mr. Rhodes agreed). After the spartan bravery they had displayed for two months, the ladies regarded this new and wanton strain on their loyalty as inhuman. Their protest was loud and dignified; and when the women are concerned in a public protest ...
— The Siege of Kimberley • T. Phelan
... of the chasm is the curse of every race, As it saps and kills its manhood ere it reach the zenith-place; Spartan valor, Grecian learning, Roman honor had their day, But land plunder rose among them, dooming death by ...
— The Arena - Volume 18, No. 92, July, 1897 • Various
... a luscious sea-pie for the sailors, and in various inviting shapes during the following week to the inmates of the cabin. This loss of property was recorded by Mr. Thompson in the ship's log-book, with his accustomed accuracy, and with Spartan brevity. The language he invariably used was, "A sheep ...
— Jack in the Forecastle • John Sherburne Sleeper
... Thermopylae the Peloponnesian Greeks commenced to fortify the isthmus of Corinth with the view of defending it with their small army against the invading host of Xerxes. The Spartan troops were under the command of Cleombrotus, the brother of Leonidas, the hero of Thermopylae. He had been consulting the oracles at Sparta, and Herodotus states that "while he was offering sacrifice to know ...
— The Story of Eclipses • George Chambers
... the matter, dear?" asked auntie, tenderly. "Are you in such pain?" for she knew that Cricket was a little Spartan in respect ...
— Cricket at the Seashore • Elizabeth Westyn Timlow
... be.'—'Heh!' said I, 'and what about your daughter?'—'Bah!' says he, 'she is only a woman! And she is quite too much of a Hulot. Valerie has a horror of them all.—My son-in-law has never chosen to come to this house; why has he given himself such airs as a Mentor, a Spartan, a Puritan, a philanthropist? Besides, I have squared accounts with my daughter; she has had all her mother's fortune, and two hundred thousand francs to that. So I am free to act as I please.—I shall judge of my son-in-law and Celestine ...
— Cousin Betty • Honore de Balzac
... were standing only a couple of yards behind me, ready to dodge behind some of the great rocks on the comb of the ridge, and I believe that in those days I possessed so much of the Spartan fortitude which pervaded our school, that I would sooner have been blown up than show fear. So I sheltered my match, bending lower and lower, till I could bring it to a level with the powder-smeared rag, which caught at once, and began to sparkle ...
— Devon Boys - A Tale of the North Shore • George Manville Fenn
... well this Spartan-like education, which inured him to the severity of the seasons. Without this training he certainly would have perished in savage and freezing Siberia, where he lived in exile for ...
— Contemporary Russian Novelists • Serge Persky
... floor. Samuel Smith was head until 1831, when he was succeeded by the more celebrated Dr. Gaisford, always described by Mr. Gladstone as a splendid scholar, but a bad dean. Gaisford's excellent services to the Greek learning of his day are unquestioned, and he had the signal merit of speech, Spartan brevity. For a short time in 1806 he had been tutor to Peel. When Lord Liverpool offered him the Greek professorship, with profuse compliments on his erudition, the learned man replied, 'My Lord, I have received your letter, and accede to the ...
— The Life of William Ewart Gladstone, Vol. 1 (of 3) - 1809-1859 • John Morley
... paths of earth and sea, who sailed upon the mainland, and walked upon the deep—him did Spartan valour hold back, with just three hundred spears. Shame ...
— Elizabeth's Campaign • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... of the property of the twelve gentlemen, whom the decree of the Spanish tribunal had convicted of rebellion, afford interesting proofs of the Spartan simplicity which existed in the colony. Thus the furniture of the bed-room of Madam Villere, who was the wife of one of the most distinguished citizens of Louisiana, and the grand-daughter of De Lachaise, who came to the colony in 1723 as ordaining ...
— Southern Literature From 1579-1895 • Louise Manly
... "You're a Spartan," said her brother in awe, as he looked on that thin, stern face. "Terry is your theory. If he disappoints you, he'll be simply a theory gone wrong. You'll cut him out of your life as if he were an algebraic equation and never think of ...
— Black Jack • Max Brand
... Median war, where so many of the nobles were killed in a battle by the lapygi, that from a free state the government was turned into a democracy; and at Argos, where so many of the citizens were killed by Cleomenes the Spartan, that they were obliged to admit several husbandmen to the freedom of the state: and at Athens, through the unfortunate event of the infantry battles, the number of the nobles was reduced by the soldiers being chosen from the list of citizens in the Lacedaemonian wars. ...
— Politics - A Treatise on Government • Aristotle
... were as shy and conveyed less information. The work was hard, the hours long, his accommodation Spartan. They were in huts on Salisbury Plain. Sometimes he confessed himself too tired to write more than a few lines. He had a bad cold in the head. He was better. They had inoculated him against typhoid and had allowed him two or three slack days. The first time ...
— The Rough Road • William John Locke
... fully fifteen, if not twenty, years since my father commenced the composition of an historical romance on the subject of Pausanias, the Spartan Regent. Circumstances, which need not here be recorded, compelled him to lay aside the work thus begun. But the subject continued to haunt his imagination and occupy his thoughts. He detected in it singular opportunities for effective exercise of the gifts most ...
— Pausanias, the Spartan - The Haunted and the Haunters, An Unfinished Historical Romance • Lord Lytton
... Horace Walpole writes to the Countess of Upper Ossory, 'I am going to Mrs. Cowley's new play,[59] which I suppose is as instructive as the Marriage of Figaro, for I am told it approaches to those of Mrs. Behn in Spartan delicacy; but I shall see Miss Farren, who, in my poor opinion is the first of all actresses.' Sir Walter Scott admired and praised her warmly. But the pinchbeck sobriety of later times was unable to tolerate her freedom. She was condemned in no small still voice as immoral, loose, ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn, Vol. I (of 6) • Aphra Behn
... you L. Stephen's letter which is certainly very kind and jolly to get[14]. I wrote some stuff about Lord Lytton, but I had not the heart to submit it to you. I sent it direct to Morley, with a Spartan billet. God knows it is bad enough; but it cost me labour incredible. I was so out of the vein, it would have made you weep to see me digging the rubbish out of my seven wits with groanings unutterable. I certainly mean to come to London, and likely before long if all goes well; ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 23 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... Murray, if satisfactory to you, must be so to me. There need be no scruple, because, though I used sometimes to buffoon to myself, loving a quibble as well as the barbarian himself (Shakspeare, to wit)—'that, like a Spartan, I would sell my life as dearly as possible'—it never was my intention to turn it to personal, pecuniary account, but to bequeath it to a friend—yourself—in the event of survivorship. I anticipated that period, because we happened ...
— Life of Lord Byron, With His Letters And Journals, Vol. 5 (of 6) • (Lord Byron) George Gordon Byron
... feel quite tired and sleepy before the doctor returned for him, and his bruises ached badly. Once he would have cried and worried every one about him, if in such an uncomfortable state; but now he bore the pain like a Spartan. ...
— Eric - or, Under the Sea • Mrs. S. B. C. Samuels
... Pausanias, a Spartan general, was the son of Cloembrotus, the king of Sparta, killed at the battle of Leuctra. Pausanias commanded at Plataea; but having conducted a treasonable correspondence with Xerxes, was starved to death ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to prose. Volume II (of X) - Rome • Various
... necessary to plead anything; war justifies itself. To fight for the experimental purpose of trying the proportions of martial merit, but (to speak frankly) for the purpose of publishing and renewing to Europe the proclamation of French superiority—that is the object of French wars. Like the Spartan of old, the Frenchman would hold that a state of peace, and not a state of war, is the state which calls for apology; and that already from the first such an apology must wear a ...
— Memorials and Other Papers • Thomas de Quincey
... are far from indicating that any injustice will be done the prisoners. I'm sure that neither Master Cap nor myself has any cause of complaint since we have given ourselves up to Master Arrowhead, who reminds me of a Roman or a Spartan by his virtues and moderation; but ye'll be remembering that usages differ, and that our scalps may be lawful sacrifices to appease the manes of fallen foes, unless you ...
— The Pathfinder - The Inland Sea • James Fenimore Cooper
... subsequent national degradation. You find, in the first place, that the nations which possessed a refined art were always subdued by those who possessed none: you find the Lydian subdued by the Mede; the Athenian by the Spartan; the Greek by the Roman; the Roman by the Goth; the Burgundian by the Switzer: but you find, beyond this—that even where no attack by any external power has accelerated the catastrophe of the state, the period in which any given people reach their highest power ...
— The Two Paths • John Ruskin
... The Spartan state was composed of a small body of citizens—the Spartiatae or Spartans proper-encamped in the midst of a hostile population to whom they allowed no political rights and by whose labour they were supplied with the necessaries of life. The distinction between the citizen class on the one hand ...
— The Greek View of Life • Goldsworthy Lowes Dickinson
... lady on the right, please come to the piano." The girl indicated, a dignified senior, obeyed the summons, coolly handed the professor her music, stationed herself at his side and awaited trial with the air of a Spartan. After a short prelude she began to sing a popular air that was at that time going the round of Sanford. She sang one verse, then the professor dropped his hands from the keys, inquired her name, made a memorandum on a ...
— Marjorie Dean - High School Sophomore • Pauline Lester
... same way were the worst Spartan natures displayed in a heroic sense, after they had commenced life by a persistence in dissimulation ...
— The Forty-Five Guardsmen • Alexandre Dumas
... and his silence wounded Lady Lucy to the quick. Was it her fault if her husband, out of an eccentric distrust of the character of his son, and moved by a kind of old-fashioned and Spartan belief that a man must endure hardness before he is fit for luxury, had made her and not Oliver the arbiter and legatee of his wealth? But Oliver had never wanted for anything. He had only to ask. What right had she to thwart her ...
— The Testing of Diana Mallory • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... are bred out of the Spartan kind, So flew'd, so sanded; and their heads are hung With ears that sweep away the morning dew; Crook-knee'd and dew-lap'd like Thessalian bulls; Slow in pursuit, but match'd in mouth like bells, Each under each. A cry more tuneable Was never holla'd to, nor cheer'd with horn, In ...
— A Midsummer Night's Dream • William Shakespeare [Collins edition]
... manufacture of purple. To be Tyrio conspectus in ostro, seemed, in the estimation of the Mantuan poet, essential to his due appearance in honour of Augustus, Geor. 3—17. But several other places in the Mediterranean afforded this precious article. Thus Horace speaks of Spartan purple, ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 12 • Robert Kerr
... for all that, deeds which for their sheer daring will ring for ever in the ears of men; of which the bare memory is an inspiration; whereof the fame in their own day roused the emulous courage of every Spartan and of every Englishman, making them ready to face any odds, and chilling the blood of their foes. Vain deeds, when we count the cost and the tangible gain—but very far from vain when we take into account ...
— England Under the Tudors • Arthur D. Innes
... From his great disinclination to pursue the same path with Metastasio, he naturally fell into the opposite extreme: I might not unaptly call him a Metastasio reversed. If the muse of the latter he a love-sick nymph, Alfieri's muse is an Amazon. He gave her a Spartan education; he aimed at being the Cato of the theatre; but he forgot that, though the tragic poet may himself he a stoic, tragic poetry itself, if it would move and agitate us, must never be stoical. His language is so barren of imagery, that his characters seem altogether devoid of ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel
... about barefoot, and, playing the philosopher, even said he might as well go about quite naked like the young of animals. As opposed to the maternal ideas, he had a certain virile idea of childhood on which he sought to mould his son, wishing him to be brought up hardily, like a Spartan, to give him a strong constitution. He sent him to bed without any fire, taught him to drink off large draughts of rum and to jeer at religious processions. But, peaceable by nature, the lad answered only poorly to his notions. His mother always kept him near ...
— Madame Bovary • Gustave Flaubert
... Resurrection of Christ, with a panel containing S. John the Baptist in the midst of certain other saints. The side-walls he painted in his own manner; one with figures of Fabius Maximus, Socrates, Numa Pompilius, F. Camillus, Pythagoras, Trajan, L. Sicinius, the Spartan Leonidas, Horatius Cocles, Fabius, Sempronius, the Athenian Pericles, and Cincinnatus. On the other wall he made the Prophets, Isaiah, Moses, Daniel, David, Jeremiah, and Solomon; and the Sibyls, the Erythraean, the Libyan, the Tiburtine, the Delphic, and the others. Below each of the said ...
— Lives of the Most Eminent Painters Sculptors and Architects - Vol. 04 (of 10), Filippino Lippi to Domenico Puligo • Giorgio Vasari
... aching heart Billy asked herself what now was to be done. For herself, turn whichever way she could, she could see nothing but unhappiness. She determined, therefore, with Spartan fortitude, that to no one else would she bring equal unhappiness. She would be silent. Bertram and Marie loved each other. That matter was settled. As to William—Billy thought of the story William had told her of his lonely life,—of the plea he had made to her; ...
— Miss Billy • Eleanor H. Porter
... as we went our way,—a modern Spartan slave in a kind of marine pillory,—conveying to the red-legged children of Gotham, as they toddled ashore, a useful lesson on the doubtful relations existing between whiskey ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 7, No. 40, February, 1861 • Various
... everybody had been particularly nice to her that morning. Several girls had given her their addresses and asked her to write to them, Miss Bowes had been kindness itself, and even Miss Teddington, whose conduct was generally of a Spartan order, when bidding her good-bye in the study, had actually bestowed an abrupt peck of a kiss, a mark of favour never before known in the annals of the school. To be sure, she had followed it with a warning against relapsing into loud laughter ...
— For the Sake of the School • Angela Brazil
... stripped the Athenians of all the advantages which they had acquired on the mainland of Greece. In every city of Greece there were always two parties, the wealthy and noble, called oligarchs, and the demos, or commons; and according as Spartan or Athenian influence was in the ascendant the balance of power in each city wavered between the nobles and the people, the Athenians favouring the Many, the Spartans the Few. Accordingly there was always a party living in exile, and waiting for a turn of affairs which might enable them to return ...
— Stories From Thucydides • H. L. Havell
... much pleasure in writing and in having written these essays of mine (which are no hundredth part as beautiful, witty, wise, or brilliant as Hazlitt's), that the leaden showers of drudgery, discouragement, and disillusionment which accompany and follow almost every one of them, and the need of Spartan training for their sake, hardly displace a drop from the bucket of joy that the work brings. Training has meant so much vital overplus to me that I long ago spurted and caught up with my pottle of joy. And, ...
— The Joyful Heart • Robert Haven Schauffler
... a strict disciplinarian to his children in their early years, but his attitude toward himself was truly Spartan. He never visited the theater, for instance, but sought his recreation in various spiritual practices and in reading the BHAGAVAD GITA. {FN1-7} Shunning all luxuries, he would cling to one old pair of shoes until ...
— Autobiography of a YOGI • Paramhansa Yogananda
... knew how fond I had grown of Lucilla, until I lost sight of the rectory at the turn in the road to Brighton. My natural firmness deserted me; I felt torturing presentiments that some great misfortune would happen in my absence; I astonished myself—I, the widow of the Spartan Pratolungo!—by having a good cry, ...
— Poor Miss Finch • Wilkie Collins
... not told her he was going. He did not mean to tell her till he was leaving, and then only to say casually: "Well, good-by. I'm off for a training-camp to-night." He had always suspected there was something of the Spartan in Sophie Carr's make-up. Even if he had not divined that, he had no intention of making a fuss about his going, of trying to pose as a hero. But he was a normal man, and he wanted his last recollection of her—if it should be his last—to be ...
— Burned Bridges • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... making any resistance. The Battle of Pydna, which placed the Macedonian monarchy in the hands of the Romans, was decided by a panic befalling the Macedonian cavalry after the phalanx had been broken. At Leuctra and at Mantinea, battles so fatal to the Spartan supremacy in Greece, the defeated armies suffered from panics. The decision at Pharsalia was in some measure owing to a panic occurring among the Pompeian cavalry; and at Thapsus, the panic terror that came upon the Pompeians ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, No. 48, October, 1861 • Various
... remember her. I have talked over these things with her many a time; and where I would fain be, she would fain be also. She sent me out with my virgin honor, as the Spartan mother did her boy with the shield, saying, 'Come back either with this, or upon this;' and one or the other I must do, if I would meet her either in this life or in the next. But in the meanwhile do not mistake me; my life is God's, and I promise not ...
— Westward Ho! • Charles Kingsley
... loss and of close-impending disgrace was the wolf which this Spartan stockbroker concealed beneath his waistcoat day after day, while the dull common, joyless course of his existence went on; and his shallow wife smiled at him from the opposite side of his hearth, more interested in a new stitch for her crotchet or berlin-wool work than by the ...
— Charlotte's Inheritance • M. E. Braddon
... individuals who have practised them. There is hardly a vice or a crime (according to our own moral standard) which has not at some time or other in some circumstances been looked upon as a moral and religious duty. Stealing was accounted virtuous for the young Spartan, and among the Indian caste of Thugs. In the ancient world, piracy, that is, robbery and murder, was a respectable profession. To the mediaeval Christian, religious persecution was the highest ...
— Human Traits and their Social Significance • Irwin Edman
... to pay him a great compliment. Among the well-known inscriptions on the rocks in the island of Thera in the Aegean sea there are many which record in deeply graven letters the friendship and devotion to each other of Spartan warrior-comrades; it seems strange at first to find how often such an epithet of praise occurs as Bathycles DANCES WELL, Eumelos is a PERFECT DANCER ([gr aristos orcestas]). One hardly in general expects one warrior to praise another for his dancing! But when one realizes ...
— Pagan & Christian Creeds - Their Origin and Meaning • Edward Carpenter
... from himself or me how entire the sacrifice must be of private happiness to public duty, of which this parting was the first sample; and he writes of the desolation of domestic prospects in so sad a way that I am obliged to write like a Spartan ...
— Lady John Russell • Desmond MacCarthy and Agatha Russell
... curtain over the scene of the Spartan mother—we hope you belong to that nearly extinct class—which is to follow. Let us suppose all differences settled, the habit ostensibly given up, and your darling, grown more honest or more artful,—the result is the same to your blissful ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 6, No. 34, August, 1860 • Various
... afternoon of the third day the pass of Thermopyae was forced, thanks to the treachery of a Greek and the contemptible policy of the Spartan government which steadily refused the plea of Leonidas for reenforcements. With Thermopyae taken there was no further reason for the Greek fleet to try to hold the straits north of Euboea, and during the night it retired unobserved. The following ...
— A History of Sea Power • William Oliver Stevens and Allan Westcott
... To reap the harvest of thy labours past, There found a perjured friend, and faithless wife, Who sacrificed to impious lust thy life; Fast by Arcadia stretch these desert plains, And o'er the land a gloomy tyrant reigns. Next, Macronisi is adjacent seen, 270 Where adverse winds detain'd the Spartan queen; For whom, in arms combined, the Grecian host, With vengeance fired, invaded Phrygia's coast; For whom so long they labour'd to destroy The lofty turrets of imperial Troy; Here, driven by Juno's rage, the hapless dame, Forlorn ...
— The Poetical Works of Beattie, Blair, and Falconer - With Lives, Critical Dissertations, and Explanatory Notes • Rev. George Gilfillan [Ed.]
... harmony with the rooms and furniture, consisting only of the strict necessities, cooked with a Spartan disregard for such sybarite foibles as seasoning or dressing. I believe there was a substantial meal somewhere in the early morning hours, but I never succeeded in getting down in time to inspect it. By successful bribery, I induced one of the village belles, who served at table, to bring ...
— Worldly Ways and Byways • Eliot Gregory
... and then flushed. Mr. Baggs was a very big and strong man and the culprit knew that he must now prepare for the pangs that attended failure. But he bore pain well. He had been operated upon for faulty tendons when he was five and proved a Spartan patient. He stood now waiting for Mr. Baggs. Other victims had reported that it was Levi's custom to use a strap from his own waist when he beat a boy, and Abel, even at this tense moment, wondered whether he would now ...
— The Spinners • Eden Phillpotts
... whole of Europe, that there was nothing invincible about the troops of Napoleon, when they were faced by British regiments properly trained, as Moore trained them at Shorncliff. Just as the destruction of the Spartan Hoplites in the Island of Sphacteria broke the military spell cast by the armies of Sparta, so Moore's victorious retreat to, and action at, Corunna broke the ...
— The Adventure of Living • John St. Loe Strachey
... Contes en vers et posies diverses. The story of the Spartan boy and the fox may be found in Plutarch's Lycurgus, 18. The idea should be compared with the artistic doctrine of ...
— French Lyrics • Arthur Graves Canfield
... French are in my Head; Latin I write, and Greek I— read."] We have also his own authority (in Tom Jones) for supposing that he occasionally, if not frequently, sacrificed "with true Spartan devotion" at the "birchen Altar," of which a representation is to be found in Mr. Maxwell Lyte's history of the College. And it may fairly be inferred that he took part in the different sports and pastimes of the day, ...
— Fielding - (English Men of Letters Series) • Austin Dobson
... Samos and Thasos; but her mutinous cities in peninsular Chalcidice and isthmian Megara, incited to revolt and aided by their neighbors,[878] were less at her mercy. This principle was recognized by Thucydides,[879] and taken advantage of by the Lacedaemonians during the great war for Spartan supremacy. England has been able to hold Ireland in a vise. Of all her former French territory, she retains only the Channel Isles. Cuba and Porto Rico remained in the crushing grasp of Spain sixty-four years after Mexico and the continental states of Central and ...
— Influences of Geographic Environment - On the Basis of Ratzel's System of Anthropo-Geography • Ellen Churchill Semple
... Having dispatched this Spartan composition by the post, Geoffrey lit his pipe, and waited the event of the interview between Lord Holchester and his ...
— Man and Wife • Wilkie Collins
... office-holders have much substance to spare under these circumstances; but, if the President, Vice-President, and the Secretaries of State, are to live upon an acre or two of land for the rest of their lives, Spartan broth will be indeed a ...
— Canada and the Canadians - Volume I • Sir Richard Henry Bonnycastle
... that the Japanese women, who were only yesterday altogether Oriental in habits and ideals, have produced a race of strong men, so far as physical daring and hardihood is concerned. The influence of women on these men ceased with childhood—even then it was a Spartan influence. ...
— The Young Man and the World • Albert J. Beveridge
... missionaries and promulgated subversive doctrines through the medium of an ever-active press. Transformed by Calvin from its earlier condition of a pleasure-loving and commercial city, it was now what Deceleia under Spartan discipline had been to Athens in the Peloponnesian war—a permanent epiteichismos, perpetually garrisoned and on guard to harry the flanks of Catholics. Faithful to the Roman See in a strict sense of the term, ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volumes 1 and 2 - The Catholic Reaction • John Addington Symonds
... of her powerful feelings she sat down, covered her face with her little hands, and—no, she did not burst into tears! Had she been a civilised beauty perhaps she might have done so, but she struggled for a considerable time with Spartan-like resolution to crush down the true feelings of her heart. Old Umqua was quite pleased with the effect of her information, ascribing it as she did to a wrong cause, and felt disposed to be friendly with the captive ...
— The Prairie Chief • R.M. Ballantyne
... Thoreau, too, went to the woods because he wanted to live deliberately, and front only the essential facts of life. "I wanted to live deep and suck out all the marrow of life, to live so sturdily and Spartan-like as to put to rout all that was not life, to cut a broad swath and shave close, to drive life into a corner, and reduce ...
— The Story of Baden-Powell - 'The Wolf That Never Sleeps' • Harold Begbie
... the smiling tearlessness testify to the more than Spartan discipline of the race. Anciently the people were trained, not only to conceal their emotions, but to speak in a cheerful voice and to show a pleasant face under any stress of moral suffering; and they are obedient to that teaching to-day. It would still be thought a shame to betray personal ...
— The Romance of the Milky Way - And Other Studies & Stories • Lafcadio Hearn
... out thy heart A remnant of our Spartan dead! Of the three hundred grant but three To ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 2 • George Gordon Byron
... Greece. What little action is narrated may be very briefly indicated. Russia is at war with Turkey and calls upon Hellas to liberate itself. The hero and his friend Alabanda are at the head of a band of volunteers, fighting the Turks. After several minor successes Hyperion lays siege to the Spartan fortress of Misitra. But at its capitulation, he is undeceived concerning the Hellenic patriots; they ravage and plunder so fiercely that he turns from them with repugnance and both he and Alabanda abandon the cause of liberty which they ...
— Types of Weltschmerz in German Poetry • Wilhelm Alfred Braun
... Timaeus, when even men like Xenophon and Plato—the very demi-gods of literature—though they had sat at the feet of Socrates, sometimes forgot themselves in the pursuit of such paltry conceits. The former, in his account of the Spartan Polity, has these words: "Their voice you would no more hear than if they were of marble, their gaze is as immovable as if they were cast in bronze; you would deem them more modest than the very maidens in their ...
— On the Sublime • Longinus
... their contracts or for special compensation; proprietors of Boarding Schools, or "Academies," as they were generally called, had to modify their terms and to plead for compensation, while the King on his throne found the Civil List insufficient even with that Spartan order adopted by His Majesty, George III., that the bread in his household was to be made of meal and rye mixed, and that the Royal family were to eat the same bread as ...
— Fragments of Two Centuries - Glimpses of Country Life when George III. was King • Alfred Kingston
... and talk incessantly. My inkstand, pen, and small handwriting amuse them very much. Miss K., the typical American travelling lady, who is encountered everywhere from the Andes to the Pyramids, tireless, with an indomitable energy, Spartan endurance, and a genius for attaining everything, and myself, a limp, ragged, shoeless wretch, complete the group, and our heaps of saddles, blankets, spurs, and gear tell of real travelling, past and future. It is a most picturesque sight by the ...
— The Hawaiian Archipelago • Isabella L. Bird
... much. Your uncle would never have consented. But oh, Jock! I'm not a Spartan mother. My heart ...
— Magnum Bonum • Charlotte M. Yonge |
