"Acheron" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... positive enchantment: thence we looked over a landscape of such splendid and unequalled interest! the shores of Baia, where Cicero, Horace, Virgil, Pliny, Mecaenas, lived; the white towers of Puzzuoli and the Islands of Ischia, Procida, and Nisida. There was the Sybil's Cave, Lake Acheron, and the fabled Lethe; there the sepulchre of Misenus, who defied the Triton; and the scene of the whole sixth book of the AEneid, which I am now reading in Annibal Caro's translation: there Agrippina mourned Germanicus; and there her daughter fell a victim ...
— The Diary of an Ennuyee • Anna Brownell Jameson
... probable that Avernus, if not corrupted from [Greek: aornos], is related to iffrin, the Irish inferi? This derivation is at any rate more probable than that of Grotefend, who connects the word with [Greek: Acheron]. ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 219, January 7, 1854 • Various
... Phaedo; they are ever being born again from Hades and returning to life on earth; each man has his daimon,[136] who follows him throughout his existences, and at death takes him to the lower world[137] for Judgment.[138] Many souls enter Acheron,[139] and, after a longer or shorter period, return to earth to be incarnated in new bodies. Unpardonable sins fling ...
— Reincarnation - A Study in Human Evolution • Th. Pascal
... men, I would confront the strangest things that haunt In horrid shades of brooding desolation: Griffin, or satyr, sphinx, or sybil ape, Or lop-eared demon from the dens of night, Let loose to caper out of Acheron. Ah me, my Theseus, wherefore art thou gone! Who left that crock of water at my side? Who stole my dog that loved no one but me? Why was the tent unstruck, I unawaked, I left, most loved, and last to be forgotten By ...
— The International Monthly Magazine, Volume 5, No. 1, January, 1852 • Various
... of performance; a land which may be bounded by the aurora borealis, but which has also undeniable acquaintance with the flames of the bottomless pit; a land which is laved at once by the rivers of Paradise and the leaden waters of Acheron. ...
— The Land of Contrasts - A Briton's View of His American Kin • James Fullarton Muirhead
... power, I see, Not Acheron itself is free. His wasting hand my subjects feel, Grow old, and wrinkle though in Hell. Decrepit is Alecto grown, Megaera worn to skin and bone; And t'other beldam is so old, She has not spirits left to scold. Go, Hermes, ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole Volume 3 • Horace Walpole
... which spread terror far and wide, and which Heaven, in its anger, ordains for the punishment of wickedness upon earth—a plague in fact; and so dire a one as to make rich in one day that grim ferryman who takes a coin from all who cross the river Acheron to the land of the dead—such a plague was once waging war against the animals. All were attacked, although all did not die. So hopeless was the case that not one of them attempted to sustain their sinking lives. ...
— The Original Fables of La Fontaine - Rendered into English Prose by Fredk. Colin Tilney • Jean de la Fontaine
... nameless terror which stirs the soul of man to its very depths, as Mrs. Ward very aptly quotes from Virgil on her title page—this was the purpose for which Helbeck of Bannisdale conceived he had been placed here by a beneficent God. And on the supposition that "Acheron" is a reality, Helbeck was absolutely right. If hell is indeed "open to Christians," and if the path to life be exceeding strait and narrow, our bounden duty, as men of common sense, would be to "go sell all we had and give to" orphanages, ...
— Morality as a Religion - An exposition of some first principles • W. R. Washington Sullivan
... see it, never more, For down to Acheron's dread shore, A living victim am I led To Hades' universal bed. To my dark lot no bridal joys Belong, nor o'er the jocund noise Of hymeneal chant shall sound for me, But death, cold death, my ...
— Literary and General Lectures and Essays • Charles Kingsley
... incarnation of thought hatched out of the corruption of will. At twilight we see thin airy spectral insects, all wing and nippers, hovering, as if they could never pause, over some sullen mephitic pool. Just so, methinks, hover over Acheron such gnat-like, noiseless soarers into gloomy air out of Stygian deeps, as are the thoughts of spirits like Randal Leslie's. Wings have they, but only the better to pounce down,—draw their nutriment from unguarded material cuticles; ...
— My Novel, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... is he who could discover the causes of things, and place under his feet all fears and inexorable fate, and the sound of rapacious Acheron: he is blest who knows the country gods, and Pan, and old Sylvanus, and the sister nymphs."—Virgil, Georg., ...
— The Essays of Montaigne, Complete • Michel de Montaigne
... be your sighs the gale, The smiting of your brows the plash of oars, Wafting the boat, to Acheron's dim shores That passeth ever, with its darkened sail, On its uncharted voyage and sunless way, Far from thy beams, Apollo, god of day— The melancholy bark Bound for the common bourn, the harbour of the dark! Look ...
— Suppliant Maidens and Other Plays • AEschylus
... were, that if any immortal had tasted food in his realms they were bound to remain there for ever. Of course the ruler of the lower world had to prove this assertion. This, however, he found no difficulty in doing, as Ascalaphus, the son of Acheron and Orphne, was his witness to the fact.[25] Zeus, pitying the disappointment of Demeter at finding {56} her hopes thus blighted, succeeded in effecting a compromise by inducing his brother Aides ...
— Myths and Legends of Ancient Greece and Rome • E.M. Berens
... a great deal, and musicate ('musiquons') a great deal more. We lay all the elements under contribution for our amusement. We have a gondola for our water parties, a swing for the air, and we only want Torraeus and his Acheron to take a trip through fire. We have made parties to go fishing, and we intend making one to go fowling with nets and looking-glasses, as it is so beautifully described by a poet of my acquaintance, (the ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 57, No. 356, June, 1845 • Various
... any clime perhaps Might yield them easier habitation, bend Four ways their flying march, along the banks Of four infernal rivers, that disgorge Into the burning lake their baleful streams— Abhorred Styx, the flood of deadly hate; Sad Acheron of sorrow, black and deep; Cocytus, named of lamentation loud Heard on the rueful stream; fierce Phlegeton, Whose waves of torrent fire inflame with rage. Far off from these, a slow and silent stream, Lethe, the river of oblivion, rolls Her watery labyrinth, whereof who drinks Forthwith ...
— Paradise Lost • John Milton
... still are in the mountain forests, though, doubtless, fast hastening towards extinction. I saw one in its wild state two years ago in the dense woods of the interior; I saw it clearly. . . . Two living specimens were lately taken by the Acheron, steamer, to Sydney, where they died; these were obtained at the Bay of Islands, where also I once got three at one time. Since then I have not been able to obtain another, although I have offered a great price for one. The fact is, the younger natives do ...
— A Dictionary of Austral English • Edward Morris
... streams must give a sense of coolness. Deep down, entombed amid smiling green hills and frowning forest peaks, lies the pearl of Grardmer, its sweet lake, a sheet of turquoise in early morn, silvery bright when the noon-day sun flashes upon it, and on grey, sunless days gloomy as Acheron itself. ...
— In the Heart of the Vosges - And Other Sketches by a "Devious Traveller" • Matilda Betham-Edwards
... awake as well as in sleep, what time we behold strange shapes, and "idols" of the light-bereaved,' Lucretius expressly advances this doctrine of 'films' (an application of the Democritean theory of perception), 'that we may not believe that souls break loose from Acheron, or that shades fly about among the living, or that any part of us is left behind after death'. {341a} Believers in ghosts must have replied that they do not see, in sleep or awake, 'films' representing a mouldering corpse, as they ...
— Cock Lane and Common-Sense • Andrew Lang
... the city Pandosia, for there were fixed the limits of his destiny." For that reason he made the greater haste to pass over to Italy, in order to be at as great a distance as possible from the city Pandosia in Epirus, and the river Acheron, which, after flowing through Molossis, runs into the lakes called Infernal, and is received into the Thesprotian gulf. But, (as it frequently happens, that men, by endeavouring to shun their fate, run directly upon it,) after ...
— The History of Rome, Books 01 to 08 • Titus Livius
... Whereat I thus: "Sir! grant me now to know Whom here we view, and whence impell'd they seem So eager to pass o'er, as I discern Through the blear light?" He thus to me in few: "This shalt thou know, soon as our steps arrive Beside the woeful tide of Acheron." ...
— The Divine Comedy, Complete - The Vision of Paradise, Purgatory and Hell • Dante Alighieri
... hermaphrodite; do you understand? an hermaphrodite. And his whole life was one of long, incessant torture, of physical and moral suffering, which was more maddening than that which Tantalus endured on the banks of the river Acheron. He had nearly everything of the woman about him; he was a ridiculous caricature of our sex, with his shrill voice, his large hips, his bust concealed by a loose, wide coat, his cheeks, his chin, and upper lip without a ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume III (of 8) • Guy de Maupassant
... into the Guacharo cavern, the entrance to which, framed as it is with the most luxuriant vegetation, is truly magnificent. From it issues a considerable river, and its dim recesses echo to the gloomy notes of birds. It is the Acheron of the Chayma Indians, for, according to their mythology and that of the natives of Orinoco, the souls of the dead go to this cavern. To go down into the Guacharo signifies in their language ...
— Celebrated Travels and Travellers - Part 2. The Great Navigators of the Eighteenth Century • Jules Verne
... that she had done so in their family conversations. Together they had fished in turbid waters for marital nibbles and had told mutual falsehoods to unbelieving tradesmen. And yet the younger woman, when tempted with a bribe worth lies and tricks as deep and as black as Acheron, now stood on her dignity and her purity and stamped her ...
— The American Senator • Anthony Trollope
... epicureanism, which always says: "Enjoy this life, for it will be soon over, and after death there is nothing left for us." Virgil tells us that those are happy who know the causes of things, and so escape the terrors of Acheron. The serious Tacitus, a man always in earnest, a penetrating mind, is by Bunsen called "the last Roman prophet, but a prophet of death and judgment. He saw that Rome hastened to ruin, and that Caesarism was an unmixed evil, but an evil not to be remedied."[308] He declares that ...
— Ten Great Religions - An Essay in Comparative Theology • James Freeman Clarke
... mast, and hoist your white sails, and sit in your ship in peace: the north wind shall waft you through the seas, till you shall cross the expanse of the ocean and come to where grow the poplar groves and willows pale of Proserpine: where Pyriphlegethon and Cocytus and Acheron mingle their waves. Cocytus is an arm of Styx, the forgetful river. Here dig a pit, and make it a cubit broad and a cubit long, and pour in milk, and honey, and wine, and the blood of a ram, and the blood of a black ewe, and turn away thy face while thou pourest in, ...
— THE ADVENTURES OF ULYSSES • CHARLES LAMB
... comeliness Demetrios was pleased to like. I would have waded Acheron—singing—rather than let his little finger ache. He knew as much. Only it seemed a trifle, because your eyes were bright and your fair skin was unwrinkled. In consequence the man is dead. Oh, Melicent, I wonder ...
— Domnei • James Branch Cabell et al |
