"Ambrosia" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... remote antiquity, near Mount Sipylus, in Lydia, and was a man of immense wealth, and pre-eminently favored both by gods and men. Intoxicated by prosperity, he stole nectar and ambrosia from the table of the gods, and revealed their secrets, for which he was punished in the under world by perpetual hunger and thirst, yet placed with fruit and water near him, which eluded his grasp when ...
— Ancient States and Empires • John Lord
... well; do not trouble yourself, my good dame," replied the elder stranger, kindly. "An honest hearty welcome to a guest works miracles with the fare, and is capable of turning the coarsest food to nectar and ambrosia." ...
— Children's Literature - A Textbook of Sources for Teachers and Teacher-Training Classes • Charles Madison Curry
... are temptations in life that require all of one's will to succumb to; and he who resists not the current of his being, nor attempts to dam the fountain of life for another, shall be crowned with bay and be fed on ambrosia ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Vol. 13 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Lovers • Elbert Hubbard
... chops, and the sweet, sticky stuff that it gathered filled him with a sudden and entirely unexpected pleasure. For a quarter of an hour he licked himself. And then, as if the secret of this delightful ambrosia had just dawned upon him, his bright little eyes fixed themselves covetously upon the tin basin. He approached it with commendable strategy and caution, circling first on one side of it and then ...
— The Grizzly King • James Oliver Curwood
... should be proud of these praises," said he, "did they come from persons that durst condemn or disapprove the contrary, in case I should do it." All the real advantages of princes are common to them with men of meaner condition ('tis for the gods to mount winged horses and feed upon ambrosia): they have no other sleep, nor other appetite than we; the steel they arm themselves withal is of no better temper than that we also use; their crowns neither defend them from ...
— The Essays of Montaigne, Complete • Michel de Montaigne
... mist so thick, that I could see neither lake nor inn, nor anything to guide me. I had to go by guess, and, as it happened, my Yankee method served me well. I ascended the hill, crossed the torrent, in the waterfall, first drinking some of the water, which was as good at that time as ambrosia. I crossed in that place, because the waterfall made steps, as it were, to the next hill. To be sure, they were covered with water, but I was already entirely wet with the mist, so that it did not matter. I kept on scrambling, as ...
— Memoirs of Margaret Fuller Ossoli, Vol. II • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... Phoebus in this grievous anguish. All herbs he sought, and strove to win some wise healing art, and he anointed all the wound with nectar and ambrosia, but remedeless are all the ...
— Theocritus, Bion and Moschus rendered into English Prose • Andrew Lang
... tender words used between lovers and their mistresses were not less correct and innocent when the mistress was a courtesan and the lover an erotic poet. He called her his rose, his queen, his goddess, his dove, his light, his star, and she replied by calling him her jewel, her honey, her bird, her ambrosia, the apple of her eye, and never with any licentious interjection, but only 'I will love!' (Amabo), a frequent exclamation, summing up a whole life and vocation. When intimate relations began, they treated each other as 'brother' and 'sister.' ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 1 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... prevailed, and just now come out triumphant over all lanes, pastures, fields, and gardens, such is their vigor. We have insulted them with low names, too,—as Pigweed, Wormwood, Chickweed, Shad-Blossom." He says, "They have brave names, too,—Ambrosia, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 58, August, 1862 • Various
... and half awake, turned over, and stretching out her arm, gave me a hasty kiss, thinking I was her sister. She then fell asleep again in the same position. I should have stayed still long enough, for her warm breath played on my face, and gave me a foretaste of ambrosia; but Eleanore could restrain herself no longer, and, bursting into a peal of laughter, forced Clementine to open her eyes. Nevertheless, she did not discover that she held me in her arms till she saw her sister standing ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... think about them; he was missing and thinking about Toby, and wondering, where he was, and what he was doing. But ah! there he was all ready and waiting close to the gate of paradise. Yes, there was Toby after all! There he was, standing by a celestial manger overflowing with ambrosia, already blanketed with softest zephyrs, saddled with shining clouds, and bitted with sunbeams—quite ready and only waiting for the touch of his friend's hand on the bridle—to canter up the radiant highway walled with jasper and paved ...
— Round Anvil Rock - A Romance • Nancy Huston Banks
... adventure, and her imperishable beauty and unadhesive cleanliness of person; and, as for lives, she has more than a thousand cats'. After nine months' confinement in a dungeon, four feet square, when it is opened for her release, the air is perfumed with the ambrosia which exhales from her ...
— Olla Podrida • Frederick Marryat (AKA Captain Marryat)
... clean, fair copy she prepares, Makes sure of moods and tenses, With her own hand,—for prudence spares A man-(or woman)-uensis; Complete, and tied with ribbons proud, She hinted soon how cosy a Treat it would be to read them loud After next day's Ambrosia. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I, No. 1, Nov. 1857 • Various
... sublime gratification which the gods have to give. To subdue the audience and blend mind with mind affords an intoxication beyond the ambrosia of Elysium. When Sophocles pictured the god Mercury seizing upon the fairest daughter of Earth and carrying her away through the realms of space, he had in mind the power of the orator, which through love lifts up humanity ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 7 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Eminent Orators • Elbert Hubbard
... my mind there came how, long ago, Lay on the hearth, amid a fiery ring, The charm'd babe of the Eleusinian king—[34] His nurse, the Mighty Mother, will'd it so. Warm in her breast, by day, He slumber'd, and ambrosia balm'd the child; But all night long amid the flames he lay, Upon the hearth, and ...
— Poetical Works of Matthew Arnold • Matthew Arnold
... in a fit of anger dropped dead at the very door of the court. Though the anger and chagrin at the loss of his case hastened his death, he had always been subject to a trouble of the heart which was liable to prove fatal at any moment under undue excitement. Ambrosia Moreno, who was called Madre, when she grew older, held our family to blame for this affliction, and made a vow that every generation of the Sotos should suffer through this plot of ground as ...
— The Beautiful Eyes of Ysidria • Charles A. Gunnison
... if their wings had plenty to do that day! Guess if Minos and Rhadamanthus were busy, and Charon sung in his boat, and Lucifer hugged himself for joy. Guess, also, if the tables in heaven groaned with nectar and ambrosia, and good old St. Peter had a dry hair in ...
— Stories from the Italian Poets: With Lives of the Writers, Volume 1 • Leigh Hunt
... enough for you, old top," replied the host, "even if I only had half as much as I have. Here, take first crack at the ambrosia. Sorry I have but a single cup; but James has broken the others. James is very careless. Sometimes I almost feel that I shall have to let ...
— The Mucker • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... felt in duty bound to apologize for the avidity with which he attacked the juicy roast of beef, the pearly potatoes, the toothsome pudding, and the other dainties that, after months of pork and beans, tasted like ambrosia. ...
— The Young Woodsman - Life in the Forests of Canada • J. McDonald Oxley
... time something sweet and deliciously fragrant was put to her lips; she opened her mouth and received a spoonful of marmalade. Never did marmalade taste like that before. It dissolved itself like ambrosia over her palate and even relieved her parched throat in some slight degree by the saliva ...
— Foul Play • Charles Reade
... abhorret vacuum. Would you say that a fly could drink in this? This is after the fashion of Switzerland. Clear off, neat, supernaculum! Come, therefore, blades, to this divine liquor and celestial juice, swill it over heartily, and spare not! It is a decoction of nectar and ambrosia. ...
— Gargantua and Pantagruel, Complete. • Francois Rabelais
... Oh! by Bacchus! what a bouquet! It has the aroma of nectar and ambrosia; this does not say to us, "Provision yourselves for three days." But it lisps the gentle numbers, "Go whither you will."(1) I accept it, ratify it, drink it at one draught and consign the Acharnians to limbo. Freed from ...
— The Acharnians • Aristophanes
... Swedish literature, Letitia struggled with Miss Lyberg. Compared with the Swede, my exquisitely ignorant wife was a culinary queen. She was an epicurean caterer. Letitia's slate-pencil coffee was ambrosia for the gods, sweetest nectar, by the side of the dishwater that cook prepared. I began to feel quite proud of her. She grew to be an adept in the art of boiling water. If we could have lived on that fluid, everything would ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume I. (of X.) • Various
... in the old myth of Demeter and Persephone," Kate asked me, "where Demeter takes care of the child and gives it ambrosia and hides it in fire, because she loves it and wishes to make it immortal, and to give it eternal youth; and then the mother finds it out and cries in terror to hinder her, and the goddess angrily ...
— Deephaven and Selected Stories & Sketches • Sarah Orne Jewett
... very warm, and Halicarnassus said he was tired; so he went into a restaurant and ordered strawberries,—that luscious fruit, quivering on the border-land of ambrosia and nectar. ...
— Gala-days • Gail Hamilton
... in your kingdom and see what a royal throne you occupied? What a reception your flowers give you! The ambrosia and nectar of the feasts of the deities of fable are overshadowed by the fragrance and sweetness of your worshippers. It would seem that every flower, like a royal subject, was bent on rendering the most exalted honor to her king. No company of maidens preparing for ...
— Trees, Fruits and Flowers of Minnesota, 1916 • Various
... BY THE ANCIENTS.—By the ancients, the flesh of this fish was compared to the ambrosia of the immortals. The poet Martial passes a high eulogium upon it, and assigns it a place on the luxurious tables of the Palatine Mount. If we may credit a modern traveller in China, the people of that country generally entirely abstain from it, and the sovereign of the Celestial Empire ...
— The Book of Household Management • Mrs. Isabella Beeton
... rye bread and jam. Several times on the Subway the apple got shoved into my ribs over a period where it seemed as if either the apple or the ribs would have to give in. But by noon my hunger was such that any state of anything edible was as nectar and ambrosia. ...
— Working With the Working Woman • Cornelia Stratton Parker
... mummy—for we are in Egypt, you know, the land of mummies. I bequeath my old dress to you, my dear, for I know you would never put on the new one. If you bewail me as you ought I will visit you in a dream, and put a sugarplum in your mouth—a cake of ambrosia such as the gods eat. You are not even ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... see Frederic again; be no more to him than if she had never laid her head upon his bosom; never felt his kisses upon lip and forehead; never lived upon his words of love as rapt mortals, admitted in trances to the banquet of the gods, eat ambrosia, and drink to divinest ecstacy of nectar—the elixir of immortal life and ...
— At Last • Marion Harland
... Ambrosia Anchovy Canapes Anchovy Canapes with Tomatoes Black Olives Brain (Appetizer) Canapes—How to Make Caviar Canapes Celery Relish Cheese Balls Chicken Liver Paste, No. 1 Chicken Liver Paste, No. 2 Chopped Herring Chopped ...
— The International Jewish Cook Book • Florence Kreisler Greenbaum
... old mammy of the family hastened to prepare what seemed to them the most delicious meal they had ever tasted. The corn-bread pones vanished down their throats as fast as she could take them from the hot ashes in which they were baked. The cabbage, fried in a skillet, tasted like ambrosia. The meat no game could surpass in flavor, and an additional zest was added to it by their fancy that it had been furnished by the slave-holder's pantry. They had partaken of many sumptuous meals, but nothing to equal that set before ...
— Historic Tales, Vol. 1 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... spouse, Has neither ill nor scratch her fears to rouse. Jane, cried the first, is ev'ry way complete; No freckles on the skin: as balm she's sweet: Antoinetta is, her spouse replied, Ambrosia ev'ry way: ...
— The Tales and Novels, Complete • Jean de La Fontaine
... fresh acquaintance with things, the dingy covering of petty habits seemed to drop off the world. I am sure that the sugar-cane molasses, which I had with cold luchis for my breakfast, could not have tasted different from the ambrosia which Indra[15] quaffs in his heaven; for, the immortality is not in the nectar but in the taster, and thus is missed ...
— My Reminiscences • Rabindranath Tagore
... body even is not fed like other men's, but he sometimes tastes the genuine nectar and ambrosia of the gods, and lives a divine life. By the healthful and invigorating thrills of inspiration his life is preserved to ...
— A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers • Henry David Thoreau
... Violet were very tired, but the difficult and eager air of the icy mountain-top was exhilarating as new wine, and the provisions they had brought with them reinvigorated them completely. To hungry and thirsty climbers black bread and vin ordinaire taste like nectar and ambrosia. The day was cloudless, the view unspeakably magnificent, and Cyril's high spirits were contagious. They lingered long before they began the descent, and laughingly pooh-poohed the guide's repeated suggestion that it ...
— Julian Home • Dean Frederic W. Farrar
... for she had on her head a shining sallet, whereon was bound a garland of Olive branches, having in one hand a target or shield: and in the other a speare as though she would fight: then came another which passed the other in beauty, and presented the Goddesse Venus, with the color of Ambrosia, when she was a maiden, and to the end she would shew her perfect beauty, shee appeared all naked, saving that her fine and dainty skin was covered with a thin smocke, which the wind blew hither and thither to testifie the youth and flowre of the age of the dame. Her colour was of two sorts, ...
— The Golden Asse • Lucius Apuleius
... reminds me," said Redgrave, getting up and following her, "we must celebrate our arrival on a new world as usual. I'll go down and get out the wine. I shouldn't be surprised if we found the people of the Love-World living on nectar and ambrosia, and as fizz is our ...
— A Honeymoon in Space • George Griffith
... "Her presence is ambrosia to my sight; her contact, fragrant sandal; her fond arms, twined round my neck; are a far richer clasp than costliest gems, and in my house she reigns the guardian goddess of my fame and fortune. Oh! I could never bear ...
— Tales from the Hindu Dramatists • R. N. Dutta
... vigorous appetites of the growing boys and girls were disposing of the supper, Arnold and Mildred rather neglected their plates, finding ambrosia in each other's eyes, words, and even intonations. Now that they had the deserted parlor to themselves, ...
— Without a Home • E. P. Roe
... to guard his aged breast With its enchanted mesh When he his nectar and ambrosia ...
— Three Unpublished Poems • Louisa M. Alcott
... Captain Maynard gallantly, "I am already more than reconciled to my wound. Anything that you prepare for me will be ambrosia." ...
— Miss Lou • E. P. Roe
... good many times there wa'n't anything in the world that tasted better than chowder—real good clam chowder." His mouth opened to take in a spoonful, and his ponderous jaws worked slowly. There was nothing gross in the action, but it might have been ambrosia. He had pushed the big spectacles up on his head for comfort, and they made an iron-gray bridge from tuft to tuft, ...
— Uncle William - The Man Who Was Shif'less • Jennette Lee
... drinking-water taken from a cistern beneath the building, into which only the winter rains were allowed to fall, was like an elixir. They offered luscious peaches that, with such water, were nectar and ambrosia to our parched lips. At night the housekeeper said she was sorry they had no mosquito-bars ready, and hoped the mosquitos would not be thick, but they came out in legions. I knew that on sleep that night depended recovery or illness ...
— Famous Adventures And Prison Escapes of the Civil War • Various
... inconvenienced by it. The island of Juan Fernandez, whither the Spaniards, when masters in Chili, used to banish criminals and republicans, lay on our left, and the little uninhabited rocky islands of Felix and Ambrosia at a little distance on our right. After rapidly gaining the Southern Tropic, our voyage, though pleasant, was far more tranquil; the slightness of the motion between the Tropics, admits of employment on board a ship, for which ...
— A New Voyage Round the World in the Years 1823, 24, 25, and 26. Vol. 1 • Otto von Kotzebue
... he did. He was eating with more enjoyment than he ever had eaten in his life. Ambrosia was nothing to ...
— The Flamp, The Ameliorator, and The Schoolboy's Apprentice • E. V. Lucas
... Coleridge should have waited till his youthful yearnings for a life of action, and perhaps (though that would have lent itself less gracefully to his poem of farewell to his Clevedon cottage) his increasing sense of the necessity of supplementing the ambrosia of love with the bread and cheese of mortals, compelled him to re-enter the world. No wonder he should have delayed to do so, for it is as easy to perceive in his poems that these were days of unclouded happiness as it is ...
— English Men of Letters: Coleridge • H. D. Traill
... Have we not touched the height of human bliss? And if the sharp rebound may hurl us back Among the prostrate, did we not soar once?— Taste heavenly nectar, banquet with the gods On high Olympus? If they cast us, now, Amid the furies, shall we not go down With rich ambrosia clinging to our lips, And richer memories settled in our ...
— Representative Plays by American Dramatists: 1856-1911: Francesca da Rimini • George Henry Boker
... somewhat grimy, perhaps, but clothed and in their right mind, with a becoming bloom upon them of eagerness, deference, and patriotic willingness to die in Virginia's defence. The dispensers of nectar and ambrosia loved them all, sped them on to Manassas with many a ...
— The Long Roll • Mary Johnston
... deceiver, applying the latter's art of transformation to himself, and destroying appearance with appearance; how the poor mortals almost perish through the odor of the skins of the sea-calves, thus showing their human weakness and limitation, till ambrosia, the food of the Immortals, is brought by the Goddess, which at once relieves them of their mortal ailment—these and other incidents have their subtle, far-reaching hint of the supersensible world. The whole story is illumined with one ...
— Homer's Odyssey - A Commentary • Denton J. Snider
... Love! All the necessities and habits of our life sink before it. Food and sleep, that seem to divide our being as day and night divide Time, lose all their influence over the lover. He is a spiritualised being, fit only to live upon ambrosia, and slumber in an imaginary paradise. The cares of the world do not touch him; its most stirring events are to him but the dusty incidents of bygone annals. All the fortune of the world without his mistress is misery; and ...
— Henrietta Temple - A Love Story • Benjamin Disraeli
... tell me that all Mussulmans are temperance people, the barbarians! What services will they give me in exchange for this ambrosia, which has cost me ...
— Sophisms of the Protectionists • Frederic Bastiat
... in love with him; and we have to thank, I believe, the high romanticks for it. They must have devilry, it seems, or cayenne pepper. But I say, Scorn not the sentimental, though it be barley-sugar to ambrosia, a canary's flight to a skylark's. Scorn it not; it's the romantic of the unimaginative; and if it won't serve for a magic carpet, it makes ...
— Love and Lucy • Maurice Henry Hewlett
... copy one of the shorter poems, written when the author was only fourteen. There is a little dimness in the filling up, but the grace and symmetry of the outline are such as few poets ever attain. There is a smack of ambrosia about it. ...
— The Function Of The Poet And Other Essays • James Russell Lowell
... these conditions expects or desires that the evolution shall be Acadian in its results. It is to be hoped indeed that country sweets shall not lose their delights; that the farmer himself may find in his surroundings spiritual and mental ambrosia. But what is wanted, and what is rapidly coming, is the breaking down of those barriers which have so long differentiated country from urban life; the extinction of that social ostracism which has been the farmer's fate; the obliteration of that line which for many a youth has marked ...
— Chapters in Rural Progress • Kenyon L. Butterfield
... flowing gown of pale rose-color and much soft lace and ribbons, no one could think of her as hungry or poverty-pinched in any way, but only as some wonderful fairy queen who dined on peacocks' tongues and supped on nectar and ambrosia. ...
— The Rose of Old St. Louis • Mary Dillon
... to be disciples at the feet of this inspired ruin. They spoke not only of his mind, but even of his physical characteristics—his voice and his hair—as though these belonged to the one man of his time whose food was ambrosia. Even as a boy at Christ's Hospital, according to Lamb, he used to make the "casual passer through the Cloisters stand still, intranced with admiration (while he weighed the disproportion between the speech ...
— The Art of Letters • Robert Lynd
... not have engaged him in single combat unless his hurt had been miraculously healed and the poet had considered that the dittany which she brought from Crete could not have wrought so speedy an effect without the juice of ambrosia which she mingled with it. After all, that his machine might not seem too violent, we see the hero limping after Turnus; the wound was skinned, but the strength of his thigh was not restored. But what reason had ...
— Discourses on Satire and Epic Poetry • John Dryden
... our food with painstaking fairness. How we gorged on the raw red flesh and thick greasy fat! Food that would have disgusted us when we lived and worked in the Central Station, now was ambrosia to our sharpened appetites. When not the least scrap was left, and we had slaked our thirst with chunks of ice from the cavern floor, ...
— Astounding Stories, July, 1931 • Various
... mind in her revolution enjoys this fair prospect, and beholds justice, temperance, and knowledge in their everlasting essence. When fulfilled with the sight of them she returns home, and the charioteer puts up the horses in their stable, and gives them ambrosia to eat and nectar to drink. This is the life of the gods; the human soul tries to reach the same heights, but hardly succeeds; and sometimes the head of the charioteer rises above, and sometimes sinks ...
— Phaedrus • Plato
... onion where his heart was, and well peppered," gloated the Little Missioner. "Dear Heaven! was there ever such a mess to put strength into a man's gizzard, David? And coffee—this coffee of Marie's! It is more than ambrosia. It is an elixir which transforms a cup into a fountain of youth. Take off your coat, David; take off your coat ...
— The Courage of Marge O'Doone • James Oliver Curwood
... and the universe growing red, and the horns of the far-distant Moon, as if about to vanish, orders the swift Hours to yoke the horses. The Goddesses speedily perform his commands, and lead forth the steeds from the lofty stalls, snorting forth flames, and filled with the juice of Ambrosia; and {then} they ...
— The Metamorphoses of Ovid - Vol. I, Books I-VII • Publius Ovidius Naso
... mother's milk, or honey, or clarified butter, or good wine that is prepared from honey, or excellent water, or milk, or curds, or skimmed milk, or all other kinds of drinks there are on earth that are sweet as ambrosia or nectar." Once more, Bhima of fierce deeds, his heart filled with wrath, beholding Duhshasana dead, laughed softly and said, "What more can I do to thee? Death has rescued thee from my hands." They, O king, that saw Bhimasena, while he filled ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 3 - Books 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12 • Unknown
... to admire and understand him, while here among his brethren he will be welcomed with joy and high honor." So Astulf sat in the seat of this poet to be honored in the future, and made a hearty dinner off nectar and ambrosia, "which are mighty fine viands," as he afterward told his friends at home; "but a hungry man, on the whole, would prefer good roast beef and a slice of plum pudding for a steady diet." Dinner being over, the pilgrim was led by the obliging ...
— Holiday Stories for Young People • Various
... on the beach chanting to the islanders the glorious boast of the little island—how it of all lands had harboured Leto in her difficult travail; how she gave birth to the Sun God; how the immortal child, as the attendant goddesses touched his lips with ambrosia, burst his swaddling bands and stood up, ...
— On The Art of Reading • Arthur Quiller-Couch
... ideas and practices, (I) The Nature of the Gods.—The gods in Homer are human beings with greatly magnified powers. Their dwelling is in the sky above us: their special abode is Mount Olympus. They experience hunger, but feed on ambrosia and nectar. They travel with miraculous speed. Their prime blessing is exemption from mortality. Among themselves they are often discordant and deceitful. (2) Relation of the Gods to Men. They ...
— Outline of Universal History • George Park Fisher
... minutes for refreshments? Is n't that a picture of the poet's hungry and hurried feast at the banquet of life? The traveller flings himself on the bewildering miscellany of delicacies spread before him, the various tempting forms of ambrosia and seducing draughts of nectar, with the same eager hurry and restless ardor that you describe in the poet. Dear me! If it wasn't for All aboard! that summons of the deaf conductor which tears one away from his half-finished sponge-cake and coffee, how I, who ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... in small pieces. Half a ripe pineapple, broken with a fork into bits and sugared to taste, and four bananas sliced, are mixed with the oranges, and the whole put on ice for three or four hours. This will be found a dish rivalling the ambrosia of ...
— Social Life - or, The Manners and Customs of Polite Society • Maud C. Cooke
... putting them in wide jars and covering them with syrup. When required for use, they must be taken out, drained thoroughly, and then filled with a variety of small fruits, such as cherries, strawberries, currants, etc., which have been mixed with a little apple or orange jelly. In winter, ambrosia—a mixture of cut-up banana, grated cocoa-nut, orange quarters, etc.—may be served in them, or a mixture of preserved fruits that are firm, such as Chinese oranges, limes, ginger, etc. In all cases serve them on a compote ...
— Choice Cookery • Catherine Owen
... certain volatile and ethereal quality which represents their highest value, and which cannot be vulgarized, or bought and sold. No mortal has ever enjoyed the perfect flavor of any fruit, and only the god-like among men begin to taste its ambrosial qualities. For nectar and ambrosia are only those fine flavors of every earthly fruit which our coarse palates fail to perceive,—just as we occupy the heaven of the gods without knowing it. When I see a particularly mean man carrying a load of fair and fragrant early apples ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 61, November, 1862 • Various
... wherein I would derive "Ambrosia." Ambergris was long supposed to be a fossil, a vegetable which grew upon the sea-bottom or rose in springs; or a "substance produced in the water like naphtha or bitumen"(!): now it is known to be the egesta of a whale. It is found in lumps weighing several pounds upon the Zanzibar Coast and is ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 6 • Richard F. Burton
... flower, but love is in the flower, and he knows he is not utterly forgotten. It may be only an hand clasp, but warmth and sympathy are in it, and behold it is straightway "an angel strengthening him." Perchance it is a letter with a foreign postmark, but in it is nectar and ambrosia for a drooping spirit. Or the angel may come enveloped in a text of Scripture or flying on the wings of the music of some old ...
— The Heart-Cry of Jesus • Byron J. Rees
... flees, and the death of the monster brings to life a lovely youth—put under the spell of malignant powers—who promptly weds his ward. In Lohengrin, Son of Parsifal, the whole machinery of the Wagner opera is transposed to the key of lunar parody. What ambrosia from the Walhalla of topsyturvy is this Elsa with her "eyes hymeneally illumined" as she awaits her saviour. He appears and they are married. Alas! The pillow of the nuptial couch becomes a swan that carries off Lohengrin weary of ...
— Ivory Apes and Peacocks • James Huneker
... was in reality a bitter comment upon facts. So a pair of new shoes for Sarah went down in my list with a large print Testament for Pete. Then I found that some of the people, some of the old ones, who in youth had been accustomed to it, like nothing so well as tea; it was ambrosia and Lethe mingled; and a packet of tea was put in my list next to the Testament. But the tea must have sugar; and I could not bear that they should drink it out of mugs, without any teaspoons; so to please myself I sent for a little delf ware and a few pewter spoons. Little by little ...
— Daisy • Elizabeth Wetherell
... mellite Iuventi, Suaviolum dulci dulcius ambrosia. Verum id non inpune tuli: namque amplius horam Suffixum in summa me memini esse cruce, Dum tibi me purgo nec possum fletibus ullis 5 Tantillum vostrae demere saevitiae. Nam simul id factumst, multis diluta labella ...
— The Carmina of Caius Valerius Catullus • Caius Valerius Catullus
... the universe. He greeted me cordially, and asked after my welfare. I satisfied his inquiries, and demanded, in my turn, how he did, and whether he had decided on another trip to Greece. Once on that subject, he gave free expression to his sentiments; and, I assure you, 'twas a veritable feast of ambrosia to me. The spells of the Sirens (if ever there were Sirens), of the Pindaric 'Charmers,' of the Homeric lotus, are things to be forgotten, after his truly divine eloquence. Led on by his theme, he spoke the ...
— Works, V1 • Lucian of Samosata
... brave and good warriors. Their way thither is over the heavenly bridge, the many-colored rainbow, thrown over between heaven and earth for the passage of the happy souls. And there in this dim, ghostly Walhalla they sit like the Grecian gods, and drink mead instead of ambrosia and nectar. They do not share in the earthly vices of the Southern gods. Thor never begat such ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 2, No. 2, August, 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... more immediately a distinct conception of what true Poetry is, by mere reference to a few of the simple elements which induce in the Poet himself the true poetical effect. He recognizes the ambrosia which nourishes his soul in the bright orbs that shine in Heaven, in the volutes of the flower, in the clustering of low shrubberies, in the waving of the grain-fields, in the slanting of tall eastern ...
— Edgar Allan Poe's Complete Poetical Works • Edgar Allan Poe
... childhood. We can all recall a period of our lives when there was joy in the consciousness of living—when animal life, in its spontaneous overflow, flooded all our careless hours with its own peculiar pleasure. The light was pleasant to our eyes, vigorous appetite and digestion made ambrosia of the homeliest fare, the simplest play brought delight, and life—all untried—lay spread out before us in one long, golden dream. We now watch our children at their sports, and see but little difference between their sources of happiness ...
— Lessons in Life - A Series of Familiar Essays • Timothy Titcomb
... and he used to spend their evenings together frequently in drinking "hot pepper and brandy." The great failing of Peter, indeed, was his love of strong liquors. We find in one of the papers of the day, that he took a particular fancy to the nectar ambrosia, "the new cordial so called, which the author, or compounder of it, presented him with, and that his Majesty sent ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 574 - Vol. XX, No. 574. Saturday, November 3, 1832 • Various
... living as it ought to be; so I took it out with me into the garden, because the dullest book takes on a certain saving grace if read out of doors, just as bread and butter, devoid of charm in the drawing-room, is ambrosia eaten under a tree. I read Luther all the afternoon with pauses for refreshing glances at the garden and the sky, and much thankfulness in my heart. His struggles with devils amazed me; and I wondered whether such a day as that, full of grace and the forgiveness of sins, never ...
— Elizabeth and her German Garden • "Elizabeth", AKA Marie Annette Beauchamp
... are expected to behave as if they lived on ambrosia and concerned themselves with nothing but the loftiest interests. Anxiety, need, passion, have no existence. All realism is suppressed as brutal. In a word, what we call "society" proceeds for the moment on the flattering illusory assumption that it is moving in an ethereal atmosphere and ...
— Amiel's Journal • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... history, poetry, and medical uses of the plant, together with its application to religious emblems, numismatics, heraldry, painting, &c. Two short extracts will suffice here:—"Le lis blanc, surnomme la fleur des fleurs, les delices de Venus, la Rose de Junon, qu'Anguillara designa sous le nom d'Ambrosia, probablement a cause de son parfum suivant, et pent etre aussi de sa soidisante divine origine, se place tout naturellement a le tete de ce groupe splendide." "C'est le Lis classique, par excellence, et en meme temps le ...
— The plant-lore & garden-craft of Shakespeare • Henry Nicholson Ellacombe
... Mamma. She did not tremendously apologize because the hot water tap in my bath-room would not run (as Mrs. Spleist did when one of the twenty electric light branches round my bed-room would not shine); she just said, "You must call Ambrosia" (a sweet darkie servant) "and she will bring you a ...
— Elizabeth Visits America • Elinor Glyn
... life, whose water is clear as crystal, cold as snow, and sweet as nectar. The believer who takes a draught shall thirst no more. Even the oriental imagination fails to describe the glories of this paradise—its fountains and flowers, pearls and gems, nectar and ambrosia, all in unmeasured profusion. To crown the enchantment of the place, to each faithful Moslem is allotted seventy-two houris, resplendent beings, free from every human defect, perpetually renewing their youth and beauty. Such is the Mohammedan ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol 3 No 3, March 1863 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... crystalline hairs or threads like the spun-glass candy in our Christmas sweetshops—white at the base and shading from pale salmon to the deepest of pinks. This exquisite tapestry, whose beauties were normally forever hidden as well from the blind grub as from the outside world, was the ambrosia all unwittingly provided by the antagonism of the plant; the nutrition of resentment, the food of defiance; and day by day the grub gradually ate his way from one end to the other of his suite, laying a normal, healthful physical foundation for ...
— Edge of the Jungle • William Beebe
... chateau, and inset here like a rare plant in an old stone wall. The panelling was of Italian intarsia work inlaid with a renaissance design portraying the tale of Cupid and Psyche; on the final panel Jupiter was handing the cup of ambrosia to Psyche with the words, 'Sume, Psyche, et immortalis esto, nec unquam digridietur a tuo nexu Cupido, sed istae vobis erunt perpetuae nuptiae'; the floor was formed of parquetry, and the rugs above were of fine ...
— Border Ghost Stories • Howard Pease
... leaves and bright-tressed flowers, the plant not unknown to wild goats when winged arrows are fast in their body. This Venus bore down, her shape girt in a dim halo; this she steeps with secret healing in the river-water poured out and sparkling abrim, and sprinkles life-giving juice of ambrosia and scented balm. With that water aged Iapix washed the wound, unwitting; and suddenly, lo! all the pain left his body, all the blood in the deep wound was stanched. And now following his hand the arrow fell out with no force, and strength ...
— The Aeneid of Virgil • Virgil
... only taken one of many versions of the same story, in all of which Dionysus is victorious, his enemy being torn to pieces by the sacred women, or by wild horses, or dogs, or the fangs of cold; or the maenad Ambrosia, whom he is supposed to pursue for purposes of lust, suddenly becomes a vine, and binds him down to the earth inextricably, in her ...
— Greek Studies: A Series of Essays • Walter Horatio Pater
... was hardly enjoyed by its object, who avoided the Spanish enthusiast. One Sunday, however, d'Ollanda had gone to San Silvestre finding there Tolomei, to whom he was also devoted, and Vittoria Colonna, both of whom had gone to hear the celebrated Fra Ambrosia of Siena expound the Epistles of St. Paul. The Marchesa di Pescara observed that she felt sure their Spanish friend would far rather hear Michael Angelo discuss painting than to hear Fra Ambrosia on the wisdom of St. Paul. Summoning an attendant she directed ...
— Italy, the Magic Land • Lilian Whiting
... cotelettes d'agneau are cotelettes de bonheur; and as for that broad dish of Syrian larks—Heaven forgive us the regret, that more songs had not been silenced for our sake! The meal is all nectar and ambrosia, and now, filled and contented, we subside into sleep on comfortable couches. So closes the ...
— The Lands of the Saracen - Pictures of Palestine, Asia Minor, Sicily, and Spain • Bayard Taylor
... that I went out into the streets, rather to run away, if possible, from my torments, than with any distinct purpose. By accident I met a college acquaintance, who recommended opium. Opium! dread agent of unimaginable pleasure and pain! I had heard of it as I had of manna or of ambrosia, but no further. How unmeaning a sound was it at that time: what solemn chords does it now strike upon my heart! what heart-quaking vibrations of sad and happy remembrances! Reverting for a moment to these, I feel a mystic importance attached to the ...
— Confessions of an English Opium-Eater • Thomas De Quincey
... know what— Why, let it go, if I must tell it— He'll sweat, and then the nymph may smell it; While she, a goddess dyed in grain, Was unsusceptible of stain, And, Venus-like, her fragrant skin Exhaled ambrosia from within. Can such a deity endure A mortal human touch impure? How did the humbled swain detest His prickly beard, and hairy breast! His night-cap, border'd round with lace, Could give no softness to his face. Yet, if the goddess ...
— The Poems of Jonathan Swift, D.D., Volume I (of 2) • Jonathan Swift
... kind of demi-gods who are admitted as visitors there. Ceres served us with bread, and Bacchus with wine; Hercules handed about the flesh, Venus scattered myrtles, and Neptune brought us fish; not to mention that I got slyly a little nectar and ambrosia, for my friend Ganymede, out of good- nature, if he saw Jove looking another way, would frequently throw me in a cup or two. The greater gods, as Homer tells us {187a} (who, I suppose, had seen them as well as myself,) never taste meat or wine, but feed upon ...
— Trips to the Moon • Lucian
... notices me because that's his business; but he's away up in the clouds—a thousand miles over my head. He has got something 'on,' as they say; he's in love with an idea. I think it's a shocking bad one, but that's his own affair. He's quite exalte; living on nectar and ambrosia—what he has to spare for us poor crawling things on earth is only a few dry crumbs. I didn't even ask him to come to rehearsal. Besides, he thinks you're in love with me and that it wouldn't be honourable to cut in. He's capable of ...
— The Tragic Muse • Henry James
... gained a great deal of flesh, and we all ate like horses. At every watch, when we came below, before turning-in, the bread barge and beef kid were overhauled. Each man drank his quart of hot tea night and morning; and glad enough we were to get it, for no nectar and ambrosia were sweeter to the lazy immortals, than was a pot of hot tea, a hard biscuit, and a slice of cold salt beef, to us after a watch on deck. To be sure, we were mere animals and had this life lasted a year instead of a month we should have been little better ...
— Two Years Before the Mast • Richard Henry Dana
... burst into "inextinguishable laughter"; and Aphrodite, weeping, moves all to tears. They surpass mortals rather in power, than in size of body. They can render themselves visible or invisible to human eyes. Their food is ambrosia and nectar; their movements are swift as light. They may suffer pain; but death can never come to them, for they are immortal. Their abode is Mount Olympus and the airy regions above ...
— A General History for Colleges and High Schools • P. V. N. Myers
... the new maid whom their hostess had described as 'so utterly helpless,' looking to the famished girls an angelic being, bearing about her an aroma of tomato soup and fried chicken, more tempting than ambrosia. ...
— The Outdoor Girls at Bluff Point - Or a Wreck and a Rescue • Laura Lee Hope
... windlasses that apparently turn nothing, and incipient canals that lead nowhere. For in these yards there seems no particular difference between land and water; the tide comes and goes anywhere, and nobody minds it; boats are drawn up among burdocks and ambrosia, and the platform on which you stand suddenly proves to be something afloat. Vessels are hauled upon the ways, each side of the wharf, their poor ribs pitiably unclothed, ready for a cumbrous mantua-making of oak and iron. On one side, within a floating ...
— Oldport Days • Thomas Wentworth Higginson
... noble bay, and itself was overlooked by a tall flag-staff bearing the colours of Portugal. Here in the first place he regaled his guest with the flank of a kid served with cucumber, and fruit gathered early, and some native wine, scarcely good enough for the Venusian bard, but as rich as ambrosia to Scudamore. Then he supplied him with the finest tobacco that ever ascended in spiral incense to the cloud-compelling Jove. At every soft puff, away flew the blue-devils, pagan, or Christian, or even scientific; and the brightness of the sleep-forbidden ...
— Springhaven - A Tale of the Great War • R. D. Blackmore
... forewarned in advance, would have the long rough tables under the trees prepared for the hungry crew. Out from her capacious ovens would come great pans of hot puffy biscuits, while from the boiling caldrons the boys drew huge cans of bubbling maple syrup. And that sugar on those biscuits! Ambrosia, nectar, food for the gods! He had dined since then in the finest restaurants in the world, and never tasted anything ...
— Bert Wilson on the Gridiron • J. W. Duffield
... 'twill be the elixir of ambrosia to breathe salt air again, and the stronger and more mist-laden the better to knock out foul exhalations sucked in these nine years from musty walls. 'Twill be sweet to have the wind rap from us the various fungi that comes from sunless chambers. Ah, a stiff breeze will rejuvenate ...
— Mistress Penwick • Dutton Payne
... description of the "Ambrosia-Concerto" makes me most inquisitive: be sure not to forget to bring the tremendous manuscript with you; we will arrange an historically memorable performance of it in the salon ...
— Letters of Franz Liszt, Volume 2: "From Rome to the End" • Franz Liszt; letters collected by La Mara and translated
... deliberately, and between bites he talked. I watched him with a wide grin, wondering what in this world he WOULD say, in a minute. I don't think I ever had quite such a good time in all my life before, and I never expect to again. He was saying: "Talk about nectar and ambrosia! Talk about the feasts of Lucullus! Talk about ...
— Laddie • Gene Stratton Porter
... candles glaring from gorgeous pumpkin jack-o'-lanterns down the middle, or from the walls either side. There were frosted cakes—loaves trimmed gaily with red and white candies, or maybe the frosting itself was tinted. In place of syllabub or boiled custard, there were bowls of ambrosia—oranges in sections, freed of skin and seed, and smothered in grated fresh cocoanut and sugar. Often the bowl-tops were ornamented with leaves cut deftly from the skin of deep red apples, and alternating, other leaves shaped from orange peel. Christmas party suppers had ...
— Dishes & Beverages of the Old South • Martha McCulloch Williams
... where I failed to notice any fresh arrival. We shall not pick up any more until we reach Kachgar. There the Russian cookery will give place to the Chinese, and although the name does not recall the nectar and ambrosia of Olympus, it is probable that we shall not lose ...
— The Adventures of a Special Correspondent • Jules Verne
... gone after you," laughed Lorimer. "And who knows what a jolly banquet we might not have been enjoying in the next world by this time? If I believe in anything at all, I believe in a really agreeable heaven—nectar and ambrosia, and all that sort of thing, and Hebes ...
— Thelma • Marie Corelli
... came in and knew him. She bade him sit down on a throne dazzling with jewels, and, placing a table before him laden with nectar and ambrosia, invited him to eat and drink. After he had finished his repast, Hermes told her that Zeus had sent him to her with the command that she should send Odysseus without delay to his native land. Having given this message, he disappeared, ...
— Odysseus, the Hero of Ithaca - Adapted from the Third Book of the Primary Schools of Athens, Greece • Homer
... to the relief of her son. While Iapis was fomenting the wound with water, the goddess, unseen, dipped into the vessel a branch of dit'ta-ny, a plant famous for its healing qualities. At the same time she injected celestial ambrosia, and juice of the all-curing ...
— Story of Aeneas • Michael Clarke
... knew what she was eating that day. Each mouthful had the taste of nectar and ambrosia to her. If she could belong to a family like that! She adored her own people and felt certain that no one could wish for a finer family than the one in which she had been placed, but it seemed, by comparison ...
— Amanda - A Daughter of the Mennonites • Anna Balmer Myers
... Cupid slept. Caesariem auream habentem, ubi Psyche vidit, mollemque ex ambrosia cervicem inspexit, crines crispos, ...
— The Anatomy of Melancholy • Democritus Junior
... deal of flesh, and we all ate like horses. At every watch when we came below, before turning in, the bread barge and beef kid were overhauled. Each man drank his quart of hot tea night and morning, and glad enough we were to get it; for no nectar and ambrosia were sweeter to the lazy immortals than was a pot of hot tea, a hard biscuit, and a slice of cold salt beef to us after a watch on deck. To be sure, we were mere animals, and had this life lasted a year instead of a month, we should ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern — Volume 11 • Various
... would neither touch bread nor cake; she is used to licking ambrosia at the table of ...
— Peace • Aristophanes
... Fourth of July cannonading began at daybreak, and for once I sympathized in my mother's objection to the license accorded to young Americans. They set off firecrackers, not by the bunch but by the bushel; kerosene and dynamite were their ambrosia and nectar. What with fighting for lunch in overcrowded restaurants, and then retaliating by stealing chairs out of the same, hunting through the various booths in the Midway to collect my three younger sons when it was time to send them home, and rescuing ...
— The Making of Mary • Jean Forsyth
... world is more intoxicating and more deadly than to drink absinthe out of a stein; more insidious than opium; more fatal than poison. It unsettles the steadiest brain and feeds the too-ravenous Ego with a food which at first he deemed nectar and ambrosia, but which he soon comes to feel is the staff of life, and no more than he deserves. With success should come the determination, be you man or woman, to fall upon your knees every day and pray Heaven for strength to keep ...
— From a Girl's Point of View • Lilian Bell
... compound, guaranteed under the Pure Ambrosia and Balm-of-Gilead Act of the year of the fall of Adam. She was a fruit-stand blonde—strawberries, peaches, cherries, etc. Her eyes were wide apart, and she possessed the calm that precedes a storm that never comes. But it seems to me that words (at any rate per) are wasted ...
— Options • O. Henry
... th'obsequious coast 10 Pays tribute to thy bed. Rome's conqu'ring hand More vanquished nations under her command Never reduced. Glad Berecynthia so Among her deathless progeny did go; A wreath of towers adorn'd her rev'rend head, Mother of all that on ambrosia fed. Thy godlike race must sway the age to come, As she ...
— Poetical Works of Edmund Waller and Sir John Denham • Edmund Waller; John Denham
... there. And Zeus came down and took me by the wrist. Olympus rang with shouts and the clapping of hands. I was hailed with unanimity as an immortal; the ambrosia melted between my charred lips; I rose up amongst you all, immaculate and fresh. But when, or how, or wherefore I have never known. And now I shall ...
— Hypolympia - Or, The Gods in the Island, an Ironic Fantasy • Edmund Gosse
... one of the skins she had brought. Then the seals came out of the sea and lay all around us. The smell that came from those beasts of the sea afflicted us, and it was then that our adventure became terrible. We could not have endured it if Eidothee had not helped us in this also. She took ambrosia and set it beneath each man's nostril, so that what came to us was not the smell of the sea-beasts but a divine savour. Then the nymph ...
— The Adventures of Odysseus and The Tales of Troy • Padriac Colum
... frightful possibility to the note itself. It was everything I could have asked. It was ambrosia, it was nectar. I had done a big thing when I fired the Todworth gun: it had brought the enemy to terms. My cousin was complimented, and I was welcomed to Paris, and—THE ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 102, April, 1866 • Various
... the moonlight and the starlight on the sleeping flowers, the exquisite form of the shadows on the white wall, filled Hamilton with pleasure: each sense seemed subtly ministered to; he felt as if invisible spirits round him were feeding him with ambrosia. ...
— Six Women • Victoria Cross
... brave soldiers, for this good success, Carouse whole cups of Amazonian wine, Sweeter than nectar or Ambrosia, And cast away the clods of cursed care, With goblets crowned with Semeleius' gifts. Now let us march to Abis' silver streams, That clearly glide along the Champaign fields, And moist the grassy meads with humid drops. Sound drums ...
— 2. Mucedorus • William Shakespeare [Apocrypha] |
