"Grail" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... mind of the Christian believer this represents the white dove of the New Testament which descended on the Son of Man when the heavens were opened. So in Parsifal the white dove descends, overshadowing the Grail. But ages before Christ the prolific white dove of Syria was worshipped throughout the Orient as the symbol of reproductive Nature: and to this day the Almighty is there believed to manifest himself under this form. In ancient Mesopotamia the divine ...
— Bride of the Mistletoe • James Lane Allen
... performances. Once, indeed, there was a "Parsifal" festival in Brooklyn, under the direction of Mr. Seidl, in which all the music was sung by the best singers of the Metropolitan Opera House on a stage set to suggest the Temple of the Grail. Only the action and the pictures were new to the city's music lovers. Nevertheless the interest on the part of the public was stupendous. The first five representations were over on January 21st, but ...
— Chapters of Opera • Henry Edward Krehbiel
... and wings and had drawn fifty pounds on the strength of it. After that came a series of vexatious delays. The chalice became less and less of a commercial man's chalice, acquired more and more the elusive quality of the Holy Grail, and at last ...
— Tono Bungay • H. G. Wells
... sound, an awful light! Three angels bear the holy Grail; With folded feet, in stoles of white, On sleeping wings ...
— Two Years Ago, Volume I • Charles Kingsley
... so satisfactory. Of the upper middle class, indeed, at that time, Gissing had very few means of observation. But this defect, common to all his early novels, is more than compensated by the intensely pathetic figure of Gilbert Grail, the tender-souled, book-worshipping factory hand raised for a moment to the prospect of intellectual life and then hurled down by the caprice of circumstance to the unrelenting round of manual toil at the soap and ...
— The House of Cobwebs and Other Stories • George Gissing
... It was allowed, however, that Titurel the Chief had grown extremely aged, but it was not allowed that he could die in the presence of the Sangrail. He seemed to have been laid in a kind of trance, resting in an open tomb beneath the altar of the Grail; and whenever the cup was uncovered his voice might be heard joining in the celebration. Meanwhile, Amfortas, his son, reigned ...
— Parsifal - Story and Analysis of Wagner's Great Opera • H. R. Haweis
... the boys with love, my dear, but they turned on me; I came with gentleness, with my heart 'twixt my hands like a bowl, Like a loving-cup, like a grail, but they spilt it triumphantly And tried to break the vessel, and to violate ...
— Amores - Poems • D. H. Lawrence
... hundred summers long, And, binding them all in one blazing sheaf, Had cast them forth; so, young and strong And lightsome as a locust leaf, Sir Launfal flashed forth in his maiden mail To seek in all climes for the Holy Grail.—Lowell. ...
— Higher Lessons in English • Alonzo Reed and Brainerd Kellogg
... and lower, both on the social and the individual side; the victory of the Round Table would have meant not only pure knights but a regenerate state. Here, however, the externalization of the Divine will in the Holy Grail, and, as in the Christian epic generally, its confusion on the marvellous side with a world of enchantment passing here into the sensuous sphere of Merlin, are felt to be inadequate. The war of "soul with sense" was the subject-matter, as was Spenser's; the method of revolution of its phases was ...
— Heart of Man • George Edward Woodberry
... also said, 'Follow God.' In each case you must realise that, whatever you do, you take your life in your [p.44] hands; you enter on a grand enterprise, a search for the Holy Grail, which will bring you to strange lands and perilous seas. For you cannot say, interpreting, 'Thus far and no further, merely according to the bond and the duty.' In following God, you follow by what has been, what is ruled and accomplished, ...
— An Interpretation of Rudolf Eucken's Philosophy • W. Tudor Jones
... "Holy Grail" of selfhood and in the light of our higher understanding we look downward and outward and upward, and the length and the breadth and the height are equal. We pass from the old race thought of limitation and live in a divine atmosphere, and can ...
— Freedom Talks No. II • Julia Seton, M.D.
... a deputation from Guyenne, Royergue, and Poitou, appeared before the Languedoc synod, requesting preachers and pastors to be sent to them. The synod agreed to send Maroger as preacher. Betrine (the first of the Lausanne students) and Grail were afterwards sent to join him. Protestantism was also reawakening in Saintonge and Picardy, and pastors from Languedoc journeyed there to administer the sacrament. Preachers were afterwards sent to join them, to awaken the people, and reorganize ...
— The Huguenots in France • Samuel Smiles
... represented in Islamism by the fondly and impiously-cherished memory of the old Guebre kings and heroes, beauties, bards and sages. Hence the mention of Zal and his son Rostam; of Cyrus and of the Jam-i-Jamshid, which may be translated either grail (cup) or mirror: it showed the whole world within its rim; and hence it was called Jam-i-Jehan-numa (universe-exposing). The contemptuous expressions about the diet of camel's milk and the meat of the Susmar, ...
— The Kasidah of Haji Abdu El-Yezdi • Richard F. Burton
... to espouse her cause, is accompanied on her entrance and sustained all through her scene of trial by the dulcet tones of the wood-winds, the oboe most often carrying the melody. Lohengrin's superterrestrial character as a Knight of the Holy Grail is prefigured in the harmonies which seem to stream from the violins, and in the prelude tell of the bringing of the sacred vessel of Christ's passion to Monsalvat; but in his chivalric character he is greeted by the militant ...
— How to Listen to Music, 7th ed. - Hints and Suggestions to Untaught Lovers of the Art • Henry Edward Krehbiel
... of these ancient stories undoubtedly are. It were foolish to expect that all of them should attain the high level of those great legends which centre about the Holy Grail. Good things have ever been imitated indifferently; and it was only the later series of tales which had to do chiefly with enchantments and fairies and 'giaunts, hard to be beleeved.' But alas! all alike have come under the ban of those who decry reading for recreation's ...
— The Book-Hunter at Home • P. B. M. Allan
... the soft tree-tent Guards, with its face of reate and sedge, nor fail The silver globules and gold-sparkling grail ...
— The Poetry Of Robert Browning • Stopford A. Brooke
... Christmas legend and it relates how Joseph of Arimathea—that good man and just, who laid our Lord in his own sepulcher, was persecuted by Pontius Pilate, and how he fled from Jerusalem carrying with him the Holy Grail hidden beneath a cloth ...
— Good Stories For Great Holidays - Arranged for Story-Telling and Reading Aloud and for the - Children's Own Reading • Frances Jenkins Olcott
... EAST-WEST I realized how far apart we seemed to be, apparently living in two different worlds. Beauty, order, calm, and peace come to me from Los Angeles, sailing into port as a vessel laden with the blessings and comfort of the Holy Grail to a ...
— Autobiography of a YOGI • Paramhansa Yogananda
... the building that was open to the public. I spent rapt hours studying the Abbey pictures. I repeated to myself lines from Tennyson's poem before the glowing scenes of the Holy Grail. Before the "Prophets" in the gallery above I was mute, but echoes of the Hebrew Psalms I had long forgotten throbbed somewhere in the depths of my consciousness. The Chavannes series around the main staircase I did not enjoy for years. I ...
— The Promised Land • Mary Antin
... great cycles of legend,—(1) the Arthur, Guinevere, and Merlin cycle, (2) the Round Table cycle, (3) the Holy Grail cycle, (4) the Launcelot cycle, (5) the Tristan cycle,—which at first developed independently, were, in the latter half of the twelfth century, merged together into a body of legend whose bond of unity was the idealized Celtic ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 2 • Charles Dudley Warner
... which were romances of chivalry, wherein valiant knights did all kinds of impossibilities at the behest of fair damsels, rescued enchanted princesses, slew two-headed giants, or wandered for months over land and sea in quest of the Holy Grail, which few of them were sufficiently good even to see, and none to bring back to Arthur's Court. But Mr Benden found that the adventures of Sir Isumbras, or the woes of the Lady Blanchefleur, were quite incapable of making him forget the very disagreeable present. ...
— All's Well - Alice's Victory • Emily Sarah Holt
... in the hall as the old man said, slowly and solemnly, "I bring you the young knight Sir Galahad, who is descended from a king. He shall do many great deeds, and he shall see the Holy Grail." ...
— Young Folks Treasury, Volume 2 (of 12) • Various
... you as a dull and stinking little town, and so I dare say it is. But after lunch we shall go up the hillside to where the theatre stands, at the edge of the pine-woods, and from the porch the trumpets will give out the motif of the Grail, and we shall pass out of the heat into the cool darkness of the theatre. Aren't you thrilled, Comber? Doesn't a holy awe pervade you! Are ...
— Michael • E. F. Benson
... That Aubrey preserved a true tradition is proved by what we learn of similar practices elsewhere. Thus, in fifteenth-century MSS. of prose romances found in English and also in Welsh, Sir Perceval, in his adventures in quest of the Holy Grail, being at one time ill at ease, congratulates himself that he is not like those men of Wales, where sons pull their fathers out of bed and kill them to save the disgrace of their dying in bed.[104] Keysler cites several instances of this savage custom ...
— Folklore as an Historical Science • George Laurence Gomme
... has the right to expect the man she is about to marry to regard their troth as a sacred obligation that shall keep him as pure as a young knight who has dedicated himself to the quest of the Holy Grail. And I find you in a public restaurant, dancing with a creature with yellow hair, upsetting waiters, and staggering about with pats of butter ...
— Uneasy Money • P.G. Wodehouse
... away one summer day To fight the boastful Hun, In khaki clad, as fine a lad As ever carried gun, No braver knight e'er went to fight, In shining coat of mail, In days of old, for love or gold, Or for the Holy Grail. ...
— War Rhymes • Abner Cosens
... fill, Good Sir Galahad seeks the Grail, Proud Sir Pertinax flaunts his frill, Hard Sir AEger dints his mail; And the while by hill and dale Tristram's braveries gleam and glance, And his blithe horn tells its tale:- 'Fate's a fiddler, ...
— Poems by William Ernest Henley • William Ernest Henley
... there are in King Alfred's new volume,' he said. 'It is always a delight to get anything new from him. His "Holy Grail" and Lowell's "Cathedral" are enough for a holiday, and ...
— Authors and Friends • Annie Fields
... Garter is of much greater antiquity than is generally believed and that phallic principles were associated with it. A similar contention was made regarding the symbolism associated with the Holy Grail, a sacred vessel apparently connected with primitive rites at a time far antedating Christianity. Associated with the old Churches in Ireland similar phallic emblems have been found, as well as in Europe. These emblems were used as charms by the ...
— The Sex Worship and Symbolism of Primitive Races - An Interpretation • Sanger Brown, II
... Grail,' 53. This thorn, a patriarchal tree of vast dimensions, was destroyed during the Reformation. But many of its descendants exist about England (propagated from cuttings brought by pilgrims), and still retain its unique season for flowering. In ...
— Early Britain—Roman Britain • Edward Conybeare
... of the 12th century; was of good birth, and lived some time at the Thuringian Court; enjoyed a wide reputation in his time as a poet; of his poems the epic "Parzival" is the most celebrated, and records the history of the "Grail." ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... Madonna of a true-hearted man; the thought of her is a shrine at the wayside of one's meditations, and her presence a temple wherein we cleanse our souls. She is mysterious, worshipful, and inaccessible, something perhaps of the woman, possibly even propitious and helpful, and yet something of the Holy Grail as well. You have no rights with her, nor she with you; you owe her no definite duties, and yet she is singularly yours. A smile is a favour, a touch of her fingers, a faint pressure of your hand, is an infinite privilege. You cannot demand the slightest help or concern of her, so you ask ...
— Select Conversations with an Uncle • H. G. Wells
... the girl keenly, to know how the picture touched her. Was, then, she thought, this grand, dead Past so shallow to him? These knights, pure, unstained, searching until death for the Holy Grail, could he understand the life-long agony, the triumph of their conflict over Self? These women, content to live in solitude forever because they once had loved, could any man understand that? Or the dead queen, dead that the man she loved might be free and happy,—why, ...
— Margret Howth, A Story of To-day • Rebecca Harding Davis
... act, and in view of the criticism already mentioned of the characters and conclusion of this act, I determined to try to make it the very pivot of the whole opera. I wished to do this, if only for the sake of the musical motive appearing in the story of the Holy Grail; but in other respects the plan struck me ...
— My Life, Volume I • Richard Wagner
... we lost account, In fitful dreams remembering days of old And nights—th' erect Archangel on the Mount With sword that drank the dawn; the Vase of Gold The moving Grail athwart the starry fields Where all the heavenly spearmen clashed ...
— The Vigil of Venus and Other Poems by "Q" • Q
... Holy Grail," he said, and, with one arm round the woman he loved, he softly quoted ...
— The Treasure of Heaven - A Romance of Riches • Marie Corelli
... she recognized it, that in the Old Home Town, men of the sort to attract women of her spirit and intelligence were scarce—and she was out looking for her own Sir Galahad, as he went up and down the earth searching for the Holy Grail. The war to her, we knew, was a great opportunity to enjoy the new freedom of her sex, to lose her harem veil, to breathe free air as an achieving human creature—but, alas! one's forties are too wise. Pretty as she was, innocent as she was, and eager as her soul was ...
— The Martial Adventures of Henry and Me • William Allen White
... music and had studied it scientifically, had now crunched his last leaf of salad. Wiping his lips with his napkin, he joined our tete-a-tete. 'Gracious madam, I agree with you. He who seeks from music more than music gives, is on the quest—how shall I put it?—of the Holy Grail.' 'And what,' I struck in, 'is this minimum or maximum that music gives?' 'Dear young friend,' replied the professor, 'music gives melodies, harmonies, the many beautiful forms to which sound shall be fashioned. Just as in the case of shells and fossils, lovely in themselves, ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Complete - Series I, II, and III • John Symonds
... The legends upon which they were based revolved for the most part round the history of King Arthur and his knights; they told of the strange adventures of Lancelot, of the marvellous quest of the Holy Grail, of the overwhelming and fatal loves of Tristan and Yseult. The stories gained an immense popularity in France, but they did not long retain their original character. In the crucible of the facile and successful CHRETIEN DE TROYES, who wrote towards the close of the twelfth century, they assumed ...
— Landmarks in French Literature • G. Lytton Strachey
... the 'Book of Jasher', still for decency's sake we submit there are limits of decorum; certain proprietorial domains upon which we may not openly poach; and mcum et tuum though moribund, is not yet numbered with belief in the 'grail'. Female emancipation is not quite complete even in America, and noblesse oblige! our code still reads: 'Zeus has unquestioned right to Io; but woe betide Io when she suns her heart in the smiles ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson
... GRAIL DE LA VILLETTE, better known by the name of Charles de Bernard, was born in Besancon, February 24, 1804. He came from a very ancient family of the Vivarais, was educated at the college of his native city, and studied for the law in Dijon and at Paris. He was awarded a prize by the 'Jeux floraux' ...
— Gerfaut, Complete • Charles de Bernard
... of the Morning Star, opening from the cabin, was to me the door to romance. When I was a boy there was more flavor in traderooms than in war. To have seen one would have been as a glimpse of the Holy Grail to a sworn knight. Those traderooms of my youthful imagination smelt of rum and gun-powder, and beside them were racks of rifles to repel the dusky figures coming over ...
— White Shadows in the South Seas • Frederick O'Brien
... North Pole. That quest—which has written in its history as many tales of heroism, self-sacrifice, and patient resignation to adversity, as the poets have woven about the story of chivalry and the search for the Holy Grail—was begun only in the middle of the last century, and by an American. But for three hundred years English, Dutch, and Portuguese explorers, and the stout-hearted American whalemen, had been pushing further and further into the frozen deep. The ...
— American Merchant Ships and Sailors • Willis J. Abbot
... of Watts' heroes. The second is the beautiful "Sir Galahad," whose strength was as the strength of ten, because his heart was pure. We see a knight standing bare-headed at the side of his white horse, gazing with rapt eyes on the vision of the Holy Grail, which in the gloom and solitude of the forest has suddenly dawned on his sight. The features of young Arthur Prinsep, with his bushy hair, who later became a general in the British army, can be detected in this wonderful and simple picture. Its composition is like a stained-glass window. It ...
— Watts (1817-1904) • William Loftus Hare
... working them out more elaborately later on. In the last act I introduced an episode, which, however, I did not develop eventually, namely, the visit to Tristan's deathbed by Parsifal during his search for the Holy Grail. The picture of Tristan languishing, yet unable to die of his wound, identified itself in my mind with Amfortas in the ...
— My Life, Volume II • Richard Wagner
... liberty, which thrilled through the veins of the world's greatest in the past, and woke our pulses to responsive throb, has not yet died wholly out of the hearts of men. Still the quest of the Holy Grail exercises its deathless fascination, but the seekers no longer raise eyes to heaven, nor search over land and sea, for they know that it waits them in the suffering at their doors, that the consecration of the holiest is on the agonising masses of the poor and the despairing, the cup is crimson ...
— Annie Besant - An Autobiography • Annie Besant
... the great Quests of the world,—the Argonauts, Helena in search of the Holy Rood, the Knights of the Holy Grail, the Pilgrim Fathers. There are the Victors in the intellectual wrestlings of the world,—the thinkers, poets, sages; the Victors in great sorrows, who conquer the savage pain of heart and desolation of spirit which arise from heroic human ...
— The Warriors • Lindsay, Anna Robertson Brown
... of its wooing. It is doubtful whether any Christian life ever passes through this period without considering the ministry or the mission field, or whether every life does not at some moment long to go in quest of a Holy Grail. ...
— The Unfolding Life • Antoinette Abernethy Lamoreaux
... fortunes of the Knight reach their lowest ebb and begin to turn. The first half of the Book has been the complication of the plot, the second half will be the resolution. 14. Give a description of Prince Arthur. 15. What mysterious power was possessed by his shield? Cf. the Holy Grail. 16. Observe carefully the scene between Una and Arthur, noting the changes in her mood. What light is thrown on her character? What are her feelings toward the Knight? 17. Explain the various threads of ...
— Spenser's The Faerie Queene, Book I • Edmund Spenser
... Mr. Pole, a grain merchant of Bristol, had developed some sort of clairvoyant power, or at all events he had dreamed several times with great vividness the location of the true Grail. Another dreamer, a Dr. Goodchild, of Bath, was mixed up in the matter, and between them this peculiar vessel, which was not a cup, or a goblet, or any of the traditional things, had been discovered. Mr. Pole seemed a man of integrity, ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... Infinity is a necessary result of our finite senses, that the only Reality is the Spiritual, the Here and the Now; that the Riddle of the Universe is not to be solved by the Intellect but by that method which is employed by those who are earnestly following the "Quest of the Grail"—namely, by realising that our True Personality or Transcendental Ego is an emanation from the Absolute; that we are one-with Him, and that it is by following the old Hellenic command "[Greek: Gnothi seauton]" (Know thyself)—namely, by Introspection, that we can hope to attain to the understanding ...
— Science and the Infinite - or Through a Window in the Blank Wall • Sydney T. Klein
... had been sufficiently schooled and educated in the new direction, a longing for something new, a yearning for art, for poetry, for beauty, began to stir the hearts of men and women. It found expression in the ideal of chivalry, the Holy Sepulchre and the Holy Grail, and suddenly love, bursting out in a brilliant flame, shed its radiance on the sordid relationship which had hitherto existed between the sexes, and transfigured it. Woman, the despised, to whom at the Council of Macon a soul had been denied, all at once became a queen, ...
— The Evolution of Love • Emil Lucka
... a thrilling spectacle, and who felt forever the desire to resolve his experience of life into a literary form. On this matter of the passion for form,—the attempt at perfection, the quest for which was to his mind the real search for the holy grail,—he said the most interesting, the most inspiring things. He mixed with them a thousand illustrations from his own life, from other lives that he had known, from history and fiction, and above all from the annals of the time that was dear to him beyond all periods,—the Italian ...
— The Author of Beltraffio • Henry James
... and teach within the university walls must respond to the injunction of the church, "Sursum corda"—lift up the heart to high thinking and impartial search for the unsullied truth in the interests of all the people; this is the holy grail of the universities. ...
— The Frontier in American History • Frederick Jackson Turner
... There was a dark, portentous secret in his life, it was agreed; an opinion not too well confirmed by the old man's appearance. His fine eyes had a pathetic habit of wandering to the horizon in a questioning fashion that had a queer sort of hopelessness in it, as if his quest were one for the Holy Grail, perhaps; and his expression was mild, vague, and sad. He had a look of race and blood; and yet, at the first glance, one saw that he was lost in dreams, and one guessed that the dreams would never be of great practicability in their application. ...
— The Gentleman From Indiana • Booth Tarkington
... 1851), the intimacy between them would seem to have been cemented, if not begun, during one of Tennyson’s visits to his and Browning’s friends, Mr. and Mrs. Knowles at the Hollies, Clapham Common. Here Tennyson read to Browning the ‘Grail’ (which the latter pronounced to be Tennyson’s “best and highest”); and here Browning came and read his own new poem ‘The Ring and the Book,’ when Tennyson’s verdict on it was, “Full of strange vigour and remarkable in many ways, doubtful if it ...
— Old Familiar Faces • Theodore Watts-Dunton
... leader, like Jacob, leant in worship on the top of his staff on Wearyall Hill, the rod took root and became a thorn tree, which blossomed every year as surely as the Feast of the Nativity came round. The "Holy Grail" (the cup of blessing from the Last Supper), which Joseph brought with him, he buried at the foot of Glastonbury Tor, and from the place of its sepulchre gushed forth the Bloody Spring, which may be duly inspected to this day. The pilgrims made more friends than disciples, and the king, after ...
— Somerset • G.W. Wade and J.H. Wade
... between sensuality and love fought out in the arena of Tannhaeuser's mind; the cosmic glories of the Ring with the resplendent figures of Siegfried and Brunhilde; the self-dedication of Parsifal, the Sir Percival of our Arthurian legends, whom "The sweet vision of the Holy Grail drew from all vain-glories, rivalries and earthly heats." Into the glowing music of Wagner my son read lessons in renunciation, the sordidness of the lust for gold, the sublimity of pure human love, the redemptive power of self-sacrifice. The occasional voluptuousness ...
— War Letters of a Public-School Boy • Henry Paul Mainwaring Jones
... the sense of lifting a tangible veil, of gaining a glimpse of the hidden personality—not the half-sceptical, pleasant, friendly Blake of the boy's acquaintance, but Blake the dreamer, the idealist who sought some grail of infinite holiness figured in his own imagination, zealously guarded from the scoffer and the worldling. A swift desire pulsed in her to share the knowledge of this quest—to see the face of the knight illumined for his adventure—to touch the ...
— Max • Katherine Cecil Thurston
... and warrior, and conquering king, Of Knights of the Holy Grail, Of wonders of winter, and glories of spring, Always and ever the poets sing; But the great God-Force, in a lowly thing, I sing, in my song ...
— The Englishman and Other Poems • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... a quest solely for military glory. The Jacobin clubs, first by fair promises and then by the demand for his life blood, had sought to force him from liberty to license, from real freedom to debauched freedom. But like Sir Galahad, the Knight of the Holy Grail, he had stood true to his quest, true to his ideal, true to the inward light that unerringly marked the real from the false, true to genuine democracy in its fight against autocracy. And now, greater than all ...
— The Spirit of Lafayette • James Mott Hallowell
... and open spirit reflects the divine light. He is perhaps the Parsifal for whom we are waiting, depressed and sick at heart, while because of the impurity of our hands the dove can no longer descend in the Holy Grail towards the chalice filled with the blood ...
— Spontaneous Activity in Education • Maria Montessori
... cold northern sky. At the fall of night, exhausted, trailing their long ears almost to the ground, they returned to the cook, who fed them and made much of them. Next morning they were at it as hard as ever. To them it was the quest for the Grail,—hopeless, but glorious. ...
— The Blazed Trail • Stewart Edward White
... start. He rose softly and went to the window, staring out into the night. A few moments later he turned back wearing a strange uplifted sort of look, a look perhaps such, as Percival bore when he beheld the Grail. ...
— Wild Wings - A Romance of Youth • Margaret Rebecca Piper
... Ann looked up and saw his face in the moonlight, white and rather stern. It made her think of the face of some young knight of bygone days taking a sacred vow before he set forth to seek and find the Holy Grail. ...
— The Vision of Desire • Margaret Pedler
... the thought disturbed her a trifle. It did not seem quite right for Monte to have no destination. He was worth something more than merely to revolve in a circle. He should have a Holy Grail. Give him something to fight for, and he would fight hard. Twice to-day she had caught a light in his eyes that had suggested this to her—a clean, white light that had hinted of a Monte with a destination. But would not that destroy the very poise ...
— The Triflers • Frederick Orin Bartlett
... of Wonder. Since passion makes immortal Time's tired slaves I am of those that delicately sunder Corruptions of contentment from the breast As with rare steel. Like music I unveil Last things, till, weary of earthen cups and rest, You seek Montsalvat and the burning Grail. Ah! blindly, blindly, wounded with the roses, I bear my spice where ...
— The Hours of Fiammetta - A Sonnet Sequence • Rachel Annand Taylor
... of Kay Khusraw, the sceptre of Anushirwan, "The holy grail of high Jamshid, Afrasiyab's ...
— The Kasidah of Haji Abdu El-Yezdi • Richard F. Burton
... we conclude, is then indeed subordinate,—a by-product, unless by chance it can enter into, melt into, the form. This case we have clearest in the example, already referred to, of the gold-embroidered gauntlet, or the jeweled chalice,—say the Holy Grail in Abbey's pictures,—which counts more or less, in the spatial balance, ...
— The Psychology of Beauty • Ethel D. Puffer
... of 1848 and the collected edition of his poems, in two volumes, issued in 1850. These also included his most ambitious narrative poem, the Vision of Sir Launfal, an allegorical and spiritual treatment of one of the legends of the Holy Grail. Lowell's genius was not epical, but lyric and didactic. The merit of Sir Launfal is not in the telling of the story, but in the beautiful descriptive ...
— Brief History of English and American Literature • Henry A. Beers
... golden cup in which He passed the wine to them, and when He went away from earth, the disciples loved everything He had touched, and they seemed to love most of all this golden cup. They called it the Holy Grail, and it was given to a very good man, who cared for it carefully, and for years it passed from one good man to another, for it was said that if it ever fell into the hands of a man who was not good and Christ-loving the cup would ...
— A Child's Story Garden • Compiled by Elizabeth Heber
... For indeed there was not any house so famous as it saving only the house of King Ban of Benwick, which brought forth those two peerless knights beyond all compare:—to wit, Sir Launcelot of the Lake and Sir Galahad, who achieved the quest of the San Grail. ...
— The Story of the Champions of the Round Table • Howard Pyle
... superstitious works, "eight grailes, seven antiphoners of parchment and bound." Gutch's Collectanea Curiosa, vol. ii., 276. At page 115, ante, the reader will find a definition of the word "Antiphoner." He is here informed that a "gradale" or "grail," is a book which ought to have in it "the office of sprinkling holy water: the beginnings of the masses, or the offices of Kyrie, with the verses of gloria in excelsis; the gradales, or ...
— Bibliomania; or Book-Madness - A Bibliographical Romance • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... fearful custom are mentioned in the stories of Percival (in the history of the Holy Grail), of Giglan de Galles et Geoffrey de Mayence, and the wide-spread tale of Amicus and Amelius and its variants, Louis and Alexander, Engelhard and Engeltrut, Oliver and Arthur, etc., in all of which one of the friends is afflicted with leprosy, but is cured through the ...
— The Child and Childhood in Folk-Thought • Alexander F. Chamberlain
... now in existence; but several editions have since been issued with the text modernized, so as to make it easier for us to read, yet with the quaintness and originality of Malory's tale preserved. So charming is it, that the following incidents in the story of the search for the Holy Grail are told nearly as they are now in the Aldine edition of Le ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 5 • Charles Sylvester
... serious, Sadly, heartily, earnestly, Salle, room, Samite, silk stuff with gold or silver threads, Sangreal, Holy Grail, Sarps, girdles, Saw, proverb, Scathes, harms, hurts, icripture, writing, Search, probe wounds, Selar, canopy, Semblable, like, Semblant, semblance, Sendal, fine cloth, Sennight, ...
— Le Morte D'Arthur, Volume I (of II) - King Arthur and of his Noble Knights of the Round Table • Thomas Malory
... am I," he said, "the son of Parsifal, the keeper of the Holy Grail. Gladly would I have helped you, O King, in your fight against the barbarians, but an unavoidable fate calls me away. You will, however, be victorious, and under your descendants will Germany become a ...
— Famous Tales of Fact and Fancy - Myths and Legends of the Nations of the World Retold for Boys and Girls • Various
... books to them, talk to the teachers and bully the editors of country newspapers and farm magazines and tell the children stories—and then little by little you begin to get good books circulating in the veins of the nation. It's a great work, mind you! It's like carrying the Holy Grail to some of these way-back farmhouses. And I wish there were a thousand Parnassuses instead of this one. I'd never give it up if it weren't for my book: but I want to write about my ideas in the hope of stirring other folk up, too. I don't suppose there's a publisher in ...
— Parnassus on Wheels • Christopher Morley
... between us, and he named a day three or four years in the future; place of settlement, the lists where the offense had been given. I said I would be ready when he got back. You see, he was going for the Holy Grail. The boys all took a flier at the Holy Grail now and then. It was a several years' cruise. They always put in the long absence snooping around, in the most conscientious way, though none of them had any idea where the Holy Grail really was, and I don't think any of them actually expected ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... great Holy Grail I caught an eagle when I caught that dove, For now you are the queen of all the dames, Even King Constantine, who seldom marks A lady of the court, comes to your side And flatters you with royal courtesies, Which you receive with ...
— Under King Constantine • Katrina Trask
... lonely mountain-meres I find a magic bark; I leap on board: no helmsman steers: I float till all is dark. A gentle sound, an awful light! Three angels bear the Holy Grail: With folded feet, in stoles of white, On sleeping wings they sail. Ah, blessed vision! blood of God! My spirit beats her mortal bars, As down dark tides the glory slides, And star-like ...
— Legends That Every Child Should Know • Hamilton Wright Mabie
... now, though. It was sleeping. However, it was due to wake up any second. "Then you're not interested in fencing the Holy Grail?" Mallory asked. ...
— A Knyght Ther Was • Robert F. Young
... of my brain that reminds me of a story told me the other day which brings an old legend very prettily to this country. It is said that when Joseph of Arimathea was hounded from place to place by the Jews, he fled to England taking the Grail with him. The spot where he settled he called Avalon. When Lord Baltimore, a devout Catholic, was given a huge tract of land in the south of this little island, he christened it Avalon in commemoration of ...
— Le Petit Nord - or, Annals of a Labrador Harbour • Anne Elizabeth Caldwell (MacClanahan) Grenfell and Katie Spalding
... in himself than Charlemagne; but when the genius of Map (or of some one else) had hit upon the real knotting and unknotting of the story—the connection of the frailty of Guinevere with the Quest for the Grail—complete developments of the fates of minor heroes, elaborate closings of minor incidents, became futile. Endless stories could be keyed or geared on to different parts of the main legend: there might be a Tristan-saga, a Palomides-saga, a Gawain-saga, episodes of Balin or of Beaumains, incidents ...
— The Flourishing of Romance and the Rise of Allegory - (Periods of European Literature, vol. II) • George Saintsbury
... Bavarian knight of humble estate, who spent some time at the court of Landgrave Hermann in Thuringia. He speaks of himself as 'ignorant of what the books contain,' which is usually taken to mean that he could not read or write. His great work is Parzival, a blend of Arthurian and Grail romance, which he says he got from a French poet Kyot. Nothing is known of any such poet, and some think him an invention. Certain it is, however, that Wolfram had some other source than Chrestien de Troyes' Conte ...
— An anthology of German literature • Calvin Thomas
... what they did; I haven't thought that out—but anyway she married the red duke Wolfang who spurned her task and took her by night with his retainers away from the tower, saying her love was his Holy Grail and to get her was the object of his pilgrimage. Oh, it's ...
— In Our Town • William Allen White
... Sawston, preparing to work a beneficent machine. No man works for nothing, and Rickie trusted that to him also benefits might accrue; that his wound might heal as he laboured, and his eyes recapture the Holy Grail. ...
— The Longest Journey • E. M. Forster
... me helmet, 'n' no red cross on me chest, 'N' so fur they haven't dressed me in a swanking load of metal; We've no 'Oly Grail I know of, but we do our little best With a jamtin, 'n' a billy, 'n' a battered ...
— 'Hello, Soldier!' - Khaki Verse • Edward Dyson
... form of the story of the Holy Grail is the French metrical romance of "Perceval" or "Le Conte du Graal" of Chretien de Troies, written about 1175. Chretien died leaving the poem unfinished, and it was continued by three other authors till it reached the vast size of 63,000 lines. The ...
— Chronicle and Romance (The Harvard Classics Series) • Jean Froissart, Thomas Malory, Raphael Holinshed
... girl smiled a happy response, but Geoffrey was oblivious of her presence, his eyes fixed upon his love's face, with the rapt, adoring gaze with which a knight of old may have gazed upon the vision of the grail. His mother looked at him, and her lips quivered. Artificial and frivolous though she was, her only son was dear to her heart. Since the hour of his birth he had been to her as a pivot round which the world revolved. Her son—the last ...
— Flaming June • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... commercial expansion and world empire. All about me were nobleness of purpose and heroism of effort, and my days and nights were sunshine and starshine, all fire and dew, with before my eyes, ever burning and blazing, the Holy Grail, Christ's own Grail, the warm human, long-suffering and maltreated, but to be rescued and ...
— Revolution and Other Essays • Jack London
... Instead of constituting a Republic at once, in harmony with those popular rights which had been proclaimed, the half-hearted leaders proceeded to look about for a King; and from that time till now they have been in this quest, as if it were the Holy Grail, or happiness on earth. The royal family of Spain was declared incompetent. Therefore a king must be found outside,——and so the quest was continued in other lands. One day the throne is offered to a prince of Portugal, then to a prince of Italy, but declined by each,——how wisely ...
— The Duel Between France and Germany • Charles Sumner
... to hear "Parsifal." We remember one lady who was concerned because Dalmores stood for a long time with his back to the audience. "Why does he have to do that?" she asked her companion. "Because," was the answer, "he shot the Holy Grail." ...
— The So-called Human Race • Bert Leston Taylor
... classic poets; here were the fit destination of some 'faery frigot,' here some adventurous prince might step ashore among new characters and incidents; and the island prison, where it floated on the luminous face of the lagoon, might have passed for the repository of the Grail. In such a scene, and at such an hour, the impression received was not so much of foreign travel—rather of past ages; it seemed not so much degrees of latitude that we had crossed, as centuries of ...
— In the South Seas • Robert Louis Stevenson
... of pearls. But as the idea spread, its meaning also became extended. At first it was merely a jug of water or a basket of figs, but elsewhere it became also a witch's cauldron, the magic cup, the Holy Grail, the font in which a child is reborn into the faith, the vessel of water here being interpreted in the earliest sense as the uterus or the organ of birth. The Celtic pot, so Mr. Donald Mackenzie tells me, is closely associated with cows, serpents, frogs, dragons, birds, ...
— The Evolution of the Dragon • G. Elliot Smith
... way from the sick-chamber. When she heard a voice near the door of the shop asking first for Mr. Povey and then for Mrs. Baines, she rose, and seizing the object nearest to her, which happened to be a pair of scissors, she hurried towards the showroom stairs as though the scissors had been a grail, passionately sought and to be jealously hidden away. She wanted to stop and turn round, but something prevented her. She was at the end of the counter, under the curving stairs, when one of the ...
— The Old Wives' Tale • Arnold Bennett
... witch or wizard, drawing the subject in charmed circles nearer and nearer to his royal or ruinous destiny,—strange spells cast upon bewitched houses or places, that could be removed only by the one hand appointed by Fate. So I pored over the misty legends of the San Grail, and the sweet story of "The Sleeping Beauty," as my first literature; and as the rough years of practical boyhood trooped up to elbow my dreaming childhood out of existence, I fed the same hunger for the hidden and ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 30, April, 1860 • Various
... Seat overhangs Edinburgh, whose presence haunts the Lakes, and Wales, and Cornwall, and the forests of Brittany; the race that held up for us the image of the Holy Grail—that race can claim no small share in the moulding ...
— Hero-Myths & Legends of the British Race • Maud Isabel Ebbutt
... just ten thousand books! Everything is beautiful about it, from the pale-pink granites and brown Spanish tiles without to the St. Gauden lions who guard the great marble staircase within. Sargent's "Religions of the World" is a noble decoration, and Abbey's frieze of the Holy Grail is beautiful, but the panel paintings of Puvis de Chavannes—"The Muses Greeting the Genius of Enlightenment"—are worth while coming from London or Paris to Boston ...
— The Lightning Conductor Discovers America • C. N. (Charles Norris) Williamson and A. M. (Alice Muriel)
... "Richard duke of Gloucester and the Lady Anne'' at the Royal Academy in 1896, and in that year was elected A.R.A., becoming a full R.A. in 1898. Apart from his other paintings, special mention must be made of the large frescoes entitled "The Quest of the Holy Grail,'' in the Boston Public Library, on which he was occupied for some years; and in 1901 he was commissioned by King Edward VII. to paint a picture of the coronation, containing many portraits elaborately grouped. The dramatic subjects, ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... nursing Tom, it suddenly struck her that this was the very situation with which that 'Romance of the Middle Ages' film ended. You know the one I mean. Sir Percival Ye Something (which has slipped my memory for the moment) goes out after the Holy Grail; meets damsel in distress; overcomes her persecutors; rescues her; gets wounded, and is nursed back to life in her arms. Sally had seen it a dozen times. And every time she had reflected that the days of romance are dead, and that that sort of thing ...
— The Man Upstairs and Other Stories • P. G. Wodehouse
... in a high state of satisfaction, even to Miss Cynthia Grail; who, having some lurking suspicion that Mrs. Plumfield might design to cut her out of her post of tea-making, had slipped herself into her usual chair behind the tea-tray before anybody else was ready to sit down. No one at table bestowed a thought upon Miss Cynthia, ...
— Queechy • Susan Warner
... (Md.) paid a beautiful tribute to Miss Anthony, "the Sir Galahad in search of the Holy Grail," and closed with an eloquent prophecy of future success. Mrs. Lillie Devereux Blake (N. Y.) gave a clever satire on The Rights of Men, which ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume IV • Various
... thousand peaks the next morning, after a delightful rest, we rode away from this Holy Grail of the Sheep Eaters, and it was not hard to imagine the character of the little men who lived among ...
— The Sheep Eaters • William Alonzo Allen
... madness, kisses wildly the bullets and the shirt, leaves him with the terrible relics already exerting their mystic power upon him. It is as if in the nineteenth century a girl, amid Christian habits, had gone back to that primitive old pagan version of the story of the Grail, which [26] identifies it not with the Most Precious Blood, but only with the blood of a murdered relation crying for vengeance. Awake at last in his old chamber at Pietranera, the house of the Barricini at the other end of the square, with its rival tower and rudely carved escutcheons, ...
— Miscellaneous Studies: A Series of Essays • Walter Horatio Pater
... of. Gomuti palm. Gondophares, a king in the St. Thomas legends. Gordon's "Ever Victorious Army". Gordun Shah. Goering, F. Goriosan. Gor Khar, wild ass. Goshawks, black. Gothia (Crimean), its limit and language. Govy, a low caste in Maabar. Goza. Gozurat, see Guzerat. Grail, Buddhist parallel to the Holy. Granaries, Imperial. Grapes in Shan-si. Grass-cloths. Grasso, Donato. Great Bear (Meistre), and Little, force of, and application of these epithets. Great, or Greater Sea (Black Sea). Greece, Bactria's relation to. Greek fire. Greeks, ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo, Volume 2 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa
... Grail lures errants pale Through the wastes of yonder star? What fables sway the Milky Way? ...
— Dreams and Dust • Don Marquis
... Avalon, whither Arthur went to heal his overmastering sorrow, and where the air is always sweet with the smell of apple blossoms. In this deep wood lives Merlin, still weaving, as of old, the magic spells. There is the castle of the Grail, and as our eyes fall on it, suddenly there comes a hush, and we seem to hear the sublime antiphony, choir answering choir in heavenly melody, as Parsifal raises the cup, and the light from above smites it into sudden glory. We are travelling eastward, touching here ...
— Under the Trees and Elsewhere • Hamilton Wright Mabie
... sky, and castles stare High from a wizard shore, Sun-arrowed, tower-strong; Gold parapets in air Down-pour, down-pour Sea-falls of peri song; Then earth, the dragon's lair; Cave eyes and burning breath; And the lance the Grail lords bore This day flies swift and fair, This ...
— Path Flower and Other Verses • Olive T. Dargan
... rose to depart. There was also a seat richer than the rest for the King himself—and another chair, wonderfully carven and wrought with gems, that was called the "Seat Perilous," where even Arthur might not sit—for that chair was reserved for the knight who should look upon the "Holy Grail," a vessel containing the blood of Christ that had been taken to Heaven on his death. It could only be beheld by the purest knight that went in quest of it, which Arthur could not do, because he ...
— A Treasury of Heroes and Heroines - A Record of High Endeavour and Strange Adventure from 500 B.C. to 1920 A.D. • Clayton Edwards
... not be owing to me, if you fail in the former," said I. "As for the latter, naturally it will depend upon yourself. What shall you call it—'A Chiel takkin' Notes' or 'In Search of the Grail'?" ...
— The Princess Passes • Alice Muriel Williamson and Charles Norris Williamson
... the mythology of the Romancers, the San Greal, or Holy Grail, was the cup out of which Jesus Christ partook of the last supper with his disciples. It was brought into England by Joseph of Arimathea, and remained there, an object of pilgrimage and adoration, for many years in the keeping of his lineal descendants. ...
— The Vision of Sir Launfal - And Other Poems • James Russell Lowell
... Williams in the first volume of his "Selections from the Hengwrt MSS". (6) The first volume of this work is entitled "Y Seint Greal, being the adventures of King Arthur's knights of the Round Table, in the quest of the Holy Grail, and on other occasions. Originally written about the year 1200". The volume, following the manuscript now in the library of W.W.E. Wynne, Esq., at Peniarth, is divided into two parts. The first, fol. 1-109 of the manuscript, represents the thirteenth ...
— High History of the Holy Graal • Unknown
... recorded in the High History of the Grail, of Sir Lohot, son of King Arthur, that he had a marvellous weakness; which was, that no sooner had he slain a man than he fell across his body. So it happened this night to the ...
— The Mayor of Troy • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... original Arthurian romance of the twelfth or thirteenth century, when at latest such a poem would be written, in a language other than French, is so far unknown to us; and although as a matter of fact the central motif of the poem, the representation of a Moor as near akin to the Grail Winner, Sir Perceval, has not been preserved in any known French text, while it does exist in a famous German version, I for one find no difficulty in believing that the tradition existed in French, and that the original version ...
— The Romance of Morien • Jessie L. Weston
... strongly stirred By clink of plate or flight of bird, He has a plumy tail; At night he treads on stealthy pad As merry as Sir Galahad A-seeking of the Grail. ...
— Songs for a Little House • Christopher Morley
... errant knight reached Philip's court, where he was received with the highest honors. Then to his paternal castle he wended his way, to be welcomed by his proud parents as gladly as if he had won the Holy Grail. Dancing and rejoicing followed, in which all the neighboring noble families participated, and many a fair damsel shed her smiles—in vain it seems—on the famous ...
— Historical Tales, Vol. 6 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality. French. • Charles Morris
... contemporaries, and in his satirical poems scourged the greed and vices of the clergy, whilst on the other hand he took a principal part in spreading a knowledge of the legend of the high-souled King Arthur and of the quest of the Holy Grail. Giraldus Cambrensis again, or Gerald of Wales, wrote on all sorts of subjects with shrewd ...
— A Student's History of England, v. 1 (of 3) - From the earliest times to the Death of King Edward VII • Samuel Rawson Gardiner
... vocation for men of action than to extend the boundary of human knowledge in the face of perils and obstacles more formidable and more mysterious than those encountered by the knights of old in the cause of the Lord's sepulchre or the holy grail—they have thus embodied in a form which will ever awaken enthusiasm in imaginative natures, the noble impulses of our latter civilization. To win the favour of that noblest of mistresses, Science; to take authoritative ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... perhaps of property and morals that were not unfamiliar to their elder comrades of the quest and the joust, and the merry wars. These modern lads, pilgrims seeking their olden, golden comrade Danger, sallied forth upon the highroads of our civilization, and as the grail was found, and the lands were bounded and the journeys over and the trumpets seemed to be forever muffled, these hereditary pilgrims of the vast pretense, still looking for Danger, played blithely at seeking justice. It was a fine game and they found their danger in fighting for free ...
— In the Heart of a Fool • William Allen White
... are greeted by the admirable Iwain, the all-surpassing Lancelot du Lac, and the bold, gallant, and true, but somewhat tiresome, Wigalois. Nearly allied and interwoven with this cyclus of sagas is that of the Holy Grail, in which the spiritual knighthood is glorified; and in this epoch we meet three of the grandest poems of the Middle Ages, the Titurel, the Parsifal, and the Lohengrin. Here indeed we find ourselves face to face with Romantic Poetry. We look deeply into her great sorrowing ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VI. • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... against tradition; try, at least, to displace old cants with new ones. I've thought I was right about life at various times, but faith is difficult. One thing I know. If living isn't a seeking for the grail it may be a damned ...
— This Side of Paradise • F. Scott Fitzgerald |
