"Medusa" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... and spear. Athena, whose aegis was a scaly cloak or mantle bordered with serpents and bearing Medusa's head. ...
— Selections from the Poems and Plays of Robert Browning • Robert Browning
... fore-piece, was the crowning glory of Aunt Mary's get-up. The brain measurements of him who had bought the cap being to its present wearer's as five is to three, the effect of its proportions, in addition to the goggles and the ear-trumpet, was such as to have overawed a survivor of Medusa's stare. ...
— The Rejuvenation of Aunt Mary • Anne Warner
... sacrifice. The heroes of mythology were but paltry figures compared with those who, in the great war, went forward to the roaring devils of modern gun-fire, dwelt amid high explosives more dreadful than dragons, breathed in the fumes of poison-gas more foul than the breath of Medusa, watched and slept above mine-craters which upheaved the hell-fire of Pluto, and defied thunderbolts more certain in death-dealing blows than those ...
— Now It Can Be Told • Philip Gibbs
... poor," resumed Madame, pathetically. "Delphine is not an heiress. Delphine is proud. She will not stoop to charm. Her coquetry is that of an Amazon. Her kisses are arrows. She is Medusa!" And Madame, her ...
— Atlantic Monthly Vol. 3, No. 16, February, 1859 • Various
... things. Sir Charles had remained in the churchyard by the grave, he had looked about him from one to the other of the mounds of turf, his imagination already stimulated had been quickened by what he had seen; he stood with the face of a Medusa. ...
— Ensign Knightley and Other Stories • A. E. W. Mason
... moon the poison might yet stir. The moon silvered the edge of things, drew illusion like a veil across the haunted ring; below, what hidden foulness!... Did the life there know its hideousness? Those lengths and coils, those twisting locks of Medusa, might think themselves desirable. These pulpy, starkly branching cacti, these shrubs that bred poignards, these fibrous ropes, dark and knotted lianas, binding all together like monstrous exaggerations ...
— Sir Mortimer • Mary Johnston
... by casting behind them stones which became men and women; Heraulos was changed into stone for offending Mercury; Pyrrhus for offending Rhea; Phineus, and Polydectes with his guests, for offending Perseus: under the petrifying glance of Medusa's head such transformations became a ...
— History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom • Andrew Dickson White
... of wounded men; and "A Hero's Death." The centre piece is devoted to "The Victor," the great general, the master of the feast, the responsible and beflattered chief. In the last three stories, physical pain exposes its hideous countenance like that of Medusa mutilated. The two opening stories deal with mental pain. The hero of the centre piece sees neither the one nor the other; his glory is throned on both; he finds life good, and war even better. From the first page to the last, revolt mutters. ...
— The Forerunners • Romain Rolland
... head, she had not time to feel a sensation of real fear, when cautiously her doorknob was turned and a head intruded itself which struck her as dumb as though Medusa had appeared, and drove the life-blood in a ...
— Idle Hour Stories • Eugenia Dunlap Potts
... loved so well. Up a stark cliff we went, then crossed the web Just as the red moon bloomed upon the hills And silvered all the Panticapean vale. The funnel of the web was in the mouth Of a vast tomb, whose outside, hewn on rock, Outlined a Gorgon's face with jaws agape— Some stern Medusa, Stheno, or Euryale, Changed to the stone that in the elder days She changed the sons of men who looked on her. We passed the funnel, entering the tomb. About my arms the spider threw his cords, And ...
— Stories in Verse • Henry Abbey
... what aspect? Wine is strong, and so is the crude alcohol but what the mellowness? And the blood in our veins, it is an infinite force: but of what temper? Is it warm, or is it cold? Does it minister to Moloch, or to Apollo? Will it shape the Madonna face, or the Medusa? Why, the simple fact that the rich blue sky over-arches this earth of ours, or that it is warm blood which flows in our veins, is sufficient to prove that no malignant Ahriman made the world. Just here the question is not, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XII. September, 1863, No. LXXI. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... foul for eyes of aught but fiends; the air too putrid for lungs that inhale that of pure and happy homes. We must shun those plague spots, else bear false witness to the world, for any true pen-picture of their hell-born horrors would, like Medusa's awful face, turn all who gazed thereon ...
— Volume 1 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... tutta mia speranza Che possi e vogli al gran bisogno altarme; Non mi lasciare in su l'estremo passo; Non guardar me, ma chi degno crearme; No'l mio valor, ma l'alta sua sembianza; Che in me ti mova a curar d'uorm si basso. Medusa, e l'error mio lo han fatto un sasso D'umor vano stillante; Vergine, tu di sante Lagrime, e pie adempi 'l mio cor lasso; Ch' almen l'ultlmo pianto sia divoto, Senza terrestro limo; Come fu'l primo non ...
— Woman in the Ninteenth Century - and Kindred Papers Relating to the Sphere, Condition - and Duties, of Woman. • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... Vagrant Duke The Splendid Outcast The Black Stone The Golden Bough The Secret Witness Paradise Garden The Yellow Dove The Flaming Sword Madcap The Silent Battle The Maker of Opportunities The Forbidden Way The Bolted Door Tony's Wife The Medusa Emerald ...
— The Vagrant Duke • George Gibbs
... before the Medusa-ruin Scott, who is again at his tricks, and refuses officers to volunteers. To carry through in Washington any sensible scheme, more boldness is needed than on the ...
— Diary from March 4, 1861, to November 12, 1862 • Adam Gurowski
... if the head of the Medusa, instead of turning into stone those who looked at it, had given them wings to escape they could not have flown away faster than did those poor savages at the sight ...
— My Friends the Savages - Notes and Observations of a Perak settler (Malay Peninsula) • Giovanni Battista Cerruti
... different from anything analogous on normal planets. They aren't tall, the biggest not more than fifteen feet high, but they are from six to eight feet thick, with all the branches at the top, sprouting out in all directions and reminding me of pictures of Medusa. The outside bark is a hard shell, which grows during the beginning of our four hot seasons a year. Under that will be more bark, soft and spongy, and this gets more and more dense toward the middle; and then comes the hardwood core, which ...
— Four-Day Planet • Henry Beam Piper
... them still stained. The roof was groined and concave, and still gay with tarnished gold. The mouldings and traceries sprang up from the four corners, and all terminated in the centre, in which grinned a Medusa's head, with her circling snakes, in high preservation, and of great and ghastly beauty. There were other grotesque visages, sprinkled here and there over that elaborate roof; but look at that Medusa from what point you might, the painted wooden ...
— Rattlin the Reefer • Edward Howard
... of these animal forests. In and out among them, moved numbers of blue and red and yellow fishes, spotted and banded and striped in the most striking manner, while great orange or rosy transparent medusa floated along near the surface. It was a sight to gaze at for hours, and no description can do justice to its surpassing beauty and interest. For once, the reality exceeded the most glowing accounts I had ever read of the ...
— The Malay Archipelago - Volume I. (of II.) • Alfred Russel Wallace
... classical forms appear continuously through the Byzantine era and in Islam as soon as it recovered from the first shocks of its formation. Procopius (died ca. 535) describes a monumental water clock which was erected in Gaza ca. 500.[17] It contained impressive jackwork, such as a Medusa head which rolled its eyes every hour on the hour, exhibiting the time through lighted apertures and showing mythological interpretations of the cosmos. All these effects were produced by Heronic techniques, using hydraulic power and puppets ...
— On the Origin of Clockwork, Perpetual Motion Devices, and the Compass • Derek J. de Solla Price
... milord, he looked up, and the lady and the husband hastily vanished, as though the Baron's face had affected them like the mythological head of Medusa. ...
— Poor Relations • Honore de Balzac
... reader in Hamburg, and Amsterdam. He takes a sip of coffee, puffs at his cigar, and comfortably settles back to a taste of more details of the catastrophe, whether observed or fabricated. What a hurrah for the newspaper publishers! A sensation! More readers! That is the Medusa into whose eyes we look, and who tells us what the genuine value of a cargo of human lives ...
— Atlantis • Gerhart Hauptmann
... realise that the stony stare of this noble animal must, Medusa-like, have become even more stony from horror and abhorrence at the eccentric things it could not hear, uttered concerning himself, I mean ...
— The Tale of Lal - A Fantasy • Raymond Paton
... them in the moonlight with a majesty at once magnificent and ludicrous. She had come swiftly, borne on the wings of a devouring suspicion, and she maintained for a long moment her Medusa stare of horror. Then, it was the ugliest thing that Karen had ever seen, the mask broke. Hatred, fury, malice, blind, atavistic passions distorted her face. It was to fall from one nightmare to another and a worse; for Tante seized her by the shoulders ...
— Tante • Anne Douglas Sedgwick
... a whistle of consternation as the features of Mr Bickers came to light, pale and stern. The sudden sight of Medusa's head could hardly have had a more petrifying effect. The victim himself was the first to recover. Stretching his arms and legs in relief, he sat up, ...
— The Master of the Shell • Talbot Baines Reed
... exclaimed Brown, as soon as she had disappeared behind her tent flaps. "She'll never let on to Medusa, Xantippe, Cassandra and Company. I ...
— Police!!! • Robert W. Chambers
... society she was accustomed to the petrifying effect of her sudden presence on a beauty-worshipping sex. She did not walk as other mortals walk, but floated in fragrantly and Skippy stood staring rock-still, as though Hippo had flashed the head of Medusa. None of which by the way was lost on the keenly ...
— Skippy Bedelle - His Sentimental Progress From the Urchin to the Complete - Man of the World • Owen Johnson
... ensuing, a book of stories made up of classical myths. The subjects are: The Story of Midas, with his Golden Touch; Pandora's Box; The Adventure of Hercules in Quest of the Golden Apples; Bellerophon and the Chimera; Baucis and Philemon; Perseus and Medusa." ...
— A Study Of Hawthorne • George Parsons Lathrop
... "Finis," for instance, being changed to "The Finish," and "The Song of the Outer Reef" to "The Song of the Coral Reef." In one case, an absolutely different title, a misappropriate title, was substituted. In place of his own, "Medusa Lights," the editor had printed, "The Backward Track." But the slaughter in the body of the poems was terrifying. Martin groaned and sweated and thrust his hands through his hair. Phrases, lines, and stanzas were cut out, interchanged, ...
— Martin Eden • Jack London
... book is said to have originated in the cele- brated French painting by Gericault, "the Wreck of the Medusa," now in the Louvre gallery. The Medusa was a French frigate wrecked off the coast of Africa in 1816. Some of the survivors, escaping on a raft, were rescued by a passing ship after many days of torture. Verne, however, seems also to have drawn upon the terrifying experiences ...
— The Survivors of the Chancellor • Jules Verne
... reclining? Whose is that letter of your mistress? Do these belong to the cardinal? Upon my honor, this man fancies the world belongs to him. There you stood, stammering, stupefied, annihilated. One might have supposed the Bastille appeared before you, and that the gigantic Medusa had converted you into stone. Is being in love conspiring? You are in love with a woman whom the cardinal has caused to be shut up, and you wish to get her out of the hands of the cardinal. That's a match you are playing ...
— The Three Musketeers • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... apex of the helmet was placed a sphinx, with griffins on either side. The figure of the goddess was represented in an erect martial attitude, and clothed in a robe reaching to the feet. On the breast was a head of Medusa, wrought in ivory, and a figure of Victory about four cubits high. The goddess held a spear in her hand, and an aegis lay at her feet, while on her right, and near the spear, was a figure of a serpent, believed ...
— Christianity and Greek Philosophy • Benjamin Franklin Cocker
... incident in the Afridi campaign. We were in the dark and partly behind a screen. Then the door opened. I confess the sight of Lady Henry paralyzed me. A great, murderous, six-foot Afridi—that would have been simple enough. But a woman—old and ill and furious—with that Medusa's face—no! My nerves suddenly failed me. What right had I in her house, after all? As she advanced into the room, I slipped out behind her. General Fergus and M. du Bartas joined me in the hall. We walked to Bond Street together. They were divided between ...
— Lady Rose's Daughter • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... impressive and lurid glow in those solemn eyes, which looked as if they had been taken out of some Medusa's head to be set in her beautiful face. And there was a sinister threat in them too which seemed to say: 'Require nothing of her that I do not approve of, or you will be turned into stone on the spot.' She did not answer twenty words to my questions, and when I once more tasted ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... the least thing that the Senate can do is to remove the twenty and the sixty bad members, and replace them by well-disposed persons. The will of the nation is that the government may not be hindered from doing well, and that the head of Medusa may no longer be displayed in our Tribunes and in our Assemblies. The conduct of Sieyes in this circumstance proves perfectly that, after having concurred in the destruction of all the constitutions since 1791, he still wishes to try his hand against this one. It ...
— Worlds Best Histories - France Vol 7 • M. Guizot and Madame Guizot De Witt
... Harbour is a wonderful sight, but you have read all about it often. The streets by it are awful, badly paved and hideous architecture, immense tall houses here and there, gaunt and staring like giants who have seen Medusa's head and been turned into stone. Farther up town the buildings are all much the same, so their huge height does not show so greatly as with a few ...
— Elizabeth Visits America • Elinor Glyn
... stone!" he exclaimed. "She is a regular Gorgon, with those heavy eyes of hers. I never saw such eyes. I believe she would petrify me if I had to bear them. Don't you give Medusa one of those sweet almonds, ...
— Daisy • Elizabeth Wetherell
... beauty. In verses in imitation of Catullus he sang of the marble Cupid which the duchess had set up in her salon, saying that the god of Love had been turned into stone by her glance. He compared Lucretia's beautiful eyes with the sun, that blinds whosoever ventures to look at it; like Medusa, whose glance turned the beholder to stone, yet in this case "the pains of love still ...
— Lucretia Borgia - According to Original Documents and Correspondence of Her Day • Ferdinand Gregorovius
... twenty-four hours. My occupation is gone, and my despair over your loss is correspondingly greater, for I have time on my hands to brood over it. I was hysterical as a woman yesterday afternoon—so hysterical that I came near upsetting one of the Furies who engaged me to row her down to Madame Medusa's villa last evening; and right at the sluice of the ...
— The Pursuit of the House-Boat • John Kendrick Bangs
... White as marble, and as terrible in expression as that of a Medusa, it had a paralysing effect on his nerves, and he shrank and trembled at ...
— The Secret Power • Marie Corelli
... Yet men and beasts Astronomers will tell Fixed in heavenly Constellations dwell, My Planets of both Sexes whose degree Poor Heathen judg'd worthy a Diety; There's Orion arm'd attended by his dog; The Theban stout Alcides with his Club; The valiant Persens, who Medusa slew, The horse that kil'd Beleuphon, then flew. My Crab, my Scorpion, fishes you may see The Maid with ballance, twain with horses three, The Ram, the Bull, the Lion, and the Beagle, The Bear, the Goat, the Raven, and the Eagle, The Crown, the Whale, the Archer, Bernice Hare The Hidra, ...
— Anne Bradstreet and Her Time • Helen Campbell
... of evolution by leaps from species to species. Koelliker, in 1872, compared the evolution of species with the processes which we can observe in the individual life in cases of alternation of generations. But a polyp only gives rise to a medusa because it has itself arisen from one, and there can be no question of a medusa ever having arisen suddenly and de novo from a polyp-bud, if only because both forms are adapted in their structure as a whole, and in every ...
— Evolution in Modern Thought • Ernst Haeckel
... of Pericles, with figures traced red and black, representing Orestes and Electra at the tomb of Agamemnon. In these cases also are some Athenian glass vases, and opaque glass vessels from Melos; terra-cotta bas-reliefs, representing Bellerophon destroying the Chimera; Perseus destroying the gorgon Medusa, and other classical subjects; and upon the third shelf, amid unguent boxes, terra-cotta lamps, and a terra-cotta doll, is a curious vase containing bones, with a silver Athenian coin, attached to the jar by careful relatives, to pay for the deceased's ...
— How to See the British Museum in Four Visits • W. Blanchard Jerrold
... whom the Eumenides pursue, chasing him down for his guilt. And all the time we vainly imagine that we are some victorious hero, some Perseus, especially favoured by the gods to fare scatheless over land and sea, and bear away the Medusa's head, and live renowned and happy forever." The reverie was becoming deeper and deeper; the Roman was beginning no longer to whisper merely to himself, he was half declaiming; then of a sudden, by a quick revolution of mind, he broke ...
— A Friend of Caesar - A Tale of the Fall of the Roman Republic. Time, 50-47 B.C. • William Stearns Davis
... period) is Pentacrinus (fig. 162). In this genus, the column is five-sided, with whorls of "side-arms;" and the arms are long, slender, and branched. The genus is represented at the present day by the beautiful "Medusa-head Pentacrinite" (Pentacrinus caput-medusoe). Another characteristic Oolitic genus is Apiocrinus, comprising the so-called "Pear Encrinites." In this group the column is long and rounded, with a dilated base, and having its uppermost ...
— The Ancient Life History of the Earth • Henry Alleyne Nicholson
... on the night of August 15th, the boats, which had assembled alongside the flag-frigate "Medusa," shoved off together; but the distance which they had to pull, with the strong, uncertain currents, separated them; and, as so often happens in concerted movements, attacks intended to be simultaneous were made disconnectedly, while the French were fully prepared. ...
— The Life of Nelson, Vol. II. (of 2) - The Embodiment of the Sea Power of Great Britain • A. T. (Alfred Thayer) Mahan
... you are as brave a youth as I believe you to be," replied King Polydectes, with the utmost graciousness of manner. "The bridal gift which I have set my heart on presenting to the beautiful Hippodamia is the head of the Gorgon Medusa, with the snaky locks; and I depend on you, my dear Perseus, to bring it to me. So, as I am anxious to settle affairs with the princess, the sooner you go in quest of the Gorgon, the better ...
— The Gorgon's Head - (From: "A Wonder-Book For Girls and Boys") • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... imagination be nurtured in this atmosphere of savourless modernism? Then I asked myself: who comes to these regions, now that invalids have learnt the drawbacks of their climate? Decayed Muscovites, Englishmen such as you will vainly seek in England, and their painted women-folk with stony, Medusa-like gambling eyes, a Turk or two, Jews and cosmopolitan sharks and sharpers, flamboyant Americans, Brazilian, Peruvian, Chilian, Bolivian rastaqueros with names that read like a nightmare (see "List of Arrivals" in New York Herald)—the whole exotic riff-raff ...
— Alone • Norman Douglas
... away!" said she, as she turned her back upon him. Her face of beauty seemed turned to stone, like unto the Medusa's head with its serpent locks. He descended to the street, a weak, lifeless thing; he entered his room like a night-walker, and in the rage of his grief, he seized his hammer, brandished it high in the air and sought to destroy the beautiful marble form. ...
— The Ice-Maiden: and Other Tales. • Hans Christian Andersen
... turns straight around, with a resemblance to Medusa, since her short, uneven hair stands out every way with the vigorous use of her magnetic brush. "How could he have had ...
— Floyd Grandon's Honor • Amanda Minnie Douglas
... frantic hatred, might have sanctioned the rigours of the law: but I considered them as the offspring of brains to be pitied for their diseased state, and contented myself with writing on them in large letters, before I returned to the post-boy, a Seen; which, like the head of Medusa, no doubt petrified more than ...
— Memoirs of the Private Life, Return, and Reign of Napoleon in 1815, Vol. I • Pierre Antoine Edouard Fleury de Chaboulon
... Mercury, he descended through a cleft in the earth, and came to the entrance of the city of King Pluto. The shades which sadly wandered back and forth before the gates of the city took flight as soon as they caught sight of flesh and blood in the form of a living man. Only the Gorgon Medusa and the spirit of Meleager remained. The former Hercules wished to overthrow with his sword, but Mercury touched him on the arm and told him that the souls of the departed were only empty shadow pictures and could not ...
— Myths and Legends of All Nations • Various
... hair was undone. She looked strikingly handsome, but the thick black strands hanging down on either side of the white face recalled to Mary a picture in the library at Lady MacMillan's. It was a clever painting of the Medusa, level-eyed, with a red mouth like a wound, and dimly seen, pale glimmering features, between the lazy writhing of dark snakes. The thing had fascinated Mary in her impressionable schoolgirl days, but now she tried to huddle the idea quickly out of her head, for it seemed ...
— The Guests Of Hercules • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... appreciation or profounder thought. Of the last named he proposed to write a comprehensive biography and entered into correspondence with a publisher in Germany.[A] He confronted the formal culture of the Latin races with the character of the German mind, as it were the head of the Medusa, and the consciousness of his mission kept up his spirits under the most trying circumstances. With Paris as an art centre he had done. Like Mozart's "Idomeneo" to the Opera Seria, "Rienzi" was his last tribute to the Grand Opera. ...
— Life of Wagner - Biographies of Musicians • Louis Nohl
... assumed so many deceptive shapes to those who visited his cave, that his memory has been preserved in the word Protean. Such fancies well apply to a part of Nature which shifts like the sands, and ranges from the hideous Cuttle-fish and ravenous Shark to the delicate Medusa, whose graceful form and trailing tentacles float among the waving fronds of colored ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, No. 47, September, 1861 • Various
... were off from the Sandwich Islands to the long swell of the Pacific, the slimy medusa lights covering the waters with a phosphorescent trail of fire all night, the rockweed and sea leek floating past by day telling their tale of some far land. Cook's secret commission had been very explicit: ...
— Vikings of the Pacific - The Adventures of the Explorers who Came from the West, Eastward • Agnes C. Laut
... sought inspiration from painting, while painting, as we have said, inclined to genre, to luxurious representations of the amours of the gods or the adventures of heroes, with backgrounds of pastoral landscape. Shepherds fluted while Perseus slew Medusa. ...
— Theocritus, Bion and Moschus rendered into English Prose • Andrew Lang
... focussed in funnels of light. Astern, deep down, when there was a breeze, bubbled a procession of milky-turquoise ghosts—the foam flung down by the hull of the Snark each time she floundered against a sea. At night the wake was phosphorescent fire, where the medusa slime resented our passing bulk, while far down could be observed the unceasing flight of comets, with long, undulating, nebulous tails—caused by the passage of the bonitas through the resentful medusa slime. ...
— The Cruise of the Snark • Jack London
... thirty thousand ways of killing," Pertinax repeated, "but if we kill one monster, four or five others will fight for his place, unless, like Perseus, we have the head of a Medusa with which to freeze them into stone! There is no substitute for Commodus in sight. The only man whose face would freeze all ...
— Caesar Dies • Talbot Mundy
... thought about those giants. How could he? Was he a philosopher? He had not had time to think. Now he was thinking, and at the bottom of his stony meditation he beholds a pale, dreadful visage. Something which recalls a Medusa-head, which he had seen some time in a picture. It has struggled out of raging waves, and is resting on them face upward; its hair is torn; its gaze has endless depth; and on its blue lips is a jeering smile. What is it jeering at? Perhaps at the grandeur of ...
— The Argonauts • Eliza Orzeszko (AKA Orzeszkowa)
... has resided in Rome, where she was a pupil of Gibson. Two heads, "Daphne" and "Medusa," executed soon after she went to Rome, were praised by critics of authority. "Will-o'-the-Wisp," "Puck," "Sleeping Faun," "Waking Faun," and "Zenobia in ...
— Women in the fine arts, from the Seventh Century B.C. to the Twentieth Century A.D. • Clara Erskine Clement
... decrees that Psyche shall be left upon a barren rock till a hideous monster shall come and devour her. And it is for this that men have paid her honours which were the portion only of the gods! Far better had she been born with the hair of Medusa and the hump ...
— The Red Romance Book • Various
... the latter read to mother and daughter, in order to prevent the publication of their libel; but it only enraged the former, -who vows she will print all she knows, that is, any thing she has heard by their entire intimacy in the family, or, no doubt, what she can invent or misrepresent. What a Medusa! There has been a fragment of a rehearsal in the Haymarket, but still the Pantheon remains master of the field of battle: the vanquished are preparing manifestoes, but they seldom ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole, V4 • Horace Walpole
... planned various statues of a religious order. It was in prison, too, that he thought out the Perseus and Medusa. In prison, works like the Pieta were his ambition, but when freedom came the Perseus was uppermost in his mind. Every great work of art is an evolution—the man sees it first as a mere germ—it grows, enlarges, evolves. The Perseus of Cellini was ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 6 - Subtitle: Little Journeys to the Homes of Eminent Artists • Elbert Hubbard
... innkeeper's daughter to retire to her beauteous apartment, lest he should be forced to prove himself ungrateful. If, he said, she would demand any other thing than love, he would willingly grant her the favor, even unto a lock of Medusa's hair. ...
— The Story of Don Quixote • Arvid Paulson, Clayton Edwards, and Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... the Duomo, and all these works, had to be left unfinished, as Michael Angelo was summoned to Rome in the beginning of 1505 by Pope Julius II. From this period Michael Angelo was the servant, often the unwilling servant, of the Popes (his Medusa as he said). Much of his time was wasted owing to the different dispositions and likings of his patrons, yet we must be thankful to them for the opportunities they gave him in their great undertakings. ...
— Michael Angelo Buonarroti • Charles Holroyd
... hymns of blessing, while the terrible Chorus of the Furies, clothed in black, with blood-stained girdles, and serpents in their hair, in masks having perhaps somewhat of the terrific beauty of Medusa-masks, are convoyed to their new sanctuary by a procession of children, women, and old men in purple robes and torches in their hands, after Athene and the Furies have sung, in response to each other, a chorus from ...
— Lectures Delivered in America in 1874 • Charles Kingsley
... steadily, but there was something in her aspect that moved him to wonderment and a curious touch of terror. The delicate rose-tint of her cheeks had faded to an ashy paleness, her lips were pressed together tightly and her eyes seemed to have gained a vivid and angry lustre which Medusa herself might have envied. ...
— Ziska - The Problem of a Wicked Soul • Marie Corelli
... arts, but the religious rites of that ancient country. Among the regal descendants of Lynceus was Danae, whose son Perseus performed marvelous deeds, by the special favor of Athene, among which he brought from Libya the terrific head of the Gorgon Medusa, which had the marvelous property of turning every one to stone who looked at her. Stung with remorse for the accidental murder of his grandfather, the king, he retired from Argos, and founded the city of Mycenae, the ruins of whose massive walls are still to be seen—Cyclopean ...
— Ancient States and Empires • John Lord
... with what speed and fury on that dangerous coast the treacherous tide came in. There was not a moment to spare, and as he flew back to the small shelter of the pebbly cove, the water was already gliding close to him, and stretching its arms like a hungry medusa round the seaweed-matted lumps of scattered rock over which ...
— St. Winifred's - The World of School • Frederic W. Farrar
... Elzevirs were the sphere, the old hermit, the Athena, the eagle, and the burning faggot. But all little old books marked with spheres are not Elzevirs, as many booksellers suppose. Other printers also stole the designs for the tops of chapters, the Aegipan, the Siren, the head of Medusa, the crossed sceptres, and the rest. In some cases the Elzevirs published their books, especially when they were piracies, anonymously. When they published for the Jansenists, they allowed their clients to ...
— The Library • Andrew Lang
... were, as they had been from the beginning, closed upon each other in that stony self-collected calm, which was only not a sneer. The wonder, if it was one, had passed: and now—did her eyes play her false, or were the snakes round that Medusa's head upon the shield all writhing, grinning, glaring at her with stony eyes, longing to stiffen her with ...
— Hypatia - or, New Foes with an Old Face • Charles Kingsley
... in which it is difficult to believe that Dante had not the pine-forest in his mind. When Virgil and the poet were waiting in anxiety before the gates of Dis, when the Furies on the wall were tearing their breasts and crying, 'Venga Medusa, e si 'l farem di smalto,' suddenly across the hideous river came a sound like that which whirlwinds make among the shattered branches and bruised stems of forest-trees; and Dante, looking out with fear upon the foam and spray and vapour of the flood, saw thousands ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Second Series • John Addington Symonds
... windows in the alferez's house closed? Where was the masculine face and the flannel shirt of the Medusa or Muse of the Civil Guard while the procession was passing? Could she have understood how unpleasant was the sight of the swelling veins of her forehead, filled, it seemed, not with blood but with vinegar and bile; of her large cigar, that worthy ornament of her red lips; and of her envious look; ...
— Friars and Filipinos - An Abridged Translation of Dr. Jose Rizal's Tagalog Novel, - 'Noli Me Tangere.' • Jose Rizal
... presence she would not have given it. The expression in her face changed rapidly from that which had been there when they had been alone, hardening very quickly until it reminded Orsino of a certain mask of the Medusa which had once made an impression upon his imagination. Her eyes were fixed and the pupils grew small while the singular golden yellow colour of the iris flashed disagreeably. She did not bend her head as she ...
— Don Orsino • F. Marion Crawford
... Years ago, she had reverently packed the pipe away, with other articles belonging to the dead, and ignorant that her mother had given it to Bertie, she deemed it safe in that sacred repository. Now, like the face of Medusa it glared at her, and that which her father's lips had sanctified, became the polluted medium of a retributive curse upon his devoted child. So the Diabolus ex machina, the evil genius of each human life decrees that the most cruel cureless ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson
... the road made a great curve round the base of a hill descending to the river, and then mounted a little spur of the valley wall. Beyond the spur the road went through lonely fields, in which were deserted farmhouses surrounded by acres of neglected vines, now rank and Medusa-like in their weedy profusion. Every once in a while, along a rise, stood great burlap screens so arranged one behind the other as to give the effect of a continuous line when seen ...
— A Volunteer Poilu • Henry Sheahan
... your gaze on me, Lazarus," he commanded. "I have heard that your head is like the head of Medusa, and turns into stone all upon whom you look. But I should like to have a close look at you, and to talk to you before I turn into stone," he added in a spirit of playfulness that ...
— Best Russian Short Stories • Various
... come here for rest for me, which I have much needed; and shall remain here for about ten days more, and then home to work, which is my sole pleasure in life. I hope your splendid Medusa work and your experiments on pangenesis are going on well. I heard from my son Frank yesterday that he was feverish with a cold, and could not dine with the physiologists, which I am very sorry for, as I should have heard what they think about the new Bill. I see that you are one of the secretaries ...
— More Letters of Charles Darwin - Volume I (of II) • Charles Darwin
... that the possibility might arise of becoming Clementine's husband, and now he had drowned himself in a ditch of mud. His face was convulsed, when he reached the kiosk, with an agony of grief; his head, like Medusa's, ...
— Paz - (La Fausse Maitresse) • Honore de Balzac
... rare difference, outlaw—for whereas her tongue (honoured relict!) is tipped with gall, wormwood, henbane, hemlock, bitter-aloes and verjuice, and stingeth like the adder, the asp, the toad, the newt, the wasp, and snaky-haired head of Medusa, mine— ...
— The Geste of Duke Jocelyn • Jeffery Farnol
... solar light, with the help of a magnifying glass was enabled distinctly to discern the moluscae. When magnified, they appeared about the size of a pin's head, of a yellowish brown colour, rather oval-shaped, and having tentaculae. The medusa is a genus of molusca; and I think M. le Seur told me he reckons forty-three or ...
— A Ramble of Six Thousand Miles through the United States of America • S. A. Ferrall
... Cement—Medusa Waterproofing Compound—Novoid Waterproofing Compound—Impermeable Coatings and Washes: Bituminous Coatings; Szerelmey Stone Liquid Wash; Sylvester Wash; Sylvester Mortars; Hydrolithic Coating; Cement Mortar Coatings; Oil and Paraffine Washes—Impermeable Diaphragms; Long Island R. R. Subway; New ...
— Concrete Construction - Methods and Costs • Halbert P. Gillette
... with the sharks in Table Bay than sit down again with Ronald Kenna. In her room she lay exhausted and very still for a long time, with the feeling that she had escaped from a red-hot gridiron. She looked in her mirror on entering, expecting to see a vision of Medusa, hair hanging in streaks, eyes distraught, and deep ruts in the cheeks; but her face was charming and composed, and a fixed smile curved her mouth. She shuddered at ...
— Blue Aloes - Stories of South Africa • Cynthia Stockley
... had filled his heart with care. At length he lifts his eyes, spent by chivalrous deeds, And turns them on his enemy clad in the ghastly weeds: "Roderick, son of my soul, mantle the spectre anon, Lest, like a new Medusa, it change my heart to stone, And leave me in such plight at last, that, ere I wish ye joy, My heart should rend within me of bliss without alloy. Oh, infamous Lozano! kind heaven hath wrought redress, And the great justice ...
— Song and Legend From the Middle Ages • William D. McClintock and Porter Lander McClintock
... wanted to understand it. What a number of pictures! There was no end to them. They must be worth a mint of money. Right at the end, Monsieur Madinier suddenly ordered a halt opposite the "Raft of the Medusa" and he explained the subject to them. All deeply impressed and motionless, they uttered not a word. When they started off again, Boche expressed the general feeling, saying it ...
— L'Assommoir • Emile Zola
... again and said, "You are too young, for this is Medusa the Gorgon. Return to your home, and when you have done the work that awaits you there, you may be worthy to go in search ...
— Young Folks Treasury, Volume 2 (of 12) • Various
... 393. Persean sword. The sword of sharpness given to Perseus by Hermes, with which he cut off the head of the Gorgon Medusa, a monster with the head of a woman, and snaky locks, the sight of whom turned those who looked on her into stone. Perseus escaped by looking only at ...
— Keats: Poems Published in 1820 • John Keats
... little feelers that hung down all around like so many mites of snakes, and so it was named Medusa, after that lady in the old times who wore snakes instead of hair, and who felt so badly because she couldn't do them up. Well, our little Medusa floated around and opened and shut her umbrella for a long time—a month, or a year, perhaps—we don't know how long. Then, one morning, down among the ...
— The Junior Classics Volume 8 - Animal and Nature Stories • Selected and arranged by William Patten
... The Nurse Medusa. O monstrous men! What have ye done! It is King Herod's only son That ye have cleft ...
— The Golden Legend • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... you are as brave a youth as I believe you to be," replied King Polydectes, with the utmost graciousness of manner. "The bridal gift which I have set my heart on presenting to the beautiful Hippodamia is the head of the Gorgon Medusa with the snaky locks; and I depend on you, my dear Perseus, to bring it to me. So, as I am anxious to settle affairs with the princess, the sooner you go in quest of the Gorgon, the better I ...
— Myths That Every Child Should Know - A Selection Of The Classic Myths Of All Times For Young People • Various
... groups, by celebrated masters of the 16th cent. To the right is the Rape of the Sabines, by G.Bologna, in 1583. Originally this group was intended to represent Youth, Manhood, and Old Age. To the left the statue in bronze of Perseus, with the head of the sorceress Medusa, by B.Cellini. The posture is fine, and full of power and animation, but the head and body of the Medusa are represented streaming with blood with a revolting exaggeration. Also left, Judith and Holofernes in bronze, by Donatello. Behind Perseus ...
— The South of France—East Half • Charles Bertram Black
... a miscalculation, when he thought that Mr. Fabian would fall into the hands of the Medusa within the bed-curtains. The very thought of the humiliation he had undergone, and the fear of what was yet in store for him, inspired Mr. Fabian with an unusual degree of courage or rather drove ...
— The Home in the Valley • Emilie F. Carlen
... an end, and that he had satisfactorily rid himself of an incubus. He bent carelessly over the parchment, and then sprang back with face as pale and eyes as wild and lips as trembling as if on the pitiful piece of sheepskin he had seen some terror as dread as the face of Medusa. His twitching mouth whispered one word, but that word was "Lagardere!" and that word was repeated on the lips of every man ...
— The Duke's Motto - A Melodrama • Justin Huntly McCarthy
... him, and that false knight Nor strikes nor wards nor striveth to be gone; But, as Medusa's head were in his sight, Stood like a man new turned to marble stone, All lances broke, unsheathed all weapons bright, All quivers emptied were on them alone, In parts so many were the traitors cleft, That those dead men had ...
— Jerusalem Delivered • Torquato Tasso
... Had he been Medusa, the glance he bent upon his spouse would have transformed her instantly into a not particularly symmetrical statue of concrete. ...
— The Valley of the Giants • Peter B. Kyne
... thence have evil drawn: It is a magic shape, a lifeless eidolon. Such to encounter is not good: Their blank, set stare benumbs the human blood, And one is almost turned to stone. Medusa's tale to thee ...
— Faust • Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe
... like Medusa's head in wrath, and who was, I think, fonder of the sound than any other of our poets. Indeed, in compounds of the kind we always make a distinction wholly independent of the doubled s. Nobody would boggle at mountainside; ...
— Among My Books • James Russell Lowell
... That a Medusa consists essentially of two membranes enclosing a variously-shaped cavity, inasmuch as its various organs are ...
— The Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley Volume 1 • Leonard Huxley
... her eyes expanded as if they saw far beyond the crystal mountains glittering before the open windows. Her mass of dark hair had fallen, and Mrs. Tolby whispered to Mrs. Prentiss that she looked like the Medusa in the Glyptothek in Munich, ...
— The White Morning • Gertrude Atherton
... grown to be a young man, the king urged him to go in search of adventures, and set him the task of bringing him the head of the terrible Gorgon named Medusa. Perseus asked the aid of the gods for this expedition, which he felt obliged to make, and in answer to his prayers, Mercury and Minerva, the patrons of adventurers, led him to the abode of the Graeae, the ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. 5, July 1878, No. 9 • Various
... in with a crash. There was the sudden apparition of the demoniac face, still half hidden by the long trailing black locks of hair that curled like Medusa's around it. A cry of terror filled the room. Three of the men dashed from the door and fled precipitately. The man who had spoken sprang toward his rifle in the chimney corner. But the movement was his last; a blinding flash and shattering report interposed between him and his weapon. The impulse ...
— Frontier Stories • Bret Harte
... phantom gibbet for a mast, Stitch shrouds together for a sail, with groans To fill it out, blood-stained and aghast; Although your rudder be a dragon's tail Long severed, yet still hard with agony, Your cordage, large uprootings from the skull Of bald Medusa, certes you would fail ...
— The Tale of Terror • Edith Birkhead
... every man, with the single exception of their big sergeant. I don't like to make ugly comparisons to a man whom I believe to be more than half interested in a woman, but it makes me think of the old story about Medusa. One look at her face is too much for a man. That Sergeant McLeod went to grass the instant he caught sight of her, and never has picked ...
— From the Ranks • Charles King
... cattle are said to be infested with liver flukes, but even when a large number are present the nourishment of the cattle is not disturbed. Thickening of the gall ducts, so that a so-called "Medusa's head" forms on the surface of the liver toward the stomach, appears in even well-nourished animals; even in cases of a cirrhosis of the liver it is seldom that any effect upon the cattle's health can be noticed, and so long as a portion of the liver ...
— Special Report on Diseases of Cattle • U.S. Department of Agriculture
... widely, but the heavens completely; and nightly over them marched the grand procession of their apotheosized divinities. There Hercules perpetually wrought his mighty labors for the good of man; there flashed and faded the changeful star Algol, as an eye in the head of the snaky-haired Medusa; over them flew Pegasus, the winged horse of the poet, careering among the stars; there the ship Argo, which had explored all strange seas of earth, nightly sailed in the infinite realms of heaven; ...
— Recreations in Astronomy - With Directions for Practical Experiments and Telescopic Work • Henry Warren
... went as a team and gave me about as much chance to escape as if I'd been a horned toad sealed in a cornerstone. Gruenwald, of course, treated me as though my breath was deadly, my touch foul, and my presence evil. In Gruenwald's eyes, the only difference between me and Medusa the Gorgon was that looking at me did not turn him to stone. He kept at least one eye ...
— Highways in Hiding • George Oliver Smith
... him and closed the doors, bolting them quietly. When he turned he saw a change in his stepmother. Her eyes regarded him with a Medusa-like stare; a spot of dull red smouldered in each cheek. Her lips seemed suddenly thin, were working slightly. He knew that her anger was even greater than his own, though she might express ...
— Juggernaut • Alice Campbell
... stone is full of shells, and bits of coral; and what are these wonderful things coiled and tangled together, like the snakes in Medusa's hair in ...
— Madam How and Lady Why - or, First Lessons in Earth Lore for Children • Charles Kingsley
... discovery was the fact that the left hand was perfect, and did not hold a bow, but some soft, elastic substance which Stephani believes to be the aegis, or shield, of Jupiter, on which was the head of Medusa. The sight of this shield paralyzed those who saw it; and though it belonged to Jupiter and Minerva, Jupiter sometimes lent it to his son Apollo to aid him in his warfare; such instances are recorded by Homer. After Stephani had told his idea of it, the German scholar Ludwig Preller pointed out what ...
— A History of Art for Beginners and Students - Painting, Sculpture, Architecture • Clara Erskine Clement
... proboscis, so characteristic of all Jelly-Fishes, hangs from the central opening; and the tentacles, coiled within the internal cavity up to this time, now make their appearance, and we have a complete little Medusa growing upon the Hydroid head. Gradually the point by which it is attached to the parent-stock narrows and becomes more and more contracted, till the animal drops off and ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 10, Number 59, September, 1862 • Various
... sun had dazzled his sight. Then, bending forward, he stared at the painting, panting as he might after racing for a wager. He stood in perfect silence, for I know not how long, as though it were Medusa he was gazing on, and when at last he clasped his hand to his brow, I called him by name. He made no reply, but an impatient 'Leave me alone!' and then he still gazed at the face as though to devour it with his eyes, and ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... vaguely I always want to know, them—I want to know why Medusa turned into a gorgon? What ...
— Halcyone • Elinor Glyn
... Athens. And here is testimony to the fact: all manner of comic masks, of grotesque visages; mouths distorted into impossible grins, eyes leering and goggling, noses extravagant. I sketched a caricature of Medusa, the anguished features and snaky locks travestied with satiric grimness. You remember a story which illustrates this scoffing habit: how the Roman Ambassador, whose Greek left something to be desired, excited the uproarious derision of the assembled Tarentines—with results that ...
— By the Ionian Sea - Notes of a Ramble in Southern Italy • George Gissing
... microscope, through which he examined one of the stomachs of the medusae. It was found to be full of diatoms, which are flinty-shelled microscopic animals of every variety of shape, such as stars, crosses, semicircles, and spirals—yet soft as are the jelly-fish, they can consume them. This one medusa had in its stomach no less than seven hundred thousand diatoms, so that it would be rather difficult to compute how many the whole shoal consumed for their dinner—they in their turn having to be eaten by the ...
— My First Voyage to Southern Seas • W.H.G. Kingston
... tombola where once they announced a victory? Even now, in spite of forgotten greatness, it is still a garden of statues. Looking ever over the Piazza stands the Perseus of Cellini, with the head of Medusa held up to the multitude, the sword still gripped in his hand. It is the masterpiece of one who, like all the greatest artists of the Renaissance—Giotto, Orcagna, Leonardo, Michelangelo, Raphael—did not confine himself ...
— Florence and Northern Tuscany with Genoa • Edward Hutton
... Hermes was, storm-footed Son of Zeus, Slaying huge Argus nigh to Inachus' streams, Argus, whose sentinel eyes in turn took sleep. And there was Phaethon from the Sun-car hurled Into Eridanus. Earth verily seemed Ablaze, and black smoke hovered on the air. There Perseus slew Medusa gorgon-eyed By the stars' baths and utmost bounds of earth And fountains of deep-flowing Ocean, where Night in the far west meets the setting sun. There was the Titan Iapetus' great son Hung from the beetling ...
— The Fall of Troy • Smyrnaeus Quintus
... to have a life of its own, almost Medusa-like, thick, glossy and moist, lying in heavy, sweet-smelling masses over her forehead, over her small ears with their pink lobes, and far down upon her nape. Deep in between the coils and braids it was of a bitumen brownness, but in the sunlight it vibrated with a sheen ...
— The Octopus • Frank Norris
... of June, 1816, the Medusa, French frigate, commanded by Captain Chaumareys, and accompanied by three smaller vessels, sailed from the island of Aix, for the coast of Africa, in order to take possession of some colonies. On the 1st of July, they entered the tropics; and there, with a childish disregard to danger, ...
— Thrilling Adventures by Land and Sea • James O. Brayman
... know? More than youre worth—more than I'm getting, because youre a ninetyday wonder, the guy who put the crap on the grass and sent it nuts. Less than he'd have given Minerva-Medusa. Come and get it straight ...
— Greener Than You Think • Ward Moore
... American to me, "but I think that they are excellent. A twenty dollar note used to last me but a week, but now it is as good as Fortunatus's purse, which was never empty. I eat my dinner at the hotel, and show them my twenty dollar note. The landlord turns away from it, as if it were the head of Medusa, and begs that I will pay another time. I buy every thing that I want, and I have only to offer my twenty dollar note in payment, and my credit is unbounded—that is, for any sum under twenty dollars. If they ever do give change again in New York it will ...
— Diary in America, Series One • Frederick Marryat (AKA Captain Marryat)
... intemperate, can secure himself? Who can say I will not be taken with a beautiful object? I can, I will contain. No, saith [4907]Lucian of his mistress, she is so fair, that if thou dost but see her, she will stupefy thee, kill thee straight, and, Medusa like, turn thee to a stone; thou canst not pull thine eyes from her, but, as an adamant doth iron, she will carry thee bound headlong whither she will herself, infect thee like a basilisk. It holds both ...
— The Anatomy of Melancholy • Democritus Junior
... Madness of Athamas; and deification of Ino and Melicertes. Change of the Theban women to rocks and birds. Cadmus and Hermione changed to serpents. Perseus. Transformation of Atlas to a mountain. Andromeda saved from the sea monster. Story of Medusa. ...
— The Metamorphoses of Publius Ovidus Naso in English blank verse Vols. I & II • Ovid
... pays no attention to these shouts; she sees not that the National Guards are clearing a way by force; she walks forward with uplifted head, with a countenance petrified like that of Medusa ...
— The Empress Josephine • Louise Muhlbach
... again, and said: "Not yet; you are too young, and too unskilled; for this is Medusa the Gorgon, the mother of a ...
— Heroes Every Child Should Know • Hamilton Wright Mabie
... pale blue profanity that a newly married couple of grip germs had taken a notion to build a nest somewhere on the outskirts of my solar plexus, and two hours later they had about 233 children attending the public school in my medusa oblongata; and every time school would let out for recess I would go up in the air and hit the ceiling with ...
— You Should Worry Says John Henry • George V. Hobart
... rising out of the sea of modern thought with the purpose of devouring the Andromeda of art. And now and then a Perseus, equipped with the shoes of swiftness of the ready writer, with the cap of invisibility of the editorial article, and it may be with the Medusa-head of vituperation, shows himself ready to try conclusions with the scientific dragon. Sir, I hope that Perseus will think better of it [laughter]; first, for his own sake, because the creature is hard of ...
— Modern Eloquence: Vol II, After-Dinner Speeches E-O • Various
... dark eyes of Karamaneh were wonderful and beautiful, the eyes of Dr. Fu-Manchu sinister and wholly unforgettable; but the eyes of this woman were incredible. Their glance was all but insupportable; the were the eyes of a Medusa! ...
— The Hand Of Fu-Manchu - Being a New Phase in the Activities of Fu-Manchu, the Devil Doctor • Sax Rohmer
... 1816 two stately vessels were sailing on the ocean, in all the pride of perfect equipment and of glorious enterprise. The one was an English frigate, the Alceste, having on board our ambassador to China; the other was a French frigate, the Medusa, taking out the suite of a governor for one of the colonies of France on the coast of Africa. The importance of the mission on which each ship was despatched, and the value of the freight, would seem to assure us that the Alceste and the Medusa were officered and manned by the best crews that could ...
— Narratives of Shipwrecks of the Royal Navy; between 1793 and 1849 • William O. S. Gilly
... Labouring through between them came detachments of British artillery, clattering gun-carriages, straight young figures on glossy horses, long Phidian lines of youths so ingenuously fair that one wondered how they could have looked on the Medusa face of war and lived. Men and beasts, in spite of the dust, were as fresh and sleek as if they had come from a bath; and everywhere along the wayside were improvised camps, with tents made of waggon-covers, where ...
— Fighting France - From Dunkerque to Belport • Edith Wharton
... faced the north, the extreme left (the Guyomar brigade) faced the west; but they did not know whether they faced the enemy, they did not see him; annihilation struck without showing itself; they had to deal with a masked Medusa. Our cavalry was excellent, but useless. The field of battle, obstructed by a large wood, cut up by clumps of trees, by houses and by farms and by enclosure walls, was excellent for artillery and infantry, but bad for cavalry. The rivulet of Givonne, which flows ...
— The History of a Crime - The Testimony of an Eye-Witness • Victor Hugo
... ciliated larva, the larva begets a polyp, the polyp begets a strobila, and the strobila begets a medusa again; the cycle of reproduction being completed ...
— Life and Habit • Samuel Butler
... guarded by lions at the four corners, was ornamented at both ends and along both sides by reliefs. The four scenes depicted appear to be distinct and separate. At one end Perseus, having cut off Medusa's head and placed it in his wallet, which he carries behind him by means of a stick passed over his shoulder, departs homewards followed by his dog. Medusa's body, though sunk upon one knee, is still upright, and from the bleeding neck there spring the forms of Chrysaor and Pegasus. ...
— History of Phoenicia • George Rawlinson
... I begin with the law of God. And, first, let us see what is alleged from Scripture for the ceremonies in general; then, after, let us look over particulars. There is one place which they will have in mythology to stand for the head of Medusa, and if they still object to us for all their ceremonies even that of the Apostle, "Let all things be done decently and in order," 1 Cor. xiv. 40. What they have drawn out of this place, Dr Burges(819) hath refined in ...
— The Works of Mr. George Gillespie (Vol. 1 of 2) • George Gillespie
... since the doors are open to every one there has been much talk of unknown and unrecognized genius. When, twelve years earlier, Ingres' "Courtesan," and that of Sigalon, the "Medusa" of Gericault, the "Massacre of Scio" by Delacroix, the "Baptism of Henri IV." by Eugene Deveria, admitted by celebrated artists accused of jealousy, showed the world, in spite of the denials of criticism, that young and vigorous palettes existed, no such complaint was made. ...
— Pierre Grassou • Honore de Balzac
... carrying in its womb the future bane of a lifetime; we should see these things till we sickened, and reeled, and grew blind with pain before the ghastly face of the Future, as men in ancient days before the loathsome visage of the Medusa! ...
— Wisdom, Wit, and Pathos of Ouida - Selected from the Works of Ouida • Ouida
... she might have been the head of the Medusa, for Dr. Brunton felt suddenly as if turned to stone. When he went into his house all chance of an hour's sleep was gone. He met his sister in the passage: she stopped and said, "Oh, James, you must have passed the Ladies Moor ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science Volume 15, No. 89, May, 1875 • Various
... At all events, in case this good end was not effected before he arrived at the garden, they counted to a certainty on his getting rid of it when he did; because the fairy of that garden, which was called the Garden of Medusa, was of such a nature, that whosoever did but look on her countenance forgot the reason for his going thither; and whoever saluted, touched, and sat down to converse by her side, forgot all that had ever ...
— Stories from the Italian Poets: With Lives of the Writers, Vol. 2 • Leigh Hunt
... with huge teeth, brazen claws and snakes for hair, sight of whom turned beholders to stone, Medusa, the most famous, ...
— Bulfinch's Mythology • Thomas Bulfinch
... to anything Medusa could do. He professed to doubt whether, since that infliction, his flesh had been quite what it was before—whether there was not something stony in its texture. The gaze had had such an effect on him as to drive him promptly from the apartment ...
— Shirley • Charlotte Bronte
... features, and a single serpent wreathing the tresses like a bandeau—but such countenances!—such a hideous expression of malice, cunning, and cruelty!—and the effect is beyond conception appalling. Leonardo da Vinci worked upon the same grand principle of art in his Medusa— ...
— Characteristics of Women - Moral, Poetical, and Historical • Anna Jameson
... was heard in the evening: whilst the cook was chopping his wood every blow was echoed round the bight, although we were eight miles from the shore. After leaving Port Keats we met with large quantities of a very beautiful species of medusa, it appeared to be the Medusa panopyra, figured in Peron's Atlas, (Plate 31 figure 2). It is from this animal that the French have named their Banc des Meduses. No turtle or snakes had for some time been seen and very few sharks; but ...
— Narrative of a Survey of the Intertropical and Western Coasts of Australia - Performed between the years 1818 and 1822 • Phillip Parker King
... him also, breathing defiance and hatred. Her big black eyes were flames, her head was thrown up and back, her cheeks were blood scarlet, and her great crop of crow- black hair stood out about her beauteous, wicked little virago face, as if it might change into Medusa's snakes. ...
— A Lady of Quality • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... and historical scenes were the work of an artist," Henley ventured to observe, looking at a strange head of Medusa. ...
— The Ghost of Guir House • Charles Willing Beale
... the head of Medusa; that head of a woman once so beautiful, which Perseus cut off and which beholds in his hand, is only that of the virgin, whose head sinks below the horizon at the very moment that Perseus rises; and the serpents which surround it are Orphiucus and the Polar Dragon, who then occupy the zenith. ...
— The Ruins • C. F. [Constantin Francois de] Volney
... of the anatomy, physiology, and psychology of the medusa, or jelly-fish, will serve to illustrate the operations of the unconscious mind as it is to be noticed in its reflex and "vegetative" phases. The higher and more evolved phases of the unconscious mind will not be discussed in this work, ...
— The Dawn of Reason - or, Mental Traits in the Lower Animals • James Weir
... a head of Medusa, but Medusa hilarious. All feeling or thought in the mind of the spectator was suddenly put to flight by the unexpected apparition, and laughter was inevitable. Antique art formerly placed on the outsides of the Greek theatre a joyous brazen face, called comedy. It laughed and occasioned ...
— The Man Who Laughs • Victor Hugo
... shadows of the Unknown, a sense of impending marvel of the rending of walls before the imaginable. Almost, when he knew the blow had started and just ere the edge of steel bit the flesh and nerves it seemed that he gazed upon the serene face of the Medusa, Truth—And, simultaneous with the bite of the steel on the onrush of the dark, in a flashing instant of fancy, he saw the vision of his head turning slowly, always turning, in the devil-devil house ...
— The Red One • Jack London
... almost the year round, and might as well be let to appreciative strangers, who would accustom the rather washy and fierce frescoes on the walls to be stared at. I might have selected rooms, say on the court which looks on the exquisite bronze fountain, Perseus with the head of Medusa, a copy of the one in Florence by Benvenuto Cellini, where we could have a southern exposure. Or we might, so it would seem, have had rooms by the winter garden, where tropical plants rejoice in perennial ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... prophesied that he would slay his grandfather. Perseus, like Tammuz and Osiris, was enclosed in a chest which was cast into the sea, to be rescued, however, by a fisherman on the island of Seriphos. This hero afterwards slew Medusa, one of the three terrible sisters, the Gorgons—a demon group which links with Tiamat. In time, Perseus returned home, and while an athletic contest was in progress, he killed his grandfather with a quoit. There is no evidence, however, to show that ...
— Myths of Babylonia and Assyria • Donald A. Mackenzie
... scant warrant for our conception of Emily Bronte's character. Her work is singularly impersonal. You gather from it that she loved the moors, that from her youth up the burden of a tragic fancy had lain hard upon her; that she had seen the face of sorrow close, meeting that Medusa-glance with rigid and defiant fortitude. So much we learn; but this is very little—a one-sided truth and therefore scarcely a ...
— Emily Bront • A. Mary F. (Agnes Mary Frances) Robinson
... just then so full of animation and country colour. A chamber, curved ingeniously into oval form, which he had added to the mansion, still contained his collection of works of art; above all, that head of Medusa, for which the villa was famous. The spoilers of one of the old Greek towns on the coast had flung away or lost the [20] thing, as it seemed, in some rapid flight across the river below, from the sands of which ...
— Marius the Epicurean, Volume One • Walter Horatio Pater
... understand this sudden volubility These frivolous and malicious things were uttered by the same voice which, but a few moments, ago had stirred his soul to its very depths; they came from the same lips which, in silence, had seemed to him like the mouth of the Medusa of Leonardo, that human flower of the soul rendered divine by the fire of passion and the anguish of death. What then was the true essence of this creature? Had she perception and consciousness of her manifold changes, or was ...
— The Child of Pleasure • Gabriele D'Annunzio
... him come no more to raise the fees Of this foul sacrilege beyond report! For Rome still flays and sells him at the court, Where paths are closed to virtue's fair increase. Now were fit time for me to scrape a treasure! Seeing that work and gain are gone; while he Who wears the robe, is my Medusa still. God welcomes poverty perchance with pleasure: But of that better life what hope have we, When the blessed banner leads to nought ...
— Sonnets • Michael Angelo Buonarroti & Tommaso Campanella
... stories of tournaments. No enchantress gave him a charmed coat of mail; no Minerva put the head of Medusa on his shield—no, nothing of all that. But—Keesje, the butcher's boy, might ...
— Walter Pieterse - A Story of Holland • Multatuli
... than two hours. The moment struggling nature had cast off her horrible night-mares, and I had once more started into identity, the anguish of the past day and night again seized me. Pains innumerable, and intolerable, rushed upon me. Each new thought was a new serpent. Mine was the head of Medusa: with this difference; my scorpions shed ...
— The Adventures of Hugh Trevor • Thomas Holcroft
... glad to see Oliver: I hope he will keep his tongue quiet, about the tea-kettle; for, I shall not give it till I leave the Medusa. ...
— The Letters of Lord Nelson to Lady Hamilton, Vol. I. - With A Supplement Of Interesting Letters By Distinguished Characters • Horatio Nelson
... her, the sobs of my friend came across the bed, and as he called to her I seemed to hear the eternal Orpheus calling for his lost Eurydice. Poor lad!—poor maid! Here, naked and terrible, was all the tragedy of the world compressed into an hour, the Medusa-face of life that turns the bravest to stone. Surely, I felt, God owed more than He could ever repay to these two lovers, whom it had been so easy to leave to their simple joys. And from that night to this I can never look upon my white bed without seeing afar off the moment when it, too, ...
— Prose Fancies (Second Series) • Richard Le Gallienne |
