"Rubicon" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... a sigh of relief that at last the Rubicon was crossed—his desire and purpose made known; but a glance at the captain's grave and troubled face dashed ...
— Elsie at the World's Fair • Martha Finley
... glance that tells her he is no longer a lad, a pretty boy to be trifled with for the amusement of an idle hour. The Cupid's bow had faded forever from his lip and childhood's innocence from his eye; he has crossed life's Rubicon, has passed at one stride from the Vale of Youth with its trifles and its idle tears, its ignorance of sex and stainless love, to Manhood's rugged mountains, where blazes Ambition's baleful star ...
— Volume 1 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... answered at length, perceiving that he stood upon the brink of a legal Rubicon, "you may do whatever seems ...
— By Advice of Counsel • Arthur Train
... the coward sees the danger, and sickens under it; the hero, warmed by the difficulty, dilates, and rises in proportion to that, and in some sort makes use of his very fears to disarm it. A remarkable instance of this we have in the great Caesar, when he came to the Rubicon, and was entering upon a part, perhaps, the most hazardous he ever bore (certainly the most ungrateful), a war with his countrymen. When his mind brooded over personal affronts, perhaps his anger ...
— The Tatler, Volume 1, 1899 • George A. Aitken
... little settlement, and, crossing the ferry again, plunged into the primeval forest. Robert felt as if that mock Clyde were the Rubicon ...
— Cedar Creek - From the Shanty to the Settlement • Elizabeth Hely Walshe
... parties, is our friend the Marquis de la Fayette. He left the Assembly while they as yet formed but one party. His attachment to both is equal, and he labors incessantly to keep them together. Should he be obliged to take part against either, it will be against that which shall first pass the Rubicon of reconciliation with the other. I should hope, in this event, that his weight would be sufficient to turn the scale decidedly in favor of the other. His command of the armed militia of Paris (thirty thousand in number, and comprehending the French guards, who are five thousand ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson
... is a noble, sprightly sound, The trumpet's clangor, and the clash of arms! This noise may chill your blood, but mine it warms. [Shouting and clashing of swords within. We have already passed the Rubicon; The dice are mine; now, fortune, for a throne! [A shout within, and clashing of swords afar off. The sound goes farther off, and faintly dies; Curse of this going back, these ebbing cries! Ye winds, waft hither sounds more strong and quick; Beat faster, drums, and mingle deaths more thick. ...
— The Works Of John Dryden, Volume 4 (of 18) - Almanzor And Almahide, Marriage-a-la-Mode, The Assignation • John Dryden
... the meeting, 'looking unto Jesus, the author and finisher of my faith,' to sustain, protect and guide me in all things." It was, perhaps, the drinking of this cup of persecution that passed our brother across the Rubicon, that burned all the bridges behind him and caused him to bow in humble submission to ...
— There is No Harm in Dancing • W. E. Penn
... met in the same way. As with nervous pain it seems at first impossible to "relax to it;" but the Rubicon once crossed, we cannot long be irritable,—it is so much simpler not to be, ...
— Power Through Repose • Annie Payson Call
... privacy, and a small retinue. The lights going out, he lost his way, and (22) wandered about a long time, until at length, by the help of a guide, whom he found towards day-break, he proceeded on foot through some narrow paths, and again reached the road. Coming up with his troops on the banks of the Rubicon, which was the boundary of his province [58], he halted for a while, and, revolving in his mind the importance of the step he was on the point of taking, he turned to those about him, and said: "We may still retreat; but if we pass ...
— The Lives Of The Twelve Caesars, Complete - To Which Are Added, His Lives Of The Grammarians, Rhetoricians, And Poets • C. Suetonius Tranquillus
... Brigadier caused it to be made known that if any officer was particularly unsettled about his future he might be granted a personal interview and it would be seen what could be done for him. William sat down with the air of one who has established a thumping bridgehead over his Rubicon and wrote to the Brigadier direct and ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, Feb. 5, 1919 • Various
... stops in its first attempt. If Caesar comes once to pass the Rubicon, he will be sure to march further on, even till he enters the very bowels of Rome, and breaks open the Capitol itself. He that wades so far as to wet and foul himself, cares not ...
— Pearls of Thought • Maturin M. Ballou
... most amiable of men, you might as well address your cries to the senseless rocks. You might as well hope with your eloquent and soft complainings to persuade the crocodile that was ready to devour you. I have passed the Rubicon. I have taken the irrevocable step. It is too late, ah, much ...
— Italian Letters, Vols. I and II • William Godwin
... liberties will be eternal. If a Roman citizen had been asked if he did not fear that the conqueror of Gaul might establish a throne upon the ruins of public liberty, he would have instantly repelled the unjust insinuation. Yet Greece fell; Caesar passed the Rubicon, and the patriotic arm even of Brutus could not preserve the liberties of his devoted country! The celebrated Madame de Stael, in her last and perhaps her best work, has said, that in the very year, almost the very month, when the president of the Directory declared that monarchy ...
— Henry Clay's Remarks in House and Senate • Henry Clay
... said the boy, turning his sling-shot at an Italian yelling strawberries. "Wait till I hit that dago on the side of the nose, and you will hear a noise that will remind you of Garibaldi crossing the Rubicon." ...
— Peck's Uncle Ike and The Red Headed Boy - 1899 • George W. Peck
... to describe the commotions of love, of happiness, of rapture, which filled Reilly's bosom as he took his departure. As for Cooleen Bawn, she had now passed the Rubicon, and there remained nothing for her but constancy to the truth of her affection, be the result what it might. She had, indeed, much of the vehemence of her father's character in her; much of his unchangeable purpose, ...
— Willy Reilly - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton
... crossed the Rubicon Julius Caesar was staggered at the greatness of the undertaking before him. The more he reflected and took counsel of his friends, the greater loomed the difficulties of the attempt and the more appalling the calamities his passage of that river would ...
— Initiative Psychic Energy • Warren Hilton
... defective in narrative power. He can give us brilliant pictures as in the lines describing the vision of Caesar at the Rubicon[282] or Pompey's last sight of Italy.[283] But such passages are few and far between. Of longer passages there are not perhaps more than three in the whole work where we get any sustained beauty of narrative-the parting of Pompey and ...
— Post-Augustan Poetry - From Seneca to Juvenal • H.E. Butler
... indignation on the "terrible poverty in our midst." She raised her head and looked round the room. No, there was nothing left to sell or pawn—for her dire necessity had driven her to the pawnshop, that last refuge of the destitute, that dire rubicon which, having passed it, a girl like Celia feels is the last barrier ...
— The Woman's Way • Charles Garvice
... submit to the Academy of Sciences his invention of an iron bridge, and with its favorable verdict he came to England, in September. He at once went to his aged mother at Thetford, leaving with a publisher (Ridgway), his "Prospects on the Rubicon." He next made arrangements to patent his bridge, and to construct at Rotherham the large model of it exhibited on Paddington Green, London. He was welcomed in England by leading statesmen, such ...
— The Writings Of Thomas Paine, Complete - With Index to Volumes I - IV • Thomas Paine
... you have, and what's unknown The same (my Lord) if Tully's, or your own. All that we feel of it begins and ends In the small circle of our foes or friends; To all beside as much an empty shade An Eugene living, as a Caesar dead; Alike or when, or where, they shone, or shine, Or on the Rubicon, or on the Rhine. A wit's a feather, and a chief a rod; An honest man's the noblest work of God. Fame but from death a villain's name can save, As justice tears his body from the grave; When what the oblivion better were resigned, Is hung on high, to poison half mankind. All fame is ...
— Essay on Man - Moral Essays and Satires • Alexander Pope
... consider the shot across my bows as an attack," said he, and he slapped on every stitch of canvas, so that the Emilie was soon abreast of the Britisher. Boom! A broadside roared into her and she struck her colors. Bold Robert Surcouf had passed the Rubicon,—he had seen the English flag lowered to him, for the first time; and his heart swelled with patriotic pride, in spite of the fact that this was an act of piracy, for which he could be ...
— Famous Privateersmen and Adventurers of the Sea • Charles H. L. Johnston
... on the reverse, and continued the use of the Greek language. When it became a Roman colony is doubtful.1 It was occupied as a naval station in the Illyrian war of 178 B.C. (Liv. xli. 1). Caesar took possession of it immediately after crossing the Rubicon. Its harbour was of considerable importance in imperial times, as the nearest to Dalmatia,2 and was enlarged by Trajan, who constructed the north quay, his architect being Apollodorus of Damascus. At the beginning of it stands the marble triumphal arch with a ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... my fine young man, must be parted with, were it as dear to you as the nymph of your dreams. Here at Florence, we love not to see a man with his nose projecting over a cascade of hair. But, remember, you will have passed the Rubicon, when once you have been shaven: if you repent, and let your beard grow after it has acquired stoutness by a struggle with the razor, your mouth will by-and-by show no longer what Messer Angelo calls the divine prerogative of ...
— Romola • George Eliot
... with the cigars as tardily as if he had had to cross a Rubicon in the back room. Two were lighted, and the Surgeon settled himself for ...
— The Red Acorn • John McElroy
... that Alice's father and her lover still stood together on confidential terms. Not easily had Mr Vavasor brought himself to speak of his daughter to John Grey, in such language as he had now used; but he had been forced by adverse circumstances to pass the Rubicon of parental delicacy; he had been driven to tell his wished-for son-in-law that he did wish to have him as a son-in-law; he had been compelled to lay aside those little airs of reserve with which ...
— Can You Forgive Her? • Anthony Trollope
... of open resistance excited the rioters still more—they had passed the Rubicon, and were now ready for anything, and "to the jail! to the jail!" arose in wild yells, and the turbulent mass poured like a tumultuous sea around the building. They rushed against the doors, and with united shoulders and bodies endeavored to heave them from ...
— The Great Riots of New York 1712 to 1873 • J.T. Headley
... soul, tempest-toss'd, Hath her Rubicon cross'd, She shall fly—saved or lost! Void of dread! Sharper pang than the steel, Thou, oh, serpent! shalt feel, Should I set the bruised heel On thy head. [He ...
— Poems • Adam Lindsay Gordon
... brood, to Caesar's hand Did Rome consign it; and what then it wrought From Var unto the Rhine, saw Isere's flood, Saw Loire and Seine, and every vale, that fills The torrent Rhone. What after that it wrought, When from Ravenna it came forth, and leap'd The Rubicon, was of so bold a flight, That tongue nor pen may follow it. Tow'rds Spain It wheel'd its bands, then tow'rd Dyrrachium smote, And on Pharsalia with so fierce a plunge, E'en the warm Nile was conscious to the pang; Its native shores Antandros, and the streams Of Simois revisited, and ...
— The Divine Comedy, Complete - The Vision of Paradise, Purgatory and Hell • Dante Alighieri
... Fontainebleau, whilst the Prince of Conde, having retired to Meaux, summoned to his side his relatives, his friends, and all the leaders of the Reformers, and wrote to Coligny, "that Caesar had not only crossed the Rubicon, but was already at Rome, and that his banners were beginning to wave all over the neighboring country." For some days Catherine and L'Hospital tried to remain out of Paris with the young king, whom Guise, the Constable ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume IV. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... of Europe in that last week of July was in the hands of a small group of men, numbering not over fifty, and what they did was never known to their respective nations in any detail until after the fell Rubicon had been crossed and a world war had ...
— The Evidence in the Case • James M. Beck
... quartier between the Boulevard des Italiennes and the Tuileries; here, at all events, he should soonest learn the worst: and every day, as he took up the English newspapers, a sick feeling of apprehension and fear came over him. No! till the seal was set upon the bond, till the Rubicon was passed, till Miss Cameron was the wife of Lord Vargrave, he could neither return to the home that was so eloquent with the recollections of Evelyn, nor, by removing farther from England, delay the receipt of an ...
— Alice, or The Mysteries, Book VI • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... at your service," was the answer, in a glib tone, and with a sufficiently saucy air; for Titmouse then felt that he had passed the Rubicon. ...
— Ten Thousand a-Year. Volume 1. • Samuel Warren
... came to nothing. Both generals distrusted each other, and both were disloyal to the State. The Senate then appointed a successor to Caesar in Gaul, ordered a general levy of troops throughout Italy, and voted money and men to Pompey. Caesar had already crossed the Rubicon, which was high treason, before his last proposal to compromise, and he was on his way to Rome. No one resisted him, for the people had but little interest in the success of either party. Pompey, exaggerating his popularity, thought he had only to stamp the ground, and an army ...
— Ancient States and Empires • John Lord
... the Rubicon; the boundaries of Cisalpine Gaul and Italy. On this side I am still the Proconsul—not as yet rightly deposed. On the other—Caesar, the Outlaw, the Insurgent, the Enemy of his Country, whose hand is ...
— A Friend of Caesar - A Tale of the Fall of the Roman Republic. Time, 50-47 B.C. • William Stearns Davis
... After the exhibition of meanness on the part of Mr. Parasyte, it seemed that the rebellion was more serious than any of us had supposed. We made up our minds, with Bob Hale, that it would be impossible for us ever to be reconciled to him again. We felt as though the Rubicon had been passed, and what had commenced as a mere frolic was likely to end as a very grave affair. Though the boys talked solemnly at first about their rights, and had "struck" to vindicate a principle, they had no idea of ...
— Breaking Away - or The Fortunes of a Student • Oliver Optic
... called "Parliament" (from parler), in the year 1265 became for the first time a representative body, when Simon de Montfort summoned not alone the lords and bishops—but two citizens from every city, and two burghers from every borough. A Rubicon was passed when the merchant, and the shopkeeper, sat for the first time with the noble and the bishops in the great council. It was thirty years before the change was fully effected, it being in the year 1295 (just 600 years ago now) that the first true Parliament met. But the "House of Lords" ...
— The Evolution of an Empire • Mary Parmele
... home, the happier for having crossed his Rubicon. He had opened his campaign with all the success he could have expected. Like a wise man, Iver held nothing true till it was proved; but like a wise man also he dubbed nothing a lie merely because it was new or improbable. And on the whole he had done the Major justice. He had ...
— Tristram of Blent - An Episode in the Story of an Ancient House • Anthony Hope
... in succession; and for fear I should be thought deficient in spirit; I followed his example. But the Rubicon once crossed, to my surprise, I found that the wine had no effect upon my senses; only serving to elevate my spirits a little, and make me more ...
— The Monctons: A Novel, Volume I • Susanna Moodie
... be his Rubicon. Either he must enter the unknown to seek, to strive, to find, or turn back and fail and never know and be always haunted. A friend's strange story had prompted his singular journey; a beautiful rainbow with its mystery and promise had decided him. Once in his life he ...
— The Rainbow Trail • Zane Grey
... and be unjust. God does not will it. The great wars of Africa and Spain, the pirates of Sicily destroyed, civilization introduced into Gaul, into Britanny, into Germany,—all this glory covers the Rubicon. There is here a sort of delicacy of the divine justice, hesitating to let loose upon the illustrious usurper the formidable historian, sparing Caesar Tacitus, and according extenuating circumstances ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... hear it again, to see the singer's face, to learn what extraordinary impulse had loosed the song. Perhaps it was his unspoken loneliness striving to call out against this self-imposed isolation; for he was secretly lonely, as all bachelors must be who have passed the Rubicon of thirty. He made no analysis of this new desire, or rather this old desire, newly awakened. He embraced it gratefully. Such is the mystery and power of the human voice: this one, passing casually under his ...
— The Lure of the Mask • Harold MacGrath
... he said coolly, 'back again to its proper owner, I suppose. Well, let it. We have no further need of it, for, like Caesar, we have now crossed the Rubicon. We are no longer convicts from a French prison, my friend, but shipwrecked sailors; you hear?'—with a sudden scintillation from his black eyes— 'shipwrecked sailors; and I will tell the story of the wreck. Luckily, I can depend on your discretion, as you have not even a tongue to contradict, ...
— Madame Midas • Fergus Hume
... almost thirty; I have passed the Rubicon of cutting up tricks. Go to the ball, you beauty, dance and revel to your heart's content; your brother Robert will manage to pass away the evening. Don't forget the key to that private case, Jack,"—as the women left the table to put the finishing ...
— The Man on the Box • Harold MacGrath
... victory, and stimulated the opposition to make another effort to strike Mrs. Gardner's name from the register; but failing in that, the board adjourned. There was now much curiosity to know if Alderman Hill would have the nerve to stand by his initiative; but with him the Rubicon was passed, and on April 3, Messrs. Hill and Durfee accepted Mrs. Gardner's vote, Mr. Bond protesting. The Detroit Post gave ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume III (of III) • Various
... none of her own people were near to see the patronising manner in which Arthurine introduced her to Mr. Foxholm, a heavily-bearded man, whose eyes she did not at all like, and who began by telling her that he felt as if he had crossed the Rubicon, and entering an Arcadia, had ...
— More Bywords • Charlotte M. Yonge
... overheard by Maria and her sister, who are watching over his couch. He wakes, and Maria is there, alive before him. In his sleep he has become aware of the true condition of his own heart; nay, he has leapt the Rubicon,—he has declared it. He becomes a ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 62, No. 384, October 1847 • Various
... with an eagerness somewhat deeper than the mannish pride of youths who have just crossed the Rubicon that divides them from their much-scorned 'teens.' "I have advanced, and you seem to have stood still; there is scarcely any difference between us now." And Olive, somewhat amused, let her old ...
— Olive - A Novel • Dinah Maria Craik, (AKA Dinah Maria Mulock)
... you should experience your first real thrill," said Bower. "This bridge forms here every year at this season, and an army might cross in safety. It is the genuine article, the first and strongest of a series. Yet here you cross the Rubicon. A mixture of metaphors is allowable in ...
— The Silent Barrier • Louis Tracy
... The little Rubicon doth brim Its purple tide—a check for him, Hinted, how vainly![15] He All bounds and marks, the world's dull wonder, Calmly o'erleaps, and snaps asunder All reverend ties that be! The soldier carries in his sword The primal right by bridge or ford To pass. ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, No. 382, October 1847 • Various
... is separation,' is unanswerable. When, in 1784, John Wesley ordained Coke and Ashbury to be 'superintendents,' and Whatcoat and Vasey to be 'elders,' in America, he to all intents and purposes crossed the Rubicon. His brother Charles regarded the act in that light and bitterly regretted it. How a logical mind like John Wesley's could regard it in any other it is difficult to conceive. But that he had in all sincerity persuaded himself that there was ...
— The English Church in the Eighteenth Century • Charles J. Abbey and John H. Overton
... resolves against possible rashnesses; my fear of the world or its senseless gossip; my prudence, or my self-restraint! These all seemed to vanish in a day; and, yielding myself, slavishly, a willing captive to bright eyes and silvery tones, upon one fine morning I passed the Rubicon of safety, and offered her my hand and heart. But, to my sore dismay, she ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 9 • Various
... if ever she let go her hold on them she would lose faith in human happiness, and thus in life itself. For between Lois Travers the woman and Lois Travers the light-hearted, high-spirited girl there stretched a year's gulf. Marriage had been to her what it is more or less to all women—a Rubicon, a Book of Revelations in which girlish ideals are rarely realized, sometimes modified, ...
— The Native Born - or, The Rajah's People • I. A. R. Wylie
... married people. To a bachelor, to whom she has just been introduced, she will chatter away nineteen to the dozen; but, even in her own, house, she has no idea of the social duties. Marriage, in her opinion, is a Rubicon, which, once crossed, if it does not altogether debar from the pleasures of maiden and bachelorhood, at least makes it necessary for married folk to shift for themselves. To talk or dance with a married man would be a terrible waste of time; and as for married women, she ...
— Town Life in Australia - 1883 • R. E. N. (Richard) Twopeny
... the Alps with 25,000 men and marching by Lyons and Paris was known in the capital, and discussions arose respecting the consequences of this passage of another Rubicon. On the 17th of August 1797 Carnot wrote to him: "People attribute to you a thousand absurd projects. They cannot believe that a man who has performed so many great exploits can be content to live as a private citizen." This observation applied ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... the great grey gleaming sea They swept with their rich booty, night and day. Five other prizes, one for every ship, Out of the seas of Spain they suddenly caught And carried with them, laughing as they went— "Now, now indeed the Rubicon is crossed; Now have we singed the eyelids and the beard Of Spain; now have we roused the hornet's nest; Now shall we sail against a world in arms; Now we have nought between us and black death But ...
— Collected Poems - Volume One (of 2) • Alfred Noyes
... looked with a charity of which he had never dreamed, and that he was amazingly content. And as he got into bed he thought that when next he slept in town he would not be alone. He would have crossed Tommy's Rubicon. ...
— Simon Called Peter • Robert Keable
... of water and flung it at her head. It missed her, and he then snatched up a stick, and, for the first time in his life, struck her. He was her only son. She quietly took up all her things, and, walking off towards a temple, said she would leave him for ever; and he, having passed the Rubicon, declared that he was resolved no longer to submit to the parental tyranny which she had hitherto exercised over him. My water carrier, however, prevailed upon her with much difficulty to return, and take up her quarters with him and his wife and five ...
— Rambles and Recollections of an Indian Official • William Sleeman
... for the body of his army, which lay beyond the Alps, choosing rather to fall in on a sudden upon his enemies, while they were in confusion, and did not expect him, than to give them time, and fight them after they had made preparations. For when he came to the banks of the Rubicon, a river that made the bounds of his province, there he made a halt, pausing a little, and considering, we may suppose, with himself the greatness of the enterprise which he had undertaken; then, at last, like men that are throwing themselves headlong from some precipice into a vast abyss, having ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough
... cleared area of the temple. There Felix, without one moment's hesitation, with a firm and resolute tread, stepped over the white coral line that marked the taboo of the great god's precincts. That was a declaration of open war; he had crossed the Rubicon of Tu-Kila-Kila's empire. Toko stood trembling on the far side; none might pass that mystic line unbidden and live, save the Korong alone who could succeed in breaking off the bough "with yellow leaves, resembling a mistletoe," of which Methuselah, the parrot, had told Felix and Muriel, and ...
— The Great Taboo • Grant Allen
... banished from Rome, fled to Caesar delaying to cross the Rubicon, and urged him on, with the argument, according to Lucan, "Tolle moras, semper nocuit ...
— The Divine Comedy, Volume 1, Hell [The Inferno] • Dante Alighieri
... way of policy, exerted an influence on the strategy of the forces on both sea and land; Caesar, for instance, was embarrassed in many of his operations by the Roman Senate, and it was for this reason that he crossed the Rubicon and passed from Gaul into Italy. When William I and Napoleon III went to war in 1870, however, Von Moltke had foreseen the effects of the telegraph and of rapid-mail communications, in giving to the headquarters of the army information of a much greater scope and reliability than had ...
— The Navy as a Fighting Machine • Bradley A. Fiske
... Berlin, whose organized espionage continued to flourish in the French capital. Thereupon Herr Jagow urged Buelow to bestir himself without delay. But the Prince was hard set. On the Italian Cabinet he had lost his hold. It had already crossed the Rubicon and passed over to the Entente. True, the Cabinet was not Italy, was not even the Government of Italy. It was hardly more than a group of mere place-warmers for Giolitti and his partisans. At any moment it could ...
— England and Germany • Emile Joseph Dillon
... well known, after the German peace action had failed, the definite decision to declare unrestricted submarine war was taken in Pless on the 9th January. In this way, as the Chancellor said, the Rubicon was crossed. War with the United States seemed inevitable, unless it were found possible at the eleventh hour to annul the decision of the German Government. Herr von Bethmann-Hollweg has declared before the Commission of the National Assembly that he had not sufficient ...
— My Three Years in America • Johann Heinrich Andreas Hermann Albrecht Graf von Bernstorff
... as Avon was concerned, he had crossed the Rubicon; for, if seen, it was impossible to re-enter the cabin, the door of which had been shut ...
— The Great Cattle Trail • Edward S. Ellis
... and thereafter and for the space of about a week a series of diplomatic communications passed between the Chancelleries of Europe, designed on their face to prevent a war and yet so ineffective that the war is precipitated and the fearful Rubicon crossed before the world knew, except imperfectly, the nature of the differences between the Governments involved. The ethical aspects of this great conflict must largely depend upon the record that has been made up by the ...
— The New York Times Current History of the European War, Vol. 1, January 9, 1915 - What Americans Say to Europe • Various
... to break with the Afrikaner Bond—a forlorn hope indeed, considering the perfection which that formidable organization had reached. Its cherished objects were not meant to be abandoned. The advice of "Bond" leaders prevailed. War was declared and the Rubicon crossed in enthusiastic expectations of soon realizing the long-deferred Bond motto: "The expulsion ...
— Origin of the Anglo-Boer War Revealed (2nd ed.) - The Conspiracy of the 19th Century Unmasked • C. H. Thomas
... Travelling-companion, is kind Sister Elizabeth; she had sworn long since, when the Insurrection of Women was, that only death should part her and them. And so they rush there, not too impetuously, through the Wood of Bondy;—over a Rubicon in their own ...
— A Book of English Prose - Part II, Arranged for Secondary and High Schools • Percy Lubbock
... Government attempted, you must remember we are standing upon the Constitution, in favor of sustaining the laws of the land, denying the existence of any real grievance; and standing thus with that consciousness of strength which integrity imparts, you must strike the first blow, cross the Rubicon, commit the foul and damning crime of treason, and bring upon your people ruin, devastation, and destruction, and call down upon your guilty heads the curses of your children and the ...
— A Report of the Debates and Proceedings in the Secret Sessions of the Conference Convention • Lucius Eugene Chittenden
... the latter answered quickly. "We change. Read First Corinthians, seventh chapter, and if you take Paul's advice and don't pass the Rubicon, then you 'll be free to change as often as ...
— The Opened Shutters • Clara Louise Burnham
... "The Rubicon was passed," says Barnum. "The successful issue of the Jenny Lind enterprise was established. I think there were a hundred men in New York, the day after her first concert, who would have willingly paid me $200,000 for my contract. I received ...
— A Unique Story of a Marvellous Career. Life of Hon. Phineas T. • Joel Benton
... besiege Mutina and enlist soldiers, wherever he can. For he is a man who has at all times despised the judgment and authority of the senate, and your inclinations and power. Will he do what it has been just now decreed that he shall do,—lead his army back across the Rubicon, which is the frontier of Gaul, and yet at the same time not come nearer Rome than two hundred miles? will he obey this notice? will he allow himself to be confined by the river Rubicon and by the limit of two hundred miles? Antonius is not that sort of man. ...
— The Orations of Marcus Tullius Cicero, Volume 4 • Cicero
... quitted the examination- room and descended into the quadrangle of the Ecole, crowded with sauntering groups of garrulous students, my spirit was heavy within me, and the expression of my face could hardly have been that of a young man who has safely passed the Rubicon of scientific apprenticeship, and who sees the laurels and honors of the world within his reach. The world? The very thought of its possible homage repelled me, for I knew that its best successes and its loudest praise are accorded to men ...
— Dreams and Dream Stories • Anna (Bonus) Kingsford
... The eloquent blood flushed cheek and throat with a keen sense of shame. She had read and heard of such painful stories, but to be face to face with a creature who had crossed the Rubicon, overpassed the great gulf, which separates the sheep from the goats was something so unexpected, so terrible, that she could not restrain a passionate burst of tears. "Ah," she murmured at last, "you were cruelly deceived, no doubt. ...
— A Crooked Path - A Novel • Mrs. Alexander
... sometimes led me to imagine that—it was always so! I mean that there was nothing poetic to Hercules about the Augean task, when the pungent smell of ammonia filled his nostrils, and he bent a sweat-dewed face to that mighty scavenging once more: that there was nothing poetic to Caesar about the Rubicon: nothing poetic to Clive about India. The world seems to have an invincible prejudice against men who see the romance in the work they are doing. The footballing, cigarette-smoking clerk, who lives at Hornsey or Tufnell Park, works in an office ...
— An Ocean Tramp • William McFee
... nice the girls looked," she rattled on; "and what a lot of intelligent faces, and how they kindled up when the president talked about the children of Israel in the wilderness forty years, and Caesar crossing the Rubicon! And you, sir" —she turned to the Englishman—"I've heard, were against all this emancipation ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... of whose existence I had previously had any suspicion. Yet they all live tremendously important lives, lives not only important to themselves but to numbers of friends and relations; every day they cross some sort of Rubicon; and to each one of them there comes a time when the whole of the rest of the world (including—confound it!—me) seems absolutely of no account whatever. That I had lived all these years in contented ignorance of their existence makes ...
— Not that it Matters • A. A. Milne
... the Rubicon. In the opinion of all those who know most about the case, the forward movement is now beyond recall. Indeed, when the intense hostility of the Border tribes, the uncertain attitude of the Amir, the possibilities of ...
— The Story of the Malakand Field Force • Sir Winston S. Churchill
... objection to a king, or to Caesar, a monarch in Rome, would Caesar but be as good a monarch as he now seems disposed to be! How, too, could Brutus say that he found no personal cause—none in Caesar's past conduct as a man? Had he not passed the Rubicon? Had he not entered Rome as a conqueror? Had he not placed his Gauls in the Senate?—Shakespeare, it may be said, has not brought these things forward—True;—and this is just the ground of my perplexity. What character did Shakespeare ...
— Shakespeare, Ben Jonson, Beaumont and Fletcher • S. T. Coleridge
... pervenire, recessit a promissis suis. Credere verbis istorum est, ac si auribus lupum teneas. Tu vero da operam, et cum primum Petrus responderit, me de eo facias certiorem: nam hoc solum expecto" (Ep. I. 21). From this time his mind was made up: he would leap the Rubicon: he would go in for the forgery, and his friend must have confidence in him. So speaking of his powers for the great task which he meditated he proceeds thus interestingly in the letter to Niccoli bearing date London, the 10th of June, 1422: ...
— Tacitus and Bracciolini - The Annals Forged in the XVth Century • John Wilson Ross
... was marshalled across the Rubicon by a spectre, which seized a trumpet from one of the soldiers ...
— Real Ghost Stories • William T. Stead
... The Rubicon was crossed. But the hardships thereby incurred were but just beginning. The two sisters were obliged to keep in hiding as if they had been criminals, for they dared not risk a chance meeting with Bishop. They had barely money ...
— Mary Wollstonecraft • Elizabeth Robins Pennell
... her eyes had not laughed at him with that twinkle of good-fellowship which he had noted on the night of the supper, Pellams never would have had the nerve. That look hauled him over the Rubicon; they went down the arcade together, in the face of Jimmy Mason, the loafers, the whole crowd shifting between lectures. Yet the sun shone as brightly on the palm-circles, the Quadrangle pillars kept their perpendicular. A little later Mason saw the couple ...
— Stanford Stories - Tales of a Young University • Charles K. Field
... Pompey the Great, or as was Marius, or as was Sylla. For each of these great men erred; yet they erred greatly as rulers that would rule. Or rather I did see you such a one as was Caesar Julius, who, as you well wot, crossed a Rubicon and set out upon a high endeavour. But you—never will you cross any Rubicon; always you blow hot in the evening and cold at dawn. Neither do you, as I had dreamed you did, rule in this your realm. ...
— The Fifth Queen Crowned • Ford Madox Ford
... Travelling-companion, is kind Sister Elizabeth; she had sworn, long since, when the Insurrection of Women was, that only death should part her and them. And so they rush there, not too impetuously, through the Wood of Bondy:—over a Rubicon in their own ...
— The French Revolution • Thomas Carlyle
... would stay until she heard from the King.[196] His message has not been preserved, but fears were never more strangely belied than when the pair crossed their Rubicon. So far from any attempt being made to separate them, their marriage was publicly solemnised before Henry and all his Court on 13th May, at Greenwich.[197] In spite of all that happened, wrote the Venetian ambassador, Henry ...
— Henry VIII. • A. F. Pollard
... great man from whom alone we know of his deeds; who could perceive his generous spirit and high qualities as a general, nay, who honored the self-devotion by which he endeavored to save his countrymen. He remained in captivity—six long years sped by—while Caesar passed the Rubicon, fought out his struggle for power at Rome, and subdued Egypt, Pontus, and Northern Africa—and all the time the brave Gaul remained closely watched and guarded, and with no hope of seeing the jagged peaks and wild valleys of his own beautiful Auvergne. For well did he, like every ...
— A Book of Golden Deeds • Charlotte M. Yonge
... Caesar's slowness to grasp the situation). Well, we shall now know who your foes are. The name of every man who has plotted against you since you crossed the Rubicon may be in these papers, for ...
— Caesar and Cleopatra • George Bernard Shaw
... The leaders on both sides armed their followers, and bloody battles were fought in the streets. Generals led their armies to Rome, although, according to the laws, to bring an army into Italy south of the Rubicon River was to make war on the republic and be guilty of treason. Once in the city these generals put to ...
— Introductory American History • Henry Eldridge Bourne and Elbert Jay Benton
... lesson of humility. Her situation, also, admitted of no other alternative than to confide herself to Elizabeth or surrender to Murray,—a step not to be thought of. Time pressed; fear urged; and resolved to throw herself at the feet of her kinswoman, she crossed, never to return, the Rubicon of her destiny. A common fishing-boat, the only vessel that could be procured, landed her on May 16th 1568, with about twenty attendants, at Workington in Cumberland, whence she was conducted with every mark of respect to Carlisle-castle; and from this ...
— Memoirs of the Court of Queen Elizabeth • Lucy Aikin
... spoke; but the Satyr only answered with cries, not unlike those of goats and the neighing of horses. This monster had a human body, but the thighs, legs, and feet of a goat. To the above stories may be added that of the Satyr who passed the Rubicon in presence of Caesar ...
— Roman Antiquities, and Ancient Mythology - For Classical Schools (2nd ed) • Charles K. Dillaway
... I placed myself in such a position as to insure his falling into the water, if he attempted such a piece of gymnastics. Tom wore nice clothes, and he did not run the risk of soiling them by a possible accident. He paused on the brink of the stream, and feared to cross the Rubicon. ...
— Seek and Find - or The Adventures of a Smart Boy • Oliver Optic
... what nature has neglected; and that renown which cannot be claimed by intrinsick excellence or greatness, is, sometimes, derived from unexpected accidents. The Rubicon was ennobled by the passage of Caesar, and the time is now come, when ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, Vol. 6 - Reviews, Political Tracts, and Lives of Eminent Persons • Samuel Johnson
... rescue," and exclaimed, "Now's your time, Ned,—Pipe the boarders away—all hands,—! if you're a man as loves a woman. Now, go it," said he, and dashed furiously over all obstacles,—fiddles, flutes, and fiddlers. Smash went the foot-lights—Caesar had passed the Rubicon. The contagion of feeling became general; and his trusty legions, fired with the ambition that inspired their leader, followed, sweeping all before them, till the whole male population of the theatre crowded ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 13, Issue 353, January 24, 1829 • Various
... dramatically. "We have crossed the Rubicon and found the Golden Fleece! This is the place of all others for our Tea Club meeting, and it doesn't matter what the rest of the house may be like. Patty, you will kindly consider ...
— Patty at Home • Carolyn Wells
... only costs. Once the Rubicon crossed, they ate heartily. The basket was emptied. It still contained one pate de foie gras, one pate de mauvette, a piece of smoked ham, Crassane pears, a Pont-l'Eveque cheese, assorted petits-fours, and a cup full of pickled gherkins and onions, Boule de Suif, like all women, ...
— Mademoiselle Fifi • Guy de Maupassant
... ever realize how important a part the ferry and the ford have played in human affairs? How differently would history read without its Caesar crossing the Rubicon, its Xerxes crossing the Hellespont, and its Washington crossing the Delaware, its Paul Revere wherried across the Charles, and its Burr and Hamilton ferried over to Weehawken,—not to speak of the Hebrews going over Jordan, Jacob at the brook ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, November 1885 • Various
... has but traveled in the parts won by the destroyers. More than eighteen centuries have mourned over the loss of the empire. A mortal disease was upon her before Caesar had crossed the Rubicon; and Brutus did not restore her health by the deep probings of the senate-chamber. The Goths, and Vandals, and Huns, the swarms of the North, completed only what was begun at home. Romans betrayed Rome. The legions were bought and sold, but the ...
— Successful Methods of Public Speaking • Grenville Kleiser
... at the pretty Pass by dint of flourishing my trumpet. But, heigho! some fly or other is the indispensable adjunct of every pot of ointment, and while I was still jumping for joy at having passed the steep barrier of such a Rubicon, there came a letter from Miss JESSIMINA which constrained me to cachinnate upon the ...
— Baboo Jabberjee, B.A. • F. Anstey
... finally summoned to hand over his province and army to a nominee of the Senate, on pain of being declared a public enemy, and when the tribunes who had reversed the resolution of the Senate were obliged to fly for their lives to his camp, he suddenly crossed the river Rubicon, the boundary of his province, and ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 1 of 8 • Various
... noticed, and I suppose other people have noticed, that in the golf education of every man there is a definite point at which he may be said to have crossed the dividing line—the Rubicon, as it were—that separates the golfer from the non-golfer. This moment comes immediately after his first good drive. In the ninety minutes in which I instructed Mortimer Sturgis that morning in the rudiments of the game, he made every variety ...
— The Clicking of Cuthbert • P. G. Wodehouse
... Treasury, reorganize the whole governmental machinery, get it to working dependably and smoothly, and at the same time prepare for a civil war which I hope to win, but of which I can foretell the outcome no better than could the Divine Julius be sure of the outcome of his when he crossed the Rubicon. Amid all these cares and occupations I must keep fit and must do all I can to win the confidence and respect of all classes by rectifying, as far as I may, the consequences of the inattention of my predecessors ...
— Andivius Hedulio • Edward Lucas White
... little stream in ancient times, in the north of Italy, which flowed eastward into the Adriatic Sea, called the Rubicon. This stream has been immortalized by the transactions which we are now about ...
— The Junior Classics • Various
... States joined the Confederacy and began levying troops to resist invasion. Tennessee followed Virginia, then Arkansas, the Old North State being the last of the Atlantic and Gulf States to cross the Rubicon into the "plains of Southern independence." The troops that had been called for six months were now disbanded, and those who had enlisted for twelve months for State service were called upon to volunteer in the Confederate Army for the unexpired time. They volunteered almost without a dissenting ...
— History of Kershaw's Brigade • D. Augustus Dickert
... otherwise, we shall be millions worse than we were at that enviable period. Such a request, had it been complied with a year ago, would have won the heart and soul of the Continent—but now it is too late, "The Rubicon ...
— Common Sense • Thomas Paine
... drew my hind foot across the Rubicon. The die was cast. Come what might, 1 Oakley Villas was on my hand for ...
— The Stark Munro Letters • J. Stark Munro
... gold mine is delusive. Secundo: Gold is a metal that cannot be worked to a profit by a company for this reason: workmen will hunt it for others so long as the daily wages average higher than the amount of metal they find per diem; but, that Rubicon once passed, away they run to find gold for themselves in some spot with similar signs; if they stay, it is to murder your overseers and seize your mine. Gold digging is essentially an individual speculation. These shares sell at 700 pounds apiece; a dozen of them are not worth one ...
— Love Me Little, Love Me Long • Charles Reade
... laurels of Caesar, who would have shown no genius in killing the republic had the republic been already dead. There was still respect for the law and the constitution. Pompey's hesitation when supreme power was within his grasp, Caesar's own pause at the Rubicon, are proofs of it. The civil wars of Marius and Sulla had fearfully impaired, in the eyes of Romans, but they had not utterly destroyed, the majesty of Rome. There were still great characters—characters which you may dislike, but of which you can never rationally ...
— Lectures and Essays • Goldwin Smith
... intellect equal to Caesar's! And yet this magnificent freethinker, rejecting a soul and a Deity, habitually entered his chariot muttering a charm; crawled on his knees up the steps of a temple to propitiate the abstraction called 'Nemesis;' and did not cross the Rubicon till he had consulted the omens. What does all this prove?—a very simple truth. Man has some instincts with the brutes; for instance, hunger and sexual love. Man has one instinct peculiar to himself, found universally (or with alleged exceptions in savage States so rare, ...
— A Strange Story, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... therefore, free in honour to have taken no part in the insurrection, since it was begun by men from whom he had withdrawn. But when the voice in the night whispered through his window that his former colleagues had crossed the Rubicon, Doheny, like the man he was, rose and rode forth to make the fatal passage and stand ...
— The Felon's Track • Michael Doheny
... of sparkling eyes, Hidden, ever and anon, In a merciful eclipse - Do not heed their mild surprise - Having passed the Rubicon. Take a pair of rosy lips; Take a figure trimly planned - Such as admiration whets (Be particular in this); Take a tender little hand, Fringed with dainty fingerettes, Press it - in parenthesis; - Take all these, you lucky man - Take and keep them, ...
— Songs of a Savoyard • W. S. Gilbert
... victim; and in the arms of a lover she secretly enjoys the solace which she cannot derive from her legal owner. Then, if she is detected, how the world holds up its ten thousand hands in pious horror!—Wives who have young husbands are eloquent in their censure; old women who have long passed the rubicon of love and feeling, denounce her a shameless hussey; while the old reprobate who calls himself her husband, says to his indignant and sympathizing friends—'I took her from a low station in life; I raised her to a position of wealth and rank, and ...
— City Crimes - or Life in New York and Boston • Greenhorn
... the rest could be depended on, he sent back over the Alps for two more legions to follow him. He crossed the little river Rubicon, which bounded his province, and advanced to Rimini, where he met the tribunes, Antony, Cassius Longinus, and Curio, who were coming to him from Rome.[1] At Rimini the troops were again assembled. Curio told them what had passed. Caesar added a few more words. The legionaries, ...
— Caesar: A Sketch • James Anthony Froude
... Anxiety for his mistress had been too much for him, and had snapped the bonds of obedience; and knowing full well that he was misbehaving, he had come up furtively, unperceived. But now, having crossed the Rubicon, the rogue must brazen things out— which he did by starting a cat out of one of the dingy laurels, chivvying her some way into the house, and returning to shake himself on the front doorstep and bark in ...
— True Tilda • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... were examined, it would be found to consist of a series of hairbreadth escapes. Every movement would be the crossing of the Rubicon. That man is of little account who at every step that he has taken has not been weighing matters as nicely as if he were matching diamonds. How narrowly did Coleridge escape being the greatest preacher, philosopher, poet, or author of his time! Almost everything was possible to ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, Issue 17, March, 1859 • Various
... originally applied to a very small tract of country. It was at first confined to the southern portion of Calabria, and was gradually extended northward, till about the time of the Punic wars it indicated the whole peninsula south of the Rivers Rubicon and Macra, the former separating Cisalpine Gaul and Umbria, the latter Liguria and Etruria. Italy, properly so called, is a very mountainous country, being filled up more or less by the broad mass of the Apennines, the offshoots or lateral branches of ...
— A Smaller History of Rome • William Smith and Eugene Lawrence
... gone too far to be stopped. It was considered that any statement of that kind put forth at that particular juncture would simply tend to create a panic from which no good results could accrue, and that, as Dr Jameson had cast the die and crossed his Rubicon, as little as possible should be done needlessly to embarrass him. Suggestions were continually being made, and have been and are still being frequently quoted, to the effect that a force should be sent out to create a diversion among the Boer commandoes in Jameson's favour. ...
— The Transvaal from Within - A Private Record of Public Affairs • J. P. Fitzpatrick
... realise that posterity is the best thing a man can leave behind him. He had two sisters, both of whom were well along in life, unmarried, and possessed of their brother's disinclination to marry. To encourage them to cross the Rubicon he made the will that entailed the Canaan Tigmores to the heirs, first of one and then the other, under the following provisions: the land was to go to the male heirs of his sister Nancy Peele, from oldest son to oldest son so long as there were male heirs, provided that in each ...
— Sally of Missouri • R. E. Young
... into Dunkirk, with its drawbridge and mediaeval towers and grey city wall; here our passes were again examined, and there was a long queue of cars waiting to get through as we drew up. Once "across the Rubicon" we sped through the town and in time came to Furnes with its quaint old market place. Already the place was showing signs of wear and tear. Shell holes in some of the roofs and a good many broken panes, together with the general air of desertion, all combined to make us ...
— Fanny Goes to War • Pat Beauchamp
... the Rubicon. 2. Morse invented the telegraph. 3. Ericsson built the Monitor. 4. Hume wrote a history. 5. Morn purples the east, ...
— Graded Lessons in English • Alonzo Reed and Brainerd Kellogg
... lovelorn one upon this piece of news. He said that the Rubicon was now passed, and retreat impossible. We noted the absence of the rosebud, and Jasperson blushingly confessed that he had presented the flower to his best girl after dinner, an act of homage—so we presumed—in recognition of the lady's contempt ...
— Bunch Grass - A Chronicle of Life on a Cattle Ranch • Horace Annesley Vachell
... such as Ruby. A very little German rusk may also be added to the milk meals, which may be increased to one and a-half tablespoonfuls at a time, but it must always be remembered that, in nine cases out of ten, trouble is caused by overfeeding rather than underfeeding, and until the rubicon of eight weeks has been passed, care and oversight should be unremitting. At eight weeks' old, Force or brown breadcrumbs may be added to the morning milk, chopped meat may be given instead of scraped at midday, the usual milk at tea-time, and a dry biscuit, ...
— Dogs and All About Them • Robert Leighton
... have stood me in stead, but this plot of Tomlinson and her uncle! To what a pretty pass, nevertheless, have I brought myself!—Had Caesar been such a fool, he had never passed the rubicon. But after he had passed it, had he retreated re infecta, intimidated by a senatorial edict, what a pretty figure would he have made in history!—I might have known, that to attempt a robbery, and put a person ...
— Clarissa, Volume 5 (of 9) • Samuel Richardson
... hers fanned the flame in Lennan as nothing had yet fanned it. Earthiness! Was it earthiness to love as he did? If so, then not for all the world would he be otherwise than earthy. In the shock of reading it, he crossed his Rubicon, and burned his boats behind him. No more did the pale ghost, chivalrous devotion, haunt him. He knew now that he could not stop short. Since she asked him, he must not, of course, try to see her just yet. But when he did, then he would fight for his life; the thought that she might be ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy |
