"Spartan" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the training of the children of that sex, hardly yielded to that of the male in laboriousness and fatigue. Be this confessed to be an extreme: but then it was in some measure compensated by its being universally allowed, that the Spartan women owed to it that beauty in which they excelled the rest of the Grecian women, who were themselves held, in that point, preferable to the rest of the world. Hellen was a Spartan. Yet the legislator of that people, did not ...
— A Treatise on the Art of Dancing • Giovanni-Andrea Gallini
... made of the property of the twelve gentlemen, whom the decree of the Spanish tribunal had convicted of rebellion, afford interesting proofs of the Spartan simplicity which existed in the colony. Thus the furniture of the bed-room of Madam Villere, who was the wife of one of the most distinguished citizens of Louisiana, and the grand-daughter of De Lachaise, ...
— Southern Literature From 1579-1895 • Louise Manly
... our party but to have their exhausted comrade carried, in some way, to Leyden. As for expecting him to skate anymore that day, the thing was impossible. In truth, by this time each boy began to entertain secret yearnings toward iceboats, and to avow a Spartan resolve not to desert Jacob. Fortunately a gentle, steady breeze was setting southward. If some accommodating schipper would but come along, matters would not be ...
— Hans Brinker - or The Silver Skates • Mary Mapes Dodge
... Prussia, and at home among the common people, who much loved and esteemed him, was VATER FRITZ,—Father Fred,—a name of familiarity which had not bred contempt in that instance. He is a King every inch of him, though without the trappings of a King. Presents himself in a Spartan simplicity of vesture: no crown but an old military cocked-hat,—generally old, or trampled and kneaded into absolute SOFTNESS, if new;—no sceptre but one like Agamemnon's, a walking-stick cut from the woods, which serves also as a riding-stick (with which he hits the horse "between the ears," ...
— History Of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. I. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—Birth And Parentage.—1712. • Thomas Carlyle
... exclamation, and resolves, with all the airs of a Spartan, to be calm. Nevertheless, he is not calm, and quite doubles the amount of minutes that really elapse before the drawing-room door is thrown open and Cecil, followed by Luttrell, ...
— Molly Bawn • Margaret Wolfe Hamilton
... Violet that of late she has been trained in a Spartan school. Last summer her flower-like face would have betrayed her in its changing tints. Now she steadies her voice, though she must ...
— Floyd Grandon's Honor • Amanda Minnie Douglas
... of arms during the Olympic games. Among these is Aristotle the philosopher, who alleges for proof an Olympic quoit, on which was preserved the inscription of Lycurgus's name. But others who, with Eratosthenes and Apollodorus, compute the time by the succession of the Spartan kings, place him much earlier than the first Olympiad. Timaeus, however, supposes that, as there were two Lycurguses in Sparta at different times, the actions of both are ascribed to one, on account ...
— Ideal Commonwealths • Various
... held solely in honour of Apollo; others, of Hyacinthus; but it is much more probable, that it was intended to be in honour of both Apollo and Hyacinthus. The festival lasted for three days, and began on the longest day of the Spartan month, Hecatombaeus. On the first and last day, sacrifices were offered to the dead, and the fate of Hyacinthus was lamented. Garlands were forbidden to be worn on those days, bread was not allowed to be eaten, and no songs were recited in praise of Apollo. On the ...
— The Metamorphoses of Ovid - Literally Translated into English Prose, with Copious Notes - and Explanations • Publius Ovidius Naso
... and, playing the philosopher, even said he might as well go about quite naked like the young of animals. As opposed to the maternal ideas, he had a certain virile idea of childhood on which he sought to mould his son, wishing him to be brought up hardily, like a Spartan, to give him a strong constitution. He sent him to bed without any fire, taught him to drink off large draughts of rum and to jeer at religious processions. But, peaceable by nature, the lad answered only poorly to his notions. His mother always kept him near ...
— Madame Bovary • Gustave Flaubert
... word enceinte, by which a pregnant woman is designated, meant, originally, without a cincture,—that is, unbound. The Roman matrons, so soon as they conceived, were obliged to remove their girdles. Lycurgus caused the enactment of the Spartan law, that pregnant women should wear large dresses, so as not to prejudice the free development of the precious charges of which nature had rendered them the momentary depositaries. Stays or corsets may be used, ...
— The Physical Life of Woman: - Advice to the Maiden, Wife and Mother • Dr. George H Napheys
... Spartan simplicity. Eunice, however, carried her point in regard to the salad; for Abel, after tasting and finding it very palatable, decided that oil and vinegar might be classed in the catalogue of True Food. Indeed, his long abstinence from piquant ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 52, February, 1862 • Various
... Colonel, 'is a Jackson man; from the top of the deck plumb down to the hock kyard, he's nothin' but Jackson. This yere attitood of my grandsire, an' him camped in the swarmin' midst of a Henry Clay country, is frootful of adventures an' calls for plenty nerve. But the old Spartan goes through. ...
— Wolfville Days • Alfred Henry Lewis
... Alcestis shall be celebrated—and no doubt worshipped— at certain full-moon feasts in Athens and Sparta, especially at the Carneia, a great Spartan festival held at the full moon in the month Carneios (August-September). Who the ancient hero Carnos or Carneios was is not very clearly stated by the tradition; but at any rate he was killed, and the feast was meant to placate and perhaps to revive him. Resurrection is apt to be a feature ...
— Alcestis • Euripides
... dinners and other domestic amusements. Having been brought up on very simple fare, I fully enjoyed the dinners which the Old East India Company gave, when we sat down about 400 people, and, as I was told, four pounds was paid for each guest. I mention this because I feel that not only has the Spartan diet of my early years given me a relish all through life for convivial entertainments, even if not quite at four pounds a head, but that the general self-denial which I had to exercise in my youth has made me feel ...
— My Autobiography - A Fragment • F. Max Mueller
... broken English, and the others laugh and talk incessantly. My inkstand, pen, and small handwriting amuse them very much. Miss K., the typical American travelling lady, who is encountered everywhere from the Andes to the Pyramids, tireless, with an indomitable energy, Spartan endurance, and a genius for attaining everything, and myself, a limp, ragged, shoeless wretch, complete the group, and our heaps of saddles, blankets, spurs, and gear tell of real travelling, past and future. It is a most picturesque sight by the light of the flickering fire, ...
— The Hawaiian Archipelago • Isabella L. Bird
... construction. There are shifts innumerable to make cheap furniture that has an alluring appearance, and the variety of design in the moderate-priced materials will lead to confusion for those who do not exert a Spartan discrimination. ...
— The Complete Home • Various
... man, can Nature receive her knightly accolade. And shall one detect the false or recognize the true by the minute-hand? I suppose so, since some do. But I cannot. People who live among the divinities may know the goddess, for all her Spartan arms, her naked knee, and knotted robe; but I, earth-born among earth-born, must needs behold the auroral blush, the gliding gait, the flowing vestment, and the divine odor of ...
— Gala-days • Gail Hamilton
... published an Essay on Ancient and Modern Learning. The style of this treatise is very good, the matter ludicrous and contemptible to the last degree. There we read how Lycurgus travelled into India, and brought the Spartan laws from that country; how Orpheus made voyages in search of knowledge, and attained to a depth of learning which has made him renowned in all succeeding ages; how Pythagoras passed twenty-two years in Egypt, and, after graduating ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 1 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... be to see you and be quiet. I understand other things than war; but duty is before everything. All my life I have sacrificed everything—peace, interest, happiness—to my destiny." These phrases in no way consoled Josephine who knew very well that her husband, in spite of his assumption of Spartan austerity; ...
— The Court of the Empress Josephine • Imbert de Saint-Amand
... and above the austerities of ordinary discipline this or that superior imposed on himself additional mortifications which were so great as to astonish as well as edify his monks. Such is the ideal State of the theorist, a Spartan republic, and for all, including the chiefs, an equal ration of the same black broth. There is another resemblance, still more profound. At the base of this republic lies the corner-stone designed in anticipation by Rousseau, then hewn and employed, ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 6 (of 6) - The Modern Regime, Volume 2 (of 2) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... head, haughtily enough now. There was something Spartan about that girl. She had such an utter recklessness of exposure—it was in failure that she felt ...
— Guy Livingstone; - or, 'Thorough' • George A. Lawrence
... feather, though it was much more like a tile. His conversation had in it something peculiar; generally it assumed a quick, short, abrupt turn, that, retrenching all superfluities of pronoun and conjunction, and marching at once upon the meaning of the sentence, had in it a military and Spartan significance, which betrayed how difficult it often is for a man to forget that he has been a corporal. Occasionally indeed, for where but in farces is the phraseology of the humorist always the same? he escaped into a more enlarged and christianlike method of dealing with the ...
— Eugene Aram, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... apparent contradictions in her character, imputed in the passage above cited, by assigning the different incidents, which have doubtless caused an intelligent woman to falter in her judgment, to their proper place in the order of time. For as, during the Olympian contests, swift-footed Spartan boys, to typify the transmission of Truth, ran with a lighted torch, and, as each fell breathless, another took up the flambeau and bore it on, bright and rapid, to the goal, so should the light of History be passed steadily and carefully from hand to hand, and its sacred ...
— Political Women, Vol. 2 (of 2) • Sutherland Menzies
... contrast to the pink and blue cambrics, and floral muslins, of the other girls; and in winter, when velvets and furs were in evidence, the contrast made by her coarse plain serge, and untrimmed cape of Irish frieze, was quite as strong; indeed, her plainness was more than Quakerish, it was Spartan, she was totally destitute of the knicknacks so dear to the girlish heart, and though she had grown used to looking at grapes like Reynard in the fable, I am sure she often felt the sting of her grandfather's needless, almost cruel, economy. This was evidenced by what was ever after spoken of ...
— Fifty-Two Stories For Girls • Various
... under the sting of tyranny and wrong. A mere remnant of the fugitive band gathered at the head of that mighty rift in the earth known as the Grand Canon of the Yellowstone—a remnant that had succeeded in escaping the bullets of the soldiery,—and with Spartan courage they resolved to die rather than be taken and carried away to pine in a distant prison. They built a raft and placed it on the river at the foot of the upper fall, and for a few days they enjoyed the plenty and peace that were their privilege ...
— Myths And Legends Of Our Own Land, Complete • Charles M. Skinner
... back from out thy breast A remnant of our Spartan dead! Of the three hundred grant but three To ...
— Familiar Quotations • John Bartlett
... however, have dreaded the news for after careful examination the eminent specialist had decided to take a single desperate chance and operate with the hope of success. Laurie, they were told, was a monument of courage and had the spirit of a Spartan. Unquestionably he merited the good luck that followed for fortune did reward his heroism,—smiling fortune. Of course, the miracle of health could not come all in a moment; months of convalescence must follow which would be unavoidably tedious with ...
— Ted and the Telephone • Sara Ware Bassett
... plunder, Andrea leaped with a lighter heart from the window, intending to slip through the hands of the gendarmes. Tall and well proportioned as an ancient gladiator, and muscular as a Spartan, he walked for a quarter of an hour without knowing where to direct his steps, actuated by the sole idea of getting away from the spot where if he lingered he knew that he would surely be taken. Having passed through the ...
— The Count of Monte Cristo • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... the more responsive to such cries since the war. That might have been foreseen by any one at all familiar with the psychopathology of reform. A cigarette addict who, in a spartan moment, swears off smoking, is familiar enough with the inner gnaw that robs him of his sleep and roils his dinner for days and days. His body, long habituated to the tobacco, had dutifully taken on the business of manufacturing ...
— Nonsenseorship • G. G. Putnam
... Notwithstanding all the Spartan rigor and severity to which he was subjected in his youth, for the purpose of dispelling exaggerated pride of birth and station, he feels assured that the rights and privileges which he enjoys above his fellow-men are of Divine origin. Although a constitutional sovereign, he is never ...
— The Secret Memoirs of the Courts of Europe: William II, Germany; Francis Joseph, Austria-Hungary, Volume I. (of 2) • Mme. La Marquise de Fontenoy
... just time enough to appease his hunger and reach Grove Lane by the suitable hour. He went out to the little coffee-shop which was his resort in Spartan moods, ate with considerable appetite, and walked over Westminster Bridge to the Camberwell tram. To kill time on the journey ...
— In the Year of Jubilee • George Gissing
... family of eleven. Cakes of maple sugar, dried peas and beans, barley and hominy, meal of all sorts, potatoes, and dried fruit. No milk, butter, cheese, tea, or meat appeared. Even salt was considered a useless luxury, and spice entirely forbidden by these lovers of Spartan simplicity. A ten years' experience of vegetarian vagaries had been good training for this new freak, and her sense of the ludicrous supported ...
— Humorous Masterpieces from American Literature • Various
... Dan is!" exclaimed Belle a few minutes later. "See how gayly he is chatting with Laura. I don't believe Laura guesses for a moment that Dan Dalzell is just as game a fellow as the Spartan boy ...
— Dave Darrin's Second Year at Annapolis - Or, Two Midshipmen as Naval Academy "Youngsters" • H. Irving Hancock
... overhanging body hatches it into life, when she takes it on her back and flies down to the sea. Motherhood under difficulties, it would seem, and the education of the baby guillemot is carried forward on Spartan principles; for the moment he is out of the shell he is swept downward hundreds of feet and plunged into a cold ocean, where he can sink or swim as instinct serves him. In a life so fraught with anxieties, exposures, and ...
— Penelope's Experiences in Scotland • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... in vain to get an offer from him. Said I, 'Carroll, is this another Declaration of Independence? No,' said I, 'Carroll, I won't reduce the last signer, it may be, to obedience on a wife going blind. That would be worse slavery than George the Third's!' He said I was a Spartan widow." ...
— The Entailed Hat - Or, Patty Cannon's Times • George Alfred Townsend
... with herself for the reckless leap over a big stone that had given the sprained ankle, under the pains of which she now groaned; but it was due to the illogical instincts of her sex that she could not consciously take so Spartan a view of her position as to blame herself for ...
— The Shadow of a Crime - A Cumbrian Romance • Hall Caine
... desert. What have you to do with mountains? What satisfaction can your beauty give to a lot of cows? You ought to have been married long ago; not to any of these dowdy women hereabouts, but to some Greek girl; an Argive, perhaps, or a Corinthian, or a Spartan; Helen, now, is a Spartan, and such a pretty girl—quite as pretty as I am—and so susceptible! Why, if she once caught sight of you, she would give up everything, I am sure, to go with you, and a most devoted ...
— Works, V1 • Lucian of Samosata
... time Zola's life had been a steady struggle against poverty. He was terribly in earnest, and was determined to create for himself a place in literature; to accomplish this end he counted no labour too arduous, no sacrifice too great. His habits were Spartan in their simplicity; he was a slave to work and method, good equipment for the vast task he was next to undertake. He had long been an earnest student of Balzac, and there is no doubt that it was the example of the great Comedie ...
— A Zola Dictionary • J. G. Patterson
... eyes brimmed over in her dismay and horror at this dreadful fate of her friend; and she, the dauntless, Spartan heroine of a hundred fights with the small boys of Alsatia, was ...
— Happy Pollyooly - The Rich Little Poor Girl • Edgar Jepson
... the Macaulay-flowers of literature?—There was a dead silence.—I said calmly, I shall henceforth consider any interruption by a pun as a hint to change my boarding-house. Do not plead my example. If I have used any such, it has been only as a Spartan father would show up a drunken helot. We have ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes
... men, no stouter soldiers, in all war's red annals, than these armed clerks, farmers, college boys, and their comrades of every peaceful calling. Each community keeps the name of some young hero, nobler than Spartan mothers ever welcomed on his shield. Redder blood never stained the earth, than those full libations our new mustered ranks have poured out for union, law, and liberty. There has been no fighting in the bloody past of human story, ...
— The American Union Speaker • John D. Philbrick
... hardly have been done at the instance of the old and warm personal friend of the warden and the Attorney-General who was sent to Atlanta recently in the guise of a Spartan inspector of the alleged abuses; because, for one thing, the improvement had set in long before he made his investigation, and the investigator, in his report, appears to have discovered no room for improvement anywhere. It must have just happened—one of those miracles in the ...
— The Subterranean Brotherhood • Julian Hawthorne
... excited the admiration of her Irish lover. She was proud of her own subsequent conduct, and gave herself credit for coming out strongly as a noble-minded matron. "I believe she thinks," said Mrs. Mackinnon, "that her virtue is quite Spartan and unique; and if she remains in Rome she'll boast of it through ...
— Mrs. General Talboys • Anthony Trollope
... credit for. He was already richer than any two of the other children put together, but he chose to keep his counsel and to pretend modesty of fortune. He realized the danger of envy, and preferred a Spartan form of existence, putting all the emphasis on inconspicuous but very ready and very hard cash. While Lester was drifting Robert was working—working ...
— Jennie Gerhardt - A Novel • Theodore Dreiser
... short of it, at any rate. You speak like a Spartan. You come to the point at once. But why do you come to me? I have no control over the ...
— Gryll Grange • Thomas Love Peacock
... that the Athenians had no choice but either to submit or to evacuate Athens, removing their families and their goods to Troezen or Aegina or Salamis. In the fleet, their contingent was by far the largest and best, but the commanding admiral was the Spartan Eurybiades. Then the Persians, passing through Boeotia, but, being dispersed before Delphi by thunderbolts and other portents, took possession of Athens, after a fierce fight with the ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol XI. • Edited by Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton
... did not share the ideas of the Greeks in regard to modesty. While the youths of Achaia made no scruples of allowing their oil-anointed torsos to shine under the sun in the stadium, and while the Spartan virgins danced ungarmented before the altar of Diana, those of Persepolis, Ebactana, and Bactria, attaching more importance to chastity of the body than to chastity of mind, considered those liberties allowed to the pleasure of the eyes by Greek manner as impure and highly reprehensible, ...
— King Candaules • Theophile Gautier
... much else, let us note only this small consequence, that young Barbaroux, Advocate, Town-Clerk of Marseilles, being charged to have these things remedied, arrived at Paris in the month of February 1792. The beautiful and brave: young Spartan, ripe in energy, not ripe in wisdom; over whose black doom there shall flit nevertheless a certain ruddy fervour, streaks of bright Southern tint, not wholly swallowed of Death! Note also that the Rolands of Lyons are again in Paris; for the second and final time. King's Inspectorship ...
— The French Revolution • Thomas Carlyle
... about 1 quart (or, according to others, 1 1/2 pint). It was the minimum allowance of corn for a man, say a slave, per diem. The Spartan was allowed at the public table ...
— Anabasis • Xenophon
... narrow room and sat down to the banquet. Heavens! what a feast! There were omelettes and geese and eels and duck and tripe and onion soup and sausages and succulences inconceivable. Accustomed to the Spartan fare of vagabondage I plunged into the dishes head foremost like a hungry puppy. Should I eat such a meal as that to-day it would be my death. Hey for the light heart and elastic stomach of youth! Some fifty persons, the ban and arriere ban of the relations of the young couple, ...
— The Beloved Vagabond • William J. Locke
... the club he took a position in the deepest shadow and waited. Spartan little soldier that she was, she now sent a wail into the night that would have brought a dozen sentries; then, as before, everything was silent. Also, as before, hurried, angry steps soon were heard; yet this time, as the sentry passed ...
— Where the Souls of Men are Calling • Credo Harris
... yet other modes, however, in which the women of ancient and modern times manifested their love of their country. The Spartan mother, who, without a tear, presented her sons with their shields, with the stern injunction to return with them, or upon them, that is, with honor untarnished, or dead,—the fair dames and maidens of Carthage, who divested themselves of their beautiful tresses, to furnish bowstrings for their ...
— Woman's Work in the Civil War - A Record of Heroism, Patriotism, and Patience • Linus Pierpont Brockett
... of raising revenue, Paine sketched a plan of progressive taxation on incomes, ranging from 3d. in the pound on incomes less than L500 to punitive proportions after L10,000 was reached; while in his Spartan arithmetic great wealth appeared so dire a misfortune that he rid the possessors of the whole of incomes of L23,000 and upwards. As for Pitt's financial reforms, he laughed them to scorn. He also accused him of throwing over the fair promises that marked his early career, of advertising for enemies ...
— William Pitt and the Great War • John Holland Rose
... now to hide his dislike of me, nor to draw for me that cloak of suave composure over the fierce temper that is always gnawing at his vitals as surely as fox ever gnawed little Spartan. He sees that it is useless, I suppose. As I went upstairs to greet Madeleine, I laughed to myself to think how Fate had circumvented ...
— The Light of Scarthey • Egerton Castle
... the arts of the card-table: a true Spartan girl; and had even courage, occasionally, to wrangle off a detection. Late hours (turning night into day, and day into night) were the almost unavoidable consequences of her frequent play. Her parents pleased themselves ...
— Clarissa Harlowe, Volume 9 (of 9) - The History Of A Young Lady • Samuel Richardson
... writer and sage. "Plato among the Greeks, like Bacon among the moderns, was the first who conceived a method of knowledge." His great work is his "Republic," in which he pictures the ideal State and outlines his scheme of education, which is built on ideals of both Spartan and Athenian citizenship. From Sparta comes the thought of an education which shall be controlled by the State from birth; while Athens adds the aesthetical aspects to those ...
— History of Education • Levi Seeley
... the order to be repeated; she returned to her room, almost forgetting to feign lameness, wrote an answer to Malicorne, and slipped it under the carpet. The answer simply said: "She shall." A Spartan could not have written ...
— Louise de la Valliere • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... bread and butter—she ate the latter as if it were a peculiarly distasteful medicine in the solid—the girl tidied the room. It was the only really well-furnished room in the cottage; Nell's little chamber in the roof was as plain as Marguerite's in "Faust," and Dick's was Spartan in its Character; but a Wolfer—Mrs. Lorton was a distant, a very distant connection by a remote marriage of the noble family of that name—cannot live without a certain amount of luxury, and, as there was not enough to go round, Mrs. Lorton got it all. So, though Nell's ...
— Nell, of Shorne Mills - or, One Heart's Burden • Charles Garvice
... had the Greeks allowed the invader to penetrate their country without offering him any resistance. Originally there had been an intention of defending Thessaly, and an army under Evsenetus, a Spartan polemarch, and Themistocles, the great Athenian, had proceeded to Tempe, in order to cooperate with the Thessalians in guarding the pass. But the discovery that the Olympic range could be crossed in the,place ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 5. (of 7): Persia • George Rawlinson
... the classical doctor in Peregrine Pickle, has indisposed our tastes for the cookery of the ancients; but, since it is often "the cooks who spoil the broth," we cannot be sure but that even "the black Lacedaemonian," stirred by the spear of a Spartan, might have had a poignancy for him, which did not happen at the ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. II (of 3) - Edited, With Memoir And Notes, By His Son, The Earl Of Beaconsfield • Isaac D'Israeli
... Though it's going to play hob with my book.—No time like the present. I'll go back with you to-day, Morty, and put my things together.—It 's been the best time of my life!" he sighed, already beginning to dramatize himself as the self-denying Spartan. ...
— Kildares of Storm • Eleanor Mercein Kelly
... as the Head always says when he jaws our form, "I regret to see in this form a serious deterioration"—I mean in uncles. They come down here and trot us round and say what a luxurious place it is compared with the stern old Spartan days. They know something, though. They ask us to have meals with them at an hotel. They take care not to face a luxurious house-dinner. And while we dine they tell yarns about the hardness of the old days and how it toughened a fellow. And then, because about 1870 it was the ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 159, July 21, 1920 • Various
... never earned a hundred pounds a year in fees. They did not, however, launch out greatly, and their house in Buccleuch Place (not the least famous locality in literature) was furnished on a scale which some modern colleges, conducted on the principles of enforced economy, would think Spartan for an undergraduate. Shortly afterwards, and very little before the appearance of the Blue and Yellow, Jeffrey made another innovation, which was perhaps not less profitable to him, by establishing ...
— Essays in English Literature, 1780-1860 • George Saintsbury
... Were it liable to be seized by the discursive and ratiocinative intellect, the most eminent statesman or lawyer or general would excel too in the capacity to appreciate beauty; the Roman would have shone in arts as in arms; the Spartan would not have been so barren where the Athenian was so prolific. But beauty is felt, not intellectually apprehended or logically deduced. Its presence is acknowledged by a gush from the soul, by a joyous sentimental recognition, not by a discernment of the ...
— Essays AEsthetical • George Calvert
... already referred to, 'to attach him to those who might have need of him rather than to those of whom he might have need.' It was Papessu, another village in the neighbourhood, to which he was sent as a nurseling, and where, in obedience to the injunctions of his Spartan father, he was treated like one of the peasant family with whom he was placed. He was reared from his cradle in frugality and philosophy, and, considering what an unpleasant childhood he must have passed, it is truly ...
— Two Summers in Guyenne • Edward Harrison Barker
... crying Of the hurrying, the fleeing, Through the air the sad lamenting Of the helpless and deserted, Cries of anguish and of terror, Wails of suff'ring and despairing. Some brave souls remained in peril, 'Mid this notable hegira; Some remained with Spartan courage, And the enemy confronted; Some fell, martyrs in the struggle, When their task of love was ended. B. F. Duncan, kind physician! Stood his post a valiant soldier, Never faltered, never wavered, While his duty lay before him; ...
— The Song of Lancaster, Kentucky - to the statesmen, soldiers, and citizens of Garrard County. • Eugenia Dunlap Potts
... the enlargement of woman's thought in all directions. From our laboratories, libraries, observatories, schools of medicine and law, universities of science, art and literature, she is advancing to the examination of the problems of life, with an eye single only to the glory of truth. Like the Spartan of old she has thrown her spear into the thickest of the fray, and will fight gloriously in the midst thereof till she regains her own. No specious sophistry or vain delusion—no time-honored tradition or untenable doctrine ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume III (of III) • Various
... three hundred years. I will not weary you with futile minor divisions of time; here are three coins (Plate VII.) roughly, but decisively, characteristic of the three ages. The first is an early coin of Tarentum. The city was founded as you know, by the Spartan Phalanthus, late in the eighth century. I believe the head is meant for that of Apollo Archegetes, it may however be Taras, the son of Poseidon; it is no matter to us at present whom it is meant for, but the fact that we cannot know, is itself ...
— The Crown of Wild Olive • John Ruskin
... very young Lady, Miss Barbara," she said, with her eyes full of Suspicion, "to be carrying a Flask about with you." I was as puzzled as she was, but I remained calm and to all apearances Spartan. ...
— Bab: A Sub-Deb • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... struck his forehead violently, so as to crush the enticing insect, or at least to put it to flight. To feel six feet moving on his skin, without speaking of the fear of being bitten, and not make a gesture, one will agree that it was the height of heroism. The Spartan allowing his breast to be devoured by a fox; the Roman holding burning coals between his fingers, were not more masters of themselves than Cousin Benedict, who was undoubtedly descended from those ...
— Dick Sand - A Captain at Fifteen • Jules Verne
... occasional bone. When I did not notice him he would plant himself straight before me, and stand wagging that bud of a tail, and looking up, with his head a little to the one side. His master I occasionally saw; he used to call me "Maister John," but was laconic as any Spartan. ...
— Short Stories Old and New • Selected and Edited by C. Alphonso Smith
... that the story which attributes the preservation of these poems to Lycurgus, is little else than a version of the same story as that of Peisistratus, while its historical probability must be measured by that of many others relating to the Spartan Confucius. ...
— The Iliad of Homer • Homer
... it is true that he is engaged to Miss Stuart," replied Anne, with Spartan composure, "but it is certainly true that she is ...
— Anne Of The Island • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... what little he did know he kept altogether to himself. He had no father or mother, no uncle, aunt, brother or sister, no cousin even whom he could mention in a cursory way to his dearest friend. He suffered, no doubt;—but with Spartan consistency he so hid his trouble from the world that no one knew that he suffered. Those with whom he lived, and who speculated often and wondered much as to who he was, never dreamed that the silent man's reticence ...
— The Prime Minister • Anthony Trollope
... Spartan valor that has made Thermopylae a name forever, serves to show the conclusion ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No 2, August, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... Jackson received the brevet rank of second lieutenant of artillery. He was fortunate from the very outset of his military career. The officers of the United States army, thanks to the thorough education and Spartan discipline of West Point, were fine soldiers; but their scope was limited. On the western frontier, far beyond the confines of civilisation, stood a long line of forts, often hundreds of miles apart, garrisoned ...
— Stonewall Jackson And The American Civil War • G. F. R. Henderson
... with grim jocoseness the "alma mater" of her students, but if she be a mother at all she is one of a very heroic and Spartan cast, who conceals her maternal affection with remarkable success. The only signs of interest which she ever designs to evince towards her alumni are upon those not infrequent occasions when guineas are to ...
— The Firm of Girdlestone • Arthur Conan Doyle
... a thick soup, rich in dark-hued garden produce, and a large hunk of bread—except on Thursdays, when a pat of butter was served out to each boy instead of that Spartan broth—that "brouet noir des Lacedemoniens," ...
— The Martian • George Du Maurier
... yet more strongly, and, as it may still seem to many minds, with convincing reason, he objected to an eleemosynary system, which "precludes the poor mother from the strongest motive human nature can be actuated by for industry, for forethought, and self-denial." "The Spartan," he said, "and other ancient communities, might disregard domestic ties, because they had the substitution of country, which we cannot have. Our course is to supplant domestic attachments, without the possibility of substituting others more capacious. What can grow out of it ...
— Wordsworth • F. W. H. Myers
... followed, and in his speech likened the crown and parliament to dancers in a minuet, to a tune composed by the cabinet—the crown led off one way, the parliament to the opposite corner; and they then joined hands, when the dance ended as it began. He also compared ministers to the Spartan, (it was an Athenian,) who, in an engagement by sea, seized the stern with his right hand, which was instantly chopped off; and who then renewed the effort with his left, which shared the same fate, whereupon he seized the galley with his teeth. The ministry ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... wrong, and she grasped the line of connection if she did not understand the issue; but, mindful of the doctrine of letting well alone—also of that of catching a heart at the rebound—she made no allusion in the beginning, but let her curiosity gnaw her like the Spartan boy's fox without making a sign. At last, however, her curiosity became impatience, and her impatience conquered her reserve. She was clever in her generation and fairly self-controlled, but she was only ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - Vol. XVII, No. 102. June, 1876. • Various
... has been accomplished to make your city what it is, the aged have done the most. The middle aged may say we will improve upon what has been done; and the young, we shall accomplish still more than our fathers. That, fellow-citizens, was the boast in the ancient Spartan procession—a procession which was divided into three classes—the old, the middle-aged, and the young. They had a saying which each class repeated in turn. The ...
— Life and Public Services of John Quincy Adams - Sixth President of the Unied States • William H. Seward
... counterbalanced the weightiest prudential reasons with him at any time. Rousseau debated whether he should keep tryst with his gay fellow-traveller, or return to Chamberi. Remorse and that intractable emptiness of pocket which is the iron key to many a deed of ingenuous-looking self-denial and Spartan virtue, directed him homewards. Here he had a surprise, and perhaps learnt a lesson. He found installed in the house a personage whom he describes as tall, fair, noisy, coxcombical, flat-faced, flat-souled. Another triple alliance seemed ...
— Rousseau - Volumes I. and II. • John Morley
... unrivalled, can now see a EUGENE SUE whose brow is umbraged by laurels of a more luxuriant and lovely green. Cease your expectorations of bile upon a great people; admit that mastication of the 'odorous vegeble' is a Spartan virtue; and we will again vote you an Anak in the kingdom of pen and paper. Then again shall we be led to believe that your praises and your vituperations are equally unpurchasable. Then once more shall we think you would swallow no golden pill, nor suffer ...
— Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, March 1844 - Volume 23, Number 3 • Various
... this an offence, or, to speak more accurately, a first step towards an offence? You must either accept this theory with all its consequences, or absolve illicit passion. French society hitherto has chosen the third and middle course of looking on and laughing when offences come, apparently upon the Spartan principle of condoning the theft and punishing clumsiness. And this system, it may be, is a very wise one. 'Tis a most appalling punishment to have all your neighbors pointing the finger of scorn at you, a punishment that ...
— A Woman of Thirty • Honore de Balzac
... Spartan lady. She cured me of it by rapping my knuckles with the handle of a silver-plated knife. My, how it hurt! I feel it yet! I wonder that they were not ...
— The Plunderer • Roy Norton
... servants and masters. Marcella's rebellion against the barriers of life had been a sort of fatigue and offence to Letty ever since she had been made to feel it. And daily contact with the simple, and even Spartan, ways of living that prevailed—for the owners of it, at least—in the vast house, with the overflowing energy and humanity that often made its mistress a restless companion, and led her into a fair percentage of mistakes—had roused a score ...
— Sir George Tressady, Vol. II • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... a young Messenian of the royal line, the "Cid" of ancient Messe'nia. On one occasion he entered Sparta by night to suspend a shield from the temple of Pallas. On the shield were inscribed these words: "Aristomenes from the Spartan spoils dedicates this to ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama, Vol 1 - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook • The Rev. E. Cobham Brewer, LL.D.
... luxury of the young men of the military school. After a little he turned the conversation on Mania, and the present education of the young Maniotes, drawing a comparison between it and the ancient Spartan system of education. His observations on this head be told me he intended to embody in a memorial to be presented to the Minister of War. All this, depend upon it, will bring him under the displeasure of his comrades; and it will be lucky if he escape being ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... succession (as every one thought) rested in Lycurgus; and reign he did for a time, but declared that the kingdom belonged to the child of his sister-in-law the queen, and that he himself should exercise the regal jurisdiction only as his guardian; the Spartan name for which office is prodicus. Soon after, an overture was made to him by the queen, that she would herself in some way destroy the infant, upon condition that he would marry her when he came to the crown. Abhorring the woman's wickedness, he nevertheless did not reject her proposal, ...
— The Boys' and Girls' Plutarch - Being Parts of The "Lives" of Plutarch • Plutarch
... of the Cave of Gold might mean—hardships, dangers, even death for those she loved. But she was of pioneer stock, had often seen her dearest go forth to face the dangers of the unknown wilderness; and, at last, with something of Spartan-like fortitude, she ...
— The Cave of Gold - A Tale of California in '49 • Everett McNeil
... a bitter pang when she showed herself in public with Philip. She quivered under the open stare, or the look askance of members of her sex; if she showed a brave front, it was that of the Spartan boy! Philip was particularly fond of the opera and the play; he would not have gone without her; so she accompanied him, and made no demur. Of course every relation and friend she had in the world shunned her as though she were a leper, which indeed, ...
— Tales from Many Sources - Vol. V • Various
... mental attainment, at least, he is the peer of the child who sees. But in order to bring this about, the early years of the child must be carefully supervised, and his training calculated to fit him for the tremendous task awaiting him, a task requiring the courage of a Spartan, the wisdom of Solomon, and the patience of Job. Unfortunately, the parents of blind children rarely understand the importance of this early training. They are too often too absorbed in their own sorrow at having a child so afflicted, too sure that loss of eyesight ...
— Five Lectures on Blindness • Kate M. Foley
... as we were bid. I began to whistle cheerily, and turning my back on my precious grandson, called Josephine's attention to the beauties of the landscape in a series of philosophic utterances. As for Winona herself, she was Spartan enough to restore the little lad to his baby-carriage, and to busy herself in reflecting whether the spot of blood on her robin's-egg blue morning wrapper would wash out. Within three minutes more Master Baby had ceased to sob, and was playing contentedly again with the rustling autumn leaves, ...
— The Opinions of a Philosopher • Robert Grant
... that Ajax never was a subject, but was always an equal. He fought, not for Helen, but for his oath's sake. The dispute waxes hot; the calm dignity of Teucer easily discomfits the Spartan braggart, who departs to bring aid. Meanwhile Tecmessa returns with the child whom Teucer in a scene of consummate pathos bids kneel at his father's side, holding in his hand a triple lock of hair—Teucer's, his mother's, his own; this sacred symbol, if violated, ...
— Authors of Greece • T. W. Lumb
... man of Spartan habits, and at sixty was scrupulous about his diet at your table, excusing himself by saying that he must eat sparingly and fare hard, as became a soldier, or one who was fitting himself for difficult ...
— A Plea for Captain John Brown • Henry David Thoreau
... because the offices of the State, which were held to their exclusion, were confined to a few; and because the nobles never by harsh treatment aroused in them any desire to usurp these offices. And this was due to the Spartan kings, who, being appointed to that dignity for life, and placed in the midst of this nobility, had no stronger support to their authority than in defending the people against injustice. Whence it resulted that ...
— Discourses on the First Decade of Titus Livius • Niccolo Machiavelli
... daunt the spirits of Leonidas and his men, and his wife, Gorgo, was not a woman to be faint-hearted or hold him back. Long before, when she was a very little girl, a word of hers had saved her father from listening to a traitorous message from the King of Persia; and every Spartan lady was bred up to be able to say to those she best loved that they must come home from battle "with the shield or on it"—either carrying it victoriously or borne ...
— Children's Literature - A Textbook of Sources for Teachers and Teacher-Training Classes • Charles Madison Curry
... physician examining a patient's chest stop all at once, as he brought out a particular sound with a tap on the collarbone, in the attitude of a pointer who has just come on the scent or sight of a woodcock. You remember the Spartan boy, who, with unmoved countenance, hid the fox that was tearing his vitals beneath his mantle. What he could do in his own suffering you must learn to do for others on whose vital organs disease has fastened its devouring teeth. It is a terrible thing to take away hope, even ...
— Medical Essays • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... the all-conquering rays of the sun. The recovery of the stolen treasure is like Menelaus's recovery of Helen, and it apparently brings as little happiness to Sigurd as his recreant wife did to the Spartan king. ...
— Myths of the Norsemen - From the Eddas and Sagas • H. A. Guerber
... not. Look up, my wearied brother; see thy fellow-workmen there, in God's Eternity; surviving there, they alone surviving; sacred band of the Immortals, celestial body-guard of the empire of mankind. To thee Heaven, though severe, is not unkind; Heaven is kind,—as a noble mother; as that Spartan mother, saying while she gave her son his shield, "With it, my son, or upon it." Thou too shall return home in honor; to thy far-distant Home, in honor; doubt it not,—if in the battle thou keep thy shield! Thou, in the Eternities and deepest death-kingdoms art not ...
— Daily Strength for Daily Needs • Mary W. Tileston
... older boy had a bullet from| |a revolver embedded to a distance of three inches in| |the brain matter. | | | |The boy was shot by his younger brother Sunday | |afternoon, but after they had agreed to keep secret | |the story of the shooting, Stephen, with the | |stoicism of a Spartan, had refused to tell the | |story. When the X-ray picture revealed his secret he| |sobbed out, "He didn't mean to do it." Then he told | |the story. | | | | "Just Tired Out," He Says | | | |The two boys had been left at home alone on Sunday | |afternoon. Their ...
— News Writing - The Gathering , Handling and Writing of News Stories • M. Lyle Spencer
... and his Spartan band of veterans attacked this superior force, charged into its midst, drove it from its camp in confusion, fought it hand-to-hand in the brush, and inflicted on it such a punishment as probably no command of equal numbers has ever before inflicted ...
— The Battle of the Big Hole • G. O. Shields
... and nurses to-day are well aware of the need for a rational hygiene. Mother-craft is studied zealously and with success, and there is no lack of books to give sound guidance and to show the mean between the dangerous extremes of coddling and a too Spartan exposure. Yet sometimes it has seemed as if some mothers whose care for their children's physical health is most painstaking, who have nothing to learn on the question of diet, of exercise, of fresh air, or of baths, who ...
— The Nervous Child • Hector Charles Cameron
... freedom of speech is limited to a class grit and backbone outweigh intellectual ability and are far more requisite. When we consider the fact that many white newspaper men have "licked the dust" in the Southland because they dared to emerge from the trend of popular thought and opinion, the Spartan who without a tremor held his hand into the flames until it had burned away was not more a subject of supreme admiration than the little Octoroon editor of the Wilmington Record whose brave utterances ...
— Hanover; Or The Persecution of the Lowly - A Story of the Wilmington Massacre. • David Bryant Fulton
... Aratus's irresolute generalship, the indolence of the rich burghers and the inadequate provision for levying troops and paying mercenaries, the league lost several battles and much of its territory; but rather than compromise with the Spartan Gracchus the assembly negotiated with Antigonus Doson, who recovered the lost districts but retained Corinth for himself (223-221). Similarly the Achaeans could not check the incursions of Aetolian adventurers in 220-218, and when Philip V. came to the rescue ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... elegante, see Seneca on the transparent vestments of the Roman ladies, who, like these modern belles, were generous in the display of their charms to the public. No doubt these French republicanists act upon the true Spartan principle of modesty: they take the most efficacious method to prevent their influence from being too great over the imaginations of men, by renouncing all that insidious reserve which alone can render ...
— Tales And Novels, Vol. 8 • Maria Edgeworth
... matter of duty, a duty to ourselves, to our consciences, to our constituents, and to God, who is the source of all law and of all obligations, to reflect long and deliberatively before we shall even seem to countenance a movement so unholy as this. The Spartan mothers asked no such immunities as are asked for by these women. The Roman mothers were content to occupy their legitimate spheres; and our own mothers, who possessed more than Spartan or Roman virtue, asked for no repudiation ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume I • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... bred out of the Spartan kind, So flu'd, so sanded; and their heads are hung With ears that sweep away the morning dew. Crook-knee'd and dew-lap'd like Thessalian bulls, Slow in pursuit, but matched in mouths like bells, ...
— The Coverley Papers • Various
... he directed. "I fancy that the pocket-book you are carrying will prove more interesting. We will just glance through the dressing-case first. Thank you. Yes, you can lay the things upon the floor. A man of Spartan-like life, I should imagine Mr. Dunster. A spare toothbrush, though, I am glad to see. Pyjamas of most unattractive pattern. And what a taste in shirts! Nothing but wearing apparel and singularly little of ...
— The Vanished Messenger • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... own counsel so bravely that no one could have told how hard she had been hit. If she betrayed herself in any way, it was in being rather more attentive and demonstrative to her guests than was usual with her; but she behaved with the Spartan pride of the English gentlewoman, and deceived all who were ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XVII. No. 101. May, 1876. • Various
... approaches them, they simply cower and submit. Not only that, but it is beyond question that hyenas have the power to call dogs to them. . . . For five weeks I have been alone in this tent six nights in every week all night, with two children and the spartan soul of Nels the Great Dane dog; and I have seen and I have heard the ...
— Son of Power • Will Levington Comfort and Zamin Ki Dost
... matter, dear?" asked auntie, tenderly. "Are you in such pain?" for she knew that Cricket was a little Spartan in ...
— Cricket at the Seashore • Elizabeth Westyn Timlow
... the Spartan mothers with one voice, while the other sisters danced round them, and Kate patted the curly ...
— Aunt Jo's Scrap-Bag VI - An Old-Fashioned Thanksgiving, Etc. • Louisa M. Alcott
... remember, and I talked with Cander, the Polykon professor, who had always seemed to me to be the embodiment of Comanche cruelty and cunning. We talked of Hogboom all the way to the corner. Wonderful how deeply the Faculty loved the boy; and with what Spartan firmness they had concealed all indications ...
— At Good Old Siwash • George Fitch
... creed of our fathers; old creed, did I say? Ever new creed; for what Time passes by, never grows old. This we would change to suit ourselves, fancying we have outgrown it; or thinking it, like the Spartan iron coin, too cumbersome for general circulation, we would change it for lighter, and as we think, more precious metal. We deem ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 2, No. 2, August, 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... no further way to check expenditure. Athalie had dismissed their servant as soon as she had lost her position at Wahlbaum and Grossman's. Table expenses were reduced to Spartan limits, much to the disgust of them all. No clothes were bought, no luxuries, no trifles. They did their own marketing, their own cooking, their own housework and laundry. And had it not been that the apartment entailed no outlay ...
— Athalie • Robert W. Chambers
... him in every possible way. He does not conceal either from himself or me how entire the sacrifice must be of private happiness to public duty, of which this parting was the first sample; and he writes of the desolation of domestic prospects in so sad a way that I am obliged to write like a Spartan to him. ...
— Lady John Russell • Desmond MacCarthy and Agatha Russell
... gloomy grandeur stands the figure of Hagen, the real hero of the second half of the poem. Fully aware that he is going to his death, he nevertheless scorns to desert his companions-in-arms, and awaits the fate in store for him with a stoicism that would do honor to a Spartan. He calmly accepts the consequences of his crime, and to the last mocks and scoffs at Kriemhild, until her fury knows no bounds. No character shows so little the refining influences of Christianity as does his. In all essential ...
— The Nibelungenlied • Unknown
... and bully. The men who trooped into the bunkhouse behind him already hated him with a religious intensity; in ten minutes, they might have accepted him as a bunkie! For your true Western cowpuncher, when all is said and done, unites with Spartan stoicism ...
— Alcatraz • Max Brand
... francs with the lady, who, after two years of marriage, became the ugliest and consequently the most peevish woman on earth. Luckily they had no children. The fair complexion (maintained by a Spartan regimen), the fresh, bright color in her face, which spoke of an engaging modesty, became overspread with blotches and pimples; her figure, which had seemed so straight, grew crooked, the angel became a suspicious and shrewish creature who drove Castanier frantic. ...
— Library of the World's Best Mystery and Detective Stories • Edited by Julian Hawthorne
... interested in seeing other nations going over the top—the same nations who had been over so many times; they wanted to see their sons and brothers at once given the opportunity to share the wounds and the danger. Their attitude was Spartan and splendid; they demanded a curtailment of their respite that they might find themselves afloat on the crimson tide. The cry of the civilians in America was identical with that of their men in France. "Let them take off our khaki ...
— Out To Win - The Story of America in France • Coningsby Dawson
... Spartan boy with the fox gnawing into his side, did not acquit himself more heroically than my friend. The case was a clear one, no doubt, but Tom made a noble speech, and was highly complimented by the Judge upon his ability. No sooner, however, had ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, No. 382, October 1847 • Various
... have sent to Hades the hero dear to Mars, had not the daughter of Jove brushed it aside with her hand, as a mother doth a fly from her sleeping child. The bow does not appear to have been extensively used in later times in either the Greek or Roman armies. The ferocious Spartan preferred the close combat with manual weapons, the Athenian won his glory upon the sea, and it was with the pike that Alexander overcame the hosts of Persia. The Cretans, who were the most celebrated archers in Europe, sometimes ...
— The International Monthly Magazine, Volume 5, No. 1, January, 1852 • Various |
