"Cerberus" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... point never to admit any persons without subjecting them to the rigorous investigation of the pair of eyes that providence had been pleased to place in my head. To those who pleased me not, I was little better than a Cerberus whom it was very difficult to pass; whilst to others, I was all easiness and condescension, ushering them straight to the sanctum sanctorum, in which, behind a desk covered with letters and papers, stood—for he never sat down to his desk—the respectable individual whose lawful commands ...
— Lavengro - The Scholar, The Gypsy, The Priest • George Borrow
... HENCE loathed Melancholy Of Cerberus and blackest midnight born, In Stygian Cave forlorn 'Mongst horrid shapes, and shreiks, and sights unholy. Find out som uncouth cell, Where brooding darknes spreads his jealous wings, And the night-Raven sings; There, under Ebon shades, ...
— Book of English Verse • Bulchevy
... man to offer either prayers or sacrifice. In that land of forgetfulness and shadows there is the unnavigable lake Avernus, Acheron, Styx, the groaning Cocytus, and Phlegethon, with its waves of fire. There are all kinds of monsters and forms of fearful import: Cerberus, with his triple head; Charon, freighting his boat with the shades of the dead; the Fates, in their garments of ermine bordered with purple; the avenging Erinnys; Rhadamanthus, before whom every Asiatic must render his account; Aeacus, before whom every European; and Minos, the dread arbiter ...
— History of the Intellectual Development of Europe, Volume I (of 2) - Revised Edition • John William Draper
... of that by and by," answered Pluto. "We are just entering my dominions. Do you see that tall gateway before us? When we pass those gates, we are at home. And there lies my faithful mastiff at the threshold. Cerberus! Cerberus! ...
— Myths That Every Child Should Know - A Selection Of The Classic Myths Of All Times For Young People • Various
... control. He is not hot nor cold; a silly soul, That fain would please each part[106], if so he might. He and the Spring are scholars' favourites: What scholars are, what thriftless kind of men, Yourself be judge; and judge of him by them. When Cerberus was headlong drawn from hell, He voided a black poison from his mouth, Call'd Aconitum, whereof ink was made: That ink, with reeds first laid on dried barks, Serv'd me awhile to make rude works withal, Till Hermes, ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. VIII (4th edition) • Various
... Servetus was not an ordinary heretic; he was a bold pantheist, and outraged the dogma of all Christian communions by saying that God, in three persons, was a Cerberus, a monster with three heads. 2. He had already been condemned to death by the Catholic doctors at Vienne in Dauphiny. 3. The affair was judged, not by Calvin, but by the magistrates of Geneva; and if it is objected that his advice must have influenced ...
— Henry IV, Makers of History • John S. C. Abbott
... lawless, was joined in love to her, the maid with glancing eyes. So she conceived and brought forth fierce offspring; first she bare Orthus the hound of Geryones, and then again she bare a second, a monster not to be overcome and that may not be described, Cerberus who eats raw flesh, the brazen-voiced hound of Hades, fifty-headed, relentless and strong. And again she bore a third, the evil-minded Hydra of Lerna, whom the goddess, white-armed Hera nourished, being angry beyond measure with the mighty Heracles. And her Heracles, the son of Zeus, of ...
— Hesiod, The Homeric Hymns, and Homerica • Homer and Hesiod
... soul of their creation any more than the limitations of counterpoint and rhythm laid their incubus on the lyre of Apollo. The porches where Callicrates, Hermogenes, and Callimachus walked were guarded by no such Cerberus as the disciples of Plato encountered at the entrance of the ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 7, No. 44, June, 1861 • Various
... as long as there is any show of accuracy in the way it is rendered. But, then, you must go straight on, and not go over a difficult phrase until you know it. You must play fair. Orpheus would probably only have provoked Cerberus—certainly wouldn't have put him to sleep—if he had practised, and counted, and gone back six ...
— Somehow Good • William de Morgan
... high privilege of supplying a hale man to be buried with the king of Fiji on every occasion of a royal decease. It was quite necessary that the man should be hale and hearty, for it was his business to grapple with the Fijian Cerberus in the other world, while his majesty slipped past ...
— The Belief in Immortality and the Worship of the Dead, Volume I (of 3) • Sir James George Frazer
... have been made in selections on this principle, and a zeal has been embarked which has been found to tend neither to profit nor edification; for there have been known, at the head of public libraries, men of the Cerberus kind, who loved the books so dearly as to be unable to endure the handling of them by the vulgar herd of readers and searchers—even by those for whose special aid and service they are employed. They who have this morbid terror of the ...
— The Book-Hunter - A New Edition, with a Memoir of the Author • John Hill Burton
... "and will you miss this splendid opportunity of giving a sop to your Cerberus? Of conciliating your bugbear? your bete noire? your fear ...
— April's Lady - A Novel • Margaret Wolfe Hungerford
... labour of Hercules when he set about bringing up Cerberus from below, and all the work done by Apollo in the years when he ground corn, are but a little matter compared with the attempt to master botany. Great minds have been at it these two thousand years, and yet we are still only ...
— Field and Hedgerow • Richard Jefferies
... brass, and dragon-gate of Hell, Grim Cerberus guards, and frights the phantoms back: Ixion, who by Juno's beauty fell, Gives his frail body to ...
— The Elegies of Tibullus • Tibullus
... a wretched life; No gold nor jewels Damon left his wife, Which made the jailer faithful, since 'twere vain To hope, unbribed, this Cerberus to gain. ...
— The Tales and Novels, Complete • Jean de La Fontaine
... been made. She had told the Cerberus below that she would be out all the evening; and she had procured a considerable stock of charcoal. She wrote two letters,—one to her father, the other to M. ...
— The Clique of Gold • Emile Gaboriau
... hall of the lord of the Underworld, Aidoneus, the brother of Zeus. Zeus gave him the Underworld to be his dominion when he shared amongst the Olympians the world that Cronos had ruled over. A fearful hound guards the hall of Aidoneus: Cerberus he is called; he has three heads. On those who go within that hall Cerberus fawns, but on those who would come out of it he springs and ...
— The Golden Fleece and the Heroes who Lived Before Achilles • Padraic Colum
... Notwithstanding which assurance, the cottage was visited next day by eleven gods and demigods, mostly Titans. Elenko found it trying, and was really alarmed when by and by the Furies, having made over their functions to the Devil, strolled up to take the air, and dropped in for a chat, bringing Cerberus. But they behaved exceedingly well, and took back a message from Elenko to Eurydice. Ere long she was on most intimate terms with all the dethroned divinities, celestial, ...
— The Twilight of the Gods, and Other Tales • Richard Garnett
... So easy is it, though many housekeepers doubt it, to establish new and better customs in the place of the old. You need not rest your reputation on the dinners you give. For my own part, I was never so effectually deterred from frequenting a man's house, by any kind of Cerberus whatever, as by the parade one made about dining me, which I took to be a very polite and roundabout hint never to trouble him so again. I think I shall never revisit those scenes. I should be proud to have for the motto of my cabin those ...
— Walden, and On The Duty Of Civil Disobedience • Henry David Thoreau
... in every sense of the word. It had represented a lovely girl, with hair unbound, saving from destruction the automobile in which she sat with several companions, by shooting a fierce blast of water into the face of a huge beast well-nigh as terrible as Cerberus. I determined to surprise Jack and Molly, when the right time should come; accordingly, the moment I reached our hotel, I filled the pistol with water, and placed it, thus loaded, in the pocket of my motoring coat ready for emergencies. Hardly had I made this preparation for the future ...
— The Princess Passes • Alice Muriel Williamson and Charles Norris Williamson
... calmest, is most dangerous! Not any wrinkle creaming in their faces, 315 When in their hearts are Scylla and Caribdis, Which still are hid in dark and standing foggs, Where never day shines, nothing ever growes But weeds and poysons that no states-man knowes; Nor Cerberus ever saw the damned nookes 320 Hid with the veiles of womens vertuous lookes. But what a cloud of sulphur have I drawne Up to my bosome in this dangerous secret! Which if my hast with any spark should light Ere D'Ambois were ...
— Bussy D'Ambois and The Revenge of Bussy D'Ambois • George Chapman
... rifted riven. Orpheus, in search of Eurydice, entered the lower world through the rocky jaws of Taenarus, a cape in the south of Greece (see Virgil Georg. iv. 467, Taenarias fauces); here also Hercules emerged from Hell with the captive Cerberus. ...
— Milton's Comus • John Milton
... with the exception of War, who appears in the attributes of Mars, they are represented simply as examples of Old age, Malady, &c., not as the agents by whom these evils are inflicted upon others. Cerberus and Charon occur in their appropriate offices, but the monstrous forms Gorgon, Chimaera, &c., are judiciously suppressed; and the poet is speedily conducted to the banks of that "main ...
— Memoirs of the Court of Queen Elizabeth • Lucy Aikin
... a buckra or not," responded, doggedly, my Cerberus in uniform; "but I's bound to keep him here till de corporal ...
— Army Life in a Black Regiment • Thomas Wentworth Higginson
... by Bushnell to destroy the British frigate "Cerberus," lying at anchor off the Connecticut coast. A torpedo, with the usual percussion apparatus, was drawn along the side of the frigate by a long line, but fouled with a schooner lying astern. The explosion occurred with frightful force, and the schooner was wholly ...
— The Naval History of the United States - Volume 1 (of 2) • Willis J. Abbot
... quest, the delightful singer Orpheus took that downward way, coming in sight of old Cerberus centiceps, he astutely feigned inattention to the hostile appearances of the multiple beast, and with a wave of his plectrum over the responsive lyre, he at the stroke raised voice. This much you know. It may ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... aged,—for its face and ears were gray, the rest of it a rusty reddish black; it had immensely long ears, pricked up like horns; it was a dog that must have been brought from foreign parts; it might have come from Acheron, sire by Cerberus, so portentous, and (if not irreverent the epithet) so infernal was its aspect, with that gray face, those antlered ears, and its ineffably weird demeanour altogether. A big dog, too, and evidently a strong one. All prudent ...
— What Will He Do With It, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... will? Who knows—or cares to know? At least he "has to learn ere long That constant mind, and hate of wrong" Than steely pride are yet more strong; That shame can strike a blow At comradeship more fatal far Than any chance of fateful war When faction howled with Cerberus throat, When falsehood struck a felon stroke, When forgery did its worst To pull its hated quarry down, To dim, disarm, degrade, discrown. Against the array accurst That ancient chief made gallant head, Dismayed not, nor disquieted At rancour's rude assault. ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 99., December 6, 1890 • Various
... beak or feet, Sirens and mermaids here and dragons meet, And antlered stags and fabled unicorn, And fearful things of monstrous fancy born. Upon the rigid form of morion's sheen Winged lions and the Cerberus are seen, And serpents winged and finned; things made to fright The timid foe, alone by sense of sight. Some leaning forward and the others back, They looked a growing forest that did lack No form of terror; but these things of dread That once on barons' helms the battle led Beneath ...
— Poems • Victor Hugo
... Melancholy, Of Cerberus and blackest midnight born, In Stygian cave forlorn, 'Mongst horrid shapes, and shrieks, and sights unholy! Find out some uncouth cell, Where brooding darkness spreads his jealous wings, And the night-raven sings; There, under ebon shades, and low-brow'd rocks, As ragged as thy locks, ...
— MacMillan's Reading Books - Book V • Anonymous
... soon saw a wider stretch of water to the west; it appeared to offer us release from the grip of the pack. At the head of an ice-tongue that nearly closed the gap through which we might enter the open space was a wave-worn berg shaped like some curious antediluvian monster, an icy Cerberus guarding the way. It had head and eyes and rolled so heavily that it almost overturned. Its sides dipped deep in the sea, and as it rose again the water seemed to be streaming from its eyes, as though it were weeping at our escape from the clutch of the floes. This may seem fanciful to ...
— South! • Sir Ernest Shackleton
... be good humours, indeed! Shall packhorses And hollow pamper'd jades of Asia, Which cannot go but thirty mile a-day, Compare with Caesars, and with Cannibals, And Trojan Greeks? nay, rather damn them with King Cerberus; and let the welkin roar. Shall ...
— King Henry IV, Second Part • William Shakespeare [Chiswick edition]
... Cerberus here filleth all the place, As huge he lieth in a den that hath them full in face: But when the adders she beheld upon his crest upborne, A sleepy morsel honey-steeped, and blent of wizards' corn, 420 She cast him: then his threefold ...
— The AEneids of Virgil - Done into English Verse • Virgil
... her that ten soldi would admit her to the enchanted realm within. Poor Annunciata's countenance fell; she pulled her seven soldi from her pocket, counted them three or four times deliberately in her hand, and cast appealing glances at the stony-hearted Cerberus. At this moment she discovered a handsome young gentleman who, with his eyes fixed on her face, was elbowing his ...
— Ilka on the Hill-Top and Other Stories • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen
... the river, and the animals under shelter of the trees. After we had breakfasted, R—— and P—— exchanged a few remarks on the art of angling, felt the fatigue of rising at two in the morning, and fell fast asleep. I possessed the wakefulness of a second Cerberus, and allowed not Morpheus to approach my eyelids; but loitering, up and down, under the shady boughs of the trees, listened to the sweet silvery rippling of the river, as it crept between the rocks, or bubbled over its shingly ...
— A Yacht Voyage to Norway, Denmark, and Sweden - 2nd edition • W. A. Ross
... Kit North. No matter. Like two such wolf-dogs are now Bob Howie and the Mad Dominie—and the School like such silly sheep. Those other hell-dogs are leaping in the rear—and to the eyes of fear and flight each one of the Six seems more many-headed than Cerberus, while their mouths kindle the frosty air into fire, and thunder-bolts pursue the ...
— Recreations of Christopher North, Volume 2 • John Wilson
... finding proofs of Deroulede's treason, although by the latter's attitude he remained quite convinced that such proof did exist, he was already reckoning upon the cat's paw, the sop he would offer to that Cerberus, the Committee of Public Safety, in exchange for his own exculpation in ...
— I Will Repay • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... Fawnes, and Nymphs; the Sea, with Tritons, and other Nymphs; every River, and Fountayn, with a Ghost of his name, and with Nymphs; every house, with it Lares, or Familiars; every man, with his Genius; Hell, with Ghosts, and spirituall Officers, as Charon, Cerberus, and the Furies; and in the night time, all places with Larvae, Lemures, Ghosts of men deceased, and a whole kingdome of Fayries, and Bugbears. They have also ascribed Divinity, and built Temples to meer Accidents, and Qualities; such as are Time, Night, Day, ...
— Leviathan • Thomas Hobbes
... with which he toyed while watching the guileless spectators or sought with soothing voice to entice one to display his handwriting in the order-book. My friend, who was small and thin, almost succeeded in defeating the vigilance of the white-waistcoated and honey-voiced Cerberus; but at the last moment, as he was about to slip out, he was stopped, and ...
— Modern Painting • George Moore
... this ostentatious piece of vanity; and this, like the other, is but a monument of the City's shame and dishonour, instead of its glory; come, let us take a walk in, and view its inside. Accordingly we were admitted in thro' an iron gate, within which sat a brawny Cerberus, of an Indico-colour, leaning upon a money-box; we turned in through another Iron-Barricado, where we heard such a rattling of chains, drumming of doors, ranting, hollowing, singing, and running, that I could think of nothing ...
— Chapters in the History of the Insane in the British Isles • Daniel Hack Tuke
... physico-theological argument he forced to back, as it were, into the cosmological, and that into the ontological. After this reluctant regressus of the three into one, shutting up like a spying-glass, which (with the iron hand of Hercules forcing Cerberus up to daylight) the stern man of Koenigsberg resolutely dragged to the front of the arena, nothing remained, now that he had this pet scholastic argument driven up into a corner, than to break its neck—which ...
— Theological Essays and Other Papers v1 • Thomas de Quincey
... been sanctioned by the council of officers, and presented[a] by Fairfax to the House of Commons, that it might be transmitted to the several counties, and there receive the approbation of the inhabitants. As a sop to shut the mouth of Cerberus, the sum of three thousand pounds, to be raised from the estates of delinquents in the county of Durham, had been voted[b] to Lilburne; but the moment he returned from the north, he appeared at the bar of the house, and petitioned against "the agreement," objecting ...
— The History of England from the First Invasion by the Romans - to the Accession of King George the Fifth - Volume 8 • John Lingard and Hilaire Belloc
... of itself have prevented consciousness of any other noise, yet none the less was he aware of the awful stillness; it was silence that could be felt. In the sublimity of that lonely pathway he felt what Hercules is imagined to have felt when passing to the underworld after Cerberus, ...
— Cord and Creese • James de Mille
... last labor he was to undertake in the region in which his hero strength—so the impious king hoped—would not accompany him. This was a fight with the dark powers of the underworld. He was to bring forth from Hades Cerberus, the dog of Hell. This animal had three heads with frightful jaws, from which incessantly poison flowed. A dragon's tail hung from his body, and the hair of his head and of his back ...
— Famous Tales of Fact and Fancy - Myths and Legends of the Nations of the World Retold for Boys and Girls • Various
... the painted and gilt luxuriousness of her saloon, whereas the Ganymede was fitted out mainly for cattle transport, and to be avoided by coastwise passengers. The humblest Indian in the obscurest village on the coast was familiar with the Cerberus, a little black puffer without charm or living accommodation to speak of, whose mission was to creep inshore along the wooded beaches close to mighty ugly rocks, stopping obligingly before every cluster of huts to collect produce, down to three-pound parcels of indiarubber bound ...
— Nostromo: A Tale of the Seaboard • Joseph Conrad
... Tearum, what's the matter, sir?—down, d-n ye, down!" produced no abatement of Tearum's vociferation, which in part prevented his master from bearing the sounds of alarm which his ferocious vigilance was in the act of challenging. But the mate of the two-legged Cerberus was gifted with sharper ears than her husband. She also was now at the window; "B-t ye, gae down and let loose the dog," she said, "they're sporting the door of the Custom-house, and the auld sap at Hazlewood ...
— Guy Mannering • Sir Walter Scott
... "Am I Cerberus, to be coaxed and cheated by a well-buttered sop of flattery? Return to your mutton, reverend sir, and know that I am incorruptible, and disdain to betray my cause for your ...
— Infelice • Augusta Jane Evans Wilson
... Tailless Tyke shot gladly forward, and the leaders on the bridge as hastily back. The dog galloped on to the rattling plank, took his post fair and square in the centre of the narrow way, and stood facing the hostile crew like Cerberus guarding the gates of hell: his bull-head was thrust forward, hackles up, teeth glinting, and a distant rumbling in his throat, as though daring them to ...
— Bob, Son of Battle • Alfred Ollivant
... was admitted with certain solemnity by a sour-faced footman whose milk of human kindness had turned acid in the thunderstorms of Mrs Pansey's spite. This engaging Cerberus conducted the chaplain into a large and sepulchral drawing-room in which the good lady and Miss Norsham were partaking of afternoon tea. Mrs Pansey wore her customary skirts of solemn black, and looked more gloomy than ever; but Daisy, the elderly sylph, brightened the room with a dress of ...
— The Bishop's Secret • Fergus Hume
... hard and ponderous wood as that: Yet when his sand was out, we find at last, That death has overset him with a blast. Our Boat is now sail'd to the Stygian ferry, There to supply old Charon's leaky wherry; Charon in him will ferry souls to Hell; A trade our Boat[5] has practised here so well: And Cerberus has ready in his paws Both pitch and brimstone, to fill up his flaws. Yet, spite of death and fate, I here maintain We may place Boat in his old post again. The way is thus: and well deserves your thanks: Take the three strongest of his broken planks, ...
— Poems (Volume II.) • Jonathan Swift
... English cut on Greek and Latin, Like fustian heretofore on satin. It had an odd promiscuous tone, As if h' had talk'd three parts in one; Which made some think, when he did gabble, Th' had heard three laborers of Babel; Or Cerberus himself pronounce A leash of languages at once. This he as volubly would vent As if his stock would ne'er be spent: And truly, to support that charge, He had supplies as vast and large, For he could coin or counterfeit New words with ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 7 • Various
... TRIPLET, the Cerberus of art, who had the first bark in this legend, and has since been out of hearing, ran from Lambeth to Covent Garden, on receipt of Mr. Vane's note. But ran he never so quick, he had built a full-sized castle in the air before ...
— Peg Woffington • Charles Reade
... ram, ramrod; piston; stop-gap; wadding, stuffing, padding, stopping, dossil^, pledget^, tompion^, tourniquet. cover &c 223; valve, vent peg, spigot, slide valve. janitor, doorkeeper, porter, warder, beadle, cerberus, ostiary^. ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... just a little more? And is not that want accompanied with a real and sharp sense of hunger? Is it not true the appetite GROWS with what it feeds on? And even if a man schools himself to something like content, it comes not because the desire is satisfied, but because it is somehow bridled. Cerberus often breaks his chain, in spite of honied cakes that have been tossed into the wide mouths of his tripled heads. What do wealth and ambition do for their votaries? And even he who thirsts for nobler occupations and lives for higher aims is often obliged to admit, in weariness, ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ezekiel, Daniel, and the Minor Prophets. St Matthew Chapters I to VIII • Alexander Maclaren
... never get away. No one can come down the staircase without my hearing and seeing it, for you know my rooms are near the stairs, and the door is always open and I am always there, and then there is the turnkey Ricard, who watches the door that leads to the court like a cerberus. Then there are three sentries at the doors leading from the inner court to the outer one, and the four sentries at the doors leading from the outer court to the street. No, no, my friends, if the she-wolf wants to escape she must use magic, and make wings grow ...
— Marie Antoinette And Her Son • Louise Muhlbach
... a voice as soft and musical as the vibration of a bell, "you make an admirable Cerberus. My gauntlet." The sweep of the hand fascinated him. "Are your ears like the sailors' of Ulysses, filled with wax? I am asking you to pick up ...
— The Grey Cloak • Harold MacGrath
... doggedness in attending to the matter in hand, whatever it might be, would not limn Stewart Morrison in any clearer light than to state that old Andrew, at seventy-two, was obeying Stewart's orders as to the ten-o'clock rule and was just as consistently a Cerberus as he had been in the case of Angus and David. He was a bit more set in his impassivity—at least to all appearances—because chronic arthritis had made his ...
— All-Wool Morrison • Holman Day
... to have been contented in her underground kingdom, where she ruled with Pluto. It was supposed to be below the volcanic grounds in southern Italy, near Lake Avernus. The entrance to it was guarded by a three-headed dog, named Cerberus, and the way to it was barred by the River Styx. Every evening Mercury brought all the spirits of the people who had died during the day to the shore of the Styx, and if their funeral rites had been properly performed, and they had a little coin on the ...
— Aunt Charlotte's Stories of Greek History • Charlotte M. Yonge
... the devils of the infernal regions, let us go. The gnawings of my stomach in this rage of hunger are so tearing, that they make it bark like a mastiff. Let us throw some bread and beef into his throat to pacify him, as once the sibyl did to Cerberus. Thou likest best monastical brewis, the prime, the flower of the pot. I am for the solid, principal verb that comes after —the good brown loaf, always accompanied with a round slice of the nine-lecture-powdered ...
— Gargantua and Pantagruel, Complete. • Francois Rabelais
... surveyed, and told me to be gone; I had forgotten my strange attire. "Pooh, my friend," said I, "may not Mr. Pelham go to a masquerade as well as his betters?" My voice and words undeceived my Cerberus, and I was admitted; I hastened to bed, and no sooner had I laid my head on my pillow, than I fell fast asleep. It must be confessed, that I had deserved "tired Nature's ...
— Pelham, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... even as being actual entrances to the lower world. For instance, at Heraclea in Pontus there was a famous [Greek: psychomanteion], or place where the souls of the dead could be conjured up and consulted, as Hercules was believed to have dragged Cerberus up to earth here. Other places supposed to be connected with this myth had a similar legend attached to them, as also did all places where Pluto was thought to have carried off Persephone. Thus we hear of entrances to Hades at Eleusis,[45] at Colonus,[46] at Enna in Sicily,[47] ...
— Greek and Roman Ghost Stories • Lacy Collison-Morley
... a lover's moan! Ye Powers of Hell, let pity reign in you! To your dark regions led me Love alone: Downward upon his wings of light I flew. Hush, Cerberus! Howl not by Pluto's throne! For when you hear my tale of misery, you, Nor you alone, but all who here abide In this blind world, will weep by Lethe's tide. There is no need, ye Furies, thus to rage; To dart those snakes that in your tresses twine: ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Second Series • John Addington Symonds
... until the gates could be opened by the slow old porter, whom Sybil laughingly greeted as "Cerberus," although the name given him in baptism was that of the keeper of the keys of heaven, and not that of the guardian of the entrance to the ...
— Cruel As The Grave • Mrs. Emma D. E. N. Southworth
... senses, the poet found himself in the third circle of hell, a place of everlasting wet, darkness, and cold, one heavy slush of hail and mud, emitting a squalid smell. The triple-headed dog Cerberus, with red eyes and greasy black beard, large belly, and hands with claws, barked above the heads of the wretches who floundered in the mud, tearing, skinning, and dismembering them, as they turned their sore and soddened bodies from side to side. When ...
— Stories from the Italian Poets: With Lives of the Writers, Volume 1 • Leigh Hunt
... of that by and by," answered Pluto. "Do you see these big gates? When we pass these we are at home; and look! there is my faithful dog at the door! Cerberus; Cerberus, come here, ...
— Young Folks Treasury, Volume 2 (of 12) • Various
... tap; rammer[obs3]; ram, ramrod; piston; stop-gap; wadding, stuffing, padding, stopping, dossil[obs3], pledget[obs3], tompion[obs3], tourniquet. cover &c. 223; valve, vent peg, spigot, slide valve. janitor, doorkeeper, porter, warder, beadle, cerberus, ostiary[obs3]. ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... Eumolpus, in order to foreshadow that state of religious preparation which should precede the momentous change. Even in Hades he rescued Theseus and removed the stone of Ascalaphus, reanimated the bloodless spirits, and dragged into the light of day the monster Cerberus, justly reputed invincible because an emblem of Time itself; he burst the chains of the grave (for Busiris is the grave personified), and triumphant at the close as in the dawn of his career, was received after his labors into the repose of the ...
— Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry • Albert Pike
... author of this character, which was printed again in 1681, and in 1704 with the following title, "The Assembly-man. Written in the Year 1647; but proves the true character of (Cerberus) the observator, MDCCIV." It was also reprinted in the Harleian Miscellany, v. 93. For an account of the author, see the Biographia ...
— Microcosmography - or, a Piece of the World Discovered; in Essays and Characters • John Earle
... mouths, as that obdurate guardian of the infernal regions had? Do not shrug your shoulders, my dear comte: I put the question to you with an excellent reason, since poets pretend that, in order to soften Monsieur Cerberus, the visitor must take something enticing with him—a cake, for instance. Therefore, I, who view the matter in a prosaic light, that is to say in the light of reality, I say: one cake is very little for three mouths. If your jealous husband has ...
— Ten Years Later • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... pictured type. Banneker wondered what the managing editor would be like; would almost, in the wreckage of his preconceived notions, have accepted a woman or a priest in that manifestation, when Mr. Gordon appeared and was addressed by name by the hollow-chested Cerberus. Banneker at once ...
— Success - A Novel • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... a tottering, old woman. I wondered what his first look would say to me, what the first word from his lips would portend? It seemed as if I were going in there like one who sought some hidden treasure, knowing which door it lay behind but stricken with fear lest some unseen Cerberus might be crouching in wait for the rash seeker after happiness. Oh! Aunt Jennie! The tenseness of that moment! The feeling that, like the Snowbird a few days ago, I was moving through a ...
— Sweetapple Cove • George van Schaick
... Keres stretch forth their nails to detain the souls; the Furies in despair twist the serpents in their locks; and Cerberus, fastened by thee with a chain, has a rattling in the throat, while he ...
— The Temptation of St. Antony - or A Revelation of the Soul • Gustave Flaubert
... is made up of individuals, every character representing a class must resemble some of the individuals in it, in some particulars; but if you undertook to attach to each single character one and the same living representative, you would soon find each of them, like Mrs. Malaprop's Cerberus, 'three gentlemen at once,' if not many more; and should one of your 'country readers,' anxious to 'put the right names to them,' address—not one, but five or six—of his 'town correspondents,' ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 1, April, 1851 • Various
... am I to know but what you have murdered that fellow-traveler of yours that you came here with last night, and are running away to save yourself? And now I remember that I saw Tartarus through a hole in the earth just at that hour, and Cerberus looking ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 2 • Charles Dudley Warner
... county papers a minute account of the trial of a farmer, at the Northampton Sessions, for keeping dogs unconfined; where said farmer was not only fined five pounds and reprimanded by the magistrates, but sentenced to three months' imprisonment. The effect was wonderful, and the reign of Cerberus ceased in the land.'—'That accounts,' said Lord Spencer, 'for what has puzzled me and Althorp for many years. We never failed to attend the sessions at Northampton, and we never could find out how we had missed ...
— Heads and Tales • Various
... if it be thy lot To essay the dismal track Where Odysseus half hung back, How wilt thou conciliate That grim mastiff by the gate? Sure, 'twill puzzle thee to fawn On his muzzles three that yawn Antrous; or to find, poor dunce, Grace in his six eyes at once— Those red eyes of Cerberus. ...
— Wandering Heath • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... sah," and no Cerberus at the door, or mailed warder of the middle ages, could have proved such an effectual barrier against all intruders as this old negro in his white waistcoat and stiff necktie, backed by the usage of modern society. Indeed, in some respects he was a greater potentate ...
— What Can She Do? • Edward Payson Roe
... again? Why, noble Cerberus, nothing but patch-panel stuff, old gallymawfries, and cotton-candle eloquence? Out, you bawling bandog! fox-furred slave! you dried stock-fish, ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. IX • Various
... Lord Stapledean would see her. So dreadful had been the contest hitherto, that this amount of success was very grateful. Her feeling latterly had been one of intense hostility to the butler rather than to her son. Now that she had conquered that most savage Cerberus, all would be pleasant with her. But, alas! she soon found that in passing Cerberus she had made good her footing in a region as little desirable as ...
— The Bertrams • Anthony Trollope
... presented by this Impe, Whose Club kil'd Cerberus that three-headed Canus, And when he was a babe, a childe, a shrimpe, Thus did he strangle Serpents in his Manus: Quoniam, he seemeth in minoritie, Ergo, I come with this Apologie. Keepe some state ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare
... or the hunt? Allow me to differ; people always must hunt something, don't you know; primeval instinct! Used to hunt one another," he laughed. "Sometimes do now. Fox is only a substitute for the joys of the man-hunt; sort of sop to Cerberus, ...
— Half A Chance • Frederic S. Isham
... earth) Could not affright you; no, nor I myself, The wrathful messenger of mighty Jove, That with his sword hath quail'd all earthly kings, Could not persuade you to submission, But still the ports [271] were shut: villain, I say, Should I but touch the rusty gates of hell, The triple-headed Cerberus would howl, And make [272] black Jove to crouch and kneel to me; But I have sent volleys of shot to you, Yet could not enter till ...
— Tamburlaine the Great, Part II. • Christopher Marlowe
... They changed this to Kironus, which they contracted Cronus; and out of it made a particular God. From Cha-Opis they formed a king Cheops; from Cayster, the same as Ca Aster, they fancied a hero, Caystrius; from Cu-Bela, Cybele; from Cu-Baba, Cybebe. Cerberus, the dog of hell, was denominated from Kir-Abor; as I shall ...
— A New System; or, an Analysis of Antient Mythology. Volume I. • Jacob Bryant
... circle, that of the rain eternal, accursed, cold, and heavy. Its rule and quality are never new. Coarse hail, and foul water and snow pour down through the tenebrous air; the earth that receives them stinks. Cerberus, a beast cruel and monstrous, with three throats barks doglike above the people that are here submerged. He has vermilion eyes, and a greasy and black beard, and a big belly, and hands armed with claws: he tears the spirits, flays them, ...
— The Divine Comedy, Volume 1, Hell [The Inferno] • Dante Alighieri
... During the late war, and for some time afterwards, he was chiefly employed in going to and from America, except in the year 1782, when he was appointed to command the transports with the 97th regiment on board, destined for the relief of Gibraltar, under convoy of his Majesty's ships Cerberus and Apollo: he was not only successful in getting all the transports in safe, but he also landed the ...
— The Voyage Of Governor Phillip To Botany Bay • Arthur Phillip
... John Hazel had bulked big. He was there, beyond the grave Semitic face of the second Jewish secretary, on the farther side of the torrent of boiling amber sunshine pouring through a central opening in the roof of the inner hall that succeeded the vestibule of the mosaic Cerberus. An atrium some forty feet in length, paved with squares of black and yellow marble with an oblong pool in the midst of it, upon whose still crystal surface pink and crimson petals of roses had been ...
— When Winter Comes to Main Street • Grant Martin Overton
... regions. Over it, AEneas stands before the Cumoean Sybil, a very injured painting. Below, Orpheus in Hades plays before Pluto and Persephone to win back Eurydice, who lies bound before them. On the right Hercules rescues Theseus from Hades, and slays Cerberus, and on the left, Eurydice, following Orpheus, looks back, and is re-seized by the demons. These are all exceedingly good and dramatic paintings, and are ...
— Luca Signorelli • Maud Cruttwell
... during that cursed dark spell. When I came below, two or three minutes before, we were heading into The Race, west-nor'west, having left Cerberus Shoal whistling buoy to port about fifteen minutes earlier. Get her back on that course, if you please, Mr. Swain, and proceed at half-speed. Don't neglect your soundings. I'll join you as ...
— Alias The Lone Wolf • Louis Joseph Vance
... Weatherbee's landmark," said Tisdale. "He called it Cerberus. It is all sketched in true as life on his plans. The gap there under the brute's paw is the ...
— The Rim of the Desert • Ada Woodruff Anderson
... a dumb dog, a squint-eyed Cerberus with what Count Victor for once condemned as a tribal gibberish for his language, so that he was incapable of understanding what was said to him even if he had ...
— Doom Castle • Neil Munro
... Epirus, in order to steal away the king of the Molossians' daughter. The king, his own name being Aidoneus, or Pluto, called his wife Proserpina, and his daughter Cora, and a great dog which he kept Cerberus, with whom he ordered all that came as suitors to his daughter to fight, and promised her to him that should overcome the beast. But having been informed that the design of Pirithous and his companion was not to court his daughter, but to force her away, ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough
... where, over the country,—and then wrote to Lady Ellinor to come to her. It is but a hearty laugh at our expense, and Mrs. Grundy is content. If you don't want her to pity or backbite, let her laugh. She is a she-Cerberus,—she wants to eat you; well stop ...
— The Caxtons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... accent: "De mi pais, de Piemong." Girolamo, however, though he professes to be as brave as Mars himself has a great repugnance to accompanying his master to the shades below, or to the "casa del diavolo," as he calls it; and while Hercules fights with Cerberus, he shakes and trembles all over, as he does likewise when he meets ...
— After Waterloo: Reminiscences of European Travel 1815-1819 • Major W. E Frye
... got through, in the course of which Sardanapalus had suffered from a distressing nightmare. He took Mr Buskin's card out of his pocket, and, hurrying out as fast as he could manage, stumped his way round to the stage door. Cerberus would fain have stopped him, but Austin flourished his card in passing, and enquired of the first civil-looking man he met where the manager was to be found. He was piloted through devious ways and under strange scaffoldings, to the foot of a steep and very dirty ...
— Austin and His Friends • Frederic H. Balfour
... sound. "I was put under service to a far inferior man to myself, who laid upon me bitter labors." The higher must serve and save the lower. "Then the mightiest labor I performed, I came down hither to Hades alive and dragged thence the dog Cerberus"—conquered the great terror of the Underworld. Thus Hercules has really transcended Hades, and so we read here that "he himself is among the immortal Gods, in bliss," that is, his infinite nature is there, while the finite part is still below in Hades. Such ...
— Homer's Odyssey - A Commentary • Denton J. Snider
... Department requires every newspaper to produce with each issue. This ill-favored individual, owner of a yellow countenance covered with red excrescences, to which he owed his nickname of "Coloquinte," indicated a personage behind the lattice as the Cerberus of the paper. This was an elderly officer with a medal on his chest and a silk skull-cap on his head; his nose was almost hidden by a pair of grizzled moustaches, and his person was hidden as completely in an ample blue overcoat as the body of the ...
— A Distinguished Provincial at Paris • Honore de Balzac
... journey, being seated by a spring to refresh himself, he heard a hideous noise, and presently espied a Lion and a Dragon, fighting, biting, and tearing each other. At length Guy, perceiving the Lion ready to faint, encountered the Dragon, and soon brought the ugly Cerberus roaring and yelling to the ground. The Lion, in gratitude to Guy, run by his horse's side like a true born spaniel, till lack of food made him retire to his ...
— Traditional Nursery Songs of England - With Pictures by Eminent Modern Artists • Various
... blankets. It seemed to me we should never pass them, but we walked fast, and reached our door in safety. Here we thundered in vain. The porter was asleep, and for nearly ten minutes we heard voices within, male and female, ineffectually endeavouring to persuade the heavy-headed Cerberus to relinquish his keys. It would have been a choice moment for our friends, had any of them wished to accost us; but either they had not observed us, or perhaps they thought that C—-n walking so late must have been armed; or perhaps, more charitable construction, they ...
— Life in Mexico • Frances Calderon de la Barca
... service to the greater gods,—Iris, Hebe, the Horae;, etc. 4. Deities whose personality is less distinct,—Ate, Eris, Thanatos, Hypnos, etc. 5. Monsters, progeny of the gods,—the Harpies, the Gorgons, Pegasus, Chimaera, Cerberus, Scylla and Charybdis, the Centaurs, the Sphinx. Below the gods are the ...
— Outline of Universal History • George Park Fisher
... at the financier's office and sent in his card by the youthful Cerberus who kept watch at the gate. The card got no farther than the ...
— Gunsight Pass - How Oil Came to the Cattle Country and Brought a New West • William MacLeod Raine
... by Baptista Porta. It was, as Tiraboschi relates, dissolved by the ecclesiastical authorities. The Lyncean was founded by Prince Frederic Cesi at Rome; its device plainly indicated its intention: a lynx, with its eyes turned upward toward heaven, tearing a triple-headed Cerberus with its claws. The Accademia del Cimento, established at Florence, 1657, held its meetings in the ducal palace. It lasted ten years, and was then suppressed at the instance of the papal government; as an equivalent, ...
— History of the Conflict Between Religion and Science • John William Draper
... a rich increase. This would doubtless lead him to read the best of our Puritan and Nonconformists' works, so that we find him using the Latin words primum mobile, carefully noting in the margin that he meant 'the soul'; and from hence he must have scraped acquaintance with Python, Cerberus, and the furies of mythology, whom he uses in this war, describing accurately their ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... Gods} with the blood of strangers? And did I {for this}, withdraw from the savage Antaeus[18] the support given him by his mother? Did neither the triple shape of the Iberian shepherd[19], nor thy triple form, O Cerberus, alarm me? And did you, my hands, seize the horns of the mighty bull? Does Elis, {too}, possess {the result} of your labours, and the Stymphalian waters, and the Parthenian[20] grove {as well}? By your valour was it that the ...
— The Metamorphoses of Ovid - Literally Translated into English Prose, with Copious Notes - and Explanations • Publius Ovidius Naso
... a Hellenic city and a colony of the Megarians, situated in the territory of the Mariandynians. So they came to anchorage off the Acherusian Chersonese, where Heracles (3) is said to have descended to bring up the dog Cerberus, at a point where they still show the marks of his descent, a deep cleft more than two furlongs down. Here the Heracleots sent the Hellenes, as gifts of hospitality, three thousand measures of barley and two thousand jars of wine, twenty beeves and one hundred sheep. ...
— Anabasis • Xenophon
... nearest friends and dearest connections. The brave Grillon was the only one who ventured to visit me, at the hazard of incurring disgrace. He came five or six times to see me, and my guards were so much astonished at his resolution, and awed by his presence, that not a single Cerberus of them all would venture to refuse him ...
— Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois, Complete • Marguerite de Valois, Queen of Navarre
... indeed, that we have nothing new to say on any subject, and yawn at each other in a sort of quiet inquietude. I hear nothing from Cawthorn, or Captain Hobhouse; and their quarto—Lord have mercy on mankind! We come on like Cerberus with our triple publications. As for myself, by myself, I must be satisfied ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. II - With His Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore
... whole weeks, Martin had written to him. A week later he wrote again. At the end of the month, he went over to San Francisco and personally called upon the editor. But he did not meet that exalted personage, thanks to a Cerberus of an office boy, of tender years and red hair, who guarded the portals. At the end of the fifth week the manuscript came back to him, by mail, without comment. There was no rejection slip, no explanation, ...
— Martin Eden • Jack London
... a cultivated community, with the advantages of education, he might have been one of the bright young fellows who manage other young fellows, who control debating societies, who are prominent in mysterious associations, the secret of which is at once guarded and represented by a Cerberus of three Greek letters. ...
— The Young Mountaineers - Short Stories • Charles Egbert Craddock
... leading to the upper apartments. Immediately without the portal is the porter's lodge, a small room with one or two bedrooms adjacent, for the accommodation of the concierge, or porter and his family. This is one of the most important functionaries of the hotel. He is, in fact, the Cerberus of the establishment, and no one can pass in or out without his knowledge and consent. The porte-cochere in general is fastened by a sliding bolt, from which a cord or wire passes into the porter's lodge. Whoever ...
— The Crayon Papers • Washington Irving
... the end of the mast) and sunk down upon one knee, about four yards from the water's edge, determining to thrust it down his throat in case he gave me an opportunity. I certainly felt somewhat uncomfortable in this situation, and I thought of Cerberus on the other side of the Styx ferry. The people pulled the cayman to the surface; he plunged furiously as soon as he arrived in these upper regions, and immediately went below again on their slackening the rope. I saw enough not to fall in love at first sight. I now told them ...
— Wanderings In South America • Charles Waterton
... coadjutor. He not only took messages to Annie, but brought sometimes little ones from her to me, and he would tell me little secret things that he had overheard her say that made me throb with joy and swear at him for repeating his mistress' conversation. But best of all, Jube was a perfect Cerberus, and no one on earth could have been more effective in keeping away or deluding the other young fellows who visited the Dalys. He would tell me of it afterwards, chuckling softly to himself. 'An,' Doctah, I say to Mistah Hemp Stevens, "'Scuse us, Mistah Stevens, ...
— The heart of happy hollow - A collection of stories • Paul Laurence Dunbar
... warm flush over her pale face, and Mrs Forbes entered, then Kate, and last of all, Alec, much against his will. Then Annie re-entered, and Bruce resumed his place as Cerberus of the pew-door. So Annie was seated next to Alec, as she had never been, in church or chapel, or even in school, before, except on that memorable day when they were both kept in for the Shorter Catechism. But Annie had no feeling of delight ...
— Alec Forbes of Howglen • George MacDonald
... the doctor says this sleep is the beneficial result of his treatment, and that when the Electoral Prince awakes he will be quite restored to health. He has ordered that no one else be admitted to see the Prince, and Dietrich watches over him like a Cerberus." ...
— The Youth of the Great Elector • L. Muhlbach
... never upon Shadwell. The night life of any dockside is as vociferant as the day. They slumber not, nor sleep in this region. They bathe not, neither do they swim; and Cerberus in all his hideousness was not arrayed like some of these. If you want to make your child good by terror, show him a picture of a Swede or a Malay, pickled in brown ...
— Nights in London • Thomas Burke
... and high renown; For in his time of strength he bare the flow'r. He slew and reft the skin of the lion He of the Centaurs laid the boast adown; He Harpies slew, the cruel birdes fell; He golden apples reft from the dragon He drew out Cerberus the hound ...
— The Canterbury Tales and Other Poems • Geoffrey Chaucer
... sat a sergeant, occupied, in obedience to orders given since the escape of Baltasar, in surveying the peasants as they passed with a keen and scrutinizing glance. For some time, however, this military Cerberus found no object of suspicion in any of the passers-by. Lithe active lads, greyhaired old men, and women whose broad shoulders and brawny limbs might well have belonged to disguised dragoons, but who, nevertheless, were unmistakeably of the softer sex, made up the different ...
— Blackwoods Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 366, April, 1846 • Various |
