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Hercules   /hˈərkjəlˌiz/   Listen
Hercules

noun
1.
(classical mythology) a hero noted for his strength; performed 12 immense labors to gain immortality.  Synonyms: Alcides, Heracles, Herakles.
2.
A large constellation in the northern hemisphere between Lyra and Corona Borealis.



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"Hercules" Quotes from Famous Books



... corruption and bribery everywhere, and she engaged in the work of reform with the energies of Hercules in cleansing the Augean stables. She abolished, indignantly the custom, which had existed for ages, of attempting to extort confession of crime by torture. It is one of the marvels of human depravity that intelligent ...
— The Empire of Russia • John S. C. Abbott

... slip over the faces presented to her; and had it been otherwise, who could be expected to pay much regard to Thomas Wingfold when George Bascombe was present? There, indeed, stood a man by the corner of the mantelpiece!—tall and handsome as an Apollo, and strong as the young Hercules, dressed in the top of the plainest fashion, self-satisfied, but not offensively so, good-natured, ready to smile, as clean in conscience, apparently, and as large in sympathy, as his shirt-front. Everybody who knew him, counted George Bascombe a genuine ...
— Thomas Wingfold, Curate • George MacDonald

... him in the blacksmith shop at Latonia, lazily observing the smith's efforts to unite Fan Tan and a set of new-made, blue-black racing-plates. I explained how a city editor had bowed my shoulders with the labors of Hercules during the last week, and began to acquire knowledge of the uncertainties connected with shoeing a ...
— Blister Jones • John Taintor Foote

... Hercules indeed does not copy slavishly the North American federal republic. He decorates it with "social institutions"; he would regulate the property relations "according to rational principles," and the seven great measures wherewith he would abolish the old bourgeois ...
— Selected Essays • Karl Marx

... praise ought to be given to history: it is the keeper of such things as have been virtuously done, and the witness of evil deeds, and by the benefit of history all noble, high and virtuous acts be immortal. What moved the strong and fierce Hercules to enterprise in his life so many great incomparable labours and perils? Certainly nought else but that for his great merit immortality might be given him of all folk.... Why moved and stirred Phalerius the King Ptolemy oft and diligently to read books? Forsooth for no other cause but that those ...
— John Lyly • John Dover Wilson

... vigorous constitution; eating beyond measure, drinking freely, presiding at all the petits soupers—petit only in name—of the capital, passing the nights in running from salon to salon, and seldom retiring to rest before morning: a worthy pupil of that Hercules of debauchery, Richelieu, his master and his executioner. Terrified at the delicate appearance of his child, his father dared not send him to school, but had him brought up under his own eye, with all the patience of an indulgent parent and the solicitude of a physician. ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 2, No. 4, March, 1851 • Various

... with his livid face, deadly eye and jaws firmly set—his long fingers clutching his knife with an iron grasp, and his left arm raised to protect himself.—The Doctor was a large, dark-complexioned, handsome man—an Apollo in beauty and a Hercules in strength, presenting a singular contrast to the hideous, misshapen being with whom he was about to engage ...
— City Crimes - or Life in New York and Boston • Greenhorn

... of the men were even finer specimens of humanity than the Europeans. With the exception of two tall, bony Scindians, they were all Seedies, or negroes, and there was not one among them that might not have served as a model for a Hercules. Their huge bodies presented an appearance of massiveness and immense strength; and the enormous muscles had even more than the prominence we find in some statues, but so seldom meet with in men of these effeminate times. These particulars were the more easily ...
— Chambers' Edinburgh Journal - Volume XVII., No 423, New Series. February 7th, 1852 • Various

... miles of wire. It also leases or uses seven Atlantic cables. In this, however, as in many other cases, size does not necessarily connote quality. My experiences may (like the weather) have been exceptional, and the attempt to judge of this Hercules by the foot I saw may be wide of the mark; but here are three instances which are ...
— The Land of Contrasts - A Briton's View of His American Kin • James Fullarton Muirhead

... motus perscrutatur. Quod ad tragoediam antiquiorem attinet, interpretatus est, uti nostis omnes, non modo Aeschylum quo nemo sublimior, sed etiam Euripidem quo nemo humanior; quo fit ut etiam illos qui Graece nesciunt, misericordia tangat Alcestis, terrore tangat Hercules. Recentiora argumenta tragica cum lyrico quodam scribendi genere coniunxit, duas Musas et Melpomenen et Euterpen simul veneratus. Musicae miracula quis dignius cecinit? Pictoris Florentini sine fraude ...
— Introduction to Robert Browning • Hiram Corson

... him lay the gray Azores, Behind, the gates of Hercules; Before him not the ghost of shores, Before him only shoreless seas. The good mate said, "Now must we pray, For lo! the very stars are gone: Brave Admiral, speak; what shall I say?" "Why say, 'Sail on! sail on! ...
— Outlines of English and American Literature • William J. Long

... enlightened of the nations. Charles the Fifth boasted that his empire saw no setting sun. It included Spain and all her vast American provinces, over large part of which to-day wave our own Stars and Stripes. The national escutcheon bore two globes; and the coin, the two Pillars of Hercules, the then acknowledged boundary of the Eastern world, with the motto "More beyond." Spain, under Philip Second, dictated law, learning, religion, especially religion, to unknown millions, not alone in Europe, but in North and South America, Africa and all ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume II • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage

... Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob." This condition is certainly mine,—and with a multitude of patriarchs beside, not to mention Caesar and Pompey, Hercules and Bacchus. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 85, November, 1864 • Various

... Reformation; which last down to our day, and are yet far from ended. Great talk and crimination has been made about these. They are lamentable, undeniable; but after all what has Luther or his cause to do with them? It seems strange reasoning to charge the Reformation with all this. When Hercules turned the purifying river into King Augeas's stables, I have no doubt the confusion that resulted was considerable all around: but I think it was not Hercules's blame; it was some other's blame! The Reformation might bring what results it liked when it came, but the Reformation simply ...
— Sartor Resartus, and On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in History • Thomas Carlyle

... Hercules, laxative and tartaric, had proved its efficacy in cases of enlarged spleen, hare-lip, vertigo, apoplexy, cachexia, cacodoria, cacochymia senilis and chilblains. It was also considered to be a sovereign remedy for that distressing and almost ...
— South Wind • Norman Douglas

... statesmen may well have forced a decision by displaying a stronger will and a wider knowledge of European affairs. Mr. Wilson was at Versailles in the position of the giant Antaeus, who drew his strength from his native soil. Once away from American ground Hercules (Clemenceau) was ...
— My Three Years in America • Johann Heinrich Andreas Hermann Albrecht Graf von Bernstorff

... Dave was secretly in love with her, but Jake was openly so, a condition which he manifested by being as plainly and as hopelessly bound in her presence as a bear cub tangled in a net. For her benefit he would show feats of strength which might have done credit to a boy-Hercules; but let her turn on him the glow of her countenance, and he was a hopeless mass ...
— Gordon Keith • Thomas Nelson Page

... the pillars of Hercules to Europe; and having taken a survey of its northern and southern countries, I passed by the north of Asia, on the polar glaciers, to Greenland and America, visiting both parts of this continent; and the winter, which was already at its height in the south, ...
— Stories by Foreign Authors: German (V.2) • Various

... partial attributes or incidental functions of these Two Presences. Thus, Jove was the power of the heavens, which, of course, centred in the sun; Apollo is admitted to have been only another name for the sun; AEsculapius represents his healing virtues; Hercules his saving strength; and Prometheus, who gave fire to men, as Vulcan, the god of fire, was probably connected with Eastern fire-worship, and so in the end with the worship of the sun. Some of the goddesses come under the same category,—such as Juno, sister and wife of Jove, ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 6, No. 34, August, 1860 • Various

... really, this is nothing at all—thirty minae, in comparison with the other expenses he has incurred in good living. He has ruined his father. There's one servant there, a very great scoundrel, Tranio by name; he could even waste the revenue of a Hercules [4]. On my word, I'm sadly distrest for his father; for when he comes to know that things have gone on thus, a hot coal will be ...
— The Captiva and The Mostellaria • Plautus

... Pausanias, x. 12: 8; Justin Martyr, Cohort ad Graecos, 37, p. 34 c (ed. 1742). According to another account, the remains of the Sibyl were enclosed in an iron cage which hung from a pillar in an ancient temple of Hercules at Argyrus (Ampelius, ...
— Balder The Beautiful, Vol. I. • Sir James George Frazer

... permit chance to settle the entire matter. That is the one intelligent way of treating anything which is really serious. You probably believe I am Robert Etheridge Townsend, but as a matter of fact, I am Hercules in the allegory. So! the beautiful lady or America? Why, the eagle flutters uppermost, and from every mountain side let praises ring. Accordingly ...
— The Cords of Vanity • James Branch Cabell et al

... from the floe to the shore by which it seemed possible to reach the floe by patient stalking without disturbing the game. Instantly Swinton decided on a plan, and commenced by crawling into the bushes. There, with his clasp-knife, he carefully cut and peeled a club which even Hercules might ...
— The Crew of the Water Wagtail • R.M. Ballantyne

... drove him mad. "The women—oh, the women!" he wailed, and interrupted himself to describe a heavy-footed German Princess who had marched past his treasures as if she were inspecting a cavalry regiment, applying an unmodulated Mugneeficent to everything from the engraved gems to the Hercules torso. ...
— Tales Of Men And Ghosts • Edith Wharton

... and others the study which leads to an assured result. They suddenly turn their backs upon an honorable future to seek the adventure of a hazardous career. But as the most robust cannot stand a mode of living that would render Hercules consumptive, they soon give up the game, and, hastening back to the paternal roast joint, marry their little cousins, set up as a notary in a town of thirty thousand inhabitants, and by their fireside of an evening have the satisfaction of relating ...
— Bohemians of the Latin Quarter • Henry Murger

... Leipzig, finely executed by Mr. Scott, and containing Portraits of those monstrous assailers of Italy and of the common rights of mankind, the Emperors of Austria and Russia; Jaques from Shakspeare, by Mr. Middiman, Reynolds' Infant Hercules by Mr. Ward, The Bard, by J. Bromley, jun. possessing the energy of the original by the late President Mr. West, and The Poacher detected, by Mr. Lupton, from ...
— Real Life In London, Volumes I. and II. • Pierce Egan

... makes Science res—. Gives it a touch of old-fashioned dignity. I have been thinking ... I don't know if you will think it absurd of me.... A little fancy is surely occasionally permissible.... Herakleophorbia. Eh? The nutrition of a possible Hercules? You ...
— The Food of the Gods and How It Came to Earth • H.G. Wells

... as report saith now some peoples live. But man's well-being was impossible Without a breast all free. Wherefore the more That man doth justly seem to us a god, From whom sweet solaces of life, afar Distributed o'er populous domains, Now soothe the minds of men. But if thou thinkest Labours of Hercules excel the same, Much farther from true reasoning thou farest. For what could hurt us now that mighty maw Of Nemeaean Lion, or what the Boar Who bristled in Arcadia? Or, again, O what could Cretan Bull, or Hydra, pest Of Lerna, fenced with vipers venomous? Or what the triple-breasted power of her ...
— Of The Nature of Things • [Titus Lucretius Carus] Lucretius

... neither to Hercules nor to Hebert; if you wish to get your own cart out of the ruts, put your own shoulder to ...
— The Parisians, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... the auld-farrant hero sees In Hell a bogle Hercules, Pit there the lesser deid to please, While he himsel' Dwalls wi' the muckle gods at ease Far ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 14 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... their manner of life, and although murder is forbidden, the gladiators kill each other for the same reason. We place a mythical 157 belief in opposition to a school when we say that, although the myths say of Hercules that in company ...
— Sextus Empiricus and Greek Scepticism • Mary Mills Patrick

... saw my side was losing, that I began to grow impatient, and the moment my uncle finished his description of the ship, and bade me good-bye, I bolted back to my game, with only a confused idea of three masts, and a green painted tafferel, and a gilt figure-head of Hercules with his club at the bow. Next day I was so much cast down with everybody saying good-bye, and a lot o' my female friends cryin' horribly over me, that I did not start for the harbour, where the ship was lying among ...
— The Coral Island - A Tale Of The Pacific Ocean • R. M. Ballantyne

... that a few whiffs would make me feel as if I lay in a ground-swell on the Bay of Biscay. I am not unacquainted with that fusiform, spiral-wound bundle of chopped stems and miscellaneous incombustibles, the CIGAR, so called, of the shops,—which to "draw" asks the suction-power of a nursling infant Hercules, and to relish, the leathery palate of an old Silenus. I do not advise you, young man, even if my illustration strike your fancy, to consecrate the flower of your life to painting the bowl of a pipe, for, let me assure you, the stain of a reverie-breeding narcotic ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)

... last time you will see it so,' I said; 'for here stands the Hercules of the stable—about to restore it to cleanliness, and what is of far more consequence ...
— Wilfrid Cumbermede • George MacDonald

... a heavy load along a very muddy way. At last he came to a part of the road where the wheels sank halfway into the mire, and the more the horses pulled, the deeper sank the wheels. So the Wagoner threw down his whip, and knelt down and prayed to Hercules the Strong. "O Hercules, help me in this my hour of distress," quote he. But Hercules appeared to ...
— The Junior Classics, Volume 1 • Willam Patten

... lay the gray Azores, Behind the Gates of Hercules; Before him not the ghost of shores, Before him only shoreless seas. The good mate said: "Now we must pray, For, lo! the very stars are gone. Brave Admiral, speak; what shall I say?" "Why say, 'Sail on! sail on! ...
— A Brief History of the United States • John Bach McMaster

... golden-hilted sword, and had gained the renown of being one of the bravest young men of the day. His fame traveled faster than he did, and reached Athens before him. As he entered the city, he heard the inhabitants talking at the street corners, and saying that Hercules was brave, and Jason too, and Castor and Pollux likewise, but that Theseus, the son of their own king, would turn out as great a hero as the best of them. Theseus took longer strides on hearing this, and fancied himself sure of a magnificent reception ...
— Tanglewood Tales • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... Irishman had cast an ogling, rolling eye on her, and had talked his loudest within her ear-shot, telling of splendid things he had done: making himself like another Samson as to the destruction of men, and a Hercules as to the slaying ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker

... to their satisfaction, he is thoroughly loyal to his own nationality. Baron Huebner speaks in discouraging tones of our position at the Cape. A much more cheerful impression was conveyed by the present able Governor, Sir Hercules Robinson, and by other eminent men whom I had ...
— The Last Voyage - to India and Australia, in the 'Sunbeam' • Lady (Annie Allnutt) Brassey

... called in honor of one Hercules) was very well named. To become immortal it had the same number of tasks to perform as had old Hercules. The Augean Stables were in the City Hall; and had Hercules lived in Herculaneum, he never would ...
— Half a Rogue • Harold MacGrath

... possible hints from the inspiration and experience of the past, I studied some of the ancient statues. The specimens of Grecian statuary at the Boston Athenaeum were objects of my frequent contemplation,—especially the Farnesian Hercules. From this I derived a proper conception of the bodily outline compatible with the exercise of the greatest amount of strength. I was particularly struck by the absence of all exaggeration in the muscular ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 09, No. 51, January, 1862 • Various

... is a story with a meaning attached to it other than it seems to have at first; and the fact that it has such a meaning is generally marked by some of its circumstances being extraordinary, or, in the common use of the word, unnatural. Thus if I tell you that Hercules killed a water-serpent in the lake of Lerna, and if I mean, and you understand, nothing more than that fact, the story, whether true or false, is not a myth. But if by telling you this, I mean that Hercules purified the stagnation ...
— The Queen of the Air • John Ruskin

... would have taken to his bed and died. It bespattered him with mud in dirty weather; it cost him a world of trouble; he could have walked with infinitely greater ease; but that was one reason for his clinging to it so tenaciously. A weak, small, spare old man, he was a very Hercules, this Toby, in his good intentions. He loved to earn his money. He delighted to believe—Toby was very poor, and couldn't well afford to part with a delight—that he was worth his salt. With a shilling or an eighteenpenny message or small parcel in hand, his ...
— The Chimes • Charles Dickens

... returned to their normal relations. I descended on them as they were sparring like lion-cubs at play, Leonard desisted in confusion at my beholding such savage doings, but cool and easy, not having turned a hair; Aubrey, panting, done up, railing at him as first cousin to Hercules, all as a delicate boast to me of his friend's recovered strength. Aubrey's forte is certainly veneration. His first class of human beings is a large one, though quizzing is his ordinary form of adoration. For instance, he teases Mab and her devoted slave some degrees more than ...
— The Trial - or, More Links of the Daisy Chain • Charlotte M. Yonge

... Thornhill of Riddlesworth, Sir Hercules Fitzoutlawe, and poor fatty Sutherland, together with my Lord Miltown, from his not being particularly adapted for an equestrian display, appeared in their several chariots on the outskirts of the ring, an occasional lull ...
— Highways and Byways in Surrey • Eric Parker

... here art equalled nature; it was as large as a big hazel-nut, with the head of Minerva in a style of inconceivable beauty. I remember yet another precious stone, different from these; it was a cameo, engraved with Hercules binding Cerberus of the triple throat; such was its beauty and the skill of its workmanship, that our great Michel Agnolo protested he had never seen anything so wonderful. Among many bronze medals, I obtained one upon which was a head of Jupiter. It was the largest that had ever been seen; ...
— The Autobiography of Benvenuto Cellini • Benvenuto Cellini

... he may have had completely passed away now that he had his work before him. Here was something definite—this hard-faced, deformed Hercules to beat, with a career as the price of beating him. He glowed with the joy of action; it thrilled through his nerves. He faced his man with little in-and-out steps, breaking to the left, breaking to the right, feeling his way, while Craggs, with a dull, malignant eye, pivoted slowly upon ...
— The Green Flag • Arthur Conan Doyle

... to death were it whispered in Carthage that I said so; but at present we can do nothing. Had the great Hamilcar Barca lived I believe that he would have set himself to work to clear out this Augean stable, a task greater than that accomplished by our great hero, the demigod Hercules; but no less a hand can accomplish it. You know how every attempt at revolt has failed; how terrible a vengeance fell on Matho and the mercenaries; how the down trodden tribes have again and ...
— The Young Carthaginian - A Story of The Times of Hannibal • G.A. Henty

... which as action and reaction, thesis and antithesis, is common to both elementary motion and thought. The fertile and profound fancy of Greece delighted to prefigure this truth in significant symbols and myths. Love, Eros, is shown carrying the globe, or wielding the club of Hercules; he is the unknown spouse of Psyche, the soul; and from the primitive chaos he brings forth the ...
— The Religious Sentiment - Its Source and Aim: A Contribution to the Science and - Philosophy of Religion • Daniel G. Brinton

... said Roejean, 'that Hercules declined, and that was eating that vile mortadella. He was a strong man; but that was stronger. Wait a moment, till I fill a pipe with caporal, and have a smoke; for if I meet another man with that delicacy, I shall have to give up ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I, No. VI, June, 1862 - Devoted To Literature and National Policy • Various

... in some of the larger medical clinics of the world for inspection. According to a recent number of the London Graphic, there is in Berlin a Singhalese who baffles all investigations by physicians by the impenetrability of his skin. The bronzed Easterner, a Hercules in shape, claims to have found an elixir which will render the human skin impervious to any metal point or sharpened edge of a knife or dagger, and calls himself the "Man with Iron Skin." He is now exhibiting himself, and his greatest feat ...
— Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine • George M. Gould

... Church. Madame Roland witnessed with mortification, which she could neither repress nor conceal, the decided superiority of the court party in dignity, and polish of manners, and in general intellectual culture, over those of plebeian origin, who were struggling, with the energy of an infant Hercules, for the overthrow of despotic power. All her tastes were with the ancient nobility and their defenders. All her principles were with the people. And as she contrasted the unrefined exterior and clumsy speech of the democratic leaders with the courtly bearing and elegant diction ...
— Madame Roland, Makers of History • John S. C. Abbott

... Hercules and Samson were noted for their strength, and we call a very strong man a Hercules or a Samson. Sodom was famous for wickedness, and a similar place is called a ...
— An English Grammar • W. M. Baskervill and J. W. Sewell

... or allowed a new lease of life, we had the honour of notice to quit from a spar on either side. Mr. Salmon, without a fin-flick of apology, taking a mean advantage, darted under the stick to the right, and at express speed made across stream. One does not, however, use Hercules gut for nothing; the log was travelling swiftly, and I ventured to clap my rod-top down to and under the surface, thus saving my tackle, and being presently able to land and gaff my 10-lb. fresh-run salmon without risk or hurry. This fish, I may add, rose in the fiercest of sunshine ...
— Lines in Pleasant Places - Being the Aftermath of an Old Angler • William Senior

... sucking his crust, and looking with awe upon the contents of the shop. Such a collection of good things seemed a perfect fairy-tale to him, and he would often settle in his own mind what he would have when he grew up and had pence to rattle about in his trousers' pocket, like Eli and Hercules Colfox. ...
— Soap-Bubble Stories - For Children • Fanny Barry

... ago, when the world was young, there were many deeds waiting to be wrought by daring heroes. It was then that the mighty Hercules, who was yet a lad, felt an exceeding great and strong desire to go out into the wide ...
— Good Stories For Great Holidays - Arranged for Story-Telling and Reading Aloud and for the - Children's Own Reading • Frances Jenkins Olcott

... play; then to Lady Lucan's assembly; after that to Ranelagh, and returned to Mrs. Hobart's faro-table; gave a ball herself in the evening of that morning, into which she must have got a good way; and set out for Scotland the next day. Hercules could not have accomplished a quarter of her labours in ...
— Americans and Others • Agnes Repplier

... giving to the meeting an aspect so cheaply convivial that no one would have imagined it to be the final consummation of a conspiracy which had been for six months in preparation. In this plot four of the men had been already initiated,—Henry, Hark or Hercules, Nelson, and Sam. Two others were novices, Will and Jack by name. The party had remained together from twelve to three o'clock, when a seventh man joined them,—a short, stout, powerfully built person, of dark mulatto complexion and strongly-marked ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 8, No. 46, August, 1861 • Various

... undoubtedly, an inhabitant of Thrace as late as the expedition of Xerxes, whose camels they attacked; and the 'Nemaean lion,' and the other lions which stand out in Grecian myth, as having been killed by Hercules and the heroes, may have been the last remaining specimens of that Felis spelaea (undistinguishable, according to some, from the African lion), whose bones are found in the gravels and ...
— Prose Idylls • Charles Kingsley

... night I was sweeping the sky with the telescope when I noticed, in Hercules and Lyra, and all that part of the heavens, a dimming of some of the fainter stars. It was like the shadow of the shroud of a ghost. Nobody else would have noticed it, and I wouldn't if I had not been looking for it. It's knowledge ...
— The Second Deluge • Garrett P. Serviss

... red-green gem, Ophiuchus, Sagittarius, Scutum Sobieskii, Capricornus, Serpens, Hercules, ...
— Pleasures of the telescope • Garrett Serviss

... were before Troy and in practice. I far excel every one else in the whole world, of those who still eat bread upon the face of the earth, but I should not like to shoot against the mighty dead, such as Hercules, or Eurytus the Oechalian—men who could shoot against the gods themselves. This in fact was how Eurytus came prematurely by his end, for Apollo was angry with him and killed him because he challenged him as an archer. I can throw a dart farther than any one else ...
— The Odyssey • Homer

... they know that Carthage is no more, though it ruled Spain, and ruled Africa beyond the pillars of Hercules down to Cerne, an immense territory, blessed with all the blessings of nature, which Hannon filled with flourishing cities, of ...
— Select Speeches of Kossuth • Kossuth

... HERCULES, the Sandow of the ancients, promoter of the Olympic games and laborer. H. claimed to have done some things which are even questioned by the partisans of Doctor Cook. Killed about everybody, erected two pillars, stole some apples, and, in short, did everything but enter politics or invent ...
— Who Was Who: 5000 B. C. to Date - Biographical Dictionary of the Famous and Those Who Wanted to Be • Anonymous

... wish we could do without him! The centre of his influence, a small room in the suburbs of the dining-room, which he calls the dispence, or dispence-khana, is a place of unwholesome sights and noisome odours, which it is good not to visit unless as Hercules visited the stables of Augeas. The instruments of his profession are there, a large handie full of very greasy water, with bits of lemon peel and fragments of broken victuals swimming in it, and a short, stout stick, with a little bunch of foul rag tied to one end of it. Here the Mussaul ...
— Behind the Bungalow • EHA

... ha!" laughed the Spaniard. "If Hercules had any merits in the eyes of Omphale, it was not on account of his spinning, but because he was Hercules. No—do better than spin. To-morrow Don Augustin has a hunt among his wild steeds; there will be an opportunity ...
— Wood Rangers - The Trappers of Sonora • Mayne Reid

... not learn of what nation they were, nor how many. All I know, is what I witnessed toward the end of the sport. Never before did I behold such a form, nor such feats of strength! He was another Hercules. It was rumored he was from the forests of Germany. If you will believe it, which I scarce can, though I saw it, he fought successively with six of Sosia's best men, and one after another laid them all sprawling. A seventh was then set upon him, ...
— Aurelian - or, Rome in the Third Century • William Ware

... strongly the sentiment of West, Copely, Trumbull, and Brown, in London; after which it would be ridiculous to add, that it was my own. I think a modern in an antique dress, as just an object of ridicule, as a Hercules or Marius with ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson

... even then they come in slowly and languidly. Nor do they sit it out; no, before the close of the recital they slip away, some sidling out so as not to attract attention, others rising openly and walking out boldly. And yet, by Hercules, our fathers tell a story of how Claudius Caesar one day, while walking up and down in the palace, happened to hear some clapping of hands, and on inquiring the cause and being told that Nonianus was giving a reading, he suddenly joined the company to every one's surprise. But ...
— The Letters of the Younger Pliny - Title: The Letters of Pliny the Younger - - Series 1, Volume 1 • Pliny the Younger

... dog was a fact. He arrived one morning at Diana's lodgings, with a soldier to lead him, and a card to introduce:—the Hercules of dogs, a very ideal of the species, toweringly big, benevolent, reputed a rescuer of lives, disdainful of dog-fighting, devoted to his guardian's office, with a majestic paw to give and the noblest satisfaction ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith

... nearly two thirds of the distance round the world, from the first meridian.[3] Ptolemy reduces the proportion to one half. Allowing for the supposed vast extent of this unknown country to the eastward, it was evident that its remotest shores approached our Western World. But, beyond the Pillars of Hercules, the dark and stormy waters of the Atlantic[5] forbade adventure. The giant minds of those days saw, even through the mists of ignorance and error, that the readiest course to reach this distant land must lie toward the setting sun, across the western ocean.[6] From over this vast watery solitude ...
— The Conquest of Canada (Vol. 1 of 2) • George Warburton

... sir, an egg out of a cloister.... He professes not keeping of oaths, in breaking them, he is stronger than Hercules. He will lie, sir, with such volubility, that you would think truth were a fool: drunkenness is his best virtue; ... he has everything that an honest man should not have; what an honest man should have, ...
— A Holiday in the Happy Valley with Pen and Pencil • T. R. Swinburne

... that the Phoenicians were indebted to the Tyrian Hercules for their trade in tin; and that this island owed them its name of Baratanac, or Britain, the land of tin. Was the Tyrian Hercules, or, as he was afterwards known and worshipped, as the Melkart of Tyre, and the Moloch of the Bible, was he the merchant-leader of the first band of ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 204, September 24, 1853 • Various

... the jails are already cracking their seams to contain the convicts. One might almost conclude that prisons, as now administered, stimulate crime instead of preventing it, and that we are in the predicament of Hercules in the fable, who, as fast as he cut off a head of the hydra, saw two others sprout in its place. At which rate, we might be led on to the surmise that it would be financially cheaper to let crime run on; the cost of our futile efforts to stop it would be saved, ...
— The Subterranean Brotherhood • Julian Hawthorne

... sun-birth," Hildebrand responded, with glib emphasis. "The glory of Solomon, the sword of Caesar, the beauty of Adonis, the lyre of Orpheus, the strength of Hercules, the grace of Apollo, the sum of all possibilities—God-man, or man-God, what shall our poor lips call you?" He made the monarch a profound obeisance, too profound to permit Robert to see the ...
— The Proud Prince • Justin Huntly McCarthy

... mockery of the distant mob, the old tune of the Old Line shrilled and rattled: - Some talk of Alexander, And some of Hercules; Of Hector and Lysander, And such ...
— This is "Part II" of Soldiers Three, we don't have "Part I" • Rudyard Kipling

... Rede See and the see occyan, toward the southe, is the kyngdom of Ethiope, and of Lybye the hyere. The which lond of Lybye, (that is to seyne Libye the lowe) that begynnethe at the See of Spayne, fro thens where the Pyleres of Hercules ben, and durethe unto aneyntes Egipt and towards Ethiope. In that contree of Libye, is the see more highe than the lond; and it semethe that it wolde covere the erthe, and natheles zit it passethe not his markes. And men seen in that contre a mountayne, to the whiche no man comethe. ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques and Discoveries - of the English Nation. v. 8 - Asia, Part I. • Richard Hakluyt

... mud-holes now he cursed, And now he cursed his team, And now his cart and load,— Anon, the like upon himself bestow'd. Upon the god he call'd at length, Most famous through the world for strength. 'O, help me, Hercules!' cried he; 'For if thy back of yore This burly planet bore, Thy arm can set me free.' This prayer gone up, from out a cloud there broke A voice which thus in godlike accents spoke:— 'The suppliant must himself bestir, Ere Hercules will ...
— The Fables of La Fontaine - A New Edition, With Notes • Jean de La Fontaine

... express." A nearer acquaintance with the great epic bard of Persia had now taught him therefore to retract the assertion he had made in his Commentary on Asiatic Poetry, that "the hero, as it is called, of the poem, was that well known Hercules of the Persians, named Rustem; although there are several other heroes, or warriors, to each of whom their own particular glory is assigned." At the time of writing this, he had an intention, if leisure should ...
— Lives of the English Poets - From Johnson to Kirke White, Designed as a Continuation of - Johnson's Lives • Henry Francis Cary

... Sprat has perished despite his splendid tomb in the Abbey. Johnson has only a cracked stone and a worn-out inscription (for the Hercules in St. Paul's is unrecognizable) but he dwells where he would wish to dwell—in the ...
— Public Speaking • Clarence Stratton

... Devers, and doubtless for good reason. He was forever getting a laugh on the captain when they happened to come together, and, contentious and critical as he was, the big dragoon couldn't abide being laughed at. Somebody once referred to Devers as reminding her of a Hercules on horseback, which prompted Blake to respond, "Hercules! yes, by Jove, of the Farnese variety," whereat there was a guffaw among the men present who knew anything of art, and a general titter on every hand, for no one was ignorant of Devers's wide physical departure ...
— Under Fire • Charles King

... pale? Borrow his help, though Hercules call it odds, I'll stand against both. Say, they were a squadron Of pikes lined through with shot; when I am mounted Upon my injuries, shall I fear to charge them? No: I'll through the battalia, ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor, Vol. I, No. 4, April 1810 • Various

... Bible, and examined the whole. I then got up, walked about, read, and thought, "If I do not answer," said I, "he will think he has terrified me at the mere appearance of such a philosophical hero, a very Hercules in his own estimation. Let us show him, with all due courtesy, that we fear not to confront him and his vicious doctrines, any more than to brave the risk of a correspondence, more dangerous to others than to ourselves. I will teach him that true courage does not consist in ridiculing CONSCIENCE, ...
— My Ten Years' Imprisonment • Silvio Pellico

... seized the animal by the tail, and, with a force worthy of Hercules, heaved it aside as if it had been a dead cat, revealing the man of science underneath—alive and well, but dishevelled, scratched, and soiled—also, ...
— Blown to Bits - The Lonely Man of Rakata, the Malay Archipelago • R.M. Ballantyne

... in his manner is a great ladies' man." "Does he disturb the repose of families?" I asked. They all began to laugh, and one answered: "What! Disturb the repose of families in Holland? It would be one of the twelve labors of Hercules."—"We Hollanders," a friend once said to me, "do not take the ladies by storm; we cannot do so, because we have no school of this art. Nothing is so false in Holland as the famous definition, matrimony is like a besieged fortress; those who are outside wish to enter, ...
— Holland, v. 1 (of 2) • Edmondo de Amicis

... moreover was closely connected in meaning with the forbidden tree of the Garden of Eden, an allegorical figure of undoubtedly phallic signification which had its counterpart in the Tree of the Hesperides, from which the Sun-God Hercules after killing the Serpent was fabled to have picked the Golden Apples of Love, one of which became the symbol of Venus, the Goddess of Love. Nor was this the only such counterpart, for almost every race ...
— The Non-Christian Cross - An Enquiry Into the Origin and History of the Symbol Eventually Adopted as That of Our Religion • John Denham Parsons

... seen. Schemes of this sort require nothing but what we may term the poetic employment of capital for their realization. It is strange that no financial hero makes his appearance to use his great money-club to fell direr monsters than those which Hercules encountered, and by the creation of a city at once great, beautiful, and healthy to realize the conception of the Utopia and the dream of Sir Thomas More. Or take a parallel instance from the country. Those who have watched the issues of the co-operative system as applied to agriculture ...
— Stray Studies from England and Italy • John Richard Green

... Hercules, son of Jupiter and Alcmena, was at his birth, named Heraclides; but that afterwards coming to Delphi to consult the oracle about some business, he obtained that for which he came, and received farther privately from the God, ...
— Miscellanies upon Various Subjects • John Aubrey

... riddle for you, old boy!" cried Allan. "Why am I like the resident manager of the Augean stable, before Hercules was called in to sweep the litter out? Because I have had my place to keep up, and I've gone and made an infernal mess of it! Why don't you laugh? By George, he doesn't see the point! Let's try again. Why am ...
— Armadale • Wilkie Collins

... stick aimed at him by an ebon Hercules he caught and wrested from his antagonist, and then the blacks experienced to the full the possibilities for punishment that lay within those smooth flowing muscles beneath the velvet brown skin of the strange, ...
— The Son of Tarzan • Edgar Rice Burroughs

... about the lives of the great masses who pierced the colossal stone cliffs of the Simplon, or who are building the Panama Canal? They have and are performing a task that may safely be compared with the extraordinary achievements of Hercules; works which, according to human conception, will last into eternity. The names and the characters of these workmen are unknown. The historians, coldly and disinterestedly, ...
— Mother Earth, Vol. 1 No. 2, April 1906 - Monthly Magazine Devoted to Social Science and Literature • Various

... through which bewildered custodians handed out bundles of sticks and umbrellas, in vain hope to appease such impatience. Nor did I succeed to the recovery of my hat and paraphernalia until after twenty-four and a half minutes (Greenwich time), and with the labours of Hercules for the golden fleece! ...
— Baboo Jabberjee, B.A. • F. Anstey

... said Lentulus, sinking into an attitude of irritating coldness, "you will further press your claim on the ground that your mother was a Fabian, and the Fabii claim the sole right to sacrifice to Hercules on the Great Altar[82] in the Cattle-market by the Flaminian Circus, because they are descended from Hercules and Evander. I think the Cornelian gens can show quite as many death-masks in its atria, and your mock heroics will only stamp you as ...
— A Friend of Caesar - A Tale of the Fall of the Roman Republic. Time, 50-47 B.C. • William Stearns Davis

... fiery fluid must have covered her from head to foot; if Lawrence had not caught the falling lamp, if he had lost one moment in smothering the lighted gown, she must have perished in agony before our eyes; but he was strong as a young Hercules, and, half suffocated and bruised as she was, Jill knew from what he ...
— Uncle Max • Rosa Nouchette Carey

... interrupting. "Shall I change the damask cloak to a tiger's skin? One claw just hanging over the white shoulder—Omphale, you know—in a modern drawing-room—a small cast of the Farnese Hercules upon a bracket, there, on the right. Decidedly, here is an idea. Do you ...
— Don Orsino • F. Marion Crawford

... not be performing a noble part, if, like unto another Hercules, I were to roam the world, and purge ...
— Faustus - his Life, Death, and Doom • Friedrich Maximilian von Klinger

... of the lives of great men is both interesting and profitable. In such a study we are amazed at the records of the deeds of the men whom the world calls great. The results of the labors of Hercules seem to be approximated according to ...
— Increasing Efficiency In Business • Walter Dill Scott

... following after in tasselled gowns of black; the band ahead playing "The Girl I left behind Me" (for, although organised for home defence, our corps had chosen this to be its regimental tune). "Some talk of Alexander and some of Hercules"—and some of Solomon, who never saw our Solomon on ...
— The Mayor of Troy • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch

... scattered habitations of the Celts. The old name of Argentorat was alone preserved; it signified a town where the river is crossed over. It was there, according to tradition, that a temple dedicated to Hercules and Mars succeeded the druidical forest. There is nothing unlikely in these traditions; the high ground on which the Cathedral stands speaks as much in their favour as the pagan statues found ...
— Historical Sketch of the Cathedral of Strasburg • Anonymous

... ye seen the gloves that armed the very Hercules, 410 And that sad battle foughten out upon this country shore! For these are arms indeed that erst thy kinsmen Eryx bore: Lo, ye may see them even now flecked with the blood and brain. With these Alcides he withstood; with these I too was fain ...
— The AEneids of Virgil - Done into English Verse • Virgil

... head, the large protruding eyes, and the dark, naked skin of all his people. His enormous arms swung the paddle first on one side of the boat and then on the other. As he did so, Fred saw the play of the splendid muscle, which was like that of Hercules himself. Rash would be that antagonist who engaged ...
— The Land of Mystery • Edward S. Ellis

... to be as silly as that jolt-headed loblolly of a carter, who, having laid his waggon fast in a slough, down on his marrow-bones was calling on the strong-backed deity, Hercules, might and main, to help him at a dead lift, but all the while forgot to goad on his oxen and lay his shoulder to the wheels, as it behoved him; as if a Lord have mercy upon us alone would have got his cart out of ...
— Gargantua and Pantagruel, Complete. • Francois Rabelais

... be a pimp and not a man of parts. That is without being politic, diligent, secret, wary, and so forth—and to all this valiant as Hercules—that is, passively valiant and actively obedient. Ah, Setter, what a treasure is here lost for ...
— The Comedies of William Congreve - Volume 1 [of 2] • William Congreve

... army, made a shiver, half enthusiasm, half terror, run through them. In fact, those four names—D'Artagnan, Athos, Porthos, and Aramis—were venerated among all who wore a sword: as, in antiquity, the names of Hercules, Theseus, Castor, ...
— The Vicomte de Bragelonne - Or Ten Years Later being the completion of "The Three - Musketeers" And "Twenty Years After" • Alexandre Dumas

... woman, and you, from your physique, are inevitably bound to become her lover. Hercules is not introduced into Messalina's home without making some disturbance. Nevertheless I make bold to add that if there is free entrance to this house, just as there is in bazaars, you are not exactly compelled to buy what is for sale. Love and cards are on the programme, but nobody ...
— Yvette • Henri Rene Guy de Maupassant

... Royal Villain; for I have heard of no other sort of giants in the reign of king Arthur." Petrus Burmannus makes three Tom Thumbs, one whereof he supposes to have been the same person whom the Greeks called Hercules; and that by these giants are to be understood the Centaurs slain by that hero. Another Tom Thumb he contends to have been no other than the Hermes Trismegistus of the antients. The third Tom Thumb he places under the reign of king Arthur; to which ...
— Miscellanies, Volume 2 (from Works, Volume 12) • Henry Fielding

... monsters, who, under the title of sovereigns, render themselves the scourges and horror of the human race,—these are savage beasts, from which every brave man may justly purge the earth. All antiquity has praised Hercules for delivering the world from an Antaeus, a Busiris, and a Diomedes."—Ibid. ch. ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. IV. (of 12) • Edmund Burke

... motion of the solar system has been known since the time of Sir William Herschel. It is toward the constellation Hercules, which, at this season, may be seen in the northeastern sky at 9 o'clock in the evening. As the line of this motion makes an angle of fifty odd degrees with the plane of the earth's orbit, it follows that the earth is not like a horse at a windlass, circling around the sun forever ...
— Scientific American Supplement, Vol. XV., No. 388, June 9, 1883 • Various

... but also that it is a part of a not very large sphere; for otherwise the difference would not be so obvious to persons making so small a change of place. Wherefore we may judge that those persons who connect the region in the neighborhood of the pillars of Hercules with that towards India, and who assert that in this way the sea is one, do not assert things very improbable. They confirm this conjecture moreover by the elephants, which are said to be of the same ...
— A History of Science, Volume 1(of 5) • Henry Smith Williams



Words linked to "Hercules" :   herculean, constellation, mythical being, classical mythology



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