"Olympian" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... day, how much more must it have been so before the invention of printing, at a time when it was more usual to listen to books read aloud than to read them oneself? Plutarch journeyed to Rome just as Herodotus went to Athens, or as he is said to have gone to the Olympian festival, in search of an intelligent audience of educated men. Whether his object was merely praise, or whether he was influenced by ideas of gain, we cannot say. No doubt his lectures were not delivered gratis, and ...
— Plutarch's Lives, Volume I (of 4) • Plutarch
... "yes, why not? Man-making is almost equal to man-bearing. I have no son to spur up the Olympian heights; but what might I not do for ...
— Winding Paths • Gertrude Page
... what wouldst thou say? I who can speak am dumb before thee. Thine eyes that drink Olympian day Where steeds of wings thy soul convey, With pride of eagles circling o'er thee: Thou ...
— Tales of the Chesapeake • George Alfred Townsend
... consecrate By love and reverence of the Olympian sire Whom I too loved and worshipped, seeing so great, And found so gracious toward my long desire To bid that love in song before his gate Sound, and my lute be loyal to his lyre, To none save one it now may dedicate Song's new burnt-offering on a century's pyre. And though the gift be light ...
— Studies in Song • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... them thus, out of the midsummer noonday: so that those things might be felt as warm, and fresh, and blue, by the young and the old, the weak and the strong, who came to sun themselves in the god's presence, as procession and hymn rolled on, in the fragrant and tranquil courts of the great Olympian temple; while all the time those people consciously apprehended in the carved image of Zeus none but the personal, and really ...
— Greek Studies: A Series of Essays • Walter Horatio Pater
... to one at least of those unfortunate "outsiders" for whose judgment or whose "meddling" Mr. Whistler has so imperial and Olympian ...
— The Gentle Art of Making Enemies • James McNeill Whistler
... appeal. Finally, therefore, the color and the composition of the portrait are but the point of meeting where we touch in energizing contact a powerful personality. Our spirit goes out into the night of these Palisades and dilates into immensity. This statue is Olympian majesty made visible, and in its presence we feel that we too are august. The symphony is a resolution of the struggle of our own tangled lives, a purification, and ...
— The Gate of Appreciation - Studies in the Relation of Art to Life • Carleton Noyes
... "pub," where his manners are reminiscent of the characters of Messrs. W. W. JACOBS and MORTON HOWARD. Again, in the story called "The First Marathon" (where, by the way, he states that "It is true that the word 'Marathon' was first used in connection with the old Olympian games," which seems a little unfair to MILTIADES), the fun mainly depends on the use of such phrases as "Spoo-fer," "King Kod," and the "Can't-stik-you-shun-all Club." Other stories are of the ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, July 29, 1914 • Various
... to bid me not forget them. Then they all ran away and left me standing in a long, endless hall with endless columns, and white figures all about,—in the niches, on the floor, on the walls,—each Olympian in beauty, in grandeur, in power to lift the entranced soul to the high region where itself was created, and to which it always pointed. The white figures melted and warmed into masses and alcoves, and innumerable volumes looked affectionately at me. They knew me of old, and ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 7, Issue 41, March, 1861 • Various
... snatched the shell, And waked wild music from its silver strings; Then tossed it sadly by.—'Ah, hush!' she cries; 'Dead offspring of the tortoise and the mine! Why mock my discords with thine harmonies? Although a thrice-Olympian lot be thine, Only to echo back in every tone The moods of nobler natures than ...
— Andromeda and Other Poems • Charles Kingsley
... godlike physiognomy, any more than of imposing stature or costume: close-shut mouth with thin lips, prominent jaws and nose, receding brow, by no means of Olympian height; head, however, is of long form, and has superlative gray eyes in it. Not what is called a beautiful man; nor yet, by all appearance, what is called a happy. On the contrary, the face bears evidence of many sorrows, ...
— History Of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. I. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—Birth And Parentage.—1712. • Thomas Carlyle
... gazed on the lofty summit of the Acropolis, covered with memorials of the ancient art, and associated with the great events of Athenian history. The Parthenon, or Temple of Pallas; the Temple of Theseus; that of Olympian Jove; the Tower of the Winds, or so-called Lantern of Demosthenes; and the Choragic Monument of Lysicrates,—all these she saw, and wondered at. But they have been so frequently described, that we may pass them here ...
— The Story of Ida Pfeiffer - and Her Travels in Many Lands • Anonymous
... own brow, With all the massive strength that fills Thy home-horizon's granite hills, With rarest gifts of heart and head From manliest stock inherited, New England's stateliest type of man, In port and speech Olympian; ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... collar-button—the conventional garb of the artisan who aspires for the air of gentlemanliness while at work. His face, though fresh-shaven, was dark with the sub-cutaneous stubble of a heavy beard; his eyes were furtive, with that masked gleam of Olympian all-confidence which a detective ...
— No. 13 Washington Square • Leroy Scott
... of Jagerndorf one of them, Prince Christian of Anhalt (once captain at the Siege of Juliers) another, likewise under Ban of the Empire; [22d Jan. 1621 (ibid. p. 518).] and in short had flung about, and was flinging, his thunder-bolts in a very Olympian manner. Under all which, what could Brandenburg and the others do; but whimper some trembling protest, "Clear against Law!"—and sit obedient? The Evangelical Union did not now any more than formerly draw out its fighting-tools. ...
— History Of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. III. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—The Hohenzollerns In Brandenburg—1412-1718 • Thomas Carlyle
... Wotan, whose Olympian self-sufficiency is usually untroubled by what any mean other-person may say, at this cannot contain himself, but starting to his feet cries out a command for the blasphemous fool's annihilation! Before Alberich, however, has caught the words—his deafness perhaps it is which saves his life—Loge ...
— The Wagnerian Romances • Gertrude Hall
... perplext, where he may likeliest find Truce to his restless thoughts, and entertain The irksome hours, till his great Chief return. Part on the Plain, or in the Air sublime Upon the wing, or in swift race contend, As at th' Olympian Games or Pythian fields; 530 Part curb thir fierie Steeds, or shun the Goal With rapid wheels, or fronted Brigads form. As when to warn proud Cities warr appears Wag'd in the troubl'd Skie, and Armies rush To Battel in the Clouds, before each Van Pric forth the Aerie Knights, ...
— The Poetical Works of John Milton • John Milton
... accompaniment of the harp in festive assemblies of wholly illiterate soldiers; and that, in all probability, the various speeches introduced were not all chanted by the main voice; but that brother minstrels from time to time relieved the master, as he himself describes the Muses at the Olympian banquet, "with ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 367, May 1846 • Various
... Prince Ipsilanti, who had served in the Russian army, to march into the provinces on the Danube; but they were not helped by the Russians, and were defeated by the Turks. Ipsilanti fled into Austria; but another leader, called George the Olympian, lived a wild, outlaw life for some years longer, but as he had no rank the Greeks were too proud to join him. At last he shut himself up in the old convent of Secka, and held it out against the Turks for thirty-six hours, until, finding that he could defend it no longer, ...
— Aunt Charlotte's Stories of Greek History • Charlotte M. Yonge
... known Robert Denver for fifteen years—watched his rise through all the stages of journalism to the Olympian pinnacle of the Investigator's editorial office. In the thick-set man with grizzling hair there were few traces left of the hungry-eyed young reporter who, on his way home in the small hours, used to "bob in" on Granice, while the latter sat grinding at his plays. Denver had to ...
— Tales Of Men And Ghosts • Edith Wharton
... Herod was the honour and glory of the nation; that the Athenians had chosen him to direct the Olympian games; that he had built temples in the honour of Augustus; had been patient, ingenious, terrible; and was ...
— Herodias • Gustave Flaubert
... what are almost the old-fashioned stage terms: the productions energetic and full of painstaking detail but dominated by a dream that is a theatrical hybrid. It is neither good moving picture nor good stage play. Yet Mary could be cast as a cloudy Olympian or a church angel if her managers wanted her to be such. She herself was transfigured in the Dawn of Tomorrow, but the film-version of that play was merely a ...
— The Art Of The Moving Picture • Vachel Lindsay
... "A matter of educated taste," he said. "You don't know beauty when you see it. If you walked into a drawing-room by the side of that marvelous being, do you think you'd win a look, my dear girl? Why, your great brows and your great, wild eyes and your face and form of an Olympian and your free grace of a forest beast—why, they wouldn't be noticed. Because, Joan, that queer, poor thing knew woman's work from A to Z. She's beautiful, Joan, beautiful as God most certainly never intended her to be. Why, it's a triumph—it's something to blow a trumpet ...
— The Branding Iron • Katharine Newlin Burt
... his many qualities. In the midst of a Cabinet crisis he would hand you a postage-stamp as though it were the sole matter that concerned him. But it is also said by his intimates that he has possibilities of Olympian wrath which almost frighten people. He was certainly roused to a passion by Lord Randolph—very much to the advantage and delight of the House of Commons; for during the earlier portion of the evening, and especially while the ...
— Sketches In The House (1893) • T. P. O'Connor
... concerned themselves with human affairs, which he was heartily glad of, as they were mostly bad characters. He observed "the reign of law" as clearly as our modern scientists, and relegated the deities to their Olympian repose, so ...
— Flowers of Freethought - (Second Series) • George W. Foote
... to so little. Remember it was by the patient toil of generations through centuries that the Colossus of Rhodes, Diana's Temple at Ephesus, the Mausoleum at Halicarnassus, the Pyramids at Egypt, the Pharos at Alexandria, the Hanging Gardens at Babylon, the Olympian Zeus, the seven wonders of the world, grew day by day into enduring monuments to the greatness of humanity. By individual effort the grand result was at last achieved. So the ideal manhood and womanhood, so earnestly prophesied, will become living ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 21, August, 1891 • Various
... and they also captured a Syracusan vessel, in which they found tables on which were written the names of all the inhabitants of Syracuse, according to their tribes and houses. These tables were kept far away from the city, in the temple of the Olympian Zeus, but at that time the Syracusans had sent for them in order to discover the number of men able to bear arms. These tables were now taken by the Athenians, and carried to their general. When the soothsayers saw this roll of names, they were much alarmed, ...
— Plutarch's Lives Volume III. • Plutarch
... Byzantium. We shall have to go back to the fifteenth century, to the Fall of Constantinople, to the Revival of Learning, ere we can find a fitting parallel to match the importance of this recent find. Not since the spade of the excavator uncovered from its shroud of earth the flawless beauty of the Olympian Hermes has such a delightful acquisition been made to our knowledge of Greek literature. The name of Professor Lachsyrma has long been one to conjure with, and all of us should experience pleasure (where surprise in his case is out of the question) on learning that his ...
— Masques & Phases • Robert Ross
... Peterhouse, we read elsewhere, which was built in 1632, and consecrated by Bishop White of Ely, had a beautiful ceiling and a noble east window. "A grave divine," Fuller tells us, "preaching before the University at St. Mary's, had this smart passage in his Sermon—that as at the Olympian Games he was counted the Conqueror who could drive his chariot wheels nearest the mark yet so as not to hinder his running or to stick thereon, so he who in his Sermons could preach near Popery and yet no Popery, there was your man. And indeed it now began to be the general complaint ...
— Andrew Marvell • Augustine Birrell
... hammer fell, out of the ruin it made were shaped marvels of form; Olympian castles and giant statues, images of such savage creatures as roamed devastating the earth in days when ...
— The Car of Destiny • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... most urban-like courtesy and affability. From noon till dark, the time is spent in conversation, continued, various, and eloquent. What a presence is there in this humble, unpretending cottage! And as the stream of Olympian sweetness moves on, now in laughing ripples, and again in a solemn majestic flood, what a past do we bring before ourselves! what a present! For this is he that talked with Coleridge, that was the friend of Wilson,—and—what furnishes a more sublime ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XII. September, 1863, No. LXXI. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... might fail and call down upon them the implacable and destructive forces that could ruin them body and soul forever. For this, plainly expressed, was the form in which his terror attacked him when he thought about it. Skale was tempting the Olympian ...
— The Human Chord • Algernon Blackwood
... scarcely inclined to wrangle about their respective modes of faith, or of worship. It was indifferent to them what shape the folly of the multitude might choose to assume; and they approached with the same inward contempt, and the same external reverence, the altars of the Libyan, the Olympian, ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 1 • Edward Gibbon
... that order always existed in his class-room. I do not remember that he ever addressed me in language; at the least sign of unrest, his eye would fall on me and I was quelled. Such a feat is comparatively easy in a small class; but I have misbehaved in smaller classes and under eyes more Olympian than Fleeming Jenkin's. He was simply a man from whose reproof one shrank; in manner the least buckrammed of mankind, he had, in serious moments, an extreme dignity of goodness. So it was that he obtained a power over the most insubordinate of students, but a power of which I was myself ...
— Memoir of Fleeming Jenkin • Robert Louis Stevenson
... lines of boys, who put out their legs to trip me up in my passage through their ranks; and surmounting all difficulties, found myself within three feet of the master's high desk, or pulpit, from which he looked down upon me like the Olympian Jupiter upon ...
— Jacob Faithful • Captain Frederick Marryat
... Denver for fifteen years—watched his rise through all the stages of journalism to the Olympian pinnacle of the Investigator's editorial office. In the thick-set man with grizzling hair there were few traces left of the hungry-eyed young reporter who, on his way home in the small hours, used to "bob in" on Granice, while the latter sat grinding at his plays. ...
— The Early Short Fiction of Edith Wharton, Part 1 (of 10) • Edith Wharton
... with its "machines," its catalogue of the forces, its funeral games, has contributed more than the Odyssey to the common pattern of manufactured epics. But the essence of the poem is not to be found among the Olympians. Achilles refusing the embassy or yielding to Priam has no need of the Olympian background. The poem is in a great degree independent of "machines"; its life is in the drama of the characters. The source of all its variety is the imagination by which the characters are distinguished; the liveliness and variety ...
— Epic and Romance - Essays on Medieval Literature • W. P. Ker
... sun the need of sleep began to afflict him. He had thought he never would need sleep again. His paddle became leaden in his hands, and Olympian yawns ...
— The Fur Bringers - A Story of the Canadian Northwest • Hulbert Footner
... other, the serenely grave Olympian who uttered the words, "Let man be noble, resourceful, and good"; who gave a new content to the religious sentiment, since he conceived all existence as a perpetual change to higher conditions, and pointed out new ...
— Germany and the Next War • Friedrich von Bernhardi
... opposition also a fighting for oneself? Awake, Parlement of Paris, renew thy long warfare! Was not the Parlement Maupeou abolished with ignominy? Not now hast thou to dread a Louis XIV., with the crack of his whip, and his Olympian looks; not now a Richelieu and Bastilles: no, the whole Nation is behind thee. Thou too (O heavens!) mayest become a Political Power; and with the shakings of thy horse-hair wig shake principalities and dynasties, like a very Jove with his ...
— The French Revolution • Thomas Carlyle
... gentleman whom he regarded as the Radical doctor's dupe, fell in for a share of his view of the doctor, and Mr. Romfrey became less fitted to observe Nevil Beauchamp's doings with the Olympian gravity ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... Suppose that the story of the Incarnation (older than Jerusalem itself) be literally true—that the Almighty was the immediate father of Mary's child: Is not the birth of each and all of us as much a mystery, as great a "miracle," as though we sprang full-grown from the brow of Olympian Jove? Is it necessary that the Creator should violate his own laws to convince us that he does exist? Is it more wonderful that the sun should stand still upon Gibeon and the moon in the Valley of Ajalon than that the great world should spin forever, bringing the night and ...
— Volume 1 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... The Olympian Hippodrome, or horse-course, was a space of ground of six hundred paces long, surrounded with a wall, near the city of Elis, and on the banks of the river Alpheus. It was uneven, and in some degree irregular, on account of the situation;—in one part was a hill ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 487 - Vol. 17, No. 487. Saturday, April 30, 1831 • Various
... divine, and Peleides the swift-footed answer'd: "So let it be: let a ransom be brought, and the body surrender'd, Since the Olympian minds it in ...
— Blackwoods Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 365, March, 1846 • Various
... Immortality, are mere words, without any real meaning. The God of nineteen-twentieths of the Christian world is only Bel, Moloch, Zeus, or at best Osiris, Mithras, or Adonaï, under another name, worshipped with the old Pagan ceremonies and ritualistic formulas. It is the Statue of Olympian Jove, worshipped as the Father, in the Christian Church that was a Pagan Temple; it is the Statue of Venus, become the Virgin Mary. For the most part, men do not in their hearts believe that God is either just or merciful. They fear ...
— Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry • Albert Pike
... race and finer fed Feast and revel o'er our head, And we titmen are only able To catch the fragments from their table. Theirs is the fragrance of the fruits, While we consume the pulp and roots. What are the moments that we stand Astonished on the Olympian land! ...
— A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers • Henry David Thoreau
... called 'the elite and creme de la creme of the diocese'—were brilliantly illuminated by electric lamps and furnished magnificently throughout, in keeping with their palatial appearance. The ceilings were painted in the Italian style, with decently-clothed Olympian deities; the floors were of parquetry, polished so highly, and reflecting so truthfully, that the guests seemed to be walking, in some magical way, upon still water. Noble windows, extending from floor to roof, were draped with purple curtains, and stood open to the ...
— The Bishop's Secret • Fergus Hume
... an honour, but it is also their interest and millennial habit to secure control of every important religious movement and to incorporate rather than suppress. And this incorporation is more than mere recognition: the parvenu god borrows something from the manners and attributes of the olympian society to which he is introduced. The greater he grows, the more considerable is the process of fusion and borrowing. Hindu philosophy ever seeks for the one amongst the many and popular thought, in a more confused way, pursues the ...
— Hinduism And Buddhism, Volume II. (of 3) - An Historical Sketch • Charles Eliot
... twined around each other, they were as lovely a sight as the moon ever shone upon. Totally unlike each other, but both excellent in beauty. One might have been a model for the seraphs of Christian faith, the other an Olympian deity. ...
— Philothea - A Grecian Romance • Lydia Maria Child
... periods of twenty days. There is the woman who has found the nearest approach to nectar and ambrosia in the uncooked fruits and vegetables of the earth, which, properly pounded, are digested, and make of our sluggish bodies fit receptacles for Olympian wisdom. There are the people who have discovered the one cause of all disease. It may be uric acid or cell proliferation or hard water—there is always a complementary cure. I listened one day with much interest to an exposition of the evils ...
— Mountain Meditations - and some subjects of the day and the war • L. Lind-af-Hageby
... us not delay one hour more than is necessary," cried Marguerite clinging to her mother's arm as if to gain assent. "We surely can be ready for the next steamer of the Anchor Line (the Olympian) ...
— Marguerite Verne • Agatha Armour
... question of you—Was a God or a man the author of your laws? 'A God, Stranger. In Crete, Zeus is said to have been the author of them; in Sparta, as Megillus will tell you, Apollo.' You Cretans believe, as Homer says, that Minos went every ninth year to converse with his Olympian sire, and gave you laws which he brought from him. 'Yes; and there was Rhadamanthus, his brother, who is reputed among us to have been a most righteous judge.' That is a reputation worthy of the son of Zeus. And as you and Megillus have been trained under these laws, I may ask you ...
— Laws • Plato
... expression of regret on the discovery of the real culprit. What Harold had felt was not so much the imprisonment,—indeed he had very soon escaped by the window, with assistance from his allies, and had only gone back in time for his release,—as the Olympian habit. A word would have set all right; but of course ...
— The Golden Age • Kenneth Grahame
... the floor is the sea. Half—rather the larger half because of some instinctive right of primogeniture—is assigned to the elder of my two sons (he is, as it were, its Olympian), and the other half goes to his brother. We distribute our boards about the sea in an archipelagic manner. We then dress our islands, objecting strongly to too close a scrutiny of our proceedings until we have done. Here, in the illustration, ...
— Floor Games; a companion volume to "Little Wars" • H. G. Wells
... call me that—I am not at all like her," Halcyone answered softly. "She was very clever and very noble—but a little hard, I think. Wait until I have shown you my own goddess. I would rather have her soul than any other of the Olympian gods." ...
— Halcyone • Elinor Glyn
... princely line of Sicyon and the great house of the Alcmaeonidae. He received an elaborate education, but of all his teachers the one whom he most reverenced was the serene and humane philosopher, Anaxagoras. Pericles was conspicuous all through his career for the singular dignity of his manners, the Olympian grandeur of his eloquence, his "majestic intelligence" in Plato's phrase, his sagacity, probity, and profound Athenian patriotism. Both in voice and in appearance he was so like Pisistratus, who had once overturned the Athenian republic and ruled as a king, that for some time ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 3 of 8 • Various
... not be, We, the dark race sun-smitten, we Will speed with suppliant wands To Zeus who rules below, with hospitable hands Who welcomes all the dead from all the lands: Yea by our own hands strangled, we will go, Spurned by Olympian gods, unto ...
— Suppliant Maidens and Other Plays • AEschylus
... tells a story about a youth who, clad in a purple toga, entered the arena at the Olympian games and asked to compete with the other youths in boxing. He was derisively denied admission, presumably because he was beyond the legitimate age for juvenile contestants. Nothing daunted, the youth entered the lists of ...
— A History of Science, Volume 1(of 5) • Henry Smith Williams
... really allow for gods who were ideal men; nay, they even went the length of giving to their philosophical deity, the "universal reason," the name of Zeus by preference, though it had nothing but the name in common with the Olympian ruler of gods and men. This pervading ambiguity brought much well-deserved reproof on the Stoics even in ancient times; but, however unattractive it may seem to us, it is of significance as a manifestation of the great hold popular belief ...
— Atheism in Pagan Antiquity • A. B. Drachmann
... the spirit of humour, that most blessed of ministering angels, without which surely the heart of humanity had long since broken, by which man is able to look with a comical eye upon terrors, as it were taking themselves so seriously, coming with such Olympian thunders and lightnings to break the spirit of a mere six foot ...
— Prose Fancies (Second Series) • Richard Le Gallienne
... the downfall of the Homeric deities—how many years there were when the common people believed in the divine origin of the Odyssey, while the educated classes were more or less discreetly heretical, until at last the whole Olympian outfit became poetic myths. But strangely enough I do not recall just the date when we began to demand a ...
— The Seeker • Harry Leon Wilson
... amounted almost to justification. And as for the crime of disobedience, it will not be gainsaid that a large part of the responsibility fell on the shoulders of the lawgivers in Paris, whose decrees, coming oracularly from Olympian heights without reference to local or other concrete circumstances, inflicted heavy losses in blood and substance on the ill-starred people of Rumania. And to make matters worse, Rumania's official representatives at the Conference had been not merely ...
— The Inside Story Of The Peace Conference • Emile Joseph Dillon
... chief-clerk in the office, the sub-agent, the head-agent. All these must be submissively approached and anxiously propitiated before the petitioner's prayers can reach the ears of Jove himself, seated aloft on his remote Olympian throne. He may be, and for the most part really is—if he belongs to the old stock of aristocratic divinities—generous and gracious, incapable of meanness, baseness, or cruelty. But the tenant has to do, not with ...
— The Land-War In Ireland (1870) - A History For The Times • James Godkin
... he walked further and further from the charmed atmosphere of his Olympian girl his face grew sad with a new sort of sadness. A perception of the dilemma in which his love had placed him came back in full force. In spite of Eustacia's apparent willingness to wait through ...
— The Return of the Native • Thomas Hardy
... dawn as it fired, and weaving all fair and fleeting things into a tissue where light and music were at one, that was the task of Shelley! "To ask you for anything human," you said, "was like asking for a leg of mutton at a gin-shop." Nay, rather, like asking Apollo and Hebe, in the Olympian abodes, to give us beef for ambrosia, and port for nectar. Each poet gives what he has, and what he can offer; you spread before us fairy bread, and enchanted wine, and shall we turn away, with a sneer, because, out of all the ...
— Letters to Dead Authors • Andrew Lang
... centre to the circumference of a circle is involved in the idea of a circle, and a non-existent all-perfect Being is as inconceivable as a quadrilateral triangle. It is sometimes answered that in this way we may prove the existence of anything, —Titans, Chimaeras, or the Olympian Gods; we have but to define them as existing, and the proof is complete. But in this objection there is really nothing of weight; none of these beings are by hypothesis absolutely perfect, and, therefore, ...
— Froude's Essays in Literature and History - With Introduction by Hilaire Belloc • James Froude
... while he himself preferred to connect it with an event of 453. The inscription on the pedestal is indecisive on this point. It runs in these terms: "The Messenians and Naupactians dedicated [this statue] to the Olympian Zeus, as a tithe [of the spoils] from their enemies. Paeonius of Mende made it; and he was victorious [over his competitors] in making the acroteria for the temple." The later of the two dates mentioned by Pausanias has been generally accepted, though not without recent ...
— A History Of Greek Art • F. B. Tarbell
... nothing; silent and proud he sat in the midst of his family circle; stoically listened to the ringing of the bell, and saw strangers enter his counting-room, too proud to show any excitement. He wrapped himself in an Olympian silence, and barricaded himself from the curious questions of his children by the stern reserve ...
— Frederick the Great and His Court • L. Muhlbach
... as did the cheeks of those who spied on him. On this question the Muse declines to take sides. For certain his naked body, after these ministrations, glowed delicious within the bath-gown as he mounted again to his Olympian chamber. There he allowed Manasseh to wash out his locks in fresh water (the Collector had a fine head of hair, of a waved brown, and detested a wig), to anoint them, and tie them behind with a fresh black ribbon. This done, he took ...
— Lady Good-for-Nothing • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... whether Goethe will obtain more of their admiration as an artist, but I am certain that Byron will inspire them with more love, both as man and poet—a love increased even by the fact of the great injustice hitherto shown to him. While Goethe held himself aloof from us, and from the height of his Olympian calm seemed to smile with disdain at our desires, our struggles, and our sufferings—Byron wandered through the world, sad, gloomy, and unquiet; wounded, and bearing the arrow in the wound. Solitary ...
— Literary and Philosophical Essays • Various
... hope deferred. When I was—what I was, I still believed that this dingy carcass swaddled a Roman spirit. In the pomp of my pallet I dreamed Olympian dreams. And the dreams have ...
— If I Were King • Justin Huntly McCarthy
... shades of RA and TUM, Ye ghosts of gods Egyptian, If murmurs of our planet come To exiles in the precincts wan Where, fetish or Olympian, To help or harm no more ye list, Look down, if look ye may, and scan ...
— Ballads in Blue China and Verses and Translations • Andrew Lang
... Old Dessauer, in a sad hour lately, speaking beside the mark; and with what Olympian glance, suddenly tearless, the new King flashed out upon him, knowing nothing of "authority" that could reside in any Dessauer. Nor was that a solitary experience; the like befell wherever needed. Heinrich of Schwedt, the Ill Margraf, advancing with jocose countenance in ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XI. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... Urania, by that name If rightly thou art called, whose voice divine Following, above the Olympian hill I soar, Above the flight of Pegasean wing! The meaning, not the name, I call; for thou Nor of the Muses nine, nor on the top Of old Olympus dwell'st; but heavenly-born, Before the hills appeared or fountain flowed, Thou with Eternal ...
— The Astronomy of Milton's 'Paradise Lost' • Thomas Orchard
... commences Song's hilarious rhapsody, Just to please himself and me! Primo Cantante! Scherzo! Andante! Piano, pianissimo! Presto, prestissimo! Hark! are there nine birds or ninety and nine? And now a miraculous gurgling gushes Like nectar from Hebe's Olympian bottle, The laughter of tune from a rapturous throttle! Such melody must be a hermit-thrush's! But that other caroler, nearer, Outrivaling rivalry with clearer Sweetness incredibly fine! Is it oriole, redbird, or bluebird, Or some strange, ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 3 (of 4) • Various
... distraught of wit That thou shouldst face me, and to fight defy Me, who in might, in blood, in stature far Surpass thee? From supremest Zeus I trace My glorious birth; and from the strong Sea-god Nereus, begetter of the Maids of the Sea, The Nereids, honoured of the Olympian Gods. And chiefest of them all is Thetis, wise With wisdom world-renowned; for in her bowers She sheltered Dionysus, chased by might Of murderous Lycurgus from the earth. Yea, and the cunning God-smith welcomed she Within her mansion, when ...
— The Fall of Troy • Smyrnaeus Quintus
... Irriguous walking, and the tender boughs Of myrtles, for a wreath to bind his head, He cropt; he saw us, he address'd us thus Aloud: "Hail, strangers; who are ye, and whence Come, from what country?" Then Orestes said, "Thessalians; victims to Olympian Jove We at the stream of Alpheus go to slay." The King replied, "Be now my guests, and share The feast with me; a bullock to the Nymphs I sacrifice; at morn's first dawn arise, Then shall you go; ...
— Story of Orestes - A Condensation of the Trilogy • Richard G. Moulton
... Driscolls, the Chauncey Ellings and the other social potentates whose least doings Mrs. Spragg and Undine had followed from afar in the Apex papers, and who had come to seem so much more remote since only the width of the Central Park divided mother and daughter from their Olympian portals. ...
— The Custom of the Country • Edith Wharton
... doll never saw the beauty of the woman. Beside Phemy, Kirsty walked like an Olympian goddess beside the naiad of a brook. And Kirsty was a goddess, for she was what she had to be, and never thought ...
— Heather and Snow • George MacDonald
... said, in his most deliberate, most Olympian tone. "I believe you're entirely mistaken, I believe ... I've been informed that the Systeme Groenlandais is one of the healthiest places in the Polar regions. There ...
— The Inheritors • Joseph Conrad
... realms above: Their father is the Olympian Jove. Ne'er shall oblivion veil their front sublime, Th' indwelling god is great, nor fears the wastes ...
— Christianity and Greek Philosophy • Benjamin Franklin Cocker
... upon a contrivance to be always with her: he would be her "comic." It was a new system which had come into fashion: the most plastic performances spoiled by the juxtaposition of their caricatures; acrobats, Olympian gods, parodied by a merry-andrew in a ridiculous coat: just as though Nunkie Fuchs, for instance, had taken it into his head to appear with his Three Graces and mimic their tricks, kicking about at the end of a wire with his fat, fatherly paunch ...
— The Bill-Toppers • Andre Castaigne
... Yet let vs altogether to our Troopes, And giue them leaue to flye, that will not stay: And call them Pillars that will stand to vs: And if we thriue, promise them such rewards As Victors weare at the Olympian Games. This may plant courage in their quailing breasts, For yet is hope of Life and Victory: Foreslow no ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare
... men, choleric and powerful, thunder-bolts of war, diplomats with olympian heads, or men of genius, who can show this utter confidence, this generous devotion to weakness, this constant protection, this love without jealousy, this easy good humor with a woman. Good heavens! I place the science ...
— Sons of the Soil • Honore de Balzac
... him, beautiful as the living image of a goddess offering herself to a mortal with Olympian simplicity. So might Oenone have willed to wed with Paris. Robert stared ...
— The Proud Prince • Justin Huntly McCarthy
... came there, And the Pobble who has no toes, And the small Olympian bear, And the Dong with a luminous nose. And the Blue Baboon who played the flute, And the Orient Calf from the Land of Tute, And the Attery Squash, and the Bisky Bat,— All came and built on the lovely Hat Of ...
— Required Poems for Reading and Memorizing - Third and Fourth Grades, Prescribed by State Courses of Study • Anonymous
... some beautiful writing in this fourth scene, which may be read after Mr. Wordsworth's equally beautiful reference to the Olympian gods and goddesses, in the fourth book of the "Excursion," entitled "Despondency Corrected." The last explains more completely than the other the attributes of the deities ...
— Charles Lamb • Barry Cornwall
... with in King Canute's day. Neither soldiers nor words of the wise could check it. It flowed forward into the Campus, a sea of men and women, shop girls not caring a fig if they were "late back" and had a half-day docked, children who swarmed amid Olympian legs, babies in mothers' arms, whose presence in that crush was a matter of real terror to us less hardened British—an impetuous mass of young and old, masculine and feminine life that cared nothing for hard elbows and torn clothes as long ...
— Westward with the Prince of Wales • W. Douglas Newton
... Senior among its founders. Then came the Germantown Club, of native American boys, organized in 1855, whose highest ambition, for many years, was to play the Philadelphia Club, "barring Tom Senior," then the only fast round-arm bowler in the country. Next came the Olympian, the Delphian, the Keystone Cricket Clubs, and a host of lesser lights, whose head-quarters were at West Philadelphia; and soon after the now famous Young America Cricket Club was formed by the lamented ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Volume 11, No. 26, May, 1873 • Various
... on it. Tenacious, diligent, faithful to the torment of his neighbour, not to be torn from his purpose, nature had not formed him for nothing. He well understood how to find the flaw in Josiana's golden armour, and how to make the blood of that Olympian flow. ...
— The Man Who Laughs • Victor Hugo
... one but he can hear. Mr. George Moore collects every fragment of Irish paganism that the forgetfulness of the Catholic Church has left or possibly her wisdom preserved. There are innumerable persons with eye-glasses and green garments who pray for the return of the maypole or the Olympian games. But there is about these people a haunting and alarming something which suggests that it is just possible that they do not keep Christmas. It is painful to regard human nature in such a light, but it seems somehow possible that Mr. George Moore does not ...
— Heretics • Gilbert K. Chesterton
... likeliest find Truce to his restless thoughts, and entertain The irksome hours, till his great Chief return. Part on the plain, or in the air sublime, Upon the wing or in swift race contend, As at th' Olympian games or Pythian fields; Part curb their fiery steeds, or shun the goal With rapid wheels, or fronted brigades form: As when, to warn proud cities, war appears Waged in the troubled sky, and armies rush To battle ...
— Paradise Lost • John Milton
... Farewell, volcanic din, Olympian brattle, The bursting bomb, the thousand-throated cheer Tartarean roar, the volleyed rifle rattle, The rocket's lightning line of fire and fear. I sought my fate 'mid foes in brilliant battle, Gorging with souls the hungry atmosphere; I find my fate from one cold ...
— Soldier Songs and Love Songs • A.H. Laidlaw
... rolled across the blue sky. Peasants on horseback goaded across the desert great herds of pearly-gray cattle with long horns; and along the ancient road, straight, dusty, and bare, goat-footed shepherds, clad in thick skins, walked in silence. On the far horizon, the Sabine Chain, with its Olympian lines, unfolded its hills; and on the other edge of the cup of the sky the old walls of the city, the front of Saint John's Church, surmounted with statues which danced in black silhouette.... Silence.... A fiery sun.... The ...
— Jean-Christophe Journey's End • Romain Rolland
... about Godwin and Horne Tooke, and shuddered over each fresh incarnation of Mrs. Radcliffe. Soame Jenyns was dead, indeed, in the flesh, but his influence stalked at nights under the lamps and where disputants were gathered together in country rectories. Dr. Parr affected the Olympian nod, and crowned or checkmated reputations. "A flattering message from Dr. P——" sends our Diarist into ecstasies so excessive that a reaction sets in, and the "predominant and final effect upon my mind has been depression rather than elevation." ...
— Gossip in a Library • Edmund Gosse
... time. The world has aged. Yet the shapes are young; they do but change their clothes and follow the fashion in externals. They laugh as of old. How they laugh! No mortal can laugh so heartily. No mortal has such good cause. Theirs is not the serene mirth of Olympian spheres; it sounds demoniac, from the midway region. What are they laughing at, these cheerful monsters? At the greatest jest in ...
— Alone • Norman Douglas
... together to our troops, And give them leave to fly that will not stay, And call them pillars that will stand to us; And if we thrive, promise them such rewards As victors wear at the Olympian games. This may plant courage in their quailing breasts, For yet is hope of life and victory.— Forslow no longer; make ...
— King Henry VI, Third Part • William Shakespeare [Rolfe edition]
... dear Rinaldo, that your mere artist never does. Intent upon expressing self, he misses the detachment which alone is Olympian; whereas the critic—Tell me, why is an architect architectonic? Because he sits in his parlour, pushing the brown sherry and chatting with his clients, while his clerks express their souls for him in a back office. This lesson, O Badcocchio, I learnt ...
— Sir John Constantine • Prosper Paleologus Constantine
... Ida listened, and hesitated: before her lay the dry, dusty road, the solitary journey by land and sea, the doubtful welcome at home. And here by her side stood the wealthy lover, the very embodiment of protecting power—is not every girl's first lover in her eyes as Olympian Jove?—eager to take upon himself the burden of her life, to make her ...
— The Golden Calf • M. E. Braddon
... James Oppenheim, author of "The Olympian," was recently asked what work he was going to do when he became a man. "Oh," Ralph replied, "I'm not going to work at all." "Well, what are you going to do, then?" he was asked. "Why," he said seriously, "I'm just going to write stories, ...
— Toaster's Handbook - Jokes, Stories, and Quotations • Peggy Edmund & Harold W. Williams, compilers
... wine, In lotus-lulling languors, fond desires That heat the heart with fierce, unhallowed fires— Till Pleasure, Circe-like, transform us into swine. But if some subtler spirit thrill our clay, Some God-like flame illume this fleeting dust— Promethean fire snatched from the Olympian height— Then must we choose the nobler, higher Way, Seeking the Beautiful, the Pure, the Just— The ultimate crowned ...
— The Path of Dreams - Poems • Leigh Gordon Giltner
... it; and well do I remember the unbounded admiration, yea, the veneration, felt for him by every young man in that college and throughout the town,—indeed, throughout the whole North, for he was the pride and glory of the land. It was then that they called him godlike, looking like an Olympian statue, or one of the creations of Michael Angelo when he wished to represent majesty and dignity and power in repose,—the most commanding human presence ever seen ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume XII • John Lord
... this line of inquiry through the countless nymphs and dryads and nixies of the higher nature-worship up to the Olympian divinities of classic polytheism, would be to enter upon the history of religious belief, and in so doing to lose sight of our present purpose, which has merely been to show by what mental process the myth-maker ...
— Myths and Myth-Makers - Old Tales and Superstitions Interpreted by Comparative Mythology • John Fiske
... "Marshal," and who was to have ordered their ranks and marched at their head; and the name of their Marshal was none other than Francois Gaspard. The Superintendent himself was keeping watch over Company B, but, in a professionally Olympian scorn of processions, he was far from asking or caring to know who the Marshal was, and indeed, if he had known, he would scarcely have drawn such a lightning-quick inference as that the missing Marshal ...
— Half a Hero - A Novel • Anthony Hope
... inflamed with that earlier half-hour in the garden now breathed a portentous air. He was with the Gods ... there on the Olympian heights he drank with them, he sang songs with them, with mighty voices they applauded "Reuben Hallard." He drank in his excitement many whiskies and sodas and soon the white room with its books was like the inside of a golden shell. The old man opposite him grew in size—his face ...
— Fortitude • Hugh Walpole
... English Academy, disturbed by a "flight of Corinthian leading articles, and an irruption of Mr. G.A. Sala;" his comparison of Miss Cobbe's new religion to the British College of Health; his parallel between Phidias' statue of the Olympian Zeus and Coles' truss-manufactory; Sir William Harcourt's attempt to "develop a system of unsectarian religion from the Life of Mr. Pickwick;" the "portly jeweller from Cheapside," with his "passionate, absorbing, almost blood-thirsty ...
— Matthew Arnold • G. W. E. Russell
... wide and about fifty-six feet high, stands near the Zappeion, and formerly marked the boundary between ancient Athens and the more modern part of the city. Passing through this arch, I soon came to what remains of the temple of the Olympian Jupiter, which was commenced long before the birth of Christ and finished by Hadrian about A.D. 140. Originally this temple, after that of Ephesus said to be the largest in the world, had three rows of eight columns each, on the eastern and western fronts, and a ...
— A Trip Abroad • Don Carlos Janes
... was present, the great German poet was as usual the cynosure of the company. His imperial and splendid presence and world-wide fame marked him out from all others. Catalani was struck by the appearance of this modern Olympian god, and asked who he was. To a mind innocent of all culture except such as touched her art merely, the name "Goethe" conveyed but little significance. "Pray, on what instrument does he play?" "He is no performer, madame—he is the renowned ...
— Great Singers, First Series - Faustina Bordoni To Henrietta Sontag • George T. Ferris
... had the appearance of taking his time as lightly as did the Olympian deities; and it was clear that he would wait patiently until the sun set and rose again rather than yield one jot or tittle of his right upon the muddy road. While he gazed placidly over Fletcher's head into the golden distance, he removed his big straw hat ...
— The Deliverance; A Romance of the Virginia Tobacco Fields • Ellen Glasgow
... persons always do in these boarding-houses, but Father changed the subject, in a slightly peppery manner. Father could be playful with Mother, but, like all men who are worth anything, he could be as Olympian as a king or a woman author or a box-office manager when he was afflicted by young men who chewed gum and were chatty. He put his gold-bowed eye-glasses on the end of his nose and looked over them so wealthily that the summerites were awed and shyly ate their apple-sauce ...
— The Innocents - A Story for Lovers • Sinclair Lewis
... richer than Shakespear, Ibsen, or Strindberg in specific talent as a playwright, is in the empyrean whilst they are gnashing their teeth in impotent fury in the mud, or at best finding an acid enjoyment in the irony of their predicament. Goethe is Olympian: the other giants are infernal in everything but their veracity and their repudiation of the irreligion of their time: that is, they are bitter and hopeless. It is not a question of mere dates. Goethe was an Evolutionist in 1830: many playwrights, ...
— Back to Methuselah • George Bernard Shaw
... will then have the satisfaction of finding that, as at the opening of authentic history, she found the Roman, the Greek, and the Asiatic inaugural events coinciding in the same exact focus, so in these semi-fabulous or ante-Olympian events, she finds that one and the same effort of memory serves to register them, and also the most splendid of the Jewish eras—that of David and Solomon. The round sum of 1000 years B.C., so easily remembered, without distinction, without modification, 'sans phrase' (to quote a brutal regicide), ...
— The Posthumous Works of Thomas De Quincey, Vol. II (2 vols) • Thomas De Quincey
... pleasingly narrated, that at the feast which Jupiter gave on the birth of Venus, Poverty modestly stood at the gate of the palace to gather the fragments of the celestial banquet; when she observed the god of riches, inebriated with nectar, roll out of the heavenly residence, and passing into the Olympian Gardens, throw himself on a vernal bank. She seized this opportunity to become familiar with the god. The frolicsome deity honoured her with his caresses; and from this amour sprung the god of Love, who resembles his father in jollity and mirth, and his mother in his nudity. The allegory ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 1 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... mighty glad that Clarice felt this way about Hartman's coming; she has not waked up so, or come down from her Olympian clouds of indifference, in a long time. But still I thought it best to go around and make some more preparations. When I have a secret to carry, it oppresses my frank and open nature more than you would think; and I find that I can conceal it best by inquiring concerning the matter of it of persons ...
— A Pessimist - In Theory and Practice • Robert Timsol
... all that followed after, Light the derision of the sky, Light the divine Olympian laughter Of kindlier gods in days gone by: Low to her lover whispered Venus, "The shameless net be praised for this— When night herself no more could screen us It snared us one more ...
— Collected Poems - Volume One (of 2) • Alfred Noyes
... in fact, had been so brief that Roy had only just become aware that his cherished dream was actually trembling in the balance—when Nevil stood up and faced him, flatly defying Jane and Olympian irony. ...
— Far to Seek - A Romance of England and India • Maud Diver
... Love," and thank anew the art of printing, and the cheerful domain of ancient thinking. Plutarch charms by the facility of his associations; so that it signifies little where you open his book, you find yourself at the Olympian tables. His memory is like the Isthmian Games, where all that was excellent in Greece was assembled, and you are stimulated and recruited by lyric verses, by philosophic sentiments, by the forms and behavior of heroes, by the worship of the gods, and by the passing of fillets, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I., No. 3, January 1858 - A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics • Various
... Otus and Ephialtes, in ancient Greek legend, the twin-sons of Poseidon by Iphimedeia, wife of Aloeus. They were celebrated for their extraordinary stature and strength. According to Homer (Od. xi. 305). they made war upon the Olympian gods and endeavoured to pile Pelion upon Ossa in order to storm heaven itself; had they reached the age of manhood, their attempt would have been successful, but Apollo destroyed them before their beards began to grow. In the Iliad (v. 365) Ares is imprisoned by them, but delivered by Hermes. ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... years I am writing. Contemporaries are only too well aware of the facts and posterity will find them dehydrated in textbooks. I started out to tell of my own personal part in the coming of the Grass, not to take an Olympian and aloof view of the passion ...
— Greener Than You Think • Ward Moore
... the end, and made him rebellious against everything bearing the paternal name. He assailed the Father of the Hebrew theocracy with amazing bitterness, and joined Prometheus in cursing and dethroning Zeus, the Olympian usurper. With him, tyrant and father were synonymous, and he has drawn the old Cenci, in the play of that name, with the same fierce, unfilial pencil, dipped in blood and wormwood. Shelley was by nature, self-instruction, and inexperience of life, impatient and full of impulse; and the ...
— Atlantic Monthly Vol. 6, No. 33, July, 1860 • Various
... instance of "discovered mate,") the numberless Mirandas of Romance have played for and been played for mates. Chess has even its Mythology,—Cassa being now, we believe, generally received at the Olympian Feasts. True, some one has been wicked enough to observe that all chess-stories are divisible into two classes,—in one a man plays for his own soul with the Devil, in the other the hero plays and wins a wife,—and to beg for a chess-story ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 32, June, 1860 • Various
... I to offer you a shake hands," he inquired smilingly; "or shall I continue to invoke the Olympian gods with classically ...
— Barbarians • Robert W. Chambers
... all the aims for which I summoned forth The people, was there one I compassed not? Thou, when slow time brings justice in its train, O mighty mother of the Olympian gods, Dark Earth, thou best canst witness, from whose breast I swept the pillars broadcast planted there, And made thee free, who hadst been slave of yore. And many a man whom fraud or law had sold For from his god-built land, ...
— The Athenian Constitution • Aristotle
... different, somehow; the very girls themselves have grown a head taller, and look serious, stately, and dignified, like Olympian goddesses, even when they are dancing and ...
— Social Pictorial Satire • George du Maurier
... the artist will never sit calmly on Olympian heights, as we have become accustomed to represent them to ourselves. The thinker or the artist should suffer in company with the people, in order that he may find salvation or consolation. Besides this, he will suffer because he is always and ...
— What To Do? - thoughts evoked by the census of Moscow • Count Lyof N. Tolstoi
... concluding words of Elsner's letter of September 14, 1834] that we can no longer see each other and exchange our opinions! I have got so much to tell you. I should like also to thank you for the present, which is doubly precious to me. I wish I were a bird, so that I might visit you in your Olympian dwelling, which the Parisians take for a swallow's nest. Farewell, love me, as I do you, for I shall always remain your sincere ...
— Frederick Chopin as a Man and Musician - Volume 1-2, Complete • Frederick Niecks
... that Washington in his Olympian quiet took a real satisfaction in his election. On January 20, 1793, he wrote to Governor Henry ...
— George Washington • William Roscoe Thayer
... and he laughed a little too, even if he was a philosopher, "boys will be boys, and those seem two fine strong little fellows of yours. One of these days they'll be competing in the Olympian games, I suppose, and how proud you will be if they should bring home the wreath ...
— The Spartan Twins • Lucy (Fitch) Perkins |
