"Pyrrhus" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... deserve. For otherwise, there is all that is in the French play, verbatim, and something more, as may be seen in the last act, where what is dully recited in the French play is there represented, which is no small advantage."[350] And true, it is, Pyrrhus is slain before our eyes; there are "alarums" and other ...
— The English Novel in the Time of Shakespeare • J. J. Jusserand
... the Life of Antony Anecdotes from the Life of Agesilaus The Brothers; from the Life of Timoleon The Wound of Philopoemen A Roman Triumph; from the Life of Paulus Aemilius The Noble Character of Caius Fabricius; from the Life of Pyrrhus From the Life of Quintus Fabius Maximus The Cruelty of Lucius Cornelius Sylla The Luxury of Lucullus From the Life of Sertorius the Roman, who endeavored to establish a separate Government for himself ...
— The Boys' and Girls' Plutarch - Being Parts of The "Lives" of Plutarch • Plutarch
... for saying little things agreeably, which is perhaps the very top of mere culture, and in literature is the next best thing to the power of saying great things as easily as if they were little German learning, like the elephants of Pyrrhus, is always in danger of turning upon what it was intended to adorn and reinforce, and trampling it ponderously to death. And yet what do we not owe it? Mastering all languages, all records of intellectual man, it has been able, or has enabled others, to strip away the ...
— Among My Books - First Series • James Russell Lowell
... was improving on the somewhat similar expedient ascribed by Polybius to King Pyrrhus, who mingled alternate cohorts, armed with short weapons after the Roman fashion, with those of his Macedonian spearmen. Lib. ...
— The History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella The Catholic, V2 • William H. Prescott
... whose toppling at the last Bears crash and ruin, and wide away the Danaans are down cast Beneath its fall: but more come on: nor drift of stones doth lack, Nor doth all kind of weapon-shot at any while grow slack. Lo, Pyrrhus in the very porch forth to the door doth pass Exulting; bright with glittering points and flashing of the brass; 470 —E'en as a snake to daylight come, on evil herbage fed, Who, swollen, 'neath the chilly soil hath had his winter bed, And now, his ancient ...
— The AEneids of Virgil - Done into English Verse • Virgil
... joints and bones, and not from accidental increase and decrease of their covering. There is more hidden art in his sitting attitudes upon the quaint lounges of the period; whether rebuking his own remissness, or listening to "the rugged Pyrrhus," or playing upon old Polonius,—setting his breast, as it were, against the ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 103, May, 1866 • Various
... Pyrrhus, invited by the inhabitants of Tarentum and aided by their fleet, landed in Italy with twenty-six thousand infantry, three thousand horses, and the first elephants which had been seen in Italy. This was two hundred and eighty years ...
— The Art of War • Baron Henri de Jomini
... duty. "The companion of fools shall be destroyed." "Though hand join in hand the guilty shall not go unpunished." "This is Fabricius, the man whom it is more difficult to turn from his integrity, than the sun from his course."—Pyrrhus. ...
— The Choctaw Freedmen - and The Story of Oak Hill Industrial Academy • Robert Elliott Flickinger
... According to Aelianus Tacticus and Polybius, he wrote a number of treatises (Upomnemata) on the subject; the only one extant deals with the best methods of defending a fortified city. An epitome of the whole was made by Cineas, minister of Pyrrhus, king of Epirus. The work is chiefly valuable as containing a large number of historical illustrations. Aeneas was considered by Casaubon to have been a contemporary of Xenophon and identical with the ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... light; When Sinon, favor'd by the partial gods, Unlock'd the horse, and op'd his dark abodes; Restor'd to vital air our hidden foes, Who joyful from their long confinement rose. Tysander bold, and Sthenelus their guide, And dire Ulysses down the cable slide: Then Thoas, Athamas, and Pyrrhus haste; Nor was the Podalirian hero last, Nor injur'd Menelaus, nor the fam'd Epeus, who the fatal engine fram'd. A nameless crowd succeed; their forces join T' invade the town, oppress'd with sleep and wine. Those few they find awake first meet their fate; ...
— The Aeneid • Virgil
... louder cries, when Ilium was in flames, Were sent to Heaven by woful Trojan dames, 700 When Pyrrhus toss'd on high his burnish'd blade, And offer'd Priam to his father's shade, Than for the cock the widow'd poultry made. Fair Partlet first, when he was borne from sight, With sovereign shrieks bewail'd her captive knight: Far louder than the Carthaginian wife, When Asdrubal, her ...
— The Poetical Works of John Dryden, Vol II - With Life, Critical Dissertation, and Explanatory Notes • John Dryden
... saw, with some good measure of kindly feeling? On the other hand, who is there that can fail to hate Tarquinius Superbus, Spurius Cassius, Spurius Maelius? Our dominion in Italy was at stake in wars under two commanders, Pyrrhus and Hannibal. On account of the good faith of the one, we hold him in no unfriendly remembrance; [Footnote: Pyrrhus, after the only victory that he obtained over the Romans, treated his prisoners with ...
— De Amicitia, Scipio's Dream • Marcus Tullius Ciceronis
... and renders the common causes, excuses, manners, etc., of war can never have escaped competent readers; but it must have struck more persons of late than perhaps at any former time. It would be impertinent to particularise largely; but if the famous adaptation and amplification of the old Pyrrhus story in the counsel of Spadassin and Merdaille to Picrochole were printed in small type as the centre of a fathom-square sheet, the whole margin could be more than filled with extracts, from German books and newspapers, of advice to Kaiser Wilhelm II. Nor is there anything, in literature ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 1 - From the Beginning to 1800 • George Saintsbury
... behaviour at the coronation," he says, "was justly admired and commended by every one, and particularly his manner of seating himself on the throne after his coronation. No actor in the character of Pyrrhus, in the Distressed Mother,—not even Booth himself, who was celebrated for it in the Spectator[110],—ever ascended the throne with so much grace and dignity. There was another particular which those only could observe who ...
— Coronation Anecdotes • Giles Gossip
... freedom did bestow, 235 Our princes worship, with a blow. King PYRRHUS cur'd his splenetic And testy courtiers with a kick. The NEGUS, when some mighty lord Or potentate's to be restor'd 240 And pardon'd for some great offence, With which be's willing to dispense, First has him laid upon his belly, Then beaten back and side to a jelly; That done, he rises, ...
— Hudibras • Samuel Butler
... affection and warmth of feeling, though he has never seen them? Or who but loathes Tarquinius Superbus, Spurius Cassius, Spurius Maelius? We have fought for empire in Italy with two great generals, Pyrrhus and Hannibal. For the former, owing to his probity, we entertain no great feelings of enmity: the latter, owing to his cruelty, our country has detested and ...
— Treatises on Friendship and Old Age • Marcus Tullius Cicero
... Argus, Pyrrhus was killed by the tile of a roof thrown by a woman, and Abimelech was slain by a stone that a woman threw from the tower of Thebes, and Earl Montfort was destroyed by a rock discharged at him by a woman ...
— The Wedding Ring - A Series of Discourses for Husbands and Wives and Those - Contemplating Matrimony • T. De Witt Talmage
... Seleucids. A welcome complement to these instructive works is now furnished by Mr. Tarn's comprehensive treatment of an important chapter in the history of the Antigonids. It is surely the irony of posthumous fame that whereas every schoolboy knows something about Pyrrhus—how he fought the Romans with elephants, and eventually met a somewhat ignoble death from the hand of an old Argive woman who dropped a tile on his head—but few outside the ranks of historical students ...
— Political and Literary essays, 1908-1913 • Evelyn Baring
... in the civil wars, whose head nobody durst cut off for fear of the dog that guarded his body, and fought in his defence. The same author relates that King Pyrrhus, in the course of one of his journies, observed a dog watching over a dead body; and hearing that he had been there three days without meat or drink, ordered the body to be buried, and the dog taken care of and brought to him. A few days afterwards there was a muster ...
— Anecdotes of Dogs • Edward Jesse
... moisir au ratelier; Sa hache de bataille aisement se decroche; Malheur a l'action mauvaise qui s'approche Trop pres d'Eviradnus, le champion d'acier! La mort tombe de lui comme l'eau du glacier. Il est heros; il a pour cousine la race Des Amadis de France et des Pyrrhus de Thrace. Il rit des ans. Cet homme, a qui le monde entier N'eut pas fait dire Grace! et demander quartier, Ira-t-il pas crier au temps: Misericorde! Il s'est, comme Baudoin, ceint les reins d'une corde; Tout vieux qu'il est, il est de la grande tribu; Le moins fier des oiseaux n'est pas l'aigle ...
— La Legende des Siecles • Victor Hugo
... examples can be quoted in our favor? Did not Appius the Blind, by the force of his eloquence dissuade the Senate from making a shameful peace with Pyrrhus? Did not Cicero's divine eloquence appear more popular than the Agrarian law he attacked? Did it not disconcert the audacious measures of Cataline? And did not he, even in his civil capacity, obtain by it honors that are conferred ...
— The Training of a Public Speaker • Grenville Kleiser
... survived; the most important kingdom formed by a general of Alexander was that of the Ptolemies in Egypt. The throne of Macedonia was long and obstinately contended for by Cassander, Polysperchon, Lysimachus, Pyrrhus, Antigonus, and others; but at last was secured by the dynasty of Antigonus Gonatas. The old republics of southern Greece suffered severely during these tumults, and the only Greek states that showed any strength and spirit were the cities of the Achaean league, the AEtolians, ...
— The Fifteen Decisive Battles of The World From Marathon to Waterloo • Sir Edward Creasy, M.A.
... is at hand! A little while, and thou too shalt sleep no more, but thy very dreams shall be mimic battles; thou too, with old Arnauld, wilt have to say in stern patience: 'Rest? Rest? Shall I not have all Eternity to rest in?' Celestial Nepenthe! though a Pyrrhus conquer empires, and an Alexander sack the world, he finds thee not; and thou hast once fallen gently, of thy own accord, on the eyelids, on the heart of every mother's child. For as yet, sleep and waking are one: the fair Life-garden rustles infinite around, and everywhere is dewy fragrance, and ...
— Sartor Resartus - The Life and Opinions of Herr Teufelsdrockh • Thomas Carlyle
... thousand men, were beheaded in the forum at Rome. But they, in the first place, did not put themselves under the direction of Atrius the Umbrian, scarcely superior to a scullion, whose name even was ominous, but of Decius Jubellius, a military tribune; nor did they unite themselves with Pyrrhus, or with the Samnites or Lucanians, the enemies of the Roman people. But you made common cause with Mandonius and Indibilis, and intended also to have united your arms with them. They intended to have held Rhegium as a lasting settlement, as the Campanians held Capua, which they took from its ancient ...
— History of Rome, Vol III • Titus Livius
... worth in more conspicuous light Through the surrounding shades of envious night. Great Phocion next, who mourn'd an equal fate, Expell'd and exiled from his parent state; A foul reward! by party rage decreed, For acts that well might claim a nobler meed: There Pyrrhus, with Numidia's king behind, Ever in faithful league with Rome combined, The bulwark of his state. Another nigh, Of Syracuse, I saw, a firm ally To Italy, like him. But deadly hate, Repulsive frowns, and ...
— The Sonnets, Triumphs, and Other Poems of Petrarch • Petrarch
... to love and emulate the heroes of the Iliad. According to the traditions of his family, the blood of Achilles actually ran in the veins of Alexander; [His mother Olympias was the daughter of Neoptolemus, king of Epirus who claimed descent from Pyrrhus, the son of Achilles.] and Lysimachus nourished the feeling which that circumstance was calculated to awaken by giving him the name of that hero, whilst he called Philip Peleus, and himself Phoenix. But the most striking feature in Alexander's education was, that he had Aristotle ...
— A Smaller History of Greece • William Smith
... that the Greeks might have a safe return to their homes. In the belly of this there hid themselves certain of the bravest of the chiefs, as Menelaues, and Ulysses, and Thoas the AEtolian, and Machaon the great physician, and Pyrrhus, son of Achilles (but Achilles himself was dead, slain by Paris, Apollo helping, even as he was about to take the city), and others also, and with them Epeius himself. But the rest of the people made as if they had ...
— Famous Tales of Fact and Fancy - Myths and Legends of the Nations of the World Retold for Boys and Girls • Various
... exclaimed, intolerant of any mention of the Liberals as a party, especially in the hour of Radical discomfiture, when the fact that compromisers should exist exasperates men of a principle. 'Your Liberals are the band of Pyrrhus, an army of bastards, mercenaries professing the practicable for pay. They know us the motive force, the Tories the resisting power, and they feign to aid us in battering our enemy, that they may stop the shock. We fight, they ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... Trojan war it may be stated that, of the prominent Trojans, AEneas alone escaped. After many years of wanderings he landed in Italy with a small company of Trojans; and the Roman writers trace to him the origin of their nation. Priam was killed by Pyrrhus, the son of Achilles, during the burning of Troy; while Achilles himself fell some time before, shot with an arrow in the heel by Paris, as Hector had prophesied would be the manner of his death. Ajax, after the death of Achilles, had a contest with Ulysses for the ...
— Mosaics of Grecian History • Marcius Willson and Robert Pierpont Willson
... to the long preliminary fight under the walls of Troy, and Ragnarok, the grand closing drama of Northern mythology, to the burning of that famous city. "Thor is Hector; the Fenris wolf, Pyrrhus, son of Achilles, who slew Priam (Odin); and Vidar, who survives in Ragnarok, is AEneas." The destruction of Priam's palace is the type of the ruin of the gods' golden halls; and the devouring wolves Hati, Skoell, ...
— Myths of the Norsemen - From the Eddas and Sagas • H. A. Guerber
... the want of suggesting to you to consider whether you preferred to weave your account of me into the main context of your history, or whether, as many Greek writers have done—Callisthenes, the Phocian War; Timaeus, the war of Pyrrhus; Polybius, that of Numantia; all of whom separated the wars I have named from their main narratives—you would, like them, separate the civil conspiracy from public and external wars. For my part, I do not see that it matters much to my reputation, ...
— The Letters of Cicero, Volume 1 - The Whole Extant Correspodence in Chronological Order • Marcus Tullius Cicero |
