"Pythoness" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... palace, where was a white marble chair or throne on a basement. Lawrence was sitting on this throne in great excitement. He wore an Afghan choga, a sort of dressing-gown garment, and this, and his thin locks, and thin beard were streaming in the wind. He always dwells in my memory as a sort of pythoness on ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo Volume 1 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa
... he went, disguised, secretly and by night, for he loved mystery, and in truth it was hardly safe that he should visit her by the light of day. Seated in a shadowed chamber he poured out his artless tale to the pythoness, of course concealing all names. He might have spared himself this trouble, as he was an old client of Meg's, a fact that no disguise could keep from her. Before he opened his lips she knew perfectly what was the name of his inamorata and indeed all ...
— Lysbeth - A Tale Of The Dutch • H. Rider Haggard
... resignedly, drawing the golden head of the pythoness down until the small, pink ear was level with her lips, "if you must know, ...
— The President - A novel • Alfred Henry Lewis
... in this spurring harangue; Lisbeth frightened her. The peasant-woman's face was terrible; her piercing black eyes had the glare of the tiger's; her face was like that we ascribe to a pythoness; she set her teeth to keep them from chattering, and her whole frame quivered convulsively. She had pushed her clenched fingers under her cap to clutch her hair and support her head, which felt too heavy; she was on fire. The smoke ...
— Cousin Betty • Honore de Balzac
... and thereupon he drew two long questions out of his pocket. In the first he desired to know how to obtain a favourable decision from the States-General in an important matter, the details of which he explained. I replied in terms, the obscurity of which would have done credit to a professed Pythoness, and I left Esther to translate the answer into common sense, and find a ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... a moment as a Pythoness Stands on her tripod, agonized, and full Of inspiration gathered from distress, When all the heart-strings like wild horses pull The heart asunder;—then, as more or less Their speed abated or their strength grew dull, She sunk down on her ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 6 • Lord Byron
... on St Cecilia's Day are both admirable in different ways. "Alexander's Feast," like Burns's "Tam o' Shanter," seems to come out at once "as from a mould." It is pure inspiration, but of the second order—rather that of the Greek Pythoness than of the Hebrew prophet. Coleridge or Wordsworth makes the objection to it, that the Bacchus it describes is the mere ...
— The Poetical Works of John Dryden, Vol II - With Life, Critical Dissertation, and Explanatory Notes • John Dryden
... sing in any school and any language. The music of Mozart and Cimarosa, Boieldieu and Eossini, Cherubini and Bellini, Donizetti and Meyerbeer, furnished in equal measure the mold into which her great powers poured themselves with a sort of inspired fury, like that of a Greek Pythoness. She had an artistic individuality powerful to create types of its own, which were the despair of other singers, for they were incapable of reproduction, inasmuch as they were partly forged from her own defects, transformed ...
— Great Singers, Second Series - Malibran To Titiens • George T. Ferris
... upon his spirit—he felt too buoyant for the earth—he longed for wings, nay, it seemed in the buoyancy of his new existence, as if he possessed them. He burst involuntarily into a loud and thrilling laugh. He clapped his hands—he bounded aloft—he was as a Pythoness inspired; suddenly as it came this preternatural transport passed, though only partially, away. He now felt his blood rushing loudly and rapidly through his veins; it seemed to swell, to exult, to leap along, as a stream that has burst ...
— The Last Days of Pompeii • Edward George Bulwer-Lytton
... expectations; but when he expressed his intention to share them with Miss Rose Bradwardine, ecstasy had almost deprived the honest man of his senses. The Bailie started from his three-footed stool like the Pythoness from her tripod; flung his best wig out of the window, because the block on which it was placed stood in the way of his career; chucked his cap to the ceiling, caught it as it fell; whistled 'Tullochgorum'; danced a Highland fling with inimitable ...
— Waverley, Or 'Tis Sixty Years Hence, Complete • Sir Walter Scott
... direction of his genius." Nature must "burst out with a kind of fine madness and divine inspiration." The madness must be fine. How can art aid it to this end? By knowledge of, by sympathy and emulation with, "the great poets and prose writers of the past." By these we may be inspired, as the Pythoness by Apollo. From the genius of the past "an effluence breathes upon us." The writer is not to imitate, but to keep before him the perfection of what has been done by the greatest poets. He is to look on them as beacons; he is to keep them ...
— On the Sublime • Longinus
... poem as the "Vision of Judgment" could not have been written in a desponding mood): "a man's poetry is a distinct faculty or soul, and has no more to do with the every-day individual than the inspiration of the Pythoness when removed from her tripod." To which Moore observes: "My remark has been hasty and inconsiderate, and Lord Byron's is the view borne out by all experience. Almost all the tragic and gloomy writers have been, in social life, mirthful ...
— My Recollections of Lord Byron • Teresa Guiccioli |
