"Racine" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... contemptible rival to eclipse the splendour of sterling merit. Thus Crowne and Settle for a time disturbed the serenity of Dryden. Voltaire says, the Phaedra of Pradon has not less passion than that of Racine, but expressed in rugged verse and barbarous language. Pradon is now forgotten: and the whole French poetry of the Augustan age of Louis the Fourteenth is threatened with the same fate. Hayley for a few ...
— Thoughts on Man - His Nature, Productions and Discoveries, Interspersed with - Some Particulars Respecting the Author • William Godwin
... festivity of imagination, and a simplicity of heart, that made him proof against its rubs and trials. He was an excellent scholar; well acquainted with Latin and Greek, and fond of the modern classics. His book was his elysium; once immersed in the pages of Voltaire, Corneille, or Racine, or of his favorite English author, Shakespeare, he forgot the world and all its concerns. Often would he be seen in summer weather, seated under one of the trees on the Battery, or the portico of St. Paul's church in Broadway, his bald head uncovered, his hat lying by his side, ...
— The Adventures of Captain Bonneville - Digested From His Journal • Washington Irving
... indulgent to his imagination; that he had created too much. He would make a second experiment, in which he would enforce his theory with more vigour. In the composition of Paradise Lost he must have experienced that the constraint he imposed upon himself had generated, as was said of Racine, "a plenitude of soul." He might infer that were the compression carried still further, the reaction of the spirit might be still increased. Poetry he had said long before should be "simple, sensuous, impassioned" (Tractate ...
— Milton • Mark Pattison
... the lectures. It was a joy to hear the theory of education, there was such freedom and pleasure in ranging over the very stuff of knowledge, and seeing how it moved and lived and had its being. How happy Racine made her! She did not know why. But as the big lines of the drama unfolded themselves, so steady, so measured, she felt a thrill as of being in the realm of the reality. Of Latin, she was doing Livy and Horace. The curious, intimate, gossiping ...
— The Rainbow • D. H. (David Herbert) Lawrence
... studies in regard to it. Mathematics, the science of war, geometry, and finally politics, were the objects of his zeal; but alongside of these he read and studied earnestly the works of Voltaire, Corneille, Racine, Montaigne, the Abbe Raynal, and, above all, the works of Jean Jacques Rousseau, whose passionate and enthusiastic disciple Napoleon Bonaparte was at that time. [Footnote: "Memoires du Roi Joseph," vol. ...
— The Empress Josephine • Louise Muhlbach
... si tous les grands ecrivains de l'epoque romantique depuis Victor Hugo jusqu'a Balzac et depuis Alfred de Vigny jusqu'a Merimee, lui doivent tous et se sont tous glorifies de lui devoir quelque chose. . . . Il doit nous suffire pour l'instant d'affirmer que l'influence de Walter Scott est a la racine meme des grandes oeuvres qui ont donne au nouveau genre tant d'eclat dans notre litterature; que c'est elle qui les a inspirees, suscitees, fait eclore; que sans lui nous n'aurions ni 'Hans d'Islande,' ni ...
— A History of English Romanticism in the Nineteenth Century • Henry A. Beers
... Shakespeare, mit einigen bescheidenen Vernderungen, unsern Deutschen bersetzt htte, ich weiss gewiss, es wrde von bessern Folgen gewesen sein, als dass man sie mit dem Corneille und Racine so bekannt gemacht hat. Erstlich wrde das Volk an jenem weit mehr Geschmack gefunden haben, als es an diesen nicht finden kann; und zweitens wrde jener ganz andre Kpfe unter uns erweckt haben, als ...
— An anthology of German literature • Calvin Thomas
... spoken of his favourites, let me also speak of his dislikes; Racine, whom he cannot bear; Molire, whom he does not really like; Buffon, whom he frankly detests for his too fluent prose, his ostentatious style, and his vain rhetoric. The only naturalist whom he might really have delighted in, had he possessed his works and been able to ...
— Fabre, Poet of Science • Dr. G.V. (C.V.) Legros
... and some of the illustrations for a fine edition of Racine, and painted a picture of AEneas and Anchises in the Burning ...
— A History of Art for Beginners and Students - Painting, Sculpture, Architecture • Clara Erskine Clement
... the chorus in the manner of the ancients, since it is "the root and original, and ... certainly always the most necessary part of Tragedy."[7] Moreover he praised (as had Dacier) the example of Racine, who had introduced the chorus into the plays that he had written for private performance, by the young ladies of St. Cyr—Esther (1689) and Athalie (1691). As is well known, he even went so far as to ...
— The Preface to Aristotle's Art of Poetry • Andre Dacier
... species of literature was cultivated by the French writers of this era, yet it was in the province of the Drama that the greatest number of eminent authors appeared. The three great names here are those of Corneille (1606-1684), Racine ...
— A General History for Colleges and High Schools • P. V. N. Myers
... principal feature is the just and animated protest they contain against the literary taste of the present day in France; a taste for the perverted, the horrible, the monstrous; a taste that welcomes Victor Hugo with outstretched arms, and retains but a frigid recollection of Racine. With this literary taste is intimately connected an unhealthy and feverish condition of the moral sentiments, against which the lecturer directs his most eloquent attacks; so that his book may be commended for its sound ethical as ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Vol. 56, No. 346, August, 1844 • Various
... poet having consulted him on a tragedy full of extraordinary incidents, Voltaire pointed out to him the defects of his piece. The writer replied, that he had purposely forsaken the beaten track of Corneille and Racine. "So much the worse," replied Voltaire, "originality is nothing but ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor - Vol I, No. 2, February 1810 • Samuel James Arnold
... the personal character of a writer which gives him his public significance. It is not imparted by his genius. Napoleon said of Corneille, "Were he living I would make him a king;" but he did not read him. He read Racine, yet he said nothing of the kind of Racine. It is for the same reason that La Fontaine is held in such high esteem among the French. It is not for his worth as a poet, but for the greatness of his character which ...
— Pearls of Thought • Maturin M. Ballou
... brother write you that we went together to the first representation of Britannicus? Some admirers of Racine had praised the piece so much to me, that not being able to get a box, I sent my valet at ten o'clock to keep a place for me. I thought that I should never reach the Hotel de Bourgogne, although I left my carriage at ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, April 1844 - Volume 23, Number 4 • Various
... Constantin, the French master, has come to me with a complaint. Two days ago, for trying to dazzle him during lessons with a sun-glass, he gave a boy named Dawkins 500 lines. To-day, instead of the usual Racine, Dawkins handed him lines copied from an advertisement in the daily press beginning:—"Perhaps you are suddenly becoming stout, or it may be that you have been putting on weight for years...." As Constantin is disposed to adiposity, ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, February 4, 1914 • Various
... comedy. Many a droll scene, many a comedy even, may be referred to this simple type. Read the speech of Chicanneau in the Plaideurs: here we find lawsuits within lawsuits, and the mechanism works faster and faster—Racine produces in us this feeling of increasing acceleration by crowding his law terms ever closer together—until the lawsuit over a truss of hay costs the plaintiff the best part of his fortune. And again the same arrangement occurs in certain scenes ...
— Laughter: An Essay on the Meaning of the Comic • Henri Bergson
... RACINE, the younger contemporary of Corneille, and his rival for supremacy in French classical tragedy, was born at Ferte-Milon, December 21, 1639. He was educated at the College of Beauvais, at the great Jansenist school at Port ...
— Phaedra • Jean Baptiste Racine
... nature made me prefer, and that I have no power of accommodating my taste to the verdict of the critical. If I do not like an author, I leave him alone, however great his reputation. Thus I do not care for Mr. Gibbon, except in his Autobiography, nor for the elegant plays of M. Racine, nor very much for some of Wordsworth, though his genius is undeniable, nor excessively for the late Prof. Amiel. Why should we force ourselves into an affection for them, any more than into a relish for olives or claret, both of which excellent creatures I have the misfortune to dislike? No spectacle ...
— Letters on Literature • Andrew Lang
... about you!' Yes, Vernon, and I believe the fellow looks up to you as the head of the establishment. I am not jealous. Provided he attends to his functions! There's a French philosopher who's for naming the days of the year after the birthdays of French men of letters. Voltaire-day, Rousseau-day, Racine-day, so on. Perhaps Vernon will inform us ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... us such a natural, living Phaedra that we were all strongly moved. How fine a part it is! As a youngster I used to learn verses from 'Phaedra' by heart. I am told that in France devotion to classical tradition is growing weaker, and that Moliere and Racine are more and more seldom played. What a pity! Our people, on the contrary, remain faithful to their great poets and enjoy their works. After school comes college, and after college—the theatre. It should elevate and expand the soul. The people do not need any representation ...
— William of Germany • Stanley Shaw
... thirteen, but he had a strange idea of prosody. In order to get lines of the same length he wrote his words between two parallel lines traced from the top to the bottom of the page. His system of versification seemed to be correct when applied to the Alexandrine verse of Racine; but when he saw the fables of La Fontaine, in which the lines are very irregular, he began to distrust ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 4 • Charles Dudley Warner
... there; translate and write out for me these five pages of English into French, and learn these fifty lines of Racine," said Monsieur Malin, as he put Blackall in, and, locking the door, took away the key. "I will report your conduct to the Doctor, and hear what he has to ...
— Ernest Bracebridge - School Days • William H. G. Kingston
... broke out with one of the speeches of Racine's Phaedra, hushing her companions on the instant. "You'll be the English Rachel," said Basil Dashwood ...
— The Tragic Muse • Henry James
... daughter of Ahab and Jezebel, who usurped authority in the name of the infant king, until she was overthrown by the high priest Jehoiada. The usurpations of this queen have furnished a subject for one of the finest tragedies of Racine. Jehoiada restored the temple worship, and instituted many other reforms, having supreme power, like Dunstan over the Saxon kings, when they were ruled by priests. His death left Judah under the ...
— Ancient States and Empires • John Lord
... faculties, Improves with age and ripens by degrees. I know, my dear; 'tis needless to deny 't, 30 You like Voiture, you think him wondrous bright; But seven years hence, your relish more matur'd, What now delights will hardly be endur'd. The boy may live to taste Racine's fine charms, Whom Lee's bald orb or Rowe's dry rapture warms: But he, enfranchis'd from his tutor's care, 36 Who places Butler near Cervantes' chair; Or with Erasmus can admit to vie Brown of Squab-hall of merry memory; Will die a Goth: and nod at [A]Woden's feast, 40 ...
— Essays on Taste • John Gilbert Cooper, John Armstrong, Ralph Cohen
... he brought upon the stage The Distressed Mother, almost a translation of Racine's Andromaque. Such a work requires no uncommon powers, but the friends of Philips exerted every art to promote his interest. Before the appearance of the play a whole Spectator, none indeed of the best, was devoted to its praise; ...
— Lives of the Poets: Gay, Thomson, Young, and Others • Samuel Johnson
... Foris, the Benedictine Editor of the new edition of the works of Bossuet and the Abbe Racine, Abrege de l'Histoire Ecclesiastique[088] are very severe in their censures of the conduct of Leibniz in the negotiations for the Reunion, and attribute its failure to his presumption and duplicity. To the writer of these pages, it appears clear, that Leibniz was sincere in his ...
— The Life of Hugo Grotius • Charles Butler
... being received in November, when, for the sixth time, she appeared as Camille. Paris was now at her feet. In 1839, called upon to play two or three times per week, she essayed but one new part, Esther, in Racine's tragedy of that name. The public was quite content that she should assume again and again the characters in which she had already triumphed. In 1840 she added to her list of impersonations Laodie and Pauline in Corneille's "Nicomede" and "Polyeucte," and Marie Stuart ...
— Great Men and Famous Women, Vol. 8 (of 8) • Various
... an artist to be merely literal and exact; that for another he saw and felt things for himself, as Milton did before him—Milton in the mind's eye of Milton the noblest of created things and to Mr. Saintsbury almost as unpleasing a spectacle as the gifted but abject Racine; and for a third that from his own point of view he was right, and there is an ...
— Views and Reviews - Essays in appreciation • William Ernest Henley
... that, generally, in the world, virtue is rewarded and vice punished. Later, he can learn a short course of logic, free from all pedantry; then study the orations of Cicero and Demosthenes, and read the tragedies of Racine. When older, he should have some knowledge of the opinions of philosophers, and the different religious sects, without inspiring him with dislike for any one sect. Make it clear to him that we all worship God—only in different ways. It is not necessary ...
— Old Fritz and the New Era • Louise Muhlbach
... is not my fault if you have had teachers of taste so rococo as to bid you find masterpieces in the tiresome stilted tragedies of Corneille and Racine. Poetry of a court, not of a people, one simple novel, one simple stanza that probes the hidden recesses of the human heart, reveals the sores of this wretched social state, denounces the evils of superstition, kingcraft, and priestcraft, is worth a library of the rubbish which ...
— The Parisians, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... have provided a fine carp; so that I must dine with my dear wife and children." "But my good sir," replied the gentleman, "several of the most distinguished characters in the kingdom expect your company, and will be anxious to see you." On this, Racine brought out the carp and showed it to his visitor, saying, "Here, sir, is our little meal; then say, having provided such a treat for me, what apology could I make for not dining with my poor children? Neither they nor my wife could have any pleasure in eating ...
— The Book of Three Hundred Anecdotes - Historical, Literary, and Humorous—A New Selection • Various
... those judges, for I see them continually walking hand-in-hand, and engaged in the most friendly conversation with Corneille, Racine, and Moliere. Our dramatic writers seem, in general, not so fond of their company; they sometimes shove rudely by them, and give themselves airs of superiority. They slight their reprimands, and laugh at their ...
— Dialogues of the Dead • Lord Lyttelton
... in "Phedre" that Sarah Bernhardt must be seen, if we are to realise all that her art is capable of. In writing "Phedre," Racine anticipated Sarah Bernhardt. If the part had been made for her by a poet of our own days, it could not have been brought more perfectly within her limits, nor could it have more perfectly filled those limits to their utmost edge. It is one of the greatest parts in poetical drama, and ...
— Plays, Acting and Music - A Book Of Theory • Arthur Symons
... recevoir Dimanche prochain, rue Racine, 3. C'est le seul jour que je puisse passer chez moi; et encore je n'en suis pas absolument certaine—mais je ferai tellement mon possible, que ma bonne etoile m'y aidera peut-etre un peu. Agreez mille remerciments ...
— Life and Letters of Robert Browning • Mrs. Sutherland Orr
... more than thirty years. Besides the criticism of the acting, he called Voltaire "the envious bard" because it was only with much reluctance and ill-humor that he permitted the performance of Iphigenie of Racine. Nevertheless, Gibbon is impressed with the social influence of the great Frenchman. "The wit and philosophy of Voltaire, his table and theatre," he wrote, "refined in a visible degree the manners of Lausanne, and however addicted to study, I enjoyed my share of the amusements of society. ...
— Historical Essays • James Ford Rhodes
... from Chaucer through Tennyson; from Luther through Goethe; from Rabelais through Victor Hugo; from Bryant and Irving through Hawthorne and Longfellow! How much they will translate from Homer and Virgil and Tacitus; from Schiller, Racine, Fenelon, and Moliere! How much philosophy they will read from Darwin, Spencer, Huxley! How they will trace the stars in the heavens, and the marks of God's fingers on the rocks and sands! How they will separate ...
— Hold Up Your Heads, Girls! • Annie H. Ryder
... frolic and mirth; Who can talk in a manner most graphic Every possible language on earth. When she's roaming in regions Italic, You would think her a fair Florentine; She speaks German like Schiller; and Gallic Better far than Rousseau or Racine. ...
— Sagittulae, Random Verses • E. W. Bowling
... rooms were crowded that evening with friends who came to remonstrate with her. She brought her most caustic wit into play. She said that as noble families could not produce a Moliere, a Racine, a Rousseau, a Voltaire, a Massillon, a Beaumarchais, or a Diderot, people must make up their minds to it, and accept the fact that great men had upholsterers and clockmakers and cutlers for their fathers. She said that genius ...
— Two Poets - Lost Illusions Part I • Honore de Balzac
... exist. The classic system had its origin in the life of the time; that time has passed away; its image subsists in brilliant colors in its works, but can no more be reproduced." Our own literary monuments must rest on other ground. "This ground is not the ground of Corneille or Racine, nor is it that of Shakespeare; it is our own; but Shakespeare's system, as it appears to me, may furnish the plans according to which genius ought now to work. This system alone includes all those social conditions and ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... generations. Chaucer and Shakespeare lived happy lives and sang in the very key of their own times. Puritanism waited for its hour of triumph to produce its great poet, who lived unmolested when the hour of triumph passed and that of reprisals succeeded. Racine was a royal pensioner; Goethe a chamberlain and the most admired figure of his time. Of course, if you hold that these poets one and all pale their ineffectual fires before the radiant Shelley, our argument must ...
— Adventures in Criticism • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... middle of March, 1854, a man named Joshua Glover, was seized near Racine, in Wisconsin, as a Fugitive Slave. His arrest was marked by the circumstances of cruelty and cowardice which seem to be essential to the execution of this Law above all others. He was brought, chained and bleeding, to Milwaukee, where he was lodged in jail. As soon ...
— The Trial of Theodore Parker • Theodore Parker
... Racine himself, the most penetrating and the most psychological of poets, is too well versed in the human soul not to have felt its intimate union with Nature. His ...
— An Iceland Fisherman • Pierre Loti
... only exception, and pre-Raphaelitism was a violent and emotional counter-revolution rather than a movement characterized by catholicity of critical appreciation. Literary criticism is certainly full of similar intolerance; though when Gautier talks about Racine, or Zola about "Mes Haines," or Mr. Howells about Scott, the polemic temper, the temper most opposed to the critical, is very generally recognized. And in spite of their admirable accomplishment in various branches of literature, these writers will never quite recover from the misfortune of having ...
— French Art - Classic and Contemporary Painting and Sculpture • W. C. Brownell
... Italy and France. The history of the age of the Guelphs and Ghibellines is clearly revealed in the vision of Dante: the times of Louis XIV. are amply illustrated by the pulpit of Massillon, Bourdaloue, and Bridaine, and by the drama of Corneille, Racine, ...
— English Literature, Considered as an Interpreter of English History - Designed as a Manual of Instruction • Henry Coppee
... innocent unconsciousness the sarcasm is driven home! Again, while he was still slaving at these bricks without straw, he says: "The present French poets are generally accused that, wheresoever they lay the scene, or in whatever age, the manners of their heroes are wholly French. Racine's Bajazet is bred at Constantinople, but his civilities are conveyed to him by some secret passage from Versailles into the Seraglio." It is curious that Voltaire, speaking of the Berenice of Racine, praises a ...
— Among My Books - First Series • James Russell Lowell
... Chicago at noon and lunched with Miss Willard at Rest Cottage, Evanston. Her mother bright and charming at eighty-two, and Anna Gordon sweet as ever. It was very good to see Miss Willard under her own roof. Reached Racine in time for the State convention, was met by a delegation of ladies and taken to the home of Martha Parker Dingee, niece of the great Theodore Parker, a ...
— The Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony (Volume 2 of 2) • Ida Husted Harper
... preference accorded by the public to Brunet's performances, addressed repeated remonstrances to government, and declared that the taste of the nation was becoming corrupted, and the classic drama of Corneille and Racine despised. They were supported by Fouche and a section of the press, until at last Napoleon, who meddled greatly in theatrical matters, and one of whose sayings was, that if Corneille had lived in his time, he would have made him a prince, thought proper to interfere. Brunet's company ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCLXXVI. February, 1847. Vol. LXI. • Various
... work, I have also a grand collection of other works that I have sung in my musical life—Racine's Athalie, The Erl King's Daughter (by Miles W. Gade), First Walpurgis Night. Esther formed one of the epochs of my time, given in Platt's hall, on Montgomery street, by Mr. William Badger, for the benefit of the Episcopal Sabbath schools of the city in 1874; Queen, Madam Anna Bishop, ...
— Sixty Years of California Song • Margaret Blake-Alverson
... next to Racine and Corneille, but as an epic poet he is a failure. His romances are probably the best evidences of his versatile and wonderful powers. They embody all the hate and really noble anger of his soul against the evils which were crushing the life of the French people. Their wit never fails, and ...
— Great Men and Famous Women, Vol. 7 of 8 • Charles F. (Charles Francis) Horne
... principle. In the writings of Pope, several expressions occur which are easily susceptible of this construction, and which have often been quoted and applied in defence of Religious Liberalism, notwithstanding his explicit disavowal of it in his letter to the younger Racine, prefixed to the collected edition of his works. But on the continent of Europe, Syncretism has been much more fully developed, and fearlessly applied to every department of human thought. Pushed to its ultimate consequences, it obliterates the distinction not only ...
— Modern Atheism under its forms of Pantheism, Materialism, Secularism, Development, and Natural Laws • James Buchanan
... knots and tassels here and there—the taste of a woman, or rather of a girl, who seeks to give a grace to the commonest things around her. With the mechanical habit of a student, Leonard took down one or two of the volumes still left on the shelves. He found SPENSER'S Fairy Queen, RACINE in French, TASSO in Italian; and on the fly-leaf of each volume, in the exquisite handwriting familiar to his memory, the name "Leonora." He kissed the books, and replaced them with a feeling akin both ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 2, May, 1851 • Various
... as a civil reaction. As there was again a throne and a court, a magistracy, a chivalry, and a hierarchy, so was there a revival of classical taste. Honour was again paid to the prose of Pascal and Massillon, and to the verse of Racine and La Fontaine. The oratory which had delighted the galleries of the Convention was not only as much out of date as the language of Villehardouin and Joinville, but was associated in the public mind ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 2 (of 4) - Contributions To The Edinburgh Review • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... Boileau check the flow of independent thought to bask them in the beams of the royal smile, a Fenelon retiring with saddened brow to record for posterity the truths which he was not permitted to utter to the royal ear, a Racine shrinking from the cold glance of the royal eye and going home to die of a broken heart. Here Louis had signed the decree which sent his dragoons to force his Protestant subjects to the mass and the confessional; ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 91, May, 1865 • Various
... lower, of those great Ancients who are the most accessible to us in English—AEschylus, Aristophanes, Virgil, and Horace. What I have said of Shakespeare I would say of Calderon, of Moliere, of Corneille, of Racine, of Voltaire, of Alfieri, of Goethe, of those dramatists, in many forms, and with genius the most diverse, who have so steadily set themselves to idealize the great types of public life and of ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. VI (of X)—Great Britain and Ireland IV • Various
... came to me suddenly one day the remembrance of a scene from Racine's "Plaideurs," in which the counsel for the defence, eager to show how fundamental his knowledge, begins his speech: "Before the Creation of the World"—And the Judge (with a touch of weariness tempered ...
— The Art of the Story-Teller • Marie L. Shedlock
... vigorous "blowing up," Albert asked: "Well, now, what's the meaning of all this, anyhow? Why this change from Racine?" ...
— Other Main-Travelled Roads • Hamlin Garland
... i.e. the day before the fall of Robespierre. The fatal tumbril which bore Chenier to the guillotine, conveyed also to the same scaffold the poet Roucher, his friend:—"Ils parlerent de la poesie a leurs derniers moments; pour eux, apres l'amitie, c'etait la plus belle chose de la terre. Racine fut l'objet de leur entretien et de leur derriere admiration. Ils voulurent reciter ses vers; ils choisirent la premiere scene ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 58, Number 358, August 1845 • Various
... and in Sophocles still more; but they have many more defects. One dares say that the beautiful scenes of Corneille and the touching tragedies of Racine surpass the tragedies of Sophocles and Euripides as much as these two Greeks surpass Thespis. Racine was quite conscious of his great superiority over Euripides; but he praised the Greek poet in order ...
— Voltaire's Philosophical Dictionary • Voltaire
... dispatches, "ten Mme. de Pompadours, eight Mme. de Maintenons, four Mme. de la Vallieres, and three Catherines of Russia." Good God! Has our "best society" come to such a pass that its proudest ladies delight to personate notorious prostitutes?" There was no Racine or Moliere, no Charlotte Corday or Mme. de Stael"—the men posed as profligate kings, the women as courtesans! Yet in that same city young Mr. Seeley is arrested for looking at a naked dancing-girl, and "Little Egypt" has to "cut it" when ...
— Volume 1 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... one could do. But how does that cramp the genius of an epic, dramatic, or lyric poet? or how does it corrupt the eloquence of an orator in the pulpit or at the bar? The number of good French authors, such as Corneille, Racine, Moliere, Boileau, and La Fontaine, who seemed to dispute it with the Augustan age, flourished under the despotism of Lewis XIV.; and the celebrated authors of the Augustan age did not shine till after the fetters were riveted upon the Roman people by that cruel and worthless ...
— The PG Edition of Chesterfield's Letters to His Son • The Earl of Chesterfield
... direction in the water, drank, ate, and fired off a gun. So far all went off well, but the poor abbe, to close the affair, wrote a letter to the king. The letter was carried in great pomp to his majesty. It contained two verses of Racine, which had some double allusion to the experiment. This, you may be sure, was interpreted in the worst manner. The duc d'Ayen gave the finishing stroke to the whole, on his opinion being asked by the king. "Sire," ...
— "Written by Herself" • Baron Etienne Leon Lamothe-Langon
... eminent merit of the tragic and comic dramatists, of the satirists, and of the preachers who had flourished under that magnificent prince, had made the French language predominant in Europe. Even in countries which had a national literature, and which could boast of names greater than those of Racine, of Moliere, and of Massillon, in the country of Dante, in the country of Cervantes, in the country of Shakspeare and Milton, the intellectual fashions of Paris had been to a great extent adopted. Germany had not yet produced a single masterpiece of ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 2 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... of Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides has been compared with that of Marlowe, Shakespeare, and Beaumont and Fletcher, and with that of Corneille, Racine, and Voltaire. The parallel will hardly hold good except as an illustration of the course of youth, perfection, and decay through which every art or product of imagination seems to run, unlike science, which continually advances. ...
— Specimens of Greek Tragedy - Aeschylus and Sophocles • Goldwin Smith
... notes, were put into the prince's hands, to inform him of what happened in the commencement of society. These were his evening studies. In the mornings he read the French poets, Boileau, Moliere, Corneille, and Racine. Racine, as we are particularly informed, was, in the space of one year, read over a dozen times. Wretched prince! Unfortunate Racine! The abbe acknowledges, that at first these authors were not understood with the same ease as the preliminary lessons had been: every word ...
— Practical Education, Volume I • Maria Edgeworth
... actress, arrived in England. She had already established her empire in Paris by her marvellous revival of Racine's and Corneille's masterpieces. She was now to exercise the same fascination over an alien people, to whom her speech was a foreign tongue. She made her first appearance in the part of Hermione in Racine's Andromaque ...
— Life of Her Most Gracious Majesty the Queen V.1. • Sarah Tytler
... dirty and witty; and Barbin still kept his shop, but gave no more orders for wares of that description. Many of the greatest names of the era were already carved on tombs: La Rochefoucauld, Pascal, Corneille, Moliere. Bossuet was a man of sixty; La Fontaine a few years older; Boileau and Racine close upon fifty. When Regnard died, in 1710, the eighteenth century had begun. Fontenelle, Le Sage, Bayle, men of nearly the same age as himself, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 92, June, 1865 • Various
... among the moderns not only Moliere and Corneille, but also Chapelain, Scuderi, and Quinault, whom he called the greatest lyrical and dramatic poet that France ever had. The battle had begun with a debate in the Academy: Racine having ironically complimented Perrault on the ingenuity with which he had elevated little men above the ancients in his poem (published 1687), le Siecle de Louis le Grand. Fontenelle touched the matter lightly, as Perraults ally, in his Digression ...
— The Spectator, Volume 2. • Addison and Steele
... illusions of the name of Louis are exhausted, and in this country, where his Augustan age has seldom been regarded with much enthusiasm, who can seriously address himself to the perusal of his great tragedians, Corneille and Racine—or of his great comedians, Moliere and Regnard—or if his great poets, Boileau and La Fontaine—or of his great wits, La Rochfaucauld and La Bruyere—or of his great philosophers, Des Cartes and Pascal—or of his great divines, Bossuet and Arnauld—or of his great scholars, ...
— The International Monthly Magazine, Volume 5, No. 1, January, 1852 • Various
... three o'clock, proceeded to the apartments of Madame de Maintenon, and, taking a seat in an arm-chair, sat in a reclining posture, sometimes silently watching the progress of her tapestry-work, and again engaged in quiet conversation. Occasionally some of Racine's tragedies were read. The king took a listless pleasure in drawing out Madame de Maintenon to remark upon the merits or defects of ...
— Louis XIV., Makers of History Series • John S. C. Abbott
... abandoned the classes of the central school, where I was taught to admire Corneille, Racine, La Fontaine, Moliere, and attended only the mathematical course. This course was entrusted to a retired ecclesiastic, the Abbe Verdier, a very respectable man, but whose knowledge went no further than the elementary course of La Caille. I saw ...
— Biographies of Distinguished Scientific Men • Francois Arago
... patent for canalising the Oise from La Fere to Chauny. They got a notable advocate, M. Louis Vrevin, to draw up a protest against the enterprise in the most florid and elaborate fashion of the Plaideurs of Racine, and by dint of bombarding the King's Council with the names of Julius Caesar, Pompey, Xerxes, Sesostris, Cleopatra, Cicero, Tertullian, and others, got, in 1625, what we in America now call an 'injunction,' putting a stop to the works begun by this foreigner, who 'had come into France to fix the ...
— France and the Republic - A Record of Things Seen and Learned in the French Provinces - During the 'Centennial' Year 1889 • William Henry Hurlbert
... Roman province. His followers, however, became disaffected, his son Pharnaces rebelled, and he had no other remedy than suicide to escape capture. He died B.C. 63, after a reign of fifty-three years, in the sixty-ninth year of his age—the greatest Eastern prince since Cyrus. Racine has painted him in one of his dramas as one of the most heroic men of the world. But it was his misfortune to contend with Rome in ...
— Ancient States and Empires • John Lord
... naturally viewed the performances with paternal partiality and no doubt regarded us as incipient Rachels. I remember as if it were only yesterday a play in which I took one of the principal parts—"Athalie," one of Jean Racine's plays. ...
— As I Remember - Recollections of American Society during the Nineteenth Century • Marian Gouverneur
... French poet, Du Rollet, living in Vienna, offered to write a libretto for the new opera, and assured him there was every chance for success in a visit to France. The libretto was thereupon written, or rather arranged from Racine's "Iphigenie en Aulide," and with this, Chevalier Gluck, lately made Knight of the papal order of the Golden Spur, set out ...
— The World's Great Men of Music - Story-Lives of Master Musicians • Harriette Brower
... les belles lettres. No one had a higher respect for the classics than he; the odes of Horace, the poems of Virgil and the orations of Cicero were as familiar to him as the best sermons of Bossuet or the tragedies of Racine. On the right was another room, with a piano and organ, to which the family devoted much attention, and lovers of music were certain of hearing there excellent performances ...
— Picturesque Quebec • James MacPherson Le Moine
... writers could not take for a model what as yet had no collective existence. Now, until the death of Charles II., no French literature could be said to have gathered or established itself; and as yet no ostentation of a French literature began to stir the air of Europe. By the time, however, that Racine, La Fontaine, Boileau, Bossuet, and Fontenelle, had begun to fix the attention of foreign courts upon the French language, a necessity, no longer to be disguised, for some modern language as the common organ of diplomacy, had made itself ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine—Vol. 54, No. 333, July 1843 • Various
... of Education, M. Spuller, has paid Racine a very graceful and appropriate compliment, in naming after him the second college that has been opened in Paris for the higher education of girls. Racine was one of the privileged few who was allowed to ...
— Reviews • Oscar Wilde
... deal of fine poetry, much of which deserves to be everlastingly forgotten. It must be said for him, that his vice became conspicuous only in the light of one of his virtues. His frankness would never allow concealment. He scandalized his friends Boileau and Racine; still, it is matter of doubt whether they did not excel him rather in prudence than in purity. But, whatever may be said in palliation, it is lamentable to think that a heaven-lighted genius should have been ...
— The Fables of La Fontaine - A New Edition, With Notes • Jean de La Fontaine
... but one other acquaintance in Paris on whom I could venture to call for a loan of a few francs; and he lived far away, across the Seine, in the Rue Racine. There seemed to be no alternative; so away we posted, carrying my ever-increasing debt, dragging at each remove a lengthening chain. We reached the Rue Racine; I found my friend; I wrung his hand. 'For Heaven's sake,' said I, 'help me to get rid of this Old Man of the Sea,—this ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 102, April, 1866 • Various
... Backstairs Passage, Detroit de Colbert. To-day the Terre Napoleon charts look like a partial index to the Pantheon and Pere Lachaise. Laplace, Buffon, Volney, Maupertuis, Montaigne, Lannes, Pascal, Talleyrand, Berthier, Lafayette, Descartes, Racine, Moliere, Bernadotte, Lafontein, Condillac, Bossuet, Colbert, Rabelais, D'Alembert, Sully, Bayard, Fenelon, Voltaire,* (* Voltaire's name is on the Terre Napoleon sectional chart, but it seems to have been ...
— Terre Napoleon - A history of French explorations and projects in Australia • Ernest Scott
... diction in a poetical drama, or to imagine anything comparable to the attitude of a Parisian audience at the cheap holiday performances at the Francais or the Odeon, where the severe classic tragedies of Racine, of Corneille, of Victor Hugo, or the well-worn comedies of Moliere or of Beaumarchais are played with small lure of stage upholstery, and listened to with close attention by a popular audience responsive to the exquisite rhythm and grace of phrasing, the delicate and restrained tragic pathos, ...
— The Story of Paris • Thomas Okey
... your father, though, who never paid a compliment in his life. Your clothes, by the by, are in exquisite taste: I had no idea that English people had arrived at such perfection in the fine arts. Your face is a little too long! You admire Racine, of course? How do you ...
— Devereux, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... tipsy catches and assaulting the watch on his way. The chorus of Wasps, the visible embodiment of a metaphor found also in Plato's 'Republic,' symbolizes the sting used by the Athenian jurymen to make the rich disgorge a portion of their gathered honey. The 'Plaideurs' of Racine is an imitation of this play; and the motif of the committal of the dog is borrowed by Ben Jonson in ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 2 • Charles Dudley Warner
... Scudery was the first who introduced the twenty-four hours from Aristotle; and Mairet studied the construction of the fable, and the rules of the drama. They yet groped in the dark, and their beauties were yet only occasional; Corneille, Racine, Moliere, Crebillon, and Voltaire ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. II (of 3) - Edited, With Memoir And Notes, By His Son, The Earl Of Beaconsfield • Isaac D'Israeli
... which should include every great imaginative work of the Western world! Thus in 1855 we find him noting the following projects, to be carried out in ten years' time:—illustrations of AEschylus, Lucan, Ovid, Shakespeare, Goethe (Faust), Lamartine (Meditations), Racine, Corneille, Schiller, Boccaccio, Montaigne, Plutarch's Lives—these names among others. The jottings in question were written for a friend who had undertaken to write the ...
— In the Heart of the Vosges - And Other Sketches by a "Devious Traveller" • Matilda Betham-Edwards
... Wright Osborne of Auburn, N. Y., niece of Lucretia Mott and daughter of Martha Wright, two of the four women who called that convention; Miss Emily Howland, a devoted pioneer of Sherwood, N. Y.; the Rev. Olympia Brown of Racine, second woman to be ordained as minister; Mrs. Ellen Sulley Fray, a pioneer of Toledo, O., and Mrs. Caroline E. Merrick, wife of a Chief Justice of Louisiana, who organized the first ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume V • Ida Husted Harper
... fine color, and a small line of mustache. As to manners he was really charming, and so well-read that Mr. Winthrop Adams took to him at once. He was conversant with Voltaire and Rousseau, the plays of Racine and Moliere, and the causes that had led to the French Revolution, and had been in Paris through the famous "Hundred Days." Of course he ...
— A Little Girl in Old Boston • Amanda Millie Douglas
... The splendour of human intelligence, the loftiness of genius, shine no less by contrast than by harmony with the age. The stoic and profound philosopher is not diminished by an external debasement. Virgil, Petrarch, Racine are great in their purple; Job is still ...
— Napoleon the Little • Victor Hugo
... of appreciating the genius of Racine could read the works in which his choice thoughts and effusive sentiments are enshrined, purified and confirmed echoes of the finest sighs ever breathed by the heart, and not be drawn to him honoring esteem and ...
— The Friendships of Women • William Rounseville Alger
... treatment of those subjects, which makes all the operas seem exactly alike, was the result of a certain literary reform which had tended to standardise opera libretti under the influence of Racine, and it was really a movement towards dignity and dramatic unity after the monstrous confusion of the earlier Venetian operas. As to the conventionality of the music, and its forms of air and recitative, it can only be said that all serious Italian music was written in these forms; ...
— Handel • Edward J. Dent
... Antiquities, Divinity, Politics.' He adds (ib. p. 49l):—'Godwin, Lofft, and Thelwall are the only three persons I know (except Hazlitt) who grieve at the late events'—the defeat of Napoleon at Waterloo. He found long after his death 'a MS. by him in these words:—"Rousseau, Euripides, Tasso, Racine, Cicero, Virgil, Petrarch, Richardson. If I had five millions of years to live upon this earth, these I would read daily with increasing delight."' Ib. ...
— Life Of Johnson, Volume 4 (of 6) • Boswell
... and charming old lady, as cheerful and full of vivacity as many a girl of seventeen. She kissed Janet on both cheeks when the Major introduced her; asked whether she was fiancee; complimented her on her French; declaimed a passage from Racine; put her poodle through a variety of amusing tricks; and pressed Janet to assist at her luncheon of cream cheese, French roll, ...
— The Argosy - Vol. 51, No. 5, May, 1891 • Various
... Every one can see in how many different ways it may be treated, with what different conceptions, how variously the characters may be built up, and what different ethical and emotional situations may be imaginatively treated in it. Racine himself thought it the finest of the Greek subjects, and began a play upon it. But he died before he finished it, and ordered his manuscript to be destroyed. We may well imagine how the quiet, stately genius of Racine would have conceived and ordered it; with the sincere passion, held under ...
— The Poetry Of Robert Browning • Stopford A. Brooke
... honoured Racine and Boileau with a private monthly audience. One day the king asked what there was new in the literary world. Racine answered, that he had seen a melancholy spectacle in the house of Corneille, whom he found dying, deprived even of a little broth! The king preserved ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 1 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... properties—and of these four, one (Borgheim) is wholly subsidiary. Ibsen, then, may be said to have challenged imitation by composing a drama of passion with only three characters in it. By a process of elimination this has been done by Aeschylus (in the Agamemnon), by Racine (in Phe*dre and Andromaque), and in our own day by Maeterlinck (in Pelle*as et Me*lisande). But Ibsen was accustomed to a wider field, and his experiment seems not wholly successful. Little Eyolf, at least, is, from all points of view, an exercise on the tight-rope. ...
— Henrik Ibsen • Edmund Gosse
... of love," an expression which became very popular. Her salon was situated on the Rue des Tournelles. Ninon de Lenclos was a woman of the most brilliant mind and exquisite taste, and it was at her hotel that Moliere first read his Tartuffe before Conde, La Fontaine, Boileau, Lulli, Racine, and Chapelle, and it was there that he received the principal ...
— Women of Modern France - Woman In All Ages And In All Countries • Hugo P. Thieme
... thirty years' hard labour of an eminent scholar:[80] the Travels of Cyrus, Telemachus, Belisarius, and Numa Pompilius, are also, though in very different degrees, useful and interesting. The plays of Corneille and Racine, Alfieri, and Metastasio, on historical subjects, will make a double impression on your memory by the excitement of your imagination. All ought to be read about the same time that you are studying those periods ...
— The Young Lady's Mentor - A Guide to the Formation of Character. In a Series of Letters to Her Unknown Friends • A Lady
... down at the corner of the Rue Racine. I have never met him again; I have never learned ...
— Grey Roses • Henry Harland
... of the skin, the alluring though less rigidly correct outlines of the great actress. Her expression was one of sweetness and tenderness; but her glance commanded less respect than that of the noblest Agrippina that ever trod the French stage since the days of Racine: on the contrary, it evoked a vulgar joy. In 1816 the Rabouilleuse saw Maxence Gilet, and fell in love with him at first sight. Her heart was cleft by the mythological arrow,—admirable description of an effect of nature which the Greeks, unable to conceive the chivalric, ideal, and ...
— The Celibates - Includes: Pierrette, The Vicar of Tours, and The Two Brothers • Honore de Balzac
... the Festin de Pierre of Corneille exceedingly well performed. The actors who did the parts of Don Juan and Sganarelle were excellent, and the scene with M. Dimanche, wherein he demands payment of his bill, was admirably given. I have also seen the Plaideurs of Racine, a very favourite piece of mine; every actor played his part most correctly, and the scene between the Comtesse de Pimbeche and Chicaneau and L'Intime wherein the latter, disguised as a Bailli, offers himself to be kicked by the former, was given in very superior ...
— After Waterloo: Reminiscences of European Travel 1815-1819 • Major W. E Frye
... Psyche. He remained in this company until Moliere's death. He then became a member of the company at the Hotel de Bourgogne, and from this time until his retirement in 1691 was undisputed master of the French stage, creating many of the leading roles in Racine's tragedies, besides those in two of his own comedies, L'Homme a bonnes fortunes (1686), and La Coquette (1687). He also wrote Les Enlevements (1685), Le Debauche (1689), and translated ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 3 - "Banks" to "Bassoon" • Various
... under the persuasion of Mme. de Maintenon, and produced "Esther" and "Athalie," the latter ranking among his finest productions, although it did not receive public recognition until some time after his death in 1699. Besides his tragedies, Racine wrote one comedy, "Les Plaideurs," four hymns of great beauty, and a history ...
— Phaedra • Jean Baptiste Racine
... other hand, to love and prefer Racine, ah! that is, no doubt, to love above all things, elegance, grace, what is natural and true (at least relatively), sensibility, touching and charming passion; but at the same time is it not also, ...
— Essays AEsthetical • George Calvert
... German and French?—for the whole endeavour in this country has been toward a closer adherence to nature. In France and in Germany the ancient method of declamation still prevails, and the great speeches of Goethe and Schiller and Racine and Corneille are to all intents and purposes intoned. No doubt this sounds very fine in German and French, but how would you ...
— [19th Century Actor] Autobiographies • George Iles
... authorship upon him; a taste over-anxious not to commit itself, and refining and diminishing nature as in a drawing-room mirror. This fancy was strengthened in the course of conversation, by his expatiating on the greatness of Racine. I think he had a volume of the French poet in his hand. His skull was sharply cut and fine; with plenty, according to the phrenologists, both of the reflective and amative organs: and his poetry will bear them out. For a lettered solitude, ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 2, July, 1850. • Various
... exploits in the way of economy. Other and fewer students, to whom money was as the dust upon the bust of Pallas over the studio-door, talked of the last "first representations" at the Francais, of Croisette's rapidly amplifying figure, of Sarah Bernhardt's unnecessary immodesty in dressing Racine's Andromaque, of the Grant reception at Healy's, of Lefevre's slipperiness of texture, of the lack of the true sentiment of piety in Bouguereau's religious pictures, of the harum-scarum amusements among the Americans at Bonnat's atelier, ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 22. July, 1878. • Various
... was converted he saw and painted supernatural things with the same carnal and robust incisiveness. The half-lights of Symbolist mysticism are remote from his hard glare. As a dramatist he drew upon and exaggerated that which in Aeschylus and Shakespeare seems to the countrymen of Racine nearest to the limit of the terrible and the brutal permissible in art: a princess nailed by the hands like a sparrow-hawk to a pine by a brutal peasant; the daughter of a noble house submitting to a loathed marriage with a foul-mouthed plebeian ...
— Recent Developments in European Thought • Various
... astonished at the completion of the preparations which had been made. 'Mind you go by the 5 p.m. train,' Marie said. 'That will take you into Liverpool at 10:15. There's an hotel at the railway station. Didon has got our tickets under the names of Madame and Mademoiselle Racine. We are to have one cabin between us. You must get yours to-morrow. She has found out that there is ...
— The Way We Live Now • Anthony Trollope
... 'Romanticism' was unknown (or nearly so) in the circles of Paris; the writers a la mode, whether ultra or liberal, were, or thought themselves to be, supporters and practisers of the old school of literature;" in the interval of her absence she published a work in which she told the Parisians that Racine was no poet, and gave them other valuable information of the kind, calculated to dispel their classical infatuation:—when she returned, every thing was changed; poets and prosers were vieing with each other in ...
— The American Quarterly Review, No. 17, March 1831 • Various
... gray heads of the Bannockburn Medical Crusade what manner of life their preachers lead; speak to the Racine Gospel Agency, those lean Americans whose boast is that they go where no Englishman dare follow; get a Pastor of the Tubingen Mission to talk of his experiences—if you can. You will be referred to the printed reports, ...
— Soldiers Three • Rudyard Kipling
... taste. Even Jeffrey seriously lamented, in one of his first reviews of Scott's poems, that he should have identified himself with the unpicturesque and expiring images of feudality, which no effort could render poetical. Racine's tragedies were received with such a storm of criticism as wellnigh cost the sensitive author his life; and Rousseau was so rudely handled by contemporary writers on his first appearance, that it confirmed him in his morbid ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 57, No. 351, January 1845 • Various
... German public, on that exalted pedestal which it has not ceased to occupy. It was in 1759, in a journal entitled 'Litteraturbriefe,' that Lessing first claimed for Shakespeare superiority, not only to the French dramatists Racine and Corneille, who hitherto had dominated European taste, but to all ancient or modern poets. Lessing's doctrine, which he developed in his 'Hamburgische Dramaturgie' (Hamburg, 1767, 2 vols. 8vo), was at once accepted by the poet Johann Gottfried ...
— A Life of William Shakespeare - with portraits and facsimiles • Sidney Lee
... Verrio and Laguerre, the architects Blondel and Le Notre, and sculptors Girardon, Puget, Desjardins, and Coysevox, whose works had done so much to beautify the new palace of the king. Close to the door, Racine, with his handsome face wreathed in smiles, was chatting with the poet Boileau and the architect Mansard, the three laughing and jesting with the freedom which was natural to the favourite servants of the king, the only subjects who might ...
— The Refugees • Arthur Conan Doyle
... caught a glimpse of the great actress, tending her geraniums and roses at the window, or going out to drive. On the evening in question, a very large audience greeted the tragedienne, and she was received, with much enthusiasm. She appeared in a tragedy of Racine, in which she had once been preeminently distinguished. Magnificently dressed, and adorned with splendid jewels, trophies of her younger days, when her favors were sought by those who could afford to bestow such gifts, she did not look over thirty-five, ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I, No. VI, June, 1862 - Devoted To Literature and National Policy • Various
... get near the chair where John Dryden sate. In winter that chair was always in the warmest nook by the fire; in summer it stood in the balcony. To bow to the Laureate, and to hear his opinion of Racine's last tragedy, or of Bossu's treatise on epic poetry, was thought a privilege. A pinch from his snuff-box was an honour sufficient to turn the head of a ...
— All About Coffee • William H. Ukers
... it all between its brown and gold covers. An extravagance that—for it cost me some sovereigns—but it is something to have the portraits of all that wonderful galaxy, of Louis, of the devout Maintenon, of the frail Montespan, of Bossuet, Fenelon, Moliere, Racine, Pascal, Conde, Turenne, and all the saints and sinners of the age. If you want to make yourself a present, and chance upon a copy of "The Court and Times of Louis XIV.," you will never think that your money has ...
— Through the Magic Door • Arthur Conan Doyle
... say that," said Giles, "Racine is the most exquisite of poets, so sensitive, so acute, ...
— Orpheus in Mayfair and Other Stories and Sketches • Maurice Baring
... if Chateaubriand, who had just rendered valuable services at Ghent; if they had had the direction of affairs, France would have emerged from these two great national crises powerful and redoubtable. Chateaubriand had received from Nature the sacred fire-his works show it! His style is not that of Racine but of a prophet. Only he could have said with impunity in the chamber of peers, 'that the redingote and cocked hat of Napoleon, put on a stick on the coast of Brest, would make all Europe ...
— Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Louis Antoine Fauvelet de Bourrienne
... their prologues, and their tedious repetition of the obvious. Hence, also, their vulgarity, their horse-play, their obscenity. Here was fine dramatic genius led astray, because the time was out of joint. Similarly, the trouble with French tragedy, in the classicist period of Corneille and Racine, is that it was written only for the finest caste of society,—the patrician coterie of a patrician cardinal. Hence its over-niceness, and its appeal to the ear rather than to the eye. Terence aimed too low and Racine aimed ...
— The Theory of the Theatre • Clayton Hamilton
... severe, not only in our North country, but in the United States and Canada also. I was lecturing during this winter in both these latter countries, though during the months of December and January travelling became very difficult owing to the continuous blizzards. I was held up for three days in Racine, Wisconsin, as neither trains, electric cars, or automobiles could make their way through the heavy drifts. Had I had my trusty dog team, however, I should not have missed three important lecture engagements. Life in the North ...
— A Labrador Doctor - The Autobiography of Wilfred Thomason Grenfell • Wilfred Thomason Grenfell
... pavement. Such a street was the Rue des Cordiers, close adjoining the Rue des Gres, where Rousseau lived and wrote; and the Rue du Dragon, where might then be seen the house of Bernard Palissy; and the Rue des Macons, where Racine lived; and the Rue des Marais, where Adrienne Lecouvreur—poor, beautiful, generous, ill-fated Adrienne Lecouvreur!—died. Here, too, in a blind alley opening off the Rue St. Jacques, yet stands part of that Carmelite Convent in which, for thirty years, Madame de la Valliere expiated the ...
— In the Days of My Youth • Amelia Ann Blandford Edwards
... by their teaching and example, imposed on later writers that majestic line, possessing the most varied powers, capable of the finest achievements, which has yielded itself alike to the purposes of Racine and to those of ...
— A History of French Literature - Short Histories of the Literatures of the World: II. • Edward Dowden
... "spices," in ancient times, equalled sweetmeats, and were given to the judge by the side which gained the suit, as a mark of gratitude. These epices had long been changed into a compulsory payment of money when Moliere wrote. In Racine's Plaideurs, act ii. scene vii., Petit Jean takes literally the demand of the judge for epices, and fetches ...
— The Impostures of Scapin • Moliere
... Greece, or Rome. France yields not to the glory of our lines, But manly conduct of our strong designs; That oft they think more justly we must own, Not ancient Greece a truer sense has shown: Greece thought but justly, they think justly too; We sometimes err by striving more to do. So well are Racine's meanest persons taught, But change a sentiment, you make a fault; Nor dare we charge them with the want of flame: When we boast more, we own ourselves to blame. And yet in Shakespeare something still I find, ...
— The Poetical Works of Edward Young, Volume 2 • Edward Young
... not take longer to come out than you did," was her reply. We were all omnivorous readers, and the old-fashioned accomplishment of reading aloud was cultivated by both brothers and sisters. I was the only one who could translate French at sight, thanks to Miss Phin's giving me so much of Racine and Moliere and other good French authors in my ...
— An Autobiography • Catherine Helen Spence
... and more exact analysis of mental operations. The correct school of poets, culminating in Dryden and Pope, holds sway in England; while Newton, Locke, and Bentley extend the sphere of science. In France the age of Rabelais and Montaigne yields place to the age of Racine and Descartes. Germany was so distracted by religious wars, Spain was so down-trodden by the Inquisition, that they do not offer equally luminous examples.[8] It may be added that in all these nations the end of the eighteenth and the beginning ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volumes 1 and 2 - The Catholic Reaction • John Addington Symonds
... then, no desire to master those noble bursts of eloquence by which Racine, Bossuet, Fenelon, and Cousin have charmed the intellects of ...
— Vashti - or, Until Death Us Do Part • Augusta J. Evans Wilson
... l'honneur de vous recevoir dimanche prochain rue Racine 3. C'est le seul jour que je puisse passer chez moi, et encore je n'en suis pas absolument certaine. Mais j'y ferai tellement mon possible, que ma bonne etoile m'y ...
— The Letters of Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Volume II • Elizabeth Barrett Browning
... XIV.th's reign, were lords of the ascendant when they had sunk beneath the horizon, their constellation again blazed forth with greater force and more disastrous splendour. Hence the Dragonnades, the destruction of Port-Royal, the persecution of the Jansenists, the death of Racine, the disgrace of Fenelon. Hence, in the reign of Louis XV., orgies that Messalina would have blushed to share; while cruelties[A] of which Suwarrow would hardly have been the instrument, were employed to lash into a momentary paroxysm nerves withered by debauchery. Here let us pause for a moment, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 54, No. 335, September 1843 • Various
... a good reason why the prudent novelist, with all his tendency to shed his privileges, still clings to this one. It is possible to imagine that a novel might be as bare of all background as a play of Racine; there might be a story in which any hint of continuous life, proceeding behind the action, would simply confuse and distort the right effect. One thinks of the story of the Princesse de Cleves, floating serenely in the void, without a sign of any visible support from a furnished ...
— The Craft of Fiction • Percy Lubbock
... of these illustrious men, in itself great, was much enhanced by the still greater blaze of fame which encircled his throne, from the genius of the literary men who have given such immortal celebrity to his reign. Corneille and Racine were his tragedians; Moliere wrote his comedies; Bossuet, Fenelon, and Bourdaloue were his theologians; Massillon his preacher, Boileau his critic; Le Notre laid out his gardens; Le Brun painted his ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Vol 58, No. 357, July 1845 • Various
... there is no more to be said," the schoolmaster answered. "Grammar must yield to the exigencies of discovery. Nevertheless, young man, a lucid and harmonious style—the diction of Massillon, of M. de Buffon, of the great Racine—a classical style, in short, can never spoil anything——But, my friend," the schoolmaster interrupted himself, "I was forgetting the object of my visit, which ...
— The Magic Skin • Honore de Balzac
... French poet, Racine, having one day returned from Versailles, where he had been on a visit, was waited upon by a gentleman with an invitation to dine at the Hotel de Conde. "I cannot possibly do myself that honour," said the poet; ...
— The Book of Three Hundred Anecdotes - Historical, Literary, and Humorous—A New Selection • Various
... worthy priests gave me was not a very literary one. We turned out a good deal of Latin verse, but they would not recognize any French poetry later than the Religion of Racine the younger. The name of Lamartine was pronounced only with a sneer, and the existence of M. Hugo was not so much as known. To compose French verse was regarded as a very dangerous habit, and would have been sufficient to get a pupil expelled. I attribute partly to this my inability ...
— Recollections of My Youth • Ernest Renan
... of Racine; Voltaire, has been wrong in accusing me of having criticized that tragedy, and in attributing to me an epigram, the author of which has never been known, and which ends with ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... man, or a poet. He had the audacity to speak of the golden era of literature which bloomed in the time of my grandfather, Frederick I., in Germany, and he was so foolhardy as to mention some German scribblers of that time, whose barbarous names no one knows, as the equals of Racine, and Corneille, and even of Virgil. Repeat to me, once more, the names of those departed geniuses, that I may know the rivals of the great writers of ...
— Frederick The Great and His Family • L. Muhlbach
... of the Bricklands, that we remained there the rest of the season. He built a summer residence on an island in Lake Superior, where we expect to go every season in the Sylvania. I liked my home in the west too well to think of giving it up, though I was admitted to the college at Racine in September, as Washburn was ...
— Up the River - or, Yachting on the Mississippi • Oliver Optic
... to her except as a dim tragedy in by-gone costumes—that women, even after marriage, might make conquests and enslave men. At that time young ladies in the country, even when educated at Mrs. Lemon's, read little French literature later than Racine, and public prints had not cast their present magnificent illumination over the scandals of life. Still, vanity, with a woman's whole mind and day to work in, can construct abundantly on slight hints, especially on such a ...
— Middlemarch • George Eliot
... love of the Absolute which possesses all true poets, Racine seeks in God alone the source of all ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol III, Issue VI, June, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... Jean Racine, unquestionably the most perfect of the French tragic poets, was born in 1639, at La Fert-Milon, near Paris. He received a sound classical education at Port-Royal des Champs, then a famous centre of religious thought and scholastic learning. At the early age of twenty he was so fortunate ...
— Esther • Jean Racine
... a very important end. She found a language crude and inelegant, manners coarse and licentious, morals dissolute and vicious. Her influence was at its height in the age of Corneille and Descartes, and she lived almost to the culmination of the era of Racine and Moliere, of Boileau and La Bruyere, of Bossuet and Fenelon, the era of simple and purified language, of refined and stately manners, and of at least outward respect for morality. To these results she largely contributed. Her salon was ...
— The Women of the French Salons • Amelia Gere Mason
... Arrive in Mull. Addison's Remarks on Italy. Addison not much conversant with Italian literature. The French masters of the art of accommodating literature. Their Ana. Racine. Corneille. Moliere. Fenelon. Voltaire. Bossuet. Massillon. Bourdaloue. Virgil's description of the entrance into ...
— Life Of Johnson, Volume 5 • Boswell
... Frenchman. Of this nature is the affirmation that Triaquero is meant for Voltaire; and the still more intrepid declaration, that Lope de Vega and Calderon de la Barca are cited, not as Spanish authors, but as types by which Corneille and Racine are shadowed out. It is true that the passage is exactly applicable to Calderon and Lope de Vega; and for that reason, as they are great comic writers, can hardly apply equally well to Corneille and Racine. But such trifling ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 55, No. 344, June, 1844 • Various
... with horror, amongst the French attracts no particular attention. Again, amidst the supposed refinements of French tragedy, and not observe the coarser tragedy of Corneille, but amidst the more feminine and polished tragedy of Racine, there is no recoil at all from saying of such or such a sentiment, 'Il me perce les entrailles'—it penetrates my bowels. The Greeks and Romans still more extensively use the several varieties of expression for the intestines, as a symbolic phraseology for the ...
— Theological Essays and Other Papers v1 • Thomas de Quincey
... chimera, and every soldier an irresistible Amadis; in which, when perfected, we find lofty sentiments, splendid imagery, eloquent expression, sound morality, everything but the language of human passion and human character. In the hands of Corneille, and still more in those of Racine, much of the absurdity of the original model was cleared away, and much that was valuable substituted in its stead; but the plan being fundamentally wrong, the high talents of these authors unfortunately only tended ...
— The Dramatic Works of John Dryden Vol. I. - With a Life of the Author • Sir Walter Scott
... monseigneur, you are improving; but you take useless precautions, as Racine says. At this moment, probably, they ...
— The Regent's Daughter • Alexandre Dumas (Pere)
... in two months that which ordinarily takes years was not surprising. They did things that way, too, at Haynes-Cooper. Take the case of Nathan Haynes himself. And Michael Fenger too who, not so many years before, had been a machine-boy in a Racine woolen mill. ...
— Fanny Herself • Edna Ferber
... to express himself orally in any language, but through hard drilling he was so genuinely erudite in accidence and syntax that he could parse and analyse with superb assurance the most magnificent sentences of Milton, Virgil, and Racine. This skill, together with an equal skill in utilising the elementary properties of numbers and geometrical figures, was the most brilliant achievement ...
— Clayhanger • Arnold Bennett
... will take) medicine on Thursday. His Majesty is better than he hath been of late, though incommoded by indigestion from his too great appetite. Madame Maintenon continues well. They have performed a play of Mons. Racine at St. Cyr. The Duke of Shrewsbury and Mr. Prior, our envoy, and all the English nobility here were present at it. (The Viscount Castlewood's passports) were refused to him, 'twas said; his lordship being sued by a ...
— The History of Henry Esmond, Esq. • W. M. Thackeray
... have seen nothing, so she took the party to the theatre, where they saw the Cid with extreme delight. She regretted that the season was so far advanced that the winter representations of Esther, at St. Cyr by the young ladies, were over, but she invited M. Racine for an evening, when Mr. Fellowes took extreme pleasure in his conversation, and he was prevailed on to read some of the scenes. She also used her entree at Court to enable them to see the fountains at Versailles, which Winchester was to have ...
— A Reputed Changeling • Charlotte M. Yonge
... Who are my friends? Are they the idle boys who send me bouquets and never mention my name without looking unutterable things? Have I no tastes, no likings, no feelings, no emotions? In the name of God, was I created only to memorize so many lines of Racine, Corneille, or Voltaire ...
— Trifles for the Christmas Holidays • H. S. Armstrong
... away to their own homes with too dismal and melancholy thoughts about them." Certain numbers of "The Spectator" were expressly devoted to the discussion of this subject, in the interest, it is now apparent, of Ambrose Philips, who had brought upon the stage an adaptation of Racine's "Andromaque," and who enjoyed the zealous friendship of Addison and Steele. To the tragedy of "The Distressed Mother," as it was called, which can hardly have been seen in the theatre since the late Mr. Macready, ...
— A Book of the Play - Studies and Illustrations of Histrionic Story, Life, and Character • Dutton Cook
... yet did not fully imbibe the prejudices of the class who can afford to be idle, and the natural result is an odd mixture of conflicting prejudices. He is classical in taste and cosmopolitan in life, and yet he always retains a certain John-Bull element. His preference of Shakespeare to Racine is associated with, if not partly prompted by, a mere English antipathy to foreigners. He never becomes Italianised so far as to lose his contempt for men whose ideas of sport rank larks with the orthodox partridge. He abuses Castlereagh and poor George III. to his heart's content, and ...
— Hours in a Library - New Edition, with Additions. Vol. II (of 3) • Leslie Stephen
... supposed himself an actor; took a part, when he took any, merely for convenience, as one takes a hand at whist; and found his true service and pleasure in the more congenial business of the manager. Augier, Racine, Shakespeare, Aristophanes in Hookham Frere's translation, Sophocles and AEschylus in Lewis Campbell's, such were some of the authors whom he introduced to his public. In putting these upon the ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson, Volume 9 • Robert Louis Stevenson
... Connected with the duties of his office, was the more personal duty of improving his own faculties, and extending his knowledge of the art which he had engaged to cultivate. He read much, and studied more. The perusal of Corneille, Racine, Voltaire, and the other French classics, could not be without advantage to one whose exuberance of power, and defect of taste, were the only faults he had ever been reproached with; and the sounder ideas thus acquired, he was constantly busy in exemplifying by attempts ...
— The Life of Friedrich Schiller - Comprehending an Examination of His Works • Thomas Carlyle
... Slicer, had had a different experience. On the evening of the raid he was in a box at the theatre where Guitry, who had run over from Paris, was appearing in the little role of Phedre, when the noise of firing was heard above the alexandrines of Racine. "With great presence of mind," so Mr. Mullinger told us, "Guitry came down stage, right, and said in quizzical tone to us: 'Eh bien, chere petite folle et vieux marcheur, just run up to the roof, will you please, ...
— Modern American Prose Selections • Various
... vocabulary of the science into his mystic writings. His sect was revived in England in the eighteenth century through the efforts of William Law. Saint-Martin translated into French two of his Latin works under the titles L'Aurore naissante, ou la Racine de la philosophie (1800), and Les trois principes de l'essence divine (1802). The originals had appeared nearly two hundred years earlier,—Aurora in 1612, and ...
— A Budget of Paradoxes, Volume I (of II) • Augustus De Morgan |
