"Samson" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... toil, what a measure of felicity, he quietly bore along with him; with what quiet strength he both worked on this earth, and enjoyed in it; invincible to evil fortune and to good! A most composed invincible man; in difficulty and distress, knowing no discouragement, Samson-like, carrying off on his strong Samson-shoulders the gates that would imprison him; in danger and menace, laughing at the whisper of fear. And then, with such a sunny current of true humor and humanity, a free joyful sympathy with so many things; what of fire he had, all lying so beautifully latent, ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Vol. V (of X) - Great Britain and Ireland III • Various
... next morning he experienced a consciousness of power that reminded him of sundry tales of Samson. But there was one drawback. He did not seem quite able to control himself. For instance, instead of dressing in the usual dignified and quiet way, he found himself prancing about his room like a young colt, and while he was taking his bath he had a yearning for objects of ...
— The Booming of Acre Hill - And Other Reminiscences of Urban and Suburban Life • John Kendrick Bangs
... death I could endure it, but the very thought that my innocent darling, my beautiful, tender little Faynie, is in that dastardly villain's power, fairly goads me to madness. Oh, Heaven! if I but had the strength of Samson for but a single hour, to burst these cruel bonds asunder and fly ...
— Mischievous Maid Faynie • Laura Jean Libbey
... surprised to see an owl sitting in a cherry tree in the daytime, and he said to himself: "My eyes are fairly good, and they tell me that a whole owl is sitting in that tree!" Then Samson Crow flew down to where Robert Robin was saying, "Tut! Tut! Tut!" in the ...
— Exciting Adventures of Mister Robert Robin • Ben Field
... "Othoniel, Aod, Gideon, Jephtha, Samson, as in Israel; Miltiades, Aristides, Themistocles, Cimon, Pericles, as in Athens; Papyrius, Cincinnatus, Camillus, Fabius Scipio, as in Rome: smiths of the fortune of the commonwealth; not such as forged hob-nails, but thunderbolts. Popular ...
— The Commonwealth of Oceana • James Harrington
... riddle for the folk mind is well known, and before the spread of cards appears to have been one of the chief forms of gambling in which even life was staked, as in the case of Samson or the Sphinx. In the Folk-Tale it often occurs in the form of the Riddle-Bride-Wager, in which a princess is married to him that can guess some elaborate conundrum. The first two of Child's Ballads deal with similar riddles, ...
— Europa's Fairy Book • Joseph Jacobs
... their bursting shrapnel, and return to our artillery with his report. One day we watched two hostile planes chase him back right to our trench. When they came near us we opened rapid fire that forced them to turn; but before Samson reached his landing-place at Salt Lake we could see that he was in trouble; one of the wings of the machine was drooping badly. We watched him land in safety, saw him jump out of his seat, and walk about ten yards to a waiting motor-ambulance. The ambulance had just turned when a shell hit the aeroplane. ...
— World's War Events, Vol. I • Various
... always profited by its martyrdoms. Samson, old and blind, toppled down the temple, and the Philistines that he slew at his death were more than they which he slew in his life. Not so Brann. His death was as tragic and pitiable as the charge of the Light Brigade, the sacrifice of men at the ...
— Volume 1 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... logically enough too, but the proposition is as monstrous and fabulous as the Lilliputian island. It is not that the grievance is so great, but there is his enemy—the assault is wonderful for its activity and terrible rage. It is Samson, with a bone in his hand, rushing on his enemies and felling them: one admires not the cause so much as the strength, the anger, the fury of the champion. As is the case with madmen, certain subjects provoke him, and awaken his fits of wrath. Marriage is one of these; in a hundred passages ...
— Harvard Classics Volume 28 - Essays English and American • Various
... give up all thoughts of it, and instead of my former habits of life, to cultivate the bit ground which my forefaithers had held for two hundred years, for the consideration of an armed man's service. But her brother taunted me, and said I was no better than Samson lying wi' his head on the lap of Dalilah, and that I had not only given his sister my heart to keep, but my courage also. A taunt was a thing that I never could endure, and that I never would put up wi' from any man that ever was born—and I hope none of ye ever will, or, ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Volume III • Various
... only by assuming that the river has cared less for its later inhabitants than it did for those who gave it name. It has laughed at the embankments on which hundreds of millions have been spent by nation, state, and private enterprise to keep its flood in restraint. Shorn of its trees, as Samson of his long hair, it has pulled down the pillars of man's raising into its own destroying waters. In 1912 a space nearly two and a half times the size of the State of New Jersey was devastated. [Footnote: ...
— The French in the Heart of America • John Finley
... hurt of Dulcinea, he would carry out all the rest faithfully and truly. The Knight of the White Moon then galloped away toward the city, where one of the Governor's friends followed him, in order to find out who he was. The victorious knight was Samson Carrasco, who, some months before, had fought with and had been beaten by Don Quixote. And he explained to the Governor's friend that all he wanted in fighting was, not to harm Don Quixote, but to make him promise to go home, and stop there for a year, by which ...
— Young Folks Treasury, Volume 3 (of 12) - Classic Tales And Old-Fashioned Stories • Various
... life I would avenge myself on this tiger, thirsting for my blood; I would anticipate him in his work of destruction, and the strength of Samson seemed to permeate ...
— Sea and Shore - A Sequel to "Miriam's Memoirs" • Mrs. Catharine A. Warfield
... I interrupted her,—"nothing. I am shorn of it all. It has all gone from me, like the strength of Samson. Spare me, and torment me not.... I cannot heal your child. I am not like you. I was not prepared for—this condition of things. I did not expect to die. I never thought of becoming a spirit. I find myself extraordinarily embarrassed ...
— The Gates Between • Elizabeth Stuart Phelps
... Bury stands the name of Samson, "the wolf who raged among the monks." Many of the brothers had become entangled with Jewish money-lenders in the twelfth century, and Abbot Samson, while protecting the Jews at the time of the massacre, discharged all the debts of ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume I. - Great Britain and Ireland • Various
... London Bridge, young hero?" cried the amazed king. "How may that be? Have we a Duke Samson among us to ...
— The Junior Classics • Various
... the building, close by the crystal fountain, there are the splendid iron gates from Coalbrookdale, which look very magnificent. I fancy Samson would find it rather a difficult matter trying to bear off these gates on his back, strong as he was. Close by these gates there is a gigantic statue of our good Queen, on horseback, which towers high over our heads; and she sits smiling at us as if ...
— The World's Fair • Anonymous
... as a man who goes a journey finds, as he jogs on, that every mile he goes brings him nearer where he is going, and farther from where he started. I am not so young as I was once, and I don't believe I shall ever be, if I live to the age of Samson, which, Heaven knows as well as I do, I don't want to, for I wouldn't be a centurion or an octagon, and survive my factories, and become idiomatic, by any means. But then there is no knowing how a thing will turn out till it takes place; and we shall come to ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume I. (of X.) • Various
... twenty. To have had the least chance of being all at once seen by two million of men, it could not have been less than fifty feet high—and if Sardanapalus waved the royal standard of Assyria round his head, Samson or O'Doherty must have been a joke to him. However, we shall suppose he did; and what was the result? Such shouts arose that the solid walls of Nineveh were shook, "and the firm ground made tremble." But ...
— Recreations of Christopher North, Volume 2 • John Wilson
... glance, those two men whose victim I was. Mr. Escourt's pale cheek was flushed, and Henry's grew pale. He trembled for himself and for me. The fabric which he had raised by his cunning, and maintained by his arts, was tottering to its base. Like to Samson in the temple of the Philistines, strength had returned to me in the hour of abasement; and I was dragging down upon him, and upon myself, the ruin which had so ...
— Ellen Middleton—A Tale • Georgiana Fullerton
... calls this and the other Additions 'fabulæ' (twice), it is pointed out by Peronne in his note to Corn. à Lap. on Dan. xiii. 1 (Paris, 1874) that Jerome uses the same word of the story of Samson (no ref. given), which he certainly regarded as canonical. He claims therefore that here it has "verum et nativum sensum vocis fabulæ, quæ quidem significat 'historiam, sermonem.'" But even if any disparaging sense could be eliminated from this particular word, ...
— The Three Additions to Daniel, A Study • William Heaford Daubney
... indeed, been one other, but for him there hung no loving memorial. He was the youngest of all, and such a noble, strong, and lusty infant, that the father, in the pride of his heart, and with his fondness for Scriptural names, had christened him Samson. He, too, had gone; but in the dread gallery that hung about the room there was no framed funereal picture "To the Memory of Samson Newell." If in the tomb of his father's or mother's heart he lay buried, no outward ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 8, No. 50, December, 1861 • Various
... of poetry involves all the possible mistakes liable to prose and, owing to the form of poetry, some new ones. Thus in Pickering's Aldine edition of Milton, two words of one line in "Samson Agonistes" are dropped down into the next, making the two lines of uneven length and very much hurting the emphasis. The three-volume reprint of this edition dutifully copies the misprint. In the Standard edition of Dr. Holmes's "Works" printed at the Riverside ...
— The Booklover and His Books • Harry Lyman Koopman
... I hear the curfew, Please go away and come some other day; Goliath tussels With Samson's muscles, Yet the muscles never ...
— The Sea Fairies • L. Frank Baum
... Other orations followed in like vein. All orders that Robespierre had given out were abrogated by acclamation. Two days and Robespierre was made to take a dose of the medicine he had so often prescribed for others. He was beheaded by Samson, his own servant, July Fifteenth, Seventeen ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Vol. 2 of 14 - Little Journeys To the Homes of Famous Women • Elbert Hubbard
... a lot of boys who could be scared out of their skins! Boys! Why, they are young devils! The fellow I went against is a regular Samson!" ...
— Frank Merriwell's Cruise • Burt L. Standish
... in his own territory! The sleeper has awoke a moral Samson, snapping the withs with which the King of Terrors had bound him. The star of Bethlehem shines, and the Valley of Achor becomes a door of hope. The all-devouring destroyer has to relinquish ...
— Memories of Bethany • John Ross Macduff
... Samson Rawdy came first, driving a victoria in which sat the gentleman who had been pointed out to him as Ina Carroll's fiance. He glanced at him approvingly, and the thought even was in his mind that had this stranger ...
— The Debtor - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... individual has made all this difference. Lady Austen and we pass our days alternately at each other's Chateau. In the morning I walk with one or other of the ladies, and in the evening wind thread. Thus did Hercules, and thus probably did Samson, and thus do I; and were both those heroes living, I should not fear to challenge them to a trial of skill in that business, or doubt to beat them both." It was perhaps while he was winding thread that Lady Austen ...
— Cowper • Goldwin Smith
... body seemed to swim in my tears. When he had finished the choir sang. Their singing was a thing that appealed to the eye as well as the ear. Uncle Eb used to say it was a great comfort to see Elkenah Samson sing bass. His great mouth opened widely in this form of praise and his eyes had a wild stare in them when he aimed at ...
— Eben Holden - A Tale of the North Country • Irving Bacheller
... of Midian seven years before Gideon delivered them. The bullock sacrificed by him was seven years old. Samson told Delilah to bind him with seven green withes; and she wove the seven locks of his head, and afterwards shaved them off. Balaam told Barak to build for him seven altars. Jacob served seven years for Leah and seven for Rachel. Job had seven ...
— Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry • Albert Pike
... The man who made the brass-work for the Tabernacle was 'full of the Spirit of God.' The poets who sung the Psalms, in more than one place, declare of themselves that they, too, were but the harps upon which the divine finger played. Samson was capable of his rude feats of physical strength, because 'the Spirit of God was upon him.' Art, song, counsel, statesmanlike adaptation of means to ends, and discernment of proper courses for a nation, such as were exemplified in Joseph and in Daniel, are, in the Old Testament, ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: Romans Corinthians (To II Corinthians, Chap. V) • Alexander Maclaren
... authorities are at variance regarding the form and attributes of Dagan. Our knowledge regarding him is derived mainly from the Bible. He was a national rather than a city god. There are references to a Beth-dagon[40], "house or city of Dagon"; he had also a temple at Gaza, and Samson destroyed it by pulling down the two middle pillars which were its main support.[41] A third temple was situated in Ashdod. When the captured ark of the Israelites was placed in it the image of Dagon "fell on his face", with ...
— Myths of Babylonia and Assyria • Donald A. Mackenzie
... the monkey Hanumant presents another curious resemblance to that of Samson. Hanumant is bound with cords by Indrajit, son of Ravanas; he could easily free himself, but does not wish to do so. Ravanas to put him to shame, orders his tail to be burned, because the tail is the part ...
— The Ramayana • VALMIKI
... survived. But the best of these old dramatic authors was a priest of Viborg, Justesen Ranch (1539-1607), who wrote Kong Salomons Hylding ("The Crowning of King Solomon") (1585), Samsons Faengsel ("The Imprisonment of Samson"), which includes lyrical passages which have given it claims to be considered the first Danish opera, and a farce, Karrig Niding ("The Miserly Miscreant"). Beside these works Ranch wrote a famous moralizing ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 8, Slice 2 - "Demijohn" to "Destructor" • Various
... Heine's parents were orthodox, but by no means bigoted Jews. We read with amazement that one of the plans of the mother, ambitious for her firstborn, was to make of him a Roman Catholic priest. The boy's father, Samson Heine, was a rather unsuccessful member of a family which in other representatives—particularly Samson's brother Salomon in Hamburg—attained to wealth and prominence in the ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VI. • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... upon the value of his music, in the fact that Haendel took twelve measures well nigh bodily out of one of the choruses in Carissimi's "Jephthah," and incorporated them in "Hear Jacob's God" in his own "Samson." Mr. Hullah gives an excellent aria from this work, but it is too long for insertion here. The more important of Carissimi's innovations were in the direction of pleasing qualities in the accompaniments, and agreeable rhythms. He was teacher of several ...
— A Popular History of the Art of Music - From the Earliest Times Until the Present • W. S. B. Mathews
... "What mules, Master Samson?" coolly demanded Hal, who had comfortably established himself under the tree with ...
— The Prince and the Page • Charlotte M. Yonge
... Friend, and pour those doses consecutively on the fragments I have mentioned, at intervals of not less than five minutes. Quantities of little bubbles will rise at every pouring; collect the gas in those bubbles, and convey it into a closed chamber—and let Samson himself be in that closed chamber; our stout Friend will kill him in half an hour! Will kill him slowly, without his seeing anything, without his smelling anything, without his feeling anything but sleepiness. Will kill him, and tell the whole College of Surgeons nothing, if ...
— Armadale • Wilkie Collins
... of love and glee, And after balls and banquets hie; In the end ye'll get no good for fee, But just heads broken by and by; Light loves make beasts of men that sigh; They changed the faith of Solomon, And left not Samson lights to spy; Good luck has he that ...
— Poems & Ballads (Second Series) - Swinburne's Poems Volume III • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... take 'em both together. She gave her evidence in the gamest way, and was highly complimented by the Bench, and cheered right home to her lodgings. She said in Court that she'd have took him single-handed (on account of what she knew concerning him), if he had been Samson. And ...
— David Copperfield • Charles Dickens
... about the wave-offering, and the sin-offering, and the burnt-offering. That was not it, and so he went from book to book until he had reached the twelfth and thirteenth verses of the fourteenth chapter of the book of Judges. He was just reading in that place about Samson's riddle, when his mamma called him ...
— Queer Stories for Boys and Girls • Edward Eggleston
... person who ever lived? Surely there is no difficulty in answering that question, surely there has never been anyone to compare with Samson in wonderful feats of strength! Did he not alone and unaided rend a young lion in two, as easily as if it had been a kid? Did he not lift the massive iron gates of Gaza from their hinges, carry them on his ...
— The King's Cup-Bearer • Amy Catherine Walton
... Cities, iii. 4, he says: "The name of the strong man of Old Scripture descended to the chief functionary who worked the guillotine." But the name of this functionary was Sanson, not Samson. ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama, Vol 1 - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook • The Rev. E. Cobham Brewer, LL.D.
... nature or some simple conflict of the savage life. The same thing is probably true of the adventures of the Babylonian hero Gilgamesh, who is sometimes considered to be the original of Heracles. Nothing is easier than to expound the story of Samson in the Old Testament as a series of solar and other phenomena,[1486] but the probability is that he embodies the vague recollections of early tribal adventures, and, notwithstanding his name (which means 'solar,' that ...
— Introduction to the History of Religions - Handbooks on the History of Religions, Volume IV • Crawford Howell Toy
... should quite have enjoyed watching it if Sir Lionel had been a stranger, but knowing him somehow made me feel 'pon honour not to look, and rather restless. I do believe that, compared with some of these men, who've been at the other end of the world for years doing important political things, Samson with his hair all cropped off was adamant ...
— Set in Silver • Charles Norris Williamson and Alice Muriel Williamson
... what province, city, and not meet with Signior Deliro, or Hercules Furens, Maenads, and Corybantes? Their speeches say no less. [769]E fungis nati homines, or else they fetched their pedigree from those that were struck by Samson with the jaw-bone of an ass. Or from Deucalion and Pyrrha's stones, for durum genus sumus, [770] marmorei sumus, we are stony-hearted, and savour too much of the stock, as if they had all heard that enchanted horn of Astolpho, that English duke in ...
— The Anatomy of Melancholy • Democritus Junior
... You are all right if you are bald headed outside, if you are not bald inside. Remember, Samson did his biggest killing after he lost his hair. Your bald head is like Paradise, there's no parting there. Your teeth may be out, and your hair may be thin, yet there's many a good ...
— Supreme Personality • Delmer Eugene Croft
... coming. I thought as our friends think at home—that to prepare my childlike wonder-lovers to listen with favor to my grave message I only needed to charm the way to it with wonders, marvels, miracles. With full confidence I told the wonders performed by Samson, the strongest man that had ever lived—for ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... Samson blind,' said Mr. Lydiard; and Miss Denham, who had returned, begged her guardian to entreat the ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... inhibition—somehow—but David and the Sibyl must try to forgive me if they find themselves represented merely by the names of those conspicuous personal qualities to which they probably owed, respectively, their powers of prophecy, as Samson's strength lay ...
— Shapes of Clay • Ambrose Bierce
... array of housewifery implements, among others a pair of scissors, with which she is clipping his locks: her expression is so placid and thrifty withal that it seemed clear she was saving a penny for her goodman instead of sending him to the barber. But this was not the painter's idea: the two were Samson and Delilah. Better than this was a painting of Susannah and the elders, where the chaste Susannah is depicted clothed to the throat like a Dutch burgomaster's wife, with a close cap and long veil, while her perilous ablutions are typified ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 15, - No. 90, June, 1875 • Various
... from their tresses; and then brought out to die in the chill, misty Brumaire morning, howled at and derided by the swarm of bloodsuckers, till they cowered down, not in fear, but sickening horror, welcoming Samson and his satellites as friends and saviors. Remember, too, that there was scarcely an exception to the rule of patient courage, calm self-sacrifice, and pride of birth that never belied itself. Dubarry might shriek on the scaffold, ...
— Sword and Gown - A Novel • George A. Lawrence
... sir (you will excuse the idea; it was involuntary), I was thinking of Hercules and Samson with their charmers—" ...
— Jane Eyre - an Autobiography • Charlotte Bronte
... owing to lack of transport, and though he had a numerically superior force he did not like Napoleon's dispositions, and retreated when Kleber moved up the plain to pass between Gaza and the sea, and the cavalry advanced east of the Mound of Hebron, or Ali Muntar, as we know the hill up which Samson is reputed to have carried the gates and bar of Gaza. For nearly a century and a quarter since Napoleon passed forwards and backwards through the town, Gaza pursued the arts of peace in the lethargic spirit which suits the native temperament, but in eight months of 1917 it was the ...
— How Jerusalem Was Won - Being the Record of Allenby's Campaign in Palestine • W.T. Massey
... I, "I read all of that book an' most of the next one. Me an' another feller had a dispute about the Bible one time, an' he said it was the best readin' the' was, an' I said it was too dry. He read me about a feller in it named Samson, who was full o' jokes an' the strongest man ever was, I reckon, before he let that Philistine woman loco him, an' he read about another feller, just a mite of a boy, who killed a giant with a slingshot in front of an army which had made fun of him ...
— Happy Hawkins • Robert Alexander Wason
... time," said he, "to witness one of the scenes in our great picture, 'Samson and Delilah.' They're getting it on now, so you must hurry if you want to see the work. It's really the biggest thing our firm ...
— Aunt Jane's Nieces Out West • Edith Van Dyne
... be no compromising there; no inter-marrying and sentimental burying of the old feud. Betty would tie his hands. He was afraid of her power to do that. He did not want to be a Samson shorn. His ego revolted against love interfering with the grim business of everyday life. He bit his lip and wished he could wipe out that kiss. He cursed himself for a slavish weakness of the flesh. The night was old when MacRae lay down on his bed. But he could find no ease for ...
— Poor Man's Rock • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... Samson or Goliath; though I believe it was the small man who slung things about and turned out the hero in the end," added Randal, surveying the performance with interest and a touch of envy, for much pen work had made his own hands as delicate as ...
— Kitty's Class Day And Other Stories • Louisa M. Alcott
... in the proposed Teufelei,—it would be such sport to stir up the vermin and hear them buzz. They gave the milder 'Xenia' pet names such as 'jovial brethren', 'little fellows', 'teasing youngsters', while the harsher ones were likened to stinging insects, or to the foxes of Samson: ...
— The Life and Works of Friedrich Schiller • Calvin Thomas
... distinction between his Church and his secular compositions; the structure, manner and outlines of his songs are precisely alike—indeed, he dished up secular airs for sacred cantatas. The style of Handel's "Semele" and that of his "Samson" are the same; there is no dissimilarity between Haydn's symphonies and the "Creation"; Mozart's symphonies and his masses (though the masses are a little breezier, on the whole); Schubert's symphonies or songs and his masses or "The Song of Miriam"; Beethoven's ...
— Purcell • John F. Runciman
... are content to occupy but a corner of the broad land which He has given us. In like manner Joshua did not realise to the full the following promise of uniform victory, but was defeated at Ai and elsewhere. The reason was the same,—the faithlessness of the people. Unbelief and sin turn a Samson into a weakling, and make Israel flee before the ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... insult me, and if you do not want to cause me to doubt the sincerity of your love, you won't call any prescription of the church of Christ foolish. The Scriptures tell us that we may lawfully and meritoriously abstain from many good and useful gifts of God—as Samson abstained from wine; St. John the Baptist from flesh and the luxury of apparel; St. Paul fasted and chastised his body; the Jews were commanded to abstain from the use of pork and other meats. Finally, our Savior promises to reward those ...
— The Cross and the Shamrock • Hugh Quigley
... from, all those to whom life is communicated by a divine act. He Himself is 'the Life,' and it was not possible that Life should be holden of Death; therefore He burst its bonds, and, like the ancient Jewish hero, though in far nobler fashion, our Samson enters into the city which is a prison, and on His strong shoulders bears away the gates, that none may ever there be ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. Mark • Alexander Maclaren
... the body—that the soul is free, and the inner man retaining the original uprightness of the image of God. You may know them by the stern sobriety of their countenances, and the contempt with which they regard the jests and pastimes of their miserable and degraded companions, who, like Samson, make sport for the keepers of their prison-house. These men are always feared as well as hated by their task-masters. Harry had never been whipped, and had always said that he would die rather than ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... in the dying light of the flames it seems to move. She studies it close, then with a cry of pain and terror she falls upon the hot earth, and her senses go out, not to be regained in woful years. With head low bowed, Gilbert Gates trudges away. In the fight at Brandywine next day, Black Samson, a giant negro, armed with a scythe, sweeps his way through the red ranks like a sable figure of Time. Mayland had taught him; his daughter had given him food. It is to avenge them that he is fighting. In the height of the conflict he enters the American ranks leading ...
— Myths And Legends Of Our Own Land, Complete • Charles M. Skinner
... wits, and was just offering the hand he had fairly won, when a crash startled them, and a heavily decorated side-scene swayed forward, ready to fall upon Alice. Demi saw it and sprung before her to catch and hold it up, standing like a modern Samson with the wall of a house on his back. The danger was over in a moment, and he was about to utter his last speech, when the excited young scene-shifter, who had flown up a ladder to repair the damage, leaned over to whisper 'All ...
— Jo's Boys • Louisa May Alcott
... original in their style, harmonious in their numbers, and pointed in their ridicule; whose tragedies are the only pathetic tragedies which have been written in our language upon the severe Greek model. The Samson Agonistes bears marks of a stronger, but also of an heavier hand, and is unquestionably less touching than the sweet Elfrida, and ...
— On the Portraits of English Authors on Gardening, • Samuel Felton
... Sorensons and the Chinese—mob-stuff. There is a mob in every drama—poor mob that always loses, of untimely arousings, mere bewildered strength in the wiles of strategy. Poor undone mob—its head always in the lap of Wit, to be shorn like Samson.... And the Glow-worm—that incomparable female facing the South, her great yellow smoldering eyes, filled with the dusky Southern Sea, and who knows what lights and lovers of Buenos Aires, flitting across her dreams?... Had there ...
— Fate Knocks at the Door - A Novel • Will Levington Comfort
... Halleck, Seward and Sumner," exclaims Wendell Philips, the apostle. Wendell Samson shakes the pillars, and the roof may crush the Philistines, and those who lack ...
— Diary from November 12, 1862, to October 18, 1863 • Adam Gurowski
... poetry is good or bad as poetry, is a matter that may admit of a difference of opinion without alienating those who differ. We could not keep the peace with a man who should put forward claims to taste and yet depreciate the choruses in SAMSON AGONISTES; but, I think, we may shake hands with one who sees no more in Walt Whitman's volume, from a literary point of view, than a farrago of incompetent essays in a wrong direction. That may not be at all our own opinion. We may think that, when a work ...
— Familiar Studies of Men & Books • Robert Louis Stevenson
... in the world, till I have done this and that and the other business; but, alas! the thing is, they are not willing; for, were they but soundly willing, these, and a thousand such as these, would hold them no faster than the cords held Samson, when he broke them like burnt flax. I tell you the will is all: that is one of the chief things which turns the wheel either backward or forward; and God knoweth that full well, and so likewise doth the devil; and ...
— The World's Great Sermons, Vol. 2 (of 10) • Grenville Kleiser
... experience." So said a brawny pioneer, a man of large mind, and generous heart, and a sledge-hammer fist that never struck a coward's blow; but when swung in defence of the right was like "the jaw-bone" of Samson to the Philistines. He had emigrated from Maine twenty years before, and was one of the first settlers I met on the prairie near the scene of my story. Was his prediction fulfilled? Ah, how like sweetest music sounded the bells of Salem (city of peace) the first Sunday of ...
— The Cabin on the Prairie • C. H. (Charles Henry) Pearson
... to look for some explanation from the walls. She gets a peep at him at last. Oh, what a grandly set-up man! Oh, the stride of him. Oh, the noble rage of him. Oh, Samson had been like this before that woman ...
— Echoes of the War • J. M. Barrie
... Sage, lie thought as a Sail, set every threadbare Saint, 't would provoke a St. John mingles with my bowl Saints in crape and lawn —, his soul is with the Salt of the earth Samson, the Philistines be upon thee Satan, get thee behind me Satire's my weapon —in disguise Saul and Jonathan, undivided in death Savage, wild in woods, the noble Saviour's, the, birth is celebrated Scars, he jests at Sceptre, ...
— Familiar Quotations • Various
... present at this difficulty, only thirty of whom were Mormons, and only eight Mormons took part in the fight. I was an entire stranger to all who were engaged in the affray, except Stewart, but I had seen the sign, and, like Samson when loaning against the pillar, I felt the power of God nerve my arm for the fray. It helps a man a great deal in a fight to know that God ...
— The Mormon Menace - The Confessions of John Doyle Lee, Danite • John Doyle Lee
... 5 [So Samson, when his hair was lost, Met the Philistines to his cost; Shook his vain limbs with sad surprise, Made feeble ...
— Hymns and Spiritual Songs • Isaac Watts
... her, "See, you have no children; but now be careful not to drink any wine nor strong drink, and do not eat anything unclean, for you are about to have a son. No razor shall be used upon your son's head, for from birth the boy shall belong to God." So the woman had a son and named him Samson. ...
— The Children's Bible • Henry A. Sherman
... Second side. Fortitude. A long-bearded man [Samson?] tearing open a lion's jaw. The inscription is illegible, and the somewhat vulgar personification appears to belong rather to Courage than Fortitude. On the Renaissance copy it is inscribed "FORTITUDO SUM VIRILIS." The Latin word has, perhaps, been received by the sculptor as merely signifying ...
— The Stones of Venice, Volume II (of 3) • John Ruskin
... heretofore impossible of enactment. The Federal Government is powerless to pass these laws. For many decades, tight held by the cramping bonds of Constitutional limitation, it has strained and struggled, like Samson in the temple, to find some weak spot at which it could free itself, and endangered the very supporting columns of the edifice of the Republic. It was bound in its lawmaking powers to the limitation of eighteen specific phrases, beyond which all ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 21 - The Recent Days (1910-1914) • Charles F. Horne, Editor
... springs the hatchet from the bottom of the water, and fixes itself to its old acquaintance, the helve. Now, had he wished to coach it up to heaven in a fiery chariot like Elias, be as rich as Job, strong as Samson, and beautiful as Absalom, would he have obtained the wish, do you think? In truth, my friend, I question it ...
— My Novel, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... And when a woman smiled, The strong man was a child, The sage a noodle. Alcides was befooled, And silly Samson shorn, Long, long ere you ...
— The Humourous Poetry of the English Language • James Parton
... prevalent competition among teachers for a high percentage of passes. I had to teach Scripture history and I didn't believe in it. None of us believed in it; the talking serpent, the Egyptian miracles, Samson, Jonah and the whale, and all that. Everything about me was sordid and unlovely. I yearned for a fuller, wider life, for larger knowledge. I hungered for the sun. In short, I was intensely miserable. At home things went from bad to worse; often I was the sole bread-winner, and my few shillings ...
— Children of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... no easy task. But Jeffreys, lad as he was, was a young Samson, and had his man at a disadvantage. For Corporal, entangled with the sack and unprepared for the sudden onslaught, staggered back and fell; and before he could struggle to his feet Jeffreys was on him, ...
— A Dog with a Bad Name • Talbot Baines Reed
... hanc fossam esse spiraculum maris arenosi, de quo mari aliquid locuturus sum in sequentibus. Ab Acon via versus Jerusalem bifurcatur: nam qui tenet vnum latus potest ire secus Iordanem fluuium, in Ciuitatem Damascum, qui vero aliud, ibit in tribus aut quatuor dietis Gazam, de qua olim fortis Samson asportauit nocte fores portarum: deinde in Caesaream Philippi, et Ascalonem, et Ioppam portum supradictum, Hincque in Rama, et Castellum Emaus, et sic ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques and Discoveries - of the English Nation. v. 8 - Asia, Part I. • Richard Hakluyt
... are longing after the deceitful charms of sin. If they still retain the fallen nature of man, what a terrible hour for them! what frightful battles inside the poor heart! What superhuman efforts and strength would be required to come out a conqueror from that battle field, where a David, a Samson, have ...
— The Priest, The Woman And The Confessional • Father Chiniquy
... over the place. He had a sad, pale, eager-looking face, with dreamy eyes, which always seemed to be looking into the spiritual world. He wore his brown hair long, as he always maintained a man's hair was as much his glory as a woman's was hers, quoting Samson and Absalom in support of this opinion. His arms were long and thin, and when he gesticulated in the pulpit on Sundays flew about like a couple of flails, which gave him a most unhappy resemblance to a windmill. The ...
— Madame Midas • Fergus Hume
... purpose to Madrid. The trial was a cowardly and ignominious submission of the English Government to the insolence of England's hereditary enemy. Raleigh seemed for the moment to have failed completely, yet it was really like the act of Samson, who slew more men at his death than in all his life. Samuel Pepys, who had some fine intuitions at a time when the national moral was very low, spoke of Raleigh as being "given over, as a sacrifice," to our enemies. This has been, in truth, the secret of his unfailing romantic ...
— Some Diversions of a Man of Letters • Edmund William Gosse
... indulges her show-monsters on such occasions, as she crams her parrots with sugar-plums, in order to make them talk before company. I cannot be tempted to "come aloft" for these marks of distinction, and, like imprisoned Samson, I would rather remain—if such must be the alternative—all my life in the mill-house, grinding for my very bread, than be brought forth to make sport for the Philistine lords and ladies. This proceeds from no dislike, real or affected, to the aristocracy ...
— Bride of Lammermoor • Sir Walter Scott
... action under O'Keefe, which one minute of private speech would launch into a hurricane effectiveness. In mad moments he had even tried to break the chain between the steel bracelets that bit into his wrists. His Samson strength had strained until the arteries swelled in his temples and it has been almost enough—but not quite. A link had stretched a bit, but the wrists had been so lacerated that the effort had ...
— A Pagan of the Hills • Charles Neville Buck
... after the Conquest, were granted lands in Devonshire, and in one generation after another they have come forward to take a part in public affairs—often a Samson's share of toil. Sir John Fortescue fought at Agincourt, and was chosen Governor of Meaux by Henry V. Sir Edward Fortescue, when he had surrendered Salcombe Castle, had the consolation of knowing that this fort had been held for the King later than any other place in ...
— Devon, Its Moorlands, Streams and Coasts • Rosalind Northcote
... Miss Dorton said he mustn't, because, if he did, it would be a victory for the enemies of humanity. Mr. Parable said something about "humanity," which I didn't rightly hear, but, whatever it was, it started Miss Dorton crying; and Miss Bulstrode called Mr. Parable a "blind Samson," who had had his hair cut by a designing minx who had been hired ...
— Malvina of Brittany • Jerome K. Jerome
... compromise, Anselm had renewed his demand for the obedience of the Archbishop of York, and this demand he continued to push with extreme vigour until his death, first against Gerard, who died early in 1108, and then against his successor, Thomas, son of Bishop Samson of Worcester, appointed by Henry. A plan for the division of the large diocese of Lincoln, by the creation of a new diocese of Ely, though by common consent likely to improve greatly the administration of the Church, he refused ...
— The History of England From the Norman Conquest - to the Death of John (1066-1216) • George Burton Adams
... her! I assure you"—he smiled—"men have no difficulty in keeping important secrets, Samson notwithstanding. Glazzard would think himself for ever dishonoured. But in a week's time they will be gone; and I shouldn't wonder if they remain abroad for years. So brighten up, dearest dear, and leave Sam alone; he's a cynical old fellow, past hope of mending his ways. See more of Molly; ...
— Denzil Quarrier • George Gissing
... you. Methought we were speaking of Blanche de Bechamel. I loved her, young man. My pearls, and diamonds, and treasure, my wit, my wisdom, my passion, I flung them all into the child's lap. I was a fool. Was strong Samson not as weak as I? Was Solomon the Wise much better when Balkis wheedled him? I said to the king—But enough of that, I spake of Blanche ...
— The Lock and Key Library • Julian Hawthorne, Ed.
... keep of the crumbling castle resumed its pristine defiance with deep-toned culverin and ponderous mace; when, amid the colossal fragments of the tottering temple, men recognized the unsubdued spirit of Samson Agonistes." ...
— Robert Toombs - Statesman, Speaker, Soldier, Sage • Pleasant A. Stovall
... reptile—the humerus of a bird—the jaw of a quadruped—all, any of these things, weak and insignificant as they may seem, become in such a quarrel too strong for us and our theory—the puny fragment in the grasp of truth forms as irresistible a weapon as the dry bone did in that of Samson of old; and our slaughtered sophisms lie piled up, ...
— Fables of Infidelity and Facts of Faith - Being an Examination of the Evidences of Infidelity • Robert Patterson
... spirit of our circle. His presence really seemed, as he said, to encourage the spirits. Never before had the manifestations been so abundant or so surprising. Miss Fetters, especially, astonished us by the vigor of her possessions. Not only Samson and Peter the Great, but Gibbs the Pirate, Black Hawk, and Joe Manton, who had died the previous year in a fit of delirium-tremens, prophesied, strode, swore, and smashed things in turn, by means of her frail little body. As Cribb, a noted pugilist ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 6, No. 38, December, 1860 • Various
... from the stand-point of the personal religion which it originally expressed, or unless one means by so doing to define it as an expression of his own religion. He who defines "the myth of creation," or "the poetical story of Samson," as parts of the pre-Christian Judaic religion, exhibits a total loss of historical sense. The distinction between cognition and fancy does not exist among objects, but only in the intending experience; hence, for ...
— The Approach to Philosophy • Ralph Barton Perry
... proof of political prejudice may not be known:—"John Milton was one whose natural parts might deservedly give him a place amongst the principal of our English poets, having written two heroic poems and a tragedy, viz:—Paradise Lost, Paradise Regained, and Samson Agonistes; but his fame is gone out like a candle in a snuff; and his memory will always stink, which might have ever lived in honourable repute, had he not been a notorious traitor, and most impiously and villanously belied that blessed martyr, King Charles I."—Lives ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 20. No. 568 - 29 Sept 1832 • Various
... of that work was publicly given to Vellano in his native city, to his very great honour. Whereupon he made all the scenes in bronze that are on the outer side of the choir of the Santo, wherein, among others, there is the scene of Samson embracing the column and destroying the temple of the Philistines, in which one sees the fragments of the ruined building duly falling, and the death of so many people, not to mention a great diversity ...
— Lives of the Most Eminent Painters Sculptors and Architects - Vol. 3 (of 10), Filarete and Simone to Mantegna • Giorgio Vasari
... Testament Christ or His apostles speak of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob as being in heaven. Paul speaks of David as a "man after God's own heart"; Elijah and Moses come down from heaven, and appear talking with Christ; and, in Hebrews, Paul praises Samuel, Jephtha, Samson, and David. ...
— God and my Neighbour • Robert Blatchford
... will probably live, but he will never recover. I am obliged to take precautions with this youth of twenty which I should take with an old man of eighty. He is big enough and muscular enough to sit to a painter as a model for Samson—and only last week I saw him swoon away like a young girl, ...
— Man and Wife • Wilkie Collins
... darkened; innocence, that as a veil Had shadowed them from knowing ill, was gone; Just confidence, and native righteousness, And honour, from about them, naked left To guilty Shame; he covered, but his robe Uncovered more. So rose the Danite strong, Herculean Samson, from the harlot-lap Of Philistean Dalilah, and waked Shorn of his strength. They destitute and bare Of all their virtue: Silent, and in face Confounded, long they sat, as strucken mute: Till Adam, ...
— Paradise Lost • John Milton
... enterprise, And evidences too of health, Of pocket and commercial wealth, Yet sadly, sometimes out of place, And serious blots on Nature's face. What would big Indian "Clouthier" say— The red-skinn'd Samson could he stray From the happy hunting ground away— Could he behold the stream to-day— The great Kah-nah-jo, where the God Of the Algonquins used to nod In dreamy slumber 'mid the smoke Which from the mighty cataract broke, Hemm'd in by sawmills, booms and ...
— Recollections of Bytown and Its Old Inhabitants • William Pittman Lett
... of the imbecility which he remarked in his colleagues, and possibly some of the imbecility they had remarked in him, were due to this dreadful ordeal. He admitted that good juleps were to be had at he Mint. But juleps had beguiled even SAMSON, and cut his hair off. His colleague, LOGAN, might not be as strong as SAMSON, but he would be as entirely useless and unimpressive an object with his ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 11, June 11, 1870 • Various
... 'Not,' said she, with her usual keen justness 'not that I've, a word against Delilah. I look upon her as a patriot; she dallied and she used the scissors on behalf of her people. She wasn't bound to Samson in honour,—liked a strong man, probably enough. She proved she liked her country better. The Jews wrote the story of it, so there she stands for posterity to ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... "But he sits above in heaven, and laugheth them to scorn." If, said Luther, God would be pleased to give me a little time and space, that I might expound a couple of small Psalms, I would bestir myself so boldly that, Samson-like, I would take all the ...
— Selections from the Table Talk of Martin Luther • Martin Luther
... a gladiator; he could crush a horseshoe in one hand; he had a small head with a bull-neck, purely Grecian features, thick curly hair with crisp beard and silky moustache. He so closely resembled a marble Hercules that (as he must have a name) we will call him Samson. ...
— Tracks of a Rolling Stone • Henry J. Coke
... remarkable that in no part of his writings does Milton take any notice of the great painters of Italy, nor, indeed, of painting as an art; while every other page breathes his love and taste for music.... Adam bending over the sleeping Eve, in Paradise Lost, and Dalilah approaching Samson, in the Agonistes, are the only two proper ...
— Hazlitt on English Literature - An Introduction to the Appreciation of Literature • Jacob Zeitlin
... withstand the assaults of its enemies?" is a question of primary importance with regard to the Political Future, not of France only but of Europe, and more remotely of the world. Even fettered and stifled as the Republic now is—a shorn and blind Samson in the toils of the Philistines—it is still a potent fact, and its very name is a "word of fear" to the grand conspiracy of despots and owls who are intent on pushing Europe back at the point of the bayonet into the debasement and ...
— Glances at Europe - In a Series of Letters from Great Britain, France, Italy, - Switzerland, &c. During the Summer of 1851. • Horace Greeley
... a master of design as Albrecht, was yet in many respects his equal with the burin. Among the many large and beautiful works that Lucas executed, the first were two in 1509, round in shape, in one of which is Christ bearing the Cross, and in the other His Crucifixion. Afterwards he published a Samson, a David on horseback, and a S. Peter Martyr, with his tormentors; and then he made a copper-plate engraving of Saul seated with the young David playing in his presence. And not long after, having made a great advance, ...
— Lives of the most Eminent Painters Sculptors and Architects - Vol. 06 (of 10) Fra Giocondo to Niccolo Soggi • Giorgio Vasari
... am prematurely weak and fallen is not hard to explain. Like Samson of old, I have taken the gates of Gaza on my shoulders to carry them to the top of the mountain, and only when I was exhausted, when youth and health were quenched in me forever, I noticed that that burden was not for my shoulders, and that I had deceived myself. I have been, ...
— The Lady with the Dog and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... Hercules and Samson were noted for their strength, and we call a very strong man a Hercules or a Samson. Sodom was famous for wickedness, and a similar place is called ...
— An English Grammar • W. M. Baskervill and J. W. Sewell
... and unwearying in friendly service, made us free of the green-room of the Francais, where, on the birthday of Moliere, we saw his "Don Juan" revived. At the Conservatoire we witnessed the masterly teaching of Samson; at the Odeon saw a new play by Ponsard, done but indifferently; at the Varietes "Gentil-Bernard," with four grisettes as if stepped out of a picture by Watteau; at the Gymnase "Clarisse Harlowe," with a death-scene of Rose Cheri which comes back to me, through the distance of time, ...
— The Life of Charles Dickens, Vol. I-III, Complete • John Forster
... soon after the war ended and after that I was jest knocked over the head. I went to Camblin and worked for Mrs. Peters. Then I runned away and married my first husband Mike Samson. I been married twice and had two children but they all ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States - Volume II. Arkansas Narratives. Part I • Work Projects Administration
... were as strong as Samson, he would find in the use of these rings, with another man of equal muscle, the fullest opportunity to exert his utmost strength; while the frailest child, engaged with one of equal strength, would never ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 58, August, 1862 • Various
... to begin the night's vigil in this low key. Capital news from the aeroplanes. Samson has sent in photographs taken yesterday, showing the Suvla Bay area. Not more than 100 to 150 yards of trenches in all; half a dozen gun emplacements and, the attached report adds, no Turks ...
— Gallipoli Diary, Volume 2 • Ian Hamilton
... much a man of genius may see in the page which can hardly obtain the attention of an ordinary reader, the last work of Mr Carlyle, Past and Present, will afford him an opportunity of making the experiment. He has but to turn, after reading in that work the account of Abbot Samson, to the Chronicle of Jocelin, from which it has been all faithfully extracted, and he will be surprised that our author could find so much life and truth in the antiquarian record. Or the experiment would be still more perfect ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine—Vol. 54, No. 333, July 1843 • Various
... Claes, on the contrary, suffered from too much power. Stifling in the clutch of a single thought, he dreamed of the pomps of Science, of treasures for the human race, of glory for himself. He suffered as artists suffer in the grip of poverty, as Samson suffered beneath the pillars of the temple. The result was the same for the two sovereigns; though the intellectual monarch was crushed by his inward force, ...
— The Alkahest • Honore de Balzac
... gay of mood, He hath Cordres city at last subdued; Its shattered walls and turrets fell By catapult and mangonel; Not a heathen did there remain But confessed himself Christian or else was slain. The Emperor sits in an orchard wide, Roland and Olivier by his side: Samson the duke, and Anseis proud; Geoffrey of Anjou, whose arm was vowed The royal gonfalon to rear; Gereln, and his fellow in arms, Gerier: With them many a gallant lance, Full fifteen thousand of gentle France. The cavaliers sit upon carpets white Playing at tables for ...
— Song and Legend From the Middle Ages • William D. McClintock and Porter Lander McClintock
... the embroiderer having chosen her scenes at pleasure or as the exigencies of space demanded. Here, Samson-like, he tore the Numean lion jaw from jaw, his knee sunk in the shaggy chest, his shoulders ripped to the bone as the hooked claws gripped the muscles, his mighty torso a dripping crimson in the scheme of colour. There he cleansed the Augean stable in a faithfulness of detail more admirable ...
— The Justice of the King • Hamilton Drummond
... the notes of its great plain-song to the sonorous lines, and "Duke Street," with superior melody and scarcely inferior grandeur, has given them wings; but the choice of many for music that articulates the life of the hymn would be the tune of "Samson," from Handel's Oratorio so named. It appears as No. 469 ...
— The Story of the Hymns and Tunes • Theron Brown and Hezekiah Butterworth
... best stone-wall builders, as the best wood-choppers, come from those solitary mountain towns; a tall, athletic, and hardy race, unerring with the axe as the Indian with the tomahawk; at stone-rolling, patient as Sisyphus, powerful as Samson. ...
— Israel Potter • Herman Melville
... XVIII., I learned that on the 5th of June a violent explosion was heard in the Chamber of Representatives at Paris, which was at first supposed to be a clap of thunder, but was soon ascertained to have been occasioned by a young Samson having fallen with a packet of detonating ...
— Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Louis Antoine Fauvelet de Bourrienne
... my nose and whined for woe. All my thrill died away. I felt guilty, oddly ashamed of myself. I took a pessimistic view of life. What, thought I, are Joannas sent into the world for, save to play havoc with men's happiness? Maitre Francois Villon was quite right. Samson, Sardanapalus, David, Maitre Francois himself, all came to grief over Joannas. "Bien heureux qui rien n'y a." Happy is he who has nothing to ...
— The Beloved Vagabond • William J. Locke
... trifling expressions, any plays on words, even the duplication of such plays as can be found in the Hebrew or the Greek. You seldom find any turn of a word in the King James version, though you do occasionally find it in the Hebrew. One such punning expression occurs in the story of Samson (Judges xv:16), where our version reads: "With the jawbone of an ass, heaps upon heaps, with the jawbone of an ass have I slain a thousand men." In the Hebrew the words translated "ass" and "heaps" are variants of the same word. It comes near ...
— The Greatest English Classic A Study of the King James Version of • Cleland Boyd McAfee
... of art, we find dancing introduced; but dancing of a solemn, mystical, and symbolic character. Here, at last, we have reached the Greek tragedy. Probably the best exemplification of a Grecian tragedy that ever will be given to a modern reader is found in the Samson Agonistes of Milton. Now, in the choral or lyric parts of this fine drama, Samson not only talks, 1st, metrically ( as he does every where, and in the most level parts of the scenic business), but, 2d, in very intricate metres, and, 3d, occasionally in rhymed ...
— The Notebook of an English Opium-Eater • Thomas de Quincey
... Samson had slain the regiment of Philistines and was exhausted and athirst; when in his extremity he cried to the Lord: "Thou hast given this great deliverance into the hand of thy servant, and now shall I die from thirst." What was ...
— Wit, Humor, Reason, Rhetoric, Prose, Poetry and Story Woven into Eight Popular Lectures • George W. Bain
... gigantic creatures seem to belong to a different race. It is no wonder that they should be so commonly proteges of the rich and distinguished. When an eminent wrestler retired in the year in which I first saw a good wrestling bout the ceremony of cutting his hair—for, like Samson, the wrestler wears his hair long—was performed by a personage who combined the dignities of an admiral and a peer. There is nothing of the bruiser in the looks of the smooth-faced wrestlers. Many, however, are the bruises to their bodies and to their self-esteem which they receive in their ...
— The Foundations of Japan • J.W. Robertson Scott
... to withstand her. She became the Count's confidante almost as speedily as she had become his mistress, and every day, and almost every hour, she, with the most delicate coquetry, laid fresh fetters on the Hungarian Samson. Did she love him? ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume III (of 8) • Guy de Maupassant
... and chocolate-coated pills. They took the medicine which their Anglo-Saxon friends offered because it was honeyed and sugared with a few fat jobs and contributions to churches and schools. And while they slept, as Samson slept on the lap of Delilah, they were shorn of their political and civil locks, and awoke one bright morning to find that their strength ...
— Alexander Crummell: An Apostle of Negro Culture - The American Negro Academy. Occasional Papers No. 20 • William H. Ferris
... of civilization speaks this truth with trumpet voice. One nation rises upon the ruins of another nation. It is when Samson lies in the lap of Delilah that the enemy steals upon him and ensnares him and binds him. It was when the great Assyrian king walked through his palace, and looking around him said in his pride, "Is not this great Babylon that I have built for the honor of the kingdom ...
— Modern Eloquence: Vol III, After-Dinner Speeches P-Z • Various
... these matters and return to the general thread of thought. Dramas have been formed on the Bible. We hardly need name "Paradise Lost," or "Samson Agonistes," or the "Cain" of Byron, the "Hadad" of Hillhouse, or Mrs. More's "David and Goliah." "Pilgrim's ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 22, Aug., 1859 • Various
... a corner of the boy's imagination. He had many worlds and he lived in each by turn. There was the world of the Old Testament, of David and Samson, and of those dim figures in the dawn of history, called the Patriarchs. There was the world of Julius Caesar and the Latin grammar, though this was scarcely as real to him as the Old Testament, which was brought to his notice every Sunday as a necessity of his life, while Caesar and AEneas ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... the Circus Boys," shouted someone. "Hello Samson, are you the strong-armed man that held the tent up by ...
— The Circus Boys Across The Continent • Edgar B. P. Darlington
... learn the truth. From her father she had tried to get it, but he had succeeded in keeping her in the dark. To Jones it would be impossible that she should apply; but from Robinson she might succeed in obtaining his secret. She had heard, no doubt, of Samson and Delilah, and thought she knew the way to the strong man's locks. And might it not be well for her to forget that other Samson, and once more to trust herself to her father's partners? When she weighed the two young tradesmen one against the other, balancing ...
— The Struggles of Brown, Jones, and Robinson - By One of the Firm • Anthony Trollope
... me see her,' De Stancy expostulated. 'If she is only half so good-looking as you say, she will drag me at her heels like a blind Samson. You are a mere youth as yet, but I may tell you that the misfortune of never having been my own master where a beautiful face was concerned obliges me to be cautious if I would ...
— A Laodicean • Thomas Hardy
... Briton, Iberian and African, as the ox crushes the frogs of the marsh. The 'sera juvenum Venus, ideoque inexhausta pubertas,' had given him more than his lofty stature, and his mighty limbs. Had he had nought but them, he might have remained to the end a blind Samson, grinding among the slaves in Caesar's mill, butchered to make a Roman holiday. But it had given him more, that purity of his; it had given him, as it may give you, gentlemen, a calm and steady brain, and a free and loyal heart; the energy which springs from health; the self-respect ...
— The Roman and the Teuton - A Series of Lectures delivered before the University of Cambridge • Charles Kingsley
... equally important. Although Greece was involved for years in war and ancient Troy was destroyed and all its inhabitants slaughtered because of the seduction of one woman; and Semiramis, through her beauty, got all her successive husbands in chancery; and poor, susceptible Samson, from firing Philistine vineyards and killing lions bare-handed, and the Philistines by the thousands with the jaw-bone of an ass, was reduced through Delilah to bitter repentance and turning Philistine ...
— History of Circumcision from the Earliest Times to the Present - Moral and Physical Reasons for its Performance • Peter Charles Remondino
... and, pressing it with the other, "he sacrificed Diogenes to all the gods." Just as good as anything! In every age some Diogenes has sacrificed to all the gods. True genius never cowers, and there is always some Samson feeling for the ...
— Lectures of Col. R. G. Ingersoll - Latest • Robert Green Ingersoll
... I am always busy in the teatrino; the other evening we repeated Samson, that play which you once saw here. If you will believe me, I was thinking of you the whole time because I remembered that when we gave it two years ago ...
— Castellinaria - and Other Sicilian Diversions • Henry Festing Jones |
