"Seraglio" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... actual state of the city the palace and gardens of the Seraglio occupy the eastern promontory, the first of the seven hills, and cover about one hundred and fifty acres of our own measure. The seat of Turkish jealousy and despotism is erected on the foundations of a Grecian republic: but it may be supposed that the Byzantines were tempted by the ...
— Gibbon • James Cotter Morison
... possessed such integrity and independence that he refused a most liberal offer from the King of Prussia to become his chapel-master, for some unexplained reason which involved his sense of right and wrong. The first year of his marriage he wrote "Il Seraglio," and made the acquaintance of the aged Gluck, who took a deep interest in him and warmly praised his genius. Haydn, too, recognized his brilliant powers. "I tell you, on the word of an honest man," said the author of the "Creation" to Leopold ...
— The Great German Composers • George T. Ferris
... whom the gazette of the capital described as the Electress Dowager of Hanover. This was the unfortunate Princess Sophia, the wife of George. Thirty-two years of melancholy captivity she had endured, while George was drinking and hoarding money and amusing himself with his seraglio of ugly women. She died protesting her innocence to the last. In the closing days of her illness, so runs the story, she gave into the hands of some one whom she could trust, a letter addressed to her husband, and obtained a promise that the letter ...
— A History of the Four Georges, Volume I (of 4) • Justin McCarthy
... girl, in getting out of a very high coach, showed one of the handsomest legs he had ever seen: but as all this was no obstruction to his designs, he resolved to purchase her at any rate, in order to place her in his seraglio. ...
— The Memoirs of Count Grammont, Complete • Anthony Hamilton
... in, and put his friends on no scent of his own abode; but he makes this "own abode" a sort of Crystal Palace in the centre of a whole ring-fence of streets, with the old fronts of the houses kept to avert suspicion of the Seraglio of Eastern beauties, the menagerie and beast fights, and the slaves whom (it is rather suggested than definitely stated) he occasionally murders. He performs circus-rider feats when he meets a lady (or at least a woman) in the Bois de Boulogne; he sets her house on fire when ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 2 - To the Close of the 19th Century • George Saintsbury
... One generation may do it, perhaps two, but the third—Can we ever rise above nature or sink below her? Did she not turn on Jerusalem as upon Sodom, upon St. Anthony in his desert as upon Nero in his seraglio? Does she not always cry in brutal triumph: "I am here still, at the bottom of things, warming the roots of life; you cannot starve me nor tame me nor thwart me; I made the world, I rule it, and I am ...
— The Troll Garden and Selected Stories • Willa Cather
... kitten, and canary; in the basement was a sewing-machine; while across the entry were a piano, flute, and music-box. But Providence, that ever takes care of its own, did ever prevent all these from performing at once, or the grand seraglio of Satan would have been nothing ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 102, April, 1866 • Various
... Viana, and his mother a lady of royal Moorish blood, from whom he inherited great wealth, and his lands and palace in Granada. There, too, he loves to dwell, who, although he is so good a Christian by faith, has many heathen tastes, and, like the Moors, surrounds himself with a seraglio of beautiful women, as I know, for often I act as his chaplain, as in Granada there are no priests. Moreover, there is a purpose in all this, for, being partly of their blood, he is accredited to the court of their ...
— Fair Margaret • H. Rider Haggard
... The Poetesses of the Age have done Wonders in this kind; and we are obliged to the Lady who writ Ibrahim [8], for introducing a preparatory Scene to the very Action, when the Emperor throws his Handkerchief as a Signal for his Mistress to follow him into the most retired Part of the Seraglio. It must be confessed his Turkish Majesty went off with a good Air, but, methought, we made but a sad Figure who waited without. This ingenious Gentlewoman, in this piece of Bawdry, refined upon an Author of the same Sex, [9] who, in the Rover, makes a Country ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... Lady who writ Ibrahim [33] for introducing a preparatory Scene to the very Action, when the Emperor throws his Handkerchief as a Signal for his Mistress to follow him into the most retired Part of the Seraglio.... This ingenious Gentlewoman in this piece of Baudry refined upon an Author of the same Sex, who in The Rover makes a Country Squire strip to his Holland Drawers. For Blunt is disappointed, and the Emperor is understood to go on to the utmost.... It is not ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn, Vol. I (of 6) • Aphra Behn
... the Emperor Mu of the Chou dynasty was making a tour of his empire, a skillful mechanic, Yen Shih by name, was brought into his presence and entertained him and the women of his seraglio with a dance performed by automaton figures, which were capable not only of rhythmical movements of their limbs, but of accompanying their ...
— The Chinese Boy and Girl • Isaac Taylor Headland
... we were surprised by a boat sent from the rajah, to say he was taken ill, and wanted some physic. We dispatched our surgeon, but it was found impossible to admit him into the sacred precincts of the seraglio, and he returned with the information that the ...
— The Expedition to Borneo of H.M.S. Dido - For the Suppression of Piracy • Henry Keppel
... Turks have done little of importance. The buildings in the Seraglio gardens are low and insignificant. The Tchinli Kiosque, now the Imperial Museum, is however, asimple but graceful two-storied edifice, consisting of four vaulted chambers in the angles of a fine cruciform ...
— A Text-Book of the History of Architecture - Seventh Edition, revised • Alfred D. F. Hamlin
... was a commissioner of the High Court of Justice and a regicide. At the Restoration he was imprisoned for life and died at Chepstow Castle, 1681, aged seventy-eight. He was notorious for profligacy and shamelessness, and kept a very seraglio of mistresses. [[The date "1681" is in ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn - Volume V • Aphra Behn
... mother had been supplied with rich dresses by one of the merchants who was employed by the ladies of the grand seignior's seraglio. My brother had done this merchant some trifling favours, and, upon application to him, he readily engaged to recommend the new scarlet dye. Indeed, it was so beautiful, that, the moment it was seen, it was preferred to every other colour. Saladin's shop was soon ...
— Murad the Unlucky and Other Tales • Maria Edgeworth
... at last, beyond all measure, Incurred the desperate displeasure Of his serene and raging highness: Whether he twitched his most revered And sacred beard, Or had intruded on the shyness Of the seraglio, or let fly An epigram at royalty, None knows: his sin was an occult one, But records tell us that the Sultan, Meaning to terrify he knave, Exclaimed, "'Tis time to stop that breath: Thy doom is sealed, presumptuous slave! Thou stand'st condemned to ...
— The Canadian Elocutionist • Anna Kelsey Howard
... of Arabia—made his appearance in the field. His light and agile horsemen hovered about the Persian host, cut off their stragglers, made prize of much of their spoil, and even captured a portion of the seraglio of ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 03 • Various
... human nature. Euripides, in particular, has delineated the terrible effects of that passion with a master's hand; witness the raving of Medea at the desertion of Jason; the fury of Hermione at the captive Andromache. Love also, as it arises now in an Eastern seraglio, was not unknown to them; the passion of Phaedra for Hippolytus, as painted by Euripides, is a proof of it. But the love they thus conceived, had scarce any resemblance to the passion of the same name, which has risen up with the general intercourse of ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 363, January, 1846 • Various
... me for one twinkling of an eye. I am never out of thy heart. And I am contained in nothing but in thy heart, and in a heart like thy heart. And I am nearer unto thee than thou art to thyself." This prince had in his Golden Seraglio three ladies of surpassing beauty, and all four, in this royal monastery, passed their lives, and left the ...
— Woman in the Ninteenth Century - and Kindred Papers Relating to the Sphere, Condition - and Duties, of Woman. • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... queenly manners. She played a sweet bit, a fantasia by her teacher, Herr Klug, entitled "The Five Blackbirds," and displayed a wonderful command of the resources of the keyboard. For encore she dashed off a brilliant morceau by Herr Klug, entitled "Echoes de Seraglio." This was very difficult, but for the fair debutante it was child's play. She got five recalls, and after the concert held an impromptu reception in her dressing-room, her happy parents being warmly congratulated ...
— Melomaniacs • James Huneker
... of age married Maria, daughter of Stanislas, the dethroned king of Poland. The whole life of Louis was one of idle sensuality. When he was old he established a seraglio of fifteen-year-old girls, the most beautiful that could be bought or kidnapped. On this harem he spent a hundred million francs, or twenty million dollars. It was he who, when warned of the impending ruin of his nation, ...
— Fighting the Traffic in Young Girls - War on the White Slave Trade • Various
... intimate friends, the Sultan immediately made up his mind to turn Quaker! He came down stairs, and went into mosque, the other day, with a broad-brimmed hat, straight coat, and drab trowsers; and insisted on all the ladies of his hareem putting on plain bonnets, and holding a "silent meeting" in the Seraglio! How it bothered them to do that last thing you may well suppose! More anon, ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 6, May 7, 1870 • Various
... distinguished from the lower part of her body, and no part restrained by stays 80) no wonder that a child dreaded such an ogress, and that the mob of London were highly diverted at the importation of so uncommon a seraglio! They were food from all the venom of the Jacobites; and, indeed nothing could be grosser than the ribaldry that was vomited out in lampoons, libels, and every channel of abuse, against the sovereign and the new court, and chaunted even in ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 1 • Horace Walpole
... Dorothea laved the burns for me with cool milk. Ah! she was very pretty; and, what 'blackguard' Heine, as Carlyle dubs him, would have called 'naive schmutzig.' When we parted next morning I thought with a sigh that before the autumn was over, she would be in the seraglio of Mr. Brigham Young; who, Artemus Ward used to say, was 'the most married ...
— Tracks of a Rolling Stone • Henry J. Coke
... required them, so did the Pope; the one to guard his women, the other to say his prayers. These were of a peculiar kind, incapable of reproduction. Scarcely human beings, they were useful to voluptuousness and to religion. The seraglio and the Sistine Chapel utilized the same species of monsters; fierce in the former case, mild ...
— The Man Who Laughs • Victor Hugo
... we also saw three or four other Mosques of great size, and the Seraglio grounds and Palace. In the latter we saw the gates through which the odalisks who had lost the sultan's favor passed beyond to be executed. The passage of this gate made our flesh creep when we thought of all it meant to the unfortunates; but near by, in ...
— A Fantasy of Mediterranean Travel • S. G. Bayne
... her. "That you must not," replied the cadi, "for it is not right that the Grand Signor's slave should be seen by any one, much less should she converse with Christians; for you know that when she comes into the Sultan's possession she will be shut up in the seraglio, and must become a Turk whether ...
— The Exemplary Novels of Cervantes • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... day see her, that my excuse might be manifest for me.' The king sent for her and beheld a person of tawny complexion, and feeble frame of body. She appeared to him in a contemptible light, inasmuch as the lowest menial in his harem, or seraglio, surpassed her in beauty and excelled her in elegance. Mujnun, in his sagacity, penetrated what was passing in the king's mind and said: 'It would behove you, O King, to contemplate the charms of Laila through the wicket of a Mujnun's eye, in order that the miracle of such a spectacle ...
— Primitive Love and Love-Stories • Henry Theophilus Finck
... th'immortal lyre. The ardent vot'ry glows with genuine fire, 'Tis yours, while care recoils, and envy flies Subdued by his resistless energies, 'Tis yours to bid Pierian fountains flow, And toast his name in Wit's seraglio; To bind his brows with amaranthine bays, And bless, with beef and beer, his mundane days! Alas! nor beef, nor beer, nor bays are mine, If by your looks, my doom I may divine, Ye frown so dreadful, and ye swell so big Your fateful arms, the goosequill and ...
— Poetic Sketches • Thomas Gent
... but sermons, and were free from the censure of not practising what they preached since they did not preach at all; generals who fought a campaign as deliberately and ceremoniously as they danced a minuet; statesmen whose diplomacy was more of the seraglio than the council; painters who improved on nature, applying the same tricks of art to the landscape as with powders to their curls; and simpering lips of the Marquise, and poets whose highest flights were a sonnet to Pompadour, or a pastoral ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 5, No. 3, March, 1852 • Various
... authority at Bagdad, he exercised as Leader of the Faithful—Emir al-Muminin—religious authority over all Mohammedans from Spain to India. At a later time the vizier arrogated all authority to himself, and the Caliph spent his time either in the mosque or in the seraglio.] ...
— The Itinerary of Benjamin of Tudela • Benjamin of Tudela |
