"Sibyl" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... OF ERIC THE RED 14 The Ancestry of Gudrid 14 The Colonization of Greenland 15 Gudrid's Father emigrates to Greenland 20 The Sibyl and the Famine in Greenland 21 Leif the Lucky and the Discovery of Vinland 23 Thorstein's Attempt to find Vinland 26 The Marriage of Gudrid to Thorstein 27 The Ancestry of Thorfinn Karlsefni; his Marriage with Gudrid ...
— The Northmen, Columbus and Cabot, 985-1503 • Various
... of the book one of its most delectable episodes ends in his excusing Mr. Justice Bridoye for settling law cases in that way. But he recommends the sortes Virgilianae, and he, others, and Panurge himself add the experiment of dreams, and the successive consultation of the Sibyl of Panzoust, the dumb Nazdecabre, the poet Raminagrobis, Epistemon, "Her Trippa," Friar John himself, the theologian Hippothadee, the doctor Rondibilis, the philosopher Trouillogan, and the professional fool Triboulet. No reader of the most moderate intelligence ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 1 - From the Beginning to 1800 • George Saintsbury
... gloomy oaken chamber. She spoke not again even to Mause that day, but seemed as if bent on some deep and solemn exercise. Abstracted from every outward impression, she sat, the image of some ancient sibyl communing with the inward, unseen pageantries of thought—the hidden workings of a power she could not control. Towards night she seemed more accessible. Naturally austere and taciturn, she rarely spoke but when it was absolutely necessary; yet now there was a softened, a subdued ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 2 (of 2) • John Roby
... of halting and diminishing strings leads to the romantic melody as it first appeared, where the multiple song again deepens and ennobles the theme. It passes straight into the waving, elemental motion, where again the hallowed horn utters its sibyl phrase, again rising to resonant height. And again merges the intimate song with the continuing pulse of the sea, while the trumpet softly sounds the legend and a still greater height ...
— Symphonies and Their Meaning; Third Series, Modern Symphonies • Philip H. Goepp
... bewildered Wanderer to stand, as so many have done, shouting question after question into the Sibyl-cave of Destiny, and receive no Answer but an Echo." Faith, indeed, lies dormant but alive beneath the doubt. But in the meantime the man's own weakness paralyses action; and, while this paralysis lasts, all faith appears to have departed. He ...
— Among Famous Books • John Kelman
... it is boldly said that the three now forthcoming are above challenge. [414:1] But Truth still refuses to be compromised, and sternly disowns these claimants for her approbation. The internal evidence of these three epistles abundantly attests that, like the last three books of the Sibyl, they are only the last shifts of a grave ...
— The Ancient Church - Its History, Doctrine, Worship, and Constitution • W.D. [William Dool] Killen
... therein, as I found, dwelt now John Field, an Irishman, and his wife, and several children, from the broad-faced boy who assisted his father at his work, and now came running by his side from the bog to escape the rain, to the wrinkled, sibyl-like, cone-headed infant that sat upon its father's knee as in the palaces of nobles, and looked out from its home in the midst of wet and hunger inquisitively upon the stranger, with the privilege of infancy, not knowing but it was ...
— Walden, and On The Duty Of Civil Disobedience • Henry David Thoreau
... ellipsis. [226] Sibylla is the ancient Greek name for a prophetic woman; and at Rome prophecies and counsels (libri Sibyllini) were kept in the Capitol which were believed to have been given as early as the time of the kings by a Sibyl of Cumae. They contained information about festivals, sacrifices, and other religious observances, and the means by which calamities which threatened the state might be averted. They were under the superintendence ...
— De Bello Catilinario et Jugurthino • Caius Sallustii Crispi (Sallustius)
... no sanction, to the altars and shrines of imposture, and He makes His own fiat the substitute for its sorceries. He speaks amid the incantations of Balaam, raises Samuel's spirit in the witch's cavern, prophesies of the Messias by the tongue of the Sibyl, forces Python to recognize His ministers, and baptizes by the hand of the misbeliever. He is with the heathen dramatist in his denunciations of injustice and tyranny, and his auguries of divine vengeance upon crime. Even on the unseemly legends of a popular ...
— The Idea of a University Defined and Illustrated: In Nine - Discourses Delivered to the Catholics of Dublin • John Henry Newman
... her great rich eyes a goddess might have commanded through, with their eyebrows of raven-black, like entrances to the caves of the Cumaean sibyl, her small head borne as easily upon her neck as a dove upon a sprig—all flashed upon Milburn's thrilled yet flinching soul, as the revelation ...
— The Entailed Hat - Or, Patty Cannon's Times • George Alfred Townsend
... initiations, was crowned with myrtle, because, according to the popular theology, the myrtle was sacred to Proserpine, the goddess of the future life. Every classical scholar will remember the golden branch with which Aeneas was supplied by the Sibyl, before proceeding on his journey to the infernal regions[198]—a voyage which is now universally admitted to be a mythical representation ...
— The Symbolism of Freemasonry • Albert G. Mackey
... our Poet drew the Image in what follows from that in Virgil's sixth Book, where AEneas and the Sibyl stand before the Adamantine Gates, which are there described as shut upon the Place of Torments, and listen to the Groans, the Clank of Chains, and the Noise of Iron Whips, that were heard in those Regions of Pain ...
— The Spectator, Volume 2. • Addison and Steele
... the Roman Catholic Church in the testimony of the sibyl is shown by the well-known hymn, said to have been composed by Pope Innocent III, at the close of the thirteenth century, beginning with ...
— The Old Masters and Their Pictures - For the Use of Schools and Learners in Art • Sarah Tytler
... wise-headed Sibyl—that is what you are, darling!" the Princess returned. "I wish I could ever know what has so utterly changed you from our convent days," and she sighed impatiently. "Then you were the merriest madcap, ready to tease any ...
— The Man and the Moment • Elinor Glyn
... receives it as a child in later years recovers the forgotten dearness of a nursery tale; and is more himself, and again and again himself, as he breathes the air of Greece, and hears, in his own Italy, the lost voice of the Sibyl murmur again ...
— Ariadne Florentina - Six Lectures on Wood and Metal Engraving • John Ruskin
... proposed as a subject the Sibyl, for which the drawing in sepia, dated 1821, now hangs in the Count's Gallery in Berlin. The figure, pensive and poetic, resembles a mediaeval Saint rather than a Sibyl. The painter afterwards found a more congenial theme in The Marriage of the Virgin. The treatment is wholly traditional, the style austerely pre-Raphaelite; the only expletive in the way of an idea comes with attendant angels, lyres in hand. The work was not delivered till 1836, in the ...
— Overbeck • J. Beavington Atkinson
... interview. That harmless little giggling creature could not resist the mere mention of a fortune-teller. Only for Nutter, who set his face against this sort of sham witchcraft, she would certainly have asked him to treat her with a glimpse into futurity at that famous-sibyl's house; and now that she had an opportunity of having the enchantress tete-a-tete in her own snug parlour at the Mills, she was in a delightful fuss of mystery ...
— The House by the Church-Yard • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... colours also borrowing help, 250 Some miniature of famous spots or things,— St. Peter's Church; or, more aspiring aim, In microscopic vision, Rome herself; Or, haply, some choice rural haunt,—the Falls Of Tivoli; and, high upon that steep, 255 The Sibyl's mouldering Temple! every tree, Villa, or cottage, lurking among rocks Throughout the landscape; tuft, stone scratch minute— All that the traveller sees when he ...
— The Poetical Works of William Wordsworth, Vol. III • William Wordsworth
... sudden swell of the ocean. Here they were desolate and homesick. The strange people among whom they had fallen did not know they were the children of a king. No one was left to care for them but their old nurse, named Sibyl. ...
— Fairy Book • Sophie May
... visits Elysium in a dream; whilst he sleeps, his head recumbent on the lap of the goddess, in the innermost recess of her sanctuary. His vision resembles the Trojan's rather than the Greek's adventure. "A slipshod sibyl," ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 58, Number 358, August 1845 • Various
... finally of the miracle wrought in the defence of the most favoured and most faithful of the greater Prophets, runs always parallel in symbolism with the Dorian fable: but the legend of St. Jerome takes up the prophecy of the Millennium, and foretells, with the Cumaean Sibyl, and with Isaiah, a day when the Fear of Man shall be laid in benediction, not enmity, on inferior beings,—when they shall not hurt nor destroy in all the holy Mountain, and the Peace of the Earth shall be as far removed from its present sorrow, as the present gloriously animate universe ...
— Our Fathers Have Told Us - Part I. The Bible of Amiens • John Ruskin
... himself to be drawn into these mysteries. He had time for everything. It afforded him relaxation, and a means of observation. On one occasion, he followed the refugee to a garden where a person of "perfect lucidity" prophesied. The sibyl was a believer as well as a seer and pretended to communicate with God in person. I do not know exactly what supernal secrets the woman revealed, while she slept, but the result ...
— Delsarte System of Oratory • Various
... the Sibyl's volumes, thou shouldst say; Those that remained, after the six were burned, Being held more precious than the nine together. But listen to my tale. Dost thou remember The Gypsy girl we saw at Cordova Dance the Romalis ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... blended of the pathetic and the ludicrous, set my mind at work upon the future; but I could find little interest in the study. Even the predictions of my sibyl failed to allure me, nor could life's prospect charm and detain my attention like ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. XXII (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... of the two-manual harpsichord originated as a device for transposition is well known. In an article titled "Transposing Keyboards on Extant Flemish Harpsichords," Sibyl Marcuse[5] discusses surviving examples that show how the second keyboard was arranged. The upper keyboard was the principal one, with the lower keyboard sounding a fourth below. The strings acted upon by a c key on the upper manual were sounded by an f key on the lower; so, ...
— Italian Harpsichord-Building in the 16th and 17th Centuries • John D. Shortridge
... of the temple were those of the Sibyl's Temple at Tivoli, helped out by a dome, only the whole was a good deal smaller. Some ancient sepulchral reliefs were built into the wall, and about it all was a pleasant flavour of the grand tour. Cooper produced the key, and ...
— Ghost Stories of an Antiquary - Part 2: More Ghost Stories • Montague Rhodes James
... her hand, before the grate, as if she questioned a sibyl, she saw again the face of the Marquis de Re. She saw it so precisely that it surprised her. The Marquis de Re had been presented to her by her father, who admired him, and he appeared to her grand and dazzling for ...
— The Red Lily, Complete • Anatole France
... with what a leaping heart he chanced on some newspaper gossip concerning the sibyl, for it was so that he first stumbled across her mission. Ironical, indeed, that the so impossible 'key' to the mystery should come by the hand of 'our own correspondent'; but so it was, and that ...
— The Book-Bills of Narcissus - An Account Rendered by Richard Le Gallienne • Le Gallienne, Richard
... that they found the Grotto of the Cumaean Sibyl. They followed the intelligent cicerone, armed with torches, into a gloomy tunnel. The intelligent cicerone walked before them with the air of one who had something to show. Seven stoat peasants followed after. ...
— The Dodge Club - or, Italy in 1859 • James De Mille
... and proud air of Adeline Imposed not upon her: she saw her blaze Much as she would have seen a glow-worm shine; Then turned unto the stars for loftier rays. Juan was something she could not divine, Being no sibyl in the new world's ways; Yet she was nothing dazzled by the meteor, Because she did not pin ...
— Lady Byron Vindicated • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... to spring on the unwary traveler. Better take a long circuit round Sicily than come even within sight and sound of Scylla. As soon as you touch the western shores of Italy, go to the city of Cumae and the Sibyl's cavern. Try to win her favor, and she will tell you of the nations of Italy and the wars yet to come, and how you may avoid each peril and accomplish every labor. One warning would I give you and enjoin it with all my power. If you desire to reach your journey's end in safety, forget ...
— Young Folks Treasury, Volume 2 (of 12) • Various
... remind me of Newport harbor and our old days there. Ah, my sweet saint, blessed was the day I first learned to know you! for it was you, more than anything else, that kept me back from sin and misery. I call you my Sibyl, dearest, because the Sibyl was a prophetess of divine things out of the Church; and so are you. The Abb says, that all true, devout persons of all persuasions belong to the True Catholic Apostolic Church, and will in the end be enlightened to know it. What do you ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 26, December, 1859 • Various
... Lady Sibyl, "the proud maiden of Bernshaw," was from her youth the creature of impulse and imagination—a child of nature and romance. She roved unchecked through the green valleys and among the glens and moorlands of her native hills; every nook and streamlet ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 1 (of 2) • John Roby
... above-named Titian has done it. Corregio, moreover, and Giorgione and Leonardo, very nearly, trying hard. Holbein three or four times, in precious pieces, highest wrought. Raphael, it may be, in one or two crowns of Muse or Sibyl. If any one else in later times, we have to consider.' There is no endeavour to show how or why accurate drawing of the leaf leads to general accuracy in drawing; no analogy is attempted, for instance, between the human and vegetable anatomies. Perhaps this is as well; only it ...
— Art in England - Notes and Studies • Dutton Cook
... "Do you recognise me, Tom? I confess I do not recognise myself. Well, that's out. Let it go. That's the last you will get from me. But, Tom, this is more than I can stand. I must quit this country, and I want you to make it easy for me to go. We'll get up some yarn for Sibyl. You'll help me out, old man? God knows I need help ...
— The Major • Ralph Connor
... 'King of Kings,' and Augustus Caesar therefore dedicated an altar in his palace to this unknown God." Eusebius and St. Augustine inform us that the first letter of each line of the verses from the Erythrean Sibyl containing this prophecy, formed the word [Greek: ICHTHYS] (a fish), and were taken as representing the sentence: [Greek: Iesous Christos Theou Huios Soter]("Jesus Christ, the Son of God, the Saviour"). Based upon this discovery arose that extraordinary ...
— Science and the Infinite - or Through a Window in the Blank Wall • Sydney T. Klein
... nature." It is a gift peculiar to woman and her temperament. By birth a fay, by the regular recurrence of her ecstasy she becomes a sibyl. By her love she grows into an enchantress. By her subtlety, by a roguishness often whimsical and beneficent, she becomes a Witch; she works her spells; does at any rate lull our pains ...
— La Sorciere: The Witch of the Middle Ages • Jules Michelet
... Incomparable Sibyl cease, I pray! Hand us thy liquor without more delay. And to the very brim the goblet crown! My friend he is, and need not be afraid; Besides, he is a man of many a grade, Who ...
— Faust Part 1 • Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe
... he had come by in this way, which were almost like the breaking of a physical light upon his mind; as the great Augustus was said to have seen a mysterious physical splendour, yonder, upon the summit of the Capitol, where the altar of the Sibyl now stood. With a prayer, therefore, for inward quiet, for conformity to the divine reason, he read some select passages of Plato, which bear upon the harmony of the reason, in all its forms, with itself—"Could ...
— Marius the Epicurean, Volume Two • Walter Horatio Pater
... from us! and shall we see Those sibyl-leaves of destiny, Those calm eyes, nevermore? Those deep, dark eyes so warm and bright, Wherein the fortunes of the man Lay slumbering in prophetic light, In characters a child might scan? So bright, and gone forth ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell
... 'the lips of Sibyl shall repeat thy songs, for they are all graven upon her heart! But you are now to chant in heaven, and the canticle is to be for His praise who made all; and when you exalt Him, put forth all your strength, and be not weary; for you ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. IV. October, 1863, No. IV. - Devoted to Literature and National Policy. • Various
... implore. Let gifts be to the mighty queen design'd, And mollify with pray'rs her haughty mind. Thus, at the length, your passage shall be free, And you shall safe descend on Italy. Arriv'd at Cumae, when you view the flood Of black Avernus, and the sounding wood, The mad prophetic Sibyl you shall find, Dark in a cave, and on a rock reclin'd. She sings the fates, and, in her frantic fits, The notes and names, inscrib'd, to leafs commits. What she commits to leafs, in order laid, Before ...
— The Aeneid • Virgil
... them always young. Under its influence, a gem brightens yearly which is only seen to more advantage through the fissures Time makes in the casket. [Footnote: Appendix F.] No one thinks of Michael Angelo's Persican Sibyl, or St. Theresa, or Tasso's Leonora, or the Greek Electra, as an old maid, more than of Michael Angelo or Canova as old bachelors, though all had reached the period in life's course ...
— Woman in the Ninteenth Century - and Kindred Papers Relating to the Sphere, Condition - and Duties, of Woman. • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... help in case of need. The expedition did not take place, else Benvenuto would probably have been able to tell us something of the impostor's assistants. The whole neighborhood was then proverbial. Aretino says somewhere of an enchanted well, 'there dwell the sisters of the sibyl of Norcia and the aunt of the Fata Gloriana.' And about the same time Trissino could still celebrate the place in his great epic with all the resources of poetry and allegory as the home of ...
— The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy • Jacob Burckhardt
... about that, since you invented her, didn't you? That's what she says; she's awfully sweet on you," Nick kindly pursued. "What I ought to do is to try something as different as possible from that thing; not the sibyl, the muse, the tremendous creature, but the charming woman, the person one knows, differently arranged as she appears en ville, she calls it. I'll do something really serious and send it to you out there with my respects. It will remind you of home and perhaps ...
— The Tragic Muse • Henry James
... finished the temple of Jupiter, begun by his father. He also obtained the SIBYLLINE BOOKS. A woman from Cumae, a Greek colony, came to him, and offered for sale nine books of oracles and prophecies; but the price seemed exorbitant, and he refused to purchase them. The sibyl then burned three, and, returning, asked the same price for the remaining six. The king again refused. She burned three more, and obtained from the monarch for her last three the original price. These books were preserved in the Capitol, ...
— History of Rome from the Earliest times down to 476 AD • Robert F. Pennell
... to flash it at her, like a jewel in an uncovered case—she kindled, flamed up, took the words from her friend's less persuasive lips, resolved herself into a magical voice, became again the pure young sibyl. Then Olive perceived how fatally, without Verena's tender notes, her crusade would lack sweetness, what the Catholics call unction; and, on the other hand, how weak Verena would be on the statistical ...
— The Bostonians, Vol. I (of II) • Henry James
... behalf, by her tears and supplications; and several of the other gipsy women were awakening strong sympathy among the young girls and maid-servants in the background. The pretty, black-eyed gipsy girl, whom I have mentioned on a former occasion as the sibyl that read the fortunes of the general, endeavoured to wheedle that doughty warrior into their interests, and even made some approaches to her old acquaintance, Master Simon; but was repelled by the latter with all the dignity of office, having ...
— Bracebridge Hall • Washington Irving
... and the old sibyl immediately appeared from the stairs, whither she had discreetly retired to wait during Annetta's visit. "Bring water, and that bottle of my wine from downstairs. You know, the bottle of old wine of Stefanone's ...
— Casa Braccio, Volumes 1 and 2 (of 2) • F. Marion Crawford
... Caligula, many a king and queen of evil repute that ruled Naples, the vile Pier-Luigi Farnese, the adventurer Joachim Murat, all have left the marks of their personality upon the coveted shores of the Neapolitan Riviera. From the days of the Sibyl and of the Trojan hero to the stirring times of Garibaldi and of King Bomba, which were but of yesterday, Naples and its environs have played a prominent part in the annals and development of the civilised western world; Roman emperors, Pagan statesmen and poets, Norman, French ...
— The Naples Riviera • Herbert M. Vaughan
... left little doubt that she was leaning like a ripe peach within his reach, ready at a touch to fall into his hand; and though Regina felt that this low-browed, sibyl-eyed woman was vastly his inferior in all save beauty and wealth, she knew that even his failure to marry the widow would furnish no justification for the further indulgence of her ...
— Infelice • Augusta Jane Evans Wilson
... heterogeneous and fantastic surroundings in which he has chosen to enframe his great central group. And yet even these—the great rusticated niche with the gold mosaic of the pelican feeding its young, the statues of Moses on one side and of the Hellespontic Sibyl on the other—but serve to heighten the awe of the spectator. The artificial light is obtained in part from a row of crystal lamps on the cornice of the niche, in part, too, from the torch borne by the beautiful boy-angel who hovers in mid-air, ...
— The Later works of Titian • Claude Phillips
... fire terrible and strange, figures of the past or of the future, from which she could not turn her face. The curve of her upper lip, where it lay along its fellow and made a dimpled end, sharpened and grew bleak. Poring and smiling into the fire, she looked like a Sibyl envisaging the fate of men, not concerned in it, yet absorbed, interested in the play, not at all in the persons. This friend of Mrs. Benson, this midnight mate of young gardeners, disturber of high ladies' comfort, serene controller of Wanless, she was, it would seem, all things to all ...
— Rest Harrow - A Comedy of Resolution • Maurice Hewlett
... mortal life, of the bonds of love and kinship, of peace, of battle, and of mourning for the dead. By a very intelligible figure and analogy the winds became shepherds, the clouds flocks, the day a conqueror, the dawn a maid, the night a wise sibyl and mysterious consort of heaven. These personifications were tentative and vague, and the consequent mythology was a system of rhetoric rather than of theology. The various gods had interchangeable attributes, and, by a voluntary confusion, quite in the ...
— The Life of Reason • George Santayana
... a sibyl for intentness now, "you would prefer to go? To be asked to! You would find the streets"—with swift discerning contempt—"more profitable for your purpose than here, where ...
— A Man and His Money • Frederic Stewart Isham
... twice blest: for prisoners and men without appetite it punctuates and makes time of eternity. I dawdled over my chop and pint of brown stout until Mrs. McRankine, after twice entering to clear away, with the face of a Cumaean sibyl, so far relaxed the tension of unnatural calm as to inquire if I meant to be all ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 20 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... form the seventh division, are more numerous, but of these five are at present known to us only by name. Those that remain are Day-break in Copacabana, The Chains of the Demon, The Devotion of the Cross, The Purgatory of St. Patrick, The Sibyl of the East, The Virgin of the Sanctuary, and The Two Lovers of Heaven. The editor, Sr. D. P. De La Escosura, seems to think it necessary to offer some apology for not including The Two Lovers of Heaven among the philosophical instead of the mystical dramas. He says: "There is a great analogy and, ...
— The Two Lovers of Heaven: Chrysanthus and Daria - A Drama of Early Christian Rome • Pedro Calderon de la Barca
... of the past. He had drifted from Conservatism, with Peel for a leader, to aristocratic socialism; and in 1844, 1845, and 1847 appeared the Trilogy, as he styled the novels 'Coningsby,' 'Tancred,' and 'Sibyl.' Of the three, 'Coningsby' will prove the most entertaining to the modern reader. The hero is a gentleman, and in this respect is an improvement on Vivian Grey, for his audacity is tempered by good breeding. The plot is slight, but the scenes are entertaining. The famous Sidonia, the Jew ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 4 • Charles Dudley Warner
... ligatures which past time have woven for the decrepit. Look down upon that multitude, Mackinnon; they shall all be free." And then, still clutching him by the arm and still standing at the top of those stairs, she gave forth her prophecy with the fury of a sibyl. ...
— Stories By English Authors: Italy • Various
... diamonds are swept aside; and hold their hands over their eyes so as not to be dazzled, the grass paths lead forward gradually to a place where one sees a little opening in the golden rocks. You were at Chamouni last year, Sibyl; did your guide chance to show you the pierced rock of the ...
— The Ethics of the Dust • John Ruskin
... oracles, amused With mortal folly; resting on the shrines; Or, all in some fair Sibyl's form infused, Spoke from her quivering lips, or penned her mystic ...
— Zophiel - A Poem • Maria Gowen Brooks
... by this artist, which are in the Dresden Gallery, as excellent examples of her work; they are "A Young Vestal," "A Young Sibyl," and ...
— Women in the fine arts, from the Seventh Century B.C. to the Twentieth Century A.D. • Clara Erskine Clement
... the playing, would say, "Beautiful! a'n't it?" "That's prime!" or "Splendid!" or "The best I ever heerd." Sometimes, at his earnest entreaty, Pet would read a page of French to him; and he would listen with awe and reverence, as to a beautiful sibyl prophesying ...
— Round the Block • John Bell Bouton
... claims it's a finer picture than any they saw in the museums, that time he took mamma to Europe. But it's horribly out of date to have those things in dining-rooms, and I caught Bobby Lamhorn giggling at it; and Sibyl made fun of it, too, with Bobby, and then told papa she agreed with him about its being such a fine thing, and said he did just right to insist on having it where he wanted it. She ...
— The Turmoil - A Novel • Booth Tarkington
... leading me. My mind was full of the tales of the place, and glowed with a vehement desire of exploring the world beyond the grot. I longed to ascend the promontory of Misenus, and follow the same dusky route down which the Sibyl conducted AEneas. ...
— Dreams, Waking Thoughts, and Incidents • William Beckford
... according to hope; but only for a few months, having himself died that same year. Poor Duke; rather a good man, by all the accounts I could hear; though not of qualities that shone. He is at present "Duke of Brunswick-Bevern,"—such his actual nomenclature in those ever-fluctuating Sibyl's-leaves of German History-Books, Wilhelmina's and the others;—expectant Duke of Brunswick in General; much a friend of Friedrich Wilhelm. A kind of Austrian soldier he was formerly, and will again be for brief times; General-Feldmarschall ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. IX. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... acquainted with foreign affairs sooner than we. Then they are now fighting in France! Blood flows in the streets; it will not be so in Denmark before the Turk binds his horse to the bush in the Viborg Lake. And then, according to the prophecy of the sibyl, it will be near the ...
— O. T. - A Danish Romance • Hans Christian Andersen
... The "Libyan Sibyl" was then in the fullness of her powers. She had been born of slave parents about 1798 in Ulster County, New York. In her later years she remembered vividly the cold, damp cellar-room in which slept the slaves of the family to which she belonged, and where ...
— A Social History of the American Negro • Benjamin Brawley
... century which has just then ended, the first names with her will be these.' The prophecy is as little like to commend itself to the pious votary of Keats as to the ardent Shelleyite: there are familiars of the Tennysonian Muse, the Sibyl of Rizpah and Vastness and Lucretius and The Voyage, to whom it must seem impertinent beyond the prophet's wont; there are—(but they scarce count)—who grub (as for truffles) for meanings in Browning. But it was not uttered to please, and in truth it has enough of plausibility ...
— Views and Reviews - Essays in appreciation • William Ernest Henley
... rare Sibyl, sing us These runes no more, thy beverage bring us, And quickly fill the goblet to the brim; This drink may by my friend be safely taken: Full many grades the man can reckon, Many good swigs ...
— Faust • Goethe
... she do what she list. You are a young huntsman, Marcus; let alone; And, come, I will go get a leaf of brass, And with a gad of steel will write these words, And lay it by: the angry northern wind Will blow these sands like Sibyl's leaves, abroad, And where's our lesson, ...
— The Tragedy of Titus Andronicus • William Shakespeare [Collins edition]
... that obedience which I owe to him, on whom I rest all my hopes, and all my prosperity. I have not, however, collected them all, because that would have been a more laborious task than to have gathered the scattered leaves of the Sibyl. It was never, indeed, with an intention of forming my letters into one body that I wrote them, but merely as occasion prompted, and as the subjects presented themselves without seeking for them. I never ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 1 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... Raleigh, "at the gate of the Chase, where a sibyl, one of the FATIDICAE, meets the Queen, to tell her fortune. I saw the verses; there is little savour in them, and her Grace has been already crammed full with such poetical compliments. She whispered to me, ...
— Kenilworth • Sir Walter Scott
... world up already, And if we stay a night we are gone for company. There's an old woman that's now grown to marble, Dri'd in this brick hill, and she sits i'th' chimnie, Which is but three tiles rais'd like a house of cards, The true proportion of an old smok'd Sibyl, There is a young thing too that nature meant For a maid-servant, but 'tis now a monster, She has a husk about her like a chesnut With basiness, and living under the line here, And these two make a hollow sound together, ...
— Rule a Wife, and Have a Wife - Beaumont & Fletcher's Works (3 of 10) • Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher
... attend at the doors of our great men. The porter in his lodge answers exactly to Cerberus in his den, and, like him, must be appeased by a sop before access can be gained to his master. Perhaps Jones might have seen him in that light, and have recollected the passage where the Sibyl, in order to procure an entrance for Aeneas, presents the keeper of the Stygian avenue with such a sop. Jones, in like manner, now began to offer a bribe to the human Cerberus, which a footman, overhearing, instantly advanced, and declared, "if Mr ...
— The History of Tom Jones, a foundling • Henry Fielding
... whose life paid the forfeiture of his folly, acknowledged, before he died, that his reasons for believing in a mine were extracted from the lips of a sibyl, who, by looking in a magic glass, was enabled to discover the hidden treasures of the earth. Such superstition was frequent in the new settlements; and, after the first surprise was over, the better part of the community forgot the subject. But, at the same ...
— The Pioneers • James Fenimore Cooper
... through rock of the hardest possible description. But the same age had seen the excavation of other subterranean passages far larger than this, and in the same country, preeminently the Grotto of Posilipo, at Naples, and that of the Cumaean Sibyl, and at length it was accomplished. The people of Veii heard of it, and were filled with alarm. Ambassadors were sent to Rome, with the hope of inducing the Romans to come to some other terms less severe than the surrender of the city; but they were disappointed, and according ...
— Among the Brigands • James de Mille
... code as the essential condition of attainment, they will find that these priests and "magi climbing up some other way," and whom Jesus designated as "thieves and robbers," could never function or pass beyond the so-called "astral plane." Here is where the Sibyl and the ...
— The New Avatar and The Destiny of the Soul - The Findings of Natural Science Reduced to Practical Studies - in Psychology • Jirah D. Buck
... last to reach the shore Where lofty Baise hears the Tuscan roar. 'Twas on a vernal morn it touch'd the land, And 'twixt Mount Barbaro that crowns the strand And old Avernus (once an hallow'd ground); For the Cumaean sibyl's cell renown'd. Linterno's sandy bounds it reach'd at last, Great Scipio's favour'd haunt in ages past; Famed Africanus, whose victorious blade The slaughterous deeds of Hannibal repaid, And to his country's heart ...
— The Sonnets, Triumphs, and Other Poems of Petrarch • Petrarch
... the site of the Temple of Jupiter. Its present altar encloses an ancient altar which is said to have been erected by Augustus. "According to a legend of the 12th century, this was the spot where the Sibyl Tibur appeared to the emperor, whom the senate proposed to elevate to the rank of a god, and revealed to him a vision of ...
— The Youthful Wanderer - An Account of a Tour through England, France, Belgium, Holland, Germany • George H. Heffner
... Bath-room, where a pool of water and sundry other arrangements suggest to a lively imagination its designation. It certainly has the recommendation of being the most retired bath-room ever known. That of the Neapolitan sibyl is ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I., No. IV., April, 1862 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... since the disappearance of the renowned prince Arthur, approached on a floating island along the moat to recite adulatory verses. Arion, being summoned for the like purpose, appeared on a dolphin four-and-twenty feet long, which carried in its belly a whole orchestra. A Sibyl, a "Salvage man" and an Echo posted in the park, all harangued in the same strain. Music and dancing enlivened the Sunday evening. Splendid fireworks were displayed both on land and water;—a play was performed;—an Italian tumbler exhibited his feats;—thirteen bears were ...
— Memoirs of the Court of Queen Elizabeth • Lucy Aikin
... record would not seem to me in any way complete without your name, dear Sibyl of our own, and as I write it here, I am grateful to know that to mine and me it is not only the name of a Sibyl with deep visions, but of a friend to us all. A. ...
— A Book of Sibyls - Miss Barbauld, Miss Edgeworth, Mrs Opie, Miss Austen • Anne Thackeray (Mrs. Richmond Ritchie)
... really unhealthy for transcendentalists. No doubt his dislike of Margaret Fuller arose from this feeling of his that she was always acting a part, always straining after an effect. He loved simple, natural, unaffected people, and the part of a sibyl was very distasteful to him. He suspected the inspiration of green tea in much that Margaret said, and very ungallantly pronounced her a humbug. But as he did this only upon the paper of his own private diary, with no thought of it ever being paraded ...
— Home Life of Great Authors • Hattie Tyng Griswold
... the fierce pursuing Gaul Had drawn his sword for Marius' fall, The godlike hero with a frown Struck all his rage and malice down; Then how can we dread William Wood, If by thy presence he's withstood? Where wisdom stands to keep the field, In vain he brings his brazen shield; Though like the sibyl's priest he comes, With furious din of brazen drums The force of thy superior voice Shall strike him ...
— Poems (Volume II.) • Jonathan Swift
... Sibyl but Etruscan seers had seen in the skies that the tenth and last astronomical cycle had begun.[42] Plutarch, in his life of Sylla, testified to the general belief in an approaching cataclysm. Lucretius announced that at any moment it might ...
— The Lords of the Ghostland - A History of the Ideal • Edgar Saltus
... acknowledged to be inspiration, revelation, the thought of God made clear to the mind of man, the mystical hypostasis through which the ideas of the human coincide with those of universal Intelligence. This is what the Pythian priestess, the Siberian shaman, the Roman sibyl, the Voluspan prophetess, the Indian medicine-man, all claimed in various degrees along with the Hebrew seers and the ...
— The Religious Sentiment - Its Source and Aim: A Contribution to the Science and - Philosophy of Religion • Daniel G. Brinton
... herself. Having fumbled in the drawer for the handkerchief, she approached the window, but no sooner did the little boy become aware of her intention than, with a rebellious shake of his curly head, he buried his nose in his little chapped fists, and, regardless of Sibyl's advice, that he had better be good, he firmly stood his ground, determined to resist Chany ...
— Plantation Sketches • Margaret Devereux
... oracle; prophet, prophesier, seer, soothsayer, augur, fortune teller, crystal gazer^, witch, geomancer^, aruspex^; aruspice^, haruspice^; haruspex; astrologer, star gazer^; Sibyl; Python, Pythoness^; Pythia; Pythian oracle, Delphian oracle; Monitor, Sphinx, Tiresias, Cassandra^, Sibylline leaves; Zadkiel, Old Moore; sorcerer &c 994; interpreter, &c 524. [person who predicts by non-mystical (natural) means] predictor, prognosticator, forecaster; weather forecaster, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... brows and breast. She was perfectly exposed to the storm; and the wind blowing her hair and dress about her thin tall figure, and the lightning flashing round her, and the waves rolling at her feet, made her look like Medea alighted from her chariot, or the Sibyl of the tempest that was rolling around her, the only living thing within hail at that moment except ourselves. On seeing me safe, she did not wait to greet me, as might have been expected, but calling out to me—'Ah! can' della ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. IV - With His Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore
... when they began to diminish in length; and souls, before arriving at the gates of Hell, were also led by her. In going through these signs, they passed the Styx in the 8th Degree of Libra. She was the famous Sibyl who initiated Eneas, and opened to him the way to ...
— Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry • Albert Pike
... perishable. Of the churches described by Paspates in his Byzantine Studies, published in 1877, nine have either entirely disappeared or lost more of their original features. It was no part of wisdom to let the books of the cunning Sibyl become rarer and knowledge poorer by neglecting to secure all that was obtainable when she made her first or ...
— Byzantine Churches in Constantinople - Their History and Architecture • Alexander Van Millingen
... obscure you are, my dear," she answered. "You speak like a sibyl. But one thing I see, and that is that you are not so perfectly happy as you would have us believe, seeing that you feel the need of consolations. Then, why do you wish me to ...
— Jacqueline, v2 • Th. Bentzon (Mme. Blanc)
... Imps, in the barn with mousing owlet bred, From rifled roost at nightly revel fed; Whose dark eyes flash'd thro' locks of blackest shade, When in the breeze the distant watch-dog bay'd:— And heroes fled the Sibyl's mutter'd call, Whose elfin prowess scal'd the orchard-wall. As o'er my palm the silver piece she drew, And trac'd the line of life with searching view, How throbb'd my fluttering pulse with hopes and fears, To learn the colour of my future years! Ah, then, what honest ...
— Poems • Samuel Rogers
... elaborated, but in which nothing that is written shall endure. That is the reason, in my opinion, why, among so many men of talent, France to-day counts not one great writer. In a society like ours, to seek for literary glory seems to me an anachronism. Of what use is it to invoke an ancient sibyl when a muse is on the eve of birth? Pitiable actors in a tragedy nearing its end, that which it behooves us to do is to precipitate the catastrophe. The most deserving among us is he who plays best this part. Well, I no longer aspire to ...
— What is Property? - An Inquiry into the Principle of Right and of Government • P. J. Proudhon
... is a magical handkerchief; a sibyl that had lived in the world two hundred years, in a fit of prophetic fury worked it; the silkworms that furnished the silk were hallowed, and it was dyed in a mummy of ...
— Tales from Shakespeare • Charles and Mary Lamb
... Hellespontica, 9. Phrygia, 10. Tiburs, by name Albunea, worshipped at Tiber as a goddess. Thus Varro categorizes the Sibyls, and besides these we hear of a Hebrew, a Chaldaean, a Babylonian, an Egyptian, a Sardian Sibyl, and some others. Other writers considerably reduce this number, three being that most usually accepted, and Salmasius, the most learned man that ever lived, summed up the various theories concerning ...
— Holidays in Eastern France • Matilda Betham-Edwards
... for the vessel you spoke at random; but as you are an honest man, confess that you were afraid of the results. I am never so bold as that, and when my father asks me questions of that kind, my replies are more obscure than a sibyl's. I don't wish him to lose confidence in my oracle, nor do I wish him to be able to reproach me with a loss that would injure my ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... That lends corruption lighter wings to fly! Gold imped by thee can compass hardest things, Can pocket states, can fetch or carry kings; A single leaf shall waft an army o'er, Or ship off senates to a distant shore; A leaf, like Sibyl's, scatter to and fro Our fates and fortunes, as the winds shall blow: Pregnant with thousands flits the scrap unseen, And silent sells a king, or buys a queen. Oh! that such bulky bribes as all might see, Still, as of old, encumbered ...
— Essay on Man - Moral Essays and Satires • Alexander Pope
... the all-sufficient, all-powerful deity, wealth, holds his immediate court of joy and pleasures; where the sunny exposure of plenty, and the hot walls of profusion, produce those blissful fruits of luxury, exotics in this world, and natives of paradise!—Thou withered sibyl, my sage conductress, usher me into thy refulgent, adored presence!—The power, splendid and potent as he now is, was once the puling nursling of thy faithful care and tender arms! Call me thy son, thy cousin, thy kinsman, or favourite, and adjure the god by the scenes of his infant ...
— The Letters of Robert Burns • Robert Burns
... yours easily, O Sibyl!" replied she. "You will never marry, neither for real nor ideal. You should have fallen in love in the orthodox way, when you were seventeen. You are adaptive enough to have moulded yourself into any nature that you loved, and constant enough to have clung to it through ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Number 9, July, 1858 • Various
... ears tingling with shame, and hurried down the beach. Presently it occurred to him, however, that it was not quite chivalrous in him to leave little Elsie there alone with the dark-minded sibyl. Who knew but that she might need his help? He paused, and was about to retrace his steps, when he heard some one approaching, whom he instinctively knew to be Elsie. As she came nearer, the moon, which hung transfixed upon the flaming spear of a glacier peak, revealed a distressed ...
— Ilka on the Hill-Top and Other Stories • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen
... story of Odysseus, and each passage-way is a Via Sacra, and every stone is old with years whose tale is told by hundreds or by thousands, and the wounded Adonis can be adored beside the tempted Christ of Sistine, and the serious beauty of the Erythean Sibyl lives beside the laughing grace of ivy-crowned Thalia, and the Jupiter Maximus frowns on the mortals made of earth's dust, and the Jehovah who has called forth woman meets the first smile of Eve. A Divine ...
— Wisdom, Wit, and Pathos of Ouida - Selected from the Works of Ouida • Ouida
... [Sidenote: Sibyl. Oracles, III 767-784] Then a kingdom over all mankind for all times shall God raise up, who once gave the holy law to the pious, for whom he pledged to open every land, the world and the portals of the blessed, and all ...
— The Makers and Teachers of Judaism • Charles Foster Kent
... season. And round this structure were things desirable by all mankind, and supposed to be desired by possessors of one penny willing to part with it. For a penny-in-the-slot you could learn your fate from a Sibyl, and repent of having spent your penny on it. For another you could scent your pocket-handkerchief, and be sorry you hadn't kept your penny for chocolate. For another you could have the chocolate, and wish you had waited and taken a cigarette. And for another ...
— Somehow Good • William de Morgan
... rustic chair and table. Jacqueline was not within the summer-house; she sat in the doorway, upon the step. She was not reading. She sat bowed together, her head upon her folded arms, a figure still and tragic as a sphinx or sibyl. Rand's eyes upon her roused her from her brooding. She lifted her head, saw him, and her face, which had been drawn and weary, became like the face of the ...
— Lewis Rand • Mary Johnston
... Palinurus as begging to be allowed to cross the Styx, while his body was still unburied and without due funeral rites. To this petition the Sibyl answers:—Desine fata Deum flecti sperare precando:—Cease to hope that the decrees of the gods can be changed by prayer."—Aeneid, ...
— The Divine Comedy, Volume 2, Purgatory [Purgatorio] • Dante Alighieri
... least, anything but a comfortable sensation; but their hostile intentions, if ever entertained, were immediately removed by a wave of the hand from our conductress, who, leading my companion towards the sibyl, whispered something in her ear. The old crone appeared incredulous. The 'Unknown' uttered one word; but that word had the effect of magic; she prostrated herself at his feet, and in an instant, from an object of suspicion he became one of worship to the whole family, to whom, on taking ...
— George Borrow and His Circle - Wherein May Be Found Many Hitherto Unpublished Letters Of - Borrow And His Friends • Clement King Shorter
... conception of the Emperor Frederick II., who strove to found a new society of humane culture in the South of Europe, and to anticipate the advent of the spirit of modern tolerance. He, too, and all his race were exterminated by the Papal jealousy. Truly we may say with Michelet that the Sibyl of the Renaissance kept offering her books in vain to feudal Europe. In vain because the time was not yet. The ideas projected thus early on the modern world were immature and abortive, like those headless trunks and zoophitic members of half-molded humanity which, in the ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volume 1 (of 7) • John Addington Symonds
... holds thee now; No wall, no bar, no body of flesh, but thou Art free and happy in the lands unnamed, Within whose gates, on weary wings and maimed, Thou still would'st bear that mystic golden bough The Sibyl doth to singing men allow, Yet thy report folk heeded not, but blamed. And they would smile and wonder, seeing where Thou stood'st, to watch light leaves, or clouds, or wind, Dreamily murmuring a ballad air, Caught from the Valois ...
— Grass of Parnassus • Andrew Lang
... the great admiration of children and the amusement of older people, but it was very seldom this favor was granted, without earnest and reiterated entreaties. It was the first time she had ever spontaneously offered to personate the Sibyl, whose oracles she uttered, and it was a proof that an unusual fit of inspiration ...
— Helen and Arthur - or, Miss Thusa's Spinning Wheel • Caroline Lee Hentz
... to go into her room. A stormed citadel was in his eyes a thing spoilt in the capturing. So he waited for the gates to open. The irony was that if he had listened to sex—who spoke to him with her deep beguiling voice, like a purple-robed Sibyl—if he had for once parted company with his exacting spiritual self, Hazel would have loved him. We cannot love that in which is nothing of ourselves, and there was no white fire of spiritual exaltation ...
— Gone to Earth • Mary Webb
... a good Cumae, but who must be Sibylla? Mrs. Langton is as wise as Sibyl, and as good; and will live, if my wishes can prolong life, till she shall in time be as old. But she differs in this, that she has not scattered her precepts in the wind, at least not those ...
— Life of Johnson - Abridged and Edited, with an Introduction by Charles Grosvenor Osgood • James Boswell
... beauty! — questing, unconfined, The mind conceived you, though the quenched mind Goes down in dark where you in dawn ascend. Our songs can but suspend The ultimate silence: yet could song aspire The realms of mortal music to extend And wake a Sibyl's voice or Seraph's lyre — How should it tell the dearness ...
— The Little Book of Modern Verse • Jessie B. Rittenhouse
... ashamed of you.' Dennie's a brick. And do you know, Burgess, spite of his cussed thin hide, we've got to toughen for him out here in Kansas; spite of all that, HE LIKES DENNIE SAXON. The oracle hath orked, the sibyl hath sibbed. But say, Vic, if he does come down hard on you, what will ...
— A Master's Degree • Margaret Hill McCarter
... back, and excites Faust's passion by the description of her beauty. He takes Faust to the prophetess Manto, daughter of the old blind Theban prophet Teiresias, and she conducts him to a dark fissure—a Bocca dell' Inferno—at the foot of Mount Olympus, such as that which you may have seen in the Sibyl's cave on Lake Avernus; and here (as once Orpheus did in search of Eurydice) he descends to the realms of the dead to seek the help of Persephone, Queen of Hades, in his quest for Helen. Meanwhile Mephisto has found that in spite of his distaste for classic art ...
— The Faust-Legend and Goethe's 'Faust' • H. B. Cotterill
... the infamous Pedro. Burke has said that if Pedro was not absolutely the most cruel of men, he was undoubtedly the greatest blackguard who ever sat upon a throne, and King Juan was far from meriting similar condemnation. Sibyl de Foix, his stepmother, had exercised so strange and wonderful a power over his father, that when Juan came to the throne he was more than eager to turn upon this enchantress and make her render ...
— Women of the Romance Countries • John R. Effinger
... God! what a forlorn and miserable creature is man, when, in his affliction, he cannot say to the worm, I shall be yours! I might have cast away, indeed, the YENARKON—the Giver of Life—the elixir of the Sibyl—but that would have been to subject myself to a power of darkness, in whose fell wrath I should have suffered the casting away of ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction. - Volume XIII, No. 376, Saturday, June 20, 1829. • Various
... would be a portion of this canal. On the east side of the lake are remains of baths, including a great octagonal hall known as the Temple of Apollo, built of brickwork, and belonging to the 1st century. The so-called Grotto of the Cumaean Sibyl, on the south side, is a rock-cut passage, ventilated by vertical apertures, possibly a part of the works connected with the naval harbour. To the south-east of the lake is the Monte Nuovo, a volcanic hill upheaved in 1538, with ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 1 - "Austria, Lower" to "Bacon" • Various
... arresting it in its course by the magic of his gaze, and, suffering the gay crowds to pass on, he has given himself up with delight to the divination of its mystic revelations, while he continued to weave his incantations and spells only for the entranced Sibyl of his song. ...
— Life of Chopin • Franz Liszt
... Hecataeeus, who wrote a history of the world, passages which glorify the Hebrew people and the Hebrew God were ascribed. Still more daring was the conversion into archaic hexameter verse of the stories of Genesis and Exodus, and of Messianic prophecies in the guise of Sibylline oracles. The Sibyl, whom the superstitions of the time revered as an inspired seeress of prehistoric ages, was made to recite the building of the tower of Babel, or the virtues of Abraham, and again to prophesy the day when the heathen ...
— Philo-Judaeus of Alexandria • Norman Bentwich
... among the frail leaves bear, To catch them fluttering in the cave she never hath a care, 450 Nor will she set them back again nor make the song-words meet; So folk unanswered go their ways and loathe the Sibyl's seat. But thou, count not the cost of time that there thou hast to spend; Although thy fellows blame thee sore, and length of way to wend Call on thy sails, and thou may'st fill their folds with happy gale, Draw nigh the seer, and strive with prayers to have her holy tale; Beseech her ...
— The AEneids of Virgil - Done into English Verse • Virgil
... woman, summoning her fainting strength, bracing her trembling knee, stepped a little up the hillside to fling high her hand as a sign—Rebecca Frankl, celebrated now through Israel as the elect of the sibyl Estrella; and at that signal the congregation, gazing keenly into heaven, lifted up their voice in meek song, singing the sibyl's ...
— The Lord of the Sea • M. P. Shiel
... "Michael setting the Watch." This picture must have been painted in England, and in unknown here except by these outlines. From these alone great strength of design might be inferred. There are, besides, "A Sibyl," sitting in a cave-like, rocky place, the eyes dilated with thought, the mouth tenderly fixed; the cave is open to the sea. This design would have proved one of the most characteristic works of Allston, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 88, February, 1865 • Various
... expression of supernatural influence on forms actually human, as of sibyl or prophet. It is evident that not only here is it unnecessary, but we are not altogether at liberty to trust for expression to the utmost ennobling of the human form: for we cannot do more than this, when that form is to be ...
— Modern Painters Volume II (of V) • John Ruskin
... but, after scouring the country for miles—the hounds being well-nigh exhausted—he returned to the Crag. At this crisis, a strange hound joined them—the familiar of Mother Helston, which had been sent to capture Lady Sibyl, who had assumed the disguise of the white doe. The remainder of the curious family legend, as told by Mr. Harland, is briefly this: During the night, Hapton Tower was shaken as by an earthquake, and in the morning the captured doe appeared as the fair heiress of Bernshaw. Counter spells were ...
— Strange Pages from Family Papers • T. F. Thiselton Dyer
... many quarters now as it was at the beginning of the seventeenth century. Names are only air, and blow away with a change of wind; but beliefs are rooted in human wants and weakness, and die hard. The oaks of Dodona are prostrate, and the shrine of Delphi is desolate; but the Pythoness and the Sibyl may be consulted in Lowell Street for a very moderate compensation. Nostradamus and Lilly seem impossible in our time; but we have seen the advertisements of an astrologer in our Boston papers year after year, which seems to imply that he found believers and patrons. You ...
— Medical Essays • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... some delightful novels to show their purpose, and to illustrate their manner of how-not-to-do-it in grappling with the grand social questions of the age. In "Coningsby" they sing canticles and carry about the boar's head; in "Sibyl" they sing hymns to the Holy Virgin and the song of labor, and steal title-deeds, after setting houses on fire to distract attention from their immediate object; and in "Tancred" they go on pilgrimage to the Holy Sepulchre, by way of reviving their faith. All this is so well ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 13, No. 78, April, 1864 • Various
... their boats and join the ship, as Dalton had directed. The old death-dresser forsook the corpse, and standing on the highest crag, her long hair floating backwards on the breeze, her arms tossing from the effects of terror and astonishment, looked like the sibyl whose spells and orgies have distracted nature by some terrible convulsion. The cliffs and strand at the moment formed a picture that Salvator would have gloried in conveying to his canvass—the line of coast now rising boldly from ...
— The Buccaneer - A Tale • Mrs. S. C. Hall
... happened to be his aunt, whose appearance, as, bent to the earth with age and infirmities, she ascended a hill, supporting herself upon a long staff, Nicholas compares to that which we might conceive the Sibyl bore, when she presented herself to Tarquin. Yet, when she came up to Korro-korro, the chief, we are told, having fallen upon her neck, and applied his nose to hers, the two continued in this posture for some minutes, talking together in a low and mournful voice; and then disengaging themselves, ...
— John Rutherford, the White Chief • George Lillie Craik
... can't nurse her child unless she follows a certain diet; an artist can't bring his visions to maturity unless he has a certain experience. You demand of us to be imaginative, and you deny us that which feeds the imagination. In labor we must be as passionate as the inspired sibyl; in life we must be mere machines. It won't do. When you have got an artist to deal with, you must take him as he is, good and bad together. I don't say they are pleasant fellows to know or easy fellows to live with; I don't say they satisfy themselves any better than other ...
— Roderick Hudson • Henry James
... facts. The facts brought out in the various litigations in which Mrs. Eddy and the church have been involved confirm both the statements and conclusions of this really distinctive work. The official life by Sibyl Wilbur (whose real name seems to be O'Brien) is so coloured as to be substantially undependable. It touches lightly or omits altogether those passages in Mrs. Eddy's life which do not fit in with the picture which Mrs. Eddy herself and the ...
— Modern Religious Cults and Movements • Gaius Glenn Atkins
... least one of its chief marks; and it is, I think, an important function of a university to create an intellectual atmosphere in which the love of excellence shall become contagious, which whosoever breathes shall, like the Sibyl, feel the inspiration of ...
— Education and the Higher Life • J. L. Spalding
... finished yet," said Marian, jumping up again. "I want to remark further that not only is Patty going to live in Vernondale, but she's going to have a house very near this one. I've picked it out," and Marian wagged her head with the air of a mysterious sibyl. "I won't tell you where it is just yet, but it's a lovely house, and big enough to accommodate Uncle Fred and Patty, and a guest or two besides. I've selected the room that I prefer, and I hope you will furnish it ...
— Patty at Home • Carolyn Wells
... class, wore the peasant costume. I observed these with interest but certainly as long as they were under the spell of the master they communicated nothing worth preserving; they seemed to show "the contortions of the sibyl without the inspiration." ...
— Autobiography of Andrew Dickson White Volume II • Andrew Dickson White
... Human aetiological tendencies supply explanations of any cavern or natural chasm—even a volcano must be the mouth of the entrance to hell or purgatory—from Taenarus, where Pluto carried off Proserpine, and the Sibyl's cavern, whence Aeneas sought the lower regions, to the famous Lough Dearg in Donegal, the entrance to "St. Patrick's Purgatory," and the Peak cavern in Derbyshire. The student may begin his researches with T. Wright's St. Patrick's ...
— The Sources and Analogues of 'A Midsummer-night's Dream' • Compiled by Frank Sidgwick
... as in spirit." Justine Brent drew her brows together, and stared moodily at the thin brown hands interwoven between Mrs. Dressel's plump fingers. Seated thus, with hollowed shoulders and brooding head, she might have figured a young sibyl bowed above some mystery of fate; but the next moment her face, inclining toward her friend's, cast off its shadows and resumed the look of a ...
— The Fruit of the Tree • Edith Wharton
... of a braided rug, and its rings of black and gray seemed to circle about her feet in the dim light. Her height and massiveness in the low room gave her the look of a huge sibyl, while the strange fragrance of the mysterious herb blew ...
— The Country of the Pointed Firs • Sarah Orne Jewett
... The Sibyl sank her head upon her breast so that her nose and chin quite disappeared, and she stood before them like some furry headless beast. There was a long pause. Alwin nervously followed the pairs of eyes, noiselessly appearing and ...
— The Thrall of Leif the Lucky • Ottilie A. Liljencrantz
... of me just now. Why? I am inoffensive enough. There is something uncommon about her; she gives me the idea of having a history, which is anything but desirable for a young woman. What fine eyes she has! She is something like that Sibyl of Guercino's in the Capitol. Why does she object to me? It is rather absurd. I must make her talk, then ...
— A Crooked Path - A Novel • Mrs. Alexander
... vehement young King; no negotiating with him, Sir Thomas! It is like negotiating for the Sibyl's Books: the longer you bargain, the higher he will rise. In four weeks, time he will demand Four Principalities more; nay, already demands them, the whole of Lower Silesia and Breslau. A precious negotiation I have made of it! Sir Thomas, ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XIII. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... America, much attenuated; indeed, she resembled a bundle of nerves electrified with vitality; her bleached skin, thin arms, large, scintillating eyes, and that indescribable something which marks the Jewish physiognomy, gave her a weird, sibyl-like appearance, as of one wasted by long vigils. There was in her glance and action the spasmodic inspiration observable in Malibran towards the close of her career. The play was Racine's Andromache, ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I. February, 1862, No. II. - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... The sibyl entertained the officers with her gay conversation, while they drank or sat at the gaining-table; she probably owed her name to the skill she displayed in telling fortunes by cards. The common soldiers liked her too, because she took care of their ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... Time, like the Sibyl, who offered her nine books of destiny to the Roman king, has been destroying, century after century, one after another of the rich volumes of antiquities which she formerly tendered to the keeping of our Scottish fathers. ...
— Archaeological Essays, Vol. 1 • James Y. Simpson
... history spurious chapters, in which he was made to deal more eulogistically with their beliefs and history, and they circulated oracles and poems in the names of fabled seers of prehistoric times—Orpheus and the Sibyl—which conveyed some of the religious and moral teachings of Judaism. Nor were they slow to adapt their own chronicles for the Greek world or to take their part in the literary movement of the time. In Palestine, indeed, the Jews remained devoted to religious thought, and never made ...
— Josephus • Norman Bentwich
... pictures, and other works of art. A magnificent marble staircase leads from the ground floor, monolith pillars support the roof, and a bust of the founder of the company, Edward III., faces the entrance. Two fine sculptures by Storey, the Libyan Sibyl and Cleopatra, adorn the vestibule. The oak panelling of the court room was taken from the old hall. This room contains a painting of St. Dunstan, the patron saint of the company, some portraits of worthies, a silver vase and shield by Vechte, and a small Roman altar, discovered when the foundations ...
— Memorials of Old London - Volume I • Various
... the vacuous odalisque in her composition. G. von Loeper has well said of her composite traits: "The tender radiance of first youth hovers over her descriptions; but, while one is beholding, Bettina suddenly changes into a mischievous elf, and, if we reach out to grasp the kobold, lo! a sibyl stands before us!" Behind all Bettina's mobility there is a force of individuality, as irresistible and as recurrent as the tides. Her brother Clemens and her brother-in-law Savigny tried in vain to temper ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VII. • Various
... Constantin. Orat. ad Sanctos, c. 19 20. He chiefly depends on a mysterious acrostic, composed in the sixth age after the Deluge, by the Erythraean Sibyl, and translated by Cicero into Latin. The initial letters of the thirty-four Greek verses form this prophetic sentence: Jesus Christ, Son of God, Savior of ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 2 • Edward Gibbon
... "told me so." I had had no disposition to deny anything she might have told me, and I couldn't see that her satisfaction in being justified by the event relieved her little nephew's condition. The truth is that, as the sequel was to prove, Miss Ambient had some of the qualities of the sibyl and had therefore perhaps a right to the sibylline contortions. Her brother was so preoccupied that I felt my presence an indiscretion and was sorry I had promised to remain over the morrow. I put it to Mark ...
— The Author of Beltraffio • Henry James
... such places. It responds to impressions left on the mind of the 'Stygian cave forlorn,' the entrance to Dante's 'City of Sorrow,' and that other cave where Aeneas witnessed in cold terror the prophetic fury of the Sibyl. ...
— Wanderings by southern waters, eastern Aquitaine • Edward Harrison Barker
... wait till husband number one Is comfortably stowed away at Woking? How is her hair most usually done? And tell me, please, will she object to smoking? The colour of her eyes, too, you may mention: Come, Sibyl, ...
— The Bab Ballads • W. S. Gilbert
... Mary Avenel hastily arranged the dress which she had not laid aside, and, venturing to quit her chamber, learned from Tibb, who, with her gray hairs dishevelled like those of a sibyl, was flying from room to room, that the bloody Southron villain had made his escape, and that Halbert Glendinning, poor bairn, would sleep unrevenged and unquiet in his bloody grave. In the lower apartments, the young men were roaring ...
— The Monastery • Sir Walter Scott
... king a strange thing happened at Rome. One day an unknown woman came to the king, bearing in her arms nine books, which she offered to sell to him at a certain price. She told him that they contained the prophecies of the Sibyl of Cumae, and that from them might be learned the destiny of Rome and the way to ...
— Historic Tales, Volume 11 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... "Mr Disraeli ... with infinite polish and grace asked pardon for the flying words of debate, and drew easy forgiveness from the member (Mr Goulburn), whom a few hours before he had mocked as 'a weird sibyl'; the other member (Sir James Graham), whom he could not say he greatly respected, but whom he greatly regarded; and the third member (Sir C. Wood), whom he bade learn that petulance is not sarcasm, and insolence is not invective. Lord John Russell congratulated him on ...
— The Letters of Queen Victoria, Vol 2 (of 3), 1844-1853 • Queen Victoria
... the sibyl of his odd adoration; Annapla was too intent upon her own elderly love-affairs to be ...
— Doom Castle • Neil Munro
... wonderingly: was little Molly going to turn out a sibyl? How grown she was! What a peace and strength shone from her countenance! She was woman, girl, and child, all in one! What a fire of life there was in this lady with the brown hands—so different from the white, wax-doll ends to Lufa's arms! She was of the cold and ice, of the white death ...
— Home Again • George MacDonald
... the old mariner, in a subdued tone, and with a shrewd and suspicious glance of his eye after the old sibyl, "it's a word that may not very well be uttered, but there are many mistakes made in evening stories if old Moll Moray there, where she lives, knows not mickle more than she is willing to tell of the Haunted Ships ...
— Little Classics, Volume 8 (of 18) - Mystery • Various
... Viola is alone in the world,—alone in the home where loneliness had seemed from the cradle a thing that was not of nature. And at first the solitude and the stillness were insupportable. Have you, ye mourners, to whom these sibyl leaves, weird with many a dark enigma, shall be borne, have you not felt that when the death of some best-loved one has made the hearth desolate,—have you not felt as if the gloom of the altered ...
— Zanoni • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... dream By Jordan's willow-shaded stream, And, of the hymns of hope and faith, Sang by the monks of Nazareth, Hears pious echoes, in the call To prayer, from Moslem minarets fall, Repeating where His works were wrought The lesson that her Master taught, Of whom an elder Sibyl gave, The prophecies ...
— The World's Best Poetry Volume IV. • Bliss Carman
... you, Sibyl, they are with their own nurse, and Graham will be far more likely to put them all at ease than I should. They will hear that "Miss 'Unter, is the missis, and lets every one know she is. Miss 'Ester keeps the maids on their legs all day long ...
— Bulbs and Blossoms • Amy Le Feuvre |
