"Thermopylae" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... shall come to a veritable triumph. Yes; and in such light we turn to read what Ruskin called the greatest inscription ever written, that which Herodotus tells us was raised over the Spartans, who fell at Thermopylae, and which Mitchel's biographer quotes as most fitting to epitomise Mitchel's life: "Stranger, tell thou the Lacedemonians that we are lying here, having obeyed their words." And the biographer of Mitchel is right in holding that he who reads into the significance of these brave lines, reads a message ...
— Principles of Freedom • Terence J. MacSwiney
... Leonidas,[123] with three hundred Spartans, could throw themselves into the Thermopylae of death for the salvation of their country, it would ill become one humble Canadian to hesitate at any sacrifice, or shrink from any responsibility, or even danger, in order to prevent his own countrymen from rushing into a vortex, ...
— The Story of My Life - Being Reminiscences of Sixty Years' Public Service in Canada • Egerton Ryerson
... his three days' labor: when he had read that poem, his heart had seemed to throb with pain every time that Roland lifted his sword-arm. He would think of the old blind "Samson Agonistes"; he would think of the Greeks at Thermopylae, of the siege of Haarlem. History was full of such tales of the agonies that men had endured for the sake of their faith; and why should he expect exemption, why should he shrink from ...
— Love's Pilgrimage • Upton Sinclair
... but his clear, pale complexion, his delicately trimmed mustachio, his lofty forehead, his arched eyebrow, and his Eastern eye, recalled to the traveller, in spite of his barbarian trappings, the fine countenances of the Aegean, and became a form which apparently might have struggled in Thermopylae. Next to him was the Austrian diplomatist, the Sosia of all cabinets, in whose gay address and rattling conversation you could hardly recognise the sophistical defender of unauthorised invasion, and the subtle inventor of Holy Alliances and Imperial Leagues. Then came the rich usurer ...
— Vivian Grey • The Earl of Beaconsfield
... of Abingdon speak glibly of Shepherd Kings, Constitution of Lycurgus, Thermopylae, Consul Duilius, or the Licinian Laws; the more advanced are even as far down as Elizabeth. For the rich and unmatched history of their own land, they have but a shallow patter of that; no guess at its high meaning, no hint ...
— Copper Streak Trail • Eugene Manlove Rhodes
... gold, but to found a democracy. They came that they might have the privilege to work and pray, to sit upon hard benches and listen to painful preachers as long as they would, yea, even unto thirty-seventhly, if the spirit so willed it. And surely, if the Greek might boast his Thermopylae, where three hundred men fell in resisting the Persian, we may well be proud of our Plymouth Rock, where a handful of men, women, and children not merely faced, but vanquished, winter, famine, the wilderness, and the yet more invincible storge that drew them back to the ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell
... descendants, AEolus, Dorus and Ion, are said to have given name to the three nations, AEolians, Dorians, and Ionians, Still further south, between the inaccessible cliffs of Mount OEta and the marshes which skirt the Maliaeus Bay, were the defiles of Thermopylae, where Leonidas and three hundred heroes died defending the pass, against the army of Xerxes, and which in one place was only twenty-five feet wide, so that, in so narrow a defile, the Spartans were able to withstand ...
— Ancient States and Empires • John Lord
... reading sentimental novels, and who wish that they had some grand field in which to display their Christian powers. Oh, what grand and glorious things they could do if they only had an opportunity! My sister, you need not wait for any such time. A crisis will come in your affairs. There will be a Thermopylae in your own household, where God will tell you to stand. There are scores and hundreds of households in this city to-day where as much bravery and courage are demanded of women as was exhibited by Grace Darling, or Marie ...
— The Wedding Ring - A Series of Discourses for Husbands and Wives and Those - Contemplating Matrimony • T. De Witt Talmage
... matchlock-men were seen astride on this wall, which was ten feet high, but they soon disappeared; and the General, discovering that there were no loopholes or scaffolding to the wall, ordered Captain Tew, with a company of the 22nd, to occupy and defend it to the last. It was another Thermopylae. The gallant Tew died in the gap, but the post was maintained, and thus 6000 enemies were paralysed ...
— Our Soldiers - Gallant Deeds of the British Army during Victoria's Reign • W.H.G. Kingston
... the window seat, which was a broad, old-fashioned one, and pointed the fire arms and heated poker at him; whilst others advanced with the squibs and missiles. 'Come on, my lads,' said the captain, 'let this be our Thermopylae, and I will be your Leonidas.' And, indeed, so daring were they, that each seemed ready to emulate the Spartans of old. The master, perceiving their determined obstinacy, turned round, without further remonstrance, and indignantly ...
— A Righte Merrie Christmasse - The Story of Christ-Tide • John Ashton
... What do you gather from a study of Mr. Lear's works to have been the prevalent characteristics of the inhabitants of Gretna, Prague, Thermopylae, Wick, ...
— Nonsense Books • Edward Lear
... Thermopylae to Artemisium, informing that that king Leonidas was slain, and that Xerxes had made himself master of all the passages by land, they returned back to the interior of Greece. Xerxes had already passed through Doris ...
— The Boys' and Girls' Plutarch - Being Parts of The "Lives" of Plutarch • Plutarch
... resolved to make their stand at Thermopylae on land, and at the strait of Artemisium by sea. But at the strong pass of Thermopylae only a small force was gathered to hold the barbarians in check, there being of the Spartans themselves only 300, ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol XI. • Edited by Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton
... for three hundred years after the battle of Thermopylae every child in the public schools of Greece was required to recite from memory the names of the three hundred martyrs who fell in the defence of that Pass. It would be a crowning triumph in patriotic education if every school child in America could contemplate each day ...
— Modern Eloquence: Vol III, After-Dinner Speeches P-Z • Various
... these proceedings were not long in reaching Cassander. He was at this time in Greece, advancing, however, slowly to the northward, toward Macedon. In coming from Greece into Thessaly, his route lay through the celebrated Pass of Thermopylae. He found this pass guarded by a large body of troops, which had been posted there to oppose his passage. He immediately got together all the ships, boats, galleys, and vessels of every kind which ...
— Pyrrhus - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... We took Thermopylae at our leisure, passing out from Lamia over the Spercheios on the bridge of Alamana, at which Diakos, famous in ballad, resisted with a small band a Turkish army, until he was at last captured and taken ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Vol VIII - Italy and Greece, Part Two • Various
... Leaders of forlorn hopes nowadays would be inclined to pick out as comrades the unmarried men, as having least to sacrifice and fewest duties to forego. Whereas Leonidas, in choosing the 300 men to make their famous and fatal stand at Thermopylae, is stated to have selected all ...
— On The Structure of Greek Tribal Society: An Essay • Hugh E. Seebohm
... always on the side of the ablest navigators.—Gibbon. 3. The axis of the earth sticks out visibly through the center of each and every town or city.—Holmes. 4. The arrogant Spartan, with a French-like glorification, boasted forever of little Thermopylae.—De Quincey. 5. The purest act of knowledge is always colored by some feeling of pleasure or pain.—Hamilton. 6. The thunder of the great London journals reverberates through every clime.—Marsh. 7. The cheeks of William the Testy were scorched ...
— Higher Lessons in English • Alonzo Reed and Brainerd Kellogg
... the news of Thermopylae was brought to the Greeks at Artemisium, that Leonidas had fallen, and Xerxes was in possession of the passes, they retired further into Greece, the Athenians protecting the rear on account of their bravery, ...
— Plutarch's Lives, Volume I (of 4) • Plutarch
... thy own land's mighty dead Deserve a nobler hymn from thee, Than bravest of the brave that bled At Laspi or Thermopylae. ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, May 1844 - Volume 23, Number 5 • Various
... his fifty men had ever read of the 300 Spartan heroes at Thermopylae, who for three days held at bay the Persian army of five millions. To pit fifty policemen against three thousand enraged strikers was too great odds. Captain Crager's orders were "to defend the property of the steel company." The reserve police force and troops en route might ...
— The Harris-Ingram Experiment • Charles E. Bolton
... godlike and Greek,' though he is rather uncertain about his quantities, rhyming 'Polyxena' to 'Athena' and 'Aphrodite' to 'light,' and occasionally makes very rash statements, as when he represents Leonidas exclaiming to the three hundred at Thermopylae: ...
— Reviews • Oscar Wilde
... Westminster Abbey with an English epitaph on Goldsmith. What reason there can be for celebrating a British writer in Latin, which there was not for covering the Roman arches of triumph with Greek inscriptions, or for commemorating the deeds of the heroes of Thermopylae in Egyptian hieroglyphics, we ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 2 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... tyrant was too base, no pretext too hollow, for enslaving the grandsons of the men of Salamis and Thermopylae: therefore did the descendants of those stern and self-restrained Romans, who were ready to give up everything, and life as the least of things, to the glory of their commonweal, produce monsters of license and reckless folly. Therefore did a little knot ...
— Hopes and Fears for Art • William Morris
... illustrative of classical scenes hung round the walls, done in the old-fashioned style of line engraving, and representing such subjects as Mutius Scaevola before Porsenna; Belisarius begging for an obolus; Aeneas carrying his father from Troy; Leonidas at Thermopylae; Coriolanus quitting Rome; Hamilcar making the boy Hannibal swear his oath of hate against Home; and ...
— The Lady of the Ice - A Novel • James De Mille
... fifty-nine daughters. (That was going some!) However, suspicious hieroglyphics have been found that go to show that Ram was chased in many battles, and that one barbarian had the audacity to tin-can him into the neighboring desert, from which he did not return for many moons. Kadesh was his Thermopylae, and the Khetas compelled him to recognize their independence at the treaty of Tanis. This made the old man sick, as he was not accustomed to taking "second money." They had no "germans" in those days, but Ram is shown in one of the alto-rilievos ...
— A Fantasy of Mediterranean Travel • S. G. Bayne
... precisely here that was situated the richest satrapy of Darius. At all events, this country abounded in those most striking events which furnish history with her richest materials. In Rajistan every small kingdom had its Thermopylae, and every little town has produced its Leonidas. But the veil of the centuries hides from posterity events that the pen of the historian might have bequeathed to the everlasting admiration of the nations. Somnath might have appeared as a rival of Delphi, the treasures of Hind might ...
— From the Caves and Jungles of Hindostan • Helena Pretrovna Blavatsky
... the money I sent for arrived, and I am only now on my way to Greece—my native land, the mother of the arts and sciences, the country of Socrates and Plato, of Alexander and Aristides, the battle-fields of Thermopylae and Marathon. Ah, signora, Greece once contained all that is noble and great, and brave—what she once was, such she will be again—when we, her brave sons, have regenerated her, when we have driven forth the accursed Turk, never more to ...
— The Pirate of the Mediterranean - A Tale of the Sea • W.H.G. Kingston
... theme of school declamation. I sat with Marius on the ruins of Carthage; I defended the bridge with Horatius Cocles; thrust my hand into the flame with Martius Scaevola, and plunged with Curtius into the yawning gulf; I fought side by side with Leonidas, at the straits of Thermopylae; and was going full drive into the battle of Plataea, when my memory, which is the worst in the world, failed me, just as I wanted the name of the ...
— The Crayon Papers • Washington Irving
... standing on the crest of the barricade, gun in hand, raised his beautiful, austere face. Enjolras, as the reader knows, had something of the Spartan and of the Puritan in his composition. He would have perished at Thermopylae with Leonidas, and burned ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... heroism in the struggles of the Dutch republic as in the wars of Napoleon; as much in our warfare for independence as in the suppression of the Southern rebellion; as much among Cromwell's soldiers as in the Crimean war; as much at Thermopylae as at Plataea. It is the greatness of a cause which gives to war its only justification. A cause is sacred from the dignity of its principles. Men are nothing; principles are everything. Men must die. It is of comparatively little moment ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume IX • John Lord
... and shot him down. Not a man of the garrison was left alive, but each of them had avenged himself four times over, for the Mexican loss was over five hundred. So ended one of the most heroic events in American history. "Thermopylae had its messengers of death; The ...
— American Men of Action • Burton E. Stevenson
... parties to the treaty of July 6th." Finally, the three powers, however, agreed to restrict the territory of the new state within narrower limits than were assumed in this protocol. The line adopted was further to the south. It commenced on the east at Zeitouni, a little to the northward of Thermopylae, and ran across the country in the direction of Vrachori, till it reached the river Aspropotamos, or the ancient Achelous, whose course it was then to follow as far as the sea. It thus excluded not only Thessaly, but Acarnaniaand the town of Vonizza, which the Greeks ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... worked on a higher plane, or was a greater power on earth, than King Alfred or George Washington, even if it be that he will survive them both in the memory of man. The name of every man but one who fought with Leonidas at Thermopylae is forgotten. But is AEschylus greater than Leonidas, or Miltiades, or Themistocles? The literature of Athens preserves to immortality the fame of its great authors. But it was Solon, and Pericles, and Miltiades that created and saved and made great the city, without which the poets ...
— Autobiography of Seventy Years, Vol. 1-2 • George Hoar |
