"Venus" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... gives them a very peculiar aspect. Their leaves are wholly wanting, or are indicated by small, imperceptible scales, and their organs of vegetation are reduced to a stem and filiform branches that have obtained for them the names of Cheveux de Venus (Venus' Hair) and Cheveux du Diable (devil's hair) in French, and gold thread in English. Because of their destructive nature they have likewise been called by the unpoetic name of hellweed; and, for the reason that they embrace their host plants so ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 430, March 29, 1884 • Various
... south of the zenith, and how far short it rises and falls from the equinoctial points. But wait awhile, and in a few minutes—that is to say, days—you shall see him start to widen his circuit. Here now is Saturn, with his rim: and here Venus—mark how delicately she lifts, following the ...
— Corporal Sam and Other Stories • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... symptoms of poetic power elucidated in a Critical analysis of Shakespeare's Venus and Adonis, and ...
— Biographia Literaria • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... est belle. Il y a plusieurs tableaux remarquables, entre autres une Venus de Leighton que je trouve superbe. La contribution de Landseer est importante, c'est un portrait de la Reine, a cheval, en deuil; cheval noir, trois chiens noirs, ...
— Philip Gilbert Hamerton • Philip Gilbert Hamerton et al
... an account of his labors during the evening, and from his story it was quite evident that he had been the most important personage in the assembly, and Dinah shone like a bronze Venus with the triumph ...
— A Noble Woman • Ann S. Stephens
... temple than (even while the sacred office was going on) that happened which had always happened at other times, and not only did the men turn their eyes to gaze upon me, but the women did the same, as if Venus or Minerva had newly descended from the skies, and would never again be seen by them in that spot where I was seated. Oh, how often I laughed within my own breast, being enraptured with myself, and taking ...
— La Fiammetta • Giovanni Boccaccio
... you equally wish for and dread it: I have, however, written you one." She had not time to say more; but the few words she had spoken were accompanied with such an air, and such a look, as to make him believe that it was Venus with all her graces who had addressed him. He was near her when she sat down to cards, and as he was puzzling himself to devise by what means he should get this answer, she desired him to lay her gloves and fan down somewhere: he took them, and with them the ...
— The Memoirs of Count Grammont, Complete • Anthony Hamilton
... maid. Why dost thou fly? No snake am I, That poison those I love. Gentle I am As any lamb, And harmless as a dove. Thy cruel scorn Has left forlorn A nymph whose charms may vie With theirs who sport In Cynthia's court, Though Venus' self were by. Since, fugitive knight, to no purpose I woo thee, Barabbas's fate still ...
— Wit and Wisdom of Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... their coming on one day of the week rather than on another. In reality, however, this apparently insignificant circumstance is astrologically connected with the issue of the contest. Palamon, who on the morning of the following day makes his prayer to Venus, succeeds at last in winning Emelie, though Arcite, who commends himself to Mars, conquers him in the tournament. The prayers of both are granted, because both address themselves to their tutelary deities at hours over which these deities respectively preside. In order to understand ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 69, February 22, 1851 • Various
... the contest, Palamon goes before dawn to the temple of Venus to beseech her aid in winning Emily, while Arcite at the same time steals to the temple of Mars to pray for victory in war. Each deity not only promises but actually grants the suppliants precisely ...
— Halleck's New English Literature • Reuben P. Halleck
... a Spartan fair, Alector's daughter; from an handmaid sprang That son to Menelaus in his age, Brave Megapenthes; for the Gods no child To Helen gave, made mother, once, of her Who vied in perfect loveliness of form With golden Venus' self, Hermione. Thus all the neighbour princes and the friends 20 Of noble Menelaus, feasting sat Within his spacious palace, among whom A sacred bard sang sweetly to his harp, While, in the midst, two ...
— The Odyssey of Homer • Homer
... entertainment to the imagination. Poets have formed what they call a poetical system of things, which though it be believed neither by themselves nor readers, is commonly esteemed a sufficient foundation for any fiction. We have been so much accustomed to the names of MARS, JUPITER, VENUS, that in the same manner as education infixes any opinion, the constant repetition of these ideas makes them enter into the mind with facility, and prevail upon the fancy, without influencing the judgment. In like manner tragedians always ...
— A Treatise of Human Nature • David Hume
... first Christian Emperor of Rome, made a pilgrimage to Jerusalem, where she was alleged to have discovered the wood of the true Cross. This, according to tradition, was found, with two other crosses and various sacred relics, under a temple of Venus, which stood near the Holy Sepulchre. And the true Cross was identified by means of a miraculous test; for when a sick woman was touched with two of the crosses, no effect was apparent; but upon contact with the true Cross, she was immediately ...
— Primitive Psycho-Therapy and Quackery • Robert Means Lawrence
... of Venus at Elis with one foot upon the shell of a tortoise, to signify two great duties of a virtuous woman, which are to keep home and be silent."—Human Prudence, by W. De Britaine, 12th edit.: Dublin, ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 214, December 3, 1853 • Various
... meadows of night, And daisies are shining there, Tossing their lovely dews, Lustrous and fair; And through these sweet fields go, Wanderers amid the stars— Venus, Mercury, Uranus, Neptune, ...
— Georgian Poetry 1913-15 • Edited by E. M. (Sir Edward Howard Marsh)
... bother you, and above all, don't think of coming out to this place which makes you miserable, and where you can't work. What a queer menage you must be at the Abbey now! You and the Star who has risen from the ocean—she ought to have been called Venus—tete-a-tete, and the, I gather, rather feeble and uninteresting old gentleman in bed upstairs. I should like to see you when you didn't know. Why don't you invent a machine to enable people at a distance to see as well as to hear each other? It would be very popular ...
— Stella Fregelius • H. Rider Haggard
... and the Dorian Apollo-worship and Athenian Virgin-worship are both expressions of adoration of divine wisdom and purity. Next to these great deities, rank, in power over the national mind, Dionysus and Ceres, the givers of human strength and life; then, for heroic example, Hercules. There is no Venus-worship among the Greeks in the great times: and the Muses are essentially teachers of Truth, and ...
— Selections From the Works of John Ruskin • John Ruskin
... and Cound Mill, a manor which Henry III. gave to his brother-in-law, Llewellyn, and which was afterwards held by Walter Fitz-Alan, who entered the service of David, King of Scotland, and became head of the royal house of Stuart. It crosses the Devil's Causeway, and passes Venus Bank, with Pitchford and Acton Barnell on the left; the latter celebrated for the ruins of the old castle where Edward I. held his parliament, the Commons sitting in ...
— Handbook to the Severn Valley Railway - Illustrative and Descriptive of Places along the Line from - Worcester to Shrewsbury • J. Randall
... Juno of a woman, if she had not borrowed Venus's girdle to render herself irresistible, at least had adopted a tender, coaxing, wheedling, frisky tone, quite different from her ordinary dignified style of conversation. She called Mr. Crampton a naughty man, for neglecting ...
— The Bedford-Row Conspiracy • William Makepeace Thackeray
... ma'am, why do you clothe yourself in such beauty but to flaunt upon our senses that sex of yours?" My lady was duly shocked and hid behind her fan. "Aye, there it is! We catch a whiff of paradise and straightway it is denied us. Our nightingale there is silent when we draw near. Our Venus here hides herself when our eyes would enjoy her. As His Grace said to me, you women are like heaven to a ...
— The Highwayman • H.C. Bailey
... I. O Venus, Beauty of the Skies, To whom a Thousand Temples rise, Gayly false in gentle Smiles, Full of Loves perplexing Wiles; O Goddess! from my Heart remove The wasting ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... This angered Venus, and she resolved to cast down her earthly rival. One day, therefore, she called hither her son, Love (Cupid, some name him), and bade him sharpen his weapons. He is an archer more to be dreaded than Apollo, for Apollo's arrows take life, but Love's bring joy or sorrow ...
— Good Stories For Great Holidays - Arranged for Story-Telling and Reading Aloud and for the - Children's Own Reading • Frances Jenkins Olcott
... Seven Years' War he distinguished himself, by his work in surveying and sounding an the coasts of Labrador and Newfoundland, as a man of science. In consequence, he was detailed to undertake expeditions for observing the transit of Venus and for discovering the southern continent which was supposed to exist in the neighborhood of the Antarctic circle. In the course of this work Cook practically established the geography of the southern half of the globe as we know it ...
— A History of Sea Power • William Oliver Stevens and Allan Westcott
... shrines of saints. Hosts set out to see the land where the Lord had walked and suffered, and brave all dangers and hardships to wrest its possession from infidel hands. But at the place where all these activities center, and whence they are being fed, a shocking abomination is seen: Venus is worshiped, and Bacchus, and Mercurius, and Mars, while white-robed choirs chant praises to the mother of God, and clouds of incense are wafted skyward. Here is a mystery—a mystery of iniquity: the son of perdition in the temple ...
— Luther Examined and Reexamined - A Review of Catholic Criticism and a Plea for Revaluation • W. H. T. Dau
... revolved slowly or swayed from side to side. Huge oil paintings with shaded top and foot-lights occupied all vacant spaces in the walls. They were "valued" at from ten to thirty thousand dollars apiece, and that fact was advertised. "Leda and the Swan," "The Birth of Venus," "The Rape of the Sabines," "Cupid and Psyche" were some of the classic themes treated as having taken place in a warm climate. "Susannah and the Elders" and "Salome Dancing" gave the Biblical flavour. The "Bath of the Harem" finished ...
— The Gray Dawn • Stewart Edward White
... d'un de leurs chefs, le fameux Gengis-Kan; persuades que la terre entiere devoit leur obeir, ces nomades belliqueux et feroces etoient venus, apres avoir soumis la Chine, se precipiter sur le nord-est de l'Europe. Par tout ou s'etoient portees leurs innombrables hordes, des royaumes avoient ete ravages; des nations entieres exterminees ou trainees en esclavage; la Hongrie, la Pologne, la ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques, - and Discoveries of The English Nation, Volume 10 - Asia, Part III • Richard Hakluyt
... righteous man is not human; he is a monster, an angel wanting wings. The angel of Christian mythology has nothing but a head. On earth, the righteous person is the sufficiently tiresome Grandison, for whom the very Venus of ...
— Cousin Pons • Honore de Balzac
... impression was one of warmth and comfort and beauty. There were no carpets, and on the hardwood floor he caught a glimpse of several wolf and coyote skins. What captured and perceptibly held his eye for a moment was a Crouched Venus that stood on a Steinway upright against a background of mountain-lion skin on ...
— Burning Daylight • Jack London
... read in Diodorus; the Egyptians likewise used it, as you may read in Herodotus, and may be gathered by the description of Berenice in the Greek Commentary upon Callimachus; the Greeks also used it anciently, as appeared by Venus's mantle lined with stars, though afterward they changed the form thereof into their cloaks, called Pallai, as some of the Irish also use; and the ancient Latins and Romans used it, as you may read in Virgil, who was a great antiquary, ...
— Castle Rackrent • Maria Edgeworth
... was rather proud of these mighty members: and some readers may recall that not least Heinesque remark of the poet who so much shocks Kaiser Wilhelm II., "Those of the Venus of Milo are ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 2 - To the Close of the 19th Century • George Saintsbury
... priests and the vulgar, by pretending to demonstrate that their personifications were necessary emanations from THE ONE; and he, and others, arranged the worship of them under the names of Jupiter, Neptune, Minerva, Venus, Pluto, Mars, &c. Among the NORTHERN NATIONS, they assumed the names of Woden, Sleepner, Hela, Fola, &c. Every town and village had, moreover, its protecting divinity, or guardian saint, under some fantastical name, or the name of some fantastical fanatic; and, even every ...
— A Morning's Walk from London to Kew • Richard Phillips
... in his chariot by prancing horses, typifies Sunday; Monday we have Diana with her stag. Tuesday comes Mars, Wednesday Mercury, Thursday Jupiter, Friday we have the goddess Venus, and Saturday Saturn." ...
— Christopher and the Clockmakers • Sara Ware Bassett
... her a moment, then caught herself up. "I won't embitter you by absolutely accusing you of that; though, as for my being hideous, it's hardly the first time I've been told so! I know it so well that even if I haven't whiskers—have I?—I dare say there are other ways in which the Countess is a Venus to me! My pretensions must therefore seem to you monstrous—which comes to the same thing as your not liking me. But do you mean to go so far as to tell me that you WANT to live with ...
— What Maisie Knew • Henry James
... sun sinks lower and lower, his red beams die in a sea of great gray clouds. Slowly and quietly they creep up over the night-sky. Venus is shrouded. The western stars blink faintly, then fade in the mounting vapors. The vane points east of south. The constellations in the zenith struggle to be seen, but presently give ...
— Dream Life - A Fable Of The Seasons • Donald G. Mitchell
... beautiful than womanliness! The next time you see the Sistine Madonna, look behind all the mother in the lovely face for the woman in it. Then see if you do not remark the same in Raphael's St. Cecilia, and in the Venus de Milo, Wherever masters have succeeded in painting the Virgin, notice, aside from the holy look,—if any thing can be aside from that,—the womanly look. What is it which makes us love some women's faces ...
— Hold Up Your Heads, Girls! • Annie H. Ryder
... no use to a person of culture; it condemns all school books and all schools which lie between the child's primer and Greek, and between the infant school and the university; it condemns all the rounds of art which lie between the cheap terra cotta groups and the Venus de Medici, and between the chromo and the Transfiguration; it requires Whitcomb Riley to sing no more till he can sing like Shakespeare, and it forbids all amateur music and will grant its sanction to ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... Venus' pigeons fly To seal love's bonds new made, than they are wont To keep obliged faith unforfeited! ——Who riseth from a feast, With that keen appetite that he sits down? Where is the horse, that ...
— Say and Seal, Volume II • Susan Warner
... with a formidable squadron, consisting of eleven sail of the line and two frigates, suddenly pushed out of Toulon harbour. The Seahorse, Lord Nelson's look-out frigate, accordingly, narrowly escaped being taken: and the Venus sloop of ten guns, with his lordship's dispatches, was actually captured; having, however, previously thrown the dispatches overboard. The Seahorse, instead of watching, at a safe distance, the course of the enemy's fleet, till their destination should have been in some degree ascertained, ...
— The Life of the Right Honourable Horatio Lord Viscount Nelson, Vol. II (of 2) • James Harrison
... down the passage. For a minute he was an amused spectator, then he said languidly: "Suppose we consider the meeting adjourned. I think it's nearly half-time." Gradually the crowd began to clear; Rudd rose out of the paper like Venus out of the water. A roar of laughter ...
— The Loom of Youth • Alec Waugh
... sky the young moon hung. Beneath it, to the left, was one star like an attendant, the star of Venus. The faint light of the moon fell upon the water of the pool. Unceasingly the frog ...
— The Garden Of Allah • Robert Hichens
... I don't know what a Vigil means; or Venus— whether it's a person or a place; or why the Latin is late, as you call ...
— Brother Copas • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... would see the temple of Mars, from whom the hill derived its name. And turning toward the Acropolis, he would behold, closing the long perspective, a series of little sanctuaries on the very ledges of the rocks, shrines of Bacchus and AEsculapius, Venus, Earth, and Ceres, ending with the lovely form of the Temple of Unwinged Victory, which glittered in front ...
— Christianity and Greek Philosophy • Benjamin Franklin Cocker
... murdered King of Denmark (murdered people, I am told, usually stay quiet, as a scientific fact), nor of that weird woman who saw King James the Poet three times with his shroud wrapped ever higher; nor the tale of the finger of the bronze Venus closing over the wedding-ring, whether told by Morris in verse patterned like some tapestry, or by Merimee in terror of cynical reality, or droned by the original mediaeval professional story-teller, none of these are genuine ghost-stories. They exist, these ghosts, only in our minds, in the minds ...
— Hauntings • Vernon Lee
... space, [Footnote: The middle, as the fifth of the nine spheres, enclosed by four; and enclosing four.] leader, prince, and ruler of the other lights, the mind and regulating power of the universe, so vast as to illuminate and flood all things with his light. Him, as his companions, Venus and Mercury follow on their different courses; and in a sphere still lower the moon revolves, lighted by the rays of the sun. Beneath this there is nothing that is not mortal and perishable, except the souls bestowed upon the human race by the gift ...
— De Amicitia, Scipio's Dream • Marcus Tullius Ciceronis
... first time was a galium with crimson flowers. I soon came to the cornfields for which the Albigeois plain is noted. Here the poppy showed its scarlet in the midst of the stalks of wheat still green, and along the borders were purple patches of that sun-loving campanula, Venus's looking-glass. ...
— Wanderings by southern waters, eastern Aquitaine • Edward Harrison Barker
... temple also that was close to it. Milo's house was attacked, and was defended by arms. We are made to understand that all Rome was in a state of violence and anarchy. The Consuls' fasces had been put away in one of the temples—that of Venus Libitina: these the people seized and carried to the house of Pompey, declaring that he should be Dictator, and he alone Consul, mingling anarchy with a marvellous ...
— The Life of Cicero - Volume II. • Anthony Trollope
... said. "I liked those books. You know it's funny, but the books you read when you're a kid, they kind of stay with you. Know what I mean? I can still remember that one about Venus, for instance. ...
— Brain Twister • Gordon Randall Garrett
... black eyebrows, the pencilled points of whose curves almost touched across the nose. I saw the rose-tinted ivory of her skin and the long jet lashes curving in a great sweep from her full white lids, and I thought full sure that Venus herself was before me. My gaze halted for a moment at the long eyes which changed chameleon-like with the shifting light, and varied with her moods from deep fathomless green to violet, and from violet to soft voluptuous brown, but in all their tints beaming forth a lustre that would ...
— Dorothy Vernon of Haddon Hall • Charles Major
... larger, on the south side. Two companies of British soldiers, with a resident, are stationed here, and a state of perfect banishment it must prove, the only amusement being field sports, and the island is by no means well stocked with game. Cerigo was famous, in antiquity, for the worship of Venus; and the goddess of beauty rose from the sea somewhere near the spot where we now are. After getting out of the strait, and weathering Cape St. Angelo, the sea again became rough, and we beat about the point all ...
— Journal of a Visit to Constantinople and Some of the Greek Islands in the Spring and Summer of 1833 • John Auldjo
... Hammer, frontispiece Phaeton Falling from the Chariot Woden Frigga, the Mother of the Gods Jupiter and His Eagle The Head of Jupiter Diana The Man in the Moon The Man in the Moon Venus Orion with His Club The Great Bear in the Sky The Great Bear and the Little Bear Castor and Pollux Minerva Boreas, the God of the North Wind Tower of the Winds at Athens Orpheus Mercury Ulysses Cover of a Drinking Cup Iris The Head of Iris Neptune A Greek Coin Silenus Holding Bacchus Aurora, ...
— Classic Myths • Retold by Mary Catherine Judd
... foe infix! "I who but now huge Python have o'erthrown; "Swol'n with a thousand darts; his mighty bulk "Whole acres covering with pestiferous weight? "Content in vulgar hearts thy torch to flame, "To me the bow's superior glory leave." Then Venus' son: "O Phoebus, nought thy dart "Evades, nor thou canst 'scape the force of mine: "To thee as others yield,—so much my fame "Must ever thine transcend." Thus spoke the boy, And lightly mounting, cleaves the yielding air With beating wings, and on Parnassus' top Umbrageous ...
— The Metamorphoses of Publius Ovidus Naso in English blank verse Vols. I & II • Ovid
... contemplated from the ramparts of a castle, in the "dim, religious light" of an old monastic chapel, or amid the obsolete trappings and weapons of an armory! What a distinct and memorable revelation of ancient Greece is the Venus or Apollo, a Parthenon frieze or a fateful drama! The best political essays on the French Revolution are based on the economical and social facts recorded in the Travels of Arthur Young. The equivocal action of Massena, when he commanded Paris against the Allies, is ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 6, Issue 35, September, 1860 • Various
... Alexander VI the so-called 'Grotesques,' that is, the mural decorations of the ancients, were discovered, and the Apollo of the Belvedere was found at Porto d'Anzio. Under Julius II followed the memorable discoveries of the Laocoon, of the Venus of the Vatican, of the Torso of the Cleopatra. The palaces of the nobles and the cardinals began to be filled with ancient statues and fragments. Raphael undertook for Leo X that ideal restoration of the whole ancient city which his (or Castiglione's) celebrated ...
— The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy • Jacob Burckhardt
... sacred. There is nothing here but choice, essential pieces, the best of the best, priceless things. Look at these jewels, Beautrelet: Chaldean amulets, Egyptian necklaces, Celtic bracelets, Arab chains. Look at these statuettes, Beautrelet, at this Greek Venus, this Corinthian Apollo. Look at these Tanagras, Beautrelet: all the real Tanagras are here. Outside this glass case, there is not a single genuine Tanagra statuette in the whole wide world. What a delicious thing to be able to say!—Beautrelet, do you ...
— The Hollow Needle • Maurice Leblanc
... it may persist. Children can give no better reason why they stop playing with dolls than because other things are liked better, or they are too old, ashamed, love real babies, etc. The Roman girl, when ripe for marriage, hung up her childhood doll as a votive offering to Venus. Mrs. Carlyle, who was compelled to stop, made sumptuous dresses and a four-post bed, and made her doll die upon a funeral pyre like Dido, after speaking her last farewell and stabbing herself with a penknife by way of Tyrian sword. At thirteen or fourteen it is more distinctly realized ...
— Youth: Its Education, Regimen, and Hygiene • G. Stanley Hall
... years over thirty. She was, or gave herself out to be, a widow. She was a female detective; I was a modest gentleman of rigid English respectability, not without some matrimonial experience in the ways of Woman. There was nothing in the purpose of her visit to have caused her to come upon me as a Venus, fully armed, and to have forced me to an abject surrender. From the feathers of her black picture hat to the tips of her black velvety shoes she was French-clad, the French of Paris, and wore her clothes like a Frenchwoman. She was dressed—bien habillee, bien gantee, ...
— The Lost Naval Papers • Bennet Copplestone
... different tale to tell. He said that the poor lady became desperately enamored of his beauty and day by day assailed his continence, but that he was as deaf to her amorous entreaties as Adonis to the dear blandishments of Venus Pandemos. Finally she became so importunate that he was compelled to seek safety in flight. He saved his virtue but lost his vestments. It was a narrow escape, and the poor fellow must have been dreadfully frightened. ...
— Volume 1 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... surpassing loveliness, that the king could not fail to perceive my absence of mind. 'How now, Charles, how now,' said he kindly, 'twenty-four hours in the capital, and beauty-struck already? which among our simple English maidens hath the merit of thus gaining the approval of thy travelled eyes?—what Venus hath bribed the purer taste of our new Paris? Ha! let me see—Lady Joscelyn? Lady—No! by heaven,' said he following my looks, 'it is as I could wish, Theresa Marchmont herself. How, man—knowest thou not the daughter of our old comrade, who fell at my side in the ...
— Theresa Marchmont • Mrs Charles Gore
... had obtained it on various parts of the ocean surface, but had failed entirely to detect its relationship to the ordinary Ascidians. Chamisso got it near Behring's Straits and thought that it was more nearly allied to "Venus's Girdle," a Coelenterate. Mertens, another distinguished zooelogist, had declared that "the relation of this animal with the Pteropods (a peculiar group of molluscs) is unmistakable"; while Mueller, a prince ...
— Thomas Henry Huxley; A Sketch Of His Life And Work • P. Chalmers Mitchell
... courses to Mars and Venus thoroughly charted—but considered a trip to Jupiter somewhat impractical. So, what with Dane's presence and the mysterious white streaks that so often shot up into the sky like fuzzy yarn from the AFDC base, it wasn't hard to guess what ...
— This is Klon Calling • Walt Sheldon
... notice of El-Khalasah, also called El-Khulusah, El-Khulsah, or Zu'l-Khalasah, consult the art. "Midian," Smith's "Dict. of the Bible," by E. S. Poole, vol. ii. p. 356. For the Khalasah of the Negeb, "where Venus was worshipped with all the licentious pomp of the Pagan ritual," see Professor Palmer's "Desert of the Exodus," p. 385. The text, however, alludes to a ruin called El-Khulasah, one march from El-Muwaylah to ...
— The Land of Midian, Vol. 1 • Richard Burton
... lovable, but not the helpmeet whom he needed. And he fought against the new dream like a brave man. He fasted, he wept, he prayed: but his prayers seemed not to be heard. Valencia seemed to have enthroned herself, a true Venus victrix, in the centre of his heart, and would not be dispossessed. He tried to avoid seeing her: but even for that he had not strength: more miserable each time, as fierce against himself and his own ...
— Two Years Ago, Volume I • Charles Kingsley
... Corinth was paganism, which naturally led to sundry vices. Bacchus and Venus had there their temples and their votaries; and luxury, the child of affluence, led to vice generally. From such a combination of circumstances, the inhabitants, like the men of Sodom, "were sinners before the Lord exceedingly." It might be justly stiled, ...
— Sermons on Various Important Subjects • Andrew Lee
... flung violently open, and a tall, magnificent woman dashed into the room. Her features, marvellously chiselled as those of the antique Venus, would have been irresistible in beauty, if their expression had corresponded to their symmetry—But in her large black eyes glared the fire of ungoverned passion, and her rosy mouth was ...
— Joseph II. and His Court • L. Muhlbach
... man, was therefore open to female flattery, whether it was the frank flattery of an infant Venus hugging a waxen Cupid or the more subtle overtures of a withered Ninon taking God for her ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, April, 1876. • Various
... black dot on the dazzling white sand, watched the lifeboat disappear up into the blue, finally into the haze of the upper atmosphere of Venus. That eternal haze that would always be there to mock his ...
— Happy Ending • Fredric Brown
... Pastimes of the various Months" of Flanders work, in the "Salle des Etats"—the six pieces of Gobelin work in the Queen's Boudoir on the first floor—the five pieces of the same work, including "Venus's toilet," in Queen Jeanne's room on the second floor, and the four pieces of Brussels in Henry IV.'s bedroom—also on the second floor—are only a few of the many ...
— Twixt France and Spain • E. Ernest Bilbrough
... so ernest for the box, Gave hir hir due, and she the dore unlocks. In am I entered: "venus be my speede! But where's this female that must do ...
— The Choise of Valentines - Or the Merie Ballad of Nash His Dildo • Thomas Nash
... these orders; and at last, as if in mockery of them, she came sailing up the river Cydnus, in a barge with gilded stern and outspread sails of purple, while oars of silver beat time to the music of flutes and fifes and harps. She herself lay all along, under a canopy of cloth of gold, dressed as Venus in a picture, and beautiful young boys, like painted cupids, stood on each side to fan her. Her maids were dressed like sea nymphs and graces, some steering at the rudder, some working at the ropes.[71] The perfumes diffused themselves from the vessel to the shore, which was covered with ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 2 • Various
... rustics, as they hold the plough, May often good advice bestow. Of love, too, we may have the joy: For Phoebus as a shepherd-boy Wandered once among the clover, Of some fair shepherdess the lover; And Venus wept, in rustic bower, Adonis turned to purple flower. And Bacchus 'midst the mountains drear Forgot ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 5 • Various
... of purple, and the oars were inlaid and tipped with silver. Upon the deck of this barge Queen Cleopatra appeared, under a canopy of cloth of gold. She was dressed very magnificently in the costume in which Venus, the goddess of Beauty, was then generally represented. She was surrounded by a company of beautiful boys, who attended upon her in the form of Cupids, and fanned her with their wings, and by a group of young girls representing the Nymphs and the Graces. There was a band ...
— Cleopatra • Jacob Abbott
... ago to-day Alice burst in upon me. I was in my study over the kitchen figuring upon the probable date of the conjunction of Venus and ...
— The House - An Episode in the Lives of Reuben Baker, Astronomer, and of His Wife, Alice • Eugene Field
... imagination—a crime quite in keeping with the spirit of the new age of the "movies." Its architect wanted you to see at a glance just what it used to be. You feel that he would have put arms on the Venus de Milo! As we stood there, a guide came up and began to tell us the history of the tower. We moved over to the terrace. From Montboron to Bordighera the Riviera lay below us, a panorama which commanded silence. ...
— Riviera Towns • Herbert Adams Gibbons
... this sign has the same curved lines at the corner of the eye as appear on the deity himself. Foerstemann mentions this sign in his Commentary on the Paris Manuscript, p. 15, and in his Commentary on the Dresden Manuscript, p. 56. He thinks the hieroglyph has relation to the revolution of Venus, which is performed in 584 days. A relation of this kind is, I think, very possible, if we bear in mind that all the god-figures of the manuscripts have more or less of a calendric and chronologic significance in their chief or in ...
— Representation of Deities of the Maya Manuscripts • Paul Schellhas
... decamping Viennese pharmacist had wearied of his low-life Venus, their joint operations soon made the East Side too hot for the man who boldly dared all, and who now yearned for a share of the fleecing of the fatuous ...
— The Midnight Passenger • Richard Henry Savage
... first ride Walter took with Grace and Julia they met the bright cavalcade of Percy and his sister, and this red-haired Venus. ...
— A Perilous Secret • Charles Reade
... labours from his friend Joceline Joliffe, lest, perchance, he had been addicted to jealousy. But it was in vain that he plied the faithful damsel, sometimes with verses from the Canticles, sometimes with quotations from Green's Arcadia, or pithy passages from Venus and Adonis, and doctrines of a nature yet more abstruse, from the popular work entitled Aristotle's Masterpiece. Unto no wooing of his, sacred or profane, metaphysical or physical, ...
— Woodstock; or, The Cavalier • Sir Walter Scott
... lady's body, its true contour, and the length and breadth of the limbs—just as an engineer must have accurate knowledge of the Earth's surface. And to the dressmaker as a dressmaker knowledge of the lady's beauty has no value whatever. The lady may have the beauty of form of a Venus, but if the dressmaker has only knowledge of that beauty and has not exact measurements she will never be able to make the dress. But for humanity at large—and, as far as that goes, for the dressmaker herself when she ...
— The Heart of Nature - or, The Quest for Natural Beauty • Francis Younghusband
... Perhaps Venus is represented as rising from the ocean, which is no other then a bath of the larger size, to denote, that bathing is the refiner of health, consequently, of beauty; and Neptune being figured in advanced life, indicates, that it is a ...
— An History of Birmingham (1783) • William Hutton
... poplar doth Alcides hold most dear, The vine Iacchus, Phoebus his own bays, And Venus fair the myrtle: therewithal Phyllis doth hazels love, and while she loves, Myrtle nor ...
— The Bucolics and Eclogues • Virgil
... contained goddesses many and gods many. Chief of these deities to receive the worship of the people seems to have been Diana of the Ephesians, a goddess whose image fell down from Jupiter; the celestial Venus of Corinth, and Isis, sister to Osiris, the god of Egypt. These popular images, so universally worshipped, were naturally the aversion of the early followers of Christ. "The primitive Christians were possessed with an unconquerable repugnance ...
— Through Five Republics on Horseback • G. Whitfield Ray
... ladies," said the mistress. "There are, in Provence and the South, what I wish there were here in Flanders,—Courts of Love, at which all offenders against the sacred laws of Venus and Cupid are tried by an assembly of their peers, and punished ...
— Hereward, The Last of the English • Charles Kingsley
... voluptuousness, were eminently adapted to be the background and scenery of a dramatic performance of this kind. There were vistas of drawing-rooms, with delicious boudoirs, like side chapels in a temple of Venus, with handsome Charlie Ferrola gliding in and out, or lecturing dreamily from the corner of some sofa on the last most important crinkle of the artistic rose-leaf, demonstrating conclusively that beauty ...
— Pink and White Tyranny - A Society Novel • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... difficult to be accounted for, except on the supposition that some portions of the work were written in great haste. Passing over a few mere oversights, such as a statement from which it would follow that a transit of Venus occurred every eight years, mistakes of dates, etc., we cite ...
— Atlantic Monthly Vol. 6, No. 33, July, 1860 • Various
... is a striking object in the western sky. Our Venus they call the Laughing Star, who is a man. He once said something very improper, and has been laughing at his joke ever since. As he scintillates you seem to see him grinning still at his Rabelais-like witticism, seeing which the ...
— The Euahlayi Tribe - A Study of Aboriginal Life in Australia • K. Langloh Parker
... particular form. The characteristics of all Gods, including the Christian, are pure limitation and absolute indivisibility. Minerva has wisdom and strength, but lacks womanly tenderness; Juno has power and wisdom, but is without amorous charm, which she borrows with the girdle of Venus, who in her turn is without the wisdom of Minerva. What would these Gods become without their limitations? They would cease to be the objects of Fancy. Fancy is a faculty, apart from the pure intellect ...
— Aesthetic as Science of Expression and General Linguistic • Benedetto Croce
... more successful with the royal family when they beheld her shorn of the splendour of the diamonds with which she had been adorned during the first days of her marriage. When clothed in a light dress of gauze or taffety she was compared to the Venus dei Medici, and the Atalanta of the Marly Gardens. Poets sang her charms; painters attempted to copy her features. One artist's fancy led him to place the portrait of Marie Antoinette in the heart of a full-blown rose. His ingenious idea ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... in my word. "And the two best chapters, by your leave, are those that treat of Squire Bacchus and Dame Venus." ...
— The God of Love • Justin Huntly McCarthy
... herself: and she then told me, that a copy of verses had been dropped in the pump-room, and read there aloud: "The beauties of the Wells," said she, "are all mentioned, but you are the Venus to whom the prize ...
— Evelina • Fanny Burney
... Abstruse and mystic thought you must express With painful care, but seeming easiness; For truth shines brightest through the plainest dress. The Aenean Muse, when she appears in state, Makes all Jove's thunder on her verses wait; Yet writes sometimes as soft and moving things As Venus speaks, or Philomela sings. Your author always will the best advise, Fall when he falls, and when he rises, rise. Affected noise is the most wretched thing, That to contempt can empty scribblers bring. Vowels and accents, regularly placed, On even syllables (and still the last) Though ...
— Specimens with Memoirs of the Less-known British Poets, Complete • George Gilfillan
... beautiful creatures never inhabited Eastern Asia. Anthropoid foxes and raccoons, wholly lacking in those engaging qualities that beget love, and through love remembrance, take their place. Even Benten, the naturalized Venus, who, like her Hellenic sister, is said to have risen from the sea, is a person quite incapable ...
— The Soul of the Far East • Percival Lowell
... dust;—the midnight train, Of silent stars,—the rolling spheres, Each God, that list'ning bows, With thee it prospers, false-One! to profane. The Nymphs attend;—gay Venus hears, And all deride thy vows; And Cupid whets afresh his burning darts On the stone, moist with blood, ...
— Original sonnets on various subjects; and odes paraphrased from Horace • Anna Seward
... first, clapped his hands in delight at the sight of a terra-cotta Venus, whose head had been blown off, and each picked up pieces of porcelain and wondered at the strange shape of the fragments, while the major was looking with a paternal eye at the large drawing-room, which had been wrecked after the fashion of a Nero, and was strewn with the fragments of works of art. ...
— Maupassant Original Short Stories (180), Complete • Guy de Maupassant
... still, as he did on the Antoine, that Carmen's figure had the lines of the Venus of Milo, that her head would have been a model either for a Madonna, or for Joan of Arc, or the famous Isabella of Aragon. Having visited the Louvre and the Luxembourg all in one day, he felt he was entitled to make such comparisons, and that ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... are ruled down for you in the drawing-books, as if the latter were the revelations of beauty, issued by supreme authority, from which there was no appeal? Why is the classical reign to endure? Why is yonder simpering Venus de' Medicis to be our standard of beauty, or the Greek tragedies to bound our notions of the sublime? There was no reason why Agamemnon should set the fashions, and remain [Greek text omitted] to eternity: and there is a classical quotation, which you may have occasionally heard, beginning ...
— The Paris Sketch Book Of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh • William Makepeace Thackeray
... O Venus, beauty of the skies, To whom a thousand temples rise, Gayly false, in gentle smiles, Full of love, perplexing wiles; O Goddess! from my heart remove The wasting cares and ...
— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753),Vol. V. • Theophilus Cibber
... who had betrayed him, "Jove, Father, there is not another god more evil-minded than thou!"[84] and Helen, provoked at Paris's defeat, and oppressed with pouting shame both for him and for herself, when Venus appears at her side, and would lead her back to the delivered Paris, impatiently tells the goddess to "go and take care ...
— Selections From the Works of John Ruskin • John Ruskin
... d'especes si differentes." And again "La Nature contient le fonds de toutes ces varietes: mais le hasard ou l'art les mettent en oeuvre. C'est ainsi que ceux dont l'industrie s'applique a satisfaire le gout des curieux, sont, pour ainsi dire, creatures d'especes nouvelles." ("Venus Physique, contenant deux Dissertations, l'une sur l'origine des Hommes et des Animaux: Et l'autre sur l'origine des Noirs" La Haye, 1746, pages 124 and 129. For an introduction to the writings of Maupertuis I am indebted ...
— Darwin and Modern Science • A.C. Seward and Others
... day with tears! And then we robe it for its last long rest, And being women, feeble things at best, We cannot dig the grave ourselves. And so We call strong-limbed New Love to lay it low: Immortal sexton he! whom Venus sends To do this service for her earthly friends, The trusty fellow digs the grave so deep Nothing disturbs the dead laid there ...
— Maurine and Other Poems • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... with curious warm tints in it here and there. The face of the moorland was generally black, sometimes broken by borders of vivid green about the pools, and along the path edges by the little rosy rootlets of the plant called Venus's Flytrap. ...
— Patsy • S. R. Crockett
... a visit to some standing stone in their neighbourhood in the hope that they may thereby be blessed with offspring. Famous in this respect is the 'Venus,' or Groabgoard, of Quinipily, a rough-hewn stone in the likeness of a goddess. The letters ...LIT... still remain on it—part of a Latin inscription which has been thought to have originally read ILITHVIA, "a name in keeping with ...
— Legends & Romances of Brittany • Lewis Spence
... and George Prince; trying during this voyage to learn what they could about Grantline's activities on the Moon; scheming doubtless to seize the treasure when the Planetara stopped at the Moon on the return voyage. I thought I could name those masquerading passengers. Ob Hahn, supposedly a Venus Mystic. And Rance Rankin, who called himself an American magician. Those two, Snap and I agreed, seemed most suspicious. ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, March 1930 • Various
... daughter Ceres. The dances ultimately celebrated in her cult were numerous: such as the Anthema, the Bookolos, the Epicredros, and many others, some rustic for labourers, others of shepherds, etc. Every locality seems to have had a dance of its own. Dances in honour of Venus were common, she was the patroness of proper and decent dancing; on the contrary, those in honour of Dionysius or Bacchus degenerated into revelry and obscenity. The Epilenios danced when the ...
— The Dance (by An Antiquary) - Historic Illustrations of Dancing from 3300 B.C. to 1911 A.D. • Anonymous
... the Ducal Palace, hung with tapestries representing the Masque of Venus; a large door in the centre opens into a corridor of red marble, through which one can see a view of Padua; a large canopy is set (R.C.) with three thrones, one a little lower than the others; the ceiling is made of long gilded beams; furniture of the period, chairs covered with gilt leather, ...
— The Duchess of Padua • Oscar Wilde
... comfort! Yes, it has been mended, too! [Examining.] Oh, yes, it's only another of these second-hand statues. Say, you missed one whole one, the best I've seen yet! A Venus off in a fine little room, all mosaics and ...
— The Girl with the Green Eyes - A Play in Four Acts • Clyde Fitch
... the impression made upon him as he gazes at the halls which are filled with the grandest works of antiquity. Any of these standing alone would challenge the admiration of all who see them, but the "Venus de Milo" and the "Winged Victory" stand out in memory among the innumerable works of art as the Alps tower above the vales of Switzerland. That magnificent piece of sculpture, Venus de Milo, was found by a peasant in the island of Milo in 1820. "It belongs to the fourth century before Christ ...
— See America First • Orville O. Hiestand
... thrifty vines, and needed only to be trimmed and trained. They were as virgin gold in the bullion, and wanted to be melted and minted into coin. They were as statues rough-hewn at the quarry, and would have ripened to forms of majestic beauty, with brows like Jove and Minerva; with bosoms like Venus, cheeks like Ceres, and lips like Apollo, had the chisel of art but sculptured them out, rounded them off, and polished them down to an elegant, ...
— Summerfield - or, Life on a Farm • Day Kellogg Lee
... a home that you may well fight for with all the strength of your arms, all the forces of your brain, and all the energies of Space that you can call forth to aid you. It is a wondrous world." Silently he stood in the gathering dusk, as first Venus winked into being, then one by one the stars came into existence in the deepening color of ...
— Invaders from the Infinite • John Wood Campbell
... limitation as to number. Afterwards I asked one of the bridegroom's friends whether he thought it a good match. "Oh, yes, Cunnel," said he, in all the cordiality of friendship, "John's gwine for marry Venus." I trust the goddess prove herself a better lady than she appeared during her previous career upon this planet. But this naturally suggests the ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 87, January, 1865 • Various
... with you, Nan," said her husband. "I think it is just that wistfulness and innocence which makes her the true Venus: the true modern Venus. She chooses NOT to know too much. And that is her attraction. Don't you agree, Aaron? Excuse me, but everybody speaks of you as Aaron. It seems to come naturally. Most people speak ...
— Aaron's Rod • D. H. Lawrence
... upon a bed Of roses laid his weary head; Luckless urchin, not to see Within the leaves a slumbering bee. The bee awak'd—with anger wild The bee awak'd, and stung the child. Loud and piteous are his cries; To Venus quick he runs, he flies; "Oh, Mother! I am wounded through— I die with pain—in sooth I do! Stung by some little angry thing, Some serpent on a tiny wing— A bee it was—for once, I know, I heard a rustic call it so." Thus he spoke, and she the while Heard him with ...
— Poems Every Child Should Know - The What-Every-Child-Should-Know-Library • Various
... have marched into an enemy's fortress. Arrived there, the luxury of the rooms seemed to inspire them with a kind of respect, not unmixed with alarm. So many things were entirely new to their experience—the choice furniture, the pictures, the great statue of Venus. They followed their chief into the salon, however, with a kind of impudent curiosity. There, the sight of General Epanchin among the guests, caused many of them to beat a hasty retreat into the adjoining room, the "boxer" and "beggar" being among the first to go. A few only, of whom Lebedeff ...
— The Idiot • (AKA Feodor Dostoevsky) Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... have a pretty house of her own, but the house is out of the question, and to be confronted with Violet's youth and freshness every day in the year is much too bitter! Jasper Wilmarth is not a man to be proud of in society, unless it is for his very ugliness and the almost deformity. She thinks of Venus and Vulcan. She might call him playfully her Vulcan; at least, she could to her friends. She will have a house of her own, she will be Mrs., and, after all, the world is much more tolerant to married women than to spinsters of an uncertain age. She is not invited with very young girls any ...
— Floyd Grandon's Honor • Amanda Minnie Douglas
... how musically! and nodded her little head at me with an air of sublimated coquetry that would have done credit to a Venus Victrix. ...
— She • H. Rider Haggard
... canoe on the Sabbath is rigidly obeyed. After dinner we landed to enjoy all the delights produced by the first impressions of a new country, and that country the charming Tahiti. A crowd of men, women, and children, was collected on the memorable Point Venus, ready to receive us with laughing, merry faces. They marshalled us towards the house of Mr. Wilson, the missionary of the district, who met us on the road, and gave us a very friendly reception. After sitting ...
— A Naturalist's Voyage Round the World - The Voyage Of The Beagle • Charles Darwin
... curving outwards, to the apex, but so vague and diffuse as to be frequently indefinable. In our latitudes, it is best seen at or just after the equinoxes; before sunrise in autumn, and after sunset in spring; and becomes invisible as twilight increases, or if the moon shines; the light even of Venus and Jupiter is sufficient to render its discovery difficult. It is brightest at the base, and grows fainter the further it stretches from the horizon, vanishing entirely at the point. Unpractised observers would ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 449 - Volume 18, New Series, August 7, 1852 • Various
... mused. "Young lady and chaperone, that's it. A real American beauty! And Blithers loudly boasts that his daughter is the prettiest girl in America! Shades of Venus! Can there be such a thing on earth as a prettier girl than this one? Can nature have performed the impossible? Is America so full of lovely girls that this one must take second place to a daughter of Blithers? I wonder if she knows the imperial Maud. ...
— The Prince of Graustark • George Barr McCutcheon
... given ideal; and this ideal is not absolute; it is elastic in respect of races and civilisations, though each type may be regarded as more or less rigid within its own domain. Passing over such racial ideals as the Hottentot Venus, and waiving comparison between the Riverine ideal of fifty years ago and that of to-day, we have the typical Eve of Flanders as one ideal, and the typical Eve of Italy as another." Again I paused, but Alf ...
— Such is Life • Joseph Furphy
... ankles, and followed until their breath was out. The last to weary were the three graces and a couple of companions; and just as they, too, had had enough, the foremost of the three leaped upon a tree-stump and kissed her hand to the canoeists. Not Diana herself, although this was more of a Venus, after all, could have done a graceful thing more gracefully. 'Come back again!' she cried; and all the others echoed her; and the hills about Origny repeated the words, 'Come back.' But the river had us round an angle in a twinkling, and we ...
— The Pocket R.L.S. - Being Favourite Passages from the Works of Stevenson • Robert Louis Stevenson
... a good dinner, and bore the joke philosophically. Coffee awaited the gentlemen in a small octagonal chamber, adjoining the music room. There stood Mr. Graeme's three favourite modern statues:—a Venus, by Canova—a Discobole, by Thorwaldson—and a late ...
— A Love Story • A Bushman
... though I be gray, Lady, this I know you'll say; Better look the roses red, When with white commingled. Black your hairs are; mine are white; This begets the more delight, When things meet most opposite; As in pictures we descry Venus standing Vulcan by. ...
— A Selection From The Lyrical Poems Of Robert Herrick • Robert Herrick
... overture as that? What d'ye tak' me for? Mark Antony that lost the world for love (the mair fule he!)? or Don Jovanny that counted his concubines by hundreds, like the blessed Solomon himself? Awa' wi' ye to yer pots and pans; and bid the wandering Venus that sent ye ...
— Man and Wife • Wilkie Collins
... She, unresisting, fell (her spirits fled); On earth together lay the lovers spread. "And like these heroes be the fate of all (Minerva cries) who guard the Trojan wall! To Grecian gods such let the Phrygian be, So dread, so fierce, as Venus is to me; Then from the lowest stone shall Troy be moved." Thus she, and Juno ...
— The Iliad of Homer • Homer
... century;[45] a Dialogue in the Madhouse between two Distracted Lovers; and a Prologue and Epilogue. The Secular Masque contains a beautiful and spirited delineation of the reigns of James I., Charles I., and Charles II., in which the influence of Diana, Mars, and Venus, are supposed to have respectively predominated. Our author did not venture to assign a patron to the last years of the century, though the expulsion of Saturn might have given a hint for it. The music of the Masque is said to have been good; at least it is admired by ...
— The Dramatic Works of John Dryden Vol. I. - With a Life of the Author • Sir Walter Scott
... And now, that an over-faint quietness should seem to strew the house [Footnote: pave the way.] for poets, they are almost in as good reputation as the mountebanks at Venice. Truly even that, as of the one side it giveth great praise to poesy, which like Venus (but to better purpose) hath rather be troubled in the net with Mars, than enjoy the homely quiet of Vulcan: so serves it for a piece of a reason, why they are less grateful to idle England, which now can scarce endure the pain of a pen. ...
— English literary criticism • Various
... word vespers comes directly from the Latin Vesper; Vespera or Espera was a name given to the star Venus, which rising in the evening was a call to prayer. This Hour is recited after None and before Compline. In structure, it resembles Lauds, Pater Noster, Ave, Gloria, Five Psalms with antiphons, Capitulum, Hymn, Versicle, ...
— The Divine Office • Rev. E. J. Quigley
... this tendency towards extravagance I endeavour to preserve a method in my madness, and with most works find that they fall readily into the growing or the decaying. It is only with very few, as with Homer and Shakespeare at their best, the Venus of Milo, the Ilyssus, the finest work of Rembrandt, Giorgione, and Velasquez, and in music with Handel, that I can see no step left unclimbed, yet none taken on the downward path. Assuredly the Vecchietto must be classed with the very few works which, being of the kind of fruit that they are, are ...
— Ex Voto • Samuel Butler |
