"Achilles" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... did he readily listen with attention to others, especially when they translated the classical authors to him; nor was he in the least backward, at all such times, to express his approbation. He was wonderfully pleased with that passage in the eleventh Iliad where Achilles is said to have bound two sons of Priam upon a mountain, and afterwards to have released them for a sum of money. This was, he said, alone sufficient to refute those who affected a contempt for the wisdom of the ancients, and an undeniable testimony of the great antiquity of priggism.[Footnote: ...
— The History of the Life of the Late Mr. Jonathan Wild the Great • Henry Fielding
... marry her, some one would take her away and own her, body and soul, and cheat him of what had been within his grasp and all but his; and yet he was ashamed, because he no longer wanted her for his wife, but only as a possession—as Achilles wanted Briseis and was wroth when she was taken from him. He felt shame at the thought, because he had already honoured her in his imagination as his wife, and because to dream of her as anything as near, yet less in honour, was a sort of dishonour to himself. Let ...
— Fair Margaret - A Portrait • Francis Marion Crawford
... of Brodick, and Carmichael of South Uist, but to me, unless the tale is one familiar to many readers, such a remoulding, if done with power, is surely a prerogative of the artist. But when he takes a well-known legendary character, as well known among the Gaels as Achilles among English school-boys, and changes his hair from black to golden and his stature from short to tall, utterly transforming not only our picture of him, but the significance of his deeds, then I object, as I would object if he had made the fair-haired and great-statured Achilles into such "a little ...
— Irish Plays and Playwrights • Cornelius Weygandt
... father's head shall be harmed by me; and, if it be not too late, I will also spare thy uncle Sepa, ay, and the others. I will not do as did my forefather, Epiphanes, who, when the Egyptians rose against him, dragged Athinis, Pausiras, Chesuphus, and Irobasthus, bound to his chariot—not as Achilles dragged Hector, but yet living—round the city walls. I will spare them all, save the Hebrews, if there be any Hebrews; ...
— Cleopatra • H. Rider Haggard
... beauty, or talent, is but an accident of birth. As you would not educate a soul to be an aristocrat, so do not to be a woman. A general regard to her usual sphere is dictated in the economy of nature. You need never enforce these provisions rigorously. Achilles had long plied the distaff as a princess, yet, at first sight of a sword, he seized it. So with woman, one hour of love would teach her more of her proper relations, than all your formulas and conventions. Express your views, men, of what you seek in woman: thus best do you give them laws. ...
— Memoirs of Margaret Fuller Ossoli, Vol. II • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... same, whiche many tymes wee see and wonder, howe diuers chyldren borne of chaste and honest women, haue bodies and qualities farre discrepant from their honest parentes. Wherefore very trimlie and cunningly Maro folowing Homeres verses, doth say, speaking of the cruel nature of Achilles: ...
— The Palace of Pleasure, Volume 1 • William Painter
... poets sang their own verses: "Homer literally sang the wrath of Achilles, and the woes of Greece;" would it were so in England. Then, my poetical public, we should have Anacreon Moore singing his "Rich and rare were the gems she wore," in some such place as the Quadrant, or Opera Colonnade; and Sir Walter Scott celebrating the ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 12, Issue 330, September 6, 1828 • Various
... are mundane stories, the History is a cosmic affair, in that, where Manuel faces the world, Jurgen considers the universe.... Dom Manuel is the Achilles of Poictesme, as Jurgen ...
— Figures of Earth • James Branch Cabell
... gentle and simple, have a right to speak in it. There is no voting, only a declaration, by shouts, of the general feeling. Though the head of the nation has been usually the person who convokes it, a magnate lower in rank might always, like Achilles in the Iliad, have it summoned when a fitting occasion arose. And it was generally preceded by a consultation among the leading men, though I could not discover that there was any regular council of chiefs.[68] In all these points the resemblance to the primary ...
— Impressions of South Africa • James Bryce
... stupendous! Mr. Polly had discovered the heel of Achilles. Uncle Jim had no stomach for cold water. The broom floated away, pitching gently on the swell. Mr. Polly, infuriated with victory, thrust Uncle Jim under again, and drove the punt round on its chain in such a manner that ...
— The History of Mr. Polly • H. G. Wells
... warres moste fortunate, but in his sonne Marcus Antoni- nus Caracalla, what wickednes wanted, whose beastlie life is rather to be put in silence, then spoken of. In the assemble of the Grecians, gathered to consulte vpon the contencion of [Sidenote: Aiax. Ulisses.] Achilles armour, Aiax gloriouslie aduaunceth hymself of his auncestrie, from many kinges descended, whom Ulisses his aduersarie aunswered: makyng a long and eloquente Ora- cion, before the noble peres of Grece, concernyng Aiax his auncetours. These ...
— A booke called the Foundacion of Rhetorike • Richard Rainolde
... our Achilles, our Samson, our ideal of everything manly and courageous! Strong as an ox and brave as a lion! Our champion in every form of athletic sports! Who looked with contempt on girls and disdained their maidenly advances! Who thought only of ...
— The Romance of an Old Fool • Roswell Field
... in the course of the day a warrior named Karna, of unknown origin, appeared on the scene and proved himself a worthy rival of Arjun. The rivalry between Arjun and Karna is the leading thought of the Epic, as the rivalry between Achilles and Hector is the leading thought ...
— Maha-bharata - The Epic of Ancient India Condensed into English Verse • Anonymous
... love for your handmaid you need feel no shame. Don't apologize, Xanthias, pray; Remember, Achilles the proud felt a flame For Brissy, his slave, as they say. Old Telamon's son, fiery Ajax, was moved By the captive Tecmessa's ripe charms; And Atrides, suspending the feast, it behooved To gather ...
— Echoes from the Sabine Farm • Roswell Martin Field and Eugene Field
... stairs at a run. The doors stood open, and on the beach the negro awaited him in the right attitude of "attention." To him he tossed his wrap and shoes, and ran down to the beach as might swift-footed Achilles have run to be clasped by the Sea-Goddess ...
— Lady Good-for-Nothing • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... feelings, and imitate their acts. And so there comes to be something traditional even in the management of the passions. Shakespeare's historical plays were the only history to the Duke of Marlborough. Thousands of Greeks acted under the influence of what Achilles or Ulysses did, in Homer. The poet sings of the deeds that shall be. He imagines the ...
— Friends in Council (First Series) • Sir Arthur Helps
... Troy by stratagem. 5. The submarine cable unites the continent of America and the Old World. 6. The Gauls joined the army of Hannibal. 7. Columbus crossed the Atlantic with ninety men, and landed at San Salvador. 8. Vulcan made arms for Achilles. 9. Cromwell gained at Naseby a most decisive victory over the Royalists. 10. Columbus was a native of Genoa. 11. God tempers the wind to the shorn lamb. 12. The morning hour has gold in its mouth. 13. The mill of the gods grinds late, but grinds to powder. 14. A young farmer ...
— Graded Lessons in English • Alonzo Reed and Brainerd Kellogg
... taken the field openly against his rival would have been madness; for he was not a man to be thwarted in his amours, any more than that stormy lover, Achilles. Ichabod, therefore, made his advances in a quiet and gently insinuating manner. Under cover of his character of singing-master, he made frequent visits at the farmhouse; not that he had anything to apprehend ...
— Legends That Every Child Should Know • Hamilton Wright Mabie
... spiritual and immortal body; and of a power proceeding from the visible form through all the infinity of the element ruled by the particular god. The precise nature of the idea is well seen in the passage of the Iliad which describes the river Scamander defending the Trojans against Achilles.[76] In order to remonstrate with the hero, the god assumes a human form, which nevertheless is in some way or other instantly recognized by Achilles as that of the river-god: it is addressed at once as a river, not ...
— Selections From the Works of John Ruskin • John Ruskin
... was the omission of the only gate of Troy really known to fame, the Scaean, which looked on the tomb of the founder Laomedon; before which stood Hector, "full and fixed," awaiting the fatal onslaught of Achilles; where Achilles, in turn, received his death-wound from the shaft of Paris; and through which, finally, the wooden horse was triumphantly conveyed into ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 204, September 24, 1853 • Various
... earth, after the daily experience we have, can question the probability of a gentleman marrying anybody? How many of the wise and learned have married their cooks? Did not Lord Eldon himself, the most prudent of men, make a runaway match? Were not Achilles and Ajax both in love with their servant maids? And are we to expect a heavy dragoon with strong desires and small brains, who had never controlled a passion in his life, to become prudent all of a sudden, ...
— Vanity Fair • William Makepeace Thackeray
... own experience for an illustration. Did you ever, except as you were sweetly inclined and drawn by the renewing grace of God, attempt to discharge a duty, without discovering that you were averse to it, and that you must gather up your energies for the work, as the leaper strains upon the tendon of Achilles to make the mortal leap. And if you had not become weary, and given over the effort; if you had entered upon that sad but salutary passage in the religious experience which is delineated in the ...
— Sermons to the Natural Man • William G.T. Shedd
... I was at school I felt exceedingly obliged to Homer's messengers for the exact literal fidelity with which they delivered their messages. The seven or eight lines of good Homeric Greek in which they had received the commands of Agamemnon or Achilles they recited to whomsoever the message was to be carried; and as they repeated them verbatim, sometimes twice or thrice, it saved me the trouble of learning so ...
— Famous Americans of Recent Times • James Parton
... years before the age of Pericles there was a civilization almost as great. Aye! more than this—he showed us that the ancient city of Troy was built upon the ruins of a city that throve and pulsed with life and pride, a thousand years or more before Thetis, the mother of Achilles, held her baby by the heel and dipped ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 7 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Eminent Orators • Elbert Hubbard
... of contumacy that is established against Russian music. It is not in the least any desire of being peculiar that leads me to spread it, but a simple feeling of justice, based on my conviction of the real worth of these works of high lineage. I do not know which ones Hans von Bulow, the Achilles of propagandists, chose for the Russian concert he gave lately with the Meiningen orchestra, of ...
— Letters of Franz Liszt, Volume 2: "From Rome to the End" • Franz Liszt; letters collected by La Mara and translated
... The Achilles heel of vivisection, however, is not to be found in the pain it causes, but in the line of argument by which it is justified. The medical code regarding it is simply criminal anarchism at its very worst. Indeed no criminal has yet had the impudence to argue as ...
— The Doctor's Dilemma: Preface on Doctors • George Bernard Shaw
... sure as ever the neck of a dunghill-cock was twisted." At which words he pulled off his mask, and the tremendous majesty of Colonel Bath appeared, from which the bucks fled away as fast as the Trojans heretofore from the face of Achilles. The colonel did not think it worth while to pursue any other of them except him who had the letter in his hand, which the colonel desired to see, and the other delivered, saying it was ...
— Amelia (Complete) • Henry Fielding
... literature in a precisely similar manner—that is to say, by public readings or recitations. In point of fact, the instance there is more directly akin to the present argument. A musical cadence, or even possibly an instrumental accompaniment, may have marked the Homeric chant about Achilles and Ulysses. Whereas, obviously, in regard to Herodotus, the readings given by him at the Olympic games were readings in the modern sense, pure and simple. Lucian has related the incident, not only ...
— Charles Dickens as a Reader • Charles Kent
... mythology ends in the same ethics; and it would seem impossible for any fable to be invented to get any currency which was not moral. Aurora[117] forgot to ask youth for her lover, and though Tithonus is immortal, he is old, Achilles[118] is not quite invulnerable; the sacred waters did not wash the heel by which Thetis held him. Siegfried,[119] in the Niebelungen, is not quite immortal, for a leaf fell on his back whilst he was bathing in the dragon's blood, and that spot which it covered is mortal. And so it must be. There ...
— Essays • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... antiquity would be unable to encounter?" I shall refer this incredulous critick to Mr Dryden's defence of his Almanzor; and, lest that should not satisfy him, I shall quote a few lines from the speech of a much braver fellow than Almanzor, Mr Johnson's Achilles: ...
— Miscellanies, Volume 2 (from Works, Volume 12) • Henry Fielding
... Rufus who suddenly joined the group, whip in hand, and looking like a young Achilles in ploughman's coat and trousers. Not Achilles' port could be more lordly; the very fine bright hazel eye was on fire; the nostril spoke, and the lip quivered; though he looked only at ...
— Hills of the Shatemuc • Susan Warner
... a few days. Calchas, however, loves his daughter too well to trust her in a city that must soon be given over to plunder, and keeps her safe in the Greek camp. There the handsome young Diomede wins her, and presently Troilus is killed in battle by Achilles. ...
— Outlines of English and American Literature • William J. Long
... dry. Therefore, when the chiefs of the Achaeans in Council, seeing how their strength was wearing down like a snowbank under the sun, looked reproachfully upon him, and thought of Hector slain, and of dead Achilles who slew him, of Priam, and of Diomede, and of tall Patroclus, he, Menelaus, took no heed at all, but sat in his place, and said, "There is no mercy for robbers of the house. Starve whom we cannot put to the sword. Lay closer leaguer. ...
— The Ruinous Face • Maurice Hewlett
... made five thousand prisoners, and killed at least six thousand of the enemy. Adieu, my adorable Josephine. Think of me often. When you cease to love your Achilles, when your heart grows cool towards him, you wilt be very cruel, very unjust. But I am sure you will always continue my faithful mistress, as I shall ever remain your fond lover ('tendre amie'). Death alone can break the union which sympathy, ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... greater than his father. Prometheus at last bought pardon for his crime of enriching mankind with his gifts, by revealing the prophecy. Hercules killed the vulture, and set him free; and Thetis was married to Peleus, the father of Achilles. ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Volume I • Percy Bysshe Shelley
... a eulogy on the rose; and again, in the fifty- fifth ode, we shall find our author rich in the praises of that flower. In a fragment of Sappho, in the romance of Achilles Tatius, to which Barnes refers us, the rose is fancifully styled "the eye of flowers;" and the same poetess, in another fragment, calls the favors of the Muse "the roses of ...
— The Complete Poems of Sir Thomas Moore • Thomas Moore et al
... comprehend the devious thing called a woman; he was more like Achilles among the daughters of Lycomedes than Tannhauser in the enchanted castle. And that is why he wandered sadly along the walls of the mighty palace searching for an outlet through which to escape; but he only saw the splendid and silent empire ...
— Honey-Bee - 1911 • Anatole France
... his impressions of his new commander, which must have been disappointing. He called him afterwards a British Achilles; but in person at least Wolfe bore no likeness to the son of Peleus, for never was the soul of a hero cased in a frame so incongruous. His face, when seen in profile, was singular as that of the Great Conde. The forehead ...
— Montcalm and Wolfe • Francis Parkman
... be constructed in order to carry him across the stream which flowed between his disappointed hopes and aims and what appeared to him an illogical and repulsive alternative. He had taken to his tent and sulked like another Achilles. He was harder to deal with than any of the Democratic file leaders, but he finally yielded and did ...
— Marse Henry, Complete - An Autobiography • Henry Watterson
... and by the set of his shoulders (not particularly deep or wide) you would infer that when he looked at you he would look straight. Pity, isn't it, that you never really can tell what a man is inside by drawing up your brief from what he is outside. There is always the heel of Achilles somewhere; trust ...
— The Voice in the Fog • Harold MacGrath
... The main historical sources for this period have been translated by Achilles Fang, The Chronicle of the Three Kingdoms, Cambridge, Mass. 1952; the epic which describes this time is C. H. Brewitt-Taylor, San Kuo, or Romance of the Three Kingdoms, ...
— A history of China., [3d ed. rev. and enl.] • Wolfram Eberhard
... beautiful because they paid a manicurist to keep them so, but she was too righteous to powder her nose. She was the sort of person a man would like his best friend to marry. Lady Arabel was older: she was virtuous to the same extent as Achilles was invulnerable. In the beginning, when her soul was being soaked in virtue, the heel of it was fortunately left dry. She had a husband, but no apparent tragedy in her life. These two women were obviously not native to their surroundings. Their eyelashes brought Bond Street—or ...
— Living Alone • Stella Benson
... often mentioned in literature as a means of discipline, inspiration and refreshment. We read in Homer that Achilles was instructed in the art that he might learn to moderate his passions; Pythagoras, father of Musical Science, counseled his disciples to refresh themselves at the fount of music before retiring to their couches ...
— For Every Music Lover - A Series of Practical Essays on Music • Aubertine Woodward Moore
... soon a pyramid of fire and smoke. Ned was not shocked at this end, even of the bodies of brave men. He recalled the stories of ancient heroes, the bodies of whom had been consumed on just such pyres as this, and he was willing that his comrades should go to join Hercules, Hector, Achilles and the rest. ...
— The Texan Scouts - A Story of the Alamo and Goliad • Joseph A. Altsheler
... modern times—understanding, according to your own sense and dignity, what all prophecy, poetry, history, have told you—of the horse whose neck is clothed with thunder, or the ox who treadeth out the corn—of Joseph's chariot, or of Elijah's—of Achilles and Xanthus—Herminius and Black Auster—down to Scott and Brown Adam—or Dandie Dinmont and Dumple. That pastoral one is, of all, the most enduring. I hear the proudest tribe of Arabia Felix is now reduced by poverty ...
— Love's Meinie - Three Lectures on Greek and English Birds • John Ruskin
... from burnished cornices of old carving. The chairs had been rifled from a Venetian palace; the couches were part of the spoils of the French revolution. There were glass screens in golden frames, and a clock that represented the death of Hector, the chariot wheel of Achilles conveniently telling the hour. A round table of mosaic, mounted on a golden pedestal, was nearly covered with papers; and from an easy-chair, supported by air cushions, half rose to welcome them Mr. Bond Sharpe. He ...
— Henrietta Temple - A Love Story • Benjamin Disraeli
... north become just the least bit of a bore. They necessitate an amount of heroic climbing under the command of a sort of romantic and do-nothing Girls of the Period, who sit about on soft shawls in the lee of the rocks, and gather their shells and anemones vicariously at the expense of your tendon achilles. We know it, for we have suffered. We calculate, and are prepared to prove, that the successful collection of a single ribbon of ruffled seaweed, procured in a slimy haystack of red dulse at the ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - Vol. XI, No. 27, June, 1873 • Various
... occur before his eyes. He lived as a man and departed hence as a complete man. Now he enjoys in the memory of posterity the advantage of appearing only as one eternally vigorous and powerful; for in the image in which a man leaves the earth he wanders among the shadows, and so Achilles remains for us an ever-striving youth. That Winckelmann departed so early, works also to our advantage. From his grave the breath of his power strengthens us, and awakens in us the intense desire ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. II • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... this vessel, made it over to Mr. Stevens, who had already borne a considerable portion of its cost, and who intends to finish it at his own expense, and is now experimenting to still further perfect his designs. The Achilles (English) now building of iron, about the size of the Warrior, and of 6,039 tons, with a casemate 200 feet long holding 26 guns, belongs to this class. The Enterprise, 180 feet length, 990 tons, 4 casemate-guns, and the Favorite, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 11, No. 63, January, 1863 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... forms is the most dynamogenic of all the emotions. In paroxysms of rage with abandon we stop at nothing short of death and even mutilation. The Malay running amuck, Orlando Furioso, the epic of the wrath of Achilles, hell-fire, which is an expression of divine wrath, are some illustrations of its power. Savages work themselves into frenzied rage in order to fight their enemies. In many descriptions of its brutal aspects, which I have ...
— The Journal of Abnormal Psychology - Volume 10
... asked whether he would rather be Achilles or Homer, said, "Which would you rather be,—a conqueror in the Olympic games, or the crier that proclaims who ...
— Familiar Quotations • John Bartlett
... hardest to characterize. The figures of the old Homeric world fare but hardly under the glaring light of modern standards of morality which Shakspere turns upon them. Ajax becomes a stupid bully, Ulysses a crafty politician, and swift-footed Achilles a vain and sulky chief of faction. In losing their ideal remoteness, the heroes of the Iliad lose their poetic quality, and the lover of Homer experiences ...
— Brief History of English and American Literature • Henry A. Beers
... muscles upon the bones same as in a small specimen, except pull the excelsior rather smooth for the purpose instead of rolling it in the palms. Make the Achilles tendon in same way and leave back of ...
— Taxidermy • Leon Luther Pray
... of the Sun-God with the Dragon of darkness and Winter were imported not only into the Zodiac, but into the more homely circle of European legend; and both Thor and Odin fight with dragons, as Apollo did with Python, the great scaly snake, Achilles with the Scamander, and Bellerophon with the Chimæra. In the apocryphal book of Esther, dragons herald "a day of darkness and obscurity"; and St. George of England, a problematic Cappadocian Prince, was originally only a varying form ...
— Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry • Albert Pike
... he is pompous and scholastic. He approves the plot of Clarissa in terms of the Iliad, but judges subtle and complex characters by an over-simplified standard of decorum and censures Lovelace as an intricate combination of Achilles and Ulysses! His unnecessary labors to show that Richardson is not really Homeric illustrate the sterile application of epic canons to the novel that vitiates much early criticism ...
— Critical Remarks on Sir Charles Grandison, Clarissa, and Pamela (1754) • Anonymous
... the great services he had rendered to the country during his memorable Chief Secretaryship were not forgotten. Ulstermen, in whose eyes the tariff question was of very subordinate importance, feared that no one could be found to take command of the Unionist forces comparable with the Achilles who, as they supposed, was ...
— Ulster's Stand For Union • Ronald McNeill
... faith: at sight of swans, the raven Chides blackness, and the snake recoils aghast In fear of poison when a bird flies past. Thersites brands Achilles as a craven; The shoal fed full with shipwreck blames the haven For murderous lust of lives devoured, and vast Desire of doom whose feast is mercy's fast: And Bacon sees the traitor's mark engraven Full on the front of Essex. Grief and shame Obscure the chaste and sunlike spirit of Oates ...
— A Channel Passage and Other Poems - Taken from The Collected Poetical Works of Algernon Charles - Swinburne—Vol VI • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... upper chamber of his palace! He would lie down upon the ivory bed, and, smoothing my hair, would sing in an amorous strain. At the end of the day, I could see the two camps and the lanterns which they were lighting; Ulysses at the edge of his tent; Achilles, armed from head to foot, driving a chariot ...
— The Temptation of St. Antony - or A Revelation of the Soul • Gustave Flaubert
... see an Ursula or a Pakomovna, and have our fortunes told as of yore?' And we know that it cannot be, and that the Romany Rye is a being who lived and moved in a different age from ours, as different as the age of Hector and Achilles, when warriors fought in their chariots round the walls of Troy, and the long-haired Achaians hurled their spears and stole one another's horses in the darkness, and kings made long speeches armed to the teeth, and ran away with other kings' wives or multiplied ...
— Isopel Berners - The History of certain doings in a Staffordshire Dingle, July, 1825 • George Borrow
... went into the drawing-room in good humour with each other, and the evening passed pleasantly in prophetic discussions on the future wars of Arabin and Slope. The frogs and the mice would be nothing to them, nor the angers of Agamemnon and Achilles. How the archdeacon rubbed his hands and plumed himself on the success of his last move. He could not himself descend into the arena with Slope, but Arabin would have no such scruples. Arabin was exactly the man for such work, ...
— Barchester Towers • Anthony Trollope
... quite a gentlemanly manner, and inquired of him the way to the village. After he had received the desired information, and was about taking his leave, the youth said, "Are you not Major Elfonzo, the great musician (2)—the champion of a noble cause—the modern Achilles, who gained so many victories in the Florida War?" "I bear that name," said the Major, "and those titles, trusting at the same time that the ministers of grace will carry me triumphantly through all my laudable undertakings, and if," continued the Major, ...
— The $30,000 Bequest and Other Stories • Mark Twain
... ode (III, 5) in which he describes the noble serenity of mind with which Regulus returned to the torture and certain death which awaited him at Carthage: and Homer makes an enduring picture of it in the person of the King supervising his fall ploughing, which Hephsestus wrought upon the shield of Achilles (Iliad, XVIII, 540). "Furthermore, he set in the shield a soft fresh ploughed field, rich tilth and wide, the third time ploughed, and many ploughers therein drove their yokes to and fro as they wheeled about. Whensoever they came to the boundary of the field ...
— Roman Farm Management - The Treatises Of Cato And Varro • Marcus Porcius Cato
... in gods, nor quite as the ancients did in heroes,—but in representative men, that is, in ideas, and in men as representing them. Washington is not to us what Achilles or Agamemnon was to the Greeks. The form of Achilles would do as well for a god; the antiquaries do not know whether the Ludovisi Mars was not an Achilles,—perhaps nobody ever knew. But in all our veneration of Washington, it is not his person we revere, but his virtues,—precisely ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 13, No. 76, February, 1864 • Various
... the glorious page, How bold Achilles kill'd his foe: And Turnus, fell'd by Trojans' rage, Went howling ...
— Ballads • William Makepeace Thackeray
... events described are as lofty as those sung by Homer in his great work, and the characters brought upon the stage still more interesting. I think Hotspur as much of a hero as Hector, and young Henry more of a man than Achilles; and then there is the fat knight, the quintessence of fun, wit, and rascality. Falstaff is a creation beyond ...
— Lavengro - The Scholar, The Gypsy, The Priest • George Borrow
... kings, heroes, and grandees; they had no beatitude for the poor and lowly. Human despair, under their dispensation, knew no alleviation but a plunge from light and life into the underworld, —rather than be monarch of which, the shade of Achilles avers, in the "Odusseia," that it would prefer to be the hireling and drudge of some poor earthly peasant. Elysium was ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, Issue 15, January, 1859 • Various
... was there: Raymond, the wise Count of Toulouse; the crafty Boemond, one of the Normans of Sicily; his gallant cousin, Tancred, a mirror of chivalry, the Achilles of the Crusade; but our limits will only allow us to dwell on those through whom the Crusade is connected ...
— Cameos from English History, from Rollo to Edward II • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... were spent by Statius over his epic poem on the War of Thebes, which was published about the year 92, with a florid dedication to Domitian. After its completion he began another epic, on an even more imposing scale, on the life of Achilles and the whole of the Trojan war. Of this Achilleid only the first and part of the second book were ever completed; had it continued on the same scale it would have been the longest of Greek or Latin epics. At various times after the publication of the Thebaid appeared the five ...
— Latin Literature • J. W. Mackail
... condones or approves such connexions. But owing partly to the puzzling nature of the subject these friendships are spoken of by Plato in a manner different from that customary among ourselves. To most of them we should hesitate to ascribe, any more than to the attachment of Achilles and Patroclus in Homer, an immoral or licentious character. There were many, doubtless, to whom the love of the fair mind was the noblest form of friendship (Rep.), and who deemed the friendship of man with man to be higher than the love of woman, because altogether ...
— Symposium • Plato
... abandon that is ignorant of sex. Yet even then the difference is apparent to the observing. Inspired by the divine instinct of motherhood, the girl that can only creep to her mother's knees will caress a doll, that her tottling brother looks coldly upon. The infant Achilles breaks the thin disguise of his gown and sleeves by dropping the distaff, and grasping the sword. As maturity approaches, the sexes diverge. An unmistakable difference marks the form and features of each, and reveals the demand for ...
— Sex in Education - or, A Fair Chance for Girls • Edward H. Clarke
... that portion of the Atlantic occupied by the Clan Macgregor. The wind had died away in fitful puffs. The waves had subsided. Marked accessions to the deck population were in evidence. Everybody looked cheerful. But Achilles, which is to say the Tyro, sulked in his ...
— Little Miss Grouch - A Narrative Based on the Log of Alexander Forsyth Smith's - Maiden Transatlantic Voyage • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... seem to think women a pastime in those lectures of yours three years ago. You said then that they were man's heel of Achilles. You seemed rather in a panic ...
— Captivity • M. Leonora Eyles
... Achilles, sing, O Muse, The direful wrath, which sorrows numberless Brought on the Greeks, and many mighty souls Of youthful heroes, slain untimely, sent To Pluto's dark abode, their bodies left A prey to dogs and ...
— Elementary Guide to Literary Criticism • F. V. N. Painter
... differs not much from Plato's military dance. The invention of it is most generally attributed to Pirrhus, son of Achilles; at least this opinion is countenanced by Lucian, in his treatise upon dancing; though it is most probably derived from the Memphitic dance of Egypt. The manner of it was to dance armed to the sound of instruments. Xenophon takes notice of these dances in armour, especially among ...
— A Treatise on the Art of Dancing • Giovanni-Andrea Gallini
... stones cast at Christ by professed unbelievers we need give but little heed. They rain harmless as Parthian shafts on the shield of Achilles. Never was atheistical book written, never was infidel argument penned that touched the core of any religion, Christian or Pagan. They but serve as driving sand of the desert to scour the eating rust from the Christian armor. Seldom indeed ...
— Volume 1 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... melancholic; that which makes them excel in their several ways is that each of them has follow'd his own natural inclination, as well in forming the design as in the execution of it. The very heroes shew their authors: Achilles is hot, impatient, revengeful, Impiger, iracundus, inexorabidis, acer[7] &c.; AEneas patient, considerate, careful of his people, and merciful to his enemies; ever submissive to the will of Heaven—Quo ...
— Prefaces and Prologues to Famous Books - with Introductions, Notes and Illustrations • Charles W. Eliot
... &c.] Penthesile, Queen of the Amazons, succeeded Orythia. She carried succours to the Trojans, and after having given noble proofs of her bravery, was killed by Achilles. Pliny saith, it was she that invented the battle-ax. If any one desire to know more of the Amazons, let ...
— Hudibras • Samuel Butler
... triumphantly rising after disgraceful falls by the force of a piety so ardent that even his backslidings now appear but as spots upon a sun. His varied experiences call out our sympathy and admiration more than the life of any secular hero whom poetry and history have immortalized. He was an Achilles and a Ulysses, a Marcus Aurelius and a Theodosius, an Alfred and a Saint Louis combined; equally great in war and in peace, in action and in meditation; creating an empire, yet transmitting to posterity a collection of poems identified forever with the spiritual life of individuals and ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume II • John Lord
... king, Sire, but an emperor,—the Emperor of Constantinople and Trebizond, accompanied by the Prince Imperial, his son. You shall see two Greek profiles of the best sort, two finely cut noses, albeit hooked, and almond-shaped eyes, like those of Achilles ...
— The Memoirs of Madame de Montespan, Complete • Madame La Marquise De Montespan
... thou wilt," said Achilles Tatius, the commander of the Varangian Imperial Body Guard, who thought the time was unfavourable for distinguishing himself by insisting on that exact observance of etiquette, which was one of his great pretensions to the name of a soldier. "Yet were it not for the constant ...
— Waverley Volume XII • Sir Walter Scott
... flow. Aulus Gellius relates that the last-mentioned argument was expounded by Chrysippus, in his work upon providence. The answer given by Plutarch seems quite sufficient: "As well might you say that Achilles could not have a fine head of hair unless Thersites had been bald; or that one man's limbs could not be all sound if another had not ...
— The Fallen Star; and, A Dissertation on the Origin of Evil • E. L. Bulwer; and, Lord Brougham
... went out to slay it, but went only to find a hideous death. Then did Meleager resolve that he would rid the land of this monster, and called on all his friends, the heroes of Greece, to come to his aid. Theseus and his friend Pirithous came; Jason; Peleus, afterwards father of Achilles; Telamon, the father of Ajax; Nestor, then but a youth; Castor and Pollux, and Toxeus and Plexippus, the brothers of Althaea, the fair queen-mother. But there came none more fearless nor more ready to fight the monster boar of Calydon than ...
— A Book of Myths • Jean Lang
... this benumbing period were those of hunting scenes, and antique groups such as the Muses, or scenes from the life of Achilles. ...
— The Tapestry Book • Helen Churchill Candee
... men in the world): 'I do feel just a little groggy about the knees, I admit; but it's not nervousness, it's only want of training. I haven't got accustomed to glacier-work yet, and the best way to overcome it is by constant practice. "Solvitur ambulando," you know, as Aldrich says about Achilles ...
— Philistia • Grant Allen
... by the water of this scanty stream as to become tainted and unlike itself, and flows thus tainted into the sea between the Greek towns of Callipidae and Hypanis. At its mouth there is an island named Achilles. Between these two rivers is a vast land filled with forests and ...
— The Origin and Deeds of the Goths • Jordanes
... one of the noblest houses at Athens. He ranked the AEacidae among his ancestry, and the blood of Achilles flowed in the veins of the hero of Marathon. One of his immediate ancestors had acquired the dominion of the Thracian Chersonese, and thus the family became at the same time Athenian citizens and Thracian princes. This occurred at the time ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 1 • Various
... even indulged in a classical joke. "There is something in the name of Helen that attracts," he said. "Were it not for the lady whose face drew a thousand ships to Ilium, we should never have heard of Paris, or Troy, or the heel of Achilles, and all these ...
— The Silent Barrier • Louis Tracy
... his sword fly from his hand. But he could not pursue his advantage, for D'O, D'Epernon, and Maugiron attacked him, with fresh fury. Schomberg had bound his wound, and Quelus picked up his sword. Bussy made a bound backwards, and reached the wall. There he stopped, strong as Achilles, and smiling at the tempest of blows which rained around him. All at once he felt a cloud pass over his eyes. He had forgotten his wound, but these symptoms of fainting recalled ...
— Chicot the Jester - [An abridged translation of "La dame de Monsoreau"] • Alexandre Dumas
... hold upon her, turned and rent Mr. Van Torp, who dwelt within his tent like Achilles, but whether brooding or sea-sick no one was ever to know. The difference of opinion about him was amazing. Some said he had no heart, since he had not even waited for the funeral of the poor girl who ...
— The Primadonna • F. Marion Crawford
... this morning received a summons from your father, who returned, it appears, two days ago, and is now at the Adelphi Hotel. I am sorry to say, that stepping out of his carriage when travelling, he missed his footing, and has snapped his tendon Achilles. He is laid up on a couch, and, as you may suppose, his amiability is not increased by the accident, and the pain attending it. As he has requested me to bring forward immediate evidence as to your identity, and the presence of Mr Cophagus ...
— Japhet, In Search Of A Father • Frederick Marryat
... stretched out like a serpent's; while his owner, who was probably not so unkind as we thought him, stood enjoying the fun of it all. Reckoning upon the big boy's assistance, I scrambled out of the water, and sped, like Achilles of the swift foot, for the boat. I jumped in and seized the oars, intending to row across, and get the big boy to throw the clothes of the party into the boat. But I had never handled an oar in my life, and in the middle passage—how it happened I cannot tell—I found ...
— Ranald Bannerman's Boyhood • George MacDonald
... had a high old time among the Orientalists. But when discussion ensued, I longed to throw off my disguise and rush, Achilles-like, into the fray. But MAX might have thought that inconsistent with my "colossal humanity;" so, ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 103, September 17, 1892 • Various
... a banquet in the "Iliad." But the Achilles of this extensive repast was Manin, the rough Manin who, according to those that were next to him, consumed no less than eleven calabashes of wine. Certainly Manin deserved being called, if not a Sueve, as that would ...
— The Grandee • Armando Palacio Valds
... our hero! A statuesque foot Would suffer by wearing that heavy-nailed boot— Its owner is hardly Achilles. However, he's happy! He cuts a great "fig" In the land where a coat is no part of the rig— In the country of ...
— The Poems of Henry Kendall • Henry Kendall
... spirit of their time not to enjoy having to pose as miracle-mongers, rain-makers and witch-doctors; they would like to say frankly that they do not believe that Jonah ever swallowed the whale, and even that they are dubious about Hercules and Achilles and other demigods. But they are part of a machine, and the old men and the rich men who run the machine have laid down the law. Those who find themselves tempted to think, remember suddenly that they have ...
— The Profits of Religion, Fifth Edition • Upton Sinclair
... [The flame flashes up. Be satisfied with nothing but the world, The world alone is fuel for thee. Mother! [The flame flashes up. And I! See what a fire I have given thee, Rome for a funeral couch! Had Achilles a pyre like to this Or had Patroclus? Had they mourners such as I give to thee, Bereaved mothers and babes? Now let the wailing cease from thy tomb, Here is a mightier wail! Now let the haunting trumpet ...
— Nero • Stephen Phillips
... Col. Ward, the deceased, was a man of high standing in the state, and very much esteemed by his neighbors, and by all who knew him. The brothers concerned in this 'murder, most foul and unnatural,' were Lafayette, Chamberlayne, Caesar, and Achilles Jones, (the ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... relationships on the mother's side regarded as much more close than those on the father's side. In Athens and Sparta a man might marry his father's sister, but not his mother's sister. Lycaon, in pleading with Achilles, says in order to appease him, that he is not the uterine brother of Hector. It is also noteworthy to find that the Thebans, when pressed in war, seek assistance from the AEginetans as their nearest kin, recollecting that Thebe and ...
— The Position of Woman in Primitive Society - A Study of the Matriarchy • C. Gasquoine Hartley
... have made no reply, but returned the sherd with his own name inscribed. At his departure from the city, lifting up his hands to heaven, he made a prayer, (the reverse, it would seem, of that of Achilles,) that the Athenians might never have any occasion which should ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough
... the morning, a splendid panorama begins to unfold on this lordly stream—"Achilles of rivers," as Winthrop called it. It is difficult to describe the charm of this trip. Residents of the East pronounce it superior to the Hudson, and travelers assert there is nothing like it in the Old World. It is simply delicious to those escaped ...
— Oregon, Washington and Alaska; Sights and Scenes for the Tourist • E. L. Lomax
... but my father turned it all into ridicule—he said we were only old-woman frighteners, and he quoted first some farwell lines of Pope's Homer, addressed by Hector to Andromache, before he went out to meet Achilles; then he quoted Hudibras, and then he would give a few lines of the character of Falstaff, the then again of Bobadil. The fatal day was, however, come, and I mounted in good time to proceed to ...
— Memoirs of Henry Hunt, Esq. Volume 1 • Henry Hunt
... evidence have I that Trajan had read these poets and historians? Therefore he made this change: "Late generations and far distant climates may impute their calamities to the immortal author of the Iliad. The spirit of Alexander was inflamed by the praises of Achilles; and succeeding heroes have been ambitious to tread in the footsteps of Alexander. Like him, the Emperor Trajan aspired to the ...
— Historical Essays • James Ford Rhodes
... have stories which inspire dread of death; no Achilles saying in the under-world that it were better to be a slave in the flesh than Lord of the Shades. And again, no heroes—and gods still less—giving way to frantic lamentations and uncontrolled ...
— The World's Greatest Books—Volume 14—Philosophy and Economics • Various
... had been the peer in strength and beauty of the valiant Achilles, and in wisdom of the subtle Ulysses, son of Laertes, I would not contradict you," interrupted Pirckheimer; "for, gentlemen, this gallant husband's wife is a jewel of a peculiar kind. Nuremberg is proud of calling Frau Katharina ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... and scraping, from one garden into the other. Evidence was given to prove that the cabbages and pot-herbs in the elder's plot were torn and spoiled in parts. Every morning he stood at a gap in the hedge and sang aloud like a skipper in a storm or Achilles at the trench of the Greeks: "I am being ruined and brought to poverty by the minister's hens." This cry grated upon the ears of the manse housekeeper, who by and by thought it her duty to go out and reason with the ...
— Literary Tours in The Highlands and Islands of Scotland • Daniel Turner Holmes
... deep-reaching knowledge of the first ideas connected with the names of Athena {57} and Daphne, too implicitly, when he supposes this idea to be retained in central Greek theology. 'Athena' originally meant only the dawn, among nations who knew nothing of a Sacred Spirit. But the Athena who catches Achilles by the hair, and urges the spear of Diomed, has not, in the mind of Homer, the slightest remaining connection with the mere beauty of daybreak. Daphne chased by Apollo, may perhaps—though I doubt even this ...
— Proserpina, Volume 1 - Studies Of Wayside Flowers • John Ruskin
... Laupepa from taking refuge in any hole that offered, and he could afford to smile at the fantastic orgie in the embassy. It was another matter when the Hawaiians approached the intractable Mataafa, sitting still in his Atua government like Achilles in his tent, helping neither side, and (as the Germans suspected) keeping the eggs warm for himself. When the Kaimiloa steamed out of Apia on this visit, the German war-ship Adler followed at her heels; and Mataafa was no sooner ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 17 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... asteroids has lately been found, with a mean distance and period equal to that of Jupiter. To three of these masculine names have been given—Hector, Patroclus, Achilles; the other ...
— History of Astronomy • George Forbes
... the end of my list, so far as the wise men are concerned," said Waife, wiping his forehead. "If Mop were to distinguish himself by valour, one would find heroes by the dozen,—Achilles, and Hector, and Julius Caesar, and Pompey, and Bonaparte, and Alexander the Great, and the Duke of Marlborough. Or, if he wrote poetry, we could fit him to a hair. But wise men certainly are scarce, and when one has hit on a wise man's name it is so little ...
— What Will He Do With It, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... is the most potent spell for opening the secret chamber of mythology. But while these scholars worked on the same general principle as Mr. Max Muller, while they subjected the names of mythical beings—Zeus, Helen, Achilles, Athene—to philological analysis, and then explained the stories of gods and heroes by their interpretations of the meanings of their names, they arrived at all sorts of discordant results. Where Mr. Max Muller found a myth of the Sun or of the ...
— Modern Mythology • Andrew Lang
... what heroes should conquer, and what should be conquered. This doctrine runs throughout the poem of Homer called the Iliad; so that he makes the fates determine the ends of his two chief heroes, Hector and Achilles. And though the former was knocked down several times in the different engagements and dangerously wounded, yet as the fates had decreed that he should fall by the hand of Achilles, he is rescued from destruction by a deity, because the ...
— A Solemn Caution Against the Ten Horns of Calvinism • Thomas Taylor
... discretion! Poor Hanover indeed; she reaps little profit from her English honors: what has she had to do with these Transatlantic Colonies of England? An unfortunate Country, if the English would but think; liable to be strangled at any time, for England's quarrels: the Achilles'-heel to invulnerable England; a sad function for Hanover, if it be a proud one, and amazingly lucrative to some Hanoverians. The Country is very dear to his Britannic Majesty in one sense, very dear to Britain in another! Nay Germany itself, through Hanover, is to be torn ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XVII. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—The Seven-Years War: First Campaign—1756-1757. • Thomas Carlyle
... this poem deals principally with the adventures of one man. For all other parts of the work are but accessories to the single figure of Rustem, the heroic personage whose superhuman strength, dignity, and beauty make him to be a veritable Persian Achilles. But when we regard the details of this work we see how deeply the literary posterity of Homer are indebted to the Father of European Poetry. The fantastic crowd of demons, peris, and necromancers that appear as the supernatural machinery of the Shah Nameh, such grotesque fancies as the serpents ...
— Persian Literature, Volume 1,Comprising The Shah Nameh, The - Rubaiyat, The Divan, and The Gulistan • Anonymous
... press Homer into his service in answer to a remark of Mr. Campbell's, that "Homer was a great describer of works of art." Mr. Bowles contends that all his great power, even in this, depends upon their connection with nature. The "shield of Achilles derives its poetical interest from the subjects described on it." And from what does the spear of Achilles derive its interest? and the helmet and the mail worn by Patroclus, and the celestial armor, and ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Vol. V (of X) - Great Britain and Ireland III • Various
... Rousseau wrote a letter against dueling in the Nouvelle Heloise, and another in favor of it. Which of the two represented his own opinion? will you venture to take it upon yourself to decide? Which of us could give judgement for Clarissa or Lovelace, Hector or Achilles? Who was Homer's hero? What did Richardson himself think? It is the function of criticism to look at a man's work in all its aspects. We draw up our case, ...
— Lost Illusions • Honore De Balzac
... not won my wish—not all of it. They say there is a weak spot in every man's armour; there is always an Achilles' heel. I am no exception. Well, the gods ordained that I, James Sefton, a man who thought himself made wholly of steel, should fall in love with a piece of pink-and-white girlhood. What a ridiculous bit of nonsense! I suppose it was done to teach me I am a fool just ...
— Before the Dawn - A Story of the Fall of Richmond • Joseph Alexander Altsheler
... deep breath and turned from the conflagration, only to encounter its reflection in her widened eyes. "Yes, I was a Trojan warrior," I resumed; "one of the many unknown men who sought and found death beside Scamander, trodden down by Achilles or Diomedes. So they died knowing they fought in a bad cause, but rapt with that joy they had in remembering the desire of the world and her perfect loveliness. She scarcely knew that I existed; but I had loved ...
— The Cords of Vanity • James Branch Cabell et al
... on the cielery we have panted Thetis dipping hir sone Achilles in the Ocean to render him immortall. She hath him by the foot, whence in all his parts he becames immortal and impatible, save only in the sole of his feet, which ware not dippt. Next ye have him slain by Paris whiles he is busy on his knees at his devotion in the temple; ...
— Publications of the Scottish History Society, Vol. 36 • Sir John Lauder
... hero has transformed a people. The blind bard singing through the villages of Greece met a rude and simple folk. But Homer opened up a gallery in the clouds, and there unveiled Achilles as the ideal Greek. It became the ambition of every Athenian boy to fix the Iliad in his mind and repeat Achilles in his heart and life. Soon the Achilles in the sky looked down upon 20,000 young Achilles walking through the streets ...
— A Man's Value to Society - Studies in Self Culture and Character • Newell Dwight Hillis
... or merchants, or stewards, or money-lenders; but if they find a winebibbing, greedy, and utterly useless slave, to him parents commit the charge of their sons, whereas the good tutor ought to be such a one as was Phoenix, the tutor of Achilles. The point also which I am now going to speak about is of the utmost importance. The schoolmasters we ought to select for our boys should be of blameless life, of pure character, and of great experience. For ...
— Plutarch's Morals • Plutarch
... again; this time he goes to ancient shores; he sits down at Thermoplyae and cries: Leonidas! Leonidas! visits the tomb of Achilles, Lacedaemon, and Carthage, and, like the sleepy shepherd who raises his head to watch the passing caravans, all those great places awake when he passes ...
— Over Strand and Field • Gustave Flaubert
... only the gods, but the Homeric heroes into "elemental combinations and physical agencies"; for there is nothing new in the mythological philosophy recently popular, which saw the sun, and the cloud, and the wind in Achilles, Athene, and Hermes.(1) ...
— Myth, Ritual, and Religion, Vol. 1 • Andrew Lang
... conscience. But of vastly more importance is the fact that in their conception of life they started with different premises. They found themselves in life, their hope ending with life, and their object was to make the best and happiest of it. The hereafter was not pleasant to contemplate. Achilles, when he meets Odysseus in the netherworld, declares that he would rather be a poor labouring thrall on earth than a king among the dead. Had the Hellenes been shown the modern doctrine of evolution, it is easy to fancy how eagerly they would have sprung at it. To the Hebraic spirit ...
— Platform Monologues • T. G. Tucker
... fears," said Merindol enthusiastically, being now more at his ease. "Jacquemin Lampourde is a hero, a wonder, as everybody will tell your lordship. He is more valiant than Achilles, or the great Alexander. He is not spotless certainly, like the Chevalier Bayard, but ...
— Captain Fracasse • Theophile Gautier
... I, and luckily he was called away at this moment to the further end of the stable. 'Oh,' sighed I, 'for Xanthus, horse of Achilles!' ...
— The Delectable Duchy • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... the female names, from novels. When the enthusiasm for the ancient world was greater than for the saints, it was simple and natural enough that noble families called their sons Agamemnon, Tydeus, and Achilles, and that a painter named his son Apelles and his daughter Minerva.58 Nor will it appear unreasonable that, instead of a family name, which people were often glad to get rid of, a well-sounding ancient name ...
— The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy • Jacob Burckhardt
... Quixote's lance and the brown blade of Hudibras. My heart throbbed high at the sight of the helmet of Miltiades and the spear that was broken in the breast of Epaminondas. I recognized the shield of Achilles by its resemblance to the admirable cast in the possession of Professor Felton. Nothing in this apartment interested me more than Major Pitcairn's pistol, the discharge of which, at Lexington, began the ...
— A Virtuoso's Collection (From "Mosses From An Old Manse") • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... again. Accordingly, he gave himself up to a Turk named Dorlin, a governor of the King of Tunis, who brought him to his master. By the latter he was well received and still better guarded; for the King deemed that in him he held the Achilles ...
— The Tales Of The Heptameron, Vol. II. (of V.) • Margaret, Queen Of Navarre
... around the body of Jenkins, he sagged down and pressed the tips of his forefingers into two vulnerable parts of the thick neck, where certain important nerves approach the surface—parts as vulnerable as the heel of Achilles. Still clinging, he mercilessly continued the pressure, while Jenkins swayed back and forth, and finally fell backward ...
— The Wreck of the Titan - or, Futility • Morgan Robertson
... I wolde han trusted, doutelees, That if that I, thurgh my disaventure, 415 Had loved other him or Achilles, Ector, or any mannes creature, Ye nolde han had no mercy ne mesure On me, but alwey had me in repreve; This false world, allas! Who may ...
— Troilus and Criseyde • Geoffrey Chaucer
... I can't fathom you!" and Reginald moved impatiently upon his couch. "You are invulnerable as Achilles. I never saw a fellow get so much comfort out of everything as you do, and yet your life is a steady grind. ...
— A Beautiful Possibility • Edith Ferguson Black
... creditable close to his career by performing the task, which seems to assume the shape of a duty to every literary Englishman of leisure, of translating the Iliad and the Odyssey. Not unnaturally he was more familiar with the way the wrath of Achilles manifested itself than with the shape taken by the wrath of the men of his race beyond the sea. On one occasion he condoled with Cooper because of the quarrelsomeness and fighting prevalent in America, making during this expression of his sympathy ...
— James Fenimore Cooper - American Men of Letters • Thomas R. Lounsbury
... virgo, redeunt Saturnia regna.... Alter erit tum Tiphys, et altera quae vehat Argo Delectos heroas; erunt quoque altera bella, Atque iterum ad Trojam magnus mittetur Achilles. ...
— A System Of Logic, Ratiocinative And Inductive • John Stuart Mill
... is indivisible. We, by constructing fictitious states and trying to compose movement out of them, endeavour to make a process coincide with a thing—a movement with an immobility. This is the way to arrive at dilemmas, antinomies, and blind-alleys of thought. The puzzles of Zeno about "Achilles and the Tortoise" and "The Moving Arrow" are classical examples of the error involved in treating movement as divisible.[Footnote: Bergson in Matter and Memory examines Zeno's four puzzles: "The Dichotomy," "Achilles and the Tortoise," "The Arrow" and "The Stadium."] ...
— Bergson and His Philosophy • J. Alexander Gunn
... as to the proper method, for some of the radicals must necessarily appear in the result. Man's conceit is his social foundation and when the vulnerable spot is once found in the armour of Achilles, the overthrow of the strenuous ...
— The Spinster Book • Myrtle Reed
... skies, And, as the thunder shakes the heav'nly plains, A deep felt horror thrills through all my veins. When gentler strains demand thy graceful song, The length'ning line moves languishing along. When great Patroclus courts Achilles' aid, The grateful tribute of my tears is paid; Prone on the shore he feels the pangs of love, And stern Pelides tend'rest passions move. Great Maro's strain in heav'nly numbers flows, The Nine inspire, and ...
— Religious and Moral Poems • Phillis Wheatley
... satisfied with looking upon Zeus as but another name of his Nous, the highest intellect, the mover, the disposer, the governor of all things, Metrodoros resolved not only the persons of Zeus, Here, and Athene, but likewise those of human kings and heroes—such as Agamemnon, Achilles, and Hektor—into various combinations and physical agencies, and treated the adventures ascribed to them as natural facts hidden under ...
— Chips From A German Workshop, Vol. V. • F. Max Mueller
... the following note on this line:—"Prince Memnon's sister; that is, an Ethiopian princess, or sable beauty. Memnon, king of Ethiopia, being an auxiliary of the Trojans, was slain by Achilles. (See Virg. Aen. I. 489., 'Nigri Memnonis arma.') It does not, however, appear that Memnon had any sister. Tithonus, according to Hesiod, had by Aurora only two sons, Memnon and Emathion, Theog. 984. This lady is a ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 217, December 24, 1853 • Various
... Browne in a suppressed passage of the 'Religio Medici,' 'if I say that I am the happiest man alive. I have that in me that can convert poverty into riches, adversity into prosperity, and I am more invulnerable than Achilles; fortune hath not one place to hit me.' Perhaps on second thoughts, Sir Thomas felt that the phrase savoured of that presumption which is supposed to provoke the wrath of Nemesis; and at any rate, he, of all men, ...
— Hours in a Library, Volume I. (of III.) • Leslie Stephen
... Like that choleric warrior Achilles, he was somewhat subject to extempore bursts of passion, which were rather unpleasant to his favorites and attendants, whose perceptions he was apt to quicken, after the manner of his illustrious imitator, ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 8 • Charles H. Sylvester
... et altera quae uehat Argo Delectos heroas; erunt etiam altera bella, Atque iterum ad Troiam magnus mittetur Achilles. ...
— The Idea of Progress - An Inquiry Into Its Origin And Growth • J. B. Bury
... rock, angry and threatening, Otto Liedenbrock was a rather grotesque fierce parody upon the fierce Achilles defying the lightning. But I thought it my duty to interpose and attempt to lay some restraint upon this ...
— A Journey to the Interior of the Earth • Jules Verne
... time, since you can do such things, it seems to me that you would have made a great mistake in doing anything else—as great a mistake as Julius Caesar would have made if he had chosen to remain a fashionable lawyer instead of mixing in politics, or Achilles, if he had taken a necklace or a bracelet and left the sword in Ulysses' basket. You would have found your mythical duenna a ...
— Taquisara • F. Marion Crawford
... heroes whose high deeds Thro' life, till death, enlarge their span: Only Achilles in his rage And sloth is ...
— Goblin Market, The Prince's Progress, and Other Poems • Christina Rossetti
... clouds and stirs the deep To tumult! Wilder grow the hurricanes Of all the winds, and now my fate is sure. Thrice happy, four times happy they, who fell On Troy's wide field, warring for Atreus' sons: O, had I met my fate and perished there, That very day on which the Trojan host, Around the dead Achilles, hurled at me Their brazen javelins! I had then received Due burial and great glory with the Greeks; Now must I die a miserable death." As thus he spoke, upon him, from on high, A huge and frightful billow broke; it whirled The raft around, and far from it he fell. His hands let ...
— Poetical Works of William Cullen Bryant - Household Edition • William Cullen Bryant
... rouged and starred assemblage gathered in the boxes to gossip, flirt, eat ices and chocolates, and incidentally, in the pauses of their talk, to listen for a moment to the ravishing airs of Metastasio's Achilles in Scyros. ...
— The Valley of Decision • Edith Wharton
... manner, and inquired of him the way to the village. After he had received the desired information, and was about taking his leave, the youth said, "Are you not Major Elfonzo, the great musician [2]—the champion of a noble cause —the modern Achilles, who gained so many victories in the Florida War?" "I bear that name," said the Major, "and those titles, trusting at the same time that the ministers of grace will carry me triumphantly through all my laudable undertakings, and if," continued the Major, "you, sir, are ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... prodigious number of fine things in its way. Troilus himself is no character: he is merely a common lover; but Cressida and her uncle Pandarus are hit off with proverbial truth. By the speeches given to the leaders of the Grecian host, Nestor, Ulysses, Agamemnon, Achilles, Shakespeare seems to have known them as well as if he had been a spy sent by the Trojans into the enemy's camp—to say nothing of their being very lofty examples of didactic eloquence. The following is a very stately and ...
— Characters of Shakespeare's Plays • William Hazlitt
... by grooms and gamekeepers and other barbaric retainers; they pass their lives in the midst of serfs; their views about the position and rights of women—especially the women of the "lower orders"—are frankly African. They share the sentiments of Achilles as to the individuality of ...
— Post-Prandial Philosophy • Grant Allen
... this passage are purely imaginary. Parts of the Mahabharata are very ancient. Yudhishthira is no more an historical personage than Achilles or Romulus. It is improbable that a 'throne of Delhi' existed in 575 B.C., and hardly anything is known about the state of India at ...
— Rambles and Recollections of an Indian Official • William Sleeman
... body and legs of a white horse, with the head and shoulders of a man. His name was Chiron; and in spite of his odd appearance, he was a very excellent teacher and had several scholars who afterward did him credit by making a great figure in the world. The famous Hercules was one, and so was Achilles, and Philoctetes likewise, and AEsculapius, who acquired immense repute as a doctor. The good Chiron taught his pupils how to play upon the harp, and how to cure diseases, and how to use the sword and shield, together with various other ...
— Famous Tales of Fact and Fancy - Myths and Legends of the Nations of the World Retold for Boys and Girls • Various
... came back very dirty and very triumphant, and Mother, feeling just as triumphant, brought him promptly over with his gun and his three rabbits to see me in the office. On most days now he rides out to school, usually on Achilles. Very shortly he will begin to spend his nights at the school, however. He has become sincerely attached to the school, and at the moment thinks he would rather stay there than go to Groton; but this is a thought he will get over—with Mother's ...
— Letters to His Children • Theodore Roosevelt
... galley appointed— Whether Idomeneus be it, or Aias, or noble Odysseus, Yea, or, Peleides, thyself, among terrible warriors foremost! So shall by thee be achiev'd the appeasing of Archer Apollo." Dark was the scowl of Achilles the rapid, as thus he made answer:— "Oh! thou in impudence clothed! O heart, that is ever on lucre! How can the words of thy mouth stir zeal in a single Achaian Either to march in thy train, or to stand in the fierceness of onset? Truly I came not, for one, out of hate for the spearmen ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 367, May 1846 • Various |
