"Hercules" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... to those who are stout enough not to be wilted by our hot summers. For briskness, thriftiness, energy, and alacrity, it is hard to find his match. He has made a book of travels, and will make a hundred, unless somebody finds him a place at home where he will have an indefinite number of labors-of-Hercules to keep him busy,—or unless some African prince cuts his head off, or he happens to call upon the Battas about ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I., No. 3, January 1858 - A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics • Various
... brawny figure, through whose black brows and rude flattened face there looks a waste energy as of Hercules not ...
— Orphans of the Storm • Henry MacMahon
... of internment at Ruhleben, after months of short commons and indifferent accommodation, was still a big bony fellow of some twenty-five years of age, with broad shoulders, long arms and legs, and a chest which would have fitted a Hercules. True, there were hollows in his cheeks, and his eyes were gaunt and sunken, yet what man in that camp of suffering, what man amongst all the unfortunate fellows caught in Germany at the outbreak of war and hustled to Ruhleben, did not, long since, show signs ...
— With Joffre at Verdun - A Story of the Western Front • F. S. Brereton
... black-bearded, hoarse-voiced, six-foot specimen of Italian humanity, who looked in his little shop and on the prosaic pavement of Prytania Street somewhat as Hercules might seem in a modern drawing-room. You instinctively thought of wild mountain-passes, and the gleaming dirks of bandit contadini in looking at him. What his last name was, no one knew. Someone had maintained once that he had been christened Antonio Malatesta, but that was unauthentic, and as little ...
— The Goodness of St. Rocque and Other Stories • Alice Dunbar
... is thrilled by it. And is there not something terribly tragic about the lives of the great masses who pierced the colossal stone cliffs of the Simplon, or who are building the Panama Canal? They have and are performing a task that may safely be compared with the extraordinary achievements of Hercules; works which, according to human conception, will last into eternity. The names and the characters of these workmen are unknown. The historians, coldly and disinterestedly, ...
— Mother Earth, Vol. 1 No. 2, April 1906 - Monthly Magazine Devoted to Social Science and Literature • Various
... in a very different light, being supposed to express the distress of Nature at earthly calamities. The Greeks believed that darkness overshadowed the earth at the deaths of Prometheus, Atreus, Hercules, Aesculapius, and Alexander the Great. The Roman legends held that at the death of Romulus there was darkness for six hours. In the history of the Caesars occur portents of all three kinds; for at the death of Julius the earth was shrouded in darkness, the birth of Augustus was heralded ...
— History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom • Andrew Dickson White
... used to make sad havoc among the plants my poor mother used to keep on her window-sill. Manly amusements those, I should say! and nevertheless, I was consumed with longing for a doll. Characters like Hercules have such weaknesses occasionally. Was the one I had fallen in love with at all beautiful? No. I can see her now. She had a splotch of vermilion on either cheek, short soft arms, horrible wooden hands, and long sprawling legs. ...
— The Bed-Book of Happiness • Harold Begbie
... way in which his arms are set on his body. The figure of the god is not standing firmly on both feet, but the sculptor has managed to invest him with an air of grandeur and an expression of vigour and bonhomie, which reminds us of certain types of the Greek Hercules. ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 6 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... the form mentioned as then used in the Acts; from the Roman Centurion's being made to call Jesus "a Son of a God," which words in the mouth of a Pagan could only mean that he must be a Demigod, like Bacchus, Hercules, or Esculapius: it is clear that this Gospel is the patched work composition of some convert from the Pagan schools. At any rate, his gospel flatly contradicts the others in several important particulars in the history of the Resurrection. For he represents the apostles as being commanded by ...
— The Grounds of Christianity Examined by Comparing The New Testament with the Old • George Bethune English
... cutting at Cook's Wall! Lord, Marcella, if I don't get the Pater to pay for me to go to the hospital, I'll do a year first on the music-halls as the modern Hercules. I should make millions! My hands were blistered till they got like iron; my back felt broken; I used to lie awake at nights and weep till I got toughened. I had ...
— Captivity • M. Leonora Eyles
... had come to was Turnus, who was also a relative of the immortal gods. Turnus and Evander became fast friends, and it is said that Turnus taught his neighbors the art of writing, which he had himself learned from Hercules, but this is one of the transparent fictions of the story. It may be that he taught them music and the arts of social life, and gave them good laws. What ever became of good Evander ...
— The Story of Rome From the Earliest Times to the End of the Republic • Arthur Gilman
... physique of a healthy artist. Muscular power needs also nervous power to bring out its finest quality. Lightness and grace are not incompatible with vigor, but are its crowning illustration. Apollo is above Hercules; Hebe and Diana are winged, not weighty. The physiologist must never forget that Nature is aiming at a keener and subtiler temperament in framing the American,—as beneath our drier atmosphere the whole scale of sounds and hues and odors ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 56, June, 1862 • Various
... health, radiant with youth, full of vigor, Lemaitre now began to lead a life of extravagance which would almost have given Bacchus the delirium tremens and driven Hercules into a consumption. But his excesses seemed to take away nothing from the magnificence of his physical beauty, and he was petted by the fair sex in a manner to which the coddlings of a young English ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science Volume 15, No. 89, May, 1875 • Various
... action and reaction, thesis and antithesis, is common to both elementary motion and thought. The fertile and profound fancy of Greece delighted to prefigure this truth in significant symbols and myths. Love, Eros, is shown carrying the globe, or wielding the club of Hercules; he is the unknown spouse of Psyche, the soul; and from the primitive chaos he brings forth ...
— The Religious Sentiment - Its Source and Aim: A Contribution to the Science and - Philosophy of Religion • Daniel G. Brinton
... hedges of gardens and olive-groves, until they were stopped by the sea. This was that fruitful region formerly called Paracheloitis, which, according to classic allegory, was drained or torn from the river Achelous, by the perseverance of Hercules and presented by him for a nuptial present to the ...
— The Life of Lord Byron • John Galt
... through remembering something he had once heard his aunt say about "kissing the soil." This had impressed him and stuck by him perhaps by reason of its brevity; when later on he came to know the story of Hercules and Antaeus, he found it one of the very few ancient fables which had a hold over him—his chiefest debt to classical literature. His aunt had wanted him to learn carpentering, as a means of kissing the soil should his Hercules ...
— The Way of All Flesh • Samuel Butler
... by Her Majesty's Government consisted of Sir Hercules Robinson, Sir Henry de Villiers, and Sir Evelyn Wood, President Brand being also present in his capacity of friend of both parties, and to their discretion were left the settlement of all outstanding questions. Amongst these, were the mode of trial of those persons ...
— Cetywayo and his White Neighbours - Remarks on Recent Events in Zululand, Natal, and the Transvaal • H. Rider Haggard
... and the fiery fluid must have covered her from head to foot; if Lawrence had not caught the falling lamp, if he had lost one moment in smothering the lighted gown, she must have perished in agony before our eyes; but he was strong as a young Hercules, and, half suffocated and bruised as she was, Jill knew from what ...
— Uncle Max • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... them, the immediate banks are guarded by walls of columnar basalt, which are worn in many places into a great variety of bold and picturesque forms, such as the Castle Rock, the Rooster Rock, the Pillars of Hercules, Cape Horn, etc., while back of these rise the sublime mountain walls, forest-crowned and fringed more or less from top to base with pine, spruce, and shaggy underbrush, especially in the narrow gorges and ...
— Steep Trails • John Muir
... as terrible as terminations, there were no liuing neere her, she would infect to the north starre: I would not marry her, though she were indowed with all that Adam had left him before he transgrest, she would haue made Hercules haue turnd spit, yea, and haue cleft his club to make the fire too: come, talke not of her, you shall finde her the infernall Ate in good apparell. I would to God some scholler would coniure her, for certainely while she is heere, a man may liue as quiet in hell, as in a sanctuary, ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare
... electricity will find the world-throne occupied by an infinite Agassiz. Some approach God through physical senses. They behold his storms sinking ships, his tornadoes mowing down forests. These find him a huge Hercules; yet the Judge who seems cruel to the wicked criminal may seem the embodiment of gentleness and kindness to his obedient children. Man determines what God shall be to him. Each paints his own picture of Deity. Macbeth sees him with ...
— The Investment of Influence - A Study of Social Sympathy and Service • Newell Dwight Hillis
... explained by the suggestion that Larentia was called lupa ("courtesan'', literally "she-wolf'') on account of her immoral character (Livy i. 4; Ovid, Fasti, iii. 55). According to another account, Larentia was a beautiful girl, whom Hercules won in a game of dice (Macrobius i. 10; Plutarch, Romulus, 4, 5, Quaest. Rom. 35; Aulus Genius vi. 7). The god advised her to marry the first man she met in the street, who proved to be a wealthy Etruscan named Tarutius. She inherited ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... we stepped on board the steamboat Hercules, destined to convey us to our packet with its musical name. The day was foggy and gloomy, as if refusing to be comforted, even by an occasional smile from the sun. All prognosticated that the Norma would not sail to-day, but "where there's a will," etc. Several of our friends ...
— Life in Mexico • Frances Calderon De La Barca
... far his whistling shaft he threw. Wide glanced the missile, by the tough shield bent, And finding famed Antores, as it flew, 'Twixt flank and bowels pierced a deadly rent. He, friend of Hercules, from Argos sent, With king Evander, 'neath Italian skies, Had fixed his home. Alas! a wound unmeant Hath laid him low. To heaven he lifts his eyes, And of sweet Argos dreams, his ...
— The Aeneid of Virgil - Translated into English Verse by E. Fairfax Taylor • Virgil
... were marching from Argos to Thebes. They came at last to the forest of Ne'me-a, where Hercules, the chief hero of Argos, had once slain a terrible lion. This monster had long lived in the forest, filling the hearts of all the people with dread; and when Hercules came out of the forest, wearing the skin of the lion, they had ...
— The Story of the Greeks • H. A. Guerber
... the Moorish tongue, Gibil Muza, or the hill of Muza, from the circumstance of its containing the sepulchre of a prophet of that name. This is one of the two excrescences of nature on which the Old World bestowed the title of the Pillars of Hercules. Its skirts and sides occupy the Moorish coast for many leagues in more than one direction, but the broad aspect of its steep and stupendous front is turned full towards that part of the European continent ...
— The Bible in Spain • George Borrow
... "Yes, by Hercules," said Scrofa, "and especially in his recipe for removing superfluous hair, in which he bids you take a yellow frog and stew it down to a third of its size and then rub the body with what ...
— Roman Farm Management - The Treatises Of Cato And Varro • Marcus Porcius Cato
... those whose looks I noted were unruffled. And for thee loudly did I clamour, "Restore to me Camerius, most giddy girls." Quoth such-an-one, her bosom bare a-shewing, "Look! 'twixt rose-red paps he shelters him." But labour 'tis of Hercules thee now to find. Not were I framed the Cretan guard, nor did I move with Pegasean wing, nor were I Ladas, or Persius with the flying foot, or Rhesus with swift and snowy team: to these add thou the feathery-footed and winged ones, ask likewise fleetness ...
— The Carmina of Caius Valerius Catullus • Caius Valerius Catullus
... him, his presence reminded me of my old acquaintance, the high-fed brawny doctors of Oxford. His legs were the pillars of Hercules, his body a brewer's butt, his face the sun rising in a red mist. We have been told that magnitude is a powerful cause of the sublime; and if this be true, the dimensions of his lordship certainly had a copious and indisputable claim to sublimity. He seemed born to bear the whole hierarchy. His ...
— The Adventures of Hugh Trevor • Thomas Holcroft
... the Ethiopians, "dwelling far away, the most distant of men," and the Cimmerians, "covered with darkness and cloud," where "baleful night is spread over timid mortals." Phoenicia was a sore journey, Egypt simply unattainable, while the Pillars of Hercules marked the extreme edge of the universe. Ulysses was nine days in sailing from Ismarus the city of the Ciconians, to the country of the Lotus-eaters—a period of time which to-day would breed anxiety in the hearts of the underwriters should it be occupied by the slowest ...
— Revolution and Other Essays • Jack London
... at Oxford..... Deplorable Incident at Sea..... Captures made by separate Cruisers..... Captain Hood takes the Bellona..... and Captain Barrington the Count do St. Florentin..... Captain Falkner takes a French East Indiaman..... Prize taken in the West Indies..... Engagement between the Hercules and the Florissant..... Havre-de-Grace bombarded by Admiral Rodney..... Admiral Boscawen defeats M. de la Clue..... Preparations made by the French for invading England..... Account of Thurot..... French Fleet sails from Brest..... Admiral Hawke defeats M. ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. - From William and Mary to George II. • Tobias Smollett
... described his portrait of Wilkes as a caricature, but have cited the inscription on his veritable contemporary caricature of Churchill in proof of the assertion. Now what says this inscription? "The Bruiser (Churchill, once the Reverend), in the character of a Russian Hercules, regaling himself after having killed the monster Caricatura, that so severely galled his virtuous friend, the heaven-born Wilkes." Hogarth's use of the word caricatura conveys a meaning which is not patent at first sight; Wilkes's leer was the leer of a satyr, "his face," ...
— English Caricaturists and Graphic Humourists of the Nineteenth Century. - How they Illustrated and Interpreted their Times. • Graham Everitt
... horizontal bands of red (top), yellow (double width), and red with the national coat of arms on the hoist side of the yellow band; the coat of arms includes the royal seal framed by the Pillars of Hercules, which are the two promontories (Gibraltar and Ceuta) on either side of the eastern end ...
— The 1993 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... second half of the fable of Amphitruo performed, with unmistakable references to the future birth of a Hercules of the House of Este. At a former representation of the same piece in the courtyard of the palace (1487), 'a paradise with stars and other wheels,' was constantly burning, by which is probably meant an illumination with fireworks, that, no doubt, ...
— The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy • Jacob Burckhardt
... the statement that the mantle of the late Winter Davis had fallen upon the member from New York. The gentleman took it seriously, and it has given his strut additional pomposity. The resemblance is great. It is striking. Hyperion to a satyr, Thersites to Hercules, mud to marble, dung-hill to diamond, a singed cat to a Bengal tiger, a whining puppy to a roaring lion. Shade of the mighty Davis, forgive the almost ...
— Political Recollections - 1840 to 1872 • George W. Julian
... woman in my youth, I may occasionally be in error, it is difficult to be quite accurate on such points after a lapse of time. But as before said in many cases the incidents were written down a few weeks and often within a few days after they occurred. I do not attempt to pose as a Hercules in copulation, there are quite sufficient braggarts on that head, much intercourse with gay women, and doctors, makes me doubt the wonderful feats in coition, some ...
— My Secret Life, Volumes I. to III. - 1888 Edition • Anonymous
... the strength of all metals with which it is alloyed. An alloy of copper and nickel containing a small percentage of aluminum, called Hercules metal, withstood a strain of 105,000 pounds, and broke without elongation. Another grade of this metal broke under a strain of 111,000 pounds, with an elongation equivalent to 33 per cent. It must be remembered that these tests ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 508, September 26, 1885 • Various
... the former, the Germans knew only those visible and palpably useful gods, the Sun and the Moon, and Fire; they had never even heard of any others by report. Tacitus, on the contrary, says, that they worship Hercules and Mars, and, above all, Mercury; that, at the same time, their religious sense is eminently spiritual, for they repudiate the thought of enshrining the celestials within walls, or representing them by the human form; that they venerate ...
— Anglo-Saxon Literature • John Earle
... of that Treaty, and while Robinson at Vienna was still laboring like Hercules in it,—the poor Duke of Parma died. Died; and no vestige of a 'Spanish Garrison' yet there, to induct Baby Carlos according to old bargain. On the contrary, the Kaiser himself took possession,—'till once the Duke's Widow, who declares herself in ...
— History Of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. VIII. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... prized Danae above the Queen of Heaven, even as Narcissus prized his shadow above all the nymphs, even as Hercules placed Omphale above his strength, or even as David the King of ...
— Privy Seal - His Last Venture • Ford Madox Ford
... (D.C.A. art. Glass, p. 733a). Garrucci (Vetri, XIII. 13) has a glass vessel in which Christ is represented with Daniel, who is giving cakes to the dragon (D.C.A. Jesus Christ, Representations of, p. 877b). In Paganism in Christian Art in the same Dictionary (p. 1535a), it is said, "Hercules feeding the fabled dragon with cakes of poppy-seed appears to have furnished the motive for the representation of the apocryphal story of Daniel killing the dragon at Babylon." Presumably this means the dragon Ladon in the garden of the Hesperides. ...
— The Three Additions to Daniel, A Study • William Heaford Daubney
... nurses and governesses, in a certain reserved plot of ground railed off from Hyde Park, whereof some of the lucky dwellers in the neighbourhood of Apsley House have a key. In this garden, at the age of nine or thereabout, she had contracted an intimate friendship with the Lord Hercules O'Ryan.—as every one of my gentle readers knows, one of the sons of the Marquis of Ballyshannon. The Lord Hercules was a year younger than Miss Ethel Newcome, which may account for the passion ...
— The Newcomes • William Makepeace Thackeray
... to a wicked heart what they ought to ascribe to a slow liver. The body and the soul are such near neighbors that they often catch each other's diseases. Those who never saw a sick day, and who, like Hercules, show the giant in the cradle, have more to answer for than those who are the subjects of life-long infirmities. He who can lift twice as much as you can, and walk twice as far, and work twice as long, will have a double account to ...
— New Tabernacle Sermons • Thomas De Witt Talmage
... creates mankind. All the man-made gods are fashioned after the similitude of Caliban's Setebos. They are grotesque, carnal, devilish. Paganism was but an installment of Caliban's theory. God was a bigger man or woman, with aggravated human characteristics, as witness Jove and Venus and Hercules and Mars. Greek mythology is a commentary on Caliban's monologue. For man to evolve a god who shall be non-human, actually divine in character and conduct, is historically impossible. No man could create ...
— A Hero and Some Other Folks • William A. Quayle
... to recede from, and Sirius and Aldebaran to approach, each other by very minute amounts; and, with a striking effort of divinatory genius, placed the "apex," or point of direction of the sun's motion, close to the star Lambda in the constellation Hercules,[19] within a few degrees of the spot indicated by later and indefinitely more refined methods of research. He resumed the subject in 1805,[20] but though employing a more rigorous method, was scarcely so happy in his result. In 1806,[21] he made a ...
— A Popular History of Astronomy During the Nineteenth Century - Fourth Edition • Agnes M. (Agnes Mary) Clerke
... flat plains where roll for ever the golden wheels of the chariot of the sun. She saw, too, the winds that are the Desert's best-loved children: Health with shining eyes and a skin of bronze: Passion, half faun, half black-browed Hercules: and Liberty with upraised arms, beating cymbals ...
— The Garden Of Allah • Robert Hichens
... read over Rhesus, Hippolytus, Medea, Ion, or the Iphigenias; altogether, the Phoenissae is the best of those I have read; the interview between Jocasta and her two sons, before the Battle, very good. There is really Humour and Comedy in the Servant's Account of Hercules' conviviality in Admetus' House of Mourning. I thought the story of the Bacchae poorly told: ...
— Letters of Edward FitzGerald in Two Volumes - Vol. II • Edward FitzGerald
... conditions under which Coke's deed would be regarded as sublime; there are none which could deny his splendid audacity. The soldiers, who seemed to be actuated by the utmost malevolence, redoubled their efforts to hit the squat Hercules who had bellowed at them and their fellow artillerists from the bridge. Bullets struck the deck, lodged in the masts, splintered the roof and panels of the upper structure, but not one touched Coke. He coolly made fast each flag in its turn, ...
— The Stowaway Girl • Louis Tracy
... possessing that inflexibility Of temper, which, from the earliest times, had been the characteristic of his family, held on the censorship by himself. By direction of the same Appius, the Potitian family, in which the office of priests attendant on the great altar of Hercules was hereditary, instructed some of the public servants in the rites of that solemnity, with the intention to delegate the same to them. A circumstance is recorded, wonderful to be told, and one which should make people scrupulous of disturbing the established modes of religious solemnities: ...
— The History of Rome; Books Nine to Twenty-Six • Titus Livius
... ship passed slowly along between the "Pillars of Hercules," for so many centuries the western limit of the Old World, and entered the blue Mediterranean. And was this low dark line on the right really Africa, the Dark Continent, which until then had seemed only a dream—a far-away dream? What a sure ...
— Barbara's Heritage - Young Americans Among the Old Italian Masters • Deristhe L. Hoyt
... about me for a fellow like you to envy," he said condescendingly. "I'm no better off than you are. In fact, I envy you fellows. You are never sick; you can eat and digest anything. I really envy you. You are built like a young Hercules and are never ashamed when you strip. When I put on a bathing suit I am embarrassed until I get out of sight in the water, because I'm all skin and bones. My arms and legs are the ...
— The Iron Puddler • James J. Davis
... seemed on the point of leaping, knife in hand, upon the captain. But the prayer of the innocent child had settled the question, and the sable Hercules sprang in front of the ...
— Adrift on the Pacific • Edward S. Ellis
... against him would almost have made a census of the valley. That this frail man should have resisted him, that those thin hands should have been raised against him, that the intellectual Professor should have knocked down the Hercules of our village, was beyond my comprehension. So my friend across the table saw amazement welling up from my open mouth ...
— David Malcolm • Nelson Lloyd
... read with him the Memorabilia of Xenophon, I imbibed from that work and from his comments a deep respect for the character of Socrates; who stood in my mind as a model of ideal excellence: and I well remember how my father at that time impressed upon me the lesson of the "Choice of Hercules." At a somewhat later period the lofty moral standard exhibited in the writings of Plato operated upon me with great force. My father's moral inculcations were at all times mainly those of the "Socratici ...
— Autobiography • John Stuart Mill
... moment the bell rang, and a tall man was shown in. He was dark, with a thick beard, and looked like a modern Hercules. We were introduced to each other; ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Vol. 1 (of 8) - Boule de Suif and Other Stories • Guy de Maupassant
... account at the end of each season. He kept one man all the time and two in summer. He was a bachelor of twenty-eight, well liked and good to look upon: five feet ten inches in height, broad of shoulder, deep of chest, and a very Hercules in strength. His face was handsome, square-jawed and strong. He was good-natured, but easily roused, and when angry was as fierce as fire. He had the reputation of being the hardest fighter in the ...
— The Fat of the Land - The Story of an American Farm • John Williams Streeter
... private life and his private examples of licentiousness and avarice I shall willingly pass over, not because one would fail to discover that he had committed many abominable outrages in the course of them, but because, by Hercules, I am ashamed to describe minutely and separately—especially to you who know it as well as I—how he conducted his youth among you who were boys at the time, how he auctioned off the vigor of his prime, his secret lapses from chastity, his open fornications, what he let be done to ...
— Dio's Rome, Vol. III • Cassius Dio
... freight transportation saw an equally radical advance with the building of the first propellers. The sloop-rigged Vandalia, built by Sylvester Doolittle at Oswego on Lake Ontario in 1842, was the first of the propeller type and was soon followed by the Hercules, the ...
— The Paths of Inland Commerce - A Chronicle of Trail, Road, and Waterway, Volume 21 in The - Chronicles of America Series • Archer B. Hulbert
... mean, to write, within six weeks or two months next ensuing, a book of stories made up of classical myths. The subjects are: The Story of Midas, with his Golden Touch, Pandora's Box, The Adventure of Hercules in quest of the Golden Apples, Bellerophon and the Chimera, Baucis and Philemon, Perseus and Medusa; these, I think, will be enough to make up a volume. As a framework, I shall have a young college ...
— Yesterdays with Authors • James T. Fields
... Theodosius as the supreme ruler of the world. Both Arbogastes and Eugenius were slain, and the East and West were once more and for the last time united. The division of the Empire under Diocletian had not proved a wise policy, but was perhaps necessary; since only a Hercules could have borne the burdens of undivided sovereignty in an age of turbulence, treason, revolts, and anarchies. It was probably much easier for Tiberius or Trajan to rule the whole world than for one of the later emperors to rule a province. ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume IV • John Lord
... lifted, handled, and put in place over the water on slender piers? How was it done? There was no Hercules to perform the mighty labor, nor Amphion to lure them to their place with the music of his ...
— Among the Forces • Henry White Warren
... young girl, the friend of Spain. He had treated Herr Matanesse Van Wibisma rudely on account of his opinions, but sought to approach her, who laughed at what he prized most highly, because she was a woman, and it was sweet to hear his work praised by beautiful lips. "Hercules throws the club aside and sits down at the distaff, when Omphale beckons, and the beautiful Esther and the daughter of Herodias—" murmured Wilhelm indignantly. He felt sorely troubled, and longed for his quiet ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... the constitution. He would only accept power upon his conception of public duty, and would resign the moment he was satisfied he was unsupported by the confidence of the people, and not continue to hold place when the voice of the country was against him. [HERCULES TEARING THESEUS FROM THE ROCK TO WHICH HE HAD GROWN.] LORD JOHN defended the acts of the Ministry, and denied that they had been guilty of harshness to the poor by the New Poor Law, or enemies of the Church by reducing ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various
... "to the young gentleman whom I mistook for a woman on coming into the room, whence proceeded all the subsequent mistakes; for if I had suspected him for a man, I would have seized him, had he been another Hercules, though, indeed, he seems rather to resemble Hylas." He then gave an account of the reason of his rising from bed, and the rest, till the lady came into the room; at which, and the figures of Slipslop and her gallant, whose heads only were visible at the ...
— Joseph Andrews, Vol. 2 • Henry Fielding
... divinely constructed armour of which Homer tells, but without its miraculous lightsomeness—he looked out baffled, labouring, moribund; a mere comfortless shadow taking part in some shadowy reproduction of the labours of Hercules, through those northern, mist-laden confines of the civilised world. It was as if the familiar soul which had been so friendly disposed towards him were actually departed to Hades; and when he read the Conversations afterwards, though ...
— Marius the Epicurean, Volume Two • Walter Horatio Pater
... Vendome, stands with arms folded, some one hundred and fifty feet in the air; careless, now, who rules the decks below; whether Louis Philippe, Louis Blanc, or Louis the Devil. Great Washington, too, stands high aloft on his towering main-mast in Baltimore, and like one of Hercules' pillars, his column marks that point of human grandeur beyond which few mortals will go. Admiral Nelson, also, on a capstan of gun-metal, stands his mast-head in Trafalgar Square; and ever when most obscured by that London smoke, ...
— Moby-Dick • Melville
... has fallen, and has been hollowed out by fire. Through it a person can ride on horseback for sixty feet. Its estimated height, when standing, was 330 feet, and its circumference, 97 feet. Another of these giants is known as Hercules. It is 320 feet high, and 95 feet in circumference. Perhaps the most beautiful group is that of three trees known as the Three Graces. Each of them measures 92 feet in circumference at the base; and in height they are nearly equal, measuring 295 feet. ...
— The Western World - Picturesque Sketches of Nature and Natural History in North - and South America • W.H.G. Kingston
... to understand the complicated politics of the day. At any rate, a short time after, Hercules came with a band of Argives and established a rival civic centre. In the meantime, Janus had become mixed up with Roman history and was working manfully for the New Italy. On very much the same spot "Tibris, King of the Aborigines" built a city, which must be ...
— Humanly Speaking • Samuel McChord Crothers
... the sacred inscriptions in the temple, how Solon's country "once opposed a power which with great arrogance pushed its way into Europe and Asia from the Atlantic Ocean. Beyond the entrance which you call the Pillars of Hercules there was an island larger than Libya and Asia together. From it navigation passed to the other islands, and from them to the opposite continent which surrounded that ocean. On this great Atlantic island there was a powerful and singular ...
— The Naturalist in Nicaragua • Thomas Belt
... parish accounts are abundant and also many Christian names not often used now. Thus:—Peg Woods, Nel J——, Old Nib, Royston Molley, Old Grig, and Hercules Powell. The last named was the Parish Constable in 1780, and he had a name at least calculated to warn ...
— Fragments of Two Centuries - Glimpses of Country Life when George III. was King • Alfred Kingston
... with the view of reading it once more. I sat down, placed them on my great Bible, and examined the whole. I then got up, walked about, read, and thought, "If I do not answer," said I, "he will think he has terrified me at the mere appearance of such a philosophical hero, a very Hercules in his own estimation. Let us show him, with all due courtesy, that we fear not to confront him and his vicious doctrines, any more than to brave the risk of a correspondence, more dangerous to others than to ourselves. ...
— My Ten Years' Imprisonment • Silvio Pellico
... The centre of his influence, a small room in the suburbs of the dining-room, which he calls the dispence, or dispence-khana, is a place of unwholesome sights and noisome odours, which it is good not to visit unless as Hercules visited the stables of Augeas. The instruments of his profession are there, a large handie full of very greasy water, with bits of lemon peel and fragments of broken victuals swimming in it, and a short, stout stick, with a little bunch of foul rag tied to one end of it. Here ...
— Behind the Bungalow • EHA
... rhyme, and Tushielaw's arm hath no power over Cockburn. Truly, I do intend to weed thy pretty arbours, Maudge; and, peradventure, I may even essay to sing a bass to thy sweet ballad of "Lustye May, with Flora Queen;" and such a domesticated creature shall I be that, like Hercules, you may see me, ere long, ply the distaff—a pretty sight ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Volume III • Various
... and they sailed eastward by Tartessus on the Iberian shore, till they came to the Pillars of Hercules, and the Mediterranean Sea. And thence they sailed on through the deeps of Sardinia, and past the Ausonian islands, and the capes of the Tyrrhenian shore, till they came to a flowery island, upon a still bright summer's eve. And as they neared it, slowly and wearily, they ...
— The Heroes • Charles Kingsley
... Trojans came in sight of Pallanteum, and soon afterwards they turned their ships toward the land, and approached the city. Just then King Evander, accompanied by his son Pallas and many of his chiefs, was offering a sacrifice to Hercules in a grove outside the city walls. Alarmed at the sudden appearance of the vessels, they made a movement as if to depart in haste from their altars. But Pallas forbade them to interrupt the sacred rites, and advancing to meet the strangers, he addressed them from ...
— Story of Aeneas • Michael Clarke
... the kind. Close beside his gymnastic apparatus we keep three trunkfuls of note-books and reports representing as many years devoted labour at his studies. At the age of twenty-six my father was a veritable Hercules and held the position of assistant to the chief engineer of an important Eastern railroad. It was shortly after he had won this place that he ...
— The Patient Observer - And His Friends • Simeon Strunsky
... course; there are other things. Physical training. Swedish exercises. Tell yourself that you'll be able to push up fifty times from the ground before you come out. Learn to walk on your hands. Practise cart-wheels, if you like. Gad! you could come out a Hercules. ...
— First Plays • A. A. Milne
... aspect of interest and beauty. It might have been the comfortable contrast to the scene without that threw its mellow tints around. Even the homely loom and spinning-wheel lost their uncouthness, and recalled to the mind's imagery the classic dreams of old romance—Hercules in the chambers of Omphale the story of Arachne and Penelope, the faithful wife of brave Ulysses; but there was other food for the spirit which required not the aid of fancy to render palatable. On the large centre table, round which ...
— Sketches And Tales Illustrative Of Life In The Backwoods Of New Brunswick • Mrs. F. Beavan
... to be named first, as unrivalled by his colleagues in talent and audacity. He was a man of gigantic size, and possessed a voice of thunder. His countenance was that of an Ogre on the shoulders of a Hercules. He was as fond of the pleasures of vice as of the practice of cruelty; and it was said there were times when he became humanized amidst his debauchery, laughed at the terror which his furious declamation excited, and might ...
— Fox's Book of Martyrs - Or A History of the Lives, Sufferings, and Triumphant - Deaths of the Primitive Protestant Martyrs • John Fox
... ordinary resident at all seasons. The lion was, undoubtedly, an inhabitant of Thrace as late as the expedition of Xerxes, whose camels they attacked; and the 'Nemaean lion,' and the other lions which stand out in Grecian myth, as having been killed by Hercules and the heroes, may have been the last remaining specimens of that Felis spelaea (undistinguishable, according to some, from the African lion), whose bones are found in the gravels and the caverns of ...
— Prose Idylls • Charles Kingsley
... dark-browed, cruel savage who had carried the scalp of a white woman at his belt. But he would hunt or scalp no more. He had been cloven from brow to chin with the blow of a tomahawk wielded by an arm mighty like that of Hercules. Colonel Alloway looked upon the slain ...
— The Keepers of the Trail - A Story of the Great Woods • Joseph A. Altsheler
... about the country, Wallis, is touching. I was brought up to believe that patriotism had an element of sacrifice in it, but I can't see ours. And I can't imagine myself, somehow, as a Hercules bearing the burden of our Constitution. From Mr. Hodder's point of view, perhaps,—and I'm not sure it isn't the right one, the pianist is doing his damnedest, to the tune of—Dalton Street. We might as well look this thing in the face, my friend. You and I really don't believe in another ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... specimens of physical manhood, both of them, for their well-trained muscles lay bulging on their limbs in a way that would have gladdened the sculptors of Hercules to behold. But there was a vast difference in the aspect of the two men. Both were about equal in height and breadth of shoulder, but Angut was much the slimmer and more elegant about the waist, as well as considerably lighter than his adversary. ...
— Red Rooney - The Last of the Crew • R.M. Ballantyne
... in over-extending the limits of the world known to him, only led to the invention of a scholastic distinction between the real and the traditional East and West, while the confusion was made perfect by the travestied history always so popular among Orientals. The "Gades of Alexander and Hercules," the farthest points east and west, were named after the mythical conquests of the real Iskander and the mythical hero of Greeks and Phoenicians. Arim in the middle, with the pillars of Hercules and Alexander, and the north and south poles at equal distance from it—the centre and the four corners ...
— Prince Henry the Navigator, the Hero of Portugal and of Modern Discovery, 1394-1460 A.D. • C. Raymond Beazley
... much of the eccentricities of this young nobleman, and was exceedingly struck with his personal appearance. His bodily frame was of the order of the Farnese Hercules,—a wonderful development of physical and muscular strength. His hands were those of a blacksmith. He was broadly and squarely made, with a finely-shaped head, and dark eyes of surpassing brilliancy. I have seldom seen a more interesting combination ...
— Lady Byron Vindicated • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... Christi, under its indomitable chief, and who, march by march, nay, foot by foot, as it might be, have perseveringly predicted the halt, the defeat, the disasters, and final discomfiture, which it has not yet pleased Divine Providence to inflict on this slight effort of the young Hercules, as he merely moves in his cradle. Alas, the enemy that most menaces the overthrow of this new and otherwise invincible exhibition of human force, is within; seated in the citadel itself; and must be narrowly watched, or he will act his malignant purpose, ...
— Oak Openings • James Fenimore Cooper
... long way to reach the Wagon, which started from a Tavern called the "Pillars of Hercules," right on the other side of Hyde Park. I was desperately tired when we came thither, and craved leave to sit on a bench before the door, between the Sign-post and the Horse-trough. So low was I ...
— The Strange Adventures of Captain Dangerous, Vol. 1 of 3 • George Augustus Sala
... that awful time. It was all that was left to him of one whom he had loved passionately, blindly, foolishly, and who had ceased to love him on the day, now nearly a year ago, when his friends had ceased to call him by the nickname of Hercules, that had been his ...
— The Tidal Wave and Other Stories • Ethel May Dell
... you examples, from more advanced art, of true Greek representation; the subjects being the two contests of leading import to the Greek heart—that of Apollo with the Python, and of Hercules with the Nemean Lion. You see that in neither case is there the slightest effort to represent the [Greek: lyssa], or agony of contest. No good Greek artist would have you behold the suffering either of gods, heroes, or men; nor allow you to be apprehensive of the issue of their contest ...
— Aratra Pentelici, Seven Lectures on the Elements of Sculpture - Given before the University of Oxford in Michaelmas Term, 1870 • John Ruskin
... face and white lips passionately. Dr. Jones prescribed bed and "complete mental and bodily rest". He said he would "send something," and in a cloud of wise words disguised the fact that he did not in the least know what to do. It was not in his experience that a healthy young Hercules, sound as a bell, without spot or blemish, should behave like an anaemic, ...
— Snake and Sword - A Novel • Percival Christopher Wren
... for a badger. He carried in his hand a short whip, resembling a carrot in shape, and evidently of such a description as no man that had any regard for his health would wish to come in contact with, especially from the hand of such a double-jointed but misshapen Hercules as bore it. ...
— The Emigrants Of Ahadarra - The Works of William Carleton, Volume Two • William Carleton
... strength of Hercules, and having still the heart of a lion—kind and patient, because he was courageous and strong—Dagobert, notwithstanding his rough exterior, evinced for his orphan charges an exquisite solicitude, a watchful kindness, and a tenderness almost maternal. Yes, motherly; for the heroism of affection ...
— The Wandering Jew, Complete • Eugene Sue
... authorities. If the charges against him are proven true, then there is no doubt that the course of General Bragg will be to dismiss him from his staff; but if, on the contrary, malicious slanders are defaming this ally, he is Hercules enough and brave enough to punish them. His bravery and gallantry were conspicuous throughout the Kentucky campaign, and it is hoped that this late tarnish on his fame will be removed; or if it ...
— Three Months in the Southern States, April-June 1863 • Arthur J. L. (Lieut.-Col.) Fremantle
... other; and in this fused form the discussion may easily have reached Shakspere's eye and ear. So it would be with the echo of two Senecan passages noted by Mr. Munro in the verses on "the undiscovered country from whose bourn no traveller returns." In the HERCULES FURENS[71] we have: ...
— Montaigne and Shakspere • John M. Robertson
... the Visurgis, learned from a deserter that Arminius had marked out the place of battle; that more tribes also had joined him at a wood sacred to Hercules, and would attempt to storm our camp by night. The deserter was believed, the enemy's fires were in view, and the scouts, having advanced toward them, reported that they heard the neighing of horses and the murmur of a mighty and tumultuous host. Being thus upon the eve of a decisive ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 03 • Various
... narrative tells us—"The Phoenicians, taking their course from the Red Sea, entered into the Southern Ocean on the approach of autumn; they landed in Lybia, planted corn, and remained till the harvest. They then sailed again. After having thus spent two years, they passed the Columns of Hercules in the third, and returned to Egypt." Herodotus doubted their story—"Their relation," says the honest old Greek, "may obtain belief from others, but to me it seems incredible; for they affirmed, that, having sailed round Africa, they ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. 341, March, 1844, Vol. 55 • Various
... Edmund's, the king and martyr. Between the hall and chancel, fronting the great castle gate, was a large chamber, with several rooms, and a cloyster under it, pulled down A.D. 1700; for which, when standing, in the reign of King Henry VIII., there was one suit of hangings of the story of Hercules; which are supposed to be those still remaining at the seat ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 19. No. 575 - 10 Nov 1832 • Various
... occupy a kind of intermediate position between prisoner and gaoler, Geryon is the last of these whom we meet; and him Dante has practically transformed into a being of his own invention: for there is little in common between the personage slain by Hercules and the strange monster with the face of a just man and the tail of a venomous scorpion. As might perhaps be expected when there was plenty of material to hand in Tuscany, less use is made of the persons of classical mythology in finding subjects for punishment. Among the virtuous ...
— Dante: His Times and His Work • Arthur John Butler
... the form of the earth is round, but also that it is a part of a not very large sphere; for otherwise the difference would not be so obvious to persons making so small a change of place. Wherefore we may judge that those persons who connect the region in the neighborhood of the pillars of Hercules with that towards India, and who assert that in this way the sea is one, do not assert things very improbable. They confirm this conjecture moreover by the elephants, which are said to be of the same species towards each extreme; as if this circumstance was ...
— A History of Science, Volume 1(of 5) • Henry Smith Williams
... bitter mockery of the distant mob, the old tune of the Old Line shrilled and rattled: - Some talk of Alexander, And some of Hercules; Of Hector and Lysander, And such great names ...
— This is "Part II" of Soldiers Three, we don't have "Part I" • Rudyard Kipling
... Roman site; for, in 1800, in the rear of the house, in a bastion of the City Wall, was found a sepulchral monument dedicated to Claudina Martina by her husband, a provincial Roman soldier; here also were found a fragment of a statue of Hercules and a female head. In front of the Coffee-house immediately west of ...
— All About Coffee • William H. Ukers
... to —God alone was to be seen in Heaven's hand, argue not against Heavens, hung be the Hecuba to him Heed, take, lest be fall Height of this great argument Heir to, that flesh is Hell it is in suing long to bide —no fury like a woman scorned Hercules, than I to Hermit, man the Hero perish or sparrow fall Herod, cat-herods High, to soar so —life furnishes high characters Hill, a cot beside the Hills peep o'er bills —, o'er the, and far away —, heart beats strong amid the Hinges, pregnant, of the knee Hint, upon this, ...
— Familiar Quotations • Various
... ducat. I thought the house very low and dark; but I confess, the comedy admirably recompensed that defect. I never laughed so much in my life. It began with Jupiter's falling in love out of a peep-hole in the clouds, and ended with the birth of Hercules. But what was most pleasant, was the use Jupiter made of his metamorphosis; for you no sooner saw him under the figure of Amphitrion, but, instead of flying to Alcmena, with the raptures Mr Dryden ...
— Letters of the Right Honourable Lady M—y W—y M—e • Lady Mary Wortley Montague
... dared not utter the awful name of Him whom he had denied. The courtier laid his hand on the jewelled clasp which fastened his girdle; perhaps the movement was accidental, perhaps he wished to direct the attention of his companion to the figures of Hercules and the Nemean lion which were embossed on the gold. "You forget," observed Pollux, "that I am a worshipper of the deities of Olympus, that I sacrifice to the ...
— Hebrew Heroes - A Tale Founded on Jewish History • AKA A.L.O.E. A.L.O.E., Charlotte Maria Tucker
... Byzantine emperors. 'With the Koran in one hand,' says Macaulay, 'and the sword in the other, they went forth conquering and converting eastward to the Bay of Bengal, and westward to the Pillars of Hercules.' They became a terror to the nations that had beheld with contempt their rising greatness. Amid the expiring glories of the Roman world they made Constantinople the capital of their empire. It was all that the oriental imagination could desire. Rendered by its fortifications ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol 3 No 3, March 1863 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... lay the gray Azores, Behind the Gates of Hercules; Before him not the ghost of shores, Before him only shoreless seas. The good mate said: "Now must we pray, For lo! the very stars are gone. Brave Adm'ral speak,—what shall I say?" "Why, say, 'Sail ...
— The Golden Treasury of American Songs and Lyrics • Various
... things, which were requisite to qualify him to undertake a task of such magnitude and importance: and with whom was I to unite? I believed also, that it looked so much like one of the feigned labours of Hercules, that my understanding would be suspected if I proposed it. On ruminating, however, on the subject, I found one thing at least practicable, and that this was also in my power. I could translate my Latin Dissertation. I could enlarge it usefully. I could see how the public received ...
— An Essay on Slavery and Abolitionism - With reference to the duty of American females • Catharine E. Beecher
... opinion of his antiquity, when he makes him contemporary with the Heraclidae. It is true, the latest of the Lacedaemonian kings were of the lineage of the Heraclidae; but Xenophon there seems to speak of the first and more immediate descendants of Hercules. As the history of those times is thus involved, in relating the circumstances of Lycurgus's life, we shall endeavour to select such as are least controverted, and follow authors of ...
— Ideal Commonwealths • Various
... was as strong as a modern Hercules, quick and alert in his movements, and, now that he was free from the terror which had overthrown him at Brown's Buildings, was of his wonted cheerfulness. Fortunately, also, he was a good sailor, and did not go under with the sea-sickness which soon prostrated nearly all the other members ...
— The Woman's Way • Charles Garvice
... but a handful of dust and the glittering gems that had decked her a bride of death, to mark the spot where she lay. Turning another knob another door opened like the previous ones, and in a niche before us lay a warrior in the prime of manhood. He was very tall and muscular, a perfect Hercules in proportions, with a broad, massive forehead and prominent features. He was attired in a sort of uniform of curious workmanship. This apparition vanished quicker than the other, owing probably, to the room being better filled with fresh air. We had, without ...
— The American Family Robinson - or, The Adventures of a Family lost in the Great Desert of the West • D. W. Belisle
... strength. He looked terribly formidable, with his livid face, deadly eye and jaws firmly set—his long fingers clutching his knife with an iron grasp, and his left arm raised to protect himself.—The Doctor was a large, dark-complexioned, handsome man—an Apollo in beauty and a Hercules in strength, presenting a singular contrast to the hideous, misshapen being with whom he was about to engage in ...
— City Crimes - or Life in New York and Boston • Greenhorn
... has proven that in order to attract and hold the child's attention each conspicuous feature of history presented to him should have an individual for its center. The child identifies himself with the personage presented. It is not Romulus or Hercules or Caesar or Alexander that the child has in mind when he reads, but himself, acting ...
— Famous Men of the Middle Ages • John H. Haaren
... return of Wallace, Lord Lennox advanced to meet him. "What shall we do?" said he. "Without you have the witchcraft of Hercules, and can be in two places at once, I fear we must either leave the rest of Scotland to fight for itself, or never restore peace to ...
— The Scottish Chiefs • Miss Jane Porter
... earnestly,—will you share my narrow means, my almost poverty? Will you be my wife? We might have been exiles, so to speak, for we should perhaps have been cast off by our own kindred, and might never have returned to our native land; but your presence would have made this new country,—this young Hercules of lands,—this land full of sinews, bones and muscle, not yet clothed with rounded symmetry of outward form, but fresh and strong and teeming with promise, a true home to us. Its vast, ever-growing mind would have given new expansion to ...
— Fairy Fingers - A Novel • Anna Cora Mowatt Ritchie
... as yet small children, long before the time when those two grown ladies offer us the choice of Hercules,[406-2] there comes up to us a youthful angel, holding in his right hand cubes like dice, and in his left spheres like marbles. The cubes are of stainless ivory, and on each is written in letters of gold—TRUTH. The spheres are veined and streaked ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 7 • Charles H. Sylvester
... was the first response; then there was a general putting of heads together, and much eager talking for about a couple of minutes. Finally a topman—one Bob Adams—a magnificent specimen of the British tar, a perfect Hercules in build, and one of the prime seamen of the ship, shouldered his way to the front, and, with an elaborate sea-scrape and a tug at ...
— Under the Meteor Flag - Log of a Midshipman during the French Revolutionary War • Harry Collingwood
... pedestals with appropriate inscriptions. The physical wants of the traveller were provided for at inns judiciously disposed along the route; while his religious wants were gratified by frequent statues of Mercury, Apollo, Diana, Ceres, Hercules, and other deities, who presided over highways and journeys, casting their sacred shadow over his path. Some of the stones of the pavement still show the ruts of the old chariot-wheels, and others are a good deal cracked and worn; but they are sound enough, ...
— Roman Mosaics - Or, Studies in Rome and Its Neighbourhood • Hugh Macmillan
... there the names of generals, poets, artists, sculptors, statesmen, and historians. Books do not dwell upon that long list of thriving colonies which filled the Grecian archipelago with traffic, and reached east and west to the shores of Asia and to the Pillars of Hercules. The Filipinos learn that Rome nourished her generals and her emperors upon the spoils of war, but they do not reflect that the predatory age—at least in the Roman sense—is past. Their imaginations seize upon the part played by the little island republic ...
— A Woman's Impression of the Philippines • Mary Helen Fee
... timbrels in their dance with the satyrs; the birds are pecking at the grapes, the goats are nibbling at the vines; all is life, strong and splendid in its marble eternity. And the mutilated Venus smiles towards the broken Hermes; the stalwart Hercules, resting against his club, looks on quietly, a smile beneath his beard; and the gods murmur to each other, as they stand in the cloister filled with earth from Calvary, where hundreds of men lie rotting beneath the cypresses, ...
— Euphorion - Being Studies of the Antique and the Mediaeval in the - Renaissance - Vol. I • Vernon Lee
... has no ideal of which the Venus of the ancients is a manifestation. Other creations of that marvellous Greek mind might be fitly used to symbolize phases of the present. Hercules might labor now; there are other stables than the Augean; and not yet are all Hydras slain. Armor is needed; and a Vulcan spirit is making the anvil ring beneath the earth-crust of humanity. But Venus, the ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 7, No. 40, February, 1861 • Various
... convictions, he counselled not with his fears. He neither looked to the past with regret nor to the future with apprehension. He might have been a zealot—he was never a hypocrite; he might have been eccentric—he was never ridiculous. He was a Hercules rather than an Adonis. In his warfare he fired hot shot; he did not send in flags of truce; he led forlorn hopes; he did not follow in the wake of charges. When he went forth with his sledge-hammer logic and his saw-mill philosophy, all who stood in ...
— Modern Eloquence: Vol III, After-Dinner Speeches P-Z • Various
... I look like a Hercules?" He held up his loose-skinned hand and shrunken wrist. "Not built for the part, certainly; but that doesn't count, of course. Man's unconquerable soul, and all the rest of it ... well, I was a coward every inch of me, ...
— The Greater Inclination • Edith Wharton
... he was being abominably weak, but he did not care. He even felt a certain pleasure in his surrender. Big, muscular men are given to this feebleness with women. Hercules probably wore an idiotic grin of happiness when he ...
— The Coming of Bill • P. G. Wodehouse
... Dacre's House, was on the horns of a dilemma. Circumstances over which he had had no control had brought him, like another Hercules, to the cross-roads, and had put before him the choice between pleasure and duty, or, rather, between pleasure and what those in authority called duty. Being human, he would have had little difficulty in making his decision, ...
— Tales of St. Austin's • P. G. Wodehouse
... the firmament, Texas, the matter with that baby,' says Peets, 'but you. Which if you'd ever got to him as a yearlin' you'd a-killed Hercules himse'f! Quit yore fussin', an' give Annalinda a chance. Take a lesson from the cub coyote. Roll Annalinda out in the sand, an' let her scuffle. That's the way to bring a ...
— Faro Nell and Her Friends - Wolfville Stories • Alfred Henry Lewis
... aghaste; And lefte behynde their bowe and asenglave. For fear of hym, in thilk a cowart haste. His garb sufficient were to move affryghte; 485 A wolf skin girded round his myddle was; A bear skyn, from Norwegians wan in fyghte, Was tytend round his shoulders by the claws: So Hercules, 'tis sunge, much like to him, Upon his sholder wore ...
— The Rowley Poems • Thomas Chatterton
... fill'd with rage extreme, The mud-holes now he cursed, And now he cursed his team, And now his cart and load,— Anon, the like upon himself bestow'd. Upon the god he call'd at length, Most famous through the world for strength. "O, help me, Hercules!" cried he; "for if thy back of yore This burly planet bore, thy arm can set me free." This prayer gone up, from out a cloud there broke A voice which thus in godlike accents spoke:— "The suppliant must himself ...
— A Hundred Fables of La Fontaine • Jean de La Fontaine
... it.—"Cic. Orat." i. 50.)—Immense stakes. He laughed all the time, chatted with Valeria over his shoulder, kissed her hand between every two moves, and scarcely looked at the board. I thought that I had him. All at once I found my counters driven into the corner. Not a piece to move, by Hercules. It cost me two millions of sesterces. All the Gods and Goddesses ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 1 (of 4) - Contibutions to Knight's Quarterly Magazine] • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... to pay too much attention to incidents which the credulous relate with eager satisfaction, and the more scrupulous or witty enquirer considers only as topicks of ridicule: Yet there is a traditional story of the infant Hercules of toryism, so curiously characteristick, that I shall not withhold it. It was communicated to me in a letter from Miss ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 1 • Boswell
... the giant Despair in the Pilgrim's Progress, or the giant Greatness in the Royal Villain; for I have heard of no other sort of giants in the reign of king Arthur." Petrus Burmannus makes three Tom Thumbs, one whereof he supposes to have been the same person whom the Greeks called Hercules; and that by these giants are to be understood the Centaurs slain by that hero. Another Tom Thumb he contends to have been no other than the Hermes Trismegistus of the antients. The third Tom Thumb he places under the reign of king Arthur; to which third Tom Thumb, says he, the actions of the other ...
— Miscellanies, Volume 2 (from Works, Volume 12) • Henry Fielding |
