"Minos" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... sway in Trebizond, a quicksand which gave way beneath their tread. From adversity to adversity, from country to country, we were finally driven to seclusion in the Isle of Candia, part of the quondam Minos territory. Venice had allowed Candia to fall before Mahomet's bloody sword. Europe lost her bulwark, the Cross of the Saviour was thrown down, and the Candian Christians have been massacred or forced to flee. I have ...
— The Memoirs of Madame de Montespan, Complete • Madame La Marquise De Montespan
... with clouds: and they went forward in a gray twilight which deepened steadily over a tranquil sea. So they passed the lights of Sargyll, most remote of the Red Islands, while Anaitis talked of Procris and King Minos and Pasiphae. As color went out of the air new colors entered into the sea, which now assumed the varied gleams of water that has long been stagnant. And a silence brooded over the sea, so that there was no noise anywhere except the sound of the voice of Anaitis, saying, ...
— Jurgen - A Comedy of Justice • James Branch Cabell
... the fact that in a vast number of early cults the gods are represented by human figures with animal heads. The Egyptian religion was full of such divinities—the jackal-headed Anubis, the ram-headed Ammon, the bull-fronted Osiris, or Muth, queen of darkness, clad in a vulture's skin; Minos and the Minotaur in Crete; in Greece, Athena with an owl's head, or Herakles masked in the hide and jaws of a monstrous lion. What could be more obvious than that, following on the tribal worship of any totem-animal, the priest or medicine-man or actual king in leading the magic ...
— Pagan & Christian Creeds - Their Origin and Meaning • Edward Carpenter
... you of this? "This, too, is mere folly," say you, "and is an untrue story; for long before this, Minos, of more ancient date, subjected the Aegaean seas with his fleet, and by seasonable correction, punished {piratical} attacks." What then can I possibly do for you, my Cato of a Reader, if neither Fables[17] nor Tragic Stories suit your taste? Do not be too ...
— The Fables of Phdrus - Literally translated into English prose with notes • Phaedrus
... flesh. But he was destined to see another and more awful vision. Suddenly the pall of darkness which shrouded the secrets of the nether abyss was lifted, and the whole realm of Hades was exposed to view. There he saw the place of torment, where great malefactors atone for their crime, and Minos, the infernal judge, sitting at the gates, passing sentence, and giving judgment among the shades. Within appeared the gigantic form of Tityos, stretched at full length along the ground, and two vultures sat ever at his side, tearing his liver. This was his punishment for violence offered ...
— Stories from the Odyssey • H. L. Havell
... classical subjects, the conception was wholly medieval. This Phaedra, just turning from her husband and maidens to greet her husband's son, giving him her first fearsome glance from under her half-lifted veil, was no daughter of Minos. The daughter of heathenesse and the early church she was; doomed to torturing visions and scourgings, and the wrangling of soul with flesh. The venerable Theseus might have been victorious Charlemagne, and Phaedra's maidens belonged ...
— The Troll Garden and Selected Stories • Willa Cather
... you dread the inexorable judges, Minos and Rhadamanthus; before whom neither L. Crassus nor M. Antonius can defend you; and where, since the cause lies before Grecian judges, you will not even be able to employ Demosthenes; but you must plead for yourself before a very great assembly. These things perhaps you dread, and therefore look ...
— Cicero's Tusculan Disputations - Also, Treatises On The Nature Of The Gods, And On The Commonwealth • Marcus Tullius Cicero
... poor have sought your aid, To be released from vows that they have made In haste, and leisurely repented, you, As stern as Rhadamanthus (Minos too, And AEeacus) have drawn your fierce brows down And petrified them with a moral frown! With iron-faced rigor you have made them run The gauntlet of publicity—each Hun Or Vandal of the public press allowed To throw their households open ...
— Black Beetles in Amber • Ambrose Bierce
... deem it fair acquittal that we have slain three men for one, since thou boastest thus? Nay, sir, but stand thou up also thyself against me, that thou mayst know what manner of son of Zeus am I that have come hither! For Zeus first begat Minos, the warden of Crete, and Minos got him a son, the noble Deukalion, and Deukalion begat me, a prince over many men in wide Crete, and now have the ships brought me hither, a bane to thee and thy father, ...
— The Iliad of Homer • Homer (Lang, Leaf, Myers trans.)
... from the first circle down into the second, which girdles less space, and so much more woe that it goads to wailing. There abides Minos horribly, and snarls; he examines the sins at the entrance; he judges, and he sends according as he entwines himself. I mean, that, when the miscreant spirit comes there before him, it confesses ...
— The Divine Comedy, Volume 1, Hell [The Inferno] • Dante Alighieri
... softnesses,—able to wear the black cap without convulsive throbbings, anxious also that the law should run its course,—averse to mercy when guilt had been proved, but as clear-sighted and as just as Minos; a man whom nothing could turn one way or another,—who could hang his friend, but who would certainly not mulct his enemy because he was his enemy. It had reached Caldigate's ears that he was unfortunate in his judge; by which, they who had so said, had intended to imply that ...
— John Caldigate • Anthony Trollope
... of the particular sin he depicts Dante shows us the evil in various phases. First of all it is personified in repulsive demons, the guardians of the circles of Hell. At the very entrance, sits, symbolizing the evil conscience, the sinners' judge "Minos horrific and grins. The ill-born spirit comes before him, confesses all and that sin-discerner (Minos) sees what place in Hell is for it, and with his tail makes as many circles round himself as the degrees he will have it descend." (Inf., V, 2.) In the circle of Gluttony, ...
— Dante: "The Central Man of All the World" • John T. Slattery
... from Jason's romantic expedition, but absurdly quoted as the first ship, for the fleets of Danaus and Minos are mentioned long before, and the Argo herself was chased by a ...
— The Sailor's Word-Book • William Henry Smyth
... might— Peaceful where She sits beside, Smiles the swart King on his Bride; Hell feels the smile in sudden light— Love can sun the Realms of Night. Heavenly o'er the startled Hell, Holy, where the Accursed dwell, O Thracian, went thy silver song! Grim Minos, with unconscious tears, Melts into mercy as he hears— The serpents in Megara's hair, Kiss, as they wreathe enamour'd there; All harmless rests the madding thong;— From the torn breast the Vulture mute Flies, scared before the charmed lute— ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Vol. 53, No. 331, May, 1843 • Various
... Miss Henrietta Minos Rhadamanthus Darwin that I plead guilty to the justice of both criticisms, and throw myself on the mercy ...
— The Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley Volume 1 • Leonard Huxley
... Han. Fortunately for me, Minos, I have mastered Greek since I have been here; so that my adversary will not have even that advantage of me. Now I hold that the highest praise is due to those who have won their way to greatness from obscurity; who ...
— Works, V1 • Lucian of Samosata
... single letter remaining."—Campbell's Pref. to Matthew. "The publisher meant no more but that W. Ames was the author."—Sewel's History, Preface, p. xii. "Be neether bashful, nor discuver uncommon solicitude."—Webster's Essays, p. 403. "They put Minos to death, by detaining him so long in a bath, till he fainted."— Lempriere's Dict. "For who could be so hard-hearted to be severe?"— Cowley. "He must neither be a panegyrist nor a satirist."—Blair's Rhet., p. 353. "No man unbiassed by philosophical opinions, thinks that life, air, or ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown
... incantations stanch'd the gushing blood."[108:1] We have also the testimony of the Grecian lexicographer, Suidas, that various maladies were cured by the repetition of certain words, in the time of Minos, ...
— Primitive Psycho-Therapy and Quackery • Robert Means Lawrence
... out of a million of pages reprints one. Again it is judged, it is winnowed by all the winds of opinion, and what terrific selection has not passed on it, before it can be reprinted after twenty years, and reprinted after a century!—it is as if Minos and Rhadamanthus had indorsed the writing. 'Tis therefore an economy of time to read old and famed books. Nothing can be preserved which is not good; and I know beforehand that Pindar, Martial, Terence, Galen, Kepler, Galileo, Bacon, Erasmus, More, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I., No. 3, January 1858 - A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics • Various
... Gainas, Areadius, Sinon, Asmodeus, Salamanders, Anicetus, Atreus, Thyestus, Cesonius, Barca and Oreb, Omar and the Koran, Ptolomy Philadelphus, Arimanes, Gengis, Themuginus, Tigellinus, Adrean, Cacus, the Fates, Minos and Rhadamanthus," &c. &c. Rapport de Courtois su ...
— A Residence in France During the Years 1792, 1793, 1794 and 1795, • An English Lady
... my poore Boy Icarus, Thy Father Minos, that deni'de our course, The Sunne that sear'd the wings of my sweet Boy. Thy Brother Edward, and thy Selfe, the Sea Whose enuious Gulfe did swallow vp his life: Ah, kill me with thy Weapon, not with words, My brest can better brooke thy Daggers point, Then can my eares that Tragicke ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare
... head; Charon, freighting his boat with the shades of the dead; the Fates, in their garments of ermine bordered with purple; the avenging Erinnys; Rhadamanthus, before whom every Asiatic must render his account; Aeacus, before whom every European; and Minos, the dread arbiter of the judgment-seat. There, too, are to be seen those great criminals whose history is a warning to us: the giants, with dragons' feet extended in the burning gulf for many a mile; ...
— History of the Intellectual Development of Europe, Volume I (of 2) - Revised Edition • John William Draper
... Minos and all the great men say—"Let us worship God, and let us be just," nobody laughs; but everyone hisses the man who claims that one cannot please God unless when one dies one is holding a cow's tail, and the man who wants one to ...
— Voltaire's Philosophical Dictionary • Voltaire
... Michelangelo meant to represent by this figure the Renascence of Italy, still struggling with darkness. The whole work brings the times before us. There is the Christian Heaven above, and the heathen Styx below. Charon ferries the souls across the dark stream; they are first judged by Minos, and Minos is a portrait of a cardinal who had ventured to judge the rest of the picture before it was finished. There is in the picture all the whirling confusion of ideas which made that age terrible and beautiful by turns, devout and unbelieving, ...
— Ave Roma Immortalis, Vol. 2 - Studies from the Chronicles of Rome • Francis Marion Crawford
... delegated and appointed overseers, sat at Bishopsgate, at the end of a room on the ground floor, in three armchairs covered with black leather, with three busts of Minos, AEacus, and Rhadamanthus, in the wall above their heads, a table before them, and at their feet ...
— The Man Who Laughs • Victor Hugo
... soaring spirit; vain it was to pass The gates of heaven, and send thy soul in quest O'er air's wide realms; for thou hadst yet to die. Ay, dead is Pelops' father, heaven's own guest, And old Tithonus, rapt from earth to sky, And Minos, made the council-friend of Jove; And Panthus' son has yielded up his breath Once more, though down he pluck'd the shield, to prove His prowess under Troy, and bade grim death O'er skin and nerves alone exert its power, Not he, you grant, in nature meanly read. Yes, all "await ...
— Odes and Carmen Saeculare of Horace • Horace
... a scamp who would keep a gentleman from getting a fair price for his own property. Secondly, you're an ignorant fellow and don't know what you're talking about. I never heard of your Colonel Smith—I'm not drawing up real estate lots or plots of any kind. Thirdly, I solemnly swear by Minos, Alianthus, Rhododendron, Nebuchadnezzar, and all the infernal gods, that if you touch a hair of our heads I'll see Colonel Smith—I'll map the whole property and advertise it in every newspaper in New-York and Boston till it brings ten ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. II. July, 1862. No. 1. • Various
... replied the man with the lamp, in a tone which as little admitted of a reply as one of the famous decrees of Minos. ...
— The Vicomte de Bragelonne - Or Ten Years Later being the completion of "The Three - Musketeers" And "Twenty Years After" • Alexandre Dumas
... congeries of praises and blames, both cruel smart, as they say in the States. But the combined instigation of prose, rhyme, and retort would send Aristides himself to Tartarus, if it were not pretty certain that Minos would grant a stet processus under the circumstances. The first two verses are exaggerations standing on a basis of truth. The fourth verse is quite true: Sir W. H. was an Edinburgh Aristotle, with the difference of ancient and ...
— A Budget of Paradoxes, Volume I (of II) • Augustus De Morgan
... where in retirement once dwelt Cicero. No writer has known where to date the beginnings of civilization in Greece, but with Mycenae, Tiryns, and the Minoan palace of Crete laid bare, antiquarians have pointed the way to dates far older than anything before recorded. The palace of Minos is ancient enough to make the Homeric age seem modern. With the Dorian invasion of Greece about 1000 B.C., begins that Greek civilization of which we have so much authentic knowledge. Dorian influence was confined largely to Sparta, ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume 7 - Italy, Sicily, and Greece (Part One) • Various
... skies. Sun, stars and planets round the earth behold Their fanes of marble and their shrines of gold; The sea, the grove, the harvest and the vine Spring from their gods and claim a birth divine; While heroes, kings and sages of their times, Those gods on earth, are gods in happier climes; Minos in judgment sits, and Jove in power, And Odin's friends are ...
— The Columbiad • Joel Barlow |
