"Prester" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the secret machinations of all that takes place, whither the wisdom of our neighbours tends, and controls at his will and pleasure all the affairs of Europe. His knowledge of what goes on extends as far as Africa and Asia, and he is informed of all that; is discussed in the privy council of Prester John[2] ...
— The Countess of Escarbagnas • Moliere
... strain, A young poet soothed his vein, But he had nor prose nor numbers, To express a princess' slumbers.— Youthful Richard had strange fancies, Was deep versed in old romances, And could talk whole hours upon The Great Cham and Prester John,— Tell the field in which the Sophi From the Tartar won a trophy— What he read with such delight of, Thought he could as eas'ly write of— But his over-young invention Kept not pace with brave intention. Twenty suns did rise and set, And he could no further get; But, unable to proceed, ...
— The Works of Charles Lamb in Four Volumes, Volume 4 • Charles Lamb
... Ages the Church of the East had spread over the whole of Central Asia. The curious legends of the powerful kingdom of Prester John, somewhere in the heart of Asia, grew out of the conversion, by Nestorian merchants in the eleventh century, of a certain King of Kerait, a kingdom of Tartary to the north of China. This king is said to ...
— The Church and the Barbarians - Being an Outline of the History of the Church from A.D. 461 to A.D. 1003 • William Holden Hutton
... last pamphlet of Marprelate. The soldiers bragged of nothing but of their employment in Ireland and the Low Countries—how they helped Drake to burn St. Domingo, or grave Maurice to hold out Breda. Tom Coryatt, or such weak-pated travellers, would babble of the Rialto and Prester John, and exhibit specimens of unicorns' horns or palm-leaves from the river Nilus. The courtier talked of the fair lady who gave him the glove which he wore in his hat as a favour; the poet of the last satire of Marston ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury
... kind of opinion of them than I have. The Courtier says, that till his time it was a disgrace to a gentleman to ride on one of these creatures: but the Abyssinians, on the contrary, the nearer they are to the person of Prester John, love to be mounted upon large mules, for the greatest ...
— The Essays of Montaigne, Complete • Michel de Montaigne
... marble; horned snakes With spines contorted: like to torrid sand Ammodytes, of hue invisible: Sole of all serpents Scytale to shed In vernal frosts his slough; and thirsty Dipsas; Dread Amphisbaena with his double head Tapering; and Natrix who in bubbling fount Fuses his venom. Greedy Prester swells His foaming jaws; Pareas, head erect Furrows with tail alone his sandy path; Swift Jaculus there, and Seps (25) whose poisonous juice Makes putrid flesh and frame: and there upreared His regal head, and frighted from his track With ...
— Pharsalia; Dramatic Episodes of the Civil Wars • Lucan
... whose method of getting rid of their enemies has given us the word assassin. To quote from Mandeville's "Travels," which has the essentials of the story, though the chief is here called Gatholonabes, and his domain is not in Syria but in the island Mistorak, "in the Lordship of Prester John:" ...
— Coleridge's Ancient Mariner and Select Poems • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... she laughed at him. "I knew you'd be somebody else if I only waited long enough. Now you're Prester John and Don Quixote rolled into one. You propose by the simple process of financing the operation to turn our slums into Happy Valleys, our missions into gardens of resurrection. It's a very beautiful purpose, Jerry, quite worthy of your ...
— Paradise Garden - The Satirical Narrative of a Great Experiment • George Gibbs
... you keep your old wont still; a Man can begin no Discourse to you, be it of Prester John, but you still ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn, Vol. II • Aphra Behn
... secret gardens And insect-laden skies— Where fiery plains stretch on and on To the purple country of Prester John ...
— The Ballad of the White Horse • G.K. Chesterton
... one ear, well wrought, and of good wool. Courage, comrade, up thy heart, billy! We will not be beasted at this bout, for I have got one trick. Ex hoc in hoc. There is no enchantment nor charm there, every one of you hath seen it. My 'prenticeship is out, I am a free man at this trade. I am prester mast (Prestre mace, maistre passe.), Prish, Brum! I should say, master past. O the drinkers, those that are a-dry, O poor thirsty souls! Good page, my friend, fill me here some, and crown the wine, I pray thee. Like a cardinal! Natura abhorret vacuum. Would you say that a fly could drink in this? ...
— Gargantua and Pantagruel, Complete. • Francois Rabelais
... place where I had drawn Brother Thomas from the water; but thereof I said no word, for indeed my dreams were haunted by his hooded face, like that of the snake which, as travellers tell, wears a hood in Prester John's country, and is the most venomous of beasts serpentine. So concerning Brother Thomas I held my peace, and the barque, swinging round a corner of the bank, soon brought us into a country with no sign of war on it, and here the poplar- ...
— A Monk of Fife • Andrew Lang
... the preamble to the edict of Paris issued two years later, Henry rehearses the ordinance and its motives: "Et pour ceste cause des nostre nouvel avenement a la couronne, voulans a l'exemple et imitation de feu nostredit seigneur et pere, travailler et prester la main a purger et nettoier nostre royaume d'une telle peste, nous aurions pour plus grande et prompte expedition desdites matieres et procez sur le fait desdites heresies, erreurs et fausses doctrines ordonne et estably une chambre particuliere en nostre parlement ...
— The Rise of the Hugenots, Vol. 1 (of 2) • Henry Martyn Baird
... "Our sentimental friend the moon Or possibly (fantastic, I confess) It may be Prester John's balloon Or an old battered lantern hung aloft To light poor travellers to their distress." ...
— Prufrock and Other Observations • T. S. Eliot
... Junius, who is to him, as to many people, more than entirely the enigma of an enigma, Hermes Trismegistus, or the mediaeval Prester John. Not only are most people unable to solve the enigma, but they have no idea of what it is that they are to solve. I have to inform Schlosser that there are three separate questions about Junius, of which he has evidently no distinct knowledge, ...
— The Notebook of an English Opium-Eater • Thomas de Quincey
... Sidney, who did not allow the sense of defeat to overcome his duty, "and be certain to play those balls well back. It was all through my stepping out to them that caused my collapse. Only be cautious and take things coolly, and you and Prester John will ...
— Tom Finch's Monkey - and How he Dined with the Admiral • John C. Hutcheson
... Whereas, the dream of Columbus's life was to make his way by an unknown route to what was known, or to what he considered to be known. He wished to find out an easy pathway to the territories of Kublai Khan, or Prester-John. ...
— The Life of Columbus • Arthur Helps
... grace command me any service to the world's end? I will go on the slightest errand now to the Antipodes, that you can devise to send me on; I will fetch you a toothpicker now from the farthest inch of Asia; bring you the length of Prester John's foot; fetch you a hair off the great Cham's beard; do you any embassage to the Pygmies,—rather than hold three words' conference with this harpy: You have ...
— Much Ado About Nothing • William Shakespeare [Knight edition]
... lane of scarlet and gold across Ocean-Sea. I wondered what temples, what towns, what spice ships at strange wharfs might lie under it afar. I wondered if there did dwell Prester John and if he would step down to give us welcome. The torrent of event strikes us day and night, all the hours, all the moments. Who can tell with distinctness color and shape ...
— 1492 • Mary Johnston
... Englond, in the town of Seynt Albones, nor have seen and gone through manye diverse Londes. And there goeth an old knight at arms, and one that connes Latyn, and hath been beyond the sea, and hath seen Prester John's country. And he hath been in an Yle that men clepen Burmah, and there bin women bearded. Now men call him Colonel Henry Yule, and he hath writ of thee in his great booke, Sir John, and he holds thee but lightly. For he saith ...
— Letters to Dead Authors • Andrew Lang
... that appears To sit still only while he steers, 270 And does not make a noise and stir Like ev'ry common mariner, Knew nothing of the card, nor star, And did not guide the man of war; Nor we, because we don't appear 275 In councils, do not govern there; While, like the mighty PRESTER JOHN, Whose person none dares look upon, But is preserv'd in close disguise, From being made cheap to vulgar eyes, 280 W' enjoy as large a pow'r unseen, To govern him, as he does men; And in the right of our Pope JOAN, Make Emp'rors at our feet fall down; Or JOAN DE PUCEL'S braver ...
— Hudibras • Samuel Butler
... blessed) Jewish for John, is probably a copy of the Chaldean Euahanes, the Oannes of BerosusEa Khan, Hea the fish. The Greeks made it Joannes; the Arabs "Yohanna" (contracted to "Hanna," Christian) and "Yabya" (Moslem). Prester (Priest) John is probably Ung Khan, the historian prince conquered and slain by Janghiz Khan in A.D. 1202. The modern history of "John" is very extensive: there may be a full hundred varieties and derivation' of ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 4 • Richard F. Burton
... Moslems from the rear. According to one form of the story the kingdom consisted of the Ten Tribes of Israel, [5] who had been converted to Christianity by Nestorian missionaries. [6] Over them reigned a priest-king named Prester (or Presbyter) John. The popes made several attempts to communicate with this mythical ruler. In the thirteenth century, however, Franciscan friars did penetrate to the heart of Asia. They returned to Europe with marvelous ...
— EARLY EUROPEAN HISTORY • HUTTON WEBSTER
... in her hands like the wild tom-cat. At that moment I declare I could have purred and rubbed my head against her knee. I would have done anything she bade me. If she had sent me to fetch the Cham of Tartary's cap or a hair of the Prester John's beard, I would have telephoned forthwith to Rogers to pack a suit-case and book a seat in ...
— Simon the Jester • William J. Locke
... "It is worthy of remark, that the great lakes of Upper Canada are liable to the formation of the Prester or water-spout, and that several instances are recorded of the occurrence of that truly extraordinary phenomenon, the theory of which, however, is well known. Whether electricity be a cause or a consequence of this ...
— The Conquest of Canada (Vol. 1 of 2) • George Warburton
... Kaffir rising, and by a combination of luck and courage manages to frustrate it. From beginning to end it is a book of stark adventure. The leader of the rising is a black missionary, who believes himself the incarnation of the mediaeval Abyssinian emperor Prester John. By means of a perverted Christianity, and the possession of the ruby collar which for centuries has been the Kaffir fetish, he organizes the natives of Southern Africa into a great army. But a revolution depends upon small ...
— Daisy's Aunt • E. F. (Edward Frederic) Benson
... breaking up; and, as you said yourself, to die and go to the devil is a pity for anyone. As for why I sell so cheap, I must explain to you there is a peculiarity about the bottle. Long ago, when the devil brought it first upon earth, it was extremely expensive, and was sold first of all to Prester John for many millions of dollars; but it cannot be sold at all, unless sold at a loss. If you sell it for as much as you paid for it, back it comes to you again like a homing pigeon. It follows that the price has kept ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 17 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... Parliament I was Prester John. Devout was my intent; I haunted meetings, Used zealous greetings, Crept full of devotion; Smectymnuus won me first, then holy Nye prevail, (111) Then Captain Kiffin (112) slops me with John of Leyden's tail, Then ...
— Cavalier Songs and Ballads of England from 1642 to 1684 • Charles Mackay |
