"Promethean" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... have, an adequate form for poetry of the highest class. Those who remember Rachel, however, can testify that she breathed the most ardent life into the frigid remains of Racine and Corneille, relumed them with Promethean heat, and showed them to be instinct with the truest and intensest passion—When she occupied the scene, there could be no thought of the old artificial times of hair powder and rouge, periwigs and patches, in connection with the characters ...
— Great Men and Famous Women, Vol. 8 (of 8) • Various
... according to that mythology, had rights of their own. To them belonged all the universe that had not been seized and reclaimed by the younger race of Odin and Aesir; and though this upstart dynasty, as the Frost Giants in Promethean phrase would have called it, well knew that Hel, one of this giant progeny, was fated to do them all mischief, and to outlive them, they took her and made her queen of Niflheim, and mistress over nine worlds. There, in a bitterly cold place, she received ...
— Popular Tales from the Norse • Sir George Webbe Dasent
... A Promethean Poet was there. He had touched the Heavenly flame; he had lasted the Waters of Inspiration: he had drained the Crystal Cup of Fancy, finding therein neither Lees nor Dregs, which bite the tongue, stifle the ...
— A Spray of Kentucky Pine • George Douglass Sherley
... scourges and goads me with the spur of fact. If I heeded him, the sweet-visaged earth would vanish into nothing, and I should hold in my hand nought but an aimless, soulless lump of dead matter. But although the body physical is rooted alive to the Promethean rock, the spirit-proud huntress of the air will still pursue the shining, ...
— The World I Live In • Helen Keller
... pure clarity of space, relationships exist. Indeed, it requires neither time nor space, number nor quantity. As the mathematician approaches the limits already achieved by study, the colder and thinner becomes the air and the fewer the contacts with the affairs of every day. The Promethean fire of pure mathematics is perhaps the greatest of all in man's catalogue of gifts; but it is not most itself, but least so, when, immersed in the manifoldness of phenomenal life, it is made to serve purely ...
— Four-Dimensional Vistas • Claude Fayette Bragdon
... friendship welcomes from no venal muse, When worth time-honour'd, still as frank as youth, Owns that her words of praise are words of truth! Benign Landaff! to liberal arts a friend! May all those arts thy well-earned fame attend! Grateful for all thy kindness to his sire, My filial sculptor, with Promethean fire, While yet a boy, confess'd a proud design, To make thy spirit in his marble shine; And, with expression eloquently just, Charm future Christians by thy breathing bust, That, hope, with many a plan devoutly bold, The great ...
— Poems on Serious and Sacred Subjects - Printed only as Private Tokens of Regard, for the Particular - Friends of the Author • William Hayley
... and then—Put out the light? If I quench thee, thou flaming minister, I can again thy former light restore, Should I repent me;—but once put out thy light, Thou cunning'st pattern of excelling nature, I know not where is the Promethean heat That can thy light relume. When I have plucked thy rose, I cannot give it vital growth again; It needs ...
— Such is Life • Joseph Furphy
... her sister, even as she Thundering, or like her confluent spring-tides brightening, And like her darkness lightening; The song that moved about him silent, now Both soundless wings refolded and refurled On that Promethean brow, Then quivering as for flight that wakes ...
— Songs of the Springtides and Birthday Ode - Taken from The Collected Poetical Works of Algernon Charles - Swinburne—Vol. III • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... that I might see her; and I found her charming, though her old dancing master allowed her to turn in her toes. All that this young and beautiful girl wanted was the Promethean spark, the colour of life; her whiteness was too like snow, and was distressing to ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... power was given Not to dissolve our clay, But draw Promethean beams from heaven To purge ...
— The Lost Stradivarius • John Meade Falkner
... when atoms jostle, The System is in peril. But I speak Of things you know not. Well, to earth again! This precious thing of dust—this bright Olimpia— This marvellous Virgin, is a marble maid— An Idol, but a cold one to your heat Promethean, and unkindled ...
— The Works of Lord Byron - Poetry, Volume V. • Lord Byron
... success and failure alike render the candidates admissible—no matter the littleness of the source from whence they sprung. Lord Melbourne's "premiership" gave shape to the all but Promethean wax. The failure of John Frost, his humble follower, secured his right to Fame's posthumous honours. All partiality is here forgotten. The titled premier, in the haunts of men, may boast his monarch's palace as his ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various
... prejudice nor bias—no party, no creed, no dogma of politics. None of these shall assail him. Yes; when the storm of battle blows darkest and rages highest, the memory of Washington shall nerve every American arm and cheer every American heart. It shall relume that Promethean fire, that sublime flame of patriotism, that devoted love of country, which his words have commended, which his example ...
— Washington's Birthday • Various
... of all the stoned names that deck thy history's page, Thy sainted kings, thy warriors proud, thy statesmen stern and sage, None, none received the glorious light, the strange Promethean spark That Heaven vouchsafed thy spotless maid, ...
— The Poetical Works of Mrs. Leprohon (Mrs. R.E. Mullins) • Rosanna Eleanor Leprohon
... that this was an evidence of a lower imaginative faculty in me rather than in him. He had less humor, but he had infinitely more of the grace that belongs to immortality. He had a spirit that withstood adversity, hardship, failure, with a sort of ancient dignity and that could face tragedy with Promethean fortitude. And I love best to think of him in relation to the bare and awful sorrows that show so nakedly in the lives of poor, simple folk. I can see him now in the dismal twilight of one winter evening, as he started on that strange mission to Mrs. Martin, ...
— A Circuit Rider's Wife • Corra Harris
... can'st inspire The soul of cheerfulness, and best array A sullen hour in smiles?—O haste to pay The cordial visit sullen hours require!— Around the circling walls a glowing fire Shines;—but it vainly shines in this delay To blend thy spirit's warm Promethean light. Come then, at Science', and at Friendship's call, Their vow'd Disciple;—come, for they invite! The social Powers without thee languish all. Come, that I may not hear the winds of Night, Nor count the heavy eave-drops as ...
— Original sonnets on various subjects; and odes paraphrased from Horace • Anna Seward
... advertisement is as follows: "These are to give notice, that Sir Kenelme Digbies Sympathetical Powder prepar'd by Promethean fire, curing all green wounds that come within the compass of a Remedy; and likewise the Tooth-ache infallibly in a very short time: Is to be had at Mr Nathanael Brook's at the Angel ...
— Bygone Beliefs • H. Stanley Redgrove
... gods; Discrowned and timid, thoughtless, worn, The child of genius sits forlorn: Between two sleeps a short day's stealth, 'Mid many ails a brittle health, A cripple of God, half true, half formed, And by great sparks Promethean warmed, Constrained by impotence to adjourn To infinite time his eager turn, His lot of action at the urn. He by false usage pinned about No breath therein, no passage out, Cast wishful glances at the stars And wishful ...
— Poems - Household Edition • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... stately youth, of noble bearing, of high purpose, of fastidious taste; and, if his broad forehead, his clear, large blue eyes, his commanding features, his lips, firm, yet plastic to every change of thought and feeling, were not an empty mask, might not improbably claim that Promethean quality of which the girl's letter had spoken,—the strange, divine, dread ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... the riches that from airy dreams In secret grottos and in laurel bow'rs, I have, by golden Clio's2 gift, acquir'd. Verse is a work divine; despise not thou Verse therefore, which evinces (nothing more) 20 Man's heav'nly source, and which, retaining still Some scintillations of Promethean fire, Bespeaks him animated from above. The Gods love verse; the infernal Pow'rs themselves Confess the influence of verse, which stirs The lowest Deep, and binds in triple chains Of adamant both Pluto and ...
— Poemata (William Cowper, trans.) • John Milton |
