"Laocoon" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... become angels; so many deformities laboring for our own embellishment; so many clumsy chrysalises each working painfully toward the development of the butterfly within him. Our ideal is no longer a serene beauty of soul; it is the agony of Laocoon struggling with the hydra of evil. The lot is cast irrevocably. There are no more happy whole-natured men among us, nothing but so many candidates for heaven, galley-slaves ...
— Amiel's Journal • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... rubbed them with his hands, and looked at the brisk little lad. 'Why, that is Bertel,' said he. And my eye quitted the poor room, for I have so much to see. At the same moment I looked at the halls of the Vatican, where the marble gods are enthroned. I shone upon the group of the Laocoon; the stone seemed to sigh. I pressed a silent kiss on the lips of the Muses, and they seemed to stir and move. But my rays lingered longest about the Nile group with the colossal god. Leaning against the Sphinx, he lies there thoughtful ...
— Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen • Hans Christian Andersen
... daughter; but eventually I overcame my coyness, and uncovered the pretty kettle of fish of my infandum dolorem, and my ardent longing to hit upon some plan to extricate myself from the suffocating coils of such a Laocoon. ...
— Baboo Jabberjee, B.A. • F. Anstey
... artist, say they, sedulously avoided that distortion of features through excessive grief, which was incompatible with beauty of form. They would tone down the expression, as Lessing argues that the sculptor did in the features of Laocoon, until it became consistent with the lines of beauty. Timanthes, therefore, finding that, in order to render with fidelity the expression of Agamemnon, he must admit such a distortion of the features as would violate the rule, chose rather to veil the countenance. But we would ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Vol. 56, No. 346, August, 1844 • Various
... before all others now with much folk all about 40 Laocoon the fiery man runs from the burg adown, And shouts from far: 'O wretched men, how hath such madness grown? Deem ye the foe hath fared away? Deem ye that Danaan gifts May ever lack due share of guile? Are these Ulysses' shifts? For either the Achaeans lurk within ...
— The AEneids of Virgil - Done into English Verse • Virgil
... fancying what must have been the feeling of the inhabitants in regard to our ships—a strange sight upon this desert coast, and not a pleasing one to them, knowing that within those dark hulls were concealed the hosts of their armed invaders. Laocoon looked not with more dread upon the huge ribs of the Danaic horse than did the simple peasant of Anahuac upon this fleet of "oak leviathans" that lay within so short a ...
— The Rifle Rangers • Captain Mayne Reid
... slackening speed. It was, if anything, going faster. I snatched frantically at the cord and pulled about half-a-furlong into the carriage. We flashed past Ealing like a rocket, and I desperately drew in coils and coils of the communicator until I and Westaby Jones resembled the Laocoon. It was no good. Smoothly and irresistibly we glided into the terminus and drew up at the platform three minutes ahead ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, May 7, 1919. • Various
... humorous expression on his vulgar countenance, watching them at intervals, as they paraded through the hall, a large square space, adorned with bas-reliefs and busts, and containing a bronze copy of the Laocoon, for which Sir Robert (or rather we English) paid a thousand pounds; or they might be seen hopping speedily through the ground-floor apartments where there could be little to arrest the footsteps of the mediaeval-minded Vertue. Who but a courtier could give one glance ...
— The Wits and Beaux of Society - Volume 2 • Grace & Philip Wharton
... as those arabesques found at Herculaneum, where Anchises, AEneas, and Ascanius are burlesqued by heads of apes and pigs, or Arion, with a grotesque motion, is straddling a great trout; or like that ludicrous parody which came from the hand of Titian in a playful hour, when he sketched the Laocoon whose three figures consist of apes. Annibale had a peculiar facility in these incongruous inventions, and even the severe Leonardo da Vinci ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. II (of 3) - Edited, With Memoir And Notes, By His Son, The Earl Of Beaconsfield • Isaac D'Israeli
... said Donovan, have written a lot on that subject, the classical school and the romantic school and all that. The Laocoon interested me very much when I read it. Of course it is ...
— A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man • James Joyce
... Laocoon storming from Princelie Castel is hastning, And a far of beloing: What fond phantastical harebraine Madnesse hath enchaunted your wits, you townsmen unhappie? Weene you (blind hodipecks) the Greekish nauie returned, Or that their presents want craft? is subtil Vlisses ...
— The Function Of The Poet And Other Essays • James Russell Lowell
... Born 1758—Grassmarket Edinburgh—Education The Bibler's Seat The brothers Erskine Apprenticed to a coachbuilder The Trustees' Academy Huguenot artisans Alexander Runciman Copy of "The Laocoon" Assistant to Allan Ramsay Faculty of resourcefulness Begins as portrait painter Friendship with Miller of Dalswinton Miller and the first steamboat Visit to Italy Marriage to Barbara Foulis Burns the poet ...
— James Nasmyth's Autobiography • James Nasmyth
... under which he will treat them. Obviously in many cases there are noble themes of art for whose appreciation no particular delicacy of moral or religious taste is required. There is no reason why such a subject as the Laocoon should make a different impression on a saint and on a profligate. It appeals to the tragic sense, which may be as highly developed in one as in the other. But if the Annunciation be the theme, we can well understand ...
— The Faith of the Millions (2nd series) • George Tyrrell
... himself so master of the glories and the wrecks of Rome, that almost everything else that has been said of them seems superfluous. Hawthorne, in his Marble Fawn, comes nearest to him; but Byron's Gladiator and Apollo, if not his Laocoon, are unequalled. "The voice of Marius," says Scott, "could not sound more deep and solemn among the ruins of Carthage, than the strains of the pilgrim among the broken shrines and fallen statues of ...
— Byron • John Nichol
... injustice. The advantages of an open and those of an anonymous attack would be combined; and the authority of avowal would be united to the security of concealment. The serpents in Virgil, after they had destroyed Laocoon, found an asylum from the vengeance of the enraged people behind the shield of the statue of Minerva. And, in the same manner, everything that is grovelling and venomous, everything that can hiss, and everything that can ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 1 (of 4) - Contibutions to Knight's Quarterly Magazine] • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... philosophy of the variations of the beautiful, Lessing's analysis of the spheres of sculpture and poetry, in the Laocoon, was a very important contribution. But a true appreciation of these things is possible only in the light of a whole system of such art-casuistries. And it is in the criticism of painting that this truth most needs enforcing, for it is in popular judgments on pictures ...
— The Renaissance - Studies in Art and Poetry • Walter Pater
... "Lincoln's-Inn-Fields": not so poetical certainly; but take away the "pyramids," and what is the "desert"? Take away Stonehenge from Salisbury Plain, and it is nothing more than Hounslow Heath, or any other uninclosed down. It appears to me that St. Peter's the Coliseum, the Pantheon, the Palatine, the Apollo, the Laocoon, the Venus dei Medici, the Hercules, the Dying Gladiator, the Moses of Michelangelo, and all the higher works of Canova (I have already spoken of those of ancient Greece, still extant in that country, or ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Vol. V (of X) - Great Britain and Ireland III • Various
... could see some of the statues in Italy; the Laocoon, Niobe, and others I have seen. I think you would feel then what I felt—what I ...
— Elinor Wyllys - Vol. I • Susan Fenimore Cooper
... to add new planets to the galaxy of the firmament; that if we have not produced an Iliad or an AEnead, a Jerusalem Delivered, or a Paradise Lost, an Oratorio of the Creation, a Transfiguration, or a Laocoon, we have not the less ...
— Willis the Pilot • Paul Adrien
... your cameo?" she asked to change the subject, looking at his finger on which he wore a ring with a cameo of Laocoon's head. ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy
... Thus saying, Laocoon hurled his spear against the side of the horse, and it sent forth a hollow sound like a deep groan. But at this moment a stranger, having the appearance of a Greek, was brought before the king. Some Trojan shepherds, finding him loitering on ...
— The Story of Troy • Michael Clarke
... says the showman, 'let me—let me lead you through the statue gallery. 'Apollo,' you see. The 'Venus Hanadyomene,' the glorious Venus of the Louvre, which I saw in 1814, Colonel, in its glory—the 'Laocoon'—my friend Gibson's 'Nymth,' you see, is the only figure I admit among the antiques. Now up this stair to the students' room, where I trust my young friend, Mr. Newcome, will labour assiduously. Ars longa est, Mr. ...
— The Newcomes • William Makepeace Thackeray
... the Tiber gave an additional embellishment to this house, which was ornamented, internally, with the most perfect elegance. The saloon was decorated with copies, in plaster, of the best statues in Italy—Niobe, Laocoon, Venus de Medicis, and the Dying Gladiator. In the apartment where Corinne received company were instruments of music, books, and furniture not more remarkable for its simplicity than for its convenience, ...
— Corinne, Volume 1 (of 2) - Or Italy • Mme de Stael
... in the woes of Actual Human Life— If thou could'st see the serpent strife Which the Greek Art has made divine in stone— Could'st see the writhing limbs, the livid cheek, Note every pang, and hearken every shriek Of some despairing lost Laocoon, The human nature would thyself subdue To share the human woe before thine eye— Thy cheek would pale, and all thy soul be ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. III • Kuno Francke (Editor-in-Chief)
... to enjoy the experience. On my right sat an army captain, who had given more thought to the possible secrets of French chaffinches than to the approaching barrage. There was also the artist, who could draw a lizard's head like a Japanese print, but preferred to depict impressionistic Laocoon roots. ...
— Edge of the Jungle • William Beebe
... Hellenic and primitive art, whether antique or medieval, were unknown or unappreciated. The reigning models of taste in ancient sculpture were copies of fourth-century originals, Hellenistic or later productions. Hence Smollett's ecstasies over the Laocoon, the Niobe, and the Dying Gladiator. Greek art of the best period was hardly known in authentic examples; antiques so fine as the Torso of Hercules were rare. But while his failures show the danger of dogmatism in art criticism, Smollett is careful ...
— Travels Through France and Italy • Tobias Smollett
... artu with its delicately diamonded trunk, the great bread-fruit tall as a beech, and shadowy as a cave, the aoa, and the eternal cocoa-nut palm all grew here like brothers. Great ropes of wild vine twined like the snake of the laocoon from tree to tree, and all sorts of wonderful flowers, from the orchid shaped like a butterfly to the scarlet ...
— The Blue Lagoon - A Romance • H. de Vere Stacpoole
... altorilievo[obs3], mezzorilievo[obs3]; intaglio, anaglyph[obs3]; medal, medallion; cameo. marble, bronze, terra cotta[Sp], papier-mache; ceramic ware, pottery, porcelain, china, earthenware; cloisonne, enamel, faience, Laocoon, satsuma. statue.&c. (image) 554; cast &c (copy) 21; glyptotheca[obs3]. V. sculpture, carve, cut, chisel, model, mold; *cast. Adj. sculptured &c, v. in relief, anaglyptic[obs3], ceroplastic[obs3], ceramic; parian[obs3]; marble &c. ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... more than this, Andersen is not only the defender of talent and genius, but, at the same time, of every human heart which is unkindly and unjustly treated. And whilst he himself has so painfully suffered in that deep combat in which the Laocoon-snakes seize upon the outstretched hand; whilst he himself has been compelled to drink from that wormwood-steeped bowl which the cold-blooded and arrogant world so constantly offers to those who are in depressed circumstances, ...
— The True Story of My Life • Hans Christian Andersen
... Bay of Naples—a seraph with a golden lyre—and shrouded in a white cymar! No, no!" would he continue, turning his footsteps towards the adjacent room, where the suffering pangs of Apollo's high priest are painfully told in marble, "let let me rather contemplate the Laocoon! His agony seems to sympathise with mine—but was his fate as hard? He saw his sons dying before him; could a son, or sons, be as the wife of one's bosom? The serpent twines around him, too, awaking exquisite ...
— A Love Story • A Bushman
... occasionally, but not too often, he appealed to Dorothea, and discussed what she said, as if her sentiment were an item to be considered in the final judgment even of the Madonna di Foligno or the Laocoon. A sense of contributing to form the world's opinion makes conversation particularly cheerful; and Mr. Casaubon too was not without his pride in his young wife, who spoke better than most women, as indeed he had perceived in ...
— Middlemarch • George Eliot
... passion, such as marble shows When exquisitely chiselled, still lay there, But fixed as marble's unchanged aspect throws O'er the fair Venus, but for ever fair;[246] O'er the Laocoon's all eternal throes, And ever-dying Gladiator's air, Their energy like life forms all their fame, Yet looks not life, for they ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 6 • Lord Byron
... deeper meaning in poetic criticism. There too, the master is he who presents the natural shape, the curves, the thews of men, and does not labour and seek praise for faithful reproduction of the mere moral drapery of the hour, this or another; who gives you Hercules at strife with Antaeus, Laocoon writhing in the coils of the divine serpents, the wrestle with circumstance or passion, with outward destiny or inner character, in the free outlines of nature and reality. The capacity which it possesses for this ...
— Studies in Literature • John Morley
... Lessing, in his Laocoon and elsewhere, sought to deduce the special function of an art from a consideration of the means at its disposal. He took pains to define the boundaries of poetry and upon the ends and appliances of art. Among these his distinction ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... suspected a treacherous design in this huge contrivance was Laocoon, a priest of Apollo, who, in company with his two young sons, had issued from the city with the Trojans in order to offer a sacrifice to the gods. With all the eloquence at his command he urged his countrymen not to place confidence in any gift of the Greeks, ...
— Myths and Legends of Ancient Greece and Rome • E.M. Berens
... only that his legs were handsome: and the decapitation, whether of St. John or St. Cecilia; the massacre of any quantity of Innocents; the flaying, whether of Marsyas or St. Bartholomew, and the deaths, it might be of Laocoon by his vipers, it might be of Adonis by his pig, or it might be of Christ by His people, became, one and all, simply subjects for analysis of muscular mortification; and the vast body of artists accurately, ...
— On the Old Road Vol. 1 (of 2) - A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays and Articles on Art and Literature • John Ruskin
... battle, built a wooden horse, in which their leaders took ambush. Their fleet sailed to Tenedos. The Trojans, but for Capys and Laocoon, had dragged the horse forthwith as a trophy into Troy (1-72). Sinon, a Greek, brought before Priam, feigns righteous indignation against Greece. The Trojans sympathise and believe his story of wrongs done him by Ulysses (73-126). "When Greek plans of ...
— The Aeneid of Virgil - Translated into English Verse by E. Fairfax Taylor • Virgil
... lyrics, and fables, Lessing returned to Berlin and began to publish his "Literary Letters," making himself by the vigor and candor of his criticism a real force in contemporary literature. From Berlin he went to Breslau, where he made the first sketches of two of his greatest works, "Laocoon" and "Minna von Barnhelm," both of which were issued after his return to the Prussian capital. Failing in his effort to be appointed Director of the Royal Library by Frederick the Great, Lessing went to Hamburg in 1767 as critic of a new national theatre, and in connection with this enterprise ...
— Minna von Barnhelm • Gotthold Ephraim Lessing
... of the gallery is a fine copy in marble of the Laocoon, by Bandinelli, one of the rivals of Michael Angelo. When it was finished, the former boasted it was better than the original, to which Michael made the apt reply: "It is foolish for those who walk in the footsteps of others, to ...
— Views a-foot • J. Bayard Taylor
... miner cling to thee for safety, and they that hunt the wild-bird's egg on the sea-shaken cliff, as they swing over the frightful abyss. With the lasso the bold Matador, like the Retiarius of the ancient arena, makes the cast that is for life. Then the fine arts!—Carrara sends her block for the Laocoon by aid of thine; and what were all the galleries in Europe but a collection of gilt frames, but for thy backing and support. By thy subserviency alone (for what were panel or laminated copper ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, Number 361, November, 1845. • Various
... away the "pyramids," and what is the "desert?" Take away Stone-henge from Salisbury plain, and it is nothing more than Hounslow heath, or any other unenclosed down. It appears to me that St. Peter's, the Coliseum, the Pantheon, the Palatine, the Apollo, the Laocoon, the Venus di Medicis, the Hercules, the dying Gladiator, the Moses of Michael Angelo, and all the higher works of Canova, (I have already spoken of those of ancient Greece, still extant in that country, or transported to England,) are as ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. 6 (of 6) - With his Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore
... secondly, though the Greeks may not have enunciated the principle, that poetry is not the art suited for picturing nature, still they probably had an instinctive feeling of its truth. Poetry, as Lessing pointed out in his Laocoon, has the element of time in it, and is therefore inapplicable in the description of those things which, while composed of various parts, must be comprehended at one glance before the right impression ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volumes I-VI. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... state, and whether or not they express actual feelings and emotions—must be answered by each from a careful reading of the Sonnets themselves. To me, however, their message of sadness, loneliness, and implied appeal seems as clear and certain as the portrayal of agony in the marble of Laocoon. ...
— Testimony of the Sonnets as to the Authorship of the Shakespearean Plays and Poems • Jesse Johnson
... question of theories of criticism—can he do with less than, say, an acquaintance with Aristotle, and Lessing's "Laocoon," or even with so little? With Shakespeare and some of his commentators he ought to be at home; the "Paradoxe sur le Comedien" he can hardly escape, and the works of some of the modern English ...
— Our Stage and Its Critics • "E.F.S." of "The Westminster Gazette"
... flesh after the skin is torn off. It makes one shudder to look at it. In one of the halls are the statues of Niobe and her daughters, a beautiful group. Then there is the celebrated copy of the group of the Laocoon by Bandinelli, which none but the most perfect and skilful connoisseur could distinguish from the original. But it is totally impossible for me to describe the immense variety of paintings, historical, portrait and landscape; the statues single or in groups; the sarcophagi, altars, ...
— After Waterloo: Reminiscences of European Travel 1815-1819 • Major W. E Frye
... endeavours, my good young man, will lessen like those of the man who employed a spade to uproot a rock. It wants blasting. Your married clergy and merchandized aristocracy are coils: they are the ivy about your social tree: you would resemble Laocoon in the throes, if one could imagine you anything of ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... brooks, or rested beneath the shade of elms and willows. In the center of the picture, disclosing its bends and reaches, Ausable river flowed on its way to Lake Champlain. In places its waters were almost hidden by grape vines that clambered and twisted around bush and tree, forming "Laocoon groups" in ...
— See America First • Orville O. Hiestand
... Lucille over Raphael's superb frescoes in the Loggie, and in the chambers adjoining. The few pictures in the gallery are scarcely surpassed. The museum contains some of the noblest treasures of art, including the Laocoon, and Apollo Belvidere. The library is very valuable. The superb palace of ...
— The Harris-Ingram Experiment • Charles E. Bolton
... would accompany me through the sculpture department of the Vatican. I acceded, and thus took my first view of those innumerable art-treasures, passing from one object to another, at an easy pace, pausing hardly a moment anywhere, and dismissing even the Apollo, and the Laocoon, and the Torso of Hercules, in the space of half a dozen breaths. I was well enough content to do so, in order to get a general idea of the contents of the galleries, before settling ...
— Passages From the French and Italian Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... remarkable piece is shown in Fig. 232. The tablet is supported by six grotesque figures, somewhat human in appearance, whose limbs are intertwined with serpents, suggesting the famous group of the Laocoon. The work is roughly done and the details are not carried out in a very consistent manner, as the arms and legs of the figures become confused with the reptiles and are as likely to terminate in a snake's head as in a hand or foot. The rudely shaped bodies are covered with indented circlets ...
— Ancient art of the province of Chiriqui, Colombia • William Henry Holmes
... before the Laocoon with Rogers, who remarked that the absence of all parental feeling in the aspect of Laocoon, his self-engrossed indifference to the sufferings of his children (which is noticed and censured, I think, by Dr. Moore) adds to the pathos, if properly considered, by ...
— The Diary of an Ennuyee • Anna Brownell Jameson
... marble, and might therefore possess as much value as a treasure. Signor de Fredis went at once to the Prefect of the City, who followed him in company with the Aedile and some learned antiquaries. The work of art was brought to the light, and inspected. Its subject was seen to be the Trojan priest Laocoon, against whom Apollo had sent two snakes because he had warned his countrymen against receiving the dangerous Greek gift of the Trojan horse, in which ...
— Historical Miniatures • August Strindberg
... proudly, and exclaimed, 'but as for me,'—and the words hissed through his clenched teeth, while his body was thrown back, and every muscle and tendon was strained against the fetters which bound him, and, with his countenance distorted by agony and rage, he looked for a moment like Laocoon in a death struggle with coiling serpents; then the loud, clear, triumphant notes, 'Give me liberty,' electrified the assembly. It was not a prayer, but a stern demand, which would submit to no refusal or delay. The sound of his voice, as he spoke these memorable words, was like ...
— Patrick Henry • Moses Coit Tyler
... stick, and joining any pieces that might exist, in case of an accident when the kite was up, as it would have been no joke for it to have broken loose. But Fred was not very well up in his task, and somehow or other made a perfect Laocoon of himself with the string, and got at last into a regular tangle, so that fully half an hour was taken up in endeavours to get it right again, which was only done at last with a knife, and at the expense of many yards ...
— Hollowdell Grange - Holiday Hours in a Country Home • George Manville Fenn
... room as the Laocoon group would dominate a ten by twelve "parlor." His size was only a minor element in that impression. True, he was as great in bulk as Bonbright and his father rolled in one, towering inches above them, and they were ...
— Youth Challenges • Clarence B Kelland
... fits, And ever and anon with frightful din The leather sounds; he trembles from within. So when Troy chairmen bore the wooden steed, Pregnant with Greeks impatient to be freed, (Those bully Greeks, who, as the moderns do, Instead of paying chairmen, ran them through,) Laocoon[6] struck the outside with his spear, And each imprison'd hero quaked for fear. Now from all parts the swelling kennels flow, And bear their trophies with them as they go: Filth of all hues and odour, ...
— The Poems of Jonathan Swift, D.D., Volume I (of 2) • Jonathan Swift
... spake, his soul untamed By pain; for a brave man's part is to endure To the uttermost. And of the Trojans some Believed him, others for a wily knave Held him, of whose mind was Laocoon. Wisely he spake: "A deadly fraud is this," He said, "devised by the Achaean chiefs!" And cried to all straightway to burn the Horse, And know if aught within ...
— The Fall of Troy • Smyrnaeus Quintus
... please me more than any other artists. In the whole Collection they have but one of Salvator's, but that one, I think, is preferable to all Raphael's. I have not yet seen statues enough to be judge of their beauties. The Apollo of Belvidere & the celebrated Laocoon lose, therefore, much of their Excellence when seen by me. There is still a fine Collection in the Palace of Versailles, but the view of that once Royal Palace excites the most melancholy ideas. The furniture ...
— Before and after Waterloo - Letters from Edward Stanley, sometime Bishop of Norwich (1802;1814;1814) • Edward Stanley
... Calydon came the son of Oeneus, strong Meleagrus, and Laocoon—Laocoon the brother of Oeneus, though not by the same mother, for a serving-woman bare him; him, now growing old, Oeneus sent to guard his son: thus Meleagrus, still a youth, entered the bold band of heroes. No other ...
— The Argonautica • Apollonius Rhodius
... been dug up from the ruins of villas, and temples, and basilicas, where they had lain buried for ages. Of course, I enter on no description of these. Let me only remark, that though I had seen hundreds of copies of some of these sculptures,—the Apollo Belvedere and the Laocoon, for instance,—no copy I had ever seen had given me any but the faintest idea of the transcendent beauty and power of the originals. The artist, I found, had flung into them, without the slightest exaggeration of feature, a tremendous energy, an intense life, which ...
— Pilgrimage from the Alps to the Tiber - Or The Influence of Romanism on Trade, Justice, and Knowledge • James Aitken Wylie
... Reform, the Status of our Colonies, our Empire in India, our relations with Ireland both in respect to her trade and her prevalent religion; and then, blurring the picture, as some may think—certainly rendering it Titanesque and gloomy—we have the spectacle of Burke in his old age, like another Laocoon, writhing and wrestling with the French Revolution; and it may serve to give us some dim notion of how great a man Burke was, of how affluent a mind, of how potent an imagination, of how resistless an energy, that even ...
— Obiter Dicta - Second Series • Augustine Birrell
... secured against bad weather, by the hand of a carrier. It is obvious that he had no thoughts of leaving Rome, and that the Pope was still eager about the monument. Early in the spring he assisted at the discovery of the Laocoon. Francesco, the son of Giuliano da San Gallo, describes how Michelangelo was almost always at his father's house; and coming there one day, he went, at the architect's invitation, down to the ruins of the Palace of Titus. "We set off, all three together; ...
— The Life of Michelangelo Buonarroti • John Addington Symonds
... din The leather sounds; he trembles from within. So when Troy chairmen bore the wooden steed, Pregnant with Greeks impatient to be freed, (Those bully Greeks, who, as the moderns do, Instead of paying chairmen, ran them through), Laocoon struck the outside with his spear, And each imprison'd hero ...
— The Humourous Poetry of the English Language • James Parton
... Greeks are hidden in this horse, or it is an engine designed for some evil to our city. Put no faith in it, Trojans. Whatever it is, I fear the Greeks even when they tender gifts." Thus speaking, Laocoon hurled his spear into the ...
— Story of Aeneas • Michael Clarke
... himself came in, and showed me some of the most beautiful statues, among which were the Venus of Medici, the Minerva of the Parthenon, Diana, in her hunting costume, with her hand on the quiver and a doe by her side, and the unfortunate Laocoon and his two little sons, struggling in the fearful coils of two huge serpents, and stretching their arms to the skies with heart-rending cries. I also saw Apollo Belvidere. He had just slain the Python and was standing by a great pillar of rock, extending his graceful hand in triumph over ...
— Story of My Life • Helen Keller
... were familiar with the expression, as shown in the statues of the Laocoon and Arretino; but, as Duchenne remarks, they carried the transverse furrows across the whole breadth of the forehead, and thus committed a great anatomical mistake: this is likewise the case in some modern statues. It is, however, more probable ...
— The Expression of Emotion in Man and Animals • Charles Darwin
... on account of the strained position of the arms, and the peculiar one of the right leg, both in the statue and the painting; but surely the most obvious and natural resemblance, notwithstanding certain marked variations, is to the figure of Laocoon in the world-famous group of the Vatican. Of this a model had been made by Sansovino for Cardinal Domenico Grimani, and of that model a cast was kept in Titian's workshop, from which he is said ...
— The Earlier Work of Titian • Claude Phillips
... fabric in the town. But Capys, and the rest of sounder mind, The fatal present to the flames designed, Or to the wat'ry deep; at least to bore The hollow sides, and hidden frauds explore. The giddy vulgar, as their fancies guide, With noise say nothing, and in parts divide. Laocoon, follow'd by a num'rous crowd, Ran from the fort, and cried, from far, aloud: 'O wretched countrymen! what fury reigns? What more than madness has possess'd your brains? Think you the Grecians from your coasts are gone? And ...
— The Aeneid • Virgil
... hitherto invincible, on having exorcised my brain of its legionary spectres, and brushed away the swarming thoughts that used to persecute my solitude; I can now lie down as calmly as the lamb, and rise as gayly as the lark; instead of a writhing Laocoon, my just-found Harlequin's wand has changed me into infant Hercules brandishing his strangled snakes; I have mowed, for the nonce, the docks, mallows, hogweed, and wild-parsley of my rank field, and its smooth green carpet looks like a rich meadow; I am free, happy, well at ease: argal, ...
— The Complete Prose Works of Martin Farquhar Tupper • Martin Farquhar Tupper |
