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More "Herculean" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... in every respect worthy of his voice. He was an enormous, six-foot high, herculean fellow, with his shirt-sleeves rolled up to his shoulders, and the disorderly appearance of his dolman and the crooked cock of his turban more than justified the suspicion that he had already taken far more than was ...
— Halil the Pedlar - A Tale of Old Stambul • Mr Jkai
... idea of Fingal pervades most of Ossian's poems he is seldom introduced in propria persona. Even when attention is directed to him the poet merely and meagerly sketches the herculean outline, and leaves our imagination to ...
— The Celtic Magazine, Vol. 1, No. 3, January 1876 • Various
... Herculean task to perform—a double task—viz., to amalgamate two nations, and also to fuse and merge two languages into one. He was absolutely compelled, by the circumstances under which he was placed, to grapple with both these vast undertakings. If, at the time when, in his park at Rouen, he ...
— William the Conqueror - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... we discern, by direct light, that he is 'of Herculean stature;' and infer, with probability, that he is of truculent moustachioed aspect,—for Royalist Officers now leave the upper lip unshaven; that he is of indomitable bull-heart; and also, unfortunately, of ...
— The French Revolution • Thomas Carlyle
... however, that the Science of Society shall be, at some time in the future, completed, and in such form as shall give to the world the fruits of Professor Sumner's intellectual power, clarity of vision, and truly herculean industry. ...
— Folkways - A Study of the Sociological Importance of Usages, Manners, Customs, Mores, and Morals • William Graham Sumner
... Dink was the polite correctness of her letters. But then something, he said to himself, must be allowed for maiden modesty. His own letters were the product of afternoons and evenings. The herculean difficulty that he experienced in covering four sheets of paper—even when writing a flowing hand and allowing half a page for the signature—secretly worried him. It seemed as though something was lacking in his character or in the strength of ...
— The Varmint • Owen Johnson
... involved, it is easier to be confused by the novel flashing of strange lights than to discern the central vivifying altar-flame. It may prove that what seem to us the regrettable accidents of Browning's genius are no malfortunate flaws, but as germane thereto as his Herculean ruggednesses are to Shakspere, as the laboured inversions of his blank verse are to Milton, as his austere concision is to Dante. Meanwhile, to the more exigent among us at any rate, the flaws seem flaws, and ...
— Life of Robert Browning • William Sharp
... narrator as meaning "a large strong man that is always laughing." The word is derived from the root ngisi, "to show the teeth" (Tag.). This giant has been described to me as being of herculean size and strength, sly, and possessing an upper lip so large that when it is thrown back it completely covers the demon's face. The Bungisngis can lift a huge animal as easily as ...
— Filipino Popular Tales • Dean S. Fansler
... blade." Reuben had made his escape, and gone to inform his father of this new disaster. The struggle was brief, for the antagonist of Landon, closing at the peril of his life, and being a man of herculean strength, wrested the sword from the Englishman's grasp, and held him at ...
— The Three Brides, Love in a Cottage, and Other Tales • Francis A. Durivage
... The Indian messenger had disappeared, and, presumably, had reached the tug, and was giving the message for help. Then Blake bent to his Herculean task again. When next he looked up, having scooped a slight hole in the side of the hill, he saw a procession of men running up—men with picks and shovels over their shoulders. He saw, too, a big slice of the hill ...
— The Moving Picture Boys at Panama - Stirring Adventures Along the Great Canal • Victor Appleton
... of Tyre has always been considered one of the greatest of Alexander's exploits. The boldness, the perseverance, the indomitable energy which he himself and all his army manifested, during the seven months of their Herculean toil, attracted the admiration of the world. And yet we find our feelings of sympathy for his character, and interest in his fate, somewhat alienated by the indications of pride, imperiousness, and cruelty which begin to appear. While he rises in our estimation ...
— Alexander the Great - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... tho Flesh and Blood be frail, yet the dear Hopes of thee has made me hold out with a Herculean Courage— Stay, where shall I carry her? not to my own Apartment; Ariadne may surprize me: I'll to the Mountebank here i'th' Piazza, he has a Cure for all things, even for longing Love, and for a Pistole ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn, Vol. I (of 6) • Aphra Behn
... majestic, irresistible America,"—this was the vision that nerved King to herculean labor, to a most real martyrdom. Condemned to the slow suicide of over-work, he gave his life a conscious offering to freedom. "What a year to live in," he writes, "worth all other times ever known in our history ...
— Starr King in California • William Day Simonds
... soul, but it was lodged in a powerful Herculean body, and carnal images began to disturb his sleep and his vigils. He drove them away; they came back again; and he murmured from time to time, smiling ...
— The works of Guy de Maupassant, Vol. 5 (of 8) - Une Vie and Other Stories • Guy de Maupassant 1850-1893
... not get beyond a derby-hat and a sack-coat, varied toward the end by a cutaway. In the outing dress he wore at home he was always effective, but there was something in Jeff's figure which did not lend itself to more formal fashion; something of herculean proportion which would have marked him of a classic beauty perhaps if he had not been in clothes at all, or of a yeomanly vigor and force if he had been clad for work, but which seemed to threaten the more worldly conceptions of the tailor with danger. ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... no trouble to Audrey to dash off half a dozen letters before post-time, or to drive into Sittingbourne to meet a batch of boys' relatives. She was naturally active, and hated an idle moment; but no work suited her so well as this Herculean task of evoking order out of the Blake chaos. Molly was so charmed with her energy, so fired by her example, that she worked like a dozen Mollies. The books were soon unpacked and on the table; then Biddy was called in to clear away the straw and hampers, and to have a grand sweep. Nothing ...
— Lover or Friend • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... scrambled up the ladder, a blanket in her arms. Polly had seen all and had not waited for orders. Gym work back in Annapolis stood in good stead at that moment. Shelby flung the blanket about Tzaritza's sizzling fur, smothered out the flame, then by some herculean mustering of strength, caught the huge dog in his arms and crawled step by step down the ladder from which Polly had quickly scrambled. A dozen hands lent aid and poor burned Tzaritza was carried to the stables, Peggy and Polly close beside her. Others could now care for Miss Sturgis, who, ...
— Peggy Stewart at School • Gabrielle E. Jackson
... Negro's right to protest against the wrongs heaped upon him is less restricted, and, his means of protection and defense are more numerous in the North than in the South. Already in at least one State north of Mason and Dixon's line Herculean efforts are being put forth to disfranchise the colored man by constitutional enactment; the discrimination against a man on account of his color, and the lynching of Negroes and the burning of their houses by infuriated mobs of white men, are not unheard of things in the North ...
— Masterpieces of Negro Eloquence - The Best Speeches Delivered by the Negro from the days of - Slavery to the Present Time • Various
... man full of vigour, and well worthy of his Herculean origin. His head was joined to his shoulders by a neck massive as a bull's, and almost without a curve; his hair, black and lustrous, twisted itself into rebellious little curls, here and there concealing the circlet of his diadem; his ...
— King Candaules • Theophile Gautier
... looked with contempt on the Herculean labors of his rival to civilize and enrich his country, and remarked "that the czar might amuse himself as he saw fit in building a city, but that he should soon take it from him, and set fire to his wooden house;" a bombastic boast, which, like most ...
— A Modern History, From the Time of Luther to the Fall of Napoleon - For the Use of Schools and Colleges • John Lord
... supposed to be the oldest of the sisterhood, holds the book close to her eyes, as if from dimness of sight, which fact, contradicted as it is by a frame of obviously Herculean strength, gives a mysterious intentness to ...
— The Old Masters and Their Pictures - For the Use of Schools and Learners in Art • Sarah Tytler
... with herculean strength who is compelled by circumstances to follow a sedentary occupation, some minute exquisite work of the hands, for example, or to engage in study and mental labor demanding quite other powers, and just those which he has not got,—compelled, ...
— The Essays Of Arthur Schopenhauer: The Wisdom of Life • Arthur Schopenhauer
... that dares to think! Give me the mind that grasps with herculean power the rocks that crush the treasures of intellectual growth, and tears them from their foundation! Give me the mind that dares to step from the fallen stones, that leaps from rock to rock past the dark rift torn in the superstitions of ages ...
— Men, Women, and Gods - And Other Lectures • Helen H. Gardener
... bring to mind the nurse-tales of his childhood—the savage deeds of the outlaw Doones in the depth of Bagworthy Forest, the beauty of the hapless maid brought up in the midst of them, the plain John Ridd's Herculean power, and (memory's too congenial food) the exploits ...
— Lorna Doone - A Romance of Exmoor • R. D. Blackmore
... for many miles along the banks of the river were erected by the systematic herculean toil of ...
— Tales of Aztlan • George Hartmann
... were fifty or sixty years subsequent to Chaucer, were not so modern in their language as their celebrated predecessor. Having, in few words, prove'd (it is presume'd) this Sonnet to be spurious, an apology may be thought necessary for not saying a great deal more;—but this Herculean task is left, in deference, to the disputants on Vortigern; who will, doubtless, engage in it, as a matter of great importance, and, once more, lay the world under very heavy obligations, with various Pamphlets ...
— Broad Grins • George Colman, the Younger
... congratulations on your seventieth year, which seems more robust to me than the twentieth of a good many others! What a Herculean constitution you have! Bathing in an icy stream is a proof of strength that bewilders me, and is a mark of a "reserve force" that is reassuring to your friends. May you live long. Take care of yourself for your dear grandchildren, for the good Maurice, for me too, for all the world, ...
— The George Sand-Gustave Flaubert Letters • George Sand, Gustave Flaubert
... prepared to appreciate the great Artist in his enthusiastic rendering of the master-pieces of the man he loved; prepared to greet him when he electrifies us with his wonderful Cyclopean harmonies, written for his own Herculean grasp, sparkling with his own Promethean fire, which no meaner hand can ever hope to master! "Hear Liszt and die," has been said by some of his enthusiastic admirers—understand him and ...
— Life of Chopin • Franz Liszt
... among the garrison, judging by the men of the Twenty-Third, nor any fear shown at any time among those upon whose courage the fate of Harrisburg seemed likely to rest. While in that threatened city the chief authorities were staggering under the herculean work of organizing an unwilling or at least an indifferent people into a disciplined force capable of resistance, and of infusing into them somewhat of the patriotic zeal which shone so brightly in the conduct of their fellow-citizens ...
— Our campaign around Gettysburg • John Lockwood
... workmen are busy to-day with ropes and axe, pick and shovel. But the task is vast, it is herculean, like unto the cleaning of ...
— The Johnstown Horror • James Herbert Walker
... climb that," thought the sturdy lad, after scrutinizing the herculean task, and watching one of the eagles soaring far above the summit. "I think there is enough foothold, and I can use the vines to help pull me up; but, if the eagles should catch me at ...
— The Jungle Fugitives • Edward S. Ellis
... a Herculean task, as I had built her too high above high water-mark, and it took me nearly a day to get her down and afloat. Finding I could not move her with my own bodily strength, I had to carry an anchor out and attach a block-tackle and thus, with the help of my faithful old comrade, "Eddy," ...
— Jethou - or Crusoe Life in the Channel Isles • E. R. Suffling
... making herculean efforts for an "on to Washington," while the enemy think he merely designs a defense of Richmond. Troops are on the move, all the ...
— A Rebel War Clerk's Diary at the Confederate States Capital • John Beauchamp Jones
... and black hair and beard; a constant smile beamed on his gay countenance, while he playfully addressed his little son and gentle wife across the table. The other was his brother, Barnabas—a man of herculean form and strength. His face was marked by smallpox; he wore neither beard or mustache, and his hair was combed smoothly back, like a peasant's. His disposition was melancholy and taciturn; but he seemed constantly striving to atone, by the ...
— The Continental Classics, Volume XVIII., Mystery Tales • Various
... charge of the Union Pacific Railroad, declares that since its present management was inaugurated, in 1884, its affairs have been fairly and prudently conducted, and that the present administration "has devoted itself honestly and intelligently to the herculean task of rescuing the Union Pacific Railway from the insolvency which seriously threatened it at the inception of its work;" that it "has devoted itself, by rigid economy, by intelligent management, and by ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 3 (of 3) of Volume 8: Grover Cleveland, First Term. • Grover Cleveland
... he continued his studies with an ardour that commands our wonder and respect; and it was at Vaucluse that he either meditated or wrote his most important compositions. Here he undertook a history of Rome, from Romulus down to Titus Vespasian. This Herculean task he never finished; but there remain two fragments of it, namely, four books, De Rebus Memorandis, and another tract entitled Vitarum Virorum Illustrium Epitome, being sketches of illustrious men from the founder of Rome ...
— The Sonnets, Triumphs, and Other Poems of Petrarch • Petrarch
... her gaunt frame, strong if angular features, gave me the sight of another ghost from the past. Ghosts, ghosts, the world is getting old and weary, and astride of it just now is the pessimist Nietzsche, who, disguised as a herculean boy, is deceiving his worshippers with the belief that he is young and a preacher of the joyful doctrines of youth. Be not deceived, he is but another veiled prophet. His mask is that of a grinning skeleton, his words are ...
— Old Fogy - His Musical Opinions and Grotesques • James Huneker
... his goods and gods, to that wonderfully winning region, in the estimation of this people, the valley of the Mississippi. The emigrant was a stout, burly, bluff old fellow, with full round cheeks, a quick, twinkling eye, and limbs rather Herculean than human. He might have been fifty-five years or so; and his two sons, one of them a man grown, the other a tall and goodly youth of eighteen, promised well to be just such vigorous and healthy-looking personages as their father. The old woman, by whom we mean—in the manner of speech common ...
— Guy Rivers: A Tale of Georgia • William Gilmore Simms
... audience so much in favour of the vice of gambling, as to make them shut out its horrible deformity, must possess more than ordinary powers, and we question much whether, of the whole fraternity of gamblers, one could be found better adapted for the Herculean task which Mr. Freeman set himself. That which the mind is accustomed steadily to dwell upon, and upon which action is had repeatedly, will scarcely want for self-justification—and while the error of proceeding ...
— Secret Band of Brothers • Jonathan Harrington Green
... were soon dressed in these diving suits, as were Captain Nemo and one of his companions—a herculean type who must have been prodigiously strong. All that remained was to encase one's head in its metal sphere. But before proceeding with this operation, I asked the captain for permission to examine the rifles set ...
— 20000 Leagues Under the Seas • Jules Verne
... taken to the proximity of our meeting-place to the bank—"in case some of the day louts should be fooling about," as Warminster explained. Thereupon, with herculean efforts, we shoved out the stern across stream, the prow being still tethered; and catching on to a stake, we had the satisfaction not only of feeling ourselves in an unassailable position, but of knowing that we were effectually blocking the river for any presumptuous wayfarer ...
— Tom, Dick and Harry • Talbot Baines Reed
... our duty to co-operate with the Bluebottles. The theory with which we beguiled ourselves, that the Bluebottles were physically starvelings and required our Herculean aid to lift the stretchers up the stairs, was palpably nonsense. Still we told ourselves that we, as disciplined soldiers, were here to give a hand to a civilian mob who might otherwise faint and fail. A singular delusion! Time has proved its falsity, for with the issue of ...
— Observations of an Orderly - Some Glimpses of Life and Work in an English War Hospital • Ward Muir
... shower out of a crater. "A moi, a moi!" was the cry, from old men, young women, soldiers, shopkeepers, and pretres, scuffling and shoving together. Careless at once of grammar and of grace, I pulled and shouted with the best, till at length our plunder was caught, corded and poised on an herculean neck. We followed in the wake, H. trembling lest the cord should break, and we experience a pre-Alpine avalanche. At length, however, we breathed more freely in rooms au ...
— Sunny Memories of Foreign Lands V2 • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... with the force of a ram that discharges its ponderous body Straight at the rear elevation of the luckless culler of simples, The foot of Herculean Kilgore—statesman of surname suggestive Or carnage unspeakable!—lit like a missile prodigious Upon the Congressional door with a monstrous and mighty momentum, Causing that vain ineffective bar to political freedom To fly from its hinges, effacing the nasal ...
— Shapes of Clay • Ambrose Bierce
... uncontrolable; he poised his father's sword, put on his helmet, and talked of the best method of killing all the rebel generals. The plans he laid for terminating the contest appeared so feasible to Constantia, that at length (though not without tears) she consented that he should enter on the Herculean labour of destroying the many-headed monster, Rebellion. Isabel thought that her father and uncle were likely to know what was best to be done, but as often as she ventured to hint that he might ...
— The Loyalists, Vol. 1-3 - An Historical Novel • Jane West
... of which one chair had been broken. Young Tom thought it was time to fight the railroad, and perceived in Austen the elements of a rebel leader. Austen had undertaken to throw young Tom out of a front window, which was a large, old-fashioned one,—and after Herculean efforts had actually got him on the ledge, when something in the street caught his eye and made him desist abruptly. The something was the vision of a young woman in a brown linen suit seated in a runabout and driving a horse almost ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... increasing the extent of cleared land from year to year. The primeval jungles of Singapore are so thickly timbered and covered with underwood and large, tough creepers, that the man who undertakes to clear them has before him an Herculean task. According to the best information I could obtain, it requires a cash outlay of sixty dollars to clear a single acre; and even that large sum does not thoroughly stump it (i. e. clear off all the large roots and stumps of ...
— Trade and Travel in the Far East - or Recollections of twenty-one years passed in Java, - Singapore, Australia and China. • G. F. Davidson
... fact that she was snubbed by the Congress of Women, meeting in New York and sponsored by Mary A. Livermore, Julia Ward Howe, and Maria Mitchell. This drawing away of women hurt her far more than newspaper gibes. In fact she was sadly disappointed in women's response to the herculean effort she was ...
— Susan B. Anthony - Rebel, Crusader, Humanitarian • Alma Lutz
... and in its warmth of color. He gazed upon it long and fixedly, estimated the prodigious labor that had been bestowed upon it, and, not being able to find any recompense sufficiently great for this Herculean effort, he passed his arm round the painter's neck and embraced him. The surintendant, by this action, had utterly ruined a suit of clothes worth a thousand pistoles, but he had satisfied, more than satisfied, ...
— The Man in the Iron Mask • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... coming, and braced himself for the herculean effort that would be necessary in the next breath. Reaching so far that he was in danger of losing his own balance, he coolly awaited the critical moment. Then his big hand closed like the paw of a grizzly bear on the shoulder of Victor Shelton. A tremendous wrench and he ...
— Deerfoot in The Mountains • Edward S. Ellis
... like the Fourth. There was a great hulking fellow named Gardiner, who was boasting one day that he could carry twice his own weight He was told that he could not so much as lift his own, and was persuaded into a two-handled hamper, in which he made herculean efforts to lift himself. There was another man who received with perfect gravity the chaffing statement of a comrade, to the effect that he had shot a wood-pigeon at the North Pole, and that the bird had fallen on the needle on ...
— The Making Of A Novelist - An Experiment In Autobiography • David Christie Murray
... father, endowed with herculean strength, the Tsarevich Alexis, thin, pale, and delicate, makes a sad figure. Most historians, following the example of Voltaire, have represented this prince as a narrow-minded person, a victim of the bigoted and intolerant education of the clergy. Merezhkovsky, ...
— Contemporary Russian Novelists • Serge Persky
... and the tenour of the conversation was, that Larry assured his companion he might carry off the girl without fear of Egan, but her name Andy could not discover. His own name he heard more than once, and voluptuous raptures poured forth about lovely lips and hips and ankles from the herculean knight of the blunderbuss, amidst the maudlin admiration and hiccups of Larry, who continued to brag of his power, and profess his readiness to stand by his friend in carrying ...
— Handy Andy, Vol. 2 - A Tale of Irish Life • Samuel Lover
... doubtless intended to bring out in a stronger degree certain particular qualities of tone: at the same time we may be sure that they had no idea of attempting to improve upon Stradivari in his own field of work, for they must have well known the Herculean character of such a task. On the other hand, had these remarkable makers been mere copyists, they would certainly have handed down to us more instruments moulded in exact accord with the style of their great teacher; while, at the same ...
— The Violin - Its Famous Makers and Their Imitators • George Hart
... to attend you at the steerage; You dignify the noble race, Content yourself with humbler place. Now learning, valour, virtue, sense, To titles give the sole pretence. St George beheld thee with delight Vouchsafe to be an azure knight, When on thy breasts and sides herculean He fixed the ...
— Specimens with Memoirs of the Less-known British Poets, Complete • George Gilfillan
... service and were regarded as experts in their profession, and, consequently, played an important part in the organization and function of the battle units. In the transport service, his powerful physical endurance and strength made him a determining factor in the Herculean efforts to supply men, munitions, and provisions for the battlefields of France. In order to appreciate the magnitude of his service, let us briefly note ...
— Kelly Miller's History of the World War for Human Rights • Kelly Miller
... This herculean attempt at reassembling many styles in a unique style that would best express a certain frozen symbolism was the amiable mania his life long of Moreau. He compelled the spirits to come to his bidding. ...
— Promenades of an Impressionist • James Huneker
... perfectly quiet, and Mr. Martin goes on doing justice in his own peculiar fashion every week. When the noise, heat, and crowd in his sessions court become beyond all bearing, he roars with his stentorian voice to clear the court; and if that be not done forthwith, he with his own two Herculean arms seizes the loudest two disputants, knocks their heads together, thrusts them bawling as they go out of the door and flings ...
— The Life and Letters of Maria Edgeworth, Vol. 2 • Maria Edgeworth
... dark apartments, where many of the workmen are negroes, is especially high-flavored and like a chapter in Vathek. Writers usually talk of "life in the iron-mills" as conducing to the development of herculean strength. But iron-workers are apt to be dry and wiry, their flesh half sweated off and their complexions unnaturally pale. For true muscular development, rather Flemish and beefy in quality, we ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - April, 1873, Vol. XI, No. 25. • Various
... men, gave them a few instructions in a low tone of voice, and three seated themselves on the port side, while Shaddy and the fourth, a herculean fellow with muscles which bulged out like huge ropes from his bronzed arms, stood in the bows, the latter with the boat-hook ...
— Rob Harlow's Adventures - A Story of the Grand Chaco • George Manville Fenn
... Carl and Krantz, by herculean exertions, dragged her through the mob; she was taken to a small room over the great hall, and laid there until the storm should ...
— International Weekly Miscellany, Vol. 1, No. 2, July 8, 1850 • Various
... lay crushed beneath a black log that was yet smoking with heat. With a herculean effort the detective lifted and flung the log from the poor girl's breast, and then he lifted and carried her beyond the reach of flame and heat, and laid her on a little ...
— Dyke Darrel the Railroad Detective - Or, The Crime of the Midnight Express • Frank Pinkerton
... which they had made in the conclave when Julius was elected. After repeating the stereotyped formula concerning the supreme authority of general councils, and the imperative necessity of a reformation of the Church in its head and in its members, the fathers addressed themselves professedly to the herculean task thus indicated; but little or nothing was effected of ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... an end: First, find—the perfect educational method! The recipe is brief; the labor it imposes is more than Herculean. To measure it, we should have to find the ratio in which mind transcends matter, or that in which the broad generalizations of genius in the materials of science surpass the poor conceptions that the wild Australian must almost utter audibly in his ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I, No. V, May, 1862 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... of herculean frame and of a full, open, handsome countenance, which gained dignity from its long, dark-brown beard, which fell in rich curls upon his chest. His picturesque dress—that of the Tyrol—comprised a red waistcoat, crossed by green braces, ...
— Historical Tales, Vol 5 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality, German • Charles Morris
... conversation was a drain upon their powers, and the reaction from the day's excitement had set in. O'Reilly lurched as he walked, his limbs were heavy, and his liveliest sensation was one of dread at the hard work in store for him. The forcing of that door assumed the proportions of a Herculean task. ...
— Rainbow's End • Rex Beach
... settled by several Spaniards, among them Juan Mexia, a man said to have been of herculean strength and great courage. The Indian woman with whom he cohabited had received timely warning of the intended attack, a proof that communications existed between the supposed Caribs and the Indians on the island. She ...
— The History of Puerto Rico - From the Spanish Discovery to the American Occupation • R.A. Van Middeldyk
... standard. The state of agriculture and the populousness of a country have been considered as nearly connected with each other. And, as a rule, for the purpose intended, numbers, in the view of simplicity and certainty, are entitled to a preference. In every country it is a herculean task to obtain a valuation of the land; in a country imperfectly settled and progressive in improvement, the difficulties are increased almost to impracticability. The expense of an accurate valuation is, in all situations, a formidable objection. In a branch of ...
— The Federalist Papers
... confusion was immeasurably greater, and through it all might be felt a certain strained and angry menace. All the long afternoon The Bedford Castle lay at her moorings subjected to the customary eleventh-hour delays. As the time dragged on, and the liquor died in the fishermen, it became a herculean task to prevent them from issuing forth into the street, while the crowds outside seemed possessed of a desperate determination to force an entrance and bring the issue to a final settlement. But across the shore end of the dock ...
— The Silver Horde • Rex Beach
... fibre must at length succumb under prolonged Herculean endeavour. No man may long continuously wag his ears, even alternately; therefore Sam perforce paused in time. Yet by that time—in what manner it occurred no one may know—Nora was seated on the chair next to him at the table. They ...
— The Girl at the Halfway House • Emerson Hough
... realization came too late. His prolonged labors, his anxieties and his disappointments had done their work, and on the 24th of December, five days after he had completed his fifty-fifth year, he sank to his grave, after herculean labors for the safety and ...
— Twenty Years of Congress, Volume 2 (of 2) • James Gillespie Blaine
... midst of the fire, there he swung the axe with his own hand; now, mounted on horseback, he rode down the line where the dry grass was to be torn up by the roots and soaked with water; now, on foot, he directed the scanty jet from the pipes or, with Herculean strength, flung back into the flames a beam which had fallen beyond the limits he had set. His shrill voice sounded, as his huge height towered, above all others; every eye was fixed on his black face and flashing eyes and teeth, while his example ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... and women came the same cry, and so she did gird on her armor and go forth. The latter part of February she took up her abode with Mrs. Stanton in New York. Herculean efforts were being made at this time by the Republicans, under the leadership of Charles Sumner, to secure congressional action in regard to emancipation. A widespread fear existed that the President's ...
— The Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony (Volume 1 of 2) • Ida Husted Harper
... accustomed to a vast and brooding silence. Mindful of Bill's parting word, she took a hack to the Ladysmith. And even though the hotel was removed from the business heart of the city, the rumble of the city's herculean labors reached her far into the night. She lay wakefully, staring through her open window at the arc lights winking in parallel rows, listening to the ceaseless hum of man's activities. But at last she fell asleep, and dawn of a clear spring ...
— North of Fifty-Three • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... neglect its current acquisitions, but will go on improving as long as means and opportunities offer; while he who finds himself ignorant of most things, is only too apt to shrink from a labour which becomes Herculean. In this manner ambition is stifled, the mind gets to be inactive, and finally sinks into unresisting apathy. Such is the case with a large portion of the European peasantry. The multitude of objects that ...
— Recollections of Europe • J. Fenimore Cooper
... between Vienna and Paris. One may share the vinegar cruet with a countess, and see a general of cavalry eat peas with a knife (hollow ground, like a razor; a Bavarian trick!) and stand aghast while a great tone artist dusts his shoes with a napkin, and observe a Russian grand duke at the herculean labour of drinking himself ...
— Europe After 8:15 • H. L. Mencken, George Jean Nathan and Willard Huntington Wright
... skipper's boast that he could "skin a bowhead in forty minutes;" and although we were certainly longer than that, the celerity with which what seemed a gigantic task was accomplished was marvellous. Of course, it was all plain-sailing, very unlike the complicated and herculean task inevitable at the commencement of ...
— The Cruise of the Cachalot - Round the World After Sperm Whales • Frank T. Bullen
... opposed by vigorous agencies. From the clergy and laity men of eminent endowments have arisen who, in ecclesiastical councils, and through the press, have defended evangelical Christianity with a spirit worthy of their Huguenot ancestors. Their task has been herculean. At every point of the horizon infidelity has appeared, and sought to gain a hearing in Paris. Romanism has crippled the advance of truth among the masses. The priesthood enjoy the favor of the government. But the faithful and learned adherents to orthodoxy in all ...
— History of Rationalism Embracing a Survey of the Present State of Protestant Theology • John F. Hurst
... intense passion when his frame actually expanded and belied the assertion. The light, almost slender symmetry of his figure, promised more of that ready activity which he evinced at the Bridge of Sighs, than of that Herculean strength which he has been known to wield without an effort, upon occasions of more dangerous emergency. With the mouth and chin of a deity—singular, wild, full, liquid eyes, whose shadows varied from pure hazel to intense and brilliant jet—and a profusion of curling, black hair, from which a ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 2 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... wife, who had been the stay of his manhood, were the first two whom he yearned to meet after crossing the river. The joyous thought of his approaching meeting with those white-souled women cheered and comforted the reformer amid excruciating physical sufferings. Worn out by heroic and Herculean labors for mankind and by a complication of diseases, he more and more longed for rest, to go home to beloved ones as he expressed it. To the question, "What do you want, Mr. Garrison?" asked by the attending physician on the day ...
— William Lloyd Garrison - The Abolitionist • Archibald H. Grimke
... one great accomplishment the Chinese people are now interested in, because they propose to make it the tool with which to work out the other Herculean tasks that await them. Happy are they in that they may set about these tasks inspired by the self-confidence begotten of one of the greatest moral achievements of modern times. I refer, of course, to the almost marvellous success ...
— Where Half The World Is Waking Up • Clarence Poe
... were carried past in succession, represented by figures magnificently dressed, placed on lofty scaffoldings of immense weight, supported by different bodies of men. One is carried by the coachmen, another by the aguadores (water-carriers), a third by the cargadores (porters), a Herculean race. ...
— Life in Mexico • Frances Calderon de la Barca
... Bailey, a herculean creature of 6 ft. 6 in., and stepping into "Wreck House" he brought out a chair, seated Lucy on it, and amidst applause and laughter, lifted it up on his mighty shoulders as if she was no more weight than the ...
— A Memory Of The Southern Seas - 1904 • Louis Becke
... work of civilizing the Germanic nations was a task of herculean proportions and of tremendous significance. Out of these tribes were to be constructed the nations of modern Europe. To this important mission the monks addressed themselves with such courage, patience, faith and zeal, as to entitle them to the veneration of posterity. With singular wisdom and unflinching ...
— A Short History of Monks and Monasteries • Alfred Wesley Wishart
... for the analysis of any one thing, completely made, must terminate in the parts, while the parts, upon a synthetical construction, must reproduce the unity. One of the two ways indicated by Irenaeus is spoken of as a herculean labor, which I suppose to be the second, the reconstruction of a unity by a recombination of the parts, which in respect to nature is undoubtedly a herculean undertaking. The more hopeful method ...
— Hidden Symbolism of Alchemy and the Occult Arts • Herbert Silberer
... her remotest bounds, Heathen or faithful;—from thy hundred mouths, That feed the Caspian with Riphean snows, Huge Volga! from famed Hypanis, which once Cradled the Hun; from all the countless realms Between Imaus and that utmost strand Where columns of Herculean rock confront The blown Atlantic; Roman, Goth, and Hun, And Scythian strength of chivalry, that tread The cold Codanian shore, or what far lands Inhospitable drink Cimmerian floods, Franks, Saxons, Suevic, and Sarmartian chiefs, And who from green Armorica or Spain Flocked to the work ...
— The Fifteen Decisive Battles of The World From Marathon to Waterloo • Sir Edward Creasy, M.A.
... Law of Competition, while that Iron Law of Wages, their tendency to fall to the minimum of subsistence (which was in the canon of all orthodox economists), was denied the moment it was looked at resentfully from the wage-earner's standpoint. Herculean labors now fell upon Lassalle—a great speech of four hours at Frankfort-on-the-Main, the founding of the General German Working-Men's Union, with himself as dictator for five years, the delivery of inflammatory speeches in town after town, the publishing of pamphlets ...
— Dreamers of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... when not silent, especially when the accent falls on the second syllable; as, a harpoon, a hegira, a herbarium, a herculean effort, a hiatus, a hidalgo, a hydraulic engine, a hyena, a historian. The absence of the accent weakens the h sound, and makes it seem as if the article a was made to precede a vowel. The use of an is certainly more euphonious ...
— Slips of Speech • John H. Bechtel
... further provocation. With almost supernatural force and quickness he sprung upon the forester, and seized him by the throat. But the active young man freed himself from the gripe, and closed with his assailant. But though of Herculean build, it soon became evident that Ashbead would have the worst of it; when Hal o' Nabs, who had watched the struggle with intense interest, could not help coming to his friend's assistance, and made a push at Demdike with ...
— The Lancashire Witches - A Romance of Pendle Forest • William Harrison Ainsworth
... Cossack, with herculean strength and unbelievable prowess, was fighting his assailants. A sword had pierced him through the left hand, another had scratched his cheek and a third had struck him in the right shoulder. But still, unmindful of these ...
— The Boy Allies with the Cossacks - Or, A Wild Dash over the Carpathians • Clair W. Hayes
... before. He had arrived with papers of introduction to one of the few papist families in that rigorously protestant neighborhood; and, immediately, had erected outside the village of Greenstream a small mission school and dwelling, where he addressed himself to the herculean task of gaining converts to his faith. At first he had been regarded with unconcealed distrust—boys, when the priest's back was turned, had thrown stones at him; the turbulent element, on more than one occasion, had discussed the advisability ...
— Mountain Blood - A Novel • Joseph Hergesheimer
... among these beachcombers a man named Larmer. He was of Herculean stature and strength, and was, in a manner, their leader. It was his habit in his drunken moments to vaunt of the bloody deeds which he had perpetrated during his crime-stained career in the Pacific Islands. For the lives of natives he had absolutely ...
— The Brothers-In-Law: A Tale Of The Equatorial Islands; and The Brass Gun Of The Buccaneers - 1901 • Louis Becke
... dauntlessness can keep it up and doing. What dauntlessness his spirit once had was gone. He moved wearily, automatically doing his work and doing it ill. The very movements of his hands, slack and fumbling, were an exasperation to the other men, setting their strength to a herculean measure, and giving of it without begrudgment. David saw their anger and did not care. Fatigue made him indifferent, ate into his pride, brought down his self-respect. He plodded on doggedly, the alkali acrid on his lips ...
— The Emigrant Trail • Geraldine Bonner
... is a kind of tower, and was raised by the people of Rhegium at the streight where the passage was to Sicily. Directly opposite stood another building of the same sort, called the tower of Pelorus. Such Pillars were by the Iberians styled Herculean, because they were sacred to Hercules; under which title they worshipped the chief Deity. Some of these were near Gades, and Onoba[795], [Greek: Kat' Onoban tes Iberias]: others were erected still higher, on ...
— A New System; or, an Analysis of Antient Mythology. Volume I. • Jacob Bryant
... wise or that, would have been incomprehensible and a little odious to him in theory, and impossible as a matter of practice. In the midst of all the hardships of his younger time, as afterwards in the midst of crushing Herculean taskwork, he was saved from moral ruin by the inexhaustible geniality and expansiveness of his affections. Nor did he narrow their play by looking only to the external forms of human relation. To Diderot it came easily to act on a principle which most of us only accept in words: he looked not to ...
— Diderot and the Encyclopaedists (Vol 1 of 2) • John Morley
... the mystery I groped about in the darkness for the card which the hurried individual had cast at me with his words of encouragement. Ultimately I found it, but was unable to decipher its inscription, if perchance it had one. Nevertheless, I managed to keep my spirits up. This, I think, was a Herculean task, considering the darkness and my extreme lonesomeness. I can be happy under adverse circumstances, if only I have congenial company. But to lie alone, in a black cavern, prey only to the thoughts of my environment, thoughts suggesting all things apart from life, thoughts which send ...
— Olympian Nights • John Kendrick Bangs
... revolution. In a time of perfect calm, amid willing neighbors and streaming wealth, the social uplifting of 4,000,000 slaves to an assured and self-sustaining place in the body politic and economic would have been an herculean task; but when to the inherent difficulties of so delicate and nice a social operation were added the spite and hate of conflict, the Hell of War; when suspicion and cruelty were rife, and gaunt Hunger wept beside Bereavement,—in such a case, the work of any instrument of social regeneration ...
— The Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, 1995, Memorial Issue • Various
... that of Herbert Glendinning, as Sir Walter Scott has depicted it in "The Monastery"; his stature was above six feet; full of grace and easy movement, he yet seemed gifted with herculean strength; a face embrowned by the sun; eyes keen and black; a natural air of daring courage; in fine, something sound, solid, and reliable in his entire person, spoke, at first glance, in favor of ...
— Five Weeks in a Balloon • Jules Verne
... tell you the truth—the result of my mission was just this: I found that the men most in repute were all but the most foolish; and that others less esteemed were really wiser and better. I will tell you the tale of my wanderings and of the 'Herculean' labours, as I may call them, which I endured only to find at last the oracle irrefutable. After the politicians, I went to the poets; tragic, dithyrambic, and all sorts. And there, I said to myself, you will be instantly detected; now you will ...
— Apology - Also known as "The Death of Socrates" • Plato
... self-distrustful mortal," she remarked, leaning back in her corner and looking at him from under her parasol. "You have worked hard all the session, and now you have finished up by three weeks of, I should think, herculean labour. If you do ...
— A Lost Leader • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... word, and a sign from Basil made us understand that we were to keep in the shade, lest, perchance, some of the enemy might be straggling in our direction. I was growing tired and breathless, when our herculean guide signed to me to look upwards. My eye following the lead of his finger, travelled across a curtain of foliage—the delicate ash leaf, faded and ready to drop away; the sturdier oak, brown, yellow, dull green, or blotted with crimson. At the top ...
— The Grateful Indian - And other Stories • W.H.G. Kingston
... assault. The French met them bravely. But the Germans were not to be denied; and urged on by the Crown Prince, and often by the presence upon the firing line of the German emperor himself, they continued the herculean task without regard to loss ...
— The Boy Allies At Verdun • Clair W. Hayes
... true, and thoughtful, but of an invincible serenity. For the moment we could only sit among the bushes in patience and wait the coming of Zambo. Presently his honest black face topped the rocks and his Herculean figure emerged upon ...
— The Lost World • Arthur Conan Doyle
... richly endowed with that admirable love of industry which is characteristic of the Pennsylvania Dutch. In accordance with her acceptance of the command, "Six days shalt thou labor," she swept, scrubbed, and toiled from early morning to evening with Herculean persistence. The farmhouse was spotless from cellar to attic, the wooden walks and porches scrubbed clean and smooth. Flower beds, vegetable gardens and lawns were kept neat and without weeds. Aunt Maria was, as she expressed it, "not afraid ...
— Patchwork - A Story of 'The Plain People' • Anna Balmer Myers
... relinquishing without regret the virtual government of Egypt, accepting cheerfully the austerities and privations of the land of Midian, never elevating his own family to power, never complaining in his herculean tasks! With what eloquence does he plead for his people when the anger of the Lord is kindled against them, ever regarding them as mere children who know no self-control! How patient he is in the performance of his ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume II • John Lord
... he made a herculean effort to pull himself together. He obtained a position as draughtsman from one who had known him in his respectable period, and he went tremblingly and sheepishly to call upon ...
— Tales From Bohemia • Robert Neilson Stephens
... he mends. But this is not the best. Looke prythee Charmian, How this Herculean Roman do's become The carriage ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare
... of gout were beginning to tell upon that herculean form, sapping and undermining it; and in 1865, while playing Damon at the Holiday Street Theatre, in Baltimore, the weather being very cold and the theatre open to draughts, he was seized with a sudden illness, which was followed by very serious results. Suffering the most ...
— Great Men and Famous Women, Vol. 8 (of 8) • Various
... flight o'er the meads, but she hardly outstrips the canoemen. See! the voyageurs bend to their oars till the blue veins swell out on their foreheads; And the sweat from their brawny breasts pours; but in vain their Herculean labor; For the oars of Tamdoka are ten, and but six are the oars of the Frenchman, And the red warriors' burden of men is matched by the voyageurs' luggage. Side by side, neck and neck, for a mile, still they strain their strong arms to the utmost, Till rounding a willowy isle, now ahead ...
— The Feast of the Virgins and Other Poems • H. L. Gordon
... individual cases they have "sinned" as we term it, but qui voulez vous! The ratio on the stage is little larger than that of the world's middle class and not at all larger than that of the world's society women. I also object to those wild fanatics who would "elevate the stage," not because it would be Herculean labor, but because the aforesaid fanatics would find larger and more fruitful fields for their efforts in the shadow of their own church spire. Let them leave the women of the footlights alone and turn their attention to the women ...
— Volume 10 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... flogging, I ran towards him, my sabre in my hand, and threatened to kill the first man to strike a blow! ... Marshal Duroc's coach was guarded by one of Napoleon's couriers, known in every post house in Europe as "Moustache." This man, of herculean strength and the courage to face anything, had accompanied the Emperor on twenty fields of battle. When he saw me in the middle of the Prussians he hurried to me, and on my instructions, he fetched four loaded pistols which were in the coach. We untied Harpin; I armed him with two of the ...
— The Memoirs of General the Baron de Marbot, Translated by - Oliver C. Colt • Baron de Marbot
... Charles McIntosh, who had lost both his eyes and his right leg while with the Gallipoli Expeditionary Force. I have stated that there are eighty-two signs in Grade II Braille; but Braille shorthand contains six hundred and eighty word and letter signs that have to be committed to memory. A herculean task was before me, but by dogged effort on my part and patience on the part of my instructor, I succeeded so well that in a few weeks I was able to take shorthand notes as speedily as the average sighted stenographer. Meanwhile, I had been diligently at work at my typewriting, ...
— Through St. Dunstan's to Light • James H. Rawlinson
... before he married. He is quite unconscious that he has departed from his favorite theories, in wedding a yeoman's daughter. On the contrary, he believes he has acted on a system, and crossed the breed so judiciously as to attain greater physical perfection by means of a herculean dam, yet retain that avitam fidem, or traditional loyalty, which (to use his own words) "is born both in Rabys and Dences, as surely as a high-bred setter comes into the world ...
— Put Yourself in His Place • Charles Reade
... to the Duke had not been difficult, but this letter seemed to be an Herculean task. It was made infinitely more difficult by the fact that Lady Cantrip had not seemed to think that this marriage was impossible. "Young people when they have set their minds upon it do so generally prevail at last!" These had been her words, and they discomforted ...
— The Duke's Children • Anthony Trollope
... hope you will so far consult your own ease and advantage, as to commit, perfectly, the signs of the moods and tenses before you proceed farther than to the subjunctive mood. If you do, the supposed Herculean task of learning to conjugate verbs, will be transformed into a few hours of ...
— English Grammar in Familiar Lectures • Samuel Kirkham
... that disappointed Dink was the polite correctness of her letters. But then something, he said to himself, must be allowed for maiden modesty. His own letters were the product of afternoons and evenings. The herculean difficulty that he experienced in covering four sheets of paper—even when writing a flowing hand and allowing half a page for the signature—secretly worried him. It seemed as though something was lacking in his character or in the strength ...
— The Varmint • Owen Johnson
... carefully that in the following spring he delivered his oration on the barbarism of slavery, more than an hour in length, before the Senate; and in 1863 he made a speech three hours in length, a herculean effort that has never been equalled, except by Hamilton's address before the Constitutional ...
— Cambridge Sketches • Frank Preston Stearns
... again, was one of the herculean artists, working, in Emerson's phrase, "in a sad sincerity," with the patience of an ant and the energy of a volcano. Of his Les Miserables—perhaps the greatest novel ever written, as it is, I suppose, easily the longest—he ...
— Vanishing Roads and Other Essays • Richard Le Gallienne
... but the squatter who settles in the Canadian backwoods does not clear his land all at once. He lives on a small portion of it, and goes on digging and delving little by little, until, after many years of Herculean labour, he hews out for himself, and his children after him, a freehold estate. Freehold estates, I admit, are not to be had for the picking up on English soil, but if a man will but work in England as they work in Canada or ...
— "In Darkest England and The Way Out" • General William Booth
... Grecian sea to the Atlantic, coasted along Africa and Guinea, doubled the Cape Bona Speranca, and arrived in India[19]; concerning which voyage many other particulars might be collected from the writings of the ancients. This Mediterranean Sea was sometimes called the Adriatic, the Aegean, and the Herculean Sea; and had other names, according to the lands, coasts, and islands, which it skirted, till, running through the Straits of Hercules, between Spain and Africa, it communicated with the great Atlantic ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. II • Robert Kerr
... master. I propose to limit the survey strictly to those pictures which have found recognised champions among modern critics of repute, for to challenge every "Giorgione" in public and private collections would be a Herculean task, well calculated to provoke ...
— Giorgione • Herbert Cook
... imposing figure of the Centaur, serious-looking and frowning; embarrassed by his anxiety to salute the company politely; savagely handsome, but disfigured by the violence which he did himself in smiling civilly and treading softly and holding his herculean arms in ...
— Dona Perfecta • B. Perez Galdos
... and it was so annoying because, as he must go to Castelvetrano in a few days, he might almost just as well come with us now. We hoped he would see his way to doing so and he hesitated and appeared to be on the point of yielding, but finally made the Herculean choice of duty before pleasure on the very sensible ground that, if it should be discovered he had deserted his post, he would be put into prison for two months. With the brigadier and all the guards in the secret, it seemed impossible that he should escape detection, ...
— Diversions in Sicily • H. Festing Jones
... summit. But the fatigue which was thus imposed upon the tender limbs of women, upon the ancient frames of ecclesiastics, was not to be borne by the new King of Sicily. He was carried up the incline in a chair by two herculean Moorish slaves, so strong and surefooted that the stubborn ascent could be made with the least possible discomfort to his royal body. While the others had groaned and sweated as they scuffled up the hill—that they might reach the goal in time to receive their royal ...
— The Proud Prince • Justin Huntly McCarthy
... practised, as being calculated to defeat its own object, he sought the gradual restoration of confidence by the only means which could restore it:—a punctual and faithful compliance with his engagements. Herculean as was this task in the existing derangement of American finances, he entered upon it courageously; and, if not completely successful, certainly did more than could have been supposed possible with the means placed in his hands. It is, in no inconsiderable degree, to be attributed to him, ...
— The Life of George Washington, Vol. 3 (of 5) • John Marshall
... of Congress echoed forth paeans to his praise. His course was as rapid and brilliant as that of the meteor that suddenly springs athwart the heavens, but he was human and accomplished his task, herculean as he was, at the price ...
— The International Weekly Miscellany, Volume I. No. 9. - Of Literature, Art, and Science, August 26, 1850 • Various
... immediate rescue. Though he was advised of the danger of such an attempt, his spirit and determination made him invincible. He proceeded to a place where some colored men were working. With a firm and determined look, and a herculean shout, he called out to them, "To arms, to arms! boys, we must rescue this man; I shall lead if you will follow." "We will," was the immediate response. And they went and overtook them, and dispersed ...
— The Underground Railroad • William Still
... have said that he had a great deal of character in his make-up and would get on in the world. Then you would hear about his matrimonial delinquency and instantly you would take a second glance. The second and more searching look would have revealed him as a herculean light-weight,—a man of strength and beauty and stature spoiled in the making. And you would be sorry that you had made the discovery, for it would take you back to his school days, and then you would encounter ...
— From the Housetops • George Barr McCutcheon
... no successful denial of the assertion that real soul-absorbing earnestness in religion is dying out. We sometimes mock at the Herculean labors of men like Owen, and Baxter, and Calvin, and Edwards. But though these men were perhaps more or less legalistic and at times a little narrow, yet one thing is sure, they made religion the business of life, and went at it with zest, enthusiasm, and determination. ...
— The Heart-Cry of Jesus • Byron J. Rees
... a wild beast in its cage, in an agony of pity, remorse, and burning impatience. His feelings became intolerable; he set his back to the boat, and with herculean strength forced it down a little way to meet the tide. He got logs and put them down for rollers. He strove, he strained, he struggled, till his face and hands were purple. And at last he met the flowing tide, and in a moment jumped into the boat, and ...
— Foul Play • Charles Reade
... Dr. Johnson looked steadily at them for a little while; and then, as one would separate two little boys, who were foolishly hurting each other, he ran up to them, and cuffed their heads till he drove them asunder[884]. But few men have his intrepidity, Herculean strength, or presence of mind. Most thieves or robbers would be ...
— Life Of Johnson, Volume 5 • Boswell
... Abellino sent his seconds to the carpenter. The first was named Livius. In all affairs of honour his opinion was a veritable canon to the jeunesse doree of the day. The other second, Conrad, was an herculean, athletic-looking fellow, whom, on that very account, every challenger tried to secure in those cases when a little judicious bullying might be necessary. This swash-buckler had, moreover, a most imposing countenance, and a voice capable of frightening ...
— A Hungarian Nabob • Maurus Jokai
... the sky to light the world of men by ... which latter, the old man maintained, was the truth, solemnly asserting that the Bible said so, and that all other belief was infidelity and blasphemy. So it was that, each evening, despite the herculean labour of the day, we drew together and debated on ...
— Tramping on Life - An Autobiographical Narrative • Harry Kemp
... ten paces, in the same manner as he had previously done; all of a sudden he turned, and taking the bridle of the burra gently in his hand, stopped her. I had now a full view of his face and figure, and those huge features and Herculean form still occasionally revisit me in my dreams. I see him standing in the moonshine, staring me in the face with his deep calm eyes. At last ...
— The Bible in Spain • George Borrow
... brain that dares to think! Give me the mind that grasps with herculean power the rocks that crush the treasures of intellectual growth, and tears them from their foundation! Give me the mind that dares to step from the fallen stones, that leaps from rock to rock past the dark rift torn in the superstitions of ages past, and that, standing on the farthest ...
— Men, Women, and Gods - And Other Lectures • Helen H. Gardener
... remembered her promise of good behavior, and by herculean effort managed to be on the "starred" list for the Saturday set aside for the ...
— Betty Gordon at Boarding School - The Treasure of Indian Chasm • Alice Emerson
... obey'd; nor these were all, But others from her hundred cities Crete 795 Sent forth, all whom Idomeneus the brave Commanded, with Meriones in arms Dread as the God of battles blood-imbrued. Nine ships Tlepolemus, Herculean-born, For courage famed and for superior size, 800 Fill'd with his haughty Rhodians. They, in tribes Divided, dwelt distinct. Jelyssus these, Those Lindus, and the rest the shining soil Of white Camirus occupied. Him bore To Hercules, (what time he led ...
— The Iliad of Homer - Translated into English Blank Verse • Homer
... side of the Colorado, more than 6,000 feet below our camp on the mountain side, which is 18 miles away; but the miles of horizontal distance represent but a small part of the day's labor before us. It is the mile of altitude we must gain that makes it a Herculean task. We are up early; a little bread and coffee, and we look about us. Our conclusion is that we can make this a depot of supplies, should it be necessary; that we can pack our rations to the point where we left ...
— Canyons of the Colorado • J. W. Powell
... the admired of women—how Tommy had fought for it since first he drank of them in Pym's sparkling pages! To some it seems to be easy, but to him it was a labour of Sisyphus. Everything had been against him. But he concentrated. No labour was too Herculean; he was prepared, if necessary, to walk round the world to get to the other side of the wall across which some men can step. And he did take a roundabout way. It is my opinion, for instance, that he wrote his book in order to make a ...
— Tommy and Grizel • J.M. Barrie
... or document of any kind is issued that does not go over his signature or under his direct supervision. To busy himself with the smallest details is a distinctive characteristic of the man. Systematic methods, combined with an extraordinary mind, enable him to accomplish his herculean task. In the eastern horizon Li-Hung-Chang shines as the brilliant star of morning that tells of the coming of ...
— Across Asia on a Bicycle • Thomas Gaskell Allen and William Lewis Sachtleben
... Below the merriment and herculean jollity, so little represented in his books, there was deep, gloomy force in the soul of the man who, gifted with an almost unparalleled imagination, would yet grip the realities of the pathetic and terrible situations he evolved with brutal strength and insistence. ...
— Honore de Balzac, His Life and Writings • Mary F. Sandars
... weary war where fierce Numantia bled, Fell Hannibal, the swoln Sicilian main Purpled with Punic blood—not mine to wed These to the lyre's soft strain, Nor cruel Lapithae, nor, mad with wine, Centaurs, nor, by Herculean arm o'ercome, The earth-born youth, whose terrors dimm'd the shine Of the resplendent dome Of ancient Saturn. You, Maecenas, best In pictured prose of Caesar's warrior feats Will tell, and captive kings with haughty crest ...
— Odes and Carmen Saeculare of Horace • Horace
... once spotless white bed, now an ensanguined horror, to look at poor Luisa, who lay on a mat on the floor, gasping out her brief young life. Her head was pillowed on her mother's bosom, and down her side the blood ran from the jagged bullet-hole. On a chair sat the herculean figure of Black Tom with his face in his hands, through which splashed heavy tears. Slowly he rocked himself to and fro in the manner of his race when strongly moved; and when he tried to speak there only ...
— The Ebbing Of The Tide - South Sea Stories - 1896 • Louis Becke
... countess, and see a general of cavalry eat peas with a knife (hollow ground, like a razor; a Bavarian trick!) and stand aghast while a great tone artist dusts his shoes with a napkin, and observe a Russian grand duke at the herculean labour of drinking himself ...
— Europe After 8:15 • H. L. Mencken, George Jean Nathan and Willard Huntington Wright
... elevated in a trice, and over them all bounds the volatile Signora like a panther, nor pauses until with airy somersets she has passed twice through the purgatory of the blazing hoop, and then, drooping and exhausted, sinks like a Sabine into the arms of the Herculean master, who—a second Romulus—bears away his lovely burden to the stables, amid such a whirlwind of applause as Kemble might have been ...
— The Bon Gaultier Ballads • William Edmonstoune Aytoun
... him to their notice. Captain de Haldimar was particularly struck by the air of bold daring and almost insolent recklessness pervading every movement of this man; and it was difficult to say whether the haughtiness of bearing peculiar to Ponteac himself, was not exceeded by that of this herculean warrior. ...
— Wacousta: A Tale of the Pontiac Conspiracy (Complete) • John Richardson
... seemed not quite to get the range. The flag and flagstaff were riddled with bullet holes, and the dead were being piled around. Still, dervish after dervish sprang to uphold the black banner of Mahdism. A herculean black grasped the staff in one hand, and leaned negligently against it for what appeared to be the space of five or ten minutes,—probably less than one minute,—ere the soldiers managed to give him his final quietus. Then it was that the remnant of the army of the Khalifa began to ...
— Khartoum Campaign, 1898 - or the Re-Conquest of the Soudan • Bennet Burleigh
... loafer! We're here and we are pursued! Where are George and Amy?" cried Mr. Barnes, doing herculean duty as a ...
— The Daughter of Anderson Crow • George Barr McCutcheon
... interest an audience so much in favour of the vice of gambling, as to make them shut out its horrible deformity, must possess more than ordinary powers, and we question much whether, of the whole fraternity of gamblers, one could be found better adapted for the Herculean task which Mr. Freeman set himself. That which the mind is accustomed steadily to dwell upon, and upon which action is had repeatedly, will scarcely want for self-justification—and while the error of proceeding is reluctantly admitted, whatever may tend to justify, however slightly, ...
— Secret Band of Brothers • Jonathan Harrington Green
... man or woman whose speech offends us. The apostle showed marvelous knowledge of the weakness of sinful mortals when he affirmed that the tongue was an unruly member, for it is easier to perform a herculean feat, to strain physical strength and muscle to the utmost, than to bite back the sharp retort, or repress the acrid reply. And there is such a hopelessness in the sentence once uttered! It is gone from us forever. We may regret it and show our repentance in speech and action, but we cannot blot ...
— The Secret of a Happy Home (1896) • Marion Harland
... mutineer, a passionate lover of truth and power. And lately he had been feeling his way, questioning himself while all sorts of confused ideas throbbed in his brain. At first, smitten with the thought of undertaking something herculean, he had planned a genesis of the universe, in three phases or parts; the creation narrated according to science; mankind supervening at the appointed hour and playing its part in the chain of beings and events; then the future—beings constantly following one ...
— His Masterpiece • Emile Zola
... the others, aiming their muskets at him. Three shots were fired. The brave Prussian still kept the saddle, but his hand dropped the bridle, and the horse stood still. The Dutch chasseurs surrounded and cut him. He lay helpless on the ground—that herculean man. He was still alive; his eyes, that had so beamed with courage, cast their last glance toward heaven, and his lips, that smiled so sweetly, murmured, "Tod du suesser fuer das Vaterland!" A powerful sabre-stroke ...
— Napoleon and the Queen of Prussia • L. Muhlbach
... the most magnificent specimen of an Arab that I have ever seen. Although upwards of eighty years of age, he was as erect as a lance, and did not appear more than between fifty and sixty; he was of Herculean stature, about six feet three inches high, with immensely broad shoulders and chest; a remarkably arched nose; eyes like an eagle, beneath large, shaggy, but perfectly white eyebrows; a snow-white beard of great thickness descended below the middle of ...
— The Nile Tributaries of Abyssinia • Samuel W. Baker
... less astonished at what they saw: for, being already acquainted with this singular habit of the snow bear, they knew what he was about. They did not stay, therefore, to watch his herculean labours; but all three, levelling their guns, pulled trigger simultaneously. The bullets—some of them, at least—evidently struck the bear; but, although, he dropped the great boulder—which at once fell back into its place—he did not himself drop. On ...
— Bruin - The Grand Bear Hunt • Mayne Reid
... father's sword, put on his helmet, and talked of the best method of killing all the rebel generals. The plans he laid for terminating the contest appeared so feasible to Constantia, that at length (though not without tears) she consented that he should enter on the Herculean labour of destroying the many-headed monster, Rebellion. Isabel thought that her father and uncle were likely to know what was best to be done, but as often as she ventured to hint that he might be too sanguine, Eustace reminded her, that girls knew nothing about war and politics, ...
— The Loyalists, Vol. 1-3 - An Historical Novel • Jane West
... was a man of herculean strength and remarkable courage. But, on account of physical defects, instead of enlisting as a soldier, he was forced to remain a servant, although he felt as if every nerve in his right arm was tingling to strike ...
— Iola Leroy - Shadows Uplifted • Frances E.W. Harper
... close of the year 17-," several gentlemen in three-cocked hats were playing bowls. A friend of mine preferred the Malabar coast in a storm, with a ship beating to windward, and a scowling fellow of Herculean proportions striding along the beach; he, to be sure, was a pirate. This was further afield than my home-keeping fancy loved to travel, and designed altogether for a larger canvas than the tales that I affected. Give me a highwayman and I was full to the brim; a Jacobite would do, ...
— Memories and Portraits • Robert Louis Stevenson
... was President of the Parliament of Bordeaux. He was a voluminous writer, his most celebrated work being his "L'Esprit des Lois." Burke described him as "A genius not born in every country, or every time: with a Herculean robustness of mind; and nerves not to ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole - Volume I • Horace Walpole
... of dwale As ulexite flare in the rocks Where implex aisles lead to gyte doom, Lure illaqueate Thought to flight, And at a Cyon, chained in stall, Whom mad Medeas shore of locks, Chase Fancy's wings where hazards bloom. Here herculean dwangs of gold, Clasped in talons of Circe's son, Pry portals of Teocalli as, When hyoids blaze like sea-linkt skies, Incondite imps seek grovels cold, Unfathomed haunts that scyle each sun, We see above the lees green grass Where pixies laugh with dancing eyes,— King Wonder's ...
— Betelguese - A Trip Through Hell • Jean Louis de Esque
... their supervision the campaign was rapidly begun. For a few days the stock must be fed on hay, and seven of the available fifteen men of the ranch force were detailed to keep full the great racks in the cattle stockade—a task in itself, with the myriad hungry mouths swarming on every hand, all but Herculean. The others, Rankin himself among the number, undertook the greater feat of in a measure opening the range ...
— Ben Blair - The Story of a Plainsman • Will Lillibridge
... Eleven volunteers were selected for the expedition, and the young and fragile Kit Carson was entrusted with the command. In manners he was gentle as a girl, with a voice as soft as that of a woman. He had no herculean powers of muscle, but he had mind, mental powers which had been developed in a hundred emergencies. And these stout, hardy veterans of the wilderness seem with one accord to have decided that he was the fitting one to lead them into battle, where ...
— Christopher Carson • John S. C. Abbott
... his opponent firmly. For a long time, Milo exerted all his strength to shake him oft, but in vain, and the sand of the Stadium was freely moistened by the great drops of sweat, the result of this Herculean struggle. ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... of his warriors to return to their camp, near by, and bring buffalo meat for the starving white men. Notwithstanding the apparent kindness of this herculean chief, there was something about him that filled the white men with distrust. Gradually the number of his warriors increased until there were over a score of them in camp. They began to be inquisitive and troublesome, and ...
— The Great Salt Lake Trail • Colonel Henry Inman
... and praying ones were Mrs Mooney—a brand plucked from the burning—and fragile Eve, with her weak, thin, helpless body and her robust heart, chosen to do herculean and gladiator service of sympathy and rescue in the Master's cause. And you may be sure that blooming Isa Martin was there, and her friend Martha Lockley; Manx Bradley, the Admiral, who, with other ...
— The Lively Poll - A Tale of the North Sea • R.M. Ballantyne
... Work Council of the Y. M. C. A. at New York, was asked to take part in the creation of the machinery necessary for the gigantic piece of work that the organization had been called upon by the President of the United States to do. It was a herculean task; practically impossible with any large degree of efficiency in view of the almost insurmountable obstacles to be contended with. But step by step the imperfect machinery was set up, and it began to function in the ...
— The Americanization of Edward Bok - The Autobiography of a Dutch Boy Fifty Years After • Edward William Bok (1863-1930)
... to-day with ropes and axe, pick and shovel. But the task is vast, it is herculean, like unto the ...
— The Johnstown Horror • James Herbert Walker
... although there were moments of intense passion when his frame actually expanded and belied the assertion. The light, almost slender symmetry of his figure, promised more of that ready activity which he evinced at the Bridge of Sighs, than of that Herculean strength which he has been known to wield without an effort, upon occasions of more dangerous emergency. With the mouth and chin of a deity—singular, wild, full, liquid eyes, whose shadows varied from pure hazel to intense and brilliant jet—and a profusion of curling, black hair, from which a ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 2 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... endowed with herculean strength who is compelled by circumstances to follow a sedentary occupation, some minute exquisite work of the hands, for example, or to engage in study and mental labor demanding quite other powers, and just those ...
— The Essays Of Arthur Schopenhauer: The Wisdom of Life • Arthur Schopenhauer
... such exertion. D'Artagnan remained, therefore, alone; and as he declared he was too ignorant of the game to play it regularly they only continued giving balls to one another without counting. But one of these balls, launched by Porthos' herculean hand, passed so close to d'Artagnan's face that he thought that if, instead of passing near, it had hit him, his audience would have been probably lost, as it would have been impossible for him to present himself before the king. Now, as upon this audience, in his Gascon imagination, depended ...
— The Three Musketeers • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... of irony in such a result of the Herculean labours of Scott to found and endow a new branch of the clan of Scott. When fifteen years after his death the estate was at length freed from debt, all his own children and the eldest of his grandchildren were dead; and now forty-six years have elapsed, and there only ...
— Sir Walter Scott - (English Men of Letters Series) • Richard H. Hutton
... hardly further off than it had been when first this thunderclap of an intuition deafened her, and still reeling from the shock, she remembered that it was almost certainly Mrs. Poppit who was the cause of Mr. Wyse writing her that exquisitely delicate note with regard to Thursday. It was a herculean task, no doubt, to plug up all the fountains of talk in Tilling which were spouting so merrily at her expense, but a beginning must be made before she could arrive at the end. A short scurry of nimble steps brought her ...
— Miss Mapp • Edward Frederic Benson
... one can help admiring the ability and indomitable courage she has displayed in the gratification of her national antipathy. From the League of Augsburg, of 1687, to which she became a party, to the Treaty of Utrecht, in 1713, she put forth herculean efforts to compel the relinquishment of the family compact by Louis XIV. By that treaty, the darling project of that monarch to secure the crown of Spain for a Bourbon, was forever abandoned by France. ...
— The Continental Monthly, Volume V. Issue I • Various
... them. The Wanguana, instead of regarding these poor creatures as soldiers, treated them like children; and once, as a diminutive Tot—the common name they go by—was exerting himself to lift his pack and place it on his mule, a fine Herculean Mguana stepped up behind, grasped Tot, pack and all, in his muscular arms, lifted the whole over his head, paraded the Tot about, struggling for release, and put him down amidst the laughter of the camp, then saddled his mule and patted ...
— The Discovery of the Source of the Nile • John Hanning Speke
... away, almost herculean in figure, and every inch of him forceful. She had never seen such a man, one so virile and, at the same time, so wilful and so masterful. Before he was out of her sight, she got ...
— Mavericks • William MacLeod Raine
... with this compliment to make any resistance, while he buckled her close to his own herculean frame, and, driving a spur into his charger, they flew from the lawn with a rapidity that defied further denial. After proceeding for some time, at a rate that a good deal discomposed the spinster, ...
— The Spy • James Fenimore Cooper
... back to the very prison from which a few months before I had made my escape. With a bursting heart I entered those walls, compelled to feel that all my more than Herculean labours served for my own torture, and for no other end. Since my escape from prison I had acquired some knowledge of the world; I had learned by bitter experience, by how many links society had a hold ...
— Caleb Williams - Things As They Are • William Godwin
... never seen a city, so flourishing in all rare beauty, so decorated with the virtue of her living citizens, so noble in the memories of her dead heroes—the sun has never shone upon a state, so solidly established; upon an empire so majestical and mighty; extending from the Herculean columns, the far limits of the west, beyond the blue Symplegades; from Hyperborean snows, to the parched sands of Ethiopia!—no! Conscript Fathers, for we have no foes unsubdued, from the wild azure-tinctured hordes of Gaul to the swart Eunuchs ...
— The Roman Traitor (Vol. 1 of 2) • Henry William Herbert
... materially increasing the extent of cleared land from year to year. The primeval jungles of Singapore are so thickly timbered and covered with underwood and large, tough creepers, that the man who undertakes to clear them has before him an Herculean task. According to the best information I could obtain, it requires a cash outlay of sixty dollars to clear a single acre; and even that large sum does not thoroughly stump it (i. e. clear off all the large roots and stumps of the larger trees) for the planting of coffee, nutmegs, or ...
— Trade and Travel in the Far East - or Recollections of twenty-one years passed in Java, - Singapore, Australia and China. • G. F. Davidson
... to the New Hampshire Grant's, at that time the Eldorado most in vogue among those seeking new countries. Here, having purchased one of the best tracts of land in the place, he commenced the slow and laborious process of clearing up a new farm. And this Herculean task, which may well be considered the work of a man's life, he had, after years of incessant toil and privation, nearly succeeded in accomplishing, and begun to catch glimpses of easier and brighter days; when he was taken away by disease, ...
— The Rangers - [Subtitle: The Tory's Daughter] • D. P. Thompson
... is making herculean efforts for an "on to Washington," while the enemy think he merely designs a defense of Richmond. Troops are on the move, all the way ...
— A Rebel War Clerk's Diary at the Confederate States Capital • John Beauchamp Jones
... no further provocation. With almost supernatural force and quickness he sprung upon the forester, and seized him by the throat. But the active young man freed himself from the gripe, and closed with his assailant. But though of Herculean build, it soon became evident that Ashbead would have the worst of it; when Hal o' Nabs, who had watched the struggle with intense interest, could not help coming to his friend's assistance, and made a push at Demdike with ...
— The Lancashire Witches - A Romance of Pendle Forest • William Harrison Ainsworth
... wandering patriot of the wilderness found the minds of his countrymen we cowed with fear, or so benumbed with indifference as to their fate, that there was scarcely a man among them all, outside his own near kindred, to lend him an ear, or join him in his self-imposed, herculean labor. But toward the end, when every hill and valley, plain and forest, river and lake of the great North-west had been made to resound full many a year with the echoes of that awakening voice, behold the result. Persuaded that their hour ...
— Burl • Morrison Heady
... the wide shirt sleeve from his herculean arm and Szilard was astonished to see the half healed and cross-like scar—it had ...
— The Poor Plutocrats • Maurus Jokai
... herculean work we had performed to perfect this play. It was time well spent. The reward came within seven minutes after the game began. The end running ability of that great player, Bosey Reiter showed. Every man was doing his part, and the play was ...
— Football Days - Memories of the Game and of the Men behind the Ball • William H. Edwards
... cast anchor in the port of Stockholm, when a number of Herculean women came and offered us their services as porters. They were Delekarliers, {52} who frequently come to Stockholm to earn a livelihood as porters, water-carriers, boatwomen, &c. They easily find employment, because they possess two excellent qualities: ...
— Visit to Iceland - and the Scandinavian North • Ida Pfeiffer
... were engaged in mortal combat, and our prisoner was all but my conqueror. Grappling with Cambaceres, whom I knocked from his horse, and was about to despatch, I felt a lunge behind, which luckily was parried by my sabretache; a herculean grasp was at the next instant at my throat—I was on the ground—my prisoner had escaped, and a gigantic warrior in the uniform of a colonel of the regiment of Artois glaring over me ...
— Burlesques • William Makepeace Thackeray
... western Louisiana was an experiment. No contracts between the planters and freedmen had then been entered into, and the difficulties to be met with and overcome by the contracting parties were new to each. The herculean task of removing the objections which the freedmen offered to signing a "contract," and of eradicating the prejudice existing among the planters against countenancing the employment upon their plantations as free men of those whom they had so long and firmly held in bondage, ...
— Report on the Condition of the South • Carl Schurz
... scholarly spectacles that bridged his nose. He really outdid the most fanciful cowboy of the far western ranches. Such an outfit he imagined just the thing for a trip among the wild characters on the Upper Mississippi. The other member of the party was a broad nosed, Herculean negro whom Paul hired to pull the row boat he had purchased for the ...
— The Story of Paul Boyton - Voyages on All the Great Rivers of the World • Paul Boyton
... he struck a medal with a Herculean figure on the reverse, confining the head of the English leopard between his knees, whilst preparing a cord to strangle him, inscribed En l'An XII. 2000 barques sont construites;—this was in condemnation of the invasion ...
— Anecdotes of Painters, Engravers, Sculptors and Architects and Curiosities of Art (Vol. 3 of 3) • S. Spooner
... look out for a wife, who, nothing discouraged by these reports of Katharine's temper, and hearing she was rich and handsome, resolved upon marrying this famous termagant, and taming her into a meek and manageable wife. And truly none was so fit to set about this herculean labour as Petruchio, whose spirit was as high as Katharine's, and he was a witty and most happy-tempered humourist, and withal so wise, and of such a true judgment, that he well knew how to feign a passionate ...
— Tales from Shakespeare • Charles Lamb and Mary Lamb
... forward with a fluttering anxiety till she could see for herself. Yes! A stern-looking policeman coming slow and majestic through the crowd. Was he going to hale the girl off to Holloway? No; he came to a standstill near some rowdy boys, and he stared straight before him—herculean, impassive, the very image of conscious authority. Whenever Ernestine said anything particularly dreadful, the old lady craned her neck to see how the policeman was taking it. When Ernestine fell to drubbing the Government, ...
— The Convert • Elizabeth Robins
... world. His father in his desire to prevent this secludes him in the enjoyment of all luxury. At the ploughing festival he falls into a trance under a tree and the shadow stands still to protect him and does not change. Again his father does him homage. He is of herculean strength and surpasses all as an archer. He marries his cousin Yasodhara, when sixteen years old. Then come the four visions, which are among the scenes most frequently depicted in modern sacred art. As he is driving in the palace grounds the gods show him ...
— Hinduism and Buddhism, Vol I. (of 3) - An Historical Sketch • Charles Eliot
... ample. The number of the sanitary corps was determined upon the experience in the Russo-Japanese war, in which the losses were by no means so heavy as they have been in this war, but where in a few cases numbers have been lacking the surgeons and their assistants have put forth herculean efforts. Many surgeons are now wearing the iron cross for bravery, winning the insignia by dragging out wounded from the rain of bullets. TREATMENT OF PRISONERS ...
— America's War for Humanity • Thomas Herbert Russell
... beat two miles of perfect cover. Then we beat it back again and finally, after all our Herculean efforts, one lonely bird flew up and was knocked over. That was the astounding total of our slaughter and when the army marched back into camp with its one little grouse the effect was laughable in the extreme. I took a photograph of the entire group and by good luck the grouse is faintly ...
— In Africa - Hunting Adventures in the Big Game Country • John T. McCutcheon
... meeting-place of Mike Lambourne and Tressillian, and rebuilding in its neighbourhood the ruins of Cumnor Hall, on which the dews fell softly? Alas! the wizard would weave no more spells. A month before that princely "progress" Sir Walter Scott, after Herculean labours to pay his debts like an honest man had wrecked even his robust frame and healthful ...
— Life of Her Most Gracious Majesty the Queen V.1. • Sarah Tytler
... Dixon felt his strength rapidly ebbing, both from his herculean exertions and from the paralyzing rays of the green moon beating down upon his unprotected head. As his speed of foot lessened the Centaurians began inexorably ...
— Astounding Stories, May, 1931 • Various
... Rojas stuck to our trail," said Thorne, his lined and haggard face expressive of dark passion. "He has followed us into this fearful desert. He'll lose men, horses, perhaps his life. He's only a bandit, and he stands to win no gold. If he ever gets out of here it 'll be by herculean labor and by terrible hardship. All for a poor little helpless woman—just a woman! My God, I can't ...
— Desert Gold • Zane Grey
... further remarks, however caustic or bitter, to a palate vitiated with the sweets of adulation, will be of service. Johnson has shown us that no poetry is perfect; but to correct mine would be an Herculean labour. In fact I never looked beyond the moment of composition, and published merely at the request of my friends. Notwithstanding so much has been said concerning the 'Genus irritabile vatum,' we shall never quarrel on the subject—poetic fame is by no means ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. I. (of VI.) - With his Letters and Journals. • Thomas Moore
... with an ardour that commands our wonder and respect; and it was at Vaucluse that he either meditated or wrote his most important compositions. Here he undertook a history of Rome, from Romulus down to Titus Vespasian. This Herculean task he never finished; but there remain two fragments of it, namely, four books, De Rebus Memorandis, and another tract entitled Vitarum Virorum Illustrium Epitome, being sketches of illustrious men from the founder of ...
— The Sonnets, Triumphs, and Other Poems of Petrarch • Petrarch
... met the Potato Famine with anything like complete success, would have been a Herculean task for any government. The total failure of the food of a nation was, as Mr. Monsell said, a fact new in history; such being the case, no machinery existed extensive enough to neutralize its effects, nor was there extant any plan upon which such machinery could be modelled. Great ...
— The History of the Great Irish Famine of 1847 (3rd ed.) (1902) - With Notices Of Earlier Irish Famines • John O'Rourke
... of these Herculean Efforts to vaporize his Income, he found himself at the age of 40 afflicted with Social Gastritis. He had gorged himself with the Pleasures of this World until the sight of a Menu Card gave him the Willies and the mere mention ...
— Knocking the Neighbors • George Ade
... theatre in the Rue Pigalle. He was a big fellow of fifty with broad shoulders and a full, bearded face. His most disagreeable characteristic was the narrow dogmatic pedantry which he had acquired at the Ecole Normale, and had never since been able to shake off. All his herculean efforts to be sceptical and frivolous, and the twenty years he had spent in Paris mingling with every section of society, had failed to rid him of it. Magister he was, and magister he remained, even in his most strenuous flights of imagination and audacity. From the moment of his arrival he ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... automatic way I released the little gentleman in the purple jacket, who did not seem to regard any of the proceedings as particularly sensible or brilliant. The gigantic Burrows, on the other hand, was heaving with herculean laughter. ...
— The Club of Queer Trades • G. K. Chesterton
... was classified and filed, envelope and all. The thing to do, then, was manifestly to run over the files and find the letter, if indeed it was in or on a letter that the seal had first come to his attention. It was a herculean job, but that never feazed Sherlock Holmes, and he went at it tooth and nail. Finally his effort was rewarded. Under 'Applications for Autograph' he found a daintily-scented little missive from a young girl living at Goring-Streatley on the Thames, the daughter, ...
— R. Holmes & Co. • John Kendrick Bangs
... body which sank down. He entered very quickly; and Simon, who had gone to his bed, distinguished the sound of a kiss and some words that his mother said very softly. Then he suddenly found himself lifted up by the hands of his friend, who, holding him at the length of his herculean arms, exclaimed to him: ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume IV (of 8) • Guy de Maupassant
... king. Louis XIII. was the feeblest of the Bourbons, but he made his throne the first in Europe. Richelieu was a great benefactor to the cause of law, order, and industry, despotic as was his policy and hateful his character. When he died, worn out by his herculean labors, the nobles tried to regain the privileges and powers they had lost, and a miserable warfare called the "Fronde" was the result, carried on without genius or system. But the Fronde produced some heroes who were destined to be famous in the great wars of Louis ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume VIII • John Lord
... the first Herculean Labours Abbot Samson undertook, or the very first, was to institute a strenuous review and radical reform of his economics. It is the first labour of every governing man, from Paterfamilias to Dominus Rex. ...
— Past and Present - Thomas Carlyle's Collected Works, Vol. XIII. • Thomas Carlyle
... L'Esperance to begin. The guide went a little apart from the rest, accompanied by the steersmen of the boats (seven or eight in number), and then, scanning the group of dark athletic men who stood smiling before him, called out, "Pierre!" A tall, Herculean man answered to the call, and, stepping out from among the rest, stood beside his friend the guide. After this one of the steersmen chose another man; and so on, till the crews of all the boats were completed. ...
— Hudson Bay • R.M. Ballantyne
... in this place and at this time. This object is primarily to present the leading historical phases of the town's and city's life and developement, together with the traces of previous occupation, and the natural history of the locality. To accomplish this almost herculean task, the sections were assigned to writers well-known in their respective spheres,—many of them of national reputation,—who from study and associations were in a measure identified with their subjects. The entire work was critically edited by Mr. Justin Winsor, ...
— The Bay State Monthly, Volume 3, No. 6 • Various
... colossal!" he exclaimed. "Think of it! a whole city wiped out." I lowered my eyes to the goat nibbling beside us. "The courage and energy that rebuilt it is herculean." His enthusiasm was cumulative. "And rebuilt it in practically three years! No wonder you date all things ...
— The Lure of San Francisco - A Romance Amid Old Landmarks • Elizabeth Gray Potter and Mabel Thayer Gray
... great an end: First, find—the perfect educational method! The recipe is brief; the labor it imposes is more than Herculean. To measure it, we should have to find the ratio in which mind transcends matter, or that in which the broad generalizations of genius in the materials of science surpass the poor conceptions that the wild Australian ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I, No. V, May, 1862 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... of dispatch increased with each succeeding train, until when it came to entraining reluctant horses and still more reluctant mules practically in the dark, for there was no other light but the dim glimmer of two candle-lamps, the task became herculean, and required an infinity of patience and tact. The General and his staff having gone by the first excursion, the task of bringing along the remainder of the column devolved on Colonel Hicks, with Captain Fetherstonhaugh as his staff officer. They did not complete the entraining until the early ...
— The Second Battalion Royal Dublin Fusiliers in the South African War - With a Description of the Operations in the Aden Hinterland • Cecil Francis Romer and Arthur Edward Mainwaring
... the truth—the result of my mission was just this: I found that the men most in repute were all but the most foolish; and that others less esteemed were really wiser and better. I will tell you the tale of my wanderings and of the 'Herculean' labours, as I may call them, which I endured only to find at last the oracle irrefutable. After the politicians, I went to the poets; tragic, dithyrambic, and all sorts. And there, I said to myself, you will be instantly detected; now you will find out that you are more ...
— Apology - Also known as "The Death of Socrates" • Plato
... dead, and only the most herculean efforts on the part of Dak Kova's females saved him from the fate he deserved. Three days later he walked without assistance to the body of Bar Comas which, by custom, had not been moved from where it fell, and placing his foot upon the neck of ...
— A Princess of Mars • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... he fell into amazement when he thought of the Herculean labors those fifteen pairs of hands had performed: of the cows they had milked, the butter they had made, the gardens they had planted, the children and grandchildren they had tended, the brooms they had worn out, ...
— A Collection of Stories, Reviews and Essays • Willa Cather
... curiosities, both of Nepaulese men and manners, in their native country, and we looked with no little interest upon the first specimens we had seen of the Newar race—the aborigines of Nepaul. Short and compact, the full development of their muscle bore evidence to their almost Herculean strength. Their flat noses, high cheek-bones, small eyes, and copper-coloured complexion are unequivocal signs of a Mongolian origin, whilst the calves of their legs, which I never saw equalled in size, indicate the mountainous character ...
— A Journey to Katmandu • Laurence Oliphant
... beside Danton when those tidings were brought to him. He flung up his cap in the air, with a burst of laughter. "So much the better!" he exclaimed; "the closer the preserve, the thicker the game." I had now a complete view of this hero of democracy. His figure was herculean; his countenance, which possibly, in his younger days, had been handsome, was now marked with the lines of every passion and profligacy, but it was still commanding. His costume was one which he had chosen for himself, and which ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 54, No. 337, November, 1843 • Various
... crying aloud for decimal coinage and decimal weights and measures, and are not educated men constantly finding some objections, and will they not continue to do so, until some giant mind springs up able to grasp the herculean task, and force the boon upon the community? Were not steamboats and railways long opposed as being little better than insane visions? Did not Doctor Lardner prove to demonstration that railway carriages could never go more than twenty miles an hour, ...
— Lands of the Slave and the Free - Cuba, The United States, and Canada • Henry A. Murray
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