"Grail" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... compassion; the conflict between sensuality and love fought out in the arena of Tannhaeuser's mind; the cosmic glories of the Ring with the resplendent figures of Siegfried and Brunhilde; the self-dedication of Parsifal, the Sir Percival of our Arthurian legends, whom "The sweet vision of the Holy Grail drew from all vain-glories, rivalries and earthly heats." Into the glowing music of Wagner my son read lessons in renunciation, the sordidness of the lust for gold, the sublimity of pure human love, the redemptive power of self-sacrifice. ...
— War Letters of a Public-School Boy • Henry Paul Mainwaring Jones
... consuming sin Of making only coin and lives to count it in, Yet once I watched with Celia, Watched on a ferry an Italian child, One whom America Had changed. His cheek was hardy and his mouth was frail For sweetness, and his eyes were opening wild As with wonder at an unseen figure carrying a grail. Perhaps he faced, as I did in his glance, The spirit of the living dead who, having ranged Through long reverses, forward without fail Carry deliverance From privilege and disinheritance, Until their universal soul shall prove The only answer ...
— The New World • Witter Bynner
... of silence. All at once a little wisp of seaweed—hardly more than a thread—started to beat time upon the sands. And then I knew and saw it to be in its happy beating the pulse that governed the music of the stars. Can the heart conduct the symphony of the body? Tonight the sun set, borne away—a Grail—by angels from the questing Galahad. There was a great silence in my heart as I sat ...
— The Forgotten Threshold • Arthur Middleton
... out her heart from the threshold, stretching it out at arms' length, crying, 'Who will take this? To whom may I give it?' A vision here of Heaven's core of light. I have seen it. I, Senhouse, have seen the Holy Grail. ...
— Rest Harrow - A Comedy of Resolution • Maurice Hewlett
... society of Christendom, immediately before the intellectual and literary revolutions of the twelfth century. The French epics are full of omens of the coming victory of romance, though they have not yet given way. They still retain, in spite of their anticipations of the Kingdom of the Grail, an alliance in spirit with the older Teutonic poetry, and with those Icelandic histories that are the highest literary expression of the Northern spirit in ...
— Epic and Romance - Essays on Medieval Literature • W. P. Ker
... investigate and teach within the university walls must respond to the injunction of the church, "Sursum corda"—lift up the heart to high thinking and impartial search for the unsullied truth in the interests of all the people; this is the holy grail of the universities. ...
— The Frontier in American History • Frederick Jackson Turner
... to America on a quest solely for military glory. The Jacobin clubs, first by fair promises and then by the demand for his life blood, had sought to force him from liberty to license, from real freedom to debauched freedom. But like Sir Galahad, the Knight of the Holy Grail, he had stood true to his quest, true to his ideal, true to the inward light that unerringly marked the real from the false, true to genuine democracy in its fight against autocracy. And now, greater than all these lures and tests, stood before him Napoleon Bonaparte, his deliverer, the ...
— The Spirit of Lafayette • James Mott Hallowell
... (atonement) 952; telling of beads, processional; thurification[obs3], incense, holy water, aspersion. relics, rosary, beads, reliquary, host, cross, rood, crucifix, pax[Lat], pyx, agnus Dei[Lat], censer, thurible, patera[obs3]; eileton[obs3], Holy Grail; prayer machine, prayer wheel; Sangraal[obs3], urceus[obs3]. ritualism, ceremonialism; sabbatism[obs3], sabbatarianism[obs3]; ritualist, sabbatarian[obs3]. holyday, feast, fast. [Christian holy days] Sabbath, Pentecost; Advent, Christmas, Epiphany; Lent; Passion week, Holy week; Easter, Easter ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... learn to put our business ventures there as Abbey has his Sir Galahad do in the Vigil panel of "The Search for the Holy Grail," in Boston Library; and when we have learned to put our homes, and our children, and our souls "In the hollow of God's palm," there will be peace on the journey of life. Yes, that is ...
— Giant Hours With Poet Preachers • William L. Stidger
... passion for justice and for liberty, which thrilled through the veins of the world's greatest in the past, and woke our pulses to responsive throb, has not yet died wholly out of the hearts of men. Still the quest of the Holy Grail exercises its deathless fascination, but the seekers no longer raise eyes to heaven, nor search over land and sea, for they know that it waits them in the suffering at their doors, that the consecration of the holiest is on the agonising masses of the poor and the despairing, ...
— Annie Besant - An Autobiography • Annie Besant
... Sir Lancelot Went forth to find the Grail, Grey Merlin wrinkled up the roads, For hope that he should fail; All roads led back to Lyonnesse And Camelot in the Vale, I cannot yield assent to this Extravagant hypothesis, The plain shrewd Briton will dismiss Such rumours ...
— G. K. Chesterton, A Critical Study • Julius West
... absorbed in that. I was thinking how of old time Christ appeared in the breaking of bread to the disciples whose eyes were holden. And to-night, John, as I have been rocking baby to sleep I have been reading Tennyson's Holy Grail, and thinking how often, in our modern life, Calabad and Percivale kneel at the same shrine, and how often what is but a memorial service to the one affords a beatific vision of a living and life-giving ...
— Laicus - The experiences of a Layman in a Country Parish • Lyman Abbott
... GRAIL DE LA VILLETTE, better known by the name of Charles de Bernard, was born in Besancon, February 24, 1804. He came from a very ancient family of the Vivarais, was educated at the college of his native city, and studied for the law in Dijon and at Paris. He was awarded a prize by the 'Jeux ...
— Gerfaut, Complete • Charles de Bernard
... conquering king, Of Knights of the Holy Grail, Of wonders of winter, and glories of spring, Always and ever the poets sing; But the great God-Force, in a lowly thing, I sing, in my song of ...
— The Englishman and Other Poems • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... Arthur may or may not be a greater figure in himself than Charlemagne; but when the genius of Map (or of some one else) had hit upon the real knotting and unknotting of the story—the connection of the frailty of Guinevere with the Quest for the Grail—complete developments of the fates of minor heroes, elaborate closings of minor incidents, became futile. Endless stories could be keyed or geared on to different parts of the main legend: there might be a Tristan-saga, a Palomides-saga, a Gawain-saga, ...
— The Flourishing of Romance and the Rise of Allegory - (Periods of European Literature, vol. II) • George Saintsbury
... was shown the Alfred Jewel, and Celtic dice-boxes carefully loaded for the despoiling of Roman legionaries or an unwary Phoenician, and heard the story of the Holy Grail from the lips of an ancient who lent credence to the legend by his venerable appearance. Mixed up with the imposing ruins and the glory of St. Joseph's Chapel was a visit to the butcher's at the corner of the street, ...
— Cynthia's Chauffeur • Louis Tracy
... better 'twould be to ride in mail A weary quest for the Holy Grail; Wield Saxon steel 'gainst Saracen sword Around the sepulcher of our Lord; See Cross and Crescent and mailed hand All plashed with blood in that sacred land, Than doubt that heaven e'er shed its light Deep into this world's long troublous night; That God hears our prayers, knows ...
— Volume 1 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... the twelfth or thirteenth century, when at latest such a poem would be written, in a language other than French, is so far unknown to us; and although as a matter of fact the central motif of the poem, the representation of a Moor as near akin to the Grail Winner, Sir Perceval, has not been preserved in any known French text, while it does exist in a famous German version, I for one find no difficulty in believing that the tradition existed in French, ...
— The Romance of Morien • Jessie L. Weston
... support for its self-preservation. Many a regiment has lost its coherence with the loss of its standard. Many kinds of associations have dissolved after their palladium, their storehouse, their grail, was destroyed. When, however, the social coherence is lost in this way, it is safe to say that it must have suffered serious internal disorder before, and that in this case the loss of the external ...
— Introduction to the Science of Sociology • Robert E. Park
... doesn't give us half a chance,' said Livingstone, 'she guards her day and night. It's like the monks and the Holy Grail. ...
— Eben Holden - A Tale of the North Country • Irving Bacheller
... spear in hand, and set forth to conquer. His first phrase, "Das weiss ich nicht" which is about all he has to say in the first act, was coldly received. However, his bare legs and arms were admired from the rear as he stood his half-hour looking at the Holy Grail. In the second act, where he resists Kundry's questionable allurements, he did passably well, though he gave the impression that even for a reiner Thor—the German for a virtuous fool—she had no charms. She was a masterful, fat, and hideous German lady, and when she ...
— The Sunny Side of Diplomatic Life, 1875-1912 • Lillie DeHegermann-Lindencrone
... splendors of song there are in King Alfred's new volume,' he said. 'It is always a delight to get anything new from him. His "Holy Grail" and Lowell's "Cathedral" are enough for a holiday, ...
— Authors and Friends • Annie Fields
... his last leaf of salad. Wiping his lips with his napkin, he joined our tete-a-tete. 'Gracious madam, I agree with you. He who seeks from music more than music gives, is on the quest—how shall I put it?—of the Holy Grail.' 'And what,' I struck in, 'is this minimum or maximum that music gives?' 'Dear young friend,' replied the professor, 'music gives melodies, harmonies, the many beautiful forms to which sound shall be fashioned. Just as in the case of shells and fossils, ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Complete - Series I, II, and III • John Symonds
... a deputation from Guyenne, Royergue, and Poitou, appeared before the Languedoc synod, requesting preachers and pastors to be sent to them. The synod agreed to send Maroger as preacher. Betrine (the first of the Lausanne students) and Grail were afterwards sent to join him. Protestantism was also reawakening in Saintonge and Picardy, and pastors from Languedoc journeyed there to administer the sacrament. Preachers were afterwards sent to join them, to awaken the ...
— The Huguenots in France • Samuel Smiles
... that you have seen this vision, and in this spirit have come to help us. Sir Launfal, in searching for the Holy Grail, found it in ministering to the suffering and diseased at his own door. Ye who are in search of God's best gift can find it to-day in lifting up these ten millions of people at your door, broken by slavery, bound by ...
— Masterpieces of Negro Eloquence - The Best Speeches Delivered by the Negro from the days of - Slavery to the Present Time • Various
... suffered and questioned came to him, and threw themselves upon him; often getting more buffeting than balm for their pains; but always conscious of some mysterious attractions in him, as of one who, like Sir Boris, had seen the Grail, but might never tell of ...
— The Mating of Lydia • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... and pale With passions of perfume, — if violets blue That hint of heaven with odor more than hue, — If perfect roses, each a holy Grail Wherefrom the blood of beauty doth exhale Grave raptures round, — if leaves of green as new As those fresh chaplets wove in dawn and dew By Emily when down the Athenian vale She paced, to do observance ...
— The Poems of Sidney Lanier • Sidney Lanier
... heart is strongly stirred By clink of plate or flight of bird, He has a plumy tail; At night he treads on stealthy pad As merry as Sir Galahad A-seeking of the Grail. ...
— Songs for a Little House • Christopher Morley
... subject of English Literature? Man's loss of Paradise has been a subject of English Literature, and so has been a Copper Coinage in Ireland, and so has been Roast Sucking-pig, and so has been Holy Dying, and so has been Mr Pepys's somewhat unholy living, and so have been Ecclesiastical Polity, The Grail, Angling for Chub, The Wealth of Nations, The Sublime and the Beautiful, The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, Prize-Fights, Grecian Urns, Modern Painters, Intimations of Immortality in early Childhood, ...
— On The Art of Reading • Arthur Quiller-Couch
... most extraordinary, rare, and orchid-like male creature, I feel that the appended narrative, albeit I do not figure therein as Sir Galahad or King Arthur, is no more than your just due. I relinquish the steel helmet and holy grail adjuncts, and exploit myself to your ribald gaze and half-witted laughter just ...
— At Home with the Jardines • Lilian Bell
... same class as those magic self-propelled craft which we meet with very frequently in Celtic lore, and the introduction of this feature in itself is sufficient to convince us of the Celtic or Breton origin of Marie's tale. We have such a craft in the Grail legend in the Morte d'Arthur, in which Galahad finds precisely such a bed. The vessel in the Grail legend is described as "King Solomon's Ship," and it is obvious that Marie or her Breton original must have borrowed the idea from a ...
— Legends & Romances of Brittany • Lewis Spence
... "Richard duke of Gloucester and the Lady Anne'' at the Royal Academy in 1896, and in that year was elected A.R.A., becoming a full R.A. in 1898. Apart from his other paintings, special mention must be made of the large frescoes entitled "The Quest of the Holy Grail,'' in the Boston Public Library, on which he was occupied for some years; and in 1901 he was commissioned by King Edward VII. to paint a picture of the coronation, containing many portraits elaborately grouped. The dramatic subjects, and the brilliant colouring of his on pictures, gave them pronounced ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... times as these, never since the first tick of time have the hours been so crowded! Never before did so many men live nobly or die bravely. The young knights from many lands are seeking the Holy Grail, and finding it in forgetfulness of self and in sacrifice for their fellows. You and I are living to-day among the deeds of men that make the deeds of the heroes of past times pale into insignificance. Never were there bred men ...
— "Over There" with the Australians • R. Hugh Knyvett
... folly of adventurous youth," rang out the melodious and sincere voice of the mandarin. "It is a quest for a grail which will end in a pool of your own blood! Come ...
— Peter the Brazen - A Mystery Story of Modern China • George F. Worts
... world as limited as a stroke of a pendulum, I and my sort would struggle against tradition; try, at least, to displace old cants with new ones. I've thought I was right about life at various times, but faith is difficult. One thing I know. If living isn't a seeking for the grail it may be a damned ...
— This Side of Paradise • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... This was in September, 1868. Instead of constituting a Republic at once, in harmony with those popular rights which had been proclaimed, the half-hearted leaders proceeded to look about for a King; and from that time till now they have been in this quest, as if it were the Holy Grail, or happiness on earth. The royal family of Spain was declared incompetent. Therefore a king must be found outside,——and so the quest was continued in other lands. One day the throne is offered to a prince of Portugal, ...
— The Duel Between France and Germany • Charles Sumner
... galleries of coal-mines. Was it really wrong to make children do that? Or was Ruskin only an impossible idealist? They were the happy years, radiant with the certain knowledge of the British that the Holy Grail would be recognized immediately it was seen, for over it would be proudly floating the confirmatory Union Jack. We had not even begun to suspect that our morals, manners, and laws were fairly poor compared with the standards ...
— Waiting for Daylight • Henry Major Tomlinson
... there was a Hector, or Achilles, or Trojan war, or Twelve Peers of France, or Arthur of England, who still lives changed into a raven, and is unceasingly looked for in his kingdom. One might just as well try to make out that the history of Guarino Mezquino, or of the quest of the Holy Grail, is false, or that the loves of Tristram and the Queen Yseult are apocryphal, as well as those of Guinevere and Lancelot, when there are persons who can almost remember having seen the Dame Quintanona, ...
— Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... know! He had lived in a glow since that wonderful night—and this letter provided another. He rode like a proud young crusader of old, with his head in a region of sunshine and gold, his vision transfixed by a face. Her love had become his holy grail—and for that he would ride ...
— The Furnace of Gold • Philip Verrill Mighels
... renaissance of old thought. The modern quest of the Grail is not for the crystal cup that held the holy elements, but for the divine life itself, the principle that inspires men to action. The philosopher of our day is not a hermit, theorizing about vague abstractions, but vitally alive to the problems that confront this day and generation, ...
— An American Suffragette • Isaac N. Stevens
... wither, is not so satisfactory. Of the upper middle class, indeed, at that time, Gissing had very few means of observation. But this defect, common to all his early novels, is more than compensated by the intensely pathetic figure of Gilbert Grail, the tender-souled, book-worshipping factory hand raised for a moment to the prospect of intellectual life and then hurled down by the caprice of circumstance to the unrelenting round of manual toil at the soap and candle factory. Dickens would have given a touch of the grotesque to Grail's ...
— The House of Cobwebs and Other Stories • George Gissing
... window and struck a golden bar against the white lawn of his surplice, and Fielding, staring at him with eyes of almost passionate devotion, thought suddenly of Sir Galahad, and of that "long beam" down which had "slid the Holy Grail." Surely the flame of that old vigorous Christianity had never burned higher or steadier. A marvellous life for this day, kept, like the flower of Knighthood, strong and beautiful and "unspotted from the world." ...
— The Militants - Stories of Some Parsons, Soldiers, and Other Fighters in the World • Mary Raymond Shipman Andrews
... mountain meres I find a magic bark; I leap on board; no helmsman steers: I float till all is dark. A gentle sound, an awful light! Three angels bear the holy Grail; With folded feet, in stoles of white, On sleeping wings they sail. Ah, blessed vision! blood of God! My spirit beats her mortal bars, As down dark tides the glory slides, And star-like mingles with ...
— Mike Fletcher - A Novel • George (George Augustus) Moore
... begin to turn. The first half of the Book has been the complication of the plot, the second half will be the resolution. 14. Give a description of Prince Arthur. 15. What mysterious power was possessed by his shield? Cf. the Holy Grail. 16. Observe carefully the scene between Una and Arthur, noting the changes in her mood. What light is thrown on her character? What are her feelings toward the Knight? 17. Explain the various threads of ...
— Spenser's The Faerie Queene, Book I • Edmund Spenser
... forgive me," he cried, "that ever I have called myself a socialist, if this is what socialism means! But it does not! I will rescue the word! I will reclaim it for its ancient nobler sense—socialism the dream of the world, the light of the grail on the marsh, the mystic city of Sarras, the vale of Avalon! Socialism the soul of liberty, the bond of brotherhood, the seal of equality! Who is he that with sacrilegious hands would seize our Ariel and prison him in that tree of iniquity the ...
— A Modern Symposium • G. Lowes Dickinson
... conception lacking in the old Greek. Within the coffin lay an object of a fresh and brilliant clearness among the ashes of the dead—a flask of lively green glass, like a great emerald. It might have been "the wondrous vessel of the Grail." Only, this object seemed to bring back no ineffable purity, but rather the riotous and earthy heat of old paganism itself. Coated within, and, as some were persuaded, still redolent with the tawny sediment of the Roman wine it had held so long ago, it was set aside for use at ...
— Imaginary Portraits • Walter Horatio Pater
... allowed, however, that Titurel the Chief had grown extremely aged, but it was not allowed that he could die in the presence of the Sangrail. He seemed to have been laid in a kind of trance, resting in an open tomb beneath the altar of the Grail; and whenever the cup was uncovered his voice might be heard joining in the celebration. Meanwhile, Amfortas, his son, ...
— Parsifal - Story and Analysis of Wagner's Great Opera • H. R. Haweis
... their connection with the mystic Grail is here the subject of Mr. William Henry Frost's translation into child language. Many volumes have been prepared telling these wonderful legendary stories to young people, but few are so admirably written as this work," says the ...
— Children's Books and Their Illustrators • Gleeson White
... always face to face with a great expectation. Perhaps to-night he may realise it; certainly in the morning it will be much nearer; and as for the third day, it will be realised in some great festival of delight. There is, too, a subtle selfishness in this quest after the ideal—the Holy Grail of the imagination. The artist keeps the secret from his brother artists until he can startle them with some gracious surprise. He almost pities them, as he thinks of the revelation that is about to dawn upon unsuspecting and slumberous minds. Postponement of this surprise ...
— The Idler Magazine, Vol III. May 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... of the criticism already mentioned of the characters and conclusion of this act, I determined to try to make it the very pivot of the whole opera. I wished to do this, if only for the sake of the musical motive appearing in the story of the Holy Grail; but in other respects the plan ...
— My Life, Volume I • Richard Wagner
... active now as ever it was. We still presume, in our unworthiness, to pass the barriers, and to walk upon those paths which lead to the enchanted forests and through them to the city of the Moon. At any moment we are ready to set forth, like Arthur's knights, in search of the Holy Grail. ...
— The Treasury of Ancient Egypt - Miscellaneous Chapters on Ancient Egyptian History and Archaeology • Arthur E. P. B. Weigall
... He fitted so precisely into a certain pigeonhole of human kind.—What we had not counted on was the fierceness of the stimulus—like the taste of blood to a carnivore or, to the true knight, a glimpse of the veritable Grail. ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1921 and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... the crown of Kay Khusraw, the sceptre of Anushirwan, "The holy grail of high Jamshid, Afrasiyab's hall?—Canst ...
— The Kasidah of Haji Abdu El-Yezdi • Richard F. Burton
... be owing to me, if you fail in the former," said I. "As for the latter, naturally it will depend upon yourself. What shall you call it—'A Chiel takkin' Notes' or 'In Search of the Grail'?" ...
— The Princess Passes • Alice Muriel Williamson and Charles Norris Williamson
... agreed; an opinion not too well confirmed by the old man's appearance. His fine eyes had a pathetic habit of wandering to the horizon in a questioning fashion that had a queer sort of hopelessness in it, as if his quest were one for the Holy Grail, perhaps; and his expression was mild, vague, and sad. He had a look of race and blood; and yet, at the first glance, one saw that he was lost in dreams, and one guessed that the dreams would never be of great practicability in their application. ...
— The Gentleman From Indiana • Booth Tarkington
... anything but this most loving corpse whose head caressing rests it on my feet. Ah, no, I did not mean it thus; I would not get away alone. I loved that corpse. It was the sweetest bit of human frailty that to man e'er brought a blessing or a curse. I turned from Dias' holy grail to taste its nectar. Hell, throw a-wide your sulphur-blazoned gates, I'll grasp it in my arms and make the plunge! Hist! what was that? I heard him laugh again. Laugh, fiend, you cannot hurt me more. Ah! Reyenita, ...
— Debris - Selections from Poems • Madge Morris
... Sally sat there, nursing Tom, it suddenly struck her that this was the very situation with which that 'Romance of the Middle Ages' film ended. You know the one I mean. Sir Percival Ye Something (which has slipped my memory for the moment) goes out after the Holy Grail; meets damsel in distress; overcomes her persecutors; rescues her; gets wounded, and is nursed back to life in her arms. Sally had seen it a dozen times. And every time she had reflected that the days of romance are dead, and that that sort ...
— The Man Upstairs and Other Stories • P. G. Wodehouse
... down to the water-front. The Chinamen were already busy in their shops. The sky had still the pallor of dawn, and there was a ghostly silence on the lagoon. Ten miles away the island of Murea, like some high fastness of the Holy Grail, guarded ...
— The Moon and Sixpence • W. Somerset Maugham
... siege of the noble prince, Sir Galahad." Straightway the young man seated himself there where none other had ever sat without danger to his life; and all who saw it said, one to another: "Surely this is he that shall achieve the Holy Grail." Now the Holy Grail was the blessed dish from which Our Lord had eaten the Last Supper, and it had been brought to the land of Britain by Joseph of Arimathea; but because of men's sinfulness, it had been withdrawn from human ...
— The Junior Classics, V4 • Willam Patten (Editor)
... the sense of lifting a tangible veil, of gaining a glimpse of the hidden personality—not the half-sceptical, pleasant, friendly Blake of the boy's acquaintance, but Blake the dreamer, the idealist who sought some grail of infinite holiness figured in his own imagination, zealously guarded from the scoffer and the worldling. A swift desire pulsed in her to share the knowledge of this quest—to see the face of the knight illumined for his adventure—to ...
— Max • Katherine Cecil Thurston
... you as a dull and stinking little town, and so I dare say it is. But after lunch we shall go up the hillside to where the theatre stands, at the edge of the pine-woods, and from the porch the trumpets will give out the motif of the Grail, and we shall pass out of the heat into the cool darkness of the theatre. Aren't you thrilled, Comber? Doesn't a holy awe pervade you! Are you worthy, do ...
— Michael • E. F. Benson
... her presence a temple wherein we cleanse our souls. She is mysterious, worshipful, and inaccessible, something perhaps of the woman, possibly even propitious and helpful, and yet something of the Holy Grail as well. You have no rights with her, nor she with you; you owe her no definite duties, and yet she is singularly yours. A smile is a favour, a touch of her fingers, a faint pressure of your hand, ...
— Select Conversations with an Uncle • H. G. Wells
... Arabian Nights or from the classic poets; here were the fit destination of some 'faery frigot,' here some adventurous prince might step ashore among new characters and incidents; and the island prison, where it floated on the luminous face of the lagoon, might have passed for the repository of the Grail. In such a scene, and at such an hour, the impression received was not so much of foreign travel—rather of past ages; it seemed not so much degrees of latitude that we had crossed, as centuries of ...
— In the South Seas • Robert Louis Stevenson
... and Sir Bedivere May pass beyond the pale, And wander over moor and mere To find the Holy Grail; ...
— The Book of American Negro Poetry • Edited by James Weldon Johnson
... had lived long ago," say some of the boys. "Then I might have killed dragons, and fought for my Queen, and sought for the Holy Grail. Nobody does those things now. Though I can be a soldier and fight for the King, that is a quite ...
— The Story of General Gordon • Jeanie Lang
... 'Holy Grail,' 53. This thorn, a patriarchal tree of vast dimensions, was destroyed during the Reformation. But many of its descendants exist about England (propagated from cuttings brought by pilgrims), and still retain its unique season for flowering. ...
— Early Britain—Roman Britain • Edward Conybeare
... rose to depart. There was also a seat richer than the rest for the King himself—and another chair, wonderfully carven and wrought with gems, that was called the "Seat Perilous," where even Arthur might not sit—for that chair was reserved for the knight who should look upon the "Holy Grail," a vessel containing the blood of Christ that had been taken to Heaven on his death. It could only be beheld by the purest knight that went in quest of it, which Arthur could not do, because he must ...
— A Treasury of Heroes and Heroines - A Record of High Endeavour and Strange Adventure from 500 B.C. to 1920 A.D. • Clayton Edwards
... of the drama was familiar to New Yorkers from many concert performances. Once, indeed, there was a "Parsifal" festival in Brooklyn, under the direction of Mr. Seidl, in which all the music was sung by the best singers of the Metropolitan Opera House on a stage set to suggest the Temple of the Grail. Only the action and the pictures were new to the city's music lovers. Nevertheless the interest on the part of the public was stupendous. The first five representations were over on January 21st, but ...
— Chapters of Opera • Henry Edward Krehbiel
... uncritical and indiscriminate enthusiasm. Manuscripts were worshipped by these men, just as the reliques of the Holy Land had been adored by their great-grandfathers. The eagerness of the crusades was revived in this quest of the holy grail of ancient knowledge. Waifs and strays of pagan authors were valued like precious gems, revelled in like odoriferous and gorgeous flowers, consulted like oracles of God, gazed on like the eyes of a beloved mistress. The good, the bad, and the indifferent ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... had previously met (notably in Paris in 1851), the intimacy between them would seem to have been cemented, if not begun, during one of Tennyson’s visits to his and Browning’s friends, Mr. and Mrs. Knowles at the Hollies, Clapham Common. Here Tennyson read to Browning the ‘Grail’ (which the latter pronounced to be Tennyson’s “best and highest”); and here Browning came and read his own new poem ‘The Ring and the Book,’ when Tennyson’s verdict on it was, “Full of strange vigour and remarkable in many ways, doubtful if it will ...
— Old Familiar Faces • Theodore Watts-Dunton
... this explanation: Mr. Pole, a grain merchant of Bristol, had developed some sort of clairvoyant power, or at all events he had dreamed several times with great vividness the location of the true Grail. Another dreamer, a Dr. Goodchild, of Bath, was mixed up in the matter, and between them this peculiar vessel, which was not a cup, or a goblet, or any of the traditional things, had been discovered. Mr. Pole seemed a man of integrity, and it was clear that the churchman believed the ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... knew also what she did not admit, even if she recognized it, that in the Old Home Town, men of the sort to attract women of her spirit and intelligence were scarce—and she was out looking for her own Sir Galahad, as he went up and down the earth searching for the Holy Grail. The war to her, we knew, was a great opportunity to enjoy the new freedom of her sex, to lose her harem veil, to breathe free air as an achieving human creature—but, alas! one's forties are too ...
— The Martial Adventures of Henry and Me • William Allen White
... thrilling spectacle and who felt for ever the desire to resolve his experience of life into a literary form. On that high head of the passion for form the attempt at perfection, the quest for which was to his mind the real search for the holy grail—he said the most interesting, the most inspiring things. He mixed with them a thousand illustrations from his own life, from other lives he had known, from history and fiction, and above all from the annals of ...
— The Author of Beltraffio • Henry James
... remember how we pledged us in the fancies of our youth, We would run the quest forever for the Holy Grail of Truth! ...
— Oklahoma Sunshine • Freeman E. (Freeman Edwin) Miller
... chattered over the manners of his contemporaries, and in his satirical poems scourged the greed and vices of the clergy, whilst on the other hand he took a principal part in spreading a knowledge of the legend of the high-souled King Arthur and of the quest of the Holy Grail. Giraldus Cambrensis again, or Gerald of Wales, wrote on all sorts of subjects with shrewd ...
— A Student's History of England, v. 1 (of 3) - From the earliest times to the Death of King Edward VII • Samuel Rawson Gardiner
... forever the desire to resolve his experience of life into a literary form. On this matter of the passion for form,—the attempt at perfection, the quest for which was to his mind the real search for the holy grail,—he said the most interesting, the most inspiring things. He mixed with them a thousand illustrations from his own life, from other lives that he had known, from history and fiction, and above all from the annals of the time ...
— The Author of Beltraffio • Henry James
... self-indulgence, they deny the maxims of the worldly wise. But in accepting Christ's principle and forsaking their palaces that they might be as brothers to beggars, Xavier and Loyola found an exhilaration denied to kings; while each Sir Launfal, in his ease denied the Holy Grail, has in the hour of self-sacrifice discerned the Vision Splendid. To each young patriot and soldier looking eagerly unto the tablets that commemorate the deeds of heroes, to each young scholar aspiring to a place beside the sages, comes this word: Life is through ...
— The Investment of Influence - A Study of Social Sympathy and Service • Newell Dwight Hillis
... of these ancient stories undoubtedly are. It were foolish to expect that all of them should attain the high level of those great legends which centre about the Holy Grail. Good things have ever been imitated indifferently; and it was only the later series of tales which had to do chiefly with enchantments and fairies and 'giaunts, hard to be beleeved.' But alas! all alike have come ...
— The Book-Hunter at Home • P. B. M. Allan
... Sadly, heartily, earnestly, Salle, room, Samite, silk stuff with gold or silver threads, Sangreal, Holy Grail, Sarps, girdles, Saw, proverb, Scathes, harms, hurts, icripture, writing, Search, probe wounds, Selar, canopy, Semblable, like, Semblant, semblance, Sendal, fine cloth, Sennight, week, ...
— Le Morte D'Arthur, Volume I (of II) - King Arthur and of his Noble Knights of the Round Table • Thomas Malory
... house so famous as it saving only the house of King Ban of Benwick, which brought forth those two peerless knights beyond all compare:—to wit, Sir Launcelot of the Lake and Sir Galahad, who achieved the quest of the San Grail. ...
— The Story of the Champions of the Round Table • Howard Pyle
... monotonous days we lost account, In fitful dreams remembering days of old And nights—th' erect Archangel on the Mount With sword that drank the dawn; the Vase of Gold The moving Grail athwart the starry fields Where all the heavenly spearmen clashed ...
— The Vigil of Venus and Other Poems by "Q" • Q
... extend the boundary of human knowledge in the face of perils and obstacles more formidable and more mysterious than those encountered by the knights of old in the cause of the Lord's sepulchre or the holy grail—they have thus embodied in a form which will ever awaken enthusiasm in imaginative natures, the noble impulses of our latter civilization. To win the favour of that noblest of mistresses, Science; to take authoritative possession, in her name, of the whole domain of humanity; to open ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... chivalry, wherein valiant knights did all kinds of impossibilities at the behest of fair damsels, rescued enchanted princesses, slew two-headed giants, or wandered for months over land and sea in quest of the Holy Grail, which few of them were sufficiently good even to see, and none to bring back to Arthur's Court. But Mr Benden found that the adventures of Sir Isumbras, or the woes of the Lady Blanchefleur, were quite incapable of making him forget the very disagreeable present. Then he tried rebuilding ...
— All's Well - Alice's Victory • Emily Sarah Holt
... 'The Holy Grail', the concluding thirty-two verses, beginning: "And spake I not too truly, O my Knights", and ending "ye have seen that ye ...
— Introduction to Robert Browning • Hiram Corson
... former belong, as Mr. Skene puts it, to the "full-blown Arthurian romance." Chretien de Troies, the most famous of the old French trouveres in the latter part of the twelfth century, made the Arthur legend the subject for his "Romans" and "Contes," as well as for two epics on Tristan; the Holy Grail, Peredur, etc., belonging to the same cycle. Early in the same century the Arthurian metrical romance became known in Germany, and there assumed a more animated and artistic form in the "Parzival" of Wolfram ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 5 of 8 • Various
... of himself, I am knight, too, of the Holy Grail, valiant for the Truth, reverent of all women, honouring all men, eager to yield life to the ...
— The Second Thoughts of An Idle Fellow • Jerome K. Jerome
... is the beautiful "Sir Galahad," whose strength was as the strength of ten, because his heart was pure. We see a knight standing bare-headed at the side of his white horse, gazing with rapt eyes on the vision of the Holy Grail, which in the gloom and solitude of the forest has suddenly dawned on his sight. The features of young Arthur Prinsep, with his bushy hair, who later became a general in the British army, can be detected in this wonderful and ...
— Watts (1817-1904) • William Loftus Hare
... like a coward to pay by herself for something which he himself had helped to start. He rose softly and went to the window, staring out into the night. A few moments later he turned back wearing a strange uplifted sort of look, a look perhaps such, as Percival bore when he beheld the Grail. ...
— Wild Wings - A Romance of Youth • Margaret Rebecca Piper
... that the only Reality is the Spiritual, the Here and the Now; that the Riddle of the Universe is not to be solved by the Intellect but by that method which is employed by those who are earnestly following the "Quest of the Grail"—namely, by realising that our True Personality or Transcendental Ego is an emanation from the Absolute; that we are one-with Him, and that it is by following the old Hellenic command "[Greek: Gnothi seauton]" (Know ...
— Science and the Infinite - or Through a Window in the Blank Wall • Sydney T. Klein
... word for the cup out of which our Lord Jesus drank, the night that he held the last supper with his disciples. Therefore, it is called holy. There is a tradition which says that for a long time after the death of Christ the Holy Grail remained on earth, and any one who was sick and touched it was healed at once. But then people grew to be so wicked that it disappeared from earth. It is said that if a person in our day were only good enough, he could see the ...
— King Arthur and His Knights • Maude L. Radford
... me helmet, 'n' no red cross on me chest, 'N' so fur they haven't dressed me in a swanking load of metal; We've no 'Oly Grail I know of, but we do our little best With a jamtin, 'n' a billy, 'n' a battered ...
— 'Hello, Soldier!' - Khaki Verse • Edward Dyson
... commonplace; and at times one feels the awkwardness of their union and the imperfections of their form. Then again, perhaps two ideas of equal originality come together and spoil each other by making too strong a contrast. The fine lamentation of King Mark—that personification of a knight of the Grail—is treated with such moderation and with so noble a scorn for outward show, that its pure, cold light is entirely lost after the glowing fire of ...
— Musicians of To-Day • Romain Rolland
... of the brave—soon, by God's grace, the free— Thy woe is transient; joy shall come to thee; It cannot fail. The darkest night gives way to rosy dawn, And thou, perchance, shalt see on Easter morn, The Holy Grail. ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 2, May, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... of night, exhausted, trailing their long ears almost to the ground, they returned to the cook, who fed them and made much of them. Next morning they were at it as hard as ever. To them it was the quest for the Grail,—hopeless, but glorious. ...
— The Blazed Trail • Stewart Edward White
... infantry which Desnoyers had seen in Berlin reflecting the light on metal and leather straps, the magnificent and terrifying Hussars, the Cuirassiers in pure white uniform like the paladins of the Holy Grail, the artillerymen with breasts crossed with white bands, all the military variations that on parade had drawn forth the Hartrotts' sighs of admiration—these were now all unified and mixed together, of uniform color, all in greenish mustard like the dusty lizards that, slipping along, ...
— The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... mountain meres I find a magic bark; I leap on board: no helmsman steers: I float till all is dark. A gentle sound, an awful light! Three angels bear the Holy Grail; With folded feet, in stoles of white, On sleeping wings they sail. Ah, blessed vision! blood of God! My spirit beats her mortal bars, As down dark tides the glory slides, And starlike ...
— Graded Poetry: Seventh Year - Edited by Katherine D. Blake and Georgia Alexander • Various
... Holy Grail I caught an eagle when I caught that dove, For now you are the queen of all the dames, Even King Constantine, who seldom marks A lady of the court, comes to your side And flatters you with royal courtesies, Which you receive with far too proud a grace; For, wit ye well, ...
— Under King Constantine • Katrina Trask
... Avalon, whither Arthur went to heal his overmastering sorrow, and where the air is always sweet with the smell of apple blossoms. In this deep wood lives Merlin, still weaving, as of old, the magic spells. There is the castle of the Grail, and as our eyes fall on it, suddenly there comes a hush, and we seem to hear the sublime antiphony, choir answering choir in heavenly melody, as Parsifal raises the cup, and the light from above smites it into sudden glory. We are travelling eastward, touching here and ...
— Under the Trees and Elsewhere • Hamilton Wright Mabie
... 13th-century poem; son of Parzival, and a Knight of the Grail; carried by a swan to Brabant he delivered and married the Princess Elsa; subsequently returning from war against the Saracens, she asked him of his origin; he told her, and was at once carried back again by the swan. Wagner adapted the story ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... countries, with the swan as symbol and token of all that is strange and beautiful where it has its source. It is less a theme capable of purely musical development to form pattern after pattern of entrancing beauty, like the Grail or Montsalvat theme, than the equivalent in music of tender colour. It never sings out from the orchestra without carrying the imagination for a moment from the scene before one's eyes to the fernem ...
— Wagner • John F. Runciman
... whose Arthur's Seat overhangs Edinburgh, whose presence haunts the Lakes, and Wales, and Cornwall, and the forests of Brittany; the race that held up for us the image of the Holy Grail—that race can claim no small share in the moulding of ...
— Hero-Myths & Legends of the British Race • Maud Isabel Ebbutt
... part of the building that was open to the public. I spent rapt hours studying the Abbey pictures. I repeated to myself lines from Tennyson's poem before the glowing scenes of the Holy Grail. Before the "Prophets" in the gallery above I was mute, but echoes of the Hebrew Psalms I had long forgotten throbbed somewhere in the depths of my consciousness. The Chavannes series around the main staircase ...
— The Promised Land • Mary Antin
... Christianised version thereof. 3. High Estimate of Buddha's Character. 4. Curious Parallel Passages. 5. Pilgrimages to the Peak. 6. The Patra of Buddha, and the Tooth-Relic. 7. Miraculous endowments of the Patra; it is the Holy Grail ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo, Volume 2 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa
... gained currency. Of these the most famous were the Veronica, a cloth on which Christ, on His way to Calvary, was supposed to have left the impress of His face, and a vessel of a green colour which was identified with the holy grail, the cup which our Lord used at the Last Supper. Of garments purporting to be the seamless coat of Christ there were a considerable number shown in different places; but the most famous to this day remains the Holy Coat of Treves, which, in Dr. Robertson's ...
— The Church and the Empire - Being an Outline of the History of the Church - from A.D. 1003 to A.D. 1304 • D. J. Medley
... Marcella with a shiver. "I like to think of the Last Supper, and the Holy Grail—mother used to read about it all to me—she used to tell me all about Parsifal and ...
— Captivity • M. Leonora Eyles
... title, but the plan and a good deal of the incidental symbolism of the poem were suggested by Miss Jessie L. Weston's book on the Grail legend: From Ritual to Romance (Macmillan). Indeed, so deeply am I indebted, Miss Weston's book will elucidate the difficulties of the poem much better than my notes can do; and I recommend it (apart from the great interest of the book itself) to any who think such elucidation of the poem worth ...
— The Waste Land • T. S. Eliot
... as a great continental conqueror—a kind of Welsh Charlemagne. "Many of the most picturesque and significant features of the full-grown legend (as Professor Lewis Jones points out)[1] are not even faintly suggested by Geoffrey. The Round Table, Lancelot, the Grail were unknown to him, and were grafted on the legend from other sources." But he made the Arthurian legends fashionable; he opened for all Europe the hitherto unknown and inexhaustible well of Celtic romance; ...
— Mediaeval Wales - Chiefly in the Twelfth and Thirteenth Centuries: Six Popular Lectures • A. G. Little
... not unfamiliar to their elder comrades of the quest and the joust, and the merry wars. These modern lads, pilgrims seeking their olden, golden comrade Danger, sallied forth upon the highroads of our civilization, and as the grail was found, and the lands were bounded and the journeys over and the trumpets seemed to be forever muffled, these hereditary pilgrims of the vast pretense, still looking for Danger, played blithely at seeking justice. It was a fine game and they found their danger ...
— In the Heart of a Fool • William Allen White
... Holy Grail," he said, and, with one arm round the woman he loved, he softly quoted ...
— The Treasure of Heaven - A Romance of Riches • Marie Corelli
... got her into distress—we know her quite as well; the celestial knight who rescues her—we know him nearly as well. But the details in which "Lohengrin" differs from all other tales of the same order are precisely those that make it the most enchanting tale of them all. Lohengrin, knight of the Grail, redeemer, yet with a touch of tragedy in his fate, drawn down the river in his magic boat by the Swan from a far mysterious land, a land of perpetual freshness and beauty, is an infinitely more poetic notion than the commonplace angel flapping clumsily down from heaven; and even ...
— Old Scores and New Readings • John F. Runciman
... of men—which Oxford will never forget, so long as high culture and noble character are dear to her. His wife—so his friend and biographer, Lewis Nettleship, tells us—once compared him to Sir Bors in "The Holy Grail": ...
— A Writer's Recollections (In Two Volumes), Volume I • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... reached Philip's court, where he was received with the highest honors. Then to his paternal castle he wended his way, to be welcomed by his proud parents as gladly as if he had won the Holy Grail. Dancing and rejoicing followed, in which all the neighboring noble families participated, and many a fair damsel shed her smiles—in vain it seems—on the famous and ...
— Historical Tales, Vol. 6 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality. French. • Charles Morris |
