"Achilles" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... not yet silent, nor the fountain of Castaly dry. For art is very life itself and knows nothing of death; she is absolute truth and takes no care of fact; she sees (as I remember Mr. Swinburne insisting on at dinner) that Achilles is even now more actual and real than Wellington, not merely more noble and interesting as a type and figure but more positive ...
— Miscellanies • Oscar Wilde
... to no law, was as happy in her freedom and confidence as any wild winged thing of the land or sea. The summer loved her; the winter strengthened her. Her first baptism in the salt waters had made her a free creature of the earth and skies; had fortified her, Achilles-like, against all hardship, cold, and nakedness to come; had delivered her from the bonds of habit and custom, and shown in her what earth and air of themselves can do, to make the lowest, most undeveloped ...
— Adela Cathcart, Vol. 3 • George MacDonald
... spoke highly of Homer. JOHNSON. 'He had all the learning of his age. The shield of Achilles shews a nation in war, a nation in peace; harvest sport, nay, stealing[245].' MONBODDO. 'Ay, and what we (looking to me) would call a parliament-house scene[246]; a cause pleaded.' JOHNSON. 'That is part of the life of a nation in peace. And there are in Homer such characters of heroes, and ...
— Life Of Johnson, Volume 5 • Boswell
... on this head were by no means uniformly successful, even when my plans were the most wittily concocted; for my namesake had much about him, in character, of that unassuming and quiet austerity which, while enjoying the poignancy of its own jokes, has no heel of Achilles in itself, and absolutely refuses to be laughed at. I could find, indeed, but one vulnerable point, and that lying in a personal peculiarity arising, perhaps, from constitutional disease, would have been spared by any antagonist less at his wit's end than ...
— Selections From Poe • J. Montgomery Gambrill
... had fled from Paris on the approach of the Allies; but being assured of the friendly protection of Alexander, returned to Malmaison ere Napoleon quitted Fontainebleau. The Czar visited her frequently, and endeavoured to soothe her affliction. But the ruin of "her Achilles," "her Cid" (as she now once more, in the day of misery, called Buonaparte), had entered deep into her heart. She sickened and died before the ...
— The History of Napoleon Buonaparte • John Gibson Lockhart
... has the following note on this line:—"Prince Memnon's sister; that is, an Ethiopian princess, or sable beauty. Memnon, king of Ethiopia, being an auxiliary of the Trojans, was slain by Achilles. (See Virg. Aen. I. 489., 'Nigri Memnonis arma.') It does not, however, appear that Memnon had any sister. Tithonus, according to Hesiod, had by Aurora only two sons, Memnon and Emathion, Theog. 984. This lady is ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 217, December 24, 1853 • Various
... difficulty, on the contrary, with these English, is ever to persuade them that they are beaten; and, as they don't care for the Saints, and don't fear the devil—heretics that they are—they trust to their own right arm, their cutlasses, and big guns; and by Achilles, if you do manage to throw them overboard, they will swim about in the hopes of getting a cut at you. Now, where we cannot succeed by force, we must employ stratagem; and I intend to go on board and to inform them that the Sea Hawk is an Austrian ship-of-war, ...
— The Pirate of the Mediterranean - A Tale of the Sea • W.H.G. Kingston
... Spinola with a courtly flourish, "although there are certainly not wanting an Austrian Agamemnon, a Dutch Hector, and an Italian Achilles." The last allusion was to the speaker's namesake and kinsman, the Marquis Anibrose Spinola, of whom much was to be heard in the world from ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... before it the storm-cloud. Not even those who are most happy are entirely so. No lot is wholly blest. Perfect happiness is unattainable. Tithonus, with the gift of ever-lasting life, wasted away in undying old age. Achilles, with every charm of youthful strength and gallantry, was doomed to early death. Not even the richest are content. Something is always lacking in the midst of abundance, and desire more than keeps pace ...
— Horace and His Influence • Grant Showerman
... arentem Lybiam, superate calores Solis, et arcanos Nili deprendite fontes, Herculeumque sinum, Bacchi transcurrite metas, Angli juris erit quicquid complectitur orbis. Anglis rubra dabunt pretiosas aequora conchas, Indus ebur, ramos Panchaia, vellera Seres, Dum viget Henricus, dum noster vivit Achilles; Est etenim laudes longe ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 75, April 5, 1851 • Various
... Clovis, William Rufus, and Rob Roy not only had red hair, but each was celebrated for having it; how Ossian sung a "lofty race of red-haired heroes," how Venus herself was golden-haired, as well as Patroclus and Achilles. "Thus does it appear," the article concluded, "that in all ages and in all countries, from Paradise to Dragon River, has red or golden hair been held in highest estimation. But for his red hair, the country of Esau would not have been called Edom. But ...
— A Political History of the State of New York, Volumes 1-3 • DeAlva Stanwood Alexander
... used as guides. The "Precepts of Chiron" was a didactic poem made up of moral and practical precepts, resembling the gnomic sections of the "Works and Days", addressed by the Centaur Chiron to his pupil Achilles. ...
— Hesiod, The Homeric Hymns, and Homerica • Homer and Hesiod
... less use is made of the persons of classical mythology in finding subjects for punishment. Among the virtuous heathen several find their place; but it may be doubted whether Electra or Orpheus were to Dante any less historical than Plato or Seneca. Semiramis, Dido, Achilles, again, would all be recorded in the histories of Orosius and others whom Dante read, with dates and possibly portraits. Capaneus, one of the "Seven against Thebes," is more nearly mythological; but as the utterer ...
— Dante: His Times and His Work • Arthur John Butler
... and distaste, Anger and just rebuke, and judgement giv'n, 10 That brought into this World a world of woe, Sinne and her shadow Death, and Miserie Deaths Harbinger: Sad task, yet argument Not less but more Heroic then the wrauth Of stern Achilles on his Foe pursu'd Thrice Fugitive about Troy Wall; or rage Of Turnus for Lavinia disespous'd, Or Neptun's ire or Juno's, that so long Perplex'd the Greek and Cytherea's Son; If answerable style I can obtaine ...
— The Poetical Works of John Milton • John Milton
... than daughters: so that the united Heritage, Brandenburg and Culmbach both, came now to the third Brother, Albert; who has been in Culmbath these many years already. A tall, fiery, tough old gentleman, of formidable talent for fighting, who was called the "ACHILLES OF GERMANY" in his day; being then a very blazing far-seen character, dim as he has now grown. [Born 1414; Kurfurst, 1471-1486.] This Albert Achilles was the Third Elector; Ancestor he of all the Brandenburg and Culmbach ...
— History Of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. III. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—The Hohenzollerns In Brandenburg—1412-1718 • Thomas Carlyle
... benumbing period were those of hunting scenes, and antique groups such as the Muses, or scenes from the life of Achilles. ...
— The Tapestry Book • Helen Churchill Candee
... animosities, ambitions, jealousies, possessed the rival governments; such entanglements of treaties and alliances, offensive or defensive, open or secret,—that a blow at one point shook the whole fabric. Hanover, like the heel of Achilles, was the vulnerable part for which England was always trembling. Therefore she made a defensive treaty with Prussia, by which each party bound itself to aid the other, should its territory be invaded. ...
— Montcalm and Wolfe • Francis Parkman
... must know. Behold A warrior, than his sire more fierce and fell, To find you rages,—Diomed the bold, Whom like the stag that, far across the vale, The wolf being seen, no herbage can allure, So fly you, panting sorely, dastard pale!— Not thus you boasted to your paramour. Achilles' anger for a space defers The day of wrath to Troy and Trojan dame; Inevitable glide the allotted years, And Dardan roofs ...
— Poems • Adam Lindsay Gordon
... in a suddenly harsh voice, "lend a hand with this rope, will you?" And in the dusk I turned away to hide my triumphant smiles. I had found the weak spot of my foe—as Mr. Tubbs might have said, I was wise to Achilles's heel. ...
— Spanish Doubloons • Camilla Kenyon
... a coward: no; let the critics remember that Ulysses did not go voluntarily to the Trojan war, and was always willing to escape when he could; and yet surely he was a hero. Thus have I proved the bravery of Taylor. He had also other requisites for a hero: he was amorous, like Achilles and AEneas, and he deserted his love like the latter. Then he was brisk and gay. I do not remember any hero exactly of this character. To be sure, Achilles laughs once in the Iliad, and AEneas in the AEneid; but it does not appear to have been the general character ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor, Vol. I, No. 6, June 1810 • Various
... men, one of whom could with ease hurl rocks which two sturdy hands of a later period would be unable even to lift. He therefore naturally represented their martial exploits as resembling in kind, but far surpassing in magnitude, those of the stoutest and most expert combatants of his own age. Achilles, clad in celestial armor, drawn by celestial coursers, grasping the spear which none but himself could raise, driving all Troy and Lycia before him, and choking Scamander with dead, was only a ...
— Critical and Historical Essays, Volume III (of 3) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... current does not pass right across the Pole? If, for instance, it passes between the Pole and Franz Josef Land, as above intimated? What will the expedition do in that case to reach the earth's axis? Yes, this may seem to be the Achilles' heel of the undertaking; for should the ship be carried past the Pole at more than one degree's distance it may then appear extremely imprudent and unsafe to abandon it in mid-current and face such a long sledge-journey over uneven ...
— Farthest North - Being the Record of a Voyage of Exploration of the Ship 'Fram' 1893-1896 • Fridtjof Nansen
... a criticism, from a Greek standpoint, of foreign affairs, illustrated with practical examples; and, as regards treatment, quite as much care is bestowed upon the delineation of Hector, Priam, and Paris, as upon Agamemnon, Menelaus, and Achilles. The same story, told by a Trojan Homer, would doubtless have been very different; but it is by no means certain that it would have been any better told. It embodies, whether symbolically or literally matters not, the triumph of Greek ideas and civilization. But, even so, the ...
— Confessions and Criticisms • Julian Hawthorne
... Lotos-Eaters. On the other hand, a taste more fastidious, or more perverse, will scarcely be satisfied with pathos which in process of time has come to seem "obvious." The pathos of early death in the prime of beauty is less obvious in Homer, where Achilles is to be the victim, or in the laments of the Anthology, where we only know that the dead bride or maiden was fair; but the poor May Queen is ...
— Alfred Tennyson • Andrew Lang
... of the other world were dismal to an extreme. The after-life in Hades was believed to be a shadowy, joyless copy of the earthly existence. In Hades the shade of great Achilles exclaims sorrowfully, "Nay, speak not comfortably to me of death. Rather would I live on earth as the hireling of another, even with a landless man who had no great livelihood, than bear sway among all the dead." [13] It ...
— EARLY EUROPEAN HISTORY • HUTTON WEBSTER
... their repose, and disturb the dust which had been collecting for years. It seemed to the Prince as if he heard this inhospitable question quite clearly uttered by the lips of his ancestor Albert Achilles, before whose picture he was just passing, and whose large, glittering eyes seemed to look out in defiance. Frederick William stopped and looked at his forefather with a sad smile. "I have come much against my will, Elector Albert Achilles," he said. "I ...
— The Youth of the Great Elector • L. Muhlbach
... visited. The Lady of the Van Lake promised to meet her son whenever her counsel or aid was required. A like trait belongs to the Homeric goddesses. Thetis heard from her father's court far away beneath the ocean the terrible sounds of grief that burst from her son Achilles on hearing of the death of his dear friend Patroclus, and quickly ascended to earth all weeping to learn what ailed her son. These Fairy ladies also show a mother's ...
— Welsh Folk-Lore - a Collection of the Folk-Tales and Legends of North Wales • Elias Owen
... come over. The river was half a mile in width, yet every word uttered by the chieftain was heard; this may be partly attributed to the distinct manner in which every syllable of the compound words in the Indian language is articulated and accented; but in truth, a savage warrior might often rival Achilles himself for ...
— Astoria - Or, Anecdotes Of An Enterprise Beyond The Rocky Mountains • Washington Irving
... Thomas Inkle of London, aged twenty Years, embarked in the Downs, on the good Ship called the 'Achilles', bound for the West Indies, on the 16th of June 1647, in order to improve his Fortune by Trade and Merchandize. Our Adventurer was the third Son of an eminent Citizen, who had taken particular Care to instill into his Mind an early Love of Gain, by making him a perfect Master ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... on the table since the silver age succeeded the golden age. Mankind has always maintained that the good old times were much better than the present day. Nestor, in the "Iliad," wishing to insinuate himself as a wise conciliator into the minds of Achilles and Agamemnon, starts by saying to them—"I lived formerly with better men than you; no, I have never seen and I shall never see such great personages as Dryas, Cenaeus, Exadius, Polyphemus equal ...
— Voltaire's Philosophical Dictionary • Voltaire
... imaginations, clubbed together. Each of us furnished his legend. Rheims is one of the most impossible towns in the geography of story. Pagan lords have lived there, one of whom gave as a dower to his daughter the strips of land in Borysthenes called the "race-courses of Achilles." The Duke de Guyenne, in the fabliaux, passes through Rheims on his way to besiege Babylon; Babylon, moreover, which is very worthy of Rheims, is the capital of the Admiral Gaudissius. It is at Rheims that the deputation sent by the Locri Ozolae to ...
— The Memoirs of Victor Hugo • Victor Hugo
... was perfectly clear to Georgie. She wanted to have a short private consultation with Peppino, and he waited rather hopefully for their return, for Peppino, he felt sure, was bored with this Achilles-attitude of sitting sulking in the tent. They came back wreathed in smiles, and instantly embarked on the question of what to do after dinner. No romps: certainly not, but why not the tableaux again? The question was still ...
— Queen Lucia • E. F. Benson
... heard no more By windy Ilion's sea-built walls; Nor great Achilles, stained with gore, Shouts "O ye gods, 'tis Hector falls!" On Ida's mount is the shining snow, But Jove has gone from its brow away; And red on the plain the poppies grow Where the Greek and the Trojan ...
— The World's Best Poetry, Volume 8 • Various
... after the daily experience we have, can question the probability of a gentleman marrying anybody? How many of the wise and learned have married their cooks? Did not Lord Eldon himself, the most prudent of men, make a runaway match? Were not Achilles and Ajax both in love with their servant maids? And are we to expect a heavy dragoon with strong desires and small brains, who had never controlled a passion in his life, to become prudent all of a sudden, and to refuse to pay any price for ...
— Vanity Fair • William Makepeace Thackeray
... five thousand prisoners, and killed at least six thousand of the enemy. Adieu, my adorable Josephine. Think of me often. When you cease to love your Achilles, when your heart grows cool towards him, you wilt be very cruel, very unjust. But I am sure you will always continue my faithful mistress, as I shall ever remain your fond lover ('tendre amie'). Death ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... present at the moment of creation, when, among the suggestions he could have given Providence, he would have advised him to put the wrinkles of old age where the gods of Pagandom had located the feeble spot in Achilles. ...
— Life, Letters, and Epicurean Philosophy of Ninon de L'Enclos, - the Celebrated Beauty of the Seventeenth Century • Robinson [and] Overton, ed. and translation.
... Epirus pretended to derive their descent from Pyrrhus the son of Achilles, who established himself in that country, and called themselves AEacides, from ...
— The Ancient History of the Egyptians, Carthaginians, Assyrians, • Charles Rollin
... Achilles, Hostibus haud tergo, sed forti pectore notus, Quae persaepe vago victor certamine cursus 340 Flammea praevertet celeris vestigia cervae. Currite ducentes ...
— The Carmina of Caius Valerius Catullus • Caius Valerius Catullus
... airy lust, Too often in its fury overcoming all Who would, as 'twere, identify their dust From out the wide destruction which, entombing all, Leaves nothing till the coming of the just, Save change. I've stood upon Achilles' tomb, And heard Troy doubted—time will ...
— The Life of Lord Byron • John Galt
... my retreat give rise to any unfavorable imputations against my courage. Achilles, himself, would have incontinently fled if threatened with the blessings in store for me. From what oriental head-dresses, burnous affectedly draped, golden rings after the style of the Empress of the Lower Empire, have I ...
— The Cross of Berny • Emile de Girardin
... in Padua,—a fantastical scholar, like such who study to know how many knots was in Hercules' club, of what colour Achilles' beard was, or whether Hector were not troubled with the tooth-ache. He hath studied himself half blear-eyed to know the true symmetry of Caesar's nose by a shoeing-horn; and this he did to gain the name ...
— The Duchess of Malfi • John Webster
... gods, nor quite as the ancients did in heroes,—but in representative men, that is, in ideas, and in men as representing them. Washington is not to us what Achilles or Agamemnon was to the Greeks. The form of Achilles would do as well for a god; the antiquaries do not know whether the Ludovisi Mars was not an Achilles,—perhaps nobody ever knew. But in all our veneration of Washington, it is not his person we revere, but his virtues,—precisely ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 13, No. 76, February, 1864 • Various
... stories, for they show that the Greeks were so deeply moved by music that they could readily imagine it to have a similar effect on animals, and even on inanimate objects. Almost three thousand years ago, Homer represented Achilles as "comforting his heart with the sound of the lyre," after losing his sweet Briseis; "stimulating his courage and singing the deeds of the heroes." And, as Emil Naumann fancies, there is a moral underlying the myth of the siren; "for, as Homer ...
— Chopin and Other Musical Essays • Henry T. Finck
... undaunted flight, forcing his way through nether and surrounding fires. The poet has not in all this given us a mere shadowy outline; the strength is equal to the magnitude of the conception. The Achilles of Homer is not more distinct; the Titans were not more vast; Prometheus chained to his rock was not a more terrific example of suffering and of crime. Wherever the figure of Satan is introduced, ...
— Hazlitt on English Literature - An Introduction to the Appreciation of Literature • Jacob Zeitlin
... The soldiers left their tents, and were preparing to depart, when a prodigy occurred—a cloud covered the summit of the funeral pile. Then the cloud rolled away, and the ghost of Achilles appeared, clad in golden armour. Extending his arms towards the warriors, he seemed to say to them, "What! do you depart, children of Danaos? do you return to the land I shall never behold again, and leave my tomb without any offerings?" ...
— Thais • Anatole France
... gaze on the finest and gayest equipages of England. A very pretty piece of water is in this park, which is called "the Serpentine River." The best skating of London is to be seen here, we are told, in hard winters. The entrance from Piccadilly is by a fine threefold arch. Here is the great Achilles of bronze, in honor of Wellington, made out of the cannon which the duke captured in Spain. St. James's and the Green Park: this is the oldest in London, and was made by Henry VIII. A fine arch affords entrance from Piccadilly, having a bronze colossal equestrian statue of the Duke ...
— Young Americans Abroad - Vacation in Europe: Travels in England, France, Holland, - Belgium, Prussia and Switzerland • Various
... human mother, rather than Ilmatar, seems to be ascribed to Vainamoinen. Visits to parents' graves for advice and assistance are common in Scandinavian and Esthonian literature. Commentators have also quoted the story of Achilles and Thetis, but this is ...
— Kalevala, Volume I (of 2) - The Land of the Heroes • Anonymous
... evil is an old question. Achilles tells Priam that Zeus has two casks, one filled with good things, and the other with bad, and that he gives to men out of each according to his pleasure; and so we must be content, for we cannot alter the will of Zeus. One of the Greek commentators ...
— The Thoughts Of The Emperor Marcus Aurelius Antoninus • Marcus Aurelius
... upper chamber of his palace! He would lie down upon the ivory bed, and, smoothing my hair, would sing in an amorous strain. At the end of the day, I could see the two camps and the lanterns which they were lighting; Ulysses at the edge of his tent; Achilles, armed from head to foot, driving a ...
— The Temptation of St. Antony - or A Revelation of the Soul • Gustave Flaubert
... Levitical cities, the church of the returned exiles instead of that of the twelve tribes of Israel, the second temple instead of the tabernacle, Ezra instead of Moses, the sons of Zadok instead of the sons of Aaron, the absence of the other marks of Mosaicity. For the position of the Levites is the Achilles heel of the Priestly Code. If the Levites at a later date were still further lowered beneath the priests, and put into a worse position in favour of these, this nevertheless presupposes the distinction between ...
— Prolegomena to the History of Israel • Julius Wellhausen
... dry, and so were his eyes dry. Therefore, when the chiefs of the Achaeans in Council, seeing how their strength was wearing down like a snowbank under the sun, looked reproachfully upon him, and thought of Hector slain, and of dead Achilles who slew him, of Priam, and of Diomede, and of tall Patroclus, he, Menelaus, took no heed at all, but sat in his place, and said, "There is no mercy for robbers of the house. Starve whom we cannot put to the sword. Lay closer leaguer. So shall I win my wife again ...
— The Ruinous Face • Maurice Hewlett
... answer: "Thou bringest to my mind all that we endured, warring round Priam's mighty town. There the best of us were slain. Valiant Ajax [Footnote: A'-jax.] lies there, and there Achilles [Footnote: A-chil'-les], and there Patroclus [Footnote: Pa-tro'-clus], and there my own dear son. Who could tell the tale of all that we endured? Truly, no one, not though thou shouldst abide here five years or six to listen. For nine whole years we were busy, devising ...
— The Story Of The Odyssey • The Rev. Alfred J. Church
... the occasion. He even indulged in a classical joke. "There is something in the name of Helen that attracts," he said. "Were it not for the lady whose face drew a thousand ships to Ilium, we should never have heard of Paris, or Troy, or the heel of Achilles, and all these would ...
— The Silent Barrier • Louis Tracy
... legs of Achilles and of Thersites would share the same fate in them, and both would in modern London be as well entitled to the epithet of "well-trousered," as the former alone was to that of 'well-greaved' before Troy. Probably the majority of mankind are ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 1, April, 1851 • Various
... related here essentially as found in the Nibelungen Lied. It is quite differently told in the older versions. Siegfried's invulnerability save in one spot reminds us of Achilles, who also was made invulnerable by a bath, and who could be wounded only ...
— The Story of Siegfried • James Baldwin
... lightnings blaze across the vaulted skies, And, as the thunder shakes the heav'nly plains, A deep felt horror thrills through all my veins. When gentler strains demand thy graceful song, The length'ning line moves languishing along. When great Patroclus courts Achilles' aid, The grateful tribute of my tears is paid; Prone on the shore he feels the pangs of love, And stern Pelides tend'rest passions move. Great Maro's strain in heav'nly numbers flows, The Nine inspire, ...
— Religious and Moral Poems • Phillis Wheatley
... deeds and great hearts, and to our gallery of heroes strong and admirable men worthy to stand beside the strong and admirable men of the Iliad—Gunnar of Lithend and Skarphedinn, Njal and Kari, Helgi and Kolskegg, beside Telamonian Aias and Patroclus, Achilles and Hector, Ulysses and Idomeneus. In two respects these Icelanders win more of our sympathy than the Greeks and Trojans; for they, like ourselves, are of Northern blood, and in their mighty strivings are ...
— The story of Burnt Njal - From the Icelandic of the Njals Saga • Anonymous
... afternoon it began to grow dark, but we estimated that we had accomplished at least half of our day's journey, and halted for a few moments to allow our deer to eat. The last half of the distance seemed interminable. The moon rose round and bright as the shield of Achilles, and lighted up the vast, lonely tundra with noonday brilliancy; but the silence and desolation, the absence of any dark object upon which the fatigued eye could rest, and the apparently boundless extent of this Dead Sea of snow, oppressed us with new ...
— Tent Life in Siberia • George Kennan
... there lurk within of ancient wrong Some traces, bidding tempt the deep with ships, Gird towns with walls, with furrows cleave the earth. Therewith a second Tiphys shall there be, Her hero-freight a second Argo bear; New wars too shall arise, and once again Some great Achilles to some Troy be sent. Then, when the mellowing years have made thee man, No more shall mariner sail, nor pine-tree bark Ply traffic on the sea, but every land Shall all things bear alike: the glebe no more Shall feel the harrow's grip, nor vine the hook; The sturdy ...
— The Bucolics and Eclogues • Virgil
... enumerating the forces and allies of the two parties. But when Dares gets to work he proceeds with a rapidity which may be partly due to the desire to contradict Homer. The landing and death of Protesilaus, avenged to some extent by Achilles, the battle in which Hector slays Patroclus (to whom Dares adds Meriones), and that at the ships, are all lumped together; and the funerals of Protesilaus and Patroclus are simultaneously celebrated. Palamedes begins to plot ...
— The Flourishing of Romance and the Rise of Allegory - (Periods of European Literature, vol. II) • George Saintsbury
... 'twas no mere task, but had poetry, and all that sort of thing in it. But I don't know whether that would have done, if he had not come out so strong in the recitation; they put him on in Priam's speech to Achilles, and he said it—Oh it was too bad papa did not hear him! Every one ...
— The Daisy Chain, or Aspirations • Charlotte Yonge
... as for conscience' sake, for righteousness' sake, for qoodness' sake, for Jesus' sake, have become idioms. Some authorities justify the omission of the possessive s when the next word begins with s, as in Archimedes' screw, Achilles' sword. ...
— Slips of Speech • John H. Bechtel
... Signor: I write this to thee to tell thee amid what bitter anxieties I live.... I believed that so many prayers and tears, and love without measure, would not have been displeasing to God.... Thy great valor has shone as in a Hector or an Achilles." ...
— Italy, the Magic Land • Lilian Whiting
... tum Tiphys, et altera quae uehat Argo Delectos heroas; erunt etiam altera bella, Atque iterum ad Troiam magnus mittetur Achilles. ...
— The Idea of Progress - An Inquiry Into Its Origin And Growth • J. B. Bury
... variety of outline of which La Fontaine himself perhaps never dreamed ... and in spite of the fine and scholarly accent which he could give to all those clever beasts, he was, on many points, deprived of his power and his prestige: how endow a lion with the proud poses of Achilles; and lend the foolish grasshopper the ...
— Delsarte System of Oratory • Various
... condescension than kindly toleration—"what would you say to me, if I were to tell you that I myself have seen all the many visions unrolled before you in these instruments? What would you say, if I declared that I had gazed on the dances of Salome and of Esmeralda? that I had beheld the combat of Achilles and Hector and the mounted fight of Saladin and the ...
— Tales of Fantasy and Fact • Brander Matthews
... straight; and by the set of his shoulders (not particularly deep or wide) you would infer that when he looked at you he would look straight. Pity, isn't it, that you never really can tell what a man is inside by drawing up your brief from what he is outside. There is always the heel of Achilles somewhere; trust the ...
— The Voice in the Fog • Harold MacGrath
... describes an extraordinary file, which is to be sent from Sheffield to the Great Exhibition. This remarkable file is adorned with designs as numerous as those on the original shield of ACHILLES, all cut and beaten out with hammer and chisel. How much more sensible and friendly to show distinguished foreigners files of this sort, than to exhibit to them files ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 2, No. 12, May, 1851. • Various
... society, including among its members names and persons of illustrious and noble title, whose whole life and pleasure in life appears to "rest upon the hazard of a die." The modern Greek, though he cannot boast much resemblance to Achilles, Ajax, Patroclus, or Nestor, is, nevertheless, a close imitator of the equally renowned chief of Ithaca. To describe his person, habits, pursuits, and manners, would be to sketch the portrait of one or more finished roues, who ...
— The English Spy • Bernard Blackmantle
... one inch of the tibia and fibula (irregular fractures of the ends above and below), a corresponding portion of the posterior tibial muscle, and the long flexors of the great and small toes, as well as the tissue interposed between them and the Achilles tendon. The anterior tibial artery was fortunately uninjured. The remaining portions consisted of a strip of skin two inches in breadth in front of the wound, the muscles which it covered back of the wound, the Achilles tendon, and another piece of skin, barely enough to cover the tendon. The ...
— Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine • George M. Gould
... of Dr. Hake, I introduced the subject of Ambrose Gwinett in the same manner as I might have introduced the story of “Achilles’ wrath,” and appealed to Dr. Hake (who, of course, had never heard of the book or the man) as to whether a certain incident in the pamphlet had gained or lost by the dramatist who, at one of the minor theatres, had many years ago dramatized the story. Borrow was ...
— Old Familiar Faces • Theodore Watts-Dunton
... and taught them to shoot and to hunt. And for the shooting of arrows should not be let with great breasts, in the 7th year (as it is said), they burnt off their breasts, and therefore they were called Amazons. And as it is said, Hercules adaunted first the fierceness of them, and then Achilles. But that was more by friendship than by strength, as it is contained in deeds and doings of the Greeks, and the Amazons were destroyed and brought to death by great Alexander. But the story of Alexander saith not so. But it is said that Alexander demanded ...
— Mediaeval Lore from Bartholomew Anglicus • Robert Steele
... dearer self divide, Dear, as the sage7 renown'd for moral truth To the prime spirit of the Attic youth! Dear, as the Stagyrite8 to Ammon's son,9 His pupil, who disdain'd the world he won! Nor so did Chiron, or so Phoenix shine10 In young Achilles' eyes, as He in mine. First led by him thro' sweet Aonian11 shade Each sacred haunt of Pindus I survey'd; 30 And favor'd by the muse, whom I implor'd, Thrice on my lip the hallow'd stream I pour'd. But thrice the Sun's resplendent chariot roll'd To Aries, has new ting'd his fleece with gold, ...
— Poemata (William Cowper, trans.) • John Milton
... would be more than compensated by the greater endurance of his Arabs. Speaking generally, the carriage-makers of Rome built for the games almost solely, sacrificing safety to beauty, and durability to grace; while the chariots of Achilles and "the king of men," designed for war and all its extreme tests, still ruled the tastes of those who met and struggled for the crowns ...
— Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ • Lew Wallace
... table and took up his Homer; for he was too agitated to sleep. But it was in vain that he tried to interest himself in it. The rhythm had lost its music, the thought its power; it was in vain that he tried to forget himself in the reply of Achilles, or the struggle over the ...
— The Bridge of the Gods - A Romance of Indian Oregon. 19th Edition. • Frederic Homer Balch
... is little doubt as to the proper method, for some of the radicals must necessarily appear in the result. Man's conceit is his social foundation and when the vulnerable spot is once found in the armour of Achilles, the overthrow of the strenuous ...
— The Spinster Book • Myrtle Reed
... gamekeepers and other barbaric retainers; they pass their lives in the midst of serfs; their views about the position and rights of women—especially the women of the "lower orders"—are frankly African. They share the sentiments of Achilles as to the individuality of Chryseis ...
— Post-Prandial Philosophy • Grant Allen
... swift: Leucippus fierce: Acastus unexcell'd To dart the javelin: Caeneus, now no more Cloth'd in a female figure: Phoenix, sprung From old Amyntor: Actor's equal sons: Hippothooes: Dryas: and from Elis' town Dispatch'd, came Phileus. Nor was absent there, Brave Telamon, nor great Achilles' sire: Nor stout Eurytion; with Pheretus' son: Nor Hyantean Ioelaues brave: Echion in speed unconquer'd: Nestor then In primal youth: Lelex, Narycian born: Panopeus: Hyleus: Hippasus the fierce: Nor those whom Hippocooen sent in aid, From old Amyclae: ...
— The Metamorphoses of Publius Ovidus Naso in English blank verse Vols. I & II • Ovid
... wrote for me, and I "drawed" for us both, 'twas Hector fixed Achilles. When I sat at your right hand and your sharp, swift knife went into the turkey, 'twas I that got the tit-bits and the oyster. And all was right with the world then, I can ...
— The Penalty • Gouverneur Morris
... the most; and owned that he was hugely indebted to his coolness. When his colours were not drying fast enough, he read her a page or two of grand heroic reading from Pope's 'Homer' about Agamemnon and Achilles, Helen and Andromache; when she tired of that he was back again to the sparkling gossip of the town, for he was a brilliant fellow, with a clear intellect and a fine taste; and he had stored up and arranged elegantly on the shelves of his memory all the knowledge ...
— Girlhood and Womanhood - The Story of some Fortunes and Misfortunes • Sarah Tytler
... with pride of its forbearing, that is, parleying, policy. The people, the country, requires action. Congressus impar Achilli: Achilles, the people, and Congressus ...
— Diary from March 4, 1861, to November 12, 1862 • Adam Gurowski
... manicurist to keep them so, but she was too righteous to powder her nose. She was the sort of person a man would like his best friend to marry. Lady Arabel was older: she was virtuous to the same extent as Achilles was invulnerable. In the beginning, when her soul was being soaked in virtue, the heel of it was fortunately left dry. She had a husband, but no apparent tragedy in her life. These two women were obviously not native to their ...
— Living Alone • Stella Benson
... all vices, but he is not equally inclined by nature to all; one is prone to avarice, another to luxury, and another to insolence. Those persons, therefore, are mistaken, who ask the Stoics, "What do you say, then? is Achilles timid? Aristides, who received a name for justice, is he unjust? Fabius, who 'by delays retrieved the day,' is he rash? Does Decius fear death? Is Mucius a traitor? Camillus a betrayer?" We do not mean that all vices are inherent in all men in the same way in which ...
— L. Annaeus Seneca On Benefits • Seneca
... Guienne, and the Virgin from the east; and all united in giving law to society. In each case it was the woman, not the man, who gave the law;—it was Mary, not the Trinity; Eleanor, not Louis VII; Isolde, not Tristan. No doubt, the original Tristan had given the law like Roland or Achilles, but the twelfth-century Tristan was a comparatively poor creature. He was in his way a secondary figure in the romance, as Louis VII was to Eleanor and Abelard to Heloise. Every one knows how, about twenty years before Eleanor came to Paris, the poet-professor Abelard, the hero of the Latin ...
— Mont-Saint-Michel and Chartres • Henry Adams
... fifteen, lithe and lovely as a fawn, and with a fine freedom in her large blue eyes. She was a wonderful Amazon, and had once raced old Lord Bilton on her pony twice round the park, winning by a length and a half, just in front of the Achilles statue, to the huge delight of the young Duke of Cheshire, who proposed for her on the spot, and was sent back to Eton that very night by his guardians, in floods of tears. After Virginia came the twins, who were usually called ...
— Humorous Ghost Stories • Dorothy Scarborough
... method of Homer as applied to the shield of Achilles, the method of Milton in enumerating the superior fiends, the method of Walter Scott confronted with a mountain pass, the method of the sonneteer to his mistress' eyebrow. Mr Kipling's enthusiasm for these broken engines would be intolerable if ...
— Rudyard Kipling • John Palmer
... 12. The iron-clad "Achilles" left yesterday for Vigo. The sea was perfectly calm although a light breeze blew, or was blowing (soplaba not estaba soplando), from ...
— Pitman's Commercial Spanish Grammar (2nd ed.) • C. A. Toledano
... Achillea has been bestowed thereupon because the Greek warrior, Achilles, is said to have disclosed its virtues which he had been taught by Chiron, the Centaur. This herb is the Stratiotes chiliophullos of the Greek botanists, by whom it was valued as an excellent astringent and vulnerary. But Gerard supposes it may have been the Achillea millefolium ...
— Herbal Simples Approved for Modern Uses of Cure • William Thomas Fernie
... here was the omission of the only gate of Troy really known to fame, the Scaean, which looked on the tomb of the founder Laomedon; before which stood Hector, "full and fixed," awaiting the fatal onslaught of Achilles; where Achilles, in turn, received his death-wound from the shaft of Paris; and through which, finally, the wooden horse was triumphantly conveyed ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 204, September 24, 1853 • Various
... Homer the poetical object is to kindle, nourish, sustain and allay the anger of Achilles. This end is constantly kept in view; and the action proper to attain it is conducted with wonderful judgment thro a long series of incidents, which elevate the mind of the reader, and excite not only a veneration for the creative powers of the poet, but an ardent ...
— The Columbiad • Joel Barlow
... he, upon the present occasion, "I am just now like the half-pike, or spontoon of Achilles, one end of which could wound and the other cure—a property belonging neither to Spanish pike, brown-bill, partizan, halberd, Lochaber-axe, or indeed any other modern staff-weapon whatever." This compliment he repeated twice; but as Annot scarce heard him the first time, and did not comprehend him ...
— A Legend of Montrose • Sir Walter Scott
... exact harmony between their operations, that one of them should play so exactly the game of the other? Suppose for a moment that the Armenian intended to heighten the effect of his deception, by introducing it after a less refined one—that he created a Hector to make himself his Achilles. Suppose that he has done all this to discover what degree of credulity he could expect to find in me, to examine the readiest way to gain my confidence, to familiarize himself with his subject by an ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... monstrous man of the wood, that asked him why he lamented. And he said he was sorrowing for a lily-white hound that he had lost. Then the wild man mocked him, and told his own tale. He was in that estate which Achilles, among the ghosts, preferred to all the kingship of the dead outworn. He was hind and hireling to a villein, and he had lost one of the villein's oxen. For that he dared not go into the town, where a prison awaited him. Moreover, ...
— Letters on Literature • Andrew Lang
... its spirit. Although he could not but receive innumerable and imperishable impressions from the city he was born in, the land and the city of his heart were Palestine and Jerusalem; and the heroes of his young imagination were not Curtius and Horatius, Hercules and Achilles, but Abraham and Joseph, Moses and David and Ezra. As he looked back on the past, it was not over the confused annals of Cilicia that he cast his eyes, but he gazed up the clear stream of Jewish history to its sources in Ur of the Chaldees; and, ...
— The Life of St. Paul • James Stalker
... would sanction his addresses to Rose, and give him a right to assist him in his exile; but he forbore to speak on this subject until his own fate should be decided. They then talked of Glennaquoich, for whom the Baron expressed great anxiety, although, he observed, he was 'the very Achilles of ...
— Waverley • Sir Walter Scott
... find him at the Basilica of Saint Neree and Saint Achilles," added the Trappist; "it is the fete of those two saints, and at five o'clock there will be a procession in their catacombs.... It is a fifteen minutes' ride from here, near the tower ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... ancient strongholds, the long impending and inevitable doom of medieval life. Strong men and proud women struggle against the destiny of modern society, unconsciously working out its ways, undauntedly defying its power. How just is our island Homer! Neither Greek nor Trojan sways him; Achilles is his hero; Hector is his favorite; he loves the councils of chiefs and the palace of Priam; but the swineherd, the charioteer, the slave girl, the hound, the beggar, and the herdsman, all glow alike in the harmonious coloring of his peopled epic. We ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. VI (of X)—Great Britain and Ireland IV • Various
... Livingstone nor the winning beauty and high-souled nobility of generous Alan Wyverne. We never saw such models, for such never quitted their ideal essences to become incarnate in the flesh. But why need this be an insuperable objection? We don't find Achilles any the less interesting because we doubt the ability of any degenerate modern to calmly destroy such outnumbering hosts of his fellow beings, and send such a throng of warrior souls to hades without scath ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol III, Issue VI, June, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... you mention, Charles, is the Crimea, which possesses a most delicious climate, although lying contiguous to the Putrid Sea, which bounds it on the north. There is an island in the Euxine,—the Island Leuce, or Isle of Achilles, also called the Isle of Serpents. It is asserted by the ancients to have been presented to Achilles by his mother Thetis. In the Gulf of Perecop there is also another island, called Taman, which contains ...
— The World of Waters - A Peaceful Progress o'er the Unpathed Sea • Mrs. David Osborne
... clash with the ideal of a gentleman, that lay religion of the English-speaking peoples, which has no longer any connexion with heraldry or property in land. The English gentleman is not a Greek any more than he is a Jew. His code makes Odysseus an amusing rascal; Achilles a violent and sulky savage; and Aristotle's μεγαλοψυχος {megalopsychos} (as has been said) is rather like a nobleman in a novel by Disraeli, but not like any other sort of gentleman. The Englishman is by nature religious; but Christianity ...
— The Legacy of Greece • Various
... Priam, king of Troy, fell in love with Achilles, and, when he was killed, she fled to the Greek camp, and slew herself on ...
— The Canterbury Tales and Other Poems • Geoffrey Chaucer
... central figure with the general purpose of the play. Marlowe sought to present a world conqueror and he creates no less a man. Outwardly the shepherd is formed in a mould of strength and grace; his countenance might serve as a model for a bust of Achilles. Inwardly his mind is full of towering ambition, supported by courage and inflexible resolution. Those who meet him are profoundly impressed with a sense of his power. Theridamas murmurs in awe to himself, ...
— The Growth of English Drama • Arnold Wynne
... give the world an enlarged description of that noble country, I shall say, "fortem ad fortia misi," and demand the armour; that is, I shall lay claim to a certain portion of the honours he will receive, upon the plea that I was the first mover of his discoveries; for, as Ulysses sent Achilles to Troy, so I sent him to Guiana. I intended to have written much more at length; but days and months and years have passed away, and nothing has been done. Thinking it very probable that I shall never have patience enough to sit down ...
— Wanderings In South America • Charles Waterton
... news with utter bewilderment. The sheriff was as formidable in the opinion of the mountains as some Achilles. It was incredible that he should have fallen. And naturally a stern ...
— Black Jack • Max Brand
... of his mind.—Dr. Gannius, in contempt, throws off the mask: he also is a concurrent. And not only is he the chosen by election of the chief Universities of his land, he has behind him, as Athene dilating Achilles, the clenched fist of the Prince of thunder and lightning of his time. German, Japan shall be! he publicly swears before them all. M. Falarique damascenes his sharpest smile; M. Bobinikine double-dimples his puddingest; M. Mytharete ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... the Black Sea; and taking a portion of it forms a figure like the Greek Ph. Then separating the Hellespont from Mount Rhodope, it passes by Cynossema,[123] where Hecuba is supposed to be buried, and Caela, and Sestos, and Callipolis, and passing by the tombs of Ajax and Achilles, it touches Dardanus and Abydos (where Xerxes, throwing a bridge across, passed over the waters on foot), and Lampsacus, given to Themistocles by the king of Persia; and Parion, founded by Parius the ...
— The Roman History of Ammianus Marcellinus • Ammianus Marcellinus
... dates given in this passage are purely imaginary. Parts of the Mahabharata are very ancient. Yudhishthira is no more an historical personage than Achilles or Romulus. It is improbable that a 'throne of Delhi' existed in 575 B.C., and hardly anything is known about the state of India at ...
— Rambles and Recollections of an Indian Official • William Sleeman
... because they are stock subjects the reader realises what a magician is at work. The notion of a clumsy fellow who falls off his horse is indeed a stock and stale subject. But Mr. Winkle is not a stock and stale subject. Nor is his horse a stock and stale subject; it is as immortal as the horses of Achilles. The notion of a fat old gentleman proud of his legs might easily be vulgar. But Mr. Pickwick proud of his legs is not vulgar; somehow we feel that they were legs to be proud of. And it is exactly this that we must look for in these Sketches. We must not leap to any cheap fancy ...
— Appreciations and Criticisms of the Works of Charles Dickens • G. K. Chesterton
... the Simois and Scamander. The Grecian camp had stretched twelve miles along the shore from the Sigaean to the Rhaetian promontory, and the flanks of the army were guarded by the bravest chiefs who fought under the banners of Agamemnon. The first of these promontories was occupied by Achilles with his invincible Myrmidons, and the dauntless Ajax pitched his tents on the other. After Ajax had fallen a sacrifice to his disappointed pride and to the ingratitude of the Greeks, his sepulchre was erected on the ground where he had defended the navy against ...
— Gibbon • James Cotter Morison
... not have stories which inspire dread of death; no Achilles saying in the under-world that it were better to be a slave in the flesh than Lord of the Shades. And again, no heroes—and gods still less—giving way to frantic lamentations and uncontrolled emotions, even uncontrolled laughter. Truth must be inculcated; medicinal ...
— The World's Greatest Books—Volume 14—Philosophy and Economics • Various
... the Greeks and Trojans—Achilles is to wed Polyxena, Priam's daughter. On entering the Temple, he is shot through his only vulnerable part by Paris.—The time of the following Poem is during the joyous preparations for ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. III • Kuno Francke (Editor-in-Chief)
... vague fashion. "Ajax suggests somebody who defies lightning and fools about with a spear. It's a silly name. A maiden aunt persuaded my mother to give it to me. I think she mixed it up with Achilles. She admired the statue in Hyde Park. She got run over by ...
— Septimus • William J. Locke
... of our situation have not altered in the remotest degree since Achilles dragged Hector round the ...
— Visions and Revisions - A Book of Literary Devotions • John Cowper Powys
... outside sat a curious group, comprising Achilles Henderson, the great Scotch giant, who was set down on the bills as eight feet three inches in height, and was really about seven feet and a half; Major Conrad, the dwarf, who was about the size of an average child of three years, and Madame Celestina Morella, the queen of ...
— The Young Acrobat of the Great North American Circus • Horatio Alger Jr.
... child of an American millionaire, strays one day into the shop of a Greek fruit-dealer, Achilles Alexandrakis, and watches the flight of a butterfly that the Greek liberates from its grey cocoon. The story is of the friendship that grew out of this meeting, and a rescue that grew out of the friendship. ...
— Werwolves • Elliott O'Donnell
... commonest of common weeds confronts us; the compact, dusty-looking clusters appearing not by waysides only, around the world, but in the mythology, folklore, medicine, and literature of many peoples. Chiron, the centaur, who taught its virtues to Achilles that he might make an ointment to heal his Myrmidons wounded in the siege of Troy, named the plant for this favorite pupil, giving his own to the beautiful blue corn-flower (Centaurea Cyanus). As a love-charm; as an herb-tea brewed by crones to cure divers ailments, from loss ...
— Wild Flowers, An Aid to Knowledge of Our Wild Flowers and - Their Insect Visitors - - Title: Nature's Garden • Neltje Blanchan
... of such descriptions is no new discovery: the logical difficulties connected with the attempt to describe change in terms of series of successive things or events have been familiar since the time when Zeno invented the famous dilemma of Achilles' race with the tortoise. Mathematicians have been in the habit of telling us that these difficulties depend simply on the fact that we imagine the series of positions at which Achilles and the tortoise find themselves from moment to moment as finite: the device of ...
— The Misuse of Mind • Karin Stephen
... "Hush, Achilles!" she cried. "Hush, all of you! Stop your racket this instant! They are excited at being together again," explained she to Walter who had approached. "The Belgian and Airedales have been boarded out during the winter and have not seen the others for months. So, you see, this is a sort of reunion ...
— Walter and the Wireless • Sara Ware Bassett
... Thomas Browne in a suppressed passage of the 'Religio Medici,' 'if I say that I am the happiest man alive. I have that in me that can convert poverty into riches, adversity into prosperity, and I am more invulnerable than Achilles; fortune hath not one place to hit me.' Perhaps on second thoughts, Sir Thomas felt that the phrase savoured of that presumption which is supposed to provoke the wrath of Nemesis; and at any rate, he, of all men, is the last to ...
— Hours in a Library, Volume I. (of III.) • Leslie Stephen
... reputation for audacity. By her wonderful progress in the arts, her citizens had acquired the epithet of {poludaidaloi},[1415] and had come to be recognised generally as the foremost artificers of the world in almost every branch of industry. Sidonian metal-work was particularly in repute. When Achilles at the funeral of Patroclus desired to offer as a prize to the fastest runner the most beautiful bowl that was to be found in all the world, he naturally chose one which had been deftly made by highly-skilled Sidonians, and which Phoenician ...
— History of Phoenicia • George Rawlinson
... copied by Benaglia from the colossal originals on the monument of Clement XIV., at Rome. Thorwaldsen is abundantly represented by his Night and Morning, and his bas-reliefs of Priam Petitioning for the Body of Hector, and Briseis, taken from Achilles by the Heralds. Schadow's Filatrice, or Spinning Girl, and his classic bas-reliefs are worthy of all admiration. The English school of sculpture appears to advantage in Gibson's fine group, Mars and Cupid, ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 5, No. 3, March, 1852 • Various
... than those whose childhood and youth had been spent with Chiron the king-centaur. He made them more swift of foot than any other of the children of men. He made them stronger and more ready with the spear and bow. Jason was trained by Chiron as Heracles just before him had been trained, and as Achilles was to ...
— The Golden Fleece and the Heroes who Lived Before Achilles • Padraic Colum
... same. And I can no more suppose, that men were better, braver, or wiser, fifteen hundred or three thousand years ago, than I can suppose that the animals or vegetables were better then than they are now. I dare assert too, in defiance of the favourers of the ancients, that Homer's hero Achilles was both a brute and a scoundrel, and consequently an improper character for the hero of an epic poem; he had so little regard for his country, that he would not act in defence of it, because he had quarrelled with Agamemnon about a—; and then afterwards, ...
— Selected English Letters (XV - XIX Centuries) • Various
... sorely in need of it. And Gonzaga had smiled a smile as pale as January sunshine, and his soft blue eyes had hardened in their glance. Not weakness now was it that held him there, well out of the dangerous turmoil. For he felt that had he possessed the strength of Hercules, and the courage of Achilles, he would not in that instant have moved a step to Francesco's aid. And as much he ...
— Love-at-Arms • Raphael Sabatini
... sharp weapon raised in the air to strike him, knows the feeling well enough. Probably he has afterwards tried to reason upon what he felt in that moment, and has failed to come to any conclusion except the very simple one, that he was badly frightened. Hector was no coward, but he let Achilles chase him three times round Troy before he could make up his mind to stand and fight, and but for Athena he might have run even further. And yet Hector was armed at all points for battle. He was badly frightened, brave ...
— Marzio's Crucifix and Zoroaster • F. Marion Crawford
... Rufus who suddenly joined the group, whip in hand, and looking like a young Achilles in ploughman's coat and trousers. Not Achilles' port could be more lordly; the very fine bright hazel eye was on fire; the nostril spoke, and the lip quivered; though he ...
— Hills of the Shatemuc • Susan Warner
... stated to be the taker of Troy, and this view is implied throughout the Odyssey. Note Achilles is the final Greek hero; he perished without capturing the city, and in his hands alone the Greek cause would have been lost. The intellectual hero had to come forward ere the hostile town could be taken and Helen restored. Herein ...
— Homer's Odyssey - A Commentary • Denton J. Snider
... the Yanokie or Yankee race, it is ten chances to one but I offend the morbid sensibilities of certain of their unreasonable descendants, who may fly out and raise such a buzzing about this unlucky head of mine, that I shall need the tough hide of an Achilles, or an Orlando Furioso, to protect me ...
— Knickerbocker's History of New York, Complete • Washington Irving
... still the common instruments of destruction and safety; and the helmets, cuirasses, and shields, of the tenth century did not, either in form or substance, essentially differ from those which had covered the companions of Alexander or Achilles. [77] But instead of accustoming the modern Greeks, like the legionaries of old, to the constant and easy use of this salutary weight, their armor was laid aside in light chariots, which followed the march, till, ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 5 • Edward Gibbon |
