"Harpy" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... snow and ice, A gulf profound as that Serbonian Bog Betwixt Damiata and mount Casius old, Where Armies whole have sunk: the parching Air Burns frore, and cold performs th' effect of Fire. Thither by harpy-footed Furies hail'd, At certain revolutions all the damn'd Are brought: and feel by turns the bitter change Of fierce extreams, extreams by change more fierce, From Beds of raging Fire to starve in Ice 600 Thir soft Ethereal warmth, and there to pine Immovable, infixt, and ...
— The Poetical Works of John Milton • John Milton
... 'My harpy,' she remarked, alluding to her dressmaker,'would ruin you over them, of course. Your maid'—the Leyburns possessed a remarkably clever one—'will make ...
— Robert Elsmere • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... her he flew into a terrible rage, and hastened home to consult his books, by which means he discovered that it was his son who had deprived him of this precious treasure. Immediately he took the shape of a harpy, and, filled with rage, was determined to devour his son, and even the Princess too, if only he could ...
— The Yellow Fairy Book • Leonora Blanche Alleyne Lang
... thinks the same as I do, I know that, for we have always been of one mind about everything. My goodness, what hard-hearted creatures the old Nuesslers are," she added, tapping her foot impatiently on the floor. "The old woman," said Braesig, "is a perfect harpy." "You're right, Braesig, that's just what she is. My pastor must try to touch the conscience of the two old people; I don't mean about the little girl, she will come here and live with us, or I know nothing of ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VIII • Various
... all. The peace between the Austrian harpy and the frogs is made. They were stout, and preferred being gobbled to parting with their money. At last, France offered to pay the money for them. The harpy blushed-for the first time-and would not take it; but signed the peace, and will ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole, V4 • Horace Walpole
... Have I pursued thee many a weary hour; But thou nor swell'st the victor's pomp, nor ever Didst breathe thy soul in forms of human power! Alike from all, howe'er they praise thee, (Nor prayer nor boastful name delays thee) From Superstition's harpy minions And factious Blasphemy's obscener slaves, Thou speedest on thy cherub pinions, The guide of homeless winds and playmate of ...
— Biographia Literaria • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... have in my memory a divine harpy who will bury her talons in all my manly sentiments, and who will stamp all other women with a seal of imperfection. Monster! you, who can give life to nothing, have swept all women off the ...
— Sarrasine • Honore de Balzac
... bottomless pit; it is a cormorant, a harpy, that devours everything. John Bull was flattered by the lawyers that his suit would not last above a year or two at most; that before that time he would be in quiet possession of his business; yet ...
— The History of John Bull • John Arbuthnot
... toothpicker now from the furthest inch of Asia; bring you the length of Prester John's foot; fetch you a hair off the Great Cham's beard; do you any embassage to the Pygmies, rather than hold three words' conference with this harpy. You have no ...
— Much Ado About Nothing • William Shakespeare [Craig, Oxford edition]
... putting his hand into his side pocket and pulling out coppers. He drips coppers all day in an unending stream. You enter a French theatre. You buy a programme, fifty centimes, and ten more to the man who sells it. You hand your coat and cane to an aged harpy, who presides over what is called the vestiaire, pay her twenty-five centimes and give her ten. You are shown to your seat by another old fairy in dingy black (she has a French name, but I forget it) and give her twenty centimes. ...
— Behind the Beyond - and Other Contributions to Human Knowledge • Stephen Leacock
... come; and mother thinks the Bride don't want to come. So why should they ask her to come? And why should she come? I wouldn't," Edith said; "but I hope she will, for I love her! And oh, I hope she'll bring her harp! I've never seen a harpy. But people are funny," Edith summed it up; "inviting people and not wanting 'em; and visiting 'em and not wanting to. It ...
— The Vehement Flame • Margaret Wade Campbell Deland
... all but one blacks, and were formerly slaves. They are very devoted and faithful, but are ill-qualified for their duties, having obtained all the learning they possess in the Sabbath school. They are all pious, and exert a harpy influence on the morals of ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... disorder, like all the rest of her fittings out. Dirty, slatternly, always intriguing, pretending, enterprising, quarrelling—always low as the grass or high as the rainbow, according to the person with whom she had to deal: she was a blonde Fury, nay more, a harpy: she had all the effrontery of one, and the deceit and violence; all the avarice and the audacity; moreover, all the gluttony, and all the promptitude to relieve herself from the effects thereof; so ...
— The Memoirs of Louis XIV., His Court and The Regency, Complete • Duc de Saint-Simon
... for several dates with Sylvia. Out of the office she wasn't quite the protective harpy about Paul Cleary that she had been in the office, although the thought was never ...
— The Trouble with Telstar • John Berryman
... "carpe diem," Juan, "carpe, carpe!" To-morrow sees another race as gay And transient, and devour'd by the same harpy. "Life's a poor player,"—then ...
— Byron • John Nichol
... can be heard, and the reason of the grace returns—with temperate diet and restricted dishes. Gluttony and surfeiting are no proper occasions for thanksgiving. When Jeshurun waxed fat, we read that he kicked. Virgil knew the harpy-nature better, when he put into the mouth of Celasno any thing but a blessing. We may be gratefully sensible of the deliciousness of some kinds of food beyond others, though that is a meaner and inferior gratitude: but the proper ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Volume 2 • Charles Lamb
... with the Pterodactyl Pups was not forgotten, and as a direct result of looking out for soaring vultures and eagles, with hopes of again seeing a white-plumaged King and the regal Harpy, I caught sight of a tiny mote high up in mid-sky. I thought at first it was a martin or swift; but it descended, slowly spiraling, and became too small for any bird. With a final, long, descending curve, it alighted ...
— Edge of the Jungle • William Beebe
... winged. So HESIOD drew The legendary Harpy crew, The "Spoilers" of old fable; Maidens, yet monsters, woman-faced, With iron hearts that had ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 102, May 14, 1892 • Various
... to describe her ecstasy, but Marie Louise broke in: "It's Fraeulein's work, is it? I might have known that! Oh, the fiend, the harpy!" ...
— The Cup of Fury - A Novel of Cities and Shipyards • Rupert Hughes
... to bite into a hard red winter apple was to leave a shaky tooth behind) obligingly took the first bite, but made that bite include nearly half the apple—that rapacious betrayer of confiding helplessness deserved to be called a harpy. But she wasn't; she was known as "a ...
— The Madigans • Miriam Michelson
... the messenger of peace, Suspends the storm, and bids the tumult cease. Pure spirit! in Religion's garb he came, And all his bosom felt her holy flame; 'Twas then her vot'ries glory, and their care 275 To bid oppression's harpy talons spare; To bend the crimson banner he unfurl'd, And shelter from his grasp a suff'ring world: Gasca, the guardian minister of woe, Bids o'er her wounds the balms of comfort flow 280 While rich Potosi[B] rolls the copious tide Of wealth, unbounded as the wish of pride; His pure, unsullied ...
— Poems (1786), Volume I. • Helen Maria Williams
... and Amory peered up, startled. A woman was standing beside the road, talking to Alec at the wheel. Afterward he remembered the harpy effect that her old kimono gave her, and the cracked hollowness of her ...
— This Side of Paradise • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... burdened with debt, never knew what it was to have a crown piece of ready money. At cards she had to borrow first of one admirer and then of another. She had been able to get plenty of credit for gowns and trinketry from a harpy class of West End tradespeople, who speculated in Lady Judith's beauty as they might have done in some hazardous but hopeful stock; counting it almost a certainty that she would make a splendid match ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 5 • Various
... Ariel play them. Once he set a banquet before them, and just as they were going to fall to, he appeared to them amid thunder and lightning in the form of a harpy, and immediately the banquet disappeared. Then Ariel upbraided them with ...
— Beautiful Stories from Shakespeare • E. Nesbit
... property of sweetness so necessary to give point to the device. Unnatural or chimerical figures could not be admitted, excepting those to which tradition or classical authors had given fixed forms and attributes—as the mermaid, harpy, phoenix; consequently, a device representing a winged tortoise, the motto, Amor addidit (Love has added them), was improper. Qualities ascribed to animate or inanimate bodies by the ancients, were considered legitimate, though known by ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 444 - Volume 18, New Series, July 3, 1852 • Various
... noon of life be past, Yet let my setting sun at last Find out the still, the rural cell, Where sage Retirement loves to dwell! There let me taste the homefelt bliss Of innocence and inward peace; Untainted by the guilty bribe, Uncursed amid the harpy tribe; No orphan cry to wound my ear, My honor and my conscience clear; Thus may I calmly meet my end, Thus to ...
— The Bay State Monthly, Volume 3, No. 6 • Various
... quick flesh, senseless of the cruel feast. Poet's conceit is not too extravagant or remote. He who in any age filches from time-lock combination light for his kind, must have his Caucasus, whereon, blind scavangers of fate, batten harpy gorge, while not a kindly drop softens Olmypus' cold, drear scowl. No prayer moves those tense lips, but Caucasus groans with the voiceless petition, and Olympus' huge molars chatter with the prophetic beseeching. No uttered petition from bound victim, but unutterable longings of ...
— Oswald Langdon - or, Pierre and Paul Lanier. A Romance of 1894-1898 • Carson Jay Lee
... Antipodes, that you can devise to send me on; I will fetch you a toothpicker now from the farthest inch of Asia; bring you the length of Prester John's foot; fetch you a hair off the great Cham's beard; do you any embassage to the Pygmies,—rather than hold three words' conference with this harpy: You have no ...
— Much Ado About Nothing • William Shakespeare [Knight edition]
... where they sat down on the grass to eat, using large round cakes or biscuits to put their meat on. Presently they came to eating up the cakes. Little Ascanius cried out, "We are eating our very tables;" and AEneas, remembering the harpy's words, knew that his wanderings ...
— Young Folks' History of Rome • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... on the unconscious rocks—this thought almost overmastered him, unmanned him, filled him with a weird sense of indescribable horror. He battled against it with all his might, but it came on him like a foul harpy again and again, sickening his whole soul, making his forehead glisten with the damp dews of anticipated death. At last he came to a stunted willow which had twisted its dry roots into the thin soil, and, clinging to ...
— St. Winifred's - The World of School • Frederic W. Farrar
... rather the mortal steed which was yoked with these immortal twain, the brood of Zephyr and the Harpy Podarga; only we can hardly say of the poet what Homer ...
— The Poetical Works of John Dryden, Vol II - With Life, Critical Dissertation, and Explanatory Notes • John Dryden
... in his harpy fangs, From Want's weak grasp the last sad morsel bears, Can ye allay the dying parent's pangs, Whose infant craves ...
— The Minstrel; or the Progress of Genius - with some other poems • James Beattie
... this interview. He had spoken of the widow in friendly terms,—declaring that she was simply mistaken in her ideas as to the duration of her interest in the Scotch property, and mistaken again about the diamonds;—whereas in truth he regarded her as a dishonest, lying, evil-minded harpy. Had Lord Fawn consulted him simply as a client, and not have come to him an engaged lover, he would have expressed his opinion quite frankly; but it is not the business of a lawyer to tell his client evil things of the lady whom that client is engaged to marry. In regard to the property he spoke ...
— The Eustace Diamonds • Anthony Trollope
... that Medenham might regard with disdain, yet he would be shocked out of his well-fed cynicism by the notion that his son was gallivanting round the country as the chauffeur of an unconventional American girl and a middle-aged harpy like ...
— Cynthia's Chauffeur • Louis Tracy
... wicked child of Envy and of Love! That turnest into pain thy father's joys, To evil Argus-eyed, but blind as mole to good. Minister of torment! Jealousy! Fetid harpy! Tisiphone infernal! Who steals and poisons others' good, Under thy cruel breath does languish The sweetest flower of all my hopes. Proud of thyself, unlovely one, Bird of sorrow and harbinger of ill, The heart ...
— The Heroic Enthusiasts,(1 of 2) (Gli Eroici Furori) - An Ethical Poem • Giordano Bruno
... senses with fear, at the strange things he had caused them to see and hear. When fatigued with wandering about, and famished for want of food, he had suddenly set before them a delicious banquet, and then, just as they were going to eat, he appeared visible before them in the shape of a harpy, a voracious monster with wings, and the feast vanished away. Then, to their utter amazement, this seeming harpy spoke to them, reminding them of their cruelty in driving Prospero from his dukedom, and leaving him and his infant daughter to perish in the sea; saying, ...
— Young Folks Treasury, Volume 3 (of 12) - Classic Tales And Old-Fashioned Stories • Various
... herself within and thus delay, at least, her impending fate in the hope that succor might come from some source. But her most subtle wiles proved ineffectual in ridding her, even for a moment, of her harpy jailer; and now that the final summons had come, she was beside herself for a lack of means to ...
— The Outlaw of Torn • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... woe and desolation, as he sat in his grim cell with aching head, bruised face and bleeding heart, with all his plans now broken, with the very soul within him dead—in this grief and anguish, I say, the foul harpy-brood of Capitalism revelled and ...
— The Air Trust • George Allan England
... Of this she takes much heed, not managing it so that it may be conveyed up the carriage with some decency, but striking it about against men's legs, and heaving it with violence over people's knees. The touch of a real woman's dress is in itself delicate; but these blows from a harpy's fins are as loathsome as a snake's slime. If there be two of them they talk loudly together, having a theory that modesty has been put out of court by women's rights. But, though not modest, the woman I describe is ferocious in her propriety. ...
— Volume 1 • Anthony Trollope
... those I have spoiled. I tell you why I am so curious to know what she is like, old boy; I just caught sight of her in the Bois, in an open carriage—but a long way off. She is a most accomplished harpy, Carabine says. She is trying to eat up Crevel, but he only lets her nibble. Crevel is a knowing hand, good-natured but hard-headed, who will always say Yes, and then go his own way. He is vain and passionate; but his cash is cold. You can never get anything out of such fellows ...
— Cousin Betty • Honore de Balzac
... money grew by what it fed on. He would have poured out every shilling into that man's hands, and would have died, himself a beggar—have died speedily too under such torments—and yet no good would have been done. The harpy would have come upon you; and you—after you had innocently assumed a title that was not your own and taken a property to which you have no right, you then would have had to own—that which your ...
— Castle Richmond • Anthony Trollope
... sir?" replied Sawbridge, jumping out of his chair, "my name is Sawbridge, sir, and I am the first lieutenant of the Harpy. Now, ...
— Mr. Midshipman Easy • Frederick Marryat
... motion. And as the actions of the foot and the hand in man are made by every great painter perfectly expressive of the character of mind, so the expressions of rapacity, cruelty, or force of seizure, in the harpy, the gryphon, and the hooked and clawed evil spirits of early religious art, can only be felt by extreme attention ...
— Love's Meinie - Three Lectures on Greek and English Birds • John Ruskin
... There follow'd at his lying-in For after-birth a sooterkin; Which, as the nurse pursued to kill, Attain'd by flight the Muses' hill, There in the soil began to root, And litter'd at Parnassus' foot. From hence the critic vermin sprung, With harpy claws and poisonous tongue: Who fatten on poetic scraps, Too cunning to be caught in traps. Dame Nature, as the learned show, Provides each animal its foe: Hounds hunt the hare, the wily fox Devours your geese, the wolf your flocks Thus Envy pleads a natural claim To persecute the Muse's ...
— The Poems of Jonathan Swift, D.D., Volume I (of 2) • Jonathan Swift
... the man, who, when a gloomy band Of vile excisemen threatened all the land, Help'd to deliver from their harpy gripe The cheerful bottle and the social pipe. O rare Ben Bradley! may for this the bowl, Still unexcised, rejoice thy honest soul! May still the best in Christendom for this Cleave to thy stopper, ...
— The Social History of Smoking • G. L. Apperson
... course, passing the island where Syracuse now stands, and rounding the southern coast of Sicily. Then they sailed past the tall rock of Acragas and palm-loving Selinus, and so came to the western corner, where the harbor of Drepanun gave them shelter. Here a sorrow overtook AEneas, that neither the harpy nor the seer had foretold. Anchises, weary with wandering and sick of long-deferred hope, fell ill and died. Sadly AEneas sailed from hence without his trusted friend and counselor, and steered his ...
— Young Folks Treasury, Volume 2 (of 12) • Various
... Jacques Coeur was poured into the laps of Charles and his harpy courtiers, and the victim was consigned to oblivion. Of all he had saved and supported, one man alone was grateful—Jean du Village, his clerk, devoted himself to his master's interests, and his life, and part of ...
— Barn and the Pyrenees - A Legendary Tour to the Country of Henri Quatre • Louisa Stuart Costello
... at leisure, should it be necessary. The carriage was driven to the door of the custom-house, and we were taken into separate rooms to be examined. As for myself, I have no reason to complain; but the ladies were indignant at being subjected to a personal examination by a female harpy, who was equally without politeness and propriety. Surely France—polished, refined, intellectual France—cannot actually need this violation of decorum, not to say of decency! This is the second time that similar rudeness has been ...
— A Residence in France - With An Excursion Up The Rhine, And A Second Visit To Switzerland • J. Fenimore Cooper
... hens of Guinea full as good I hold, Except you eat the feathers green and gold. Of carps and mullets why prefer the great (Though cut in pieces ere my lord can eat), Yet for small turbots such esteem profess? Because God made these large, the other less. Oldfield with more than harpy throat endued, Cries "Send me, gods! a whole hog barbecued! Oh, b—— it, south-winds! till a stench exhale Rank as the ripeness of a rabbit's tail. By what criterion do ye eat, d'ye think, If this is prized for sweetness, that for stink?" When the tired glutton labours through a treat, He finds ...
— Essay on Man - Moral Essays and Satires • Alexander Pope
... had my choice of being any of the fabulous creatures in the mythology book," said Hinpoha musingly, "I think I'd choose to be a harpy." ...
— The Camp Fire Girls Do Their Bit - Or, Over the Top with the Winnebagos • Hildegard G. Frey
... sketches have properly found oblivion to-day. They were all, or nearly all, collected by a Canadian pirate, C. A. Backas, in a volume bearing the title of Memoranda,—[Also by a harpy named John Camden Hotten (of London), of whom we shall hear again. Hotten had already pirated The Innocents, and had it on the market before Routledge could bring out the authorized edition. Routledge later published the "Memoranda" ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... I was caught by the name Charpillon, which every reader of the Memoirs will remember as the name of the harpy by whom Casanova suffered so much in London, in 1763-4. This manuscript begins by saying: 'I have been in London for six months and have been to see them (that is, the mother and daughter) in their own house,' where he finds nothing but 'swindlers, who cause all who go there to lose ...
— Figures of Several Centuries • Arthur Symons
... the lines of her face took place. She became sinister, mocking, and pitiless. An exultant cruelty croaked in her voice. Minute, repulsive remodellings of her neck and cheeks changed her to a harpy, and seeing these evidences of her great genius Douglass grew bitterly resentful, and when she laughed, with the action of a vulture thrusting her head forward from the shoulders, he sickened and turned away. ...
— The Light of the Star - A Novel • Hamlin Garland
... birds, calling them Harop, or winged destroyers. This solution of the fable corresponds with the opinion of Le Clerc, who takes the harpies to have been a swarm of locusts, the word Arbi, whence Harpy is formed, signifying, ...
— Roman Antiquities, and Ancient Mythology - For Classical Schools (2nd ed) • Charles K. Dillaway
... his harpy fangs From Want's weak grasp the last sad morsel bears, Can ye allay the heart-wrung parent's pangs, Whose famish'd child craves ...
— The Poetical Works of Beattie, Blair, and Falconer - With Lives, Critical Dissertations, and Explanatory Notes • Rev. George Gilfillan [Ed.]
... From boyhood I had known the black hornet, with his large paper nest, and the spiteful yellow-jacket, with his lesser domicile, and had cherished proper contempt for the various indolent wasps. But the sand hornet was a new bird,—in fact, the harpy eagle among insects,—and he made an impression. While walking along the road about midsummer, I noticed working in the towpath, where the ground was rather inclined to be dry and sandy, a large yellow hornet-like insect. ...
— The Writings of John Burroughs • John Burroughs
... petticoat, both exquisitely embroidered, sailed up with a cordial greeting to her good cousin, and wanted to set him down to loo or ombre; but the veteran knew too well what the play in her house was, and saw, moreover, Lady Aresfield sitting like a harpy before the green baize field of her spoils. While he was refusing, Sir Amyas returned to him, saying, "Sir, here is a gentleman whom I think you must have known in Flanders;" and the Major found himself shaking hands with an old comrade. Save for his ...
— Love and Life • Charlotte M. Yonge
... went, With both her hands she made the bed a tent, And in her own mind thought herself secure, O'ercast with dim and darksome coverture. And now she lets him whisper in her ear, Flatter, entreat, promise, protest and swear; Yet ever, as he greedily assayed To touch those dainties, she the harpy played, And every limb did, as a soldier stout, Defend the fort, and keep the foeman out. For though the rising ivory mount he scaled, Which is with azure circling lines empaled, Much like a globe ...
— Hero and Leander • Christopher Marlowe
... her handkerchief, and took from it a broad shining louis d'or. She placed it in the hand of La Corriveau, whose long fingers clutched it like the talons of a harpy. Of all the evil passions of this woman, the greed for money was the ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... voice speaking to the dogs: "Ah, my friends, ah, my dears! I know you every one. Jo Portugais is here. I know your bark, you, Harpy, and you, Lazybones, and you, Cloud and London! I know you every one. I heard you as I came from Mass, beauty dears. Ah, you know me, sweethearts? Ah, God bless you for coming! You have come to bring us home; ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... to the town. Much excitement is caused by the expectation of Rotherwood's visit, and it is even said that he is to be met here by the great White himself, whom I have always regarded as a sort of mythical personage, not to say a harpy, always snatching away every promising family of Jane's to ...
— Beechcroft at Rockstone • Charlotte M. Yonge
... were a French 40-gun frigate, an East India ship, and a brig, of the same nation: likewise two other French ships with slaves from the coast of Mozambique bound to the West Indies: a Dutch packet from Europe, after a four months passage: and the Harpy, a South Sea Whaler with 500 barrels of spermaceti, and 400 of seal and other oils. There is a standing order from the Dutch East India Company that no person who takes a passage from Batavia for Europe in any of their ships shall be allowed to leave the ship before ...
— A Voyage to the South Sea • William Bligh
... after his arrival he began to complain that he felt worse. It was then that he became the ranch's incubus, its harpy, its Old Man of the Sea. He shut himself in his room like some venomous kobold or flibbertigibbet, whining, complaining, cursing, accusing. The keynote of his plaint was that he had been inveigled into a gehenna against his will; that ...
— Heart of the West • O. Henry
... take her flight to hell, And summons all my senses to depart: The heat and moisture, which did feed each other, For want of nourishment to feed them both, Are [126] dry and cold; and now doth ghastly Death With greedy talents [127] gripe my bleeding heart, And like a harpy [128] tires on my life.— Theridamas and Tamburlaine, I die: And fearful ...
— Tamburlaine the Great, Part I. • Christopher Marlowe
... what is said of those harpy-defilers of knowledge known as juvenile books. A limited use of the works of Abbott, Edgeworth, Sedgwick, and a very few others may certainly be permitted. But the common practice of removing every occasion for effort from the path of the young—of boning and ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 77, March, 1864 • Various
... the friendship is mostly on Tyrrell's side, and, moreover, Tyrrell is rather more than human, as anyone will admit who sees him hang boa constrictors round his neck. Of course one often hears of boys making pets of common English snakes, but a boy is not a human creature at all; he is a kind of harpy. ...
— The Strand Magazine, Volume V, Issue 28, April 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... 'carpe diem,' Juan, 'carpe, carpe!' To-morrow sees another race as gay And transient, and devour'd by the same harpy. 'Life 's a poor player,'—then 'play out the play, Ye villains!' above all keep a sharp eye Much less on what you do than what you say: Be hypocritical, be cautious, be Not what you seem, but ...
— Don Juan • Lord Byron
... he said. "You can always get money from her. She is as rich as a Jew, she can give you five thousand roubles at a time and she is not above taking a pledge for a rouble. Lots of our fellows have had dealings with her. But she is an awful old harpy...." ...
— Crime and Punishment • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... have sown But the crop was not our own; We have reaped, but harpy hands Swept the harvest from our lands; We were perishing for food, When, lo! in pitying mood, Our kindly rulers gave The fat fluid of the slave, While our corn filled the manger Of the war-horse ...
— Poems • Denis Florence MacCarthy
... following lightly on his feet, cast the first apple [1713]: and, swiftly as a Harpy, she turned back and snatched it. Then he cast the second to the ground with his hand. And now fair, swift-footed Atalanta had two apples and was near the goal; but Hippomenes cast the third apple to the ground, and therewith escaped ...
— Hesiod, The Homeric Hymns, and Homerica • Homer and Hesiod
... of air and might have been An eagle with a soul; you make him harpy, More murderous than dragons of the ooze. I tell you, we outsiders see the game, We Jews, who bidden rise beyond the code Of eye for eye, must rub both eyes to see Not e'en eye-justice done in Christendom, Whose cannon thunder ...
— The Menorah Journal, Volume 1, 1915 • Various
... friends think proper to administer at sick-bedsides with becoming steadiness, bid him write his brothers word that he was dead, and gently desired a woman who waited to leave him quite alone. No interested attendants watching for ill-deserved legacies, no harpy relatives clung round the couch of ...
— Autobiography, Letters and Literary Remains of Mrs. Piozzi (Thrale) (2nd ed.) (2 vols.) • Mrs. Hester Lynch Piozzi
... profound as that Serbonian bog Betwixt Damiata and Mount Casius old, Where armies whole have sunk: the parching air Burns frore, and cold performs th' effect of fire. Thither by harpy-footed Furies hal'd, At certain revolutions all the damn'd Are brought, and feel by turns the bitter change Of fierce extremes,—extremes by change more fierce; From beds of raging fire to starve in ice Their soft ethereal warmth, and there to pine Immovable, infix'd, and ...
— Familiar Quotations • John Bartlett
... Barbarians lay in heaps. The Greeks had been crushed at the end, not in close strife, but by showers of arrows. Mardonius dismounted and went with a few followers among the dead. Plunderers were already at their harpy work of stripping the slain. The bow-bearer chased them angrily away. He oversaw the task which his attendants performed as quickly as possible. Their toil was not quite fruitless. Three or four Thespians were still breathing, a few more of the helots who had attended Leonidas's Spartans, but not ...
— A Victor of Salamis • William Stearns Davis
... point. Furthermore, the erroneous reference of Calaeno's omen to Anchises in the seventh book (l. 122) would indicate that this part at least was written before the harpy-scene of the third, for the latter is so extensive that the poet could hardly have forgotten it if it ...
— Vergil - A Biography • Tenney Frank
... just home from a vacation. "One has positively seen nothing, and has always been robbed; the landlady was a harpy, the bedroom was unhealthy, and the mutton was tough. The other has always found the coziest nooks, the cheapest houses, the best landladies, the finest ...
— Cheerfulness as a Life Power • Orison Swett Marden
... malefic beings, Ker, Harpy, Fury, Gorgon, Sphinx, and the like, appear to have been developed out of ghosts[1408]—whether or not this is true of the Babylonian demons the known material does not enable us to say. Organization of such beings was carried out fully by the Persians, but not ...
— Introduction to the History of Religions - Handbooks on the History of Religions, Volume IV • Crawford Howell Toy
... feel in that peculiarly distressing state of mind in which one oppressing idea displaces or colours every other, absorbing, intermingling with, empoisoning, and, like the filth of the harpy, turning every thing into disgust—when a certain incubus rides upon the brain, as the Old Man of the Mountain did upon the shoulders of Sinbad, burdening, irritating, and rendering existence a misery—when, ...
— Olla Podrida • Frederick Marryat (AKA Captain Marryat)
... and an overturned tin pap-cup. Against the wall a Dutch clock was fixed out of level, and ticked wildly in longs and shorts, its entrails hanging down beneath its white face and wiry hands, like the faeces of a Harpy ('foedissima ventris proluvies, uncaeque manus, et pallida semper ora'). A baby was crying against every chair-leg, the whole family of six or seven being small enough to be covered by a washing-tub. Mrs. Higgins sat helpless, clothed in a dress which had hooks ...
— Desperate Remedies • Thomas Hardy
... not obtain distinguishing names until they made their appearance upon earth, when they frequently obtained one from the form they loved to assume; for example, the familiars of the witches in "Macbeth"—Paddock (toad), Graymalkin (cat), and Harpier (harpy, possibly). Is it surprising that, with resources of this nature at his command, such an adept in the art of necromancy as Owen Glendower should hold Harry Percy, much to his disgust, ...
— Elizabethan Demonology • Thomas Alfred Spalding
... rush from memory, as if plucking himself from the claws of a harpy,—"What's the good of looking back? A man's gone self is a dead thing. It is not I—now tramping this road, with you to lean upon—whom I see, when I would turn to look behind on that which I once was: it is ...
— What Will He Do With It, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... your aim Was alone to defame, The nearest relation you own; At your malice he smil'd, But he won't see defil'd, By your harpy bespatt'rings, the Throne." ...
— The Works of Lord Byron: Letters and Journals, Volume 2. • Lord Byron
... ruin seems Of ancient pile; all else deep snow and ice, A gulf profound as that Serbonian bog Betwixt Damiata and Mount Casius old, Where armies whole have sunk: the parching air Burns frore, and cold performs th' effect of fire. Thither, by harpy-footed Furies haled, At certain revolutions all the damned Are brought; and feel by turns the bitter change Of fierce extremes, extremes by change more fierce, From beds of raging fire to starve in ice Their soft ethereal warmth, and there to pine Immovable, infixed, ...
— Paradise Lost • John Milton
... I in these days, as I used to have, any especial taste for the joys of the chase. There was a time when my slungshot was unerring, and I could bring down a Dodo, or snipe my Harpy on the wing with as much ease as my wife can hit our barn-door with a rolling-pin at six feet, and for three hundred and thirty years I never let escape me any opportunity for tracking the Dinosaur, ...
— The Autobiography of Methuselah • John Kendrick Bangs
... with so much ardour, in a letter which she received privately, but returned by her father's footman. Contempt has driven out my love, and I am content to have purchased, by the loss of fortune, an escape from a harpy, who has joined the artifices of age to the allurements of youth. I am now going to pursue my former projects with a legacy which my uncle bequeathed me, and if I succeed, shall expect to hear of ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson - Volume IV [The Rambler and The Adventurer] • Samuel Johnson
... had sent this fearful scourge into the world expressly to destroy all harmony. Scorn of the world was expressed in his countenance. His tongue uttered nothing save biting and censorious words. He swooped down like a harpy into the street: and his acquaintances, catching sight of him in the distance, sought to turn aside and avoid a meeting with him, saying that it poisoned all the rest of ...
— Taras Bulba and Other Tales • Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol
... directions, to report the proceedings of the squadron named in the margin—[the Elephant, Defiance, Monarch, Bellona, Edgar, Russell, Ganges, Glatton, Isis, Agamemnon, Polyphemus, and Ardent, ships of the line; the Amazon, Desiree, Blanche, and Alcmene, frigates; the Dart, Arrow, Cruiser, and Harpy, sloops; the Zephyr, and Otter, fire-ships; the Discovery, Sulphur, Hecla, Explosion, Zebra, Terror, and Volcano, bombs; with eight gun-brigs]—which you did me the honour to place under my command, I beg leave to inform you that, having by the assistance of that able officer Captain Riou, and the ...
— The Life of the Right Honourable Horatio Lord Viscount Nelson, Vol. II (of 2) • James Harrison
... swarmed about the shipping ports in search of employment and pelf. The man-of-warsman was the legitimate defender of his country's interests and fought in the open, without fear of death or imprisonment from his own people. The privateersman—a combination of all three—was the harpy of the rolling ocean, a vulture preying upon the merchant marine of the enemy to his country, attacking only those weaker than himself, scudding off at the advent of men-of-warsmen, and hovering where the guileless merchantman passed by. The privateersman was a gentleman ...
— Famous Privateersmen and Adventurers of the Sea • Charles H. L. Johnston
... coursers bind Speedily to the yoke, for him he loved Next to Achilles most, as worthiest found 175 Of trust, what time the battle loudest roar'd. Then led Automedon the fiery steeds Swift as wing'd tempests to the chariot-yoke, Xanthus and Balius. Them the harpy bore Podarge, while in meadows green she fed 180 On Ocean's side, to Zephyrus the wind. To these he added, at their side, a third, The noble Pedasus; him Peleus' son, Eetion's city taken, thence had brought, Though mortal, yet a match for steeds divine. 185 Meantime from every ...
— The Iliad of Homer - Translated into English Blank Verse • Homer
... side with Haldane stood a creature whose dishevelled, rusty hair, blotched and bloated features, wanton, cunning, restless eyes, combined perfectly to form the head of the mythological Harpy. It required little effort of the imagination to believe that her foul, bedraggled dress concealed the "wings and talons of the vulture." Being still unsteady from her night's debauch, she leaned against the young man, and when he shrank in loathing ...
— A Knight Of The Nineteenth Century • E. P. Roe
... a scanty breakfast, lingered around the place until the fire had left nothing more for them, when they shook their ugly heads, and hopping a few steps, to get up a momentum, flapped their harpy wings and ...
— The English Governess At The Siamese Court • Anna Harriette Leonowens
... with marvellous rapidity. Now the picture glowed with the wealth and gorgeousness of the torrid zone; now the ice-fields of the North rose into view; anon a pine-forest; then a wild seashore; but always the same three flying figures; always the horrible three-formed harpy pursuing the enchanter, and beside her the evil spirit with the dragonfly wings. At last this succession of images ceased, and I beheld a desolate region, in the midst of which sat the woman with the enchanter beside her, his head reposing in her lap. Either the sight of her must ...
— Dreams and Dream Stories • Anna (Bonus) Kingsford
... of Graspum when that gentleman sold the fair slave to Gurdoin Choicewest; in addition to which he had apartments at Lady Tuttlewell's most fashionable house, where the little doll-like thing used to be so sprightly in waiting at table. The quick eye of this harpy, as may readily be supposed, was not long in detecting the person of Annette the slave in our fair mother; which grand discovery he as soon communicated to Montague, pluming himself a generous fellow for being first to disclose what he ...
— Our World, or, The Slaveholders Daughter • F. Colburn Adams
... the lamb together," said one harpy. "The lion must buy a rose to give to the lamb. Sir Lion, the rose is but a poor half-crown." And she tendered him a battered flower, leering at him from beneath her draggled, dusty bonnet as she put forth her ...
— Miss Mackenzie • Anthony Trollope
... seen at any price. The writ of convocation will, probably, not take effect for a month to come. Between now and then, imagine the intrigues! I entreat you not to expose our friend Thuillier to the blows of his competitors; let us not deliver him over to public discussion, that modern harpy which is but the trumpet of envy and calumny, the pretext seized by malevolence to belittle all that is great, soil all that is immaculate and dishonor whatever is sacred. Let us, rather, do as the Third Party is now doing in ...
— The Lesser Bourgeoisie • Honore de Balzac
... being set adrift in an open boat, with his infant daughter and his books for company, are wrecked through his art upon the island of which he has become the master. Ariel, the spirit who serves Prospero, a mysterious, ever changing form, now fire, now a Nymph, now an invisible musician, now a Harpy, striking guilt into the conscience (and yet apparently not interested in either vice or virtue, but {206} longing only for free idleness), guides all to Prospero's cave, and receives freedom for his toil. His spirit pervades ...
— An Introduction to Shakespeare • H. N. MacCracken
... basilisk to pose up there in the organ loft, she would point her gold trumpet at him, and puff him out of existence! I laughed to myself over this conceit, which, at the time, I thought very amusing, and sat and chaffed myself and everything else, from the old harpy outside the railing, who had made me pay ten centimes for my chair, before she would let me in (she was more like a basilisk, I told myself, than was my organist with the anaemic complexion): from that grim old dame, to, yes, alas! Monseigneur C—— himself. For all devoutness had fled. I ...
— The King In Yellow • Robert W. Chambers
... faith into the gain of unutterable longing. Who were these gods who heard not the cry of the weak and were ever on the side of the strong? Were they only in those hands of power that flung their levin from the Palatine? Could he, who had learned to love innocence and purity, love also the foul harpy which Rome had become? It seemed to him difficult to reconcile the love of Arria and the love of Rome. Was the time not, indeed, overdue when the wicked should tremble and the proud should bow themselves, according to ...
— Vergilius - A Tale of the Coming of Christ • Irving Bacheller
... and delightful and sympathetic. Perhaps if you had looked like a bear and behaved like a harpy, who knows what I might not ...
— The Story of My Life - Recollections and Reflections • Ellen Terry
... throats; and for commodity [349]"to squeeze blood," saith Hierom, "out of their brother's heart," defame, lie, disgrace, backbite, rail, bear false witness, swear, forswear, fight and wrangle, spend their goods, lives, fortunes, friends, undo one another, to enrich an harpy advocate, that preys upon them both, and cries Eia Socrates, Eia Xantippe; or some corrupt judge, that like the [350]kite in Aesop, while the mouse and frog fought, carried both away. Generally they prey one upon another as so ...
— The Anatomy of Melancholy • Democritus Junior
... her down into the mire was done; yet she was not pushed down, but emerged as one of those rare souls who have in their natures an uncontaminated spring of goodness and honesty. Unlike Barbara Villiers or Lucy Walters or Louise de Keroualle, she was neither a harpy nor a foe ...
— Famous Affinities of History, Vol 1-4, Complete - The Romance of Devotion • Lyndon Orr
... Automedon quickly to yoke the steeds, whom, next to rank-breaking Achilles, he most honoured, because he was most faithful to him in battle, to stand the charge. Wherefore Automedon yoked the fleet horses, Xanthus and Balius, which kept pace with the winds. Them the Harpy Podarge bore to Zephyrus, the wind, while feeding in the meadows by the stream of Oceanus. And in the outer harness he fastened illustrious Pedasus, whom Achilles led away long since, having sacked the city of ...
— The Iliad of Homer (1873) • Homer
... the coast of Asia Minor, they became lovers of the Hellenic culture, and Xanthus, their capital, as may be judged from the beauty of its ruins, managed to have a considerable portion in Greek art, though infusing it [273] with a certain Asiatic colour. The frugally designed frieze of the Harpy Tomb, in the lowest possible relief, might fairly be placed between the monuments of Assyria and those primitive Greek works among which it now actually stands. The stiffly ranged figures in any other than strictly archaic work would seem affected. But what an undercurrent of refined sentiment, ...
— Greek Studies: A Series of Essays • Walter Horatio Pater
... eagles; soar ye ne'er so high, I have the jesses that will pull you down; And AEque tandem shall that canker cry Unto the proudest peer of Britainy. Thou that compar'st him to a flying-fish, And threaten'st death whether he rise or fall, 'Tis not the hugest monster of the sea, Nor foulest harpy, that shall swallow him. Y. Mor. If in his absence thus he favours him, What will he do whenas he shall be present? Lan. That shall we see: ...
— Edward II. - Marlowe's Plays • Christopher Marlowe
... a beggar, in these domains, wrested from me by rapine and the harpy fangs of injustice misnamed law. Theophilus Ashton, from whom ye took your share of the inheritance when death dislodged it from his gripe, won it himself most foully from my ancestors;—and have I not a right ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 2 (of 2) • John Roby
... property, and a disfranchisement of the members of the East India Company; all the several articles of whose effects were transferred by violence to strangers. Imagination was at a loss to guess at the most insignificant trifle that had escaped the harpy jaws of a ravenous coalition. The power was pretended, indeed, to be given in trust for the benefit of the proprietors; but, in case of the grossest abuses of trust, to whom was the appeal? To the proprietors? No; to the majority of either house of parliament, ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... cried out Lady Maria. "Dear Harry, tell me who did that? Was it my mother-in-law, the grasping, odious, abandoned, brazen harpy? Do you know all about her? How she married my father in his ...
— The Virginians • William Makepeace Thackeray
... say harpy? She only wanted what we really owed her. And she was good and patient when I was ill. Yes, I ...
— A Singer from the Sea • Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr
... Museum a monument which was discovered at Xanthos in 1838. It is thought to have been made about 500 B.C., and is called "The Harpy Monument," It is a tower, round the four sides of which runs a frieze at a height of about twenty-one feet from the ground. The frieze is of white marble, and is let into the frieze which is of sandstone. The Lycians, in whose country it was found, ...
— A History of Art for Beginners and Students - Painting, Sculpture, Architecture • Clara Erskine Clement
... which to them seemed to be a desert. Caliban found them; and a conspiracy was entered into to kill Prospero and secure the person of Miranda. Solemn and strange music was heard, and several strange shapes appeared at a banquet. Thunder rolled, and lightning flashed: Ariel, in the form of a harpy, clapped his wings upon the table, and the banquet vanished. Prospero gave Ferdinand a rich compensation to make amends for past austere punishments; and that compensation was nothing less than the hand of Miranda. He recommended them to be prudent ...
— The Mysteries of All Nations • James Grant
... herbage bite. With point and edge we fall on them, and all the Gods invite, Yea very Jove, to share the spoil, and on the curved strand We strew the beds, and feast upon rich dainties of the land. When lo, with sudden dreadful rush from out the mountains hap The Harpy folk, and all about their clanging wings they flap, And foul all things with filthy touch as at the food they wrench, And riseth up their grisly voice amid ...
— The AEneids of Virgil - Done into English Verse • Virgil
... a harpy—a thing about the size and general design of a Terran Jurassic pterodactyl, big enough to take a Little Fuzzy at one mouthful. It must have made one swoop at him already, and was circling back for another. It ran into a 6-mm rifle bullet, went into a backward ...
— Little Fuzzy • Henry Beam Piper
... Impeyan pheasant, strutting with outspread, light-coloured tail, just as he courts his plain hen-mate on the Indian mountains; a family of the funny pelicans—cleanliness, ugliness, and contentment in one happy combination; a band of flamingoes; eagles and vultures; the harpy—that Picton of the birds—looking defiance as he stands, with upraised crest, flashing eye, and clenched talons, over his food; the wily otter; the amiable seal, which carries us to the seas and rocks of much-loved Shetland, with their long, winding ...
— Heads and Tales • Various
... am led to think this by seeing how low, how unjust, how unworthy, the judgments of this world are; and I would not that what I so much respect, love, and revere should be placed within reach of its harpy claw, which pollutes what ...
— Lady Byron Vindicated • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... the dog-days here seek to imitate it? After being rammed to a jelly in a door-way (where you feel your feet going through Lady Barbara Macbeth's lace flounces, and get a look from that haggard and painted old harpy, compared to which the gaze of Ugolino is quite cheerful); after withdrawing your elbow out of poor gasping Bob Guttleton's white waistcoat, from which cushion it was impossible to remove it, though you knew you ...
— The Book of Snobs • William Makepeace Thackeray
... became a harpy, a Moloch, a Jonah, a vampire, to my acquaintances. Anxious, haggard, greedy, I stood among them like a veritable killjoy. Let a bright saying, a witty comparison, a piquant phrase fall from their lips and I was after it like a hound springing ...
— Waifs and Strays - Part 1 • O. Henry
... or been merely a giggling, simpering creature of a woman, it would have been different. Instead, she amazed him with her simplicity and wholesomeness, with her great store of comradeliness. This latter was the unexpected. He had never looked upon woman in that way. Woman, the toy; woman, the harpy; woman, the necessary wife and mother of the race's offspring,—all this had been his expectation and understanding of woman. But woman, the comrade and playfellow and joyfellow—this was what Dede had surprised him in. And the more she became worth while, the more ardently his love burned, ...
— Burning Daylight • Jack London
... jewels, Ned; the French harpy must not lay her claws upon them. You're a steady hand, by ...
— The Purcell Papers - Volume II. (of III.) • Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu
... the forlornest of seats in the Courts. They had foretold of one another each the unfulfilled; each claimed the actual as the child of his prediction. Victor was to have been ruined long back; Colney the prey of independent bachelors. Colney had escaped his harpy, and Victor could be called a millionaire and more. Prophesy was crowned by Colney's dyspepsia, by Victor's ticklish domestic position. Their pity for one another, their warm regard, was genuine; only, they were of different temperaments; and we have to distinguish, that ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... bird preys upon hares and rabbits, and has been known to plant its claws in a young lamb with success. In this vicinity are also the Indian Pondicherry eagle, sacred to the Brahmins; the Egyptian booted eagle; the Brazilian eagle; the South American harpy eagle; the European Jean le Blanc eagle; the marine eagle of the Indian Archipelago; the South American crested goshawk; the varieties of the osprey; and the short-tailed falcon from the Cape of Good ...
— How to See the British Museum in Four Visits • W. Blanchard Jerrold
... the Siren was transformed into a harpy. Her blue eyes turned to steel, and shot lightning. The children, understanding the situation, stood by looking like little sharks, and the handsome friends suddenly assumed the air of fierce wild birds in the Zoo, just tame enough to eat out of your hand ...
— The Chauffeur and the Chaperon • C. N. Williamson
... around him, and confound him, the confounder of us all; Pelt him, pummel him, and maul him; rummage, ransack, overhaul him; Overbear him and outbawl him; bear him down, and bring him under. Bellow, like a burst of thunder, robber! harpy! sink of plunder! Rogue and villain! rogue and cheat! rogue and villain, I repeat! Oftener than I can repeat it has the rogue and villain cheated. Close around him, left and right; spit upon him, spurn and smite: Spit upon him as you see; spurn and spit at him like ...
— Mosaics of Grecian History • Marcius Willson and Robert Pierpont Willson
... youthful blood, So by misuse to poison good! Reason awakes, and views unbarr'd The sacred gates he wish'd to guard; Approaching, see the harpy Law, And Poverty, with icy paw, Ready to seize the poor remains That vice has left of all his gains. Cold penitence, lame after-thought, With fear, despair, and horror fraught, Call back his guilty pleasures dead, Whom he hath ...
— The Works of William Hogarth: In a Series of Engravings - With Descriptions, and a Comment on Their Moral Tendency • John Trusler
... secure, O'ercast with dim and darksome coverture. And now she lets him whisper in her ear, Flatter, entreat, promise, protest, and swear: Yet ever, as he greedily assay'd To touch those dainties, she the harpy play'd, And every limb did, as a soldier stout, Defend the fort, and keep the foeman out; For though the rising ivory mount he scal'd, Which is with azure circling lines empal'd. Much like a globe (a globe ...
— Hero and Leander and Other Poems • Christopher Marlowe and George Chapman
... hand-waled curse keep hard in chase The harpy, hoodock, purse-proud race, Wha count on poortith as disgrace; Their tuneless hearts, May fireside discords jar a base To a' ...
— Poems And Songs Of Robert Burns • Robert Burns
... you a tooth-picker now from the furthest inch of Asia: bring you the length of Prester Iohns foot: fetch you a hayre off the great Chams beard: doe you any embassage to the Pigmies, rather then hould three words conference, with this Harpy: you haue no employment for me? Pedro. None, but to desire ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare
... dragon! Faugh! that foul and writhing Worm Seems scarcely worthy of the ancient term That fills old myth, and typifies the fight 'Twixt wrathful evil and the force of right. The dragons of the prime, fierce saurian things With ogre gorges and with harpy wings, Fitted their hour; the haunts that gave them birth, The semi-chaos of the early earth, The slime, the earthquake shock, the whelming flood, Made battle ground for the colossal brood. But now, when centuries of love and light Have warmed and brightened man's old home; when might ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 102, April 16, 1892 • Various
... Brisket!" said Robinson. Perhaps, he was wrong in using such a phrase, but it must be confessed that he was sorely tried. Who but a harpy would have alluded to the comforts of a rival's domestic establishment at such a moment as that? Maryanne Brown was a harpy, and is a harpy ...
— The Struggles of Brown, Jones, and Robinson - By One of the Firm • Anthony Trollope
... Sol Glenhart, the police judge, was good. A striking likeness, and unmistakable, with phrases tripping along like this: 'This crook-nosed, gross-bodied harpy'; 'this civic sinner, this judicial highwayman'; 'possessing the morals of the Tenderloin and an honor which thieves' honor puts to shame'; 'who compounds criminality with shyster-sharks, and in atonement railroads the unfortunate and impecunious ...
— Moon-Face and Other Stories • Jack London
... women no longer. They were monsters—in face and form grotesque caricatures of everything human. They were hideously maimed and distorted, and had the seeming of creatures that had been racked in millenniums of hell. Their hands, when they possessed them, were like harpy claws. Their faces were the misfits and slips, crushed and bruised by some mad god at play in the machinery of life. Here and there were features which the mad god had smeared half away, and one woman wept ...
— The House of Pride • Jack London
... reflecting surface of a dollar, or a bright cent, in which he could see his own brazen face; who regarded even the wild ducks which settled in it as trespassers; his fingers grown into crooked and bony talons from the long habit of grasping harpy-like;—so it is not named for me. I go not there to see him nor to hear of him; who never saw it, who never bathed in it, who never loved it, who never protected it, who never spoke a good word for it, nor thanked God that He had made it. Rather let it ...
— Walden, and On The Duty Of Civil Disobedience • Henry David Thoreau
... publisher by the name of Hotten, a sort of literary harpy, of which there were a great number in those days of defective copyright, not merely content with pilfering his early work, had reprinted, under the name of Mark Twain, the work of a mixed assortment of other humorists, an offensive volume bearing the title, ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... through the gates: woman and a girl. Leanjawed harpy, hard woman at a bargain, her bonnet awry. Girl's face stained with dirt and tears, holding the woman's arm, looking up at her for a sign to cry. Fish's face, ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce
... Shall terminate our impious feuds, And discipline, with hallow'd voice, recall? 30 Recall the Muses too Driv'n from their antient seats In Albion, and well-nigh from Albion's shore, And with keen Phoebean shafts Piercing th'unseemly birds, Whose talons menace us Shall drive the harpy race ...
— Poemata (William Cowper, trans.) • John Milton
... sky In flocks the birds of omen fly; And oft the wandering harpy, Care, Must thy delicious viands share: But all the soul's interior light, All that is soothing, sweet, and bright, All fragrance, softness, colour, glow, To thee, as ...
— The Lay of Marie • Matilda Betham
... burned fourteen vessels successively in the British Channel. The 'Young Wasp,' of Philadelphia, cruised nearly six months about the coasts of England and Spain, and in the course of West India commerce. The 'Harpy,' of Baltimore, another large vessel of some 350 tons and fourteen guns, cruised nearly three months off the coast of Ireland, in the British Channel, and in the Bay of Biscay, and returned safely to ...
— American Merchant Ships and Sailors • Willis J. Abbot
... "That harpy hopes to fleece us," said Dalrymple, slipping his arm through mine and drawing me towards the roulette table. "She has just told De Simoncourt to take us in hand. I always suspected the fellow was ...
— In the Days of My Youth • Amelia Ann Blandford Edwards
... in the street. She could not go back to that circle of harpy faces, all eagerly tearing to pieces the details of poor old Madame Gautier's death. She must be alone—think. She would have to write home. Her father would come to fetch her. Her aunt was beyond the reach of appeal. Her artist-life would be over. Everything ...
— The Incomplete Amorist • E. Nesbit
... poet, the late Rev. William Crowe, the incongruity of these metaphors is thus noticed:—"Within the space of three or four couplets, he transforms a man into as many different animals. Allow him but the compass of three lines, and he will metamorphose him from a wolf into a harpy, and in three more he will ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. II - With His Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore
... know, and would make fine stuff for Nelson. Therefore we must do one thing of two—let Carroway catch him, and get the money to pay for all the breeches and the petticoats we saw; or if we catch him ourselves, say nothing, but draft him right off to the Harpy. You understand me. It is below us to get blood-money upon the man. ...
— Mary Anerley • R. D. Blackmore
... will be equally certain. It is no matter how things are: so a man observe but the agreement of his own imaginations, and talk conformably, it is all truth, all certainty. Such castles in the air will be as strongholds of truth, as the demonstrations of Euclid. That an harpy is not a centaur is by this way as certain knowledge, and as much a truth, as that a square ...
— An Essay Concerning Humane Understanding, Volume II. - MDCXC, Based on the 2nd Edition, Books III. and IV. (of 4) • John Locke
... the living began to well up within him ... for Hilmer in the relentless grip of the harpy who would tear at his content with her scrawny fingers ... for Mrs. Hilmer, condemned to feed to the end upon the bitter fruits of hatred ... for his wife, drifting to a pallid fate made up of petty adjustments ...
— Broken to the Plow • Charles Caldwell Dobie
... comely Countenance (as they told me), indeed, but with just two Guineas in my pouch for all my Fortune. Many a Lord Mayor of London has begun the World, 'tis said, with a yet more slender Provision (I wonder what Harpy Hopwood had to begin with?) and Eighteenpence would seem to be the average of Capital Stock for an Adventurer that is to heap up Riches. Still I seemed to have made my Start in Life's Voyage a great many ...
— The Strange Adventures of Captain Dangerous, Vol. 2 of 3 • George Augustus Sala
... which such as she should for ever be shielded and protected, she had left the only spot on earth she knew as home, the only place where she could claim a friend, and fared out into the unknown! It was as if some evil harpy of the air had swooped down and borne her into the pathless sky, as though the earth or the waters had closed over her and left no trace. The simple and the sincere, those most direct and frank, ofttimes are most difficult to follow in their actions when they take counsel wholly of themselves. ...
— The Law of the Land • Emerson Hough
... of many privateers in those waters. The 'Governor Tompkins' burned fourteen vessels successively in the British Channel. The 'Young Wasp,' of Philadelphia, cruised nearly six months about the coasts of England and Spain, and in the course of West India commerce. The 'Harpy,' of Baltimore, another large vessel of some 350 tons and fourteen guns, cruised nearly three months off the coast of Ireland, in the British Channel, and in the Bay of Biscay, and returned safely to Boston filled ...
— American Merchant Ships and Sailors • Willis J. Abbot
... most notable species is the harpy eagle. This is said to be bold and strong, and to attack beasts, and even man himself. He is fierce, quarrelsome, and sullen, living alone in the deepest forests. He is ...
— McGuffey's Fourth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey
... in his harpy fangs From Want's weak grasp the last sad morsel bears, Can ye allay the heart-wrung parent's pangs, Whose famish'd child ...
— The Poetical Works of Beattie, Blair, and Falconer - With Lives, Critical Dissertations, and Explanatory Notes • Rev. George Gilfillan [Ed.]
... negligent, pugnacious Regan, by his own sheer neglect, put his property into the hands of the most relentless harpy that ever robbed and fleeced a tenantry. This mode of proceeding was, in fact, one of the many methods resorted to by rapacious agents, for filling their own pockets at the expense of the tenant, who, by this means, seldom received more than a fourth part of the value of his ...
— Valentine M'Clutchy, The Irish Agent - The Works of William Carleton, Volume Two • William Carleton
... right," said Tarvrille to the table generally. "Go on! It's not a general conflagration, and the fire brigade won't be five minutes. Don't see that it's our affair. The stuff's insured. They say old Lady Paskershortly was dreadful. Like a harpy. The Dowager Empress had shown her some little things of hers. Pet things—hidden away. Susan went straight for them—used to take an umbrella ...
— The New Machiavelli • Herbert George Wells
... the line, showing her little teeth like pomegranate seeds in a sneer that would have made a passport clerk take notice; and her voice was raised to a shrill, harpy scream that rasped under the iron roof, so that none could have pretended he did ...
— The Lion of Petra • Talbot Mundy
... dwelling! Your notion's lovely, winning, grand, The fiscal cat most bravely belling; Guileless NATHANIEL, too, affects World-hardened hearts—almost to weeping, Volunteer taxes who expects To draw from Mammon's harpy keeping. Go, lure the tomtit from the twig, Go, coax the tiger from his quarry, The toper from his thirsty swig, The swindler from his schemings sorry: "Persuade" the Sweater to be just, The 'cute Monopolist to be kindly; Tempt hunger to resign ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 100, May 30, 1891 • Various |
