"Momus" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... law, Sir, the profession may in courts of Momus be held bound by the act of the respectable but unlucky St. Evona; but in equity, let me respectfully claim release, for Evona ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 16, February 16, 1850 • Various
... vast number of degrees of latitude. All the nine rolled their eyes exceedingly, and had very red lips. At the extremities of the curve they formed, seated in their chairs, were the performers on the tambourine and bones. The centre Momus, a black of melancholy aspect (who inspired me with a vague uneasiness for which I could not then account), performed on a Mississippi instrument closely resembling what was once called in this island a hurdy-gurdy. The ...
— The Uncommercial Traveller • Charles Dickens
... impertinent to the aforesaid John, must seem very diverting to lookers on. The state of the Drama may also be brought forward in proof of our position. Tragedies are at a discount; farces are at a premium; lions, nay goats and monkeys, are pressed into the service of Momus. Even the various institutions for the advancement of morals have not escaped the influence of the prevailing taste. To mention that respectable body of men, the Teetotallers, is sufficient of itself to excite a ...
— The Comic Latin Grammar - A new and facetious introduction to the Latin tongue • Percival Leigh
... the first man was made by Jupiter, the first bull by Neptune, and the first house by Minerva. On the completion of their labors, a dispute arose as to which had made the most perfect work. They agreed to appoint Momus as judge, and to abide by his decision. Momus, however, being very envious of the handicraft of each, found fault with all. He first blamed the work of Neptune because he had not made the horns of the bull below his eyes, so he might better ...
— Aesop's Fables • Aesop
... got his house, he may not be the richer but the poorer for it, and it be the house that has got him. As I understand it, that was a valid objection urged by Momus against the house which Minerva made, that she "had not made it movable, by which means a bad neighborhood might be avoided"; and it may still be urged, for our houses are such unwieldy property that we are often imprisoned ...
— Walden, and On The Duty Of Civil Disobedience • Henry David Thoreau
... is Momus who reviles all men; among the heroes there is Hercules who slays monsters; among the demons there is Pluto, the king of Erebus, who is in a rage with all the shades; among the philosophers there is Democritus who laughs at all things, Heraclitus who bewails all things, Pyrrhon who is ignorant ...
— Books Fatal to Their Authors • P. H. Ditchfield
... gentleman at dinner, and the conversation turns upon a certain anonymous literary performance which at the time is amusing the town. "Oh," says the gentleman, "everybody knows who wrote that paper: it is Momus's." I was a young author at the time, perhaps proud of my bantling: "I beg your pardon," I say, "it was written by your humble servant." "Indeed!" was all that the man replied, and he shrugged his shoulders, turned his back, and talked to his other neighbour. I never heard sarcastic incredulity ...
— English Satires • Various
... idem. A very different affair was the Lapsus Linguae from the Edinburgh University Magazine. The two prospectuses alone, laid side by side, would indicate the march of luxury and the repeal of the paper duty. The penny bi-weekly broadside of session 1823-4 was almost wholly dedicated to Momus. Epigrams, pointless letters, amorous verses, and University grievances are the continual burthen of the song. But Mr. Tatler was not without a vein of hearty humour; and his pages afford what is much better: to wit, a good picture of student life as it then was. The students of ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. XXII (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... Momus' suggestion to Vulcan, of a window in the human heart, whereby one's thoughts might be rendered visible, had been adopted; for, under the empaling eye bent upon her, the secret motives of her conduct seemed spread out as on a scroll, which he ...
— St. Elmo • Augusta J. Evans
... along the time. You fellow, that you see lying on the fore-topsail-yard like an indolent serpent basking on the branch of a tree, will 'roar you as gently as any sucking dove!' And here is a votary of Momus, who would raise a smile on the lips of a sea-sick friar: I believe I can say no more in ...
— The Red Rover • James Fenimore Cooper
... the first, hardly one of them appeared without careful revision, and the insertion of a more or less considerable number of additions and corrections. I found, indeed, few errors of a kind that need have seemed serious except to Momus or Zoilus. But in the enormous number of statements of fact which literary history of the more exact kind requires, minor blunders, be they more or fewer, are sure to creep in. No writer, again, who endeavours constantly to keep up ...
— A History of English Literature - Elizabethan Literature • George Saintsbury
... Momus may find handles—he generally can. "You are suffering from morbid senile relapse into puerile enjoyment of indecency," he or Mrs. Momus (whom later ages have called Grundy) may be kind enough to say. "You were a member ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 1 - From the Beginning to 1800 • George Saintsbury
... Welshman to events of which he could have no notion, Warburton has plunged into the most ludicrous difficulties, all which ended, as all his discoveries have done, in making the fortune of an adversary who, like the Momus of Homer, has raised through the skies "inextinguishable laughter," in the amusing tract of "Confusion worse Confounded, Rout on Rout, or the Bishop of G——'s Commentary on Arise Evans; by Indignatio," 1772. The writer was the learned Henry Taylor, the ...
— Calamities and Quarrels of Authors • Isaac D'Israeli
... intellectual sphere of the German is vaster, but though with certain aims before him, he rather floats and tumbles about like a porpoise at play than follows any direct perceptible course. With Lowell, on the contrary, every word tells, every laugh is a blow; as if the god Momus had turned out as Mars, and were hard at work fighting every inch of him, grinning ...
— The Biglow Papers • James Russell Lowell
... his enemies in the famous Fable for Critics. Swift, in his Battle of the Books, revenges himself upon Criticism by describing her. "She dwelt on the top of a snowy mountain in Nova Zembla. There Momus found her extended in her den upon the spoils of numberless volumes, half devoured. At her right hand sat Ignorance, her father and husband, blind with age; at her left Pride, her mother, dressing her up in the ...
— Interludes - being Two Essays, a Story, and Some Verses • Horace Smith |
