"Rubicon" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... difficult. The Rubicon once crossed, they fell to with a will. They emptied the basket, which contained, besides the provisions already mentioned; a pate de foie gras, a lark pie, a piece of smoked tongue, some pears, a slab of gingerbread, mixed biscuits, and a cup of pickled onions and ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Vol. 1 (of 8) - Boule de Suif and Other Stories • Guy de Maupassant
... the great grey gleaming sea They swept with their rich booty, night and day. Five other prizes, one for every ship, Out of the seas of Spain they suddenly caught And carried with them, laughing as they went— "Now, now indeed the Rubicon is crossed; Now have we singed the eyelids and the beard Of Spain; now have we roused the hornet's nest; Now shall we sail against a world in arms; Now we have nought between us and black death But our own hands, five ships, and three score guns." So laughed they, plunging through ...
— Collected Poems - Volume One (of 2) • Alfred Noyes
... the state of public affairs was most alarming. Caesar and Pompey were in antagonism. He must choose between them, and he distrusted both. Caesar was the more able, accomplished, and magnanimous, but he was the more unscrupulous and dangerous. He had ventured to cross the Rubicon,—the first general who ever dared thus openly to assail his country's liberties. Pompey was pompous, overrated, and proud, and had been fortunate in the East. But then he sided with the Constitutional authorities,—that is, with ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume III • John Lord
... which he, as a British subject devoted to his country's good, could not but feel towards the inventor, &c. &c. The flattery was so delicately and so seriously insinuated, that the worthy citizen could only receive it as an honest expression of sincere admiration. The Rubicon was passed; a little lively conversation, artfully made attractive by Hook, followed, and the watchmaker was more and more gratified. He felt, too, what an honour it would be to entertain two real gentlemen, and remarking that they were far from town, brought out at last the longed-for ...
— The Wits and Beaux of Society - Volume 2 • Grace & Philip Wharton
... as the friend of man. The cat, an animal of franker appetites, preserves his independence. But the dog, with one eye ever on the audience, has been wheedled into slavery, and praised and patted into the renunciation of his nature. Once he ceased hunting[9] and became man's plate-licker, the Rubicon was crossed. Thenceforth he was a gentleman of leisure; and except the few whom we keep working, the whole race grew more and more self-conscious, mannered and affected. The number of things that a small dog does naturally ...
— Essays of Robert Louis Stevenson • Robert Louis Stevenson
... head of his devotedly loyal veterans he crossed the Rubicon. His rapid and successful advance caused Pompeius to abandon Italy and fall back on the Eastern Provinces. The discipline preserved, and the moderation displayed by Caesar won him unexpected favour. Having secured Italy, ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol XI. • Edited by Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton
... Rubicon—nous voila en France, all new, interesting, and delightful. I know not where or how to begin—the observations of an hour were I to paint in Miniature would fill my sheet; however, you must not expect arrangement but read a sort of higgledy-piggledy journal as things ...
— Before and after Waterloo - Letters from Edward Stanley, sometime Bishop of Norwich (1802;1814;1814) • Edward Stanley
... Apennines he naturally remembers the hardships which Hannibal's army endured, and proceeds to cite, not the authentic narrative of Polybius, not the picturesque narrative of Livy, but the languid hexameters of Silius Italicus. On the banks of the Rubicon he never thinks of Plutarch's lively description, or of the stern conciseness of the Commentaries, or of those letters to Atticus which so forcibly express the alternations of hope and fear in a sensitive mind at a great crisis. His only authority ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 2 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... beard, my fine young man, must be parted with, were it as dear to you as the nymph of your dreams. Here at Florence, we love not to see a man with his nose projecting over a cascade of hair. But, remember, you will have passed the Rubicon, when once you have been shaven: if you repent, and let your beard grow after it has acquired stoutness by a struggle with the razor, your mouth will by-and-by show no longer what Messer Angelo calls the divine prerogative of lips, ...
— Romola • George Eliot
... has on several occasions heard gentlemen talking of "passing the Rubicon," and she wants to know whether this is a Bill in Parliament about the Ruby Mines, or whether it is a modern expression for what was many years ago, as she was informed by her grandfather, a slang after-dinner phrase—"Pass the ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 104, April 1, 1893 • Various
... hero, warmed by the difficulty, dilates, and rises in proportion to that, and in some sort makes use of his very fears to disarm it. A remarkable instance of this we have in the great Caesar, when he came to the Rubicon, and was entering upon a part, perhaps, the most hazardous he ever bore (certainly the most ungrateful), a war with his countrymen. When his mind brooded over personal affronts, perhaps his anger burned with a desire of revenge. But when more ...
— The Tatler, Volume 1, 1899 • George A. Aitken
... replied, "I know Great Britain has determined on her system, and that very determination determines me on mine. You know I have been constant and uniform in opposition to her measures. The die is now cast. I have passed the Rubicon. Sink or swim, live or die, survive or perish with my ...
— Life and Public Services of John Quincy Adams - Sixth President of the Unied States • William H. Seward
... destiny—not of an individual, but of the human race; a life risked without hesitation or retrospect in venturing into the unknown and phantom-peopled ocean, 1,500 leagues across, and on which the first step no more allowed of second thoughts than Caesar's passage of the Rubicon; untiring study, knowledge as extensive as the science of his day, skillful but honorable management of courts to persuade them to truth; propriety of demeanor, nobleness, and dignity in outward bearing, which afford proof of greatness of mind and ...
— Christopher Columbus and His Monument Columbia • Various
... sometimes led me to imagine that—it was always so! I mean that there was nothing poetic to Hercules about the Augean task, when the pungent smell of ammonia filled his nostrils, and he bent a sweat-dewed face to that mighty scavenging once more: that there was nothing poetic to Caesar about the Rubicon: nothing poetic to Clive about India. The world seems to have an invincible prejudice against men who see the romance in the work they are doing. The footballing, cigarette-smoking clerk, who lives at Hornsey or Tufnell Park, works in an office ...
— An Ocean Tramp • William McFee
... the Tinker, "the Rubicon is a river as no Roman ever crossed without doo thought. 'The die,' as Julius Caesar remarked when he crossed it, 'the die is cast!' Friend Peregrine, you ha' sent away your lady aunt a-grieving, poor ma'm, and your fine gentlemen ...
— Peregrine's Progress • Jeffery Farnol
... reader ever realize how important a part the ferry and the ford have played in human affairs? How differently would history read without its Caesar crossing the Rubicon, its Xerxes crossing the Hellespont, and its Washington crossing the Delaware, its Paul Revere wherried across the Charles, and its Burr and Hamilton ferried over to Weehawken,—not to speak of the Hebrews going over Jordan, Jacob at the brook Jabbok, and John the Baptist at the fords of Bethabara! ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, November 1885 • Various
... defective in narrative power. He can give us brilliant pictures as in the lines describing the vision of Caesar at the Rubicon[282] or Pompey's last sight of Italy.[283] But such passages are few and far between. Of longer passages there are not perhaps more than three in the whole work where we get any sustained beauty of narrative-the parting of Pompey and his wife,[284] Pompey's dream before Pharsalus,[285] and ...
— Post-Augustan Poetry - From Seneca to Juvenal • H.E. Butler
... country. It was at first confined to the southern portion of Calabria, and was gradually extended northward, till about the time of the Punic wars it indicated the whole peninsula south of the Rivers Rubicon and Macra, the former separating Cisalpine Gaul and Umbria, the latter Liguria and Etruria. Italy, properly so called, is a very mountainous country, being filled up more or less by the broad mass ...
— A Smaller History of Rome • William Smith and Eugene Lawrence
... getting desperate. Lord Palmerston had, in November, 1838, promised them to send a consul to New Zealand to supersede poor Mr. Busby, but the permanent officials thwarted him, and nothing was done for eight months. At last, in May, 1839, Gibbon Wakefield crossed the Rubicon. As the Government persisted in treating New Zealand as a foreign country, let the Company do the same, and establish settlements there as in a foreign land! Since repeated efforts to obtain the help and sanction of the English Government had failed, let them go on unauthorized. Secretly, therefore, ...
— The Long White Cloud • William Pember Reeves
... John Brown should the lines of battle form. When John Brown crossed the Nation's Rubicon, Him Freedom followed in the battle-storm, And John Brown's soul in song went ...
— The Arena - Volume 18, No. 92, July, 1897 • Various
... passing in the way of policy, exerted an influence on the strategy of the forces on both sea and land; Caesar, for instance, was embarrassed in many of his operations by the Roman Senate, and it was for this reason that he crossed the Rubicon and passed from Gaul into Italy. When William I and Napoleon III went to war in 1870, however, Von Moltke had foreseen the effects of the telegraph and of rapid-mail communications, in giving to the headquarters of the army information of a much greater scope and reliability than had ...
— The Navy as a Fighting Machine • Bradley A. Fiske
... waste the lands, and besiege Mutina and enlist soldiers, wherever he can. For he is a man who has at all times despised the judgment and authority of the senate, and your inclinations and power. Will he do what it has been just now decreed that he shall do,—lead his army back across the Rubicon, which is the frontier of Gaul, and yet at the same time not come nearer Rome than two hundred miles? will he obey this notice? will he allow himself to be confined by the river Rubicon and by ...
— The Orations of Marcus Tullius Cicero, Volume 4 • Cicero
... it arrived before the jury under the name of the "Passage of the Rubicon!" but Pharaoh, poorly disguised under Caesar's mantle, was recognized and repulsed with all the honors ...
— International Short Stories: French • Various
... hope indeed, considering the perfection which that formidable organization had reached. Its cherished objects were not meant to be abandoned. The advice of "Bond" leaders prevailed. War was declared and the Rubicon crossed in enthusiastic expectations of soon realizing the long-deferred Bond motto: "The expulsion of the ...
— Origin of the Anglo-Boer War Revealed (2nd ed.) - The Conspiracy of the 19th Century Unmasked • C. H. Thomas
... surveys the whole course of existence and judges it soberly. Hitherto he had scarcely so much as shaken off the spell of the fresh and gracious influences that envelop a childhood in the country, like green leaves and grass. He had hesitated on the brink of the Parisian Rubicon, and in spite of the prickings of ambition, he still clung to a lingering tradition of an old ideal—the peaceful life of the noble in his chateau. But yesterday evening, at the sight of his rooms, those ...
— Father Goriot • Honore de Balzac
... whistled, read the letter again very carefully, folded and put it away. What had come to Violet? This was so unlike her. Still, he had to confess to himself that he was relieved at not yet having to cross the Rubicon. Perhaps she was right; it might be better to wait. He was glad to know that for a time at least she was away from the uncongenial surroundings of Rohar and again enjoying life. He went through the ...
— The Jungle Girl • Gordon Casserly
... passed the Rubicon. He was in debt. If youth but knew the fatal misery that they are entailing on themselves the moment they accept a pecuniary credit to which they are not entitled, how they would start in their career! how pale they ...
— Henrietta Temple - A Love Story • Benjamin Disraeli
... back in the fly smiling, Morton thought, superciliously. It seemed to him stupid to put his arm round her waist and try to kiss her. But, sooner or later, he would have to do this. Once this Rubicon was passed he would know where he was.... As he debated, the tall trunks rose branchless for thirty or forty feet; and Mildred said that they were like ...
— Celibates • George Moore
... ever-memorable night when he had resolved to take the first step (and in such a case the first step, as regarded the power of retreating, was also the final step) which placed him in arms against the state, it happened that his head-quarters were at some distance from the little river Rubicon, which formed the boundary of his province. With his usual caution, that no news of his motions might run before himself, on this night Caesar gave an entertainment to his friends, in the midst of which he slipped away unobserved, and with a small retinue proceeded through the woods to the point ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 20, - Issue 570, October 13, 1832 • Various
... head. It missed her, and he then snatched up a stick, and, for the first time in his life, struck her. He was her only son. She quietly took up all her things, and, walking off towards a temple, said she would leave him for ever; and he, having passed the Rubicon, declared that he was resolved no longer to submit to the parental tyranny which she had hitherto exercised over him. My water carrier, however, prevailed upon her with much difficulty to return, and take up her quarters with him and his wife and five children in a small tent we had ...
— Rambles and Recollections of an Indian Official • William Sleeman
... slowness to grasp the situation). Well, we shall now know who your foes are. The name of every man who has plotted against you since you crossed the Rubicon may be in these papers, for ...
— Caesar and Cleopatra • George Bernard Shaw
... soul, tempest-toss'd, Hath her Rubicon cross'd, She shall fly—saved or lost! Void of dread! Sharper pang than the steel, Thou, oh, serpent! shalt feel, Should I set the bruised heel On ...
— Poems • Adam Lindsay Gordon
... of hers fanned the flame in Lennan as nothing had yet fanned it. Earthiness! Was it earthiness to love as he did? If so, then not for all the world would he be otherwise than earthy. In the shock of reading it, he crossed his Rubicon, and burned his boats behind him. No more did the pale ghost, chivalrous devotion, haunt him. He knew now that he could not stop short. Since she asked him, he must not, of course, try to see her just yet. But when he did, then he would fight for his life; the thought ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... discontented expression, "I am going to give you a mission after your own heart. You are to take Miss Beresford over there, to where Mrs. Bohun is dealing death to all those boys.—This is Lord Rossmoyne, Miss Beresford: he will see you safely over your rubicon." ...
— Rossmoyne • Unknown
... hard work to forget as it was. Nor had it changed any more than her handwriting, or than the woman herself as I confidently expected to find her now. I have often thought that at about forty both sexes stand still to the eye, and I did not expect Catherine Evers, who could barely have reached that rubicon, to show much symptom of the later marches. To me, here in her den, the other year was just the other day. My time in India was little better than a dream to me, while as for angry shots at either end of Africa, it ...
— No Hero • E.W. Hornung
... away from the line of the outposts and their supports. Such was the case with Stewart's regiment far out toward the waterworks at the east. Such was the case with the Primeval Dudes on the other side of the Pasig, lining the banks of the crooked estuary that formed the Rubicon we were forbidden to cross. Such was the case with Canker and the —teenth in the dense bamboo thicket to the south, and so it happened that at first Armstrong and Billy Gray saw nothing of each other, and ...
— Found in the Philippines - The Story of a Woman's Letters • Charles King
... examination- room and descended into the quadrangle of the Ecole, crowded with sauntering groups of garrulous students, my spirit was heavy within me, and the expression of my face could hardly have been that of a young man who has safely passed the Rubicon of scientific apprenticeship, and who sees the laurels and honors of the world within his reach. The world? The very thought of its possible homage repelled me, for I knew that its best successes and its loudest praise are accorded to men whose hearts are of steel and whose lives are corrupt. I knew ...
— Dreams and Dream Stories • Anna (Bonus) Kingsford
... whichever view we may incline on sentimental grounds the fact remains that, while Charles Darwin declared language to form no impassable barrier between man and the lower animals, Professor Max Muller calls it the Rubicon which no brute dare cross, and deduces hence the conclusion that man cannot have descended from an unknown but certainly ...
— Essays on Life, Art and Science • Samuel Butler
... crossed the Rubicon Julius Caesar was staggered at the greatness of the undertaking before him. The more he reflected and took counsel of his friends, the greater loomed the difficulties of the attempt and the more appalling the ...
— Initiative Psychic Energy • Warren Hilton
... courage to the sticking point, and boldly place his bliss at hard Sir Thomas's disposal. Some day—not yet—perhaps next week, at any rate not exactly to-day—these were his natural excuses; and they availed him even to the other side of that social Rubicon, engagement. Nevertheless, now at length something must decidedly be done; and, within half an hour, Finsbury's deserted square echoed to the heroic knock of Mr. Henry Clements, fully determined upon claiming his Maria at her ...
— The Complete Prose Works of Martin Farquhar Tupper • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... whole of the evening Mollie and the camellias shone forth with resplendence. Those of Phil's masculine friends who had known her since her babyhood felt instinctively that to-night the Rubicon had been passed. Unconscious as she was of herself, she was imposing in the maroon silk, and these free-and-easy, good-natured fellows were the very men to be keenly alive to any subtle power of womanhood. So when they addressed her their ...
— Vagabondia - 1884 • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... sigh of relief that at last the Rubicon was crossed—his desire and purpose made known; but a glance at the captain's grave and troubled face dashed ...
— Elsie at the World's Fair • Martha Finley
... Boulevard des Italiennes and the Tuileries; here, at all events, he should soonest learn the worst: and every day, as he took up the English newspapers, a sick feeling of apprehension and fear came over him. No! till the seal was set upon the bond, till the Rubicon was passed, till Miss Cameron was the wife of Lord Vargrave, he could neither return to the home that was so eloquent with the recollections of Evelyn, nor, by removing farther from England, delay the receipt ...
— Alice, or The Mysteries, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... want us to go there. They will move heaven and earth to prevent us—they will talk about us getting our rights, and offer us a territory here, and all that. It is of no use. They have pressed us to the last retreat—the die is cast—the Rubicon must be crossed—go we will, in defiance of all the slave-power in the Union. And we shall not go there, to be idle—passive spectators to an invasion of South American rights. No—go when we will, and where we may, we shall hold ourselves amenable to defend and protect the country that ...
— The Condition, Elevation, Emigration, and Destiny of the Colored People of the United States • Martin R. Delany
... the Alps with 25,000 men and marching by Lyons and Paris was known in the capital, and discussions arose respecting the consequences of this passage of another Rubicon. On the 17th of August 1797 Carnot wrote to him: "People attribute to you a thousand absurd projects. They cannot believe that a man who has performed so many great exploits can be content to live as a private citizen." This observation applied to Bonaparte's ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... be his Rubicon. Either he must enter the unknown to seek, to strive, to find, or turn back and fail and never know and be always haunted. A friend's strange story had prompted his singular journey; a beautiful rainbow with ...
— The Rainbow Trail • Zane Grey
... is as the imperishable monument of those tragic centuries that we rightly look upon Ravenna: before the empire was founded she was already famous. It was from her silence that Caesar emerged to cross the Rubicon and all unknowing to found what, when all is said, was the most beneficent, as it was the most universal, government that Europe has ever known. In the first years of that government Ravenna became, and through the four hundred years of its unhampered ...
— Ravenna, A Study • Edward Hutton
... confidence, but it was a confidence inspired by a liberal dose of brandy. He felt that he had already passed the Rubicon. There could ...
— The Submarine Hunters - A Story of the Naval Patrol Work in the Great War • Percy F. Westerman
... the power of the government—a sort of Chinese warfare of gongs and tom-toms. The passage of the Potomac and seizure of a city under the aegis of the Confederate Government was actually crossing the Rubicon and carrying the war directly into the southern territory. Fortress Monroe and other fortified points still held by the United States, in the South, were conceded to be in a measure hers, at least by ...
— Four Years in Rebel Capitals - An Inside View of Life in the Southern Confederacy from Birth to Death • T. C. DeLeon
... was a troublesome place to be, and they were quite willing he should go there. For a priest to go among the fighting Gauls—they smiled and stroked their chins! Gaul had definite boundaries on the south—the Rubicon marked the line—but on the north it was without limit. Real-estate owners own as high in the air and as deep in the earth as they wish to go. Caesar alone guessed ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 7 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Eminent Orators • Elbert Hubbard
... waiting for his box to emerge from the luggage-van, with mixed feelings of gloom and excitement. The gloom was in the larger quantities, perhaps, but the excitement was there, too. It was the first time in his life that he had been entirely dependent on himself. He had crossed the Rubicon. The occasion was too serious for him to feel the same helplessly furious feeling with which he had embarked on life at Sedleigh. It was possible to look on Sedleigh with quite a personal enmity. London ...
— Psmith in the City • P. G. Wodehouse
... probable that if her eyes had not laughed at him with that twinkle of good-fellowship which he had noted on the night of the supper, Pellams never would have had the nerve. That look hauled him over the Rubicon; they went down the arcade together, in the face of Jimmy Mason, the loafers, the whole crowd shifting between lectures. Yet the sun shone as brightly on the palm-circles, the Quadrangle pillars kept their perpendicular. A little later Mason saw the couple sitting under the 'Ninety-five ...
— Stanford Stories - Tales of a Young University • Charles K. Field
... for no British were in that sector at this time. Soon we arrived at the picturesque entry into Dunkirk, with its drawbridge and mediaeval towers and grey city wall; here our passes were again examined, and there was a long queue of cars waiting to get through as we drew up. Once "across the Rubicon" we sped through the town and in time came to Furnes with its quaint old market place. Already the place was showing signs of wear and tear. Shell holes in some of the roofs and a good many broken panes, together with the general ...
— Fanny Goes to War • Pat Beauchamp
... None the less, it seemed easier to forge a letter than to avow himself penniless. Detection? Impossible! Two or three tradesmen in Harrow would advance the money if he showed them this letter. Next Christmas they would be paid. Within a quarter of an hour he made up his mind to cross the Rubicon, and crossed it with undue haste. He forged the letter, placed it in an envelope which had come from Rome, and ...
— The Hill - A Romance of Friendship • Horace Annesley Vachell
... slipping away from before them in the darkness of midnight, had ridden in wide circuit around and across their front, burrowed into the earth at the first blush of the morning sky, reappeared dripping on the left bank of the bordering stream, the Rubicon of the reservation, and now was swiftly bearing down upon the devoted village from ...
— Under Fire • Charles King
... fear from our heroes; our liberties will be eternal. If a Roman citizen had been asked if he did not fear that the conqueror of Gaul might establish a throne upon the ruins of public liberty, he would have instantly repelled the unjust insinuation. Yet Greece fell; Caesar passed the Rubicon, and the patriotic arm even of Brutus could not preserve the liberties of his devoted country! The celebrated Madame de Stael, in her last and perhaps her best work, has said, that in the very year, almost the very month, when the president of the Directory declared ...
— Henry Clay's Remarks in House and Senate • Henry Clay
... exhibition of meanness on the part of Mr. Parasyte, it seemed that the rebellion was more serious than any of us had supposed. We made up our minds, with Bob Hale, that it would be impossible for us ever to be reconciled to him again. We felt as though the Rubicon had been passed, and what had commenced as a mere frolic was likely to end as a very grave affair. Though the boys talked solemnly at first about their rights, and had "struck" to vindicate a principle, they had no idea of the seriousness of ...
— Breaking Away - or The Fortunes of a Student • Oliver Optic
... Lyle answered, with an eagerness somewhat deeper than the mannish pride of youths who have just crossed the Rubicon that divides them from their much-scorned 'teens.' "I have advanced, and you seem to have stood still; there is scarcely any difference between us now." And Olive, somewhat amused, let her old ...
— Olive - A Novel • Dinah Maria Craik, (AKA Dinah Maria Mulock)
... in reaching a conclusion. As soon as conventions could be assembled, the States joined the Confederacy and began levying troops to resist invasion. Tennessee followed Virginia, then Arkansas, the Old North State being the last of the Atlantic and Gulf States to cross the Rubicon into the "plains of Southern independence." The troops that had been called for six months were now disbanded, and those who had enlisted for twelve months for State service were called upon to volunteer in the Confederate ...
— History of Kershaw's Brigade • D. Augustus Dickert
... most amiable of men, you might as well address your cries to the senseless rocks. You might as well hope with your eloquent and soft complainings to persuade the crocodile that was ready to devour you. I have passed the Rubicon. I have taken the irrevocable step. It is too late, ah, much too late ...
— Italian Letters, Vols. I and II • William Godwin
... Rubicon With helm, and shield, and breast-plate on, Dashing his war-horse through the waters; The R*d*r would have built a barge, Or steamboat, at the city's charge, And passed it with his ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII No. 1 January 1848 • Various
... her he is no longer a lad, a pretty boy to be trifled with for the amusement of an idle hour. The Cupid's bow had faded forever from his lip and childhood's innocence from his eye; he has crossed life's Rubicon, has passed at one stride from the Vale of Youth with its trifles and its idle tears, its ignorance of sex and stainless love, to Manhood's rugged mountains, where blazes Ambition's baleful star and the fires ...
— Volume 1 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... alternative than to confide herself to Elizabeth or surrender to Murray,—a step not to be thought of. Time pressed; fear urged; and resolved to throw herself at the feet of her kinswoman, she crossed, never to return, the Rubicon of her destiny. A common fishing-boat, the only vessel that could be procured, landed her on May 16th 1568, with about twenty attendants, at Workington in Cumberland, whence she was conducted with every ...
— Memoirs of the Court of Queen Elizabeth • Lucy Aikin
... none of her own people were near to see the patronising manner in which Arthurine introduced her to Mr. Foxholm, a heavily-bearded man, whose eyes she did not at all like, and who began by telling her that he felt as if he had crossed the Rubicon, and entering an ...
— More Bywords • Charlotte M. Yonge
... about Caesar, and as desirous of reaching the truth as to his character, as we have all been in regard to Bismarck in these latter days. I lived in Caesar, and debated with myself constantly whether he crossed the Rubicon as a tyrant or as a patriot. In order that I might review Mr. Merivale's book without feeling that I was dealing unwarrantably with a subject beyond me, I studied the Commentaries thoroughly, and went ...
— Autobiography of Anthony Trollope • Anthony Trollope
... would have shown no genius in killing the republic had the republic been already dead. There was still respect for the law and the constitution. Pompey's hesitation when supreme power was within his grasp, Caesar's own pause at the Rubicon, are proofs of it. The civil wars of Marius and Sulla had fearfully impaired, in the eyes of Romans, but they had not utterly destroyed, the majesty of Rome. There were still great characters—characters which you may dislike, but ...
— Lectures and Essays • Goldwin Smith
... result, had not political and personal considerations been permitted to outweigh those of a military character. Politicians are pests in a camp. Caesar was in his fifty-first year when he crossed the Rubicon and began his wonderful series of campaigns in the Civil War,—campaigns characterized by an almost superhuman energy. The most remarkable of his efforts was that which led to his last appearance in the field, at the Battle of Munda, where he fought for existence; he was then approaching fifty-five, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 13, No. 78, April, 1864 • Various
... woman is like a rudderless ship at sea, at the mercy of wind and wave and current. She could not go back to her life in St. Louis: her situation there would be unbearable: her friends would not be the same friends. No, she had crossed her Rubicon and destroyed the bridge deep within her she felt that delay would be fatal, both to her and Chiltern. Long enough had the banner of their love been trailed ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... his province and army to a nominee of the Senate, on pain of being declared a public enemy, and when the tribunes who had reversed the resolution of the Senate were obliged to fly for their lives to his camp, he suddenly crossed the river Rubicon, the boundary of his province, and ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 1 of 8 • Various
... she spurned at mean revenge, Or stayed her hand for conquered foeman's moan; As when, the fates of aged Rome to change, By Caesar's side she crossed the Rubicon. Nor joyed she to bestow the spoils she won, As when the banded powers of Greece were tasked To war beneath the Youth of Macedon: No seemly veil her modern minion asked, He saw her hideous face, and loved the ...
— Some Poems by Sir Walter Scott • Sir Walter Scott
... conquering Gaul, returned with his triumphant legions to Rome, passed the Rubicon, won the battle of Pharsalia, trampled upon the liberties of his country, and expired by the patriot hand of Brutus. But Rome ceased to be free. War and conquest had enervated and corrupted the masses. The spirit of true liberty ...
— Elson Grammer School Literature, Book Four. • William H. Elson and Christine Keck
... to know what language he spoke; but the Satyr only answered with cries, not unlike those of goats and the neighing of horses. This monster had a human body, but the thighs, legs, and feet of a goat. To the above stories may be added that of the Satyr who passed the Rubicon in presence of Caesar ...
— Roman Antiquities, and Ancient Mythology - For Classical Schools (2nd ed) • Charles K. Dillaway
... sparkling eyes, Hidden, ever and anon, In a merciful eclipse - Do not heed their mild surprise - Having passed the Rubicon. Take a pair of rosy lips; Take a figure trimly planned - Such as admiration whets (Be particular in this); Take a tender little hand, Fringed with dainty fingerettes, Press it - in parenthesis; - Take all these, you lucky man - Take and keep ...
— Songs of a Savoyard • W. S. Gilbert
... year Frauds and corruption in the Field of Mars; Hence interest and devouring usury sprang, Faith's breach, and hence came war, to most men welcome. Now Caesar overpass'd the snowy Alps; His mind was troubled, and he aim'd at war: And coming to the ford of Rubicon, At night in dreadful vision fearful[594] Rome Mourning appear'd, whose hoary hairs were torn, And on her turret-bearing head dispers'd, 190 And arms all naked; who, with broken sighs, And staring, thus bespoke: "What mean'st thou, ...
— The Works of Christopher Marlowe, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Christopher Marlowe
... communicated to Berlin, whose organized espionage continued to flourish in the French capital. Thereupon Herr Jagow urged Buelow to bestir himself without delay. But the Prince was hard set. On the Italian Cabinet he had lost his hold. It had already crossed the Rubicon and passed over to the Entente. True, the Cabinet was not Italy, was not even the Government of Italy. It was hardly more than a group of mere place-warmers for Giolitti and his partisans. At any moment ...
— England and Germany • Emile Joseph Dillon
... no choice; and long before the time of Caesar, nothing remained of republican government but the name and the abuse. Read Plutarch. In the 'Life of Caesar,' and not three pages before the crossing of the Rubicon, he paints the ruined state of the elections,—shows that all elective government was gone,—that the hereditary form had become a necessary relief from the contests of the corrupt,—and that in choosing between Pompey and Caesar, ...
— Elements of Military Art and Science • Henry Wager Halleck
... the time being. That other hooded Dame, styled Travelling-companion, is kind Sister Elizabeth; she had sworn, long since, when the Insurrection of Women was, that only death should part her and them. And so they rush there, not too impetuously, through the Wood of Bondy:—over a Rubicon in their own ...
— The French Revolution • Thomas Carlyle
... of it, Mrs. Armine crossed a Rubicon. She crossed it when she came out of the big tent into the sands to go back to the camp by the lake. While she had been with Baroudi the sky had partially cleared. Above the tents and the blazing fire some stars shone out ...
— Bella Donna - A Novel • Robert Hichens
... and eye. His father had died in 1847; and when Morris came of age he inherited a fortune of about L900 a year and was his own master. Before the end of 1855 he imparted to his mother his decision about taking Orders. The Rubicon was crossed; but on which road he was to reach his goal was not settled for many years. Twice he had to retrace his steps from a false start and begin a fresh career. The year 1856 saw him still working at Oxford, in the office of Street, the architect. Two ...
— Victorian Worthies - Sixteen Biographies • George Henry Blore
... Alps, his mighty soul Great tumults pondering and the coming shock. Now on the marge of Rubicon, he saw, In face most sorrowful and ghostly guise, His trembling country's image; huge it seemed Through mists of night obscure; and hoary hair Streamed from the lofty front with turrets crowned: Torn were her locks and naked were ...
— Pharsalia; Dramatic Episodes of the Civil Wars • Lucan
... known, or knowable, in physical analysis, which will be the point of departure as well as your ultimate truth behind which you can not go, then, of course, you are where you must rest satisfied or dissatisfied; you have come to the Rubicon beyond which you will never pass. The mere physicist finds, as a legitimate result of his hypothesis of but one substance, his rest in the ultimate of eternal matter and blind force. The Christian, recognizing spiritual substance also, finds his ultimate or resting place in God, ...
— The Christian Foundation, Or, Scientific and Religious Journal, Volume 1, January, 1880 • Various
... step only costs. Once the Rubicon crossed, they ate heartily. The basket was emptied. It still contained one pate de foie gras, one pate de mauvette, a piece of smoked ham, Crassane pears, a Pont-l'Eveque cheese, assorted petits-fours, and a cup full of pickled gherkins and onions, Boule de Suif, ...
— Mademoiselle Fifi • Guy de Maupassant
... in succession; and for fear I should be thought deficient in spirit; I followed his example. But the Rubicon once crossed, to my surprise, I found that the wine had no effect upon my senses; only serving to elevate my spirits a little, and make me more sociable ...
— The Monctons: A Novel, Volume I • Susanna Moodie
... in the decline of his life, intoxicated by his magnificent position or led astray by ambition, made serious political errors. What then? All great men have made errors, both in judgment and in morals,—Caesar, when he crossed the Rubicon; Theodosius, when he slaughtered the citizens of Thessalonica; Luther, when he quarrelled with Zwingli; Henry IV., when he stooped at Canossa; Elizabeth, when she executed Mary Stuart; Cromwell, when he bequeathed ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume XII • John Lord
... it is a noble, sprightly sound, The trumpet's clangor, and the clash of arms! This noise may chill your blood, but mine it warms. [Shouting and clashing of swords within. We have already passed the Rubicon; The dice are mine; now, fortune, for a throne! [A shout within, and clashing of swords afar off. The sound goes farther off, and faintly dies; Curse of this going back, these ebbing cries! Ye winds, waft hither sounds more strong and quick; Beat ...
— The Works Of John Dryden, Volume 4 (of 18) - Almanzor And Almahide, Marriage-a-la-Mode, The Assignation • John Dryden
... remember a certain saying of Squire Cumpston? It was this: "If you're going to cross the Rubicon, cross it! Don't wade out to the middle and stand there: you only get ...
— The Seeker • Harry Leon Wilson
... thyself to it. We act as we are forced. I cannot give assent to my own shame 150 And ruin. Thou—no—thou canst not forsake me! So let us do, what must be done, with dignity, With a firm step. What am I doing worse Than did famed Csar at the Rubicon, When he the legions led against his country, 155 The which his country had delivered to him? Had he thrown down the sword, he had been lost, As I were, if I but disarmed myself. I trace out something ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... consider the shot across my bows as an attack," said he, and he slapped on every stitch of canvas, so that the Emilie was soon abreast of the Britisher. Boom! A broadside roared into her and she struck her colors. Bold Robert Surcouf had passed the Rubicon,—he had seen the English flag lowered to him, for the first time; and his heart swelled with patriotic pride, in spite of the fact that this was an act of piracy, for which he could be hanged to ...
— Famous Privateersmen and Adventurers of the Sea • Charles H. L. Johnston
... event that could befall this country, for all may now be recovered. Compensation to the East India Company I regard as no object of the Bill. The sword is drawn, and you must throw away the scabbard. Pass this Act, and you will be past the Rubicon. The Americans will then know that we shall not temporize any longer; if it passes with a tolerable unanimity, Boston will submit, and all will end in victory without carnage." The Marquis of Rockingham and the Duke of Richmond warmly opposed the measure, as did Lords Camden ...
— The Loyalists of America and Their Times, Vol. 1 of 2 - From 1620-1816 • Egerton Ryerson
... Race Marbles Mumblety Peg Names of Marbles Nigger Baby Olympic Games One Old Cat Over the Barn Pass It Pelota Plug in the Ring Polo Potato Race Prisoner's Base Push Ball Quoits Racquets or Rackets Red Line Red Lion Roley Boley Roque Rowing Record Rubicon Sack Racing Scotland's Burning Skiing Soccer Spanish Fly Squash Stump Master Suckers Tether Ball Tether Tennis Three-Legged Racing Tub Racing Volley Ball Warning Washington Polo Water Water Race Wicket Polo Wolf and Sheep Wood ...
— Outdoor Sports and Games • Claude H. Miller
... the jury once, under the name of "The Passage of the Rubicon," but Pharaoh, badly disguised under the mantle of Caeser, was recognized and rejected with all the honors due him. Next year, Marcel threw a coat of white over the foreground, to imitate snow, planted a fir tree in one corner, ...
— Bohemians of the Latin Quarter • Henry Murger
... as tardily as if he had had to cross a Rubicon in the back room. Two were lighted, and the Surgeon ...
— The Red Acorn • John McElroy
... blindly through a hedge of moral antagonisms. His alternatives have become so lopsided that practically there is only one course open. The initial exercise of judgment was not merely an antecedent to later developments of the plot; it was a Rubicon-crossing, which has committed the hero to a system of interlaced contingencies; and the tendency of this system bears him away, half-conscious of his own impotence, to where the rest is silence. The turning-point is where Hamlet engages the Players to enact ...
— Such is Life • Joseph Furphy
... insure his falling into the water, if he attempted such a piece of gymnastics. Tom wore nice clothes, and he did not run the risk of soiling them by a possible accident. He paused on the brink of the stream, and feared to cross the Rubicon. ...
— Seek and Find - or The Adventures of a Smart Boy • Oliver Optic
... influence of divils. 'These, however,' said he, 'I'll soon cast out from her, and then the woman will be a holy cratur, much better than she ever was before.' A very learned man was Father Hogan, especially in casting out divils, and a portly, good-looking man too, only he had a large rubicon nose, which people said he got by making over free with the cratur in sacret. I had often looked at the nose, when the divil was upon me, and felt an inclination to seize hold of it, just to see how it felt. Well, ...
— Wild Wales - Its People, Language and Scenery • George Borrow
... from his pocket a long address. Bolivar listened to the beginning and at once knew that it was going to be not only long but tedious. The young man came to a sentence reading: "When Caesar crossed the Rubicon...," at which point Bolivar interrupted him, saying, "My dear friend, when Caesar crossed the Rubicon he had had his breakfast, and I have not yet had mine. Let us first have breakfast." Generally, he respected everyone's ...
— Simon Bolivar, the Liberator • Guillermo A. Sherwell
... the suspicion was proved unjust, a promise of better things. As early as 1839 Sterling had written an article in the Westminster, which gave him intense pleasure; for while contemning praise in almost the same words as Byron did, he loved it equally well. In 1840 he had crossed the Rubicon that lies between aspiration and attainment. The populace might be blind or dumb, the "rattlesnakes"—the "irresponsible indolent reviewers," who from behind a hedge pelt every wrestler till they found ...
— Thomas Carlyle - Biography • John Nichol
... (whose Italian possessions passed to the Emperor), as well as the Netherlands and the whole left bank of the Rhine, but united Lombardy with the Duchies south of the Po and the Papal States as far as the Rubicon into a "Cisalpine Republic," which was absolutely beneath her control. The withdrawal of Austria left France without an enemy on the Continent, and England without an ally. The stress of the war was pressing more heavily on her ...
— History of the English People, Volume VIII (of 8) - Modern England, 1760-1815 • John Richard Green
... Rubicon was crossed. They had turned their backs on the ranch, and it was to be dismissed from their thoughts until they should reach some place ...
— The Young Ranchers - or Fighting the Sioux • Edward S. Ellis
... sensation is created, even among these grave young gentlemen, by a visit from the emancipated Toots; who is regarded with a kind of awe, as one who has passed the Rubicon, and is pledged never to come back, and concerning the cut of whose clothes, and fashion of whose jewellery, whispers go about, behind hands; the bilious Bitherstone, who is not of Mr Toots's time, affecting to despise the latter to ...
— Dombey and Son • Charles Dickens
... to it. We act as we are forced. I cannot give assent to my own shame And ruin. Thou—no—thou canst not forsake me! So let us do, what must be done, with dignity, With a firm step. What am I doing worse Than did famed Caesar at the Rubicon, When he the legions led against his country, The which his country had delivered to him? Had he thrown down the sword, he had been lost. As I were, if I but disarmed myself. I trace out something in me of this spirit. Give me his luck, that other ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... what it did from the Var even to the Rhine, the Isere beheld, and the Saone, and the Seine beheld, and every valley whence the Rhone is filled. What afterward it did when it came forth from Ravenna, and leaped the Rubicon, was of such flight that neither tongue nor pen could follow it. Toward Spain it wheeled its troop; then toward Dyrrachium, and smote Pharsalia so that to the warm Nile the pain was felt. It saw again Antandros and Simois, whence it set forth, and ...
— The Divine Comedy, Volume 3, Paradise [Paradiso] • Dante Alighieri
... Land Values Duties (the only original feature of Mr. LLOYD GEORGE'S epoch-making first Budget). Mr. RAFFAN pictured their author being dragged at the Tory chariot-wheels, and Dr. MURRAY observed that the land-taxes were evidently not allowed "on the other side of the Rubicon." ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 158, April 28, 1920 • Various
... to abandon the pleasing delusion, and talked over the old plans for redress of grievances, and a constitutional union with the mother country. With little or no belief in the possibility of either, they stood shivering on the banks of the Rubicon, that mythical river of irretrievable self-committal, hesitating to enter its turbid waters. A few of the bolder "shepherds of the people" tried to urge them onward; but no one was bold enough to ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 25, November, 1859 • Various
... woman greater than ordinary, beckoned to Julius Caesar to pass over the Rubicon, L. Flor. lib. 4. Satyres appeared to Alexander when he besieged Tyrus; Alexander asked the divines, what was the signification of it; they told him the meaning is plain, {Greek Text: Sa Turos} (i.e.) Tyre is thine. Alexander took ...
— Miscellanies upon Various Subjects • John Aubrey
... they do not at present flourish, there being so few public platforms on which women can meet, and so the 'social grade' determines women's relative position by women's votes, and there is small chance of crossing the Rubicon then. There is no doubt, however, that women in Holland are slowly winning their way to greater independence of life. They are filling posts in public offices; they are going to the universities; they are studying medicine ...
— Dutch Life in Town and Country • P. M. Hough
... reorganize the whole governmental machinery, get it to working dependably and smoothly, and at the same time prepare for a civil war which I hope to win, but of which I can foretell the outcome no better than could the Divine Julius be sure of the outcome of his when he crossed the Rubicon. Amid all these cares and occupations I must keep fit and must do all I can to win the confidence and respect of all classes by rectifying, as far as I may, the consequences of the inattention of my predecessors ...
— Andivius Hedulio • Edward Lucas White
... senator: each brim Look big as mine: the gallant, jolly beast Of all the herd—you'll say—was not the least. Now crown the second bowl, rich as his worth I'll drink it to; he, that like fire broke forth Into the Senate's face, cross'd Rubicon, And the State's pillars, with their laws thereon, And made the dull grey beards and furr'd gowns fly Into Brundusium to consult, and lie. This, to brave Sylla! why should it be said We drink more to the living than ...
— Poems of Henry Vaughan, Silurist, Volume II • Henry Vaughan
... this is the Rubicon; the boundaries of Cisalpine Gaul and Italy. On this side I am still the Proconsul—not as yet rightly deposed. On the other—Caesar, the Outlaw, the Insurgent, the Enemy of his Country, whose hand is against every man, every man's hand against him. What say you? Speak! speak quickly! Shall I ...
— A Friend of Caesar - A Tale of the Fall of the Roman Republic. Time, 50-47 B.C. • William Stearns Davis
... significance. I do not now recall any of the facts connected with the great epoch-making events of classic times; I cannot tell as I write, for example, who fought in the battle of the Allia; why Caesar crossed the Rubicon, or why Cicero delivered an ...
— The "Goldfish" • Arthur Train
... Crofton, or Warmfield, or Dewsbury, there would have been nothing remarkable in it; but Utica at once revived the scenes at school long past and half-forgotten, and carried me with full speed back again to Italy, and from thence to Africa. I crossed the Rubicon with Caesar; fought at Pharsalia; saw poor Pompey into Larissa, and tried to wrest the fatal sword from Cato's hand in Utica. When I perceived he was no more, I mourned over the noble-minded man who took that part which he thought ...
— Wanderings In South America • Charles Waterton
... posterity is the best thing a man can leave behind him. He had two sisters, both of whom were well along in life, unmarried, and possessed of their brother's disinclination to marry. To encourage them to cross the Rubicon he made the will that entailed the Canaan Tigmores to the heirs, first of one and then the other, under the following provisions: the land was to go to the male heirs of his sister Nancy Peele, from oldest son to oldest son so long as there were male heirs, ...
— Sally of Missouri • R. E. Young
... that burned without consuming, and a consciousness of having crossed a rubicon. Points of view are left behind in a moment, although the proof may not be apparent for days or weeks, and I reckon our mental change from being merely hunters of an ancient castle and big game-tourists-trippers, from that hour. As we galloped behind Kagig the ...
— The Eye of Zeitoon • Talbot Mundy
... entirely escaped his own notice. Young and vivacious women are peculiarly subject to this sort of sensitiveness, as he was well aware. There was nothing to be done but to be quiet, attentive in small things, and to wait for fair weather again. After all, he had crossed the Rubicon, and had been very well received on the other side. It would not be easy to make ...
— The Children of the King • F. Marion Crawford
... it is swelled to a dangerous height, and this is also the case after heavy rains: but at present the middle of it is quite dry, and the water divided into two or three narrow streams, which, however, are both deep and rapid. This river has been absurdly enough by some supposed the Rubicon, in all probability from the description of that river in the Pharsalia of Lucan, who makes it the boundary betwixt ...
— Travels Through France and Italy • Tobias Smollett
... disagreeably in society. It is her want of conversation with ladies and married people. To a bachelor, to whom she has just been introduced, she will chatter away nineteen to the dozen; but, even in her own, house, she has no idea of the social duties. Marriage, in her opinion, is a Rubicon, which, once crossed, if it does not altogether debar from the pleasures of maiden and bachelorhood, at least makes it necessary for married folk to shift for themselves. To talk or dance with a married man would be a terrible waste of time; and as for married women, she expects to ...
— Town Life in Australia - 1883 • R. E. N. (Richard) Twopeny
... of Mr. Iverson's harangue disclosed his fear that after all Georgia might prefer the old Union. "For myself," said he, "unless my opinions greatly change, I shall never consent to the reconstruction of the Federal Union. The Rubicon is passed, and with my consent shall never be recrossed." But these bold declarations were materially qualified by Mr. Iverson when he reflected on the powerful minority of Union men in Georgia, and the general feeling in that State against a conflict with the National Government. ...
— Twenty Years of Congress, Vol. 1 (of 2) • James Gillespie Blaine
... half-a-dozen times over in imagination before the next instalment is due. He at length becomes so fond of the flavour, that he actually—we know, for we have seen him do it—he actually, to use his own expression, 'goes in for a goose' besides with Mr Pluck the poulterer. Having once passed the Rubicon, of course he cannot go back; the weekly sixpences must be paid, come what will: it would be disgraceful to be a defaulter. So he practises a little self-denial, for the sake of a little self-esteem—and the goose and pudding in perspective. He finds, to his astonishment, ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 441 - Volume 17, New Series, June 12, 1852 • Various
... across the Alps into Cisalpine Gaul, which as yet had not been legally taken from him, and in the autumn sat himself down at Ravenna, which was still within his province. It was there that he had to meditate the crossing of the Rubicon and the manifestation of absolute rebellion. Matters were in this condition when Cicero returned to Italy, and heard the corroboration of the news as to the civil war which had reached ...
— The Life of Cicero - Volume II. • Anthony Trollope
... wouldn't be for any girl of her intelligence and social instincts. She knows what she's doing, and she's doing it for you. She has made her sacrifice, and made it willingly, before she consented to take this step at all. She crossed her Rubicon without saying anything to you about it, and you needn't ...
— The Inner Shrine • Basil King
... only the first step that cost. This Rubicon once crossed, they set to work with a will. The basket was emptied. It still contained a pate de foie gras, a lark pie, a piece of smoked tongue, Crassane pears, Pont-Leveque gingerbread, fancy cakes, and a cup full of pickled gherkins and onions—Boule de Suif, like ...
— Maupassant Original Short Stories (180), Complete • Guy de Maupassant
... her lover still stood together on confidential terms. Not easily had Mr Vavasor brought himself to speak of his daughter to John Grey, in such language as he had now used; but he had been forced by adverse circumstances to pass the Rubicon of parental delicacy; he had been driven to tell his wished-for son-in-law that he did wish to have him as a son-in-law; he had been compelled to lay aside those little airs of reserve with which a father generally speaks of his daughter,—and now all ...
— Can You Forgive Her? • Anthony Trollope
... the definite entrance of the nation upon a new era. One thing was clear from the beginning: the day of conservatism and reaction was over; the people of the United States had definitely crossed their Rubicon and had committed themselves to spiritual ...
— Theodore Roosevelt and His Times - A Chronicle of the Progressive Movement; Volume 47 in The - Chronicles Of America Series • Harold Howland
... of this world—the worth-while people—have almost all been known by one name. There were many Caesars, but only one Caesar, who crossed the Rubicon, and in his 'Commentaries' said: 'All Gaul is divided into three parts.' One never hears what Cleopatra's other name was," pursued Miss Trigg, with her queer smile. "Whether Isabella of Spain—the Isabella that made the voyages of Columbus possible—had another name, or not, we do not inquire. How ...
— A Little Miss Nobody - Or, With the Girls of Pinewood Hall • Amy Bell Marlowe
... first forty-three lines of the law, and is concerned with the public land of Italy, from the Rubicon southwards. It commences by referring to the condition of this land in the year 133, when Tiberius Gracchus was tribune. The law does not affect to touch any thing which had been enacted concerning this land prior to 133. It either confirms or alters ...
— Public Lands and Agrarian Laws of the Roman Republic • Andrew Stephenson
... my sister to let the child go, and Suzanne was about to do so when she remembered having at supper filled her pocket with pecans. She quickly filled the child's hands with them and the Rubicon was passed.... She said that her name was Annie; that her father, mother, and brothers lived in the hut. That was all she could say. She did not know her parents' name. When Suzanne put her down she ran with all her legs towards the cabin to ...
— Strange True Stories of Louisiana • George Washington Cable
... happiness, and thus in life itself. For between Lois Travers the woman and Lois Travers the light-hearted, high-spirited girl there stretched a year's gulf. Marriage had been to her what it is more or less to all women—a Rubicon, a Book of Revelations in which girlish ideals are rarely realized, sometimes ...
— The Native Born - or, The Rajah's People • I. A. R. Wylie
... the German peace action had failed, the definite decision to declare unrestricted submarine war was taken in Pless on the 9th January. In this way, as the Chancellor said, the Rubicon was crossed. War with the United States seemed inevitable, unless it were found possible at the eleventh hour to annul the decision of the German Government. Herr von Bethmann-Hollweg has declared before the Commission ...
— My Three Years in America • Johann Heinrich Andreas Hermann Albrecht Graf von Bernstorff
... surface. The very phrase gold mine is delusive. Secundo: Gold is a metal that cannot be worked to a profit by a company for this reason: workmen will hunt it for others so long as the daily wages average higher than the amount of metal they find per diem; but, that Rubicon once passed, away they run to find gold for themselves in some spot with similar signs; if they stay, it is to murder your overseers and seize your mine. Gold digging is essentially an individual speculation. These shares ...
— Love Me Little, Love Me Long • Charles Reade
... "The Rubicon is forded," thought Rosa, complacently, the while her compassion for him was sincere and strong. "He can never shut his heart inexorably against ...
— At Last • Marion Harland
... he finds himself face to face with the inevitable. I am not speaking of what men talk about in such cases, or of what they do, but of what they feel,—of the fact that, in too many instances, Nature not having meant men for bondage, after they have passed the Rubicon to that spot from which the code of civilized honor does not permit them to turn back, they usually have a period of regret, and are forced to make a real effort to face the ...
— Told in a French Garden - August, 1914 • Mildred Aldrich
... comers, be they whom they might; after which, with her own hand, she drew the heavy bolts across the doors that he had closed behind him, and returned to the King, whose gesture of surprise and annoyance she affected not to remark. She had passed the Rubicon, and she felt that she had no time to lose if she did not desire to become herself the victim of the struggle in which she was engaged; and thus having announced to her son the dismissal of Richelieu and his relatives from her personal service, she ...
— The Life of Marie de Medicis, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Julia Pardoe
... hold; he then sprang back into the road and prepared for Clifford, who now, however, occupied himself rather in fugitive than warlike measures. Meanwhile, the moment the other rescuers had passed the Rubicon of the hedge, their flight, and that of the gentlemen who had passed before them, commenced. On this mystic side of the hedge was a cross-road, striking at once through an intricate and wooded part of the country, which allowed speedy and ...
— Paul Clifford, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... matters had seemingly gone too far to be stopped. It was considered that any statement of that kind put forth at that particular juncture would simply tend to create a panic from which no good results could accrue, and that, as Dr Jameson had cast the die and crossed his Rubicon, as little as possible should be done needlessly to embarrass him. Suggestions were continually being made, and have been and are still being frequently quoted, to the effect that a force should be sent out to create a diversion among the Boer commandoes in Jameson's favour. Suggestions were made ...
— The Transvaal from Within - A Private Record of Public Affairs • J. P. Fitzpatrick
... heat the agitation failed because the orator proved to be a voice and nothing more. He yielded meekly to the proclamation of the government forbidding further meetings, and his followers forsook him when they saw that he would not cross the Rubicon and take arms after words had failed. The society called "Young Ireland," formed about 1840, took up the agitation for Irish nationality, and carried it to greater lengths than O'Connell had dared. Its fiery young leaders, Smith O'Brien, Meagher, and Mitchel, ...
— Ten Englishmen of the Nineteenth Century • James Richard Joy
... other dish; it is to him That made his horse a senator: each brim Look big as mine: the gallant, jolly beast Of all the herd—you'll say—was not the least. Now crown the second bowl, rich as his worth I'll drink it to; he, that like fire broke forth Into the Senate's face, cross'd Rubicon, And the State's pillars, with their laws thereon, And made the dull grey beards and furr'd gowns fly Into Brundusium to consult, and lie. This, to brave Sylla! why should it be said We drink more to the living than the dead? Flatt'rers and fools do use ...
— Poems of Henry Vaughan, Silurist, Volume II • Henry Vaughan
... leaders on both sides armed their followers, and bloody battles were fought in the streets. Generals led their armies to Rome, although, according to the laws, to bring an army into Italy south of the Rubicon River was to make war on the republic and be guilty of treason. Once in the city these generals put to death hundreds ...
— Introductory American History • Henry Eldridge Bourne and Elbert Jay Benton
... abruptly until his face was hid. "Damn you, Darley Roberts!" he stormed inadequately, "I don't want to a bit, but after all I trust you and—and like you. You have my permission to intrude. I want you to, have wanted you to a hundred times." The Rubicon was crossed at last and he made the admission that for long had trembled on his tongue. "Somehow I can't get along without you and keep my nerve. I think you're the only person in the world who even in a measure understands me, and can ...
— The Dominant Dollar • Will Lillibridge
... convention you would ruin all your life by going on with these ways—it is unthinkable!" and his deep voice vibrated with feeling. "It is a mistake, that is all, and can be rectified,—if you were already married to this man I would not plead so, because then you would have crossed the Rubicon, and assumed responsibilities which you would have to accept or suffer the consequences. But this preliminary bond can be broken without hurt to either side. A man of the good clergyman's type will not suffer ...
— The Point of View • Elinor Glyn
... emotion. The eloquent blood flushed cheek and throat with a keen sense of shame. She had read and heard of such painful stories, but to be face to face with a creature who had crossed the Rubicon, overpassed the great gulf, which separates the sheep from the goats was something so unexpected, so terrible, that she could not restrain a passionate burst of tears. "Ah," she murmured at last, ...
— A Crooked Path - A Novel • Mrs. Alexander
... forty years, and yet not even by aid of interest and compound interest and perquisites and commissions squeezed out of little tradesmen and other time-honored embezzlements, have reached the rubicon of four figures. Five thousand little shopkeepers, active, intelligent and greedy, have bought wholesale and sold retail, yet never mounted so high as this above rent, housekeeping, bad debts and casualties. Many a writer of genius has charmed his nation and adorned her language, yet never held ...
— It Is Never Too Late to Mend • Charles Reade
... ad calcem cuperem pervenire, recessit a promissis suis. Credere verbis istorum est, ac si auribus lupum teneas. Tu vero da operam, et cum primum Petrus responderit, me de eo facias certiorem: nam hoc solum expecto" (Ep. I. 21). From this time his mind was made up: he would leap the Rubicon: he would go in for the forgery, and his friend must have confidence in him. So speaking of his powers for the great task which he meditated he proceeds thus interestingly in the letter to Niccoli bearing date London, the 10th of June, 1422: "I want you to have no distrust: ...
— Tacitus and Bracciolini - The Annals Forged in the XVth Century • John Wilson Ross
... general, too, is slain in battle in far Parthia, and Pompey steals a march by getting a long term in Spain. Caesar demands as much and is refused by Pompey's friends. Then the storm breaks and Caesar comes back from Gaul to cross the Rubicon, and take all Italy in sixty days. Pompey, ambitious, ill-starred, fights losing battles everywhere. Murdered at last in Egypt, he, too, is dead, and Caesar stands alone, master of Rome and of the world. One year he ruled, and then ...
— Ave Roma Immortalis, Vol. 1 - Studies from the Chronicles of Rome • Francis Marion Crawford
... carried off the king to Melun at first, and then to Fontainebleau, whilst the Prince of Conde, having retired to Meaux, summoned to his side his relatives, his friends, and all the leaders of the Reformers, and wrote to Coligny, "that Caesar had not only crossed the Rubicon, but was already at Rome, and that his banners were beginning to wave all over the neighboring country." For some days Catherine and L'Hospital tried to remain out of Paris with the young king, whom Guise, the Constable de Montmorency, and the King of Navarre, the ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume IV. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... monarch in Rome, would Caesar but be as good a monarch as he now seems disposed to be! How, too, could Brutus say that he found no personal cause—none in Caesar's past conduct as a man? Had he not passed the Rubicon? Had he not entered Rome as a conqueror? Had he not placed his Gauls in the Senate?—Shakespeare, it may be said, has not brought these things forward—True;—and this is just the ground of my perplexity. What ...
— Shakespeare, Ben Jonson, Beaumont and Fletcher • S. T. Coleridge
... story connected with the crossing of the Rubicon by Caesar that certainly deserves to be better known than it is.[111] It is only fitting that an event fraught with such momentous consequences should have a supernatural setting of some kind; and Suetonius relates that while Caesar was still hesitating ...
— Greek and Roman Ghost Stories • Lacy Collison-Morley
... against the elements," said the poet, falling back helpless in his chair. "Caeser passed the Rubicon, but he could not have ...
— Bohemians of the Latin Quarter • Henry Murger
... it death," saith Sir John de Gaytenby—"we of this nether world, that be ever in sickness and weariness, in tene and in temptation. Know we what they call it which have forded the Rubicon, and stand safe on the pavement of the Golden City? 'Multo magis melius,' saith the Apostle [Philippians One verse 23]: 'much more better' to dissolve and to be with Christ. And the colder be the waters man hath to ford, the ...
— In Convent Walls - The Story of the Despensers • Emily Sarah Holt |
