"Acanthus" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... against the gold the jogging homeward of empty carts.... Such a procession I want to see painted upon a sovereign sky. I want to have painted a giant carpenter of the village as I once saw him, his great bare arms upholding a huge white pillar, while blue figures hung above and set the acanthus capital.... Some day we shall see these things in their own surprising values and fresco our village libraries with them." [Footnote: Zona Gale, "Friendship Village Love Stories," p. 47.] That appreciation and expression of the beautiful is something ...
— The French in the Heart of America • John Finley
... As familiarity turns the darkness to twilight, and the twilight to a grey daylight, the first impression is that of two rows of towering pillars. They are of a dark red stone having much of the appearance of a dark red marble; and they are crowned with the acanthus in the manner of the Corinthian school. They were carved and set up at the command of Constantine; and beyond them, at the other end of the church beside the attar, is the dark stairway that descends under the ...
— The New Jerusalem • G. K. Chesterton
... breaking of in an olde fashioned iagged leaf-worke, lying a long vnder the backe of the Coppisse, and of the same mettall. Vpon euery corner of the Plynth, from the Coronice downeward, there was a foote lyke a Harpies, with an excellent conuersion and turning vppon eyther sides of the leaues of Acanthus. ...
— Hypnerotomachia - The Strife of Loue in a Dreame • Francesco Colonna
... of the same day, Bartja and Sappho saw each other again. In that first hour surprise and joy together made Sappho's happiness too great for words. When they were once more seated in the acanthus-grove whose blossoming branches had so often seen and sheltered their young love, she embraced him tenderly, but for a long time they did not speak one word. They saw neither moon nor stars moving silently above them, in the warm summer night; they ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... more tempted to admit those particulars which we know we can describe; and hence those most of all which, having been described very often, have grown to be conventionally treated in the practice of our art. These we choose, as the mason chooses the acanthus to adorn his capital, because they come naturally to the accustomed hand. The old stock incidents and accessories, tricks of workmanship and schemes of composition (all being admirably good, or they would long have been forgotten) haunt and tempt our fancy, offer us ready-made ...
— The Art of Writing and Other Essays • Robert Louis Stevenson
... now in common use has been gathered from the dust-bin of the ages. What ornamental motif of any universality, worth, or importance is less than a hundred years old? We continue to use the honeysuckle, the acanthus, the fret, the egg and dart, not because they are appropriate to any use we put them to, but because they are beautiful per se. Why are they beautiful? It is not because they are highly conventionalized representations of natural forms which are themselves beautiful, but ...
— Architecture and Democracy • Claude Fayette Bragdon
... traversed several halls ornamented in the Hellenic style, where the Corinthian acanthus and the Ionic volute bloomed or curled in the capitals of the columns, where the friezes were peopled with little figures in polychromatic plastique representing processions and sacrifices, and they finally arrived at a remote portion of the ancient ...
— King Candaules • Theophile Gautier
... or genius; and it is pleasing to see the tendrils, leaves, and scarlet berries of the nightshade playfully twining among the sculptured friezes which are scattered about in every position but straight lines; or other plants between the volutes, rivalling the acanthus foliage of ...
— Byeways in Palestine • James Finn
... when they awoke next morning, but they had to start. As far as the eye could reach, nothing was visible but one stretch of prairie, enameled with flower, in all the freshness and abundance of spring. The blue flowers of the slender-leaved flax, combined with the bright hues of the scarlet acanthus, a ...
— In Search of the Castaways • Jules Verne
... stranger—another's arms have taken it away, and borne it afar off, unnoticed, into the palace! And the Marchesa! Her lip—her beautiful lip trembles: tears are gathering in her eyes—those eyes which, like Pliny's acanthus, are "soft and almost liquid." Yes! tears are gathering in those eyes—and see! the entire woman thrills throughout the soul, and the statue has started into life! The pallor of the marble countenance, the swelling of the marble bosom, the very purity of the marble ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 2 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... doubled, as it were, so that four volutes occur between the astragali and the abacus (Figs. 42 and 77).[263] In other examples, again, it is elongated upwards until it takes a shape differing but little from the acanthus leaves of ...
— A History of Art in Chaldaea & Assyria, v. 1 • Georges Perrot
... Amongst these the Mangroves[1] take the first place in respect to their mass of vegetation; then follow the Belli-patta[2] and Suriya-gaha[3], with their large hibiscus-like flowers; the Tamarisks[4]; the Acanthus[5], with its beautiful blue petals and holly-like leaves; the Water Coco-nut[6]; the AEgiceras and Hernandia[7], with its sonorous fruits; while the dry sands above are taken possession of by the Acacias, Salvadora Persica (the true mustard-tree of Scripture[8], ...
— Ceylon; an Account of the Island Physical, Historical, and • James Emerson Tennent
... they returned after an absence, the monk told us); lived, like some anchorites of old, in the ruins, in a grotto made by human hands; with the vineyards all round, and the shrubs and flowers waving from the broken masonry! Their rags and shreds of paper littered the rank grass and acanthus by the walled-up gate, where the little Bramantesque temple stands, built by a French prelate under Julius II., and inscribed "Au plaisir de Dieu." ...
— The Spirit of Rome • Vernon Lee
... ornamented with salient mouldings; they were decorated with clover leaves. The monastery is built over this hall, at an altitude of two hundred feet above the sea level. It is composed of a quadrangular gallery formed by a triple line of small granite, tufa, or stucco columns. Acanthus, thistles, ivy, and oak-leaves wind around their caps; between each mitred ogive is a cut-out rose; this gallery is the place where ...
— Over Strand and Field • Gustave Flaubert
... including a semicircular arch sweeping over several arcades, the corners and wall-space being occupied either with arabesque patterns, showing them to be after the time of Leo III., or with scrolls of line-ornament enriched with acanthus foliages. Under this the ...
— Illuminated Manuscripts • John W. Bradley |
