"Borgia" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... harness from Brigham, mounted him bareback and started after the game, being armed with my new buffalo killer which I had named "Lucretia Borgia," an improved breech-loading needle-gun which I had obtained from ...
— An Autobiography of Buffalo Bill (Colonel W. F. Cody) • Buffalo Bill (William Frederick Cody)
... 'Lucrezia Borgia at the Tomb of Don Giovanni! You see,' said the artist, 'I have chosen a good name for my painting, ... and it's a great point gained. Forty or fifty years ago, some of those fluffy old painters would have had Venus worshiping at the ...
— Continental Monthly - Volume 1 - Issue 3 • Various
... scholar to whom learned men wrote letters, as if to a pattern of virtue. But in the father and son live a flame and a cloud, the flame rising steadily to beat back and consume the cloud. It is Caesar Borgia who is the flame, and Alexander the Pope who fills the Vatican and the world with his contagious clouds. The father, up to this moment, has held all his vices well in hand; he has no rival; his sons and ...
— Figures of Several Centuries • Arthur Symons
... which they are destroyed; this pillage of the gigantic library where the antiquarian can read the archeological history of a country. Oh! the vandals, the barbarians! Worse than that, the idiots! who revenge the Borgia crimes and the debauches of Louis XV. on stone. How well those Pharaohs, Menaes, and Cheops knew man as the most perversive, destructive and evil of animals! They who built their pyramids, not with carved traceries, nor lacy spires, ...
— The Companions of Jehu • Alexandre Dumas
... dishonored. The fifteenth century was the era of the infamous popes. By another coincidence which arrests the attention of the reader of history, that same year of the discovery by Columbus witnessed the accession of the most infamous of the series, the Borgia, Alexander VI., to his ...
— A History of American Christianity • Leonard Woolsey Bacon
... these enlightened times, when the souls of men have shaken off the fetters of mediaeval bondage, it is difficult to understand how our ancestors could have been so enslaved—worshipping the reigning pope, though even a Borgia, as a very God upon earth. Near the last column of the aisle is a colossal bronze statue of St. Peter, seated on a huge chair or throne. We noticed that every one (Roman Catholic) bowed before the image, and afterwards advanced and kissed one of the feet, the big ...
— Fair Italy, the Riviera and Monte Carlo • W. Cope Devereux
... condition of the Church, when it was divided by the last splinterings, as it were, of the great schism, perhaps the astute Louis deemed that any prince might obtain anything from whichever rival Pope he chose to acknowledge, though it was reserved for Alexander Borgia to grant the first licence of this kind. To Jean the idea was simply abhorrent, alike as regarded her instincts and for the sake of the man himself. His sneering manner towards her sister had filled her ...
— Two Penniless Princesses • Charlotte M. Yonge
... beliefs which have latterly been assailed with every resource of logical argument and formidably arrayed proofs, unearthed by tireless diligence and pursuit. Thus we are told that the story of William Tell is a romantic myth; that Lucretia Borgia, far from being a poisoner and murderess, was really a very estimable person; and that the siege of Troy was a very insignificant struggle, between armies counted, not ...
— The Nation in a Nutshell • George Makepeace Towle
... exquisite original. Over the high carved mantelpiece was suspended the portrait of Sir Reginald. It had been painted in early youth; the features were beautiful, disdainful,—with a fierceness breaking through the courtly air. The eyes were very fine, black as midnight, and piercing as those of Caesar Borgia, as seen in Raphael's wonderful picture in the Borghese Palace at Rome. They seemed to fascinate the gazer—to rivet his glances—to follow him whithersoever he went—and to search into his soul, as did the dark orbs of Sir Reginald in his lifetime. It was the work likewise ...
— Rookwood • William Harrison Ainsworth
... commissioned him to paint some pictures for her to send as a present to her own family, the Orsini of Rome. These works, of which the subjects are not known, passed afterwards into the possession of Casar Borgia. She also sat to Mariotto for her own portrait. It is easily imagined how elated the excitable youth became at this notice from the mother of the magnificent Lorenzo. He had dreams of making a greater name than even his master, Cosimo, whose handiwork was in the Sistine; of excelling Michelangelo, ...
— Fra Bartolommeo • Leader Scott (Re-Edited By Horace Shipp And Flora Kendrick)
... should come in at this point. It came in. Mr. Twain resumed his eulogy.] Look at the noble names of history! Look at Cleopatra! Look at Desdemona! Look at Florence Nightingale! Look at Joan of Arc! Look at Lucretia Borgia! [Disapprobation expressed. "Well," said Mr. Twain, scratching his head, doubtfully, "suppose we let Lucretia slide."] Look at Joyce Heth! Look at Mother Eve! I repeat, sir, look at the illustrious ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... experience, to meet the exigencies of life. The organization of society under chiefs and medicine men greatly increased the power of the society to serve its own interests. The same is true of higher political organizations. If Gian Galeazzo Visconti or Cesare Borgia could have united Italy into a despotic state, it is an admissible opinion that the history of the peninsula in the following four or five hundred years would have been happy and prosperous, and that, at the present time, it would ...
— Folkways - A Study of the Sociological Importance of Usages, Manners, Customs, Mores, and Morals • William Graham Sumner
... of Flies, reported that he saw this spirit come to take possession of him. M. de Langier, a French minister, who employed many spies, was frequently accused of diabolical communication. Sixtus the Fifth, Marechal Faber, Roger Bacon, Caesar Borgia, his son Alexander VI., and others, like Socrates, had their ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 1 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... last named post Valdez had his headquarters, and Colonel Borgia commanded at Lammen. The fleet was delayed at North Aa by another dyke, called the Kirkway. The waters, too, spreading again over a wider space, and diminished from the east wind again setting in, sank rapidly, and very soon the ...
— By Pike and Dyke: A Tale of the Rise of the Dutch Republic • G.A. Henty
... Papa was a member of an Ethical Society at Cambridge. They used sometimes to discuss special things—whether they were right or wrong. I wonder what they would have said to St. Francis Borgia?" ...
— Helbeck of Bannisdale, Vol. II • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... Muzio beheld Valeria for the first time at a sumptuous popular festival, got up at the command of the Duke of Ferrara, Ercole, son of the famous Lucrezia Borgia, in honour of some distinguished grandees who had arrived from Paris on the invitation of the Duchess, the daughter of Louis XII, King of France. Side by side with her mother sat Valeria in the centre of an elegant ...
— A Reckless Character - And Other Stories • Ivan Turgenev
... also married, and intended to poison, but who was said to have subsequently poisoned him—besides murders or schemes for murder of various other individuals, both French and English. "He was a rare artist in poison," said Sir Robert Naunton, and certainly not Caesar Borgia, nor his father or sister, was more accomplished in that difficult profession than was Dudley, if half the charges against him could be believed. Fortunately for his fame, many of them were proved to be false. ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... of Central Italy which Leonardo visited in 1502, when in the service of Cesare Borgia, are reproduced here in the same order as in the note book used during these travels (MS. L., Institut de France). These notes have but little interest in themselves excepting as suggesting his itinerary. The maps of the districts ...
— The Notebooks of Leonardo Da Vinci, Complete • Leonardo Da Vinci
... business, or pleasure, without the slightest discomfort; and this was probably no more than a fair estimate of one of the great constitutions of all time. As a digester, Maurice Levy would have disappointed a Borgia. ...
— Penrod • Booth Tarkington
... Miss Cavell," said Machiavelli. "And there was the bombing of unfortified towns, and the poison gas. Why, in my palmiest days I never thought of anything so choice as that poison gas. I told Borgia about it, and she went ...
— Best Short Stories • Various
... in 1833, soon after Hugo's play "Lucrece Borgia" had been accepted for production, that a lady called one morning at Hugo's house in the Place Royale. She was then between twenty and thirty years of age, slight of figure, winsome in her bearing, and one who knew the arts which appeal to men. For she was ...
— Famous Affinities of History, Vol 1-4, Complete - The Romance of Devotion • Lyndon Orr
... politely to withdraw my invitation. The gardener and I then made a luscious compound of bacon grease and rough-on-rats, which we served on lettuce leaves and left about the edges of the grass plot. Did you ever hear a rabbit scream? They do. I felt like Lucretia Borgia, and decided that if they wanted the lawn they could have it. Oddly enough, a lot of grass came up in quite another part of the garden. I suppose it was the first planting that Fraeulein had blown away with the hose! We often have surprises like that in gardening. We once ...
— The Smiling Hill-Top - And Other California Sketches • Julia M. Sloane
... his natural son Caesar Borgia, was famous for his wickedness, in which he, and his son too, surpassed all imagination. Their lives are well worth your reading. They were poisoned themselves by the poisoned wine which they had prepared for others; the father died of it, ...
— The PG Edition of Chesterfield's Letters to His Son • The Earl of Chesterfield
... five-and-forty years;—other virtues perhaps more than we know of. Probably no mortal ever had such things recorded of him: such facts, and also such lies. For he was a Jacobin Prince of the Blood; consider what a combination! Also, unlike any Nero, any Borgia, he lived in the Age of Pamphlets. Enough for us: Chaos has reabsorbed him; may it late or never bear his like again!—Brave young Orleans Egalite, deprived of all, only not deprived of himself, is gone to Coire in the Grisons, under the name of Corby, to teach Mathematics. The Egalite ...
— The French Revolution • Thomas Carlyle
... flies, combined with some other ingredients, which, however, are only known to the makers of it. That the Acqua Tofana is made from the foam sometimes found upon the lips of the dying, is an idle tale. Allessandro Borgia was the first to ...
— The Daughter of an Empress • Louise Muhlbach
... she should present us with all sorts of faces. Can there be a more express act of justice than this? The Duc de Valentinois,—[Caesar Borgia.]—having resolved to poison Adrian, Cardinal of Corneto, with whom Pope Alexander VI., his father and himself, were to sup in the Vatican, he sent before a bottle of poisoned wine, and withal, strict order to the butler to keep it very safe. The Pope being come before ...
— The Essays of Montaigne, Complete • Michel de Montaigne
... others of high descent—great descent, it may be added, remembering the moral depths attained; but to those who care for the welfare of the people, it is a mutation of no slight interest. I am glad to think, as has been shown in a recent novel, that Lucrezia Borgia was not so black as she has been painted; yet in the early days of June and July, when strawberries and raspberries are ripening, I fancy that most of us can dismiss her and her kin from mind as we observe Nature's alchemy in our gardens. ...
— The Home Acre • E. P. Roe
... grew into mine. I was forty-five, she twenty-five. In the back of my mind was always a sense of the enormity of her offense against Perry. In my hottest moments I said to myself that she had sacrificed his life to her selfishness; she might have been a Borgia or a Medici. ...
— The Gay Cockade • Temple Bailey
... who have not read the play it is only necessary to observe, in order to understand what follows, that Victor Hugo, with that violent effort after a moral novelty which distinguishes him, has chosen to represent the infamous Lucretia Borgia as under the influence of maternal love, while in all other respects she fully sustains her odious ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Vol. 56, No. 346, August, 1844 • Various
... Anglican orders was often discussed at the Observatory, and I no doubt gave great offence by openly declaring in my imperfect English that I considered Luther a better channel for the transmission of the Holy Ghost than a Caesar Borgia or even a Wolsey. Anyhow I could not bring myself to see the importance of such questions, if only the heart was right and if the whole of our life was in fact a real and constant life with God and in God. ...
— My Autobiography - A Fragment • F. Max Mueller
... left Rome for Florence in 1486, Pinturicchio remained there, obtained commissions from the great families of the Della Rovere and Cibo, and from the Borgia Pope Alexander VI., for whom he decorated the famous "Appartamento Borgia" within the Vatican. He thus began to assume the position of an independent master; but if we trace his hand (especially in the children and landscape backgrounds) in the two Sistine wall paintings which I have ...
— Perugino • Selwyn Brinton
... Minister, came in after dinner—just to visit. His household is greatly upset. His cook and three footmen have gone to the war. He apologised for not inviting us to dine during these depressing days, but said he could not, as his cook was a Lucretia di Borgia. He is confident that the war is going to knock Brussels life into a cocked hat this winter. So many of the families will be in mourning, and so much poverty will come as a result of the war. Life goes on so normally now, save for the little annoyances of living under martial ...
— A Journal From Our Legation in Belgium • Hugh Gibson
... probably never a more openly profligate Italian despot than Alexander VI (1493-1503) of the notorious Spanish house of Borgia. He frankly set to work to advance the interests of his children, as if he were merely a secular ruler. For one of his sons, Csar Borgia, he proposed to form a duchy east of Florence. Csar outdid his father in crime. He not only entrapped and ...
— An Introduction to the History of Western Europe • James Harvey Robinson
... your Potion to kill yourself, but when you may safely lay out the other Half with the view of killing somebody else." A mighty pleasant Way had his Eminence with him; and his conversation was a kind of Borgia Brocade ...
— The Strange Adventures of Captain Dangerous, Vol. 3 of 3 • George Augustus Sala
... and butter and a small coffee seemed the only things on the list that hadn't been specially prepared by the nastier-minded members of the Borgia family for people they had a particular grudge against, so I chose them, ...
— Death At The Excelsior • P. G. Wodehouse
... idiot. He is a man of another age than our own. He seems absurd and mad, because he is out of his place and time. Transport him to Spain in the 16th century, and Philip II would recognise him; to England, and Henry VIII would smile on him; to Italy, and Caesar Borgia would jump on his neck. Or even, confine yourself to setting him outside the pale of European civilization,—place him, in 1817, at Janina, and Ali-Tepeleni would grasp him ...
— Napoleon the Little • Victor Hugo
... Roman fashion of the vast interior power to hold one's imagination enchained to the Cross of Calvary. The white robes of the altar servants, broidered vestments of the priests and pallid torches of a hundred candles belonged to the Rome of Caesar Borgia and not to the Rome of Caesar Nero. Into that singular building, impressive in its incompleteness, crept no echo of the catacombs, and the sighing of the reed notes was voluptuous as a lover's whisper, and as far removed ...
— The Orchard of Tears • Sax Rohmer
... battles also between the citizens who obeyed or thwarted them. Houses were sacked and burnt, and occasionally razed to the ground, for the ploughshare and the salt-sower to go over their site. A few years later, when Pope Borgia dredged the Tiber for the body of his son, the boatmen of Ripetta reported that so many bodies were thrown over every night that they no longer heeded such occurrences. And when, two centuries later, ...
— Renaissance Fancies and Studies - Being a Sequel to Euphorion • Violet Paget (AKA Vernon Lee)
... the action begins at once; surprise follows surprise, plot is matched by plot, until the fortunes of the actors are entwined inextricably. The portraits of the famous Colonna and of the infamous Caesar Borgia (the latter being the arch "villain" of the story) are drawn in sharp and decisive lines. The tournament which forms the scene of the catastrophe is a brilliant picture, though not a pleasing one for a Friend or a member of ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 4, No. 23, September, 1859 • Various
... for beneath his arrogant churchmanship there was a fanatical spirituality of a mediaeval kind. His sense of responsibility was painful and intense. The same pain possessed him always, were the sin that of a child or a Borgia. ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... No, give me the past. It doesn't change; it's all there in black and white, and you can get to know about it comfortably and decorously and, above all, privately—by reading. By reading I know a great deal of Caesar Borgia, of St. Francis, of Dr. Johnson; a few weeks have made me thoroughly acquainted with these interesting characters, and I have been spared the tedious and revolting process of getting to know them by personal contact, which I should ...
— Crome Yellow • Aldous Huxley
... levity, indeed, licentiousness, ill according with a religious turn of mind, rose to the position of a great dignitary of the Church and a powerful arbiter of the destinies of his kind. As that was an age when Alexander VI. was a Pope, and Lucretia Borgia the daughter of a Pontiff and consort of a reigning Duke of Italy, we can readily credit the author of the Annals, and laud him for admirable, life-like portraiture, when he says that a character and conduct, such as Piso's, "met with the approbation of a large number of people, who, ...
— Tacitus and Bracciolini - The Annals Forged in the XVth Century • John Wilson Ross
... conjured by the unjust spirits of indiscriminate accusation and revenge. A crime which, in its public magnitude, added to its private misery, would have driven even the Atis-haunted heart of a Medici, a Borgia, or a Madame Bocarme to wild confession before its accomplishment, and daunted even that soul, of all the recorded world the most eager for novelty in license, and most unshrinking in sin—the indurated soul of Christina of Sweden; such a crime the profoundest ...
— The World's Best Orations, Vol. 1 (of 10) • Various
... my friend,' said Vandeloup, looking at them critically, 'I can prepare a vegetable poison as deadly as any of Caesar Borgia's. It is a powerful narcotic, and leaves hardly any trace. Having been a medical student, you know,' he went on, conversationally, 'I made quite a study of toxicology, and the juice of this plant,' touching ...
— Madame Midas • Fergus Hume
... happiness, Then Nature deviates; and can man do less? As much that end a constant course requires Of showers and sunshine, as of man's desires; As much eternal springs and cloudless skies, As men for ever temperate, calm, and wise. If plagues or earthquakes break not Heaven's design, Why then a Borgia, or a Catiline? Who knows but He, whose hand the lightning forms, Who heaves old ocean, and who wings the storms; Pours fierce ambition in a Caesar's mind, Or turns young Ammon loose to scourge mankind? From pride, from pride, our very reasoning springs; Account ...
— Essay on Man - Moral Essays and Satires • Alexander Pope
... 'that's just the kind of a chance you do stand. They'll all be there to-night, and as this is ladies' day, you might meet Lucretia Borgia, Cleopatra, and a few other feminine apparitions ...
— The Water Ghost and Others • John Kendrick Bangs
... Why, because it is a monstrous thing even to think of!" Tignonville answered, with the confidence of one who did not use the argument for the first time. "Could they insult the King more deeply than by such a suspicion? A Borgia may kill his guests, but it was never a practice of the Kings of France! Pardieu, I have no patience with them! They may lodge where they please, across the river, or without the walls if they choose, the Rue de l'Arbre Sec is good enough ...
— Count Hannibal - A Romance of the Court of France • Stanley J. Weyman
... startling proposition that the "amazing" but, as the world has heretofore held, infamous Emperor Heliogabalus was a great religious reformer, who was in advance of his times; a third to present Lucrezia Borgia to the world as a much-maligned and very virtuous woman; and a fourth to tell us that the "ever pusillanimous" Barere, as he is called by M. Louis Madelin, was "persistently vilified and deliberately misunderstood." Biographical research has, moreover, destroyed many ...
— Political and Literary essays, 1908-1913 • Evelyn Baring
... at the end of the fifteenth century. "Courtesan" or "cortegiana" meant a lady following the court, and the term began at this time to be applied to a superior prostitute observing a certain degree of decorum and restraint.[155] In the papal court of Alexander Borgia the courtesan flourished even when her conduct was not altogether dignified. Burchard, the faithful and unimpeachable chronicler of this court, describes in his diary how, one evening, in October, 1501, ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 6 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... of men and women who, while on earth, consecrated themselves to God by the vows of poverty, chastity, and obedience. Many of them—perhaps the great majority are virgins, while other are not. For many of them, like a St. Francis Borgia, were widowers; and others, like a St. Frances of Rome, were widows. Others again, there are, who, when young and foolish, committed sin, by which they may have ceased to be virgins, but who nevertheless received a most marked vocation to the religious life. All these, ...
— The Happiness of Heaven - By a Father of the Society of Jesus • F. J. Boudreaux
... imagination of a Prince. Directly these men turned their thoughts towards realisation, their attitudes became—what shall I call it?—secretarial. Machiavelli, it is true, had some little doubts about the particular Prince he wanted, whether it was Caesar Borgia of Giuliano or Lorenzo, but a Prince it had to be. Before I saw clearly the differences of our own time I searched my mind for the modern equivalent of a Prince. At various times I redrafted a parallel dedication to the Prince of Wales, to the Emperor William, to Mr. Evesham, to a certain newspaper ...
— The New Machiavelli • Herbert George Wells
... high intellectual abilities, he had received a thorough training in the Macchiavellian theory of politics,[1191] and, during many years of diplomatic service, had enjoyed a fair opportunity for schooling himself in its practical workings. The son of Lucretia Borgia, the grandson of Pope Alexander the Sixth, could scarcely help being an adept at intrigue. Next to this special qualification, his highest recommendations were that he was the brother-in-law of Renee of France, ...
— The Rise of the Hugenots, Vol. 1 (of 2) • Henry Martyn Baird
... Borgia, thou once wert almost too august And high for adoration; now thou'rt dust. All that remains of thee these plaits unfold, Calm hair, meandering in ...
— Imaginary Conversations and Poems - A Selection • Walter Savage Landor
... the first interpreters of the comedies of Goldoni, and several of them claim descent from players who enacted the tragedies and comedies of serious classical literature before the courts of Lucrezia Borgia and Leonora d'Este. In glancing over an Italian play-bill one is invariably struck by the fact that many of the artists bear the same name, and are evidently connected by ties of consanguinity or of marriage. In the Ristori troupe, for instance, there are several actors ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science Vol. XV., No. 85. January, 1875. • Various
... gave woman all her will: Field, bright and loud with laughing flower and bird And keen alternate notes of laud and gird: Barnes, darkening once with Borgia's deeds the quill Which tuned the passion of Parthenophil: Blithe burly Porter, broad and bold of word: Wilkins, a voice with strenuous pity stirred: Turk Mason: Brewer, whose tongue drops honey still: Rough Rowley, handling song with Esau's hand: Light Nabbes: lean Sharpham, rank and raw ...
— Sonnets, and Sonnets on English Dramatic Poets (1590-1650) • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... far that the tragedian has thought himself injured when the comedian pretended to wear a fine coat." Powel, the tragedian, surveying the dress worn by Cibber as Lord Foppington, fairly lost his temper, and complained, in rude terms, that he had not so good a suit in which to play Caesar Borgia. Then, again, when Betterton proposed to "mount" a tragedy, the comic actors were sure to murmur at the cost of it. Dogget especially regarded with impatience "the costly trains and plumes of tragedy, ...
— A Book of the Play - Studies and Illustrations of Histrionic Story, Life, and Character • Dutton Cook
... is this: a spray Which will be grafted on thy happy tree. What of the fruitful stepchild shall I say, Who in succession next to her I see, Lucretia Borgia? who, from day to day, Shall wax in beauty, virtue, chastity, And fortune, that like youthful plant will shoot, Which into yielding ...
— Orlando Furioso • Lodovico Ariosto
... odious monster will soon lose its terror by becoming familiar to you. The modern history of our own times furnishes as black a list of crimes as can be paralleled in ancient times, even if we go back to Nero, Caligula, or Caesar Borgia. Young as you are, the cruel war into which we have been compelled by the haughty tyrant of Britain and the bloody emissaries of his vengeance, may stamp upon your mind this certain truth, that the welfare and prosperity of all countries, ...
— Brave Men and Women - Their Struggles, Failures, And Triumphs • O.E. Fuller
... thoughts to nobler methods for preserving that State. Guido Ubaldo, duke of Urbino and son to Duke Federigo, who in his day was a warrior of much renown, but who was driven from his dominions by Cesare Borgia, son to Pope Alexander VI., when afterwards, by a sudden stroke of good fortune, he was restored to the dukedom caused all the fortresses of the country to be dismantled, judging them to be hurtful. For as he was beloved ...
— Discourses on the First Decade of Titus Livius • Niccolo Machiavelli
... assume the title of Formosus, and whose tiara, valued at two hundred thousand florins, was bought at the price of a terrible sin; Gian Maria Visconti, who used hounds to chase living men, and whose murdered body was covered with roses by a harlot who had loved him; the Borgia on his white horse, with Fratricide riding beside him, and his mantle stained with the blood of Perotto; Pietro Riario, the young Cardinal Archbishop of Florence, child and minion of Sixtus IV., whose beauty was equalled only by his debauchery, and who received Leonora of Aragon in ...
— The Picture of Dorian Gray • Oscar Wilde
... celebrity—La Marechale d'Ancre, by de Vigny; and Marion Delorme, by Victor Hugo. We quote a scene from the former. Concini, the principal character, is a favourite of Louis XIII.; the Marechale, his wife, has a first love, Borgia, a Corsican, who, disappointed in his early suit by the stratagems of Concini, has married the beautiful but uncultivated Isabella Monti. On the conflicting feelings of this strange personage, his hatred to the husband, and his relenting towards the wife; and the licentious plans ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction. - Volume 19, No. 535, Saturday, February 25, 1832. • Various
... controversy over the arms, [165] they had ceased intercourse [with us]. Notwithstanding all this, they always directed their efforts to the end that the Society should yield; and, the octave of the naval feast falling on the very day of St. Francis de Borgia, we had to delay until the octave the feast and sermon for the saint, and went in a body to the church. Great rejoicing was displayed in the city; much artillery was fired; the [Dominican] provincial Marron preached; ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898—Volume 39 of 55 • Various
... could almost be called, thickly sandwiched between them. Such was one's strange sense for the connections of things that they drew out the halls of Ferrero till these too seemed fairly to resound with Norma and Lucrezia Borgia, as if opening straight upon the stage, and Europe, by the stroke, had come to us in such force that we had but to enjoy it on the spot. That could never have been more the case than on the occasion of my assuming, for the famous fancy-ball—not ...
— A Small Boy and Others • Henry James
... are the well-known and respectable guardians. Every piece Victor Hugo has written, since "Hernani," has contained a monster—a delightful monster, saved by one virtue. There is Triboulet, a foolish monster; Lucrece Borgia, a maternal monster; Mary Tudor, a religious monster; Monsieur Quasimodo, a humpback monster; and others, that might be named, whose monstrosities we are induced to pardon—nay, admiringly to witness—because they are agreeably mingled ...
— The Paris Sketch Book Of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh • William Makepeace Thackeray
... Rip Van Winkle, and in his Yankee characters. (See pages 19, 20, "Specimen Days.") It was here (some years later than the date in the headline) I also heard Mario many times, and at his best. In such parts as Gennaro, in "Lucrezia Borgia," he was inimitable—the sweetest of voices, a pure tenor, of considerable compass and respectable power. His wife, Grisi, was with him, no longer first-class or young—a fine Norma, though, ...
— Complete Prose Works - Specimen Days and Collect, November Boughs and Goodbye My Fancy • Walt Whitman
... were young—was not destined to survive him more than two years. "Since his death was to bring about many calamities," says Niccolo Macchiavelli, "it was the will of Heaven to show this by omens only too certain: the dome of the church of Santa Regarata was struck by lightning, and Roderigo Borgia was ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... is used of deeds of unusual horror; enormousness, of things of unusual size. We speak of the enormity of CA|sar Borgia's crimes, of the ...
— Practical Exercises in English • Huber Gray Buehler
... Webster's sinister and powerful genius. But unless he had seen it with his eyes, what poet would have ventured to devise the thing and display it even in the dumb show of a tragedy? Fact is more wonderful than romance. No apocalypse of Antichrist matches what is told of Roderigo Borgia; and the crucifix of Crema exceeds the sombre ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece • John Addington Symonds
... XIV., and enlarged by Pius VI., and the celebrated library of the Vatican. The treasures carried away by the French have been restored. Among the paintings of this palace, the most beautiful are Raffaelle's frescos in the stanze and loggie. The principal oil paintings are in the appartamento Borgia, which also contains the Transfiguration, by Raphael. In the Sistine chapel is the Last Judgment by Michael Angelo. The popes have chosen the palace of Monte Cavallo, or the Quirinal palace, with its extensive and ...
— Anecdotes of Painters, Engravers, Sculptors and Architects and Curiosities of Art (Vol. 3 of 3) • S. Spooner
... patriots as not often comes within one's experience to see. General Marion was playing a dummy game of poker with General Lafayette; Governor Morris was having a set-to with Nathan Lane, and James Madison was executing a Dutch polka with Madam Roland on one arm and Luicretia Borgia on the other. The next moment the advancing flames compelled ...
— A Unique Story of a Marvellous Career. Life of Hon. Phineas T. • Joel Benton
... his friend had positively had a laugh for his tone. "To you and to every one. She had only to be what she is—and to be it all round. If she's charming, how can she help it? So it was, and so only, that she 'acted'-as the Borgia wine used to act. One saw it come over them—the extent to which, in her particular way, a woman, a woman other, and SO other, than themselves, COULD be charming. One saw them understand and exchange looks, then one saw them lose heart and decide to move. For what they had to take home ...
— The Golden Bowl • Henry James
... moaned Lucretia Borgia. "Calpurnia just looked out of the window and discovered that we ...
— The Pursuit of the House-Boat • John Kendrick Bangs
... and it was obvious that he would go for the London one first. I warned the inmates of the house, so as to avoid a second tragedy, and we went down with the happiest results. By that time, of course, I knew for certain that it was the Borgia pearl that we were after. The name of the murdered man linked the one event with the other. There only remained a single bust—the Reading one—and the pearl must be there. I bought it in your presence from the ...
— The Return of Sherlock Holmes - Magazine Edition • Arthur Conan Doyle
... was permitted to roam at large. But the putting him to death in cold blood, by lingering tortures of mind, by vexations, insults, and deprivations, was a degree of inhumanity to which the poisonings and assassinations of the school of Borgia and the den of Marat never attained. The book proves, also, that nature had denied him the moral sense, the first excellence of well-organized man. If he could seriously and repeatedly affirm, that he had raised himself to power without ever having committed a crime, ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson
... marriage to dictatorial little Anne of Brittany, for whom he had induced Pope Alexander to divorce him from the poor little crippled owlet, Joan. In consideration of this divorce he had put Caesar Borgia, Pope Alexander's son, on his feet, financially and politically. I think he must have wanted the owlet back again before he was done with Anne, because Anne was a termagant—and ruled him with the ...
— When Knighthood Was in Flower • Charles Major
... been decreed that the streets of Toulon should be razed to the ground. When depravity is placed so high as his, the hatred which it inspires is mingled with awe. His place was with great tyrants, with Critias and Sylla, with Eccelino and Borgia; not with hireling scribblers and ...
— Critical and Historical Essays, Volume III (of 3) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... for speaking with so famous a man; and in came, in full armor, a short, bull-necked Italian, evidently of immense strength, of the true Caesar Borgia stamp. ...
— Westward Ho! • Charles Kingsley
... as clear As a speaking voice, and I, as thought, Could hear a Presence think as he walked Between the boxes pinching off leaves, Looking for bugs and noting values, With an eye that saw it all: "Homer, oh yes! Pericles, good. Caesar Borgia, what shall be done with it? Dante, too much manure, perhaps. Napoleon, leave him awhile as yet. Shelley, more soil. Shakespeare, needs spraying—" ...
— Spoon River Anthology • Edgar Lee Masters
... his motto was the survival of the fittest. He did not yet feel pity for Hilary—for he was angry. Only contempt,—contempt that one who had been a power should come to this. To draw a somewhat far-fetched parallel, a Captain Kidd or a Caesar Borgia with a conscience would never have been heard of. Mr. Flint did not call it a conscience—he had a harder name for it. He had to send Hilary, thus vitiated, into the Convention to conduct the most important battle since the founding of the Empire, ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... prone to regard themselves as Italian princes who might normally employ their states as so many pawns in the game of peninsular politics. The policy of the notorious Alexander VI (1492-1503) centered in his desire to establish his son, Cesare Borgia, as an Italian ruler; and Julius II (1503-1513) was famed more for statecraft and military prowess ...
— A Political and Social History of Modern Europe V.1. • Carlton J. H. Hayes
... marriage contract, but the goods delivered are so different from the sample by which they bargained. They were simply swindled, and they backed out. They mistook Jezebel for Longfellow's Evangeline, and Lucretia Borgia for ...
— The Wedding Ring - A Series of Discourses for Husbands and Wives and Those - Contemplating Matrimony • T. De Witt Talmage
... Troilus and Cressida, and probably in the same month, Cleomena in Mrs. Behn's The Young King; later in the autumn, Laura Lucretia in The Feign'd Curtezans; in October, Bellamira, the heroine of Lee's excellent if flamboyant tragedy, Caesar Borgia, to the Borgia of Betterton and Smith's Machiavel. In 1680 her roles were Arviola in Tate's The Loyal General; Julia in Lawrence Maidwell's capital comedy, The Loving Enemies; Queen Margaret in Crowne's The Misery of Civil War, a version ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn, Vol. II • Aphra Behn
... strains of devotion; and, were they not sincere, I doubt much of his well-being, {47} and, I fear, he was too well seen in the aphorisms and principles of Nicholas the Florentine, and in the reaches {48} of Cesare Borgia. ...
— Travels in England and Fragmenta Regalia • Paul Hentzner and Sir Robert Naunton
... that her favourite character in history was Lucrezia Borgia, and when she saw my horror, immediately added: 'Well, no, I am only joking!' Such was her duplicity: for I see now that she lived in the constant effort to hide her heinous heart from me. Yet, now I think of it, how completely did Clodagh ...
— The Purple Cloud • M.P. Shiel
... to me one day: "Listen, I want you to meet this man X——. You will like him. He is fine. You haven't any idea what a fascinating person he really is. He looks like a Russian Grand Duke. He has the manners and the tastes of a Medici or a Borgia. He is building a great house down on Long Island that once it is done will have cost him five or six hundred thousand. It's worth seeing already. His studio here in the C—— studio building is a dream. It's ...
— Twelve Men • Theodore Dreiser
... en Angleterre. The paragraph is violent. The writer wants to know what demon possesses the Englishwomen at this moment. I might have been sure it was translated from an English paper. The creature wants to know whether the furies are let loose, and is very clever about Lucretia Borgia, and Mary Manning, and Mary Newell! One would think English mothers were all going to boil their children. This is just what has happened about everything else. In certain English circles slang is talked: therefore women have become coarse and vulgar. The Divorce Court has been a busy one ...
— The Cockaynes in Paris - 'Gone abroad' • Blanchard Jerrold
... well to frighten him a little by a short term of imprisonment. He is restless and easily led; a lesson in time may save his honored house from disaster. But to Carillo no quarter." He rose and stood over them. "The best thing in Machiavelli's 'Prince,'" he said, "is the author's advice to Caesar Borgia to exterminate every member of the reigning house of a conquered country, in order to avoid future revolutions and their infinitely greater number of dead. Do not let the water in your blood whimper for mercy. You are ...
— The Doomswoman - An Historical Romance of Old California • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
... labouring with the secret of the earth and the burden of mystery, that guard and glorify the chapel of Pope Sixtus at Rome—do they not tell us more of the real spirit of the Italian Renaissance, of the dream of Savonarola and of the sin of Borgia, than all the brawling boors and cooking women of Dutch art can teach us of the real spirit of ...
— Miscellanies • Oscar Wilde
... little gilded face on the panel?...All her friends, of course: Aileen, Sibyl, Alice, Olive, Janet, Helene....Unthinkable to have a secret drawer in an old Italian cabinet which had belonged to some Borgia or other, and not exhibit it to one's ...
— The Sisters-In-Law • Gertrude Atherton
... he was dealing with a Borgia—a man who cajoled, bought and bribed, and when these failed there were noose, knife and poison close at hand. The Prior of Saint Mark's could deal with Lorenzo in Florence, but with Alexander at Rome he would be undone. ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 7 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Eminent Orators • Elbert Hubbard
... unyoke the horses from the carriage of some great prima donna and pull her themselves through the streets to her hotel. Why did they never play the grand old operas now, he asked, Dinorah, Lucrezia Borgia? Because they could not get the voices to sing them: ...
— Dubliners • James Joyce
... Borgia) did not hesitate as to the line he intended taking in the matter, and he gave his sanction to the rehabilitation of the heroine by a rescript dated the 11th of June, 1455. It was ...
— Joan of Arc • Ronald Sutherland Gower
... adopted. The aids walk to and fro, selected without reference to any association with the late President. Their clothes are rich, their swords wear mourning, they go in silence, everything is funereal. In the deeply-draped mirrors strange mirages are seen, as in the coffin scene of "Lucretia Borgia," where all the dusky perspectives bear vistas of gloomy palls. The upholsterers make timid noises of driving nails and spreading tapestry; but save ourselves and these few watchers and workers, only the dead is here. The White House, so ill-appreciated in common times, is seen ...
— The Life, Crime and Capture of John Wilkes Booth • George Alfred Townsend
... neighborhood of Jativa, a city that he had always regarded with interest on account of the Borgias having been born in one of its suburbs. The two men were of the same opinion. That almost infantile prelate could have been no other than Caesar Borgia, made Archbishop of Valencia when sixteen years old by his father, the Pope. On their first free day they would examine the portrait with particular attention.... And Ulysses, hanging his head, felt every mouthful sticking ...
— Mare Nostrum (Our Sea) - A Novel • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... topsy-turvy, and the bottom is the top, and it isn't much matter what comes next. Here are shoals of noble families uprooted and lying round like those aloes that the gardener used to throw over the wall in spring-time; and there is that great boar of a Caesar Borgia turned in to batten and ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, Issue 45, July, 1861 • Various
... that lay directly in front of the hotel, presented as pretty and enticing a picture as could be found anywhere. That afternoon we drove all about old Naples, visiting many of the quaint and handsome old cathedrals and palaces, and that night we went to hear "Lucretia Borgia," at the San Carlos, which is one of the most magnificent theaters to be found in all Europe. The next day we spent among the ruins of Pompeii and, though a third of the original city at the time of our visit still lay buried ...
— A Ball Player's Career - Being the Personal Experiences and Reminiscensces of Adrian C. Anson • Adrian C. Anson
... of husbands who would make the world better by leaving it, even so—well, abruptly, as you indicate. And the lady you speak of, who, as it were, assists, may merely have drawn a generous part of Lucretia Borgia for her soul-substance, and this portion chanced to assert itself while her husband was in the house and out ...
— Master of the Vineyard • Myrtle Reed
... whereupon he was marched off to court, fined eighty francs, and jilted by his perfidious lady-love, who speedily transferred her affections. If she had been born in the right class and the right century, Peppina would have made an admirable and brilliant Borgia. ...
— Penelope's Postscripts • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... intellectual ebullition, are the explanation of the worst feature of the Renaissance: not the wickedness of numberless single individuals, but the universal toleration of it by the people at large. Men like Sigismondo Malatesta, Sixtus IV., Alexander VI., and Caesar Borgia might be passed over as exceptions, as monstrous aberrations which cannot affect our judgment of their time and nation; but the general indifference towards their vices shown by their contemporaries and countrymen is a conclusive and terrible proof of the moral chaos of ...
— Euphorion - Being Studies of the Antique and the Mediaeval in the - Renaissance - Vol. I • Vernon Lee
... for renown, rash yet timid, obstinate yet fickle, always in a hurry, yet always too late; the fierce and haughty energy which gave dignity to the eccentricities of Julius; the soft and graceful manners which masked the insatiable ambition and the implacable hatred of Caesar Borgia. ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 2 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... that is why a Pope had made the Portuguese treaty of 1470, and why King John now sought its enforcement by the present Pope. But Ferdinand and Isabella also were hurrying messengers to Rome. The pontiff at this time happened to be not an Italian but a Spaniard, Alexander Borgia, born a subject of Ferdinand's own kingdom of Aragon. Ferdinand knew well how to judge this shrewd Aragonese character, and what arguments were most likely to appeal to it. He told the Spanish ambassadors to say that Spain would immediately set to work to convert ...
— Christopher Columbus • Mildred Stapley
... drew together in a slight frown. With that expression on his face he looked very much like an Italian poisoner of old time,—the kind of man whom Caesar Borgia might have employed to give the happy dispatch to his enemies by some sure and undiscoverable means known only to ...
— The Life Everlasting: A Reality of Romance • Marie Corelli
... and well disposed, containing some good pictures, particularly one by Rembrandt, of Judas throwing the money on the floor, with a strong expression of guilt and remorse; the whole group fine. In the same room is a portrait of Caesar Borgia, by Titian. The library is a most elegant apartment of about forty by thirty, and of such a height as to form a pleasing proportion; the light is well managed, coming in from the cove of the ceiling, and has an exceeding good effect; ...
— A Tour in Ireland - 1776-1779 • Arthur Young
... of Mrs. Beauly was not to be concealed. If eyes can tell secrets, she must have discovered, in my eyes, that I hungered and thirsted to see her in the hangman's hands. From first to last, I tell you, Mrs. Borgia-Beauly was on her guard against me. Can I describe her cunning? All my resources of language are not equal to the task. Take the degrees of comparison to give you a faint idea of it: I am positively cunning; ...
— The Law and the Lady • Wilkie Collins
... of the year, in that mountain eyrie beloved of the Muses and coveted of the Borgia, that a little boy stood looking out of a grated casement into the calm, sunshiny day. He was a pretty boy, with hazel eyes, and fair hair cut straight above his brows; he wore a little blue tunic ...
— Bimbi • Louise de la Ramee
... of his Highness may bring more adherents to a fresh conspiracy of this character, and we should be lost as an independent state. And the peril that menaces us is the peril of being so lost. Not only by defection of our own, but by the force of arms of another. That other is Caesar Borgia. His dominion is spreading like a plague upon the face of this Italy, which he has threatened to eat up like an artichoke—leaf by leaf. Already his greedy eyes are turned upon us, and what power have we—all unready as we are—wherewith ...
— Love-at-Arms • Raphael Sabatini
... and treachery which were useless to themselves, objected to the poisoning of a near relative for the advantage of a Lombard usurper; the royalties of Naples again were afraid of their suzerain, Pope Alexander Borgia; all three were anxiously watching Florence, lest with its midway territory it should determine the game by underhand backing; and all four, with every small state in Italy, were afraid of Venice—Venice the cautious, the stable, and the strong, that wanted to stretch its arms ...
— Romola • George Eliot
... practical sort at once, and his one-time trainer was the man of all men to give it to him. Buck had come, constrained and silent; he was obviously awed by the Doc's sudden emergence into stunning notoriety. To be Surface's son was, to him, like being the son of Iscariot and Lucrezia Borgia. On the other hand, he was aware that, of Klinkers and Queeds, a Surface might proudly say: "There are no such people." So he had greeted his friend stiffly as Mr. Surface, and was amazed at the agitation with which that usually impassive ...
— Queed • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... the opposite of his life—the things that he did not experience. The object of art is to fill up what is missing in the artist's experience: "Art begins where life leaves off," said Wagner. A man of action is rarely pleased with stimulating works of art. Borgia and Sforza patronised Leonardo. The strong, full-blooded men of the seventeenth century; the apoplectic court at Versailles (where Fagon's lancet played so necessary a part); the generals and ministers who harassed the Protestants and burned the Palatinate—all these loved pastorales. Napoleon ...
— Musicians of To-Day • Romain Rolland
... modelled on the ideal of the Florentine thinker whose book was constantly in his hand. Even as a servant of Wolsey he startled the future Cardinal, Reginald Pole, by bidding him take for his manual in politics the "Prince" of Machiavelli. Machiavelli hoped to find in Caesar Borgia or in the later Lorenzo de' Medici a tyrant who after crushing all rival tyrannies might unite and regenerate Italy; and terrible and ruthless as his policy was, the final aim of Cromwell seems to have been that of Machiavelli, an aim of securing enlightenment ...
— History of the English People, Volume III (of 8) - The Parliament, 1399-1461; The Monarchy 1461-1540 • John Richard Green
... that I hate or fear or despise or loathe life. I have liked to hear that, for it flattered me; but it is none the less false. I love life ... You smile, Lisaveta, and I know why. But I conjure you, do not regard what I am just saying as literature. Do not think of Cesar Borgia or of any drunken philosophy that elevates him to its escutcheon. He is nothing to me, this Cesar Borgia. I have the poorest possible opinion of him, and I shall never in my life understand how men can revere ...
— The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries - Masterpieces of German Literature Vol. 19 • Various
... traditions, and the Medici name never stood so low as during his period of power. Himself illegitimate, he was the father of an illegitimate son, Alessandro, for whose advancement he toiled much as Alexander VI had toiled for that of Caesar Borgia. He had not the black, bold wickedness of Alexander VI, but as Pope Clement VII, which he became in 1523, he was little less admirable. He was cunning, ambitious, and tyrannical, and during his pontificate he contrived not only to make many powerful enemies and to see both Rome and Florence under ...
— A Wanderer in Florence • E. V. Lucas
... of certainty, St. George realized to be her whom he had come to see. So strong was his conviction that, as he afterward recalled, he even asked no question concerning her. She looked as manifestly not one of the canaille of incorrigibles as, in her place, Lucrezia Borgia ...
— Romance Island • Zona Gale
... to me. She was surrounded by decay, dusty desolation, the barrenness of a poverty that is drearier than any of the poverty of the poor; but so might have looked Madama Lucrezia in those old days when the Borgia was God's vicegerent. ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 26, July 1880. • Various
... taken a fancy to Will," said Fred with a grin, "is capable of more atrocities than all the Turks between here and Stamboul! She looks to me like Santanita, Cleopatra, Salome, Caesar's wife, and all the Borgia ladies rolled in one. There's something ...
— The Eye of Zeitoon • Talbot Mundy
... in 1822. During the following six years he wrote no less than twenty-three operas, many of which were cheap imitations of Rossini. In 1880, stung by the success of Bellini, he wrote "Anna Bolena," which inaugurated his second more original period, which included "Lucrecia Borgia" and the immensely popular "Lucia di Lammermoor." The prohibition of his opera "Poliecto," while he was serving as a director of the Naples Conservatory, so exasperated Donizetti that he betook himself to Paris in 1838. There he brought out the "Daughter of the Regiment" and "La Favorita." ...
— A History of the Nineteenth Century, Year by Year - Volume Two (of Three) • Edwin Emerson |
