"Centaur" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... command the convoy sent home with the numerous fleet of merchantmen from the West Indies in the month of July.—He accordingly hoisted his flag on board the Ramillies of 74 guns, and sailed on the 25th from Blue Fields, having under his orders the Canada and Centaur of 74 guns each, the Pallas frigate of 36 guns, and the following French ships, taken by Lord Rodney and Sir Samuel Hood, out of the armament commanded by the Count de Grasse, viz. the Ville de Paris, of 110 guns; ...
— Thrilling Narratives of Mutiny, Murder and Piracy • Anonymous
... vigorous wrist, or strive against that hand so soft in appearance, but never tired. She has the foot of a doe, a thin, muscular little foot, indescribably graceful in outline. She is so strong that she fears no struggle; men cannot follow her on horseback; she would win a steeple-chase against a centaur; she can bring down a stag without stopping her horse. Her body never perspires; it inhales the fire of the atmosphere, and lives in water under pain of not living at all. Her love is African; her ...
— The Lily of the Valley • Honore de Balzac
... Combattant, actually, a warrior attacking a mounted Amazon. An inscription states that it is the work of Agasias of Ephesus. To the R. is a fine Marsyas, doomed to be flayed alive by order of Apollo; to L. 562, the Borghese Centaur, and near the exit, 529, the charming Diana of Gabii, a Greek girl fastening her mantle. We pass to the Salle du Tibre, in the centre of which stands the famous Diana and the Stag, acquired for Francis I., much admired and over-rated by ...
— The Story of Paris • Thomas Okey
... spears, familiar to his hold. One spear Achilles had, long, pond'rous, tough; But this he touch'd not; none of all the Greeks, None, save Achilles' self, that spear could poise; The far-fam'd Pelian ash, which to his sire, On Pelion's summit fell'd, to be the bane Of mightiest chiefs, the Centaur Chiron gave. Then to Automedon he gave command To yoke the horses: him he honour'd most, Next to Achilles' self; the trustiest he In battle to await his chief's behest. The flying steeds he harness'd ...
— The Iliad • Homer
... the shapes Of genii press with purpling feet the grapes, Here springs the wild Bacchante to the dance, And there she sleeps [while that voluptuous trance Eyes the sly faun with never-sated glance] Now on one knee upon the centaur-steeds Hovering—the ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... having first invented medicines is due is unknown, the origins of pharmacy being lost in the twilight of myth. OSIRIS and ISIS, BACCHUS, APOLLO father of the famous physician AESCULAPIUS, and CHIRON the Centaur, tutor of the latter, are among the many mythological personages who have been accredited with the invention of physic. It is certain that the art of compounding medicines is extraordinarily ancient. There is a papyrus in the British Museum containing medical prescriptions which was ...
— Bygone Beliefs • H. Stanley Redgrove
... The Centaur, Sagittarius, am I, Born of Ixion's and the cloud's embrace; With sounding hoofs across the earth I fly, A steed Thessalian with a human face. Sharp winds the arrows are with which I chase The leaves, half dead already with affright; I shroud myself in gloom; and to the ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... himself! Diana of Ephesus had many breasts, and Cerberus three heads, but only two hands have grown on my wrists. I need help, and you are just the person to give it. You have had nothing to do with horses yet, Isabella tells me; but you are half a Centaur yourself. Set to work on the steeds now, and when you have progressed far enough, you shall transfer these sketches to the ceiling and walls of the riding-school. I will help you perfect the thing, and give ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... Centaur shall behold no more With long stride making down the beechy glade, Clear-eyed, with firm lips laughing,—at his heels The clamor of his fifty deep-tongued hounds; Him the wise Centaur shall behold ...
— In Divers Tones • Charles G. D. Roberts
... driving all the Court to Presburg, with (fabulous) "MORIAMUR PRO REGE NOSTRO MARIA THERESIA," but with actual armament of Tolpatches, Pandours, Warasdins, Uscocks and the like unsightly beings of a predatory centaur nature. Which fine Hungarian Armament, and others still more ominous, have been diligently going on, while Karl Albert sat enjoying his Homagings at Linz, his Pisgah-views Vienna-ward; and asking himself, "Shall we venture forward, and ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XIII. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... that, and to reassure me gave his name and rank in this delicate way. I shall never forget his pleasant smile as he returned my salute after thanking him for his suggestion. He was a superb-looking man, dark complexioned, wearing full black whiskers, and sat his fine horse like a Centaur, tall, straight, and graceful, the ideal soldier. I do not remember to have ever seen this remarkable officer again. He was one of the few great commanders developed by the war. A quiet, modest man, he yet possessed a very decisive element of character, ...
— War from the Inside • Frederick L. (Frederick Lyman) Hitchcock
... satisfaction of urging forward his steed by whip, spur, or voice. It was utterly useless to show any signs of impatience. I could not help smiling to see him look so big on his little horse; his long legs now and then touching the ground made him look like a six-footed centaur. ...
— A Journey to the Centre of the Earth • Jules Verne
... dreamers, You dauntless fledglings Who pass by my headstone, Mock not its record of my captaincy in the army And my faith in God! They are not denials of each other. Go by reverently, and read with sober care How a great people, riding with defiant shouts The centaur of Revolution, Spurred and whipped to frenzy, Shook with terror, seeing the mist of the sea Over the precipice they were nearing, And fell from his back in precipitate awe To celebrate the Feast of the Supreme Being. ...
— Spoon River Anthology • Edgar Lee Masters
... him the force which is to destroy the germs of evil that Typhon had, during the winter, planted everywhere in nature. This passage of the Sun into Taurus, whose attributes he assumes on his return from the lower hemisphere or the shades, is marked by the rising in the evening of the Wolf and the Centaur, and by the heliacal setting of Orion, called the Star of Horus, and which thenceforward is in conjunction with the Sun of Spring, in his triumph over the darkness ...
— Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry • Albert Pike
... highly intricate, and shows a tendency towards the introduction of an adventurous element; it turns upon the tribute of youths and maidens exacted from the island of Scyros by the king of Thrace. The figure of the satyr is replaced by a centaur who carries off one of the nymphs. Her cries attract two youths who succeed in driving off the monster, but are severely wounded in the encounter. The nymph, Celia, thereupon falls in love with both ...
— Pastoral Poetry and Pastoral Drama - A Literary Inquiry, with Special Reference to the Pre-Restoration - Stage in England • Walter W. Greg
... Hercules had in time to meet death himself. He had married a nymph named Deianira, and was taking her home, when he came to a river where a Centaur named Nessus lived, and gained his bread by carrying travellers over on his back. Hercules paid him the price for carrying Deianira over, while he himself crossed on foot; but as soon as the river was between them, the faithless ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 5 of 8 • Various
... officers. There was in our party a Belgian captain who was on his way home. While chatting together, we saw at some distance, against a background formed by the Belgian camp, Princess Salm-Salm, in her gray-and-silver uniform, sitting her horse like a female centaur—truly a picturesque figure, with her white couvre-nuque glistening under the ...
— Maximilian in Mexico - A Woman's Reminiscences of the French Intervention 1862-1867 • Sara Yorke Stevenson
... ?): Pair of sphinxes, Exterior architrave: pairs Centaur, wild hog, man pursuing of sphinxes in centre of E. & woman, two men in combat, W. fronts (?), Herakles and etc. Triton, Herakles and Centaurs, ...
— The American Journal of Archaeology, 1893-1 • Various
... Paris (the Duke) gives the apple. The third is 'Europa and the Bull,' Europa being personified by Esperance. The Duke does not wish to look ridiculous in a bull's hide, so takes liberties with the legend and transforms the bull into a centaur. I have said 'Amen' to everything. Finally to complete the fete, which will no doubt be well attended and very profitable, there will be little shops of all kinds. Esperance is to sell flowers from the Duchess's gardens. I have my own idea on this ...
— The Idol of Paris • Sarah Bernhardt
... ahead, and he followed, shouting, imploring her to go back. Finally he settled to the chase, resolved on overtaking her. It was no easy task, for she rode like a centaur, and she knew ...
— Trailin'! • Max Brand
... are plunged more or less deeply in proportion to the heinousness of their crimes; for, like earthly streams, this has its deep and shallow. At the latter point they cross, on the back of Nessus the Centaur, and at once enter (Canto xiii.) a wood of gnarled and sere trees, in which the Harpies have their dwelling. These trees have sprung from the souls of suicides, and retain the power of speech and sensation. From one of these, who in life had been the famous statesman Peter de Vineis, ...
— Dante: His Times and His Work • Arthur John Butler
... them, asked him, Pray, sir, when do you design to drink? When shall we drink? When shall the worshipful esquire drink? What a devil! have you not talked long enough to drink? It is a good motion, answered Pantagruel: go, get us something ready at the next inn; I think 'tis the Centaur. In the meantime he writ to Gargantua as followeth, to be sent by ...
— Gargantua and Pantagruel, Complete. • Francois Rabelais
... a pair of beautiful silver cups with graceful handles. The design was made in hammered silver, and showed centaurs talking to cupids that are sitting on their backs. A centaur was half ...
— Buried Cities: Pompeii, Olympia, Mycenae • Jennie Hall
... was like a leaf in the current. It took it up and shook it, and carried it masterfully away, like a Centaur carrying off a nymph. To keep some command on our direction required hard and diligent plying of the paddle. The river was in such a hurry for the sea! Every drop of water ran in a panic, like as many people in a frightened crowd. But what crowd was ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 1 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... hear her say, in answer to a question as to her present feelings: 'I feel that I am carried away by a centaur!' The comparison had been used or implied to ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... a diversion in which two boys personate a Centaur, a creature of Greek mythology, half man and half horse. One of the players stands erect and the other behind him in a stooping position with his hands upon the first player's hips, as shown in Fig. ...
— The Boy Mechanic: Volume 1 - 700 Things For Boys To Do • Popular Mechanics
... meal, others still asleep—all unprepared for this thunderbolt that fell in their midst. While forming his lines of battle, and while bullets were flying all around, General Kershaw came dashing down in front of his column, his eyes flashing fire, sitting his horse like a centaur—that superb style as Joe Kershaw only could—and said in passing us, "Now, my old brigade. I expect you to do your duty." In all my long experience, in war and peace, I never saw such a picture as Kershaw and his war-horse made in riding ...
— History of Kershaw's Brigade • D. Augustus Dickert
... things ever grow new. The monstrosity of the crimes of the Renaissance was not a mark of imagination; it was a mark, as all monstrosity is, of the loss of imagination. It is only when a man has really ceased to see a horse as it is, that he invents a centaur, only when he can no longer be surprised at an ox, that he worships the devil. Diablerie is the stimulant of the jaded fancy; it is the dram-drinking of the artist. Savonarola addressed himself to the hardest of all earthly tasks, that of making men turn back and wonder at the simplicities ...
— Twelve Types • G.K. Chesterton
... among the characters, and pointed it out to each other with uncouth murmurings. They were strange folk, with eyes like pebbles and squat frames and short, broad faces, but each horse and man moved in unison like a centaur. ...
— The Path of the King • John Buchan
... bridal torch, in return for the kindly honour thou didst pay me. But come, let me tell a tale that erreth not. When thy son shall come to the Elysian plain, he whom now in the home of Cheiron the Centaur water-nymphs are tending, though he still craves thy mother milk, it is fated that he be the husband of Medea, Aeetes' daughter; do thou aid thy daughter-in-law as a mother-in-law should, and aid Peleus himself. Why is thy wrath so steadfast? He was blinded by ...
— The Argonautica • Apollonius Rhodius
... proceeded. Already a good horseman, he was now initiated into the arts of the manege, which, when carried to perfection, almost realize the fable of the Centaur, the guidance of the horse appearing to proceed from the rider's mere volition, rather than from the use of any external and apparent signal of motion. He received also instructions in his field duty; but, I must own, that when his first ardour was passed, his progress fell short ...
— Waverley • Sir Walter Scott
... I mark'd, as high as to their brow Immers'd, of whom the mighty Centaur thus: "These are the souls of tyrants, who were given To blood and rapine. Here they wail aloud Their merciless wrongs. Here Alexander dwells, And Dionysius fell, who many a year Of woe wrought for fair Sicily. That brow Whereon the hair so jetty clust'ring hangs, Is Azzolino; that with flaxen ...
— The Divine Comedy, Complete - The Vision of Paradise, Purgatory and Hell • Dante Alighieri
... of it! We shall inform ourselves Into all sensuous life; the goat-foot faun, The centaur, or the merry, bright-eyed elves That leave they: dancing rings to spite the dawn Upon the meadows, shall not be more near Than you and I to Nature's ...
— The Book-Bills of Narcissus - An Account Rendered by Richard Le Gallienne • Le Gallienne, Richard
... expression half laughing, half demoniac. On the first round his cap had fallen off, and the shaggy hair of his head and face streamed in the wind, adding greatly to the fierceness of his looks. He had perfect control of himself and horse, and rode like a centaur, ready to take any advantage which circumstances or guile threw in his way. He also had held in his horse with bit and bridle, reserving his best efforts for the closing ...
— The Kentucky Ranger • Edward T. Curnick
... Matter to be possible, yet, upon that account merely, it can have no more claim to existence than a golden mountain, or a centaur. ...
— Three Dialogues between Hylas and Philonous in Opposition to Sceptics and Atheists • George Berkeley
... Map of Constellations on the Meridian in September 73. Map of Constellations on the Meridian in November 74. Southern Circumpolar Constellations 75. Aspects of Double Stars 76. Sprayed Star Cluster below ae in Hercules 77. Globular Star Cluster in the Centaur 78. Great Nebula about th Orionis 79. The Crab Nebula above z Tauri 80. The Ring Nebula in Lyra 81. Showing Place of Ring Nebula ...
— Recreations in Astronomy - With Directions for Practical Experiments and Telescopic Work • Henry Warren
... tedium of captivity. Raleigh had been living a life of exaggerated activity, never a month at rest, now at sea, now in Devonshire, now at Court, hurrying hither and thither, his horse and he one veritable centaur. Among the Euphuistic 'tears of fancy' which he sent from the Tower, there occurs this little sentence, breathing the most complete sincerity: 'I live to trouble you at this time, being become like a fish cast on dry land, gasping for breath, with lame legs and lamer lungs.' ...
— Raleigh • Edmund Gosse
... printed was a prose publication, entitled "The Centaur Not Fabulous, in Six Letters to a Friend on the Life in Vogue." The conclusion is dated November 29, 1754. In the third letter is described the death-bed of the "gay, young, noble, ingenious, accomplished, and ...
— Lives of the Poets: Gay, Thomson, Young, and Others • Samuel Johnson
... we shall see a picture by Michelangelo which has been accused of blending Christianity and paganism; but Bellini's sole purpose was to do this. We have children from a Bacchic vase and the crowned Virgin; two naked saints and a Venetian lady; and a centaur watching a hermit. The foreground is a mosaic terrace; the background is rocks and water. It is all bizarre and very curious and memorable and quite unique. For the rest, I should mention two charming Guardis; a rich little Canaletto; a nice scene of sheep by Jacopo Bassano; the portrait of an unknown ...
— A Wanderer in Florence • E. V. Lucas
... had again happened, and that another conqueror by mistake had again arrived. A most wonderful being galloped up to the top of the apartment. It was half man and half horse. The Secretary told Popanilla that this was the famous Centaur Chiron; that his Horseship, having wearied of his ardent locality in the constellations, had descended some years back to the island of Vraibleusia; that he had commanded the armies of the nation in all the great wars, and had gained every battle in which ...
— The Voyage of Captain Popanilla • Benjamin Disraeli
... "rammed" each other at Actium; but there was no Dahlgren or Sawyer to thunder from their decks or turrets. The artillery roared at Trafalgar; but there were no iron-clads to tilt at each other, meeting with a shock as of ten thousand knights in armor moulded into one mailed Centaur and ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 91, May, 1865 • Various
... got him a horse, and he came out with a long cane fishing-pole and a pair of saddle-bags. I told him that he must watch the old nag or she would run away with him, particularly when he started homeward. The tutor was not much of a centaur. The horse started as he was throwing the wrong leg over his saddle, and the tutor clamped his rod under one arm, clutching for the reins with both hands and kicking for his stirrups with both feet. The ...
— Christmas Eve on Lonesome and Other Stories • John Fox, Jr.
... himself, who was subdued by pain at the very time when he was on the point of attaining immortality by death. What words does Sophocles here put in his mouth, in his Trachiniae? who, when Deianira had put upon him a tunic dyed in the centaur's blood, and it stuck ...
— Cicero's Tusculan Disputations - Also, Treatises On The Nature Of The Gods, And On The Commonwealth • Marcus Tullius Cicero
... heartfelt welcome. I am in hourly expectation of seeing the fleet, the letters from the Earl acquainting me with his intention of putting to sea the moment the weather moderated. The Superb, with Centaur and Warrior, hove in sight this afternoon,—the only ships I have seen since last Tuesday, when I went into Douvarnenez Bay; and I have the satisfaction to reflect that, notwithstanding the tempestuous weather, this squadron ...
— Memoirs and Correspondence of Admiral Lord de Saumarez, Vol. I • Sir John Ross
... the He-Goat lies the Southern Fish, facing towards the tail of the Whale. The Censer is under the Scorpion's sting. The fore parts of the Centaur are next to the Balance and the Scorpion, and he holds in his hands the figure which astronomers call the Beast. Beneath the Virgin, Lion, and Crab is the twisted girdle formed by the Snake, extending over a whole line of stars, his snout raised near the Crab, supporting ...
— Ten Books on Architecture • Vitruvius
... sent for the saddle had watched everything; so when Sedgwick dismounted he held out his hand and said, heartily: "I beg your pardon, Mr. Sedgwick, I was mistaken in you. You do more than ride. When mounted, you and the horse together make a centaur." ...
— The Wedge of Gold • C. C. Goodwin
... became the natural conclusion of a great many tales. The heroes of mythology, or even those of human society, continued to live in the sky in the form of brilliant stars. There Perseus again met Andromeda, and the Centaur Chiron, who is none other than Sagittarius, was on terms of good fellowship with ...
— The Oriental Religions in Roman Paganism • Franz Cumont
... conflicting elements of heredity were brought together. In the language of science, there was one negative result and two positive. The first mentioned is a son Malcolm, whom I have not met. He has a commission in the cavalry, is a devil at billiards, can't read a map, and rides like a Centaur. ...
— The Parts Men Play • Arthur Beverley Baxter
... little gentleman, who domineered over the entire household, and would have been grievously spoilt, if his mother had not taken all the crossing the stout little will upon herself. He had a gallant pair of legs, and the disposition of a young Centaur, he seemed to divide the world into things that could be ridden on, and that could not; and when he bounced at the study door, with 'Papa! gee! gee!' and lifted up his round, rosy face, and despotic blue eyes, Mr. Kendal's ...
— The Young Step-Mother • Charlotte M. Yonge
... imaginations, objects and scenes which they never saw;—but this mental act is not the imagining of an entirely new thing. All such scenes or things are compounded of objects, or parts of objects, which they have seen, and with which they are familiar. They can readily picture to themselves a centaur or a cerberus, a mermaid or a dragon,—creatures which have no existence, and which never did exist; but a little reflection will shew, that nothing which the mind conceives of these supposed animals is really new, but is merely a new combination ...
— A Practical Enquiry into the Philosophy of Education • James Gall
... bright on the cheeks and virgins all; Charlie on the roster though not in sight, the silken-satin standard well in view, rent and pierced, but showing seven red days of valor legended on its folds, and with that white-moustached old centaur, Maxime, still upholding it in ...
— Kincaid's Battery • George W. Cable
... reared upon a beautiful pedestal in the garden attracted him first. It proved to be the statue of a centaur. An inscription informed the unlearned visitor that it exactly represented Chiron, the beloved of Apollo and Diana, instructed by them in the mysteries of hunting, medicine, music, and prophecy. The inscription ...
— Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ • Lew Wallace
... sorrel, and it knew all the tricks of its kind. It went sunfishing, tried weaving and fence-rowing, at last toppled over backward after a frantic leap upward. The rider, long-bodied and lithe, rode like a centaur. Except for the moment when he stepped out of the saddle as the outlaw fell on its back, he stuck to his seat as though he were ...
— Tangled Trails - A Western Detective Story • William MacLeod Raine
... writing a Life of Bulwer-Lytton. The marriage and its results were so predominant in the career of the man, and poisoned it so deeply to the latest hour of his consciousness, that to attempt a biography of him without clear reference to them would have been like telling the story of Nessus the Centaur without mentioning the poisoned arrow of Heracles. But Lord Lytton shall give his ...
— Some Diversions of a Man of Letters • Edmund William Gosse
... That little goose means a centaur, and she called him a Cyclops," exclaimed Jo, with a burst ...
— Little Women • Louisa May Alcott
... Henry Herbert, notices of contemporaneous events, such as a scene at the Cockpit, the trial of Thurtell (a very powerful article), &c. That delightful punster and humorist, with pen or pencil, Tom Hood, sent to the London his first poems of any ambition or length—"Lycus the Centaur," and "The Two Peacocks of Bedfont." Keats, "that sleepless soul that perished in its pride," and Montgomery, both contributed poems. Sir John Bowring, the accomplished linguist, wrote on Spanish poetry. Mr. Henry Southern, the editor of that excellent work the Retrospective Review, contributed ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury
... done, not selfishly, but for the good of the State of which he is trustee. There is the power of Law and the power of Force. The first is proper to men, the second to beasts. And that is why Achilles was brought up by Cheiron the Centaur that he might learn to use both natures. A ruler must be half lion and half fox, a fox to discern the toils, a lion to drive off the wolves. Merciful, faithful, humane, religious, just, these he may be and above all should seem to be, nor should any word ...
— Machiavelli, Volume I - The Art of War; and The Prince • Niccolo Machiavelli
... Nature for just this kind of thing, and since he believes there is "absolutely no limit to the variety and adaptiveness of Nature even in a single species." If there is no such limit, then I suppose we need not be surprised to meet a winged horse, or a centaur, or a ...
— Ways of Nature • John Burroughs
... work is nearly all done in the saddle and calls for much hard riding. He rides like a Centaur, but is clumsy on his feet. Being so much in the saddle his walking muscles become weakened, and his legs pressing against the body of his horse, in time, makes him bowlegged. In addition he wears high-heeled Mexican boots which throw him on his toes when he walks and makes his already shambling ...
— Arizona Sketches • Joseph A. Munk
... fleet horse, who seemed to him, in his impetuous haste, to be creeping like a snail. He drove his spurs deep into the sides of the frightened animal, which almost leaped through his girth. A less expert horseman would have been unseated; but an earthquake could not have thrown this Centaur out ...
— The Redemption of David Corson • Charles Frederic Goss
... plague of gold strides far and near, And deep and strong it enters: This purple chimar which we wear, Makes madder than the centaur's. Our thoughts grow blank, our words grow strange; We cheer the pale gold-diggers— Each soul is worth so much on 'Change, And marked, like sheep, with ...
— The World's Best Poetry Volume IV. • Bliss Carman
... not vended at the drum And common outcry; goodness gave the greatness, And greatness worship; every house became An academy, and those parts We see departed in the practice now Quite from the institution. LOVEL. Why do you say so, Or think so enviously? do they not still Learn us the Centaur's skill, the art of Thrace, To ride? or Pollux' mystery, to fence? The Pyrrhick gestures, both to stand and spring In armour; to be active for the wars; To study figures, numbers and proportions, May yield ...
— The Fortunes of Nigel • Sir Walter Scott
... flowed round him. Blurts of crimson light Splashed the white grains like blood. Past the cave's mouth Shone with a large, fierce splendor, wildly bright, The crooked constellations of the South; Here the Cross swung; and there, affronting Mars, The Centaur stormed aside a froth of stars. Within, great casks, like wattled aldermen, Sighed of enormous feasts, and cloth of gold Glowed on the walls like hot desire. Again, Beside webbed purples from some galleon's hold, A black chest bore the skull and bones in white Above a scrawled ...
— Young Adventure - A Book of Poems • Stephen Vincent Benet
... more we fall back on these as the chief objects of our attention. The shortest system of medical practice that I know of is the oldest, but not the worst. It is older than Hippocrates, older than Chiron the Centaur. Nature taught it to the first mother when she saw her first-born child putting some ugly pebble or lurid berry into its mouth. I know not in what language it was spoken, but I know that in English it would ...
— Medical Essays • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... Donatello may have copied them in Rome, for they belonged at this time to the Papal glyptothek, from which they were subsequently bought. The subjects of these roundels are Ulysses and Athena, a faun carrying Bacchus, two incidents of Bacchus and Ariadne, a centaur, Daedalus and Icarus, a prisoner before his victor, and the Diomede. Gems became very popular and expensive: a school of engravers grew up who copied, invented, and forged. Carpaccio introduced them into his pictures,[135] and Botticelli used ...
— Donatello • David Lindsay, Earl of Crawford
... criticism to insist on the reality which the ideal world possessed for Shelley. Other poets have illustrated thought by sensuous imagery. To Shelley, thought alone was the essential thing. A good impulse, a dream, an idea, were for him what a Centaur or a Pegasus were for common fancy. He sees in Prometheus Unbound ...
— Shelley, Godwin and Their Circle • H. N. Brailsford
... by order of the Houses was to dance a morrice through the west of England. Well, he's a nimble gentleman; set him upon Banks his horse in a saddle rampant, and it is a great question which part of the Centaur shows better tricks. ...
— Character Writings of the 17th Century • Various
... equal at putting one over a jump? At the exact hair's-breadth of time, he had changed from human being to spirit. It was no longer Alan Donn and his horse when he dropped his hands on the neck. There was fusion. A centaur sprang.... On the links he remembered him, the smiling mask, the stance, the waggle, the white ball. The face set, the eyes gleamed.... The terrific explosion.... Not a man and a stick and a piece of gutta-percha, but the mind and will performing a miracle ...
— The Wind Bloweth • Brian Oswald Donn-Byrne
... Ariadne is really asleep, and Hercules, in wine, really sinks to the ground; the dancing girl floats in the air as though in her native element; the centaur gallops without an effort; it is simple reality—the very reverse of realism—nature such as she actually is when she is pleasant to behold, in the full effusion of her grace, advancing like a queen ...
— The Wonders of Pompeii • Marc Monnier
... the enthusiasm of Captain Sarrasin. He liked a girl who rode, that was certain. Mrs. Sarrasin rode like that rarest of creatures, except the mermaid, a female Centaur, and if he had had a dozen daughters, they would all have been trained to ride, one better than the other. The riding, therefore, was clearly in the favour of Dolores, so far as Captain Sarrasin's estimate was concerned. But then the idea of a hotel-keeper's daughter riding ...
— The Dictator • Justin McCarthy
... on it. In one of the halls above stairs the most remarkable statue is that of the dying gladiator (brought back from Paris); this is certainly a noble piece of sculpture; the bodily pain and mental anguish are singularly well expressed in the countenance; a superb bronze statue of Hercules; a Centaur in black marble; a Faun in rosso antico; a group of Cupid and Psyche; a Venus in Parian marble rather larger than the common size. One of the halls in this museum contains the busts of all the philosophers; another those of all the Roman emperors; there is also a colossal ...
— After Waterloo: Reminiscences of European Travel 1815-1819 • Major W. E Frye
... His chest and back were as much too broad, as his legs were too short. He was dressed in a Newmarket coat and tight-fitting trousers; wore a shawl round his neck; smelt of lamp-oil, straw, orange-peel, horses' provender, and sawdust; and looked a most remarkable sort of Centaur, compounded of the stable and the play-house. Where the one began, and the other ended, nobody could have told with any precision. This gentleman was mentioned in the bills of the day as Mr. E. W. B. Childers, so justly celebrated for his daring vaulting act as the Wild Huntsman of the North ...
— Hard Times • Charles Dickens*
... its own transformation, and of that of Nyctimene into an owl), and having persisted in informing Phoebus of the intrigues of Coronis. Her son AEsculapius being cut out of the womb of Coronis and carried to the cave of Chiron the Centaur, Ocyrrhoe, the daughter of Chiron, is changed into a mare, while she is prophesying. Her father in vain invokes the assistance of Apollo, for he, in the guise of a shepherd, is tending his oxen in the country of Elis. He neglecting his herd, Mercury takes the opportunity of stealing it; after which ...
— The Metamorphoses of Ovid - Vol. I, Books I-VII • Publius Ovidius Naso
... a confused heap of Turks and Spanish soldiers lying in a corner, and at the back of the stage, between the farthest scene and the wall of the theatre, was the stable containing seven war horses and one centaur. Pasquale told me that the centaur was "un animale selvaggio" which I knew, but he did not tell me what part he took in the play. One of the horses, of course, was Baiardo, the special horse of Rinaldo. Baiardo is still living in the forest of Ardennes, he formerly belonged to Amadis de ...
— Diversions in Sicily • H. Festing Jones
... rider been enabled to arrive within a few paces of the canoe, at the very moment when the increasing depth of the water, in compelling the horse to the less expeditions process of swimming, gave a proportionate advantage to the pursued. No sooner, however, did the Centaur-like rider find that he was losing ground, than, again darting his spurs into the flanks of his charger, he made every effort to reach the canoe, Maddened by the pain, the snorting beast half rose upon the calm element, like some monster ...
— The Canadian Brothers - or The Prophecy Fulfilled • John Richardson
... aside, catch one of the flying reins, hold on for a few yards, half dragged, half running, and then the animal yielded to a master. A cloud of dust obscured them momentarily; then the country-bred athlete vaulted lightly into the saddle and came trotting sharply toward them, riding like a centaur. She was enraged at herself that her face should grow scarlet under his brief glance from one to the other, but without a word he sprang lightly down and began to fasten the horse securely to a tree—an act scarcely necessary, for the animal ...
— Without a Home • E. P. Roe
... behold no more With long stride making down the beechy glade, Clear-eyed, with firm lips laughing,—at his heels The clamor of his fifty deep-tongued hounds; Him the wise Centaur ...
— In Divers Tones • Charles G. D. Roberts
... day when AEgeon was arrested, Antipholus of Syracuse landed in Ephesus and pretended that he came from Epidamnum in order to avoid a penalty. He handed his money to his servant Dromio of Syracuse, and bade him take it to the Centaur Inn and remain there till ...
— Beautiful Stories from Shakespeare • E. Nesbit
... little knowledge, but strong feeling—by the narrow loins, turgid muscles of the breast, thighs, and calves of the legs, will all find reason to believe they are copied from the above-mentioned statue." Greece, it must be owned, possessed musicians long anterior to Homer: Chiron the Centaur, regarded by the ancients as one of the inventors of medicine, botany, and chirurgery, who, when eighty-eight years of age, formed the constellations for the use of the Argonauts; Linus, the preceptor of Hercules, who added a string to the lyre, and is said to be ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. 327 - Vol. 53, January, 1843 • Various
... typical in appearance with many of that broad land. Lithe, sinewy and bronzed by hard riding and hot suns, he sat in his Cheyenne saddle like a centaur, all his weight on the heavy, leather-guarded stirrups, his body rising in one magnificent straight line. A bleached moustache hid the thin lips, and a gray sombrero threw a heavy shadow across his eyes. Around ...
— Hopalong Cassidy's Rustler Round-Up - Bar-20 • Clarence Edward Mulford
... and wondering when the tedious Libeccio will release him, he must perforce remember that here AEneas instituted the games for Anchises. Here Mnestheus and Gyas and Sergestus and Cloanthus raced their galleys: on yonder little isle the Centaur struck; and that was the rock which received ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Complete - Series I, II, and III • John Symonds
... at the same time for an endless procession of Eastern friends who came for the hunting. The Eatons kept open house. Travelers wrote about the hospitality that even strangers were certain to find there, and carried away with them the picture of Howard Eaton, "who sat his horse as though he were a centaur and looked a picturesque and noble figure with his clean-shaven cheeks, heavy drooping moustache, sombrero, blue shirt, and neckerchief with flaming ends." About the time Roosevelt arrived, friends who had availed themselves of the Eaton hospitality until they were in danger of ...
— Roosevelt in the Bad Lands • Hermann Hagedorn
... ascribed to Triptolemus are referred to,—namely, to honour parents; to worship the gods with the fruits of the earth; to hurt no living creature. The first two laws are also ascribed to the centaur Cheiron. ...
— Familiar Quotations • John Bartlett
... queer fish; mongrel, random breed; half-caste, half-blood, half-breed; metis[Lat], crossbreed, hybrid, mule, hinny, mulatto; tertium quid[Lat], hermaphrodite. [mythical animal] phoenix, chimera, hydra, sphinx, minotaur; griffin, griffon; centaur; saggittary[obs3]; kraken, cockatrice, wyvern, roc, dragon, sea serpent; mermaid, merman, merfolk[obs3]; unicorn; Cyclops, "men whose heads do grow beneath their shoulders" [Othello]; teratology. [unconformable to the ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... lithe man was all bone and sinew and muscle. He rode like a Centaur, as if he were a part of the horse, as easily and gracefully as a chip does the waves. The outlaw was furious with hate, blind with a madness that surged through it; but all its weaving and fence-rowing could not shake the perfect poise of the rider, nor ...
— A Daughter of the Dons - A Story of New Mexico Today • William MacLeod Raine
... lesser gods, Bacchus, Isis, Hebe, the Muses and the Fates, etc.; also Sleep, Dreams and Death; and there were still others who had free will and intelligence, and having mixed forms, such as the Pegasus, or winged horse, the Centaur, half man and half horse, ...
— Museum of Antiquity - A Description of Ancient Life • L. W. Yaggy
... is part and parcel of that horrible deep-red-plush nuisance, the Hotel-omnibus. He and it are inseparables, and make up a sort of Centaur between them. Once outside the Railway-station, I am besieged by a babel of these Porter-omnibuses—"Bear Hotel, Sor;" "Grand Hotel, Sor!"—This, from a very dilapidated specimen, which, on inspection, turns out to be "Grand Hotel Du Lac;" a pirate porter-omnibus ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 103, September 17, 1892 • Various
... sulphurously splendid. In the "Brit." I made my first acquaintance with the limelit humanity that, magnificent in its crimes and in its virtues, sins or suffers in false eyebrows or white muslin to the sound of soft music. Here I met that strange creation, the villain—a being as mythic, meseems, as the centaur, and, like it, more beast than man. The "Brit." was a hot place for villains, the gallery accepting none but the highest principles of speech and conduct, and ginger-beer were not too weighty a form of expressing detestation of the more comprehensive breaches of the decalogue. Hisses the ...
— Without Prejudice • Israel Zangwill
... Chiron, M. D., appears as a Centaur, as we look at him through the lapse of thirty centuries, the modern country-doctor, if he could be seen about thirty miles off, could not be distinguished from a wheel-animalcule. He inhabits a wheel-carriage. He thinks of stationary dwellings as Long Tom Coffin ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... filled her with horror. She struggled to free herself, her horse began to rear, she screamed for help with all her might, but nothing answered her save an echo. The situation seemed critical for Jacqueline. As to M. de Talbrun, he was quite at his ease, as if he were accustomed to make love like a centaur; while the girl felt herself in peril of being thrown at any moment, and trampled under his horse's feet. At last she succeeded in striking her aggressor a sharp blow across the face with her riding-whip. Blinded for a moment, he let her go, and she took ...
— Jacqueline, Complete • (Mme. Blanc) Th. Bentzon
... No citizen came or went without being studied, characterized, accounted for, and every woman was scrutinized as closely as a stray horse, and if there was within her, the slightest wayward impulse some lawless centaur came to know it, to exult over it, to make test of it. Her every word, her minutest expression of a natural coquetry was enlarged upon as a sign of weakness, of yielding. Every personable female was the focus of a natural desire, intensified by lonely brooding on the part ...
— The Forester's Daughter - A Romance of the Bear-Tooth Range • Hamlin Garland
... them to the gate of Mrs. Hazleton's house. He was an admirable horseman, for he had not only a good but a graceful seat, and his handsome figure and fine gentlemanly carriage never appeared to greater advantage than when he did his best to be a centaur. The slow progress of the lumbering vehicle might have been of some inconvenience, but his horse was trained to canter to a walk when he pleased, and, leaning to the window of the carriage, and sometimes resting his hand upon it, he contrived to carry on the conversation with those within ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 2, No. 4, March, 1851 • Various
... The Centaur, Syren, I foregoe; Those have been sung, and lowdly too: Nor of the mixed Sphynx Ile write, Nor the renown'd Hermaphrodite. Behold! this huddle doth appear Of horses, coach and charioteer, That moveth him by traverse ...
— Lucasta • Richard Lovelace
... "Adjieu," said the young centaur; and Sosthene replied from the creaking caleche, "Adjieu, 'Thanase," while the rider bestowed his rustic smile upon the group. Madame Sosthene's eyes met his, and her lips moved in an inaudible greeting; but the eyes of her little daughter ...
— Bonaventure - A Prose Pastoral of Acadian Louisiana • George Washington Cable
... commands, Which rising, like a tow'ring city stands; Three Trojans tug at ev'ry lab'ring oar; Three banks in three degrees the sailors bore; Beneath their sturdy strokes the billows roar. Sergesthus, who began the Sergian race, In the great Centaur took the leading place; Cloanthus on the sea-green Scylla stood, From whom ...
— The Aeneid • Virgil
... attempted by Philip of Side, a prolix and contemptible writer. Even the work of Cyril has not entirely satisfied the most favorable judges; and the Abbe de la Bleterie (Preface a l'Hist. de Jovien, p. 30, 32) wishes that some theologien philosophe (a strange centaur) would undertake the ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 2 • Edward Gibbon
... stallion, stud, sire; (female) mare, dam; (young) colt, foal, filly; (small) pony, tit, mustang; steed, charger, nag, gelding, cockhorse, cob, pad, padnag, roadster, punch, broncho, warragal, sumpter, centaur, hackney, jade, mestino, pintado, roan, bat horse, Bucephalus, Pegasus, Dobbin, Bayard, hobby-horse. Associated words: equine, equestrian, equestrianism, equestrienne, equerry, fractious, hostler, groom, hostlery, postilion, coachman, jockey, hippocampus, hippogriffe, manege, chack, hippology, ...
— Putnam's Word Book • Louis A. Flemming
... statues at regular intervals around the hedge. The like of it could be found nowhere. Here, against a background of green, and hanging forward over a green lawn, were an Indian Chief, a Golden Hind, a Triton, a Centaur, an effigy of King Charles I., another of Britannia, a third of the god Pan, and a fourth of Mr. John Phillipson, sometime alderman and shipowner of Harwich. Though rudely modelled, the majority received an extremely lifelike appearance ...
— The Blue Pavilions • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... this failed, and he found himself compelled to meet the fixed and stern gaze of the colossal priest, who was on horseback, and bore in his huge right hand a whip, that might, so gripped, have tamed a buffalo, or the centaur himself, ...
— Valentine M'Clutchy, The Irish Agent - The Works of William Carleton, Volume Two • William Carleton
... said Parson Brush, more than once; "you ride like a centaur and none knows better how to use firearms, but there are Indians in these mountains and they sometimes approach nigh enough to be seen from New Constantinople. Then, too, your father brought word that other miners are working their way toward us. More than likely there ...
— A Waif of the Mountains • Edward S. Ellis
... came the attendants of the Grand Vizier, and delighted the astonished eyes of the spectators with a display of slinging. Then came the wine-carriers with their wine-skins, and in a pavilion set up for the purpose wooden men sported with a living centaur. There also were the Egyptian sword and hoop dancers, the Indian jugglers and serpent charmers, after whom came the Chief Mufti, who read aloud a verse from the Koran in the light of thy countenance, and gave also the interpretation thereof in words fair to listen to. Then followed fit and ...
— Halil the Pedlar - A Tale of Old Stambul • Mr Jkai
... this World; and, on the left hand, Hell With long reach interposed; three several ways In sight, to each of these three places led. And now their way to Earth they had descried, To Paradise first tending; when, behold! Satan, in likeness of an Angel bright, Betwixt the Centaur and the Scorpion steering His zenith, while the sun in Aries rose: Disguised he came; but those his children dear Their parent soon discerned, though in disguise. He, after Eve seduced, unminded slunk Into the wood fast by; and, ...
— Paradise Lost • John Milton
... the third, he seemed impelled to exceed his bounds, and depart on an adventurous quest," from which we might infer that we are here concerned with a sort of double monster, half horse and half cavalier. With regard to a certain Eroica, this Centaur is very hard pressed, because he did not succeed in making it clear "whether it is a question of a conflict on the open field or in the deep heart of man." In the Pastoral there is said to be "a furiously ...
— Thoughts out of Season (Part One) • Friedrich Nietzsche
... flanks of his horse, and rode on, careless of all save that he must hurry, that his was a great race against the racing day, that he must find her before the night had sought her out. The very shadow which he and his horse cast—a distorted, black centaur sort of thing, running silently across the desert—was one with the desert in its cursed menace. For a moment ago it had hidden under his horse's belly, and now it ran beside him, ever lengthening, ever pushing farther ...
— Under Handicap - A Novel • Jackson Gregory
... Southern hemisphere was to me the very acme of bliss. I was thoroughly in sympathy with the passage of Humboldt where he speaks of the tropical skies and vegetation in the following beautiful manner:—"He on whom the Southern Cross has never gleamed nor the Centaur frowned, above whom the clouds of Magellan have never circled, who has never stood within the shadow of great palms, nor clothed himself with the gloom of the primeval forests, does not know how the soul seems to have a new birth in the midst of these new and splendid surroundings. ...
— As I Remember - Recollections of American Society during the Nineteenth Century • Marian Gouverneur
... higher up, the Toucan, Hydrus, and Pavo. On our right, low down, was the beautiful Altar; higher up, the Triangle; while on the left were the Sword-fish and the Flying-fish. Turning to look forward, we beheld a more splendid display. Then, over the bow of the vessel, between the Centaur, which lay low, and Musca Indica, which rose high, there blazed the bright stars of the Southern Cross—a constellation, if not the brightest, at least the most conspicuous and attractive in all the heavens. All around there burned other stars, separated ...
— A Strange Manuscript Found in a Copper Cylinder • James De Mille
... pitched, the human clothespin stuck to his seat, and apparently with as little concern as if he had been in a rowboat gently moved to and fro by the waves. Jed rode like a centaur, every motion attuned to those of the animal as much as if he were a part of it. No matter how it pounded or tossed, he stuck securely to the ...
— A Texas Ranger • William MacLeod Raine
... and brocades, with vast wigs and hoops; which, under the name of lords and ladies, strut the stage, to the great delight of attorneys and their clerks in the pit, and of the citizens and their apprentices in the galleries; and which are no more to be found in real life than the centaur, the chimera, or any other creature of mere fiction. But to let my reader into a secret, this knowledge of upper life, though very necessary for preventing mistakes, is no very great resource to a writer whose province is comedy, or that kind of novels ...
— The History of Tom Jones, a foundling • Henry Fielding
... is little variety in these performances, as there are only a certain quantity of feats, which can be performed either by the horses or the riders, nevertheless we had some novelty. We had the very best feminine rider I ever saw; she was a perfect female Centaur, looking part and parcel of the animal upon which she stood; and then we had a regularly Dutch-built lady, who amused us with a tumble off her horse, coming down on the loose saw-dust, in a sitting posture, and making a hole in it as large as if a covey of partridges had been ...
— Olla Podrida • Frederick Marryat (AKA Captain Marryat)
... of the 30th of April was sufficiently fine for observing the meridian heights of x of the Southern Cross, and the two large stars in the feet of the Centaur. I found the latitude of San Balthasar 3 degrees 14 minutes 23 seconds. Horary angles of the sun gave 70 degrees 14 minutes 21 seconds for the longitude by the chronometer. The dip of the magnetic needle was 27.8 degrees ...
— Equinoctial Regions of America V2 • Alexander von Humboldt
... was just as strong, the citizens found that their hearts were larger than their houses, and that even Virginia hospitality must have a limit. Varied, indeed, were the forms one met on every street and road about Richmond. Here the long-haired Texan, sitting his horse like a centaur, with high-peaked saddle and jingling spurs, dashed by—a pictured guacho. There the western mountaineer, with bearskin shirt, fringed leggings, and the long, deadly rifle, carried one back to the days of Boone and the "dark and bloody ground." The dirty gray ...
— Four Years in Rebel Capitals - An Inside View of Life in the Southern Confederacy from Birth to Death • T. C. DeLeon
... in the gloomy fog of fear and superstition grew by degrees into a formidable monster, being changed by the overheated imaginations of dogmatists into a reptile, an owl, a raven, a dog, a wolf, a lion, a centaur, a being half monkey, half man, till, finally, he became a polite ...
— Mystic London: - or, Phases of occult life in the metropolis • Charles Maurice Davies
... been written of Bismarck's reckless and dissipated life at the university, which differed not essentially from that of other nobles. He had a grand figure, superb health, extraordinary animal spirits, and could ride like a centaur. He spent but three semestres at Goettingen, and then repaired to Berlin in order to study jurisprudence under the celebrated Savigny; but he was rarely seen in the lecture-room. He gave no promise of the great abilities which afterward distinguished him. Yet ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume X • John Lord
... bear it to the Centaur, where we host, And stay there, Dromio, till I come to thee. Within this hour it will be dinner-time; Till that, I'll view the manners of the town, Peruse the traders, gaze upon the buildings, And then return and sleep within mine inn; ...
— The Comedy of Errors • William Shakespeare [Collins edition]
... two call for especial notice, and these adjoin each other. One is Centaurus (or the Centaur), which contains the two first magnitude stars, [a] and [b] Centauri. The first of these, Alpha Centauri, comes next in brightness to Canopus, and is notable as being the nearest of all the stars to our earth. ...
— Astronomy of To-day - A Popular Introduction in Non-Technical Language • Cecil G. Dolmage
... Is a centaur, a mixture of man and beast, like a monster engendered by unnatural copulation, a crab engrafted on an apple. He was neither made by art nor nature, but in spite of both, by evil custom.. His perpetual ...
— Character Writings of the 17th Century • Various |
