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Cupid   /kjˈupɪd/   Listen
Cupid

noun
1.
(Roman mythology) god of love; counterpart of Greek Eros.  Synonym: Amor.
2.
A symbol for love in the form of a cherubic naked boy with wings and a bow and arrow.



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"Cupid" Quotes from Famous Books



... BARBARA ALEXIEVNA,—To think that a day like this should have fallen to my miserable lot! Surely you are making fun of an old man? ... However, it was my own fault—my own fault entirely. One ought not to grow old holding a lock of Cupid's hair in one's hand. Naturally one is misunderstood.... Yet man is sometimes a very strange being. By all the Saints, he will talk of doing things, yet leave them undone, and remain looking the kind of fool from whom may the Lord preserve ...
— Poor Folk • Fyodor Dostoyevsky

... admitted that it is only when the relations between a man and a woman are the relations of wedlock, or at least an intimate resemblance to it, that the man snarls out " What? " to the woman. Mere lovers say " I beg your pardon ? " It is only Cupid's finished product that spits like a cat. Nora Black had called him like a wife, and he had answered like a husband. For his cause, his manner could not possibly have been worse. He saw the professor stare at him in surprise and alarm, and felt the excitement of the eight students. These ...
— Active Service • Stephen Crane

... Cupid shot a shaft, That play'd a dame a shavie, A sailor rak'd her fore and aft, Behint the chicken cavie. Her lord, a wight o' Homer's craft, Tho' limping wi' the spavie, He hirpl'd up and lap like daft, And shor'd them Dainty Davie ...
— The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. • Robert Burns and Allan Cunningham

... bade Cupid on fair Baiae's side Plunge with his torch into the glassy tide; As the boy swam the sparks of mischief flew And fell in showers upon the liquid blue; Hence all who venture on that shore to lave Emerge love-stricken from the ...
— The Greville Memoirs - A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William - IV, Volume 1 (of 3) • Charles C. F. Greville

... spech be spoke for our excuse? Or shall we on without Apologie? Ben. The date is out of such prolixitie, Weele haue no Cupid, hood winkt with a skarfe, Bearing a Tartars painted Bow of lath, Skaring the Ladies like a Crow-keeper. But let them measure vs by what they will, Weele measure them with a Measure, ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare

... oft in danger ride; Who hawks, lures oft both far and wide Who uses games shall often prove A loser, but who falls in love, Is fetter'd in fond Cupid's snare: My angle breeds me no ...
— The Complete Angler • Izaak Walton

... was a delicate oval of the same creamy smoothness as Asako's But the chin, which in Asako's case receded a trifle in obedience to Japanese canons of beauty, was thrust vigorously forward; and the curved lips in their Cupid's bow seemed moulded for kissing by generations of European passions, whereas about Japanese mouths there is always something sullen and pinched and colourless. The bridge of her nose and her eyes of deep olive green, ...
— Kimono • John Paris

... whom should he meet but the little god Cupid, armed with his bow and arrows. Cupid was the young god of love, sometimes called the god of the bow, and there are many stories about how wonderful ...
— Tell Me Another Story - The Book of Story Programs • Carolyn Sherwin Bailey

... boy, Paris is Paris, and the provinces are the provinces. If a man came in from L'Houmeau with an order for wedding cards, and you were to print them without a Cupid and garlands, he would not believe that he was properly married; you would have them all back again if you sent them out with a plain M on them after the style of your Messrs. Didot. They may be fine printers, but their inventions won't ...
— Lost Illusions • Honore De Balzac

... dust;—the midnight train, Of silent stars,—the rolling spheres, Each God, that list'ning bows, With thee it prospers, false-One! to profane. The Nymphs attend;—gay Venus hears, And all deride thy vows; And Cupid whets afresh his burning darts On the stone, moist with blood, that dropt from ...
— Original sonnets on various subjects; and odes paraphrased from Horace • Anna Seward

... to distract his anxious thoughts by walking round the room looking at the extraordinary collections of objects it contained. He was earnestly scrutinizing a lutestring picture depicting "The Origin of the Dimple"—a cupid poking his forefinger into the double chin of a fat languishing female—when the door opened and a ...
— The Moon Rock • Arthur J. Rees

... uncommon beauties, Hyacinth could only be adequately described by the most hackneyed phrases. Her eyes were authentically sapphire-coloured; brilliant, frank eyes, with a subtle mischief in them, softened by the most conciliating long eyelashes. Then, her mouth was really shaped like a Cupid's bow, and her teeth were dazzling; also she had a wealth of dense, soft, brown hair and a tall, sylphlike, slimly-rounded figure. Her features were delicately regular, and her hands and feet perfection. Her complexion was extremely fair, so she was not a brunette; some remote Spanish ancestor ...
— Love's Shadow • Ada Leverson

... "My name is Cupid," answered the boy. "Don't you know me? There lies my bow; it shoots well, I can assure you! Look, the weather is now clearing up, and the moon is shining ...
— Andersen's Fairy Tales • Hans Christian Andersen

... does it matter what figure you are? It would be very pretty, thou rosiest of all the roses with which Cupid ...
— The Wandering Jew, Complete • Eugene Sue

... Can it be possible? Oh! Love, and all ye cordial powers of passion, forbid it! Still, still the dreadful words glare on my sight. Alas! alas! and is it, then, a fact? If so 't is pitiful, 't is wondrous pitiful. Cupid, tear off your bandage, new string your bow and tip your arrows with harder adamant. Oh! shame upon you, only hear the words of your exultant votarist—'Even Love, which according to the proverb conquers ...
— Samuel F. B. Morse, His Letters and Journals - In Two Volumes, Volume I. • Samuel F. B. Morse

... by Love bestow'd? With roses crown'd and sprigs of heather, With mandolin and dart enbow'd Shall Cupid and I go together— Land of the madrigal and ode, Of ...
— Calvert of Strathore • Carter Goodloe

... and pleasantly) Not a single one of those words do I part with for golden sovereigns, not if some purchaser comes along: uncomplimentary remarks about us from you are good coin of the realm. Your heart is fastened to us here with one of Cupid's spikes through it. Out with oar and up with sail, speed your fastest and scud away: the more you put out to sea, the more the tide brings ...
— Amphitryo, Asinaria, Aulularia, Bacchides, Captivi • Plautus Titus Maccius

... approved, and we set out. Fritz, decorated with his beautiful belt of skin, Jack in his porcupine helmet. Each had a gun and game-bag; except Francis, who, with his pretty fair face, his golden hair, and his bow and quiver, was a perfect Cupid. My wife was loaded with a large butter-pot for a fresh supply. Turk walked before us with his coat of mail, and Flora followed, peeping at a respectful distance from him, for fear of the darts. Knips, ...
— The Swiss Family Robinson; or Adventures in a Desert Island • Johann David Wyss

... him, and in every way in her power was striving to conceal the fact from Margaret, and yet meet her lover at hours when she thought it possible to do so without discovery. As the friendship strengthened between himself and Latrobe they began using him as Cupid's postman, and many little notes and some big ones found their way to and from the Fourth Division of cadet barracks. Mrs. Frank was only moderately kind to her civilian adorer then, granting him only one dance ...
— Found in the Philippines - The Story of a Woman's Letters • Charles King

... masques in honor of James I and of Queen Anne, to be played amid elaborate scenery by the gentlemen of the court. The best of these are "The Satyr," "The Penates," "Masque of Blackness," "Masque of Beauty," "Hue and Cry after Cupid," and "The Masque of Queens." In all his plays Jonson showed a strong lyric gift, and some of his little poems and songs, like "The Triumph of Charis," "Drink to Me Only with Thine Eyes," and "To the Memory of my Beloved Mother," are now better known than his great dramatic works. ...
— English Literature - Its History and Its Significance for the Life of the English Speaking World • William J. Long

... "on the MONA CAIRD lay, eh, my lady?" Jest then, mate, I looks And sees male-looking things by the dozen: but then they turned out to be spooks. There was TOLSTOI the Rooshian romancer, a grim-looking son of a gun, Welting into young Cupid like scissors, and wallopping ...
— Punch Among the Planets • Various

... season in June when the legal ship of Lawyer Gooch (to borrow his own figure) was nearly becalmed. The divorce mill grinds slowly in June. It is the month of Cupid and Hymen. ...
— Whirligigs • O. Henry

... upon foundations so unworthy. But the pursuit of her stirred me deeply; and in the end—say, in a couple of days—I was her very humble and devoted slave. She really was an attractive child, I fancy, in her wilful, imperious way. And, Cupid, how I did adore her by the time I had driven Master Fred from the field! Even my father suffered a temporary eclipse in my regard during the first white-hot fervour of my devotion to Nelly. I lied for her, in word and deed; I stole for her—from the cabin ...
— The Record of Nicholas Freydon - An Autobiography • A. J. (Alec John) Dawson

... Not without; Those blows were nothing: I could bear them ever. But angry Cupid, bolting from her eyes, Hath shot himself into me like a flame; Where, now, he flings about his burning heat, As in a furnace an ambitious fire, Whose vent is stopt. The fight is all within me. I ...
— Volpone; Or, The Fox • Ben Jonson

... vow, to see thy arts, The guileless Nymphs and cruel Cupid smile, And, smiling, whets on bloody stone his darts Of fire ...
— Horace • Theodore Martin

... of this marvel,—this niece of mine, and he shall buy her pictures. Eh, little one?" and he gave her the avuncular caress, i. e., a pat of the hand on either cheek, and a kiss. Miguel envied him, but cupidity outgeneraled Cupid, and presently the conversation flagged, until a convenient recollection of Victor's—that himself and comrade were due at the Posada del Toros at 10 o'clock—gave them the opportunity to retire. But not without a chance shot from Carmen. ...
— The Story of a Mine • Bret Harte

... which we entered is a masterly aristocratic allegory by Paul Veronese—Venice with Hercules and Ceres—notable for the superb drawing and vivacity of the cupid with the wheat sheaf. I give a reproduction opposite page 102, but the Cupid unfortunately ...
— A Wanderer in Venice • E.V. Lucas

... allied itself with the secular power, it gradually departed more and more from its primitive condition,[92] until at length it was scarcely to be recognised from the Paganism which it had superseded. The heathen gods were replaced by canonised mortals; Venus and Cupid by the Virgin and Child; Lares and Penates by images and crucifixes; while incense, flowers, tapers, and showy dresses came to be regarded as essential parts of the ceremonial of the new religion as they had been ...
— The Huguenots in France • Samuel Smiles

... are in each other bless'd, When nought but lofty faith can rule The nymph's and swain's consenting breast, How cuckoo-like in Cupid's school, With store of grave prudential saws On fortune's power and custom's ...
— Poetical Works of Akenside - [Edited by George Gilfillan] • Mark Akenside

... paper. At dinner they give you three courses; but a third of the dishes is patched up with sallads, butter, puff-paste, or some such miscarriage of a dish. None, but Germans, wear fine clothes; but their coaches are tawdry enough for the wedding of Cupid and Psyche. You would-laugh extremely at their signs: some live at the Y grec, some at Venus's toilette, and some at the sucking cat. YOU would not easily guess their notions of honour: I'll tell you ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 1 • Horace Walpole

... appealed to Cupid!" said the cardinal, laughing. "In such a case aid could come only from the god of ancient Rome, not ...
— The Daughter of an Empress • Louise Muhlbach

... monthly-payment display, designed to represent the $49.50 completely furnished sitting-room, parlor, and dining-room of the home felicitous—a golden-oak room, with an incandescent fire glowing right merrily in the grate; a lamp redly diffusing the light of home; a plaster-of-Paris Cupid shooting a dart from the mantelpiece; and last, two figures of connubial bliss, smiling and waxen, in rocking-chairs, their waxen infant, block-building on ...
— Every Soul Hath Its Song • Fannie Hurst

... said, as he faced a white-haired, Cupid-faced man in the rather dingy offices of the Princess Building. A slow smile spread over the pudgy features of the genial appearing attorney, and he waved a fat hand toward the office's ...
— The Cross-Cut • Courtney Ryley Cooper

... that grace has enlightened me; and he has fascinated the good woman with my million and the chief-justiceship. She consents that we shall live with her, and sends me her portrait, and wants mine. If Cupid looked at hers he would die on the spot. Come, go away, Maxime. I must put an end to my poor Arthur to-night, ...
— Beatrix • Honore de Balzac

... another, which is headed To Celia— Occasioned by her apprehending her House would be broke open, and having an old Fellow to guard it, who sat up all Night, with a Gun without any Ammunition, and from which it has been concluded that the Miss Cradocks were their own landlords, Venus chides Cupid for neglecting to ...
— Fielding - (English Men of Letters Series) • Austin Dobson

... make any halt till you enter a small apartment with a cupola roof—within a niche of which stands the small statue of Cupid; with his head inclined, and one hand raised to feel the supposed-blunted point of a dart which he holds in the other. This is called the Cupid-Room, out of compliment to DANNECKER the sculptor of the figure, who is much patronised by the Queen. A statue or two by Canova, with a tolerable portion of Gobeleine tapestry, form the principal remaining moveable ...
— A Bibliographical, Antiquarian and Picturesque Tour in France and Germany, Volume Three • Thomas Frognall Dibdin

... judgment, put all down to the experience that makes a man wise, none to a loss within. He was not able to imagine himself in anything less than he had been, in anything less than he would be. Yet poetry was to him now the mere munition of war! mere feathers for the darts of Cupid! —that was how the once poetic man to himself expressed himself! He was laying in store of weapons, he said! For when a man will use things in which he does not believe, he cannot fail to be vulgar. But Lady Joan saw no vulgarity in the result—it ...
— Warlock o' Glenwarlock • George MacDonald

... indeed more germanely to the matter, of the BASKET-BEARERS[22], waited upon their beautiful enemy with an ultimatum and manifesto in one, importing first a requisition to surrender; then, in case of refusal to capitulate, the announcement that HYMEN having found in CUPID an inefficient ally, he was about associating with himself, in league offensive, the god MARS, with intent of carrying the Maiden-fortress by storm, and reducing the aforesaid wild occupants of the stronghold into captivity—whereunto she ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXLV. July, 1844. Vol. LVI. • Various

... by recent restoration, these frescoes form a precious monument of Lombard art. The object of the painter's design seems to have been the glorification of Music. In the central compartment of the roof is an assembly of the gods, obviously borrowed from Raphael's 'Marriage of Cupid and Psyche' in the Farnesina at Rome. The fusion of Roman composition with Lombard execution constitutes the chief charm of this singular work, and makes it, so far as I am aware, unique. Single figures of the goddesses, and the whole movement of the scene upon Olympus, ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece • John Addington Symonds

... His red hair was a rather brighter red than the hair of Pollyooly; but his eyes were of the same deep blue and his clear skin of the same paleness. They would have made a charming picture of Cupid ...
— Happy Pollyooly - The Rich Little Poor Girl • Edgar Jepson

... the delicate type of Perrin of Lyons, on ribbed paper, with old gold covers, became careless as to how his books appeared, and has to be read in a disorderly crowd of volumes, some of them as hideous as the original edition of L'Eve Future, with its red stars and streaks, its Apollo and Cupid and grey city landscape. It is therefore with singular pleasure that one finds the two beautiful books which have lately been published by M. Deman, the well-known publisher of Rops: one, the fullest collection ...
— Figures of Several Centuries • Arthur Symons

... Juley, Hester, Susan—quite a small child; Swithin, with sky-blue eyes, pink cheeks, yellow curls, white waistcoat-large as life; and Nicholas, like Cupid with an eye on heaven. Now he came to think of it, Uncle Nick had always been rather like that—a wonderful man to the last. Yes, she must have had talent, and miniatures always had a certain back-watered cachet of their own, little subject to the currents of competition on ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy

... and containing some of the artist's happiest pictures of children and amorini. Many of these little groups would make admirable designs for gems, if indeed they are not already derived from them, since one at least is an obvious copy of a well-known sardonyx—("The Marriage of Cupid and Psyche.") This volume, generally known by the name of the "Firebrand" edition, is highly prized by collectors; and, as intelligent renderings of pen and ink, there is little better than these engravings of Clennell's. {12} Finally, among others of Bewick's ...
— The Library • Andrew Lang

... to see it, in especial considering all the warnings we've had. Three times of a night hath old Cupid bayed the moon; and a magpie lighted on the tree beside my window only this morning; and last night I heard the death-watch, as plain ...
— The Gold that Glitters - The Mistakes of Jenny Lavender • Emily Sarah Holt

... regret that I left this attractive home, and I gladly accepted an invitation to return in the fall for the shooting. For the shooting, indeed! Why, that was all over! Dan Cupid never aimed truer! My wife—a Kentuckian—says that I will never shine as a Nimrod, but it seems to me that I have had pretty fair success ...
— The Statesmen Snowbound • Robert Fitzgerald

... have been therefore disappointed in some painters whose names are widely known, and surprised again to find works of great beauty by others of smaller fame. Judging by such a standard, I should say that "Cupid sleeping in the lap of Venus," by Correggio, is the glory of this collection. The beautiful limbs of the boy-god droop in the repose of slumber, as his head rests on his mother's knee, and there is a smile lingering around his half-parted lips, as if he was ...
— Views a-foot • J. Bayard Taylor

... to play,—that is to say, he was given a thick book, a mysterious book, the work of a certain Maximovitch-Ambodik, entitled: "Symbols and Emblems." This book contained about a thousand in part very puzzling pictures, with equally puzzling explanations in five languages. Cupid, with a plump, naked body, played a great part in these pictures. To one of them, labelled "Saffron and Rainbow," was appended the explanation: "The action of this is great ..."; opposite another, which represented "A Heron flying with a violet blossom in his mouth," stood the ...
— A Nobleman's Nest • Ivan Turgenieff

... also not alone by the confession Armado makes but also by the words in which he expressed it, the theme of the conflict of Love against the vow foreswearing it is made clear. Notice, too, that the symptom, so to speak, of the labour of Love or Cupid as opposed to the Herculean labor of "warre against your owne affections" is at once made evident in Armando. This symptom is the desire to write a Sonnet. In what way, then, does it appear from the Story of Act I, that witness will be borne to the success of love's labor over ...
— Shakespeare Study Programs; The Comedies • Charlotte Porter and Helen A. Clarke

... done any wrong; he went on to tell her exactly what wrong he had done, which was the best way to convince her that he had not done any worse. He vowed again and again that he would never, never dally with Cupid again—he would see Comrade Baskerville at once and tell ...
— Jimmie Higgins • Upton Sinclair

... Retunes the lyre, and tries his wonted strain, } 'Tis he,—our lost Anacreon lives again. } But when th' illustrious poet soars above The sportive revels of the god of love, Like Maro's muse he takes a loftier flight, And towers beyond the wond'ring Cupid's sight. ...
— Life And Letters Of John Gay (1685-1732) • Lewis Melville

... well-known one of Psyche and Cupid, told at such length, and with so much beauty and pathos and picturesqueness by Apuleius, in his "Golden Ass." Psyche is the human soul—a beautiful young woman. Cupid is spiritual, heavenly love—a comely youth. They are married, and live in perfect happiness, but by a ...
— Spare Hours • John Brown

... a lace robe and a lace cap, and there were pink ribbons threaded in, and her cheeks were pink. "You can't put in a garden until there is one, Derry. When we find it, it must be a lovesome garden, with the old-fashioned flowers, and a fountain with a cupid—and a fish-pond." ...
— The Tin Soldier • Temple Bailey

... There is a pair of boots wherever you go. These would be more in place in a shop window or taking a walk on the boulevard on somebody's feet; here, however, without a pair of feet in them, they tell a pretty plain tale. I am fifty years old, and that is the truth; I ought to be as blind as Cupid himself." ...
— A Distinguished Provincial at Paris • Honore de Balzac

... window he did come, And laid him on his bed, A thousand heaps of care did run Within his troubled head: For now he means to crave her love, And now he seeks which way to prove How he his fancy might remove, And not this beggar wed. But Cupid had him so in snare, That this poor beggar must prepare A salve to cure him of his care, Or else he would ...
— A Bundle of Ballads • Various

... why should Hymen ever blight The roses Cupid wore? Or why should it be ever night Where it was day before? Or why should women have a tongue, Or why should it be cursed, In being, like my Second, long, ...
— "Stops" - Or How to Punctuate. A Practical Handbook for Writers and Students • Paul Allardyce

... Venus, spare Awhile thy car, Thy Cupid, dove, and sparrow, To waft my fair, Like my own star, To give ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 13, - Issue 368, May 2, 1829 • Various

... look for her—and don't intend to for some years to come. I have something else to think of," he concluded, in a tone of contempt, for which anyone might have known he would be punished sometime if Cupid were not deaf as ...
— Kilmeny of the Orchard • Lucy Maud Montgomery

... years after this bout with Cupid, General George Washington, Commander-in-Chief of the Continental Army, occupied the Roger Morris Mansion as headquarters, the occupants having fled. Washington had a sly sense of humor, and on the occasion of his moving into the mansion, remarked to Colonel ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 11 (of 14) - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Businessmen • Elbert Hubbard

... earthly fashion, But with a beatific passion. I chanced to, yesterday, behold A maiden child of beauty's mould; 'Twas near, more sacred was the scene, The palace of our patriot Queen. The little charmer to my view Was sculpture brought to life anew. Her eyes had a poetic glow, Her pouting mouth was Cupid's bow: And through her frock I could descry Her neck and shoulders' symmetry. 'Twas obvious from her walk and gait Her limbs were beautifully straight; I stopp'd th' enchantress and was told, Though ...
— Life and Literature - Over two thousand extracts from ancient and modern writers, - and classified in alphabetical order • J. Purver Richardson

... gods were pondering Which of these goodly gifts the goodliest was, Young Cupid came among them carolling And proffered unto her a looking-glass, Wherein she gazed, and saw the goodliest thing That Earth had borne, ...
— Chivalry • James Branch Cabell

... frescos which exist in the Farnese Palace, and are called "Raphael's frescos," there are but two in which are to be traced the master's hand,—the Galatea, and one of the compartments in the series representing the story of Cupid ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 86, December, 1864 • Various

... you laugh heartily, Jack, to see the droll manner in which the servants acted their parts" (there had been a sort of mystified masque), "more particularly the fat old butler, of whom they had made a Cupid, as Dick Griffin said, in order to show that love becomes drowsy and dull by good eating and drinking—I DO wish you COULD ...
— The Monikins • J. Fenimore Cooper

... only not a mythological one, not Cupid's arrow, but a real arrow of very flexible wood, with a sharply-pointed tip at one end.... A very unpleasant sensation is produced by such an arrow, especially when ...
— The Diary of a Superfluous Man and Other Stories • Ivan Turgenev

... manners that one grim-visaged justice did—the curmudgeon, you called him, Eusebius, that would, were they now on earth, and sleeping all lovely with their pearly arms together, locked in leafy bower, have Cupid and Psyche taken up under the Vagrant Act, or have them lodged in a "Union House" to be disunited. You thought the superstition of the world as it was, far above the knowledge it now brags of. You admired the Saxons ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 54, No. 337, November, 1843 • Various

... splendours, he had no difficulty in comprehending them from what he beheld from without. The entrance gates were open, and a wide archway beyond leading to the great quadrangle, gave him a view of its beautiful marble fountain in the midst, ornamented with exquisite statues of Venus and Cupid. Numerous officers of the household, pages, ushers, and serving-men in the royal liveries, with now and then some personage of distinction, were continually passing across the Fountain Court. Gaily attired courtiers, in doublets of satin and ...
— The Star-Chamber, Volume 1 - An Historical Romance • W. Harrison Ainsworth

... is Cupid," he answered. "Don't you know me? There lies my bow. I shoot with that, you know. Look, the weather is getting fine ...
— Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen • Hans Christian Andersen

... princess of Armenia; of surpassing beauty, but insensible to love. She is made to submit to the yoke of Cupid, by a vision which befalls her on a May-day ramble.—Gower, Confessio ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook, Vol. 3 • E. Cobham Brewer

... and responsibility. Accordingly we have the King of this Fairydom endowed with the rights and powers both of the classical god of love and the classical goddess of chastity. Oberon commands alike the secret virtues of "Dian's bud" and of "Cupid's flower"; and he seems to use them both unchecked by any other law than his innate love of what is handsome and fair, and his native aversion to what is ugly and foul; that is, he owns no restraint but as he is inwardly held to apply either or both ...
— Shakespeare: His Life, Art, And Characters, Volume I. • H. N. Hudson

... as to that. Man proposes, God disposes. There is a god called Cupid, Mr. Brendon, who overturns our plans as yonder plough-share overturns the secret ...
— The Red Redmaynes • Eden Phillpotts

... mistress. "There are, in Provence and the South, what I wish there were here in Flanders,—Courts of Love, at which all offenders against the sacred laws of Venus and Cupid are tried by an assembly of their peers, and ...
— Hereward, The Last of the English • Charles Kingsley

... not of Hope, but of Faith. Faith is dependent, but Hope is aspirant. Spenser, however, introduces Hope twice,—the first time as the Virtue with the anchor; but afterwards fallacious Hope, far more beautifully, in the Masque of Cupid: ...
— Stones of Venice [introductions] • John Ruskin

... in the newspaper line of life, being employed, by a more thriving firm than his father and Co., to vend newspapers at a railway station, where his chubby little person, like a shabbily-disguised Cupid, and his shrill little voice (he was not much more than ten years old), were as well known as the hoarse panting of the locomotives, running in and out. His juvenility might have been at some loss for a harmless outlet, in this early application to traffic, but ...
— The Haunted Man and the Ghost's Bargin • Charles Dickens

... Horse-Guards, too, I know," said I. "It would ruin you for ever. They'd call you old 'bows and arrows,' as they did the general that had no flints to his guns, when he attacked Buonus Ayres; they'd have you up in 'Punch;' they'd draw you as Cupid going to war; they'd nickname you a Bow-street officer. Oh! they'd soon teach you what a quiver was. They'd play the devil with you. They'd beat you at your own game; you'd be stuck full of poisoned arrows. You could as easily introduce the queue ...
— Nature and Human Nature • Thomas Chandler Haliburton

... assistance, And nimble Cupid with his bow close by, The various colours melting in the distance Lent quite a pleasing aspect to the eye, And perhaps produced the very faintest sigh For such-like beauties on a larger scale, Where sweeping meadows meet the azure sky, And florid milk-maids bear their bounteous pail, And ...
— The Minstrel - A Collection of Poems • Lennox Amott

... Cupid is blind. This may be true of him at some stage of the proceedings, but when he is looking for a spot at which to let fly an arrow, he could play schoolmaster to Argus, of ...
— The Hindered Hand - or, The Reign of the Repressionist • Sutton E. Griggs

... pyramids; of the arch, the canopy, and the grouping. A second, much less symmetrical example of this type, is given by another Botticelli in the Academy—Spring (140). Here the central female figure, topped by the floating Cupid, is slightly raised above the others, which, however, bend slightly inward, so that a triangle, or pyramid with very obtuse angle at the apex, is suggested; and the whole, which at first glance seems a little scattered, is at once felt, when this is ...
— Harvard Psychological Studies, Volume 1 • Various

... has been for two generations a common gift-book for weddings, and has more than once appeared among the gifts at royal marriages, it is small wonder that I have often been greeted by old—and young—married couples as having been a sort of spiritual Cupid on such occasions. Frequently at my readings and elsewhere ladies thitherto unknown have claimed me as their unseen friend, and some have feelingly acknowledged that my Love and Marriage (both written in my teens) were the turning-points of their lives and causes ...
— My Life as an Author • Martin Farquhar Tupper

... and Messrs. Sargeant, Robson, Simpson, and Lilley (in oil), have well copied the Cupid by Sir J. Reynolds; and Messrs. Fussel, Hilder, Sims, and Hoffland, deserve praise for their copies from a Dutch Village, by Ruysdael. A Corn Field, by the same master, appears to have been carefully studied by ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 578 - Vol. XX, No. 578. Saturday, December 1, 1832 • Various

... "Nay, gentlest Cupid; 'twas my pride undid me. Nay, guiltless dove; by mine own wound I fell. To worship, not to wed, Celestials bid me: I dreamt to mate in heaven, and wake in hell; Forever doom'd, Ixion-like, to reel On ...
— Westward Ho! • Charles Kingsley

... their eyes as they stood on the balcony whence the amiable Catherine surveyed the walls hung thick, and the river choked up with the dead. Below, the broad Loire rolled slowly by between its green banks. Little boys, in the costume of Cupid, were riding great horses in to bathe after the day's work. The grey roofs of the town nestled to the hillside, and far away stretched the summer landscape, full of vague suggestions of new scenes and pleasures to ...
— Shawl-Straps - A Second Series of Aunt Jo's Scrap-Bag • Louisa M. Alcott

... important," Anne assured him anxiously. The mail carrier was a rather grumpy old personage who did not at all look the part of a messenger of Cupid; and Anne was none too certain that his memory was to be trusted. But he said he would do his best to remember and she had to ...
— Anne Of Avonlea • Lucy Maud Montgomery

... home she should worship the God Kama (i.e., the Indian Cupid), and offer oblations to other Deities, and having caused a pot filled with water to be brought by her friends, she should perform the worship in honour of the crow who eats the offerings which we make to the manes of deceased relations. After the first visit is over she ...
— The Kama Sutra of Vatsyayana - Translated From The Sanscrit In Seven Parts With Preface, - Introduction and Concluding Remarks • Vatsyayana

... street With her little 'plates of meat,' [1] And the summer sunshine falling On her golden 'Barnet Fair,' [2] Bright as angels from the skies Were her dark blue 'mutton pies.' [3] In my 'East and West' Dan Cupid [4] Shot a shaft and ...
— Musa Pedestris - Three Centuries of Canting Songs - and Slang Rhymes [1536 - 1896] • John S. Farmer

... husband was Cupid Benjamin. My white folks give me a white dress, and they got de white Baptist preacher, Mr. Collins to do de grand act for us. Cupid turned out to be a preacher. Us had three chillun and every ...
— Slave Narratives: a Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves • Works Projects Administration

... cried. "When will D. Cupid, Esquire, discover this pristine hunting ground? You've a blue ribbon surprise in store for you, ...
— Sunlight Patch • Credo Fitch Harris

... the wood boxes in the house an' on the po'ch. I done split up enough kindlin' ter las' a week. I done scrubbed the kitchen an' cleaned out the cow shed an' put fresh straw in Cupid and Puck's stalls. I done pick a tu'key fer Miss Judy an' blacked the stove. I ain't lef nothin' undone, an' she ain't gonter have no trouble till ol' Billy gits back. I done already ax her what she thinks ...
— The Comings of Cousin Ann • Emma Speed Sampson

... growths" from Beauty and the Beast. It would be more correct to say that Beauty and the Beast is a late, courtly, French adaptation and amplification of the original popular "wild growth" which first appears (in literary form) as Cupid and Psyche, in Apuleius. Except for the metamorphosis, however, there is little analogy in this case. The friendly act of the Fairy Queen is without parallel in British Folklore, but Mr. Child points out that the Nereid Queen, in Greece, is still as kind as ...
— A Collection of Ballads • Andrew Lang

... have walked five miles in your service, you won't afford me an arm to help me back. I am not a horse with wings, and I won't be Cupid's post except on my ...
— Dynevor Terrace (Vol. II) • Charlotte M. Yonge

... white, frozen shape as she almost fell into the sofa below the Falconet group. Cupid with his laughing eyes peeped down and mocked her. Gritzko did not sit beside her. He took a chair and leant ...
— His Hour • Elinor Glyn

... yonder. He was an ugly little wretch, in some of the late groom-porter's old clothes cut down, and much too tight for him; and yet, when he had taken up the ring (as it turned out to be), and was carrying it to his mistress, she thought he looked like a little cupid. He gave the ring to her; it was a trumpery little thing enough, but too small for any of her old knuckles, so she put it ...
— The Christmas Books • William Makepeace Thackeray

... woman, but shades of Helen! This was Venus, Juno and Minerva—the whole Greek and any other goddesses rolled into one! Tall and willowy, superb of figure, great dark-blue eyes, masses of blue-black wavy hair, full red lips forming a perfect Cupid's bow. But why go on—I might get too enthusiastic, and mislead the reader. After my adventure I ...
— The Secrets of the German War Office • Dr. Armgaard Karl Graves

... Lend me your scarlet, lady. 'Tis the sun, Hath giv'n some little taint unto the ceruse; You should have used of the white oil I gave you. Sejanus, for your love! his very name Commandeth above Cupid or his shafts—— [Paints ...
— Sejanus: His Fall • Ben Jonson

... she said {this, when} she leaps into the waves, and follows the ships, Cupid giving her strength, and she hangs, an unwelcome companion, to the Gnossian ship. When her father beholds her, (for now he is hovering in the air, and he has lately been made a sea eagle, with tawny wings), he is going to tear her in pieces with his crooked beak. Through fear she quits the ...
— The Metamorphoses of Ovid - Literally Translated into English Prose, with Copious Notes - and Explanations • Publius Ovidius Naso

... is Cupid's crimson motion, Billowy ecstasy of woe? Bear me straight, meandering ocean, ...
— Poetry for Poetry's Sake - An Inaugural Lecture Delivered on June 5, 1901 • A. C. Bradley

... her love's; The fane of Venus, where he moves His worthy love-suit, and attains; Whose bliss the wrath of Fates restrains For Cupid's grace to Mercury: Which ...
— The Works of Christopher Marlowe, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Christopher Marlowe

... painting a portrait of Agnes Walton for our friend Miss Celia Amelia. You would laugh to see how his eyes sparkle with delight when he looks at it, like a pretty child pleased with a new plaything. Good-bye to you. Let me have no more of your humbug about Cupid, etc. You know as well as I do ...
— Charlotte Bronte and Her Circle • Clement K. Shorter

... Temple, and had them simply furnished, but with every accessory for love's combats in couples, or in the wildest orgies. The adorable Benson inaugurated and dedicated them to the service of holy mother Venus and her son Cupid, as well ...
— The Romance of Lust - A classic Victorian erotic novel • Anonymous

... received them with pleasant words of welcome, and reminiscences of life in Yonkers, and memories of Mary's mother, held Cupid in abeyance for an hour. Quincy passed the license to the clergyman who read it ...
— The Further Adventures of Quincy Adams Sawyer and Mason's Corner Folks • Charles Felton Pidgin

... eagles his coursers they came, And he whistled and shouted and called them by name; "Now Dasher! now, Dancer! now, Prancer and Vixen! On Comet! on, Cupid! on, Donder and Blitzen! To the top of the porch, to the top of the wall, Now, dash away, dash ...
— Cole's Funny Picture Book No. 1 • Edward William Cole

... "Cupid," the ship's bugler, played "Home, Sweet Home," and instead of mobbing him as we would have done had he played it three hours earlier, we applauded. He also played "America," and then "Dixie," in honor of ...
— A Gunner Aboard the "Yankee" • Russell Doubleday

... Switzerland, cattle are called "wares" and the word cheese is used as a synonym for food, as we use bread. A Swiss peasant who has a reputation for cheese making is popular with the girls.[1307] Here even Cupid turns ...
— Influences of Geographic Environment - On the Basis of Ratzel's System of Anthropo-Geography • Ellen Churchill Semple

... I should fashion a Venus with Cupid, surrounded by a crowd of pretty emblems, all in proper keeping with the subject. Messer Gabriello proposed that I should model an Amphitrite, the wife of Neptune, together with those Tritons of the sea, and ...
— The Autobiography of Benvenuto Cellini • Benvenuto Cellini

... small house in the Avenue de Paris, and were admitted first into a small garden ornamented by a grotto, a fountain, and several nymphs in plaster-of-Paris, then up a mouldy old steep stair into a hall, where a statue of Cupid and another of Venus welcomed us with their eternal simper; then through a salle-a-manger where covers were laid for six; and finally to a little saloon, where Fido the dog began to howl furiously according to ...
— Men's Wives • William Makepeace Thackeray

... if not now, then in ten years' time—if not in ten years, then in twenty? Had he not been as faithless to her, was he not as much man-sworn, as though a thousand oaths had passed between them? Oaths between lovers are but Cupid's phrases, made to enable them to talk of love. They are the playthings of love, as kisses are. When lovers trust each other they are sweet bonds; but they will never bind those who do not trust. When he had told her that she, and she only, understood his feelings, that she, and she only, knew ...
— The Bertrams • Anthony Trollope

... not a melancholy child; the former, in whatever slough he may sink, can raise his eyes either to the kingdom of reason or of hope; but the little child is entirely absorbed and weighed down by one black poison-drop of the present. Think of a child led to the scaffold, think of Cupid in a Dutch coffin; or watch a butterfly, after its four wings have been torn off, creeping like a worm, and you will feel what I mean. But wherefore? The first has been already given; the child, like the beast, only knows purest, though ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 430 - Volume 17, New Series, March 27, 1852 • Various

... novels. And they are generally very good. What can be more delicious than the "spooning" in Home, if it is not the billing and cooing in Ours? But what can be more commonplace or more objectionable than the frequent remarks about love and Cupid scattered through his plays? Tom Stylus says in Society, "Love is an awful swindler—always drawing upon Hope, who never honors his drafts—a sort of whining beggar, continually moved on by the maternal police. But 'tis a weakness to which the ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 15, - No. 90, June, 1875 • Various

... the barge. And now for the person of herself, she was laid under a pavillion of cloth of gold of tissue, apparelled and attired like the goddess Venus, commonly drawn in picture; and hard by her, on either hand of her, pretty fair boys apparelled as painters do set forth god Cupid, with little fans in their hands, with which they fanned wind upon her. Her ladies and gentlewomen also, the fairest of them were apparelled like the Nymphs Nereides (which are the Myrmaids of the waters) and like the Graces; ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 27, January, 1860 • Various

... shopgirl smile, and I enjoin you to shun it unless you are well fortified with callosity of the heart, caramels and a congeniality for the capers of Cupid. This smile belonged to Masie's recreation hours and not to the store; but the floorwalker must have his own. He is the Shylock of the stores. When he comes nosing around the bridge of his nose is a toll-bridge. It is goo-goo eyes or "git" when he looks toward a pretty girl. Of ...
— The Voice of the City • O. Henry

... see her quite distinctly. You said the other day that she was fine in figure; roundly built; had deep red lips like Cupid's bow; dark eyelashes and brows, an immense rope of hair like a ship's cable; and large ...
— Tess of the d'Urbervilles - A Pure Woman • Thomas Hardy

... I swear to thee by Cupid's strongest bow, By his best arrow with the golden head, By the simplicity of Venus doves, By that which knitteth souls and prospers loves, And by that fire which burn'd the Carthage green, When the false Trojan under sail was seen; By all ...
— Shakespeare's Christmas Gift to Queen Bess • Anna Benneson McMahan

... Mr. H.C. BAILEY called his latest story The Young Lovers (METHUEN) he was doing it something less than justice. For the width and variety of the plot make it far more than a mere love-tale. Arma virique are quite as much Mr. BAILEY'S theme as Cupid, who indeed makes a rather belated appearance at the tag end. Before that we have a vast deal of agreeable adventuring. The scene is set in the period of the Peninsular War; all the characters, lovers, parents and hangers-on, are more or less ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, Dec. 5, 1917 • Various

... 4920. When Cupid slept. Caesariem auream habentem, ubi Psyche vidit, mollemque ex ambrosia cervicem inspexit, crines crispos, purpureas genas ...
— The Anatomy of Melancholy • Democritus Junior

... sensation of being still at her side as if he had gone out of himself and were following her. He remained thus watching the figure of Rachel until it disappeared and the street grew suddenly cold and empty. A strange scene mocked him. Strange smoke, strange warehouses, strange railroad tracks. Cupid awaking ...
— Erik Dorn • Ben Hecht

... silver frames in the lodger's rooms. She used to make the tea herself, while the lodger sat and smoked; and she had a fascinating way of doubling the thin slices of bread into long strips and nibbling at them like a mouse at a piece of cheese. She had wonderful little teeth and Cupid's-bow lips, and she had a fashion of lifting her veil only high enough for one to see the two Cupid's-bow lips. When she did that the American used to laugh, at nothing apparently, and say, "Oh, I guess Reggie loves you ...
— The Exiles and Other Stories • Richard Harding Davis

... established in the schools and museums; two theatres were fitted up for the future reunions of the Senate and the Chamber of Deputies. Julio was lodged in a filthy, disreputable hotel at the end of a foul-smelling alley. A little Cupid adorned the crystals of the door, and the looking-glass in his room was scratched with names and unspeakable phrases—souvenirs of the occupants of an hour . . . and yet many grand ladies, hunting in vain for temporary residence, would have envied ...
— The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse • Vicente Blasco Ibanez

... she hates to recollect That she had taken to Rinaldo so; She thinks it the last want of self-respect, Pure degradation, to have look'd so low. "Such arrogance," said Cupid, "must be check'd." The little god betook him with his bow To where Medoro lay; and, standing by, Held the shaft ready ...
— Stories from the Italian Poets: With Lives of the Writers, Vol. 2 • Leigh Hunt

... which, though it exists in English, and though the French was very probably written by an Englishman, is not now one of the most widely read and is in parts very charming. That it is one of the romances on which, from the fact of the resemblance of its central incident to the story of Cupid and Psyche, the good defenders of the bad theory of the classical origin of romance generally have based one of their few plausible arguments, need not occupy us. For the question is not whether Denis Pyramus or any one else (modernity ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 1 - From the Beginning to 1800 • George Saintsbury

... may help to illustrate a passage in Shakespeare which puzzles the commentators—"Cupid is a good hare-finder."—Much ADO, Act I., Sc. 1. The hare, in Germany, is considered an emblem of abject submission and cowardice. The word may also be rendered "Simpleton," "Sawney," or any other of the numerous epithets which ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller

... He got in fight, reds, blacks, and blues, To mollify th' uneasy pang 305 Of ev'ry honourable bang, Which b'ing by skilful midwife drest, He laid him down to take his rest. But all in vain. H' had got a hurt O' th' inside, of a deadlier sort, 310 By CUPID made, who took his stand Upon a Widow's jointure land, (For he, in all his am'rous battels, No 'dvantage finds like goods and chattels,) Drew home his bow, and, aiming right, 315 Let fly an arrow at the Knight: The shaft against a rib did glance, ...
— Hudibras • Samuel Butler

... with love twice. Cupid spends no second arrow on the same heart. Love's handmaids are our life-long friends. Respect, and admiration, and affection, our doors may always be left open for, but their great celestial master, in his royal progress, pays but one visit and departs. We ...
— Idle Thoughts of an Idle Fellow • Jerome K. Jerome

... made a captive by loose love And gadding fancy! fie, 'twere monstrous shame That Cupid's bow should blemish Mars's name: Take up thy arms, recall thy drooping thoughts, And lead thy troops into the ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. VIII (4th edition) • Various

... "You asked where we were driving? Across the country. What is the meaning of this—outrage, I believe you called it? All actions spring from two sources—Cupid and cupidity. The rest of the riddle you'll have to guess." Gazing insolently into her face, with his hands ...
— The Strollers • Frederic S. Isham

... affections, although his opportunities of holding communication with her had not exceeded the length of a silent supper on one occasion, and the going down a country-dance on another. This, however, was no unwonted mood of passion with Darsie Latimer, upon whom Cupid was used to triumph only in the degree of a Mahratta conqueror, who overruns a province with the rapidity of lightning, but finds it impossible to retain it beyond a very brief space. Yet this new love was rather more serious than the scarce skinned-up wounds which his friend Fairford ...
— Redgauntlet • Sir Walter Scott

... I mention those dedicated to Help, Safety, Concord, Liberty, and Victory, which have been called Deities, because their efficacy has been so great that it could not have proceeded from any but from some divine power? In like manner are the names of Cupid, Voluptas, and of Lubentine Venus consecrated, though they were things vicious and not natural, whatever Velleius may think to the contrary, for they frequently stimulate nature in too violent a manner. Everything, then, from which ...
— Cicero's Tusculan Disputations - Also, Treatises On The Nature Of The Gods, And On The Commonwealth • Marcus Tullius Cicero

... with a hissing sound sucking in the yellowish boiling liquid through their teeth. At last they had emptied the whole samovar, turned upside down the round cups—one with the inscription, 'Take your fill'; the other with the words, 'Cupid's dart hath pierced my heart'—then they cleared their throats, wiped their perspiring brows, and ...
— A Desperate Character and Other Stories • Ivan Turgenev

... it is different, and Dan Cupid spends most of his time on the hot foot between the coroner's office and the ...
— Get Next! • Hugh McHugh

... imagined her capable of inspiring such sentiments in a man almost old enough to be her father. I think that you are the victim of a kind of mania, which I have heard of but never experienced. Venus—or is it Cupid?—has netted you, my ...
— The Yellow God - An Idol of Africa • H. Rider Haggard

... was thus stricken mad after the irrational methods of Cupid, he had sufficient sense not to examine too minutely into the reasons for this sudden passion. He was in love, and admitting as much to himself, there was an end of all argument. The long lane of his youthful and loveless life had turned in another direction at the signpost of a ...
— The Silent House • Fergus Hume

... look. Our path led through the park, and we stopped to call 'Prancer' and 'Dancer' and 'Donder' and 'Blitzen,' and Santa Claus fed them with lumps of sugar from his pocket. He pointed out 'Comet' and 'Cupid' in a distant part of the park; 'Dasher' and 'Vixen' were nowhere ...
— Lill's Travels in Santa Claus Land and other Stories • Ellis Towne, Sophie May and Ella Farman

... necessarily lie hid. If I personally did not arrive at that delectable condition the fault is with the immortal gods rather than with myself; for in my eagerness to learn the gorgeous tongue of Calderon and of Cervantes, I placed myself purposely in circumstances where I thought the darts of young Cupid could never fail to miss me. But finally I was reduced to Ollendorf's Grammar. However, these are biographical details of interest to none but myself; they are merely to serve as preface for certain observations upon the women whom the ...
— The Land of The Blessed Virgin; Sketches and Impressions in Andalusia • William Somerset Maugham

... depart. This character was the result of a careful consideration of the ideal beauty suitable to the respective attributes of the different deities. Thus in their Jupiter, Neptune, Hercules, Vulcan, Mars, and Pluto; the Apollo, Mercury, Hymen, and Cupid, and also in the goddesses Juno, Minerva, Venus, Hebe, the Nymphs and Graces; appeared a vast discrimination of character, at the same time as true an individuality as if the different forms had been the ...
— The Life, Studies, And Works Of Benjamin West, Esq. • John Galt



Words linked to "Cupid" :   Roman deity, Roman mythology, allegory, emblem



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