"Heroics" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... marvellous music of Shelley's verse we need not dwell, except to note that he avoids that metronomic beat of rhythm which Edgar Poe introduced into modern lyric measures, as Pope introduced it into the rhyming heroics of his day. Our varied metres are becoming as painfully over-polished as Pope's one metre. Shelley could at need sacrifice smoothness to fitness. He could write an anapaest that would send Mr. Swinburne into ...
— Shelley - An Essay • Francis Thompson
... blazed at me. Then he frowned. "I've been misled," he muttered, with a dark glance at Carlos. And recovering his jocular serenity, "Ye mean it?" he asked; "it's not British heroics?" ...
— Romance • Joseph Conrad and F.M. Hueffer
... without a suspicion that the younger man, Mortimer, might prove a rival; heroics such as the Diablo episode were apt to give young people a romantic interest in each other; Fate had more than evened matters up by giving him the present opportunity. He thought with some satisfaction how perfectly helpless Mortimer ...
— Thoroughbreds • W. A. Fraser
... a far superior metrist. Neither in his sonnets, nor in his various stanzas composed of heroics, nor in what may be called his doggerel metres—the fatally fluent Alexandrines, fourteeners, and admixtures of both, which dominated English poetry from his time to Spenser's, and were never quite rejected during the Elizabethan period—do we find evidence of the want ...
— A History of English Literature - Elizabethan Literature • George Saintsbury
... immediate result now, but how about the six months at Vienna? Might it not be utilised to undermine that position during those six months of fascinating change? She pictured to herself an abatement of what her mind thought of as "the heroics" ...
— When Ghost Meets Ghost • William Frend De Morgan
... conclusion by putting certain facts together in a practical and commonsense fashion. There was more than a possibility that she might be wrong, so there was no reason for working oneself up into a state of hysteria or of heroics. Moreover, Sally had been entirely frank. She understood that the French officer would be overjoyed if Yvonne should prove to be his sister, but Sally herself would have felt no enthusiasm over the same discovery. ...
— The Campfire Girls on the Field of Honor • Margaret Vandercook
... of do-nothing heroics to which even good men surrender at times. Many officers of ships can no doubt recall a case in their experience when just such a trance of confounded stoicism would come all at once over a whole ship's company. Jukes, however, ...
— Typhoon • Joseph Conrad
... Torture his soul to reinforce the sight Of those that closed their eyes and would not see. To your own men of science, fifty turns Of the thumbscrew would not prove that earth revolved. Call it Italian subtlety if you will, I say his intricate cause could not be won By blind heroics. Much that his enemies challenged Was not yet wholly proven, though his mind Had leapt to a certainty. He must leave the rest To those that should come after, swift and young,— Those runners with the torch for whom he longed As his deliverers. Had he chosen death Before his hour, his proofs ...
— Watchers of the Sky • Alfred Noyes
... the mock heroics of their ineffective challenge on Benedicke's earnest championship of Hero? Is the Prince's satiric speech (V, i, 208-209) to be interpreted as complimentary to Benedicke? Notice Claudio's next speech in comment upon it, and explain the ...
— Shakespeare Study Programs; The Comedies • Charlotte Porter and Helen A. Clarke
... ingenious gentleman under the influence of the Tragic Muse contrived to dislocate, 'I wish you a good morning, Sir! Thank you, Sir, and I wish you the same,' into two blank-verse heroics:— ...
— English Critical Essays - Nineteenth Century • Various
... to put the best face on the situation, and indulge in no heroics, so he said, "You could not expect such a body of infantry as this ...
— Barriers Burned Away • E. P. Roe
... Homer and Virgil which his father had in the versions of Pope and Dryden; the small copper-plates with which they were illustrated conveyed no suggestion to him. Afterward he read Goldsmith's Deserted Village, and he formed a great passion for Pope's Pastorals, which he imitated in their easy heroics; but till he came to read Longfellow, and Tennyson, and Heine, he never read any long poem without more fatigue than pleasure. His father used to say that the taste for poetry was an acquired taste, like the taste for tomatoes, and that he would come to it yet; but he ...
— Boy Life - Stories and Readings Selected From The Works of William Dean Howells • William Dean Howells
... again, Millicent," suggested Leslie with an uneasy laugh. "These heroics hardly become you—and nobody can extort a great deal in return for—nothing better than you. In any case, it's no use now debating whether one or both of us were foolish. I'm speaking no more than the painful truth when I say that if I can't get the ...
— Thurston of Orchard Valley • Harold Bindloss
... country, till we forgot to listen to the sobbing and the trampling of the engines, and till all sights and sounds resolved themselves into a temple of sentiment round a charming priestess chanting low anthems. She would leave us early to go to her babies. She would leave us throbbing with mock heroics, undecided whether we should cry, or consecrate our lives to some high and noble enterprise, or drink one more glass of hot whiskey-and-water. She was kind, but not sentimental; her sweet, yet practical "good-night" was quite of the work-a-day ...
— Twenty-One Days in India; and, the Teapot Series • George Robert Aberigh-Mackay
... with another must know things to his disadvantage, but no one thinks of telling them. The world would not tolerate it. It would prejudice the betrayer at least as much as the betrayed. I don't affect to be angry, or talk romance and heroics, because you fancy such stuff; but I assure you—when will that old woman give me a cup of tea?—I assure you, Radie, ...
— Wylder's Hand • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... the matter seriously and argue it with her; but the next moment he smiled and tossed his head with jaunty playfulness—Bertram, to tell the truth, had now had quite enough of what he privately termed "scenes" and "heroics"; and, manlike, he was very ardently longing for the old easy-going friendliness, with ...
— Miss Billy Married • Eleanor H. Porter
... also found their way to the Military Outpost on the borders of the dreaded region. I say dreaded, but should have added, without cause. M. BUCHANANOFF shows us a very pleasant picture. The prisoners seem to have very little to do save to preserve the life of the Governor, and to talk heroics about liberty and other kindred subjects. Prince Zosimoff attempts, for the fourth or fifth time, to make Anna his own—he calls the pursuit "a caprice," and it is indeed a strange one—and is, in the nick of time, arrested, by order of the CZAR. After this pleasing and natural ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 99., October 25, 1890 • Various
... give of this place. The fellows who write about it get into the heroics, and what with their descriptions, and pictures, and moralizing, you believe it is a second Babylon. It don't seem possible for any of them to tell the truth. Why, there isn't a single decent-sized house in the place. ...
— The Dodge Club - or, Italy in 1859 • James De Mille
... Otway came next, Tom Shadwell's dear Zany, And swears for heroics he writes best of any; Don Carlos his pockets so amply had filled, That his mange was quite cured, and his lice were all killed. But Apollo had seen his face on the stage, } And prudently did not think fit to engage } The scum of a playhouse, ...
— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753) - Volume II • Theophilus Cibber
... you again," returned Christopher, not troubling to soften his scorn of such cheap heroics; "we must manage better next time. Did you think to remind him, by the way, that I once took the trouble to save ...
— The Deliverance; A Romance of the Virginia Tobacco Fields • Ellen Glasgow
... on an effort to speak as Judith would have her, quietly, without heroics; but when she broke her silence she found that she had no control of her voice. She tried to say, "But, Judith dear, if Arnold is like that—doesn't he need you more than ever? You are a nurse. How can you abandon him now!" But she could produce only a few, broken, inarticulate words in a choking ...
— The Bent Twig • Dorothy Canfield
... come out openly on the side of rebellion and treason. The sword had been at my breast, and the wind of a bullet had stirred the hair of my head. I might have spared my pains. All this pother of mine was over the man sitting yonder, heartily enjoying his dinner. All my heroics had ended in my being ...
— The Yeoman Adventurer • George W. Gough
... because I knew he hadn't anything except friendship to offer me that I knew it wasn't fair...." She tried to cover the seriousness of her words with a laugh. She lit another cigarette. "And now, having got rid of my heroics, let's talk sense," she added more calmly. "But you ought to go to bed. You look worn out. You'll be a ...
— The Phantom Lover • Ruby M. Ayres
... intimately acquainted with the Bays family ever since they came to Blue River settlement from North Carolina, and I am going to tell you the story of the sweetest, gentlest nature God has ever given me to know—Rita Bays. I warn you there will be no heroics in this history, no palaces, no grand people—nothing but human nature, the forests, and a few very simple ...
— A Forest Hearth: A Romance of Indiana in the Thirties • Charles Major
... Germans, for the French genius is declamatory and needs the inspiration of ideas and great passions greatly stated. It was assumed that, because the British soldier sang "Tipperary," moved in an atmosphere of homely fun, indulged in no heroics, never talked of "glory," rarely of patriotism or the Fatherland, and only joked about "the flag," there was no great passion in him. Some of our frenzied people at home have the same idea. They still believe we are a nation of "slackers" because we ...
— Pebbles on the Shore • Alpha of the Plough (Alfred George Gardiner)
... the deep satisfaction which every form of heroism affords. But if the tragedy of life be preconceived and wilfully perpetrated, it must be resented for the sake of self-respect. Even man possesses a dignity which is not consistent with puppetry and mock heroics. ...
— The Moral Economy • Ralph Barton Perry
... jocular strain. He must not be unreasonable, he said; pride was no doubt an estimable weakness, but it might be carried too far; men must act upon realities not fancies; he must learn to have an eye to the main chance, and eschew heroics: what was life without money! It was not as if he gave it grudgingly, for he made him heartily welcome. The property was in truth but a flea-bite to him! He hoped the Macruadh would live long to enjoy ...
— What's Mine's Mine • George MacDonald
... of Irish heroics. Since their scene was shifted from the East Side, there has come over there an epidemic of child crime of meaner sort, but following the same principle of gang organization. It is difficult to ascertain the exact extent of it, because of the well-meant but, I am inclined to think, mistaken ...
— The Battle with the Slum • Jacob A. Riis
... The poem opens with a geographical description of the neighbourhood, which must be very clear and satisfactory to the English reader; indeed, it leaves far behind in accuracy of topography and melody of rhythm the heroics of Dionysius Periegetes. ...
— Early Reviews of English Poets • John Louis Haney
... polemic or journalistic. When real literature was attempted, it consisted in general of imitations of British essays, or fiction, or poetry; and in the last two cases not even imitations of the best models in either. The essays were modeled on Addison; the poetry on the heavy imitators of Pope's heroics; the fiction either on the effusive sentimentalists who followed Richardson, or on the pseudo-Orientalists like Walpole and Lewis, or on the pseudo-mediaevalists like Mrs. Roche and Mrs. Radcliffe. This sort of work filled the few literary ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 6 • Various
... you in the least, you may be sure, Helen," said Ruth. "But, my dear, if it has taken such a thing as this—which is not a thing to go into heroics over—to remind you that I might possibly be hurt by your treatment, I am very ...
— Ruth Fielding at Briarwood Hall - or Solving the Campus Mystery • Alice B. Emerson
... rather high heroics, seeing where I was, but he saw nothing to laugh at. He looked earnestly at me for a moment, then held out his hand and shook mine heartily. "I believe you," he said; "yet you need it, or you would not sleep here. ...
— Stories of Achievement, Volume IV (of 6) - Authors and Journalists • Various
... sang-froid, he joined the spectators and triumphed in the final pulling up of the omnibus, and the consequent abandonment of the race by the indignant hero of the hansom cab, who protested in mock heroics that he was winning hand over hand, and would have licked the 'bus to fits if Dig hadn't ...
— The Master of the Shell • Talbot Baines Reed
... flare into eighty-gee acceleration without wasting time getting out to where an enemy was. In their struggle against the cops two generations ago the Huks had had to learn that fighting wasn't all drama and heroics. The cops had taken the glamour out when they won. So the Huks wouldn't waste time making fine gestures now. The squad ship had appeared off their planet. It had not transmitted a code identification-signal the instant it came out of overdrive. The ...
— A Matter of Importance • William Fitzgerald Jenkins
... Dinmont, or Sir Walter himself; but Mrs. Macgregor has obviously just stepped off the boards of a minor theatre, devoted to the melodrama. As long as Scott keeps to his strong ground, his figures are as good flesh and blood as ever walked in the Saltmarket of Glasgow; when once he tries his heroics, he too often manufactures his characters from the materials used by the frequenters of masked balls. Yet there are many such occasions on which his genius does not desert him. Balfour of Burley may rub ...
— Hours in a Library, Volume I. (of III.) • Leslie Stephen
... acting as ever, I see,' he said, mockingly; 'cannot you even see a friend without going into these heroics?' ...
— Madame Midas • Fergus Hume
... the lives of defenseless women in a lonely land, they inclined to smile. Two of them had been present on another shore when Cope had "saved" Amy Leffingwell from a watery death, and they knew how far heroics might be pushed by women who were willing to idealize. Cope saw their smiles and felt that he had fumbled an opportunity: when he might have been a truncheon, he had been ...
— Bertram Cope's Year • Henry Blake Fuller
... good lad, and don't fly into heroics and give us a scene. I am too lazy to pick a quarrel with you. What a confounded wet morning! It has disarranged all my plans. I ordered the groom to bring up my mare at eleven. The rain commenced at ten. I think it means to keep on ...
— The Monctons: A Novel, Volume I • Susanna Moodie
... declaimed his mock heroics so delightfully that Elizabeth not only succumbed to his charm, but also wondered in her heart why ...
— A Singer from the Sea • Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr
... with his sane eye, his laugh! As he leant over the gate he found himself quivering with impatience to be away—by himself—out of reach—the critic in him making the most bitter remorseless mock of all these heroics and despairs the other self had been indulging in. But for the life of him he could not find a word to say—a move to make. He stood hesitating, gauche, ...
— Robert Elsmere • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... natural minimum our natural desires. That we must pitch our lives just as much as we can in the heroic key, and hem and control mere lasciviousness as it were a sort of leprosy of the soul, seems fairly certain. And all that love-making which involves lies, all sham heroics and shining snares, assuredly must go out of a higher order of social being, for here more than anywhere lying is the poison of life. But between these data there are great interrogative blanks no generalization will fill— cases, situations, temperaments. Each life, it seems to me, in that ...
— Mankind in the Making • H. G. Wells
... (as has been observed) what 'Pastorals' we have are mostly written in what is called the heroic measure. But the reason is, I suppose, not far to seek. Dryden and Pope wrote 'heroics,' not from any sense of their fitness for bucolic poetry, but from a sense of their universal fitness: and their followers copied them. But probably no scholar would affirm that any poem, original or translated, by Pope or Dryden or any of their school, really resembles ...
— Theocritus • Theocritus
... at her with a twinge of inward distaste. This rather dramatic start did not promise well; she was to be treated to some youthful heroics. Instantly the hope came to her that Magsie had some new admirer, someone she would really consider as a husband, and wanted to make of Rachael an advocate with Warren, who, in his present absurd state of infatuation, might not find such ...
— The Heart of Rachael • Kathleen Norris
... "Spare your heroics, my dear Vivian!" cried Wharton, laughing; "for we are not in the days of Pylades and Orestes;—yet, upon my soul, instead of being as angry with you as you are with me, at this instant I like you ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. V - Tales of a Fashionable Life • Maria Edgeworth
... either of these qualities may be sufficient to recommend it. In didactic poetry, of which the great purpose is instruction, a simile may be praised which illustrates, though it does not ennoble; in heroics, that may be admitted which ennobles, though it does not illustrate. That it may be complete, it is required to exhibit, independently of its references, a pleasing image; for a simile is said to be a short episode. ...
— Lives of the English Poets: Prior, Congreve, Blackmore, Pope • Samuel Johnson
... cried Masaroon, "when one has yawned or slept through five acts of dull heroics, one needs to be stung into wakefulness by a high-spiced epilogue. For my taste your epilogue can't be too pungent to give a flavour to my oysters and Rhenish. Gud, my lord, we must have something to talk about when we leave ...
— London Pride - Or When the World Was Younger • M. E. Braddon
... glance at her daughter and smiled. Perhaps the heroics of Louise did not greatly ...
— Aunt Jane's Nieces • Edith Van Dyne
... her circumstances. Why had she shot from her sphere in this silly way?" demands unanimous common-sense in valiant heroics. ...
— Literary and Social Essays • George William Curtis
... would have gone into violent heroics at such a moment as this. As it was, she smiled, though her eyes filled with tears, and said, quietly, "Thank you, cousin! It is what I expected from ...
— Rita • Laura E. Richards
... remarkable utterance, Bismarck was promptly hissed down by the Liberal side. Undaunted, Bismarck loaded his heaviest guns against this thing called "Liberalism," with all its mock-heroics of liberty, fraternity and equality. Would it not endanger our King's sacred throne? That was enough ...
— Blood and Iron - Origin of German Empire As Revealed by Character of Its - Founder, Bismarck • John Hubert Greusel
... hope, Eloise, you are not going to indulge in any heroics over this affair," returned Mrs. Evringham, who had braced herself to meet an attack. "Does the unpleasant creature suppose we would stay with him if we ...
— Jewel - A Chapter In Her Life • Clara Louise Burnham
... trod the face of the earth; and, had the ghost of the renowned Jack-the-giant-killer itself passed that way at the time, I'll venture to say, that I would have given it a kick in the breech without the smallest ceremony. But, as the sun began to rise, I began to fall from the heroics; and, when he showed his face, I took a look at my own, and found that I was too unclean a spirit to worship, for I was covered with mud and dirt, with the greater part of ...
— Adventures in the Rifle Brigade, in the Peninsula, France, and the Netherlands - from 1809 to 1815 • Captain J. Kincaid
... two acts and had played in it, was playing in it when he died. After his Trenchard, Jefferson turned himself loose in all sorts of parts, from Diggory to Mazeppa, a famous burlesque, which he did to a turn, imitating the mock heroics of the feminine horse marines, so popular in the equestrian drama of the period, Adah Isaacs Menken, the beautiful and ill-fated, at their head. Then he produced a version of Nicholas Nickleby, in which his Newman Noggs took a more ambitious flight. These, however, were but the avant-couriers ...
— Marse Henry, Complete - An Autobiography • Henry Watterson
... second Charles were still the lawful ruler of his obedient province of Virginia; and in The Rivet in Grandfather's Neck Rudolph Musgrave, that quaint figure whittled out of chivalry and dressed up in amiable heroics, is plainly contrasted with the glib rogue of genius John Charteris, who, elsewhere in Mr. Cabell's books generally the chorus, here enters the plot and exhibits a sorry gallantry in action. Poictesme, these ...
— Contemporary American Novelists (1900-1920) • Carl Van Doren
... other would think a little differently. The cheerful Frenchwoman had gone through life with the belief that it is better, on the whole, to make oneself comfortable in this world, if it can be managed on honest principles, than to worry oneself about heroics, and in the calm recesses of her practical little soul she was sure that, in Angela's place, she would have told Giovanni to resign as soon as possible and find some pleasant and well-paid occupation for his married life. All Angela's talk ...
— The White Sister • F. Marion Crawford
... at what she called his "heroics," but she felt interested to know what he was; and it flattered her that he should see her "spreading gay wings among the houses of men." These days she liked to think ...
— Together • Robert Herrick (1868-1938)
... impulses, ignorant exaltations, mistaken ideals, which really represent no intelligent purpose, and come from disordered nerves, ill-advised reading, and the erroneous perspective of inexperience. Mrs. Pasmer felt this, and she was tempted to break into a laugh over Alice's heroics; but she preferred to keep a serious countenance, partly because she did not feel the least seriously. She was instantly resolved not to let this letter accomplish anything more than Dan's temporary abasement, and she would have preferred ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... so; but there are many women as good as Miss Melville. I grant that she is a fine woman, and one of excellent principles and understanding; but not just the sort of person one could go into heroics about. I do not say that as a companion and friend her place could be filled up to you by such women as Miss Crichton or any of the Jardine girls, or even by Eliza Rennie. But Mary Forrester—what do you think of Mary Forrester? You should not let such a girl leave the country. She is handsomer, ...
— Mr. Hogarth's Will • Catherine Helen Spence
... for heroics there is no present need! I surely thought Boris loved his business and would ...
— An Orkney Maid • Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr
... trouble," replied Lawrence, "Isabella won't let anything remain commonplace. She pulls everything out of its place,—makes a hero or heroine out of a piece of clay. I don't want to be in heroics all the time. Even Homer's heroes ate their suppers comfortably. I think it was a mistake in your father, bringing her here. Let her stay in her sphere queening it, and leave us poor mortals ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 4, February, 1858 • Various |
