"Medusa" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Away, away!" said she, as she turned her back upon him. Her face of beauty seemed turned to stone, like unto the Medusa's head with its serpent locks. He descended to the street, a weak, lifeless thing; he entered his room like a night-walker, and in the rage of his grief, he seized his hammer, brandished it high in the air and sought to destroy the beautiful marble ...
— The Ice-Maiden: and Other Tales. • Hans Christian Andersen
... faced the east, the left faced the north, the extreme left (the Guyomar brigade) faced the west; but they did not know whether they faced the enemy, they did not see him; annihilation struck without showing itself; they had to deal with a masked Medusa. Our cavalry was excellent, but useless. The field of battle, obstructed by a large wood, cut up by clumps of trees, by houses and by farms and by enclosure walls, was excellent for artillery and infantry, but bad for cavalry. The rivulet of Givonne, which flows at the ...
— The History of a Crime - The Testimony of an Eye-Witness • Victor Hugo
... very purpose of taking the mask off for the first time in her life, she seemed to look upon the frightened cry as a fresh provocation. "What are you screaming for, you little fool?" she said advancing alone close to the girl who was affected exactly as if she had seen Medusa's head with serpentine locks set mysteriously on the shoulders of that familiar person, in that brown dress, under that hat she knew so well. It made her lose all her hold on reality. She told Mrs. Fyne: "I didn't know where I was. I didn't even know that I was frightened. ...
— Chance • Joseph Conrad
... The rest remains as it was, untouched. We see here, in the destruction of the Mason's egg, a flagrant waste which aggravates the crime. Hunger excuses many things; for lack of food, the survivors on the raft of the Medusa indulged in a little cannibalism; but here there is enough food and to spare. When there is more than she needs, what earthly motive impels the Dioxys to destroy a rival in the germ stage? Why cannot she allow the larva, ...
— The Mason-bees • J. Henri Fabre
... too putrid for lungs that inhale that of pure and happy homes. We must shun those plague spots, else bear false witness to the world, for any true pen-picture of their hell-born horrors would, like Medusa's awful face, turn all who ...
— Volume 1 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... water in a glass tumbler, and having exposed it to a strong solar light, with the help of a magnifying glass was enabled distinctly to discern the moluscae. When magnified, they appeared about the size of a pin's head, of a yellowish brown colour, rather oval-shaped, and having tentaculae. The medusa is a genus of molusca; and I think M. le Seur told me he reckons forty-three or forty-four ...
— A Ramble of Six Thousand Miles through the United States of America • S. A. Ferrall
... statue of Athena; yet terrible in the fixed and stony horror of its eyes, and in the blood-streaks that covered it, and in the incarnate hate of its expression—terrible in all this as the Gorgon face of Medusa. ...
— A Castle in Spain - A Novel • James De Mille
... to eat them. Her house is fenced about with the bones of the men whose flesh she has devoured; in one story she offers a human arm, by way of a meal, to a girl who visits her. But she is also represented in one of the stories[178] as petrifying her victims. This trait connects her with Medusa, and the three sister Baba Yagas with the three Gorgones. The Russian Gorgo's method of petrifaction is singular. In the story referred to, Ivan Devich (Ivan the servant-maid's son) meets a Baba Yaga, who plucks one of her hairs, gives it to him, ...
— Russian Fairy Tales - A Choice Collection of Muscovite Folk-lore • W. R. S. Ralston
... and Pyrrha, escaping from the flood, repeopled the earth by casting behind them stones which became men and women; Heraulos was changed into stone for offending Mercury; Pyrrhus for offending Rhea; Phineus, and Polydectes with his guests, for offending Perseus: under the petrifying glance of Medusa's head such transformations became a thing ...
— History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom • Andrew Dickson White
... I seen their like. The dark eyes of Karamaneh were wonderful and beautiful, the eyes of Dr. Fu-Manchu sinister and wholly unforgettable; but the eyes of this woman were incredible. Their glance was all but insupportable; the were the eyes of a Medusa! ...
— The Hand Of Fu-Manchu - Being a New Phase in the Activities of Fu-Manchu, the Devil Doctor • Sax Rohmer
... head, she had not time to feel a sensation of real fear, when cautiously her doorknob was turned and a head intruded itself which struck her as dumb as though Medusa had appeared, and drove the life-blood in a frozen current to ...
— Idle Hour Stories • Eugenia Dunlap Potts
... the surface, which captain Vobonne mentions having seen in 1732, to the north of Porto Santo, really exist, we may suppose that this innumerable quantity of medusas had been thence detached; for we were but 28 leagues from the reef. We found, beside the Medusa aurita of Baster, and the Medusa pelagica of Bosc with eight tentacula (Pelagia denticulata, Peron), a third species which resembles the Medusa hysocella, and which Vandelli found at the mouth of the Tagus. It is known by its brownish-yellow ...
— Equinoctial Regions of America • Alexander von Humboldt
... have already the habit of coherence. In a few hours I will go back again and begin with canvas and paint once more. My madness is a lost argument. I am a little tired. But, alas, he who has danced and slept with Medusa goes home weary. ...
— Fantazius Mallare - A Mysterious Oath • Ben Hecht
... abruptly and stared at her with the expression of one who is suddenly confronted by some Medusa's head, as if in the straggling wisps of hair that escaped from beneath her hat he saw the writhing serpents. She was going to ...
— Half a Rogue • Harold MacGrath
... bring Reissiger a page of verse for every piano rehearsal, and this I faithfully did until the whole book was done. I was much surprised to learn some time later that Reissiger had had a new libretto written for him by an actor named Kriethe. This was called the Wreck of the Medusa. I then learned that the wife of the conductor, who was a suspicious woman, had been filled with the greatest concern at my readiness to give up a libretto to her husband. They both thought the book was good and full of striking effects, but they ...
— My Life, Volume I • Richard Wagner
... silent motion of a snake; and suddenly his eyes narrowed, his lips drew back from his teeth, his ears pricked forward, along the ridge of his bare back the hair bristled, and the locks about his face waved and writhed as though they were the locks of Medusa herself. Ah, and were those the flanks and feet of a man, or of a beast, that bore him along so stealthily? The child watched him in a horror of fascination, rooted to the ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1920 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... the aegis and spear. Athena, whose aegis was a scaly cloak or mantle bordered with serpents and bearing Medusa's head. ...
— Selections from the Poems and Plays of Robert Browning • Robert Browning
... Greece',[122] the offspring of an untaught folk-imagination, and so far richer in the quality of beauty than the mythology of the North. Even in the sawdust of a mythological dictionary the stories of Atalanta, Narcissus, Pygmalion, Orpheus and Eurydice, Phaethon, Medusa keep ...
— The Legacy of Greece • Various
... do: for all here, it used to be said, lies a great sunken continent; and I thought it would be rising and shewing itself to my eyes, and driving me stark mad: for the earth is full of these contortions, sudden monstrous grimaces and apparitions, which are like the face of Medusa, affrighting a man into spinning stone; and nothing could be more appallingly insecure than ...
— The Purple Cloud • M.P. Shiel |
