"Saga" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... such an opus? Gude kens, but it tickles me. Two or three historical personages will just appear: Judge Jeffreys, Wellington, Colquhoun, Grant, and I think Townsend the runner. I know the public won't like it; let 'em lump it then; I mean to make it good; it will be more like a saga. ...
— Letters of Robert Louis Stevenson - Volume 2 • Robert Louis Stevenson
... saga of the sacred gold which fell burning from heaven. The ancients had also some strange fictions of silver which fell from heaven, and with which it had been attempted, under the Emperor ...
— Ragnarok: The Age of Fire and Gravel • Ignatius Donnelly
... primitive, less civilised, than the life of the great Southern nations in the Middle Ages, the record of that life is by a still greater interval in advance of all the common modes of narrative then known to the more fortunate or more luxurious parts of Europe. The conventional form of the Saga has none of the common medieval restrictions of view. It is accepted at once by modern readers without deduction or apology on the score of antique fashion, because it is in essentials the form with which modern readers are acquainted in modern story-telling; ...
— Epic and Romance - Essays on Medieval Literature • W. P. Ker
... the Saga, you mean. He laughed only at the end, I think, when the great roof-beam burned through and the hall fell in. But my castle tumbled about my ears in the beginning, and I laughed ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves
... nothing of the deeds of the King's armies. By cottage fires they wove stories about it and made simple songs, the echo of which may still be traced by curious scholars. There is something of it in the great saga of Robin Hood, and long after the fens were drained women hushed their babies with snatches about the Crane and the Falcon, and fairy tales of a certain John of the Shaws, who became one with Jack the Giant-killer and all the ...
— The Path of the King • John Buchan
... effectually conciliate the Somerlidian tribe. The Norwegian Monarch, disappointed in his negotiations, had recourse to the sword, and sailed with a fleet, which both the Sturlunga-saga, and the Flateyan annals represent as the most formidable that ever ...
— The Norwegian account of Haco's expedition against Scotland, A.D. MCCLXIII. • Sturla oretharson
... of Tennyson to romantic poetry lay in his being the first to give a worthy form to the great Arthurian saga; and the modern masterpiece of that poetry, all things considered, is his "Idylls of the King." Not so perfect and unique a thing as "The Ancient Mariner"; less freshly spontaneous, less stirringly ...
— A History of English Romanticism in the Nineteenth Century • Henry A. Beers
... in their general features were the sepulchral usages connected with barrow-burial over the whole of Europe, that we find the Anglo-Saxon Saga of Beowulf describing the chambered tumulus with its gigantic masonry "held fast on props, with vaults of stone," and the passage under the mound haunted by a dragon, the guardian of the treasures of heathen gold which it contained. Beowulf's own burial is minutely described ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 3 - "Banks" to "Bassoon" • Various
... three in number. One was a foreign prince from the North. One was a foreign prince from the South: and one was a native hero of the land. Harald Hardrada, the strongest and the most chivalric of the kings of Norway, was the first; [See in Snerre the Saga of Harald Hardrada.] Duke William of Normandy was the second; and the Saxon Harold, the son of Earl Godwin, was the third. Never was a nobler prize sought by nobler champions, or striven for more gallantly. The Saxon triumphed over ...
— The Fifteen Decisive Battles of The World From Marathon to Waterloo • Sir Edward Creasy, M.A.
... green earth and summer sky. Each broad, seamed breast has cast aside Its cumbering vest of shaggy hide; Bared to the sun and soft warm air, Streams back the Norsemen's yellow hair. I see the gleam of axe and spear, The sound of smitten shields I hear, Keeping a harsh and fitting time To Saga's chant, and Runic rhyme; Such lays as Zetland's Scald has sung, His gray and naked isles among; Or muttered low at midnight hour Round Odin's mossy stone of power. The wolf beneath the Arctic moon Has answered to that startling rune; The Gael has heard its stormy swell, ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... to man's desire, And ocean the wide gate to manful luck.' And then with that resolve his heart was bent, Which, like a humming shaft, through many a stripe Of day and night, across the unpathwayed seas Shot the brave prow that cut on Vinland sands The first rune in the Saga ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell
... ornately as well, for I saw as I walked further into the room that what I had thought had been imperfections in the dome proved to be an elaborate three dimensional sculpture that stuck out from the ceiling, depicting an intricate scene of figures and telling a story of some great saga of war and peace, pride and prejudice, love and hate, faith and betrayal, all combined to make the greatest mural: history, ...
— The Revolutions of Time • Jonathan Dunn
... are framing Lean faces, grim and brown, No more keen eyes are aiming To bring the redskin down; But every wind careening Seems here to breathe a song— A song of brave careering, A saga of ...
— Songs of the Cattle Trail and Cow Camp • Various
... same group. The New School was in turn opposed by the Gothic Society or Scandinavian School, among whom were Ling and Geijer. Franzen and Wallin devoted themselves to religious poetry. The most famous of all modern Swedish poets was Esaias Tegner, whose "Frithiof's Saga" achieved an international reputation. Politically, he was conspicuous for his inveterate hostility to the "Holy Alliance" and its reactionary spirit in state, ...
— A History of the Nineteenth Century, Year by Year - Volume Two (of Three) • Edwin Emerson
... The saga then goes on to say that trading voyages to the settlement which had been formed by Karlsefne now became frequent, and that the chief lading of the return voyages was timber, which was much needed in Greenland. A bishop of Greenland, Eric Upsi, is also said to have gone to Vinland in A.D. ...
— Great Epochs in American History, Volume I. - Voyages Of Discovery And Early Explorations: 1000 A.D.-1682 • Various
... have in arrangement!" he cried. "Scott, Tolstoi, Meredith, an odd volume of a Saga library, an odd volume of the Corpus Boreale, some Irish reprints, Stevenson's poems, Virgil and the Pilgrim's Progress, and a French Gazetteer of Mountains wedged above them. And then an odd Badminton volume, French Memoires, a Dante, a Homer, and a badly ...
— The Half-Hearted • John Buchan
... veiled, lost in profound revery, sits a female form, in whose lofty, intellectual features we recognise the impersonation of the traditional source of all early poetry; it is the impersonation of the Saga or Myth. She recalls those sybils who came from Asia to Greece to proclaim the oracles of the gods. In her hand the helm is still resting, in token that her guidance has brought Homer to Greece. A group of unclad nymphs, mingled with swans, swim ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 5, No. 3, March, 1852 • Various
... French sources, by Miss May Sellar, Miss Farquharson, and Miss Blackley from the German, while the story of 'Sigurd' is condensed by the Editor from Mr. William Morris's prose version of the 'Volsunga Saga.' The Editor has to thank his friend, M. Charles Marelles, for permission to reproduce his versions of the 'Pied Piper,' of 'Drakestail,' and of 'Little Golden Hood' from the French, and M. Henri Carnoy for the same privilege in ...
— The Red Fairy Book • Various
... no harm, Belle. I was but comparing you to one of whom the saga says her eyes were like the shine of sun ...
— Danger! and Other Stories • Arthur Conan Doyle
... screen Till my far morning—and O streams that slow And pure and deep through plains and playlands go, For me your love and all your kingcups store, And—dark militia of the southern shore, Old fragrant friends—preserve me the last lines Of that long saga which you sang me, pines, When, lonely boy, beneath the chosen tree I listened, with my eyes ...
— Poems of To-Day: an Anthology • Various
... like a really good saga, about gods and giants, and the fire kingdoms, and the snow kingdoms, and the Aesir making men and women out of two sticks, and all ...
— A Mother's List of Books for Children • Gertrude Weld Arnold
... Susanna, raising her eyebrows, "to admire the light-hearted way in which you leave me out of the saga?" ...
— The Lady Paramount • Henry Harland
... broken-hearted weeping it was. And Prosper's face was drawn by pity of her. That story of her life and love, it was a sort of saga, something as moving as an old ballad most beautifully sung. He half-guessed then that she had genius; at least, he admitted that it was something more than just her beauty and her sorrow that so greatly stirred him. To speak such sentences in such a voice—that was a gift. She had no ...
— The Branding Iron • Katharine Newlin Burt
... Beauty and the claims of Freedom on a possessive world are the main prepossessions of the Forsyte Saga, it cannot be absolved from the charge of embalming ...
— Quotations from the Works of John Galsworthy • David Widger
... that one is a middle-aged man, well-dressed, with a lined and sunken face; the other a mere boy who is chiefly eyes and overcoat. Disguising well the tedium begotten by many repetitions, the server of drinks begins to chant the sanitary saga of Santone. "Rather a moist night, gentlemen, for our town. A little fog from our river, but nothing to ...
— Rolling Stones • O. Henry
... has been more or less fragmentary. With Olaf Trygvason's Saga reliable history begins, and the narration is full and connected. The story of Hakon the earl is incorporated in ...
— Heimskringla - The Chronicle of the Kings of Norway • Snorri Sturluson
... with ourselves, our guns, our cartridges, the keepers, the dogs, and everything else. The pleasant array of plates and glasses, and the savoury odours of the meats mitigated, but did not dispel the frowns. Then suddenly there dropped down amongst us, as it were from the sky, the Great Woodcock Saga. In a moment the events of the morning were forgotten, brows cleared, tempers were picked up, and an eager hilarity reigned over the company, while the adventures of the wonderful bird were pursued from tree to tree, from clump to clump, ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 103, October 29, 1892 • Various
... three tragedies proper there came a play, still in tragic diction, with a traditional saga plot and heroic characters, in which the Chorus was formed by these Satyrs. There was a deliberate clash, an effect of burlesque; but of course the clash must not be too brutal. Certain characters of the heroic saga are, so to speak, at home with Satyrs and others are not. To take our extant specimens ...
— Alcestis • Euripides
... King of Parmenia named Riwalin Kanelengres (in the Norse saga he is King of Bretland; in the English he is called Rouland rise, King of Ermonric), who, leaving his own country in the charge of his marshal, Rual li foitenant, joined the court of the powerful King Marke of Cornwall "and of England" in Tintajol. There he falls in love with Blanscheflur ...
— Wagner's Tristan und Isolde • George Ainslie Hight
... while Ildico sat weeping beneath her veil by the dead king's bedside. He died as a fool dieth; and his warriors gashed their cheeks and wept tears of blood, and gave him a splendid burial. And his name passed into legend as the King Etzel of the Niebelungen Lied, and Alti of the Saga. But his "loutish sons" quarrelled among themselves. The Teutons, Goths, Gepidae, Alani, and Heruli reasserted their independence in the great victory of Netad in Pannonia in 454; and though the Huns left their name in Hungary, henceforth the empire of Attila became mere "drift-wood, on ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 1 of 8 • Various
... little to recommend it, and not a few require a diviner rather than a translator. Yet they are valuable to students as showing the different sources and the heterogeneous materials from and of which the great Saga-book has been compounded. Some are, moreover, striking and novel, especially parts of the series entitled King Shah Bakht and his Wazir Al- Rahwan (pp. 191-355). Interesting also is the Tale of the "Ten ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 1 • Richard F. Burton
... the house was built by one Hund, 'a maker of runes' (one of the old saga writers, no doubt), who lived here with his young wife. All went peacefully until, unfortunately for him, a certain maiden stationed at a neighbouring saeter grew to ...
— John Ingerfield and Other Stories • Jerome K. Jerome
... who are on strong grounds of probability, etymological and other, assigned to this dynasty are Saga-raktiyas, the founder of a Temple of the male and female Sun at Sippara, Ammidi-kaga, Simbar-sikhu, Kharbisikhu, Ulam-puriyas, Nazi-urdas, Mili-sikhu, and Kara-kharbi. Nothing is known at present of the position which any of these monarchs held in the dynasty, or of their ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 1. (of 7): Chaldaea • George Rawlinson
... detailed particular account, circumstantial account, graphic account; narration, recital, rehearsal, relation. historiography^, chronography^; historic Muse, Clio; history; biography, autobiography; necrology, obituary. narrative, history; memoir, memorials; annals &c (chronicle) 551; saga; tradition, legend, story, tale, historiette^; personal narrative, journal, life, adventures, fortunes, experiences, confessions; anecdote, ana^, trait. work of fiction, novel, romance, Minerva press; fairy tale, nursery tale; fable, parable, apologue^; dime novel, penny dreadful, shilling ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... liable to this frenzy were mysteriously endowed, during its accesses, with a strange body of unearthly strength. If, however, the Berserk was called on by his own name, he lost his mysterious form, and his ordinary strength alone remained. Thus it happens in the Svarfdaela Saga: ...
— Notes and Queries, Issue No. 61, December 28, 1850 • Various
... youth, a young man (from "juna", young). belulino, a beauty, a belle (from "bela", beautiful). maljunulo, an old man (from "maljuna", old). sagxulo, a sage, a wise man (from "saga", wise). malricxulino, a poor woman ...
— A Complete Grammar of Esperanto • Ivy Kellerman
... No more keen eyes are aiming To bring the redskin down. The plough team's trappings jingle Across the furrowed field, And sounds domestic mingle Where valor hung its shield. But every wind careering Seems here to breathe a song— A song of brave frontiering— A saga of the strong. ...
— A Texas Ranger • William MacLeod Raine
... get him to talk Norse again, he says, 'I have not been far, but I have news for you. I have found vines and grapes!' 'Is that true, foster-father?' says Leif. 'True it is,' says the old German, 'for I was brought up where there was never any lack of them.' The saga—as given by Rafn—has a detailed description of this quaint personage's appearance; and it would not be amiss if American wine-growers should employ an American sculptor—and there are great American sculptors—to render ...
— Lectures Delivered in America in 1874 • Charles Kingsley
... written by Mrs. Lang, except the story of Grettir the Strong, done by Mr. H. S. C. Everard from the saga translated by ...
— The Book of Romance • Various
... efforts were some peasant tales, whose freshness and vividness made an immediate and remarkable impression and practically ensured his future as a writer, while their success inspired him with the desire to create a kind of peasant "saga." He wrote of what he knew, and a delicate sense of style seemed inborn in him. The best known of these tales are Synnoeve Solbakken (1857) and Arne (1858). They were hailed as giving a revelation of the ...
— Three Comedies • Bjornstjerne M. Bjornson
... journeys over the immense snow-fields. These seem originally to have been used by the Finns, "for which reason," says a Swedish writer, "they were called 'Skrid Finnai' (Sliding Finns)—a common name for the most ancient inhabitants of Sweden, both in the North saga and ...
— Harper's Young People, January 27, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... the fairy-tale." The gifted companions of Fortunio, Keen-eye, Keen-ear, and so forth, are very old stock characters in Maerchen: their first known appearance is in the saga of Jason and ...
— St. Ronan's Well • Sir Walter Scott
... impressed them like a spell or charm in a child's fairy tale. Even theft with asportation could not alter property rights, even in favor of innocent purchasers, when the owner did not intend to part therewith. A moment's recollection of what is now perhaps the most familiar of Teutonic saga to the ordinary reader, the text of Wagner's "Ring of the Nibelung," will give ample evidence of that mental attitude. But the Oriental mind was far more subtile. To the Jews or Lombards we owe the discovery of that bill of exchange—the first of negotiable instruments, and ...
— Popular Law-making • Frederic Jesup Stimson
... manuscripts, but her stepmother was left almost penniless with five young children. For their benefit Louis Kepler printed a "Dream of Lunar Astronomy," which first his father and then his brother-in-law had been preparing for publication at the time of their respective deaths. It is a curious mixture of saga and fairy tale with a little science in the way of astronomy studied from the moon, and cast in the form of a dream to overcome the practical difficulties of the hypothesis of visiting the moon. Other writings in large numbers were left unpublished. No ...
— Kepler • Walter W. Bryant
... the prospects of Germany alone threatened by France and Russia; disturbances, like a fantastic renewal of the horrors of the Middle Age, are ready to burst forth on the other side of the Alps, as though, according to the ancient saga of Germany, the dead were about to rise in order to mingle in the last great contest between ...
— Germany from the Earliest Period Vol. 4 • Wolfgang Menzel, Trans. Mrs. George Horrocks
... with endless variations, and some of our greatest modern writers have deemed them worthy of a new dress, as is seen in Tennyson's "Idyls of the King," Goethe's "Reineke Fuchs," Tegner's "Frithiof Saga," Wieland's "Oberon," Morris's "Story of Sigurd," and many shorter works by these and ...
— Legends of the Middle Ages - Narrated with Special Reference to Literature and Art • H.A. Guerber
... tells how King Olaf Tryggvesson built a ship, the keel of which, as it lay on the grass, was 74 ells long; in modern measure, it would be a vessel of about 942 tons burden. Even if we make allowance for the exaggeration or ignorance of the writer of the saga, there is still a vast contrast between this vessel and the little ship Centurion in which Anson sailed round ...
— The Dawn of Canadian History: A Chronicle of Aboriginal Canada • Stephen Leacock
... King Olaf recorded in this story of his kinsman are therefore from the Norse "Saga of King Olaf the Holy," and the various incidents are assigned as nearly as may be to their place in the sequence of events given from the death of Swein to the accession of Cnut, in the contemporary Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, which is our most reliable ...
— King Olaf's Kinsman - A Story of the Last Saxon Struggle against the Danes in - the Days of Ironside and Cnut • Charles Whistler
... the OEdipus Saga enthralled the imagination of antiquity and inspired dramas amongst the world's masterpieces. Later forms of the tale may be found ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn - Volume V • Aphra Behn
... three divisions of Eddaic, Scaldic, and Saga literature. Samund the Wise (1056-1131), a Christian priest of Iceland, was the first to collect and commit to writing the oral traditions of the mythology and poetry of the Scandinavians. His collection ...
— Handbook of Universal Literature - From The Best and Latest Authorities • Anne C. Lynch Botta
... in the wailing cry of La Meffraye in the forests of Machecoul, in the maledictions of Grio, and of the Saga of the Burning Fields? ...
— The Witchcraft Delusion In Colonial Connecticut (1647-1697) • John M. Taylor
... Snorri said, "You must be mistaken; it must be that Thorgils Hallason has slain some one." The man replied, "Why, the head flew off his trunk." "Then perhaps it is time," said Snorri. This manslaughter was peacefully atoned, as is told in the Saga ...
— Laxdaela Saga - Translated from the Icelandic • Anonymous
... She holds it with a firm hand, as the Saint in the old paintings bears the church. In her, the Iceland of ancient and modern times meets. She has more warmth, more kindness of heart, more womanly affection, than any antique figure from a Saga. She gives herself completely, resignedly. She is tender and she is mild, without being meek. In her inmost self, however, she is proud. When first this pride is touched, then hurt, and finally the very woman in her is mortally wounded, it is at once perceptible that she ...
— Hadda Padda • Godmunder Kamban
... Against a Malay background, and blended with native pagan elements, are presented chains of episodes, characteristic personalities, methods for securing a magical control of the situation, that suggest vividly parallel literary forms in the Sanscrit saga. Still more, one is conscious of a prevailing Indian atmosphere, that may sometimes elude analysis, yet none the less fails not to make itself felt. But as to the line of ethnic contacts which has transfused this peculiar literary quality ...
— Philippine Folk-Tales • Clara Kern Bayliss, Berton L. Maxfield, W. H. Millington,
... I could find it in me to wish that Mr. MAURICE HEWLETT would consult a good man about the Saga habit, which appears to be growing upon him, to the loss (or so I think) of all those who were lovers of his more human and companionable fiction. But I repeat that this is no more than individual prejudice, based on the fact that these Norse chronicles ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, May 5, 1920 • Various
... of the din and clash of shouting and of steel rose the voice of Sigvat the saga-man, or song-man of the young viking, ...
— Historic Boys - Their Endeavours, Their Achievements, and Their Times • Elbridge Streeter Brooks
... interwoven with narrative we know to be true, as to make it impossible not to attach a certain amount of credit to them. This particular story is the more interesting as its denouement, abruptly left in the blankest mystery by one Saga, is incidentally revealed to us in the course of another, relating to events with which the first had no connection. [Footnote: From internal evidence it is certain that the chronicle which contains these Sagas must have been written about the beginning of ...
— Letters From High Latitudes • The Marquess of Dufferin (Lord Dufferin)
... of that underworld, that vast Atlantic bed, in which Mont Blanc might be buried without showing even his topmost snowfield above the plain of waves. Then at other times it would be the simple frolic and fancy of fiction—fairy tale and legend, Greek myth or Icelandic saga, episodes from Walter Scott, from Cooper, from Dumas; to be followed perhaps on the next evening by the terse and vigorous biography of some man of the people—of Stephenson or Cobden, of Thomas Cooper or John Bright, or even of ...
— Robert Elsmere • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... Siegfried, the noble child, That song-and-saga wonder, Who, when his fabled sword was forged, ...
— The New York Times Current History of the European War, Vol. 1, January 9, 1915 - What Americans Say to Europe • Various
... are not yet generally accepted by students. His last work, "Leif's House in Vineland," with his daughter's supplementary essay on "Graves of the Northmen," is probably the most interesting of the series (Boston, 1893). In Longfellow's "Saga of King Olaf" (II.), included in "Tales of a Wayside Inn," there is a description of the athletic sports practised by the Vikings, which are moreover described with the greatest minuteness ...
— Tales of the Enchanted Islands of the Atlantic • Thomas Wentworth Higginson
... enlightenment in the literal phrase, 'how the myths ought to be put together.' The higher Greek poetry did not make up fictitious plots; its business was to express the heroic saga, the myths. Again, the literal translation of poetes, poet, as 'maker', helps to explain a term that otherwise seems a puzzle in the Poetics. If we wonder why Aristotle, and Plato before him, should lay such stress on the theory that art is ...
— The Poetics • Aristotle
... on chess, of which the most esteemed have been Aben Ezra 1175, (translated by Dr. Hyde) Conrad Von Ammenhusen and Lydgate's "Love Battle" in the fourteenth century Vida, Bishop of Alba 1525, Sir William Jones 1761, and Frithiofs Saga by Esaias ...
— Chess History and Reminiscences • H. E. Bird
... saw of Calgary was crowded into one lively half-hour (motors were invented to run about new cities). What I heard I picked up, oddly enough, weeks later, from a young Dane in the North Sea. He was qualmish, but his Saga ...
— Letters of Travel (1892-1913) • Rudyard Kipling
... seafaring adventures is condensed into a reported speech—a traveller's tale at the court of Alcinoues. Virgil borrowed this trick, you remember; and I dare to swear that had it fallen to Homer to attempt the impossible saga of Nelson's pursuit after Villeneuve he would have achieved it triumphantly—by means of a tale told in the first person by a survivor to Lady Hamilton. Note, again, how boldly (being free to deal with an itinerary of which his audience ...
— On the Art of Writing - Lectures delivered in the University of Cambridge 1913-1914 • Arthur Quiller-Couch
... survives in human institutions, in the temperament of races, and in the creations of ideal art; but only in the last is it immortal. Custom and law are for an age: race after race is pushed to the sea, and dies; only epic and saga and psalm have one date with man, one destiny with the breath of his lips, one silence at the last with them. Least of all does the past survive in the living memories of men. Here and there the earth cherishes a coin or a statue, the ...
— Heart of Man • George Edward Woodberry
... be in the thickest part of the battle. They met King Harald in a fjord in Rogaland called Hafrsfjord. The forces on each side were very large, and the battle was one of the greatest ever fought in Norway. There are many accounts of it, for one always hears much about those people of whom the saga is told. Troops had come in from all the country around and from other countries as well, besides a multitude of vikings. Onund brought his ship alongside of that of Thorir Long-chin in the very middle of the battle. King Harald made ...
— Grettir The Strong - Grettir's Saga • Unknown
... the word Celtic occurs—usually by substituting "Gothic and Celtic" for the "Celtic" of the original. Mason made his contribution to Runic literature, "Song of Harold the Valiant," a rather insipid versification of a passage from the "Knytlinga Saga," which had been rendered by Bartholin into Latin, from him into French by Mallet, and from Mallet into English prose by Percy. Mason designed it for insertion in the introduction to Gray's abortive history of ...
— A History of English Romanticism in the Eighteenth Century • Henry A. Beers |
