"Thermopylae" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... little fellow than he did of himself. If he could have been assured of his safety, he would have been ready to wheel about and meet his score or more of foes, and fight them single-handed, as Leonidas and his band did at Thermopylae. But the fate of the two was linked together, and, sink or swim, it must ...
— The Cave in the Mountain • Lieut. R. H. Jayne
... Greece, the proper and ancient Greece, again received a Latin conqueror, [12] who trod with indifference that classic ground. He viewed with a careless eye the beauties of the valley of Tempe; traversed with a cautious step the straits of Thermopylae; occupied the unknown cities of Thebes, Athens, and Argos; and assaulted the fortifications of Corinth and Napoli, [13] which resisted his arms. The lots of the Latin pilgrims were regulated by chance, or choice, or subsequent exchange; and they abused, with intemperate ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 6 • Edward Gibbon
... command; no mutiny, or even attempt at mutiny, was ever known in his camp; and, finally, after fifteen years of Italian warfare, his men followed their old leader to Zama, "with no fear and little hope;" ["We advanced to Waterloo as the Greeks did to Thermopylae; all of us without fear and most of us without hope."—SPEECH OF GENERAL FOY.] and there, on that disastrous field, stood firm around him, his Old Guard, till Scipio's Numidian allies came up on their flank; when at last, surrounded and overpowered, the ...
— The Fifteen Decisive Battles of The World From Marathon to Waterloo • Sir Edward Creasy, M.A.
... deserted to his side. They were afraid to be found fighting against God, as Whittier had convinced them they were doing. There is the roll of drums and the clash of spears in these stirring strains; there are echoes from Thermopylae and Marathon, and the breath of the old Greek heroes is in the air; there is a hint of the old Border battle-cries from Scotland's hills and tarns; from Jura's rocky wall we can catch the cheers of Tell; and the voice of Cromwell can often ...
— Home Life of Great Authors • Hattie Tyng Griswold
... not be forgotten that many armies that have met with defeat at first, have gathered courage, and gained victories that have changed the whole course of events. With the memories of Marathon, Thermopylae, and Salamis in their hearts, the Greeks ...
— The Great Round World and What Is Going On In It, Vol. 1, No. 27, May 13, 1897 - A Weekly Magazine for Boys and Girls • Various
... whispered in answer to the soldier's words. "But they have not mounted far yet. And when they come, if two pikes cannot hold this doorway which they can pass but one at a time, there is no truth in Thermopylae!" ...
— The Long Night • Stanley Weyman
... illustrative of classical scenes hung round the walls, done in the old-fashioned style of line engraving, and representing such subjects as Mutius Scaevola before Porsenna; Belisarius begging for an obolus; Aeneas carrying his father from Troy; Leonidas at Thermopylae; Coriolanus quitting Rome; Hamilcar making the boy Hannibal swear his oath of hate against Home; and ...
— The Lady of the Ice - A Novel • James De Mille
... was precisely here that was situated the richest satrapy of Darius. At all events, this country abounded in those most striking events which furnish history with her richest materials. In Rajistan every small kingdom had its Thermopylae, and every little town has produced its Leonidas. But the veil of the centuries hides from posterity events that the pen of the historian might have bequeathed to the everlasting admiration of the nations. Somnath might have appeared as a rival ...
— From the Caves and Jungles of Hindostan • Helena Pretrovna Blavatsky
... Abingdon speak glibly of Shepherd Kings, Constitution of Lycurgus, Thermopylae, Consul Duilius, or the Licinian Laws; the more advanced are even as far down as Elizabeth. For the rich and unmatched history of their own land, they have but a shallow patter of that; no guess at its high meaning, no hint of a possible destiny ...
— Copper Streak Trail • Eugene Manlove Rhodes
... given name to the three nations, AEolians, Dorians, and Ionians, Still further south, between the inaccessible cliffs of Mount OEta and the marshes which skirt the Maliaeus Bay, were the defiles of Thermopylae, where Leonidas and three hundred heroes died defending the pass, against the army of Xerxes, and which in one place was only twenty-five feet wide, so that, in so narrow a defile, the Spartans were able to withstand for three days the whole power of Persia. In this famous pass the Amphictyonic ...
— Ancient States and Empires • John Lord
... he hoped to collect the only documents still wanting to complete his history, and he visited all the spots that had become illustrious by the great battles fought between the Greeks and Persians. He gives a minute description of the Pass of Thermopylae, and of his visit to the plain of Marathon, the battlefield of Plataea, and his return to Asia Minor, whence he passed along the coast on which the Greeks had established several colonies. Herodotus can only have been twenty-eight ...
— Celebrated Travels and Travellers - Part I. The Exploration of the World • Jules Verne
... see that that service is attended to. And if there is a post likely to be left deserted on account of its hardships or its perils, let every one be sure, first of all, that that post is occupied. Let there be an emulation among all to do the drudgery of the service, and to man the Thermopylae of danger. Then you shall read in the vigor and nerve of the ...
— Thoughts on Missions • Sheldon Dibble
... reading sentimental novels, and who wish that they had some grand field in which to display their Christian powers. Oh, what grand and glorious things they could do if they only had an opportunity! My sister, you need not wait for any such time. A crisis will come in your affairs. There will be a Thermopylae in your own household, where God will tell you to stand. There are scores and hundreds of households in this city to-day where as much bravery and courage are demanded of women as was exhibited by Grace Darling, or Marie ...
— The Wedding Ring - A Series of Discourses for Husbands and Wives and Those - Contemplating Matrimony • T. De Witt Talmage
... were great And in the depths of ages rose the heights Radiant of high deeds done And souls that matched the sun For splendour with the lightnings of their lights Whence even their uttered names Burn like the strong twin flames Of song that shakes a throne and steel that smites; As on Thermopylae when ...
— Studies in Song • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... war field, would it not be grand? What were the plains of Marathon, the pass of Thermopylae, or Cannae paved with golden rings, ...
— Ernest Linwood - or, The Inner Life of the Author • Caroline Lee Hentz
... heroism in the struggles of the Dutch republic as in the wars of Napoleon; as much in our warfare for independence as in the suppression of the Southern rebellion; as much among Cromwell's soldiers as in the Crimean war; as much at Thermopylae as at Plataea. It is the greatness of a cause which gives to war its only justification. A cause is sacred from the dignity of its principles. Men are nothing; principles are everything. Men must die. It is of comparatively little moment whether ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume IX • John Lord
... commercial and political relation, their internal laws, characters, or manners. Their studies are chiefly confined to Rollin and Plutarch, the deistical works of Voltaire, and the visionary politics of Jean Jaques. Hence they amuse their hearers with allusions to Caesar and Lycurgus, the Rubicon, and Thermopylae. Hence they pretend to be too enlightened for belief, and despise all governments not founded on the Contrat Social, or the Profession de Foi.—They are an age removed from the useful literature and general information of the middle classes in ...
— A Residence in France During the Years 1792, 1793, 1794 and 1795, • An English Lady
... ye are beasts, then stand here like fat oxen, waiting for the butcher's knife! If ye are men, follow me! Strike down yon guard, gain the mountain passes, and then do bloody word, as did your sires at old Thermopylae! Is Sparta dead? Is the old Grecian spirit frozen in your veins, that you do crouch and cower like a belabored hound beneath his master's lash? O comrades! warriors! Thracians! if we must fight, let us fight for ourselves! If we must slaughter, let us slaughter our ...
— The Evolution of Expression Vol. I • Charles Wesley Emerson
... at his Sabine farm. When the war against Antiochus broke out, he took service along with his friend Flaccus on the staff of the consul Glabrio,[42] and by a difficult march over the mountains broke in on the king's rear, and so was chiefly instrumental in winning the great battle of Thermopylae, by which Antiochus was driven out of Greece. Immediately after the battle Cato returned home with despatches. We have dim and uncertain information that he took the field once or twice again, but his career as a ...
— Cato Maior de Senectute • Marcus Tullius Cicero
... tried to recall the stories of her glorious past. The figures of legend, myth, and history,—mighty warriors, celebrated heroes, eloquent orators, illustrious painters, renowned architects, great historians, immortal poets, and wonderful deities; Spartan mothers, Thermopylae defenders, and Persian invaders; beautiful Helen, muscular Hercules, crusty Diogenes, deformed AEsop, silver-tongued Demosthenes, fleet-footed Mercury, drunken Silenus, stately Juno, and lovely Venus,—a confused procession of mortals and immortals ...
— A Trip to the Orient - The Story of a Mediterranean Cruise • Robert Urie Jacob
... called the Dardanelles, the inner gateway being the famous Hellespont. Here it was that Xerxes crossed over on a bridge of boats at the head of his Persian army to invade Greece, only to meet disaster at Thermopylae, and here Alexander of Macedonia crossed over to begin his march of conquest which was to extend his power as far as India. And about this narrow strait is centered the ancient Greek myth about Hero and Leander, which inspired Byron to swim across ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume II (of VIII) - History of the European War from Official Sources • Various
... th' thrustees in th' Sicond Baptist Church excited so much comment among spoortin' men three or four years ago, Gin'ral Rangefinder iv Thebes, Colonel Chivvy iv Sparta, who whittled Major Lycurgus Gam iv Thermopylae down to th' wishbone at th' anti-polygamist meetin' las' June, an' ...
— Mr. Dooley's Philosophy • Finley Peter Dunne
... as to loyalty in a case of pinch. He has endless stores in the place; for one item, almost a million sterling of ready money. Poor Schmettau, if he knew it, has suddenly become the Leonidas of this campaign, Dresden its Thermopylae; and"—But readers ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XIX. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... in slumbers Lethargic dost thou lie? Awake, and join thy numbers With Athens, old ally! Leonidas recalling, That chief of ancient song, Who saved ye once from falling, The terrible! the strong! Who made that bold diversion In old Thermopylae, And warring with the Persian To keep his country free; With his three hundred waging The battle, long he stood, And like a lion raging, Expired in ...
— The Works Of Lord Byron, Vol. 3 (of 7) • Lord Byron
... make their stand at Thermopylae on land, and at the strait of Artemisium by sea. But at the strong pass of Thermopylae only a small force was gathered to hold the barbarians in check, there being of the Spartans themselves only 300, commanded ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol XI. • Edited by Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton
... long mustache, spoke grandiloquently of the Saltanov dam being "a Russian Thermopylae," and of how a deed worthy of antiquity had been performed by General Raevski. He recounted how Raevski had led his two sons onto the dam under terrific fire and had charged with them beside him. Rostov heard the story ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy
... Sparta contributed little of anything to art, literature, science, philosophy, or government. She left to the world some splendid examples of heroism, as for example the sacrifice of Leonidas and his Spartans to hold the pass at Thermopylae, and a warning example of the brutalizing effect on a people of excessive devotion to military training. It is a pleasure to turn from this dark picture to the wonderful (for the time) educational system that was gradually ...
— THE HISTORY OF EDUCATION • ELLWOOD P. CUBBERLEY
... and came to take their part in the labour with their band of music at their head. The Emperor, accompanied only by a few of the officers of his household, frequently went to encourage the zeal of the workmen. His presence and his words fired their imagination: they fancied they saw Thermopylae in every pass they fortified and, like new Spartans, swore with enthusiasm, to defend them ...
— Memoirs of the Private Life, Return, and Reign of Napoleon in 1815, Vol. II • Pierre Antoine Edouard Fleury de Chaboulon
... said Sydney, consequentially, as if he knew all about London thieves. "They are the distressed country people, no doubt—such as would no more think of standing a second shot from my pistol, than of keeping the straits of Thermopylae. Look here," he continued, showing the end of a pistol, which peeped from a pocket inside his coat; "here's a thing that will put such gentry ...
— Deerbrook • Harriet Martineau
... of departed worth! Immortal! though no more; though fallen, great; Who now shall lead thy scatter'd children forth And long-accustom'd bondage uncreate? Not such thy Sons who whilom did await, The hopeless warriors of a willing doom, In bleak Thermopylae's sepulchral strait: Oh! who that gallant spirit shall resume, Leap from Eurotas' banks, and call ...
— The Life of Lord Byron • John Galt
... us. Whenever a man or woman gives up self for the good of others, we intuitively admire and honor the deed. The story of Thermopylae, the leap of Curtius into the yawning chasm, the charge of the ...
— Elementary Guide to Literary Criticism • F. V. N. Painter
... before us," exclaimed the Spartans at Thermopylae. "And we are before them," was the cool reply of Leonidas. "Deliver your arms," came the message from Xerxes. "Come and take them," was the answer Leonidas sent back. A Persian soldier said: "You will not be able to ...
— How to Succeed - or, Stepping-Stones to Fame and Fortune • Orison Swett Marden
... effecting anything! How often they drop burning tears over their own feebleness amid the defections of those they believed to be converts! Yes! but that small band has the decree of God on its side. Who has not admired the band of Leonidas at the pass of Thermopylae? Three hundred against three million. Japhet, with the decree of God on his side, only 300 strong, contending for enlargement with Shem and his 3,000,000. Consider what has been effected during the last fifty years. There is no vaunting of scouts now. No Indian gentlemen making themselves ...
— The Personal Life Of David Livingstone • William Garden Blaikie
... the Oise, the Somme, the Marne—little 20 streams of France; old brooks as precious as Thermopylae or Bunker Hill! ...
— Story Hour Readings: Seventh Year • E.C. Hartwell
... two hours, we proceeded through horrible ravines, thick woods, and rapid mountain torrents. The ravines often became so narrow as to form so many defiles, with such precipitous and inaccessible sides, that here, as at Thermopylae, a handful of valiant warriors might defy whole armies. As a natural consequence, the entrance of Fantaua is regarded as the real key to the whole island. There was no other means of taking it than by scaling one of its most precipitous sides, and pressing forward upon the narrow ...
— A Woman's Journey Round the World • Ida Pfeiffer
... avenging day, When, launching lightnings in her wrath divine, She rose, and gave to never-dying fame, Platae, Marathon, Thermopylae, Did each, did all, sublimer laurels twine Round Graecia's conquering ...
— Poems (1828) • Thomas Gent
... themselves for their end; not less beautiful in their resolution, not less deserving the everlasting remembrance of mankind, than those three hundred who in the summer morning sate combing their golden hair in the passes of Thermopylae. We will not regret their cause; there is no cause for which any man can more nobly suffer than to witness that it is better for him to die than to speak words which he does not mean. Nor, in this their hour of trial, were they left without ...
— History of England from the Fall of Wolsey to the Death of Elizabeth. Vol. II. • James Anthony Froude
... sailed away, in obedience to a summons from Taxiles, a new general whom Mithridates had sent with an army of 100,000 foot, 10,000 horse, and ninety scythed chariots into Greece. With these forces and the troops previously sent with his master's son he formed a junction at Thermopylae, marched into Phocis down the valley of the Cephissus, attempted but failed to take Elateia, and came up with Sulla near Chaeroneia. [Sidenote: Sulla forms a junction with Hortensius.] Sulla had marched into Boeotia and joined Hortensius, who had a brought ...
— The Gracchi Marius and Sulla - Epochs Of Ancient History • A.H. Beesley
... we but weep o'er days more blest? Must we but blush?—Our fathers bled Earth! render back from out thy breast A remnant of our Spartan dead! Of the three hundred grant but three, To make a new Thermopylae! ...
— The Illustrated London Reading Book • Various
... base, no pretext too hollow, for enslaving the grandsons of the men of Salamis and Thermopylae: therefore did the descendants of those stern and self-restrained Romans, who were ready to give up everything, and life as the least of things, to the glory of their commonweal, produce monsters of license and reckless folly. Therefore did a little knot of Galilean peasants overthrow ...
— Hopes and Fears for Art • William Morris
... strength, marshalling forces, planting batteries, and today we stand in the thick of the fray. Shall we fail? Men and women of America, will you fail? Shall the cause go by default? When a great idea, that has been uplifted on the shoulders of generations, comes now to its Thermopylae, its glory-gate, and needs only stout hearts for its strong hands,—when the eyes of a great multitude are turned upon you, and the of dumb millions in the silent future rest you,—when the suffering and sorrowful, the lowly, whose immortal hunger for justice gnaws at hearts, who blindly see, ...
— Gala-days • Gail Hamilton
... would be inclined to pick out as comrades the unmarried men, as having least to sacrifice and fewest duties to forego. Whereas Leonidas, in choosing the 300 men to make their famous and fatal stand at Thermopylae, is stated to have selected all fathers with ...
— On The Structure of Greek Tribal Society: An Essay • Hugh E. Seebohm
... David, for choosing the battle at the straits of Thermopylae as a subject for a picture, was that of a general rather than connoisseur: it smelt, if I may say so, of his shop; though, perhaps, the real motive for it was dislike to the republican artist, and distaste ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Vol. 2, No. 8, January, 1851 • Various
... of antiquity, we find that the Greeks had noticed the blue waters of Thermopylae, the red waters of Joppa, and the black waters of the hot-baths of Astyra, opposite Lesbos. Some rivers, the Rhone for instance, near Geneva, have a decidedly blue colour. It is said, that the snow-waters ...
— Equinoctial Regions of America V2 • Alexander von Humboldt
... died," said he, "without stain in war and in love." That is all, but think how full was the heart of the author of this short and simple elegy. Woe to him who fails to perceive its charm. The following words were engraved on a tomb at Thermopylae— ...
— Emile • Jean-Jacques Rousseau
... destined to extend her empire over the whole mainland of Greece. By the victory of Oenophyta, gained over the Boeotians just before the reduction of Aegina, Athens became mistress of all the central provinces of the Greek peninsula, from the pass of Thermopylae to the gulf of Corinth. The alliance of Megara, lately united by long walls to its harbour of Nisaea, secured her from invasion on the side of Peloponnesus. The great island of Euboea, with its rich pastures and fruitful corn lands, had, since the Persian War, become an ...
— Stories From Thucydides • H. L. Havell
... he read. "My name—here—is Art Georgopoulis. I work at present as a bartender at the Golden Web, on Thermopylae street. The high-ups in the underworld hang out there, and I pick up occasional bits of news. If you come in, introduce yourself by asking for 'a good old Kentucky mint-julep,' Practically no one ever asks for those. ...
— Man of Many Minds • E. Everett Evans
... kind, but innumerable delays occurred before the money I sent for arrived, and I am only now on my way to Greece—my native land, the mother of the arts and sciences, the country of Socrates and Plato, of Alexander and Aristides, the battle-fields of Thermopylae and Marathon. Ah, signora, Greece once contained all that is noble and great, and brave—what she once was, such she will be again—when we, her brave sons, have regenerated her, when we have driven ...
— The Pirate of the Mediterranean - A Tale of the Sea • W.H.G. Kingston
... asks no surplice round the heart that feels, And all is holy where devotion kneels. Thus on the soil the patriot's knee should bend Which holds the dust once living to defend; Where'er the hireling shrinks before the free, Each pass becomes "a new Thermopylae"! Where'er the battles of the brave are won, There ...
— The Poetical Works of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Complete • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... exist at all. We can, for instance, no doubt point to Leonidas and the three hundred as specimens of what human heroism can rise to; and we can point to the Stoics as specimens of human self-control. But to make a new Thermopylae we want a new Barbarian; and before we can recoil from temptation as the Stoics did, we must make pleasure as perilous and as terrible as it was under the Roman emperors. Such developments of humanity are at their very essence abnormal; and ...
— Is Life Worth Living? • William Hurrell Mallock
... while, the musketeers loaded their carbines and shot him down. Not a man of the garrison was left alive, but each of them had avenged himself four times over, for the Mexican loss was over five hundred. So ended one of the most heroic events in American history. "Thermopylae had its messengers of ...
— American Men of Action • Burton E. Stevenson |
