"Vestal" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... bites, but was subsequently treated by native remedies and carried before the altar of Baphomet to be cured by the special intervention of the good God Lucifer. This ceremony was accomplished by the intervention of a lovely Indian Vestal, by the prayers of the Grand Master, a silk-mercer by commercial persuasion, and by the mock baptism of a serpent, after which the sufferer rose to his feet and the inconvenient venom spurted of itself out of his wounds. From the Sanctuary of the Serpents the company then proceeded, ...
— Devil-Worship in France - or The Question of Lucifer • Arthur Edward Waite
... make of the artist's own strong interest in what he had to say. In both pictures he succeeded in showing the Colosseum as no longer a ruin, but as, so to speak, a living place peopled by the swarm of the Roman populace, with the emperor and his court, and the College of the Vestal Virgins, and, for chief actors, the hapless wretches who are "butchered to make a Roman holiday." Another picture that greatly increased Gerome's reputation, was his "Death of Julius Caesar," though it must be confessed there was a touch of the stage in the arrangement ...
— Great Men and Famous Women, Vol. 8 (of 8) • Various
... evil dreams should vex thee, I did bring That worshipped wafer by the Vestal given; Then, with loose robes and linen stole, did sing Nine prayers to Hecate ...
— The Elegies of Tibullus • Tibullus
... indeed the All-Plastic Power itself can do more than mold. In all the universe is but one original; and the very suns must to their source for their fire; and we Prometheuses must to them for ours; which, when had, only perpetual Vestal tending will keep alive. ...
— Mardi: and A Voyage Thither, Vol. I (of 2) • Herman Melville
... supported the roofs and the rarest statues stood in niches. The bathing capacity was the largest ever planned. To sit there alone and people it, as when it was at its best, with all the glory of the emperor, the court ladies, the vestal virgins, senators, warriors, artists, men of letters and the rest, is a treat to the imagination that cannot be realized on any ...
— A Fantasy of Mediterranean Travel • S. G. Bayne
... thousand men of his village of Rome against twenty-five thousand combatants of the village of the Sabines: that later he became a god; that Tarquin, the ancient, cut a stone with a razor, and that a vestal drew a ship to land with ...
— Voltaire's Philosophical Dictionary • Voltaire
... will or the respect due to seniority: for Amulius, having expelled his brother, seizes the kingdom; he adds crime to crime, murders his brother's male issue; and under pretence of doing his brother's daughter, Rhea Sylvia, honour, having made her a vestal virgin, by obliging her to perpetual virginity he deprives her of all hopes ...
— The History of Rome, Books 01 to 08 • Titus Livius
... their doom. Were it otherwise, were women the passionless creatures some doctors delight to paint them, all our encomiums of female virtue were idle mockery. It is because we realize that in the veins of the vestal virgin runs the same fierce tide which Egypt's Queen nor Russia's Empress could control, and which flamed in battle-splendor in the ten years' war of Troy, that with uncovered heads we render her the tribute of our respect. Women admit all this in demanding the "single standard of morals." It is ...
— Volume 1 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... charming prison, whose walls were overrun with flowering vines, and whose cells were pretty vestal bowers, entered the bard and the young girl, to be met on the front porch by the wardeness herself, a mite of a woman, with wavy yellow hair, fine complexion and washed-out blue eyes. Sensitive almost to shyness, Mademoiselle de Castiglione ...
— The Strollers • Frederic S. Isham
... The vestal virgins, whose duty it was to keep the fire burning on the altar in the temple of Vesta. Vesta was the goddess of the home, and the vestal virgins were bound by oath ...
— Narrative and Lyric Poems (first series) for use in the Lower School • O. J. Stevenson
... worthy of such kindness; have I done any thing entitling me to such a proof of condescension on her part, and am I thus honored by her who is the guardian angel of Prussia!—whom Napoleon hates, because he fears her zeal and fidelity. As a vestal, she has kept alive the fire of patriotism on the altar of her country. When all despair, she still hopes for the redemption of her people from a victorious but merciless enemy. I will consecrate my life anew to her, though unworthy of the distinguished ...
— Napoleon and the Queen of Prussia • L. Muhlbach
... of poets, the men of sympathy and of humor, Milton stands first in that other great order which is too didactic for humor, and of which Schiller is the best recent representative. He was called the lady of his college not only for his beautiful face, but because of the vestal purity and austerity of his virtue. The men of the former class are intuitive, passionate, impulsive; not steadily conscious of their powers; fitful, unsystematic. Their love is ecstasy; their errors are the intoxication of joy; their sorrows ...
— Stories of Authors, British and American • Edwin Watts Chubb
... should dispread Infamous ruin with their liberty. There's not a man—the fairest of ye all— Who is not fouler than he seems. This life Is one unending struggle to conceal Our baseness from our fellows. Here stands one In vestal whiteness with a lecher's lust;— There sits a judge, holding law's scales in hands That itch to take the bribe he dare not touch;— Here goes a priest with heavenward eyes, whose soul Is Satan's council-chamber;—there a doctor, With nature's secrets wrinkled round a brow ...
— Representative Plays by American Dramatists: 1856-1911: Francesca da Rimini • George Henry Boker
... song, And certain stars shot madly from their spheres, To hear the sea maid's music. That very time I saw, but thou could'st not, Flying between the cold moon and the earth, Cupid all arm'd; a certain aim he took At a fair vestal throned by the West, And loosed his love-shaft smartly from his bow. As it should pierce a hundred thousand hearts; But I might see young Cupid's fiery shaft Quench'd in the chaste beams of the watery moon, And the ...
— Shakespeare's Christmas Gift to Queen Bess • Anna Benneson McMahan
... surpassing the success of this woman Berenice conceived a dance series of her own. One was to be "The Terror"—a nymph dancing in the spring woods, but eventually pursued and terrorized by a faun; another, "The Peacock," a fantasy illustrative of proud self-adulation; another, "The Vestal," a study from Roman choric worship. After spending considerable time at Pocono evolving costumes, poses, and the like, Berenice finally hinted at the plan to Mrs. Batjer, declaring that she would enjoy the artistic outlet it would afford, and indicating at the same time that it might ...
— The Titan • Theodore Dreiser
... its right object; it flamed up in direct fervors of devotion to God, and in collateral emissions of charity to its neighbor. It was not then only another and more cleanly name for lust. It had none of those impure heats that both represent and deserve hell. It was a vestal and a virgin fire, and differed as much from that which usually passes by this name nowadays as the vital heat from the burning of ...
— The World's Great Sermons, Vol. 2 (of 10) • Grenville Kleiser
... orders of monks and nuns. One who has read of the vestal virgins of old will recognize ...
— The Revelation Explained • F. Smith
... is holy; the grain sown by her hand is blessed. At some time in the past she seems to have been also a pythoness: the spirits of the gods possessed her and spoke through her lips. All the poetry of this most ancient of religions centres in the figure of its little Vestal,—child-bride of ghosts,—as she flutters, [144] like some wonderful white-and-crimson butterfly, before the shrine of the Invisible. Even in these years of change, when she must go to the public school, she continues to represent all that is delightful ...
— Japan: An Attempt at Interpretation • Lafcadio Hearn
... temples of the gods. I tried to convert the clustering mendicants into barbarian prisoners clanking by, chained at wrist and neck and ankle; I sought to imagine the pestersome flower venders as being vestal virgins; the two unkempt policemen who loafed nearby, as centurions of the guard; the passing populace as grave senators in snowy togas; the flaunting underwear on the many clotheslines as silken ...
— Europe Revised • Irvin S. Cobb
... the dear ones gathered nightly round the shining household hearth, What to them is brighter, better than the choicest things of earth? Ask that dearer one, whose loving, like a ceaseless vestal flame, Sets my very soul a-glowing at the mention of her name; Ask her why the loved, in dying, feels her spirit linked with his In a union death but strengthens? she will tell ...
— Incidents of the War: Humorous, Pathetic, and Descriptive • Alf Burnett
... avenue Selah Adams sat upon the front veranda, looking like the vestal virgin of ...
— The Co-Citizens • Corra Harris
... white rose our Tuscan poet saw, With saints for petals. When this rose was perfect Its hundred thousand petals were not saints, But senators in their Thessalian caps, And all the roaring populace of Rome; And even an Empress and the Vestal Virgins, Who came to see the gladiators die, Could not give sweetness to a rose like this. The sand beneath our feet is saturate With blood of martyrs; and these rifted stones Are awful witnesses against a people Whose pleasure was the ...
— Fair Italy, the Riviera and Monte Carlo • W. Cope Devereux
... first time in fiction, a correct and adequate account of the Vestal Virgins, their powers and privileges, as well as of many strange ...
— The Unwilling Vestal • Edward Lucas White
... births, marriages, deaths, and similar occurrences are, of course, as common and frequent in our temples as in our homes. Gentlemen, can any amount of esoteric whitewashing justify these disgraceful and fairly incredible practices? Then there are the deva dasies, our 'vestal virgins,' of whom even small and poor temples have one or two to boast. They are the recognized prostitutes of the country, and many sociologists are of opinion that no 'civilized' human society can completely get rid of such a class. Is that any reason why we should associate them with ...
— India, Its Life and Thought • John P. Jones
... the year 748 or 750 B. C.— cooperated with the endless other Pagan superstitions in anchoring the whole Pantheon to the Capitol and Mount Palatine. So long as Rome had a worldly hope surviving, it was impossible for her to forget the Vestal Virgins, the College of Augurs, or the indispensable office and the indefeasible privileges of the Pontifex Maximus, which (though Cardinal Baronius, in his great work, for many years sought to fight off the evidences for that fact, yet afterwards partially he confessed his error) actually ...
— Memorials and Other Papers • Thomas de Quincey
... tragic picture, and listening to the sepulchral echo that floats down the arcade of centuries. "Ave, Imperator, morituri te salutant," nineteenth century womanhood frowns, and deplores the brutal depravity which alone explains the presence of that white-veiled vestal band, whose snowy arms are thrust in signal over the parapet of the bloody arena; yet fair daughters of the latest civilization show unblushing flower faces among the heaving mass of the "great unwashed" who crowd our ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson
... cordial support to the regular nominee of the convention.[157] Such machine-like precision warmed the hearts of Democratic politicians. The editor of the People's Advocate declared the integrity of Douglas to be "as unspotted as the vestal's fame—as untarnished and as pure as ...
— Stephen A. Douglas - A Study in American Politics • Allen Johnson
... Vestal virgins were not supposed to have children, yet they could and often did marry. The Code contemplated that such a wife would give a husband a maid as above. Free women might marry slaves and be dowered for the marriage. ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 1 - "Austria, Lower" to "Bacon" • Various
... contrast to the color of their own bodies. As the groups of women walk about, their toe-rings and ankle-ornaments jingle against the marble, and their particolored raiment and barbarous gewgaws look curiously out of place here. The place seems more appropriate to vestal virgins, robed in white, than to dusky Hindoo females, arrayed in all the colors of the rainbow. Many of these people are pilgrims who have come hundreds of miles to see the Taj, and to pay tribute to the memory ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle Volume II. - From Teheran To Yokohama • Thomas Stevens
... the dejection worn On the dropt eye, and lip no smile illumes; Not all this pomp of sorrow, that presumes It pays Affection's debt, is due concern To the FOR EVER ABSENT, tho' it mourn Fashion's allotted time. If Time consumes, While Life is ours, the precious vestal-flame Memory shou'd hourly feed;—if, thro' each day, She with whate'er we see, hear, think, or say, Blend not the image of the vanish'd Frame, O! can the alien Heart expect to prove, In worlds of light and ...
— Original sonnets on various subjects; and odes paraphrased from Horace • Anna Seward
... of Vesta, called Vestales or Vestal Virgins, played a conspicuous part in these festivals. They were six in number, and were chosen—between the ages of six and ten—from the noblest families in Rome. Their term of office was thirty years. During the first ten years, they were initiated in their religious ...
— Myths and Legends of Ancient Greece and Rome • E.M. Berens
... principles laid down by Dr. Sylvanus Stall in his great works on sex hygiene—lewdness most horrible! But there is no need to proceed further. Every kiss, hug and tickle of the chin in the chronicle is laboriously snouted out, empanelled, exhibited. Every hint that Witla is no vestal, that he indulges his unchristian fleshliness, that he burns in the manner of I Corinthians, VII, 9, is ...
— A Book of Prefaces • H. L. Mencken
... not materialise; in the walnut and chestnut forest around them not a leaf stirred; and gradually the mountains cleared, became inartistically distinct, and turned a beautiful but disturbing dark-blue colour. And Thusis wore her vestal veil in ...
— In Secret • Robert W. Chambers
... that the task were mine, To guard the liquid fires that shine, And round your orbits play— To watch them with a vestal's care, And feed with smiles a light so fair, ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel , Volume I. - The Songs of Scotland of the past half century • Various
... from the almost vestal quiet of "Aunt Mary's" life, to all this open-windowed, open-eyed screaming of "poltroon," "nefarious plan," "entire depravity," ...
— Memoirs of Margaret Fuller Ossoli, Vol. II • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... Christ-worshipers say that Christ was miraculously born of a virgin, the Pagans had said before them that Remus and Romulus, the founders of Rome, were miraculously born of a vestal virgin named Ilia, or Silvia, or Rhea Silvia; they had already said that Mars, Argus, Vulcan, and others were born of the goddess Juno without sexual union; and, also, that Minerva, goddess of the sciences, sprang from Jupiter's ...
— Superstition In All Ages (1732) - Common Sense • Jean Meslier
... crowd, The Duke's blithe associates, babbling aloud Some comment upon his gay humor that day? He never was gayer: what makes him so gay? 'Tis, no doubt, say the flatterers, flattering in tune, Some vestal whose virtue no tongue dare impugn Has at last found a Mars—who, of course, shall be nameless, That vestal that yields to Mars ONLY is blameless! Hark! hears he a name which, thus syllabled, stirs All his heart ...
— Lucile • Owen Meredith
... from flirtations that might mean nothing to the man but would be damnation to the girl. Even the name of this big, blue-eyed, fair-skinned young votary of science had much about it that made her fairly bristle, for she had once been described as an "austere vestal" by Lieutenant Blake, of the regiment preceding them at Sandy, the ——th Cavalry—and a mutual friend had told her all about it—another handicap for Blakely. She had grown, it must be admitted, somewhat gaunt and forbidding in these later years, a thing that had stirred certain callow wits to ...
— An Apache Princess - A Tale of the Indian Frontier • Charles King
... he wrote a century and a half ago, there is less of the low and indelicate than in the plays we see posted at the doors of our theatres. The French of the time of Louis XIV. must have been a much more refined people than the contemporary English. At least, Thalia in Paris was a vestal, compared with her tawdry, indecent, and drunken London sister. One is ashamed to be seen reading the unblushing profligacy of ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 92, June, 1865 • Various
... umbrage, unanimous, undulate, urbanity, usurious, uxorious, vacillate, vacuous, vandalism, variegate velocity, venal, venereal, venial, venous, veracious, verdant, verisimilitude, vernacular, versatile, vestal, vibratory, vicarious, vicissitude, virulence, viscid, viscous, vitiate, vitreous, vituperate, vivacious, volatile, volition, voluminous, voluptuary, voluptuous, voracious, votive, ...
— The Century Vocabulary Builder • Creever & Bachelor
... his style. Thus his one-act opera "Milton," dedicated to Empress Josephine, may be regarded as the first of his truly original works. Empress Josephine appointed him her chamber composer, and secured a hearing for his new opera "The Vestal," produced at the Grand Opera. Napoleon awarded to him the prize for the best dramatic work of that year. In 1810, Spontini became the director of the Italian opera, and there staged Mozart's "Don Giovanni." Dismissed in 1812, on charges of financial irregularity, ...
— A History of the Nineteenth Century, Year by Year - Volume Two (of Three) • Edwin Emerson
... of cod-liver oil to me. Who conspicuously walks the Rialto now, and what does he or she wear? Are the trees still green in Madison Square, or have they grown brown and dusty? Does the chaste Diana on the Garden Theatre still keep her vestal vows through all the exasperating changes of weather? Who has your brother's old studio now, and what misguided aspirants practice their scales in the rookeries about Carnegie Hall? What do people go to see at the theaters, and what do they eat and drink there ...
— The Troll Garden and Selected Stories • Willa Cather
... believed him to be asleep. The house contained two large rooms and as many small ones. One of the former served for kitchen and sitting room; in the other lay the father of Birch; of the latter, one was the sanctuary of the vestal, and the other contained the stock of provisions. A huge chimney of stone rose in the center, serving, of itself, for a partition between the larger rooms; and fireplaces of corresponding dimensions were in each ...
— The Spy • James Fenimore Cooper
... from Heaven the sacred fire And swept to earth with it o'er land and sea. He lit the vestal flames of poesy, Content, for this, to brave ...
— The Complete Poems of Paul Laurence Dunbar • Paul Laurence Dunbar
... narrative of Bigfoot's Adventures is the rollickiest and the most flavorsome that any American frontiersman has yet inspired. The tiresome thumping on the hero theme present in many biographies of frontiersmen is entirely absent. Stanley Vestal wrote Bigfoot Wallace also, Boston, ...
— Guide to Life and Literature of the Southwest • J. Frank Dobie
... may seize On the white wonder of dear Juliet's hand And steal immortal blessing from her lips, Who, even in pure and vestal modesty, Still blush, as thinking their ...
— Familiar Quotations • John Bartlett
... furniture, with his bald head, and pale, impressive face, would have made a fine study for a painter. By such men, the embers of learning and of science were nursed into a faint but steady flame, burning through the long, gloomy night of the dark ages, unseen by profane eyes, like the vestal fire ...
— Life in Mexico • Frances Calderon De La Barca
... things among which she was crouching. Had she indeed any life in her? It was a mystery. Yet I saw plainly that once she must have been young and beautiful; fair, with all the charm of simplicity, perfect as some Greek statue, with the brow of a vestal. ...
— Christ in Flanders • Honore de Balzac
... coquette, A brow of marble, but a heart of jet; An eye that shows no vestige of the deep And stained thoughts that in her bosom sleep: By day a vestal, but by night a bawd; Her ways a riddle, her whole life a fraud; At church an angel, but at home a shrew, Cheating her mother, to her sire untrue; Vain without talent, without merit proud; By all who see her, still a fool allow'd; Without all love, with but the show of truth, ...
— Lays of Ancient Virginia, and Other Poems • James Avis Bartley
... I saw the grave where Laura lay, Within that temple where the vestal flame Was wont to burn; and passing by that way, To see that buried dust of living fame, Whose tomb fair Love and fairer Virtue kept, All suddenly I saw the Fairy Queen, At whose approach the soul of Petrarch wept; And from thenceforth ...
— Sir Walter Ralegh - A Biography • William Stebbing
... to get a little old, we are, perhaps, growing too fastidious; yet surely it is something very shocking. Portsmouth Poll and Plymouth Sall—sisters originating at Yarmouth—when brought into comparison with Miranda and Dorinda of the enchanted island, to our imagination seem idealized into Vestal virgins. True, they were famous—when not half seas over—for keeping a quiet tongue in their mouths: with them mum was the word. Only when drunk as blazes, poor things, did they, by word or gesture, offend modesty's most sacred laws. But D'Avenant's and Dryden's daughters are such leering and ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 57, No. 352, February 1845 • Various
... de salon. As it was, she was sufficiently harassed and overworked in her double office of decorous, authoritative chaperon and qualified guide, philosopher, and friend to the girls under her charge. These might be vestal virgins or nymphs of Minerva, but they were also girls, so long as the world lasted—the most of them half curious, half friendly where May was concerned. This was true even of the wonderful young American who came and stayed with no other object in view ...
— A Houseful of Girls • Sarah Tytler
... Why—there's a thousand feet of crevasse on every hand, I know, steps an' benches an' weathered faces that no man can climb. They say there's bright waters that tumble down like th' Vestal's Veil and sink into holes without an outlet. Just go away in the rock. There's strange flowers an' stunted trees. An' they tell of th' Cup of God, a hidden glade so beautiful that th' eye of man has never seen its like. All my life it's ...
— Tharon of Lost Valley • Vingie E. Roe
... village and went by them to sea gay with the bunting of a first voyage, with a fair wind, and on a fine morning; and when such a ship came back long after as an old plank bearded with sea moss, to the dunes under which it stranded the day was still the same, vestal and innocent; for they were on a voyage of greater length and import. They had buried many ships; but, as time moved to them, ...
— Old Junk • H. M. Tomlinson
... defence of Cluentius, Muraena, Caelius, Milo, Sylla, Flaccus, and Rabirius Postumus; the most striking instances of which are the poetical burst of feeling with which he addresses his client Plancius,[251] and his picture of the desolate condition of the Vestal Fonteia, should her brother be condemned.[252] At other times, his peroration contains more heroic and elevated sentiments; as in his invocation of the Alban groves and altars in the peroration of the Pro Milone, the panegyric on patriotism, and ...
— Historical Sketches, Volume I (of 3) • John Henry Newman
... sofa hung a large print of the Circus Maximus, with crowded tiers mounting toward the sky, and awninged boxes where sat the Vestal Virgins and the Emperor high above a motley, serried group on the sand. At the mouth of a tunnel a lion stood motionless, menacing, regarding them. The picture ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... also is Latin, and owes its origin to an interesting fact in ancient Roman history. When the Capitol was besieged by the Gauls (A.U. 365) most of the inhabitants of Rome provided for their own safety by flight: but the Flamen Quirinalis or priest of Romulus, and the Vestal virgins loaded themselves with the sacred things, that they might secure those hallowed treasures from profanation. "They were proceeding" (says Livy lib. V, c. XXII) "along the way which passes over the Sublician bridge, when they were met on the ...
— The Ceremonies of the Holy-Week at Rome • Charles Michael Baggs
... Nu'mitor's sons first fell a sacrifice to his suspicions; and to remove all apprehensions of being one day disturbed in his ill-gotten power, he caused Rhe'a Sil'via, his brother's only daughter, to become a vestal. ...
— Pinnock's Improved Edition of Dr. Goldsmith's History of Rome • Oliver Goldsmith
... Purity. — N. purity; decency, decorum, delicacy; continence, chastity, honesty, virtue, modesty, shame; pudicity[obs3], pucelage[obs3], virginity. vestal, virgin, Joseph, Hippolytus; Lucretia, Diana; prude. Adj. pure, undefiled, modest, delicate, decent, decorous; virginibus puerisque[Lat]; simon-pure; chaste, continent, virtuous, honest, Platonic. virgin, unsullied; cherry [coll.]. Phr. "as chaste as unsunn'd snow" [Cymbeline]; ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... words. It was the young astronomer, he reflected, who had helped to crystallise her strange views. His lurking fear that she might one day marry and leave him was aroused at the thought, and his heart contracted with jealousy. She possessed in his eyes something of the sanctity of a vestal virgin, one who must not be profaned by marriage. In such an event, also, his cherished hope that she might complete the quadrangle of St. George's Hall was likely to be frustrated forever. These fears ...
— The Mayor of Warwick • Herbert M. Hopkins
... 11 and 12 she banteringly asks him if he took her to be like the traditional lehua tree of Hopoe, of which men stood in awe as a sort of divinity, not daring to pluck its flowers? It is as if the woman had asked—if the poet's meaning is rightly interpreted—"Did you really think me plighted to vestal vows, a tree whose bloom man was forbidden ...
— Unwritten Literature of Hawaii - The Sacred Songs of the Hula • Nathaniel Bright Emerson
... sure no common muse inspires, I heard your verse that glows with vestal fires; And I from unwatch'd needle's erring point Had surely suffered on each finger joint, Those wounds, which erst did poor Arachne meet; While he, the much-loved object of my choice, (My bosom thrilling with enthusiast heat) Pour'd on my ear, with deep impressive voice, How ...
— Reminiscences of Samuel Taylor Coleridge and Robert Southey • Joseph Cottle
... talk of love To Marcia, whilst her father's life's in danger? Thou might'st as well court the pale, trembling vestal, When she beholds ...
— Cato - A Tragedy, in Five Acts • Joseph Addison
... attended the sick poor, and each city had five, seven or ten, according to its size. Rome had fourteen of these officers, besides one for the vestal virgins, and one for the gymnasia. They were paid by the Government for attending the poor, but were not restricted to this class of practice, and were well paid by their prosperous patients. Their office was more lucrative but not so honourable as that of the archiaters of the palace. The ...
— Outlines of Greek and Roman Medicine • James Sands Elliott
... shall hem his ashes in: The vestal virgins with their holy notes Shall sing his famous, though too fatal, death. I and my Fulvia with dispersed hair Will wait ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. VII (4th edition) • Various
... my lord's writing. That I was shipped at sea I well remember, but whether there delivered of my babe, by the holy gods I cannot rightly say; but since my wedded lord I never shall see again, I will put on a vestal livery and never more ...
— Tales from Shakespeare • Charles and Mary Lamb
... alike in these stages. (Aloud.) No, my Vestal. We're going along the quietest road ...
— The Works of Rudyard Kipling One Volume Edition • Rudyard Kipling
... always kept liberalism alive in Rome. Appius had already displayed some of the restless individuality of his ancestors. When the senate had refused him a triumph after a war with the Salassi, he had celebrated the pageant at his own expense, while his daughter, a vestal, walked beside the car to keep at bay the importunate tribune who attempted to drag him off.[314] A similar unconventionality was manifested in the present betrothal. The story runs that Appius broached the question to Tiberius at an augural ...
— A History of Rome, Vol 1 - During the late Republic and early Principate • A H.J. Greenidge
... fair vestal is stirring abroad?" said the only man she met, who was one of the menials; but Catharine passed on without notice or reply, and gained the little garden ...
— The Fair Maid of Perth • Sir Walter Scott
... gladsome anger takes The sunshine and the blast! Who is the victor of the day? Thou of the delicate form, and golden hair, And manhood glorious in its midst of May; Thou who upon thy shield of argent bearest The bold device, "The loftiest is the fairest!" As bending low thy stainless crest, "The vestal throned by the west" Accords the old Provencal crown Which blends her own with thy renown; Arcadian Sidney, nursling of the muse, Flower of fair chivalry, whose bloom was fed With daintiest Castaly's ...
— With Spurs of Gold - Heroes of Chivalry and their Deeds • Frances Nimmo Greene
... precedent, at another meeting of the assembly. The Portico of Paulus was burned and the fire from it reached the temple of Vesta, so that the sacred objects that this shrine contained were carried up to the Palatine by all of the vestal virgins except the eldest (who had gone blind) and were placed in the house of the priest of Jupiter. The portico was afterward rebuilt, nominally by AEmilius, who was the representative of the family that had formerly erected it, but really ...
— Dio's Rome, Vol. 4 • Cassius Dio
... Her vestal lamp she nightly trimmed and fed, A beacon light more true Than stars above; For darkness only made the light it threw More bright—bless'd, too, as emblem of her love For those who else might make Hell's caves their last ...
— Rowena & Harold - A Romance in Rhyme of an Olden Time, of Hastyngs and Normanhurst • Wm. Stephen Pryer
... barred gates of that vestal establishment, Maitland's cabman "pulled, and pushed, and kicked, and knocked" for a considerable time, without manifest effect. Clearly the retainers of Miss Marlett had secured the position for the night, and expected no visitors, though ...
— The Mark Of Cain • Andrew Lang
... her head, she threw her long black hair over one shoulder, then, dropping one end of the counterpane from the other like a vestal tunic, she stepped before Carry with a purposely-exaggerated classic stride. "And what if I have, miss! What if I happen to know a gentleman when I see him! What if I happen to know, that among a thousand such traditional, ...
— Tales of the Argonauts • Bret Harte
... will court you, their whole delight is to immortalize—Alexander was begot by a Salamander, that visited his Mother in the form of a Serpent, because he would not make King Philip jealous; and that famous Philosopher Merlin was begotten on a Vestal Nun, a certain King's Daughter, by a most beautiful young Salamander; as indeed all the Heroes, and ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn, Vol. III • Aphra Behn
... afraid even of those things that preserve them. Consider the pettish, they are angry with their best and dearest friends. Consider the amorous and lascivious, in the height of their fury they dare violate a Vestal. For custom is very powerful to draw the temper of the body to anything that is suitable to it; and he that is apt to fall will stumble at everything that lies in his way. So it is no wonder that those that have raised in themselves an ...
— Essays and Miscellanies - The Complete Works Volume 3 • Plutarch
... her recital sufficiently cruel and mortifying; for the intention, at least, of the infidelity was so obvious, that she had not even taken the trouble to disguise it. She could never have imagined that G—— M—— meant to venerate her as a vestal. She must therefore clearly have made up her mind to pass at least one night with him. What an avowal for a lover's ears! However, I considered myself as partly the cause of her guilt, by having been the first to let her know ...
— Manon Lescaut • Abbe Prevost
... rattling scales: Then, in the steersman confident, he rests On the high poop his head, till they approach Lavinium's city, and her sacred seat, And Tiber's mouth. The people rush in heaps, And crowds of matrons and of fathers rush, Confus'dly hither; even the vestal maids Who guard the sacred fire: and all salute The god with joyful clamor. Then where'er The rapid vessel cleaves th' opposing stream, The incense crackles on the banks, and rais'd Are lines of altars, thick on either shore; ...
— The Metamorphoses of Publius Ovidus Naso in English blank verse Vols. I & II • Ovid
... 'Thou makest the vestal violate her oath; Thou blow'st the fire when temperance is thaw'd; Thou smother'st honesty, thou murder'st troth; Thou foul abettor! thou notorious bawd! Thou plantest scandal and displacest laud: Thou ravisher, thou traitor, thou ...
— The Rape of Lucrece • William Shakespeare [Clark edition]
... most serious delay arose, during the first act, through the evolutions of a triumphal march. With the most vociferous emphasis the master expressed intense dissatisfaction with the apathetic demeanour of our populace during the procession of vestal virgins. He was quite unaware of the fact that, in obedience to our stage manager's instructions, they had fallen on their knees upon the appearance of the priestesses; for he was so excited, and ...
— My Life, Volume I • Richard Wagner
... galante by Pater. We next note 659, a fine portrait group by Nattier: Mlle. de Lambec as Minerva, arming her brother the young Count of Brienne. To the same skilful portraitist are due: 660, a Knight of Malta; and 661, A Daughter of Louis XV. as a Vestal Virgin. By Boucher are: 48, R. of entrance, The Painter in his Studio, and R. wall, 47, The Three Graces; 46 and 49, L. wall, Venus and Vulcan, and Vulcan's Forge. Fragonnard is represented by some of his characteristic works executed with wonderful sleight of hand, 292-301. ...
— The Story of Paris • Thomas Okey
... King of the revenge of her armed hosts ("When Sheba's iron Lances splinter and Zion's Throne in Ruins falls"). In sad contrast comes the mournful chant which accompanies Sulamith as she passes to the vestal's home ("The Hour that robbed me of him"), and ends in her despairing cry rising above the chorus of attendants as Solomon also refuses ...
— The Standard Operas (12th edition) • George P. Upton
... chose the kingdom; but Amulius, having the money, and being able to do more with that than Numitor, took his kingdom from with great ease, and, fearing lest his daughter might have children who would supplant him, made her a Vestal, bound in that condition forever to live a single and maiden life. This lady some call Ilia, others Rhea, and others Silvia; however, not long after, contrary to the established laws of the Vestals, she had two sons of more than ...
— The Boys' and Girls' Plutarch - Being Parts of The "Lives" of Plutarch • Plutarch
... group, to which the attention of our concealed spectators had been directed, followed, with slow and hesitating steps, her still importuning friends into the yard, where, in her bridal robes of vestal white, and with her rich profusion of bright and wavy tresses hanging like a golden cloud over her shoulders, she stood at once a vision of loveliness and an object of commiseration. Again and again ...
— The Rangers - [Subtitle: The Tory's Daughter] • D. P. Thompson
... dare say it is; but like a great many other heresies, it is true. . . . But such green, green, green, as flutters in the vineyard down below the windows, that I never saw; nor yet such lilac and such purple as float between me and the distant hills; nor yet in anything, picture, book, or vestal boredom, such awful, solemn, impenetrable blue, as in that same sea. It has such an absorbing, silent, deep, profound effect, that I can't help thinking it suggested the idea of Styx. It looks as if a draught of it, only so much as you could scoop up on the beach in the hollow of your hand, ...
— The Life of Charles Dickens, Vol. I-III, Complete • John Forster
... ever it apprehended. And as the Spirit enlightens, so he enlivens this tabernacle or temple, he kindles a holy fire in his affections, which must never go out, it is such as cannot be kindled, if it go out, but by the beams of the sun, as the poets fancied the vestal-fire. The Spirit within the soul is a fire to consume his corruption, to burn up his dross and vanity. Christ comes in like a refiner, with the fire of the Spirit, and purges away earthly lusts, and makes the ...
— The Works of the Rev. Hugh Binning • Hugh Binning
... the tomb of Christ, when they find the stone rolled away and, looking around, see the Saviour's figure before them. The scene is low and cavern-like, with a brilliant light surrounding the tomb. This artist also painted "The Vestal Virgin," "King Cophetua and the Beggar Maid," "Pan and Psyche," "The Golden Stairs," and "Love Among ...
— Pictures Every Child Should Know • Dolores Bacon
... twentieth and draw them all, but the reader may be well satisfied if he clearly know these eight. The group they form is an entirely distinct one, exactly intermediate between the Vestals and Draconids, and cannot be rightly attached to either; for it is Draconid in structure and affinity—Vestal in form—and I don't see how to get the connection of the three families rightly expressed without taking the Draconidae out of the groups belonging to the dark Kora, and placing them next the Vestals, with the Monachae ...
— Proserpina, Volume 2 - Studies Of Wayside Flowers • John Ruskin
... glory Revived in Latium's later story, When, by her auspices, her son Laurentia's royal damsel won. She vestal Rhea's spotless charms Surrender'd to the War-god's arms; She for Romulus that day The Sabine daughters bore away; Thence sprung the Rhamnes' lofty name, Thence the old Quirites came; And thence the stock of high renown, The blood of Romulus, handed down Through many an age of ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXII. - June, 1843.,Vol. LIII. • Various
... wretched we! why were we hurried down This lubrique and adulterate age (Nay, added fat pollutions of our own), To increase the streaming ordures of the stage? What can we say to excuse our second fall? Let this thy Vestal, Heaven, atone for all! Her Arethusian stream remains unsoil'd, Unmixt with foreign filth, and undefil'd; Her wit was more than man, her innocence ...
— Book of English Verse • Bulchevy
... the Palatine, the following order was observed in the ceremonial pageant; first came Augustus as Emperor and Pontifex Maximus, next the Consuls, the Senate, the Quindecemviri and other colleges of priests, then followed the Vestal Virgins, and a group of one hundred and ten matrons (as many as there were years in the saeculum) selected from among the most exemplary matres familiae ...
— Pagan and Christian Rome • Rodolfo Lanciani
... Portia, and strongly individualized by a certain moral grandeur, a saintly grace, something of vestal dignity and purity, which render her less attractive and more imposing; she is "severe in youthful beauty," and inspires a reverence which would have placed her beyond the daring of one unholy wish or thought, except in such a ...
— Characteristics of Women - Moral, Poetical, and Historical • Anna Jameson
... His latest victories still thickest came, As near the centre motion doth increase; Till he, press'd down by his own weighty name, Did, like the vestal,[13] under spoils decease. ...
— The Poetical Works of John Dryden, Vol I - With Life, Critical Dissertation, and Explanatory Notes • John Dryden
... and I begged his body, that I might burn it upon the funeral-pile, and mourn over him. Ay, on my knees, amid the dust and blood of the arena, I begged that boon, while all the Roman maids and matrons, and those holy virgins they call vestal, and the rabble, shouted in mockery, deeming it rare sport, forsooth, to see Rome's fiercest gladiator turn pale, and tremble like a very child, before that piece of bleeding clay; but the praetor drew back as if I were pollution, and sternly said, 'Let the carrion rot! There are no noble ...
— Elson Grammer School Literature, Book Four. • William H. Elson and Christine Keck
... aware that the subsequent lines, referring to "a fair vestal throned by the west," are commonly understood to have been meant as a piece of delicate flattery to Queen Elizabeth. Mr. Halpin has recently given to this famous passage a new interpretation or application, ...
— Shakespeare: His Life, Art, And Characters, Volume I. • H. N. Hudson
... a vestal maid, I warrant, The bride of Heaven—Come—we may shake your purpose; For here I bring in hand a jolly suitor Hath ta'en degrees in the seven sciences That ladies love best—He is young and noble, Handsome and valiant, gay, and ...
— St. Ronan's Well • Sir Walter Scott
... written by her husband, and the jewels; and she looked on the paper, and said, "It is my lord's writing. That I was shipped at sea, I well remember, but whether there delivered of my babe, by the holy gods I cannot rightly say; but since my wedded lord I never shall see again, I will put on a vestal livery, and never more have joy." "Madam," said Cerimon, "if you purpose as you speak, the temple of Diana is not far distant from hence; there you may abide as a vestal. Moreover, if you please, a niece of mine shall there attend you." ...
— Tales from Shakespeare • Charles Lamb and Mary Lamb
... steamer-feathers is ludicrous; the price, too, is proportionately cheaper, for the feathers are infinitely better. Long, white, full, and curly feathers can be bought for much less than you give for them in England. We drove down to the town, finished our business transactions, and then went in the 'Vestal's' steam launch on board the 'Gamma,' one of the new Chinese gunboats on her ...
— A Voyage in the 'Sunbeam' • Annie Allnut Brassey
... time I marked—but thou could'st not— Flying between the cold moon and the earth, Cupid all armed. A certain aim he took At a fair vestal throned by the west, And loosed his love-shaft smartly from his bow As he would pierce a hundred thousand hearts. But I might see young Cupid's fiery dart Quenched in the chaste beams of the watery moon, And the imperial votaress passed on In maiden ...
— Brief History of English and American Literature • Henry A. Beers
... the country; and the stain Appears a spot upon a vestal's robe, The worse for what it soils. The fashion runs Down into scenes still rural, but alas, Scenes rarely graced with rural manners now. Time was when in the pastoral retreat The unguarded door was safe; men did ...
— The Task and Other Poems • William Cowper
... year, one of these—to whom the seed sown in London ball-rooms and German watering-places had produced nothing yet but those tiresome garlands of the vestal—I look curiously to see how she wears, thinking of the courtier's answer to Louis XIV. when the latter asked if he was looking older: "Sire, I see some more victories written on your forehead." It is more defeats that one can read so plainly on ...
— Guy Livingstone; - or, 'Thorough' • George A. Lawrence
... and his descendants after him, reigned over the town for many years. At length Numitor and Amulius, two brothers, quarrelled about the kingdom. Amulius seized the crown by force, cast out Numitor, and made his daughter, Rhea Silvia, a Vestal Virgin. The Vestal Virgins, the priestesses of the goddess Vesta, were sworn to celibacy. But Rhea Silvia broke her vow, and gave birth, by the god Mars, to the twins, Romulus and Remus. For this offence she was buried alive, the usual punishment ...
— TITLE • AUTHOR
... Luperci (wolf-men) held a shepherd's festival in the month of February, sacrificing goats and dogs to some rustic deity, and running naked through the streets afterwards, striking those they met with thongs cut from the hides of the victims. The six vestal virgins are well known, who had charge of keeping up the fire of Vesta, the house-fire of the state. They devoted their whole lives to this office, and enjoyed great respect. These priesthoods and corporations, instituted ...
— History of Religion - A Sketch of Primitive Religious Beliefs and Practices, and of the Origin and Character of the Great Systems • Allan Menzies
... passage in Valerius Maximus renders it probable that the Cimbrian states were of this number: "The wives of the Teutones besought Marius, after his victory, that he would deliver them as a present to the Vestal virgins; affirming that they should henceforth, equally with themselves, abstain from the embraces of the other sex. This request not being granted, they all strangled themselves the ...
— The Germany and the Agricola of Tacitus • Tacitus
... "Sacred fire! vestal virgins, too, I suppose! can they be Romans?" reasoned Aunt Maria, beginning to doubt ...
— Overland • John William De Forest
... I saw (but thou couldst not) Flying between the cold moon and the earth, Cupid all arm'd. A certain aim he took At a fair vestal, throned by the West, And loos'd his love-shaft smartly from his bow, As it should pierce a hundred thousand hearts; But I might see young cupid's fiery shaft Quench'd in the chaste beams of the watery moon, And the imperial votaress passed ...
— English Literature For Boys And Girls • H.E. Marshall
... of her freedom and independence; the horror that love or the joy of motherhood will only hinder her in the full exercise of her profession—all these together make of the emancipated modern woman a compulsory vestal, before whom life, with its great clarifying sorrows and its deep, entrancing joys, rolls on without ...
— Mother Earth, Vol. 1 No. 1, March 1906 • Various
... leaves; Phoebus is dumb, and votaries crowd no more The Delphian mountain and the Delian shore, And lone and still the Lybian Ammon stands, His utterance stifled by the desert sands. No more in Cnydian bower, or Cyprian grove The golden censers flame with gifts to Love; The pale-eyed Vestal bends no more and prays Where the eternal fire sends up its blaze; Cybele hears no more the cymbal's sound, The Lares shiver the fireless hearthstone round; And shatter'd shrine and altar lie o'erthrown, Inscriptionless, save where Oblivion lone Has dimly traced his name ...
— The Poets and Poetry of Cecil County, Maryland • Various
... the blast, and eager is the air; With flakes of feather'd snow the ground is spread; To step, with mincing pace, to early prayer, Our clay-cold vestal ...
— The Works of William Hogarth: In a Series of Engravings - With Descriptions, and a Comment on Their Moral Tendency • John Trusler
... solitudes and awful cells, Where heavenly-pensive Contemplation dwells, And ever-musing Melancholy reigns, What means this tumult in a vestal's veins? Why rove my thoughts beyond this last retreat? Why feels my heart its long-forgotten heat? Yet, yet I love!—From Abelard it came, And Eloisa yet must ...
— The Poetical Works Of Alexander Pope, Vol. 1 • Alexander Pope et al
... welcome from his father, and intense was the satisfaction of the brave seaman when his son showed him his commission and appointment as second lieutenant to the "Vestal," an eighteen gun sloop of war, commanded by Captain Gale, and destined ...
— The Grateful Indian - And other Stories • W.H.G. Kingston
... toil is a more than Vestal world. It is true that males can sometimes be perceived in it; but they appear only at particular seasons, and they have nothing whatever to do with the workers or with the work. None of them would presume ...
— Kwaidan: Stories and Studies of Strange Things • Lafcadio Hearn
... have been less fervent had she known that, for the time being, her protegee had assumed the role of a Vestal virgin, and that Elisabeth's care of the fires that winter was not fulfilment of a duty but part of a game. This, however, was Elisabeth's way; she frequently received credit for performing a duty when she was really ...
— The Farringdons • Ellen Thorneycroft Fowler
... descend: The getting it too much of life does spend. Take such a ground, whose gratitude may be A fair encouragement for industry. Let constant fires the winter's fury tame, And let thy kitchens be a vestal flame. Thee to the town let never suit at law, And rarely, very rarely, business draw. Thy active mind in equal temper keep, In undisturbed peace, yet not in sleep. Let exercise a vigorous health maintain, ...
— Cowley's Essays • Abraham Cowley
... for the bridal hour Of nymph and naiad from woodland bower; Till vestal pearls that on leaflets lay, Ravished with beauty ...
— Poems • Mary Baker Eddy
... science, and an illustration of some of the manifold errors and absurdities which their hasty assumption is apt to involve—considerations probably equivalent to those which induced Lord Bacon to liken final causes to "vestal virgins." So, if any one, it is here Bacon that "sitteth in the seat of the scornful." As to Darwin, in the section from which the extracts were made, he is considering a subsidiary question, and trying to obviate a particular difficulty, ...
— Evolution and Ethics and Other Essays • Thomas H. Huxley
... read, and that the comedies of Aristophanes were unworthy of presentation in a country tavern! One is tempted to believe that the father was a man of robuster judgment in such matters than the son, whose own rather mediocre literary equipment, made him the easy prey of that acidulous vestal of literature, Voltaire. However that may be, he left a useful and unexpected legacy to his son, provided, indeed, the sinews for the making of a powerful ...
— Germany and the Germans - From an American Point of View (1913) • Price Collier
... agitated. She had always looked on Alice as excluded by her misfortune from the usual destiny of her sex, as consecrated from her birth for a vestal's lot. She had never thought of her being wooed as a wife, and she repelled the idea as ...
— Helen and Arthur - or, Miss Thusa's Spinning Wheel • Caroline Lee Hentz
... I've affronted you. Isn't that it, fair angel, fair—what do you call it?—fair vestal? Ah, well! would you was safe in my own house! But honour must be minded now, not courting. Rollicum-rorum, tol-lol- lorum. Pardon me, my sweet, I like ye! It may be a come down for me, owning land; ...
— The Trumpet-Major • Thomas Hardy
... as some say, tho' according to others the Son of Mars by one of the Vestal Virgins, built the City of Rome, and reign'd there 37 Years; after him reigned six Kings successively (their Names are of no Consequence) but the Wickedness of the last King put an end to the regal State, ...
— Remarks on Clarissa (1749) • Sarah Fielding
... the coach to herself. Jack Hamlin, a gambler, having once silently ridden with her in the same coach, afterward threw a decanter at the head of a confederate for mentioning her name in a barroom. The over-dressed mother of a pupil whose paternity was doubtful had often lingered near this astute Vestal's temple, never daring to enter its sacred precincts, but content to ...
— Short Story Classics (American) Vol. 2 • Various
... Light to a Cigar Evening Amusement Trip to MATANZAS—El Casero Slave Plantation Sugar Making Luxuriant Vegetation Punic Faith and Cuban Cruelty H.M.S. "Vestal" Bribery Admiralty Wisdom Cigars and Manufactory Population—Chinese Laws of Domicile—Police and Slavery Increase of Slaves and Produce Tobacco, Games, and Lotteries Cuban Jokes Sketch of Governors The ...
— Lands of the Slave and the Free - Cuba, The United States, and Canada • Henry A. Murray
... hand, they take a decayed fellow, they are in a worse condition in marriage than either maids or widows. We think them well provided for, because they have a man to lie with, as the Romans concluded Clodia Laeta, a vestal nun, violated, because Caligula had approached her, though it was declared he did no more but approach her: but, on the contrary, we by that increase their necessity, forasmuch as the touch and company ...
— The Essays of Montaigne, Complete • Michel de Montaigne
... be the rival of a cow: Others to prostitute their great hearts, To he baboons' and monkeys' sweet-hearts; Some with the Dev'l himself in league grow, By's representative a Negro. 400 'Twas this made vestal-maids love-sick, And venture to be bury'd quick: Some by their fathers, and their brothers, To be made mistresses and mothers. 'Tis this that proudest dames enamours 405 On lacquies and valets des chambres; Their haughty stomachs overcomes, And makes 'em stoop to dirty grooms; To ...
— Hudibras • Samuel Butler
... to consult and worship in, and feast, and buy, and sell; and this [Greek: demos] they walled about for its safety, and called [Greek: ten polin] the city: and this I take to have been the original of Villages, Market-Towns, Cities, common Councils, Vestal Temples, Feasts and Fairs, in Europe: the Prytaneum, [Greek: pyros tameion], was a Court with a place of worship, and a perpetual fire kept therein upon an Altar for sacrificing: from the word [Greek: ...
— The Chronology of Ancient Kingdoms Amended • Isaac Newton
... out of a block of wood; hearing this signal, the worshipful sisterhood, bedaubed, by way of insignia, with red and white chalk or clay, follow her from the village to some remote nook in the jungle, where the lodge is tiled. Sentinels are stationed around whilst business is transacted before a vestal fire, which must burn for a fortnight or three weeks, in the awe- compelling presence of a brass pipkin filled with herbs, and a basin, both zebra'd like the human limbs. The Rev. William Walker ...
— Two Trips to Gorilla Land and the Cataracts of the Congo Volume 1 • Richard F. Burton
... compliance with the old Greek observance of its being bent there by the pressure of the helmet. That rippling of it down her shoulders comes from the Athena of Corinth; the raising of it on her forehead, from the knot of the hair of Diana, changed into the vestal fire of the angels. But chiefly, the calmness of the features in the one face, and their anxiety in the other, indicate first, indeed, the characteristic difference in every conception of the schools, the Greek never representing ...
— Aratra Pentelici, Seven Lectures on the Elements of Sculpture - Given before the University of Oxford in Michaelmas Term, 1870 • John Ruskin
... women out with their milk-pails, carried on yokes from the shoulder: Leopoldine, Jensine, and little Rebecca. All three barefooted. The Margravine, Inger herself, is not with them; she is indoors preparing the meal. Tall and stately, as she moves about her house, a Vestal tending the fire of a kitchen stove. Inger has made her stormy voyage, 'tis true, has lived in a city a while, but now she is home; the world is wide, swarming with tiny specks—Inger has been one of them. All but nothing in ...
— Growth of the Soil • Knut Hamsun
... and felt the nobler regenerated by the innocent companionship you gave me. I wanted you, but it was not the touch of hands or lips, the soft encounter of eyes, the tones of tenderness, I wanted most. It was that something beyond my reach, vital and vestal, invisible, yet irresistible; that something, be it heart, soul, or mind, which drew me to you by an attraction genial and genuine as itself. My Sylvia, that was love, and when it came to me I took it in, sure that whether its fruition was granted or denied I should be a manlier man for ...
— Moods • Louisa May Alcott
... was a Vestal, seems to have taken sanctuary with the Vestals, as did the mother and sister of Augustus in B.C. 43. The special indignity of which Cicero complains is that she had been forced to leave the sanctuary and appear at the bank of Valerius, ...
— The Letters of Cicero, Volume 1 - The Whole Extant Correspodence in Chronological Order • Marcus Tullius Cicero
... AEneas, and his descendants for three hundred years were the Latin tribes. After eleven generations of kings, Amulius usurps the throne, which belonged to Numitor, the elder brother, and dooms his only daughter, Silvia, to perpetual virginity as a Vestal. Silvia, visited by a god, gives birth to twins, Romulus and Remus. The twins, exposed by the order of Amulius, are suckled by a she-wolf, and brought up by one of the king's herdsmen. They feed their flocks on the Palatine, but ...
— Ancient States and Empires • John Lord
... is indeed far more poetical than anything else in Latin literature. The loves of the Vestal and the God of War, the cradle laid among the reeds of Tiber, the fig-tree, the she-wolf, the shepherd's cabin, the recognition, the fratricide, the rape of the Sabines, the death of Tarpeia, the fall of Hostus Hostilius, the ...
— Lays of Ancient Rome • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... the August, I being his favorite, bestowed his name Upon me, and I hold it still in trust, In memory of him and of his fame. I am the Virgin, and my vestal flame Burns less intensely than the Lion's rage; Sheaves are my only garlands, and I claim The golden ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... he had powerful relations, whom Sylla did not care to offend. Aurelius Cotta, who was perhaps his mother's brother, Mamercus Aemilius, a distinguished patrician, and singularly also the College of the Vestal Virgins, interceded for his pardon. The Dictator consented at last, but with prophetic reluctance. "Take him," he said at length, "since you will have it so—but I would have you know that the youth for whom you ...
— Caesar: A Sketch • James Anthony Froude
... jests whether at his own expense or that of friend or foe, was wont to observe that there were three things which nobody would ever believe, and which yet were very true; that Queen Elizabeth deserved her title of the, throned vestal, that he was himself a good Catholic, and that Cardinal Albert was a good general. It is probable that the assertions ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... of sorcery! and on these counts have I been indicted, found guilty, and sentenced to be burnt as a sacrilegious heretic, an unnatural robber, and a formidable wizard! Antonia, the mother of seven children, is to be—like the unchaste vestal—immured! Oh Heaven! whilst Druso the Informer, receiving at the same time the portion of a prince for his venal treachery, will celebrate his union with Phaedera, amidst the shrieks and groans ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction. - Volume 19, No. 531, Saturday, January 28, 1832. • Various
... she urged her husband to take vigorous action against Catiline, who had compromised her half-sister Fabia, a vestal virgin; also to give evidence against Clodius, being jealous of his ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 3 - "Chitral" to "Cincinnati" • Various
... the guardians of a state, And when they fail, portend approaching fate: For that which Rome to conquest did inspire, Was not the Vestal, but the Muses fire; Heav'n joins the blessings, no declining age E'er felt the raptures of ...
— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753) - Vol. IV • Theophilus Cibber
... of the sun immense silken awnings were stretched over the arena and the auditorium. When the theatre was full, it presented a scene of dazzling splendour. In the best places sat senators in purple-bordered togas, the priests of the various temples, the Vestal virgins in black veils, warriors in gold-embroidered uniforms. There sat Roman citizens in white or coloured togas, bareheaded, beardless, and closely cropped, eagerly talking in a language as euphonious as French and Italian. All strangers who were staying in Rome were there, ambassadors ...
— From Pole to Pole - A Book for Young People • Sven Anders Hedin
... place till two and three of the morning, waiting for Germans to cross the flooded fields. For him cigarettes were an endless chain that went through his life. From the expiring stub he lit his fresh smoke, as if he were maintaining a vestal flame. He kept puffing till the live butt singed his upturned mustache. He squinted his eyes to escape the ...
— Golden Lads • Arthur Gleason and Helen Hayes Gleason
... it had not accomplished the impossible and transmuted the pirate of body into the pure of soul. It would not be true to say that he never thought lewdly of her; he would have thought lewdly of an angel or a vestal maid; that was ingrain in the composition of the man; but he thought well of her as he had never thought well of women before since he first scorched his stripling's fingers, and he would have killed twenty men to keep her from hearing a foul word. Sometimes when ...
— The Lady of Loyalty House - A Novel • Justin Huntly McCarthy
... a religion among them; and seeing that the worship had been carried on without fail, that the vestal fire had never gone down upon the hearth, I should not have said that the Dales had walked their ways without high principle. To this religion they had all adhered, and the new heir had ever entered in upon his domain without other encumbrances ...
— The Small House at Allington • Anthony Trollope
... condition of a dim spark hardly perceptible. It is the philosophic child, the immanent Logos or the Christ incarnate, which legend represents as born obscurely in the midst of the filth of a cave serving as a stable. The initiation becomes the vestal of this inner fire [Symbol: Sulfur]; archetype or principle of all individuality. She knows how to care for it as long as it is brooded in the ashes. Then she devotes herself to nourishing it judiciously, to render it keen for the moment when it ...
— Hidden Symbolism of Alchemy and the Occult Arts • Herbert Silberer
... several losses by poker, the whisky bills, and the record of a "jamboree" at Tooley's, the vague expenses whereof footed up $275, were received with enthusiastic cheers by the audience. A single milliner's bill for $125 was hailed with delight; $100 expended in treating the Vestal Virgin Combination Troupe almost canonized his memory; $50 for a simple buggy ride with Deacon Fisk brought down the house; $500 advanced, without security, and unpaid, for the electioneering expenses of Assemblyman ...
— Drift from Two Shores • Bret Harte
... group. Mr. Craske had caught sight of Lady Ostermore and Mistress Winthrop, and he fell to giggling, a flimsy handkerchief to his painted lips. "Oh, 'Sbud!" he bleated. "Let me die! The audaciousness of the creature! And behold me the port and glance of her! Cold as a vestal, ...
— The Lion's Skin • Rafael Sabatini
... north-east corner of the temple, raised on three steps and bearing traces of a mosaic pavement, probably supported a round temple of Diana in her character of Vesta, like the round temple of Vesta in the Roman Forum. Here the sacred fire would seem to have been tended by Vestal Virgins, for the head of a Vestal in terra-cotta was found on the spot, and the worship of a perpetual fire, cared for by holy maidens, appears to have been common in Latium from the earliest to the latest times. Further, at the annual festival of the goddess, hunting dogs were crowned and wild ...
— The Golden Bough - A study of magic and religion • Sir James George Frazer
... not discuss either now or at any other time," said Ludovico, with a look that showed he was in earnest. "But, as for La Diva Bianca, I have no objection to tell all I know to anybody. My belief is that she is as correct and proper, and all that sort of thing, as a Vestal." ...
— A Siren • Thomas Adolphus Trollope |
