"Centaur" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... I mark'd, as high as to their brow Immers'd, of whom the mighty Centaur thus: "These are the souls of tyrants, who were given To blood and rapine. Here they wail aloud Their merciless wrongs. Here Alexander dwells, And Dionysius fell, who many a year Of woe wrought for fair Sicily. ...
— The Divine Comedy, Complete - The Vision of Paradise, Purgatory and Hell • Dante Alighieri
... Krane, like a centaur, swirled by me to do the thing I ordered. Behind me rode Beverly Clarenden bareheaded, his face aglow with power. As I looked back the dust engulfed him for a moment, and then I heard an arrow sing, and a sharp cry of pain. The dust had lifted and Beverly and a huge Indian, ...
— Vanguards of the Plains • Margaret McCarter
... I am neither your Minotaur, nor your Centaur, nor your satyr, nor your hyaena, nor your babion, but your ...
— Cynthia's Revels • Ben Jonson
... wild and picturesque rush from the beach, like a Centaur in a scarlet cloak, was an actual measure of prudence; for in those cruel times of wreckers and smugglers the survivors who landed from a wreck were often murdered by the people they were thrown ...
— Lynton and Lynmouth - A Pageant of Cliff & Moorland • John Presland
... was alone he rose up and set his face to the moon, and journeyed for seven moons, speaking to no man nor making any answer. And when the seventh moon had waned he reached that desert which is the desert of the Great River. And having found a cavern in which a Centaur had once dwelt, he took it for his place of dwelling, and made himself a mat of reeds on which to lie, and became a hermit. And every hour the Hermit praised God that He had suffered him to keep some knowledge of Him and of His ...
— Selected Prose of Oscar Wilde - with a Preface by Robert Ross • Oscar Wilde
... shore there was a second ditch and wall, and behind it were the beaks of the ships and the host of Aquaiusha, even of his own dear people the Achaeans. There were the old blazons, and the spears that had fought below Troy town. There were the two lions of Mycenae, the Centaur of the son of Polypaetas, son of Pirithous; there were the Swan of Lacedaemon, and the Bull of the Kings of Crete, the Rose of Rhodes, the Serpent of Athens, and many another knightly bearing of old friends and kindred dear. And now they were the blazons of foemen, ...
— The World's Desire • H. Rider Haggard and Andrew Lang
... or spirits. The horse then is his friend under all circumstances, and inseparable from him; he may be even said to live on horseback, he eats and sleeps without dismounting, till the fable has been current that he has a centaur's nature, half man and half beast. Hence it was that the ancient Saxons had a horse for their ensign in war; thus it is that the Ottoman ordinances are, I believe, to this day dated from "the imperial stirrup," and the display ...
— Historical Sketches, Volume I (of 3) • John Henry Newman
... sheep, black swan, lusus naturae[Lat], rara avis[Lat], queer fish; mongrel, random breed; half-caste, half-blood, half-breed; metis[Lat], crossbreed, hybrid, mule, hinny, mulatto; tertium quid[Lat], hermaphrodite. [mythical animal] phoenix, chimera, hydra, sphinx, minotaur; griffin, griffon; centaur; saggittary[obs3]; kraken, cockatrice, wyvern, roc, dragon, sea serpent; mermaid, merman, merfolk[obs3]; unicorn; Cyclops, "men whose heads do grow beneath their shoulders" [Othello]; teratology. [unconformable to the surroundings] fish out of water; ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... reassure me gave his name and rank in this delicate way. I shall never forget his pleasant smile as he returned my salute after thanking him for his suggestion. He was a superb-looking man, dark complexioned, wearing full black whiskers, and sat his fine horse like a Centaur, tall, straight, and graceful, the ideal soldier. I do not remember to have ever seen this remarkable officer again. He was one of the few great commanders developed by the war. A quiet, modest man, he yet possessed a very decisive ...
— War from the Inside • Frederick L. (Frederick Lyman) Hitchcock
... foliage scrolls with animals within them; on Eve's side an ass, horse, camel, elephant, hippopotamus, and the Oriental motif of a griffin stooping over its prey; on Adam's side a woman riding on a horse, a centaur with a dart, a mermaid, a sea-horse, and at the bottom a griffin devouring a scroll, with a human head attached. Below the ornament are semi-nude caryatid figures on one side; on the other they have turbans and shoes, and one has ankle ...
— The Shores of the Adriatic - The Austrian Side, The Kuestenlande, Istria, and Dalmatia • F. Hamilton Jackson
... very acme of bliss. I was thoroughly in sympathy with the passage of Humboldt where he speaks of the tropical skies and vegetation in the following beautiful manner:—"He on whom the Southern Cross has never gleamed nor the Centaur frowned, above whom the clouds of Magellan have never circled, who has never stood within the shadow of great palms, nor clothed himself with the gloom of the primeval forests, does not know how the soul seems to have a new birth in the midst of these new and splendid surroundings. Nowhere but under ...
— As I Remember - Recollections of American Society during the Nineteenth Century • Marian Gouverneur
... from this simple origin, according to some explanations, that the fable of the Centaurs sprung. We must remark, that we place no confidence in the proposed etymology of the word Centauros, and almost as little in the explanation of the story. The centaur Chiron in Homer was a model of justice, and the poet appears to have had no idea of the monstrous combination of two animals. Pindar, in his second Pythian Ode, first makes us acquainted with the Hippocentaur, or half horse and half man. Though it cannot be imagined that the Greeks ...
— How to See the British Museum in Four Visits • W. Blanchard Jerrold
... merchantmen from the West Indies in the month of July.—He accordingly hoisted his flag on board the Ramillies of 74 guns, and sailed on the 25th from Blue Fields, having under his orders the Canada and Centaur of 74 guns each, the Pallas frigate of 36 guns, and the following French ships, taken by Lord Rodney and Sir Samuel Hood, out of the armament commanded by the Count de Grasse, viz. the Ville de Paris, of 110 guns; the Glorieux and ...
— Thrilling Narratives of Mutiny, Murder and Piracy • Anonymous
... swan, lusus naturae [Lat.], rara avis [Lat.], queer fish; mongrel, random breed; half-caste, half-blood, half-breed; metis [Lat.], crossbreed, hybrid, mule, hinny, mulatto; tertium quid [Lat.], hermaphrodite. [Mythical animals] phoenix, chimera, hydra, sphinx, minotaur; griffin, griffon; centaur; saggittary^; kraken, cockatrice, wyvern, roc, dragon, sea serpent; mermaid, merman, merfolk^; unicorn; Cyclops, men whose heads do grow beneath their shoulders [Othello]; teratology. [unconformable to the surroundings] fish out of water; neither one thing nor another, neither fish nor ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... winter, planted everywhere in nature. This passage of the Sun into Taurus, whose attributes he assumes on his return from the lower hemisphere or the shades, is marked by the rising in the evening of the Wolf and the Centaur, and by the heliacal setting of Orion, called the Star of Horus, and which thenceforward is in conjunction with the Sun of Spring, in his triumph over the ...
— Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry • Albert Pike
... the situation of the Swedes since the capture of Sweaborg and the recapture of Gothland, states that the Russians and Swedes had each eleven sail of the line: it was agreed that the Swedish fleet should be reinforced by two ships, the Centaur of 74 guns, Rear-admiral Sir Samuel Hood, and the Implacable 74, Captain Byam Martin, and take a position at Hango-udde, a small, ill-fortified harbour at the north-west point of Finland, round which the Russian flotilla ...
— Memoirs and Correspondence of Admiral Lord de Saumarez. Vol II • Sir John Ross
... it pitched, the human clothespin stuck to his seat, and apparently with as little concern as if he had been in a rowboat gently moved to and fro by the waves. Jed rode like a centaur, every motion attuned to those of the animal as much as if he were a part of it. No matter how it pounded or tossed, he stuck securely to the ...
— A Texas Ranger • William MacLeod Raine
... same hero who is celebrated by Homer in the Iliad; but it is the previous history of Achilles, not his conduct in the Trojan war, which forms the subject of the poem of Statius. While the young hero is under the care of the Centaur Chiron, Thetis makes a visit to the preceptor's sequestered habitation, where, to save her son from the fate which, it was predicted, would befall him at Troy, if he should go to the siege of that place, she orders him to ...
— The Lives Of The Twelve Caesars, Complete - To Which Are Added, His Lives Of The Grammarians, Rhetoricians, And Poets • C. Suetonius Tranquillus
... have been considered the first edifice in Rome, next to the capitol, particularly for its fine collection of statues. The most remarkable among them were the Fighting Gladiator; Silenus and a Faun; Seneca, in black marble, or rather a slave at the baths; Camillus; the Hermaphrodite; the Centaur and Cupid; two Fauns, playing on the flute; Ceres; an Egyptian; a statue of the younger Nero; the busts of Lucius Verus, Alexander, Faustina and Verus; various relievos, among which was one representing Curtius; an urn, on which was represented the festival of Bacchus; another ...
— Anecdotes of Painters, Engravers, Sculptors and Architects and Curiosities of Art (Vol. 3 of 3) • S. Spooner
... "The Centaur not Fabulous; in Six Letters to a Friend, on the Life in Vogue," which reads very much like the most objurgatory parts of the "Night Thoughts" reduced to prose. It is preceded by a preface which, though addressed to a lady, is in its denunciations of vice as grossly indecent and almost ...
— The Essays of "George Eliot" - Complete • George Eliot
... but his great performances were not. He fought with the centaurs and giants. When his period of slavery had ended, he married Dejanira; with her he went to Trachinia. At the river Evenus he encountered the centaur Nessus. Nessus, under pretence of carrying Dejanira over, attempted to offer her violence, which caused Hercules to slay him with a poisoned arrow. Nessus, before expiring, instructed Dejanira how to prepare a love ...
— The Mysteries of All Nations • James Grant
... plain boiling, roasting, and broiling. The first that rode a horse thither, though in several other voyages he had contracted an acquaintance and familiarity with them, put them into so terrible a fright, with his centaur appearance, that they killed him with their arrows before they could come to discover who he was. Their buildings are very long, and of capacity to hold two or three hundred people, made of the barks of tall trees, reared with ...
— The Essays of Montaigne, Complete • Michel de Montaigne
... sides. This dispute, however, was of short duration. In about half an hour admiral Boscawen's mizen-mast and topsail-yards were shot away, and the enemy hoisted all the sail they could carry. Mr. Boscawen having shifted his flag from the Namur to the Newark, joined some other ships in attacking the Centaur, of seventy-four guns, which, being thus overpowered, was obliged to surrender. The British admiral pursued them all night, during which the Souveraine and the Guerrier altered their course, and deserted their commander. At day-break, M. de la Clue, whose left leg had been ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. - From William and Mary to George II. • Tobias Smollett
... for little Maurice, a tyrannical little gentleman, who domineered over the entire household, and would have been grievously spoilt, if his mother had not taken all the crossing the stout little will upon herself. He had a gallant pair of legs, and the disposition of a young Centaur, he seemed to divide the world into things that could be ridden on, and that could not; and when he bounced at the study door, with 'Papa! gee! gee!' and lifted up his round, rosy face, and despotic blue eyes, Mr. Kendal's foot was at his service, and the ...
— The Young Step-Mother • Charlotte M. Yonge
... the famous "Borghese Gladiator" or Heros Combattant, actually, a warrior attacking a mounted Amazon. An inscription states that it is the work of Agasias of Ephesus. To the R. is a fine Marsyas, doomed to be flayed alive by order of Apollo; to L. 562, the Borghese Centaur, and near the exit, 529, the charming Diana of Gabii, a Greek girl fastening her mantle. We pass to the Salle du Tibre, in the centre of which stands the famous Diana and the Stag, acquired for Francis ...
— The Story of Paris • Thomas Okey
... forget the many times when he dropped the reins and signalled to the horse only by the gentle touch of knee, of heel, by voice, by body swing, by wishing thus and so, and got response? For the horse and he were perfectly attuned and trained—the reins superfluous. Thus, centaur-like, they went, with more than twice the power that either ...
— The Preacher of Cedar Mountain - A Tale of the Open Country • Ernest Thompson Seton
... statues at regular intervals around the hedge. The like of it could be found nowhere. Here, against a background of green, and hanging forward over a green lawn, were an Indian Chief, a Golden Hind, a Triton, a Centaur, an effigy of King Charles I., another of Britannia, a third of the god Pan, and a fourth of Mr. John Phillipson, sometime alderman and shipowner of Harwich. Though rudely modelled, the majority received an extremely ...
— The Blue Pavilions • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... known that persons are likely to be competent trainers of animals if they are born under the influence of the Whale or of the Centaur or the Lion or the Scorpion or when the Lesser Bear rises at dawn or in those watches of the night when the Great Bear, after swinging low in the northern sky, is again beginning to swing upwards, or at those hours of the day when, as it can be established by calculations, ...
— Andivius Hedulio • Edward Lucas White
... attitudinizes. Ariadne is really asleep, and Hercules, in wine, really sinks to the ground; the dancing girl floats in the air as though in her native element; the centaur gallops without an effort; it is simple reality—the very reverse of realism—nature such as she actually is when she is pleasant to behold, in the full effusion of her grace, advancing like a queen because she is a queen, and because she could not move in any other fashion. ...
— The Wonders of Pompeii • Marc Monnier
... events, such as a scene at the Cockpit, the trial of Thurtell (a very powerful article), &c. That delightful punster and humorist, with pen or pencil, Tom Hood, sent to the London his first poems of any ambition or length—"Lycus the Centaur," and "The Two Peacocks of Bedfont." Keats, "that sleepless soul that perished in its pride," and Montgomery, both contributed poems. Sir John Bowring, the accomplished linguist, wrote on Spanish poetry. Mr. Henry Southern, the editor of that excellent work the Retrospective ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury
... it not been to me a friend in suffering, a companion in good and evil fortune? It reminds me of that centaur's tunic which could not be torn off without carrying away the flesh and blood of its wearer. I am unwilling to give it up; whatever gratitude for the past, and whatever piety toward my vanished youth is in me, seem to forbid it. The warp of this rag is woven out of ...
— Amiel's Journal • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... Instinctively they reined in, and at the instant Lord Godalming and Jonathan dashed up at one side and Dr. Seward and Mr. Morris on the other. The leader of the gypsies, a splendid looking fellow who sat his horse like a centaur, waved them back, and in a fierce voice gave to his companions some word to proceed. They lashed the horses which sprang forward. But the four men raised their Winchester rifles, and in an unmistakable way commanded them to stop. At the same moment ...
— Dracula • Bram Stoker
... of his untrained steed, held sufficient control over it to keep it always within the circle of the spectators' vision. At a signal from the prince, two horsemen, who had remained as close as possible to the daring centaur, seized him with astonishing swiftness, and galloped away with him before those who looked on could understand the new manoeuvre. The horse, for a moment stupefied, soon darted away at full speed and was lost in the midst of the herd. This exploit ...
— Celebrated Women Travellers of the Nineteenth Century • W. H. Davenport Adams
... Shew cold through watery pinions; make more bright The Star-Queen's crescent on her marriage night: Haste, haste away!— Castor has tamed the planet Lion, see! And of the Bear has Pollux mastery: A third is in the race! who is the third, Speeding away swift as the eagle bird? The ramping Centaur! The Lion's mane's on end: the Bear how fierce! The Centaur's arrow ready seems to pierce 600 Some enemy: far forth his bow is bent Into the blue of heaven. He'll be shent, Pale unrelentor, When he shall hear ...
— Endymion - A Poetic Romance • John Keats
... to decipher illegible inscriptions, to contemplate a throttled centaur on a dilapidated frieze, or a carved acanthus on a fallen capital, grope over the Acropolis and invoke Athenian Pallas," said Mike; "but for me these painted seraglios and terraced, bower-canopied gardens, vocal with nightingales and seeming to impregnate ...
— Little Classics, Volume 8 (of 18) - Mystery • Various
... Holofernally bad. I once heard a better one on the same subject, of scriptural be-head-edness. Where is a centaur first mentioned? John's head on a charger. The postage stamp on your lawyer's bill—mine especially—represents the same thing, with the substitution of General Washington for John. Rarey tamed Cruiser—I wonder if he ...
— Continental Monthly - Volume 1 - Issue 3 • Various
... fall over and hide the fruit most picturesquely; two ivory cups, one in alto, the other in basso relievo; the latter the finer and most charmingly carved; a small group in bronze by John Bologna, "Dejanira and the Centaur," admirably done. Here are tables of the rarest marbles, one composed of a block from the Himalaya Mountains. In one of the windows is a piece of African marble brought to this country for George IV; also a small bath of Egyptian porphyry. In the lower room was a vase containing ...
— Recollections of the late William Beckford - of Fonthill, Wilts and Lansdown, Bath • Henry Venn Lansdown
... (1856) asks: "What Centaur have we here, half man, half beast, neighing defiance to all the world? What conglomerate of thought is this before us, with insolence, philosophy, tenderness, blasphemy, beauty, and gross indecency tumbling in drunken confusion ...
— Walt Whitman Yesterday and Today • Henry Eduard Legler
... the waist and the remainder horses. They are a noble race of monsters. One of them, as you know, was able, guided by the light of reason alone, to direct his steps towards eternal blessedness, and you sometimes see his heroic bosom prancing on the clouds. Chiron, the Centaur, deserved for his works on the earth to share the abode of the blessed; he it was who gave Achilles his education; and that young hero, when he left the Centaur's hands, lived for two years, dressed as a young girl, among the daughters of King Lycomedes. He shared their games and their bed without ...
— Penguin Island • Anatole France
... accepting his testimony, unless I were well satisfied, not only as to his previous acquaintance with zebras, but as to his powers and opportunities of observation in the present case. If, however, my informant assured me that he beheld a centaur trotting down that famous thoroughfare, I should emphatically decline to credit his statement; and this even if he were the most saintly of men and ready to suffer martyrdom in support of his belief. In such a case, I could, of course, entertain no doubt ...
— Hume - (English Men of Letters Series) • T.H. Huxley
... drive. At Leipzig, not to waste time, he declines entering the Town; positively will not, though the cannon-salvos are booming all round;—"breakfasts in the suburbs, with a certain Horse-dealer (ROSS-HANDLER) now deceased:" a respectable Centaur, capable, no doubt, of bargaining a little about cavalry mountings, while one eats, with appetite and at one's ease. Which done, Majesty darts off again, the cannon-salvos booming out a second time;—and by assiduous driving gets home to Potsdam about eight at night. ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. IX. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... along the Orizava road, the major and Jack riding in advance. I could not help smiling at the contrast between these two equestrians; the former with his great gaunt horse, looming up in the uncertain light of the morning like some huge centaur; while Jack and Twidget appeared the two representatives of ...
— The Rifle Rangers • Captain Mayne Reid
... our speech? Wine it is that wounds thee, honey sweet wine, that is the bane of others too, even of all who take great draughts and drink out of measure. Wine it was that darkened the mind even of the Centaur, renowned Eurytion, in the hall of high-hearted Peirithous, when he went to the Lapithae; and after that his heart was darkened with wine, he wrought foul deeds in his frenzy, in the house of Peirithous. ...
— DONE INTO ENGLISH PROSE • S. H. BUTCHER, M.A.
... stalls but is higher and more elaborate. Upon the back of the throne inside is a small mitre. The finial in front consists of an elephant carrying a man in his trunk, and bearing on his back a castle filled with armed soldiery, and in front of the elephant is a centaur (renewed), the shaft under which is again of open-work. The end of this desk displays a large mitre above a shield charged with the three stars of St. Wilfrid and supported by two angels, between whom is a scroll ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: The Cathedral Church of Ripon - A Short History of the Church and a Description of Its Fabric • Cecil Walter Charles Hallett
... Centaurea, represented here by the blue ragged sailor of gardens, and not our Centaury, a distinctly American group of plants, which, Ovid tells us, cured a wound in the foot of the Centaur Chiron, made by an ...
— Wild Flowers, An Aid to Knowledge of Our Wild Flowers and - Their Insect Visitors - - Title: Nature's Garden • Neltje Blanchan
... physician, CHIRON, M.D., appears as a Centaur, as we look at him through the lapse of thirty centuries, the modern country-doctor, if he could be seen about thirty miles off, could not be distinguished from a wheel-animalcule. He inhabits a wheel-carriage. He thinks of stationary dwellings as Long ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 31, May, 1860 • Various
... his dissipations Sir Jocelyn preserved one characteristic, an unerring instinct for field-sports that no amount of drinking could impair. He could hit a flying bird with a stone, was a deadly shot for snipe or mallard, rode like a centaur, and fished with the instinct of a heron. It is probable that his consciousness of this faculty was at the bottom of his startling recovery. Possibly he was frightened to find a little of his skill failing. I only know that at the age of ...
— The Tragic Bride • Francis Brett Young
... outlaw known as Jazz. The horse was a sorrel, and it knew all the tricks of its kind. It went sunfishing, tried weaving and fence-rowing, at last toppled over backward after a frantic leap upward. The rider, long-bodied and lithe, rode like a centaur. Except for the moment when he stepped out of the saddle as the outlaw fell on its back, he stuck to his seat as though ...
— Tangled Trails - A Western Detective Story • William MacLeod Raine
... lithe man was all bone and sinew and muscle. He rode like a Centaur, as if he were a part of the horse, as easily and gracefully as a chip does the waves. The outlaw was furious with hate, blind with a madness that surged through it; but all its weaving and fence-rowing could not shake the perfect poise of the rider, ...
— A Daughter of the Dons - A Story of New Mexico Today • William MacLeod Raine
... ahead, and he followed, shouting, imploring her to go back. Finally he settled to the chase, resolved on overtaking her. It was no easy task, for she rode like a centaur, and she ...
— Trailin'! • Max Brand
... like this," remarked Stahl, apparently casually, "that I once in Tiflis overheard two mountain Georgians talking together as they examined a reproduction of a modern picture—Boecklin's 'Centaur.' They spoke in half whispers, but I caught the trend of what they said. You know the ...
— The Centaur • Algernon Blackwood
... tell us that Sagittarius was the same as Chiron the centaur; others, that he was Crocus, a famous hunter, the son of Euphemia, who nursed the Muses, at whose intercession, he was, after his death, promoted to the ninth place in the Zodiac, under the name ...
— Trips to the Moon • Lucian
... headed by the flagship, then steamed toward the Dutch coast, followed by the Coventry, Dragoon, Danal and Centaur. Other ships followed in line with their navigation lights showing. The picture was a noble one as the great vessels, with the moon still shining, plowed their way to take part in the surrender of ...
— History of the World War - An Authentic Narrative of the World's Greatest War • Francis A. March and Richard J. Beamish
... boiling river of blood, stood the tyrants, among whom were Dionysius, Azzolin, and Attila, uttering loud laments. If they ventured to stir from their place of torment they were pierced by the arrows of the Centaurs that guarded the banks. The Centaur Nessus conveyed Dante across the river into the second circle, the dolorous forest, where the Violent against nature, the Suicides, were transformed into closely set, twisted thorn-trees, infested with harpies that fed on their leaves, inflicting perpetual pain; thence into the ...
— National Epics • Kate Milner Rabb
... types—notably the human-headed bird and the human-headed winged lion; these it identified as the Siren and the Sphinx of Greek myth, and associated them with the mysteries of the tomb. To some other forms, that of the Centaur and the Satyr and the Triton, it also gave considerable scope. But all these, if not human, are hardly to be regarded as divine; they are mostly noxious, and, even if benignant, do not attain the rank of gods. Perhaps a nearer approach ...
— Religion and Art in Ancient Greece • Ernest Arthur Gardner
... has temporarily baffled the disease, but for me there can be no restoration. Day by day I feel the ebbing of strength and energy, and the approach of my deliverer, death; but I realize also, what the Centaur uttered to Melampus, 'I decline unto my last days calm as the setting of the constellations; but I feel myself perishing and passing quickly away, like a ...
— Vashti - or, Until Death Us Do Part • Augusta J. Evans Wilson
... of the brightly-beaming constellation Argo, of the Milky Way between Scorpio, the Centaur, and the Southern Cross, the picturesque beauty, if one may so speak, of the whole expanse of the southern celestial hemisphere, has left upon my mind an ineffaceable impression. The zodiacal light, which rises in a pyramidal form, and constantly ...
— COSMOS: A Sketch of the Physical Description of the Universe, Vol. 1 • Alexander von Humboldt
... called the king of beasts. I knock off its coronet and put the crown upon the horse, in every way nobler, whether in shape or spirit or sagacity or intelligence or affection or usefulness. He is semi-human, and knows how to reason on a small scale. The centaur of olden times, part horse and part man, seems to be a suggestion of the fact that the horse is ...
— New Tabernacle Sermons • Thomas De Witt Talmage
... have? A million years quotha! nay, not so much. It depends on the speed and the direction taken. If they were able to cover, say, the distance from Liverpool to New York in a tenth of a second, they would get to Alpha in the constellation Centaur, perhaps the nearest of the fixed stars, in twenty or thirty years—a mere bagatelle. But why should we stop there?" went on Gazen. "Why should we not build large vessels for the navigation of the ether—artificial ...
— A Trip to Venus • John Munro
... effective bas-reliefs of jesting subject:—two cocks carrying on their shoulders a long staff to which a fox (?) is tied by the legs, hanging down between them: the strut of the foremost cock, lifting one leg at right angles to the other, is delicious. Then a stag hunt, with a centaur horseman drawing a bow; the arrow has gone clear through the stag's throat, and is sticking there. Several capital hunts with dogs, with fruit trees between, and birds in them; the leaves, considering ...
— The Stones of Venice, Volume I (of 3) • John Ruskin
... is little variety in these performances, as there are only a certain quantity of feats, which can be performed either by the horses or the riders, nevertheless we had some novelty. We had the very best feminine rider I ever saw; she was a perfect female Centaur, looking part and parcel of the animal upon which she stood; and then we had a regularly Dutch-built lady, who amused us with a tumble off her horse, coming down on the loose saw-dust, in a sitting posture, and making a hole in it as large as if a covey of partridges had been ...
— Olla Podrida • Frederick Marryat (AKA Captain Marryat)
... eyes towards the tribune, could see the figures of Christ and his apostles in mosaic; turning to the side walls, they could see Nero, Galba, and six other Roman emperors, Diana hunting the stag, Hylas stolen by the nymphs, Cybele on the chariot drawn by lions, a lion attacking a centaur, the chariot of Apollo, figures performing mysterious Egyptian rites, and other such profanities, represented in opus sectile marmoreum, a sort of Florentine mosaic. This unique set of intarsios was destroyed in the sixteenth century by the French ...
— Pagan and Christian Rome • Rodolfo Lanciani
... help with all her might, but nothing answered her save an echo. The situation seemed critical for Jacqueline. As to M. de Talbrun, he was quite at his ease, as if he were accustomed to make love like a centaur; while the girl felt herself in peril of being thrown at any moment, and trampled under his horse's feet. At last she succeeded in striking her aggressor a sharp blow across the face with her riding-whip. ...
— Jacqueline, Complete • (Mme. Blanc) Th. Bentzon
... part and parcel of that horrible deep-red-plush nuisance, the Hotel-omnibus. He and it are inseparables, and make up a sort of Centaur between them. Once outside the Railway-station, I am besieged by a babel of these Porter-omnibuses—"Bear Hotel, Sor;" "Grand Hotel, Sor!"—This, from a very dilapidated specimen, which, on inspection, turns ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 103, September 17, 1892 • Various
... The Centaur Nessus, in dying by the arrow of Heracles, which had been dipped in the venom of the Hydra, persuaded the bride Deanira, whose beauty was the cause of his death, to keep some of the blood from the wound as a love-charm for her husband. Many years afterwards, when Heracles was returning from his ...
— The Seven Plays in English Verse • Sophocles
... in both, your colours are dirty, carelessly dirty: in your distant hills you are improved, and not hard. The figures are too large—I don't mean in the Elizabeth Castle, for there they are neat; but the centaur, though he dies as well as Garrick can, is outrageous. Hercules and Deianira are by no means so: he is sentimental, and she most improperly sorrowful. However, I am pleased enough to beg you would continue. ...
— Selected English Letters (XV - XIX Centuries) • Various
... overmuch severeness, I repeat, When faith is wavering makes the waverer pass Into more settled hatred of the doctrines Of those who rule, which hatred by and by Involves the ruler (thus there springs to light That Centaur of a monstrous Commonweal, The traitor-heretic) then tho' some may quail, Yet others are that dare the stake and fire, And their strong torment bravely borne, begets An admiration and an indignation, And hot desire to imitate; so the plague Of schism spreads; were ...
— Queen Mary and Harold • Alfred Lord Tennyson
... Already a good horseman, he was now initiated into the arts of the manege, which, when carried to perfection, almost realise the fable of the Centaur, the guidance of the horse appearing to proceed from the rider's mere volition, rather than from the use of any external and apparent signal of motion. He received also instructions in his field duty; but I must own, that when his first ...
— Waverley, Or 'Tis Sixty Years Hence, Complete • Sir Walter Scott
... stampede of many hundred maddened animals, or in the performance of a hundred other feats of reckless and daring horsemanship, the cowboy is absolutely unequalled; and when he has his own horse gear he sits his animal with the ease of a centaur. Yet he is quite helpless the first time he gets astride one of the small eastern saddles. One summer, while purchasing cattle in Iowa, one of my ranch foremen had to get on an ordinary saddle to ride out of town and see a bunch of steers. He is perhaps the best rider on the ranch, ...
— Hunting the Grisly and Other Sketches • Theodore Roosevelt
... double, quadruple himself! Diana of Ephesus had many breasts, and Cerberus three heads, but only two hands have grown on my wrists. I need help, and you are just the person to give it. You have had nothing to do with horses yet, Isabella tells me; but you are half a Centaur yourself. Set to work on the steeds now, and when you have progressed far enough, you shall transfer these sketches to the ceiling and walls of the riding-school. I will help you perfect the thing, and give it ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... your former [happy] state by a propitious change. Now it is fitting both to be bedewed with Persian perfume, and to relieve our breasts of dire vexations by the lyre, sacred to Mercury. Like as the noble Centaur, [Chiron,] sung to his mighty pupil: "Invincible mortal, son of the goddess Thetis, the land of Assaracus awaits you, which the cold currents of little Scamander and swift-gliding Simois divide: whence the fatal sisters have broken off your return, by a thread that cannot be altered: nor shall your ...
— The Works of Horace • Horace
... among the Lapithae of Thessaly, one of the turbulent Centaurs had attempted to steal away the bride. A fierce struggle followed, and in the general confusion, Chiron, blameless as he was, had been wounded by a poisoned arrow. Ever tormented with the hurt and never to be healed, the immortal Centaur longed for death, and begged that he might be accepted as an atonement for Prometheus. The gods heard his prayer and took away his pain and his immortality. He died like any wearied man, and Zeus set him as a shining archer among ...
— Old Greek Folk Stories Told Anew • Josephine Preston Peabody
... laugh, these long enduring 'films,' from a body perhaps many ages deep in dust, are laughable. {341b} However Lucretius is so wedded to his 'films' that he explains a purely fanciful being, like a centaur, by a fortuitous combination of the film of a man with the film of a horse. A 'ghost' then, is, to the mind of Lucretius, merely a casual persistent film of a dead man, composed of atoms very light which can fly at inconceivable speed, and are not arrested by ...
— Cock Lane and Common-Sense • Andrew Lang
... are connected: "catasterism" or translation into the stars, became the natural conclusion of a great many tales. The heroes of mythology, or even those of human society, continued to live in the sky in the form of brilliant stars. There Perseus again met Andromeda, and the Centaur Chiron, who is none other than Sagittarius, was on terms of good fellowship with ...
— The Oriental Religions in Roman Paganism • Franz Cumont
... them? (i.e., these songs) As a timorous wench from a centaur (or a centurion) Already they flee, howling in terror * * * * * Will they be touched with the verisimilitude? ...
— The Poet's Poet • Elizabeth Atkins
... last interrupting them, asked him, Pray, sir, when do you design to drink? When shall we drink? When shall the worshipful esquire drink? What a devil! have you not talked long enough to drink? It is a good motion, answered Pantagruel: go, get us something ready at the next inn; I think 'tis the Centaur. In the meantime he writ to Gargantua as followeth, to be ...
— Gargantua and Pantagruel, Complete. • Francois Rabelais
... who can recite the tales of the Canterbury Pilgrims, on horseback, giving the contemporary pronunciation, never missing an accent by reason of the trot, and at the same time witch North Carolina and a strip of East Tennessee with his noble horsemanship, is a kind of Literary Centaur of whose double instruction any Friend of Humanity may be ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... of a canter,' says I. 'Shake the New York dust off your hoofs and be a real agreeable kind of a centaur. You broke the ice, you know, and we're getting better acquainted every minute. Seems to me I asked you ...
— Sixes and Sevens • O. Henry
... (marked thus, [symbol for SAGITTARIUS]) is the ninth zodiacal sign, and corresponds with the month of November. This sign is represented like a centaur and was fabled to be Crotus, the son of Eupheme, ...
— The Ruins • C. F. [Constantin Francois de] Volney
... summoned to the feast the gods, one and all. And with my own hand I raised the bridal torch, in return for the kindly honour thou didst pay me. But come, let me tell a tale that erreth not. When thy son shall come to the Elysian plain, he whom now in the home of Cheiron the Centaur water-nymphs are tending, though he still craves thy mother milk, it is fated that he be the husband of Medea, Aeetes' daughter; do thou aid thy daughter-in-law as a mother-in-law should, and aid Peleus himself. Why is thy wrath so ...
— The Argonautica • Apollonius Rhodius
... glen, on such a day, On Pelion, on the grassy ground, Chiron, the aged Centaur lay, The young Achilles standing by. The Centaur taught him to explore The mountains; where the glens are dry And the tired Centaurs come to rest, And where the soaking springs abound And the straight ashes grow for spears, And where the ...
— Poetical Works of Matthew Arnold • Matthew Arnold
... of gold strides far and near, And deep and strong it enters: This purple chimar which we wear, Makes madder than the centaur's. Our thoughts grow blank, our words grow strange; We cheer the pale gold-diggers— Each soul is worth so much on 'Change, And marked, like sheep, with figures. Be ...
— The World's Best Poetry Volume IV. • Bliss Carman
... trees stood away from him, and the little child lay at his feet. He waited, and then he heard the thud-thud of great hooves. And then from between the trees he saw coming toward him the strangest of all beings, one who was half man and half horse; this was Chiron the centaur. ...
— The Golden Fleece and the Heroes who Lived Before Achilles • Padraic Colum
... We shall inform ourselves Into all sensuous life; the goat-foot faun, The centaur, or the merry, bright-eyed elves That leave they: dancing rings to spite the dawn Upon the meadows, shall not be more near Than you and I to Nature's mysteries, for ...
— The Book-Bills of Narcissus - An Account Rendered by Richard Le Gallienne • Le Gallienne, Richard
... they like. If they see a debauchee with long flowing locks and hairy as a beast, like the son of Xenophantes,[505] they take the form of a Centaur[506] in derision ...
— The Eleven Comedies - Vol. I • Aristophanes et al
... Achilles in Homer differs from that given by later writers. According to Homer, he was brought up by his mother at Phthia with his cousin and intimate friend Patroclus, and learned the arts of war and eloquence from Phoenix, while the Centaur Chiron taught him music and medicine. When summoned to the war against Troy, he set sail at once with his Myrmidones ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... sentiment, that of the intolerable tedium of captivity. Raleigh had been living a life of exaggerated activity, never a month at rest, now at sea, now in Devonshire, now at Court, hurrying hither and thither, his horse and he one veritable centaur. Among the Euphuistic 'tears of fancy' which he sent from the Tower, there occurs this little sentence, breathing the most complete sincerity: 'I live to trouble you at this time, being become like a fish cast on dry land, gasping for breath, with lame legs and lamer lungs.' There was ...
— Raleigh • Edmund Gosse
... examine this dexterous wielder of the knife and cord. He, Juan de Dios! Come hither, O Centaur of the boundless cattle-plains! We will not ask you to dismount,—for that you never do, we know, except to eat and sleep, or when your horse falls dead, or tumbles into a bizcachero; but we want to have a look at your savage self, and ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Number 9, July, 1858 • Various
... of Pindar, where Apollo, in the same manner, requires of Chiron some information respecting the fair Cyrene, the Centaur, in obeying, very gravely apologizes for telling the God what his omniscience must know so ...
— The Complete Poems of Sir Thomas Moore • Thomas Moore et al
... I'll draw Dejanire for you,' and he takes a soft pencil and a piece of smooth card-board, and in five minutes draws me an outline of a naked woman on a centaur's back, a creature of touching beauty no other hand in the world could produce—so aristocratically delicately English and of to-day—so severely, so nobly and classically Greek. C'est la chastete meme—mais ...
— The Martian • George Du Maurier
... getting into unembarrassed talk with such a centaur, Captain Delano, after glancing round for a more promising countenance, but seeing none, spoke pleasantly to the blacks to make way for him; and so, amid various grins and grimaces, returned to the poop, feeling a little strange at first, he could hardly tell why, ...
— The Piazza Tales • Herman Melville
... words the other answered undismayed, 'I say to thee that I bear with me the wisdom of Cheiron, for from Chariklo and Philyra I come, from the cave where the Centaur's pure daughters reared me up, and now have I fulfilled twenty years among them without deceitful word or deed, and I am come home to seek the ancient honour of my father, held now in rule unlawful, which of old Zeus gave to the chief Aiolos and his children. For I hear that Pelias ...
— The Extant Odes of Pindar • Pindar
... too short. He was dressed in a Newmarket coat and tight-fitting trousers; wore a shawl round his neck; smelt of lamp-oil, straw, orange-peel, horses' provender, and sawdust; and looked a most remarkable sort of Centaur, compounded of the stable and the play-house. Where the one began, and the other ended, nobody could have told with any precision. This gentleman was mentioned in the bills of the day as Mr. E. W. B. Childers, so justly ...
— Hard Times • Charles Dickens*
... "The cavalry charger, on a Hounslow Heath parade, well fed, well groomed, goes through a field-day without injury, although carrying more than twenty stone weight; he and his rider presenting together, a kind of alderman centaur. But if in the field, half starved, they have, at the end of a forced march, to charge an enemy! The biped full of fire and courage, transformed by war-work to a wiry muscular dragoon, is able and willing, but the overloaded quadruped cannot ...
— A New Illustrated Edition of J. S. Rarey's Art of Taming Horses • J. S. Rarey
... tipp'd with bronze, and feather'd bright; Nay, his were blue with mould, and fretted o'er With many a spell Melampus wrought of yore, Singing above his task a song of bane; And they were venom'd with the Centaur's gore, And tipp'd with bones of men a ...
— Helen of Troy • Andrew Lang
... order to determine the latitude more exactly by the altitude of various stars then approaching the meridian. These were Aries and Menkar; while the two feet of the Centaur, both fine circumpolar stars, were so steadily reflected in the placid stream that I obtained by that means the altitude of both BELOW THE POLE. It was most essential to the accuracy of my survey of the river that I should determine the latitude as frequently ...
— Three Expeditions into the Interior of Eastern Australia, Vol 2 (of 2) • Thomas Mitchell
... [1]Cheiron the Centaur lived in a cavern on Mount Pelion and was reputed to be the wisest of mortals. All the young heroes of the time, Jason, Achilles, and others, were his pupils and spent their boyhood with him. He is sometimes represented as having the ...
— Hero Tales • James Baldwin
... distance. But they had not proceeded twenty paces when they heard the sound of a horse galloping after them at so rapid a pace that he gained upon them every moment. Our traveller turned round and saw a man, or rather a Centaur, for the most perfect harmony imaginable existed between horse and rider. The latter was of a robust and plethoric constitution, with large fiery eyes, rugged features, and a black mustache. He was of middle age and had a general air of rudeness and aggressiveness, ...
— Dona Perfecta • B. Perez Galdos
... of a man accustomed to "go across the country" and ride to hounds; and still less was it the seat of a cavalry-man, the result of teaching in a military riding-school. It was more like the seat (if the expression be permissible) of a centaur. The rider and his steed seemed to be one organization and governed by one and ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 15, - No. 90, June, 1875 • Various
... in front Alec saw a goal keeping centaur waiting to intercept him. In another couple of strides a lean, eager head would be straining alongside his own pony's girths. So he struck hard and clean and raced on, and the goalkeeper judged the flight of the ...
— A Son of the Immortals • Louis Tracy
... induced the Spartans to send their infants on a shield to be delivered over to the nursery of the State. In accordance with a similar custom, also, was the young Achilles intrusted by Peleus to the care of Chiron, the centaur. For among the Circassians, as among the early Greeks, the principal object of education is to form the ...
— Life of Schamyl - And Narrative of the Circassian War of Independence Against Russia • John Milton Mackie
... to you. Piso,' said Gracchus, 'that this slight girl can wield a lance or a sword, while centaur-like she grows to the animal she rides, as well as ...
— Zenobia - or, The Fall of Palmyra • William Ware
... that her arms surround Her married elm, had crept along the ground. Ah, beauteous maid! let this example move Your mind, averse from all the joys of love. Deign to be loved, and every heart subdue! What nymph could e'er attract such crowds as you? 70 Not she whose beauty urged the Centaur's arms, Ulysses' queen, nor Helen's fatal charms. Ev'n now, when silent scorn is all they gain, A thousand court you, though they court in vain— A thousand sylvans, demigods, and gods, That haunt our mountains and our Alban ...
— Poetical Works of Pope, Vol. II • Alexander Pope
... strong rock from which it soars by the giant labor of the now dying Past, it seems during the lapse of centuries to have grown up from its stony heart, as the human breast grows from the broad back of the Centaur. A single banner streams above its lofty turret, the only banner of the Cross now raised on earth; the symbol of God's mystic love alone floats high enough to pierce into the unclouded blue of the ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No. 6, December 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... this order; and the great Hippocrates, styled "the Father of Medicine," is said to have claimed to be the seventeenth in direct descent from Esculapius.[99:2] Although the god of healing may be said to have been also the first practising physician, his distinguished teacher Chiron, the wise Centaur, was without doubt the first medical professor whose name has been handed down. To Chiron is usually ascribed the honor of having introduced among the Grecians the art of Medicine, in the thirteenth century B. C. He was reputed to have been a learned chief or ...
— Primitive Psycho-Therapy and Quackery • Robert Means Lawrence
... greatness, And greatness worship; every house became An academy, and those parts We see departed in the practice now Quite from the institution. LOVEL. Why do you say so, Or think so enviously? do they not still Learn us the Centaur's skill, the art of Thrace, To ride? or Pollux' mystery, to fence? The Pyrrhick gestures, both to stand and spring In armour; to be active for the wars; To study figures, numbers and proportions, May yield them great in counsels and the art; To make ...
— The Fortunes of Nigel • Sir Walter Scott
... for an endless procession of Eastern friends who came for the hunting. The Eatons kept open house. Travelers wrote about the hospitality that even strangers were certain to find there, and carried away with them the picture of Howard Eaton, "who sat his horse as though he were a centaur and looked a picturesque and noble figure with his clean-shaven cheeks, heavy drooping moustache, sombrero, blue shirt, and neckerchief with flaming ends." About the time Roosevelt arrived, friends who had availed themselves of the Eaton hospitality until they were in danger of ...
— Roosevelt in the Bad Lands • Hermann Hagedorn
... they recognised some word among the characters, and pointed it out to each other with uncouth murmurings. They were strange folk, with eyes like pebbles and squat frames and short, broad faces, but each horse and man moved in unison like a centaur. ...
— The Path of the King • John Buchan
... Phoenix and the Crane; higher up, the Toucan, Hydrus, and Pavo. On our right, low down, was the beautiful Altar; higher up, the Triangle; while on the left were the Sword-fish and the Flying-fish. Turning to look forward, we beheld a more splendid display. Then, over the bow of the vessel, between the Centaur, which lay low, and Musca Indica, which rose high, there blazed the bright stars of the Southern Cross—a constellation, if not the brightest, at least the most conspicuous and attractive in all the heavens. All around there burned other stars, separated widely. Then, over the stern, gleamed ...
— A Strange Manuscript Found in a Copper Cylinder • James De Mille
... who freed a certain country from the Ogri and the Blue Centaur. When she sounded her trumpet, the sick were recovered and became both young and strong. She gave the princess Carpil'lona a bunch of gilly-flowers, which enabled her to pass unrecognized before those who knew her well.—Comtesse ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama, Vol 1 - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook • The Rev. E. Cobham Brewer, LL.D.
... up to the Barye bronzes, while the upper rooms are devoted to the "Angelus" and the paintings by Millet and other contemporaries of the great French sculptor. Passing on the left of the entrance the superb, large bronze of "Theseus battling with the Centaur," one is fronted by the great cast of the "Lion and Serpent," which from the centre of the gallery dominates the surrounding exhibits. Both of these are the property of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the cast having lately been presented to that institution by the French government. ...
— The American Architect and Building News, Vol. 27, Jan-Mar, 1890 • Various
... there is arising a colossal centaur called the Russian Empire. With a civilized head and front, it has the sinews of a huge barbaric body. There one man's brain moves 70,000,000. There all the traditions of the people are of aggression and conquest ...
— The United States in the Light of Prophecy • Uriah Smith
... novels and, latterly, in moving pictures. He, like the mountaineer of the South, has himself been largely inarticulate except for his rude songs and ballads; formula and tradition caught him early and in fiction stiffened one of the most picturesque of human beings—a modern Centaur, an American Cossack, a Western picaro—into a stock figure who in a stock costume perpetually sits a bucking broncho, brandishes a six-shooter or swings a lariat, rounds up stampeding cattle, makes fierce war on Mexicans, Indians, and rival ...
— Contemporary American Novelists (1900-1920) • Carl Van Doren
... was typical in appearance with many of that broad land. Lithe, sinewy and bronzed by hard riding and hot suns, he sat in his Cheyenne saddle like a centaur, all his weight on the heavy, leather-guarded stirrups, his body rising in one magnificent straight line. A bleached moustache hid the thin lips, and a gray sombrero threw a heavy shadow across his eyes. Around his neck and over his open, blue flannel shirt lay loosely a ...
— Hopalong Cassidy's Rustler Round-Up - Bar-20 • Clarence Edward Mulford
... to her eternal rock, looks mournfully towards the delivering hero whose conquering hand bears aloft the petrific visage of Medusa. Far off in the north the gigantic Bootes is seen driving towards the Centaur and the Scorpion. And yonder, smiling benignantly upon the crews of many a home bound ship, are revealed the twin brothers, joined in the embrace ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger
... pair of beautiful silver cups with graceful handles. The design was made in hammered silver, and showed centaurs talking to cupids that are sitting on their backs. A centaur was half ...
— Buried Cities: Pompeii, Olympia, Mycenae • Jennie Hall
... of these Hermaphrodites appeared in Juvenal's Days, with what an Indignation should we have seen her described by that excellent Satyrist. He would have represented her in a Riding Habit, as a greater Monster than the Centaur. He would have called for Sacrifices or Purifying Waters, to expiate the Appearance of such a Prodigy. He would have invoked the Shades of Portia or Lucretia, to see into what the Roman Ladies had ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... arrows. Associated Words: archery, archer, toxophilite, crossbow, quiver, centaur, ascham, belomancy, bowman, Sagittarius, sagittary, ...
— Putnam's Word Book • Louis A. Flemming
... necessary to have recourse to the second. Therefore it is necessary for a prince to understand how to avail himself of the beast and the man. This has been figuratively taught to princes by ancient writers, who describe how Achilles and many other princes of old were given to the Centaur Chiron to nurse, who brought them up in his discipline; which means solely that, as they had for a teacher one who was half beast and half man, so it is necessary for a prince to know how to make use of both natures, and that one without the other is not durable. A prince, therefore, being compelled ...
— The Prince • Niccolo Machiavelli
... made a leg and exit. The country people took him for one that by order of the Houses was to dance a morrice through the west of England. Well, he's a nimble gentleman; set him upon Banks his horse in a saddle rampant, and it is a great question which part of the Centaur shows better tricks. ...
— Character Writings of the 17th Century • Various
... the very day when AEgeon was arrested, Antipholus of Syracuse landed in Ephesus and pretended that he came from Epidamnum in order to avoid a penalty. He handed his money to his servant Dromio of Syracuse, and bade him take it to the Centaur Inn and ...
— Beautiful Stories from Shakespeare • E. Nesbit
... We shall inform ourselves Into all sensuous life, the goat-foot Faun, The Centaur, or the merry bright-eyed Elves That leave their dancing rings to spite the dawn Upon the meadows, shall not be more near Than you and I to nature's mysteries, for we ...
— Poems • Oscar Wilde
... looking in Nature for just this kind of thing, and since he believes there is "absolutely no limit to the variety and adaptiveness of Nature even in a single species." If there is no such limit, then I suppose we need not be surprised to meet a winged horse, or a centaur, or a mermaid at ...
— Ways of Nature • John Burroughs
... which Caesar conquered Pompey—renowned too as the classic ground of witches and wizards. Griffins, Sphinxes and Sirens meet them. They can tell Faust nothing about Helen, but they direct him to Cheiron the Centaur (a link, as it were, between the monstrous forms of barbarous oriental imagination and Hellenic art). Cheiron the Centaur has himself borne Helen on his back, and excites Faust's passion by the description of her beauty. He takes ...
— The Faust-Legend and Goethe's 'Faust' • H. B. Cotterill
... terms into Abstract and Concrete is based upon the kind of thing signified. It involves no reference to actual existence. There are imaginary as well as real substances. Logically a centaur is as much a substance ...
— Deductive Logic • St. George Stock
... no beauty of any sort or kind; nothing but destruction, disorganization, and ruin, to be obtained by the violation of natural distinctions. The elements of brutes can only mix in corruption, the elements of inorganic nature only in annihilation. We may, if we choose, put together centaur monsters; but they must still be half man, half horse; they cannot be both man and horse, nor either man or horse. And so, if landscape painters choose, they may give us rocks which shall be half granite and half slate; but they cannot give us rocks which shall be either granite ...
— Modern Painters Volume I (of V) • John Ruskin
... Philip of Side, a prolix and contemptible writer. Even the work of Cyril has not entirely satisfied the most favorable judges; and the Abbe de la Bleterie (Preface a l'Hist. de Jovien, p. 30, 32) wishes that some theologien philosophe (a strange centaur) would undertake ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 2 • Edward Gibbon
... know this fellow of old, 'tis a herald: many a centaur, chimaera[261], barnacle[262], crocodile, hippopotame, and such like toys hath he stolen out of the shop of my Invention, to shape new coats for his upstart gentlemen. Either Africa must breed more monsters,[263] or you make fewer gentlemen, Master ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. IX • Various
... water the bar formed at the mouth of the little river Manzanares. The evening breeze gently swelled the waves in the gulf of Cariaco. The moon had not risen, but that part of the milky way which extends from the feet of the Centaur towards the constellation of Sagittarius, seemed to pour a silvery light over the surface of the ocean. The white rock, crowned by the castle of San Antonio, appeared from time to time between the high tops of the cocoa-trees which ...
— Equinoctial Regions of America • Alexander von Humboldt
... other lesser gods, Bacchus, Isis, Hebe, the Muses and the Fates, etc.; also Sleep, Dreams and Death; and there were still others who had free will and intelligence, and having mixed forms, such as the Pegasus, or winged horse, the Centaur, half man and half horse, ...
— Museum of Antiquity - A Description of Ancient Life • L. W. Yaggy
... him. Blurts of crimson light Splashed the white grains like blood. Past the cave's mouth Shone with a large, fierce splendor, wildly bright, The crooked constellations of the South; Here the Cross swung; and there, affronting Mars, The Centaur stormed aside a froth of stars. Within, great casks, like wattled aldermen, Sighed of enormous feasts, and cloth of gold Glowed on the walls like hot desire. Again, Beside webbed purples from some galleon's ...
— Young Adventure - A Book of Poems • Stephen Vincent Benet
... and the centaur race below Deriding wings above. Manful they meet and fight to overthrow All they are wearied of,— Manful they build, demolish, drive, are driven,— But you are free, who have more greatly striven, Yours is the light above their lightless heaven, For ...
— Perpetual Light • William Rose Benet
... to represent the forces of nature and the accomplishments of man by skilfully constructed myths, have left a record showing their appreciation of the strength derived from the union of horse and man, in their fable of the Centaur, which possibly grew up in a time before their people had won the use of the animal, and when they only knew the creature by chance encounters with enemies who were mounted upon them. Although the naturalist of to-day perceives the impossibility of there ...
— Domesticated Animals - Their Relation to Man and to his Advancement in Civilization • Nathaniel Southgate Shaler
... "each time in composing the third, he seemed impelled to exceed his bounds, and depart on an adventurous quest," from which we might infer that we are here concerned with a sort of double monster, half horse and half cavalier. With regard to a certain Eroica, this Centaur is very hard pressed, because he did not succeed in making it clear "whether it is a question of a conflict on the open field or in the deep heart of man." In the Pastoral there is said to be "a furiously raging storm," for which it is "almost too insignificant" to interrupt ...
— Thoughts out of Season (Part One) • Friedrich Nietzsche
... north peristyle are: 1. (Beside main doorway of gallery) Beyond by Chester Beach. 2. The Sower by Albin Polasek. 3. The Centaur by Olga Popoff Muller. 4. Boy with Fish by Bela L. Pratt. 5. (At the right) Returning from the Hunt by John J. Boyle. 6. (At the left) L'Amour by Evelyn Beatrice Longman-a marble wherein the woman's figure is tenderly beautiful. 7. Garden Figure by Edith Woodman Burroughs. 8. (At the right) ...
— An Art-Lovers guide to the Exposition • Shelden Cheney
... lifting six gallons of wine for us, stumbled and dealt us great woe. "From wine also perished the Centaur," and ah that we had too! but now it perished ...
— Select Epigrams from the Greek Anthology • J. W. Mackail
... started at a gallop—a rollicking gallop and in the very tune of his master's mood; and if all Port Nassau had not been at its devotions, the chins of its burghers might have tilted themselves in wonder at the apparition—a Centaur, enlarged ...
— Lady Good-for-Nothing • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... the crimes of the Renaissance was not a mark of imagination; it was a mark, as all monstrosity is, of the loss of imagination. It is only when a man has really ceased to see a horse as it is, that he invents a centaur, only when he can no longer be surprised at an ox, that he worships the devil. Diablerie is the stimulant of the jaded fancy; it is the dram-drinking of the artist. Savonarola addressed himself to the hardest of all earthly tasks, that of making men ...
— Twelve Types • G.K. Chesterton
... Pair of sphinxes, Exterior architrave: pairs Centaur, wild hog, man pursuing of sphinxes in centre of E. & woman, two men in combat, W. fronts (?), Herakles and etc. Triton, Herakles and Centaurs, symposium, combats ...
— The American Journal of Archaeology, 1893-1 • Various
... Which to the dead a lingering fame conveys 80 In song, where Fame as yet hath left no sign Beyond the sound whose charm is half divine; Which leaves no record to the sceptic eye, But yields young History all to Harmony; A boy Achilles, with the Centaur's lyre In hand, to teach him to surpass his sire. For one long-cherished ballad's[378] simple stave, Rung from the rock, or mingled with the wave, Or from the bubbling streamlet's grassy side, Or gathering ...
— The Works of Lord Byron - Poetry, Volume V. • Lord Byron
... he printed was a prose publication, entitled "The Centaur Not Fabulous, in Six Letters to a Friend on the Life in Vogue." The conclusion is dated November 29, 1754. In the third letter is described the death-bed of the "gay, young, noble, ingenious, accomplished, and most wretched Altamont." His last words were—"My principles have ...
— Lives of the Poets: Gay, Thomson, Young, and Others • Samuel Johnson
... Hercules himself, who was subdued by pain at the very time when he was on the point of attaining immortality by death. What words does Sophocles here put in his mouth, in his Trachiniae? who, when Deianira had put upon him a tunic dyed in the centaur's blood, and it ...
— The Academic Questions • M. T. Cicero
... play is highly intricate, and shows a tendency towards the introduction of an adventurous element; it turns upon the tribute of youths and maidens exacted from the island of Scyros by the king of Thrace. The figure of the satyr is replaced by a centaur who carries off one of the nymphs. Her cries attract two youths who succeed in driving off the monster, but are severely wounded in the encounter. The nymph, Celia, thereupon falls in love with both ...
— Pastoral Poetry and Pastoral Drama - A Literary Inquiry, with Special Reference to the Pre-Restoration - Stage in England • Walter W. Greg
... have perished, for none of those aboard had either the will or the strength to struggle for life. With a supreme effort some mariners would reach the board and eagerly scan the blue, transparent deep, hoping to see a naiad's pink shoulder flash in the hollow of an azure wave, or a drunken gay centaur dash along and in frenzy splash the wave with his hoof. But the sea was like a wilderness, and the deep was dumb ...
— Famous Modern Ghost Stories • Various
... results were so predominant in the career of the man, and poisoned it so deeply to the latest hour of his consciousness, that to attempt a biography of him without clear reference to them would have been like telling the story of Nessus the Centaur without mentioning the poisoned arrow of Heracles. But Lord Lytton shall give ...
— Some Diversions of a Man of Letters • Edmund William Gosse
... and Dialogue in the present case), that will not ensure a good effect, unless the mixture is harmonious and well-proportioned; it is possible that the resultant of two beauties may be bizarre. The readiest instance to hand is the centaur: not a lovely creature, you will admit, but a savage, if the paintings of its drunken bouts and murders go for anything. Well, but on the other hand is it not possible for two such components to result in beauty, as the combination of wine and honey in superlative sweetness? That is my ...
— Works, V1 • Lucian of Samosata
... for the saddle had watched everything; so when Sedgwick dismounted he held out his hand and said, heartily: "I beg your pardon, Mr. Sedgwick, I was mistaken in you. You do more than ride. When mounted, you and the horse together make a centaur." ...
— The Wedge of Gold • C. C. Goodwin
... here, From Colonel By, who first lived there; 'Twas then a grove of thickest shade, What civilization's hand hath made, The Indian, with its withering skill, It has done for the "Colonel's Hill." Who comes, so centaur like in grace, Good spirits pictured in his face? 'Tis Isaac Smith, let truth not vary, A gentleman from Tipperary, Beloved by all, 'twere hard to mate him, He had no enemies to hate him, His friends were neither scarce nor few They numbered ...
— Recollections of Bytown and Its Old Inhabitants • William Pittman Lett
... Darke working Sorcerers that change the minde: Soule-killing Witches, that deforme the bodie: Disguised Cheaters, prating Mountebankes; And manie such like liberties of sinne: If it proue so, I will be gone the sooner: Ile to the Centaur to goe seeke this slaue, I greatly feare my monie is ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare
... virgin lamp, and watch the smoke of old altars coiling among the cypress boughs. The redwoods of the West become columns of Doric eloquence and simplicity. The mountains and lakes of the West have become settings for the reading of the "Centaur" of Maurice de Guerin. You see the reason for the titles chosen because you feel that the poetry of line and the harmonic accompaniment of color is the primal essential. They are not so dynamic as suggestive in their quality of finality. The way is left open, ...
— Adventures in the Arts - Informal Chapters on Painters, Vaudeville, and Poets • Marsden Hartley
... funeral, my nation's tears, my burial in the glorious church. The ages remember me, and the poets sing my praise in immortal verse!" The strident wheels turned at the far end of the room and came back. The fantastic and frightful apparition, man and machinery blended in one—the new Centaur, half man, half chair—flew by me again in the dying light. "I am Shakespeare!" cried the frantic creature now. "I am writing 'Lear,' the tragedy of tragedies. Ancients and moderns, I am the poet who towers over them ...
— The Law and the Lady • Wilkie Collins
... incongruities. We see a fish and we see a woman we can drop one half of each, and unite in idea the other two halves to a mermaid. We see a horse and we see a man; we are able to drop one half of each, and unite the other two halves to a centaur. Thus also the pictorial representations of the Deity, the bodies and wings of cherubs and seraphs, the hoofs, horns, and tail of the Evil One, the joys of the blessed, and the torments of the damned, have ...
— Fragments of science, V. 1-2 • John Tyndall
... a state of waking reverie, the attention is so scattered that no impression is made to stand out clearly in consciousness. On the other hand, as soon as the mind focuses itself on a certain impression, for example, the report of a gun, the relation of two angles, or the image of a centaur, this stands out so clearly that it occupies the whole foreground of consciousness, while all other impressions hide themselves in the background. This single focal state of consciousness is, therefore, pre-eminently ...
— Ontario Normal School Manuals: Science of Education • Ontario Ministry of Education |
