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Hercules   Listen
noun
Hercules  n.  
1.
(Gr. Myth.) A hero, fabled to have been the son of Jupiter and Alcmena, and celebrated for great strength, esp. for the accomplishment of his twelve great tasks or "labors."
2.
(Astron.) A constellation in the northern hemisphere, near Lyra.
Hercules' beetle (Zool.), any species of Dynastes, an American genus of very large lamellicorn beetles, esp. Dynastes hercules of South America, which grows to a length of six inches.
Hercules powder, an explosive containing nitroglycerin; used for blasting.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Hercules" Quotes from Famous Books



... acquaintance with the great epic bard of Persia had now taught him therefore to retract the assertion he had made in his Commentary on Asiatic Poetry, that "the hero, as it is called, of the poem, was that well known Hercules of the Persians, named Rustem; although there are several other heroes, or warriors, to each of whom their own particular glory is assigned." At the time of writing this, he had an intention, if leisure should be allowed him, ...
— Lives of the English Poets - From Johnson to Kirke White, Designed as a Continuation of - Johnson's Lives • Henry Francis Cary

... in London. What was the worth of Ralph's interest in the property? That was one great question. Would Ralph sell that interest when the price was fixed? That was the second question. Ralph, to whom the difficulty of giving an answer was as a labour of Hercules, staved off the evil day for awhile by declaring that he must know what was the price before he could say whether he would sell the article. The exact price could not be fixed. The lawyers combined in saying that the absolute sum of money to include all Ralph's ...
— Ralph the Heir • Anthony Trollope

... inferior masters. His "Ugolino" was a portrait, or a study, in the commencement; it owes its excellence to its retaining this character in its completion. If we were to point to failures, in single figures, (historical,) we should mention his "Puck" and his "Infant Hercules." The latter we only know from the print. Here he certainly had an opportunity of displaying the great style of Michael Angelo; it was beyond his daring; the Hercules is a sturdy child, and that is all, we see not the ex pede Herculem. We can imagine the colouring, especially of ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Vol. 53, No. 331, May, 1843 • Various

... 'Iliad,' open to Miss Bayley's objection, is yet too beautiful and appropriate, I fancy, for you to throw over. Curious it is that my first recollection went from that shield of Achilles to Hesiod's 'Shield of Hercules,' from which I send you a version—leaving out of it what dear Miss Bayley would object to on a ...
— The Letters of Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1 of 2) • Frederic G. Kenyon

... brought with them, procured them a favourable reception from the original inhabitants of that inhospitable region, who are mentioned by authors[G] as being a Celtic nation, fabulously conjectured from their name [Greek: leipontio][H] to have been left there by Hercules in his ...
— Account of the Romansh Language - In a Letter to Sir John Pringle, Bart. P. R. S. • Joseph Planta, Esq. F. R. S.

... there's his choice, He would live, like a lamp, to the last wink, And crawl the utmost verge of life. O Hercules! Why should a man like this, Who dares not trust his fate for one great action, Be all the care of Heaven? Why should he lord it O'er fourscore thousand men, of whom each ...
— All for Love • John Dryden

... x. 12: 8; Justin Martyr, Cohort ad Graecos, 37, p. 34 c (ed. 1742). According to another account, the remains of the Sibyl were enclosed in an iron cage which hung from a pillar in an ancient temple of Hercules at Argyrus ...
— Balder The Beautiful, Vol. I. • Sir James George Frazer

... awful name of Him whom he had denied. The courtier laid his hand on the jewelled clasp which fastened his girdle; perhaps the movement was accidental, perhaps he wished to direct the attention of his companion to the figures of Hercules and the Nemean lion which were embossed on the gold. "You forget," observed Pollux, "that I am a worshipper of the deities of Olympus, that I sacrifice ...
— Hebrew Heroes - A Tale Founded on Jewish History • AKA A.L.O.E. A.L.O.E., Charlotte Maria Tucker

... the gray Azores, Behind the Gates of Hercules; Before him not the ghost of shores, Before him only shoreless seas. The good mate said: "Now must we pray, For lo! the very stars are gone. Brave Adm'ral speak,—what shall I say?" "Why, say, 'Sail on! ...
— The Golden Treasury of American Songs and Lyrics • Various

... cruelty the sage made an opportunity for heroism. Moreover, what is there that one man can do to another which he himself may not have to undergo in his turn? We are told that Busiris, who used to kill his guests, was himself slain by his guest, Hercules. Regulus had thrown into bonds many of the Carthaginians whom he had taken in war; soon after he himself submitted his hands to the chains of the vanquished. Then, thinkest thou that man hath any power who cannot prevent another's being able to ...
— The Consolation of Philosophy • Boethius

... shot from the shadow and surrounded them. There was a babel of laughter, exclamations, questions. Minks thought the stars had fallen. Children and constellations were mingled all together, it seemed. Both were too numerous to count. All were rushing with the sun towards Hercules ...
— A Prisoner in Fairyland • Algernon Blackwood

... have perceived the superior advantages, or to have been tempted by the greater facility of Sackville's verse; and amongst the MSS. of the Bodleian library there is found a translation by her own hand of part of Seneca's Hercules Oetaeus, which is in this measure. Warton however adds, that this specimen "has no other ...
— Memoirs of the Court of Queen Elizabeth • Lucy Aikin

... conqueror; one of the articles prohibited them from using iron except for the purposes of agriculture. Plutarch, in his Roman Questions, declares that there was a time when the Romans paid a tenth of their produce to the Etrurians, but that they were freed from the disgraceful tribute by Hercules; this tradition appears to refer to the conquest of the city ...
— Pinnock's Improved Edition of Dr. Goldsmith's History of Rome • Oliver Goldsmith

... feast takes up three pages of the history of Corio, where we find a minute list of the dishes—wild boars and deer and peacocks, roasted whole; peeled oranges, gilt and sugared; gilt rolls; rosewater for washing; and the tales of Perseus, Atalanta, Hercules, etc., I wrought in pastry—tutte in vivande. We are also told how masques of Hercules, Jason, and Phaedra alternated with the story of Susannah and the Elders, played by Florentine actors, and with the Mysteries of San ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volume 1 (of 7) • John Addington Symonds

... Joe spent this Sunday and the night with his acquaintances. The lumberers told me that there were many moose hereabouts, but no caribou or deer. A man from Oldtown had killed ten or twelve moose, within a year, so near the house that they heard all his guns. His name may have been Hercules, for aught I know, though I should rather have expected to hear the rattling of his club; but, no doubt, he keeps pace with the improvements of the age, and uses a Sharpe's rifle now; probably he gets all his armor made and repaired at Smith's shop. One moose ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Number 9, July, 1858 • Various

... be wilted by our hot summers. For briskness, thriftiness, energy, and alacrity, it is hard to find his match. He has made a book of travels, and will make a hundred, unless somebody finds him a place at home where he will have an indefinite number of labors-of-Hercules to keep him busy,—or unless some African prince cuts his head off, or he happens to call upon the ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I., No. 3, January 1858 - A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics • Various

... and after all I cannot get it! And to support my eight children, and my wife, and myself, what have I in this world," cried he, striding suddenly with colossal firmness upon his sturdy legs, and raising to heaven arms which looked like fore-shortenings of the limbs of Hercules; "what have I in this wide world but these ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. IV • Maria Edgeworth

... laughing or crying Philosopher at pleasure—but sit as neither, for in either character you will set the painter's house in a roar. I fear the very plaster figures in it will set you off—to see yourself in such motley company, with Bacchus and Hercules, and Jupiter and Saturn, with his marble children to devour. You will look Homer and Socrates in the face; and I know will make antics, throw out, and show fight to the Gladiator. This may be, if your painter, as many of them do, affect the antique; but if he be another sort ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 55, No. 340, February, 1844 • Various

... established by Sanchan Torpest may have included much that afterwards gave place to a more purely Irish training. The tale of Troy seems to have been known to the fili, and there are in their works allusions to Greek heroes, to Hercules and Hector, but it has been pointed out by Mr. Nutt that there is little if any evidence of influence produced by Latin or Greek literature on the actual matter or thought of the older Irish work. On this point reference ...
— Heroic Romances of Ireland Volumes 1 and 2 Combined • A. H. Leahy

... and for several days, trusting to the strength of their rock-built fortress, they set the Wali at defiance. At length some of the loyal inhabitants of Toledo, who knew all its secret and subterraneous passages, some of which, if chroniclers may be believed, have existed since the days of Hercules, if not of Tubal Cain, introduced Temam and a chosen band of his warriors into the very center of the city, where they suddenly appeared as if by magic. A panic seized upon the insurgents. Some sought safety in submission, some in ...
— The Crayon Papers • Washington Irving

... to White Hall, there to discourse with [Sir] G. Carteret and Mr. Fenn about office business. I found them all aground, and no money to do anything with. Thence homewards, calling at my Tailor's to bespeak some coloured clothes, and thence to Hercules Pillars, all alone, and there spent 6d. on myself, and so home and busy all the morning. At noon to dinner, home, where my wife shows me a letter from her father, who is going over sea, and this afternoon would take his ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys

... cutting at Cook's Wall! Lord, Marcella, if I don't get the Pater to pay for me to go to the hospital, I'll do a year first on the music-halls as the modern Hercules. I should make millions! My hands were blistered till they got like iron; my back felt broken; I used to lie awake at nights and weep till I got toughened. I ...
— Captivity • M. Leonora Eyles

... I should do the very thing which I am blaming, I will pass over all these matters, which are so far from the subject that they are not even connected with it. Only do you protect me, if any one attacks me for putting down Chrysippus, who, by Hercules, was a great man, but yet a Greek, whose intellect, too sharply pointed, is often bent and turned back upon itself; even when it seems to be in earnest it only pricks, but does not pierce. Here, however, what occasion is there for subtlety? We ...
— L. Annaeus Seneca On Benefits • Seneca

... of a religious man, far from decorating the ship with pagan idols, such as Jupiter, Neptune or Hercules, which heathenish abominations, I have no doubt, occasion the misfortunes and shipwreck of many a noble vessel, he I say, on the contrary, did laudably erect for a head, a goodly image of St. Nicholas, equipped with a low, broad-brimmed hat, a huge pair of Flemish ...
— Knickerbocker's History of New York, Complete • Washington Irving

... that remained of the ancient nature-worship, unrelated to one another, lost their power of producing mythology. The Capitoline Jupiter never stood to the Romans in a true personal relation. Neither Mars nor Hercules (who were genuine Italian gods) was to Rome what Apollo was to Greece. Whatever poetic sentiment was felt centred rather in the city herself than in the deities who guarded her. Rome was the one name that roused enthusiasm; from first to last ...
— A History of Roman Literature - From the Earliest Period to the Death of Marcus Aurelius • Charles Thomas Cruttwell

... and Temple's Oman maid Moty were standing beside the Hilton's car—and so was another Oman, like none ever before seen. Six feet four; shoulders that would just barely go through a door; muscled like Atlas and Hercules combined; skin a gleaming, satiny bronze; hair a rippling mass of lambent flame. Temple came to a full stop and caught ...
— Masters of Space • Edward Elmer Smith

... is to make clean by removing dirt, impurities, or soil of any kind. Cleanse implies a worse condition to start from, and more to do, than clean. Hercules cleansed the Augean stables. Cleanse is especially applied to purifying processes where liquid is used, as in the flushing of a street, etc. We brush clothing if dusty, sponge it, or sponge it ...
— English Synonyms and Antonyms - With Notes on the Correct Use of Prepositions • James Champlin Fernald

... of the most fruitful and beautiful regions of the earth; which stretches along the course of the Danube, the Euphrates, and the Nile; which embraces the Pindus, the Taurus, the Caucasus, Mount Sinai, the Libyan mountains, and the Atlas, as far as the Pillars of Hercules; and which, having no history itself, is heir to the historical names of Constantinople and Nicaea, Nicomedia and Caesarea, Jerusalem and Damascus, Nineveh and Babylon, Mecca and Bagdad, Antioch and Alexandria, ignorantly holding in ...
— Historical Sketches, Volume I (of 3) • John Henry Newman

... further inflamed his envy and ambition, by launching out in praise of Sir Launcelot. He observed that his countenance was open and manly; his joints strong knit, and his form unexceptionable; that he trod like Hercules, and vaulted into the saddle like a winged Mercury. Nay, he even hinted it was lucky for Sycamore that the knight of the Crescent happened to be so pacifically disposed. His patron sickened at these praises, and took fire at the last observation. ...
— The Adventures of Sir Launcelot Greaves • Tobias Smollett

... but introductory to the great change of death Baptism, anointing, embalming, obsequies by burial or fire, are preparatory symbols, like the initiation of Hercules before descending to the Shades, pointing out the mental change which ought to precede the renewal of existence. Death is the true initiation, to which sleep is the introductory or minor mystery. It is the final rite which united the Egyptian ...
— Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry • Albert Pike

... with mighty Hercules and had created that great gap that has severed two continents. Then, leaving their work to be finished, they had sailed on to celebrate their triumph in the Land of El Dorado, the ...
— Palaces and Courts of the Exposition • Juliet James

... all things, whereby man's wealth riseth, special laud and praise ought to be given to history: it is the keeper of such things as have been virtuously done, and the witness of evil deeds, and by the benefit of history all noble, high and virtuous acts be immortal. What moved the strong and fierce Hercules to enterprise in his life so many great incomparable labours and perils? Certainly nought else but that for his great merit immortality might be given him of all folk.... Why moved and stirred Phalerius the King Ptolemy oft and diligently to read books? Forsooth for no other cause but ...
— John Lyly • John Dover Wilson

... Crawley!" And he would say to her in confidential moments, "By Jove, Beck, you're fit to be Commander-in-Chief, or Archbishop of Canterbury, by Jove." Is his case a rare one? and don't we see every day in the world many an honest Hercules at the apron-strings of Omphale, and great whiskered Samsons prostrate ...
— Vanity Fair • William Makepeace Thackeray

... vulgar are commonly ill- natured, and always grudging against their governors: which makes that a prince has more business and trouble with them than ever Hercules had with the bull or any other beast; by how much they have more heads than will be reined with one bridle. There was not that variety of beasts in the ark, as is of beastly natures in the multitude; especially when they come to that iniquity to censure their sovereign's actions. Then all the ...
— Discoveries and Some Poems • Ben Jonson

... the Trimourti the Asiatic myths became adapted to the imaginations of various races in the lands they reached by the agency of certain sages whom men elevated to be demi-gods—Mithra, Bacchus, Hermes, Hercules, and the rest —Buddha, the great reformer of the three primeval religions, lived in India, and founded his Church there, a sect which still numbers two hundred millions more believers than Christianity can show, while it certainly influenced the powerful Will both ...
— Louis Lambert • Honore de Balzac

... since Yorktown down to the last day—the country knows that at the last disasters at Bull Run these heroic generals did their fullest duty. But not even their advice is asked at the double headquarters. Stanton alone cannot do everything. Rats may devour a Hercules. ...
— Diary from March 4, 1861, to November 12, 1862 • Adam Gurowski

... of red (top), yellow (double width), and red with the national coat of arms on the hoist side of the yellow band; the coat of arms includes the royal seal framed by the Pillars of Hercules, which are the two promontories (Gibraltar and Ceuta) on either side of the eastern end of ...
— The 2004 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency

... Old, it was the life and death of Sir Walter Raleigh that was produced as the Historical Key to the Elizabethan Art of Tradition. It was the Man of the Globe Theatre, it was the Man in the Tower with his two Hemispheres, it was the modern 'Hercules and his load too,' that made in the original design of it, the Frontispiece of ...
— The Philosophy of the Plays of Shakspere Unfolded • Delia Bacon

... is elderly, as the waiting-woman of a rector ought to be. In her youth she knew, in her country, the three Messieurs d'Asterac, one of whom was captain of a man-of-war and has since been drowned. He was the youngest. The second was colonel of a regiment, went to war and was killed. The eldest, Hercules d'Asterac, is the sole survivor of the three brothers. It is the same one in whose service you are for your good, at least I hope so. He dressed magnificently in his youth, was liberal in his manners but of a sombre humour. He kept ...
— The Queen Pedauque • Anatole France

... work for themselves without working for others, and there came in very early the idea of service as part of the idea of heroism, and the demi- gods, who were among the earliest heroes, were servants as well as masters. Hercules, the most powerful of the heroes to Greek and Roman boys was set to do the most difficult things not for himself but for others. He destroyed lions, hydras, wild boars, birds with brazen beaks and wings, mad bulls, many-headed monsters, horses which fed on human flesh, dragons, he mastered ...
— Heroes Every Child Should Know • Hamilton Wright Mabie

... dies Solis, in conformity to his worship of Apollo, and in company with an ordinance for the regular consulting of the haruspex (321); contributed liberally to the building of churches and the support of the clergy; erased the heathen symbols of Jupiter and Apollo, Mars and Hercules from the imperial coins (323); and gave his sons a Christian education. This mighty example was followed, as might be expected, by a general transition of those subjects who were more influenced in their conduct by outward ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No 2, August, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various

... to make a fabulous number of crank revolutions—fabulous, at least, in connection with his tender age; he was put on the lightest crank, but the lightest was heavy to thirteen years. Not being the infant Hercules, he could not perform this labor; so Hawes put him in jacket and collar almost the whole day. His young and supple frame was in his favor, but once or twice he could hardly help shamming, and then they threw ...
— It Is Never Too Late to Mend • Charles Reade

... whatever, no beauty, no sublimity even, can make me insensible to a bird note. Just at the entrance to the Pillars of Hercules, two towering walls of perpendicular rock that approach each other almost threateningly, as if they would close up and crush between them the rash mortal who dared to penetrate farther,—in that impressive spot, while I lingered, half ...
— A Bird-Lover in the West • Olive Thorne Miller

... disgraced, by their partial attachment, the cause and character of the usurper. The clergy vehemently exclaimed, that he aggravated the crime of rebellion by the guilt of apostasy; that, by his permission, the altar of victory was again restored; and that the idolatrous symbols of Jupiter and Hercules were displayed in the field, against the invincible standard of the cross. But the vain hopes of the Pagans were soon annihilated by the defeat of Eugenius; and they were left exposed to the resentment of the conqueror, who labored to deserve the favor ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 3 • Edward Gibbon

... secondary formation, like the sandstone rocks. Emerson was delighted when he learned that Carlyle, "with those devouring eyes, with that portraying hand," had seen Webster. And this is the portrait Carlyle drew of him: "As a Logic-fencer, Advocate, or Parliamentary Hercules, one would incline to back him at first sight against all the extant world. The tanned complexion, that amorphous, crag-like face; the dull black eyes under their precipice of brows, like dull anthracite furnaces, needing only to be blown; the mastiff-mouth, accurately closed:—I ...
— The Last Harvest • John Burroughs

... march, nay, foot by foot, as it might be, have perseveringly predicted the halt, the defeat, the disasters, and final discomfiture, which it has not yet pleased Divine Providence to inflict on this slight effort of the young Hercules, as he merely moves in his cradle. Alas, the enemy that most menaces the overthrow of this new and otherwise invincible exhibition of human force, is within; seated in the citadel itself; and must be narrowly watched, or he will act his malignant purpose, and destroy the fairest ...
— Oak Openings • James Fenimore Cooper

... By Hercules, I think, I am i' the right. Can. Soldier, thou art: but his whole action grows Not ...
— Notes to Shakespeare, Volume III: The Tragedies • Samuel Johnson

... delicacy, was only to be paralleled by her readiness to impart information. The party at the White Bear knew before she went home, that she had recently had her parlour newly hung with arras, representing the twelve labours of Hercules: that she intended to have roast veal to supper: that her worsted under-stockings had cost her four-and-sixpence the pair: that her husband was a very trying man, and her eldest son the ...
— It Might Have Been - The Story of the Gunpowder Plot • Emily Sarah Holt

... Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob." This condition is certainly mine,—and with a multitude of patriarchs beside, not to mention Caesar and Pompey, Hercules and Bacchus. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 85, November, 1864 • Various

... me, and the offer was tempting; but I steeled my soul against it, and, strange as it may seem, 'twas the remembrance of Mistress Lucy that put an end to all wavering. Once I had had no higher aim than to win Captain Galsworthy's praise; now I felt—but dimly—that I would endure the toils of Hercules to win a lady's favor. 'Twas the budding of young love within me—and I never knew that a lad was any ...
— Humphrey Bold - A Story of the Times of Benbow • Herbert Strang

... soldier; and, under the pretext of obtaining forage for my rocking-horse, I used to make sad havoc among the plants my poor mother delighted to keep on her window-sill. Manly amusements those, I should say! And, nevertheless, I was consumed with longing for a doll. Characters like Hercules have such weaknesses occasionally. Was the one I had fallen in love with at all beautiful? No. I can see her now. She had a splotch of vermilion on either cheek, short soft arms, horrible wooden hands, and long sprawling legs. Her flowered petticoat was fastened ...
— The Crime of Sylvestre Bonnard • Anatole France

... a leader Hadassah, myrtle Halbert, bright stone Hamlyn, home Hanan, grace Hannibal, grace of Baal Harold, a champion Harry, home rule Harvey, bitter Haymon, home Heber, a companion Hector, a defender Henry, a rich lord Herbert, bright warrior Hercules, lordly fame Hereward, sword guardian Herman, a warrior Herodias, of a hero Herodotus, noble gift Hezekiah, strength of God Hilary, cheerful Hildebert, a nobleman Hildebrand, a warbrand Hiram, most noble Hodge, spear of fame Homer, a pledge Horace, worthy of love Horatio, worthy of love ...
— Cole's Funny Picture Book No. 1 • Edward William Cole

... and they sailed eastward by Tartessus on the Iberian shore, till they came to the Pillars of Hercules, and the Mediterranean Sea. And thence they sailed on through the deeps of Sardinia, and past the Ausonian islands, and the capes of the Tyrrhenian shore, till they came to a flowery island, upon a still bright summer's eve. And as they neared it, slowly and wearily, they heard ...
— The Heroes • Charles Kingsley

... victim, not even his aged parents: at last Alcestis his wife, young and bright as himself, gave herself for her husband and died. Then another Guest-Friend of Admetus came to the rescue, Jupiter's own son Hercules, and by main force wrested Alcestis from the grasp of Death, and restored her ...
— Story of Orestes - A Condensation of the Trilogy • Richard G. Moulton

... but it was great service to catch two of the vilest bloodhounds ever laid on by heretics. And to make them shoot one another: it was rare; it was rare, my lad. Now ask us anything in reason; thou canst carry any honours, on thy club, like Hercules. What is ...
— Lorna Doone - A Romance of Exmoor • R. D. Blackmore

... great hero, Hercules, came to the Caucasus Mountains. He climbed the rugged peak, slew the fierce eagle, and with mighty blows broke the chains that ...
— Myths and Legends of All Nations • Various

... double-banked, a dragon's tail in the stern and a horse's head at the prow, in which the Phoenicians of old and other mariners were wont to drive an extensive and lucrative trade in the Mediterranean; sometimes pushing their adventurous keels beyond the Pillars of Hercules, visiting the distant Cassiterides or Tin Isles, and Albion, and even penetrating northward into the Baltic, in search of tin, ...
— The Hot Swamp • R.M. Ballantyne

... kles, or Hercules—a celebrated hero whose deeds are connected with many localities. There is a cave near Nemea where he is said to have slain a lion, not far from Stymphalos, where he put the Harpies to flight, and Erymanthos, the scene of ...
— Odysseus, the Hero of Ithaca - Adapted from the Third Book of the Primary Schools of Athens, Greece • Homer

... Before it strikes, Atlas, the mighty Titan, the son of Asia and the nursling of Aether, will have dropped his heavy manvantaric burden and—died; the Pleiades, the bright seven Sisters, will have upon awakening hiding Sterope to grieve with them—to die themselves for their father's loss. And, Hercules, moving off his left leg, will have to shift his place in heavens and erect his own funeral pile. Then only, surrounded by the fiery element breaking through the thickening gloom of the Pralayan twilight, will Hercules, expiring amidst a general ...
— Five Years Of Theosophy • Various

... known to him, only led to the invention of a scholastic distinction between the real and the traditional East and West, while the confusion was made perfect by the travestied history always so popular among Orientals. The "Gades of Alexander and Hercules," the farthest points east and west, were named after the mythical conquests of the real Iskander and the mythical hero of Greeks and Phoenicians. Arim in the middle, with the pillars of Hercules and Alexander, and the north and south poles ...
— Prince Henry the Navigator, the Hero of Portugal and of Modern Discovery, 1394-1460 A.D. • C. Raymond Beazley

... Gibraltar lie between Morocco and Spain, and the Pillars of Hercules, about which you have probably heard, are the promontories of Europe and Africa which jut out into the Mediterranean Sea at the Straits, and are ...
— The Great Round World and What Is Going On In It, Vol. 1, No. 39, August 5, 1897 - A Weekly Magazine for Boys and Girls • Various

... him, published in 1592; and the fact of his residence in this city is corroborated at page 18 of the present treatise. He then returned to Scotland, having gained a reputation for the excellence of his learning and for the power he possessed of communicating it to others. On the dismissal of Hercules Rollock, Rector of the High School, Edinburgh, from his office, Hume was unanimously chosen to succeed him, and his appointment was dated 23rd April, 1596. During his incumbency the High School underwent many changes, and received the form which it retains to the present day. In March, 1606, Hume ...
— Of the Orthographie and Congruitie of the Britan Tongue - A Treates, noe shorter than necessarie, for the Schooles • Alexander Hume

... will not strive, for he is my host, and it were not fitting or prudent to challenge them. Whatever a man can do with his hands I can do: I can send an arrow sure and strong, and strike down my foe, and herein can no archer surpass me, save one only, Philoctetes, who bare the bow of Hercules; and I can fling a javelin farther than another man can shoot an arrow. Only in speed of foot I fear that some of you may surpass me; for my knees are yet weak from long fasting and fighting with ...
— Stories from the Odyssey • H. L. Havell

... be so formerly. But to-day men of science declare that it rushes towards the constellation of Hercules!" ...
— Bouvard and Pecuchet - A Tragi-comic Novel of Bourgeois Life • Gustave Flaubert

... principle, when a doctrine becomes too absurd for the pulpit, it is given to the Sunday School. The ages of muscle and miracle—of fists and faith—are passing away. Minerva occupies at last a higher niche than Hercules. Now, a word ...
— Men, Women, and Gods - And Other Lectures • Helen H. Gardener

... man, if that he was a man, Not that his manhood could be call'd in question, For had he not been Hercules, his span Had been as short in youth as indigestion Made his last illness, when, all worn and wan, He died beneath a tree, as much unblest on The soil of the green province he had wasted, As e'er was locust ...
— Don Juan • Lord Byron

... the evil genius of his predecessors in office, and most notably by the malignant star which lately ruled over the foreign destinies of England, the task has necessarily been, yet is, and will be, Herculean; but the force of Hercules is there also, as may be hoped, to wrestle with and overthrow the hydra—the AEolus to recall and encage the tempestuous elements of strife. A host in himself, hosts also the premier has with him in his cabinet; for ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Vol. 53, No. 331, May, 1843 • Various

... always been a great pet of Mrs. Baker's, and the unfortunate child being now motherless, he was naturally adopted, and led a most happy life. Although much under two years old, he was quite equal in precocity to a European child of three; in form and strength he was a young Hercules, and, although so young, he would frequently follow me out shooting for two or three miles, and return home with a guinea-fowl hanging over his shoulder, or his hands full of pigeons. Abbai became very civilized; he was taught to make a Turkish "salaam" upon ...
— The Albert N'Yanza, Great Basin of the Nile • Sir Samuel White Baker

... the delicate arms of Elizabeth, of her body clasped by the man in a struggle, her white skin reddened by his grasp. The spectacle, imaginary and lasting but an instant, maddened Peyton beyond endurance, made him a giant, a Hercules. He threw himself against the door repeatedly, plied foot and body in heavy blows. Meanwhile Elizabeth had reached the window, and thrown the key far out on the snow-heaped lawn. She had no sooner done so than the man laid his clutch on ...
— The Continental Dragoon - A Love Story of Philipse Manor-House in 1778 • Robert Neilson Stephens

... Londoners, to lay open the hard dealing of their Tynne Marchants in this trade. When any Western Gent, or person of accompt, wanteth money to defray his expences at London, he resorteth to one of the Tynne Marchants of his acquaintance, to borrow some: but they shall as soone wrest the Clubbe out of Hercules fist, as one penie out of their fingers, vnlesse they giue bond for euerie twentie pound so taken in lone, to deliuer a thousand pound waight of Tyn at the next Coynage, which shal be within two ...
— The Survey of Cornwall • Richard Carew

... wouldn't have been—er—what do you call it?—proper. And of course I could not see clearly at night, anyway. But I did notice he was about six feet tall. Imagine me, poor little me, looking up to six feet! With broad shoulders; an athletic, muscular figure, like a young Hercules; a well-shaped head, like Apollo's, covered with curls of fair hair; a smooth, clear skin, with the tint of the rose in his cheek that deepened to blood-red when his blue eyes, in which the skies of all the world seemed to be mirrored, stared with an expression like that ...
— One Day - A sequel to 'Three Weeks' • Anonymous

... where roll for ever the golden wheels of the chariot of the sun. She saw, too, the winds that are the Desert's best-loved children: Health with shining eyes and a skin of bronze: Passion, half faun, half black-browed Hercules: and Liberty with upraised arms, beating cymbals like monstrous spheres ...
— The Garden Of Allah • Robert Hichens

... for my freedom from anxiety; and, therefore, upon the whole, it was satisfactory to my mind that my brother's opinion of me, after any little transient oscillation, gravitated determinately back toward that settled contempt which had been the result of his original inquest. The pillars of Hercules, upon which rested the vast edifice of his scorn, were these two—1st, my physics; he denounced me for effeminacy: 2d, he assumed, and even postulated as a datum, which I myself could never have the face to refuse, my general idiocy. Physically, therefore, and intellectually, he looked upon ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Vol. 2, No. 8, January, 1851 • Various

... given, with "Tristan." For this purpose Schnorr was invited, at that time residing in Dresden. Wagner says, when he first met him at Carlsruhe, in 1862: "While the sight of the swan-knight, approaching in his little boat, gave me the somewhat odd impression of the appearance of a young Hercules (Schnorr suffered from obesity), yet his manner at once conveyed to me the distinct charm of the mythical hero sent by the gods, whose identity we do not study but whom we instinctively recognize. This instantaneous effect which touches ...
— Life of Wagner - Biographies of Musicians • Louis Nohl

... was not willing himself to share. He took the head of the column in the storming of Eryx, and was the first to mount the ladders. Previous, however, to advancing for the attack, he performed a grand religious ceremony, in which he implored the assistance of the god Hercules in the encounter which was about to take place; and made a solemn vow that if Hercules would assist him in the conflict, so as to enable him to display before the Sicilians such strength and valor, and to perform such feats as should be worthy of his name, his ancestry, and ...
— Pyrrhus - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott

... in just such manner that the Greeks chanted the praises of some hero who had saved them from great disaster, or who had done a mighty deed against dragons. From his early reading came visions of Hercules and Theseus, of Perseus and Bellerophon. But he did not put himself with such champions. He was merely serving a primitive little village, carried by its primitive state farther back than that world in which the more or less legendary ...
— The Great Sioux Trail - A Story of Mountain and Plain • Joseph Altsheler

... see—she moves her heel to make the gown fall better—I told you so. A pretty figure, all in white, before the great altar with the lights, and the priest in his robes, and the organ playing, and that Hercules in a black coat for a husband. Now she looks up. The rings are there on the gold salver upon the altar. She has not seen hers, and is wondering whether it is of plain gold, or a band of diamonds, like the Princess Valdarno's. Now then—ego conjungo vos—the ...
— Sant' Ilario • F. Marion Crawford

... been construed into a prophecy of a forthcoming Messiah, Hyzlo, who was a scholar, knew to have been addressed to a son of Virgil's intimate friend. Tacitus, too, has been interpolated. Seneca's ideal man is not Jesus, for Jesus is Osiris, Horus, Krishna, Mithra, Hercules, Adonis,—think of this beautiful young god's death!—Buddha. Such a mock trial and death could not have taken place under the Roman or Jewish laws. The sacraments derive from the Greeks, from the Indians—the mysteries of Ceres and Bacchus, from the Haoma ...
— Visionaries • James Huneker

... occasions in the Boy's Town, to the fancied admiration of all the other fellows. I do not know just why he wished to appear to his grandmother in a vision; now as Mercury with winged feet, now as Apollo with his drawn bow, now as Hercules leaning upon his club and resting from his Twelve Labors. Perhaps it was because he thought that his grandmother, who used to tell the children about her life in Wales, and show them the picture of ...
— Boy Life - Stories and Readings Selected From The Works of William Dean Howells • William Dean Howells

... they generally gazed out upon calm and sunlit seas. Nifl-heim, the Northern region of perpetual cold and mist, had its exact counterpart in the land north of the Hyperboreans, where feathers (snow) continually hovered in the air, and where Hercules drove the Ceryneian stag into a snowdrift ere he could seize and bind ...
— Myths of the Norsemen - From the Eddas and Sagas • H. A. Guerber

... Rae-Brown A Song for the end of the Season J. R. Planche The Aged Pilot-man Mark Twain Tim Keyser's Nose Max Adeler The Lost Expression Marshall Steele A Night Scene Robert B. Brough Karl the Martyr Frances Whiteside The Romance of Tenachelle Hercules Ellis Michael Flynn William Thomson A Night with a Stork William G. Wilcox An Unmusical Neighbour William Thomson The Chalice David Christie Murray Livingstone Henry Lloyd In Swanage Bay Mrs. Craik Ballad of ...
— Successful Recitations • Various

... appears to have been principally preoccupied with the moral problem. He was the author of the famous apologue which represented Hercules having to choose between two paths, the one being that of virtue, the other of pleasure. Like Socrates later on, he too was subject to the terrible accusation of impiety, and underwent capital punishment. ...
— Initiation into Philosophy • Emile Faguet

... with the addition also of that blessing which you often speak of as an addition, but which is, in fact, an impossible one, the absence of all fear; or, while deserving well of all nations, and bearing assistance and safety to all who are in need of it, to encounter even the distresses of Hercules. For so our ancestors, even in the case of a god, called labours which were unavoidable by the most melancholy name, distresses.(44) I would require you, and compel you to answer me, if I were ...
— The Academic Questions • M. T. Cicero

... of the Night! thine eyes are dim With watching; and the mists, that chill the vale Down which thy feet are passing, hide from view The ever-burning stars. It is thy sight That is so dark, and not the heavens. Thine eyes, Were they but clear, would see a fiery host Above thee; Hercules, with flashing mace, The Lyre with silver chords, the Swan uppoised On gleaming wings, the Dolphin gliding on With glistening scales, and that poetic steed, With beamy mane, whose hoof struck out ...
— Poetical Works of William Cullen Bryant - Household Edition • William Cullen Bryant

... Germans; which appellation of a particular tribe, not of a whole people, gradually prevailed; so that the title of Germans, first assumed by the victors in order to excite terror, was afterwards adopted by the nation in general. [25] They have likewise the tradition of a Hercules [26] of their country, whose praises they sing before those of all other heroes ...
— The Germany and the Agricola of Tacitus • Tacitus

... conquerors of the Byzantine emperors. 'With the Koran in one hand,' says Macaulay, 'and the sword in the other, they went forth conquering and converting eastward to the Bay of Bengal, and westward to the Pillars of Hercules.' They became a terror to the nations that had beheld with contempt their rising greatness. Amid the expiring glories of the Roman world they made Constantinople the capital of their empire. It was ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol 3 No 3, March 1863 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various

... "Two Hercules and two Hippolyti Of Este, a Hercules and Hippolyte Of the Gonzagas' and the Medici, Hunt and fatigue the monster in his flight: Nor Julian lets his good son pass him by; Nor bold Ferrant his brother; nor less wight Is Andrew Doria; ...
— Orlando Furioso • Lodovico Ariosto

... around it. While they were all busily occupied, the fire in the furnace—by burning up faster than was expected—suddenly imparted to the engine the breath of life; and no sooner had the minimum of steam necessary to move it been thus created, than this infant Hercules not only walked off, but without the smallest embarrassment walked through the 14-inch brick wall of the great building which contained it, to the terror of the superintendent and workmen, who expected every instant that the roof above ...
— Railway Adventures and Anecdotes - extending over more than fifty years • Various

... sat solemnly on the platform for awhile, saying no more than the ugly fowls they so much resembled, and then stalked out, leaving me to my fate. A young Hercules fisherman at once suggested, that the first business in order was to throw me out the window as they had so many of my predecessors. To this I stoutly objected, and seizing a big hickory stick window-elevator, I swung ...
— The Gentleman from Everywhere • James Henry Foss

... I said, "and it may interest our friend to know that he also combines the qualities of Hercules and Mars." ...
— John Henry Smith - A Humorous Romance of Outdoor Life • Frederick Upham Adams

... over this rocky cliff did not have its origin in yonder pool. Pure water does not flow from a mud-puddle. Here is a man who in twenty years writes in round numbers forty productions—the task of Hercules. The product of the man attests the nobility of his soul. No man can labor for twenty years without putting his stamp upon his work. Shakspere was no bar-room brawler, no prodigal spender of time and substance in riotous living. He lived to the mature age of fifty-two and died a well-to-do ...
— Stories of Authors, British and American • Edwin Watts Chubb

... nature, of the mixed body, it loves the place of its generation, and even the time; and therefore each one naturally is of more power in his own place and in his own time than in any other. Wherefore, one reads in the History of Hercules, and in the greater Ovid, and in Lucan, and in other Poets, that when fighting with the Giant who was named Antaeus, every time that the Giant was weary, and laid his body down on the earth at full length, either by the ...
— The Banquet (Il Convito) • Dante Alighieri

... doth lodge a noble peer, Great England's glory and the world's wide wonder, Whose dreadful name late thro' all Spain did thunder, And Hercules' two pillars standing near Did make to quake and fear: Fair branch of honour, flower of chivalry! That fillest England with thy triumphs' fame Joy have thou of thy noble victory, And endless happiness of thine own name That promiseth the ...
— The Golden Treasury - Of the Best Songs and Lyrical Poems in the English Language • Various

... measures were proceeding steadily. I had put in a fortnight's attendance at a gymnasium under the supervision of Professor Schneipp, the Bavarian Hercules; I had practiced the most approved 'knock-outs' known to my instructor, the famous pugilist, Melchizedeck Cohen (popularly known as 'Slimy' Cohen); I had given up an hour a day to studying the ...
— The Uttermost Farthing - A Savant's Vendetta • R. Austin Freeman

... more than two years ago. A stranger, on coming to the ground, is struck with wonder when for the first time he obtains a near view of the vast piles of masonry towering majestically above all the surrounding objects—strong as the pillars of Hercules, and apparently as endurable—his eyes wander instinctively to the ponderous tubes, those masterpieces of engineering constructiveness and mathematical adjustment; he shrinks into himself as he gazes, and is astonished when he thinks that the whole is the developed idea of one man, ...
— Anecdotes of Painters, Engravers, Sculptors and Architects and Curiosities of Art (Vol. 3 of 3) • S. Spooner

... to Goliath whom David overthrew. Huge he was and hairy, with deep-set, piercing eyes and a great hooked nose. His face seemed thin and ancient also, when with a motion of the great head, he tossed his long locks back from about it, but his limbs were those of a Hercules and his movements full of a youthful vigour. Moreover his aspect as a whole was that of a devil rather than of a man; indeed the ...
— She and Allan • H. Rider Haggard

... a part of a not very large sphere; for otherwise the difference would not be so obvious to persons making so small a change of place. Wherefore we may judge that those persons who connect the region in the neighborhood of the pillars of Hercules with that towards India, and who assert that in this way the sea is one, do not assert things very improbable. They confirm this conjecture moreover by the elephants, which are said to be of the same species towards each extreme; as if this circumstance was a consequence of the conjunction ...
— A History of Science, Volume 1(of 5) • Henry Smith Williams

... of the principal native chiefs were called together in the Square at Pretoria, and there the English Commissioner read to them the proclamation of Queen Victoria. Sir Hercules Robinson, the Chief Commissioner, having "introduced the native chiefs to Messrs. Kruger, Pretorius, and Joubert," having given them good advice as to indulging in manual labour when asked to do so by the Boers, and having reminded them that it would ...
— Native Races and the War • Josephine Elizabeth Butler

... me: shee speakes poynyards, and euery word stabbes: if her breath were as terrible as terminations, there were no liuing neere her, she would infect to the north starre: I would not marry her, though she were indowed with all that Adam had left him before he transgrest, she would haue made Hercules haue turnd spit, yea, and haue cleft his club to make the fire too: come, talke not of her, you shall finde her the infernall Ate in good apparell. I would to God some scholler would coniure her, for certainely while she is heere, a man may liue as quiet in hell, as in a sanctuary, ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare

... Cascades, and for some distance below them, the immediate banks are guarded by walls of columnar basalt, which are worn in many places into a great variety of bold and picturesque forms, such as the Castle Rock, the Rooster Rock, the Pillars of Hercules, Cape Horn, etc., while back of these rise the sublime mountain walls, forest-crowned and fringed more or less from top to base with pine, spruce, and shaggy underbrush, especially in the narrow gorges and ravines, where innumerable small streams come dancing and drifting down, misty and white, ...
— Steep Trails • John Muir

... Hydras and Chimaeras dire,' their grisly offspring, their futile opponents, are but personified frosts. Mythology—the poet's necessity, the fertile mother of his inventions—has become a series of atmospheric phenomena, and the labours of Hercules prove to be a ...
— The Eagle's Shadow • James Branch Cabell

... and curbed them with stone. He set up fountains, here and there, where the streets intersected, and at symmetrical intervals placed cast-iron statues, painted white, with their titles clear upon the pedestals: Minerva, Mercury, Hercules, Venus, Gladiator, Emperor Augustus, Fisher Boy, Stag-hound, Mastiff, Greyhound, Fawn, Antelope, Wounded Doe, and Wounded Lion. Most of the forest trees had been left to flourish still, and, at some distance, or by moonlight, the place was in truth beautiful; but the ardent citizen, loving ...
— The Magnificent Ambersons • Booth Tarkington

... was still unfit for an offensive campaign against a regular army. To the practised eye of an able and experienced soldier who accompanied McClellan, the Federal host was an army only in name. He likened it to a giant lying prone upon the earth, in appearance a Hercules, but wanting the bone, the muscle, and the nervous organisation necessary to set the great frame in motion. Even when the army was landed in the Peninsula, although the process of training and organisation had been going on for over six months, it was still a most unwieldy ...
— Stonewall Jackson And The American Civil War • G. F. R. Henderson

... more. Such matters were too grand for him. He had beaten the dog of Hercules, who had only brought the purple dye—a thing requiring skill and art and taste to give it value. But gold does well without all these, and better in their absence. From handling many little nuggets, ...
— Erema - My Father's Sin • R. D. Blackmore

... majestic stairs of this castle of victories—heard Adrian's voice—O fool! O woman nurtured, effeminate and contemptible being—I heard his voice, and answered it with convulsive shrieks; I rushed into the Hall of Hercules, where he stood surrounded by a crowd, whose eyes, turned in wonder on me, reminded me that on the stage of the world, a man must repress such girlish extacies. I would have given worlds to have embraced him; I dared ...
— The Last Man • Mary Shelley

... certain DeWitt Clinton had no one save himself to thank for taking this Hercules, whose political direction was conspicuously inevitable from the first. But Clinton wanted an assured victor against Morgan Lewis and the Livingstons, with their Federalist supporters, and, although some people inclined to the opinion that Tompkins had already been promoted too rapidly, Clinton ...
— A Political History of the State of New York, Volumes 1-3 • DeAlva Stanwood Alexander

... I?' replied Terry. 'Deny, if you please, my lord, that it was for a golden pippin that the three goddesses FIT—and that the HIPPOMENES was about golden apples—and did not Hercules rob a garden for golden apples?—and did not the pious Eneas himself take a golden branch with him, to make himself welcome to his father in hell?' said Sir ...
— The Absentee • Maria Edgeworth

... names of generals, poets, artists, sculptors, statesmen, and historians. Books do not dwell upon that long list of thriving colonies which filled the Grecian archipelago with traffic, and reached east and west to the shores of Asia and to the Pillars of Hercules. The Filipinos learn that Rome nourished her generals and her emperors upon the spoils of war, but they do not reflect that the predatory age—at least in the Roman sense—is past. Their imaginations seize upon the part played by the little ...
— A Woman's Impression of the Philippines • Mary Helen Fee

... hoarse-voiced, six-foot specimen of Italian humanity, who looked in his little shop and on the prosaic pavement of Prytania Street somewhat as Hercules might seem in a modern drawing-room. You instinctively thought of wild mountain-passes, and the gleaming dirks of bandit contadini in looking at him. What his last name was, no one knew. Someone had maintained ...
— The Goodness of St. Rocque and Other Stories • Alice Dunbar

... centre of the Universe, and its northern hemisphere was the abode of man. At the middle point of this hemisphere stood Jerusalem, equidistant from the Pillars of Hercules on the West, and the ...
— The Divine Comedy, Volume 1, Hell [The Inferno] • Dante Alighieri

... juncture Scott arrived in London. I called to him for help, as I was sticking in the mire, and, more propitious than Hercules, he put his own shoulder to the wheel. Through his favorable representations, Murray was quickly induced to undertake the future publication of the work which he had previously declined. A further edition of the first volume was struck off and the second volume was ...
— The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent. • Washington Irving

... examined the evidences of revealed religion. But I am glad to find that you have not adopted the code of infidelity of many of the French revolutionists and of an English school of sceptics, who find in the ancient astronomy all the germs of the worship of the Hebrews, who identify the labours of Hercules with those of the Jewish heroes, and who find the life, death and resurrection of the Messiah in the history of the solar day. You, at least, allow the existence of a peculiar religious instinct, or, as you are ...
— Consolations in Travel - or, the Last Days of a Philosopher • Humphrey Davy

... hear with pleasure that our sun is moving rapidly towards the constellation Hercules: and I hope that the men on this earth will do like the sun. And we foremost, ...
— Beyond Good and Evil • Friedrich Nietzsche

... defend myself now from the light of the candles. after the play done, we met with W. Batelier and W. Hewer and Talbot Pepys, [Of Impington, Ob. 1681, aet. suae 35.] and they followed us in a hackney-coach: and we all stopped at Hercules' Pillars; and there I did give them the best supper I could, and pretty merry; and so home between eleven and ...
— The Diary of Samuel Pepys • Samuel Pepys

... upon such public state thieves as would beggar a kingdom to enrich themselves: these were the vermin whom to his eternal honour his pen was continually pricking and goading; a pen, if not so happy in the success, yet as generous in the aim, as either the sword of Theseus, or the club of Hercules; nor was it less sharp than that, or less weighty than this. If he did not take so much care of himself as he ought, he had the humanity however, to wish well to others; and I think I may truly affirm he did the world as much good by a right application of satire, ...
— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753) - Volume II • Theophilus Cibber

... for poverty that was the glory of St. Francis of Assisi. I am the maddest progressive of my time and the maddest reactionary. I despise Americanism, and yet I see in the great American world-invasion, the dominion of the exploiter, something similar to one of the biggest works that Hercules performed in the ...
— Atlantis • Gerhart Hauptmann

... woman, and you, from your physique, are inevitably bound to become her lover. Hercules is not introduced into Messalina's home without making some disturbance. Nevertheless I make bold to add that if there is free entrance to this house, just as there is in bazaars, you are not exactly compelled to buy what is for sale. Love and cards are on the programme, but nobody compels ...
— Yvette • Henri Rene Guy de Maupassant

... big, bare room, done in hard wood, made me seem noisier still. He sort of stopped and twitched, and appeared to shrink back in his chair: I presume my tones went straight through the poor twisted invalid's head. He must have fancied me (from the racket I was making) as a sort of free-and-easy Hercules (which is not quite the case), if not as the whole football squad rolled into one. Whether he really saw me, then or thereafter, I don't know; he wore a sort of green shade over his eyes. Of course I met him in due form. I tried not ...
— Bertram Cope's Year • Henry Blake Fuller

... If I threw myself at her feet to obtain by anticipation her forgiveness for the loving violence I intended to use against her, she would repulse me more powerfully than if she had had the strength of a female Hercules, for she would say, in a voice full of sweetness ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt

... with thunder, has put into the hands of Jesus bolts of flame, and has applauded and enthroned in His sanctuaries such pictorial blasphemies as Michael Angelo's Last Judgment, which represents Jesus as an angry Hercules, and even gratifies the private spite of the artist by overwhelming in a sea of fire one who had offered ...
— The Empire of Love • W. J. Dawson

... not have that solid judgment, or that knowledge of men, manners, and things, which were requisite to qualify him to undertake a task of such magnitude and importance; and with whom was I to unite? I believed, also, that it looked so much like one of the feigned labors of Hercules, that my understanding would be suspected if ...
— Sunny Memories of Foreign Lands V2 • Harriet Beecher Stowe

... inundation than the depth of narrow artesian well; finding nothing too small for his contemplation in the markings of the grammatophora subtilissima, and nothing too large in the movement of the solar system towards the star Lambda of the constellation Hercules;—and the question is, whether there is anything left for me, the Professor, to suck out of creation, after my lively friend has had his straw in the bung-hole ...
— The Professor at the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes (Sr.)

... and, with a swing that Hercules would have envied, planted it securely. In another moment the ship was following in the wake of this novel tug! It was a moment of great danger, for the bergs encroached on their narrow canal as they advanced, obliging them to brace the ...
— The World of Ice • Robert Michael Ballantyne

... handle. This and the pan with the Hercules head on handle used in connection with the plain Thermospodium to serve hot foods in the dining room. ...
— Cooking and Dining in Imperial Rome • Apicius

... was celebrating a solemn feast to Hercules, together with his only son Pallas, and his senate, welcomed the warriors to his modest home, promised his alliance, and sent forth with Aeneas his son Pallas and four hundred knights. He also advised him to go to Argylla, ...
— National Epics • Kate Milner Rabb

... composed a poem in praise of Hercules, and a tragedy, Oedipus. Plutarch (Caes. 2) speaks of him as reciting poems of his own composition to the pirates who took him prisoner. On his journey from Rome to Spain, B.C. 46, he wrote a descriptive poem with ...
— The Student's Companion to Latin Authors • George Middleton

... exclaimed, in no very amiable tone. "I thought the ship was wrecked, with all that splashing and scrubbing. One would suppose that the vessel was as dirty as those Augean stables that fellow Hercules had to clean, by all ...
— The Pirate of the Mediterranean - A Tale of the Sea • W.H.G. Kingston

... quitte discourag'd in my nurserie, Since all my store seemes to hir penurie. I am not as was Hercules the stout, That to the seaventh iournie could hould ...
— The Choise of Valentines - Or the Merie Ballad of Nash His Dildo • Thomas Nash

... sword, and had gained the renown of being one of the bravest young men of the day. His fame traveled faster than he did, and reached Athens before him. As he entered the city, he heard the inhabitants talking at the street corners, and saying that Hercules was brave, and Jason too, and Castor and Pollux likewise, but that Theseus, the son of their own king, would turn out as great a hero as the best of them. Theseus took longer strides on hearing this, and fancied himself sure of a magnificent reception at his father's court, since he ...
— Tanglewood Tales • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... have all wanted to be independent; we have all preferred the far-off land to being near home. And, dear brethren, the character that you have made for yourselves clings to you like the poisoned Nessus' shirt to Hercules. You cannot strip it off. You may get part of it away, but you cannot entirely cast it from your limbs, nor free yourselves from the entanglements of its tatters. Go to God, and He will smile away your sin, and His forgiving love will melt the stains ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren

... glowing spark of Prometheus is burnt out, and now they substitute for it the flash of lycopodium,* a stage-fire which will not so much as light a pipe. The present generation may be compared to rats crawling about the club of Hercules.** ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller

... time and attention to spare for the wonderfully elaborate staircase, the representation in chiaroscuro of horses and warlike weapons, the frieze with heads of unicorns and masks of lions. It must have been on another day that young heads looked up in jest or earnest at Hercules, Diana, Apollo, and Minerva, and stopped to pick out the heterogeneous figures in the colonnade—"ladies, yeomen of the guard, pages, a quaker, two Turks, a Highlander, and Peter the Wild Boy," which testified to the liberal imagination of Kent, who executed ...
— Life of Her Most Gracious Majesty the Queen V.1. • Sarah Tytler

... platonic. She is the East to me; for I cannot understand the East pure and undiluted. She is a country-woman of mine on her father's side, and therefore easier to understand. Impersonality and fatalism, the Eastern Proteus, in the grip of self-insistence and idealism, the British Hercules. A butterfly body with this cosmic war shaking it incessantly. Poor child! no wonder she ...
— Kimono • John Paris

... carriage, politeness compelled King Otho to make a cold offer to the young sailor to follow; the archduke bowed profoundly, sprang into the carriage, and seated himself beside her majesty. The successor of Agamemnon followed, looking more grim than Hercules Furens: he stood for a moment bolt upright in the carriage, hoping his guest would rise and vacate his seat; but the young man was already actively engaged in conversation. The Emperor of the East—in expectancy—was compelled to sit down with his back ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 55, No. 344, June, 1844 • Various

... mine not only visit my office and invade my home, but they turn up at all sorts of inconvenient times and places.—There is my friend the dipsomaniac, the pocket Hercules, the man of brain ...
— London's Underworld • Thomas Holmes

... allow Mr. Jowett most of what he asks. We may freely grant that if the Tragedies of Sophocles had exercised the same wondrous dominion over the world which the Books of the Bible have exercised:—if Oedipus and Jocasta and Creon; if Theseus and Dejanira and Hercules; if Ajax, Ulysses and Minerva;—had done for the world what Enoch and Noah;—what Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob;—what Joseph, and Joshua, and Hannah, and Samuel, and David;—what Elijah and Elisha; what Isaiah and Jeremiah, Ezekiel and Daniel, and the rest;—what St. Peter, ...
— Inspiration and Interpretation - Seven Sermons Preached Before the University of Oxford • John Burgon

... London. He selected a party, including a physician, to sail with him from Geneva. He raised a sum of about L10,000, and on the 13th of July, 1823, embarked with his small party and eight servants, on board the "Hercules" for Greece. ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume XIII • John Lord

... were enabled to attain to it through seeing excavated out of the earth certain antiquities cited by Pliny as amongst the most famous, such as the Laocoon, the Hercules, the Great Torso of the Belvedere, and likewise the Venus, the Cleopatra, the Apollo, and an endless number of others, which, both with their sweetness and their severity, with their fleshy roundness copied from the greatest beauties of nature, and with certain ...
— Lives of the Most Eminent Painters Sculptors and Architects - Vol. 04 (of 10), Filippino Lippi to Domenico Puligo • Giorgio Vasari

... Dacre's House, was on the horns of a dilemma. Circumstances over which he had had no control had brought him, like another Hercules, to the cross-roads, and had put before him the choice between pleasure and duty, or, rather, between pleasure and what those in authority called duty. Being human, he would have had little difficulty in making his decision, had not the path of pleasure been ...
— Tales of St. Austin's • P. G. Wodehouse

... shining for hours, so bright and steady did he shine. She sprang out of bed—with no lazy London resurrection of the old buried, half sodden corpse, sleepy and ashamed, but with the new birth of the new day, refreshed and strong, like a Hercules baby. A few aching remnants of stiffness was all that was left of the old fatigue. It was a heavenly joy to think that no Caley would come knocking at her door. She glided down the long room to the ...
— The Marquis of Lossie • George MacDonald

... by the unexpectedness of the thing, you are weighed down by your clothes and your purse, you are entangled with sails, or clutched at by fellow-passengers, or sucked into vortices. In a big steamer accident, what chance is there for those who can swim? Only an occasional Hercules can keep afloat in a heavy sea, and he not for long. The most that swimming can do for you is to enable you to save yourself in circumstances where you would very probably be saved by somebody else. On the ...
— Without Prejudice • Israel Zangwill

... Italian Hercules, all terrible as he appeared to be, was not long a member of this society before his companions felt towards him sentiments of the most unbounded esteem. All loved, all valued him, for his extraordinary ...
— The Bravo of Venice - A Romance • M. G. Lewis

... the Attic Hercules, however; and Troy may have been a sort of house of call for mythical monsters, in the view ...
— Ariadne Florentina - Six Lectures on Wood and Metal Engraving • John Ruskin

... was with many foes, And stood against them as the hope of Troy Against the Greeks that would have ent'red Troy. But Hercules himself must yield to odds; And many strokes, though with a little axe, Hew down and fell the hardest-timber'd oak. By many hands your father was subdu'd, But only slaught'red by the ireful arm Of unrelenting Clifford and the queen, Who crown'd the gracious duke in high ...
— King Henry VI, Third Part • William Shakespeare [Rolfe edition]

... Humboldt terms 'primordial necessity.' This apotheosis of dirt, by such men as Moleschott, Buchner, and Voght, is the real Antaeus which, though continually over-thrown, springs from mother earth with renewed vigor, and after a little while some Hercules of science will lift the boaster in his ...
— St. Elmo • Augusta J. Evans

... the same time fanning herself most vehemently with a large green fan. Another church (St. Alessandro, I think) was oddly decorated for a Christian temple. A statue of Venus stood on one side of the porch, a statue of Hercules on the other. The two divinities, whose attributes could not be mistaken, had been converted from heathenism into two very respectable saints. I forget their christian names. Nor is this the most amusing metamorphosis ...
— The Diary of an Ennuyee • Anna Brownell Jameson

... me many happy hours on the banks of the Delaware—imperial river!—is Charles C. Abbott's "Upland and Meadow." "Better," Mr. Abbott says, "repeat the twelve labours of Hercules than attempt to catalogue the varied forms of life found in the area of an average ramble!" Soit! And better than that, "to feel that whatever creature we may meet will prove companionable—that is, no stranger, but rather an amusing and companionable friend—assures both pleasure and profit whenever ...
— Confessions of a Book-Lover • Maurice Francis Egan

... religion, Csar formed a totally different opinion from Tacitus. According to the former, the Germans knew only those visible and palpably useful gods, the Sun and the Moon, and Fire; they had never even heard of any others by report. Tacitus, on the contrary, says, that they worship Hercules and Mars, and, above all, Mercury; that, at the same time, their religious sense is eminently spiritual, for they repudiate the thought of enshrining the celestials within walls, or representing them by the human form; that they ...
— Anglo-Saxon Literature • John Earle

... hall to another, dazzled by the masterpieces, bewildered by the accumulation of genius and beauty. It was not only the celebrated examples of statuary, the Laocoon and the Apollo of the cabinets of the Belvedere, the Meleager, or even the torso of Hercules—that astonished him. He was yet more impressed by the ensemble, by the innumerable quantities of Venuses, Bacchuses, and deified emperors and empresses, by the whole superb growth of beautiful or August flesh celebrating the immortality of life. Three days ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola

... small Mediterranean; and what was fabled of the entrance to that sea, in Rio is partly made true; for here, at the mouth, stands one of Hercules' Pillars, the Sugar-Loaf Mountain, one thousand feet high, inclining over a little, like the Leaning Tower of Pisa. At its base crouch, like mastiffs, the batteries of Jose and Theodosia; while opposite, you are menaced by ...
— White Jacket - or, the World on a Man-of-War • Herman Melville

... by poets in several languages. [276] The front of the Ambassador's palace was decorated on this great day with absurd allegorical paintings of gigantic size. There was Saint George with his foot on the neck of Titus Cares, and Hercules with his club crushing College, the Protestant joiner, who in vain attempted to defend himself with his flail. After this public appearance Castelmaine invited all the persons of note then assembled at Rome to a banquet in that gay and splendid gallery which is adorned with paintings of ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 2 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay

... not shock the sensibilities of the sewing-circle by writing home exactly what the employment was that Dan had found, while, for themselves, Polly had her own little ways of embellishing the somewhat prosaic situation. She dubbed the young stable-boy Hercules, and always spoke of the establishment he served as "The Augaeans." Nor did her invention fail when, a month or two later, Dan got a place at somewhat higher wages as druggist's messenger; for then he was promptly informed that his name was Mercury, and that there were wings on his ...
— A Bookful of Girls • Anna Fuller

... light banter, with clear logic; adroitly, with an inexhaustible toughness and resource, like the skilfullest fencer; on whom, so skilful is he, the whole world now looks. Three long years it lasts; with wavering fortune. In fine, after labours comparable to the Twelve of Hercules, our unconquerable Caron triumphs; regains his Lawsuit and Lawsuits; strips Reporter Goezman of the judicial ermine; covering him with a perpetual garment of obloquy instead:—and in regard to the ...
— The French Revolution • Thomas Carlyle



Words linked to "Hercules" :   Herakles, Hercules-club, Hercules'-clubs, Alcides, herculean, Heracles, Hercules'-club, mythical being, constellation



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