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Niobe   Listen
noun
Niobe  n.  (Class. Myth.) The daughter of Tantalus, and wife of Amphion, king of Thebes. Her pride in her children provoked Apollo and Diana, who slew them all. Niobe herself was changed by the gods into stone.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Niobe" Quotes from Famous Books



... shoulders hung, Therein a flash of arrows feathered weel. In her left hand her bow was bended strong, Therein a shaft headed with mortal steel, So fit to shoot she singled forth among Her foes who first her quarries' strength should feel, So fit to shoot Latona's daughter stood When Niobe she killed ...
— Jerusalem Delivered • Torquato Tasso

... sea, I was telling them old gossip-tales of mermaids and sea-serpents, when a red-faced, bottle-nosed Frenchman clapped himself right before me, and, placing his spectacles very deliberately astride his proboscis, echoed out, 'Sacre, mille tonnerres! this is the damned pirate who boarded the "Niobe"!'" ...
— Zanoni • Edward Bulwer Lytton

... little girl." When the rough men who have worked days in the valley of death turned away from this scene there was not a dry eye in the crowd. One touch of nature, and the thought of little ones at home, welded them in heart and sympathy to this Niobe ...
— The Johnstown Horror • James Herbert Walker

... enjoy it all quite as intensely as I, so they considerately give me the lion's share. Every morning, after an exhilarating interview with the Niobe of our kitchen (who thinks me irresponsible, and prays Heaven in her heart I be no worse), I put on my goloshes, take my umbrella, and trudge up and down the little streets and lanes on real and, if need be, ...
— Penelope's Experiences in Scotland • Kate Douglas Wiggin

... and women in repose, when intellect, not the heart, rules. His prose has all the purity of outline and harmony of Greek plastic art. He could not wield the painter's brush, but the great sculptor had yet power to depict the grief of a "Niobe," the agony of the "Laocooen," or the majesty of a "Moses." Like a sculptor, he rarely groups ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 104, June, 1866 • Various

... trout and the pike. If a man loves prints you have an excellent clue to his character; take for instance, the inventory of mine at College:—Four views of the ruins at Rome; Charles Fox; Belisarius; Niobe; and four Landscapes of Poussin; and Claude Lorraine. These last are of constant source of pleasure. I become acquainted with the inhabitants in every house, and know every inch of ground in the prospect. They have formed for me many a pleasant day-dream. I can methodise ...
— Reminiscences of Samuel Taylor Coleridge and Robert Southey • Joseph Cottle

... when her brother came to see her. He arrived at Patesville by an early morning train before the town was awake, and walked unnoticed from the station to his mother's house. His meeting with his sister was not without emotion: he embraced her tenderly, and Rena became for a few minutes a very Niobe of grief. ...
— The House Behind the Cedars • Charles W. Chesnutt

... and motionless, compelled to watch the horrid scene, like Niobe when chained to Sipylus. His servile spirit bowed before the ruler's power, instead of arming his right hand with the dagger of revenge, and when the frantic king asked him the same question a second time, he actually answered, pressing his hand ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers

... just comes in in her automobile rig and talks about her 'bubble.' Mercury has a bicycle; he's a trick rider, and does all sorts of stunts. And Venus is a summer girl, dressed up in a stunning gown and a Paris hat. And Hercules has a punching-bag—to make himself stronger, you know. And Niobe has quantities of handkerchiefs, dozens and dozens of them; ...
— Patty at Home • Carolyn Wells

... no more, having to slip away at that moment and hide behind one of the statues in the passage during the exit of his step-mother with the weeping Niobe; but when the sound of their footsteps had died away in the distance, he rushed into the oak parlour, and seizing Winnie round the waist, treated her to several convulsive hugs and various exclamations of ...
— Aunt Judith - The Story of a Loving Life • Grace Beaumont

... the gods have shown, In turning Niobe to stone: But man's superior power you see, Who turns ...
— The Life And Letters Of Maria Edgeworth, Vol. 1 • Maria Edgeworth

... exhibitions, and of giving it a sort of theatrical animation, than to keep these forms of gods and heroes ever present to our fancy. The assertion may appear somewhat strange at present, but I hope in the sequel to demonstrate its justice: it is only before the groups of Niobe or Laocon that we first enter into the spirit ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art - and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel trans John Black

... shows how Cassandra killed her sons, and the dead boys are lying so naturally that you'd think 'em alive. I own a thousand bowls which Mummius left to my patron, where Daedalus is shown shutting Niobe up in the Trojan horse, and I also have cups engraved with the gladiatorial contests of Hermeros and Petraites: they're all heavy, too. I wouldn't sell my taste in these matters for any money!" A slave dropped a cup while he was running on in this fashion. Glaring at him, Trimalchio said, "Go hang ...
— The Satyricon, Complete • Petronius Arbiter

... Niobe, regina Thebanorum, erat pulchra femina sed superba. Erat superba non solum forma[1] sua maritique potentia[1] sed etiam magno liberorum numero.[1] Nam habebat[2] septem filios et septem filias. Sed ea superbia erat reginae[3] causa magnae tristitiae ...
— Latin for Beginners • Benjamin Leonard D'Ooge

... fascinating a paragon as Eppie herself. Had Silas Marner really existed (nay! even had George Eliot created him in her maturity) neither would he have felt recompensed. Far likelier, he would have been turned to stone, in the first instance, as was poor Niobe when the divine arrows destroyed that unique collection on which she had lavished so many years. Or, may be, had he been a very strong man, he would have found a bitter joy in saving up for a new hoard. Like Carlyle, when the MS. of his masterpiece was burned ...
— Yet Again • Max Beerbohm

... gate, and through it pass friends, a multitude of strangers, the forests, the fields, the marching clouds. There is the ear gate, and therein go trooping all sweet songs, all conversation and eloquence, all laughter with Niobe's woe and grief. There is conversation, and thereby we cross the threshold of another's mind, and wander through the halls of memory and the chambers of imagination. But these faculties are limited. ...
— A Man's Value to Society - Studies in Self Culture and Character • Newell Dwight Hillis

... woman started to her feet, and pressed her children to her arms with an expression as terrified and full of agony as that of the noble and touching statue of the Greek Niobe. ...
— Frederick the Great and His Court • L. Muhlbach

... Fasti, II. 721 ff. Among other Ovidian allusions are those to the story of Philomela, so pervasive in Titus Andronicus; to the Medea myth in four or five passages; to Narcissus and Echo, Phaeton, Niobe, Hercules, and a score more of the familiar names of classical mythology. Pyramus and Thisbe Shakespeare may have read about in Chaucer as well as in Ovid, but Bottom's treatment of this story in A Midsummer-Night's Dream gives but a slight ...
— The Facts About Shakespeare • William Allan Nielson

... illustrated gift-books of the period, composed the bulk of the little library. Midwinter turned to leave the room, when an object on one side of the window, which he had not previously noticed, caught his attention and stopped him. It was a statuette standing on a bracket—a reduced copy of the famous Niobe of the Florence Museum. He glanced from the statuette to the window, with a sudden doubt which set his heart throbbing fast. It was a French window. He looked out with a suspicion which he had not felt yet. The view before him was the ...
— Armadale • Wilkie Collins

... are laughing at me!' she said. 'But I don't think I quite understand passive, inactive fortitude. I like Niobe's arms, all wrapped about ...
— Wych Hazel • Susan and Anna Warner

... you satisfied?" cried Mrs. Hudson, in the tone in which Niobe may have addressed the avenging archers, after she had seen her eldest-born fall. "It 's out of all nature keeping him here. When we 're in a poor way, surely our own dear native land is the place for us. Do leave ...
— Roderick Hudson • Henry James

... within her bower she wept, Still dreaming of the dames renown'd of old, Whom hate or love of the Immortals swept Within the toils of Ate manifold; And most she loved the ancient tales that told How the great Gods, at length to pity stirr'd, Changed Niobe upon the mountains cold, To a cold stone; and ...
— Helen of Troy • Andrew Lang

... Sometimes, after a drenching on account of the David Lockwin Annex—a costly fabric—Mr. Harpwood marvels that men should be created so for the solace of widows! The other ladies show their discontent. Fortunes are on every hand, and Esther is like Niobe, all tears. Why does Harpwood turn all tears, weeping for Lockwin? This causes Harpwood to be ...
— David Lockwin—The People's Idol • John McGovern

... Niobe, Queen of Thebes, was proud of many things. Amphion, her husband, had received from the Muses a wonderful lyre, to the music of which the stones of the royal palace had of themselves assumed place. Her father was Tantalus, who had been entertained ...
— Myths and Legends of All Nations • Various

... little forsaken thing came back into the conservatory and wanted to be comforted. And we did comfort her as best we could. All the winter through she was in and out from the conservatory to the dining-room, becoming very friendly and answering to her name instantly: papa had named her Niobe. ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 22. July, 1878. • Various

... at her side, he became quiet. Their meals often passed in silence, and, from the grace of their attitudes, the beautiful proportions of their figures, and their naked feet, you might have fancied you beheld an antique group of white marble, representing some of the children of Niobe; if those eyes which sought to meet those smiles which were answered by smiles of the most tender softness, had not rather given you the idea of those happy celestial spirits, whose nature is love, and who are not obliged to have recourse to words for the expression ...
— Paul and Virginia • Bernardin de Saint Pierre

... continue for some little time, if a man gets thoroughly interested in his subject and thinks he is talking rather well, before he discovers that his petite blonde divinity is either a frozen statue, or a veritable Niobe as to tears. And not one man in three hundred and nineteen ever suspects ...
— The Spinster Book • Myrtle Reed

... And thus Niobe is feigned to have been turned into stone, from her never speaking, I suppose, in her grief. But they imagine Hecuba to have been converted into a bitch, from her rage and bitterness of mind. There are others who love to converse with solitude itself, ...
— The Academic Questions • M. T. Cicero

... Nineveh bulls afresh, with the blackest eyes he could paint (because he had none himself), and he got the angels down from Lincoln choir, and gilded their wings like his gingerbread of old times; and he sent for everything else he could think of, and put it in his booth. There are the casts of Niobe and her children; and the Chimpanzee; and the wooden Caffres and New-Zealanders; and the Shakespeare House; and Le Grand Blondin, and Le Petit Blondin; and Handel; and Mozart; and no end of shops, and buns, and beer; and all the little-Pthah-worshippers say, ...
— The Crown of Wild Olive • John Ruskin

... pyles let no man raise To her name for after-dayes; Some kind woman, borne as she, Reading this, like Niobe, Shall turne marble, and become Both her mourner ...
— The Natural History of Wiltshire • John Aubrey

... babylonica, or the weeping willow, in its geographical range, sweeps through the plains of Judea, and by the ruins of Babylon, from the verge of the Mediterranean to the frontiers of Japan—a lovely line of beauty—the Niobe of vegetation! Sad memorial of the mournful march of the captive Hebrews. It is, we think, a very striking circumstance, that these countries should even now retain such unchanged lineaments of their ancient history. Time seems to linger, or move slowly on; ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 19, - Issue 553, June 23, 1832 • Various

... Americans from the South, and coloured waiters; but that which actually at last put me in a fever was the sight of the female attendant of the ladies' cabin, whose form was so buckled up in stays of the most rigid order, that the heat, American-bred as she was, appeared to have rendered her a Niobe, for she was tall and as straight as a poplar-tree, and much of the colour of its inner rind. Oh! the heat, the intolerable heat, on Lake Erie that night! The worthy captain declared he had never experienced its like, and that as for rest it was impracticable. ...
— Canada and the Canadians, Vol. 2 • Richard Henry Bonnycastle

... gravitated towards his central passion—the Fragments of Sophocles. Some day ("never," said Herbert) he would edit them. At present they were merely in his blood. With the zeal of a scholar and the imagination of a poet he reconstructed lost dramas—Niobe, Phaedra, Philoctetes against Troy, whose names, but for an accident, would have thrilled the world. "Is it worth it?" he cried. "Had we better be planting potatoes?" And then: "We had; but this is the ...
— The Longest Journey • E. M. Forster

... these rural scenes to those we had recently encountered in poor down-trodden Ireland, the Niobe of nations, besprinkled with the tears of centuries for the loss of ...
— Shakspere, Personal Recollections • John A. Joyce

... peer in all the sea For verdure, vale, or river, flower or leaf,— If first to no man else, thou'rt first to me. New loves may come with duties, but the first Is deepest yet,—the mother's breath and smiles; Like that kind face and breast where I was nursed Is my poor land, the Niobe ...
— The World's Best Poetry, Volume 8 • Various

... on the top of it was perched son Tom, waving the blue and silver flag of Hurstley, and acting as fugleman to a crowd of uproarious cheerers; and beside it, on the bank, sat Sarah Stack, overcome with joy, and sobbing like a gladsome Niobe. ...
— The Complete Prose Works of Martin Farquhar Tupper • Martin Farquhar Tupper

... matter at all. His creed on such subjects will no more influence his poetry, properly so called, than the notions which a painter may have conceived respecting the lacrymal glands, or the circulation of the blood will affect the tears of his Niobe, or the blushes of his Aurora. If Shakespeare had written a book on the motives of human actions, it is by no means certain that it would have been a good one. It is extremely improbable that it would have contained ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 1 • Thomas Babington Macaulay

... archers too, upon a wider plain, Beside the feathery whizzing of the shaft, And the dull twanging bowstring, and the raft Branch down sweeping from a tall ash top, Call'd up a thousand thoughts to envelope Those who would watch. Perhaps, the trembling knee And frantic gape of lonely Niobe, Poor, lonely Niobe! when her lovely young Were dead and gone, and her caressing tongue 340 Lay a lost thing upon her paly lip, And very, very deadliness did nip Her motherly cheeks. Arous'd from this sad mood By one, who at a distance loud halloo'd, Uplifting his strong bow into ...
— Endymion - A Poetic Romance • John Keats

... "As Niobe, when weeping mute, To angry gods the scorn and prey, But tasted of the charmed fruit, And cast despair itself away; So, while unto thy lips, its shore, This stream of life enchanted flows, Remember'd ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXVIII. February, 1843. Vol. LIII. • Various

... to have arisen in the following way [1110]: the "Catalogues" probably ended (ep. "Theogony" 963 ff.) with some such passage as this: 'But now, ye Muses, sing of the tribes of women with whom the Sons of Heaven were joined in love, women pre-eminent above their fellows in beauty, such as was Niobe (?).' Each succeeding heroine was then introduced by the formula 'Or such as was...' (cp. frags. 88, 92, etc.). A large fragment of the "Eoiae" is extant at the beginning of the "Shield of Heracles", which may be mentioned here. The "supplement" (ll. 57-480) is nominally Heracles ...
— Hesiod, The Homeric Hymns, and Homerica • Homer and Hesiod

... crying like Niobe or Niagara, Mrs. Peters threw her arms around her lord and dissolved upon him. Mr. Peters would have striven to extricate the dollar bill from its deposit vault, but his arms were ...
— The Voice of the City • O. Henry

... expression of his opinions about a book, was to be dealt with criminally, free speech, free action, the noble inheritance of our ancestors, were gone, and the liberties of the country no more. Collecting himself for a last effort, he represented the Goddess of Liberty, like Niobe, all tears, weeping over the fate of her children, should the iniquity, contemplated by ...
— The Lost Hunter - A Tale of Early Times • John Turvill Adams

... have imagined that the masculine traits in her were getting the upper hand! She grew more feminine every hour. There was an increasing rhythm in her movements—a certain rich solemnity like that of Niobe or Hermione. Her red-brown hair tumbled about her face and festooned her statuesque shoulders. The severity of her usual attire gave place to a negligence which enhanced her picturesqueness, and the heaving of her troubled bosom, the lifting of her wistful eyes gave her a tenderer beauty ...
— The Precipice • Elia Wilkinson Peattie

... yet will never be dissuaded.—Cho. Yet what groans and prayers can raise thy sire from the doomed pool of Hades? you go from woes bearable to woes beyond bearing.—Elec. It is weak to forget parents so lost; rather for me the nightingale that ever wails 'Itys,' or Niobe weeping in stone.—Cho. Thou art not the only one who feels sorrow: there are thy sisters, and another now mourning in a youth obscure, but who will one day return to save.—Elec. Ah! him I yearn for, but he mocks ...
— Story of Orestes - A Condensation of the Trilogy • Richard G. Moulton

... 'Some more,' said Richter, continually peeling the potatoes, while not a single muscle of his face betrayed what he thought of it all. I thought that everything was going fine, so I selected 'Hagar.' I despaired like Niobe, cursed like Lear, pleaded, threatened, and ended up, all exhausted and breathless. He said: 'Still more!' He stopped peeling the potatoes and began to chop meat. Enraptured by the tone of encouragement I selected from Slowacki's Mazeppa that prison-scene from the fourth act and recited ...
— The Comedienne • Wladyslaw Reymont

... Themistocles? But what man had hated Glaucon? One answer remained,—unwittingly the athlete had offended some god, forgotten some vow, or by sheer good fortune had awakened divine jealousy. Poseidon had been implacable toward Odysseus, Athena toward Hector, Artemis toward Niobe,—Glaucon could only pray that his present welcome amongst the Persians might not draw down another ...
— A Victor of Salamis • William Stearns Davis

... to shake the human bundle, calling the man again by name; when, after a little while, he disinterred his terrified face from amidst the folds of his coverings, looking as pale as a Niobe in marble. ...
— The Wreck of the Nancy Bell - Cast Away on Kerguelen Land • J. C. Hutcheson

... halted, a boy who was denouncing someone in a hard and bitter voice and, clinging to his arm, a girl in a cloak, whom I judged to be his sister. Her eyes were like pools of ink and tragic with imploring, Laughter would have made her lovely. As it was, with her lashes wet I could only think of Niobe and a passion of tears. I have rarely seen in a woman's face so much of the right kind of sweetness. It was an exquisite vigor of sweetness, not in the ...
— Kenny • Leona Dalrymple

... good fellow, so I cried, too. I always cry some time during a bat, and there was an opening for your life. I cried so hard that the bartender had to ask me to stop three different times. I made Niobe look like a two spot. Between sobs I asked him about the sad affair, and found that his mother had died when he was born. I guess it had just struck ...
— Billy Baxter's Letters • William J. Kountz, Jr.

... Butch, and Coach Corridan, but I got all shivery when I tried to confess, and I—couldn't! Nay, Theophilus, you faithful friend, I'm so glad, old man, that beside yours truly, the celebrated Pollyanna resembles Niobe, weeping ...
— T. Haviland Hicks Senior • J. Raymond Elderdice

... of old! What sorrows have ye sung, And tragic stories, chronicled in stone,— Sad Philomel restored her ravish'd tongue, And transform'd Niobe in dumbness shown; Sweet Sappho on her love forever calls, And Hero on the drown'd ...
— The Poetical Works of Thomas Hood • Thomas Hood

... see some of the statues in Italy; the Laocoon, Niobe, and others I have seen. I think you would feel then what I felt—what I never can describe ...
— Elinor Wyllys - Vol. I • Susan Fenimore Cooper

... pyles let no man raise, To her name, for after daies, Some kind woman, born as she, Reading this like Niobe, Shall turn marble, and become, Both her mourner ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 75, April 5, 1851 • Various

... scene is spectacular, and the music is not striking—for Wagner, though Marschner or Spontini might have owned it with pride. The entry of the nobles bringing Frederick's corpse, the entry also of Elsa, "like Niobe, all tears," are theatrically powerful. Elsa's entry is a particularly beautiful example of what I have previously called Wagner's dramatict use of the leitmotiv. There are twenty bars of accompaniment, and in that space we have three motives, so ...
— Richard Wagner - Composer of Operas • John F. Runciman

... castle, I paused at the spot where Columbine and I had sat down so disconsolately in our ragged finery, and looked dubiously upon London. I almost expected to see her again, standing on the hill's brink, "like Niobe all tears;"—mournful ...
— Tales of a Traveller • Washington Irving

... sorry work. She kissed me on the forehead, and turned away. Her daughter was standing close to her, "like Niobe, all tears." "Farewell, Mr Cringle—may you be happy!" I kissed her hand—she turned to the Captain. He looked inexpressible things, and taking her hand, held it to his breast; and then, making a slight genuflection, pressed it to his lips. He appeared to ...
— Tom Cringle's Log • Michael Scott

... suffer, it is also his fortune to forget. Oblivion and sorrow share our being, as Darkness and Light divide the course of time. It is not in human nature to endure extremities, and sorrows soon destroy either us or themselves. Perhaps the fate of Niobe is no fable, but a type of the callousness of our nature. There is a time in human suffering when succeeding sorrows are but like snow falling on an iceberg. It is indeed horrible to think that our peace of mind should arise, not from a retrospection of the past, but from a forgetfulness ...
— Vivian Grey • The Earl of Beaconsfield

... Must I remember: why she would hang on him, As if encrease of Appetite had growne By what is fed on; and yet within a month? Let me not thinke on't: Frailty, thy name is woman. A little Month, or ere those shooes were old, With which she followed my poore Fathers body Like Niobe, all teares. Why she, euen she. (O Heauen! A beast that wants discourse of Reason Would haue mourn'd longer) married with mine Vnkle, My Fathers Brother: but no more like my Father, Then I to Hercules. Within a Moneth? Ere yet the salt of most vnrighteous Teares ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare

... her splendours manifold, Her quays and palaces that fringed the bay. His smile makes every barren hill-side blush In rose and purple for the glories fled, As early watchers note th' encroaching flush From proud Ravello to Atrani spread, And curse the cruel arm that once did crush This sea-sprung Niobe, and leave her dead." ...
— The Naples Riviera • Herbert M. Vaughan

... and, both running before the wind, we fired broadsides as we cracked on. It was tit-for-tat for a while with splinters flying and neither of us in the eye of advantage, but at last the Araminta shot away the main-mast and wheel of the Niobe, and she wallowed like a tub in the trough of the sea. We bore down on her, and our carronades raked her like a comb. Then we fell thwart her hawse, and tore her up through her bowline-ports with a couple of thirty-two-pounders. But before ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker

... task of sculpture, held fast the model's fleeting outline—so fleeting, at that particular age of life, that every month, and every week, brings about new conditions of surface and texture. A child of Niobe? Very likely. There is suffering also here, a suffering different from theirs; struck by the Sun-God's arrow, he is in the act of sinking to earth. Over this tension broods a divine calm. Here is the antidote to mummified ...
— Alone • Norman Douglas

... I thought she had something to do with sitting on a hill and her children turning to stone one after the other, but Jerry said that was Niobe and that it was she who turned to stone, not the children. He has a fearfully long memory. So we put on the light again and looked it up in "The Reader's Handbook," because we didn't want to bother the grown-ups, and we found, ...
— Us and the Bottleman • Edith Ballinger Price

... extending his graceful hand in triumph over the terrible snake. Oh, he was simply beautiful! Venus entranced me. She looked as if she had just risen from the foam of the sea, and her loveliness was like a strain of heavenly music. I also saw poor Niobe with her youngest child clinging close to her while she implored the cruel goddess not to kill her last darling. I almost cried, it was all so real and tragic. General Loring kindly showed me a copy of one of the wonderful bronze ...
— Story of My Life • Helen Keller

... kinglier, say, than I am? Even so, you will not sit like Theseus. You would prove a model? The Son of Priam Has yet the advantage in arms' and knees' use. You're wroth—can you slay your snake like Apollo? You're grieved—still Niobe's the grander! You live—there's the Racers' frieze to follow: You die—there's the ...
— Introduction to Robert Browning • Hiram Corson

... north-westerly direction for long stretches of 3,500 m., 4,000 m., 2,000 m., until we came to an equilateral-triangular island, 300 m. each side—Erminia Island. A small channel not more than 20 m. across separated this from an irregularly-shaped island, 600 m. long—Niobe Island. After this came a low island of sand and gravel 5 ft. high and 300 m. long, with merely a few trees upon it, whereas the other two islands were covered with dense and most beautiful vegetation. The main channel of the river ...
— Across Unknown South America • Arnold Henry Savage Landor

... same time with her to the Lake. His absence darkened all the sunshine to her; and when I asked her why she could not enjoy the walk as Julian did, she replied, "Ah, he does not love papa as I do!" But when we arrived, there sat papa on a rock, and her face and figure were transfigured from a Niobe's to an Allegra's instantly. After I put Julian to bed, I went out to the barn to see about the chickens, and she wished to go. There sat papa on the hay, and like a needle to a magnet she was drawn, and begged to see papa a little longer, and stay with him. ...
— Memories of Hawthorne • Rose Hawthorne Lathrop

... Italiens. Patti had been announced, and Mdlle. Harris appeared instead. Whereupon there was an uproar that could not be stilled. La Patti wept; la Harris wept also. Finally, the spoilt child appeared, like Niobe, all tears. Who created the uproar? The French chroniqueur answers: a cosmopolitan audience—an audience from the Grand Hotel. He is good enough not to pick us out, but we are included with the rest. The foreign residents have degraded the Opera. ...
— The Cockaynes in Paris - 'Gone abroad' • Blanchard Jerrold

... The Niobe of nations! there she stands, Childless and crownless, in her voiceless woe;[nm] empty urn within her withered hands, Whose holy dust was scattered long ago; The Scipios' tomb contains no ashes now;[457] The very sepulchres lie tenantless[458] ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 2 • George Gordon Byron

... restor'd to thee as thou requiredst. He on his bier has been laid, and thyself shall behold and remove him Soon as the dawning appears: but of food meanwhile be we mindful. For not unmindful of food in her sorrow was Niobe, fair-hair'd, Albeit she in her dwelling lamented for twelve of her offspring. Six were the daughters, and six were the sons in the flower of their manhood. These unto death went down by the silvern bow of Apollo, Wrathful to Niobe—those smote Artemis arrow-delighting; For that she vaunted ...
— Blackwoods Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 365, March, 1846 • Various

... had embarked in a Greek vessel for Tripoli; had been nearly wrecked through the skipper's intemperance, and had finally been put ashore at Malta. He had also been Byron-smitten, and had followed in the wake of the author of "Childe Harold" to the Levant; had contemplated "the Niobe of nations" among the ruins of Rome; had witnessed the dance of the dervishes amid the fallen temples of Athens; and had "felt his patriotism gain force upon the plain of Marathon."[202] He had twice visited ...
— The Story of the Upper Canada Rebellion, Volume 1 • John Charles Dent

... expression of the Soul that the creator of the Niobe has presented to us. All the means by which Art tempers even the Terrible, are here made use of. Mightiness of form, sensuous Grace, nay, even the nature of the subject-matter itself, soften the expression, through this, that Pain, transcending all expression, ...
— The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries: - Masterpieces of German Literature Translated into English, Volume 5. • Various

... why the Prince's chauffeur had acquired the countenance of a male Niobe. Wormlike resignation to utter misery was, we had judged, his prevailing characteristic; but hard work, ingratitude, and goodness knows how much abuse, caused the worm to ...
— My Friend the Chauffeur • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson

... earth! Must I remember? why, she would hang on him, As if increase of appetite had grown By what it fed on: And yet, within a month,— Let me not think on't,—Frailty, thy name is Woman!— A little month; or ere those shoes were old With which she follow'd my poor father's body, Like Niobe, all tears;—she married with my uncle, My father's brother; but no more like my father Than I to Hercules. It is not, nor it cannot come to, good: But break, my heart, for ...
— Hamlet • William Shakespeare

... impulsive and exigent woman, rising at the outset to the height of a bold and womanly choice in defiance of social prejudice and family tradition, and then relapsing under the disillusions of marriage into the weakest failings of her class, rising again, from a self-torturing neurotic into a kind of Niobe at the death ...
— When Winter Comes to Main Street • Grant Martin Overton

... spite of such minor attractions as those of Niobe and her daughters, at once to achieve the Tribune, feeling, as poppa said, that it would be most unfortunate to have our admiration all used up before we reached it. The guide led the way, and it was beguiled with the fascinating experience of the Miss Binghams, ...
— A Voyage of Consolation - (being in the nature of a sequel to the experiences of 'An - American girl in London') • Sara Jeannette Duncan

... then she stood in silence, fixed and breathless; But presently the threatening arm slid down; The fierce, destroying frown Departed from her eyes, which took a deathless Expression of despair, like Niobe's— Her ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 1 July 1848 • Various

... figure on the damp marshy ground, took the heavy head on her lap, and looked up at the two men with a pale set face which indicated a resolve that neither of them was strong enough to overrule. They tried their utmost to persuade her, but in vain. She was fixed as a new Niobe—a stony image of young despair. So Roderick mounted his horse and rode off towards Lyndhurst, and honest Jack Wimble tied the other two horses to the gate, and took his stand beside them, a few paces from those two motionless ...
— Vixen, Volume I. • M. E. Braddon

... care for the Apollo Belvidere and the Venus of Milo because it tickles our vanity to view the physical perfection of the race to which we belong; it is our own possibilities of anguish that we pity in the Laocoon and the Niobe; ...
— The Philistines • Arlo Bates

... a fearful zigzag before it reached the upper regions of the roof, was the necessary and infallible ornament of the room. A shelf ran round the walls, on which were models in plaster, heterogeneously placed, most of them covered with gray dust. Here and there, above this shelf, a head of Niobe, hanging to a nail, presented her pose of woe; a Venus smiled; a hand thrust itself forward like that of a pauper asking alms; a few "ecorches," yellowed by smoke, looked like limbs snatched over-night from a graveyard; besides these objects, pictures, drawings, lay figures, frames without ...
— Vendetta • Honore de Balzac

... dinner, not merely in the enjoyment, while it is passing, but afterwards. I made a good suggestion to Miss Hosmer for the design of a fountain,—a lady bursting into tears, water gushing from a thousand pores, in literal translation of the phrase; and to call the statue "Niobe, all Tears." I doubt whether she adopts the idea; but Bernini would have been delighted with it. I should think the gush of water might be so arranged as to form a beautiful drapery about the figure, swaying and fluttering with every ...
— Passages From the French and Italian Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... a Niobe—weeping not for her children, she never had any, but for her youth. She is the religion of half Mayfair, though I don't know whether she's got a religion. Men who wouldn't look at her when she was sixteen, twenty-six, thirty-six, worship ...
— The Woman With The Fan • Robert Hichens

... which teach how grace can chasten nudity in the Goddess of the Tribune at Florence, to the embodied melancholy of Hamlet in the brooding Lorenzo of the Medici Chapel,—from the stone despair, the frozen tears, as it were, of all bereaved maternity, in the very bend of Niobe's body and yearning gesture, to the abandon gleaming from every muscle of the Dancing Faun,—from the stern brow of the Knife-grinder, and the bleeding frame of the Gladiator, whereon are written forever the inhumanities ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. II, No. 8, June 1858 • Various

... Adam and Niobe were there, DISRAELI much the worse for wear, Samson before he'd cut his hair, Lord BYRON and Apollo; A female group surrounded by A camel (though I don't know why)— And all of them were ten feet high And all, I think, ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, Feb. 26, 1919 • Various

... large, full-faced likeness of a pet actress, taken in just the right attitude to show the rounding shoulders, the lightly poised head, and the heavy hair, to the best advantage; some charming French prints, among them "Niobe and her Daughters" and "Di Vernon;" and a half dozen pictures of the fine old English stage-coach days. Over the fireplace were suspended several pairs of boxing gloves, garnishing the picture of a tall fellow in fighting attitude, whose prodigious muscles ...
— Round the Block • John Bell Bouton

... a vision of Louise de la Valliere, "like Niobe, all tears," flying to the arms of the abbess of the Visitandines for refuge from the anguish of beholding the insolent De Montespan enthroned in her place. It took all the eloquence and persuasive powers of Colbert to induce the fair weeper to return with him to Versailles. She yielded at last, ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, December 1878 • Various

... not to find a tender Niobe, but feeling that his dignity demanded the first apology, he made none, only came leisurely in and laid himself upon the sofa with the singularly relevant remark, "We are going to have a new moon, ...
— Little Women • Louisa May Alcott

... remember, my dear Madame de Camps, that in 1831 you and I went together to the Beaux-Arts to see the exhibition of works which were competing for the Grand Prix in sculpture? The subject given out for competition was Niobe weeping for her children. Do you also remember my indignation at one of the competing works around which the crowd was so compact that we could scarcely approach it? The insolent youth had dared to turn that sacred subject into jest! His Niobe was infinitely touching in her ...
— The Deputy of Arcis • Honore de Balzac

... bade the mother plead with her son, obey the promptings of nature, and bid him live for her sake. She had stood through all the fearful scene, not like a Niobe in tears, but with hands clasped and eyes upraised, as one who sees the invisible, and drinks in courage from words inaudible to other ears than her own. She heard the king, approached her young son, laid her hand on his ...
— Hebrew Heroes - A Tale Founded on Jewish History • AKA A.L.O.E. A.L.O.E., Charlotte Maria Tucker

... that the chief pleasure he had in visiting Rome was to find the Greek gods and the heroes and heroines of Greek story throned in the Vatican. He preferred Niobe to the Mater Dolorosa and Helen to both; the worship of sorrow must give place, he declared, to ...
— Oscar Wilde, Volume 1 (of 2) - His Life and Confessions • Frank Harris

... inhabitants to stone, In the same attitudes they now are in, What fearful glances downward might we cast Into the hollow chasms of human life! What groups should we behold about the death-bed, Putting to shame the group of Niobe! What joyful welcomes, and what sad farewells! What stony tears in those congealed eyes! What visible joy or anguish in those cheeks! What bridal pomps, and what funereal shows! What foes, like gladiators, fierce and struggling! What lovers with ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

... Hellenic and primitive art, whether antique or medieval, were unknown or unappreciated. The reigning models of taste in ancient sculpture were copies of fourth-century originals, Hellenistic or later productions. Hence Smollett's ecstasies over the Laocoon, the Niobe, and the Dying Gladiator. Greek art of the best period was hardly known in authentic examples; antiques so fine as the Torso of Hercules were rare. But while his failures show the danger of dogmatism in art criticism, Smollett is ...
— Travels Through France and Italy • Tobias Smollett

... the name of the same Aristotle "in the eleventh chapter of his Art of Poetry, wherein we find the condemnation of Le Cid"; in the name of Plato, "in the tenth book of his Republic"; in the name of Marcellinus, "as may be seen in the twenty-seventh book"; in the name of "the tragedies of Niobe and Jephthah"; in the name of the "Ajax of Sophocles"; in the name of "the example of Euripides"; in the name of "Heinsius, chapter six of the Constitution of Tragedy; and the younger Scaliger in his poems"; and finally, in the name of the Canonists and Jurisconsults, under the ...
— Prefaces and Prologues to Famous Books - with Introductions, Notes and Illustrations • Charles W. Eliot

... She were less wretched;"—how, evoking so From congregated wrong and heaped despair Of men and women writhing under blow, Harrowed and hideous in a filthy lair, Some personating Image wherein woe Was wrapt in beauty from offending much, They called it Cybele, or Niobe, Or laid it corpse-like on a bier for such, Where all the world might drop for Italy Those cadenced tears which burn not where they touch,— "Juliet of nations, canst thou die as we? And was the violet crown ...
— The Poetical Works of Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Volume IV • Elizabeth Barrett Browning

... wreathed, Yon stone was mournful Niobe's mute cell, Low through yon sedges pastoral Syrinx breathed, And through those groves wail'd the sweet Philomel; The tears of Ceres swell'd in yonder rill— Tears shed for Proserpine to Hades borne; And, for her lost Adonis, yonder ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 54, No. 334, August 1843 • Various

... the less cultivated. Lear and the Divine Comedy exhaust the thinking of the profoundest student, yet subdue to hushed and breathless attention the illiterate minds that know not what study means. The "Last Judgment," the "Transfiguration," the "Niobe," and the "Dying Gladiator" excite alike the intelligent rapture of artists, and the unintelligent admiration of those to whom art and its principles are a sealed book. Handel's Israel in Egypt—the ...
— Early Reviews of English Poets • John Louis Haney

... antique statue of the huntress Diana—at one time haughty, rapid, imperious, with eyes and arrows that dart and kill. Harry watched and wondered at this young creature, and likened her in his mind to Artemis with the ringing bow and shafts flashing death upon the children of Niobe; at another time she was coy and melting as Luna shining tenderly upon Endymion. This fair creature, this lustrous Phoebe, was only young as yet, nor had nearly reached her full splendor: but crescent and brilliant, ...
— The History of Henry Esmond, Esq. • W. M. Thackeray

... along their beat of boulevard, the idlers of the quarter dubbed them "the pair of nutcrackers," a nickname which makes any portrait of Schmucke quite superfluous, for he was to Pons as the famous statue of the Nurse of Niobe in the Vatican ...
— Cousin Pons • Honore de Balzac

... O Niobe! in what a trance of woe Thee I beheld, upon that highway drawn, Sev'n sons on either side thee slain! Saul! How ghastly didst thou look! on thine own sword Expiring in Gilboa, from that hour Ne'er visited with rain ...
— The Divine Comedy, Complete - The Vision of Paradise, Purgatory and Hell • Dante Alighieri

... had left Rome with the retreating tide of foreign residents. For, as summer approaches, the Niobe of Nations is made to bewail anew, and doubtless with sincerity, the loss of that large part of her population which she derives from other lands, and on whom depends much of whatever remnant of prosperity she still enjoys. Rome, at this ...
— The Marble Faun, Volume II. - The Romance of Monte Beni • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... stood two nymphs, now almost classic with decay. One of them, toppling helplessly, quenched her bronze torch in weeds. Her sister stood erect in grief like a daughter of Niobe ...
— In a Little Town • Rupert Hughes

... your service, sir. Captain they call me, though I'm none. Sailing-master I was, on board of His Majesty's ship Niobe, 84;" and Willis raised his hat with such an air, that Tom raised ...
— Two Years Ago, Volume I • Charles Kingsley

... forgotten. It seems like one in deep distress. "A stranger," says Waterton, "would never believe the sound to be the voice of a bird. He would say it was the last groan of a midnight murdered victim, or the cry of Niobe for her children before she was turned into stone. Suppose a person in great sorrow, who begins with a loud note, Ha, ha, ha, ha! and so on, each note lower and lower, till the last is scarcely heard, pausing a moment or two between every ...
— The Western World - Picturesque Sketches of Nature and Natural History in North - and South America • W.H.G. Kingston

... he singles out, like his cousin in 'Childe Harold' or 'Manfred', as the most striking objects, the general aspect of the "marbled wilderness", the moonlight view of the amphitheatre, the Laocoon, the Belvedere Apollo, and the group of Niobe and her daughters. One other taste he shared with Byron—he was a lover of dogs, and "Rover" was his constant ...
— The Works Of Lord Byron, Letters and Journals, Vol. 1 • Lord Byron, Edited by Rowland E. Prothero

... it gives a wonderful effect and is strikingly suitable, as the slight reddish colour gives a full idea of the flesh after the skin is torn off. It makes one shudder to look at it. In one of the halls are the statues of Niobe and her daughters, a beautiful group. Then there is the celebrated copy of the group of the Laocoon by Bandinelli, which none but the most perfect and skilful connoisseur could distinguish from the original. But it is totally impossible ...
— After Waterloo: Reminiscences of European Travel 1815-1819 • Major W. E Frye

... of retaliation. And it is odd that it was not till thirty years after that I perceived one. It then struck me that the eternal intercession might have been equally odious to her. To find herself prostrate for ever, weeping like Niobe, and, if the Gazette was to be believed, refusing to raise herself from the mud or the flinty pavement till I had been forgiven, and reinstated in my rank—ah, how loathsome that must have been to her! Ah, how loathsome the whole cycle of favours were to me, considering ...
— The Posthumous Works of Thomas De Quincey, Vol. 1 (2 vols) • Thomas De Quincey

... poetic worth and claims; but first of all I'll try To show how this portentous quack beguiled the silly fools Whose tastes were nurtured, ere he came, in Phrynichus's schools. He'd bring some single mourner on, seated and veiled, 'twould be Achilles, say, or Niobe—the face you could not see— An empty show of tragic woe, who uttered not ...
— The Frogs • Aristophanes

... to thy longing eyes: But now the peaceful hours of sacred night Demand reflection, and to rest invite: Nor thou, O father! thus consumed with woe, The common cares that nourish life forego. Not thus did Niobe, of form divine, A parent once, whose sorrows equall'd thine: Six youthful sons, as many blooming maids, In one sad day beheld the Stygian shades; Those by Apollo's silver bow were slain, These, Cynthia's arrows stretch'd upon the plain: So was her pride chastised by wrath divine, Who match'd her ...
— The Iliad of Homer • Homer

... the roadside, which, like mourners by an open grave, had been bowing their heads to the earth, and brandishing their long arms, with their silver tresses spread out on the winds, now stood as if dead, with an expression of dumb grief like the statue of Niobe on Sipylos. Only the trembling ...
— Pan Tadeusz • Adam Mickiewicz

... implements, all executed with such grace and finished with such masterly skill, that the eye is dazzled by the vast abundance of beautiful inventions. Opposite to this is a smaller facade, which could not be improved in beauty and variety; and there, in the frieze, is the story of Niobe causing herself to be worshipped, with the people bringing tribute, vases, and various kinds of gifts; which story was depicted by them with such novelty, grace, art, force of relief and genius in every part, that it would certainly take too long to describe the whole. Next, there follows the wrath ...
— Lives of the Most Eminent Painters Sculptors and Architects - Vol. 05 ( of 10) Andrea da Fiesole to Lorenzo Lotto • Giorgio Vasari

... fallen dress exposed to view her beautiful form. Her arms, which were folded above her head, were round and white as those of a Greek statue; and as she lay with her full, graceful shoulders bared almost to the waist, she looked like Niobe just stricken by the wrath of ...
— Joseph II. and His Court • L. Muhlbach

... to them scandalous adventures or dishonest acts. Hermes was notorious for his thieving, Aphrodite for her coquetry, Ares for his ferocity. All were so vain as to persecute those who neglected to offer sacrifices to them. Niobe had seen all her children pierced with arrows by Apollo because she herself had boasted of her numerous family. The gods were so jealous that they could not endure seeing a man thoroughly happy; prosperity for the Greeks was the greatest ...
— History Of Ancient Civilization • Charles Seignobos

... drops of thy sprinkling," replied De Bracy; "but this damsel hath wept enough to extinguish a beacon-light. Never was such wringing of hands and such overflowing of eyes, since the days of St Niobe, of whom Prior Aymer told us. [30] A water-fiend hath ...
— Ivanhoe - A Romance • Walter Scott

... Far as the eye can see there is nothing but a melancholy plain, studded here and there with a ruin, and populous only with the visionary forms of the past; and its tragic beauty prepares your mind for passing into the solemn shadow of the great Niobe of cities. But it was not thus in the brilliant days of the Empire. For fifteen miles beyond the walls the Appian Way stretched to the beautiful blue Alban hills, through a continuous suburb of the city, adorned with all the charms of nature and art, palatial villas and pleasure-gardens, groves and ...
— Roman Mosaics - Or, Studies in Rome and Its Neighbourhood • Hugh Macmillan

... architecture is petrified music. In the Sacristy of S. Lorenzo we feel impelled to remember phrases of Beethoven. Each of these statues becomes for us a passion, fit for musical expression, but turned like Niobe to stone. They have the intellectual vagueness, the emotional certainty, that belong to the motives of a symphony. In their allegories, left without a key, sculpture has passed beyond her old domain of placid concrete form. The anguish of intolerable ...
— The Life of Michelangelo Buonarroti • John Addington Symonds

... a lotus-flower after some storm, and rolling down her pale cheeks fell upon her fair forlorn hands, languishingly open, like roses whose leaves are half-shed, for no order came from the brain to give them activity. The attitude of Niobe, beholding her fourteenth child succumb beneath the arrows of Apollo and Diana, was not more sadly despairing, but soon starting from this state of prostration, she rolled herself upon the floor, rent her garments, covered her beautiful dishevelled hair with ashes, tore her bosom and cheeks ...
— King Candaules • Theophile Gautier

... improvement. Nothing is wanting but riches, Aby, to proceed to much greater lengths than any we have yet thought of. What richness of imagination is there in Ovid! What statues might we form, from the wonderful tales which he relates! Niobe at the head of the canal, changing into stone! To be sure we should want a rock there. Then on one side Narcissus, gazing at himself in the clear pool, with poor Echo withering away in the grove behind! King Cygnus, in the very act of being metamorphosed into a swan, on the other! It would ...
— Anna St. Ives • Thomas Holcroft

... Tantalus. The main one is the making of the ivory shoulder of Pelops after Demeter has eaten the shoulder of flesh. With that you have Broteas, the brother of Pelops, carving the first statue of the mother of the gods; and you have his sister, Niobe, weeping herself to stone under the anger of the deities of light. Then Pelops himself, the dark-faced, gives name to the Peloponnesus, which you may therefore read as the "isle of darkness;" but its central city, Sparta, the "sown city," is connected ...
— Lectures on Art - Delivered before the University of Oxford in Hilary term, 1870 • John Ruskin

... inventive skill of the proprietor had converted to nearly as much use as ornament; for a plaster Apollo, in addition to watching the "arrow's deathful flight," had been appointed custodier of a Taglioni and a Mackintosh, which he wore with easy negligence over his head—a distracted Niobe, in the same manner, had undertaken the charge of a grey silk hat and a green umbrella. The Gladiator wore a lady's bonnet; the Farnese Hercules looked like an old-fashioned watchman, and sported ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXLII. Vol. LV. April, 1844 • Various

... result is far from answering to the poet's expectation. The proof is that the poets who have dramatised the whole story of the Fall of Troy, instead of selecting portions, like Euripides; or who have taken the whole tale of Niobe, and not a part of her story, like Aeschylus, either fail utterly or meet with poor success on the stage. Even Agathon has been known to fail from this one defect. In his Reversals of the Situation, however, he shows a marvellous skill in the effort to hit the popular taste,—to produce a tragic ...
— Poetics • Aristotle

... The latter are distrustful. Therefore he and his females and his young-I should say small-depart when one is yet far away. I say small, because I do not believe that any wildebeeste is ever young. They do not resemble calves, but are exact replicas of the big ones, just as Niobe's daughters are in nothing childlike, but merely ...
— The Land of Footprints • Stewart Edward White

... doubling or trebling the effect on the spectator. Sculpture has never realised to the full the chances offered by grouped plastic art of heroic proportions. Classical groups cannot be fairly judged by the Laocoon, the Farnese Bull, or even the Niobe reliefs. Their theatrical character is so patent, that it is obvious how far inferior they must be to the work of greater men whose genuine productions have perished. But, even so, the group being the medium through which emotions could be intensified to the uttermost, it is not necessary ...
— Donatello • David Lindsay, Earl of Crawford

... Raphael's Heliodorus, to the St. Sebastian of Sodoma, with exquisite limbs and head, rich with tendril-like locks, delicate against the brown Umbrian sunset; from the Madonna of Andrea del Sarto seated, with the head and drapery of a Niobe, by the sack of flour in the Annunziata cloister, to the voluptuous goddess, with purple mantle half concealing her body of golden white, who leans against the sculptured fountain in Titian's Sacred and Profane Love, with the greenish ...
— Euphorion - Being Studies of the Antique and the Mediaeval in the - Renaissance - Vol. I • Vernon Lee

... was to bear Alice Ferris away to her home by the lakes, and some subtle influence seemed to have transformed the golden-haired girl into a stern, stately Niobe. ...
— The Midnight Passenger • Richard Henry Savage

... time. The crazy "murderess" had veered her course, but what was that other object nearby? A Niobe weeping for her own and the world's sorrows! Or this one over here—a shrieking maniac calling on all Hell's legions for vengeance on fancied enemies! Beyond, gibbering victims of paresis, white-haired idiots, wasted sufferers from ...
— Orphans of the Storm • Henry MacMahon

... out o' my mind!" There should be a climax, of course, to all this, and it came. It was not the odor of the steaks and onions that, wafted across intervening gardens from Father Letheby's kitchen, precipitated the crisis; nor the tears of Lizzie, who appeared from time to time, a weeping Niobe, and whose distress would have touched the heart of a less susceptible Irishman than Jem Deady; nor yet the taunts of the women of the village, who stung him with such sarcasms as these: "Yes; Faynians begor, with their ...
— My New Curate • P.A. Sheehan

... their writings. In one of his writings he makes them say, 'We shall live for ever, not in the schools of word-catchers, but in the circle of the wise, where they talk not of the mother of Andromache or of the sons of Niobe, but of the deeper causes of things human and divine; he who looks closely will see that even the barbarians had intelligence (mercurium), not on the tongue but in the breast.' Himself writing a vigorous and not inelegant Latin, and a master of clear exposition, ...
— The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy • Jacob Burckhardt

... is to say, Frasquita, was nearly thirty years old, and almost six feet high, strongly built in proportion, and even a little stouter than exactly corresponded to her majestic figure. She looked like a gigantic Niobe, though she never had any children; she seemed like a female Hercules, or like a Roman matron, the sort of whom there are still copies to be seen in the Rioni Trastevere. But the most striking feature was her mobility, her agility, her animation, and the grace ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 1 • Charles Dudley Warner

... means, accept," he counselled her. "Buck Ogilvy is one of the finest gentlemen you'll ever meet. I'll stake my reputation on him. You'll find him vastly amusing, Moira. He'd make Niobe forget her troubles, and he DOES know how ...
— The Valley of the Giants • Peter B. Kyne

... obedience to the desire of explaining unusual natural appearances, coupled with the idea that sin must be followed by retribution, we also owe the well-known Niobe myth. Having incurred the divine wrath, Niobe saw those dearest to her destroyed by missiles from heaven, and was finally transformed into a rock on Mount Sipylos which bore some vague resemblance to the human form, and her tears became the rivulets ...
— History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom • Andrew Dickson White

... innocent creatures, while the audience involuntarily closed their eyes and recoiled before the harrowing spectacle, which almost elicited a stifled cry of horror. But her fine genius invested the character with that classic dignity and beauty which, as in the Niobe group, veils the excess of human agony in the drapery of ...
— Great Singers, First Series - Faustina Bordoni To Henrietta Sontag • George T. Ferris

... fountain, and other features of a new garden ambitiously planned before the President was so inconsiderate as to declare war without consulting me, and confronted, too, by an empty purse—pardon me, I mean by the voluntarily imposed necessity for economy—I sat me down amid my catalogues, like Niobe amid her children, and wept. (Maybe it wasn't amid her children Niobe wept, but for them; anyhow I remember her as a symbol of lachrymosity.) Dear, alluring, immoral catalogues, sweet sirens for a man's ...
— How To Write Special Feature Articles • Willard Grosvenor Bleyer

... the Annuals, comes to woo us with the kindred charms of poetry and playful humour—romance and real life—full of kindly feelings, sighs and tears, such as Niobe shed, and smiles that with their witchery light up the finest affections to cherish drooping nature, and guide our footsteps along this world of weal and woe. To be more explicit, the character of the present volume is well ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 20, - Issue 573, October 27, 1832 • Various

... abroad; the sun shone, though it was not yet May—and then we breakfasted; and John Gilpin made a very funny speech, though with tears in his voice; and as for poor Maman-belle-mere, as Barty called her, she was a very Niobe. ...
— The Martian • George Du Maurier

... of Thebes, and husband of Niobe; famous for his magical power with the lyre by which the stones were collected for the building of the city.—Hor., "De Arte Poetica," 394.—W. ...
— The Poems of Jonathan Swift, D.D., Volume I (of 2) • Jonathan Swift

... is left! She is weeping now alone, Like a Niobe bereft Of her own; And at length I dare to speak To the woman seated there, With the tears upon her cheek, ...
— Poems • John L. Stoddard

... his contemporary, and was the author of the celebrated group of Niobe, which is one of the chief ornaments of the gallery of sculpture at Florence. He flourished about three hundred and fifty years before Christ, and wrought chiefly in marble. He was employed in decorating the Mausoleum which Artemisia ...
— The Old Roman World • John Lord

... that clumsy mechanic woman, and went rejoicing to lady Culture, the more when I thought upon the stick, and all the blows my yesterday's apprenticeship had brought me. For a time the deserted one was wroth, with clenched fists and grinding teeth; but at last she stiffened, like another Niobe, into marble. A strange fate, but I must request your belief; dreams are great magicians, ...
— Works, V1 • Lucian of Samosata

... like a wall back of the little settlement of Sitka, parted for a moment, and the sun, a coy disdainful guest, flung a glittering mist over what Nature had intended to be one of the most enchanting spots on earth, until, in a fit of ill-temper—with one of the gods, no doubt—she gave it to Niobe as a permanent outlet for her discontent. When it does not rain at Sitka it pours, and when once in a way she draws a deep breath of respite and lifts her grand and glorious face to the sun, in pathetic gratitude for dear infrequent favor, comes a wild ...
— Rezanov • Gertrude Atherton

... long my grief has kept me drunk: Sure there 's a lethargy in mighty woe; Tears stand congealed, and cannot flow. ........ Tears for a stroke foreseen, afford relief; But unprovided for a sudden blow, Like Niobe, we marble grow, ...
— English Literature, Considered as an Interpreter of English History - Designed as a Manual of Instruction • Henry Coppee

... beckoned, the attendant stars seemed to circle closer and closer, burning with an added lustre that made night glorious. Answering her call, the Auroral arch sprang out of the North, spanning the sky with waving banners of orange and violet flame, that illumined the Niobe of the Seasons, as she hovered with out-stretched glittering pinions, and mournful ice-dimmed eyes above her ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson

... the winter. Thais Medesicaste, T. Hypsipyle, Anthocaris Eupheno (the Aurore de Provence), Polyommatus Ballus, and Rhodocera Cleopatra may be taken in April. A little later there is an abundance of the Podalirius (scarce Swallow Tail), the Machaon, the Thecla Betul, the Argynnis Pandora, the A.Niobe, the A.Dia, the A. Aglaia, the A.Valenzina, the Arge Psyche, the Satyrus Circe, the S. Briseis, the S.Hermione, the S. Fidia, the S.Phdra, the S. Cordula, the S.Acto, the S.Semele, and the S. Bathseba, all common more or less throughout the summer." ...
— The South of France—East Half • Charles Bertram Black

... the wide Berecynthian fields, Full six days' journey long, (From the "Niobe" of Aechylus, ...
— Essays and Miscellanies - The Complete Works Volume 3 • Plutarch

... passed without a word being spoken; and from their silence, the simple elegance of their attitudes, and the beauty of their naked feet, you might have fancied you beheld an antique group of white marble, representing some of the children of Niobe, but for the glances of their eyes, which were constantly seeking to meet, and their mutual soft and tender smiles, which suggested rather the idea of happy celestial spirits, whose nature is love, and who are not obliged to have recourse to words for the ...
— Paul and Virginia • Bernardin de Saint Pierre

... roughly. Heav'n and Earth! Must I remember? Why, she would hang on him, As if Increase of Appetite had grown By what it fed on; yet within a Month! Let me not think. Frailty! Thy Name is Woman. A little Month; e'er yet those Shoes were old, With which she follow'd my poor Father's Body, Like Niobe, all Tears; Why she, even she, (Oh Heav'n, a Beast that wants Discourse of Reason, Would have mourn'd longer) married with mine Uncle, My Father's Brother; but no more like my Father, Than I to Hercules. Within a Month, E'er yet the Salt of most unrighteous Tears Had left the flushing in her gaul'd ...
— Some Remarks on the Tragedy of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark, Written by Mr. William Shakespeare (1736) • Anonymous

... had gone, when the door had closed to behind him, the figure of the strange youth lost its soldierly bearing, and his limbs with a painful spasm subsided into that picturesque pose in which artists generally represent Niobe, or the Daughters of Sion mourning by the willows of Babylon. Every trace of energy and vigour vanished from his face, his eyelids closed over his tearful eyes, and his lips parted with an expression of the deepest ...
— The Day of Wrath • Maurus Jokai

... slopes of Mount Sipylos, between the valley of the Hermos and the Gulf of Smyrna. The traditional capital of this kingdom was Magnesia, the most ancient of cities, the residence of Tantalus, the father of Niobe and the Pelopidae. The Leleges rise up before us from many points at the same time, but always connected with the most ancient memories of Greece and Asia. The majority of the strongholds on the Trojan coast belonged to ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 5 (of 12) • G. Maspero

... last illnesses and dangerous cases—a woman of heart and courage, though perhaps of too imaginative a style of conversation. Although it was but a work-day, she was sitting at her own door in her Sunday black gown and bonnet, and, like Niobe, all tears. Mr. Carnegie pulled up in sheer amazement at the deplorable spectacle his valued right hand was making of herself in public, and, as if she had been on the watch for him, up she rose from her stool and came forward ...
— The Vicissitudes of Bessie Fairfax • Harriet Parr

... in which it seemed to be conceded that color expressed passion, whilst sculpture more severely expressed thought: yet painting did not exclude the expression of thought, or sculpture that of feeling,—witness Niobe,—but it must be an universal feeling, like ...
— Memoirs of Margaret Fuller Ossoli, Vol. I • Margaret Fuller Ossoli

... betwixt Pallas and Arachne. Transformation of Arachne to a spider. Pride of Niobe. Her children slain by Apollo and Diana. Her change to marble. The Lycian peasants changed to frogs. Fate of Marsyas. Pelops. Story of Tereus, Procne, and Philomela. Their change to birds. Boreas and Orithyia. Birth of ...
— The Metamorphoses of Publius Ovidus Naso in English blank verse Vols. I & II • Ovid

... the example of the Muses, Pallas determines on the destruction of Arachne. She enters with her into a contest for the superiority in the art of weaving. Each represents various transformations on her web, and then Arachne is changed into a spider. Niobe, however, is not deterred thereby from preferring her own lot to that of Latona; on account of which, all her children are slain by Apollo and Diana, and she is changed into a rock. On learning this, while one person relates the transformation ...
— The Metamorphoses of Ovid - Vol. I, Books I-VII • Publius Ovidius Naso

... daring to make love to her. (2) She changed Actaeon into a stag and set her own dogs on him to worry him to death, because he chanced to look upon her while bathing. (3) She shot with her arrows the six sons and six daughters of Niobe, because the fond mother said she was happier than Latona, who had only ...
— 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.

... episode of Niobe down to the best song in the "Princess," how many beautiful lines have been devoted to those outward and visible ...
— Guy Livingstone; - or, 'Thorough' • George A. Lawrence

... the offspring of Niobe experienced as avenger of a presumptuous tongue, and the ravisher Tityus, and also the Thessalian Achilles, almost the conqueror of lofty Troy, a warrior superior to all others, but unequal to thee; though, son of the ...
— The Works of Horace • Horace

... Zethus a hunter and herdsman (Apollodorus iii. 5). After punishing Lycus and Dirce for cruel treatment of Antiope (q.v.), they built and fortified Thebes, huge blocks of stone forming themselves into walls at the sound of Amphion's lyre (Horace, Odes, iii. 11). Amphion married Niobe, and killed himself after the loss of his wife and children (Ovid, Metam. vi. 270). The brothers were buried in one grave and worshipped as the Dioscuri "with white ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia

... the countenance, so indicative of conscious power and well-regulated strength, why did memory travel swiftly back among the "Stones of Venice," repeating the description of the hawthorn on Bourges Cathedral? "A perfect Niobe of May." Had this man petrified in his youth before the steady stylus of time left on his features that subtle tracery which passing years engrave on human faces? The motto of his magazine, Veritas sine clementia, ruled his life, and, putting aside the lenses ...
— St. Elmo • Augusta J. Evans

... over with figures, like sculptured tombstones. There was Lucifer among them, struck flaming down from heaven; and Briareus, pinned to the earth with the thunderbolt, and, with the other giants, amazing the gods with his hugeness; and Nimrod, standing confounded at the foot of Babel; and Niobe, with her despairing eyes, turned into stone amidst her children; and Saul, dead on his own sword in Gilboa; and Arachne, now half spider, at fault on her own broken web; and Rehoboam, for all his insolence, flying in terror in his chariot; and Alcmaeon, who made his mother pay with her life ...
— Stories from the Italian Poets: With Lives of the Writers, Volume 1 • Leigh Hunt

... Guido was the most genially endowed. He alone derived a true spark from the previous age of inspiration. He wearies us indeed with his effeminacy, and with the reiteration of a physical type sentimentalized from the head and bust of Niobe. But thoughts of real originality and grace not seldom visited his meditations; and he alone deserved the name of colorist among the painters I have as yet ascribed to the Bolognese School.[225] Guido affected a cool harmony of blue, white, and deadened gold, which in the best pictures ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volumes 1 and 2 - The Catholic Reaction • John Addington Symonds

... suffering. He was not mistaken. Nero listened, with stony face and fixed eyes, to the consolation offered by knights and senators. It was evident that, even if he suffered, he was thinking of this: What impression would his suffering make upon others? He was posing as a Niobe, and giving an exhibition of parental sorrow, as an actor would give it on the stage. He had not the power even then to endure in his silent and as it were petrified sorrow, for at moments he made a gesture as if to cast the dust of the ...
— Quo Vadis - A Narrative of the Time of Nero • Henryk Sienkiewicz

... the time to which Daedalus belonged the prehistoric period, and his works and those of other artists of his day have all perished. Two very ancient specimens of sculpture remain—the Lion Gate of Mycenae and the Niobe of Mount Sipylus; but as their origin is not known, and they may not be the work of Greek artists, it is best for us to pass on to about 700 B.C., when the records of individual ...
— A History of Art for Beginners and Students - Painting, Sculpture, Architecture • Clara Erskine Clement

... associated his sister Artemis, or Diana, another exquisite conception of Greek thought. Not the cold and cruel Diana of the poets; not she who, in her prudish anger, turned Actaeon into a stag, who slew Orion, who slew the children of Niobe, and demanded the death of Iphigenia. Very different is the beautiful Diana of the sculptors, the Artemis, or untouched one, chaste as moonlight, a wild girl, pure, free, noble; the ideal of youthful womanhood, who can share with man manly exercises ...
— Ten Great Religions - An Essay in Comparative Theology • James Freeman Clarke

... plough the wide Berecynthian fields, Full six days' journey long, (From the "Niobe" ...
— Essays and Miscellanies - The Complete Works Volume 3 • Plutarch



Words linked to "Niobe" :   Greek mythology



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