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More "Sibylline" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... of the study are a body of reports, of treatises, and of statutes, in this country and in England, extending back for six hundred years, and now increasing annually by hundreds. In these sibylline leaves are gathered the scattered prophecies of the past upon the cases in which the axe will fall. These are what properly have been called the oracles of the law. Far the most important and pretty nearly the ...
— The Path of the Law • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.
... two women looked out of the canvas with the same, self-same piercing intensity, the same glow of passion, the same flame of sensual desire, the same marvellous eloquence; each had a mouth that was ambiguous, enigmatical, sibylline, the mouth of the insatiable absorber of souls; and each had a brow of marble whiteness, ...
— The Child of Pleasure • Gabriele D'Annunzio
... Greek colony of Italy on the coast, and the last survivors of the Tarquinii died here. This is the most classic of all these legendary coast towns near Naples, as it was here that the Cumaean Sibyl dwelt with the mysterious sibylline leaves,—the books that were carried to Rome. A colossal Acropolis was once here, fragments of whose walls are now standing; and the rocky foundation is honeycombed with secret passages and openings. It is here that Virgil's "Grotto of the Sibyl" is supposed ...
— Italy, the Magic Land • Lilian Whiting
... it well; but he was dissuaded from his purpose by his Friends, as beneath the dignity of a Professor of the occult Sciences. Yet these very Friends, I suppose, would have thought it had added lustre to his high Station, to have new-furbished out some dull northern Chronicle, or dark Sibylline AEnigma. But let it not be thought that what is here said insinuates any thing to the discredit of Greek and Latin criticism. If the follies of particular Men were sufficient to bring any branch of Learning into disrepute, I don't know ...
— Eighteenth Century Essays on Shakespeare • D. Nichol Smith
... force of religion was so great among our ancestors that some of their commanders have, with their faces veiled, and with the solemn, formal expressions of religion, sacrificed themselves to the immortal Gods to save their country.[116] I could mention many of the Sibylline prophecies, and many answers of the haruspices, to confirm those things, which ought not to ...
— Cicero's Tusculan Disputations - Also, Treatises On The Nature Of The Gods, And On The Commonwealth • Marcus Tullius Cicero
... she'd be Of all that's worth mentioning over the sea, For a woman must surely see well, if she try, The whole of whose being's a capital I: She will take an old notion, and make it her own, By saying it o'er in her Sibylline tone, Or persuade you 'tis something tremendously deep, By repeating it so as to put you to sleep; 1170 And she well may defy any mortal to see through it, When once she has mixed up her infinite me ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell
... could not give other details. Her sibylline science extended no further. During this chiromantic interlude, the dancing kept up, until finally, about three in the ...
— Caesar or Nothing • Pio Baroja Baroja
... to be my own priest, pupil, parent, child, husband, and wife. All this I did not understand as I do now; but this destiny of the thinker, and (shall I dare to say it?) of the poetic priestess, sibylline, dwelling in the cave, or amid the Lybian sands, lay yet enfolded in my mind. Accordingly, I did not look on any of the persons, brought into relation with me, with common ...
— Memoirs of Margaret Fuller Ossoli, Vol. I • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... superstitions of the populace; the republic supported six augurs charged with predicting the future. It carefully preserved a collection of prophecies, the Sibylline Books. It had sacred chickens guarded by priests. No public act—assembly, election, deliberation—could be done without the taking of the auspices, that is to say, observation of the flight of birds. In the year 195 it was ...
— History Of Ancient Civilization • Charles Seignobos
... whose name was Serafina, opened the bedroom door and thrust out her head, covered with a dark and threadbare shawl. There was a sibylline gloom about her withered face, as though she had lived a lifetime in the face of ...
— Casa Braccio, Volumes 1 and 2 (of 2) • F. Marion Crawford
... exclamation, sometimes uttered in a tone of vexation, but more frequently of satisfaction. She was so original and eccentric, had such an inexhaustible store of ghost stories and fairy tales, sang so many crazy old ballads, that children gathered round her, as a Sibylline oracle, and mothers, who were not troubled with a superfluity of servants, were glad to welcome one to their household who had such a wondrous talent for amusing them, and keeping them still. In spite of all her oddities, she was respected for her industry and ...
— Helen and Arthur - or, Miss Thusa's Spinning Wheel • Caroline Lee Hentz
... her joy and dowers him with her gift of melody. Correggio is the Ariel or Faun; he has surprised laughter upon the face of the universe, and he paints this laughter in ever-varying movement. Michael Angelo is the prophet and Sibylline seer; to him the Renaissance discloses the travail of her spirit; him she endues with power; he wrests her secret, voyaging, like an ideal Columbus, the vast abyss of thought alone. In order that this revelation of the Renaissance in painting should be complete, it is ...
— Renaissance in Italy Vol. 3 - The Fine Arts • John Addington Symonds
... been peculiar in having such a list of them, but I now believe that half the children of the same age go through the same experiences. No Roman soothsayer ever had such a catalogue of OMENS as I found in the Sibylline leaves of my childhood. That trick of throwing a stone at a tree and attaching some mighty issue to hitting or missing, which you will find mentioned in one or more biographies, I well remember. Stepping on or over certain particular ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes
... one to expect; be the precursor &c 64. [predict by mathematical or statistical means from past experience] extrapolate, project. Adj. predicting &c v.; predictive, prophetic; fatidic^, fatidical^; vaticinal, oracular, fatiloquent^, haruspical, Sibylline; weatherwise^. ominous, portentous, augurous^, augurial, augural; auspicial^, auspicious; prescious^, monitory, extispicious^, premonitory, significant of, pregnant with, bit with the fate of. Phr. coming events cast their shadows before [Campbell]; dicamus bona verba [Lat.]; there ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... brain: That genia soil receives the fruitful store, And there they grow, and breed a thousand more. Now be their arts display'd, how first they choose A cause and party, as the bard his Muse; Inspired by these, with clamorous zeal they cry, And through the town their dreams and omens fly; So the Sibylline leaves were blown about, Disjointed scraps of fate involved in doubt; So idle dreams, the journals of the night, Are right and wrong by turns, and mingle wrong with right.- Some champions for the rights that prop the crown, Some sturdy patriots, sworn ...
— The Village and The Newspaper • George Crabbe
... Ducie to the broken carriages and began to search more carefully than before. "What can be the nature of the great secret, I wonder, that is hidden between the Sibylline leaves I am in search of? If what Platzoff's words implied be true, he who learns it is master of the situation. Would that it were ...
— The Argosy - Vol. 51, No. 3, March, 1891 • Various
... but were consulted to discover the religious observances necessary to avert great calamities and to expiate prodigies. During the reign of Augustus they were removed to the Temple of Apollo on the Palatine Hill, and all the false Sibylline leaves which were extant were collected and burned. They remained here until shortly after the year 400 A.D., when they were publicly burned by Stilicho, a famous general of Christian Rome, as impious documents ...
— Historic Tales, Volume 11 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... Latin Bible appeared in 1551 and the French Bible in 1555. During this period he also brought out a new edition of his "Sacred Dialogues," an edition of Xenophon, a translation of the Sibylline Oracles, a Latin poem on Jonah, and a Greek poem on John ...
— Spiritual Reformers in the 16th & 17th Centuries • Rufus M. Jones
... His huge enterprise had always remained essentially a copartnership, and he had frequently expressed his abhorrence of trusts. Yet, in spite of his wish to retire from business and in spite of his avowed intention to die poor, Carnegie now adopted the policy of the Sibylline leaves to all prospective purchasers. Moore and Reid would have purchased his interest for $157,000,000; when Rockefeller came along the price had risen to $250,000,000; when the oil man shook his head and retired, Carnegie immediately raised his price to $500,000,000. ...
— The Age of Big Business - Volume 39 in The Chronicles of America Series • Burton J. Hendrick
... another temple in honour of Apollo, on the Palatine Hill, in which at the foot of his statue, were deposited two gilt chests, containing the Sibylline oracles. These oracles were collected to replace the Sibylline books originally preserved in the temple of Jupiter, which were destroyed ...
— Myths and Legends of Ancient Greece and Rome • E.M. Berens
... this poor minister, who flattered himself that he had outgrown every graceful and touching form with which human affection or human infirmity had clothed the Christian idea, stumbled amid the rubbish of an effete heathenism, with its Sibylline contortions and tripod-responses, which the best minds of Pagan civilization found no difficulty in pronouncing a delusion ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 80, June, 1864 • Various
... eighteen months have the volume of Poems, entitled SIBYLLINE LEAVES, and the present volume, up to this page, been printed, and ready for publication. But, ere I speak of myself in the tones, which are alone natural to me under the circumstances of late years, I would fain present myself to the Reader ...
— Biographia Literaria • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... well as priests, are other indications that at this time woman was regarded as divine or as capable of ministering to divinity. The prophetic powers of woman were universally recognized. The oracles at Delphi, Argos, Epirus, Thrace and Arcadia were feminine. Indeed the Sibylline prophetesses were ...
— Taboo and Genetics • Melvin Moses Knight, Iva Lowther Peters, and Phyllis Mary Blanchard
... with something of a sibylline air. Evidently he was thinking how clever it was of her to have guessed it, and indeed she thought it was a remarkable example of her instinctive understanding of men. And Yaverland, on his side, was letting his mind travel down a channel of feeling which ...
— The Judge • Rebecca West
... Blenheim, Skye, Maltese, Lapped in purple and proud ease— They might read their god's reproof Here on blister'd wall and roof; Scaling lacquer, dinted bells, Floor befoul'd of weed and shells, Where, as erst the tabid Curse Brooded over Pelops' hearse, Squats the sea-cow, keeping house, Sibylline, gelatinous. Where is Carlo? Tell, O tell, Echo, from this fluted shell, In whose concave ear the tides Murmur what the main confides Of his compass'd treacheries! What of Carlo? Did the breeze Madden to a gale while he, Curl'd ...
— Wandering Heath • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... and every public and private right. The history of the country is inexplicable, and its public archives are a mass of such gross irregularities, and show such a total disregard of all law, that they are little better than the Sibylline leaves. ...
— Mexico and its Religion • Robert A. Wilson
... the Virgin, the mother of God. The poet Virgil foretold her in Sibylline verses before she was born and, in angelical tones he sang Jam redit et virgo. Throughout heathendom prophetic figures of her have been made, like that which you, O Marcus, have placed upon this altar. And without doubt it is she who has protected your modest household. Thus it ...
— Penguin Island • Anatole France
... much brighter curiosity, and which seemed to take its baptism, as we passed through prodigious perched and huddled, adorably scattered and animated and even crowded Tivoli, from the universal happy spray of the drumming Anio waterfalls, all set in their permanent rainbows and Sibylline temples and classic allusions and Byronic quotations; a wondrous romantic jumble of such things and quite others—heterogeneous inns and clamorous guingettes and factories grabbing at the torrent, to say nothing of innumerable guides and donkeys and white-tied, swallow-tailed waiters dashing ...
— Italian Hours • Henry James
... portion of the Poem while he was abroad; and his feelings, on hearing it recited by the Author (after his return to his own country) are recorded in his Verses, addressed to Mr. Wordsworth, which will be found in the 'Sibylline Leaves,' p. 197, edition 1817, or 'Poetical Works, by S. T. ...
— The Poetical Works of William Wordsworth, Vol. III • William Wordsworth
... the first, and to those who had long nourished a secret hatred of him the most specious, cause. And indeed those who were contriving this honour for Caesar spread about a certain report among the people, that according to the Sibylline writings[589] it appeared that Parthia could be conquered by the Romans if they advanced against it with a king, but otherwise could not he assailed. And as Caesar was going down from Alba to the city, they ventured ...
— Plutarch's Lives Volume III. • Plutarch
... fathers, that ye have so much misgiving about opening the Sibylline books, as if ye were deliberating in an assembly of Christians, and not in the temple of all the gods. Let inquiry be made of the sacred books, and let celebration take place of the ceremonies that ought to be fulfilled. Far from refusing, I offer, with zeal, to satisfy all expenditure ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 4 • Various
... at the dormer window, holding aside the faded blue cotton curtain, and the mid-day glare falling upon her, showed every curve of her tall full form; every line in the calm, pale Sibylline face. The large steel gray eyes were shaded by drooping lids, heavily fringed with black lashes, but when raised in a steady gaze the pupils appeared abnormally dilated; and the delicately traced black brows that overarched them, contrasted conspicuously ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson
... when he wrote the fourth Eclogue is of course out of the question; there is not a single close parallel of the kind that Vergil usually permits himself to borrow from his sources; we cannot even be sure that he had seen any of the Sibylline oracles, now found in the third book of the collection, which contains so strange a syncretism of Mithraic, Greek, and Jewish conceptions, but we can no longer doubt that he was in a general way well informed and quite thoroughly ...
— Vergil - A Biography • Tenney Frank
... intention to keep up the national spirit, and diffuse hopes of the new enterprise of Vasco de Gama, who had just sailed on a voyage of discovery to the Indies. Three stones were discovered near Cintra, bearing in ancient characters a Latin inscription; a sibylline oracle addressed prophetically "To the Inhabitants of the West!" stating that when these three stones shall be found, the Ganges, the Indus, and the Tagus should exchange their commodities! This was the ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... well be believed that these sibylline leaves of Mohammedanism make up a heterogeneous jumble of varied elements. Some of the chapters are long, others are short; now the prophet seems to be caught up by a whirlwind, and is brought face to face with ineffable ...
— Sacred Books of the East • Various
... very long discourse, which is still extant, the royal preacher expatiates on the various proofs still extant, the royal preacher expatiates on the various proofs of religion; but he dwells with peculiar complacency on the Sibylline verses, and the fourth eclogue of Virgil. Forty years before the birth of Christ, the Mantuan bard, as if inspired by the celestial muse of Isaiah, had celebrated, with all the pomp of oriental metaphor, the return of the Virgin, ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 2 • Edward Gibbon
... baldricks till they had mounted the Capitol, and they arrived within three days' march of Rome. At every appearance of this formidable enemy the alarm at Rome was great. The senate raised all its forces and summoned its allies. The people demanded a consultation of the Sibylline books, sacred volumes sold, it was said, to Tarquinius Priscus by the sibyl Amalthea, and containing the secret of the destinies of the Republic. They were actually opened in the year 228 B.C., and it was with terror found that ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume I. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... Ellen, I am just as much shocked as you are; but when he does not respect even your opinions, how dare I presume to hope he will show any deference to mine? St. Elmo, what think you of the last Sibylline leaves of your favorite Ruskin? In looking over his new book, I was surprised to find this strong assertion ... Here is the volume ...
— St. Elmo • Augusta J. Evans
... that I could point out the place in which these precious "folia Sibyllae" of Gray's lie interred; they would no doubt be found among other Sibylline leaves of Mason, in two large boxes, which he left to the care of his executors. These gentlemen, as I am informed, are so extremely careful of them, as to have intrepidly resisted the importunity of some ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. II (of 3) - Edited, With Memoir And Notes, By His Son, The Earl Of Beaconsfield • Isaac D'Israeli
... bit, famous for being one of the places in Virgil which goes to prove that the Sibylline books (to which the Augustan poets had easy access) quoted Isaiah's prophecies of Christ and the Millennium. It will be considered that my public versifying was quite extempore, as in fact is common with me. For other college memories in the literary ...
— My Life as an Author • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... anything she told me, and I could not see that her satisfaction in being justified by the event made poor Dolcino's throat any better. The truth is that, as the sequel proved, Miss Ambient had some of the qualities of the sibyl, and had therefore, perhaps, a right to the sibylline contortions. Her brother was so preoccupied that I felt my presence to be an indiscretion, and was sorry I had promised to remain over the morrow. I said to Mark that, evidently, I had better leave them in the morning; to which he replied that, on the contrary, if he was to pass the next ...
— The Author of Beltraffio • Henry James
... do not close breaches. If our object is, as we hear it said, to appease the Irish, we shall have to give them the Parliament their leader demands. It might once have been much less; it may be worried into a raving, perhaps a desperate wrestling, for still more. Nations pay Sibylline prices for want of forethought. Mr. Parnell's terms are embodied in Mr. Gladstone's Bill, to which he and his band have subscribed. The one point for him is the statutory Parliament, so that Ireland may civilly govern herself; and standing before the world ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... immense popularity, imagined an infinite variety of degrees of retribution.[257] Irenaeus and Justin Martyr, in closely corresponding words, speak of its period of duration as simply dependent upon the will of God.[258] The Christian Sibylline books cherished hopes in the influence of intercession. Ambrose and Lactantius,[259] Jerome,[260] and in a far more notable degree, Clement of Alexandria[261] and Origen write of corrective fires of discipline in the next world, if not in this, ...
— The English Church in the Eighteenth Century • Charles J. Abbey and John H. Overton
... the way to see a country in a Sibylline manner, by inner consciousness: but you might have seen the pierced rock in your drive up, or down, if the clouds broke: not that there is much to see in it; one of the crags of the aiguille-edge, on the southern slope ...
— The Crown of Wild Olive • John Ruskin
... opinion spread that the catastrophe would not have assumed such dreadful proportions but for the anger of the gods; for this reason "piacula," or purifying sacrifices, were commanded in the temples. By advice of the Sibylline books, the Senate ordained solemnities and public prayer to Vulcan, Ceres, and Proserpina. Matrons made offerings to Juno; a whole procession of them went to the seashore to take water and sprinkle with it the statue of the goddess. Married women prepared feasts to the gods and ...
— Quo Vadis - A Narrative of the Time of Nero • Henryk Sienkiewicz
... landscapes of England are yet precious, and to whom they may yet teach what they taught me, in early boyhood, and would still if I had it now to learn,—it is my duty to plead with what earnestness I may, that these sacred sibylline books may be redeemed ...
— On the Old Road, Vol. 2 (of 2) - A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays and Articles on Art and Literature • John Ruskin
... in connection with thought and public discussion. It ought to be added, however, that the Romans had no daily press, and that journalism, as we understand it, was as unknown to the Caesars as were steamships and rifled cannon. Had they been troubled with those daily showers of Sibylline leaves that so vex modern potentates, their magnanimity would have been severely tested, and they might have established as severe censorships as ever have been known in ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 7, No. 44, June, 1861 • Various
... of Greece that made itself felt through Etruria, came also the influence of the Grecian mythology, and Jupiter, Juno, and Minerva found a shrine on the top of the Capitoline, where the first statue of a deity was erected. The mysterious Sibylline Books are also a mark of the Grecian influence, coming from Cum, ...
— The Story of Rome From the Earliest Times to the End of the Republic • Arthur Gilman
... attached more importance to divination generally and oracles more particularly, whereas people in his day were quite indifferent to these things. He gives as the reason that the Romans were content to use the Sibylline books and their own system of divination. His remark is made a propos of the Oracle in Libya, which was formerly in great repute, but was almost extinct in his time. He is undoubtedly correct as to the fact, but the decline of the oracular system cannot be explained by the indifference ...
— Atheism in Pagan Antiquity • A. B. Drachmann
... ruby, opal, Emerald, diamond, amethyst, are our sisters from the beginning, And our brothers are iron, lead, zinc, Copper and silver and gold. We are the dust of continents past and to come, We are a deathless frieze carved with man's destiny; In us is the record sibylline of far events. We are as old as the world, our birth was before the hills. We are the cup that holds the sea And the framework of the peak that parts the sky. When Chaos shall again return, And ...
— The Song of the Stone Wall • Helen Keller
... the newspaper press alone active. The feuilleton press was also at work; and magazines, reviews, pamphlets, whole libraries of volumes, were flung like Sibylline leaves on the four winds of heaven. Fiction, the drama, religion, art, literature, moral and mechanical science—all departments of intellect—silently, unseen, yet surely exerted their omnipotent influence for the attainment of one single ...
— Edmond Dantes • Edmund Flagg
... for two days unanswered letters which were to her as Sibylline leaves to some unquiet neophyte yearning for solutions to enigmas suggested whether by the world without or by the soul within. For six days Madame de Grantmesnil's letter remained unanswered, unread, neglected, thrust out of sight; just as when some imperious ...
— The Parisians, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... namesake of yours over yonder—the big white Marguerite on the edge of the grass plat. Thanks, petite. Now I'll be sworn you guess what I am going to do with it! No? Well, I am going to question these little sibylline leaves, and make the Marguerite tell me whether I am destined to a prison all the days of my life. What! you never heard of the old flower sortilege? Why, Gretchen, I thought every little German maiden learned it in the cradle with her ...
— Monsieur Maurice • Amelia B. Edwards
... their city, had dwindled into a myth; as a source of actual reliance and trust, the intercession of Venus, that emblem of female loveliness, with the father of the gods in behalf of her human favourites, was abandoned; the Sibylline books, once believed to contain all that was necessary for the prosperity of the republic, were suspected of an origin more sinister than celestial; nor were insinuations wanting that from time to time they had been tampered with to suit the expediency of passing interests, ...
— History of the Intellectual Development of Europe, Volume I (of 2) - Revised Edition • John William Draper
... mathematical or statistical means from past experience] extrapolate, project. Adj. predicting &cv.; predictive, prophetic; fatidic[obs3], fatidical[obs3]; vaticinal, oracular, fatiloquent[obs3], haruspical, Sibylline; weatherwise[obs3]. ominous, portentous, augurous[obs3], augurial, augural; auspicial[obs3], auspicious; prescious[obs3], monitory, extispicious[obs3], premonitory, significant of, pregnant with, bit ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... St. Columba, Cumaean Sibyl, seeress of Cumae, consulted by Aeneas, sold Sibylline ...
— Bulfinch's Mythology • Thomas Bulfinch
... duty, in the cause of those to whom the sweet landscapes of England are yet precious, and to whom they may yet teach what they taught me, in early boyhood, and would still if I had it now to learn,—it is my duty to plead with what earnestness I may, that these sacred sibylline books ...
— On the Old Road, Vol. 2 (of 2) - A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays and Articles on Art and Literature • John Ruskin
... lover, but without effect. A few days later she again met her old gipsy crone Hagar Burton, who repeated her sibylline declaration. As Miss Arundell never, by any chance, talked about anything or anybody except Burton, and as she paid liberally for consulting the Fates, this declaration necessarily points to peculiar acumen on the part of ...
— The Life of Sir Richard Burton • Thomas Wright
... was the customary exclamation, sometimes uttered in a tone of vexation, but more frequently of satisfaction. She was so original and eccentric, had such an inexhaustible store of ghost stories and fairy tales, sang so many crazy old ballads, that children gathered round her, as a Sibylline oracle, and mothers, who were not troubled with a superfluity of servants, were glad to welcome one to their household who had such a wondrous talent for amusing them, and keeping them still. In spite of all her oddities, she ...
— Helen and Arthur - or, Miss Thusa's Spinning Wheel • Caroline Lee Hentz
... concerning the sibyls, sibylline books, and sibylline leaves consult a classical dictionary. 23. VERBE; used currently for the second person of the Trinity; here it goes back to a passage in the first division of the poem, where speaking of God's ...
— French Lyrics • Arthur Graves Canfield
... lip flash with such concentrated haughtiness, curl with so fell a sneer, as those of that fallen consular, of that degraded senator, the haughtiest and most ambitious of a race never deficient in those qualities, he who, drunk with despairing pride, and deceived to his ruin by the double-tongued Sibylline prophecies, aspired to be that third Cornelius, who should be master of ...
— The Roman Traitor (Vol. 1 of 2) • Henry William Herbert
... prisonlike and sepulchral than the others in its eternal shadow. High up in a wall the black hole of a kind of grotto opens, to which a secret corridor coming from the depths used to lead. It was there that the face of the priest charged with the announcement of the sibylline words appeared—and the ceiling of his niche is all covered still with the smoke from the flame of his lamp, which was extinguished more ...
— Egypt (La Mort De Philae) • Pierre Loti
... to in paying for a second, as one would have sufficed to acquit him. This man, such in his own nature, and now inflamed by Catiline, false prophets and fortune-tellers had also corrupted with vain hopes, quoting to him fictitious verses and oracles, and proving from the Sibylline prophecies that there were three of the name Cornelius designed by fate to be monarchs of Rome; two of whom, Cinna and Sylla, had already fulfilled the decree, and that divine fortune was now advancing with the gift of monarchy for the remaining third Cornelius; and that therefore he ought by all ...
— The Boys' and Girls' Plutarch - Being Parts of The "Lives" of Plutarch • Plutarch
... gift of melody. Correggio is the Ariel or Faun; he has surprised laughter upon the face of the universe, and he paints this laughter in ever-varying movement. Michael Angelo is the prophet and Sibylline seer; to him the Renaissance discloses the travail of her spirit; him she endues with power; he wrests her secret, voyaging, like an ideal Columbus, the vast abyss of thought alone. In order that ...
— Renaissance in Italy Vol. 3 - The Fine Arts • John Addington Symonds
... imperfect; unpublished fragments of Plautus, of Isaeus, of Themistius; an unpublished work of the philosopher Porphyrius; some writings of the Jew Philo; the ancient interpreters of Virgil; two books of the Chronicles of Eusebius Pamphilus; the VI. and XIV. Sibylline Books; and the six books of the Republic of Cicero. I saw, too, in the Biblioteca Ambrosiana, fragments of the version of the Bible made in the middle of the fourth century, by Ulfila, bishop of the Maesogoths. ...
— Pilgrimage from the Alps to the Tiber - Or The Influence of Romanism on Trade, Justice, and Knowledge • James Aitken Wylie
... horse to the path, I rode out of the glade; but with very different feelings from those I had on entering it. The words of this ill-starred maiden—attainted with that sibylline cunning peculiar to her race—had filled my heart with most dire forebodings. Her speech could not be mere conjecture, put forth to vex and annoy me? She had scarcely motive enough for this; besides, her display of a positive foreknowledge was proof against the supposition, ...
— The Wild Huntress - Love in the Wilderness • Mayne Reid
... That genia soil receives the fruitful store, And there they grow, and breed a thousand more. Now be their arts display'd, how first they choose A cause and party, as the bard his Muse; Inspired by these, with clamorous zeal they cry, And through the town their dreams and omens fly; So the Sibylline leaves were blown about, Disjointed scraps of fate involved in doubt; So idle dreams, the journals of the night, Are right and wrong by turns, and mingle wrong with right.- Some champions for the rights ...
— The Village and The Newspaper • George Crabbe
... consulted to discover the religious observances necessary to avert great calamities and to expiate prodigies. During the reign of Augustus they were removed to the Temple of Apollo on the Palatine Hill, and all the false Sibylline leaves which were extant were collected and burned. They remained here until shortly after the year 400 A.D., when they were publicly burned by Stilicho, a famous general of Christian Rome, as impious documents of ...
— Historic Tales, Volume 11 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... is possible for those who are not behind their age in scholarship and science; this is a solemn fact, which may be ignored by the partisans of short-sighted bigotry, but which is felt by all, and confessed by most of those who are capable of appreciating its reality and importance. The deep Sibylline vaticinations of Coleridge's philosophical mind, the practical working of Arnold's religious sentimentalism, and the open acknowledgment of many divines who are living examples of the spirit of the age, have all, in different ways, foretold the advent ...
— Theological Essays and Other Papers v1 • Thomas de Quincey
... pontifices were performing in it; a statue of Virtus, standing before some of the gates, fell upon its face; and certain persons rendered inspired by the Mother of the Gods declared that the goddess was angry with them. On this point the Sibylline books were consulted. They made the same statements and prescribed that the statue be taken down to the sea and purified with water from it. In obedience to the order the goddess went very far indeed out into the surges, where she remained ...
— Dio's Rome, Vol. III • Cassius Dio
... that is all," went on her brother-in-law. "Now listen to me. I have been living beyond my means. Last year the canvass to get on the board of guardians of the Sibylline Books—in which that graceless son-in-law of Cicero's, Publius Dolabella, defeated me—cost a deal of money. This year I have the consulship. But it has taken every denarius I own, and more too. All my estates are involved, so that it will require years to ...
— A Friend of Caesar - A Tale of the Fall of the Roman Republic. Time, 50-47 B.C. • William Stearns Davis
... "What? Never read 'Sibylline Leaves'? Why, I will wager my head that you have parsed from them a thousand times! Never read that magnificent hymn before sunrise, in the midst of glaciers and snow- crowned, cloud-piercing peaks? Listen, then; and if you don't feel like falling upon your knees, ...
— Beulah • Augusta J. Evans
... in Rome, and, in fact, in many other cities and countries of the world in those days, a variety of prophetic books, called the Sibylline Oracles, in which it was generally believed that future events were foretold. Some of these volumes or rolls, which were very ancient and of great authority, were preserved in the temples at Rome, under the charge of a board of guardians, who were to ...
— History of Julius Caesar • Jacob Abbott
... the Romans neglected them because they had the Sibylline books, and their auspices (aruspices, or haruspices), which stood them instead of oracles. M. Vandale demonstrates that some remains of the oracles might yet be seen under the Christian emperors. It was then ...
— The Phantom World - or, The philosophy of spirits, apparitions, &c, &c. • Augustin Calmet
... with regard to II. and III., which did obtain posthumous publication, the following caution should be borne in mind by the reader. "To the completion," says Coleridge, "of these four works I have literally nothing more to do than to transcribe; but, as I before hinted, from so many scraps and Sibylline leaves, including margins of blank pages that unfortunately I must be my own scribe, and, not done by myself, they will be all but lost." As matters turned out he was not his own scribe, and the difficulty which ...
— English Men of Letters: Coleridge • H. D. Traill
... Aunt Ellen, I am just as much shocked as you are; but when he does not respect even your opinions, how dare I presume to hope he will show any deference to mine? St. Elmo, what think you of the last Sibylline leaves of your favorite Ruskin? In looking over his new book, I was surprised to find this strong assertion ... Here is the volume now—listen ...
— St. Elmo • Augusta J. Evans
... O'Brien. And the two women looked out of the canvas with the same, self-same piercing intensity, the same glow of passion, the same flame of sensual desire, the same marvellous eloquence; each had a mouth that was ambiguous, enigmatical, sibylline, the mouth of the insatiable absorber of souls; and each had a brow of marble whiteness, immaculately, ...
— The Child of Pleasure • Gabriele D'Annunzio
... she said, with something of a sibylline air. Evidently he was thinking how clever it was of her to have guessed it, and indeed she thought it was a remarkable example of her instinctive understanding of men. And Yaverland, on his side, was letting his mind travel down a channel of feeling which he knew to be silly and sentimental, ...
— The Judge • Rebecca West
... except in the intellectual severity of her outline, and bears marks of age which will grow stronger every year, and make her ugly before long. Still it will be a grandiose, gypsy, or rather Sibylline ugliness, well adapted to the expression of some tragic parts. Only it seems as if she could not live long; she expends force enough upon a part to furnish out ...
— At Home And Abroad - Or, Things And Thoughts In America and Europe • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... now proceeded to pour out another cup of tea, and having mixed and flavored it, she looked in a weird and sibylline manner across ...
— The Pearl of Orr's Island - A Story of the Coast of Maine • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... rather insipid quatrain was tortured into a baleful prophecy. It was considered very ominous that the battery should be first opened against this Sibylline tower. The chimes, too, which had been playing, all through the siege, the music of Marot's sacred songs, happened that morning to be sounding forth from every belfry the twenty-second psalm: "My God, my God, ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... good people be concerned to hear that Pagan fictions will so long retain their influence over literature, let them reflect that, as the Bishop of St David's says, in his "Proofs of the Inspiration of the Sibylline Verses," read at the last meeting of the Royal Society of Literature, "at all events, a ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 1 (of 4) - Contibutions to Knight's Quarterly Magazine] • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... whereas the hypothesis that it was Caesar's intention to rule the Romans as Imperator, the non-Romans as Rex, must be simply dismissed. It is based solely on the story that in the sitting of the senate in which Caesar was assassinated a Sibylline utterance was brought forward by one of the priests in charge of the oracles, Lucius Cotta, to the effect that the Parthians could only be vanquished by a "king," and in consequence of this the resolution was adopted ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... it for them: but the water companies did not choose to take it; and now this part of England is growing so populous and so valuable that it wants all its little rainfall for itself. So there is another leaf torn out of the Sibylline books for the poor old water companies. You do not understand: you will some day. But you may comfort yourself about London. For it happens to be, I think, the luckiest city in the world; and if it had not been, ...
— Health and Education • Charles Kingsley
... deceived him. Impostors! But of what incredible caliber, of what illusion-creating power! For years he could not see a Salvation Army girl without a sense of cerebral exaltation. If he could have met Debora again, he would have forgiven her sibylline deceptions, her father's chicanery. And how did they spin their web? Ferval, student of the occult, greedy of metaphysical problems, at first set it down to Indian Yogi magic. But the machinery—the ...
— Visionaries • James Huneker
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