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Colossus   Listen
noun
Colossus  n.  (pl. L. colossi, E. colossuses)  
1.
A statue of gigantic size. The name was especially applied to certain famous statues in antiquity, as the Colossus of Nero in Rome, the Colossus of Apollo at Rhodes. "He doth bestride the narrow world Like a colossus." Note: There is no authority for the statement that the legs of the Colossus at Rhodes extended over the mouth of the harbor.
2.
Any man or beast of gigantic size.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Colossus" Quotes from Famous Books



... are surely outshone! On Marvel World's billows 'twill toss us—'twill toss us, To watch him, Director and Statesman in one, This Seven-League-Booted Colossus—Colossus! Combining in one supernatural blend Plain Commerce and Imagination—gination; O'er Africa striding from dark end to end, To forward ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 103, December 10, 1892 • Various

... soberly at this school, at the colossus he had helped to create. He had the feeling that it was wrong somehow, that if people would only think about it they could ...
— There Will Be School Tomorrow • V. E. Thiessen

... of the day-dreamer; he is rolling in gold, digging up treasure, sitting on his throne, or somehow at the summit of bliss; for dame How-I-wish is a lavish facile Goddess, that will never turn a deaf ear to her votary, though he have a mind to fly, or change statures with Colossus, or strike a gold- reef; well, in the middle of all this, in comes his servant with some every-day question, wanting to know where he is to get bread, or what he shall say to the landlord, tired of waiting for his rent; and then he flies into a temper, as ...
— Works, V2 • Lucian of Samosata

... It was dynamic, an induced current from Paris via Craigenputtock, because it was dramatic—great abstractions, playing magnificently over great concretes. Every man in Carlyle's history is a philosophy, and every abstraction in it a man's face, a beckoning to us. He always seems to me a kind of colossus of a man stalking across the dark, way out in The Past, using men as search-lights. He could not help doing his thinking in persons, and everything he touches is terribly and beautifully alive. It was because he saw things in persons, that is, ...
— The Lost Art of Reading • Gerald Stanley Lee

... arbitress of art? He moved nearer. Why, this was but a girl—nay, unless his instinct was at fault, a Jewish girl—a glorious young Jewess, of that radiant red-haired type which the Russian Pale occasionally flowered with. What was she doing with this Christian Colossus? He tried vainly to see her left hand; the mere possibility that she might be Mrs. Wilhammer shocked his Semitic instinct. Wilhammer disappeared within—the relation was obviously intimate—but the girl still stood at the door, a ...
— Ghetto Comedies • Israel Zangwill

... Flavian dynasty, and entered upon his reign by filling up the spaces made by the demolitions of Nero, and by the fire, with large buildings, the most conspicuous and massive of them being the Coliseum. It is not known whether this name was given to it from its tremendous size or from the Colossus of Nero ...
— Little Folks (October 1884) - A Magazine for the Young • Various

... died out of her, and she lay back on the pillows of the sofa for a moment and closed her eyes. She had indeed forgotten that ghastly colossus in her absorption ...
— The Price of Things • Elinor Glyn

... like that should cause a man so much pain!" exclaimed a giant, as he rolled in his hand and examined with eager curiosity the acorn which his friend the dwarf had obligingly taken from the huge eye into which it had fallen just as the colossus was on the point of shooting a bird perched in ...
— Architects of Fate - or, Steps to Success and Power • Orison Swett Marden

... pallid little creature, and could not believe that it was thirteen months old. At home in his cradle she herself had a little colossus of seven months, who was at least half as ...
— Tales of Two Countries • Alexander Kielland

... first taught her the pleasantness of power. But that was nothing to this. Anybody, even Emmy, curly-headed baby that she was, could turn poor Septimus into a slave. For a woman to impose her will upon Clem Sypher, Friend of Humanity, the Colossus of Curemongers, was ...
— Septimus • William J. Locke

... create a fashion, but who servilely follow every fashion after it is thirty years old. Such a theatre no longer counts in the history of French music; and its next directors will need a vast amount of ingenuity and energy to get a semblance of life into such a dead colossus. ...
— Musicians of To-Day • Romain Rolland

... nations. Japan sent an ultimatum to Russia which did not receive prompt enough attention and war was declared in 1904. For the second time the world's attention was centered on Japan, and to the amazement of the western world the eastern empire defeated the Russian Colossus most severely and consistently both on land and on sea. The financial burden of the war, however, was a severe strain on the limited resources of the young world power and it was forced to accept mediation proffered ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume I (of 8) - Introductions; Special Articles; Causes of War; Diplomatic and State Papers • Various

... Lexington, Ky.; the Great Wall of China; Judge Von Rosenberg (the Colossus of Roads); the Hanging Gardens at Albany; a San Antonio Sunday school; Mrs. Frank ...
— Rolling Stones • O. Henry

... a country not a tenth part so extensive as the huge colossus of the Russian empire, whose tzar reigns over a hundred lands, contains perhaps as many Gypsies, it not being uncommon to find whole villages inhabited by this race; they likewise abound in the suburbs of the towns. ...
— The Zincali - An Account of the Gypsies of Spain • George Borrow

... their black at evening against the ethereal lemon color, the orange and the red. The little obelisk beyond the last sphinx on the left began to change, as in Egypt all things change at sunset—pylon and dusty bush, colossus and baked earth hovel, sycamore, and tamarisk, statue and trotting donkey. It looked like a mysterious finger pointed in warning toward the sky. The Nile began to gleam. Upon its steel and silver torches of amber flame were lighted. The Libyan mountains became spectral beyond ...
— The Spell of Egypt • Robert Hichens

... necessary heir of the Crown, though he had never received anything but evidences of tenderness from him, and triumphed over him for eight months with the most scandalous success; it was, I say, thus that this Colossus was overthrown by the breath of a prudent and courageous princess, who earned by this act merited applause. All who were concerned with her, were charmed to see of what she was capable; and all who were opposed ...
— The Memoirs of Louis XIV., His Court and The Regency, Complete • Duc de Saint-Simon

... which the eye might travel wearily for what appeared endless miles. One could call out here with never a faint hope of being heard; one left alone here could die miserably, taunted only by the echoes of her own choking voice. This devil's land took on a vindictive personality; it was a hideous colossus, stooping over her, inspired with but one cruel desire, to crush her soft white body, to stamp out her life, to annihilate her and gloat over her shrieking despair. She felt like some hapless little princess in a fairy-tale who had wandered into a ...
— The Everlasting Whisper • Jackson Gregory

... very giantly man, and was clad in a coarse blue coat, strapped round the waist with a leathern belt, which caused the enormous skirts and pockets to set off with a very warlike sweep. His ponderous legs were cased in a pair of foxy-colored jack-boots, and he was straddling in the attitude of the Colossus of Rhodes, before a bit of broken looking-glass, shaving himself with a villainously dull razor. This afflicting operation caused him to make a series of horrible grimaces, which heightened exceedingly the grisly terrors of his visage. On Antony Van Corlear's being ...
— Knickerbocker's History of New York, Complete • Washington Irving

... English Monk, nay about Cromwell: O thou Paris Grandison-Cromwell!—What boots it? King Louis himself looked coldly on the enterprize: colossal Hero of two Worlds, having weighed himself in the balance, finds that he is become a gossamer Colossus, only some thirty ...
— The French Revolution • Thomas Carlyle

... Nowhere among the ribbons brought from the library was another of his making, although a great number of different voices was included; neither was there another talker with a fifth the volume, the resonance, the absolute power of conviction that this unknown colossus possessed. ...
— The Lord of Death and the Queen of Life • Homer Eon Flint

... forced themselves up through the troubled incoherence of his thoughts were of the nature of "damned American," "vulgar Yankee," "insolent bounder," rendering but inadequately the sentiments of a certain kind of Englishman toward his fancied typical American, a crafty Colossus who accomplishes everything by money and brutal strength. Had there been nothing whatever to create a special antagonism between them, Ashley's feeling toward Davenant would still have been that of a civilized Jack-the-Giant-Killer toward a stupendous, ...
— The Street Called Straight • Basil King

... his long- vanished temple, and proceed along a paved path across stretches of lawn; great trees hide him. But very suddenly, at a turn, he comes into full view and you start! No matter how many photographs of the colossus you may have already seen, this first vision of the reality is an astonishment. Then you imagine that you are already too near, though the image is at least a hundred yards away. As for me, I retire at once thirty or forty yards back, to get a better view. And the jinricksha man runs ...
— Glimpses of an Unfamiliar Japan - First Series • Lafcadio Hearn

... travelled he had his practical jokes and his Irish stories and his fondness for the social side; but he was conventionally as correct as a time-table. Had there been a spark of genius in him he would have extinguished it for the sake of betterments to the most conventional Colossus in Canada. The C.P.R. was supposed to lead. It was built for dividends, and born in politics. It had craft at its cradle. The new policy under Shaughnessy was bigger. It had to do less with Asia, with spectacle, with carved gods; ...
— The Masques of Ottawa • Domino

... young brave's lower limbs and reaessure himself that this was the one who had left the slender foot-prints along the trail, side by side with which had always appeared those of the boy. Slowly then rose the victor to his feet, and like a black Colossus, standing astride his prostrate foe, remained for many moments profoundly silent, as if lost in thought, and uncertain, under circumstances so unexpected and peculiar, what ...
— Burl • Morrison Heady

... their colony; they had to admit it to their financial calculations, and all the time they would fain have crushed the great pioneer under their feet. They had, indeed, hoped to see him humbled and abashed after his one fatal mistake, instead of which he had gone calmly on his way—a Colossus indeed—with the set purpose, as a guiding star ever before his eyes, to retrieve the error which they had fondly imagined would have delivered him into their hands. Truly an impressive and curious study was that House of Assembly in ...
— South African Memories - Social, Warlike & Sporting From Diaries Written At The Time • Lady Sarah Wilson

... sacrificed, and that, too, while half the mystery of its strange powers is yet a secret. Here is a man who has never entered the doors of a college or a university, and yet by the sheer might of his innate gifts has made himself such a colossus in abstruse learning that the ablest of our scholars are but pigmies in his presence. By the evidence of Professor Mather, Mr. Surbridge, Mr. Richmond, and other men qualified to testify, this man is as familiar with the broad domain of philology as common men are with the ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine

... to this day the memory of his cruelty. But all was forgotten when, on the 9th Thermidor, he proclaimed himself against Robespierre, and assisted in casting from the altar the Supreme Being, the colossus who, being an apostle, had made himself a god. Freron, repudiated by the Mountain, which abandoned him to the heavy jaws of Moise Bayle; Freron, disdainfully repulsed by the Girondins, who delivered him over to the imprecations ...
— The Companions of Jehu • Alexandre Dumas, pere

... to come; for long enough to build planetary defenses against attack. And there they would have used Athena's rich resources to make ships and weapons to defend mineral-depleted Earth against the inexorably increasing inclosure of the mighty, coldly calculating colossus that was the ...
— Space Prison • Tom Godwin

... so far towards it, when a sudden interruption, probably a smart box on the ear, cheated him of his fame, except so far as this poor record may rescue it. Dead long ago. I remember him well, a grown man, as a visitor at a later period; and, for some reason, I recall him in the attitude of the Colossus of Rhodes, standing full before a generous wood-fire, not facing it, but quite the contrary, a perfect picture of the content afforded by a blazing hearth contemplated from that point of view, and, as the heat stole through his person and kindled his emphatic features, seeming to me a ...
— The Poet at the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.

... years now since this colossus of crime suddenly ceased keeping the world in a turmoil; and when he ceased, as they said after the death of Roland, there was a great quiet upon the earth. But in his best days (I mean, of course, ...
— The Innocence of Father Brown • G. K. Chesterton

... us, and heaven gave a portion of its blue, boys, blue, that I remember the song of Roland at the "Old Piazza Coffee-house." And now where is the "Old Piazza Coffee-house?" Where is Thebes? where is Troy? where is the Colossus of Rhodes? Ah, Rolando, Rolando! thou wert a gallant captain, a cheery, a handsome, a merry. At ME thou never presentedst pistol. Thou badest the bumper of Burgundy fill, fill for me, giving those who preferred it champagne. Caelum non animum, &c. Do ...
— Roundabout Papers • William Makepeace Thackeray

... again to discourse this very heart aching subject. Now, as we approach the colossus of Liberty, Miss Maria Rose made her morning appearance and before we all could exchange the "Bon Jour" salutations to her, she gracefully grasped the gentleman from Boston by the arm and walking up and down the bridge with soldierly step, began in an apparently joyful ...
— Conversion of a High Priest into a Christian Worker • Meletios Golden

... by no means faultless, his verse often coming near to prose, and his prose sometimes aping the rhythm of verse. In fact, it is not surprising that to the rigid classicists of the eighteenth century this Colossus had feet of clay. But, after all, even clay has a merit of its own: it is the substance of the common earth. That substance, entering into the composition of Moliere, gave him his broad-based solidity, and brought him into kinship with ...
— Landmarks in French Literature • G. Lytton Strachey

... cut-and-dry, here-we-are-again kind of manner. He is better to listen to than to argue withal. When you differ from him, he lifts up his voice and thunders; and you know that the thunder of an excited foreigner often miscarries. One stands aghast, marvelling how such a colossus of a man, in such a great commotion of spirit, can open his mouth so much and emit such a still small voice at the hinder end of it all. All this while he walks about the room, smokes cigarettes, occupies divers chairs for divers brief spaces, and casts ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 23 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... minutes the colossus (he was one of the Dinosaurs, or Terrible Lizards, and known as a Diplodocus) remained on all-fours, darting his sinuous neck inquiringly in all directions, and snatching here and there a mouthful of the ...
— In the Morning of Time • Charles G. D. Roberts

... of the seals, was at his country house at Glatigny, very near Versailles, where the king was expected. He remained there in hopes that Louis would send for him and put the power of the disgraced cardinal into his hands. The colossus seemed about to fall. ...
— Historical Tales, Vol. 6 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality. French. • Charles Morris

... position as impregnable, but Elizabeth's pirates contemptuously termed it "a Colossus stuffed with clouts." Priests, crucifixes, and reliance on supernatural assistance had no meaning for them. If any suggestion to impose on them by such means had been made, they would have cast ...
— Drake, Nelson and Napoleon • Walter Runciman

... the detective, who had played his last card, was in an agony during the two weeks' absence of his men. At last they returned, discomfited and weary, leading the foundered yellow horse, and accompanied by a sort of colossus, "somewhat resembling a grenadier," who was no ...
— The House of the Combrays • G. le Notre

... folly. We were wasting time when, bending over our maps, we foresaw a skilful advance on the heels of Belgium's invaders, followed by a huge victory, dearly bought, perhaps, but one that would upset the German Colossus at a single blow. The whole thing was an illusion. And I thought what a fool I had been. I thought of my regiment. How much of it was there left? How many of those good fellows were lying dead on foreign soil? How many ...
— In the Field (1914-1915) - The Impressions of an Officer of Light Cavalry • Marcel Dupont

... of the old fight, which was splendid at least, if tremendous, 'Twixt Jove and the Titans of old. That colossus, gold-armoured, stupendous, Perched high on the "Privilege" ramparts, and bastioned by big bags of bullion, Is "Capital"; he's the new Jove, and each Titan would treat as his scullion, But look at the huge Hundred-Handed One, ...
— Punch Among the Planets • Various

... Macdonald. With the money back of him, he had for two years fought against and almost prevailed over a strong public opinion in the United States. He was as masterful in his hatred as in his love. The dominant, fighting figure in the Northwest, he trod his sturdy way through opposition like a Colossus. ...
— The Yukon Trail - A Tale of the North • William MacLeod Raine

... had just heard could belong to no man but the colossus he had seen in passing through the kitchen. It made the place vibrate. The quarrelling continued some time, and then there was a ...
— The Cloister and the Hearth • Charles Reade

... College that "Footelights" had given an order for a certain number of feet of books, - not being at all proud as to their contents, - and had laid down the sum of a thousand pounds (or thereabouts) for their binding. This might have been scandal; but the fact of his father being a Colossus of (the iron) Roads, and indulging his son and heir in every expense, gave some ...
— The Adventures of Mr. Verdant Green • Cuthbert Bede

... seas, which the whale inhabits, are, like other seas, full of innumerable troops of various little sea-animals, and it is these which are destined to the honor of nourishing this gigantic mass of flesh. When the colossus wishes to take a meal, he stretches his mouth to its utmost width, and the salt water rushing in as into a gulf, carries with it the imprudent little fry, who disappear then and there for ever, being retained by the fringe-like sieve of the whalebone. But as, in ...
— The History of a Mouthful of Bread - And its effect on the organization of men and animals • Jean Mace

... Carlos Herrera—it will be necessary to speak of him by one or the other of these names according to the circumstances of the case—had long been familiar with the methods of the police, of the jail, and of justice. This colossus of cunning and corruption had employed all his powers of mind, and all the resources of mimicry, to affect the surprise and anility of an innocent man, while giving the lawyers the spectacle of his sufferings. As has been told, Asie, that skilled Locusta, had given ...
— Scenes from a Courtesan's Life • Honore de Balzac

... own land, on the cliff at Dover, relics of which may even now be seen. It was built by the Romans, of very strong material, tufa, concrete, and red-tile brick. It was probably used as a lighthouse about the time of the Norman conquest, and is now devoted to purposes of government storage. The Colossus of Rhodes is said to have been used as a beacon, but there is no proof ...
— Grace Darling - Heroine of the Farne Islands • Eva Hope

... into the shapes of triangles, eggs, and pilasters. Gabriel Harvey is accused by his tormentor, Nash, of doing the same, "of having writ verse in all kinds, as in form of a pair of gloves, a dozen of points, a pair of spectacles, a two-hand sword, a poynado, a colossus, a pyramid, a painter's easel, a market cross, a trumpet, an anchor, a pair of pot-hooks." Puttenham's Art of Poetry, with its books, one on Proportion, the other on Ornament, might be compared to an Art of War, of ...
— Spenser - (English Men of Letters Series) • R. W. Church

... 217 miles long, 8 to 12 miles wide at the rim, and more than a mile deep. It is the Colossus of canyons, by far the hugest example of stream erosion in the world. It is gorgeously colored. It is by common consent the most stupendous spectacle in the world. It may be conceived as a mountain range reversed. Could its moulded image, similarly colored, stand upon the desert floor, ...
— The Book of the National Parks • Robert Sterling Yard

... his scheme, to convey to England the bust of Memnon. So eager was he, that the same day, the Italian set out for the ruins of Thebes, and hired a hundred natives, whom he made clear away the sand which half covered the stone colossus. With a large staff in his hand, Belzoni commanded his army of Mussulmans, directed their labors, astonished them with displays of his physical strength, learned to speak their language with marvelous facility, and speedily came to be regarded by them ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 2, No. 12, May, 1851. • Various

... magnitude of purpose, no less than in the scope and power of his imagination, he towers like a Colossus among his contemporaries. Compared with such a work as 'Christ leaving the Prtorium,' the pictures in Burlington House look like the production of a race of dwarfs whose mental faculties are as diminutive as their stature. And it is not alone the efforts of the English School of Painting that appear ...
— In the Heart of the Vosges - And Other Sketches by a "Devious Traveller" • Matilda Betham-Edwards

... wretched business, and those who were in Basra at that time and saw those spectacles will never forget them; nor will they forget the silent, impotent rage that filled the mind at the thought of the giant-bodied, small-headed Colossus of war which makes a useless sacrifice of men in ways such as these every day. But it had one useful effect, perhaps. A really Zoroastrian reverence for the sun came after seeing a case, and a man learnt to look on his pith helmet and spine pad as ...
— In Mesopotamia • Martin Swayne

... nation and its chiefs have mistaken these holy truths. They must abide then the consequences of their blindness. The decree is past; the day approaches when this colossus of power shall be crushed and crumbled under its own mass. Yes, I swear it, by the ruins of so many empires destroyed. The empire of the Crescent shall follow the fate of the despotism it has copied. A nation of strangers shall drive ...
— The Ruins • C. F. [Constantin Francois de] Volney

... colossus, was well known for one peculiarity. When about to lead his troops in a charge against the enemy, it was his custom to shout "Let's go! I'll put on my animal dress." Then he took off his uniform, his jacket and shirt and retained only his plumed hat, his leather breeches and his ...
— The Memoirs of General the Baron de Marbot, Translated by - Oliver C. Colt • Baron de Marbot

... resembles in some respects, the interior of the cathedrals of this country. One long avenue from east to west is intersected by a Transept, which divides the building into two nearly equal parts. This is the greatest building the world ever saw, before which the Pyramids of Egypt, and the Colossus of Rhodes must hide their diminished heads. The palace was not full at any time during the day, there being only 64,000 persons present. Those who love to study the human countenance in all its infinite varieties, can find ample ...
— Three Years in Europe - Places I Have Seen and People I Have Met • William Wells Brown

... Like that colossus of strength and wisdom, the elephant which refuses to pass over a bridge until satisfied that this will uphold its weight, the cunning stone did not budge another inch until the bridge had been braced with ...
— Tales of Aztlan • George Hartmann

... ask your pardon, sir," said he, "for seeming to neglect you as I did, but the truth is, I was in a white heat of passion with that great good-natured colossus of mine, Mat Ruly, for, indeed, he is good-natured, and that I can tell you makes me overlook many a thing in him that I would not otherwise pass by. Ah, then, sir, did you observe," he added, "how he confessed to heaping the creel of turf for the ...
— The Black Baronet; or, The Chronicles Of Ballytrain - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton

... Mexico. In the second may be placed Cargueirazo and Pichincha, in the province of Quito; the volcano of Puracey, near Popayan; and perhaps also Hecla, in Iceland. In the third and last we may rank the majestic figure of Chimborazo, and, (if it be allowable to place by the side of that colossus a hill of Europe,) the ...
— Equinoctial Regions of America • Alexander von Humboldt

... to want a husband that may wed you to-day and be sent the Lord knows where before night; then in a twelve-month, perhaps, to have him come like a Colossus, with one leg at New York and ...
— Memoirs of the Life of the Rt. Hon. Richard Brinsley Sheridan V1 • Thomas Moore

... meet first, on our right, was bristling with churches. There was one at the foot of the Colossus of the Sun, where the bodies of the two Persian martyrs, Abdon and Sennen, were exposed at the time of the persecution of Decius. There were four dedicated to the Saviour (S. Salvator in Tellure, de Trasi, de Insula, de rota Colisei), a sixth to S. James, a seventh ...
— Pagan and Christian Rome • Rodolfo Lanciani

... harder than ever, and now he identified the face with the pictures he had seen. Waterman, the Colossus of finance, the Croesus of copper and gold! How many trusts had Waterman organized! And how many puns had been made ...
— The Metropolis • Upton Sinclair

... only ones then clear of sand. These graffiti are of the highest value for the early history of the alphabet, and as proving the presence of Greek mercenaries in the Egyptian armies of the period. The upper part of the second colossus (from the south) has fallen; the third was repaired by Sethos II. not many years after the completion of the temple. This great temple was wholly rock-cut, and is now threatened by gradual ruin by sliding on the planes of stratification. ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia

... has revealed a capacity in some degree comparable with that of the myriad-minded Englishman. Yet Goethe replied to Eckermann, "We cannot talk about Shakespeare; everything is inadequate." If the German intellectual colossus, whose conversation bestrode the narrow world from comparative anatomy and scientific optics to the principles of art, could not talk of Shakespeare; if a poet whose writings, next to those of our own unrivalled bard, are most thickly studded with great stars of thought, ...
— Platform Monologues • T. G. Tucker

... Perhaps they were overproud and reserved, for they held themselves aloof from those about them. Mme Goujet always wore mourning, and her pale, serene face was encircled with nunlike bands of white. Goujet was a colossus of twenty-three with a clear, fresh complexion and honest eyes. At the manufactory he went by the name of the Gueule-d'Or on account ...
— L'Assommoir • Emile Zola

... disappeared ages ago, no one knows how nor precisely when. It is clear that the nation which produced them has fallen into a kind of unconscious stupor, which has been its mental condition ever since, and which to-day raises puny Europe to the stature of a giant before the fallen colossus. ...
— Irish Race in the Past and the Present • Aug. J. Thebaud

... ourselves. I venture to think that we may rejoice over it, too, with your distinguished guest. It enables Great Britain and the United States to preserve a common interest and present a common front in the enormous commercial development in the East that must attend the awakening of the Chinese Colossus; and whenever and wherever Great Britain and the United States stand together, the peace and the civilization of the world will be the better ...
— Problems of Expansion - As Considered In Papers and Addresses • Whitelaw Reid

... stature and commanding authority, were ideas almost inseparable, before a religion, entirely intellectual, had placed the power of man in his mind. The human figure, which was also the figure of the gods, appeared symbolical; and the nervous colossus of Hercules, as well as every other ancient statue of this sort, do not convey vulgar ideas of common life; but an omnipotent and divine will, which shews itself under the emblem of a supernatural ...
— Corinne, Volume 1 (of 2) - Or Italy • Mme de Stael

... Where this Colossus among beasts had come from it was impossible to say, but the terrifying fact was self-evident that he was advancing ...
— Two Boys in Wyoming - A Tale of Adventure (Northwest Series, No. 3) • Edward S. Ellis

... from the Sumerian /lama/, was similar in character to the /sedu/, but is thought to have been of the nature of a colossus—a winged man-headed bull or lion. It is these creatures which the kings placed at the sides of the doors of their palaces, to protect the king's footsteps. In early Babylonian times a god named Lama was one of the most popular deities ...
— The Religion of Babylonia and Assyria • Theophilus G. Pinches

... and she dreaded to leave the place where she had passed so many delightful hours with him. But her aunt and Doctor Elbert refused to give her up, and so, one beautiful September morning, they sailed for Liverpool in the good ship Colossus. ...
— The Fatal Glove • Clara Augusta Jones Trask

... of roads, Telford continued to be the very highest authority, his friend Southey jocularly styling him the "Colossus of Roads." The Russian Government frequently consulted him with reference to the new roads with which that great empire was being opened up. The Polish road from Warsaw to Briesc, on the Russian frontier, 120 miles in length, was ...
— The Life of Thomas Telford by Smiles • Samuel Smiles

... in the models of earlier sculptors made by Lysippos were of sufficient importance to give rise to a school which was carried on by his sons and others, producing among many famous works the Barberini Faun, now at the Glyptothek, Munich. The enormous Colossus of Rhodes was also the work ...
— TITLE • AUTHOR

... that he became a sort of Colossus of the English-speaking theater. Figuratively, he stood astride the mighty sea in which he was to meet his death, with one foot planted securely in England and ...
— Charles Frohman: Manager and Man • Isaac Frederick Marcosson and Daniel Frohman

... World" are seven most remarkable objects of the ancient world. They are: The Pyramids of Egypt, Pharos of Alexandria, Walls and Hanging Gardens of Babylon, Temple of Diana at Ephesus, the Statue of the Olympian Jupiter, Mausoleum of Artemisia, and Colossus of Rhodes. ...
— The Handy Cyclopedia of Things Worth Knowing - A Manual of Ready Reference • Joseph Triemens

... our cup to the northern colossus, the model of liberal republics, the United States of America, in their living and vigorous personification, in their image visible and cherished ...
— Latin America and the United States - Addresses by Elihu Root • Elihu Root

... childhood. Its greatest fault is its slothful unwillingness to seek renewal. But humanity must seek renewal and growth. For centuries it has condemned itself to use no more than a modicum of its spiritual resources. It is like a half-paralysed colossus. It allows some of its organs to atrophy. Are we not weary of these infirm nations, of these scattered members of a great body, which might ...
— The Forerunners • Romain Rolland

... infuriated mob spared the statues of the Tuileries at the bloody climax of the French Revolution,—that a "love of the antique" knit in bonds of life-long friendship Winckelmann and Cardinal Albani,— that among the most salient of childhood's memories should be Memnon's image and the Colossus of Rhodes,—that an imaginative girl of exalted temperament died of love for the Apollo Belvidere,—and that Carrara should win many a pilgrimage because its quarries ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. II, No. 8, June 1858 • Various

... she thinks so great was only very like the Serapis which men worshipped so many ages in Theophilis, and which, when the soldiers struck it down at last, proved itself only a hollow Colossus with a colony of rats in its head that ...
— Wisdom, Wit, and Pathos of Ouida - Selected from the Works of Ouida • Ouida

... journey take, As if thy last thou wert to make, Business must be despatched ere thou canst part. Nor canst thou stir unless there be A hundred horse and men to wait on thee, And many a mule, and many a cart: What an unwieldy man thou art! The Rhodian Colossus so A ...
— Cowley's Essays • Abraham Cowley

... of Egypt contain in hieroglyphic characters many secrets of our Faculty. The Chinese Wall, and the Colossus at Rhodes, were erected by our ancestors in sport. We could cite many ...
— A Collection of College Words and Customs • Benjamin Homer Hall

... you in the hole." Ayrault instantly fired for a point just back of the left foreleg. The explosion had the same effect as on the mastodon, removing a half-barrel of hide, etc; and the next second Bearwarden sent a bullet less than an inch from where Ayrault's had stopped. Before the colossus could turn, each had caused several explosions in close proximity to the first. The creature was of course terribly wounded, and several ribs were cracked, but no ball had gone through. With a roar it made straight for the woods, and with surprising agility, running fully as fast as an elephant. ...
— A Journey in Other Worlds • J. J. Astor

... this colossus, stands across a chasm through which flows a small tributary of the Saguenay, and is a head or two shorter, as becomes a wife, and less rugged and broken ...
— Locusts and Wild Honey • John Burroughs

... admirable. It is admitted that the people are children, that they err only through ignorance, that faith must be had in their repentance, and, as soon as they return to order, they must be received with paternal effusions.—The truth is, that the child is a blind Colossus, exasperated by sufferings. hence whatever it takes hold of is shattered—not only the local wheels of the provinces, which, if temporarily deranged, may be repaired, but even the incentive at the center which puts the rest in motion, and the ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 2 (of 6) - The French Revolution, Volume 1 (of 3) • Hippolyte A. Taine

... obesity; plumpness &c. adj.; embonpoint, corporation, flesh and blood, lustihood. hugeness &c. adj.; enormity, immensity, monstrosity. giant, Brobdingnagian, Antaeus, Goliath, Gog and Magog, Gargantua, monster, mammoth, Cyclops; cachalot, whale, porpoise, behemoth, leviathan, elephant, hippopotamus; colossus; tun, cord, lump, bulk, block, loaf, mass, swad, clod, nugget, bushel, thumper, whooper, spanker, strapper; "Triton among the minnows" [Coriolanus]. mountain, mound; heap &c. (assemblage) 72. largest portion &c. 50; full size, life size. V. be large &c. adj.; become large &c. ...
— Roget's Thesaurus

... from older folk poetry. What he did was to pour into these forms the incomparable richness of a personality whose fire and brilliance and humour transcended all locality and all tradition, a personality which strode like a colossus over the formalism and correctness of his time. His use of familiar forms explains, more than anything else, his immediate fame. His countrymen were ready for him; they could hail him on the instant (just as an Elizabethan audience could hail Shakespeare) as something familiar ...
— English Literature: Modern - Home University Library Of Modern Knowledge • G. H. Mair

... of great reforms and the resuscitation of all that is good and noble in the Slavonic soul brought about also a moral regeneration. The colossus who, according to Turgenief, preferred to sleep an endless sleep, with a jug of vodka in his clutched fingers, proved that he, too, was human, with a feeling, human heart beating in his bosom. With the restoration of peace and ...
— The Haskalah Movement in Russia • Jacob S. Raisin

... stayers. Guest after guest quickly followed, almost all making the same observation, namely, that it was a fine day for the time of year, and then each sidled off, rubbing his hands, to the fire. Captain Guano monopolized about one-half of it, like a Colossus of Rhodes, with a coat-lap under each arm. He seemed to think that, being a stayer, he had more right to the fire than the ...
— Mr. Sponge's Sporting Tour • R. S. Surtees

... his first and last end was to serve his country. 'Tis well, if he could serve it by letters, equally well, if he could serve it by his simple life. Gogol, therefore, now decided to devote the rest of his days to the unveiling of the ills to which the Russian Colossus was subject, in the hope that the sight of the ugly cancer would help its removal. Thus he became the conscious protester, the critic of autocracy; and he became such because his gifts were best fitted for such labor. For coupled with his ...
— Lectures on Russian Literature - Pushkin, Gogol, Turgenef, Tolstoy • Ivan Panin

... under sunlight. Sidewalk humanity quickened and had a shove to it. Street cars and cabs plunged in seemingly impassable directions. Frivolity was showing her naked shoulder on lithograph roof garden and matinee stage. The Times Building stood like a colossus, breakwater to the tide. ...
— Star-Dust • Fannie Hurst

... banker stood, a colossus of wealth and stability to the eye, though ready to crumble at a touch; and indeed self-doomed, for bankruptcy was now ...
— Hard Cash • Charles Reade

... the wall behind him, and turned a switch so that the room became brightly lighted. Then, reluctantly, he came out from behind the piano, swinging between his crutches, and leaving Rose to escape at the first favorable opportunity. His descent from colossus to cripple had an unpleasant effect. And the question, "How the deuce do you work the pedals?" was jerked from Blythe, ...
— The Penalty • Gouverneur Morris

... letter To Daniel O'Connell, to make him Grand Master; Engaging to change the old name, if he can, From the Knights of St. John to the Knights of St. Dan;— Or if Dan should prefer (as a still better whim) Being made the Colossus, 'tis all one ...
— The Complete Poems of Sir Thomas Moore • Thomas Moore et al

... had stood the furnace, of which not a vestige remained, was standing a man, or rather a colossus; and Sylvestre Ker needed but a glance to recognize in him the demon. His body appeared to be of iron, red-hot and transparent; for in his veins could be seen the liquid gold, flowing into, and then retreating from, his heart, black ...
— In the Yule-Log Glow, Book II - Christmas Tales from 'Round the World • Various

... good living. So we had plenty of time to look about us. There was one individual who amused us mightily. This was one of the bewigged gentlemen in the red robes, who was straddling before the fire in the centre of the Court, in the attitude of the brazen Colossus, to the complete exclusion of everybody else. He had gathered up his robe behind, in much the same manner as a slovenly woman would her petticoats on a very dirty day, in order that he might feel the full warmth of the fire. His wig was put on all awry, with the tail straggling about his neck; his ...
— Sketches by Boz - illustrative of everyday life and every-day people • Charles Dickens

... COLOSSUS, any gigantic statue, specially one of Apollo in bronze, 120 ft. high, astride over the mouth of the harbour at Rhodes, reckoned one of the seven wonders of the world, erected in 280 B.C., destroyed by an earthquake 56 years after, and sold to a Jew centuries later for old metal; besides this ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood

... its embattled verge as a mountain-pine from the edge of a cliff. At its base, in its projected shadow, gleamed certain dim sculptures which I wonderingly approached. One of the images, on the left of the palace door, was a magnificent colossus, shining through the dusky air like a sentinel who has taken the alarm. In a moment I recognised him as Michael Angelo's David. I turned with a certain relief from his sinister strength to a slender figure in bronze, stationed beneath the high light loggia, which opposes the ...
— The Madonna of the Future • Henry James

... the Great; You strain and strive with mighty men; Your hand is on the helm of State; Colossus-like you stride . . . and then There comes a pause, a shining hour, A dog that leaps, a hand that clings: O Titan, turn from pomp and power; Give all your ...
— Ballads of a Bohemian • Robert W. Service

... mouth of the cave and sealing up the masonry, then leaving the Natives, men, women and children, to smother to death with their belongings inside the cave. Further, Mr. Stent accompanied Cecil Rhodes to the Mattopo hills, where the late Colossus went unarmed to hold with the Matabele chiefs the pourparler which brought about the peace of Southern Rhodesia. In the siege of Mafeking, Mr. Stent was Reuter's war correspondent, and all things considered, it must be conceded that he is better qualified to write on a subject of this kind ...
— Native Life in South Africa, Before and Since • Solomon Tshekisho Plaatje

... the emperor having ordered that part of his army, which quarters in and about his metropolis, to be in readiness, took a fancy of diverting himself in a very singular manner; he desired I would stand like a colossus, with my legs as far asunder as I conveniently could; he then commanded his general (who was an old experienced leader, and a great patron of mine) to draw up the troops in close order, and march them under me; the foot by twenty-four ...
— The Junior Classics, V5 • Edited by William Patten

... of encouragement he bestowed a kick on Lapoulle, a colossus of a man, who was on his knees puffing away with might and main, his cheeks distended till they were like wine-skins, his face red and swollen, and his eyes starting from their orbits and streaming with tears. Two other men of the squad, Chouteau and Pache, ...
— The Downfall • Emile Zola

... English ideas the pollo is more objectionable there than elsewhere, since his idea of riding is to show off the antics of a horse specially taught and made to prance about and curvet while he sits it, his legs sticking out in the position of the Colossus of Rhodes, his heels, armed with spurs, threatening catastrophe to the other riders. An old English master of foxhounds, who was a frequent visitor in Madrid, used to compare the Paseo of the Fuente Castellana at the fashionable hour to a "chevaux de frise on horseback." These gentlemen ...
— Spanish Life in Town and Country • L. Higgin and Eugene E. Street

... the appearance of flowers in spring: "There perhaps at the end of the combat, a pink all bleeding falls from fatigue; there a rosebud, elated at the ill-success of her antagonist, blooms with joy; there the lily, that colossus among the flowers, that giant of curdled cream, vain of seeing her image triumph at the Louvre, raises herself above her companions, and looks at them with contemptuous arrogance." The same author, who is Cyrano de Bergerac, calls ice "an hardened ...
— The English Novel in the Time of Shakespeare • J. J. Jusserand

... Clifford was beginning again with self-reproaches and self-abasement, but Rex broke in: "You fellows are awfully good — I do assure you I appreciate it. But I wasn't in any more danger than the rest of you. What about Thaxton and the Colossus and Carleton?" He grew anxious as he ...
— In the Quarter • Robert W. Chambers

... have another sample of this prodigious imagination? It is raining, freezing; wretched weather. M. Joyeuse has taken the omnibus to go to his office. Finding himself seated opposite a sort of colossus, with the head of a brute and formidable biceps, M. Joyeuse, himself very small, very puny, with his portfolio on his knees, draws in his legs in order to make room for the enormous columns which support the monumental body ...
— The Nabob • Alphonse Daudet

... de colosse bon enfant, d'une tenue irreprochable—a perfect image of a good-natured colossus, of irreproachable bearing. ...
— The Martian • George Du Maurier

... realize then that his vanity was of the kind which can in an instant spring into a Redwood colossus from the shriveled stalk to which the last glare of truth has wilted it. Still his words and manner jarred on me. As our eyes met, something in mine—perhaps something he imagined he saw—made him frown ...
— The Plum Tree • David Graham Phillips

... This colossus of French literature, having been for a long time in correspondence with the great Frederic, became particularly anxious to see that monarch. On his arrival in a village where the head-quarters of the Prussian army were then established, Voltaire inquired for the king's ...
— Paris As It Was and As It Is • Francis W. Blagdon

... he doth bestride the narrow world Like a Colossus; and we petty men Walk under his huge legs and peep about To find ourselves dishonorable graves. Men at some time are masters of their fates: The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars, But in ourselves,that we are underlings. "Brutus" and "Caesar": what should ...
— Julius Caesar • William Shakespeare [Hudson edition]

... emergency, grasped and directed the storm of battle. It was by the unparalleled courage of the troops of Hood, Humphreys, and Kershaw, and the temporary command under Longstreet, throwing themselves athwart the path of the great colossus of the North, that checked him and drove him back over the mountains to the strongholds around Chattanooga. And it is no violent assumption to say that had the troops on the right under Polk supported the battle with as fiery zeal as those ...
— History of Kershaw's Brigade • D. Augustus Dickert

... the walls of the amphitheatre and by Constantine's triumphal arch. Like all the innumerable fountains of the city, the Meta Sudans stood dry; around the base of the rayed colossus of Apollo, goats were browsing. Thence they went along by the Temple of Venus and Rome, its giant columns yet unshaken, its roof gleaming with gilded bronze; and so under the Arch of Titus, when, with a sharp turn to the left, they began ...
— Veranilda • George Gissing

... itself across the Schuylkill where that audacious arch used to leap the river at a single bound,—an arch of greater span, as they loved to tell us, than was ever before constructed. The Upper Ferry Bridge was to the Schuylkill what the Colossus was to the harbor of Rhodes. It had an air of dash about it which went far towards redeeming the dead level of respectable average which flattens the physiognomy of the rectangular city. Philadelphia will never be herself again until another Robert Mills and another Lewis Wernwag ...
— Pages From an Old Volume of Life - A Collection Of Essays • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.

... his collegue. Sarrau writes thus to Salmasius, March 15, 1645[424]. "Grotius is preparing to set out for Sweden after Easter, to complain of the injury done to him by appointing for his successor a young man who was his rival. He must however obey; and return into a private station: but this Colossus, though thrown down, will be always great; this statue will still be very high without its base." Whilst Grotius waited for Baron Oxenstiern's answer, he wrote to Spiringius, the Swedish Agent in Holland, asking him, in case he should not receive a favourable letter ...
— The Life of the Truly Eminent and Learned Hugo Grotius • Jean Levesque de Burigny

... he doth bestride the narrow world Like a Colossus, and we petty men Walk under his huge ...
— The New Hudson Shakespeare: Julius Caesar • William Shakespeare

... volumes, exquisitely produced, designed to hold the essence of the wisdom of some of the world's keenest intelligences. The Napoleon volume, for instance, thus contains the essential creed of the man who towered above his time like a Colossus. That of Madame de Sevigne, again, holds the attar of an intellect that dazzled the most brilliant court of France. In the La Rochefoucauld is the essence of the worldly wisdom of one of the cleverest judges of men and things. ...
— Law and Laughter • George Alexander Morton

... mortification, and no alternative can have the force of direct law. But in former ages nothing was ever heard of the practice, it being peculiar to a later and more corrupt era. "A woman's burning herself from the desire of connubial bliss ought to be rejected with abhorrence," wrote this colossus of pundits. Yet before he was believed, or the higher law was enforced, as it has ever since been even in our tributary States, mothers had burned with sons, and forty wives, many of them sisters, at a time, with polygamous husbands. Lepers and the widows of the devotee ...
— The Life of William Carey • George Smith

... Monckton Milnes's speech; and on since reading the latter, I do not see how I could have answered it better. My speech certainly was better cheered than any other; especially one passage, where I made a colossus of Mr. Browne, at which the audience grew so tumultuous in their applause that they drowned my figure of speech before it was half out ...
— Passages From the English Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... myself have rendered defenseless by breaking her shell is nothing for a warrior to boast about; but we shall soon see the Carabus display his daring. I offer a Pine-chafer, in the pink of strength, to the Golden Beetle, whose appetite has been whetted by a few days' fasting. The victim is a colossus beside the Golden Carabus; an ...
— The Glow-Worm and Other Beetles • Jean Henri Fabre

... a colossal statue of Liberty, which shall at once serve as a lighthouse and as a symbolic work of art, may be discussed from several different points of view. The abstract idea, as it occurred to the sculptor, Mr. Bartholdi, was noble. The colossus was to symbolize the historic friendship of the two great republics, the United States and France; it was to further symbolize the idea of freedom and fraternity which underlies the republican form of government. ...
— The Bay State Monthly - Volume 2, Issue 3, December, 1884 • Various

... German music, I asked him 'which was his favorite among the great masters?' Of Beethoven he said: 'I take him twice a week, Haydn four times, and Mozart every day. You will tell me that Beethoven is a Colossus who often gives you a dig in the ribs, while Mozart is always adorable; it is that the latter had the chance of going very young to Italy, at a time when they still sang well.' Of Weber he says, 'He has talent enough, and to spare' (Il a du talent ...
— Great Italian and French Composers • George T. Ferris

... at the slippery roof. I dreamed that the ghost of Benton, in contemplation bestrode the summit of the Rocky Mountains; that 'Young America,' like a Colossus with monster limbs stretched across a world, was endeavouring to wake from their stupor the nations. With a voice like unto lazy thunder murmuring in the distance was he proclaiming his hatred of kings, into whose dominions he threatened to march great armies, and whom he described as curses ...
— The Adventures of My Cousin Smooth • Timothy Templeton

... suppose, easily the longest—he said, "it takes me nearly as long to publish a book as to write one"; and he was at work on Les Miserables, off and on, for nearly fifteen years. Of his writing Notre Dame (that other colossus of fiction) this quaint picture has been preserved. He had made vast historical preparations for it, but ever there seemed still more to make, till at length his publisher grew impatient, and under his pressure Hugo at last made a ...
— Vanishing Roads and Other Essays • Richard Le Gallienne

... prototype of the young working Englishman. You are, I should judge, thorough, dogmatic, narrow, persistent, industrious, and bound to be successful according to the scope and nature of your ambitions. In this country you will never develop. In my country, sir, we should make a colossus of you. We should teach you not to be content with small things; we should raise your hand which you yourself kept to your side, and we should point your finger to the skies. Waiter," he added, turning abruptly ...
— The Tempting of Tavernake • E. Phillips Oppenheim

... is situated on the island of that name, which lies some twelve miles from the coast of Asia Minor. It was founded four hundred years before the birth of Christ, and, among other things, was noted for its Colossus—pictured in our heading—which was reckoned to be one of the Seven Wonders of the ancient world. The Colossus was a gigantic statue in brass of Helios, or the Sun, and stood at the entrance of one of the ports. It was 105 feet high. According to one belief—which, however, is now abandoned—the ...
— Little Folks (July 1884) - A Magazine for the Young • Various

... Donegal, Captain MALCOLM, left the Fleet for Gibraltar. On the 19th his Majesty's ships the Colossus, Mars, Defence, and Agamemnon, formed the cordon of communication with the frigates in shore: the Fleet was lying to. About half past nine in the morning, the Mars, being one of the ships nearest to the Fleet, repeated the signal from the ships further in shore, that "the Enemy were coming out of ...
— The Death of Lord Nelson • William Beatty

... the narrow world, Like a Colossus, and we petty men Walk under his huge legs, and peep about To find ourselves ...
— Familiar Quotations • Various

... of the Samnites are so utterly destroyed by the Romans that their sites are unknown; a portion of the spoil is cast into a brazen colossus, and placed in front of ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 2 • Various

... reporter. "How did you contrive to force your way through the seething mass in Printing House Square, and pass the closely-guarded portals of the world's chief and largest newspaper office; and by what means did you persuade the Colossus of publishing to tell you anything about it?" we asked. We regret that we cannot give his reply; only the incomparable genius of the painter of ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, March 18, 1914 • Various

... Bartholdi statue and its pedestal cost one million dollars; that the statue was presented by the French people to the people of the United States. The head of Liberty is higher than the tall steeple of Trinity Church, which is 300 feet high, or twice that of the Colossus of Rhodes, one ...
— The Harris-Ingram Experiment • Charles E. Bolton

... was, I met the two one evening at the Provises', and with exuberant congratulation. Then straddling as a young Colossus on the hearth-rug, and with an admonitory forefinger, I proclaimed to the universe at large that Mrs. Risby had blighted my existence and beseeched for Warwick some immediate and fatal and particularly excruciating malady. In fine, I was abjectly miserable the while ...
— The Cords of Vanity • James Branch Cabell et al

... clouds aforesaid, lying prone upon the earth in the verge of the distant horizon, like the burnished shield of a giant, mine eyes behold a lake, which is described and set forth in maps as the Sink of Carson; nearer, in the great plain, I see the Desert, spread abroad like the mantle of a Colossus, glowing by turns, with the warm light of the sun, hereinbefore mentioned, or darkly shaded by the messenger clouds aforesaid; flowing at right angles with said Desert, and adjacent thereto, I see the silver and sinuous thread of the river, commonly called Carson, which winds its tortuous course ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume X (of X) • Various

... execution, more flowing in their outline, more easy to read. Dr. Johnson, though perhaps no very excellent authority on the more intangible graces of literature, was disposed to deny to Milton the capacity of creating the lighter literature: "Milton, madam, was a genius that could cut a colossus from a rock, but could not carve heads upon cherry-stones." And it would not be surprising if this generation, which has access to the almost infinite quantity of lighter compositions which have been produced since Johnson's time, were to echo his sentence. In some degree, perhaps, ...
— Harvard Classics Volume 28 - Essays English and American • Various

... the army on one side, with his person secure, enjoying the right of initiative and the right of veto, this officer of the "commonwealth" became indeed the Colossus who bestrode the Roman world. He was invariably made also the Pontifex Maximus, or chief guardian of the religious interests of Rome. He might in addition receive other constitutional appointments—for example, that of supervisor or corrector of morals—whenever ...
— Life in the Roman World of Nero and St. Paul • T. G. Tucker

... Favre presented a great contrast. Bismarck was then fifty-five years of age; Jules Favre was six years older. Bismarck wore the uniform of a colonel of White Cuirassiers,—a white coat, a white cap, and yellow trimmings. He seemed like a colossus, with his square shoulders and his mighty strength. Jules Favre, on the contrary, was tall and thin, bowed down by a sense of his position, wearing a black frock-coat that had become too wide for him, with his white ...
— France in the Nineteenth Century • Elizabeth Latimer

... insistence upon the resources of his dress-suit. In my memory those black legs of his, in a particularly thin and shiny black cloth—for evidently his dress-suit dated from adolescent and slenderer days—straddle like the Colossus of Rhodes over my approach to my mother's funeral. Moreover, I was inconvenienced and distracted by a silk hat he had bought me, my first silk hat, much ennobled, as his was also, by a deep ...
— Tono Bungay • H. G. Wells

... "What a colossus he is," thought Donald, as he gritted his teeth to keep back the involuntary exclamation of pain, for, although the massive shoulders and Jovian head of the mountaineer were stooped forward, he towered fully three inches above the six foot city athlete, ...
— 'Smiles' - A Rose of the Cumberlands • Eliot H. Robinson

... women, and children. The great mass of rock broke through the protecting barricade and rushed right upon the engine. The huge, steam-vomiting leviathan was crushed in an instant, and the copper and steel fragments scattered everywhere. Three of the wheels were shattered, and with that the iron colossus came to a dead stop, the suddenness of which threw the carriages crashing on top of each other. This fearful havoc was not all. Through the breach which the great rock had made in the barricade, an incessant avalanche of stones, from the size of a cannon-ball to that ...
— Dr. Dumany's Wife • Mr Jkai

... VICTOR HUGO in a few pages is to carve a colossus on a cherry-stone. His work dominates half a century. In the years of exile he began a new and greater career. During the closing ten years his powers had waned, but still they were extraordinary. Even with death he did not retire; posthumous publications astonished ...
— A History of French Literature - Short Histories of the Literatures of the World: II. • Edward Dowden

... six feet in stature ... and he was built as if it had been a colossus, destined to sustain the weight of the starry heavens. His voice was like thunder ... his head and chin were clothed with a thick and shaggy hair, in colour a dead-black. He had suffered considerable mutilation in the services through which he had passed ... ...
— The Tale of Terror • Edith Birkhead

... the subject of our work, it seems desirable to make some mention of it here, at least so far as relates to those terrible convulsions whose destructiveness has given them special prominence in the history of great disasters. Ancient notable examples are those which threw down the famous Colossus of Rhodes and the Pharos of Alexandria. The city of Antioch was a terrible sufferer from this affliction, it having been devastated some time before the Christian era, while in the year 859 more than 15,000 of its houses were destroyed. ...
— The San Francisco Calamity • Various

... been right and Conscience's wrong. That he still believed. So the spirit of the French Revolution had been perhaps a forward-moving colossus of humanity: a triumph of right over aristocratic decadence. And yet the picture of a slender queen going to the guillotine in a cart, with her chin held high under the jeers of the rabble, made the big thing seem small, and her ...
— The Tyranny of Weakness • Charles Neville Buck

... positions. From time to time a river would appear amid the verdure of tamarisks to lose itself at the turning of the hills. Sometimes a huge rock would tower aloft like the prow of a vessel or the pedestal of some vanished colossus. ...
— Salammbo • Gustave Flaubert

... her bed. It was a mountainous, whale-backed, feather-bedded four-poster, built in the days of San Domingo mahogany, and quite capable of supporting the weight of a baby elephant without a quiver. Equipped with the legs of a colossus it had a frame to match. Tradition had it that a governor of the state had once lain in it. If there was one thing sure, therefore, it was that the bed would not collapse. But then again the Minnie Williams was a lady not to be denied. She must come ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1919 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various

... uneasily at each other for several minutes. The Magnus was breathing heavily, as though he had passed through a terrible mental ordeal. Cato, the Stoic and ascetic, had his eyes riveted on the carpet, and his face was as stony as an Egyptian Colossus. ...
— A Friend of Caesar - A Tale of the Fall of the Roman Republic. Time, 50-47 B.C. • William Stearns Davis

... endowed our language with such a world of creations from the pen of Scott, betrayed him also into inventiveness per force of brick and mortar—just as the same bent of genius which created the Castle of Otranto, created also that other colossus of lath and plaster, Strawberry Hill—the author of the Scotch novels was fain to sacrifice to the evil genius of the times; and behold! as the assiduous slave of the circulating libraries, he extinguished one of the greatest spirits of Great Britain. But for the hateful ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 55, No. 343, May 1844 • Various

... of debate or in the shadow of the legislative halls, others out in the country at Groote Schuur, the Prime Minister's residence, where we walked amid the gardens that Cecil Rhodes loved, or sat in the rooms where the Colossus "thought in terms of continents." It was ...
— An African Adventure • Isaac F. Marcosson

... Mosaic system into a mischievous idolatry of forms." (p. 10.) "In short, the Jewish nation had lost very much when John the Baptist came." (p. 11.) The hopelessly corrupt moral state of the youthful Colossus, described with such sickening force and power by the great Apostle in the first chapter of the Epistle to the Romans, cannot have occurred to Dr. Temple's remembrance, for he says nothing about it. Certain withering denunciations of "a wicked and adulterous generation[24];"—of ...
— Inspiration and Interpretation - Seven Sermons Preached Before the University of Oxford • John Burgon

... twelfth to the last. Ordinarily in front of the temple a great gate-way is erected, with inclined faces—the pylone. On either side of the entrance is an obelisk, a needle of rock with gilded point, or perhaps a colossus in stone representing a sitting giant. Often the approach to the temple is by a long ...
— History Of Ancient Civilization • Charles Seignobos

... body is that of a man, a sort of colossus. He lay upon his back so as to die bravely; his arms and his limbs are straight and rigid. His clothing is very clearly defined, the greaves visible and fitting closely; his sandals laced at the feet, and one of them pierced by the toe, the nails in the soles distinct; ...
— The Wonders of Pompeii • Marc Monnier

... Titans at that, some lying prone upon the prairie, others in the act of walking. The limbs clearly defined, the body vast and well moulded, like a huge colossus. One near Baraboo, Sauk County, Wisconsin, discovered by Mr. William H. Canfield, and reported to the Philosophical Society by Mr. Lapham, of Milwaukee, was visited also by us. It is two hundred and ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 5, May, 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various

... if this is too much to say of all, yet hazarded by good authors. Thus Holland wrote 'cirque', but we 'circus'; 'cense', but we 'census'; 'interreign', but we 'interregnum'; Sylvester 'cest', but we 'cestus'; 'quirry', but we 'equerry'; 'colosse', but we still 'colossus'; Golding 'ure', but we 'urus'; 'metropole', but we 'metropolis'; Dampier 'volcan', but this has not superseded 'volcano'; nor 'pagod' (Pope) 'pagoda'; nor 'skelet' (Holland) 'skeleton'; nor 'stimule' (Stubbs) 'stimulus'. Bolingbroke ...
— English Past and Present • Richard Chenevix Trench

... to meet this colossus of war that our little soldier marched forth. And he made it ...
— New York Times, Current History, Vol 1, Issue 1 - From the Beginning to March, 1915 With Index • Various

... the old duke moved; how slim his form; and how lofty and imposing his bearing! The king was younger than the duke; and yet he was fettered to his truckle-chair; yet he sat on his throne like an immovable colossus, while he moved freely and lightly, and obeyed his own will, not necessity. Henry could have crushed him—this proud, arrogant earl, who was a free man, whilst his king was nothing but a prisoner to his own flesh, a slave of ...
— Henry VIII And His Court • Louise Muhlbach

... no longer egg-shaped, but rolled up into himself like a ball, so to speak, and utterly quiescent. (I wonder if she remembered the little wood-lice that she had so often amused herself playing with in idle hours. They rolled themselves up just like that. Perhaps she thought she'd come upon the Colossus of all the wood-lice.) Anyway, after she had spat off at him all the vile remarks she could think of for the moment, without producing any more reply than she would get from the average stone, she came back, drawn ...
— The Way of the Wild • F. St. Mars

... South Africa. Having nothing better to do, I joined them, and won. I lectured them on incautious play, and they said something in South-African, which the street Arabs here speak to perfection, and which, I fancy, was both flattering and apologetic. Called on CECIL, the Colossus of Rhodes, but he was absent at the time. Fine place, the Cape. "Why," I asked myself, "do our people go to Ramsgate, Southend, Herne Bay, and even Scarborough, when there is such a splendid seaside place as this to come to?" But no; because ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 101. July 4, 1891 • Various

... expression of the peasantry) a "monsieur," had just completed his legal studies and was about to take his degree as licentiate, preparatory to being called to the Bar. Monsieur and Madame Minoret-Levrault—for behind our colossus every one will perceive a woman without whom this signal good-fortune would have been impossible—left their son free to choose his own career; he might be a notary in Paris, king's-attorney in some district, collector of customs no matter where, ...
— Ursula • Honore de Balzac

... this outburst, so no less was Mme. du Croisier. To her this was a terrible revelation of her husband's character, a new light not merely on the past but on the future as well. Any capitulation on the part of the colossus was apparently out of the question; but Chesnel in no ...
— The Collection of Antiquities • Honore de Balzac

... few firm steps in a quiet part of the Champs Elysees, with his footman carrying a second overcoat and looking doubly tall behind him. In whatever attitude Daumier depicts him, planted as a tiny boxing-master at the feet of the virtuous colossus in a blouse (whose legs are apart, like those-of the Rhodian), in whom the artist represents the People, to watch the match that is about to come off between Ratapoil and M. Berryer, or even in the act of lifting ...
— Picture and Text - 1893 • Henry James

... scene was a bit too gruesome to be humorous. As a rule I can see the funny side of Hawkins' doings; but the fun departed from this particular mess at the thought of what would happen when the colossus finally emerged from the bag and commenced operations upon Hawkins and ...
— Mr. Hawkins' Humorous Adventures • Edgar Franklin

... flowers, of one of the many little tea-houses improvised in this courtyard. We are on a terrace at the top of the great steps, up which the crowd continues to flock; we are at the foot of a portico which stands up erect with the rigid massiveness of a colossus against the dark night sky; at the foot also of a monster, who stares down upon us, with his big stony eyes, his cruel ...
— Madame Chrysantheme • Pierre Loti

... Tomb of Cyrus the Great. Darius with his Attendants. Rock Sepulchers of the Persian Kings. A Royal Name in Hieroglyphics (Rosetta Stone). An Egyptian Court Scene. Plowing and Sowing in Ancient Egypt. Transport of an Assyrian Colossus. Egyptian weighing Cow Gold. Babylonian Contract Tablet. An Egyptian Scarab. Amenhotep IV. Mummy and Cover of Coffin (U.S. National Museum, Washington). The Judgment of the Dead. The Deluge Tablet (British Museum, ...
— EARLY EUROPEAN HISTORY • HUTTON WEBSTER

... circumference nowhere. And in addition he took up a small patch of one hundred thousand acres between the bay and the Barwon, including the insignificant site of Geelong, a place of small account even to this day. Batman was a long-limbed Sydney native, and he bestrode his real estate like a Colossus, but King William was a bigger Colossus than Batman—he claimed both the land and the blacks, and ignored ...
— The Book of the Bush • George Dunderdale

... noble trees. The bramble lives, the fungus vegetates. Moreover, however great the cedar and the palm may be, it is not with the sap one sucks from them that one can become great one's self. A giant's parasite will be at best a dwarf. The oak, colossus that it is, can produce and sustain nothing ...
— Prefaces and Prologues to Famous Books - with Introductions, Notes and Illustrations • Charles W. Eliot

... in these mountains more than eight months with two workmen and his horse, and without any other salary except his food. One day whilst he was there he saw a crag that overlooked the sea, which made him wish to carve a colossus that would be a landmark for sailors from a long way off, incited thereto principally by the suitable shape of the rock from which it could have been conveniently carved, and by emulation of the ancients, who, perhaps with the same object as Michael Angelo not to be idle, or for some other ...
— Michael Angelo Buonarroti • Charles Holroyd



Words linked to "Colossus" :   colossal, personage, behemoth, Colossus of Rhodes, monster, anomaly, titan



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