"Acheron" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... scanty leisure of the illustrious warrior was employed in producing odes and epistles, a little better than Cibber's, and a little worse than Hayley's. Here and there a manly sentiment which deserves to be in prose makes its appearance in company with Prometheus and Orpheus, Elysium and Acheron, the plaintive Philomel, the poppies of Morpheus, and all the other frippery which, like a robe tossed by a proud beauty to her waiting-woman, has long been contemptuously abandoned by genius to mediocrity. ...
— Critical and Historical Essays, Volume III (of 3) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... it is, comrade! 'Tis me, messmate, old Resolution, friend, come to loose thy bilboes, for fair is fair. Ha, 'tis plaguey dark, the pit o' Acheron ain't blacker, where d'ye lay—speak soft for there's ...
— Martin Conisby's Vengeance • Jeffery Farnol
... Anubis, "the usher of souls;" Aacus, Minos, and Rhadamanthos, with the three assistant gods who help in weighing the soul and present the result to Osiris; Tartarus, to the ditch Tartar; Charon's ghost boat over the Styx, to the barge conveying the mummy to the tomb; Cerberus, to Oms; Acheron, to Acherusia; the Elysian Fields, to Elisout.12 Kenrick thinks the Greeks may have developed these views for themselves, without indebtedness to Egypt. But the notions were in existence among the ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger
... dread evils which spread terror far and wide, and which Heaven, in its anger, ordains for the punishment of wickedness upon earth—a plague in fact; and so dire a one as to make rich in one day that grim ferryman who takes a coin from all who cross the river Acheron to the land of the dead—such a plague was once waging war against the animals. All were attacked, although all did not die. So hopeless was the case that not one of them attempted to sustain their sinking lives. Even the sight of food did not rouse them. ...
— The Original Fables of La Fontaine - Rendered into English Prose by Fredk. Colin Tilney • Jean de la Fontaine
... greatly rejoiced at receiving this answer. Acheron was a stream of Epirus, and Pandosia was a town upon the banks of it. He understood the response to mean that he was fated to die quietly in his own country at some future period, probably a remote one, and that there was no danger in his undertaking the expedition to which ...
— Pyrrhus - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... lovers parled by the touch of hands: True love is mute, and oft amazed stands. Thus while dumb signs their yielding hearts entangled, The air with sparks of living fire was spangled; And Night, deep-drench'd in misty Acheron, Heav'd up her head, and half the world upon Breath'd darkness forth (dark night is Cupid's day): And now begins Leander to display Love's holy fire, with words, with sighs, and tears; Which, like sweet music, enter'd ...
— Hero and Leander and Other Poems • Christopher Marlowe and George Chapman
... some distance, breaks in like a DEUS EX MACHINA, swift as the storm-wind, upon this Russian Horse-torrent; drives it again before him like a mere torrent of chaff, back, ever back, to the shore of Acheron and the Stygian quagmires (of the Mutzel, namely); so that it did not return again; and the Prussian infantry had free field for their platoon exercise. Their rage against the Russians was extreme; and that ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XVIII. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—Seven-Years War Rises to a Height.—1757-1759. • Thomas Carlyle
... presently, brave in the shirt of Nessus, and mimicked in every action by that incongruous shadow, Prince Jurgen was playing tag with the three little Eumenides, the daughters of Anaitis by her former marriage with Acheron, the King ...
— Jurgen - A Comedy of Justice • James Branch Cabell
... of the earth and return again, in their course forming lakes and rivers, but never descending below the centre of the earth; for on either side the rivers flowing either way are stopped by a precipice. These rivers are many and mighty, and there are four principal ones, Oceanus, Acheron, Pyriphlegethon, and Cocytus. Oceanus is the river which encircles the earth; Acheron takes an opposite direction, and after flowing under the earth through desert places, at last reaches the Acherusian lake,—this ...
— Phaedo - The Last Hours Of Socrates • Plato
... you eternall counsell, or else I feare the nere-erturned dead Clad in the fearefull shapes of night and hell, will rife before the general day be spred; and hurrie me in flesh to Acheron, To taste hels torture both in soule and bone: Then blast me thunderer in righteous ire, and I like Semele ...
— Seven Minor Epics of the English Renaissance (1596-1624) • Dunstan Gale
... of the State; for whatsoever Kypselos had left undone in killing and driving into exile, this Periander completed. And in one day he stripped all the wives of the Corinthians of their clothing on account of his own wife Melissa. For when he had sent messengers to the Thesprotians on the river Acheron to ask the Oracle of the dead about a deposit made with him by a guest-friend, Melissa appeared and said she would not tell in what place the deposit was laid, for she was cold and had no clothes, since those which he had buried with her were of no use to her, ...
— The History Of Herodotus - Volume 2 (of 2) • Herodotus
... way they lead the clueless wanderer To fields suburban, and the towers of men, I would confront the strangest things that haunt In horrid shades of brooding desolation: Griffin, or satyr, sphinx, or sybil ape, Or lop-eared demon from the dens of night, Let loose to caper out of Acheron. Ah me, my Theseus, wherefore art thou gone! Who left that crock of water at my side? Who stole my dog that loved no one but me? Why was the tent unstruck, I unawaked, I left, most loved, and last to be forgotten By much obtaining, much indebted Theseus? Left to sleep on, ...
— The International Monthly Magazine, Volume 5, No. 1, January, 1852 • Various
... as the grim, stern ruler over hell. He is also called Hades and Orcus. He has a throne of sulphur, from beneath which flows the Rivers Lethe, or "Oblivion," Phlegethon, Cocytus and Acheron. In one hand he holds his fork and in the other the keys of hell, and beside him is the dog with three heads. He is described as being well qualified for his position, being inexorable and deaf to supplications, and an object of aversion and hatred to both gods and men. From his realms there ...
— Museum of Antiquity - A Description of Ancient Life • L. W. Yaggy
... day like this Waits, as is seemly, and shall run By the white waves of Acheron To fold him ...
— Agamemnon • Aeschylus
... a few minutes only to stuff down coffee and coarse thick sandwiches at a coffee stall, and then made their way across the river, which under the grey and growing light looked as desolate as Acheron. They reached the bottom of the huge block of buildings which they had seen from across the river, and began in silence to mount the naked and numberless stone steps, only pausing now and then to make short remarks on the rail of the banisters. At ...
— The Man Who Was Thursday - A Nightmare • G. K. Chesterton
... realize what my life might have been, if Dr. Howe had failed in the great task God gave him to perform. If he had not taken upon himself the responsibility of Laura Bridgman's education and led her out of the pit of Acheron back to her human inheritance, should I be a sophomore at Radcliffe College to-day—who can say? But it is idle to speculate about what might have been in connection with Dr. Howe's ...
— Story of My Life • Helen Keller
... soul of man to its very depths, as Mrs. Ward very aptly quotes from Virgil on her title page—this was the purpose for which Helbeck of Bannisdale conceived he had been placed here by a beneficent God. And on the supposition that "Acheron" is a reality, Helbeck was absolutely right. If hell is indeed "open to Christians," and if the path to life be exceeding strait and narrow, our bounden duty, as men of common sense, would be to "go sell all we had and give to" orphanages, like ...
— Morality as a Religion - An exposition of some first principles • W. R. Washington Sullivan
... show that I do not grudge you your share of the carrion. Perhaps such honours will not prejudice you in a certain house on the Palatine," he added, slyly. "But come! you and I shall join our forces and raid together. We have sent two hundred to Acheron since we left the camp, and birds have been singing on our left ...
— The Lion's Brood • Duffield Osborne
... cavern, the entrance to which, framed as it is with the most luxuriant vegetation, is truly magnificent. From it issues a considerable river, and its dim recesses echo to the gloomy notes of birds. It is the Acheron of the Chayma Indians, for, according to their mythology and that of the natives of Orinoco, the souls of the dead go to this cavern. To go down into the Guacharo signifies in ...
— Celebrated Travels and Travellers - Part 2. The Great Navigators of the Eighteenth Century • Jules Verne
... Banks of Acheron, and found Charon scooping his wherry, who seeing me approach him, bid me sit down a little, for he had been hard worked lately, and could not go with a single passenger: I was willing enough to embrace the proposal, ...
— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753) - Vol. III • Theophilus Cibber
... conversations. Together they had fished in turbid waters for marital nibbles and had told mutual falsehoods to unbelieving tradesmen. And yet the younger woman, when tempted with a bribe worth lies and tricks as deep and as black as Acheron, now stood on her dignity and her purity and stamped her ...
— The American Senator • Anthony Trollope
... the spirits falling from the bank of Acheron "as dead leaves flutter from a bough,"[56] he gives the most perfect image possible of their utter lightness, feebleness, passiveness, and scattering agony of despair, without, however, for an instant losing his own clear perception that these are ...
— Selections From the Works of John Ruskin • John Ruskin
... twain might "become a song in the ears of all men unborn," even for their love's sake; and prayed, "Would, O Father Cronides, and would, ye ageless immortals, that this might be, and that when two generations have sped, one might bring these tidings to me by Acheron, the irremeable stream: the loving-kindness that was between thee and thy gracious friend is even now in all men's mouths, and chiefly on the lips of the young." Hill and fountain and pine, the gray sea and Mother Etna, are here; ...
— Heart of Man • George Edward Woodberry
... let's on. Against th' opposing will and arm of Heav'n 600 May never this just sword be lifted up, But for that damn'd magician, let him be girt With all the greisly legions that troop Under the sooty flag of Acheron, Harpyies and Hydra's, or all the monstrous forms 'Twixt Africa and Inde, Ile find him out, And force him to restore his purchase back, Or drag him by the curls, to a foul death, Curs'd as ...
— The Poetical Works of John Milton • John Milton
... ruffian, you! O, villain, villain, arrant vilest villain! Who seized our Cerberus by the throat, and fled, And ran, and rushed, and bolted, haling off The dog, my charge! But now I've got thee fast. So close the Styx's inky-hearted rock, The blood-bedabbled peak of Acheron Shall hem thee in: the hell-hounds of Cocytus Prowl round thee; whilst the hundred-headed Asp Shall rive thy heart-strings: the Tartesian Lamprey, Prey on thy lungs: and those Tithrasian Gorgons Mangle and tear thy kidneys, mauling them, Entrails ...
— The Frogs • Aristophanes
... island of Corcyra (Corfu), famous for the shipwreck of Ulysses, and for the gardens of Aleinous, and for having given rise to the Peloponnesian war. Epirus is also distinguished as the country over which Pyrrhus ruled. The Acheron, supposed to communicate with the infernal regions, was one ...
— Ancient States and Empires • John Lord
... entered while the soldier's shadow was interposed between her and the lamp, it had fully occupied her quick imagination, when, with deep reverence and great surprise at her sudden appearance on the ladder of Acheron, the Varangian advancing, knelt down, and lent his arm to the assistance of the fair lady, in order to help her out ...
— Waverley Volume XII • Sir Walter Scott
... heights, And like a strange new sacrilege the advance Of prows that ploughed that time-forgotten tide. But soon rude flaws, cross currents, tortuous channels Bewildered them, and many a league they drove As down some vaster Acheron, while the coasts With wailing voices cursed them all night long, And once again the hideous fires leapt red By many a grim wrenched crag and gaunt ravine. So for a hundred leagues of whirling spume They groped, till suddenly, far away, they saw Full of the sunset, like a cup of gold, The purple ...
— Collected Poems - Volume One (of 2) • Alfred Noyes |
