Hoyt & Roberts, comps. Hoyt’s New Cyclopedia of Practical Quotations. 1922.
Gods (The)
Great is Diana of the Ephesians.
Acts. XIX. 28.
The Ethiop gods have Ethiop lips,
Bronze cheeks, and woolly hair;
The Grecian gods are like the Greeks,
As keen-eyed, cold and fair.
Walter Bagehot—Literary Studies. II. 410. Ignorance of Man.
Speak of the gods as they are.
Bias.
And that dismal cry rose slowly
And sank slowly through the air,
Full of spirit’s melancholy
And eternity’s despair!
And they heard the words it said—
Pan is dead! great Pan is dead!
Pan, Pan is dead!
E. B. Browning—The Dead Pan.
The Graces, three erewhile, are three no more;
A fourth is come with perfume sprinkled o’er.
’Tis Berenice blest and fair; were she
Away the Graces would no Graces be.
Callimachus—Epigram. V. Goldwin Smith’s rendering.
Two goddesses now must Cyprus adore;
The Muses are ten, and the Graces are four;
Stella’s wit is so charming, so sweet her fair face,
She shines a new Venus, a Muse, and a Grace.
Callimachus—Epigram. V. Swift’s rendering. See Meleager of Gadara, in Anthologia Græca. IX. 16. Vol. II. P. 62. (Ed. 1672).
Omnia fanda, nefanda, malo permista furore,
Justificam nobis mentem avertere deorum.
The confounding of all right and wrong, in wild fury, has averted from us the gracious favor of the gods.
Catullus—Carmina. LXIV. 406.
O dii immortales! ubinam gentium sumus?
Ye immortal gods! where in the world are we?
Cicero—In Catilinam. I. 4.
Never, believe me,
Appear the Immortals,
Never alone.
Coleridge—The Visits of the Gods. Imitated from Schiller.
Nature’s self’s thy Ganymede.
Cowley—Anacreontics. The Grasshopper. L. 8.
With ravish’d ears
The monarch hears,
Assumes the god,
Affects to nod,
And seems to shake the spheres.
Dryden—Alexander’s Feast. L. 37.
Creator Venus, genial power of love,
The bliss of men below, and gods above!
Beneath the sliding sun thou runn’st thy race,
Dost fairest shine, and best become thy place;
For thee the winds their eastern blasts forbear,
Thy mouth reveals the spring, and opens all the year;
Thee, goddess, thee, the storms of winter fly,
Earth smiles with flowers renewing, laughs the sky.
Dryden—Palamon and Arcite. Bk. III. L. 1405.
Cupid is a casuist, a mystic, and a cabalist,—
Can your lurking thought surprise,
And interpret your device,
*****
All things wait for and divine him,—
How shall I dare to malign him?
Emerson—Initial Dæmonic and Celestial Love. Pt. I.
Either Zeus came to earth to shew his form to thee,
Phidias, or thou to heaven hast gone the god to see.
In Greek Anthology.
I, Phœbus, song those songs that gained so much renown
I, Phœbus, sang them; Homer only wrote them down.
In Greek Anthology.
Say, Bacchus, why so placid? What can there be
In commune held by Pallas and by thee?
Her pleasure is in darts and battles; thine
In joyous feasts and draughts of rosy wine.
In Greek Anthology.
Some thoughtlessly proclaim the Muses nine:
A tenth is Sappho, maid divine.
In Greek Anthology.
Though men determine, the gods do dispose.
Greene—Perimedes. (1588).
There’s a one-eyed yellow idol to the north of Khatmandu,
There’s a little marble cross below the town,
There’s a broken-hearted woman tends the grave of Mad Carew,
And the yellow god forever gazes down.
J. Milton Hayes—The Green Eye of the Yellow God.
The heathen in his blindness
Bows down to wood and stone.
Reginald Heber—Missionary Hymn.
Who hearkens to the gods, the gods give ear.
Homer—Iliad. Bk. I. L. 280. Bryant’s trans.
The son of Saturn gave
The nod with his dark brows. The ambrosial curls
Upon the Sovereign One’s immortal head
Were shaken, and with them the mighty mount,
Olympus trembled.
Homer—Iliad. Bk. I. L. 666. Bryant’s trans.
Shakes his ambrosial curls, and gives the nod,
The stamp of fate, and sanction of the god.
Homer—Iliad. Bk. I. L. 684. Pope’s trans.
The ox-eyed awful Juno.
Homer—Iliad. Bk. III. L. 144, also Bk. VII. L. 10; Bk. XVIII. L. 40.
Yet verily these issues lie on the lap of the gods.
Homer—Iliad. Bk. XVII. 514. Odyssey. I. 267. Butcher and Lang’s trans. That lies in the laps of the gods. (Nearest to the original, which is “in” not “on.”) Other translations are: “But these things in the God’s Knees are repos’d. / And yet the period of these designes, lye in the Knees of Gods. / It lies in the lap of the Norns. [Fates.]” From the Scandinavian.
Where’er he moves, the goddess shone before.
Homer—Iliad. Bk. XX. L. 127. Pope’s trans.
The matchless Ganymede, divinely fair.
Homer—Iliad. Bk. XX. L. 278. Pope’s trans.
Jove weighs affairs of earth in dubious scales,
And the good suffers while the bad prevails.
Homer—Odyssey. Bk. VI. L. 229. Pope’s trans.
Nec deus intersit nisi dignus vindice nodus.
Nor let a god come in, unless the difficulty be worthy of such an intervention.
Horace—Ars Poetica. CXCI.
Junctæque Nymphis Gratiæ decentes.
And joined with the Nymphs the lovely Graces.
Horace—Carmina. I. 4. 6.
Di me tuentur.
The gods my protectors.
Horace—Carmina. I. 17. 13.
Neque semper arcum
Tendit Apollo.
Nor does Apollo keep his bow continually drawn.
Horace—Carmina. II. 10.
Quanto quisque sibi plura negaverit,
A dis plura feret.
The more we deny ourselves, the more the gods supply our wants.
Horace—Carmina. III. 16. 21.
Scire, deos quoniam propius contingis, oportet.
Thou oughtest to know, since thou livest near the gods.
Horace—Satires. XXI. 6. 52.
Of Pan we sing, the best of leaders Pan,
That leads the Naiads and the Dryads forth;
And to their dances more than Hermes can,
Hear, O you groves, and hills resound his worth.
Ben Jonson—Pan’s Anniversary Hymn. I.
Nam pro jucundis aptissima quæque dabunt di,
Carior est illis homo quam sibi.
For the gods, instead of what is most pleasing, will give what is most proper. Man is dearer to them than he is to himself.
Juvenal—Satires. X. 349.
To that large utterance of the early gods!
Keats—Hyperion. Bk. I.
High in the home of the summers, the seats of the happy immortals,
Shrouded in knee-deep blaze, unapproachable; there ever youthful
Hebé, Harmonié, and the daughter of Jove, Aphrodité,
Whirled in the white-linked dance, with the gold-crowned Hours and Graces.
Charles Kingsley—Andromeda.
Le trident de Neptune est le sceptre du monde.
The trident of Neptune is the sceptre of the world.
Lemierre.