Thomas Bulfinch > Quotes

“Your arrows may strike all things else, Apollo, but mine shall strike you.”
― Thomas Bulfinch, Bulfinch's Mythology

“Alas! For shame," said Sir Launcelot, "that ever one knight should betray another! But it is an old saw, a good man is never in danger, but when he is in danger of a coward.”
― Thomas Bulfinch

“So near the track of the stars are we,
That oft, on night's pale beams,
The distant sounds of their harmony
Come to our ears, like dreams.

The Moon, too, brings her world so nigh,
That when the night-seer looks
To that shadowless orb, in a vernal sky,
He can number its hills and brooks.

To the Sun god all our hearts and lyres,
By day, by night, belong;
And the breath we draw from his living fires
We give him back in song,”
― Thomas Bulfinch, Bulfinch's Mythology

“I come from a land in the sun-bright deep,         Where golden gardens glow,      Where the winds of the north, becalmed in sleep,         Their conch shells never blow.”
― Thomas Bulfinch, Bulfinch’s Mythology

“He saw her eyes bright as stars; he saw her lips, and was not satisfied with only seeing them.”
― Bulfinch, Thomas

“and since here we have passed our lives in love and concord, we wish that one and the same hour may take us both from life, that I may not live to see her grave, nor be laid in my own by her.”
― Thomas Bulfinch, Bulfinch's Mythology

“There is another deity who is described as the calumniator of the gods and the contriver of all fraud and mischief. His name is Loki. He is handsome and well made, but of a very fickle mood and most evil disposition. He is of the giant race, but forced himself into the company of the gods, and seems to take pleasure in bringing them into difficulties, and in extricating them out of the danger by his cunning, wit, and skill.”
― Thomas Bulfinch, The Age of Fable

“Then he struck her with a magic wand, and she was changed back into a young woman, the fairest ever seen.”
― Thomas Bulfinch, Bulfinch's Mythology: All Volumes

“The reader will, we apprehend, by this time have had enough of absurdities.”
― Thomas Bulfinch, The Age of Fable: Or, Beauties of Mythology

“...but the beauty of the youngest was so wonderful that the poverty of language is unable to express its due praise.”
― Thomas Bulfinch

“a ship without ballast is tossed hither and thither on the sea, so the chariot, without its accustomed weight, was dashed about as if empty. They”
― Thomas Bulfinch, Bulfinch's Mythology

“the boundless plain of the universe lies open before them. They dart forward and cleave the opposing clouds, and outrun the morning breezes which started from the same eastern goal.”
― Thomas Bulfinch, Bulfinch's Mythology

“Never did man make worse use of his wits than thou hast done.”
― Thomas Bulfinch, The Age of Chivalry

“he contended only for glory, and was contented to leave him the lady.”
― Thomas Bulfinch, Bulfinch's Mythology: All Volumes

“The Emperor was unreasonably partial to his eldest son; he would have been glad to have had the barons and peers demand Charlot for their only sovereign; but that prince was so infamous, for his falsehood and cruelty, that the council strenuously opposed the Emperor’s proposal of abdicating, and implored him to continue to hold a sceptre which he wielded with so much glory.”
― Thomas Bulfinch, Bulfinch's Mythology: All Volumes

“Brunello the dwarf, the subtlest thief in all Africa,”
― Thomas Bulfinch, Bulfinch's Mythology: All Volumes

“If no other knowledge deserves to be called useful but that which helps to enlarge our possessions or to raise our station in society, then Mythology has no claim to the appellation. But if that which tends to make us happier and better can be called useful, then we claim that epithet for our subject. For Mythology is the handmaid of literature; and literature is one of the best allies of virtue and promoters of happiness.”
― Thomas Bulfinch, The Age of Fable Volume 1

“...In the reign of Cecrops, the first king of Athens, the two deities contended for the possession of the city. The gods decreed that it should be awarded to that one who produced the gift most useful to mortals. Neptune gave the horse; Minerva produced the olive. The gods gave judgment that the olive was the more useful of the two, and awarded the city to the goddess.”
― Thomas Bulfinch, The Age of Fable: Or, Beauties of Mythology

“Our book is not for the learned, nor for the theologian, nor for the philosopher, but for the reader of English literature, of either sex, who wishes to comprehend the allusions so frequently made by public speakers, lecturers, essayists, and poets, and those which occur in polite conversation.

We trust our young readers will find it a source of entertainment; those more advanced, a useful companion in their reading; those who travel, and visit museums and galleries of art, an interpreter of paintings and sculptures; those who mingle in cultivated society, a key to allusions which are occasionally made; and last of all, those in advanced life, pleasure in retracing a path of literature which leads them back to the days of their childhood and revives at every step the associations of the morning of life.”
― Thomas Bulfinch, The Age of Fable Volume 1

“CALLISTO”
― Thomas Bulfinch, The Age of Fable

“You may make as many fair speeches as you choose, but you lie.”
― Thomas Bulfinch, Bulfinch's Mythology: All Volumes

“Shall we be told that answers to such queries may be found in notes, or by a reference to the Classical Dictionary? We reply, the interruption of one's reading by either process is so annoying that most readers prefer to let an allusion pass unapprehended rather than submit to it. Moreover, such sources give us only the dry facts without any of the charm of the original narrative; and what is a poetical myth when stripped of its poetry? The story of Ceyx and Halcyone, which fills a chapter in our book, occupies but eight lines in the best (Smith's) Classical Dictionary; and so of others.”
― Thomas Bulfinch, The Age of Fable Volume 1

“yield the lady, or prepare to maintain his right by arms.”
― Thomas Bulfinch, Bulfinch's Mythology: All Volumes

“libations of milk and wine.”
― Thomas Bulfinch, Bulfinch's Mythology: All Volumes

“Then, for the first time, the Great and Little Bear were scorched with heat, and would fain, if it were possible, have plunged into the water; and the Serpent which lies coiled up round the north pole, torpid and harmless, grew warm, and with warmth felt its rage revive.”
― Thomas Bulfinch, Bulfinch's Mythology

“The laws of war at that early day did not forbid a brave man to slay a sleeping foe,”
― Thomas Bulfinch, Bulfinch's Mythology: All Volumes

“Thus,” said she, “shall be treated the deceiver, the traitor, the faithless, the disgraced, and the beardless.”
― Thomas Bulfinch, Bulfinch's Mythology: All Volumes

“There was, however, one drawback to his happy lot: he was not permitted to live beyond a certain period, and if, when he had attained the age of twenty-five years, he still survived, the priests drowned him in the sacred cistern and then buried him in the temple of Serapis.”
― Thomas Bulfinch, Bulfinch's Mythology: All Volumes

“(wonderful to relate)”
― Thomas Bulfinch, Bulfinch's Mythology