"Thermopylae" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... gathering strength, marshalling forces, planting batteries, and today we stand in the thick of the fray. Shall we fail? Men and women of America, will you fail? Shall the cause go by default? When a great idea, that has been uplifted on the shoulders of generations, comes now to its Thermopylae, its glory-gate, and needs only stout hearts for its strong hands,—when the eyes of a great multitude are turned upon you, and the of dumb millions in the silent future rest you,—when the suffering and sorrowful, the lowly, whose immortal hunger for justice gnaws ...
— Gala-days • Gail Hamilton
... see that that service is attended to. And if there is a post likely to be left deserted on account of its hardships or its perils, let every one be sure, first of all, that that post is occupied. Let there be an emulation among all to do the drudgery of the service, and to man the Thermopylae of danger. Then you shall read in the vigor and nerve of the action ...
— Thoughts on Missions • Sheldon Dibble
... conquering to conquer. Alaric, leader of the Goths, invaded Greece at the head of a numerous army. Degenerate soldiers guarded the pass where three hundred Spartan heroes had once arrested the Persian hosts, and fled as Alaric approached. Even at Thermopylae no resistance was made. The country was laid waste with fire and sword. Athens purchased her preservation at an enormous ransom. Corinth, Argos, and Sparta yielded without a blow, but did not escape the doom of vanquished cities. Their palaces were burned, ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume IV • John Lord
... of the Muses to the chosen band after their return from the inroad into the Persian camp, on the night before the Battle of Thermopylae. ...
— Specimens with Memoirs of the Less-known British Poets, Complete • George Gilfillan
... exaggerated notion of the Greeks, if we attempt to apply a lofty manner and a magnificent culture to the Homeric period. They had a good deal of piratical boldness, and, after the formation of their small states, gave examples of spurts of courage such as that at Marathon and Thermopylae. Yet these evidences were rare exceptions rather than the rule, for even the Spartan, trained on a military basis, seldom evinced any great degree of bravery. Perhaps the gloomy forebodings of the future, characteristic of the Greeks, ...
— History of Human Society • Frank W. Blackmar
... eat and drink or e'er we die (The sunlight flushes on the sea). Three hundred soldiers feasted high An hour before Thermopylae; Leonidas pour'd out the wine, And shouted ere he drain'd the cup, "Ho! comrades, let us gaily dine— This night with Pluto we shall sup"; And if they leant upon a reed, And if their reed was slight and slim, There's something good in ...
— Poems • Adam Lindsay Gordon
... are before us," exclaimed the Spartans at Thermopylae. "And we are before them," was the cool reply of Leonidas. "Deliver your arms," came the message from Xerxes. "Come and take them," was the answer Leonidas sent back. A Persian soldier said: "You will not be able to see the sun for flying javelins and arrows." "Then we will fight in the shade," ...
— How to Succeed - or, Stepping-Stones to Fame and Fortune • Orison Swett Marden
... journey from his city, and this work still remains intact. He need not have done it; a hundred men, ambushed among the ledges at the top of the canon-walls, and well provided with loose rocks and Minie-rifles, could convert the defile into a new Thermopylae, without exposure to themselves. In an older and more superstitious age, the unassisted horrors of Nature herself would have repelled an invading host from the passage of this grizzly canon, as the profane might have been driven from the ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 13, No. 78, April, 1864 • Various
... after the defeat of Onomarchus, had marched toward the pass of Thermopylae, which, however, he found occupied by the Athenians, who had sent a force for the purpose of preventing his advance. Being baffled there, he directed his march into Thrace, and alarmed the Athenians for the safety of their ...
— The Olynthiacs and the Phillippics of Demosthenes • Demosthenes
... Greece—the paradise of genius and renown. The memorials of the country's greatness rose around him on his journey. As he quitted Beroea, he could see behind him the snowy peaks of Mount Olympus, where the deities of Greece had been supposed to dwell. Soon he was sailing past Thermopylae, where the immortal Three Hundred stood against the barbarian myriads; and, as his voyage neared its close, he saw before him the island of Salamis, where again the existence of Greece was saved from extinction by the ...
— The Life of St. Paul • James Stalker
... for another lustrum of duty and victory. How shall we do this great work? We cannot do it, my friends, by assailing our Republican brethren. God forbid that I should say one word to cast a shadow upon any name on the roll of our heroes. This coming fight is our Thermopylae. We are standing upon a narrow isthmus. If our Spartan hosts are united, we can withstand all the Persians that the Xerxes of Democracy can bring against us. Let us hold our ground this one year, for the stars in their courses fight for ...
— Hidden Treasures - Why Some Succeed While Others Fail • Harry A. Lewis
... so lissome and strong Fresh from the Master Praxiteles' hand? So you're of Spartan birth? Descended, perhaps, from one of the band — Deathless in story and song — Who combed their long hair at Thermopylae's pass? Ah, I forget the straits, alas! More tragic than theirs, more compassion-worth, That have doomed you to march in our "immigrant class" Where you're nothing ...
— The Little Book of Modern Verse • Jessie B. Rittenhouse
... with might unfurled The flag of Freedom over Chaos, And all its banded anarchs fled, Like vultures frighted from Imaus, 50 Before an earthquake's tread.— So from Time's tempestuous dawn Freedom's splendour burst and shone:— Thermopylae and Marathon Caught like mountains beacon-lighted, 55 The springing Fire.—The winged glory On Philippi half-alighted, Like an eagle on a promontory. Its unwearied wings could fan The quenchless ashes of Milan. 60 From age to age, from man to man, It lived; and lit from land ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Volume I • Percy Bysshe Shelley
... Pictures illustrative of classical scenes hung round the walls, done in the old-fashioned style of line engraving, and representing such subjects as Mutius Scaevola before Porsenna; Belisarius begging for an obolus; Aeneas carrying his father from Troy; Leonidas at Thermopylae; Coriolanus quitting Rome; Hamilcar making the boy Hannibal swear his oath of hate against Home; and others of ...
— The Lady of the Ice - A Novel • James De Mille
... Great King was free to devote his attention to the distant Greeks. Mustering the contingents of the different provinces of his empire, Xerxes led his vast army over the bridges he had caused to be thrown across the Hellespont, crushed the Spartan guards at the Pass of Thermopylae, pushed on into Attica, and laid Athens in ruins. But there fortune forsook him. At the naval battle of Salamis, his fleet was cut to pieces by the Grecian ships; and the king, making a precipitate retreat into Asia, hastened to his capital, Susa. Here, in the ...
— A General History for Colleges and High Schools • P. V. N. Myers
... be so; but the noblest deeds which have been done on earth have not been done for gold. It was not for the sake of gold that the Lord came down and died, and the Apostles went out to preach the good news in all lands. The Spartans looked for no reward in money when they fought and died at Thermopylae; and Socrates the wise asked no pay from his countrymen, but lived poor and barefoot all his days, only caring to make men good. And there are heroes in our days also, who do noble deeds, but not for gold. Our discoverers ...
— The Heroes • Charles Kingsley
... the besiegers got possession of Wolf Hill, and with plunging shot smashed the remnant of the fleet, they offered generous terms to the defenders. General Stoessel declined the offer, resolving to emulate Thermopylae, or believing, perhaps, in the possibility of rescue. When, however, he saw the "203 Metre Hill" in their hands and knew his casemates would soon be riddled by heavy shot, in sheer despair he was forced to capitulate. This was on the first day of the new year (1905). ...
— The Awakening of China • W.A.P. Martin
... become of those shoals of pigeons, those herrings of the air, which used in the gloom and glory of a breezy autumnal day to darken the sun in their flight, like the discharge of the Xerxean arrows at Thermopylae? The eye sweeps the autumnal sky in vain now for any such winged phenomenon, at least here in New England. The days of the bough-house and pigeon-stand strewn with barley seem to have gone by. Swift of flight and shapely in body is the North American wild pigeon, running upon ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 101, March, 1866 • Various
... they had no stomach for raiding the settlements. If seventeen Frenchmen, assisted by a few Indians, could keep their hosts at bay for a week, it would be useless to attack strongly fortified posts. And so Daulac and his men at this 'Canadian Thermopylae' had really turned aside the tide of war from New France. The settlements were saved, and for a time traders and missionaries journeyed along the St Lawrence and the ...
— The Jesuit Missions: - A Chronicle of the Cross in the Wilderness • Thomas Guthrie Marquis
... not endorse the verdict of all ages on the conduct of those Spartans at Thermopylae, when they sat "combing their yellow hair for death" on the sea-shore? They devoted themselves to hopeless destruction; but why? They felt—I must believe that, for they behaved as if they felt—that on them the destinies of the Western World might hang; that they were in ...
— Sanitary and Social Lectures and Essays • Charles Kingsley
... to make their stand at Thermopylae on land, and at the strait of Artemisium by sea. But at the strong pass of Thermopylae only a small force was gathered to hold the barbarians in check, there being of the Spartans themselves only 300, commanded ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol XI. • Edited by Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton
... in Europe. The passionate sympathy of the Russians rested wholly on their religious bonds. The more enlightened Philhellenes of France and Germany affected to see in this struggle a revival of the ancient Greek spirit that blazed forth at Thermopylae and Marathon. For this same reason, perhaps, Metternich and his colleagues in the Holy Alliance looked upon the Greek revolution with an evil eye. Any cause espoused by the hot-headed liberals at the universities in those ...
— A History of the Nineteenth Century, Year by Year - Volume Two (of Three) • Edwin Emerson
... magnificence. Nor was the liberality of that illustrious citizen confined to the walls of Athens. The most splendid ornaments bestowed on the temple of Neptune in the Isthmus, a theatre at Corinth, a stadium at Delphi, a bath at Thermopylae, and an aqueduct at Canusium in Italy, were insufficient to exhaust his treasures. The people of Epirus, Thessaly, Euboea, Boeotia, and Peloponnesus, experienced his favors; and many inscriptions of the cities of Greece and Asia gratefully style Herodes Atticus their ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 1 • Edward Gibbon
... shrinking timidity and puts in a courage like that at Thermopylae. There was once a young man who, previous to his sanctification, was so timid that he frequently stayed away from church for no other reason than that he feared God might ask him to testify. He ...
— The Heart-Cry of Jesus • Byron J. Rees
... the tail of the fact is tied history itself. Until a pupil gets a glimpse of that relation, that dependence of which we have just heard, with all that has yet happened in connection with it, he is not yet quite master of his fact. He recites glibly the date of Thermopylae, and does not know that all Greece is trailing behind his desk. When, after subsequent research, he knows something of Greece, he discovers Greece to be dovetailed into Rome and Egypt, and they lay hold upon the plain of Shinar and Eden, and the ...
— The Warriors • Lindsay, Anna Robertson Brown
... he hoped to collect the only documents still wanting to complete his history, and he visited all the spots that had become illustrious by the great battles fought between the Greeks and Persians. He gives a minute description of the Pass of Thermopylae, and of his visit to the plain of Marathon, the battlefield of Plataea, and his return to Asia Minor, whence he passed along the coast on which the Greeks had established several colonies. Herodotus can only have been twenty-eight years of age when he returned to Halicarnassus in Caria, for it was ...
— Celebrated Travels and Travellers - Part I. The Exploration of the World • Jules Verne
... exasperating was that the people—the people, who are always giving their rulers so much trouble, and making it so hard for them—were wildly applauding King George and the Greeks for the firm stand they had taken, and saying that the old fire which burned at Marathon and Thermopylae had not been extinguished; that the modern Greeks were the worthy ...
— The Great Round World and What Is Going On In It, Vol. 1, No. 20, March 25, 1897 - A Weekly Magazine for Boys and Girls • Various
... Ville Marie,[5] and the imminence of this danger produced one of the most brilliant exploits which Canadian history records—a feat of daring closely resembling, and not surpassed by, the achievement of Leonidas in the Pass of Thermopylae. ...
— Old Quebec - The Fortress of New France • Sir Gilbert Parker and Claude Glennon Bryan
... the contiguous provinces of Macedonia, should the king be occupied with a distant war. The Boeotians, indeed, and the people inhabiting the inland parts of Greece, told him that the Aetolians had obstructed by a ditch and rampart the straits of Thermopylae, where the road is very narrow and confined, in order to prevent their passing to the assistance of the allied states. So many disturbances arising on all hands were sufficient to awaken an inactive general. He dismissed ...
— History of Rome, Vol III • Titus Livius
... of Thermopylae was brought to the Greeks at Artemisium, that Leonidas had fallen, and Xerxes was in possession of the passes, they retired further into Greece, the Athenians protecting the rear on account of their bravery, and full of pride at their achievements. At all the harbours ...
— Plutarch's Lives, Volume I (of 4) • Plutarch
... place in the line close to that of the Persian contingent. It was no doubt on account of their valor, as Diodorus suggests, that the Medes were chosen to make the first attack upon the Greek position at Thermopylae, where, though unsuccessful, they evidently showed abundant courage. In the earlier times, before riches and luxury had eaten out the strength of the race, their valor and military prowess must have been even more conspicuous. ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 3. (of 7): Media • George Rawlinson
... the Government troops, the manager and officials of the railway and a host of friends of lesser note, but none the less loyal hearts, crowded the banquet room. They feasted, drank wine, sang songs and made speeches to me and about me that were enough to have satisfied the vanity of a survivor of Thermopylae. At the close, the Prefecto of Puno arose, and after saying things that were loudly applauded, presented me with ten thousand dollars not as a gift, but as something I had justly earned. He was followed by the general manager of the ...
— Where Strongest Tide Winds Blew • Robert McReynolds
... strength. It is a veritable parade ground among the mountains, almost cut off from them by the ceaseless action of water, and destined for the defence of the plains of Italy. A small force posted at the head of the winding roadway can hold at bay an army toiling up from the valley; but, as at Thermopylae, the position is liable to be outflanked by an enterprising foe, who should scale the footpath leading over the western offshoots of Monte Baldo, and, fording the stream at its foot, should then ...
— The Life of Napoleon I (Volumes, 1 and 2) • John Holland Rose
... since the Persians invaded Greece, and the men of Marathon and Thermopylae were no more. Men had been posted to defend the world-famous pass, but, instead of fighting to the death, like Leonidas and his Spartans of old, they retired without a blow, and left Greece to ...
— Historic Tales, Volume 11 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... seen him," he resumed with a sneer. "He's got a fine look on him! He reminded me of Leonidas at Thermopylae. Is it you, mother, who have made him cut ...
— The Fortune of the Rougons • Emile Zola
... the natives; and Greece, the proper and ancient Greece, again received a Latin conqueror, [12] who trod with indifference that classic ground. He viewed with a careless eye the beauties of the valley of Tempe; traversed with a cautious step the straits of Thermopylae; occupied the unknown cities of Thebes, Athens, and Argos; and assaulted the fortifications of Corinth and Napoli, [13] which resisted his arms. The lots of the Latin pilgrims were regulated by chance, or choice, or subsequent exchange; ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 6 • Edward Gibbon
... who saved her country but lost her son; on Cincinnatus, taken from the plow and sent as general and dictator against the Acquians; on the Fabian gens, defending Rome a whole year from the attacks of the Veientines until they were all cut off, like the Spartan band at Thermopylae; on Siccius Dentatus, the veteran captain of one hundred and twenty battles, who was only slain by rolling a stone from a high rock upon his head; on Cossos, slaying the king of Veii with his own hand; on the siege of Veii, itself, a city as large as Rome, lasting ten years, ...
— The Old Roman World • John Lord
... and shot him down. Not a man of the garrison was left alive, but each of them had avenged himself four times over, for the Mexican loss was over five hundred. So ended one of the most heroic events in American history. "Thermopylae had its messengers of death; The ...
— American Men of Action • Burton E. Stevenson
... new Thermopylae, Our monument shall tower on high, And 'Alamo' hereafter be On bloodier fields the battle-cry!" Thus Travis from the rampart cried; And when his warriors saw the foe Like whelming billows surge below,— At once each dauntless heart ...
— Blue Bonnet's Ranch Party • C. E. Jacobs
... once Athens, inflamed by Demosthenes, flashed into her old-time energy and activity, and stayed the Macedonian's course; as when, in his first bold march towards the heart of Greece, he found himself confronted at Thermopylae by Athenian troops; and again when prompt succor from Athens saved Byzantium for the time. But the emergency once past, the ardor of the Athenians died down as quickly as it had ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern — Volume 11 • Various
... Balazsfalva came the Szekler muster at Agyagfalva, and presently we found ourselves like an island in the midst of the sea. A Wallachian army ten thousand strong, under Moga's command, beset us on all sides, while we had but three hundred armed men all told,—just the number that Leonidas had at Thermopylae. Our eldest brother, Berthold, who, since he turned vegetarian, can't bear to see a chicken killed for dinner, and is dead set against all bloodshed, advised us to make peaceful terms with the enemy. So we drew lots to see who should go out and ...
— Manasseh - A Romance of Transylvania • Maurus Jokai
... in, indignant). And Thermopylae, and Protesilaus, and Marcus Curtius, and Arnold de Winkelried, and Iphigenia, ...
— The Crown of Wild Olive • John Ruskin
... which was ten feet high, but they soon disappeared; and the General, discovering that there were no loopholes or scaffolding to the wall, ordered Captain Tew, with a company of the 22nd, to occupy and defend it to the last. It was another Thermopylae. The gallant Tew died in the gap, but the post was maintained, and thus 6000 enemies were paralysed ...
— Our Soldiers - Gallant Deeds of the British Army during Victoria's Reign • W.H.G. Kingston
... made shift to bathe in icy water from the Tower well, shaved, tidied up his clothes and found a clean shirt from his pack. He carefully brushed his hair, reminding himself that thus had the Spartans done before Thermopylae. The neat and somewhat pallid young man that emerged from these rites then ascended to the first floor to reconnoitre the landscape ...
— Huntingtower • John Buchan |
