Semele Quotes & Sayings

Mankind ... possesses two supreme blessings. First of these is the goddess Demeter, or Earth whichever name you choose to call her by. It was she who gave to man his nourishment of grain. But after her there came the son of Semele, who matched her present by inventing liquid wine as his gift to man. For filled with that good gift, suffering mankind forgets its grief; from it comes sleep; with it oblivion of the troubles of the day. There is no other medicine for misery. — Euripides

Crishna, the Hindoo virgin-born Saviour, was born in a cave, [156:1] fostered by an honest herdsman, [156:2] and, it is said, placed in a sheep-fold shortly after his birth. How-Tseih, the Chinese "Son of Heaven," when an infant, was left unprotected by his mother, but the sheep and oxen protected him with loving care. [156:3] Abraham, the Father of Patriarchs, is said to have been born in a cave. [156:4] Bacchus, who was the son of God by the virgin Semele, is said to have been born in a cave, or placed in one shortly after — Thomas William Doane

I tend to go back and forth between old favourites and "new" stuff, some of which could easily be by authors I've hitherto heard about but haven't had the chance to catch up with. — Gemma Files

Madame Semele seemed torn between her desire to threaten and to cajole, and the emotions chased each other so nakedly across her face that she seemed almost to vibrate with the effort of keeping them in check. — Neil Gaiman

In a bravura demonstration of stonewalling, righteousness, and hurt sincerity, Steve Jobs successfully took to the stage the other day to deny the problem, dismiss the criticism, and spread the blame among other smartphone makers.". "This is a level of modern marketing, corporate spin, and crisis management about which you can only ask with stupefied incredulity and awe: How do they get away with it? Or, more accurately, how does he get away with it?" Wolff attributed it to Jobs's mesmerizing effect as "the last charismatic individual." Other CEOs would be offering abject apologies and swallowing massive recalls, but Jobs didn't have to. "The grim, skeletal appearance, the absolutism, the ecclesiastical bearing, the sense of his relationship with the sacred, really works, and, in this instance, allows him the privilege of magisterially deciding what is meaningful and what is trivial. — Walter Isaacson

What can I do with these people? They come to the risk so dutifully. Are delighted by anecdotes that give them Poetry. Are grateful to be told of diagonals that give them Painting. Good people. But stubborn when warned the beast is not domestic. How can I persuade them that the dark, soulful Keats was five feet one? Liked fighting and bear-baiting? I can't explain the red hair. Nor say how you died so full of lust for Fanny Brawne. I will tell them of Semele. — Jack Gilbert

Was this the face that launch'd a thousand ships,
And burnt the topless towers of Ilium--
Sweet Helen, make me immortal with a kiss.--
'[kisses her]'
Her lips suck forth my soul: see, where it flies!--
Come, Helen, come, give me my soul again.
Here will I dwell, for heaven is in these lips,
And all is dross that is not Helena.
I will be Paris, and for love of thee,
Instead of Troy, shall Wertenberg be sack'd;
And I will combat with weak Menelaus,
And wear thy colours on my plumed crest;
Yea, I will wound Achilles in the heel,
And then return to Helen for a kiss.
O, thou art fairer than the evening air
Clad in the beauty of a thousand stars;
Brighter art thou than flaming Jupiter
When he appear'd to hapless Semele;
More lovely than the monarch of the sky
In wanton Arethusa's azur'd arms;
And none but thou shalt be my paramour! — Christopher Marlowe

Surely a program of incremental reforms, of cautious steps, is the wisest way to proceed? You show xtraordinary erudition for an eighth-stratum, Archivist. I wonder if you encountered this dictum first spoken by a twentieth-century statesman: "An abyss cannot be crossed in two steps." We — David Mitchell

This was because, after the birth of Priapus, they had developed a love/hate relationship with each other. They loved & hated each other at the same time. And even when he assured her that he would do his best to bring back Metis from the dead, she was not satisfied. She wanted Asteria & Semele to be reborn as well. And he had even issued instructions that human sacrifices should be stopped, in particular, the sacrificing of young virgin girls, since, Aphrodite, the Goddess of Love, liked to see young virgin girls loved rather than cut into pieces to feed the sacrificial flame of Hestia. The Athenians, as a whole, had stopped the practice of sacrificing Hyacinthids, after Macaria. And indeed, Artemis had stopped the sacrifice of Iphigenia. And after Polyxena & Periboae were sacrificed, Athena had stopped the sacrifice of the Locrian girls by the Trojans. — Nicholas Chong

Lightning crashed on the horizon. A breeze swirled around the Cast Members. The air tasted dusty, almost bitter, with electrical charge. — Ridley Pearson

Kissing was something I did a lot of. Kissing in a wheat field as the sun begins to set on a summer's evening, with the haze of that light. — Beth Orton

A number of ethical, aesthetic, psychiatric or forensic classfications that are produced by the "institutional sciences",not to mention those produced and inculcated by the educational system, are similarly subordinated to social functions, although they derive their specific efficacy from their apparent neutrality. They are produced in accordance with the specific logic, and in the specific language, of relatively autonomous fields, and they combine a real dependence on the classificatory schemes of the dominant habitus (and ultimately on the social structures of which these are the product) with an apparent independence. — Pierre Bourdieu