Thalia

“ There are queer little boxes on either side of the stage, which slopes perceptibly and has in its middle a prompter's hood—survival of the days when parts were so long, and so many had to be learned each week, that no actor could be trusted out of sight of the man with the manuscript. The Thalia is a theatrical anachronism, dilapidated, decayed and degraded. ”

“ Nor all your wanton line,
Not Beauty’s perfect self shall comfort me
For Silence once departed,
For her the cool-tongued, her the tranquil-hearted,
Whom evermore I follow wilfully,
Wandering Heaven and Earth and Hell and the four seasons through;
Thalia, not you,
Not you, Melpomene,
Not your incomparable feet, O thin Terpsichore,
I seek in this great hall,
But one more pale, more pensive, most beloved of you all. ”

“ Putting out all his strength, Dallas thrust himself violently back against the face of the cliff. As he did so, Thalia swung his body with all her force in the same direction, and for a moment held him barely balanced against the sheer side of the rock. ”

“ Thalia crossed the room and walked to the side of the platform.
"I mean it. Do you think I'm going to pig everything, just because I've got a couple of buckshot under my pelt? I shall camp in front of the fire." Forgetting his wounded arm, Dallas shoved himself upright, then sat swaying giddily from the pain caused by the effort.
"Dallas! Don't! Can't you be good? Lie down! Oh, please, please, please! If you only knew how worried I am about you!" Thalia's rich voice broke. ”

“ Thalia seized his wrists, and turned to stare at him with large and startled eyes.
"Do you mean that you are going back to America to fight with—what do you call them—greasers? And Indians, perhaps? Oh, no, no, Stephen! What if you should be killed?"
Dallas took her in his arms. "No, darling," said he. "Those days are past. We are going to be married and live in a peaceful country enough, but one where a man does a man's work—and makes other men do it, too! ”

“ Yet the laughter of Thalia and the unbending of her sister Muse were hardly likely to make much impression in the Oldfield household, where money had more admirers than mythology, and so we are not surprised to learn that, with the death of the gallant captain, this "incomparable sweet girl," who would ere long reconcile even a supercilious Frenchman to the English stage, had to seek her living as a seamstress. ”

“ How marvellously well was Thalia playing her comedy! Which was the real, and which the false? What of true value, what of peace and security was contained in her present existence? She had missed the meaning of things, and suddenly it was held up before her, in a garden.
A later hour found them in Honora's runabout wandering northward along quiet country roads on the eastern side of the island. Chiltern, who was driving, seemed to take no thought of their direction, until at last, with an exclamation, he stopped the horse ”

“ Besides, here's the rifle."
"Give that to me."
"Look here, Thalia, you leave that rifle alone. I'm a good deal of a duffer, I know, but I haven't reached the stage where I must have my gun carried up cliffs and across rivers for me by a girl."
"You are a little new to climbing," said Thalia, "and you may not be much of a swimmer; but you can shoot!" She rose to her feet. "Wait here; I want to see how deep it is."
Dallas waited, closely watching the opposite bank. A moment later, Thalia returned. ”

“ Thalia, my beauty, behave like a good dog; come here, Euphrosyne, and don’t be so silly!” cried the old lady in a voice which was both pleasant and peremptory, as she stood-wide awake now-behind her table, folding together the dried clothes. The little barking beasts who were thus endowed with the names of the three Graces did not trouble themselves much about her affectionate admonitions ”

“ The vast majority of the lovers of light literature look upon classical stories with a certain mistrust. They fear them either to be too pedantic or wanting in “esprit.” Thalia opens in Arles, thence we voyage to Alexandria, then to Rome, from Rome to Nicomedia, and so on. There are a few good scenes and descriptive passages; but, although a somewhat agreeable way of learning the history of the time, it does not necessarily make a pleasing romance. ”

“ The tyrant hastened to reply that nothing could be easier, and that the troupe, one of the best that had ever travelled through the provinces, was entirely at his lordship’s disposition—“from the king to the soubrette”—he added, with a broad grin.
“That is capital,” said the marquis, “and as to money matters, you can arrange them to suit yourself. I should not think of bargaining with the votaries of Thalia—a muse so highly favoured by Apollo, and as eagerly sought after, and enthusiastically applauded, at the court of his most gracious majesty as in town and country everywhere.” ”

“ THALIA A MIDDLE-AGED LYRICAL POET IS SUPPOSED TO BE TAKING FINAL LEAVE OF THE MUSE OF COMEDY. SHE HAS BROUGHT HIM HIS HAT AND GLOVES, AND IS ABSTRACTEDLY PICKING A THREAD OF GOLD HAIR FROM HIS COAT SLEEVE AS HE BEGINS TO SPEAK: I say it under the rose—
oh, thanks!—yes, under the laurel,
We part lovers, not foes ”

“ Terpsichore proposed.
[108] “I will read you no poem whatever,” said Calliope severely. “You are not—not yet ripe for it.”
“Yes, we are very crude,” sighed Thalia to Terpsichore.
“I will tell you instead a perfectly true story, quite unadorned and not at all epic. When you get a little riper, I will read you one of my own poems, but not to-night. To-night you have to put up with the following drivel.”
This is the drivel which they had to put up with:—
There was once a man, an Athenian, who was the opposite of all that he wanted to be. ”

“ The Hotel Thalia looks on Broadway as Marathon looks on the sea. It stands like a gloomy cliff above the whirlpool where the tides of two great thoroughfares clash. Here the player-bands gather at the end of their wanderings, to loosen the buskin and dust the sock. Thick in the streets around it are booking-offices, theatres, agents, schools, and the lobster-palaces to which those thorny paths lead.
Wandering through the eccentric halls of the dim and fusty Thalia, you seem to have found yourself in some great ark or caravan about to sail, or fly, or roll away on wheels. ”

“ Thalia knows it annoys me to be told about a woman, with any sort of significance, what position her husband occupies in the world, and that is the reason she does it. I do not say that it has no weight as a contributory fact in a general description, but I do say that an improper amount of importance is usually attached to it. ”

“ Thaler, tä′lėr, n. a dollar, in Germany a silver coin worth about 3s. [Ger. Cf. Dollar.]
Thalia, thā-lī′a, n. one of the nine muses, who presided over pastoral and comic poetry.—adj. Thālī′an. [Gr. Thaleia, Thalia—thallein, to bloom.]
Thalictrum, thā-lik′trum, n. a genus of perennial herbs of the Crowfoot family, the meadow-rues: a plant of this genus. [Gr. thaliktron—thallein, to bloom.] ”

“ They must not even offer them the compliment of a morning salutation. To say “Good-morning” to an Arian was to hold communication with the lost. Such a manifesto merely added fuel to the fire, and the two parties drew farther and farther apart.
Nor was Arius idle. It must have been about this time that he composed the notorious poem, Thalia, in which he embodied his doctrines. He selected the metre of a pagan poet, Sotades of Crete, of whom we know nothing save that his verses had the reputation of being exceedingly licentious. Arius did this of deliberate purpose. ”

“ Atma is very pleased with these borders; it is the first time he has had them so long and so gay. “How excellent this season,” says he in his own tongue, “are the giftie-noughts of we people.” I told you he was a man of parts; it is not easy to be a poet in another language.
Also, I perceive, there are periwinkles on the khud.
[45] Chapter V IT was an event this morning when Thalia came whisking along the Mall in her rickshaw and turned in here. ”

“ Solon, Pittakus, Bias, and Thalês, were all men of influence—the first two even men of ascendency, [188] —in their respective cities. Kleobulus was despot of Lindus, and Periander (by some numbered among the seven) of Corinth. Thalês stands distinguished as the earliest name in physical philosophy, with which the other contemporary wise men are not said to have meddled; their celebrity rests upon moral, social, and political wisdom exclusively, which came into greater honor as the ethical feeling of the Greeks improved and as their experience became enlarged. ”

“ And Thalis, I'd take it kindly if you'd furnish us with a bit of food and drink."
For answer Thalis leaned herself against him, slipping one white arm about his bronzed shoulders. Her sleek naked flank pressed against his thigh and the perfume of her foamy hair was in his nostrils.
"Why dare the desert?" she whispered urgently. "Stay here! I will teach you the ways of Xuthal. I will protect you. I will love you! You are a real man: I am sick of these moon-calves who sigh and dream and wake, and dream again. I am hungry for the hard, clean passion of a man from the earth. ”

“ And if we look to Anaximander, the person next in order of time to Thalês, as well as to Herakleitus, we find them departing, in a great degree, even from that character which all the rest have in common, though both the one and the other are usually enrolled in the list of Ionic philosophers.
Of the old legendary and polytheistic conception of nature, which Thalês partially discarded, we may remark that it is a state of the human mind in which the problems suggesting themselves to be solved, and the machinery for solving them, bear a fair proportion one to the other. ”

“ THALES.
Thales of Miletus (about 624–547 B.C.) was a man of extraordinary versatility; philosopher, mathematician, astronomer, statesman, engineer, and man of business, he was declared one of the Seven Wise Men in 582–581 B.C. His propensity to star-gazing is attested by the story of his having fallen into a well while watching the stars, insomuch that (as Plato has it) he was rallied by a clever and pretty maidservant from Thrace for being so “eager to know what goes on in the heavens when he could not see what was in front of him, nay at his very feet”. ”

“ So, with his own hands he carried the golden tripod to the little house where Thales lived. He knocked at the door and the wise man himself opened it.
Then the governor told him how the tripod had been found, and how the oracle had said that it must be given to the wisest of the wise.
"And so I have brought the prize to you, friend Thales."
"To me!" said the astonished Thales. "Why, there are many men who are wiser than I. There is my friend Bias [Footnote: Bi'as] of Priene. [Footnote: Prie'ne] He excels all other men. Send the beautiful gift to him." ”

“ It is said that once, when he was taken out of doors by an old woman in order that he might observe the stars, he fell into a ditch, and his cry for help drew from the old woman the retort, "How can you expect to know all about the heavens, Thales, when you cannot even see what is just before your feet?" ”

“ There is very likely a substratum of truth in the stories which make the birth, or rather the revival, of learning in Greece come from Egypt and Crete. Thales knew that the light of the moon came from the sun. He was the first of those natural philosophers of Greece whose main object was to find the “principle” of the universe. Thales held that all things originated from water. Another of the Seven was Bias of Priene, whose activities were mainly political, and who invented maxims like “He is unfortunate who cannot bear misfortune,” and “If thou hast done a good deed, ascribe it to the gods.” ”

“ He is asserted to have measured the pyramids by their shadows. He cultivated astronomy and astrology; and Laertius declares him to have been the first Greek that foretold eclipses. The yet higher distinction has been claimed for Thales of having introduced among his countrymen the doctrine of the immortality of the soul. But this sublime truth, though connected with no theory of future rewards and punishments, was received in Greece long before his time. Perhaps, however, as the expressions of Cicero indicate, Thales might be the first who attempted to give reasons for what was believed. ”

“ A crowd of idle philosophers, discussing all things in Heaven and Earth through the long summer days and balmy nights of Attica, must sometimes have hit on a true opinion, if only by accident; but Thales, or whoever broached the heliocentric dogma, had no reason for his belief, and showed himself not more, but less reasonable than his companions. ”

“ A sophist, wishing to perplex Thales, who was one of the seven wise men of Greece, asked him many difficult questions; to all of which the sage replied without the least hesitation. To one of those questions,—which was the following,—"What is the best of all things?" Thales gave this response: "Virtue; because without it there is nothing good." Such is the conviction of mere unassisted and stumbling reason, the voice of nature, and the unequivocal and direct assertion of a heathen philosopher.—Preface to Piety and Intellect Relatively Estimated, by Dr Henry Edwards.—An excellent work. ”