phoenixes

Updated: May 9, 2025

It may take him all his life to learn perhaps he will never learn that his emotional and intellectual experiences are no prodigies of sentiment and phoenixes of thought, but the common experiences of half his fellows.

Harry Perry Robinson - The Twentieth Century American: Being a Comparative Study of the Peoples of the Two Great: Anglo-Saxon Nations

I saw also a chameleon, such as Aristotle describes it, and like that which had been formerly shown me by Charles Maris, a famous physician of the noble city of Lyons on the Rhone; and the said chameleon lived on air just as the other did. I saw three hydras, like those I had formerly seen. They are a kind of serpent, with seven different heads. I saw also fourteen phoenixes.

François Rabelais - Gargantua and Pantagruel, Illustrated, Book 5

In her coiffure, she had a band of gold filigree work, representing the eight precious things, inlaid with pearls; and wore pins, at the head of each of which were five phoenixes in a rampant position, with pendants of pearls. On her neck, she had a reddish gold necklet, like coiled dragons, with a fringe of tassels.

Xueqin Cao - Hung Lou Meng, or, the Dream of the Red Chamber, a Chinese Novel, Book I

So she took the poor professor in hand: and because he was not content with things as they are, she filled his head with things as they are not, to try if he would like them better; and because he did not choose to believe in a water-baby when he saw it, she made him believe in worse things than water-babies in unicorns, fire- drakes, manticoras, basilisks, amphisbaenas, griffins, phoenixes, rocs, orcs, dog-headed men, three-headed dogs, three-bodied geryons, and other pleasant creatures, which folks think never existed yet, and which folks hope never will exist, though they know nothing about the matter, and never will; and these creatures so upset, terrified, flustered, aggravated, confused, astounded, horrified, and totally flabbergasted the poor professor that the doctors said that he was out of his wits for three months; and perhaps they were right, as they are now and then.

Charles Kingsley - The Water-Babies

"There is a saying, 'He will die soon, when a man acts unlike himself." "What kind of defects may we bear with and even cultivate in ourselves? Such as rather give pleasure to others than injure them." "The passions are defects or excellencies only in excess." "Our passions are true phoenixes: as the old burn out, the new straight rise up out of the ashes."

- The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Volume 02 : Masterpieces of German Literature Translated into English. in Twenty Volumes