“Not unlike the bear which bringeth forth
In the end of thirty dayes a shapeless birth;
But after licking, it in shape she drawes,
And by degrees she fashions out the pawes,
The head, and neck, and finally doth bring
To a perfect beast that first deformed thing.”
First Week, First Day. Compare: "I had not time to lick it into form, as a bear doth her young ones", Robert Burton, Anatomy of Melancholy. Democritus to the Reader.
La Semaine; ou, Création du monde (1578)
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Guillaume de Salluste Du Bartas 48
French writer 1544–1590Related quotes
Book II, Ch. 12. Apology for Raimond Sebond
Essais (1595), Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)
“I had not time to lick it into form, as a bear doth her young ones.”
The Anatomy of Melancholy (1621), Democritus Junior to the Reader
c. 1906; as quoted in Ernst Kirchner's Streetwalkers: Art, Luxury, and Immorality in Berlin, 1913 - 1916, Simmons, Sherwin, in 'The Art Bulletin', Vol. 82, No. 1. March 2000, p. 121
Bleyl stated that he favored this model Isabella due to her natural body. Using only two tones of yellow in the poster, Bleyl was able to impart a clear sense of this woman's physique. It is precisely this that got Bleyl in trouble: the police censored this image because they saw pubic hair in the shadow below the belly, apparently giving it an inappropriate sexual power
“She can find in her bewilderment no words wherewith to begin, how to order or where to end her speech; fain would she pour out all in her first utterance, but not even the first words doth fear-stricken shame allow her.”
Nec quibus incipiat demens videt ordine nec quo
quove tenus, prima cupiens effundere voce
omnia, sed nec prima pudor dat verba timenti.
Source: Argonautica, Book VII, Lines 433–435
“When she can't bring me to heal with scolding, she bends me to shape with guilt.”
Source: The Sweet Far Thing
O caso triste, e dino da memória,
Que do sepulcro os homens desenterra,
Aconteceu da mísera e mesquinha
Que depois de ser morta foi Rainha.
Stanza 118, lines 5–8 (tr. Ezra Pound); of Inês de Castro.
Epic poetry, Os Lusíadas (1572), Canto III
As quoted by Morris Kline, Mathematical Thought from Ancient to Modern Times (1972)
