"Ancient" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... it took so long before the thought of evolution should have fully dawned upon the world, the answer is not far to seek. No student of Natural History in ancient or medieval times had the faintest conception of the enormous number of animals and of plants in the world. The old Greek or Roman student of Natural History gives no evidence of knowing more than a few hundred animals. Men ...
— The Meaning of Evolution • Samuel Christian Schmucker
... ancient Teutons, botes and were-gilds satisfy the injured who seek redress at law rather than by the steel. But there are certain bootless crimes, or rather sins, that imply "sacratio", devotion to the gods, for the clearing of the community. Such are treason, which is punishable by hanging; ...
— The Danish History, Books I-IX • Saxo Grammaticus ("Saxo the Learned")
... they had seen neither hut nor canoe, and in accordance with the captain's instructions they rowed into the mouth of a little river and landed in a lovely shady ravine, whose waters at a couple of hundred yards from the lagoon were completely shaded by the boughs of ancient trees. ...
— Jack at Sea - All Work and no Play made him a Dull Boy • George Manville Fenn
... stood was in fact an ancient alluvial pit or volcanic mud-crater. Scoriac rubble filled it in to a very great depth; and in the interstices of this rubble were embedded here and there rude blocks of greenstone, containing almond-shaped chalcedonies and agate and milk-quartz, with now and then a tiny water-worn spec ...
— What's Bred In the Bone • Grant Allen
... P. Cornelius Scipio Africanus, the younger, was no blood relation of the conqueror of Hannibal, but the adopted son of his son. It must be remembered, however, that adoption was much more formal and binding, and produced much closer ties in ancient than in modern times.[51] The elder Africanus was unfortunate in his sons. The younger of these attained to the praetorship in 174, but was immediately driven from the senate by the censors of that year on account of his disreputable life. The elder was an invalid, ...
— Cato Maior de Senectute • Marcus Tullius Cicero
... the books containing it have been invented—of which Paley's 'Horae Paulinae' is a memorable example. The diligent collation of the text, too, has removed many difficulties; the diligent study of the original languages of ancient history, manners and customs, has cleared up many more; and by supplying proof of accuracy where error of falsehood had been charged, has supplied important additions to the evidence which substantiates the truth of Revelation. Against the alleged absurdity of the laws ...
— Reason and Faith; Their Claims and Conflicts • Henry Rogers
... attached to this extraordinary place is of so popular a character as fully to justify its introduction to our pages. It is situate at the southern extremity of the ancient province of Normandy, a district of considerable importance in the early histories of France and England. The "Mount" is likewise one of the most stupendous of Nature's curiosities, it being one mass of granite, and referred to by geologists as a fine specimen of that primary or primitive rock; ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 17, No. 477, Saturday, February 19, 1831 • Various
... Thus, in time, he feels his way out into the open sea. By day he has some idea of direction with the aid of the sun; by night, when the sky is clear he can steer by the Great Bear, or "Cynosure," the compass of his ancient predecessors on the Mediterranean. But when it is cloudy, if he persists in steaming ahead, he may be running towards the Azores or towards Greenland, or he may be making his way back to New York without knowing it. So, keeping up steam only when sun or star is visible, ...
— Side-lights on Astronomy and Kindred Fields of Popular Science • Simon Newcomb
... old edition of this choice piece of chapman's ware, where an accurate drawing of Mrs. Thumb, and the board, and the bowl, and Tom with the candle, may be inspected. The prima stamina of the modern fruit-pudding really appear to be found in the ancient bag-pudding, of which Tom Thumb had such excellent reason to be acquainted with the contents. The mode of construction was similar, and both were boiled in a cloth. The material and subsidiary treatment of course differed; but it is curious that no other country possesses either the ...
— Old Cookery Books and Ancient Cuisine • William Carew Hazlitt
... problem," then, had clearly arisen in ancient Greece, though no doubt in an infinitely simpler form than that in which it is presented to ourselves; and it might perhaps have been expected that the Greeks, with their notion of the supremacy of the state, would ...
— The Greek View of Life • Goldsworthy Lowes Dickinson
... track, marched promptly to the hair-dresser's, Mr. Percombe's. Percombe was the chief of his trade in Sherton Abbas. He had the patronage of such county offshoots as had been obliged to seek the shelter of small houses in that ancient town, of the local clergy, and so on, for some of whom he had made wigs, while others among them had compensated for neglecting him in their lifetime by patronizing him when they were dead, and letting him shave their corpses. On the strength of all this he had taken down his pole, ...
— The Woodlanders • Thomas Hardy
... like the face of some ancient archangel, judging justly after heroic wars. There was laughter in the eyes, and in the mouth honour and sorrow. There was the same white hair, the same great, grey-clad shoulders that I had seen from behind. But when I saw him from behind I was ...
— The Man Who Was Thursday - A Nightmare • G. K. Chesterton
... possessed farther recommendations. On the opposite bank of the Tweed might be seen the remains of ancient enclosures, surrounded by sycamores and ash-trees of considerable size. These had once formed the crofts or arable ground of a village, now reduced to a single hut, the abode of a fisherman, who also manages a ferry. The cottages, even the church which once existed there, have ...
— The Monastery • Sir Walter Scott
... foot of which was classic ground. Along their way they encountered amphitheatres, aqueducts, tombs, and other monuments of the past, some in ruins, others still erect in stately though melancholy grandeur. Capua invited them to tarry—not the ancient Capua, but the modern, which, though several miles distant from the historic city, has yet a history of its own, and its own charms. But among all these scenes and sights which they encountered, the one that impressed them most was Cicero's tomb. It is built on ...
— Among the Brigands • James de Mille
... religious liberty, the common property of all the people, whatever tongue it may speak, or in whatever church pray, and that a national ministry shall execute these laws, and guard with its responsibility the chartered ancient independence of our Fatherland. ...
— Select Speeches of Kossuth • Kossuth
... the merit of the Circles that they have effectually suppressed those ancient heresies which led men to waste energy and sympathy in the vain belief that conduct depends upon will, effort, training, encouragement, praise, or anything else but Configuration. It was Pantocyclus—the illustrious ...
— Flatland • Edwin A. Abbott
... Achan League. The sword alternately enslaved and disenthralled Thebes and Athens, Sparta, Syracuse, and Corinth. The sword of Rome conquered every other free State, and finished the murder of Liberty in the ancient world, by destroying herself. What but the sword, in modern times, annihilated the Republics of Italy, the Hanseatic Towns, and the primitive independence of Ireland, Wales, and Scotland? What but the sword partitioned Poland, assassinated the rising liberty of Spain, banished the ...
— The American Union Speaker • John D. Philbrick
... further delay. The Athanasian Creed was not necessarily true because the fire would not light or the sword would not cut, nor, excuse me, were all your old beliefs wrong because your prayer was unanswered. It is an ancient story, that we cannot tell whether the answering of our petitions will be good or ill for us. Of course I do not know anything about such things, but it seems to me rash to suppose that Providence is going to alter the working of its eternal laws merely to suit ...
— Beatrice • H. Rider Haggard
... conspicuous feature in the landscape is not only associated with the legendary doings of some ancestors but is commonly said to have arisen as a direct result of their actions. The mountains, the plains, the rivers, the seas, the islands of ancient Greece itself were not more thickly haunted by the phantoms of a fairy mythology than are the barren sun-scorched steppes and stony hills of the Australian wilderness; but great indeed is the gulf which divides the beautiful creations of Greek fancy from the crude imaginings of the Australian savage, ...
— The Belief in Immortality and the Worship of the Dead, Volume I (of 3) • Sir James George Frazer
... signally failed at first in making themselves understood. At last they bethought them of putting all their previous knowledge of the Hellenic tongue out of the question, and of pointing to things and asking their names. Frequently they found a great similarity between the modern and ancient Greek, which assisted them very much in recollecting the names of the things they learned. They thus in their turn rather surprised the natives by the rapidity with ...
— The Three Midshipmen • W.H.G. Kingston
... These ancient things and the general surroundings made all open their eyes in wonder, and feel that there were more things on earth than their own little ...
— The Kangaroo Marines • R. W. Campbell
... in the autumn of the year 1831, I first conceived the notion of writing this story. Wishing to describe, somewhat minutely, the trim gardens, the picturesque domains, the rook-haunted groves, the gloomy chambers, and gloomier galleries, of an ancient Hall with which I was acquainted, I resolved to attempt a story in the bygone style of Mrs. Radcliffe,—which had always inexpressible charms for me,—substituting an old English squire, an old English manorial residence, ...
— Rookwood • William Harrison Ainsworth
... of everyone here except a tipsy man, this meeting of citizens declares Dr. Thomas Stockmann to be an enemy of the people. (Shouts and applause.) Three cheers for our ancient and honourable citizen community! (Renewed applause.) Three cheers for our able and energetic Mayor, who has so loyally suppressed the promptings of family feeling! (Cheers.) The meeting is dissolved. ...
— An Enemy of the People • Henrik Ibsen
... of those ancient teachers if we have not discovered that their greatest lesson to us is not truth, as they had found it, but the blessing of the persistent search after truth. To cherish as final past presentations of truth is to be false to its ...
— Levels of Living - Essays on Everyday Ideals • Henry Frederick Cope
... remain a friend to one who has transgressed friendship, to continue faithful to one who has broken faith. Perhaps this seems strange to you, but you ought not to disbelieve it. For all goodness has not yet perished from among mankind, but there is still in us a remnant of the ancient virtue. And if any one does disbelieve it, that renders the more ardent my desire that men may see accomplished what no one would believe could come to pass. That would be one profit I could derive from present ills, if I could settle the affair well and show to all mankind that there is a right ...
— Dio's Rome, Volume V., Books 61-76 (A.D. 54-211) • Cassius Dio
... its island mountain—all combine to produce upon the spectator an irresistible impression of melancholy; and a spirit of superstitious inclinings cannot help giving way to thoughts of the supernatural. No wonder that in such a place the ancient Aztec priests should have erected an altar for their sanguinary sacrifices; and so strong is tradition, that even in modern times the lake of Ostuta and the mountain of Monopostiac, are invested with supernatural attributes, and regarded by the ...
— The Tiger Hunter • Mayne Reid
... slowly, "I wish, as the son of an ancient friend—for I consider this story of the lost letter perfectly true—I wish, I say, in order to repair the coldness you may have remarked in my reception of you, to discover to you the secrets of our policy. ...
— The Three Musketeers • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... day the room was aglow. For quite two hundred years every visible sunrise had shone in at that window more or less, as the season changed and the sun rose to the north of east. Perhaps it was that sense of ancient homeliness that caused Cicely, without knowing why, to steal in there alone to dream, for nowhere else indoors could she have been so far away ...
— Round About a Great Estate • Richard Jefferies
... Cynthia remembered very well. That scrape, for instance, with the seductive little granddaughter of the retired village school-master—a veritable Ancient of Days, who had been the witness of an unlucky kiss behind a hedge, and had marched up instanter, in his wrath, to complain to Lord Buntingford grand-pere. Or that much worse scrape, when a lad ...
— Helena • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... has been said above also applies to the theory of a spiritus mundi, or spirit of the universe, which formed so large a part in the cosmological theories of many ancient philosophers. It is supposed to be a sort of all-pervading nervous principle, having, however, a mind of its own, when occasion demands—for otherwise how are the results to be accounted for? I think this and the preceding ...
— The Problems of Psychical Research - Experiments and Theories in the Realm of the Supernormal • Hereward Carrington
... himself indignantly from "this bank and shoal of time," or the frail tottering bark that bears up modern reputation, into the huge sea of ancient renown, and to revel there with untired, outspread plume. Even this in him is spleen—his contempt of his contemporaries makes him turn back to the lustrous past, or project himself forward to the dim future!—Lord Byron's tragedies, ...
— The Spirit of the Age - Contemporary Portraits • William Hazlitt
... will want, not the spur. Well! well! you shall to bed without paying the usual toll; and oh, but 'tis sweet to fall in with a young man who can withstand these ancient ill customs, and gainsay brazen ...
— The Cloister and the Hearth • Charles Reade
... a bundle of sketches from their summer holiday—water-colour memories of cliff, of sea, ruined castle, and ancient abbey. I brought back from the Channel Islands these pages here printed, as a kind of bundle of sketches in black and white, put together day by day as a holiday-task, and forming a string, as it were, on which ...
— The Fall Of The Grand Sarrasin • William J. Ferrar
... celebrated educators, had her favorite ancient paths, and in a general wreck of society would have tried to hold her "Lindley Murray" ...
— Middlemarch • George Eliot
... this, which in their origin and still in the frame of their constitution differentiates Oxford and Cambridge from all their ancient sisters and rivals. These two (and no third, I believe, in Europe) were corporations of Teachers, existing for Teachers, governed by Teachers. In a Scottish University the students by vote choose their Rector: but here or at Oxford no undergraduate, no Bachelor, ...
— On The Art of Reading • Arthur Quiller-Couch
... the archway of an ancient temple. He took in the wonderful proportions and drank of the exquisite detail in an ...
— Fables For The Times • H. W. Phillips
... to Comitan, the road passes over a curious lime deposit, apparently formed by ancient hot waters; it is a porous tufa which gave back a hollow sound under the hoofs of our horses. It contains moss, leaves, and branches, crusted with lime, and often forms basin terraces, which, while beautiful to see, were peculiarly harsh and rough for our animals. ...
— In Indian Mexico (1908) • Frederick Starr
... probability, Alfric and Dunstan. These were collected into permanent form by Plegmund, Archbishop of Canterbury, who brought the annals up to the year 891; from that date they were continued in the monasteries. Of the Saxon Chronicle there are no less than seven accredited ancient copies, of which the shortest extends to the year 977, and the longest to 1154; the others extend ...
— English Literature, Considered as an Interpreter of English History - Designed as a Manual of Instruction • Henry Coppee
... Governor of Wyoming, shaking his ancient friend's hand. "You in Drybone to-night, ...
— Lin McLean • Owen Wister
... to set on the banquet. "Sir," said Sir Key, the seneschal, "if ye go now to meat ye will break the ancient custom of your court, for never have ye dined at this high feast till ye ...
— The Legends Of King Arthur And His Knights • James Knowles
... impede, but greatly furthered the end of the Incarnation, as above stated. And although these infirmities concealed His Godhead, they made known His Manhood, which is the way of coming to the Godhead, according to Rom. 5:1, 2: "By Jesus Christ we have access to God." Moreover, the ancient Fathers did not desire bodily strength in Christ, but spiritual strength, wherewith He vanquished the devil and healed human ...
— Summa Theologica, Part III (Tertia Pars) - From the Complete American Edition • Thomas Aquinas
... legend of the Flying Dutchman had in it no elements of drama. The irascible mariner of ancient times, vainly struggling to round Cape Horn (or some other cape) against a head wind, swore in his wrath that he would succeed if he tried until the Day of Judgment; a lightning flash in the sky proclaimed that he was taken at ...
— Richard Wagner - Composer of Operas • John F. Runciman
... are actually connected by a sluggish natural canal. The headwaters of the northern affluents of the Paraguay and the southern affluents of the Amazon are sundered by a stretch of high land, which toward the east broadens out into the central plateau of Brazil. Geologically this is a very ancient region, having appeared above the waters before the dawning of the age of reptiles, or, indeed, of any true land vertebrates on the globe. This plateau is a region partly of healthy, rather dry and sandy, open prairie, partly of forest. The great and low-lying basin of the Paraguay, ...
— Through the Brazilian Wilderness • Theodore Roosevelt
... quite true. Everyone of them is the descendant of slaves of the past. Every ancient race was at some time the slaves of some stronger nation. Many of the masters of today are the descendants of people who were bought and sold with the land for hundreds of years. Think of that when ...
— The Bondwoman • Marah Ellis Ryan
... the purpose of my life to restore to them the holiness of the ancient Church; to rescue them from the snare of traitors to the faith, whom men call priests. They shall learn through me that the Church knew no adornment once, but the presence of the pure; that the priest craved no finer vestment than his holiness; that the Gospel, which once taught humility ...
— Antonina • Wilkie Collins
... in a roar which was heard even by deaf old Ebenezer Simpkins, driver of the depot wagon, who was just piloting his ancient steed from the Dott gate. "Come in, John!" roared Captain Dan. "There she is, in there, ...
— Cap'n Dan's Daughter • Joseph C. Lincoln
... having the temple repaired the high priest found the rolls of parchment on which the law was written, and sent it to the king by a servant of the king who was a writer. Josiah was full of interest in the ancient book, and wished to know what was in it, and his servant read ...
— Child's Story of the Bible • Mary A. Lathbury
... father!" he exclaimed. "Wouldst thou turn from bad to worse, and rush straight to Jehennum. Thou hast studied history, so knowest that the Latins are our ancient enemies. They slew us with the Muslims when their armies took by storm the Holy Places, and enslaved the remnant of us in a cruel slavery. They have statues, rank idols, in their churches; and is it not the worst ...
— The Valley of the Kings • Marmaduke Pickthall
... not know them," he said at last. "I cannot guess what city this may be. But it is an ancient city. Its people have no fliers and no firearms. It ...
— The Chessmen of Mars • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... is going on amongst the most moving orders in the English Church, how far it is possible that strict orthodoxy should bend, on the one side, to new impulses, derived from an advancing philosophy, and yet, on the other side, should reconcile itself, both verbally and in spirit, with ancient standards. But if Phil. is eclectic, then I will be eclectic; if Phil. has a right to be desultory, then I have a right. Phil. is my leader. I can't, in reason, be expected to be better than he is. If I'm wrong, Phil. ought to set me a better example. ...
— Theological Essays and Other Papers v1 • Thomas de Quincey
... might fancy, at first, that Triptolemus was a quite Boeotian divinity, of the ploughshare. Yet we know that the thoughts of the Greeks concerning the culture of the earth from which they came, were most often noble ones; and if we examine carefully the works of ancient art which represent him, the second thought will suggest itself, that there was nothing clumsy or coarse about this patron of the plough—something, rather, of the movement of delicate wind or fire, about him and his chariot. And this finer character is explained, if, as we ...
— Greek Studies: A Series of Essays • Walter Horatio Pater
... mosey along to-night so as to make it. I know the trail with my eyes shut." He was about to stride out of camp, when his eye caught Doctor Tom's old musket leaning against the tree. "You don't shoot with this?" he asked with a little, uneasy laugh, as he picked up the ancient piece and toyed with the lock. Boston laughingly replied, "Well, hardly," and the stranger replaced the gun, said "So long," and was lost in ...
— Bears I Have Met—and Others • Allen Kelly
... by the chimney-side with his finger in his Latin book, and his eyes set upon her face with a kind of pleasant intentness that became the old gentleman very well. If she wept, he would condole with her like an ancient man that has seen worse times and begins to think lightly even of sorrow; if she raged, he would fall to reading again in his Latin book, but always with some civil excuse; if she offered, as she often did, to let them have her money in a gift, he would show ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition, Vol. XII (of 25) - The Master of Ballantrae • Robert Louis Stevenson
... lady, "what blissful ignorance of the deeds of ancient heroes, of the noble achievements of great and good men, of the adventures of Marco Polo, and Magellan, and Vasco de Gama, over whose voyages you have so often and ...
— The Pirate City - An Algerine Tale • R.M. Ballantyne
... before, and accordingly looked about with interest and curiosity. The furniture, which had belonged to Pap's father-in- law, a Spanish-Californian, was of mahogany and horsehair, very good and substantial. In a bookcase were some ancient tomes bound in musty leather. A strange-looking piano, with a high back, covered with faded rose-coloured silk, stood in a corner. Some half a dozen daguerreotypes, a case of stuffed humming-birds, ...
— Bunch Grass - A Chronicle of Life on a Cattle Ranch • Horace Annesley Vachell
... other boys were listening to Peter's account of an incident which had occurred long ago *{Sir Thomas Carr's tour through Holland.} in a part of the city where stood an ancient castle, whose lord had tyrannized over the burghers of the town to such an extent that they surrounded his castle and laid siege to it. Just at the last extremity, when the haughty lord felt that he could hold out no longer and was ...
— Hans Brinker - or The Silver Skates • Mary Mapes Dodge
... submit to the consequences. We have just finished the perusal of a case in AEsop's Fables, exactly in point. It is the case of a trumpeter taken prisoner in battle. He claimed exemption from the common fate of prisoners of war, in ancient times, on the ground that he carried no weapons, and was, in fact, a non-combatant, belonging to the peace party! "Non-combatant, the Devil!" exclaimed the opposing party, pointing to his trumpet, as preparations ...
— Americanism Contrasted with Foreignism, Romanism, and Bogus Democracy in the Light of Reason, History, and Scripture; • William Gannaway Brownlow
... are now Anglo-Americans, Anglo-Africans, Anglo-Indians, Anglo-Australians, and Anglo-New-Zealanders. As the native Indians of America and the Maoris of New Zealand have given way before the onward push and persistence of the English, so likewise did the ancient Britons give way and were absorbed by the Anglo-Saxons; and then the Saxons, being a little too fine for the stern competitor, allowed the Engles to take charge. And as Dutch, Germans, Slavs and Swedes are transformed with the ...
— Little Journeys To The Homes Of Great Teachers • Elbert Hubbard
... around these sides is twenty feet in breadth, paved with tiles that have been worn into hollows by innumerable lazy footsteps, mostly shoeless, for this side of the house is frequented chiefly by the servants of the place, who are Mexican Indians. Ancient wooden settles are bolted to the walls; from hooks hang Indian baskets of bright colors; in one corner are stretched raw hides, which serve as beds. Small brown children, half naked, trot, clamber, and crawl about. Black-haired, swarthy women squat on the tiled floor, pursuing their vocations, ...
— The Golden Fleece • Julian Hawthorne
... The ancient city of Coventry stands upon a little hill, with old St. Michael's steeple and the spire of Holy Trinity church rising above it against the sky; and as the master-player and the boy came climbing upward from the south, walls, towers, chimneys, and red-tiled roofs were turned to ...
— Master Skylark • John Bennett
... relation that Jupiter had to Creation, but simply for the negative reason that they had nobody else)—never does Jupiter seem more disgusting than when as just now in a translation of the 'Batrachia' I read that Jupiter had given to frogs an amphibious nature, making the awful, ancient, first-born secrets of Chaos to be his, and thus forcing into contrast and ...
— The Posthumous Works of Thomas De Quincey, Vol. 1 (2 vols) • Thomas De Quincey
... a remarkably large and beautiful animal, entirely black, and sagacious to an astonishing degree. In speaking of his intelligence, my wife, who at heart was not a little tinctured with superstition, made frequent allusion to the ancient popular notion, which regarded all black cats as witches in disguise. Not that she was ever serious upon this point—and I mention the matter at all for no better reason than that it happens, just ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 2 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... preceding page is a sort of rude emblematic representation of such a trial, copied from a drawing in an ancient manuscript. We see the combatants in the foreground, with the judges and ...
— Margaret of Anjou - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... in the share. Many things have happened since," he said, "but once more the harvest means a great deal to both of us. Miss Lorimer—and we are now more fortunate, Ralph, than we were then—you will imagine yourself an ancient priestess, and bless the soil for us. That always struck me as an ...
— Lorimer of the Northwest • Harold Bindloss
... is another type that under varying forms and under various circumstances has ever trod the stage of Irish history. From an ancient Irish manuscript (See O'Curry, Manners and Customs, II, 79, 80) we learn that Adamnan, the biographer of St. Columcille, and some other youths studied at Clonard and were supported by the neighborhood. The poor scholar ...
— The Glories of Ireland • Edited by Joseph Dunn and P.J. Lennox
... instance among many of the harmonious relations of things throughout the universe. Thus we have Pythagoras described as soothing mental afflictions, and bodily ones also, by rhythmic measure and by song. With the morning's dawn he would be astir, harmonising his own spirit to his lyre, and chanting ancient hymns of the Cretan Thales, of Homer, and of Hesiod, till all the tremors of his soul ...
— A Short History of Greek Philosophy • John Marshall
... that ought to have been discussed in the late extraordinary convention of Louisiana, are: First, What ought the State of Louisiana to do to adopt her ancient system of labor to the present advanced spirit of the age? And Second, How can the State be assisted by the general government in effecting the change? But instead of this, the only question before that body was how to vindicate ...
— The Black Phalanx - African American soldiers in the War of Independence, the - War of 1812, and the Civil War • Joseph T. Wilson
... urge, Based on the ancient pinnacles, lo, newer, higher pinnacles, From science and the modern still impell'd, ...
— Leaves of Grass • Walt Whitman
... last learned the truth of that ancient and profound maxim, that "he who would aspire to govern, should first ...
— The Flag Replaced on Sumter - A Personal Narrative • William A. Spicer
... his "Social Life of the Chinese," describes the custom. I cannot now refer to native works where the practice of employing digital rug as a sign manual is alluded to. I doubt if its employment in the courts is of ancient date. Well-informed natives think that it came into vogue subsequent to the Han period; if so, it is in Egypt that earliest evidence of the practice is to be found. Just as the Chinese courts now require criminals ...
— Scientific American Supplement No. 360, November 25, 1882 • Various
... throne the fourteen-year-old emperor Heliogabalus, a worshiper of the Baal of Emesa. His intention was to give supremacy over all other gods to his barbarian divinity, who had heretofore been almost unknown. The ancient authors narrate with indignation how this crowned priest attempted to elevate his black stone, the coarse idol brought from Emesa, to the rank of supreme divinity of the empire by subordinating the whole ancient pantheon to it; they never tire of giving revolting details about the dissoluteness ...
— The Oriental Religions in Roman Paganism • Franz Cumont
... another, and there arranging it upon shelves. I suggested to Perry that we were in the public library of Phutra, but later, as he commenced to discover the key to their written language, he assured me that we were handling the ancient archives ...
— At the Earth's Core • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... that into one word I may crowd much feeling: (Forgive me, O God, All such speech-sinning!) —Sit I here the best of air sniffling, Paradisal air, truly, Bright and buoyant air, golden-mottled, As goodly air as ever From lunar orb downfell— Be it by hazard, Or supervened it by arrogancy? As the ancient poets relate it. But doubter, I'm now calling it In question: with this do I come indeed Out of Europe, That doubt'th more eagerly than doth any Elderly married woman. May the Lord improve ...
— Thus Spake Zarathustra - A Book for All and None • Friedrich Nietzsche
... apartments, not far from Gramercy Park. "The only fine, old-fashioned mansion I can think of, that would just suit you is Miss Theresa O'Reilly's—a patient of mine—when she's any one's patient. Do you know anything about the ancient dame?" ...
— The Lion's Mouse • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... they had done, and how they had done it, and why; with instances in which the execution of their plans had met with failure, the reasons for that failure, and the methods by which, if he had been them, success might easily have been attained. An ancient-looking apothecary, with an old "Rebel bushwhacker" and a painter out of work who "loafed" of evenings in, or in front of, the corner apothecary shop, had stood gap-mouthed at these recitations until the mine of wonders had been to the last grain exhausted. ...
— A Strange Discovery • Charles Romyn Dake
... all our young readers would make themselves acquainted with it. Jesus was a Jew; and the Jews had no dealings with the Samaritans. Weary with travelling in the heat of the day, our Lord sat down to rest by that ancient well, when the stranger woman came to draw water from it. Jesus said unto her, "Give me to drink." She was surprised that he, being a Jew, should ask water of her, a Samaritan. This very surprise which she expressed led ...
— Small Means and Great Ends • Edited by Mrs. M. H. Adams
... made in Rome, in the winter of 1900, by Signer Giorgi, the Librarian of the Royal Casanatense Library, in an ancient manuscript account of curious legal trials, among which were those of Beatrice Cenci, of Miguel de Molinos (in 1686), and of the trial and sentence of Guido Franceschini. The fact that taxes credulity in regard to this manuscript, of whose existence, even, no one in modern times had ...
— The Brownings - Their Life and Art • Lilian Whiting
... severely, Uhlig conceived the ingenious idea of using the parcel post for our correspondence. As only packets of a certain weight might be sent in this way, a German translation of Beaumarchais' Figaro, of which Uhlig possessed an ancient copy, enjoyed the singular destiny of acting as ballast for our letters to and fro. Every time, therefore, that our epistles had swelled, to the requisite length, we announced them with the words: ...
— My Life, Volume II • Richard Wagner
... in which the objects we have been mentioning were found, are the most ancient in Chaldaea—on this all the explorers are agreed. Their situation in the lowest part of the funerary mounds, the aspect of the characters engraved upon the cylinders and the style of the things they contained, all ...
— A History of Art in Chaldaea & Assyria, v. 1 • Georges Perrot
... these formidable stoups at Provost Haswell's, at Jedburgh, in the days of yore. It was a pewter measure, the claret being in ancient days served from the tap, and had the figure of a hen upon the lid. In later times, the name was given to a glass bottle of the same dimensions. These are rare apparitions among the degenerate ...
— Guy Mannering • Sir Walter Scott
... Zoroaster.—Like the ancient Aryans, they first adored the forces of nature, especially the sun (Mithra). Between the tenth and seventh[29] centuries before our era their religion was reformed by a sage, Zarathustra (Zoroaster). We know nothing certainly about him ...
— History Of Ancient Civilization • Charles Seignobos
... Newgate street to the crossing of Giltspur and the Old Bailey, the black arch of the ancient gate loomed grimly against the sky, its squinting window-slits peering down like the eyes of an old ogre. The bell of St. Sepulchre's was tolling, and there was a crowd about the door, which opened, letting out a black cart in which was a priest praying ...
— Master Skylark • John Bennett
... change. My mother was never well here; though, for the matter of that, she was never very well anywhere. I suppose it's the laboratory that attracts me here, as it did my father, playing with the ancient forces of the world in these Arcadian surroundings—Arcady without beauty or Arcadians." He glanced up at his mother's picture. "No, she never liked it—a ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... and two such young women handsomely gowned seemed to take the old hotel back a score of years—back to the times when such sights were of daily occurrence. The ancient greatness of the now dingy International ...
— A Gentleman from Mississippi • Thomas A. Wise
... where, now, two old bachelor brothers in broad hats (who are whispered in the Mint to have made a compact long ago that if either should ever marry, he must forfeit his share of the joint property) still keep a sequestered tavern, and sit o' nights smoking pipes in the bar, among ancient bottles and glasses, as ...
— Reprinted Pieces • Charles Dickens
... penitence: but they were absolutely rejected by Henry, who had ceased to dread his spiritual thunders. The parliament and the convocation showed themselves prepared to adopt, without hesitation, the numerous changes suggested by the king in the ancient ritual; and Cromwel, with influence not apparently diminished by the fall of the late patroness of the protestant party, presided in the latter assembly with the title of vicegerent, and with ...
— Memoirs of the Court of Queen Elizabeth • Lucy Aikin
... R.: As I clambered among the ruins of Heidelberg Castle today, I wished for each of my loved ones to come across old ocean and look upon the remains of ancient civilization—of art and architecture, bigotry and barbarism. I am enjoying my "flying," though I would not again make such a rush, but I am getting a good relish for a more deliberate tour at some later day. All of life should not be given ...
— The Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony (Volume 2 of 2) • Ida Husted Harper
... Lotus-land to the Viking. The great hills shut him in from the sight of the sea. He built himself a "seat," and enclosed "thwaites" of greater or less extent; and, forgetting the world in his green paradise, was for centuries almost forgotten by the world. And if long descent and an ancient family have any special claim to be held honorable, it is among the Cumberland "statesmen," or freeholders, it must ...
— The Squire of Sandal-Side - A Pastoral Romance • Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr
... the Old South Church, Boston; Bogue and Bennett's History of the Dissenters; Benedict's History of the Baptists; Life of Wesley; History of Methodism; Life of Whitefield; Millar's Life of Dr. Rodgers; Crantz's Ancient and Modern History of the Church of the United Brethren; Crantz's History of the Mission in Greenland; Loskiel's History of the North American Indian Missions; Oldendorp's History of the Danish Missions of the United Brethren; Choules' Origin and History of Missions. Those who have not ...
— A Practical Directory for Young Christian Females - Being a Series of Letters from a Brother to a Younger Sister • Harvey Newcomb
... over some ancient charters a few days ago, I met with one dated 22 Edw. III, by which "Willielmus de Bolton clericus et Goditha uxor ejus," release a claim to certain lands. If William de Bolton was an ecclesiastic, as I suppose, how is it that his ...
— Notes & Queries 1849.12.01 • Various
... dear colleague; that is the reason why you are an honorable savant and a fair-minded man.' Piqued by his ironic praise, Marmet thought of learning a little Etruscan. He read to his colleague a memoir on the part played by flexions in the idiom of the ancient Tuscans." ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... up his mind how to act. He would get to Avignon, and thence by express to Paris. The rapides from Marseilles and the Riviera all stopped at the ancient ...
— Mademoiselle of Monte Carlo • William Le Queux
... the seas the bare-browed dawn arose, While the last laggard drops ran off the eaves, He dressed, but took some customary garb On his arm; stole swiftly to the sands; and there Cast clown his garments by the ancient heap Of stones. At first brief pause he made, and thought: "And thus I play, to win perchance a tear From her whom, first, to save the smallest care, I thought I could have died!" But then at once Within the sweep ...
— Rose and Roof-Tree - Poems • George Parsons Lathrop
... taken such fast hold of by coming upon this thrilling wreck of ancient sea-battle, fought out fiercely to a finish generations before ever I was born, that for a little while I forgot my own troubles entirely; and so got over the shock which my first sight of the riddled sloop and her dead crew had given me by proving that again I had lost ...
— In the Sargasso Sea - A Novel • Thomas A. Janvier
... this subject. Let him know (what he will soon know to his mortification,) that there yet survives a veteran of the revolution—one whose mental faculties are undimmed by age—whose very physical frame, time has treated with tenderness and respect—whose keen and lively intelligence retains its ancient vigour—a Revolutionary soldier, who well knew Joseph Reed; who equally well knew George Washington; and who intends to give to the world, at no very distant day, his knowledge of them, ...
— Nuts for Future Historians to Crack • Various
... in the rain over a tomb. His sense of beauty is frail and midge-like compared with his sense of everlasting frustration. The conceptions in his novels are infinitely more poetic than the conceptions in his verse. In Tess and Jude destiny presides with something of the grandeur of the ancient gods. Except in The Dynasts and a few of the lyrics, there is none of this brooding majesty in his verse. And even in The Dynasts, majestic as the scheme of it is, there seems to me to be more creative imagination in the prose passages than ...
— Old and New Masters • Robert Lynd
... discarnate intelligences. Lombroso says, 'We find, as I already foresaw some years ago, that these materialized bodies belong to the radiant state of matter, which has now a sure foothold in science. This is the only hypothesis that can reconcile the ancient and universal belief in the persistence of some manifestation of life after death with the results of science.' He adds: 'These beings, or remnants of beings, would not be able to obtain complete consistency to incarnate themselves, if they did not temporarily borrow a part of the medium. But ...
— The Shadow World • Hamlin Garland
... another; "and if our skipper don't mind, it will be packing off her presently," with an emphasis on the word "off." "Right well do I know these Cape gales," adds an ancient mariner of the South Seas; "they snuffle up in a minute; and, I'll answer for it, the captain will not carry sail so long off Cape Aguilhas, when he has gone round that breezy point as often as old ...
— The Lieutenant and Commander - Being Autobigraphical Sketches of His Own Career, from - Fragments of Voyages and Travels • Basil Hall
... of bronze bells in Valencia as early as 622, and an ancient mortar was found near Monzon, in the ruins of a castle which had formerly belonged to the Arabs. Round the edge of this mortar was the inscription: "Complete blessing, and ever increasing happiness and prosperity of every kind and an elevated and happy social position for its ...
— Arts and Crafts in the Middle Ages • Julia De Wolf Addison
... after which they removed what remained for use on the morrow. As soon as the meats had been consumed, Alaeddin arose and stowed away under his clothes a platter of the platters and went forth to find the Jew, purposing to sell it to him; but by fiat of Fate he passed by the shop of an ancient jeweller, an honest man and a pious who feared Allah. When the Shaykh saw the lad, he asked him saying, "O my son, what dost thou want? for that times manifold have I seen thee passing hereby and having dealings with a Jewish man; and I have espied ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 3 • Richard F. Burton
... ancients in Greece and Rome knew nothing of this great law as we now know it. Aristotle, the embodiment of all that the ancient world knew of natural science, expressly taught that the lower forms of animals, such as fleas and worms, even mice and frogs, sprang up spontaneously from the moist earth. "All dry bodies," he declared, "which become damp, and all damp bodies which are dried, engender animal life." According to ...
— Q. E. D., or New Light on the Doctrine of Creation • George McCready Price
... Valleys, by subscription of his Devonshire tenants on the occasion of his marriage with the Lady Gertrude Semmering—no insignia were absent, save the family portraits in the gallery of Valleys House in London. There was even an ancient duplicate of that yellow tattered scroll royally, reconfirming lands and title to John, the most distinguished of all the Caradocs, who had unfortunately neglected to be born in wedlock, by one of those humorous omissions to be found in the genealogies ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... scowling at the distant group. MacLean, in his turn, looked curiously at his quondam companion of a sunny day in May, the would-be assassin with whom he had struggled in wind and rain beneath the thunders of an August storm. The trader wore his great wig, his ancient steinkirk of tawdry lace, his high boots of Spanish leather, cracked and stained. Between the waves of coarse hair, out of coal-black, deep-set eyes looked the soul of the half-breed, fierce, vengeful, ignorant, ...
— Audrey • Mary Johnston
... 'r would talk," said our ancient. "You can't tell nothin' about which-a-way a vein runs in this here hell's half-acre. Bart Blackwell's the whole show on the Lawrenceburg, and he's a hawg. He's the one that ran them Nebraska farmers off'm the Mary Mattock down yander: give 'em notice that he was goin' ...
— Branded • Francis Lynde
... rooms, with their floors of red Dutch tiles, their blue walls, their white-washed rafters, their doors and windows consisting of German shutters only, their ancient beds of portentous height, and their generally silent and haunted look, and then went to tiffin with Mr. and Mrs. Biggs. Mr. Biggs is a student of hymnology, and we were soon in full swing on this mutually congenial subject. Mrs. Biggs devotes her time and strength ...
— The Golden Chersonese and the Way Thither • Isabella L. Bird (Mrs. Bishop)
... et Tai (of the tribe of Tai), a famous poet of the first half of the ninth century and postmaster at Mosul under the Khalif Wathic Billah (commonly known as Vathek), A.D. 842-849. He was the compiler of the famous anthology of ancient Arabian poetry, known as ...
— The Book Of The Thousand Nights And One Night, Volume IV • Anonymous
... the ancient, who was conveniently deaf on a sudden. "Theer's been no such fine ripenin' weather for the wheat ...
— Aunt Rachel • David Christie Murray
... soft full voice, a native guide. For all around them lay an enchanted world as young as they—the world is never older than the young!—and they "had eyes and they saw; ears had they and they heard"—but not the dead echoes of that warning voice, alas! calling through the ancient wilderness ...
— The Firing Line • Robert W. Chambers
... upon him at the end of his Senior year. In the spring of 1889, he married Miss Osceola Pleasant of Augusta, Ga. He attended the American College, Athens, Greece, during 1890-91. Under his supervision the site of Ancient Eretria, now Nea Psara, on the island of Enbola, was excavated and in collaboration with Prof. John Pickard, the only extant map of this ancient city was made by him. All the places of classic note in Greece were visited and ...
— Twentieth Century Negro Literature - Or, A Cyclopedia of Thought on the Vital Topics Relating - to the American Negro • Various
... certain things rather than certain others does not prove that those things are desirable in any general sense. It does not prove that men ought to desire them. For that proof we must look in some other direction; and a critical scrutiny of the pleasures which moralists ancient and modern have generally accepted as "higher" reveals a common characteristic which explains their being thus classed together much better than the appeal to Mill's criterion. [Footnote: See chapter ...
— A Handbook of Ethical Theory • George Stuart Fullerton
... ability, legal knowledge, and trusty observance of our orders we have received many and genuine proofs, and especially commissioned them to compose by our authority and advice a book of Institutes, whereby you may be enabled to learn your first lessons in law no longer from ancient fables, but to grasp them by the brilliant light of imperial learning, and that your ears and minds may receive nothing useless or incorrect, but only what holds good in actual fact. And thus whereas in past ...
— The Institutes of Justinian • Caesar Flavius Justinian
... aware that there is a vast difference of opinion as to what progress really is; that many denounce the ideas of to-day as destructive of all happiness—of all good. I know that there are many worshipers of the past. They venerate the ancient because it is ancient. They see no beauty in anything from which they do not blow the dust of ages with the breath of praise. They say, no masters like the old; no religion, no governments like the ancient; no orators, no ...
— The Ghosts - And Other Lectures • Robert G. Ingersoll
... of especial interest to us are those which controlled theological thought in Chaldea. The Assyrian inscriptions which have been recently recovered and given to the English-speaking peoples by Layard, George Smith, Sayce, and others, show that in the ancient religions of Chaldea and Babylonia there was elaborated a narrative of the creation which, in its most important features, must have been the source of that in our own sacred books. It has now become perfectly clear that from the same sources ...
— History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom • Andrew Dickson White
... ancient Apethorpe, the ancestral seat of the Earls of Westmorland, lay the long, straggling, and rather poverty-stricken village of Woodnewton. Like many other Northamptonshire villages, it consisted of one long street of cottages, many of them ...
— The House of Whispers • William Le Queux
... Craig replied that he did, and the utmost amicability was restored by the purchase of the Green Book of the Guru, which seemed to deal with everything under the sun, and particularly the revival of ancient Asiatic fire-worship with many forms and ceremonies, together with posturing and breathing that rivalled the "turkey trot," the "bunny hug," and the "grizzly bear." The book, as we turned, over its pages, gave directions for preparing everything from food to love-philtres and the ...
— The Poisoned Pen • Arthur B. Reeve
... condition. With manufacture and commerce it stood not a whit better. What little there was, was in the hands of the Jews and foreigners, the nobles not being allowed to meddle with such base matters, and the degraded descendants of the industrious and enterprising ancient burghers having neither the means nor the spirit to undertake anything of the sort. Hence the strong contrast of wealth and poverty, luxury and distress, that in every part of Poland, in town and country, struck so forcibly and painfully all foreign travellers. Of the Polish provinces ...
— Frederick Chopin as a Man and Musician - Volume 1-2, Complete • Frederick Niecks
... for the picturesque; nay, that it was a sense utterly unawakened amongst them; and that the very conception of the picturesque, as of a thing distinct from the beautiful, is not once alluded to through the whole course of ancient literature, nor would it have been intelligible to any ancient critic; so that, whatever attraction for the eye might exist in the Rome of that day, there is little doubt that it was of a kind to be felt only by modern spectators. Mere dissatisfaction with its external ...
— The Caesars • Thomas de Quincey
... shout, interrupted their cries, "You ignorant child of wrath!" he ejaculated; "how many old writers can you know, and how many stanzas of ancient poetical works can you remember, that you will have the boldness to show off in the presence of all these experienced gentlemen? (In allowing you to give vent to) all the nonsense you uttered my object was no other than to see ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin |
