"Pagan" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... silence there was what most haunted me. Long, speechless streets, whose stepping-stones invite Feet which shall never come; to left and right Gay colonnades and courts,—beyond, the glee, Heartless, of that forgetful Pagan sea. O'er roofless homes and waiting streets, the light Lies with a pathos sorrowfuler than night. Fancy forbids this doom of Life with Death Wedded; and with a wand restores the Life. The jostling throngs swarm, animate, beneath The open shops, and all ...
— Cambridge Sketches • Frank Preston Stearns
... The shadows were deep and mysterious, the rays of light which pierced the foliage, already touched by the finger of autumn, seemed like shafts of moonlight shining through the storied windows of a cathedral. A mixed sentiment, partly Pagan, partly Christian, seemed to emanate from this sylvan retreat, as from a mythological picture painted ...
— The Child of Pleasure • Gabriele D'Annunzio
... done as the Mongolian laundryman dampens our linen: by taking the mouth full of water and spouting it over the convert's head in a fine spray. If so, it follows that the pastor having most "cheek" is best qualified for cleansing the pagan soul. ...
— The Fiend's Delight • Dod Grile
... the two matched each other like the candlesticks on an altar. The Duchess—you've seen her portrait—but to hear my grandmother, sir, it no more approached her than a weed comes up to a rose. The Cavaliere, indeed, as became a poet, paragoned her in his song to all the pagan goddesses of antiquity; and doubtless these were finer to look at than mere women; but so, it seemed, was she; for, to believe my grandmother, she made other women look no more than the big French fashion-doll ...
— Crucial Instances • Edith Wharton
... the last. This virtue is cultivated to a degree that is remarkable, and has produced singular and favorable results on the national character, which it is hoped may be imparted to the land to which they are flocking in such multitudes. For with all their peculiarities of pagan philosophy and their oriental eccentricities of custom and practical life, they are everywhere renowned for their uniform and elegant courtesy—a most commendable virtue, and one arising from habitual deference to the aged more than from any ...
— The American Woman's Home • Catherine E. Beecher and Harriet Beecher Stowe
... the forest, and the author has endeavored to justify him in his outrages. The former found it easier to exterminate than to civilize, the latter to vilify than to discriminate. The appellations of "savage" and "pagan" were deemed sufficient to sanction the hostilities of both; and thus the poor wanderers of the forest were persecuted and defamed, not because they were guilty, but because ...
— Types of Children's Literature • Edited by Walter Barnes
... advancing troops; which is generally effected by the panic among the boys, occasioned by the savage aspect of the pioneers,—their faces being hideously painted, and their dress consisting of gleanings from every costume, Christian, Pagan, and Turkish, known among men. As the body passes through the different streets, the martial men receive sundry testimonials of regard and approval in the shape of boquets and wreaths from the fair 'Peruvians,' who of course bestow them on those who, ...
— A Collection of College Words and Customs • Benjamin Homer Hall
... inquired," he said lightly; "but I am inclined to think she is. She is certainly not a pagan." ...
— The Wizard's Daughter and Other Stories • Margaret Collier Graham
... some subtlety of logic in the Christian world, it has come to be believed that there can be no love outside the conventional process of courtship and marriage. One life, one love, is the Christian idea, and into this sluice or mold it has been endeavoring to compress the whole world. Pagan thought held no such belief. A writing of divorce for trivial causes was the theory of the elders; and in the primeval world nature apparently holds no scheme for the unity of two beyond the temporary ...
— The Financier • Theodore Dreiser
... babbling but truth-telling beaches record. No rocky cove, no smooth strand, no rubbish-accumulating creek, no mangrove-fringed islet, no coral esplanade white under the tropic sun, no sand-bank with crest of windshaken bush, is free. It is Christmas. Christian and pagan alike tell it to the sea, and the sea tells it to ...
— Tropic Days • E. J. Banfield
... themselves more zealous to recast French society in its old mould, and so to restore their church to its former place there, than to reform and purify the moral condition of souls. Here was a profound mistake. The Christian Church is not like the pagan Antaeus, who renews his strength by touching the earth; it is on the contrary, by detaching itself from the world, and re-ascending towards heaven, that the Church in its hours of peril regains its vigour. When we saw it depart from ...
— Memoirs To Illustrate The History Of My Time - Volume 1 • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... history of religion could not start from a definition of that kind. It would have to keep in view, not the philosophical notion of God, but the conceptions of the gods as they appear in the religion of antiquity. Hence I came to define atheism in Pagan antiquity as the point of view which denies the existence of the ancient gods. It is in this sense that the word will be used in the ...
— Atheism in Pagan Antiquity • A. B. Drachmann
... infatuation. The fact is, that they said things fit to astonish a cardinal. Mothers triumphed greatly over their little ones after the Egyptians had read in their hands all sorts of marvels written in pagan and in Turkish. One had an emperor; another, a pope; another, a captain. Poor Chantefleurie was seized with curiosity; she wished to know about herself, and whether her pretty little Agnes would not become some day Empress of Armenia, or something else. So she carried her to the Egyptians; and ...
— Notre-Dame de Paris - The Hunchback of Notre Dame • Victor Hugo
... as strongly marked as with the Tatars, in their original ancestors from Asia. Most of them are baptized into the Russian faith, and their villages have Russian churches. Nevertheless, along with their native tongue they are believed to retain many of their ancient pagan customs and superstitions, although baptism is in no sense compulsory. The priest in our friends' village, who had lived among them, had told us that such is the case. But he had also declared that ...
— Russian Rambles • Isabel F. Hapgood
... he remained after all a stranger) and pure, biblical Christianity. Could it be a union? Not really. In Erasmus's mind the light falls, just as we saw in the history of his career, alternately on the pagan antique and on the Christian. But the warp of his mind is Christian; his classicism only serves him as a form, and from Antiquity he only chooses those elements which in ethical tendency are in conformity with his ...
— Erasmus and the Age of Reformation • Johan Huizinga
... the pagan mysteries into lower and more literal forms, the Ivy preserved two meanings. It was already the vine of life, and the early Christians laid it in the coffins of their departed, as the emblem of a new life in Christ.[4] It had hung upon ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 3, No. 1 January 1863 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... priest beheld the bridal group before the altar stand, And sigh'd as he drew forth his book with slow reluctant hand: He saw the bride's flow'r-wreathed hair, and mark'd her streaming eyes, And deem'd it less a Christian rite than a Pagan sacrifice; And when he call'd on Abraham's God to bless the wedded pair, It seem'd a very mockery to breathe so vain ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 12, - Issue 344 (Supplementary Issue) • Various
... herself. When asked what she meant, she was smilingly vague, with a glance at Edith's youngsters. But she threw out hints about the church and even Christianity, as though it were falling to pieces. She spoke of a second Renaissance, "a glorious pagan era" coming. And then she exploded a little bomb by inquiring ...
— His Family • Ernest Poole
... a debt of gratitude to its pagan forbears for the pleasant features of many of its holidays and especially for those of Yule-tide. The Fathers of the early church showed rare wisdom in retaining the customs of these ante-Christian festivals, imbuing them with the spirit of the ...
— Yule-Tide in Many Lands • Mary P. Pringle and Clara A. Urann
... prehistoric races which in early ages successively inhabited the northern end of the Scottish mainland may have been, we can now hardly imagine. Dr. Joseph Anderson's classical volumes[1] on Scotland in Pagan Times tell us something, indeed all that can now be known, of some of them, and in the Royal Commission's[2] Reports and Inventories of the Early Monuments of Sutherland and of Caithness respectively, Mr. Curle has classified their visible remains, and may, let us hope, with the aid ...
— Sutherland and Caithness in Saga-Time - or, The Jarls and The Freskyns • James Gray
... the state of the capital of Constantine had been totally changed, and unspeakably to its advantage. The world was now Christian, and, with the Pagan code, had got rid of its load of disgraceful superstition. Nor is there the least doubt, that the better faith produced its natural and desirable fruits in society, in gradually ameliorating the hearts, and taming ...
— Waverley Volume XII • Sir Walter Scott
... his adversary, and methodically chops him to pieces with his hatchet. Then the press roars about the brutal ferocity of the pagan. ...
— American Notes • Rudyard Kipling
... by McKennan, as quoted by Mr. Wake, in 'Anthropologia,' Oct. 1873, p. 75.) Mr. Winwood Reade made inquiries for me with respect to the negroes of Western Africa, and he informs me that "the women, at least among the more intelligent Pagan tribes, have no difficulty in getting the husbands whom they may desire, although it is considered unwomanly to ask a man to marry them. They are quite capable of falling in love, and of forming tender, passionate, and faithful attachments." Additional ...
— The Descent of Man and Selection in Relation to Sex • Charles Darwin
... what course he should pursue. Hugh promptly relieved him. Shaking his head vigorously, he pointed to the stone image, signifying that there were to be no more salutations bestowed upon it, all homage being due to himself and the lady. The fickle pagan, after a waning look of love for their renounced idol, proceeded to treat it with scorn by devoting himself entirely to the usurpers. He brought cocoanut shells filled with cool water, and the thirsty ...
— Nedra • George Barr McCutcheon
... stricken to death, but he would not fall unavenged. With his great sword Hautclere he smote the Caliph on his head and cleft it to the teeth. "Curse on you, pagan. Neither your wife nor any woman in the land of your birth shall boast that you have taken a penny's worth from King Charles!" But to Roland he cried, "Come, comrade, help me; well I know that we two shall part in great sorrow ...
— Heroes Every Child Should Know • Hamilton Wright Mabie
... in his satire. The Sixth Epistle of the First Book of Horace, which Pope attempts to imitate, is, as Mr. Courthope observes, 'incapable of imitation. Its humour, no less than its philosophy, belongs entirely to the Pagan World.' In a general sense it is also true that Horace's style, whether of language or of thought, will not bear transplanting. Indeed, whatever is most characteristic and most exquisite in a poet's work is precisely ...
— The Age of Pope - (1700-1744) • John Dennis
... realize that she was as changeable as a chameleon. One moment she could be like the sirocco in warmth and languor, the next as sparkling as the sunlit ocean. Again she could be steeped in a dreamy abstraction or alive with a pagan joy of life. She might have been sixteen or thirty, as her mood chanced to affect her. Of all the crossed strains that go to make up the Sicilian race she had inherited more of the Oriental than the Greek or Roman. Somewhere back in the Ginini family there ...
— The Net • Rex Beach
... Still when pagan peoples sever Railway line and telegraph Thou shalt keep thy staunch endeavour, Thou shalt scatter us like chaff. Still, O goddess of the Prussians, Thou shalt sound thy trump of tin Undeterred by rude concussions While the ...
— Punch or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, September 23, 1914 • Various
... maintained an unblemished character. A short time ago I took down from his own lips the story of his life, or I might rather say of his two lives; so great a contrast does the latter half of his life present to the former. The one is the life of the ignorant and corrupt Pagan, the other that of the humble follower and devoted disciple of the Lord Jesus. All who know Peniamina would concur in this testimony that he is one of the brightest gems that has been won for Christ in Samoa. His praise is in all the churches. ...
— Fruits of Toil in the London Missionary Society • Various
... an enterprise worthy of gallant knights and to open to you a new field of action. In Spain both glory and profit await you. You will there find a rich and avaricious king who possesses great treasures, and is the ally of the Saracens; in fact, is half a pagan himself. We propose to conquer his kingdom and to bestow it on the Count of Trastamara, an old comrade of yours, a good lance, as you all know, and a gentle and generous knight, who will share with you his land when you win it for him from the Jews and Moslems of that wicked ...
— Historical Tales - The Romance of Reality - Volume VII • Charles Morris
... last berth in the ship he had meant to sail by, and so escaped the fate of the crew and passengers when it went down with all on board—no "special providence" saving them. It looks like a reflection of the pagan mythological tales about heroes rescued by the timely interference of gods and goddesses in battles where thousands of common mortals perish unheeded. It is the aristocratic idea of privilege carried up to religion. The newer view is more ...
— Problems of Immanence - Studies Critical and Constructive • J. Warschauer
... anchorite or monk. If you would estimate the power of such a conception and the grandeur of the transformation it imposes on human faculties and habits, read, in turn, the great Christian poem and the great pagan poem, one the 'Divine Comedy' and the other the 'Odyssey' and the 'Iliad.' Dante has a vision and is transported out of our little ephemeral sphere into eternal regions; he beholds its tortures, its expiations and its felicities; he ...
— The Aldine, Vol. 5, No. 1., January, 1872 - A Typographic Art Journal • Various
... basilei, chamai pese daidalos aula; ouketi Phoibos echei kaluban, ou mantida daphnen, ou pagan laleousan; apesbeto ...
— Poems & Ballads (Second Series) - Swinburne's Poems Volume III • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... to one of the oldest families in England, and traced her descent to Pagan de Villiers, in the days of William Rufus, and a good deal farther among the nobles of Normandy. She was the daughter of William, second Viscount Grandison, and rejoiced in the appropriate name of Barbara, for she could be savage occasionally. She ...
— The Wits and Beaux of Society - Volume 1 • Grace Wharton and Philip Wharton
... grows old, The Shepherd pipes his sundered Flocks to Fold, Your Garments quail and ripple in the Chill, Your pagan ...
— The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam Jr. (The Rubiyt of Omar Khayym Jr.) • Wallace Irwin
... stand with the Indian before the judgment bar of God, our position will be worse than that of the Indian. It seems to me that I can hear what the Judge would say to him at that time. The Indian comes before God, a pagan from a Christian land; he comes having improved none of the powers that God gave him. The Lord might say to him: "Did I not give you as good opportunities and as good capacities as the white man in whose midst you were? ...
— The American Missionary - Volume 42, No. 1, January 1888 • Various
... these taught orally. Then came Hippocrates, the eighteenth from Aesculapius, and of him we have manuscripts; to him we owe 'the vital principle.' He also invented the bandage, and tapped for water on the chest; and above all he dissected; yet only quadrupeds, for the brutal prejudices of the pagan vulgar withheld the human body from the knife of science. Him followed Aristotle, who gave us the aorta, the largest blood-vessel in ...
— The Cloister and the Hearth • Charles Reade
... married Rowena the daughter of Hengist the Saxon prince, his mortal enemy; but wherefore? she had Kent for her dowry. Iagello the great Duke of Lithuania, 1386, was mightily enamoured on Hedenga, insomuch that he turned Christian from a Pagan, and was baptised himself by the name of Uladislaus, and all his subjects for her sake: but why was it? she was daughter and heir of Poland, and his desire was to have both kingdoms incorporated into one. Charles the Great was an earnest suitor to Irene the ...
— The Anatomy of Melancholy • Democritus Junior
... children to devour their parents. I do not complain." I think he was aware he was playing a part; his sofa was his stage; and he lay there theatrical as Leo XI. or Beerbohm Tree, saying that the Roman Church was an artistic church, that its rich externality and ceremonial were pagan. But I think he knew even then, at the back of his mind, that I was right; that is why he pressed me to give reasons for my preference. Zola came to hate Catholicism as much as I, and his hatred was ...
— Confessions of a Young Man • George Moore
... have made for her a secure place in current literature, where she can stand fast.... Her latest production, 'A Puritan Pagan,' is an eminently clever story, in the best sense of ...
— The Faith Doctor - A Story of New York • Edward Eggleston
... a height, that (according to the report, of several among his friends) had either Dr. Johnson, or Cowper, the poet—the two contemporary authors whom most he reverenced—happened to visit Greenhay, he might have been tempted to express his homage through the Pagan fashion of raising altars and burning incense, or of sacrificing, if not an ox, yet, at least, a baron of beef. The latter mode of idolatry Dr. Sam, would have approved, provided always that the nidor were irreproachable, and that the ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Vol. 2, No. 8, January, 1851 • Various
... Bemoin's gentlemen received baptism after him. This is the account of his reception. "Bemoin, because he was a man of large size and fine presence, about forty years old, with a long and well-arranged beard, appeared indeed not like a barbarous pagan, but as one of our own princes, to whom all honour and reverence were due. With equal majesty and gravity of demeanour he commenced and finished his oration, using such inducements to make men bewail his sad fortune ...
— The Life of Columbus • Arthur Helps
... with old-fashioned Christianity or Methodism. They wanted preachers who would openly assail the doctrine of the divine or special inspiration of the Bible, and the supernatural origin of Christianity, and try to bring people down or up to the pagan or infidel level ...
— Modern Skepticism: A Journey Through the Land of Doubt and Back Again - A Life Story • Joseph Barker
... The columns of several pagan temples reminded the travelers that this lovely city was the home of Philip, the son of Herod the Great. He had spent much money to make it beautiful. But the disciples found ...
— Men Called Him Master • Elwyn Allen Smith
... is unknown among the pagan Manbos, but the Christianized members of the tribe who have come under the influence of culture of a different stamp, have acquired a knowledge of its practice for the purpose of concealing their condition and of thereby avoiding subsequent ...
— The Manbos of Mindano - Memoirs of the National Academy of Sciences, Volume XXIII, First Memoir • John M. Garvan
... with a lazy sense of proprietorship in the man, as my chauffeur related the pretty legend of St. Agnes's ruined castle and the handsome Pagan who had loved the Christian maiden; while he described the exquisite walks to be found up hidden valleys among the serrated mountains behind Mentone; and enlarged upon the charms of picnics with donkeys and lunch-baskets ...
— My Friend the Chauffeur • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... he had shelved the project of Christianizing the natives, although one of his first acts had been to abolish their pagan sects. He had told himself at first that it was best to wait until he had put down from memory the salient parts of the Holy Bible—Genesis, say, the better-known Psalms, and a condensed version of the Gospels; leaving out all the begats, and the Jewish tribal ...
— The Worshippers • Damon Francis Knight
... should be told that the sentimental love of our day was unknown to the pagan world, he would not cite last the two lovers, Antony and Cleopatra, and the will of the powerful Roman general, in which he expressed the desire, wherever he might die, to be buried beside the woman whom he loved to his latest ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... view as theirs of God's constant and clear guidance of Israel and of the nation's obstinacy in relapsing from this. His heart, too, must have hailed the Book's august enforcement of that abolition of the high places and their pagan ritual, which he had ventured to urge from his obscure position in Anathoth. Nor did he ever throughout his ministry protest against the substitute which the Book prescribed for those—the concentration of the national worship upon ...
— Jeremiah • George Adam Smith
... is man, to pretend to infallibility! His heart, be he pope or pagan, is 'deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked.' Pope Sixtus V in 1589 issued his infallible Bible; but the edition of Clement VIII, in 1592, differs much from that of 1589. Infallibles ought never to differ with each other; but how ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... protection afforded by a thunderbolt that where the lightning has once struck it never strikes again; the bolt already buried in the soil seems to preserve the surrounding place from the anger of the deity. Old and pagan in their nature as are these beliefs, they yet survive so thoroughly into Christian times that I have seen a stone hatchet built into the steeple of a church to protect it from lightning. Indeed, steeples have always of course attracted the electric discharge to a singular ...
— Falling in Love - With Other Essays on More Exact Branches of Science • Grant Allen
... conjurings and the art of spectacle. There was a great car drawn by milk-white oxen; in the front were ranged sheaves of golden grain, while at the back shepherds and shepherdesses posed with scenic graces. The whole mummery was pagan. It was a bringing back of Cerealia and Thesmophoria to earth. It stands as the most disgusting and ...
— Critical Miscellanies (Vol. 1 of 3) - Essay 1: Robespierre • John Morley
... pleasing demeanor is often the scales by which the pagan weighs the Christian. It is not virtue, but virtue inspires it. There are circumstances in which it takes a great and strong soul to pass under the little yoke of courtesy, but it is a passport ...
— Searchlights on Health: Light on Dark Corners • B.G. Jefferis
... measure has return'd to these 17 Whose Pagan hands had stain'd the troubled seas; With ships they made the spoiled merchant mourn; With ships their city and themselves are torn. One squadron of our winged castles sent, O'erthrew their fort, ...
— Poetical Works of Edmund Waller and Sir John Denham • Edmund Waller; John Denham
... might be in the poorhouse. When the end of the next week came, he would send the wife meat, and would give the children bread, and would despise himself for doing so. In matters of religion he was an old Pagan, going to no place of worship, saying no prayer, believing in no creed,—with some vague idea that a supreme power would bring him right at last, if he worked hard, robbed no one, fed his wife and children, and paid his way. To pay his way was the pride of his heart; ...
— The Vicar of Bullhampton • Anthony Trollope
... would open your mind to the truth. St. Paul sanctified union between Christian and pagan, and deemed the unbelieving wife sanctified by the believing husband. There can be no sin, therefore, despite my poor mother's violent opinions, in the union of those who worship the same God, and whose creed differs only in particulars. 'How knowest thou, O man, whether thou shalt save thy ...
— London Pride - Or When the World Was Younger • M. E. Braddon
... a blot upon the splendour of Oxford and Cambridge that both of them, in a Christian land, make Paley the foundation of their ethics; the alternative being Aristotle. And, in our mind, though far inferior as a moralist to the Stoics, Aristotle is often less a pagan than Paley. ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 57, No. 351, January 1845 • Various
... impressive and unusual in his character has room to show itself; and there are no rival forces. And yet—I doubt very much whether it would answer his purpose that she should see much of his home. She will never endure any home of her own run on the same lines; for at bottom she is a pagan, with the splendid pagan virtues, of honor, fairness, loyalty, pity, but incapable by temperament of those particular emotions on which the life of Hoddon Grey is based. Humility, to her, is a word ...
— The Coryston Family • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... this is so delicate a subject, and our ideas are so different about it. I can not change mine; I must leave you yours. As for me, I am a very pagan." ...
— Monsieur de Camors, Complete • Octave Feuillet
... named Cosmas, who had journeyed to India, and was accordingly known as COSMAS INDICOPLEUSTES, wrote, about 540 A.D., a work entitled "Christian Topography," to confound what he thought to be the erroneous views of Pagan authorities about the configuration of the world. What especially roused his ire was the conception of the spherical form of the earth, and of the Antipodes, or men who could stand upside down. He drew a picture of a round ball, with ...
— The Story of Geographical Discovery - How the World Became Known • Joseph Jacobs
... the May-pole is no more than a pagan thing, an idol to encourage to vanity and profane dancing," said a sour-faced man, who had been standing ...
— Fifty-Two Stories For Girls • Various
... so favourable to the stories that end unhappily. And we beg leave to reinforce this inference from them, that if the temporary sufferings of the virtuous and the good can be accounted for and justified on Pagan principles, many more and infinitely stronger reasons will occur to a Christian reader in behalf of what are called unhappy catastrophes, from the consideration of the doctrine of future rewards; which is every where strongly enforced in the ...
— Clarissa Harlowe, Volume 9 (of 9) - The History Of A Young Lady • Samuel Richardson
... hand as they close over the morsel of bread. In the gray dawn he is roused from his bivouac by the gentle stir of a warm, sweet breath over his sleeping face, and looks up into the eyes of his faithful fellow-traveller, ready and waiting for the toil of the day. Surely, unless he is a pagan and an unbeliever, by whatever name he calls upon his God, he will thank Him for this voiceless sympathy, this dumb affection, and his morning prayer will embrace a double blessing—God bless us both, and keep our feet from falling and ...
— The Story of the Other Wise Man • Henry Van Dyke
... tell you that since our Lord God did mould with his hands our first Father Adam, even until this day, never hath there been Christian, or Pagan, or Tartar, or Indian, or any man of any nation, who in his own person hath had so much knowledge and experience of the divers parts of the World and its Wonders as hath had this Messer Marco! And for that reason he bethought himself ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo Volume 1 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa
... prophets and bards had foretold, went majestically forward. The fountains of the frozen North were opened, the waters prevailed, but the ark of Christianity floated upon the flood. As the deluge assuaged, the earth had returned to chaos, the last pagan empire had been washed out of existence, but the dimly, groping, faltering, ignorant infancy ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... the "Common-Prayer priests" obscure, they must have thought him sevenfold so. Instead of doctrines and such pagan things, he talked solemnly of "centring down"; "being renewedly made sensible"; "having his mind drawn to this and that thing"; "feeling himself dipped into deep baptism"; "feeling a sense of duty"; and of "seeing, or not seeing his way clear" into this or that matter. But his master ...
— Stories of Comedy • Various
... Elizabethan drama. Religious controversy had played a part in the drama of the reign of Edward and Mary, but it rarely enters the Elizabethan drama, and then mainly in the form of ridicule for the puritan. Shakespeare's plays seem almost to ignore the most momentous facts of his time. They treat pagan, Catholic, and Protestant with cordiality and only smile at the puritan or Brownist. His England of the merry wives or Falstaff's justices seems strangely untroubled by questions of faith or ritual. There is, to be sure, plenty of ...
— The Facts About Shakespeare • William Allan Nielson
... part to meet no more This side the misty Stygian river, Be sure of this: On yonder shore Sweet cheer awaiteth such as we— A Sabine pagan's heaven, O friend— And fellowship that knows ...
— Echoes from the Sabine Farm • Roswell Martin Field and Eugene Field
... to go to pagan antiquity for guidance and example when we have near at hand the glorious precedent of Charles V., the greatest of kings, who taught at last by experience, abandoned the bloody path of persecution, ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... that sacrifice the drink-offering, the outpoured wine, is his own life-blood, his martyrdom for the Gospel which he has preached to them. Cp. Num. xv. 5 for the Mosaic libation, oinon eis sponden . . . poisete epi tes holokautoseos. Lightfoot thinks that a reference to pagan libations is more likely in a letter to a Gentile mission. But surely St Paul familiarized all his converts with Old Testament symbolism. And his own mind was of course full of it (Note here in The Cambridge Greek Testament for Schools).—This ...
— Philippian Studies - Lessons in Faith and Love from St. Paul's Epistle to the Philippians • Handley C. G. Moule
... you will forgive the expression, to be more than half a Pagan; to put Christianity on a level—though you allow it a certain pre-eminence—with other refining influences. You spoke of art and poetry as if they could bring men to God, and that in spite of the fact that, as I reminded you, there ...
— Beside Still Waters • Arthur Christopher Benson
... Roman emperor from 248 to 251 famous for having persecuted the Christians. He was unable to tolerate their refusal to join in communal corporate pagan observances. He insisted that they do so and once they had done it, a Certificate of Sacrifice ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 3 (of 6) - The French Revolution, Volume 2 (of 3) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... Mr. Paris, grandpa, and I, started off on a long ride, to visit Hoonaunau, the city of refuge, a place to which people could flee, if they had committed any crime, or displeased any chief, and be protected by the priests. This was in old pagan times; they are not used ...
— Scenes in the Hawaiian Islands and California • Mary Evarts Anderson
... replied that the Bible must not be interpreted by laymen, and that the Church had alone the power to explain it. I observed that the Church of Christ had ever explained it exactly as I did, and to that Church I belonged; that the system which he called 'The Church,' was built up at Rome by pagan priests, and had ever since been employed in adding falsehood to falsehood, for the sake of imposing on the minds of the people, and compelling them to do their will; and that, if he wished to serve Christ, he must leave ...
— Villegagnon - A Tale of the Huguenot Persecution • W.H.G. Kingston
... Workers stream from dilapidated gates. A weary person moves quietly in a round tower. A hearse crawls along the street, two steeds out front, Soft as a worm and weak. And over all lies an old rag— The sky... pagan and meaningless. ...
— The Verse of Alfred Lichtenstein • Alfred Lichtenstein
... them submission and devotion; all, in short, that the old-fashioned believers in the Fifth Commandment thought to be due from a daughter. If you are striving after a noble life you must give all this,—if you owe allegiance to either the Christian ideal of love or to the Pagan one of strength. "If a man love not his brother whom he hath seen, how can he love God Whom he hath not seen?" and, equally, if he love not his brother close at hand, how can he love brethren afar off? It is a poor sort of love which lavishes itself on self-chosen and, therefore, less irritating ...
— Stray Thoughts for Girls • Lucy H. M. Soulsby
... stirred in a quarter of a mile. During this interval I have to direct your sympathies on the Vicomte de Saint-Yves! All addressed me softly, like folk round a sick-bed. Our Italian corporal, who had got a dozen of oysters from a fishwife, laid them at my feet, as though I were a Pagan idol; and I have never since been wholly at my ease in the society of shellfish. He who was the best of our carvers brought me a snuff-box, which he had just completed, and which, while it was yet ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 20 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... last night in my sleep by one whom I presently recognised as the famous Adept and Mystic of the first century of our era, Apollonius of Tyana, called the " Pagan Christ." He was clad in a grey linen robe with a hood, like that of a monk, and had a smooth, beardless face, and seemed to be between forty and fifty years of age. He made himself known to me by asking if I had heard of his lion.* He commenced by speaking ...
— Dreams and Dream Stories • Anna (Bonus) Kingsford
... preached of; but there is an immortality of which I am sure; it is that of the race," she makes an intellectual somersault from the twelfth century into the nineteenth, and never gets back firmly on her pagan feet again. As Brandes wittily observes: "People who talk like that do not torture their enemy to death; ...
— Essays on Scandinavian Literature • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen
... still remain, preserved to us by accident in the great European libraries; but most of them were destroyed by the monks. Their contents were found to relate chiefly to the pagan ritual, to traditions of the heathen times, to astrological superstitions, and the like. Hence, they were considered deleterious, ...
— The Books of Chilan Balam, the Prophetic and Historic Records of the Mayas of Yucatan • Daniel G. Brinton
... Some would say that the moon is so drawn to reproduce some lunar deity: it would be more correct to say that the lunar deity was created through this human likeness. Sir Thomas Browne remarks, "The sun and moon are usually described with human faces: whether herein there be not a pagan imitation, and those visages at first implied Apollo and Diana, we may make some doubt." [11] Brand, in quoting Browne, adds, "Butler asks a shrewd question on this head, which I do not remember to have ...
— Moon Lore • Timothy Harley
... lowest individual can put a petition into the hands of the chief magistrate, be he king or emperor: let us hope, that the time will yet come when Englishmen will be able to do the same. In the meanwhile I beg you to despise these worse than pagan parasites. ...
— Advice to Young Men • William Cobbett
... of Morals, vol. ii, p. 318), brings together instances of women, in both Pagan and early Christian times, who showed their modesty by drawing their garments around them, even at the moment that they were being brutally killed. Plutarch, in his essay on the "Virtues of Women,"—moralizing on the well-known story of the ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 1 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... the fragments of ancient sculpture brought from Rome and from Greece; and in the Gothic cloister enclosing the green sward and dark cypresses of the grave-yard of Pisa, the art of the Middle Ages came for the first time face to face with the art of antiquity. There, among pagan sarcophagi turned into Christian tombs, with heraldic devices chiselled on to their arabesques and vizored helmets surmounting their garlands, the great unsigned artist of the fourteenth century, be he Sienese or Florentine, be he Orcagna, Lorenzetti, ...
— The Contemporary Review, Volume 36, September 1879 • Various
... its hundred brazen feet towered superbly above port and town, and then it was partly destroyed by an earthquake. For nearly a thousand years the sacred image remained unmolested where it had fallen, by Greek and Roman, Pagan and Christian; but at last the Saracen owners of Rhodes, caring as little for its religious association as for its classic antiquity, sold the brass of it for the great sum of L36.000, to ...
— Illustrated Science for Boys and Girls • Anonymous
... Paper without wishing, that we had some of this Breed of Dogs in Great Britain, which would certainly do Justice, I should say Honour, to the Ladies of our Country, and shew the World the difference between Pagan Women and those who are instructed in sounder Principles ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... Greek, with wave of hand, Showed the swart pagan at his side; So, motioning to the gathered band, That none could choose but understand, "Let this man drink," he said, ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 26, August, 1880 - of Popular Literature and Science • Various
... sunset music is, I think, a relic of very old times, and it jars on the nerves like the despairing howl of ancient Persia, protesting against the innovation from the pomp and din and glamour of her old pagan glories, to the present miserable era of mollah rule and feeble dependence for national existence on the forbearance or jealousy of other nations. Beneath the musicians' gate, and I emerge into a small square which is half taken up by a square tank of water; near the tank is a ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle V1 • Thomas Stevens
... the Cymri founded Ailcluith, "Clyde rock," now Dumbarton; "to this day," says Bede, "the strongest city of the Britons." {54} Then the Scots came, and turned the Britons out; and St. Columba came, and St. Kentigern from Wales (573-574), and began to spread the Gospel among the pagan Picts and Cymri. Stone amulets and stone idols, (if the disputed objects are idols and amulets,) "have had their day," (as Bob Acres says "Damns have had their day,") and, with Ailcluith in Scots' hands, ...
— The Clyde Mystery - a Study in Forgeries and Folklore • Andrew Lang
... became blind, and has since been kept at her home on the Onondaga reservation. She retained her faculties to the last. Her husband died thirty years ago. Her dying request was that the pagan ceremony be first observed ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, April 1887 - Volume 1, Number 3 • Various
... exist to say about authors the things that they knew themselves. It exists to say the things about them which they did not know themselves. If a critic says that the Iliad has a pagan rather than a Christian pity, or that it is full of pictures made by one epithet, of course he does not mean that Homer could have said that. If Homer could have said that the critic would leave Homer to say it. The ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Maisie Ward
... Paulinus remained with Augustine; but in 625 a marriage was arranged between Edwin, King of Northumbria and overlord of England, and Ethelberga, daughter of Ethelbert, the Christian King of Kent. Edwin, though still a Pagan, agreed that Ethelberga should be allowed the free exercise of her religion, and that she should bring a chaplain with her, who might preach the Christian faith when and where ...
— The Cathedral Church of York - Bell's Cathedrals: A Description of Its Fabric and A Brief - History of the Archi-Episcopal See • A. Clutton-Brock
... Byrde, Whyte, Orlando Gibbons, and they composed not for the English, but for the Roman Church. When I say that Pelham Humphries and Purcell were not religious at all, but purely secular composers, thoroughly pagan in spirit, I imply—or, if you like, exply—that the Church of England has had no religious musicians worth mentioning. Far be it from me to doubt the honest piety of the men who grubbed through life in dusty organ-lofts. Their intentions may have been of the ...
— Purcell • John F. Runciman
... shall seem not unreasonable to men living at the time of the explanation. Therefore the pious remonstrances and the forced constructions of early thinkers like Xenophanes, of poets like Pindar, of all ancient Homeric scholars and Pagan apologists, from Theagenes of Rhegium (525 B. C.), the early Homeric commentator, to Porphyry, almost the last of the heathen philosophers, are so many proofs that to Greece, as soon as she had a reflective literature, the myths of Greece ...
— Myth, Ritual, and Religion, Vol. 1 • Andrew Lang
... Lincoln, in the tower of St. Mary-le-Wigford Church. Into this tower, which is of early date, a Roman pagan monument (Diis Manibus, &c.) is walled, and, on the triangular gable of the stone, a Saxon inscription has been carved. It is imperfect, but the general sense is clear. It must be read from the lowest and longest line upwards to the ...
— Anglo-Saxon Literature • John Earle
... bathed before he dressed. A brasier? the pagan, he burned perfumes! You see, it is proved, what the neighbours guessed: His wife and ...
— The Life of Froude • Herbert Paul
... general; while others make themselves pleasant with the principles of the christian. Of the last kind, this age has seen a most audacious example in the book entitled, a Tale of a Tub. Had this writing been published in a pagan or popish nation, who are justly impatient of all indignity offered to the established religion of their country, no doubt but the author would have received the punishment he deserved. But the fate of this impious buffoon is very different; for in a protestant kingdom, ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D. in Nine Volumes - Volume the Eighth: The Lives of the Poets, Volume II • Samuel Johnson
... half-civilized, and barbarous nations; learned, unlearned, ignorant, and enlightened; rich, powerful, enterprising, respected, ancient or modern, christian, mahomedan or pagan. In these, and a thousand similar cases, we decide the meaning, not alone from the word employed as an adjective, but from the subject of remark; for, were we to attach the same meaning to the same word, wherever used, we could not receive correct or definite impressions from the ...
— Lectures on Language - As Particularly Connected with English Grammar. • William S. Balch
... may do (said she) I do not know, But know you this, there is a thousand waies, To finde out night before my shamelesse brow, Shall meet that day in guilt of such misrayes. Oh how vniust art thou? the pagan sayes, To him which sues for a respecting eye, And no ignoble action doth allow, But honor, and thy faires ...
— Seven Minor Epics of the English Renaissance (1596-1624) • Dunstan Gale
... How can children be expected to be youthful in this house? Almost before we could speak we were filled with notions that might have been all very well for pagan philosophers of fifty, but were certainly quite unfit for respectable people of ...
— Heartbreak House • George Bernard Shaw
... she disdained flamboyant types and snubbed the gay and gildy brand; Instead she loved a decadent whose pagan name was Hildebrand, Until that sad occasion when she met him coming back o' night, His system loaded up with bhang and ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, January 21st, 1920 • Various
... the Christians had no churches—they met secretly in private houses. Later, when the cruel pagan emperors began to persecute and put to death the Christians, they made large tunnels under ground and in these places they heard Mass and received the Sacraments. These underground churches were called the catacombs, and some of them ...
— Baltimore Catechism No. 4 (of 4) - An Explanation Of The Baltimore Catechism of Christian Doctrine • Thomas L. Kinkead
... Kingsley's powers. No difference could be greater than that between the stirring age of Elizabeth and that of Alexandria in the fifth century, when the world was occupied with barren ecclesiastical strife. Hypatia, the last defender of the pagan faith, is a wonderful study, and the whole book is a brilliant picture of the passing of the old faiths of ...
— Kate Coventry - An Autobiography • G. J. Whyte-Melville
... Through these Iliads of vagabondage ran an irresponsible gaiety, a non-morality, and a kind of unbrave zest for adventure. They told of their defeats and flights with as much relish and humor as of their charges and victories. And while the spirit was thoroughly pagan, these accounts were full of the cliches of religion. A roustabout whom every one called the Persimmon confided to Peter that he meant to cut loose some logs in a raft up the river, float them down a little way, tie them up again, and ...
— Birthright - A Novel • T.S. Stribling
... deposed that, obeying her orders, he had stopped the Sacramento coach, and secured a passage for herself and child to San Francisco. It was true that Ah Fe's testimony was of no legal value. But nobody doubted it. Even those who were skeptical of the pagan's ability to recognize the sacredness of the truth admitted his passionless, unprejudiced unconcern. But it would appear, from a hitherto unrecorded passage of this veracious chronicle, that herein ...
— Selected Stories • Bret Harte
... Romans, was to bring down the power of the empire upon them. Nothing could be more absurd in the eyes of the Grecian philosophers than to speak of the resurrection of the body. Nor could any plan be devised more certain to arouse the fury of the pagan priesthood, than to denounce the craft by which they had their wealth, and to preach that they are no gods which are made by hands. The most degraded wretch, who perishes by the hand of the hangman is not so contemptible in our eyes, as the crucified malefactor was in the eyes of the Roman ...
— Fables of Infidelity and Facts of Faith - Being an Examination of the Evidences of Infidelity • Robert Patterson
... borne to see any Papist among the servants of their Majesties; and Dryden was not only a Papist, but an apostate. He had moreover aggravated the guilt of his apostasy by calumniating and ridiculing the Church which he had deserted. He had, it was facetiously said, treated her as the Pagan persecutors of old treated her children. He had dressed her up in the skin of a wild beast, and then baited her for the public amusement. [28] He was removed; but he received from the private bounty ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 3 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... hoose, and we got a nice clean-lookin' bedroom, an' efter a'thing was arranged, Sandy an' me gaed awa' doon as far as Holyrood, whaur Queen Mary got ane o' her fiddlers killed, an' whaur John Knox redd her up for carryin' on like a pagan linkie instead o' the Queen o' Scotland. Weel, it was gey late when we got back to oor hotel, an' we juist had a bit snack o' supper, an' up the stair we gaed. We were three stairs up. We had a seat, an' a crack an' a look oot at the winda, for ...
— My Man Sandy • J. B. Salmond
... laws of Justinian, though of uncertain date, mark the termination of the contest between Christianity and paganism. In the second of these laws there is a reference to the prohibition of pagan teachers. It is in line with the closing of the schools of the heathen teachers at Athens. The decree closing the schools ...
— A Source Book for Ancient Church History • Joseph Cullen Ayer, Jr., Ph.D.
... any object was consecrated, and experienced a feeling of disgust and repugnance when in the neighbourhood of old pagan cemeteries, whereas she was attracted to the sacred remains of the saints as steel by the magnet. When relics were shown to her, she knew what saints they had belonged to, and could give not only accounts of the minutest and hitherto unknown ...
— The Dolorous Passion of Our Lord Jesus Christ • Anna Catherine Emmerich
... seen in some of the towns and villages of England, and are said to mark the spot where the early Christian missionaries, long before the churches were built, preached their gospel of peace and good will to a pagan audience. Close at hand were the stocks, where, until quite recently, the bullies and scolds of the town had been set by their fellow-citizens and suhjected to the missiles and taunts of every passer-by. ...
— More Tales of the Ridings • Frederic Moorman
... To the pagan yet remaining in man it would seem that yon railroad train plunging toward the Southland is somehow conscious of the fact that it is playing a part in events of tremendous import, for observe how it pierces the darkness with its one wild eye, cleaves the air with its steely front and ...
— The Hindered Hand - or, The Reign of the Repressionist • Sutton E. Griggs
... Jemima, the parson left her with a pious thanksgiving that Riccabocca at least was a Christian, and not a Pagan, Mahometan, ...
— My Novel, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... through the whirlpool of licentiousness to the solid rock of Christian character. From the harem life of promiscuous and unnameable sins of slavery, some of which were the natural and fatal growth of pagan vices, others the fruit of prostitution, to the making of one clean, beautiful, noble and divine family and home, covers a period of intense, moral, spiritual and intellectual development, more significant than the geologic transformation ...
— Twentieth Century Negro Literature - Or, A Cyclopedia of Thought on the Vital Topics Relating - to the American Negro • Various
... a she-camel freed from labour under certain conditions amongst the pagan Arabs; for which see Sale (Prel. ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 3 • Richard F. Burton
... Charles V and a gentleman in Rome. The emperor was anxious to see that famous temple of the Rotunda, called in ancient times the temple 'of all the gods,' but now-a-days, by a better nomenclature, 'of all the saints,' which is the best preserved building of all those of pagan construction in Rome, and the one which best sustains the reputation of mighty works and magnificence of its founders. It is in the form of a half orange, of enormous dimensions, and well lighted, ...
— Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... care of the eunuch Mardonius. In grammar, Nicocles, the Lacedaemonian, was his instructor; and Ecbolius, the sophist, who was at that time a Christian, taught him rhetoric; for the Emperor Constantius had made provision that he should have no pagan masters, lest he should be seduced to pagan superstitions; for Julian was a Christian at the beginning. Since he made great progress in literature, the report began to spread that he was capable of ruling the Roman Empire; and this popular rumor becoming generally ...
— A Source Book for Ancient Church History • Joseph Cullen Ayer, Jr., Ph.D.
... fearful chastisement for slight offences, formed the general features of the criminal code of most Christian nations. They had been handed down by barbarous ancestors, the relics of Scandinavian cruelty for the most part, added to the Roman slave penalties, which were the remnants of pagan inhumanity. This answer would be insufficient when comparing the English with the Brehon law, but it does not hold good even with reference to other Continental nations. In no country at that time was punishment so pitiless as in England. The details, now well known, can only be ...
— Irish Race in the Past and the Present • Aug. J. Thebaud
... three copies of Lord Byron's works will exist: one in the possession of King George the Nineteenth, one in the Duke of Carrington's collection, and one in the library of the British Museum. Finally, should any good people be concerned to hear that Pagan fictions will so long retain their influence over literature, let them reflect that, as the Bishop of St David's says, in his "Proofs of the Inspiration of the Sibylline Verses," read at the last meeting of the Royal Society of Literature, "at all events, a ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 1 (of 4) - Contibutions to Knight's Quarterly Magazine] • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... moved by the Wild Woman's story of the hardships she had suffered, and the godless company she had been driven to keep—Egyptians, jugglers, outlaws and even sorcerers, who are masters of the pagan lore of the East, and still practice their dark rites among the simple folk of the hills. Yet she would not have him think wholly ill of this vagrant people, from whom she had often received food and ...
— The Hermit and the Wild Woman and Other Stories • Edith Wharton
... subdue him. He preserved his spiritual sensitiveness, and literary ideals of a most exalted kind, through the most depressing and demoralizing experiences. The following passage in that first essay offered to Mr. Meynell, entitled "Paganism: Old and New," a vindication of Christian over pagan ideals in art, shows the rich, colorful tone of mind of one who could walk unstained among the world's impurities. "Bring back then, I say, in conclusion, even the best age of Paganism, and you smite beauty on the cheek. But you cannot bring back the best age of Paganism, the age ...
— The Hound of Heaven • Francis Thompson
... But, then, you were born a pagan; I am trying laboriously to make myself one. I can take nothing for granted, I can enjoy nothing as it comes along. Beauty, pleasure, art, women—I have to invent an excuse, a justification for everything ...
— Crome Yellow • Aldous Huxley
... will not think I am presuming to have written this on the strength of a childish acquaintance. I wish you all honors that can come to you on such a quest as yours, and I had almost said all good luck, only that that word sounds too frivolous and pagan for such a serious matter; so I will say all safety for a swift accomplishment of your task and a swift homecoming. I used to think when I was a little child that nothing could ever hurt you or make you afraid, and I cannot help feeling now that you will come through the ...
— The Search • Grace Livingston Hill
... too, history had been made in this mountain passage whose walls had rung with wilder sounds than the screaming of our siren. The rival battle-cries of Moor and Spaniard had echoed among the rocks, and Christian blood and pagan had mingled in the white spume of ...
— The Car of Destiny • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... the advancing lava, cast offerings upon the glowing mass, and solemnly prayed for the salvation of Hilo. That night the lava ceased to flow. It still forms a shining bulwark about the menaced town. The princess sailed back to Honolulu, and the faithful asked the Christians why the pagan divinity alone had answered ...
— Myths & Legends of our New Possessions & Protectorate • Charles M. Skinner
... contentions for the prize, divided with him the applause of the populace. At that time the theatre was held to be an object of the highest magnitude and importance, and made an essential and magnificent part of their pagan worship. The Athenians, therefore, were delighted by the contentions of these two prodigious men: but, as it generally happens in cases of rivalship between public favourites, the people divided into two parties, one of which maintained the superiority of Sophocles, ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor - Vol. I. No. 3. March 1810 • Various
... labyrinthine, cabalistic. Israel remembered having beheld, on one of his early voyages, something similar on the arm of a New Zealand warrior, once met, fresh from battle, in his native village. He concluded that on some similar early voyage Paul must have undergone the manipulations of some pagan artist. Covering his arm again with his laced coat-sleeve, Paul glanced ironically at the hand of the same arm, now again half muffled in ruffles, and ornamented with several Parisian rings. He ...
— Israel Potter • Herman Melville
... sustenance, To cut his passage to the British throne? One that has suck'd in malice with his milk, Malice, to Britain, liberty, and truth? Less savage was his brother-robber's nurse, The howling nurse of plundering Romulus, Ere yet far worse than pagan harbour'd there. Hail to the brave! be Britain Britain still: Britain! high favour'd of indulgent Heaven! Nature's anointed empress of the deep! The nurse of merchants, who can purchase crowns! Supreme in commerce! that exuberant source Of wealth, the nerve of war; of wealth, the blood, The circling ...
— The Poetical Works of Edward Young, Volume 2 • Edward Young
... attends opium when it does not put one absolutely to sleep. I don't believe that the deity who formerly practised both poetry and physic, when gods got their livelihood by more than one profession, ever gave a recipe in rhyme; and therefore, since Dr. Johnson has prohibited application to pagan divinities, and Mr. Burke has not struck medicine and poetry out of the list of sinecures, I wish you may get a patent for life for exercising both faculties. It would be a comfortable event for me for, since I cannot wait on you to thank you, nor ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole, V4 • Horace Walpole
... Cirque of the Gladiators which faced - That haggard mark of Imperial Rome, Whose Pagan echoes mock the chime Of our Christian time: It was void, and I ...
— Wessex Poems and Other Verses • Thomas Hardy
... unawares it had been known to define agnosticism as a heresy of the Early Church and Professor Froude as a distinguished histologist; and such minor members as Mrs. Leveret still secretly regarded ethics as something vaguely pagan. ...
— Xingu - 1916 • Edith Wharton
... vineyard of the Lord grow both good fruit and bad. The world of illusions, which is, as we might say, a second world, is tumbling about us in ruins. Mysticism in religion, routine in science, mannerism in art, are falling, as the Pagan gods fell, amid jests. Farewell, foolish dreams! the human race is awakening and its eyes behold the light. Its vain sentimentalism, its mysticism, its fevers, its hallucination, its delirium are passing away, and he who was before sick is now well ...
— Dona Perfecta • B. Perez Galdos
... the pomp of temples which were the glory of Athens, and the multitude of sacrifices which he had beheld on their altars. The true conception of God as the Creator and Lord of all things cuts up by the roots the pagan notions of temples as dwelling-places of a god and of sacrifices as ministering to his needs. With one crushing blow Paul pulverises the fair fanes around him, and declares that sacrifice, as practised there, contradicted the plain truth as to God's nature. To suppose ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: The Acts • Alexander Maclaren
... that in those first times, when our religion began to gain authority with the laws, zeal armed many against all sorts of pagan books, by which the learned suffered an exceeding great loss, a disorder that I conceive to have done more prejudice to letters than all the flames of the barbarians. Of this Cornelius Tacitus is a very good testimony; for though the ...
— The Essays of Montaigne, Complete • Michel de Montaigne
... The pagan storm which all but repeated in Britain the disaster of the Saxon invasions, which all but overcame the mystic tenacity of Alfred and the positive mission of the town of Paris, swept it completely. Its abbot ...
— The Historic Thames • Hilaire Belloc
... dance, and in their dancing to perform evolutions descriptive of mathematical and astronomical figures. To this day the vestiges of those heterogeneous amusements are discernible all over Indostan: but that which will be regarded by many with surprise, is that in all countries pagan or christian the drama in its origin, with the dancings and spectacles attending it have been intermixed with divine worship. The Bramins danced before their god Vishnou, and still hold it as an article of faith that ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor - Vol I, No. 2, February 1810 • Samuel James Arnold
... the symbols of the new faith. Once liberated, however, Christianity appropriated bodily for its public rites the basilica-type and the general substance of Roman architecture. Shafts and capitals, architraves and rich linings of veined marble, even the pagan Bacchic symbolism of the vine, it adapted to new uses in its own service. Constantine led the way in architecture, endowing Bethlehem and Jerusalem with splendid churches, and his new capital on the Bosphorus with the first ...
— A Text-Book of the History of Architecture - Seventh Edition, revised • Alfred D. F. Hamlin
... is rare in the long barrows of the south of England, it is the rule in those of Yorkshire and the north of Scotland. In Ireland, where the long barrow form is all but unknown, the round barrow or chambered cairn prevailed from the earliest Pagan period till the introduction of Christianity. The Irish barrows occur in groups in certain localities, some of which seem to have been the royal cemeteries of the tribal confederacies, whereof eight are enumerated ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 3 - "Banks" to "Bassoon" • Various
... for labour. If it was so it was so in a much looser and vaguer sense than the breeding of the Eugenists; and such modern philosophers read into the old paganism a fantastic pride and cruelty which are wholly modern. It may be, however, that pagan slaves had some shadow of the blessings of the Eugenist's care. It is quite certain that the pagan freemen would have killed the first man that suggested it. I mean suggested it seriously; for Plato was only a Bernard Shaw who unfortunately made his jokes in Greek. Among free men, ...
— Eugenics and Other Evils • G. K. Chesterton
... Defoe, and as it chanced he had made no literary allusion in English which did not recall some long familiar text to my mind, I offered a bargain. If O'Hanlon would give me the classical stuff in respect to which I was in Pagan darkness, I would give him the English with which he was less well-acquainted. We exchanged notes and between us we turned out an excellent if a somewhat compressed and truncated report. I felt that I was saved, ...
— Recollections • David Christie Murray
... free custody, was spreading the gospel (Acts xxviii. 31) : at the time when Peter once in that city was ruling the Church gathered at Babylon (1 Peter v. 13): at the time when that Clement, so singularly praised by the Apostle (Phil. iv. 3) was governing the Church: at the time when the pagan Caesars, Nero, Domitian, Trajan, Antoninus, were butchering the Roman Pontiffs: also at the time when, as even Calvin bears witness, Damasus, Siricius, Anastasius and Innocent guided the Apostolic bark. For at this ...
— Ten Reasons Proposed to His Adversaries for Disputation in the Name • Edmund Campion
... malicious in the voice and gaze sent the singular idea shooting through his mind that Queen had gone out on purpose so that Concepcion might have him alone for a while. And he was wary of both of them, as he might have been of two pagan goddesses whom he, a poor defiant mortal, suspected of having laid an eye on ...
— The Pretty Lady • Arnold E. Bennett
... number of actors. Yet into the mouths of this tiny group of persons Milton may be said to have brought all the history of the world and all its geography, art, science and learning, the Jew, the Christian and the Pagan, Greek philosophy and Roman politics, classical myth, mediaeval romance, and even the contemporary life of his own experience. This is partly done, as Virgil had done it, by the way of a prophecy of future ages: but to ...
— Milton • John Bailey
... Charlemagne. That emperor rebuilt Florence, but experienced some difficulty in doing so, by reason of the statue of Mars, which had been thrown into the Arno. The temple, converted to Christian purposes, had been the only building to escape the wrath of Totila; but owing to the pagan incantations practised when the town was originally consecrated to the god of war, the statue of that divinity would not consent to lie quietly and ignominiously in the bed of the Arno, while his temple and town were appropriated to other purposes. The river was dragged. The statue ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I, No. 1, Nov. 1857 • Various
... excited apron, sighing. Let no one imagine that she regretted her complicity. She was ready to cry torrents, but there must be absolute castigation before this criminal shall conceive the sense of regret; and probably then she will cling to her wickedness the more—such is the born Pagan's tenacity! Mrs. Berry sighed, and gave him back his shake of the head. O you wanton, improvident creature! said he. O you very wise old gentleman! said she. He asked her the thing she had been doing. She enlightened him with the fatalist's ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... secret harbour at sunrise over a still sea, we two rejoiced and sang as did the knights of old when they followed our great Duke to England. Yet was our leader an heathen pirate; all our proud fleet but one galley perilously overloaded; for guidance we leaned on a pagan sorcerer; and our port was beyond the world's end. Witta told us that his father Guthrum had once in his life rowed along the shores of Africa to a land where naked men sold gold for iron and beads. There had ...
— Puck of Pook's Hill • Rudyard Kipling
... whereby "we use a certain conjuring of God"; the kneeling at the Communion; the use of the cross in baptism, and of the ring in marriage, clearly a thing of human, if not of diabolical invention, and the "imposition of hands" in confirmation. The churching of women, they said, is both Pagan and Jewish. "Other things not so much shame itself as a certain kind of pity compelleth us ...
— John Knox and the Reformation • Andrew Lang
... dealt with its Caesars: it was ready to grant her apotheosis, but only when she was safely out of this world. It was only when the light of revelation was extinguished in her midst that the teachings of the Bible were ignored, and woman was welcomed back to the place she held in pagan climes ...
— The True Woman • Justin D. Fulton
... cannot describe the positions of all without offence, so I forbear. We were glad to turn away and retrace our steps to our carriage. Never, I believe, in any country, Christian or pagan, is there an instance of such total want of respect for the remains ...
— Samuel F. B. Morse, His Letters and Journals - In Two Volumes, Volume I. • Samuel F. B. Morse
... a stream of pagan Teutons flowed over the east of Britain, and the British Church was separated from the Roman Church. By 664 British and Roman missionaries had converted the English; and the two Churches of Rome and Britain, once united, were ...
— A Short History of Wales • Owen M. Edwards
... for my sins or his ain that the lad has sic auld world notions? There isna a pagan altar-stane 'tween John O'Groat's an' Lambaness he doesna run after. I wish he were as anxious to serve in the Lord's temple—I would build him a kirk an' a ...
— Winter Evening Tales • Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr
... company of Bavarian infantry went by, in all the pomp and circumstance of martial array and the joyous swing of rapid rhythmic movement. The street echoed and throbbed in the Englishman's ears with the exultant pulse of youth and mastery set to loud Pagan music. A group of lads from the tea-shop clustered on the pavement and watched the troops go by, staring at a phase of life in which they had no share. The martial trappings, the swaggering joy of life, ...
— When William Came • Saki
... which the poems are printed is in no sense original, but is that followed in most standard textbooks. Naturally such artificial divisions as "Pagan" and "Christian" are inexact. The "pagan" poems are only largely pagan; the "Christian" predominatingly Christian. On the whole, the grouping is perhaps accurate enough for practical purposes, and the conformity to existing ...
— Old English Poems - Translated into the Original Meter Together with Short Selections from Old English Prose • Various
... the cessation of pain. That pagan aphorism the Red Cross might put on its banners. Spiritually it is defective, but practically it is sound and some relief the Red Cross supplies. Give to it. You can put your money to no fairer use. It will hallow the ...
— The Paliser case • Edgar Saltus
... steeped themselves in antiquity, and they put to the greatest value it has ever received the name of poet; they demanded that the poet should be a kind of king, or seer. Half seriously, half as a product of mere scholarship, the pagan conception of the muse ...
— Avril - Being Essays on the Poetry of the French Renaissance • H. Belloc
... and intelligent; unless, in short, you can make them what you say they have a right to be, those laws will be in vain." The work of education should be done for black and white alike; the South is not to be treated as a pagan land to which missionaries are to be sent, but as part of our common country, to which the richer and more prosperous section ought to give aid. "I do not think it would be wise for the North to pour ministers, colporteurs and ...
— The Negro and the Nation - A History of American Slavery and Enfranchisement • George S. Merriam
... brother's years of anguish and toil were endured. Friends in Scotland gave Mr. and Mrs. Watt the money wherewith to purchase materials, and St. Paul's Parish Church, Glasgow, provided the Bell. But let us hear how she paints the scene, and unveils to us the Island life,—alike Pagan ...
— The Story of John G. Paton - Or Thirty Years Among South Sea Cannibals • James Paton
... a vague perfume of which I became aware, were responsible, I found myself thinking of a flower-bedecked shrine, wherefrom arose the smoke of incense to some pagan god. ...
— The Hand Of Fu-Manchu - Being a New Phase in the Activities of Fu-Manchu, the Devil Doctor • Sax Rohmer
... the present century is not propitious of any changes. Against all intrusion upon its rites, the physiological laboratory in England and America maintains as successful an opposition as ever characterized the Eleusinian mysteries of the pagan world. No laboratory—so far as known—dares to invite inspection at any hour, even from men of the highest personal character, and leave them free to reveal or to publicly criticize whatever in the experiments upon animals there conducted seems worthy of caution or reproof. Silence and ...
— An Ethical Problem - Or, Sidelights upon Scientific Experimentation on Man and Animals • Albert Leffingwell
... as well as matter falls under the will of God; all things that are sweet to speak of, things prompting a loving and noble tone of conversation; whatever virtue there is, truly so called, not in the pagan sense of self-grounded vigour, even in right directions, but in that of the energy for right which is found in God; and whatever praise there is, given rightly by the human conscience to deeds and purposes of good; these things think out, reckon, reason on (logixesthe). ...
— Philippian Studies - Lessons in Faith and Love from St. Paul's Epistle to the Philippians • Handley C. G. Moule
... freedom or absolute rights of another, is a violation of good manners. He who presumes to censure me for my religious belief, or want of belief; who makes it a matter of criticism or reproach that I am a Theist or Atheist, Trinitarian or Unitarian, Catholic or Protestant, Pagan or Christian, Jew, Mohammedan, or Mormon, is guilty of rudeness and insult. If any of these modes of belief make me intolerant or intrusive, he may resent such intolerance or repel such intrusion; but the basis of all true politeness and social enjoyment is ...
— How To Behave: A Pocket Manual Of Republican Etiquette, And Guide To Correct Personal Habits • Samuel R Wells |
