"Primitive" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... man then living been bold enough to tell the world of the Church of Rome's ferocity in primitive terms, he must have been particularly desirous of being roasted alive: had he even so represented it as to render himself comprehensible by the most quick-witted, he must still have had the martyr's liking for instruments of torture and the blazing faggot: Bracciolini, whom nature had ...
— Tacitus and Bracciolini - The Annals Forged in the XVth Century • John Wilson Ross
... Champfontaine," he said. "I will look once more upon the crumbling towers, so soon to be restored to their primitive ...
— Run to Earth - A Novel • M. E. Braddon
... The primitive Christians censured a practice prevalent among the Romans, of decorating a corpse, previous to interment or combustion, with garlands and flowers. Their reprehension extended also to a periodical custom of placing the "first-fruits of Flora" on their graves and tombs. Thus ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 12, No. 334 Saturday, October 4, 1828 • Various
... excitement tingled through Ishmael. When the labourers had shouted he had dropped Phoebe's hand and shouted with them, flinging up his arms. The glamorous light, the sense of something primitive and vital that the ceremony expressed, and the stir at the pulses caused by the sight of many people moved to do the same thing at the same moment, went to his head. He ran about singing and leaping like the rest, but ...
— Secret Bread • F. Tennyson Jesse
... Augustine, says, "If Calvinists pretend that absolute decrees, the unconditional election and reprobation of individuals, particular redemption, irresistible grace, and the entire destruction of free -will in man in consequence of the fall, were the doctrines of the primitive Church, let them cite their authority, let them refer to the works in which these doctrines are actually taught. If such opinions were actually held we could not fail to meet with some of them in the various and voluminous works which are still ...
— The Doctrines of Predestination, Reprobation, and Election • Robert Wallace
... however, charged us nine sous for it, and on our giving half a franc and thinking ourselves exceedingly stingy for not giving a whole one, they shouted out "Voila les Anglais, voila la generosite des Anglais," with evident sincerity. I thought to myself that the less we English corrupted the primitive simplicity of these good folks the better; it was really refreshing to find several people protesting about one's generosity for having paid a halfpenny more for a bottle of wine than was expected; at Monetier we asked whether many English came there, ...
— Samuel Butler's Cambridge Pieces • Samuel Butler
... work, as there was nothing farther for him to do. The subsequent progress of creation is only the successive development, upon mechanical and necessary principles, and as fast as proper occasions were offered, of these qualities thus made inherent in the primitive constitution of matter. The atoms thus marvellously endowed have gone on, without any further aid from Almighty power, to form suns, and astral systems, and planets with their satellites, and worlds tenanted by successive generations and races of vegetable and animal things. And this work ...
— A Theory of Creation: A Review of 'Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation' • Francis Bowen
... primitive meaning and first application of the name Maya, it is now used to signify specifically the aborigines of Yucatan. In a more extended sense, in the expression "the Maya family," it is understood to embrace all tribes, wherever ...
— The Maya Chronicles - Brinton's Library Of Aboriginal American Literature, Number 1 • Various
... of his mother before her church-members and her few remaining neighbors, or that of his sisters within the circle which they had lately constructed for themselves. Nor did he yet realize, even with Bertie's picture in mind, the hundred checks and bars that awaited him in a society of whose primitive purity he had made a jest whenever ...
— With the Procession • Henry B. Fuller
... it will be found to contain much novelty of conception, much classical taste, and great spirit and beauty in the execution. It appears under the name of Cadwallo, an ancient bard, who probably lived at least one hundred years before the commencement of our common era. The manners of the primitive times seem to be perfectly understood by the author, and are described with the air of a man who was in the utmost degree familiar with them. It is impossible to discover in any part of it the slightest trace of Christianity. And we believe it will not be disputed, that in a country so ...
— Imogen - A Pastoral Romance • William Godwin
... Communist centrally planned economy with government ownership and control of productive enterprises of any size. In recent years, however, the government has been decentralizing control and encouraging private enterprise. Laos is a landlocked country with a primitive infrastructure; that is, it has no railroads, a rudimentary road system, limited external and internal telecommunications, and electricity available in only a limited area. Subsistence agriculture is the main occupation, accounting for over 60% of GDP and providing about 85-90% of total ...
— The 1992 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... him across the shining spaces of the hall and into the morning-room. Books, flowers and sunlight seemed to furnish it, and, with something austere and primitive, to make it the most fitting background for herself. But while her presence perfected it for him, it was her guardian's absence that preoccupied Karen. Again, and comically, she reminded Gregory of the sacristan explaining to the sight-seer that the famous altar-piece had been temporarily removed ...
— Tante • Anne Douglas Sedgwick
... with a Duke. He gave Scotland cannon three hundred years too early; and made Cleopatra play at billiards. Look at his notion of "the very manners" of early post-Roman Britain in Cymbeline and King Lear! Concerning "the anomalous status of a King of Scotland under one of its primitive Kings" the author of Macbeth knew no more than what he read in Holinshed; of the actual truth concerning Duncan (that old prince was, in fact, a young man slain in a blacksmith's bothy), and of the whole affair, the author knew ...
— Shakespeare, Bacon and the Great Unknown • Andrew Lang
... large canoe-shape vessel, of peculiar lines, and drowning. She was quite overcome upon her first visit to the Field Museum in Chicago, where there were exhibited a number of models of queer vessels used by primitive people. She pointed out one similar in shape, and lines, to the one she remembers as having fallen from ...
— A Series of Lessons in Gnani Yoga • Yogi Ramacharaka
... men are used up, emotionally speaking. The count would turn a neat phrase even if he were to blow his brains out the next minute. They think they are splendidly cool, but it only means that they have exhausted all their powers of sensation. You are delightfully primitive and unspoiled, and then I suppose it is natural to like a fellow-countryman best, isn't it? Now, honest—have you found any girls over here you like as well ...
— Love, The Fiddler • Lloyd Osbourne
... origin, not for the purpose of determining and fixing grammatical associations and dependances, such as the agreement, government, and mutual relations of words, but in order to analyze combinations with a view to develop the first principles of the language, and arrive at the primitive meaning of words. Now, it is presumed, that no one who has paid critical attention to the subject, will contend, that the original import of single words, has any relation to the syntactical dependances and connexions of words in general;—to gain a knowledge of which, ...
— English Grammar in Familiar Lectures • Samuel Kirkham
... investigations. We receive the first notice of his death from Mr. Hubert Howe Bancroft, who pays the following eloquent tribute to his memory: "Brasseur de Bourbourg devoted his life to the study of American primitive history. In actual knowledge pertaining to his chosen subjects, no man ever equalled or approached him. Besides being an indefatigable student, he was an elegant writer. In the last decade of his life, he conceived a new and complicated theory respecting ...
— The Mayas, the Sources of Their History / Dr. Le Plongeon in Yucatan, His Account of Discoveries • Stephen Salisbury, Jr.
... of firm ground, free from swamp, and clear for about the area of a couple of acres, stood a few primitive buildings: there was a barn, a cow shed, a few huts in which men slept but did not live, and a central building wherein the whole community, when at home, assembled to eat the king's venison, and wash it down with ale, mead, and even wine—the latter probably ...
— The House of Walderne - A Tale of the Cloister and the Forest in the Days of the Barons' Wars • A. D. Crake
... that the reliability of the article of faith has long ago been proven, even in ancient time, by the Church of the primitive fathers, of the prophets and the apostles. A solid foundation is established, one all men are bound to believe and maintain at the risk of their eternal salvation, whatever councils may establish, or the world advance and determine, ...
— Epistle Sermons, Vol. II - Epiphany, Easter and Pentecost • Martin Luther
... frighten away the monster swallowing the moon. The superstition was once common. See Tylor's 'Primitive Culture,' pp. 296-302. ...
— The Consolation of Philosophy • Boethius
... ideal Christian equality, which we have been getting farther away from since the days of the Primitive Church, can prevent this subdivision of society into classes from taking place everywhere,—in the great centres of our republic as much as in old European monarchies. Only there position is more absolutely hereditary,—here it ...
— The Professor at the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes (Sr.)
... the fact that this idea of a radical change in our planet is not only predicted in the Scriptures, but that the Earth herself, in her primitive rocks and varying formations, on which are lithographed the history of successive convulsions, darkly prophesies of others to come. The old poet prophets, all the world over, have sung of a renovated world. A vision of it haunted the contemplations of Plato. ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... gradually come to feel such a passion as uneducated people can conceive when they come to Paris from the depths of the country, bringing with them all the fixed ideas bred of the solitary country life; all the ignorance of a primitive nature, all the brute appetites that become so many fixed ideas. Mme. Cibot's masculine beauty, her vivacity, her market-woman's wit, had all been remarked by the marine store-dealer. He thought at first of taking La Cibot from her husband, bigamy among the lower classes in Paris ...
— Cousin Pons • Honore de Balzac
... plant, which, occupying a place of comparative security above the ground, appears to promise to its fortunate possessor a similar security from some of the ills that beset the life of man on earth. We have already met with examples of the store which the primitive mind ...
— The Golden Bough - A study of magic and religion • Sir James George Frazer
... character, or description, that catch and hold the reader's attention. In his earlier writings, like Plain Tales from the Hills or The Jungle Books, the radical racial differences between his characters and readers, and the background of primitive, mysterious India caught the reading world and instantly established ...
— Short-Stories • Various
... the will of God. Henceforth you shall study, not Nature, but Him. Yet as for place—I do not like your English primitive formations, where earth, worn out with struggling, has fallen wearily asleep. No, you shall rather come to Asia, the oldest and yet the youngest continent,—to our volcanic mountain ranges, where her bosom still heaves with the creative energy of youth, around the primeval cradle of the most ...
— Yeast: A Problem • Charles Kingsley
... and vegetable substances, doubtless composes the richegt superficial mould; but this soil, so favorable for vegetation, gives the reed as much silex, but no more, in proportion to the size of the stalk, than the same plants growing in mountainous districts, and primitive soils. It is to be regretted, that the solution of these questions, with others that might be enumerated, had not occupied the profoundly investigating spirit of Mr. Davy; but which subjects now offer an ample ...
— Reminiscences of Samuel Taylor Coleridge and Robert Southey • Joseph Cottle
... the language was allied to the Batta and Tagala, and the whole derived from and varieties of the primitive tongue ...
— The Expedition to Borneo of H.M.S. Dido - For the Suppression of Piracy • Henry Keppel
... reproduction for them was far more complicated than the multiplication of dates to the utmost limit. At this point of knowledge instinctive or intelligent regulations had to be put on physical appetites. For primitive men the reproductive function is as simple a function as eating or sleeping. It is not in itself wicked or base. It is naive until knowledge comes. Then it is found that rules must be made to regulate the interest. If there are rules, there is the sense of wrongdoing in the ...
— Folkways - A Study of the Sociological Importance of Usages, Manners, Customs, Mores, and Morals • William Graham Sumner
... books and strangely-written manuscripts in old tongues; queerer things even than crocodiles, whales, and mummies—I mean the librarians and sub-librarians, janitors, and servants. Oddities many of them have been. Honest old Jacobites, non-jurors, primitive thinkers, as well as scandalously lazy drunkards and illiterate dogs. An old foundation can afford to have a varied experience ...
— In the Name of the Bodleian and Other Essays • Augustine Birrell
... a belle or even a fashionable lady, Meg did not experience this affliction till her babies were a year old, for in her little world primitive customs prevailed, and she found herself more ...
— Little Women • Louisa May Alcott
... seemed to weave a fantastic net around him as he walked. The quaint odors of certain woodland herbs known to his scholars, and religiously kept in their desks, or left like votive offerings on the threshold of the school-house, recalled all the primitive simplicity and delicious wildness of the little temple he had left. Even in the mischievous glances of evasive squirrels and the moist eyes of the contemplative rabbits there were faint suggestions ...
— Cressy • Bret Harte
... spots on its sides was washing its face on the kitchen doorstep. Val was kneeling beside the front porch, painstakingly stringing white grocery twine upon nails, which she drove into the rough posts with a small rock. The primitive trellis which resulted was obviously intended for the future encouragement of the sweet-pea plants just unfolding their second clusters of leaves an inch above ground. She did not see Kent at first, and he sat quiet ...
— Lonesome Land • B. M. Bower
... and the Hotel du Midi, to our own quarters for dinner. The Hotel de France, as it is called, is the best in Arreau, but is nevertheless not much more than a fairly large country inn. The rooms are very clean, and the food good, but the arrangements are somewhat primitive; yet for all this we were very well satisfied on the whole, though the necessity of starting at nine o'clock next morning prevented us ...
— Twixt France and Spain • E. Ernest Bilbrough
... the barbarism of Europe then Germanic, The Nights itself being the best expositor. On the other hand the action of the state-religion upon the state, the condition of Al- Islam during the reign of Al-Rashid, its declension from the primitive creed and its relation to Christianity and Christendom, require a somewhat extended notice. In offering the following observations it is only fair ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 10 • Richard F. Burton
... he had so much admiration, and then turn to Clarendon's character of Falkland;—'a person of such prodigious parts of learning and knowledge, of that inimitable sweetness and delight in conversation, of so flowing and obliging a humanity and goodness to mankind, and of that primitive simplicity and integrity of life, that if there were no other brand upon this odious and accursed civil war than that single loss, it must be most infamous and execrable to all posterity.' Now Clarendon is not a great writer, not even a good writer, for he is prolix and involved, yet we see ...
— Critical Miscellanies, Volume I (of 3) - Essay 4: Macaulay • John Morley
... my doubts about Polreen's primitive virtues. Certainly the village, as it lay bathed in moonlight, its whitewashed terraces and glimmering roofs embowered in dark clusters of fuchsia and tamarisk, seemed to harbour nothing but peace and sleeping innocence. An ebbing tide lapped the pebbles on the beach, each pebble distinct and ...
— The White Wolf and Other Fireside Tales • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... is in no wise the natural consequence of a new invention, of processes or methods hitherto unknown. It owes nothing to the latest acquirements of our knowledge. It springs from the humblest idea which the most primitive man might have conceived in the first days of the earth's existence. It is simply a matter of having a little more patience, confidence and respect for all that which shares our lot in a world whereof we know none of the purposes. It is simply a matter of having a little less pride and of looking ...
— The Unknown Guest • Maurice Maeterlinck
... of this double motor path explains how after a hemiplegic stroke in which the pyramidal tract is destroyed while the rubro-spinal tract escapes, the patient is able to perform such primitive movements as are involved in walking or standing, while he is unable to carry out finer movements that require ...
— Manual of Surgery Volume Second: Extremities—Head—Neck. Sixth Edition. • Alexander Miles
... rhythm, of melody, and of poetic harmony. They were, moreover, the children of passion, sensuous, worshipful of whatever lends itself to pleasure. How, then, could the dramatic efforts of this primitive people, still in the bonds of animalism, escape the note of passion? The songs and other poetic pieces which have come down to us from the remotest antiquity are generally inspired with a purer sentiment and a loftier ...
— Unwritten Literature of Hawaii - The Sacred Songs of the Hula • Nathaniel Bright Emerson
... of the plough, the Basques used the laya, a two-pronged short-handled steel digging fork, admirably adapted to small properties, where labour is abundant. They alone of the peoples of western Europe have preserved specimens of almost every class of dance known to primitive races. These are (1) animal (or possibly totem) dances, in which men personate animals, the bear, the fox, the horse, &c.; (2) dances to represent agriculture and the vintage performed with wine-skins; (3) the simple arts, such as weaving, where the dancers, each holding a long coloured ribbon, dance ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 3 - "Banks" to "Bassoon" • Various
... coral on the reef there was revealed one of those primitive and curious marine animals which has no common name, but which science recognises as SYNAPTA BESELLI. It is a relation of the beche-de-mer, of snake-like form, with a group of gills differentiating the head. Playing about it were three or four little fish which immediately took advantage of the ...
— Tropic Days • E. J. Banfield
... where they were, even aside from their own small fire. The burning trees in the departing ship's rocket-trail sent up a column of white which remaining flames illuminated. The remarkably primitive camp Cochrane had made looked like a camp on a tiny ...
— Operation: Outer Space • William Fitzgerald Jenkins
... called Morgan's Gap. No railroad has ever yet penetrated this southern country, despite the fact that rich mines have been opened along these mountains, and are still being opened; but it lies to-day in much of the condition of primitive savagery, and lawlessness, as the word is conventionally accepted, that obtained when the first rush was made for the Thief ...
— Nan of Music Mountain • Frank H. Spearman
... 1827, the island lay forsaken and neglected in its primitive condition, neither the Portuguese nor Spaniards having thought it worth their consideration. At length, the attention of the British government was directed to it, in consequence of its favourable position for putting a stop to the slave trade in that quarter of Africa. Situated within a ...
— Lander's Travels - The Travels of Richard Lander into the Interior of Africa • Robert Huish
... about the angles of the house, and through the branches of the trees, in dreary harmony with the roar of the ocean. It is somewhat startling, for a few nights, to us denizens of cities, to notice the entire absence of all precautions against depredators—there are neither locks nor bolts. Life is primitive here; all honor the head of the family, and bow to his will. The people, young and old, are universally kind and respectful to those strangers who sojourn among them, meeting them in a spirit of frankness and exacting the same. We shoot whenever the weather is suitable, and amuse ourselves ...
— Nick Baba's Last Drink and Other Sketches • George P. Goff
... where they have factories; e.g. governor, council, company. But these and numerous other traces of the Celtic language which have been found in Florida and Darien are not indicative of such impressions; most of them, from their universality, bespeak themselves to be primitive; and who can assure us that some may not have reached them before the twelfth century, through "Walsh or strangers," "a race mightier than they and wiser," by whom they may have been instructed in the arts which ...
— Notes and Queries 1850.03.23 • Various
... was an apotheosis of tom-foolery. General Harrison had lived the life, mainly, of a Western farmer, and for a time, doubtless, exercised amid his rude surroundings the primitive hospitality natural to sturdy Western pioneers. On these facts the changes were rung. In every town and village a log cabin was erected where the Whigs held their meetings; and the bringing of logs, ...
— Volume I • Andrew Dickson White
... gravel washes were becoming more and more frequent, and they were able to travel at much better speed. As they left the low-lying jungle land they entered a zone which was faintly reminiscent of a terrestial jungle. It was still hot, soggy, and fetid, but gradually the most primitive aspects of the scene were modified. The over-arching trees were less closely packed, and they came across occasional rock clearings which were bare of vegetation except for a dense carpet of brown, lichenlike vegetation that secreted an astonishing amount of juice. They slipped and sloshed through ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, August 1930 • Various
... stick which small children flying small kites on short strings find sufficient for winding their twine on is far too primitive a contrivance for dealing with some hundreds of yards, may be, of string. In such circumstances one needs a quick-winding apparatus. A very fairly effective form of winder, suitable for small pulls, ...
— Things To Make • Archibald Williams
... honorable place. [281] About eight years before the first conquest of Jerusalem, he was born of a noble family in Burgundy; at the age of three-and-twenty he buried himself in the monastery of Citeaux, then in the primitive fervor of the institution; at the end of two years he led forth her third colony, or daughter, to the valley of Clairvaux [29] in Champagne; and was content, till the hour of his death, with the humble station of abbot of his own ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 6 • Edward Gibbon
... The latter end in an angle between the Peace River and the great Slave Lake, and beyond this the buffalo does not run. There is a point, however, across an arm of the Slave Lake where buffalo are found. It is called Slave Point, and although contiguous to the primitive rocks of the "Barren Grounds" it is of a similar geology (stratified limestone) with the buffalo prairies to the west. This, to the geologist, ...
— The Hunters' Feast - Conversations Around the Camp Fire • Mayne Reid
... their history, bore the older senses of "ignorant," "noted," and "blessed." It may be granted that any attempt to return to these older senses, regardless of later implications, is stark pedantry; but a delicate writer will play shyly with the primitive significance in passing, approaching it and circling it, taking it as a point of reference or departure. The early faith of Christianity, its beautiful cult of childhood, and its appeal to unlearned simplicity, have left their mark on the meaning of "silly"; the history ...
— Style • Walter Raleigh
... human instinct; as, e.g., the Lord's Supper, whatever higher and deeper feelings it may have, has this simple, but most significant meaning to the primitive convert, of feasting as a child with his brethren and sisters at ...
— Life of John Coleridge Patteson • Charlotte M. Yonge
... Modifications and improvements in construction would soon have suggested themselves, as was the case with the bicycle, which in its latest developments can scarcely be recognised as springing from the primitive "bone-shaker" of thirty-three years ago. We would suggest the idea to the modern inventor. He will in these days, of course, find lighter materials to hand. Then he will adopt some link motion for the legs in place of leather thongs, and will hinge the paddle blades so that they open ...
— The Dominion of the Air • J. M. Bacon
... allegory has reference to the idolatrous practices of the ignorant primitive Christians, such as the worship of images of the Saints, the pageant of the wooden ass during Lent (see Matthew, xxi, and Brand's Popular Antiquities, i, 124), and the Feast of the ...
— Spenser's The Faerie Queene, Book I • Edmund Spenser
... to fall back upon this venerable subject (which should only be broached in the wilds of Cornwall, or other equally primitive spots), of course you can speak of a hard frost being "an ice day for a hunting-man, although he is sure to swear at it." If the weather breaks, you may observe, "You thaw so," but not when you have to shout the quibble through the ear-trumpet ...
— Punch, or The London Charivari, Vol. 100., Jan. 17, 1891 • Various
... possible to make out the influence at work. In reading a piece of popular Latin one is very likely to be impressed with the large number of diminutives which are used, sometimes in the strict sense of the primitive word. The frequency of this usage reminds one in turn of the fact that not infrequently in the Romance languages the corresponding words are diminutive forms in their origin, so that evidently the diminutive in these cases crowded out the primitive ...
— The Common People of Ancient Rome - Studies of Roman Life and Literature • Frank Frost Abbott
... struck nine, and these primitive people prepared for rest; for their day began at dawn, and much wholesome work ...
— Work: A Story of Experience • Louisa May Alcott
... diversified in form and in specific functions; there is a wonderful division of labor, special functions being chiefly relegated to definite groups of cells; but from first to last there is no function developed that is not present, in a primitive way, in every cell, however isolated; nor does the developed cell, however specialized, ever forget altogether any one of its primordial functions or capacities. All physiology, then, properly interpreted, becomes merely a study of cellular ...
— A History of Science, Volume 4(of 5) • Henry Smith Williams
... rejected Him, and when the Resurrection and Ascension had raised the conception of His Messiahship to the height of a spiritual and universal sovereignty? The Christology of these passages is a striking proof of their primitive character." It is indeed difficult to see how men can read the Benedictus or Magnificat without realizing this. Every verse in them is full of Jewish thought and Jewish expressions, such as would have been impossible ...
— The Virgin-Birth of Our Lord - A paper read (in substance) before the confraternity of the Holy - Trinity at Cambridge • B. W. Randolph
... because of the earth invisible and without form, without any succession of times, which succession presents "this thing now, that thing anon"; because where is no form, there is no distinction of things: -it is, then, on account of these two, a primitive formed, and a primitive formless; the one, heaven but the Heaven of heaven, the other earth but the earth invisible and without form; because of these two do I conceive, did Thy Scripture say without mention of days, ...
— The Confessions of Saint Augustine • Saint Augustine
... breakfast, Sabine devoted herself sedulously to Lord Fordyce—and this produced two results. It sent Henry into a seventh heaven and caused Michael to burn with jealous rage. Primitive instincts were a good deal taking possession of him—and he found it extremely difficult to keep up his role of disinterested friend. It must be admitted he was in really a very difficult position for any man, and it is not very easy to decide ...
— The Man and the Moment • Elinor Glyn
... to belong, in theory at least, to that primitive era; but it is not necessary to go back further than the feudal period to look for a man who never has known a will above his own. Donatello seizes Miriam's tormentor and casts him down the Tarpeian Rock,—from ...
— The Life and Genius of Nathaniel Hawthorne • Frank Preston Stearns
... that Le Notre opened through the primitive groves where Louis XIII once came to hunt—on either side the broad lane of trees and leaping waters—groves were laid out, varied in design and decoration—delectable retreats where lovers, traitors, diplomats ...
— The Story of Versailles • Francis Loring Payne
... the most special of men, related more strictly than almost any other to a particular aspect of Nature. Inseparable from the extreme North, the sea-shore, and the seal, he is himself, as it were, a seal come to feet and hands, and preying upon his more primitive kindred. The cetacean of the land, he is localized, like animals,—not universal, like civilized man. He is no inhabitant of the globe as a whole, but is contained within special poles. His needle does not point ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 90, April, 1865 • Various
... upon the table facing her, and she saw in his eyes the primitive, savage joy of battle. "I mean war," he said. "Oh, it's horrible; yes, of course it's horrible. But it'll bring us to our senses. It'll ...
— The Bars of Iron • Ethel May Dell
... caught in the dry brushwood and began to leap heavenward, she followed it with her great brown eyes until it vanished into space. Her spirit thrilled with that same sense of awe and reverence which filled the souls of primitive men when they traced the course of the darting flames toward the sky. In the presence of fire, some form of worship is inevitable. Before conflagrations our reveries are transformed into prayers. The silently ascending tongues of flame carry us involuntarily ...
— The Redemption of David Corson • Charles Frederic Goss
... blood-vessels in his head and give him a stroke. Or if he pens it up, without its reaching any of these vents, it may rise at last to flood-level, and you will have violent assaults, the breaking of furniture, 'murther' even. For all this energy a good flamboyant, ranting swear is Nature's outlet. All primitive men and most animals swear. It is an emotional shunt. Your cat swears at you because she does not want to scratch your face. And the horse, because he cannot swear, drops dead. So you see my reason for regretting the decay of this excellent ...
— Certain Personal Matters • H. G. Wells
... the comfort of the troops at sea were simple and primitive. Each man shifted for himself. The whole space below was occupied by cargo or horses. The troops lived and slept on deck. Here, on wide flat stones, they cooked their meals, whiled away the day by games of chance, and slept at night on skins or thick rugs. Fortunately the weather ...
— The Young Carthaginian - A Story of The Times of Hannibal • G.A. Henty
... standing in the canoes. When they reached the landing in front of Yeomans's ranch, the congratulations began, with wild gesticulations, leapings, and contortions. They were tall, savage-looking men. Some of them had rings in their noses; and all had a much more primitive, uncivilized look, than our Indians on the Sound. I could hardly believe that the gentlemanly old Yeomans would deliver up his pretty daughter to the barbarians that came to claim her, and looked to see some one step forward and forbid the banns; but the ceremony proceeded as if every ...
— Life at Puget Sound: With Sketches of Travel in Washington Territory, British Columbia, Oregon and California • Caroline C. Leighton
... fact, the caterer. Collecting the edible roots and the manzanilla fruit occupied him some hours every day; and so did fishing with plaited rushes, sometimes in the waters of the stream, and sometimes in the hollows of the rocks on the beach when the tide had gone out. The means were primitive, no doubt, but from time to time a fine crustacean or a succulent fish figured on the table of Will Tree, to say nothing of the mollusks, which were ...
— Godfrey Morgan - A Californian Mystery • Jules Verne
... the bill in the Commons occupied no fewer than eighteen sittings, more than one of them, according to the standard of those primitive times, inordinately long. In the hundred encounters between Mr. Gladstone and Bethell, polished phrase barely hid unchristian desire to retaliate and provoke. Bethell boldly taunted Mr. Gladstone with insincerity. Mr. Gladstone, ...
— The Life of William Ewart Gladstone, Vol. 1 (of 3) - 1809-1859 • John Morley
... Rita's door it would no doubt have saved me an infinity of pangs too complex for analysis; but as this was impossible I elected to walk from end to end of that long way. My emotions and sensations were childlike and chaotic inasmuch that they were very intense and primitive, and that I lay very helpless in their unrelaxing grasp. If one could have kept a record of one's physical sensations it would have been a fine collection of absurdities and contradictions. Hardly touching ...
— The Arrow of Gold - a story between two notes • Joseph Conrad
... so that we didn't have to do the grand hike?" Jimmy asked, afflicted with dizzy visions of five hundred miles of tramping over rough country, supporting themselves, meanwhile, in the most primitive fashion by shooting game, and cooking the same over fires made with flint and steel, or the bow and stick method ...
— Boy Scouts on Hudson Bay - The Disappearing Fleet • G. Harvey Ralphson
... than in the planning of their houses; there seems to be something hereditary about it, as difficult to change as a tendency to bald heads and awkward locomotion. Americans are special sufferers in this respect. The primitive Anglo-American home was only a step removed from the wigwams of the aboriginal savages, in size, shape and general accommodations. Even our English ancestors, from whom we derived some of our domestic ...
— The House that Jill Built - after Jack's had proved a failure • E. C. Gardner
... across its perforated poles, and P the second Nicol.) Exciting the magnet, one half of the image becomes suddenly red, the other half green. Interrupting the current, the two colours fade away, and the primitive puce ...
— Six Lectures on Light - Delivered In The United States In 1872-1873 • John Tyndall
... pledged to seek to distribute the life-giving Word of God to those who were hungering for it, and to help each in his measure to let the light, now shrouded beneath a mass of observances which had lost their original meaning to the unlettered people, shine out in its primitive brilliance and purity; but Dalaber had only partially understood ...
— For the Faith • Evelyn Everett-Green
... become one of the cuckoo-cries which are heard but not regarded. Rays of crimson, blue, and purple shone upon the twain from the east window behind them, wherein saints and angels vied with each other in primitive surroundings of landscape and sky, and threw upon the pavement at the sitters' feet a softer reproduction of the same translucent hues, amid which the shadows of the two living heads of Knight and Elfride ...
— A Pair of Blue Eyes • Thomas Hardy
... bearing within themselves evidence of the hour and day and place of their inception; letters written with the stub of a pencil on copy-paper, at some sleepless dawn; or, long ago, in the wide- spaced type of a primitive traveling typewriter, and dated, perhaps, on the Western desert, while he was on his way to secure water for thirsty settlers; or dashed off in the glowing moment just after a Cabinet meeting, with the heat of the discussion still in his veins; others on the paper of the Department ...
— The Letters of Franklin K. Lane • Franklin K. Lane
... gloriously as Jimmy died, well, you should be a proud man, prouder even than you are. He sent the boys over raving mad with blood, and they struck Bavarians—and good Bavarians: men who could fight, and men who did fight. They were at it, teeth, feet, and steel for ten minutes: primitive, lustful fighting; and then the Bavarians broke; with the boys after them, stabbing and cursing. One or two were left, though they wouldn't surrender, more power to them. A Bavarian officer, in fact, concluded the eventful career of Sapper ...
— No Man's Land • H. C. McNeile
... lessons to be imprinted upon the general heart of men, and to be seen in all their character and intercourse. But when a few hundred years shall have elapsed, and that is a long allowance for this education to be perfected in, I can conceive that the times of the primitive peace and love shall be more than restored, and that such reproaches as to-night were heard lavished upon one and another will be deemed as little compatible with a Christian profession as would be violence and war. All violence and wrong must cease, as this religion is received, ...
— Aurelian - or, Rome in the Third Century • William Ware
... the time as primitive, as much a child of the wilderness as they. An ironical spirit laid hold of him. They would test him! Well, he would test them! The inside of his chest bubbled with malicious laughter. Once more Hainteroh, great warrior of the Wyandots, mighty hunter, ...
— The Riflemen of the Ohio - A Story of the Early Days along "The Beautiful River" • Joseph A. Altsheler
... implies to prohibit, in opposition to the word bid in its present sense, it signifies by the same kind of opposition to curse, when it is derived from the same word in its primitive meaning. ...
— Notes to Shakespeare, Volume III: The Tragedies • Samuel Johnson
... the other is lying." Nekhludoff recalled his relations with the wife of the district commander, and a flood of shameful recollections came upon him. "There is a disgusting bestiality in man," he thought; "but when it is in a primitive state, one looks down upon and despises it, whether he is carried away with or withstands it. But when this same bestiality hides itself under a so-called aesthetic, poetic cover, and demands to ...
— The Awakening - The Resurrection • Leo Nikoleyevich Tolstoy
... other barriers between him and the coveted diploma. If a man stands at a lower point in evolution where he has not the ambition for intellectual culture nor for fame nor for wealth, but only the desire for shelter and food, still that primitive desire forces him into action; and while his will power will be evolved only in proportion to the strength of the desire that prompts him, it must nevertheless grow. Instead of rising at a certain hour because the will decrees it he may rise only because he knows ...
— Self-Development and the Way to Power • L. W. Rogers
... the term may be used, the sexual imagination of the descriptive poet. The same conclusion may be deduced from another hint in the same episode of Musidora; for Thomson's notion of the privileges of favoured love must have been either very primitive, or rather deficient in delicacy, when he made his grateful nymph inform her discreet Damon that in some happier moment he might perhaps be the ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 2 • George Gordon Byron
... are now rich, and strangers to the stings of those wants that urged them to violations of the law: they are become industrious, exemplary, and useful citizens. The English government should purchase the most northern and barren of those islands; it should send over to us the honest, primitive Hebrideans, settle them here on good lands, as a reward for their virtue and ancient poverty; and replace them with a colony of her wicked sons. The severity of the climate, the inclemency of the seasons, the sterility of the soil, the tempestuousness ...
— Letters from an American Farmer • Hector St. John de Crevecoeur
... Robert Grell with the fierce, passionate devotion of a strong nature. The sudden news of his death had brought out the primitive woman bent on vengeance. It was no impulse of suddenly shattered nerves that had made her turn on Fairfield. To coldly analyse the facts for and against him was beyond her. She only thought of the man who had a ...
— The Grell Mystery • Frank Froest
... independent of the habit. The acts which are elicited after the habit is formed, owe to the habit, not their existence, but the mode of their existence: that is to say, because of the habit the acts are now formed readily, reliably, and artistically, or virtuously. The primitive acts which gradually engendered the habit, were done with difficulty, fitfully, and with many failures,—more by good luck than good management, if it was a matter of skill, and by a special effort rather than as a thing of course, ...
— Moral Philosophy • Joseph Rickaby, S. J.
... by wandering tribes, had no history other than the songs of the national bards, until after the rise of Mohammed in the sixth century. The desire of the prophet was to bring his people back from idolatry and star worship to the primitive and true worship of God. He studied the Old and New Testament, the legends of the Talmud and the traditions of Arabian and Persian mythology, then he wrote the Koran, which became the sacred book of the Arabians, and in which is traced in outline ...
— The Interdependence of Literature • Georgina Pell Curtis
... His plan was primitive and simple: it was to oppose by continual resistance every attempt which should be made to begin the projected works upon the river; to destroy at night all which should be done in the day, and so harass ...
— The Waters of Edera • Louise de la Rame, a.k.a. Ouida
... instinct of possession was rising in Reardon. Esther suddenly meant more to him than she had in all this time when she had been meaning a great deal. Alston Choate had power to rouse this primitive rage in him, but he could always conquer it by reasoning that Alston wouldn't take her if he could get her. There were too many inherited reserves in Alston. Actually, Reardon thought, Alston wouldn't really want a woman he had to take unguardedly. But here was the man who, by every rigour of conventional ...
— The Prisoner • Alice Brown
... They ask no favor of any man. Yet the road is never too rough, the way too far, for one neighbor to go to the aid of another in time of sickness or death. I knew a little boy who was dangerously sick with a strange ailment that primitive home remedies could not heal. Neighbor boys made a slide, a quilt tied to two strong saplings, and carried their little friend some ten miles over a rough mountain footpath to the nearest wagon road. There, placing him in a jolt wagon, the bed of which had ...
— Blue Ridge Country • Jean Thomas
... in most parts, below the apostolic times; and it was only by the strength of the dark coloring with which he brought out the failings and the follies of the succeeding ages, that a shadow of doubt and suspicion was thrown back upon the primitive period of Christianity. ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 1 • Edward Gibbon
... Desboutin, Proust, Mallarme, Clemenceau, Guys, Faure, Baudelaire, Moore, and others, an admirable series by a visionary who possessed, in a period of unrest and artificiality, the quality of rude sincerity, and the love of truth of a Primitive. ...
— The French Impressionists (1860-1900) • Camille Mauclair
... the first time, I consider that I have seen the Indians in their primitive state; for till now all that I had fallen in with have been debased by intercourse with the whites, and the use of spirituous liquors. The Winnebagos at Prairie du Chien were almost always in a state of intoxication, as were ...
— Diary in America, Series One • Frederick Marryat (AKA Captain Marryat)
... body and fell with his face turned toward that region where lived the unspeakable noises of the swirling missiles. There was the faintest shadow of a smile on his lips as he looked at Collins. He gave a sigh, a little primitive breath like ...
— The Little Regiment - And Other Episodes of the American Civil War • Stephen Crane
... immediately to a church, at their own request, in procession. And no sooner did they find themselves in the temple of the Lord for whom they had suffered so much, than they all commenced to sing aloud Nunc dimittis, from beginning to end, so that the Christians of the primitive church could have done no more. They were then taken to a hospital, where they are being cared for at present with liberal good cheer, for on every hand they are supplied with plentiful alms. The heathen Japanese went back astonished at this charitable reception which they received; and ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898, Volume XXIV, 1630-34 • Various
... suitors, to marry. Indeed I did not entirely understand why I liked having John in camp better than anyone else; probably it was essentially the same charm which impelled Mildred to want to live with him, and the Tin Lizzie to fall down and worship. In any case the Lizzie worshipped with a primitive and unashamed and enduring adoration, which stood even the test of fear. That was the supreme test for the Tin Lizzie, who was a coward of cowards. Rather cruelly I bet John on a day that his satellite did not love him enough to go out to the club-house alone ...
— Joy in the Morning • Mary Raymond Shipman Andrews
... of the keenest hate, and as soon as—shortly before we entered Keilhau—hunting was freely permitted, the peasants gave full vent to their rage, set off for the woods with the old muskets they had kept hidden in the garrets, or other still more primitive weapons, and shot or struck down all the game they encountered. Roast venison was cheap for weeks on Rudolstadt tables, and the pupils had many ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... isn't silly. Any one of us would enjoy it, if he weren't so self-conscious. And it's more picturesque than golf and takes more skill. And what courtesy! These men form what is really a club—a club in its primitive and true sense. And I was invited to ...
— Chimney-Pot Papers • Charles S. Brooks
... maintained with equal truth, both that religion is destroyed by the progress of human knowledge, and that it is always present there. Their religion was the whole patrimony of knowledge of primitive peoples: our patrimony of knowledge is our religion. The content has been changed, bettered, refined, and it will change and become better and more refined in the future also; but its function is always the same. We do not know what use could be made of religion by those who wish to preserve it ...
— Aesthetic as Science of Expression and General Linguistic • Benedetto Croce
... considerable height above the shore; harbour there was none at all, only a broad beach of shingle on which waves were breaking, and where a cluster of men, women and children stood gazing at the steamer. It gave me pleasure to find the place so small and primitive. In no hurry to land, I watched the unloading of merchandise (with a great deal of shouting and gesticulation) into boats which had rowed out for the purpose; speculated on the resources of Paola in the matter of food (for I was ...
— By the Ionian Sea - Notes of a Ramble in Southern Italy • George Gissing
... posterity will always link it with his name. Discarding the crude notions of cometary impact and volcanic eruption, Laplace filled up the gaps in the hypothesis with the aid of well-known laws of gravitation and motion. He assumed that the primitive mass of cosmic matter which was destined to form our solar system was revolving on its axis even at a time when it was still nebular in character, and filled all space to a distance far beyond the present limits of the system. As this vaporous mass contracted through loss ...
— A History of Science, Volume 3(of 5) • Henry Smith Williams
... later centuries the Gospelized communities developed into an organized Church, with doctrine, worship, and government based upon God's Word. These primitive Christians were careful to preserve the apostolic simplicity, purity, manner, and substance, of Divine service. The Infallibility of the Bible, the Divinity of Christ, the Inspired Psalmody, and the Presbyterian form of government, were fundamentals in the faith of the Church of Scotland ...
— Sketches of the Covenanters • J. C. McFeeters
... that raises the blood-pressure and promotes the circulation of the blood. This, then, is the biological function of laughter, one of the most delicate and beautiful of all nature's adjustments. In order that man should reap the full benefits of life in the social group, it was necessary that his primitive sympathetic tendencies should be strong and delicately adjusted. For without this, there could be little mutual understanding, and only imperfect cooperation and mutual aid in the more serious difficulties and embarrassments of life. But, in endowing man with delicately ...
— More Toasts • Marion Dix Mosher
... Anyone subjected to this poison died, but for a few minutes after the life left his body the medicine men could still converse with him. The subject, though ostensibly and actually dead, answered the medicine men's every question. This was their primitive, though reportedly effective method of catching glimpses of what lay in the world ...
— There is a Reaper ... • Charles V. De Vet
... me very humble; it's only a survival of the primitive in all of us. I shouldn't worry about it. It's terribly easy to become a lost sheep, even a black one. But this is not an hour for philosophical discussion. Let me assure you that the nasty telegram that caused you to leave Bailey ...
— Blacksheep! Blacksheep! • Meredith Nicholson
... week-ends or in the evening, tramping down the lane to hail the house in absurd varieties of the latest New York slang, which, never failed to amuse Mary. The shy Jamie was often with her; they were now the most intimate of friends. He would show her primitive tools and mechanical contrivances of his own making, and she would tell him stories of Scotland, of Prince Charlie and Flora, of Bruce and Wallace, of Bannockburn, or of James, the poet king. Of these she had a store, having been brought ...
— The Nest Builder • Beatrice Forbes-Robertson Hale
... he chaffed her about it for the rest of his visit: he had at last found a topic after his own heart. If her mother considered that he might be the emblem of their redemption he was an engine of the most primitive construction. He stayed and stayed; he struck Rose as on the point of bringing out something for which he had not quite, as he would have said, the cheek. Sometimes she thought he was going to begin: "By the way, my ...
— The Chaperon • Henry James
... not see? Step by step I worked back to the primitive and central principle, the soul of all religion. You know what that is. It is Love! This I have preached," said Pendlam, his features suffused, his eyes glistening bright; "and this I shall continue to preach, while life lasts. Persecution cannot influence ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I, No. 1, Nov. 1857 • Various
... fixing the opinions on that matter, I should like every unbiassed mind to take a voyage round the world and devote itself to a survey of different literatures in their primitive vigour and infinite variety. What would be seen? Chief of all a Homer, the father of the classical world, less a single distinct individual than the vast living expression of a whole epoch and a semi-barbarous civilisation. In order ...
— Literary and Philosophical Essays • Various
... Another, a primitive man from the German forests, whose language was scarcely intelligible, lived entirely to himself and constructed his shelter of brush and leaves—as would a bear preparing to hibernate. In his ignorance of the use of an axe I saw him, in felling a tree, "throw" it so that ...
— The Story of a Cannoneer Under Stonewall Jackson • Edward A. Moore
... keenness of his countenance became blurred, as if the hand of an unseen sculptor were rubbing down its features, doing away the veneer with which Europe had overlaid the primitive Asiatic, which now showed on the surface, in every detail of coarsely modelled nose, oblique eyes of animal cunning, pendulous lips ...
— Red Masquerade • Louis Joseph Vance
... warfare against the ships of all civilized nations, and cut every Christian throat among their prisoners; but (except for deeds of that character, which are the rule and habit of their life, and matter of religion and conscience with them) they are a gentle-natured people, of primitive innocence and integrity. ...
— Our Old Home - A Series of English Sketches • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... difficult to the imagination to realise the first embodiment of what is now Edinburgh in the far distance of the early ages. Neither Pict nor Scot has left any record of what was going on so far south in the days when the king's daughters, primitive princesses with their rude surroundings, were placed for safety in the castrum puellarum, the maiden castle, a title in after days proudly (but perhaps not very justly) adapted to the supposed invulnerability of the fortress perched upon ...
— Royal Edinburgh - Her Saints, Kings, Prophets and Poets • Margaret Oliphant
... of Mars was conducted by the Salian priests, whom Numa summoned to Rome from Etruria. These also used the flute as an accessory to their sacrificial rites. In these primitive days of Rome, much was borrowed from the Etruscans in ...
— Music and Some Highly Musical People • James M. Trotter
... primitive. We didn't have kerosene. Our only lights were tallow candles, mostly grease lamps, they were just a pan with grease in it, and one end of the rag dragging out over the side which we would light. There were no sewers at ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States - From Interviews with Former Slaves - Kansas Narratives • Works Projects Administration
... with undergrowth. What first attracted my gaze after penetrating the tree fringe was the glimpse of a small shack, built of poles, and thatched with coarse grass, which stood nearly in the center of the island. It was a rudely constructed, primitive affair, and to all appearances deserted. My first thought was that we had stumbled upon some Indian hut, but I felt it safer to explore its interior before permitting the others to ...
— The Devil's Own - A Romance of the Black Hawk War • Randall Parrish
... day, takes his meals with the Marshes. His red face, his little steady eyes—by no means altogether commonplace—his enormous appetite (that's safe; he won't look at Minnie till the bread's swamped the gravy dry), napkin tucked diamond-wise—but this is primitive, and, whatever it may do the reader, don't take me in. Let's dodge to the Moggridge household, set that in motion. Well, the family boots are mended on Sundays by James himself. He reads Truth. But his passion? Roses—and his wife a retired hospital nurse—interesting—for God's sake ...
— Monday or Tuesday • Virginia Woolf
... and feeling as if all the bones of my limbs were getting pulled out of their sockets. The weight of the body naturally tending to settle down would, I felt, every moment increase the suffering of this terrible torture, which was really a primitive ...
— An Explorer's Adventures in Tibet • A. Henry Savage Landor
... the Apostle Paul, labored to live by the labor of his own hands; and what was given unto him by the rich bestowed he on the poor. And with this blessed man, as being her nephew, Lupita, the sister of Saint Patrick, abided in one house (for such was the custom of the primitive church), that by his conversation and example she might profit in the exercise of all holy duties. And after some time had passed, when the pious prelate, as he was wont, would arise in the middle of the night to confess unto the Lord, this holy woman would compose herself to sleep and cover herself ...
— The Most Ancient Lives of Saint Patrick - Including the Life by Jocelin, Hitherto Unpublished in America, and His Extant Writings • Various
... primarily his strong sense, already illustrated, that the sacredness of marriage, and the customs that regulate it, were triumphs of culture which had been won, painfully and with effort, from the unbridled promiscuity of primitive life. To impair that sacredness, to dislocate those customs, was to take a step backwards into darkness and anarchy. His keen sense of moral virtue—that instinctive knowledge of evil which, as Frederick Robertson said, comes not of contact with evil but of repulsion from it, ...
— Matthew Arnold • G. W. E. Russell
... rising in a blaze of splendour, giving promise of an oppressive day, when the horsemen topped a ridge beyond which lay the primitive buildings of a ...
— The Settler and the Savage • R.M. Ballantyne
... Primitive man made women do all the hard work of life, bear all the burdens, eat of the leavings, and be the servants ...
— Social Life - or, The Manners and Customs of Polite Society • Maud C. Cooke
... the Indian suited the chivalric hidalgo; and then, weary of the Spanish nobles, in whom he no longer had confidence, disgusted with the selfish mestizoes, who wished to aggrandize themselves at his expense, he took a pleasure in turning to that primitive race, who have disputed so valiantly the American soil with the ...
— The Pearl of Lima - A Story of True Love • Jules Verne
... kindly to the rifle, now and then one is found who is a devotee of the hound. Such a one was an old Missourian, who may be called Mr. Cowley, whom I knew when he was living on a ranch in North Dakota, west of the Missouri. Mr. Cowley was a primitive person, of much nerve, which he showed not only in the hunting field but in the startling political conventions of the place and period. He was quite well off, but he was above the niceties of personal vanity. His ...
— Hunting the Grisly and Other Sketches • Theodore Roosevelt
... These primitive people are bent, in their out-of-the-world, remote way, upon fleecing the passing stranger quite as earnestly as other Italians, and they naively improve every occasion for plunder. As we passed up ...
— Venetian Life • W. D. Howells
... were totally overlooked. Nor was ecclesiastical merit confined to the established church. Many instances of extraordinary genius, unaffected piety, and universal moderation, appeared among the dissenting ministers of Great Britain and Ireland; among these we particularize the elegant, the primitive Foster; the learned, ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. - From William and Mary to George II. • Tobias Smollett |
