"Pagan" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... comets being the presages of evil is an old pagan superstition, introduced and entertained among Christians by their prejudice for antiquity; and which Mr. Bayle says is a remnant of pagan superstition, conveyed from father to son, ever since the first conversion ...
— Thaumaturgia • An Oxonian
... 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 and Christian. ...
— The Story of John G. Paton - Or Thirty Years Among South Sea Cannibals • James Paton
... impending doom: That Emperour, Charles of France the Douce, Into this land is come, us to confuse. I have no host in battle him to prove, Nor have I strength his forces to undo. Counsel me then, ye that are wise and true; Can ye ward off this present death and dule?" What word to say no pagan of them knew, Save Blancandrin, of th' Castle ...
— The Song of Roland • Anonymous
... Saxons were named Woden, Tuisco, Thor, Frea, and Seator. They also worshipped the sun and moon. Woden was their god of war; and from him Ida and his descendants professed to spring. We need hardly add that it is after these objects of pagan worship that we still name the days of the week; as Woden's day (Wednesday), Thor's day (Thursday), ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Volume VI • Various
... yellow pines, with feet planted in masses of flowers, pushed toward heaven. Scattered among the rugged pines were thousands of slender aspen trees, swaying and quivering, their white trunks giving an artificial effect to the scene as if the gods had set a stage for some pagan drama. Ruffed grouse strutted about, challenging the world at large. Our horses' hoofs scattered a brood and sent them scuttling to cover under vines and blossoms. Roused from his noonday siesta, a startled deer bounded away. One doe had her fawn secreted near the trail and she ...
— I Married a Ranger • Dama Margaret Smith
... If the Pagan religion still prevailed, the new goddess, in whose honour temples would be raised and to whom statues would be erected in all the capitals of the world, would he the goddess Worry. London would be the chief seat and centre ...
— The Recreations of A Country Parson • A. K. H. Boyd
... of my life to search, I have not herded with mere pagan beasts: But sometimes I have "sat at good men's feasts," And I have been "where bells have knolled to church." Dear bells! how sweet the sound of village bells When on the undulating air they swim! ...
— The Humourous Poetry of the English Language • James Parton
... intellects the world has ever known. Canon Farrar calls him "A Seeker after God," and has printed parallel passages from Saint Paul and Seneca which, for many, seem to show that the men were in communication with each other. Every ethical maxim of Christianity was expressed by this "noble pagan," and his influence was always directed toward that which he thought was right. His mistakes were all in the line of infirmities of the will. Voltaire calls him, "The father of all those who wear shovel hats," and in another place ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great Philosophers, Volume 8 • Elbert Hubbard
... had gone, Birnier began anew to question Mungongo regarding the reputed ceremonies of the festival, but beyond the fact that it was an occasion allied to the Christian-Pagan festival of a kind of thanksgiving for the harvest and sacrifice to the god which involved the ceremony of the marriage of the Bride of the Banana, Mungongo ...
— Witch-Doctors • Charles Beadle
... sculpture. But his interest in these studies was not like that of the ordinary cultured visitor to the Italian cities. Thousands of such visitors, for example, study those endless lines of magnificent Pagan busts which are to be found in nearly all the Italian galleries and museums, and admire them, and talk about them, and note them in their catalogues, and describe them in their diaries. But the way in which they ...
— Robert Browning • G. K. Chesterton
... of view the oracles of pagan antiquity and religious predictions in general, and confining ourselves solely to the persons who, in modern times, have made themselves most conspicuous in foretelling the future, we shall find that the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries were the golden age of these impostors. Many ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds • Charles Mackay
... such event as that described ever took place; to exhibit the untrustworthy character of the narrative demonstrated by literary criticism; and, finally, to account for its origin, by producing a form of those ancient legends of pagan Chaldaea, from which the biblical compilation is manifestly derived. I have yet to learn that the main propositions of this essay can ...
— Collected Essays, Volume V - Science and Christian Tradition: Essays • T. H. Huxley
... mind 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 ...
— Erasmus and the Age of Reformation • Johan Huizinga
... Package pakado, pakajxo. Packer pakisto. Packet pako—ajxo. Packet-boat kuriersxipo. Pack-saddle sxargxselo. Pad vati. Padding vato—ajxo. Paddle (to row) remeti. Paddock kampeto. Padlock penda seruro. Pagan idolano. Page-boy pagxio, lakeeto. Page pagxo. Pageant vidajxo, parado. Pagoda pagodo. Pail sitelo. Pain dolori. Painful dolora. Painless sendolora. Paint pentri, kolori. Paint kolorilo, kolorigilo. Paint (rouge) rugxilo. Painter (artist) pentristo. Painter (workman) ...
— English-Esperanto Dictionary • John Charles O'Connor and Charles Frederic Hayes
... worth while? In Chapters X and XI the reader will face some of the appalling details of the blood, violence and despair which have been tyrannically imposed upon Russia's groaning millions for the sake of an experiment which leads to nothing but the pagan barbarism of I. W. W.'ism. Is it worth while? Even if at last they are able to produce and distribute enough to clothe and feed themselves, can human beings be happy in such a state? Is this the dream of ...
— The Red Conspiracy • Joseph J. Mereto
... little paper). I cannot deny it. A truth is a truth. And, since no medal, nor riband, nor cross, of any known order, is disposable for the most brilliant successes in dealing with desperate (or what may be called condemned) passages in Pagan literature, mere sloughs of despond that yawn across the pages of many a heathen dog, poet and orator, that I could mention, the more reasonable it is that a large allowance should be served out of boasting and self-glorification to all those whose ...
— The Uncollected Writings of Thomas de Quincey, Vol. 2 - With a Preface and Annotations by James Hogg • Thomas de Quincey
... published, was an age overflowing with imposture and credulity. "Such," says Bishop Fell, "was the license of fiction in the first ages, and so easy the credulity, that testimony of the facts of that time is to be received with great caution, as not only the pagan world, but the church of God, has just reason to complain of its fabulous age." Stillingfleet says, "that antiquity is defective most where it is most important, In the awe immediately succeeding that of the apostles." Now be it recollected, that the Gospels first appeared in this age of ...
— Letter to the Reverend Mr. Cary • George English
... the majority of Christians: that is all which, in the latitude of the term, is known about its signification. This makes such persecutors ten times worse than any of that description that hitherto have been known in the world. The old persecutors, whether Pagan or Christian, whether Arian or Orthodox, whether Catholics, Anglicans, or Calvinists, actually were, or at least had the decorum to pretend to be, strong dogmatists. They pretended that their religious maxims were clear and ascertained, and so useful that they were bound, for the eternal benefit ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. VI. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... contention, and made an accepted tribunal, and the same for all.[63] If men were truly sincere, and delivered judgment by no canons but those of evident morality, then Julian would be described in the same terms by Christian and pagan, Luther by Catholic and Protestant, Washington by Whig and Tory, Napoleon by ...
— A Lecture on the Study of History • Lord Acton
... curious old heraldic figures, and beside them are two blackened pictures—one representing Sir Bevis of Hampton, and the other his companion, Ascapart. Sir Bevis, who lived in the reign of Edgar, had a castle in the neighbourhood. It is said he bestowed his love on a pagan lady, Josian, who, having been converted to Christianity, gave him a sword called Morglay, and a horse named Arundel. Thus equipped he was wont to kill four or five men at one blow. Among his renowned deeds were those he performed against the Saracens, and also his slaughter ...
— A Yacht Voyage Round England • W.H.G. Kingston
... does he need "Light," and that light which is from above. All the laws we may enact the next hundred years will not change the character of a single Indian. To a considerable extent he is a superstitious pagan still. He needs Jesus Christ. He needs to learn the Fatherhood of God and the brotherhood of man. As it is a part of the Indian man's religious belief that his god does not want him to work and he will be punished if he does, it is especially necessary to touch his religious nature first. When he ...
— The American Missionary, Volume 42, No. 12, December, 1888 • Various
... if he do, I'll die a sturdy martyr. And to the last preach to thee, pagan Percy, Till I have made a convert. Answer me, Is not this idol of thy heathen worship That sent thee hither a despairing pilgrim; Thy goddess, ...
— The Indian Princess - La Belle Sauvage • James Nelson Barker
... attention on what might else have been but little, and perhaps soon forgotten; while the ominous words of Dandie - heard, not heeded, and still remembered - had lent to her thoughts, or rather to her mood, a cast of solemnity, and that idea of Fate - a pagan Fate, uncontrolled by any Christian deity, obscure, lawless, and august - moving indissuadably in the affairs of Christian men. Thus even that phenomenon of love at first sight, which is so rare and seems so simple and violent, like ...
— Weir of Hermiston • Robert Louis Stevenson
... grimness and a sprinkling of that charming irrelevancy which is of the essence of true humour. Occasionally Mr. BARRY PAIN wings a shaft against the comfortably brutal doctrines of the average and orthodox householder, male or female. But on these occasions he uses the classical fables and the pagan deities as his bow, and the twang of his shot cannot offend those who play the part of target and are pierced. Read the four stories from the "Entertainments of Kapnides" in the "Canadian Canoe" series, or, "An Hour of Death," "The Last ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 101, August 29, 1891 • Various
... finds an aged Pagan woman making great lamentation above a tomb which she believes to be that of her son. He kneels beside her in prayer, while around them a wondrous tempest sweeps. After a long time, he declares unto her the Death of Christ, and how, through that Death, the Dead ...
— The Legends of Saint Patrick • Aubrey de Vere
... the secrets of his Pagan hell, Where ghost with ghost in sad communion dwell." —Crabbe's Bor., ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown
... blood. As we pass out into the bleak street, the first faint flush of dawn is in the east. The waesserer are washing off the cabs; a helmeted hauptmann salutes lazily as we pass, and we drive home full of the intoxications of that pagan gaiety which the Viennese, more than any other people, have preserved in all its innocence, its sensuous splendour, its spontaneity ...
— Europe After 8:15 • H. L. Mencken, George Jean Nathan and Willard Huntington Wright
... days in which he had been beaten like a shuttlecock between the Stanburys and the Frenches, he had lost his head and had done,—he knew not what. "Those whom the God chooses to destroy, he first maddens," said Mr. Gibson to himself of himself, throwing himself back upon early erudition and pagan philosophy. Then he looked across to the river Exe, and thought that there was hardly water enough there to cover the ...
— He Knew He Was Right • Anthony Trollope
... almost as hairy as that of a bear, which gave him a very strange appearance indeed. Once in his animal dress, as he called it, General Macard, sabre in hand, hurled himself at the enemy horsemen, swearing like a pagan; but it so happened that he rarely reached any of them, for at the unexpected and terrible sight of this kind of giant, half naked and covered in hair rushing toward them uttering the most fearsome yells the enemy often fled ...
— The Memoirs of General the Baron de Marbot, Translated by - Oliver C. Colt • Baron de Marbot
... 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, the horse and the rider, and keep our feet from falling and our ...
— The Blue Flower, and Others • Henry van Dyke
... from their unquestioning hold on the world, one sees little trace of religion, still less of a distinctively Christian creed. Their belief in the Unseen, so far as it manifests itself at all, seems to be rather a pagan kind; their moral notions, though held with strong tenacity, seem to have no standard beyond hereditary custom. You could not live among such people; you are stifled for want of an outlet toward something beautiful, ...
— The Mill on the Floss • George Eliot
... does into theirs. How thankful we should be that it does not also enter into our religious life! How thoroughly the Chinese must be impressed with this by their recent experiences of our Latest Crusaders! I was listening the other day to a gentleman descanting "on the darkness that enveloped those Pagan barbarians," and I was thinking of another darkness or blindness which prevented the speaker, and many like him, from seeing the least gleam of light in the East. Yet it does not require much hand-shading of our intellectual eyes to see EX ...
— Impressions of a War Correspondent • George Lynch
... imparting some of their own tint of fable, yet baptizing anew the groves and hillsides to sanctity. Beautiful hillsides, rippling down to the sea-coasts; and plains, nestling among the mountain slopes, littered with remnants of vast temples of superb pagan workmanship and with priceless pre-historic remains: wonderful, ancient marbles, time-mellowed and crumbling, inwrought rather with barbaric symbols of splendor than with the tender ...
— The Royal Pawn of Venice - A Romance of Cyprus • Mrs. Lawrence Turnbull
... he condescended. "Measured by our standard he must needs seem puny—as, indeed, what king of them all, Christian or Pagan, would not?" His manner so far had been in agreement with his supple companion, but suddenly a change came over his temper, and he turned on Hildebrand a frown so coldly menacing that the favorite ...
— The Proud Prince • Justin Huntly McCarthy
... pagan and without the light of the gospel, Akbar recognized the merits of Christianity and exemplified the ideals of civil and religious liberty which it teaches, and which are now considered the highest ...
— Modern India • William Eleroy Curtis
... Mr. Pyecroft; and the founder of his family must have been a certain pagan gentleman by the ...
— No. 13 Washington Square • Leroy Scott
... and fountains spring up there and gush abundantly and one seldom loses the sound of the plash of water. The flower of Christian chivalry and Christian intelligence went to Palestine to wrest the Holy Sepulchre from the hands of pagan Mohammedans. They found there many excellent things which they had not gone out to seek, and the Crusaders produced a kind of premature and abortive Renaissance, the shadow of lost classic things reflected on Christian Europe from the mirror ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 4 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... there was no Christmas in New England. The Pilgrims and the Puritans did not believe in such celebrations. In fact, they often made it a special point to do their hardest work on Christmas day, just to show their contempt for what they considered a pagan festival. ...
— Our Holidays - Their Meaning and Spirit; retold from St. Nicholas • Various
... the moment is just as perfect in this era of electric light and central heating, as it was in the era of Virgil, who, by the way, described a Christmas tree. We shall say this year, with exactly the same accents of relief and hope as our pagan ancestors used, and as the woaded savage used: "The days will begin to lengthen now!" For, while we often falsely fancy that we have subjugated nature to our service, the fact is that we are as irremediably as ever at the mercy ...
— The Feast of St. Friend • Arnold Bennett
... innocent Adam rendered to our common Mother and which doubtless suggested to the Serpent the idea of taking them in. But a symptom so complete is not frequent. Most married couples are too good Christians to follow the usages of pagan Greece, so we have ranged, among the last symptoms, the appearance in the calm nuptial couch of those shameless pleasures which spring generally from lawless passion. In their proper time and place we will treat more fully ...
— The Physiology of Marriage, Part I. • Honore de Balzac
... storehouses were located in the following places in twenty counties: Accomac, Calvert's Neck; Charles City, Flower de Hundred; Elizabeth City, Hampton; Gloucester, Tindall's Point; Henrico, Varina; Isle of Wight, Pates Field on Pagan Creek; James City, James City; Lancaster, Corotomond River; Middlesex, Urbanna Creek; Nansemond, Dues Point; New Kent, Brick House; Norfolk, on the Elizabeth River at the mouth of the Eastern River; Northampton, Kings Creek; Northumberland, Chickacony; ...
— Tobacco in Colonial Virginia - "The Sovereign Remedy" • Melvin Herndon
... at Kazan large spoons and candles, drums that were used to summon the people to religious ceremonies, and various other articles connected with their mysterious beliefs, and the Committee of the Exhibition awarded them a medal for "a collection of invaluable objects for the study of the pagan ...
— Modern Saints and Seers • Jean Finot
... enormous difficulty presented itself for solution. The whole elaborate educational system of the Romans was founded on the older literature and the older creeds. All education, law, and culture were pagan. How could the Christians be educated; and how, unless they were educated, could they appeal to the minds of educated men? So began a long struggle, which continued for many centuries, and swayed this way and that. ...
— Romance - Two Lectures • Walter Raleigh
... the time and of the men whom he lashes 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 portion ...
— The Age of Pope - (1700-1744) • John Dennis
... conversation. Thy profession is so far from helping thee in such a case, that it shall be the most bitter ingredient in thy cup of judgment, for it is the greatest aggravation of thy sin, for through it God's name is blasphemed. If they had not known, they had not had sin. Pagan's sin is no sin in respect of Christians. If ye consider Christ's sermon, Matt. xi., ye will say Isaiah is a meek and moderate man in regard of him. Isaiah calls them people of Gomorrah, but Christ will have ...
— The Works of the Rev. Hugh Binning • Hugh Binning
... all is! What a lovely world God made when He made—this!" Toni stood on the steps with arms outstretched, like some young priestess of a pagan faith welcoming the sun. "And why do we lie asleep in stuffy beds when all the birds and flowers ...
— The Making of a Soul • Kathlyn Rhodes
... tracked With struggle and sorrow and vengeful act 'Gainst Puritan, pagan, and priest. Where wolf and panther and serpent ceased, Man added the horrors your dark ...
— Dreams and Days: Poems • George Parsons Lathrop
... rapt me to present indignation, but made me studious heretofore;' for by them 'the filth of the time is uttered, and with such impropriety of phrase, such plenty of solecisms, such dearth of sense, so bold prolepses, so racked metaphors, with brothelry able to violate the ear of a pagan, and blasphemy to turn the blood of ...
— Shakspere And Montaigne • Jacob Feis
... Macedon into a madman, and perverted the gracious-minded Julius Caesar into usurpation and tyranny, has also been found by Christian heroes the most perilous ordeal of their virtue; but, inasmuch as they are Christian heroes, and not pagan men, worshippers of false gods, whose fabled examples inculcated all these deeds of self-absorbing vain-glory, our heroes of a "better revelation" have no excuse for failing under their trial, and many there be who pass through it "pure and undefiled." Such were the great ...
— Thaddeus of Warsaw • Jane Porter
... adherents is, that they should speedily reach a point at which they could perceive their doctrines to be debasing. I hope, indeed, that they do not realise their own meaning: but I could almost as soon join in some old pagan ceremonies, gash my body with knives, or swing myself from a hook, as indulge in ...
— Social Rights and Duties, Volume I (of 2) - Addresses to Ethical Societies • Sir Leslie Stephen
... everywhere, till he thinks he'd give a nickel for a decent chance to swear; then they all get underneath him and capsize him in the mud, and the milk runs down his whiskers and his garments in a flood, and you really ought to see him when he goes back to his home quoting divers pagan authors and the bards of ancient Rome. And he murmurs while he's washing mud off at the kitchen sink: "What we need is a contraption that will teach ...
— Rippling Rhymes • Walt Mason
... on giving the boy that strange Pagan name, and had not lived long enough to judge as to the appropriateness, or otherwise, of its significance. In seventeen years and some odd months Francesca had had ample opportunity for forming an opinion concerning her ...
— The Unbearable Bassington • Saki
... family, scarce one of the whole multitude was in any other than the native dress—the maro, the kihee, and the simple tapa, of their primitive state. In this respect, and in the attitude of sitting, the assembly was purely pagan; totally unlike those of the Society Islands; as unlike as to one at home. But the breathless silence, the eager attention, the half-suppressed sigh, the tear, the various feeling—sad, peaceful, joyous—discoverable in the faces of many, all ...
— Daughters of the Cross: or Woman's Mission • Daniel C. Eddy
... sought in the religious impressions which the people were supposed to derive most easily through the senses; but nothing could be urged in defence of much that the clergy tolerated or encouraged. Superstitions of heathen origin were suffered to reign undisturbed. Pagan statues were openly worshipped. An Isis received homage and was honored with burning candles. An Apollo at Polignac was a centre of religious veneration, and even the unsavory surroundings, when ...
— The Rise of the Hugenots, Vol. 1 (of 2) • Henry Martyn Baird
... compassion—although they loved to read them—for the old authors of antiquity. Pagans they were, and therefore fit only to be named as infidels and dogs, so the monk was directed for a secular book, "which some pagan wrote after making the general sign to scratch his ear with his hand, just as a dog itching would do with his feet, because infidels are not unjustly compared to such creatures—quia nec immerito infideles tali animanti contparantur."[32] Wretched bigotry and puny malice! Yet what ...
— Bibliomania in the Middle Ages • Frederick Somner Merryweather
... 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 ...
— Eugenics and Other Evils • G. K. Chesterton
... of God's finger again: it was Fate—pagan, devilish Fate!—the weird, shrivelled women who sit and spin their interminable thread. They had decreed; and Juliette, unable to fight, blind and broken by the conflict, had succumbed to the Megaeras and ...
— I Will Repay • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... important circumstance, 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 the passions, of the people. But while many of the converts ...
— Waverley Volume XII • Sir Walter Scott
... this is desirable after those noble fictions, "Darkness and Dawn" and "Quo Vadis," the reply must be that these books necessarily take and interpret the Christian point of view. And they do well; but the Pagan point of view still needs its interpretation, at least as a help to an easy apprehension of the life and literature of the great age of the Fall of the Roman Republic. This is the aim of "A Friend of Caesar." The Age of Caesar prepared the way for the Age of Nero, ...
— A Friend of Caesar - A Tale of the Fall of the Roman Republic. Time, 50-47 B.C. • William Stearns Davis
... that showed reverence and godly fear—he cordialized wherever and in whomsoever it was found,—Pagan or Christian, Romanist or Protestant, bond or free; and while he disliked, and had indeed a positive antipathy to intellectual mysticism, he had a great knowledge of and relish for such writers as Dr. Henry ...
— Spare Hours • John Brown
... that at the end of this valley lay blood, bones, ashes, and mangled bodies of men, even of pilgrims that had gone this way formerly; and while I was musing what should be the reason, I espied a little before me a cave, where two giants, POPE and PAGAN, dwelt in old time; by whose power and tyranny the men whose bones, blood, and ashes, &c., lay there, were cruelly put to death. But by this place Christian went without much danger, whereat I somewhat wondered; but I have learnt since, that ...
— The Pilgrim's Progress - From this world to that which is to come. • John Bunyan
... its infinite embraces, causing every fibre of our being to quicken under its heavenly truths. Ithuriel's golden spear was not more antagonistic to Satan's loathly transformation—than is Christian opposed to pagan art. The wide, the awful gulf, separating one from the other, will be felt instantly in its true force by first thinking ZEUS, and then thinking CHRIST. How pale, shadowy, and shapeless the vision of lust, revenge, and impotence, that ...
— The Germ - Thoughts towards Nature in Poetry, Literature and Art • Various
... revolution from Christian image-worship—Christianity, in a natural succession, and by fortuitous circumstances, took possession of the executive, and placed on the seat of power a Christian Byzantine emperor in lieu of a pagan. Basilicas, dedicated to Jupiter, Mercury, Adonis, Venus and the deities of High Olympus, were re-dedicated to God the Father, God the Son, God the Holy Ghost, the Virgin Mary, and the other saints (or ...
— Percy Bysshe Shelley as a Philosopher and Reformer • Charles Sotheran
... he planned an appeal to eternity. He knew "Emaux et Camees" as pious folk their Bible; he felt that naught endured but art. So he became a pagan, and sought for firmness and delicacy in the texture, while aiming to fill his verse with the fire of Swinburne, the subtlety of Rossetti and the great, clear day-flame of Gautier. A well-nigh impossible ideal; yet ...
— Melomaniacs • James Huneker
... classical allusion merely, drawn from the Pagan authors. I shall see you both no doubt ...
— The Importance of Being Earnest - A Trivial Comedy for Serious People • Oscar Wilde
... poet OV'ID, who lived at the time of the Christian era, has collected from the fictions of the early Greeks and Oriental nations, and woven into one continuous history, the pagan accounts of the Creation, embracing a description of the primeval world, and the early changes it underwent, followed by a history of the four eras or ages of primitive mankind, the deluge of Deuca'lion, and then onward ...
— Mosaics of Grecian History • Marcius Willson and Robert Pierpont Willson
... regretfully, "it's a pagan world. Men make mistakes. I think it's largely because they want so much to love that they love somebody, anybody, till the right ...
— Sally of Missouri • R. E. Young
... learned and sober divines the first six seals are considered as disclosing the events which transpired from the time of the apostle John till the overthrow of pagan idolatry in the Roman empire and the accession ...
— Notes On The Apocalypse • David Steele
... song, which is a juvenile production of the poet, has been communicated by his niece, Miss Pagan of Dumfries. The heroine of the song, Eliza Neilson, eldest daughter of the Reverend Mr Neilson of Kirkbean, still lives, and is ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volumes I-VI. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... "Those are pagan ideas, and as such are so opposed to the dogmas of faith, that I am obliged, in order to explain their coming from your mouth, to suppose that you are trying to make a fool ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... the Roman goddess that performed for the new-born infant the earliest office of ennobling kindness,—typical, by its mode, of that grandeur which belongs to man everywhere, and of that benignity in powers invisible which even in pagan worlds sometimes descends to sustain it. At the very moment of birth, just as the infant tasted for the first time the atmosphere of our troubled planet, it was laid on the ground. That might, bear different ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern — Volume 11 • Various
... ancient sculptors, exhibited in their gods and goddesses, in whose faultless faces the expression of all passion seems to have been carefully avoided. Whether this peculiarity is to be accounted for by the desire of the artist to signify the superiority of the Pagan divinities over mortals, by this absence of any trace of earthly feelings, or whether it was thought that any decided expression might deteriorate from the character of repose and beauty that marks the works of the great sculptors of antiquity, I know not, ...
— The Idler in France • Marguerite Gardiner
... was the name of the gentleman who delivered that delightful course of lectures that we heard in Geneva, on—what was the title?—'The Redeeming Features of the Pagan Morality.'" ...
— Confidence • Henry James
... her soul for a great price to the demons, in order to save her people here and hereafter. Such a tremendous sacrifice, however, is not permitted. Because of the purity of her motive, armed angels save her soul in the last impressive act. Supernatural powers, both pagan and Christian, participate in the play. Spirits haunt the woods, enter the peasants' cottages, and cast spells on the inhabitants. The play is Irish in story, in symbolism, and in the fancifulness ...
— Halleck's New English Literature • Reuben P. Halleck
... that the ultimate, if not speedy, success of the national arms is now sufficiently ascertained, sure as I am of the righteousness of our cause and its consequent claim on the blessing of God, (for I would not show a faith inferiour to that of the pagan historian with his Facile evenit quod Dis cordi est,) it seems to me a suitable occasion to withdraw our minds a moment from the confusing din of battle to objects of peaceful and permanent interest. Let us not neglect the monuments of preterite history because what shall be history ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 55, May, 1862 • Various
... he appends relate only to the Pagan period, and he does not appear to have known that a similar practice prevailed in the sepulture of Christians—if, indeed, such a custom was general, and not confined to the particular case mentioned by ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 52, October 26, 1850 • Various
... the English and German poets, the Colonel's library, which was an extensive one, almost wholly consisted of such books as immediately related to military subjects, or might be able to bear on some branch of science connected with military warfare. Pagan, and his follower Vauban, and the more matured treatises of Cormontaigne, were backed by the works of that boast of the Low Countries, Coehorn; and by the ingenious theories, as yet but theories, of Napoleon's ...
— A Love Story • A Bushman
... differed from him upon the most subtile, and, as he now thinks, ridiculous points of belief, with the same savage hatred as did all others who were then living. And had he seen the light yet a few centuries earlier—say, among the pagan Saxons of the days of Charlemagne—human sacrifices would have shocked him as little as they did the other worshippers of the goddess Hertha. And the man who, brought up as a pagan Saxon in the forests of the Weser and the Elbe, would ...
— Freeland - A Social Anticipation • Theodor Hertzka
... qualities of balance and completeness. The Minerva, hung with a web of poetical allusion, gives me a sense of exhilaration that is almost physical; and I like the luxuriant, wavy hair of Bacchus and Apollo, and the wreath of ivy, so suggestive of pagan holidays. ...
— The World I Live In • Helen Keller
... at the outset, to set forth certain general conclusions regarding the Tinguian and their neighbors. Probably no pagan tribe of the Philippines has received more frequent notice in literature, or has been the subject of more theories regarding its origin, despite the fact that information concerning it has been exceedingly scanty, and careful observations on the ...
— The Tinguian - Social, Religious, and Economic Life of a Philippine Tribe • Fay-Cooper Cole
... in the book of Proverbs proclaims to a nation of religious formalists the moral character of God: "To do righteousness and justice is more acceptable to the LORD than sacrifice." This is accounted as ethical teaching, somewhat in advance of the times. A pagan rather than a Christian way of thinking is discoverable here. In each of the cases cited the specific character of supernatural Revelation is equally evident,—the disclosure of spiritual truth above the natural thought ...
— Miracles and Supernatural Religion • James Morris Whiton
... dear,' said Mr Pecksniff, smiling upon his assembled kindred, 'that I am at a loss for a word. The name of those fabulous animals (pagan, I regret to say) who used to sing in the ...
— Life And Adventures Of Martin Chuzzlewit • Charles Dickens
... there's that woman with the Pagan name,' said my aunt, 'that Peggotty, she goes and gets married next. Because she has not seen enough of the evil attending such things, she goes and gets married next, as the child relates. I only ...
— David Copperfield • Charles Dickens
... his distinct place and office in the field of Latin literature, as the chief author who bridged the gulf between pagan poetry and Christian ...
— Helps to Latin Translation at Sight • Edmund Luce
... of course, the study of Scriptures, but with just as many helps as possible. He thought that commentators, and historians, not alone Christian, but also Hebrew and Pagan, should be studied to illustrate it, and then the commentaries of the Latin fathers, so that a thoroughly rounded knowledge of it should be obtained. He thus began an "Encyclopedia Biblica," and set a host ...
— Old-Time Makers of Medicine • James J. Walsh
... during our first years is thus a gentle dealing with us, fertilizing our powers with the rich juices of an earthly prosperity. And in this respect De Quincey was eminently fortunate. The powers of heaven and of earth and—if we side with Milton and other pagan mythologists in attributing the gift of wealth to some Plutonian dynasty—the dark powers under the earth seem to have conjointly arrayed themselves in his behalf. Whatever storms were in the book of Fate written against his name they postponed ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XII. September, 1863, No. LXXI. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... heritage of Christians. By their own voluntary act they placed right beside them a large population of another race of people, seized as captives, and brought to their plantations from a distant continent. This other race was an unlettered, unenlightened, and a pagan people. ...
— Civilization the Primal Need of the Race - The American Negro Academy. Occasional Paper No. 3 • Alexander Crummell
... and talked to me of pleasure. So far as recollection serves me she connected pleasure chiefly with theatres, restaurants, the habit of supping in public, and the use of hansom cabs. At all events, within the week I squandered two whole sovereigns out of my small hoard on giving this young pagan what she called a "fluffy" evening. It reminded me more than a little of certain rather frantic undergraduate excursions from Cambridge. But Beatrice quoted luscious lines of minor poetry, and threw a certain glamour over a quarter of the town which was a warren of tawdry ...
— The Message • Alec John Dawson
... for an instant, a vibrant pagan, drunk with the joy of life; Pan poised for an unforgettable ...
— A Parody Outline of History • Donald Ogden Stewart
... of the present novel, however, lies neither with priest nor pagan, but with Mr. Clive Newcome, and his affairs and his companions at this period of his life. Nor, if the gracious reader expects to hear of cardinals in scarlet, and noble Roman princes and princesses, will he find such in this history. ...
— The Newcomes • William Makepeace Thackeray
... of the tempests which throw on the shores of Zeeland's little isles the bodies of strange mummied monsters, part man, part boat; and of still, clear dawnings when the fisherfolk of Domburg can discern, far down under the green water, pagan temples of marble, and gleaming statues more perfect than any fashioned by known sculptors, even the greatest masters, when Greek art was in its prime. He told of the great dyke building, and how, at high tide, the North Sea beats ...
— The Chauffeur and the Chaperon • C. N. Williamson
... herself, and that in the Irish tongue. She saved herself, however, by resorting to that temper of which she had boasted, and hurled at the two a torrent of words which sounded to them like the most horrible pagan blasphemy, and from which they fled in genuine horror. In reality it was the names of all the places in France that ...
— Seven Miles to Arden • Ruth Sawyer
... that all your life you swore like a pagan, smoked like a beadle, and drank like a bell-ringer, be your memory nevertheless honoured—not merely because you were a brave soldier, but also because you revealed to your little nephew in petticoats the sentiment of heroism! Pride and laziness ...
— The Bed-Book of Happiness • Harold Begbie
... 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 his false church, as thousands ...
— Villegagnon - A Tale of the Huguenot Persecution • W.H.G. Kingston
... acted miracles, and how had been crucified? And when they went to the theme of investigating if it was a whip or a lash with which the angels have whipped St. Jerome for trying to imitate in his writings the pagan Cicero, it was but after centuries that Abbot Cartaut dared to write that if St. Jerome was whipped at all, he was whipped for having badly imitated Cicero. Still, the doctrine of Christian charity is so sublime in its simplicity, that not even the subtility ...
— Select Speeches of Kossuth • Kossuth
... revered them when the republic was broken, as readily as when it flourished". Thus is the word ceremony associated at once with the devotion of Albinus, with the Gaulish invasion of the Capitol, and with Caere, one of the twelve cities of Etruria, now called Cervetri or Caere vetus[1]. The Pagan Romans derived their religious rites from Etruria, and in particular from Caere on account of its proximity to Rome: this may be another reason for the adoption of the term ceremony, which was afterwards applied to the rites ...
— The Ceremonies of the Holy-Week at Rome • Charles Michael Baggs
... "Sharrun kana" i.e. an evil (Sharr) has come to being (kana) that is, "bane to the foe" a pagan and knightly name. The hero of the Romance "Al-Dalhamah" is described as a bitter gourd ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 2 • Richard F. Burton
... reconnoiter them, he did not dare to, because of the few men that he had. The messenger reached Don Pedro de Acuna, and a little later came a Christian Sangley, one Baristilla, then governor of the Sangleys, both Christian and pagan. He craftily informed Don Pedro de Acuna of the news, and was heartily thanked, as the matter was not understood. The Spaniards immediately called a council of war, where it was resolved to send the help asked by Don Luys de las Marinas. That same day the reenforcement left, and all the ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898: Volume XIV., 1606-1609 • Various
... night in which the white sandals of a beloved pagan can hardly be distinguished, and dense bristling of slender, dry trees; pallor of a limestone slope, and water in which something casts two long ...
— Romance of the Rabbit • Francis Jammes
... thrown into the air. Unnoticed passed the eruption before the gaze of Saint-Prosper, whose mind in a torpor swept dully back to youth's roseate season, recalling the homage of the younger for the elder brother, a worship as natural as pagan adoration of the sun. From the sanguine fore-time to the dead present lay a bridge of darkness. With honor within grasp, deliberately he had sought dishonor, little recking of shame and murder, and childishly husbanding green, red ...
— The Strollers • Frederic S. Isham
... bitterness in her assaults. She loved him, and very often he would take her in his arms, kiss her tenderly, and coo: "Are you my fine big baby? Are you my red-headed doll? Do you really love me so much? Kiss me, then." Frankly, pagan passion in these two ran high. So long as they were not alienated by extraneous things he could never hope for more delicious human contact. There was no reaction either, to speak of, no gloomy disgust. She was physically acceptable to him. He could always ...
— The Titan • Theodore Dreiser
... the basin on the ground, with which Don Quixote contented himself, saying that the pagan had shown his discretion and imitated the beaver, which finding himself pressed by the hunters bites and cuts off with its teeth that for which by its natural instinct, it ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 7 • Charles H. Sylvester
... one word to me, although the whispering trees Seem strange and old as pagan priests in ...
— Virginia of Elk Creek Valley • Mary Ellen Chase
... current of contemporary history. There is, however, no lack of such history, and an exhaustive account of the country and age in which the hero of the story lived is given by one of his own nation—a most painstaking and laborious historian. "How shall we excuse the supine inattention of the Pagan and philosophic world to those evidences which were presented by the hand of Omnipotence, not to their reason, but to their senses? During the age of Christ, of his apostles, and of their first disciples, the doctrine which they preached was confirmed by innumerable prodigies. ...
— The Freethinker's Text Book, Part II. - Christianity: Its Evidences, Its Origin, Its Morality, Its History • Annie Besant
... window near the pulpit a venerable locust-tree brandished a bough dripping with blossoms. Countless little censers of white spice swung frankincense and myrrh for pagan nostrils. ...
— In a Little Town • Rupert Hughes |
