"Propitiate" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... piece of rotten wood, or putrefying fish. This primitive conception may have subsequently faded, and khu the glorious one, one of the manes, may have become one of those flattering names by which it was thought necessary to propitiate the dead; it then came to have that significance of resplendent with light which ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 1 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... was anxious to propitiate Michael, laughed a cheerless laugh. "You have such a flow of spirits," said he, "I am sure I often find it quite amusing. But regarding this principle of which I was about to speak. It is that of accommodating one's-self to the manners of any land ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 7 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... have I had so good a guide. But perhaps the most curious experience of our stay was an attendance upon a political meeting at Glastonbury, in the Gladstonian interest. The first speech was made by the candidate, Sir Hugh Davey; and in his anxiety to propitiate his hearers he began by addressing them as men whose ancestors had for centuries shown their devotion to free principles, and had especially given proof of this by hanging the last Abbot of Glastonbury at the old tower above the town. But, shortly afterward, when Freeman began ...
— Autobiography of Andrew Dickson White Volume II • Andrew Dickson White
... do?" she said. "This is very unfortunate. If I had thought the Doctor—but the little fellow is so sweet, I thought he would be pleased and amused. We must try to keep them away from each other. Or perhaps, if the little dear would try to propitiate the Doctor,—you have no idea how sensitive he is, and how he feels anything like disrespect,—if he were to try to propitiate him, ...
— Hildegarde's Holiday - a story for girls • Laura E. Richards
... enunciation of the merits of a hansom cab had been always made when it was the right way up. Let me, therefore, explain how I felt when I fell out of a hansom cab for the first and, I am happy to believe, the last time. Polycrates threw one ring into the sea to propitiate the Fates. I have thrown one hansom cab into the sea (if you will excuse a rather violent metaphor) and the Fates are, I am quite sure, propitiated. Though I am told they do not like to ...
— Tremendous Trifles • G. K. Chesterton
... little Irish blarney to propitiate me,' laughed Mr. Kendal, who certainly was in unusual spirits after his execution and rescue by proxy, but ...
— The Young Step-Mother • Charlotte M. Yonge
... cataracts, but it was manned by as smart a crew of young Chinese as could be found on the river. It was pitch dark when we paddled into the stream amidst a discharge of crackers. As we passed under the Kweili, men were there to wish me bon voyage, and a revolver was emptied into the darkness to propitiate the river god. ...
— An Australian in China - Being the Narrative of a Quiet Journey Across China to Burma • George Ernest Morrison
... year of the pestilence a strange and portentous event occurred. The Tiber rose to an unusual height, overflowed with its waters the great circus (Circus Maximus), and put a stop to the games then going on, which were intended to propitiate the wrath of heaven, and induce the gods to relieve man from the evil ...
— Historic Tales, Volume 11 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... college of old women? They cannot think it needful to salvation,or they would not withdraw themselves. Wherefore is it? Do they fear these self-elected, self-ordained priests, and offer up their wives and daughters to propitiate them? Or do they deem their hebdomadal freedom more complete, because their wives and daughters are shut up four or five times in the day at church or chapel? It is true, that at Hoboken, as every where else, there are ...
— Domestic Manners of the Americans • Fanny Trollope
... knew when his wife would return, and was ready to receive her in the meekest of moods. He had cut an unusual quantity of wood and kindlings, but they failed to propitiate. Sissy soon called her mother to come over to her cabin to hear of Mr. Birdsall's visit, and all that it portended. Aun' Sheba listened in silence, and sat for a long time in deep thought, while ...
— The Earth Trembled • E.P. Roe
... stirring up a great commotion of piety in Milan. The city had been brought to the very lowest state of misery by the Spanish occupation; and, strange to say, this friar was himself a Spaniard. In order to propitiate offended deities, he organized a procession on a great scale. 700 women, 500 men, and 2,500 children assembled in the cathedral. The children were dressed in white, the men and women in sackcloth, and all were barefooted. They promenaded the streets of Milan, incessantly shouting Misericordia! ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volume 1 (of 7) • John Addington Symonds
... have known in life. When a field is blighted or a crop does not promise well, a gourd is placed in the pathway; passengers set up a wailing cry, which they intend as a prayer to the spirits to give a good crop to their mourning relatives. Rumanika, in order to propitiate the spirit of his father, was in the habit of sacrificing annually a cow on his tomb, and also of placing offerings on it of corn and wine. These and many other instances show that, though their minds are dark and misguided, the people possess religious sentiments which might afford ...
— Great African Travellers - From Mungo Park to Livingstone and Stanley • W.H.G. Kingston
... night, trembling with fear, they [89] sought to propitiate the glorious goddess; and in the morning they told all to their father, Celeus. And he, according to the commands of the goddess, built a fair temple; and all the people assisted; and when it was finished every man departed to his own home. Then Demeter returned, and sat down within the temple-walls, ...
— Greek Studies: A Series of Essays • Walter Horatio Pater
... was a broad crimson sash. He advanced with a grave dignity. Each bow—and he bowed often—was an act of ceremonial courtesy. There was no trace of servility, nor of any special desire to please or propitiate in his manner. He reached the step below the terrace on which the flagstaff stood. He bowed once more and then stood upright, looking straight at the Queen ...
— The Island Mystery • George A. Birmingham
... persuaded that he had no wish to establish a tyranny in Germany, were likely to capitulate, and after a victory his generosity in leaving Germany her liberty would appear the greater. Charles did not at this moment fear the Turk, and it was in his power at any moment to propitiate the French. Pedro de Soto urged the continuance of the war, to avert the danger of a papal-French combination, which would be the natural result of Paul's indignation at a ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 9 • Various
... subject that would recall their old relations at Glanyravon, that he gradually felt more at his ease with her, and it ended by his resuming his old, friendly intercourse with Mr and Mrs Jones. But Freda knew well that, in spite of her best efforts to propitiate him, he never forgot those words, 'Do you know who I am, and who you are?' He was always gentlemanlike, always kind, always ready to do anything she asked him, but he never relaxed the somewhat formal respect of his manner. In society, he was quite different with every one else to what he was ...
— Gladys, the Reaper • Anne Beale
... myself grow weak. But Sallie proceeded gayly: "Then you know how hard I have tried to propitiate those miserable Asburys. I declare, I think Alice might meet me half way. Perhaps she didn't like being seated between Frank Mayo and Brian Beck, but both she and that awful Frost man sat as stiff and unsmiling as if ...
— The Love Affairs of an Old Maid • Lilian Bell
... always sad for the historian to have to record a departure from principle, and I have to confess with shame on Mr. Bultitude's account that, feeling the Doctor's eye upon him, and striving to propitiate him, he humiliated himself so far as to run about with an elaborate affection of zest, and his exertions were rewarded by hearing himself cordially ...
— Vice Versa - or A Lesson to Fathers • F. Anstey
... fortitude—that is, I feel sure I could—but toothache, no! I am not ashamed of it. Every brave man has at least one weakness. Lord ROBERTS'S was cats. Achilles' was tendons. Mine is toothache (Biographers, please note). When my jaw annoys me I try to propitiate it with libations of whisky, brandy, iodine, horse-blister and patent panaceas I buy from sombreroed magicians in the Strand. If these fail I totter round to the dentist, ring the bell and run away. If the maid catches me before I can escape and turns me into the waiting-room ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, January 14, 1920 • Various
... it. In what other Lepantos besides Trafalgar Square Cunninghame Graham has fought, I cannot tell. He is a fascinating mystery to a sedentary person like myself. The horse, a dangerous animal whom, when I cannot avoid, I propitiate with apples and sugar, he bestrides and dominates fearlessly, yet with a true republican sense of the rights of the fourlegged fellowcreature whose martyrdom, and man's shame therein, he has told most powerfully in his Calvary, a tale with an edge that will cut the soft cruel hearts and strike ...
— Captain Brassbound's Conversion • George Bernard Shaw
... gentle flattery would propitiate my father. Instead, his brows knitted, and he shot forward his head and asked: "The what kind of ...
— David Malcolm • Nelson Lloyd
... of antiquity; and it is not more than thirty years since the labors of Niebuhr made the truth generally known,—if it can, indeed, be said to be so known even now. The Gracchi long passed for a couple of demagogues, who were engaged in seditious practices, and who were so very anxious to propitiate "the forum populace" that they were employed in perfecting plans for the division of all landed property amongst its members, when they were cut off by a display of vigor on the part of the government. "The Sedition of the Gracchi" was for ages one of the common titles for ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 3, No. 18, April, 1859 - [Date last updated: August 7, 2005] • Various
... a ghastly grin on his tormentors. It was meant to propitiate them, to save the last scrap of his self-respect by the assumption that they were all good fellows together. Feebly it suggested that after all a ...
— The Sheriff's Son • William MacLeod Raine
... Young people, who find that their daily pleasures depend not so much upon their own exertions as upon the humour and caprice of others, become absolute courtiers; they practise all the arts of persuasion, and all the crouching hypocrisy which can deprecate wrath, or propitiate favour. Their notions of right and wrong cannot be enlarged; their recollection of the rewards and punishments of their childhood, is always connected with the ideas of tyranny and slavery; and when they break their own chains, they are impatient to impose similar bonds ...
— Practical Education, Volume I • Maria Edgeworth
... waters. Rain fell or threatened for both of the days. Not even the presence of three queens—of England, Prussia, and Belgium—two kings, a prince consort, an archduke, and a future emperor and empress, could propitiate the adverse barometer, or change the sulky face of the sky. Between showers the Queen had a glimpse of the romantic scenery, and perhaps Ehrenbreitstein was most in character when the smoke from the firing of twenty thousand troops "brought home to the imagination ...
— Life of Her Most Gracious Majesty the Queen, (Victoria) Vol II • Sarah Tytler
... beginning and the end of their philosophy. Let us listen for a moment to their language. "Prayer should be only for the good". "Men should act according to the spirit, and not according to the letter of their faith". "Wouldest thou propitiate the gods? Be good: he has worshipped them sufficiently who has imitated them". It was from a Stoic poet, Aratus, that St. Paul quoted the great truth which was the rational argument against idolatry—"For we are also His offspring, and" ...
— Cicero - Ancient Classics for English Readers • Rev. W. Lucas Collins
... was, at the same time, the Only Begotten Son of God, and, as the idea of sacrifice to the numerous gods was an important part of the religious orgies of the time, they could only bring that into their new scheme for entrapping souls by making the Son—who was really God—a sacrifice to himself, to propitiate himself, and keep himself from utterly destroying and damning the folks He himself had created. So they made it out that this good man should be a propitiation for the "sins of the race." Silly; improbable; unlawful; incredible; impossible. ...
— Insights and Heresies Pertaining to the Evolution of the Soul • Anna Bishop Scofield
... distrust American democracy," returned Paul, smiling, "and feel disposed to propitiate it by a temporary sacrifice of ...
— Homeward Bound - or, The Chase • James Fenimore Cooper
... two young people drew apart, escaped from the elders, to create a new thing by themselves. He worked in the garden to propitiate his uncle. He talked churches to propitiate his aunt. He followed Anna like a shadow: like a long, persistent, unswerving black shadow he went after the girl. It irritated Brangwen exceedingly. It exasperated him beyond bearing, to see the lit-up grin, the cat-grin as he ...
— The Rainbow • D. H. (David Herbert) Lawrence
... sudden, Urvasi enters on a heavenly car, accompanied by his friend. They are invisible to the king as on the previous occasion. The moment that Urvasi is about to withdraw her veil, the queen appears. She is dressed in white, without any ornaments, and comes to propitiate her ...
— Tales from the Hindu Dramatists • R. N. Dutta
... when misfortunes began to overwhelm him. His Majesty had proofs of this in a visit he made to the Faubourg Saint-Antoine; and it is very certain that, if under other circumstances he had been able to bend from his dignity to propitiate the people, a means which was most repugnant to the Emperor in consequence of his remembrances of the Revolution, all the faubourgs of Paris would have armed themselves in his defense. How can this be doubted after the event which I ...
— The Private Life of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Constant
... buffaloes, and other animals are sacrificed daily at her shrine. We saw the bloody work going forward. Crowds of pilgrims, numbering at least three hundred during our short stay, came in bands from the country to propitiate the goddess. Each one presents an offering as the idol is shown. It is the most disgusting object I have ever seen, and a sight of it would, I am sure, frighten children into crying. The business is skilfully managed. A small dark hall, capable of ...
— Round the World • Andrew Carnegie
... Percival had not even time to breathe into her ear the "Forgive me" with which he meant to propitiate her. He was not very penitent for his offence. He thought that he was sure of Elizabeth's pardon, because he thought himself sure of Elizabeth's love. But, as a matter of fact, that stolen kiss did not at all advance his ...
— Under False Pretences - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant
... to go To Hades, do not fail to throw A "Sop to Cerberus" at the gate, His anger to propitiate. Don't say "Good dog!" and hope thereby His three fierce Heads to pacify. What though he try to be polite And wag his Tail with all his might, How shall one amiable Tail Against three angry Heads prevail? The Heads must ...
— The Mythological Zoo • Oliver Herford
... position of the Chinese permitted to remain in the Islands has changed since the American advent. In former times, when the highest authorities frowned upon the Chinese community, it was necessary to propitiate them with bags of silver pesos. There was no Chinese consul in those days; but Chino Carlos Palanca was practically the protector and dictator of his countrymen during the last decade of Spanish rule, and, if a cloud descended upon them from high quarters, he used to pass the word round for a ...
— The Philippine Islands • John Foreman
... Mexico once more. So the allied army of Spaniards and Tlascalans set out upon their journey through luxuriant plains and flourishing plantations, met occasionally by embassies from different towns, anxious to claim the protection of the white men, and bringing rich gifts of gold to propitiate them. They passed between the two enormous mountain peaks, Popocatapetl, 'the hill that smokes,' and Iztaccihuatl, 'the white woman,' and presently encountered a blinding snow-storm, from which they ...
— The True Story Book • Andrew Lang
... village of Stromness, on the Orkney main island, called Pomona, lived, in 1814, an aged dame called Bessie Millie, who helped out her subsistence by selling favourable winds to mariners. He was a venturous master of a vessel who left the roadstead of Stromness without paying his offering to propitiate Bessie Millie! Her fee was extremely moderate, being exactly sixpence, for which she boiled her kettle and gave the bark the advantage of her prayers, for she disclaimed all unlawful acts. The wind thus petitioned for was sure, she said, to ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 16 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... although it was evident that they knew they were meant as questions. The pole we observed in the creek, on the evening previously to our making the Darling, was not the only one that fell under our notice; our impression therefore, that they were fixed by the natives to propitiate some deity, was confirmed. It would appear that the white pigment was an indication of mourning. Whether these people have an idea of a superintending Providence I doubt, but they evidently dread evil agency. On the whole I should say they are ...
— Two Expeditions into the Interior of Southern Australia, Complete • Charles Sturt
... tost in soul, wandering hither and thither, rested not night or day in the pursuit of her husband, desiring, if she might not sooth his anger by the endearments of a wife, at the least to propitiate him with the prayers of a handmaid. And seeing a certain temple on the top of a high mountain, she said, "Who knows whether yonder place be not the abode of my lord?" Thither, therefore, she turned her steps, ...
— Marius the Epicurean, Volume One • Walter Horatio Pater
... before another party came up the opposite side of the ship. They announced themselves to be a nominating committee of the Perpendiculars, on exactly the same errand as their opponents. They, too, wished to propitiate the foreign interests, and were in search of a proper candidate. Captain Poke had been an attentive listener to all that occurred during the circumstances that preceded my nomination; and he now stepped promptly forward, ...
— The Monikins • J. Fenimore Cooper
... came in sight, nursing the villages of Pen-Kai and Blut, and the wandering streets of Mlo, where priests propitiate the avalanche with wine and maize. Then the night came down over the plains of Tlun, and we saw the lights of Cappadarnia. We heard the Pathnites beating upon drums as we passed Imaut and Golzunda, then all but the helmsman slept. And villages scattered along the banks of the ...
— Tales of Three Hemispheres • Lord Dunsany
... government—that they as a body and the great sectarian power of the West, formally ask'd Mr. Harlan's appointment—that he was of them, having been a Methodist minister—that it would not do to offend them, but was highly necessary to propitiate them. ...
— Complete Prose Works - Specimen Days and Collect, November Boughs and Goodbye My Fancy • Walt Whitman
... he did this he heard a footstep and a cough together close at hand, and, turning with a start, beheld a pale and slender man of brief stature, who scraped his lantern jaws with apologetic thumb and finger, and looking at him with a startled meekness, as if he would fain propitiate anger for a possible intrusion, sidled to the foot of the stairs, mounted the stairway with a backward glance and a second cough of apology, and ...
— Young Mr. Barter's Repentance - From "Schwartz" by David Christie Murray • David Christie Murray
... of primitive religion is the inevitable sequel. In behalf of the interests which represent him man must here, as ever, make the best terms he can with the powers which beset him. He has no concern with these powers except the desire to propitiate them. He has no knowledge of their working excepting as respects their bearing upon his interests. Obeying a law of human nature which is as valid now as then, he seeks for remedies whose proof is the cure which they effect. Let the association between a certain ...
— The Moral Economy • Ralph Barton Perry
... her mourned virginity, was never paraded, (that I wot of,) for any other than a much-to-be-lamented damsel. Who ever asked, in those old times, the mediation of St. Enoch? Where were the offerings, in jewels or in gold, to propitiate that undoubted man of God and denizen of heaven, St. Moses? what prows, in wax, of vessels saved from shipwreck, hung about the dripping fane of Jonah? and where was, in the olden time, that wretched ...
— The Complete Prose Works of Martin Farquhar Tupper • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... always consecrating the event of the moment; they are under the influence of dreams and apparitions, and they build altars and temples in every village and in any place where they have had a vision. The law is designed to prevent this, and also to deter men from attempting to propitiate the Gods by secret sacrifices, which only multiply their sins. Therefore let the law run:—No one shall have private religious rites; and if a man or woman who has not been previously noted for any impiety offend in this way, let them be admonished to remove their rites ...
— Laws • Plato
... praiseworthy efforts, but at what cost no one but herself ever knew. Marion's whole life became one propitiatory sacrifice to her mother-in-law. To propitiate Mrs. Daintree was a very simple matter. Bearing in mind that her leading characteristics were a bad temper and an ungovernable desire to ride rough-shod over the feelings of all those who came into contact with ...
— Vera Nevill - Poor Wisdom's Chance • Mrs. H. Lovett Cameron
... they use, than thus cloudily enwrapped in allegorical devises." He thought that Homer and Virgil and Ariosto had thus written poetry, to teach the world moral virtue and political wisdom. He attempted to propitiate Lord Burghley, who hated him and his verses, by setting before him in a dedication sonnet, the ...
— Spenser - (English Men of Letters Series) • R. W. Church
... whence I now bring very important news. The haughty Manasara, brooding over his defeat, unmindful of your generous forbearance, and only anxious to wipe off his disgrace, has been for a long time endeavouring to propitiate with very severe penance the mighty Siva, whose temple is at Mahakala, and he has so far succeeded that the god has given him a magic club, very destructive of life ...
— Hindoo Tales - Or, The Adventures of Ten Princes • Translated by P. W. Jacob
... the morrow be regarded as virtues. The accused were cited before the tribunal of Ain, in the city of Bourg, where dwelt a majority of their friends, relatives, abettors and accomplices. The Ministry sought to propitiate the one party by the return of its victims, and the other by the almost inviolate safeguards with which it surrounded the prisoners. The return to prison indeed resembled nothing less than ...
— The Companions of Jehu • Alexandre Dumas, pere
... in the snowy Algidus among the oaks and holm trees, or thrives in the Albanian meadows, with its throat shall stain the axes of the priests. It is not required of you, who are crowning our little gods with rosemary and the brittle myrtle, to propitiate them with a great slaughter of sheep. If an innocent hand touches a clear, a magnificent victim does not pacify the offended Penates more acceptably, than a consecrated ...
— The Works of Horace • Horace
... were intended to propitiate the gods being completed, the consuls took the sense of the senate on the state of the nation, the conduct of the war, what troops should be employed, and where they were severally to act. It was resolved that ...
— The History of Rome; Books Nine to Twenty-Six • Titus Livius
... sentiment that he could hardly credit and was wholly impotent to express. With a face, voice, and manner trained through forty years to terrify and repel, Rhadamanthus may be great, but he will scarce be engaging. It is a fact that he tried to propitiate Archie, but a fact that cannot be too lightly taken; the attempt was so unconspicuously made, the failure so stoically supported. Sympathy is not due to these steadfast iron natures. If he failed to gain his son's friendship, or even his son's toleration, on ...
— Weir of Hermiston • Robert Louis Stevenson
... purpose on one side to some large opposite tree on the other. Such poles are permanently fixed, supported by substantial props, and it was doubtless one of them that Captain Sturt supposed to have been erected to propitiate some deity. ...
— Three Expeditions into the Interior of Eastern Australia, Vol 1 (of 2) • Thomas Mitchell
... Arts asked himself what he could do to propitiate the female M. D. He went to the gardener and got him to cut a huge bouquet, choice and fragrant, and he carried it all the way to Hillstoke. Miss Gale was at home. As he was introduced rather suddenly, she started and changed color, and said, sharply, "What do you want?" Never ...
— The Woman-Hater • Charles Reade
... sacrificial cultus of heathenism, but a confession that the whole heathen world finds and feels itself to be guilty at the bar of natural reason and conscience? The accusing voice within them wakes their forebodings and fearful looking-for of Divine judgment, and they endeavor to propitiate the offended Power by their offerings ...
— Sermons to the Natural Man • William G.T. Shedd
... her ill-treatment, desired her to repair to her confessor, who was the proper person to award a punishment for such a catalogue of heinous crimes. The next day I was in the confessional, when she narrated all that had passed: I then told her she had nothing to do, but to propitiate Heaven by dedicating her musical talents to its service; pointing out, that her only chance of salvation was from immediately taking the veil. I refused to listen to any other species of penance, however severe, for which she gladly would ...
— The Pacha of Many Tales • Captain Frederick Marryat
... When the body was burnt and the bones collected in a silver urn, which his father had ordered to be carried back to his native land, to be there buried beneath the earth, Sapor, after taking counsel, determined to propitiate the shade of the deceased prince by making the destroyed city of Amida his monument. Nor indeed was Grumbates willing to move onward while the shade of his ...
— The Roman History of Ammianus Marcellinus • Ammianus Marcellinus
... sorry comedy with such skill as he can manage. To his German countrymen he has to proclaim that the war has been one brilliant progress from the start to the present time. This must be done in order to allay the apprehensions of Berlin and to propitiate the ever-increasing demand for more plentiful supplies of food. Secretly he has to work quite as hard to secure for the Central Empires such a conclusion of hostilities as will leave them masters of Europe. And, without doubt, he has to put up with a good many indignities ...
— Raemaekers' Cartoons - With Accompanying Notes by Well-known English Writers • Louis Raemaekers
... minutely enthusiastic is the hunter's treatment of his theme, that the attempt to win any favour for his performance from the Saxon reader, is attended with no small risk,—although it is possible that a little practice with the rifle in any similar wilderness may propitiate even the holiday sportsman somewhat in favour of the subject and its minute details. We must commit this forest minstrel to the good-nature of other readers, entreating them only to render due acknowledgment to the forbearance ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volumes I-VI. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... Johnson, 'those are the most wretched who exhibit their productions on the theatre, and who are to propitiate first the manager and then the public. Many an humble visitant have I followed to the doors of these lords of the drama, seen him touch the knocker with a shaking hand, and after long deliberation adventure to solicit entrance by a single ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 1 • Boswell
... Hargrove had the tact to put her guests immediately at ease. She proposed to have a good time during the remainder of the summer, and saw in Burt a means to that end, while she instinctively felt that she must propitiate Amy in order to accomplish her purpose. Therefore she was disposed to pay a little court to her on general principles. She had learned that the young girl was a ward of Mr. Clifford's. What Burt was to Amy ...
— Nature's Serial Story • E. P. Roe
... myself upon my knees, and pray to all the saints to come to my aid; for I do not dare, in consequence of my excess of wickedness, to call upon God. O Saints of God, you I pray with weeping full of grief, that ye would propitiate his mercies for me miserable. Alas me! Father Abraham, pray for me, that I be not driven from thy bosom, which I greatly long for, and yet not worthily, because of the ...
— Primitive Christian Worship • James Endell Tyler
... the night lighted joss-sticks are stuck in the bow of the sampan, and lighted paper is waved about to propitiate the spirit of the waters and of the night; small saucers of rice, boiled turnip, and peanut-oil are also solemnly presented to the tutelary gods, to enlist their active sympathies as an offset against the fell designs of mischievous spirits. Falling asleep ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle Volume II. - From Teheran To Yokohama • Thomas Stevens
... that this isolated people were influenced by a higher race, to the extent of adopting a totally new Supreme Being, from Europeans, a being whom they in no way sought to propitiate, and who was of no practical use. And this they did, he says, not under priestly influence, but in the face ...
— The Making of Religion • Andrew Lang
... should say. He is a lank giant of about seven feet in height; the kind of show man that used to go about in caravans over the country; and he began rocking over me like a poplar in a gale, and cries out: "Stay there! away with that! Providence? Can you set a thought on Providence, not seeking to propitiate it? And have you not there the damning proof that you are at the foot of an Idol?"—The old idea about a special Providence, I suppose. These fellows have nothing new but their trimmings. And he ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... cross marking the boundary between the Kolyma and Verkhoyansk districts. The cross was hung with all kinds of rubbish, copper coins, scraps of iron, and shreds of coloured cloth suspended by horse-hair, which had been placed there by Yakute travellers to propitiate the gods and ensure a prosperous journey. The cross, as a Christian symbol, did not seem to occur to the worshippers of the Shaman faith, who had left these offerings. We slept on the northern side of the mountain at a povarnia renowned even amongst the natives for its revolting ...
— From Paris to New York by Land • Harry de Windt
... to propitiate the hunted animal, in order not only to avert the anger of its kin but also to obtain its aid, appears in the numerous cases in which excuses are made for the killing, and the animal is implored to make a friendly report of the man to its friends and ...
— Introduction to the History of Religions - Handbooks on the History of Religions, Volume IV • Crawford Howell Toy
... after the right has been mentioned, or, in short, the other one. Many things which are lucky if seen on the right are fateful omens if seen to leftward. On the other hand, if you spill the salt, you propitiate destiny by tossing a pinch of it over the left shoulder. A murderer's left hand is said by good authorities to be an excellent thing to do magic with; but here I cannot speak from personal experience. Nor do I know why ...
— Falling in Love - With Other Essays on More Exact Branches of Science • Grant Allen
... justice which marked the course prescribed to me by two of my illustrious predecessors when acting under their direction in the discharge of the duties of superintendent and commissioner shall be strictly observed. I can conceive of no more sublime spectacle, none more likely to propitiate an impartial and common Creator, than a rigid adherence to the principles of justice on the part of a powerful nation in its transactions with a weaker and uncivilized people whom circumstances have placed at ...
— United States Presidents' Inaugural Speeches - From Washington to George W. Bush • Various
... second of April following; and the first mention we find of Goldsmith is in connection with an incident which has its ludicrous as well as its regrettable aspect. The further success of She Stoops to Conquer was not likely to propitiate the wretched hole-and-corner cut-throats that infested the journalism of that day. More especially was Kenrick driven mad with envy; and so, in a letter addressed to the London Packet, this poor creature ...
— Goldsmith - English Men of Letters Series • William Black
... had, in singular succession, dead calms and fresh breezes, stiff gales and sudden squalls; saw sharks, flying-fish, and dolphins; spoke several vessels: had a visit from Neptune when we crossed the Line, and were compelled to propitiate his favour with some gallons of spirits, which he seems always to find a very agreeable change from sea water; and touched at Table Bay and ...
— A Voyage to the Moon • George Tucker
... situation was hemming her in, and left gaps for a passage through to something else—even these had now to be curbed. Useful in hate, they were impotent in love. So Ruth recognised in her new humility. But when one day, seized by panic at having spoken irritably to her, Dickie hastily tried to propitiate her, to ingratiate himself so that she might spare him, might let him live a little longer, then Ruth felt she must cry aloud under the strain of this subtle torture. Why, he was her lover, her man, her child.... In thought, her arm shaped itself into a ...
— The Best British Short Stories of 1922 • Edward J. O'Brien and John Cournos, editors
... "the father bears the heat and burden of the day, the maternal uncle only comes when it is a question of life or death." The Khasi father is revered not only when living, but also after death as U Thawlang, and special ceremonies are performed to propitiate his shade. Further remarks on the subject of marriage will be found in the Section which ...
— The Khasis • P. R. T. Gurdon
... which new land long remained marshy and scarcely habitable, and the original settlers were forced to abandon it on account of the numerous serpents by which it was infested: But they afterwards returned, being instructed to propitiate ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. II • Robert Kerr
... box, open on the side next us, fitted up as a shrine; in it sat an Indian goddess in vermilion and gold, with minor deities round her, all very fearsome. I was told it was a cholera goddess, and the dancing was to propitiate her and drive cholera out of the village. I'd fain remember the light and shade and colour, but it is difficult to do these unfamiliar scenes from memory; of scenes at home one can grasp more in the time, for many forms are familiar and others one can reason from these—that they must ...
— From Edinburgh to India & Burmah • William G. Burn Murdoch
... of the ancient world—the God of human passions, frailties, caprices, and whims is gone, and with him the old duty to propitiate him, so that he might be induced to treat you better than your neighbor. Can anyone question the advance that has been made in diminishing the prevalence of these medieval, essentially childish, and essentially selfish ideas? The new God is the God of law ...
— The Necessity of Atheism • Dr. D.M. Brooks
... relation with me was a singular one. Her life was passed in a crack-brained sort of alternation between love and hatred for me. If I was in a good-humour with her (as occurred sometimes) there was nothing she would not do to propitiate me further; and she would be as absurd and violent in her expressions of fondness as, at other moments, she would be in her demonstrations of hatred. It is not your feeble easy husbands who are loved best in the world; according to my ...
— Barry Lyndon • William Makepeace Thackeray
... the Aztecs of Cortez' time, with their comparatively high civilization, tolerated human sacrifices. But their human sacrifices were merciful compared with ours. What is cutting out a man's heart on an altar to propitiate a god, to hounding him to death through miserable years in a prison to placate the spite of an accuser, the justice of a court, or the grudge of a warden ...
— The Subterranean Brotherhood • Julian Hawthorne
... three Rhodian sculptors, Agesan'dros, Polydo'rus, and Athenodo'rus. It represents a scene, in connection with the fall of Troy, that Virgil describes in the Second Book of the AEneid. A Trojan priest, named Laocoon, endeavored to propitiate Neptune by sacrifice, and to dissuade the Trojans from admitting within the walls the fatal wooden horse, whereupon the goddess Minerva, ever favorable to the Greeks, punished him by sending two enormous ...
— Mosaics of Grecian History • Marcius Willson and Robert Pierpont Willson
... him. It might have struck a disinterested observer that she was a little afraid of him—a little anxious to propitiate him; but none of these ...
— The Second Honeymoon • Ruby M. Ayres
... with holy-water was a part of the original rite, on the ground that the mariner was passing into new countries, once thought uninhabited, as into a strange new-world, to sanctify the hardiness and propitiate the Ruler of Sea and Air. The Dutch, also, performed some ceremony in passing the rocks, then called Barlingots, which lie off the mouth of the Tagus. Gradually the usage went farther out to sea; and the farther it went, of course, the ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 10, Number 59, September, 1862 • Various
... us an altar, tug at the cliff-boulders, pile them with the rough stones— we no longer sleep in the wind, propitiate us. ...
— Sea Garden • Hilda Doolittle
... Fredegonde, imploring her forgiveness. The king had him expelled from the church, but, instead of taking warning, he lingered in the shops around the market-place in the Cite, selecting jewels and rich stuffs with which to propitiate the queen; when she issued from the church and saw him, she despatched her guards to arrest him; one of them was wounded, and another gave him a sword-cut over the head; as he fled across the Petit-Pont, he fell and broke his leg. The manner and quality of ...
— Paris from the Earliest Period to the Present Day; Volume 1 • William Walton
... a piece of the comb and placed it in the fork of a tree for the honey-guide, assuring those who looked on, that it was necessary to propitiate the bird and pay it for its services—a plan of which the little thing seemed highly to approve, for it flew to the comb at once, and ...
— Off to the Wilds - Being the Adventures of Two Brothers • George Manville Fenn
... the pass. I was told that they dated from a very remote period, and that there were several other such groups in the country, but none so remarkable as the one which I had seen. They had a religious origin, having been designed to propitiate the gods of deformity and disease. In former times it had been the custom to make expeditions over the ranges, and capture the ugliest of Chowbok's ancestors whom they could find, in order to sacrifice them in the presence of these ...
— Erewhon • Samuel Butler
... The astrologers sometimes forbid the body to be carried out for interment at the principal door of the house, pretending to be regulated in this by the stars, and order it to be carried out by some other way; or will even command a passage to be broken out in the opposite wall of the house, to propitiate the adverse planet. And if any one object to this, they allege that the spirit of the dead would be offended, and would occasion injury to the family. When the body is carried through the city to be buried, wooden cottages are built at certain ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 1 • Robert Kerr
... so with the greatest pleasure, and as he wished to propitiate the soldier in order that he might not be molested in the persons of his laborers, he refused to accept the money which the alferez was trying to get out of ...
— The Reign of Greed - Complete English Version of 'El Filibusterismo' • Jose Rizal
... the prince's mistress. His mistress! Oh, what fabulous fortune! What might her history be? I burned to hear it, and wearied of Octave's seemingly endless chatter about his method of painting; I had heard all he was saying many times before, but I listened to it all again, and to propitiate him I regretted that the picture was not painted in his present manner, "for there are good things in the picture," I said, "and the model—you seem to have been ...
— Memoirs of My Dead Life • George Moore
... have conceived, rightly or wrongfully, that they have some cause of complaint against ourselves, and out of all England we could not have selected an envoy more calculated to allay irritation and to propitiate good will." As one whose cordial genius was, in truth, a bond of sympathy between the two great kindred nationalities, Charles Dickens indeed went forth in one sense at that time, it might almost have been said, in a semi-ambassadorial character, not between the rulers, but between the peoples. ...
— Charles Dickens as a Reader • Charles Kent
... is to this shrine of the Maya Venus that as far down as the Spanish conquest, pilgrims repaired yearly to offer their prayers and votive presents to propitiate that divinity. Cogolludo tells us that it was on her altar that the priest who accompanied the adventurers who first landed at the island, after destroying the effigies of the Goddess and of her companions and replacing them by a picture of the Virgin Mary, celebrated mass for the first ...
— The Mayas, the Sources of Their History / Dr. Le Plongeon in Yucatan, His Account of Discoveries • Stephen Salisbury, Jr.
... to propitiate this mild and miniature Cerberus with a dainty piece of ham, but was rewarded only by a disdainful sniff and angrier snarl. The politic cat, however, with wary glances at the dog and the stranger, stole noiselessly to the meat, ...
— A Knight Of The Nineteenth Century • E. P. Roe
... Christ speaketh better things than that of Abel. The real atonement—so infinitely beyond the heathen conception that God requires human blood to propitiate His justice and bring His mercy—needs to be understood. The real blood or Life of Spirit is not yet discerned. Love bruised and bleeding, yet mounting to the throne of glory in purity and peace, over the steps of uplifted humanity,—this is the deep significance of the blood of Christ. Nameless ...
— No and Yes • Mary Baker Eddy
... Forum or the Senate; it was employed to save culprits, to kindle patriotic devotion, or to stimulate the sentiments of freedom and public virtue. Eloquence certainly did not belong to the priest. It was his province to propitiate the Deity with sacrifices, to surround himself with mysteries, to inspire awe by dazzling rites and emblems, to work on the imagination by symbols, splendid dresses, smoking incense, slaughtered beasts, grand temples. He was a man to conjure, ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume IV • John Lord
... impart his own convictions, gave a candor and patient and sweet reasonableness to his preaching, which has, I think, never been equalled in any preacher of his measure of intellect, height of imagination, and reverence of soul. For he could never lower his ideals to please or propitiate. He was working for no immediate and transitory effects. He could use no arts that entangled, dazzled, or frightened; nothing but truth, and truth cautiously discriminated. His sermons were born of the most painful labors of his spirit; they were careful and finished works, written ...
— Autobiography and Letters of Orville Dewey, D.D. - Edited by his Daughter • Orville Dewey
... said—Oh, aunt, do you think I am a witch?' And now Lois was standing up, holding by Grace's cloak, and trying to read her face. Grace drew herself, ever so little, away from the girl, whom she dreaded, and yet sought to propitiate. ...
— Curious, if True - Strange Tales • Elizabeth Gaskell
... yes! the thunder rolls over all, but the stroke of lightning falls only upon me; and I—I am the one," said the prince, solemnly; "I am the sacrificial offering chosen by the king, with which he will seek to propitiate the frowning gods ...
— Frederick The Great and His Family • L. Muhlbach
... way to the fort we met Tootahah, who, though not king, appeared to be at this time invested with the sovereign authority; he seemed not to be well pleased with the distinction that was shewed to the lady, and became so jealous when she produced her doll, that to propitiate him it was thought proper to compliment him with another. At this time he thought fit to prefer a doll to a hatchet; but this preference arose only from a childish jealousy, which could not be soothed ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 12 • Robert Kerr
... attained as yet to a conception of the impersonality of Nature, he regarded these forces which helped and hindered him as friendly and alien powers which it was in the imperative interests of his own welfare to placate and propitiate. It was in this urgent sense of helplessness and need that there were developed the two outstanding modes of communication with the ...
— Human Traits and their Social Significance • Irwin Edman
... political and theological compass, and yet in our hearts acknowledge him to be the best of all good fellows. Without surrendering a single conviction, we came to see the virtue of so stating our beliefs as to persuade and propitiate, instead of offending and alienating. We had attained to that temper which, in the sphere of thought and opinion, is analogous to the crowning ...
— Fifteen Chapters of Autobiography • George William Erskine Russell
... games that Mr. Newell calls "world-old and world-wide." It is found in France, Italy, Spain, Germany, etc., was played by Froissart in the fourteenth century, and by Rabelais in the fifteenth. The game is supposed to have had its source in a formula sung at the sowing of grain to propitiate the earth gods and to promote and quicken the growth of crops. Mrs. Gomme notes that the turning around and bowing to the fields and lands, coupled with pantomimic actions of harvest activities, are very general in the history of sympathetic ...
— Games for the Playground, Home, School and Gymnasium • Jessie H. Bancroft
... noble veteran were prepared to march. Previously, however, to their departure from the city, they piously bent their steps towards the cathedral, where divine service was performed with great pomp, to propitiate heaven in favour of its servants. The archbishop delivered an eloquent oration inculcating on the Christians their duty, and the glory of their enterprize; pointing out fame and honour to the survivors—an ...
— Gomez Arias - The Moors of the Alpujarras, A Spanish Historical Romance. • Joaquin Telesforo de Trueba y Cosio
... beautiful and industrious beings," I can imagine him murmuring to himself, "whom I see everywhere, serving me I know not why? What fairy godmother bade them come trotting out of elfland when I was born? What god of the borderland, what barbaric god of legs, must I propitiate with fire and wine, lest ...
— Heretics • Gilbert K. Chesterton
... before drinking still continues in Persia, and perhaps generally in the East. Mons. Nicolas considers it "un signe de liberalite, et en meme temps un avertissement que le buveur doit vider sa coupe jusqu'a la derniere goutte." Is it not more likely an ancient Superstition; a Libation to propitiate Earth, or make her an Accomplice in the illicit Revel? Or, perhaps, to divert the Jealous Eye by some sacrifice of superfluity, as with the Ancients of the West? With Omar we see something more is signified; the precious Liquor is not lost, but ...
— Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam • Omar Khayyam
... acquaintance with her, I have never discovered but one foible incident to the flesh, love of her morning nap! You have adroitly struck Achilles in the heel. Sound the timbrel and sing like Miriam over your victory; for it were better to propitiate one of the house of Palma, than to strangle Pharaoh. You should apply for a position in some foreign legation, where your talents can be fitly trained for the tangles of diplomacy. Now if you were only a man, how admirably ...
— Infelice • Augusta Jane Evans Wilson
... instructions from his anxious mamma, took off what few clothes the poor boy had on, and repairing to the baptismal font in the yard, sprinkled cold water upon his naked breast and lips, presented his credentials in the shape of offerings to propitiate the gods of war, agriculture, etc., whose names you will find further along in this history, repeated a prayer in which "the Lord was implored to wash away the sin that was given him before the foundation of the world, so that the child might be born anew," and told the three little boys who ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. 5, Nov 1877-Nov 1878 - Scribner's Illustrated • Various
... rashness, clinging to Aubrey, with her gaze riveted on Maltravers; and Aubrey, whose gentle character was borne down and silenced by the powerful and tempestuous passions that now met in collision and conflict, withheld by his abhorrence of Vargrave's treachery from his natural desire to propitiate, and yet appalled by the apprehension of bloodshed, that for the first ...
— Alice, or The Mysteries, Book XI • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... prominent part which religious forms of worship take in the every-day life of the people. Monuments and temples everywhere bear testimony to the universal belief in a Supreme Being; and Hindoo, Mussulman, and Buddhist alike, by numberless prayers and frequent offerings, confess their desire to propitiate His power and ...
— Diary of a Pedestrian in Cashmere and Thibet • by William Henry Knight
... Speaker, not nominally, but essentially. He further relates how when a railroad magnate traveled, his journey was like a royal progress; Governors of States and Territories bowed before him; Legislatures received him in solemn session; cities and towns sought to propitiate him, for had he not the means of making or marring a city's fortunes? "You cannot turn in any direction in American politics," wrote Richard T. Ely a little later, "without discovering the railway power. It is the power behind ...
— Great Fortunes from Railroads • Gustavus Myers
... us not struggle with th' eternal will, Nor languish o'er irreparable ruins; Come, haste and live—Thy innocence and truth Shall bless our wand'rings, and propitiate heav'n. ...
— Dr. Johnson's Works: Life, Poems, and Tales, Volume 1 - The Works Of Samuel Johnson, Ll.D., In Nine Volumes • Samuel Johnson
... and despondency. He knew that in order to steer this government by public opinion successfully through all the confusion created by the prejudices and doubts and differences of sentiment distracting the popular mind, and so to propitiate, inspire, mould, organize, unite, and guide the popular will that it might give forth all the means required for the performance of his great task, he would have to take into account all the influences strongly affecting the current of popular thought and feeling, and to ...
— The Papers And Writings Of Abraham Lincoln, Complete - Constitutional Edition • Abraham Lincoln
... piece of sculpture, representing the Virgin or any saint, in the first case it is turned towards the wall; or, in the second, it is covered over with a sheet, in order that it may not be a witness of the sin. In asking a favour of an image, it is a common practice for the devotee, in order to propitiate it, to inflict upon himself some punishment or privation; such, for example, as that of absenting himself from the theatre, or the bullfights (corridas de toros), abstaining from eating dessert, or from going to the promenade, balls, and routs. This is called ...
— Roman Catholicism in Spain • Anonymous
... eyes had a suspicion of tears in them. "It was just a passing weakness, and I am all right now. Yes, I will get the Scholarship, and I will stoop to Aunt Susan's ways—I will cringe to her if necessary; I will do my best to propitiate Sir John Wallis, and I will act like a snob in every sense of the word. There now, Mummy, I see you are dying to have the box opened. We will open it and see ...
— A Bunch of Cherries - A Story of Cherry Court School • L. T. Meade
... of the Massachusetts Bay Court on the Royal Message; their address of vindication and entreaty to the King; and instead of sending agents, send two large masts, and resolve to send L1,000 to propitiate the ...
— The Loyalists of America and Their Times, Vol. 1 of 2 - From 1620-1816 • Egerton Ryerson
... authorities. These acknowledged governments are supplemented by other unacknowledged ones, that grow up in all circles, in which every man or woman strives to be king or queen or lesser dignitary. To get above some and be reverenced by them, and to propitiate those who are above us, is the universal struggle in which the chief energies of life are expended. By the accumulation of wealth, by style of living, by beauty of dress, by display of knowledge or intellect, each tries to ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. VI (of X)—Great Britain and Ireland IV • Various
... you are not getting on very well with Alice. I wish it were different. Could you not do something to propitiate her?" ...
— The Rebel of the School • Mrs. L. T. Meade
... anything lost; as also that the voice of certain wild animals, birds, or beasts, will insure them good-luck, or warn them of danger. With the utmost complacency our sable brother builds a dwarf hut in his fields, and places some grain on it to propitiate the evil spirit, and suffer him to reap the fruits of his labour, and this too ...
— The Discovery of the Source of the Nile • John Hanning Speke
... was sent in search of an easier landing-place, with orders to propitiate the natives, if possible, by presents. He was expressly enjoined not to expose himself to danger, to return if several pirogues advanced against him, not to leave the boat himself, and not to allow more than two men to land at ...
— Celebrated Travels and Travellers - Part 2. The Great Navigators of the Eighteenth Century • Jules Verne
... commanded Psyche to visit the Infernal Regions and obtain from Proserpine a closed box of cosmetic which was on no account to be opened. Psyche thought death alone could bring her to these realms, and was about to throw herself from a tower, when a voice instructed her how to enter a cavern, and propitiate Cerberus with cakes after ...
— Love and Life • Charlotte M. Yonge
... anxious to propitiate Sally. He returned from London with presents for her, and he always spoke to her, looking at ...
— Spring Days • George Moore
... upon the part of the body affected.[7:1] Passages from the books of the Gospel (literally "good spell") were especial favorites as such preservatives; they were usually inscribed on parchment, and were even placed upon horses.[7:2] Amulets were also employed to propitiate the goddess Fortune, and to thwart her evil designs. So insistent was the belief in the virtues of these objects, and to such a pitch of credulity did the popular mind attain, that special charms in great variety were devised against particular diseases, as well as against misfortunes and ...
— Primitive Psycho-Therapy and Quackery • Robert Means Lawrence
... whereas there is another and a very short one, which the Pope and the other great prelates, who know and practise it, will not have made known, for that the clergy, who for the most part live by alms, would incontinent be undone, inasmuch as the laity would no longer trouble themselves to propitiate them with alms or otherwhat. But, for that thou art my friend and hast very honourably entertained me, I would teach it thee, so I were assured thou wouldst practise it and wouldst not discover it to any living soul.' Fra Puccio, ...
— The Decameron of Giovanni Boccaccio • Giovanni Boccaccio
... bear arrived, and was duly installed in an apartment which had been prepared for him, as well as it could be on such short notice; for all agreed, that he must be treated with great care and attention, not only in order to propitiate him, but because it might be dangerous to let him return in worse condition than he came. So neither trouble nor cost was spared to make him comfortable; and very comfortable he was: supplied with ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 449 - Volume 18, New Series, August 7, 1852 • Various
... you to propitiate the cove or not, as you please; and now that we have settled the main point, let us ...
— Paul Clifford, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... own imagination. They write as men whose minds are rendered morbid with mysterious fears, rather than brightened into holy gladness, by a filial love of God. They seem to be vindicating with servile dread a character, whose wrath they would deprecate, and whose doubtful favour they would propitiate on their own behalf. Even when they express their persuasion of their own interest in "special grace," it is more in the spirit of men who are conscious of being the favoured objects of capricious tyranny, than of that serene and hopeful and cheering ...
— On Calvinism • William Hull
... say, the gods aid those who propitiate them, I will begin my book by invoking divine approval, not like Homer and Ennius, from the Muses, nor indeed from the twelve great gods of the city whose golden images stand in the forum, six male and as many female, but from a solemn council of those twelve divinities ...
— Roman Farm Management - The Treatises Of Cato And Varro • Marcus Porcius Cato
... celebrated in the spring was sacred to Jal, and that in the autumn to the mother-goddess. But there was this difference between them—that at the spring ceremony female victims only were sacrificed to Jal to propitiate him and to avert his evil influence, while at the autumn celebration males alone were offered up to the mother-goddess in gratitude for her gifts of plenty. Also criminals were occasionally thrown to the Snake that his hunger ...
— The People Of The Mist • H. Rider Haggard
... you've been appointed an admiral in the Russian Navy, or that you've married the Grand Duchess Irene Yaroslav, I shall not for one moment disbelieve you. At the same time, if you come back from Russia without your ears, the same having been cut off by your peasant neighbours to propitiate the ghost of a martyr who died six hundred years ago, I shall not be surprised either. That is the country you're going to—and I ...
— The Book of All-Power • Edgar Wallace
... were still in force. From a careful perusal of the works of the "Fathers," and the contemporary books of the heathens, he fancied that all the superstitions in the world differed but in degree—that religion was but the organic cause of superstition, the arguments made for it by the philosophers to propitiate the vulgar. This idea (in the main) was agreed to by Woolston, although his violent "Discourses," which were addressed to the unlearned, contained within them the germ of their intrinsic popularity. Yet even Woolston's works, notwithstanding their bluff exterior, had something ...
— Ancient and Modern Celebrated Freethinkers - Reprinted From an English Work, Entitled "Half-Hours With - The Freethinkers." • Charles Bradlaugh, A. Collins, and J. Watts
... regard, but because she was the mother of Alexander. Polysperchon, therefore, considered it very important to secure her influence, and the prestige of her name in his favor. At the same time, while he thus sought to propitiate Olympias, he neglected Cassander and all the other members of Antipater's family. He considered them, doubtless, as rivals and antagonists, whom he was to keep down by every means in ...
— Pyrrhus - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... the food of the Tuatha, now exorcised those very beings. The trefoil signified the Trinity, and the cross no longer the rays of the sun on water, but the cross of Calvary. The fires which had been built to propitiate the god and consume his sacrifices to induce him to protect them were now lighted to protect the people from the same god, declared to be an evil mischief-maker. In time the autumn festival of the Druids became the vigil of All ...
— The Book of Hallowe'en • Ruth Edna Kelley
... to the story of the lions which stopped the rebuilding of Samaria must occur to everyone, and if the Samaritans had quarter as good cause for their fears as had the railway coolies, their wish to propitiate the local deities is easily understood. If the whole body of lion anecdote, from the days of the Assyrian Kings till the last year of the nineteenth century, were collated and brought together, it would not equal in tragedy or atrocity, ...
— The Man-eaters of Tsavo and Other East African Adventures • J. H. Patterson
... new policy of international brigandage was the need, as he conceived it, to propitiate those Southern expansionists who in the lower South at least formed so large a part of the political machine, who must somehow be lured back into the Union; to whom the Virginia Compromise, as well as every other scheme of readjustment yet suggested, ...
— Lincoln • Nathaniel Wright Stephenson
... superstition and themselves done something to mar their perfect happiness. Polycrates offered his ring to avert the calamity sure to follow unmitigated pleasure or success, and Franz ought, perhaps, to have also made an effort to propitiate his envious Fate. ...
— Winter Evening Tales • Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr
... guests—one bowl to each couple facing each other. But before commencing a portion was laid aside and dedicated to their gods, with various mysterious ceremonies; for here, as in other places where the gospel is not known, the poor savages fancied that they could propitiate God with sacrifices. They had never heard of the "sacrifice of a broken spirit and a contrite heart." This offering being made, the feast began in earnest. Not only was it a rule in this feast that every mouthful should be swallowed ...
— The Dog Crusoe and His Master - A Story of Adventure in the Western Prairies • Robert Michael Ballantyne
... husband. She was of a very stern and masculine character, and she seems to have mastered Antony by surpassing him in the use of his own weapons. In fact, instead of attempting to soothe and mollify him, she reduced him, it seems, to the necessity of resorting to various contrivances to soften and propitiate her. Once, for example, on his return from a campaign in which he had been exposed to great dangers, he disguised himself and came home at night in the garb of a courier bearing dispatches. He caused himself to be ushered, muffled and disguised as he was, into Fulvia's apartments, where he handed ...
— Cleopatra • Jacob Abbott
... Furies and infernal gods, And visit, without leave, the dark abodes? Attend the term of long revolving years; Fate, and the dooming gods, are deaf to tears. This comfort of thy dire misfortune take: The wrath of Heav'n, inflicted for thy sake, With vengeance shall pursue th' inhuman coast, Till they propitiate thy offended ghost, And raise a tomb, with vows and solemn pray'r; And Palinurus' name the place shall bear." This calm'd his cares; sooth'd with his future fame, And pleas'd to hear his ...
— The Aeneid • Virgil
... will which all his relations and friends had taken as the final expression of his life's weakness, his miserable failure to play the man in his own household, and in which she, his wife, had recognized with a secret triumph his last effort to propitiate her, his last surrender to her. Everything left to her, both land and personalty, everything! save for a thousand a year to each of the children, and fifteen hundred a year to Coryston, his heir. The great ...
— The Coryston Family • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... at the age of thirty-two, he paused from the fiery speed of his earlier course; and for the first time gave the nations an opportunity of offering their homage before his throne. They came from all the extremities of the earth to propitiate his anger, to celebrate his greatness, or to solicit his protection. . . . History may allow us to think that Alexander and a Roman ambassador did meet at Babylon; that the greatest man of the ancient world saw and spoke with a citizen of that great nation, ...
— The Fifteen Decisive Battles of The World From Marathon to Waterloo • Sir Edward Creasy, M.A.
... feet of us, gurgling and crooning, flapping his hands and waggling his great head; his uneasy eyes wandered from the Wonder to me and back again, but it was plainly the Wonder whom he wished to propitiate. Then he suddenly backed as if he had dared too much, flopped on to the wet grass and regarded us both with foolish, goggling eyes. For a few seconds he lay still, and then he began to squirm along the ground towards us, ...
— The Wonder • J. D. Beresford
... confused with the aboriginal superstitions, and neither have been entirely obliterated by the cult which superseded them. The belief in the power of malignant spirits to cause misfortune, sickness, and death is still strong among the Malays, whose pawangs or medicine-men claim to be able to propitiate demons by spells, prayers, and offerings. These men frequently invoke benevolent spirits by the names of Rama, Vishnu, and other Hindu deities, in complete ignorance that they are Hindu,[36] to counteract the evil influences of malevolent demons. Practices ...
— A Manual of the Malay language - With an Introductory Sketch of the Sanskrit Element in Malay • William Edward Maxwell
... be as much use to me as to any one else," said Cecily indignantly. She had sacrificed her dear forget-me-not jug to satisfy some pang of conscience, or propitiate some threatening fate, but surrender her precious cherry vase she could not and would not. Felicity ...
— The Story Girl • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... same class, Bucoli or buccaniers, as those who figure so conspicuously in the adventures of Chariclea and Theagenes. The robbers are at this juncture in expectation of an attack from the royal troops; and, having been ordered by their priests to propitiate the gods by the sacrifice of a virgin, are greatly at a loss for a victim, when chance throws Leucippe in their way. She is forthwith torn from her lover, and sent off to the headquarters of the banditti; ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXIX. January, 1844. Vol. LV. • Various
... There was something slightly subservient, consciously inferior, in Charlotte's attitude to life. She had loved it secretly, with a sort of shame, with a corroding passion and incredulity and despair. Such natures are not seldom victims of the power they would propitiate. It killed her in her effort to bring ...
— The Three Brontes • May Sinclair
... for sin, of which the soul is conscious in all ages and countries; sometimes to obtain divine favor, as in military expeditions, or to secure any object dearest to the heart, such as health, prosperity, or peace; sometimes to propitiate the deity in order to avert the calamities following his supposed wrath or vengeance. The oblations were usually in the form of wine, honey, or the fruits of the earth, which were supposed to be necessary for the nourishment of the gods, especially in Greece. The sacrifices were generally of ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume I • John Lord
... traditions, he had believed in the existence of a Good Spirit, which he called Kissa-Manito; and also in the existence of a bad spirit, whose name was Muche-Manito; but in what little worship he had engaged heretofore he had endeavoured to propitiate and turn away the malice of the evil spirit, rather than to worship the Good Spirit, in whom all Indians believe, but about whom he had very vague ideas until his visit to the Christian hunter's wigwam. Now, however, even before he skinned ...
— Oowikapun - How the Gospel Reached the Nelson River Indians • Egerton Ryerson Young
... reason, subjected him to the charge of atheism, we may doubt his entire sincerity when he pretends to advocate the doctrine of necessity out of a zeal for the Divine Sovereignty and the dogma of Predestination. If he hoped by this avowal of his design to propitiate any class of theologians, he must have been greatly disappointed; for his speculations were universally condemned by the Christian world as atheistical in their tendency. This charge has been fixed upon him, in spite of his solemn protestations ...
— A Theodicy, or, Vindication of the Divine Glory • Albert Taylor Bledsoe
... party. He was under a noble exterior a man without heart, pity, honour, or conscience. He aspired to nothing but tyranny, and though he would have made use of Gaspar Ruiz for his nefarious designs, yet he soon became aware that to propitiate the Chilian Government would answer his purpose better. I blush to say that he made proposals to our Government to deliver up on certain conditions the wife and child of the man who had trusted to his honour, and that this offer ...
— A Set of Six • Joseph Conrad
... at my command, to assure him that I did not wish to have anything more to do with Devrient. At this the Grand Duke told me, with renewed gentleness, that he declined to regard my assurance as irrevocable, for it lay in his power to propitiate me by other means. I took my departure with an expression of serious regret that I could not help regarding as fruitless any effort made in the direction contemplated by my patron. Later on I ascertained that Devrient, who, of course, was informed by the Grand Duke of what had taken place, ...
— My Life, Volume II • Richard Wagner
... first the Myth applied. Its object is as much to propitiate the gods as to preserve social order. It is absolute because it is inspired. Many of its ordinances as drawn from the myth are inapplicable to man, and are unjust or frivolous. Yet such as it is, it rules the conduct of the commonwealth ...
— The Religious Sentiment - Its Source and Aim: A Contribution to the Science and - Philosophy of Religion • Daniel G. Brinton
... worlds to come, and drivel about the resurrection of dead bodies, and bring in a thousand more absurdities to catch fools? But now, dearest son, if thou hast any regard for me thy father, bid a long farewell to these longwinded follies, and come sacrifice to the gracious gods, and let us propitiate them with hecatombs and drink-offerings, that they may grant thee pardon for thy fall; for they be able and strong to bless and to punish. And wouldst thou have an example of that which I say? Behold ...
— Barlaam and Ioasaph • St. John of Damascus
... all conscience, is pitiable enough—its temples infested by fortune-tellers, witches, and fakirs, its faith mingled with gross superstitions and charms to propitiate the "nats" or spirits which are supposed to inhabit streams, forests, villages, houses, etc., and to have infinite power over the lives and fortunes of the people. A common sight on the morning streets is a group of yellow-robed priests with their begging bowls, into which ...
— Where Half The World Is Waking Up • Clarence Poe
... possessor of the estate was not the real owner of Son Febrer, and frequently, on arriving at the city with his gifts, he changed his route and left them at the houses of his creditors, awe-inspiring personages whom he desired to propitiate. ...
— The Dead Command - From the Spanish Los Muertos Mandan • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... poem about the cook instead of the camel-boys. Luckily, however, at the last moment I remembered a superstition of the Ancient Egyptians. They were in the habit of sacrificing a black lamb to propitiate Set, the sender of storms. Our lamb was black: and at the hour of his untimely death a storm was coming up. The dreadful deed, therefore, was ...
— It Happened in Egypt • C. N. Williamson & A. M. Williamson
... fellow used to buy it, and roast it on the Sunday. There was a cheap periodical of selected pieces called the Portfolio, which he had also a great fancy for taking home with him. The new proposed "deed," meanwhile, had failed to propitiate his father's creditors; all hope of arrangement passed away; and the end was that his mother and her encampment in Gower Street north broke up and went to live in the Marshalsea. I am able at this point to resume ...
— The Life of Charles Dickens, Vol. I-III, Complete • John Forster
... forty-five, who was ready to nurse his now declining years. That year 1822 was a year of much sorrow; the cholera, said to have first appeared in 1817, became very virulent. The Hindoos viewed it as a visitation from the goddess of destruction, and held services to propitiate it, and when that had passed away, a more than usually fatal form of fever set in. Krishnu-pal, the first convert, who had for twenty years been a consistent Christian, was one of the first to be taken away. Dr. Carey himself, though exceedingly ...
— Pioneers and Founders - or, Recent Workers in the Mission field • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... receiving one of the greatest possible favours that can be conferred on him, whatever may be his own superiority of social rank or worldly circumstances; and that, therefore, his conduct should be marked by a delicate respect towards the parents of his lady-love. By this means he will propitiate them in his favour, and induce them to regard him as worthy of the trust they have placed ...
— Routledge's Manual of Etiquette • George Routledge |
