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More "Propitiate" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... power than President or 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 ...
— Great Fortunes from Railroads • Gustavus Myers
... At the end of that time, the Regimental Sergeant-Major reported himself. The situation was rather novel to him; but he was not a man to be put out by circumstances. He saluted and said, "Regiment all comeback, Sir." Then, to propitiate the Colonel—"An' none of the ...
— Indian Tales • Rudyard Kipling
... fruits of the earth, she was regarded as the source of all things, and frequently remained as an important divinity when a crowd of other divinities became prominent. This is especially true of agricultural peoples, who propitiate Earth with sacrifice, worship her with orgiastic rites, or assist her processes by magic. With advancing civilisation such a goddess is still remembered as the friend of man, and, as in the Eleusinia, is represented sorrowing and rejoicing like man himself. Or where a higher religion ousts ...
— The Religion of the Ancient Celts • J. A. MacCulloch
... idea of destiny prevails in it throughout; the allegorical figures which enter between the acts supply nearly, though in a different way, the place of the chorus in the Greek tragedies; they guide the reflection and propitiate the feeling. A great deed of heroism is accomplished; the extremity of suffering is endured with constancy; but it is the deed and the suffering of a whole nation whose individual members, it may almost be said, appear but as examples of the general fortitude and magnanimity, while the Roman ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel
... disliked! I hated his pale face as much now as I had then. Even the errand of good on which he had come could not blind me to his thin-lipped mouth, to his mock humility and crafty eyes. "I have had no task so pleasant for many days," added he, with every appearance of a desire to propitiate. ...
— The House of the Wolf - A Romance • Stanley Weyman
... handles of their swords and daggers being very artistic. The common people live in constant terror of evil spirits in this world and of terrible punishments in the hereafter; the educated classes believe they can drive off or propitiate all evil influences in this world, but fear they may be changed in a future rebirth to some vile form of being. In general, the people are treacherous and cowardly. For weapons of defence they use matchlocks; in firing ...
— Wealth of the World's Waste Places and Oceania • Jewett Castello Gilson
... of country houses, placed there to keep evil spirits away. Frequently also, three crosses are seen in conspicuous places near the roadside or even in the middle of the road. They are supposed to propitiate the Almighty, and pious persons mumble prayers as they pass them. When the destruction wrought by the Martinique volcano became known here, the dismay of the countrymen was responsible for more than one "calvario" (calvary), as these collections of crosses are called. It is especially ...
— Santo Domingo - A Country With A Future • Otto Schoenrich
... all authors,' wrote 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 knock.' ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 1 • Boswell
... of introducing it into America. We have before alluded to what the Abbot Nyssens says, and if in addition we call to mind what others have uttered about its diabolical nature, and that the American Indians were wont to propitiate the powers of darkness by making offerings to them of tobacco, we cannot help thinking that King James was nearer truth and propriety than he imagined, when he declared that if he were to invite the Devil to dine with him, he would be sure to provide three things,—1. a pig,—2. ...
— The American Quarterly Review, No. 17, March 1831 • Various
... native productions of the savages. Amongst them were some clubs, most of them made of casuarina wood, skilfully carved, or embossed in an artistic manner with mother-of-pearl or with whalebone. The custom of amputating a joint or two of the fingers or toes, to propitiate the Deity, was still observed, in the case of a ...
— Celebrated Travels and Travellers - Part III. The Great Explorers of the Nineteenth Century • Jules Verne
... well-educated man; it was not in power, for, if he chose, the present object of Mr Donne's life might be utterly defeated; it did not arise from anything overbearing in manner, for Mr Donne was habitually polite and courteous, and was just now anxious to propitiate his host, whom he looked upon as a very useful man. Whatever this sense of inferiority arose from, Mr Bradshaw was anxious to relieve himself of it, and imagined that if he could make more display of his wealth his object would be obtained. Now his house in Eccleston was ...
— Ruth • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... over the new unpalatable food, refusing it day after day, till the sharp, wilful face had grown pale and pinched with famine, and caring no more apparently for her aunt's beatings than she did for the clumsy advances by which her uncle would sometimes try to propitiate her. There had been a great deal of beating—whenever Reuben thought of it he had a superstitious way of putting Sandy out of his mind as much as possible. Many times he had gone far away from the house to avoid the sound of the blows ...
— The History of David Grieve • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... principle. They did not, perhaps, adore Arimanes under one sole name, or consider the malignant divinities as sufficiently powerful to undertake a direct struggle with the more benevolent gods; yet they thought it worth while to propitiate them by various expiatory rites and prayers, that they, and the elementary tempests which they conceived to be under their direct command, might be merciful to suppliants who had acknowledged their power, and deprecated ...
— Letters On Demonology And Witchcraft • Sir Walter Scott
... grandfather, which Zerah in turn had wrested form Shishak. (19) Asa himself did not long keep them. Baasha, the king of Israel, together with Ben-hadad, the Aramean king, attacked Asa, who tried to propitiate Ben-hadad by giving him his lately re-acquired treasures. (20) The prophet justly rebuked him for trusting in princes rather than in God, and that in spite of the fact that Divine help had been visible in his conflicts with the Ethiopians and the Lubim; for there ...
— THE LEGENDS OF THE JEWS VOLUME IV BIBLE TIMES AND CHARACTERS - FROM THE EXODUS TO THE DEATH OF MOSES • BY LOUIS GINZBERG
... am summoned to that offended tribunal, to propitiate which I have passed so many years in penitence and prayer, let me record for the benefit of others the history of one, who, yielding to fatal passion, embittered the remainder of his own days, and shortened those of the adored partner of his guilt. ...
— The Pacha of Many Tales • Captain Frederick Marryat
... corpse! All the charms and incantations of the Powows bad failed to banish the disease that was sent to summon him away. All the treasure that had been destroyed, and the precious life- blood that had been spilled to propitiate false deities, could not for one moment arrest the fiat of the true 'Master of life,' or detain the spirit which was recalled by 'Him who gave it' That spirit had passed away amidst the noise of the tempest; and when Henrich sprang forward, ...
— The Pilgrims of New England - A Tale Of The Early American Settlers • Mrs. J. B. Webb
... explanations of the names of the Gods, like that excellent one of Zeus.' The truest names of the Gods are those which they give themselves; but these are unknown to us. Less true are those by which we propitiate them, as men say in prayers, 'May he graciously receive any name by which I call him.' And to avoid offence, I should like to let them know beforehand that we are not presuming to enquire about them, but only about the names which they usually bear. ...
— Cratylus • Plato
... appeared, Echephron, Stratius, Perseus, Thrasymedes, Aretus and Pisistratus. They placed Godlike Telemachus at Nestor's side, And the Gerenian Hero thus began. Sons be ye quick—execute with dispatch My purpose, that I may propitiate first Of all the Gods Minerva, who herself Hath honour'd manifest our hallow'd feast. Haste, one, into the field, to order thence 530 An ox, and let the herdsman drive it home. Another, hasting to the sable bark Of brave Telemachus, bring hither all His friends, save two, and ...
— The Odyssey of Homer • Homer
... considerable reinforcement of their upper posts, but to occasion their fomenting, secretly, at least, the opposition of the Indians." How any official of the government with the report of Antoine Gamelin in his hands, could hope to soften the animosity of the tribes by the taking of half measures, or to propitiate the British by a display of timidity, is hard to conceive. Four months later the hesitating secretary changed ...
— The Land of the Miamis • Elmore Barce
... satisfactorily with the full knowledge and acquiescence of the two brothers, who had taken a strange attachment to the young Charles Holland, who was indeed in every way likely to propitiate the good opinion of all who ...
— Varney the Vampire - Or the Feast of Blood • Thomas Preskett Prest
... 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 ...
— The Reign of Greed - Complete English Version of 'El Filibusterismo' • Jose Rizal
... through which the voice of Tamanoues screamed tauntingly. Blackness closed around him. The din was horrible. Terrified, he threw back into the bowl behind him five strings of hiaqua to propitiate Tamanoues, and there followed a momentary lull, during which he started homeward. But immediately the storm burst again with ...
— The Book of the National Parks • Robert Sterling Yard
... ban was on him, and a mark which all Would scan who met him. "He whose lot hath been With fiends in Pandemonium, must expect Hate and contempt from men." "Not so, my son! Wipe off the past, as a forgotten thing, Propitiate virtue, by forsaking vice. The good will aid you, and a brighter day Doubtless awaits you. Be not too much moved By man's applause or blame, but ever look Unto a higher Judge." Then there arose A voice of supplication, so intense To the Great Pardoner, that He would send His ...
— Man of Uz, and Other Poems • Lydia Howard Sigourney
... lips never moved in laughter, and he was as sad as sad could be because he had no son.—After trying in vain the distribution of charitable gifts which his ministers and the priests recommended, the king resolves to retire into the wilderness and there endeavour to propitiate Mahesvara [i.e. Siva], hoping thus to have his desire fulfilled. He appoints his ministers to order the realm during his absence, and doffing his royal robes clothes himself in the bark of trees and takes up his ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 3 • Richard F. Burton
... of his own. With all his infamies, Aretino was a man whom sovereigns and princes, nay even pontiffs, delighted to honour, or rather to distinguish by honours. The Marquess Federigo Gonzaga of Mantua, the Duke Guidobaldo II. of Urbino, among many others, showed themselves ready to propitiate him; and such a man as Titian the worldly-wise, the lover of splendid living to whom ample means and the fruitful favour of the great were a necessity; who was grasping yet not avaricious, who loved wealth chiefly because it secured material consideration and a life of serene enjoyment; such ...
— The Later works of Titian • Claude Phillips
... worse than folly; but Irish heroism, like Irish religion, was unfortunately limited to words and feelings. The generous defiance in the cause of the Catholic faith was followed by pillage and murder, the usual accompaniments of Irish insurrection, as a sort of initial holocaust to propitiate success. The open country was at the mercy of the rebels. Fitzgerald, joined by O'Connor, proceeded to swear-in all such of the inhabitants of the pale as would unite against England; promising protection if they would consent, but inflicting fire ...
— History of England from the Fall of Wolsey to the Death of Elizabeth. Vol. II. • James Anthony Froude
... mouth of the river, perhaps in order to be prepared to make good his escape again, to sea, in case of any sudden or extraordinary danger. Another party were employed in erecting altars, and preparing for sacrifices and other religious celebrations, designed on the part of AEneas to propitiate the deities of the place, and to inspire his men with religious confidence and trust. He also immediately proceeded to organize a party of reconnoiterers who were to proceed into the interior, to explore the country and to ...
— Romulus, Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... and decree that war shall be declared against the Carthaginians?" The decision was in the affirmative. The war was then proclaimed with the usual imposing ceremonies. Sacrifices and religious celebrations followed, to propitiate the favor of the gods, and to inspire the soldiers with that kind of courage and confidence which the superstitious, however wicked, feel when they can imagine themselves under the protection of heaven. These shows and spectacles being over, ...
— Hannibal - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... 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, ...
— Roman Catholicism in Spain • Anonymous
... life was presided over by some deity, whom it was necessary to propitiate before engaging in it. Davidson says, with reference to the practical nature of their religion, that "While the Athenians rejoiced before their gods, the Romans kept a debtor and creditor account with theirs, and were ...
— THE HISTORY OF EDUCATION • ELLWOOD P. CUBBERLEY
... through Timagenes that Octavianus considers the son of Caesar, whose face so wonderfully resembles his father's, a dangerous person, and this opinion is the boy's death-warrant. Antyllus, too, is going on a journey. His destination is Asia, where he is to seek to propitiate Octavianus and make him new offers. As you know, he was betrothed to his daughter Julia. The Queen ceased long ago to believe in the possibility of victory, yet, spite of all the demands of the "Comrades of Death" and her own cares, she toils unweariedly ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... religious hymns and the ritual of which they formed part in the sacred literature of Babylonia, there is proof that four thousand years ago hymns were sung in honour of the gods, and prayers were offered to propitiate them and secure their favour. But belief in God had place long before these hymns were sung or these prayers offered. This is shown by the existence of words in the most ancient hymns, prayers, and inscriptions ...
— Exposition of the Apostles Creed • James Dodds
... bout. They were able to accompany us. In embarking, M. Radisson must needs observe all the ceremony of two races. Such a whiffing of pipes among the stately, half-drunk Indian chiefs you never saw, with a pompous proffering of the stem to the four corners of the compass, which they thought would propitiate the spirits. Jean blew a blast on the trumpet. I waved the French flag. Godefroy beat a rattling fusillade on the drum, grabbed up his bobbing tipstaff, led the way; and down we ...
— Heralds of Empire - Being the Story of One Ramsay Stanhope, Lieutenant to Pierre Radisson in the Northern Fur Trade • Agnes C. Laut
... had shown the MS. to Gifford for advice as to its publication. Byron seems to have resented this on the ground that it might look like an attempt to propitiate the 'Quarterly Review'.] ...
— The Works of Lord Byron: Letters and Journals, Volume 2. • Lord Byron
... often both classes are worshipped from opposite motives; the good, that the worshipper may receive benefit; the evil, that he may escape harm. Sometimes good deities are so benevolent that they are neglected, superstitious fear directing all devotion towards the evil spirits to propitiate them and avert the calamities they are ever ready to bring upon the human race; sometimes the malevolent deities have so little power that the prayer of the pious is offered up to the good spirits that they may pour out still further ...
— Irish Wonders • D. R. McAnally, Jr.
... Behind the women was a 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 ...
— From Edinburgh to India & Burmah • William G. Burn Murdoch
... 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
... to his cruelty and caprice." [272] The above quoted line from Lucretius—To such evils could religion persuade!—is more than the exclamation of righteous indignation against the sacrifice of Iphigenia by her father, Agamemnon, at the bidding of a priest, to propitiate a goddess. It is still further applicable to the long chain of outrageous wrongs which have been inflicted upon the innocent at the instigation of a stupid and savage fanaticism. What is worst of all, much of this bloodthirsty religion has claimed a commission ...
— Moon Lore • Timothy Harley
... been selected as the offering by which Joe and his companions expected to gain immunity, showed that the fellow was really a most worthless character, whose death even would have been a benefit to the tribe. Thus it seemed that they had two purposes in view—the one to propitiate me and get good terms, the other to rid themselves of a vagabond ...
— The Memoirs of General Philip H. Sheridan, Vol. I., Part 1 • Philip H. Sheridan
... him a new transgression which might lessen the chances of his being able to save her, and he tried to forget it in prayer, to atone by penitence. He offered his own life amid whatever tortures would propitiate the offended deity, but he prayed that she might ...
— The Puritans • Arlo Bates
... that she was troubled, and he held the large and unaccustomed presence of the "comp'ny mit whiskers" responsible. Countless generations of ancestors had followed and fostered the instinct which now led Morris to propitiate an angry power. Luckily, he was prepared with an offering of a suitable nature. He had meant to enjoy it for yet a few days, and then to give it to Teacher. She was such a sensible person about presents. One might give her one's most cherished possession with a brave and cordial heart, for on ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume III. (of X.) • Various
... the direction of his glance instinctively, and saw, standing on the pavement, and wearing the blue cockade, Sir John Chester. He held his hat an inch or two above his head, to propitiate the mob; and, resting gracefully on his cane, smiling pleasantly, and displaying his dress and person to the very best advantage, looked on in the most tranquil state imaginable. For all that, and quick and ...
— Barnaby Rudge • Charles Dickens
... "partitioning Poland," no less; that is to say, cutting off the outskirts of Poland, flinging them to neighboring Sovereigns as propitiation, or price of good-will, and rendering the rest hereditary in his family. Pragmatic Sanction once acceded to, would probably propitiate the Kaiser? For which, and other reasons, Polish Majesty still keeps that card in his hand. Friedrich Wilhelm's alliance, with such an army and such a treasury, the uses of that are evident to the Polish Majesty.—By ...
— History Of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. VI. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... I explained, "and I am from a country beyond Caspak." I thought it best to propitiate him if possible, because of the necessity of conserving ammunition as well as to avoid the loud alarm of a shot which might bring other Band-lu warriors upon us. "I am from America, a land of which you never heard, and I am seeking others of my countrymen who are in Caspak and from ...
— The People that Time Forgot • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... in possession of the kingdom of Pyrrhus, and by them are entertained awhile and sent upon their way with gifts and guidance (343-577). The voyage from Dyrrhachium and the first glimpse of Italy. They land and propitiate Juno: then coast along till they sight Mount AEtna (578-666). After a description of the rescue of Achemenides and the escape from Polyphemus, the voyage and the story end with the death of ...
— The Aeneid of Virgil - Translated into English Verse by E. Fairfax Taylor • Virgil
... bloodshed, oppression, or even treachery, has been committed by men in the sincere belief that they were doing God service, Cromwell cannot be placed among that group of self-deceivers: that he stands by himself, and on a lower level. It was to save himself, to propitiate a gang of mutinous servants, that Cromwell contrived and wrought out the deception of March, 1655, and obtained in the bloodshed that it produced, the essential result that he desired. And then, to give validity to his imposture, to ...
— The Quarterly Review, Volume 162, No. 324, April, 1886 • Various
... military officers about our palace! Which of them will drive back for us these foreign troops? They are all afraid of the Tartar swords and arrows! But if they cannot exert themselves to expel the barbarians, why call for the princess to propitiate them? ...
— Chinese Literature • Anonymous
... discus-knife, a wooden weapon, is not now in use, but is known to have been used formerly. The wild Kadayans sacrifice after every new moon, and are forbidden to eat a number of things until they have done so. The Malanaus set laden rafts afloat on the rivers to propitiate the spirits of the sea. The very names of the two kinds of cotton, then evidently a novelty to the Chinese, are found in Borneo: KAPOK is a well-known Malay word; but TAYA is the common name for cotton among the Sea Dayaks, though it is doubtful whether it is found in Sumatra at all, and is not given ...
— The Pagan Tribes of Borneo • Charles Hose and William McDougall
... his account, as well as from other sources, that the belief of the transformation into lower animals was and is one familiar to the superstitions of the Mayas.[25-[]] The natives still continue to propitiate the ancient gods of the harvest, at the beginning of the season assembling at a ceremony called by the Spaniards the misa milpera, or "field mass," and by themselves ti'ch, "the stretching out ...
— Nagualism - A Study in Native American Folk-lore and History • Daniel G. Brinton
... emotion in his voice and manner. "Your riband was fairly won, fighting the battles of England, and can be worn with credit to yourself and to your country; but these baubles are sent to me, at a moment when a rising was foreseen, and as a sop to keep me in good-humour, as well as to propitiate ...
— The Two Admirals • J. Fenimore Cooper
... gentleman, who 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 ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 7 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... nature of the offences thus visited by secret and bloody punishment is scarcely known to Americans. He has two chief deities—a god and a devil. Most of his prayers are offered to his devil. His god, he says, being good and well-disposed, it is not necessary to propitiate him. But his devil is ugly, and must be won over by offering and petition. Once a year, wherever collected in any number, he builds a flimsy sort of temple, decorates it with ornaments of tinsel, lays piles of fruit, meats and sugared delicacies ...
— Lippincott's Magazine Of Popular Literature And Science, No. 23, February, 1873, Vol. XI. • Various
... fact, owed her a good deal. Then she had seen cause to think ill of him; and, moreover, his travels had taken him to the other side of the world. Ashe was now well aware that Cliffe reckoned on him as a hostile influence and would not try either to deceive or to propitiate him. ...
— The Marriage of William Ashe • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... the lock. As 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 ...
— Young Mr. Barter's Repentance - From "Schwartz" by David Christie Murray • David Christie Murray
... in the government of Rome, was afterwards at war with him. He was murdered by those who thought to propitiate Caesar, but the latter wept when Pompey's head was sent to him, and had the murderers ...
— McGuffey's Sixth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey
... heard in the hall. There is a great difference between the entrance into an inn of men who are not known there and of men who are known. The men who are not known are shy, diffident, doubtful, and anxious to propitiate the chambermaid by great courtesy. The men who are known are loud, jocular, and assured;—or else, in case of deficient accommodation, loud, angry, and full of threats. The guests who had now arrived were well known, and seemed at present to be in the former mood. "Well, Mary, my dear, ...
— Orley Farm • Anthony Trollope
... dwellers thereof, themselves absent, perhaps unable to endure a meeting that would have been painful, had left warm pies, freshly baked, upon the tables. This touching attention to our tastes was appreciated. Some individuals were indelicate enough to hint that the pies were intended to propitiate us and prevent the ...
— History of Morgan's Cavalry • Basil W. Duke
... their weapons and crawled to us on their knees, taking us for gods. . . . And bearing in mind all that the shipwrecked Castilian we had found at Cabo Tormentoso had told us of the mine of precious stones, we hastened to propitiate them in every way. . . . The gauds we had brought, gay beads, bright kerchiefs, and the like with these we won our way to their goodwill. They hunted for us; of buck and of wild game they brought us abundance; ...
— A Rip Van Winkle Of The Kalahari - Seven Tales of South-West Africa • Frederick Cornell
... the coppers, they were both shortly at boiling-point; when, going aft to his pantry, Jones fetched out a pound of coffee, which he chucked into the starboard copper, which held about four gallons, and was not quite filled to the brim. He evidently had determined to propitiate the crew at the start by giving them good coffee for once and plenty of it; as there were only eighteen hands in the fo'c's'le, now that Sam had gone, besides himself and me—leaving out the captain and mates, ...
— The Island Treasure • John Conroy Hutcheson
... remember the story of that non-committal editor who during the late canvass, desiring to propitiate all his subscribers of both parties, hoisted the ticket of "Gr—— and ——n" at the top of his column, thus giving those who took the paper their choice of interpretations between "Grant and Wilson" and "Greeley and Brown." A story turning on the same style of point (and probably quite ...
— Lippincott's Magazine Of Popular Literature And Science, No. 23, February, 1873, Vol. XI. • Various
... 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 ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 9 • Various
... skipper said nothing more. They waited thus the fourth day at the place on account of the stormy state of the sea, but after that the storm ceased, and the anchor was weighed. When the voyage was now continued with a favourable wind, the skipper said: 'You laughed at my advice to propitiate the Semes rock, and considered it a foolish superstition, but it certainly would have been impossible for us to get past it, if I had not secretly by night ascended the rock and sacrificed.' To the inquiry what he had offered, ...
— The Voyage of the Vega round Asia and Europe, Volume I and Volume II • A.E. Nordenskieold
... brothers, named Manabozho and Chibiabos, are the chief characters. The Manitos (spirits or gods) drown Chibiabos. Manabozho mourns and smears his face with black, as Demeter wears black raiment. He laments Chibiabos ceaselessly till the Manitos propitiate him with gifts and ceremonies. They offer to him a cup, like the beverage prepared for Demeter, in the Hymn, by Iambe. He drinks it, is glad, washes off the black stain of mourning, and is himself again, while Earth again ...
— The Homeric Hymns - A New Prose Translation; and Essays, Literary and Mythological • Andrew Lang
... 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
... George hastened to propitiate her with the usual futilities: he had supposed that he was in excellent time, his watch had been playing tricks, and ...
— Sir George Tressady, Vol. I • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... thinking that for a long time the poor feather-head attached a considerable value to my opinion, and that he was anxious in his own way to conciliate my friendship. He knew what I thought about him, and yet he sought my acquaintance, and did what he could to propitiate me and to secure my good-will; but at last an open breach declared itself between us. It came about ...
— In Direst Peril • David Christie Murray
... what I should have done without her. She reads me what I like—quite well; she writes as you see; she is fond of me; she is willing; she can talk about Madame de Grignan. In fact, you may love her on my assurance." And then the poor little dear puts in her little word for herself to propitiate this ...
— In a Green Shade - A Country Commentary • Maurice Hewlett
... 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 sinks into the ground to refresh the ...
— Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam • Omar Khayyam
... would have great difficulties to encounter. They knew that the natives had a horror of the dead, believing that spirits in the dark land of the departed thought of nothing but revenge and mischief. Therefore they perform ceremonies to propitiate departed spirits and dissuade them from plaguing the living with war, ...
— From Pole to Pole - A Book for Young People • Sven Anders Hedin
... the irruption of the Drilgoes, the priests were seeking to propitiate their gods by sacrificing the three strangers whom they held responsible for ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, May, 1930 • Various
... guardian of the peace applies it to his gullet, and for some time the policeman and the man of letters remain attached by a cord of sympathy. Gentlemen who lead the variegated life of Mr. Scalper find it well to propitiate the arm of the law, and attachments of this sort are not uncommon. Mr. Scalper hauls up the bottle, closes the window, and returns to his task; the policeman resumes his walk with a glow of internal satisfaction. A ...
— Literary Lapses • Stephen Leacock
... to shun my society, and, if I did meet him by chance, would treat me with the frigid dignity of a Grand Seigneur. Indeed, the haughtiest duke that ever rolled in his chariot is far less proud than your plain English rustic, and far less difficult to propitiate. Thus, though I had once had the temerity to question him as to his altered treatment of me, the once had sufficed. He was sitting, I remember, on the bench before "The Bull," his hands crossed upon his stick and his chin ...
— The Broad Highway • Jeffery Farnol
... 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, eager to know the ...
— The Decameron of Giovanni Boccaccio • Giovanni Boccaccio
... for his evil doing. But do you turn your foolish heart altogether away from these things, and, as far as you are able, sacrifice to the deathless gods purely and cleanly, and burn rich meats also, and at other times propitiate them with libations and incense, both when you go to bed and when the holy light has come back, that they may be gracious to you in heart and spirit, and so you may buy another's ...
— Hesiod, The Homeric Hymns, and Homerica • Homer and Hesiod
... quarrel was not sufficiently grounded. He heard a woman's scream, and the sharp checking exclamation of his master, and felt himself seized on each side. There was much confusion in his mind and in the yard, but he knew 'Tite Laboise flew through the gate and past him, and he tried to propitiate her by ...
— The Black Feather - From "Mackinac And Lake Stories", 1899 • Mary Hartwell Catherwood
... records of the long succession of consuls, and agents, and consuls-general, that followed him are a title-roll of shame. The state of things at almost any point in this span of two hundred and thirty years may be described in few words. A consul striving to propitiate a sullen, ignorant, common soldier, called a Dey; a Christian king, or government, submitting to every affront put upon his representative, recalling him after mortal insult, and sending a more obsequious substitute with presents and fraternal messages; and now and ...
— The Story of the Barbary Corsairs • Stanley Lane-Poole
... [Footnote: Among the strange customs of the olden times in Italy was one called ver sacrum (sacred spring). In time of distress a vow would be made to sacrifice every creature born in April and May to propitiate an offended deity. In many cases man and beast were thus offered; but in time humanity revolted against the sacrifice of children, and they were considered sacred, but allowed to grow up, and at the age of twenty were sent blindfolded out into ...
— The Story of Rome From the Earliest Times to the End of the Republic • Arthur Gilman
... 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 ...
— Cleopatra • Jacob Abbott
... religious liberty. They condescend to assign two weighty reasons which have induced them to allow this universal toleration: the humane intention of consulting the peace and happiness of their people; and the pious hope, that, by such a conduct, they shall appease and propitiate the Deity, whose seat is in heaven. They gratefully acknowledge the many signal proofs which they have received of the divine favor; and they trust that the same Providence will forever continue to protect the prosperity ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 2 • Edward Gibbon
... thrown into her countenance. "I must inform you at once, Mr. Osbaldistone, that compliments are entirely lost upon me; do not, therefore, throw away your pretty sayings—they serve fine gentlemen who travel in the country, instead of the toys, beads, and bracelets, which navigators carry to propitiate the savage inhabitants of newly-discovered lands. Do not exhaust your stock in trade;—you will find natives in Northumberland to whom your fine things will recommend you—on me they would be utterly thrown away, for I happen to know their ...
— Rob Roy, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... 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 the ...
— Love and Life • Charlotte M. Yonge
... tear 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
... conference with Grattan himself; but he found that great orator not very manageable, partly, as it may seem from some of Mr. Windham's letters, through jealousy of Fitzgibbon, who was now the Irish Chancellor,[134] and still more from a desire to propitiate the Roman Catholics, for whom he demanded complete and immediate Emancipation; while Pitt, who was, probably, already resolved on accomplishing a legislative Union, thought, as far as we can judge, ...
— The Constitutional History of England From 1760 to 1860 • Charles Duke Yonge
... To propitiate thee, O Varuna, we unbend thy mind with songs, as the charioteer ...
— Chips From A German Workshop - Volume I - Essays on the Science of Religion • Friedrich Max Mueller
... thing while you were yet on the mesa," said the governor patiently. "The people who saw the vision of Tahn-te saw only the spirit form of Navahu warriors," and the governor puffed smoke from his pipe to the four ways to propitiate the gods for the mention of those who belonged in the spirit land. "But before the vision was carried away by magic of the wind, Tahn-te saw more than the others, he saw a dream mountain behind them—and ...
— The Flute of the Gods • Marah Ellis Ryan
... was also attributed by the Egyptians to Exvotos offered in the temples. They consisted of various kinds. Some persons promised a certain sum for the maintenance of the sacred animals; or whatever might propitiate the deity; and after the cure had been effected, they frequently suspended a model of the restored part in the temple; and ears, eyes, distorted arms, and other members, were dedicated as memorials of ...
— Museum of Antiquity - A Description of Ancient Life • L. W. Yaggy
... venerating the spirits of the deceased, while the Kher-heb, or cantor, enveloped in the mystic folds of the leopard-skin and with bronze incense-burner in hand, sang the holy litanies and spells which should propitiate the ghost and enable him to win his way to ultimate ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, And Assyria In The Light Of Recent Discovery • L.W. King and H.R. Hall
... seeing the planet shining brightly? came with all reverence to Columbus to propitiate him with gifts, and from that time forward there was ...
— Notable Voyagers - From Columbus to Nordenskiold • W.H.G. Kingston and Henry Frith
... 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 encouragement ...
— Great African Travellers - From Mungo Park to Livingstone and Stanley • W.H.G. Kingston
... goods in the city; but had left them in their coquettish villas and pavilions, the doors of which were barely looked. The German soldiers would very likely occupy the houses, but assuredly they would do no harm to them. "Perhaps, however, it might be as well to propitiate the foreign soldiers. Let us leave something for them," said worthy Monsieur Durand to Madame Durand, his wife; "they will be hungry when they get here, and if they find something ready for them they will be grateful and do no damage." So, ...
— My Days of Adventure - The Fall of France, 1870-71 • Ernest Alfred Vizetelly
... 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 ...
— No and Yes • Mary Baker Eddy
... 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 ...
— The Roman History of Ammianus Marcellinus • Ammianus Marcellinus
... interpreter, that buffalo were again likely to be feeding in the prairie, and that we might have a chance of killing two or three more. Of course we were ready for the sport,—indeed, the more animals we killed, the more likely we were to propitiate the chief and his son. We felt all the time that we were prisoners, although not actually in chains, and that our masters might, at any time, change their conduct ...
— The Two Supercargoes - Adventures in Savage Africa • W.H.G. Kingston
... storm rages, they exhibit great timidity, giving up all attempts at amusement. On such occasions, with sober faces and trembling hands, they prepare pieces of joss-paper (scraps with magic words), bearing Chinese letters, and cast them overboard to propitiate the anger of the special god who controls the sea. The dense, noxious smell which always permeates their quarters, in spite of enforced ventilation and the rules of the ship, is often wafted unpleasantly to our own part ...
— Foot-prints of Travel - or, Journeyings in Many Lands • Maturin M. Ballou
... the singing. Nevertheless, when the concert was over, not a word was said on the subject by any one, though I had quite expected to be taken at once to the magisterial chamber to hear some dreadful sentence passed on me; and when, before retiring, anxious to propitiate my host, I began to express regret for having inflicted pain on them by attempting to sing, the venerable gentleman raised his hands deprecatingly, and begged me to say no more about it, for painful subjects ...
— A Crystal Age • W. H. Hudson
... fearful war-dance, accompanied by clashing on their drumlike instruments, and whoops that rang long and loud amid the echoing hills. If to the hunt, the Bear-Dance or the Buffalo-Dance was kept up nights and days before starting, in order to propitiate the Bear Spirit or Buffalo Spirit, whichever it might be. They had a funeral dance also, which was very solemn and impressive. And if a chieftain was to be buried, either in the river, or, as among the Mandans, on a rough ...
— Po-No-Kah - An Indian Tale of Long Ago • Mary Mapes Dodge
... too egotistic. They are too afraid of one another; too conscious of the derisive flapping of the goose-wings of the literary journal! They are not proud enough in their personal individuality to send the critics to the devil and go their way with a large contempt. They set themselves to propitiate the critics by the wit of technical novelty and to propitiate their fellow craftsmen by avoiding the inspiration of ...
— Suspended Judgments - Essays on Books and Sensations • John Cowper Powys
... military operations of this period. The early years of Albert's rule in Prussia were faidy prosperous. Although he had some trouble with the peasantry, the lands and treasures of the church enabled him to propitiate the nobles and for a time to provide for the expenses of the court. He did something for the furtherance of learning by establishing schools in every town and by giving privileges to serfs who adopted a scholastic life. In 1544, in spite of some opposition, he founded a university at ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... of Camp Fire girls was not pleased by the addition of a new member to their party, Mrs. Burton hoped in time they might come to appreciate Miss Patricia's real value, although she made no effort to propitiate them at the start. ...
— The Campfire Girls on the Field of Honor • Margaret Vandercook
... going to propitiate Miss Pinshon with it? I have a presentiment that sweets won't ...
— Daisy • Elizabeth Wetherell
... companies.[748] Cooper, in fact, seemed bent upon tantalizing Steele and many of the Indians were behind him.[749] Colonel Tandy Walker was especially his supporter. Cooper had been Walker's choice for department commander[750] and continued so, in spite of all Steele's honest attempts to propitiate him and in spite of his promise to use every exertion to satisfy Choctaw needs generally.[751] To Tandy Walker Steele entrusted the business of recruiting anew ...
— The American Indian as Participant in the Civil War • Annie Heloise Abel
... of the game, and they chase her and propitiate her; and she generally condescends to return, for solitary dignity is dull. If any of the seniors happen to see it, it is checked as much as possible, but oftener we hear of it in that very informing prayer, which is to her quite the event of the evening; for she takes to the ...
— Things as They Are - Mission Work in Southern India • Amy Wilson-Carmichael
... niche beside the altar. Jephtha's daughter, for all 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 and insensate being, calling himself ...
— The Complete Prose Works of Martin Farquhar Tupper • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... rites. The priests of Moloch, of Chemosh, of Baal, are the dark and ancient ancestors of the same vocation. All who have trafficked in the terrors of mankind, who have gained power by trading on superstitious imaginings, who have professed to propitiate wrathful and malignant spirits, to stand between men and their dreadful Maker—all these have contributed their share to the dark and sad burden which the priest has to bear. As soon as man, rising out of pure savagery, began to have any conception ...
— From a College Window • Arthur Christopher Benson
... 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 against its ...
— A Theodicy, or, Vindication of the Divine Glory • Albert Taylor Bledsoe
... reform. For nearly fifty years Manasseh had opposed the pure religion of the prophets of the eighth century, by persecution, by the introduction of foreign and sensual cults, and especially by reviving in the name of Israel's God(110) the ancient sacrifice of children, in order to propitiate His anger. Thus it appears that the happier interests of religion—family feasts, pieties of seed-time and harvest, gratitude for light, fountains and rain, and for good fortune—were scattered among a host both of local and ...
— Jeremiah • George Adam Smith
... sacred animal, the Llama. And as to Mexico, Sahagun, the great Spanish missionary, tells us that it was a custom of the people there to "smear the outside of their houses and doors with blood drawn from their own ears and ankles, in order to propitiate the god of Harvest" (Kingsborough's Mexican Antiquities, vol. ...
— Pagan & Christian Creeds - Their Origin and Meaning • Edward Carpenter
... after men had ceased to fear the unknown regions of the ocean. Perhaps an aspersion 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 more ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 10, Number 59, September, 1862 • Various
... conclude that somebody must be doing it all, or that somebody is doing the good and somebody else doing the evil, or that armies of invisible persons, benefit-cut and malevolent, are doing it; hence you postulate gods and devils, angels and demons. You propitiate these powers with presents, called sacrifices, and flatteries, called praises. Then the Kantian moral law within you makes you conceive your god as a judge; and straightway you try to corrupt him, also with presents and flatteries. This seems shocking to us; but our objection ...
— Preface to Androcles and the Lion - On the Prospects of Christianity • George Bernard Shaw
... 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 ...
— Laws • Plato
... 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
... and their desire trickle through their fingers; he sees Semenoff die, and death also in that atmosphere is blurred and meaningless. Men and women plunge into horrible relationships and constantly excuse themselves. They seek to propitiate society by labouring to give permanence to fleeting pleasures, the accidents of passion and propinquity. Love is rare; physical necessity is common to all men and women; it is absurd to expect the growth of the one and the satisfaction of the other often to coincide. ...
— Sanine • Michael Artzibashef
... interested in their own government to give their vote; or, if they vote at all, do not bestow their suffrages on public grounds, but sell them for money, or vote at the beck of some one who has control over them, or whom for private reasons they desire to propitiate. Popular elections as thus practised, instead of a security against misgovernment, are but an additional wheel ...
— The Rise of the Democracy • Joseph Clayton
... although so much their superior, was addressed by them uniformly as "Uncle Billy;" and I could not but fancy there was something desperate about them, that it was necessary to propitiate by this familiarity. This feeling was further confirmed by the remarks of one of the company who lingered behind after the rest of the gang had taken their departure. He had learned that we came from Fort Winnebago, and, having ...
— Wau-bun - The Early Day in the Northwest • Juliette Augusta Magill Kinzie
... 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 they run away ...
— Heretics • Gilbert K. Chesterton
... Selden still leaned against the window, a detached observer of the scene, and under the spell of his observation Lily felt herself powerless to exert her usual arts. The dread of Selden's suspecting that there was any need for her to propitiate such a man as Rosedale checked the trivial phrases of politeness. Rosedale still stood before her in an expectant attitude, and she continued to face him in silence, her glance just level with his polished baldness. The look put the finishing touch ...
— House of Mirth • Edith Wharton
... gained their help. During one of his drunken sprees they carried the shell to a wizard, who put a secret taboo mark on its lip, and when the pirate blew it, on regaining his wits, it made only a low, dull moaning. Try as he would, he could never restore it. It was chiefly to propitiate the gods and give its notes back to the trumpet that he had returned ...
— Myths & Legends of our New Possessions & Protectorate • Charles M. Skinner
... 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, hastening now the more because desire and hope pressed ...
— Marius the Epicurean, Volume One • Walter Horatio Pater
... begin to throw 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 ...
— Primitive Christian Worship • James Endell Tyler
... halt, Not far from where we stood, her offering brought. Singing a low sweet strain, with lips untaught. Her song proclaimed, that 'twas not many hours Since she had left her childhood's innocent home; And now with Beara lamp, and wreathed flowers, To propitiate heaven, ...
— Flowers and Flower-Gardens • David Lester Richardson
... looked out at him. He did not seem to hear, and she stole up to him and, putting her arm around his neck, laid her cheek on his head—a dear, familiar, childish gesture, used when she wished to propitiate him. He roused himself and put his arm about her waist, tried to speak, and finally said in a sorry attempt at humor, wofully belied by the tears on his face and the choking ...
— A Little Norsk; Or, Ol' Pap's Flaxen • Hamlin Garland
... Julia Vickers hastened to propitiate the arbiter of her daughter's fate. "We are obliged to you," she said, with a touch of quiet dignity resembling her husband's; "and if I ever get back safely, I will take care that ...
— For the Term of His Natural Life • Marcus Clarke
... weakness of his (which has been glanced at already) remains to be noticed. This is the altogether deplorable notion of jocularity which he only too often exhibits. Mr. Masson, trying to propitiate the enemy, admits that "to address the historian Josephus as 'Joe,' through a whole article, and give him a black eye into the bargain, is positively profane." I am not sure as to the profanity, knowing nothing particularly sacred about Josephus. But if Mr. Masson had called it excessively ...
— Essays in English Literature, 1780-1860 • George Saintsbury
... expedition. But the real object of it was to show kindness which his mother had suggested as the only payment Theo would accept. Geoff in his generosity was going to give the price beforehand, to intimate his intention of saving Theo trouble by coming to the Warren every second day, and generally to propitiate and please his new tutor. It was a very important expedition, and nobody after this could say that Theo's kindness was ...
— A Country Gentleman and his Family • Mrs. (Margaret) Oliphant
... of temples and sacrifices, and the entire service of gods, demigods, and heroes; also the ordering of the repositories of the dead, and the rites which have to be observed by him who would propitiate the inhabitants of the world below. These are matters of which we are ignorant ourselves, and as founders of a city we should be unwise in trusting them to any interpreter but our ancestral deity. He is the god who sits in the centre, on the navel of the earth, and he is the interpreter of ...
— The Republic • Plato
... They can do one harm, and that They have occult powers. All the world has known that for a hundred thousand years, more or less, and every attempt has been made to propitiate Them. James I. would drown Their mistress or burn her, but They were spared. Men would mummify Them in Egypt, and worship the mummies; men would carve Them in stone in Cyprus, and Crete and Asia Minor, or (more remarkable still) artists, ...
— On Nothing & Kindred Subjects • Hilaire Belloc
... life, saith the Lord; he that believeth on me, though he were dead, yet shall he be made alive; and whosoever liveth and believeth on me shall never die. Pilgrim, the scene before you represents the splendid conclusion of the hallowed sacrifice offered by the Redeemer of the world, to propitiate the anger of an offended Deity. This sacred volume informs us that our Saviour, after having suffered the pains of death, descended into the place of departed spirits, and that on the third day he burst the bands of death, triumphed over the grave, and, in due time, ascended with transcendent ...
— The Mysteries of Free Masonry - Containing All the Degrees of the Order Conferred in a Master's Lodge • William Morgan
... intrude upon that sorrow, which the tragical fate of the late marquis so justly claimed. But how shall I introduce the subject upon which I am now to address you? Where shall I begin this letter? Or with what arguments may I best propitiate the anger I have so justly incensed, and obtain that boon upon which the happiness of my future life ...
— Italian Letters, Vols. I and II • William Godwin
... slaves and struggling to be lords," their servile adulation of rank and talent; their stupid admiration of processions and levees, are leading features of all the American books of travel.... We much doubt if all the pretty things we have quoted will so far propitiate Lady Blessington as to make her again admit to her table the animal who has printed what ensues. [Here follows the report of Moore's conversation on the subject of O'Connell.] As far as we are acquainted with English or American literature, this is the first example of ...
— Little Memoirs of the Nineteenth Century • George Paston
... propitiate Sally. He returned from London with presents for her, and he always spoke to her, looking at ...
— Spring Days • George Moore
... the preachers stormed against Lennox; a plot to murder him (a Douglas plot) and to seize James was discovered; Randolph, who now represented Elizabeth, was fired at, and fled to Berwick; James Stewart was created Earl of Arran. In March 1581 the king and Lennox tried to propitiate the preachers by signing a negative Covenant against Rome, later made into a precedent for the famous Covenant of 1638. On June 1 Morton was tried for guilty foreknowledge of Darnley's death. He was executed deservedly, and his head was ...
— A Short History of Scotland • Andrew Lang
... called "money spinners" prognosticate good luck; in order to propitiate which, they must be ...
— Notes & Queries, No. 41, Saturday, August 10, 1850 • Various
... and they must be made to see and realise their awful condition. Truth must send its arrows into their consciences, and Terror rouse them to exertion, and Conviction bring them upon their knees, and Repentance propitiate the anger of Heaven, or they perish by the sword. The slaves must be free; and He who is no respecter of person is now holding out to us this alternative—either to wait until they burst their chains and wade through a river of blood to freedom, or to liberate them willingly ourselves. Can we hesitate ...
— Thoughts on African Colonization • William Lloyd Garrison
... used between man and man. All forms of complimentary address were at first the expressions of submission from prisoners to their conqueror, or from subjects to their ruler, either human or divine—expressions which were afterwards used to propitiate subordinate authorities, and slowly descended into ordinary intercourse. All modes of salutation were once obeisances made before the monarch and used in worship of him after his death. Presently others of the god-descended race were similarly ...
— Essays: Scientific, Political, & Speculative, Vol. I • Herbert Spencer
... disquiet: her eyes were dreamy and her voice softer and less decided in its inflexions, and her manner to me, instead of continuing its old noble habits of command, became timid and caressing, as if she were anxious to propitiate me. In the evenings, instead of sitting among us boys on the piazza, she would leave us and walk by herself under the laburnums in the garden; and if I followed her and put my arm about her, I found, with vague pain ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 22. July, 1878. • Various
... day, the master 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 ...
— Celebrated Travels and Travellers - Part 2. The Great Navigators of the Eighteenth Century • Jules Verne
... ship which he fitted out for discovery; and so he sailed away in the direction of Gunnbiorn's land, and found it. He whiled away three years on its coast, and as soon as he was allowed, ventured back with the tidings. While, to propitiate intending settlers, he said he had been to Greenland, and so the ...
— Great Epochs in American History, Volume I. - Voyages Of Discovery And Early Explorations: 1000 A.D.-1682 • Various
... our departure a great sacrifice of slaves was held upon the teocalli to propitiate the gods, so that they might give us a safe journey, and also in honour of some festival, for to the festivals of the Indians there was no end. Thither we went up the sides of the steep pyramid, since ...
— Montezuma's Daughter • H. Rider Haggard
... Town-hall.—Meanwhile a chorus of students approaches, who have left Halle to avoid being enlisted in the army. Lenchen and Hedchen, recognizing {197} their sweet-hearts among them, greet them joyfully, and when Ruepelmei appears, they propitiate him ...
— The Standard Operaglass - Detailed Plots of One Hundred and Fifty-one Celebrated Operas • Charles Annesley
... previous, we may remark that one of the consequences of the Mississippi scheme, and the reign of Mr. Law in France, had been the recall of Lord Stair from the French Court, to which he was accredited as English ambassador. Lord Stair quarrelled with Law when Law was all-powerful; and in order to propitiate the financial dictator, it was found convenient to recall Stair from Paris. England had been well served by him as her ambassador at the French Court. We have already said something of Lord Stair—his ability, courage, and dexterity, his winning ...
— A History of the Four Georges, Volume I (of 4) • Justin McCarthy
... electricity, and the relative powers of conducting and non-conducting bodies, as would induce them to place a mistaken reliance upon the contrivance described, as one calculated to ensure their personal safety; or whether, as religious devotees, they presented it as a costly offering to propitiate the mysterious power that controls the elements. The thing affixed was however so insignificant in value, compared with the stupendous edifice to be protected, that the latter supposition is scarcely ...
— Ceylon; an Account of the Island Physical, Historical, and • James Emerson Tennent
... England at the Sublime Porte. The records of the long succession of consuls, and agents, and consuls-general, that followed him are a title-roll of shame. The state of things at almost any point in this span of two hundred and thirty years may be described in few words. A consul striving to propitiate a sullen, ignorant, common soldier, called a Dey; a Christian king, or government, submitting to every affront put upon his representative, recalling him after mortal insult, and sending a more obsequious substitute ...
— The Story of the Barbary Corsairs • Stanley Lane-Poole
... comprehended their highest notions of happiness. The wicked were to expiate their crimes by ages of wearisome labor. They associated with these ideas a belief in an evil principle or spirit, bearing the name of Cupay, whom they did not attempt to propitiate by sacrifices, and who seems to have been only a shadowy personification of sin, that exercised little influence over their ...
— The History Of The Conquest Of Peru • William H. Prescott
... 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 ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 3, No. 18, April, 1859 - [Date last updated: August 7, 2005] • Various
... bluebird she wished to propitiate both the sky and the earth, so she gave him the color of the one on his back and the hue of the other on his breast, and ordained that his appearance in the spring should denote that the strife and war between these two elements was at ...
— Wake-Robin • John Burroughs
... depriving him of his lawful prey. Sundry cocks and hens, evidently toothsome morsels, are then thrown from one priest to another, and saved for the cooking-pot, but a tough-looking chanticleer of the Cochin China persuasion is finally selected, and cast into the seething pit to propitiate the terrible wrath of the Avenging Deity at the smallest expense and loss to the astute priesthood. At the close of the sacerdotal is sacreligious performance, we mount the shaking ladder to a thatched ...
— Through the Malay Archipelago • Emily Richings
... ice-clad peaks of the giant ranges of the Himalayas, they crossed snowy passes fourteen thousand feet above the sea, and did not neglect to throw a stone upon the obos—the cairns that pious and superstitious travellers erect to propitiate the spirits of the passes. Sometimes the path led under beautiful cliffs of pure white crystalline limestone that in the brilliant sunlight shone like the finest marble. Often they journeyed through a lovely land of gently-sloping hills, of grassy uplands, of deep valleys ...
— The Jungle Girl • Gordon Casserly
... enemy, who had made a wide circuit, and was approaching the town from another quarter. By ill luck, the Iroquois captured a Tobacco Indian and his squaw, straggling in the forest not far from St. Jean; and the two prisoners, to propitiate them, told them the defenceless condition of the place, where none remained but women, children, and old men. The delighted Iroquois no longer hesitated, but silently and swiftly pushed on towards ...
— The Jesuits in North America in the Seventeenth Century • Francis Parkman
... perhaps offending the gravity of certain of our readers by the extent of this notice; albeit, we have striven to propitiate their prejudices by the peculiar combination and juxtaposition of professions, selected for consideration. But we are not acting unadvisedly. Close its eyes as it may, the public cannot but perceive, that the legitimate ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. 341, March, 1844, Vol. 55 • Various
... soon saw that she was of no account in Rhoda's eyes, and was not her chosen confidante, but simply the person to whom she talked for want of any other listener. There was not, therefore, in his opinion, any reason why he should trouble himself to propitiate Phoebe. ...
— The Maidens' Lodge - None of Self and All of Thee, (In the Reign of Queen Anne) • Emily Sarah Holt
... writings. She is a true poetess: the woes of humanity are reflected in her own sorrows, to which she gave utterance in soulful tones. She, too, became an exemplar for a number of young women. A Pole, Yenta Wohllerner, like Rachel Morpurgo, had to propitiate churlish circumstances before she could publish the gifts of her muse, and Miriam Mosessohn, Bertha Rabbinowicz, and others, emulated her masterly handling of the ...
— Jewish Literature and Other Essays • Gustav Karpeles
... public pulse with an unerring accuracy of touch, which told him when to speak and when to be silent, when to urge and when to leave events to their natural progress. Ever active, ever vigilant, no opportunity was suffered to escape him, and yet no one whose good-will it was desirable to propitiate was disgusted by injudicious importunity. Even Vergennes, who knew that his coming was the signal of a new favor to be asked, found in his way of asking it such a cheerful recognition of its true character, so considerate an exposition of the necessities which made it urgent, that he never ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 91, May, 1865 • Various
... drank yearly by the Americans could be collected it would make a lake two miles square and ten feet deep. The alcoholic drinks alone if collected would fill a canal one hundred miles long, one hundred feet wide, and ten feet deep. May their saints propitiate this insatiate thirst! ...
— As A Chinaman Saw Us - Passages from his Letters to a Friend at Home • Anonymous
... interlarding their most solemn speeches with expostulations and threats of neglect, if he fails in complying with their requests. As most of their petitions are for plenty of food, they do not trust entirely to the favour of Kepoochikawn, but endeavour, at the same time, to propitiate the animal, an imaginary representative of the whole race of larger quadrupeds that ...
— Narrative of a Journey to the Shores of the Polar Sea, in the Years 1819-20-21-22, Volume 1 • John Franklin
... that way, they may propitiate the gods of the volcano. Their hearts are constantly filled with fear lest the gods of the volcano become angry and ...
— Flash-lights from the Seven Seas • William L. Stidger
... hither and who admitted them into my pavilion! But the like of the beauty of this youth and this girl my eyes never beheld!' 'Thou art right, O Commander of the Faithful,' replied Jaafer, hoping to propitiate him. Then said the Khalif, 'O Jaafer, let us both mount the branch that overlooks the window, that we may amuse ourselves with looking at them.' So they both climbed the tree and looking in, heard Ibrahim say, 'O my lady, I have laid aside ...
— The Book Of The Thousand Nights And One Night, Volume I • Anonymous
... them were some clubs, most of them made of casuarina wood, skilfully carved, or embossed in an artistic manner with mother-of-pearl or with whalebone. The custom of amputating a joint or two of the fingers or toes, to propitiate the Deity, was still observed, in the case of a near relative ...
— Celebrated Travels and Travellers - Part III. The Great Explorers of the Nineteenth Century • Jules Verne
... press and the public approval of the National Irish Players had not proved sufficient to propitiate that iron-hearted monster, Financial Success. The company went into bankruptcy before they had played half their bookings. Their final curtain went down on a bit of serio-comic drama staged, impromptu, on a North River ...
— Seven Miles to Arden • Ruth Sawyer
... 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 arrive, though occasionally ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 16 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... when he saw his patient he said "Lalla Saheb—I have found out the real cause of your trouble—it is a ghost whom you have got to propitiate and unless you do that you will never get well—and no medicine will help you and your digestion ...
— Indian Ghost Stories - Second Edition • S. Mukerji
... embarrassment in an instant, failed her now. She attributed his strange reception of her to pride, to reluctance—to any cause but the unexpected revelation of her own beauty. "I have no words to thank you," she said, faintly, trying to propitiate him. "I should only distress you if I tried to speak." Her lip began to tremble, she drew back a little, and turned away her head ...
— Armadale • Wilkie Collins
... side, they made their camp-fires, and allowed their prisoners to do the same. Accau and Du Gay slung their kettle; while Hennepin, to propitiate the Sioux, carried to them two turkeys, of which there were several in the canoe. The warriors had seated themselves in a ring, to debate on the fate of the Frenchmen; and two chiefs presently explained to the friar, by significant signs, that it had been resolved that his head should be ...
— France and England in North America, a Series of Historical Narratives, Part Third • Francis Parkman
... used to dress their victims, when they were about to throw them into the flames to pacify the wrath of their gods. I shall suffer the same fate. I shall die of the fire burning in my heart, yet I shall not be able to propitiate the idol that the world is worshipping. It will be all in vain! With a soul so crushed as mine, I am incapable of accomplishing any thing. But complaints are useless, I must finish what I have begun; I must—but hush! is not that the sound of wheels ...
— Napoleon and the Queen of Prussia • L. Muhlbach
... is the life of the game, and they chase her and propitiate her; and she generally condescends to return, for solitary dignity is dull. If any of the seniors happen to see it, it is checked as much as possible, but oftener we hear of it in that very informing prayer, which is to her quite the event of the evening; for she takes to ...
— Things as They Are - Mission Work in Southern India • Amy Wilson-Carmichael
... in homage to him, and the four Kings were they that were loudest in their revilings of the spouse of Kadza, and most obsequious in praises of the Master. The King of the City was fain to propitiate his people by a voluntary resignation of his throne to Shibli Bagarag, and that King took well to heart the wisdom of ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... the women of all the Dyak tribes. They held important parts in all the feasts, incantations, and superstitions, which could not be called religion, but were based on the dread of evil spirits and a desire to propitiate them. The women encouraged head-taking by preferring to marry the man who had some of those ghastly tokens of his prowess. When Sir James Brooke forbad head-taking among the tribes in his dominions, it was ...
— Sketches of Our Life at Sarawak • Harriette McDougall
... order of S. Dominic, 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
... earth, she was regarded as the source of all things, and frequently remained as an important divinity when a crowd of other divinities became prominent. This is especially true of agricultural peoples, who propitiate Earth with sacrifice, worship her with orgiastic rites, or assist her processes by magic. With advancing civilisation such a goddess is still remembered as the friend of man, and, as in the Eleusinia, is represented sorrowing and rejoicing like man himself. Or ...
— The Religion of the Ancient Celts • J. A. MacCulloch
... opposition of the Indians." How any official of the government with the report of Antoine Gamelin in his hands, could hope to soften the animosity of the tribes by the taking of half measures, or to propitiate the British by a display of timidity, is hard to conceive. Four months later the hesitating secretary ...
— The Land of the Miamis • Elmore Barce
... and sacrifices, and the entire service of gods, demigods, and heroes; also the ordering of the repositories of the dead, and the rites which have to be observed by him who would propitiate the inhabitants of the world below. These are matters of which we are ignorant ourselves, and as founders of a city we should be unwise in trusting them to any interpreter but our ancestral deity. He is the god who sits in the centre, on the navel of the earth, and he is the interpreter ...
— The Republic • Plato
... for our present purpose in two ways. In the first place, it may serve, at the outset of our remarks, to propitiate those plain-spoken English critics who look upon new terms in philosophy with the same suspicion with which Jack Cade regarded "a noun and a verb, and such abominable words as no Christian ear can endure ...
— The Philosophy of the Conditioned • H. L. Mansel
... 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, eager to know the ...
— The Decameron of Giovanni Boccaccio • Giovanni Boccaccio
... excesses that might on 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
... home with our possessions, before being invited even," he added, as four of them placed on their heads some pieces of cloth and a native basket filled with handsome beads, which Hassan had advised us to bring in order to propitiate Wimpai. ...
— The Strand Magazine, Volume V, Issue 29, May 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... 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 ...
— Practical Education, Volume I • Maria Edgeworth
... question desires is that the Albanians shall pasture their flocks and market their sheepskins in peace, free of Serbian control. In every country at present at war, the desire of the majority of people is for a non-contentious solution that will neither crystallise a triumph nor propitiate an enemy, but which will embody the economic and ethnological and geographical common sense of the matter. But while the formulae of national belligerence are easy, familiar, blatant, and instantly present, the gentler, greater formulae ...
— War and the Future • H. G. Wells
... Holy-tide, to propitiate the minds of his subjects and vassals, they were invited in large numbers to partake of a princely festivity at Castell-Coch, or the Red- Castle, as it was then called, since better known by the name of Powys-Castle, and in latter times ...
— The Betrothed • Sir Walter Scott
... might 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
... moment or two, as if touched by some compunction, before he put the notes into his pocket. It had occurred to him vaguely that he might propitiate his fortune by sacrificing this money make himself, as it were, by a timely generosity, the creditor of good luck. But it was not the kind of thing ...
— Those Who Smiled - And Eleven Other Stories • Perceval Gibbon
... the roe. So 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 which has, in the meantime, troubled them only with the ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volumes I-VI. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... with many stripes. It was unjust and cruel and Mamma and Papa would never have allowed it. Unless perhaps, as Aunty Rosa seemed to imply, they had sent secret orders. In which case he was abandoned indeed. It would be discreet in the future to propitiate Aunty Rosa, but, then, again, even in matters in which he was innocent, he had been accused of wishing to "show off." He had "shown off" before visitors when he had attacked a strange gentleman—Harry's uncle, not his own—with ...
— Kipling Stories and Poems Every Child Should Know, Book II • Rudyard Kipling
... blarney to propitiate me,' laughed Mr. Kendal, who certainly was in unusual spirits after his execution and rescue by proxy, but you wont ...
— The Young Step-Mother • Charlotte M. Yonge
... seeing a question in my eyes and on my lips. 'Yes, yes; I have made the attempt. My wife was formerly living in the Faubourg Saint-Antoine. One day when, from what Gobain told me, I believed in some chance of a reconciliation, I wrote by post a letter, in which I tried to propitiate my wife—a letter written and re-written twenty times! I will not describe my agonies. I went from the Rue Payenne to the Rue de Reuilly like a condemned wretch going from the Palais de Justice to his execution, but he goes on a cart, and I was on foot. ...
— Honorine • Honore de Balzac
... to talking on the subject, you know. But, really, I had a reason. I did not want to seem to propitiate your favour by any such means; I wished to try my chances with you on my own merits; and that was also a reason why I made my profession in Montreal. I wanted to do it without delay, it is true; I also wanted to do it quietly. I mean everybody shall know; ...
— Nobody • Susan Warner
... stained the otherwise amiable character of these islanders—the offering of human sacrifices! Cook was once present at one of these detestable oblations, and describes it circumstantially. Its object was to propitiate the assistance of the Gods, in a war ...
— A New Voyage Round the World in the Years 1823, 24, 25, and 26. Vol. 1 • Otto von Kotzebue
... 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 ...
— Tremendous Trifles • G. K. Chesterton
... honour of the bad gods in order to avert their displeasure. If they committed crimes or denied themselves, they employed the usual methods of purification taught them by their own hearts. Since there are bad as well as good gods, it is necessary to propitiate them with offerings of agreeable food, playing the lute, blowing the flute, singing and dancing, and whatever else is likely to ...
— A History of the Japanese People - From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era • Frank Brinkley and Dairoku Kikuchi
... 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 ...
— The Mayas, the Sources of Their History / Dr. Le Plongeon in Yucatan, His Account of Discoveries • Stephen Salisbury, Jr.
... The rowan, or mountain ash, whose berries had been 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
... the region called Campania, in the midst of which is the volcano Vesuvius. [Footnote: Among the strange customs of the olden times in Italy was one called ver sacrum (sacred spring). In time of distress a vow would be made to sacrifice every creature born in April and May to propitiate an offended deity. In many cases man and beast were thus offered; but in time humanity revolted against the sacrifice of children, and they were considered sacred, but allowed to grow up, and at the age of twenty were sent blindfolded out into ...
— The Story of Rome From the Earliest Times to the End of the Republic • Arthur Gilman
... God was to be found there, and that the tent of Moses was the spot where they were to appear before their Creator. God, however, was not at all pleased to see Moses keep himself aloof from the people, and said to him: "According to our agreement, I was to propitiate thee every time thou wert angry with the people, and thou wert to propitiate Me when My wrath was kindled against them. What is now to become of these poor people, if we be both angry with them? Return, therefore, into the camp to the people. But if thou wilt not obey, remember that Joshua is ...
— THE LEGENDS OF THE JEWS VOLUME III BIBLE TIMES AND CHARACTERS - FROM THE EXODUS TO THE DEATH OF MOSES • BY LOUIS GINZBERG
... beings, brothers, named Manabozho and Chibiabos, are the chief characters. The Manitos (spirits or gods) drown Chibiabos. Manabozho mourns and smears his face with black, as Demeter wears black raiment. He laments Chibiabos ceaselessly till the Manitos propitiate him with gifts and ceremonies. They offer to him a cup, like the beverage prepared for Demeter, in the Hymn, by Iambe. He drinks it, is glad, washes off the black stain of mourning, and is himself again, while Earth again is joyous. ...
— The Homeric Hymns - A New Prose Translation; and Essays, Literary and Mythological • Andrew Lang
... as rapidly arrived at her conclusions. The first of those was, that Lucian Davlin, by his intolerance and unkindness, had fitted a tool to her hand, and she, therefore, as a preliminary step, must propitiate and win the confidence of this same tool left by ...
— Madeline Payne, the Detective's Daughter • Lawrence L. Lynch
... God 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 ...
— The Necessity of Atheism • Dr. D.M. Brooks
... and purity, forms a remarkable phenomenon in the history of modern poetry. The idea of destiny prevails in it throughout; the allegorical figures which enter between the acts supply nearly, though in a different way, the place of the chorus in the Greek tragedies; they guide the reflection and propitiate the feeling. A great deed of heroism is accomplished; the extremity of suffering is endured with constancy; but it is the deed and the suffering of a whole nation whose individual members, it may almost be said, ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art - and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel trans John Black
... a boy this wing is stuck upon a spear, and if a girl it is fixed to the slip of wood used to pass between the threads in weaving, and this is fixed on the bank, and the blood allowed to drop into the stream, as an offering to propitiate the spirits supposed to inhabit the waters, and to insure that, at any rate, no accident by water shall happen to the child. The remainder of the fowl is taken back to the ...
— Children of Borneo • Edwin Herbert Gomes
... Perhaps an aspersion 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 more ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 10, Number 59, September, 1862 • Various
... the errand of good on which he had come could not blind me to his thin-lipped mouth, to his mock humility and crafty eyes. "I have had no task so pleasant for many days," added he, with every appearance of a desire to propitiate. ...
— The House of the Wolf - A Romance • Stanley Weyman
... Colonel, and wrestled with him for half-an-hour. At the end of that time, the Regimental Sergeant- Major reported himself. The situation was rather novel tell to him; but he was not a man to be put out by circumstances. He saluted and said: "Regiment all come back, Sir." Then, to propitiate the Colonel:—"An' none of the horses any the ...
— The Works of Rudyard Kipling One Volume Edition • Rudyard Kipling
... struggling to be lords," their servile adulation of rank and talent; their stupid admiration of processions and levees, are leading features of all the American books of travel.... We much doubt if all the pretty things we have quoted will so far propitiate Lady Blessington as to make her again admit to her table the animal who has printed what ensues. [Here follows the report of Moore's conversation on the subject of O'Connell.] As far as we are acquainted with English or American literature, this is the first example of ...
— Little Memoirs of the Nineteenth Century • George Paston
... men confronted each other helplessly, silently, and then Lans Treadwell, overcome by sudden remorse, and a kind of fear, strove to propitiate the sternness that found ...
— A Son of the Hills • Harriet T. Comstock
... of steps that led to that mysterious second story door, and Dan rapped. The door opened promptly and Peg Bowen stood before us, in what seemed exactly the same costume she had worn on the memorable day when we had come, bearing gifts, to propitiate her in the matter ...
— The Golden Road • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... with gold thread. Underneath it was a blue tunic reaching to his knees. Round his waist 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
... over the lake hole so often that they had become accustomed to it, and had grown into the habit of sinking a ball or two as a preliminary formality with much the same stoicism displayed by those kings in ancient and superstitious times who used to fling jewellery into the sea to propitiate it before they took a voyage. But today, by one of those miracles without which golf would not be golf, each of them got over with his first shot—and not only over, but dead on the pin. Our "pro." himself could not ...
— The Clicking of Cuthbert • P. G. Wodehouse
... your supper," he said, as he helped his mother to the ground. "Mr Job Judson here did not quite approve of our proceeding, as he would rather we had spent the time in his bar; however, I have brought him up some of the proceeds of our sport to propitiate him, for he is an obliging, good-natured fellow, at bottom. I wish ...
— The Log House by the Lake - A Tale of Canada • William H. G. Kingston
... 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 ...
— Sermons to the Natural Man • William G.T. Shedd
... forms of complimentary address were at first the expressions of submission from prisoners to their conqueror, or from subjects to their ruler, either human or divine—expressions which were afterwards used to propitiate subordinate authorities, and slowly descended into ordinary intercourse. All modes of salutation were once obeisances made before the monarch and used in worship of him after his death. Presently others of the god-descended race were similarly saluted; and ...
— Essays: Scientific, Political, & Speculative, Vol. I • Herbert Spencer
... proceeded to say: "I have reared in a single day a new avenue by which histrionic greatness, hitherto obstructed, may become accessible. Wife, I think I have done the trick at last. Lysimachus!" added he, "let a libation be poured out on so smiling an occasion, and a burnt-offering rise to propitiate the celestial powers. Run to the 'Sun,' you dog. Three pennyworth of ale, and ...
— Peg Woffington • Charles Reade
... smock-frock. He courted disgust, and such courtship is pretty sure of success. But Landor made his bow in full court-dress. In spite of the difficulty of his poetry, he had all the natural graces which are apt to propitiate cultivated readers. His prose has merits so conspicuous and so dear to the critical mind, that one might have expected his welcome from the connoisseurs to be warm even beyond the limit of sincerity. To praise him was to announce one's own possession of a ...
— Hours in a Library - New Edition, with Additions. Vol. II (of 3) • Leslie Stephen
... primarily awe, nervousness, scruple—much the same in fact as that feeling which in these days we call superstition; and secondarily the means taken, under the authority of the State, to quiet such feelings by the performance of rites meant to propitiate the gods.[530] In both of these senses religio is to be found in the last age of the Republic; but, as we shall see, the tendency to superstitious nervousness was very imperfectly allayed and the worship that should have allayed it was in great ...
— Social life at Rome in the Age of Cicero • W. Warde Fowler
... forces of the Lombard barons in the field of Coviolo like an independent potentate. His power and splendour were great enough to rouse the jealousy of the Emperor; but Henry III. seems to have thought it more prudent to propitiate this proud vassal, and to secure his kindness, than to attempt his humiliation. Bonifazio married Beatrice, daughter of Frederick, Duke of Lorraine—her whose marble sarcophagus in the Campo Santo at ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Complete - Series I, II, and III • John Symonds
... decision. "Do the Roman people decide and decree that war shall be declared against the Carthaginians?" The decision was in the affirmative. The war was then proclaimed with the usual imposing ceremonies. Sacrifices and religious celebrations followed, to propitiate the favor of the gods, and to inspire the soldiers with that kind of courage and confidence which the superstitious, however wicked, feel when they can imagine themselves under the protection of heaven. These shows and spectacles being over, ...
— Hannibal - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... trade this time, but when I go back to my country, and say I have seen the great merchant, and shew them the presents I have received, then they will all want to come, and bring plenty of trade." This of course concludes with a present to propitiate the grasping spirit of ...
— A Voyage Round the World, Vol. I (of ?) • James Holman
... then solemnly took 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, ...
— Off to the Wilds - Being the Adventures of Two Brothers • George Manville Fenn
... mark nor just to punish it: in the latter, he either "remembers God and is troubled," or, if he would allay the remorse and forebodings of an uneasy conscience, he has recourse to penance and mortification, to painful sacrifices and ritual observances, in the hope, that by these he may propitiate an offended Deity. In the one case, the conflict ends in practical Atheism, in the other, in abject Superstition. And these two, Atheism and Superstition, however different and even opposite they may seem to be, are really offshoots ...
— Modern Atheism under its forms of Pantheism, Materialism, Secularism, Development, and Natural Laws • James Buchanan
... banking account, and your banker," he went on. This was perfectly true, though it was Raffles alone who had kept the one open, and enabled me to propitiate the ...
— A Thief in the Night • E. W. Hornung
... the situation was thus: I had undertaken, not indeed without grave misgivings, to propitiate his Majesty, after the failure of the THIERS-BISMARCK negotiations, and, if possible, procure such terms as would save Parisians from the galling necessity of immolating the monkeys of the Jardin des Plantes to the popular ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 2, No. 36, December 3, 1870 • Various
... 27-This day, the twenty-first Sunday of my bereavement, Alexander, I trust, is ordained a deacon of the Church of England. Heaven propitiate his entrance! I wrote to the good Bishop of Salisbury to beseech his pious wishes on this opening of ...
— The Diary and Letters of Madame D'Arblay Volume 3 • Madame D'Arblay
... itself the municipality had wrested the authority from the Viceroy, and consigned the administration to a Committee of Thirty. The ships of war and transports being blown to sea, the inhabitants became still more aggressive; for, foreseeing the return of the French, they were naturally eager to propitiate their future masters by a display of zeal. British property was sequestered, and shipping not permitted to leave ...
— The Life of Nelson, Vol. I (of 2) - The Embodiment of the Sea Power of Great Britain • A. T. (Alfred Thayer) Mahan
... I copy not others' impressions, but simply set down my own. Among his associates, the fault commonly found with Sumner is not that he was implacable—none easier to propitiate—but impracticable; not an idealist, but ideologist and doctrinary dreamer of a peace and freedom on earth which he put into no effective and satisfactory form; for ten thousand besides him recommended the Emancipation, which John Quincy Adams held justifiable as a war measure, ...
— Senatorial Character - A Sermon in West Church, Boston, Sunday, 15th of March, - After the Decease of Charles Sumner. • C. A. Bartol
... at the irruption of the Drilgoes, the priests were seeking to propitiate their gods by sacrificing the three strangers whom they held responsible ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, May, 1930 • Various
... the pious offerings from their disciples, they are not at all particular. They go upon the easy principle that all is fish that comes into their net. If the ignorant and superstitious givers have not 'filthy lucre' wherewithal to propitiate the ugly represented saints, wax candles, silver ore, cacao, sugar, and any other description of property is as readily received. Thus, it often happens that these peripatetic friars have a long convoy of heavily-laden mules with which to ...
— The Aldine, Vol. 5, No. 1., January, 1872 - A Typographic Art Journal • Various
... had approached the bishop, who, eager to propitiate whoever seemed most likely to become king, gave the signal for the procession that was to mark the solemn bearing of the crown of Lutha up the aisle ...
— The Mad King • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... control of the powers who rule man as well. The savage sees his crops destroyed by a tempest or drought; he attributes the disaster to the particular powers concerned with such things whom he must have angered unwittingly, and whom he must propitiate by sacrifice or penitence. His individual and tribal acts do not always accomplish the desired ends, and again the laws of infinite and ultimate powers must have been contravened, as he interprets the situation. Therefore his whole religious consciousness was exerted ...
— The Doctrine of Evolution - Its Basis and Its Scope • Henry Edward Crampton
... artistic, too egotistic. They are too afraid of one another; too conscious of the derisive flapping of the goose-wings of the literary journal! They are not proud enough in their personal individuality to send the critics to the devil and go their way with a large contempt. They set themselves to propitiate the critics by the wit of technical novelty and to propitiate their fellow craftsmen by avoiding the inspiration ...
— Suspended Judgments - Essays on Books and Sensations • John Cowper Powys
... said, with a slight break in his voice, so anxious he was to propitiate the pale, pretty girl who brooded at him from the head of the table, "look here! Do something to please me. When I'm out on the spree to-night let me think of your having a good time too. Why not ring up Miss Winter and get her to go to the theatre ...
— Married Life - The True Romance • May Edginton
... laws, he was sent into temporary banishment—this time in a ship which he fitted out for discovery; and so he sailed away in the direction of Gunnbiorn's land, and found it. He whiled away three years on its coast, and as soon as he was allowed, ventured back with the tidings. While, to propitiate intending settlers, he said he had been to Greenland, and so the land got a ...
— Great Epochs in American History, Volume I. - Voyages Of Discovery And Early Explorations: 1000 A.D.-1682 • Various
... most important personages too. Because they fight? No, because in war too they make magic; they charm the approaches to the village, they "doctor" the trails or the weapons or the canoes, they make war medicine, they invoke and propitiate the war gods. The warriors are the younger men, men whose efforts would be vain without the backing of their magic-working seniors or chiefs. The elders make peace and declare war. And it is at their dictate that the young men take to head-hunting ...
— Popular Science Monthly Volume 86
... power of initiative. 'The perfect commonwealth,' says Mr. Zimmern,' is a society of free men and women, each at once ruling and being ruled,' It is also fair to argue that monarchies do not escape the worst evils of democracies. An autocracy is often obliged to oppress the educated classes and to propitiate the mob. Domitian massacred senators with impunity, and only fell 'postquam cerdonibus esse timendus coeperat.' If an autocracy does not rest on the army, which leads to the chaos of praetorianism, it must rely on 'panem et circenses.' Hence it has ...
— Outspoken Essays • William Ralph Inge
... pure as the deep sunless source, could soon kill me, without drawing from my veins a single drop of blood, or receiving on his own crystal conscience the faintest stain of crime. Especially I felt this when I made any attempt to propitiate him. No ruth met my ruth. He experienced no suffering from estrangement—no yearning after reconciliation; and though, more than once, my fast falling tears blistered the page over which we both bent, they produced ...
— Jane Eyre - an Autobiography • Charlotte Bronte
... crowds of civil and military officers about our palace! Which of them will drive back for us these foreign troops? They are all afraid of the Tartar swords and arrows! But if they cannot exert themselves to expel the barbarians, why call for the princess to propitiate them? ...
— Chinese Literature • Anonymous
... received from Mrs. Vickars's favourable prognostics upon this subject could have in any degree balanced the pain she daily endured from this lady's fretful temper. Almeria submitted to her domineering humour, and continued to propitiate her with petty sacrifices, more from fear than love—from fear that her adverse influence might be fatal to her present scheme of aggrandizement. Weak minds are subject to this apprehension of control from secret causes utterly ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. V - Tales of a Fashionable Life • Maria Edgeworth
... wounds, and their naturally strong constitutions enabled them to recover. All these tortures were willingly undertaken; nor would any one of those who endured them, on any account whatever, have evaded them. To propitiate the Great Spirit, and to stand well in the estimation of his own tribe, are the two highest objects in the mind of ...
— History, Manners, and Customs of the North American Indians • George Mogridge
... Frank was anxious to propitiate Sally. He returned from London with presents for her, and he always spoke to her, looking ...
— Spring Days • George Moore
... that human traditions instituted to propitiate God, to merit grace, and to make satisfaction for sins, are opposed to the Gospel and the doctrine of faith. Wherefore vows and traditions concerning meats and days, etc., instituted to merit grace and to make satisfaction for sins, are useless ...
— The Confession of Faith • Various
... 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 of this sort ...
— A Manual of the Malay language - With an Introductory Sketch of the Sanskrit Element in Malay • William Edward Maxwell
... to propitiate Some curst kioodle at each gate, But entered one another's grounds, Unscared, and were ...
— Black Beetles in Amber • Ambrose Bierce
... Beerbohm—"there was a desirable piece of land lying waste"—the very spot for a theatre—"because it was reputed to be haunted by a malignant goddess,"—that wouldn't matter as long as the "gods" were well provided for. Then it continues, "They" (who?) "did all they could to propitiate her, setting apart a tree—." Yes; but it wasn't the right tree: of course it ought to have been a BEERBHOOM TREE. His first drama might have shown how a Buddhist priest couldn't keep a ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 99, Sept. 27, 1890 • Various
... with twisted snakes growing from the head instead of hair. This is the great image of the temple and represents the most cruel and revengeful of all the Hindu gods. Ten centuries ago he wore altogether a different character, but human sacrifices have always been made to propitiate him. Around the walls of the cave are other gods of smaller stature representing several of the most prominent and powerful of the Hindu pantheon, all of them chiseled from the solid granite. There are several chambers or chapels ...
— Modern India • William Eleroy Curtis
... 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
... porch-posts horribly mutilated by the turning-lathe. Yet for all their frailness, how much jealousy and envy and unhappiness some of them managed to contain! The life that went on in them seemed to me made up of evasions and negations; shifts to save cooking, to save washing and cleaning, devices to propitiate the tongue of gossip. This guarded mode of existence was like living under a tyranny. People's speech, their voices, their very glances, became furtive and repressed. Every individual taste, every natural ...
— My Antonia • Willa Sibert Cather
... On Sunday Bell and Sylvia went to church, with a strange, half-superstitious feeling, as if they could propitiate the Most High to order the events in their favour by paying Him the compliment of attending to duties in their time of sorrow which they had too often neglected in ...
— Sylvia's Lovers, Vol. II • Elizabeth Gaskell
... O king, committed an improper act. Do thou speedily propitiate him so that the virulent poison of a Brahmana's curse may not consume thee ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 2 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... however that the goddess known at Po-nagar as Bhagavati was an ancient local deity worshipped before the Hindu immigration and an inscription found at Mi-son recommends those whose eyes are diseased to propitiate Kuvera and thus secure protection against Ekakshapingala, "the tawny one-eyed (spirit)." Though this goddess or demon was probably a creation of local fancy, similar identifications of Kali with the spirits presiding over cholera, smallpox, ...
— Hinduism and Buddhism, An Historical Sketch, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Charles Eliot
... Democratic Convention thought it politic to have a Union candidate for the Presidency. Hence, the nomination of General McClellan; but to propitiate the out-and-out Vallandigham Peace men, Mr. Pendleton was nominated to the second ...
— The Great Conspiracy, Complete • John Alexander Logan
... every thing in too dark and sad a light," cried the king. "Every thing will come out right if we are only wise and carefully conform to circumstances, and by well-timed concessions and admissions propitiate this hate and bring this enmity ...
— Marie Antoinette And Her Son • Louise Muhlbach
... controls the world and the lives of human beings. An illustration of this stage of religious consciousness is afforded by Mr. Risley, who, in dealing with the religion of the jungle dwellers of Chota Nagpur, India, says that "in most cases the indefinite something which they fear and attempt to propitiate is not a person at all in any sense of the word; if one must state the case in positive terms, I should say that the idea which lies at the root of their religion is that of a power rather ...
— Myths of Babylonia and Assyria • Donald A. Mackenzie
... 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 ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 7 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... of Bath, Richie,' said he, twinkling to propitiate me, lest I should suspect him of valuing his achievements highly. He had, he continued, promised Hickson of the Fourth Estate, that he would, before leaving the place, do his utmost to revive the ancient glories of Bath: Bath had once set the fashion to the kingdom; why not again? I might have ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... Murray had shown the MS. to Gifford for advice as to its publication. Byron seems to have resented this on the ground that it might look like an attempt to propitiate the 'Quarterly Review'.] ...
— The Works of Lord Byron: Letters and Journals, Volume 2. • Lord Byron
... to 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
... her 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, ...
— It Happened in Egypt • C. N. Williamson & A. M. Williamson
... amulet, thus improvised, 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 ...
— Primitive Psycho-Therapy and Quackery • Robert Means Lawrence
... what that act shall be. In the pre Christian (Roman) religion, the grand office of the priesthood was the discovery of future events by oracles, omens, or an inspection of the entrails of animals, and by the offering of sacrifices to propitiate the gods. In the later, the Christian times, a higher power was claimed; the clergy asserting that, by their intercessions, they could regulate the course of affairs, avert dangers, secure benefits, work miracles, and even change the order ...
— History of the Conflict Between Religion and Science • John William Draper
... execute his behests. These inferior spirits see what passes on earth, and report it to their Great Ruler: the Indian, trusting to their good offices, invokes those spirits of the air in times of peril, and endeavors to propitiate them by throwing tobacco or other simple offerings to the winds or upon the waters. But, amid all these corrupt and ignorant superstitions, the One Spirit, the Creator and Ruler of the World, is the great object of the Red ...
— The Conquest of Canada (Vol. 1 of 2) • George Warburton
... these things must be in the hands of some power higher than his own. The world then and its various familiar objects become for him peopled with spirits, like in character to men, but more powerful, and his success in life and its various operations depends on the degree in which he is able to propitiate these spirits and secure their co-operation. If he desires rain, he must win the favour of the spirit who controls it, if he would fell a tree and suffer no harm, he must by suitable offerings entice the indwelling spirit to leave it. His ...
— The Religion of Ancient Rome • Cyril Bailey
... not in the least mind his assignment to so prominent a position, but he did mind Little Teacher's attitude toward him throughout the day. He sought to propitiate her by coming to her assistance in many little tasks, but she persistently ignored his overtures. He then ventured to seek enlightenment regarding his studies, but she coldly informed him he could remain after school to ask ...
— David Dunne - A Romance of the Middle West • Belle Kanaris Maniates
... "money spinners" prognosticate good luck; in order to propitiate which, they must be thrown ...
— Notes & Queries, No. 41, Saturday, August 10, 1850 • Various
... 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 ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 1 • Robert Kerr
... Shamans. They are described by Wrangel, Hooper, and other travellers. Wrangel states (vol. i. p. 284) that the Shamans in the year 1814, when a severe epidemic broke out among the Chukches and their reindeer at Anjui, declared that in order to propitiate the spirits they must sacrifice Kotschen, one of the most highly esteemed men of the tribe. He was so much respected that no one would execute the sentence, but attempts were made to get it altered, first by presents to the prophets, and then by flogging them. But when this did not succeed, ...
— The Voyage of the Vega round Asia and Europe, Volume I and Volume II • A.E. Nordenskieold
... himself in the boat, in which he recognized an old comrade, Septimius, who, however, did not return his salutation. On landing, he was stabbed by Septimius, who had persuaded Ptolemy to take his life, in order to propitiate Caesar and gain the Egyptian crown. Thus ingloriously fell the conqueror of Asia, and the second man in the empire, ...
— Ancient States and Empires • John Lord
... by the interposition of any superior power, how is it that mankind have ever formed a conception of a supernatural power? And yet the conception, in the shape of superstition at least, is absolutely universal. Tribes who have no idea of the existence of God, use charms and incantations to propitiate unseen powers. ...
— The Lost Gospel and Its Contents - Or, The Author of "Supernatural Religion" Refuted by Himself • Michael F. Sadler
... his neighbour, he might pass his whole time on earth oblivious of the fact that such a Power was in existence; unless perchance he wished to obtain some good or attain some end, in which case he might seek to propitiate Him by sacrifice and prayer. There was no Devil to tempt man astray, and to rejoice in his fall; neither was there any belief that righteous behaviour in this world would lead at death to absorption in the Deity. To God, ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 2 - "Chicago, University of" to "Chiton" • Various
... the fullest extent those superstitions which form such a salient characteristic of all the Bantu tribes. Now, all savages believe that persons whose wits are affected are wizards, whom it is good policy to propitiate, and whom he may be dangerous to offend. Therefore the king signified that the ...
— Kafir Stories - Seven Short Stories • William Charles Scully
... possible result of this ordeal to her favourite. It was clear to him now that she was troubled, and he held the large and unaccustomed presence of the comp'ny mit whiskers responsible. Countless generations of ancestors had followed and fostered the instinct which now led Morris to propitiate an angry power. Luckily, he was prepared with an offering of a suitable nature. He had meant to enjoy it for yet a few days, and then to give it to Teacher. She was such a sensible person about presents. One might give her one's most cherished ...
— Little Citizens • Myra Kelly
... however, we have been exerting our best efforts to propitiate her good will. Upon the pretext that Texas, a nation as independent as herself, thought proper to unite its destinies with our own, she has affected to believe that we have severed her rightful territory, and in official proclamations ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents: Polk - Section 3 (of 3) of Volume 4: James Knox Polk • Compiled by James D. Richardson
... the tour, gave, on her return, so lamentable an account of Mr. Adolphus Young, to whom the headstrong girl had united her destiny, that it operated as a chill upon family feeling—especially in the case of the half-brothers. Catherine had done nothing subsequently to propitiate her family; she had not even written to them in a way that indicated a lucid appreciation of their suspended sympathy; so that it had become a tradition in Boston circles that the highest charity, ...
— The Europeans • Henry James
... time, the Regimental Sergeant-Major reported himself. The situation was rather novel to him; but he was not a man to be put out by circumstances. He saluted and said, "Regiment all comeback, Sir." Then, to propitiate the Colonel—"An' none of the ...
— Indian Tales • Rudyard Kipling
... tone: "Science has shown us that we are under the dominion of general laws, and that there is no special Providence. Nature acts with fearful uniformity: stern as fate, absolute as tyranny, merciless as death; too vast to praise, too inexplicable to worship, too inexorable to propitiate; it has no ear for prayer, no heart for sympathy, no arm ...
— History of Free Thought in Reference to The Christian Religion • Adam Storey Farrar
... on New Year's morning, which according to their calendar comes between the twenty-first of January and the nineteenth of February, they propitiate heaven and earth with offerings of rice, vegetables, tea, wine, oranges, and imitation of paper money which they burn with incense, ...
— Threads of Grey and Gold • Myrtle Reed
... gradually the 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 called it, ...
— The Rainbow • D. H. (David Herbert) Lawrence
... is a prodigious hubbub from the junks on the Woosung, made with tom-toms, drums, and other unmelodious instruments, which are vigorously beaten for ten or fifteen minutes, to bring good luck, and propitiate the devils, or frighten them away for the night. From the shore, the rapid motions of a dozen arms on the high poop of each junk, tossed aloft in the dusk, and the discordant, harsh sounds that come from so many vessels at ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No. 6, December 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... book, "The Lord smelled a sweet savour," at the sacrifice made by Noah, etc., on p. 119. For an excellent summary of the work, see Dr. Driver's article in the Contemporary Review for March, 1894. For a pungent but well-deserved rebuke of Prof. Sayce's recent attempts to propitiate pious subscribers to his archaeological fund, see Prof. A. A. Bevan, in the Contemporary Review for December, 1895. For the inscription on the Assyrian tablets relating in detail the exposure of King Sargon in a basket of rushes, his rescue and rule, see ...
— History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom • Andrew Dickson White
... talking and praying about the celestial hierarchies, and the unfathomable mysteries, the wives, mothers and daughters will throng the "zeyarehs," or holy visiting shrines, on the hill tops, and among the groves of green trees, to propitiate the favor of the reputed saints of ancient days. These shrines are supposed to have miraculous powers, but Friday is the day when the prophets are more especially "at home," to receive visitors. On other days they may be "on a journey," or asleep. Whenever a Nuisairiyeh woman is in sorrow or ...
— The Women of the Arabs • Henry Harris Jessup
... a telegram from Aubrey Mannering to Mrs. Gaddesden. Elizabeth had done her best to propitiate her but she remained cold and thorny, and when the telegram came she was pleased that the news came to her first, and—tragic as it was—that Elizabeth had to ask ...
— Elizabeth's Campaign • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... antiquity, we read of a great General about to set out upon the sea to attack the army of another nation. In order to propitiate the god of the ocean, he had a fine chariot built to which were harnessed two beautiful white horses. In the presence of a vast concourse of people collected to witness the ceremony, he drove them into the sea. ...
— Mizora: A Prophecy - A MSS. Found Among the Private Papers of the Princess Vera Zarovitch • Mary E. Bradley
... let us watch our course when we are entertaining strangers whose good opinion we wish to propitiate. We dress ourselves with care, we study what it will be agreeable to say, we do not suffer our natural laziness to prevent our being very alert in paying small attentions, we start across the room for an easier chair, we stoop to pick up ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 93, July, 1865 • Various
... 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
... tradition went, by any European. With the exception of a few of Sekeletu's tusks, the oxen needed for carrying, and a trifling amount of coffee, cloth, beads, etc., Livingstone had neither stores of food for his party, nor presents with which to propitiate the countless tribes of rapacious and suspicious savages that lined his path. The Barotse men who accompanied him, usually called the "Makololo," though on the whole faithful and patient, "the best that ever accompanied me," were a burden in ...
— The Personal Life Of David Livingstone • William Garden Blaikie
... furnished fresh fuel to the expiring flame, and widened the chasm between them more hopelessly than ever; and that, moreover, with such dexterity, that M. de Bouillon never suspected what friendly hand had come to his aid; although the Italian favourite did not fail to propitiate the haughty Duke by every means in his power, and so thoroughly succeeded in flattering his vanity, and encouraging his ambitious aspirations, that, anxious to secure the interest and assistance of so influential ...
— The Life of Marie de Medicis, Vol. 2 (of 3) • Julia Pardoe
... Page fourteen, number seventy-two," shouted the usher again, and as the witness was a Jew, his hat was sent for. "There's a lot of history behind that hat," said Mr. Clarkson, wishing to propitiate public opinion. ...
— Essays in Rebellion • Henry W. Nevinson
... women burst into prolonged wailings, and the bravest of the men trembled. The messenger said that the white men had consented to abstain from using their magical powers until the following day; and that the only chance to propitiate them was for deputations from the villages to come in, early the next morning, with promises of peace and offerings for ...
— For Name and Fame - Or Through Afghan Passes • G. A. Henty
... Radisson must needs observe all the ceremony of two races. Such a whiffing of pipes among the stately, half-drunk Indian chiefs you never saw, with a pompous proffering of the stem to the four corners of the compass, which they thought would propitiate the spirits. Jean blew a blast on the trumpet. I waved the French flag. Godefroy beat a rattling fusillade on the drum, grabbed up his bobbing tipstaff, led the way; and down we filed ...
— Heralds of Empire - Being the Story of One Ramsay Stanhope, Lieutenant to Pierre Radisson in the Northern Fur Trade • Agnes C. Laut
... his diminutive height. The terrified sportsman stood gazing on this horrible apparition, until, with an angry countenance, the being demanded by what right he intruded himself on those hills, and destroyed their harmless inhabitants. The perplexed stranger endeavoured to propitiate the incensed dwarf, by offering to surrender his game, as he would to an earthly Lord of the Manor. The proposal only redoubled the offence already taken by the dwarf, who alleged that he was the lord of those mountains, and the protector of the wild creatures ...
— The Black Dwarf • Sir Walter Scott
... of this sect, seeing no hope of relief from human action, turned to God as their only refuge, and deemed it necessary to propitiate the Deity by extraordinary sacrifices and self-tortures. The flame of fanaticism, once started, spread rapidly and widely. Hundreds of men, and even boys, marched in companies through the roads and streets, carrying heavy torches, ...
— Historical Tales, Vol 5 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality, German • Charles Morris
... 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 once, whilst ...
— Celebrated Travels and Travellers - Part 2. The Great Navigators of the Eighteenth Century • Jules Verne
... beat him with many stripes. It was unjust and cruel and Mamma and Papa would never have allowed it. Unless perhaps, as Aunty Rosa seemed to imply, they had sent secret orders. In which case he was abandoned indeed. It would be discreet in the future to propitiate Aunty Rosa, but, then, again, even in matters in which he was innocent, he had been accused of wishing to "show off." He had "shown off" before visitors when he had attacked a strange gentleman—Harry's uncle, not his own—with requests for information about ...
— Kipling Stories and Poems Every Child Should Know, Book II • Rudyard Kipling
... 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 a people, at present, at the very bottom ...
— Two Expeditions into the Interior of Southern Australia, Complete • Charles Sturt
... 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 ...
— Greek Studies: A Series of Essays • Walter Horatio Pater
... verses in the ritual, but probably the ritual is later than the ropes. In Mexico we find that the sun himself (like the stars in most myths) was once a human or pre-human devotee, Nanahuatzin, who leapt into a fire to propitiate the gods.(3) Translated to heaven as the sun, Nanahuatzin burned so very fiercely that he threatened to reduce the world to a cinder. Arrows were therefore shot at him, and this punishment had as happy ...
— Myth, Ritual, and Religion, Vol. 1 • Andrew Lang
... authors,' wrote 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, Edited by Birkbeck Hill
... 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 ...
— The Moral Economy • Ralph Barton Perry
... the ice-clad peaks of the giant ranges of the Himalayas, they crossed snowy passes fourteen thousand feet above the sea, and did not neglect to throw a stone upon the obos—the cairns that pious and superstitious travellers erect to propitiate the spirits of the passes. Sometimes the path led under beautiful cliffs of pure white crystalline limestone that in the brilliant sunlight shone like the finest marble. Often they journeyed through a lovely land of gently-sloping ...
— The Jungle Girl • Gordon Casserly
... assisting Mid[-e], inviting them to visit him at his own wigiwam at a specified time. When the conference takes place, tobacco, which has been previously furnished by the candidate, is distributed and a smoke offering made to Kitshi Manid[-o], to propitiate his favor in the deliberations about to be undertaken. The host then explains the object of the meeting, and presents to his auditors an account of the candidate's previous life; he recounts the circumstances of his fast and dreams, ...
— Seventh Annual Report • Various
... yet it is only in the abstract, for practically the belief seems to be a dead letter. At their marriage they kill fowls, as I have narrated; but this is a ceremony, not a sacrifice. They have no priests or idols, say no prayers, make no offerings to propitiate the Deity, and it is little likely therefore that human sacrifice should exist among them. In this respect they are different from any known people who have arrived at the same state of civilization. The New Zealanders, the inhabitants of the South ...
— The Expedition to Borneo of H.M.S. Dido - For the Suppression of Piracy • Henry Keppel
... was not slow to communicate his important knowledge to the rest of the rear-guard, and, in a very few moments, the naturalist was the object of general observation and reverence. The trapper, who understood that the natives often worshipped, with a view to propitiate, the evil spirit, awaited the workings of his artifice, with the coolness of one who had not the smallest interest in its effects. It was not long before he saw one dark figure after another, lashing ...
— The Prairie • J. Fenimore Cooper
... the Irusian Mountains 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 ...
— Tales of Three Hemispheres • Lord Dunsany
... moment were not, indeed, calculated to dispel this dread. She was unusually distant and haughty, from a mistaken sort of moral pride. Aware that some of the persons now before her had, in various ways, by their own or their husbands' means, power to serve or to injure Lord Davenant, she disdained to propitiate them ...
— Helen • Maria Edgeworth
... State committee abused my confidence. I feel sure now, as I felt sure then, that the committee named by me fairly represented the two wings of the party; but after their appointment it was perfectly evident that this did not propitiate the anti-administration wing. They were deeply angered against the administration by the fact that General Grant had taken as his adviser in regard to New York patronage and politics Senator Conkling rather than Senator Fenton. Doubtless Senator Conkling's manner in dealing ...
— Volume I • Andrew Dickson White
... 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 ...
— No and Yes • Mary Baker Eddy
... prophecy handed down from their ancestors warns the Winnebagoes that their nation shall be annihilated at the close of the thirteenth generation. Ten have already passed, and that now living has appointed ceremonies to propitiate the powers of heaven, and mitigate its stern decree.[220-3] Well may they be about it, for there is a gloomy probability that the warning came from no false prophet. Few tribes were destitute of such presentiments. The Chikasaw, the Mandans of the Missouri, the Pueblo Indians of New Mexico, ...
— The Myths of the New World - A Treatise on the Symbolism and Mythology of the Red Race of America • Daniel G. Brinton
... Senor Madero's complete disposition when the latter was elected and inaugurated as President at Mexico. Madero, for reasons that are self-evident, was anxious to propitiate the military element, and to secure the cooperation of the more experienced officers in the regular army for the better pacification of the country. Accordingly, when Zapata and his bandit hordes gave signs of returning to their old ways, refusing to "stay ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 21 - The Recent Days (1910-1914) • Charles F. Horne, Editor
... and Ulm, if they were 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
... the effect of each at home. In this he satisfied that obscure fealty of the husband who feels that such a connection of the absent wife with some actual experience of his is equivalent to their joint presence. It was not so much to praise Mrs. Braile's belongings to her as to propitiate the idea of Mrs. Reverdy that he continued his flatteries. In the meantime Braile, who came in behind him, stood easing himself from one foot to the other, with an ironical eye slanted at Reverdy from under his shaggy brows; he dropped his head now, and began ...
— The Leatherwood God • William Dean Howells
... failed to propitiate Magda in the slightest degree. She felt intensely annoyed that anyone from the outside world—from her world of London—should have intruded upon her seclusion at Ashencombe, nor could she imagine how Davilof had ...
— The Lamp of Fate • Margaret Pedler
... has shown us that we are under the dominion of general laws, and that there is no special Providence. Nature acts with fearful uniformity: stern as fate, absolute as tyranny, merciless as death; too vast to praise, too inexplicable to worship, too inexorable to propitiate; it has no ear for prayer, no heart for sympathy, no arm ...
— History of Free Thought in Reference to The Christian Religion • Adam Storey Farrar
... terrors and remorse of Michelangelo's old age; says that "his fancy became haunted with doubts and fears; every day discovering fresh sins in the past, inveighing against the very art which made him famous among men, and seeking to propitiate Paradise for his soul by acts of charity to dowerless maidens." The sonnets to Vasari and some others are quoted in support of this view. But the question remains, whether it is not exaggerated to regard pious ...
— The Life of Michelangelo Buonarroti • John Addington Symonds
... on sharp lava jaws. But he held fast to his hiaqua. The blackness grew ever deeper and more crowded with perdition; the din more impish, demoniac, and devilish; the laughter more appalling; and the miser more and more exhausted with vain buffeting. He at last thought to propitiate exasperated Tamanous, and threw away a string of hiaqua. But the storm was renewed blacker, louder, crueler than before. String by string he parted with his treasure, until at the last, sorely wounded, terrified, and weak, with a despairing cry, he cast ...
— Oregon, Washington and Alaska; Sights and Scenes for the Tourist • E. L. Lomax
... friends, inexorably to New South Wales. Yet Inspector Field stands in this den, the Sultan of the place. Every thief here cowers before him, like a schoolboy before his schoolmaster. All watch him, all answer when addressed, all laugh at his jokes, all seek to propitiate him. This cellar company alone - to say nothing of the crowd surrounding the entrance from the street above, and making the steps shine with eyes - is strong enough to murder us all, and willing enough ...
— Reprinted Pieces • Charles Dickens
... inducement to make a display in my presence. What influence could I possibly exercise over the fortunes of that great female? A maternal hippopotamus in the Zoo would as soon think of hugging a young giraffe to propitiate the spectators. Of course you may take up the position that the hypocrisy is practised all day before her mistress, and that the mere momentum of habit carries it on at other times. This is plausible, ...
— Behind the Bungalow • EHA
... does as he likes, all men are equal." Certainly a powerful Sultan would be of advantage in The Sahara, for a traveller would then have but one master to conciliate, now he has ten thousand masters to propitiate. People in quarrelling say, "You must not do this (or that), for you are in a Blad Sheikh" (a country where there is a constituted authority). Liberty is a good thing, nothing is better; but there must be with it morality. ...
— Travels in the Great Desert of Sahara, in the Years of 1845 and 1846 • James Richardson
... human skill baffled and confounded, Columbus endeavoured to propitiate heaven by solemn vows, and various private vows were made by the seamen. The heavens, however, seemed deaf to their vows: the storm grew still more furious, and every one gave ...
— Peter Parley's Tales About America and Australia • Samuel Griswold Goodrich
... only payment Theo would accept. Geoff in his generosity was going to give the price beforehand, to intimate his intention of saving Theo trouble by coming to the Warren every second day, and generally to propitiate and please his new tutor. It was a very important expedition, and nobody after this could say that Theo's ...
— A Country Gentleman and his Family • Mrs. (Margaret) Oliphant
... of the numerous assailants who had penetrated their works, throwing headlong from the wall such as had escaped the sword, insomuch that the bastion and the ditch below were heaped with dead bodies. Rumi Khan spent the succeeding night in prayers and processions to propitiate Mahomet, and next morning renewed the assault with equal fury. But after mounting the two bastions, he was at length forced to retreat with the loss of near 2000 men, among whom was Juzar Khan the Abyssinian general, who was succeeded in his command by his uncle of the same name. ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume VI - Early English Voyages Of Discovery To America • Robert Kerr
... Its popularity was once very great, and it contains some effective passages, though it belongs to Class 2, and is rather a parody than an imitation of Oriental fiction. The Caliph Vathek, after committing many crimes at the instance of his mother, the witch Carathis, in order to propitiate Eblis, finally starts on an expedition to Istakar. On the way, he seduces Nouronihar, the beautiful daughter of the Emir Fakreddin, and carries her with him to the Palace of Eblis, where they am condemned ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 10 • Richard F. Burton
... to curse, and leave the rival Porters to fight it out themselves, after paying off the ragged regiment of Station-men. On the drive to the Hotel, the Porter tries to propitiate me. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 103, September 17, 1892 • Various
... well," said Holden, thinking that it might be well to propitiate the Medicine Man for the time. But Thunder-maker, stooping forward with a pretence of picking up something from the ground, came close enough to whisper, so that only ...
— The Fiery Totem - A Tale of Adventure in the Canadian North-West • Argyll Saxby
... of devils about," she declares, shaking her head; "or else why do they put up arches especially to keep them off—propitiate them, and prevent their entrance into the village? They have little bamboo huts like dolls' houses, and place food inside, that the devils may lodge and eat. It seems that the corpse to-day had a good time of it. They gave him a month's food, new gong ...
— When the Birds Begin to Sing • Winifred Graham
... their homes, joyful at having escaped such great disasters. Regarding Columbus with awe and reverence, as a man in the peculiar favor and confidence of the Deity, since he knew upon earth what was passing in the heavens, they hastened to propitiate him with gifts; supplies again arrived daily at the harbor, and from that time forward, there was ...
— The Life and Voyages of Christopher Columbus (Vol. II) • Washington Irving
... behests. These inferior spirits see what passes on earth, and report it to their Great Ruler: the Indian, trusting to their good offices, invokes those spirits of the air in times of peril, and endeavors to propitiate them by throwing tobacco or other simple offerings to the winds or upon the waters. But, amid all these corrupt and ignorant superstitions, the One Spirit, the Creator and Ruler of the World, is the great object of the Red ...
— The Conquest of Canada (Vol. 1 of 2) • George Warburton
... also attributed by the Egyptians to Exvotos offered in the temples. They consisted of various kinds. Some persons promised a certain sum for the maintenance of the sacred animals; or whatever might propitiate the deity; and after the cure had been effected, they frequently suspended a model of the restored part in the temple; and ears, eyes, distorted arms, and other members, were dedicated as memorials of ...
— Museum of Antiquity - A Description of Ancient Life • L. W. Yaggy
... rapidly, and as rapidly arrived at her conclusions. The first of those was, that Lucian Davlin, by his intolerance and unkindness, had fitted a tool to her hand, and she, therefore, as a preliminary step, must propitiate and win the confidence of this same tool left by ...
— Madeline Payne, the Detective's Daughter • Lawrence L. Lynch
... this man had been selected as the offering by which Joe and his companions expected to gain immunity, showed that the fellow was really a most worthless character, whose death even would have been a benefit to the tribe. Thus it seemed that they had two purposes in view—the one to propitiate me and get good terms, the other to rid themselves of a ...
— The Memoirs of General Philip H. Sheridan, Vol. I., Part 1 • Philip H. Sheridan
... Mercury [62] is the principal object of their adoration; whom, on certain days, [63] they think it lawful to propitiate even with human victims. To Hercules and Mars [64] they offer the animals usually allotted for sacrifice. [65] Some of the Suevi also perform sacred rites to Isis. What was the cause and origin of ...
— The Germany and the Agricola of Tacitus • Tacitus
... unfavorable position, they continue the effort until the blocks fall as desired. When business is dull and times hard with the Chinaman, they attribute it to the displeasure of their gods. They try to propitiate the offended deity by burning incense sticks, and offering fruits and other things which have no Christian equivalent, and which are supposed to be grateful ...
— My Native Land • James Cox
... became more popular among that part of the inhabitants called the people 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
... propagandi. Propel antauxen pusxi, irigi. Propensity emo, inklino. Proper (exact) gxusta. Proper konvena. Property propreco, posedajxo. Prophecy profetajxo. Prophesy profetajxi. Prophet profeto. Propinquity proksimeco. Propitiate favorigi, trankviligi. Propitious favora. Proportional proporcia. Proposal propono. Propose proponi. Proposition propono. Proposition (gram.) propozicio. Proprietor posedanto. Propriety konveneco. Pro rata proporcie. Prorogue prokrasti. Prosaic proza. Proscribe ...
— English-Esperanto Dictionary • John Charles O'Connor and Charles Frederic Hayes
... 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
... banishment—this time in a ship which he fitted out for discovery; and so he sailed away in the direction of Gunnbiorn's land, and found it. He whiled away three years on its coast, and as soon as he was allowed, ventured back with the tidings. While, to propitiate intending settlers, he said he had been to Greenland, and so the land got a ...
— Great Epochs in American History, Volume I. - Voyages Of Discovery And Early Explorations: 1000 A.D.-1682 • Various
... 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 ...
— Young Mr. Barter's Repentance - From "Schwartz" by David Christie Murray • David Christie Murray
... more happily chosen for his visit;" adding, "because our American kinsfolk 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 ...
— Charles Dickens as a Reader • Charles Kent
... all authors, those are the most wretched, who exhibit their productions on the theatre, and who are to propitiate first the manager, and then the publick. 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 knock; but I never ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson in Nine Volumes - Volume V: Miscellaneous Pieces • Samuel Johnson
... favour it is that all born beings of the four kinds increase. And they being created, propitiate the dwellers of heaven by offerings made to the gods and the names of departed forefathers. Thus it is that people, protected by thee and free from trouble live depending on one another, and (so) increase. Now this peril hath befallen the people. We do not ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 1 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... Lyndon's 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 experience ...
— Barry Lyndon • William Makepeace Thackeray
... the new carpet on the library made the old place look a different thing; also there was some laughing pleasant chatter about Prim's trunk. It was funny to see how both the ladies sat with their faces turned towards Dane three-quarters of the time; Prudentia possibly with a desire to propitiate, Primrose forgetting everything else in the moment's pleasure of seeing him; and both of them being a little unconsciously shy towards Hazel. However, that evening rolled off well; and also the next day was filled with business which left no leisure ...
— The Gold of Chickaree • Susan Warner
... nor just to punish it: in the latter, he either "remembers God and is troubled," or, if he would allay the remorse and forebodings of an uneasy conscience, he has recourse to penance and mortification, to painful sacrifices and ritual observances, in the hope, that by these he may propitiate an offended Deity. In the one case, the conflict ends in practical Atheism, in the other, in abject Superstition. And these two, Atheism and Superstition, however different and even opposite they may seem to be, are really offshoots from the same corrupt root,—"the evil heart ...
— Modern Atheism under its forms of Pantheism, Materialism, Secularism, Development, and Natural Laws • James Buchanan
... devotion? Stranger things have been done in the name of worship. Was it not possible that the lost thousands were molded into that lustrous image? That the goldsmith had formed it of the pure and precious metal, and set it there, through some hope of a perhaps disordered brain to propitiate the saints and pave the way to his ...
— Roads of Destiny • O. Henry
... of the fan-bearer was achieved in an incredibly short time. It proved conclusively that until this period an influence against Har-hat had been at work upon Meneptah, and seeing that Rameses had subsided, having cause to propitiate the father of the woman he would wed, the courtiers began to blame the prince and talk of him to ...
— The Yoke - A Romance of the Days when the Lord Redeemed the Children - of Israel from the Bondage of Egypt • Elizabeth Miller
... boiling-point; when, going aft to his pantry, Jones fetched out a pound of coffee, which he chucked into the starboard copper, which held about four gallons, and was not quite filled to the brim. He evidently had determined to propitiate the crew at the start by giving them good coffee for once and plenty of it; as there were only eighteen hands in the fo'c's'le, now that Sam had gone, besides himself and me—leaving out the captain and mates, who belonged to the cabin, and of course did not count in, but ...
— The Island Treasure • John Conroy Hutcheson
... by her in a vision to him sleeping near (her temple) direction was given: 'There shall be produced of thee one son, and one daughter shall be born; but he shall be in subjection to her husband. But let her, beginning from the seventh year till her marriage, propitiate me every month while the moon is in Krittika (the constellation of the Pleiades), with the ball-dance, for the obtaining an excellent husband; and whom she likes, to him she is to be given and let this festival be called the Ball Festival.' So ...
— Hindoo Tales - Or, The Adventures of Ten Princes • Translated by P. W. Jacob
... didn't tell him that, but I can tell him some other time," answered Will, who would have promised anything in his desire to propitiate Ann and his father, and to gain their consent to his entering Llaniago College at the beginning ...
— Garthowen - A Story of a Welsh Homestead • Allen Raine
... delineation of character, or any satisfactory analysis of their mental state in regard to the paleface religion, eluded him. Their passive, silent, sphinx-like secretiveness was baffling. Glickhican had taught him how to propitiate the friendly braves, and with these he was successful. Little he learned, however, from the unfriendly ones. When making gifts to these redmen he could never be certain that his offerings were appreciated. The jewels and gold he had brought west with him went to the French traders, who in ...
— The Spirit of the Border - A Romance of the Early Settlers in the Ohio Valley • Zane Grey
... not in power, for, if he chose, the present object of Mr Donne's life might be utterly defeated; it did not arise from anything overbearing in manner, for Mr Donne was habitually polite and courteous, and was just now anxious to propitiate his host, whom he looked upon as a very useful man. Whatever this sense of inferiority arose from, Mr Bradshaw was anxious to relieve himself of it, and imagined that if he could make more display of his wealth his ...
— Ruth • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... this great mine was said to be emboweled in the earth. Here the wily Shawanoe spent some time in seclusion, in order to humble himself by fastings, purifications and pow-wowings, with a view to propitiate the Great Spirit; and to get His permission to disclose the grand secret of the mine. An equivocal answer was all the response that was given to him in his dreams; and, after many days of fruitless toil and careful research, the mine, the great object so devoutly sought and ...
— Life of Tecumseh, and of His Brother the Prophet - With a Historical Sketch of the Shawanoe Indians • Benjamin Drake
... yet become desirous of beholding offspring, deserve the more to be obeyed by thee. O amiable one, joining my palms furnished with rosy fingers, and making of them a cup as of lotus leaves, I place them on my head to propitiate thee. O thou of lair looks, it behoveth thee to raise offspring, at my command, through some Brahmana possessed of high ascetic merit. For then, owing to thee, O thou of fair hips, I may go the way that is reserved for those that ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 1 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... won his wife, and, casting her in the scale, father, mother, and friends were as gossamer. She died two years after the wedding—to the very day. Rich in her love, he had never taken a thought to propitiate anybody, nor to make friends with the Mammon of Unrighteousness, and when she suddenly departed, he turned round and found himself alone. So far from knocking at men's doors, he more fiercely hated those who now, touched with pity, would gladly have welcomed ...
— The Revolution in Tanner's Lane • Mark Rutherford
... daughter, for all 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 and insensate ...
— The Complete Prose Works of Martin Farquhar Tupper • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... for the first time is very clear in my memory. I can see myself, a stout little fellow about eight years old, clad in gray homespun, with breeches, low shoes, and a low, flat beaver hat. I can hear my mother say, "Here are two big apples for thy master," it being the custom so to propitiate pedagogues. Often afterward I took eggs in a little basket, or flowers, and ...
— Hugh Wynne, Free Quaker • S. Weir Mitchell
... We 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
... whites as vassals and inferiors. The immediate provocation for the so-called Bacon Rebellion was the failure of Governor Berkeley to protect the settlers from Indian depredations, the governor having a monopoly of the fur-trade, and being inclined by motives of self-interest to propitiate the savages. An armed force assembled and chose Bacon as their leader. They first repulsed the Indians, and then demanded from the governor a commission for Bacon as commander-in-chief of the Virginia military. Berkeley, although ...
— The Land We Live In - The Story of Our Country • Henry Mann
... of many of the species cause him to be associated as a divinity with Varuna, the water-god. Thus in early Hinduism one finds snake-sacrifices of two sorts. One is to cause the extirpation of snakes, one is to propitiate them, Apart from the real snake, there is revered also the N[a]ga, a beautiful chimerical creature, human, divine, and snake-like all in one. These are worshipped by sectaries and by many wild tribes alike. The N[a]ga tribe of Chota N[a]gpur, ...
— The Religions of India - Handbooks On The History Of Religions, Volume 1, Edited By Morris Jastrow • Edward Washburn Hopkins
... talking on the subject, you know. But, really, I had a reason. I did not want to seem to propitiate your favour by any such means; I wished to try my chances with you on my own merits; and that was also a reason why I made my profession in Montreal. I wanted to do it without delay, it is true; I also wanted to do it quietly. I mean ...
— Nobody • Susan Warner
... that these things must be in the hands of some power higher than his own. The world then and its various familiar objects become for him peopled with spirits, like in character to men, but more powerful, and his success in life and its various operations depends on the degree in which he is able to propitiate these spirits and secure their co-operation. If he desires rain, he must win the favour of the spirit who controls it, if he would fell a tree and suffer no harm, he must by suitable offerings entice the indwelling ...
— The Religion of Ancient Rome • Cyril Bailey
... did Tony see him than he warned him off, threatening to call the police if Theodore came any nearer; but the latter hastened to propitiate him by holding up ...
— Uncle Rutherford's Nieces - A Story for Girls • Joanna H. Mathews
... more seeing the planet shining brightly? came with all reverence to Columbus to propitiate him with gifts, and from that time forward there was no ...
— Notable Voyagers - From Columbus to Nordenskiold • W.H.G. Kingston and Henry Frith
... religious teaching! And now, what was to be the result? Would the priests and the congregation rise up as one man and tear the audacious young innovator limb from limb, or offer him up as a sacrifice on the altar from which he had essayed to snatch its destined victim, to propitiate their outraged deity? The sensation produced on all sides as Tiahuana had translated Escombe's denunciation, sentence by sentence, was tremendous, and grew in intensity as the denunciation proceeded. But whether the ...
— Harry Escombe - A Tale of Adventure in Peru • Harry Collingwood
... Snake Dance, which is held in alternate years at Walpi and Oraibi, at the former place in the odd year and at the latter place in the even year, some time during the month of August. It is purely a religious ceremony, an elaborate supplication for rain, and is designed to propitiate the water god ...
— Arizona Sketches • Joseph A. Munk
... not, perhaps, adore Arimanes under one sole name, or consider the malignant divinities as sufficiently powerful to undertake a direct struggle with the more benevolent gods; yet they thought it worth while to propitiate them by various expiatory rites and prayers, that they, and the elementary tempests which they conceived to be under their direct command, might be merciful to suppliants who had acknowledged their power, and ...
— Letters On Demonology And Witchcraft • Sir Walter Scott
... one else; she had even allowed that she had once thought him like-minded; she had formerly distinguished him; and nothing lay between them but her scruples; and when they were overcome, by whatever means, his idol would be his, to adore, to propitiate, to win by the most intense devotion. All now must, however, turn upon the Duke of Burgundy, without whose sanction Madame of Hainault would be afraid to ...
— The Caged Lion • Charlotte M. Yonge
... easy thing to manage, try it. Every man who drives a racing-car has a coloratura soprano beaten to death for temperament. Then every racing-car has quirky spells; there's the local committee to propitiate; the track to look after; and if that isn't enough, there's the promotion itself, the advertising. That's my ...
— Tish, The Chronicle of Her Escapades and Excursions • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... 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 ...
— A Manual of the Malay language - With an Introductory Sketch of the Sanskrit Element in Malay • William Edward Maxwell
... 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 direct ...
— The Papers And Writings Of Abraham Lincoln, Complete - Constitutional Edition • Abraham Lincoln
... Coronation and the Revolt of the Barons. 1172—1174.—In the spring of 1172 Henry was back in Normandy. The English barons were longing to take advantage of his quarrel with the Church, and his only chance of resisting them was to propitiate the Church. He met the Papal legates at Avranches, swore that he was innocent of the death of Thomas, and renounced the Constitutions of Clarendon. He then proceeded to pacify Louis VII., whose daughter was married to ...
— A Student's History of England, v. 1 (of 3) - From the earliest times to the Death of King Edward VII • Samuel Rawson Gardiner
... mankind have ever formed a conception of a supernatural power? And yet the conception, in the shape of superstition at least, is absolutely universal. Tribes who have no idea of the existence of God, use charms and incantations to propitiate unseen powers. ...
— The Lost Gospel and Its Contents - Or, The Author of "Supernatural Religion" Refuted by Himself • Michael F. Sadler
... Tyrwhitt-Drake had not returned from their visit to the Caves of Magharat el Kotn. The gates of Jerusalem were shut, and I felt seriously alarmed, lest they should have met with some accident; so before settling myself to write my dream, I ordered my horse and rode back to the Damascus Gate to propitiate the guard and to post a kawwass at the gate, that I might get into the city again. It was pitch dark; so I went down myself to the caves, which were miles long and deep, with lights and ropes. After a quarter of an hour's exploration I met them coming back, safe. ...
— The Romance of Isabel Lady Burton Volume II • Isabel Lady Burton & W. H. Wilkins
... 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. The more useless ...
— Insights and Heresies Pertaining to the Evolution of the Soul • Anna Bishop Scofield
... and ease, which comprehended their highest notions of happiness. The wicked were to expiate their crimes by ages of wearisome labor. They associated with these ideas a belief in an evil principle or spirit, bearing the name of Cupay, whom they did not attempt to propitiate by sacrifices, and who seems to have been only a shadowy personification of sin, that exercised little influence ...
— History Of The Conquest Of Peru • William Hickling Prescott
... drawing-room with muddy boots and a smock-frock. He courted disgust, and such courtship is pretty sure of success. But Landor made his bow in full court-dress. In spite of the difficulty of his poetry, he had all the natural graces which are apt to propitiate cultivated readers. His prose has merits so conspicuous and so dear to the critical mind, that one might have expected his welcome from the connoisseurs to be warm even beyond the limit of sincerity. To praise him was to announce one's own possession of a fine classical ...
— Hours in a Library - New Edition, with Additions. Vol. II (of 3) • Leslie Stephen
... than 12,000 marks had been thus fruitlessly expended, the King, in order to propitiate the saint, after ordering the tower to be rebuilt for the third time, and called by his name, also ordered a small oratory to be constructed in its south-east turret. Whether the saint allowed himself to be thus propitiated, or that greater care had been bestowed upon its foundations, this tower, ...
— Memorials of Old London - Volume I • Various
... that God was to be found there, and that the tent of Moses was the spot where they were to appear before their Creator. God, however, was not at all pleased to see Moses keep himself aloof from the people, and said to him: "According to our agreement, I was to propitiate thee every time thou wert angry with the people, and thou wert to propitiate Me when My wrath was kindled against them. What is now to become of these poor people, if we be both angry with them? Return, therefore, into the camp to the people. ...
— THE LEGENDS OF THE JEWS VOLUME III BIBLE TIMES AND CHARACTERS - FROM THE EXODUS TO THE DEATH OF MOSES • BY LOUIS GINZBERG
... concentrating their combined influence in favor of Hardicanute, who, though not absolutely the heir to either line, still combined, in some degree, the claims of both of them. Canute also did all in his power to propitiate his Anglo-Saxon subjects. He devoted himself to promoting the welfare of the kingdom in every way. He built towns, he constructed roads, he repaired and endowed the churches. He became a very zealous Christian, evincing the ardor of his piety, whether ...
— King Alfred of England - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... everyday nature seem to demonstrate the direct control of the powers who rule man as well. The savage sees his crops destroyed by a tempest or drought; he attributes the disaster to the particular powers concerned with such things whom he must have angered unwittingly, and whom he must propitiate by sacrifice or penitence. His individual and tribal acts do not always accomplish the desired ends, and again the laws of infinite and ultimate powers must have been contravened, as he interprets the situation. Therefore his whole religious ...
— The Doctrine of Evolution - Its Basis and Its Scope • Henry Edward Crampton
... with softnesses of 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 he went up the great, ...
— Weir of Hermiston • Robert Louis Stevenson
... she accosted the widow. But she was no more successful than the Steward had been. The truth is, that I don't believe the haughtiest duke in the three kingdoms is really so proud as your plain English rural peasant, nor half so hard to propitiate and deal with when his sense of dignity is ruffled. Nor are there many of my own literary brethren (thin-skinned creatures though we are) so sensitively alive to the Public Opinion, wisely despised by Dr. Riccabocca, as the same peasant. He can endure a good ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 2, No. 4, March, 1851 • Various
... Anthonie Nutter of Pendle to fauour Elizabeth Sothernes alias Dembdike."] The Sothernes and Davies's and the Whittles and Redfernes were the Montagus and Capulets of Pendle. The poor cottager whose drink was forsepoken or bewitched, or whose cow went mad, and who in his attempt to propitiate one of the rival powers offended the other, would naturally exclaim from the innermost recesses of his heart, "A plague ...
— Discovery of Witches - The Wonderfull Discoverie of Witches in the Countie of Lancaster • Thomas Potts
... was echoed at the card-table, where Bongrand, the Nemours doctor, and old Minoret were victims to the presumption with which the collector, in order to propitiate his great-uncle, had proposed to take the fourth hand at whist. Ursula left the piano. The doctor rose as if to receive the abbe, but really to put an end to the game. After many compliments to their uncle on the wonderful ...
— Ursula • Honore de Balzac
... of his (which has been glanced at already) remains to be noticed. This is the altogether deplorable notion of jocularity which he only too often exhibits. Mr. Masson, trying to propitiate the enemy, admits that "to address the historian Josephus as 'Joe,' through a whole article, and give him a black eye into the bargain, is positively profane." I am not sure as to the profanity, knowing nothing particularly sacred about Josephus. ...
— Essays in English Literature, 1780-1860 • George Saintsbury
... they made their camp-fires, and allowed their prisoners to do the same. Accau and Du Gay slung their kettle; while Hennepin, to propitiate the Sioux, carried to them two turkeys, of which there were several in the canoe. The warriors had seated themselves in a ring, to debate on the fate of the Frenchmen; and two chiefs presently explained to ...
— France and England in North America, a Series of Historical Narratives, Part Third • Francis Parkman
... assistance she gave to the royalists, and the protection she afforded them, oftentimes despite Napoleon's anger, all the loyalty, the generosity, and self-denial she manifested, were the quiet sacrifice which she offered to God for her own happiness, and with which she sought to propitiate the revengeful spirit of the old monarchy, loitering perchance in the Tuileries, where she now, in the place of the wife of the Count de ...
— The Empress Josephine • Louise Muhlbach
... to the fullest extent those superstitions which form such a salient characteristic of all the Bantu tribes. Now, all savages believe that persons whose wits are affected are wizards, whom it is good policy to propitiate, and whom he may be dangerous to offend. Therefore the king signified ...
— Kafir Stories - Seven Short Stories • William Charles Scully
... which followed, there was some hope that the influence of Halifax would prevail, and that the court of Whitehall would return to the policy of the Triple Alliance. To that hope William fondly clung. He spared no effort to propitiate Charles. The hospitality which Monmouth found at the Hague is chiefly to be ascribed to the Prince's anxiety to gratify the real wishes of Monmouth's father. As soon as Charles died, William, still adhering unchangeably to his object, again changed his course. ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 2 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... avenue by which histrionic greatness, hitherto obstructed, may become accessible. Wife, I think I have done the trick at last. Lysimachus!" added he, "let a libation be poured out on so smiling an occasion, and a burnt-offering rise to propitiate the celestial powers. Run to the 'Sun,' you dog. Three pennyworth of ale, and a hap'orth ...
— Peg Woffington • Charles Reade
... 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 sinks into the ground to refresh the dust ...
— Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam • Omar Khayyam
... 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
... were at last converted into stone, which beginning at the feet gradually invaded the nobler parts leaving nothing unchanged but a bunch of grapes which the female holds in her hands to this day. Whenever the Ricaras pass these sacred stones, they stop to make some offering of dress to propitiate these deities. Such is the account given by the Ricara chief which we had no mode of examining, except that we found one part of the story very agreeably confirmed; for on the river near where the event is said to have occurred, we found a greater abundance of fine grapes than we had yet seen. ...
— History of the Expedition under the Command of Captains Lewis and Clark, Vol. I. • Meriwether Lewis and William Clark
... meet his; and turning upon the couch of her chamber, where he hath lain her, awakes to consciousness, and finds him watching over her with a lover's solicitude. "I was not cold because I loved you less-oh no! It was to propitiate my ambition-to be free of the bondage of this house-to purge myself of the past-to better my future!" And she lays her pale, nervous hand gently on his arm-then grasps his hand and presses it fervently ...
— Justice in the By-Ways - A Tale of Life • F. Colburn Adams
... quarry there is a row of five huge, granite boulders, which the Indians regard with great reverence, and when they visit the spot to secure some red stone to make pipes, they seek to propitiate the guardian spirits by throwing plugs of Tobacco to them. Some admirable pieces of pipe-sculpture are produced by the Boheen Indians, who are found on the coast of the Pacific to the south of the Russians. These pipes are made from a soft blue clay stone which ...
— Tobacco; Its History, Varieties, Culture, Manufacture and Commerce • E. R. Billings
... you might distrust American democracy," returned Paul, smiling, "and feel disposed to propitiate it by a temporary sacrifice ...
— Homeward Bound - or, The Chase • James Fenimore Cooper
... questions were put to him from all sides. But his powers of observation and description went no further. As he was anxious to propitiate his captors, he answered as often as possible in the affirmative. Mr. Jansenius asked him whether the young woman he had seen was a lady, and he said yes. Was the man a laborer? Yes—after a moment's hesitation. How was she dressed? He hadn't taken notice. Had she ...
— An Unsocial Socialist • George Bernard Shaw
... at 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 and expresses the ...
— The Religious Sentiment - Its Source and Aim: A Contribution to the Science and - Philosophy of Religion • Daniel G. Brinton
... this 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 eternal ...
— Gomez Arias - The Moors of the Alpujarras, A Spanish Historical Romance. • Joaquin Telesforo de Trueba y Cosio
... every one who could reach him, with hand, foot, or missile. The Sakai think it unlucky to sing or dance for nine days after a death, so the tribesmen had to give the poor little urchin, who had done the wrong, a fairly bad time of it to propitiate the ...
— In Court and Kampong - Being Tales and Sketches of Native Life in the Malay Peninsula • Hugh Clifford
... or, if they vote at all, do not bestow their suffrages on public grounds, but sell them for money, or vote at the beck of some one who has control over them, or whom for private reasons they desire to propitiate. Popular election thus practiced, instead of a security against misgovernment, is but an additional wheel in ...
— Considerations on Representative Government • John Stuart Mill
... of the interior are concerned they were never idolaters. I cannot find that they had any distinct notion of worship at all. Their religion had root in a certain frantic terror of the unknown, and found expression in ceaseless efforts to propitiate the malign spirits surrounding them on every side. Thus they were given over to the mastery of those amongst them who had the traditional art of such propitiation, and fell more or less completely under that cruellest and most venal of sways, the tyranny of the ...
— Ten Thousand Miles with a Dog Sled - A Narrative of Winter Travel in Interior Alaska • Hudson Stuck
... his evil doing. But do you turn your foolish heart altogether away from these things, and, as far as you are able, sacrifice to the deathless gods purely and cleanly, and burn rich meats also, and at other times propitiate them with libations and incense, both when you go to bed and when the holy light has come back, that they may be gracious to you in heart and spirit, and so you may buy another's holding and not ...
— Hesiod, The Homeric Hymns, and Homerica • Homer and Hesiod
... favors from railroad managers and in return do their bidding, however humiliating this may be. The shipper, realizing that the manager's displeasure or good will toward him finds practical expression in his daily freight bills, finally loses, like the serf, all self-esteem in his efforts to propitiate an overbearing master. He is intimidated to such an extent that he never speaks openly of existing abuses, lest he lose the special rates which have been given him, or, if he is not a participant of such privileges, lest additional favors be given to his rivals ...
— The Railroad Question - A historical and practical treatise on railroads, and - remedies for their abuses • William Larrabee
... offense compared with my attempt to lead the singing. Nevertheless, when the concert was over, not a word was said on the subject by any one, though I had quite expected to be taken at once to the magisterial chamber to hear some dreadful sentence passed on me; and when, before retiring, anxious to propitiate my host, I began to express regret for having inflicted pain on them by attempting to sing, the venerable gentleman raised his hands deprecatingly, and begged me to say no more about it, for painful subjects were best forgotten. "No doubt," he kindly added, "when ...
— A Crystal Age • W. H. Hudson
... spot for a theatre—"because it was reputed to be haunted by a malignant goddess,"—that wouldn't matter as long as the "gods" were well provided for. Then it continues, "They" (who?) "did all they could to propitiate her, setting apart a tree—." Yes; but it wasn't the right tree: of course it ought to have been a BEERBHOOM TREE. His first drama might have shown how a Buddhist priest couldn't ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 99, Sept. 27, 1890 • Various
... he do this? He has a better chance of pardon, if he returns to the statement that they are genuine. If they are, the Government, which he must propitiate, has a far stronger hand, for the forgeries then defied detection. However, for no conceivable reason, unless it be either conscience or the vanity of the artist, Sprot now insists on claiming the letters as his own handiwork. ...
— James VI and the Gowrie Mystery • Andrew Lang
... sufficient reach of intellect to form some estimate of the transcendent abilities of his kinsman; and struck with dread or envy, he seems to have formed a systematic design of impeding by every art his favor and advancement. Unmoved by the eloquent adulation with which Bacon sought to propitiate his regard, he took all occasions to represent him to the queen, and with some degree of justice though more of malice, as a man of too speculative a turn to apply in earnest to the practical details of business; one moreover whose head was so filled with abstract ...
— Memoirs of the Court of Queen Elizabeth • Lucy Aikin
... little Irish blarney to propitiate me,' laughed Mr. Kendal, who certainly was in unusual spirits after his execution and rescue by proxy, but you ...
— The Young Step-Mother • Charlotte M. Yonge
... of procuring a gift wherewith to propitiate a certain maiden's esteem, and seeing above a shop of varied attraction a suspended sign emblematic of three times repeated gild abundance I drew near, not doubting to find beneath so auspicious a token the fulfilment ...
— The Mirror of Kong Ho • Ernest Bramah
... There may be such negro cemeteries in the upper Southern States, but if so I have never seen them. In this portion of Georgia they are numerous, and their distinguishing mark consists in the little piles of household effects with which every grave is covered. I do not know whether this is done to propitiate ghosts and devils (generally believed to "hant" these graveyards), or whether it is the idea that the deceased can still find use for the assortment of pitchers, bowls, cups, saucers, knives, forks, spoons, statuettes, alarm-clocks, and heaven ...
— American Adventures - A Second Trip 'Abroad at home' • Julian Street
... responded gallantly; and as the table was being prepared the four talked almost as if there were no bitter suspense at three of their hearts at least. Mr. Graves was nervous and uneasy, but did his utmost to propitiate Mary. At last he was on the point of withdrawing, when Mr. Buxton entreated ...
— By What Authority? • Robert Hugh Benson
... God. Their belief in Him is universal, and their confidence in his goodness and mercy almost exceeds belief. Their Almighty Creator is always before their eyes on all important occasions. They feel and acknowledge, his supreme power. They also endeavour to propitiate Him by outward worship or sacrifices. These are religious solemnities, intended to make themselves acceptable to the Great Spirit, to find favour in His sight, and to obtain His forgiveness for past errors ...
— Traditions of the North American Indians, Vol. 1 (of 3) • James Athearn Jones
... explain further. He had not primarily come back to atone for the suffering he had inflicted on Rosie, or because his love for her was such that he couldn't live without her. He had come back to propitiate the demon within himself—the demon or the god, he was not sure which it was, for it possessed the attributes of both. He had come back to escape the chastisement his soul inflicted on itself—because without coming back he could no longer be a man. He had come ...
— The Side Of The Angels - A Novel • Basil King
... it will 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 needn't be giving ...
— The Story Girl • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... them to 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 they call ...
— The Discovery of the Source of the Nile • John Hanning Speke
... desire of the Fetish men—in which the Fantees abstain from work, and during a period of war, it often happens that the movements of the opposing armies are much interfered with by the numerous occasions upon which it becomes necessary to propitiate the Fetish. One of these especial Fetish days may be here noticed, it being, apparently, the most important of those that occur during the whole year, and its object no less important than driving the devil out of the ...
— The Ethnology of the British Colonies and Dependencies • Robert Gordon Latham
... humiliation, thanksgiving, and prayer was ordered throughout the republic for the 9th of May, in order to propitiate the favour of Heaven on the great work to be undertaken; and, as a further precaution, Prince Maurice ordered all garrisons in the strong places to be doubled, lest the slippery enemy should take advantage of too much confidence reposed in his good faith. The preachers throughout the ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... copy not others' impressions, but simply set down my own. Among his associates, the fault commonly found with Sumner is not that he was implacable—none easier to propitiate—but impracticable; not an idealist, but ideologist and doctrinary dreamer of a peace and freedom on earth which he put into no effective and satisfactory form; for ten thousand besides him recommended the Emancipation, which John Quincy Adams held justifiable ...
— Senatorial Character - A Sermon in West Church, Boston, Sunday, 15th of March, - After the Decease of Charles Sumner. • C. A. Bartol
... at Miss Minerva, in unconcealed surprise at finding her in the house. She rose, and made an effort to propitiate him by shaking hands. "I am very anxious," she said gently, "to ...
— Heart and Science - A Story of the Present Time • Wilkie Collins
... before they reached Rocroy, and, wherever their need compelled them to stop, they met with the same insults; the same efforts were to be gone through, to propitiate the rabble; and Eugene was forced to endure it all, while his martyred heart was wrung with anguish that no words are ...
— Prince Eugene and His Times • L. Muhlbach
... though the source of his great riches could never be discovered. I knew him from the photographs so frequently in the papers, a stout, full-bearded, Teutonic-looking man, who claimed Swedish nationality, and who frequently gave large sums to charity, apparently in order to propitiate the British Government, who were more than suspicious of his ...
— The Golden Face - A Great 'Crook' Romance • William Le Queux
... bridging over of gaps; but Selden still leaned against the window, a detached observer of the scene, and under the spell of his observation Lily felt herself powerless to exert her usual arts. The dread of Selden's suspecting that there was any need for her to propitiate such a man as Rosedale checked the trivial phrases of politeness. Rosedale still stood before her in an expectant attitude, and she continued to face him in silence, her glance just level with his polished baldness. ...
— House of Mirth • Edith Wharton
... in 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 ...
— Where Half The World Is Waking Up • Clarence Poe
... (striving to propitiate THE CONDUCTOR by a dastardly amiability). Oh, yes, yes. There's no mistake about the car—the Governor Marcy. She telegraphed the name just before you left Albany, so that I could find her at ...
— The Sleeping Car - A Farce • William D. Howells
... secret, some hidden cause; that they are the instruments, employed by some invisible agent, who is either friendly or inimical to his welfare. To this concealed agent, therefore, he addresses himself; pays him his vows; emplores his assistance; deprecates his wrath; seeks to propitiate him to his interests; is willing to soften his anger; for this purpose he employs the same means, of which he avails himself, either to appease or gain over the beings of ...
— The System of Nature, Vol. 2 • Baron D'Holbach
... of Horace are feebly paraphrastical, and the additions which he makes are of little value. He sometimes retains what were more properly omitted, as when he talks of vervain and gums to propitiate Venus. ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D. in Nine Volumes - Volume the Eighth: The Lives of the Poets, Volume II • Samuel Johnson
... giving the little children of the noblest families to be dropped into the fire between the brazen hands of his statue, and grown-up people of the noblest families rushed in of their own accord, hoping thus to propitiate their gods, and obtain safety for their country. Their time was not yet fully come, and a respite was granted to them. They had sent, in their distress, to hire soldiers in Greece, and among these came a Spartan, named Xanthippus, who at once took the command, and led the army out to battle, ...
— The Junior Classics • Various
... that his career had come to an end. There was much to remind him that this was so. He was made aware of it by the sad, sympathetic glances of the women; by their tactful courtesies; by the fact that Livingstone, anxious to propitiate Hanley, treated him rudely; by the sight of the young officers, each just starting upon a career of honor, and possible glory, as his career ended in humiliation; and by the big war-ship herself, that recalled certain crises when he had only to press ...
— My Buried Treasure • Richard Harding Davis
... the consequences of the Mississippi scheme, and the reign of Mr. Law in France, had been the recall of Lord Stair from the French Court, to which he was accredited as English ambassador. Lord Stair quarrelled with Law when Law was all-powerful; and in order to propitiate the financial dictator, it was found convenient to recall Stair from Paris. England had been well served by him as her ambassador at the French Court. We have already said something of Lord Stair—his ability, courage, and dexterity, his winning ways, and his fearless ...
— A History of the Four Georges, Volume I (of 4) • Justin McCarthy
... embroidered with gold thread. Underneath it was a blue tunic reaching to his knees. Round his waist 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 with calm, ...
— The Island Mystery • George A. Birmingham
... 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 subjugate others, and so aids in weaving that ramified network of restraints ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. VI (of X)—Great Britain and Ireland IV • Various
... very kind to 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
... the Cross having come in contact with the Medicine." They have their genii of lakes, rivers, mountains, and forests, to whom they offer sacrifice. I was present at the sacrifice of a beaver, made by an Algonquin to his familiar, or "totem," in order to propitiate him, because he had been unsuccessful in hunting. The beaver was roasted without being skinned, the fur only being appropriated to the spirit, whilst the flesh afforded a luxurious feast to the sacrificer; and in this part of ...
— Service in the Hudson's Bay Territory • John M'lean
... Poland," no less; that is to say, cutting off the outskirts of Poland, flinging them to neighboring Sovereigns as propitiation, or price of good-will, and rendering the rest hereditary in his family. Pragmatic Sanction once acceded to, would probably propitiate the Kaiser? For which, and other reasons, Polish Majesty still keeps that card in his hand. Friedrich Wilhelm's alliance, with such an army and such a treasury, the uses of that are evident to the Polish Majesty.—By the blessing of Heaven, however, his marriage with Wilhelmina ...
— History Of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. VI. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... 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 ...
— Sermons to the Natural Man • William G.T. Shedd
... the savages. Amongst them were some clubs, most of them made of casuarina wood, skilfully carved, or embossed in an artistic manner with mother-of-pearl or with whalebone. The custom of amputating a joint or two of the fingers or toes, to propitiate the Deity, was still observed, in the case of a ...
— Celebrated Travels and Travellers - Part III. The Great Explorers of the Nineteenth Century • Jules Verne
... overhangs the left bank. This is known as Fetish Rock from the legend that the natives used to throw live people from it into the river as sacrifices. This is possibly true but there is little evidence to show that the natives of the Congo ever sacrificed either living or dead to propitiate ...
— A Journal of a Tour in the Congo Free State • Marcus Dorman
... Theriere in the face—the mucker who had insulted and threatened to strike her! She shuddered at the thought. And then she recalled the man's other side, and for the life of her she could not tell whether to be afraid of him or not—it all depended upon what mood governed him. It would be best to propitiate him. She called ...
— The Mucker • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... fail to see the girl's repellent manner and Orion's eager attempts to propitiate her; and for this reason Neforis was glad when, just as her husband had finished the third game, and had pushed the men together on the board with the back of his hand, his chamberlain reminded him that the Arab was without, awaiting his ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... "shall we leave our damsel with what is upon her, things which have no equal and whose like is not to be found and more perfect than aught else thou takest; nor couldst thou find a goodlier offering wherewithal to propitiate the favour of the Commander of the Faithful?" But Musa answered, "O man, heardest thou not what the Lady saith on this tablet? More by token that she giveth it in trust to us who are no traitors." "And shall we," rejoined the Wazir Talib, "because of these words, leave all ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 6 • Richard F. Burton
... pulse with an unerring accuracy of touch, which told him when to speak and when to be silent, when to urge and when to leave events to their natural progress. Ever active, ever vigilant, no opportunity was suffered to escape him, and yet no one whose good-will it was desirable to propitiate was disgusted by injudicious importunity. Even Vergennes, who knew that his coming was the signal of a new favor to be asked, found in his way of asking it such a cheerful recognition of its true character, so considerate an exposition of the necessities which made it urgent, that he never saw ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 91, May, 1865 • Various
... 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
... prepared to make good his escape again, to sea, in case of any sudden or extraordinary danger. Another party were employed in erecting altars, and preparing for sacrifices and other religious celebrations, designed on the part of AEneas to propitiate the deities of the place, and to inspire his men with religious confidence and trust. He also immediately proceeded to organize a party of reconnoiterers who were to proceed into the interior, to explore the country and to communicate ...
— Romulus, Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... damnation. But how damn a king who had entered the lists as champion of the Church? England was Protestant, and so was Prussia; Austria was supremely Catholic. Was it not a merit in the eyes of God to join her in holy war against the powers of heresy? The King of the Parc-aux-Cerfs would propitiate Heaven ...
— Montcalm and Wolfe • Francis Parkman
... 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 found shelter in one of the large stone ...
— The True Story Book • Andrew Lang
... bring you a manuscript," began Katherine, smiling with all her might, with an abject desire to propitiate the arbiter of her ...
— A Crooked Path - A Novel • Mrs. Alexander
... with volcanic features, profuse in streams and mephitic fountains, contributed to render the feeling of local divinity prevalent and intense. Each petty canton had its own Nile, whose influence upon fertility and culture was sufficient to become worthy to propitiate, and therefore to personify. Had Greece been united under one monarchy, and characterized by one common monotony of soil, a single river, a single mountain, alone might have been deemed divine. It was the number of its tribes—it ...
— Athens: Its Rise and Fall, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... strange, indeed, for me to find myself so suddenly the centre of interest and of generous intentions. For a moment the thought occurred to me that they regarded me as some wonderful being with superior powers, and were trying to propitiate me by these services; yet I soon saw that these services were not at all acts of propitiation; they looked rather like those loving and profuse attentions which a family showers down upon some dear one long absent and at last returned, ...
— A Strange Manuscript Found in a Copper Cylinder • James De Mille
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