"Potsherd" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... sort are observed at the same season in Sicily. Pairs of boys and girls become gossips of St. John on St. John's Day by drawing each a hair from his or her head and performing various ceremonies over them. Thus they tie the hairs together and throw them up in the air, or exchange them over a potsherd, which they afterwards break in two, preserving each a fragment with pious care. The tie formed in the latter way is supposed to last for life. In some parts of Sicily the gossips of St. John present each ...
— The Golden Bough - A study of magic and religion • Sir James George Frazer
... Or, thirdly, the allusion may be to the consequence of becoming infected with some loathsome cutaneous disease. "So Satan smote Job with sore boils from the sole of his foot unto his crown. And he took him a potsherd to scrape himself withal" (Job ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 216, December 17, 1853 • Various
... sons and daughters were crush'd to death by the falling in of the house upon them in a violent storm of wind; and soon after he himself was afflicted with scabs and foul ulcers all over his body; so that he sate down among the ashes, and scraped himself with a potsherd." Thus from a very rich man he became extremely poor, and from the heighth of prosperity he sunk into the depth of misery. And yet all these evils did not give the least shock to his firmness of mind, nor ...
— Medica Sacra - or a Commentary on on the Most Remarkable Diseases Mentioned - in the Holy Scriptures • Richard Mead
... Mighty ones of Bashan beset me round, They open their mouths at me, Like a ravening, roaring lion. As water I am poured out, Yea, all my bones are out of joint, My heart hath become like wax, It is melted within my body, My palate is dried up like a potsherd, And my tongue cleaveth to my jaws; In the dust of death thou dost lay me, For dogs circle me about, The assembly of evil-doers enclose me; They pierce my hands and my feet, I can count all my bones; They stare, they ...
— The Makers and Teachers of Judaism • Charles Foster Kent
... poem; but not the less certainly does the whole resemble the speech of a child of active imagination, to whom judgment as to the character of his suggestions is impossible, his taste being equally gratified with a lovely image and a brilliant absurdity: a butterfly and a shining potsherd are to him similarly desirable. Whatever wild thing starts from the thicket of thought, all is worthy game to the hunting intellect of Dr. Donne, and is followed without question of tone, keeping, or harmony. In ...
— England's Antiphon • George MacDonald |
