"Idol" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Clarence was, for nearly a week, fit for nothing but lying on the grass in the shade, playing with the cats and dogs, or with little Anne, looking over our drawings, listening to Wordsworth, our reigning idol,—and enjoying, with almost touching gratitude, the first approach to petting that had ever fallen ...
— Chantry House • Charlotte M. Yonge
... himself with the understanding, and makes a sect in a commonwealth, his followers will sacrifice themselves for him, and nobody will be pardoned that dares to attack him, justly or unjustly, because that truth, real or imaginary, which he maintained, is now become an idol. Time will do nothing for the extinction of this hatred; it will be propagated from age to age; and there is no hope that Aristophanes will ever be treated with tenderness by the disciples of Plato, who made Socrates his hero. Every body else may, perhaps, confess, that Aristophanes, ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson in Nine Volumes - Volume V: Miscellaneous Pieces • Samuel Johnson
... of our hearts—and which the great master of the knout, Christopher, who visited men's trespasses like the Eumenides, never resorted to but in love for some great idea which had been outraged; why, this man knouted his way through life, from bloody youth up to truculent old age. Grim idol! whose altars reeked with children's blood, and whose dreadful eyes never smiled except as the stern goddess of the Thugs smiles, when the sound of human lamentations inhabits her ears. So much had the monster fed ...
— Narrative And Miscellaneous Papers • Thomas De Quincey
... it when closing my curtains for the night, noticing how it drew its heavy skirts about it, and how the light from other windows threw glimmering streaks and patches that turned it into the semblance of a towering, solemn image. It stood there then so strikingly, somehow like a great old-world idol, that it claimed attention. Its appearance was curiously formidable. Its branches rustled without visibly moving and it had a certain portentous, forbidding air, so grand and dark and monstrous in the night that I was always glad when my curtains shut it ...
— The Damned • Algernon Blackwood
... day J.W. came to a temple, not a great towering shrine, but a third-rate sort of place, a sacred cow temple. Here was a family which had journeyed four hundred miles to worship before the idols of this temple. They offered rice to one idol, flowers to another, holy water from the river to a third. No one might know what inner urge had driven them here. The priest, slow to heed them, at length deigned to dip his finger in a little paint and with it he smeared ...
— John Wesley, Jr. - The Story of an Experiment • Dan B. Brummitt
... of all teachers, and, above all, to pave the way for speedier centralization and consolidation of the one-room district school. Results have been beyond the expectations of school men, every breath and opposition to the system has blown away, and it may truthfully be said that it has become an idol of the people of the state. The re-organization has stimulated interest in education in all respects and has made possible a more recent establishment of a state-wide teachers' pensions system and a complete revamping of financial support of schools through a ...
— The Progressive Democracy of James M. Cox • Charles E. Morris
... idol mine, tells one is here To bring thee joy, to kiss away the tear. Keep in thy heart the ruby fire of love; The hour of thy ...
— Tales of Destiny • Edmund Mitchell
... and stooped down to him, and put her hand to his arms, and raised him up, and said to him: "What is this, my Squire, that thou kneelest to me as to an idol?" ...
— The Wood Beyond the World • William Morris
... of May in the year 1660 was indeed a red-letter day in the calendar of jovial fox-hunting Squire Jennings, of Sandridge, in Hertfordshire. It was the day on which his Royal idol, the second Charles, set out from Canterbury on the last stage of the journey to his crown. Mounted on his horse, caparisoned in purple and gold, at the head of a gay cavalcade of retainers, he rode proudly through the Kentish lanes and villages: through avenues of ...
— Love Romances of the Aristocracy • Thornton Hall
... war. He divided it, according to an idea of his own, into groups of four comrades each, for the campaign. He exercised a personal supervision over the most important and the most trivial minutiae of the regimental business. The quick sympathy of the public still followed him. He became the idol of the Bowery and the pet of the Avenue. Yet not one instant did he waste in recreation or lionizing. Indulgent to all others, he was merciless to himself. He worked day and night, like an incarnation of Energy. When he arrived with his men in Washington, he was thin, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, Issue 45, July, 1861 • Various
... and on his return from these mysterious absences, would let it be known that he had just accomplished some great deed, or brought a dangerous mission to a successful termination. In this way the Chevalier Acquet de Ferolles had become the idol of the little group of naive royalists among whom he had found refuge. He had bravely served the cause; he plumed himself on having merited the surname of "toutou of the Princes," and in Mme. de Combray's dazzled eyes this was equal ...
— The House of the Combrays • G. le Notre
... he refused to wait for the draft! He went and enlisted. Dad patted him on the back.... If anything happens to him it'll kill my mother. Jim is her idol. It'd break my heart.... Oh, I hate the ...
— The Desert of Wheat • Zane Grey
... had been accomplished! Do you know, Mr. Allison, that I have compared my insane purposes in the past to that of those men of old who made their children pass through the fire to Moloch? I set up an idol—a bloody Moloch—and was about ...
— The Good Time Coming • T. S. Arthur
... offering, and all the secret treasures. He slew some of the people, and carried off into captivity about ten thousand, burnt the finest buildings, erected a citadel, and therein placed a garrison of Macedonians. Building an idol altar in the Temple, he offered swine on it, and he compelled many of the Jews to raise idol altars in every town and village, and to offer swine on them every day. But many disregarded him, and these underwent bitter punishment. They were ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol XI. • Edited by Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton
... a degree which rendered him incapable of a sordid or oblique action. Always acute, but sometimes crotchety, he had the same fault in politics which was the reproach of Lord Eldon in law—indecision; and this in no small degree impaired both his efficacy and his authority. His great idol was Pitt, and, after him, he was the friend and admirer of Perceval. Bred in their school, and a Tory by taste, by habit, and in opinion, it is not a little to his honour that he was able to comprehend the mighty changes which time and circumstances had effected, and to perceive that ...
— The Greville Memoirs - A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William IV, Vol. III • Charles C. F. Greville
... old woman with one eye, with disheveled hair, seated on the ground like an Indian idol, ironing clothes. The sad-iron was carefully imitated, being of copper with coals of red tinsel and smoke-wreaths ...
— The Reign of Greed - Complete English Version of 'El Filibusterismo' • Jose Rizal
... time forward Mrs. Hutchinson was a person of great importance in Boston. Sir Harry Vane, then governor of the colony and the idol of the people, was pleased, with Mr. Cotton, to take much notice of the gifted newcomer, and their example was followed by the leading and influential people of the town, who treated her with much ...
— The Romance of Old New England Rooftrees • Mary Caroline Crawford
... commendation. At the head of these must be placed the Ode to the Virgin. It is, perhaps, the finest hymn in the world. His devout veneration receives an exquisitely poetical character from the delicate perception of the sex and the loveliness of his idol, which we may easily ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 1 (of 4) - Contibutions to Knight's Quarterly Magazine] • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... who makes music up out of his head for people to play in theatres or for lunatics like Moreno to amuse themselves with. Well, when his daughter was born the Doctor wondered what name to give her. As a tribute to Emilio Castelar, his idol, he felt he ought to call her Emilia: but he liked the sound of Leonora better (no, not Lenor, but Leonora!). According to what he told us, that was the title of the only opera Beethoven ever wrote—an opera he could read, for that matter, the way I read the paper. Anyhow, the foreigner ...
— The Torrent - Entre Naranjos • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... fight at Pharsalus, from a blow that he had never felt in the heat of the battle. During the forced marchings and voyages no razor had touched his cheeks, and he was thickly bearded. But what cared Cornelia? Had not her ideal, her idol, gone forth into the great world and stood its storm and stress, and fought in its battles, and won due glory? Was he not alive, and safe, and in health of mind and body after ten thousand had fallen around him? Were not ...
— A Friend of Caesar - A Tale of the Fall of the Roman Republic. Time, 50-47 B.C. • William Stearns Davis
... look on, half with awe and half as a diversion. Suddenly he began to groan and to shriek, as if contending with himself, and willing and not willing some new act; and the struggle ended in his falling on his hands and knees, and crawling like a quadruped towards the idol. When he got near, his attitude was still more servile; still groaning and shuddering, he laid himself flat on the ground, and wriggled to the idol as a worm, and lapped up with his tongue the mingled blood and dust which lay about the sacrifice. And then again, ...
— Callista • John Henry Cardinal Newman
... said to be the size of a pigeon's head, and to have been purchased for ninety thousand pounds, besides a yearly sum for life to the Greek merchant from whom it was bought. This diamond formed one of the eyes of the famous idol Juggernaut, whose temple is on the Coromandel coast, and a French soldier, who had deserted into the Malabar service, found the means of robbing the temple of it, and escaped with it to Madras. There he disposed of it to a ship ...
— Harper's Young People, January 27, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... Cannook, deity of Dene Carapaco, lake of Carcha, town of Cardinal points, worship of Caylla, epithet of Viracocha Ce Acatl, One Reed, a name of Quetzalcoatl Ce Acatl Inacuil Cemi, deity of Arawacks Chac, deity of the Mayas Chacamarca, river of Chac Mool, supposed idol Chalchihuitl Chalchiuitlicue, Aztec goddess Chalchihuitzli, Aztec deity Chalchiuhapan, the bath of Quetzalcoatl Chasca, Qquichua deity Chem, Egyptian deity Chibchas, see Muyscas Chibilias, a Maya goddess Chichen Itza Chichimees, ...
— American Hero-Myths - A Study in the Native Religions of the Western Continent • Daniel G. Brinton
... of mortal race. Alas! if I who still was blessed When thou wast but a lowly flower— To pluck thy image from my breast, Though thus thou will'st it, have no power; Thou still to me, though lifted high In hope and heart above the glen, Where first thou won my idol eye, Must spell ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII. No. 3. March 1848 • Various
... divine nature, with the verbal admission of the doctrine of the divine unity, they heard these idolaters speak of 330,000,000 of gods. Amidst innumerable idol temples they found none erected for the worship of the one living and true God. Services without end they saw performed in honour of the elements and deified heroes, but heard not one voice tuned to the praise or employed in the service of the one God. Unacquainted with the moral ...
— The Life of William Carey • George Smith
... COR. viii. 7-13.—"Howbeit there is not in every man that knowledge: for some, with conscience of the idol, unto this hour, eat it as a thing offered unto an idol; and their conscience being weak is defiled. But meat commendeth us not to God: for neither if we eat are we the better; neither if we eat not are we the worse. ...
— Sermons Preached at Brighton - Third Series • Frederick W. Robertson
... Commissioner means, as I am afraid he does, that the Book of Genesis contains a trustworthy scientific account of the origin of species, and that the god to whom Jephthah sacrificed his daughter is any less obviously a tribal idol than Dagon ...
— Bernard Shaw's Preface to Major Barbara • George Bernard Shaw
... and you cast out sorrow. So he first earns his new name of Jerubbaal ('Let Baal plead'), and is known as Baal's antagonist, before he blows the trumpet of revolt. The name is an omen of victory. The hand that had smitten the idol, and had not been withered, would smite Midian. Therefore that new name is used in this chapter, which tells of the preparations for the fight and its triumphant issue. From his home among the hills, he had sent the fiery cross to the three northern ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... lonely woman sitting there so solitary beside her wintry fire. But Aunt Eunice asked no pity. If Hugh came once a week to spend the night, and once a day to see her, it was all that she desired, for Hugh was her darling, her idol, the object which kept her old heart warm and young with human love. For him she would endure any want or encounter any difficulty, and so it is not strange that in his dilemma regarding Adah Hastings, he intuitively turned to her, ...
— Bad Hugh • Mary Jane Holmes
... Nekrassov became the idol of Russia. The literary evenings at which he used to read his poems aloud were besieged by fervent devotees, and the most brilliant orations were addressed to him on all possible occasions. His ...
— Who Can Be Happy And Free In Russia? • Nicholas Nekrassov
... persons had the most dolorous consequences: we shall fall in with her more than once in the course of this history; but, whether or no, she was assuredly the best of this princely trio, and Francis I. was the most spoiled by it. There is nothing more demoralizing than to be an idol. ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume IV. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... lap. His pale face was convulsed by outraged vanity; his lips were drawn and thin, his eyes flamed; he was quite unable to conceal the struggle that was going on inside him. To think that he, Prulliere, the idol of the public, should play a part of ...
— Nana, The Miller's Daughter, Captain Burle, Death of Olivier Becaille • Emile Zola
... Judd would almost jump at his own shadow. He avoided crowds and made friends slowly. As for competition, he apparently detested it, retracing his steps rather than encounter physical conflict. And so, when he might have been the idol of the entire school, Judd soon ...
— Over the Line • Harold M. Sherman
... cup iv tay,' an' 'How d'ye do Misther Dooley, I didn't see ye at mass this mornin',' an' 'Martin, me boy, dhrop in an' take a hand at forty-fives. Th' young ladies has been ask in' me ar-re ye dead.' I was th' pop'lar idol, ye might say, an' manny's th' black look I got over th' shouldher at picnic an' wake. But I minded thim little. If a bull again me come fr'm th' pope himsilf in thim days whin me heart was high, ...
— Mr. Dooley's Philosophy • Finley Peter Dunne
... idol of the dowagers within a week after his appearance; matrons warmed to him; young belles looked sweetly on him, while the gentlemen were won to admiration or envy. He was of prodigious wealth: old Mr. Bicksit, who dared not, for his fame's sake, fail to have seen all things, had visited ...
— Monsieur Beaucaire • Booth Tarkington
... idol of the day—the names of Jules Favre and Gambetta were by-words of scorn. Even Armand Monnier, still out of work, beginning to feel the pinch of want, and fierce for any revolution that might turn topsy-turvy the conditions of labour,—even Armand Monnier was found among groups ...
— The Parisians, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... of government buildings, witnessed that new thing, the making of a king and queen, knew the stolid march of convicts, white and brown, images of saints carried in processions, and schools opened to regenerate the race of idol-worshippers. ...
— White Shadows in the South Seas • Frederick O'Brien
... these little ones out of the grasp of that monster (the public school), of that popular idol, ...
— Thirty Years In Hell - Or, From Darkness to Light • Bernard Fresenborg
... child with a lamb. Herbs pressed against it would cure all diseases. For years a dispute was carried on between clerical factions as to whether it represented St. John the Baptist or Christ. Bishop Miguel Garcia, having undressed it and examined it thoroughly, decided it to be a Chinese idol. Thereupon it was broken and burned as a ...
— Myths & Legends of our New Possessions & Protectorate • Charles M. Skinner
... incomprehensible, and the only way by which we can reconcile ourselves to many trials which we are called to endure is by remembering that there is a "need be" for every sorrow which falls to our lot, in the journey of life. Emma was an only child and had been the idol of her father's heart, and no marvel if the world, to her, looked dark and dreary when he was removed by death. Added to the grief occasioned by their bereavement, the mother and daughter had yet another cause for anxiety and disquietude, for the home ...
— Stories and Sketches • Harriet S. Caswell
... singing the words. Job thought again of the aged saint. He thought of Yankee Sam and that wild night when he died; of Tim, poor Irish Tim; and then of that sweet face in the plain wooden casket in the strange California city—his boyhood's idol—and the tears ...
— The Transformation of Job - A Tale of the High Sierras • Frederick Vining Fisher
... tole me they wasn't going to get him to go to Sunday-school. He says his father has a brass idol that he keeps in the garret, and Bill says he's made up his mind to be a pagan, and to begin to go naked, and carry a tomahawk and a bow and arrow, as soon as the warm weather comes. And to prove it to me, he says his father has this town all underlaid ...
— Elbow-Room - A Novel Without a Plot • Charles Heber Clark (AKA Max Adeler)
... gratification for the purpose of securing a future good, and in this light it represents the ascendancy of reason over the animal instincts. It is altogether different from penuriousness: for it is economy that can always best afford to be generous. It does not make money an idol, but regards it as a useful agent. As Dean Swift observes, "we must carry money in the head, not in the heart." Economy may be styled the daughter of Prudence, the sister of Temperance, and the mother of Liberty. It is eminently conservative—conservative of character, ...
— How to Get on in the World - A Ladder to Practical Success • Major A.R. Calhoon
... looked on with lack-lustre eyes. As well make much of Anna Belle as any other idol. Everything was ...
— Jewel - A Chapter In Her Life • Clara Louise Burnham
... the intermeddling of Mr. Southey's idol, the omniscient and omnipotent State, but by the prudence and energy of the people, that England has hitherto been carried forward in civilisation; and it is to the same prudence and the same energy that we ...
— Famous Reviews • Editor: R. Brimley Johnson
... dimensions are given as 365 feet long by 300 feet wide at the base, whilst the summit-platform was raised more than 150 feet above the level of the streets and square. Here was set the great image of the Aztec war-god, the idol of the abominable Huitzilopochtli which Cortes and his men, after their frightful hand-to-hand struggle with the Aztecs on this giddy platform, tumbled down the face of the pyramid into the streets ...
— Mexico • Charles Reginald Enock
... an appointment under government as engineer in the department of Roads and Bridges, made a rapid fortune, aided by his great-uncle, in a canal which he was able to construct; moreover, he succeeded in pleasing his cousin Mademoiselle Conyncks, the idol of her father, and one of the richest heiresses in Flanders. In 1824 the whole Claes property was free, and the house in the rue de Paris had repaired its losses. Pierquin made a formal application to Balthazar for the hand of Felicie, and Monsieur de Solis ...
— The Alkahest • Honore de Balzac
... enchanting; after which I echoed it with the English translation; all which went on very prosperously, till I came to that touching invocation written on Good Friday, when the poet, no longer offering incense to his mortal idol, but penitential supplications to his God, implores pardon for the waste of life and power his passion had betrayed him into, and seeks for help to follow higher aims and holier purposes; a pathetic and solemn composition, which vibrated so ...
— Records of Later Life • Frances Anne Kemble
... their mutual interest to depreciate his merits. Unfortunately one day Plato found himself in his school without these three favourite scholars. Aristotle flies to him—a crowd gathers and enters with him. The idol whose oracles they wished to overturn was presented to them. He was then a respectable old man, the weight of whose years had enfeebled his memory. The combat was not long. Some rapid sophisms embarrassed Plato. He saw himself surrounded ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 1 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... all this mischief had come to pass; and said to herself, sighing, "Alas, two dark things have brought me to the ground,—sleep and a black slave!" Then she took a fine house facing the palace of the Prince; from whence, though she could not see the idol of her heart, she could at least look upon the walls wherein what ...
— Stories from Pentamerone • Giambattista Basile
... passed a law protecting the land around it as a park, and there is now reason to hope that the mound will last as long as the rocky bluff on which the serpent lies coiled. This huge idol is more than twelve hundred feet long, and is the most wonderful symbol in the world of the serpent worship, which was everywhere the earliest religion of ...
— Stories Of Ohio - 1897 • William Dean Howells
... attention), was introduced to a group of the principal inhabitants. Our conversation ended in a promise to meet the next evening at a country house about a league from Bassano, and then to return together and sing to the praise of Pacchierotti, their idol, as well ...
— Dreams, Waking Thoughts, and Incidents • William Beckford
... appellation of the "rood of grace." The lips, and eyes, and head of the image moved on the approach of its votaries. Hilsey, bishop of Rochester, broke the crucifix at St. Paul's Cross, and showed to the whole people the springs and wheels by which it had been secretly moved. A great wooden idol, revered in Wales, called Darvel Gatherin, was also brought to London, and cut in pieces; and by a cruel refinement in vengeance, it was employed as fuel to burn friar Forest,[**] who was punished for denying the supremacy, and for some pretended heresies. A finger ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part C. - From Henry VII. to Mary • David Hume
... ideala. identical : identa. idiom : idiomo, idiotismo. idiotic : idiota. idle : senokupa. idol : idolo. illegitimate : nelauxlegxa, bastarda, illuminate : ilumini. illusion : iluzio. illustrate : ilustri. image : figuro, bildo. imagine : imagi, revi. imbibe : ensorbi. imbue : penetri, inspiri. imitate : imiti. immediately : tuj. imminent : surpenda, minaca. impassive : stoika, kvietega. ...
— The Esperanto Teacher - A Simple Course for Non-Grammarians • Helen Fryer
... pleasing troubles; Farewell, ye honour'd rags, ye glorious bubbles; Fame's but a hollow echo, gold pure clay, Honour the darling but of one short day, Beauty, the eye's idol, but a damask'd skin, State but a golden prison to live in And torture free-born minds; embroider'd trains Merely but pageants for proud swelling veins; And blood, allied to greatness, is alone Inherited, not ...
— Specimens with Memoirs of the Less-known British Poets, Complete • George Gilfillan
... valuable counsellors whether in peace or war. In force of character and in personal bravery she was scarce inferior to her heroic husband, and yet she lacked not discretion or even shrewdness. She was the idol of the Swedish people, and before many years were passed was to have an opportunity ...
— The Swedish Revolution Under Gustavus Vasa • Paul Barron Watson
... miracles, which were ascribed to him in increasing measure, at first slight, then more and more surprising ones, viz. cures of incurable diseases,—who does not know the resistless nature of this illusion, bound up as it is with the nearest needs of man in every form?—made him the idol of England. Henry II had to live to see the man who had refused him the old accustomed obedience, reverenced among his people with almost divine honours as one of the greatest saints that had ever lived. The great Hohenstaufen in the unsuccessful struggle ...
— A History of England Principally in the Seventeenth Century, Volume I (of 6) • Leopold von Ranke
... him what is to be done with the scapegoat. "Let him be married to a girl who will sober him." The wine moves briskly round, and Mr. Shelley becomes maudlin and tearful again. He is a model magistrate, the terror and the idol of poachers; he is highly respected in the House of Commons, and the Speaker could not get through the session without him. Then he drifts to religion. God exists, no one can deny it; in fact, he has the proof in his pocket. Out comes a piece of paper, and arguments are ...
— Shelley • Sydney Waterlow
... Mrs. Worse for making an idol of her son; he was all she had to care for. Although Jacob was a good son, and grew up strong and healthy, he had cost his mother many tears when he came home from school bruised and untidy after a fight. ...
— Garman and Worse - A Norwegian Novel • Alexander Lange Kielland
... full, but which all pay unconscious homage to the worship of that great God, to whom so many heathen hearts so often turned as the divine realizer of their prayers, and the giver of all good things, until they come at last to make an idol out of their hopes and prayers, and to ...
— Popular Tales from the Norse • Sir George Webbe Dasent
... by the greater majority, if not by all his fellow-men, as having a right to be worshipped; whose rights are so unquestionable that men agree unanimously to bow down to it. For the chief concern of these miserable creatures is not to find and worship the idol of their own choice, but to discover that which all others will believe in, and consent to bow down to in a mass. It is that instinctive need of having a worship in common that is the chief suffering of every man, the chief concern of mankind ...
— "The Grand Inquisitor" by Feodor Dostoevsky • Feodor Dostoevsky
... reason the news that he has reconsidered and jumped to the All-Stars comes like a thunderbolt from a clear sky. The major leaguers are in consternation, while the new league naturally is jubilant at this acquisition to their ranks. Matson is a popular idol among his fellow players and it is believed that many stars who have been wavering in their allegiance to the old leagues will follow ...
— Baseball Joe Around the World - Pitching on a Grand Tour • Lester Chadwick
... idolatry. In later times it was a station of the golden calf of Jeroboam's institution, that is to say, the revived emblem of Baal, going back to the practice of the Leshemites; and there is yet an idea prevailing in our days that the Druses of the neighbourhood retain that emblem or idol among them—a remarkable instance of the perpetuity of idolatry, and one form of idolatry under different names, modified only by circumstances in the same locality. I forbear to pursue further the reflections that can ...
— Byeways in Palestine • James Finn
... noontide glory of the sun of righteousness, were making for their liberation from the thrall of pagan darkness and superstition, we doubt not that they would have prostrated themselves by millions before the shrine of their great idol, Juggernaut, and devoutly invoked him to pardon and forgive the poor, deluded victims of a false religion, and bring them all under his sublime ...
— Eventide - A Series of Tales and Poems • Effie Afton
... transcendent practical importance, no successful leader has ever been too busy to cultivate the symbols which organize his following. What privileges do within the hierarchy, symbols do for the rank and file. They conserve unity. From the totem pole to the national flag, from the wooden idol to God the Invisible King, from the magic word to some diluted version of Adam Smith or Bentham, symbols have been cherished by leaders, many of whom were themselves unbelievers, because they were focal points where differences merged. The detached observer ...
— Public Opinion • Walter Lippmann
... works. She was rich and enjoyed the peculiar distinction of wearing very fashionable gowns even to church. Upon this occasion something reserved, potential and authoritative in her manner made me nervous. I had a premonition that she was after somebody's dearest idol. And I was not left long in suspense as ...
— A Circuit Rider's Wife • Corra Harris
... him of Vinicius. His joyfulness was dimmed only by the thought that at night he must go to Ostrianum. He comforted himself, however, as he would go in disguise, in darkness, and in the company of two men, one of whom was so strong that he was the idol of Rome; the other a patrician, a man of high dignity in the army. "Even should they discover Vinicius," said he to himself, "they will not dare to raise a hand on him; as to me, they will be wise if they see the tip of ...
— Quo Vadis - A Narrative of the Time of Nero • Henryk Sienkiewicz
... idol of my heart, have I not told you so? Yes, the angels are watching over us! Ah! how he stares at us! He seems to try to give us confidence. Look at that little demon; admire him! He must certainly be your guardian spirit ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... with a statue of Durga; before the idol an altar. In the background a landscape with ...
— The Buddha - A Drama in Five Acts and Four Interludes • Paul Carus
... that would require wisdom and liberality in his copyists—in the repugnance he felt to restrictions and exclusions, affecting either the worldly commerce of man with man, or the spiritual intercourse of man with his God,—in all this, like the Indian that quarrels with his idol, these pretended followers not only dissent from their prototype themselves, but violently denounce, as mischievous, his opinions when ...
— Memoirs of the Life of the Rt. Hon. Richard Brinsley Sheridan V1 • Thomas Moore
... introduce in the mythology of their court-adulation; that marvelous Faith of the 18th century, which will one day, and that not far off, be known for a thing more truly disgraceful to human nature than the Polynesian's dance round his feather idol, or Egyptian's worship of the food he fattened on. From Salvator and Domenichino it is possible to turn in a proud indignation, knowing that theirs are no fair examples of the human mind; but it is with humbled and woful anger that we must trace the degradation of the ...
— The Harbours of England • John Ruskin
... maiden held out her crucifix before her, and the dragon was checked in its onrush. A moment later it turned aside and plunged into the Rhine. The people on the crag were filled with awe at the miraculous power of the strange symbol which had overcome their idol and, descending, hastened to free the young girl from her bonds. When they learned the significance of the cross they begged that she would send them teachers that they might learn about the new religion. In vain their priests endeavoured to dissuade them. They had seen the power of the ...
— Hero Tales and Legends of the Rhine • Lewis Spence
... must have inevitably followed. Supported by the people, he would have brought unification a long step forward. Unfortunately, when it came to political strength, Clay's people were confined to the Western section, where his efforts in their behalf had made him an idol. He was a legislative hero, so to speak. But there was a war hero, whose popularity was not measured so much ...
— The United States of America Part I • Ediwn Erle Sparks
... becomes unable to criticise him; he can only justify and praise him, sling mud at his opponents, and, so to speak, clear a space round his hero by knocking over in opprobrious terms any one who may threaten his supremacy. He condones and even praises any fault in his idol; and what would be in his eyes a damning fault in one whom he happened to dislike, becomes a salient virtue in the person whom he praises. He condemns Swift for his coarseness and praises Johnson for his outspokenness. He condemns Robert Browning for his obscurity and praises George Meredith for ...
— The Silent Isle • Arthur Christopher Benson
... mistress with a garland of flowers; the countryman, when he stops to look at the rainbow; the city-apprentice, when he gazes after the Lord-Mayor's show; the miser, when he hugs his gold; the courtier, who builds his hopes upon a smile; the savage, who paints his idol with blood; the slave, who worships a tyrant, or the tyrant, who fancies himself a god;—the vain, the ambitious, the proud, the choleric man, the hero and the coward, the beggar and the king, the rich and the poor, the young and the old, all live in a world of their own ...
— Lectures on the English Poets - Delivered at the Surrey Institution • William Hazlitt
... said, "is hard to be discovered, and having discovered him, to make him known to all, impossible."[108] It is the confession of a want of knowledge, the expression of a desire to know, the acknowledgment of the duty of worshipping him. Underlying all the forms of idol-worship the eye of Paul recognized an influential Theism. Deep down in the pagan heart he discovered a "feeling after God"—a yearning for a deeper knowledge of the "unknown," the invisible, the incomprehensible, ...
— Christianity and Greek Philosophy • Benjamin Franklin Cocker
... well. Her parson had emerged triumphant from his battle with disease and adverse fate and was more than ever the idol of his congregation. He was to marry the girl of his choice—and hers. The housekeeper's ears were still ringing with the thanks of John and Grace. Both seemed to feel that to her, Keziah Coffin, more than anyone else, they ...
— Keziah Coffin • Joseph C. Lincoln
... this collection leads to the belief that all the specimens are from one interment, that is, the grave of a single individual. The fact that there is but one skull, one mask-like idol, and but a small number of articles of each, of the classes represented, ...
— Illustrated Catalogue of a Portion of the Collections Made During the Field Season of 1881 • William H. Holmes
... the father of Abraham, was a famous statuary and idol-worshipper, according to the ideas ...
— Bagh O Bahar, Or Tales of the Four Darweshes • Mir Amman of Dihli
... Doct. num. vet. t. vii. p. 250.) As to its etymology, that which Gibbon adduces is given by Bochart, Chan. ii. 5; but Salmasius, on better grounds. (not. in Lamprid. in Elagab.,) derives the name of Elagabalus from the idol of that god, represented by Herodian and the medals in the form of a mountain, (gibel in Hebrew,) or great stone cut to a point, with marks which represent the sun. As it was not permitted, at Hierapolis, in Syria, to make statues of the sun and moon, because, ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 1 • Edward Gibbon
... was twenty-two years old at this time, delicate as the miniature he had seen, though no longer in the fragile health of her girlhood. Gentle, winning, lovable, she was the family idol, and Samuel Clemens was no less her worshiper from the first moment ...
— The Boys' Life of Mark Twain • Albert Bigelow Paine
... they made a calf in those days, and offered sacrifice unto the idol, and rejoiced in the works of their own hands. Then God turned, and gave them up to worship ...
— The Astronomy of the Bible - An Elementary Commentary on the Astronomical References - of Holy Scripture • E. Walter Maunder
... Thy mother kisses an infant curl. The room of the toys was a boundless nest, A kingdom the field of the games, Till entered the craving for more, And the worshipped small body had aims. A good little idol, as records attest, When they tell of him lightly appeased in a scream By sweets and caresses: he gave but sign That the heir of a purse-plumped dominant race, Accustomed to plenty, not dumb would pine. Almost magician, his earliest dream Was lord of the unpossessed For a look; himself and his chase, ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... a fellow should be a teetotaller. Dermot Tracy had been defied into betting upon the resolute abstinence of his hero—nay, perhaps the truth was that these men had felt that their victim was being attracted from their grasp, and a Satanic instinct made them strive to degrade his idol in his eyes. ...
— My Young Alcides - A Faded Photograph • Charlotte M. Yonge
... not European—and there was something mean and chetive in his regard. He would have looked over-dressed and un-English in a London ball-room, but in that cosmopolitan company he was unremarkable. He had been his mother's idol and Sir James had left him everything he could scrape from his highly mortgaged property. But certain tastes of his own made a Continental life more congenial to him, and he had chosen early to enter a financial ...
— The Price of Things • Elinor Glyn
... find it true what the prophet Ezekiel hath written, that 'the Lord will pour out his indignation upon them, and consume them with the fire of his wrath.' Yea, I tell you, unless they turn from their evil ways—unless they cast aside the golden idol they now worship, and set up the Holy One of Israel in its stead, a fire will be sent to consume them, and that pile which they have erected as a temple to their god shall ...
— Old Saint Paul's - A Tale of the Plague and the Fire • William Harrison Ainsworth
... an irresistible impulse did not urge me to it. In a few days you will be married, and then will come a separation, which I shall bear with courage; but which will require courage, my Ellen, for I have loved you too much as an idol, too much as a treasure, which nothing could rob me of, and to which I have clung with all the tenacity of a crushed but ardent spirit. All my life I have had to meet indifference, and to struggle with disappointment in various forms. Self-devotion was the dream ...
— Ellen Middleton—A Tale • Georgiana Fullerton
... still a great power in the state. To him the clergy, the universities, and that large body of country gentlemen whose rallying cry was "Church and King," had long looked up with respect and confidence. Fox had, on the other hand, been the idol of the Whigs, and of the whole body of Protestant dissenters. The coalition at once alienated the most zealous Tories from North, and the most zealous Whigs from Fox. The University of Oxford, which had marked its approbation of North's orthodoxy by electing him chancellor, the city ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 3. (of 4) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... deliberately planned great deeds, and thus won themselves fame. He loved Mistress Dorothy, and he felt that, if she would only love him, he could be brave and noble; yet he hated the easy-going, simple-hearted Johnnie Morgan, who had made himself a popular idol, and was marked out by the gossips as the fittest and properest husband for pretty Mistress Dawe. Master Windybank could not help but admire the valiant admiral, and he remembered how he had flushed with pleasure when Drake had taken him by the hand on the occasion of their ...
— Sea-Dogs All! - A Tale of Forest and Sea • Tom Bevan
... old. For when France passed from theory to practice, the question was put to the world in a way not thinkable in connection with the prefatory experiment of a thin population on a colonial coast. The mightiest of human monarchies, like some monstrous immeasurable idol of iron, was melted down in a furnace barely bigger than itself, and recast in a size equally colossal, but in a shape men could not understand. Many, at least, could not understand it, and least of all the ...
— A Short History of England • G. K. Chesterton
... friends till they could raise a sufficient force among their own party.[2] His progress through the northern counties was slow;[e] nor did he reach the capital till the day after the exclusion of the Presbyterian members. His late victory had rendered him the idol of the soldiers: he was conducted with acclamations of ...
— The History of England from the First Invasion by the Romans - to the Accession of King George the Fifth - Volume 8 • John Lingard and Hilaire Belloc
... of general knowledge that the three girls were very fond of one another, and supported each other in every way; it was even said that the two elder ones had made certain sacrifices for the sake of the idol of the household, Aglaya. In society they not only disliked asserting themselves, but were actually retiring. Certainly no one could blame them for being too arrogant or haughty, and yet everybody ...
— The Idiot • (AKA Feodor Dostoevsky) Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... he was ready to vote for internal improvements. This was good Whig doctrine at that time, and the young politician did not fancy he could go wrong in following in such a matter the lead of his idol, ...
— Abraham Lincoln: A History V1 • John G. Nicolay and John Hay
... was now necessary, according to the order and form of the Prayer, that Peter should commence and offer up his supplications for the happy passage from life to eternity of her who had been his inward idol during a long period. Peter knew nothing about sentiment, or the philosophy of sorrow; but he loved his wife with the undivided power of a heart in which nature had implanted her strongest affections. He knew, too, that his ...
— Phil Purcel, The Pig-Driver; The Geography Of An Irish Oath; The Lianhan Shee • William Carleton
... worked the wickedness of which he had just now heard, but any other Pecksniff could; and the Pecksniff who could do that could do anything, and no doubt had been doing anything and everything except the right thing, all through his career. From the lofty height on which poor Tom had placed his idol it ...
— Life And Adventures Of Martin Chuzzlewit • Charles Dickens
... it,' he says, 'but if I had said "No" to India, I should feel as if I had been a coward and had lost the right to respect myself or to profess the doctrines I have always held and preached about the duty of doing the highest thing one can and of not making an idol of domestic comfort.' He continued to write to his mother regularly, dictating letters when disabled from writing by his fever, and the whole series, carefully numbered by her from 1 to 129, now lies before me. He wrote with almost ...
— The Life of Sir James Fitzjames Stephen, Bart., K.C.S.I. - A Judge of the High Court of Justice • Sir Leslie Stephen
... offers the thousand dollars leaves the shop," Thede continued, "Finklebaum chases out to a dealer in antiques to make inquiries about the Little Brass God. I guess he thinks it's some East India idol, or something of that kind, and that his fortune ...
— Boy Scouts in Northern Wilds • Archibald Lee Fletcher
... was an elegant and accomplished gentleman with a high-bred manner which never unbent, and he was always faultlessly dressed. He looked the ideal of an aristocrat, and yet he was and continued to be until his death the idol of the Democracy."—Speeches of Chauncey M. Depew, November, 1896, ...
— A Political History of the State of New York, Volumes 1-3 • DeAlva Stanwood Alexander
... Adonis of his time. We may also fairly surmise that his parents were guilty of partiality and indulgence in their treatment of him, for David would love him the more as one who revived the memory of his favourite Absalom, the idol of the people, distinguished for his noble mien and princely bearing. Courtiers, soldiers, and people all flattered Adonijah, and Joab, the greatest captain of his age, next only to the king, was his partisan, the more so because he neither forgot nor forgave David's reproaches ...
— Men of the Bible; Some Lesser-Known Characters • George Milligan, J. G. Greenhough, Alfred Rowland, Walter F.
... he had sent his father. I knew not that this child was already begotten, and that his name was Man. It has taken Man ages to assert himself, nor has he yet, as it would seem, done more than enthrone a new idol in the place of the old. But for the old, behold the last traces of its authority in these fetters, of which the first smith will rid me. Expect no thunderbolt, dear maiden; none will come: nor shall I regain the immortality ...
— The Twilight of the Gods, and Other Tales • Richard Garnett
... own, I believe, that M. de Bassano most frequently shared and approved without exception the opinions of the Emperor; but it was not from interested or base motives: the Emperor was the idol of his heart, the object of his admiration: with such sentiments, how was it possible for him, to perceive the errors and faults of Napoleon? Besides, having continually to express the ideas of the Emperor, and to imbue himself as it were with the emanations of his spirit, he had ...
— Memoirs of the Private Life, Return, and Reign of Napoleon in 1815, Vol. I • Pierre Antoine Edouard Fleury de Chaboulon
... estimate the elements which have gone to make up this Shakespeare-God. The voices of the priests behind the Idol are only too clearly distinguishable. We hear the academic voice, the showman's voice, and the voice of the ethical preacher. They are all absurd, but their different absurdities have managed to flow together into one powerful and unified ...
— Visions and Revisions - A Book of Literary Devotions • John Cowper Powys
... daring and vanity than from any other impulse,—he had taken such pains to tarnish and debase in his own eyes. Accordingly, instead of being able, as once, to elevate and embellish all that interested him, to make an idol of every passing creature of his fancy, and mistake the form of love, which he so often conjured up, for its substance, he now degenerated into the wholly opposite and perverse error of depreciating and making light of what, intrinsically, he ...
— Life of Lord Byron, With His Letters And Journals, Vol. 5 (of 6) • (Lord Byron) George Gordon Byron
... harshly, puffing at his cigarette, dragging its fumes into his lungs in a fierce desire to finish his physical cataclysm with his moral. Yes, it had been his last chance. He, the popular idol, had been going lower and lower in the scale, but the sporting world had been loyal, as it always is to "class." He had been "class," and they had ...
— Garrison's Finish - A Romance of the Race-Course • W. B. M. Ferguson
... could arise, he would have done the honours to the victor of Aboukir, a greater victor than himself! Lady Hamilton finely remarked—with a spirit and energy forcibly depicting the grand character of that superlative mind which renders her, at once, the idol and idoliser of transcendent genius and valour—that "the splendid reward of Marlborough's services, was because a woman reigned, and women had great souls: and I," says her ladyship, for these are her own matchless words, "told Nelson that, if I had been a queen, after ...
— The Life of the Right Honourable Horatio Lord Viscount Nelson, Vol. II (of 2) • James Harrison
... that Rudolph was the idol of his parents, the favorite of his playmates, and the cherished darling of the whole castle? His merry spirit and winning ways completely gained the hearts of the servants and retainers, and many voices in the adjacent cottages were loud in the praise of the beautiful, ...
— Holidays at the Grange or A Week's Delight - Games and Stories for Parlor and Fireside • Emily Mayer Higgins
... one who has clung to me when others were false, who has come to me in my darkness and my despair, so that my dungeon has become a heaven, and this dark night is the brightest time of my life. And this girl—this, my Spanish girl, is my idol and my deity. I adore her, for I know that she stands ready to give up all for my sake, and to lay down her very life for me. Never—never in all my life have I known anything like the deep, intense, vehement, craving, yearning, ...
— A Castle in Spain - A Novel • James De Mille
... waves have ceased. For, oh, this poor heart has been wrung by disappointments, but I see now it was all for the best; my Heavenly Father would have all my heart, and so he, in his infinite wisdom, separated me from my idol, and now my affections, separated from earthly love, are fixed upon him, he is my rock, and my stay. No earthly friend could go with me 'through the valley and shadow of death,' but Christ can go with me, and open wide the gates of heaven, ...
— Withered Leaves from Memory's Garland • Abigail Stanley Hanna
... colonnades; and in each cloister or court were fifty chambers with gardens to each. In these chambers were quartered one thousand young ladies in the service of the King. The King would sometimes go with the Queen and some of these maidens to take his diversion on the Lake, or to visit the Idol-temples, in ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo, Volume 2 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa
... love making there is neither the time nor the desire, and those who are wedded to La Liberte find her an all-sufficient idol for purposes of worship. Human life is held of small account, to join the Cause being equivalent to the signing of one's own death warrant. One would probably have to die to-morrow if not to-day, and whether it were sooner or later ...
— The Hippodrome • Rachel Hayward
... been enormous. Its four thousand seats were filled and every inch of standing-room the police would allow. The religious element in Socialism had found in him its high priest. His eloquence, his magnetism, his daring, his aggressive and radical instinct for leadership made him at once their idol. ...
— The One Woman • Thomas Dixon
... satisfaction, but she stirred no sentiment, for all women were alike to him. His view of them was purely animal. The procession of Chook's loves crossed his mind, and he smiled. At regular intervals Chook "went balmy" over some girl or other, and, while the fit lasted, worshipped her as a savage worships an idol. And Jonah was stupefied by this passionate preference for one woman. He had never felt that ...
— Jonah • Louis Stone
... too violent and too swift with me," Julia resumed, after a while. "If I had the past fifteen years to live over again, I would live them very differently. I made an idol of Jim; he could do no wrong. He wanted more bracing treatment than that; he should have been boldly faced down. If I had been wiser, I would have treated all my marriage differently. If I had been very wise, I should not have married at all, ...
— The Story Of Julia Page - Works of Kathleen Norris, Volume V. • Kathleen Norris
... to the question; but since every body else was setting up an idol, she followed in the crowd. If Mr Flint cared, he kept his own counsel. Little Dickon clapped his hands at the pretty colours and bright gilding; and Will innocently asked, "Mother, wherefore had ...
— For the Master's Sake - A Story of the Days of Queen Mary • Emily Sarah Holt
... And, formed like tyrants, tyrants would believe. Zeal then, not charity, became the guide; And hell was built on spite, and heaven on pride, Then sacred seemed the ethereal vault no more; Altars grew marble then, and reeked with gore; Then first the flamen tasted living food; Next his grim idol smeared with human blood; With heaven's own thunders shook the world below, And played the god an engine on his foe. So drives self-love, through just and through unjust, To one man's power, ambition, lucre, lust: The same self-love, in all, becomes the cause Of what restrains him, ...
— Essay on Man - Moral Essays and Satires • Alexander Pope
... free, strong man, she a chained and helpless girl—he drew his dagger and flung himself at her to stab her. But Warwick seized him and held him back. Warwick was wise. Take her life in that way? Send her to Heaven stainless and undisgraced? It would make her the idol of France, and the whole nation would rise and march to victory and emancipation under the inspiration of her spirit. No, she must be saved ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... needful than now. Feverish activity rules in all spheres of life. The iron wheels of the car which bears the modern idol of material progress whirl fast, and crush remorselessly all who cannot keep up the pace. Christian effort is multiplied and systematised beyond all precedent. And all these facts make calm fellowship with God hard to compass. The measure of the difficulty is the measure of the need. I, ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. Mark • Alexander Maclaren
... risen from the tea table, had followed his son into the farmyard, but finding no trace of him there, his face had taken a troubled and anxious expression, for Will was the idol of his soul, the apple of his eye, and a ruffle upon that young man's brow meant a furrow on the old man's heart. He reproached himself for having allowed "the boy" to proceed too far with his plans for entering college before he had suggested ...
— Garthowen - A Story of a Welsh Homestead • Allen Raine
... needed downstairs Charles stayed in the sick-room. His mother did not know him or any one, but wandered in her mind, and was haunted by the ghosts of work in a manner that was pitiful to listen to. The nurse said she had made work her idol. There were two days when Mr. Reed stayed at home, though he sent Charles off to school. They had a woman in the kitchen now, a relative he had written for, Cousin Jane that Charles had once met in the country. She was extremely tidy; but she put on an afternoon ...
— A Little Girl of Long Ago • Amanda Millie Douglas
... remotely as possible with the conspicuous merits of the renowned recipient. What was Voltaire's apotheosis at the Theatre-Francais but the triumph of eighteenth century philosophy? A triumph in France means that everybody else feels that he is adorning his own temples with the crown that he sets on the idol's head. ...
— Eve and David • Honore de Balzac
... heart waits on your words and looks, almost as a little child waits on the help and tenderness of the strong on whom it depends. If the thought of you took slight hold of me, I should not fear that it would be an idol in the temple. But you will strengthen me—you will not hinder me in seeking to obey ...
— Adam Bede • George Eliot
... of God and the Bible talk as though such an outrage as burning sons and daughters in the fire to idol gods should not be visited with such punishment. Would they do any better? Could they manage such barbarous murderers better for the general good? If it was possible for a civil government to allow such characters the rights of citizenship it would be ...
— The Christian Foundation, March, 1880
... his majesty is in a passion, Tremble, ye rogues, and tremble all the nation! Suppose he takes it in his, royal head To strike your academic idol dead— Knock down your house, dissolve you in his ire, And strip you of ...
— Art in England - Notes and Studies • Dutton Cook
... of Anne of Austria, but his vanity rendered him insupportable, and he went out of his way to insult the regent, so that she sent him to Vincennes. Voltaire passes a severe judgment on him. He says of the Duke: "He was the idol of the people, and the instrument employed by able men for stirring them up into revolt; he was the object of the raillery of the Court, and of the Fronde as well. He was always spoken of as the Roi des Halles, the Market-King." One day he asked the President Bellevue whether he did not think that ...
— Castles and Cave Dwellings of Europe • Sabine Baring-Gould
... president of Raymond and St. Clair Lumber Company. Nineteen years before this time he had married Mrs. Murray's eldest sister, and established his home with every prospect of a prosperous and happy life, but after three short, bright years of almost perfect joy, his young wife, his heart's idol, after two days' illness, fluttered out from her beautiful home, leaving with her broken-hearted husband her little boy and a baby girl two weeks old. Then Eugene St. Clair besought his sister to come out from England and preside over his home and ...
— The Man From Glengarry - A Tale Of The Ottawa • Ralph Connor
... there was who could have withstood the pressure: Mirabeau. He was the popular idol,—the great orator of the Assembly and much more than a great orator,—he had carried the nation through some of its worst dangers by a boldness almost godlike; in the various conflicts he had shown not only oratorical ...
— Fiat Money Inflation in France - How It Came, What It Brought, and How It Ended • Andrew Dickson White
... were their physicians. They respected the latter so greatly that, from the day on which they entered their doors, no fire was lit in that house, as a sign of great reverence. The medicines applied were after consultation with the devil, in the shape of a little idol or a very ugly figure of a man or woman, whom they asked for the life of the sick person. If the idol moved, it was a sign of death, just as remaining still was a sign of life and health. They made the same tests in the water, by putting a boat in it, and ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898, Volume XXI, 1624 • Various
... name, so utterly would he have forgotten you! They would rush to precipitate themselves beneath the silver wheels of her chariot, that they might have even the pleasure of being crushed by her, like those devotees of the Indus who pave the pathway of their idol with ...
— King Candaules • Theophile Gautier
... perfect face than any of those I have mentioned; it is visible even now, because the oval is still there, the frownless brows, the carriage and, above all, the grace both of movement and of gesture which made her the idol of her people. ...
— Margot Asquith, An Autobiography: Volumes I & II • Margot Asquith
... and capacity they felt sure they had the very highest human leadership, and in his splendid career and spotless renown they all took pride, as conferring reflected credit upon themselves. So noble, unselfish and wise, he had become the idol of his own people and the admiration of his foes. At the outbreak of the war he had declined the command of the Federal armies, because he believed it was his duty to take part with ...
— School History of North Carolina • John W. Moore
... generous pity'; to my belief the leader cared no more for bleating flocks than he did for infants' cries, and many of our ruffians butchered one or the other with equal alacrity. You hew out of your polished verses a stately image of smiling victory; I tell you 'tis an uncouth, distorted, savage idol, hideous, bloody, and barbarous. The rites performed before it are shocking to think of. You great poets should show it as it is, ugly and horrible, ...
— Studies in Literature and History • Sir Alfred Comyn Lyall
... continued to send him some of it every day till he was quite restored. On the fifth day the invalid found himself quite cured and got up. His first care was to have burned, in the presence of the king and all the people, an idol for which he had great veneration, and which some old women guarded carefully in his house. He also caused some temples which stood on the sea-shore, and in which the people assembled to eat the meat consecrated to their old divinities, to ...
— Celebrated Travels and Travellers - Part I. The Exploration of the World • Jules Verne
... She knew he would come. Her faith was expressed in the sublime trust and confidence which her woman's adoration had built up about the idol of her life. No god of the human mind was ever endowed with greater, more infallible powers. So the hours of labour were brief and swiftly passing, for she felt that each detail of her daily life was carried ...
— The Heart of Unaga • Ridgwell Cullum
... have done, or was ever more cruelly betrayed? Oh! Greville, Greville!—did I not regard you with an affection too intense for my happiness! did I not confide in you with a reverence, a veneration unmeet to be lavished on a creature of clay? But you have broken the fragile idol of my worship before my eyes—and the after-path of my life is dark with fear and loneliness. But be it so; my soul was proud of its good gifts—and now that I am stricken to the dust, its vanity is laid bare to my sight—haply, 'it is good for me that I have ...
— Theresa Marchmont • Mrs Charles Gore
... way, Tintoretto left the studio and was thrown upon his own resources and ambition. Fortunately he did not need money: he was able even to form a collection of casts from the antique and also from Michael Angelo, the boy's other idol, who when Tintoretto was seventeen was sixty-one. Thus supplied, Tintoretto practised drawing and painting, day and night, his motto being "Titian's colour and Michael Angelo's form"; and he expressed himself as willing to paint anything anywhere, inside a house or outside, and if necessary for ...
— A Wanderer in Venice • E.V. Lucas
... dates were published 'Childe Harold' (Cantos I., II.), 'The Waltz', 'The Giaour', 'The Bride of Abydos', the 'Ode to Napoleon Buonaparte'. At the beginning of this period Byron had suddenly become the idol of society; towards its close his personal popularity almost as rapidly declined before ...
— The Works of Lord Byron: Letters and Journals, Volume 2. • Lord Byron
... Edinburgh, where he discharged a noble part "self pulling like Captain Crowe 'for dear life, for dear life' against the whole boat's crew," speaking, that is, against 30 members of a drunken company and maintaining the predominance. Mons Meg was at that time his idol. He had a sort of avarice of proper names, and, besides half a dozen which were his legitimately, he had a claim to be called Garvadh, which uncouth appellation he claimed on no very good authority ...
— The Journal of Sir Walter Scott - From the Original Manuscript at Abbotsford • Walter Scott
... sent from the Queen to the missionaries on her accession; with assurances of public protection for all their converts. The diviners and idol keepers, who had been so influential in the palace, were dismissed to country villages. Numerous members of noble families joined the several congregations in the city, and many of the highest rank were baptized. The congregations both in town and country grew larger and larger, and it was most difficult ...
— Fruits of Toil in the London Missionary Society • Various
... her not to think more highly of us than the subject would warrant, and intimating that when we embellish a creature with colours taken from our own fancy, and so adorned, admire and praise it beyond its real merits, we make it an idol, and have nothing to expect in the end but that it will deceive our hopes, and that we shall derive nothing from it but a painful conviction of our error. Your mother heard me read the letter, she read it herself, and honoured it with her ...
— Cowper • Goldwin Smith
... logs of wood, And worship was to puppets paid; In antic dress the idol stood, And priests and people ...
— The Battle of the Books - and Other Short Pieces • Jonathan Swift
... hardly put away the dishes, which were almost as much of an idol to her as the child, when Jeanne came ...
— A Little Girl in Old Detroit • Amanda Minnie Douglas
... nothing, it is true, or next to nothing, of her nature; but that was of little consequence to one who knew nothing, and never troubled himself to know anything, of his own. Was he doomed never to come near his idol?—Ah, there she was! Yes; it was she—all but lost in a humble group near the door! His foolish heart—not foolish in that—gave a great bound, as if it would leap to her where she stood. She was dressed in white muslin, ...
— Mary Marston • George MacDonald
... for him, my dear fellow?" said Choate. "So do I. I bow down to him as the wild Indian does before his wooden idol. I know he's ugly; but I ...
— Autobiography of Seventy Years, Vol. 1-2 • George Hoar
... they have, and I'll tell you what they are. They have got lovely names; once I heard mother say that the whole four of them were called after heathen idols. Isn't it awful and exciting to be called after a heathen idol? Oh, Phil! ...
— A Little Mother to the Others • L. T. Meade
... tiredly over the black hill and down to his shack, wondering how he could compete with an idol. He realized now, it had been foolish of him to have overlooked the possible effect Thor might have upon the tribe. When it had been found three months ago, he never dreamed they would spend all their ...
— Regeneration • Charles Dye
... noted his idol's preoccupation since Miss Thornhill's advent, the self-imposed aloofness, and had drawn his own shrewd conclusions. He determined, here and now, to do Danvers a good turn, despite the frown on the doctor's face and Philip's frantic signaling. "Lieutenant Danvers is the finest ...
— A Man of Two Countries • Alice Harriman
... of whom I teach and the Great Manitou, your idol, are the same; the happy hunting ground of the Indian and the beautiful forest of the paleface are the same; the paleface and the redman are the same. There is but one Great Spirit, that is God; but one eternal home, that is heaven; but ...
— The Spirit of the Border - A Romance of the Early Settlers in the Ohio Valley • Zane Grey
... those who held Captain Blaise for a sort of idol. I had seen dozens of the kind before. Great hours for them when they could sit in with the famous Captain Blaise, and so now, with the agent bound to talk of the West Coast trade, lawful and otherwise, Captain Blaise was making ...
— Wide Courses • James Brendan Connolly
... open-hearted and ingenuous young American had enabled my sister to do, there could be no difficulty in understanding what was the matter when a young woman, who had hitherto lived only for her ideals, freedom and justice, whose idol had been humanity, but who had shown no interest in any individual man apart from the ideas to which he devoted himself, was thrown into confusion as often as she heard the footsteps of a certain man, and in ...
— Freeland - A Social Anticipation • Theodor Hertzka
... Sherman's march through Georgia, who would distinctly limit themselves to this: "I wish the South might succeed, but I don't think it will." When the impending catastrophe of the South was no longer disputable, the Saturday Review, the idol of our Club-men and University-men, of those who are at once highly cultivated and intensely English, and who fancy themselves freer from prejudice and more large-minded than others in proportion to their incapacity to perceive that their own prejudices are prejudices,—a ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 100, February, 1866 • Various
... the most pathetic and striking illustrations of the fervent devotion which was a characteristic product of Port-Royal, is supplied by Jacqueline Pascal, sister of the great Blaise Pascal. Young, spirituelle, very much sought after and the idol of brilliant companions, at the age of twenty-six she abandoned the world to devote herself to God. At thirty-six years of age she died of sorrow and remorse for having signed an equivocal formulary of Pope Alexander VI., "through pure deference ...
— Women of Modern France - Woman In All Ages And In All Countries • Hugo P. Thieme
... the year 1846 his patent rights were extended for another period of years, and he was gradually accumulating a competence as the various lines in which he held stock began to declare dividends. In addition to all this his fame had so increased that he was often alluded to in the papers as "the idol of the nation," and honorary degrees were conferred on him by various institutions both at home and abroad. Of these the one that, perhaps, pleased him the most was the degree of LL.D. bestowed by his alma mater, Yale. He alludes to it with pride in many of his letters to ...
— Samuel F. B. Morse, His Letters and Journals - In Two Volumes, Volume II • Samuel F. B. Morse |
