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Prester   Listen
noun
Prester  n.  A priest or presbyter; as, Prester John. (Obs.)






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Prester" Quotes from Famous Books



... breaking up; and, as you said yourself, to die and go to the devil is a pity for anyone. As for why I sell so cheap, I must explain to you there is a peculiarity about the bottle. Long ago, when the devil brought it first upon earth, it was extremely expensive, and was sold first of all to Prester John for many millions of dollars; but it cannot be sold at all, unless sold at a loss. If you sell it for as much as you paid for it, back it comes to you again like a homing pigeon. It follows that the price has kept falling ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 17 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... kind of opinion of them than I have. The Courtier says, that till his time it was a disgrace to a gentleman to ride on one of these creatures: but the Abyssinians, on the contrary, the nearer they are to the person of Prester John, love to be mounted upon large mules, for the greatest ...
— The Essays of Montaigne, Complete • Michel de Montaigne

... of mystery about this peculiar outbreak of lawlessness that seemed to be directed so pointedly against the British trade. The town of Rio Medio was alluded to as one of the unapproachable towns of the earth—closed, like the capital of Prester John to the travellers, or Mecca to the infidels. Nobody I ever met in Jamaica had set eyes on the place. The impression prevailed that no stranger could come out of it alive. Incredible stories were told of it in the island, and indignation at ...
— Romance • Joseph Conrad and F.M. Hueffer

... Church of the East had spread over the whole of Central Asia. The curious legends of the powerful kingdom of Prester John, somewhere in the heart of Asia, grew out of the conversion, by Nestorian merchants in the eleventh century, of a certain King of Kerait, a kingdom of Tartary to the north of China. This king is said to have requested that missionaries might be sent to him from the Church {97} of ...
— The Church and the Barbarians - Being an Outline of the History of the Church from A.D. 461 to A.D. 1003 • William Holden Hutton

... when the Portuguese in their travels and voyages discovered a Christian king among the Abyssinians, called Baleel-Gian, they confounded him with the potentate already spoken of. Nor was the blunder extraordinary, since the original Prester John was said to reign over a remote part of India; and the ancients included in that name Ethiopia and all the regions of Africa and Asia bordering on the Red Sea and on the commercial route from Egypt ...
— The Life and Voyages of Christopher Columbus (Vol. II) • Washington Irving

... its name for everything. You have heard of the country of Prester John, that mysterious Christian empire, rarely visited by ...
— Yeast: A Problem • Charles Kingsley

... (whom Jehovah has blessed) Jewish for John, is probably a copy of the Chaldean Euahanes, the Oannes of BerosusEa Khan, Hea the fish. The Greeks made it Joannes; the Arabs "Yohanna" (contracted to "Hanna," Christian) and "Yabya" (Moslem). Prester (Priest) John is probably Ung Khan, the historian prince conquered and slain by Janghiz Khan in A.D. 1202. The modern history of "John" is very extensive: there may be a full hundred varieties and derivation' of the name. ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 4 • Richard F. Burton

... the original this is called the country of Prester or Presbyter John. We have formerly, in the First Part of this work, had occasion to notice the strange idea of a Christian prince and priest, who was supposed to have ruled among the pagan nations of eastern Tartary. Driven from this false notion, by a more thorough knowledge of ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. II • Robert Kerr

... said Sidney, who did not allow the sense of defeat to overcome his duty, "and be certain to play those balls well back. It was all through my stepping out to them that caused my collapse. Only be cautious and take things coolly, and you and Prester John will ...
— Tom Finch's Monkey - and How he Dined with the Admiral • John C. Hutcheson

... Portugal. Then he sent his mariners to explore the coast of the unknown and dreaded continent. When they reached the Senegal and the Gambia, still more, when the coast of Guinea trended to the East, they remembered Prester John, and dreamed of finding a way to his fictitious realm which would afford convenient leverage for Christendom, at the back of the dark world that faced ...
— Lectures on Modern history • Baron John Emerich Edward Dalberg Acton

... at him. "I knew you'd be somebody else if I only waited long enough. Now you're Prester John and Don Quixote rolled into one. You propose by the simple process of financing the operation to turn our slums into Happy Valleys, our missions into gardens of resurrection. It's a very beautiful purpose, Jerry, quite ...
— Paradise Garden - The Satirical Narrative of a Great Experiment • George Gibbs

... Andrew's report to his sovereign, whom he rejoined in 1251 at Caesarea in Palestine, appears to have been a mixture of history and fable; the latter affects his narrative of the Mongols' rise to greatness, and the struggles of their leader, evidently Jenghiz Khan, with Prester John; it is still more evident in the position assigned to the Tatar homeland, close to the prison of Gog and Magog. On the other hand, the envoy's account of Tatar manners is fairly accurate, and his statements about Mongol Christianity and its ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia

... contrive to take the keys from your master, and I will give you a piece of wax, with which you may take an impression of the wards, for I have taken such a liking to you, I will get a locksmith, a friend of mine, to make new keys, and then I can come in at night and teach you to play better than Prester John in the Indies. It is a thousand pities that a voice like yours should be lost for want of the accompaniment of the guitar; for I would have you to know, brother Luis, that the finest voice in the world loses its perfection when it is not accompanied by some instrument, ...
— The Exemplary Novels of Cervantes • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

... supposed to have emanated from the mysterious if not mythical Prester John, it is written: 'The river Indus which issues out of Paradise flows among the plains through a certain province, and it expands, embracing the whole province with its various windings. There are found emeralds, sapphires, carbuncles, ...
— Storyology - Essays in Folk-Lore, Sea-Lore, and Plant-Lore • Benjamin Taylor

... JOHN, PRESTER, a supposed king and priest of a mediaeval kingdom in the interior of Asia; converted to Christianity by the Nestorian missionaries; was defeated and killed in 1202 by Genghis Khan, who had been tributary to him but had revolted; he was distinguished ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood

... contradict some one who was talking to some other person, the writer dropped the Celtic languages and literature, and asked him whether he did not think it a funny thing that Temugin, generally called Genghis Khan, should have married the daughter of Prester John? {373} The Lion, after giving a side-glance at the writer through his left spectacle glass, seemed about to reply, but was unfortunately prevented, being seized with an irresistible impulse to contradict a respectable ...
— The Romany Rye - A Sequel to 'Lavengro' • George Borrow

... Carl was stalking ants on a sunny hillock. Walter, lying on his stomach among the fern, was reading aloud to Mary and Di and Faith and Una from a wonderful book of myths wherein were fascinating accounts of Prester John and the Wandering Jew, divining rods and tailed men, of Schamir, the worm that split rocks and opened the way to golden treasure, of Fortunate Isles and swan-maidens. It was a great shock to Walter to learn that William Tell and Gelert were myths also; and the story of Bishop Hatto was to ...
— Rainbow Valley • Lucy Maud Montgomery

... were doubtless eagerly and bitterly canvassed. It was felt that a few years ago the honours would have gone elsewhere. In this unwonted business, in this reception of some hitherto undreamed-of and outlandish potentate—some Prester John or old Assaracus—a few years back it would have been the part of Moipu to play the hero and the host, and his young men would have accompanied and adorned the various celebrations as the acknowledged ...
— In the South Seas • Robert Louis Stevenson

... of January was passed in jousts and pastimes; ceremonial privileges were conferred on the University of Bologna; magnificent embassies from the Republic of S. Mark, glowing in senatorial robes of crimson silk, were entertained; and a singular deputation from the African court of Prester John obtained audience of the Roman Pontiff. Amid these festivities there arrived, on January 16, three delegates from Florence, who spent some weeks in fruitless efforts to obtain a hearing from the ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volumes 1 and 2 - The Catholic Reaction • John Addington Symonds

... her interviews with Aerssens. The luckless queen, who was always in want of money to satisfy the insatiable greed of her favourites, and to buy off the enmity of the great princes, was very vehement—although she knew as much of those transactions as of the finances of Prester John or the Lama of Thibet—in maintaining this claim of her government upon ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley

... her, for Our Lady's sake," said the voice of one of these laughing invisibles. "Nectabanus, thou shalt be made ambassador to Prester John's court, to show them how wisely thou canst ...
— The Talisman • Sir Walter Scott

... he obtained from the sultan such passports and letters as he might stand in need of, to the other princes in those parts. He then bought a camel, hired proper servants, and set off on his travels. He went through Turkey, Persia, and from thence to Carthage; he next went into the country of Prester John, who rides upon a white elephant, and has kings to wait on him. Fortunatus made him some rich presents, and went on to Calcutta; and, in coming back, he took Jerusalem in the way, and so came again to Alexandria, where he had the good fortune to find the same ship that had brought ...
— The Fairy Book - The Best Popular Stories Selected and Rendered Anew • Dinah Maria Mulock (AKA Miss Mulock)

... Prester John, in his letter to Manuel Comn[e]nus, says his land is the home of men with horns; of one-eyed men (the eye being in some cases before the head, and in some cases behind it); of giants, forty ells in height (i.e. 120 feet); of the phoenix, etc.; and of ghouls ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook, Vol. 3 • E. Cobham Brewer

... in prison, in prison already himself, for he may not go where he will. For if he could he would go into Portugal, Italy, Spain, France, Germany, and England, and as far in the other direction too—both into Prester John's land and into the Grand ...
— Dialogue of Comfort Against Tribulation - With Modifications To Obsolete Language By Monica Stevens • Thomas More

... European world, developing under the favorable physical conditions of the north temperate zone, knew the black man chiefly as a legend or occasional curiosity, but still as a fellow man—an Othello or a Prester John or an Antar. ...
— The Negro • W.E.B. Du Bois

... Ammodytes, of hue invisible: Sole of all serpents Scytale to shed In vernal frosts his slough; and thirsty Dipsas; Dread Amphisbaena with his double head Tapering; and Natrix who in bubbling fount Fuses his venom. Greedy Prester swells His foaming jaws; Pareas, head erect Furrows with tail alone his sandy path; Swift Jaculus there, and Seps (25) whose poisonous juice Makes putrid flesh and frame: and there upreared His regal head, and frighted from his track ...
— Pharsalia; Dramatic Episodes of the Civil Wars • Lucan



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