"Heathenish" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... made a laughing protest, but gave a virtual consent by saying, "We must all wrap up well, then." The idea seemed a scatterbrained one to her, and almost heathenish, but if afforded an opportunity for "throwing the young people together," and as such she welcomed it. Mr. Horace Bordenby was a young man with quite substantial prospects, and he had danced with Beryl at a local ...
— The Toys of Peace • Saki
... good manners. Good manners demanded some show of grief at the young man's melancholy end; but, as his lordship pointed out to his weeping daughter, higher reflections ought to triumph over the vulgar instincts of sorrow, and an etiquette almost heathenish. "Let us be thankful," said he, "that poor Beauclerk was spared some lingering malady and the shattering disappointments of a public career. He would not wish us to mourn. And indeed, any undue mourning on your part might ...
— Robert Orange - Being a Continuation of the History of Robert Orange • John Oliver Hobbes
... The sea dashes wrecks on all four sides of it, but there is no village on its shores so heathenish that if a man is cast upon the beach the inhabitants do not rejoice because ...
— The Face And The Mask • Robert Barr
... better. Well, I'll call you Mary; it's not so heathenish. And tell me what you have thought ...
— The Guinea Stamp - A Tale of Modern Glasgow • Annie S. Swan
... took place in a field. At first it was only between two who had been miscalling one another; but there was many looking on, and when the town man was like getting the worst of it the others set to, and a most heathenish fray with no sense in it ensued. One man had his arm broken. I mind Hobart the bellman going about ringing his bell and telling all persons to get within doors; but little attention was paid to him, it being notorious that Snecky had ...
— Auld Licht Idylls • J. M. Barrie
... did so, and was unable to find you, for it was very dark, and the sea was very rough," suggested the commander. "But her conduct looks heathenish, and I will warrant that she was not an English steamer; for the British tars never pass by their fellow-beings on the ocean ...
— Across India - Or, Live Boys in the Far East • Oliver Optic
... loss to know? There were but three young ladies present. My own girl, whom I went to see and did expect to meet; Miss Cavendish, whom you have just identified as one of the two alluded to, and the brilliant little creature whom you introduced by a heathenish sort of ...
— Victor's Triumph - Sequel to A Beautiful Fiend • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth
... the man in black; "eating the bodies of the dead was a heathenish custom, practised by the heirs and legatees of people who left property; and this custom is alluded to ...
— The Romany Rye • George Borrow
... Annette and Aunt Mary. True, Aunt Mary paused to sniff into her handkerchief every few minutes or to listen to Annette's French raptures as she laid upon me each foolish garment up unto the long swath of heathenish tulle she was beginning to arrange when an interruption occurred in the shape of Rufus, who put his head in the door and mysteriously summoned Polly, who had come in to exhibit her silk muslin frills, in which she was the incarnation ...
— The Golden Bird • Maria Thompson Daviess
... said Mr. Chapman, as Mr. Weston rose to lead the way to the drawing-room. "You will not find us so bad as you think. We may roast a negro now and then, when we have a barbecue, but that will be our way of showing you hospitality. You must remember we are only 'poor heathenish Southerners' according to the best received opinions of some who live with you ...
— Aunt Phillis's Cabin - Or, Southern Life As It Is • Mary H. Eastman
... right, according to the laws of God and man, in defending his household against the assaults of ignorance and superstition? Would he have been justified in sacrificing his own child, even if he could thereby save another's? And, moreover, was it not all a wild, heathenish delusion, which it was his duty as a servant of God to stamp out and root out at all hazards? Yes, there could be no doubt of it; he had but exercised his legal right. He had done what was demanded ...
— Boyhood in Norway • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen
... So spoke this poor, heathenish Kentuckian, who had not been instructed in his constitutional relations, and consequently was betrayed into acting in a sort of Christianized manner, which, if he had been better situated and more enlightened, he would not have ...
— Uncle Tom's Cabin • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... foundations Now are but robber-sees—rogues' habitations. And thus is each once-blest German state, Deep sunk in the gloom of the desolate! Whence comes all this? Oh, that will I tell— It comes of your doings, of sin, and of hell; Of the horrible, heathenish lives ye lead, Soldiers and officers, all of a breed. For sin is the magnet, on every hand, That draws your steel throughout the land! As the onion causes the tear to flow, So vice must ever be followed by woe— The W duly succeeds the V, This is the order of A, B, C. Ubi erit victoriae ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... some hesitation about the mode of summoning his Moslemah to prayer. He rejected bells as used by Christians, trumpets as the summons of the Guebres, and finally adopted the human voice. I have had equal doubt concerning my dinner-call. Gongs, now in present use, seemed a newfangled and heathenish invention, and the voice of the female womankind I rejected as equally shrill and dissonant; wherefore, contrary to the said Mahommed, or Mahomet, I have resumed the bell. It has a local propriety, since it was the conventual signal for spreading the repast in their refectory, ...
— The Antiquary, Complete • Sir Walter Scott
... and heathendom is assuming a new aspect. Under the faithful labors of self-denying men, the wilderness is beginning to blossom as the rose. Here and there, amid the sands of the wide desert once parched by sin and consumed by the fiery blaze of heathenish cruelty, the plants of grace are beginning to appear, and Christian churches are springing up to spread themselves like green vines upon the broken ruins ...
— Daughters of the Cross: or Woman's Mission • Daniel C. Eddy
... and spring, is observed as a solemn festival throughout all Persia, which has been continued from the time of idolatry; and our prophet's religion, pure as it is, and true as we hold it, has not been able to abolish that heathenish custom, and the superstitious ceremonies which are observed, not only in the great cities, but celebrated with extraordinary rejoicings in every little town, ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments vol. 4 • Anon.
... with! too good for the preceding one. All temples and altars, all priesthoods and prayers, must vanish in this one and only sacrifice. Exquisite, however, as the poem is, we cannot help wishing it looked less heathenish. ...
— England's Antiphon • George MacDonald
... this entry was hung all over with a heathenish array of monstrous clubs and spears. Some were thickly set with glittering teeth resembling ivory saws; others were tufted with knots of human hair; and one was sickle-shaped, with a vast handle sweeping round like the segment made in the new-mown grass by a long-armed mower. You shuddered ...
— Moby Dick; or The Whale • Herman Melville
... boy! So will I. I had a very early dinner. New York is the most arid place on holidays," he continued as he rattled the ice in the glasses. "When one gets too old to hit the rapids down there, and tired of gobbling food to heathenish dance music, there is absolutely no place where you can get a chop and some milk toast in peace, unless you have strong ties of blood brotherhood on upper Fifth Avenue. But you, why ...
— A Collection of Stories, Reviews and Essays • Willa Cather
... The heathenish terror with which the steam man had at first inspired the savages had rapidly worn away, the circumstances unfortunately having been such that they had very speedily learned that it was nothing more than a human invention, which of itself could ...
— The Huge Hunter - Or, the Steam Man of the Prairies • Edward S. Ellis
... desire to injure. "Your wife—you melodious sinner! Do you think such tomfoolery has any effect in this civilized country? She is about as much your wife as I am your brother. Don't talk your heathenish rot here. I said I'd help you to get your own, because you played the fiddle as few men can play it, and I owe you a lot for that hour's music; but there's nothing belonging to Gabriel Druse that belongs to you, and his ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... Ghost did not wish the converted Jews to be debarred at once from observing the legal ceremonies, while converted heathens were forbidden to observe the rites of heathendom, was in order to show that there is a difference between these rites. For heathenish ceremonial was rejected as absolutely unlawful, and as prohibited by God for all time; whereas the legal ceremonial ceased as being fulfilled through Christ's Passion, being instituted by God ...
— Summa Theologica, Part I-II (Pars Prima Secundae) - From the Complete American Edition • Saint Thomas Aquinas
... puzzle their brain, With grammar, and nonsense, and learning; Good liquor, I stoutly maintain, Gives 'genus' a better discerning. Let them brag of their heathenish gods, 5 Their Lethes, their Styxes, and Stygians: Their Quis, and their Quaes, and their Quods, They're all but a parcel of Pigeons. Toroddle, ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Oliver Goldsmith • Oliver Goldsmith
... refined selfishness, and nothing beyond. Spiritual light, faith, none; hope that to-morrow might pass as smoothly as to-day; love, only that particular affection which man feels for his female fellow-creature. Such a heathenish frame of mind will find little favor in this era of yearnings, seekings, teachings. It was, indeed, a lamentable condition of moral darkness; but the error, though grievous, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 92, June, 1865 • Various
... many sank from fever and exhaustion on the banks of Sacramento! Yet no word of sacrifices there. And why should we so regard all we give and do for the Well-beloved of our souls? Our talk of sacrifices is ungenerous and heathenish.... ...
— The Personal Life Of David Livingstone • William Garden Blaikie
... feminine influence upon her. They found, accidentally, that she did not know a word of any catechism, and, terrified, loaned her religious novels to convert her: she took them graciously, but never cut the leaves. There were to them even more heathenish indications in her hoopless straight skirts: the good little creatures zealously cut and trimmed a dress for her from the very last patterns. She put it on, and straightway went through bog and brake with Bruno for mushrooms, coming back with it in tatters. They chattered in their thin falsetto ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, October, 1877, Vol. XX. No. 118 • Various
... man, "is worth nought to a slave. What right has a slave to himself, his wife, or his children? We are kept in heathenish darkness, by laws especially enacted to make our instruction a criminal offence; and our bones, sinews, blood, and nerves are exposed in ...
— Clotelle - The Colored Heroine • William Wells Brown
... seems to be synonymous with Gentile and Gentoo; if so, the manner in which it has been applied for ages ceases to surprise, for genteel is heathenish. Ideas of barbaric pearl and gold, glittering armour, plumes, tortures, blood-shedding, and lust, should always be connected with it. Wace, in his grand Norman poem, calls the ...
— The Romany Rye - A Sequel to 'Lavengro' • George Borrow
... Chapter is (as an Excellent Person calls it) an Extravasated Account of the Circumstances, which befell the Primitive Church, during the first Four or Five Hundred Years of Christianity: It shows us the Face of the Church, first in Rome Heathenish, and then in Rome Converted, before the Man of Sin was yet come to Mans Estate. Our Text contains the Acclamations made upon the most Glorious Revolution that ever yet happened upon the Roman Empire; namely, That wherein ...
— The Wonders of the Invisible World • Cotton Mather
... the villagers who came to sit and condole with him; while his wife, and an unmarried daughter who lived at home, both deploring the wickedness of Bridgepath, tried to throw in a word of scriptural truth now and then, for the sake of instructing and improving their heathenish neighbours. ...
— Working in the Shade - Lowly Sowing brings Glorious Reaping • Theodore P Wilson
... no account, and that effort in their behalf is hardly worth while, obtained in India until recent years. The consequence was that the children of Christian congregations were neglected and allowed to absent themselves from Christian services and to grow up in ignorance and heathenish darkness. As a result of this many of these boys and girls, when they grew up into manhood and womanhood, reverted to heathenism; and many flourishing Christian congregations of the last generation became defunct. It is now understood, with increasing distinctness, ...
— India's Problem Krishna or Christ • John P. Jones
... agnosticism from Montaigne? What were really Montaigne's religious and philosophic opinions? We must consider this point also with more circumspection than has been shown by most of Montaigne's critics. The habit of calling him "sceptic," a habit initiated by the Catholic priests who denounced his heathenish use of the term "Fortune," and strengthened by various writers from Pascal to Emerson, is a hindrance to an exact notion of the facts, inasmuch as the word "sceptic" has passed through two phases of significance, and may still have either. In the original sense of the ...
— Montaigne and Shakspere • John M. Robertson
... Big Lena, Miss Penny, and Chloe; and numerous three-room cabins for the housing of whole families of Indians, which the girl fondly pictured as flocking in from the wilderness to have the errors of their heathenish religion pointed out to them upon a brand-new blackboard, and the discomforts of their nomadic lives assuaged by an introduction to collapsible bath-tubs and the multiplication table. For hers was to be a mission as well ...
— The Gun-Brand • James B. Hendryx
... worshippers of Venus Urania; it was widely spread throughout Heathendom; so widely that, as we learn from Tacitus, the priests of the Naharvali (in modern Denmark) officiated in the dress of women. Like many other heathenish customs and costumes, traces of this have descended to our own times; such, for example, may have been the exchange of dresses on New Year's Eve, &c.: see Drake's Shakspeare and his Times, vol. i. p. 124., ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 223, February 4, 1854 • Various
... existence could scarce be ended in a less gentle way. Only upon the two last, therefore, did my mind dwell; and for some time I sat coolly weighing the one against the other. Unfortunately, my young days had been passed in a manner almost heathenish; and at that time I did not even know that taking one's own life was a crime. This consideration, therefore, had no weight in the balance, and all I had to guide me was the conjecture as to which of the two modes of death would ...
— The Boy Tar • Mayne Reid
... for their sakes,—more for the love of gathering the lost sheep into the fold, than for our own satisfaction, that we seek to pitch our tents in the desert of their ignorance. They, and their children, are the prey of heathenish modern doctrines, which alas!— are too prevalent throughout the whole world at this particular time,— and, as they are at present situated, no restraint is exercised upon them for the better controlling of their natural and inherited ...
— Temporal Power • Marie Corelli
... Samuel. But, remembering what Penelope had told me about the jugglers, and the pouring of the little pool of ink into the palm of the boy's hand, I instantly suspected that I had disturbed the three Indians, lurking about the house, and bent, in their heathenish way, on discovering the whereabouts of the Diamond ...
— The Moonstone • Wilkie Collins
... balance of phrase and epithet cannot always escape what Milton himself calls "the heathenish battology of multiplying words." It serves the uses of rhetoric rather than of logic, and by the fervour of its repetitions and enlargements unfits his prose for the plainer purposes of argument or exposition. His argument is sometimes ...
— Milton • Sir Walter Alexander Raleigh
... great heat; "Tobit and his dog baith are altogether heathenish and apocryphal, and none but a prelatist or a papist would draw them into question. I doubt I hae ...
— On the Old Road, Vol. 2 (of 2) - A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays and Articles on Art and Literature • John Ruskin
... turning to the culprit, 'You know my lord's chateau, of course? My guards will take you there.' 'The devil a furlong know I of this accursed spot,' answered Tibbald viciously, 'seeing that I arrived here a good hour after dark, and by a road as heathenish as yourselves.' ...
— Merry-Garden and Other Stories • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... his lodge into which he had thrown some twigs, so that the embers which had smouldered all day now blazed up brightly. The cheerful crackling was welcome, it seemed to him to speak in English words of home and comfort, not the heathenish jargon he had listened to perforce for several weeks. Not only was it a companion but a protection. While it blazed he might be seized and put to death, but at least he should see his enemies. He missed Pocahontas for her ...
— The Princess Pocahontas • Virginia Watson
... passed to prohibit, under a severe penalty, the smoking of tobacco, which was compared to the smoke of the bottomless pit. Drinking of healths, and wearing long hair, were also forbidden, under the same penalty: the first was considered as a heathenish and idolatrous practice, grounded on the ...
— Travels in the United States of America • William Priest
... thankful that we haven't," she said severely. "That Graveyard Day is a heathenish custom, anyhow. They make a regular picnic of it, and it makes me sick to hear those school girls chattering about what they mean to plant, each one trying to outblow the other. If I had a grave there, I wouldn't make a flower garden ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1904 • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... defend, surely, their plotting to use the savages against their neighbors—against helpless women and children. That must be heathenish to ...
— In the Valley • Harold Frederic
... don't lift up," she explained, "like all the box lids as ever I saw, and me with Lady Chitterton for six years, traveling constantly. The front of the thing splits in the middle and the bottom half falls on the floor. A heathenish kind of tray lifts off from its hinges like a door, and a clothes rack pulls out on runners. 'T is a sight to curdle your blood; and the number of dresses she's brought would make her out to be richer than Crusoe!—though I have heard from a cousin of mine who ...
— Robinetta • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... of endless suffering, because it is in the creed of the church; but practically they deny it. Would it not be far better to believe steadfastly in a state of discipline and purification? Would not that be a much better incentive to prepare for the end of life, than the half heathenish idea that there is nothing whatever to fear? As a gentleman said to me lately, when speaking of the Roman Catholic fear of Purgatory, "The Methodists and Presbyterians would need some ...
— Love's Final Victory • Horatio
... scarcely keep from shuddering when I heard them speaking in this wild, heathenish, bloody sort of ...
— The Life of Mansie Wauch - tailor in Dalkeith • D. M. Moir
... greedy contention; the absence of all taste and culture,—no lines of beauty, no strains of music, no tones of kindness, no gestures of gentleness and grace, no delicate attentions, no ladies' presence, no social circle, no books, no home, no church;—Good God! what a heathenish barbarism of coarse instincts, and irreverence, and insulting equalities, and all manner of gracelessnesses, to bring the dangerous impressionability of fine childhood to! The boy was nervous, sensitive, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 11, September, 1858 • Various
... Lucy's dumb terror. It was because the little life was so important, because so much hung upon it, that everybody jumped to the conclusion that the worst issue might be looked for. Humanity has an instinctive, heathenish feeling that God will take advantage of all the special circumstances ...
— Sir Tom • Mrs. Oliphant
... told, dedicate their whole lives to the preservation and protection of certain animals; was it not that our English Bannians, while they preserve them from other enemies, will most unmercifully slaughter whole horse-loads themselves, so that they stand clearly acquitted of any such heathenish superstition. ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. IV (of X)—Great Britain and Ireland II • Various
... took Miss Mackenzie's breath away. To become the owner of Baubie Wishart, even at so low a price, seemed to her rather a heathenish proceeding, with a flavor of illegality about it to boot. There was a vacancy at the home for little girls which might be made available for the little wretch without the necessity of any preliminary of this kind; and it did not occur to her that it was a matter ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XXVI., December, 1880. • Various
... a number of heathenish customs which the widows are obliged to observe. There is, first, the terrible lamentation for the dead. Secondly, the widows must allow themselves to ...
— Primitive Love and Love-Stories • Henry Theophilus Finck
... when erroneously expressed, through involuntary ignorance, shall not be rejected by that just Being who seeks not to reap where He hath not sowed; but that it may come up as holy incense before Him, when our cold, unloving, orthodox prayers, backed by our heathenish lives, and meaner offerings on the altar of our God, shall return, blighted and blighting, into our own bosoms. Or should you be too petrified with pious horror at this—Popery, as with your longest, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 364, February 1846 • Various
... at publishing the banns, because they averred it was a heathenish name; parents have lingered their consent, because they suspected it was a fictitious name; and rivals have declined my challenges, because they pretended it was ...
— The Works of Charles Lamb in Four Volumes, Volume 4 • Charles Lamb
... iron on Hester Prynne's forehead. Madam Hester would have winced at that, I warrant me. But she,—the naughty baggage,—little will she care what they put upon the bodice of her gown! Why, look you, she may cover it with a brooch, or such like heathenish adornment, and so walk the streets ...
— The Scarlet Letter • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... peaceful time the stormiest day and the fruitfullest of future mischiefs should have been a certain Lord's Day, only a week or two after our coming. It was from Mr. Truelocke that I learnt to say 'the Lord's Day,' Sunday, said he, being a heathenish, idolatrous word, nor would he allow of the fashion of calling the day of rest 'the Sabbath.' 'We keep not holy,' said he, 'the seventh-day Sabbath of the people of Israel, but the first day made holy for us by the resurrection ...
— Andrew Golding - A Tale of the Great Plague • Anne E. Keeling
... some, before you had killed any; besids, wher bloud is one begune to be shed, it is seldome stanched of a long time after. You will say they deserved it. I grant it; but upon what provocations and invitments by those heathenish Christians?[BO] Besids, you, being no magistrats over them, were to consider, not what they deserved, but what you were by necessitie constrained to inflicte. Necessitie of this, espetially of killing ...
— Bradford's History of 'Plimoth Plantation' • William Bradford
... Burton's direction she learnt to wear stays [237] though this took a good deal of learning; and also to slap men's faces and scream when they tried to kiss her. By dint of practice she in time managed this also to perfection. Indeed, she gave up, one by one, all her heathenish ways, except swearing, and so became a well-conducted young lady, and almost English. Mrs. Burton was nothing if not a woman with a mission, and henceforward two cardinal ideas swayed her namely, first to inveigle the heathen into stays, and secondly, to induce them ...
— The Life of Sir Richard Burton • Thomas Wright
... without a moment's hesitation. "Jane after its mother, of course; and I have always thought Camilla the prettiest name in the world. Charlotte would be sure to give it some perfectly heathenish name. I wouldn't put it past her calling ...
— Further Chronicles of Avonlea • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... discharge quite as well as the first-rate mechanic. The mechanic who is master of his calling need yield to none. We would not have him like the ironmongers denounced by the old religious writer as "heathenish in their manners, puffed up with pride, and inflated with worldly prosperity"; but we would have him mindful of his true dignity. In the importance of the results which he achieves, in the magnitude of the honors he may win, in the genius he may ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 13, No. 79, May, 1864 • Various
... indulged? a mere mask for treason, very impolitically allowed to those who are too great cowards to wear their principles barefaced.— Had we not better send up a party and search the house, in case some of the bloody villains concerned in this heathenish butchery may ...
— Old Mortality, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... were shaken and the majority opined that it was a great pity. The Master was a likely young fellow; he could have his pick of almost anybody, you might think; it was too bad that he should go and take up with that queer, dumb niece of the Gordons who had been brought up in such a heathenish way. But then you never could guess what way a man's fancy would jump when he set out to pick him a wife. They guessed Neil Gordon didn't like it much. He seemed to have got dreadful moody and sulky of late and wouldn't sing in the choir ...
— Kilmeny of the Orchard • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... the more learned, it is a pretty general opinion that all the oracles were mere cheats and impostures; calculated either to serve the avaricious ends of the heathenish priests, or the political views of the princes. Bayle positively asserts, that they were mere human artifices, in which the devil had no hand. In this opinion he is strongly supported by Van Dale, a Dutch physician, and M. Fontenelle, who have expressly written on the subject."—Vide ...
— Thaumaturgia • An Oxonian
... Fathers, his parentage was humble. He owed nothing to the circumstances of wealth and rank. His father was a heathen, and lived, as Augustine tells us, in "heathenish sin." But his mother was a woman of remarkable piety and strength of mind, who devoted herself to the education of her son. Augustine never alludes to her except with veneration; and his history adds additional confirmation to the fact that nearly all the remarkable men of our world have ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume IV • John Lord
... himself to proving the solidarity of all "church priests," Establishments, and prelatical Christians generally. Father Bowles might be in a "parlish" state; but as to all supporters of bishops and the heathenish custom of fixed prayers—whether they wore black gowns or no—"a man ...
— Helbeck of Bannisdale, Vol. II • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... given him medals; he is—why, if he wished to he could write a string of letters after his name a yard long. I believe—hang it, it sounds absurd, but I believe he has been—er—knighted or something like it, in one heathenish little kingdom. And in Washington there, at the Institute, ...
— Galusha the Magnificent • Joseph C. Lincoln
... of faith that originated in the system immediately preceding. Protestant sects have transferred many of the false doctrines of Romanism to their own creeds, hence they worship the first beast just as truly as the Papists worshiped the dragon by accepting heathenish principles. The greatest principle of false doctrine that originated with Catholicism, and one that has been transferred to every Protestant sect, is, that a human organization is necessary to complete the church of Christ on earth. The church of Rome has an earthly head ...
— The Revelation Explained • F. Smith
... Not even the love of a man for a maid, Valerie. You found it so good that you were thoroughly prepared to find it false. And the moment you saw the clouds, you believed the sun to be dead. That is heathenish and the way of the people who imagine a ...
— Anthony Lyveden • Dornford Yates
... and you will not, I hope, Unman the poor knave for the sake of a trope. 'Tis a metaphor known to every plain thinker, Just as when we say, the devil's a tinker, Which cannot, in literal sense be made good, Unless by the devil we mean Mr. Wood. But some will object that the devil oft spoke, In heathenish times, from the trunk of an oak; And since we must grant there never were known More heathenish times, than those of our own; Perhaps you will say, 'tis the devil that puts The words in Wood's mouth, or speaks from his ...
— Poems (Volume II.) • Jonathan Swift
... looked down the reaches of the river only to spy out their prey or their enemy; the monks in their quiet valleys looked out for their trout-stream and kitchen-garden, but any interest beyond that would have been heathenish and dangerous. Whilst to the ancients the earth had value only as enjoyable, inhabitable, the earlier Christian ages valued it only as uninhabitable, as a wilderness repelling society. In the earliest mediaeval landscapes, the effort to represent a wilderness that is there only for the ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 77, March, 1864 • Various
... like—nay, even more than a child, over the objects which met her eyes, and which, after the rain, stood in the bright sunshine, as if in the glory of a festive-day. The world was to her now more than ever a magic ring; not the perplexing, half-heathenish, but the purely Christian, in which everything, every moment has its signification, even as every dewdrop receives its beaming point of light from the splendour of the sun. Autumn was, above all, Petrea's favourite season, and its abundance now made her soul overflow with joyful thoughts. It is ...
— The Home • Fredrika Bremer
... conventional distance. "Do you know," he said long afterwards, "the thought that first loosened me from the life I led? How can I love my fellow-men and yet get rich by the sweat of their brows? I couldn't do it. You are not a Christian, and can't call yourself one, I said to myself, if you do that. The heathenish selfishness of business competition started me ...
— Life of Father Hecker • Walter Elliott
... sister Charlotte," answered Nellie, "and lives in Rochester, in a great big house, with the handsomest things; but she don't come here often, it's so heathenish, she says." ...
— Cousin Maude • Mary J. Holmes
... all the emphasis he could give them, but neither Lize nor Lee would consent to go. "It would be heathenish to leave him alone in this ...
— Cavanaugh: Forest Ranger - A Romance of the Mountain West • Hamlin Garland
... heathenish story with regard to money is the following, which may be taken as a specimen of the Skazkas which bear the impress of the genuine reverence which the peasants feel for their religion, whatever may be the feelings they entertain towards its ministers. ...
— Russian Fairy Tales - A Choice Collection of Muscovite Folk-lore • W. R. S. Ralston
... eagerness for change, and its ridiculous mania for appropriating to itself foreign ideas which conflict with our beautiful national constitution, might disappear. I fear greatly that among the crowd of mad youth who pursue vain Utopias and heathenish novelties, my desires are not destined to be fulfilled, and that the contemplation of the illustrious virtues of the past will remain confined within the same narrow circle as to-day. What is to be done, my friend? I am afraid that very soon our poor Spain is doomed to be so disfigured ...
— Dona Perfecta • B. Perez Galdos
... upholstered with a worn piece of Axminster and a bit of yellow silk with half a dragon on it. The ceremony, one could see, was not new. Vanishing into the further mysteries of the rear, he brought out a bowl of tea, steaming, a small dish of heathenish things, nuts perhaps, or preserves, deposited the offering on the minister's pointed knees, and retired behind the counter to ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1917 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... long I had continued to live in this despairing and heathenish condition, when one day, in harvest time, Madelena brought good Father Antonio to see me. This Father Antonio was the priest of the chapel of Santa Maria, who had performed the marriage ceremony between ...
— The Lost Lady of Lone • E.D.E.N. Southworth
... for Him to be a God, and if the Lord of Hosts is an intelligent Creator and expects us, as His children, to worship Him in an intelligent manner, the Catholic Church and all of her followers are sinning against God every day, as her mode of worship is steeped in the drugs of heathenish superstitions. ...
— Thirty Years In Hell - Or, From Darkness to Light • Bernard Fresenborg
... is often afflicted with. I have just sent to the press a translation of an old Greek poet. I do not expect he will please you much, as he treats of little but charioteering, boxing, running, and some old heathenish stories. But I will send you a copy, not requiring you to read it. Mrs. C., if she were at my elbow, would, I am sure, desire to ...
— Life and Remains of John Clare - "The Northamptonshire Peasant Poet" • J. L. Cherry
... message? There was present a renegade fellow, Pat Tyhee (big Pat, or chief Pat), not an Irishman. He was a Shoshone who years before had gone to live among the Nez Perces and had married a woman of them. He could interpret Hays, but could he be trusted? He was a very heathenish heathen. The missionary teacher, Miss Frost, consulted with Mr. Hays and myself as to the wisdom of asking Pat to play interpreter for the momentous occasion; after fervently praying we concluded to take the risk and trust to God's leading. Pat, the heathen, was chosen. It was a queer ...
— Trail Tales • James David Gillilan
... fairies, but, like the Scotch Presbyterians, she fears that they are wicked. "Still, you say they haven't got immortal souls to save, and I don't suppose they're responsible for their actions," she allows; "but as for traipsing up to those heathenish, haunted woods when all Christian folks are in bed, I don't believe in it, and neither would Mr. Beresford; but if you're set on it, I shall go ...
— Penelope's Irish Experiences • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... prior to the spread of Christianity. Indeed the earliest proof of their observance in Northern Europe is furnished by the attempts made by Christian synods in the eighth century to put them down as heathenish rites.[263] Not uncommonly effigies are burned in these fires, or a pretence is made of burning a living person in them; and there are grounds for believing that anciently human beings were actually burned on these occasions. A general survey of ...
— Balder The Beautiful, Vol. I. • Sir James George Frazer
... of the Indians in their religious worship,[21] are more after the Mosaic institution, than of Pagan imitation. This could not be the fact if a majority of the old nations were of heathenish descent. They are utter strangers to all the gestures practiced by Pagans in their religious rites. They have likewise an appellative, which with them is the mysterious, essential name of God; the tetragrammaton, which they never use in common speech. They are very particular ...
— Chronicles of Border Warfare • Alexander Scott Withers
... woman as if he had been with her all the night before. The unconscious operations of life went on in him only to perpetuate this excitement. His brain held but one image now—vibrated, burned with it. It was a heathenish feeling; without ...
— Youth and the Bright Medusa • Willa Cather
... embrace all classes, from the samurai lawyer or gentleman to the humblest citizen, and from gray-haired old men and women to shock-headed youngsters, who merely come with their mothers. Many of these same mothers have been persuaded by the missionaries to cease the heathenish practice of blackening their teeth, and so appear at the meeting in even rows of becoming white ivories like their unmarried sisters. Numbers of curious outsiders congregate about the open doors and peep in and stand and listen to ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle Volume II. - From Teheran To Yokohama • Thomas Stevens
... was anxious to see the wonderful object. She saw it, and she saw the holy Fathers, and they converted her against the superstitious heathenish wishes of her husband. And more ...
— Maruja • Bret Harte
... she demanded severely. "This town life is making me forget my religion already, and as for you, you worldly-minded young sinner, you ought to be ashamed of yourself, beguiling me with your heathenish dance parties. Go along now and let me get my mind in ...
— Miss Pat at School • Pemberton Ginther
... that when I was young and romantic, I bought that altar— it is a Hymeneal altar, they say—and said I would pour a libation upon it at my marriage; a sentimental and heathenish notion enough." ...
— The Pagans • Arlo Bates
... greater devils, or the most important of them, had distinguishing names—strange, uncouth names; some of them telling of a heathenish origin; others inexplicable and almost unpronounceable—as Ashtaroth, Bael, Belial, Zephar, Cerberus, Phoenix, Balam (why he?), and Haagenti, Leraie, Marchosias, Gusoin, Glasya Labolas. Scot enumerates seventy-nine, the above amongst them, and he ...
— Elizabethan Demonology • Thomas Alfred Spalding
... of these practices are very deeply rooted in the native mind. Even at Loanda they retire out of the city in order to perform their heathenish rites without the cognizance of the authorities. Their religion, if such it may be called, is one of dread. Numbers of charms are employed to avert the evils with which they feel themselves to ...
— Missionary Travels and Researches in South Africa - Journeys and Researches in South Africa • David Livingstone
... lady of Ardvoirlich, into the old church of Balquidder, nearly in the centre of their country, where the Laird of MacGregor and all his clan being convened for the purpose, laid their hands successively on the dead man's head, and swore, in heathenish and barbarous manner, to defend the author of the deed. This fierce and vindictive combination gave the author's late and lamented friend, Sir Alexander Boswell, Bart., subject for a spirited poem, entitled "Clan-Alpin's Vow," which was printed, but not, I ...
— A Legend of Montrose • Sir Walter Scott
... the brother. "When he was at home, he was always saying things which our mother called 'impolite,' our father 'outlandish,' and the blacks 'right down heathenish.' However, with all his roughness, I believe there never was a more truly honorable man, or a more ...
— Tempest and Sunshine • Mary J. Holmes
... That I have not shown them in their true form, I am not afraid that any body will complain. I have given an account of every thing, as far as it was consistent with moral decency. No pen, however cynical or heathenish, would venture to produce, in open day, the horrid passages which I have put out of sight; and, instead of regretting any part that I have suppressed, the very suppression will easily show to what degree the Athenians were infected with licentiousness ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson in Nine Volumes - Volume V: Miscellaneous Pieces • Samuel Johnson
... "For some years he wandered in heathenish darkness. He forsook the safe and good though narrow way of his forefathers, and of his father and mother, and his gentle Uncle Benjamin, without finding better and larger ways of his own. He was in danger of becoming ...
— Benjamin Franklin, A Picture of the Struggles of Our Infant Nation One Hundred Years Ago - American Pioneers and Patriots Series • John S. C. Abbott
... had under the pope four score and fifteen, called festival, and thirty profesti, beside the Sundays, they are all brought unto seven and twenty, and, with them, the superfluous numbers of idle wakes, guilds, fraternities, church-ales, help-ales, and soul-ales, called also dirge-ales, with the heathenish rioting at bride-ales, are well diminished and laid aside. And no great matter were it if the feasts of all our apostles, evangelists, and martyrs, with that of all saints, were brought to the holy days that follow ...
— Chronicle and Romance (The Harvard Classics Series) • Jean Froissart, Thomas Malory, Raphael Holinshed
... to desire the episcopal office. Hence our Lord reproved His disciples for seeking precedence, by saying to them (Matt. 20:25): "You know that the princes of the gentiles lord it over them." Here Chrysostom says (Hom. lxv in Matth.) that in these words "He points out that it is heathenish to seek precedence; and thus by comparing them to the gentiles He ...
— Summa Theologica, Part II-II (Secunda Secundae) • Thomas Aquinas
... and gave Seward the praise. "Oh," quoth Sir William Scott, "[Greek: makaron] is Heathenish, and the Dean and Chapter will hesitate." "The more fools they," said I. But to prevent disputes I ...
— Life Of Johnson, Volume 4 (of 6) • Boswell
... against John Bull that he had no tact in dealing with other races than his own. He did not mean to be unjust or unfair, but he trampled on the sensitiveness, which he could not understand. In Ireland he called the Roman Catholic faith "a lie and a heathenish superstition"; or, in a lighter mood, made imbecile jokes about pigs and potatoes. In Scotland, thriftiness and oatmeal were the themes of his pleasantry; in Wales, he found the language, the literature, and the local nomenclature equally comic, and reserved his loudest guffaw ...
— Prime Ministers and Some Others - A Book of Reminiscences • George W. E. Russell
... the Vidame intervened with an explanation which made America appear in a light less heathenish. "The planting of Saint Barbara's grain," he said, "is a custom that I think is peculiar to the South of France. In almost every household in Provence, and over in Languedoc too, on Saint Barbara's day the women fill two, sometimes three, plates with wheat or lentils which ...
— The Christmas Kalends of Provence - And Some Other Provencal Festivals • Thomas A. Janvier
... to keep the Indians under his influence, or shall adopt any means to prevent the attendance of children at the agency schools, or shall use any of the arts of the conjurer to prevent the Indians from abandoning their heathenish rites and customs, he shall be adjudged guilty of an "Indian offense," and upon conviction of any one or more of these specified practices, or any other, in the opinion of the court, of an equally anti-progressive ...
— Sioux Indian Courts • Doane Robinson
... with a troubled look, "me and Hiram consider it's a heathenish sort of name for a young gal, but you'll find it in my brother's letter." She took a letter from under the lid of a large Bible on the table and pointed to ...
— Trent's Trust and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... For this the fair Eugenia styled him "a silly old fool," wondering "what business it was to him," and "why he need be so much interested in one who, if she had any sense, would, in less than two weeks, turn him from the house, with his heathenish ways." Still, fret as she would, she could not in the least retard the progress of matters, and one morning towards the last of October, she heard from Mrs. Leah, whom she met at a store in the village, that the wedding was to take place at the house of the ...
— Dora Deane • Mary J. Holmes
... profess themselves to be Christians. Scores of them by their lives and testimonies assure us of the blessed consciousness that the Lord Jesus is indeed their own loving Saviour. Every conjuring drum has ceased. All vestiges of the old heathenish life are ...
— By Canoe and Dog-Train • Egerton Ryerson Young
... had suspicions before, and now they were confirmed—that the present crowding of services was most inexpedient. And as I pondered on the matter, instead of trying to go on praying after I had already uttered my soul, which is but a heathenish attempt after much speaking, I thought how our Lord had given us such a short prayer to pray, and I began to wonder when or how the services came to be so heaped the one on the back of the other as they now were. ...
— The Seaboard Parish Vol. 2 • George MacDonald
... soil uncultivated here," he said; "and, I may add, without the sinful leaven of self-commendation, that, since my short sojourn in these heathenish abodes, much good seed has been ...
— The Last of the Mohicans • James Fenimore Cooper
... sent to us by God as a gift and comfort in our misery. She, on the other hand, would not hear of this, and told us that she thought she had been called Undine by her parents, and that Undine she wished still to be called. Now this appeared to me a heathenish name, not to be found in any calendar, and I took counsel therefore of a priest in the city. He also would not hear of the name of Undine, but at my earnest request he came with me through the mysterious forest in order to perform the rite of baptism here in my cottage. The little one stood ...
— Undine - I • Friedrich de la Motte Fouque
... the parents, which by them were not begot [Sidenote: Nuns concubines.] in lawfull matrimonie but on concubines, whether they were nunnes or secular women. Also of paiment of tithes, performing of vowes, auoiding of vndecent apparell, and abolishing of all maner of heathenish vsages and customes that sounded contrarie to the order [Sidenote: Curtailing of horsses.] of christanitie, as curtailing of horsses, and eating of horsses flesh. These things with manie other expressed in 20 principall articles (as ...
— Chronicles (1 of 6): The Historie of England (6 of 8) - The Sixt Booke of the Historie of England • Raphael Holinshed
... be understood as a glorification of the relations and arrangements of the cultus as we find them (say) in the first centuries of the divided kingdom. All that seems offensive and heathenish to a later age is here consecrated and countenanced by Jehovah Himself and His favoured ones,— the high places, the memorial stones (maccceboth), the trees, ...
— Prolegomena to the History of Israel • Julius Wellhausen
... they choose to send me. I confess that I have a preference for Africa; there are certain kings there"—he pronounced several crack-jaw names—"that I can not think wholly ill of. There must be some hope of conversion among them. I trust to wean them from that heathenish slave-trade. They may make use of their people at home in planting sugar-cane and cultivating rice. In a couple of years I will send you, by way of London, the first ...
— Debit and Credit - Translated from the German of Gustav Freytag • Gustav Freytag
... no ice, nor did we miss it, but the judge had a plateful of chips on the table before him, one of which he every now and then popped into his long thin bell—glass of claret, diluting it, I should have thought, in rather a heathenish manner; but n'importe, he worked away, sawing off pieces now and then from the large lump in the blanket, (to save the tear and wear attending a fracture,) which was handed to him by his servant, ...
— Tom Cringle's Log • Michael Scott
... Their hearts beat violently while they drew near to the inn. There was no light in the room. They groped about the porch, but not a soul was to be seen. Dachsel and Wachsel, however, were making a heathenish ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 3 • Various
... sister Charlotte," answered Nellie, "and lives in Rochester, in a great big house, with the handsomest things; but she don't come here often, it's so heathenish, ...
— Cousin Maude • Mary J. Holmes
... thinks that mistletoe was never put up in churches but by mistake or ignorance of the sextons: it being a heathenish and profane plant, and therefore assigned to the kitchen. Mr. Brand made many diligent inquiries after the truth of this point. He learnt at Bath that it never came into churches there. An old Sexton at Teddington told him that mistletoe was once put up in the church there, but was by the clergyman ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 20, No. - 582, Saturday, December 22, 1832 • Various
... knowledge and authority of Him that revealed Him, not by the clear discernment and just judgment of us that received that revelation.' I do tell thee, Lettice—what with this man o' the one side with his philosophical follies, and Parson Turnham on the other, with his heathenish fooleries, I am at times well-nigh like old Elias, ready to say, 'Now then, O Lord, take me out of this wicked world, for I cannot stand it ...
— It Might Have Been - The Story of the Gunpowder Plot • Emily Sarah Holt
... "I crave your pardon, good our imperial spouse, and our daughter born in the purple chamber. I remember me, our most amiable and accomplished daughter, that last night you wished to know the particulars of the battle of Laodicea, with the heathenish Arabs, whom Heaven confound. And for certain considerations which moved ourselves to add other enquiries to our own recollection, Achilles Tatius, our most trusty Follower, was commissioned to introduce into ...
— Waverley Volume XII • Sir Walter Scott
... hurt. He had prepared me in a measure for the visit, but the reality was even worse than I anticipated. And still they are the kindest-hearted people in the world, while Mr. Douglas is a man, they say, of excellent sense. George never lived at home much, and their heathenish ways mortify him, I know, though he never says a word except that ...
— Maggie Miller • Mary J. Holmes
... knew her best held their peace in her presence, and then went away and spoke softly to each other of the life that seemed wasted and the heart that was so hardened with its trouble. "What would the world be if every one were to bear their sorrows so badly?" they would say. "There is something heathenish in such utter want of resignation. Oh, yes, it was very sad, her losing her husband and children, but it all happened four or five years ago; and you know"—And here people's voices dropped a little ominously, for there were vague ...
— Not Like Other Girls • Rosa N. Carey
... child around to train and stew over, and no doubt she would be getting married just the time when she, Mrs. Perkins, would need her the most. The Lord hadn't seen fit to give her any children to comfort her old age; after all, would she want a delicate little thing like this child with a heathenish name! ...
— A Little Girl in Old Boston • Amanda Millie Douglas
... some of their conventions or hurting their feelings. The Black and the White mix very quaintly in their ways. Sometimes the White shows in spurts of fierce, childish pride—which is Pride of Race run crooked—and sometimes the Black in still fiercer abasement and humility, half heathenish customs and strange, unaccountable impulses to crime. One of these days, this people— understand they are far lower than the class whence Derozio, the man who imitated Byron, sprung—will turn out ...
— The Works of Rudyard Kipling One Volume Edition • Rudyard Kipling
... category—is to be sought the true cause of our failures with the Indians, to whom the strange and intense story of the Gospel appears at first in something as wild and marvelous as some of their own relations; and who are, at any rate, firmly fixed in their heathenish rites and devotions to a subtil system of deism, and the invocation of gods of the elements ...
— Personal Memoirs Of A Residence Of Thirty Years With The Indian Tribes On The American Frontiers • Henry Rowe Schoolcraft |
