"Pagan" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... 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, ...
— Chronicles of Border Warfare • Alexander Scott Withers
... into charcoal, it cooks his food; and, supported on blocks of stones, rails in his lands. He impels his canoe through the water with a paddle of the wood, and goes to battle with clubs and spears of the same hard material. In Pagan Tahiti, a coco-nut branch was the symbol of regal authority. Laid upon the sacrifice in the temple, it made the offering sacred; and with it the priests chastised and put to flight the evil spirits which assailed them. The supreme majesty of Oro, the great god of their mythology, was declared ...
— The Commercial Products of the Vegetable Kingdom • P. L. Simmonds
... it if they are spared to see many years) that civilisation alone will never improve the heart. Let history speak and it will tell you that deeds of darkest hue have been perpetrated in so-called civilised, though pagan lands. Civilisation is like the polish that beautifies inferior furniture, which water will wash off if it be but hot enough. Christianity resembles dye, which permeates every fibre of the fabric, and which ...
— The Dog Crusoe and his Master • R.M. Ballantyne
... aesthetic education, the Greek sarcophagus on which was carved the Hunting of Meleager, and the Greek urn with Bacchic figures wreathing it in classic symmetry. With his mind tuned to the beautiful, the boy Nioola gazed at the work of genuine pagan Greek artists, who knew the sinuousness of the human form and the joy of living with no thought of the morrow. These joyous pagan elements, grafted on solemn religious surroundings and influences, combined ...
— Arts and Crafts in the Middle Ages • Julia De Wolf Addison
... and twenty millions of Mohammedans, who spurn the name of Jesus as a Saviour, and who have set up Mahomet as their prophet. I want you also to look at all the dark spots, where, with comparatively a few exceptions, the people are in pagan darkness, without any knowledge of God and the only Saviour of sinners Jesus Christ. And in view of all this darkness—in view of the need of more than half a million of ministers of the Gospel to preach the news of salvation to them, I want you, my dear boys, to ask ...
— Dr. Scudder's Tales for Little Readers, About the Heathen. • Dr. John Scudder
... slightest trace of Christianity. And we believe it will not be disputed, that in a country so pious as that of Wales, it would have been next to impossible for the poet, though ever so much upon his guard, to avoid all allusion to the system of revelation. On the contrary, every thing is Pagan, and in perfect conformity with the theology we are taught to believe prevailed at ...
— Imogen - A Pastoral Romance • William Godwin
... understand how a ceremony of that kind would soothe the last hours of Tim Hurley," said the pagan Endicott, "but I am curious, if you will pardon me, to know if the holy oils would have a ...
— The Art of Disappearing • John Talbot Smith
... with what voluptuousness she revels in all the joys of primitive life, and imagines herself living in the beautiful times of ancient Greece. There are days and pages when George Sand, under the afflux of physical life, is pagan. Her genius then is that of the greenwood divinities, who, at certain times of the year, were intoxicated by the odour of the meadows and the sap of the woods. If some day we were to have her complete correspondence given ...
— George Sand, Some Aspects of Her Life and Writings • Rene Doumic
... a regret. Who was the fellow who sent for a fellow to let him see how a Christian could die? I can fancy my father doing the same thing, only there would be nothing about Christianity in the message. He would bid you come and see a pagan depart in peace, and would be very unhappy if he thought that your dinner would be disturbed by the ceremony. Now come down to breakfast, and ...
— Mr. Scarborough's Family • Anthony Trollope
... and hope from me to the few promises he had heard me utter! The faith that limits itself to the promises of God, seems to me to partake of the paltry character of such a faith in my child—good enough for a Pagan, but for a Christian a miserable and wretched faith. Those who rest in such a faith would feel yet more comfortable if they had God's bond instead of his word, which they regard not as the outcome of his character, ...
— Unspoken Sermons - Series I., II., and II. • George MacDonald
... and retired to Rome, in which city he composed his History. We know not when he was born, or when he died, except that from one or two incidental passages in his work it is plain that he lived nearly to the end of the fourth century: and it is even uncertain whether he was a Christian or a Pagan; though the general belief is, that he adhered to the religion of the ancient Romans, without, however, permitting it to lead him even to speak ...
— The Roman History of Ammianus Marcellinus • Ammianus Marcellinus
... this passage of Matthew, the reference is to the Jews even at the time when it was yet lawful to keep the legal observances, in so far as he whom they converted to Judaism "from paganism, was merely misled; but when he saw the wickedness of his teachers, he returned to his vomit, and becoming a pagan deserved greater punishment for his treachery." Hence it is manifest that it is not blameworthy to draw others to the service of God or to the religious life, but only when one gives a bad example to the person converted, whence ...
— Summa Theologica, Part II-II (Secunda Secundae) • Thomas Aquinas
... intercepting, to Japon, where they already had a trading-post, their trade would be established firmly in that land, and that new field of Christendom would be in danger of heresy (which spreads like a cancer), in addition to the daily calamities to which it is subject under pagan lords. The honor of the Spanish nation was also concerned, because the temper of many of these peoples is, "Long live the conqueror!" and they do not dare to stir because of their idea of the Spaniards. If these nations should become insolent ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898: Volume XVII, 1609-1616 • Various
... a face purified of all passion by tears and prayer, where she had seen the soulless face of a Pagan's orgy. ...
— Phyllis of Philistia • Frank Frankfort Moore
... trust the pagan king: but with a sword he bade them take off her head. The damsel did not gainsay this thing: she would fain let go this worldly life if Christ gave command. And in shape of a dove she flew to heaven. Let us all pray that she may deign to ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 1 - From the Beginning to 1800 • George Saintsbury
... the unknown dead. Many of them were decorated with fresh flowers or those metal wreaths that the Europeans use, and where a company lay together a little monument had been erected with a simple inscription. It would seem that these Champenoise peasants still retain some of that pagan reverence for the dead which their Latin ancestors had cultivated, mingled with passionate love for those who gave themselves in defense of ...
— The World Decision • Robert Herrick
... the Romans, and took possession of the land. Saxon proprietors compelled the people, whose lives they spared, to till the very lands on which their fathers had lived under the Roman Government or their own chiefs. Pagan worship was reintroduced; but when Sigberht, the son of Redwald, King of East Anglia, reigned, he sent to France for Christian ministers, and one of them, Felix, a Burgundian, landed at Felixstowe, and there commenced his Christian labours. Felix ...
— East Anglia - Personal Recollections and Historical Associations • J. Ewing Ritchie
... Mardonius. In grammar, Nicocles, the Lacedaemonian, was his instructor; and Ecbolius, the sophist, who was at that time a Christian, taught him rhetoric; for the Emperor Constantius had made provision that he should have no pagan masters, lest he should be seduced to pagan superstitions; for Julian was a Christian at the beginning. Since he made great progress in literature, the report began to spread that he was capable of ruling the Roman Empire; and this popular rumor becoming generally ...
— A Source Book for Ancient Church History • Joseph Cullen Ayer, Jr., Ph.D.
... obtain it. Being at Iona, where he had entered the community as a simple monk on renouncing his charge in Ireland, he announced one day to the brethren in the spirit of prophecy that an irruption of pagan Danes was about to take place. He exhorted those who felt themselves too weak for martyrdom to seek safety in flight. They concealed the shrine of St. Columba's {8} relics, and many of the monks betook themselves to ...
— A Calendar of Scottish Saints • Michael Barrett
... immolation of Oriental slaves upon the tomb? Did they think that long rows of Oriental dancing-girls would sway hither and thither in an ecstasy of lament? Did they look for the funeral games of Patroclus? I fear they had no such splendid and pagan meaning. I fear they were only using the words "quiet" and "modest" as words to fill up a page—a mere piece of the automatic hypocrisy which does become too common among those who have to write rapidly and often. The word "modest" will soon ...
— All Things Considered • G. K. Chesterton
... the basin on the ground, with which Don Quixote contented himself, saying that the pagan had shown his discretion and imitated the beaver, which finding himself pressed by the hunters bites and cuts off with its teeth that for which by its natural instinct, it knows ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 7 • Charles H. Sylvester
... with Cheldric, the Saxon leader in Germany, and promised to give him all that part of England which lies between the Humber and Scotland, together with all that Hengist and Horsa held in Kent, if he would aid him against King Arthur. Accordingly, Cheldric came over with 800 ships, filled "with pagan soldiers" (British History, ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook, Vol. 3 • E. Cobham Brewer
... compassing their designs! compelling those who ate of the bread of the accused, and drank of his cup, and were his own domestic servants, and confidential inmates of his home, to bear the testimony of death against him: verifying among Christians what the Lord of Christians prophesied as the result of pagan opposition to the Gospel itself, "A man's foes shall be those ...
— Henry of Monmouth, Volume 2 - Memoirs of Henry the Fifth • J. Endell Tyler
... Mediterranean the glow of St. John's fires might have been seen. The Emperor Charlemagne in the ninth century forbade the custom as a heathen rite, but the Church endeavoured to win over the custom from its Pagan associations and to attach to it a Christian signification. In the island of Jersey the older inhabitants used to light fires under large iron pots full of water, in which they placed silver articles—as spoons, mugs, &c., and then ...
— Old English Sports • Peter Hampson Ditchfield
... are addressed to their idle deities, nor any allusions to their fabulous actions. 'I have more than once (says Sir Richard) publicly declared my opinion, that a Christian poet cannot but appear monstrous and ridiculous in a Pagan dress. That though it should be granted, that the Heathen religion might be allowed a place in light and loose songs, mock heroic, and the lower lyric compositions, yet in Christian poems, of the sublime and greater kind, a mixture of the Pagan theology must, by all who are masters of reflexion and ...
— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753),Vol. V. • Theophilus Cibber
... which confronted life and Time in absolute stillness; in a mountain, in this temple. And the temple spoke to something far down within her; to something which desired long silences and deep retirement, to something mystic which she did not understand. The temple was Pagan and she knew that. But that in her to which it spoke was not Pagan. Before she left Athens she meant to realize that the soul of man, when it speaks through mighty and pure effort, of whatever kind, always speaks ...
— In the Wilderness • Robert Hichens
... best histories are taken for granted, and are the frequent subjects both of conversation and writing. Though I am convinced that Caesar's ghost never appeared to Brutus, yet I should be much ashamed to be ignorant of that fact, as related by the historians of those times. Thus the Pagan theology is universally received as matter for writing and conversation, though believed now by nobody; and we talk of Jupiter, Mars, Apollo, etc., as gods, though we know, that if they ever existed at all, it was ...
— The PG Edition of Chesterfield's Letters to His Son • The Earl of Chesterfield
... of true humour. Occasionally Mr. BARRY PAIN wings a shaft against the comfortably brutal doctrines of the average and orthodox householder, male or female. But on these occasions he uses the classical fables and the pagan deities as his bow, and the twang of his shot cannot offend those who play the part of target and are pierced. Read the four stories from the "Entertainments of Kapnides" in the "Canadian Canoe" series, or, "An Hour of Death," "The Last Straw," and "Number One Hundred and ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 101, August 29, 1891 • Various
... the story of the miraculous birth, and stepping aside a little from the woman and the Child, he talked gravely and earnestly, answering all questions, since, as he said, it was his duty to tell the great thing to all the world, to Jew and pagan alike. ...
— The Wolf's Long Howl • Stanley Waterloo
... found any real response to the question which was, and is, the test question which will disclose, according to its answer, whether Christianity is a living voice from on high, or an echo from the Pagan past; and a debased echo at that. Debased, for if Adams could have stood in the Agora of Athens and told his tale of horror and truth, could Demosthenes have taken up the story; could Leopold the Barbarian have been a king in those days, and have done in those days, ...
— The Pools of Silence • H. de Vere Stacpoole
... following in the wake of M. L'Abbe Gaume, maintained that one of the principal causes of the weakening of faith since the time of the renaissance, was the obligation imposed on youth of studying, almost exclusively, Pagan authors. Mgr. Dupanloup contended rather against exaggerations of this opinion than against the idea itself. But having developed his views in an episcopal letter to the professors of his lesser seminaries, he would not allow them to be opposed; and so, like Mgr. Sibour, ...
— Pius IX. And His Time • The Rev. AEneas MacDonell
... that I use on this occasion the words of a better Critick, who yet was not willing to carry the illiteracy of our Poet too far:—"They who are in such astonishment at the learning of Shakespeare, forget that the Pagan Imagery was familiar to all the Poets of his time; and that abundance of this sort of learning was to be picked up from almost every English book that he could take into his hands." For not to insist ...
— Eighteenth Century Essays on Shakespeare • D. Nichol Smith
... his book to be that "the deeds achieved by our Spaniards in the discovery, conquest, and conversion of the Filipinas Islands—as well as various fortunes that they have had from time to time in the great kingdoms and among the pagan peoples surrounding the islands" may be known. The first seven chapters of the book treat of "discoveries, conquests, and other events ... until the death of Don Pedro de Acuna." The eighth chapter treats of the natives, government, conversion, ...
— History of the Philippine Islands Vols 1 and 2 • Antonio de Morga
... by their gestures grief and despair. In the open fields a grave was dug, and into it the figure was lowered amid weeping and wailing, after which games and dances were begun, "calling to mind the funeral games celebrated in old times by the pagan Slavonians." In Little Russia the figure of Yarilo was laid in a coffin and carried through the streets after sunset surrounded by drunken women, who kept repeating mournfully, "He is dead! he is dead!" The men lifted and shook the figure as if they were ...
— The Golden Bough - A study of magic and religion • Sir James George Frazer
... filth of the time is uttered, and with such impropriety of phrase, such plenty of solecisms, such dearth of sense, so bold prolepses, so racked metaphors, with brothelry able to violate the ear of a pagan, and blasphemy to turn the blood of a ...
— Shakspere And Montaigne • Jacob Feis
... could be a Christian within and remain a pagan without," I answered grimly; "though alas! that may not be. Martina, do you not understand that it was for no such reasons as these that I kissed the Cross; that in so doing I sought not fortune, ...
— The Wanderer's Necklace • H. Rider Haggard
... acquiring from books by the study of years. But this was better than books. These Roman houses, into which he could walk, were far better than any number of plans or engraved prints, however accurately done. These temples afforded an insight into the old pagan religion better far than volumes of description. These streets, and shops, and public squares, and wall, and gates, and tombs, all gave him an insight into the departed Roman civilization that was far fresher, and more vivid, ...
— Among the Brigands • James de Mille
... rocky cove, no smooth strand, no rubbish-accumulating creek, no mangrove-fringed islet, no coral esplanade white under the tropic sun, no sand-bank with crest of windshaken bush, is free. It is Christmas. Christian and pagan alike tell it to the sea, and the sea tells it ...
— Tropic Days • E. J. Banfield
... representing the torments of purgatory. What must he do but report it, and immediately a hue and cry arises that I am being corrupted with Popish books. In vain do I tell them that their admirable John Milton, the only poet save Sternhold and Hopkins that my father deems not absolute pagan, knew, loved, and borrowed from Dante. All my books are turned over as ruthlessly as ever Don Quixote's by the curate and the barber, and whatever Mr. Horncastle's erudition cannot vouch for is summarily handed over to the kitchen wench to light the fires. The ...
— A Reputed Changeling • Charlotte M. Yonge
... kings, and be governed in all their actions, by the principles of the Bible. A sort of Jewish theocracy was to be restored on earth, and he was to be the organ of the divine will, as was Joshua of old, when he led the Israelites against the pagan inhabitants of the promised land. Up to this time, no inconsistencies disgraced him. His prayers and his exhortations were in accordance with his actions, and the most scrutinizing malignity could attribute nothing to him but sincerity and ardor in the cause which ...
— A Modern History, From the Time of Luther to the Fall of Napoleon - For the Use of Schools and Colleges • John Lord
... interpreted by laymen, and that the Church had alone the power to explain it. I observed that the Church of Christ had ever explained it exactly as I did, and to that Church I belonged; that the system which he called 'The Church,' was built up at Rome by pagan priests, and had ever since been employed in adding falsehood to falsehood, for the sake of imposing on the minds of the people, and compelling them to do their will; and that, if he wished to serve Christ, he ...
— Villegagnon - A Tale of the Huguenot Persecution • W.H.G. Kingston
... That emperor rebuilt Florence, but experienced some difficulty in doing so, by reason of the statue of Mars, which had been thrown into the Arno. The temple, converted to Christian purposes, had been the only building to escape the wrath of Totila; but owing to the pagan incantations practised when the town was originally consecrated to the god of war, the statue of that divinity would not consent to lie quietly and ignominiously in the bed of the Arno, while his temple and town were appropriated to other purposes. The river was dragged. The statue was found and ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I, No. 1, Nov. 1857 • Various
... from the Old Tower, his youngest child succumbed to the ravages of a malignant fever. He and his wife were distracted, as, in spite of their pagan instincts and habits, their devotion to their offspring was a passion. They remembered Mr. Turnbull appealing to them to flee from the wrath to come by amending their ways, lest something terrible befell ...
— Looking Seaward Again • Walter Runciman
... impending doom: That Emperour, Charles of France the Douce, Into this land is come, us to confuse. I have no host in battle him to prove, Nor have I strength his forces to undo. Counsel me then, ye that are wise and true; Can ye ward off this present death and dule?" What word to say no pagan of them knew, Save Blancandrin, of th' Castle ...
— The Song of Roland • Anonymous
... true only with a condition. Thus, the admirable nature of Justice, and the happiness of the Just man, are a proper theme to be extolled with all the power of eloquence. It has been so with every civilized people, pagan as well as Christian. In the dialogues of Plato, justice is a prominent subject, and is adorned with the full splendour of his genius. Aristotle, in one of the few moments when he rises to poetry, pronounces ...
— Practical Essays • Alexander Bain
... bread. Entering his house, "with loude tunes they made all signs of great joy." In the first account Powhatan is represented as surrounded by his principal women and chief men, "as upon a throne at the upper end of the house, with such majesty as I cannot express, nor yet have often seen, either in Pagan or Christian." In the later account he is "sitting upon his bed of mats, his pillow of leather embroidered (after their rude manner with pearls and white beads), his attire a fair robe of skins as large as an Irish mantel; at his head ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... indulgently at the open admiration written so boldly upon his face, and, encouraged by her glance, he regarded her swiftly, comprehensively; the masses of hair the fillet ill-confined; eyes, soft-lidded, dreamy as a summer's day; a figure, pagan in generous proportions; a foot, however, petite, Parisian, peeping from beneath ...
— Under the Rose • Frederic Stewart Isham
... keep chronicling the dry events would miss writing a history. He must fathom the social condition of the peasantry, the townsmen, the middle-classes, the nobles, and the clergy (Christian or Pagan), in each period—how they fed, dressed, armed, and housed themselves. He must exhibit the nature of the government, the manners, the administration of law, the state of useful and fine arts, of commerce, of foreign relations. He ...
— Thomas Davis, Selections from his Prose and Poetry • Thomas Davis
... instead of ornamenting construction, they constructed ornament; and as the Reformation came to the Church in the sixteenth century so to architecture came degradation. And then the Renaissance of pagan types, from which the Gothic had derived its being by a rational development, was by the revivalists of those days hotch-potched into a more or less homogeneous mass, which even the genius of Wren could leave but ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: The Cathedral Church of Norwich - A Description of Its Fabric and A Brief History of the Episcopal See • C. H. B. Quennell
... of my article lies in the fact that during the first three centuries Christianity only existed on earth in the Church and was nothing but the Church. When the pagan Roman Empire desired to become Christian, it inevitably happened that, by becoming Christian, it included the Church but remained a pagan State in very many of its departments. In reality this was bound to happen. But ...
— The Brothers Karamazov • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... than ever. In the old times they tootled on the tuneful reed, and sang in purest Latin the sweetest ditties ever heard, in praise of Galatea and Amyntas, Delia and Iolla. But they never tootle now, and never sing, and when they speak, their tongue is that of the unmusical barbarians. In their pagan days they stained their rustic altars with the blood of a kid, a sacrifice to Jupiter, and poured out libations of generous wine; but they offer up neither prayer nor sacrifice now, and they pour libations of gin ...
— The Book of the Bush • George Dunderdale
... tracked With struggle and sorrow and vengeful act 'Gainst Puritan, pagan, and priest. Where wolf and panther and serpent ceased, Man added the horrors your ...
— Dreams and Days: Poems • George Parsons Lathrop
... the holy Scriptures;—to settle the minds of those who have formed no definite opinions on religious subjects;—and to lead us all, by contrasting the sacred truths and sublime beauties of Christianity with the absurd notions of pagan idolaters, of skeptics, and of infidels, to set a just value on the doctrines of HIM WHO SPAKE AS ...
— The Book of Religions • John Hayward
... Charity is a paradox, like modesty and courage. Stated baldly, charity certainly means one of two things—pardoning unpardonable acts, or loving unlovable people. But if we ask ourselves (as we did in the case of pride) what a sensible pagan would feel about such a subject, we shall probably be beginning at the bottom of it. A sensible pagan would say that there were some people one could forgive, and some one couldn't: a slave who stole wine could be laughed at; a slave who betrayed his benefactor could be killed, and cursed even ...
— Orthodoxy • G. K. Chesterton
... myself hang the leg of a goat no mortal man could have got tooth into, on to a papaw tree with a bit of string for the night. In the morning it was clean gone, string and all; but whether it was the pepsine, the papaine, or a purloining pagan that was the cause of its departure there was no evidence to show. Yet I am myself, as Hans Breitmann says, "still skebdigal" as to the papaw, and I ...
— Travels in West Africa • Mary H. Kingsley
... river, for ever changing, and yet for ever the same—always fulfilling its errand, which yet is never fulfilled," said Stangrave,—he was given to half-mystic utterances, and hankerings after Pagan mythology, learnt in the days when he worshipped Emerson, and tried (but unsuccessfully) to worship Margaret Fuller Ossoli,—"Those old Greeks had a deep insight into nature, when they gave to each river not merely a name, but a semi-human personality, ...
— Two Years Ago, Volume I • Charles Kingsley
... travellers had an opportunity of visiting some of these old missionary establishments; and observing the odd rigmarole of superstitions there practised under the guise, and in the name of religion—a queer commingling of pagan rites with Christian ceremonies—not unlike those Buddhistic forms from which these same ceremonies have ...
— Bruin - The Grand Bear Hunt • Mayne Reid
... venerable Theseus might have been victorious Charlemagne, and Phaedra's maidens belonged rather in the train of Blanche of Castile than at the Cretan court. In the earlier studies Hippolytus had been done with a more pagan suggestion; but in each successive drawing the glorious figure bad been deflowered of something of its serene unconsciousness, until, in the canvas under the skylight, he appeared a very Christian knight. This male figure, ...
— The Troll Garden and Selected Stories • Willa Cather
... should like to become a Pagan," said Lothaw, one day, after listening to an impassioned discourse on Greek art from the lips of ...
— The Luck of Roaring Camp and Other Tales • Bret Harte
... individual can put a petition into the hands of the chief magistrate, be he king or emperor: let us hope, that the time will yet come when Englishmen will be able to do the same. In the meanwhile I beg you to despise these worse than pagan parasites. ...
— Advice to Young Men • William Cobbett
... "romantic school," of which the aesthetic poetry is an afterthought, mark a transition not so much from the pagan to the medieval ideal, as from a lower to a higher degree of passion in literature. The end of the eighteenth century, swept by vast disturbing currents, experienced an excitement of spirit of ...
— Aesthetic Poetry • Walter Horatio Pater
... paper, eulogising the Licensed Victuallers' fete at Vauxhall Gardens, on Tuesday evening, bursts into the following magnificent flight:—"Wit has been profanely said, like the Pagan, to deify the brute" (the writer will never increase the mythology); "but here," (that is, in the royal property,) "while intellect and skill" (together with Roman candles) "exhibit their various manifestations, Charity" (arrack punch and blue fire) "throw ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 1, August 28, 1841 • Various
... Chump chop from the grill. Bolting to get it over. Sad booser's eyes. Bitten off more than he can chew. Am I like that? See ourselves as others see us. Hungry man is an angry man. Working tooth and jaw. Don't! O! A bone! That last pagan king of Ireland Cormac in the schoolpoem choked himself at Sletty southward of the Boyne. Wonder what he was eating. Something galoptious. Saint Patrick converted him to Christianity. Couldn't swallow ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce
... transfixed. "My God," he whispered, "that's what I heard my mother say more than twenty years ago. What a mockery—each generation a scorn and plaything for the high Gods! Well, we'll do the best we can, Mary. I'm utterly a pagan, so I'm not quite the inhuman granite my Christian father was. Don't cry, dear." He stooped and kissed her, and she heard his light, wild steps pass through the room and out into the night. She sat silent, amid the ...
— The Nest Builder • Beatrice Forbes-Robertson Hale
... sight when we went in. He was quite happy, playing like a child, at cup-and-ball. The attendant retired at my request. I introduced Mrs. Tenbruggen. He smiled and shook hands with her. He said: 'Are you a Christian or a Pagan? You are very pretty. How many times can you catch the ball in the cup?' The effort to talk to her ended there. He went on with his game, and seemed to forget that there was anybody in the room. It made my heart ache to remember what he was—and to ...
— The Legacy of Cain • Wilkie Collins
... purple cone of the great volcano and the uprising of the smoke of its everlasting burnings. The sight of this, magnificent, menacing evidence of the anarchic might of the powers of nature, quickened the pagan instinct in her. She wanted to worship. And even in so doing, she became aware of a kindred something in herself—of an answering and anarchic energy, a certain menace to the conventional works and ways, and fancied security, of groping, purblind man. The insolence of a great lady, the dangerously ...
— The History of Sir Richard Calmady - A Romance • Lucas Malet
... thinking and living. On the contrary, they have transported all sorts of political notions from monarchial countries to our soil. "The continental ideas of the Sabbath, the nihilist's ideas of government, the communist's ideas of property, the pagan's ideas of religion—all these mingle in our air with the ideas that shaped the men at Plymouth Rock and Valley Forge," that adorned hill, dale and prairie with Christian church and Christian school, and made possible the ...
— Aliens or Americans? • Howard B. Grose
... of Balzac. He belongs to the school of "Impressionists," and, although he has a liking for exceptional situations, wherefrom humanity does not always issue without serious blotches, he yet is free from pessimism. He has no nervous disorder, no "brain fag," he is no pagan, not even a nonbeliever, and has happily preserved his wholesomeness of thought; he is averse to exotic ideas, extravagant depiction, and inflammatory language. His novels and tales contain the essential qualities ...
— Prince Zilah, Complete • Jules Claretie
... meetings; he met and encouraged the temperance societies; he graced the sewing circles of the ladies with his presence, and even took a needle now and then and made a stitch or two upon a calico shirt for some poor Bibleless pagan of the South Seas, and this act enchanted the ladies, who regarded the garments thus honored as in a manner sanctified. The Senator wrought in Bible classes, and nothing could keep him away from the Sunday Schools—neither ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... the strength of this I rode, Shattering all evil customs everywhere, And past thro' Pagan realms, and made them mine, And clash'd with Pagan hordes, and bore them down, And broke thro' all, and in the strength of ...
— The Ascent of the Soul • Amory H. Bradford
... (now Baltinglass, in the County of Wicklow). It is about this cave, nevertheless, that so many of our pretended Irish antiquarians have written so much nonsense in connection with some imaginary pagan worship to which they gravely assure the world, on etymological authority, the spot was devoted. The authority for the legend of Cuglas is the Dinnoean Chus on the place Bealach Conglais (Book of Lecain). The full tale has not ...
— The Golden Spears - And Other Fairy Tales • Edmund Leamy
... These pagan meditations were interrupted by a footfall slowly approaching. I did not turn to ascertain who it might be, but trusted it was no one of importance, as the poddy and I presented rather a grotesque appearance. It was one of the most miserable and sickly of its ...
— My Brilliant Career • Miles Franklin
... no come into my hoose! An' you, Sir, a blind leader o' the blind, a disciple o' Beelzebub, wi' y'r Babylonish idolatries, wi' y'r incense that fair stinks in the nostrils o' decent folk, wi' y'r images and mummery and crossin' o' y'rsel', wi' y'r pagan, popish practises, wi' y'r skirts and petticoats, I'll no hae ye on my premises, no, not an' ye leave y'r religion outside! An' you, Meester Hamilton, a respectable Protestant, I'm fair surprised to see ye in ...
— Lords of the North • A. C. Laut
... resting places; beneath the grand trees of the forest there was mossy carpet, upon which he slept; there were trickling rills and natural basins where crystal water gave him drink, or places where he could bathe his hot and tired feet, while now and again he came upon the rude hut of some goat-herd or Pagan who, for a small coin, gladly supplied him with coarse black bread and a bowl of freshly-drawn ...
— Marcus: the Young Centurion • George Manville Fenn
... conies into my mind at the moment, which tells how an emperor won the true Cross in battle from a pagan king, and brought it back, with great pomp, to Jerusalem; but found the gate walled up, and an angel standing before it, who said, 'Thou bringest back the Cross with pomp and splendour. He that died upon it had shame for His companion; and carried ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. Mark • Alexander Maclaren
... Angles, theological and secular studies were pursued with avidity. By the end of the seventh century we find Anglo-Saxon missionaries, with St. Boniface at their head, carrying Christianity and enlightenment to the pagan German ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 2 • Charles Dudley Warner
... Her eyes blazed with a hatred that bordered madness. Ridgway had observed that neither Aline Harley nor Virginia was present, and a note from the latter had just reached him to the effect that Aline was ill with the strain of the long trial. Afterward Ridgway could never thank his pagan gods enough that ...
— Ridgway of Montana - (Story of To-Day, in Which the Hero Is Also the Villain) • William MacLeod Raine
... God! I 'd rather be A Pagan suckled in a creed outworn, So might I, standing on this pleasant lea, Have glimpses that would make me less forlorn; Have sight of Proteus rising from the sea, Or hear old Triton blow ...
— Familiar Quotations • John Bartlett
... blade straightened, shaking his shaggy mane. "Were I a Pagan Dane, I would run my sword through him. But I am a Christian Englishman. Let him lie. He will bleed his ...
— The Ward of King Canute • Ottilie A. Liljencrantz
... representing rivers there is something more than the mere Pagan tradition lingering through the wrecks of the Eastern Empire. A river, in the East and South, is necessarily recognised more distinctly as a beneficent power than in the West and North. The narrowest and feeblest stream is felt to have an influence on the life ...
— Giotto and his works in Padua • John Ruskin
... undaunted, the older woman fixed on Corinna the stare with which she would have attempted the conversion of an undraped pagan if she had ever encountered one. Though she was unconscious of the fact as she sat there, suffering yet unbending, in the Florentine chair, she represented the logical result of the conservative principle in nature, of the spirit that forgets nothing and learns nothing, of ...
— One Man in His Time • Ellen Glasgow
... ill, and talk of that which I do not well understand. It is easy to see, that what is called by distinction society and fashion has good laws as well as bad, has much that is necessary, and much that is absurd. Too good for banning, and too bad for blessing, it reminds us of a tradition of the pagan mythology, in any attempt to settle its character. 'I overheard Jove, one day,' said Silenus, 'talking of destroying the earth; he said it had failed; they were all rogues and vixens, who went from bad to worse, as fast as the days succeeded ...
— Essays, Second Series • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... for ever assembled, though invisible to mortal eyes, pronounced the like sentence on those famous conquerors, on those heroes of the pagan world, who, like Nebuchadnezzar, considered themselves as the sole authors of their exalted fortune; as independent on authority of every kind, and as not ...
— The Ancient History of the Egyptians, Carthaginians, Assyrians, • Charles Rollin
... would be sitting, her head thrown back against the wooden column of the porch, her hands clasped about her knees, smiling, smiling, always smiling. Sometimes she would hum a sort of low tuneless chant—it sounded like a pagan ritual of some sort, all repetitions, rising and falling in a monotonous, haunting drone. And once, as I stood watching her curiously, the word for that noise flashed suddenly into my mind—incantation. ...
— The Strange Cases of Dr. Stanchon • Josephine Daskam Bacon
... Monsieur le cure will tell you that a fortnight ago I was chained to my arm-chair, swearing under my breath like a pagan, and cursing the follies of my youth!—Forgive me, my father; I mean that I had the gout, and I forgot that I am not the only sufferer, and that it racks the old age of the philosopher quite as much as that of ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... Irishwoman brought comfort and hope to the whole party. She was a devout Roman Catholic, and it is a creed which forms an excellent prop in hours of danger. To her, to the Anglican Colonel, to the Nonconformist minister, to the Presbyterian American, even to the two Pagan black riflemen, religion in its various forms was fulfilling the same beneficent office,—whispering always that the worst which the world can do is a small thing, and that, however harsh the ways of Providence may seem, it is, on the whole, the wisest and best thing for us that ...
— A Desert Drama - Being The Tragedy Of The "Korosko" • A. Conan Doyle
... faces shining with pagan joy, and, turning her gaze from them, sank on the earth behind the screen of bushes. Ray perceived her desire to remain unseen, and stepped behind the wide-girthed oak. The two passed them, still treading that proud ...
— The Precipice • Elia Wilkinson Peattie
... Lane. "Yet she seemed such a frank honest girl. Her attitude was an acknowledgment of sin. But she did not believe it herself. She seemed to have a terrible resentment. Not against one man, or many persons, but perhaps life itself! She was beyond me. A modern girl—a pagan! But such a brave, loyal, generous little soul. What a pity! I find my religion at fault because it can ...
— The Day of the Beast • Zane Grey
... procrastination. I thus became a martyr to supposed opinions, of which I was ignorant; and such was the unchristian bigotry of my neighbours, that, deeming it sinful to employ one whom they considered little other than a pagan, about five years after my marriage I was compelled to remove with ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, XXII • various
... bestowed upon the immortal Robinson Crusoe. Thus it came about that George Borrow was proclaimed brother to the gypsy's son Ambrose, {12b} who as Jasper Petulengro figures so largely in Lavengro and The Romany Rye, and is credited with that exquisitely phrased pagan ...
— The Life of George Borrow • Herbert Jenkins
... illustrations of book-burning, to show the place the custom had in the development of civilisation, and the distinction of good or bad company and ancient lineage enjoyed by such books as their punishment by burning entitles to places on the shelves of our fire-library. The custom was of pagan observance long before it passed into Christian practice; and for its existence in Greece, and for the first instance I know of, I would refer to the once famous or notorious work of Protagoras, certainly one of the wisest philosophers or sophists of ancient times. He was the first avowed ...
— Books Condemned to be Burnt • James Anson Farrer
... service, and after a sermon a good church-hour in length to gratify him, enriched with compliments from all authors, Christian and Pagan, informing him at the conclusion that, although he had been crowned in the Capitol, he must die, being born mortal, Ser Francesco rode homeward. The sermon seemed to have sunk deeply into him, and even into the horse under him, for both ...
— Imaginary Conversations and Poems - A Selection • Walter Savage Landor
... expression; but I conceive it probable that a solution could be readily given by some of your learned correspondents. The burning of the dead does not appear to be in itself an anti-christian ceremony, nor necessarily connected with Pagan idolatries, and therefore might have been tolerated in the case of Gentile believers like any other ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 32, June 8, 1850 • Various
... library. Besides the Lama, I consulted many of the natives of the Company’s territory, who had visited the lower parts of Sikim, and several of the Gorkhalese, and other people of Nepal; and Mr Smith, of Nathpur, favoured me with several particulars, collected by a Mr Pagan for the information ...
— An Account of The Kingdom of Nepal • Fancis Buchanan Hamilton
... poet's maxim, it will be observed, was "enjoy the present day"—the carpe diem of Horace, the genial old pagan. On the same suggestive theme of Springtide a celebrated Turkish poetess, Fitnet Khanim (for the Ottoman Turks have poetesses of considerable genius as well as poets), has composed a pleasing ode, addressed to her lord, of which the following ...
— Flowers from a Persian Garden and Other Papers • W. A. Clouston
... anything could be done to resist the advance of Sapor, that the insubordination of the troops should be checked, their wants supplied, and their good-will conciliated. Constantius applied himself to effect these changes. Meanwhile Sapor set the Arabs and Armenians in motion, inducing the Pagan party among the latter to rise in insurrection, deliver their king, Tiranus, into his power, and make incursions into the Roman territory, while the latter infested with their armed bands the provinces of Mesopotamia and Syria. He himself was content, during the first year of the ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 7. (of 7): The Sassanian or New Persian Empire • George Rawlinson
... parallels and imperfect analogies. A voice, like that which is said to have startled the mariner of old on the coasts of Ionia, and to have announced to him the cessation of oracles, comes to us from all the remains of pagan antiquity, warning us that the spirit of that ancient civilization has departed with its forms: and while it bids us look forward to a new destiny for the human race, it teaches us that the maxims and the oracles by which that destiny must be guided, are to be sought elsewhere than in the Republic ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, April 1844 - Volume 23, Number 4 • Various
... a pleasant adventure to-day. A free verse poet came in to see me, wanted me to buy some copies of "The Pagan Anthology." I looked over the book, to which he himself had contributed some pieces. I advised him to read Tennyson. I wish you ...
— Pipefuls • Christopher Morley
... portray the living man and the mouldering skeleton, this epitaph contrasts the glories of the Prince's life—his wealth, beauty, and power—with the decay and corruption of the grave. It is distinctly pagan in thought, and reminds one strongly of the laments of the dead Homeric heroes as they wail for the joys of life and strength and lordship. Stanley states that it is "borrowed, with a few variations, from the anonymous French translation of the 'Clericalis Disciplina' of Petrus ...
— The Cathedral Church of Canterbury [2nd ed.]. • Hartley Withers
... far better to utilize the vast amount of energy and financial outlay, which it gives to gorging the multitude for one day, in a better and more lasting way; the question whether there is not, in these Christmas feasts, a likeness to the old time feast of pagan Rome. In every city of any size throughout the country the pots and kettles on the street corner are familiar objects. At each Corps or other location of the Army, tickets are given out entitling the bearer to a Christmas ...
— The Social Work of the Salvation Army • Edwin Gifford Lamb
... feelings of fear—ay, something stronger—with awe. The Pagan worshipper of Brahma or Vishnu was no longer alone in his superstitious imaginings. His young Christian companions were almost equally victims to a belief in the supernatural. They comprehended well enough what had caused the destruction of the house. Though the author of that mischief ...
— The Cliff Climbers - A Sequel to "The Plant Hunters" • Captain Mayne Reid
... interests, aside from writing, are Bach, the New Republic, woman suffrage, and climbing mountains. First story was written at the age of nine, offered to The Youth's Companion for $100. It was not accepted. First published story was in The Pagan, September, 1919, ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1919 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... critics went away, but came back next day with the startling information that Raphael's pictures were more Pagan than Christian. Pope Leo heard the charge, and then with Lincoln- like wit said that Raphael was doing this on his order, as the desire of the Mother Church was to annex the Pagan art-world, in ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 6 - Subtitle: Little Journeys to the Homes of Eminent Artists • Elbert Hubbard
... proceeded from the Mother towards whom the Father did not turn, 793-u. Judgments too rigorous prevent the process of creation from being carried on, 798-u. Julian an Illuminatus and initiate of the first order, 731-l. Julian believed in one God and the Trinity; was no Pagan, but a Gnostic, 731-l. Julian, Emperor, discovery during the rebuilding of the Temple by, 280-m. Julian gives reasons why the Mysteries were celebrated in the Autumn, 491-u. Julian; why Mysteries were celebrated at the Equinox, opinion of, 404-l. Junior Warden's column represents Tephareth, ...
— Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry • Albert Pike
... the forest, and the author has endeavored to justify him in his outrages. The former found it easier to exterminate than to civilize, the latter to vilify than to discriminate. The appellations of "savage" and "pagan" were deemed sufficient to sanction the hostilities of both; and thus the poor wanderers of the forest were persecuted and defamed, not because they were guilty, but ...
— Types of Children's Literature • Edited by Walter Barnes
... partly civilized. Pedantry and learning of the most minute sort existed side by side with the most violent excesses of medieval barbarism. The Church had undertaken the gigantic task of subduing and enlightening the semi-pagan peoples of France and ...
— Famous Affinities of History, Vol 1-4, Complete - The Romance of Devotion • Lyndon Orr
... Over the grand entrance of this abbey was inscribed, Fays ce que voudras, "Do what you like;" and the jokes of the members of the club consisted principally in wearing monkish dresses, and drinking wine out of a communion cup to a pagan divinity. For the entertainment of these men, some of whom were even more conspicuous in their profligacy than Wilkes himself, he took a house at the court end of the town, by which he incurred expenses his fortune could not support, ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... black night air, silent, circuitous, interminable. To poor people, looking up under moist eyebrows, it seemed a wonder where it all came from. Master Francis Villon had propounded an alternative that afternoon, at a tavern window: was it only pagan Jupiter plucking geese upon Olympus? or were the holy angels moulting? He was only a poor Master of Arts, he went on; and as the question somewhat touched upon divinity, he durst not venture to conclude. A silly old priest from ...
— Stories By English Authors: France • Various
... harbour at sunrise over a still sea, we two rejoiced and sang as did the knights of old when they followed our great Duke to England. Yet was our leader an heathen pirate; all our proud fleet but one galley perilously overloaded; for guidance we leaned on a pagan sorcerer; and our port was beyond the world's end. Witta told us that his father Guthrum had once in his life rowed along the shores of Africa to a land where naked men sold gold for iron and beads. There had he bought much gold, and no few elephants' teeth, and thither by help of the ...
— Puck of Pook's Hill • Rudyard Kipling
... to have been heathens before they came into this country, their separation from pagan degradation and cruelty, has been attended with many advantages to themselves. They have seen neither the superstitions of idolatry, nor the unnatural cruelties of heathenism. They are not destitute of those sympathies and attachments which would adorn the most polished circles. In ...
— The Gipsies' Advocate - or, Observations on the Origin, Character, Manners, and Habits of - The English Gipsies • James Crabb
... around, and kind o' see the city. But don't go into the down-town part; you'll not like it; nothing but narrow streets and old buildings with histories to 'em, and gardens hid away inside of 'em, and damp archways, and pagan-looking females who can't talk English, peeping out over balconies that offer to drop down on you, and then don't keep their word; every thing old-timey, and Frenchy, and Spanishy; unprogressive—you wouldn't like it. Go up-town. That's American. It's new and ...
— Bonaventure - A Prose Pastoral of Acadian Louisiana • George Washington Cable
... made of (1) Justin Martyr. He records several facts only found in this Gospel, e.g. Elisabeth as the mother of John the Baptist, the census {66} under Quirinius, and the cry, "Father, into Thy hands I commend My spirit." (2) Celsus, the pagan philosopher, who opposed Christianity. He refers to the genealogy which narrates that Jesus was descended from the first man. (3) The Letter of the Churches of Lyons and Vienne, written in A.D. 177. (4) Marcion. He endeavoured to found a system of theology which he pretended ...
— The Books of the New Testament • Leighton Pullan
... beetle-browed, bandy-legged, obese man, that so many fresh tourists find so charming, is a Turkish official. He and his ancestors have ruled the land since 1517. A Wilberforce in sentiment, he is the representation of "that shadow of shadows for good—Ottoman rule." The Turks, whether in their Pagan or Mohammedan phase, have only appeared on the world's scene to destroy. No social or civilizing art owes anything to the Turks but progressive debasement ...
— The Contemporary Review, January 1883 - Vol 43, No. 1 • Various
... movement, or propaganda, did not cease then: it did not fail to reach an arm down into secular history, and to light up one fiery dynamic soul on the Imperial Throne, who did all that a God-ensouled Man could do to save the dying Roman world. Diocletian, that great but quite unillumined pagan, was dead; the new order, that subverted Rome at last, had been established by Constantine; and the House of Constantine, with all that it implied, was in power. But a year or two before the death of Iamblichus it chanced that a Great Soul stole a march on the House of Constantine, ...
— The Crest-Wave of Evolution • Kenneth Morris
... or technical. The suffragettes had rediscovered the Quaker truth that the spirit is stronger than all the forces of Government, and that things may really come by fasting and prayer. Even the window-breaking, though a perilous approach to the methods of the Pagan male, was only a damage to insensitive material for which the window-breakers were prepared to pay in conscious suffering. But once the injury was done to flesh and blood, the injurer would only be paying tooth for tooth and eye for eye; and all the ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 21 - The Recent Days (1910-1914) • Charles F. Horne, Editor
... the Parson would say—my Parson," said Ishmael on one of his flashes of intuition; and then they both laughed, for Killigrew was one of those rare creatures, a born pagan—or rather heathen, which is not quite the same thing. The pagan has beliefs of his own; the true heathen denies the need for any, through ...
— Secret Bread • F. Tennyson Jesse
... had been laid at her feet, only to be kicked aside. She calmly spoke of herself as a pearl without price. She was content to possess, but not to be possessed. That was what she called self-respect. She was a pagan, but she was her own idol. She worshipped herself. She would never permit ...
— West Wind Drift • George Barr McCutcheon
... House, whose "combination of superficial ferocity and inherent tenderness," testifies Henry Crabb Robinson, in his Diary, was true to the life. Landor is the most purely classical of English writers. Not merely his themes {242} but his whole way of thinking was pagan and antique. He composed, indifferently, in English or Latin, preferring the latter, if any thing, in obedience to his instinct for compression and exclusiveness. Thus portions of his narrative poem, Gebir, 1798, were written originally in Latin, and he added ...
— Brief History of English and American Literature • Henry A. Beers
... ecclesiastics at last quitting the church, got into carts filled with mud and filth, amusing themselves with flinging it upon the crowds who followed them in such streets as were wide enough for a cart to pass. It is conjectured that these festivities, with their nonsensical ceremonies, were of pagan origin, and probably the celebration of the Carnival is derived from the same source; many attempts were made to abolish so disgraceful a custom as the continuance of the Fetes des Fous, with the absurdities incidental to its revelries, but ...
— How to Enjoy Paris in 1842 • F. Herve
... was considered the most propitious month for marriage; but with the Anglo-Saxons October has always been a favorite and auspicious season. We find that the festival has always been observed in very much the same way, whether druidical, pagan, or Christian. ...
— Manners and Social Usages • Mrs. John M. E. W. Sherwood
... friend, the brainless Robert Redmayne, brought his niece to spend her school holiday with him and I discovered in the seventeen-year-old schoolgirl a magnificent and pagan simplicity of mind, combined with a Greek loveliness of body that created in me a convulsion. From the day that we met, from the hour that I heard her laugh at her uncle's objection to mixed bathing, I was as one possessed; and my triumphant joy may be judged, ...
— The Red Redmaynes • Eden Phillpotts
... a natural human philosophy—perhaps as the only natural human philosophy—underlies all the beautiful soft-coloured panorama of pagan poetry and pagan thought. It must have been the habitual temper of mind in any Periclean symposium or Caesarean salon. It is, pre-eminently and especially, the civilised attitude of mind; the attitude of mind most dominant ...
— Suspended Judgments - Essays on Books and Sensations • John Cowper Powys
... they'll but pay for 'em, and get 'em christen'd; by this means making many a good Saint out of a very indifferent Devil. So far, I say, Balzac is undoubtedly in the right, that Christianity and Heathenism ought not to be confounded, nor the Pagan Gods mention'd, but as such, in Christian Poems. Of which Boileau also says, "They should not be Fill'd with the Fictions of Idolatry;" tho' he ...
— Epistle to a Friend Concerning Poetry (1700) and the Essay on Heroic Poetry (second edition, 1697) • Samuel Wesley
... Real was also recounted to the Prince and some displeasure expressed that the Bishop of Guatemala, Marroquin, should have seen fit to receive this rebellious priest in his diocese. Priests, however, were so scarce, that any one who could say a mass and baptise a pagan, no matter what his defects of character or conduct might be, was apt to ...
— Bartholomew de Las Casas; his life, apostolate, and writings • Francis Augustus MacNutt
... gratitude, and curiosity, a dream or an omen, a singular disorder, or a distant journey, perpetually disposed him to multiply the articles of his belief, and to enlarge the list of his protectors. The thin texture of the Pagan mythology was interwoven with various but not discordant materials. As soon as it was allowed that sages and heroes, who had lived or who had died for the benefit of their country, were exalted to a state of power and immortality, it was universally confessed, ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 1 • Edward Gibbon
... her into the dangerous error of hazarding her own soul by espousing a heretic. There was so much of fervent piety, mingled with so strong a burst of natural feeling, so much of the woman blended with the angel, in her prayers, that Middleton could have forgiven her, had she termed him a Pagan, for the sweetness and interest with which she petitioned in ...
— The Prairie • J. Fenimore Cooper
... it is in vain for us to reflect on the absurdity, incongruity and frivolousness, as we apprehend it, of the pagan worship, inasmuch as we find, whatever we may think of its demerits, that the most heroic people that ever existed on earth, in the hour of their direst calamity, regarded a zealous and fervent adherence to that religion as the most sacred ...
— Lives of the Necromancers • William Godwin
... merely my experience, but, thank goodness, my imagination. The nautical personages used, in their conversations, what is called 'a class of language', and there ran, if I am not mistaken, a glow and gust of life through the romance from beginning to end which was nothing if it was not resolutely pagan. ...
— Father and Son • Edmund Gosse
... production remains Sudan's most important sector, employing 80% of the work force and contributing 39% of GDP, but most farms remain rain-fed and susceptible to drought. Chronic instability - including the long-standing civil war between the Muslim north and the Christian/pagan south, the ethnic purges in Darfur, adverse weather, and weak world agricultural prices - ensure that much of the population will remain at or below the poverty line ...
— The 2004 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency
... he declares the principles of the church of New England with respect to morals, Mather inveighs with violence against the custom of drinking healths at table, which he denounces as a pagan and abominable practice. He proscribes with the same rigor all ornaments for the hair used by the female sex, as well as their custom of having the arms ...
— American Institutions and Their Influence • Alexis de Tocqueville et al
... observes Fray Antonio Agapida, "was humbling himself before the cross and devoutly praying for the destruction of his enemies, that fierce pagan, El Zagal, depending merely on arm of flesh and sword of steel, pursued his diabolical outrages upon the Christians." No sooner was the invading army disbanded than he sallied forth from his stronghold, and carried fire and sword into all those parts ...
— Chronicle of the Conquest of Granada • Washington Irving
... remember that the word Norman means man of the north, that it is a Scandinavian, and not a French word, that it originated in the invasions of the followers of Rollo and and other Norwegians, and that just as part of England was overrun by Pagan buccaneers called Danes, part of France was occupied by similar Northmen, we see the likelihood of certain Norse words finding their way into the French language, where they would be superadded to its ...
— A Handbook of the English Language • Robert Gordon Latham
... to the fine custom of many of the people of Aberdeen, borne to the grave by twelve stalwart men in black, with broad round bonnets on their heads, the one-half relieving the other—a privilege of the company of shore-porters. Their exequies are thus freed from the artificial, grotesque, and pagan horror given by obscene mutes, frightful hearse, horses, and feathers. As soon as, in the beautiful phrase of the Old Testament, John Anderson was thus gathered to his fathers, Robert went to pay a ...
— Robert Falconer • George MacDonald
... to be practised which shall comport with the exhibition of a reasonably seemly morality. I cannot, at least, concur in that definition of a moral character, upon which no operation of Divine grace has been expended, for its raising or its beautifying, which accepts that of the pagan Indian as its highest expression; and, distinctly, hesitate to affirm that a high moral instinct inheres in the Indian, or that such is permitted to dominate his mind; and, when I find one of these very writers who claim for him a high inborn morality, discovering in him such indwelling ...
— A Treatise on the Six-Nation Indians • James Bovell Mackenzie
... the first great saint of the Order, and patron of the canons of the cathedral. He was born at Tagaste, in Numidia, A.D. 354. His father, Patricius, was a Pagan, while his mother, Monica, was a Christian. Patricius, perceiving the ability of his son, "spared nothing to breed him up a scholar." When quite young he had a severe illness, and expressed a wish to be baptized, but on his recovery the wish vanished. Later, his morals grew corrupt, and he lived ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: The Cathedral Church of Carlisle - A Description of Its Fabric and A Brief History of the Episcopal See • C. King Eley
... poetry, whether the religion was that of the pagan Greek Tragedies, the mediaeval Dante, or the Puritan Milton. He was a great lover of the best hymns, and with a catholicity of affection which included the Calvinist Toplady, the Arminian Wesley, the Roman Catholic Faber, and the Unitarian Holmes. Generally, however, ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 4 • Charles Dudley Warner
... so-called Pagan Goethe, intent on self-culture as the first if not the final duty of man, makes Serlo in his "Meister" lay down as a rule which one should observe daily. "One," he says, "ought every day to hear a little song, ...
— Hebraic Literature; Translations from the Talmud, Midrashim and - Kabbala • Various
... right! Why sir what I am is plainly written on my face. Surely you do not take me for a pagan! I might be a black man from Africa, or an Englishman, but an Indian—that, no! But a minute ago you had the goodness to invite me to smoke. How, sir, can a poor man smoke ...
— Green Mansions - A Romance of the Tropical Forest • W. H. Hudson
... unrivaled intellectual splendor and of unexampled sufferings through war. By diplomacy and debate it prescribed laws for a new age of unexpected ecclesiastical energy and of national peace procured at the price of slavery. Illustrious survivors from the period of the pagan Renaissance met here with young men destined to inaugurate the Catholic Revival. The compact struck between Emperor and Pope in private conferences, laid a basis for that firm alliance between ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volumes 1 and 2 - The Catholic Reaction • John Addington Symonds
... lamb, as you remembers all about what made you drop down in that faint. And look you here, my lamb, you've got to tell me, Jane Parsons, all about it; and what is more, if I can help you I will. You tell Jane all the whole story, honey, for it 'ud go to a pagan's heart to see you, and so it would; and you needn't be feared, for she ain't anywheres about. She said as she wanted no dinner, and she's safe in her room a-reckoning the money ...
— The Children's Pilgrimage • L. T. Meade
... also be pleasing, because of the account they give of the customs and manners of the eastern nations, and of the ceremonies of their religion, as well Pagan as Mahometan, which are better described here than in any author that has written of them, or in the relation of travellers. All the eastern nations, Persians, Tartars, and Indians, are here distinguished, and appear such as they are, from the sovereign to the meanest ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments Volume 1 • Anonymous
... that they and their devices may hang in the corners of the world like fine-spun cobwebs, with greedy, puffed-up, spider-like lusts in the middle. And this, which in Christian times is the abuse and corruption of the sense of beauty, was in that Pagan life of which St. Paul speaks, little less than the essence of it, and the best they had; for I know not that of the expressions of affection towards external nature to be found among Heathen writers, there are ...
— Modern Painters Volume II (of V) • John Ruskin
... wondering what had become of him. His new work in the Exhibitions supplied a sort of answer, and the few who chanced to meet him reported dolefully that he was a changed man. Gone was the light-hearted and light-footed dancer of the Paris pavement. Silent the licentious wit of the neo-Pagan. This was a new being with brooding brow and pained eyes that lit up only when they beheld his dream. Never had Bohemia known ...
— Ghetto Comedies • Israel Zangwill
... of these is the period of the Christian Fathers, culminating in the authoritative writings of Augustine, who died in 430. By this time a great part of the critical Greek books had disappeared in western Europe. As for pagan writers, one has difficulty in thinking of a single name (except that of Lucian) later than Juvenal, who had died nearly three hundred years before Augustine. Worldly knowledge was reduced to pitiful compendiums on which the mediaeval students were later to place great reliance. ...
— The Mind in the Making - The Relation of Intelligence to Social Reform • James Harvey Robinson
... repeated to her the legend of St. Cecilia and her guardian angel who once appeared in bodily form to her husband holding two rose garlands gathered in Paradise, or of St. Dorothea, who sent an angel messenger with a basket of heavenly fruits and flowers to convert the pagan Theophilus. ...
— The Rape of the Lock and Other Poems • Alexander Pope
... "smoking mountain" and a vast shower of cinders and stones was thrown into the air. Unnoticed passed the eruption before the gaze of Saint-Prosper, whose mind in a torpor swept dully back to youth's roseate season, recalling the homage of the younger for the elder brother, a worship as natural as pagan adoration of the sun. From the sanguine fore-time to the dead present lay a bridge of darkness. With honor within grasp, deliberately he had sought dishonor, little recking of shame and murder, and childishly husbanding green, red ...
— The Strollers • Frederic S. Isham |
