"Tophet" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... representing our own fashions than those of a hundred years ago. Another phenomenon, still more strikingly modern, was a package of lucifer matches, which, in old times, would have been thought actually to borrow their instantaneous flame from the nether fires of Tophet. ...
— The House of the Seven Gables • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... they want. They expect me to go to the House of Lords and get a ruling, and build walls between times. Are they all stark, raving mad? One 'ud think I made a profession of flagging trains. How in Tophet was I to know their old Induna from a waytrain? I took the first that came along, and I've been jailed and fined ...
— The Day's Work, Volume 1 • Rudyard Kipling
... of parts, a witty blade To college went and progress made Sounding round his logick; The prince of hell wide spread his net, And caught him by one lucky hit And dragged him down to tophet." ...
— The Gentleman from Everywhere • James Henry Foss
... Shakespeare may recognise that he too was a Prophet, in his way; of an insight analogous to the Prophetic, though he took it up in another strain. Nature seemed to this man also divine; unspeakable, deep as Tophet, high as Heaven: "We are such stuff as Dreams are made of!" That scroll in Westminster Abbey,[84] which few read with understanding, is of the depth of any seer. But the man sang; did not preach, except musically. We called ...
— English Prose - A Series of Related Essays for the Discussion and Practice • Frederick William Roe (edit. and select.)
... you, man! The water absolutely hisses down your red-hot gullet, and is converted quite into steam in the miniature Tophet, which you mistake for a stomach. Fill again, and tell me, on the word of an honest toper, did you ever, in cellar, tavern, or any other kind of dramshop, spend the price of your children's food for a swig half so delicious? Now, for the first time these ten years, ...
— Eighth Reader • James Baldwin
... I was told; and I have said she did not look good: though a spirit, she was a spirit out of Tophet. Well, if so much of unholy force can arise from below, may not an equal efflux of sacred essence descend one day ...
— Villette • Charlotte Bronte
... In Argob and in Basan, to the stream Of utmost Arnon. Nor content with such Audacious neighbourhood, the wisest heart 400 Of Solomon he led by fraud to build His Temple right against the Temple of God On that opprobrious Hill, and made his Grove The pleasant Vally of Hinnom, Tophet thence And black Gehenna call'd, the Type of Hell. Next Chemos, th' obscene dread of Moabs Sons, From Aroer to Nebo, and the wild Of Southmost Abarim; in Hesebon And Heronaim, Seons Realm, beyond The flowry Dale of Sibma clad with ...
— The Poetical Works of John Milton • John Milton
... would induce me to join you, that I'd read about the lakes too much and too often to venture upon them in the early part of June; in fact, had no desire to see the lakes at any time or under any conditions. I told Omar that I would see you in the lowest pit of Tophet before I would go with you to—whatever the name of this place is. And yet, here ...
— At Love's Cost • Charles Garvice
... was a watchword of battle, repeated morning, noon, and night. It was the prevailing idea of his life. 'Excelsior'! Yes; how great, how grand, how all-absorbing is the idea! But what if a man may be going down, down to Tophet, and yet think the while that he is scaling the walls ...
— The Three Clerks • Anthony Trollope
... call 'Horsefoot Bar.' That crazy Van Brunt and his chum, Hartley, who lived there along with Sol Pratt a year or so ago, re-christened it 'Ozone Island,' you remember. Nate was willin' to let it. He'd let Tophet, if he owned it, and a fool come along who wanted to hire it and could pay for the rent ...
— The Depot Master • Joseph C. Lincoln
... white-hot, and in all but a melting state, passed through rollers of various size and pressure, and speedily converted into long bars, which came curling and waving out of the rollers like great red ribbons, or like fiery serpents wriggling out of Tophet; and finally, being straightened out, they were laid to cool in heaps. Trip-hammers are very pleasant things to look at, working so massively as they do, and yet so accurately; chewing up the hot iron, as it were, and ...
— Passages From the English Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... remain alive during the day through a perception of the humour of their situation, and by night through the agency of the prayers of their despairing relatives." For Basrah has the most malarial air, the most choleraic water, and the most infernal climate of any spot in the world outside 'Tophet.' ...
— With a Highland Regiment in Mesopotamia - 1916—1917 • Anonymous
... heap ashes upon our heads when the flames of Tophet are mentioned. For, even the preachers have begun to tell us that God is radium, or ether or some scientific compound, and that the worst we wicked ones may expect is a chemical reaction. This is a pleasing ...
— The Four Million • O. Henry
... nevertheless. My Lord's groom, who had been sitting before the fire, rose up and saluted her. A handsome young man, rather square and prominent about the jaws, but nevertheless foolish and amiable looking. The sort of man one would suppose, who, if his lord were to tell him to jump into the pit Tophet, would pursue one of two courses, either jump in himself, without further to do, or throw his own brother in with profuse apologies. From the top of his sleek round head to the sole of his perfect top-boot, the model and living exponent of what ...
— The Recollections of Geoffrey Hamlyn • Henry Kingsley
... time they heard the roar of the earthquake beneath their feet; the first time they saw, in the magnificent words of Micah, the mountains molten and the valleys cleft as wax before the fire, like water poured down a steep place; and discovered that beneath their very feet was Tophet, the pit of fire and brimstone, ready to burst up and overwhelm them they knew ...
— The Gospel of the Pentateuch • Charles Kingsley
... lessons for the future in all this. For if there were not still a future before the French aristocracy, there would be no need to do more than find a suitable sarcophagus; it were something pitilessly cruel to burn the dead body of it with fire of Tophet. But though the surgeon's scalpel is ruthless, it sometimes gives back life to a dying man; and the Faubourg Saint-Germain may wax more powerful under persecution than in its day of triumph, if it but chooses to ...
— The Thirteen • Honore de Balzac
... deep-blue eyes,—I shall not shrink; for the rule of my future years shall be to scorn every word, thought, and deed that I would not freely bare to the scrutiny of the man whose respect I would sooner die than forfeit. Oh, my darling, it were easier for me to front the fiercest flames of Tophet than face your scorn! I can wait till Miss Jane sees fit to show me the letter, and, if it bring good news of your speedy coming, I shall have my reward; if not, why should I hasten to meet a bitter disappointment which may be lagging out of mercy ...
— Vashti - or, Until Death Us Do Part • Augusta J. Evans Wilson
... a sentence of exclusion from Court was to a French noble but just this side of a banishment to Tophet; and de Rohan was just silly enough to feel this infliction most intensely. He went however, and from that time onward, for year after year, lived the life of a persevering Adam thrust out of his paradise, hanging about the gate and trying all possible ways to sneak in again. ...
— The Humbugs of the World • P. T. Barnum
... landing in my first whaling port; tombstones staring at me in the whalemen's chapel; and here a gallows! and a pair of prodigious black pots too! Are these last throwing out oblique hints touching tophet? I was called from these reflections by the sight of a freckled woman with yellow hair and a yellow gown, standing in the porch of the inn, under a dull red lamp swinging there, that looked much like an injured eye, and carrying on a brisk scolding with a man in a ...
— Moby-Dick • Melville
... Hackmen bustled noisily about; baggage masters were busier and crosser than ever; there was the usual melee of leave-takings and greetings. With the choking dust and scalding glare of the sun, the whole scene might have been an anteroom to Tophet. ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol 6, No 5, November 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... we got to the tree, where me and Tom, after a spell of rest, jumped in together with a will. It was no slouch of a job to get that tackle in position, the block being iron shod and heavy, the rope inch Manila, and the night as black as the pit of Tophet. Tom went aloft first, with a coil of light line, having to feel his way for the place we had marked with the handkerchief, and threatening more than once to come down quicker than he had gone up. The handkerchief ...
— Wild Justice: Stories of the South Seas • Lloyd Osbourne
... ten, and sometimes to eleven, For "six bob" a week. Ah! such life must be heaven; Whilst as for your "profit," That's bound to approach five-and-twenty per cent., That Sweaters shall thrive, let their tools be content With starvation in Tophet. ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 99., December 13, 1890 • Various
... where the truth, as in many Spanish proverbs, is sacrificed to the rhyme, saying that the climate is tres meses invierno y nueve infierno,—three months winter and nine months Tophet. At the first coming of the winter frosts the genuine son of Madrid gets out his capa, the national full round cloak, and never leaves it off till late in the hot spring days. They have a way of throwing one corner over the left shoulder, so that ...
— Castilian Days • John Hay
... much that is new to Past and Present (1843) or to Sartor (1831); and little of what they add is either needful or true. The world had been fully enlightened about Wind-bags, Shams, the approach to Tophet, Stump-orators, Palaver-Parliaments, Phantasm-Captains, and the rest of the Sartorian puppet-pantomime. There was a profound truth in all of these invectives, warnings, and prophecies. But the prophet's voice at last got so shrieky and monotonous, that instead of warning and ...
— Studies in Early Victorian Literature • Frederic Harrison
... Karenina," who never sees the comedy of an inward struggle and an outward compliance, any more than does the benedict, safely entrenched under the bed, who shouts out, "I defy thee, I defy thee!" as did Mephisto when Goethe thrust him into Tophet. ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great Philosophers, Volume 8 • Elbert Hubbard
... lying jargoning professor of Sham-Fact, whose name is Legion, who as yet (oftenest little conscious of himself) goes tumulting and swarming from shore to shore, become a species extinct, and well known to be gone down to Tophet!— ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XXI. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... enlightenment burst upon his mind, and he saw himself no longer unwanted, flotsam, a thing supine, but a buckler—a shield—one chosen and elected to a mighty task. The words of Don had first raised the curtain; now it was rent as the Temple veil and his eyes were dazzled. The Gate of Tophet had opened and Something had crept out upon the world; it was for him to cast ...
— The Orchard of Tears • Sax Rohmer
... notions—has designated, in terms plainer than I like to repeat, as the mouth of the infernal region. This, however, must be a mistake, inasmuch as Mr. Smooth-it-away, while we remained in the smoky and lurid cavern, took occasion to prove that Tophet has not even a metaphorical existence. The place, he assured us, is no other than the crater of a half-extinct volcano, in which the directors had caused forges to be set up for the manufacture of railroad iron. Hence, also, is obtained a plentiful supply of fuel for the use ...
— Mosses from an Old Manse and Other Stories • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... place of the Herods; in sight was a second Herodian palace. South was the open space of the great markets; near the southernmost segment of the outer wall was the semicircular Hippodrome. Cut off from its neighbor by ancient walls were Ophlas, overlooking Tophet and under the shadow of the Temple; Mount Zion which the Lord had established, Akra of the valley, Moriah, the Holy Hill, and Coenopolis or Bezetha which Agrippa I had walled. About the immense outer fortifications crawled the shadowy valleys of Tophet, of Brook ...
— The City of Delight - A Love Drama of the Siege and Fall of Jerusalem • Elizabeth Miller
... he died, we would be married secretly, and she would return to your roof until I could get possession of my inheritance, when we would go to some other part of the country to live. If he recovered, I would marry her anyway, and let the old man go to Tophet with his money-bags. I see now how ...
— Deadwood Dick, The Prince of the Road - or, The Black Rider of the Black Hills • Edward L. Wheeler
... death that knows no reviving, must be, and ought to be the blessedest thought left him. "O land of shadows!" well may such a one cry! "land where the shadows love to ecstatic self-loss, yet forget, and love no more! land of sorrows and despairs, that sink the soul into a deeper Tophet than death has ever sounded! broken kaleidoscope! shaken camera! promiser, speaking truth to the ear, but lying to the sense! land where the heart of my friend is sorrowful as my heart—the more sorrowful that ...
— A Dish Of Orts • George MacDonald
... most curious and weird circumstances connected with this meeting. Hardly had he laid himself back in his chair before I heard a faint scratching against the table leg, and next moment an enormous cat, black as the Pit of Tophet, sprang with a bound upon the table and stood there steadfastly regarding me, its eyes flashing and its back arched. I have seen cats without number, Chinese, Persian, Manx, the Australian wild cat, and the English tabby, but never in the whole course ...
— A Bid for Fortune - or Dr. Nikola's Vendetta • Guy Boothby
... for quite a long spell," said his wife earnestly. "I don't know but I've always felt it—leastways, all through my married life. It's somethin' that makes me as mad as tophet when you start me out to do anything I don't feel it's no ways right to do, and it keeps whisperin' to me I'm a fool to do it. That's what it says, Myron. 'You're a fool ...
— Country Neighbors • Alice Brown
... insurrectionary movement, which we liken to a breaking out of Tophet and the abyss, has swept away royalty, aristocracy, and a king's life. The question is, what will it next do? how will it henceforth shape itself? Settle down into a reign of law and liberty, according ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine—Vol. 54, No. 333, July 1843 • Various
... without depth or meaning—eyes like bits of blue steel reflecting the light of Tophet—, incarnate evil, blazing, peering ... I caught a glimpse of long, thin hands, like claws, around the folded umbrella, a flash of something bright at the ferrule ... and then the picture dissolved like an image passing from a dimly lighted screen. Before ...
— The Window-Gazer • Isabel Ecclestone Mackay
... you ran away from me last night—no wonder you didn't have the face to stay and take what you deserve. How in tophet I ever allowed you to plan ...
— The Landloper - The Romance Of A Man On Foot • Holman Day
... and wasted these unhappy districts were the dragoons commanded by John Graham of Claverhouse. The story ran that these wicked men used in their revels to play at the torments of hell, and to call each other by the names of devils and damned souls. [287] The chief of this Tophet, a soldier of distinguished courage and professional skill, but rapacious and profane, of violent temper and of obdurate heart, has left a name which, wherever the Scottish race is settled on the face of the globe, is mentioned with a peculiar energy ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 1 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... renowned for his elegant dancing in the days of Elizabeth, is as devoutly believed as the Gospels. The room is to be seen where the devil seized her after the expiration of the contract he had made with her, and bore her away bodily to the pit of Tophet: the pump against which he dashed her is still pointed out, and the spot where her heart was found, after he had torn it out of her bosom with his iron claws, has received the name of Bleeding-heart Yard, in confirmation of the story. Whether ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds • Charles Mackay
... and brimstone; fire that is never quenched; worm that never dies. purgatory, limbo, gehenna, abyss. [Mythological hell] Tartarus, Hades, Avernus [Lat.], Styx, Stygian creek, pit of Acheron^, Cocytus; infernal regions, inferno, shades below, realms of Pluto. Pluto, Rhadamanthus^, Erebus [Lat.]; Tophet. Adj. hellish, infernal, stygian. Phr. dies irae dies illa [Lat.]; the hue of dungeons and the scowl of ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... Tophet: "For Tophet is ordained of old, yea, for the king," the Lucifer, "it is prepared; he hath made it deep and large; the pile thereof is fire and much wood; the breath of the Lord, like a stream of brimstone, doth ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... the days come, saith the LORD, that it shall no more be called Tophet, nor the Valley of the Son of Hinnom, but the Valley or Slaughter; for they shall bury in Tophet till there be no place."— ...
— The Complete Poems of Sir Thomas Moore • Thomas Moore et al
... hour, though. 'Bout all hands in Bayport's comin' to this time, everybody but the Orthodox and the Methodists and the Come-Outers. They cal'late goin' to a play-actin' time is same as goin' to Tophet. I tell 'em I'd ruther go to the show, 'cause I'd have a little fun out of it, and from what I hear there ain't much fun in t'other place. He, he, he! But say, how'd it happen George Kent ever let 'Liz'beth Berry go anywheres without him? ...
— Fair Harbor • Joseph Crosby Lincoln
... rope (for two ropes broke, and the quavering voice still pleaded), can he be so much as got hanged! His Body is dragged through the streets; his Head goes aloft on a pike, the mouth filled with grass: amid sounds as of Tophet, from a grass-eating people."] ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 6 • Lord Byron
... but have reserved them for another chapter. It is necessary, however, to bring them in here in order to explain that employment will be created for women as well as men. Fruit farming affords a great opening for female labour, and it will indeed be a change as from Tophet to the Garden of Eden when the poor lost girls on the streets of London exchange the pavements of Piccadilly for the strawberry Beds of ...
— "In Darkest England and The Way Out" • General William Booth
... starving populace was to live he answered: "Let them eat grass." Afterward, Carlyle says, the mob, maddened with rage, "caught him in the streets of Paris, hanged him, stuck his head upon a pike, filled his mouth with grass, amid shouts as of Tophet from a grass-eating people." What kings and princes gave they received. This is the voice of nature and conscience: "Behold, sin crouches at ...
— The Investment of Influence - A Study of Social Sympathy and Service • Newell Dwight Hillis
... lies the body of Mary Ford We hope her soul is with the Lord. But if for tophet she's changed this life, Better be there than J. ...
— Quaint Epitaphs • Various
... Evangelist, 'Why not willing to die, since this life is attended with so many evils?' The man answered, 'Because I fear that this burden that is upon my back will sink me lower than the grave, and I shall fall into Tophet. And, Sir, if I be not fit to go to prison, I am not fit to go to judgment, and from thence to execution; and the thoughts of ...
— The Greek View of Life • Goldsworthy Lowes Dickinson
... all day, amidst clankings and groanings of machinery, and clouds of oily-smelling steam, and where work went on all night, with more groanings and more clankings, deplorable shrieks of steam-sirens and hellish flares that might have been reflections from a burning Tophet, cast upon yet bigger and denser clouds of the ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves
... sword, for those whose hearts are yet dwelling in huts of clay, whose footsteps are tangled in the mesh of mortal sympathies, and who clothe themselves in the righteousness that is as filthy rags. But to gain a soul to the truth is better than to send one to Tophet; therefore I give quarter to this youth, providing the grant is confirmed by the general council of God's army, whom he hath this day blessed with so signal a deliverance.—Thou art unarmed—Abide my return ...
— Old Mortality, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... gale which made life unendurable. The Red Sea was a relief and not too hot, but how we pitied the poor devils quartered at Perim, and the lighthouses seen at the Two Brothers. I would as soon camp for ever on the lee side of Tophet. But my first trip through the Canal was charming. At night, when the vessel's search-light threw its glare on the banks, the white sand looked like snow-drifts. In the day the far-off deserts were ...
— A Tramp's Notebook • Morley Roberts
... mine in the brine that day When Tophet spilt, 'n' in the roar Of shells that split the sea 'n' tore Our boats to chips, we broke any Up through the pelt of leaden spray, 'N' got our ...
— 'Hello, Soldier!' - Khaki Verse • Edward Dyson
... reflective voice coming from a partner lying comfortably on his back, "and if anybody reckons I'm going to face Tophet ag'in down that slope, he's mistaken!" The speaker ...
— From Sand Hill to Pine • Bret Harte
... thou afraid of? Wherefore, like a coward, dost thou forever pip and whimper, and go cowering and trembling? Despicable biped! What is the sum-total of the worst that lies before thee? Death? Well, Death: and say the pangs of Tophet too, and all that the Devil and Man may, will or can do against thee! Hast thou not a Heart; canst thou not suffer whatsoever it be; and, as a Child of Freedom, though outcast, trample Tophet itself under thy feet, while it consumes ...
— Among Famous Books • John Kelman
... nations, and besought from them the succour they despaired of receiving from any other source; the worship of Jahveh was confounded with that of Moloch in the valley of the children of Hinnom, where there was a sanctuary or Tophet, at which the people celebrated the most horrible rites: a large and fierce pyre was kept continually burning there, to consume the children whose fathers brought them to offer in sacrifice.* Isaiah complains bitterly ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 8 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... dying day shall I forget the sight that met my eyes. For there seated upon a tuffet, her beautiful blue eyes fixed in horror and despair, her jug of curds and whey scarce tasted, was my MARIAN, while beside her, lolling at ease with the slothful stretch of his great limbs, and the flames as of Tophet in his fierce eyes sat SPIDER, the great black-haired giant SPIDER that would ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 100, May 23, 1891 • Various
... if there was a sudden exit of all men from the world, heaven, as prefigured in the Christian idea, would not be a heaven to the majority; on the other hand, neither would all suffer equally in the so-called Tophet. Cultivation has its balances. As the mind is made intelligent, the capacity of the soul for pure enjoyment is proportionally increased. Well, therefore, if it be saved! If lost, however, alas that it ever had cultivation! its capacity for enjoyment in the one case is the measure of its capacity ...
— Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ • Lew Wallace
... I am lazy and sad; in the fall I am gay, I am for the big things to do. This matter was in the fall. I felt that I must move. Yet, what to do? There was the thing. Cards, of course. But that's only for times, not for all seasons. So I was like a wild dog on a chain. I had a good horse—Tophet, black as a coal, all raw bones and joint, and a reach like a moose. His legs worked like piston-rods. But, as I said, I did not know where to go or what to do. So we used to sit at the Post loafing: in the daytime watching the empty plains all panting for travellers, like a young bride waiting ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... strange gods, but guard him most of all from the wiles of strange women who bow the knee to Baal, for such are the gate of Gehenna upon earth, and those who enter by it shall find their place in Tophet.'" ...
— Elissa • H. Rider Haggard
... Tophet behind and the flames of hell. So our good friends the parsons tell us. Well, if a man is to make no money in this world, be hanged at the end of it, and finally burn for ever, he hath assuredly wandered on to a thorny ...
— Micah Clarke - His Statement as made to his three Grandchildren Joseph, - Gervas and Reuben During the Hard Winter of 1734 • Arthur Conan Doyle
... Basan, to the stream Of utmost Arnon. Nor content with such Audacious neighbourhood, the wisest heart Of Solomon he led by fraud to build His temple right against the temple of God On that opprobrious hill, and made his grove The pleasant valley of Hinnom, Tophet thence And black Gehenna called, the type of Hell. Next Chemos, th' obscene dread of Moab's sons, From Aroar to Nebo and the wild Of southmost Abarim; in Hesebon And Horonaim, Seon's real, beyond The flowery dale of Sibma clad with vines, And Eleale to th' Asphaltic Pool: ...
— Paradise Lost • John Milton
... Diogenes! No sooner has that heart-rending occurrence fairly taken place, than he affects to regard it as a thing natural, of which there is nothing more to be said. 'One highest hope, seemingly legible in the eyes of an Angel, had recalled him as out of Death-shadows into celestial Life: but a gleam of Tophet passed-over the face of his Angel; he was rapt away in whirlwinds, and heard the laughter of Demons. It was a Calenture,' adds he, 'whereby the Youth saw green Paradise-groves in the waste Ocean-waters: a lying vision, yet not wholly a lie, for he saw it.' ...
— Sartor Resartus, and On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in History • Thomas Carlyle |
