"Initiation" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... means the same as amount of resistance to initiation of motion, at first estimated by the varying amount of personal muscular energy required to effect the motion in question, thereafter objectively and scientifically by comparison with some independent standard whereby ...
— Essays Towards a Theory of Knowledge • Alexander Philip
... sleep in the great, cradle-like, basket, for winnowing the corn, remembers Demeter Courotrophos, the mother of corn and children alike, and makes it a little coat out of the dress worn by its father at his initiation into her mysteries. Yet she is an angry goddess too, sometimes—Demeter Erinnys, the goblin of the neighbourhood, haunting its shadowy places. She lies on the ground out of doors on summer nights, and becomes wet with the dew. She grows young again every spring, ...
— Greek Studies: A Series of Essays • Walter Horatio Pater
... "Poor child! the initiation has been too much for her unformed mind," she murmured complacently, pleased with herself for having secured a disciple. "The path is narrow and rugged at the beginning, but it will broaden out before her as she ...
— Vixen, Volume III. • M. E. Braddon
... expelled from Captain Raymond's gang, had fluctuated, during the last years of his life, between the two professions of a violator of the laws and a retainer to their administration. He had originally devoted himself to the first; and probably his initiation in the mysteries of thieving qualified him to be peculiarly expert in the profession of a thief-taker—a profession he had adopted, not from choice, but necessity. In this employment his reputation was great, though ...
— Caleb Williams - Things As They Are • William Godwin
... permitted to see, and those which were only shewn to the initiated. Concerning the latter, Aristides calls them "the most shocking and most ravishing representations." And Stoboeus asserts that the initiation into the grand mysteries exactly resembles death. Divine Legat. Vol. I. p. 280, and p. 272. And Virgil in his entrance to the shades below, amongst other things of terrible form, mentions death. Aen. VI. This part of the exhibition seems to be represented ...
— The Botanic Garden - A Poem in Two Parts. Part 1: The Economy of Vegetation • Erasmus Darwin
... "He that is kept from falling into a ditch, is as truly saved, as he that is taken out of one."—Barclay cor. "The best of it is, they are but a sort of French Hugonots."—Addison cor. "These last ten examples are indeed of a different nature from the former."—R. Johnson cor. "For the initiation of students into the principles of the English language."—Ann. Rev. cor. "Richelieu profited by every circumstance which the conjuncture afforded."—Bolingbroke cor. "In the names of drugs and plants, the mistake of a word may endanger life."—Merchant's ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown
... lighted up by one of my own sex. Yes, dear Laura, it was you who first taught me the delights and joys of love; it was you who first kindled that flame of desire that has caused me to experience twelve years of delirious bliss; it was to your gentle teaching, sweet friend, that I owe my initiation in all the mysteries of the Court of Venus; it was your soft hand that pointed out to me that path of pleasure—and all the delight shown on the wayside. The ...
— The Life and Amours of the Beautiful, Gay and Dashing Kate Percival - The Belle of the Delaware • Kate Percival
... symbols, parables, and proverbs, taken from ancient tradition, but beautifully woven into a purer faith, which taught that the healthy joys of life, and all knowledge of divine truth, should be given not to a few kings or priests, a few favored with initiation into divine mysteries, as of old, but to the whole world; for the spirit of Christianity was identical with the genius of republicanism. As taught by our Lord Jesus Christ, it was eminently healthy, brave-hearted, and joyous. It did not ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 3 No 2, February 1863 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... factor, but it is surprising that in the former case he does not consider environment as a factor, although he elsewhere gives striking evidence of unconscious influence proceeding from one individual to another via sex initiation. ...
— The Journal of Abnormal Psychology - Volume 10
... inhabitants, and that should be filled and blessed also with all kinds of goods." (L. G. B., I, p. 40.) [The three gates refer not merely to the three degrees, but have still for themselves another analogue in the initiation. In the old English system the aspirant knocks, because the door offers him a resistance, on the backs of the three officials. They are, as it were, the spiritual doors of the brotherhood. The resistance, and how it is gradually presented in Leade's ...
— Hidden Symbolism of Alchemy and the Occult Arts • Herbert Silberer
... sense of superstition, at any rate where cats are concerned, and a devout lover of "the furred serpent," I may record the last, the complete rite of my initiation at The Spectator office. While I was one day during my novitiate talking over articles and waiting for instructions—or, rather, finding articles for my chiefs to write about, for that very soon became the routine—a large, consequential, not to say stout black Tom-cat ...
— The Adventure of Living • John St. Loe Strachey
... begins by being a man wearing a lion's skin: he ends, as we have seen, by feeling himself to be a lion wearing a lion's skin. And who is this man? He may on particular occasions be only a candidate for purification or initiation. But par excellence he who has the right is the priest, the medicine-man, the divine king. If an old suggestion of my own is right, he is the original theos or thesos, the incarnate medicine or spell or magic power.[24:3] He at first, ...
— Five Stages of Greek Religion • Gilbert Murray
... Master will take the Sacred Roll (a sheet of parchment or paper prepared for the purpose), on which have been inscribed the name, age, date of initiation or affiliation, date of death, and any matters that may be interesting to the brethren, and shall read the same aloud, ...
— Masonic Monitor of the Degrees of Entered Apprentice, Fellow Craft and Master Mason • George Thornburgh
... however, discontinue conversation with Mr. Polly; he would come along to him whenever he appeared at his door, and converse about sport and women and fisticuffs and the pride of life with an air of extreme initiation, until Mr. Polly felt himself the faintest underdeveloped intimation of a man that had ever hovered ...
— The History of Mr. Polly • H. G. Wells
... sacred mystery of the turndun is preserved by a legend, which gives a supernatural sanction to secrecy. When boys go through the mystic ceremony of initiation they are shown turnduns, or bull-roarers, and made to listen to their hideous din. They are then told that, if ever a woman is allowed to see a turndun, the earth will open, and water will cover the globe. ...
— Custom and Myth • Andrew Lang
... spite of the ceaseless noises of your normal world. Within this world of silence you seem as it were to lose yourself, "to ebb and to flow, to wander and be lost in the Imageless Ground," says Ruysbroeck, struggling to describe the sensations of the self in this, its first initiation into the "wayless world, beyond image," where "all is, ...
— Practical Mysticism - A Little Book for Normal People • Evelyn Underhill
... sought for wisdom by travelling all over the world. Not content with the rites already known, they raked up obscure ceremonies and imported strange mysteries. Reflection and dialectic were no longer sufficient to ensure knowledge; asceticism, devotion, and initiation, were necessary for divine science. The idea broached by Plato in the Timaeus of intermediate beings between the gods and man, seemed to meet their requirements; and accordingly they at once adopted it. An entire hierarchy of daimones ...
— A History of Roman Literature - From the Earliest Period to the Death of Marcus Aurelius • Charles Thomas Cruttwell
... sea about the great white throne. And it is this which makes me comprehend how even an unregenerated soul—and how much more the Christian—can long for that which we call death, but which is but the initiation into the mysteries of the Beyond. It is this which, even aside from religious aspirations and fears, wraps our departure in an awful sublimity. To die that we may KNOW—to give up the transitory, the perishing, the earthly, ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 5, November, 1863 • Various
... that adolescence brings with it an awakening of the whole mental life, not of religion alone. But the analogy goes no further, and, in any case, it begs the question. The full significance of the connection will be seen when we come to deal with initiation in primitive times and conversion in the modern period. At present it suffices to point out that the interest in art, in science, in literature, in sociology, are ends in themselves, and one need go no further ...
— Religion & Sex - Studies in the Pathology of Religious Development • Chapman Cohen
... good-humoured, and accustomed to give and take, and they both found their level, as well in the Dragon court as among the world outside, where the London prentices were a strong and redoubtable body, with rude, not to say cruel, rites of initiation among themselves, plenty of rivalries and enmities between house and house, guild and guild, but a united, not to say ferocious, esprit de corps against every one else. Fisticuffs and wrestlings ...
— The Armourer's Prentices • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... very great difficulty and seriousness, not to be achieved without special aid and the intervention of the gods. We may even go so far as to say that the new materfamilias was in some sort a priestess of the household, and that she must undergo a solemn initiation before assuming that position. And we may still further illustrate the mystical religious nature of the whole rite, if we remember that throughout Roman history no one could hold the priesthood of Jupiter (flaminium diale), or that of Mars or Quirinus, or of the Rex sacrorum, who had not been ...
— Social life at Rome in the Age of Cicero • W. Warde Fowler
... of Beauty expressed in the "Hymn," Shelley "sought through the world the One whom he may love." Thus, while his doctrine in "Epipsychidion" seems Platonic, it will not square with the "Symposium." Plato treats the love of a beautiful person as a mere initiation into divine mysteries, the first step in the ladder that ascends to heaven. When a man has formed a just conception of the universal beauty, he looks back with a smile upon those who find their soul's sphere in the love of ...
— Percy Bysshe Shelley • John Addington Symonds
... Druids were the true children of the Magi, and their initiation came from Egypt and Chaldæa, that is to say, from the pure sources of the primitive Kabalah. They adored the Trinity under the names of Isis or Hesus, the Supreme Harmony; of Belen or Bel which in Assyrian ...
— Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry • Albert Pike
... is an unfamiliar one, there is first the initiation by employment in a sweater's shop, and a few months, or even weeks, gives all the necessary facility. Then comes the question of workroom; and here it is only necessary to take the family room, and hire a sewing machine, which is for rent at two shillings ...
— Prisoners of Poverty Abroad • Helen Campbell
... even carried away by it, without any volition of their own. Recollect, the memory can tyrannise, as well as the imagination. Derangement, I believe, has been considered as a loss of control over the sequence of ideas. The mind, once set in motion, is henceforth deprived of the power of initiation, and becomes the victim of a train of associations, one thought suggesting another, in the way of cause and effect, as if by a mechanical process, or some physical necessity. No one, who has had experience of men of studious ...
— English Prose - A Series of Related Essays for the Discussion and Practice • Frederick William Roe (edit. and select.)
... initiation were peculiarly solemn. After undergoing a severe fast, and spending whole nights in prayer, the candidate confessed, and received the sacrament. He then clothed himself in snow-white garments, and repaired to the church, or the hall, where the ceremony was to take place, bearing a knightly ...
— Bulfinch's Mythology • Thomas Bulfinch
... a sign of initiation, by which we are admitted into the society of the Church, in order that being incorporated into Christ, we may be numbered among the children of God.... For as circumcision was a pledge to the Jews, by which they were assured of their adoption as the people and family of God, and on ...
— The Story of My Life - Being Reminiscences of Sixty Years' Public Service in Canada • Egerton Ryerson
... up his courage. Cerizet's cleverness had given him the chance of striking the final blow. Petit-Claud was a double-dealer of the profoundly cautious stamp that is never caught by the bait of a present satisfaction, nor entangled by a personal attachment, after his first initiation into the strategy of self-seeking and the instability of the human heart. So, from the very first, he had put little trust in Cointet. He foresaw that his marriage negotiations might very easily be broken off, saw also that in that case he could ...
— Eve and David • Honore de Balzac
... who furnish "drapery Misses"[583] Throughout the season, upon speculation Of payment ere the Honeymoon's last kisses Have waned into a crescent's coruscation, Thought such an opportunity as this is, Of a rich foreigner's initiation, Not to be overlooked—and gave such credit, That future bridegrooms swore, and sighed, ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 6 • Lord Byron
... that my Father might expound it, verse by verse. The extraordinary beauty of the language—for instance, the matchless cadences and images of the first chapter—made a certain impression upon my imagination, and were (I think) my earliest initiation into the magic of literature. I was incapable of defining what I felt, but I certainly had a grip in the throat, which was in its essence a purely aesthetic emotion, when my Father read, in his pure, large, ringing voice, such passages as ...
— Father and Son • Edmund Gosse
... at Avignon and Bourg with Morgan and the Company of Jehu, his adventures in the villages of Muzillac and the Trinite with Cadoudal and his Chouans, seemed to him some strange initiation in an unknown religion; but like those courageous neophytes who risk death to learn the secrets of initiation, he resolved to ...
— The Companions of Jehu • Alexandre Dumas, pere
... France, the two hundred and fifty oldest men were to form the Council of Ancients, having powers to amend or reject the proposals emanating from the Council of Five Hundred. In this Council were the younger deputies, and with them rested the sole initiation of laws. Thus the young deputies were to make the laws, but the older deputies were to amend or reject them; and this nice adjustment of the characteristics of youth and age, a due blending of enthusiasm ...
— The Life of Napoleon I (Volumes, 1 and 2) • John Holland Rose
... mysteries—which are mysteries still, but which contained under their veil whatever faith in the Invisible and Eternal rested in the mind of an enlightened pagan. There can be little doubt but that Cicero took this opportunity of initiation. His brother Quintus and one of his cousins were with him at Athens; and in that city he also renewed his acquaintance with an old school-fellow, Titus Pomponius, who lived so long in the city, and became so thoroughly Athenian in his tastes and habits, that he is better known ...
— Cicero - Ancient Classics for English Readers • Rev. W. Lucas Collins
... had given it a sound drubbing, he bade them unbind the sack and throw it into the street. And so the day dawned, and all was well with the child. That day they performed the ceremony of Initiation with great rejoicing, and the Baal Shem was made godfather or Sandek. But before the feasting began, the father of the child begged the Baal Shem to tarry, "for," said he, "I must needs go first ...
— Dreamers of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... was postponed till night, and the rest of the day was spent in the ceremonies of Andrew's initiation. They cleared out one of the best huts in the encampment, dressed it with boughs and rushes, and seating Andrew in it on the stump of a cork tree, they put a hammer and tongs in his hands, and made him cut two capers to the sound of two guitars. They then bared one ...
— The Exemplary Novels of Cervantes • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... the situation and surroundings of that people, the elements of force and action, for good or evil, no individual agency and no combination of men can impart the power which they lack. All that was required among the Southern people, for the initiation of this gigantic rebellion, was some universal animating idea, capable of binding them together in unanimous accord, imparting the necessary force and velocity in the direction of treason, when started and impelled by the efforts of their ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol 2, No 6, December 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... the Constitution having been adopted, it will be necessary for those wishing to become members to sign it (and pay the initiation fee, if required by the Constitution), and suggests, if the assembly is a large one, that a recess be taken for the purpose. A motion is then made to take a recess for say ten minutes, or until the Constitution is signed. The constitution ...
— Robert's Rules of Order - Pocket Manual of Rules Of Order For Deliberative Assemblies • Henry M. Robert
... that I have become a Fenian," he said, "and I have been called on to explain to many what chance the movement has of succeeding. There was nothing in the initiation ...
— The Art of Disappearing • John Talbot Smith
... Pra@na, sun and eye; in Chandogya II. the Saman was identified with Om, rain, water, seasons, Pra@na, etc., in Chandogya III. 16-17 man was identified with sacrifice; his hunger, thirst, sorrow, with initiation; laughing, eating, etc., with the utterance of the Mantras; and asceticism, gift, sincerity, restraint from injury, truth, with sacrificial fees (dak@si@na). The gifted mind of these cultured Vedic Indians was anxious to come to some unity, but logical precision of thought ...
— A History of Indian Philosophy, Vol. 1 • Surendranath Dasgupta
... most part send them to a school where they are to be taught arithmetic, and the principles of English grammar. I should say in this case, as I said before on the subject of classical education, that a certain initiation in these departments of knowledge, even if they are pursued a very little way, will probably ...
— Thoughts on Man - His Nature, Productions and Discoveries, Interspersed with - Some Particulars Respecting the Author • William Godwin
... understanding of Dante as a poet than any other of his works. It shows him (and that in the midst of affairs demanding practical ability and presence of mind) capable of a depth of contemplative abstraction, equalling that of a Soofi who has passed the fourth step of initiation. It enables us in some sort to see how, from being the slave of his imaginative faculty, he rose by self-culture and force of will to that mastery of it which is art. We comprehend the Commedia better ...
— Among My Books • James Russell Lowell
... interpreter did not venture to explain; and laying his hand on me pronounced me 'Con-go-gu-wah,' and instantly, with great apparent delight, took me by the hand as a brother. I felt badly during the scene, but it was beyond recall, and supposing it might be useful in a future day, submitted to the initiation. ...
— An account of Sa-Go-Ye-Wat-Ha - Red Jacket and his people, 1750-1830 • John Niles Hubbard
... repetition of genealogies, comments, anecdotes to which Dickie lent most attentive ear. He was keen to learn, his attention was on the stretch. He was in process of initiation, and every moment of the sacred rites came to him with power and value. Yet it must be owned that he found the lessening of the strain on his memory and attention not wholly unwelcome when Mr. Chifney, sitting ...
— The History of Sir Richard Calmady - A Romance • Lucas Malet
... bear the weight of the huge dome with which Filippo di Ser Brunellesco vaulted the church, as may be seen to-day. The excellence of this initial work was such that the place is still called Lungo i Fondamenti (beside the foundations). The laying of the foundations and the initiation of so great a church was celebrated with much ceremony. The first stone was laid on the day of the Nativity of Our Lady 1298 by the cardinal legate of the Pope, in the presence not only of many bishops and of all the clergy, but also of the podesta, captains, priors, ...
— The Lives of the Painters, Sculptors & Architects, Volume 1 (of 8) • Giorgio Vasari
... "That's your initiation, my boy," said Whippleby. "We always try new beginners in that way, to find out what they ...
— Work and Win - or, Noddy Newman on a Cruise • Oliver Optic
... symbols? To fathom them is the task of our whole lifetime, but the developing man is warned at the very beginning of an all-disposing higher power, and I doubt if the same end could be reached by early initiation into the mysteries of the rule of three or into the wisdom of AEsop's fables. The remarkable part of it was, to be sure, that in my imagination Luther came to stand almost directly beside Moses and Jesus Christ, but without ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. IX - Friedrich Hebbel and Otto Ludwig • Various
... half-century, the Finns made a remarkable transformation from a farm/forest economy to a diversified modern industrial economy. Per capita income has risen to the West European level; Finland is a member of the European Union and is the only Nordic state to join the euro system at its initiation ...
— The 1999 CIA Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... LETTERS, by virtue of (as Ruskin calls it) "the kingship of words." "Charm" is derived from the Latin "carmen," a song that fascinates, and means to control by incantation, to subdue; while Teleo concerns the secret powers and wisdom of consecration and initiation. It is because of modern misuse of antique terms that, we have considered this somewhat lengthy explanation necessary, in order to clear away the accumulated debris of the ages, from the true foundation of ...
— The Light of Egypt, Volume II • Henry O. Wagner/Belle M. Wagner/Thomas H. Burgoyne
... especially by Drummond's character sketch. The natural consequence was that membership in the Apollo Club came to be regarded as an unusual honour. There appears to have been some kind of ceremony at the initiation of each new member, which gave all the greater importance to the rite of being "sealed of the tribe of Ben." Long after the dramatist was dead, his "sons" boasted of their intimacy with him, much to the irritation of Dryden and others. While ...
— Inns and Taverns of Old London • Henry C. Shelley
... introduce us to wild animals as they really are; and the reports of those who have caught terrified or ignorant glimpses of them in their native regions will mislead us no less in another direction. Nature reveals her secrets only to those who have faithfully and rigorously submitted to the initiation; but to them she shows herself marvellous and inexhaustible. The "simple animal" avouches his ability to transcend any imaginative conception of him. The stern economy of his structure and character, ...
— Confessions and Criticisms • Julian Hawthorne
... "you have never given me a single sign of life since our interview at Fontainebleau, and I confess that your presence there on the day of the Franciscan's death, and your initiation in certain secrets, caused me the liveliest astonishment I ever experienced ...
— Louise de la Valliere • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... the others, the more peculiar. In all the naval countries, suitable youths are taken in hand by their governments, and initiated into the "mysteries" of the naval profession—mysteries that would always remain mysteries to them, if their initiation were begun too late in life. Many instances are known of men who obtained great excellence in professions which they entered late in life; but not one instance in the case of a man who entered ...
— The Navy as a Fighting Machine • Bradley A. Fiske
... filled her soul with a tempest of emotion. Paris that morning was displaying the same vague joy and sorrow as that which disturbed her heart. In this lay a great charm—to be ignorant, to guess things dimly, to yield to slow initiation, with the vague thought that her youth was ...
— A Love Episode • Emile Zola
... us with 4000 men. The man was evidently in earnest, and was a loyal one. He believed every word he said, but he had in fact seen only a few of the enemy's horsemen who were scouting toward us, and believed their statement that an army was at their back. It was our initiation into an experience of rumors that was to continue as long as the war. We were to get them daily and almost hourly; sometimes with a little foundation of fact, sometimes with none; rarely purposely deceptive, but always grossly exaggerated, making chimeras with which a commanding ...
— Military Reminiscences of the Civil War V1 • Jacob Dolson Cox
... burning memories and touching old wounds in Shepherd's Bush and Bayswater, in Pimlico and South Kensington. The King hesitates, but the honorary member is firm. I approach you invoking the vows of my initiation, the Sacred Seven Cats, the Poker of Perfection, and the Ordeal of the Indescribable Instant (forgive me if I mix you up with the Clan-na-Gael or some other club I belong to), and ask you to permit me to read a paper at your next meeting on the "Wars of the London Boroughs."' Say all this to the ...
— The Napoleon of Notting Hill • Gilbert K. Chesterton
... I questioned my ability to carry on that work to its due height and proportion, yet as that was not proposed, but an initiation only by accidence into grammar, I consented to the proposal as a present expedient till a more qualified person should be found, without further treaty or mention of terms between us than that of mutual friendship. ...
— The History of Thomas Ellwood Written by Himself • Thomas Ellwood
... blood, and gave only to them. And this the evil demons imitating, commanded it to be done also in the mysteries of Mithras; for that bread and a cup of water are set forth with certain explanations in the ceremonial of initiation, you either know or ...
— A Source Book for Ancient Church History • Joseph Cullen Ayer, Jr., Ph.D.
... propaganda; indoctrination, inculcation, inoculation; advise &c. 695. explanation &c (interpretation) 522; lesson, lecture, sermon; apologue[obs3], parable; discourse, prolection[obs3], preachment; chalk talk; Chautauqua [U.S.]. exercise, task; curriculum; course, course of study; grammar, three R's, initiation, A.B.C. &c (beginning) 66. elementary education, primary education, secondary education, technical education, college education, collegiate education, military education, university education, liberal education, classical education, religious ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... it could be seen that some special interest in the voyage was being taken among the sailors and we learned that three of them had never crossed the line before and that an initiation of so doing was about to take place. The crew assembled at the bow of the ship and at the blowing of a trumpet by one of their number, Neptune appeared inquiring the name of the ship, where she was bound, etc., and announced that he would like to pay her a visit. Before his apparent ...
— Cape Cod and All the Pilgrim Land, June 1922, Volume 6, Number 4 • Various
... Eleusinia, as also to the mystic connection of Demeter with Dionysus. She gave them bread: but they never forgot that she gave them the bread of life. "She gave us," says the ancient Isocrates, "two gifts that are the most excellent: fruits, that we might not live like beasts; and that initiation, those who have part in which have sweeter hope,—both as regards the close of life, and for all eternity." So Dionysus gave them wine, not only to lighten the cares of life, but as a token, moreover, of efficient deliverance from the ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 6, No. 34, August, 1860 • Various
... genuine beginning in modern times of what has come to be the deepest note of present-day Christianity, the appreciation of personality as the highest thing in earth or heaven, and the initiation of a movement to find the vital sources and resources for the inner kindling of the spirit, and for raising the whole personal life to higher functions ...
— Spiritual Reformers in the 16th & 17th Centuries • Rufus M. Jones
... help her that at her initiation into the Christian life she had formally made just this renunciation, or that she had thought that before now she had ratified the vow. The meaninglessness of such formulas when spoken is only revealed when deepening life reveals their depths of meaning. She asked, in dismay, if duty was ...
— What Necessity Knows • Lily Dougall
... justice and polity," and that no change was to be made—that is to say, no new law was to pass without their consent as well as that of the council. Thus, the principle was established of two legislative chambers, with the right, but not the exclusive right, of initiation on the part of government, and in the sixteenth century one would hardly look for broader views of civil liberty and representative government. The foundation of a free commonwealth was thus securely laid, which had William lived, would have been a representative monarchy, but which ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... jurisdiction in different localities. In order not to be confounded with the vulgar mechanics who could only use the hammer and the trowel, the Freemasons invented signs of mutual recognition and certain ceremonies of initiation. A traditionary secret was handed down, revealed to the initiated, and that only according to the degrees they had attained. They adopted for symbols the square, the level, the compass, and the hammer. In some lodges and in higher grades (for they differ almost in every nation) we find ...
— Alvira: the Heroine of Vesuvius • A. J. O'Reilly
... three streets away.... Initiation by the new landlady into the mysteries of pawnshops; gradual thinning of wardrobe.... Answering of advertisements found in the public library in Great Smith Street.... Long, feet-aching trudges to save omnibus fares.... Always the same ...
— Once Aboard The Lugger • Arthur Stuart-Menteth Hutchinson
... render possible the initiation of a general limitation of the armaments of all nations, Germany undertakes directly to observe the military, naval, and air clauses ...
— World's War Events, Volume III • Various
... sinful for the uninitiated to listen. Plutarch speaks of the terror of those about to be initiated, and compares their state of mind to preparation for death. A special mode of life had to precede initiation, tending to give the spirit the mastery over the senses. Fasting, solitude, mortifications, and certain exercises for the soul were the means employed. The things to which man clings in ordinary life were to lose all their value for him. The whole trend of his life ...
— Christianity As A Mystical Fact - And The Mysteries of Antiquity • Rudolf Steiner
... he looked with feelings of unutterable amazement, not unmixed with awe. But there was little else that Mrs. Bullimore could teach John Clare, either in her schoolroom or in the yard. The instruction of the good old woman was, in the main, confined to two things—the initiation into the difficulties of A B C, and the reading from two books, of which she was the happy possessor. These books were 'The Death of Abel' and Bunyan's 'Pilgrim's Progress.' Their contents did not stir any thoughts or imaginings in little John, ...
— The Life of John Clare • Frederick Martin
... beloved so oddly enjoyed her footing. She gave him, she could see, a restless sense that these might be familiarities not to be sacrificed; germs, possibilities, faint foreshowings—heaven knew what—of the initiation it would prove profitable to have arrived at when in the fulness of time he should have his own shop in some such paradise. What really touched him—that was discernible—was that she could feed him with so much mere vividness of reminder, keep before him, as by the play ...
— In the Cage • Henry James
... questions cut like knives." The author of "Bench and Bar in Massachusetts", who was in college with him, says of him: "During the five years of his practice at the Middlesex Bar he underwent such an initiation into the profession as no other county could furnish. Shrewdness, energy, resource, strong nerves and mental muscles were needed to ward off the blows which the trained gladiators of this bar were accustomed to inflict. With the lessons learned at the Middlesex Bar he removed ...
— The Story of Wellesley • Florence Converse
... chin in his hand and scowled at the flames. "It's too bad, March; and I put your name up for the Golf Club, too. You will join that, won't you? You must, now that I've put you up. It's only a dollar initiation fee ...
— The Half-Back • Ralph Henry Barbour
... legislation and defined its principles and general characteristics. He meant to show it more and more systematic, deliberately hostile to collective enterprise, considering secondary bodies not as "distinct, special organs," endowed with a life of their own, "maintained and stimulated by private initiation," but as agents of the State "which fashions them after a common pattern, imposes on them their form and prescribes their work."—This done, this defect pointed out, the author was to enumerate the consequences flowing from it, the social body entirely changed, ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 6 (of 6) - The Modern Regime, Volume 2 (of 2) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... members appointed. The number of praetors was increased to eight. The government still rested on the basis of popular election, but was made more aristocratic than before. The Comitia Centuriata was left in possession of the nominal power of legislation, but it could only be exercised upon the initiation of a decree of the Senate. The Comitia Tributa was stripped of the powers by which it had so long controlled the Senate and the State. Tribunes of the people were selected from the Senate. The College of Pontiffs was no ...
— Ancient States and Empires • John Lord
... them as seditious, turbulent, obstinate, and avaricious; they regarded them as mainly composed of the very meanest slaves out of the gross and abject multitude; their proselytism they considered as the clandestine initiation into some strange and revolting mystery, which involved as its direct teachings contempt of the gods, and the negation of all patriotism and all family affection; they firmly believed that they worshipped the head of an ass; they thought it natural that none ...
— Seekers after God • Frederic William Farrar
... requiring him to demonstrate the abstrusest problems . . . spiritual problems, too . . . before he allows his right to teach the elements. Humbly I must enter the temple porch; gradually and trustfully proceed with my initiation. . . . When that is past, and not before . . . shall I be a fit judge of the mysteries of ...
— Yeast: A Problem • Charles Kingsley
... he had fallen like a live coal into some celestial magazine of colour and glow, straightway blazed up a slow explosion of crimson and green in a golden triumph—pure fire, the smoke and fuel gone, and the radiance alone left. And now Helen received the second lesson of her initiation into the life of nature: she became aware that the whole evening was thinking around her, and as the dusk grew deeper and the night grew closer, the world seemed to have grown dark with its thinking. Of late Helen had been driven herself to think—if not deeply, yet intensely—and so knew what ...
— Thomas Wingfold, Curate • George MacDonald
... columns. The architect of the Temple of Athena on the island of AEgina (Fig. 52) was less venturesome. Although the cella there is only 21 1/4 feet in breadth, we find, as in large temples, a double row of columns to help support the ceiling. And when a really large room was built, like the Hall of Initiation at Eleusis or the Assembly Hall of the Arcadians at Megalopolis, such a forest of pillars was required as must have seriously interfered with the convenience of congregations. We are now ready to study ...
— A History Of Greek Art • F. B. Tarbell
... child eats no animal food for four days. The plume which has been placed on the child's head in the kiva during the initiation is not removed till the fourth morning after the planting of the feathers, when he again goes over the road with his guardian, who deposits the plume from the child's head with a prayer, which ...
— The Religious Life of the Zuni Child - Bureau of American Ethnology • (Mrs.) Tilly E. (Matilda Coxe Evans) Stevenson
... his Precis du Traite de Commerce, 1786, endeavours to prove that in the initiation of negotiations Pitt was acting in obedience to the ...
— The Political History of England - Vol. X. • William Hunt
... wa al-Mufatahah fi Asnaf al-Jima' wa Alatih (Book of Carnal Copulation and the Initiation into the modes of Coition and its Instrumentation) by Aziz ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 10 • Richard F. Burton
... is the initiation of a new attitude, namely, the commonplace. The establishment of this attitude involves the sacrifice of self-love, and of the melancholy pleasure of playing the martyr. The oversensitive individual must recognize the fact that if people do not want him round it may be because he inflicts his ego ...
— Why Worry? • George Lincoln Walton, M.D.
... and quotes the often-quoted passage from Stephanus Gobarus, in which this writer refers to the language of Hegesippus condemning the use of the words, 'Eye hath not seen, etc.', why does he not state that these words were employed by heretical teachers to justify their rites of initiation, and consequently 'apologetic' writers contend that Hegesippus refers to the words, not as used by St Paul, but as misapplied by these heretics? Since, according to the Tuebingen interpretation, this ...
— Essays on "Supernatural Religion" • Joseph B. Lightfoot
... Russell & Sturgis, made a request to be allowed to trade, which, having the support of the Gov.-General of the day, was granted; and Mr. Butler, taking advantage of this recent precedent, also succeeded in founding a commercial house in Manila. To these foreigners is due the initiation of the traffic in those products which became the staple trade of the Colony and paved the way for the bulk of the business being, as it is to-day, in the hands of European and ...
— The Philippine Islands • John Foreman
... leaped from childhood to libertinism, taking his initiation into life at a single bound. She had desired marriage in order to acquire the respect and liberty of a married woman, but feeling towards her husband only a vague gratitude. "We end where others begin," ...
— The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... explicitly her threefold policy: reform of the Church, return to Rome, the initiation of a Crusade. In her little letter to Sir John Hawkwood, we have already seen her devotion to this last cause. A Crusade in the fourteenth century was not to be. Nevertheless, Catherine never showed ...
— Letters of Catherine Benincasa • Catherine Benincasa
... of such part will then say, "The Union for which we have struggled being already gone, we now choose to go with the Southern section." To deprive them of this hope substantially ends the rebellion, and the initiation of emancipation completely deprives them of it as to all the States initiating it. The point is not that all the States tolerating slavery would very soon, if at all, initiate emancipation; but that, while ...
— The Papers And Writings Of Abraham Lincoln, Complete - Constitutional Edition • Abraham Lincoln
... had promised not to join these societies. Not only were they obliged to resign their membership, but the original members of Alpha Delta Phi were compelled formally to submit to re-admission to the University, pledging themselves not to consent to the initiation of any members of the University in the society in opposition to Rule 20. The matter rested here until the following November, when the society presented a second constitution, which was received by the Faculty with ...
— The University of Michigan • Wilfred Shaw
... copious as faith; he was never so fine as on a shy return, and even better at forgiving than at being forgiven. I dare say it was a smaller matter than that famous night at Wimbledon, the night of the problematical sobriety and of Miss Anvoy's initiation; but I was as much in it on this occasion as I had been out of it then. At about 1.30 ...
— The Coxon Fund • Henry James
... the world may think of it, it will doubtless be acknowledged to be that—contained in the article that follows, merits a few words of introduction. The details given in it on the subject of what has always been considered as one of the darkest and most strictly guarded of the mysteries of the initiation into occultism—from the days of the Rishis until those of the Theosophical Society—came to the knowledge of the author in a way that would seem to the ordinary run of Europeans strange and supernatural. He himself, ...
— Five Years Of Theosophy • Various
... fortify his mind against obloquy and public hatred. He had reached his forty- eighth year in dignified ease, without knowing, by personal experience, what it was to be ridiculed and slandered. All at once, without any previous initiation, he had found himself exposed to such a storm of invective and satire as had never burst on the head of any statesman. The emoluments of office were now nothing to him; for he had just succeeded to a princely property by the death of his father-in-law. ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 1 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... "Musha good gracious, and who could be tellin' you that?" an answer which had repeatedly left him a discouraged atom of bewilderment, symbolically environed by our wide-spreading bog. Since Mr. Polymathers's visit, these visions had grown clearer, but not under any rays of hope. His initiation into the elements of mathematics had pointed out the road along which he should travel, but had simultaneously revealed all its obstacles, insurmountable for him solitary and unequipped. In those days his mind was constantly fumbling at ...
— Strangers at Lisconnel • Barlow Jane
... enlightenments) in one of his philosophical meditations, "are products of mankind, but to seek reason directly for the people and through the people is a chimera. It is not necessary for the existence of reason that everybody should know it. In any case if this initiation were to be brought about it could not be through low-class democracy, which seems to lead rather to the extinction of every difficult culture and of every great discipline. The principle that society exists only for the welfare and liberty of individuals ...
— Readings on Fascism and National Socialism • Various
... and athletic exercises had been his chief study. His father was lately dead, and the administration of a great estate had devolved upon him. His desire was to do his duty by it, and he had to learn how, that prospect not having been prepared for in his education, further than by initiation in the field-sports ...
— The Vicissitudes of Bessie Fairfax • Harriet Parr
... composing any philosophical work, he thought it necessary to observe the silence of five years, which was the appointed initiation into the esoteric doctrines of his Sect. During this time he exercised his mind in storing up materials for future reflection. We are told that on several occasions he hindered insurrections in the cities in which ...
— Historical Sketches, Volume I (of 3) • John Henry Newman
... kings The service of Joseph to the king Famine in Egypt Power of Pharaoh Power of the priests Character of the priests Knowledge of the priests Teachings of the priests Egyptian gods Antiquity of sacrifices Civilization of Egypt Initiation of Joseph in Egyptian knowledge Austerity to his brethren Grief of Jacob Severity of the famine in Canaan Jacob allows the departure of Benjamin Joseph's partiality to Benjamin His continued austerity to his ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume II • John Lord
... do so to prove thee, and know whether thou wert resigned to the Divine will, and wert walking in those ways wherein alone thou canst become worthy of initiation into the highest grade of knowledge. Thou hast told us faithfully all that thou hast heard, and thereby proved that thou canst obey—the first virtue ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... penetrate to his apartment. A visitor, let into the secret, would say to the porter, "The season for plums has arrived," thanks to which he acquired the right to enter the house. But this was only the first degree of initiation. A servant would next come forward and ask, "What does Monsieur wish?" and one had to be able to answer, "I have brought some Brussels lace." This constituted the second degree and resulted in permission to ascend the stairs. Then, with the door of the sanctuary just ajar, the visitor could ...
— Honor de Balzac • Albert Keim and Louis Lumet
... allusion to the toga virilis of the Romans. The German youth were presented with the shield and spear probably at twelve or fifteen years of age. This early initiation into the business of arms gave them that warlike character for which they were so celebrated. Thus, Seneca (Epist. 46) says, "A native of Germany brandishes, while yet a boy, his slender javelin." And again ...
— The Germany and the Agricola of Tacitus • Tacitus
... the new society took little pains to conceal its existence; they seemed rather to find a pride in the knowledge which their neighbours had of the fact, and relied for their legal safety on certain precautions adopted in the manner of their initiation as members. When informed firstly by well known nationalists in a private manner, and subsequently by public remonstrances addressed to them by Catholic clergymen and the national journals, that the government were on their track, they refused to believe it; but ...
— Speeches from the Dock, Part I • Various
... all working independently, are all agreed later in their accounts of the initiation of order: the phenomenon is identical; at a given moment, a child begins to show an intense interest in one of the exercises. It is by no means necessary that it should be that exercise pertaining to the object determined as the first series; it may be any other object that fixes the attention ...
— Spontaneous Activity in Education • Maria Montessori
... is necessary to be profoundly versed at once in the esoteric signification of the Scriptures and in the mysteries of Freemasonry. It was the dreamer's great regret that she neither knew, nor could know, the latter, women being excluded from initiation. ...
— Dreams and Dream Stories • Anna (Bonus) Kingsford
... of 1902 which inquired into certain aspects of the Darkest England Scheme two years after its initiation, were careful to state that they did not enter upon any consideration of the many economic questions affecting the maintenance of the system sought to be carried out." (The Salvation Army and the ...
— The Social Work of the Salvation Army • Edwin Gifford Lamb
... and Howe's manoeuvres for breaking the line must be considered later. For the present it will suffice to note that it seems designed rather as a method of gaining the wind than as a method of concentration, and that the initiation of the manoeuvre is left to the discretion of the leading flag officer, and cannot be signalled by ...
— Fighting Instructions, 1530-1816 - Publications Of The Navy Records Society Vol. XXIX. • Julian S. Corbett
... as pleasure, has its initiation. The first crisis, like that in which poor Sabine nearly succumbed, returns no more than the first fruits of other things return. It is the first wedge struck in the torture of the heart; all others are expected, the shock to the nerves is known, the ...
— Beatrix • Honore de Balzac
... Christ was, that, taken together, they cover the whole ground of revealed fact, and they also cover the whole ground of Christian experience. There is no room for any other rites, because these two, the rite of initiation, which is baptism, and the rite of commemoration, which is the Lord's Supper, say everything about Christianity as a revelation, and about Christianity as a ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: Romans Corinthians (To II Corinthians, Chap. V) • Alexander Maclaren
... intolerance" toward the leading poets—of my "deriding" them, and preaching their "uselessness." If anybody cares to know what I think—and have long thought and avow'd—about them, I am entirely willing to propound. I can't imagine any better luck befalling these States for a poetical beginning and initiation than has come from Emerson, Longfellow, Bryant, and Whittier. Emerson, to me, stands unmistakably at the head, but for the others I am at a loss where to give any precedence. Each illustrious, each rounded, each distinctive. Emerson for his sweet, vital-tasting melody, ...
— Complete Prose Works - Specimen Days and Collect, November Boughs and Goodbye My Fancy • Walt Whitman
... this redemption by roses, and the initiation into virtue's path, that caused Adlington in his introduction to call the book "a figure of man's life, egging mortal men forward from their asinal form to their human and perfect shape, that so they ...
— Essays in Rebellion • Henry W. Nevinson
... Nunnery, where the Lady Abbess brings her out, and delivers her to them. Then again is there a Sermon preach'd on the same Subject as at first; which being over, she is brought up to the Altar, in a decent, but plain Dress, the fine Apparel, which she put off on her Initiation, being deposited on one side of the Altar, and her Nun's Weeds on the other. Here the Priest in Latin cries, Utrum horum mavis, accipe: to which she answers, as her Inclination, or as her Instruction directs her. If she, after this her Year of Probation, show any ...
— Military Memoirs of Capt. George Carleton • Daniel Defoe
... my own initiation into this mystery of the nameless singer, and fired by Guido's praises of him, turned to those about me, and the room had filled a little by this time, and I cried out, as indeed I had no business to do in a house where at best I was ...
— The God of Love • Justin Huntly McCarthy
... another by means of a legal fiction[2]. The other kind of association, to which the name age-grades is applied, is composed of a series of grades, through which, concomitantly with the performance of the rites of initiation obligatory on every male member of the community, each man passes in succession, until he attains the highest. In the rare cases where an individual fails to qualify for the grade into which his coevals pass, and remains ...
— Kinship Organisations and Group Marriage in Australia • Northcote W. Thomas
... recluses, long since abandoned, and rooms for the menials and slaves, of whom hundreds were employed in the precincts; under ground spread the mystical array of halls, grottoes, galleries and catacombs dedicated to the practice of the Mysteries and the initiation of neophytes; on the roof stood various observatories—among them one erected for the study of the heavens by Eratosthenes, where Claudius Ptolemaeus had watched and worked. Up here astronomers, star-gazers, horoscopists and Magians spent their nights, while, ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... the first germ of the belief in the immortality of the soul."[2004] The idea of the Orphic mysteries was that humanity is suffering and sinful, and must be initiated in order to wash away its stains and be redeemed from its sins. Initiation puts a man in communication with the divinity. The soul is raised by ecstasy to feel its own divinity, which is the deepest element in all mystic religion. In all this compound of rites and notions the great antecedent philosophy was not the same as ours. It was ...
— Folkways - A Study of the Sociological Importance of Usages, Manners, Customs, Mores, and Morals • William Graham Sumner
... the mood if I am to speak again of what amused me in the pagan days of my initiation at Chautauqua. Life, for instance, at the ginger-bread hotel amused me oddly. To one who lives in a metropolis throughout the working months, the map of eating at Chautauqua seems incongruous. Dinner is served in the middle of the day, at an hour when one is ...
— The Unpopular Review, Volume II Number 3 • Various
... have lingered on the borders long enough. To-morrow will be my initiation. By night I'll have learned the state of my artistic ability with natural resources, and I'll know whether the heart of the swamp is the loveliest sight I ever have seen, and I will have proved how I 'line up' with ...
— Michael O'Halloran • Gene Stratton-Porter
... his pieces disclosed the Eleusinean mysteries, and was only acquitted on the intercession of his brother Aminias, who bared in sight of the judges the wounds which he had received in the battle of Salamis. He perhaps believed that in the communication of the poetic feeling was contained the initiation into the mysteries, and that nothing was in this way revealed to any one who was not ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art - and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel trans John Black
... Initiation ceremonies. Jus primae noctis. Punishment for adultery. Ariltha of central tribes. ...
— Kinship Organisations and Group Marriage in Australia • Northcote W. Thomas
... Mason's conjecture of 'initiation' as void of meaning and harmony. Now my ear deceives me if 'initiation' be not the right word. In fact,'imitation' is utterly impertinent to all that follows. Bertoldo tells Antonio that he had been initiated in the manners suited to the court by two ...
— Literary Remains (1) • Coleridge
... his explanatory message, "that all the States tolerating slavery would very soon, if at all, initiate emancipation; but that while the offer is equally made to all, the more northern shall, by such initiation, make it certain to the more southern that in no event will the former ever join the latter in their proposed Confederacy. I say 'initiation' because, in my judgment, gradual, and not sudden, emancipation is better for all.... Such a proposition on the part of the general ...
— A Short Life of Abraham Lincoln - Condensed from Nicolay & Hay's Abraham Lincoln: A History • John G. Nicolay
... her brother across the water for a year or two of travel; but Hazel was quite determined, and before January was over she was established in the hospital, through the influence of their family physician, and undergoing her first initiation. ...
— The Man of the Desert • Grace Livingston Hill
... action. Ten thousand wasn't very much—not nearly so much as he had counted on—still, ten thousand dollars was ten thousand dollars; besides, if the Gulwings did their work cannily the ten thousand ought to be merely a starter, an initiation fee, really, for the victim. Once he was enmeshed, trust Sig and Alf to trim him to his underwear; the machinery of the wire-tapping game was geared for ...
— Sundry Accounts • Irvin S. Cobb
... prejudice against whooping-cough, Emmy Lou had not entered the Primer Class until late. When she arrived, the seventy little boys and girls were well along in Alphabetical lore, having long since passed the a, b, c, of initiation, and become glibly eloquent to a point where the l, m, n, o, p slipped off their tongues with the liquid ...
— Americans All - Stories of American Life of To-Day • Various
... less veiled language mythical explanations of the origin of particular rites which we have good reason to believe formed essential features of the festival. Amongst the rites as to which the poet thus drops significant hints are the preliminary fast of the candidates for initiation, the torchlight procession, the all-night vigil, the sitting of the candidates, veiled and in silence, on stools covered with sheepskins, the use of scurrilous language, the breaking of ribald jests, and the ...
— The Golden Bough - A study of magic and religion • Sir James George Frazer
... ceremony was only begun, for to-night was the night of my initiation. Leaving the inner court I bathed myself, and, clad in pure linen, passed, as it is ordained, into an inner, but not the inmost, sanctuary, and laid the accustomed offerings on the altar. Then, lifting my hands to heaven, I remained for many ...
— Cleopatra • H. Rider Haggard
... condition in which the consciousness is held in bondage by the infirmities of the body is not one likely to be conducive to psychic development. For this reason alone many aspirants have been turned back from initiation. The constitution need not be robust, but it should at all events be free from disorder and pain. Some of the most ethereal and spiritual natures are found in association with a delicate organism. So long as the balance ...
— Second Sight - A study of Natural and Induced Clairvoyance • Sepharial
... modest house on Henry Street he moved to Fifth Avenue. At his summer home in Greenwich he erected a stable with stalls of finest mahogany. His daughter's wedding became a prodigal exhibition of great wealth, and admittance to the Americus Club, his favourite retreat, required an initiation fee of one thousand dollars. To the poor he gave lavishly. In the winter of 1870-71 he donated one thousand dollars to each alderman to buy coal and food for the needy. His own ward received fifty thousand. Finally, in return for his gifts scattered broadcast to the press and to an army of proteges, ...
— A Political History of the State of New York, Volumes 1-3 • DeAlva Stanwood Alexander
... to have got the better of his propensity for play, if we may judge from the following wise sentiment:—'It was too great a consumer,' he said, 'of four things—time, health, fortune, and thinking.' But a writer in the Edinburgh Review seems to doubt Selwyn's reformation; for his initiation of Wilberforce occurred in 1782, when he was 63; and previously, in 1776, he underwent the process of dunning from Lord Derby, before-mentioned, and in 1779 from Mr Crawford ('Fish Crawford,' as he was called), each of whom, like Mr Shafto, 'had a sum to make up'—in ...
— The Gaming Table: Its Votaries and Victims - Volume I (of II) • Andrew Steinmetz
... of De Quincey and Ruskin and Charles Kingsley, and for the strangely subtle effects wrought by Pater and Stevenson. But he must not imagine that any laboratory system of tapping syncopated time, or any painstaking marking of macrons (-) breves (u) and caesuras (||) will give him full initiation into the mysteries of prose cadences which have been built, not merely out of stressed and unstressed syllables, but out of the passionate intellectual life of many generations of men. He may learn to feel that life as it pulsates in words, but no one has thus far devised ...
— A Study of Poetry • Bliss Perry
... well be called a baptism, a regeneration, the initiation into a new state. The yearning memories, the bitter regret, the agonized sympathy, the struggling appeals to the Invisible Right—all the intense emotions which had filled the days and nights of the past week, and were compressing ...
— Adam Bede • George Eliot
... into war did much to cool his indignation, and Bethmann-Hollweg's cynical explanation of the violation of Belgium's neutrality went far to justify Britain's action consequent upon that outraging of treaty faith. The deliberate initiation of the policy of "frightfulness" which had heaped such unspeakable horrors upon the Belgian people tore the veil from the face of German militarism and revealed in its sheer brutality the ruthlessness and lawlessness ...
— The Major • Ralph Connor
... naualteteuctin, which may be translated "master magicians." They were also known as teotlauice, "sacred companions in arms." As was the case with most classes of the teteuctin, or nobles, entrance to the order was by a severe and prolonged ceremony of initiation, the object of which was not merely to test the endurance of pain and the powers of self-denial, but especially to throw the mind into that subjective state in which it is brought into contact with the divine, in which it can "see visions and dream dreams." The order claimed as ...
— Nagualism - A Study in Native American Folk-lore and History • Daniel G. Brinton
... the initiation of the final campaign directed against the only remaining burdens of the press. Mr. Ewart and Mr. Milner Gibson brought forward a motion for the repeal of the advertisement duty, but were defeated by two hundred and eight votes to thirty-nine. But they were not cast down by their want of success, ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No 2, August, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... mode of reasoning will apply to the other branch of the subject—the initiation of structures and organs by the action of the fundamental laws of growth. Admitting that such laws have determined some of the main divisions of the animal and vegetable kingdom, have originated certain important organs, and have been the fundamental cause of certain lines of development, ...
— Darwinism (1889) • Alfred Russel Wallace
... man was undergoing initiation into a secret society. He was blind-folded, and two companions were leading him along the edge of a cliff over a deep ravine, when the earth gave way, or they slipped and fell from the precipice, and Leggett was so injured that he died in ...
— Ars Recte Vivende - Being Essays Contributed to "The Easy Chair" • George William Curtis
... this time, accomplished their initiation into the process of walking under a knapsack, with the most complete and encouraging success. You, who in these days of vehement bustle, business, and competition, can still find time to travel for pleasure ...
— Rambles Beyond Railways; - or, Notes in Cornwall taken A-foot • Wilkie Collins
... element of clumsiness and stupidity. Civil duties demand intelligence and morals. The best patriotism of the South joins hands with that of the North in the elevation of the lowly and ignorant. What has been done is only the initiation of the ten times more which ...
— The American Missionary — Volume 54, No. 01, January, 1900 • Various
... had watched the little incident. She said to her, "I see you belong to the helping hand society." "No," replied the girl, "not the helping hand, just the helping finger society." This is a great society, girls and boys. Admission to it requires no initiation fee, no dues, simply the desire and the will to be helpful wherever ...
— The Children's Six Minutes • Bruce S. Wright
... I remember him, now, impulsive, hasty in action, and slow to confess a fault. It was his impulsiveness that led him to volunteer and serve four years in the Confederate army,—trying years to my mother, with a brood of seven children to feed, garb, and house. The war brought me my initiation as a cowboy, of which I have now, after the long lapse of years, the greater portion of which were spent with cattle, a distinct recollection. Sherman's army, in its march to the sea, passed through our county, devastating that section ...
— The Log of a Cowboy - A Narrative of the Old Trail Days • Andy Adams
... effect, that he found himself in serious financial difficulties, but by practising as a lawyer he succeeded in making a sufficient income to provide more than adequately for the expenses of this fresh initiation (Metamorph. xi. 28, 30). While at Rome he made the acquaintance of Aemilianus Strabo and Scipio Orfitus, men of distinguished position, whom he was to meet again when their official career brought them to Africa as proconsuls of that province ...
— The Apologia and Florida of Apuleius of Madaura • Lucius Apuleius
... his thoughts and ideals. As there would be but one spirit in the world, and that infinite, so there would be but one ideal and that indiscriminate. The despair which the naturalist's view of human instability might tend to produce is turned by this mystical initiation into a sort of ecstasy; and the deluge of conformity suddenly submerges that Life of Reason which science seemed to condemn ...
— The Life of Reason • George Santayana
... moments, and that I am gone, than they would be to think of me as a vagabond, let loose upon society: they will at least feel that I shall 'cease from troubling.' I have not the excuse that many delinquents have pleaded, early initiation into vice. My childhood was passed with pious relatives, who labored to instil religious principles into my mind; but I 'would none of their reproof.' My friends not being wealthy, I was left at a proper age to my own resources. I found a situation where my talents were appreciated ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, January 1844 - Volume 23, Number 1 • Various
... been Shelley. Homer, I conceive, had from the first the normal bent for action. What his fellows did he too wanted to do. He learned to hunt, to sail a boat, to build a house, to use a spear and bow. He had his initiation early, in conflict, in danger, and in death. He loved the feast, the dance, and the song. But also he had dreams. He used to sit alone and think. And, as he grew, these moods grew, till he came to live a second life, a kind ...
— Appearances - Being Notes of Travel • Goldsworthy Lowes Dickinson
... stories Mr. Blackwood has adequately maintained the quality of his best previous animistic work. To those who found a new imaginative world in "The Centaur" and "Pan's Garden," the old familiar magic still has power in many of these stories,—almost completely in "The Touch of Pan" and "Initiation." Hardly inferior to these stories for their passionate reality are "The Other Wing," "The Occupant of the Room," "The Tryst," and "H. S. H." There is no story in this volume which would not have made the reputation of a new writer, ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1917 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... the simple truth as far as it can be understood, and the promise of full explanation whenever the mind is mature to receive it. The mother should anticipate this natural need of the mind for knowledge, and should prepare her daughter for initiation into the higher mysteries of human life by an acquaintance with life in its simpler forms, where it is not complicated by human passions. The functions of reproduction in vegetable life are the natural method of instruction, and lead the way to a ...
— The Education of American Girls • Anna Callender Brackett
... Will you never learn to be an artist, Denham? The modern picture should be a painted quatrain, with colours for words—words which say nothing, because everything has been said, but which suggest all that has been felt and dreamed. Art is the initiation into a mood, a mystery—a sphinx whose riddle every one can ...
— The Black Cat - A Play in Three Acts • John Todhunter
... correspondent, who seems, with all his errours, worthy of advice, must be told, that he is calling too hastily for the last effusion of total insensibility. Whatever he may have been taught by unskilful Idlers to believe, labour is necessary in his initiation to idleness. He that never labours may know the pains of idleness, but not the pleasure. The comfort is, that if he devotes himself to insensibility, he will daily lengthen the intervals of idleness, and ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson in Nine Volumes - Volume IV: The Adventurer; The Idler • Samuel Johnson
... for the sale of the power to be generated at this project. These contracts must assure the return of all Government outlays upon the project. I recommend that the necessary funds be appropriated for the initiation of this work as soon as the contracts are in the ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... Pytholaus, who murdered Alexander of Pherae. And Periander, the tyrant of the Ambraciotes, having asked a most insulting question of his minion, was murdered by him, so exasperated was he. But with women and wives all this is the beginning of friendship, and as it were an initiation into the sacred mysteries. And pleasure plays a very small part in this, but the esteem and favour and mutual love and constancy that result from it, proves that the Delphians did not talk nonsense in giving the name of Arma[146] to ...
— Plutarch's Morals • Plutarch
... establishment and cut a dash if he had known how. He admired the grand style in living, not so much as a matter of display, because presumably it stood for all sorts of mysterious refinements for which he possessed the yearning without the initiation. The highest flight he could take by his own unaided efforts was in engaging the best suite of rooms in the best hotel, when he was quite content with his dingy old lodgings; in driving in taxicabs, when the tram-car would have suited him ...
— The Street Called Straight • Basil King |
