"Nativity" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... our thoroughfares. Abroad, in the shops of the Rue de Rivoli, brightest and most central of Parisian streets, the putrescent remnant of what was once Catholicism promotes its poor gilded pedlars' ware of nativity and crucifixion into such honorable corners as it can find among the more costly and studious illuminations of the brothel: and although, in Pall Mall, and the Strand, the large-margined Landseer,—Stanfield,—or Turner-proofs, in a few stately windows, ...
— Ariadne Florentina - Six Lectures on Wood and Metal Engraving • John Ruskin
... agency. Yes, the chronicles were full of these gods born of virgins, of crucifixions,—he could remember sixteen,—of these solar myths. He caught tripping in a thousand cases the translations of our holy books. The Ox and Ass legend at the Nativity he realized was the Pseudo-Matthew's description to Habakkuk of the literal presence: "In the midst of two animals thou shalt be known;" which is a mistranslated Hebrew text in the Prayer ascribed to Habakkuk. It got into the Greek Septuagint version of the Prophet made by Egyptian Jews before ...
— Visionaries • James Huneker
... stars seem to have been in conjunction at his nativity. The Reformation had passed the period of its vinous fermentation, and its clarified results remained as an element of intellectual impulse and exhilaration; there were signs yet of the acetous and putrefactive stages which were to follow in the victory and ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, Issue 15, January, 1859 • Various
... you this Letter. He is going to the Land of his Nativity, wishing for the best Happiness of his own Country & ours and hoping that mutual Affection will be at length restored, as the only Means of the prosperity of both. As he determines to spend the Remainder of his Days in the Country where ...
— The Original Writings of Samuel Adams, Volume 4 • Samuel Adams
... certain Masses of Saints, the chants for which were taken from those which later were collected together to form the Common. For the Feasts of the Annunciation, the Assumption, and the Nativity of the Virgin, all the chants were taken from older Masses, e.g., from the masses of Advent and of certain Virgins and Martyrs. The Procession of the Purification, both words and melody, was borrowed ...
— St. Gregory and the Gregorian Music • E. G. P. Wyatt
... scarcely a page damaged by the weather. It bore no title; but the Bishop, who afterwards caused his secretary to take a copy of the tale, gave it a very long one, beginning: "God's mercy shown in a Miracle upon certain castaways from Jutland, at the Feast of the Nativity of His Blessed Son, our Lord, in the year MCCCLVII., whereby He made dead trees to put forth in leaf, and comforted desperate men with summer in the midst of the Frozen Sea" . . . with much beside. But ...
— The White Wolf and Other Fireside Tales • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... recommend the war: he was applauded, and his word taken for the science, the politeness, and importance of the Turks. It is true that he believed in his own thesis, for he has found among them people who cast a nativity, and alchymists who ruined his fortune; as he found Martinists at Paris, who enabled him to sup with Sesostris, and Magnetizers who concluded with destroying his existence. Notwithstanding this, the Turks were beaten by the Russians, and the man who then predicted the ...
— The Ruins • C. F. [Constantin Francois de] Volney
... the first sketch. The dream panorama is not a literal discussion of abolitionism or states' rights. It illustrates rather the Hebraic exultation applied to all lands and times. "Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord"; a gracious picture of the nativity. (Edith Storey impersonates Mary the Virgin.) "I have seen him in the watchfires of a hundred circling camps" and "They have builded him an altar in the evening dews and damps"—for these are given symbolic pageants ...
— The Art Of The Moving Picture • Vachel Lindsay
... Maupassant was from Normandy; and Daudet had the Southern expansiveness and abundance, just as Maupassant had the Northern reserve and caution. If an author is ever to bring forth fruit after his kind he must have roots in the soil of his nativity. Daudet was no orchid, beautiful and scentless; his writings have always the full flavor of the southern soil. He was able to set Tartarin before us so sympathetically and to make Numa Roumestan so convincing because ...
— The Nabob, Volume 1 (of 2) • Alphonse Daudet
... prediction is but a trifle, yet I will mention it, to show how ignorant those sottish pretenders to astrology are in their own concerns. It relates to Partridge, the almanack-maker. I have consulted the stars of his nativity by my own rules, and find he will infallibly die upon the 29th of March next, about eleven at night, of a raging fever; therefore I advise him to consider of it, and settle his ...
— The Battle of the Books - and Other Short Pieces • Jonathan Swift
... have to offer to these tribes as an inducement to relinquish the lands on which they now reside and to remove to those which are designated. It is not doubted that this arrangement will present considerations of sufficient force to surmount all their prejudices in favor of the soil of their nativity, however strong they may be. Their elders have sufficient intelligence to discern the certain progress of events in the present train, and sufficient virtue, by yielding to momentary sacrifices, to ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 1 (of 3) of Volume 2: James Monroe • James D. Richardson
... came out of Chaldea, he left his country and kindred behind him (Gen 12; Acts 7). When Ruth came to put her trust under the wings of the Lord God of Israel, she left her father and mother, her gods, and the land of her nativity, behind her (Ruth 1:15-17; 2:11,12). When Peter came to Christ, he left his nets behind him (Matt 4:20). When Zaccheus came to Christ, he left the receipt of custom behind him (Luke 19). When Paul came to ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... the Annunciation, presents no feature of interest; nor yet does the tenth, the Visit of Mary to Elizabeth. The eleventh, the Nativity, though rather ...
— Essays on Life, Art and Science • Samuel Butler
... himself, Charles surrounded himself that night with cheer. A band of wandering minstrels had arrived to sing, the great fire blazed, the dogs around it gnawed the bones of the Christmas feast. But when the troubadours would have sung of the Nativity, he bade them in a great voice to have done. So they sang of war, and, remembering his cousin Philip, ...
— The Truce of God • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... infancy, and which he had preserved, first from superstitious reverence, and, latterly, from the hope that it might serve one day to aid in the discovery of his birth. The bag, being opened, was found to contain a blue silk case, front which was drawn a scheme of nativity. Upon inspecting this paper, Colonel Mannering instantly admitted it was his own composition; and afforded the strongest and most satisfactory evidence, that the possessor of it must necessarily be the young heir of Ellangowan, by avowing his having first appeared in that country in the character ...
— Guy Mannering • Sir Walter Scott
... enemies asserted that he was himself a sorcerer, and raised such a storm over his head, that he was forced to fly the city. After this he became physician to Louisa de Savoy, mother of King Francis I. This lady was curious to know the future, and required her physician to cast her nativity. Agrippa replied that he would not encourage such idle curiosity. The result was, he lost her confidence, and was forthwith dismissed. If it had been through his belief in the worthlessness of ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds • Charles Mackay
... Amorites with whom Abraham became associated had those pronounced Armenoid traits which can still be traced in representatives of the Hebrew people. Of special interest in this connection is Ezekiel's declaration regarding the ethnics of Jerusalem: "Thy birth and thy nativity", he said, "is of the land of Canaan; thy father was an Amorite, and ...
— Myths of Babylonia and Assyria • Donald A. Mackenzie
... Lancashire family. When eleven years old he was sent to Queens' College, Cambridge, as he himself informs us in his Autobiographical Notes, now preserved in the British Museum,[14] which he wrote for the purpose of having his nativity cast: '1525. Sub fine II [a]ni circa fest[u] Mic[h]is Cantabrigiam s[u] missus ad bonas I[r]as.' Here he so greatly distinguished himself that King Henry VIII. chose him and John Cheke, afterwards tutor to Prince Edward, to be his ...
— English Book Collectors • William Younger Fletcher
... belonged to Elyas de Rabayn and his wife Matilda (12th Nov., 1288), the jurors declare that "Robert de Rothwell holds in Thymelby and Horncastre," certain "rents of assize, to be paid at the Feast of St. Michael, the Nativity of the Lord, Easter, and St. Botulph" ...
— A History of Horncastle - from the earliest period to the present time • James Conway Walter
... "if Miss Anthony does not like our laws she'd better emigrate!" This legal authority failed to advise where she could emigrate to find laws which were equally just to men and to women. It might also have answered the question, "Should a woman be compelled to leave the land of her nativity because of the injustice ...
— The Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony (Volume 1 of 2) • Ida Husted Harper
... Garrazino. In the last chapel, N. side nearest the altar, is a triptych by Brea, 1495. Near the Cathedral, in the Sistina chapel, is the tomb of the parents of Pope Sixtus IV., the uncle of JuliusII. In the church of San Domenico there is in the first chapel, left on entering, a"Nativity" by A.Semini. The figure of the Virgin appears rather large, but the contour and expression of the others are admirable. In another chapel on the same side of the church is an "Adoration of the Magi" by Albert Durer, in the form of a triptych. ...
— The South of France—East Half • Charles Bertram Black
... scenes of the Passion, etc. The most striking is a large head and bust of Christ on the easternmost division of the vaulting. One hand holds the Gospels, with the inscription Salus Populi Ego Sum. On the wall beneath are the Descent from the Cross and the Entombment. The Nativity and Annunciation also appear on the roof, while on the walls are the Entry into Jerusalem, the Raising of Lazarus, the Descent into Hell, and the Appearance to Mary Magdalene ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: The Cathedral Church of Winchester - A Description of Its Fabric and a Brief History of the Episcopal See • Philip Walsingham Sergeant
... footing. At one corner a great white sow ran out of an alley-way, followed by a twinkling litter of pink pigs. In the market-place we left our horses in the shadow of the monastery wall and entered, by a low door, the lofty, bare Church of the Nativity. ...
— Out-of-Doors in the Holy Land - Impressions of Travel in Body and Spirit • Henry Van Dyke
... out and left uncoloured at Pian di Mugnone. In 1519 Fra Paolo finished it, and it presents the usual disparity between the composition and colouring, the former being good, the latter weak and crude. His best known works are a Nativity in the Palazzo Borghese, a Madonna and Child with S. John Baptist in the Sciarra Colonna, also in Rome; a Madonna and Child with S. John in the Corsini Gallery, Florence, and another of the same subject in the Antinori Palace. He painted also at San Gimignano, Pian di Mugnone, and Pistoja, ...
— Fra Bartolommeo • Leader Scott (Re-Edited By Horace Shipp And Flora Kendrick)
... street, below, the assistant of the Clutching Hand who had waited while Taylor Dodge was electrocuted, was waiting now as his confederate, "Pitts Slim"—which indicated that he was both wiry in stature and libellous in delegating his nativity—made the attempt. ...
— The Exploits of Elaine • Arthur B. Reeve
... men march joyously to battle and death to drum and fife squeaking and rattling The Girl I Left Behind Me. It may be a long way to Tipperary, but it is longer to the end of the tether that binds the heart of man to the cradle songs of his nativity. With the cradle songs of America the name of Stephen Collins Foster "is immortal bound," and I would no more dishonor his memory than that of Robert Burns or the author of ...
— Marse Henry, Complete - An Autobiography • Henry Watterson
... Rosary contain events from the youthful life of Jesus. These are the Annunciation, the Visitation of Mary, the Nativity of Christ, the Presentation of Christ in the Temple, and the Finding of the Child Jesus in the Temple. These five Mysteries comprise the foundation of the work of the redemption. With all of them is intimately connected Mary, the Blessed Mother of ...
— The Excellence of the Rosary - Conferences for Devotions in Honor of the Blessed Virgin • M. J. Frings
... the Colored people are persuaded to go anywhere, why not there? One reason for unwillingness to do so is that some of you would rather remain within reach of the country of your nativity. I do not know how much attachment you may have toward our race. It does not strike me that you have the greatest reason to love them. But still you are attached to them at ...
— The Great Conspiracy, Complete • John Alexander Logan
... Virginians sought the Military Bounty Lands in the region of Chillicothe. The Middle States and the South, with their democratic ideas, constituted the dominant element in Ohio politics in the early part of her history. This dominance is shown by the nativity of the members of the Ohio legislature elected in 1820: New England furnished nine Senators and sixteen Representatives, chiefly from Connecticut; New York, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania, seventeen Senators and twenty-one Representatives, mostly from Pennsylvania; while the South furnished nine ...
— The Frontier in American History • Frederick Jackson Turner
... acting) be read together, and it will be as clear as day light, that the Devil gave an astrological account of the French king's horoscope; that the regal star, then culminating, was the sun in the tenth house, or mid-heaven; which, caeteris paribus, is a regal nativity in that art. The rest of the scene confirms what I have said; for the Devil has taken the position of the heavens, or scheme of the world, at the point of the sun's entrance into Aries. I dispute not here the truth or lawfulness ...
— The Works Of John Dryden, Vol. 7 (of 18) - The Duke of Guise; Albion and Albanius; Don Sebastian • John Dryden
... of the Romagnuol school, Marco Palmezzano, the pupil of Melozza da Forli, a contemporary of Rondinelli, who influenced him to some small extent, is represented in the Accademia by two works in Sala II., the Nativity and the Presentation of the Blessed Virgin (Nos. 189 and 190); in the Vescovado there is a Madonna and Child with four saints from his hand. Vasari says nothing of him, but only mentions his name, yet he has a good deal to tell us of perhaps a lesser man, Luca Longhi (1507-1580), ...
— Ravenna, A Study • Edward Hutton
... plaze, your reverence," shouted Jemmy, "and by the same token, you may remember it was on the Nativity of the Blessed Vargin, sir, I gave you the ...
— Handy Andy, Vol. 2 - A Tale of Irish Life • Samuel Lover
... Southern States termed piazza; this being but little elevated above the level of the outside street. Besides Don Ignacio and his daughter, but one other individual occupied the house—their only servant, a young girl of Mexican nativity and mixed blood, half white, half Indian—in short, a mestiza. The straitened circumstances of the exile forbade a more expensive establishment. Still, the insignia within were not those of pinched poverty. The sitting-room, if small, was tastefully furnished, while, among other ...
— The Free Lances - A Romance of the Mexican Valley • Mayne Reid
... of a roast fowl (generally a cock, as here), in confirmation of an incredible prophecy, is a tale found in nearly all European countries. Originally, we find, the miracle is connected with the Passion, not the Nativity. See the ...
— Ballads of Mystery and Miracle and Fyttes of Mirth - Popular Ballads of the Olden Times - Second Series • Frank Sidgwick
... is immediately caused by the pleasureable sensation occasioned by its stimulus on the palate or fauces and is acquired long before the nativity of the animal. Afterwards the pain of hunger previously produces the various voluntary exertions to procure the proper material, but the actions of masticating and of swallowing it are effected by the sensorial power ...
— Zoonomia, Vol. II - Or, the Laws of Organic Life • Erasmus Darwin
... I, "'tis the same thing, the chaplain will be here anon." So the chaplain came in. Now the servants say he is my sweetheart, Because he's always in my chamber, and I always take his part. So, as the devil would have it, before I was aware, out I blunder'd, "Parson," said I, "can you cast a nativity when a body's plunder'd?" (Now you must know, he hates to be called parson, like the devil.) "Truly," says he, "Mrs. Nab, it might become you to be more civil; If your money be gone, as a learned divine says, d'ye see: You are no text for my handling; so take that from me: I was never ...
— English Satires • Various
... Incarnation that justifies all joy, and song is the expression of joy. The Gospel Songs all celebrate the Great Nativity. Birth and marriage are the occasions most sacred to mirth and music among men; and Christmas is at once the Birthday and the Marriage ...
— A Christmas Faggot • Alfred Gurney
... of more ancient birth than many very honest people suspect; nay, more than, were the register of its nativity laid before their eyes, they would be willing to admit. We have no space for its voluminous history; but it is our belief, since quackery first plied its profitable trade with human incredulity, it never perpetrated so successful a trick as that exhibited by Sir ROBERT PEEL in his motion ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 1, November 6, 1841, • Various
... Prophetic Accuracy. At least sixteen prophets prophesied concerning future events. They told of the coming destruction of cities and empires, calling them by name. They told of new kingdoms. They told of the coming of Christ, his nativity, the place of his birth, and the result of his life and death ...
— The Bible Book by Book - A Manual for the Outline Study of the Bible by Books • Josiah Blake Tidwell
... them. Charlemagne received them direct from the Patriarch of Jerusalem, and from Haroun-al-Raschid. They are enclosed in a shrine of silver-gilt, of the workmanship of the ninth century. There are four principal articles: The cotton robe, five feet long, worn by the Virgin at the Nativity; the swaddling clothes, of a coarse yellow cloth like sacking, in which the infant Saviour was wrapped; the cloth on which the head of John the Baptist was laid; and the scarf worn by the Saviour, at the crucifixion, which bears the stains of blood. Other articles, such as religious emblems, ...
— Down the Rhine - Young America in Germany • Oliver Optic
... patriotic person named McCool has bin raisin a insurrection in the mountain districts, and is now goin to leave the land of his nativity for a tower in France. Previsly to doin so he picks the pockit of Mr. Michael Feeny, a gov'ment detectiv, which pleases the gallery very much indeed, and they joyfully remark, ...
— The Complete Works of Artemus Ward, Part 7 • Charles Farrar Browne
... he poked out. He's a awful star for females! hates 'em like poison! I suspect he's been worriting hisself into her nativity, for I got out from her the year, month, and day she was born, hour unbeknown, but, calkeiating by noon, Herschel was dead agin her in the Third and Ninth House,—Voyages, Travels, Letters, News, Church Matters, and such like. But it will all come right after he's transited. ...
— What Will He Do With It, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... the same gesture and expression; and although the temple is sometimes close at hand, and sometimes a little way off, the wedding ceremony invariably takes place outside it, and not inside. The shepherds in the Nativity are sometimes young and sometimes old, but they always come in broad daylight, and the manger by which the Virgin is kneeling is always outside the stable, and always in one corner of the picture. Again, whatever slight difference there may ...
— Renaissance Fancies and Studies - Being a Sequel to Euphorion • Violet Paget (AKA Vernon Lee)
... Nativity of our Lord following, the King and his justice Hubert de Burgh came to Sarum on the day of the Holy Innocents, and there the King offered one gold ring with a precious stone called a ruby, one piece of silk, ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: The Cathedral Church of Salisbury - A Description of its Fabric and a Brief History of the See of Sarum • Gleeson White
... from the tints of the pigment. He evidently could produce any desired color at will, and the effects gained are indescribably beautiful. The Castellani collection contains 130 superb specimens, which glow like jewels. In one, the scene of the nativity of Christ is provided with the figures in low relief, and the exquisite cerulean lustre is imparted to give the effect of moonlight. The rarest pieces are those of which the luster is a delicate green. Some blaze with yellow, ...
— Scientific American, Volume XXXVI., No. 8, February 24, 1877 • Various
... any citizen from voting on either or any of the grounds thus prohibited. No fact of race, or color, or previous servitude prevents any citizen from voting in Rhode Island. Neither of these qualities depends in any degree upon the place of his nativity. This seems too obvious to need discussion. It is also a fact, appearing in the public records of Congress and doubtless known to the petitioners, that when the XV. Amendment was under consideration by Congress ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume II • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... images of the saints, though shapeless ones! In 1754 I saw some images found in a cave, which were thought to be idols; but I had no doubt that they were figures representing the mystery of the Holy Nativity." ...
— Anahuac • Edward Burnett Tylor
... Annunciation. Second Mystery. The Visitation. Third Mystery. The Nativity. Fourth Mystery. The Presentation. Fifth Mystery. The Finding of the Child ...
— Baltimore Catechism No. 2 (of 4) • Anonymous
... Bossuet the pulpit eloquence of France and the persecution of Fenelon, and that of Saint Cyr the Jansenist discussion. A blank like that which designates the place of Marino Faliero in the Ducal palace at Venice, is left here for Le Sage, as the nativity of the author of Gil Blas is yet disputed. We look at Rousseau to revert to the social reforms, of which he was the pioneer; at La Place to realize the achievements of the exact sciences, and at St. Pierre to remember the poetry ...
— Gifts of Genius - A Miscellany of Prose and Poetry by American Authors • Various
... professions, occupations, and nativity of the members of the legislature of Ohio, during the present winter, (1835-6,) and is about a proportionate estimate ...
— A New Guide for Emigrants to the West • J. M. Peck
... who had observed the very moment of my birth, consulted astrologers about my nativity; and was answered, 'Your son shall live happily till the age of fifteen, when his life will be exposed to a danger which he will hardly be able to escape. But if his good destiny preserve him beyond that time, he will live to a great age. It will be' (said they) ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments Complete • Anonymous
... La Navidad, or The Nativity, he named the fort, in remembrance of the day of the wreck, and when he came back in 1493 he hopefully expected to find its garrison awaiting him, with a rich treasure in the precious yellow metal. ...
— Historical Tales - The Romance of Reality - Volume III • Charles Morris
... the moonlit road; and very crisply their music rang out beneath a sky scattered with cloud and stars. All their songs were simple carols of the country, and the burden of them was but the joy of man at Christ's nativity; but the young man and maid who walked behind were ...
— I Saw Three Ships and Other Winter Tales • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... sheep-farm of Ettrick-house, and afforded shelter and support to his aged and indigent parents. In the year 1800, he resigned his lease to the poet, having taken another farm on the occasion of his marriage. James now established himself, along with his parents, at Ettrick-house, the place of his nativity, after a period of ten years' connexion with Mr Laidlaw of Blackhouse, whose conduct towards him, to use his own words, had proved "much more like that of a father than a master." It was during the course of a visit to Edinburgh in the same year, that an ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volume II. - The Songs of Scotland of the past half century • Various
... pot, when there is a drowsy blether from the flock, and far down the mesa the twilight twinkle of shepherd fires, when there is a hint of blossom underfoot and a heavenly whiteness on the hills, one harks back without effort to Judaea and the Nativity. But one feels by day anything but good will to note the shorn shrubs and cropped blossom-tops. So many seasons' effort, so many suns and rains to make a pound of wool! And then there is the loss of ground-inhabiting birds that must fail ...
— The Land of Little Rain • Mary Austin
... We have also of his a sacred collection (again very much in accordance with the practice of his models of the preceding generation), entitled Flowers of Sion, and consisting, like the sonnets, of poems of various metres. One of these is noticeable as suggesting the metre of Milton's "Nativity," but with an alteration of line number and rhyme order which spoils it. Yet a fourth collection of miscellanies differs not much in constitution from the others, and Drummond's poetical work is completed by some local pieces, such as Forth ...
— A History of English Literature - Elizabethan Literature • George Saintsbury
... was to convoy him had orders to assemble. In his way thither he passed through Ghent, and after stopping there a few days, to indulge that tender and pleasing melancholy which arises in the mind of every man in the decline of life on visiting the place of his nativity, and viewing the scenes and objects familiar to him in his early youth, he pursued his journey, accompanied by his son Philip, his daughter the archduchess, his sisters the dowager Queens of France and Hungary, Maximilian ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 9 • Various
... [258] angry brow! Mountains and hills, come, come, and fall on me, And hide me from the heavy wrath of heaven! No! Then will I headlong run into the earth: Gape, earth! O, no, it will not harbour me! You stars that reign'd at my nativity, Whose influence hath [259] allotted death and hell, Now draw up Faustus, like a foggy mist, Into the entrails of yon [260] labouring cloud[s], That, when you [261] vomit forth into the air, My limbs ...
— Dr. Faustus • Christopher Marlowe
... Chaldeans portrayed in vermilion, girded with girdles upon their loins, exceeding in dyed attire upon their heads, all of them princes to look to, after the manner of the Babylonians of Chaldea, the land of their nativity. Chapter ...
— Journals Of Two Expeditions Of Discovery In North-West And Western Australia, Vol. 1 (of 2) • George Grey
... for I was not uninformed of those qualities which must render you so formidable to an invading foe. I knew that you could endure hunger and thirst and all the hardships of war; I knew that you loved the land of your nativity, and that, like ourselves, you had to defend all that is most dear to man. But you surpass my hopes. I have found in you, united to these qualities, that noble enthusiasm which impels ...
— History of the Negro Race in America from 1619 to 1880. Vol. 2 (of 2) - Negroes as Slaves, as Soldiers, and as Citizens • George Washington Williams
... beloved friend Mrs. Walker, shows the impressions made on the mind of Mrs. Graham by visiting the place of her nativity and the scene of her struggles with this world's adversity, when the hand of ...
— The Power of Faith - Exemplified In The Life And Writings Of The Late Mrs. Isabella Graham. • Isabella Graham
... determine their lives in every year, that the first day should mark the last, that the tail of the snake should return into its mouth precisely at that time, and that they should wind up upon the day of their nativity, is indeed a remarkable coin- cidence, which, though astrology hath taken witty pains to solve, yet hath it been very wary in making predictions of it," should himself die on the day of ...
— Religio Medici, Hydriotaphia, and the Letter to a Friend • Sir Thomas Browne
... sleeps, and the slumber of the body seems to be but the waking of the soul. It is the ligation of sense, but the liberty of reason, and our waking conceptions do not match the Fancies of our sleeps. At my Nativity, my Ascendant was the watery sign of Scorpius; I was born in the Planetary hour of Saturn, and I think I have a piece of that Leaden Planet in me. I am no way facetious, nor disposed for the mirth and galliardize of company; ...
— The Bed-Book of Happiness • Harold Begbie
... had observed the very moment of my birth, consulted astrologers about my nativity, who told him, Your son shall live very happy till the age of fifteen, when he will be in danger of losing his life, and hardly be able to escape it; but if his good destiny preserve him beyond that time, he will live to grow very old. It will be then, said they, when ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments Volume 1 • Anonymous
... quarter that year, declared in their platform their belief in the equality of all men before the law and the duty of the government in all its dealings with the people to mete out equal and exact justice to all of whatever nativity, race, color or persuasion, religious or political. The Liberal Republicans pledged themselves to maintain the union of States, emancipation, and enfranchisement and to oppose any reopening of the questions settled by the Thirteenth, ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 5, 1920 • Various
... faithful antiquary, and one that was deeply versed in the traditions of his order—the late Iolo Morganwg—that King Arthur in his Institutes of the Round Table introduced the age of the world for events which occurred before Christ, and the year of Christ's nativity for all subsequent events.' Now, putting out of the question Iolo Morganwg's character as an antiquary, it is obvious that no one, not Grimm himself, can stand in that way as 'authority' for King ...
— Celtic Literature • Matthew Arnold
... there, for one of the ancient churches—much later than his time, however—is dedicated under his invocation. The reference to saints "known to God only" reminds us of the dedications to saints "whose names the Lord knows" in Greek on the font of the Church of the Nativity at Bethlehem, and in Armenian on a mosaic ...
— The Latin & Irish Lives of Ciaran - Translations Of Christian Literature. Series V. Lives Of - The Celtic Saints • Anonymous
... came and stood over where the young child was. The curtains of the void were parted by invisible hands, and down the long vista of the centuries he saw the familiar scene of the Nativity, dwelt on so often and so faithfully in his childhood training that it seemed almost like a part of the material scheme of the universe: the Babe in the manger; the shepherds watching their flocks; ...
— The Quickening • Francis Lynde
... is believed that they have never been engraved. They were unusually well preserved, too, for, on being placed in the oratory of La Creche, both canvases had been covered with glass to protect them from candle-smoke. One of the subjects was the Nativity, the other the Adoration of the Magi. In reading with involuntary indignation and disgust of this barbarous instance of iconoclasm, one is reminded of what Thackeray wrote on the same scene and topic nearly thirty ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 12, No. 32, November, 1873 • Various
... we run through an eternity of lives and deaths. Surfeited with the unqualified pleasures of heaven, we "straggle down to this terrene nativity:" When, amid the sour exposures and cruel storms of the world, we have renewed our appetite for the divine ambrosia of peace and sweetness, we forsake the body and ascend to heaven; this constant recurrence illustrating the great truths, that alternation is the law of destiny, and ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger
... custom of presenting spoons on certain occasions. One was beautifully wrought; the bowl was very large, and its edges carved with exquisite workmanship. In the middle of the bowl was a representation of "the nativity," carved in so masterly a manner, that, although it was considerably defaced, it must have required the ablest artists to accomplish. The handle, which was likewise superbly carved, ended in a figure of the Virgin Mary, with our ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 13, No. 362, Saturday, March 21, 1829 • Various
... there is not even a suggestion of pain; there is not a martyr with the symbol of his martyrdom; and what is still more striking, in the sculptured life of Christ, from the Nativity to the Ascension, which adorns the capitals of the columns, the single scene that has been omitted is the Crucifixion. There, as everywhere in this portal, the artists seem actually to have gone out of their ...
— Mont-Saint-Michel and Chartres • Henry Adams
... the day of the nativity was passed the Star ascended up into the firmament, and it had right many long streaks and beams, more burning and brighter than a brand of fire; and, as an eagle flying and beating the air with his wings, right so the streaks and beams of the ...
— Good Stories For Great Holidays - Arranged for Story-Telling and Reading Aloud and for the - Children's Own Reading • Frances Jenkins Olcott
... masters are not always willing to give their servants a settlement by hiring them in this manner; and servants are not always willing to be so hired, because, as every last settlement discharges all the foregoing, they might thereby lose their original settlement in the places of their nativity, the habitation of ...
— An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations • Adam Smith
... the Feast of the Nativity, Christmas-day of the year 800, duly came. It was destined to be a great day in the annals of the Roman city. The chimes of bells which announced the dawning of that holy day fell on the ears of great multitudes assembled in the streets of Rome, all full of the grand event ...
— Historical Tales, Vol. 6 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality. French. • Charles Morris
... Indians. The new pastor preached a long and edifying sermon, and then Agnes with her class of little ones sang hymns about the little Lord Jesus and His wondrous love. Though the time was short, Agnes and Matthew had drilled the story of the nativity well, and the children answered promptly. The service lasted three hours. Then each child received a small gift, and the whole company was treated royally with a feast that all remembered for a ...
— Three Young Pioneers - A Story of the Early Settlement of Our Country • John Theodore Mueller
... Jehovah was overruling all things to the accomplishment of his purpose. Augustus Caesar, then the emperor and ruler over all Palestine, issued a decree that all the people should be taxed. Every one must go to the city of his nativity, there to be numbered and taxed. Joseph the carpenter, although a resident of Nazareth, was of the house of David, and hence must go to the city of David to be numbered and taxed. Naturally his ...
— The Harp of God • J. F. Rutherford
... undeniably be a serious loss to it; yet, of these plays twenty-three have entirely foreign scenes and characters. Milton, as a political writer, was English; but his "Paradise Lost and Regained," his "Samson," his "Ode on the Nativity," his "Comus," bear no reference to the land of his birth. Dryden's best-known work to- day is his "Alexander's Feast." Pope has come down to us as the translator of Homer. Richardson, Fielding, Smollett, and Sterne are the great quartet of English novelists ...
— Confessions and Criticisms • Julian Hawthorne
... of the Union, and they still coupled the proud and affectionate adjective "old" with her name when they spoke of her. In Missouri a recognized superiority attached to any person who hailed from Old Virginia; and this superiority was exalted to supremacy when a person of such nativity could also prove descent from the First Families of that great commonwealth. The Howards and Driscolls were of this aristocracy. In their eyes, it was a nobility. It had its unwritten laws, and they were as clearly defined and as strict as any that ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... a miraculous incident respecting two pious maidens. The night of the Nativity of Christ, after the first mass, they both retired into a solitary spot of their nunnery till the second mass was rung. One asked the other, "Why do you want two cushions, when I have only one?" The other replied, "I would place it between us, for the child ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 1 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... we had, what would be, a beautiful place; far better than the rocks and hills we left, I often renewed my promise that if she and I lived and I grew to be a man, we would go back, visit her friends and see again the land of her nativity. ...
— The Bark Covered House • William Nowlin
... common in the sense of to calculate or compute; see Shakespeare, ii. Henry IV. i. 1. 166, "You cast the event of war." Some think, however, that the word has here its still more restricted sense as used in astrology, e.g. "to cast a nativity"; others see in it a reference to the founder's art; and others to ...
— Milton's Comus • John Milton
... is that of an old woman, residing about two miles from the place of my nativity, who for many years had borne the unenviable reputation of a witch. She certainly had the look of one,—a combination of form, voice, and features which would have made the fortune of an English witch ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... to participate in governmental affairs choose their own ground and we will be content. The voting franchise exists, and it exists because it has been seized by force or because of some right antedating its sanction by law. Nativity does not confer it, because aliens exercise it; it does not arise from taxation, for many are taxed who can not vote and many vote who are not taxed. Ability to bear arms is not the test of the voting franchise, as many legally vote who were never able ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume IV • Various
... Christmas trees in Spain, but each family makes its own Nativity scene, which is set out in time for Christmas Eve. In some cities contests are held for the most beautiful "Belen" scenes, as they are called, because "Belen" is the way Spanish people say Bethlehem. On ...
— Getting to know Spain • Dee Day
... than they were really guilty of. And this trade grew so open and so generally practised that it became common to have signs and inscriptions set up at doors: 'Here lives a fortune-teller', 'Here lives an astrologer', 'Here you may have your nativity calculated', and the like; and Friar Bacon's brazen-head, which was the usual sign of these people's dwellings, was to be seen almost in every street, or else the sign of Mother Shipton, or of Merlin's head, and ...
— A Journal of the Plague Year • Daniel Defoe
... gentlemen—the party which he has served so loyally, and with so much distinction, so much temperance, albeit so disastrously for his own influence in the world, will perish on the far boundaries of an extremism altogether foreign to our English nativity. ...
— Painted Windows - Studies in Religious Personality • Harold Begbie
... Republique: Sometimes in the insignificant Speeches of Mad-men, supposed to be possessed with a divine Spirit; which Possession they called Enthusiasme; and these kinds of foretelling events, were accounted Theomancy, or Prophecy; Sometimes in the aspect of the Starres at their Nativity; which was called Horoscopy, and esteemed a part of judiciary Astrology: Sometimes in their own hopes and feares, called Thumomancy, or Presage: Sometimes in the Prediction of Witches, that pretended conference ...
— Leviathan • Thomas Hobbes
... {boon}. And from a God thou shalt become a lifeless carcase; and a God {again}, who lately wast a carcase; and twice shalt thou renew thy destiny. Thou likewise, dear father, now immortal, and produced at thy nativity, on the condition of enduring for ever, wilt then wish that thou couldst die, when thou shalt be tormented on receiving the blood of a baneful serpent[75] in thy wounded limbs; and the Gods shall make thee from an immortal {being}, subject ...
— The Metamorphoses of Ovid - Vol. I, Books I-VII • Publius Ovidius Naso
... against you before the Bishop, and has you burned for a heretic. To do him justice, however, if he is ill informed on these points, there are other points on which Newton and Laplace were mere children when compared with him. He can cast your nativity. He knows what will happen when Saturn is in the House of Life, and what will happen when Mars is in conjunction with the Dragon's Tail. He can read in the stars whether an expedition will be successful, ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 4 (of 4) - Lord Macaulay's Speeches • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... my friends," said Winfried, "how sweet and peaceful is this convent to-night, on the eve of the nativity of the Prince of Peace! It is a garden full of flowers in the heart of winter; a nest among the branches of a great tree shaken by the winds; a still haven on the edge of a tempestuous sea. And this is what religion ...
— The First Christmas Tree - A Story of the Forest • Henry Van Dyke
... Russell and Porter, President of the New England Society, and all begging for a copy of Grady's[5] speech. Distant communities had got the names of the modern Horatii mixed. [Laughter.] In replying I had to acknowledge that my nativity barred me out from the moral realms of this puritanical society, and I could only coincide with Charles II when he said he always admired virtue, but he never could imitate it. [Laughter and applause.] When the Puritan influence spread across the ocean; when it was imported ...
— Modern Eloquence: Vol III, After-Dinner Speeches P-Z • Various
... his name in runic characters in four poems: Christ, Elene, Juliana, a story of a Christian martyr, and the least important, The Fates of the Apostles. The Christ, a poem on the Savior's Nativity, Ascension, and Judgment of the world at the last day, sometimes suggests Dante's Inferno or Paradiso, and Milton's ...
— Halleck's New English Literature • Reuben P. Halleck
... of wines, and could tell all the famous old Madeiras from each other, "Eclipse," "Juno," the almost fabulously scarce and precious "White-top," and the rest. He struck the nativity of the Mediterranean Madeira before it had fairly moistened ...
— Elsie Venner • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... discuss the laws to which the structure of an ode should conform, we rank the poem in this respect as standing far above Dryden's celebrated composition, but below the Odes of Wordsworth on Immortality and of Milton on the Nativity, which still remain peerless and without a rival."—Congregationalist, ...
— Gycia - A Tragedy in Five Acts • Lewis Morris
... and to flatter them in the blood of their Horses. But though he was little esteemed in his life-time, yet his book of pedigrees and genealogy of Horses was thought so useful, that he was greatly honoured for it after his death. And what is more strange, though the place of his nativity was unknown, and no country would receive him as a member of their community when living, yet when dead, many nations contended for the honour of it; but whatever arguments each country may produce for the support of its claim, nothing is more evident than that he was ...
— A Dissertation on Horses • William Osmer
... purification of Milton's taste will be best perceived by comparing 'L'Allegro' and 'Il Penseroso' of uncertain date but written after 1632 with the 'Ode on the Nativity,' written 1629. The Ode, notwithstanding its foretaste of Milton's grandeur, abounds in frigid conceits, from which the two later pieces are free. The Ode is frosty, as written in winter within the four walls of a college-chamber. The two idyls breathe ...
— Lectures and Essays • Goldwin Smith
... little Russian chap who had been working down at Fort Wrangell, and, having made a fortune—it was a fortune in his eyes,—he was returning to stay in the land of his nativity. He was quiet enough on shipboard—indeed, he had almost escaped observation until we sighted Sitka; but then his heart could contain itself no longer, and he made confidants of several of us to whom ...
— Over the Rocky Mountains to Alaska • Charles Warren Stoddard
... have imposed on him, that with an enchanted ointment, which they had prepared for him, he shall be invulnerable, though he should face the mouth of a cannon: they have, at the earnest request of Hermione, calculated his nativity, and find him born to be a king; and, that before twenty moons expire, he shall be crowned in France: and flattering his easy youth with all the vanities of ambition, they have made themselves ...
— Love-Letters Between a Nobleman and His Sister • Aphra Behn
... and said unto her, "It hath fully been showed me, all that thou hast done unto thy mother-in-law, since the death of thine husband; and how thou hast left thy father and thy mother and the land of thy nativity, and art come unto a people which thou knewest not heretofore. The Lord recompense thy work, and a full reward be given thee of the Lord God of Israel, under whose wings thou ...
— Famous Stories Every Child Should Know • Various
... sensuality; but also in the intensity of their emotion, the realisation of their vitality. Those which hover round the Cross in the fresco of the "Crucifixion" are as passionate as any angels of the Giottesque masters in Assisi. Those, again, which crowd the Stable of Bethlehem in the "Nativity" yield no point of idyllic charm to Gozzoli's in the ...
— New Italian sketches • John Addington Symonds
... carved capitals, and sculptured lions, in a maze of marvellous invention; but it has no rival in the architectonic effect of harmony, and the masterly feeling for balanced masses it displays. The five subjects chosen by Giovanni for his bas-reliefs are the "Nativity," the "Adoration of the Magi," the "Massacre of the Innocents," the "Crucifixion," and the "Last Judgment." In the "Nativity" our Lady is no longer the Roman matron of Niccola's conception, but a graceful mother, young in years, and bending with the weakness of childbirth. ...
— Renaissance in Italy Vol. 3 - The Fine Arts • John Addington Symonds
... 10th, 1870, Mr. Cochran adds, "Geog Tapa continues to witness novel scenes under the eccentric and reckless Priest John. At the close of the fast of the nativity, the communion was administered to the whole village, and numbers from surrounding villages were also invited in. Many who had not communed for from ten to thirty years, as well as the more superstitious and the lowest rabble, participated. Four priests, all of whom are of doubtful ...
— History Of The Missions Of The American Board Of Commissioners For Foreign Missions To The Oriental Churches, Volume II. • Rufus Anderson |
