"Pagan" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... if he bathed before he dressed. A brasier? the pagan, he burned perfumes! You see, it is proved, what the neighbours guessed: His wife ...
— The Life of Froude • Herbert Paul
... of old Upsal, about a mile off; and being there, Schuett showed him three great mounts of earth, cast up by the hands of men, for monuments in memory of their ancient famous kings, whose seat had been here, and the place of their coronation. These mounts had been dedicated to three of their Pagan gods: the one to the god whom they call Teuo, who was Mars, and from him they have the name of the day of the week Teuosdag, which we call Tuesday, and the Germans Tuisconsdaeg, and the Latins Dies Martis; the second mount was dedicated to their god Woden, so they called ...
— A Journal of the Swedish Embassy in the Years 1653 and 1654, Vol II. • Bulstrode Whitelocke
... singular of these, perhaps immortal, fallacies, which live on, Tithonus-like, when sense and force have long deserted them, is that which charges Mr. Darwin with having attempted to reinstate the old pagan goddess, Chance. It is said that he supposes variations to come about "by chance," and that the fittest survive the "chances" of the struggle for existence, and thus "chance" is substituted ...
— The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, Volume I • Francis Darwin
... dear,' said Mr Pecksniff, smiling upon his assembled kindred, 'that I am at a loss for a word. The name of those fabulous animals (pagan, I regret to say) who used to sing in the water, ...
— Life And Adventures Of Martin Chuzzlewit • Charles Dickens
... no real answer to a speech of this character, Peggy Webster made no reply. What Vera's future held in store for her was, according to an ancient pagan expression, "in ...
— The Campfire Girls on the Field of Honor • Margaret Vandercook
... drunken men. The Tahitians, fitting so well into the beauty of their island, gold of skin and crowned with flowers, carrying themselves with dignity, were as far removed as could be imagined from the idea of pagan men. They contrasted sharply at that moment with those from "civilization," who in filthy rags of clothes and wild disorder of gestures and voices staggered about aimlessly gorging food and drinking. ...
— Mr. Wicker's Window • Carley Dawson
... in the sense of our vague "Providence." The sentence means, leave Omnipotence to manage him. Mr. Redhouse, who forces a likeness between Moslem and Christian theology, tells us that "Qader is unjustly translated by Fate and Destiny, an old pagan idea abhorrent to Al-Islam which reposes on God's providence." He makes Kaza and Kismet quasi-synonymes of "Qaza" and "Qader," the former signifying God's decree, the latter our allotted portion, and he would render both by dispensation. Of course it is convenient to forget the Guarded Tablet ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 7 • Richard F. Burton
... deluded by false parallels and imperfect analogies. A voice, like that which is said to have startled the mariner of old on the coasts of Ionia, and to have announced to him the cessation of oracles, comes to us from all the remains of pagan antiquity, warning us that the spirit of that ancient civilization has departed with its forms: and while it bids us look forward to a new destiny for the human race, it teaches us that the maxims and the oracles by which ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, April 1844 - Volume 23, Number 4 • Various
... blacks, I come now to relate the unhappy death of one who was naturally of that colour. This poor creature's Julian. At the time of his execution he seemed to be about sixteen years of age, he had been stolen while young from his parents at Madras. He still retained his pagan ignorance both in respect ...
— Lives Of The Most Remarkable Criminals Who have been Condemned and Executed for Murder, the Highway, Housebreaking, Street Robberies, Coining or other offences • Arthur L. Hayward
... as a prophet of sterner days might have cast the dust of a pagan dancing hall from his feet. Saton for a moment was staggered. His composure left him. He walked aimlessly up and down the room, swinging his gloves in his ...
— The Moving Finger • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... innocent Adam rendered to our common Mother and which doubtless suggested to the Serpent the idea of taking them in. But a symptom so complete is not frequent. Most married couples are too good Christians to follow the usages of pagan Greece, so we have ranged, among the last symptoms, the appearance in the calm nuptial couch of those shameless pleasures which spring generally from lawless passion. In their proper time and place we will treat more fully of this ...
— Analytical Studies • Honore de Balzac
... the Holy Scriptures, and the works of Milton; to which I cannot forbear to add to those of Spenser. I select these writers in preference to those of ancient Greece and Rome, because the anthropomorphitism of the Pagan religion subjected the minds of the greatest poets in those countries too much to the bondage of definite form; from which the Hebrews were preserved by their abhorrence of idolatry. This abhorrence was almost as ...
— Prefaces and Prologues to Famous Books - with Introductions, Notes and Illustrations • Charles W. Eliot
... themselves on corners where no one expected them. They call these pretty old houses the best examples of domestic architecture, but warn you that the quaint peaked roofs are Gothic and the surprises are Renaissance—a mixture of which purists do not approve. But I am a pagan. I like mixtures. They give you little flutters of delight in your heart, and one of the most satisfactory of experiences is not to be able to analyse your emotions or to tell why you are pleased, but to feel at liberty to answer ...
— Abroad with the Jimmies • Lilian Bell
... residence at Aosta, even though he found his theatres and triumphal arches there. Wherever classical feeling has predominated, this has been the case. Cellini's Memoirs, written in the height of pagan Renaissance, well express the aversion which a Florentine or Roman felt for the inhospitable wildernesses of Switzerland.[2] Dryden, in his dedication to 'The Indian Emperor,' says, 'High objects, it is ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Complete - Series I, II, and III • John Symonds
... That which causes most inquiry to this commerce and communication, is the diversion of the commerce between the Yndias and Espana to other kingdoms, not belonging to his Majesty, but heathen and pagan; such is now the case between Nueva Espana, Peru, and the Filipinas, which receive annually two million pesos of silver; all of this wealth passes into the possession of the Chinese, and is not brought to Espana, to the consequent loss of the royal duties, and injury to the inhabitants of the Filipinas; ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898: Volume XII, 1601-1604 • Edited by Blair and Robertson
... On that hard Pagan World disgust And secret loathing fell; Deep weariness and sated lust Made human life ...
— The Message and the Man: - Some Essentials of Effective Preaching • J. Dodd Jackson
... considered the most propitious month for marriage; but with the Anglo-Saxons October has always been a favorite and auspicious season. We find that the festival has always been observed in very much the same way, whether druidical, pagan, or Christian. ...
— Manners and Social Usages • Mrs. John M. E. W. Sherwood
... France Comes to this land to 'whelm us with his might. To give him battle I no army have, Nor people to array against his host: Your counsel give me, Lords, as my wise men, And so defend your King from death and shame;" But answer none a single Pagan gave, Save Blancandrin del ...
— La Chanson de Roland • Lon Gautier
... Pagan achievements, also, "the glory that was Greece and the grandeur that was Rome," were roots to this same tree of preparation for the coming of Christ, though they knew it not. Greece with all the glories of its philosophy and art showed that the world never could be saved by its own ...
— A Wonderful Night; An Interpretation Of Christmas • James H. Snowden
... Mission, and neither could the London nor Wesleyan Societies. He declared that every one grew cold when they heard of South America, and viewed it as the natural inheritance of Giants Pope and Pagan; and for this very reason he was the more bent upon doing his utmost. Failing in his attack on Pagan he made an assault on Pope, obtaining a grant of Bibles, Testaments, and tracts from the Bible Society, and in 1843 sailed for Rio to distribute them; this time, however, going alone, as his ...
— Pioneers and Founders - or, Recent Workers in the Mission field • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... Empedocles. The number was sacred to Hermes, and lay at the root of the physical philosophy of Pythagoras. The quotation in the text is from the "Golden Verses," given in Passow's lexicon under the word tetraktys: nai ma ton hametera psycha paradonta tetraktyn, pagan aenaou physeos. "The most sacred of all things," said this famous teacher, "is Number; and next to it, that which gives Names;" a truth that the lapse of three thousand years is just enabling us ...
— The Myths of the New World - A Treatise on the Symbolism and Mythology of the Red Race of America • Daniel G. Brinton
... sat; they call it the "Roman" tower, and the foundation-stones, though not in situ, are probably of that period; it was a Byzantine bell-tower, then a minaret, now a ruin. And here, confronting me, lie a few stones, that are all that remain of a pagan temple which became a Christian basilica and afterwards a mosque. In the fifth century Tisouros—this slumberous Bled-el-Adher—was a dependency of the Greek "Duke of Gafsa" (how strange it sounds!); Florentinus, its bishop, was executed ...
— Fountains In The Sand - Rambles Among The Oases Of Tunisia • Norman Douglas
... to dwell. The Roman empire, in which the Pax Romana had provided a mould of widespread civilisation for the Church's growth, was at length broken up in the western half of it, by Teuton invaders occupying its provinces. These were all, at the time of their settlement, either pagan or Arian. There followed, in a certain lapse of time, the creation of a body of States whose centre of union and belief was the See of Peter. That is the creation of Christendom proper. The wonder ...
— The Formation of Christendom, Volume VI - The Holy See and the Wandering of the Nations, from St. Leo I to St. Gregory I • Thomas W. (Thomas William) Allies
... approve, we hope you will permit us to be frank. We conceive that, although you have been more cautious than is common, in touching sectarianism, yet, if you had not named, or made any kind of allusion to any religious sect, Christian, Jew, Pagan, or Mohammedan, you would have produced more effect. There are many individuals who neither touch, taste, nor handle this most dangerous of all poisons, who yet refuse to join in the general effort to destroy, prevent the use, or furnish ...
— Personal Memoirs Of A Residence Of Thirty Years With The Indian Tribes On The American Frontiers • Henry Rowe Schoolcraft
... Founder of our religion—or, at least, must have known some one who had seen Him. "None hath seen Him smile; but many have seen Him weep." It is so like what we should have expected! The days of the joyous pagan gods were passing away, the shadows of tedium and of life-weariness were drooping over a world that was once filled with thoughtless merriment—and then came One who preached the Gospel of Sorrow. He preached that gospel, and a faithless world at first refused to hear Him; but the Divine ...
— Side Lights • James Runciman
... Nicholas stands in a Christian church. Into the church comes a pagan barbarian; he is about to go on a long journey, and desires to leave his treasure in a safe place. Having heard of the reputation of St. Nicholas as the patron of property, he lays his riches at the foot of the statue, and in four Latin ...
— The Growth of English Drama • Arnold Wynne
... Peking Government, proposed to make terms with the court at Nanking. The French minister refused to cooeperate, partly because the rebels had not been careful to distinguish between the images in Roman Catholic chapels and those in pagan temples, but chiefly from an objection to the ascendency of Protestant influence, coupled with a fear of losing the power that comes from a protectorate of Roman Catholic missions. How different would have been [Page 162] the future of China ...
— The Awakening of China • W.A.P. Martin
... spectators of a dance, Two Brahmins, Mahomet, the Cid, Four Pagan kings, four knights of France, ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, February 1844 - Volume 23, Number 2 • Various
... the robes That disrobe so well your charms! Your dear breasts, twin ivory globes, And your bare sweet pagan arms. ...
— Enamels and Cameos and other Poems • Theophile Gautier
... These things are not fable only, for Ireland is still a land of the gods, and in out of the way places we often happen on wonderlands of romance and mystic beauty. I have spoken to people who have half parted from their love for the world in a longing for the pagan paradise of Tir-na-nog, and many who are outwardly obeisant to another religion are altogether pagan in their hearts, and Meave the Queen of the Western Host is more to them than Mary Queen of Heaven. I was told of this Meave that lately she was seen in vision by a peasant, who ...
— AE in the Irish Theosophist • George William Russell
... the job to-day risk his life twice and think no more about it than if he had been out for a walk. If a man in England, if a man in Germany, if a man in Italy, yes by thunder, Wayland, if a man on the job in pagan Turkey had done what you did to-day, he'd be given a V. C. accordin' to the Turk, and a title and a ...
— The Freebooters of the Wilderness • Agnes C. Laut
... Pope and Pagan, there is almost nothing to indicate the writer's ecclesiastical standing. But for here and there a marking of time in prosaic passages which have nothing to do with the story, there is nothing to mar the catholicity of its spirit. Romanists and Protestants, Anglicans and Puritans, ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 7 • Various
... burden, but never unburden them." This saying was used by Saint Francis to prove that the pagan philosophers had no tenderness, and that the humanities came at a later date. We can now easily understand that to relieve men of responsibilities is no help; rather do we grow strong ...
— Little Journeys To The Homes Of Great Teachers • Elbert Hubbard
... must be forming the mainstay of the defence. Perhaps, sprinkled along the compound walls, with harsh-speaking rifles in their hands, they are a sort of human incense, exorcising by their mere presence the devils in pagan hearts.... ...
— Indiscreet Letters From Peking • B. L. Putman Weale
... justifies habit of deed. Southey, in his History of the Brazils, tells a sad tale of a dying converted Indian. In her dying moments, cannibalism prevailed over Christian conscience; and was the Pagan conscience silent? She was asked by those standing about her, if they could do any thing for her. She replied, that she thought she could pick the bones of a little child's hand, but that she had no one now who would go and kill her one. I dare to say, Eusebius, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 348 • Various
... mean by saying that the fountains of the great deep burst, and that the windows of heaven were opened? No such record is found in all pagan literature, although the heathen searched with zeal the mysteries of nature. One discrimination should be made as regards the abysses of the earth, the floodgates or windows of heaven, and the rain. Rain, as we know it, is a common phenomenon, while that of bursting floodgates ...
— Commentary on Genesis, Vol. II - Luther on Sin and the Flood • Martin Luther
... Austin replied by asking if she knew what a quincunx was, or what Virgil was really driving at when he composed the First Eclogue, and whether she had ever heard of Lycidas; and when she said that she had something better to do than stuff her head with quidnunxes and all such pagan rubbish, he remarked very politely that ignorance was evidently not all of the same sort. Which sent Aunt Charlotte bustling away in a huff to look after ...
— Austin and His Friends • Frederic H. Balfour
... this name of Governments to introduce a foreign power, viz. the political magistrate, into the list and roll of mere church officers? Finally, the civil magistrate, as a magistrate, is not so much as a member of the visible Church, (for then all Pagan magistrates should be members of the Church,) much less a governor in the Church of Christ. 5. That this government settled in the Church is of divine right; for, of those Governments, as well as of Apostles, Prophets, and Teachers, it is said, God hath ...
— The Divine Right of Church Government • Sundry Ministers Of Christ Within The City Of London
... last generation each Christian power has turned the bulk of its attention to finding out newer and still newer and more and more effective ways of killing Christians, and, incidentally, a pagan now and then; and the surest way to get rich quickly in Christ's earthly kingdom is to invent a kind of gun that can kill more Christians at one shot than any other existing kind. All the Christian nations are at it. The more advanced they are, the bigger and more destructive ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... Jesus really live? Or is he a mythical character, like the gods of pagan Rome? Let us ask, in making our reply, how truth comes to mankind? Is it not always through some human channel? Then the great sayings attributed to Jesus at least came from a human being. Let us go further: it is the common history of mankind that truth comes to the ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking
... love for and study of philosophy; so that this city was ever a favourite dwelling-place for the choice spirits of the Renaissance. It may also be asserted that Nola was the only city of Magna Graecia which, in spite of the persecutions of Pagan emperors and Christian princes and clergy, always preserved the philosophical traditions of the Pythagoreans, and never was the sacred fire on the altar of Vesta suffered to become entirely extinct. Such was the intellectual and moral atmosphere in which Bruno passed his childhood. His ...
— The Heroic Enthusiasts,(1 of 2) (Gli Eroici Furori) - An Ethical Poem • Giordano Bruno
... argued that a true Republic, where every human being's rights were recognized, could but be Christian. A Mrs. McFarland seemed to settle the question, by stating a fact of history, that in olden times there were Pagan Republics. ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume II • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... now why he had shelved the project of Christianizing the natives, although one of his first acts had been to abolish their pagan sects. He had told himself at first that it was best to wait until he had put down from memory the salient parts of the Holy Bible—Genesis, say, the better-known Psalms, and a condensed version of the Gospels; ...
— The Worshippers • Damon Francis Knight
... since our grandfathers built their places of worship we have seen strange changes in American church buildings—changes in material, location and adaptation to ritual uses. We have had a revival of pagan temple-building in wood and stucco; we have seen Gothic cathedrals copied for the simplest Protestant uses, until humorists have suggested that congregations might find it cheaper to change their religion than their unsuitable new churches; we have ranged from ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XXVI., December, 1880. • Various
... by the Wild Woman's story of the hardships she had suffered, and the godless company she had been driven to keep—Egyptians, jugglers, outlaws and even sorcerers, who are masters of the pagan lore of the East, and still practice their dark rites among the simple folk of the hills. Yet she would not have him think wholly ill of this vagrant people, from whom she had often received food and comfort; and her worst danger, as he learned with shame, had ...
— The Hermit and the Wild Woman and Other Stories • Edith Wharton
... Socialism is not an original religion, but it is the most sublime form of Christianity. "Socialism is in accordance with the revealed will of God."[86] "Karl Marx was an utter pagan, but there is not an essential proposition in 'Das Kapital' that Jesus of Nazareth did not inculcate. Is it a question of rent? You are as much entitled to immunity from it as the birds of the air, ...
— British Socialism - An Examination of Its Doctrines, Policy, Aims and Practical Proposals • J. Ellis Barker
... with imposture and credulity. "Such," says Bishop Fell, "was the license of fiction in the first ages, and so easy the credulity, that testimony of the facts of that time is to be received with great caution, as not only the pagan world, but the church of God, has just reason to complain of its fabulous age." Stillingfleet says, "that antiquity is defective most where it is most important, In the awe immediately succeeding that of the apostles." ...
— Letter to the Reverend Mr. Cary • George English
... the army of Troubadours and Minnesingers and the crowd of romancers who followed in their train. They decided that the joyous array of early mediaeval literature was full of promise, though something of its tone and temper was past the comprehension of pagan goddesses. The legends of saints and pictures of martyrdoms were especially mysterious to them, and they regarded them raptly, not smilingly, and bowed their heads. Anon their eyes rested on an Italian city, where uprose, as if in interstellar ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 6, No. 34, August, 1860 • Various
... in church; he took a leading part in prayer meetings; he met and encouraged the temperance societies; he graced the sewing circles of the ladies with his presence, and even took a needle now and then and made a stitch or two upon a calico shirt for some poor Bibleless pagan of the South Seas, and this act enchanted the ladies, who regarded the garments thus honored as in a manner sanctified. The Senator wrought in Bible classes, and nothing could keep him away from the Sunday Schools—neither sickness nor storms nor weariness. He even traveled a tedious thirty miles ...
— The Gilded Age, Part 6. • Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens) and Charles Dudley Warner
... favourite of the Emperor Nero, was the master of Epictetus, the lame slave and Stoic philosopher, who was amongst the greatest of pagan moralists. Epaphroditus, who treated his slave with great cruelty, is said to have been one day twisting his leg for amusement. Epictetus said, 'If you continue, you will break my leg.' Epaphroditus went on, the leg was broken, ...
— La Legende des Siecles • Victor Hugo
... the study of years. But this was better than books. These Roman houses, into which he could walk, were far better than any number of plans or engraved prints, however accurately done. These temples afforded an insight into the old pagan religion better far than volumes of description. These streets, and shops, and public squares, and wall, and gates, and tombs, all gave him an insight into the departed Roman civilization that was far fresher, and more vivid, and more profound, than ...
— Among the Brigands • James de Mille
... asked: 'Can one speak to your master?' 'He is not there,' answers one. 'He is there,' answers the other, 'but he is busy making counterfeit money, forged contracts, daggers and poisons, to undo those who have but accomplished his purposes.' The atheist resembles the first of these porters, the pagan the other. It is clear, therefore, that the pagan offends the Deity more ...
— Voltaire's Philosophical Dictionary • Voltaire
... in that exuberant vista of gilding and crimson velvet set amidst all those opposing mirrors and upholding caryatids, with fumes of tobacco ever rising to the painted and pagan ceiling, and with the hum of presumably cynical conversation broken into so sharply now and again by the clatter of dominoes shuffled on marble tables, I drew a deep breath and, "This indeed," said I to myself, "is life!" (Forgive me that theory. Remember the waging ...
— Enoch Soames - A Memory of the Eighteen-nineties • Max Beerbohm
... readily as when it flourished". Thus is the word ceremony associated at once with the devotion of Albinus, with the Gaulish invasion of the Capitol, and with Caere, one of the twelve cities of Etruria, now called Cervetri or Caere vetus[1]. The Pagan Romans derived their religious rites from Etruria, and in particular from Caere on account of its proximity to Rome: this may be another reason for the adoption of the term ceremony, which was afterwards applied to the rites of ...
— The Ceremonies of the Holy-Week at Rome • Charles Michael Baggs
... he thought, "but it is distinctly pagan; that altar is built to some heathen god. It does not fit into the scheme of a Christian life. I doubt whether it is consistent with the tone of my house. I will sell it this winter. It will bring three or four times what I paid for it. That was a good purchase, a ...
— The Unknown Quantity - A Book of Romance and Some Half-Told Tales • Henry van Dyke
... sinister and conspirator-like, of his soot- dark paletot were the outlines of his person obscured; on the contrary, his figure (such as it was, I don't boast of it) was well set off by a civilized coat and a silken vest quite pretty to behold. The defiant and pagan bonnet-grec had vanished: bare-headed, he came upon us, carrying a Christian hat in his gloved hand. The little man looked well, very well; there was a clearness of amity in his blue eye, and a glow of good feeling on his dark complexion, which passed perfectly in the place of beauty: one really ...
— Villette • Charlotte Bronte
... fathers of the heroes engaged in the Trojan war, it becomes necessary to add sixty or seventy years to the Trojan date, in order to obtain that of oedipus and the Sphinx. Out of the Hebrew Scriptures, there is nothing purely historic so old as this.] story in the Pagan records, older by two generations than the story of Troy, is that of oedipus and his mysterious fate, which wrapt in ruin both himself and all his kindred. No story whatever continued so long to impress the Greek sensibilities ...
— Memorials and Other Papers • Thomas de Quincey
... many sarcastical and spiteful strokes at religion in general; while others make themselves pleasant with the principles of the christian. Of the last kind, this age has seen a most audacious example in the book entitled, a Tale of a Tub. Had this writing been published in a pagan or popish nation, who are justly impatient of all indignity offered to the established religion of their country, no doubt but the author would have received the punishment he deserved. But the fate of this impious buffoon is very different; ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D. in Nine Volumes - Volume the Eighth: The Lives of the Poets, Volume II • Samuel Johnson
... frontier would have required a standing army. Massachusetts, Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, northern New York,—on the frontier of each reigned perpetual terror. And the fiendish work was a paying business to the pagan Indian; for the Christian white men paid well for all scalps, and ransom money could always be extorted for captives. Barely had the Boston raid on Port Royal failed, when Governor de Vaudreuil of Quebec {198} retaliated by turning his ...
— Canada: the Empire of the North - Being the Romantic Story of the New Dominion's Growth from Colony to Kingdom • Agnes C. Laut
... honeysuckle, over-sweet, festoon'd; With bitter ivy bound; Terraced with funguses unsound; Deform'd with many a boss And closed scar, o'ercushion'd deep with moss; Bunch'd all about with pagan mistletoe; And thick with nests of the hoarse bird That talks, but understands not his own word; Stands, and so stood a thousand years ago, A single tree. Thunder has done its worst among its twigs, Where the great crest yet ...
— The Unknown Eros • Coventry Patmore
... their lover will glide along the water, and the name be borne on the breeze, if the gift be pleasing to the spirit. Ella, I knew, had for some time been preparing to keep this ancient relic of the pagan rites—she had a treasured rose tree which bloomed, unexpectedly, early in the season—these delicate things she fancied would be a fitting offering to the spirit. She paused not to think of what she was about to do—the thing itself was but a harmless folly—from ...
— Sketches And Tales Illustrative Of Life In The Backwoods Of New Brunswick • Mrs. F. Beavan
... 'Pilgrimage.' Pope, despairing of originality, and taking Dryden for his model, sought only to polish and to perfect. Gray borrowed from Spenser, Spenser from Chaucer, Chaucer from Dante, and Dante had ne'er been Dante but for the old Pagan mythology. Sterne and Hunt ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 2, No 3, September, 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy. • Various
... were great amateurs of music. Up to the sixth century they remained pagan. Gregory the Great sent missionaries to them, and more than 10,000 were baptized in a single day. The Venerable Bede represents St. Benoit as establishing the music of the new church, substituting the plain song of Rome for the ...
— A Popular History of the Art of Music - From the Earliest Times Until the Present • W. S. B. Mathews
... Ask whom you choose. It may not be very civil, Edith, but if you meddle in it you will mar it. She has been very farouche with me for a long time; and is only just beginning to thaw a little from her Zenobia ways. She has the making of a Cleopatra in her, if only she were a little more pagan.' ...
— North and South • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... discovered and published by the librarian of the National Assembly—so M. Villemain announced at a recent meeting of the Academie des Belles Lettres at Paris. The work traces the heresies of the third century to the writings of the Pagan Philosophers, and throws new light upon ancient manners, ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 2, No. 12, May, 1851. • Various
... be practised which shall comport with the exhibition of a reasonably seemly morality. I cannot, at least, concur in that definition of a moral character, upon which no operation of Divine grace has been expended, for its raising or its beautifying, which accepts that of the pagan Indian as its highest expression; and, distinctly, hesitate to affirm that a high moral instinct inheres in the Indian, or that such is permitted to dominate his mind; and, when I find one of these very writers who claim for him a high inborn ...
— A Treatise on the Six-Nation Indians • James Bovell Mackenzie
... which one must in your allowance o'erweigh a whole theater of others. Oh, there be players that I have seen play, and heard others praise, and that highly, not to speak it profanely, that, neither having the accent of Christians nor the gait of Christian, pagan, nor man, have so strutted and bellowed that I have thought some of nature's journeymen had made men and not made them well, ...
— Public Speaking • Clarence Stratton
... hands; how Nibbi supersedes Winckelman, only to be superseded in turn; how a temple is converted into a senate-house; one man's villa into another; how Caracalla is driven from his circus to make way for Romulus; how Peace resigns her claim to a Pagan temple to make way for a Christian basilica of Constantine; how statues, arches, gardens, baths, forums, obelisks, or columns, are in a constant state of transition, so far as regards their nomenclature; and, to borrow the conceit of Quevedo, nothing about Rome remains permanent ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 364, February 1846 • Various
... Kingsley's powers. No difference could be greater than that between the stirring age of Elizabeth and that of Alexandria in the fifth century, when the world was occupied with barren ecclesiastical strife. Hypatia, the last defender of the pagan faith, is a wonderful study, and the whole book is a brilliant picture of the passing of the old faiths ...
— Kate Coventry - An Autobiography • G. J. Whyte-Melville
... Pike with equal serenity, as both men were only too well pleased to humor the Indian ranch people in any friendly concessions, for back of some of those alert black eyes there were surely inherited records of old pagan days, and old legends of golden veins ...
— The Treasure Trail - A Romance of the Land of Gold and Sunshine • Marah Ellis Ryan
... 'd rather be A Pagan suckled in a creed outworn, So might I, standing on this pleasant lea, Have glimpses that would make me less forlorn; Have sight of Proteus rising from the sea, Or hear old Triton blow ...
— Familiar Quotations • John Bartlett
... about. From Russia and Comania they proceeded against the Hungarians and Polonians, where many of them were slain: and had the Hungarians withstood them manfully, the Tartars had been utterly defeated. In their return from thence, they invaded and defeated the pagan Morduans: whence they marched against the Byleri of greater Bulgaria, which they almost entirely destroyed. Thence they proceeded to the north against the Bastarci of greater Hungary, whom they conquered; and ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 1 • Robert Kerr
... florid lazy month when mid-summer dawdles along in trailing greeneries, and the day is like some jocund pagan, all flushed and asleep, with dripping beard rosy in a wine bowl of fat vine leaves. Yet, in this languorous time there may befall a brisker night, cool and lively as an intrusive boy—a night made for dancing. ...
— Gentle Julia • Booth Tarkington
... this detestable old pagan, with a malicious chuckle. "How sure we are! how positive! ready to risk our all upon our lover's truth! Yet, were I to question this faithful lover upon the same subject, I fear me that I should receive a ...
— Molly Bawn • Margaret Wolfe Hamilton
... being aided and encouraged. In rites which are not strictly sacrifices, we notice men seeking to sympathise with their gods in what the gods are doing, and to take a share in it by doing similar things themselves. The Christmas and Easter fires in pagan times connected with the worship of the sun, are examples of this, and many other instances might ...
— History of Religion - A Sketch of Primitive Religious Beliefs and Practices, and of the Origin and Character of the Great Systems • Allan Menzies
... was there 'prentice to a hard calling, Gilian's life was more the gentle's than the shepherd's. He might be often on the hill, but it was seldom to tend his flock and bring them to fank for clip or keeling, it was more often to meditate with a full pagan eye upon the mysteries of the countryside. A certain weeping effect of the mists on the ravines, one particular moaning sound of the wind among the rocks, had a strange solace for his ear, chording with some sweet melancholy ...
— Gilian The Dreamer - His Fancy, His Love and Adventure • Neil Munro
... the Gold and Silver Towers. From a drawing by the Editor, based upon his sketches of the remains of the City so called by Marco Polo, viz., PAGAN, the mediaeval capital ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo, Volume 2 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa
... Broomielaw. He wants to go "east" again to Singapore, where the ladies of Japan are so charming and so cheap. The only hope for him is that he may fall in love. I pray without ceasing that he may fall in love. See the young pagan lounging round by the stokehold door. Now you will perceive what I argued as to the ...
— An Ocean Tramp • William McFee
... a favorite horse, which he rode alike in battle and in the hunt, until at length a prediction came from the soothsayers that death would overtake him through his cherished charger. Warrior as he was, he had the superstition of the pagan, and to avoid the predicted fate he sent his horse far away, and for years avoided even speaking ...
— Historic Tales, Vol. 8 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... decline of inspiration, the decline of taste, the decline of language, the decline of intellectual interest. Beneath it all and through it all there is spreading, gradually and silently, the insidious decay that will surely crumble the constitution of the ancient world. Pagan letters are uncreative, and, with few exceptions, without imagination and dull. The literature of the new religion, beginning to push green shoots from the ruins of the times, is a mingling of old and new substance under forms that ...
— Horace and His Influence • Grant Showerman
... History," it has been necessary to make some rearrangement of lectures and volumes. Dr. Lord began with his volume on classic "Antiquity," and not until he had completed five volumes did he return to the remoter times of "Old Pagan Civilizations" (reaching back to Assyria and Egypt) and the "Jewish Heroes and Prophets." These issued, he took up again the line of great men and movements, and brought ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume I • John Lord
... remains unchanged, and suggests the following historical division of eras. (1) Pagan era; (2) ...
— Mr. Punch's History of the Great War • Punch
... rightly impress us, more than quaint and antiquated notions about the four temperaments, or about witches and their sabbaths, or about virtues and vices embodied in misconceptions of the characters of pagan divinities, and in legends about them which scholars had just begun to translate with great difficulty and very ill. It is the astonishing assurance of the central human will for perfection that awes us; this perception that flinches at no difficulty, this perception of how greatly ...
— Albert Durer • T. Sturge Moore
... thirst for vengeance, a burning desire to inflict punishment, a rage that can only be satisfied by pain, and blood, and death. In other words, we are driven to a conception of God which is profoundly immoral, and revoltingly pagan. If we are rightly interested in missions to the heathen, are there to be no attempts to convert our fellow-Christians whose conception of God scarcely rises above the heathen one of a cruel and sanguinary deity? Not such, at least, is the New Testament doctrine ...
— Gloria Crucis - addresses delivered in Lichfield Cathedral Holy Week and Good Friday, 1907 • J. H. Beibitz
... they now stand none appear to be of earlier date than the ninth or tenth century, these stories all breathe the very breath of a primitive world. An air of remote pagan antiquity hangs over them, and as we read we seem gradually to realize an Ireland as unlike the one we know now as if, like the magic island of Buz, it had sunk under the waves and been lost. Take, ...
— The Story Of Ireland • Emily Lawless
... infatuated men. Treasure had been laid at her feet, only to be kicked aside. She calmly spoke of herself as a pearl without price. She was content to possess, but not to be possessed. That was what she called self-respect. She was a pagan, but she was her own idol. She worshipped herself. She would never permit her ...
— West Wind Drift • George Barr McCutcheon
... they must have been often more scandalized than edified by the boisterous amusements of those who celebrated their respective Feasts. In these particulars, however, Ecclesiastical Rome was merely a borrower from its elder Pagan sister. The Compitalia of ancient Rome were street-fairs dedicated to the worship of local deities, and the Thirty cities of Latium held annually, on the slope of the Alban Mount, a great fair as well as a great council of Duumviri and Decuriones. To the ancient fairs of Southern ...
— Old Roads and New Roads • William Bodham Donne
... Iliya came to the city of Chernigov, which was besieged by a countless Pagan army, threatening to destroy its houses and churches, and to carry off into slavery all the princes and voyevodes. Iliya of Murom was terrified at the sight of such an army; nevertheless, at last he summoned courage, and resolved to die for his religion. So with a brave heart and a stout ...
— The Russian Garland - being Russian Falk Tales • Various
... probably of very ancient origin—"Pagan, I regret to say," as Mr. Pecksniff observed in reference to the sirens—and go back to "the heathen custom of going about on the Kalends of January in disguises, as wild beasts and cattle, the sexes changing apparel," (There is a relic of this last unseemly custom still in "The Old Tup" and "The ...
— The Peace Egg and Other tales • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... Passing to our own literature, it is certain that Addison was profoundly ignorant of Chaucer and of Spenser. Milton only,—and why? simply because he was a brilliant scholar, and stands like a bridge between the Christian literature and the Pagan,—Addison had read and esteemed. There was also in the very constitution of Milton's mind, in the majestic regularity and planetary solemnity of its epic movements, something which he could understand and appreciate. As to the meteoric ...
— Biographical Essays • Thomas de Quincey
... not the primitive masculine instinct. Men have thought of themselves first and of women afterward since the beginning of time. Only with Christianity was chivalry born in them. And since many of our youths have elected to be pagan, what ...
— Mistress Anne • Temple Bailey
... night ceremony, in which I took part in my early youth, and which is the affair to which I have alluded, was in every point heathenish, being neither more nor less than an invocation to this Freya, the wife of the old pagan god." ...
— Lavengro - The Scholar, The Gypsy, The Priest • George Borrow
... attention to the other non-Christian elements of the Islands, the case is no better. The Christianized Filipino fears and dreads the pagan mountaineers, the head-hunters who occupy so large a part of Luzon, the largest and most important island of the Archipelago. He grudges every centavo spent under our direction for the betterment of these ...
— The Head Hunters of Northern Luzon From Ifugao to Kalinga • Cornelis De Witt Willcox
... Dear as their pagan books were to the monkish collectors, it was upon their Bibles, their psalters, and their other religious books that these mediaeval bibliomaniacs expended their choicest art and their most loving care. St. Cuthbert's "Gospels," preserved in the British Museum, was written by ...
— The Love Affairs of a Bibliomaniac • Eugene Field
... suffocating gases said to beset the bottom of the shafts, but men would have it that in the narrow passages below lurked evil spirits and demons. One who ought to know about such things, told me that when St. Aldhelm first came to Purbeck, he bound the old Pagan gods under a ban deep in these passages, but that the worst of all the crew was a certain demon called the Mandrive, who watched over the best of the black marble. And that was why such marble might only be used in churches or for graves, for if it ...
— Moonfleet • J. Meade Falkner
... will not be disputed, that in a country so pious as that of Wales, it would have been next to impossible for the poet, though ever so much upon his guard, to avoid all allusion to the system of revelation. On the contrary, every thing is Pagan, and in perfect conformity with the theology we are taught to believe prevailed ...
— Imogen - A Pastoral Romance • William Godwin
... into history, not a nation of keen spiritual aspirations and altruistic ethics, but that pagan people, worshipping rocks, sheep and cattle, and spirits of caves and wells, of whom the Old Testament, tending towards its higher ideal, gives ...
— The Necessity of Atheism • Dr. D.M. Brooks
... This sunset music is, I think, a relic of very old times, and it jars on the nerves like the despairing howl of ancient Persia, protesting against the innovation from the pomp and din and glamour of her old pagan glories, to the present miserable era of mollah rule and feeble dependence for national existence on the forbearance or jealousy of other nations. Beneath the musicians' gate, and I emerge into a small ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle V1 • Thomas Stevens
... humiliations that they could, taking away from us the entrances to the harbors, whence came our provisions, and burning the houses and possessions of our neighboring friends—which certainly gave these pagan natives a great notion of cruelty, seeing that with such wicked ways and such cruelty the Portuguese were trying to hurt and annoy us. And in this way, seeing that by fighting they might lose more than they would gain, they did not care to fight, but resolved to take, on the side ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1803 - Volume III, 1569-1576 • E.H. Blair
... time also King of Denmark, won a decisive victory here in 1043 over a much larger invading army of Wends. (See also Note 23.) Trnder, one from the region about Trondhjem. Haakon from Hjrungavaag. Haakon Jarl (970-995) was the last pagan King in Norway. His defeat in 986 of the Jomsborg vikings, allies of King Harald Bluetooth of Denmark, in a naval engagement at Hjrungavaag, a bay in western Norway, was the greatest naval battle ever fought in that country. Valhall, ...
— Poems and Songs • Bjornstjerne Bjornson
... of the surprises of our future will certainly be a return to beliefs and ideas long ago abandoned upon the mere assumption that they contained no truth—beliefs still called barbarous, pagan, mediaeval, by those who condemn them out of traditional habit. Year after year the researches of science afford us new proof that the savage, the barbarian, the idolater, the monk, each and all have arrived, by different paths, as near to some point of eternal truth ...
— The Wrack of the Storm • Maurice Maeterlinck |
