"Tophet" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... no, not there! Belay to that little yard-arm [whiffle-tree]. Got it through the lazy-jack [trace-bearer]? Now reeve your jib-sheets [lines] through them dead-eyes [hame rings] and pass 'em aft. Now where in Tophet does this thingumbob [holdback] go? Give it a turn around the port bowsprit [shaft]. ...
— Horses Nine - Stories of Harness and Saddle • Sewell Ford
... in the days of Elizabeth, is as devoutly believed as the Gospels. The room is to be seen where the devil seized her after the expiration of the contract he had made with her, and bore her away bodily to the pit of Tophet: the pump against which he dashed her is still pointed out, and the spot where her heart was found, after he had torn it out of her bosom with his iron claws, has received the name of Bleeding-heart Yard, in confirmation of the story. Whether the horse-shoe still ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds • Charles Mackay
... the tree, where me and Tom, after a spell of rest, jumped in together with a will. It was no slouch of a job to get that tackle in position, the block being iron shod and heavy, the rope inch Manila, and the night as black as the pit of Tophet. Tom went aloft first, with a coil of light line, having to feel his way for the place we had marked with the handkerchief, and threatening more than once to come down quicker than he had gone up. The handkerchief had rotted off, or blown away long since, and it bothered ...
— Wild Justice: Stories of the South Seas • Lloyd Osbourne
... was his first contribution to the conversation, "d' you remember it was at a dock that you and I first met? It was night, blacker than Tophet, and raining, and you came ashore wet as a rag. You were the lonesomest, chilliest, most forlorn little tike I ever saw; but, by the eternal, you ...
— The Firefly Of France • Marion Polk Angellotti
... I was here left with the cousin and the aunt, during which I learned that said cousin sees me every Sunday in St. Stephen's. Oho! thought I, at the "every." The aunt was very anxious to know who that strange, wild man was? (didn't I wish Samuel in Tophet!). Of course, in reply, I drew it strong about eccentric genius and my never having known him before, and a good deal that was perhaps "strained to the extremest limit of ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 23 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... most curious and weird circumstances connected with this meeting. Hardly had he laid himself back in his chair before I heard a faint scratching against the table leg, and next moment an enormous cat, black as the Pit of Tophet, sprang with a bound upon the table and stood there steadfastly regarding me, its eyes flashing and its back arched. I have seen cats without number, Chinese, Persian, Manx, the Australian wild cat, and the English tabby, but never in the ...
— A Bid for Fortune - or Dr. Nikola's Vendetta • Guy Boothby
... affects to regard it as a thing natural, of which there is nothing more to be said. "One highest hope, seemingly legible in the eyes of an Angel, had recalled him as out of Death-shadows into celestial Life: but a gleam of Tophet passed over the face of his Angel; he was rapt away in whirlwinds, and heard the laughter of Demons. It was a Calenture," adds he, "whereby the Youth saw green Paradise-groves in the waste Ocean-waters: ...
— Sartor Resartus - The Life and Opinions of Herr Teufelsdrockh • Thomas Carlyle
... done all that. I, who have learned so much, and said so much, And had the commendations of the great For one who rules herself — why don't you cry? — And own a certain small authority Among the blind, who see no more than ever, But like my voice, — I would have tossed it all To Tophet for one man; and he was jealous. I would have wound a snake around my neck And then have let it bite me till I died, If my so doing would have made me sure That one man might have lived; and he was jealous. I would have driven ...
— The Three Taverns • Edwin Arlington Robinson
... which seemed to assert this. What else did that whole book of Daniel and the history of Nebuchadnezzar mean—if not that? Philosophic latitudinarianism had long ago cured him of the Rabbinical notion of the Babylonian conqueror as an incarnate fiend, devoted to Tophet, like Sennacherib before him. He had long in private admired the man, as a magnificent human character, a fairer one, in his eyes, than either Alexander or Julius Caesar.... What if Augustine had given him a hint which might justify his admiration?.... But more. .... What if Augustine ...
— Hypatia - or, New Foes with an Old Face • Charles Kingsley
... not telling how we were to be saved. Moreover, he had spoken too favourably of the Papists, contenting himself with calling them erring brethren, whereas he ought, as a good Protestant, to have delivered all the bloody race to Tophet, whose children they were. He further held gross errors, such as that salvation was offered to all mankind, that it was possible for the elect to sin, and that we were not mere machines acted on by grace, but possessed the liberty of free-will, by ...
— The Loyalists, Vol. 1-3 - An Historical Novel • Jane West
... at Westminster," he said, "might teach them that the man at Whitehall was even as the man his father;" and closed a long tirade against the vices of the Court, with assurance "that Tophet was ordained of old—for the King ...
— Peveril of the Peak • Sir Walter Scott
... behind the figure-head; and to either hand of them, the sun glistened upon two metallic objects, locomotory like men, and occupying in the economy of these creatures the places of heads—only the heads were faceless. To Davis between wind and water, his mythology appeared to have come alive, and Tophet to be vomiting demons. But Huish ...
— The Ebb-Tide - A Trio And Quartette • Robert Louis Stevenson and Lloyd Osbourne
... Michael and his host met the Serpent and his crew— Naught has reached us of the Fight—but if I have dreamed aright, 'Twas a loud one and a long, as ever thundered through! Right stiffly, past a doubt, the Dragon fought it out, And his Angels, each and all, did for Tophet their devoir— There was creak of iron wings, and whirl of scorpion stings, Hiss of bifid tongues, and the Pit in full uproar! But, naught thereof enscrolled, in one brief line 'tis told (Calm as dew the Apocalyptic ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 6 • Various
... sic folk,' retorted Mr McIntosh, piously, 'the deil's ain bairns, wha wull gang into the pit of Tophet.' ...
— Madame Midas • Fergus Hume
... lad, and the block? A fiery oven is not hotter than that pile was getting, before we dove into the earth. I never fail to think of it, when the good Minister is dealing powerfully with the punishments of the wicked, and the furnaces of Tophet!" ...
— The Wept of Wish-Ton-Wish • James Fenimore Cooper
... you've got, old fellow, even liquid Tophet boiled down to a small half-pint; but I want you to listen to me first. I've been a bit of a scoundrel to you, but, by God, old man, I exchanged into the beastly old Petrel for this cruise expressly to find you and make a clean breast of it. ...
— The Ebbing Of The Tide - South Sea Stories - 1896 • Louis Becke
... scope, that it fastens itself in the ear by a damnable iteration which no diverting of the attention can overcome; and it announces a depth of moral and mental debasement which seems as far from human as from merely animal possibilities; it is of the uttermost soundings of Tophet, and would probably be modified by fresh-heated gridirons ...
— The Subterranean Brotherhood • Julian Hawthorne
... the fust ones. Be plenty more in half an hour, though. 'Bout all hands in Bayport's comin' to this time, everybody but the Orthodox and the Methodists and the Come-Outers. They cal'late goin' to a play-actin' time is same as goin' to Tophet. I tell 'em I'd ruther go to the show, 'cause I'd have a little fun out of it, and from what I hear there ain't much fun in t'other place. He, he, he! But say, how'd it happen George Kent ever let 'Liz'beth Berry go anywheres ...
— Fair Harbor • Joseph Crosby Lincoln
... They don't stay long enough to try out anything, Morgan. They're here today and gone tomorrow, cursing Kansas as they go, slandering it, branding it as the Tophet of the earth. We've never had the right kind of people here, they didn't have the courage, the faith, and the vision. If a man hasn't got the grit and ability to stick through his losses at any game in this life, Morgan, he'll never win. And ...
— Trail's End • George W. Ogden
... Evangelist, "Why not willing to die, since this life is attended with so many evils?" The man answered, "Because I fear that this burden that is upon my back will sink me lower than the grave and I shall fall into Tophet. And, sir, if I be not fit to go to prison, I am not fit to go to judgment, and from thence to execution; and the thoughts of these things ...
— Bible Stories and Religious Classics • Philip P. Wells
... a sentence of exclusion from Court was to a French noble but just this side of a banishment to Tophet; and de Rohan was just silly enough to feel this infliction most intensely. He went however, and from that time onward, for year after year, lived the life of a persevering Adam thrust out of his paradise, hanging ...
— The Humbugs of the World • P. T. Barnum
... was told; and I have said she did not look good: though a spirit, she was a spirit out of Tophet. Well, if so much of unholy force can arise from below, may not an equal efflux of sacred essence descend one ...
— Villette • Charlotte Bronte
... till ten, and sometimes to eleven, For "six bob" a week. Ah! such life must be heaven; Whilst as for your "profit," That's bound to approach five-and-twenty per cent., That Sweaters shall thrive, let their tools be content With starvation in Tophet. ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 99., December 13, 1890 • Various
... plainer than I like to repeat, as the mouth of the infernal region. This, however, must be a mistake, inasmuch as Mr. Smooth-it-away, while we remained in the smoky and lurid cavern, took occasion to prove that Tophet has not even a metaphorical existence. The place, he assured us, is no other than the crater of a half-extinct volcano, in which the directors had caused forges to be set up for the manufacture of railroad iron. Hence, ...
— Mosses from an Old Manse and Other Stories • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... War," intensifies the "Hola!" Of purists who are all for "war on ZOLA!" Well, he whose pen is touched with tints from Tophet, Is the right man to pose as Red ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 101. October 10, 1891 • Various
... on all day, amidst clankings and groanings of machinery, and clouds of oily-smelling steam, and where work went on all night, with more groanings and more clankings, deplorable shrieks of steam-sirens and hellish flares that might have been reflections from a burning Tophet, cast upon yet bigger and denser ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves
... as granite. When Foulon was asked how the starving populace was to live he answered: "Let them eat grass." Afterward, Carlyle says, the mob, maddened with rage, "caught him in the streets of Paris, hanged him, stuck his head upon a pike, filled his mouth with grass, amid shouts as of Tophet from a grass-eating people." What kings and princes gave they received. This is the voice of nature and conscience: "Behold, sin crouches ...
— The Investment of Influence - A Study of Social Sympathy and Service • Newell Dwight Hillis
... awful! This place is an old three-story house, of the fiendish mid-Victorian brand—dark halls, high ceilings, and marble mantels. It seemed clean, so I took a room, almost as large as your linen closet, where I shall spend the few days I am here. My room has a court outlook, and was hotter than Tophet last night, but of course you expect to ...
— Bambi • Marjorie Benton Cooke
... name of Tophet does all this mean?" fiercely exclaimed Gurley, throwing an angry and suspicious look round the table upon those who had doubtless been, at other sittings, his confederates in fleecing Elwood. "Yes, what is the meaning of this? I ask ...
— Gaut Gurley • D. P. Thompson
... is Tophet behind and the flames of hell. So our good friends the parsons tell us. Well, if a man is to make no money in this world, be hanged at the end of it, and finally burn for ever, he hath assuredly ...
— Micah Clarke - His Statement as made to his three Grandchildren Joseph, - Gervas and Reuben During the Hard Winter of 1734 • Arthur Conan Doyle
... love her just the same. I reckon she'll never seem to me anyhow like she does to other people. Still I ain't so blind that I don't know she's pretty. Her hair is wonderful, an' she's got them big brown eyes an' pink cheeks. I'm proud as Tophet of her. If it warn't fur Abbie I figger the three captains an' I would have the child clean spoilt. But Abbie's always kept a firm hand on us an' prevented us from puttin' nonsensical notions into Delight's head. Much of the way she's turned out is due ...
— Flood Tide • Sara Ware Bassett
... one for me. It's ominous, thinks I. A Coffin my Innkeeper upon landing in my first whaling port; tombstones staring at me in the whalemen's chapel; and here a gallows! and a pair of prodigious black pots too! Are these last throwing out oblique hints touching tophet? I was called from these reflections by the sight of a freckled woman with yellow hair and a yellow gown, standing in the porch of the inn, under a dull red lamp swinging there, that looked much like an injured eye, and carrying on a brisk scolding with a man in a purple ...
— Moby-Dick • Melville
... women, and the children ran and yelled at her, and set their dogs upon her. The soil was thick with dust like soot, and the trees were seared and brown. There was no peace in the place, and no loveliness. Eighty thousand folks toiled together in the hopeless Tophet, and swarmed, and struggled, and labored, and multiplied, in joyless and endless wrestling against ...
— Bebee • Ouida
... mystic word, 'Excelsior!' To him it was a watchword of battle, repeated morning, noon, and night. It was the prevailing idea of his life. 'Excelsior'! Yes; how great, how grand, how all-absorbing is the idea! But what if a man may be going down, down to Tophet, and yet think the while that he is scaling ...
— The Three Clerks • Anthony Trollope
... these children of the devil, have let out the cloven foot, and the thing is now beginning to work as I expected. Our long deluded people are opening their eyes, and beginning to see and smell the blood and burnings of that 'Tophet', that political hell of slavery and ruin, to which the British army is now endeavoring, by murder and rapine, ...
— The Life of General Francis Marion • Mason Locke Weems
... we saw how matters were going to shape. If he died, we would be married secretly, and she would return to your roof until I could get possession of my inheritance, when we would go to some other part of the country to live. If he recovered, I would marry her anyway, and let the old man go to Tophet with his money-bags. I see now how ...
— Deadwood Dick, The Prince of the Road - or, The Black Rider of the Black Hills • Edward L. Wheeler
... Vernon, that she would rely on her own intelligence, and upon professional aid rather than upon any family intervention. If she could, by her own strong hand, with the help of the London physician, lead her husband's footsteps out of this Tophet into which he had sunk himself, she would spare no trouble, withhold no sacrifice, to effect his rescue, and she and her stepmother, the kindliest of women, would keep ...
— The Golden Calf • M. E. Braddon
... general predicate of heroism; there is very little except their names and the titles to differentiate one sort of hero from another. His picture of contemporary conditions is not so much a reasoned indictment as a wild and fantastic orgy of epithets: "dark simmering pit of Tophet," "bottomless universal hypocrisies," and all the rest. In it all he left no practical scheme. His works are fundamentally not about politics or history or literature, but about himself. They are the ...
— English Literature: Modern - Home University Library Of Modern Knowledge • G. H. Mair
... Street is all a fleetin' sho', From which lame ducks are driven, "Up in a balloon they allers go, To Tophet, not ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 26, September 24, 1870 • Various
... Hammond, and the Doctor—filling his everlasting pipe, meanwhile, and ordering Hannah to give him a coal (perhaps this was the circumstance that made people say he had imps to bring him coals from Tophet)—ordered him to be ...
— Doctor Grimshawe's Secret - A Romance • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... experience which is often the lot of men born to make epochs, who also have souls fit to assert themselves. We find our Oliver consumed with a strange despair, biting world- sorrow, Tophet pouring black smoke into the universe of his being— temptations ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 9 - Subtitle: Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Reformers • Elbert Hubbard
... worm that never dies. purgatory, limbo, gehenna, abyss. [Mythological hell] Tartarus, Hades, Avernus[Lat], Styx, Stygian creek, pit of Acheron[obs3], Cocytus; infernal regions, inferno, shades below, realms of Pluto. Pluto, Rhadamanthus[obs3], Erebus[Lat]; Tophet. Adj. hellish, infernal, stygian. Phr. dies irae dies illa[Lat]; "the hue of dungeons and the scowl of night" ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... you, man! The water absolutely hisses down your red-hot gullet, and is converted quite into steam in the miniature Tophet, which you mistake for a stomach. Fill again, and tell me, on the word of an honest toper, did you ever, in cellar, tavern, or any other kind of dramshop, spend the price of your children's food for a swig half so ...
— Eighth Reader • James Baldwin
... which was tied near, and, uncorking one of them, the trader said: 'I allers carry my own pizen. 'Taint right to give even nigs sech hell-fire as they sell round har; it git's a feller's stumac used ter tophet 'fore the ...
— The Continental Monthly , Vol. 2 No. 5, November 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various |
