"Benighted" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... shrewd casuists know too well that by such frank confession, they would soon lose their hold on Catholic populations, especially on women, by whom, through confession, they rule the world. They much prefer to keep their gripe on benighted minds, frightened consciences, and trembling souls. No wonder, then, that they fully endorse and confirm the decisions of the councils of Latran and Trent ordering "that all sins must be confessed such as God knows them." No wonder that they ...
— The Priest, The Woman And The Confessional • Father Chiniquy
... their backs; and the yelp of the blood-hound who was to bury his fangs deep into their flesh, in case they sought for liberty. Such was the music with which the Anglo-Saxon came down to the shore to extend a hearty welcome to the forlorn children of night, brought from a benighted heathen land to ...
— Imperium in Imperio: A Study Of The Negro Race Problem - A Novel • Sutton E. Griggs
... work of these missionaries with indifference, if not disfavor, for I had been led to believe that they were accomplishing little or nothing. But now I have seen, and I know of what incalculable value the services are that they are rendering to the poor, benighted people of this coast. ...
— The Long Labrador Trail • Dillon Wallace
... and no room for 'em. Some things are too little to be told, i.e. to have a preference; some are too big and circumstantial. Thanks for yours, which was most delicious. Would I had been with you, benighted, &c.! I fear my head is turned with wandering. I shall never be the same acquiescent being. Farewell. Write again quickly, for I shall not like to hazard a letter, not knowing where the fates have carried ...
— Selected English Letters (XV - XIX Centuries) • Various
... sting. He recognized the fact that yellow fever is not contagious and therefore could not think of the possibility of man-to-man infection, as we know it to-day. The keenest observer was this man Beauperthuy, and, even at that benighted time in the history of tropical medicine, made most interesting studies of the blood and tissues, employing the microscope and the chemical reactions in his research. No one believed him, and a commission appointed to report ...
— Popular Science Monthly Volume 86
... provincial spirit, forgetting that Lincoln fought a war over the purely moral question of slavery, and the McKinley broke the fetters of our boundary lines, spoke the freedom of Cuba, and carried the torch of American idealism to the benighted Philippines. They lose memory of Garfield's prophecy that America, under the blessings of God- given opportunity, would by her moral leadership and co- operation become the Messiah among the nations ...
— The Progressive Democracy of James M. Cox • Charles E. Morris
... power to melt Man's stubborn heart, as I have felt, Subdue all sins that ever dwelt In men benighted. If o'er this world 'twere shed abroad, The soldier soon might sheathe his sword, And God alone would be ...
— The Emigrant Mechanic and Other Tales In Verse - Together With Numerous Songs Upon Canadian Subjects • Thomas Cowherd
... guide necessary, but a boy took me up by a track near Gadmen, and left me to my Siegfried map some way up the great ridge of rocks that overlooks the Engstlen Alp. I a little overestimated my mountaineering, and it came about that I was benighted while I was still high above the Joch Pass on my descent. Some of this was steep and needed caution. I had to come down slowly with my folding lantern, in which a reluctant candle went out at regular intervals, and I did not reach the little inn at Engstlen ...
— The Passionate Friends • Herbert George Wells
... when the question of locust extermination came before the first Raad, the worthies to whom the conduct of the State was confided showed a condition of benighted simplicity that can ...
— South Africa and the Transvaal War, Vol. 1 (of 6) - From the Foundation of Cape Colony to the Boer Ultimatum - of 9th Oct. 1899 • Louis Creswicke
... to the twentieth century author, notwithstanding its apparent caprice, has always been governed by immutable laws. But these laws were not recognised in the benighted epoch in which we happen to live at present. On the contrary, Fashion is thought a whim, a sort of shuttlecock for the weak-minded of both sexes to make rise and fall, bound and rebound with the battledore ...
— The Strand Magazine, Volume V, Issue 30, June 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... fairy godmother, ready to furnish her pets with shoes of swiftness, swords of sharpness, and omnipotent Aladdin's lamps, so that they may have telegraphs to Saturn, and see the other side of the moon, and thank God they are better than their benighted ancestors. ...
— Lay Sermons, Addresses and Reviews • Thomas Henry Huxley
... who learned to read so rapidly, or who pursued his studies with the ardour of this despised, soulless black. His motive for this exertion was a noble one, which I believe cost him his life—the hope of carrying the glad tidings of salvation to his benighted countrymen, which he considered the best means of improving their condition, and rendering ...
— Flora Lyndsay - or, Passages in an Eventful Life • Susan Moodie
... am convinced," and there was perhaps a hint of warning in his smile, "would give the souls of half his people to know what that little box contains; and, in his realm, it is the religion of some of his benighted subjects to give him what ...
— L. P. M. - The End of the Great War • J. Stewart Barney
... feelings; 'are you to come to us, or are we to go to you? What is the etiquette of the situation? Father and mother know nothing about outside points of etiquette. Beyond the common rules of dinners and calls, calls and dinners, I believe they are in benighted ignorance. Shall we tell John Coachman to put four horses to the landau—with himself and the under-gardener as postilions—and post over to Wimperfield—just as they pay visits in Miss Austin's novels? Perhaps now we have gone back ...
— The Golden Calf • M. E. Braddon
... but not before the saint was grievously wounded, and where his blood fell now grow the lilies of the valley, common here but nowhere else in the neighbourhood. Headless horsemen, who have an unpleasant habit of sharing the benighted traveller's steed; witches and warlocks; white-ladies and were-wolves are in great plenty, and the normal inhabitants of the forest must have a fervent appreciation of the high noon and the ...
— Seaward Sussex - The South Downs from End to End • Edric Holmes
... He is the describer of the striking scene which occurred when the House of Commons was giggling over some delicious story of bribery and corruption—the House of Commons was frivolous in those benighted days; he tells how Pitt suddenly stalked down from the gallery and administered his thundering reproof; how Murray, then Attorney-General, 'crouched, silent and terrified,' and the Chancellor of the Exchequer faltered out an humble apology ...
— Hours in a Library, Volume I. (of III.) • Leslie Stephen
... the morning light had come; but she assured him that she could bear fatigue, and her firm cheerfulness lent his heart vigour. At times they were hooded with the darkness, which came on them as if, as benighted children fancy, their faces were about to meet the shaggy breast of the forest. Rising up to lighter air, they had sight of distant twinklings: it might be city, or autumn weed, or fires of the woodmen, or beacon fires: they glimmered like eyelets to the ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... opportunities, at all events, Henrietta Stackpole was by no means disposed to neglect those in which she now found herself immersed. "Do you know you're the first lord I've ever seen?" she said very promptly to her neighbour. "I suppose you think I'm awfully benighted." ...
— The Portrait of a Lady - Volume 1 (of 2) • Henry James
... day of summer; the oak leaves expand, the roses blow, butterflies are about, and I have spirits enough to write to you. We have had clouded skies this fortnight past, and roads like the Slough of Despond. Last Wednesday we were benighted on a dismal plain, apparently boundless. The moon cast a sickly gleam, and now and then a blue meteor glided along the morass which lay ...
— Dreams, Waking Thoughts, and Incidents • William Beckford
... a punkah is acceded to without further circumlocution, the growing movement in favour of Separation will be openly advocated by this journal. Already (of this we have private knowledge) has Lord Kimberley expressed himself astonished at the heartless refusal of our benighted Colonial Secretary and Treasurer to grant the insignificant sum of two hundred pounds to the necessitous widow of Samuel Wilson, who was killed by being run over by a trolley on our beautiful jetty. Does the Colonial Secretary know the meaning ...
— Tom Gerrard - 1904 • Louis Becke
... necessary for your chairman to apologize for me in Germany. It wasn't necessary at all. Instead of that he ought to have impressed upon those poor benighted Teutons the service I rendered them. Their language had needed untangling for a good many years. Nobody else seemed to want to take the job, and so I took it, and I flatter myself that I made a pretty good job of it. The Germans have an inhuman way of cutting up their verbs. Now a verb has a hard ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... message. How I hate this part of a letter. Things come crowding in to say, and no room for 'em. Some things are too little to be told, i.e. to have a preference; some are too big and circumstantial. Thanks for yours, which was most delicious. Would I had been with you, benighted &c. I fear my head is turned with wandering. I shall never be the same acquiescent being. Farewell; write again quickly, for I shall not like to hazard a letter, not knowing where the fates have carried you. Farewell, ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Vol. 5 • Edited by E. V. Lucas
... from which we had a lovely view of the surrounding country; the hills were just tipped by the setting sun; but this fact, while it added to the beauty of the scene, materially detracted from our enjoyment of it. In a few moments more we should be benighted, and we had still two hours' walk to the village for which we were bound. Accordingly, we had scarcely commenced the descent when it became so dark that it was no longer possible to distinguish the path; and ...
— A Journey to Katmandu • Laurence Oliphant
... all," said Nap. "It is about eight miles through the woods. We should be benighted, of course. Also I fancy there is a storm coming up. But if you wish ...
— The Knave of Diamonds • Ethel May Dell
... Southern correspondents, who were sending him all sorts of Billingsgate. And he wrote them the truth. "It is the only way they see a word of truth," he said. "Look at that newspaper, and that, and that." Till the mails stopped, they had not to blame him, if they were benighted. I wish that series of letters might, even now, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 89, March, 1865 • Various
... this distance, without the ties of kindred to draw me too close for clear judgment, I see, though, that we have to walk very cautiously here, for fear of doing more harm than good. Better that those benighted women never heard the name of child-study, than to hear it only to greet it with rebellion and hatred. Yet to force any of our principles upon her attention when she is in a hostile mood—or to force them, indeed, in any mood—is to invite just ...
— Study of Child Life • Marion Foster Washburne
... the whole population sunk on their knees in a concert of prayer, only finding in it an attempt of Satan to counterfeit Christian worship; and on the other hand to see ancient and modern learning ransacked to prove that the brightest and clearest light that ever burst upon a sinful and benighted world was but the reflected rays ...
— The Dawn and the Day • Henry Thayer Niles
... see the Truth, and speak it, and do it; Nature's own sacred voice heard once more athwart the dreary boundless element of hearsaying and canting, of twaddle and poltroonery, in which the bewildered Earth, nigh perishing, has lost its way. Hear once more, ye bewildered benighted mortals; listen once again to a voice from the inner Light-sea and Flame-sea, Nature's and Truth's own heart; know the Fact of your Existence what it is, put away the Cant of it which it is not; and knowing, do, and let it ...
— Past and Present - Thomas Carlyle's Collected Works, Vol. XIII. • Thomas Carlyle
... mind pretty strongly that the man I had seen looking at his map was some gentleman-tourist who was walking the district, and had as like as not been tramping it over Plodden Field and that historic corner of the country, and had become benighted ere he could reach wherever his headquarters were. And I was not going to bring suspicion on what was in all probability an innocent stranger, so I answered Chisholm's question as I meant to answer any similar one—unless, indeed, I had reason ...
— Dead Men's Money • J. S. Fletcher
... or three houses in France. This great missionary society came into existence at a singularly opportune moment, and none can tell what an important part it may bear in carrying the light of Christianity into that benighted Africa which modern discovery, the discovery of our age, the age of Pius IX., is now throwing open to the many blessed influences ...
— Pius IX. And His Time • The Rev. AEneas MacDonell
... arrayed, And weaponless except his blade, His stately mien as well implied A high-born heart, a martial pride, As if a baron's crest he wore, And sheathed in armor bode the shore. Slighting the petty need he showed, He told of his benighted road; His ready speech flowed fair and free, In phrase of gentlest courtesy, Yet seemed that tone and gesture bland Less used to sue ...
— The Lady of the Lake • Sir Walter Scott
... furniture of us both crammed into one knapsack), and our money sewed between the linings and waistbands of our breeches, except some loose silver for our immediate expenses on the road, We travelled all day at a round pace, but, being ignorant of the proper stages, were benighted at a good distance from any inn, so that we were compelled to take up our lodging at a small hedge alehouse, that stood on a byroad, about half-a-mile from the highway: there we found a pedlar of our own country, in whose company we regaled ourselves ...
— The Adventures of Roderick Random • Tobias Smollett
... other respects. These sons and daughters of rich tenant-farmers, peasant proprietors, or even day-labourers, are far ahead of the young people in Anjou, and each would be considered a wonder in benighted Brittany. They are, in fact, quite accomplished, not only learning singing, drawing and other accomplishments, but are able to take part in dramatic entertainments. Two performances were given by the boys, two by the girls, a little ...
— Holidays in Eastern France • Matilda Betham-Edwards
... still, save for the screech of a benighted gull. Overhead a meteor passed swiftly across the sky, throwing a ...
— The Submarine Hunters - A Story of the Naval Patrol Work in the Great War • Percy F. Westerman
... importance of improving their minds, while young, to fit them for the service of Christ. You may have before you some future Harriet Newell, or Mrs. Judson, who may willingly surrender all the comforts of this life to carry the glad tidings of salvation to the benighted heathen. ...
— A Practical Directory for Young Christian Females - Being a Series of Letters from a Brother to a Younger Sister • Harvey Newcomb
... suddenly revealed to the astonished gaze of Europe, it was not merely the adventurous conqueror who hastened to these shores. The priest accompanied him, and many enthusiastic soldiers of the Cross embarked to bear to the benighted souls beyond the sea the tidings of salvation. Missionary enterprises were not then what they are to-day. Nothing was known with certainty of the strange tribes on this side of the globe, and there was often a heroism in the labors of self-sacrificing ...
— John L. Stoddard's Lectures, Vol. 10 (of 10) - Southern California; Grand Canon of the Colorado River; Yellowstone National Park • John L. Stoddard
... street of small houses, promising infinite ugliness in a little space; the soil over a considerable area was torn up and trodden into mud. A number of men were at work; carts and waggons and trucks were moving about. In truth, the benighted valley was waking up and donning the ...
— Demos • George Gissing
... that has light within his own clear breast May sit i' th' center, and enjoy bright day; But he that hides a dark soul, and foul thoughts, Benighted walks under the mid-day sun; Himself in his own dungeon." ...
— Essays • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... fair parody of this doctrine. In political science, by a portentous snobbery, the actual evolution of European government was assumed to be in the line of upward progress. Our histories contrasted the benighted condition of past ages with the high morality and general enlightenment of the present. In philosophy, the problem of evil was met by the theory that though the Deity is not omnipotent yet, He is on His way to become so. He means well, and ...
— Outspoken Essays • William Ralph Inge
... derisively, at this ignorance of a benighted American. "These savages may indeed," he said, "be a formidable enemy to your raw American militia. But upon the king's regular and disciplined troops, it is impossible that they should make ...
— Benjamin Franklin, A Picture of the Struggles of Our Infant Nation One Hundred Years Ago - American Pioneers and Patriots Series • John S. C. Abbott
... this mean, except that multiplication, excessive in relation to the contemporaneous means of support, will create a severe competition for those means? And this seems to me to be a pretty accurate "reflection of the conceptions of Malthus" and the other poor benighted folks of a past generation at whom ...
— Evolution and Ethics and Other Essays • Thomas H. Huxley
... felons! A downright robbery of twenty pounds, just as though he had broken into the bank! And so he did, with sly artifice, which is worse in such hands than a crowbar. And now what are we to do? Here is Thursday, and something must be done before Sunday for the souls of those poor benighted creatures at Hogglestock." Mrs Proudie was ready for the battle, and was even now sniffing the blood afar-off. "I believe it's a hundred and thirty pounds a year," she said, before the bishop had collected his thoughts ...
— The Last Chronicle of Barset • Anthony Trollope
... inhabiting different parts of the island were constantly fighting with each other, warfare has entirely ceased, and all have become Christians by profession, many of them adorning the Gospel by their lives and conversation, while others have gone forth to carry its blessings to the still benighted heathen in the western ...
— The Cruise of the Dainty - Rovings in the Pacific • William H. G. Kingston
... to leave my position as narrator, and speak from my individual standpoint, I would say Brook Farm and what it stood for was to world-benighted travellers, seeking for sustenance, like a city set on a hill. It was a small, glimmering light of social truth, shining amid universal darkness. It was a dim foregleam of the great sun of social life and science, that will yet rise and shine gloriously on our earth. It was a spark ...
— Brook Farm • John Thomas Codman
... prevention of unjust foreign wars? When has she ever given even a respectable gift to any good object from her enormous income? But virtue is not expected in sovereigns; they are expected only to enjoy themselves hugely, to make an ostentatious display, and consume all their benighted subjects give them. ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, July 1887 - Volume 1, Number 6 • Various
... should have been a-knowin' something was queer. All your weapons and your strange ideas. Faith, I wouldn't be surprised if ye hadn't yet established a planet-wide government. Sure, an' I'll go still further. Ye probably still have wars on this benighted world. No wonder it is ye haven't been invited to join the Galactic League an' take your place ...
— Off Course • Mack Reynolds (AKA Dallas McCord Reynolds)
... Indian and a half-caste woman; and taught him the prayer which the other used morning and evening, and which he soon learned:—"Great Father, bless me, through Jesus Christ." May a gracious God hear their cry, and raise them up as heralds of his salvation in this truly benighted and ...
— The Substance of a Journal During a Residence at the Red River Colony, British North America • John West
... of whom, as I advanced, came running towards me, and taking my horse by the bridle, led me round the walls of the town; and then pointing to the west, told me to go along, or it would fare worse with me. It was in vain that I represented the danger of being benighted in the woods, exposed to the inclemency of the weather, and to the fury of wild beasts. "Go along," was all the answer; and a number of people coming up, and urging me in the same manner with great earnestness, I suspected that some of ...
— Life and Travels of Mungo Park in Central Africa • Mungo Park
... visited, near Mauchline, the very farm of the Whig leader. He congratulated him upon the fine breed of cattle he possessed. Then he went on to speak of the many evil, popish, and unchristian things he had seen in his travels as a pedlar over the benighted countries of Europe. Whereupon Gifted Gilfillan became so pleased with his companion and so enraptured with his subject, that he allowed his party to string itself out along the route without an attempt ...
— Red Cap Tales - Stolen from the Treasure Chest of the Wizard of the North • Samuel Rutherford Crockett
... of Hogglestock, though you may never have visited that benighted and outlying parish. Indeed, I was never there myself till last week, when Tom felt it his duty (though woefully misdirected, to my mind, but we are fallible creatures) to go and open a bazaar in that place for the restoration of the church. {6} I accompanied him; for I ...
— Old Friends - Essays in Epistolary Parody • Andrew Lang
... boy he had never entered the wood so far; for he was under a prohibition, lest he should lose himself in its intricacies, and be benighted there. He had often heard that it was haunted ground, and that too would, when a boy, have deterred him. It was on this account that the scene was so new to him, and that he cared so often to stop and look about him. Here and there a vista opened, exhibiting the same utter desertion, and opening ...
— J. S. Le Fanu's Ghostly Tales, Volume 3 • Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu
... small candle that had guided us through the storm; but the old Waterloo stove was colouring the gloom with tremulous, rose-red whorls of light, and warm and cosy indeed seemed Peg's retreat to us snow-covered, frost-chilled, benighted wanderers. ...
— The Golden Road • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... twenty years of age, her youthful beauty and grace, the tender, yearning love which lit up her expressive features, the ready utterance and sweet voice, and the charm of manner which never left her, were no unfitting media to convey the tidings of mercy to many a benighted seeker after rest ...
— Excellent Women • Various
... grave doubts whether a great commercial country, holding communication with all parts of the world, can better Christianise the benighted portions of it than by the bestowal of its wealth and energy on the making of good Christians at home, and on the utter removal of neglected and untaught childhood from its streets, before it wanders elsewhere. For, if it steadily persist in this work, working ...
— The Letters of Charles Dickens - Vol. 1 (of 3), 1833-1856 • Charles Dickens
... not in love, and in the second place whose business was it but mine if I were? Certainly not Poopendyke's, certainly not Britton's, certainly not the Schmicks'! Absolute lack of any sense of proportion, that's what ailed the whole bally of them. What looked like love to them—benighted dolts!—was no more than a rather resolute effort on my part to be kind to and patient with a person who had invaded my home and set ...
— A Fool and His Money • George Barr McCutcheon
... "Pendragon"; though, I suppose, if it's true, King Arthur must really have been married several times, as say the vulgar records of which Tennyson very properly takes no notice. There have been dukes and earls in the family, but they have somehow disappeared, perhaps because in those benighted days there were no American heiresses to ...
— Set in Silver • Charles Norris Williamson and Alice Muriel Williamson
... plenty might be said to reign. Although true happiness cannot exist where Christianity is not, and where the fear of the fetish and the malign influence of the spirit of evil rules supreme over the mind, the people were contented, and probably as happy as are any of the countless numbers of the still benighted children of Africa, Rumours of wars and slave-hunts reached them, but they had so long escaped the inflictions others had suffered, that they flattered themselves they should escape altogether. So little accustomed are the negro race to look to the future, contented ...
— Tales of the Sea - And of our Jack Tars • W.H.G. Kingston
... first-class powers. I'd like to lead a regiment right through the most sacred precincts of London; or take an early morning gallop through Berlin to wake up the Dutch. All this talk about hands across the sea and such rot makes me sick. The English are the most benighted and the most conceited and condescending race on earth; the Germans and Austrians are stale beer-vats, and the Italians and French are ...
— The Port of Missing Men • Meredith Nicholson
... resolution of some tens of millions of people to see the cross once more planted upon St. Sophia's. Ask anybody in Greece or the Balkans or European Russia what "the great idea" is, and you will get for an answer, "The return of the cross to St. Sophia's." Backward and even benighted Christians these Eastern churchmen may be, but they hold a few fundamental ideas pretty fast, and are readier to fight for them than ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 21 - The Recent Days (1910-1914) • Charles F. Horne, Editor
... him from many prejudices, to tame him of many fanaticisms, to beat out of him many errors. The present Conservative Government contains more than one member who regards his party as intellectually benighted; who either never speaks their peculiar dialect, or who speaks it condescendingly, and with an "aside"; who respects their accumulated prejudices as the "potential energies" on which he subsists, but who despises them while he lives by them. Years ago Mr. Disraeli ...
— The English Constitution • Walter Bagehot
... at night as a sort of apology for a bed, and be served with a mutton-chop by day, as a makeshift for lunch, and this they considered wonderful, because they were being dragged over their road at the marvellous, soul-thrilling pace of sixty miles an hour. (Loud laughter.) What would the poor benighted travellers of those days say to their present Grand Circular Express, that ran from London to York in two-and-twenty minutes, and ran up to the most northern point in Scotland, then down the Western Coast to Land's ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 98, February 22nd, 1890 • Various
... and by the private letters of soldiers home, how cruel and barbarous and fiendish had been the warfare made by those whose avowed purpose was to carry the blessed light of civilization and Gospel "to the benighted native"—how in very truth these priceless blessings had been handed on the point of a bayonet to the "Person Sitting ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... Mankind asks ever of the skies to vision out what lies behind them. It is terror for the end, and but a subtler form of selfishness—this it is that breeds religions. Mark, my Holly, each religion claims the future for its followers; or, at least, the good thereof. The evil is for those benighted ones who will have none of it; seeing the light the true believers worship, as the fishes see the stars, but dimly. The religions come and the religions pass, and the civilisations come and pass, and naught endures but ...
— She • H. Rider Haggard
... them proselytes. There can be little doubt that misgivings regarding the truth of their claims began to haunt the champions of the Darwinian hypothesis. They were just then masters of the whole field of scientific thought. They had brought all science to the feet of Darwin. The few benighted dissenters who still held out against the doctrine were looked upon as not worthy even of contempt. The whole world had adopted the creed of evolution. Was it wantonness then, or was it conscience, that prompted Huxley in what is now a historically famous speech, delivered at the ...
— Evolution - An Investigation and a Critique • Theodore Graebner
... length of time we knew not. We now felt the need of water, and our supply was comparatively nothing. A man may live nearly twice as long without food, as without water. Look at us now, my friends, left benighted on a little spot of sand in the midst of the ocean, far from the usual track of vessels, and every appearance of a violent thunder tempest, and a boisterous night. Judge of my feelings, and the circumstances which our band of ...
— The Pirates Own Book • Charles Ellms
... not bein' av the prastely office, I'll jist lay hands on ye an' qualify ye for the same. If it happens to be a bit irregular, why, the ind justifies the manes, ye remimber, or the ancient Fathers are all wrong, which is onpossible. An' now, Heller, do tell these poor, benighted, lazy loons that I must have me coky-nuts fresh, an' as great a variety av fish as can be procured in these wathers. The chap that preshumes to bring me an owld coky-nut I'll curse his basket an' ...
— Humorous Masterpieces from American Literature • Various
... dusky; unilluminated &c. (see illuminate &c. 420)[obs3]; nocturnal; dingy, lurid, gloomy; murky, murksome[obs3]; shady, umbrageous; overcast &c. (dim) 422; cloudy &c. (opaque) 426; darkened; &c. v. dark as pitch, dark as a pit, dark as Erebus[Lat]. benighted; noctivagant!|, noctivagous!|. Adv. in the dark, in the shade. Phr. "brief as the lightning in the collied night" [M. N. D.]; "eldest Night and Chaos, ancestors of Nature" [P. L.]; "the blackness of the noonday night" [Longfellow]; "the prayer ...
— Roget's Thesaurus • Peter Mark Roget
... simplicity and purity. Had Omai—like the Ethiopian eunuch of other days—but embraced with all his heart the truths of the Gospel, and returned to his native land, carrying with him the glad tidings of salvation to his benighted countrymen, the light of the knowledge of the glory of God might have been spread throughout the islands of ...
— Captain Cook - His Life, Voyages, and Discoveries • W.H.G. Kingston
... are, too! Next to a Greek statue (I mean a real old Greek one; for I am a thoroughly anti-preraphaelite benighted pagan heathen in taste, and intend some day to get up a Cinque-Cento Club, for the total abolition of Gothic art)—next to a Greek statue, I say, I know few such combinations of grace and strength as in a fine foxhound. It is the beauty of the Theseus— light and yet massive; and light not in spite ...
— Prose Idylls • Charles Kingsley
... human seed across parsecs of interstellar space. It seems that they were a unit in a missionary fleet that had gone out to the stars with flame in their hearts and Gospel on their lips to bring the Word to the benighted heathen on other worlds." Kennon's lips curled with mild contempt at their stupid foolhardiness even as his pulse quickened to their bravery. They had been fanatics, true enough, but theirs was a selfless fanaticism that would risk torture and death for what they believed—a ...
— The Lani People • J. F. Bone
... the victims. I have no terms of respect too high for the brave and conscientious men who carry the gospel, and their own lives, in their hands to distant shores. But, surely, they need not go thus far to seek for the benighted and the debased. They may find there a wider extent of heathenism, but none more intense than that which prevails close by the school and the church. The richest products of modern progress and Christian culture grow on the verge of barren wastes, ...
— Humanity in the City • E. H. Chapin
... Virginia are not only as the stars of heaven in number—not only as thick as stars, but that like the stars they are absolutely in heaven, and, having carried their family dignity thither, are emitting their light to the benighted angels—occasional sparks sometimes dropping down from them to their numberless descendants, living here upon the shadows of their grandfathers. It may not be amiss, in order to save future digression, to say that the Smith in my name is on the paternal side. Should you come to Virginia, ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 5, No. 3, March, 1852 • Various
... amusements peculiar to certain foreign peoples, not because they are necessarily wrong, or antagonistic to genuine Americanism, but merely because they are different. According to some of these self-constituted authorities the way to instill patriotism and love of country into the benighted aliens is to persuade them to abandon all that links them with the land of their ancestors, and become exactly like the prevailing type of Bangor, Maine, Augusta, Georgia, ...
— The Art of Stage Dancing - The Story of a Beautiful and Profitable Profession • Ned Wayburn
... triumphant success. All the maids and matrons of the southern suburbs had rallied at her summons, there was an influential platform with Dr. Balthazar Walker in the chair, and Admiral Hay Denver among his more prominent supporters. One benighted male had come in from the outside darkness and had jeered from the further end of the hall, but he had been called to order by the chair, petrified by indignant glances from the unenfranchised around him, and finally escorted to the door by Charles Westmacott. Fiery resolutions were passed, to ...
— Beyond the City • Arthur Conan Doyle
... friendless, abused, degraded, benighted in broad daylight; abandoned by her lover. She sank on the floor of the room, conceiving with much strangeness of sentiment under these hard stripes of misfortune, that reality had come. The monster had ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... think of parting with that. But I really don't see why I shouldn't be a Socialist as well. I pity those poor, benighted beings that have room in their narrow souls for only one set of opinions. I like to be everything, to hold every 'ism,' and to be labelled all over with every 'ist,' like the window of that 'eating-house' yonder. Which reminds ...
— Cleo The Magnificent - The Muse of the Real • Louis Zangwill
... "But, excellency, benighted travellers might seek the house for rest and a guide to the ford of the Mable." At these words a red flush came over Simon's face, and he half rose ...
— Orrain - A Romance • S. Levett-Yeats
... Oporto wine-merchants—all hearty English gentlemen—gone to their wine-butts, and their red-legged partridges, and their duels at Oporto. It appears that these gallant Britons fight every morning among themselves, and give the benighted people among whom they live an opportunity to admire the spirit national. There is the brave honest major, with his wooden leg—the kindest and simplest of Irishmen: he has embraced his children, and reviewed his little invalid garrison of fifteen men, in the fort which he commands at ...
— Notes on a Journey from Cornhill to Grand Cairo • William Makepeace Thackeray
... Lutheranism of this land is so much better than the leather-bound symbolism of the Bavarian autocrat, as our political institutions are better than those of the old Fatherland. But, instead of this work of love, our benighted symbolists have strengthened the prejudices of the foreigners in saying to them that the Lutheranism of the General Synod is a pseudo-Lutheranism."—The origin, then, of the confessional commotion within the Lutheran Church of America must be traced chiefly to ...
— American Lutheranism - Volume 2: The United Lutheran Church (General Synod, General - Council, United Synod in the South) • Friedrich Bente
... metropolis, and from almost every country in England, but also from Scotland, Ireland, Holland, and even from Demerara. This looks well. It seems as if we were in a fair way to accomplish our design. But much yet remains to be done. We have recently been told of whole districts in England so benighted as never to have heard of "NOTES AND QUERIES;" and after an interesting question has been discussed for weeks in our columns, we are informed of some one who could have answered it immediately if he had seen ...
— Notes & Queries, No. 53. Saturday, November 2, 1850 • Various
... squire was benighted as he rode homeward, and by misfortune happened to come into the castle of a baron whose brother (a false knight and betrayer of ladies and of good knights) Sir Aglovale had slain. When this baron knew from the squire that he served a good knight called Sir Aglovale, he commanded his men to have ...
— Stories of King Arthur and His Knights - Retold from Malory's "Morte dArthur" • U. Waldo Cutler
... not an experience just like somebody else, they were not converted, and had neither part nor lot in the kingdom of God. He has also met more than one who, by just such vagaries and delusions, had been almost driven to unbelief and despair. And what a relief it often is to such poor, benighted ones, if they are not too far gone, to be led out of their vain imaginings into the ...
— The Way of Salvation in the Lutheran Church • G. H. Gerberding
... years before, read in a magazine, a story about a traveller and a deserted house. This traveller, lost, as are all travellers in stories, in a forest, benighted and hungry, saw ...
— The Captives • Hugh Walpole
... benighted ancients called a magician," interrupted Dr. Cairn quietly. "He is what was known in the Middle Ages as a wizard. What that means, exactly, few modern thinkers know; but I know, and one day others will know. Meanwhile his shadow lies upon ...
— Brood of the Witch-Queen • Sax Rohmer
... was doubtless very helpful; the stars had a cheery look among the chimney-pots; and a cresset here and there, on church or citadel, produced a fine pictorial effect, and, in places where the ground lay unevenly, held out the right hand of conduct to the benighted. But, sun, moon, and stars abstracted or concealed, the night-faring inhabitant had to fall back—we speak on the authority of old prints—upon stable lanthorns two storeys in height. Many holes, drilled in the conical turret-roof of this vagabond Pharos, let up spouts of dazzlement ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 2 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... the long-benighted mind of Captain Delano, a flash of revelation swept, illuminating, in unanticipated clearness, his host's whole mysterious demeanor, with every enigmatic event of the day, as well as the entire past voyage of the San Dominick. He smote Babo's hand down, but his own heart smote him ...
— The Piazza Tales • Herman Melville
... liberty and ardent for progress; the political as well as the social and intellectual systems of Europe appeared to him, in his youthful zeal for the improvement of his fellow-beings, belated if not benighted on the road to it, and he had embraced with the most ardent hopes and purposes the scheme of emigration of Colonel Talbot, for forming in the New World a colony where all the errors of the Old were to be avoided. But his mother died, ...
— Records of a Girlhood • Frances Anne Kemble
... him. As he led me up the crazy verandah, and into a broad ghostly room, without glass in the windows, or fire, or any one comfort, my mind recurred to the stories told of the horrors of the Hartz forest, and of the benighted traveller's situation therein. Cold sluggish beetles hung to the damp walls,—and these I immediately secured. After due exertions and perseverance with the damp wood, a fire smoked lustily, and, by cajoling the gnome of a housekeeper, I procured ...
— Himalayan Journals (Complete) • J. D. Hooker
... search after truth, enlargement of thought, or change of sentiment, was with them out of the question. The very idea of anything differing from their own traditionary or haphazard belief was, in the estimation of some of them, no less than heresy, treason, or infidelity. Others, who were not so much benighted, were afraid to venture on a free examination of religious matters, or a careful comparison of their views with the teachings of Scripture. Some trusted in their elders, and feared no error so long as they kept in the track of their predecessors. I am not certain that I should go too far if ...
— Modern Skepticism: A Journey Through the Land of Doubt and Back Again - A Life Story • Joseph Barker
... back, then be it said, various strollers unfamiliar with the neighbors or the neighborhood of Kennedy Square, poor benighted folk who knew nothing of the events set down in the preceding chapters, had nodded knowingly to each other or shaken their pates deprecatingly over the ...
— Kennedy Square • F. Hopkinson Smith
... being in furious haste, took the bundle of clean clothes Jean had brought him, and strode away over the rough fells in the direction of the Wild. Half-way, however, he changed his course. And many a night wanderer on land and many a benighted fisherman bearing up Loch Ryan-ward on the northward set of the tide, was awed by a strange light in the Corpse Yard above the Elrich Strand, where the Blackshore folk bury the drowned who come to them from the sea. Here among the wooden head-boards ...
— Patsy • S. R. Crockett
... from the Reverend Warren Holbrook, accepting the offer of three hundred dollars a year and board and washing, and saying, that in addition to transcendentalism, he would advocate the equality of the great human family. If these poor, benighted Dutch people who lived about Nyack would only be regenerated and made progressive. Mrs. Chapman found great consolation in this letter, and sat down to read it to her dear husband, who had moved up nearer to the lamp and opened the last great-work ...
— The Von Toodleburgs - Or, The History of a Very Distinguished Family • F. Colburn Adams
... with it. Depend upon it, your interest in benevolent objects will increase from the very moment that you deny yourself for the sake of giving to others. Think what it would be to have even one soul saved from among the poor benighted heathen, to rise up in the last great day, and call you, yes you, my little reader, blessed. Try it, and with daily prayers for the blessing of God upon your efforts, see what you can do for the heathen; remembering, that "he that converteth a single sinner from the ...
— Self-Denial - or, Alice Wood, and Her Missionary Society • American Sunday-School Union
... excursions along the sea coast, it sometimes happened that I was benighted, and could not, with convenience, return to our dwelling; but I was never at a loss for a bed. The greater part of the beach consists of a remarkably fine white sand, which above highwater-mark is perfectly clean and dry. Into this I dug ...
— Letters on the Nicobar islands, their natural productions, and the manners, customs, and superstitions of the natives • John Gottfried Haensel
... of such poor benighted beings as have never seen Chautauqua, let me explain that the auditorium was the great temple where the congregation assembled for united service. Such a grand temple as it was! The pillars thereof were great solemn trees, with their green leaves arching overhead in festoons of ...
— Four Girls at Chautauqua • Pansy
... probably hurts himself less than the beginner. Yet it is the experienced runner who carries the gear, the beginner it is who usually scoffs and takes risks, not only to himself, but to the people who have to go out to look for him when he is benighted ...
— Ski-running • Katharine Symonds Furse
... conversation. The rest, not being able to speak Italian, contented themselves with smiles; the Senator particularly, who gave the most beaming of smiles both on going and on returning. Sometimes he even tried to talk to her in his usual adaptation of broken English, spoken in loud tones to the benighted but fascinating foreigner. Her attention to Dick during his sickness increased the Senator's admiration, and he thought her one of the best, one of the most ...
— Humour of the North • Lawrence J. Burpee
... depicted the devil fleeing from holy water, were not perhaps quite so benighted as our superior modern culture has led us to suppose. For that "hatred of goodness exaggerated to the point of paroxysm," that impulse to desecrate and defile which forms the basis of black magic and has manifested itself in successive phases of the world-revolution, springs from fear. ...
— Secret Societies And Subversive Movements • Nesta H. Webster
... Spain—a line of kings, with but few exceptions, more inimical to the rights of man, more opposed to the advancement of truth, and light, and liberty, more practised in tyranny, more hardened in crime, more infatuated with superstition, and more benighted with ignorance, than any other monsters that ever disgraced a throne in christendom, since the revival of letters. Yes, humanity shudders, and freedom burns with indignation at a recital of the barbarities and oppressions ...
— Texas • William H. Wharton
... paused irresolutely a few paces further on. It was not, I fancy, merely a foolish apprehension of what the raw-boned butcher might "think" that prevented my going back to see if I could find Seaton's grave in the benighted churchyard. There was precious little use in pottering about in the muddy dark merely to find where he was buried. And yet I felt a little uneasy. My rather horrible thought was that, so far as I was concerned—one of his esteemed few friends—he had never been much better than "buried" ...
— The Best British Short Stories of 1922 • Edward J. O'Brien and John Cournos, editors
... long, ghostly shadows east and west, which flitted, lean and noiseless and black, before the wind. Overhead the stars shone dimly, piercing a fine mist. Eugenia leaned forward, her chin on her clasped hands. Beyond the gray blur of the pasture she could see, like benighted beacons, the lights in Amos Burr's windows, and she found herself vaguely wondering if Nicholas were at his books—those books that never failed him. He had that consolation at least—his books were more to ...
— The Voice of the People • Ellen Glasgow
... worth of the deliverances and dictates of the conscience of the individual, depends on the degree of moral enlightenment and sensitiveness he has attained. The conscience of an educated Christian has a worth and authority which the conscience of the benighted savage has not. Since conscience is the recognition of the ideal of conduct and character, every new appreciation of duty and virtue gives to conscience added strength ...
— Practical Ethics • William DeWitt Hyde
... steps knee-deep in bloom, and bade her bow her auburn head, as, blushing, she faltered forth, in her sweet Gaelic accents, a welcome that thrilled like a blessing through the heart of the Sassenach, nearly benighted, and wearied sore with the fifty glorious mountain-miles that intermit at times their frowning forests from the corries of Cruachan to the cliffs ...
— Recreations of Christopher North, Volume 2 • John Wilson
... travels was sister Sall, and I used to call that tipple, when I took it late, a night-cap; apple jack and white nose ain't the smallest part of a circumstance to it. On such an occasion as this, minister, when a body is leavin' the greatest nation atween the poles, to go among benighted, ignorant, insolent foreigners, you wouldn't object to ...
— The Attache - or, Sam Slick in England, Complete • Thomas Chandler Haliburton
... and as they came were mowed down by the rifles waiting for them. Again and again was the gateway besieged, and the roasting human flesh sent up a nauseous reek upon the smoke-laden air. Nothing could exceed the insensate fearlessness of these benighted creatures, nothing the awful slaughter which the ...
— The Watchers of the Plains - A Tale of the Western Prairies • Ridgewell Cullum
... within the wall; No rafter'd roofs with dance and tabor sound, No noontide-bell invites the country round: 190 Tenants with sighs the smokeless towers survey, And turn the unwilling steeds another way: Benighted wanderers, the forest o'er, Curse the saved candle, and unopening door; While the gaunt mastiff growling at the gate, Affrights the beggar whom he longs ...
— Poetical Works of Pope, Vol. II • Alexander Pope
... with pleasure an incident of an apostate going about warning people against the turpitudes of Rome and especially against the extortions of her priests through the confessional. He explained how the benighted papist was obliged under pain of eternal damnation to confess his sins to the priest, and then was charged so much for each fault he had been guilty of. An incredulous listener wanted to know if he, the speaker, while in the toils of Rome had ever been obliged thus to disgorge in the ...
— Explanation of Catholic Morals - A Concise, Reasoned, and Popular Exposition of Catholic Morals • John H. Stapleton
... shadow seemed to cross her thoughts. Benighted with love, she had never reflected upon the probability of my leaving her, nor indeed had I. Her cheeks became suddenly pale; and I could see the agony gathering in her eyes, as she fixed them upon me. ...
— The Scalp Hunters • Mayne Reid
... odious word arises from the fact that a particularly benighted landsman must imagine the act of anchoring as a process of throwing something overboard, whereas the anchor ready for its work is already overboard, and is not thrown over, but simply allowed to fall. It ...
— The Mirror of the Sea • Joseph Conrad
... the struggle for existence, of adaptation to conditions, were notorious enough; but none of us had suspected that the road to the heart of the species problem lay through them, until Darwin and Wallace dispelled the darkness, and the beacon-fire of the Origin guided the benighted. ...
— Thomas Henry Huxley; A Sketch Of His Life And Work • P. Chalmers Mitchell
... the least accident occurs. I feel inclined to ask myself whether the Processionaries were not kept up there so long by the difficulties and dangers of the descent rather than by the lack of any gleam of intelligence in their benighted minds. The facts, however, reply that the descent is as easy ...
— The Wonders of Instinct • J. H. Fabre
... three or four gold pieces in the money-bag, so-called, or purse, which many tars wear round their necks, tucked out of sight. Upon this, they deliberately lay their plans; and in due time, proceed to carry them into execution. The man they have marked is perhaps strolling along the benighted berth-deck to his mess-chest; when of a sudden, the foot-pads dash out from their hiding-place, throw him down, and while two or three gag him, and hold him fast, another cuts the bag from his neck, and makes away with it, followed by his comrades. This was more ...
— White Jacket - or, the World on a Man-of-War • Herman Melville
... around uneasily. She hoped the old man in the corner had not heard this benighted remark. All went well until the car reached the terminal station. Here Tommy refused to get off. In vain Lovey Mary coaxed ...
— Lovey Mary • Alice Hegan Rice
... plantation. The Judge decided to spare no expense in making the occasion as pleasant as possible. He had instructed his black people to have a barbecue at their quarters. Some of our readers are benighted as to the meaning of that great word. How shall we enlighten their ignorance? Words are insufficient to set forth the joy and glory of this feast. We may try our best, but much ...
— The Kentucky Ranger • Edward T. Curnick
... resources—to evolve early into a progressive modern nation was lost. So Spain has remained ever since, and only in the last quarter of a century has reform from within begun to be evident in this until recently priest-ridden and benighted land. ...
— THE HISTORY OF EDUCATION • ELLWOOD P. CUBBERLEY
... ardent affections. He was just as safe among them as the most beloved father surrounded by his children. Three years this good man remained in these lonely wilds, peacefully and successfully teaching these benighted children of the forest. During all this time his mind had been much exercised with the thought of exploring the limitless and unknown regions ...
— The Adventures of the Chevalier De La Salle and His Companions, in Their Explorations of the Prairies, Forests, Lakes, and Rivers, of the New World, and Their Interviews with the Savage Tribes, Two Hu • John S. C. Abbott
... they resolved to do, as those of Rouen and La Rochelle had done, after recognizing the necessity of the regulations, without which it is impossible to hope for any profit from these lands. May God by His grace cause this undertaking to prosper to His honor and glory, the conversion of these poor benighted ones, and to the welfare and ...
— Voyages of Samuel de Champlain V3 • Samuel de Champlain
... The Flemings had but to speak a word, to lift a finger, and all the Netherlands, self-governed, would coalesce into one independent confederation of States, strong enough to defy all the despots of Europe. Alas! the benighted victims of superstition hugged their chains, and preferred the tyranny under which their kindred had been tortured, burned, and buried alive for half-a-century long, to the possibility of a single Calvinistic conventicle being ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... was it not?" she observed to Miss Unity, "and casts quite a new light on the condition of those poor benighted creatures. The bishop is a charming man, full of information. The dean is delighted. He has always been so interested in foreign missions. The children think of ...
— Penelope and the Others - Story of Five Country Children • Amy Walton
... attend it, attend it long. And first of all the cost of applying our principle within our own borders. For, when a place had been obtained for us among nations, we looked down, and, lo! at our feet the African—in chains. A benighted and submissive race, down-trodden and despised from of old, a race of outcasts, of Pariahs, covered with the shame of servitude, and held by the claim of that terrible talisman, the word property,—here it crouched at our ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XI., February, 1863, No. LXIV. • Various
... Thus benighted, and with only the above light and knowledge, I entered into the dark, mysterious and abstruse science of distilling, a business professed to be perfectly understood by many, but in fact not sufficiently understood by any. For it ...
— The Practical Distiller • Samuel McHarry
... present object is not so much to draw attention to the battle-scenes described by Mr Keppel, and which may be read with peculiar though painful interest in his book, as to obtain for Mr Brooke, the peaceful and unselfish disposer of so many blessings amongst a benighted and neglected people, that admiration and regard which he has so nobly earned. He has done much, but our government may enable him to do more. He has shown the capabilities of his distant home, and ...
— Blackwoods Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 365, March, 1846 • Various
... nearly dark now, and there was only just time to reach the City gate before the hour when it would be closed. Agnes hurried on quickly, passed out of Newgate, and, afraid of being benighted, almost ran up Giltspur Street to the south end of Cow Lane. A hasty rap on Mistress Flint's door brought little Will to ...
— For the Master's Sake - A Story of the Days of Queen Mary • Emily Sarah Holt
... and by degrees, should be the plan To cure the dark and erring mind; But who would rush at a benighted man And give him two black eyes for ...
— Yesterdays with Authors • James T. Fields
... locality was excellent, being very near the promenade and music-gardens: then I liked the face of the Haus-meisterin, as did Herr Schwager, who wisely remarked that he thought kindness of heart should rank high in that "benighted land." ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 22. July, 1878. • Various
... loneliest of eves when afar and benighted we stood, She who upheld me and I, in the midmost of Egdon together, Confident I in her watching and ward through the blackening heather, Deeming her matchless in might and ...
— Poems of the Past and the Present • Thomas Hardy
... several Authors who are tenebrificous Stars of the first Magnitude, and point out a Knot of Gentlemen, who have been dull in Consort, and may be looked upon as a dark Constellation. The Nation has been a great while benighted with several of these Antiluminaries. I suffered them to ray out their Darkness as long as I was able to endure it, till at length I came to a Resolution of rising upon them, and hope in a little time to drive them quite ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... there at the office so early and she did not inquire. She attributed it to his filial affection and was accordingly touched by it. She petted him as usual, and carried him back to the hotel in her phaeton, while she thrilled with satisfaction at the knowledge she could at last get away from a benighted region where no Sunday trains ...
— Dorothy's Travels • Evelyn Raymond
... drawbridge with thy hounds To hunt the boar in the crisp woods till eve; And thou, O Princess! shalt no more receive, Thou and thy ladies, in the hall of state, The jaded hunters with their bloody freight, Coming benighted to ...
— Poetical Works of Matthew Arnold • Matthew Arnold
... well as surgery, the value of the Artesian ray was speedily admitted by the civilized world. To eliminate everything between the eye of the surgeon and the affected portion of a human organism was like the rising of the sun upon a hitherto benighted region. ...
— The Great Stone of Sardis • Frank R. Stockton
... made by Mrs McNab was cleanliness! She was so obtrusively, aggressively, immaculately clean, that the like of her had never before dazzled the eyes of the benighted Southern visitors. Her lilac print gown was glossy from the press of the iron; the hands folded across the snowy apron were puffed and lined from recent parboiling; her face shone like a mirror from a generous use of good ...
— Big Game - A Story for Girls • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey |
