"Cult" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... The cult of courage imposed on and exercised by the ruling classes, and symbolically imaged in their code of honour, took an effective shape in the banning of cowardice and of cowardly crime. So far as positive values go, the ethics of ...
— The New Society • Walther Rathenau
... between the Being of Nature (cf. Kant's "starry vault above") and the God of the heart (Kant's "moral law within"). The idea of an antagonism seems to have been cardinal in the thought of the Essenes and the Orphic cult and in the Persian dualism. So, too, Buddhism seems to be "antagonistic." On the other hand, the Moslem teaching and modern Judaism seem absolutely to combine and identify the two; God the creator is altogether and without distinction also ...
— God The Invisible King • Herbert George Wells
... has very little of the narrow and acrid temper of the special pleader. He is content to show humanity. It is quite conceivable that the future, forgetful of the special social problems and the humanitarian cult of to-day, may view these plays as simply bodying forth the passions and events that are timeless and constant in the inevitable march of human life. The tragedies of Drayman Henschel and of Rose Bernd, at all events, stand in ...
— The Dramatic Works of Gerhart Hauptmann - Volume II • Gerhart Hauptmann
... whose bold lead they profess to follow, lies at rest in the Jewish cemetery of his native Breslau under the simple epitaph "Thinker and Fighter," and at his death the extraordinary popular manifestations seemed to inaugurate the cult of a modern ...
— Dreamers of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... no fanatical zeal, and have no creed or cult of my own to vindicate. I am influenced only by a noble love of truth and a sublime sense of duty in arraying myself with the despised minority,—perhaps I may say by a sense of fair play for the "under dog." I do ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, September, 1885 • Various
... between 700 and 332 B.C. Numerous bronze figures of him remain. The oldest memorial mentioning him is a statue of one of his priests, Amasis (No. 14765 in the British Museum). Ptolemy V dedicated to him a temple on the island of Philae. His cult increased much in later days, and a special temple was dedicated to him near Memphis Sethe suggests that the cult of Imhotep gave the inspiration to the Hermetic literature. The association of Imhotep with the famous temple at Edfu is of ...
— The Evolution of Modern Medicine • William Osler
... merely talent. And that Brahms on his own part made the regrettable mistake of falling asleep while Liszt in turn was playing for him his newly completed sonata for pianoforte, is an incident which was important only for the moment. The Liszt circle took up the Brahms cult in earnest, played the trio at the chamber concerts, and the members, when they departed to their homes, generally carried with them their admiration of this new personality which had ...
— The Masters and their Music - A series of illustrative programs with biographical, - esthetical, and critical annotations • W. S. B. Mathews
... of the thoughtless, An Orphic priest and bard, I bring to light again a hymn Of a thrice-ancient cult. For until now my thought flowed on, A river under earth. Amidst men's tumult my lyre's rhythm, A sudden wonder rose. At night I start, at night I climb The mountain difficult; I wish alone and first to ...
— Life Immovable - First Part • Kostes Palamas
... the newspapers and the poets who outraced one another to weep upon his tomb. Look upon Mr. Booth's map of East London, with its coloured lines showing the swarms of human beings who live ignobly and die obscurely, and realise for yourself of what import the cult of beautiful form is to these human ant-heaps. Walk down the populous Whitechapel Road of a Saturday night, or traverse the long slimy alleys of Rotherhithe among the timber wharves, and discover how many of your countrymen and contemporaries are living neither in your country nor ...
— Without Prejudice • Israel Zangwill
... the cult of the pessimist, the gentle malice of disillusion. And, like all other cults, it sustains its advocates. Thus, the city has no more debonairly-mannered, smiling-souled citizen to offer than Clarence Darrow. For years and years Mr. Darrow has been gently disproving the intelligence of man, the importance ...
— A Thousand and One Afternoons in Chicago • Ben Hecht
... for the resident alien, and in its insistence upon motives of benevolence and humanity, it is an eloquent reminder of the moral elevation of Israel's religion, and is peculiarly welcome in a book so largely devoted to the externals of the cult. ...
— Introduction to the Old Testament • John Edgar McFadyen
... not intended as a propaganda of spiritualism, that cult has been introduced with considerable dramatic effect for two apparent reasons. The first and least important of these reasons is to cater to the ever-growing taste of the reading public for the occult; but the second reason is peculiar to the book. In discussing man as ...
— Solaris Farm - A Story of the Twentieth Century • Milan C. Edson
... conspicuous ability in telling the tale to the London Pressmen encourages expectations that he will be no less successful as a preacher to the birds, after the manner of St. FRANCIS, the founder of the cult. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, June 30th, 1920 • Various
... was laid in the grave, supplied with all these magic texts which were to restore and revive the soul and guide it across waters and through dangers to the place of Osiris. But the chapel was not wanting, the cult of the ka was maintained, the statues were placed in the hidden room, the food and drink were brought daily to the door of the grave. Thus, while a special immortality was evolved for the king, the funeral ...
— The Egyptian Conception of Immortality • George Andrew Reisner
... the nature of the Christian Science appeal largely explains the rapid spread of this cult. Christian Science is quite unlike other religions in this, that while they promise at most salvation—an intangible boon—Mrs. Eddy promises her followers health, relief from bodily pain and sickness, and thus addresses ...
— Problems of Immanence - Studies Critical and Constructive • J. Warschauer
... drinks in the world is clabbered milk; it is far better in a way for every one than buttermilk for it requires no artificial cult to bring it to perfection. The milk is simply allowed to stand in a warm place in the bottles just as it is bought, and when it reaches the consistency of a rich cream or is more like a jelly the same as is required for cheese, it is ready to drink. ...
— The International Jewish Cook Book • Florence Kreisler Greenbaum
... to the "dead level" of the commonplace, under the mistaken idea of universal equality. Gifted persons daring to lift up their heads above the common ruck of mankind, are at once shoved back into the narrow groove the heads of the cult have decided to be the proper rut for human beings to ...
— Insights and Heresies Pertaining to the Evolution of the Soul • Anna Bishop Scofield
... work of fertilizing the queen, in the most cruel and summary manner. Their apparent attachment to the queen, and their loyalty to her, are not personal. They do not love her. It is the Spirit of the Hive, or the cult of the swarm solicitous about itself. There are no brothers, sisters, fathers, mothers, among the bees; there are only co-workers, working not for the present, but for the future. When we enter the kingdom of the bee, we must leave all our human ...
— Under the Maples • John Burroughs
... same Being. "God" is the name a man gives to his highest inspiration, and men vary greatly in that which inspires them. One man's god is his belly, another's his reputation, a third's cleverness. Napoleon reintroduced the cult of the God of authority, by establishing the Concordat with Rome, because as he bluntly put it, "men require to be kept in order." A number of socially minded thinkers, of whom the best known is ...
— Some Christian Convictions - A Practical Restatement in Terms of Present-Day Thinking • Henry Sloane Coffin
... consorts with chambermaids knows it, only he who steals to their pillow and listens to the unconscious utterance of a dream, hears it. He alone knows it who makes a woman of himself, and initiates himself into the secrets of her cult of inconstancy! But man, who asks for it openly, he who opens a loyal hand to receive that frightful alms, he will never obtain it! They are on guard with him; for reply he receives a shrug of the shoulders, and, if he rouses himself in his impatience, ...
— Child of a Century, Complete • Alfred de Musset
... with apprehension as she considered the effect which this infatuation, if it should continue to gain strength, might have upon one of Paul's dreamy temperament and excessive ideality. That she had devoted her own lonely and useless life to the cult of the past did not greatly matter, although in the light of her present happier faith she saw and regretted her mistake; but as for permitting Paul's life to be overshadowed by the same influence she could not consent to it. ...
— Miss Ludington's Sister • Edward Bellamy
... period also must be referred the rise of that system of necromancy which, originating in America, has had great vogue in other countries, and here in its native land has taken such form as really to constitute a new cult. Making no mention of sporadic instances of what in earlier generations would have been called (and properly enough) by the name of witchcraft, we find the beginning of so-called "spiritualism" in the "Rochester rappings," produced, to the wonder of many witnesses, by "the ...
— A History of American Christianity • Leonard Woolsey Bacon
... Syria.[206] On his way he conceived a desire to visit the temple of Venus at Paphos,[207] which is famous among all the inhabitants and visitors. It may not be tedious to give here a short account of the origin of this worship, the ritual of the cult, and the shape—unparalleled elsewhere—in which the goddess ...
— Tacitus: The Histories, Volumes I and II • Caius Cornelius Tacitus
... measure or to account for life's many and various manifestations. In the very early days of imaginative prophecy, the 'elemental' nature of certain beings was accepted by men accounted wise in their own time,—in the long ago discredited assertions of the Count de Gabalis and others of his mystic cult,—and I am not entirely sure that there does not exist some ground for their beliefs. Life is many-sided;—humanity can only be one facet of ...
— The Secret Power • Marie Corelli
... "The laws apply to the aforenamed Catholics whenever they enter into betrothal or matrimony with non-Catholics, baptized or not, even when they have obtained a dispensation from the obstacle of a mixed religion or of a disparity of cult; except the Holy See decrees otherwise for a ...
— Luther Examined and Reexamined - A Review of Catholic Criticism and a Plea for Revaluation • W. H. T. Dau
... group, unchecked by any higher authority of king or governor, arose ancestor-worship—that unnatural religion which erases the laws of life and bids the chicken feed the hen—or rather the rooster. No matriarchal cult would have made that mistake. The patriarch owned his women, owned his children, owned all the property; he gave and took away at his pleasure. Therefore, looming vast in unchecked pride, he erected sacrificial religions all his own, demanding ...
— The Forerunner, Volume 1 (1909-1910) • Charlotte Perkins Gilman
... within, is dark, shuts out the light, etc. Possibly the derivation was symbolic. Votan was called "the heart of the nation," and at Tlazoaloyan, in Soconusco, he constructed, by breathing or blowing, a "dark house," in which he concealed the sacred objects of his cult. In this myth we find an unequivocal connection of the idea of "darkness" ...
— Day Symbols of the Maya Year • Cyrus Thomas
... will. This supernatural virtue is Charity, sometimes expressed in the simpler form of Love, the essence of the social code of Christianity and the symbol of the New Dispensation as justice was the symbol of the Old. Just in so far as a man or a cult or an interest or a corporation or a state or a generation or a race, relinquishes charity as its controlling spirit, in so far it relinquishes its place in Christian society and its claim to the Christian name, while it is voided of all power for good or possibility ...
— Towards the Great Peace • Ralph Adams Cram
... ob de womans," said the negro, as they hurried through the streets; "awrful dif'cult to manidge. Come 'long, we'll go home and hab ...
— The Middy and the Moors - An Algerine Story • R.M. Ballantyne
... other provinces. There was among them a high priest, called "Bayoc," who by certain rites consecrated the other priests. He celebrated this ceremony in the midst of orgies and the most frightful revels. He next indicated to the new priest the idol or cult to which he should specially devote himself and conferred on him privileges proportionate to the rank of that divinity, for they recognized among their gods a hierarchy, which established also that of their curates. They gave to their principal idol the name of "Malyari"—that is, the powerful. ...
— Negritos of Zambales • William Allan Reed
... differ from us in this, as in other respects. They claim that Christianity freed woman from her previous low position, and they ground themselves upon the worship of Mary, the "mother of God,"—a cult, however, that sprang up only later in Christendom, but which they point to as a sign of regard for the whole sex. The Roman Catholic Church, which celebrates this cult, should be the last to lay claim to such a doctrine. ...
— Woman under socialism • August Bebel
... divine part is willing to accept her before the step taken can be regarded as complete. She has to enter the family in such a way as to be able to share in its sacra, i.e. in the worship of the household spirits, the ancestors in their tombs, or in any special cult attached to the family. In order to secure this eligibility, she was in the earliest times subjected to a ceremony which was clearly of a sacramental character, and which had as its effect the transference of the bride from the hand (manus) of her father, ...
— Social life at Rome in the Age of Cicero • W. Warde Fowler
... antipodal difference between East and West—here "the family is the social unit" and with us the individual himself—explains the system of adoption: a younger son not being essential to the maintenance of the family cult may be adopted into another family, while the eldest son may not. On the same principle the father rules, not because of what he represents as an Individual, but because he represents the Family. Whenever he chooses, he abdicates, and must then join his other ...
— Where Half The World Is Waking Up • Clarence Poe
... for some time. It had a sweet, old-fashioned face, with a very high forehead, blue eyes, and dark hair arranged in two festoons of plaits, turned up at the sides. It represented his mother in the early sixties and he thought it was like Edith. He had a great devotion and cult for the memory of his mother. When he was charmed with a woman he always imagined her to ...
— Tenterhooks • Ada Leverson
... Shakespeare, the very passage which Hazlitt later quoted as "the best character of Shakespeare that has ever been written."[35] The high-priest of classicism wavered frequently in his allegiance to some of the sacred fetishes of his cult, and had enough grace, once at least, to speak with scorn of the "cant of those who judged by principles ...
— Hazlitt on English Literature - An Introduction to the Appreciation of Literature • Jacob Zeitlin
... of time, which temporally considereth all things: our fathers find their graves in our short memories, and sadly tell us how we may be buried in our survivors.' Let us make sure that our sons will care for Homer before we pledge a more distant generation to a newer cult. ...
— Robert Louis Stevenson • Walter Raleigh
... no religion. We seldom reflect on the strangeness of the fact that the modern working-man has few or no superstitions. At other times the masses have evolved for themselves some picturesque nature-religion, some pious ancestor-worship, some cult of saints or heroes, some stories of fairies, ghosts, or demons, and a mass of quaint superstitions, genial or frightening. The modern town-dweller has no God and no Devil; he lives without awe, without admiration, ...
— Outspoken Essays • William Ralph Inge
... Brother Jacques quietly. "I should go to further lengths of disapprobation. I should say that Monsieur le Marquis's philosophy is the cult of fools and of madmen, did I not know that he was simply testing our patience when he advanced such ...
— The Grey Cloak • Harold MacGrath
... began to discover him, and to make his countrymen some noisy reproaches for ignoring him; they were wholly in the dark concerning him when the Saturday Press, which first stood his friend, and the young men whom the Press gathered about it, made him their cult. No doubt he was more valued because he was so offensive in some ways than he would have been if he had been in no way offensive, but it remains a fact that they celebrated him quite as much as was good for them. ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... like bats, but they are also pictured as having fine houses and great riches. They are sometimes hostile or mischievous, but more frequently are friendly. They play a very important part in the mythology, but not in the cult. [121] ...
— The Tinguian - Social, Religious, and Economic Life of a Philippine Tribe • Fay-Cooper Cole
... to her quickly, with a cordial smile and her most friendly manner. "Ah, but you must come," she said. "We will be victimised together. And perhaps Dal and Lawson will succeed in converting us to the cult of the 'service of song.' And anyway it will be amusing to have Dal explain it to us. He will need the courage of ...
— The Rosary • Florence L. Barclay
... of a word-civilization than the English. Our architectural, painting, and sculptural history is concerned with men now living, or their immediate predecessors. And even such work as we have is pretty largely a cult by the wealthy. This is the more a cause for misgiving because, in a democracy, the arts, like the political parties, are not founded till they have touched the county chairman, the ward leader, ...
— The Art Of The Moving Picture • Vachel Lindsay
... of which the second or Dominican Inquisition had taken cognizance were designated under the generic name of heresy. Heretics were either patent by profession of some heterodox cult or doctrine; or they were suspected. The suspected included witches, sorcerers, and blasphemers who invoked the devil's aid; Catholics abstaining from confession and absolution; harborers of avowed heretics; legal defenders of the cause of heretics; priests who gave ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volumes 1 and 2 - The Catholic Reaction • John Addington Symonds
... stagnant water!' Now it will require at least a decade, to train us to appreciate the subtile symphonies of ditch slime. An English friend compassionating my American stupidity, essayed to initiate me in the cult of 'culture', and gave me a leaf to study, from the latter-day gospel. I learned it after a time, as I did the multiplication table. 'Culture steps in, and points out the grossness of untempered belief. It tells us the beauty of picturesque untruth; the grotesqueness of unmannerly ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson
... ago abolished the old English law of primogeniture. But the idea was in the blood of the Virginia planter. The servants caught it as quickly as they caught the other English traits of love of home, family, kin, the cult of leisure, the habit of Church, the love of country. It was not an accident that the decisions of the courts of the Old South were quoted by English barristers and accepted by English judges as law. The Common Law of England was the law of Southern Seaboard ...
— The Man in Gray • Thomas Dixon
... also bitter about Christian Science, and could easily be led to expose its falsity. He would wittily say it wasn't Christian and wasn't science; merely the chuckleheadedness of a lot of women. This because a local adept of the cult had told him, and—what was worse—told Mrs. Penniman and Winona, that if he didn't quit thinking he was an invalid pretty soon he would really have something the ...
— The Wrong Twin • Harry Leon Wilson
... sensible, well-behaved, promising young officer. It would damage, at any rate, his immediate prospects, and lose him the good-will of his general. These worldly preoccupations were no doubt misplaced in view of the solemnity of the moment. A duel, whether regarded as a ceremony in the cult of honour, or even when reduced in its moral essence to a form of manly sport, demands a perfect singleness of intention, a homicidal austerity of mood. On the other hand, this vivid concern for his ...
— A Set of Six • Joseph Conrad
... Zeus at Dodona called themselves doves, as those of Diana at Ephesus called themselves bees; this proves that the oracles of the temples were formerly founded on observations of the flight of doves and bees, and no doubt also that the original cult consisted in the worship of these animals." [712] Thus, as is seen here, when the deity was no longer an animal but had developed into a god in human shape, the animal remained associated with him and partook of his sanctity; and what could be ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India - Volume IV of IV - Kumhar-Yemkala • R.V. Russell
... it is here where her great work was done, and where she is so honored. Some day we promise ourselves the pleasure of bringing the children here and going with them through all the Joan of Arc country. M. La Tour, who has made the journey, says that, as the Joan of Arc cult is increasing all the time, every spot associated with her is marked and everything most ...
— In Chteau Land • Anne Hollingsworth Wharton
... of men, the ass that carried Balaam is one, the dog of the Seven Sleepers the other. This is no small distinction. From what has been written about this beast might be compiled a library of great splendor and magnitude, rivalling that of the Shakespearean cult, and that which clusters about the Bible. It may be said, generally, that all literature is more ...
— The Devil's Dictionary • Ambrose Bierce
... ancient India. But the truth seems to be that the oldest popular theology of Egypt was only a variety of Negro animism and fetishism.[9] Yet these grovelling superstitions, as is often the case, evolved in unbroken continuity a higher faith. For, in the attempt made to adapt this savage cult to the religious needs of various districts, all alike gradually advancing in culture, the number and variety of divinities became so bewildering to the priests, that the latter almost inevitably adopted the device of recognising in parochial gods only ...
— Pantheism, Its Story and Significance - Religions Ancient And Modern • J. Allanson Picton
... To the cult of the birthplaces of famous men must be added that of their graves, and, in the case of Petrarch, of the spot where he died. In memory of him Arqua became a favorite resort of the Paduans, and was dotted with graceful little villas. At this time there were no 'classic spots' in Northern Europe, ...
— The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy • Jacob Burckhardt
... respects the same. In the popular faith older superstitions and beliefs still lingered which had disappeared from the religion of the state or appeared in it in another form. The place of the priest was in large measure taken by the sorcerer and the magician, the ceremonies of the public cult were superseded by charms and incantations, and the deities of the official creed were overshadowed by a crowd of subordinate spirits whose very existence was hardly recognized among the more cultured classes. The Babylonian was ...
— Babylonians and Assyrians, Life and Customs • Rev. A. H. Sayce
... like a fanatic, Dave told himself. Crazy or not, he took this business of the hatching egg seriously. But you could never be sure about anyone who joined a cult. "What is your egg going to hatch into?" ...
— The Sky Is Falling • Lester del Rey
... tangled masses of foliage occupied two hundred coolies during six weeks of arduous toil. The brief English occupation of the island necessarily left the work unfinished, but Dutch archaeologists continued the labour, though with slower methods and feebler grasp of the situation. A transient cult sprang up among the Javanese populace as the ancient sanctuary revealed itself anew. The statues were invoked with reverential awe, incense was offered; the saffron, used as a personal decoration on festive occasions, was smeared over the impassive faces, unchanged in the ...
— Through the Malay Archipelago • Emily Richings
... was what his father had made him under the iron cult of solitary development; and now, the father, loyal in his own way to the memory of his old friend Anthony Seagrave, meant to do his full ...
— The Danger Mark • Robert W. Chambers
... about the moorland, for health and for weariness. When unoccupied, he durst not be physically idle; the passions that ever lurked to frenzy him could only be baffled at such times by vigorous exercise. His cold bath in the early morning was followed by play of dumb-bells. He had made a cult of physical soundness; he looked anxiously at his lithe, well-moulded limbs; feebleness, disease, were the menaces of a supreme hope. Ideal love dwells not in the soul alone, but in every vein and nerve and muscle ...
— The Crown of Life • George Gissing
... various forms prevails. It is not associated with any rites that might be called particularly obscene; and on the coast, where manners and morals are particularly corrupt, the phallus cult is no longer met with. In the forests between Manyanga and Stanley Pool it is not rare to come upon a little rustic temple, made of palm fronds and poles, within which male and female figures, nearly or quite life size, may be seen, with disproportionate genital ...
— Religion & Sex - Studies in the Pathology of Religious Development • Chapman Cohen
... his character. I do believe that my uncle would have made a far less egregious smash if there had been no Napoleonic legend to misguide him. He was in many ways better and infinitely kinder than his career. But when in doubt between decent conduct and a base advantage, that cult came in more and more influentially: "think of Napoleon; think what the inflexibly-wilful Napoleon would have done with such scruples as yours;" that was the rule, and the end was invariably a ...
— Tono Bungay • H. G. Wells
... getting harder to convince that a broad foot, shaped on the lines laid down by the Creator, is less beautiful or desirable than the one-toe pointed shoe, decreed just now by our particular brand of culture, and today I would as lief defend the cult of the simple red man as the savagery that disgraces the ...
— Trees, Fruits and Flowers of Minnesota, 1916 • Various
... of God, they will unavoidably give frank recognition to that will above others, and such recognition will dictate conduct. The gods of Epicurus, leading a lazy existence in the interstellar spaces, indifferent to man and in no wise affecting his life, could scarcely become the objects of a cult. But the God of the Mahometan, of the Jew, or of the Christian, is a ruler to be feared, loved, obeyed. His will is law, and is ...
— A Handbook of Ethical Theory • George Stuart Fullerton
... and is so insufficiently advertised, that it is only to be found in a very few houses indeed, and is not a commodity in general request. The Patentees then call themselves a Church, and devote their energies to advertising the new "Cult," as they generally style it. For example, you have Esoteric Buddhism, so named because it is not Buddhism, nor Esoteric. It is imported by an American company with a manufactory in Thibet, and has had some success among ...
— 'That Very Mab' • May Kendall and Andrew Lang
... much stouter than is the case with the average species of Calamus. Doubtless to the vulgar a Malacca cane is merely a Malacca cane. There are, however, in this interesting world choice spirits who make a cult of Malacca canes, just as some dog fanciers are devotees of the Airedale terrier. Such as these know that inferior Malacca canes are, as the term in the cane trade is, "shaved"; that is, not being of the circumference most ...
— Walking-Stick Papers • Robert Cortes Holliday
... sincere and able book on Synge, may be taken as a representative apostle of the Synge cult. He sets before us a god, not a man—a creator of absolute beauty—and he asks us to accept the common view that The Playboy of the Western World is his masterpiece. There can never be any true criticism of Synge till we have got rid of all these obsessions and idolatries. Synge ...
— Old and New Masters • Robert Lynd
... race of beings quite apart from the rest of humanity and with the exception of a few money-seeking foreigners, one of whom had painted her portrait, and Teddy Vincent, a New Yorker socially prominent (who was unspeakable), her acquaintance with the cult had been limited and unfavorable. When, therefore, her car drew alongside the curb of the old-fashioned building to which Olga directed the chauffeur, Hermia was already prepared to dislike Mr. Markham cordially. She had not always cared for ...
— Madcap • George Gibbs
... their special cult the Vestals took part in nearly every important sacrifice, procession and festival of the public worship of Rome. They were busy women and among them Brinnaria was anything but idle. She never found time ...
— The Unwilling Vestal • Edward Lucas White
... the soul of Quintus is in wild commotion, there falls upon him a mighty force which is not of earth. Coming he knows not whence, but not invading the department of his will, it impels him to the Christ. Transformed is this Roman knight, who has been taught the doctrines of the Latin cult, and whose nation can only feel disdain for a Galilaean who proposes to revolutionize the ages. The words of the augur at Brundisium are having in truth ...
— An Easter Disciple • Arthur Benton Sanford
... Hannay? There was a strange cult in the ancient world, the worship of Magna Mater—the Great Mother. To enter into her mysteries the votary passed through a bath of blood——I think I am passing through that bath. I think that like the initiate I shall be renatus in ...
— Mr. Standfast • John Buchan
... know I had! Well, I only want to tell you that it isn't a cult now. I have got to know Adela better, to know her really. I used to admire her as a great lady. Now I love her as a splendid woman. She's rare. That is the word for her. Once—not long ago—I was talking to a man who knows what people ...
— December Love • Robert Hichens
... intended by the author. The technical devices adopted have nothing to do with the question. No doubt there is much technical knowledge involved in acting, but it must be remembered that it is all a means to an end. The cult of technique for itself ...
— Our Stage and Its Critics • "E.F.S." of "The Westminster Gazette"
... adherence to conventions under a decent show of following convictions; so that the pure and straightforward Philistinism which Mr. Irons professed from simple lack of a knowledge of the secrets of what might perhaps be called the priestly cult of Philistia, appeared to Peter Calvin shockingly crude ...
— The Philistines • Arlo Bates
... self-admiring boy Nymph Echo longed so vainly to enjoy; Yet the old classic fable hath a phase Which seems to fit the opprobrium of our days. Criminal-worship seems our latest cult, And this strange figure is its last result. Self-conscious, self-admiring, Crime parades Its loathly features, not in slumdom's shades, Or in Alsatian sanctuaries vile. No; peacock-posing and complacent smile Pervade the common air, and take the town. The ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 102, April 23, 1892 • Various
... of them, but there is nevertheless no lack of evidence to prove that it was only too well known among them long before that happy age (Livy i, 4; ii, 18); and the peculiar story of the Bacchanalian cult which was brought to Rome by foreigners about the second century B.C. (Livy xxxix, 9-17), and the comedies of Plautus and Terence, in which the pandar and the harlot are familiar characters. Cicero, ...
— The Satyricon, Complete • Petronius Arbiter
... exhausted my ammunition! You wish to imitate the sparrow? But the sparrow does not, slyly and meanly mischievous, make a cult of sprightliness is not funny with authority, is not the pedant of flippancy! You percher among low bushes, who never care to fly, you wish to imitate—[Turning to one of the exotic COCKS cackling behind him.] Silence, Cock of Japan! or I ...
— Chantecler - Play in Four Acts • Edmond Rostand
... objects in a primitive stage of religious development. Stocks and stones—the latter often reputed to have fallen from heaven, the former sometimes in the shape of a growing tree, sometimes of a mere unwrought log—were to be found as the centres of religious cult in many of the shrines of Greece. These sacred objects are sometimes called fetishes; and although it is perhaps wiser to avoid terms belonging properly to the religion of modern savages in speaking of ancient Greece, there seems to be an analogy between the beliefs and customs ...
— Religion and Art in Ancient Greece • Ernest Arthur Gardner
... material on this subject is so great that I have not attempted to make a survey of the whole of European 'Witchcraft', but have confined myself to an intensive study of the cult in Great Britain. In order, however, to obtain a clearer understanding of the ritual and beliefs I have had recourse to French and Flemish sources, as the cult appears to have been the same throughout Western Europe. The ...
— The Witch-cult in Western Europe - A Study in Anthropology • Margaret Alice Murray
... connection between the construction of the future and the destruction of the past, that she could honestly admire Cyrus Treadwell for possessing the qualities her soul abhorred. The simple awe of financial success, which occupies in the American mind the vacant space of the monarchical cult, had begun already to generate the myth of greatness around Cyrus, and, like all other myths, this owed its origin less to the wilful conspiracy of the few than it did to the ...
— Virginia • Ellen Glasgow
... in mind the year in which 1601 was written, 1876. There had been nothing like it before in American literature; there had appeared no Caldwells, no Faulkners, no Hemingways. Victorian England was gushing Tennyson. In the United States polite letters was a cult of the Brahmins of Boston, with William Dean Howells at the helm of the Atlantic. Louisa May Alcott published Little Women in 1868-69, and Little Men in 1871. In 1873 Mark Twain led the van of the debunkers, scraping the gilt off the lily in the ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... period of peace there lurks the danger that methods of training may deviate after false ideals, lose themselves in the cult of imposing appearances, and in the clash of individual opinions fail to distinguish the essential—i.e., what is really practicable under the ...
— Cavalry in Future Wars • Frederick von Bernhardi
... own name and priests. With the sun-gods are joined the goddesses of the heavens,—Nut, Hather, Isis, and others. But Osiris became the most famous sun-god. His worship was originally at Abydos and Busiris. At length his cult spread over the whole land. In the legend, he is murdered by Seth; but Horus is his avenger. Horus conquers the power of darkness. Henceforward Osiris reigns in the kingdom of the West, the home of the dead. He is the sun in the realm of the shades. He receives the dead, is their protector, ...
— Outline of Universal History • George Park Fisher
... water-god, or a fire-god, or a corn-god, but he was undoubtedly associated with Marduk, either as his son or as a fellow-god. It is certain that as early as B.C. 2000 he was regarded as one of the "Great Gods" of Babylonia, and about 1,200 years later his cult was general in Assyria. He had a temple at Nimrd in the ninth century B.C., and King Adad-Nirari (B.C. 811-783) set up six statues in it to the honour of the god; two of these statues are now in the British Museum. Under the last Assyrian Empire he ...
— The Babylonian Story of the Deluge - as Told by Assyrian Tablets from Nineveh • E. A. Wallis Budge
... which alone we can contemplate it—the religion of the primitive Chaldaeans, that it will be unnecessary, after the full treatment which that subject received in an earlier portion of this work, to do much more than notice in the present place certain peculiarities by which it would appear that the cult of Assyria was distinguished from that of the neighboring and closely connected country. With the exception that the first god in the Babylonian Pantheon was replaced by a distinct and thoroughly national ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 2. (of 7): Assyria • George Rawlinson
... noun and its adjective rather curiously of the dead: cp. 82, "To the reverend shade of his religious Father," and 138, "When thou shalt laugh at my religious dust". There may be something of this use here, or we may refer to his ancient cult of Jonson. But the use of the phrase in 870 makes the exact shade ...
— The Hesperides & Noble Numbers: Vol. 1 and 2 • Robert Herrick
... love of detail) about the way in which his friend's fame began to spread, and the pilgrims to journey to his shrine. It would have been of interest to trace the first stages in the unauthorised cult of one as yet uncanonised. What is left of the book is the record of only the last week in Master Richard's life and of his death under peculiar circumstances at Westminster in the ...
— The History of Richard Raynal, Solitary • Robert Hugh Benson
... poetry know naught of the sensual love so assiduously fostered by the cult of the Virgin. "Love," says a celebrated historian of literature, "was glorified in all shapes and guises, and represented as the highest aim of life. Woman's virtues, yea, even her vices, were invested with exaggerated importance. Woman became accustomed to think that she could ...
— Jewish Literature and Other Essays • Gustav Karpeles
... ruin. If you could read some of the letters of Horemheb, the commander-in-chief of his army, begging him to send reinforcements to Syria, imploring him to realize the danger that menaced Asia, you would feel as impatient as I do with his mission work at Tel-el-Amarna, his cult of ...
— There was a King in Egypt • Norma Lorimer
... of a Dryad cult With leaf-like locks she'll haunt the trees, Securing this superb result ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, February 11, 1914 • Various
... true or only invented, it is very clear that in spite of the War and its shattering way with so many ancient shibboleths the cult of the actor is still strong; for this is the kind of thing that lasted all the way from Hyde Park Corner to ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 152, March 28, 1917 • Various
... coiffured with pounds of yellow hair in which glittered rhinestone buckles. Hair of every sort and shade and length was clustered about her, as if she were the presiding genius of some barbarian scalping-cult. Seen at that hour, in the pale luster of the flashlight, this sorry plunder of lost teeth and dead hair made upon one a melancholy impression, disparaging to humanity. I had scant time to moralize on hair and teeth, however, for Flint was stopping before ...
— Slippy McGee, Sometimes Known as the Butterfly Man • Marie Conway Oemler
... struggle between monarchy and republic." From the fervid admiration for the Roman Republic which animated the men of the French Revolution to the unmeasured Caesarian apologies of Duruy and of Mommsen, from the ardent cult of Brutus to the detailed studies on the Roman administration of the first two centuries, all historians have studied and regarded Roman history mainly from the point of view of the struggle between the two principles that yet to-day rend in incurable discord the mind of old Europe and from which ...
— Characters and events of Roman History • Guglielmo Ferrero
... and herself occupied a sofa in the apartment of a friend of humanity in the next street. These arrangements enabled her to admit an experimenter on hypnotism, a mental healer who had been much abused by the orthodox members of her cult, and was evolving a method of her own, an ostensible delegate to an Occidental Conference of Religions, and a lady agent for a flexible celluloid undershirt. For a few days Mrs. Grubb found the society of these persons very stimulating and agreeable; but before long the hypnotist proved to be an ...
— Marm Lisa • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... prayers, a large percentage whereof amounts to "Go away, we don't want you." "Come not into this house, this village, or its plantations." He knows from experience that the spirits pay little heed to these objurgations, and as they are the people who must be attended to, he develops a cult whereby they may be managed, used, and understood. This cult is what we ...
— Travels in West Africa • Mary H. Kingsley
... who do retain the idea of God, but merely as the sum total of man's idealistic life. "God," says one exponent, "is the farthest outreach of our human ideals." That is to say, our spiritual lives created God, not God our spiritual lives. God, as one enthusiastic devotee of this new cult has put it, is a sort of Uncle Sam, the pooling of the idealistic imaginations of multitudes. Of course he does not exist, yet in a sense he is real; he is the projection of our ...
— Christianity and Progress • Harry Emerson Fosdick
... Sir James Frere is a type of the cult of Specialists, I want no more of them. To start with, he does not seem to know any more than you do about my Father's condition; and if he were a hundredth part as much interested in it as you are, he would not stand on such punctilio. Of course, I am only too anxious about my ...
— The Jewel of Seven Stars • Bram Stoker
... denounces? Will more babies be poisoned amidst comparative ease and plenty, or when, as before the fall of Napoleon, provisions were twice as dear as they now are, and wages not much more than half as high? Romans and Carthaginians were pretty much given to war: but no nations were more sedulous in the cult of Mammon. Again, the Scriptures are pretty strong against Mammon-worship, but they do not recommend this original and peculiar cure. Nay, once more: what sad errors must have crept into the text of the prophet Isaiah when he is made to desire that our swords shall be converted ...
— Famous Reviews • Editor: R. Brimley Johnson
... one oracle-sanctuary of special importance, which in the universal decline had preserved the ancient cult in its purest form. It was one of the Christ oracles, and on that account it was able to preserve not only the Christ Mystery itself but those of the other oracles as well. For in the manifestation of the loftiest of the Sun-spirits, were ...
— An Outline of Occult Science • Rudolf Steiner
... beautiful. But the fashions have floated away to absurdity. Every now and then through the austere bustle of London in war time drifts a last practitioner of the "eternal feminine"—with the air of a foreign visitor, with the air of devotion to some peculiar cult. She has very high-heeled boots; she shows a leg, she has a short skirt with a peculiar hang, due no doubt to mysteries about the waist; she wears a comic little hat over one brow; there is something of Columbine about her, something of the Watteau shepherdess, something of a vivandiere, ...
— What is Coming? • H. G. Wells
... name could survive so long, I think, as a peg on which to hang actual history. It would pass, long before the ten millenniums were over, into legend; and become that of a God or demigod,—whose cult, also, would need reviving, in time, by some new avatar. Now (as remarked before) humanity has a profound instinct for avatars; and also (as you would expect) for Reincarnation. The sixth-century Britons were reminded by one of their chieftains of some mighty king or God of prehistory; ...
— The Crest-Wave of Evolution • Kenneth Morris
... "The 'Cult' is an organization of advanced thinkers, presided over by Madam Gersdorff, an adept who can converse with the birds of the air, ...
— Grace Harlowe's Overland Riders in the Great North Woods • Jessie Graham Flower
... once, making one of a party of six, five of whom were men. She did not care for women as a sex, and said so in the plainest language, denouncing their mentality as still afflicted by a narrowness that smacked of the harem. But for certain women she had a cult, and among these women Lady Sellingworth held a prominent, perhaps the ...
— December Love • Robert Hichens
... of the Law and, consequently, the study of the Law formed the basis of this religion. With the fall of the Temple the one place disappeared in which the Divine cult could legitimately be performed; as a result the Jews turned for the expression of their religious sentiment with all the more ardor toward the Law, now become the real sanctuary of Judaism torn from its native soil, the safeguard ...
— Rashi • Maurice Liber
... great men who have swayed men's minds no longer have altars, but they have statues, or their portraits are in the hands of their admirers, and the cult of which they are the object is not notably different from that accorded to their predecessors. An understanding of the philosophy of history is only to be got by a thorough appreciation of this fundamental point of the psychology of crowds. The ...
— The Crowd • Gustave le Bon
... the steady development of innovating forces in human affairs there has actually grown up a cult of receptivity, a readiness for new ideas, a faith in the probable truth of novelties. Liberalism—I do not, of course, refer in any way to the political party which makes this profession—is essentially anti-traditionalism; its tendency ...
— An Englishman Looks at the World • H. G. Wells
... me. 'I come to the shore now and then, just to see how he's getting on. But I spend most of my time inland. I find I've so much to talk over with Gabriel. Not that he's quite the fellow he was. He always had rather a cult for Dante, you know, and now he's more than ever under the Florentine influence. He lives in a sort of monastery that Dante has here; and there he sits painting imaginary portraits of Beatrice, and giving them all to Dante. But he still has his great moments, and there's ...
— And Even Now - Essays • Max Beerbohm
... (1856-1900).—Poet and dramatist, s. of Sir William W., the eminent surgeon, was b. at Dublin, and ed. there at Trinity Coll. and at Oxf. He was one of the founders of the modern cult of the aesthetic. Among his writings are Poems (1881), The Picture of Dorian Gray, a novel, and several plays, including Lady Windermere's Fan, A Woman of no Importance, and The Importance of being Earnest. He was convicted of a serious offence, and after his release from prison ...
— A Short Biographical Dictionary of English Literature • John W. Cousin
... and tossed the cigarette in the fire. "You used to smoke like a furnace, Margaret. Is this some new 'cult'?" ...
— Dope • Sax Rohmer
... influenced the European powers, particularly since the time of the Holy Alliance. Accustomed to clothe their actions in the garb of humanitarianism, they were not, when caught thus red-handed, prepared to be a mark of scorn for the rest of the world. The cult of unabashed might was still a closet philosophy which even Germany, its chief devotee, was not yet ready to avow to the world. Of course Hay knew that the battle was not won, for the bandits still held ...
— The Path of Empire - A Chronicle of the United States as a World Power, Volume - 46 in The Chronicles of America Series • Carl Russell Fish
... vanity, or false modesty" an esoterist, that is to say, one who is an adept at the interpretation of the occult and secret doctrines. This book, an exposition of the secret doctrine, is not, therefore, as its title might suggest, a scientific treatise upon the Voudo cult as it has existed and as it still exists in Haiti. It is rather an interpretation and defense of the primitive religion of Africa, particularly as it is represented in the religious customs and practices of the ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 7, 1922 • Various
... Aphrodite called Hierodouli (Strabo viii. 6), who aided the ten thousand courtesans in gracing the Venus-temple: from this excessive luxury arose the proverb popularised by Horace. One of the headquarters of the cult was Cyprus where, as Servius relates (Ad AEn. ii. 632), stood the simulacre of a bearded Aphrodite with feminine body and costume, sceptered and mitred like a man. The sexes when worshipping it exchanged habits and here the virginity was offered in sacrifice: Herodotus (i. c. 199) describes ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 10 • Richard F. Burton
... was a good woman, and, to some extent, a just woman; but it was scarcely possible for her to judge Lesley correctly. All Miss Brooke's traditions favored the cult of the woman who worked: and Lesley, like her mother before her, had the look of a tall, fair lily—one of those who toil not, neither do they spin. Miss Brooke was quite too liberal-minded to have any ...
— Brooke's Daughter - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant
... barrenness, if we keep her away from exercising the right of suffrage which affords the citizen the most effective means to make his influence felt in social questions and in the improvement of the public affairs. How are we to inculcate in our children, that sacred pledge of the future of the nation, the cult and worship of native land and liberty if we do not give their mothers that practical education involved in the exercise of the right of suffrage; if they are taught that government and politics are strange gods at whose ...
— The Woman and the Right to Vote • Rafael Palma |
