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Heathen   /hˈiðən/   Listen
Heathen

noun
(pl. heathens or collectively heathen)
1.
A person who does not acknowledge your god.  Synonyms: gentile, infidel, pagan.






WordNet 3.0 © 2010 Princeton University








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"Heathen" Quotes from Famous Books



... As there was seldom any occasion for making separate assertions respecting heathens who lived in the country, there was no need for a separate word to denote them; and pagan came not only to mean heathen, but to ...
— A System Of Logic, Ratiocinative And Inductive • John Stuart Mill

... endurance against great odds, are surely designed for some nobler purpose than merely to bear with fortitude the ills of life and the misery of starvation. It is the easiest thing in the world to criticise—the West criticises the Chinese because he is a heathen, because they do not understand him. Hundreds of millions of the Chinese race hate and fear the man of the West for exactly the same reason as would cause us to hate the ...
— Across China on Foot • Edwin Dingle

... it was at the end of a holiday, the Republican Committee had assigned to our town, for the benefit of the men in the shops, one of the picture-shows that Mark Hanna, like a heathen in his blindness, had sent to Kansas, thinking our State, after the war, needed a spur to its patriotism in the election. The crowd in front of the post-office was a hundred feet wide and two hundred ...
— In Our Town • William Allen White

... United States to their patrons at home, and, among the rest, on page 85, is the following statement, made by one of them, in regard to the people of the United States: 'We entreat all European Christians to unite in prayer to God for the conversion of these unhappy heathen and obstinate heretics.' But, forbearing to multiply quotations from this little work, admirable in most of its positions, my main object, in citing it, was to make the following extract, from page 15 of the preface, taken by the author from the lectures of the ...
— Americanism Contrasted with Foreignism, Romanism, and Bogus Democracy in the Light of Reason, History, and Scripture; • William Gannaway Brownlow

... other; "and of the Roman emperors as low as Severus; besides a great deal of the heathen mythology, and all the metals, semi-metals, ...
— Persuasion • Jane Austen

... of salutation in Venice. So the priest, who wishes him to come again, and to found some sort of influence over him, says,—"Oh dear, dear! This is very bad. Blasphemy is deadly sin. If you must swear, swear by the heathen gods: say Body of Diana, instead of Body of God; Presence of the Devil, instead of Blood of Mary. Then there is no harm done." The students laugh over the pleasant absurdity together, and usually agree upon the matter of ...
— Venetian Life • W. D. Howells

... and the big war-drums lay. As soon as they saw us a dozen lifted their spears and ran out to meet us. But they stopped after six steps. The sun glinted on the Governor's gold lace and my lum hat, and no doubt they thought we were heathen deities descended from the heavens. Down they went on their faces, and then back like rabbits to the rest, while the drums stopped, and the whole body awaited our coming in a silence ...
— The Moon Endureth—Tales and Fancies • John Buchan

... signifying fine flour, and not from the mythical persons, Simon and Nell, who are popularly supposed to have invented the cake. Hot cross buns are a relic of an ancient rite of the Saxons, who ate cakes in honour of the goddess of spring, and the early Christian missionaries strove to banish the heathen ideas associated with the cakes (which latter the people would not abandon) by putting a cross ...
— Old English Sports • Peter Hampson Ditchfield

... misconception, bigotry, and ignorance of the Roman Catholic missionaries in Ireland, these openings were designated as the "Devil's Yonies." Although these emblems typified the original conception of one of their most sacred beliefs, namely, the "new birth," still they were "heathen abominations" with which the devotees of the new (?) faith must ...
— The God-Idea of the Ancients - or Sex in Religion • Eliza Burt Gamble

... trade and it would be difficult to determine whether the effect would be more deleterious on the interests of the master or on those of the native-born slave. Of the evils to the master, the one most to be dreaded would be the introduction of wild, heathen, and ignorant barbarians among the sober, orderly, and quiet slaves whose ancestors have been on the soil for several generations. This might tend to barbarize, demoralize, and exasperate the whole mass and produce most ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various

... that our Lord hath exclaimed—'How hardly they that have riches enter into the kingdom of heaven?' And what are temptations but trials?—what are trials but perils and sorrows? Think not that you cannot bestow your charity on the rich man, even while you take your sustenance from his hands. A heathen writer, often cited by the earliest preachers of the gospel, hath truly said—'Wherever there is room for a man, there is ...
— The International Magazine, Volume 2, No. 2, January, 1851 • Various

... according to which the heathen gods are real beings just as much as the God of the Jews themselves—only Jews must not worship them—is in the later portions of the Old Testament superseded by the view that the gods are only images made of wood, stone or metal, and incapable of doing either ...
— Atheism in Pagan Antiquity • A. B. Drachmann

... divinities Greek polytheism Greek mythology Adoption of Oriental fables Greek deities the creation of poets Peculiarities of the Greek gods The Olympian deities The minor deities The Greeks indifferent to a future state Augustine view of heathen deities Artists vie with poets in conceptions of divine Temple of Zeus in Olympia Greek festivals No sacred books among the Greeks A religion without deities Roman divinities Peculiarities of Roman worship Ritualism and hypocrisy Character of ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume I • John Lord

... He hath turned A bitter knave of late, and lost his mirth, And mutters riddling warnings and wild tales Of the great days of heathen Rome; and prates Of peace, and liberty, and equal law, And mild philosophy, to us the knights And warriors of this warlike age, who rule By the bright law of arms. The fool's ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 12, No. 338, Saturday, November 1, 1828. • Various

... poverty-stricken Mint; of pewter, let them become bullets to shoot the 'enemies of du genre humain.' Dalmatics of plush make breeches for him who has none; linen stoles will clip into shirts for the Defenders of the Country: old-clothesmen, Jew or Heathen, drive the briskest trade. Chalier's Ass Procession, at Lyons, was but a type of what went on, in those same days, in all Towns. In all Towns and Townships as quick as the guillotine may go, so quick goes the axe and the wrench: sacristies, lutrins, ...
— The French Revolution • Thomas Carlyle

... Temiscamingue, and were drawn to this quarter by Mr. Godin. A considerable number of Algonquins also trade here, where they pass the greater part of their lives without visiting the Lake. The people appear to me to differ in no respect from their heathen brethren, save in the very negligent observance of certain external forms of worship, and in being more enlightened in the ...
— Service in the Hudson's Bay Territory • John M'lean

... to her Irish extraction and slight accent; and the sufferings she has herself undergone from gaunt famine and grim death, make her keenly alive to their wants and feelings. No one has such power over the poor untutored heathen children of the ragged school as she has, and no one loves them as she does. She, too, like her mistress, has found her vocation in their city home; who cannot find a vocation in any home, if they will only look ...
— Gladys, the Reaper • Anne Beale

... lacking in its missionary spirit. These were difficulties which the ardent young preacher, Mr. Strong, had sought for many long months to overcome, and while the earnest missionary from Africa was pleading the cause of the heathen, the pastor praying with all his ...
— At the Little Brown House • Ruth Alberta Brown

... either of Nirvana or of the nightingale's cry to the rose. At times the other friends tapped gently on three painted drums, hardly bigger than tea cups. The enemy, seeing from Bulwan the little crowd of us engaged upon a heathen rite, threw shrapnel over our heads. It burst and sprinkled the dusty ground behind us with lead. Not one of the Hindoos looked up or turned his face. That low chant did not pause or vary by a note. Close ...
— Ladysmith - The Diary of a Siege • H. W. Nevinson

... as my ship remained at the bar I was much flattered, but after her departure I was most unsufferably misused; being in a heathen country, environed by so many enemies, who plotted daily to murder me and to cozen me of my goods. Mucrob Khan, to get possession of my goods, took what he chose, and left what he pleased, giving me such price as his own ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. VIII. • Robert Kerr

... that you offer me?' he said mildly. 'Blind opinion? Undemonstrated and undemonstrable theory? Why, may I ask, do you come over here to convert us heathen, when your own Christian land is rife with evil, with sedition, with religious hatred of man for man, with bloodshed and greed? If your religious belief is true, then you can demonstrate it—prove it beyond doubt. Do you say that the ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking

... apparitions and visions related in Christian, Jewish, or heathen authors, I do my best to discern amongst them, and I exhort my readers to do the same; but I blame and disapprove the outrageous criticism of those who deny everything, and make difficulties of everything, in order ...
— The Phantom World - or, The philosophy of spirits, apparitions, &c, &c. • Augustin Calmet

... The word Gentoo, which was commonly applied in the last century to the Hindus, is, according to Wilson, derived from the Portuguese word gentio, gentile or heathen. The word caste, too, comes ...
— Chips from a German Workshop - Volume IV - Essays chiefly on the Science of Language • Max Muller

... Only those who have resided in China can understand the repugnance with which anyone accustomed to the amenities of refined society would naturally regard such a life. He gave up body and soul to the spread of Christianity in a heathen land, recalling to my mind the early Jesuits, Francis Xavier, Lucas Caballero and Cipriano Baraza, who penetrated pathless forests and crossed unknown seas in conformity with the requirements of their sacred ...
— As I Remember - Recollections of American Society during the Nineteenth Century • Marian Gouverneur

... you is, sir; I never meant to cut his tail, only to frighten him a bit; but, poor heathen, he took it all as serious as seas. Shall I go and ...
— Blue Jackets - The Log of the Teaser • George Manville Fenn

... which declared that Holda, the Northern Venus, had set up her enchanted abode in the hollow mountain known as the Hoerselberg, where she entertained her devotees with all the pleasures of love. When the missionaries came preaching Christianity, they diligently taught the people that all these heathen divinities were demons, and although Holda and her court were not forgotten, she became a type of sensual love. Tannhaeuser, a minstrel of note, who has won many prizes for his songs, hearing of the wondrous underground palace and of its manifold charm, ...
— Stories of the Wagner Opera • H. A. Guerber

... bankruptcy, she had been knocked down for a song to a second-hand shop, where she had been bought for next to nothing by Mr Poulter as "the very thing." Now she stood in the entrance hall of the academy, where, it can truthfully be said, that no heathen goddess received so much adoration and admiration as was bestowed on "Turpsichor" by Mr Poulter and Miss Nippett. To these simple souls, it was the finest work of art to be found anywhere in the ...
— Sparrows - The Story of an Unprotected Girl • Horace W. C. Newte

... twelve in the United States ends in divorce. You'll not find anybody who dares to say that that is not a crying scandal. Yet you and I know that home life in America is as pure and honorable as in any other country. I'm an awful heathen, of course, but I'll bet you I'm a true prophet when I say that divorce will increase as the world goes on, instead of decreasing, and that in all the countries where divorce is forbidden or restricted it will grow freer and freer. ...
— We Can't Have Everything • Rupert Hughes

... assured) be set on foot by our persons of fashion, as soon as the hot days come in. Ranelagh is the place pitched upon for their meeting; where it is proposed to have a masquerade al fresco, and the whole company are to display all their charms in puris naturalibus. The pantheon of the heathen gods, Ovid's Metamorphoses, and Titian's prints, will supply them with sufficient variety of undressed characters." A cynic might harbour the suspicion that this critic was ...
— Inns and Taverns of Old London • Henry C. Shelley

... colony in Constantinople a few years later,[519] and meanwhile carrying on an interurban warfare in Italy that seemed to stimulate it to great activity.[520] A writer of 1114 tells us that at that time there were many heathen people—Turks, Libyans, Parthians, and Chaldeans—to be found in Pisa. It was in the midst of such wars, in a cosmopolitan and commercial town, in a center where literary work was not appreciated,[521] that the genius of Leonardo ...
— The Hindu-Arabic Numerals • David Eugene Smith

... was called "Kar-dunish-i," i.e., the "Garden of the god Dunish." Now Kar is the Turanian form of the Semitic G[a]n, or Gin[a] (garden); and what is more likely than that, as the true story was lost in the heathen traditions and mythology that grew up, the "garden" was attributed to the god Dunish—whereas the real original had been not "Gandunish," but "Gan'Eden?" This, though only a conjecture, is the more probable, as one of the inscription-names of Babylon ...
— Creation and Its Records • B.H. Baden-Powell

... Walter moving slowly from stem to stern, and stern to stem, laying on the magic oil, (unctuous of victory to our noses), with steady sweeps, and the bent figure of black old Clump beside the caldron, from which rose a curling smoke, we must have made a tableau of heathen offering sacrifice, or ...
— Captain Mugford - Our Salt and Fresh Water Tutors • W.H.G. Kingston

... alliance, and she promised that she would devote the remainder of her life, if need be, to showing America that as long as she refused to sign that treaty, she was standing on a level with barbarous and heathen countries. ...
— The Story of the Red Cross as told to The Little Colonel • Annie Fellows-Johnston

... with fabulous beings. Many learned men, indeed, were induced to side with the popular opinion on the subject, and did nothing more than endeavour to unite it with their acknowledged systems of Demonology. They taught that the objects of heathen reverence were fallen angels in league with the Prince of Darkness, who, until the appearance of our Saviour, had been allowed to range on the earth uncontrolled, and to involve the world in spiritual ...
— Thaumaturgia • An Oxonian

... wished for, dear wife, and royal liege," was his courteous address, as he rose and gracefully led her to a seat beside his own. "See how my plans for the reduction of these heathen Moors are quietly working; they are divided within themselves, quarrelling more and more fiercely. Pedro Pas brings me information that the road to Alhama is well nigh defenceless, and therefore the war should commence in that quarter. But how is this, love?" he added, after speaking ...
— The Vale of Cedars • Grace Aguilar

... If you desire the spleene, and will laughe your selues into stitches, follow me; yond gull Maluolio is turned Heathen, a verie Renegatho; for there is no christian that meanes to be saued by beleeuing rightly, can euer beleeue such impossible passages of ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare

... in them the light both of nature and of the Gospel, and so to disprepare them for the kingdom of God to come." And such darkness is wrought first by abusing the light of the Scriptures so that we know them not; secondly by introducing the demonology of the heathen poets; thirdly, by mixing with the Scripture divers relics of the religion and much of the vain and erroneous philosophy of the Greeks, especially of Aristotle; and, fourthly, by mingling with these false or uncertain traditions and ...
— The World's Greatest Books—Volume 14—Philosophy and Economics • Various

... seventy-two. But they killed her, they blew off the top of her head and he could feel it when they did. It was as if something had happened in his head, and then he ran at them and screamed, and there was great slaughter amongst the heathen, ...
— This Crowded Earth • Robert Bloch

... of Mambre, of the whyche the Valeye taketh his name. And there is a Tree of Oke that the Saracens clepen Dirpe, that is of Abraham's Tyme, the which men clepen THE DRYE TREE." [Schiltberger adds that the heathen call it Kurru Thereck, i.e. (Turkish) Kuru Dirakht Dry Tree.] "And theye seye that it hathe ben there sithe the beginnynge of the World; and was sumtyme grene and bare Leves, unto the Tyme that Oure Lord dyede on the Cros; and thanne it dryede; and so dyden alle the Trees ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo Volume 1 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa

... and did all that," said Prince Henry, pale and trembling with emotion. "I was a madman! More than that, I was a blasphemer! Love is as God—holy, invisible, and eternal; and he who does not believe in her immortality, her omnipresence, is like the heathen, who has faith only in his gods of wood and stone, and whose dull eyes cannot behold the invisible glory of the Godhead. My heart had at that time received its first wound, and because it bled and pained me fearfully, I believed it to be dead, and I ...
— Frederick The Great and His Family • L. Muhlbach

... church lies on every hand the mill population, for whom hardly any one cares. They need not one man, but many. Nothing is done for them. They are almost heathen, in the midst of a ...
— Diana • Susan Warner

... dark foster-mothers, To the heathen songs they sung— To the heathen speech we babbled Ere we came to the white man's tongue. To the cool of our deep verandas— To the blaze of our jewelled main, To the night, to the palms in the moonlight, And ...
— The Kipling Reader - Selections from the Books of Rudyard Kipling • Rudyard Kipling

... "The heathen, Lord! are come!" responsive thus, The trinal now, and now the virgin band Quaternion, their sweet psalmody began, Weeping; and Beatrice listen'd, sad And sighing, to the song', in such a mood, That Mary, as she stood beside the cross, Was scarce more chang'd. But when they gave her ...
— The Divine Comedy • Dante

... William, the last duke of Aquitaine, William Talvas, and others. They penetrated the country as far as Lisieux, treating the churches and servants of God, says Orderic Vitalis, after the manner of the heathen, but were obliged to retreat; and finally, though he had been joined by Matilda, Geoffrey, badly wounded, abandoned this attempt ...
— The History of England From the Norman Conquest - to the Death of John (1066-1216) • George Burton Adams

... fists, as if he's asleep. And there's no possibility of pacifying him; and for why? Why, because, as you know yourself, Gavrila Andreitch, he's deaf, and what's more, has no more wit than the heel of my foot. Why, he's a sort of beast, a heathen idol, Gavrila Andreitch, and worse . . . a block of wood; what have I done that I should have to suffer from him now? Sure it is, it's all over me now; I've knocked about, I've had enough to put up with, I've been battered like an earthenware pot, but still ...
— Stories by Foreign Authors: Russian • Various

... the town by keeping between the booths and the houses. Just as she left the last street Ned Marks rode up—he had been on the watch, thinking to talk with her as she walked home, but just as he drew rein to go slow and so speak, a heathen pig from the market rushed between his horse's legs and spoiled the game ...
— Amaryllis at the Fair • Richard Jefferies

... the old man, as he pushed the dog away. "You have got to get used to this young heathen," and he hugged the bright-looking, well-dressed boy as though he ...
— Peck's Bad Boy With the Cowboys • Hon. Geo. W. Peck

... a heathen as to be insensible to the beauty of those relics of Greek art, of which men much more learned and enthusiastic have written such piles of descriptions. I thought I could recognise the towering beauty of the prodigious columns of the Temple of Jupiter; and ...
— Notes on a Journey from Cornhill to Grand Cairo • William Makepeace Thackeray

... IN HEATHENDOM.—Heathen nations invented protective divinities for their orchards (such as Pomona, Vertumnus, Priapus, &c.), and benevolent patrons for their fruits: thus, the olive-tree grew under the auspices of Minerva; ...
— The Book of Household Management • Mrs. Isabella Beeton

... and waft vp and downe, and then went backe againe to Tition in Barbary, which is sixe leagues off from Gibraltar, and when we came thither we found the people wonderous fauourable to vs, who being but Moores and heathen people shewed vs where to haue fresh water and al other necessaries for vs. And there we had such good intertainment, as if we had bene in any place ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques, and Discoveries of The English Nation, v. 7 - England's Naval Exploits Against Spain • Richard Hakluyt

... and civilized life in the East."[854] Antioch was for ages the home of science and philosophy. Here the religious opinions of the East and the West were blended and mutually modified. Here it was discovered by the heathen mind that a new religion had appeared, and a new revelation had been given.[855] In Alexandria all nations were invited to exchange their commodities and, with equal freedom, their opinions. The representatives of all religions met ...
— Christianity and Greek Philosophy • Benjamin Franklin Cocker

... unterrific was the aspect; but we looked on it like brave youths. For myself, these were perhaps my most genial hours. Towards this young warm-hearted, strong-headed and wrong-headed Herr Towgood I was even near experiencing the now obsolete sentiment of Friendship. Yes, foolish Heathen that I was, I felt that, under certain conditions, I could have loved this man, and taken him to my bosom, and been his brother once and always. By degrees, however, I understood the new time, and its wants. If man's Soul is indeed, as in the ...
— Sartor Resartus - The Life and Opinions of Herr Teufelsdrockh • Thomas Carlyle

... What must he have been when it would not have been safe for him to leave his wife alone with the best and highest of his gods? The ancient Hellenes were morally most vicious and depraved, even when compared with contemporary heathen nations. The old Greek was large in brain, but not in heart. He had created his gods in his own image, and they were—what they were. There was no goodness in his religion, and we can tolerate it only as it is developed in the Homeric rhapsodies, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, Issue 15, January, 1859 • Various

... superstitions. If it did not burn all night that was looked upon as a misfortune, and if a barefooted or squinting person came to the house while it was burning that also was a bad omen. The name Yule carries us back to the far-off ages when the heathen nations of the North held their annual winter festival in honour of ...
— Little Folks (December 1884) - A Magazine for the Young • Various

... holding this feast, which occurred about the time of the winter solstice, they decked the outsides of their houses with holly; at the same time the Christians were quietly celebrating the birth of Christ, and to avoid detection they outwardly followed the custom of their heathen neighbours, and decked their houses with holly also. In this way the holly came to be connected with our Christmas customs. (See chapter on Festivals.) This plant was also regarded as a symbol of the resurrection. The use of mistletoe along ...
— Folk Lore - Superstitious Beliefs in the West of Scotland within This Century • James Napier

... arguments highly favourable to Atheism, whose professors consider an admission of utter ignorance of God, tantamount to a denial of His existence. Many Christians, with more candour, perhaps, than prudence, have avowed the same opinion. Minutius Felix, for example, said to the Heathen, 'Not one of you reflects that you ought to know your gods before you worship them.' [20:2] As if he felt the absurdity of pretending to love and honour an unknown 'Perhaps.' That he did himself what he ridiculed in them proves nothing but his own inconsistency. ...
— An Apology for Atheism - Addressed to Religious Investigators of Every Denomination - by One of Its Apostles • Charles Southwell

... Not Impossible. The Mythical Theory. The Inner Light. Many Ignorant of God. Heathen Morality—Plato's. ...
— Fables of Infidelity and Facts of Faith - Being an Examination of the Evidences of Infidelity • Robert Patterson

... know what else to blame for Dick's untidy ways. Hair sticking up five ways for Christmas, and fingernails in mourning and the manners of a heathen. I'm afraid that sore on his hand may be something catching. Those Garcias and Martinezes of yours . . ...
— Across the Fruited Plain • Florence Crannell Means

... it contained, as also the school-house and chapel, and many of the natives had erected neat cottages after the same model. Indeed, the whole place already wore an air of civilisation and comfort, which contrasted greatly with the heathen portion ...
— The Voyage of the "Steadfast" - The Young Missionaries in the Pacific • W.H.G. Kingston

... remonstrances and the forced constructions of early thinkers like Xenophanes, of poets like Pindar, of all ancient Homeric scholars and Pagan apologists, from Theagenes of Rhegium (525 B. C.), the early Homeric commentator, to Porphyry, almost the last of the heathen philosophers, are so many proofs that to Greece, as soon as she had a reflective literature, the myths of Greece seemed impious and IRRATIONAL. The essays of the native commentators on the Veda, in the same way, are endeavours to put into myths felt to be irrational and impious a ...
— Myth, Ritual, and Religion, Vol. 1 • Andrew Lang

... unity. Christians have various gifts from the ascended Christ (iv. 7-8), and some are specially gifted for ecclesiastical offices (iv. 9-13). These gifts make for the completeness of the Church, of which Christ is the Head and the Life. To "walk worthily" also means that everything connected with heathen habits must be sedulously renounced. The old self must be changed for the new. A basis for social life must be found in truthfulness, uprightness, and kindliness (iv. 25-32). Purity must specially be preserved, impurity being contrasted with love. Light and darkness are then ...
— The Books of the New Testament • Leighton Pullan

... the very name of Hypatia was enough to rouse the clergy to a fury of execration. It seemed that Orestes, the Roman governor of the city, although nominally a Christian, was the curse of the Alexandrian Church; and Orestes visited Hypatia, whose lectures on heathen philosophy drew all the educated ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Volume V. • Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton, Eds.

... and starving populations in other countries,—are carried on, in fact, for the sake of business, if our churches are filled with business men and our sky pilots pray for the government, you can't expect heathen individuals like me to do business on a Christian basis,—if there is such a thing. You can make rules for croquet, but not for a game that is based on the natural law of the survival of the fittest. ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill

... in these latter days spoken unto us by his Son, and through him revealed the second covenant in which he "gave him the heathen for an inheritance, and the utter most parts of the earth for a possession," and declared him to be the resurrection and life of the world. If in the divine counsels no Christ had been provided, the human family it appears would have remained in ...
— Twenty-Four Short Sermons On The Doctrine Of Universal Salvation • John Bovee Dods

... of primitive and savage people, of nature-folk, with a mind purged of the thanks-to-the-goodness-and-the-grace spirit. [Page 262] It will not do for us to brush aside contemptuously the notions held by the Hawaiians in religion, cosmogony, and mythology as mere heathen superstitions. If they were heathen, there was nothing else for them to be. But even the heathen can claim the right to be judged by their deeds, not by their creeds. Measured by this standard, the average heathen would not make a bad showing in comparison ...
— Unwritten Literature of Hawaii - The Sacred Songs of the Hula • Nathaniel Bright Emerson

... informed by divinity is of two kinds: matter of belief and truth of opinion, and matter of service and adoration; which is also judged and directed by the former—the one being as the internal soul of religion, and the other as the external body thereof. And, therefore, the heathen religion was not only a worship of idols, but the whole religion was an idol in itself; for it had no soul; that is, no certainty of belief or confession: as a man may well think, considering the chief doctors of their church were the ...
— The Advancement of Learning • Francis Bacon

... with all tenderness compatible with such a deed. There is nothing similar or parallel in the two cases; and if there were, what signifies it now to Count Horn, whether he were condemned rightfully or no; are these men heathen, that they would offer a victim to the offended manes of the dead? But is there no hope, my father, that ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 1 July 1848 • Various

... the mischief is the feller doin' when he stoops low like that? If you asked me, I'd say he was smellin' of the tracks of the three men; but since when was a heathen Injun given a scent like a hound, ...
— Boy Scouts on Hudson Bay - The Disappearing Fleet • G. Harvey Ralphson

... Lord," continued Caesar, "to all rank unbelievers, and such as live in heathen darkness in a Christian land, and don't know Saturday from Sunday, and are imper-ent uncommon and ...
— The Manxman - A Novel - 1895 • Hall Caine

... inconstancy and indifference, retreated by degrees to this mountain stronghold, where they successfully retained their religious independence, and defended themselves from Mohammedan hostility. Brahminism through centuries of isolation, has assimilated many extraneous heathen rites, and wild superstitions have overlaid the original creed. The worship of the Tenggerese is now mainly directed to the ever-active crater of the awe-inspiring Bromo, always faced by the longer side of the windowless ...
— Through the Malay Archipelago • Emily Richings

... In 1843 his "Punch's Heathen Mythology" followed Wills' chapters on the same subject, and in the following year his "Comic Blackstone"—one of the cleverest burlesques of its kind in the language—served another purpose than to amuse his readers: ...
— The History of "Punch" • M. H. Spielmann

... well enough, Juggut Khan, but there are things about you that I don't like. You're too fond of doing things on your own responsibility, and you're much too fond of using oaths. Y our soul is none o' my business; you're a heathen anyhow, and no longer in the Service. But, I'll trouble you not to use those disgraceful oaths of yours in the presence of the men! ...
— Told in the East • Talbot Mundy

... a dwelling far from a settlement; and it takes a brave heart to make a journey from one town to another, and folk do say the Indian creatures rise up out of the very ground to waylay the English; and then offers affirm they are all in league with Satan to affright the Christians out of the heathen country over which he has reigned so long. Then, again, the seashore is infested by pirates, the scum of all nations: they land, and plunder, and ravage, and burn, and destroy. Folk get affrighted of the real dangers, and in their fright imagine, perchance, dangers that are not. But who knows? ...
— Curious, if True - Strange Tales • Elizabeth Gaskell

... named Enid the Good; and in their halls arose The cry of children, Enids and Geraints Of times to be; nor did he doubt her more, But rested in her fealty, till he crown'd A happy life with a fair death, and fell Against the heathen of the Northern Sea In battle, fighting for the ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 5 • Charles Sylvester

... experienced in the sweet Gospel as restored by Luther. In reading the Apology, one can tell from the words employed how Melanchthon lived, moved, and fairly reveled in this blessed truth which in opposition to all heathen work-righteousness teaches terrified hearts to rely solely and alone on grace. In his History of Lutheranism (2, 206) Seckendorf declares that no one can be truly called a theologian of our Church who has not diligently and repeatedly read the Apology ...
— Historical Introductions to the Symbolical Books of the Evangelical Lutheran Church • Friedrich Bente

... battles by my side, And the blood of man was mingling Warmly with my chilly tide. Father Euxine! thou rememb'rest How I brought thee tribute then— Swollen corpses, gashed and gory, Heads and limbs of slaughter'd men? Father Euxine! be thou joyful! I am running red once more— Not with heathen blood, as early, But with gallant Christian gore! For the old times are returning, And the Cross is broken down, And I hear the tocsin sounding In the village and the town; And the glare of burning cities Soon shall light me on my way— Ha! my heart is big and jocund With the draught I drank ...
— Lays of the Scottish Cavaliers and Other Poems • W.E. Aytoun

... of the Christian era the profession of faith, when lightly assumed, was frequently and suddenly scorched off the so-called Christian's lips by the pitiless persecution of heathen governments: in subsequent ages, and down even to our own day, Papal fires have burned fiercely in many lands, and before them every faith has faded except that which is of God's own planting, and grows in the secret depths of believing souls. Nationally ...
— The Parables of Our Lord • William Arnot

... "Heathen and devil!" he shouted, taking the money-lender by the throat, "do you dare to mention her as part of ...
— The Entailed Hat - Or, Patty Cannon's Times • George Alfred Townsend

... "Then what of heathen art? You let your religion distort your view of Nature. You sacrifice truth to a dogma. Nature has no ethics. You profess to paint facts and paint them wrong. You are not a mystic; that we could understand and criticise accordingly. You try to run ...
— Lying Prophets • Eden Phillpotts

... where his spirit alone Broods and o'ershadows all, bears him from earth, And purifies his chastened soul for heaven. Both heaven and earth shall from thy grasp recede. Whether on death or life thou arguest, Untutored savage or corrupted heathen Avows no sentiment so vile ...
— Count Julian • Walter Savage Landor

... Colonial Office, inhabiting the head of Downing Street, really was, and had to do, or try doing, in God's practical Earth, he could not by any means precisely get to know; believes that it does not itself in the least precisely know. Believes that nobody knows;—that it is a mystery, a kind of Heathen myth; and stranger than any piece of the old mythological Pantheon; for it practically presides over the destinies of many millions ...
— Latter-Day Pamphlets • Thomas Carlyle

... most dangerous heathen doctrine, my dear, but I'll admit there's something in it. Poor Francie! she was born at a disadvantage, with that fascinating face of hers set on the foundation of so light a character. She was too pretty, to start with. The pretty people get so spoiled, so filled ...
— Sisters • Ada Cambridge

... chubby winged heads without bodies, with which some artists etherealize their works. Some err by mingling on the same canvass the sacred and profane; scripture characters and the non-descripts of heathen mythology. Nor is poetry free from the latter error, as is exemplified in the major and minor epics, &c., of many Christian poets. The drawings of the monks, splendid in colouring and beautiful in finish, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 12, No. 341, Saturday, November 15, 1828. • Various

... missionaries who had gone a century or two before to plant the cross along with the lilies of France had the souls of the heathen savages at heart. Since then times had changed and the Indians were not looked upon as such promising subjects. Father Gilbert worked for the good and the glory of the Church. One English convert was worth a dozen Indians. So the church had been improved and made more beautiful. There ...
— A Little Girl in Old Detroit • Amanda Minnie Douglas

... Rhode Island; but still our shores were hardly more than a myth, and the country north of the peninsula of Florida a terra incognita. Early in 1584, Raleigh, then a gallant courtier, received a grant from Elizabeth to 'discover and find out such remote and heathen lands, not actually possessed or inhabited by any Christian King, or his subjects, and there to have, hold, fortify, and possess, in fee-simple to him and his associates and their heirs forever, with privileges of allegiance to the ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I, No. V, May, 1862 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various

... greatly modify it. Indeed the temper of the Church rather strengthened it. Origen believed that demons produce famine, unfruitfulness, corruptions of the air and pestilences. They hover concealed in clouds in the lower atmosphere and are attracted by the blood and incense which the heathen ...
— Modern Religious Cults and Movements • Gaius Glenn Atkins

... all the Indian wars of New England. This remarkable forbearance towards female prisoners, so different from the practice of many western tribes, was probably due to a form of superstition, aided perhaps by the influence of the missionaries.[67] It is to be observed, however, that the heathen savages of King Philip's War, who had never seen a Jesuit, were no less forbearing ...
— A Half Century of Conflict - Volume I - France and England in North America • Francis Parkman

... replied, "They did; but it was done without either my desire or knowledge. Therefore I cannot conceive that that appointment could lay me under any obligation of continuing here longer than till a door is opened to the Heathen; and this I expressly declared at the time I ...
— Biographical Memorials of James Oglethorpe • Thaddeus Mason Harris

... sang such songs," he said. "I sailed the seas in my long ship, and men feared my name—feared me, Andreas, the man of God. I was a heathen then, as thou art; I worshipped the gods of the North, and the hammer of Thor was my symbol on the ocean. I spared none who stood in my way. These hands have dripped with the blood of my foes, and many a ...
— Vandrad the Viking - The Feud and the Spell • J. Storer Clouston

... loquacity of the fellow is highly offensive. He has no sense of inferiority. He stands as erect, and speaks with as little embarrassment and as loudly as the best of us: nay boldly asserts that neither riches, rank, nor birth have any claim. I have offered to buy him a beard, if he would but turn heathen philosopher. I have several times indeed bestowed no small portion of ridicule upon him; but in vain. His retorts are always ready; and his intrepidity, in this kind of ...
— Anna St. Ives • Thomas Holcroft

... fifty or sixty fires, before which dark and ill-defined figures were ever and anon flitting like phantoms; while, in the midst, the funnel of the steam-boat loomed tall and black above the veil of smoke that hung around—like some dark and horrid object Of heathen idolatry surrounded by its sacrificial fires. The sounds that met my ear, however, dispelled this somewhat fanciful idea; for in the stillness of the night voices grow distinct, while forms are indebted to the imagination for ...
— Chambers' Edinburgh Journal - Volume XVII., No 423, New Series. February 7th, 1852 • Various

... is the most exceptionable Passage in the whole Work. We have endeavoured to soften it as much as possible; but even as it now stands, we cannot help expressing Detestation of this Sentiment, which appears shocking even in a Heathen Writer.] ...
— The Lovers Assistant, or, New Art of Love • Henry Fielding

... first principles, which cannot be an object of faith and love, because it is not an object of thought.{1} Such have their lot among those called Naturalists. It is otherwise with those born outside the church, who are called the heathen; these will be treated ...
— Heaven and its Wonders and Hell • Emanuel Swedenborg

... her narrative, "it was the dolefullest day that ever mine eyes saw. Now the dreadful hour had come. Some in our house were fighting for their lives; others wallowing in blood; the house on fire over our heads, and the bloody heathen ready to knock us on the head if we stirred out. I took my children to go forth; but the Indians shot so thick that the bullets rattled against the house as if one had thrown a handful of stones. We had six stout dogs; but none of them would stir. A bullet went through my side, ...
— The Real America in Romance, Volume 6; A Century Too Soon (A Story - of Bacon's Rebellion) • John R. Musick

... Christ actually meant prayer to be the great power by which His Church should do its work, and that the neglect of prayer is the great reason the Church has not greater power over the masses in Christian and in heathen countries. In the first chapter I have stated how my convictions in regard to this have been strengthened, and what gave occasion to the writing of the book. It is meant to be, on behalf of myself and my brethren in the ...
— The Ministry of Intercession - A Plea for More Prayer • Andrew Murray

... and the human past, in such a man: even if he only used it to rob the past or deceive the future. The story of Arthur may have been really connected with the most fighting Christianity of falling Rome or with the most heathen traditions hidden in the hills of Wales. But the word "Mappe" or "Malory" will always mean King Arthur; even though we find older and better origins than the Mabinogian; or write later and worse versions than the "Idylls of the King." The nursery fairy tales may have come out of Asia with ...
— Aesop's Fables • Aesop

... he shouted, vainly endeavouring at the same time to make a gesture of defiance with his hand; "if you ar' about to play the interpreter, speak such words to the ears of that damnable savage, as becomes a white man to use, and a heathen to hear. Tell him, from me, that if he does or says the thing that is uncivil to the girl, called Nelly Wade, that I'll curse him with my dying breath; that I'll pray for all good Christians in Kentucky to curse him; sitting and standing; eating and drinking, fighting, praying, or at ...
— The Prairie • J. Fenimore Cooper

... show what nature designed, what God has taught, and what woman has proved herself capable of being and doing in the world. The abuses to which the sex has been subject from the physically stronger "lords of creation," in heathen nations and in brute ages, are ably and fully ...
— Woman: Man's Equal • Thomas Webster

... Privileges and Immunities granted the Clergy. 39. Apostolic Constitutions: How the Catechumens are to be instructed. 40. Leach: Catechumenal Schools of the Early Church. 41. Apostolic Constitutions: Christians should abstain from all Heathen Books. 42. The Nicene Creed of 325 A.D. 43. Saint Benedict: Extracts from the Rule of. 44. Lanfranc: Enforcing Lenten Reading in the Monasteries. 45. Saint Jerome: Letter ...
— THE HISTORY OF EDUCATION • ELLWOOD P. CUBBERLEY

... sentiments are strictly Catholic, but the poem is at the same time an epitome of what St. Cuthbert and the monks of Lindisfarne, the royal Abbess Hilda, Caedmon, and now it appears Cynewulf also had been long doing for Northumbria, in taking what was grand and heroic in the old heathen traditions, and leading up through them to Christianity. But if this influence can be distinctly traced in the runes on the Ruthwell Cross, yet another element is seen in its ornamentation, which carries us back ...
— Studies from Court and Cloister • J.M. Stone

... own hands? No! Did they become insolvent, and by their own imprudence subject themselves to be sold as slaves? No! Did they steal the property of another, and were they sold to make restitution for their crimes? No! Did their present masters, as an act of kindness, redeem them from some heathen tyrant to whom they had sold themselves in the dark hour of adversity? No! Were they born in slavery? No! No! not according to Jewish Law, for the servants who were born in servitude among them, were ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society

... the bishop that the progress of religion among the heathen must depend upon the foundation established for that good work by secular government; and that if this be not maintained the land will relapse into barbarism, and the Spaniards will be compelled to abandon what they have begun to build in the islands.] ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898, Volume VIII (of 55), 1591-1593 • Emma Helen Blair

... not see my way to run in debt, and I was wondering whether I should go and work on the road; but I had a burning desire to labour most of all for Christ, and I was longing to go South, or somewhere to tell the heathen of Jesus. But when I received your letter, I took it as an answer to prayer from the Lord, and I could hardly finish reading it before I was telling my landlady to rejoice with me. How blessed to trace ...
— God's Answers - A Record Of Miss Annie Macpherson's Work at the - Home of Industry, Spitalfields, London, and in Canada • Clara M. S. Lowe

... they ran," said Alan, laughing, for the vision of a missionary with Little Bonsa on his head caught his fancy. "But come to the point, you old heathen. What do you mean that ...
— The Yellow God - An Idol of Africa • H. Rider Haggard

... square, flat-bottomed canvas boat he had sent the day before, and his heathen boatman, who swore he could row, cut branches to hide both of them from the duck. This arrangement looked like a fair sized table decoration, a conspicuous man in a topee with a gun at one end, and a black white-turbaned native at the other. ...
— From Edinburgh to India & Burmah • William G. Burn Murdoch

... note. Alfred has come down to us in the best way (that is, by national legends) solely for the same reason as Arthur and Roland and the other giants of that darkness, because he fought for the Christian civilization against the heathen nihilism. But since this work was really done by generation after generation, by the Romans before they withdrew, and by the Britons while they remained, I have summarised this first crusade in a triple symbol, and given to a fictitious Roman, ...
— The Ballad of the White Horse • G.K. Chesterton

... under the heathen or Christian system, been, but a blind faith in things contrary to the principles of reason? And could poor reason make considerable advances when it was reckoned the highest degree of virtue to do violence to its dictates? Lutherans, preaching reformation, ...
— Letters written during a short residence in Sweden, Norway, and Denmark • Mary Wollstonecraft

... his English "Iliad." Bentham read "Telemachus" in his youth, and, many years afterwards, he said, "That romance may be regarded as the foundation-stone of my whole character." Goethe became a poet in consequence of reading the "Vicar of Wakefield." Carey was fired to go on a mission to the heathen by reading "Voyages of Captain Cook." Samuel Drew credited his eminent career to reading Locke's "Essay on the Understanding." The lives of Washington and Henry Clay awakened aspirations in Lincoln's soul, that impelled him forward and gave direction to his life. ...
— From Boyhood to Manhood • William M. Thayer

... so, my bonbon!" pleaded the good lady, covering him with kisses. "I would have worn my hands to the bone to save you from this dreadful life. Suppose you should be sent to Algiers or Mexico, or some other heathen country, ...
— Bohemian Days - Three American Tales • Geo. Alfred Townsend

... mine, they having found diamonds near the surface in some of the leaders, which consisted of a rock known in Australian mining circles as illegitimate granite. The white folk, fearing that the poor heathen might become debauched if they possessed too much wealth, had gathered those diamonds in—when they could—and later had started mining for the precious gems, with what success the heathen did not know. I tried the Dutchman on the same point, ...
— Campaign Pictures of the War in South Africa (1899-1900) - Letters from the Front • A. G. Hales

... remembered only the dark beauty of his face, his robust and vigorous youth, the tenderness and gallantry of his passion. For her daughters she had drawn an imaginary portrait of him which combined the pagan beauty of Antinous with the militant purity of Saint Paul; and this romantic blending of the heathen and the Presbyterian virtues had passed through her young imagination into the awakening ...
— Life and Gabriella - The Story of a Woman's Courage • Ellen Glasgow

... baggy trousers, all as if split new and of perfection of workmanship, and he totted up his accounts and did all the business with a polished self-possessed manner! I must say my first impression of the heathen Chinee at Bhamo was tremendously in his favour; in many ways even the coolies, or Chinese porters, struck me favourably, by their simple kit, blue tunic and shorts, and their sturdy limbs and absence ...
— From Edinburgh to India & Burmah • William G. Burn Murdoch

... one chance was well worth all and more than they expended,—a possibility of indefinite aggrandizement. To the eyes of Ferdinand there was a prospect—remote, indeed—of adding to the power of the Spanish monarchy; and it is probable that the pious Isabella contemplated also the conversion of the heathen to Christianity. It is possible that some motives may have also influenced Columbus kindred to this,—a renewed crusade against Saracen infidels, which he might undertake from the wealth he was so confident of securing. But the probabilities are that Columbus was urged on ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume VI • John Lord

... that the petty Angle and Saxon kings of the sixth and seventh centuries ruled over a mixed race, in which their own was the most influential, though not necessarily the largest element. The arrival from Rome in 597 of Augustine, the first Christian missionary to the now heathen inhabitants of Britain, will serve as a point to mark the completion of the Anglo-Saxon conquest of the country. By this time the new settlers had ceased to come in, and there were along the coast and inland some seven or eight different kingdoms. These were, however, ...
— An Introduction to the Industrial and Social History of England • Edward Potts Cheyney

... rebell) On Sion my holi' hill. A firm decree I will declare; the Lord to me hath say'd Thou art my Son I have begotten thee This day, ask of me, and the grant is made; As thy possession I on thee bestow Th'Heathen, and as thy conquest to be sway'd Earths utmost bounds: them shalt thou bring full low With Iron Sceptir bruis'd, and them disperse 20 Like to a potters vessel shiver'd so. And now be wise at length ye Kings averse Be taught ye Judges of the earth; with fear Jehovah serve and let your joy converse ...
— The Poetical Works of John Milton • John Milton

... you will not despise my offer. The yoke is not so heavy here. Here is no strict convent rule; how could there be? We are but a handful of feeble old women left living after those who led us are gone, to the end that heathen fog smother not utterly the light which once was so bright. In truth, most dear child, you would have no hard lot among us. A few hours' work in the garden,—surely that is a pleasure, watching the fair green things spring and thrive under your care. And when the tenderness of the birds and the ...
— The Ward of King Canute • Ottilie A. Liljencrantz

... reads—"Have thou nothing to do with this just man, for I have suffered many things this day in a dream because of him." It is from Pilate's wife—her testimony to Christ. You want to know what His enemies thought of Him? You want to know what a heathen, thought? Well, here it is, "no fault in him"; and the wife of a heathen, ...
— The world's great sermons, Volume 8 - Talmage to Knox Little • Grenville Kleiser

... that when your contemplation of unclothed heathen and boa-constrictors was too much for your courage, you used to remark despairingly that you supposed you would just stay at home and ...
— 'Lizbeth of the Dale • Marian Keith

... too far gone to protest against playing sick lion to any stray donkey with an itching hoof. All sorts of people seemed to become vicariously religious at my expense. I received the most uncompromising warning that I was a Heathen: on the conclusive authority of a field preacher, who, like the most of his ignorant and vain and daring class, could not construct a tolerable sentence in his native tongue or pen a fair letter. ...
— The Uncommercial Traveller • Charles Dickens

... from beginning to end before he was six. He remembered that the paraphrases were torn out of all the Bibles in the manse. Indeed, they existed only in a rudimentary form even in the great Bible in the kirk (in which by some oversight a heathen binder had bound them), but Allan Welsh had rectified this by pasting them up, so that no preacher in a moment of demoniac possession might give one out. What would have happened if this had occurred in the Marrow kirk it is perhaps better only guessing. At twelve Ralph ...
— The Lilac Sunbonnet • S.R. Crockett

... this malecontent Could the King no longer bear, So to Iceland he was sent To convert the heathen there, And away One summer day Sailed ...
— Tales of a Wayside Inn • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

... have done. Listen, brethren, for God has not before so plainly said it to any man, and I know my time is short among you. We have gone back to the ages of Hebrew barbarism for our God—to the God of Battles worshipped by a heathen people—a God who loved the reek of blood and the smell of burning flesh. ...
— The Lions of the Lord - A Tale of the Old West • Harry Leon Wilson

... to secularism in Italy, and wrote in Italian all that he could remember of the life and words of his late teacher. Then suppose that the Italian life of Raeburn was translated into Chinese, and that hundreds of years after, a heathen Chinee sat down to read it. His Oriental mind found it hard to understand Mr. Raeburn's thoroughly Western mind; he didn't see anything noble in Mr. Raeburn's character, couldn't understand his mode of thought, read through the life, perhaps studied it after a ...
— We Two • Edna Lyall

... Con. A heathen dream! Young souls but see the gay and warm outside, And work but in the shallow upper soil. Mine deeper, and the sour and barren rock Will stop you soon enough. Who trains God's Saints, He must transform, not pet—Nature's ...
— The Saint's Tragedy • Charles Kingsley

... Experiment, drawn up by the Secretaries of that Institution, records, that "it had been requested, that, if possible, children should be procured, somewhat resembling the heathen, (or persons in a savage state,) whose intellectual and moral attainments were bounded only by their knowledge of natural objects, and whose feelings and obligations were of course regulated principally by ...
— A Practical Enquiry into the Philosophy of Education • James Gall

... body had next to be considered. As the older members of the system were already known by the same names as great heathen divinities, it was obvious that some similar source should be invoked for a suggestion as to a name for the most recent planet. The fact that this body was so remote in the depths of space, not unnaturally suggested the name "Neptune." Such is accordingly the accepted ...
— Great Astronomers • R. S. Ball

... a good dream surely, because of the angel that spoke; but there seems only one way in which it can come to pass. A prince must come for you from Denmark, for there he would reign by his own right, and here he would do so by yours. Yet I have heard that the Danish kings are most terrible heathen, worse than the Saxon kin, of whom we know the worst now. Maybe that is why the angel told you to have no fear. I mind Gunnar Kirkeban, and what he wrought on the churches and Christian folk in Wales—in Gower on the Severn Sea, and on ...
— Havelok The Dane - A Legend of Old Grimsby and Lincoln • Charles Whistler

... characteristics of the individual child. Jessie's ideals concerning "being good" will be shaped by what she hears and sees about her. If you speak frequently about the foreign missions, she may think of being good as something that has to do with the heathen. If the family conversation takes into consideration the sick and the needy, Jessie's ideal may be dressed like a Red Cross nurse. If you never speak of the larger problems of community welfare, or of social needs, or of moral advance ...
— Your Child: Today and Tomorrow • Sidonie Matzner Gruenberg

... he continued, clapping his hands to shake off the earth that soiled them, 'you won't come roaming here any more, like a heathen; the dead will pull your feet at night if you go walking ...
— Abbe Mouret's Transgression - La Faute De L'abbe Mouret • Emile Zola

... self-abnegation, the subdued flash of pride here and there that suggested better days, the hopeless droop of the arms, and the irresolute tremble of the corners of his mouth would have appealed to the heart of a heathen idol. That one of his caste should refuse a glass of "Usher's Best," and be willing to brave the burst of a southwest monsoon to take it to any one—child, mother, ...
— Tales of the Malayan Coast - From Penang to the Philippines • Rounsevelle Wildman

... she was not acquainted with the heathen mythology; and was also guiltless of any thought of connexion between herself and the doctor's ideal. So her very free, unsuspicious face and laughter ...
— Say and Seal, Volume II • Susan Warner

... in the law, devising Provisional Governments, and Privy Councillors wallowing in imaginative treason. As for the Bishops, they will talk daggers as luridly as the rest, but they will not even threaten to use any. And so does the pagan rage, and the heathen prophesy vain things. ...
— The Open Secret of Ireland • T. M. Kettle

... of my affections until she informed me, not in a private interview, but in the midst of her family circle, that she had made up her mind to become a missionary and go to India to work among the heathen. I was greatly shocked, but I could say nothing then, and afterwards had ...
— John Gayther's Garden and the Stories Told Therein • Frank R. Stockton

... do me proud, Kong," said William Beveledge, after regarding me fixedly for a moment. "If I didn't remember that you are a flat-faced, slant-eyed, top-side-under, pig-tailed old heathen, I should be really annoyed at your unwarrantable personalities. Do you take ME for what you call ...
— The Mirror of Kong Ho • Ernest Bramah

... lady would be remembered, being tall, dark, and of fine presence, though sad. A few hours earlier and Don Preble could have judged for himself, for, as it were, she might have passed through this visitors' room. But she was gone—departed by the coach. It was from a telegram—those heathen contrivances that blurt out things to you, with never an excuse, nor a smile, nor a kiss of the hand! For her part, she never let her scholars receive them, but opened them herself, and translated them in a Christian spirit, after due preparation, at her ...
— In a Hollow of the Hills • Bret Harte

... sensational chorus girl—and it's wrong and not what America should be called upon to endure. And it all reverts back in a sense to you busy, unprincipled, yet conscience-stricken American business men who write checks for these Gorgeous Girls—and the heathen in Africa—and wonder why golf doesn't bring your blood pressure down to normal—when your grandfather had such a wonderful constitution at eighty-four! Don't you know that get-rich-quick people always pay a usurer's interest ...
— The Gorgeous Girl • Nalbro Bartley

... still doubting Captain, who could not resolve to trust a Heathen, he said, upon his Parole, a Man that had no Sense or Notion of the God that he worshipp'd. Oroonoko then reply'd, He was very sorry to hear that the Captain pretended to the Knowledge and Worship of any Gods, who had taught him no ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn - Volume V • Aphra Behn

... friend Petrarch, and which, perhaps, in the succeeding century, was clandestinely used by Laurentius Valla, the Latin interpreter. It was from his narratives that the same Boccace collected the materials for his treatise on the genealogy of the heathen gods, a work, in that age, of stupendous erudition, and which he ostentatiously sprinkled with Greek characters and passages, to excite the wonder and applause of his more ignorant readers. [94] The first steps of ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 6 • Edward Gibbon

... heathen festival at Trichinopoly, during an outburst of fanaticism, four hundred persons were trampled to death, and a vast number injured. These mad assemblages for idolatrous purposes not only received too much tolerance from the government, but ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan

... knowledge of facts, which you are in a situation to possess, might change my opinion. There is nothing we more desire and labor for, at all our missions, than good native helpers. They are an invaluable acquisition, but our experience teaches us that they are exceedingly rare. Not one educated heathen youth in ten, even if pious when he commences his studies, has been found fit for an office requiring judgment, good common sense, and energy of character. Still we do not think that this ought to deter us from attempts to raise up native teachers and evangelists. Most of the work ...
— Personal Memoirs Of A Residence Of Thirty Years With The Indian Tribes On The American Frontiers • Henry Rowe Schoolcraft

... is a political quarrel with our emperor. His soldiers fight only our soldiers. They do not slaughter, as we have been assured, old men, women, and children. Cheer up, then, and let us thank God for being relieved from the painful duty of hating them as heathen, impious wretches, and incendiaries!" The pope then commenced a hymn of thanks, in which they ...
— History of the Expedition to Russia - Undertaken by the Emperor Napoleon in the Year 1812 • Count Philip de Segur

... place, father, I do not believe in such a God as some people say they believe in. Their God is but an idol of the heathen, modified with a few Christian qualities. For hell, I don't believe there is any escape from it but by leaving hellish things behind. For suicide, I do not believe it is wicked because it hurts yourself, but I do believe it is very wicked. I only ...
— Robert Falconer • George MacDonald

... Our attention may be devoted to getting skill in technical manipulation without reference to the connection of laboratory exercises with a problem belonging to subject matter. There is sometimes a ritual of laboratory instruction as well as of heathen religion. 1 It has been mentioned, incidentally, that scientific statements, or logical form, implies the use of signs or symbols. The statement applies, of course, to all use of language. But in ...
— Democracy and Education • John Dewey

... February 2nd. The alternative title (the "Presentation of Christ in the Temple,") suggests the lesson to be drawn from all the services of the day. The name "Candle-mas Day" is derived from the custom of a procession with torches, superseding (it is thought) the heathen festival of torches to Ceres in the early part of February, with a reference to the true "light to lighten the Gentiles." Exodus xiii. 1-17 (the proper lesson for the day) gives the Mosaic law of ...
— The Church Handy Dictionary • Anonymous

... the alert for the happiness of her little ones and the comfort of those she loved, and the truly new woman, than between the latter and her average emancipated sister. The disciples of emancipation pure and simple declared me a heathen, fit only for the stake. Their blind zeal did not let them see that my comparison between the old and the new was merely to prove that a goodly number of our grandmothers had more blood in their ...
— Anarchism and Other Essays • Emma Goldman

... "You ungrateful heathen!" Lucile chided. "What do you expect? I'd like to spend a year in New York, too, but we can't do everything ...
— Lucile Triumphant • Elizabeth M. Duffield

... your friend since the day you tried to bore me with a rifle bullet out there in the valley—the day I come here—after runnin' like a coyote from the daylight. I've got an idea what you was hangin' around for that day—I've got the same idea now. You're tryin' to locate that heathen idol. You're wastin' your time. You're doin' more—you're runnin' a heap of risk. For what you've just got is only a sample of what you'll get if you stray over onto my range again. That goes for the sneakin' thief you call your father, or any of ...
— The Boss of the Lazy Y • Charles Alden Seltzer

... Antisthenes, so also Jesus must be credited with having raised himself far higher above the narrow prejudices of his nation than those of his disciples who could scarcely understand the spread of Christianity among the heathen when it had become an ...
— The Unseen World and Other Essays • John Fiske

... he, long lost to his Jesuit brothers, Sent forth by an holy decree to carry the Cross to the heathen. In his old age abandoned to die, in the swamps, by his timid companions, He prayed to the Virgin on high, and she led him forth from the forest; For angels she sent him as men —in the forms of the tawny Dakotas, And they led his feet from the fen, —from ...
— Legends of the Northwest • Hanford Lennox Gordon

... mental complement in the failure to comprehend the destiny of the people which was to inhabit it. Spain thought only of material and theological aggrandizements: of getting gold, and converting heathen, to her own temporal and spiritual glory; and she was as ready to shed innocent blood in the latter cause as in the former. England, without her rival's religious bigotry, was as intent upon winning wealth through territorial and commercial usurpations. ...
— The History of the United States from 1492 to 1910, Volume 1 • Julian Hawthorne

... Christian by my side or in the pew behind me notices my hapless plight, and hands me a Bible opened at the text. Last Sunday it was Obadiah first, fifteenth, 'For the day of the Lord is near upon all the heathen.' It chanced to be a returned missionary who was preaching on that occasion; but the Bible is full of heathen, and why need he have chosen a text from Obadiah, poor little Obadiah one page long, slipped in between Amos and Jonah, where nobody but an elder could find him?" If Francesca had not ...
— Penelope's Experiences in Scotland • Kate Douglas Wiggin

... Lettice Verney, "fairest and most discreet of ladies." They drank to Captain Laramore's next voyage, to Mr. Wormeley's success in vine planting, to Major Carrington's conversion. They drank confusion to Quakers, Independents, Baptists and infidels, to the heathen on the frontier and the Papists in Maryland, the Dutch on the Hudson and the French on the St. Lawrence,—"Quebec in exchange for Dunkirk!" In short, there were few things in heaven or earth but ...
— Prisoners of Hope - A Tale of Colonial Virginia • Mary Johnston

... her hands in childish glee. "Of a truth, ugly tree that thou art, thou growest the fruits of wisdom, oh Holly," she said; "but of those Jews whom I hated, for they called me 'heathen' when I would have taught them my philosophy—did their Messiah come, and doth He ...
— She • H. Rider Haggard

... of which I write, converted many miles of thoroughfare at the East End of London, as well as one of the prettiest forest scenes still surrounding the metropolis, into a vast al fresco tavern, where the "worship of Bacchus" was as freely indulged as in any heathen temple of ...
— Mystic London: - or, Phases of occult life in the metropolis • Charles Maurice Davies

... a sub-constable with quiet face taking note of all arrivals, and saw that he was good enough looking to be an Antrim man. Found I was right and entered Castlebar protected by a member of the force. Paid the victorious old heathen who had walked off with my luggage the price of a car, partly for his bravery and partly for his impudence. The approach to Castlebar from the station, about a mile, is bounded on one side by Lord Lucan's demesne, shut in behind ...
— The Letters of "Norah" on her Tour Through Ireland • Margaret Dixon McDougall

... have passed, have extended itself in this quarter; that cities and hamlets will have risen on the banks of the new-found river, that commerce will have directed her track thither, and that smoke may rise from Christian hearths where now alone the prowling heathen lights his fire. There is an inevitable tendency in man to create; and there is nothing which he contemplates with so much complacency as the work of his own hands. To civilize the world, to subdue the wilderness, is the ...
— Discoveries in Australia, Volume 2 • John Lort Stokes

... is something worth fifty times its weight in gold," said M. Roussillon when he presented the necklace to his foster daughter with pardonable self-satisfaction. "It is a sacred charm-string given me by an old heathen who would sell his soul for a pint of cheap rum. He solemnly informed me that whoever wore it could not by any possibility be killed ...
— Alice of Old Vincennes • Maurice Thompson

... later and more enlightened Hellenic thought. Established as a synonym of the Greek noun, superstitio received all the meaning which Plutarch elaborated as to the former; the idea of that excellent heathen, that true piety is the mean between atheism and credulity, has given a sense to the word superstition, and become a ...
— Current Superstitions - Collected from the Oral Tradition of English Speaking Folk • Various



Words linked to "Heathen" :   idoliser, pagan, nonreligious person, idol worshiper, gentile, idolater, idolizer, irreligious, ethnic, heathenish, infidel, paynim



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