"Idol" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Augustin cared much. In all the conceit of his false knowledge, he had that kind of inhumanity which drives the intellectual to make litter of the sweetest and deepest feelings as a sacrifice to his abstract idol. Not only did he not mind very much if his apostasy made his mother weep, but he did not trouble, either, to reconcile the chimeras of his brain with the living reality of his soul and the things of life. Whatever he found inconvenient, he tranquilly denied, content if he had talked ...
— Saint Augustin • Louis Bertrand
... which I at first thought to be some real king or high priest of titanic size, but as I approached it I saw by the way in which the light was reflected from it that it was a statue admirably cut in jet-black stone. I was led up to this idol, for such it seemed to be, and looking at it closer I saw that though it was perfect in every other respect, one of its ears had been broken short off. The grey-haired negro who held my relic mounted upon a small stool, and stretching up his arm fitted Martha's black ...
— The Captain of the Pole-Star and Other Tales • Arthur Conan Doyle
... was surfeited with roses and praises and incense. He alone took precedence over Scott and Coleridge and Moore and Campbell. For a time his pre-eminence in literature was generally conceded. He was the foremost man of letters of his day, and the greatest popular idol. His rank added to his eclat, since not many noblemen were distinguished for genius or literary excellence. His singular beauty of face and person, despite his slight lameness, attracted the admiring gaze of women. What Abelard was in the schools ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume XIII • John Lord
... Arthur, whom the giant Beige secretly instructs to overthrow ah idol in the neighboring church, as that will enable him to triumph without difficulty. While Arthur is thus rescuing Beige, Artegall and Talus have again departed to free Irena from her oppressor Grantorto. On their way to Ireland, ...
— The Book of the Epic • Helene A. Guerber
... did not permit me to enjoy. It seemed to be his great delight during supper to keep a young girl next him in a continual agony of stifled laughter, in spite of her awe of the reproving looks of her mother, who sat opposite. Indeed, he was the idol of the younger part of the company, who laughed at everything he said or did, and at every turn of his countenance. I could not wonder at it; for he must have been a miracle of accomplishments in their eyes. He could imitate Punch and Judy; make an old woman of his hand, with the assistance ...
— Old Christmas From the Sketch Book of Washington Irving • Washington Irving
... and my soul's idol, the most beautified Ophelia] [T: beatified] Both Sir Thomas Hanmer and Dr. Warburton have followed Theobald, but I am in doubt whether beautified, though, as Polonius calls it, a vile phrase, be not the proper word. Beautified seems to be a vile phrase, for the ambiguity ...
— Notes to Shakespeare, Volume III: The Tragedies • Samuel Johnson
... any other Pecksniff could; and the Pecksniff who could do that could do anything, and no doubt had been doing anything and everything except the right thing, all through his career. From the lofty height on which poor Tom had placed his idol it ...
— Life And Adventures Of Martin Chuzzlewit • Charles Dickens
... movement in the opposite direction in England; it was in Turner's pictures of the later period. It is well known that Turner, so long an idol of the English public, paints now in a manner which has caused the liveliest dissensions in the world of connoisseurs. There are two parties, one of which maintains, not only that the pictures of the late period are not good, but that they are not pictures ...
— At Home And Abroad - Or, Things And Thoughts In America and Europe • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... in the ranks did not even know the name of their army general or of the corps commander. It meant nothing to them. They did not face death with more passionate courage to win the approval of a military idol. That was due partly to the conditions of modern warfare, which make it difficult for generals of high rank to get into direct personal touch with their troops, and to the masses of men engaged. But those difficulties ...
— Now It Can Be Told • Philip Gibbs
... already made several warm friends among both the boarders and the day girls. Meg Gordon in particular was inclined to accord her that species of hero worship often indulged in by schoolgirls. She brought offerings of late roses or autumn violets from home, and followed her idol about the school like a love-sick swain. She would sit gazing at Gipsy during classes in deepest admiration, and was ready to accept her every idea as gospel. Meg was rather a curious, abrupt girl in many ways, and though she had been ...
— The Leader of the Lower School - A Tale of School Life • Angela Brazil
... is shown the personal god of war of that sovereign whose grand-child was the last to hold the sceptre of the Kanakas. There are royal documents to prove that more than one thousand men have been beheaded before this grim-faced old idol. Here, too, is the famous robe of birds' feathers, made to please the fancy of this same grim old monarch. The feathers of which this strange, but really elegant, robe is made are of a reddish color. The birds from which they were plucked were found only in the Hawaiian Islands ...
— An Epoch in History • P. H. Eley
... reprobate vice, rather on account of its outward deformity, than of its intrinsic guilt; gradually he becomes impatient of restraints on the pleasure which he derives from social intercourse; and the religious and moral principles of his nature are sacrificed to the visionary idol to which his love of pleasure and his love of ...
— Travels in France during the years 1814-1815 • Archibald Alison
... Rue Pirouette, where a man had died. For quite a month women stopped short on the footway to look at Lisa between the saveloys and bladders in the window. Her white and pink flesh excited as much admiration as the marbles. She seemed to be the soul, the living light, the healthy, sturdy idol of the pork trade; and thenceforth one and all baptised ...
— The Fat and the Thin • Emile Zola
... musical idol of the hour was Glinka; and Ivan, whose piano practice had always been kept up, went quietly to the big Erard which stood lonesomely upon the platform at the end of the hall, opened it, seated himself, and ...
— The Genius • Margaret Horton Potter
... is to say, that during nearly a quarter of a century of marriage he had never wavered either in his allegiance to his wife or in his undivided acceptance of her allegiance, and hers alone. She on her side had never once during all those years realised that the light which shone round her idol came from the lamp she herself kept alive before the shrine, nor even that it was her more acute intelligence, blind in one direction only, which suggested the opinion or course of action that he quite unconsciously afterwards offered to the world as his own. It was she who infused into ...
— The Arbiter - A Novel • Lady F. E. E. Bell
... even in those days in which Antipas was my faithful witness: who was slain among you, where Satan dwelleth. But I have a few things against thee, because thou hast there those, who hold fast the doctrine of Balaam, who taught Balak to cast an enticement to sin before the children of Israel: to eat idol-sacrifices, and to commit fornication. So thou hast also those, who hold fast the doctrine of the Nicolaitanes, in like manner. Repent; or else I will come to thee quickly, and will fight against them with the sword of my mouth. He, who ...
— A Brief Commentary on the Apocalypse • Sylvester Bliss
... were being made for a grand festival in honour of the great idol Devi. Hundreds of banners waved, hundreds of drummers drummed, hundreds of singers chanted chants, hundreds of priests, well washed and anointed, performed their sacred rites, whilst the rajah sat, nervous and ill at ease, amongst hundreds of courtiers and servants, wishing it were all well over. ...
— The Olive Fairy Book • Various
... around the person of the Sovereign, which has thus far proved impregnable to all assaults. The august personage, who from time to time may rest within it, and who may possess the art of turning to the best account the countless resources of the position, is no dumb and senseless idol; but, together with real and very large means of influence upon policy, enjoys the undivided reverence which a great people feels for its head; and is likewise the first and by far the weightiest among the forces, which ...
— Prose Masterpieces from Modern Essayists • James Anthony Froude, Edward A. Freeman, William Ewart Gladstone, John Henry Newman and Leslie Steph
... neatness, and three girls who hardly knew of any evil closer to them than what lay in history-books, and dramas, and would at once associate a lovely Jewess with Rebecca in "Ivanhoe," besides thinking that everything they did at Deronda's request would be done for their idol, Hans. The vision of the Chelsea home once raised, Deronda ...
— Daniel Deronda • George Eliot
... were scarcely out of my mouth when Mr. Perryman rose from his chair like a man in wrath. Inadvertently I had used an expression which acted like a spark upon gunpowder. Intending to praise his idol, I had for some obscure reason wounded the passionate old man in the most sensitive nerve of his being. I sat amazed, not understanding what I had done, and even now I do not pretend to understand it wholly. But this is what happened. Standing over me with fierce gesticulations, ...
— Mad Shepherds - and Other Human Studies • L. P. Jacks
... delighted the people even more than the show of the gladiators. One morning they beheld the statues of Marius, that had been overthrown by Sulla, set up once more in their old places, bright with gold and ornaments. Marius had been the people's idol, and Caesar by this bold stroke gained much of the popularity that had formerly been attached to that ...
— A Treasury of Heroes and Heroines - A Record of High Endeavour and Strange Adventure from 500 B.C. to 1920 A.D. • Clayton Edwards
... touched and carried away by the earnestness and enthusiasm of the lad, wild, fierce iconoclast as he was, ready to cast down the whole fabric of Church and State; though without any personal hankering after lawless rights and low pleasures. His sole idol was, as he said, intellect, ...
— Mistress and Maid • Dinah Craik (aka: Miss Mulock)
... than now. Feverish activity rules in all spheres of life. The iron wheels of the car which bears the modern idol of material progress whirl fast, and crush remorselessly all who cannot keep up the pace. Christian effort is multiplied and systematised beyond all precedent. And all these facts make calm fellowship with God hard to compass. The measure of the difficulty is ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. Mark • Alexander Maclaren
... into something like tune, instead of interpreting my deeper feelings in dreamy improvisations, as I had intended, I began with those sweet and charming canzonets which have reached us from the South. During this or the other Senza di te (Without thee), or Sentimi idol mio (Hear me, my darling), or Almen se nonpos'io (At least if I cannot), with numberless Morir mi sentos (I feel I am dying), and Addios (Farewell), and O dios! (O Heaven!), a brighter and brighter brilliancy shone in Seraphina's eyes. She had seated herself close beside ...
— Weird Tales. Vol. I • E. T. A. Hoffmann
... are ready to make the greatest sacrifices, which draws our warmest love; which, lost, would leave us desolate; which, possessed, makes us blessed. If we search our hearts with this 'candle of the Lord,' we shall find many an idol set up in their dark corners, and be startled to discover how much we need to bring ourselves to be judged and condemned by this commandment It is the foundation of all human duty. Obedience to it is the condition of peace and blessedness, light and leading for mind, heart, ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus and Numbers • Alexander Maclaren
... was the idol of the people. He was at the fulness of his great intellectual power. The series of speeches and professional and political achievements which began with the oration at Plymouth in 1820 was still in progress. The Whigs of Massachusetts disliked slavery; but they loved ...
— Autobiography of Seventy Years, Vol. 1-2 • George Hoar
... me with an expensively repellent gift in the form of a brown earthenware jug, a cross between a Mexican idol and a pitcher. A hideous thing, calculated to frighten children or sober drunken men. I know I should have nearly died of thirst before I could have forced myself to swallow a drop of liquid coming from that ...
— Stage Confidences • Clara Morris
... the early Persian make His altar the high places and the peak Of earth-o'ergazing mountains, and thus take A fit and unwalled temple, there to seek The Spirit, in whose honor shrines are weak, Upreared of human hands.... compare Columns and idol-dwellings, Goth or Greek With Nature's realm of ...
— Trail Tales • James David Gillilan
... the last he occupied a very curious position, never I think quite paralleled elsewhere—the position of a Boswell who would fain be a Boswell and is not allowed to be, who has wild notions that he is really a greater man than Johnson and occasionally blasphemes against his idol, but who in the intervals is truly Boswellian. In the second place, he has usually hitherto been not criticised at all, but either somewhat sneered at or else absurdly over-praised. In the third place, as both Scott and Byron recognised, he is probably the most remarkable example ...
— Essays in English Literature, 1780-1860 • George Saintsbury
... mentioned by Cogolludo as that of an idol worshiped at Itzamal. He says:—"They had another temple on another mound in the northern part of the city, and this, from the name of an idol which they worshiped here, they called Kinich Kakmo, which means the sun with a face. They say ...
— The Maya Chronicles - Brinton's Library Of Aboriginal American Literature, Number 1 • Various
... accustomed to quote in my addresses as 'the Bible upon the Beef Trust'; or take the words of Isaiah—or of the Master himself! Not the elegant prince of our debauched and vicious art, not the jeweled idol of our society churches—but the Jesus of the awful reality, the man of sorrow and pain, the outcast, despised of the world, who had ...
— The Jungle • Upton Sinclair
... things that the little one could not understand just to make an ease of the pressure of all of his business upon his troubled mind and breaking heart. And as Madam Whitworth talked I could hear my Pierre's brave voice as he always gave assurances to his sad idol. ...
— The Daredevil • Maria Thompson Daviess
... you was a present from our dear departed Swami. If people only knew about it, there might be a certain amount of scandal about a young woman's receiving a supposedly valuable gift from a swindler who was also a social idol. Don't go off your head, Dick. You've got to listen to me. As a matter of fact, she lied to you when she told you he gave them to her. She bought them; and she had not the money to pay for them. I suppose it was at his suggestion ...
— Jewel Weed • Alice Ames Winter
... that Trotsky, the idol of the Red crowd, was present at the battle of Toulgas, but if he was there, he had little influence in checking the riotous retreat of his followers when they thought themselves flanked from the woods. They fled in wild disorder ...
— The History of the American Expedition Fighting the Bolsheviki - Campaigning in North Russia 1918-1919 • Joel R. Moore
... order, it was not a virtue to be impatient with every infringement of its rules on the part of others. She was very severe, for instance, upon her two younger sisters if, the moment after the second bell had rung, they were not seated at the dinner-table, washed and aproned. Order was a very idol with her. Hence the house was too tidy for any sense of comfort. If you left an open book on the table, you would, on returning to the room a moment after, find it put aside. What the furniture of the drawing-room was like, I never saw; for not ...
— The Portent & Other Stories • George MacDonald
... uncontrollable they had been in following their fierce impulses. When summoned to prayer just before sunrise during their journey, some had turned toward the day-star rising in the east, others had taken out a small idol they had brought with them, and others still had uplifted their eyes to the Nile acacia, which in some provinces of Egypt was regarded as a sacred tree. What did they know of the God who had commanded them to cast so much behind ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... defects. It involved some postponement—in fact, until Margaret should have become the mother of a boy about Penrod's present age. This boy would be precisely like Georgie Bassett—Penrod conceived that as inevitable—and, like Georgie, he would be his mother's idol. Penrod meant to take him to church and force him to blow his nose with an ammonia-soaked handkerchief in the presence of the Eye and all ...
— Penrod and Sam • Booth Tarkington
... begun to say. He spoke no further word, and I, in glancing at his face, comprehended that, incredible as it seemed, there was some bond between the woman I had seen and this raw-boned, big-framed, and big-hearted idol of the bleachers. ...
— Murder in Any Degree • Owen Johnson
... standstill whenever they draws near. But the fool mules don't care; it's ecstacy to simply know she's livin' an' that mule's cup of joy is runnin' over who finds himse'f permitted to crop grass within forty foot of his old, gray bell-bedecked idol. ...
— Wolfville Nights • Alfred Lewis
... with a statue of Durga; before the idol an altar. In the background a landscape with farms ...
— The Buddha - A Drama in Five Acts and Four Interludes • Paul Carus
... I was exalted by these words! I was in the hero-worship stage of life, and this mysterious giant by my side was my chosen idol. The lady aft had quickened into activity whatever chivalry my nature contained, and it was pure, romantic delight to be told I had served her by loyalty to the man. Aye, I felt lifted ...
— The Blood Ship • Norman Springer
... I repeated this story? The reader may, perhaps, suppose it introductory to some tale of boyish romantic passion for some female idol clothed with imaginary perfections. But in that case he will be mistaken. Nothing of the kind was possible to me. I was preoccupied by other passions. Under the disease—for disease it was—which at that time mastered me, one solitary ...
— Autobiographic Sketches • Thomas de Quincey
... us are hero-worshippers at some time of our lives. The boy finds his hero in the baseball player or athlete, the girl in the matinee idol, or the "movie" star. These objects of worship are not always worthy of the adoration they inspire, but this does not matter greatly, since their worshippers seldom find it out. There is something fine in absolute loyalty to an ideal, even if the ideal is far from reality. "The Tenor" ...
— Americans All - Stories of American Life of To-Day • Various
... see that Mazarin will not give him further opportunities of becoming the idol of France until he has assured himself that he can count upon his friendship. Mazarin is not Richelieu. The red cardinal won his way to the leadership of France by proving himself able to defeat all intrigues against him, and crush every enemy, ...
— Won by the Sword - A Story of the Thirty Years' War • G.A. Henty
... with a hideous-looking figure carved on the top of it. On this they all joined hands and began dancing and shouting more furiously than before, going round and round their prey. The chief and others then brought pieces of the meat, which they placed before the idol. This I now knew to be a fetish, as all idols as well as charms are called throughout Negro-land. I was afraid every instant that I should be seen. Hitherto there had been little risk of that, as they were all so eagerly engaged ...
— In the Wilds of Africa • W.H.G. Kingston
... turned to Neilson, evidently imbued with Ray's fervor. "What do you think of that, old man?" he asked menacingly. Thus Chan, too, had escaped from Neilson's dominance: plainly Ray was his idol now. It was also plain that he recognized attributes of mercy and decency in his grizzled leader that might interfere with his own and his companion's plans. "What's worrying me—whether you're goin' to join in on the sport when ...
— The Sky Line of Spruce • Edison Marshall
... that was given him. The only levee he held in Government House was {156} after his death, when he lay in state, and thousands crowded round to take a long last look at their old idol. ...
— The Tribune of Nova Scotia - A Chronicle of Joseph Howe • W. L. (William Lawson) Grant
... upon her! 'Tis not good! Forbear! 'Tis lifeless, magical, a shape of air, An idol. Such to meet with, bodes no good; That rigid look of hers doth freeze man's blood, And well-nigh petrifies his heart to stone:— The story ...
— Faust Part 1 • Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe
... O how vile an idol proves this god! Thou hast, Sebastian, done good feature shame. In nature there 's no blemish but the mind; None can be call'd deform'd but the unkind. Virtue is beauty; but the beauteous evil Are empty trunks, o'erflourish'd ...
— Twelfth Night; or, What You Will • William Shakespeare [Hudson edition]
... to a place where they saw what had once been the pedestal of a statue. Here Michael Angelo showed them a hollow niche, which was so contrived that one might conceal himself there, and speak words which the ignorant and superstitious populace might believe to come from the idol's own stony lips. This one thing showed the full depth of ancient ignorance and superstition; and over this Michael Angelo waxed quite eloquent, and proceeded to deliver himself of a number of impressive ...
— Among the Brigands • James de Mille
... trustees of the National Gallery, on the caustic condition that they should always be placed between the two celebrated 'Claudes,' known as 'The Marriage of Isaac and Rebecca' and 'The Embarkation of the Queen of Sheba'—helped to shake the English art world's faith in its former idol. Mr Ruskin's adoption and proclamation of Turner's opinion shook the old faith still further. This reversal of a verdict with regard to Claude is peculiar; it is by no means uncommon for the decision of contemporaries to be set aside, and we shall hear of an instance presently, in the ...
— The Old Masters and Their Pictures - For the Use of Schools and Learners in Art • Sarah Tytler
... Henrietta of England had been full of life, and loveliness, and hope, the idol of a court, and the centre of the most brilliant circle in Europe. And now, as the tearful priest arose from his knees, the costly curtains of embroidered velvet were drawn around a cold, ...
— Louis XIV., Makers of History Series • John S. C. Abbott
... the girl—but how should he know the truth as to that, unless Rotha knew it? If the girl loved his brother, he could relinquish her. He was conscious of no pang of what was called jealousy in this matter. An idol that he had worshipped seemed to ...
— The Shadow of a Crime - A Cumbrian Romance • Hall Caine
... every religious system. The system that holds sway in society is apt to be the one that he himself has just outgrown; he has, accordingly, an artist's impatience for its immaturity. There is much truth to the poet's nature in verses entitled The Idol ...
— The Poet's Poet • Elizabeth Atkins
... our dear little Beatrice was four years old. It upset me much, for she was the idol of that beloved Grandmamma, and the child so fond of her. She continually speaks of her—how she "is in Heaven," but hopes she will return! She is a most darling, engaging child.... ...
— The Letters of Queen Victoria, Volume III (of 3), 1854-1861 • Queen of Great Britain Victoria
... great rejoicing, therefore, that the young ladies of Mrs. Hopkins' select seminary were informed on a certain Thursday morning that their idol was about to return to them. She was no longer to take her place in any of the classes; she was to be a parlor boarder, and go in and out pretty much as she pleased; but she was to be in the house again, and they were to see her bright face, and hear her gay laugh, and doubtless she would once ...
— Frances Kane's Fortune • L. T. Meade
... the Convention, in the very place where he had been directed by the representatives of the people to repel the factions, he expired under the guillotine, loaded with the execration of that same people of whom he had been the most venerated idol. ...
— Paris As It Was and As It Is • Francis W. Blagdon
... an elegant and accomplished gentleman with a high-bred manner which never unbent, and he was always faultlessly dressed. He looked the ideal of an aristocrat, and yet he was and continued to be until his death the idol of the Democracy."—Speeches of Chauncey M. Depew, November, 1896, ...
— A Political History of the State of New York, Volumes 1-3 • DeAlva Stanwood Alexander
... for it but to associate with themselves a sufficient number of persons in the conduct of affairs, or the oligarchy would certainly come to an end. Critias and the rest of the Thirty, whose fears had already converted Theramenes into a dangerous popular idol, proceeded at once to draw up a list of three thousand citizens; fit and proper persons to have a share in the conduct of affairs. But Theramenes was not wholly satisfied, "indeed he must say, for himself, he regarded it as ridiculous, that in their effort to associate the better classes with ...
— Hellenica • Xenophon
... and his companion, and Hawke shortened his bayonet as he saw his idol's brother clutching the ...
— With Haig on the Somme • D. H. Parry
... I dress up in a blanket for a court dress, and we wake up Lovey and play our royal visit. Do you blame me for not minding washing and ironing and cooking and toe-poking or dress-shrinking with a brother who is an idol like that?" ...
— Phyllis • Maria Thompson Daviess
... of the opulence of the owner of the house. Here every object was estimated, not for its beauty or elegance, but by its costliness. Money was the grand criterion, by which the worth of animate and inanimate objects was alike decided. In this society, the worship of the golden idol was avowed without shame or mystery; and all who did not bow the knee to it were considered as hypocrites or fools. Our heroine, possessed of two hundred thousand pounds, could not fail to have a large share of incense—every thing she said, or looked, was applauded in Sir ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. V - Tales of a Fashionable Life • Maria Edgeworth
... pilgrims to some accursed shrine, most likely. May these heathen idolaters be all confounded, and the chosen people of Adonai be brought home in peace! I could see, I dare say, if I stood on the wall. They may have some vile idol with them, and if I do not ...
— Earl Hubert's Daughter - The Polishing of the Pearl - A Tale of the 13th Century • Emily Sarah Holt
... you out too, ye conquerors of the old God! Weary ye became of the conflict, and now your weariness serveth the new idol! ...
— Thus Spake Zarathustra - A Book for All and None • Friedrich Nietzsche
... single gun served by one man, and that man an American. It was the first sea-fight of the war. Over night a Cuban navy had been born, and into the limelight a cub reporter had projected a new "hero," a ready-made, warranted-not-to-run, popular idol. ...
— The Boy Scout and Other Stories for Boys • Richard Harding Davis
... and shrugged his shoulders. "It's all a question of motives," he said indifferently. "I don't want to shatter your idol; I only want to save you from ...
— The Lion and the Unicorn and Other Stories • Richard Harding Davis
... the secret of the devices by which Amedee succeeded in keeping up his rank in Besancon, and esteemed him highly for it. Soulas had placed himself under her wing when she was thirty, and at that time had dared to admire her and make her his idol; he had got so far as to be allowed—he alone in the world—to pour out to her all the unseemly gossip which almost all very precise women love to hear, being authorized by their superior virtue to ...
— Albert Savarus • Honore de Balzac
... certain; but it undoubtedly corresponds better than its opposite to the spirit and letter of Scripture. The Bible, as we have already pointed out, likens the opposition existing between grace and sin to that between life and death,(969) justice and injustice, Christ and Belial, God and an idol.(970) But these are contradictories, ergo.(971) The same conclusion can be reached by arguing from the character of sanctifying grace as a participatio divinae naturae.(972) If grace is a participation in the divine nature, it must be opposed to sin in the same way in which ...
— Grace, Actual and Habitual • Joseph Pohle
... a smaller honour upon Warburton had been at the same time thrown out by the University. In fact, Pope looked up to Warburton with a reverence almost equal to that which he felt for Bolingbroke. If such admiration for such an idol was rather humiliating, we must remember that Pope was unable to detect the charlatan in the pretentious but really vigorous writer; and we may perhaps admit that there is something pathetic in Pope's constant eagerness to be supported ...
— Alexander Pope - English Men of Letters Series • Leslie Stephen
... investigator who approaches their study with a knowledge only of Christian religion and theology finds it difficult at first to recognize that the same fundamental ideas, although of far cruder nature, enter into the conceptions of an idol-worshiping fanatic living in the heart of Africa. But, nevertheless, beliefs that fall within the scope of the definitions adopted above are to be found among all men, and they must be examined so that their agreements and differences may be demonstrated, and their ...
— The Doctrine of Evolution - Its Basis and Its Scope • Henry Edward Crampton
... half as a married man he had learned that one does not always say everything that comes into one's mind. But he meditated on the abysses that lie between the masculine and feminine intellects. That it should be possible for anyone to wish to see a movie idol leaping into second-story windows, or being pulled from beneath flying express trains, on this day of destiny, this greatest ...
— Jimmie Higgins • Upton Sinclair
... 'How,' said the king, 'can you decide before you know the question?' 'Because,' replied the count, 'had there been any doubt, all these gentlemen would have given it in favour of your Majesty.' The plain inference is that this (at the time) great world's idol and Voltaire's god, was 'up to a little cheating.' It was, however, as much to the king's credit that he submitted to the decision, as it was to that of the courtier who gave him such ...
— The Gaming Table: Its Votaries and Victims - Volume I (of II) • Andrew Steinmetz
... told the story of the negro's wrongs. Yes, Northerners know every thing about slavery now. This monster of iniquity has been unveiled to the world, her frightful features unmasked, and soon, very soon will she be regarded with no more complacency by the American republic than is the idol of Juggernaut, rolling its bloody wheels over the crushed bodies of ...
— An Appeal to the Christian Women of the South • Angelina Emily Grimke
... face, more than the full curve of her cheek. He watched her hair, which at the back was almost of the colour of the soapstone idol, take the candlelight into its vigorous freedom in front and ...
— The Trespasser • D.H. Lawrence
... Debt The Young Archduchess The Sign of the Stranger No. 7 Saville Square The Little Blue Goddess The Lady-in-Waiting As We Forgive Them Scribes and Pharisees The Day of Temptation The Bronze Face An Eye for an Eye Sins of the City Guilty Bonds The Court of Honour The Idol of the Town The Broken Thread If Sinners Entice Thee The Bond of Black In White Raiment The Valrose Mystery The Lure of Love The Scarlet Sign The Mysterious Three The Black Owl No Greater Love The House of Evil ...
— Bones in London • Edgar Wallace
... once more. 'I ha' made thee my idol; and if I could live my life o'er again I would love my God more, and thee less; and then I shouldn't ha' sinned this sin against thee. But speak one word of love to me—one little word, that I may ...
— Sylvia's Lovers — Complete • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... idol two heathen knelt and prayed; it was their day of bridal, the savage and the maid. "We two have come together, to journey through the years, in calm and stormy weather, in sunshine and in tears. O idol most exalted, protect us on our way, and may our feet ...
— Rippling Rhymes • Walt Mason
... philanthropist—much as he would have hated to exhibit himself or be regarded as a professional patriot—yet the devotion to that cause which he had himself created—the cause of a regenerated Gloria—was deep down in his very heart. Gloria and her future were his day-dream—his idol, his hobby, or his craze, if you like; he had long been possessed by the thought of a redeemed and regenerated Gloria. To-night his mind had been thrown for a moment off the track—and it was therefore that he pulled out his maps ...
— The Dictator • Justin McCarthy
... multitudes, and as a foretoken of the changes that are to come, that the highest interest attaches to such scenes as that of Chickka breaking the serpent-gods, turning the sword-gods into plough-shares, refusing to bow to the idol, or speaking lightly of the great god of the vicinity when his car was burned. Even the procession, which in all forms of idolatry, from that of India to that of Rome, forms an important instrument ...
— Old Daniel • Thomas Hodson
... households in paying a visit to Canterbury. Under Mrs. Delarayne's vigilant eye, Leonetta and Denis Malster had therefore been very discreet, and as the cars returned in the evening, Sir Joseph was firmly of the opinion that his idol had, with her customary art, slightly exaggerated the attentions which his private secretary was paying to her ...
— Too Old for Dolls - A Novel • Anthony Mario Ludovici
... take down one more old idol, and look into his record, examining the environment of the little child as dispassionately as we would examine the environment of a ...
— The Forerunner, Volume 1 (1909-1910) • Charlotte Perkins Gilman
... before. And then, to discover all in a moment that her love for me was a mere fiction, or at any rate a secondary sentiment, although, even with such evidence before my eyes as what I have already described to you, I could scarcely realise it, and that the idol I worshipped was at best the very incarnation of falsehood and unworthiness, was altogether too much for me; I brooded and fretted over it until I could endure it no longer, and then, one day when she seemed striving to weave anew round my heart the ...
— The Rover's Secret - A Tale of the Pirate Cays and Lagoons of Cuba • Harry Collingwood
... the dream is fled, The dream of joy sent from above; The idol of my soul is dead, And naught remains but hopeless love. The song of birds, the scent of flowers, The tender light of parting day— Unheeded now the tardy ...
— Roughing it in the Bush • Susanna Moodie
... brought him into contact with the unpublished chronicle of Father Capocchio, a Dominican friar of licorous and even licentious disposition, a hater of Nepenthe and a personal enemy, it seemed, of his idol Perrelli. His manuscript—the greater part of it, at all events—was not fit to be printed; not fit to be touched by respectable people. Mr. Eames felt it his duty to waive considerations of delicacy. ...
— South Wind • Norman Douglas
... found himself beside a mudhole and as the others "ouched" and "o-ohed" and bewailed their fate, and grabbed mud and plastered it on, he did the same. Jud generously offered, as he had not so many stings, to help Mickey. Soon even the adoring eyes of Peaches could not have told her idol from the mudhole. He twisted away from an approaching handful crying: "Gee Jud! Leave a feller room to breathe! If you are going to smother me, I might as well die ...
— Michael O'Halloran • Gene Stratton-Porter
... the day of her death and beyond her death. This plain, downright, homely man not only professed, but felt, an ardour of attachment which no hero of romance ever exceeded. His conscience reproached him for making an idol of his 'dear Mary.' Oddly enough, he took the public into his confidence. The publication of his 'Letters to a Wife,' breathing as they do the very spirit of devoted love, in his own life-time, may have been ...
— The English Church in the Eighteenth Century • Charles J. Abbey and John H. Overton
... with him?" she thought. "I love the other man, but if I cannot win him, I shall gratify my ambition by marrying Haughton Hall, and in petting my idol gratify myself; and so to pet my old ...
— A Heart-Song of To-day • Annie Gregg Savigny
... and uncivilized nations have uniformly adored, under various names, a God of which themselves were the model: revengeful, blood-thirsty, groveling and capricious. The idol of a savage is a demon that delights in carnage. The steam of slaughter, the dissonance of groans, the flames of a desolated land, are the offerings which he deems acceptable, and his innumerable votaries throughout the world have made ...
— Percy Bysshe Shelley as a Philosopher and Reformer • Charles Sotheran
... nation to save. Railroads, telegraphs, steamships, printing-presses, schools, platforms, and pulpits are the agents of modern civilization. Through them we are to secure unity, strength, and national life. Securing these, Asia may send over her millions of idol-worshippers without detriment to ourselves. With these, America is to give life to ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 101, March, 1866 • Various
... the Professor's sister. A quiet, studious boy, he graduated at the head of his class at an early age, but he inherited the weak lungs of his father, who died of consumption. Raymond was a lovable boy, with a fund of dry humor and wit—the idol of his mother, who, taking the advice of a specialist, accompanied her boy, as a last resort, to New Mexico, where, partly owing to his determination to get well, proper food and daily rides on the mesa, on the back of his little pinto pony, he regained perfect ...
— Mary at the Farm and Book of Recipes Compiled during Her Visit - among the "Pennsylvania Germans" • Edith M. Thomas
... in posterity. She was reared from childhood in habits of austerity and unquestioning piety. Submission to the Church became for her not merely a rule of conduct, but a passionate enthusiasm. She identified herself with the cause of four successive Popes, protected her idol, the terrible and iron-hearted Hildebrand, in the time of his adversity; remained faithful to his principles after his death; and having served the Holy See with all her force and all that she possessed through all her lifetime, ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Complete - Series I, II, and III • John Symonds
... observing on his wife's arm the ring with which he had once pledged Ingeborg, he rushes at her to recover it. The woman, who had been warming the wooden image of Balder before the fire, drops, in her fright, the idol into the flame. Frithjof seizes her by the arm and snatches the ring from her. In the general confusion that follows the temple takes fire, and all attempts to quench the flames are futile. In consequence of this sacrilege Frithjof is outlawed at the Thing as a vargr-i-veum, i.e., wolf in the ...
— Essays on Scandinavian Literature • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen
... Englishman, I'm not sure which—one of those fellows who makes music up out of his head for people to play in theatres or for lunatics like Moreno to amuse themselves with. Well, when his daughter was born the Doctor wondered what name to give her. As a tribute to Emilio Castelar, his idol, he felt he ought to call her Emilia: but he liked the sound of Leonora better (no, not Lenor, but Leonora!). According to what he told us, that was the title of the only opera Beethoven ever wrote—an opera he could read, for that matter, the way I read the paper. Anyhow, the foreigner ...
— The Torrent - Entre Naranjos • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... sight no health can bring. it is a magic shape, an idol, no live thing. To meet it never can be good! Its haggard look congeals a mortal's blood, And almost turns him into stone; The story ...
— Faust • Goethe
... four years old at this time, the idol of his foster-mother, and a great favorite with his adopted brothers and sisters. A quaint little fellow he was, with a broad, intellectual-looking face, serious to old-fashionedness, very fair, and with ...
— Jan of the Windmill • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... then. He would have said, as beautifully, but for envy of the frank, pellucid worship in that look on her proved hero. It was the jewel of all the earth to win back to himself; and it subjected him, through his desire for it, to a measurement with her idol, in character, quality, strength, hardness. He heard the couple pronouncing sentence of his loss ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... admirers of Martin Renard entered the library of his author that night he would have seen an interesting thing. He would have seen the creator of that idol of clerks and messenger-lads and fourth-form boys frankly putting the case before a portrait propped up on a chair. He would have heard that popular author haranguing, pleading, curiously on his defence, turning the thing this ...
— Widdershins • Oliver Onions
... the man in silent, awe-stricken wonder. His grief unnerved him, and made him a weak, passive child. I did not dream that his rugged nature could be so moved. I shall never forget those solemn moments—genius and greatness weeping over love's idol lost. There is a grandeur as well as a simplicity about the picture that will never fade. With me it is immortal—I really believe that I shall carry it with me across the dark, ...
— Behind the Scenes - or, Thirty years a slave, and Four Years in the White House • Elizabeth Keckley
... dead God, on your altars, Who lived a Man among men, You have taken away our Lord And we cannot find Him again. You have not left us a handful Of even the earth He trod . . . You have made Him a rich man's idol Who came as ...
— Many Voices • E. Nesbit
... a curious feeling of exultation and confidence throughout the insurgent army, for Dru had conducted every move in the great game with masterly skill, and no man was ever more the idol of his troops, or of the people whose cause he ...
— Philip Dru: Administrator • Edward Mandell House |
