"Initiation" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... President. "Needless to say," writes Dorothy Sayers, "he read his part of the initiation ceremony with tremendous ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Maisie Ward
... dropping the peculiar doctrines of Jesus and going back to John the Baptist, was to make it much easier to convert Gentiles than Jews; and it was by following the line of least resistance that Paul became the apostle to the Gentiles. The Jews had their own rite of initiation: the rite of circumcision; and they were fiercely jealous for it, because it marked them as the chosen people of God, and set them apart from the Gentiles, who were simply the uncircumcized. When Paul, finding that baptism made way faster among the Gentiles than among the Jews, as it enabled ...
— Preface to Androcles and the Lion - On the Prospects of Christianity • George Bernard Shaw
... participated in the fun, for it had been a one-man race. Fifteen minutes later, however, we had a "free for all" which gave him his initiation. ...
— Across Mongolian Plains - A Naturalist's Account of China's 'Great Northwest' • Roy Chapman Andrews
... of friendship between Christ and men, the origination and initiation come from Him. 'We love Him because He first loved us.' He has told us how, in His divine alchemy, He changes by the shedding of His blood our enmity into friendship. In the previous verse He has said, 'Greater ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: St. John Chaps. XV to XXI • Alexander Maclaren
... kinds, those which the people were permitted to see, and those which were only shewn to the initiated. Concerning the latter, Aristides calls them "the most shocking and most ravishing representations." And Stoboeus asserts that the initiation into the grand mysteries exactly resembles death. Divine Legat. Vol. I. p. 280, and p. 272. And Virgil in his entrance to the shades below, amongst other things of terrible form, mentions death. Aen. VI. This part of the exhibition ...
— The Botanic Garden - A Poem in Two Parts. Part 1: The Economy of Vegetation • Erasmus Darwin
... Holy Church. He has been asked to paint a picture after the sketch, but he puts his fingers to his ears and shakes his head at that; the fancy is past, he says—a strange animal, our Piero. But now all is ready for your initiation into the mysteries of ...
— Romola • George Eliot
... Avondale was like membership in a Church, only that, to the carnal mind, there was more in it; moreover, the initiation was attended with greater ceremony, and the possibility of expulsion was kept further in the background. Once admitted into Avondale fellowship, the communicant might turn out a white sheep or a black one; but he was still a sheep, whilst all outside ...
— Such is Life • Joseph Furphy
... once to a significance of the fact," nor ever rested till he had devised and effected his scheme of Post-office Reform; though all the while an uncomfortable feeling might be lurking behind as to the perfect credibility of so interesting a mode of accounting for the initiation of ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 62, January 4, 1851 • Various
... the old Charter which I am astonished at their keeping, but which they may possibly alter[4] at the revision which is to take place next year, those particularly which limit the entrance to the Chamber of Deputies to men of forty, and which give the initiation of laws to the King. But on the whole it is a good sign that they should alter so little, and looks like extreme caution and a dislike ...
— The Greville Memoirs - A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William IV, Vol. II • Charles C. F. Greville
... which it was necessary to know before one could penetrate to his apartment. A visitor, let into the secret, would say to the porter, "The season for plums has arrived," thanks to which he acquired the right to enter the house. But this was only the first degree of initiation. A servant would next come forward and ask, "What does Monsieur wish?" and one had to be able to answer, "I have brought some Brussels lace." This constituted the second degree and resulted in permission to ascend the stairs. Then, with the door of ...
— Honor de Balzac • Albert Keim and Louis Lumet
... sorrow. Poor, grand Cardinal! It was the final trial of his life, the supremely bitter drop in his chalice, to assist at the disenchantment which followed so closely upon the blissful intoxication of his gentle neophyte's first initiation. To whom, if not to him, should she have gone to ask counsel, in all the tormenting doubts which she at once began to have in her feelings ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... to initiation, and the novice was taken there that she might recognise solemnly what she was about to do on ...
— Saronia - A Romance of Ancient Ephesus • Richard Short
... to eliminate any specific inheritance as a factor, but it is surprising that in the former case he does not consider environment as a factor, although he elsewhere gives striking evidence of unconscious influence proceeding from one individual to another via sex initiation. ...
— The Journal of Abnormal Psychology - Volume 10
... impressed, for, starting with no other initiation into the mysteries of foreign relations than having had a father born in Wales and having spent his vacations in England, probably in the lake region studying the topography of Wordsworth's poetry,—a certain ...
— The Mirrors of Washington • Anonymous
... otherwise than as a loss of a portion of the lower Manas. This is, no doubt, a very material method of expressing the great mystery of the reflection of the higher Manas in the lower, but since only those who have passed the portals of initiation can fully comprehend this, we must content ourselves with the nearest approximation to exactitude which is possible to us; and as a matter of fact, a very fairly accurate idea of what actually takes place will be obtained ...
— The Astral Plane - Its Scenery, Inhabitants and Phenomena • C. W. Leadbeater
... favor of their unknown God by the sacrifice of every moral virtue. There were many who pretended to confess or to relate the ceremonies of this abhorred society. It was asserted, "that a new-born infant, entirely covered over with flour, was presented, like some mystic symbol of initiation, to the knife of the proselyte, who unknowingly inflicted many a secret and mortal wound on the innocent victim of his error; that as soon as the cruel deed was perpetrated, the sectaries drank up the blood, greedily tore asunder the quivering ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 2 • Edward Gibbon
... of these remarks it was to be inferred that the princess had the depth of a precipice, the grace of a queen, the corruption of diplomatists, the mystery of a first initiation, and the dangerous qualities of a siren. The two clever men of the world, incapable of foreseeing the denouement of their joke, succeeded in presenting Diane d'Uxelles as a consummate specimen of the Parisian woman, the cleverest of coquettes, the most enchanting mistress in the world. Right ...
— The Secrets of the Princesse de Cadignan • Honore de Balzac
... or twice-born, is usually appropriate to Brahmans, but is applicable to the three higher castes. Investiture with the sacred thread and initiation of the neophyte into certain religious mysteries are regarded as his regeneration or ...
— The Ramayana • VALMIKI
... at once and for ever within the innermost circle of friends and fellow-labourers who were united round Wilberforce and Henry Thornton by indissoluble bonds of mutual personal regard and common public ends. As an indispensable part of his initiation into that very pleasant confederacy, he was sent down to be introduced to Hannah More, who was living at Cowslip Green, near Bristol, in the enjoyment of general respect, mixed with a good deal of what even those who admire her as she deserved must in conscience call flattery. ...
— Life and Letters of Lord Macaulay • George Otto Trevelyan
... the water contract, several labour unions elected me to honorary membership. The carriage makers' union had so elected me, and a night was set for my initiation. It was a wild winter's night—the streets of the city were covered with snow, and the thermometer registered five above zero. Few hard-working men would come out a night like this. Who would expect them? I was rather glad of the inclement weather. ...
— From the Bottom Up - The Life Story of Alexander Irvine • Alexander Irvine
... yet the foresight of cutting the holes gave him enough oxygen to maintain his senses. At last, after aeons of suffering which reminded him of nothing so much as his initiation into the college fraternity, he felt himself being dragged up the side of the ...
— The Ghost Breaker - A Novel Based Upon the Play • Charles Goddard
... of from six to ten years old, who, for the whole time the process of drying occupied—from seven to ten days—were never allowed to step out of the hall, or neglect their sacred trust. This was the commencement of their initiation in the endurance of hardships, that they also might become warriors. Night after night the men used to meet in front of the hall, dancing and singing, and beating their gongs. They used to address their heads, taunting them, telling them that they ...
— Mark Seaworth • William H.G. Kingston
... easier to make his confession. When he came back from accompanying their old friend Outreville to her carriage he asked her if Waterlow's charming sitter had known who she was and if she had been frightened. Mme. de Brecourt stared; she evidently thought that kind of sensibility implied an initiation—and into dangers—which a little American accidentally encountered couldn't possibly have. "Why should she be frightened? She wouldn't be even if she had known who I was; much less therefore when ...
— The Reverberator • Henry James
... christened man. Scott says: "The Elves were supposed greatly to envy the privileges acquired by Christian initiation, and they gave to those mortals who had fallen into their power a certain precedence, founded upon this advantageous distinction. Tamlane, in the old ballad, describes his own ...
— The Lady of the Lake • Sir Walter Scott
... no system of seclusion of either boys or girls on attaining puberty, or in connection with initiation, or on attaining a marriageable age. Nor is there any initiation ceremony, or wearing of ceremonial masks, or use of bull-roarers. The custom by which chiefs' children, when assuming the perineal band, are made to stand on a platform reminds one, however, ...
— The Mafulu - Mountain People of British New Guinea • Robert W. Williamson
... only tell you who are in the great busy world outside, the lessons and morals. The real secrets I must not tell; you will receive them when you, too, come to the hills and forests, and sit down on a rock alone and go through the initiation. ...
— Evening Round Up - More Good Stuff Like Pep • William Crosbie Hunter
... that despite his tour of initiation under the butcher's guidance he was puzzled to know which of the two doors opened into the room from which supplies were for the present to be drawn. At a hazard he opened one of them, and on entering did not immediately perceive the room to ...
— Tom Slade with the Colors • Percy K. Fitzhugh
... apostolic succession of masters living in the service of one ideal. And so it is these brotherhoods of labor, it is these grim brotherhoods covered with grime and scars, that stand before you to-day inviting you to initiation. ...
— Modern American Prose Selections • Various
... by striking the eye with diversely colored rays. But if no person could discern, without intuition developed by study, a painting by a master from a daub, a melody of Beethoven from one by Clapisson, no more could any one at first, without preliminary initiation, help confusing a bouquet invented by a sincere artist with a pot pourri made by some manufacturer to be sold in ...
— Against The Grain • Joris-Karl Huysmans
... neighbourhood take the youths to a secluded spot previously fixed upon. The ceremony then takes place. Sham fights, dances, partial mutilations of the body, e.g., the knocking out of a front tooth, are elements of it. And this is as much as is known of it; except that from the time of initiation to the time of marriage, the young men are forbidden to speak to, or even ...
— The Ethnology of the British Colonies and Dependencies • Robert Gordon Latham
... hardly stopped, when we were boarded from a fleet of negro boats, and huge bunches of plantains, yams, green oranges, junks of sugar-cane, were displayed upon the deck; and more than one of the ladies went through the ceremony of initiation into West Indian ways, which consisted in sucking sugar-cane, first pared for the sake of their teeth. The Negro's stronger incisors tear it without paring. Two amusing figures, meanwhile, had taken up their station close to the companion. ...
— At Last • Charles Kingsley
... pleasure, has its initiation. The first crisis, like that in which poor Sabine nearly succumbed, returns no more than the first fruits of other things return. It is the first wedge struck in the torture of the heart; all others are expected, the shock to the nerves is known, the ...
— Beatrix • Honore de Balzac
... mule was postponed till night, and the rest of the day was spent in the ceremonies of Andrew's initiation. They cleared out one of the best huts in the encampment, dressed it with boughs and rushes, and seating Andrew in it on the stump of a cork tree, they put a hammer and tongs in his hands, and made him cut two capers to the sound of two guitars. They then bared one ...
— The Exemplary Novels of Cervantes • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... saying, "Numchahse! arise!" lo, they arose, and deemed they had only slept. And now Glooskap had gained the greatest power. [Footnote: This incident of the passage underground is deeply suggestive of Wabeno mystery and initiation. It will strike every student of classic lore as almost identical with much that he has read. If it has not the same symbolical meaning here, it has apparently ...
— The Algonquin Legends of New England • Charles Godfrey Leland
... the front porch, smoking his pipe alone, while the two little relics, whom he had had left to dine with him, were taking their two respective naps. Our dinner was late on account of the initiation of Petunia, and he had finished ...
— The Tinder-Box • Maria Thompson Daviess
... Bassett. "It's an initiation for one of our school societies and it must be always a secret—never tell any one we had anything to do ...
— The Mark of the Knife • Clayton H. Ernst
... deals with circumstances immediately before him and essentially transient, while the strategist has to take wider views of more lasting conditions, and into them to introduce his own conceptions to be modifying factors. Creative thought and faculty of initiation are therefore more characteristic of the natural endowments of the born strategist. There is also more room for them in his work, because in the larger and more complicated field there is greater elasticity and opportunity to effect new combinations, to ...
— Types of Naval Officers - Drawn from the History of the British Navy • A. T. Mahan
... Mrs. Pembrose was in some mysterious way strengthened in Lady Harman by this extraordinary convergence of testimony. When Sir Isaac mentioned the lady with a kind of forced casualness at breakfast as the only conceivable person for the work of initiation and organization that lay before them, Lady Harman determined to see more of her. With a quickened subtlety she asked her to tea. "I have heard so much of your knowledge of social questions and I want you to advise me about my work," she wrote, and then scribbled ...
— The Wife of Sir Isaac Harman • H. G. (Herbert George) Wells
... apace. At first they were small and confined to a group of persons well known to each other, thus being genuinely fraternal. Simple in form, they imposed an initiation fee of hardly less than $2.50 or more than $5.00, a monthly fee of about 50 cents, and gave sick dues ranging from $1.50 to $5.00 a month, with guarantee of payment of one's funeral expenses and subsequent help to the widow. By 1838 there were in Philadelphia alone 100 ...
— A Social History of the American Negro • Benjamin Brawley
... her work has been of inestimable value to the state. Her initiation into the work of corresponding secretary of the state union was strong and vigorous. In October, 1891, she was elected secretary, and it was during the winter of 1891-92 that the legislative work was done that resulted ...
— Two Decades - A History of the First Twenty Years' Work of the Woman's Christian Temperance Union of the State of New York • Frances W. Graham and Georgeanna M. Gardenier
... the alleviation of pain. The country-woman who puts her child to sleep in the great, cradle-like basket for winnowing the corn remembers Demeter Kourotrophos, the mother of corn and children alike, and makes it a little coat out of the dress worn by its father at his initiation into her mysteries.... She lies on the ground out-of-doors on summer nights, and becomes wet with the dew. She grows young again every spring, yet is of great age, the wrinkled woman of the Homeric hymn, who becomes the ...
— Books and Culture • Hamilton Wright Mabie
... the foundation of the writer's life-work for young people, after an initiation of over twenty years as a teacher in the schools of Boston, in all grades from usher to principal. Even then he had not the remotest idea of becoming an author; he never definitely prepared himself for such a profession; and, as he has often stated it, he "blundered ...
— The Boat Club - or, The Bunkers of Rippleton • Oliver Optic
... show her the sun, the sky, the land, the water, the trees, the flowers, and tell her all their names, as if to a newborn creature. Then a great feast is made, a poor crouching slave is killed with a blow of the sword, and the girl is solemnly smeared with his reeking blood, by way of initiation. But this is only done, of course, with the daughters of wealthy and powerful families. And I find it pretty much the same in England. In all these matters, your poorer classes are relatively pure and simple and natural. It's ...
— The British Barbarians • Grant Allen
... inverted; i.e., under certain external conditions, chief among which are the inaccessibility of the normal sexual object and initiation, they are able to take as the sexual object a person of the same sex and thus ...
— Three Contributions to the Theory of Sex • Sigmund Freud
... more of him," interrupted the Rover, a little impatiently, as if he liked not that his companion should look too deeply into the policy of his government, so early in his initiation. "I will see to him. If I mistake not, fellow, you over-acted your own part to-day, and were a little too forward in ...
— The Red Rover • James Fenimore Cooper
... more and more into Church circles. The fervent heart repeats constantly our Lord's prayer, "that they may all be one." Yet it becomes clear that there may be movements toward union that are not of the Holy Spirit's initiation, and that ...
— Quiet Talks on the Crowned Christ of Revelation • S. D. Gordon
... [Footnote: A medicine woman is a female doctor or juggler. No man or woman can assume this office without previous initiation by authority. The medicine dance is a sacred rite, in honor of the souls of the dead; the mysteries of this dance are kept inviolable; its secrets have never been divulged by its members. The medicine ...
— Dahcotah - Life and Legends of the Sioux Around Fort Snelling • Mary Eastman
... that went with it was impossible. To resist a score of millions was twenty times impossibler. She made up her mind that Dyckman should not escape from this temporary alliance with the Thropps without paying at least a handsome initiation-fee. Suddenly she set her jaw and broke into the parley of her husband and ...
— We Can't Have Everything • Rupert Hughes
... about the great white throne. And it is this which makes me comprehend how even an unregenerated soul—and how much more the Christian—can long for that which we call death, but which is but the initiation into the mysteries of the Beyond. It is this which, even aside from religious aspirations and fears, wraps our departure in an awful sublimity. To die that we may KNOW—to give up the transitory, the perishing, the earthly, that we may grasp the ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 5, November, 1863 • Various
... The Chapter appointed four of its own members to superintend the work: Jean Dumas, Jean Fabres, Pierre Vuaille, and Jean Lenglache, to whom my authors (canons both) attribute the choice of subjects, the placing of them, and the initiation of the workmen 'au sens veritable et plus eleve de la Bible ou des legendes, et portant quelque fois le simple savoir-faire de l'ouvrier jusqu'a la ...
— Our Fathers Have Told Us - Part I. The Bible of Amiens • John Ruskin
... Country Club, to which belonged Charles McKelvey, Horace Updike, and the other rich men who lunched not at the Athletic but at the Union Club. Babbitt explained with frequency, "You couldn't hire me to join the Tonawanda, even if I did have a hundred and eighty bucks to throw away on the initiation fee. At the Outing we've got a bunch of real human fellows, and the finest lot of little women in town—just as good at joshing as the men—but at the Tonawanda there's nothing but these would-be's in New York get-ups, drinking ...
— Babbitt • Sinclair Lewis
... Miss Mason launched into the creed of the ice-box—its ubiquity, values and economies. Mary understood she was receiving her second initiation into flat life, and mentally bracketed this new cult ...
— The Nest Builder • Beatrice Forbes-Robertson Hale
... did not diminish. These had to do with mysterious talents of his own, and dated back to the moment he stood for the first time before one of the "big cat" cages at the Lincoln Park Zoo in Chicago. That was his initiation-day in a craft in which he had since gone very far as white men go—even into the ...
— Son of Power • Will Levington Comfort and Zamin Ki Dost
... Fifth Avenue. At his summer home in Greenwich he erected a stable with stalls of finest mahogany. His daughter's wedding became a prodigal exhibition of great wealth, and admittance to the Americus Club, his favourite retreat, required an initiation fee of one thousand dollars. To the poor he gave lavishly. In the winter of 1870-71 he donated one thousand dollars to each alderman to buy coal and food for the needy. His own ward received fifty thousand. Finally, in return for his ...
— A Political History of the State of New York, Volumes 1-3 • DeAlva Stanwood Alexander
... the ceaseless noises of your normal world. Within this world of silence you seem as it were to lose yourself, "to ebb and to flow, to wander and be lost in the Imageless Ground," says Ruysbroeck, struggling to describe the sensations of the self in this, its first initiation into the "wayless world, beyond image," where "all is, ...
— Practical Mysticism - A Little Book for Normal People • Evelyn Underhill
... light boat; half a minute, and all would be over.—Or, for the first and the last time in his life, he would take her in his arms, hold her to him, feel her cheek on his; he would kiss her, with kisses that were at once an initiation and a farewell; then, covering her eyes with his hands, he would gently, very gently, tilt the boat. A moment's hesitation; it sought to right itself; rocked violently, and overturned: and beneath it, locked in each other's arms, they found ...
— Maurice Guest • Henry Handel Richardson
... example of their influence upon him, agreed joyfully to forward the funds for his journey and to make arrangements for his stay in Rangoon before proceeding to Mandalay, where he was to be received as a Buddhist priest after a certain course of initiation. ...
— Seen and Unseen • E. Katharine Bates
... residence is in (the suitability of) the place; that of the mind is in abysmal stillness; that of associations is in their being with the virtuous; that of government is in its securing good order; that of (the conduct of) affairs is in its ability; and that of (the initiation of) any movement is in ...
— Tao Teh King • Lao-Tze
... to say that he regards the initiation of provincial civil government as an aid in the work of pacification, in which view it is not necessary that a province should be completely pacified as a condition to the initiation of such government. He has expressed to the Commission ...
— The Philippines: Past and Present (vol. 1 of 2) • Dean C. Worcester
... made—that is to say, no new law was to pass without their consent as well as that of the council. Thus, the principle was established of two legislative chambers, with the right, but not the exclusive right, of initiation on the part of government, and in the sixteenth century one would hardly look for broader views of civil liberty and representative government. The foundation of a free commonwealth was thus securely laid, which had William lived, ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... formerly it was [Greek: thus], derived from [Greek: thuein], meaning to offer as a sacrifice, for it seems that victims were chosen from the race of swine for the earliest sacrifices; evidence of which remains in the tradition that pigs are sacrificed at the initiation to the mysteries of Ceres, that when a treaty is ratified peace begins with the slaughter of a pig, and that in solemnizing a marriage the ancient kings and mighty men of Etruria caused the bride and the ...
— Roman Farm Management - The Treatises Of Cato And Varro • Marcus Porcius Cato
... often. It is in the interest of superstition that it should happen again; and the best way to prevent it surely is to tell the masses—Scientific method is no peculiar mystery, requiring a peculiar initiation. It is simply common sense, combined with uncommon courage, which includes uncommon honesty and uncommon patience; and if you will be brave, honest, patient, and rational, you will need no mystagogues to tell you what in science ...
— Health and Education • Charles Kingsley
... recognised as false, as the new apologetic seems to suggest. Faith is not the born storyteller of Modernist theology. Faith is, on the practical side, just the resolution to stand or fall by the noblest hypothesis; and, on the intellectual side, it is a progressive initiation, by experiment which ends in experience, into the unity of the good, the true, and the beautiful, founded on the inner assurance that these three attributes of the divine nature have one source and ...
— Outspoken Essays • William Ralph Inge
... "you have never given me a single sign of life since our interview at Fontainebleau, and I confess that your presence there on the day of the Franciscan's death, and your initiation in certain secrets, caused me the liveliest astonishment I ever experienced ...
— The Vicomte de Bragelonne - Or Ten Years Later being the completion of "The Three - Musketeers" And "Twenty Years After" • Alexandre Dumas
... of Roger van der Weyden, of the painter of the death of Mary, of Ambrogio Lorenzetti, and of the old Umbrian masters. It was, however, neither Bruges, nor Cologne, nor Sienna, nor Perugia, that completed my initiation; it was in the little town of Arezzo that I became a conscious adept in primitive painting. That was ten years ago or even longer. At that period of indigence and simplicity, the municipal museums, though usually kept shut, were always ...
— Penguin Island • Anatole France
... the right time and in the right way. A man whose mighty English was always fast anchored to classic bottoms had surely no sentimental preference for modern sciences. Indeed, in this very essay he seems to demand what at present we must consider as a too early initiation into the ancient languages, no longer the exclusive keys to knowledge. But Milton realized that there was a natural development to the imitative and perceptive powers of man, and he knew that a mere tasking of the verbal memory blighted the diviner faculties of comparison ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, No. 72, October, 1863 • Various
... and disappointment,—for pure art speaks only to the pure by intuition or initiation, and I was yet a novice,—my old newspaper curiosity revived to learn of the successful living rather ...
— Campaigns of a Non-Combatant, - and His Romaunt Abroad During the War • George Alfred Townsend
... which had repeatedly left him a discouraged atom of bewilderment, symbolically environed by our wide-spreading bog. Since Mr. Polymathers's visit, these visions had grown clearer, but not under any rays of hope. His initiation into the elements of mathematics had pointed out the road along which he should travel, but had simultaneously revealed all its obstacles, insurmountable for him solitary and unequipped. In those days his mind was constantly fumbling at some insoluble problem with ...
— Strangers at Lisconnel • Barlow Jane
... must have furnished the first germ of the belief in the immortality of the soul."[2004] The idea of the Orphic mysteries was that humanity is suffering and sinful, and must be initiated in order to wash away its stains and be redeemed from its sins. Initiation puts a man in communication with the divinity. The soul is raised by ecstasy to feel its own divinity, which is the deepest element in all mystic religion. In all this compound of rites and notions the great antecedent philosophy was not the same as ours. It was demonism, ...
— Folkways - A Study of the Sociological Importance of Usages, Manners, Customs, Mores, and Morals • William Graham Sumner
... what the initiation into those mysteries is. I don't know whether I am prepared or not," answered ...
— The Meadow-Brook Girls Under Canvas • Janet Aldridge
... the initiation of the savage into humanity? However far we look back into history the phenomenon is identical among all people who have shaken off the slavery of the animal state: the love of appearance, the inclination for ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... his initiation into Indian winter life. Passing over numerous adventures by water and land, we find the party, on the twelfth of November, leaving their canoes on an island, and wading ashore at low tide over the flats to the ...
— The Jesuits in North America in the Seventeenth Century • Francis Parkman
... and the unfeigned tenderness with which the childless women of the harem caress the babies of their happier rivals. But the sentimentalist moved by this display of family feeling would do well to consider the lives of these much-petted children. Ignorance, unhealthiness and a precocious sexual initiation prevail in all classes. Education consists in learning by heart endless passages of the Koran, and amusement in assisting at spectacles that would be unintelligible to western children, but that the pleasantries of the harem make perfectly ...
— In Morocco • Edith Wharton
... similar rate. It is unfortunate that the Empress Dowager should have died before this reform had been carried to a successful culmination, but whatever may be the result of the movement the fact and the credit of its initiation will ever belong ...
— Court Life in China • Isaac Taylor Headland
... from a farm/forest economy to a diversified modern industrial economy. Per capita income has risen to the West European level; Finland is a member of the European Union and is the only Nordic state to join the euro system at its initiation ...
— The 1999 CIA Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... a long courtship on us, my Clara; and I, perhaps lamenting the laws of decorum—I have done so!—still felt the benefit of the gradual initiation. It is not good for women to be surprised by a sudden revelation of man's character. We also have things to learn—there is matter for learning everywhere. Some day you will tell me the difference of what you ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... and his chums. Ted Slavin and Ward Kenwood were just as vigorously employed; and several times in the course of the day the rivals ran across each other while engaged in thus drumming up new subjects for initiation. ...
— The Banner Boy Scouts - Or, The Struggle for Leadership • George A. Warren
... Platonists sought for wisdom by travelling all over the world. Not content with the rites already known, they raked up obscure ceremonies and imported strange mysteries. Reflection and dialectic were no longer sufficient to ensure knowledge; asceticism, devotion, and initiation, were necessary for divine science. The idea broached by Plato in the Timaeus of intermediate beings between the gods and man, seemed to meet their requirements; and accordingly they at once adopted it. An entire hierarchy of daimones was imagined, and on this a system of ...
— A History of Roman Literature - From the Earliest Period to the Death of Marcus Aurelius • Charles Thomas Cruttwell
... destitute of philological criticism, unless everybody had known that the scribes in convents who copied the classics were famous for committing endless blunders in their transcriptions. Thus, his good fortune stood steadfastly by him all through his extraordinary forgery; at its initiation as well as during ...
— Tacitus and Bracciolini - The Annals Forged in the XVth Century • John Wilson Ross
... first rite corresponds to the circumcision and naming of Jesus, so does the second to His presentation in the temple. These two rites really begin the catechumenate or period of instruction in the faith and discipline of the church. It depended on the individual how long he would wait for initiation. Whenever he felt inclined, he gave in his name as a candidate. This was usually done at the beginning of Lent. The bishop and clergy next examined the candidates one by one, and ascertained from their ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 3 - "Banks" to "Bassoon" • Various
... whether it is quite judicious to make French comic papers her initiation into the ideas of Western civilisation. Into this I must inquire. I must also talk seriously to her with a view to her ultimate destiny. But as my view would be distorted by the red dressing-gown, I shall wait until she is decently clad. I think I shall have to set apart certain hours of the day ...
— The Morals of Marcus Ordeyne • William J. Locke
... underlying ideas of a man's life, we will commence with the child. Nothing, as far as I have been able to make out, happens to him, for fetish reasons, when he first appears on the scene. He receives at birth, as is usual, a name which is changed for another on his initiation into the secret society, this secret society having also, as usual, a secret language. About the age of three or five years the boy is decorated, under the auspices of the witch doctor, with certain ...
— Travels in West Africa • Mary H. Kingsley
... the proprietor of the Utinam Club. "I perceive, Mr. Indiman, that you are bent upon amusing yourself; and since circumstances have undeniably favored you, you may continue to do so. But not at my expense," and thereupon he mentioned a figure for initiation and dues that made me sit up. But Indiman settled without flinching; he happened to have his check-book with him, and the remaining ...
— The Gates of Chance • Van Tassel Sutphen
... has won the requisite number of points for the first degree, a unanimous vote of all leaders in council assembled, is necessary, after which, a solemn ceremony of initiation is conducted. ...
— Camping For Boys • H.W. Gibson
... single elementary form, the measures, | >q. q |, or | >q. q q |, for example. Variation, subordination, synthesis, are present in every rhythmical sequence. The regular succession is interrupted by variant groups; points of initiation in the form of redundant syllables, points of finality in the form of syncopated measures, are introduced periodically, making the rhythm form a complex one, the full set of relations involved being represented only by the complete succession of elements contained ...
— Harvard Psychological Studies, Volume 1 • Various
... over the Negro was due in large degree to the mysterious secrecy of the meetings, the weird initiation ceremony that made him feel fearfully good from his head to his heels, the imposing ritual, and the songs. The ritual, it is said, was not used in the North; it was probably adopted for the particular benefit ...
— The Sequel of Appomattox - A Chronicle of the Reunion of the States, Volume 32 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Walter Lynwood Fleming
... surround us, darkness and silence still hang about our pain. But slowly the clinging companionship with the dead is linked with our living affections and duties, and we begin to feel our sorrow as a solemn initiation preparing us for that sense of loving, pitying fellowship with the fullest human lot which, I must think, no one who has tasted it will deny to be the chief blessedness of our life. And especially to know what the last parting is, ...
— George Eliot; A Critical Study of Her Life, Writings & Philosophy • George Willis Cooke
... Charles became a young man again, enthralled by the splendor of a nature so lofty. He wished for a fuller initiation into the secret history of a life blighted rather by fate than by her own fault. Mme. d'Aiglemont heard him ask the cause of the overwhelming sorrow which had blended all the harmonies of sadness with her beauty; she gave him one glance, ...
— A Woman of Thirty • Honore de Balzac
... entombment alive, wild beasts, worse men, and hideous diseases—he can with difficulty, it seems to me, continue his own career of worldly prosperity without suspecting that he may all the while not be really inside the game, that he may lack the great initiation. ...
— The Varieties of Religious Experience • William James
... Baker, a clergyman of the Establishment, and with whom I had been in habits of intimacy for some time. Dr. Baker was a learned and pious man. He had performed the duties of his profession, from the time of his initiation into the church, in an exemplary manner; not only by paying a proper attention to the customary services, but by the frequent visitation of the sick and the instruction of the poor. This he had ...
— The History of the Rise, Progress and Accomplishment of the - Abolition of the African Slave-Trade, by the British Parliament (1839) • Thomas Clarkson
... him. He was as mild as contrition and as copious as faith; he was never so fine as on a shy return, and even better at forgiving than at being forgiven. I dare say it was a smaller matter than that famous night at Wimbledon, the night of the problematical sobriety and of Miss Anvoy's initiation; but I was as much in it on this occasion as I had been out of it then. At about 1.30 he ...
— The Coxon Fund • Henry James
... attempts made to suppress this practice, are on the initiation into office of new foo-yunes, or governors, who have not yet perfectly learned the established usages, or who have not been propitiated by the necessary gratuities. In these cases, a terrible revolution ...
— The American Quarterly Review, No. 17, March 1831 • Various
... own are more profusely represented than they have the good-fortune to be in America, and consequently limit our contention to the point that his talent itself was already formed when this happy initiation was opened to it. He went to England for the first time in 1878. but it was not all at once that he fell into the trick, so irresistible for an artist doing his special work, of living there, I must forbid ...
— Picture and Text - 1893 • Henry James
... crime. "Poor Queen, poor Queen!" she muttered at intervals, "she was still alive when they threw her from the window. If I had been there I would have wept on her grave." She was but fifteen, and it was her initiation into those Balkan politics in which, as Madame Rizoff, she was herself later to play ...
— Twenty Years Of Balkan Tangle • Durham M. Edith
... the old prison of St. Lazare, the women's prison of Paris, the deaconesses have a mission especially concerned with caring for discharged female convicts. As was the case at Kaiserswerth, this, in its initiation, is closely connected with the saintly life of Elizabeth Fry. When she came to Paris, in 1835, a drawing-room meeting was held at the residence of the Duchess de Broglie, in which she told of her efforts to ...
— Deaconesses in Europe - and their Lessons for America • Jane M. Bancroft
... the last years of his life, that great Teacher met this young Aeschylus from Athens; whether the years the latter spent in Sicily on this his first visit there, were the due seven years of his Pythagorean probation and initiation? "Veniat Aeschylus," says Cicero, "non poeta solum, sed etiam Pythagoreus: sic enim accepimus ";—and we may accept it too; for that was the Theosophical Movement of the age; and he above all others, Pythagoras having died, was the great Theosophist. They had the ...
— The Crest-Wave of Evolution • Kenneth Morris
... goes far to reconcile us to the tendency to give governments an almost complete monopoly in the initiation of legislation which is so evident in modern parliamentary life. Much useful legislation in the past has been due to private and independent members, but the chance of bills introduced by such members ever becoming law is steadily ...
— The Map of Life - Conduct and Character • William Edward Hartpole Lecky
... make the entrance into Italy sublime. Nowhere do the Alps exhibit their full stature, their commanding puissance, with such majesty as in the gates of Italy; and of all those gates I think there is none to compare with Maloja, none certainly to rival it in abruptness of initiation into the Italian secret. Below Vico Soprano we pass already into the violets and blues of Titian's landscape. Then come the purple boulders among chestnut trees; then the double dolomite-like peak of Pitz Badin ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Complete - Series I, II, and III • John Symonds
... much—not nearly so much as he had counted on—still, ten thousand dollars was ten thousand dollars; besides, if the Gulwings did their work cannily the ten thousand ought to be merely a starter, an initiation fee, really, for the victim. Once he was enmeshed, trust Sig and Alf to trim him to his underwear; the machinery of the wire-tapping game was geared for ...
— Sundry Accounts • Irvin S. Cobb
... true sense of the term, MEN OF LETTERS, by virtue of (as Ruskin calls it) "the kingship of words." "Charm" is derived from the Latin "carmen," a song that fascinates, and means to control by incantation, to subdue; while Teleo concerns the secret powers and wisdom of consecration and initiation. It is because of modern misuse of antique terms that, we have considered this somewhat lengthy explanation necessary, in order to clear away the accumulated debris of the ages, from the true ...
— The Light of Egypt, Volume II • Henry O. Wagner/Belle M. Wagner/Thomas H. Burgoyne
... cherished belief of some philosophers, and of many Christians, that our world, in its present state, contains the mere embryo of intelligent, moral, and religious happiness; that the progress of man in his present state is but the initiation of an interminable career of glory; and that his most widely extended associations are a preparation for as interminably an intercourse with the whole family of an intelligent universe." [463] Dr. Arnott may add a final word, a last link in this evidential chain of analogy. ...
— Moon Lore • Timothy Harley
... how unmistakably this knowledge brings home to us the great doctrine of Maya, the transitoriness and unreality of earthly things, the utterly deceptive nature of appearances! When the candidate for initiation sees (not merely believes, remember, but actually sees) that what has always before seemed to him empty space is in reality a solid mass of inconceivable density, and that the matter which has appeared to ...
— Occult Chemistry - Clairvoyant Observations on the Chemical Elements • Annie Besant and Charles W. Leadbeater
... then, excuse us for having grouped around several of the prisoners personages to be known in this tale, and other secondary figures, destined to place in active relief certain critical events necessary to complete this initiation into prison life. Let us ...
— Mysteries of Paris, V3 • Eugene Sue
... feathers, used as a flag or signal, elevated on a spear; similar ones are worn by the males, of eagle or emu feathers over the pubes. 4. Let-ter-rer—kangaroo teeth worn tied to the hair of young males and females after the ceremonies of initiation. 5 and 6. Coverings for the pubes, worn by females, one is of fur string in threads, the other of skins cut in strips. 7. Tufts of white feathers worn round the neck. 8. Tufts of feathers stained red, worn round the ...
— Journals Of Expeditions Of Discovery Into Central • Edward John Eyre
... the conventional hedonism, lost its ascetic character and degenerated into licentiousness. This was the case with the eighteenth-century mysticism known as Chassidism, though, as its name ('Saintliness') implies, it was innocent enough at its initiation. Violent dances, and other emotional and sensual stimulations, led to a state of exaltation during which the line of morality was overstepped. But there was nevertheless, as Dr. Schechter has shown, considerable ...
— Judaism • Israel Abrahams
... They were having a fraternity initiation, it seems, and Jack was bringing the goat, his horns painted with phosphorus, a bunch of fire-crackers tied to his tail. Fire-crackers to the tail of ...
— The Pot Boiler • Upton Sinclair
... fairly stated the attitude towards each other of the workers to whose coming together must be attributed as much of the change in the Irish situation as is due to Irish initiation, it will be seen that what had so long kept them apart in public affairs, outside politics, was a difference of opinion, not so much as to the conditions to be dealt with, nor, indeed, as to the end to be sought, but rather as to the means most effective for the ...
— Ireland In The New Century • Horace Plunkett
... fluctuated, during the last years of his life, between the two professions of a violator of the laws and a retainer to their administration. He had originally devoted himself to the first; and probably his initiation in the mysteries of thieving qualified him to be peculiarly expert in the profession of a thief-taker—a profession he had adopted, not from choice, but necessity. In this employment his reputation was great, though perhaps not equal to ...
— Caleb Williams - Things As They Are • William Godwin
... methods of embryological investigation. He had already been the teacher of Karl Ernst von Baer; and though the pupil outran the master, and has become the pride of the scientific world, it is but just to remember that he owed to him his first initiation into the processes of embryological research. Dollinger was a careful, minute, persevering observer, as well as a deep thinker; but he was as indolent with his pen as he was industrious with his brain. He gave his intellectual capital to ...
— Louis Agassiz: His Life and Correspondence • Louis Agassiz
... carried away by it, without any volition of their own. Recollect, the memory can tyrannise, as well as the imagination. Derangement, I believe, has been considered as a loss of control over the sequence of ideas. The mind, once set in motion, is henceforth deprived of the power of initiation, and becomes the victim of a train of associations, one thought suggesting another, in the way of cause and effect, as if by a mechanical process, or some physical necessity. No one, who has had experience of men of studious habits, but must recognise the existence ...
— English Prose - A Series of Related Essays for the Discussion and Practice • Frederick William Roe (edit. and select.)
... reference to Western cavalry and Western affairs altogether, for I served at no time with the Army of Northern Virginia, and know nothing of it but the bare outline of its glorious and unequaled record. Cavalry officers, after long and arduous service, and a thorough initiation into all the mysteries of their craft, were rewarded and encouraged by having some staff officer, or officer educated to shoot heavy artillery, run steamships, or mix chemical preparations, promoted over their heads; and were expected to be delighted with him, although ...
— History of Morgan's Cavalry • Basil W. Duke
... Wandering Years that I would especially refer, as these volumes contain the sum of the Sage's observations during a long life, as to what Man should do, under present circumstances, to obtain mastery over outward, through an initiation into inward life, ...
— Woman in the Ninteenth Century - and Kindred Papers Relating to the Sphere, Condition - and Duties, of Woman. • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... became acquainted with Petralto Garcia. I believe I owed the introduction to my beautiful hound, Lutha; but, at any rate, our first conversation was quite as sensible as if we had gone through the legitimate initiation. I know it was in the mountains, and that within an hour our tastes and sympathies had touched each other ...
— Winter Evening Tales • Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr
... Life; but before doing so I must enroll your name among the members of our Society; in fact, one of the rules of the Society is that unless a person becomes a member we can tell him nothing, beyond allowing him to read the circular which you have already seen. The initiation fee is five dollars, and you are at liberty not to take the powder if you desire not to do so after you have become a member, but if you wish to become a member in high standing, and to take the powder, which will insure you a length of life ...
— Montezuma's Castle and Other Weird Tales • Charles B. Cory
... Melroy replied. "Here's the situation. I have about fifty of my own men, from Pittsburgh, here, but they can't work on the reactors because they don't belong to the Industrial Federation of Atomic Workers, and I can't just pay their initiation fees and union dues and get union cards for them, because admission to this union is on an annual quota basis, and this is December, and the quota's full. So I have to use them outside the reactor area, on fabrication and assembly work. And I have to hire through the ...
— Day of the Moron • Henry Beam Piper
... with 4000 men. The man was evidently in earnest, and was a loyal one. He believed every word he said, but he had in fact seen only a few of the enemy's horsemen who were scouting toward us, and believed their statement that an army was at their back. It was our initiation into an experience of rumors that was to continue as long as the war. We were to get them daily and almost hourly; sometimes with a little foundation of fact, sometimes with none; rarely purposely deceptive, but always grossly exaggerated, making chimeras with ...
— Military Reminiscences of the Civil War V1 • Jacob Dolson Cox
... matter. Juvenal laughs at the mortifications of the devotees of Isis; in his Necromancy Lucian parodies the interminable purifications of the magi, and in the Metamorphoses Apuleius relates the various scenes of an initiation into the mysteries of Isis with the fervor of a neophyte and {14} the studied refinement of a rhetorician. But as a rule we find only incidental remarks and superficial observations in the authors. ...
— The Oriental Religions in Roman Paganism • Franz Cumont
... time? Will you not then, as long as you have been permitted, after seeing the spectacle and the solemnity, when he leads you out, go with adoration of him and thanks for what you have heard and seen? No; but I would still enjoy the feast. The initiated too would wish to be longer in the initiation; and perhaps also those at Olympia to see other athletes. But the solemnity is ended; go away like a grateful and modest man; make room for others; others also must be born, as you were, and, being born, they must have a place, and houses, and necessary things. And if the first do not ...
— A Selection from the Discourses of Epictetus With the Encheiridion • Epictetus
... a theatre, and listened to a gentleman saying unintelligible things before pictures that she would have enjoyed looking at if his explanations had not prevented her from understanding them. This initiation had shown her that North Dormer was a small place, and developed in her a thirst for information that her position as custodian of the village library had previously failed to excite. For a month or two she dipped feverishly ...
— Summer • Edith Wharton
... was when the priests of the Osiris-Isis religion made their bid to the classical world. They offered immortality by initiation. Learn the proper rites, learn the master words, and secure eternal life among the great gods. It was a religion for the exceptional man down to the last; it required training and knowledge. Even in its most popular form in the Ptolemaic period, a specially instructed ...
— The Egyptian Conception of Immortality • George Andrew Reisner
... unfamiliar one, there is first the initiation by employment in a sweater's shop, and a few months, or even weeks, gives all the necessary facility. Then comes the question of workroom; and here it is only necessary to take the family room, and hire ...
— Prisoners of Poverty Abroad • Helen Campbell
... the first pioneering was done by devoted Franciscans and Jesuits, their chiefest concern the souls of the gentile Indians. In similar wise, the pioneering of northern Arizona had its initiation in a hope of the Mormon Church for conversion of the Indians of the canyons and plains. In neither case was there the desired degree of success, but each period has brought to us many stories of heroism and self-sacrifice on the part of the missionaries. In the days when ...
— Mormon Settlement in Arizona • James H. McClintock
... Mormon at Salt Lake City of the name of W.W. Phelps. He is from Cortland, State of New York, and has been a Saint for a good many years. It is said he enacts the character of the Devil, with a pea-green tail, in the Mormon initiation ceremonies. He also published an almanac, in which he blends astronomy with short moral essays, and suggestions in regard to the proper management of hens. He also contributes a poem, entitled "The Tombs," to his almanac for the current ...
— The Complete Works of Artemus Ward, Part 4 • Charles Farrar Browne
... the above advice if followed conscientiously by you would go to make you really fit for initiation into the more advanced stages of mastery. Take it to heart by all means. Be convinced, the man who looks for quick results and a royal road to the mastery of Mental Science breaks down in frequent despair at apparent failures and neglects his ...
— The Doctrine and Practice of Yoga • A. P. Mukerji
... to professional medicine for cases. They're lying around loose. Why, when I was at Ann Arbor—in a fraternity initiation—we bared a chap's shoulders, showed him a white-hot poker, blindfolded him, told him to stand steady, and—touched him with a piece of ice. A piece of ice, I tell you! What happened? Damned if it—pardon ...
— The Faith Healer - A Play in Three Acts • William Vaughn Moody
... the temple. They work with and teach those alone who have passed through certain stages of spiritual unfoldment and are able to visit the temple in their spiritual bodies; a feat taught in the first initiation which usually takes place outside the temple as it is not convenient for all to visit ...
— The Rosicrucian Mysteries • Max Heindel
... white places of old memory, sleeping by the blue waves as if no Vasco de Gama had ever come sailing up out of the West to disturb their enchanted slumber. The approach to these dreamy shores was dark and tumultuous, as if nature had set an initiation of contrasting toil before the enjoyment of that light and peace. It followed the bed of a mountain stream, which began in a mere pleat of the hills, tumbling often in white cascades, and enduring no boat upon its waters until half its course was ...
— Apologia Diffidentis • W. Compton Leith
... he appears to have got the better of his propensity for play, if we may judge from the following wise sentiment:—'It was too great a consumer,' he said, 'of four things—time, health, fortune, and thinking.' But a writer in the Edinburgh Review seems to doubt Selwyn's reformation; for his initiation of Wilberforce occurred in 1782, when he was 63; and previously, in 1776, he underwent the process of dunning from Lord Derby, before-mentioned, and in 1779 from Mr Crawford ('Fish Crawford,' as he was called), each of whom, like Mr Shafto, 'had a sum to ...
— The Gaming Table: Its Votaries and Victims - Volume I (of II) • Andrew Steinmetz
... by trials, and rewards him at the last by blessing his union with the maiden. The trials of silence, secrecy, and hardihood in passing through the dread elements of fire and water were ancient literary materials; they may be found in the account of the initiation of a neophyte into the mysteries of Isis in Apuleius's "Metamorphoses; or, The Golden Ass," a romance written in the second century. By placing the scene of the opera in Egypt, the belief of Freemasons that their order originated ...
— A Book of Operas - Their Histories, Their Plots, and Their Music • Henry Edward Krehbiel
... more advanced college near by, which impression was heightened when he volunteered his services and suggested many improvements in the "trap." When completed, the boys and their new friend moved away some distance, to await the result of the "initiation." Two hours passed in uncomfortable silence, and then one of the leaders said, "I don't believe he'll come to-night." "Oh, yes," said the stranger, pleasantly; "the truth is, he has come." "What!" cried ...
— Golden Days for Boys and Girls, Vol. XIII, Nov. 28, 1891 • Various
... which, having the support of the Gov.-General of the day, was granted; and Mr. Butler, taking advantage of this recent precedent, also succeeded in founding a commercial house in Manila. To these foreigners is due the initiation of the traffic in those products which became the staple trade of the Colony and paved the way for the bulk of the business being, as it is to-day, in the hands of ...
— The Philippine Islands • John Foreman
... change, for the organ at once returns to its normal quiescent state as soon as it ceases to function. Such temporary functional change, brought about in the moment of functioning, is usually dependent for its initiation upon some neuro-muscular mechanism, though it may be elicited also by a chemical stimulus. It is thus always a phenomenon of "behaviour." "From such temporary changes are sharply to be distinguished all permanent alterations which first appear in ...
— Form and Function - A Contribution to the History of Animal Morphology • E. S. (Edward Stuart) Russell
... really to teach, from the instant they confer any power—whether psychic, mental, or physical—on their pupils, they take upon themselves all the sins of that pupil, in connexion with the Occult Sciences, whether of omission or commission, until the moment when initiation makes the pupil a Master and responsible in his turn. There is a weird and mystic religious law, greatly reverenced and acted upon in the Greek, half-forgotten in the Roman Catholic, and absolutely extinct in the Protestant Church. ...
— Studies in Occultism; A Series of Reprints from the Writings of H. P. Blavatsky • H. P. Blavatsky
... nations will stand on an equality with them. But they will by the end of the Forty Days have grasped the fact that they are not engaged in a secular revolution and are not entering on a career of worldly power. They will be ready for their active ministry after Pentecost, a ministry of spiritual initiation into the Kingdom of God. When in response to their preaching men asked the question: "Men and brethren, what shall we do?" They were ready with their answer: "Repent and be baptised every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ for ...
— Our Lady Saint Mary • J. G. H. Barry
... letter presents explicitly her threefold policy: reform of the Church, return to Rome, the initiation of a Crusade. In her little letter to Sir John Hawkwood, we have already seen her devotion to this last cause. A Crusade in the fourteenth century was not to be. Nevertheless, Catherine never showed more political wisdom than in this matter, and it was the one aim of her life in which she wholly ...
— Letters of Catherine Benincasa • Catherine Benincasa
... governments which have for their principle resistance and obstruction; but there are also governments of initiation. Governments founded on pure liberty are not necessarily the most active. Free assemblies are better suited to put the drag upon the wheels, to check them when they go too fast, than to accelerate them. Like criticism, which is in fact their province ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 102, April, 1866 • Various
... write no more. What, my uncle dead! General Kock, Major Hall, Advocate Coster—all dead! It seemed impossible. We could not understand it, this first initiation of ...
— With Steyn and De Wet • Philip Pienaar
... full-grown Copperhead peers through the orifice. "We whisper the word "Peace," or "Peoria," or whatever the monthly pass-word is, and the door is open, and we find ourselves within the vestibule of the temple, surrounded by a little group going through the preliminary exercises of initiation. We see the candidate and sponsors, with hands uplifted, and listen to the very poor reading of an officer, from the ritual, and giving the new comer his first dose of States' sovereignty and secession. This is so mystified and clouded with ...
— The Great North-Western Conspiracy In All Its Startling Details • I. Windslow Ayer
... possible, but that had not really ripened and flowered. He met the decent family eyes across the table, met them afterwards in the music-room, but only to read in them still what he had learned to read during his first months, the time of over-anxious initiation, a kind of apprehension in which the terms and conditions were finally fixed and absolute. This directed regard rested at its ease, but it neither lingered nor penetrated, and was, to the Prince's fancy, much of the same order ...
— The Golden Bowl • Henry James
... my election and initiation to membership, the Supreme Lodge was in convention and they requested me to make a talk. I suggested a scheme to save the wastage of child life resulting from the death of parents and the scattering of their babies; and ...
— The Iron Puddler • James J. Davis
... Butenval in his Precis du Traite de Commerce, 1786, endeavours to prove that in the initiation of negotiations Pitt was acting in obedience ...
— The Political History of England - Vol. X. • William Hunt
... only to them. And this the evil demons imitating, commanded it to be done also in the mysteries of Mithras; for that bread and a cup of water are set forth with certain explanations in the ceremonial of initiation, you either know or ...
— A Source Book for Ancient Church History • Joseph Cullen Ayer, Jr., Ph.D.
... whips (364) and burning torches of the Furies. Nay, he attempted by magical rites to bring up her ghost from below, and soften her rage against him. When he was in Greece, he durst not attend the celebration of the Eleusinian mysteries, at the initiation of which, impious and wicked persons are warned by the voice of the herald from approaching the rites [604]. Besides the murder of his mother, he had been guilty of that of his aunt; for, being obliged ...
— The Lives Of The Twelve Caesars, Complete - To Which Are Added, His Lives Of The Grammarians, Rhetoricians, And Poets • C. Suetonius Tranquillus
... identity thoroughly established, his passports all correct, and his heart full with the new doctrine that his initiation had developed in him, together with the mission which poor old Batavsky had intrusted him with, he ...
— The Boy Nihilist - or, Young America in Russia • Allan Arnold
... mind, the perfunctory in things ecclesiastical is hardly more distressing than the service of books as conducted in many great libraries. One feels that the librarii should be a sacred order, nearly allied to the monastic, refined by varying steps of initiation, and certainly celibates. They should give out their books as the priest his sacrament, should wear sacred vestments, and bear about with them the priestlike aura, as of divine incarnations of the great spirit of Truth and Art in whose temples ...
— The Book-Bills of Narcissus - An Account Rendered by Richard Le Gallienne • Le Gallienne, Richard
... savages is the amputation of a finger as a sacrifice to a deity. In the tribe of the Dakotas the relatives of a dead chief pacified his spirit by amputating a finger. In a similar way, during his initiation, the young Mandan warrior, "holding up the little finger of his left hand to the Great Spirit," ... "expresses his willingness to give it as a sacrifice, and he lays it on the dried buffalo skull, when another chops it off near ...
— Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine • George M. Gould |
