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Ishmael   /ˈɪʃmil/  /ˈɪʃmeɪl/   Listen
Ishmael

noun
1.
(Old Testament) the son of Abraham who was cast out after the birth of Isaac; considered the forebear of 12 Arabian tribes.
2.
A person who is rejected (from society or home).  Synonyms: castaway, outcast, pariah.






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"Ishmael" Quotes from Famous Books



... which he maintained would be a hindrance, not a help—"they will iron you out, and make you a decent member of society—and then, Razorre, God help the poet in you ... poets and artists should never be decent ... only the true son of Ishmael can ever ...
— Tramping on Life - An Autobiographical Narrative • Harry Kemp

... from this must have transpired the incidents recorded of Hagar and Ishmael,—incidents that might have occurred yesterday, or last week; for a few thousand years count but little ...
— Byeways in Palestine • James Finn

... still stood mute awhile. At length, in a pained tone, spoke: "How hard the lot of that pleader who, in his zeal conceding too much, is taken to belong to a side which he but labors, however ineffectually, to convert!" Then with another change of air: "To you, an Ishmael, disguising in sportiveness my intent, I came ambassador from the human race, charged with the assurance that for your mislike they bore no answering grudge, but sought to conciliate accord between you and them. Yet you take me not for the honest ...
— The Confidence-Man • Herman Melville

... resolute tone, "if I had some independence, however small, to count on,—nay, if among all my tribe of dainty relatives there were but one female who would accompany Violante to the exile's hearth,—Ishmael had his Hagar. But how can we two rough-bearded men provide for all the nameless wants and cares of a frail female child? And she has been so delicately reared,—the woman-child needs the fostering hand and ...
— My Novel, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... obtained any widely extended dominion over the scattered population; and foreign powers have still more rarely exercised authority for any considerable period over the freedom-loving descendants of Ishmael. But towards the beginning of the sixth century of our era the Abyssinians of Axum, a Christian people, "raised" far "above the ordinary level of African barbarism" by their religion and by their constant intercourse with Rome, succeeded in attaching to their ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 7. (of 7): The Sassanian or New Persian Empire • George Rawlinson

... ironical—that he had never seen or heard anything quite like that before, and was struck with wonder at it. Yet he had cast flies before we were born, and shot even earlier than he had cast a fly, and was a very Ishmael for travel. Rarely could you get an account of his own experiences, and then only in illustration ...
— The Mountains • Stewart Edward White

... handsome likenesses of very plain people. Some folks pronounced Hartley Coleridge too Jewish. But to be a Jew is to be an Arab. And our own feeling was, when we met Hartley at times in solitary or desolate places of Westmoreland and Cumberland, that here was a son of Ishmael walking in the wilderness of Edom. The coruscating nimbus of his curling and profuse black hair, black as erebus, strengthened the Saracen impression of his features and complexion. He wanted only a turban on his head, and a spear in his right hand, to ...
— The Posthumous Works of Thomas De Quincey, Vol. II (2 vols) • Thomas De Quincey

... this chapter, it may be proper to give some account of the subverters of the Eastern empire, and of their irruption into Europe. The Arabs, called in the middle ages Saracens, are supposed to be descended from Ishmael, the son of Abraham and Hagar. During all the changes of dynasties and empires in the eastern and western world, they retained their independence, though almost constantly at war with the surrounding states. "Their hand was against every ...
— Pinnock's Improved Edition of Dr. Goldsmith's History of Rome • Oliver Goldsmith

... help to make the phraseology of the Psalms and even of the narratives clear to them. Wonder stories such as the Creation, the Flood, the Burning Bush, Elijah's experiences, appeal to them on another side, the side that is eager to wonder: the accounts of the childhood of Ishmael, Isaac, Joseph, Moses, David and Samuel, and the little Syrian maid, come very close to them. Such stories should be given to young children so that they form part of the enchanted memory ...
— The Child Under Eight • E.R. Murray and Henrietta Brown Smith

... it. We have not as yet correctly worked out that theory, and therefore it is not enough in our practice. More particularly in this subject do we require something ideal in the manner, for few are equally true in the characters as in the external scene. Here, certainly, neither Hagar nor Ishmael are of their nation and country. It is too lovely a picture to wish touched. The remarks we venture upon may be applied to most modern pictures of ancient subjects, and may be worth consideration. There are two other pictures, very beautiful ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 54, No. 334, August 1843 • Various

... hundred strangers on board. The act of leaping into the sea had been a mere impulse, the prompting of an unsuspected instinct. She might hate his race, but he was still its slave. All his life he had been an Ishmael, feared and disliked; humankind had given him only cause to hate and despise it, and yet blood remained stronger than belief when a human life was in peril. The young man laughed, and the boat's from the Francis Cadman, drawing near, heard the mocking laughter and ceased ...
— In the Roaring Fifties • Edward Dyson

... the blood-men, they also were under command and the names of their captains were, Captain Cain, Captain Nimrod, Captain Ishmael, Captain Esau, Captain Saul, Captain Absalom, Captain ...
— The Holy War • John Bunyan

... attributed to her father, and Rabbi Joseph ibn Nagdela's wife was esteemed the most learned and representative woman in Granada. Even in the choir of Arabic-Andalusian poets we hear the voice of a Jewish songstress, Kasmune, the daughter of the poet Ishmael. Only a few blossoms of her delicate poetry have been preserved.[31] Catching sight of her young face in the mirror, ...
— Jewish Literature and Other Essays • Gustav Karpeles

... Ishmael had taken hold of me by then and I wandered continually. Sometimes Ahmed came with me; we have shot big game together in most parts of the globe. A few times he stayed with us in Paris, but never for long; he always wearied to get back to the desert. Five years ago the ...
— The Sheik - A Novel • E. M. Hull

... biographical notice of Hazlitt (a notice entirely free from the malignity with which De Quincey has been sometimes charged), declares with quite as much truth as point, that Hazlitt's guiding principle was, "Whatever is, is wrong." He was the very ideal of a literary Ishmael; and after the fullest admission of the almost incredible virulence and unfairness of his foes, it has to be admitted, likewise, that he was quite as ready to quarrel with his friends. He succeeded, at least once, in forcing ...
— Essays in English Literature, 1780-1860 • George Saintsbury

... lawlessness—"frenetic to be free." He was hail-fellow well-met, we are told—but is this part of a Browning legend?—with tramps and gipsies, and he wandered gladly, whether through devout sympathy or curiosity of mood we know not, into Little Bethels and other tents of spiritual Ishmael. ...
— Robert Browning • Edward Dowden

... up our heads and say so, not only to ourselves and to the Lord, but to the neighbours? I'm afraid she won't understand much of it, but I think I shall find the place and read to Little Poll about Abraham and Isaac to-night, and probably about Hagar and Ishmael to-morrow night, and it wouldn't surprise me a mite to hear myself saying 'Praise the Lord,' right out loud, any time, any place. Let's gather a great big bouquet of our loveliest flowers, and go tell Mother ...
— A Daughter of the Land • Gene Stratton-Porter

... their burdens upon my back. Little sable folk, asleep and ahungered, drawn to that barefoot woman's breast; and the tired boy, weeping as he held to his father's hand; and the father with the sweat of fatigue and doubt upon his forehead,—children of Ishmael all; war raging in the land, but God overhead! These are the "wandering Jews" of our day, hated North and South, because they are poor and blind, and do no harm; but out of their wrongs has arisen the abasement of their wrongers. Is ...
— Campaigns of a Non-Combatant, - and His Romaunt Abroad During the War • George Alfred Townsend

... limped painfully to his attic retreat, his bitterest reflection might have been that even the children, his former partners in every plot against the public peace, had now joined in the general assault upon him. Truly, every man's hand was raised against Jocko, and in the spirit of Ishmael he entered on ...
— Children of the Tenements • Jacob A. Riis

... fantastic shadows, and through a rocky channel a russet stream of shallow waters threaded its downward path under the reeds, and no living thing was near him save some quiet browsing herds far off, and their Arab shepherd-lad that an artist might have sketched as Ishmael. What his future might have been rose before his thoughts; what it must be rose also, bitterly, blackly, drearily in contrast. A noble without even a name; a chief of his race without even the power to claim kinship with that race; owner by law of three thousand broad English acres, yet an ...
— Under Two Flags • Ouida [Louise de la Ramee]

... should have the fellow at advantage, inasmuch as he would doubtless have put a fairly strong prize crew on board the ship, which would proportionately weaken his own crew. Full of the hope that this Ishmael of the sea might be about to place himself within my power, I caused all hands to be called, and, having first made sail, sent them to quarters, the gunner at the same time descending to the magazine and sending up a plentiful ...
— A Pirate of the Caribbees • Harry Collingwood

... only jealous of work that he could never have achieved. As for literary critics, it may be set down once and for all that they are "suspect." They write; ergo, they must be unjust. The dilemma has branching horns. Is there no midway spot, no safety ground for that weary Ishmael the professional critic to escape being gored? Naturally any expression of personal feeling on his part is set down to mental arrogance. He is permitted like the wind to move over the face of the waters, but he must remain unseen. We ...
— Promenades of an Impressionist • James Huneker

... Wednesday afternoon, as Dam, a wretched, forlorn Ishmael, sat alone in a noisy crowd, reading a "penny horrible" (admirable, stimulating books crammed with brave deeds and noble sentiments if not with faultless English) the Haddock entered the form-room, followed ...
— Snake and Sword - A Novel • Percival Christopher Wren

... connected with any clique of authors or journalists. He thought this was one reason why the London reviewers—whom he once styled "those asses the critics"—were so unfriendly toward him. He was not of their set, and some of them regarded him as a sort of literary Ishmael, who had his hand raised against all his contemporaries, a quarrelsome and cantankerous although very able man, and therefore to be ignored or sat down upon whenever possible. He once said, "I don't know a man on the press who would do me a favor. The press is a ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, December, 1885 • Various

... those chosen as representatives of the tribes to gather every hundred years at the grave of the great teacher of Caballah whose doctrines give the chosen ones power on earth and supremacy over all the descendants of Ishmael. Eighteen hundred years the struggle has been conducted by the nation of Israel for supremacy which was promised to Abraham and which was taken away from us by the Cross. Trampled under foot by our enemies, under the terror of death and all kinds of humiliation and violence, the nation of Israel, ...
— The History of a Lie - 'The Protocols of the Wise Men of Zion' • Herman Bernstein

... Councils have regarded as a prophet—hath read in the stars that thy marriage shall reconcile me with a powerful enemy, and that thy husband shall be Christian, leaving thus the fairest ground to hope that the conversion of the Soldan, and the bringing in of the sons of Ishmael to the pale of the church, will be the consequence of thy wedding with Saladin. Come, thou must make some sacrifice rather ...
— The Talisman • Sir Walter Scott

... to barbarism was illustrated by historic references. The emigration headed by Abraham soon developed a mass of barbarism,—Lot giving rise to the Moabites and the Ammonites; meanwhile, Abraham throwing off upon the world in his son Ishmael another stock of barbarians—the Arabs,—a name which according to some signifies Westerners. One generation later, and another ferocious race springs from the family of Isaac—the descendants of Esau, or the Edomites. Then coming down to the time ...
— American Scenes, and Christian Slavery - A Recent Tour of Four Thousand Miles in the United States • Ebenezer Davies

... shining columns, fountains of fresh water.[Footnote: See Mr. Yates's 'Annotations upon Fellowes's Researches in Anatolia,' as one authority for this singular phenomenon.] In the desert of the sea are found Arabian fountains of Ishmael and Isaac! Are these fountains poisoned for the poor victim of fever, because they have to travel through a contagion of waters not potable? Oh, no! They bound upwards like arrows, cleaving the seas above with as much projectile force as the glittering water-works of Versailles cleave ...
— Theological Essays and Other Papers v1 • Thomas de Quincey

... Lycurgus at Sparta, and Cecrops in the Athenian Commonwealth. Chun, the Chinese legislator, divided China into twelve Tcheou, and specially designated twelve mountains. The Etruscans divided themselves into twelve Cantons. Romulus appointed twelve Lictors. There were twelve tribes of Ishmael and twelve disciples of the Hebrew Reformer. The New Jerusalem of the Apocalypse ...
— Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry • Albert Pike

... if you know where to find her. But you will never see her do that. For, if she had, she knew quite well Tom would have fought, and kicked, and bit, and said bad words, and turned again that moment into a naughty little heathen chimney-sweep, with his hand, like Ishmael's of old, against every man, and every man's ...
— The Water-Babies - A Fairy Tale for a Land-Baby • Charles Kingsley

... cove. And before us, bowered in trees, lies Chapel Island, the Micmac Mecca, with its Catholic Church and consecrated ground. Here at certain seasons the red men come to worship the white CHRIST. Here the western descendants of Ishmael pitch their bark tents, and swing their barbaric censers before the Asiatic-born REDEEMER. "They that dwell in the wilderness shall bow before HIM." That gathering must be a touching sermon ...
— Acadia - or, A Month with the Blue Noses • Frederic S. Cozzens

... surprise of the shepherds is most beautifully exprest. In one of the halls there is a picture of Van der Werff in which the touching story of Hagar is told more feelingly than words could do it. The young Ishmael is represented full of grief at parting with Isaac, who, in childish unconsciousness of what has taken place, draws in sport the corner of his mother's mantle around him and smiles at the ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume V (of X) • Various

... of our teachers explain the expression: "after the words of Satan," who said to God Of all his meals Abraham sacrifices nothing to Thee, neithe a bull nor a ram. He would sacrifice his son, replied God if I told him to do it. Others say: "after the words of Ishmael," who boasted of having undergone circumcision when he was thirteen years old, and to whom Isaac answered: If God demanded of me the sacrifice of my entire being, I would do what he demanded. Abraham said: Behold, here I am]. Such is the humility of pious men; for this expression indicates ...
— Rashi • Maurice Liber

... rigor Elijah displayed toward teachers of the law. From them he demanded more than obedience to the mere letter of a commandment. For instance, he pronounced severe censure upon Rabbi Ishmael ben Jose because he was willing to act as bailiff in prosecuting Jewish thieves and criminals. He advised Rabbi Ishmael to follow the example of his father and leave the ...
— THE LEGENDS OF THE JEWS VOLUME IV BIBLE TIMES AND CHARACTERS - FROM THE EXODUS TO THE DEATH OF MOSES • BY LOUIS GINZBERG

... but (as with Ishmael, and with the Children that mocked the Prophet) the seeds of sin did put forth ...
— The Life and Death of Mr. Badman • John Bunyan

... woman's howl was heard on the street, lamenting, like Hagar over young Ishmael in the wilderness of Beersheba, and crying that her old grannie, that was a lameter, and had been bedridden for four years come the Martinmas following, was burning to a cinder in the fore-garret. My heart was like to burst within me when I heard this dismal news, remembering ...
— The Life of Mansie Wauch - tailor in Dalkeith • D. M. Moir

... contradiction gives him the air of one who has suffered from opposition, both literary and social. With his liberal views, he is apparently considered by the good people of Pittsfield as little better than a cannibal or a 'beach-comber.' His attitude seemed to me something like that of Ishmael; but perhaps I judged hastily. I managed to draw him out very freely on everything but the Marquesas Islands, and when I left him he was in full tide of discourse on all things sacred and profane. But he seems to put away the objective side of his life, ...
— Typee - A Romance of the South Sea • Herman Melville

... the stead of my own offspring life for life, blood for blood, head for head, bone for bone, hair for hair, and skin for skin. In the name of God do I sacrifice this he-goat." This is apparently a relic of the substitution of a goat for Ishmael when Abraham was offering him as a sacrifice. The Muhammadans say that it was Ishmael instead of Isaac who was thus offered, and they think that Ishmael or Ismail was the ancestor of ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India—Volume I (of IV) • R.V. Russell

... me because I did not give them more. I showered money on whoever sought it of me—they cursed me because it was mine to give. In my poverty there had been the bond of common sorrow between me and my fellows: in my wealth I stand alone, a modern Ishmael, with every man's ...
— Five Little Plays • Alfred Sutro

... righteous man, was forewarned of the destruction of Jerusalem and the Babylonish captivity, who was commanded by the Lord, took his family and fled into the wilderness. He pitched his tent in the wilderness, near the Red Sea, and sent back his sons to Jerusalem, who persuaded one Ishmael and his family to accompany them to their father Lehi. The Lord promised to lead them to a choice land above all lands; therefore they set out on their journey for this land. After a long and tedious ...
— The Book of Religions • John Hayward

... shall come: they shall bring gold and incense: and they shall show forth the praises of Jehovah. All the flocks of Kedar shall be gathered together unto thee, the rams of Nebaioth [i. e. the chiefs of the Arabs Nebaioth was the eldest son of Ishmael] shall minister unto thee: they shall come up with acceptance to mine altar, [doubtless, because they have been worshippers of one sole God of Abraham and the prophets since, the days of Mohammed] and I will beautify the house of my glory. "Who are these that fly as a cloud, ...
— Five Pebbles from the Brook • George Bethune English

... arrive when the Messiah, who sleeps in Paradise, will wake up and descend to the earth. Then a great war will spread over the world. Israel will stand up against Edom and Ishmael, until Edom and Ishmael will fall at his feet ...
— An Obscure Apostle - A Dramatic Story • Eliza Orzeszko

... this subject and to the teaching by figures that it contains, we ought also to have had the Patriarch's two wives carved on the supporting pillar or plinth, and his other son Ishmael. For, as you know, these two women are emblems, Hagar of the Old Dispensation, and Sarah of the New; the former disappears to make way for the second, the Old Law being merely the preparation for the New; and the two sons born of these two mothers are by analogy ...
— The Cathedral • Joris-Karl Huysmans

... duplicate of which is placed in the time of Abraham (xxi. 22-34, J and E). Beersheba, which figures in both, is celebrated by the planting of a sacred tree and (like Bethel) by the invocation of the name of Yahweh. This district is the scene of the birth of Ishmael and Isaac. As Sarai was barren (cf. xi. 30)2 the promise that his seed should possess the land seemed incapable of fulfilment. According to one rather obscure narrative, Abram's sole heir was the servant, who was over his household, apparently a certain Eliezer of Damascus3 (xv. 2, the text ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia

... having got from me the two landscapes; that source is stopped. Not that Mr. M'untz is eloped to finish the conquest of America, nor promoted by Mr. Secretary's zeal for my friends, nor because the ghost of Mrs. Leneve has appeared to me, and ordered me to drive Hannah and Ishmael into the wilderness. A cause much more familiar to me has separated US—nothing but a tolerable quantity of ingratitude on his side, both to me and Mr. Bentley. The story is rather too long for a letter: the substance was most extreme impertinence to me, ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole Volume 3 • Horace Walpole

... of the lazy sons of Skirting Ishmael is prowling out of his camp to-night," said the young bee-hunter, with great vivacity, and in tones that might easily have been excited to a menace, "he may have an end put to his journey sooner than either he or his ...
— The Prairie • J. Fenimore Cooper

... these small traders he noted particularly while his conductor stopped to converse with a friend. He was an old man, evidently a descendant of Ishmael, and clothed in what seemed to be a ragged cast-off suit that had belonged to Abraham or Isaac. He carried his shop on his arm in the shape of a basket, out of which he took a little bit of carpet, and spread it close to where they stood. On this he sat down and slowly extracted from his basket, ...
— The Middy and the Moors - An Algerine Story • R.M. Ballantyne

... of good breeding, education and culture; and if he yielded to the corrupt influences of his time, it was because he was unable to withstand the flood; it was because the corrupt hand of everyone in politics at that time, Ishmael-like, was turned against the forces of righteousness in political affairs. For, at that time, as the author clearly shows, crime, corruption and fraud were so rife, so common, that they were taken for granted. And the moral sense was so low, so negligible, that men ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 5, 1920 • Various

... about; and light fellowships should take you by the arm, and walk with you an hour upon your way. You may see from afar off what it will come to in the end—the weather-beaten red-nosed vagabond, consumed by a fever of the feet, cut off from all near touch of human sympathy, a waif, an Ishmael, and an outcast. And yet it will seem well—and yet, in the air of the forest, this will seem the best—to break all the network bound about your feet by birth and old companionship and loyal love, and bear your shovelful of phosphates ...
— Essays of Travel • Robert Louis Stevenson

... was providentially saved, and where Hagar, his mother, was buried. The well pointed out by the angel, they believe to be the famous Zemzem, of which all pious Mohammedans drink to this day. To commemorate the miraculous preservation of Ishmael, God commanded Abraham to build a temple, and he erected and consecrated the Caaba, or sacred house, which is still venerated in Mecca; and the black stone incased within its walls is the ...
— Handbook of Universal Literature - From The Best and Latest Authorities • Anne C. Lynch Botta

... Proceeding upon that policy, the predecessors of Gratus had carefully abstained from interfering with any of the sacred observances of their subjects. But he chose a different course: almost his first official act was to expel Hannas from the high-priesthood, and give the place to Ishmael, son of Fabus. ...
— Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ • Lew Wallace

... "Basmath," meaning "balsam" or "sweet," was no doubt a common woman's name. It occurs as the name of Ishmael's daughter whom Esau married (Gen. xxxvi. 3, 4, 13), and as that of one of Solomon's daughters (1 Kings iv. 15). She may have been the wife of Milcilu, King of Gezer, and pleads for her sons after her husband's death. He had apparently been seized ...
— Egyptian Literature

... ISHMAEL, son of Abraham, whose appearance complicated his father's estate. Traveled extensively in the desert with ...
— Who Was Who: 5000 B. C. to Date - Biographical Dictionary of the Famous and Those Who Wanted to Be • Anonymous

... without many limitations, is blindly asserted in a separate dissertation of the authors of the Universal History, vol. xx. p. 196—250. A perpetual miracle is supposed to have guarded the prophecy in favor of the posterity of Ishmael; and these learned bigots are not afraid to risk the truth of Christianity on this frail and slippery foundation. * Note: It certainly appears difficult to extract a prediction of the perpetual independence of the Arabs from the text in Genesis, which would ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 4 • Edward Gibbon



Words linked to "Ishmael" :   Old Testament, religious outcast, heretic, patriarch, outcast, castaway, unfortunate person, pariah, misbeliever, leper, unfortunate, untouchable, Harijan



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