"Joss" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Lawton when death came to him! That has been proved. Just as brandy and soda, and peach brandy, are amber-colored, so are Scotch high-balls, which you and Pennington Lawton were drinking. No odor of peaches lingered about the room, for Miss Lawton had lighted a handful of joss-sticks in a vase upon the mantel earlier in the evening, and their pungent perfume filled the air. But the odor of peaches permeated the room when the tiny bottle which you hid in the folds of the chair ...
— The Crevice • William John Burns and Isabel Ostrander
... and mandarins Expiate their egg-shell sins By reclining on their drumsticks, Waving fans and burning gum-sticks. Land of poppy and pekoe! Could thy sacred artists know— Could they distantly conjecture How we use their architecture, Ousting the indignant Joss For a pampered Flirt or Floss, Poodle, Blenheim, Skye, Maltese, Lapped in purple and proud ease— They might read their god's reproof Here on blister'd wall and roof; Scaling lacquer, dinted bells, Floor befoul'd of weed and shells, Where, as erst ...
— Wandering Heath • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... great volcano of Hawaii, with all the surrounding scenery—an American Indian Village, showing the remnants of some of the greatest North American Indian tribes, and their manner of living—and a Chinese Village including a theater, a joss house, ...
— By Water to the Columbian Exposition • Johanna S. Wisthaler
... objects are placed before the Joss, the suppliant at the same time jangling and shaking the Ncheke a rude beginning of the bell, the gong, the rattle, and the instruments played before idols by more advanced peoples. It is a piece of wood, hour-glass-shaped but flat, and some six inches and a half ...
— Two Trips to Gorilla Land and the Cataracts of the Congo Volume 1 • Richard F. Burton
... of a head and this pinky peach of a face is like anybody in the world except Patty Farnsworth, I'll give up! Why, she's the image of you,—except when she makes these grotesque grimaces,—like a Chinese Joss." ...
— Patty and Azalea • Carolyn Wells
... big upper room, where his best customers gathered, as neat as a new pin. In one corner used to stand Fung-Tching's Joss—almost as ugly as Fung- Tching—and there were always sticks burning under his nose; but you never smelt 'em when the pipes were going thick. Opposite the Joss was Fung-Tching's coffin. He had spent a good deal of his savings on that, and whenever ...
— The Works of Rudyard Kipling One Volume Edition • Rudyard Kipling
... enough of its ambiguous, inter-racial atmosphere, as of a vitalised museum; never wonder enough at its outlandish, necromantic-looking vegetables set forth to sell in commonplace American shop-windows, its temple doors open and the scent of the joss-stick streaming forth on the American air, its kites of Oriental fashion hanging fouled in Western telegraph-wires, its flights of paper prayers which the trade-wind hunts and dissipates along Western gutters. I was a frequent wanderer on North Beach, gazing at the straits, and the huge Cape ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 13 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... Schermerhorn, sadly shaking his head, as if the good days were gone. "But you'd like a little curio store I'll take you to—owned by an American lady married to a Chinese, and wearing the costume. They sell relics of the fire. And a joss-house ...
— The Port of Adventure • Charles Norris Williamson and Alice Muriel Williamson
... that the appetite of the joss for gore remained unsatisfied, and led the way into the dimly-lighted building that ...
— Blindfolded • Earle Ashley Walcott
... of the saloon was the Joss-house, or idol-house, containing the idol Chin-Tee, having eighteen arms, with her attendants, Tung-Sam and Tung-See. The richly-gilt idol was made of one solid piece of camphor-wood, and had a red scarf thrown round it. An altar-table, also of camphor-wood, and painted red, ...
— Under the Dragon Flag - My Experiences in the Chino-Japanese War • James Allan
... As the Chinaman's "Joss" is only his own pronunciation of the Portuguese word Deos, or the Latin Deus, so the word "fetich" is but the Portuguese modification of the Latin word facticius, that is feitico. Portugal, ...
— The Religions of Japan - From the Dawn of History to the Era of Meiji • William Elliot Griffis
... suspicion on the sober treatment of the West, where no joss-stick is burnt, and no paper money is offered on the altar of some favourite P'u-sa; though, if they knew the whole truth, they would discover that intercessory prayers for the recovery of sick persons are considered by many of us to be ...
— Chinese Sketches • Herbert A. Giles
... up in the hills yonder. Do you know, old man, I feel as though we're getting away just in the nick of time. My back hair and the pricking of my thumbs warn me that your dearly beloved spooks are combining to put up some sort of a spooking job on us. I hope Yee Kee has a plentiful supply of joss-sticks to stand 'em off, if they get too busy ...
— The Eyes of the World • Harold Bell Wright
... you,' says Wainwright. 'I'm a devotee to the great joss Booze; but my ruminating facilities are unrepaired,' says he—or words to that effect. 'And I hate,' says he, 'to see fools trying to ...
— Rolling Stones • O. Henry
... the mastheads, like mysterious signals, presenting a very weird and uncanny effect; and some of the superstitious Chinese sailors, who had had no previous experience of "Saint Elmo's fire", burnt joss-sticks and twisted their prayer-wheels, in the hope of scaring away the evil spirits which they averred were hovering round ...
— A Chinese Command - A Story of Adventure in Eastern Seas • Harry Collingwood
... Junk was out at sea? Whether they dangled there, banging and beating against each other, like so many jesters' baubles? Whether the idol Chin Tee, of the eighteen arms, enshrined in a celestial Punch's Show, in the place of honour, ever tumbled out in heavy weather? Whether the incense and the joss-stick still burnt before her, with a faint perfume and a little thread of smoke, while the mighty waves were roaring all around? Whether that preposterous tissue-paper umbrella in the corner was always spread, as being a convenient ...
— The Life of Charles Dickens, Vol. I-III, Complete • John Forster
... looked at the sky, which was brassy above, but thickening in the North. It augmented darkly and streakily—like a tub of water into which bluing is added drop by drop.... A Chinese arose and tossed a handful of joss-tatters into the still air. And now the voice of the Captain brought the rest of the crew ...
— Fate Knocks at the Door - A Novel • Will Levington Comfort
... are in great fear for the future of our most holy and perfectly authenticated religion, and have, like faithful watchmen from the walls and towers of Zion, hastened to give the alarm. They have informed Congress that "Joss has his temple of worship in the Chinese quarters, in San Francisco. Within the walls of a dilapidated structure is exposed to the view of the faithful the god of the Chinaman, and here are his altars of worship. Here he tears up his pieces of paper; here he offers up his prayers; ...
— Lectures of Col. R. G. Ingersoll - Latest • Robert Green Ingersoll
... praising God. We broke our idols and—I don't know what we didn't do. And now we're not scared any more, we've set 'em up again: same old idols. Rookie, I bet you the only reason we ever sacrificed to God at all was because we thought He was the biggest joss and things were so desperate and all, we'd better make a sure thing of it. And now we think we aren't in any particular danger, seems as if the little gods would do, same as they did before; and ...
— Old Crow • Alice Brown
... slimy cuss was just purtendin' he thought I was prayin' to my Joss, but I was that weak I hadn't stren'th, boys, to heave a rock at him. Yet it ...
— Stories in Light and Shadow • Bret Harte
... church, kirk, chapel, meetinghouse, bethel[obs3], tabernacle, conventicle, basilica, fane[obs3], holy place, chantry[obs3], oratory. synagogue; mosque; marabout[obs3]; pantheon; pagoda; joss house[obs3]; dogobah[obs3], tope; kiosk; kiack[obs3], masjid[obs3]. [clergymen's residence] parsonage, rectory, vicarage, manse, deanery, glebe; Vatican; bishop's palace; Lambeth. altar, shrine, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... were doing so well at the Joss-house, too." Lord Earlscourt was shaking his head sorrowfully, as he spoke. "We were all getting on so comfortably. That was what people ...
— Phyllis of Philistia • Frank Frankfort Moore
... expectation of the general appeal, "After that let us take breath." And having done so, they must have remembered that they were not in a serious world; that they were in the fairyland of fans, in the paradise of pipkins, in the limbo of blue china, screens, pots, plates, jars, joss-houses, and all the fortuitous frippery ...
— The Gentle Art of Making Enemies • James McNeill Whistler
... determined upon, and in this quiet and unostentatious manner maintaining peace and greatly purifying the entire province. In this passionless subservience to the principles of the Order none exceeded him; yet at no time have men been forbidden to burn joss-sticks to the spirit of the destinies, ...
— Kai Lung's Golden Hours • Ernest Bramah
... to their own immemorial traditions, on the Director and his wife. These servants had curious ways, and a curious language in the odd pidgin English that enabled the door boy to announce that "the number one topside foreign devil joss man have makee come," when the English Bishop called, and the table boy to announce a dish of duckling as "one piecee duck pups," or of chicken as "one piecee looster." The social scale among the few foreign residents was very precisely defined, and the social life of ...
— Herbert Hoover - The Man and His Work • Vernon Kellogg
... Chinese preacher of note. Lived some 500 years B. C. and taught the chinks the art of joss making, and how to do things backward. He also was the founder of ancestor worship. This still is practiced in England, but never in the United States or Australia. Recreation: Fireworks. Ambition: A Chinese laundry in every city. ...
— Who Was Who: 5000 B. C. to Date - Biographical Dictionary of the Famous and Those Who Wanted to Be • Anonymous
... proverb: "If you want to make a Chinese happy, just buy him a coffin," is not so far off, because death to many of them looks much more attractive than life. We were told that if a Chinese falls off his sampan, his neighbor does not try to save him. That would be a "Bad Joss" as they say and would incur the wrath of the River God, who pulled him in. Then, too, the rescuer would have to support him for the rest of ...
— The Log of the Empire State • Geneve L.A. Shaffer
... the temple and burned some joss-sticks; after which the Superior made him a low obeisance and begged him to come and rest himself for a moment in the reception hall. Tea was served. Then, concealing his ...
— Eastern Shame Girl • Charles Georges Souli
... the savages penetrating the fortifications, will be exploded one after another, to terrify them into fits, when they will be easily captured. This precaution has been scarcely thought necessary by some of the mandarins, as our great artist, Wang, has covered the external joss-house with frantic figures that, must strike terror to every barbarian. Gold paper has also been kept constantly burning, on altars of holy clay, at every practicable point of the defences, which it is hardly thought they will have the hardihood to ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 1, August 28, 1841 • Various
... persuasive powers of Catholic missionaries, or as an example of the wiles of Jesuitism, if we did not know the inner history of Mr. Ling's soul, the abysmal depths of his personality. He has not, like many other modern converts, written a little book, such as "How I ceased to chinchin Joss; or, from Confucius to Christianity," but he has told Madame Judith Mendes all about it. Madame Mendes has made a name in literature, and English readers may have wondered how the daughter of the poet Theophile Gautier came to acquire the knowledge of Chinese which she has shown ...
— Lost Leaders • Andrew Lang |
