"Pagan" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the Prince, carelessly, "all religions are tolerated. Here we have temples for the worship of the Roman and the Greek gods and mosques for the Moslems. Here Christian, or Jew, Sun- worshipper or Pagan implore their several gods unmolested, and thus is Baalbek prosperous. I confess a liking for this Temple of Life, and come here often. I should, however, warn you that it is the general belief of those who frequent this place that he who steps upon the marble slab ...
— The Strong Arm • Robert Barr
... Saint Paul goes farther and assures us that "the earnest expectation of the creature waiteth for the manifestation," so that "the whole creation groaneth and travaileth in pain together until now." "And not only they," he goes on, "but ourselves also": while the pagan poet has tears that reach the heart of the transitory show: Sunt lacrimae rerum, et mentem mortalia tangunt—"Tears are for Life, ...
— Poetry • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... apprehension, the sense of mystery and of dread that had hung round him as he stole the day before through voiceless woods to the sound of noisy breakers on a foreign shore. He saw again the brake nod in a little air of wind as if a form was harboured, and the pagan rose in him—not the sceptic but the child of nature, early and remote, lost in lands of silence and of omen in dim-peopled and fantastic woods upon ...
— Doom Castle • Neil Munro
... you haven't been murdered," he proceeded, "in a moonless garden by an elderly lawyer. Do you ever think of the lyric day when, preceded by a flock of bridesmaids and other flowery pagan truck, you'll meet justice?" ...
— Linda Condon • Joseph Hergesheimer
... actions, Christian and pagan, may contain examples of self-denial sublimer and more absolute than this; but in the blended grace and tenderness of its knightly courtesy, we know not where to ...
— Stories of Authors, British and American • Edwin Watts Chubb
... dashed impetuously at the head of his guards and Ethiopians into the affray. The battle became obstinate and bloody. Thrice the white banner disappeared amidst the closing ranks; and thrice, like a moon from the clouds, it shone forth again—the light and guide of the Pagan power. ...
— Leila, Complete - The Siege of Granada • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... girl, with black braids hanging down her white neck as she sat in the "minister's pew" of the old brick church, into a beautiful pale woman in a widow's bonnet. Therese went now every Sunday to the same church where her father used to preach. The countess accompanied her most decorously. She was a pagan at heart, but it pleased Therese. In church she spent her time looking at her friend's profile and calculating the ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 22. October, 1878. • Various
... militant. He is the conqueror of Satan, the mightiest of all created spirits, the nearest to God. His place was where the danger was greatest; therefore you find him here. For the same reason he was, while the pagan danger lasted, the patron saint of France. So the Normans, when they were converted to Christianity, put themselves under his powerful protection. So he stood for centuries on his Mount in Peril of the Sea, watching ...
— Mont-Saint-Michel and Chartres • Henry Adams
... of a religious character current among the Russian peasantry, the duality of their creed, or of that of their ancestors, has produced a twofold effect. On the one hand, into narratives drawn from purely Christian sources there has entered a pagan element, most clearly perceptible in stories which deal with demons and departed spirits; on the other hand, an attempt has been made to give a Christian nature to what are manifestly heathen legends, by lending saintly ...
— Russian Fairy Tales - A Choice Collection of Muscovite Folk-lore • W. R. S. Ralston
... false gods, and taught the right meane and waie how to worship the true and immortall God. There were in those daies within the bounds of Britaine 28 Flamines, & three Archflamines, which were as bishops and archbishops, or superintendents of the pagan or heathen religion, in whose place (they being remoued) were instituted 28 bishops & three archbishops of the christian religion. One of the which archbishops held his see at London, another at Yorke, [Sidenote: Matth. West.] and the ...
— Chronicles (1 of 6): The Historie of England (4 of 8) - The Fovrth Booke Of The Historie Of England • Raphael Holinshed
... language of physicians and statesmen; but a stronger appeal has been made for the sake of morality itself. The detestable crime of abortion is appallingly rife in our day; it is abroad in our land to an extent which would have shocked the dissolute women of pagan Rome. Testimony from all quarters, especially from New England, has accumulated within the past few years to sap our faith in the morality and religion of American women. This wholesale, fashionable murder, how are we to stop ...
— The Physical Life of Woman: - Advice to the Maiden, Wife and Mother • Dr. George H Napheys
... as to those people whose habitat is on the southern part of the Sarangani Peninsula. Those, again, that occupy the hinterland of Tuna Bay[2] come under the same designation. So it might seem that the word was originally used to designate the pagan as distinguished from the Mohammedanized people of Mindano, much as the name Harafras or Alfros was applied by the early writers to the pagans to distinguish them ...
— The Manbos of Mindano - Memoirs of the National Academy of Sciences, Volume XXIII, First Memoir • John M. Garvan
... in the way of mere religious observances; yet was he as far from being in that state which St. Paul has described succinctly as "for me to live in Christ, and to die is gain," as if he had been a pagan. It was not the love of God that was active in his soul, but the love of self; and he happened to exhibit his passion under these restrained and deceptive forms, simply because he had been born and educated in a state ...
— The Sea Lions - The Lost Sealers • James Fenimore Cooper
... cloak of decorum to suit the pageantry of a court, or even simulate fervour to portray the ecstasy of a saint. He is clearly acting a part, but in Watts the character of the man is always seen. Whether his subjects are drawn from the Bible or from pagan myths, they are all treated in the same ...
— Victorian Worthies - Sixteen Biographies • George Henry Blore
... was Quintus to see the Lord, before his departure heavenward. When midnight hours afterward came to him in Italy, the memory of that vision was golden. When, among the temples of the gods in pagan Rome, men challenged his belief, his sufficient answer was: "With mine own eyes I have seen the risen Teacher who has revealed immortality to men." So did the first disciples of the faith who bore its weightiest burdens, enjoy ...
— An Easter Disciple • Arthur Benton Sanford
... OF HEALING CHECK MEDICAL SCIENCE. Character of the testimony regarding miracles Connection of mediaeval with pagan miracles Their basis of fact Various kinds of miraculous cures Atmosphere of supernaturalism thrown about all cures Influence of this atmosphere on ...
— History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom • Andrew Dickson White
... is as hard to prevent as the rain. But some of us are destined to a reaction, almost as strong as the obsession. The religionists will think they lead it. They will be self-deceived. Moving picture nausea is already taking hold of numberless people, even when they are in the purely pagan mood. Forced by their limited purses, their inability to buy a Ford car, and the like, they go in their loneliness to film after film till the whole world seems to turn on a reel. When they are again at home, they see in the dark an imaginary screen with tremendous pictures, whirling ...
— The Art Of The Moving Picture • Vachel Lindsay
... favorite dish," Dorothy said, after a couple of bites, "and this one is just too perfectly divine! It doesn't taste like any other fruit I ever ate, either—I think it must be the same ambrosia that the old pagan gods used to eat." ...
— Skylark Three • Edward Elmer Smith
... my soul! the flight and return of Mohammed, Prophet and priest, who scatter'd abroad both evil and blessing, Huge wasteful empires founded and hallow'd slow persecution, Soul-withering, but crush'd the blasphemous rites of the Pagan And idolatrous Christians.—For veiling the Gospel of Jesus, 5 They, the best corrupting, had made it worse than the vilest. Wherefore Heaven decreed th' enthusiast warrior of Mecca, Choosing good from iniquity rather than evil from goodness. Loud the tumult in Mecca surrounding the fane ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... comparative study (or Science) of Religion, and the greatest authorities in its various departments, are practically unanimous in their opinion, that all pagan systems of mythology and religion contain remnants of a more exalted form of belief, of a higher, clearer knowledge of the Divinity, which ...
— Evolution - An Investigation and a Critique • Theodore Graebner
... We know not when he was born, or when he died, except that from one or two incidental passages in his work it is plain that he lived nearly to the end of the fourth century: and it is even uncertain whether he was a Christian or a Pagan; though the general belief is, that he adhered to the religion of the ancient Romans, without, however, permitting it to lead him even to speak ...
— The Roman History of Ammianus Marcellinus • Ammianus Marcellinus
... river, for ever changing, and yet for ever the same—always fulfilling its errand, which yet is never fulfilled," said Stangrave,—he was given to half-mystic utterances, and hankerings after Pagan mythology, learnt in the days when he worshipped Emerson, and tried (but unsuccessfully) to worship Margaret Fuller Ossoli,—"Those old Greeks had a deep insight into nature, when they gave to each river not merely a name, but a semi-human personality, ...
— Two Years Ago, Volume I • Charles Kingsley
... surprise you ask who is M. le Cure. Only the pagans have not knowledge of him. Are you one pagan? I think you say that to make laugh. It is very bad to mock yourself of M. ...
— Deer Godchild • Marguerite Bernard and Edith Serrell
... would be libertinism or lawlessness. The great majority of men, from the earliest ages of the world to the present time, have been under the control of tyrants, and have known little exemption from despotic rule. There is not a single Pagan, Mahomedan, or anti-Christian country to-day in which the spirit of liberty has an abiding place. She may have brooded over them at intervals, but, like Noah's ...
— The Christian Foundation, February, 1880
... always the visible sign through which the appeal came. I have seen him lean, spell-bound, from our windows on a blue summer night, thrilled by the presence out there of Cleopatra's Needle, the pagan symbol flaunting its slenderness against river and sky, while in the distance the dome of St. Paul's, the Christian symbol, hung a phantom upon the heavens. His pleasure in the friendship of men of rank and family might have savoured of snobbishness had not one understood how much they ...
— Nights - Rome, Venice, in the Aesthetic Eighties; London, Paris, in the Fighting Nineties • Elizabeth Robins Pennell
... Paper without wishing, that we had some of this Breed of Dogs in Great Britain, which would certainly do Justice, I should say Honour, to the Ladies of our Country, and shew the World the difference between Pagan Women and those who are instructed in sounder Principles of ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... difference could be greater than that between the stirring age of Elizabeth and that of Alexandria in the fifth century, when the world was occupied with barren ecclesiastical strife. Hypatia, the last defender of the pagan faith, is a wonderful study, and the whole book is a brilliant picture of the passing of the old faiths of ...
— Kate Coventry - An Autobiography • G. J. Whyte-Melville
... aloud) I wish people didn't wear any clothes. I guess I ought to have been a pagan or a ...
— Tales of the Jazz Age • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... 1849) mentions that inscriptions are found in Denmark, Norway, and Sweden, written in different languages in Runic character. He also mentions the fact of a Pagan Runic inscription occurring at Jellinge, Denmark, on the tomb of old King Gorm, A.D. c. 900, found in a huge barrow; and, at the same place, a Christian Runic inscription on the tomb of his son Harold. Has this inquiry been extended ...
— Notes & Queries No. 29, Saturday, May 18, 1850 • Various
... weird, pagan Snake Dance was performed with deadly earnestness when white men first penetrated the forbidding wastelands that surround the Hopi. And we have every reason to believe that it has gone on for centuries, always as a prayer to the gods of the ...
— The Unwritten Literature of the Hopi • Hattie Greene Lockett
... Augustus than residence at Aosta, even though he found his theatres and triumphal arches there. Wherever classical feeling has predominated, this has been the case. Cellini's Memoirs, written in the height of pagan Renaissance, well express the aversion which a Florentine or Roman felt for the inhospitable wildernesses of Switzerland.[2] Dryden, in his dedication to 'The Indian Emperor,' says, 'High objects, it is true, attract the sight; ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece • John Addington Symonds
... peculiar strength of Mr Grote. With scholarship as extensive as that of his predecessors, he has united a stricter discipline of mind, and habits of closer reasoning; and he manifests a truer perception of the nature of past modes of thinking—of the intellectual life of unlettered and Pagan ages. He has passed through that transition state in which Dr Thirlwall unfortunately found himself, and has drawn with a firm hand the boundaries between history and fable. Not only has he drawn the line, and determined the principle on which the limits ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, No. 382, October 1847 • Various
... abusing each other in their supposed vexation at having to join in the Creator's praises. The people hoot and hiss them, the lower classes sing songs in derision of them, and play them all manner of tricks, and the whole scene is one of incredible noise, uproar, and confusion, more worthy of some pagan bacchanalia than a procession of Christian people. All the country-folk from five or six leagues around Aix pour into the town on that day to do honour to God. It is the only occasion of the kind, and the clergy, either knavish ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... stone idol. He appeared to be at a loss as to what course he should pursue. Hugh promptly relieved him. Shaking his head vigorously, he pointed to the stone image, signifying that there were to be no more salutations bestowed upon it, all homage being due to himself and the lady. The fickle pagan, after a waning look of love for their renounced idol, proceeded to treat it with scorn by devoting himself entirely to the usurpers. He brought cocoanut shells filled with cool water, and the thirsty ...
— Nedra • George Barr McCutcheon
... "The old pagan!" muttered Susan, as Norman strode away. She did not care if Ellen Douglas did hear her. Susan could never understand why fire did not descend from heaven upon Norman Douglas when he insulted ministers the way he did. But the astonishing thing ...
— Rilla of Ingleside • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... certainly one form of Osiris. His festivals, held twice a year at Tanta, still display the symbol of the Creator of all things. All is thus here—the women wail the dead, as on the old sculptures, all the ceremonies are pagan, and would shock an Indian Mussulman as much as his objection to eat with a Christian shocks an Arab. This country is a palimpsest, in which the Bible is written over Herodotus, and the Koran over that. In the towns the Koran is most visible, in the country Herodotus. I fancy it ...
— Letters from Egypt • Lucie Duff Gordon
... sage in the book of Proverbs proclaims to a nation of religious formalists the moral character of God: "To do righteousness and justice is more acceptable to the LORD than sacrifice." This is accounted as ethical teaching, somewhat in advance of the times. A pagan rather than a Christian way of thinking is discoverable here. In each of the cases cited the specific character of supernatural Revelation is equally evident,—the disclosure of spiritual truth above the natural thought of the natural men to whom it came. The character ...
— Miracles and Supernatural Religion • James Morris Whiton
... constantly liable to be deluded by false parallels and imperfect analogies. A voice, like that which is said to have startled the mariner of old on the coasts of Ionia, and to have announced to him the cessation of oracles, comes to us from all the remains of pagan antiquity, warning us that the spirit of that ancient civilization has departed with its forms: and while it bids us look forward to a new destiny for the human race, it teaches us that the maxims and the oracles by which that destiny must be guided, are ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, April 1844 - Volume 23, Number 4 • Various
... combatants, having spent at last their whole stock of dialectic ammunition, resorted to carnal weapons, passing suddenly, by a very illogical metabasis, from "universals" to particulars. Both parties appealed to Aristotle. By a singular fortune, a pagan philosopher, introduced into Western Europe by Mohammedans, became the supreme authority of the Christian world. Aristotle was the Scripture of the Middle Age. Luther found this authority in his way and disposed of it in short order, devoting Aristotle without ceremony ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. II, No. 8, June 1858 • Various
... These pagan meditations were interrupted by a footfall slowly approaching. I did not turn to ascertain who it might be, but trusted it was no one of importance, as the poddy and I presented rather a grotesque appearance. It was one of the most miserable and sickly of its miserable kind, ...
— My Brilliant Career • Miles Franklin
... Venice, in Padua, which had been subject to her since 1405, speculative thought and ideal studies were in full swing. There was no re-birth in Venice, whose tradition was unbroken and where "men were too genuinely pagan to care about the echo of a paganism in the remote past." St. Mark was the deity of Venice, and "the other twelve Apostles" were only obscurely connected with her religious life, which was strong and ...
— The Venetian School of Painting • Evelyn March Phillipps
... is still thought no wrong. There is habit of thought that justifies habit of deed. Southey, in his History of the Brazils, tells a sad tale of a dying converted Indian. In her dying moments, cannibalism prevailed over Christian conscience; and was the Pagan conscience silent? She was asked by those standing about her, if they could do any thing for her. She replied, that she thought she could pick the bones of a little child's hand, but that she had no one now who would go and kill ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 348 • Various
... forests. A young Englishman, named John Rolfe, fell in love with her. Wives from England were scarce, and this fact may have made Pocahontas more attractive in his eyes. When some one objected that she was a pagan—"Is it not my duty," he replied, "to lead the blind to the light?" Pocahontas learned to love Rolfe in return, and love made easy her path to conversion to Christianity. She was baptized by the name of Rebecca, and was the first Christian convert in Virginia. Powhatan ...
— The Land We Live In - The Story of Our Country • Henry Mann
... that went out back Was shocked, or pained, or both, At hearing every pagan black ...
— Saltbush Bill, J.P., and Other Verses • A. B. Paterson
... that surpass the model. Open loggie yield fair prospect over what were once trim gardens; spacious halls, adorned with frescoes in the vehement and gorgeous style of the Roman school, form a fit theatre for the grand parade-life of an Italian prince. The whole is Pagan in its pride and sensuality, its prodigality of strength and insolence of freedom. Having seen this palace, we do not wonder that the fame of Giulio flew across the Alps and lived upon the lips of Shakspere: for in his master-work at Mantua he collected, as it were, and epitomised in one ...
— Renaissance in Italy Vol. 3 - The Fine Arts • John Addington Symonds
... solar eclipse, recorded during the Christian Era, is known as the "Eclipse of Phlegon," from the fact that we are indebted for the account to a pagan writer of that name. This eclipse took place in A.D. 29, and the total phase was visible a little to the north of Palestine. It has sometimes been confounded with the "darkness of the Crucifixion," which event ...
— Astronomy of To-day - A Popular Introduction in Non-Technical Language • Cecil G. Dolmage
... or some old pagan demon within me, woke up, and fiercely bounded—my bosom was lifted and swam as though I had touched her warm robe. One moment—one more, and then—the fever had left me. I rose from my knees. I felt hopelessly sane. The mere world reappeared. My good old monk was there, ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Volume 19 - Travel and Adventure • Various
... about in these wilds, Before the beautiful Christ Made the soul more beautiful, Revealed the terror of its divine forces, Announced its immortality, And was nailed on a tree for His goodness! While the monk, therefore, lay yet in the pagan brain, And' Time had not so much as thought Of sowing the seed for his coming— While his glorious cathedral, which, as we now know it, Is an epic poem built in immortal stone, Had no archetype except in the dreams of ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 5, May, 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... cost my friends. Oh! how wicked was I now. At last all of us became tired of seeing even the most beautiful views; and whilst at first, after having seen certain scenes, I had been saying with Horace, at the end of the day, in my pagan heart, "Vixi," (I have lived), I was now glad ...
— A Narrative of Some of the Lord's Dealings with George Mueller - Written by Himself, First Part • George Mueller
... valley. Now I saw in my dream, that at the end of this valley lay blood, bones, ashes, and mangled bodies of men, even of pilgrims that had gone this way formerly; and while I was musing what should be the reason, I espied a little before me a cave, where two giants, POPE and PAGAN, dwelt in old time; by whose power and tyranny the men whose bones, blood, ashes, &c., lay there, were cruelly put to death.[104] But by this place Christian went without much danger, whereat I somewhat wondered; but I have learnt ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... looking to the north see Cato the Warder of Purgatory, his face illuminated by the four stars, typical of the cardinal virtues, Prudence, Justice, Fortitude and Temperance. Is Dante's selection of Cato, the pagan suicide, as the guardian of Christian Purgatory, to be taken as an example of the broadmindedness of the poet who believes "so wide arms hath goodness infinite, that it receives all who turn to it?" Or is it an instance showing how ...
— Dante: "The Central Man of All the World" • John T. Slattery
... the British minister, on the case of Thomas Pagan, containing a complaint of injustice in the dispensations of law by the courts of Massachusetts to a British subject, the President approves of my referring it to you, to report thereon your opinion of the proceedings, and whether any thing, and what, can or ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson
... soothing effect on earnest Prohibitionists on the boat to urge, as a point of dignity and delicacy, that it ought to be given back to the French, a vicious race abandoned to the culture of the vine. I proposed that the last liquors on board should be poured out in a pagan libation before it. And then I suddenly remembered that this Liberty was still in some sense enlightening the world, or one part of the world; was a lamp for one sort of wanderer, a star of one sort of seafarer. To one persecuted ...
— What I Saw in America • G. K. Chesterton
... another tone, and observe, "He is clever and he is amusing: but he is terribly monotonous. I do not mind a visit to the 'oyster-bearing shores' now and then, but I do not want to live in Lampsacus. After all, even in a pagan Pantheon, there are other divinities besides a cleverly palliated Priapus and a comparatively ladylike Cotytto. Seven volumes of however delicately veiled 'sculduddery' are nearly as bad as a whole evening's golf-talk in a St. Andrews hotel, or a long men's dinner, where everybody ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 1 - From the Beginning to 1800 • George Saintsbury
... thoughts ran on. "Hollow, shallow, inconsistent—loveless. Catholicism equals a modern refinement of pagan principles with all the old deities on their best behaviour thrown in; while Protestantism is an ...
— The Heavenly Twins • Madame Sarah Grand
... rediscovered the Quaker truth that the spirit is stronger than all the forces of Government, and that things may really come by fasting and prayer. Even the window-breaking, though a perilous approach to the methods of the Pagan male, was only a damage to insensitive material for which the window-breakers were prepared to pay in conscious suffering. But once the injury was done to flesh and blood, the injurer would only be paying tooth for tooth and eye for eye; and all the sympathy would go, not to the assailant, ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 21 - The Recent Days (1910-1914) • Charles F. Horne, Editor
... patient research, the profound learning, and the admirable skill in marshalling facts displayed by Mr. Fergusson in his various writings. Had it been possible to devote a larger space to Eastern architecture, Pagan and Mohammedan, the indebtedness to him, in a field where he stands all but alone, must of ...
— Architecture - Classic and Early Christian • Thomas Roger Smith
... children of Cromwell's Puritan soldiers were beginning to grow rich by importing slaves for Roman Catholic Spaniards, the Maroons still held their own wild empire in the mountains, and, being sturdy heathens every one, practised Obeah rites in approved pagan fashion. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 5, No. 28, February, 1860 • Various
... to lie flat on my cot before a great open fire and his god-ship would perch cross-legged on my chest. When I breathed, he seemed to shake his fat sides and laugh. When a pagan god from Peru laughs at you in a Yukon cabin, the situation calls for attention. I ...
— The Lighted Match • Charles Neville Buck
... antagonist, was at liberty, if he pleased, to come to the assistance of his companions. The play of the "Little French Lawyer" turns entirely upon this circumstance; and it may be remarked throughout the poems of Boiardo and Ariosto; particularly in the combat of three Christian and three Pagan champions, in the 42d canto of Orlando Furioso. But doubtless a gallant knight was often unwilling, like young Maitland, to avail himself of this advantage. Something of this kind seems to have happened in the celebrated combat, ...
— Minstrelsy of the Scottish border (3rd ed) (1 of 3) • Walter Scott
... had been laboriously acquiring from books by the study of years. But this was better than books. These Roman houses, into which he could walk, were far better than any number of plans or engraved prints, however accurately done. These temples afforded an insight into the old pagan religion better far than volumes of description. These streets, and shops, and public squares, and wall, and gates, and tombs, all gave him an insight into the departed Roman civilization that was far fresher, and more vivid, and more profound, than any that he had ever gained before. ...
— Among the Brigands • James de Mille
... non-Catholics, were written in Greek. A number of them are historical, and of great value as illustrating the spirit and thought of the age to which they refer. The other class of writers includes the work of Christian authors. Greek and Latin writings wholly different from Pagan literature, began to appear soon after the first century, and their purifying and ennobling influence was more and more felt as time passed. The primitive Christians held these writings of the Greek and Latin fathers in great esteem, and in the second and third centuries Christianity ...
— The Interdependence of Literature • Georgina Pell Curtis
... the Isle of Thanet A.D. 597, and Bede died A.D. 735. The intervening period, that of his chronicle, is the golden age of Anglo-Saxon sanctity. Notwithstanding some twenty or thirty years of pagan reaction, it was a time of rapid though not uninterrupted progress, and one of an interest the more touching when contrasted with the calamities which followed so soon. Between the death of Bede and the first Danish invasion, were eighty ...
— Legends of the Saxon Saints • Aubrey de Vere
... An Appreciation My Mother Catharine of the "Crow's Nest" A Red Girl's Reasoning The Envoy Extraordinary A Pagan in St. Paul's Cathedral As It Was in the Beginning The Legend of Lillooet Falls Her Majesty's Guest Mother o' the Men The Nest Builder The ...
— The Moccasin Maker • E. Pauline Johnson
... way, Iliya came to the city of Chernigov, which was besieged by a countless Pagan army, threatening to destroy its houses and churches, and to carry off into slavery all the princes and voyevodes. Iliya of Murom was terrified at the sight of such an army; nevertheless, at last he summoned courage, and resolved to die for his religion. So ...
— The Russian Garland - being Russian Falk Tales • Various
... he was different. So different; there was the horror. She was the sinner; not he. He belonged to the bright, ardent life, the life without social bond or scruple, the life of sunny, tolerant hotels and pagan forests; but she did not belong to it. The things that had seemed external things, barriers and shackles, were the realest things, were in fact the inner things, were her very self. In yielding to her heart she had destroyed herself, there ...
— Amabel Channice • Anne Douglas Sedgwick
... doing so, by reason of the statue of Mars, which had been thrown into the Arno. The temple, converted to Christian purposes, had been the only building to escape the wrath of Totila; but owing to the pagan incantations practised when the town was originally consecrated to the god of war, the statue of that divinity would not consent to lie quietly and ignominiously in the bed of the Arno, while his temple and town were appropriated to other purposes. The river was dragged. The statue was ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I, No. 1, Nov. 1857 • Various
... abounds in Ceylon, and is considered a delicacy by the Cingalese, but the civilized stomach would probably find Double Ease in letting it alone. Cotelette de Constrictor, however pleasant to the Pagan palate, would scarcely go down ...
— Punchinello, Vol.1, No. 12 , June 18,1870 • Various
... inferiority we can trace those irregularities which for many centuries filled the Church with shame, for practices more obscene than the orgies of Babylon or Corinth, and which dragged Christendom to a darkness blacker than the night of heathendom in pagan countries—a darkness upon which the most searching efforts of historians cast scarcely one ray of light—a darkness so profound that from the seventh to the eleventh century no individual thought can ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume I • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... observes Fray Antonio Agapida, "was humbling himself before the cross and devoutly praying for the destruction of his enemies, that fierce pagan, El Zagal, depending merely on arm of flesh and sword of steel, pursued his diabolical outrages upon the Christians." No sooner was the invading army disbanded than he sallied forth from his stronghold, and carried fire and sword into all those parts which ...
— Chronicle of the Conquest of Granada • Washington Irving
... society is "vulgar." Sneezing (Al-'Atsah) is a complicated affair. For Talmudic traditions of death by sneezing see Lane (M. E. chaps. viii). Amongst Hindus sneezing and yawning are caused by evil spirits whom they drive away by snapping thumb and forefinger as loudly as possible. The pagan Arabs held sneezing a bad omen, which often stopped their journeys. Moslems believe that when Allah placed the Soul (life ?) in Adam, the dry clay became flesh and bone and the First Man, waking to life, sneezed ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 9 • Richard F. Burton
... earth I stay'd, still succour'd them; And their most righteous customs made me scorn All sects besides. Before I led the Greeks In tuneful fiction, to the streams of Thebes, I was baptiz'd; but secretly, through fear, Remain'd a Christian, and conform'd long time To Pagan rites. Five centuries and more, T for that lukewarmness was fain to pace Round the fourth circle. Thou then, who hast rais'd The covering, which did hide such blessing from me, Whilst much of this ascent is yet to climb, Say, if thou know, where our old Terence bides, Caecilius, Plautus, ...
— The Divine Comedy • Dante
... who was a godless man, A pagan, heart and soul, Played nurse until the wound began To heal, and Giles ...
— The Book of Saints and Friendly Beasts • Abbie Farwell Brown
... hurrying crowds, swirling and sifting through the brobdingnagian camp of iron and steel, one saw the camp-followers and the pagan women—there would be work to-day and dancing to-night. For the Puritan's dry voice is but the crackling of a leaf underfoot in the rush and roar of the coming ...
— The Turmoil - A Novel • Booth Tarkington
... Chief interests, aside from writing, are Bach, the New Republic, woman suffrage, and climbing mountains. First story was written at the age of nine, offered to The Youth's Companion for $100. It was not accepted. First published story was in The Pagan, ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1919 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... believeth in me shall never die," and then, "Nay, but except ye repent, ye shall all likewise perish." She did not say anything in showing me these passages, and I found something in her action touchingly childlike and elemental, as well as curiously heathenish. It was as if some poor pagan had brought me his fetish to test its effect upon me. "Yes," I said, "those are things that we hardly know what to do with in our philosophy. They seem to be said as with authority, and yet, somehow, we cannot admit their validity in a philosophical inquiry as to a future ...
— Questionable Shapes • William Dean Howells
... moreover, to think, that just as the Jewish cities were easily got at from all parts of Palestine, so from all parts of the world, may people go to the Greater and more Glorious Gospel Refuge. Poor Pagan of the far East! cast away your idols; the gates of the Gospel-City stand ready to welcome you. Indian of the far West! cast aside your warrior spear and your offerings of blood, and flee to the portals of mercy and to ...
— The Cities of Refuge: or, The Name of Jesus - A Sunday book for the young • John Ross Macduff
... single-handed the burdens and misfortunes of earth! It takes but a little frost to nip the root of all our greatness, and then when our high-blown pride breaks under us we quickly realize how fragile and insecure are the personal foundations of our lives. Naturally and reasonably, therefore, did the pagan philosophers conclude that friendship and friends were necessary ...
— The Shepherd Of My Soul • Rev. Charles J. Callan
... authority, even to the last. This virtue is cultivated to a degree that is remarkable, and has produced singular and favorable results on the national character, which it is hoped may be imparted to the land to which they are flocking in such multitudes. For with all their peculiarities of pagan philosophy and their oriental eccentricities of custom and practical life, they are everywhere renowned for their uniform and elegant courtesy—a most commendable virtue, and one arising from habitual deference to the aged more than ...
— The American Woman's Home • Catherine E. Beecher and Harriet Beecher Stowe
... heavenward clinging, They multiply, star upon star; And the breeze a low murmur is bringing From the tents of my people afar. Nay, frown not, I am but a Pagan, Yet little for these things I care; 'Tis the hymn to our deity Dagon That comes with ...
— Poems • Adam Lindsay Gordon
... Fruits and vegetables were, for the time, placed in the background, and an act of "faith" (auto da fe), or burning of heretics, was offered as a public spectacle. The grandest of all the bull-fights of Mexico was nothing in comparison with this vice-regal exhibition. As among the Aztecs and the pagan Romans, the sacrificial victims were kept in reserve for important occasions, and for occasions when a bull-fight would have been a most inadequate exhibition. The consecration of a new archbishop, or the arrival of a new Vice-king from Spain, or ...
— Mexico and its Religion • Robert A. Wilson
... silent, circuitous, interminable. To poor people, looking up under moist eyebrows, it seemed a wonder where it all came from. Master Francis Villon had propounded an alternative that afternoon, at a tavern window: was it only pagan Jupiter plucking geese upon Olympus? or were the holy angels moulting? He was only a poor Master of Arts, he went on; and as the question somewhat touched upon divinity, he durst not venture to conclude. A silly old priest from Montargis, who was ...
— Stories By English Authors: France • Various
... your mother; she has never touched a drop of anything since she was born, except 'kvass.'[14] So whose fault is it? Whose but the confounded 'moussie;' he taught you fine things, that son of a dog, and well worth the trouble of taking a Pagan for your servant, as if our master had not had ...
— The Daughter of the Commandant • Aleksandr Sergeevich Pushkin
... of all antiquity, has been considered as the most virtuous and enlightened of Pagan philosophers, was a citizen of Athens, and belonged to the town ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 3 of 8 • Various
... that time of mourning turned on loftier themes. The grandeur of pagan philosophy attracted me, and for a while I became a convert. In my efforts to discover new rights for man, I thought that with the aid of modern thought I could penetrate further into the questions to which those old-world systems ...
— The Country Doctor • Honore de Balzac
... I. they are known as Stuart. The only pictures worked in the early days of this art were worked in petit-point, the tiny stitch which imitated tapestry, and very quaint are the specimens left to us. The favourite themes were entirely pagan. Gods and goddesses disported themselves among leafy trees. Cupid lightly shot his arrows, the woods were inhabited by an unknown flora and fauna which seem all its own. The very dogs seem to be a different species, having more likeness to the china dogs of the spotted or ...
— Chats on Old Lace and Needlework • Emily Leigh Lowes
... of natural conservatism, Petrarch added one significant element to the former medieval culture. That was an appreciation, amounting almost to worship, of the pagan Greek and Latin literature. Nor was he interested in antique things because they supported his theology or inculcated Christian morals; his fondness for them was simply and solely because they were inherently interesting. In a multitude ...
— A Political and Social History of Modern Europe V.1. • Carlton J. H. Hayes
... the valley lay blood, bones, ashes, and mangled bodies of men, even of pilgrims that had gone this way formerly; and while I was musing what should be the reason, I espied a little before me a cave, where two giants, Pope and Pagan, dwelt in old time; by whose power and tyranny the men, whose bones, blood, ashes, etc., lay there, were cruelly put to death. But by this place Christian went without much danger, whereat I somewhat wondered; but I have learned since, that Pagan has been dead many a day; and as for the other, ...
— Bible Stories and Religious Classics • Philip P. Wells
... these graves of the unknown dead. Many of them were decorated with fresh flowers or those metal wreaths that the Europeans use, and where a company lay together a little monument had been erected with a simple inscription. It would seem that these Champenoise peasants still retain some of that pagan reverence for the dead which their Latin ancestors had cultivated, mingled with passionate love for those who gave themselves in ...
— The World Decision • Robert Herrick
... zealous missionary, propagating his faith by the sword, and like many other religious zealots he was guilty of outrageous cruelty. Seven years subsequent to the last-named date he destroyed the Pagan temples of Thor and Odin at Troendhjem. Upon the site of this temple he built a Christian church, making the city his seat of government, and so it remained the capital down to the union with Denmark. Olaf was slain in battle while fighting for his throne, and was declared a saint by the Church, ...
— Foot-prints of Travel - or, Journeyings in Many Lands • Maturin M. Ballou
... ceremony itself, the finger-ring still holds among us as prominent a place as it did among the superstitious marriage-rites of the ancient pagan world. Among the endless magical and medical properties that were formerly supposed to be possessed by human saliva, one is almost universally credited by the Scottish schoolboy up to the present hour; ...
— Archaeological Essays, Vol. 1 • James Y. Simpson
... ivy in the niches, the moss and lichen, the rich colour of the boulders, the trees in the valleys below us, the clear sky, and the sweet air that comes across the bay, make us linger here for the beauty of the scene alone; regardless almost of the ancient history of Mortain, of the story of its Pagan temples, of its thirteenth-century church, and almost unmindful of the 'Abbaye de Savigny,' eight miles off, a building which is worthy ...
— Normandy Picturesque • Henry Blackburn
... see, does not give his name, but merely the two words 'Porphyrius philosophus.' What this may refer to I cannot say: it is beyond my experience. My friend Mr. Calvert has suggested that Stradivarius may have dedicated this violin to the pagan philosopher, or named it after him; but this seems improbable. I have, indeed, heard of two famous violins being called 'Peter' and 'Paul,' but the instances of such naming are very rare; and I believe it to be altogether without precedent ...
— The Lost Stradivarius • John Meade Falkner
... There is something in the impulse with which one sympathizes; though I am afraid the destroyers were not sufficiently aware of the mischief they did to enjoy it fully. Probably, too, the early Christians were impelled by religious zeal to destroy the pagan temples, before the happy thought occurred of converting them ...
— Passages From the French and Italian Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... be hard to find in our generation: "No bickering or dissention was ever permitted. Love was the habit, the life of the household rather than the law.—A querulous tone, a complaint, a slight word of dissention, was met by that awful frown of my father's. Jove's thunder was to a pagan believer but as a summer day's drifting cloud to it. It was not so dreadful because it portended punishment,—it was punishment; it was a token of suspension of the approbation and ...
— Daughters of the Puritans - A Group of Brief Biographies • Seth Curtis Beach
... grandfathers built their places of worship we have seen strange changes in American church buildings—changes in material, location and adaptation to ritual uses. We have had a revival of pagan temple-building in wood and stucco; we have seen Gothic cathedrals copied for the simplest Protestant uses, until humorists have suggested that congregations might find it cheaper to change their religion than their unsuitable new churches; we have ranged from ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XXVI., December, 1880. • Various
... talk of that which I do not well understand. It is easy to see, that what is called by distinction society and fashion has good laws as well as bad, has much that is necessary, and much that is absurd. Too good for banning, and too bad for blessing, it reminds us of a tradition of the pagan mythology, in any attempt to settle its character. 'I overheard Jove, one day,' said Silenus, 'talking of destroying the earth; he said it had failed; they were all rogues and vixens, who went from bad to worse, as fast as the days succeeded each other. Minerva ...
— Essays, Second Series • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... stamp of his profession in his very bearing, and in every lineament of his face. It was more difficult to imagine a young and charming woman housed in such a place, but his first glimpse of the bishop's daughter showed him that her Pagan beauty was emphasized rather than lessened by contrast ...
— The Mayor of Warwick • Herbert M. Hopkins
... clash of arms in this remarkable poem. But elsewhere there is, in rather narrow and usual limits, a good deal else. Charlemagne's daughter, and the daughters of peers and paladins, figure: and their characteristics are not very different from those of the pagan damsels. It is, indeed, unnecessary to convert them,—a process to which their miscreant sisters usually submit with great goodwill,—and they are also relieved from the necessity of showing the extreme undutifulness to their more religiously constant sires, which is something ...
— The Flourishing of Romance and the Rise of Allegory - (Periods of European Literature, vol. II) • George Saintsbury
... been attempted. The Arabs come down to the native ways, and make no efforts to raise the natives to theirs; it is better that it is so, for the coast Arab's manners and morals would be no improvement on the pagan African! ...
— The Last Journals of David Livingstone, in Central Africa, from 1865 to His Death, Volume I (of 2), 1866-1868 • David Livingstone
... walked now, for not only were suffocating gases said to beset the bottom of the shafts, but men would have it that in the narrow passages below lurked evil spirits and demons. One who ought to know about such things, told me that when St. Aldhelm first came to Purbeck, he bound the old Pagan gods under a ban deep in these passages, but that the worst of all the crew was a certain demon called the Mandrive, who watched over the best of the black marble. And that was why such marble might only be used in churches or for graves, for if it were not ...
— Moonfleet • J. Meade Falkner
... we shall briefly refer are full of illustrations of the manner in which old pagan gods became Christian deities, so to speak, of the newly baptized nation. For example: Perun the Thunder-god became, in popular superstition, "St. Ilya" (or Elijah), and the day dedicated to him, July 20th (old ...
— A Survey of Russian Literature, with Selections • Isabel Florence Hapgood
... course! Shall we believe less of the divinity of Virtue than an Athenian Sage? Shall we, to whose eyes have been revealed without a cloud the blaze and the glory of Heaven, make Virtue a slave to those chains of earth which the Pagan subjected to her feet? But if by her we can trample on the ills of life, are we not a hundredfold more by her the vanquishers of death? All creation lies before us: shall we cling to a grain of dust? All immortality is our heritage: shall we gasp ...
— The Disowned, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... hall, now the college dining-hall, had become a dancing-hall, and the ground, unoccupied by buildings, soil hallowed by the memories of so many saintly lives and associated with the momentous days when England was being released from the toils of pagan ignorance became known as "the Old Palace Tea-gardens." The popular mind had seemingly forgotten the original uses of the place they were desecrating ...
— Beautiful Britain • Gordon Home
... Sudan's most important sector, employing 80% of the work force and contributing 39% of GDP, but most farms remain rain-fed and susceptible to drought. Chronic instability - including the long-standing civil war between the Muslim north and the Christian/pagan south, the ethnic purges in Darfur, adverse weather, and weak world agricultural prices - ensure that much of the population will remain at or below the poverty ...
— The 2004 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency
... moll-owl! And I ask any sane Christian or Pagan—proof enough!—would my brother Rowsley let his wife visit those places, those people? Monstrous to have the suspicion that he would, you know him! Mrs. Lawrence Finchley, for example. I say nothing to hurt the poor woman; I back her ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... the view that the account of the miracles of Apollonius is derived from the narrative of Christ's miracles, and has been concocted by people anxious to degrade the character of the Saviour. The attempt to make him appear as a pagan Christ has been renewed in ...
— Outlines of Greek and Roman Medicine • James Sands Elliott
... kind; while in such exquisite little poems as Blossoms, Daffodils, and others he finds a classic expression for his love of nature and country life. In his epigrams, however, he falls much below himself. He has been described as "the most frankly pagan of English poets." ...
— A Short Biographical Dictionary of English Literature • John W. Cousin
... manifest on the other hand little or no delicacy or sensitiveness of conscience on purely ethical matters. Take for example such men as Torquemada and the inquisitors, or Calvin amongst the Protestants; take the orgies of sensuality which were the necessary accompaniment of much religious worship in Pagan times, and, if we may believe travellers, are not wholly dissociated with popular religion in India and China to-day. Or, again, take such a case as that of the directors of the Liberator Building Society, men whose prospectuses, annual reports, and even announcements ...
— Morality as a Religion - An exposition of some first principles • W. R. Washington Sullivan
... case of the great emperor Charles V and a gentleman in Rome. The emperor was anxious to see that famous temple of the Rotunda, called in ancient times the temple 'of all the gods,' but now-a-days, by a better nomenclature, 'of all the saints,' which is the best preserved building of all those of pagan construction in Rome, and the one which best sustains the reputation of mighty works and magnificence of its founders. It is in the form of a half orange, of enormous dimensions, and well lighted, though no light penetrates ...
— Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... "Here, you pagan, you, you stolid and flesh-fettered ox, you monstrosity of over-weening and perennial health and joy, what do you think ...
— The Valley of the Moon • Jack London
... who taught him to fight with consummate skill; while Hilde herself presided over the education of Gudrun, and made her so charming that many suitors soon came, hoping to find favor in her eyes. These were Siegfried, King of Moorland, a pagan of dark complexion; Hartmut, son of Ludwig, King of Normandy; and, lastly, Herwig of Zealand. Although the latter fancied that he had won some favor in the fair Gudrun's sight, Hettel dismissed him as well as the others, with the answer that his daughter ...
— Legends of the Middle Ages - Narrated with Special Reference to Literature and Art • H.A. Guerber
... visited many of the Roman Catholic missionary establishments; their priests adopt quite a different line of conduct: they are cheerful and kind to the savage pagan, and polite and attentive to their European brethren; they have gained the esteem of those they have been sent to convert; they have introduced their own language amongst them, which enables them to have intercourse ...
— A Narrative of a Nine Months' Residence in New Zealand in 1827 • Augustus Earle
... also, like Boisrobert, a bad poet; that was another. His thesis was that the history of Christianity offered subjects far more inspiring to a poet than those which had been treated by Homer and Sophocles, and that Christian poetry must bear off the palm from pagan. His own Clovis and Mary Magdalene or the Triumph of Grace were the demonstration of Homer's defeat. Few have ever heard of these productions; how many have read them? Curiously, about the same time an epic was being composed in England which might have given ...
— The Idea of Progress - An Inquiry Into Its Origin And Growth • J. B. Bury
... Agnus Dei, than their magic cords. The chiefs, in like manner, while they testified no repugnance to avail themselves of the protection promised from the wearing of crucifixes and images of the Virgin, were unprepared to part with the enchanted rings and other pagan amulets with which they had been accustomed to form a panoply round their persons. In case of dangerous illness, sorcery had been always contemplated as the main or sole remedy, and those who rejected its use were reproached, as rather allowing their sick relations to die, than incur the expense ...
— Lander's Travels - The Travels of Richard Lander into the Interior of Africa • Robert Huish
... game that I've been seein' ivry time th' pagan fistival iv Thanksgivin' comes ar-round, sure it ain't th' game I played. I seen th' Dorgan la-ad comin' up th' sthreet yestherdah in his futball clothes,—a pair iv matthresses on his legs, a pillow behind, a mask over his nose, an' a bushel measure iv hair on his head. He ...
— Mr. Dooley in Peace and in War • Finley Peter Dunne
... possessed him. The process by which this had been achieved he could not explain, but the result was undeniable, and it was due, he knew, to an influence the source of which he frankly acknowledged to be external to himself. The words of the beaten and confounded pagan magic-workers came to him, "This is the finger of God." He could not deny it. Why should he wish to hide it? It became clear to him, in these few minutes of intense soul activity, that there was a demand being made upon him as ...
— The Doctor - A Tale Of The Rockies • Ralph Connor
... it ought to be with the truths which Mr. Mill has set forth. If the minds of lads can but be kept clear of Pagan brutalities and mediaeval superstitions, and fed instead on the soundest and noblest of our English literature, Mr. Mill's creed about women will, I verily believe, seem to them as one which they have always held ...
— Women and Politics • Charles Kingsley
... Lisle, but of Suard and Morellet. M. Faguet sums up on the side of M. France in his volume on the 18th century (1890). Chenier's real disciples, according to the latest view, are Leconte de Lisle and M. de Heredia, mosaistes who have at heart the cult of antique and pagan beauty, of "pure art" and of "objective poetry." Heredia himself reverted to the judgment of Sainte-Beuve to the effect that Chenier was the first to make modern verses, and he adds, "I do not know in the ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 1 - "Chtelet" to "Chicago" • Various
... institutions of the Children of the Sun than any thing which we have met in the whole of this strange and obsolete record. 'The ritual of the Incas,' says Prescott, 'involved a routine of observances as complex and elaborate as ever distinguished that of any nation, whether pagan or Christian. Each month had its appropriate festival, or rather festivals. The four principal had reference to the Sun, and commemorated the great periods of his annual progress, the solstices and equinoxes. Garments of a peculiar wool, and feathers of a ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I, No. V, May, 1862 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... cause him to lie down meekly beside the stick! Can it be that the Italian peasants, who still believe cattle kneel in their stalls at midnight on the anniversary of Jesus' birth, decorate the mangers on Christmas eve with holly, among other plants, because of a survival of this old pagan notion about ...
— Wild Flowers, An Aid to Knowledge of Our Wild Flowers and - Their Insect Visitors - - Title: Nature's Garden • Neltje Blanchan
... it home with me, and had not read a dozen pages, when I was convinced that I ought to be ashamed of myself to think how greatly I have admired less noble and less natural beauties in Pagan authors; while I have known nothing of this all-exciting collection of beauties, the Bible! By my faith, Lovelace, I shall for the future have a better opinion of the good sense and taste of half a score of parsons, whom ...
— Clarissa, Volume 7 • Samuel Richardson
... disruption after another took place among the Buddhistic Order. There were many different schools of the Buddhists at the time when King Acoka ascended the throne (about 269 B.C.), and the patronage of the King drew a great number of pagan ascetics into the Order, who, though they dressed themselves in the yellow robes, yet still preserved their religious views in their original colour. This naturally led the Church into continual disturbances and moral corruption. In the eighteenth year of ...
— The Religion of the Samurai • Kaiten Nukariya
... "remnant of true believers." By way of aiding in the crusade to convert him to the faith, I hereunder quote a couple of instances, "within the age of registers," which I trust will in some degree satisfy his pagan incredulity. The parish registers of the township of Church Minshull, in Cheshire, begin in 1561, and in the portion for the year ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 190, June 18, 1853 • Various
... is just. O brother, can it be needful now, at this late epoch of experience, after eighteen centuries of Christian preaching for one thing, to remind thee of such a fact; which all manner of Mahometans, old Pagan Romans, Jews, Scythians and heathen Greeks, and indeed more or less all men that God made, have managed at one time to see into; nay which thou thyself, till 'redtape' strangled the inner life of thee, hadst ...
— Past and Present - Thomas Carlyle's Collected Works, Vol. XIII. • Thomas Carlyle
... foremost amongst the best models of poetic excellence. Yet there was wanting to them the true sources of poetic inspiration, whence flow the loftiest conceptions and sublimest emanations of genius. Homer never rose above the summit of Olympus, nor Virgil above the level of pagan subjects and surroundings. Therefore they cannot be properly regarded as the highest and best models, certainly not the safest for Christians, who can feast their eyes and fill their minds and hearts with more perfect models and more sublime subjects. The sight of Sinai, ...
— Poems: Patriotic, Religious, Miscellaneous • Abram J. Ryan, (Father Ryan)
... man prayed for all the world And all its motley crew, For pagan, Hindoo, sinners, Turk, And unbelieving Jew,— Though the congregation doubtless thought That the cowboys as a race Were a kind of moral outlaw With no good claim ...
— Cowboy Songs - and Other Frontier Ballads • Various
... the state of the capital of Constantine had been totally changed, and unspeakably to its advantage. The world was now Christian, and, with the Pagan code, had got rid of its load of disgraceful superstition. Nor is there the least doubt, that the better faith produced its natural and desirable fruits in society, in gradually ameliorating the hearts, and taming the passions, of the people. But while many of the converts ...
— Waverley Volume XII • Sir Walter Scott
... something far greater. When he came to the original he was profoundly impressed. It is strange, he says, that he has learnt for the first time at the age of sixty what a really great poem could be. Poor Milton's adaptation of pagan mythology to the Hebrew legends, in order to expound Puritan theology, results in a series of solecisms, which even the poet could not expect his readers to take seriously. The story, taken for history, certainly breaks down sufficiently to ...
— The Life of Sir James Fitzjames Stephen, Bart., K.C.S.I. - A Judge of the High Court of Justice • Sir Leslie Stephen
... answered at last regretfully, "it's a pagan world. Men make mistakes. I think it's largely because they want so much to love that they love somebody, anybody, till ...
— Sally of Missouri • R. E. Young
... inconceivable if she did not live in wedlock; and he expressly states that eight "metropolitans" of Armagh were "married men" (Sec. 19). But if there was nevertheless a revival among large sections of the people of pagan ideas of marriage, which tolerated polygamy, concubinage, incest and easy termination of unions, it can be understood that marriage in the face of the Church, which included a vow absolutely prohibitive ...
— St. Bernard of Clairvaux's Life of St. Malachy of Armagh • H. J. Lawlor
... rapturously pagan vision of pranks and posies broke one of her room-mates all awhiff with ...
— The White Linen Nurse • Eleanor Hallowell Abbott
... his fears that 'his son was in a bad way.' For this, too, am I indebted to procrastination. I thus became a martyr to supposed opinions, of which I was ignorant; and such was the unchristian bigotry of my neighbours, that, deeming it sinful to employ one whom they considered little other than a pagan, about five years after my marriage I was compelled to remove with my family ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, XXII • various
... she knows more of our way of speaking, then we must teach her; it is a sad thing for Christian children to live with an untaught pagan," said Louis, who, being rather bigoted in his creed, felt a sort of uneasiness in his own mind at the poor girl's total want of the rites of his church; but Hector and Catharine regarded her ignorance with feelings of compassionate interest, and lost no ...
— Canadian Crusoes - A Tale of The Rice Lake Plains • Catharine Parr Traill
... of his Roman palace at London, King Uther, Pendragon of the Island of Britain, lay dying. He had been long sick with a wasting disease, and forced to lie in his bed, gnawing his beard with wrath at his weakness, while the pagan Saxons ravened up and down the fair broad lands, leaving in their tracks the smoking ruin of broken towns and desolated villages, where mothers lay dead beside their children on the hearths, fair churches stood pillaged and desecrated, and priests and ...
— King Arthur's Knights - The Tales Re-told for Boys & Girls • Henry Gilbert
... idea of his people's adopting Christianity as their national religion, and allowed the missionaries a free hand to plant churches throughout the vast interior. Rarely if ever has so fine an opportunity offered for making an easy conquest of a pagan empire. It was lost through the jealousy of contending societies, and especially through the blunder of an infallible Pope. The Dominicans denounced the Jesuits for tolerating the practice of pagan rites, such ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume XIV • John Lord
... suggestion of ideas is purely Christian. The ancient world knew of a few great women who transcended the conditions of society in those days and helped, each one her country, in some extraordinary way. Thus Deborah helped the people of God in a time of terrible difficulty. And even the Pagan world was not without its Semiramis and its Portia. When mercy came into the world with Christianity the dispensation of it was largely committed to the gentle hands of women, for since men have believed ...
— Defenders of Democracy • The Militia of Mercy
... victory for us means victory for religion. And they could not tolerate that. The world is too small to provide adequate "living room" for both Hitler and God. In proof of that, the Nazis have now announced their plan for enforcing their new German, pagan religion all over the world—a plan by which the Holy Bible and the Cross of Mercy would be displaced by Mein Kampf and the swastika and the ...
— State of the Union Addresses of Franklin D. Roosevelt • Franklin D. Roosevelt
... manhood's early bloom The Christian hero found a Pagan tomb: Religion, sorrowing o'er her favorite son, Points to the glorious trophies which he won. Eternal trophies, not with slaughter red, Not stained with tears by hopeless captives shed; But trophies of the Cross. For that dear Name Through every form of danger, death and ...
— A Handful of Stars - Texts That Have Moved Great Minds • Frank W. Boreham
... could not gauge the strength of the new spirit, for words do not by themselves convey the quality of power in men; and even when the reverberations from Easter Week were echoing everywhere in Ireland, for a time I, and many others, thought and felt about those who died as some pagan concourse in ancient Italy might have felt looking down upon an arena, seeing below a foam of glorious faces turned to them, the noble, undismayed, inflexible faces of martyrs, and, without understanding, have realized that this spirit was stronger ...
— Imaginations and Reveries • (A.E.) George William Russell
... from the one which is left. It is quite conceivable that the Roman Church, which considers itself the only true one, should look on those who leave its communion as guilty of a great offence. It is equally natural that a church which considers Pope and Pagan a pair of murderous giants, sitting at the mouths of their caves, alike in their hatred to true Christians, should regard any of its members who go over to Romanism as lost in fatal error. But within the Protestant fold there are many ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... May morning, he took his last walk in the beautiful grounds of Trinity, and set out for New York, where he now leads a classical existence, puzzling the natives by his free use of the Graeco-cantab dialect, as well as by a semi-pagan sort of worship which he pays to ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 440 - Volume 17, New Series, June 5, 1852 • Various
... of the religious element and of harmony among the people. They also ceased to appreciate the simple and sublime principles of a Theocracy, while all around them was the central power and the pomp of pagan monarchies; and they became tired of God's holy sovereignty, having no visible display of authority. There were dissensions and civil strife in Israel, in consequence of these departures from the Lord, and strange melancholy blindness to ...
— Half Hours in Bible Lands, Volume 2 - Patriarchs, Kings, and Kingdoms • Rev. P. C. Headley
... would not trust the pagan king: but with a sword he bade them take off her head. The damsel did not gainsay this thing: she would fain let go this worldly life if Christ gave command. And in shape of a dove she flew to heaven. Let ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 1 - From the Beginning to 1800 • George Saintsbury
... morality of Christian valuations: the latter having grown out of a thoroughly morbid soil. (—The gospels present us with the same physiological types, as do the novels of Dostoiewsky), the master-morality ("Roman," "pagan," "classical," "Renaissance"), on the other hand, being the symbolic speech of well-constitutedness, of ascending life, and of the Will to Power as a vital principle. Master-morality affirms just as instinctively as Christian morality denies ("God," "Beyond," "self-denial,"—all of them negations). ...
— The Case Of Wagner, Nietzsche Contra Wagner, and Selected Aphorisms. • Friedrich Nietzsche.
... of a great palace. She points to the heavens; she is an interrogation mark, Pilate's question. Botticelli was adored. But understood? An enigmatic malady ravaged his being. He died poor and alone, did this composer of luminous chants and pagan poems, this moulder of exotic dreams and of angels who long for other gods than those of Good and Evil. A grievously wounded, timid soul, an intruder at the portals of paradise, but without the courage ...
— Promenades of an Impressionist • James Huneker
... agreement in mankind than perhaps on anything that is beyond the five senses. To argue that in claiming of the State an enforcement of duties cardinal to citizenship, we admit its right to dictate in religion, is a pestilent anachronism; it confounds Morals with Religion just as did the ancient world, Pagan and Hebrew. Again, the test of soundness in Morals is found in the agreement of the human race. There is no nation, no elementary tribe of men, so ignorant or so besotted, as not to condemn drunkenness as immoral and utterly evil. In justifying penalties against a ...
— Memoir and Letters of Francis W. Newman • Giberne Sieveking
... you o'erstep not the modesty of nature. O! there be players that I have seen play, and heard others praise, and that highly, not to speak it profanely, that, neither having the accent of Christians nor the gait of Christian, pagan, nor man, have so strutted and bellowed that I have thought some of nature's journeymen had made men and not made them well, they imitated ...
— Shakespeare and the Modern Stage - with Other Essays • Sir Sidney Lee
... the shouting fowls upon the limb, The kneeling cattle and the rising hymn! Has not a pagan rights to be regarded— His heart assaulted and his ear bombarded With sentiments and sounds that good old Pan Even in ...
— Shapes of Clay • Ambrose Bierce
... he got hold of he stuck to. More than this, he had teeth fit to masticate iron, a stomach to dissolve it, a duodenum to digest it, a sphincter to let it out again without tearing, and shoulders that would bear a universe upon them, like that pagan gentleman to whom the job was confided, and whom the timely arrival of Jesus Christ discharged from the duty. He was, in fact, a man made with one stroke, and they are the best, for those who have to be touched are worth nothing, being patched up and finished at odd times. In short, Master ...
— Droll Stories, Volume 3 • Honore de Balzac
... purchased or received in church. The sacred elements were stabbed by the whole assembly, the candles were extinguished at the termination of the mass, and an orgie followed, similar, says Mgr. de Segur, to those of "Pagan mysteries and Manichaean re-unions." Such abominations were, however, admittedly rare, and the story just recited rests on nothing ...
— Devil-Worship in France - or The Question of Lucifer • Arthur Edward Waite
... GDP, and accounting for most of GDP growth, but most farms remain rain-fed and susceptible to drought. Chronic instability - including the long-standing civil war between the Muslim north and the Christian/pagan south, adverse weather, and weak world agricultural prices - ensure that much of the population will remain at or below the poverty line ...
— The 2005 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency
... while others make themselves pleasant with the principles of the christian. Of the last kind, this age has seen a most audacious example in the book entitled, a Tale of a Tub. Had this writing been published in a pagan or popish nation, who are justly impatient of all indignity offered to the established religion of their country, no doubt but the author would have received the punishment he deserved. But the fate of this impious buffoon is very different; for in a protestant kingdom, zealous of their ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D. in Nine Volumes - Volume the Eighth: The Lives of the Poets, Volume II • Samuel Johnson
... sympathy—deeper far than mere theological doctrine could reach—ready to accept it; and in every land the ground prepared for it in some already dominant idea of a mother-Goddess, chaste, beautiful, and benign. As, in the oldest Hebrew rites and Pagan superstitions, men traced the promise of a coming Messiah,—as the deliverers and kings of the Old Testament, and even the demigods of heathendom, became accepted types of the person of Christ,—so the Eve of the Mosaic history, the ...
— Legends of the Madonna • Mrs. Jameson
... somewhat in the way of 'Baetyli' of pagan antiquity, which were of round form; they were supposed to be animated, by means of magical incantations, with a portion of the Deity; they were consulted on occasions of great and pressing emergency as a kind of divine oracle, and were suspended either round the ...
— The Euahlayi Tribe - A Study of Aboriginal Life in Australia • K. Langloh Parker
... could be done to resist the advance of Sapor, that the insubordination of the troops should be checked, their wants supplied, and their good-will conciliated. Constantius applied himself to effect these changes. Meanwhile Sapor set the Arabs and Armenians in motion, inducing the Pagan party among the latter to rise in insurrection, deliver their king, Tiranus, into his power, and make incursions into the Roman territory, while the latter infested with their armed bands the provinces of Mesopotamia and ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 7. (of 7): The Sassanian or New Persian Empire • George Rawlinson
... Christianity, all of his loyal subjects were from that moment Christians—Christians by edict, but Pagans by character, for the natures of men can not be changed by the passing of a resolution. From that time every Pagan temple became a Christian church, and every Pagan ...
— Little Journeys To The Homes Of Great Teachers • Elbert Hubbard
... however, of which I find a note, this monarch was not a Hebrew but a Gentile, and a very wicked one. He once invited eleven famous doctors of the holy nation to supper. They were received in the most magnificent style, and were then invited, under pain of death, either to eat pork, to accept a pagan mistress, or to drink wine consecrated to idols. After long consultation, the doctors, in great tribulation, agreed to save their heads by accepting the last alternative, since the first and second were forbidden by Moses, and the last only by ...
— Alroy - The Prince Of The Captivity • Benjamin Disraeli
... book we have aimed at presenting a clear picture of the pagan tribes of Borneo as they existed at the close of the nineteenth century. We have not attempted to embody in it the observations recorded by other writers, although we have profited by them and have been guided and aided by them in ...
— The Pagan Tribes of Borneo • Charles Hose and William McDougall
... exceptional weather," they tell us, but that seems to be the rule everywhere. We have done a respectable amount of gallery-slaving, and I have been amusing myself by picking up the topography of ancient Rome. I was going to say Pagan Rome, but the inappropriateness of the distinction strikes me, papal Rome being much more stupidly and childishly pagan than imperial. I never saw a sadder sight than the kissing a wretched bedizened doll of a Bambino that went on in the Ara Coeli ...
— The Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley Volume 2 • Leonard Huxley
... against the wall, were some splendid Georgian columns and architraves, richly carved in dark brown wood. I asked what it was. "Oh, a horrible pompous thing," he said; "it was behind the altar—most pagan and unsuitable; we had it all out as soon as I came. The first moment I entered the church, I said to myself, 'THAT must go,' and I have succeeded, though it was hard enough to collect the money, and actually some of the old people here objected." I did not feel it was worth while to ...
— The Upton Letters • Arthur Christopher Benson
... played is a peculiar one, evidently of great antiquity, and probably the custom had its origin as far back as the feast of Flora, when pagan rites were performed in the country, or, perhaps, it originally was instituted to celebrate a victory over the Saxons; or it may be a remnant of some ...
— Michael Penguyne - Fisher Life on the Cornish Coast • William H. G. Kingston
... nought but stale mediocrity—while we are shaken from, shell to core by the breath of the times." He is worshipped by the dwarfs because he has opened the mysteries of inanimate nature, and he commands the spirits of classical life represented by Antinous, and the pagan' gods and demi-gods, the personifications of the naive impulses of nature. But he realizes that his wisdom, while it makes dwarfs happy, is inadequate for ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VII. • Various
... several pagan temples reminded the travelers that this lovely city was the home of Philip, the son of Herod the Great. He had spent much money to make it beautiful. But the disciples found little pleasure in ...
— Men Called Him Master • Elwyn Allen Smith
... Won't you see?" she asked. "I was waiting here for the courage to go to you since you have made it so very hard for me—my pagan." With which she came close to him, looking upward into his face, smiling a little, shrinking a little, yielding yet withholding, while the moonlight made of her eyes two bottomless, boundless pools, dark with love, and brimming with the promise ...
— The Spoilers • Rex Beach |
