"Polynesia" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... skin midway between the black or brown-black of the negro, and the ruddy or olive-white of the Caucasian types, a colour which still prevails over all Northern Asia, over the American continents, and over much of Polynesia. From this primary tint arose, under the influence of varied conditions, and probably in correlation with constitutional changes adapted to peculiar climates, the varied tints which still exist among mankind. If the reasoning by which ...
— Darwinism (1889) • Alfred Russel Wallace
... by Logan to designate the light-colored non-Malay inhabitants of the Eastern Archipelago, is now used as a convenient collective name for all the peoples of Malaysia and Polynesia who are neither Malays nor Papuans but of Caucasic type. * * * Doctor Hamy, who first gave this extension to the term Indonesian, points out that the Battaks and other pre-Malay peoples of Malaysia so ...
— The Manbos of Mindano - Memoirs of the National Academy of Sciences, Volume XXIII, First Memoir • John M. Garvan
... tongues was one that I particularly over-estimated. The languages of Polynesia are easy to smatter, though hard to speak with elegance. And they are extremely similar, so that a person who has a tincture of one or two may risk, not without hope, an attempt ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 18 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... mountain," though with an altered profile. The first day the weather was so hazy that it was in vain we endeavored to unravel the obscurity. It was like looking into the sky again, and the patches of forest here and there seemed to flit like clouds over a lower heaven. As to voyagers of an aerial Polynesia, the earth seemed like a larger island in the ether; on every side, even as low as we, the sky shutting down, like an unfathomable deep, around it, a blue Pacific island, where who knows what islanders inhabit? and as we sail near its shores ...
— Excursions • Henry D. Thoreau
... ships must sail round the world. The great island over there was Asia; that large stone Africa; the little island America; the small stones were Polynesia; and the shore from which the ships sailed out was Europe. The whole fleet set off and sailed far away to other parts of the world. The ships of the line steered a straight course to Asia, the frigates sailed to Africa, the brigs to America, and the schooners to Polynesia. But Little Lasse remained ...
— The Lilac Fairy Book • Andrew Lang
... with me to my trade-room, and we soon went to work together, I forbearing to ask her any questions whatever, though I was as full of curiosity as a woman. Like that of all trading vessels whose "run" embraced the islands of Polynesia as well as Melanesia and Micronesia, the trade-room of the Metaris was a general store. The shelves and cases were filled with all sorts of articles—tinned provisions, wines and spirits, firearms and ammunition, hardware and drapers' soft goods, "yellow-back" novels, ready-made clothing for men, ...
— The Call Of The South - 1908 • Louis Becke
... idol of Polynesia was ever a sign of a more shameful idolatry than the modern notion in the minds of certainly the majority of English religious persons, that the Word of God, by which the heavens were of old, and the earth, standing out of the water and in the water,—the Word ...
— Aratra Pentelici, Seven Lectures on the Elements of Sculpture - Given before the University of Oxford in Michaelmas Term, 1870 • John Ruskin
... pyjamas or white duck, and becomes used to a certain laxity of moral tone which prevails (as in memory of Mr. Hayes) on smuggling, ship-scuttling, barratry, piracy, the labour trade, and other kindred fields of human activity, he will find Polynesia no less amusing and no less instructive than Pall ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 13 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... plunge himself into a country of savages nevertheless, where all the refinement would be his own. To some natures it would be easier to part with a hand altogether, than to forego the necessity of having it clean. This was one. And he was going to give himself up to Polynesia and its practices. Eleanor eat with the rest of her breakfast and swallowed with her tea, the remembered words of the apostle—"But what things were gain to me, those I counted loss for Christ."—"Neither count I my life dear unto myself, so that I may finish my ...
— The Old Helmet, Volume II • Susan Warner
... satisfaction of roasting his flesh and calcining his bones, for an antediluvian dejeuner a la fourchette,—(only, to escape anachronism) sans fourchette! What a pity I have not the privilege of la belle sauvage, far away in some cannibalistic nook of pagan Polynesia." ...
— Infelice • Augusta Jane Evans Wilson
... said Mr. Scogan, as they strolled slowly onward, "that a multitude of people are toiling in the harvest fields in order that we may talk of Polynesia. Like every other good thing in this world, leisure and culture have to be paid for. Fortunately, however, it is not the leisured and the cultured who have to pay. Let us be duly thankful for that, my dear Denis—duly ...
— Crome Yellow • Aldous Huxley
... Denmark Djibouti Dominica Dominican Republic Ecuador Egypt El Salvador Equatorial Guinea Eritrea Estonia Ethiopia Europa Island Falkland Islands (Islas Malvinas) Faroe Islands Fiji Finland France French Guiana French Polynesia French Southern and Antarctic Lands Gabon The Gambia Gaza Strip Georgia Germany Ghana Gibraltar Glorioso Islands Greece Greenland Grenada Guadeloupe Guam Guatemala Guernsey Guinea Guinea-Bissau Guyana ...
— The 1997 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... they say. Gather the open marguerite daisies, and they seem large—so wide a disc, such fingers of rays; but in the grass their size is toned by so much green. Clover heads of honey lurk in the bunches and by the hidden footpath. Like clubs from Polynesia the tips of the grasses are varied in shape: some tend to a point—the foxtails—some are hard and cylindrical; others, avoiding the club shape, put forth the slenderest branches with fruit of seed at the ends, which ...
— The Life of the Fields • Richard Jefferies
... man. Much interested the other day. As I rode past a house, I saw where a Samoan had written a word on a board, and there was an [inverted A], perfectly formed, but upside down. You never saw such a thing in Europe; but it is as common as dirt in Polynesia. Men's names are tattooed on the forearm; it is common to find a subverted letter tattooed there. Here is ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 25 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... the Orang Binua of Borneo. In the Philippines the Semang complexion re-appears. But the prolongation of the eastward line of migration takes us through the Mariannes and Ladrones to Polynesia; and here the magnitude of the islands decreases; in other words, the influences of the sea-air become greater. The aliment becomes almost wholly vegetable. The separation from the civilizational ...
— The Ethnology of the British Colonies and Dependencies • Robert Gordon Latham
... by some unfrequented track, and, striking the broad Atlantic, stretch down the coast of Brazil. Perhaps we may double Cape Horn, and see what those miserable patriots are fighting for in Chili and Peru; then maybe across the Pacific, to the lovely islands and maidens of Polynesia; so on to the China Seas, where we may fall in with an outward-bound Canton trader, or a galleon with a ton or two of silver on board—who knows?—there is plenty of blue water and fine ships every where; so we must ...
— Captain Brand of the "Centipede" • H. A. (Henry Augustus) Wise
... has been almost complete; the population are nominally Christian, and in most of these communities there is a strong nucleus of spiritual life in a valuable body of Church members. This is the case in Polynesia, in the West Indies, and in many stations in South Africa. Around many strong churches in Madagascar, in India, and in China, the sphere of heathenism is still very large. Several stations in those Missions—well planted for the influence required of them—may now be occupied ...
— Fruits of Toil in the London Missionary Society • Various
... before the end of 1914.... It was small consolation for Mr. Britling to reflect that English homes and women and children were, after all, undergoing only the same kind of experience that our ships have inflicted scores of times in the past upon innocent people in the villages of Africa and Polynesia.... ...
— Mr. Britling Sees It Through • H. G. Wells
... Here is none of the indolence and apathy which one associates with Oriental life, and which I have seen in Polynesia. These yellow, brown, tawny, swarthy, olive-tinted men are all intent on gain; busy, industrious, frugal, striving, and, no matter what their creed is, all paying homage to Daikoku. In spite of the activity, rapidity, and earnestness, the movements of all but the Chinese are graceful, ...
— The Golden Chersonese and the Way Thither • Isabella L. Bird (Mrs. Bishop) |
