"Thor" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... her, the world was yet peopled by the mythological beings, created by the naive faith of the north, and to them she had learned to adapt the phenomena of nature. When she heard the thunder, she thought of Thor, and his mighty hammer, driving across the heavens in his iron car. If the sky was clear, she thought the luminous Alfis lighted up ...
— International Miscellany of Literature, Art and Science, Vol. 1, - No. 3, Oct. 1, 1850 • Various
... Then waken'd Thor, {f:28} And drew around his loins the mighty belt Of bear-sinews; With love fraternal harden'd he his shield, With eager haste he sharp'd his blunted glaive, And, with the iron of his hammer, touch'd Each Dane's ...
— Romantic Ballads - translated from the Danish; and Miscellaneous Pieces • George Borrow
... Kamna are before the drummers, back to back, kicking up ambitiously at the stars; Asmani,—the embodiment of giant strength,—a towering Titan,— has also a gun, with which he is dealing blows in the air, as if he were Thor, slaying myriads with his hammer. The scruples and passions of us all are in abeyance; we are contending demons under the heavenly light of the stars, enacting only the part of a weird drama, quickened into action ...
— How I Found Livingstone • Sir Henry M. Stanley
... her whole household therefore busied themselves in preparing everything for the reception of her lord. The long, colored tapestry, on which she and her maidens had worked pictures of their idols, Odin, Thor, and Friga, was hung up. The slaves polished the old shields that served as ornaments; cushions were placed on the seats, and dry wood laid on the fireplaces in the centre of the hall, so that the flames might be fanned up at a moment's notice. The Viking's wife herself ...
— Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen • Hans Christian Andersen
... approach her in intellect. He however took to chaff. He would defend every popular error that she attacked, and with an acumen and ease that baffled her, even when she knew he was not in earnest, and made her feel like Thor, when the giant affected to take three blows with Miolner for three flaps ...
— Magnum Bonum • Charlotte M. Yonge
... inspiration for the invention of high explosives. There still survives among us the superstition that races professing Christianity are divinely destined to rob or exterminate races holding other beliefs. Some men occasionally express their conviction that we still worship Thor and Odin,—the only difference being that Odin has become a mathematician, and that the Hammer Mjolnir is now worked by steam. But such persons are declared by the missionaries to be atheists and men of ...
— Kokoro - Japanese Inner Life Hints • Lafcadio Hearn
... I think, Gildon has observed, belonged to the British druids, and Thor and Woden were Saxon deities. Of the "double rhymes," which he so liberally supposes, he ...
— Lives of the Poets, Vol. 1 • Samuel Johnson
... "The North has originated only Thor, Odin, Balder, Valkyres." The gloom and cold drive man into himself; do not open him. In the East one can live in quiet solitude, with no effort, close to nature. The representatives of all faiths wear ostentatiously their badges, ...
— Youth: Its Education, Regimen, and Hygiene • G. Stanley Hall
... had settled down on the land, intermarried with the Angles and Saxons, and colonized all England north and east of Watling Street (a rough line from London to Chester), and the eastern lowlands of Scotland likewise. Gradually they had deserted Thor and Odin for "the White Christ"; had their own priests and bishops, and built their own minsters. The convents which the fathers had destroyed, the sons, or at least the grandsons, rebuilt; and often, casting away sword and axe, they entered them as monks themselves; and Peterborough, Ely, and ...
— Hereward, The Last of the English • Charles Kingsley
... at the open door, watching the movements of Thor (the raven), whose depredatory proclivities were well known to the dog. Thor, perfectly aware that a detective's eye was upon him, did not venture to abstract any of the wreckage, but assumed an air of careless curiosity as he hopped about among ...
— Viking Boys • Jessie Margaret Edmondston Saxby
... the Embassy staff sat in the other two coaches. Our little procession progressed solemnly through the streets of Berlin, passing on the way through the centre division of the arch known as the Brandenburger Thor, the gateway that stands at the head of the Unter den Linden, a privilege given only on ...
— My Four Years in Germany • James W. Gerard
... angel," he cried heartily. "You will answer your own question inside of two days. No doubt I'm going to grow jealous of old Vulcan and Thor and Majesty. Sure, I've named them," he chuckled. "And you'll come with me into their dim cathedral to-morrow at dusk and listen with me to their old sermon. A man ought to go to church to them at least once a year, to keep his soul cleaned ...
— The Everlasting Whisper • Jackson Gregory
... following year an army invaded Prussia and erected a fortress at Thorn, on the Vistula, on the site of a grove of enormous oaks, which the inhabitants looked upon as sacred to their god Thor. This was followed, in 1232, by the foundation of another stronghold at Culm. A successful campaign followed, and the castle of Marienwerder, lower down the Vistula, was after some reverses and delays successfully built and fortified. The grand master then established ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume VI. • Various
... Company, it had taken some time before he had become accustomed to the detailing of a non-com and a couple of privates out of each platoon for baby-sitting duty. At least, though, they didn't have the squaw-trouble around army posts on Uller that they had on Thor, where he ...
— Uller Uprising • Henry Beam Piper, John D. Clark and John F. Carr
... from his hand. "So far as my hammer this arm has hurled, All mine are the sea and the land." And forward flew the giant tool Over the whole broad earth, to fall At last in the southernmost pool To prove that Thor's was all. Since then 'tis the pleasant German way By the hammer, lands to win, And to claim for themselves world-wide sway, As the ...
— Winning a Cause - World War Stories • John Gilbert Thompson and Inez Bigwood
... the scriptural "Asshur"Assyria, biblically derived from Asshur, son of Shem (Gen. x. 22), who was worshipped as the proto-deity. The capital was Niniveh. Weber has "Nineveh and Thor," showing the spelling of his MS. According to the Arabs, "Ashur" had four sons; Iran (father of the FursPersians, the Kurd, or Ghozzi, the Daylams, and the Khazar), Nabit, Jarmuk, and Basil. Ibn Khaldun (iii. 413), in his "Universal ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 6 • Richard F. Burton
... distance, if clearer and clearer, yet also smaller and smaller, like a receding Star. It needs a scientific telescope, it needs to be reinterpreted and artificially brought near us, before we can so much as know that it was a Sun. So likewise a day comes when the Runic Thor, with his Eddas, must withdraw into dimness; and many an African Mumbo-Jumbo and Indian Pawaw be utterly abolished. For all things, even Celestial Luminaries, much more atmospheric meteors, have their rise, ...
— Sartor Resartus - The Life and Opinions of Herr Teufelsdrockh • Thomas Carlyle
... extrasolar planets, as they had been discovered, had been named from Norse mythology—Odin and Baldur and Thor, Uller and Freya, Bifrost and Asgard and Niflheim. When the Norse names ran out, the discoverers had turned to other mythologies, Celtic and Egyptian and Hindu and Assyrian, and by the middle of the Seventh Century they were naming planets for ...
— Graveyard of Dreams • Henry Beam Piper
... feet With the flames on every side. "I am coming!" said the king, "Where the swords and bucklers ring— Where the warrior lives again With the souls of mighty men— I am coming, great All-Father, Unto Thee! Unto Odin, unto Thor, And the strong, true hearts of yore— I am coming to ...
— The Ontario Readers: Fourth Book • Various
... adventures, Thor, accompanied by Thialfi and Loke, his servants, entered upon Giantland, and wandered over plains—wild uncultivated places—among stones and trees. At nightfall they noticed a house; and as the door, which indeed formed one whole side of the house, was open, they entered. ...
— The Illustrated London Reading Book • Various
... of your faith?" I said. "Neot asked me of mine. As for the other, I do not know rightly what it means. I see your people sign themselves crosswise, and I cannot tell why, unless it is as we hallow a feast by signing it with Thor's hammer." ...
— King Alfred's Viking - A Story of the First English Fleet • Charles W. Whistler
... the motto of all medieval times. In heathen Iceland, the owner of a piece of land might be deprived of it by an adversary who could overpower him in single combat. This mode of acquisition was considered more honorable than purchase. It was Thor's own form of investiture. The ideas of the Romans on rightful acquisition may be inferred from the word mancipium (manu capere).(263) Pure Christianity, on the other hand, preached the honorableness of labor from the first (Thess. 4, 11; II. Thess. 3, 8 seq.; Eph. 4, 28). And ...
— Principles Of Political Economy • William Roscher
... through the night The rush and the clamour; The pulse of the fight Like blows of Thor's hammer; The pattering flight Of the leaves, and the anguished Moan of the ...
— Songs Out of Doors • Henry Van Dyke
... round,—an astounding temerity. He rolled up the rivers and mountains, the forests and plains and broad horizons that stretched beyond his ken, that seemed to commonsense to go on certainly for ever, into a ball, into a little ball "like an orange." Magnificent feat of the imagination, outdoing Thor's deep draught of the sea! And once he had done it, all do it and no one falters at the deed. You are not yet seven as I write and already you are serenely aware that you live upon a sphere. And in much the same manner it is that we, who are sociologists ...
— The Passionate Friends • Herbert George Wells
... Saracens. France seemed given up to wild beasts. Nor were the pirates unaided in their work of rapine. Necessarily few in number, for they came from far by sea, their ranks were recruited by every reckless freebooter in the country, who was quite ready to bow down to Thor and Odin, instead of to the shrines of his own land, which had proved so powerless to protect it. Fast on the heels of the first band of pirates came another, and another yet. Only by the strength of Theobald ...
— The Story of Rouen • Sir Theodore Andrea Cook
... simply, that its peculiarity did not at once seem apparent, and before they had time to wonder at it, Dale, who now was leading, turned in the path and glared at them. His eyes were as stern as those of a wrathful god, and his lips as resolute as Thor. ...
— Sunlight Patch • Credo Fitch Harris
... Exemplar of Peace America and the World's Peace America's Mission in the Peace Movement America's Mission to Mankind America's Obligation The Arbiter of the World Arbitration versus War The Challenge of Thor The Conflict of War and Peace A Congress of Nations The Cost of Militarism The Cost of Peace The Crucial Parallelism The Dawn of Peace The Dawn of Universal Peace Democracy and Peace Diplomacy and Peace Disillusionment The Dominant Ideal The End; and the Means ...
— Prize Orations of the Intercollegiate Peace Association • Intercollegiate Peace Association
... They have somewhat indulgently regarded it as one more historic institution for preserving myth and legend. To them the Christ-life has meant little more than the Beowa-myth, the Arthur-saga, the Nibelungen cycle, the Homeric stories, the Thor-and-Odin tales! Druids, fire-worshippers, moon-dancers, and Christian communicants have been comparatively studied, with a view to understanding the race-progress in rite ...
— The Warriors • Lindsay, Anna Robertson Brown
... covered with coarse grass, and upon the barren fields. I mirrored my face in the Tyris river, while the steamboat drove the fish into the rushes. Beneath me floated the waves, throwing long shadows on the so-called graves of Odin, Thor, and Friga. In the scanty turf that covers the hill-side names have been cut.[1] There is no monument here, no memorial on which the traveller can have his name carved, no rocky wall on whose surface he can get it painted; so visitors have the turf cut away for that purpose. ...
— What the Moon Saw: and Other Tales • Hans Christian Andersen
... Wodin and Thor had ceased to satisfy the expanding soul of the Anglo-Saxon; and the new faith rapidly spread; its charm consisting in the light it seemed to throw upon the darkness ...
— The Evolution of an Empire • Mary Parmele
... trundling raw and finished products in and out, chimneys of dizzy height belching forth monster coils of Cimmerian smoke, seem to transport one from the prosaic valley of the Ruhr into the deafening realm of Vulcan and Thor. The impression of Krupps by night is ineffaceable. The very air exudes iron and energy. You can almost imagine yourself in the midst of a thunderous artillery duel. You are at any rate in no doubt that the myriad of hands at work behind those carefully ...
— The Land of Deepening Shadow - Germany-at-War • D. Thomas Curtin
... 595.).—Wace's Chronicle of the Norman Conquest, as it appears in Mr. Edgar Taylor's translation, pp. 21, 22, mentions the war-cries of the various knights at the battle of Val des Dunes. Duke William cries "Dex aie," and Raol Tesson "Tur aie;" on which there is a note that M. Pluquet reads "Thor aide," which he considers may have been derived from the ancient Northmen. Surely this is the origin of our modern hurrah; and if so, perhaps the earliest mention of ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 191, June 25, 1853 • Various
... A reeling King Ogg, delirious in power, The quarter-deck carronades he seemed to make cower. "Put him in brig there!" said Lieutenant Marrot. "Put him in brig!" back he mocked like a parrot; "Try it, then!" swaying a fist like Thor's sledge, And making the pigmy constables hedge— Ship's corporals and the master-at-arms. "In brig there, I say!"—They dally no more; Like hounds let slip on a desperate boar, Together they pounce on the ...
— John Marr and Other Poems • Herman Melville
... outlaw, than not free!—These are his own words. And thus he changes at his will. Like the God Thor, of the old Northern mythology, he now holds forth the seven bright stars in the bright heaven above us, and now hides himself in clouds, and pounds away with ...
— Hyperion • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... long line of ancestors. They can, without abusing the license permitted to genealogists, go back to the time when the English did not inhabit England, when London, like Paris, was peopled by latinised Celts, and when the ancestors of the puritans sacrificed to the god Thor. The novelists indeed can show that the beginning of their history is lost in the abysm of time. They can recall the fact that the Anglo-Saxons, when they came to dwell in the island of Britain, brought with them songs and legends, whence was evolved ...
— The English Novel in the Time of Shakespeare • J. J. Jusserand
... customs recorded of both. Two of the most frequently used ingredients in witches cauldrons were the vervain and the rue. "The former probably derived its notoriety from the fact of its being sacred to Thor, an honor which marked it out, like other lightning plants, as peculiarly adapted for occult uses," says Mr. Thiselton Dyer in his "Folk-lore of Plants." "Although vervain, therefore, as the enchanter's plant, was gathered by witches to do mischief in their incantations, ...
— Wild Flowers Worth Knowing • Neltje Blanchan et al
... recollection of war between a people who had iron weapons and a race who had not—the race whose remains are found all over Europe? If these were wandering tribes, they had leaders; if they were warlike, they had weapons. There is a smith in the Pantheon of many nations. Vulcan was a smith; Thor wielded a hammer; even Fionn had a hammer, which was heard in Lochlann when struck in Eirinn. Fionn may have borrowed his hammer from Thor long ago, or both may have got theirs from Vulcan, or all three may have brought hammers with them from the land ...
— Industrial Biography - Iron Workers and Tool Makers • Samuel Smiles
... twenty-five minutes after ten. The two lovers don't necessarily have to know much about acting, either, though of course it's better if they happen to. The best stage-lover I ever knew, and the one that played in the most successes, did happen to understand acting thor—" ...
— Harlequin and Columbine • Booth Tarkington
... Nazarene no thigh of Thor, To play on partial fields the puppet king Bearing the battle down with bloody hand. Serene he towers above the gods of war, A naked man where shells go thundering— The great unchallenged Lord ...
— Miscellany of Poetry - 1919 • Various
... The visit of St. Paul to England in the time of Boadicea's war, and that of Joseph of Arimathea, are mere monkish legends. The Londoners again became pagan, and for thirty-eight years there was no bishop at St. Paul's, till a brother of St. Chad of Lichfield came and set his foot on the images of Thor and Wodin. With the fourth successor of Mellitus, Saint Erkenwald, wealth and splendour returned to St. Paul's. This zealous man worked miracles both before and after his death. He used to be driven about in a cart, and one legend says that he often preached ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury
... Saxo Grammaticus—are the chief supernaturals, demons of the swamp and fen. These best localize the legends in which they appear; for which most parts of Hanover and the Cimbric Chersonesus suit indifferently, the Frisian portions pre-eminently, well. The more exalted mythology of Woden, Thor, and Balder, so generally considered to have been all-pervading in Germany and Scandinavia, finds no place in Beowulf. Our Devil and the Devil's Dam are rough ...
— The Ethnology of the British Islands • Robert Gordon Latham
... bars" of our sturdy tars as gallantly shall wave As long shall live in the storied page, or the spirit-stirring stave, As hath the red cross of St. George or the raven-flag of Thor, Or flag of the sea, whate'er it be, that ever unfurled ...
— War Poetry of the South • Various
... on all matters, in spite of your this day having us and all our concerns in your power even as it pleases you. Now, as for myself, I shall receive the faith in Norway on that understanding alone that I shall give some little worship to Thor the next winter when I get back to Iceland." Then the king said and smiled, "It may be seen from the mien of Kjartan that he puts more trust in his own weapons and strength than in Thor and Odin." Then the meeting was broken up. After a while many men egged the king on to force ...
— Laxdaela Saga - Translated from the Icelandic • Anonymous
... ye, Gods, is there no other way?— Speak, were not this a way, a way for Gods? If I, if Odin, clad in radiant arms, Mounted on Sleipner, with the warrior Thor Drawn in his car beside me, and my sons, All the strong brood of Heaven, to swell my train, Should make irruption into Hela's realm, And set the fields of gloom ablaze with light, And bring in triumph ...
— Views and Reviews - Essays in appreciation • William Ernest Henley
... or field, and has memories of the Danes. They left other names near: Tuesley, or Tuesco's field, lies towards Godalming, and Thunder Hill, near Elstead, is Thor's or Thunor's. Thor lives in local legends. Three strange conical hills, lying close together two miles or so west of Thursley, have been known since his day as the Devil's Jumps. Tradition draws a frightful picture of the Devil, horns ...
— Highways and Byways in Surrey • Eric Parker
... decisive victory. He knew the horrible injustice done to his Christian nation by the surrounding Christian nations. He was horrified looking at Bismarck. He called Bismarck the "true adorer of Thor," because he was a true follower of a pagan philosophy expressed in the Iron Chancellor's sentence—Might over Right. Yet Sienkiewicz prophesied that "Germany in the future cannot live with Bismarck's spirit." She must change her spirit, she must expel Thor and again kneel before Christ, because ...
— The Religious Spirit of the Slavs (1916) - Sermons On Subjects Suggested By The War, Third Series • Nikolaj Velimirovic
... Thor, with His Red-hot Hammer, frontispiece Phaeton Falling from the Chariot Woden Frigga, the Mother of the Gods Jupiter and His Eagle The Head of Jupiter Diana The Man in the Moon The Man in the Moon Venus Orion with His Club The Great Bear in the Sky The ...
— Classic Myths • Retold by Mary Catherine Judd
... abbey of Heiligenkreuz. It possesses a church, in Romanesque style, dating from the 11th century, with fine cloisters and the tombs of several members of the Babenberg family. The highest point in the neighbourhood of Baden is the peak of the Hoher Lindkogel (2825 ft.), popularly called the Eiserne Thor, which is ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 2 - "Baconthorpe" to "Bankruptcy" • Various
... sharper and altogether more penetrating than the Thor's hammer blow of a huge wave, sounded loud and menacing in their ears. The ship trembled violently, and then became strangely still. The least experienced traveler on board knew that the engines had stopped. They felt a long lurch to port when ...
— The Captain of the Kansas • Louis Tracy
... to date from 1000 to 1500 B.C." It is thought to represent in heathen use a revolving wheel, the symbol of the great sun-god, or to stand for the lightning wielded by the omnipotent deity, Manu, Thor, or Zeus. The Christians saw in it a cross concealed from the eyes of their heathen enemies. The fylfot is frequently found in the Greek Church on the vestments of the clergy. The Greek fret or key pattern, with which all are familiar, is a decorative development ...
— The Worship of the Church - and The Beauty of Holiness • Jacob A. Regester
... carefully its sides are rounded. But in the case of any given man no one knows his capacity until he has had a chance to show it. His nature may hold only a pint, or, as with the men who have mastered great occasions with still unexhausted powers, it may seem like the horn which the god Thor tried to drain but could not, for its base was connected with the ocean itself. Not every man can hope to be called to a responsibility that shall bring out his latent powers; most of us, if we are ever to get the call, will first ...
— The Booklover and His Books • Harry Lyman Koopman
... substance of Hindoo mythology came from the same source; as also that of the Greeks, Chinese, Mexicans, and Scandinavians. This is how the Druids got the cross also: it was in the hand of their demi-god Thor, the second person of their triad, who slew the great serpent with his famous hammer, which ...
— From Death into Life - or, twenty years of my ministry • William Haslam
... victorious, re-introduced Paganism, the names of their gods still surviving in our day-names, Tuesday (Tuisco), Wednesday (Woden), Thursday (Thor), Friday (Friga), Saturday (Seater). ...
— Records of Woodhall Spa and Neighbourhood - Historical, Anecdotal, Physiographical, and Archaeological, with Other Matter • J. Conway Walter
... the French king Charibert, a fervent Christian woman. A few priests came with her to England, and the king gave them a ruined Christian edifice, the Church of St. Martin, outside the walls of Canterbury, for their worship. But it was overshadowed by a pagan temple, and the worship of Odin and Thor still dominated ...
— Historical Tales, Vol. 4 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... "Thor's own weather!" he said, laughing; and as he spoke the blue lightning paled the red glow of the forge to a glimmer. "This should be a good axe, and were you not a Christian, I would bid you hold your beginning, as its wielder, of ...
— Wulfric the Weapon Thane • Charles W. Whistler
... partner in the old "banking-and-broking" house of Toogood & Masterman, enjoyed the same sort of chaff. "Looking pale, Thor. Must be working ...
— The Side Of The Angels - A Novel • Basil King
... prevail, love reign, humanity rise, and a golden age come back again to a world-wide Arcadia. Fat and Anti-Fat! Eros and Anteros, Strophe and Antistrophe. Or, better, the old primeval tale,—Jove and the Titans, Theseus and the Centaurs, Bellerophon and the Chimaera, Thor and the Giants, Ormuzd and Ahriman, Good and Evil, Water and Fire, Light and Darkness. The world has told ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 85, November, 1864 • Various
... adventures,—having killed the giant Ymir, and made out of his body Heaven and Earth,—proceeded to form a man and woman named Ask and Embla. Chaos having thus disappeared, Odin became the All-Father, creator of gods and men, with Earth for his wife, and the powerful Thor for his oldest son. So much for ...
— Ten Great Religions - An Essay in Comparative Theology • James Freeman Clarke
... of heaven. And of his three evil children—here Dickie would, for what reason he knew not, always feel his mother hold him more closely, while her voice took a deeper tone—Fenrir the wolf, who, when Thor sought to bind him, bit off the brave god's right hand; and Joermungand the Midgard serpent, who, tail in mouth, circles the world; and Hela, the pale queen, who reigns in Niflheim over the dim kingdoms of the dead. And of Baldur the ...
— The History of Sir Richard Calmady - A Romance • Lucas Malet
... France by the roads of war, (God save us evermore from Mars and Thor!) Up and down the fair land iron armies came, (Pity, Jesu, all who fell, ...
— Ballads of Peace in War • Michael Earls
... Johannes Evald, he translated "The Death of Balder," a play, into blank verse with consistently feminine endings, as in this speech of Thor ...
— George Borrow - The Man and His Books • Edward Thomas
... (the belt of Orion) leading the Paurvas. Now the Bull-Dionysus was especially associated with the Pleiades on ancient gems and in classical mythology—which form part of the sign Taurus." The bull is a sign of Haoma (Homa) or Soma. The belt of the thunder-god Thor corroborates the fact of the diffusion of these Babylonian ideas as ...
— The Evolution of the Dragon • G. Elliot Smith
... one whole side of the house, was open, they entered. It was a simple habitation—one large hall, altogether empty. They stayed there. Suddenly, in the dead of the night, loud voices alarmed them. Thor grasped his hammer, and stood in the doorway, prepared for fight. His companions within ran hither and thither, in their terror, seeking some outlet in that rude hall: they found a little closet at last, ...
— The Illustrated London Reading Book • Various
... left hand (excellent hot beer), and with his right cut the sign of the cross above it, then drank a draught. "Yes; but what is this with the king's right hand?" cried the company. "Don't you see?" answered shifty Sigurd; "he makes the sign of Thor's hammer before drinking!" which quenched the matter for ...
— Early Kings of Norway • Thomas Carlyle
... once rise to the sanctities of obedience and faith, let us at least resist our temptations; let us enter into the state of war and wake Thor and Woden, courage and constancy, in our Saxon breasts. This is to be done in our smooth times by speaking the truth. Check this lying hospitality and lying affection. Live no longer to the expectation of these deceived and deceiving people with whom we converse. Say to them, ...
— Essays, First Series • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... antiquary will find something of interest—a modest belfry, perhaps, with a romance of its own; a parish church, whose foundations were laid long ago in ground dedicated, in the distant past, to the worship of Thor or Woden; or the remains, it may be, of a mediaeval castle, from which some worthy knight, whose name is forgotten except in local traditions, rode away to ...
— Bruges and West Flanders • George W. T. Omond
... soft putty; the forest-giants— marsh-jotuns—bear sheaves of golden grain; AEgir—the Sea-Demon himself stretches his back for a sleek highway to you, and on Firehorses and Windhorses ye career. Ye are most strong. Thor, red-bearded, with his blue sun-eyes, with his cheery heart and strong thunder-hammer, he and you have prevailed. Ye are most strong, ye Sons of the icy North, of the far East, far marching from your rugged Eastern Wildernesses, hitherward from the gray dawn of Time! ...
— "In Darkest England and The Way Out" • General William Booth
... equally probable. In symbolic art these have been so multiplied that now two hundred and twenty-two variants of the figure are described![210-1] Of course there is nothing easier than to find among these similarities, with many other conventional symbols, the Egyptian Tau, the Hammer of Thor, the "Tree of Fertility," on which the Aztecs nailed their victims, the crossed lines which are described on Etruscan tombs, or the logs crossed at rectangles, on which the Muskogee Indians built the sacred fire. The four ...
— The Religious Sentiment - Its Source and Aim: A Contribution to the Science and - Philosophy of Religion • Daniel G. Brinton
... half humorous tolerance—Apollo and the Muses, Zeus and the great ones of Olympus, Hermes and Hephaestus, Athene in her armour, with her vanquisher the foam-born irresistible Aphrodite, these remain the authentic gods of our literature, beside whom the gods of northern Europe—Odin, Thor, Freya—are strangers, unhomely, uncanny as the shadows of unfamiliar furniture on the walls of an inn. Sprung though great numbers of us are from the loins of Northmen, it is in these gracious deities of the South that we find the familiar and ...
— On the Art of Writing - Lectures delivered in the University of Cambridge 1913-1914 • Arthur Quiller-Couch
... works we have just considered were wholly pagan in spirit, but all reference to Thor or other gods was excluded by the monks who first wrote down the ...
— Outlines of English and American Literature • William J. Long
... of Teutonism. Men whose ancestors had worshiped Jupiter and Apollo, and who were themselves worshipping the Christian God, Madonna and the great saints, had no spiritual affinity with men whose ancestors could conceive of no Deities higher than Thor, Odin and the other rough, crude, and unmannered denizens of the Northern Walhalla. So Italy stood by Civilization. Her risk was great, but great shall be her guerdon in the approval of her own conscience ...
— Defenders of Democracy • The Militia of Mercy
... by their religious prejudices. We know little of the other theological tenets of the Saxons: we only learn that they were polytheists; that they worshipped the sun and moon; that they adored the god of thunder under the name of Thor; that they had images in their temples; that they practised sacrifices; believed firmly in spells and enchantments; and admitted in general a system of doctrines which they held as sacred, but which, like all other superstitions, must carry the air of the wildest extravagance, if propounded to ...
— The History of England, Volume I • David Hume
... fruiting portion of the fertile frond much contracted and quite unlike the sterile. Sporangia large, globular, short-stalked, borne on the margin of the divisions and opening into two valves by a longitudinal slit. Ring obscure. (From Osmunder, a name of the god Thor.) ...
— The Fern Lover's Companion - A Guide for the Northeastern States and Canada • George Henry Tilton
... savage and violent; and they showed more respect to their women than any of the heathens did. They had many gods, of whom Odin, who left his name to the fourth day of the week, was the chief and father. Freya, the Earth, was his wife, and Thor was Thunder. There was a story of Baldur, a good and perfect one, who died by the craft of Lok the Destroyer, and yet still lived. This seemed like a copy of the truth; and so did the story of Lok himself, the power of ...
— The Chosen People - A Compendium Of Sacred And Church History For School-Children • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... East Row without remembering the railway. It was in this glen, where Lord Normanby's lovely woods make a background for the pretty tiled cottages, the mill, and the old stone bridge, which make up East Row, that the Saxons chose a home for their god Thor. [Since this was written one or two new houses have been allowed to mar the simplicity of the valley.—G. H.] Here they built some rude form of temple, afterwards, it seems, converted into a hermitage. This was ...
— Yorkshire—Coast & Moorland Scenes • Gordon Home
... Where Doom sits poised—Each monster's goal! Erelong the air shakes with a roar— Forebodings of souls on Death's dome! Bright cyphers spell the new-damned name In letters 'gainst a leprous home: Oaths peel like the hammer of Thor— The screaming thing is flayed to bone! Its sins—an outraged Body's shame— Laid bare as whipcords dye the foam, Whereon nepheloid imps and night, Soom on with tidings of a moan, Of dews, and whisper'd groans and sighs. And, as vague forms writhe in despair, A native in phantastic ...
— Betelguese - A Trip Through Hell • Jean Louis de Esque
... narrow passes and along the steep defiles, Utah, Fort Bridger, Salt Lake City, he witches Brigham with his swift ponyship—through the valleys, along the grassy slopes, into the snow, into sand, faster than Thor's Thialfi, away they go, rider and horse—did you see them? They are in California, leaping over its golden sands, treading its busy streets. The courser has unrolled to us the great American panorama, ...
— The Story of the Pony Express • Glenn D. Bradley
... add to Landor's reputation; it is interesting, however, for having been written "within two paces of his ninetieth year," and as showing the course of the mind's empire. Landor would have been more heroic than these Idyls had he withheld them from publication, for it is not cheering to see Thor cracking nuts with his most ponderous hammer. And Landor realized as much when he ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 103, May, 1866 • Various
... would stand sponsor for me. He said it as we rode on the day of the great mist, when it chanced that all of us must pray together. He saw me make the holy sign, and asked presently if it was that of Thor. And I told him that in Wales I was what they call a catechumen. I mind me that so ran the ...
— A King's Comrade - A Story of Old Hereford • Charles Whistler
... Whoever God be, never Christ or Thor Beheld or blessed a nobler wife, whose love Was found through proof of purity by fire More like our northern stars and snows and suns, And sane in strong sufficiency of soul As womanhood by godhead from the ...
— Rosamund, Queen of the Lombards • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... wise The folk-leader commanded that be sacred kept The temple-lands of Thor and other Gods. Home to glory across the billows Did the shield-bearer steer the ship, It was the Gods that led him. 'And the men-loving AEsirs gloat on the offerings Whereby the shield-bearer is made of more account. Bountifully doth the earth give forth ...
— The Sagas of Olaf Tryggvason and of Harald The Tyrant (Harald Haardraade) • Snorri Sturluson
... Thor and Jupiter, have already been ordered into production. The parallel progress in the intercontinental ballistic missile effort will be advanced by our plans for acceleration. The development of the submarine-based Polaris missile system has progressed ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... not improbable that some of my readers may take a summer's trip to the Orkney Islands; let me ask them to wait at Thurso—the old town of Thor—for a handsome little steamer that leaves there three times a week for Kirkwall. It is the sole property of Captain Geordie Twatt, was a gift from an old friend in California, and is called ...
— Winter Evening Tales • Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr
... I had told her of Niflheim and Muspell, of the birth of the giant Ymir from the snowflakes, of the cow Andhumbla, and of Fenrir and Loki and the frozen Jotuns—as I say, when I had told her of all this, and of Thor and Odin and our own Valhalla, she clapped her hands and cried ...
— The Jacket (The Star-Rover) • Jack London
... age of Vladimir the Holy, "The Beautiful Sun of Kief," in the tenth century, Russia has had the tradition of international peace. Vladimir wandered over the country, sword and battle ax in hand, like a reincarnation of Thor, armed with his mighty and wondrous hammer. Then came his yearning for a new religion—something to inspire his life better than Perun—Russia's old god of thunder—and the other idols, and a little later, ...
— Popular Science Monthly Volume 86
... matter? Where did Van Eyck, who immortalized himself by that one painting, known throughout Europe as the Dantzic picture, reside? Why, in one of those wretched buildings, ill supported by props and pillars, near the Grime Thor, but which his fellow-townsmen are at this moment prouder of than they are of the Artimshof or the Stockthurm. How did Andreas Stock live? In obscurity and penury, without one smile of good fortune to gild the darkness of existence. But do you suppose that these men were unhappy? Oh no, Marguerite, ...
— International Weekly Miscellany, Vol. 1, No. 2, July 8, 1850 • Various
... the Brandenburger Thor Kitchens are worked by cooks of war; Loyal moustaches cease to sag, Leaping for joy of the old war-flag; Drums are beating and bugles blare And passionate bandsmen rip the air; Prussia's original ardour rallies At the sound of Deutschland ueber alles, ...
— Punch or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, March 24, 1920. • Various
... Here well might Thor, the god of war, Harness the whirlwinds to his car, While, mailed in storm, his iron arm Heaves high his hammer's lava-form, And red and black his beard streams back, Like some fierce torrent scoriac, Whose ...
— Myth and Romance - Being a Book of Verses • Madison Cawein
... a disparagement, to consult a man only on horses, or on steam, or on theatres, or on eating, or on books, and, whenever he appears, considerately to turn the conversation to the bantling he is known to fondle. In the Norse heaven of our forefathers, Thor's house had five hundred and forty floors: and Man's house has five hundred and forty floors. His excellence is facility of adaptation, and of transition through many related points to wide contrasts and extremes. Culture kills his exaggeration, his ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 6, Issue 35, September, 1860 • Various
... are to be found in some of the sayings. A curse still existing says, "May Perun (i. e., the lightning) strike thee." The god Perun, the Thunderer, resembles Thor, and like him carries a hammer. He has been transformed into Elijah, the prophet Ilya, the rumbling of whose chariot as he rolls through heaven, especially on the week in summer when his festival falls, may be heard in thunder. There is a dismal custom ...
— Russia - As Seen and Described by Famous Writers • Various
... house stood on yonder height, With walls of power; On yon had his daughter, the damsel bright, Her maiden bower. Upon the third the temple stood, Through the North famed wide, Where to Thor was offered the he-goat’s ...
— The Expedition to Birting's Land - and other ballads - - - Translator: George Borrow • Thomas J. Wise
... Scandinavian Berserker, if there ever was one—the literary heir of the Eddas—was specially created to wage that war—to smite the conventionality which is the tyrant of England with the hammer of Thor, and to sear with the sarcasm of Mephistopheles the hollow hypocrisy—sham taste, sham morals, sham religion—of the society by which he was surrounded and infected, and which all but succeeded in seducing him. But for the ...
— Byron • John Nichol
... came, they came as worshippers of Thor and Odin and the old Teutonic gods. To them the Christianity of the Pict was "a weak effeminate creed." They, therefore, slew its followers, plundered its shrines, and drove its clergy south from Orkney, from north-east Caithness and the coasts of Sutherland, ...
— Sutherland and Caithness in Saga-Time - or, The Jarls and The Freskyns • James Gray
... their last upon the sun, the one in the ancestral homestead under the eyes of love, the other in a distant land among strange faces, behold the wind of Thor, and out of the deep of heaven the white horses of Odin, All-Father, bearing Valkyrie, shining messengers of Valhalla. And those two world-worn women, faithful in all their lives, were caught up in death in divine ...
— The Art of the Story-Teller • Marie L. Shedlock
... his life he'd been good, as far as he could, And the poor little beast had done all that he should. But this morning he swore, by Odin and Thor And the Canine Valhalla—he'd stand ...
— The Collected Poems of Rupert Brooke • Rupert Brooke
... who had come to Britain were heathen, and believed in many false gods: the Sun, to whom they made Sunday sacred, as Monday was to the moon, Wednesday to a great terrible god, named Woden, and Thursday to a god named Thor, or Thunder. They thought a clap of thunder was the sound of the great hammer he carried in his hand. They thought their gods cared for people being brave, and that the souls of those who died fighting gallantly in battle were the happiest of all; ...
— Young Folks' History of England • Charlotte M. Yonge
... reverence to the instructions of Bishops, adored the relics of martyrs, and took part eagerly in disputes touching the Nicene theology, the rulers of Wessex and Mercia were still performing savage rites in the temples of Thor and Woden." ...
— Legends of the Northwest • Hanford Lennox Gordon
... the Jupiter of Radagaisus, who worshipped Thor and Woden, was very different from the Olympic or Capitoline Jove. The accommodating temper of Polytheism might unite those various and remote deities; but the genuine Romans ahhorred the human sacrifices of ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 3 • Edward Gibbon
... water for the table, Loo would hang a white rag on a pole, and Corney, seeing the signal, would return from summer fallow or hayfield, grimy, swarthy, and ruddy, a picture of manly vigor and honest toil. Thor might be away all day, but at night, when they again assembled at the table, he would come from lake or distant ridge and eat a supper like the dinner and breakfast, for meals as well as days were exact repeats: pork, bread, potatoes, and tea, with occasionally eggs supplied by a dozen hens around ...
— Animal Heroes • Ernest Thompson Seton
... must sing you no more such Sagas," said he, "if they fill your mind with these revengeful thoughts, fit only for the worshippers of Odin and Thor. Neither Ragnar nor his sons knew better than to rejoice in this deadly vengeance, but we, who are Christians, know that it is for ...
— The Little Duke - Richard the Fearless • Charlotte M. Yonge
... those I love are keeping feast this Christmas-eve. But we have work to do before we feast to-night. For this is the Yuletide, and the heathen people of the forest are gathered at the thunder-oak of Geismar to worship their god, Thor. Strange things will be seen there, and deeds which make the soul black. But we are sent to lighten their darkness; and we will teach our kinsmen to keep a Christmas with us such as the woodland has never known. Forward, then, and ...
— The Blue Flower, and Others • Henry van Dyke
... in staring amaze, and stood a while eying Beltane with hungry gaze. "By Thor!" said he, "but 'tis a good armour and should fit me well. Off with it—off, I am Tostig!" So saying, he drew a slow pace nearer, his teeth agleam, his great hands opening and shutting, whereat out leapt Roger's blade; but now the outlaws came running to throng about ...
— Beltane The Smith • Jeffery Farnol
... marriage, Bertha herself for some years held Christian services here alone in little St. Martin's Church, but Ethelbert still loved his idols; indeed, for many years, he continued to worship Odin and Thor. St. Patrick had been in Ireland a full century ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume I. - Great Britain and Ireland • Various
... there (on the mountain top) in the shadow of the moon. We left there an acorn yet green in its cup, We left also a firchatt upon the great stone hurled by Thor; To a fir branch we tied with a fine whang drawn from a bear we slew The wing feather of an eagle which span towards us, Yet it fell not to the earth, we twain caught it, The one by the quill, the other by ...
— Border Ghost Stories • Howard Pease
... nobleness which underlay the grim and often cruel nature of the Norseman. It belongs, too, to the culminating epoch, to the beginning of that era when the Scandinavian peoples had their great times; when the old fierceness of the worshippers of Thor and Odin was tempered, without being effeminated, by the Faith of the "White Christ," till the very men who had been the destroyers of ...
— Historical Lectures and Essays • Charles Kingsley
... treating my instructions with contempt. A curious thing about his prophecies is their confirmation of Adam's fears as to the ultimate result of these new-fangled ideas as to dress, and, what interested me more than anything else, he predicted a machine called a Moh-Thor-Cah, that not only runs along without outside assistance, but is propelled entirely by the same vapor that I have spoken of before as striking the high C in the nozzle of my tea-kettle. He goes too far with this, ...
— The Autobiography of Methuselah • John Kendrick Bangs
... which is largely of a military character; at least, has the aid of drums and trumpets, and the whole band of brass. For the first few days of our stay here we had rooms near the Maximilian Platz and the Karl's Thor. I think there was some sort of a yearly fair in progress, for the great platz was filled with temporary booths: a circus had set itself up there, and there were innumerable side-shows and lottery-stands; and I believe that each ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... and venerable monument than all the cathedrals of Europe put together" (General von Disfurth in Hamburger Nachrichten). "Thus is fulfilled the well-known prophecy of Heine: 'When once that restraining talisman, the Cross, is broken ... Thor, with his colossal hammer, will leap up, and with it shatter into fragments the Gothic cathedrals'" (Religion and Philosophy in Germany ...
— Raemaekers' Cartoons - With Accompanying Notes by Well-known English Writers • Louis Raemaekers |
