"Antiquity" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... of antiquity feign a torment, too great for the mind long to endure, in the sword of Damocles suspended by a single hair over his head. Here the sword hung over an innocent creature, who smiled beneath it, fearless; but these two old men must sit and watch the sword, and ask themselves ...
— A Simpleton • Charles Reade
... ancestor, the creative father of mankind. Thus the Greeks in their oldest faith were tethered to the idea that they were descended from the plane tree; in the Sagas and Eddas the human race is tethered to the world-ash. Among every people of antiquity this forest faith sprang up and flourished: every race was tethered to some ancestral tree. In the Orient each succeeding Buddha of Indian mythology was tethered to a different tree; each god of the ...
— Bride of the Mistletoe • James Lane Allen
... the wide-spread ignorance among the monks of that age, the encyclopaedic movement of the Renaissance was attracting all the lofty minds. Rabelais threw himself into it with enthusiasm, and Latin antiquity was not enough for him. Greek, a study discountenanced by the Church, which looked on it as dangerous and tending to freethought and heresy, took possession of him. To it he owed the warm friendship of Pierre Amy and of the celebrated Guillaume Bude. In fact, the Greek letters of the ...
— Gargantua and Pantagruel, Complete. • Francois Rabelais
... rose, and spoke to this purpose:—Sir, I have been long conversant with military affairs; and, therefore, may perhaps be able to give a more exact account, from my own knowledge, of the antiquity and extent of this practice, than other gentlemen have had, from their way of life; an opportunity ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, Vol. 10. - Parlimentary Debates I. • Samuel Johnson
... good fortune; the second, that I have learned what the cave of Montesinos contains, together with the transformations of Guadiana and of the lakes of Ruidera; which will be of use to me for the Spanish Ovid that I have in hand; the third, to have discovered the antiquity of cards, that they were in use at least in the time of Charlemagne, as may be inferred from the words you say Durandarte uttered when, at the end of that long spell while Montesinos was talking to him, ...
— Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... lights gleamed in the windows, and I saw a pleasant family-party gathered at their evening meal. The whole scene with its background of sloping meadows and budding woods so tranquil and contented—a scene which William Morris would have loved—for there is a pleasant grace of antiquity about the old house, a sense of homely and solid life, and of all the family associations that have gone to the making of it, generation after generation leaving its mark in the little alterations and additions that have met a need, or ...
— The Altar Fire • Arthur Christopher Benson
... Yet, what signifies my dressing when I have such a piece of antiquity by my side as Mr. Hardcastle: all I can say will never argue down a single button from his clothes. I have often wanted him to throw off his great flaxen wig, and where he was bald, to plaster it over, like my Lord ...
— She Stoops to Conquer - or, The Mistakes of a Night. A Comedy. • Oliver Goldsmith
... 501-507) says that the Areois society in Tahiti, one of whose chief objects was "to preserve the chants and songs of antiquity," sent out an officer called the "Night-walker," Hare-po, whose duty it was to recite the chants all night long at the sacred places. If he hesitated a moment it was a bad omen. "Perfect memory for these chants was a gift of god and proved that a god spoke through and inspired the reciter." ...
— The Hawaiian Romance Of Laieikawai • Anonymous
... causes and the consequences of such deeds. But it is one of our duties to reassure them under unreasoning panic and despondency. Assassination has never changed the history of the world. I will not refer to the remote past, though an accident has made the most memorable instance of antiquity at this moment fresh in the minds and memory of all around me. But even the costly sacrifice of a Caesar did not propitiate the inexorable destiny of his country. If we look to modern times, to times at least with the feelings ...
— The World's Best Orations, Vol. 1 (of 10) • Various
... Chronicles runs parallel with the older historical books of the canon, it makes no real additions, but the tradition is merely differently coloured, under the influence of contemporary motives. In the picture it gives the writer's own present is reflected, not antiquity. But neither is the case very different with the genealogical lists prefixed by way of introduction in 1Chronicles i.-ix.; they also are in the main valid only for the period at which they were drawn up—whether for its actual ...
— Prolegomena to the History of Israel • Julius Wellhausen
... delicacy, were written on that very day when he was about to encounter voluntarily an immense danger. The presentiment of a violent end almost inevitably did not disturb him—his hand traced those terrible words, Ma mort, ma mort prochaine! with a firmness which the Stoics of antiquity might have envied. Sensibility, on the contrary, obtained the mastery when the illustrious proscribed was drawn into the anticipation that Madame de Condorcet also might be involved in the bloody catastrophe that threatened him. Should my daughter be destined ...
— Ancient and Modern Celebrated Freethinkers - Reprinted From an English Work, Entitled "Half-Hours With - The Freethinkers." • Charles Bradlaugh, A. Collins, and J. Watts
... originals." That is to say, he avowedly made up texts out of a variety of copies, when he had more copies than one. This is frequently acknowledged by Scott; what he does not acknowledge is his own occasional interpolation of stanzas. A good example is The Gay Gosshawk. He had a MS. of his own "of some antiquity," a MS. of Mrs. Brown, a famous reciter and collector of the eighteenth century; and the Abbotsford MSS. show isolated stanzas from Hogg, and a copy from Will Laidlaw. Mr. T. F. Henderson's notes {10a} display ...
— Sir Walter Scott and the Border Minstrelsy • Andrew Lang
... turn, instead, into the quiet, narrow way which a lover of Creole antiquity, in fondness for a romantic past, is still prone to call the Rue Royale. You will pass a few restaurants, a few auction-rooms, a few furniture warehouses, and will hardly realize that you have left behind you the activity and clatter of a city of merchants ...
— Old Creole Days • George Washington Cable
... origin of the Upanishads can be fixed, because the written text does not limit their antiquity. The word Sruti makes that clear to us. The teaching probably existed ages before it was set down in any written form. The text itself bears evidence of this, because not infrequently in a dialogue between teacher and disciple the teacher quotes from earlier ...
— The Upanishads • Swami Paramananda
... The geographers of antiquity have frequently hesitated to what portion of the globe they should ascribe Egypt. [85] By its situation that celebrated kingdom is included within the immense peninsula of Africa; but it is accessible only on the side of Asia, whose revolutions, in almost every period of history, Egypt ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 1 • Edward Gibbon
... perplexed studies, he left off, and turned to them as a recreation; and that his very recreation had made him so perfect in them, that he could, in a very short time, give an account of the descent, arms, and antiquity of any family of the Nobility ...
— Lives of John Donne, Henry Wotton, Rich'd Hooker, George Herbert, - &C, Volume Two • Izaak Walton
... intended by the Normal Social Life here is a type of human association and employment, of extreme prevalence and antiquity, which appears to have been the lot of the enormous majority of human beings as far back as history or tradition or the vestiges of material that supply our conceptions of the neolithic period can carry us. It has never been the lot of all humanity at any time, to-day it is ...
— An Englishman Looks at the World • H. G. Wells
... transient exceptions (which, it may be incidentally remarked, are easily explicable from what follows) antiquity and the Middle Ages had no political economy. This was not because the men of those times were not sharp-sighted enough to discover the sources of wealth, but because to them there was nothing enigmatical about those sources of wealth. The ...
— Freeland - A Social Anticipation • Theodor Hertzka
... superfluous, we would urgently recommend the study of Pompeii to the students of life in general and to those of Antiquity in particular. Those who would know something about the ancient table cannot do ...
— Cooking and Dining in Imperial Rome • Apicius
... trails, watching the lightness of her small figure against the splendid background of peak and pine, he became a troubled, introspective person; concentrating upon himself and his disagreeable plight the attention he had hitherto given to a delightful outer world, sown with the caches of antiquity, in order to ...
— Lady Merton, Colonist • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... difficulty which may occur to those who have not been in these parts. Some may say that this history cannot be accepted as authentic being taken from the narratives of these barbarians, because, having no letters, they could not preserve such details as they give from so remote an antiquity. The answer is that, to supply the want of letters, these barbarians had a curious invention which was very good and accurate. This was that from one to the other, from fathers to sons, they handed down past events, repeating the story of them many ...
— History of the Incas • Pedro Sarmiento de Gamboa
... of venerable antiquity in the Canadian woods. There are no ancient spreading oaks that might be called the patriarchs of the forest. A premature decay seems to be their doom. They are uprooted by the storm, and sink in their first maturity, to give place to a new generation ...
— The Backwoods of Canada • Catharine Parr Traill
... here presented may not have been suggested by any previous investigator, and they may be exceedingly damaging to certain popular theories; but they should not, therefore, be summarily condemned. Surely every honest effort to explain and reconcile the memorials of antiquity is entitled to a candid criticism. Nor, from those whose opinion is really worthy of respect, do I despair of a kindly reception for this volume. One of the most hopeful signs of the times is the increasing charity of evangelical Christians. There is a growing disposition to discountenance the spirit ...
— The Ancient Church - Its History, Doctrine, Worship, and Constitution • W.D. [William Dool] Killen
... of making charcoal—if, indeed, so crude a process is worthy of being dignified by the name of an art—dates back to a remote antiquity, and has been practiced with but little change for hundreds of years. It is true that some improvements have been recently made, but these relate to the recovery of certain volatile ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 601, July 9, 1887 • Various
... terraced lawn, where a fountain played, keeping bent plumes of water in the air. The lofty chateau of white stone had a broad front, with wings. Eagle bade me note the two dove-cotes or pigeon towers, distinctly separate structures, one flanking each wing, and demonstrating the antiquity of the house. For only nobles in medieval days were accorded the privilege ...
— Lazarre • Mary Hartwell Catherwood
... difficult to say which seat in the opera house was his, stalls, gallery, or dress circle. A writer? He lacked self-consciousness. A painter? There was something in the shape of his hands (he was descended on his mother's side from a family of the greatest antiquity and deepest obscurity) which indicated taste. Then his mouth—but surely, of all futile occupations this of cataloguing features is the worst. One word is sufficient. But if ...
— Jacob's Room • Virginia Woolf
... my spirit what must have been a dream, I scanned more narrowly the real aspect of the building. Its principal feature seemed to be that of an excessive antiquity. The discoloration of ages had been great. Minute fungi overspread the whole exterior, hanging in a fine tangled web-work from the eaves. Yet all this was apart from any extraordinary dilapidation. No portion of the masonry had fallen; and there appeared ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 2 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... interesting seat of learning,' said the Doctor, quite delighted to change the subject. 'Whether we consider its antiquity, its learning, the influence it has exercised upon the history of the country, its magnificent endowments, its splendid buildings, its great colleges, libraries, and museums, or that it is one of the principal head-quarters of all the hope of England, ...
— Venetia • Benjamin Disraeli
... Rowley,' said I, 'this is telling tales out of school! Do not you be deceived. The greatest men of antiquity, including Caesar and Hannibal and Pope Joan, may have been very glad, at my time of life or Alain's, to follow his example. 'Tis a misfortune common to all; and really,' said I, bowing to myself before the mirror like one who should dance the minuet, 'when the result is so successful ...
— St Ives • Robert Louis Stevenson
... of the fact that antiquity is the youth of the world, still follow Aristotle as their guide in philosophy and metaphysics, and Ptolemy in geography! Missionaries have succeeded in introducing modern text books into some of the schools, but owing to the ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol 3 No 3, March 1863 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... the most enjoyable, was spent outside the walls. There, everything retains its stamp of antiquity, whilst in Rome, with its hotels and shops, one might fancy oneself in Paris. This drive in the Roman Campagna has left a specially delightful impression on ...
— The Story of a Soul (L'Histoire d'une Ame): The Autobiography of St. Therese of Lisieux • Therese Martin (of Lisieux)
... moved her in the depths of her being, and her mind was thick with lees of ancient sentiment, and wrecks of belief had floated up and hung in mid memory. She knew that the beauty of the ritual, the eternal psalms, the divine sacrifice, the very ring of the bell, the antiquity of the language, lifted her out of herself, and into a higher, a more intense ecstasy than the low medium of this world's desires. And if she did not believe that the bread and wine were the true body and ...
— Evelyn Innes • George Moore
... rose-coloured lutestring, with a flounce of the same about a quarter deep. The old lady being very notable, found some use for the silk, and used to cover the china which stood in the best parlour with this remains of antiquity." ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 68, February 15, 1851 • Various
... are better understood now, and may be heard here and there sung as they should be. They are of great artistic merit and beauty; and instead of considering them a priori as uncongenial on the ground of antiquity, we should rather be thinking of them that they were invented at a time when unison singing was cultivated in the highest perfection, so much so that a large number of these tunes are, on account of their ...
— A Practical Discourse on Some Principles of Hymn-Singing • Robert Bridges
... makes you think of a great many things besides Assyrians: among others of some words of Renan: I quote from memory: "But the trace of Israel will be eternal. She it was who alone among the tyrannies of antiquity, raised her voice for the helpless, the oppressed, ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Maisie Ward
... of a very large town, which, from the only evidence of antiquity afforded by ruins in this country, must have been inhabited for a long period; the millstones of gneiss, trap, and quartz were worn down two and a half inches perpendicularly. The ivory grave-stones soon rot away. Those of Moyara's father, who must have died ...
— Missionary Travels and Researches in South Africa - Journeys and Researches in South Africa • David Livingstone
... as an illustration of the difference between English and American manners: in New York people always asked the arriving stranger the first thing about the steamer and the hotel. Mr. Wendover appeared greatly impressed with Lady Davenant's antiquity, though he confessed to his companion on a subsequent occasion that he thought her a little flippant, a little frivolous even for her years. 'Oh yes,' said the girl, on that occasion, 'I have no doubt that you considered she talked too much, for one so old. In America old ...
— A London Life; The Patagonia; The Liar; Mrs. Temperly • Henry James
... of English makers does not arise from any national want of talent for this particular handicraft; in fact, we have plenty of men quite as enthusiastic as our foreign friends for a vocation which, in England also, must be pronounced to be alike venerable in its antiquity and famed for the ...
— The Violin - Its Famous Makers and Their Imitators • George Hart
... larger than himself. He wore a vest, all the buttons of which were gone except two, out of which peeped a shirt which looked as if it had been worn a month. To complete his costume he wore a coat too long for him, dating back, if one might judge from its general appearance, to a remote antiquity. ...
— Ragged Dick - Or, Street Life in New York with the Boot-Blacks • Horatio Alger
... [FN247] Showing the antiquity of "Apres moi le deluge," the fame of all old politicians and aged statesmen who can expect but a few years of life. These "burning questions" (e.g. the Bulgarian) may be smothered for a time, but the result is that they blaze forth with increased violence. ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 2 • Richard F. Burton
... be adduced in any number. We might show how, in magic, negroes of Barbadoes make clay effigies of their enemies, and pierce them, just as Greeks did in Plato's time, or the men of Accad in remotest antiquity. We might remark the Australian black putting sharp bits of quartz in the tracks of an enemy who has gone by, that the enemy may be lamed; and we might point to Boris Godunof forbidding the same practice among the Russians. We might watch Scotch, and Australians, ...
— Custom and Myth • Andrew Lang
... was so occupied with his own over Gerard. At each municipal tender of undying affection, he turned almost purple with the effort it cost him not to roar with glee; and driving his elbow into the deep-meditating and much-puzzled pupil of antiquity, whispered, "Le peu ...
— The Cloister and the Hearth • Charles Reade
... commencement of the iron age, the lake-habitations were abandoned, the only settlement of this later epoch yet discovered being that at Tene, on Lake Neufchatel: and it is a remarkable circumstance, showing the great antiquity of the lake-dwellings, that they are not mentioned by any of the ...
— Industrial Biography - Iron Workers and Tool Makers • Samuel Smiles
... Seamanship, by a man Towser, Towson—some such name—Master in his Majesty's Navy. The matter looked dreary reading enough, with illustrative diagrams and repulsive tables of figures, and the copy was sixty years old. I handled this amazing antiquity with the greatest possible tenderness, lest it should dissolve in my hands. Within, Towson or Towser was inquiring earnestly into the breaking strain of ships' chains and tackle, and other such matters. Not a very enthralling book; but at the first glance you could ...
— Heart of Darkness • Joseph Conrad
... later, Cardinal de Richelieu had his body-guard. Several princes allied to the royal house—Guise, Conde, Nevers, and Vendome, etc.—had pages chosen among the sons of the best families,—a last lingering custom of departed chivalry. The wealth of the Duc d'Herouville, and the antiquity of his Norman race indicated by his name ("herus villoe"), permitted him to imitate the magnificence of families who were in other respects his inferiors,—those, for instance, of Epernon, Luynes, Balagny, d'O, Zamet, ...
— The Hated Son • Honore de Balzac
... Clarenceux King-of-Arms. Camden was in his sixtieth year, in 1610; he had enjoyed slow success, violent detraction, and final triumph. His health was poor, but he continued to write history, eager, as he says, to show that "though I have been a studious admirer of venerable antiquity, yet have I not been altogether an incurious spectator of modern occurrences." He stood easily first among the historians of his time; he was respected and adored by the Court and by the Universities, and that his fame might be completed by the chrism of detraction, his popularity ...
— Gossip in a Library • Edmund Gosse
... on all this scholastic bravery. The dust of a dry antiquity has settled upon the laborious pages of these ragged tomes, undisturbed save by some "local grubber," or by some "illustrator" in search of portraits for a rich ...
— The Philadelphia Magazines and their Contributors 1741-1850 • Albert Smyth
... indisputably of pagan origin, and of antiquity so great as to precede written history. There is no doubt that the early Irish were sun and fire worshippers, and many excellent reasons may be given for the belief that the round towers were built by the Druids for ...
— Irish Wonders • D. R. McAnally, Jr.
... and preparing a meal; others explored the country in search of game. AEneas, however, hastened at once to seek the temple of Apollo and the adjoining cave of the Cumaean Sibyl,—the most famous of all the oracles of antiquity. The temple and cave were situated in a thick wood, closely adjoining the gloomy lake of Avernus, a black pool of unknown depth, hedged in by precipitous cliffs, and emitting gases so poisonous that no bird was able to fly over it in safety. ...
— The Children's Hour, Volume 3 (of 10) • Various
... rapid survey of the course of this feeling in antiquity. Pantheism has always been the home of a special tenderness for Nature, and the poetry of India is full of intimate dealings between man and ...
— The Development of the Feeling for Nature in the Middle Ages and - Modern Times • Alfred Biese
... village which, on account of its antiquity, is called Little Castilla. It belongs to his Majesty, and has a population ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1803, Volume V., 1582-1583 • Various
... national records is like to destroy my trade, and that of all local antiquaries, by substituting truth instead of legend and romance. Alas! I would the learned gentleman did but know how difficult it is for us dealers in petty wares of antiquity to— ...
— The Monastery • Sir Walter Scott
... his spirit grows dull as he grows older, and that he finds a difficulty as a translator in matching his rhymes to his French original. He acknowledges as incontestable the superiority of the poets of classical antiquity:— ...
— Chaucer • Adolphus William Ward
... nature, and her movements are free from the stale uniformity that distinguishes artifice from art. The others seem to me to have but two dreams of grace, a sort of crawling on stilts is their motion, and an angular stiffness their repose." He then cited the most famous statues of antiquity, and quoted situations in plays where, by her fine dramatic instinct, Mrs. Woffington, he said, threw her person into postures similar to these, and of equal beauty; not that she strikes attitudes like the rest, but she melts from one beautiful statue into another; and, if sculptors could ...
— Peg Woffington • Charles Reade
... Tristram and Yseult. Indeed, it is difficult to guess whether this self-satisfied, self-glorifying quality, which distinguishes mediaeval passion from the passion (always regarded as an interlude, harmless or hurtful, in civic concerns) of unromantic Antiquity—whether, I say, this peculiarity of mediaeval love is due to its having served for religious as well as for secular use, or whether the possibility of its being brought into connection with the highest mysteries and aspirations was not itself a result of the dignity in ...
— Renaissance Fancies and Studies - Being a Sequel to Euphorion • Violet Paget (AKA Vernon Lee)
... "Calendar of the Saints," for which Mr. Campbell did the illustrations, illustrations akin to those of Miss Althea Gyles, which so surely take one back to Ireland's heroic age, instinct as they are with the primitive aloofness of antiquity. ...
— Irish Plays and Playwrights • Cornelius Weygandt
... mortar of this historic town seem impregnated with the spirit of restful antiquity.' (Extract from one of Aunt Celia's letters.) Among the great men who have studied here are the Prince of Wales, Duke of Wellington, Gladstone, Sir Robert Peel, Sir Philip Sidney, William Penn, John Locke, the two Wesleys, Ruskin, Ben Jonson, ...
— A Cathedral Courtship • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... primitive state of ignorance and barbarism, in which a rude Theology existed, in the form of Fetishism, is opposed not more to the authority of Scripture, the earliest record of our race, than to the unanimous voice of antiquity, which attests the general belief of mankind in a primeval state of light and innocence. There is a sad but striking contrast between the views which are generally held by the Christian Theist, and those which are avowed by M. Comte on this subject. The Christian Theist ...
— Modern Atheism under its forms of Pantheism, Materialism, Secularism, Development, and Natural Laws • James Buchanan
... reddish earth which contrasted finely with the acacias and dark casuarinae around. Others gilt with moss shot far into the recesses of the bush, where slight traces of still more ancient graves proved the antiquity of these simple but touching records of humanity. With all our art we could do no more for the dead than these poor savages had done. As we approached Nyngan we crossed a plain on which we killed a kangaroo which afforded a seasonable supply, ...
— Three Expeditions into the Interior of Eastern Australia, Vol 1 (of 2) • Thomas Mitchell
... reread Bowen's adventures so often that I knew them almost by heart, and so now I knew that I was looking upon the last remnant of that ancient man-race—the Alus of a forgotten period—the speechless man of antiquity. ...
— The People that Time Forgot • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... determining the totem has all the appearance of extreme antiquity. For it ignores altogether the intercourse of the sexes as the cause of offspring, and further, it ignores the tie of blood on the maternal as well as the paternal side, substituting for it a purely local bond, since the members of a totem stock are merely ...
— The Euahlayi Tribe - A Study of Aboriginal Life in Australia • K. Langloh Parker
... senores, I must now go about my work. Don Rafael knows that I am much too ready to forget my work in talk of ancient matters. It is a weakness with me—this love for the study of antiquity—that I struggle against, but that seems rather to increase upon me than to be overcome. This afternoon, senor, I will send a few of the ancient manuscripts to you. And so—until we ...
— The Aztec Treasure-House • Thomas Allibone Janvier
... III. During antiquity no International Law in the modern sense of the term was possible, because the common interests which could force a number of independent States into a Community of ...
— The League of Nations and its Problems - Three Lectures • Lassa Oppenheim
... the lantern, which had been dancing to and fro before the door and window, like a Will of the Wisp, took due care of the horse; who was fatter than you would quite believe, if I gave you his measure, and so old that his birthday was lost in the mists of antiquity. Boxer, feeling that his attentions were due to the family in general, and must be impartially distributed, dashed in and out with bewildering inconstancy; now describing a circle of short barks round the horse, where he was ...
— The Cricket on the Hearth • Charles Dickens
... the first of his name, the author of the following interesting specimen of 16th-century criticism came of a family of great antiquity, of so great an antiquity, indeed, as to preclude our tracing it back to its origin. This family was originally known as the "De Botfelds," but in the 15th century one branch adopted the more humble name of "Thynne," ...
— Animaduersions uppon the annotacions and corrections of some imperfections of impressiones of Chaucer's workes - 1865 edition • Francis Thynne
... it, and after the books which have said the contrary are censured; we must cry out so much the louder, the more unjustly we are censured, and the more violently they would stifle speech, until there come a Pope who hears both parties, and who consults antiquity to do justice. So the good Popes will find the Church still ...
— Pascal's Pensees • Blaise Pascal
... President de Mesmes, a man of great capacity, but by fear and ambition most slavishly attached to the Court, made an eloquent and pathetic harangue, preferable to anything I ever met with of the kind in all the monuments of antiquity, and, turning about to the Prince de Conti, "Is it possible, monsieur," said he, "that a Prince of the blood of France should propose to let a person deputed from the most bitter enemy of the fleurs-de-lis have a seat upon those flowers?" Then ...
— The Memoirs of Cardinal de Retz, Complete • Jean Francois Paul de Gondi, Cardinal de Retz
... the result of centuries of sphagnous growth, which had reached a thickness of nearly 2 feet above the remains. When we reflect upon the well-known slowness of this kind of growth in these northern regions, attested by numerous Arctic travelers, the antiquity of ...
— An introduction to the mortuary customs of the North American Indians • H. C. Yarrow
... preserved in the Casa Buonarroti at Florence, is, so to speak, in fermentation with powerful half-realised conceptions, audacities of foreshortening, attempts at intricate grouping, violent dramatic action and expression. No previous tradition, unless it was the genius of Greek or Greco-Roman antiquity, supplied Michelangelo with the motive force for this prentice-piece in sculpture. Donatello and other Florentines worked under different sympathies for form, affecting angularity in their treatment of the nude, adhering to literal transcripts ...
— The Life of Michelangelo Buonarroti • John Addington Symonds
... the remains of some ancient and long-disused fortifications, of far greater antiquity than the edifice which had been ...
— Jack Harkaway's Boy Tinker Among The Turks - Book Number Fifteen in the Jack Harkaway Series • Bracebridge Hemyng
... the next place in the wood wind band. The principle of sound excitement, that of the double reed, originating in the flattening of the end of an oat or wheat straw, is of great antiquity, but it could only be applied by insertion in tubes of very narrow diameter, so that the column of air should not be wider than the tongue straw or reed acting upon it. The little reed bound round and contracted below the vibrating ends in this ...
— Scientific American Supplement No. 819 - Volume XXXII, Number 819. Issue Date September 12, 1891 • Various
... work of a stranger to him and testifies to his artistic judgment, for a study of this "old chanty" will prove it to be a work of art, not only for the tremendous lines of which Mr. Mason speaks, but because it creates the impression of antiquity while being entirely modern by every rule ...
— The Dead Men's Song - Being the Story of a Poem and a Reminiscent Sketch of its - Author Young Ewing Allison • Champion Ingraham Hitchcock
... soared above the pitch of ordinary minds; and had his faculties been exercised to their full extent by opportunity and action, had his judgment been fully matured by age and experience, he would without doubt have rivalled in reputation the most celebrated captains of antiquity. ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. - From William and Mary to George II. • Tobias Smollett
... were unknown to their religion, and they do not appear at any time to have slain in cold blood captives taken in war. Human life was held at a far higher value in Egypt than among any other nation of antiquity, and the whole teaching of their laws tended to create a disposition ...
— The Cat of Bubastes - A Tale of Ancient Egypt • G. A. Henty
... those gigantic monuments which alone, perhaps, of all the creations of man, have the character of eternity. Already proclaimed the most illustrious of living generals, he sought to efface the rival names of antiquity by his own. If Caesar fought fifty battles, he longed to fight a hundred—if Alexander left Macedon to penetrate to the Temple of Ammon, he wished to leave Paris to travel to the Cataracts of the ...
— Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Louis Antoine Fauvelet de Bourrienne
... the whirr of a covey on wing before the fowler, our crested three of immemorial antiquity and a presumptive immortality, the Ladies Endor, Eldritch, and Cowry, shot up again, hooting across the dormant chief city Old England's fell word of the scarlet shimmer above the nether pit-flames, Rome. An ancient horror in the blood of the ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... the Grecian;" and, in the Tatler, No. 6: "While other parts of the town are amused with the present actions (Marlborough's) we generally spend the evening at this table (at the Grecian) in inquiries into antiquity, and think anything new, which gives us new knowledge. Thus, we are making a very pleasant entertainment to ourselves in putting the actions of Homer's Iliad into an ...
— All About Coffee • William H. Ukers
... succeeded; for, by this time, the whole of our party had reached the Abbot's rooms. I now requested, to be immediately taken to the church; and within five minutes we were in the crypt. It scarcely merits one word of description on the score of antiquity; and may be, at the farthest, somewhere about three centuries old. The church is small and quite unpretending, as a piece of architecture. On quitting the church, and passing through the last court, or smaller quadrangle, we came to the outer walls: and leaving them, we discerned—below—the horses, ...
— A Bibliographical, Antiquarian and Picturesque Tour in France and Germany, Volume Three • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... violins, when he invited me to call and see him. I did so; and he showed me his treasures of violins. There were fully thirty of them hanging up in a closet; one amongst them bore conspicuously all the marks of great antiquity (a carved lion's head, &c.), and, hung up higher than the rest and surmounted by a crown of flowers, it seemed to exercise a queenly supremacy over them. "This violin," said Krespel, on my making some inquiry relative to it, "this violin is a very remarkable ...
— Weird Tales. Vol. I • E. T. A. Hoffmann
... style, by manipulation and rehandling, which contrasts unfavorably with the unaffected ease, the pregnant spontaneity, of his unpublished writings. His periods are almost interminable, and his rhetoric is prolix and monotonous. We can trace the effort to emulate the authors of antiquity without the ease which is acquired by practice or the taste that ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volume 1 (of 7) • John Addington Symonds
... cypresses, camels filing through the desert — such images get their character from the strong but misty atmosphere of sentiment and adventure which clings about them. The profit of travel, and the extraordinary charm of all visible relics of antiquity, consists in the acquisition of images in which to focus a mass of discursive knowledge, not otherwise felt together. Such images are concrete symbols of much latent experience, and the deep roots of association give them the same hold upon our attention ...
— The Sense of Beauty - Being the Outlines of Aesthetic Theory • George Santayana
... ought to expect to find some traditions of their former existence. The statement is quite often made that the Indians had no tradition as to the origin or purpose of the mounds, and from this it is argued that the mounds are of great antiquity. But, instead of finding no traditions, we find nearly every tribe possessed of some, and often very full and distinct. It makes no difference that a number of those traditions are childish, and that traditions are a very unsatisfactory sort ...
— The Prehistoric World - Vanished Races • E. A. Allen
... the Cid.] The ballads of the Cid, which number about two hundred, and some of which are of undoubted antiquity, were not committed to writing until the twelfth century, when a poem of about three thousand lines was composed. This poem, descriptive of a national hero's exploits, was probably written about half a century after his death. The earliest manuscript of ...
— Legends of the Middle Ages - Narrated with Special Reference to Literature and Art • H.A. Guerber
... XIIIth century as opus pulvinarium or cushion work, is of great antiquity, and seems to have had an independent origin in several countries. It is sometimes given the misleading name of tapestry, perhaps owing to hangings of all kinds being called tapestries, whether loom-woven, worked with the needle, or ...
— Embroidery and Tapestry Weaving • Grace Christie
... couche tres-mince de la terre vegetale est un monument d'une haute antiquite, et, par le fait de sa permanence, un objet digne d'occuper le geologue, et capable de lui fournir des remarques interessantes." Although the superficial layer of vegetable mould as a whole no doubt is of the highest antiquity, yet in regard to its permanence, we shall hereafter see reason to believe that its component particles are in most cases removed at not a very slow rate, and are replaced by others due to the disintegration of the ...
— The Formation of Vegetable Mould through the action of worms with • Charles Darwin
... fact—which he and his friends were so eager to know, that they sent a special letter of inquiry to Rome—he was “ravished with the idea that the experimenter was so illustrious a genius, whose mathematical writings, already well known, surpassed those of all antiquity.” He says, in conclusion, that it was only in the same year (1647), after the publication of his own researches, that he learned “the very fine thought” of Torricelli concerning the cause of all ...
— Pascal • John Tulloch
... Field Place, near Horsham, in the county of Sussex. His father, named Timothy, was the eldest son of Bysshe Shelley, Esquire, of Goring Castle, in the same county. The Shelley family could boast of great antiquity and considerable wealth. Without reckoning earlier and semi-legendary honours, it may here be recorded that it is distinguished in the elder branch by one baronetcy dating from 1611, and by a second in the younger dating from 1806. In ...
— Percy Bysshe Shelley • John Addington Symonds
... in a remote antiquity to the fraternity of college editors, a contribution to this centennial number[1] has been solicited. Perhaps I can do no better than to recall a few impressions of my own life in college. Every year, at the banquet, I observe ...
— A Williams Anthology - A Collection of the Verse and Prose of Williams College, 1798-1910 • Compiled by Edwin Partridge Lehman and Julian Park
... unconscious of, and have least control over, our digestion, which we have in common even with our invertebrate ancestry, and which is a habit of extreme antiquity. ...
— Selections from Previous Works - and Remarks on Romanes' Mental Evolution in Animals • Samuel Butler
... attain any considerable knowledge of the bacteria discovered by Loewenhoeck until more perfect instruments for studying them were devised. Lenses for studying objects were used in remote antiquity, but the compound microscope in which the image made by the lens is further magnified was not discovered until 1605, and when first made was so imperfect that the best simple lenses gave clearer definition. With the betterment of the microscope, increasing the ...
— Disease and Its Causes • William Thomas Councilman
... mother. Mr. Burke, here's to you! Why I dare say you are right, Mrs. Burke. The Cavanagh family is but an upstart one at best; it wants antiquity, ma'am—a mere affair of yesterday, so what after all ...
— The Emigrants Of Ahadarra - The Works of William Carleton, Volume Two • William Carleton
... great question about civil power is, not whence it first came in remote antiquity, but whence it is now derived and flows continually as from its source, whether from the free consent of subjects so long as that lasts, or whether it obtains independently of their consent. Can subjects overthrow the ruler, or alter the polity itself, as often ...
— Moral Philosophy • Joseph Rickaby, S. J.
... painted those already described. Although Grey believes that it is a more ancient production, the face of it having suffered more than the other is in all probability due to it being more exposed to atmospheric, or other influences, rather than to its greater antiquity. There are, however, some very interesting points to examine in this drawing, and in the first place our attention is drawn to the curious signs inscribed on the AUREOLA surrounding ...
— The History of Australian Exploration from 1788 to 1888 • Ernest Favenc
... text-books in medicine, and the Greek philosophers in Latin translations, or in Latin works founded on them, their masters in thought. To understand the extent of the influence and the knowledge of antiquity of a twelfth-century scholar we need only turn again to John of Salisbury, and we shall find him as familiar as any Renaissance scholar with Latin literature, and possessing a very considerable acquaintance with Greek literature so far as it could be obtained through the Latin.[30] ...
— Progress and History • Various
... would arise while traversing, hour after hour, the neglected soil, or passing by desolated villages which bear names of immense antiquity, and which stand as memorials of miraculous events which took place for our instruction and for that of all succeeding ages; and then, even while looking forward to a better time to come, the heart would sigh as the expression was ...
— Byeways in Palestine • James Finn
... generosity; the time is now come for the morality of justice. Whenever, in former ages, any approach has been made to society in equality, Justice has asserted its claims as the foundation of virtue. It was thus in the free republics of antiquity. But even in the best of these, the equals were limited to the free male citizens; slaves, women, and the unenfranchised residents were under the law of force. The joint influence of Roman civilization and of Christianity obliterated these distinctions, and in theory (if only partially ...
— The Subjection of Women • John Stuart Mill
... collectors. This prelate was an earnest student in the ancient history of the country and especially in whatever had relation to the Church. He was the first editor of a Saxon Homily. It was printed by John Day, and was entitled, "A Testimony of Antiquity showing the Ancient Faith of the Church of England touching the Sacrament, &c." The interest of this publication as understood at the time, lay in its witness against transubstantiation. It was reprinted at Oxford ...
— Anglo-Saxon Literature • John Earle
... Frank, "for a modern, twentieth-century explanation, but the real root of the matter goes far back into the obscure ages of antiquity. The whole habit is a relic of barbarism. Probably, in the early ages, only the great had cups to drink from. These few, to protect themselves from their envious and covetous brethren, stuck out their little fingers to ward off possible assaults upon their porcelain property. This ...
— Patty at Home • Carolyn Wells
... this tope was erected as a homage to the old temple, at the beginning of 245 of the Hindu astronomical (Samvat) era. According to Prinsep and Dr. Stevenson, this date coincides with 189 A.D., and so it clearly settles the question of when the tope was built. But the question of the antiquity of the temple itself still remains open, though the inscription states that it was an old temple in 189 A.D., and contradicts the above-quoted opinion of Fergusson. However, this important discovery failed to shake Fergusson's equanimity. For him, ancient inscriptions are of ...
— From the Caves and Jungles of Hindostan • Helena Pretrovna Blavatsky
... may compare the classic learning of Cellarius and the geographical science of D'Anville. William of Tyre is the only historian of the crusades who has any knowledge of antiquity; and M. Otter trod almost in the footsteps of the Franks from Constantinople to Antioch, (Voyage en Turquie et en Perse, tom. i. p. 35-88.) * Note: The journey of Col. Macdonald Kinneir in Asia Minor throws considerable light on the geography of this march ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 5 • Edward Gibbon
... south. Two stone steps worn away by the friction of many feet led to the door, which was made of three planks; the door had never been painted or varnished, so great cracks yawned in it during the dry season to close again when the rains came on. The house, with all its crumbling antiquity and apparent misery, was yet cheerful and picturesque, and was the same that old Dantes formerly inhabited—the only difference being that the old man occupied merely the garret, while the whole house was now placed at the command of ...
— The Count of Monte Cristo • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... will maintain it, even to the very fire itself exclusively, are fair and goodly creatures. Who lendeth nothing is an ugly and wicked creature, and an accursed imp of the infernal Old Nick. And there is made—what? Debts. A thing most precious and dainty, of great use and antiquity. Debts, I say, surmounting the number of syllables which may result from the combinations of all the consonants, with each of the vowels heretofore projected, reckoned, and calculated by the noble Xenocrates. To judge of the perfection of debtors by the numerosity of their creditors ...
— Gargantua and Pantagruel, Complete. • Francois Rabelais
... the value of Guillaume Paradin's Histoire de Notre Temps and Chronique de Savoie, which he admired to such a degree that he put the now forgotten author (the name of whom is not in the British Encyclopaedia) on the same level as Guicciardini and the great historians of antiquity. I would like to know how he discovered Paradin, and if copies of his rare works were in his library. When I happened to get hold of Major Frye's manuscript, afterwards published by me (thanks to Sir Charles Dilke's recommendation) at Heinemann's, he was the first to appreciate ...
— The Life of the Rt. Hon. Sir Charles W. Dilke, Vol. 2 • Stephen Gwynn
... Details of the ritual. Parallels with the Grail legend examined. Dead Knight or Disabled King. Consequent misfortunes of Land. The Weeping Women. The Hairless Maiden. Position of Castle. Summing up. Can incidents of such remote antiquity be used as criticism for ...
— From Ritual to Romance • Jessie L. Weston
... mysterious temples and fortifications, and learnt to love and treasure them. He had his proofs too and his deductions, and such as they were they satisfied him, in the face of all opposition, that the curious remains were indeed of great antiquity, quite probably the ancient Havilah of the Scriptures. To him every nook and every corner had its meaning and its history. In the play of his fancy he had seen the white-robed priests and acolytes in stately procession, amid the old, old ...
— The Rhodesian • Gertrude Page
... full splendour, the destination of those immense fabrics could have been a matter of doubt.... Herodotus, three hundred years later, may have been misinformed on these points," etc., etc. According to modern Egyptology, the erection of the "earlier pyramids" was an event of remotest antiquity when the Assyrian ...
— The Works of Lord Byron - Poetry, Volume V. • Lord Byron
... for him and hoped he would come, and we got more and more impatient all the time. We hadn't any interest in the other boys any more, and wouldn't take part in their games and enterprises. They seemed so tame, after Satan; and their doings so trifling and commonplace after his adventures in antiquity and the constellations, and his miracles and meltings and explosions, ...
— The Mysterious Stranger and Other Stories • Mark Twain
... illustrated with, several lithographic fac similia of coins; and the vignette is from a very beautiful gold coin of Hiero II. of Syracuse, in the possession of Mr. Till, of Great Russell-street, Covent-garden. This morsel of antiquity, not larger than one's little finger nail, must be upwards of ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 569 - Volume XX., No. 569. Saturday, October 6, 1832 • Various
... with a wave of my cigarette, "behold me once more at your service. The gentle art of bathing, madam, is of considerable antiquity. In classical times the bath played a very prominent part in the everyday existence of the cleanly nut. Then came a dead period in the history of personal irrigation. Recently, however, the bath-rate has once more gone up, immersion is again in vogue, and to-day in the best circles ...
— The Brother of Daphne • Dornford Yates
... for evidence of their antiquity it is believed that data has been found which denotes great age. In the construction of some of their houses, notably those in the Mancos Canon, is displayed a technical knowledge of architecture and a mathematical accuracy which savages ...
— Arizona Sketches • Joseph A. Munk
... paper published in the proceedings of the Pekin Oriental Society.[20] The substance of the case is that in the reign of Chung-K'ang, the fourth Emperor of the Hsia Dynasty, there occurred an eclipse of the Sun, which is interesting not only for its antiquity, but also for the dread fate of the two Astronomers Royal of the period, who were taken by surprise at its occurrence, and were unprepared to perform the customary rites. These rites were the shooting of arrows and ...
— The Story of Eclipses • George Chambers
... had taken? To which Mr. Lithgow replied, that he was already resolved, unless he could show substantial reasons to make him alter his opinion. The superior, after a pedantic display of their seven sacraments, the intercession of saints, transubstantiation, &c. boasted greatly of their church, her antiquity, universality, and uniformity; all which Mr. Lithgow denied: "For (said he) the profession of the faith I hold hath been ever since the first days of the apostles, and Christ had ever his own church (however obscure) in the ...
— Fox's Book of Martyrs - Or A History of the Lives, Sufferings, and Triumphant - Deaths of the Primitive Protestant Martyrs • John Fox
... after half an hour's rowing the boatmen took them, was a clear deep pool reflecting the blue of the sky, and encircled with papyrus, donax reeds, and beautiful irises. It seemed a fit setting for the legend of antiquity, and a fertile imagination could almost conjure up a vision of Pluto, with his chariot and black horses, carrying off the lovely nymph from her meadows of flowers to his gloomy realm of darkness. On the way back the second boat made a ...
— The Princess of the School • Angela Brazil
... welcome at the farm-houses, where the gude wife liked to have a crack (gossip) with the blue coat, and, in return for his news, gave him dinner or supper, as might be. Edie Ochiltree is a perfect specimen of this extinct race. There was another species of beggar, of yet higher antiquity. If a man were a cripple, and poor, his relations put him in a hand-barrow, and wheeled him to their next neighbour's door, and left him there. Some one came out, gave him oat-cake or peasemeal bannock, and then wheeled him to the next door; and in this way, going from house ...
— Personal Recollections, from Early Life to Old Age, of Mary Somerville • Mary Somerville
... without reason lavished on the dead, and that the honours due only to excellence are paid to antiquity, is a complaint likely to be always continued by those, who, being able to add nothing to truth, hope for eminence from the heresies of paradox; or those, who, being forced by disappointment upon consolatory expedients, are willing to hope from posterity ...
— Preface to Shakespeare • Samuel Johnson
... distinguished German historians, the author gives to the Hindoos the distinction of being the earliest race of men. "Above all the historical records of other nations," says he, "the Hindoos have brought forth the best evidence of the highest antiquity, and the earliest civilization. Therefore the supposition of those may be correct, who presume that man's first abode was somewhere in the neighborhood of the Himalaya mountains, which are the most ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII No. 6 June 1848 • Various
... of the survival of Anglo-French in our dialects. Indeed, their chief philological use consists in the great antiquity of many of the terms, which often preserve Old English and Anglo-French forms with much fidelity. The charge often brought against dialect speakers of using "corrupt" forms is only occasionally and exceptionally true. Much worse "corruptions" have been made by antiquaries, ...
— English Dialects From the Eighth Century to the Present Day • Walter W. Skeat
... of none at all; and although Cato was called a Stoic, it was more from a resemblance of manners in his worst qualities, than that he avowed himself one of their disciples. The same may be affirmed of many other great men of antiquity. Whence I infer that those who were renowned for virtue among them were more obliged to the good natural dispositions of their own minds than to the doctrines of any sect they pretended ...
— Three Sermons, Three Prayer • Jonathan Swift
... metamorphosed into the so-called noble, both however being controlled as to education, within Catholicism by Jesuitism, within Protestantism by Pietism. (2) Against this tendency to the church, we find reacting on the one hand the devotion to a study of antiquity, and on the other the friendly alliance to immediate actuality, i.e. with Nature. We can name these periods of Pedagogics those of its ideals of culture. (3) But the truth of all culture must forever remain moral ...
— Pedagogics as a System • Karl Rosenkranz
... sugar candy, has been made in China from very remote antiquity, and large quantities have been exported from India, in all ages, whence it is most probable that it found its way ...
— The Commercial Products of the Vegetable Kingdom • P. L. Simmonds
... a man. This senior or doyen of the German artists, who died overwhelmed with glory and honours, had been a valet de chambre in the Princess Louisa's household. He had followed the princess to Rome, where, among the masterpieces of antiquity and of the Renaissance, she had divined the budding genius of him who was to carve in everlasting marble the monumental ...
— Celebrated Women Travellers of the Nineteenth Century • W. H. Davenport Adams
... are about to build a "Temple for the revival of the Mysteries of Antiquity."—Vide ...
— Shapes of Clay • Ambrose Bierce |
