"Tradition" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... north country, where the white breath of the melting icebergs takes turn and turn with diamond nights and days, people did not remember so thick a fog; nor was there a thicker recorded in any chapter of tradition. Indeed, if the expression be endurable, so black was the whiteness that it was difficult to know when morning came. There was a fresher shiver in the cold, the sensibility that tree-tops were stirring, a filmy distinction of objects near ...
— Aladdin O'Brien • Gouverneur Morris
... not be human if some belief had not arisen that the insects that fly by night imitate human thieves and rob those which toil by day. There has always been a tradition that the death's-head moth, the largest of all our moths, does this, and that it creeps into the hives and robs the bees, which are said to be terrified by a squeaking noise made by the gigantic moth, which to a bee must appear as the roc did to its victims. ...
— The Naturalist on the Thames • C. J. Cornish
... his practice generally, when we hear of it, was to take the people's side; so that gradually these French procedures were a great deal mitigated; and DIE REGIE—so they called this hateful new-fangled system of Excise machinery—became much more supportable, "the sorrows of it nothing but a tradition to the younger sort," reports Dohm, who is extremely ample on this subject. [Christian Wilhelm von Dohm, Denkwurdigkeiten meiner Zeit (Lemgo und Hanover, 1819), iv. 500 et seq.] De Launay ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XXI. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... long been a sacred spot. There Gregory the Patriarch had breathed his last, and there his bones lay buried; there many an historic Brethren's Synod had been held; and there Comenius took up his abode in a little wood cottage outside the town which tradition said had been built by Gregory himself. He had lost his wife and one of his children on the way from Fulneck; he had lost his post as teacher and minister; and now, for the sake of his suffering Brethren, he wrote his beautiful ...
— History of the Moravian Church • J. E. Hutton
... was a person of extraordinary sagacity; and that astrology brought to such perfection as this, is by no means an art to be despised, whatever Mr. Bickerstaff, or other merry gentlemen are pleased to think. As to the tradition of these lines having been writ in the original by Merlin, I confess I lay not much weight upon it: But it is enough to justify their authority, that the book from whence I have transcrib'd them, was printed 170 years ago, as appears by the title-page. For the satisfaction ...
— The Bickerstaff-Partridge Papers • Jonathan Swift
... poetry in Europe. However, although originally Danish, it has received some touches in passing through the alembic of translation, which may warrant us in giving it a prominent place, and we are sure that no lover of hoar tradition will blame us for ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 57, No. 352, February 1845 • Various
... lance. Switzerland was the last place in Europe he would visit. He wanted to see old cities and dim cathedrals, to lounge in pleasant lands where rivers murmured past lush meadows. Though an American born and bred, there was a tradition in his home that the Spencers were once people of note on the border. When tired of London, he meant to go north, and ramble through Liddesdale in search of family records. But the business presently on hand was to arrange that Swiss excursion for ...
— The Silent Barrier • Louis Tracy
... is an industrial and commercial administration; that it is a vast enterprise of general utility; that the notion of loyalty or treason is entirely misplaced in this field. They have declared that the new legislation is wrong "because it perpetuates the bureaucratic tradition; because with a contempt for all the necessities of modern life it discountenances organization of labor; because it has constituted a repressive legal condition for wage earners; and because it is an act of authority which has nothing ...
— Socialism As It Is - A Survey of The World-Wide Revolutionary Movement • William English Walling
... that night had scared him and he was silent. For only a moment once we heard him singing in some far grove because the musicians rested and our bare feet made no sound; for a moment we heard that bird of which once our nightingale dreamed and handed on the tradition to his children. And Saranoora told me that they have named the bird the Sister of Song; but for the musicians, who presently played again, she said they had no name, for no one knew who they were or from what ...
— Tales of Three Hemispheres • Lord Dunsany
... understanding they received from it, in the reading of the scriptures of truth. And this was their plea; the scripture is the text, the spirit the interpreter, and that to every one for himself. But yet there was too much of human invention, tradition, and art, that remained both in praying and preaching; and of worldly authority, and worldly greatness in their ministers; especially in this kingdom, Sweden, Denmark, and some parts of Germany. God was therefore pleased in England to shift us from vessel to vessel; and the ...
— A Brief Account of the Rise and Progress of the People Called Quakers • William Penn
... of the 18th century, for the popular element fails almost entirely in their works. Such as they are, they may also be read in the Cabinet des Fees, a collection which ran to no fewer than forty-one volumes, and with which no lover of popular tradition need trouble himself much. To the playwright and the story- teller it has been a great repository, which has supplied the lack of original invention. In Germany we need trouble ourselves with none of the collections before the ...
— Popular Tales from the Norse • Sir George Webbe Dasent
... There is a tradition that when the ashes of the martyr Maid were gathered to be cast into the Seine, the heart ...
— Joan of Arc • Ronald Sutherland Gower
... embraced it and shaped his life in conformity to it. The principle of rationalism, instead of growing, seemed for twelve whole years to go under, and to be completely mastered by the antagonistic principles of authority, tradition, and transcendental faith. ...
— Critical Miscellanies (Vol. 3 of 3) - Essay 5: On Pattison's Memoirs • John Morley
... go through this examination, and to judge for themselves upon it. We say that the Scriptures, concerning the divine authenticity of which all the professors of Christianity agree, are the sole criterion of Christianity. You add tradition, concerning which there may be, and there is, much dispute. We have, then, a certain invariable rule whenever the Scriptures speak plainly. Whenever they do not speak so, we have this comfortable assurance— that doctrines which nobody understands are revealed to nobody, and are therefore ...
— Letters to Sir William Windham and Mr. Pope • Lord Bolingbroke
... trust. But the man, the philosopher or the moralist, does not stand upon these chance adhesions; and the purpose of any system looks towards those extreme points where it steps valiantly beyond tradition and returns with some covert hint of things outside. Then only can you be certain that the words are not words of course, nor mere echoes of the past; then only are you sure that if he be indicating anything at all, it is a star and not a street-lamp; then only do you touch ...
— Lay Morals • Robert Louis Stevenson
... that softening influence, and on what sort of natures did it act, that is supposed to survive all dead attachments, all broken friendships. Certainly, according to tradition, it seemed as if I ought now to feel some sort of emotion at hearing the fate of a man who had once held so large ...
— To-morrow? • Victoria Cross
... the gulf through the fortifications, using newly flayed hides smeared with olive oil instead of hauling-engines. However, I can find no exploit recorded of these ships in the gulf and therefore I am unable to trust the tradition; for it was certainly no small task to draw triremes on hides over a long and uneven tract of land. Still, it is said to have been performed. Actium is a place sacred to Apollo and is located in ...
— Dio's Rome, Vol. III • Cassius Dio
... brown cupboard, all wainscoted with delicious cedar, so deeply and uniformly panelled, that when shut, the door was not obvious; and it was like being in a box, for there were no wardrobes, only shelves shut by doors into the wall, which the old usage of the household tradition called awmries (armoires). The furniture was reasonably modern, but not obtrusively so. There was a delicious recess in the deep window, with a seat and a table in it, and a box of mignonette along the sill. It looked ...
— Hopes and Fears - scenes from the life of a spinster • Charlotte M. Yonge
... Stanford's music is a happy compromise between old and new. In his use of guiding themes, and in his contrapuntal treatment of the orchestra he follows Wagner, but his employment of new devices is tempered by due regard for established tradition. He is happiest in dealing with humorous situations, and in the lighter parts of the opera his music has a bustling gaiety which fits the situation very happily. In the more passionate scenes he is less at home, and the love duet in particular is by no means ...
— The Opera - A Sketch of the Development of Opera. With full Descriptions - of all Works in the Modern Repertory • R.A. Streatfeild
... story is indeed true, I should think he remembered before long a reproof his intolerance brought him once. 'Ye know not what spirit ye are of." And really, if we are to fall back upon tradition, I may quote the story of Abraham turning the unbeliever out of his tent on a stormy night. 'I have suffered him these hundred years,' was the Lord's reproof, 'though he dishonored Me, and couldst thou not endure him for one night?' ...
— We Two • Edna Lyall
... to the peasantry, for the followers would have spread themselves over the country like a flight of locusts, and taken anything they could lay their hands on, representing themselves as Mulk-i-Lord-Sahib-Ke-Naukar,[3] whom according to immemorial tradition it was death to resist. The poor, frightened country-people, therefore, hardly ventured to remonstrate at the mahouts walking off with great loads of their sugar-cane, or to object to the compulsory purchase ...
— Forty-one years in India - From Subaltern To Commander-In-Chief • Frederick Sleigh Roberts
... belongings. Mr Hoggins looked broad and radiant, and creaked up the middle aisle at church in a brand-new pair of top-boots—an audible, as well as visible, sign of his purposed change of state; for the tradition went, that the boots he had worn till now were the identical pair in which he first set out on his rounds in Cranford twenty-five years ago; only they had been new-pieced, high and low, top and bottom, heel ...
— Cranford • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... mile, on the Walton side, from our favorite bridge (Old Camden tells us so), is the spot where Caesar crossed the Thames. Were the peasantry as imaginative as their brethren of Killarney, what legends would have grown out of this tradition; how often would the "noblest Roman of them all" have been seen by the pale moonlight leading his steed over the waters of the rapid river—how many would have heard Cassivelaunus himself during the stillness of some particular Midsummer night working at the rude defence which ...
— The International Monthly Magazine - Volume V - No II • Various
... to signs, too! Look at that, now! It be small, and the boy've had no paint to lay on, but there's the sign of the Jolly Sow for you, as natteral as life. You know about signs, Master Linseed," continued the landlord. For there was a tradition that the painter could "do picture-signs," though he had only been known to renew lettered ones since he came to the neighborhood. "Master Lake should 'prentice him with you when he's older," Master Chuter said ...
— Jan of the Windmill • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... roused afresh by the reading of an anatomical treatise by Gabriel Fallopius, his successor in the chair at Padua. From that moment life in Spain became intolerable to Vesalius, and in 1563 he set out for the East. Tradition reports that this journey was a penance to which the Church condemned him for having opened the body of a woman before she was actually dead; but more probably Vesalius, sick of his long servitude, made the pilgrimage a pretext ...
— Artemis to Actaeon and Other Worlds • Edith Wharton
... tradition at Aire-sur-la-Lys that, about half a century ago, the good people of this ancient and picturesque town (which, like St.-Omer, remained a part of the Spanish dominions when all the rest of the Artois became French by the treaty of the Pyrenees in 1659) turned out with flags and music to ...
— France and the Republic - A Record of Things Seen and Learned in the French Provinces - During the 'Centennial' Year 1889 • William Henry Hurlbert
... birth and tradition, and Royalist as he always remained, it was the court at the Tuileries that filled his imagination. The Bourbons, whom he served, hoped some day for a court; at the Tuileries there was a court, glittering ...
— Real Soldiers of Fortune • Richard Harding Davis
... From force of tradition and of habit, the farmer accepts his fate and plods through his hard life, piously ascribing to the especial interference of an inscrutable Providence, the trials which come of his own neglect to use the means of relief which Providence has ...
— Draining for Profit, and Draining for Health • George E. Waring
... phlogiston, in contrast with the gravitation of all other forms of matter, discredited that supposed agent. That Macpherson should have found the Ossianic poems extant in the Gaelic memory, was contrary to the nature of oral tradition; except where tradition is organised, as it was for ages among the Brahmins. The suggestion that xanthochroid Aryans were "bleached" by exposure during the glacial period, does not agree with Wallace's doctrine concerning the coloration of Arctic animals. ...
— Logic - Deductive and Inductive • Carveth Read
... before her, in her great interest in the house through whose rambling halls she was being so carefully guided. So much that was tragic and heartrending had occurred here. The Van Broecklyn name, the Van Broecklyn history, above all the Van Broecklyn tradition, which made the house unique in the country's annals (of which more hereafter), all made an appeal to her imagination, and centred her thoughts on what she saw about her. There was door which no man ever opened—had never opened since Revolutionary times—should ...
— The Golden Slipper • Anna Katharine Green
... out a puff of smoke. "I don't especially mind," he said, slowly. "According to tradition, of course, I ought to spring at your throat with a smothered curse. But, as a matter of fact, I don't see why I should be irritated. No, in common reason," he added, upon consideration, "I am only rather ...
— The Rivet in Grandfather's Neck - A Comedy of Limitations • James Branch Cabell
... Cheshire and Bedfordshire, and on the other from Durham and York, a hundred and seventy years before. For seven or eight generations in a direct and unbroken line his forefathers had been preachers and divines, not without eminence in the Puritan tradition of New England. His second name came into the family with Rebecca Waldo, with whom at the end of the seventeenth century one Edward Emerson had intermarried, and whose family had fled from the Waldensian valleys and that slaughter of the saints which Milton called on Heaven to avenge. Every ...
— Critical Miscellanies, Vol. 1, Essay 5, Emerson • John Morley
... and German servants who took the place of Americans in families, there was, to begin with, the tradition of education in favor of a higher class; but even the foreign population became more or less infected with the spirit of democracy. They came to this country with vague notions of freedom and equality, and in ignorant and uncultivated people such ideas are ...
— Household Papers and Stories • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... forming temporary communities, was to the English a plain proof that they were near the land of the famous Amazons, of whom they had heard so often from the Indians; while Amyas had no doubt that, as a descendant of the Incas, the maiden preserved the tradition of the Virgins of the Sun, and of the austere monastic rule of the Peruvian superstition. Had not that valiant German, George of Spires, and Jeronimo Ortal too, fifty years before, found convents of the Sun upon ...
— Westward Ho! • Charles Kingsley
... are about to discuss the motion, action, and use of the heart and arteries, it is imperative on us first to state what has been thought of these things by others in their writings, and what has been held by the vulgar and by tradition, in order that what is true may be confirmed, and what is false set right by dissection, multiplied experience, and ...
— The Harvard Classics Volume 38 - Scientific Papers (Physiology, Medicine, Surgery, Geology) • Various
... Jeanne as yet had known nothing. She had been successful in assault, in the operations of the siege, but to meet the enemy hand to hand in battle was what she had never been required to do; and every tradition, every experience, was in favour of the English. From Agincourt to the Battle of the Herrings at Rouvray near Orleans, which had taken place in the beginning of the year (a fight so named because the field of battle had been covered with herrings, the conquerors in this case being merely ...
— Jeanne d'Arc - Her Life And Death • Mrs.(Margaret) Oliphant
... that a difference of birth, of rearing, of tradition placed her apart from him. She even had a fondness for ...
— A Tar-Heel Baron • Mabell Shippie Clarke Pelton
... few paces led him into the cloister garden. This was a considerable quadrangle; once surrounding the garden of the monks, but all that remained of that fair pleasaunce was a solitary yew in its centre, that seemed the oldest tree that could well live, and was, according to tradition, more ancient than the most venerable walls of the Abbey. Round this quadrangle was the refectory, the library and the kitchen, and above them the cells and dormitory of the brethren. An imperfect staircase, not without danger, ...
— Sybil - or the Two Nations • Benjamin Disraeli
... tradition in Le Morte D'Arthur, Uther Pendragon, the father of Arthur, was a powerful king in England. To fulfill a promise made to Merlin, Uther Pendragon allowed Merlin to take Arthur on the day of his birth, that the child might not be known as the son of the king. Merlin ...
— Children's Literature - A Textbook of Sources for Teachers and Teacher-Training Classes • Charles Madison Curry
... old tradition which made the Egyptians keep away from all things foreign, they allowed the exchange of Egyptian merchandise for goods which had been carried to their ...
— Ancient Man - The Beginning of Civilizations • Hendrik Willem Van Loon
... 2.—Scott may possibly refer to the tradition that the souls of the dead are stored up in the trumpet of Israfil, when he speaks of the ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 5 • Richard F. Burton
... was removed, he says, owing to the popular belief that its leaves were poisonous, and might injure the cattle grazing in the common. The present tree is erroneously called "Wordsworth's Yew." Its proximity to the place where the tree of the poem stood has given rise to the local tradition.—Ed. ...
— The Poetical Works of William Wordsworth - Volume 1 of 8 • Edited by William Knight
... confined his efforts to denying us the privilege of acting as drivers, on the ground that our personal appearance was a disgrace to the section. In this, I am bound to say, Mr. A. was but sustaining the tradition conceived originally by his predecessor, a Mr. P., a Harvard man, who until his departure from Vingt-et-Un succeeded in making life absolutely miserable for B. and myself. Before leaving this painful subject I beg to state that, at least as far as I was concerned, the tradition had a firm foundation ...
— The Enormous Room • Edward Estlin Cummings
... north winds, which raise clouds of dust all day, and are described accurately as being 'like a blast from a furnace,' or 'the breath of a brick-kiln.' Even a younger generation in Sydney, having received the word by colloquial tradition, losing its origin, and knowing nothing of the old brickfields, might apply the word to a hot ...
— A Dictionary of Austral English • Edward Morris
... itself the true charm of St. Mammes. It has a fine ambulatory, and a range of eight monolithic columns, removed, says tradition, from an ancient Pagan temple. Their capitals are ornamented with carven foliage, grimacing heads, ...
— The Cathedrals of Northern France • Francis Miltoun
... to Japanese tradition, in the fifth year of the Emperor Korei (286 B.C.), the earth opened in the province of Omi, near Kioto, and Lake Biwa, sixty miles long by about eighteen broad, was formed in the shape of a Biwa, or four-stringed lute, ...
— Tales of Old Japan • Algernon Bertram Freeman-Mitford
... as they began to revive, for dealing with the lads, who were sure to be devoted to anything so pretty and refined. When she began, the whisper that she was the love of their hero, gave them a romantic interest, and though with the younger generation this is only a tradition, yet "our lady" has won ground of her own, and is still fair and sweet enough to be looked on by those youths as a sort of flower of the whole world, yet their own peculiar property. For is she not a Hydriot ...
— My Young Alcides - A Faded Photograph • Charlotte M. Yonge
... of the owner, curbed in its turn by the pride of tradition and family, spoke strangely from these words. Julie stood trembling, ...
— Lady Rose's Daughter • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... their profession made pilgrimages to Berlin and Potsdam to drink of the stream of military knowledge at its source. When it came in contact with the tumultuous array of revolutionary France, the performances of the force that preserved the tradition of the great Frederick were disappointingly wanting in brilliancy. A few years later it suffered an overwhelming disaster. The Prussian defeat at Jena was serious as a military event; its political effects were of the utmost importance. Yet many who were involved in that disaster took, later ...
— Sea-Power and Other Studies • Admiral Sir Cyprian Bridge
... imagery in the mind of a reader. To read is to join with the writer in a creative act. The mystery of the transubstantiation of ideas, originates perhaps in the instinctive consciousness that we have of a vocation loftier than our present destiny. Or, is it based on the lost tradition of a former life? What must that life have been, if this slight residuum of memory offers us ...
— The Physiology of Marriage, Part II. • Honore de Balzac
... time when profound and far-reaching events command a break with tradition. This is ...
— State of the Union Addresses of Richard Nixon • Richard Nixon
... land where no one reads or writes or thinks or reasons, where dirt and insanity are regarded as marks of divine favour, how easy it is to acquire a reputation for holiness—(oral tradition alone can make a saint)—to turn the god-habit of your fellow-creatures into a profitable source of revenue: as easy as it was in Europe, in the days when we cherished such knaves and neurotic dreamers. ...
— Fountains In The Sand - Rambles Among The Oases Of Tunisia • Norman Douglas
... that there is a city which is of all cities the most typical of innovation and dissipation, and a certain almost splendid vulgarity, and that this city bears the name in a quaint old European language of the most perfect exponent of the simplicity and holiness of the Christian tradition; the city is called San Francisco. San Francisco, the capital of the Bret Harte country, is a city typifying novelty in a manner in which it is typified by few modern localities. San Francisco has in all probability its cathedrals, but it may well be that its cathedrals are less old and ...
— Varied Types • G. K. Chesterton
... writer, or the partiality of another, finds as powerful a touchstone and as wholesome a chastisement in the healthy scepticism of a temperate class of antagonists, as the dreams of conservatism, or the impostures of pluralist sinecures in the Church. History and tradition, whether of ancient or comparatively recent times, are subjected to very different handling from that which the indulgence or credulity of former ages could allow. Mere statements are jealously watched, and the motives of the writer form as important an ingredient in the analysis ...
— The Iliad of Homer • Homer
... neither man, angel, nor devil, but superhuman. According to correct Muhammadan tradition, there are five classes of Jinns worth noting here for information—Jânn, Jinn, Shaitân, 'Ifrît, and Mârid. They are all mentioned in Musalmân folk-tales, and but seldom distinguished in annotations. In genuine Indian folk-tales, ...
— Tales Of The Punjab • Flora Annie Steel
... Millennium; that the Millennium had begun in Helleston close on a thousand years ago; and that (as he calculated, on the 8th of May next approaching) Satan might reasonably be expected to regain his liberty (see Revelation xx.). For evidence he adduced a local tradition that in his parish the Archangel Michael (whose Mount stands at no great distance) had met and defeated the Prince of Darkness, had cast him into a pit, and had sealed the pit with a great stone; which stone might be seen ...
— The Mayor of Troy • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... walked the northern cliffs beside the sea, he was constrained to remember that it was along these craggy places that, men said, a century and a half ago, Mark, the first Christian apostle to Alexandria, had been dragged by cords, at the time of the feast of the god Serapis. Then, tradition said, there had arisen a dreadful tempest of hail and lightning, that destroyed ...
— Out of the Triangle • Mary E. Bamford
... of massed humanity too great for any but the merest guesses at its numbers. This "Mela," feast, religious pilgrimage, whatever it might mean to these endless multitudes, is held here at stated times because the two sacred rivers, the Jumna and the Ganges, come together at Allahabad, and tradition has it that a third river flows beneath the surface to meet the others. So the place is trebly sacred, its waters potent for purification, no matter how ...
— John Wesley, Jr. - The Story of an Experiment • Dan B. Brummitt
... time at the homes of his two elder brothers, and this was fortunate, for they were educated men, of some colonial consequence, while his mother lived in comparatively straitened circumstances, was illiterate and untidy, and, moreover, if tradition is to be believed, smoked a pipe. Her course with the lad was blamed by a contemporary as "fond and unthinking," and this is borne out by such facts as can be gleaned, for when his brothers wished to send him to sea she made "trifling objections," and ...
— The True George Washington [10th Ed.] • Paul Leicester Ford
... practically settled so far as the young people were concerned. Rowena had been right in her surmise about the boys, for, like most fathers, Mr Saxon was prepared to retrench in any and every direction rather than interfere with the education of his sons. It was a family tradition that the eldest son should go into the army; therefore, at all costs, Hereward must continue that tradition. The Saxons had for generations been Eton boys, therefore it was impossible that Gurth could attend another school. As to the girls— well, Mr ...
— Etheldreda the Ready - A School Story • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... his poems, and made Barbara copy out a ballad he had written for the "Traveller's Joy" on some local tradition in the Tyrol. He offered this to a magazine, whose editor, a lady, was an occasional frequenter of Mrs. Brownlow's evenings. The next time she came, she showed herself so much interested in the legend that Allen said he should like to show her another story, which he had ...
— Magnum Bonum • Charlotte M. Yonge
... In the best tradition of the Eatanswill Gazette, the Ballarat Star referred to the Ballarat Times as "our veracious contemporary and doughty opponent," and alluded to the "unblushing profligacy of its editorial columns." The proprietor of the United States Hotel and the solicitor ...
— The Magnificent Montez - From Courtesan to Convert • Horace Wyndham
... living old lady, on whose hearth, after a night of destruction, was once found the impression of a seal of Mary of Modena. I could give only too good a guess at the provenance of those papers, but nobody can interfere. Beyond 1500 the family memories rely on tradition. The ancestors owned lands in the Forest of Ettrick, and Williamhope, on the Tweed hard by Ashestiel. On the Glenkinnon burn, celebrated by Scott, they hid the prophets of the Covenant "by fifties in a cave." One Williamhope ...
— The Death-Wake - or Lunacy; a Necromaunt in Three Chimeras • Thomas T Stoddart
... presents of feathers and emeralds. In conversation with these Indians about their religious belief, they said they believed in a being named Aguar, the lord of all things, who resided in heaven and sent them rain when they prayed to him for it; such being the tradition they had learnt from their fathers. Cabeza told them that Aguar was GOD the Creator of heaven and earth, who disposed all things according to his holy will, and who, after this life, rewarded the good and punished ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 5 • Robert Kerr
... Literature is busy to beguile the world with trifles or with fictions, with fancies or with lies. The rude and cursory languages of barbarous nations, till the genius of Grammar arise to their rescue, are among those transitory things which unsparing time is ever hurrying away, irrecoverably, to oblivion. Tradition knows not what they were; for of their changes she takes no account. Philosophy tells us, they are resolved into the variable, fleeting breath of the successive generations of those by whom they were spoken; whose ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown
... home hot (as it were) from the battle-field, with all his martial satellites around him, and have himself carried at once through Rome. It was barbaric and grand, as I have said before, but it required the martial satellites. Tradition had become law, and the Imperator intending to triumph could not dismiss his military followers till the ceremony was over. In this way Cicero was sadly hampered by his lictors when, on his landing at Brundisium, he found that Italy was already ...
— The Life of Cicero - Volume II. • Anthony Trollope
... the city would suggest a nomadic tradition, but for its craftsmanship. It seems independent of any obvious supply of food and their equivalent of water, if any. Nor were any provisions in evidence for the disposal of waste products. Yet the city had the appearance of age and continual usage. If you notice, the floor ...
— General Max Shorter • Kris Ottman Neville
... and rather sought the things that he could agree with you upon. In the last talk I had with him he appeared to have no grudge left, except for the puritanic orthodoxy in which he had been bred as a child. This he was not able to forgive, though its tradition was interwoven with what was tenderest and dearest in his recollections of childhood. We spoke of puritanism, and I said I sometimes wondered what could be the mind of a man towards life who had not been reared in its awful shadow, say an English Churchman, ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... poet as the "seer" became secondary to the "maker." His office became that of entertainer rather than teacher. But always something of the old tradition was kept alive. And if he has now come to be looked upon merely as the best expresser, the gift of seeing is implied as necessarily antecedent to that, and of seeing very deep, too. If any man would seem to have written without any conscious moral, that man is Shakespeare. But that must be a ...
— The Function Of The Poet And Other Essays • James Russell Lowell
... the story of a king's daughter who was beguiled from her father's house by a false Sir John; the other, intitled "Clerk Colvil," treats of a young man who fell into the snares of a false mermaid; the latter, indeed, bears a still stranger resemblance to the Danish tradition of "The Erl-King's Daughter." The fragment of "The Water King" may be found ...
— Translations of German Poetry in American Magazines 1741-1810 • Edward Ziegler Davis
... accustomed itself to consider St. Petersburg the capital, they were obstinate in the determination to come every winter to hold court in the mother of Russian cities. The conflagration of 1812 broke this tradition. The nobility, not willing or not being able to rebuild their houses, rented the ground to citizens, and industry, prodigiously developing since then, has taken possession of Moscow. This is how the city has lost its floating population of ...
— Napoleon's Campaign in Russia Anno 1812 • Achilles Rose
... Coyotes, and the little muchacho coyotes had their home in the dark canada, and came out over these fields, yellow with wild oats and red with poppies, to seek their prey. They were happy. For why? They were the first; they had no history, you comprehend, no tradition. They married as they liked" (with a glance at Carroll), "nobody objected; they increased and multiplied. But the plains were fertile; the game was plentiful; it was not fit that it should be for the beasts alone. And so, in the course of time, an Indian ...
— Maruja • Bret Harte
... behind every natural phenomenon, and found a god or a devil in wind, rain, and hail, in lightning, and in storm, so the untaught man or woman who is assailed by an unusual ache or pain, some strenuous symptom of serious physical disorder, is prompt to accept the suggestion, which tradition approves, that some evil influence is behind his discomfort; and what more natural than to conclude that some rival in business or in love has set ...
— The Conjure Woman • Charles W. Chesnutt
... mere children, John; and I do suppose that it is a pretty well decorated tradition." He looked at her with surprise, as she added, "I used to believe it all, now it seems strange to me, John—like a dream of childhood. I think you really are a good deal ...
— Westways • S. Weir Mitchell
... been, however, in the beginning of the days when the judges ruled, as Boaz, who married Ruth, was the son of Rahab, who protected the spies in Joshua's reign. Some say that it was in the reign of Deborah. Tradition says that the "Messiah was descended from two Gentile maidens, Rahab and Ruth, and that Ruth was the daughter of Eglon, King of Moab; but this is denied, as Boaz, whom Ruth married, judged Israel two hundred years after Eglon's death. ...
— The Woman's Bible. • Elizabeth Cady Stanton
... old Rabbinical tradition which speaks a deep truth, dressed in a fanciful shape. It says that the manna in the wilderness tasted to every man just what he desired, whatever dainty or nutriment he most wished; that the manna became like the magic cup in the old fairy legends, out of which could be poured any ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... that it would be pleasant to know something of their history. It was through inquiring about the age of the rookery that this thought took shape. No one could tell me how long the rooks had built there, nor were there any passing allusions in old papers to fix the date. There was no tradition of it among the oldest people; all they knew was that the rooks had always been there, and they seemed to indicate a belief that there the rooks would always remain. It seemed to me, however, that the site of their city was slowly travelling, and in a few generations ...
— Round About a Great Estate • Richard Jefferies
... Ichabod, supplemented by information from other quarters and such additions of fancy as imaginative children and savages are sure to weave about the fabric of any story which comes in their way to make tradition generally the trustworthy ...
— Julia And Her Romeo: A Chronicle Of Castle Barfield - From "Schwartz" by David Christie Murray • David Christie Murray
... and Ramdut Pandee, the banker, rode with me, and related the popular tradition regarding the head of the Kulhuns family of Rajpoots, Achul Sing, who, about a century and a quarter ago, reigned over the district intervening between Gonda and Wuzeer Gunge, and resided at his capital of Koorassa. ...
— A Journey through the Kingdom of Oude, Volumes I & II • William Sleeman
... Souza, one of a Lingaet family from Goa who had been Christian for three generations, the tales she afterwards published with Mr. Murray in 1868, under the title, "Old Deccan Days, or, Indian Fairy Legends current in Southern India, collected from oral tradition by M. Frere, with an introduction and notes by Sir Bartle Frere." Her example was followed by Miss Stokes in her Indian Fairy Tales (London, Ellis & White, 1880), who took down her tales from two ayahs and a Khitmatgar, all of ...
— Indian Fairy Tales • Collected by Joseph Jacobs
... and places, and so on. In short, the whole ritual that has risen up around spiritual religion in all our churches, from that of the Pope himself out to that of George Fox—it is all the penny rather than the pound. This rite and that ceremony; this habit and that tradition; this ancient and long-established usage, as well as that new departure and that threatened innovation;—it is all, at its best, always the penny and never the pound. Satan busied me about the lesser matters of religion, says James Fraser of Brea, and made ...
— Bunyan Characters - Third Series - The Holy War • Alexander Whyte
... then followed an experience impossible to describe. It was as if I had been blundering about since my birth with two huge and unmanageable machines, of different shapes and without apparent connection—the world and the Christian tradition. I had found this hole in the world: the fact that one must somehow find a way of loving the world without trusting it; somehow one must love the world without being worldly. I found this projecting feature ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Maisie Ward
... given to these gullies open a curious field of speculation. Many have a sort of digger's tradition respecting their first discovery. The riches of Peg Leg Gully were brought to light through the surfacing of three men with wooden legs, who were unable to sink a hole in the regular way. Golden Gully was discovered by a man who, whilst lounging on the ground and idly pulling up ...
— A Lady's Visit to the Gold Diggings of Australia in 1852-53. • Mrs. Charles (Ellen) Clacey
... moment the young Indian hesitated, the fears bred in him by tradition struggling with his curiosity, but curiosity conquered. Turning to his followers, who had all drawn in to the landing, he gave some sharp commands in his own language. They stepped ashore with evident reluctance and there was considerable murmuring amongst them. The ...
— The Boy Chums in the Forest - or Hunting for Plume Birds in the Florida Everglades • Wilmer M. Ely
... mocked herself in this, and that the moral principle had not operated one jot in her acceptance of him. In truth she had not realized till now the full presence of the emotion which had unconsciously grown up in her for this lonely and severe man, who, in her tradition, was vengeance and irreligion personified. He seemed to absorb her whole nature, and, ...
— A Changed Man and Other Tales • Thomas Hardy
... of tradition, Claudia, ignominiously expelled from her husband's house, deprived of her servants' attendance, far from all her friends, alone in a strange hotel in a foreign city, with a degrading trial threatening her—Claudia, I say, ought to have been very ...
— Self-Raised • Emma Dorothy Eliza Nevitte Southworth
... Chocolate is cold and dry, participating of the Nature of Earth. They have supported this Determination neither with Reason nor Experience; nor do they know from whence they learnt it; perhaps they have taken it upon the Words, and from the Tradition of the Inhabitants of the Country. Let that be as it will, it is natural from false Principles to draw false Conclusions, of which the ...
— The Natural History of Chocolate • D. de Quelus
... far-fetched," said Sir Charles, satirically; "Bella's father was a very dark man, and it is a tradition in our family that all the Bassetts were as black as ink till they married with you Rolfes, ...
— A Terrible Temptation - A Story of To-Day • Charles Reade
... blooming still in talent and strength, was forgetting more and more every day the nobleness, the purity, and the severity of taste which had carried to the highest pitch the art of the fifteenth century. The tradition of the masters in vogue in Italy, of the Caracci, of Guido, of Paul Veronese, had reached Paris with Simon Vouet, who had long lived at Rome. He was succeeded there by a Frenchman "whom, from his grave and thoughtful air, you would have taken for ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume V. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... Romeo and Juliet at the Haymarket Theatre impressed me favourably, in spite of the great inferiority of the company, on account of its accuracy and of the scenic arrangements, which were no doubt an inheritance from the Garrick tradition. But I still remember a curious illusion in connection with this: after the first act I told Luders, who was with me, how surprised I was at their giving the part of Romeo to an old man, whose age must at least be sixty, and who seemed anxious to retrieve his long-lost ...
— My Life, Volume II • Richard Wagner
... have been of the house of Bourdeille, which had the honour to produce Brautome and Montresor. The combination of indolence and talent, of wit and simplicity, of bluntness and irony, with which he is represented, may have been derived from tradition, but could only have been united into the inimitable whole by the pen of Hamilton. Several of his bons-mots have been preserved; but the spirit evaporates in translation. "Where could I get this nose," said Madame D'Albret, ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... then, was this, and not surely an unnatural one:—as a matter of feeling and of duty I threw myself into the system which I found myself in. I saw that the English Church had a theological idea or theory as such, and I took it up. I read Laud on Tradition, and thought it (as I still think it) very masterly. The Anglican Theory was very distinctive. I admired it and took it on faith. It did not (I think) occur to me to doubt it; I saw that it was able, and supported by learning, and I felt it was a duty to maintain it. Further, on looking ...
— Apologia Pro Vita Sua • John Henry Cardinal Newman
... crack jokes over his breakfast and his mug of small beer. Who would not give something to pass a night at the club with Johnson, and Goldsmith, and James Boswell, Esq., of Auchinleck? The charm of Addison's companionship and conversation has passed to us by fond tradition—but Swift? If you had been his inferior in parts (and that, with a great respect for all persons present, I fear is only very likely), his equal in mere social station, he would have bullied, scorned, and insulted you; if, undeterred ...
— Henry Esmond; The English Humourists; The Four Georges • William Makepeace Thackeray
... middle slopes darkened by pine-woods like shadows of clouds brooding on the mountain-side; while at its skirts nestled the ivy-mantled walls of Daulis overhanging the deep glen, whose romantic beauty accords so well with the loves and sorrows of Procne and Philomela, which Greek tradition associated with the spot. Northwards, across the broad plain to which the hill of Panopeus descends, steep and bare, the eye rested on the gap in the hills through which the Cephissus winds his tortuous way to flow under grey willows, at the foot of barren stony hills, till his ...
— Darwin and Modern Science • A.C. Seward and Others
... in the proceedings became confounded in the public apprehension, and have been borne down by tradition, indiscriminately, under the name of Trials. It was the succession, at brief intervals, through a long period, of these Examinations, that wrought the great excitement through the country, which met Phips on his arrival; and which is so graphically described by ...
— Salem Witchcraft and Cotton Mather - A Reply • Charles W. Upham
... greatest of the Greek physical philosophers, was a native of Abdera in Thrace, or as some say—probably wrongly—of Miletus (Diog. Lart. ix. 34). Our knowledge of his life is based almost entirely on tradition of an untrustworthy kind. He seems to have been born about 470 or 460 B.C., and was, therefore, an older contemporary of Socrates. He inherited a considerable property, which enabled him to travel widely in the East in search of information. In Egypt he settled ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 8, Slice 2 - "Demijohn" to "Destructor" • Various
... The second tradition of womanhood does not perish; but, in these present confusions of change, women of the more emotional and imaginative type are less potent than they have been and will be again. They appear equally inimical and heretical to the opposing camps of hausfrau and of suffragist. Their intellectual ...
— The Hours of Fiammetta - A Sonnet Sequence • Rachel Annand Taylor
... full five minutes of intense silence I knew that my bold appeal was being balanced in the scales by one of a people to whom tradition is a religion. One scale was weighted with the immemorial customs and usages of a great and proud people; the other with a white man's subtle and flattering recognition of these customs, conveyed in metaphor, which all Indians adore, and appealing to imagination—an appeal to which no Huron, no ...
— The Hidden Children • Robert W. Chambers
... dark eye and jewelled turban, and rounded outlines, sustaining on her hand a brilliant paroquet. Ludicrous as this conception appears in a scriptural point of view, I liked it because there was life in it; because he had painted it from an internal sympathy, not from a chalky, second-hand tradition. ...
— Sunny Memories of Foreign Lands V2 • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... why shouldn't you? I hope I can take a beating in a sporting way! I think I made them ashamed of themselves. Fair play and no favoritism is the tradition of this school, and I mean to have no nasty cliquey feeling in it so long as I'm Games Captain, or my name's not Winona Woodward! That's the law of the ...
— The Luckiest Girl in the School • Angela Brazil
... tall, thin, aristocratic boy—spoke solemnly. He was a dandy, the understudy—as John soon discovered—of one of the "Bloods"; a "Junior Blood," or "Would-be," a tremendous authority on "swagger," a stickler for tradition, who had been nearly three years ...
— The Hill - A Romance of Friendship • Horace Annesley Vachell
... coast, the chief constable informed Colwyn that the prohibited area was full of troops guarding a little bay called Leyland Hoop, where the water was so deep that hostile transports might anchor close inshore, and where, according to ancient local tradition, ...
— The Shrieking Pit • Arthur J. Rees
... peculiarities of the ancestor to his notable descendants. So all our ideal Solomons have fair faces, and hair and beard chestnut in the shade, and of the tint of gold in the sun. Such, we are also made believe, were the locks of Absalom the beloved. And, in the absence of authentic history, tradition has dealt no less lovingly by her whom we are now following down to the native city of ...
— Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ • Lew Wallace
... ancestor of the present owners to emphasize the fact that the ancient builders had not made pure Gospel teaching their sure foundation. But, by the irony of fate, the text had become a striking commentary upon the fortunes of later possessors of sacrilegious spoils; for it was a tradition—upon which the family kept a discreet silence—that three male heirs in direct succession had never lived to inherit the property. At the very time of which I am writing, Colonel Ashol's only son was suffering from what doctors had pronounced to be incipient spinal disease, which, should it develop, ...
— Up in Ardmuirland • Michael Barrett
... problem, whether those who formed the scattering monuments in our western country, were colonies sent off from Mexico, or the founders of Mexico itself? Whether both were the descendants or the progenitors of the Asiatic red men? The Mexican tradition, mentioned by Dr. Robertson, is an evidence, but a feeble one, in favor of the one opinion. The number of languages radically different, is a strong evidence in favor of the contrary one. There is an American by the name of Ledyard, he who was with Captain ...
— The Writings of Thomas Jefferson - Library Edition - Vol. 6 (of 20) • Thomas Jefferson
... notice, in 'Modern Painters,' of Turner's constant use of the same symbol; partly an expression of his own personal feeling, partly, the employment of a symbolic language known to all careful readers of solar and stellar tradition. ...
— The Storm-Cloud of the Nineteenth Century - Two Lectures delivered at the London Institution February - 4th and 11th, 1884 • John Ruskin
... Practically every great discovery since the Revival we owe to men who, by their very desire for truth, were forced into opposition to the tremendous power of the Church, which always insisted that people should 'just trust,' and take the mixture of cosmogony and Greek philosophy, tradition and fable, paganism, Judaic sacerdotalism, and temporal power wrongly called spiritual dealt out by this same Church as the last word on science, philosophy, ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... Sama is the title under which was deified a certain mythical personage, called Uga, to whom tradition attributes the honour of having first discovered and cultivated the rice-plant. He is represented carrying a few ears of rice, and is symbolized by a snake guarding a bale of rice grain. The foxes wait upon him, and do his bidding. Inasmuch as rice is the most important and necessary product ...
— Folk Tales Every Child Should Know • Various
... finger ever on the thick wrist of its public, substituted for the little gray lady of tradition the glittering novelty of full-lipped bacchantes whose wreaths were grape, and mistletoe ...
— Every Soul Hath Its Song • Fannie Hurst
... Kensington, Maida Vale and Cheyne Walk. This last reveals, between Blantyre and Tite streets, the whole social order of England and the most disconcerting divarications of design. In it meet democracy, plutocracy, and aristocracy, artist and artisan, trade and tradition, philosophy and philistinism, publicans and publicists, connoisseurs and confidence men, sin and sincerity. It is not proposed to introduce the reader to the whole of this goodly company. The Balzac of Chelsea still tarries in obscurity. By some amazing oversight this street, ...
— An Ocean Tramp • William McFee
... Constitution are among the best in the book. It is here that the method of Professor Giddings shows itself to the best advantage. The problems of anthropology and ethnology are also fully and ably handled. Of the other parts I like best of all the discussion of tradition and of social choices; on these topics he shows the greatest originality. I have not the space to take up these or other doctrines in detail, nor would such work be of much value. A useful book must be read to be understood." —Professor SIMON N. ...
— Essentials of Economic Theory - As Applied to Modern Problems of Industry and Public Policy • John Bates Clark
... according to local tradition once kicked her husband all the way up Foolscap Hill with a dried cod-fish. Charity, the third, married too,—for the Stovers of Scarboro were handsome girls, but she got a fit mate in her spouse. She failed to intimidate him, for he was a foeman worthy of her steel; but she left his bed and ...
— The Village Watch-Tower • (AKA Kate Douglas Riggs) Kate Douglas Wiggin
... heart, and head of one strong, efficient, and resolute man, it is matter for rejoicing with every honest gentleman to be able to observe how quickly the idea took root, how well it has thriven, by how great a tradition it has become consecrated, and how studiously the wishes of the founder in all their essentials are still observed ...
— In the Name of the Bodleian and Other Essays • Augustine Birrell
... treated by the Colonel as an equal, loves her unaffectedly, and is not her master, nor ever likely to dominate her in spite of his advantage of social standing. Eliza has no use for the foolish romantic tradition that all women love to be mastered, if not actually bullied and beaten. "When you go to women," says Nietzsche, "take your whip with you." Sensible despots have never confined that precaution to women: they have taken their whips with them when they ...
— Pygmalion • George Bernard Shaw
... Indian tradition has little or nothing to offer on this head. Time and barbarism have blotted out all. The entire sum of the traditions of all the various races of Red men, on the continent, when sifted from the mass of fabulous and incongruous matter by which it is accompanied, and when there ...
— Incentives to the Study of the Ancient Period of American History • Henry R. Schoolcraft
... and not a mere person, is scarcely more universal in Switzerland than here. But in fact I have found Aristocracy a chronic disease nowhere but in Great Britain. In France, there is absolutely nothing of it; there are monarchists in that country—monarchists from tradition, from conviction, from policy, or from class interest—but of Aristocracy scarcely a trace is left. Your Paris boot-black will make you a low bow in acknowledgment of a franc, but he has not a trace of the abjectness of a London waiter, and would evidently decline the honor of ...
— Glances at Europe - In a Series of Letters from Great Britain, France, Italy, - Switzerland, &c. During the Summer of 1851. • Horace Greeley
... Science, tradition, and observation inform us that primitive man had certain affinities to the beast of prey. By superior strength or ingenuity he slew or snared the means of subsistence. Civilized man leaves the coarsest forms of slaughter to a professional class, and, if he kills at all, elevates his pastime ...
— The Story of the Barbary Corsairs • Stanley Lane-Poole
... "Vineyard" at Jamnia, the Jewish tradition was the subject of much animated inquiry. The religious, ethical, and practical literature of the past was sifted and treasured, and fresh additions were made. But not much was written, for until the close of the second century the new literature ...
— Chapters on Jewish Literature • Israel Abrahams
... of the North! still further,—you have another power; you can pray! Do you believe in prayer? or has it become an indistinct apostolic tradition? You pray for the heathen abroad; pray also for the heathen at home. And pray for those distressed Christians whose whole chance of religious improvement is an accident of trade and sale; from whom any adherence to the morals of Christianity is, in many cases, an impossibility, ...
— Uncle Tom's Cabin • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... distracted elders find, is all but an impossibility; but in any case it would be a failure. You can bring the spoon to the child, but three nurses cannot make him drink. This, then, is the occasion of the ultimate resistance. He raises the standard of revolution, and casts every tradition and every precept to the wind on which it flies. He has his elders at a disadvantage; for if they pursue him with a grotesque spoon their maxims and commands are, at the moment, still more grotesque. ...
— The Children • Alice Meynell
... residence for the venerable bishop. When showing me the chapel, the Provicaire told me of the visit of one of Our Lord's Apostles to Suifu. He seemed to have no doubt himself of the truth of the story. Tradition says that St. Thomas came to China, and, if further proof were wanting, there is the black image of Tamo worshipped to this day in many of the temples of Szechuen. Scholars, however, identify this image and its marked Hindoo features with that of the Buddhist evangelist ...
— An Australian in China - Being the Narrative of a Quiet Journey Across China to Burma • George Ernest Morrison
... that; he was not perfect; but things have altered for the better. Muhammed received his first impressions from his cousin Waraka, who was of Jewish descent. At first he was friendly towards Israel; he told his followers to turn in prayer not towards the Kaaba, but towards Jerusalem. There is also a tradition that the prophet was a Jew, which may mean that he was an Arab or Ishmaelite, ...
— Historical Miniatures • August Strindberg
... it again wi' the siller, ye jaud? I'll be sworn ye wad rather hear ae twalpenny clink against another, than have a spring from Rory Dall, [Blind Rorie, a famous musician according to tradition.] if he was-coming alive again anes errand. Gang doun the gate to Lucky Gregson's and get the things ye want, and bide there till ele'en hours in the morn; and if you see Robin, ...
— Redgauntlet • Sir Walter Scott
... stormy as seas, flowing into each other; marshes and morasses, thickets and brushwood; of huge forests, overrun by herds of wild horses; vast stretches of pines, oaks, and alder trees, in which, tradition tells us, you could traverse leagues passing from trunk to trunk without ever putting your foot to the ground. The deep bays carried the northern storms into the very heart of the country. Once a year certain provinces disappeared under the sea, becoming muddy plains ...
— Holland, v. 1 (of 2) • Edmondo de Amicis
... so disjoined from each other, that there can scarcely be imagined any communication of sentiments, either by commerce or tradition, has prevailed a general and uniform expectation of propitiating GOD by corporal austerities, of anticipating his vengeance by voluntary inflictions, and appeasing his justice by a speedy and cheerful submission to a less penalty when a greater is ...
— A Poetical Review of the Literary and Moral Character of the late Samuel Johnson (1786) • John Courtenay
... learning and universality of a philosopher. This propriety inherent and individual attribute in your Majesty deserveth to be expressed not only in the fame and admiration of the present time, nor in the history or tradition of the ages succeeding, but also in some solid work, fixed memorial, and immortal monument, bearing a character or signature both of the power of a king and the difference and perfection of such ...
— The Advancement of Learning • Francis Bacon
... lent a hand too, and a vigorous one; and for centuries the face of the Muse was sicklied o'er with a pale determination to combine amusement with instruction. Even our noble Sidney allowed his modesty to be overawed by the pedantic tradition, though as a man of the world he tactfully gave it the slip. "For suppose it be granted," he says, "(that which I suppose with great reason may be denied) that the Philosopher in respect of his methodical proceeding doth teach more perfectly than the Poet: yet do I thinke ...
— Poetry • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... Inca. We attended an Indian masquerade dance at Machachi, which seemed to have an historical meaning. It was performed in full view of that romantic mountain which bears the name of the last captain of Atahuallpa. There is a tradition that after the death of his chief, Ruminagui burned the capital, and, retiring with his followers to this cordillera, threw himself from the precipice. The masquerade at Machachi was evidently intended to keep alive the memory of the Incas. Three Indians, fantastically ...
— The Andes and the Amazon - Across the Continent of South America • James Orton
... months of his life. A baronial centre, like Worcester, could not hold its own long in the west. Moreover, John had not entirely forfeited his hereditary advantages. The administrative families, whose chief representative was the justiciar Hubert de Burgh, held to their tradition of unswerving loyalty, and joined with the followers of the old king, of whom William Marshal was the chief survivor. All over England the royal castles were in safe hands, and so long as they remained unsubdued, no part ...
— The History of England - From the Accession of Henry III. to the Death of Edward III. (1216-1377) • T.F. Tout
... could here relate several stories by tradition of his deceiving the devil with his shadow at a race in Muscovy, his delivering a woman from him by the burning of a candle,—his supplanting him in a hat full of ...
— Biographia Scoticana (Scots Worthies) • John Howie
... unusual circumstance, oral tradition takes the place of writings, charters, and puzzling trifles. One of the four sons of Bernard Guynemer, Auguste, lived to be ninety-three, retaining all his faculties. Toward the end he resembled Voltaire, not only in face, but in his irony and skepticism. He had all ...
— Georges Guynemer - Knight of the Air • Henry Bordeaux
... young minds, as soon as, and in whatever degree, it is associated with classical, philosophical, and historical studies;—and as very many persons of great consideration seem to be of this opinion, I will set down the reasons why I follow the English tradition instead, and in what sense ...
— The Idea of a University Defined and Illustrated: In Nine - Discourses Delivered to the Catholics of Dublin • John Henry Newman
... from Helle, who, according to poetical tradition, perished in these waters, and from Pontus, the Greek ...
— The World of Waters - A Peaceful Progress o'er the Unpathed Sea • Mrs. David Osborne
... observation examples which will support Professor Thomas's admirable account of the power of custom. Among many barbarous tribes certain foods, like eggs, are taboo; no one knows why they should not be eaten; but tradition says their use produces bad results, and one who presumes to taste them is put to death. To-day, we believe ourselves rather highly civilised; but the least observation of society must compel ...
— A Short History of Women's Rights • Eugene A. Hecker
... verse; a sixth, a broker or race-track tout or city bar-tender (for color, this last), to marvel that one of L——'s sense, or any one indeed, should live in the country at all. There were drinking bouts, absolute drunkenness, in which, according to the Johnsonian tradition and that of Messieurs Rabelais and Moliere, the weary intellect and one's guiding genius were immersed in a comforting ...
— Twelve Men • Theodore Dreiser
... American rich whom we are accustomed to hear so crudely caricatured in Europe;—and it is quite a respectable little aristocracy. They ally themselves, as we see here in our excellent host and hostess, with what there is of old blood in the country and win tradition to guide their power. They are not the flaunting, vulgar rich, of whom we hear so much from those who do not know them, but the anxious, thoughtful, virtuous rich, oppressed by their responsibilities and all studying ...
— Tante • Anne Douglas Sedgwick
... up to the reign of Ferdinand and Isabella, which reign first created a kingdom of Spain; in that reign the whole fabric of their power thawed away, and was confounded with forgotten things. Columbus, according to a local tradition, was personally present at some of the latter campaigns in Grenada: he saw the last of them. So that the discovery of America may be used as a convertible date with that of extinction for the Saracen ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 348 • Various
... elevated standard of excellence, because they feel (even when they do not distinctly see) that such a standard would conflict with many of the dispensations of nature, and with much of what they are accustomed to consider as the Christian creed. And thus morality continues a matter of blind tradition, with no consistent principle, nor even any ...
— Autobiography • John Stuart Mill
... such an ill-judged forbearance been practised by historians, would the world have known that any tyrants, except those who may exist at the present epoch, or who may have existed within the reach of memory or of tradition, ever infested the earth? Would not the enormities of the Dionysii, of Caligula, and of Nero, have been long since forgotten? And would not many of those princes who have merited and obtained the appellations ...
— Statistical, Historical and Political Description of the Colony of New South Wales and its Dependent Settlements in Van Diemen's Land • William Charles Wentworth
... to the idea of England. Despite the passion for his mountains and the boon of your raising of the interdict (within a hundred years) upon his pastors to harangue him in his native tongue, he gladly ships himself across the waters traversed by his Prince Madoc of tradition, and becomes contentedly a transatlantic citizen, a member of strange sects—he so inveterate in faithfulness to the hoar and the legendary!—Anything rather than Anglican. The Cymry bear you no hatred; their affection likewise is undefined. But ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... a tradition in the county that the Assembly also took steps for preparing for an Indian war then threatening, which broke out the following year, ...
— In Ancient Albemarle • Catherine Albertson
... French language, but they lived in the minds of the people, and Sir Lancelot, who died "a holy man," was as vivid and real to them as was Richard, the troubadour king. With the story of his sharp penance, his fasting and prayers for the soul of Guinevere, was also handed down incidentally the tradition of Britain's obedience ...
— Studies from Court and Cloister • J.M. Stone
... the same of the Southampton, though it stands on classic ground, and is connected by vocal tradition with the great names of the Elizabethan age. What a falling off is here I Our ancestors of that period seem not only to be older by two hundred years, and proportionably wiser and wittier than we, but hardly ...
— Table-Talk - Essays on Men and Manners • William Hazlitt
... you, Mr. Carlyle, to know the origin of my family, I may say that I am descended from Henry Leland, whom the tradition declares to have been a noted Puritan, and active in the politics of his time,' and who went to ...
— Memoirs • Charles Godfrey Leland
... the upper and the nether grindstones, Mary Cahill was left without the society of her own sex, and was of necessity forced to content herself with the society of the officers. And the officers played fair. Loyalty to Mary Cahill was a tradition at Fort Crockett, which it was the duty of each succeeding regiment to sustain. Moreover, her father, a dark, sinister man, alive only to money- making, was known to handle a revolver with the alertness ...
— Ranson's Folly • Richard Harding Davis |
