"Pagan" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... discussion they gave rise to had the natural result of awakening a keen interest in them. There were excellent souls who misinterpreted and deplored them, there were excellent souls who condemned; there were even ministers of the gospel who preached against the man as an iconoclast and a pagan, and forbade their congregations to join his audiences. But his lecture-halls were always crowded, and the hundreds of faces upturned to him when he arose upon his platform were the faces of eager, breathless, yearning creatures. He was a man speaking to men, not an echo of old ...
— In Connection with the De Willoughby Claim • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... of figures of the fowl on the ancient Egyptian monuments, on account of the strong and widely prevalent prejudice against this bird. I am informed by the Rev. S. Erhardt that on the east coast of Africa, from 4 to 6 deg south of the equator, most of the pagan tribes at the present day hold the fowl in aversion. The natives of the Pellew Islands would not eat the fowl nor will the Indians in some parts of S. America. For the ancient history of the fowl see also Volz 'Beitrage zur Culturgeschichte' 1852 ...
— The Variation of Animals and Plants under Domestication - Volume I • Charles Darwin
... So that, where'er ye look, ye see, No capital, no cornice free, Or frieze, from this fine frippery. Now this the fairies would have known, Theirs is a mixed religion: And some have heard the elves it call Part pagan, part papistical. If unto me all tongues were granted, I could not speak the saints here painted. Saint Tit, Saint Nit, Saint Is, Saint Itis, Who 'gainst Mab's-state placed here right is; Saint Will o' th' Wisp, ...
— The Hesperides & Noble Numbers: Vol. 1 and 2 • Robert Herrick
... struck off his head from his shoulders, so that it bounded across the hall. Then cried Horn to the other guests, "The dance is over!" after which he proclaimed a truce, and, throwing himself down on a couch, spake thus to King Aylmer: "I was born in Southland, of a royal race. The pagan Vikings slew King Altof, my father, and put me out to sea with my twelve companions. You did train me for the order of knighthood, and I have dishonoured it by no unworthy deeds, though you did drive me ...
— Legends That Every Child Should Know • Hamilton Wright Mabie
... say the pagan poet—quickly recognized, to a degree, that he was not among a group of barbarians; and I remember the marked respect with which he observed my father's noble head and countenance, and the attention with which he listened to the low, perfectly modulated voice of his host. But Mr. Emerson ...
— McClure's Magazine, Volume VI, No. 3. February 1896 • Various
... the yellow dawn. It was a personification of the morning. Poussin succeeded better in classic than in sacred subjects. The latter are comparatively heavy, forced, full of violent contrasts of colour, of red, blue, and black, and without the true prophetic inspiration of the characters. But in his pagan allegories and fables he was quite at home. The native gravity and native levity of the Frenchman were combined with Italian scenery and an antique gusto, and gave even to his colouring an air of learned indifference. ...
— Table-Talk - Essays on Men and Manners • William Hazlitt
... his knees, staring at the golden shower which poured in through the west windows, at the lake of gold sleeping on the faded Turkish carpet. The spot was enchanted; a vision out of Alexandria, out of the remote pagan past, had bathed itself ...
— Youth and the Bright Medusa • Willa Cather
... science, known only to the initiated few, were believed to be sufficiently powerful, through the agency of spells and charms, to control the actions of evil spirits.[6:2] The early Christians readily adopted the pagan custom of wearing amulets as remedies against disease, and as bodily safeguards, in spite of the emphatic condemnation ...
— Primitive Psycho-Therapy and Quackery • Robert Means Lawrence
... are unsurpassed in their kind; while in such exquisite little poems as Blossoms, Daffodils, and others he finds a classic expression for his love of nature and country life. In his epigrams, however, he falls much below himself. He has been described as "the most frankly pagan of ...
— A Short Biographical Dictionary of English Literature • John W. Cousin
... remember that the word Norman means man of the north, that it is a Scandinavian, and not a French word, that it originated in the invasions of the followers of Rollo and and other Norwegians, and that just as part of England was overrun by Pagan buccaneers called Danes, part of France was occupied by similar Northmen, we see the likelihood of certain Norse words finding their way into the French language, where they would be superadded to its original ...
— A Handbook of the English Language • Robert Gordon Latham
... stones as a "long pig." When he converted the king or chief, and he always directed his sacred ammunition at the upper classes, he took advantage of every inch of spiritual and governmental club put in his hand, and smote the pagan hip and thigh. His sole effort was to make the South Seas safe for theocracy, and to ...
— Nonsenseorship • G. G. Putnam
... Walter, a Germanic name, means "rule army" (Modern Ger. walten and Heer), but the discussion of such meanings lies outside our subject. It is, in fact, sometimes difficult to distinguish between the personal name and the nickname. Thus Pagan, whence Payn, with its diminutives Pannell, Pennell, etc., Gold, Good, German, whence Jermyn, Jarman, and many other apparent nicknames, occur as personal names in the earliest records. Their etymological origin is in any case the same as if ...
— The Romance of Names • Ernest Weekley
... is doubtless fuller of Home than even Bath is; and it has happened that her civilization was much more largely dug up here than elsewhere when the foundations of the spreading edifices were laid. The relics are mainly the witnesses of pagan Rome, but Christianity politically began in York, as it has politically ended in New York, and doubtless some soldiers of the Sixth Legion and many of the British slaves were religiously Christians in the ancient metropolis ...
— Seven English Cities • W. D. Howells
... who was a godless man, A pagan, heart and soul, Played nurse until the wound began To heal, and Giles ...
— The Book of Saints and Friendly Beasts • Abbie Farwell Brown
... about that George Borrow was proclaimed brother to the gypsy's son Ambrose, {12b} who as Jasper Petulengro figures so largely in Lavengro and The Romany Rye, and is credited with that exquisitely phrased pagan ...
— The Life of George Borrow • Herbert Jenkins
... from his superiors to preach the Faith to unbelievers, he could never obtain it. Being at Iona, where he had entered the community as a simple monk on renouncing his charge in Ireland, he announced one day to the brethren in the spirit of prophecy that an irruption of pagan Danes was about to take place. He exhorted those who felt themselves too weak for martyrdom to seek safety in flight. They concealed the shrine of St. Columba's {8} relics, and many of the monks betook themselves ...
— A Calendar of Scottish Saints • Michael Barrett
... also a mode of compelling action of another sort. St. Patrick fasted against King Trian to compel him to have compassion on his [Trian's] slaves.[1] He also fasted against a heretical city to compel it to become orthodox.[2] He fasted against the pagan King Loeguire to ...
— Jailed for Freedom • Doris Stevens
... Have we no heard that Argyle is cutten off? And why was he cutten off? Because he hadna due faith in the workings o' the Almighty, and must needs reject the help o' the children o' light in favour o' the bare-legged spawn o' Prelacy, wha are half Pagan, half Popish. Had he walked in the path o' the Lord he wudna be lying in the Tolbooth o' Edinburgh wi' the tow or the axe before him. Why did he no gird up his loins and march straight onwards wi' the banner o' light, instead o' dallying here and biding there like a half-hairted Didymus? ...
— Micah Clarke - His Statement as made to his three Grandchildren Joseph, - Gervas and Reuben During the Hard Winter of 1734 • Arthur Conan Doyle
... republic; their courts of justice recognizing no appeal to higher powers, even under the despotic sway of Charles V. And now, under the reign of his son, and in the feebler days of that reign, the capital of the free Frisians—the men whom their ancient pagan statutes had once declared to be "free so long as the wind blew out of the clouds"—relied upon the trained bands of her burghers enured to arms and well-provided with all munitions of war to protect her, not against foreign tyranny nor domestic sedition, but against ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... if I may use the expression; more that can brace and invigorate every manly and noble sentiment. No. 32 on patience, even under extreme misery, is wonderfully lofty, and as much above the rant of stoicism, as the Sun of Revelation is brighter than the twilight of Pagan philosophy. I never read the following sentence without feeling my frame thrill: 'I think there is some reason for questioning whether the body and mind are not so proportioned, that the one can bear all which can be inflicted on the other; whether virtue cannot stand ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 1 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill
... decrease. Wait and see whether the religion of the Servile State is not in every case what I say: the encouragement of small virtues supporting capitalism, the discouragement of the huge virtues that defy it. Many great religions, Pagan and Christian, have insisted on wine. Only one, I think, has insisted on Soap. You will find it in the New Testament attributed ...
— Utopia of Usurers and other Essays • G. K. Chesterton
... whom good Angels Had preserv'd from Murderers' hands, And from Pagan chains had rescued, Liv'd with honour on his lands. Sons he had, saw Sons of theirs: And through ages, Heirs of Heirs, 110 A long posterity renown'd, Sounded the Horn which ...
— Poems In Two Volumes, Vol. 1 • William Wordsworth
... Point San Agustin as well as to those people whose habitat is on the southern part of the Sarangani Peninsula. Those, again, that occupy the hinterland of Tuna Bay[2] come under the same designation. So it might seem that the word was originally used to designate the pagan as distinguished from the Mohammedanized people of Mindano, much as the name Harafras or Alfros was applied by the early writers to the pagans to distinguish ...
— The Manbos of Mindano - Memoirs of the National Academy of Sciences, Volume XXIII, First Memoir • John M. Garvan
... I asked my cousin, and he replied with a laugh that probably the man meant that the elders of the village had pronounced a curse against the animal, or perhaps the guaharka of the district, the 'wise woman,' had woven a spell, for these pagan customs ...
— Chatterbox, 1906 • Various
... of guineas were given by the nation that the Prince of Wales, the Regent, the King, might be, in the best sense of the word, ornamental. It is not for us, at this moment, to consider whether Royalty, as a wholly Pagan institution, is not out of place in a community of Christians. It is enough that we should inquire whether the god, whom our grand-fathers set up and worshipped and crowned with offerings, gave grace to ...
— The Works of Max Beerbohm • Max Beerbohm
... Western Europe was but partly civilized. Pedantry and learning of the most minute sort existed side by side with the most violent excesses of medieval barbarism. The Church had undertaken the gigantic task of subduing and enlightening the semi-pagan peoples of France and ...
— Famous Affinities of History, Vol 1-4, Complete - The Romance of Devotion • Lyndon Orr
... non-Catholics, were written in Greek. A number of them are historical, and of great value as illustrating the spirit and thought of the age to which they refer. The other class of writers includes the work of Christian authors. Greek and Latin writings wholly different from Pagan literature, began to appear soon after the first century, and their purifying and ennobling influence was more and more felt as time passed. The primitive Christians held these writings of the Greek and Latin fathers in great esteem, and in the second and third centuries Christianity counted ...
— The Interdependence of Literature • Georgina Pell Curtis
... star," said the Lion, "but somewhere there, I think; but then, you see, I'm only a Pagan." ...
— The Tale of Lal - A Fantasy • Raymond Paton
... range of classical studies. The first of these works, the Septuagint version of the Old Testament, before mentioned, and the Greek Apocrypha, may properly be termed Hebrew-Grecian. Their spirit is wholly at variance with that of pagan literature, and it cannot be doubted that they exerted great influence when made known to the pagans of Alexandria. Many of the books termed the Apocrypha were originally written in Greek, and mostly before the ...
— Handbook of Universal Literature - From The Best and Latest Authorities • Anne C. Lynch Botta
... hospitable Tree; I did to Planter's Booth repair, And there at Breakfast nobly Fare On rashier broil'd of infant Bear: I thought the Cub delicious Meat, Which ne'er did ought but Chesnuts eat; Nor was young Orsin's flesh the worse, Because he sucked a Pagan Nurse. Our Breakfast done, my Landlord stout, Handed a Glass of Rum about; Pleas'd with the Treatment I did find, I took my leave of Oast so kind; Who to oblige me, did provide, His eldest son to be my Guide, ...
— The Sot-weed Factor: or, A Voyage to Maryland • Ebenezer Cook
... of human character by means of ethical philosophy or moral science—as it used to be called—appears to be somewhat of a theological "survival." When the sanctions of authority were removed from the pagan deities they were found to have been long reduced in the nursery to the dimensions of fairies. The tremendous conceptions of Christian theology may some day be revealed as similarly diminished in the catechised mind of childhood. And the abstract principles of ethical ...
— George Washington's Rules of Civility - Traced to their Sources and Restored by Moncure D. Conway • Moncure D. Conway
... in his narrative the verbose diction characteristic of pagan literature, where we often find one and the same argument embellished and polished by a variety of colors. We find by experience that no human power of description can do justice to inward emotions. In consequence, verbosity, as a rule, comes short of expressing emotion. Moses employs the opposite ...
— Commentary on Genesis, Vol. II - Luther on Sin and the Flood • Martin Luther
... unawares it had been known to define agnosticism as a heresy of the Early Church and Professor Froude as a distinguished histologist; and such minor members as Mrs. Leveret still secretly regarded ethics as something vaguely pagan. ...
— Xingu - 1916 • Edith Wharton
... most of all. It was a boy's face; it was a woman's face; it was serious and at the same time amused, expressing the pleasure it found woven with the peril. It was a white woman's face—and modern; and yet, to Graham, it was all-pagan. This was not a creature and a situation one happened upon in the twentieth century. It was straight out of old Greece. It was a Maxfield Parrish reminiscence from the Arabian Nights. Genii might be expected to rise from those troubled depths, or golden princes, astride winged dragons, ...
— The Little Lady of the Big House • Jack London
... This pagan proposition of being born in sin is pollution to the mind of a child, and causes misery, unrest and heartache incomputable. A few years ago we were congratulating ourselves that the devil at last was dead, and that the tears of pity had put out the fires of hell, but ...
— Love, Life & Work • Elbert Hubbard
... song to "him that made heaven and earth and the sea and the fountains of waters." But first, for a long time, the worship of power will go on. There is one sonnet by Kirke White, eighty-five years younger than Thomson, which is quite pagan in its mode of glorifying the power ...
— England's Antiphon • George MacDonald
... native members of the church and of the mission family, scarce one of the whole multitude was in any other than the native dress—the maro, the kihee, and the simple tapa, of their primitive state. In this respect, and in the attitude of sitting, the assembly was purely pagan; totally unlike those of the Society Islands; as unlike as to one at home. But the breathless silence, the eager attention, the half-suppressed sigh, the tear, the various feeling—sad, peaceful, joyous—discoverable in the faces of many, all spoke the presence ...
— Daughters of the Cross: or Woman's Mission • Daniel C. Eddy
... and Heroes" the compiler has endeavored to impart the pleasures of classical learning to the English reader, by presenting the stories of Pagan mythology in a form adapted to modern taste. In "King Arthur and His Knights" and "The Mabinogeon" the attempt has been made to treat in the same way the stories of the second "age of fable," the age which witnessed the dawn of the several states ...
— Bulfinch's Mythology • Thomas Bulfinch
... they hear the tales that are told of our German troops in Belgium? You don't believe these stories of German brutalities, do you?" he said anxiously, conciliatory. But I did, and I told him so. "But you don't know the Belgian Askari; he is cannibal; he is recruited from the pagan tribes in the forest of the Congo, he files his front teeth to a point, and we know he is short of supplies. What is going to happen to German children? It is the truth I tell you," he went on, evidently with very sincere feeling. "You know what became of the 1,500 Kavirondo porters ...
— Sketches of the East Africa Campaign • Robert Valentine Dolbey
... Christian men upon poor Heathen savages, for many of them were not many weeks from Guinea and Old Calabar, where they had been worshiping Mumbo Jumbo, and making war upon one another in their own Pagan fashion—that I have known Planters even more refined in their cruelty. They would make their slaves drink salt water, and then set them out in the hot sun tied to the outside posts of the Piazza. The end of that was, that they went Raving Mad, gnawing their Tongues ...
— The Strange Adventures of Captain Dangerous, Vol. 2 of 3 • George Augustus Sala
... or a vague perfume of which I became aware, were responsible, I found myself thinking of a flower-bedecked shrine, wherefrom arose the smoke of incense to some pagan god. ...
— The Hand Of Fu-Manchu - Being a New Phase in the Activities of Fu-Manchu, the Devil Doctor • Sax Rohmer
... his spiritual sensitiveness, and literary ideals of a most exalted kind, through the most depressing and demoralizing experiences. The following passage in that first essay offered to Mr. Meynell, entitled "Paganism: Old and New," a vindication of Christian over pagan ideals in art, shows the rich, colorful tone of mind of one who could walk unstained among the world's impurities. "Bring back then, I say, in conclusion, even the best age of Paganism, and you smite beauty on the cheek. But you cannot bring back the best age of Paganism, ...
— The Hound of Heaven • Francis Thompson
... "Infidel! heretic! pagan! misbeliever! accursed Ragnar!" began the irate monk, when an arrow, perhaps only meant to frighten him (for they could hardly have missed so fair ...
— Edwy the Fair or the First Chronicle of Aescendune • A. D. Crake
... days of Christianity women had been especially active in the work of the Church, and there were countless martyrs among them even as far back as the time of the Roman persecutions. In the old days of pagan worship they had been allowed their part in religious ceremonies, and with the development of the religious institutions of Christendom this active participation had steadily increased. But, more than this, when it became necessary to withdraw from the corrupt ...
— Women of the Romance Countries • John R. Effinger
... goodly force, unhampered by passengers. With Abraham, Murray, and Regimental Sergeant-Major Hedley (from the Bucks) those departments of the Battalion not purely tactical were sure to be well managed. I felt quite confident in the command of this force of men, and General Pagan, the new Brigadier, was kind enough to express his confidence in ...
— The Story of the 2/4th Oxfordshire and Buckinghamshire Light Infantry • G. K. Rose
... Pagan Northern Mariana Islands Palau Pacific Islands, Trust Territory of the Palawan Philippines Palermo [US Consulate General] Italy Palk Strait Indian Ocean Palma de Mallorca Spain [US Consular Agency] Pamirs China; Soviet Union Panama ...
— The 1991 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... that the first Christians, avoiding the Pagan tribunals, tried most even of their civil causes before the bishop, who, though he had no direct coercive power, yet, wielding the sword of excommunication, had wherewithal to enforce the execution of his judgments. Thus the bishop ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. VII. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... has a strange idea that he will make it easier to forgive sins by saying that there are no sins to forgive. Mr. Blatchford is not only an early Christian, he is the only early Christian who ought really to have been eaten by lions. For in his case the pagan accusation is really true: his mercy would mean mere anarchy. He really is the enemy of the human race— because he is so human. As the other extreme, we may take the acrid realist, who has deliberately killed in ...
— Orthodoxy • G. K. Chesterton
... respect him for such, as much as if he were of my own colour and race. Neither his colour, nor any peculiarities of physiognomy should debar him with me from any rights he could fairly claim as a man. "Have these men—these black savages from pagan Africa," I asked myself, "the qualities which make man loveable among his fellows? Can these men—these barbarians—appreciate kindness or feel resentment like myself?" was my mental question as I travelled through their quarters and observed ...
— How I Found Livingstone • Sir Henry M. Stanley
... of the virtues of the Mohammedan religion, such as honesty, cleanliness, temperance, and devoutness, and denounced with scathing sarcasm, not Christ, but professing Christians whose conduct towards himself was beneath the dignity of the pagan. But this in no way detracts from his admiration of the genuine follower of Christ. He says that "religious ideas have more influence than certain narrow-minded philosophers are willing to believe; ...
— The Tragedy of St. Helena • Walter Runciman
... gutter-snipe is the real and visible fruit of organized German education; he is a much truer type than any gory and hairy Hun. In the face of that young atheist there is everything that can come from the congestion of the pagan with the parvenu; all the knowingness that is the cessation of knowledge; and that something which always accompanies real ...
— Raemaekers' Cartoons - With Accompanying Notes by Well-known English Writers • Louis Raemaekers
... of wealth distribution which science can ever devise—after and beyond the last sublime echo of the greatest socialistic symphonies—after and beyond every transcendent thought and expression in the simple example of these Christ-inspired souls—be they Pagan, Gentile, ...
— Essays Before a Sonata • Charles Ives
... marvels and wonder-workings?—he shook his head mournfully. If any such there had been, those impartial witnesses who must have known and should have spoken were silent, and now all the earth was silent: storms rose in their fury and were calmed for no man's Peace, be still; earthquakes engulfed pagan and Christian believer alike; all nature was cruel, ...
— The Quickening • Francis Lynde
... apostle, that "there is one glory of the sun, another glory of the moon, and another glory of the stars," sanction us in joining those luminaries in the same ascription of glory with their Almighty Creator and ours. Just as reasonably would a pagan justify his worship of the sun, the moon, and the stars, by this passage of Scripture, as our Roman Catholic brethren would justify themselves by the former passage in their ascription of praise and glory to the holy angels, and saints, and the blessed Virgin. We honour the holy angels, ...
— Primitive Christian Worship • James Endell Tyler
... the last few years. They are changing every day. Those who will not change will die! We always have this assurance, and in this battle for independence, many a woman has found comfort in poor Swinburne's pagan hymn ...
— In Times Like These • Nellie L. McClung
... bits like a scientific child; he touched nature with his fingers instead of sitting looking out of window—perhaps the first man who had ever done so for seventeen hundred years or so, since superstition blighted the progress of pagan Rome. The work he did! But no one reads Linnaeus now; the folios, indeed, might moulder to dust without loss, because his spirit has got into the minds of men, and the text is of little consequence. The best book he wrote to read now is the delightful 'Tour in Lapland,' with ...
— Field and Hedgerow • Richard Jefferies
... represented a principle "atheistical and monstrous, destructive of all that was pure and holy in morals and religion." To find parallels for this madness, the bishop referred to the French Revolution, when the Christian faith was abjured, and the Goddess of Reason set up for worship; to pagan Rome, which, to please the natives she had conquered, "condescended to associate their impure idolatries ...
— George Brown • John Lewis
... has reference to the meaning of the word sudden. Very possibly Caesar and the Christian Church do not differ in the way supposed,—that is, do not differ by any difference of doctrine as between Pagan and Christian views of the moral temper appropriate to death; but perhaps they are contemplating different cases. Both contemplate a violent death, a Biathanatos—death that is biaios, or, in other words, death that is brought ...
— The English Mail-Coach and Joan of Arc • Thomas de Quincey
... saved my life that winter, or my reason anyhow. There had been so much tragedy that I used to wonder every day what would happen before night; and that's not a good thing for the brain of a chap of twenty-one or two. The funny part of it is that she wasn't a pagan—not a bit. She could read and speak English in a sweet old- fashioned way, and she used to sing to me—such a funny, sorry little voice she had—hymns the Moravians had taught her, and one or two English songs. I taught her one or two ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... Languages. It is no reflection on this ingenious Gentleman, when I say that I use on this occasion the words of a better Critick, who yet was not willing to carry the illiteracy of our Poet too far:—"They who are in such astonishment at the learning of Shakespeare, forget that the Pagan Imagery was familiar to all the Poets of his time; and that abundance of this sort of learning was to be picked up from almost every English book that he could take into his hands." For not to insist upon Stephen Bateman's ...
— Eighteenth Century Essays on Shakespeare • D. Nichol Smith
... difficulty in doing so, by reason of the statue of Mars, which had been thrown into the Arno. The temple, converted to Christian purposes, had been the only building to escape the wrath of Totila; but owing to the pagan incantations practised when the town was originally consecrated to the god of war, the statue of that divinity would not consent to lie quietly and ignominiously in the bed of the Arno, while his temple and town were appropriated to other purposes. The river was dragged. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I, No. 1, Nov. 1857 • Various
... a little pagan," said the landlady. "For that matter, they are all the same, these mountebanks, tumblers, artists, and what not. ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 6 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... gentleman in Rome. The emperor was anxious to see that famous temple of the Rotunda, called in ancient times the temple 'of all the gods,' but now-a-days, by a better nomenclature, 'of all the saints,' which is the best preserved building of all those of pagan construction in Rome, and the one which best sustains the reputation of mighty works and magnificence of its founders. It is in the form of a half orange, of enormous dimensions, and well lighted, though no light penetrates it save that which is admitted by a window, ...
— Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... were pessimists because they gave up threescore years and ten for an eternity of happiness. We forget that the bare proposition of an eternity of happiness is by its very nature ten thousand times more optimistic than ten thousand pagan saturnalias. ...
— Varied Types • G. K. Chesterton
... summed up his situation, her husband had probably decided she was incurably stupid. It was the same taste, in essence, our young man moralised, as the taste for M. Gerome and M. Baudry in painting and for M. Gustave Flaubert and M. Charles Baudelaire in literature. The Count was a pagan and his wife a Christian, and between them an impassable gulf. He was by race and instinct a grand seigneur. Longmore had often heard of that historic type, and was properly grateful for an opportunity to examine it closely. It had its elegance of ...
— Madame de Mauves • Henry James
... was not afraid very much. What influenced my decision most were the obscure promptings of that pagan residuum of awe and wonder which lurks still at the bottom of our old humanity. "Victory" was the last word I had written in peace-time. It was the last literary thought which had occurred to me before the doors of the Temple of Janus flying open with a ...
— Victory • Joseph Conrad
... of my life to search, I have not herded with mere pagan beasts: But sometimes I have "sat at good men's feasts," And I have been "where bells have knolled to church." Dear bells! how sweet the sound of village bells When on the undulating air they swim! Now loud as welcomes! faint, now, as farewells! And trembling ...
— The Humourous Poetry of the English Language • James Parton
... was fonder of church history than of divinity, and had much more insight into men's characters than interest in their opinions; he was neither laborious, nor obviously self-denying, nor very copious in alms-giving, and his theology, you perceive, was lax. His mental palate, indeed, was rather pagan, and found a savouriness in a quotation from Sophocles or Theocritus that was quite absent from any text in Isaiah or Amos. But if you feed your young setter on raw flesh, how can you wonder at its retaining a relish for uncooked partridge ...
— Adam Bede • George Eliot
... Josephs of the families in which you live. Let these four words be distinctly and frequently recollected; and cheerfully perform all your business from this consideration—that it is obedience to heaven, and from thence will leave a recompense. It was the observation even of a pagan, "That a master may receive a benefit from a servant"; and "what is done with the affection of a friend, ceases to be the act of a mere servant." Even the maid-servants of a house may render a great service to it, by instructing the infants and ...
— The Education Of The Negro Prior To 1861 • Carter Godwin Woodson
... a morning paper, eulogising the Licensed Victuallers' fete at Vauxhall Gardens, on Tuesday evening, bursts into the following magnificent flight:—"Wit has been profanely said, like the Pagan, to deify the brute" (the writer will never increase the mythology); "but here," (that is, in the royal property,) "while intellect and skill" (together with Roman candles) "exhibit their various manifestations, Charity" (arrack punch ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 1, August 28, 1841 • Various
... leafy solitude,—just where the line of water conservation, creeping northward from the Lachlan, here and there touched the line creeping southward from the Darling,— I was standing in the veranda of the barracks, on Goolumbulla station, when the narangies' pagan henchman announced, "Brekfit ...
— Such is Life • Joseph Furphy
... secured recognition as ethically and socially right, that Tennyson could not hope to enlist the sympathy and admiration of his readers for his Oenone, if he had cast her image in the tearless bronze of Pagan obduracy." ...
— Selections from Wordsworth and Tennyson • William Wordsworth and Alfred Lord Tennyson
... She points to the heavens; she is an interrogation mark, Pilate's question. Botticelli was adored. But understood? An enigmatic malady ravaged his being. He died poor and alone, did this composer of luminous chants and pagan poems, this moulder of exotic dreams and of angels who long for other gods than those of Good and Evil. A grievously wounded, timid soul, an intruder at the portals of paradise, but without the courage to enter or withdraw. He had visions that rapt him up ...
— Promenades of an Impressionist • James Huneker
... of Rome marked the end of the ancient Pagan world. Above its ruin Christian civilization in the course of time arose. Gothic architecture is an expression of the Christian spirit; in it is manifest the reaction from licentiousness to asceticism. Man's spiritual nature, ...
— The Beautiful Necessity • Claude Fayette Bragdon
... divine animals, or to commit incest, which was a divine prerogative, was analogous to "the blasphemy against the Holy Ghost," which in the New Testament is proclaimed an unpardonable offence, and in pagan legend was punished by the divine wrath, thunder, lightning, rain, floods, or petrifaction being the avenging instruments. Oedipus put out his own eyes to forestall the traditional wrath of ...
— The Evolution of the Dragon • G. Elliot Smith
... religious training. While he is yet a baby in arms he is carried "pick-a-back" in his mother's blanket to the ancient dances and festivals, where he sees for the first time, and in his infant way participates in, the rites and rituals of the pagan faith, learning to revere the "Great Spirit," and to anticipate the happy hunting grounds ...
— The Shagganappi • E. Pauline Johnson
... carries, and appeals to her by that symbol of devotion and self-sacrifice to remain true to her duties, to accept willingly the burdens given her to bear, not to think of self, but only of others. He condemns the pagan teaching she had received, of individual self-seeking, and the spirit of culture, refinement and ease which accompanied that teaching. She looks on the image of a suffering life, a life offered willingly as a sacrifice for others' good, and ...
— George Eliot; A Critical Study of Her Life, Writings & Philosophy • George Willis Cooke
... had rediscovered the Quaker truth that the spirit is stronger than all the forces of Government, and that things may really come by fasting and prayer. Even the window-breaking, though a perilous approach to the methods of the Pagan male, was only a damage to insensitive material for which the window-breakers were prepared to pay in conscious suffering. But once the injury was done to flesh and blood, the injurer would only be paying tooth for tooth and ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 21 - The Recent Days (1910-1914) • Charles F. Horne, Editor
... ornament. From that time, instead of ornamenting construction, they constructed ornament; and as the Reformation came to the Church in the sixteenth century so to architecture came degradation. And then the Renaissance of pagan types, from which the Gothic had derived its being by a rational development, was by the revivalists of those days hotch-potched into a more or less homogeneous mass, which even the genius of Wren could ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: The Cathedral Church of Norwich - A Description of Its Fabric and A Brief History of the Episcopal See • C. H. B. Quennell
... sweetly, and may represent many circumstances actually recorded in the Hebrew scriptures, yet we hardly understand the dance as a religious ceremony; the bare mention of it sets us thinking on some fundamental differences between the pagan religions and our own. It is to such ecstasies, however, that all nature-worship seems to tend; that giddy, intoxicating sense of spring—that tingling in the veins, sympathetic with the yearning life of the earth, having, apparently, in all times and places, prompted some ...
— Greek Studies: A Series of Essays • Walter Horatio Pater
... testing the accuracy of the above catalogue of gradations seriatim and in order of time; but to satisfy ourselves on the question, whether the invocation of saints and angels prevailed from the first in the Christian Church; or whether it was an innovation introduced after pagan superstition had begun to mingle its poisonous corruptions with the pure worship of {70} Almighty God. And here, I conceive, few persons will be disposed to doubt, that if the primitive believers were taught by the Apostles to address the saints reigning ...
— Primitive Christian Worship • James Endell Tyler
... king Ferdinand," observes Fray Antonio Agapida, "was humbling himself before the cross and devoutly praying for the destruction of his enemies, that fierce pagan, El Zagal, depending merely on arm of flesh and sword of steel, pursued his diabolical outrages upon the Christians." No sooner was the invading army disbanded than he sallied forth from his stronghold, ...
— Chronicle of the Conquest of Granada • Washington Irving
... paper is to present some physical measurements of the Negrito and then of several other pagan peoples of the islands whose types, as determined by measurement and observation, reveal the presence ...
— The Negrito and Allied Types in the Philippines and The Ilongot or Ibilao of Luzon • David P. Barrows
... plant groves and gather luxuries, that they and their devices may hang in the corners of the world like fine-spun cobwebs, with greedy, puffed-up, spider-like lusts in the middle. And this, which in Christian times is the abuse and corruption of the sense of beauty, was in that Pagan life of which St. Paul speaks, little less than the essence of it, and the best they had; for I know not that of the expressions of affection towards external nature to be found among Heathen writers, there are any of which the balance and leading thought cleaves not towards the ...
— Modern Painters Volume II (of V) • John Ruskin
... persons of leisure in such a community. This education passed from Greece and Rome to the feudal communities of Europe, where also the warrior caste and the priestly caste were alone held in honour, and where the really useful and working part of the community, though not nominally slaves as in the pagan world, were practically not much better off than slaves, and not more seriously regarded. And how absurd it is, people end by saying, to inflict this education upon an industrious modern community, where ...
— English Prose - A Series of Related Essays for the Discussion and Practice • Frederick William Roe (edit. and select.)
... may teach. A man remote in distance, in time, or in mental state from the thing we are about to examine would perceive the reality of this truth just as clearly as would a man who was steeped in its spirit from within and who formed an intimate part of Christian Europe. The Oriental pagan, the contemporary atheist, some supposed student in some remote future, reading history in some place from which the Catholic Faith shall have utterly departed, and to which the habits and traditions of our civilization will therefore be wholly alien, would each, in proportion ...
— Europe and the Faith - "Sine auctoritate nulla vita" • Hilaire Belloc
... at the open admiration written so boldly upon his face, and, encouraged by her glance, he regarded her swiftly, comprehensively; the masses of hair the fillet ill-confined; eyes, soft-lidded, dreamy as a summer's day; a figure, pagan in generous proportions; a foot, however, petite, Parisian, peeping from beneath a ...
— Under the Rose • Frederic Stewart Isham
... position at daybreak. During a short halt by the last rays of the setting sun I caught sight of a number of Mohammedan soldiers prostrating themselves toward Mecca in their evening prayers, while their Christian or pagan comrades looked stolidly on. It was late October, and although the days were still very hot and oppressive, the nights were almost bitterly cold. A night-march is always a disagreeable business. The head of the column checks and halts, and those in the rear have no idea whether it is ...
— War in the Garden of Eden • Kermit Roosevelt
... has undergone various modifications since that time. Perhaps even the Church is less sure of her share in the record, less certain of the doom once so unhesitatingly denounced against "the Paip that Pagan fu' of pride"; less confident of her own superiority to all other developments of Christianity. The least enlightened are no longer able to feel with a good conscience, as our best instructed fathers did, that an important part of religious liberty was freedom to ...
— Royal Edinburgh - Her Saints, Kings, Prophets and Poets • Margaret Oliphant
... not be disputed, that in a country so pious as that of Wales, it would have been next to impossible for the poet, though ever so much upon his guard, to avoid all allusion to the system of revelation. On the contrary, every thing is Pagan, and in perfect conformity with the theology we are taught to believe ...
— Imogen - A Pastoral Romance • William Godwin
... was Persis, and she was the daughter of a Pagan king that ruled in a country many, many—oh, many leagues to the southward of these islands, in a country where unicorns and dragons be, and where dwelleth the phoenix and hippogriffins and the cockatrix, and where bloometh a tree that runneth ...
— The Holy Cross and Other Tales • Eugene Field
... the good cause; and could the poor heathen have known what mighty exertions this band of benevolent, self-denying females, who basked in the noontide glory of the sun of righteousness, were making for their liberation from the thrall of pagan darkness and superstition, we doubt not that they would have prostrated themselves by millions before the shrine of their great idol, Juggernaut, and devoutly invoked him to pardon and forgive the poor, deluded victims of a ...
— Eventide - A Series of Tales and Poems • Effie Afton
... the band had broken up and marched musically home, a motley troop of men and women, merchant clerks and navy officers, dancing in its wake, arms about waist and crowned with garlands. Long ago darkness and silence had gone from house to house about the tiny pagan city. Only the street lamps shone on, making a glow-worm halo in the umbrageous alleys or drawing a tremulous image on the waters of the port. A sound of snoring ran among the piles of lumber by the Government pier. ...
— The Ebb-Tide - A Trio And Quartette • Robert Louis Stevenson and Lloyd Osbourne
... another king, one Jesus, to the Romans, was to bring down the power of the empire upon them. Nothing could be more absurd in the eyes of the Grecian philosophers than to speak of the resurrection of the body. Nor could any plan be devised more certain to arouse the fury of the pagan priesthood, than to denounce the craft by which they had their wealth, and to preach that they are no gods which are made by hands. The most degraded wretch, who perishes by the hand of the hangman ...
— Fables of Infidelity and Facts of Faith - Being an Examination of the Evidences of Infidelity • Robert Patterson
... as the centuries before the coming of the Romans. A church was built in the most crowded part of it; monks in leathern jerkins lived beside the church, which lay in ruins for two hundred years, while the pagan Saxon passed every day beside it across the double ford. During the two hundred years of war and conquest by the Saxons, Westminster, quite forgotten and deserted, lay with its brambles growing over the Roman ruins, and the weather and ivy pulling ...
— Westminster - The Fascination of London • Sir Walter Besant
... Topertoe, "provided you can allay my pain. I also was tempted to dance as well as the philosopher; and now the Christian parson and the pagan Pythagorean are ...
— The Evil Eye; Or, The Black Spector - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton
... Egypt, like those of Greece and Rome, was killed by Christianity, which largely gave place, at a later date, to Muhammedanism; and yet, in the hearts of the people there are still an extraordinary number of the old pagan beliefs. I will mention a few instances, taking them ...
— The Treasury of Ancient Egypt - Miscellaneous Chapters on Ancient Egyptian History and Archaeology • Arthur E. P. B. Weigall
... devout believer in inspiration, and the book is curious for its mixture of all the phenomena, Pagan and Christian, going over Hindoo. Chinese, Greek, and Italian literature for examples, and then bringing ...
— The Life of Harriet Beecher Stowe • Charles Edward Stowe
... their authority, even to the last. This virtue is cultivated to a degree that is remarkable, and has produced singular and favorable results on the national character, which it is hoped may be imparted to the land to which they are flocking in such multitudes. For with all their peculiarities of pagan philosophy and their oriental eccentricities of custom and practical life, they are everywhere renowned for their uniform and elegant courtesy—a most commendable virtue, and one arising from habitual deference to the aged more ...
— The American Woman's Home • Catherine E. Beecher and Harriet Beecher Stowe
... which she could not have learned from Origen, as among Christians he was regarded as heretical, and his followers were Unitarians and Universalists combined, adding the cheerful theory of the "second opportunity" and that all punishment from sin would have an end, yet clinging to the old pagan mythology and believing that sun, moon, stars, and the ocean all ...
— A Truthful Woman in Southern California • Kate Sanborn
... Indian boy, a good-looking, black-eyed little chap with as pagan a heart as ever beat under a copper-colored skin. His father and grandfathers were pagans. His ancestors for a thousand years back, and yet a thousand years back of that, had been pagans, and We-hro, with the pride of his religion and his race, would not have ...
— The Shagganappi • E. Pauline Johnson
... the Abbe de Sponde. "When a great misfortune happens, charity, which is divine love, and as blind as pagan love, ought not to look into the causes of it. Niece, you are president of the Maternity Society; you must succor that poor girl, who will now find ...
— An Old Maid • Honore de Balzac
... one that carried the stamp of his profession in his very bearing, and in every lineament of his face. It was more difficult to imagine a young and charming woman housed in such a place, but his first glimpse of the bishop's daughter showed him that her Pagan beauty was emphasized rather than lessened by ...
— The Mayor of Warwick • Herbert M. Hopkins
... When he returned from Damascus, he himself, instead of the regularly appointed priest, offered the sacrifices upon the new altar, as he had seen Tiglath-Pileser do. To cap the climax, Ahaz introduced certain pagan religious ideas, copied from the Assyrian worship, into the cult of the Temple, simply to please and gratify ...
— Stories of the Prophets - (Before the Exile) • Isaac Landman
... God! I'd rather be A Pagan suckled in a creed outworn, So might I, standing on this pleasant lea, Have glimpses that would make me less forlorn; Have sight of Proteus rising from the sea; Or hear old Triton blow ...
— Romance of Roman Villas - (The Renaissance) • Elizabeth W. (Elizbeth Williams) Champney
... of talking it. Austin replied by asking if she knew what a quincunx was, or what Virgil was really driving at when he composed the First Eclogue, and whether she had ever heard of Lycidas; and when she said that she had something better to do than stuff her head with quidnunxes and all such pagan rubbish, he remarked very politely that ignorance was evidently not all of the same sort. Which sent Aunt Charlotte bustling away in a huff to look after her ...
— Austin and His Friends • Frederic H. Balfour
... in the night," to adopt Mrs. Munday's metaphor—had slipped the heavy bolts; had joined the thousand creatures of the wood—had danced and leapt and shouted; had behaved, in short, more as if she had been a Pagan nymph than a happy English child. She had regained the house unnoticed, as she thought, the Devil, no doubt, assisting her; and had hidden her wet clothes in the bottom of a mighty chest. Deceitfulness in her heart, ...
— All Roads Lead to Calvary • Jerome K. Jerome
... parallels and imperfect analogies. A voice, like that which is said to have startled the mariner of old on the coasts of Ionia, and to have announced to him the cessation of oracles, comes to us from all the remains of pagan antiquity, warning us that the spirit of that ancient civilization has departed with its forms: and while it bids us look forward to a new destiny for the human race, it teaches us that the maxims and the oracles by which that destiny must be guided, are to be sought elsewhere than in the Republic ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, April 1844 - Volume 23, Number 4 • Various
... made (Southey, History of the Church). Thus, while the disciples of Dr. Pusey extract their forms and symbols from the practices of Papal Rome, the disciples of the Pope deduce theirs from the practices of Pagan Rome. ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 69, February 22, 1851 • Various
... another friend, James Kenneth Stephen, too pagan, wayward and lonely to be available for the Souls, but a man of genius. One afternoon he came to see me in Grosvenor Square and, being told by the footman that I was riding in the Row, he asked for tea and, while waiting for ...
— Margot Asquith, An Autobiography: Volumes I & II • Margot Asquith
... children be expected to be youthful in this house? Almost before we could speak we were filled with notions that might have been all very well for pagan philosophers of fifty, but were certainly quite unfit for respectable people of ...
— Heartbreak House • George Bernard Shaw
... the Kaaba was a pagan temple; but when he took possession of Mecca he made the old temple the centre of worship for ...
— Famous Men of The Middle Ages • John H. Haaren, LL.D. and A. B. Poland, Ph.D.
... from Ward C as Margaret MacLean entered. It was lusty enough to have come from the throats of healthy children, and it would have sounded happily to the most impartial ears; to the nurse in charge it was a very pagan of gladness. ...
— The Primrose Ring • Ruth Sawyer
... were of an absolutely general applicability—as the world indeed imagines them to be. Bryant, in his very learned 'Mythology,' mentions an analogous source of error, when he says that 'although the Pagan fables are not believed, yet we forget ourselves continually, and make inferences from them as existing realities.' With the algebraists, however, who are Pagans themselves, the 'Pagan fables' are believed, and the inferences are made, ...
— Selections From Poe • J. Montgomery Gambrill
... a rare exception in a period described by M. Saint-Amand as one in which women were Christian in certain aspects of their character and pagan in others, taking an active part in every event, ruling by wit and beauty, wisdom and courage; an age of thoughtless gaiety and morbid fanaticism, and of laughter and tears, still rough and savage, yet with an undercurrent of subtle grace and exquisite ...
— Women of Modern France - Woman In All Ages And In All Countries • Hugo P. Thieme
... habit of thought that justifies habit of deed. Southey, in his History of the Brazils, tells a sad tale of a dying converted Indian. In her dying moments, cannibalism prevailed over Christian conscience; and was the Pagan conscience silent? She was asked by those standing about her, if they could do any thing for her. She replied, that she thought she could pick the bones of a little child's hand, but that she had no one now who would ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 348 • Various
... now why he had shelved the project of Christianizing the natives, although one of his first acts had been to abolish their pagan sects. He had told himself at first that it was best to wait until he had put down from memory the salient parts of the Holy Bible—Genesis, say, the better-known Psalms, and a condensed version of the Gospels; leaving out all the ...
— The Worshippers • Damon Francis Knight
... complicity. She was ready to cry torrents, but there must be absolute castigation before this criminal shall conceive the sense of regret; and probably then she will cling to her wickedness the more—such is the born Pagan's tenacity! Mrs. Berry sighed, and gave him back his shake of the head. O you wanton, improvident creature! said he. O you very wise old gentleman! said she. He asked her the thing she had been doing. She enlightened him with ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... within the walls of the town, and to celebrate his arrival with almost imperial splendor, more, however, to deceive the people and to regain their waning popularity by means of some one else, by a ceremony copied from those of Pagan Rome, than to honor and recompense the services of a soldier whom they despised at the bottom ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume III (of 8) • Guy de Maupassant
... play is supposed to be in Sicily; hence Pagan oaths are not out of place. Even at the present time Italians say, per Jove! ...
— The Blunderer • Moliere
... practised in the middle ages, and, as I shall show, comparatively even in modern times. The ignorant and the careless clergy then imagined it was the securest means to retain the populace, who were always inclined to these pagan revelries. ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. II (of 3) - Edited, With Memoir And Notes, By His Son, The Earl Of Beaconsfield • Isaac D'Israeli
... Between Pagan Rome and Christian Paganism there is small choice—all State religions are very much alike. Caesar was Pope: and no State religion since his time has been an ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 7 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Eminent Orators • Elbert Hubbard
... protestation of expiring naturalism. Under the form of an eagle Eliwlod introduces the divinity to the sentiment of resignation, of subjection, and of humility, with which Christianity combated pagan pride. Hero-worship recoils step by step before the great formula, which Christianity ceases not to repeat to the Celtic races to sever them from their memories: There is none greater than God. Arthur allows himself to be persuaded ...
— Literary and Philosophical Essays • Various
... infinite. For fourteen centuries the ideal of this life was the anchorite or monk. If you would estimate the power of such a conception and the grandeur of the transformation it imposes on human faculties and habits, read, in turn, the great Christian poem and the great pagan poem, one the 'Divine Comedy' and the other the 'Odyssey' and the 'Iliad.' Dante has a vision and is transported out of our little ephemeral sphere into eternal regions; he beholds its tortures, its expiations and its felicities; he is affected by superhuman anguish and horror; all that the ...
— The Aldine, Vol. 5, No. 1., January, 1872 - A Typographic Art Journal • Various
... young,'" said David. "But that is a Pagan sentiment. Papa said, the other day, that victory must mean more to the man who has gone through the war, than to him who has hardly had time to strike a blow. Even before the victory it must be grand, he said, to be able to say like Paul, 'I have fought the good fight; ...
— The Inglises - How the Way Opened • Margaret Murray Robertson
... Monsieur le cure will tell you that a fortnight ago I was chained to my arm-chair, swearing under my breath like a pagan, and cursing the follies of my youth!—Forgive me, my father; I mean that I had the gout, and I forgot that I am not the only sufferer, and that it racks the old age of the philosopher quite as much ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - DERUES • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE
... support them. Before the Christian religion had, as it were, humanized the idea of the Divinity, and brought it somewhat nearer to us, there was very little said of the love of God. The followers of Plato have something of it, and only something; the other writers of pagan antiquity, whether poets or philosophers, nothing at all. And they who consider with what infinite attention, by what a disregard of every perishable object, through what long habits of piety and contemplation it is that any man ...
— Selections from the Speeches and Writings of Edmund Burke. • Edmund Burke
... to peace, he pursued his travels without molestation. He visited the famous city of Athens; there making a considerable stay, he was initiated into the Eleusin'ian mysteries, which were accounted the most sacred in the Pagan mythology, and took upon him the office of archon or chief magistrate. 20. In this place, also, he remitted the severity of the Christian persecution. He was even so far reconciled to their sect, as to think of introducing ...
— Pinnock's Improved Edition of Dr. Goldsmith's History of Rome • Oliver Goldsmith
... conduct of Jacob and this Hebrew appellation, the learned Bochart, with great ingenuity and reason, insists that the name and veneration of the sacred stones called Baetyli, so celebrated in all Pagan antiquity, were derived. ...
— Journals Of Two Expeditions Of Discovery In North-West And Western Australia, Vol. 2 (of 2) • George Grey
... this would not trust the pagan king: but with a sword he bade them take off her head. The damsel did not gainsay this thing: she would fain let go this worldly life if Christ gave command. And in shape of a dove she flew to heaven. Let us all pray that she may deign to intercede for us; that ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 1 - From the Beginning to 1800 • George Saintsbury
... connection, the account of the faith of the philosopher Sallustius, the Emperor Julian's friend, by Professor Gilbert Murray, "A Pagan Creed," in the English Review for December, 1909. The term 'pagan' now has a connotation that is singularly out of accord with the character of a ...
— Introduction to the History of Religions - Handbooks on the History of Religions, Volume IV • Crawford Howell Toy
... cavern; and does not the sadness that forces the soul back into itself, to the retreat it has made, kindle deep consolation there? And, as the noble Eponina has taken us back to the days of persecution, may we not liken such sorrow to the pagan executioner who, suddenly touched by grace, or perhaps admiration, in the very midst of the torture that he was inflicting, flung himself down headlong at the feet of his victim, speaking words of tenderest sympathy; who demanded to share her ...
— Wisdom and Destiny • Maurice Maeterlinck
... faith," she cried vehemently. "Thou knowest I am no Christian at heart. Nay, nor are any of our house, though they perceive it not. My father fasts at Lent, but it is the Pagan Aristotle that nourishes his thought. Rome counts her beads and mumbles her paternosters, but she has outgrown the primitive faith in Renunciation. Our pageants and processions, our splendid feasts, our gorgeous costumes, what have these to do with ...
— Dreamers of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... and his parents confessed their faith in the Nazarene, Captain Mercurio also declared himself converted and twenty of the soldiers, dismounting from their horses, threw their arms on the ground and prayed to be bound with chains since they now abhorred the false pagan gods and intended for the future to worship only the God of ...
— Castellinaria - and Other Sicilian Diversions • Henry Festing Jones
... hurrying crowds, swirling and sifting through the brobdingnagian camp of iron and steel, one saw the camp-followers and the pagan women—there would be work to-day and dancing to-night. For the Puritan's dry voice is but the crackling of a leaf underfoot in the rush and roar of the coming of ...
— The Turmoil - A Novel • Booth Tarkington |
