"Idol" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... south, awake! The song of triumph sing; Let mount, and hill, and vale, With hallelujahs ring: Shout, for the idol's overthrown, And Israel's God ...
— Hymns for Christian Devotion - Especially Adapted to the Universalist Denomination • J.G. Adams
... already to scribble more or less ribald jokes, and, what is still more strange, the mist of unbelief is rising from the heads of those who, in the nature of things, ought to bow down reverently. Finally there will come a gifted sceptic, a second Heine, to spit and trample on the idol, as in his time did Aristophanes; he will not, however, trample on it in the name of old ideals, but in the name of freedom of thought, in the name of freedom of doubt; and what will happen then I do not know. ...
— Without Dogma • Henryk Sienkiewicz
... gilds The idol of the shrine; But cold Oblivion seeks to fill Regret's ambrosial wine. Though Friendship's offering buried lies 'Neath cold Aversion's snow, Regard and Faith will ...
— A Nonsense Anthology • Collected by Carolyn Wells
... kens, I ween, of Woman's breast, Who thinks that wanton thing is won by sighs; What careth she for hearts when once possessed? Do proper homage to thine Idol's eyes; But not too humbly, or she will despise Thee and thy suit, though told in moving tropes: Disguise ev'n tenderness, if thou art wise; Brisk Confidence still best with woman copes:[er] Pique her and soothe in turn—soon ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 2 • George Gordon Byron
... faithful daughter nothing is impossible where her father is concerned. This vote, I believe, cost Mr. Edgeworth his peerage. 'When it was known that he had voted against the Union he became suddenly the idol of those who would previously have stoned him,' says his devoted biographer. It must not, however, be forgotten that Mr. Edgeworth had refused an offer of L3000 for his seat for two or three weeks, during that momentous period when every vote was of importance. Mr. Pitt, they say, spent over ...
— Castle Rackrent • Maria Edgeworth
... desirable to the people at large. It was, nevertheless, invariably found, after the transient enthusiasm for the early Congresses was over, that the attention and attachment of the people were turned anew to their own particular governments; that the federal council was at no time the idol of popular favor; and that opposition to proposed enlargements of its powers and importance was the side usually taken by the men who wished to build their political consequence on the prepossessions of their fellow-citizens. If, therefore, as has ...
— The Federalist Papers
... would mebbe git my mind off a little from my idol, I asked her again about Robert Strong's City of Justice; sez I, "It has run in my mind considerable since you spoke on't; I don't think I ever hearn the name of any place I liked so well, City of Justice! Why the name fairly takes hold of my heart-strings," ...
— Around the World with Josiah Allen's Wife • Marietta Holley
... into spectres—the coronal of each became a death's- head, huge and sun-bleached—dead dreams of an elder world and mightier race lay frozen in their wide gaping eyeholes. That evening more firmly than ever fastened into my soul the conviction that Fate was of stone, and Hope a false idol—blind, bloodless, and of granite core. I felt, too, that the trial God had appointed me was gaining its climax, and must now be turned by my own hands, hot, feeble, trembling as they were. It rained still, and blew; but with more ...
— Villette • Charlotte Bronte
... wearied and goaded on all sides, might probably have persevered through the darkness till daylight came; but the catastrophe, the dismissal, and the perception that he could only defend himself at the expense of his idol's little brother, all exaggerated by youthful imagination, were too much for his balance of judgment, and he fled without giving himself time to realise how much worse he made it for those he left ...
— Beechcroft at Rockstone • Charlotte M. Yonge
... well. Her parson had emerged triumphant from his battle with disease and adverse fate and was more than ever the idol of his congregation. He was to marry the girl of his choice—and hers. The housekeeper's ears were still ringing with the thanks of John and Grace. Both seemed to feel that to her, Keziah Coffin, more than anyone else, they owed their great joy. Some of the things they ...
— Keziah Coffin • Joseph C. Lincoln
... they had, which parted the One God into many; and they said, too, that these gods did things which would be a shame and sin for any man to do. And when their philosophers arose, and told them that God was One, they would not listen, but loved their idols, and their wicked idol feasts, till they all came to ruin. But we will talk of such sad ...
— The Heroes • Charles Kingsley
... to see that they hated us Egyptians, and even dared to despise us. Hate shone in their glittering eyes, and I heard them calling us the 'idol-worshippers' one to the other, and asking where was our god, the Bull, for being ignorant they thought that we worshipped Apis (as mayhap some of the common people do) instead of looking upon the sacred beast as a symbol of the powers of Nature. Indeed they did more, for ...
— Moon of Israel • H. Rider Haggard
... fourth-floor dwelling, the furniture being of the simplest kind. But when he saw the girl's beauty and great qualities, when he had known inexpressible and unlooked-for happiness with her, he began to dote upon her, and longed to adorn his idol. Then Aquilina's toilet was so comically out of keeping with her poor abode, that for both their sakes it was clearly incumbent on him to move. The change swallowed up almost all Castanier's savings, for he furnished ...
— Library of the World's Best Mystery and Detective Stories • Edited by Julian Hawthorne
... "but then they had not attacked the true God, but only a false idol of the Pagans. 'Tis a mighty difference. The fact is clear, Lucifer, you raised the standard of revolt against the true and veritable King of ...
— The Well of Saint Clare • Anatole France
... into the hands of the Saracens by a capitulation, which was far from dishonourable. If Phocyas is guilty, his guilt must consist in this only, that he performed the same action from a sense of his own wrong, and to preserve the idol of his soul from violation, and death, which he might have performed laudably, upon better principles. But this (say they) seems not sufficient ground for those strong and stinging reproaches he casts upon himself, nor for Eudocia's rejecting ...
— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753) - Vol. IV • Theophilus Cibber
... so, at least, for a time; but all rivers, all brooks, all rills, are meant to flow into the ocean, and all special knowledge, to keep it from stagnation, must have an outlet into the general knowledge of the world. Knowledge for its own sake, as it is sometimes called, is the most dangerous idol that a student can worship. We despise the miser who amasses money for the sake of money, but still more contemptible is the intellectual miser who hoards up knowledge instead of spending it, though, with regard to most of our knowledge, we may ...
— Chips from a German Workshop - Volume IV - Essays chiefly on the Science of Language • Max Muller
... on the ground. Poor Miriam! her heart's idol torn away. God help my darling! I did not understand that George could die until I looked at her. In vain I strove to raise her from the ground, or check her wild shrieks for death. "George! only George!" she would cry; until at last, with the horror ...
— A Confederate Girl's Diary • Sarah Morgan Dawson
... time. We may also fairly surmise that his parents were guilty of partiality and indulgence in their treatment of him, for David would love him the more as one who revived the memory of his favourite Absalom, the idol of the people, distinguished for his noble mien and princely bearing. Courtiers, soldiers, and people all flattered Adonijah, and Joab, the greatest captain of his age, next only to the king, was his partisan, the ...
— Men of the Bible; Some Lesser-Known Characters • George Milligan, J. G. Greenhough, Alfred Rowland, Walter F.
... little Keelers! but I had been brought up on hygienic, as well as moral, principles, and moved away without a sigh. In another sequestered nook, I paused with a sinful mixture of curiosity and delight, before a Chinese idol standing alone ...
— Cape Cod Folks • Sarah P. McLean Greene
... fanes and gaping graves Yawn level with the luminous waves; But not the riches there that lie In each idol's diamond eye— Not the gaily-jewelled dead Tempt the waters from their bed; For no ripples curl, alas! Along that wilderness of glass— No swellings tell that winds may be Upon some far-off happier sea— No heavings hint that winds have been ...
— Edgar Allan Poe's Complete Poetical Works • Edgar Allan Poe
... 'You will be the idol of the people,' Rekh-mara whispered joyously; 'the Temple of Amen will not contain ...
— The Story of the Amulet • E. Nesbit
... guilded follies, pleasing troubles, Farwel ye honour'd rags, ye glorious bubbles; Fame's but a hollow eccho, gold pure clay, Honour the darling but of one short day. Beauty (th'eyes idol) but a damask'd skin, State but a golden prison, to live in And torture free-born minds; imbroider'd trains Meerly but Pageants, for proud swelling vains, And blood ally'd to greatness is alone Inherited, not purchas'd, nor our own. ...
— The Complete Angler 1653 • Isaak Walton
... press could afford it; and Thomas Moore and George Cruikshank manufactured the most stinging satires and the most ludicrous caricatures upon every person of distinction who opposed her; but a writer had entered the field on the other side, whose caustic humour told more damagingly on the popular idol and her chief supporters than the pen of the poet or the pencil of the artist; and Theodore Hook, in the columns of the John Bull, made the respectable portion of the Queenites heartily ashamed of ...
— Memoirs of the Court of George IV. 1820-1830 (Vol 1) - From the Original Family Documents • Duke of Buckingham and Chandos
... brighter. One thing was sure—I could not run away. That would be cowardice, as well as an affront to hospitality. And did the worthy man snoring in a near-by room once know that I thought of leaving because his idol was coming, he would doubtless hasten my departure by turning loose upon me the pack of fox-hounds I had heard clamoring for their supper a few ...
— The Love Story of Abner Stone • Edwin Carlile Litsey
... thought that in a place of such utter loneliness, the natural human spirit of a man would instinctively desire movement,—action of some sort, to shake off the insidious depression which crept through the air like a creeping shadow, but the solitary being, seated somewhat like an Aryan idol, hands on knees and face bent forwards, had no inclination to stir. His brain was busy; and half unconsciously his thoughts ...
— The Secret Power • Marie Corelli
... deity, divinity, idol. Associated Words: deify, deification, apotheosize, apotheosis, theogony, Olympus, pantheon, deicide, deifie, deiform, mythology, polytheism, monotheism, theomachy, ...
— Putnam's Word Book • Louis A. Flemming
... entering the arbor where MWAW was sitting, this world-renowned Learned One made three deep obeisances, as if he were approaching an idol, and stammered in a husky voice: ...
— Fighting For Peace • Henry Van Dyke
... foraging in the streets as the only scavengers, and a swarming host, but little above the hog in its appetites and in the quality of the shelter afforded it, peopling the back alleys. Still later, the mob, caught looting the city's treasury with its idol, the thief Tweed, at its head, drunk with power and plunder, had insolently defied the outraged community to do its worst. There were meetings and protests. The rascals were turned out for a season; the arch-chief died in jail. I see him now, going through the ...
— The Battle with the Slum • Jacob A. Riis
... promulgation of the present constitution. If I had gone back to the days of the confederation, I might have given still more striking instances. The whole nation was at that time in a state of enthusiastic excitement; the revolution was represented by a man who was the idol of the people; but at that very period congress had, to say the truth, no resources at all at its disposal. Troops and supplies were perpetually wanting. The best devised projects failed in the ...
— American Institutions and Their Influence • Alexis de Tocqueville et al
... pulling like Captain Crowe 'for dear life, for dear life' against the whole boat's crew," speaking, that is, against 30 members of a drunken company and maintaining the predominance. Mons Meg was at that time his idol. He had a sort of avarice of proper names, and, besides half a dozen which were his legitimately, he had a claim to be called Garvadh, which uncouth appellation he claimed on no very good authority to be the ancient name of the Hays—a tale. I loved him dearly; he had high spirits, a ...
— The Journal of Sir Walter Scott - From the Original Manuscript at Abbotsford • Walter Scott
... the thought that one may attain a ripe old age with neither son nor daughter to smooth the decline of life, or sorrow for his or her departure! How many women desire a first-born of love, the idol of their waiting hearts, a soul, which shall be begotten within, clothed with their own nature, and yet immortal! It is a natural instinct, this yearning of the heart for offspring; and yet little ...
— The People's Common Sense Medical Adviser in Plain English • R. V. Pierce
... husband into death, she was only doing what every other widow would do—she was only doing her duty. In India, where men in the prime of life throw themselves under the car of Jaggernath, to be crushed to death by the idol they believe in—where the plaintiff who cannot get redress starves himself to death at the door of his judge—where the philosopher who thinks he has learnt all which this world can teach him, and who longs for absorption into the Deity, quietly steps into the Ganges, in order to arrive ...
— Chips From A German Workshop - Volume I - Essays on the Science of Religion • Friedrich Max Mueller
... had condescended to ask questions and invite gossip, like the smaller beings well enough known in the boy-world as in every other, who make gossip the chief object of their existence. Could there be anything in the idol of his youth akin to these? He felt sore and disappointed, without knowing why, with a dim consciousness that there were many other people whom Mr. Derwentwater might have inquired about without awakening any such feelings in him. When the train stopped, and they got ...
— Sir Tom • Mrs. Oliphant
... must not bless light and spices of idolatrous Gentiles, nor light and spices of corpses, nor light and spices before an idol. They must not bless the light until ...
— Hebrew Literature
... who have been bereft of the Word. Who is not horrified by the Romans, men of exemplary wisdom and famous before other nations by reason of their dignified discipline, who observed the custom of letting the worthy matrons worship and crown Priapus, the foul idol, and of leading bridal virgins before it? What is more ludicrous than that the Egyptians adored the calf Apis ...
— Commentary on Genesis, Vol. II - Luther on Sin and the Flood • Martin Luther
... It is a Persian word, spelt chabouk by Moore, in Lalla Rookh. It was adopted by the Portuguese as chabuco, "in the Portuguese India, a whip or scourge"[23] (Vieyra, Port. Dict., 1794). Fetish, an African idol, first occurs in the records of the early navigators, collected and published by Hakluyt and Purchas. It is the Port. feitico, Lat. factitius, artificial, applied by the Portuguese explorers to the graven images of the heathen. The corresponding Old Fr. faitis is rather ...
— The Romance of Words (4th ed.) • Ernest Weekley
... was an African by birth, became bishop of Verona A. D. 362, and is said to have suffered martyrdom twenty years afterward under the emperor Julian: his swarthy wooden effigy, of archaic stiffness, reminds one of the idol of some barbarous tribe. One of the most curious bits of the past is a group among the rude sculptures of the porch called The Chase of Theodoric: the dogs have caught the stag, and a fiend is about to seize upon the rider. Orthodox tradition ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 20, August 1877 • Various
... to have been converted to christianity by Peter, whom he served as an amanuensis, and under whose inspection he wrote his gospel in the Greek language. Mark was dragged to pieces by the people of Alexandria, at the great solemnity of Serapis their idol, ending his life under their ...
— Fox's Book of Martyrs - Or A History of the Lives, Sufferings, and Triumphant - Deaths of the Primitive Protestant Martyrs • John Fox
... to describe the horrible enormities that were practised among them. It is incredible to us in these days that such charges should be made, and still more that they should actually be believed. It was said that the Templars worshipped some hideous idol in their secret assemblies, that they offered sacrifices to it of infants and young girls, and that although every one saw them devout, charitable, and regular in their religious duties, people were not to be misled by these things, for this was only a cloak intended to ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... respects like theirs; but differs, in that I attend men and not women; and look after their souls when they are in labour, and not after their bodies: and the triumph of my art is in thoroughly examining whether the thought which the mind of the young man brings forth is a false idol or a noble and true birth. And like the midwives, I am barren, and the reproach which is often made against me, that I ask questions of others and have not the wit to answer them myself, is very just—the reason is, that the god compels me to be a midwife, but does not ...
— Theaetetus • Plato
... little figure, modelled after Cupid's own; his curly flaxen hair; his matchless complexion, fair and clear as the sky on a sunny summer day; and his bright, round, expressive eyes, which imparted intelligence to his every feature, combined to make him the idol of his father, the envy of all the mothers in town, and the admiration of every one who saw him. At noon, when the great foundry-bell rang, which was the signal for the workmen to go to dinner Charlie might regularly be seen, toddling as fast as his stout ...
— The Gerrard Street Mystery and Other Weird Tales • John Charles Dent
... Nan as well? He saw how it was; he had been speaking of his father, but he had been thinking of himself; he had been struggling to justify himself, to reconcile, strengthen, and fortify himself. But in doing so he had been breaking an idol, a life-long idol, his own idol and ...
— The Manxman - A Novel - 1895 • Hall Caine
... a lonely dancer entering from the court, large, weary, crowned with gold, tufted with feathers, wrinkled, with greedy, fatigued eyes, and hands painted blood-red. She was like an idol in its dotage. Over her spreading bosom streamed multitudes of golden coins, and many jewels shone upon her wrists, her arms, her withered neck. She advanced slowly, as if bored, until she was in the midst of the crowd. Then she wriggled, stretched forth her hands, slowly stamped ...
— Smain; and Safti's Summer Day - 1905 • Robert Hichens
... in which Ali Partab stood and swore was a dark, low corner space in which at one time and another sacks and useless impedimenta had been tossed, to become rat-eaten and decayed. In among all the rubbish, cross-legged like the idol of the underworld, a nearly naked Hindoo sat, prick-eared. He was quite invisible long before the sun went down, for that was the dingiest corner of the yard; when twilight came, he could not have been seen from ...
— Rung Ho! • Talbot Mundy
... of a considerable portion of the catholic nobility of his realm, although himself an excommunicated heretic; the mainstay of Calvinism while secretly bending all his energies to effect his reconciliation with the pope; the idol of the austere and grimly puritanical, while himself a model of profligacy; the leader of the earnest and the true, although false as water himself in every relation in which human beings can stand to each other; a standardbearer of both great ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... made since, we travelled over whole districts in the plains, where fragments of these arrows and knives were to be found, literally at every step, mixed with morsels of pottery, and here and there a little clay idol. Among the heaps of fragments were many that had become weathered on the upper side, and had a remarkable lustre, like silver. Obsidian is called bizcli by the Indians, and the silvery sort is known as bizcli platera.[11] They often find bits of it in the fields; ...
— Anahuac • Edward Burnett Tylor
... amusement, and now became its slave." Byron, on the other hand, gave what remained of a heart, never alienated from her by any other mistress. Till the middle of the month they met every day; and when the husband took her back to Ravenna she despatched to her idol a series of impassioned letters, declaring her resolution to mould her life in accordance with his wishes. Towards the end of May she had prepared her relatives to receive Byron as a visitor. He started in answer to ...
— Byron • John Nichol
... had the Fane-builder reared this magnificent structure. Within those costly walls was a veiled and jeweled sanctuary. There had he enshrined an idol—the image of a bright divinity which he alone might worship. Willingly and freely did he admit the pilgrim and the wayfarer to the outer courts of his temple; gladly did he offer them refreshing draughts from the fountain of living water which gushed up in ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 1 July 1848 • Various
... Buddhahood. The name does not include those Buddhas who have not yet attained to pari-nirvana. The symbol of the state is an elephant fording a river. Popularly, its abbreviated form P'u-sa is used in China for any idol or image; here the name has ...
— Record of Buddhistic Kingdoms • Fa-Hien
... bull-dog. A dog with a more thoughtfully ferocious expression—a dog with, apparently, a heart more dead to all ennobling and civilizing sentiments—I have never seen. As George said, he looked more like some heathen idol than a ...
— Evergreens - From a volume entitled "Idle Thoughts of an Idle Fellow" • Jerome K. Jerome
... must interest me. The honours you have received, though I have so little taste for such things myself, gave me great satisfaction; and I do not know whether there is not more pleasure in not being a prophet in one's own country, when one is almost received like Mahomet in every other. To be an idol at home, is no assured touchstone of merit. Stocks and stones have been adored in fifty regions, but do not bear transplanting. The Apollo Belvidere and the Hercules Farnese may lose their temples, but never lose ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole, V4 • Horace Walpole
... regarded with any other feelings than those of admiration of human beauty, or reverence for human skill. Effective religious art, therefore, has always lain, and I believe must always lie, between the two extremes—of barbarous idol-fashioning on one side, and magnificent craftsmanship on the other. It consists partly in missal-painting, and such book-illustrations as, since the invention of printing, have taken its place; partly in glass-painting; partly in rude sculpture on ...
— Stones of Venice [introductions] • John Ruskin
... Moloch fled, Hath left in shadows dred, His burning Idol all of blackest hue, In vain with Cymbals ring, They call the grisly king, In dismall dance about the furnace blue; The brutish gods of Nile as fast, Isis and Orus, and the ...
— Book of English Verse • Bulchevy
... likeness enabled him to turn out busts so rapidly and cheaply that he had all the work he could do. He was, of course, anxious to try his hand at marble, and procuring a block of native Carolina stone, hewed out, with infinite labor, a bust of that South Carolina idol, John C. Calhoun. It was the best bust ever made of that celebrated statesman, and was the beginning of Mills's good fortune, and of the sequence of events which resulted in his statue of the ...
— American Men of Mind • Burton E. Stevenson
... completely occupied; it was one round of brilliant success for the poor woman. 'Such triumphs! such intoxication!' as Scudo says; but the glory was that of a shooting star. In eight short years after that brilliant season at Venice, Adelade Montresor, better known as 'La Malanotte,' the idol of the European musical public, the short-lived infatuation and passion of the celebrated Rossini, was a hopeless invalid, and worse, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 4, No. 24, Oct. 1859 • Various
... widest tide That ever mariner defied, And, at the shore, could on have gone To that high crag she stood upon, To there entreat and say, 'My Sweet, Behold thy servant at thy feet.' And to my soul I said: 'Above, There stands the idol of thy love!' ...
— The Complete Works • James Whitcomb Riley
... and despotical to their inferiors, smooth-tongued and hypocritical toward each other, destitute equally of justice and compassion toward men, and of respect and piety toward the Gods! Wealth had become the idol, the god of the whole people! Wealth—and no longer service, eloquence, daring, or integrity,—was held the requisite for office. Wealth now conferred upon its owner, all magistracies all guerdons—rank, power, command,—consulships, ...
— The Roman Traitor (Vol. 1 of 2) • Henry William Herbert
... of brains to be guided by any laughing, well-bred individual who would listen to stale jokes and impudent ribaldry. Of Queen Charlotte she used to speak with the utmost disrespect, attributing to her a love of domination and a hatred of every one who would not bow down before any idol that she chose to set up; and as being envious of the Princess Caroline and her daughter the Princess Charlotte of Wales, and jealous of their acquiring too much influence over the Prince of Wales. In short, Mary Anne ...
— Reminiscences of Captain Gronow • Rees Howell Gronow
... from the city, had left after an evening of banter and chit-chat.... At Milly's despairing exclamation, Ernestine squatted down on a footstool at her feet and looked up at her mate with the pained expression of a faithful dog, who wants to understand his Idol's desires, but can't. ...
— One Woman's Life • Robert Herrick
... Hurons." (These lakes were erroneously supposed to be but one). N. End: "Bay of the Pottawatamies." Islands near Mackinac: "I entered this bay only as far as these islands." W. of St. Clair River: "Great hunting ground." At Detroit: "Here was a stone, idol of the Iroquois, which we broke up and threw into the water." Essex Peninsula: "Large prairies." Lake Erie: "I mark only what I have seen." Long Point: "Peninsula of Lake Erie." North Shore Opposite: "Here we wintered." The Bay Opposite: ...
— The Country of the Neutrals - (As Far As Comprised in the County of Elgin), From Champlain to Talbot • James H. Coyne
... my mind a reminiscence from college days, which grows more significant to me the longer I live. One Saturday morning at our Missionary Society there came, at our invitation, to talk to us about our future life, the professor who was the idol of the students and reputed the most severely scientific of the whole staff. We used to think him keen, too, and cynical; and what we expected was perhaps a scathing exposure of the weaknesses of ministers or a severe ...
— The Preacher and His Models - The Yale Lectures on Preaching 1891 • James Stalker
... attractive character. Weislingen, Clavigo, and Werther have all their redeeming qualities, but Fernando is an emotional egotist incapable of any worthy motive, and it is the most serious blemish in the play, even in view of the factitious world in which it moves, that he is made the adored idol of two such different women as Caecilie and Stella. The situation, as Goethe himself tells us, was suggested by the relations of Swift to Stella and Vanessa, but he did not need to go so far afield for a motive. In the world around him he was ...
— The Youth of Goethe • Peter Hume Brown
... beyond. It is to attack the sceptre in the name of the throne, and the mitre in the name of the attar; it is to ill-treat the thing which one is dragging, it is to kick over the traces; it is to cavil at the fagot on the score of the amount of cooking received by heretics; it is to reproach the idol with its small amount of idolatry; it is to insult through excess of respect; it is to discover that the Pope is not sufficiently papish, that the King is not sufficiently royal, and that the night has ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... all its rights and appendages; and to substitute therefor, a pure theocracy, administered by Jehovah, with the Israelites as His representatives and agents. In a word the people were to be denationalized, their political existence annihilated, their idol temples, altars, groves, images, pictures, and heathen rites destroyed, and themselves put under tribute. Those who resisted the execution of Jehovah's purpose were to be killed, while those who quietly ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... Hortense was twining himself closely around his mother's heart. He had become her idol. Napoleon was then in the zenith of his power, and it was understood that Napoleon Charles was to inherit the imperial sceptre. The warmth of his heart and his daily intellectual development indicated that he would prove worthy of ...
— Hortense, Makers of History Series • John S. C. Abbott
... of Celtil, who, guilty of conspiring against the freedom of his city, expiated on the pyre his ambition and his crime. The young Gaul thus became heir to the goods of his father, whose name he nevertheless blushed to bear. Having become the idol of his people, he traveled to Rome and saw Caesar, who attempted to win his good graces. But the Gaul rejected the friendship of his country's enemy. Returned to his native land he labored secretly to reawaken among his people ...
— The Brass Bell - or, The Chariot of Death • Eugene Sue
... Villon's poetry had stirred his enthusiasm, while all the much which was worst had left his sane wholesomeness untainted. To the half-dreamer, half-downright, practical lad in Poitou, Villon, with his jovial, bitter humour and even flow of human verse, had been something of an idol, and when our idols crash into ruin the thunder of the catastrophe bewilders judgment. But there was more than bewilderment, there was an inevitable disgust. The frankness ...
— The Justice of the King • Hamilton Drummond
... and followed in his wake gave glowing tribute to the true value and leadership of that youth who flew the green and gold plane. With him as leader, they would have taken a toll, despite the unexpected arrival of the Spads. But with von Herzmann, their idol and their pride, forced from the fight by a hated Englander flying a dinky little Camel—well, the Fatherland could ...
— Aces Up • Covington Clarke
... your sister now, on one side of her idol, to correct her extravagant idolatry! I long for her. I had a number of nice little phrases to ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... to his students was healing, and he proved his faith by his works. The ancient Christians were healers. Why 146:3 has this element of Christianity been lost? Because our systems of religion are governed more or less by our systems of medicine. The first idol- 146:6 atry was faith in matter. The schools have rendered faith in drugs the fashion, rather than faith in Deity. By trusting matter to destroy its own discord, health and 146:9 harmony have been sacrificed. Such systems are barren of the vitality of spiritual power, by which material ...
— Science and Health With Key to the Scriptures • Mary Baker Eddy
... dramatis personae[Lat]; repertoire. actor, thespian, player; method actor; stage player, strolling player; stager, performer; mime, mimer[obs3]; artists; comedian, tragedian; tragedienne, Roscius; star, movie star, star of stage and screen, superstar, idol, sex symbol; supporting actor, supporting cast; ham, hamfatter *[obs3]; masker[obs3]. pantomimist, clown harlequin, buffo[obs3], buffoon, farceur, grimacer, pantaloon, columbine; punchinello[obs3]; pulcinello[obs3], ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... Doctor had an idol in the world, it was his son George. The lad possessed the most amiable disposition, uniting to the talent and earnestness of the father, the gentle, endearing qualities of his mother. He was handsome, ...
— George Leatrim • Susanna Moodie
... Voltaire reaches the ludicrous, though we can seldom laugh with him. It led him once to compose one of the very dullest books in literature, Le Citateur, a string of anti-Christian gibes and arguments from his idol and others. ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 1 - From the Beginning to 1800 • George Saintsbury
... three years and a half as a married man he had learned that one does not always say everything that comes into one's mind. But he meditated on the abysses that lie between the masculine and feminine intellects. That it should be possible for anyone to wish to see a movie idol leaping into second-story windows, or being pulled from beneath flying express trains, on this day of destiny, ...
— Jimmie Higgins • Upton Sinclair
... sent a chill into Mrs. Payne's heart. The idea that this bright, delightful child, the idol of her hopes, was the victim of some obscure form of moral insanity frightened her. But she was a woman of courage and determined to know the worst. She took him to a ...
— The Tragic Bride • Francis Brett Young
... utterly destroyed the idols and images in Spain, except the idol in Andalusia, called Salamcadis. Cadis properly signifies the place of an island, but in Arabic it means God. The Saracens had a tradition that the idol Mahomet, which they worshipped, was made by himself in his lifetime; and that ...
— Mediaeval Tales • Various
... way, is a victim of Barrie MacDonald. He has mentally apportioned her to Somerled, as spoil of battle. His vicious wall-eyes regard with distrust and hatred other male creatures who dare to contend for the prize. If he could arrange an accident to the Dragon without injuring it (an idol only second in his heart to Somerled) or any one under its wing, except me and himself, I feel sure he would risk his own bones for the sake of cracking mine. As for my sister, he does not approve ...
— The Heather-Moon • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... contingency. Most of the officers liked, even though they did not fully trust him. They recognized that he had the necessary confidence in himself for success and also the touch of dramatic genius that may make of a soldier a public idol. ...
— Steve Yeager • William MacLeod Raine
... of God and the Bible talk as though such an outrage as burning sons and daughters in the fire to idol gods should not be visited with such punishment. Would they do any better? Could they manage such barbarous murderers better for the general good? If it was possible for a civil government to allow such characters the rights of citizenship ...
— The Christian Foundation, March, 1880
... now. But that's the way I cared. Now I know that I didn't care for you, really, at all. I built up an idol and worshiped it. I always saw you through a sort of haze. You were operating, with everybody standing by, saying how wonderful it was. Or you were coming to the wards, and everything was excitement, getting ready ...
— K • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... friends,—the most intimate friend I ever had, sister, out of this dear circle. He was a rough soldier, whom the world had not well treated; but he never railed at the world, and maintained that he had had his deserts. Honor was his idol, and the sense of honor paid him for ...
— The Caxtons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... and exaggerates American civilisation, we must bear in mind first that la vulgarite ne se traduit pas, and secondly, that the foes of our foemen are our friends. Woe be to the man who refuses to fall down and do worship before that brazen-faced idol (Eidolon Novi Mundi), Public Opinion in the States; unless, indeed, his name be Brown and ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 6 • Richard F. Burton
... fellow of whom the neighbourhood talked, who seemed to have left behind him such memories of energy and goodness, his mother's idol, had his bones too lain bleaching on that field of horror? It did ...
— Eleanor • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... child bearing the treasures demanded by the insatiable Kitty-mouse. Teddy insisted on going also, and seeing that all the others had toys, he tucked a squeaking lamb under one arm, and old Annabella under the other, little dreaming what anguish the latter idol was to give him. ...
— Little Men - Life at Plumfield With Jo's Boys • Louisa May Alcott
... Babylon, was wroth with Daniel, because he denied that Bel was a god. Meats were placed on the altar before the idol every night, and before morning they had vanished. "Therefore," said the king, "Bel must be a god." But Daniel got fine ashes and strewed the temple floor, and locked the doors. Next morning he came with the king to the temple, and when the doors were opened, ...
— The Village Pulpit, Volume II. Trinity to Advent • S. Baring-Gould
... unseen protectors of the harvest whom he propitiates in the little church of Conehagua by the offering of a candle, and in the depth of the forest, in some secluded spot of ancient sanctity, by libations of chicha, poured out, with strange dances, at the feet of some rudely sculptured idol which his fathers venerated before him, and which he inwardly believes will come out "all right" in the end, notwithstanding its present ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 30, April, 1860 • Various
... lonely woman sitting there so solitary beside her wintry fire. But Aunt Eunice asked no pity. If Hugh came once a week to spend the night, and once a day to see her, it was all that she desired, for Hugh was her darling, her idol, the object which kept her old heart warm and young with human love. For him she would endure any want or encounter any difficulty, and so it is not strange that in his dilemma regarding Adah Hastings, he intuitively turned to her, as the one of all others who would lend a helping hand. He ...
— Bad Hugh • Mary Jane Holmes
... the general public these things come easier than reading; and their good-humored contempt keeps us poor "littery gents" in our proper place and frame of mind. I have lately read somewhere about a man of letters who conceived himself to be the idol of the great and good-natured American people. They sent him the kindest letters, they invited him to lecture, but ah! when his publishers' accounts came in, he found there "To American sales: six and twopence!" [Laughter.] Here is ...
— Modern Eloquence: Vol II, After-Dinner Speeches E-O • Various
... He admires, but always with a reservation. Plato comes nearest to being his idol, Shakespeare next. But he says of all great men: "The power which they communicate is not theirs. When we are exalted by ideas, we do not owe this to Plato, but to the idea, to which also Plato ...
— Ralph Waldo Emerson • Oliver Wendell Holmes
... perhaps even—and I suspect it—Germany has seen enough results of his dangerous influence. It is only in certain dispositions of the mind, and in hours of exaltation, that recourse can be had to Klopstock, and that he can be felt. It is for this reason that he is the idol of youth, without, however, being by any means the happiest choice that they could make. Youth, which always aspires to something beyond real life, which avoids all stiffness of form, and finds all limits too narrow, lets itself be carried away with love, with delight, into the infinite ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... the light in which it appeared to him. "Intellectual and spiritual affection being all which he had to give, Mrs. Carlyle naturally looked on these at least as exclusively her own. She had once been his idol, she was now a household drudge, and the imaginative homage which had been once hers was given to another." Froude's posthumous championship of Mrs. Carlyle may have led him to magnify unduly the importance of domestic disagreements. ...
— The Life of Froude • Herbert Paul
... he remembered her restless brain and her many whims. He sent her the flowers which he knew she liked best, and told her that she was his life, that he was dying of waiting for her, of longing for her, for her, his idol. ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume II (of 8) • Guy de Maupassant
... America with the relics of Paine. Paine, the object of his abuse, had become his idol, not because Cobbett cared much for any abstract political theories, or for religious dogmas. Paine's merit was that he had attacked paper money. To Cobbett, as to Paine, it seemed that English banknotes were going the way of French assignats and the provincial currency of the Americans. This ...
— The English Utilitarians, Volume II (of 3) - James Mill • Leslie Stephen
... very dirty too, but perhaps it is not polite to say that. There was a sort of sideboard at one end of the room, with an embroidered dirty cloth on it, and on the cloth a bluey-white crockery image over a foot high. It was very fat and army and leggy, and I think it was an idol. The minute we got inside the young man lighted little brown sticks, and set them to burn in front of it. I suppose it was incense. There was a sort of long, wide, low sofa, without any arms or legs, ...
— New Treasure Seekers - or, The Bastable Children in Search of a Fortune • E. (Edith) Nesbit
... a son, a grown up man, an uncouth ill-looking ungainly fellow, who did no work, smoked and loafed about, but was the idol of his mother. He resembled neither parent in the least, and, except that such vagaries of nature are not unknown, it might have been supposed that some cuckoo had ...
— Fifty Years of Railway Life in England, Scotland and Ireland • Joseph Tatlow
... undone—Isak could not feel sure he had not dealt over hardly with that bundle. Whatever it might be—he was not sure he had acted rightly. Only just now he had been in the village, and seen his new harrow, a brand-new harrow he had ordered—oh, a wonderful machine, an idol to worship, and it had just come. A thing like that must carry a blessing with it. And the powers above, that guide the footsteps of men, might be watching him now at this moment, to see if he deserved a blessing or not. Isak gave much thought to the powers above; ay, he had ...
— Growth of the Soil • Knut Hamsun
... thought, mind. idole, f., idol. Idume, f., Idumaea. ignominie, f., ignominy, shame. ignorer, not to know. illustre, illustrious. image, f., image, vision. immobile, immovable. immoler, to sacrifice. immortel, -le, immortal. impie, impious. impit, f., impiety, the impious. impitoyable, pitiless. implacable, ...
— Esther • Jean Racine
... with dreariness and pain! He sat apart, his legs crossed, a hand over his eyes. Wilson and his men, puzzled by his apparent apathy, left him alone. It is not much use addressing a mute and wooden idol, no matter how ...
— The Fortunate Youth • William J. Locke
... Sourabaya, dispatched two frigates and a brig of war in search of the pirates. They were supposed to belong to some place on the coast of Borneo, which has for many years abounded with nests of these desperadoes. The fleet in question was supposed to belong to a famous chief, the very idol of his followers on account of the success of his expeditions. His title was the Rajah Raga, and he was brother to the Sultan Coti, a potentate of Borneo. The Raja Raga had subsequently some wonderful escapes, for he ...
— James Braithwaite, the Supercargo - The Story of his Adventures Ashore and Afloat • W.H.G. Kingston
... best secular works that were ever written upon the facilities and operations of the human mind, and the duties of men in their relations with each other, are those of Imam-ud-din Ghazzali, and Nasir-ud-din of Tus.[10] Their idol was Plato, but their works are of a more practical character than his, and less dry than ...
— Rambles and Recollections of an Indian Official • William Sleeman
... of gray moss had partially overspread its tarnished gilt surface, and a swallow, or other familiar little bird in some by-gone summer, seemed to have built its nest in the yawning and exaggerated mouth. It looked like a kind of Manichean idol, which might have been elevated on a pedestal for a century or so, enjoying the worship of its votaries in the open air, until the impious sect perished from among men,—all save old Dr. Dolliver, ...
— The Dolliver Romance • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... euphemistic name seem to date from the ninth and tenth centuries, during which much activity prevailed in South India in the matter of building Temples and elaborating the services held in them. . . . The duties then, as now, were to fan the idol with Tibetan ox-tails, to carry the sacred light, and to sing and dance before the god when he is carried in procession. Inscriptions show that in A.D. 1004 the great Temple of the Chola king at Tanjore had attached to it four hundred women of the Temple, who lived in free quarters ...
— Lotus Buds • Amy Carmichael
... few like her. So modest and retiring—with an earnest desire to do all the good in the world of which she was capable, but with no ambition to shine. Well fitted as she was, to be an ornament in any station of society, she seemed perfectly content to be the idol of her own family, and known to few besides. There were few subjects on which she had not thought, and her clear perceptions went at once to the bottom of a subject, so that she solved simply many a question on which astute philosophers had found themselves at fault. I came at last to regard her ...
— Friends and Neighbors - or Two Ways of Living in the World • Anonymous
... exalted; he bestows not his confidence on him who resists his will, nor subscribes to the advancement of one whom he does not hope to influence.—I may almost venture to add, that more dissimulation, meaner concessions, and more tortuous policy, are requisite to become the idol of the people, than are practised to acquire and preserve the favour of the most potent Monarch in Europe. The French, however, do not argue in this manner, and Rolland is at present very popular, and his popularity is said to be greatly supported by the ...
— A Residence in France During the Years 1792, 1793, 1794 and 1795, • An English Lady
... again till Charlemagne refounded the city. It was then placed on a pillar at the entrance to the Ponte Vecchio, and on this spot Buondelmonti was slain in 1215. The origin of the great feud between Guelph and Ghibelline was thus associated with the dreaded idol. During the inundation of 1333 the ...
— The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy • Jacob Burckhardt
... a drama of Action and of Spectacle, however, to which the Music is subordinate. Such a medley of drinking and praying, dancing and devotion, idol-worship and Delilah-craft, I had not before encountered. At least three hundred performers were at once on the stage. The dancing-girls engaged were not less than one hundred in number, apparently all between fourteen and eighteen years of age, generally good-looking, and with ...
— Glances at Europe - In a Series of Letters from Great Britain, France, Italy, - Switzerland, &c. During the Summer of 1851. • Horace Greeley
... bit the more do I understand you though. You talk most lover-like; that's very clear, yet I must say I never saw the part worse played. Why, here's your ladye-love, this self-same idol of whom you rave, at this moment perchance, breathing within these woods,—years too—two mortal years it must be, since you have seen her face; and yet—you stand here yet, with folded arms;—a goodly lover, ...
— The Bride of Fort Edward • Delia Bacon
... doubtful, was unquestionably illegitimate, and, therefore, by English as well as Irish law, wrongfully put in the place. On the other hand, a younger son Shane—called affectionately "Shane the Proud" by his clansmen—was unquestionably legitimate, and what was of much more importance, was already the idol of every fighting O'Neill from Lough Foyle to the ...
— The Story Of Ireland • Emily Lawless
... loud Vain idol of a scribbling crowd, Whose very name inspires an awe Whose ev'ry word is ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 1 • Boswell
... the charms of the three springs for their short-liv'd fate; Thine attire of past years to lay aside thou chang'st, a Taoist dress to don; How sad, alas! of a reputed house and noble kindred the scion, Alone, behold! she sleeps under a glimmering light, an old idol for mate. ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin
... condition, twin-born with greatness, Subjected to the breath of every fool. What infinite heart's ease must king's neglect, That private men enjoy! And what have kings, that privates have not too, Save ceremony, save general ceremony? And what art thou, thou idol ceremony? Art thou aught else but place, degree, and form, Creating awe and fear in other men? Wherein thou art less happy being fear'd Than they in fearing. What drink'st thou oft, instead of homage sweet, But poison'd flattery? O, be sick, great greatness, ...
— King Henry the Fifth - Arranged for Representation at the Princess's Theatre • William Shakespeare
... of religion and language, then, was among the pacific methods of spreading Pan-Turkism through the Empire. A monstrous idol was set up, a Hindenburg idol, in front of which all peoples and languages, not Christians alone, but Moslems, were bound to prostrate themselves. Indeed it was against Arabs mainly that these provisions were directed, for the Arabs constituted the most ...
— Crescent and Iron Cross • E. F. Benson
... Villiers imposed ignominious conditions of surrender upon Washington, but scorned to take other revenge for the death of his brother. He spared the life of Washington, who lived to become the leader and idol of his nation, which, but for the magnanimity of the noble Canadian, might have ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby |
