"Incense" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... ghastlier than words can fitly picture, these revolting figures began with wild chanting to make offerings to their gods, dancing and capering before the flame to an accompaniment of dismal music, burning some incense which polluted ...
— Prisoners of Chance - The Story of What Befell Geoffrey Benteen, Borderman, - through His Love for a Lady of France • Randall Parrish
... (a birthday present) struck five, Gwendolen French sprang out of bed and plunged her face into the clump of nettles which grew outside her lattice window. For some minutes she stood there, breathing in the incense of the day; then dressing quickly she went down into the great oak-beamed kitchen to prepare breakfast for her father and the pigs. As she went about her simple duties she sang softly to herself, a song of love and knightly ...
— Once a Week • Alan Alexander Milne
... that renunciation which is at the same time a sacrifice offered to the gods, and on which the gods themselves throw incense; and, it may be, it would never have been offered but for the knowledge that came to Lear in ...
— Shakespearean Tragedy - Lectures on Hamlet, Othello, King Lear, Macbeth • A. C. Bradley
... covered with hideous masks, some dancing, others jumping, or playing different games, drinking, and eating puddings, sausages, etc., offering them to the high-priest whilst he was celebrating high mass; also burning old shoes in the chalice, instead of incense, to produce a disagreeable scent; at length, elevated by wine, their orgies began to have the appearance of those of demons, roaring, howling, singing, and laughing until the walls of the church echoed with their yells. This ...
— How to Enjoy Paris in 1842 • F. Herve
... chanted and performed is my beau ideal of religious worship—simple, intelligible, and grand, appealing at the same time to the reason and the imagination. I prefer it infinitely to the Catholic service, for though I am fond of the bursts of music and the clouds of incense, I can't endure the undistinguishable sounds with which the priest mumbles over ...
— The Greville Memoirs - A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William IV, Vol. III • Charles C. F. Greville
... of the latter's "Sir Charles Grandison" with Meredith's "The Egoist." One is a portrait for the time, the other for all time. Both, superficially viewed, are the same type: a male paragon before whom a bevy of women burn incense. But O the difference! Grandison is serious to his author, while Meredith, in skinning Willoughby alive like another Marsyas, is once and for all making the worship of ...
— Masters of the English Novel - A Study Of Principles And Personalities • Richard Burton
... themselves in no bounds, and as freely and without controul inveighed against the person of the King, prophanely and blasphemously applying whatever had been spoken by God himself or the Prophets, against the most wicked and impious Kings, to incense and stir up the people against their most gracious Sovereign. Besides licensed divines, preaching and praying was at that time practiced by almost all men in the ...
— The Loyalists, Vol. 1-3 - An Historical Novel • Jane West
... of the old duke of Alva, and father of that nobleman, who subsequently acquired such gloomy celebrity by his conquests and cruelties in the Netherlands. The tender poet, Garcilasso de la Vega, offers sweet incense to the house of Toledo, in one of his pastorals, in which he mourns over the disastrous ...
— The History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella The Catholic, V3 • William H. Prescott
... walls a chapel stood; And there, in crypt below, With Warre's proud race, His gentle wife they laid, while monks with slow And solemn steps, with incense filled the place. The stern knight's sob was heard throughout the ...
— Rowena & Harold - A Romance in Rhyme of an Olden Time, of Hastyngs and Normanhurst • Wm. Stephen Pryer
... of war unless some one is pulling the other way. The savor of religion, like that of life itself, is in its contrasts. I thank God that we have them even within our own Communion. We are high-church and low-church and broad-church. We burn incense and we wear Geneva gowns. This diversity is not to be condemned. What is to be deprecated is the feeling among some of us that the diversity should give place to uniformity—to uniformity of their ...
— A Librarian's Open Shelf • Arthur E. Bostwick
... it stands in the narrow, dingy street, a beautiful, dreamy stranger, an exquisite foreign lady whose grace is a joy to the eye, the incense of whose breath makes the air enamored. May the hand wither ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 1 • Charles Dudley Warner
... wall of rounded pebbles down which the crystal ripples would fall, a miniature Talulah or Tuccoa. The chrism of nature had anointed her early life and consecrated her heart, but fate brought her to the vestibule of the temple of Mammon, and its defiling incense floated about her. How long would the consecration last? As she slowly limped about the house and grounds, acquainting herself with the details, she was impressed with the belief that happiness had once held her court here, had been dethroned, exiled ...
— St. Elmo • Augusta J. Evans
... the event, which properly should have preceded the cave-story, brought in subsequent to it. The sun nearly burns up the earth, and the earth is saved amid the smoke of incense from the pipes of the old men—the gods. And we are told that the increasing size of the earth has four times rendered it necessary that the sun should be put farther back from the earth. The clearer the atmosphere, the farther away ...
— Ragnarok: The Age of Fire and Gravel • Ignatius Donnelly
... the ceremony commenced. The priest, who was to be made into a bishop, had all sorts of things done to him. He knelt, he prayed, he was prayed over, he was read to, he had hands laid upon him, he was crossed; incense was thrown up, the organ played, and all the priests and bishops knelt and rose from their knees, and knelt and rose again, and again; high mass was said, and the show ...
— Travellers' Tales • Eliza Lee Follen
... like incense up To God the strong, God the beneficent, God ever mindful in all strife and strait, Who, for our own good, makes the need extreme, Till at the last He puts ...
— Browning as a Philosophical and Religious Teacher • Henry Jones
... said Joseph in dreamy undertones, "the midnight mass—incense and lights and the figures of saints, and wonderful painted windows, and a great multitude of weeping worshippers and music that wept with them, now shrill like the passionate cry of martyrs, now breathing the peace ...
— Dreamers of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... despoiled of his public functions and consigned to his honorary and available rights, but who nevertheless remains a prince.[1224]—He has his bench in the church, and his right of sepulture in the choir; the tapestry bears his coat of arms; they bestow on him incense, "holy water by distinction." Often, having founded the church, he is its patron, choosing the curate and claiming to control him; in the rural districts we see him advancing or retarding the hour of the ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 1 (of 6) - The Ancient Regime • Hippolyte A. Taine
... rice, camphor, and black and red scented powder; and close to it he piles the cocoanuts, sugar, camphor, cakes, betel-nuts, and marigolds which the Bhandari initiates have sent as an offering to Rama. He next produces a pile of incense-sprinkled cinders, which he places in front of the goddess, and several incense-cones which he lights, while Rama lays down a handful of light canes for use at the forthcoming ceremony. And while the rich scented smoke rises in clouds into the still night-air, shrouding the ...
— By-Ways of Bombay • S. M. Edwardes, C.V.O.
... was bow'd the monarch mild, Hearing the whisper'd words of the fair and panting child. —Could she be dear to him as dews to ocean are, Be in his wreath a leaf, on his robes a golden star! Could she as incense float around his eternal throne, Sound as the note of a hymn to his ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. 341, March, 1844, Vol. 55 • Various
... bottle is a crystal temple to the great god Bacchus and who may know what phantom lurks within, ready to rise and grow from the fumes of its fragrant incense into a nebulous wraith of gigantic proportions. Many a bottle such as this has made history and destroyed it. A sparkling essence of tears and jest, of romance and passion and war and grotesquerie, of treachery and irony and blood ...
— Diane of the Green Van • Leona Dalrymple
... of Absalom and Achitophel, is meant for Lord Howard, a profligate, who laid claim to great piety. As Nadab offered incense with strange fire and was slain, so Lord Howard, it is said, mixed the consecrated wafer with some roast ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook, Vol. 3 • E. Cobham Brewer
... without clouds—everything shining clear after rain, the scent of the flowers rising like incense so full and sweet that you could almost see it. The unnumbered birds were every one awake, responsive and emulous. The deep silence of midsummer was broken up. It was ...
— Red Axe • Samuel Rutherford Crockett
... Christian indeed, will, when the star of Bethlehem rises before his closed eyes, be mute beneath the image, or he will hail it in strains simple as were those of the shepherds watching their flocks by night when it appeared of old, high as were those of the sages who came from the East bearing incense to the Child in the Manger. Such are this Poet's strains, evolving themselves out of the few words—"Behold, the star, which they saw in the east, went before them, till it came and stood over where the young Child was. When they saw the star, they rejoiced ...
— Recreations of Christopher North, Volume 2 • John Wilson
... without song, and messenger of dawn, Circling above the hamlets as thy nest; Or else, departing dream, and shadowy form Of midnight vision, gathering up thy skirts; By night star-veiling, and by day Darkening the light and blotting out the sun; Go thou my incense upward from this hearth, And ask the gods to pardon this ...
— Walden, and On The Duty Of Civil Disobedience • Henry David Thoreau
... levels, ruined flumes, and roofless cabins of the earlier occupation, so that when Jackson Wells entered the wide, straggling street of Buckeye, that summer morning was filled with the radiance of its blossoms and fragrant with their incense. His first visit there, ten years ago, had been a purely perfunctory and hasty one, yet he remembered the ostentatious hotel, built in the "flush time" of its prosperity, and already in a green premature decay; he recalled the Express Office and Town Hall, also passing away in a kind of similar ...
— Openings in the Old Trail • Bret Harte
... many enforced halts had made it seem as if the whole city had been traversed. They were now before the porch of a house that was, if possible, even more magnificent than that of Calavius. Every column was twined with garlands, flowers hung in festoons from the architrave, incense steamed up from brazen tripods set on either side of the entrance. In front and around the entire insula, the streets were packed dense with a seething crowd, save only for a small space before the vestibule, where was stationed a guard of Africans equipped in the manner of Roman legionaries. ...
— The Lion's Brood • Duffield Osborne
... table, fringing it with sprays of the yellow brier buds and wands of copper beech now in its velvety perfection of youth. This morning, the moment that I crossed my bedroom threshold, the Jacqueminot odour wafted up. Is there anything more like the incense of praise to the flower lover? Not less individual than the voice of friends, or the song of familiar birds, is the perfume of flowers to those who live with them, and among roses none impress this characteristic more poignantly ...
— The Garden, You, and I • Mabel Osgood Wright
... unequal. The choirs came in from both sides of the altar twice, and formed themselves into a half circle on the floor of the church—as choirs used to do at the representations of the Greek plays of old. We were well-nigh suffocated with incense and the strange odour that emanates from a Russian peasant, and had begun to think of those queer little wooden beds in which we were to pass the night—and what a contrast the primitive cell was to that gorgeous glittering church—when we saw our ...
— Through Finland in Carts • Ethel Brilliana Alec-Tweedie
... one of his companions[A] communicated to me, confirm Garrick's account preserved in Dr. Bumey's collections, that "He was more dissolute in his conduct than his writings, and generally drove every female away by his ribaldry. He degenerated in London like an ill-transplanted shrub; the incense of the great spoiled his head, and their ragouts his stomach. He grew sickly and proud —an invalid in body and mind." Warburtou declared that "he was an irrecoverable scoundrel." Authenticated facts ...
— Literary Character of Men of Genius - Drawn from Their Own Feelings and Confessions • Isaac D'Israeli
... wicked purpose into execution. However this might be, no act of violence had been committed, and it was hoped by many and expected by more, that the royal mercy might yet be extended to preserve his life: but Northumberland spared no efforts to incense the king against his unhappy uncle; he also contrived by a course of amusements and festivities to divert him from serious thought; and on January 21st 1552, to the great regret of the common people and the dismay of the protestant party, the duke of Somerset ...
— Memoirs of the Court of Queen Elizabeth • Lucy Aikin
... religion of the isle, but with a sense and apprehension of its mystic power—a power that was still to be obeyed—obeyed by me, for why otherwise did I toil on with sorry horses to “where, for HER, the hundred altars glowed with Arabian incense, and breathed with the fragrance of garlands ever ...
— Eothen • A. W. Kinglake
... Hail be thou, Lord of high magnificence In tokening of priesthood, and dignity of office, To thee I offer a cup full of incense; For it behoveth thee ...
— Everyman and Other Old Religious Plays, with an Introduction • Anonymous
... tried burning down the churches, and then imprisoning the priests and bishops. But one day he suddenly got mad, and gave an order that if the people would not worship the Roman gods and offer incense to them, and swear that they no longer believed in Christ, his soldiers would kill them like beasts and leave them in the streets, as a ghastly warning to any other ...
— Stories of the Saints by Candle-Light • Vera C. Barclay
... Like the early Egyptians, the early Sumerians may have been in touch with Punt (Somaliland), which some regard as the cradle of the Mediterranean race. The Egyptians obtained from that sacred land incense-bearing trees which had magical potency. In a fragmentary Babylonian charm there is a reference to a sacred tree or bush at Eridu. Professor Sayce has suggested that it is the Biblical "Tree of Life" in the Garden of Eden. His translations of certain vital words, however, is sharply questioned ...
— Myths of Babylonia and Assyria • Donald A. Mackenzie
... serene as before. Turning to the veiled woman near her, she said, "We may not burn perfumes over these our honoured dead, but you, Zarah, my child, have brought living flowers for the burial, and their fragrance shall rise as incense. Cast them into the grave ere ...
— Hebrew Heroes - A Tale Founded on Jewish History • AKA A.L.O.E. A.L.O.E., Charlotte Maria Tucker
... hushed, slumb’ring air, Thy accents raise, For all his loving care Incense of praise; Thrilling with happiness, Full with content, Still asking His goodness, Prayer ...
— Records of Woodhall Spa and Neighbourhood - Historical, Anecdotal, Physiographical, and Archaeological, with Other Matter • J. Conway Walter
... ancients may expatiate upon the glories of a dish of peacock's tongues and their other rare and costly edibles, but they probably never knew to what heights one may ascend in the scale of gastronomic joys in the immediate presence of a baked Carmen. When it is broken open the steam ascends like incense from an altar, while at the magic touch the snowy, flaky substance billows forth upon the plate in a drift that would inspire the pen of a poet. The further preliminaries amount to a ceremony. There can be, there must be ...
— Reveries of a Schoolmaster • Francis B. Pearson
... Caroline found herself out of sight of the crowd almost before she was aware, and ushered into a narrow shady spot, embowered above with hawthorns, and enamelled under foot with daisies. She took no notice of the evening sun chequering the turf, nor was she sensible of the pure incense exhaling at this hour from tree and plant; she only heard the wicket opening at one end, and knew Robert was approaching. The long sprays of the hawthorns, shooting out before them, served as a screen. They ...
— Shirley • Charlotte Bronte
... to the sacred fowls, so Capitan Tiago would also consult his augurs, with the modifications befitting the times and the new truths, tie would watch closely the flame of the tapers, the smoke from the incense, the voice of the priest, and from it all attempt to forecast his luck. It was an admitted fact that he lost very few wagers, and in those cases it was due to the unlucky circumstance that the officiating priest was hoarse, or that the altar-candles were ...
— The Social Cancer - A Complete English Version of Noli Me Tangere • Jose Rizal
... with its contents, was hastily snatched from the deadly shade, and, supported by four large pebbles to serve as feet for the queer stew-pan, it was placed over the burning embers, and soon commenced to steam and squeak, spreading around an odorous incense, far pleasanter to the olfactories of the hungry party than either the fresh saline breeze, or the perfume of tropical flowers now and then wafted to them from the ...
— The Castaways • Captain Mayne Reid
... tramped along the river heights and looked down upon chatting groups below! How like airs of Araby the Blest the odors of steaming coffee! how more stimulating than breath of fair Spice Isles the pungent incense of hissing onions! ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, December, 1885 • Various
... bad accompaniment, was very sweetly sung, and the service beautifully read in the soft silence of that old, old church, with the thousand scents of the country floating in through the open doors and windows, like Nature's own incense entering the temple of ...
— Hollowdell Grange - Holiday Hours in a Country Home • George Manville Fenn
... trousers open from the hip, and with a chain of silver buttons down their flapping hems; his spurs, huge wheels with murderous spikes, were fringed with little bells that jangled as he rode,—and this to the accompaniment of much strumming of guitars and the incense of cigarros. ...
— In the Footprints of the Padres • Charles Warren Stoddard
... his army after the repulse by Lee. All he scored was the death of "Stonewall" Jackson, Lee's right hand, and that was an accident. As Lee invaded Maryland, all hopes of Hooker's dictatorship were dispersed in the battle smoke penetrating too far North to be pleasant incense to ...
— The Lincoln Story Book • Henry L. Williams
... death, so must I avail myself of this occasion to offer a last homage to the great poet, which will take place at four o'clock. Go to the mass, Herzberg, and tell me to-morrow how it went off—whether the priests make right pious faces and burn much incense. Adieu. Au ...
— Old Fritz and the New Era • Louise Muhlbach
... incense to her vanity, Afy nearly forgot her scruples. "Yes, he did," she answered, casting a smile of general ...
— East Lynne • Mrs. Henry Wood
... conscious of it. So far from cowering, her indignation was fast rising, and there was an ominous glow kindling in her dark eyes. Their seemingly unwarranted hostility and jealousy were beginning to incense her. She believed she had as much right there as they had, and she resolved to maintain her right. Catching an ireful glance from the girl in charge of the counter, she returned it with interest. Even this spark came very near ...
— Without a Home • E. P. Roe
... Edna with the old-time aggravating smile that was always warranted to further incense her opponent. It had its desired effect, for Edna fairly bristled with indignation and was about to make a furious reply when she was pushed aside by Eleanor, who said loftily, "Allow me to talk to this ...
— Grace Harlowe's Junior Year at High School - Or, Fast Friends in the Sororities • Jessie Graham Flower
... in an unguarded moment he'll do it yet. He could never be convinced that if a woman had fine clothes and carriages and bejewelled fingers and throat that she could wish for something else. To him a woman is property." She drew in her breath. "After a visit from him I need prayers and want incense. And I've asked him to eat John's ...
— Miss Gibbie Gault • Kate Langley Bosher
... low-hanging, heavy clouds, but almost with our start, as if to give us courage for our work and fire our blood, the leaden curtain was drawn aside and the deep blue dome of heaven rose above us. The sun shone warm and bright, and the smell of the fresh damp forest, the incense of the wilderness gods, was carried to us by a puff of wind from the south which enabled Duncan to hoist his sails. The rest of us bent to our paddles, and all were eager to plunge into the unknown and solve the mystery of what ...
— The Long Labrador Trail • Dillon Wallace
... wasted all its fire, And he who wro't that spell; Ah, towering pine and stately Kentish spire, Ye have one tale to tell. Lost is that camp, but let its fragrant story Blend with the breath that thrills With hop vines' incense all the pensive glory That fills the Kentish hills. And on that grave where English oak and holly And laurel wreath entwine, Deem it not all a too presumptuous folly, This spray ...
— Life's Enthusiasms • David Starr Jordan
... at the lilies, and one of them seemed to nod to her, and its perfumed breath rose up, until a delicate cloud, like incense, spread around her. ...
— Little Folks (November 1884) - A Magazine for the Young • Various
... read Hanscha a bit of poetry out of a furiously stained old volume of verse, so fragrantly beautiful, to him, this bit, that it wound around him like incense, the perfume of it going deeply and stinging ...
— The Vertical City • Fannie Hurst
... touch our writers most nearly are those of the modern English poets. It is the poets of the romantic movement who are thought of as suffering greatest injustice. Chatterton's extreme youth probably has helped to incense many against the cruelty that caused his death. [Footnote: See Shelley, Adonais; Coleridge, Monody on the Death of Chatterton; Keats, Sonnet on Chatterton; James Montgomery, Stanzas on Chatterton; Rossetti, Sonnet to Chatterton; Edward Dowden, Prologue to Maurice Gerothwohl's Version ...
— The Poet's Poet • Elizabeth Atkins
... shield and eagle, and at her feet lay the cornucopias, in her right hand she held the Indian calumet of peace supporting the cap of liberty; in the perspective appeared the temple of fame, and on her left hand an altar dedicated to public gratitude, upon which incense was burning. In her left hand she held a scroll inscribed Valedictory, and at the foot of the altar lay a plumed helmet and sword, from which a figure of General Washington, large as life, appeared, retiring down the steps, pointing with his right hand to the emblems ...
— Life And Times Of Washington, Volume 2 • John Frederick Schroeder and Benson John Lossing
... man they have made into the high priest of property and smug respectability, a divine sanction of all the horrors and abominations of modern commercial civilization! Jeweled images are made of him, sensual priests burn incense to him, and modern pirates of industry bring their dollars, wrung from the toil of helpless women and children, and build temples to him, and sit in cushioned seats and listen to his teachings expounded by doctors of ...
— The Jungle • Upton Sinclair
... profaned by heretics who might buy the ground and not wish to have them there, we determined to exhume them. They had been buried about a fortnight, and the weather was warm, so we provided ourselves with incense to burn in case there might be a foul odour. This precaution, however, was not necessary, as there was no smell perceptible, they were as fresh, so to speak, as if they were still alive. We remarked especially that the body of Brother ...
— Memoir • Fr. Vincent de Paul
... world becomes incense and doves,—in the silence and peace of that monastery, it may have been a few minutes or a decade,—and the second Tibetan whispers, "There is no need to wipe ...
— Edge of the Jungle • William Beebe
... silence in which she seemed to envelop him with her deep, luminous regard. The still, remote beauty of the winter woods, the notes of friendly birds, the sweet, wild music of the wind in the tree-tops, accompanied that look, as mystery and incense and ...
— The Side Of The Angels - A Novel • Basil King
... below me, clothing the gaunt loins Of ancient Caucasus with hairy strength, Sent up a murmur in the morning wind, 45 Sad as the wail that from the populous earth All day and night to high Olympus soars, Fit incense to ...
— The Vision of Sir Launfal - And Other Poems • James Russell Lowell
... Christ's mystical body, which is signified in this sacrament, that the angel standing by at the Divine mysteries may present to God the prayers of both priest and people, according to Apoc. 8:4: "And the smoke of the incense of the prayers of the saints ascended up before God, from the hand of the angel." But God's "altar on high" means either the Church triumphant, unto which we pray to be translated, or else God Himself, in Whom we ask to share; because it is said of this altar (Ex. 20:26): "Thou shalt not go up ...
— Summa Theologica, Part III (Tertia Pars) - From the Complete American Edition • Thomas Aquinas
... made a strong impression on the mind, but more than that I do not know. As to those of the future, I know even less; it is the work of the power of the air, whose name I whisper to myself when I pour out the incense, and to whom I pray. It is seldom that I show these pictures; he gets angry if called upon too often. I never do it unless I feel ...
— Rujub, the Juggler • G. A. Henty
... did she ever think of repairing the early neglect of her education. In this respect she was inferior, on the authority even of her apologists, to many ladies of the Court and city. Intoxicated as she had been by the fumes of the incense which flattery had wafted around her in the circle of the Hotel de Rambouillet, she probably had no perception of her failings on that essential point. The spontaneity of her wit, her natural aptitude to comprehend and decide upon all sorts ...
— Political Women (Vol. 1 of 2) • Sutherland Menzies
... subdues the wilderness may be, nay, is, the spirit of the missionary, but the mark of military occupation is a tremendous convincer of truth. The shotgun and the Bible worked side by side in the conquest of the Plains; the smell of powder was often the only incense on the altars, and human blood was sprinkled for holy water. Fort Wallace, with the Stars and Stripes afloat, looked good to me after that ten days in the trackless solitude. And yet I was disappointed, ...
— The Price of the Prairie - A Story of Kansas • Margaret Hill McCarter
... amonge his subjectes of this his said realme, by blasphemous and pestiferous englishe bokes, printed in other regions and sent into this realme, to the entent as well to perverte and withdrawe the people from the catholike and true fayth of Christe, as also to stirre and incense them to sedition and disobedience agaynst their princes, soveraignes, and heedes, as also to cause them to contempne and neglect all good lawes, customes, and vertuous maners, to the final subversion and desolacion of this ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 183, April 30, 1853 • Various
... desolate villages, where the crops rotted in the fields; they went through stricken towns whereof the moan and the stench rose in a foul incense to heaven; they crossed rivers where the very fish had died by thousands, poisoned of the dead that rolled seaward in their waters. The pleasant land had become a hell, and untouched, unharmed, they plodded onward through those ...
— Red Eve • H. Rider Haggard
... who surely knows. We have promised to have a new fish made of solid gold to replace the gilded wooden one, if he counsels us well and has a care over us while on the way. The priest is now in his cell burning incense before the God, and when the moon reaches that constellation in the middle of the heavens, he will tell ...
— The Shipwreck - A Story for the Young • Joseph Spillman
... madame, that I do not think there is a person in the world so generally esteemed as you are. You are the delight of humankind; antiquity would have erected altars to you, and you would certainly have been a goddess of something. In our century, when we are not so lavish with incense, and especially for living merit, we are contented to say that there is not a woman of your age more virtuous and more amiable than are you. I know princes of the blood, foreign princes, great lords with princely manners, ...
— Women of Modern France - Woman In All Ages And In All Countries • Hugo P. Thieme
... I was treated with great circumstance and worshipped like a god by the highest in the city, who came in to do me reverence and burned incense before me, till I was weary of the smell of it, for though such sorrow was on the land, the priests would abate no jot of their ceremonies or cruelties, and great hopes were held that I being of the race of Teules, my sacrifice would avert the anger ...
— Montezuma's Daughter • H. Rider Haggard
... pinks. Henceforward flower-gardens, the May sunshine, the birds in their nests, exquisite tints, radiant blossoms, boxes of orange trees and daphne odora, velvet petals upon which golden bees alight, the sacred odours of spring-tide, balms, incense, purling brooks, and soft green grass are associated with this bandit. The divine smile of nature ...
— The Memoirs of Victor Hugo • Victor Hugo
... appropriate amusement. The elegant gamester discovers his cards and his companions; the garrulous find listeners; the gossip retails, and imbibes, from a hundred sources, all the current scandal; vanity finds incense—beauty adoration; the young make love, or dance, or in groups give their spirits play in pleasantries, and raillery, and peals of animated laughter; their elders listen to the music, or watch the cards, ...
— The International Magazine, Volume 2, No. 2, January, 1851 • Various
... make thank-offering for mercies vouchsafed to them. Pindar refers to the hospitable young Corinthian women ministrants whose thoughts often turn towards Ourania Aphrodite[134] in whose temple they burned incense; and Athenaeus mentions the importance that was attached to the prayers of the Corinthian prostitutes in ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 6 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... would kneel down and pray; she would bow to the ikon, and her grey shadow on the wall would bow, too, so that two shadows prayed to God. And all the time there was a smell of roast meat and of the Finn's pipe, but once Klimov could detect a distinct smell of incense. He nearly vomited ...
— The House with the Mezzanine and Other Stories • Anton Tchekoff
... people who found lice in bald heads, demanded why the devil rested under the form of a canon, went to the Church of Notre Dame at the hours when the canons usually go, and ventured so far as to sniff the perfume of the incense, taste the holy water, and a thousand other things. To these heretical propositions some said that doubtless the devil wished to convert himself, and others that he remained in the shape of the canon to mock at the three nephews and heirs of this said brave confessor and make them wait until ...
— Droll Stories, Volume 1 • Honore de Balzac
... his heart stayed faithful to the girl he had so greatly loved. At every feast he went to the temple of the Marshal-of-the-Five-Ways, and burned incense, so that the pleasant smoke of it might ascend to the palace of the soul of little Victorious-Immortal. His fidelity touched even the rough heart of Chou and, when he came to die a few years later, his body was buried in the same tomb with her whom ...
— Eastern Shame Girl • Charles Georges Souli
... Hail be Thou, Lord of high magnificence! In tokening of priesthood and dignity of office, To Thee I offer a cupfull of incense, For it behoveth ...
— Fifteenth Century Prose and Verse • Various
... showers of seeds and grains and blossoms. On the third day, still in their wedding attire, and bearing lighted candles in their hands, they walked with the monks in a procession, round and round the new tower, the monks chanting, and sprinkling incense and holy water on its walls, the ceremony seeming to all devout beholders to give a blessed consecration to the union of the young pair as well as to the newly completed tower. After this they journeyed ...
— Ramona • Helen Hunt Jackson
... night of gentle rain the day broke radiantly, all Surrentum was in movement between church and harbour. Mass having been said, the bishop himself led the procession down the hollow way and through the chasm in the cliffs seaward, whilst psalms were chanted and incense burnt. Carried in her litter, Petronilla followed the bier; beside her walked Basil and Decius. Only by conscious effort could these two subdue their visages to a becoming sadness; for Basil thought of his ...
— Veranilda • George Gissing
... lingered there all day and for many days. She could not forget it nor cast it from her, and in spite of all her sorrow it uplifted her as she had been uplifted at times before when, reading the country newspaper, there had blossomed among its dry pages the perfume of a stray poem, whose incense entered into ...
— The Bishop of Cottontown - A Story of the Southern Cotton Mills • John Trotwood Moore
... April, about nine o'clock in the morning, we were seated at breakfast near the open window—we, that is Agnes, myself, and little Francis; the freshness of morning spirits rested upon us; the golden light of the morning sun illuminated the room; incense was floating through the air from the gorgeous flowers within and without the house; there in youthful happiness we sat gathered together, a family of love, and there we never sat again. Never again were we three gathered together, nor ever shall be, so long as the sun and its golden light—the ...
— The Uncollected Writings of Thomas de Quincey, Vol. 2 - With a Preface and Annotations by James Hogg • Thomas de Quincey
... painter's brush, the shy harebell, the tasselled windflower, and a few belated mountain roses. Long-stemmed, slender cornflowers and bluebells held up their faces to the sun, blue as the sky above them. Everywhere was an odour as of incense, the fragrance of the great hemlocks, of grasses frost-touched at night and sunburnt by day, of the unpolluted earth-mould ...
— The Cariboo Trail - A Chronicle of the Gold-fields of British Columbia • Agnes C. Laut
... being, all wisdom, love and beauty. But Mrs. Pendennis had one weakness,—pride of family. She spoke of Mr. Pendennis as if he had been the Pope of Rome on his throne, and she a cardinal kneeling at his feet, and giving him incense. Mr. Pendennis's brother, the Major, she held to be a sort of Bayard among Majors, and as for her son Arthur, she worshipped that youth with an ardour which the young scapegrace accepted almost as coolly as the statue of the saint in St. Peter's receives the rapturous kisses which ...
— Boys and girls from Thackeray • Kate Dickinson Sweetser
... Torah! There it is written: 'God is one, Jehovah! He is not satisfied with your sacrifices, singing, and incense, but he requires from you a love of the truth, to defend the oppressed, to teach the ignorant, and heal the sick, because ...
— An Obscure Apostle - A Dramatic Story • Eliza Orzeszko
... business was still flourishing, thanks to the custom of all the pious folk of the neighbourhood. The truth was, that one sometimes espied black cassocks stealthily crossing that mysterious shop, where all the aromatic herbs set a perfume of incense. A kind of cloistral quietude pervaded the place; the devotees who came in spoke in low voices, as if in a confessional, slipped their purchases into their bags furtively, and went off with downcast eyes. Unfortunately, some very ...
— His Masterpiece • Emile Zola
... Christian temple, with its heavy arches, arcades, galleries, colonnades, and Protean gloom. "A grave and dreamy structure," says Dickens, "of immense proportions; golden with old mosaics; redolent of perfumes; dim with the smoke of incense; costly in treasures of precious stones and metals, glittering through iron bars; holy with the bodies of deceased saints; rainbow-hued with windows of stained glass; dark with carved woods and coloured ...
— Fair Italy, the Riviera and Monte Carlo • W. Cope Devereux
... rites mysterious served the Power divine, Prepared the altar and adorn'd the shrine, Responsive hail'd, with still returning praise, Each circling season that the God displays, Sooth'd with funereal hymns the parting dead, At nuptial feasts the joyful chorus led; While evening incense and the morning song Rose from his hand or trembled ...
— The Columbiad • Joel Barlow
... nonpatriotic odour, she might hope to have the estates. The duchess had obtained this mercy for her, and it was much; for Giacomo's scheme of revolt had been conceived with a subtlety of genius, and contrived on a scale sufficient to incense any despotic lord of such a glorious milch-cow as Lombardy. Unhappily the signora was more inspired by the remembrance of her husband than by consideration for her children. She received disaffected persons: she subscribed her money ostentatiously for notoriously patriotic purposes; and ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... of an old-time mansion in Russell Square. The smell of incense or some kindred perfume was at once about one; and, on the walls of the dark hall, electric light burned, in jars of alabaster picked up in the East. The whole place was in fact a sanctum of the collector's spirit. Its owner had a passion for black—the walls, divans, picture-frames, ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... sacrifice, receive them; Two beings here erect them unto thee. If thou lov'st blood, the shepherd's shrine, which smokes On my right hand, hath shed it for thy service In the first of his flock, whose limbs now reek In sanguinary incense to thy skies; Or, if the sweet and blooming fruits of earth, And milder seasons, which the unstained turf 260 I spread them on now offers in the face Of the broad sun which ripened them, may seem Good to thee—inasmuch as they have ...
— The Works of Lord Byron - Poetry, Volume V. • Lord Byron
... go to that place to which {others} have gone before, why in the blindness of your mind do you torment your wretched existence? To you I address myself, Miser, joy of your heir,[28] who rob the Gods of their incense, yourself of food; who hear with sorrow the musical sound of the lyre; whom the joyous notes of the pipes torment; from whom the price of provisions extorts a groan;[29] who, while adding some farthings to your estate, offend heaven by your sordid perjuries; ...
— The Fables of Phdrus - Literally translated into English prose with notes • Phaedrus
... great cataract sends up to heaven Its sprayey incense in perpetual cloud, Thy wings in twain the sacred bow have riven, And onward sailed irreverently proud! Unflinching bird! No frigid clime congeals The fervid blood that riots in thy veins; No torrid sun thine upborne nature feels— The North, the ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 2 August 1848 • Various
... been in the Lease that only people with aesthetic tastes were to be admitted to the apartments. However that may be, the fireplace, with its vases and pictures and trinkets, was something quite wonderful. Indian incense burned in a mysterious little dish, pictures of purple ladies were hung in odd corners, calendars in letters nobody could read, served to decorate, if not to educate, and glass vases of strange colours and extraordinary shapes stood about ...
— The Children's Book of Christmas Stories • Various
... found himself alone, free, with days and days ahead of him to work and think, gradually to rid his limbs of the stiff attitudes of the automaton. The smell of the streets, and the mist, indefinably poignant, rose like incense smoke in fantastic spirals through his brain, making him hungry and dazzled, making his arms and legs feel lithe and as ready for delight as a crouching cat for a spring. His heavy shoes beat out a dance as they clattered on the wet pavements under ...
— Three Soldiers • John Dos Passos
... spot where we stand, a box in white wood provided with handles, a sort of sedan-chair, rests on the freshly disturbed earth, with its lotus of silvered paper, and the little incense-sticks burning yet, by its side; clearly someone has been buried here ...
— Madame Chrysantheme • Pierre Loti
... Billy somewhere and made him forget his hunger. Like a sweet incense which induces pleasant daydreams they were wafted in upon him through the rich, mellow voice of the solitary camper, and the lilt of the meter entered ...
— The Mucker • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... daily service by the priests was of seven parts. 1st. Fire-making—rubbing the fire sticks, taking the censer, putting incense in it, and lighting it. 2nd. Opening the Shrine—going up to the shrine, loosening the fastening, and breaking the seal, opening the door, seeing the god. 3rd. Praise—various prostrations, and then singing a hymn to the god. 4th. Supplying ...
— The Religion of Ancient Egypt • W. M. Flinders Petrie
... oracion, to drawe vn- to theim the hartes of a multitude, to plucke doune and extir- pate affeccio[n]s and perturbacions of people, to moue pitee and compassion, to speake before Princes and rulers, and to per- swade theim in good causes and enterprises, to animate and incense them, to godlie affaires and busines, to alter the cou[n]- saill of kynges, by their wisedome and eloquence, to a better state, and also to be exquisite in thother, is a thing of all most [Sidenote: Demosthe- nes. Tisias. Gorgias. Eschines[.] Tullie. Cato.] noble and ...
— A booke called the Foundacion of Rhetorike • Richard Rainolde
... flatterers and admirers; and he, on his part, was far too much taken up with his newly-inherited fortune—which he evidently considered inexhaustible—with planning amusements, and inhaling adulatory incense, to pay attention to a man whom, as full fifteen years his senior, he doubtless set down as an old fellow, a "slow coach," and perhaps even as a member of that distinguished corporation known as the "Fogie Club." So that when we met in London, during the ensuing season, occasionally ...
— Tales from Blackwood, Volume 7 • Various
... a humiliating confession to make, yet it is surely true that we are all accessible to flattery. Different tastes appreciate different methods of burning incense—but the perfume is more or less agreeable to all varieties of noses. Francine's method had its tranquilizing effect on Emily. She answered indulgently, "Miss de Sor, I have nothing ...
— I Say No • Wilkie Collins
... happened, being Jill's palace, in which, lying full length upon a white divan, with a small brazier of sweet smelling incense sending up spirals of blue haze around her dishevelled head, and an ivory tray laden with coffee and sweetmeats at her side, she promised never to run the risk of getting lost in the desert again, on condition that the Breeze of the Desert ...
— Desert Love • Joan Conquest
... fancies, blending one with another; of battered pillars of old Pagan temples, dug up from the ground, and forced, like giant captives, to support the roofs of Christian churches; of pictures, bad, and wonderful, and impious, and ridiculous; of kneeling people, curling incense, tinkling bells, and sometimes (but not often) of a swelling organ; of Madonne, with their breasts stuck full of swords, arranged in a half-circle like a modern fan; of actual skeletons of dead saints, hideously attired in gaudy satins, silks, and ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume 7 - Italy, Sicily, and Greece (Part One) • Various
... and if every tune was pitched to the self-same key, even the tenderest, what a monotonous, dreary world it would be to live and sing in after all. Perhaps a man might make himself a little shrine not wholly without sweet savour of pure incense for beautiful, stately, queenlike Hilda Tregellis too! But no; I mustn't think of it. I have no other duty or prospect in life possible as yet while dear little Miss Butterfly ...
— Philistia • Grant Allen
... religion. A Protestant and a liberal, her spiritualist faith now found support in the moral strength of Christianity. She was not, like Chateaubriand, an epicurean and a Catholic; she did not care to decorate religion with flowers, or make it fragrant with incense; it spoke to her not through the senses, but directly to the conscience, the affections, and the will. In the chapters of her book on Germany which treat of "the religion of enthusiasm," her ...
— A History of French Literature - Short Histories of the Literatures of the World: II. • Edward Dowden
... at the palace had been brilliant and sustaining and she had received much personal homage, for she was looking very beautiful and radiant, and the little adventure had been incense to her pride (moreover the young Freifrau von Nettelbeck, whom she saw on his arm later, was an insignificant little hausfrau); but when she was in her room after midnight she realized grimly that if she had not done her work so well during that terrible month in New York and buried her ...
— The White Morning • Gertrude Atherton
... by which so many of us turn our memories into a cause of weakness, if not of sin. There are people, and we are all tempted to be of the number, who look back upon the past and see nothing there but themselves, their own cleverness, their own success; 'burning incense to their own net, and sacrificing to their own drag.' Another mood leads us to look back into the past dolefully and disappointedly, to say, 'I have broken down so often; my resolutions have all gone to ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... become one of His tabernacles. At that moment I heard the songs of angels, I was more than a woman, born to a life of light amid the acclamations of the whole earth, admired by the world in a cloud of incense and prayers that were intoxicating, adorned like a ...
— Scenes from a Courtesan's Life • Honore de Balzac
... every house, every city, and every province.[70] These genii are considered as good, beneficent,[71] and worthy of the worship of those who invoke them. They were represented sometimes under the form of a serpent, sometimes as a child or a youth. Flowers, incense, cakes, and wine were offered to them.[72] Men swore by the names of the genii.[73] It was a great crime to perjure one's self after having sworn by the genius of the emperor, says Tertullian;[74] Citius apud vos per omnes Deos, quam ...
— The Phantom World - or, The philosophy of spirits, apparitions, &c, &c. • Augustin Calmet
... of art as it has are not very noticeable, or at any rate do not insist upon being seen; but in its vastness it overpowers. Great as are some of the churches of Florence, I suppose three or four of them could be packed within this one. And mere size with a dim light and a savour of incense is enough: it carries religion. No need for masses and chants or any ceremony whatever: the world is shut out, one is on terms with the infinite. A forest exercises the same spell; among mountains one feels it; but in such a cathedral as the ...
— A Wanderer in Florence • E. V. Lucas
... mountain, the little copse and the grass under it, and delicate little flowers among the grass. List to the lark's song in the heavens, the wind soughing in the trees, the whispering of the leaves. In the air there is a mysterious incense spread from God's censers, the very language of mystery. Now you see far into the beauty of the world and hear tidings from afar. All the horizons of your senses have been extended. Are you not glad for all these ...
— A Tramp's Sketches • Stephen Graham
... resin from trees and shrubs of the genus Commiphora of India, Arabia, and eastern Africa, used in perfume and incense. ...
— Mother's Remedies - Over One Thousand Tried and Tested Remedies from Mothers - of the United States and Canada • T. J. Ritter
... every secret thought lay exposed. The entire scene was a deeply impressive one; and when I saw, in witnessing the celebration of high mass in a Popish cathedral many years after, the altar suddenly enveloped in a dim and picturesque obscurity, amid which the curling smoke of the incense ascended, and heard the musically-modulated prayer sounding in the distance from within the screen, my thoughts reverted to the rude Highland cottage, where, amid solemnities not theatric, the red umbry light of the fire fell with uncertain glimmer upon dark walls, and bare black ...
— My Schools and Schoolmasters - or The Story of my Education. • Hugh Miller
... o'er the swelling wave, and, lo! The lake was overspread with blooming stars, Or snowy golden-centred cups, that rocked And spilled the choicest incense. Adam cried, 'The Lily;' but the sweet voice at his side, Grown tremulous and faint with overjoy, Could only whisper, 'Purity.' Then quick, With restless hands, she culled the floral star— Queen of the wave—emblem ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 3 No 2, February 1863 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... the king himself, using for the purpose a knife to the handle of which small bells were attached. With this he laid bare the hair, to show that the animal was of the required colour, inflicted the wound of death, and cut away the fat, which was burned along with southernwood to increase the incense and fragrance. Other victims were numerous, and the fifth ode of the second decade, Part II, describes all engaged in the service as greatly exhausted with what they had to do, flaying the carcases, boiling the flesh, roasting it, broiling it, arranging it on trays and stands, and setting ...
— The Shih King • James Legge |
