"Primitive" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Mr. Farish and Mr. Smedley were very agreeable and entertaining, and did very well together, though such different persons. Mr. Farish is the most primitive, simple-hearted man I ...
— The Life And Letters Of Maria Edgeworth, Vol. 1 • Maria Edgeworth
... instantly communicated to Ireland, and we are equally sure that almost every successive improvement in constitutional liberty, as fast as it was made here, was transmitted thither. The feudal baronage and the feudal knighthood, the roots of our primitive Constitution, were early transplanted into that soil, and grew and flourished there. Magna Charta, if it did not give us originally the House of Commons, gave us at least a House of Commons of weight and consequence. But your ancestors did not churlishly sit down ...
— Burke's Speech on Conciliation with America • Edmund Burke
... The primitive population around Greencombe had never seen the duke, or any of his family, who preferred to reside at Hereward Hold, in Devonshire, or their town-house in Piccadilly, leaving their small Sussex place in charge of a land-steward ...
— The Lost Lady of Lone • E.D.E.N. Southworth
... inhabited by the Keltic nation, until they were dispossessed by the more resolute tribes of Teuton origin, and driven to the extreme West, where the barrier of rugged hills that guards the continent from the Atlantic waves has likewise protected this primitive race from extinction. ...
— Cameos from English History, from Rollo to Edward II • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... bit back a laugh. It was all very primitive, very savage, she told herself; it was, above all, different from any of the life that she had known, and yet, in a mysterious way, it was familiar, as if the unrestrained emotion in his voice stirred some racial ...
— The Deliverance; A Romance of the Virginia Tobacco Fields • Ellen Glasgow
... Christian equality, which we have been getting farther away from since the days of the Primitive Church, can prevent this subdivision of society into classes from taking place everywhere,—in the great centres of our republic as much as in old European monarchies. Only there position is more absolutely hereditary,—here it is more ...
— The Professor at the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes (Sr.)
... charge. My instances are gathered from half a dozen pages of the tale called Deerslayer. He uses "verbal," for "oral"; "precision," for "facility"; "phenomena," for "marvels"; "necessary," for "predetermined"; "unsophisticated," for "primitive"; "preparation," for "expectancy"; "rebuked," for "subdued"; "dependent on," for "resulting from"; "fact," for "condition"; "fact," for "conjecture"; "precaution," for "caution"; "explain," for "determine"; "mortified," ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... anything appertaining to the secular welfare of the parishioners was made public. I do not state this to criticise it. It was in some degree a recognition of the charity which ought to realise the sympathy in each other's welfare which we ought all to display. It was in those primitive times and localities a specimen of the simplicity and well-meant interest in the welfare of the neighbour as well as of oneself, although perhaps the secular sometimes did ...
— The Parish Clerk (1907) • Peter Hampson Ditchfield
... it too runs back to antiquity and the primitive struggles of rival families of Navarre and Labourt. The Alzates have been lords of Vera ever ...
— Youth and Egolatry • Pio Baroja
... Jim's father had said. She might have moved in well-trodden ways, through gardens of pleasure, lived a life where all would be made easy, where she would be shielded at every turn, and her beauty would be flattered by luxury into a constant glow. She was not so primitive, so unintellectual, as not to have thought of this, else her decision would have had less importance; she would have been no more than an infatuated, emotional woman with a touch of second-class drama in her ...
— Northern Lights • Gilbert Parker
... was rough and bare, of the most primitive order, and like a thousand other dens of its kind, consisted of a large room with adobe walls, a rude bar of boards, piles of kegs in a corner, a stove, and ...
— The Rustlers of Pecos County • Zane Grey
... insight into the mining life as it was, they are, of course, infinitely more helpful to us than the perverse romanticism of a thousand such tales as Mr. Bret Harte's, tales that, as the world knows, were not the result of any personal experience of really primitive conditions. ...
— The Shirley Letters from California Mines in 1851-52 • Louise Amelia Knapp Smith Clappe
... what such things might mean. "The Christian—in speculative belief—fails under the challenge of life as often as other men. Surely it depends on something infinitely more primitive and fundamental than Christianity?—something out of which Christianity itself springs? But this something—does it really exist—or am I only cheating myself by fancying it? Is it, as all the sages have ...
— The Marriage of William Ashe • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... of the temple of Vesta reminds us that it is time to face about, and, passing behind the temple of Julius, to look in the opposite direction, from V. Before us lies this circular shrine, a form gradually developed from the primitive round hut which once served as house to the prehistoric ancestors of the Roman stock. As it was the duty of the maiden daughters of that ancient tribe to keep alight the fire upon the domestic hearth, so through all the history of Rome it was the duty of certain chosen virgins to keep perpetually ...
— Life in the Roman World of Nero and St. Paul • T. G. Tucker
... light, nor leave their game exposed to its action. We ourselves have not outgrown such words as lunatic, moon-struck, and the like. Where did we get these ideas? The philosophical historian of medicine, Kurt Sprengel, traces them to the primitive and popular medical theories of ancient Egypt, in accordance with which all maladies were the effects of the anger of the goddess Isis, the moisture, the moon." [378] Perhaps Dr. Brinton's own Mexican myth is a better elucidation of this ...
— Moon Lore • Timothy Harley
... one of the most primitive of our industries. From the very earliest period, ever since man began to keep domestic cattle, he has been familiar with dairying. During these many centuries certain methods of procedure have been developed which produce desired results. These methods, however, ...
— The Story Of Germ Life • H. W. Conn
... we commit to your fraternity, according to ancient custom, under God, our vicariate in the churches which are under the dominion of our most excellent son Childebert, with the understanding that their proper dignity, according to primitive usage, be preserved to the several metropolitans. We have also sent a pallium which thy fraternity will use within the Church for the solemnization of mass only. Further, if any of the bishops should by any ...
— A Source Book for Ancient Church History • Joseph Cullen Ayer, Jr., Ph.D.
... love) desire a Christianity that will go with them to the halls of pleasure; that will dine with them at the banquets; that will smile on them as they walk in the ways of sin and worldliness, calming their fears with her flattering words and peace offerings. Primitive Christianity, they consider, was good enough for primitive days, but she would be a horrid enough old maid in these days of progress. In this fast driving age the Christianity that crowned the life of the holy apostles is altogether too antiquated. ...
— The Gospel Day • Charles Ebert Orr
... going," he cried back; "all your things will be soaked. Never mind the supper, come and help me." And it seemed in this moment of tumult, that Susan ceased to be a woman to be cared for and protected and became his equal, fighting with him against the forces of the primitive world. The traditions of her helplessness were stripped from her, and he called her to his aid as the cave man called his woman when the storm fell on ...
— The Emigrant Trail • Geraldine Bonner
... without the heavy baggage of the ponderous-minded scholar, and the reader who embarks with me on the "long cruise" need bring with him only an open mind and a love for the strange and picturesque. He will come back, I hope, as I did, with some glimpses into the primitive customs of the long-forgotten ancestors of the white race, a deeper wonder at the mysteries of the world, and a memory of sun-steeped days on white beaches, of palms and orchids and the childlike savage peoples who live in the bread-fruit groves of ...
— White Shadows in the South Seas • Frederick O'Brien
... connected with the art of printing has done more toward the advancement of that art than the simple inking appliance familiarly and commonly known as "the printer's roller,"—without which, indeed, the evolution of the power printing press from the primitive hand machines of the fathers would not have been possible,—it is an inexplicable truth that historians and encyclopaedia makers who have made investigation of the origin and progress of the art seem to have attached so little of importance to the invention ...
— The Building of a Book • Various
... during our sixth week in Galveston, when, happening to pass one of these primitive crematories, I stopped to interview the man in charge. Boards, water-soaked mattresses, rags of blankets and curtains, part of a piano, baby-carriages, and the framework of sewing-machines, piled on top, gave ...
— A Story of the Red Cross - Glimpses of Field Work • Clara Barton
... and it is only by the consensus of their evidence that we get the ethical picture which I shall try to outline for you. Altogether there are probably about five thousand different species of ants, and these different species represent many different stages of social evolution, from the most primitive and savage up to the most highly civilized and moral. The details of the following picture are furnished by a number of the highest species only; that must not be forgotten. Also, I must remind you that the morality ...
— Books and Habits from the Lectures of Lafcadio Hearn • Lafcadio Hearn
... allegory has reference to the idolatrous practices of the ignorant primitive Christians, such as the worship of images of the Saints, the pageant of the wooden ass during Lent (see Matthew, xxi, and Brand's Popular Antiquities, i, 124), and the Feast of the Ass ...
— Spenser's The Faerie Queene, Book I • Edmund Spenser
... tale of murder is told with holy horror by Dr. Gaspar Fructuoso, and the islanders are still nicknamed 'prophetas.' Foreigners, however, who have lately visited them, speak highly of their simple primitive ways. ...
— To the Gold Coast for Gold - A Personal Narrative in Two Volumes.—Vol. I • Richard F. Burton
... It is clear indeed that the two must largely go together, acting and reacting on each other. Whatever the physical conditions of the animal brain may be which connect themselves with simple (unreflected and unreflecting) consciousness, it is evident that these conditions—in animals and primitive man—lasted for an enormous period, before the distinct consciousness of the individual and separate SELF arose. This second order of consciousness seems to have germinated at or about the same period as the discovery of the use of Tools (tools of stone, copper, bronze, &c.), the adoption of picture-writing ...
— Pagan & Christian Creeds - Their Origin and Meaning • Edward Carpenter
... forth also that Jesus forbids heaven to none, that it is the soul herself who, deeming herself unworthy to attain it, flings herself by her own motion into Purgatory there to cleanse herself, for she has only one end, to re-establish herself in her primitive purity, only one desire, to attain her last end, by destroying herself, annihilating herself, ...
— En Route • J.-K. (Joris-Karl) Huysmans
... assured that it is only among the singular beings of these lowest classes, and especially in the lowest orders of these classes, that it is possible to find on both sides the primitive germs of life, and consequently the germs of the most important faculties ...
— Lamarck, the Founder of Evolution - His Life and Work • Alpheus Spring Packard
... she rode El Capitan slowly along the little village streets that lay so dusty and flat and that ended so quickly in the open country, she caught herself wondering how long the dream would endure. The farms, too, with their new green fields and their primitive, pioneer shacks, tent houses and shelters and their acres of still unimproved land, all lying under the white blaze of the semi-tropical sun, were they more than a mirage weirdly painted in the air by the spirit of the dreadful land to lure ...
— The Winning of Barbara Worth • Harold B Wright
... Under the primitive conditions of which we speak a river of moderate depth, not too rapid in its current and perennial in its supply, is much the best means by which men may communicate. It will easily carry, by the exertions of a couple of men, some hundred times ...
— The Historic Thames • Hilaire Belloc
... The primitive man, the Arab, is instability incarnate. A breath, a nothing, governs him at each instant in war. The civilized man, in war, which is opposed to civilization, returns naturally to ...
— Battle Studies • Colonel Charles-Jean-Jacques-Joseph Ardant du Picq
... question. It occurred to me that we could hardly do better than ask Rivarez to undertake the management of our own smuggling. That press at Pistoja is very inefficiently managed, to my thinking; and the way the leaflets are taken across, always rolled in those everlasting cigars, is more than primitive." ...
— The Gadfly • E. L. Voynich
... steps, picturesque yet solid,—a great massive pedestal, as it were, supporting mountain piled on mountain, with caps of snow whitening their summits, and great glaciers hanging on their sides. Before us lay the town,—built upon a gnarled spur of primitive rock, which seemed to have crept from underneath the lofty cliffs, as a serpent from its hiding-place, and, after wriggling through the sea, to have stopped at length, when it had almost completely enclosed a beautiful sheet of water about a mile long by half a mile broad, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 117, July, 1867. • Various
... The primitive African faith seems to be that there is one Almighty Maker of heaven and earth; that he has given the various plants of earth to man to be employed as mediators between him and the spirit world, where all who have ever been ...
— A Popular Account of Dr. Livingstone's Expedition to the Zambesi and Its Tributaries • David Livingstone
... present," said Raphael Ristofalo. Richling dropped his eyes in thought. The present! He had never been able to see that it was the present which must be provided against, until, while he was training his guns upon the future, the most primitive wants of the present burst upon him right and ...
— Dr. Sevier • George W. Cable
... happy, loving you," he added, and smiled down at her reassuringly. But he had for all that a wild primitive impulse which almost overcame him for a moment, to pick her up in his arms and carry her out the door and away with him. Somewhere, anywhere. Away from that grim old house, and that despotic little man, to liberty and happiness ...
— A Poor Wise Man • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... Austria-Hungary, and whereas, as has just been proved (no indication as to how or when it has been proved), Austrian and Hungarian subjects in Belgium have been obliged to submit, under the very eyes of the Belgian authorities, to treatment contrary to the most primitive demands of humanity and inadmissible even toward subjects of an enemy State, therefore Austria is obliged to break off diplomatic relations and considers herself from this moment in a state of ...
— A Journal From Our Legation in Belgium • Hugh Gibson
... Revolution on its idealistic side more strikingly than Fabre d'Eglantine's nomenclature of the months for the Revolutionary Calendar. Although slightly tinged with pedantism and preciosity, its freshness, its grace, its inspiration and sincerity, give it a flavour almost of primitive art. It remains one of the few notable ...
— The French Revolution - A Short History • R. M. Johnston
... of information, which were to be found only in the north of Europe, and in the west of Ireland and Scotland. In another particular they all failed of success; they never discovered some of the principal modes in which the primitive radical words were combined to form the more modern compounds. On this subject, therefore, almost everything remains to be done.... I can assure the American public that the errors in Johnson's Dictionary are ten ...
— Noah Webster - American Men of Letters • Horace E. Scudder
... may be defined. The material evidences of civilization are all around us. Primitive man faced an unknown world. Civilization is expressed in a variety of ways. Modern civilization includes some fundamentals. Progress an essential characteristic of civilization. Diversity is necessary to progress. What is the goal of civilized man? Possibilities of civilization. ...
— History of Human Society • Frank W. Blackmar
... bold and beautiful rivers. The brook trout are the fish which mostly inhabit them, and, a singular fact, in many of these streams this kind of fish treat the presence of a man with perfect indifference, which has led me to believe, that in their primitive state, the "shy trout" fear neither man nor beast. The Indians catch them, and it may be that this fish is first frightened by them. In the Rocky Mountains, south of the head waters of the Arkansas, comparatively ...
— The Life and Adventures of Kit Carson, the Nestor of the Rocky Mountains, from Facts Narrated by Himself • De Witt C. Peters
... From here, by reaching a long arm, she could gather some fine specimens of the bog bean. She pulled it up in handfuls, with trailing oozy stalks. As she turned to grip the alder branch before venturing back over her primitive bridge, her eye suddenly caught sight of a large nest built at the extreme brink of the water. It held four browny-speckled eggs, and an agitated moorhen, seeking cover among the reeds, gave ...
— The Madcap of the School • Angela Brazil
... paused a moment, then started boldly forward with upraised hands. Then a curious thing happened. A sharp cry arose far off down toward the swamp and the sound of great footsteps coming, coming as from the end of the world; there swelled a rhythmical chanting, wilder and more primitive than song. On, on it came, until it swung into sight. An old man led the band—tall, massive, with tufted gray hair and wrinkled leathery skin, and his eyes were the eyes of death. He reached the circle of light, and Zora started: once ...
— The Quest of the Silver Fleece - A Novel • W. E. B. Du Bois
... natives on a remote island in the Pacific, proceeds apace and with little regard for the susceptibilities of civilisation and refinement. Familiar but rarely printed language is used when occasion demands; primitive passions stalk naked and unashamed; and when murder is to be done it is done brutally, forthwith and notwithstanding the respective merits, from an heroic point of view, of active and passive agents. Being myself so situated in life that I am never likely ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, May 6, 1914 • Various
... applied—frequently as an epithet—indiscriminately to persons of widely differing, and often conflicting, views. Every one who complained of social inequalities, every dreamer of social Utopias, was called a Socialist. The enthusiastic Christian, pleading for a return to the faith and practices of primitive Christianity, and the aggressive atheist, proclaiming religion to be the bulwark of the world's wrongs; the State worshiper, who would extol Law, and spread the net of government over the whole of life, and the iconoclastic Anarchist, who would destroy all forms of social ...
— Socialism - A Summary and Interpretation of Socialist Principles • John Spargo
... tribes.] We have seen how the clan of our barbarous ancestors, when it became stationary, was established as the town or township. But in those early times clans were generally united more or less closely into tribes. Among all primitive or barbarous races of men, so far as we can make out, society is organized in tribes, and each tribe is made up of a number of clans or family groups. Now when our English forefathers conquered Britain they settled there as clans and ...
— Civil Government in the United States Considered with - Some Reference to Its Origins • John Fiske
... his cure of souls he stretch'd; And like a primitive apostle preach'd: Still cheerful; ever constant to his call; By many follow'd; loved by most, admired by all. 130 With what he begg'd, his brethren he relieved: And gave the charities himself received. Gave, while he taught; ...
— The Poetical Works of John Dryden, Vol II - With Life, Critical Dissertation, and Explanatory Notes • John Dryden
... by means of a most primitive elevator, nothing but an open platform of bare boards, which Mr. MacQueen worked with one hand, and which interestingly pushed up the floor above as one ascended. As they rose by this ...
— V. V.'s Eyes • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... Ages Christian Europe seems to have been striving, out of a strong, primitive, animal nature, towards the self-abnegation and the abstraction of Christ. This brought about by itself a great sense of completeness. The two halves were joined by the effort towards the one as yet unrealized. There was a triumphant joy in ...
— Twilight in Italy • D.H. Lawrence
... || de || Khoubilai-Khaan; || redige en francais sous sa dictee en 1298 || par Rusticien de Pise; || Publie pour la premiere fois d'apres trois manuscrits inedits de la Bibliotheque imperiale de Paris, || presentant la redaction primitive du Livre, revue par Marc Pol lui-meme et donnee par lui, en 1307, a Thiebault de Cepoy, || accompagnee des variantes, de l'explication des mots hors d'usage, et de Commentaires geographiques et historiques, || tires des ecrivains orientaux, principalement chinois, avec une Carte generale ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo, Volume 2 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa
... wary for him.] The actors in the outrage, who comprised nearly all the leading members of the British party in that part of the Grants lying east of the mountains, having been thus summarily disposed of, the people, now taking the government into their own hands, and acting in primitive assembly, proceeded to reorganize the county, by the appointment of new judges, and all the usual subordinate officers, of their own principles, to adopt measures to reduce to submission or drive away the remaining ...
— The Rangers - [Subtitle: The Tory's Daughter] • D. P. Thompson
... proximity it of course shares with the second reaction of the group, but the underlying trochaic tendency depreciates the value of the second reaction while it exaggerates that of the third. This reception of the primitive accent the third element of the group indeed shares with the first, and one might on this basis alone have expected the maximal value to be reached in the initial position, were it not for the influence ...
— Harvard Psychological Studies, Volume 1 • Various
... sunk were merely demijohns filled with powder and ignited by a common friction primer rigidly secured inside. To the primer was fastened a wire passing through a water-tight cork of gutta percha and plaster of Paris. The first very primitive idea was to explode them by pulling from the shore, and it is possible that the first to go off near the light-draughts was thus fired. The matter was then taken in hand by a Confederate naval officer, who arranged them in pairs, anchored twenty feet apart, the wire leading from the primer ...
— The Gulf and Inland Waters - The Navy in the Civil War. Volume 3. • A. T. Mahan
... hours among beautiful islands, covered with the fresh green of spring, through narrow and romantic passages, brought them to their destination. In some places, within five miles of Stockholm, the scene was so quiet, and nature so primitive, that the excursionists could have believed they were hundreds of miles from the homes of civilization. Two or three of the islands had a house or two upon them; but generally they seemed to be unimproved. The boats varied their order at the command ...
— Up The Baltic - Young America in Norway, Sweden, and Denmark • Oliver Optic
... nothing more to hope for from our friendly wind, we started. For the first hour or so we managed to row the boat, though with great labour; but after that the weeds got too thick to allow of it, and we were obliged to resort to the primitive and most exhausting resource of towing her. For two hours we laboured, Mahomed, Job, and I, who was supposed to be strong enough to pull against the two of them, on the bank, while Leo sat in the bow of the boat, and brushed away the weeds ...
— She • H. Rider Haggard
... life like two children who had known each other a long time. All the years between were as if they had not been. They made their blunders; were merry over their work; and grew into each other's companionship charmingly. Their ideas of cooking were most primitive and had it not been possible to order things sent in from caterers they and the nurses might have been in danger of starving to death. But as it was, what with telephoning to the nurses for directions, and what with studying ...
— Lo, Michael! • Grace Livingston Hill
... of the healing art in Ancient Rome is shrouded in uncertainty. The earliest practice of medicine was undoubtedly theurgic, and common to all primitive peoples. The offices of priest and of medicine-man were combined in one person, and magic was invoked to take the place of knowledge. There is much scope for the exercise of the imagination in attempting to follow the course of early man in his efforts to bring plants into ...
— Outlines of Greek and Roman Medicine • James Sands Elliott
... Dr. Kenrick's Ascetick, at the end of which he gives an account of the lives of the primitive Christians. Their pattern she recommended to our imitation, and said, their conversation was not like this of our age: For now, says she, there is nothing but frothy, vain discourse, which is far different from theirs. Theirs was to edification, and to build one another up in faith; ...
— The Best Ghost Stories • Various
... without a word or look, vanished down the passage. Bocardon, with a great sigh, took her place. It was dinner-time. The half-dozen guests and frequenters filled for a moment the little hall, some waiting to wash their hands at the primitive lavabo by the foot of the stairs. Aristide accompanied them into the salle a manger, where he dined in solemn silence. The dinner over he went out again, passing by the bureau where Bocardon, in ...
— The Joyous Adventures of Aristide Pujol • William J. Locke
... drawbacks, it became necessary to seek a means of rendering the production of the gas continuous, and of regulating it automatically without the aid of the operator. Mr. Mondollot has obtained such a result through a happy modification of the primitive system of the English engineer Bramah. He preserves the suction and force pump but, while applying it to the same uses, he likewise employs it, by the aid of a special arrangement, so as to distribute the sulphuric ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 365, December 30, 1882 • Various
... is a rough, primitive structure: several breadths of bark stitched together with sinews of the seal, and gathered up at the ends. Along each side a pole is lashed joining the gunwale-rail, while several stout pieces laid crosswise serve as beam timbers. In the bottom, amidships, is a mud hearth on which burns ...
— The Land of Fire - A Tale of Adventure • Mayne Reid
... such places become fewer and fewer in the Adirondacks; and in time to come doubtless a modern hotel would be erected where just then only primitive solitude reigned. ...
— Phil Bradley's Mountain Boys - The Birch Bark Lodge • Silas K. Boone
... His primitive life in the camp had inured him to new habits; he had been removing only his shoes and his coat when he went to bed. He pulled on his shoes—he did not bother with coat or hat. He rushed out of doors and called aloud, hoping ...
— When Egypt Went Broke • Holman Day
... forest in the last rays of the setting sun. The park at Sainte-Severe, with its fine lordly oaks which had never known the insult of an axe, came into my thoughts as I gazed on these trees of the wilds, exempt from all human care, towering out above our heads in their might and primitive grace. The glowing horizon reminded me of the evening visits to Patience's hut, and Edmee sitting under the golden vine-leaves, and the notes of the merry parrots brought back to me the warbling of the beautiful exotic birds she used to keep in her room. I wept as I thought of ...
— Mauprat • George Sand
... All the available evidence points to the conclusion that at the opening of Babylonian history women had complete independence and equal rights with their husbands and brothers. It is significant that the most archaic texts in the primitive language are remarkable for the precedence given to the female sex in all formulas of address: "Goddesses and gods;" "Women and men," are mentioned always in that order; this is in itself a decisive indication of the ...
— The Position of Woman in Primitive Society - A Study of the Matriarchy • C. Gasquoine Hartley
... river and hills on western side. Truly its striking beauty might give rise to the well established title of "Celestial City." Though unadorned by lofty monuments of imposing stateliness, costly public buildings, or princely residences, Fredericton lays claim to a higher and more primitive order of architecture than that of Hellenic ages. The Universal Architect lingered lovingly in studying the effect of successive design. Trees of grace and beauty arose on every side in exquisite drapery, while softly curved outlines added harmony to the whole, teaching the wondrous ...
— Lady Rosamond's Secret - A Romance of Fredericton • Rebecca Agatha Armour
... recently cut ship-canals bisects Keweenaw Point, making of its upper end an island, and was speeding northward over a rough upland. Its way led through a naked country of rocks and low-growing scrub, for the primitive growth of timber had been stripped for use in the mines. Every now and then it passed tall shaft-houses and chimneys, belching forth thick volumes of smoke, which, with their clustering villages, marked the sites of copper-mines. Finally, as darkness began ...
— The Copper Princess - A Story of Lake Superior Mines • Kirk Munroe
... three quite modern, present-day people, learning to know their own hearts and each other's, fighting out the crisis of their lives according to the accepted rules and standards of twentieth century civilisation—yet all amongst the wild primitive savagery of uncivilised tribes, and the extraordinary primeval growths of the unexplored jungles, where plants ape animals, and animals ape men, and all nature rears its head with a loose rein, as if defying ...
— The Upas Tree - A Christmas Story for all the Year • Florence L. Barclay
... all very well for foreigners to complain of our denying civic rights to our Jewish subjects; but we know the Jews better than they do. They are a barbarous people, entirely primitive, and very like the simple savages who cannot count beyond five on their fingers. It is quite impossible to make them understand ordinary numbers, to say nothing of simple economics. They do not realise the meaning or the value of money. No Jew anywhere in the world can ...
— What I Saw in America • G. K. Chesterton
... needed money, and the idea of a special department of prehistoric science was entirely new. It was decided, however, not to attempt to influence Mr. Peabody away from his own plan. President Walker saw that European minds were eagerly turning toward studies of primitive man, that the interest in the subject would grow from year to year, and that, as the first museum in the country devoted to this branch, it would have the best chance for securing collections rapidly going to ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, November 1885 • Various
... been made on account of its age. The tile-roofing dated from the reign of Louis XIV, for one easily recognised the work of that epoch; a dormer window pierced in the side of the turret, little wooden frames replacing everywhere those of the primitive panes; the three united openings of the second story had been reduced to two, that of the middle being closed up with bricks, thus giving to the front the symmetry of the other buildings on the street ...
— The Dream • Emile Zola
... interests of all. The fundamental rule in American national life is that, on the whole and in the long run, we shall all go up or down together. Many of those who have made it their vocation to denounce the great industrial combinations appeal especially to the primitive instincts of hatred and fear. These are precisely the two emotions which unfit men for cool and steady judgment. The whole history of the world shows that legislation, in facing new industrial conditions, will generally be both unwise and ineffective unless it is undertaken only ...
— Theodore Roosevelt and His Times - A Chronicle of the Progressive Movement; Volume 47 in The - Chronicles Of America Series • Harold Howland
... trying to convince myself, was my sister Adelaide, but who seemed further apart from me than ever. But the old sense of fascination which she had been wont to exercise over me returned again in all or in more than its primitive strength. ...
— The First Violin - A Novel • Jessie Fothergill
... of Gordium, an ancient town of Phrygia in Asia Minor, was preserved an old wagon, rudely built, and very primitive in structure. Tradition said that it had originally belonged to the peasant Gordius and his son Midas, rustic chiefs who had been selected by the gods and chosen by the people as the primitive kings of Phrygia. The cord which attached the yoke of this wagon ...
— Historic Tales, vol 10 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... reasons for acquiring a love for bright hues. Hence their aesthetic feeling seems rather to have taken a turn toward the further development of their own graceful forms. Even the plainest wading birds have a certain natural elegance of shape which supplies a primitive basis for ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 1 • Charles Dudley Warner
... overpower his self-possession. He is as little of a proser as possible, but he blurts out the finest wit and sense in the world. He keeps a good deal in the back-ground at first, till some excellent conceit pushes him forward, and then he abounds in whim and pleasantry. There is a primitive simplicity and self-denial about his manners; and a Quakerism in his personal appearance, which is, however, relieved by a fine Titian head, full of dumb eloquence! Mr. Lamb is a general favourite with those who know him. His character ...
— Hazlitt on English Literature - An Introduction to the Appreciation of Literature • Jacob Zeitlin
... whole fund of Bomongo stories, most of which are unfit for printing, but which, nevertheless, find favour amongst the primitive humorists of the Great River. By parable and story, by nonsense tale and romance, by drawing upon his imagination to supply himself with facts, by invoking ju-jus, ghosts, devils, and all the armoury ...
— The Keepers of the King's Peace • Edgar Wallace
... more liberal,—so very liberal, indeed, so very free and easy, in the rural districts especially, that only a knowledge of the primitive conditions under which such manners grew up could possibly reconcile with them any impressions of purity and discretion. In hearing of manners, therefore, it is always necessary to remember that the children of country Puritans are and were wholly different in the grain from Paris or London ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XI., February, 1863, No. LXIV. • Various
... at low stages of civilization and primitive social conditions, religion becomes polytheism at a higher, and monotheism at a still higher stage. It is not the gods that create men, it is man who turns the gods into God. "In the image of himself (man) he created Him" (God), not the ...
— Woman under socialism • August Bebel
... reach it, however, it was opened from without; being a primitive sort of door, with a latch that any one could lift if he chose—and a good many people did choose, for all kinds of neighbours liked to have a cheerful word or two with the Carrier, though he was no great talker himself. Being ...
— The Cricket on the Hearth • Charles Dickens
... redolent with the spirit of the Odyssey, that glorious primitive epic, fresh with the dew of the morning of time. It is an unalloyed pleasure to read his recital of the adventures of the wily Odysseus, slightly expurgated though it be, and adapted for the intelligence of youthful minds. Howard Pyle's illustrations render the spirit of the Homeric ...
— Sara Crewe - or, What Happened at Miss Minchin's • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... the Primitive Church there was a godly discipline, that, at the beginning of Lent, such persons as stood convicted of notorious sin were put to open penance, and punished in this world, that their souls might be saved in the Day of the Lord; ...
— Ellen Middleton—A Tale • Georgiana Fullerton
... is a metaphysical or sentimental good. A little observation shows that there is no such thing in this world as doing as one has a mind to. There is no man, from the tramp up to the President, the Pope, or the Czar, who can do as he has a mind to. There never has been any man, from the primitive barbarian up to a Humboldt or a Darwin, who could do as he had a mind to. The "Bohemian" who determines to realize some sort of liberty of this kind accomplishes his purpose only by sacrificing most of the rights and turning his back on most of the duties of a civilized man, while ...
— What Social Classes Owe to Each Other • William Graham Sumner
... call barbarians, in other words, led by an instinct frequently generous, but always involuntary, which only admits of reflection in the choice of the means, and not in the examination of the end; I say happily for them, not that I wish to extol barbarism, but I designate by this name a certain primitive energy which can alone replace in nations the concentrated strength ...
— Ten Years' Exile • Anne Louise Germaine Necker, Baronne (Baroness) de Stael-Holstein
... avoided him. That Inez—at this time—should have been taken from her home, abducted, frightened or harassed, was the sin unpardonable. For it he meant to exact a capital punishment. The law, just then, meant to him nothing; only the primitive instinct of an outraged man controlled ...
— Port O' Gold • Louis John Stellman
... far nobody had ever seen him the worse for drink. He reviewed one colleague after another in his mind; where was there one who had not behaved like other men? And why had they sent him to such a remote post? so rural, so primitive. His scruples were gradually being lulled to sleep in the snowy winter days, that were not even brightened by a faint gleam of light—he hardly ever caught a glimpse of a paper, besides papers were pernicious reading—in ...
— Absolution • Clara Viebig
... and Mr. Im Thurn has found them in Guiana. How savages all over the world got the idea that men and beasts could be swallowed and disgorged alive, and why they fashioned the idea into a divine myth, it is hard to say. Mr. Tylor, in 'Primitive Culture,' {55a} adds many examples of the narrative. The Basutos have it; it occurs some five times in Callaway's 'Zulu Nursery Tales.' In Greenland the Eskimo have a shape of the incident, and we have all heard of ...
— Custom and Myth • Andrew Lang
... Professor Stevens. "A sort of primitive lock. It seems incredible that human creatures could exist down here, but such ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science January 1931 • Various
... common woodpecker entirely insensible to the wooing of the spring, and, like the partridge, testifies his appreciation of melody after quite a primitive fashion. Passing through the woods on some clear, still morning in March, while the metallic ring and tension of winter are still in the earth and air, the silence is suddenly broken by long, resonant hammering upon a ...
— Wake-Robin • John Burroughs
... noblest and sanest of all ancient cults, corresponding very closely to our Quakers, before Worth and Wanamaker threw them a hawse and took them in tow. It is a tide of feeling produces a sect, not a belief: primitive Christianity was a revulsion from Phariseeism, and a William Penn and a wan Ann Lee form the antithesis of an o'ervaulting, fantastic ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great Philosophers, Volume 8 • Elbert Hubbard
... heavy felucca towards Messina—a service, however, sometimes executed by men harnessed to the towing-cord, who, as they go, offend the Sicilian muses by sounds and by words that have little indeed of the [Greek: Doriz aoida]. The gable ends of cottages often exhibit a very primitive windmill for sawing wood within doors. It is a large wheel, to the spokes of which flappers are adjusted, made of coarse matting, and so placed as to profit by the ordinary sea breeze; and, while the wind ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXLV. July, 1844. Vol. LVI. • Various
... the primitive way of extracting camphor, a drug unknown to the Greeks and Romans, introduced by the Arabs and ruined in reputation by M. Raspail. The best Laurus Camphora grows in the Malay Peninsula, Sumatra and Borneo: although ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 6 • Richard F. Burton
... intellectual attainments, and can look forward at no very distant period (if even left to their own exertions) to be enabled to take a very prominent position in the affairs of the world. But the Hudson's Bay Company's territory is still nearly in its primitive state, and much indeed is to be expected from its advancement, when it shall have taken its proper station in the general trade and commerce of mankind; the position of Vancouver's Island is such that there is little reason to doubt ...
— A Letter from Major Robert Carmichael-Smyth to His Friend, the Author of 'The Clockmaker' • Robert Carmichael-Smyth
... to making forks; and primitive ones they were. He selected a bough the size of a thick walking-stick; sawed it off the tree; sawed a piece six inches long off it, peeled that, split it in four, and, with his knife, gave each piece three points, by merely tapering off and serrating one end; and so he ...
— Foul Play • Charles Reade
... the Church's devotional system. The motive of the early Communion, especially on the Lord's Day, may be said to be twofold: First, the recognition of the Holy {90} Communion as the distinctive act of worship for each Lord's Day, without taking part in which no primitive Christian would have been considered to have properly kept Sunday, and secondly, the reverent desire to receive fasting, or as Bishop Jeremy Taylor has said, "to do this honor to the Blessed Sacrament, that It be the first food we eat and the first beverage we drink ...
— The American Church Dictionary and Cyclopedia • William James Miller
... in the jungles of the Amazon, with a half-demented naturalist who told the lad nothing of his past. The jungle boy was a lover of birds, and hunted animals with a bow and arrow and his trusty machete. He had a primitive education in some things, and his daring adventures will be followed with ...
— The Boy Ranchers in Death Valley - or Diamond X and the Poison Mystery • Willard F. Baker
... by means of logs of wood bored hollow and charged with gunpowder and ball. These were to be launched against the invaders somewhat after the manner of the modern torpedo, of which they were, in fact, the primitive type and original. [Footnote: Admiralty Records 1. 580—Rear-Admiral Young, 14 Aug. 1803, and secret enclosure, as in the Appendix. The Admiral's "machine," as he termed it, though embodying the true torpedo idea of an explosive device to be propelled against an ...
— The Press-Gang Afloat and Ashore • John R. Hutchinson
... woman; and Devonshire women, especially those who have passed their youth near the sea-coast, are generally superstitious. She had a wonderful budget of fables. Before I was six years old, I was erudite in that primitive literature in which the legends of all nations are traced to a common fountain,—Puss in Boots, Tom Thumb, Fortunio, Fortunatus, Jack the Giant-Killer; tales, like proverbs, equally familiar, under different versions, to the infant worshippers of Budh and ...
— The Caxtons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... Love and hate, gratitude and envy, hope and fear, pity and jealousy, repentance and sinfulness, and all the similar crude emotions have been sufficient for the construction of most scenarios. The more mature development of the photoplay will certainly overcome this primitive character, as, while such an effort to reduce human life to simple instincts is very convenient for the photoplay, it is not at all necessary. In any case where this tendency prevails it must help greatly to excite and to intensify ...
— The Photoplay - A Psychological Study • Hugo Muensterberg
... for the comfort of the troops at sea were simple and primitive. Each man shifted for himself. The whole space below was occupied by cargo or horses. The troops lived and slept on deck. Here, on wide flat stones, they cooked their meals, whiled away the day by games of chance, and slept at night on ...
— The Young Carthaginian - A Story of The Times of Hannibal • G.A. Henty
... attack upon it we see even the substance of the social body decaying and diminishing. On the nature of the Family; on its profound physiological origins; on its necessary role in the prolongation and "perpetuation of the individual" by affording him "the sole remedy for death"; on its primitive constitution among men of our own race; on its historic organization and development "around the family home"; on the necessity of its subsistence and continuance in order to insure the duration of this home; on its other needs, M. Taine, with his knowledge of man ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 6 (of 6) - The Modern Regime, Volume 2 (of 2) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... the saviour and regenerator of half-ruined, revolution-rent Russia, but this was the first time that Nitocris had met him in her present life. When she had returned his stately bow, she looked up and saw with a strange intuition, which somehow seemed half-reminiscent an almost perfect type of the primitive warrior through the disguise of his faultless twentieth-century attire. He was nearly two inches over six feet, but he was so exquisitely proportioned that he looked less than his height. His skin was fair ...
— The Mummy and Miss Nitocris - A Phantasy of the Fourth Dimension • George Griffith
... still, doubtless, with a few modifications, the hamlet of St. Ignace, fair type of the primitive Lower Canadian settlement, dominated by the church, its twin spires recalling the towers of Notre Dame, its tin roof shining like silver, the abode of contented ignorance and pious conservatism, the home of those who are best described ...
— Ringfield - A Novel • Susie Frances Harrison
... The primitive Church was pre-eminently a free society; and, with a view to united action, its members were taught to consult together respecting all matters of common interest. Whilst the elders were required to beware of attempting ...
— The Ancient Church - Its History, Doctrine, Worship, and Constitution • W.D. [William Dool] Killen
... wish to quarrel with the Queen. Indeed, there was a degree of coldness towards me on the part of Her Majesty for having gone so far as I had done. It was not until after the birth of the Duc de Normandie, her third child, in March, 1785, that her friendship resumed its primitive warmth. ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... Maupassant at the start win universal favor? It is because he had direct genius, the clear vision of a "primitive" (an artist of the pre-Renaissance). His materials were just those of a graduate who, having left college, has satisfied his curiosity. Grasping the simple and ingenious, but strong and appropriate tools that he himself has forged, he starts out in the forest of romance, and instead of ...
— Une Vie, A Piece of String and Other Stories • Guy de Maupassant
... and that he was a Frenchman; and that if any enemies should presume to come into the country, it would be necessary to take up a musket and fight them out again, and defend wife, children, and celery-beds till the last breath was out of his body. Further than this simple and primitive idea of patriotism he did not go. He never bothered himself about dissentient shades of opinion, or quarrels among opposing parties. When he had to send his children to the Government school, the first thing he asked was whether ...
— The Master-Christian • Marie Corelli
... primitive land seen such progress in so short a time. And The Wand had played a substantial part in this development. It was swamped with ...
— Land of the Burnt Thigh • Edith Eudora Kohl
... in the most primitive and simple fashion. The names of the candidates were written upon slips of paper, and distributed throughout the room—only the members who had formed the organisation having the right to vote. Each of them chose the slip bearing the name of him he intended to vote for, and dropped it into a hat ...
— The Free Lances - A Romance of the Mexican Valley • Mayne Reid
... the irrational part of our nature. The rational part is by its essence relative; it leads us from data to conclusions, or from parts to wholes; it never furnishes the data with which it works. If any preference or precept were declared to be ultimate and primitive, it would thereby be declared to be irrational, since mediation, inference, and synthesis are the essence of rationality. The ideal of rationality is itself as arbitrary, as much dependent on the needs of a finite organization, as any other ideal. Only as ultimately securing tranquillity ...
— The Sense of Beauty - Being the Outlines of Aesthetic Theory • George Santayana
... passages with a letter of July 10, 1836, in which she tells how she throws herself, all dressed as she is, into the Indre, and then continues her course through the sunny meadows, and with what voluptuousness she revels in all the joys of primitive life, and imagines herself living in the beautiful times of ancient Greece. There are days and pages when George Sand, under the afflux of physical life, is pagan. Her genius then is that of the greenwood divinities, who, at certain ...
— George Sand, Some Aspects of Her Life and Writings • Rene Doumic
... construction that shall satisfy the different parts of the programme that we have just laid out, that is to say, strength, lightness, rapidity of erection, and ease of carriage. The shelters that are at present employed for movable markets at Paris are very primitive, and are wanting in solidity and convenience. They consist simply of wooden uprights to which are affixed cross-pieces that support an ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 488, May 9, 1885 • Various
... came in sight—two lithe and stalwart natives armed with primitive bow and spear. One man carried the hindquarters of a gnu, the other had a brace of birds dangling from the haft ...
— Wilmshurst of the Frontier Force • Percy F. Westerman
... first poem, "L'Amour de la Campagne," in the Almanach des Muses. Dissatisfied with the revolutionary turn of affairs, he resigned his commission in 1790, and journeyed to North America. There he travelled extensively, seeking poetic inspiration from the wilderness and the primitive customs of the Indians. After the downfall of King Louis XVI. and the French nobility, Chateaubriand hastily returned to France and joined the army of emigres under Prince Conde. At the siege of Thionville he was wounded and went to England. By the ...
— A History of the Nineteenth Century, Year by Year - Volume Two (of Three) • Edwin Emerson
... acoustic instrument ever invented is the megaphone, which latter is a Greek word meaning great sound. It is a very primitive device and our Indians made it out of birch-bark before Columbus discovered America. In its simplest form it consists of a cone-shaped horn and as the speaker talks into the small end the concentrated sound waves pass out of the large end ...
— The Radio Amateur's Hand Book • A. Frederick Collins
... help gave general satisfaction and Lottie was much amused with the girl's primitive manners, which even the associations of "Sunny ...
— Marguerite Verne • Agatha Armour
... or in the centre of the inflorescence,—parts which, it is believed, receive the most sap; for when an irregular flower becomes perfectly regular or peloric, this may be attributed, at least partly, to reversion to a primitive and normal type. Even the position of a seed at the end of the capsule sometimes gives to the seedling developed from it a tendency to revert. Secondly, reversions often occur by means of buds, independently of reproduction by seed; so ...
— The Power of Movement in Plants • Charles Darwin
... me, ladies," said Lousteau, "but I find it impossible to go on without remarking to you how direct this Empire literature is, going to the point without any details, a characteristic, as it seems to me, of a primitive time. The literature of that period holds a place between the summaries of chapters in Telemaque and the categorical reports of a public office. It had ideas, but refrained from expressing them, it was so scornful! It was ...
— Parisians in the Country - The Illustrious Gaudissart, and The Muse of the Department • Honore de Balzac
... fill the air. It did no harm. Ah, ha, thought I; it's all a bluff, this taking water on the fly being bad for the bo on the first blind. What does this little spray amount to? Then I began to marvel at the device. This was railroading! Talk about your primitive Western railroading—and just then the tender filled up, and it hadn't reached the end of the trough. A tidal wave of water poured over the back of the tender and down upon me. I was soaked to the skin, as wet as ...
— The Road • Jack London
... primitive or primary emotions (as I said in the note to III. xi.), namely, pleasure, pain, and desire. I have spoken of wonder simply because it is customary to speak of certain emotions springing from the three primitive ones by different names, when they are ...
— Ethica Ordine Geometrico Demonstrata - Part I: Concerning God • Benedict de Spinoza
... understanding symbols and the hidden meaning of things, he understood at once that this rope had not been detached without the permission of spiritual powers. He made of it a belt, and realized that he had been chosen to lead back into its primitive purity the Third Order of Saint Francis. He renounced the beauty of women, the delights of poetry, the brightness of glory, and studied the life and the doctrine of Saint Francis. However, he has sold to his editor a book entitled 'Les Blandices', which contains, ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... saints, I have conceived it all and taken a whole year to elaborate it; and since you see me looking so cool and well-dressed in the midst of it, you need not be offended or overwhelmed. Such is ever the naivety of great souls among those whose culture is primitive. It is like the boasted bravery of the eldest among little children, wholly an act of kindness and consideration, not a selfish vaunt. That they should be admired and trusted is for them a foregone conclusion; and when they call on that admiration and trust, ...
— Albert Durer • T. Sturge Moore
... intent to describe Ileen Hinkle to you. Instead, I must refer you to the volume by Edmund Burke entitled: A Philosophical Inquiry into the Origin of Our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful. It is an exhaustive treatise, dealing first with the primitive conceptions of beauty—roundness and smoothness, I think they are, according to Burke. It is well said. Rotundity is a patent charm; as for smoothness—the more new wrinkles a woman acquires, ...
— Options • O. Henry
... him to do. The subsequent progress of creation is only the successive development, upon mechanical and necessary principles, and as fast as proper occasions were offered, of these qualities thus made inherent in the primitive constitution of matter. The atoms thus marvellously endowed have gone on, without any further aid from Almighty power, to form suns, and astral systems, and planets with their satellites, and worlds tenanted by successive generations and races of vegetable ...
— A Theory of Creation: A Review of 'Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation' • Francis Bowen
... of Odin, is one of the most primitive districts of Germany. It consists of a hilly, rather than a mountainous district, of some forty miles in one direction, and thirty in another. The beautiful Neckar bounds it on the south; on the west it is terminated by the sudden descent of its hills into the ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 4, September, 1850 • Various
... was at this time the staple food of the Romans of the city was wheat, and wheat of a good kind; in primitive times it had been an inferior species called far, which survived in Cicero's day only in the form of cakes offered to the gods in religious ceremonies. The wheat was not brought from Italy or even from Latium; what each Italian ...
— Social life at Rome in the Age of Cicero • W. Warde Fowler
... Mr. Bud, and, after closing up his own apartment, led the way, by the light of matches, to a small cubicle at the rear of the passage, wherein were an ancient wood-encased bathtub, two reluctant water-taps, and other products of a primitive age of plumbing. From this place, discarding the aid of light, Mr. Bud and his visitor ...
— The Mystery of Murray Davenport - A Story of New York at the Present Day • Robert Neilson Stephens
... the Hebrew language is aware that we have in the conjugation of our verbs a mode known as the 'intensive voice,' which, by means of an almost imperceptible modification of vowel-points, intensifies the meaning of the primitive root. A similar significance seems to attach to the Jews themselves in connection with the people among whom they dwell. They are the 'intensive form' of any nationality whose language and customs they adopt.... Influenced by the same causes, they represent the same results; ...
— The Poems of Emma Lazarus - Vol. I (of II.), Narrative, Lyric, and Dramatic • Emma Lazarus |
