"Shibboleth" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... felled an ox, and chuckled out, "Such fun!" If we stuck in a bog, if we were caught in a thunder-storm, if we were pitched head-over-heels by the wild colts we undertook to break in, Guy Bolding's sole elegy was "Such fun!" That grand shibboleth of philosophy only forsook him at the sight of an open book. I don't think that at that time he could have found "fun" even in Don Quixote. This hilarious temperament had no insensibility; a kinder heart never beat,—but, to be sure, it beat to a strange, restless, ...
— The Caxtons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... "apprehends" the extrinsic justice of Christ, and with it covers his sins, which are thereupon no longer "imputed" to him. In other words, he is outwardly accounted and declared righteous in the sight of God, though inwardly he remains a sinner. With the exception of "sola fides" there was probably no shibboleth in the sixteenth century so persistently dinned into the ears of Catholics and Protestants alike as "iustitia Christi extra nos." It is found in the Apologia written in defence of the Augsburg Confession(905) and recurs in the ...
— Grace, Actual and Habitual • Joseph Pohle
... is still the shibboleth in which the British believe, no less than our pioneers and Grant and Stonewall Jackson believed in it, and nothing throughout the Somme battle was so characteristically British as not only the stubbornness of ...
— My Second Year of the War • Frederick Palmer
... only response was the bitter shibboleth—"Carajo!" showing that both were uneasy about the dog. Long before this time both had heard of the fame of Cibolo, though neither had a full knowledge of the perfect training to which that ...
— The White Chief - A Legend of Northern Mexico • Mayne Reid
... is thinking when he speaks of the glory of the empire and the prestige of the nation. Every country has its appeal—its shibboleth—ready for the lips of the imperialist. German rulers pointed to the comfort of the workers, to old-age pensions, maternal benefits and minimum wage regulations, and other material benefits, when they wished to inspire ...
— Woman and the New Race • Margaret Sanger
... to deny that his reverence for what was old and tested by time in the English church and constitution may have had its root in the same temper of mind which led him to compose archaic ballad-romances like "Christabel" and "The Dark Ladye." But in Germany "throne and altar" became the shibboleth of the school; half of the romanticists joined the Catholic Church, and the new literature rallied to the ...
— A History of English Romanticism in the Nineteenth Century • Henry A. Beers
... completely all young or old, and turn from life toward death whatever in you does not bear my mark and name that is my image.' " [From this the psychological sense of the countersign is recognized. In connection with the field we are reminded especially of Shibboleth (Judges XIII, 6: The Ephraimites who could not speak it had to die). Leade often mentions the Ephraimites. Directly pertinent to the above passage is, of course, Revelations, passim.] (L. G. B., ...
— Hidden Symbolism of Alchemy and the Occult Arts • Herbert Silberer
... carousal we tried to forget what we were. Even in the saloon and dance-hall we told tales of the shop! Oh, the irony of it! Was there no escape from the madness of the mart, no surcease from the frenzy of the factory or the shibboleth of the shop! ...
— An Anarchist Woman • Hutchins Hapgood
... manners did not convince them. They seemed to hold by some complicated code of etiquette for ladies and gentlemen—Heaven knew how they had become possessed of it—of which he fell sadly short. He did not understand in the least their shibboleth of flirtation, their particular methods of banter, the precise shade of significance of their facial expressions and movements, the exact values of their phrases and catch-words; all of which was knowledge that, according to their notion, ...
— Cleo The Magnificent - The Muse of the Real • Louis Zangwill
... The man questioned, who is aware that as regards coat, hat, boots, and outward cleanliness he is below him by whom he is questioned, unconsciously feels himself called upon to assert his political equality. It is his shibboleth that he is politically equal to the best, that he is independent, and that his labor, though it earn him but a dollar a day by porterage, places him as a citizen on an equal rank with the most wealthy fellow-man that may employ or accost him. But, being so inferior in ...
— Volume 1 • Anthony Trollope
... pointed" to be quite perfect. At present they whisper, the wind blows clean through them, and no figures of flesh and blood are ever seen there, but only pallid phantoms with large, calm eyes, eating uncooked grain, out of baskets, and discoursing in a sublime shibboleth of which mortals have no key. But how could Plato Skimpole, who goes down to Hingham on the sea, in a New England January, clad only in a suit of linen, hope to ...
— Literary and Social Essays • George William Curtis
... to me a grammatical deficiency, I shall proceed to make a few remarks; from which I trust your Hong Kong correspondent W. T. M. may be able to form "a clear and definite rule," and students of English assisted in their attempts to overcome this formidable conversational "shibboleth." ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 188, June 4, 1853 • Various
... Legislature to appropriate ten thousand pounds sterling toward an expedition to effect the conquest of Canada. Acadia had just fallen into the hands of Gov. Francis Nicholson without firing a gun, and the news had carried the New Yorkers off their feet. "On to Canada!" was the shibboleth of the adventurous colonists; and the expedition started. Eight transports, with eight hundred and sixty men, perished amid the treacherous rocks and angry waters of the St. Lawrence. The troops that had gone overland returned in chagrin. The city was wrapped in gloom: the Legislature refused ...
— History of the Negro Race in America From 1619 to 1880. Vol 1 - Negroes as Slaves, as Soldiers, and as Citizens • George W. Williams
... disinclination as evidence of unworthiness. Poor little Susan! As we look back with the knowledge of our later life, we translate the heart-burnings as unconscious protests against labeling your free soul, against testing your reasoning conviction of to-morrow by any shibboleth of to-day's belief. We hail this child-intuition as a prophecy of the uncompromising truthfulness of the mature woman. Susan Anthony was taught simply that she must enter into the holy of holies of her own self, meet herself, and ...
— Eighty Years And More; Reminiscences 1815-1897 • Elizabeth Cady Stanton
... sphere." This shibboleth is the logical result of the attitude mentioned. Doubtless, the home is woman's sphere; but the home includes all that pertains to it—city, politics and taxes, laws relating to the protection of minors, municipal rottenness which may corrupt children, schools and playgrounds ...
— A Short History of Women's Rights • Eugene A. Hecker
... liberty wherewith Christ hath made us free" (Gal. v. 1). We must firmly refuse to accept any other foundation than that of the Creeds, settled by an undivided Christendom. And on the other hand, we must set ourselves with equal firmness against allowing any "Shibboleth" (Judges xii. 6), made out of exaggerated views of particular doctrines, to cut off those who should be brethren, not only in name ...
— The Kingdom of Heaven; What is it? • Edward Burbidge
... without a function in the elucidation of phenomena, so a supreme good which was good for nobody would be without conceivable value. Respect for such an idol is a dialectical superstition; and if zeal for that shibboleth should actually begin to inhibit the exercise of intelligent choice or the development of appreciation for natural pleasures, it would constitute a reversal of the Life of Reason which, if persistently indulged in, could only issue in madness or ...
— The Life of Reason • George Santayana
... nation, as a fan to the floor, which purges away the chaff and purifies the wheat. It is like the furnace to the metal, which takes away the dross and shews you a refined lump. It is a Shibboleth, to distinguish Ephraimites from Gileadites. And who knows not how great an advantage it is for the successful carrying on of any honourable design, to know friends from enemies, and the faithful from false brethren? Some have thought it unpolitical to set-a-foot this ...
— The Covenants And The Covenanters - Covenants, Sermons, and Documents of the Covenanted Reformation • Various
... vanquisht Kings; And how ingrateful Ephraim Not worse then by his shield and spear Had dealt with Jephtha, who by argument, Defended Israel from the Ammonite, Had not his prowess quell'd thir pride In that sore battel when so many dy'd Without Reprieve adjudg'd to death, For want of well pronouncing Shibboleth. ...
— The Poetical Works of John Milton • John Milton
... creatures tortured, Racial hatreds never cease, And man's greatest self-delusion Is the shibboleth of "Peace." ...
— Poems • John L. Stoddard |
