"Primitive" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... themselves as well as the tobacco. They filled the air with shouts and wild screams and peals of laughter. That fiercest joy of the world, the joy of destruction, was upon them, and sure it must have been one of the chiefest of the joys of primitive man, for all in a second it was as if the centuries of civilisation and Christianity had gone for naught, and the great gulf which lies back of us to the past had been leapt. One had doubted it not, had he seen those old ...
— The Heart's Highway - A Romance of Virginia in the Seventeeth Century • Mary E. Wilkins
... Fries the modern student hardly knows which most to admire, the author's far-reaching, patient research, the singular acumen of his taxonomic instinct, the graceful exactness of the Latin in which his conclusions are expressed, or the delicate courtesy with which he touches the work even the most primitive, of those his predecessors or contemporaries. Nevertheless in our particular group even the determinations of Fries are not conclusive. He himself often confesses as much. The microscopic technique of that day did not yield the data needful for minute comparison among ...
— The North American Slime-Moulds • Thomas H. (Thomas Huston) MacBride
... abundantly proved that the civilization of which we are so proud, our buildings, our wealth, our industry, all our activity and noise, do not fill with the admiration we expect those who are brought up far from our opulent cities and our artificial manners. Nature, in these immense solitudes, in these primitive manners, has then charms unknown to us, to be preferred to those which, in our existing state, we find so incomparable. We must here close our reflections, for fear of falling into paradoxes difficult to be avoided in questions ...
— Canada and the Canadians, Vol. 2 • Richard Henry Bonnycastle
... to my room greatly discouraged that night. In former ages—or so one is led to suppose—and in the lower primitive classes who still linger near the primeval type, action of any kind was, and is, easier than amid the complication of our higher civilization. A bad man is a distinct entity, against whom you know more or less what steps to take. A tyrant, an oppressor, a bad ...
— The Open Door, and the Portrait. - Stories of the Seen and the Unseen. • Margaret O. (Wilson) Oliphant
... caravansaries, like the one at Bethlehem sacred to the Christ child, the same accommodations were meted out to man and beast alike. More recently there are "hotels," which distinguish a man from his beast, usually; though sometimes undeservedly. And so the word "meson" got left behind along with its primitive meaning. But in Mexico word and meaning still go together to this day, and both described pretty well the four walls in Tampico where Anastasio Murguia tarried. Excepting the porter's lodge at the ...
— The Missourian • Eugene P. (Eugene Percy) Lyle
... In the primitive state, before there was organized civil society, family government was supreme; and likewise, if a family should remove from within the limits of civil society and be entirely isolated, family government would again resume its power ...
— Elements of Civil Government • Alexander L. Peterman
... 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 ...
— The Best Ghost Stories • Various
... In primitive ages the duties of women were very different from those of later and more civilized periods, and varied of course according to the habits of each people. Among pastoral tribes they drew water, kept the sheep, and superintended the herds ...
— Museum of Antiquity - A Description of Ancient Life • L. W. Yaggy
... is." Bud had disinterred the deputy sheriff's badge, and began to polish it by the primitive but effectual method of spitting on it and then rubbing vigorously on his sleeve. "You're outside of Crater County, but by thunder you're both guilty of resisting an officer, and county lines don't ...
— Cow-Country • B. M. Bower
... art of making fire. As none of the skeletons so far found are complete, it is assumed that he buried certain bones of the dead in different places from the rest. This burial custom, which is found among primitive peoples in other parts of the world, suggests the conclusion that the Peking Man already had religious notions. We have no knowledge yet of the length of time the Peking Man may have inhabited the Far East. His first traces ...
— A history of China., [3d ed. rev. and enl.] • Wolfram Eberhard
... conditions under which the Juniata "Sentinel" was founded fifty years ago, in contrast with the greatly changed conditions which confront the journals of to-day. The people of Juniata county were a well-to-do class, adapted to the primitive conditions in which they lived. The enervating blight of luxury and the despair of pinching want were strangers in their midst. They believed in the church, in the school, in the sanctity of home, in integrity between man and man. Christianity was accepted by them ...
— Modern Eloquence: Vol II, After-Dinner Speeches E-O • Various
... that time to be the cause of a dangerous schism. The Jansenists of the pit exclaimed heresy, scandal; and were opposed to the shortened petticoats. The Molinists, on the contrary, held that this innovation was in character with the spirit of the primitive church, which was opposed to the sight of pirouettes and pigeon-wings, embarrassed by the length of a petticoat. The Sorbonne of the opera had for a long time great trouble in establishing the wholesome doctrine on this point of discipline, which ...
— The International Monthly Magazine - Volume V - No II • Various
... people on the shore soon inspired the others of the expedition with a desire to beat a retreat towards the ships. Alarcon, however, was not of this mind. The natives were, of course, armed only with the bow-and-arrow and similar primitive weapons, while the Spaniards, though few in number, possessed the advantage of firearms, of which the natives had no comprehension whatever. The interpreter, being a native from down the coast, understood not a word ...
— The Romance of the Colorado River • Frederick S. Dellenbaugh
... of Greece and under every form of society. The real question is, would the modern poets be the men to keep up a tone some four or five centuries old, and to be true, if they were true, to the details of the heroic age? "It is not beyond the bounds of possibility that some part of the most primitive Iliad may have been actually sung by the court minstrel in the palace whose ruins can still be seen in Mycenae." [Footnote: Leaf, Iliad, vol. i. p. xv.] But, by the expansionist theory, even the oldest ...
— Homer and His Age • Andrew Lang
... previously rejected, with the addition of an annual tribute of two hundred talents for fifty years. He had no object to destroy a city after its political power was annihilated, and wickedly overthrow the primitive seat of commerce, which was still one of the main pillars of civilization. He was too great and wise a statesman to take such a revenge as the Romans sought fifty years afterward. He was contented to end the war gloriously, ...
— Ancient States and Empires • John Lord
... the bitter blow to Mr. Burrowes. Had this lapse into the unscientific primitive happened in a regular fight, he might have mourned and poured reproof into Bug's ear when he got him back in his corner at the end of the round; but he would not have experienced this feeling of helpless horror—the sort of horror an elder of the church might feel ...
— The Adventures of Sally • P. G. Wodehouse
... sons—Edward, whose tragic death at Torquay saddened so much of his sister's life, Charles (the 'Stormie' of the letters), Samuel, George, Henry, Alfred, Septimus, and Octavius; Mr. Barrett's inventiveness having apparently given out with the last two members of his family, reducing him to the primitive method of simple enumeration, an enumeration in which, it may be observed, the daughters counted for nothing. Not many of these, however, can have been born at Coxhoe; for while Elizabeth was still an infant—apparently about the beginning of the year ...
— The Letters of Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1 of 2) • Frederic G. Kenyon
... be accessory were burned alive, or forced to swallow melted lead. The very offspring of an illegal love were involved in the consequences of the sentence.—Gibbon's "Decline and Fall", etc., volume 2, page 210. See also, for the hatred of the primitive Christians to love ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Volume I • Percy Bysshe Shelley
... talk of laws or of human rules—their foulness, their deformity does not depend upon local constitutions, upon human institutes or religious creeds:—they are crimes—and the persons who perpetrate them are monsters who violate the primitive condition, upon which the earth was given to man—they are guilty by the general ...
— Memoirs of the Life of Rt. Hon. Richard Brinsley Sheridan Vol 2 • Thomas Moore
... were used as dressing-rooms, but their partition from the stage being only partial, and their flooring stopping far short of the front, a great gap was left—a pitfall down which everything tumbled. Their appointments were primitive, consisting of a small looking-glass, a pincushion, and a piece of comb in each room. The "properties" on the ladies' side were an old straw bonnet wreathed with artificial flowers, and a gaudy overskirt; and on that of the gentlemen, two hats, and ...
— A Trip to Manitoba • Mary FitzGibbon
... in the chest, or under the table. When, in a country district such as this, one hears the laughter that greets so venerable a piece of pantomime, one is surprised that circus owners think it worth while to secure novelties at all. The primitive taste of West Sussex, at any rate, cannot ...
— Highways & Byways in Sussex • E.V. Lucas
... troublesome: And when they are under a deep conviction of the evil of it, and see the woful and miserable state that sin hath brought mankind into how they have lost the image of God and the favour of God; they then desire to be restored, and brought back again into their primitive state. You that know the truth of God, see how the work goes on in your hearts, see how the image of God is carrying on upon you. Consider, that the Lord is a holy God, of purer eyes than to behold iniquity with approbation: "There is no peace to the wicked," that ...
— A Sermon Preached at the Quaker's Meeting House, in Gracechurch-Street, London, Eighth Month 12th, 1694. • William Penn
... answer to this the Interpreter continued. "Consider a great building: The idea of the structure has come down through the ages from the first habitation of primitive man. The mental strength represented in the structure in its every detail is the composite thought of every generation of man since the days when human beings dwelt in rocky caves and in huts of mud. But listen: The capitalist who furnished the money says he did it; the architect says ...
— Helen of the Old House • Harold Bell Wright
... practically were three alphabets—the hieroglyphic, the hieratic, and the demotic. The hieroglyph is a symbol, denoting something without letters or syllables; as, pictures of a bee stand for king. The hieratic handwriting was a transition from symbols to primitive letters; the papyrus reed, cut in slices and gummed together, was used as paper for this writing, much of which is very beautifully executed in black and red inks. These papyri are constantly being discovered, but perhaps the earliest "find" of importance was that at Thebes in 1846, when a number ...
— Egyptian Literature
... walked as if they already walked the streets of Mexico. All things seemed possible to them. The royalty of their carriage, the authority in their faces, gave dignity even to their deerskin clothing. Its primitive character was its distinction, and the wearers looked like the demi-gods of the ...
— Remember the Alamo • Amelia E. Barr
... continent, have convinced me that nowhere is Nature being destroyed so rapidly as in the United States. Except within our conservation areas, an earthly paradise is being turned into an earthly hades; and it is not savages nor primitive men who are doing this, but men and women who boast of their civilization. Air and water are polluted, rivers and streams serve as sewers and dumping grounds, forests are swept away and fishes are driven from the streams. Many birds are becoming extinct, and certain mammals are on the verge of ...
— Our Vanishing Wild Life - Its Extermination and Preservation • William T. Hornaday
... owned under his pink skin any of the primitive instincts which he was so fond of portraying in his characters, he would have killed Luck without any ...
— The Phantom Herd • B. M. Bower
... the Proceedings of the Leipsic Academy, 1688. From this time until 1791, when John Barber took out a patent for the production of force by the combustion of hydrocarbon in air, practically no advancement was made. The latter patent, curiously enough, comprised a very primitive form of rotary engine. Barber proposed to turn coal, oil, or other combustible stuff into gas by means of external firing, and then to mix the gases so produced with air in a vessel called the exploder. This mixture was then ignited as it issued from ...
— Gas and Oil Engines, Simply Explained - An Elementary Instruction Book for Amateurs and Engine Attendants • Walter C. Runciman
... celui qu'elle a volontairement et pour toujours choisi. C'est cet instinct, un antique instinct Germanique, que ces grands peintres de l'instinct mettent tous ici en lumiere!... L'ame dans cette race, est a la fois primitive et serieuse. La candeur chez les femmes y subsiste plus longtemps qu'ailleurs. Elles perdent moins vite le respect, elles pesent moins vite les valeurs et les caracteres: elles sont moins promptes a deviner le mal et a mesurer ...
— Home Life in Germany • Mrs. Alfred Sidgwick
... labyrinth of legends. From the researches of undoubted authorities, we know that Cyprus possessed a written character peculiarly original, and that it was occupied by a people highly civilised according to the standard of the early world at so primitive an era, that all records have disappeared, and we are left in the darkness ...
— Cyprus, as I Saw it in 1879 • Sir Samuel W. Baker
... the Malays, the men in some of the tribes rarely exceeding four feet eight inches in height, and the women four feet four. Their clothing consists of a bark cloth waist-cloth. Some of the tribes live in huts of the most primitive description supported on posts, while others, often spoken of as the "tree people," build wigwams on platforms, mainly supported by the forking branches of trees, at a height of from twenty to thirty feet. These wild people, says Mr. Daly, lead a gregarious life, rarely remaining long in one ...
— The Golden Chersonese and the Way Thither • Isabella L. Bird (Mrs. Bishop)
... Telephone system: primitive system domestic: sparse system of open wire, radiotelephone communications, and low-capacity microwave radio relay international : satellite earth station - ...
— The 1997 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... of Washington: The State's system of taxation is obsolete, and only 13 civilized communities in the world have such an out-of-date system. The State is confined by the constitution to property tax, well known as a primitive system, utterly incapable of coping with modern business. It can be remedied only by recognizing the different classes of ...
— Practical Forestry in the Pacific Northwest • Edward Tyson Allen
... that The Sea Bride (MILLS AND BOON) may be too violent to suit all tastes, for Mr. BEN AMES WILLIAMS writes of men primitive in their loves and hates, and he describes them graphically. The scenes of this story are set on the whaler Sally, commanded by a man of mighty renown in the whaling world. When we meet him he has passed his prime and has ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 159, September 8th, 1920 • Various
... said Mrs. Hal, with a woman's natural but unspoken comparison between the simplicity of her ranch toilet and the probable elegancies of the young ladies' Eastern costumes. "They'll find us very primitive up here in the mountains, I'm afraid; but if they like scenery and horseback riding and fishing ...
— Warrior Gap - A Story of the Sioux Outbreak of '68. • Charles King
... Gibbon; his plan enabled him to commence his account, in most parts, below the apostolic times; and it was only by the strength of the dark coloring with which he brought out the failings and the follies of the succeeding ages, that a shadow of doubt and suspicion was thrown back upon the primitive period of Christianity. ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 1 • Edward Gibbon
... him in declaring that no civilized nation could be thus independent. Imagining himself in the France of brave ideas, he contrived to strike out sparks of Legitimist ire around him, and found himself breathing the atmosphere of the most primitive nursery of Toryism. Again he encountered the shrug, and he would have it a verbal matter. M. d'Orbec gravely recited the programme of the country party in France. M. Livret carried the war across Channel. You English have ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... the Holiness Code contains many laws and regulations which evidently come from a much earlier period in Israel's history. Some of its enactments are very similar to those of the primitive codes of Exodus 21-23. In spirit it is closely related to the book of Deuteronomy. It also reproduces many of the laws found in this earlier code. Both codes represent the fruitage of the teaching of the pre-exilic prophets and priests. Each ...
— The Makers and Teachers of Judaism • Charles Foster Kent
... his child groveling at the feet of that blasphemous impostor and adoring him as her God pitilessly realized itself to him as a thing shameful past experience and beyond credence, and yet as undeniable as his pulse, his breath, his seeing and hearing. The dread which a less primitive spirit would have forbidden itself as something too abominable, possessed him as wholly possible. He had lived righteously, and he had kept evil from those dear to him, both the dead and the quick, by the force of his strong unselfish will; ...
— The Leatherwood God • William Dean Howells
... themselves Onkilon—seafolk. In the account of Captain Billing's journey through the country of the Chukches, he shows the near relationship the language of this coast tribe has to that of the Aleutians at Kadyak, who are of the same primitive stem as the Greenlanders. Tradition relates that upwards of two hundred years ago these Onkilon occupied the whole of the Chukch coast, from Cape Chelagskoj to Behring's Straits, and indeed we still find along the whole of this stretch remains ...
— The Voyage of the Vega round Asia and Europe, Volume I and Volume II • A.E. Nordenskieold
... to John Lapraik," says Gilbert Burns, "was produced exactly on the occasion described by the author. Rocking is a term derived from primitive times, when our country-women employed their spare hours in spinning on the roke or distaff. This simple instrument is a very portable one; and well fitted to the social inclination of meeting in a neighbour's house; hence the phrase of ...
— The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. • Robert Burns and Allan Cunningham
... process, what kind of a body would it be? Something, as Professor WHEWELL suggests, resembling a large meteoric stone. How after wards came this unformed mass to be like our earth, to be covered with motion and organization, with life and general felicity? What primitive cause stocked it with plants and animals, and produced all the surprising and subtle contrivances which we find in their structure, all the wide and profound mutual dependence which we trace in their economy? Is it possible to conceive, as the Vestiges inculcate, that man, with ...
— An Expository Outline of the "Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation" • Anonymous
... are mostly of very simple and primitive construction, and St. Culbone has the construction of a perfect parish church within the limits of its thirty-four feet from east window to west door, with a nave, and a tiny chancel thirteen feet long, and a small ...
— Lynton and Lynmouth - A Pageant of Cliff & Moorland • John Presland
... tell the story as to give a general idea of the cycle, and of primitive heroic Irish life as reflected in that literature, laying the cycle, so far as accessible, under contribution to furnish forth the tale. Within a short compass I would bring before swift modern readers the more striking aspects of a literature so vast and ...
— The Coming of Cuculain • Standish O'Grady
... himself on top he will inevitably torture and murder his former oppressors. He hasn't the intelligence to foresee the ultimate folly of his acts, or that the only hope of the world is equal justice for all classes; he merely gratifies his primitive instinct for vengeance—precisely the same today, as during the first servile uprising of Rome—he butchers and slaughters and wrecks, and then sinks with his own weight, while what brains are left reconstruct civilization ...
— Black Oxen • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
... reddish-white, and fine gray and red sandstones. These strata dip to the eastward at an angle of about 18 deg., and form the western limit of the sandstone and limestone formations on the line of our route. Here we entered among the primitive rocks. The usual road passes to the right of this place; but we wound, or rather scrambled, our way up the narrow valley for several hours. Wildness and disorder were the character of this scenery. The river had been swollen ...
— The Exploring Expedition to the Rocky Mountains, Oregon and California • Brevet Col. J.C. Fremont
... one, on account of his fault, be deprived of a favor bestowed on him the privation of that favor is a punishment of that fault. Now as we stated in the First Part (Q. 95, A. 1; Q. 97, A. 1), God bestowed this favor on man, in his primitive state, that as long as his mind was subject to God, the lower powers of his soul would be subject to his rational mind, and his body to his soul. But inasmuch as through sin man's mind withdrew from subjection to God, the result was that neither were his lower ...
— Summa Theologica, Part II-II (Secunda Secundae) • Thomas Aquinas
... Hazlitt's primitive remarks on the metre of Christabel are of little interest. Coleridge was, of course, wrong in stating that his metre was founded on a new principle. The irregularly four-stressed line occurs in Spenser's Shepherd's Calender and can be traced back through ...
— Early Reviews of English Poets • John Louis Haney
... the direction of her gaze. At the corner of the alley there was a shop wherein a man sat rounding a stick of wood with a primitive lathe. He made the lathe revolve by working a stringed bow with his right hand, while his left hand worked the chisel and his right foot directed it. His limbs were making three different motions with an absence of effort which needed much practice, and for ...
— The Broken Road • A. E. W. Mason
... art, no less than in letters and science—it was not so much that they had not produced works worthy of comparison with those which adorned Babylon and Nineveh, as that, boasting less antiquity and less originality than those primitive races, they did not strike in the same way the imagination of the lively Greeks, who moreover could not but feel a certain jealousy of artistic successes, which had rewarded the efforts of a living and rival people. It happened, moreover, that the Persian ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 5. (of 7): Persia • George Rawlinson
... generally were far from good, as may be imagined from a consideration of the smallness of the houses, the compactness of the city, particularly the parts occupied by the people, and especially of the primitive system of sanitation, which was content to use the front street as a main sewer. There were, of course, no drains; at most there was a gutter along the middle of a street, or at each side of the roadway. It was the traditional practice to dump house and workshop refuse into the ...
— Life in a Medival City - Illustrated by York in the XVth Century • Edwin Benson
... primitive tea-parties the utmost propriety and dignity of deportment prevailed. No flirting nor coquetting; no gambling of old ladies nor hoyden chattering and romping of young ones; no self-satisfied struttings of wealthy gentlemen with ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 8 • Charles H. Sylvester
... naturally a social being. Good and evil have their primitive seat in the heart of individuals, but good and evil are transferred into institutions of which the influence is morally beneficial or pernicious. If socialism consists in recognizing the importance ...
— The Heavenly Father - Lectures on Modern Atheism • Ernest Naville
... the hardest thought of all for Philippe. Deep hollows appeared in his cheeks. The minutes seemed to age him like long years of sickness. The sight of him suggested the faces of the dying martyrs in certain primitive pictures. Nothing short of physical pain can thus convulse the features of a man's countenance. And he really suffered as much as if he were being stretched on the rack and burnt with red-hot pincers. Nevertheless, he felt that his ...
— The Frontier • Maurice LeBlanc
... rarely quite dry. Entering through the old gate one sees two ancient pieces of cannon taken from the English, who unsuccessfully laid siege to the place in 1422. Close to the gate are the two rival inns, which are very primitive in their arrangement, the entrance hall forming the kitchen, as in many old Breton houses. A second frowning old gateway leads to the single street, which, passing between two rows of antique gabled houses, and under the chancel of the little parish church, conducts one to the almost interminable ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 430, March 29, 1884 • Various
... not new, no; but the device Whitney and his friend Mr. Miller produced was a fresh method for getting this age-old result. Up to 1760 the same primitive ginning machine was used in England as had been used in India for many, many years. Think of that! But as civilization grew and people not only wove more cloth but made an increasing variety of kinds ...
— Carl and the Cotton Gin • Sara Ware Bassett
... and Square, Westbourne Park Crescent and Terrace Road. Near to Park Crescent in Chichester Place is a Jewish synagogue of red brick, with ornate stone carving over doors and windows. Next door is a curiously built Primitive Methodist chapel, with bands of differently coloured bricks in relief. St. Mary Magdalene's Church and schools stand at the corner of Cirencester Street. A temporary church was first opened in 1865, and the real building in 1868. This ...
— Mayfair, Belgravia, and Bayswater - The Fascination of London • Geraldine Edith Mitton
... had been constant. Her territory had been saturated with population; that is to say, her territory, with the primitive method of production, had supported the maximum limit of population. But when she awoke and inaugurated the machine-civilization, her productive power had been enormously increased. Thus, on the same territory, she was able to support a far larger population. At once the birth rate began ...
— The Strength of the Strong • Jack London
... of war are primitive, the causes of war are no less so. It has been strikingly said of late by a Scandinavian scholar that "language was born in the courting-days of mankind: the first utterance of speech something between the nightly ...
— The Creed of the Old South 1865-1915 • Basil L. Gildersleeve
... Giles would have addressed with a deferential Sir or Madam. Beside this visioned scene the homely farmsteads did not quite hold their own from her present twenty-year point of survey. For all his woodland sequestration, Giles knew the primitive simplicity of the subject he had started, and now ...
— The Woodlanders • Thomas Hardy
... remains in Ireland—all that has survived of St. Declan's holy city of Ardmore. This embraces a beautiful and perfect round tower, a singularly interesting ruined church commonly called the cathedral, the ruins of a second church beside a holy well, a primitive oratory, a couple of ogham inscribed pillar stones, ...
— The Life of St. Declan of Ardmore • Anonymous
... just beginning the study of the Latin language. By myth is meant an imaginative tale that has been handed down by tradition from remote antiquity concerning supernatural beings and events. Such tales are common among all primitive peoples, and are by them accepted as true. They owe their origin to no single author, but grow up as the untutored imagination strives to explain to itself the operations of nature and the mysteries of life, or amuses itself with ...
— Ritchie's Fabulae Faciles - A First Latin Reader • John Kirtland, ed.
... was well stocked, and appeared to be cultivated in the most approved modern style, and was well fenced with the usual rails, we started on our return to Zoar, where the packet had halted. On our way thither, we passed through a hamlet of primitive appearance, consisting of some half-dozen houses built of logs, at one end of which was a rudely-constructed meeting-house, belonging to the sect of Whitfieldite Methodists. The congregation was assembled, ...
— An Englishman's Travels in America - His Observations Of Life And Manners In The Free And Slave States • John Benwell
... something funny. You know, my memory is still freakish, and things come back in splotches. Just now I was recalling a primitive Brazilian tribe in whose language the word 'we' means also 'good. 'Others,' which they express by saying 'not we,' means also 'evil.' Isn't that a funny trait of early man—we—good; not we—bad! I suppose our own tongue is but an elaboration of that simple bit ...
— The Seeker • Harry Leon Wilson
... will shortly be converted either into public workshops or into gymnasia. No child will be admitted into the workshops under ten years of age. Active training in primitive modes of fighting and gymnastics will be compulsory for all boys over ...
— Fantasia of the Unconscious • D. H. Lawrence
... lightly against his. He hated his own excited triumph. For the first time he became aware of something definitely abnormal in himself, as though a dead skin had been stripped off his senses and he had begun to see and hear with a primitive and ...
— The Dark House • I. A. R. Wylie
... frescoes of the Brancacci Chapel; but we do not doubt that he too felt the beneficent influx of the new style, of which Masaccio was the greatest champion, and that he followed it, leaving behind, up to a certain point, the primitive giottesque forms. There is in his art, the great mediaeval ideal rejuvenated and reinvigorated by the spirit of newer times. Being in the beginning of his career, as is generally believed, only an illuminator, he continued, with subtle delicacy and accurate, almost timid design, to illuminate ...
— Fra Angelico • J. B. Supino
... carried with them a feeling of kindly but enormous force—elemental force, fresh, untutored, new, and young. There was buoyancy in it; a fine, breathless sense of uplifting and exhilaration; a sensation as of bigness and a return to the homely, human, natural life, to the primitive old impulses, irresistible, changeless, and unhampered; old as the ocean, stable as the hills, vast as the ...
— Blix • Frank Norris
... to 11th century: Circular churches of Holy Cross at Mnster, and of Fulda; palace chapel of Charlemagne at Aix-la-Chapelle, 804; St. Stephen, Mayence, 990; primitive nave and crypt of St. Gereon, Cologne, 10th century; Lorsch.—11th century: Churches of Gernrode, Goslar, and Merseburg in Saxony; cathedral of Bremen; first restoration of cathedral of Treves (Trier), 1010, west ...
— A Text-Book of the History of Architecture - Seventh Edition, revised • Alfred D. F. Hamlin
... how evil how good soever, to the Divine Being. When they have done this, they think they have performed an act of piety and mercy. At my request, Mohammed made Said a pair of camel-driver's shoes, or sandals, to save his best. The plan is primitive enough. They get a piece of dried camel's hide, and cut it into the shape of the sole of the foot. Then they cut two thongs from the same hide. Holes are now bored through the soles, a knot is made at the end of ...
— Travels in the Great Desert of Sahara, in the Years of 1845 and 1846 • James Richardson
... horn-spoon by its side. They all drew their chairs to the table, and David, asking no blessing, as it was called, but nevertheless giving thanks for the blessing already bestowed, namely, the perfect gift of food, invited Hugh to make a supper. Each, in primitive but not ungraceful fashion, took a potatoe from the dish with the fingers, and ate it, "bite and sup," with the help of the horn-spoon for the milk. Hugh thought he had never supped more pleasantly, and could ...
— David Elginbrod • George MacDonald
... the planet—is to discover; after which discovery there is little more comfort to be had of the sort with which Helen was chiefly conversant. But she escaped for the time after a very simple and primitive fashion, although it ...
— Thomas Wingfold, Curate • George MacDonald
... near your house," she answered. "I know how your primitive social organization is set up, but isn't one human being just as good as another to lead me ...
— The Gift Bearer • Charles Louis Fontenay
... shipper were certainly harassed, and trade was dislocated; but, as Mollien observed, commerce soon adapted itself to altered conditions; and merchants never parted with their wares without getting hard cash or resorting to the primitive method of barter. Money was also frequently melted down in France and Germany so as to effect bargains with England in bars of metal. And so, in one way or another, trade was carried on, with infinite discomfort and friction, ...
— The Life of Napoleon I (Volumes, 1 and 2) • John Holland Rose
... certainly indicate the leading features of Scottish music. There is something not only of wild sweetness, but touches of pathos even in its merriest measures. Though termed a new kind of music, however, it was not new. The king took up the key-note of the human heart—the primitive scale, or what has been defined the scale of nature, and produced some of those wild and plaintive strains which we now call Scottish melodies. His poetry was descriptive of, and adapted to the feelings, customs, and manners of his countrymen; ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volumes I-VI. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... banished the gloomy forebodings of her own; and she walked on, through the iron gate, where the bronze mastiffs glared warningly from their granite pedestal—on into the large undulating park, which stretched away to meet the line of primitive pines. There was no straight avenue, but a broad smooth carriage road curved gently up a hillside, and on both margins of the graveled way, ancient elm trees stood at regular intervals, throwing their boughs across, to unite in lifting the superb groined arches, whose fine tracery of sinuous ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson
... now impervious to fever. Who can tell the joy that I experienced as I watched Marie returning from the very brink of the grave to a state of full and lovely womanhood? After all, we were not so far away from the primitive conditions of humanity, when the first duty of man was to feed his women and his children, and I think that something of that instinct remains with us. At least, I know I never experienced a greater pleasure than I did, when the woman I loved, the poor, starving woman, ate and ate of the ...
— Marie - An Episode in The Life of the late Allan Quatermain • H. Rider Haggard
... Captain Palliser wondered if he was perhaps sharp—one of those New Yorkers shrewd even to light-fingeredness in clever scheming. Stories of a newly created method of business dealing involving an air of candor and almost primitive good nature—an American method—had attracted Captain Palliser's attention for some time. A certain Yankee rawness of manner played a part as a factor, a crudity which would throw a man off guard if he did not recognize it. The person who employed the method was of philosophical non- combativeness. ...
— T. Tembarom • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... "The primitive government was the Matriarchate. The Matriarchate! The Lords of Creation just ran about and did ...
— Ann Veronica • H. G. Wells
... opinion in reference to these causes; but one cause concerning whose influence there can be no dispute is the culmination of the change from the ancient system of manufacturing to the modern. Let us briefly trace the manner in which this branch of civilization has grown: In the most primitive state of existence, each man procures and prepares for himself the few things which he requires. With the first increase in intelligence those of most skill in making weapons and preparing skins make more than they require for themselves, which they exchange with others for the products ...
— Monopolies and the People • Charles Whiting Baker
... the house. A wild thought came to her that, if there were any killing it would be Kraill who would do it. And he and she would run away for awhile, right into the Bush, before people came to hang them. She stopped breathing at the gloriousness, the primitive full-bloodedness of it, and then writhed in horror at the greed of such thoughts, and prayed passionately that a sentry might be put at ...
— Captivity • M. Leonora Eyles
... answered by "Albra," or "Abbraak," which is rendered "a king without reproach." Some contend that this word should be written "Abrah." PASS-WORD:—"Stibium" (antimony). By this is intended as among the Hermetic Philosophers, "the primitive matter whence all things are formed." To this pass-word some add ...
— The Mysteries of Free Masonry - Containing All the Degrees of the Order Conferred in a Master's Lodge • William Morgan
... a relation of cause and effect between this scene and the fact, which is a fact, that the most ancient fragments of primitive Christian worship now discoverable are forms for the due commemoration of the sacrifice of ...
— A Short History of the Book of Common Prayer • William Reed Huntington
... crops. The ornament of the forests had become the object of the keenest hate, and as soon as—shortly before we entered Keilhau—hunting was freely permitted, the peasants gave full vent to their rage, set off for the woods with the old muskets they had kept hidden in the garrets, or other still more primitive weapons, and shot or struck down all the game they encountered. Roast venison was cheap for weeks on Rudolstadt tables, and the pupils had ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... first arose from the primitive Ape, He first dropped his tail, and took on a new shape. But Cricketing Man, born to trundle and swipe, Reversion displays to the earlier type; For a cricketing team, when beginning to fail, Always loses its "form," and "developes ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 103, August 13, 1892 • Various
... in Saint Agnes' consecrated ground. If the weather was good, he generally extended his walk through the fields to an old deserted Catholic burial-field, which had been used only in the first years after the famine invasion, and now was clean forgotten. The old wagon-maker liked to look over the primitive, neglected stones which marked the graves of these earlier exiles. Fully half of the inscriptions mentioned his County Galway—there were two naming the very parish adjoining his. The latest date on any stone was of ...
— The Damnation of Theron Ware • Harold Frederic
... of the process in his sister's wasted face. At eighteen she had been pretty, and as full of enthusiasm as he. Now she was sour, trivial, insignificant—she had missed her chance of life. And she had no resources, poor creature, was fashioned simply for the primitive functions she had been denied the chance to fulfil! It exasperated him to think of it—and to reflect that even now a little travel, a little health, a little money, might transform her, make her young and desirable... The chief fruit of his experience was that there is no ...
— The Early Short Fiction of Edith Wharton, Part 1 (of 10) • Edith Wharton
... being said on the subject of the great discovery; but after the meal was finished, Miss Davis desired Hetty to fetch her her drawings that she might see them. Hetty went to her own room immediately, and returned bringing about a dozen drawings in a very primitive portfolio made of several ...
— Hetty Gray - Nobody's Bairn • Rosa Mulholland
... family of children, they grew up surrounded by the conditions of an isolated farm life, so general in the widely scattered settlements of those early days, with only now and then rare chances for a little schooling of the most primitive character. However, they shared with each other their joys and sorrows, their plays and privations; always forbearing and patient, kind and affectionate, light-hearted, sympathetic and helpful, they did much to develop that broad, loving, genial nature which ...
— Solaris Farm - A Story of the Twentieth Century • Milan C. Edson
... the same extreme susceptibility to the moods of nature. He loved her first for herself, and then with a sense of those inherited primitive associations with her scenes and hid influences which still play upon us to-day; and nothing could be surer than the wilder or tamer glimpses which are seen in this book and in its landscape settings of the characters. But Russ as he is, he never lets his ...
— Virgin Soil • Ivan S. Turgenev
... gold fields bring in view every trait of human character. The more vicious standing out in bold relief, and stamping their impress upon the locality. This phase and most primitive situation can be accounted for partly by the cupidity of mankind, but mainly that the first arrivals are chiefly adventurers. Single men, untrammeled by family cares, traders, saloonists, gamblers, and that unknown quantity of indefinite quality, ever present, content ...
— Shadow and Light - An Autobiography with Reminiscences of the Last and Present Century • Mifflin Wistar Gibbs
... The primitive process by which the pearls are extracted from the oysters is tedious, offensive to the senses, and of a character much too disagreeable to be associated with the jewel symbolizing purity. A few million oysters are shipped to southern India, and some go to Jaffna ...
— East of Suez - Ceylon, India, China and Japan • Frederic Courtland Penfield
... devoted himself to his parish, where he won the respect of all parties. In 1666 he alienated the Scottish bishops by a bold memorial (printed in vol. ii. of the Miscellanies of the Scottish Historical Society), in which he pointed out that they were departing from the custom of the primitive church by their excessive pretensions, and yet his attitude was far too moderate to please the Presbyterians. In 1669 he resigned his parish to become professor of divinity in the university of Glasgow, and in the same year he published ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 4 - "Bulgaria" to "Calgary" • Various
... it seemed as though a struggle between the two men was inevitable. Already people were glancing at them curiously, for Mr. Heseltine-Wrigge came of a primitive school, and he had no intention whatever of letting his man escape. Fortunately, at that moment Count von Hern came up and Peter at once appealed ...
— Peter Ruff and the Double Four • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... further, though they be known, yet if they be discontinued or changed, exhortations, precepts, and illustrations of things, which refer to such circumstances now ceased or altered, cannot at this time be urged in that manner and with that force which they were to the primitive Christians. Thus the text now before us, in its first intent and design, relates to the decent management of those extraordinary gifts which were then in the Church, {1} but which are now totally ceased. And even as to the allusion that "we are one body in Christ," though what the apostle ...
— Human Nature - and Other Sermons • Joseph Butler
... urged that the patriarchs held slaves, and therefore, slavery is right. Do you really believe that patriarchal servitude was like American slavery? Can you believe it? If so, read the history of these primitive fathers of the church and be undeceived. Look at Abraham, though so great a man, going to the herd himself and fetching a calf from thence and serving it up with his own hands, for the entertainment of his guests. ...
— An Appeal to the Christian Women of the South • Angelina Emily Grimke
... world, the world would love his own.' The Church has leavened the world, but the world has also leavened the Church; and it seems agreed by common consent that there is to be no fanatical goodness of the early primitive pattern. Of course, then, there will be no persecution, where religion goes in silver slippers, and you find Christian men running neck and neck with others, and no man can tell which ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ezekiel, Daniel, and the Minor Prophets. St Matthew Chapters I to VIII • Alexander Maclaren
... night, and whose carpet was nature's greenest velvet, life in it was a perennial picnic for the children. Meantime father was at work on our permanent home, and before the summer fled we were domiciled in a large double-log house—rough and primitive, ...
— Last of the Great Scouts - The Life Story of William F. Cody ["Buffalo Bill"] • Helen Cody Wetmore
... help thinking that the captains and crews of our primitive little coastal steamers take the chances so often that they in time get used to it, and, being used to it, have no longer any misgivings or anxiety in rough weather concerning a watery grave, but feel as perfectly safe as if they were in church with their wives ...
— While the Billy Boils • Henry Lawson
... the nave of the Santo—a church with mosque-like domes, like those of the early Eastern architects. The Child is seated in her lap, as in the earliest representation of the subject: here, however, the Christ is a child, with an element of helplessness almost indicated, whereas the primitive idea had been to show the vigour and often the features of a biggish boy. Donatello's version is much more pathetic, as the little Christ raises a tiny hand in benediction. The Virgin herself is of unequalled solemnity, while her young and gracious face, exquisite in expression ...
— Donatello • David Lindsay, Earl of Crawford
... the very few sea-side places within fairly easy reach of London which had not been vulgarized into an ordinary watering place. It was a primitive little place with one good, old-established hotel, and a limited number of villas and lodging houses, which only served as a sort of ornamental fringe to the ...
— We Two • Edna Lyall
... sort of primitive lock. It seems incredible that human creatures could exist down here, but such appears to ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science January 1931 • Various
... jealous of any man, he lays worse plots for them than ever was impos'd on Hercules, for he strews in his way flatterers, panders, intelligencers, atheists, and a thousand such political monsters. He should have been Pope; but instead of coming to it by the primitive decency of the church, he did bestow bribes so largely and so impudently as if he would have carried it away without heaven's knowledge. Some good he ...
— The Duchess of Malfi • John Webster
... consider their episcopal ordination in England as conferring on them any spiritual authority in a church newly gathered in America. They found rather in the free choice of the brotherhood the sign of a divine call to spiritual functions in the church, and were inducted into office by the primitive form of the laying on ...
— A History of American Christianity • Leonard Woolsey Bacon
... with gun in hand was stealthily crawling to the outer edge of the flat where my intended victims were, when an alligator rose close by, bringing his unpleasant countenance much nearer than was agreeable. My gun was charged with shot, and the primitive state of nudity to which I had just reduced myself, precluded the possibility of my having a second load. To fire therefore was useless, and to retreat difficult, for I had wandered from the boat some distance across the bank, ...
— Discoveries in Australia, Volume 2 • John Lort Stokes
... Incorporeall Spirits, hath hitherto so prevailed in the Church, that the use of Exorcisme, (that is to say, of ejection of Devills by Conjuration) is thereupon built; and (though rarely and faintly practised) is not yet totally given over. That there were many Daemoniaques in the Primitive Church, and few Mad-men, and other such singular diseases; whereas in these times we hear of, and see many Mad-men, and few Daemoniaques, proceeds not from the change of Nature; but of Names. But how it comes ...
— Leviathan • Thomas Hobbes
... been a change in that respect in recent years?- Yes, a very considerable change; but in some of the more primitive districts glazed windows do not ...
— Second Shetland Truck System Report • William Guthrie
... by the generations which have gone before them. I love to dwell on the tender recollections, the kindred ties, the early affections, and the touching narratives and incidents, which mingle with all I know of this primitive family abode. I weep to think that none of those who inhabited it are now among the living; and if ever I am ashamed of it, or if I ever fail in affectionate veneration for him who reared it, and defended ...
— The Great Speeches and Orations of Daniel Webster • Daniel Webster
... corresponding offices. Though improvements in other parts of the piano have done much to increase the volume of the tone, yet in the radical change of form, size, and other physical qualities of the sounding-board consists the evolution of the modern pianoforte from the primitive clavichord. ...
— Resonance in Singing and Speaking • Thomas Fillebrown
... walk into "Old" Cairo, and turning a corner you may catch glimpses of what Mark Twain calls "Oriental simplicity," namely, picturesquely-composed groups of "dear delightful" Arabs whose clothing is no more than primitive custom makes strictly necessary. These kind of "tableaux vivants" or "art studies" give quite a thrill of novelty to Cairene-English Society,—a touch of savagery,—a soupcon of peculiarity which is entirely lacking to fashionable London. Then, it must be remembered ...
— Ziska - The Problem of a Wicked Soul • Marie Corelli
... falls on a more or less distant relation of the author of the original offence.), even more strange than his first story, and he thoroughly stirred her enthusiasm by his descriptions of the strange wild beauty of the country, the peculiarities of its inhabitants, and their primitive hospitality and customs. Finally, he offered her a pretty little stiletto, less remarkable for its shape and copper mounting than for its origin. A famous bandit had given it to Captain Ellis, and had assured him it had been buried in four human bodies. Miss Lydia thrust ...
— Columba • Prosper Merimee
... doubtless; in that sense the hairs were numbered. But that there is a special direction and interference to-day for you and me—well, we won't argue, as I said; but I never can conceive it so; and I think a wider look at the world brings a question to all such primitive faith." ...
— A Summer in Leslie Goldthwaite's Life. • Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney
... definition, in which every one is free to use his own: to wit, What constitutes identity, or difference in two things, in the common acceptation of sameness? All languages may be called the same, as being all made up of the same primitive sounds, expressed by the letters of the different alphabets. But, in this sense, all things on earth are the same, as consisting of matter. This gives up the useful distribution into genera and species, which we form, arbitrarily indeed, ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson
... of Biggar, asked me to give a lecture in my native village, the shrewd little capital of the Upper Ward. I never lectured before; I have no turn for it; but Avunculus was urgent, and I had an odd sort of desire to say something to these strong-brained, primitive people of my youth, who were boys and girls when I left them. I could think of nothing to give them. At last I said to myself, "I'll tell them Ailie's story." I had often told it to myself; indeed, it came on me at intervals almost painfully, as if ...
— Rab and His Friends • John Brown, M. D.
... expect to be annihilated by the big brother if I attempted any but the 'sincerest' admiration and respect. Have no fears on that score, but tell us what is to follow this superb dinner. An apple bee, spinning match, husking party, or primitive pastime of some sort, ...
— Kitty's Class Day And Other Stories • Louisa M. Alcott |
