"Pagan" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... sinned. I had broken the canons of the living God, and deserved a fearful chastisement. I had made unto myself an idol, and no pagan idolater ever worshipped at his unhallowed shrine with more blind devotion. I had been true to Ernest, but false to my Maker, the one great and jealous God. I had lived but for one object, and that object was withdrawn, leaving ...
— Ernest Linwood - or, The Inner Life of the Author • Caroline Lee Hentz
... enormous luxury of the court, and the squalid misery of the people. He knew better. He was professedly a disciple of Jesus Christ, and yet a more thorough worldling could hardly have been in Christian or in pagan lands. He was one of the most gigantic robbers of the poor of ...
— Louis XIV., Makers of History Series • John S. C. Abbott
... o' see the city. But don't go into the down-town part; you'll not like it; nothing but narrow streets and old buildings with histories to 'em, and gardens hid away inside of 'em, and damp archways, and pagan-looking females who can't talk English, peeping out over balconies that offer to drop down on you, and then don't keep their word; every thing old-timey, and Frenchy, and Spanishy; unprogressive—you wouldn't like it. Go up-town. That's American. It's ...
— Bonaventure - A Prose Pastoral of Acadian Louisiana • George Washington Cable
... personal freedom or absolute rights of another, is a violation of good manners. He who presumes to censure me for my religious belief, or want of belief; who makes it a matter of criticism or reproach that I am a Theist or Atheist, Trinitarian or Unitarian, Catholic or Protestant, Pagan or Christian, Jew, Mohammedan, or Mormon, is guilty of rudeness and insult. If any of these modes of belief make me intolerant or intrusive, he may resent such intolerance or repel such intrusion; but the basis of all true politeness and ...
— How To Behave: A Pocket Manual Of Republican Etiquette, And Guide To Correct Personal Habits • Samuel R Wells
... destinies ordain.—"In the mythology, also, of the Iliad, purely Pagan as it is, we discover one important truth unconsciously involved, which was almost entirely lost from view amidst the nearly equal scepticism and credulity of subsequent ages. Zeus or Jupiter is popularly to be taken as omnipotent. No distinct empire is assigned to fate ...
— The Iliad of Homer • Homer
... would gladly have encouraged these pagan deliverances on the part of the converted Prince, but the Colonel was scandalised, and Mac, although in his heart of hearts not ill-satisfied at the evidence of the skin-deep Christianity of a man delivered over to the corrupt teaching ...
— The Magnetic North • Elizabeth Robins (C. E. Raimond)
... is sincere, the Atheist, the Agnostic, the Christian, the Pagan, the Mohammedan, the Buddhist, the Sun-worshipper, the Republican, the Democrat, the Progressive, the Prohibitionist, the Brewer, all these are sincere in their beliefs. And as these beliefs are different, it is common sense to say that no one ...
— Evening Round Up - More Good Stuff Like Pep • William Crosbie Hunter
... came round again to the artificial lake in front of the house. For some reason it looked a very artificial lake; indeed, the whole scene was like a classical landscape with a touch of Watteau; the Palladian facade of the house pale in the moon, and the same silver touching the very pagan and naked marble nymph in the middle of the pond. Rather to his surprise, he found another figure there beside the statue, sitting almost equally motionless; and the same silver pencil traced the wrinkled brow and patient face of Horne ...
— The Man Who Knew Too Much • G.K. Chesterton
... the young Greek, with wave of hand, Showed the swart pagan at his side; So, motioning to the gathered band, That none could choose but understand, "Let this man ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 26, August, 1880 - of Popular Literature and Science • Various
... —a pagan and a worshipper of Pan, loving the woods and waters, and preferring to go to them (when my heart was stirred thereto by that mysterious power which, as I conceive, cares little for worship made stately and to order on certain recurring calendar ...
— Literary Hearthstones of Dixie • La Salle Corbell Pickett
... process of illogical reasoning of which, later, the Puritans were guilty when they banished music from the churches. In view of the fact that music was used to heighten the charms of wanton Roman festivities or Pagan rites, St. Jerome condemned the art itself, ignorant of the fact that music can never be immoral in itself, but only through evil associations. St. Augustine took a different view of music from St. Jerome. When he first heard the Christian chant at Milan he ...
— Chopin and Other Musical Essays • Henry T. Finck
... said, "since you ask for criticism, I feel bound to give it. You speak of the 'sacred' Nine. The word sacred appears to me to belong distinctly to religious matters; I cannot think that it should be employed in speaking of pagan divinities. The expression—I am sorry ...
— Mrs. Tree • Laura E. Richards
... humorous triumphs are bucolic. And for another source of keenest pleasure, there is his style, ennobling all his work. Whether for the plastic manipulation of dialogue or the eloquencies and exactitudes of description, he is emphatically a master. His mind, pagan in its bent, is splendidly broad in its comprehension of the arcana of Nature and that of a poet sensitive to all the witchery of a world which at core is inscrutably dark and mysterious. He knows, none better, of the comfort ...
— Masters of the English Novel - A Study Of Principles And Personalities • Richard Burton
... the sagas of this pagan time, the dying on a bed of sickness is mentioned as a kind of derogatory end of a man ...
— Heimskringla - The Chronicle of the Kings of Norway • Snorri Sturluson
... because there the great apostle to the Gentiles planted his feet upon it, and said, in the ears of the Grecian sophists, "Him whom ye ignorantly worship declare I unto you?" At that brilliant centre of pagan civilization it might have reached its loftiest altitude, measured by a purely intellectual standard; but morally, this scaffolding was on the same low level of human life and character all the world around. The immortalities erected ...
— A Walk from London to John O'Groat's • Elihu Burritt
... that the profession of medicine originated in idolatry with pagan priests, who besought the gods to 158:3 heal the sick and designated Apollo as "the god of medicine." He was supposed to have dic- tated the first prescription, according to the 158:6 "History of Four Thousand Years of Medicine." It is here noticeable ...
— Science and Health With Key to the Scriptures • Mary Baker Eddy
... career had its advantages. Mlle. de Brabender considered that the convent would have a great fascination for so dreamy a nature as mine. The latter was very religious and a great church-goer, mon petit Dame was a pagan in the purest acceptation of that word, and yet the two women got on very well together, thanks to their affectionate devotion ...
— My Double Life - The Memoirs of Sarah Bernhardt • Sarah Bernhardt
... bringing about a change in the morals and manners of a nation. These changes, which may be for good or evil, do not come of a sudden. Even during the Christian ages the principles of the gospel do not always prevail in their fulness and beauty. At times, through the passions of men, non-Christian and pagan ideas gain ground and for a time predominate. It is only by dealing tactfully with human nature and by persistent efforts that the Church has been enabled to make ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 2, 1917 • Various
... Iliads of vagabondage ran an irresponsible gaiety, a non-morality, and a kind of unbrave zest for adventure. They told of their defeats and flights with as much relish and humor as of their charges and victories. And while the spirit was thoroughly pagan, these accounts were full of the cliches of religion. A roustabout whom every one called the Persimmon confided to Peter that he meant to cut loose some logs in a raft up the river, float them down a little way, tie them ...
— Birthright - A Novel • T.S. Stribling
... ma tante, but I am afraid that father would not altogether see eye to eye with you in this. After all," she added naively, "a pagan may become converted to Christianity without being called a traitor to his false gods, and the Duc de Raguse may have learnt to hate the idol whom he once worshipped, and for this profession of faith we should honour him, ...
— The Bronze Eagle - A Story of the Hundred Days • Emmuska Orczy, Baroness Orczy
... on this eminence, is an oblong narrow garden, full of rose trees and jasmine, which vulgar tradition points out as the grave of the giant who gives name to the mountain, and who figures in the Pagan annals as a hero of extraordinary size and valour. Among the Christians, he is said to have been a vast and ferocious giant; while the Mussulmans will have him to be a holy dervish. In each tradition he was a monster, that sat on the top of the mountain, and dangled ...
— Journal of a Visit to Constantinople and Some of the Greek Islands in the Spring and Summer of 1833 • John Auldjo
... "Propaganda," or of that celebrated institution for the propagation of the Roman Catholic religion which, since the reign of Gregory XV., has governed, as from a common centre, the immense network of missions that Christian Rome has spread over the lands she hopes to conquer, as Pagan Rome spread her network of military roads over the lands which she had already reduced to subjection. Cardinals, with a cardinal for prefect and a prelate for secretary, compose this congregation, which holds regular meetings twice a month, ...
— Atlantic Monthly,Volume 14, No. 82, August, 1864 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... were no less famous than his Halakic activities. Just about this time all sorts of hybrid religions made up of decadent Greek philosophy and of dying Pagan creeds were in vogue—the various forms of Gnosticism. Christianity—Jewish Gnosticism, that is—was only one of the many perversions that Judaism had to combat. These religions exercised a particular fascination because they dealt largely ...
— The Menorah Journal, Volume 1, 1915 • Various
... certain Lieutenant James Stuart was one among those welcome brave allies. That our gallant Tracy was the beautiful Begum's favourite soon became notorious to all; and not less so, that the Begum herself was precisely in the same interesting situation as Mrs. James Stuart. The two ladies, Pagan and Christian, were, technically speaking, running a race together. Well, just as times drew nigh, poor Lieutenant Stuart was unfortunately killed in an insurrection headed by some fanatics, who disapproved of foreign friends, and perhaps of their princess's situation. His death proved ...
— The Complete Prose Works of Martin Farquhar Tupper • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... Roland, favorite nephew of the king, and greatest of all the paladins. Next him sat Oliver, the friend of his soul, closer knit in bonds of friendship than ever the ties of blood bound brother to brother. Others there were of valiant men who had often proved their courage against their pagan enemies. None, however, matched in massiveness and kingly bearing the great Charles himself, who sat now on his chair of gold over which twined a flowering rose vine. In the boughs of the towering pine the birds sang blithely, unconscious of the ...
— Journeys Through Bookland V3 • Charles H. Sylvester
... theologians, crushed by two Councils, and remaining, in the popular fancy, as a sort of Friar Bacon, a forerunner of the wizard Faustus; a man whom Bernard of Clairvaux called a thief of souls, a rapacious wolf, a Herod; a man who reveals himself a Pagan in his attempts to turn Plato into a Christian; a man who disputes about Faith in the teeth of Faith, and criticises the Law in the name of the Law; a man, most enormous of all, who sees nothing as symbol or emblem (per speculum in aenigmate), but ...
— Renaissance Fancies and Studies - Being a Sequel to Euphorion • Violet Paget (AKA Vernon Lee)
... simply a forest dweller, and the author is glad himself to be a savage a great part of every year, but yet, as savages, entitled to name their own rivers, their own lakes, their own mountains. After all, these terms—"savage," "heathen," "pagan"—mean, alike, simply "country people," and point to some old-time superciliousness of the city-bred, now confined, one hopes, to such localities as Whitechapel and ...
— The Ascent of Denali (Mount McKinley) - A Narrative of the First Complete Ascent of the Highest - Peak in North America • Hudson Stuck
... art beautiful, howe'er it be! Huntress, or Dian, or whatever named; And he, the veriest Pagan, that first framed A silver idol, and ne'er worshipp'd thee!— It is too late—or thou should'st have my knee— Too late now for the old Ephesian vows, And not divine the crescent on thy brows!— Yet, call thee nothing but the mere mild Moon, Behind those chestnut ...
— The Poetical Works of Thomas Hood • Thomas Hood
... conquest of the Ostrogoths threatened to be. I do not mean to suggest that that advent was without danger. It was of course full of dreadful peril, but that peril was chiefly material and not spiritual; it could destroy, but not create; moreover, since in the main it was pagan, it could ...
— Ravenna, A Study • Edward Hutton
... liable to be deluded by false parallels and imperfect analogies. A voice, like that which is said to have startled the mariner of old on the coasts of Ionia, and to have announced to him the cessation of oracles, comes to us from all the remains of pagan antiquity, warning us that the spirit of that ancient civilization has departed with its forms: and while it bids us look forward to a new destiny for the human race, it teaches us that the maxims and the oracles by which that destiny must be guided, are to be sought elsewhere ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, April 1844 - Volume 23, Number 4 • Various
... from the top of each cupola one could look forth on the plain and the mountains around Meknez. All about the stables the rarest trees were planted. Within the walls were fifty palaces, each with its own mosque and its baths. Never was such a thing known in any country, Arab or foreign, pagan or Moslem. The guarding of the doors of these palaces was intrusted to twelve hundred ...
— In Morocco • Edith Wharton
... that the service of a god implies any duties in common life beyond ceremonial ones is wholly foreign to paganism in all its forms. The establishment of the opposite idea is wholly the consequence of revelation. So we need not wonder if the pagan conception of service was here in the minds of the vowing assembly. If we look at their vow, as recorded in verses 16-18, we see nothing in it which necessarily implies a loftier idea. Jehovah is their national God, who has fought and conquered for them, therefore they will 'serve ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... moll-owl! And I ask any sane Christian or Pagan—proof enough!—would my brother Rowsley let his wife visit those places, those people? Monstrous to have the suspicion that he would, you know him! Mrs. Lawrence Finchley, for example. I say nothing to hurt the poor woman; I back her against her imbecile of a husband. He ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... on His demand, (If Christ came questioning,) No pagan soul converted to His creed Could I proclaim; or say, that word or deed Of mine, had spread the faith in any land; Or sent it forth, to fly on stronger ...
— Poems of Experience • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... Judith to deliver Bethulia from this Holofernes. The sword of the eternal is too heavy for my arm. Allow me, then, to avoid dishonor by death; let me take refuge in martyrdom. I do not ask you for liberty, as a guilty one would, nor for vengeance, as would a pagan. Let me die; that is all. I supplicate you, I implore you on my knees—let me die, and my last sigh shall be a blessing ...
— The Three Musketeers • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... vulgar opinion, if a man be wealthy, no matter how he gets it, of what parentage, how qualified, how virtuously endowed, or villainously inclined; let him be a bawd, a gripe, an usurer, a villain, a pagan, a barbarian, a wretch, [2209]Lucian's tyrant, "on whom you may look with less security than on the sun;" so that he be rich (and liberal withal) he shall be honoured, admired, adored, reverenced, and highly [2210]magnified. "The rich is had in reputation ...
— The Anatomy of Melancholy • Democritus Junior
... builders call it their "prayer in stone," which suggests to recollection the story of the cathedral of Amiens, whose architectural construction and arrangement of statuary and paintings made it to be called the Bible of that city. The Frankish church was reared upon the spot where, in pagan times, one bitter winter day, a Roman soldier parted his mantle with his sword and gave half of the garment to a naked beggar; and so was memorialized in art and stone what was called the divine spirit of giving, whose unbelieving ...
— Pulpit and Press (6th Edition) • Mary Baker Eddy
... yeoman forward, who, much confused under the Prince's keen eye, stammered out that he did not wish to harm the young gentleman, but that he had seemed mighty anxious to spare the Pagan hounds of prisoners, and had even been heard to say that their revenge ...
— The Prince and the Page • Charlotte M. Yonge
... half. And I only own—such is my challengeful character—that perhaps He do eat pagan infants when He's in the desert. But not Christian ones at home. Oh ...
— The Dynasts - An Epic-Drama Of The War With Napoleon, In Three Parts, - Nineteen Acts, And One Hundred And Thirty Scenes • Thomas Hardy
... and courtier of the Renaissance should be represented in the guise of a Roman warrior, is an anomaly, irreconcilable as that of pagan gods and the personification of Christian attributes here placed vis-a-vis. Perhaps the grief-stricken wife, who was, as it appears, of a highly romantic and adventuresome turn, wished thus to commemorate the heroic qualities of her husband; she ...
— East of Paris - Sketches in the Gatinais, Bourbonnais, and Champagne • Matilda Betham-Edwards
... may have forced upon him, may welcome, the honors of the priest, though he pose as the humble slave of Nature and her secrets. Presently the foundations and institutes, which coexist with the cathedrals and churches, just as once the new Christian chapels and congregations stood side by side with pagan temples and heathen shrines, may oust their rivals, and assume the monopoly of ritual. Should its spirit remain fine and clear, should it maintain the glorious promise of its dawn, should its high priests realize the perpetually widening intimations of its universal triumph, ...
— The Glands Regulating Personality • Louis Berman, M.D.
... the Pagan shall never profane The shrine where Jehovah disdained not to reign; And scattered and scorned as thy people may be, Our worship, oh ...
— The Works Of Lord Byron, Vol. 3 (of 7) • Lord Byron
... soon after to restore the Christian, as the revival of letters had brought back the pagan antiquity. Ignorance was dissipated, and religion was disengaged from philosophy. The Renaissance, as the revival of antique learning was called, and the Reformation, at first made common cause. One ...
— Handbook of Universal Literature - From The Best and Latest Authorities • Anne C. Lynch Botta
... sordid boon! This sea, that bares her bosom to the moon, The winds that will be howling at all hours, And are up-gathered now like sleeping flowers— For this, for everything, we are out of tune; It moves us not. Great God! I'd rather be A pagan, suckled in a creed outworn, So might I, standing on this pleasant lea, Have glimpses that would make me less forlorn; Have sight of Proteus, rising from the sea, Or hear old Triton blow ...
— Poems Every Child Should Know - The What-Every-Child-Should-Know-Library • Various
... them; and, lastly, as they do not receive the same classical education with boys, their feeble minds are not obliged at once to receive and separate the precepts of Christianity, and the documents of pagan philosophy. The necessity of doing this perhaps somewhat weakens the serious impressions of young men, at least till the understanding is formed; and confuses their ideas of piety, by mixing them with so much heterogeneous matter. They ...
— Golden Steps to Respectability, Usefulness and Happiness • John Mather Austin
... Cups" —surnames of Baptism, the pagan Bar, the, language of Barathrum, a ravine Barriers, let down Bastard, when of strange women Baths, how heated —use in winter Battus, silphium of Bed of Procrustes Beginning, fable of the Bell, to awaken sentinels Birds ...
— The Eleven Comedies - Vol. I • Aristophanes et al
... a ceremony of that kind would soothe the last hours of Tim Hurley," said the pagan Endicott, "but I am curious, if you will pardon me, to know if the holy oils would have a ...
— The Art of Disappearing • John Talbot Smith
... into a madman, and perverted the gracious-minded Julius Caesar into usurpation and tyranny, has also been found by Christian heroes the most perilous ordeal of their virtue; but, inasmuch as they are Christian heroes, and not pagan men, worshippers of false gods, whose fabled examples inculcated all these deeds of self-absorbing vain-glory, our heroes of a "better revelation" have no excuse for failing under their trial, and many there be who pass through ...
— Thaddeus of Warsaw • Jane Porter
... no wrong. There is habit of thought that justifies habit of deed. Southey, in his History of the Brazils, tells a sad tale of a dying converted Indian. In her dying moments, cannibalism prevailed over Christian conscience; and was the Pagan conscience silent? She was asked by those standing about her, if they could do any thing for her. She replied, that she thought she could pick the bones of a little child's hand, but that she had no one now who would ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 348 • Various
... in its old mould, and so to restore their church to its former place there, than to reform and purify the moral condition of souls. Here was a profound mistake. The Christian Church is not like the pagan Antaeus, who renews his strength by touching the earth; it is on the contrary, by detaching itself from the world, and re-ascending towards heaven, that the Church in its hours of peril regains its vigour. When we saw it depart from its appropriate and sublime mission, to demand penal laws and to ...
— Memoirs To Illustrate The History Of My Time - Volume 1 • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... absurd it is," she murmured; "but it isn't just those few months. He trusts me. It's the feeling he has that this is only a beginning. I know what he means so well," she ended helplessly. David's short fingers moved over the keys. A music wild and pagan rose up, filled the room with rhythms of free dancing creatures, sank to a minor plaint, and broke off on a harsh ...
— O. Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1920 • Various
... resilient temperament, one who gamboled through life like a faun, argument was difficult. Bob Wharton was pagan in his joyous inconsequence; his romping spirits could not be damped; he bubbled with the optimism of a Robin Goodfellow. Ahead of him he saw nothing but dancing sunshine, heard nothing but the Pandean pipes. The ...
— The Auction Block • Rex Beach
... course, the study of Scriptures, but with just as many helps as possible. He thought that commentators, and historians, not alone Christian, but also Hebrew and Pagan, should be studied to illustrate it, and then the commentaries of the Latin fathers, so that a thoroughly rounded knowledge of it should be obtained. He thus began an "Encyclopedia Biblica," and set a host ...
— Old-Time Makers of Medicine • James J. Walsh
... knew absolutely nothing. Passing to our own literature, it is certain that Addison was profoundly ignorant of Chaucer and of Spenser. Milton only,—and why? simply because he was a brilliant scholar, and stands like a bridge between the Christian literature and the Pagan,—Addison had read and esteemed. There was also in the very constitution of Milton's mind, in the majestic regularity and planetary solemnity of its epic movements, something which he could understand and appreciate. As to the meteoric and incalculable eccentricities ...
— Biographical Essays • Thomas de Quincey
... is looked upon as an ancient effigy of the German Norns. The Cloister of the three Holy Bournes, or Fountains, which stands close by the place of discovery, is supposed to have been set up on ground that had once served for pagan worship. Probably the later monkish establishment of the Three Holy Bournes had taken the place of a similarly named heathen sanctuary where the three Sisters of Fate were once adored. Indeed, the name of all the corresponding fays in yet current German folk-lore is ...
— The Younger Edda - Also called Snorre's Edda, or The Prose Edda • Snorre
... advance of Sapor, that the insubordination of the troops should be checked, their wants supplied, and their good-will conciliated. Constantius applied himself to effect these changes. Meanwhile Sapor set the Arabs and Armenians in motion, inducing the Pagan party among the latter to rise in insurrection, deliver their king, Tiranus, into his power, and make incursions into the Roman territory, while the latter infested with their armed bands the provinces of Mesopotamia and Syria. He himself ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 7. (of 7): The Sassanian or New Persian Empire • George Rawlinson
... frequently recollected; and cheerfully perform all your business from this consideration—that it is obedience to heaven, and from thence will leave a recompense. It was the observation even of a pagan, "That a master may receive a benefit from a servant"; and "what is done with the affection of a friend, ceases to be the act of a mere servant." Even the maid-servants of a house may render a great service to it, by instructing ...
— The Education Of The Negro Prior To 1861 • Carter Godwin Woodson
... this hero of mine was going over the monotony of the old days in Arizona, the sand-deserts, the unlovely landscapes, the dull routine, the indifferent skirmishes with cattle- men and Indians; the pagan bullet which had plowed through his leg. And now it was all over; he had surrendered his straps; he was a private citizen, with an income sufficient for his needs. It will go a long way, forty-five hundred a year, if one does not attempt to cover the distance ...
— The Man on the Box • Harold MacGrath
... with fresh flowers or those metal wreaths that the Europeans use, and where a company lay together a little monument had been erected with a simple inscription. It would seem that these Champenoise peasants still retain some of that pagan reverence for the dead which their Latin ancestors had cultivated, mingled with passionate love for those who gave themselves in defense ...
— The World Decision • Robert Herrick
... regretfully, "it's a pagan world. Men make mistakes. I think it's largely because they want so much to love that they love somebody, anybody, till the right ...
— Sally of Missouri • R. E. Young
... absence—even while I whitewashed him—I could not extend a Christian forgiveness and forbearance to Jevons, any more than Mrs. Thesiger could. I think I hated Jevons. I ought to have hated him—by every glorious and manly code, pagan or barbarous, I ought to have hated him. And I did—every minute that he wasn't there. He had made me a figure of preposterous suffering. Because of him I trailed a fatuous tragedy through the Thesigers' house and over the green lawns of the Close, under the eyes of the young subalterns and ...
— The Belfry • May Sinclair
... man with the stock nodded. "It is the exquisite pagan athirst in you, scorched by the fire of spring. Quench that sweet thirst at the ...
— Iole • Robert W. Chambers
... both of them, in a Christian land, make Paley the foundation of their ethics; the alternative being Aristotle. And, in our mind, though far inferior as a moralist to the Stoics, Aristotle is often less a pagan than Paley. ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 57, No. 351, January 1845 • Various
... from an ancient and laudable custom of above 1000 years, introduc'd by Avitus the pious bishop of Vienna, in a great dearth, unseasonable weather, and other calamities, (however in tract of time abus'd by many gross superstitions and insignificant rites, in imitation of the pagan robigalia) upon which days, (about the Ascension, and beginning of Spring especially) prayers were made, as well deprecatory of epidemical evils, (amongst which blasts and smut of corn were none of the least) as supplications for propitious ...
— Sylva, Vol. 1 (of 2) - Or A Discourse of Forest Trees • John Evelyn
... high and stood on tiptoe to meet them. She shook her hair loose from its plait and threw back her head, loving it all—the wind and the dark sky and the tense feeling of readiness for the storm with which everything seemed charged—with an almost pagan joy. She even began a dance, a fantastic sort of lonely quadrille (if it could be given any special name), there on the flagged walk by the end of ...
— The Heart of Arethusa • Francis Barton Fox
... purpose of this volume to dwell. The Roman empire, in which the Pax Romana had provided a mould of widespread civilisation for the Church's growth, was at length broken up in the western half of it, by Teuton invaders occupying its provinces. These were all, at the time of their settlement, either pagan or Arian. There followed, in a certain lapse of time, the creation of a body of States whose centre of union and belief was the See of Peter. That is the creation of Christendom proper. The wonder seen is that the northern tribes, impinging on the empire, ...
— The Formation of Christendom, Volume VI - The Holy See and the Wandering of the Nations, from St. Leo I to St. Gregory I • Thomas W. (Thomas William) Allies
... before London Bridge was built—a place of throng and moil as far back as the centuries before the coming of the Romans. A church was built in the most crowded part of it; monks in leathern jerkins lived beside the church, which lay in ruins for two hundred years, while the pagan Saxon passed every day beside it across the double ford. During the two hundred years of war and conquest by the Saxons, Westminster, quite forgotten and deserted, lay with its brambles growing over the Roman ruins, and the weather and ivy pulling down the old walls of villa and stationary ...
— Westminster - The Fascination of London • Sir Walter Besant
... silver domes of Lucknow, Moslem mosque and Pagan shrine, Breathed the air to Britons dearest, The air of Auld Lang Syne. O'er the cruel roll of war-drums Rose that sweet and homelike strain; And the tartan clove the turban, As the ...
— Selections From American Poetry • Various
... allowed it, one would like to point out here how the Apostle accepts the non-Christian notions of the people in whose tongue he was speaking; and here, for the only time in his letters, uses the great Pagan word 'virtue,' which was a spell amongst the Greeks, and says, 'I accept the world's notion of what is virtuous and praiseworthy, and I bid you take it to ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... stretched Marfisa on the ground, and thrice she rose and sought to avenge herself by a sword-thrust. At this point a body of knights, with Roger in their midst, arrived upon the field, while a band of pagan warriors approached from the opposite side. Blows were soon struck, and Bradamante, caring nothing for her own life, galloped wildly about seeking to ...
— The Red Romance Book • Various
... any object was consecrated, and experienced a feeling of disgust and repugnance when in the neighbourhood of old pagan cemeteries, whereas she was attracted to the sacred remains of the saints as steel by the magnet. When relics were shown to her, she knew what saints they had belonged to, and could give not only accounts ...
— The Dolorous Passion of Our Lord Jesus Christ • Anna Catherine Emmerich
... from human and dramatic Imagination, are the prophetic and lyrical parts of the Holy Scriptures, and the works of Milton; to which I cannot forbear to add to those of Spenser. I select these writers in preference to those of ancient Greece and Rome, because the anthropomorphitism of the Pagan religion subjected the minds of the greatest poets in those countries too much to the bondage of definite form; from which the Hebrews were preserved by their abhorrence of idolatry. This abhorrence was almost as strong in our great epic Poet, both from circumstances of his life, ...
— Prefaces and Prologues to Famous Books - with Introductions, Notes and Illustrations • Charles W. Eliot
... world, although it has indeed but slightly modified the conduct of nations, has nevertheless secured recognition as ethically and socially right, that Tennyson could not hope to enlist the sympathy and admiration of his readers for his Oenone, if he had cast her image in the tearless bronze of Pagan obduracy." ...
— Selections from Wordsworth and Tennyson • William Wordsworth and Alfred Lord Tennyson
... fought out that long fight all alone—and not merely against the subtlest brains and deepest learning of France, but against the ignoble deceits, the meanest treacheries, and the hardest hearts to be found in any land, pagan ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... music of sympathy mellow her voice. Her life had been unrelieved by a single deed of charity. She was, in old Mr. Morell's language, 'a negative saint.' Mr. Penrose went further, and called her 'a Calvinistic pagan.' But none of these ...
— Lancashire Idylls (1898) • Marshall Mather
... inspiration, the decline of taste, the decline of language, the decline of intellectual interest. Beneath it all and through it all there is spreading, gradually and silently, the insidious decay that will surely crumble the constitution of the ancient world. Pagan letters are uncreative, and, with few exceptions, without imagination and dull. The literature of the new religion, beginning to push green shoots from the ruins of the times, is a mingling of old and new substance under ...
— Horace and His Influence • Grant Showerman
... was a Briton; but this is mere conjecture. For over twenty years Paulinus remained with Augustine; but in 625 a marriage was arranged between Edwin, King of Northumbria and overlord of England, and Ethelberga, daughter of Ethelbert, the Christian King of Kent. Edwin, though still a Pagan, agreed that Ethelberga should be allowed the free exercise of her religion, and that she should bring a chaplain with her, who might preach the Christian faith ...
— The Cathedral Church of York - Bell's Cathedrals: A Description of Its Fabric and A Brief - History of the Archi-Episcopal See • A. Clutton-Brock
... 23. C. M. Loeffler's symphonic poem "A Pagan Poem" produced by the Boston Symphony Orchestra. Also Reznicek's adagio, scherzo and finale from "Symphonic Suite in E minor," given for the first ...
— Annals of Music in America - A Chronological Record of Significant Musical Events • Henry Charles Lahee
... Deluge, was to prove, by physical criticism, that no such event as that described ever took place; to exhibit the untrustworthy character of the narrative demonstrated by literary criticism; and, finally, to account for its origin, by producing a form of those ancient legends of pagan Chaldaea, from which the biblical compilation is manifestly derived. I have yet to learn that the main propositions of this ...
— Collected Essays, Volume V - Science and Christian Tradition: Essays • T. H. Huxley
... New England, was false, disloyal. She had but half kept the faith. When the cry of pagan England had gone forth for light, it had been heard; the light had been given. But now in her day of illumination, when the Macedonian cry came to her, she closed her ears and listened not. On her skirts was the blood of the souls of men; and ...
— The Bridge of the Gods - A Romance of Indian Oregon. 19th Edition. • Frederic Homer Balch
... thousand,—among them princes, generals, and the flower of the nobility,—were converted to Christianity. Afterwards, amidst the frenzy of civil war, religious persecution arose, and the penalty of death was denounced against all who refused to trample upon the effigy of the Redeemer. This was the Pagan law of a Pagan land. But the delighted historian records, that from the multitude of converts scarcely one was guilty of this apostasy. The law of man was set at naught. Imprisonment, torture, death, ...
— American Eloquence, Volume II. (of 4) - Studies In American Political History (1896) • Various
... Isle of Thanet A.D. 597, and Bede died A.D. 735. The intervening period, that of his chronicle, is the golden age of Anglo-Saxon sanctity. Notwithstanding some twenty or thirty years of pagan reaction, it was a time of rapid though not uninterrupted progress, and one of an interest the more touching when contrasted with the calamities which followed so soon. Between the death of Bede and the first Danish invasion, were eighty years, ...
— Legends of the Saxon Saints • Aubrey de Vere
... which the stream of its self-sacrifice and moral energy naturally flowed. Few things in history are more interesting and more valuable than a study of the causes that produced and modified these successive ideals. Thus in the moral type of pagan antiquity the civic virtues occupied incomparably the foremost place. The idea of a supremely good man was essentially that of a man of action, of a man whose whole life was devoted to the service of his country. The life and death ...
— Historical and Political Essays • William Edward Hartpole Lecky
... way time appeared to broaden and leisure to grow more ample. Life had an unusual richness, and warmth, and color, when the Bibliotaph was by. There was an Olympian largeness and serenity about him. He seemed almost pagan in the breadth of his hold upon existence. And when he departed he left behind him what can only be described as great unfilled mental spaces. I recall that a placard was hung up in his particular corner with the inscription, 'English spoken here.' This amused him. Later there was ...
— The Bibliotaph - and Other People • Leon H. Vincent
... at Kazan large spoons and candles, drums that were used to summon the people to religious ceremonies, and various other articles connected with their mysterious beliefs, and the Committee of the Exhibition awarded them a medal for "a collection of invaluable objects for the study of the pagan religion ...
— Modern Saints and Seers • Jean Finot
... was quite different from that which her scientific friends formulated for her, and was not modern but ancient as the hills. On the one hand, she never quite freed herself from the old pagan conception of Nemesis, or Fate; on the other, her early Methodist training entered deep into her soul and made her mindful of the Cross that forever towers ...
— Outlines of English and American Literature • William J. Long
... this had been achieved he could not explain, but the result was undeniable, and it was due, he knew, to an influence the source of which he frankly acknowledged to be external to himself. The words of the beaten and confounded pagan magic-workers came to him, "This is the finger of God." He could not deny it. Why should he wish to hide it? It became clear to him, in these few minutes of intense soul activity, that there was a demand being made upon him ...
— The Doctor - A Tale Of The Rockies • Ralph Connor
... time that FERAMORZ had ever ventured upon so much prose before FADLADEEN and it may easily be conceived what effect such prose as this must have produced upon that most orthodox and most pagan- hating personage. He sat for some minutes aghast, ejaculating only at intervals, "Bigoted conquerors!—sympathy with Fire-worshippers!"[191]— while FERAMORZ happy to take advantage of this almost speechless horror ...
— The Complete Poems of Sir Thomas Moore • Thomas Moore et al
... one, whose walls are also covered with deities. Both temples were much injured by the Portuguese, who, when they conquered the island, in their noble religious zeal planted cannon before them, in order to destroy the shocking Pagan temples; in which attempt they succeeded much better than in the conversion of the Pagans. Several columns are quite in ruins; nearly all are more or less damaged, and the ground is covered with fragments. None of either the gods or their ...
— A Woman's Journey Round the World • Ida Pfeiffer
... a little pagan,' said the landlady. 'For that matter, they are all the same, these mountebanks, tumblers, artists, and what not. ...
— The Merry Men - and Other Tales and Fables • Robert Louis Stevenson
... brocade. They wrap their legs in leggings with a fringe three or four inches long. Their shoes consist of socks, with plaits round the toe, covering the foot. All this has its charm in their eyes; they are as vain of dress as any Frenchman. The pagan tribes, whenever love is felt, marry without any ceremonial. The pair will discover whether they love one another in silence, Indian-like. One of the caresses consists in throwing to the loved one a small pebble, or grains of Indian corn, or else some other object which cannot ...
— Picturesque Quebec • James MacPherson Le Moine
... the orchard gate, watching the dying glow of the sunset. Suddenly I became aware of a naked boy, a bather from some neighbouring pool, I took him to be, who was standing out on the bare hillside also watching the sunset. His pose was so suggestive of some wild faun of Pagan myth that I instantly wanted to engage him as a model, and in another moment I think I should have hailed him. But just then the sun dipped out of view, and all the orange and pink slid out of the landscape, leaving it cold and grey. And at the ...
— Reginald in Russia and Other Sketches • Saki (H.H. Munro)
... this book we have aimed at presenting a clear picture of the pagan tribes of Borneo as they existed at the close of the nineteenth century. We have not attempted to embody in it the observations recorded by other writers, although we have profited by them and have been guided and aided by ...
— The Pagan Tribes of Borneo • Charles Hose and William McDougall
... reminded her of, and suddenly she remembered. It was the god Pan, the goat-footed lord of rivers and woods, sitting beside her, who blew into his pipes and stirred the blood of men and women to frenzies of joy and fear. There was fear and exultation in her heart. A pagan voluptuousness spread through her limbs. Jonah paused for a moment, and then broke into the pick of his repertory. And Clara listened, hypnotized by the sounds, her brain mechanically fitting ...
— Jonah • Louis Stone
... flowing uninterruptedly down from the fountain-head, and entrusted always to the best workmen who could be found—Latins in Italy and Greeks in Greece; and thus both branches may be ranged under the general term of Christian Romanesque, an architecture which had lost the refinement of Pagan art in the degradation of the empire, but which was elevated by Christianity to higher aims, and by the fancy of the Greek workmen endowed with brighter forms. And this art the reader may conceive as extending in its various branches over all the central provinces of the empire, taking ...
— Stones of Venice [introductions] • John Ruskin
... Dear as their pagan books were to the monkish collectors, it was upon their Bibles, their psalters, and their other religious books that these mediaeval bibliomaniacs expended their choicest art and their most loving ...
— The Love Affairs of a Bibliomaniac • Eugene Field
... of Christian valuations: the latter having grown out of a thoroughly morbid soil. (—The gospels present us with the same physiological types, as do the novels of Dostoiewsky), the master-morality ("Roman," "pagan," "classical," "Renaissance"), on the other hand, being the symbolic speech of well-constitutedness, of ascending life, and of the Will to Power as a vital principle. Master-morality affirms just as instinctively ...
— The Case Of Wagner, Nietzsche Contra Wagner, and Selected Aphorisms. • Friedrich Nietzsche.
... at the divine animals, or to commit incest, which was a divine prerogative, was analogous to "the blasphemy against the Holy Ghost," which in the New Testament is proclaimed an unpardonable offence, and in pagan legend was punished by the divine wrath, thunder, lightning, rain, floods, or petrifaction being the avenging instruments. Oedipus put out his own eyes to forestall the ...
— The Evolution of the Dragon • G. Elliot Smith
... am on this chapter of Brutality—wreaked by Christian men upon poor Heathen savages, for many of them were not many weeks from Guinea and Old Calabar, where they had been worshiping Mumbo Jumbo, and making war upon one another in their own Pagan fashion—that I have known Planters even more refined in their cruelty. They would make their slaves drink salt water, and then set them out in the hot sun tied to the outside posts of the Piazza. The end of that was, that they went Raving Mad, gnawing their Tongues and poor blubberous ...
— The Strange Adventures of Captain Dangerous, Vol. 2 of 3 • George Augustus Sala
... intellects the world has ever known. Canon Farrar calls him "A Seeker after God," and has printed parallel passages from Saint Paul and Seneca which, for many, seem to show that the men were in communication with each other. Every ethical maxim of Christianity was expressed by this "noble pagan," and his influence was always directed toward that which he thought was right. His mistakes were all in the line of infirmities of the will. Voltaire calls him, "The father of all those who wear shovel hats," and in another place refers to him as an "amateur ascetic," but in this the ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great Philosophers, Volume 8 • Elbert Hubbard
... teaching has been attempted. The Arabs come down to the native ways, and make no efforts to raise the natives to theirs; it is better that it is so, for the coast Arab's manners and morals would be no improvement on the pagan African! ...
— The Last Journals of David Livingstone, in Central Africa, from 1865 to His Death, Volume I (of 2), 1866-1868 • David Livingstone
... with the exception of the chef d'oeuvres of the English and German poets, the Colonel's library, which was an extensive one, almost wholly consisted of such books as immediately related to military subjects, or might be able to bear on some branch of science connected with military warfare. Pagan, and his follower Vauban, and the more matured treatises of Cormontaigne, were backed by the works of that boast of the Low Countries, Coehorn; and by the ingenious theories, as yet but theories, of ...
— A Love Story • A Bushman
... law—and that I had returned from Manila to encourage the Christians, cherishing the desire to die on the cross in order to go to enjoy eternal glory like my former colleagues. On hearing these words the Emperor began to smile, whether in his quality of a pagan of the sect of Shaka which teaches that there is no future life, or whether from the thought that I was frightened at having to be put to death. Then, looking at me kindly, he said, "Be no longer afraid and no longer conceal yourself ...
— A History of the Japanese People - From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era • Frank Brinkley and Dairoku Kikuchi
... from a view of countries which have been blessed with the light of revelation.—True it is, and with joy let us record the concession, Christianity has set the general tone of morals much higher than it was ever found in the Pagan world. She has every where improved the character and multiplied the comforts of society, particularly to the poor and the weak, whom from the beginning she professed to take under her special patronage. Like her divine Author, "who sends his rain on the evil and on the good," ...
— A Practical View of the Prevailing Religious System of Professed Christians, in the Middle and Higher Classes in this Country, Contrasted with Real Christianity. • William Wilberforce
... doubt, bled his patients and customers on the public streets of Persian towns, for the benefit of their healths, when we pinned our pagan faith on Druidical incantations and mystic rites and ceremonies; his Mussulman descendants were doing the same thing when we at length arrived at the same stage of enlightenment, and the Persian wielder of razor and tweezers to-day performs the same office as belonging to his profession. From my ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle Volume II. - From Teheran To Yokohama • Thomas Stevens
... possible.[C] If not, they must in every way regard the master with respect—bowing to his authority, working his will, subserving his interests so far as might be consistent with Christian character.[D] And this, to prevent blasphemy—to prevent the pagan master from heaping profane reproaches upon the name of God and the doctrines of the gospel. They should beware of rousing his passions, which, as his helpless victims, they might be ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... the slave-holders who sang hymns, ballads and popular songs in his hearing! With all due allowance for white influence, which has been great, of course, the fact remains that in savage Africa, remote from European culture, many of the most primitive pagan songs are sung in parts with elaborate interludes on drums tuned to different pitches. Indeed the music of the Dark Continent is rich in polyphonic as well as rhythmic suggestions for the European. Perhaps the war may ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 3, 1918 • Various
... stead. He cannot rest on pure negation. There never has been a real, absolute unbeliever. All the so-called unbelievers are either knaves or idiots. All the Gentile nations of the past have been religious people; all the Pagan powers of the present are also believers. There never has been a nation without faith, without an altar, without a sacrifice. Man can never, even for a single instant, escape the All-seeing Eye of God, or avoid ...
— Public School Education • Michael Mueller
... the inscription, 'Liberatori Patriae S.P.Q.R.' It is true that Giovio had lost his money in the general confiscation of public funds, and had only received a benefice by way of compensation because he was 'no poet,' that is to say, no pagan. But it was decreed that Adrian should be the last great victim. After the disaster which befell Rome in 1527, slander visibly declined along with the unrestrained wickedness ...
— The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy • Jacob Burckhardt |
