"Primitive" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... rickety, primitive-looking buildings, occupied by the officials of the Fur Company, reflected no great credit on the architectural skill of my husband, who had superintended their construction, he told me, when ...
— Wau-bun - The Early Day in the Northwest • Juliette Augusta Magill Kinzie
... descends again in the north, at the pearl pink of dawn. Sleep is a lost art with these men, as with all classes of people, during those nerve-destroying "white nights." When all the silvery satin of the birch logs has been removed from their capacious holds, these primitive barks will be unpegged, and the cheap "bark-wood," riddled with holes as by a mitrailleuse, will be used for poor structures on the ...
— Russian Rambles • Isabel F. Hapgood
... the accuracy and completeness of magnetic observations which was obtained by the new method, opened up fields of research which were hardly suspected to exist by those whose observations of the magnetic needle had been conducted in a more primitive manner. We must reserve for its proper place in our course any detailed description of the disturbances to which the magnetism of our planet is found to be subject. Some of these disturbances are periodic, following ...
— Five of Maxwell's Papers • James Clerk Maxwell
... in the Ancyloceras; or the tendency to a coil is reduced to a single curve, so as to give the shell the outline of a horn, as in the Toxoceras; or the coil is entirely lost, and the shell reduced to its primitive straight form, as in the Baculites, which, except for their undulating partitions, might be mistaken for the Orthoceratites of the Silurian and Devonian epochs. I have presented here but a few species of these extraordinary Cretaceous ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, August, 1863, No. 70 - A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics • Various
... "In the verbiage of primitive optimism a misleading limitation is placed on the significance of the word Nature and its inflections. And the misconception of the meaning of an important word is as certain to lead to an inaccurate concept as is the misstatement of a premise to precede a false conclusion. For ...
— The Crack of Doom • Robert Cromie
... legal procedure with all its crookedness.[13] Still it seems more in the ordinary course of things to explain this linguistic identification of law with justice, by supposing conformity to justice to have been the primitive element in the formation of the notion of law, than by supposing 'conformity to law to have been the primitive element in the formation of the notion of justice.' It seems more probable that certain things were commanded because they were deemed just, than that they were deemed ...
— Old-Fashioned Ethics and Common-Sense Metaphysics - With Some of Their Applications • William Thomas Thornton
... should not have its cabinet for photographs and the usually cherished prayer-book which maids love both to possess and display. Such possessions answer exactly to the bric-a-brac of the drawing-room; ministering to the same human instinct in its primitive form, and to the inherent enjoyment of the beautiful which is the line of demarcation between the tribes of animals and those ...
— Principles of Home Decoration - With Practical Examples • Candace Wheeler
... him on double duty over Mr Bradley Headstone. It was not that she was naturally given to playing the spy—it was not that she was at all secret, plotting, or mean—it was simply that she loved the irresponsive Bradley with all the primitive and homely stock of love that had never been examined or certificated out of her. If her faithful slate had had the latent qualities of sympathetic paper, and its pencil those of invisible ink, many a little treatise calculated to astonish the pupils would have come bursting ...
— Our Mutual Friend • Charles Dickens
... Khoubilai-Khaan; || redige en francais sous sa dictee en 1298 || par Rusticien de Pise; || Publie pour la premiere fois d'apres trois manuscrits inedits de la Bibliotheque imperiale de Paris, || presentant la redaction primitive du Livre, revue par Marc Pol lui-meme et donnee par lui, en 1307, a Thiebault de Cepoy, || accompagnee des variantes, de l'explication des mots hors d'usage, et de Commentaires geographiques et historiques, || tires des ecrivains ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo, Volume 2 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa
... Dick arrived from Montreal, much better, and our car was fastened to the train and on we went to Toronto. We all tried to read, but oh! the shaking, and dust, and heat were overpowering; still it was interesting to see what appeared a primitive country with forests half burned, with stations at "cities" consisting of apparently two or three wooden houses in the wood—I say apparently, for Sir D. Macpherson told me there were splendid farms near the railway. ...
— The British Association's visit to Montreal, 1884: Letters • Clara Rayleigh
... book is redolent with the spirit of the Odyssey, that glorious primitive epic, fresh with the dew of the morning of time. It is an unalloyed pleasure to read his recital of the adventures of the wily Odysseus. Howard Pyle's illustrations render the spirit of the Homeric age ...
— Round-about Rambles in Lands of Fact and Fancy • Frank Richard Stockton
... back a laugh. It was all very primitive, very savage, she told herself; it was, above all, different from any of the life that she had known, and yet, in a mysterious way, it was familiar, as if the unrestrained emotion in his voice stirred some racial memory within ...
— The Deliverance; A Romance of the Virginia Tobacco Fields • Ellen Glasgow
... conducts to that part of the Basilica of Constantine which by Honorius III was converted into the presbytery. It is decorated at the upper end by twelve columns of violet marble which rise from the level of the primitive basilica beneath. At the end is the ancient pontifical seat, adorned with mosaic and precious marbles. The papal altar is under a canopy in the Byzantine style. The pavement of this presbytery is worthy of ...
— Italy, the Magic Land • Lilian Whiting
... "Primitive people are inured to hardships, and besides, they have methods of their own. They can make fire—" "So can I," retorted Tish. "Any fool can make a fire with a rubbing-stick. It's ...
— Tish, The Chronicle of Her Escapades and Excursions • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... and no necessity for any matronage had been felt. But now the case was different—a large promiscuous element of military guests was thrown into it; and it struck all that society must change its primitive habit. ...
— Four Years in Rebel Capitals - An Inside View of Life in the Southern Confederacy from Birth to Death • T. C. DeLeon
... catholics are eager to conceive that these have been borrowed from Christianity; unconscious that their own mummeries have all been borrowed from heathen worship, and superadded to the rational purity of primitive Christianity,—E.] ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume VII • Robert Kerr
... the absolute majority is then elected. We propose to consider the different ways in which elimination might be made. We assume, in the first place, that each elector has cast an advance vote—i.e., that he has placed all the candidates in order of preference. The most primitive method is to eliminate at each successive count the candidate who has least first preferences. This is the method adopted in the Hare system, and we have already shown that it is very defective; in fact, it is no improvement at all. The eliminated candidate might be most in general ...
— Proportional Representation Applied To Party Government • T. R. Ashworth and H. P. C. Ashworth
... doctrine of justificaiton. Indeed, also Luther's Catechism is, in more than one way, conditioned by its times, but in its kernel, in its doctrine, it contains, as Albrecht puts it, "timeless, never-aging material. For in it pulsates the heartbeat of the primitive Christian faith, as witnessed by the apostles, and experienced anew by the Reformer." (648.) This, too, is the reason why Luther's Enchiridion is, indeed, as G. v. Zezschwitz remarks, "a booklet which a theologian never finishes learning, and a ...
— Historical Introductions to the Symbolical Books of the Evangelical Lutheran Church • Friedrich Bente
... primitive communities, the sap and vitality of the race were kept in the best men, because upon them the strain and struggle were greatest. War, adventure, discovery, favor virility. Whitman is always and everywhere occupied with that which makes for life, power, longevity, manliness. The scholar ...
— Whitman - A Study • John Burroughs
... he travelled with less comfort than before in a rickety buggy of most primitive construction, designed to meet the needs of rough mountain roads, and as innocent of springs as Guy himself of the murder of Montague Nevitt. It was a wretched drive. The drought had now broken; the wet ...
— What's Bred In the Bone • Grant Allen
... on the east side, is the Church of Holy Innocents, opposite St. Peter's Schools. It is a high brick building, opened September 25, 1890. There is a Primitive Methodist chapel with school attached in Dalling Road near by. In Glenthorne Road is the Church of St. John the Evangelist, founded in 1858, and designed by Mr. Butterfield. A magnificent organ was built in it by one of the parishioners in memory of ...
— Hammersmith, Fulham and Putney - The Fascination of London • Geraldine Edith Mitton
... choose to furnish the small preliminary sum necessary to change egg-shells into the great arcanum. There was Captain Seagull, undertaker for a foreign settlement, with the map under his arm of Indian or American kingdoms, beautiful as the primitive Eden, waiting the bold occupants, for whom a generous patron should equip two brigantines and a fly-boat. Thither came, fast and frequent, the gamesters, in their different forms and calling. This, light, young, gay in appearance, the thoughtless youth of wit and pleasure—the ...
— Peveril of the Peak • Sir Walter Scott
... smilingly. "Coombs here was a little reluctant to impart information, and I was compelled to resort to primitive methods. The result ...
— Gordon Craig - Soldier of Fortune • Randall Parrish
... sit in front of the shed and admire the world. I thought about the primitive mind, and how the civilised was given to playing it low on the primitive. I seemed to get around part of their point of view after a while and see it was reasonable. For the Mituans had got it fixed before we came that the keeper was somehow mixed up in the earthquakes. And when they'd ...
— The Belted Seas • Arthur Colton
... of. Facts, their unamiability, compared to an old-fashioned stage-coach. Falstaffii, legio. Family-trees, fruit of jejune, a primitive forest of. Faneuil Hall, a place where persons tap themselves for a species of hydrocephalus, a bill of fare mendaciously advertised in. Father of country, his shoes. Female Papists, cut off in the midst of idolatry. Fenianorum, rixae. ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell
... Assembly: "My intercourse with the brethren of the General Assembly was peculiarly pleasant and satisfactory." (13.) The delegate to the "Unitas Fratrum" (Moravians) stated "that he was most cordially received by the brethren. There is something of the simplicity and love of primitive Christianity about them that renders their assemblages charmingly attractive. The spirit of the Master was evinced in all their doings. Their discussions of some points of church-practises, diverging from their accustomed order, were ...
— American Lutheranism - Volume 2: The United Lutheran Church (General Synod, General - Council, United Synod in the South) • Friedrich Bente
... the years had wrought in her. He had told himself he was prepared for that. Nevertheless, now that he was actually face to face with her, in spite of his regard and respect for her, a horrid chasm seemed to yawn between them, which only one primitive emotion can span, an emotion which, like a disused bridge, had fallen into the ...
— Prisoners - Fast Bound In Misery And Iron • Mary Cholmondeley
... falsehoods. And as the artificial mysteries vanish, so will the ocean of veritable mystery stretch out further and further: the mystery of life, its aim and its origin; the mystery of thought; the mystery that has been called "the primitive accident," or the ...
— The Buried Temple • Maurice Maeterlinck
... older you will think differently," corrected Ethel, severely. "You will realise then that it is all very primitive." ...
— Peg O' My Heart • J. Hartley Manners
... that they never asked for one unless they were prepared to leave. Philip hesitated. He was a little suspicious of the men in his room who told him that the buyer could not do without him. They were decent fellows, but their sense of humour was primitive, and it would have seemed funny to them if they had persuaded Philip to ask for more wages and he were sacked. He could not forget the mortification he had suffered in looking for work, he did not wish ...
— Of Human Bondage • W. Somerset Maugham
... Whether Bishop Doane is ignorant of this fact, or whether he is merely presuming upon women's ignorance thereof, it is impossible to say. But one thing is clear, and that is, that the time has arrived when all women should be informed of the true status of their sex in the ministry of the primitive Church. ...
— The Woman's Bible. • Elizabeth Cady Stanton
... one of 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 picturesque ...
— We Two • Edna Lyall
... Compiegne he received a visit from Father Berton, formerly principal of the military school of Brienne. He was then rector of the school of arts at Compiegne, a situation in which he had been placed by Bonaparte. I learned the particulars of this visit through Josephine. Father Berton, whose primitive simplicity of manner was unchanged since the time when he held us under the authority of his ferule, came to invite Bonaparte and Josephine to breakfast with him, which invitation was accepted. Father Berton had at that time living with him one of our ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... unshakable. It was a phase already in process of fading into other phases, each less stable, less definite, and more dangerous than the other, leaving her and her ardent mind and heart always unconsciously drifting toward the simple, primitive and natural goal for which all healthy bodies are created and destined—the instinct of the human being to protect and perpetuate the race by the great ...
— The Crimson Tide • Robert W. Chambers
... "Their morals, like their pleasures, are but low". Probably Goldsmith only uses 'low' here in its primitive sense, and not in that which, in his own day, gave so much umbrage to so many eighteenth-century students of humanity in the rough. Cf. Fielding, 'Tom Jones', 1749, iii. 6:—'Some of the Author's Friends cry'd—"Look'e, Gentlemen, the Man is a Villain; but it is Nature for all ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Oliver Goldsmith • Oliver Goldsmith
... post-office and the Hotel du Midi, to our own quarters for dinner. The Hotel de France, as it is called, is the best in Arreau, but is nevertheless not much more than a fairly large country inn. The rooms are very clean, and the food good, but the arrangements are somewhat primitive; yet for all this we were very well satisfied on the whole, though the necessity of starting at nine o'clock next morning prevented us indulging ...
— Twixt France and Spain • E. Ernest Bilbrough
... took place in a bunker, while Eileen was whimsically vituperating her ball. The fascination of her virginal diablerie was like a force compelling the victim to seize her in his arms after the fashion of the primitive bridegroom. However the poor Honourable refrained, said boldly, "Try it with this," and under pretence of changing her golfsticks possessed himself of her hand. For the first time his touch ...
— The Grey Wig: Stories and Novelettes • Israel Zangwill
... further credence than any other book. It is not worth more, as an historical record, than an old chronicle of Indian, Greek, or Roman legends.[46] The evangelists did not get their accounts of the doings of Christ from observation, but from a primitive document written in the Aramaic language. The gospels were not intentional deceptions; but that they are as well the work of error as of wisdom, no candid interpreter can deny. The life of Christ ...
— History of Rationalism Embracing a Survey of the Present State of Protestant Theology • John F. Hurst
... acquainted with the medicinal uses of this plant in the Philippines. In India, by means of a primitive system of distillation, they extract from the seeds a dark-colored oil of empyreumatic odor, which under the name of Oleum nigrum was once proclaimed by Dr. Herklots as ...
— The Medicinal Plants of the Philippines • T. H. Pardo de Tavera
... full of the wives of the officers stationed in the Camp. During the daytime I was the only man among the guests. About five o'clock in the afternoon the officers from the Camp began to arrive on a primitive motor ferryboat. My son came over each day, and we often visited him at the Camp. His long training at Kingston had been very severe. It included besides the various classes which he attended a great deal of hard exercise, long ...
— Carry On • Coningsby Dawson
... in a conformity of shape rather than hue. The origin of sculpture is somewhat obscured in the thickening mists of antiquity, but it was no doubt one of the earliest symbols of ideas made use of by man. In fact, in its primitive development, there is considerable evidence to show that it was the first essay at a recorded language. The Egyptian hieroglyphics, those mysterious etchings upon the rock, representing animals, men, and nondescript characters, were unquestionably rude attempts to ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol V. Issue III. March, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... coffee was crushed as well as boiled. The pail was set upon a flat stone like a cobbler's lapstone, and the coffee berries were broken by using the butt of the bayonet as a pestle. At break of day every camp was musical with the clangor of these primitive coffee-mills. The coffee was fed to the mill a few berries at a time, and the veterans had the skill of gourmands in getting just the degree of fineness in crushing which would give the best strength and flavor. The cheering beverage was the comfort and luxury of camp life, and ...
— Military Reminiscences of the Civil War V2 • Jacob Dolson Cox
... took to making forks; and primitive ones they were. He selected a bough the size of a thick walking-stick; sawed it off the tree; sawed a piece six inches long off it, peeled that, split it in four, and, with his knife, gave each piece three points, ...
— Foul Play • Charles Reade
... Scott Elliot has hit upon a good idea in this attempt to set forth the life of the primitive savage. On the whole, too, he has carried it out well and faithfully.... We can recommend the book as ...
— Astronomy of To-day - A Popular Introduction in Non-Technical Language • Cecil G. Dolmage
... say that the epic is the oldest form of literary expression, but it is the expression of the oldest literary ideas, for, even when the epic is not at all primitive in form, it deals essentially with elemental moods and ideals. Epical poetry is poetic not because it is metrical and conformative to rhythmical standards,—though it usually is both,—but it is poetry because of the high sweep of its emotional outlook, the bigness of its thought, the untamed ...
— The Book of the Epic • Helene A. Guerber
... but the result of vice. A fearless man, they felt, must be a true man, and he was honoured accordingly. Flath-innis, the Isle of the Noble, was their only name for heaven. Allail or divine they applied to their heroic men. To imitate such was the old Celtic religion as it was the primitive religion ...
— The Celtic Magazine, Vol. 1, No. 3, January 1876 • Various
... the identical pair of cross-talk comedians who controlled its destinies in more peaceful days. Strangely attired in khaki and sheepskin, they salute officers with cheerful bonhomie, and bellow to one another throughout the journey the simple and primitive jests of their previous incarnation, to the huge ...
— All In It K(1) Carries On - A Continuation of the First Hundred Thousand • John Hay Beith (AKA: Ian Hay)
... mother, who cared for my health far more than for all the Fathers the Church could boast of—to use the sign of the cross, to go to weekly communion. Indeed, the contrast I found between my early Evangelical training and the doctrines of the Primitive Christian Church would have driven me over to Rome, had it not been for the proofs afforded by Pusey and his co-workers, that the English Church might be Catholic although non-Roman. But for them I should most certainly have joined the Papal Communion; for if the Church of the early ...
— Autobiographical Sketches • Annie Besant
... is as little of a proser as possible, but he blurts out the finest wit and sense in the world. He keeps a good deal in the back-ground at first, till some excellent conceit pushes him forward, and then he abounds in whim and pleasantry. There is a primitive simplicity and self-denial about his manners; and a Quakerism in his personal appearance, which is, however, relieved by a fine Titian head, full of dumb eloquence! Mr. Lamb is a general favourite with those who know him. His character is equally ...
— Hazlitt on English Literature - An Introduction to the Appreciation of Literature • Jacob Zeitlin
... pretty villa on the cliff." In 1808 Seaham "was the most primitive hamlet ever met with—a dozen or so of cottages, no trade, no manufacture, no business doing that we could see; the owners were mostly servants of ...
— The Works of Lord Byron: Letters and Journals, Volume 2. • Lord Byron
... niggardly miser Crassus was routed and knocked on the head by the Parthians, Pantagruel took his leave of the good Gargantua, his royal father. The old gentleman, according to the laudable custom of the primitive Christians, devoutly prayed for the happy voyage of his son and his whole company, and then they took shipping at the port of Thalassa. Pantagruel had with him Panurge, Friar John des Entomeures, alias of the Funnels, Epistemon, Gymnast, Eusthenes, Rhizotome, Carpalin, ...
— Gargantua and Pantagruel, Complete. • Francois Rabelais
... mythologist, that it is really delightful to come across a book that deals with the subject simply as literature. For the Folk-tale is the father of all fiction as the Folk-song is the mother of all poetry; and in the games, the tales and the ballads of primitive people it is easy to see the germs of such perfected forms of art as the drama, the novel and the epic. It is, of course, true that the highest expression of life is to be found not in the popular songs, however poetical, of any nation, but in the great ...
— Reviews • Oscar Wilde
... is amongst the middle classes; the same remark applies to the lower orders. As to the higher classes they never can be cited as forming a characteristic in any country; receiving a highly finished education, they are all brought to the same degree of polish, and the primitive features are entirely effaced. Good nature is a very conspicuous trait in the French character, and that is continually displayed towards any foreigner; ask your way in the street in a polite manner, and generally the persons become interested in your ...
— How to Enjoy Paris in 1842 • F. Herve
... primitive, who hold The faith which makes ye great on earth, implored A part of that vast all they held of old,—[gu] Freedom to worship—not alone your Lord, Michael, but you, and you, Saint Peter! Cold Must be your souls, if you have not ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 4 • Lord Byron
... the world gives the clew to the knowledge of man. Natural becoming is brought about by the chemical separation and coming together of substances; the ultimate constituents revealed by analysis are the three fundamental substances or primitive essences, quicksilver, sulphur, and salt, by which, however, something more principiant is understood than the empirical substances bearing these names: mercurius means that which makes bodies liquid, sulfur, that which ...
— History Of Modern Philosophy - From Nicolas of Cusa to the Present Time • Richard Falckenberg
... solution—he could not hesitate, he seldom erred. That upon his deeds and words was founded a religion which in a debased form persists and even spreads to this day is mere attestation of his marvelous gift: adoration is a primitive ...
— The Shadow On The Dial, and Other Essays - 1909 • Ambrose Bierce
... prophetou], scil. after Christ), and on the other, as a Montanist, he was obliged to assert the continued existence of prophecy. In like manner he sometimes ascribed to the Apostles a unique possession of the Holy Spirit, and at other times, adhering to a primitive Christian idea, he denied this thesis. Cf. also Baith "Tertullian's Auffassung des Apostels Paulus und seines Verhaltnisses zu den Uraposteln" (Jahrbuch fur protestantische Theologie, Vol. III. p. 706 ff.). Tertullian strove to reconcile the principles of early Christianity with the authority ...
— History of Dogma, Volume 2 (of 7) • Adolph Harnack
... next thousand years there was little attempt to light the streets. Iron baskets of burning wood, primitive oil-lamps, and candles were used to some extent, but during all these centuries there was no attempt on the part of the government or of individuals to light the streets in an organized manner. In 1417 the Mayor of London ordained "lanthorns with lights to bee hanged out on the winter evenings ...
— Artificial Light - Its Influence upon Civilization • M. Luckiesh
... forehead," and she pulled it up to show us. But Elihu himself sulked on in the dumps: his dignity was offended. "If you wanted to know," he said, "you might as well have asked me. Assault and battery is not the right way to test whether a citizen's hair is primitive or acquired." ...
— An African Millionaire - Episodes in the Life of the Illustrious Colonel Clay • Grant Allen
... and that creed, for the sake of harmony. This vestment they lay aside, and that form, until they will all be swallowed up, and neither Methodists nor Calvinists, Baptists nor Lutherans, Armenians, Jews, nor Gentiles, will remain. Then the primitive Church of Christ will be revived again upon earth, simple and unostentatious; its creed will be the ...
— Strange Visitors • Henry J. Horn
... in every house two sticks were kept for producing fire by rubbing. These were replaced by the flint-stone and a piece of steel. Of course, Bryant and May's matches have now replaced those primitive arrangements almost everywhere, and in the hands of children have become a source of great danger ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 3 - Books 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12 • Unknown
... chansons, a fuller appearance than the flashlight view of lost tragedy which we have in Roland. But until the reflex influence of the Arthurian romance begins to work, they are, though not always disagreeable or ungraceful, of a very simple and primitive kind, as indeed are ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 1 - From the Beginning to 1800 • George Saintsbury
... the crude bathing facilities afforded by nature might suffice for the primitive requirements of the untutored savage, a tub was a necessity to which he, as a refined product of civilization, had always been accustomed, and did not propose to forego. Also that to the toilet of an officer and a gentleman certain well-recognized ...
— At War with Pontiac - The Totem of the Bear • Kirk Munroe and J. Finnemore
... It was a primitive way, and so wasteful of wood that it required a tree to furnish fuel enough to prepare breakfast; but under the hands of a skillful woman those ovens and skillets turned out viands with a flavor that ...
— The Red Acorn • John McElroy
... drop-cakes, instead of making their own, or get up a hollow show of liberal housekeeping by purchasing slices of collared meat when a neighbour came in for supper. But it is my task to narrate the gradual corruption of Grimworth manners from their primitive simplicity—a melancholy task, if it were not cheered by the prospect of the fine peripateia or downfall by which the progress of the ...
— Brother Jacob • George Eliot
... girl who is sent away from decent houses, if she is a servant, and cut off in awful disgrace from her family and never spoken to again, if she belongs to the upper classes. Books and Benevolent Societies speak of her as "fallen" and "lost." Her vision of such things was at once vague and primitive. It took the form of pathetic fictional figures or memories of some hushed rumour heard by mere chance, rather than of anything more realistic. She dropped her hands upon her lap and looked at the ...
— Robin • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... your assemblies but in such houses, and these are of the best that have been made with hands. Nor is it well argued that they are pompous, and therefore profane, or less proper for divine service, seeing the Christians in the primitive Church chose to meet with one accord in the Temple, so far were they from any inclination to pull ...
— The Commonwealth of Oceana • James Harrington
... 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: ...
— Helen of the Old House • Harold Bell Wright
... neatness of her dress revealed a powerful struggle with her poverty. Notwithstanding the cold, she wore a scanty frock made of print of an indefinable color, spotted with white; but it had been so often washed, that its primitive design and color had long since disappeared. In her resigned, yet suffering face, might be read a long familiarity with every form of suffering, every description of taunting. From her birth, ridicule had ever pursued her. We have said that she was very deformed, ...
— The Wandering Jew, Complete • Eugene Sue
... at Lodore,—a small, primitive country inn, which has latterly been enlarged and otherwise adapted to meet the convenience of the guests brought thither by the fame of the cascade; but it is still a country inn, though it takes upon itself the title ...
— Passages From the English Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... and hares from their familiarity, their long ears, and their peculiar method of locomotion, seem always to attract the notice of primitive peoples. Several species occur in Mexico, including the Marsh rabbit (Sylvilagus truei; S. insonus), various races of the Cottontail rabbit (S. floridanus connectens; S. f. chiapensis, S. f. yucatanicus; S. aztecus; S. orizabae, etc.) ...
— Animal Figures in the Maya Codices • Alfred M. Tozzer and Glover M. Allen
... it, since this abstraction of the mind arises from no positive cause by which it is abstracted from other things, but merely from the absence of any cause by which from the contemplation of one thing the mind is determined to think other things. I acknowledge, therefore, only three primitive or primary emotions, those of joy, sorrow, and desire; and the only reason which has induced me to speak of astonishment is, that it has been the custom to give other names to certain emotions derived from the three primitives ...
— The Philosophy of Spinoza • Baruch de Spinoza
... device of recognition and reappearances to satisfy a rather primitive taste in fiction, and to add to the mystery, though I will again suggest that a man who travelled and went about among men as he did would take less offence at these things. The re-appearances of Jasper are natural enough, except at the ford when Borrow ...
— George Borrow - The Man and His Books • Edward Thomas
... left off wondering why the primitive man made so many white horses. I left off troubling in what sense the ordinary eternal man had sought to scar or deface the hills. I was content to know that he did want it; for I ...
— Alarms and Discursions • G. K. Chesterton
... wilderness soon discovered that his maintenance, indeed his existence, was conditioned upon his individual efficiency and his resourcefulness in adapting himself to his environment. The very history of the human race, from the age of primitive man to the modern era of enlightened civilization, is traversed in the Old Southwest throughout the course ...
— The Conquest of the Old Southwest • Archibald Henderson
... of St. Peter and St. Paul, the 'Blessed Prophet Fernando.' The tale of murder is told with holy horror by Dr. Gaspar Fructuoso, and the islanders are still nicknamed 'prophetas.' Foreigners, however, who have lately visited them, speak highly of their simple primitive ways. ...
— To the Gold Coast for Gold - A Personal Narrative in Two Volumes.—Vol. I • Richard F. Burton
... is an old track or drift-road, dating from primitive times, which diverges from the Old North Road and runs for some miles along the top of the low chalk downs which bound my southern horizon. Its name is a corruption of the word Mary—Mary's way—for there was an ancient shrine of pilgrimage dedicated to the Virgin ...
— The Silent Isle • Arthur Christopher Benson
... nature of my life, advanced infallibly in one direction and in one direction only. It was on the moral side, and in my own person, that I learned to recognise the thorough and primitive duality of man; I saw that, of the two natures that contended in the field of my consciousness, even if I could rightly be said to be either, it was only because I was radically both; and from an early date, even before the course of my scientific discoveries had begun to suggest the most ...
— Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde • ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON
... features of the great West, by traders and settlers. As the aboriginal tribes of these magnificent regions are yet in existence, the Indian names might easily be recovered; which, besides being in general more sonorous and musical, would remain mementoes of the primitive lords of the soil, of whom in a little while scarce any traces will be left. Indeed, it is to be wished that the whole of our country could be rescued, as much as possible, from the wretched nomenclature inflicted upon it, by ...
— Astoria - Or, Anecdotes Of An Enterprise Beyond The Rocky Mountains • Washington Irving
... De Thou, i. 539; Crespin, ubi supra, fols. 100, 101.—Historians have noticed the remarkable points of similarity this report presents to that made by the younger Pliny to the Emperor Trajan regarding the primitive Christians. ...
— The Rise of the Hugenots, Vol. 1 (of 2) • Henry Martyn Baird
... were falling fast when through an Alpine village passed"—egad, what a primitive existence. Like an Irunti in the Australian bush. Telling time by the sun. It must be approachin' six, thought the captain as his voice ...
— A Thousand and One Afternoons in Chicago • Ben Hecht
... peering curiously at its rather primitive fittings. Around three sides extended a breast-high shelf, carved and cut by many a jack-knife, and beneath it a narrower one where books and slates were stowed. In front were rows of backless benches for seats, and in the centre of the room an open stove ...
— Uncle Terry - A Story of the Maine Coast • Charles Clark Munn
... creature, by this young man who, even in his weaknesses, has a certain heroic air about him. It was necessary to break through the bonds of unworthy love. Unable to trust any longer to his often baffled resolution and self-command, Alfieri devised a primitive and theatrical remedy too much in harmony with his whole nature to be otherwise than efficacious. The lady occupied a house in the great rococo square of San Carlo, opposite to the one which he rented; she could not go in or out of her door without being seen ...
— The Countess of Albany • Violet Paget (AKA Vernon Lee)
... latter, from the premises laid down in books of geometry, under the title of definitions and axioms. Whatever we are capable of knowing must belong to the one class or to the other; must be in the number of the primitive data, or of the conclusions which can be drawn ...
— A System Of Logic, Ratiocinative And Inductive • John Stuart Mill
... Filipino peoples—the early Recollect missionaries, like Chirino and his co-laborers, having gone among wild Indians who had had little acquaintance with the Spaniards; and their observations are therefore of natural and primitive conditions ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898, Volume XXI, 1624 • Various
... and yet the impulse was so strong that, had I stayed another minute in her presence, I should have committed myself. What was it? I have to teach others the workings of our organism, and what do I know of it myself? Was it the sudden upcropping of some lower stratum in my nature—a brutal primitive instinct suddenly asserting itself? I could almost believe the tales of obsession by evil spirits, so overmastering ...
— The Parasite • Arthur Conan Doyle
... open the hunting season with me at my farm at Marinville? I shall be delighted if you will, my dear boy. In the first place, I am all alone. It is rather a difficult ground to get at, and the place I live in is so primitive that I can invite only my most ...
— Maupassant Original Short Stories (180), Complete • Guy de Maupassant
... 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 ...
— While the Billy Boils • Henry Lawson
... idea that one listens better with one's eyes shut, and that this and other things are a remnant of our primitive existence when perhaps the ears of our arboreal ancestors kept a lookout while the rest of their senses slept. I think, also, that the instinct I found in myself, and have since in other children, to conceal a wound is a similar survival. At one time, I suppose, in the human herd the ...
— An Englishwoman's Love-Letters • Anonymous
... idioms are long preserved. Their old dialect continues the language of the fireside, of daily toil, of daily needs, and of domestic joys and sorrows. It hovers in the air about them, and has been sucked in with their mothers' milk. Yet, when a primitive race such as the Gascons mix much with the people of the adjoining departments, the local dialect gradually dies out, and they learn to speak ...
— Jasmin: Barber, Poet, Philanthropist • Samuel Smiles
... in the savage and primitive way which we female human things have merely modernized, not modified, since the days of Lilith up to the days of suffragettes. I was asking myself what punishment I could devise and inflict, if necessary, to fit ...
— Secret History Revealed By Lady Peggy O'Malley • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... describes the primitive way of extracting camphor, a drug unknown to the Greeks and Romans, introduced by the Arabs and ruined in reputation by M. Raspail. The best Laurus Camphora grows in the Malay Peninsula, Sumatra and Borneo: although Marsden (Marco Polo) declares that the ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 6 • Richard F. Burton
... all the property I have got in the world," I answered as I clasped the last pair of biddies to my breast, for while we had been holding our primitive conversation, I had been obeying his directions and loading the Birds into Grandmother Craddock's stately equipage. Anxiety shone from my eyes ...
— The Golden Bird • Maria Thompson Daviess
... vault-builders of St. Denis and Notre Dame were not at once generally followed. Noyon, Senlis, and Soissons, contemporary with these, are far less completely Gothic in style. At Le Mans the groined vaulting which in 1158 was substituted for the original barrel-vault of the cathedral is of very primitive design, singularly heavy and awkward, although nearly contemporary with that of ...
— A Text-Book of the History of Architecture - Seventh Edition, revised • Alfred D. F. Hamlin
... Mexico, all mention the knowledge which the Mexican physicians had of herbs. It was supposed by these last, that for every infirmity there was a remedy in the herbs of the field; and to apply them according to the nature of the malady, was the chief science of these primitive professors of medicine. Much which is now used in European pharmacy is due to the research of Mexican doctors; such as sarsaparilla, jalap, friars' rhubarb, mechoacan, etc.; also various emetics, antidotes to poison, remedies against fever, and an infinite ...
— Life in Mexico • Frances Calderon De La Barca
... happy condition of human affairs; and although mankind have been gradually verging from a state of simplicity to a more social refinement, yet the governments of those primitive times laid open an analogy for licentiousness; and we find, by pursuing the history of man, that slavery was again introduced, and stained the annals of all the ...
— Anti-Slavery Opinions before the Year 1800 - Read before the Cincinnati Literary Club, November 16, 1872 • William Frederick Poole
... that the primitive Church had no such Bishops. If the fourth part of the bishopric remained unto the Bishop, it were sufficient."—On the ...
— The Complete Poems of Sir Thomas Moore • Thomas Moore et al
... I continued to make myself—well, famous throughout the land. I have taught these people many things, gentlemen—like this for instance." He indicated his cigar, and the chair in which he was sitting. "You cannot imagine what a variety of things one knows beyond the knowledge of so primitive a race ...
— The Girl in the Golden Atom • Raymond King Cummings
... the favourite game among the ancient Hindus, was that of chess; a knowledge of which in those primitive times formed one of the requisite accomplishments of a hero, just as skill in chess was considered among us in the palmy days ...
— Chess History and Reminiscences • H. E. Bird
... dandelions, whose soft yellow crowns were almost too heavy for the slender necks. The prince and princess of the fairy-tale paused here, recognizing the spot as the most beautiful on earth,—albeit only since their love's arrival. They seated themselves not on the bench, but on the yet more primitive grass beside it. They had not spoken as yet. Balder plucked some dandelions, and proceeded to twist them into a chain; and Gnulemah, after watching him for ...
— Idolatry - A Romance • Julian Hawthorne
... had pleased God in the primitive times to choose the Jewish race from among the nations and make it the repository of salvation; and, till the advent of Christ, those from other nations who wished to become partakers of the true religion had ...
— The Life of St. Paul • James Stalker
... a word as fathers, we are enabled to divide it into two parts; in other words, to reduce it into two elements. By comparing it with the word father, we see that the s is neither part nor parcel of the original word. Hence the word is capable of being analysed; father being the original primitive word, and s the secondary superadded termination. From the word father, the word fathers is derived, or (changing the expression) deduced, or descended. What has been said of the word fathers may also be said of fatherly, fatherlike, fatherless, ...
— A Handbook of the English Language • Robert Gordon Latham
... aware of it for several days. Their calls at his cabin in the lonely little park below had been frequent, and they had been specially solicitous of his coffee, his sugar, his biscuit and other delicacies, insomuch that once or twice during his absence these ingenuous children of Nature had with primitive simplicity, entered his cabin and helped themselves without leave ...
— Our Boys - Entertaining Stories by Popular Authors • Various
... surprised and admiring, recognised the quaint beauty of the little house. It was no commonplace country home now, though the changes wrought had been comparatively slight. It looked as if it might have stood for years in just this fashion, yet it was as far removed from its primitive characterless condition as may be an artist's drawing of a face upon which he has altered ...
— The Indifference of Juliet • Grace S. Richmond |
