"Shibboleth" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... to a nation, as a fan to the floor, which purges away the chaff and purifies the wheat. It is like the furnace to the metal, which takes away the dross and shews you a refined lump. It is a Shibboleth, to distinguish Ephraimites from Gileadites. And who knows not how great an advantage it is for the successful carrying on of any honourable design, to know friends from enemies, and the faithful from false brethren? Some ...
— The Covenants And The Covenanters - Covenants, Sermons, and Documents of the Covenanted Reformation • Various
... amusement—the appeal of the poor man's club!—when in gay carousal we tried to forget what we were. Even in the saloon and dance-hall we told tales of the shop! Oh, the irony of it! Was there no escape from the madness of the mart, no surcease from the frenzy of the factory or the shibboleth of ...
— An Anarchist Woman • Hutchins Hapgood
... to effect the conquest of Canada. Acadia had just fallen into the hands of Gov. Francis Nicholson without firing a gun, and the news had carried the New Yorkers off their feet. "On to Canada!" was the shibboleth of the adventurous colonists; and the expedition started. Eight transports, with eight hundred and sixty men, perished amid the treacherous rocks and angry waters of the St. Lawrence. The troops that had gone overland returned in chagrin. ...
— History of the Negro Race in America From 1619 to 1880. Vol 1 - Negroes as Slaves, as Soldiers, and as Citizens • George W. Williams
... his family was a stiff commercial one, that had generally kept demure, yet grasping, and practised the conservatism he also boasted of, but had departed from: he was the outlaw of the house, yet elevating its tenets into an aggressive shibboleth, the more so ...
— The Entailed Hat - Or, Patty Cannon's Times • George Alfred Townsend
... which the tower of his cathedral depends for its support." (Rockstro, "History of Music," p. 269.) Now this is all very fine, but it is nonsense, for Mozart's sonatas are anything but cathedrals. It is time to cast aside this shibboleth of printer's ink and paper and look the thing itself straight in the face. It is a fact that Mozart's sonatas are compositions entirely unworthy of the author of the "Magic Flute," or of any composer with pretensions to anything beyond mediocrity. They are written in a style of flashy ...
— Critical & Historical Essays - Lectures delivered at Columbia University • Edward MacDowell
... their standard. There was not one of the men repudiating them who did not believe thoroughly in the principle of woman's full right to the ballot. The women simply were sacrificed to political expediency; set aside without a moment's hesitation in obedience to the party shibboleth. "This ...
— The Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony (Volume 1 of 2) • Ida Husted Harper
... background of the undistinguished masses, those who had formerly carried on their performances in the full glare of front-row publicity and the campfire, now continued their efforts almost unabated. The impressive utterers of the goom-zup shibboleth, the slayers of the symbolical lion, carried on still. Indeed as the night wore on, and one group of dancers succeeded another, the homogeneous crowd began to break into varied activity. Each took his turn as principal, then fell back to form part of the variegated background. ...
— The Leopard Woman • Stewart Edward White et al
... The shibboleth that Saxham quoted was evidently unfamiliar to the girl. "I know"—there was a sombre shadow in her glance—"what Women's Wrongs are, but I am not very well informed about the things you speak of. The Mother tells me that there are many well-educated ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves
... the spoken word over the written, a thing he could well afford to do, since he was a remarkably good writer. This for the same reason that the only man who can afford to go ragged is the man with a goodly bank-balance. The shibboleth of the modern schools of oratory is, "We grow through expression." And Plato was the man who first said it. Plato's teaching was all in the form of the "quiz," because he believed that truth was not a thing to be ...
— Little Journeys To The Homes Of Great Teachers • Elbert Hubbard
... instruct themselves as regarded American localities, and were not readily to be caught by a cross-examination as to the topographical features, public institutions, or prominent inhabitants of the places where they pretended to belong. The best shibboleth I ever hit upon lay in the pronunciation of the word "been," which the English invariably make to rhyme with "green," and we Northerners, at least (in accordance, I think, with the custom of Shakespeare's time), ...
— Our Old Home - A Series of English Sketches • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... number taking up the name specifically, with a determination to stick to it denominationally, is small. In all large towns a few of this complexion may be found; and in Preston odd ones exist whose shibboleth is "Christian Brethren." We had a spell with them, rather unexpectedly, on a recent "first day"—"Christian Brethren" always call Sunday the first day. And it came about in this way: we were on the point of entering a Dissenting place of worship, ...
— Our Churches and Chapels • Atticus
... spring of 1812 was not an unattractive one. A new party, controlled by a remarkable coterie of brilliant young men from the South, whose shibboleth was war with England, had sprung up in Congress, and, by sheer force of will and intellect, had dragged to the support of its policies the larger part of the Republican majority.[164] President Madison was thoroughly in sympathy with these members. He thought war should ...
— A Political History of the State of New York, Volumes 1-3 • DeAlva Stanwood Alexander
... of men in Asia and Africa, in America and the islands of the sea. It was a phase of this problem that caused the Civil War; and however much they who marched South and North in 1861 may have fixed on the technical points, of union and local autonomy as a shibboleth, all nevertheless knew, as we know, that the question of Negro slavery was the real cause of the conflict. Curious it was, too, how this deeper question ever forced itself to the surface despite effort and disclaimer. No sooner had Northern ...
— The Souls of Black Folk • W. E. B. Du Bois
... the crimes in Hind are done under that word. It is the shibboleth of the British ...
— The Adventures of Kathlyn • Harold MacGrath
... beginning in 1835 chiefly a movement among the working-men, though not yet sharply separated from the bourgeoisie. The Radicalism of the workers went hand in hand with the Radicalism of the bourgeoisie; the Charter was the shibboleth of both. They held their National Convention every year in common, seeming to be one party. The lower middle-class was just then in a very bellicose and violent state of mind in consequence of the disappointment over the Reform Bill and of the bad business years ...
— The Condition of the Working-Class in England in 1844 - with a Preface written in 1892 • Frederick Engels
... and insulted. The translation of it is this: The man questioned, who is aware that as regards coat, hat, boots, and outward cleanliness he is below him by whom he is questioned, unconsciously feels himself called upon to assert his political equality. It is his shibboleth that he is politically equal to the best, that he is independent, and that his labor, though it earn him but a dollar a day by porterage, places him as a citizen on an equal rank with the most wealthy fellow-man that may employ or accost him. But, being so ...
— Volume 1 • Anthony Trollope
... apprised of their approach, called out the mighty men of Gilead and put the Ephraimites to flight. And to make his victory secure, he placed guards at all the passes on the river Jordan, giving them this password: Shibboleth. The Ephraimites, being of a different tribe and dialect, could not pronounce the word Shibboleth, but called it Sibboleth, which trifling defect proved them enemies, and there fell at that time forty ...
— Masonic Monitor of the Degrees of Entered Apprentice, Fellow Craft and Master Mason • George Thornburgh
... medium of a bookseller in Little Britain, well known to deal in such commodities, and to whom he was instructed to address himself in a particular phrase and with a certain sign, which, it seems, passed at that time current among the initiated Jacobites. The moment Mr. Pembroke had uttered the Shibboleth, with the appropriate gesture, the bibliopolist greeted him, notwithstanding every disclamation, by the title of Doctor, and conveying him into his back shop, after inspecting every possible and impossible place of concealment, he ...
— Waverley, Or 'Tis Sixty Years Hence, Complete • Sir Walter Scott
... done. Behold a Christian! a saint! a phoenix! In the meantime, perhaps, his heart and his temper, and even his conduct, are unsanctified; possibly less exemplary than those of some avowed infidels. No matter—he can talk—he has the shibboleth of the true Church—the Bible in his pocket, and a ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol IX. • Edited by Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton
... liberty means license; whether that be so or not equality is not consistent with military discipline. An army in which the idea of equality reigns is not an army but a mob, and is no more use for fighting purposes than so many armed peasants. The Shibboleth is always absurd and in a case like the present ruinous. The first duty of a soldier is obedience, absolute and implicit, and a complete surrender of the right of ...
— A Girl of the Commune • George Alfred Henty
... lived in, all things were estimated only by their value to commerce or to speculation; that there was neither space nor patience amongst men for what was, in their reckoning, useless; that the conqueror was now but a trader in disguise; that civilisation was but the shibboleth of traffic; that because trade follows the flag, therefore to carry the flag afar, thousands of young soldiers of every nationality are slaughtered annually in poisonous climes and obscure warfare, because such is the suprema lex and ...
— The Waters of Edera • Louise de la Rame, a.k.a. Ouida
... schooled himself to an English walk, and, so long as he did not raise it, an English voice. He did not gesticulate with his hands; he sat down on most of his enthusiasms, but he could not rid himself of The Shibboleth. He would ask for the Worcestershire sauce: even Howard, his immaculate butler, could not break ...
— The Day's Work, Volume 1 • Rudyard Kipling
... ministers, not belonging to the movement party, held truly orthodox opinions, and did their pastoral work as faithfully as ever Chalmers did after his great change of sentiment. It is curious to know that while party feeling ran high in the Scotch Church, it was a shibboleth of the Moderate party to use the Lord's Prayer in the Church service. The other party rejected that beautiful compendium of all supplication, on the ground that, it was not a Christian prayer, no mention being made ...
— The Recreations of A Country Parson • A. K. H. Boyd
... return to Manila." [12] He reported secretly to Bonifacio, who bestowed several choice Tagalog epithets on Rizal, and charged his envoy to say nothing about the failure of his mission, but rather to give the impression that he had been successful. Rizal's name continued to be used as the shibboleth of the insurrection, and the masses were made to believe that he would appear as their ...
— The Social Cancer - A Complete English Version of Noli Me Tangere • Jose Rizal
... their teachers, they lost no time in bettering the instruction they received, using their models as mere stepping stones on the way to those unsurpassed and unsurpassable achievements which are all their own. The shibboleth of Art is [107] the human figure. The ancient Chaldaeans and Egyptians, like the modern Japanese, did wonders in the representation of birds and quadrupeds; they even attained to something more than respectability in human portraiture. ...
— Evolution and Ethics and Other Essays • Thomas H. Huxley
... career will acknowledge that after his exile he lived for this principle, and that he died for it. "Respublica," the Republic, was the one word which to his ear contained a political charm. It was the shibboleth by which men were to be conjured into well-being. The word constitution is nearly as potent with us. But it is essential that the reader of Roman history and Roman biography should understand that the appellation had in it, for all Roman ears, a thoroughly conservative meaning. ...
— Life of Cicero - Volume One • Anthony Trollope
... mask of devotion, men were encouraged to obtrude with Cynic impudence all their most scandalous vices on the public eye. Because he had punished illicit love with barbarous severity, virgin purity and conjugal fidelity were made a jest. To that sanctimonious jargon which was his Shibboleth, was opposed another jargon not less absurd and much more odious. As he never opened his mouth except in scriptural phrase, the new breed of wits and fine gentlemen never opened their mouths without uttering ribaldry of which a porter would now be ashamed, and without ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 1 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... at least two guests uneasy. Mrs. Eustis showed him a most flattering attention. She was deeply impressed by him. He had just aided her pet mission in China—what he had given the heathen would have buttered my children's bread for many a day. Also, he was all but lyrical in his voicing of the shibboleth that Woman's Sphere is the Home, wherein she should be adored, enshrined, and protected. Woman and the Home! All the innate chivalry ...
— Slippy McGee, Sometimes Known as the Butterfly Man • Marie Conway Oemler
... the scene, Out of the coppice roars the tiger's voice: The lightning's touch is death; the thunder rends The very rocks whereon its anger lights, The paths are mined with gins; and giants wait To slay me should I speak with faltering tongue Their crafty shibboleth! Most dearest coz, This part you offer bids me play with death! I'll none of ...
— Double Trouble - Or, Every Hero His Own Villain • Herbert Quick
... daughter of my Hond Father in the Gosple,' the mask seems to be torn off, and the wages of godliness appear too openly. Capacity is a secondary matter in a midwife, temper in a servant, affection in a daughter, and the repetition of a shibboleth fulfils the law. Common decency is at times forgot in the same page with the most sanctified advice and aspiration. Thus I am introduced to a correspondent who appears to have been at the time the housekeeper at Invermay, and who writes to condole with my ...
— Records of a Family of Engineers • Robert Louis Stevenson
... exchanged by the three gentlemen. I had stumbled upon their shibboleth, and proclaimed myself an Ephraimite, and not of Gilead. I have no doubt that up to that moment they had considered me as one of themselves—a member, and perhaps a priest, of their own ancient, grand, and imposing religion, for such it is, I must confess—an error into which it ...
— The Bible in Spain • George Borrow
... committee—good and pious men— A Presbyterian Elder, Baptist deacon, A local preacher, three or four class-leaders, Anxious inquirers, and renewed backsliders, A score in all—to watch the river ferry, (As they of old did watch the fords of Jordan,) And cut off all whose Yankee tongues refuse The Shibboleth of the Nebraska bill. And then, in answer to repeated calls, I gave a brief account of what I saw In Washington; and truly many hearts Rejoiced to know the President, and you And all the Cabinet regularly hear The gospel message of a Sunday morning, Drinking ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... This shibboleth has indeed always been religious. Even to-day the way of direct access to the common heart is a religious one. Catholic as well as Protestant, Quaker no more and no less than "the world's people," welcome religious approaches, respect confessions, and believe experiences. Nothing ...
— Quaker Hill - A Sociological Study • Warren H. Wilson
... that had nothing earthly to do with the end to be promoted. The religious demagogue had been trotting out the foreigner; and he had found him unsound. The religious demagogue belonged to a petty dissenting sect, no doubt; and he was trying for his wretched little Shibboleth. But you may have seen the like, even with leading men in National Churches. And I have seen a pert little whipper-snapper ask a venerable clergyman what he thought of a certain outrageous lay-preacher, and receive the clergyman's reply, that he thought most unfavorably of many ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 58, August, 1862 • Various
... Benedict Walnut Abominate Piazza Holiday Barbarous Disgust Heavy Kind Virtu Nightmare Devil Gospel Comfort Whist Mermaid Pearl Onion Enthusiasm Domino Book Fanatic Grotesque Cheat Auction Economy Illegible Quell Cheap Illegitimate Sheriff Excelsior Emasculate Danger Dunce Champion Shibboleth Calico Adieu Essay Pontiff Macadamize Wages Copy Stentorian Quarantine Puny Saturnine Buxom Caper Derrick Indifferent Boycott Mercurial Gaudy Countenance Poniard ...
— The Century Vocabulary Builder • Creever & Bachelor
... the pure doctrine of the Gospel," such was the shibboleth of the faithful Lutherans over against the Melanchthonians and other errorists. But this was neither reprehensible doctrinalism nor a corruption of original Lutheranism, but the very principle from which it was born and for which Luther contended throughout his life—a principle ...
— Historical Introductions to the Symbolical Books of the Evangelical Lutheran Church • Friedrich Bente
... sentiment, will eventually bring about common consent and a willing acquiescence in the policy supported by the majority. So each craft was made a self-determining unit and "craft autonomy" became a sacred shibboleth in the labor movement without ...
— A History of Trade Unionism in the United States • Selig Perlman
... our attitude toward the alien should be sympathetic, and our minds should be open and inquiring as we study the incoming multitudes. We do not wish to raise the Russian cry, "Russia for the Russians," or the Chinese shibboleth, "China for the Chinese." The Christian spirit has been compressed into the epigram, "Not America for Americans, but Americans for America." We must see to it that the immigrants do not remain aliens, ...
— Aliens or Americans? • Howard B. Grose
... that he had a mission to bring labor into its own. The coming of the Democracy of Labor was a real democracy to him—no mere shibboleth. And as he rode through the rows of wooden tenements, where he knew men and women were being crushed by the great industrial machine, he thought of the tents in the fields; of the women and children and of the old and the ...
— In the Heart of a Fool • William Allen White
... two periods and belonging to both, the most prominent is Nachmanides, a pious and learned Bible scholar. With logical force and critical candor he entered into the great conflict between science and faith, then dividing the Jewish world into two camps, with Maimonides' works as their shibboleth. The Aristotelian philosophy was no longer satisfying. Minds and hearts were yearning for a new revelation, and in default thereof steeping themselves in mystical speculations. A voluminous theosophic ...
— Jewish Literature and Other Essays • Gustav Karpeles
... Convention of the followers of Jesus Christ be called, with a view to the speedy Christianization of the world, and either three-fourths would keep away or the whole time of the meeting be wasted in an acrimonious quarrel as to the meaning of Christianity or the wording of the Shibboleth whereby those who were should be distinguished from those who were not entitled to bear ...
— Glances at Europe - In a Series of Letters from Great Britain, France, Italy, - Switzerland, &c. During the Summer of 1851. • Horace Greeley
... their comparative values. Being an intelligent man he said frankly at the outset that he knew very little on the subject. He had, however, in common with all of us, heard the word "asbestos" used as a shibboleth for years, but he desired definite knowledge, and after he had digested the information he should act on his judgment. I devoted sufficient time to him to put him in possession of the salient points of the subject. ...
— The American Architect and Building News, Vol. 27, No. 733, January 11, 1890 • Various
... masse, till a man come and bid me go out or kneel down: so I did go out. And thence to Somerset House; and there into the chapel, where Monsieur d'Espagne [Probably author of a small volume called "Shibboleth, ou, Reformation de quelques Passages de la Bible, per Jean d'Espagne; Ministre du St. Evangile," in the Pepysian Collection, printed 1653, and dedicated to Cromwell.] used to preach. But now it ...
— The Diary of Samuel Pepys • Samuel Pepys
... those red tabs? The expression "red tabs" is, however, employed rather as a shibboleth; staff-officers must be distinguished somehow when they are not wearing armlets, and were the tabs less conspicuous there would be no special harm in them. It is the red band round the cap that is so utterly inappropriate when imposed upon service dress. It ought to have been abolished within six ...
— Experiences of a Dug-out, 1914-1918 • Charles Edward Callwell
... rightly pronouncing the petition in the Lord's Prayer, "Forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive them that trespass against us." The child tried its best, but could get no nearer than "tepasses," and "trepasses." "Alas!" says Fuller, it is a shibboleth to a child's tongue wherein there is a confluence of hard consonants together; and then he continues, "What the child could not pronounce the parents do not practise. O how lispingly and imperfectly do we perform the close of this petition: As we forgive them that trespass ...
— The Teaching of Jesus • George Jackson
... with all her senses quivering, that saying, "Until the heaven's fallen," was frightening beyond the rest. On the lips of her husband, those lips which had never spoken in metaphors, never swerved from the direct and commonplace, nor deserted the shibboleth of his order, such words had an evil ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... little Susan! As we look back with the knowledge of our later life, we translate the heart-burnings as unconscious protests against labeling your free soul, against testing your reasoning conviction of to-morrow by any shibboleth of to-day's belief. We hail this child-intuition as a prophecy of the uncompromising truthfulness of the mature woman. Susan Anthony was taught simply that she must enter into the holy of holies of her own self, meet herself, and be true to the revelation. She first found ...
— Eighty Years And More; Reminiscences 1815-1897 • Elizabeth Cady Stanton
... It was the powerful shibboleth of the world of trade that one must be seen to be doing business; only so could the doors of credit be opened. If Cater came in with him now, as seemed at last to be expected, the doors must open farther. ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol. 31, No. 1, May 1908 • Various
... yet finished with this tattered shibboleth. The State had the right to nullify Federal law in 1798, so Jefferson taught and Kentucky practiced. Half a century elapsed; the State of Wisconsin, rock-ribbed Republican, nullified the fugitive slave law and in its pronunciamento of nullification ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume V • Ida Husted Harper
... pass out of my existence, admitting that they have ever entered it. I repeat, my life is all my own, and that I am concerned only with those whom I wish to retain as my friends. Gossip is the shibboleth of the mediocre, and, thank heaven, ...
— Parrot & Co. • Harold MacGrath
... across the sea to scratch him again, for the note was well written in a bold, round hand. It was short because Folly combined the wisdom of the serpent with the voice of a dove. She knew the limits of her shibboleth of culture, and never passed them. She said only the things she had learned to write correctly. ...
— Through stained glass • George Agnew Chamberlain
... thank ma'am, please!" he announced with a defiant glance at the singer lady up from under the rampant curl, and that he did not fail in his usual shibboleth of courtesy was due to his habitual use of it, rather than a desire to soften ...
— The Road to Providence • Maria Thompson Daviess
... for them; they seemed to enter heartily into the other portions of the service—but the psalms in metre are a great Shibboleth. My beadle, who always sat where he could command the congregation, has often assured me that when a psalm was announced he could soon tell the sheep from ...
— St. Cuthbert's • Robert E. Knowles
... calls this the "shibboleth of Bostonians." However this may be, it is simply an archaism, not a vulgarism. Show, like blow, crow, grow, seems formerly to have had what is called a strong preterite. Shew is used by Lord Cromwell ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 25, November, 1859 • Various
... training of street arabs had been his passion when he was still a student at Manchester New College. Then had come his moment of utterance—a thirst for preaching, for religious influence; though he could not bring himself to accept any particular shibboleth or take any kind of orders. He found something congenial for a time to a deep though struggling faith in the leadership of the Christian Brethren. Now, however, something had broken in him; he could preach no more. But he could go back to his old school; he could teach ...
— The History of David Grieve • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... we must "stand fast in the liberty wherewith Christ hath made us free" (Gal. v. 1). We must firmly refuse to accept any other foundation than that of the Creeds, settled by an undivided Christendom. And on the other hand, we must set ourselves with equal firmness against allowing any "Shibboleth" (Judges xii. 6), made out of exaggerated views of particular doctrines, to cut off those who should be brethren, not only ...
— The Kingdom of Heaven; What is it? • Edward Burbidge
... conception of a gentleman. The simplicity of his manners did not convince them. They seemed to hold by some complicated code of etiquette for ladies and gentlemen—Heaven knew how they had become possessed of it—of which he fell sadly short. He did not understand in the least their shibboleth of flirtation, their particular methods of banter, the precise shade of significance of their facial expressions and movements, the exact values of their phrases and catch-words; all of which was knowledge that, according to their notion, was the common stock-in-trade of breeding. Their atmosphere ...
— Cleo The Magnificent - The Muse of the Real • Louis Zangwill
... Church, Westminster, at which 220 of the Commons and all the Divines then present swore to the new pact, and signed it with their names.—This was but the beginning. The Covenant was thenceforth the Shibboleth of Parliamentarianism. In London first, and then gradually through England, in towns, parishes, and parish churches, wherever Parliament prevailed, all had to sign it or swear to it if they would be considered ...
— The Life of John Milton Vol. 3 1643-1649 • David Masson
... upon the freedom of the world; after the most painstaking and patient efforts to avoid conflict, during which he was subjected to humiliation and insult, we see him grasp the sword, calling a united nation to arms in clarion tones, like some Crusader of old; his shibboleth: DECENCY, HUMANITY, LIBERTY. ...
— History of the American Negro in the Great World War • W. Allison Sweeney
... me. The next day I crossed Grand River, and went to the vicinity of Old mines, when a sudden storm compelled me to take shelter at the first house, where I passed my second night. In this distance I visited the mining station of John Smith T. at his place of Shibboleth. Smith was a bold and indomitable man, originally from Tennessee, who possessed a marked individuality of character, and being a great shot with pistol and rifle, had put the country in dread ...
— Personal Memoirs Of A Residence Of Thirty Years With The Indian Tribes On The American Frontiers • Henry Rowe Schoolcraft
... same time a word often repeated, the word Huatinmio, began to enter largely into their conversation, and piqued the curiosity of the historiographer. Marcoy begged the interpreter to procure him the explanation of this perpetual shibboleth. Half by signs, half in the polyglot jargon which he had been employing with the Siriniris, Garcia managed to understand that the word in question was the name of their village, situated at a small distance and in a direction which they indicated. In this retreat, they said, no inhabitants ...
— Lippincott's Magazine Of Popular Literature And Science, No. 23, February, 1873, Vol. XI. • Various
... revolutionary fathers—in convention assembled—declared their independence of the mother country; solemnly asserted the divine right of self-government and its relation to constituted authority. With liberty their shibboleth, the colonies triumphed in their long and fierce struggle with the mother country, and established an independent government. They adopted a "bill of rights" embodying their ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume III (of III) • Various
... condescended to intersperse the cant dialect of the populace, with which the cobblers doubtless assisted these learned men, when busied in their buffoonery. Hence all their vulgar gibberish; the Shibboleth of the numerous class of their admirers—such as, "O, whose tat?" John Kankerbury, for Canterbury; Paltri-politans, for Metropolitans; See Villains, for Civilians; and Doctor of Devility, for Divinity! ...
— Calamities and Quarrels of Authors • Isaac D'Israeli
... Treaties and Sunnuds backward in his sleep. What he did with his stored knowledge only the Secretary knew; and he, naturally, would not publish the news abroad. This man's name was Wressley, and it was the Shibboleth, in those days, to say—"Wressley knows more about the Central Indian States than any living man." If you did not say this, you were considered one of ...
— Indian Tales • Rudyard Kipling
... secrecy of the performance, the hour, the mode, all the surrounding circumstances! I can imagine a man currying favour with the basest and most dangerous class by such means. I can imagine a conspiracy recruited by such means. I can imagine this shibboleth of the shutter grown to a watchword as deadly as the 'TUEZ!' of '72. I can imagine all that, but I cannot imagine a man acting thus out ...
— From the Memoirs of a Minister of France • Stanley Weyman
... or made,—and presently the answer appeared: If white and black men and women eat and drink together, play and work together,—then they will intermarry, and the white race will become mixed and degenerate. So that became the conviction, the creed, the shibboleth, of the Southern whites,—race purity, to be safeguarded by complete prohibition of all social intimacy, especially as symbolized by the common meal. And the prohibition was enforced among the whites by the penalty of ...
— The Negro and the Nation - A History of American Slavery and Enfranchisement • George S. Merriam
... week, as they meet they reckon up their items of transgression, and give an abstract of their downward progress for approval and encouragement. These folk form a freemasonry of their own. An oath is the shibboleth of their sinister fellowship. Once they hear a man swear, it is wonderful how their tongues loosen and their bashful spirits take enlargement under the consciousness of brotherhood. There is no folly, no pardoning warmth of temper ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. XXII (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... English language: and to this day hear many people quite as well educated, and of as high station in all but literary society, as Mr. Dickens, use the same pronunciation; but this eminent writer has thought fit of late to proscribe this practice as far as in him lies, by making it the Shibboleth of two of the meanest and vilest characters in his works. I should like to know whether the aspiration of this letter is due to Mr. D.'s London birth and residence, or whether it has become of late the general usage of good ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 194, July 16, 1853 • Various
... said Lawrence, unable to help laughing. "My feelings are not sensitive. But do finish—you fill me with curiosity. What shibboleth do ...
— Nightfall • Anthony Pryde
... were, in one individual. They cannot comprehend you when you argue for a principle; they do comprehend you when you talk of a name. The Emperor Napoleon is to them a name, and the prefects and officials who influence their votes are paid for incorporating all principles in the shibboleth of that single name. You have thus sought the well-spring of a political system in the deepest stratum of popular ignorance. To rid popular ignorance of its normal revolutionary bias, the rural peasants are indoctrinated with the conservatism that comes from ...
— The Parisians, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... of these asses met there would be an anxious, 'Have you your lantern?' and a gratified 'Yes,' That was the shibboleth, and a very needful one too; for as it was the rule to keep our glory contained, none could recognize a lantern-bearer, unless like a polecat, ...
— The Life of Robert Louis Stevenson for Boys and Girls • Jacqueline M. Overton
... his golden goblet, each filled the beggars' bowl to the brim, and drained it to the beggars' health. Roars of laughter, and shouts of "Vivent les gueulx" shook the walls of the stately mansion, as they were doomed never to shake again. The shibboleth was invented. The conjuration which they had been anxiously seeking was found. Their enemies had provided them with a spell, which was to prove, in after days, potent enough to start a spirit from palace ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... worse then by his shield and spear Had dealt with Jephtha, who by argument, Defended Israel from the Ammonite, Had not his prowess quell'd thir pride In that sore battel when so many dy'd Without Reprieve adjudg'd to death, For want of well pronouncing Shibboleth. ...
— The Poetical Works of John Milton • John Milton
... "Clarion" had its retort pat for the tribe of "I-told-you-so," admitting the prospect of some primary harm to save a great disaster later. More than one hundred lives, it pointed out, giving names and dates, had already been sacrificed to the shibboleth of secrecy; the whole city had been imperiled; the disease had set up its foci of infection in a score of places, and there were some three hundred cases, in all, known or suspected. One method only could cope with the situation: ...
— The Clarion • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... Marcoline did not dare to speak a word of French for fear of making herself ridiculous. When we got back to the inn, Marcoline told me that her new friend had given her the Florentine kiss: this is the shibboleth of ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... in some quarters, the power and charm of the book were universally admitted. At dinner parties, and in all circles where literature is discussed at all, 'Illusion' was becoming a standard topic; friendships were cemented and intimacies dissolved over it; it became a kind of 'shibboleth.' ...
— The Giant's Robe • F. Anstey
... have loved, to have triumphed!—what more can the world bestow? I stand at the close of the conflict, my foot on the neck of my foe. Prone in the dust lies the demon Despair, still shouting his shibboleth To the treacherous Amazon dark-browed Fate, and her grisly comrade, Death. To have lived! To have felt in my veins the surge of the rich, red tide of life, The quickening stir of the strong man's heart that thrills to the sound of strife; To have wrested success from defeat, to ...
— The Path of Dreams - Poems • Leigh Gordon Giltner
... on the safe side with a fire-insurance policy in the shape of a creed! Personally, I wonder when we all take to joining the sit-tight, safety-guarantee brigade, who is to stand on the outside guard? Or is there any modern Fighting Line? Or does the Fighting Line belong to the old Shibboleth legends of Canaanite and Jebusite and Perizzite and God knows what other "ite"? I hear these ancient gentry preached about and the heroes who smote them hip and thigh extolled. Personally, I am a great deal more interested in the modern ...
— The Freebooters of the Wilderness • Agnes C. Laut
... treatment of the King, and his early sympathy with the rebels. As Clarendon himself says, [Footnote: Life, i 425.] "They were all, or pretended to be, the most implacable enemies to the Marquis of Argyle; which was the 'Shibboleth' by which the affections of that whole nation ...
— The Life of Edward Earl of Clarendon V2 • Henry Craik
... vivendi treaty was periodically renewed by the Colonial Legislature with a submissiveness which would have seemed excessive if they had not been pressed with the shibboleth of Imperial interest. At the same time, signs of restiveness were not wanting. The complaints of the Newfoundlanders became more frequent, more insistent, and more emphatic. They pointed out that the French virtually claimed a monopoly of an 800-mile shore, which was entirely ...
— The Story of Newfoundland • Frederick Edwin Smith, Earl of Birkenhead
... and above all this, for me it has a far greater merit—utility. I have no sympathy with the flippant, effeminate, and senile cry, "Art for art's sake"; that is the echo of a decaying civilization, the voice of Greece and Rome in their decline. It is the shibboleth of a people drunken with pleasure; of a popular conscience anaesthetized; the cry of sensualism and selfishness popular with shallow minds and bloodless hearts; the incarnation of that fatal effeminacy that springs from a union of wealth and superficial intellectuality; the ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 20, July, 1891 • Various
... touch the little broken mass of carmine which was all that he possessed. We believed, but I do not know whether this could be the fact, that carmine of this superlative quality was sold at a guinea a cake. 'Carmine', therefore, became my shibboleth of self-indulgence; it was a symbol of all that taste and art and wealth could combine to produce. I imagined, for instance, that at Belshazzar's feast, the loftiest epergne of gold, surrounded by flowers and jewels, carried the monarch's proudest ...
— Father and Son • Edmund Gosse
... interests of all, builds up, strengthens and purifies the weaker units; unmistakably making for good. The results seem to marshal themselves on the side of co-operation, for the purpose of demonstrating the truth of its shibboleth, that the injury or weakness of one, is the concern of all. In other words, to raise the lower strata of society, means a corresponding elevation for the upper. The average morality, happiness and prosperity of society, is measured ...
— Solaris Farm - A Story of the Twentieth Century • Milan C. Edson
... remarked," said an Assistant, "that she possesses not the shibboleth whereunto she ...
— The Knight of the Golden Melice - A Historical Romance • John Turvill Adams
... of contradiction. Without the artifices usual to the practical politician he gradually rose to be a power in his party; thence to become the leader of a vast following, his name a shibboleth to millions of his countrymen, who enthusiastically supported him and who believed that he was elected Chief Magistrate of the United States. He was an idealist; he lost the White House because he was so, though represented while he lived by his enemies as a scheming spider weaving ...
— Marse Henry, Complete - An Autobiography • Henry Watterson
... thou ask'st, the Master's word, The Schoolman's shibboleth that binds the herd? To the soul's haven is there but one chart? Its peace a problem to be learned by art? On system rest the happy and the good? To base the temple must the props be wood? Must I distrust the gentle law, imprest, To guide and warn, by Nature ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. III • Kuno Francke (Editor-in-Chief)
... standing upright." Why, that statement of the "Autocrat" appears to me at least as certain as that two and two make four. It may, indeed, contain some recondite and malignant reference which the stupid American divines know, and which I do not; it may be a mystic Shibboleth, indicating far more than it asserts; as at one time in Scotland it was esteemed as proof that a clergyman preached unsound doctrine, if he made use of the Lord's Prayer. But, understanding it simply as meaning that the Judge of all the Earth will do ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, No. 48, October, 1861 • Various
... that Theology, at the age of seven, is not commendable—setting aside the question of whether (at any age) Theology is a web of words, ritual, dogma, tradition, invention, shibboleth; a web originally spun by interested men to obscure ...
— Snake and Sword - A Novel • Percival Christopher Wren
... with people of our world—people who know England and its great houses well enough to have made her familiar with the knowledge of where certain pieces of famous furniture are.—The very phrasing of her sentences is the phrasing of our Shibboleth, and not the phrasing ...
— Man and Maid • Elinor Glyn
... The Shibboleth, or trade cry, of the average modern vocal teacher is "The Old Italian School of Singing." How much of value there is in this may be surmised when we stop to consider that of the many who claim ...
— The Renaissance of the Vocal Art • Edmund Myer |
